Beijing: China on Monday passed a new controversial law to bar elected rebel lawmakers from taking office in Hong Kong in a bid to crush growing pro-independence movement in the former British colony. The ruling passed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Chinas rubber stamp parliament, said elected members to Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must swear allegiance to Hong Kong as part of China and those who changed their oath will be disqualified. Two pro-independence legislators, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung expressed support for Hong Kong's independence from China while taking oath in LegCo. PTI
Philadelphia, November 8 Rallying behind Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama has said that the Democratic presidential nominee was more qualified to be the next US president than him or Bill Clinton as he termed her Republican rival Donald Trump temperamentally unfit to lead the country. Appearing with his wife Michelle Obama, former president Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea for a grand rally here on election eve, 55-year-old Obama exhorted a crowd of thousands to go out and vote for Hillary. Describing Hillary as smart and well-tested, Obama said she was more qualified than he or her husband was to lead the country. Its been a long campaign, with a lot of noise and distraction. It felt more like a reality show and parody, Obama said. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Noting that Trump is temperamentally unfit to be the Commander-in-Chief, he said the Republican nominee lacked basic understanding of the world and justified torture. Hitting out at Trumps aides who took control of his Twitter account, Obama said if the Republican nominees closest aides did not trust him to tweet then he should not be trusted with nuclear codes. Anyone who sees women as objects, minorities and immigrants as inferior, then he cannot lead our diverse and dynamic big-hearted country, Obama said. Obama said in Hillary, Americans had somebody extraordinary to vote for. He said he had to bite my tongue several times when Hillary was attacked viciously and described her as one of the most effective Secretaries of State who did a great job for America. She is a big reason why we are more respected around the world today, he said, adding that Hillary did not complain, doesnt buckle, just like the American people. She is strong and tough and she will work and deliver. She wont just tweet. Urging the crowd, especially the young to go out and vote, Obama said in 2008 you gave me a chance, a skinny guy with a funny name. Im betting on you one more time, he said, expressing confidence that on election day, the American people would not vote for a candidate who denigrated their daughters from the highest office in the land or looked at people with differences as objects and with suspicion. Tomorrow America will reject politics of resentment and blame, you will reject fear and choose hope, he said. PTI BEIRUT, November 8 Syrian government forces battled rebels for control of a strategically significant district of Aleppo on Tuesday, in what could be the most important advance in the divided city by Damascus and its allies in weeks. There were conflicting accounts of the situation in the 1070 Apartments district on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo, which lies alongside the government's corridor into the parts of the city that it controls. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war, said government forces and their allies had seized full control of the district, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since September. But officials in two rebel groups fighting in Aleppo said the battle was still raging in the area. Yasser Alyousef from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki group said rebels had recovered positions they had lost on Monday. "There is still a battle and the result has absolutely not been decided," added the second official, Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of the Fastaqim rebel group. A military media unit run by the Damascus-allied Hezbollah meanwhile said the Syrian army and its allies had taken full control of the area. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group, is fighting in support of Damascus. Syrian government forces backed by allied militias and Russian air power launched a major assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in September, after besieging the area that the United Nations says is home to 275,000 people. Insurgents launched a counter attack aimed at breaking the siege on October 29, targeting government-held western districts of Aleppo in an offensive that included jihadist groups and insurgents fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. But their progress slowed after early gains. Russia says its air force has been observing a moratorium on air strikes on the rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo since October 18. The Observatory and emergency workers in eastern Aleppo said heavy air strikes had killed hundreds of people, and hit hospitals and other civilian facilities prior to that. Insurgent shelling of government-held western Aleppo has meanwhile killed dozens of people, the United Nations said last week in an update on the humanitarian situation in the city. Reuters Washington, November 8 As US gets ready for a nail-biting election on Tuesday, two American astronauts orbiting the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour have already cast their votes from space. According to NASA, astronaut Shane Kimbrough has officially filed his electronic absentee ballot from the International Space Station (ISS). (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Another astronaut Kate Rubins cast her ballot before returning to Earth last week. Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislatures in 1997 that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, the two astronauts - residents of Houston where the Johnson Space Centre is located a. voted while in orbit. For astronauts, the voting process starts a year before launch when they are able to select which elections (local/state/federal) that they want to participate in while in space. Then, six months before the election, astronauts are provided with a standard form: the "Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request - Federal Post Card Application", the US space agency said in a statement. "Space voting" was first used the same year it was implemented in 1997. NASA astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote in space while on the Russian Mir Space Station. Current space station resident astronaut Shane Kimbrough is the most recent astronaut to take advantage of the opportunity. While astronauts do not have to wait in line for his ballot like the rest of us, there is one disadvantage to voting in space: they miss out on the highly coveted "I Voted" sticker! IANS U.S. Xpress is one fleet using the Pit Group's fuel economy testing services. Photo: Jack Roberts "Spec'ing a truck today is a science," Dwayne Haug says bluntly. "If you just go to a dealer and pick one off the lot, you're doing it wrong." Haug ought to know what he's talking about. He's a Technology & Maintenance Council Silver Spark Plug honoree who started at a small, Midwestern fleet in 1972 and eventually spent 26 years at Werner Enterprises. Today, Haug is a private fleet consultant who is helping The Pit Group, a Canadian-based engineering and consulting firm, make its first inroads in the U.S. Pit is working with American fleets to test and verify emerging powertrain, fuel efficiency and safety technology, as well as trucking-specific best practices both in the shop and in the cab. "We're on the cusp of a whole new era in trucking," Haug explains. "Everything is changing. And nothing can be taken for granted. Fleets need good, hard data verifying that new technologies or procedures are going to benefit their bottom line. And the Pit Group are specialists when it comes to helping its fleet members identify ways to run better and boost their bottom line." "Fleets need good, hard data verifying that new technologies or procedures are going to benefit their bottom line" "You have to remember that fuel is $4 a gallon in Canada today," explains Yves Provencher, director of the Pit Group. "Many U.S. fleets became very technology focused a decade ago when prices shot up suddenly." Provencher says that, to a degree, that interest faded over the past few years as fuel prices fell to more manageable price points. "But in Canada, $4 is our everyday reality," he notes, explaining that Pit goes back to 1975. "In 2008 the Canadian trucking industry asked us to help them identify and verify new technologies and best practices so they run more profitably." The Pit Group is a non-profit, member-driven organization with a team of ready-to-travel engineers. The organization has the ability to carry out verification tests in remote, real-world or track conditions, as well as perform cold room and laboratory testing with the newest equipment and sensors. Provencher says the group sees itself as a "hub" between technology providers and fleet managers, with a goal toward developing, testing and accelerating the implementation of safe, sustainable and efficient trucking technologies. The Pit Group is currently working with more than 50 Canadian and U.S. truck fleets. Since 2007 it has conducted 16 different testing campaigns examining approximately 300 technologies and best practices for a price tag of over $3 million. "Our fleet members set our agenda," Provencher adds. "We have advisory meetings, and they tell us what technologies or practices are important to them and need to be investigated. So we are always working in their best interest." U.S. Express hosts Tunnel Hill Fuel Test One Pit Group member is Chattanooga, Tennessee-based U.S. Xpress, which this week is hosting a Pit Group Class 8 tractor fuel test out of its Tunnel Hill, Georgia, fleet facility. The test involves nine brand-new, tractors including Peterbilt Model 579s, Kenworth T680s, Navistar LTs and both conventional, and next-generation Freightliner Cascadias. U.S. Xpress trucks preparing to begin a 52-mile fuel economy run out of its facility in Tunnel Hill, Georgia. The trucks are the latest model tractors available equipped with each OEM's most aggressive fuel economy package. Photo: Jack Roberts Gerry Mead, U.S. Xpress' senior vice president of maintenance (and a 2016 HDT Truck Fleet Innovator) happily prowled the floor of his shop at Tunnel Hill earlier this week as his techs swarmed over the tractors, preparing them for their 52-mile runs to determine which tractor will turn in the best fuel economy numbers at the test's conclusion. "This a big deal and I'm like a kid in a candy store," Mead said, gesturing to the Navistar LT behind him. "We had Navistar President Bill Kozek personally sign off on getting this new tractor down here for this test. They've got a lot of confidence in the design and they're anxious to show off its performance. And they understand that the Pit Group is the perfect organization to accomplish that goal." Provencher says the carefully controlled test will follow TMC's Type III Fuel Consumption Test Procedures on a 52-mile course on both highways and local roads. Drivers will be rotated through the vehicles carefully to eliminate as many variables as possible, eventually winnowing the nine trucks down to three finalists, with a winner declared by week's end. Each truck is fitted with a 36-gallon temporary fuel tank fitted behind the tractor's cab. The tanks are filled carefully to account for heat and humidity ahead of the run. Upon returning to the Tunnel Hill shop, the tanks are removed and weighed on highly sensitive scales to determine the precise amount of remaining fuel. Left to right, the Pit Group's Dwayne Haug, U.S. Xpress' Gerry Mead, and Pit's Yves Provencher and Marc Bolduc prepare to begin a TMC Type III Fuel Test at U.S. Xpress headquarters in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photo: Jack Roberts Haug notes that most big fleets today carry on their own testing. "And that's good. But Pit Group can really reinforce those findings and add an extra layer of confidence to your operations," he says. "The more information you have, the smarter you can spec your trucks and run your fleet. And because our findings are ultimately rooted in the return on investment, you can be confident that the money you save goes straight to your bottom line." It's an approach that Mead finds appealing. "Like most carriers, U.S. Xpress takes fuel economy seriously, and we believe this test will help validate the decisions we've made about our equipment," Mead says. "Using a proven process and a certified, highly experienced team from Pit Group will provide us with solid fuel test results on fuel economy, and we're looking forward to seeing the results." Kevin Kolbeck has been named Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Oseco, bringing years of knowledge and competitive marketing experience to the positon, it was announced Monday. Kolbeck assisted with growth for two of the three unique Oseco business segments as Director of Marketing over the last 18 months. Last year, Kolbeck was integral to developing strategy for the newest Oseco business segment, Fire Safety. He then shifted to a leadership role within the largest Oseco business segment, Chemical Processing, where he supported implementation of a new sales process and launch of the Safety Cartridge, an innovative new product solution. Kolbeck earned his degree in Business Administration from Kansas State University in 1992. He spent eight years with Hilti, Inc. where he managed large sales teams as Senior Director of Trade Management at the Hilti headquarters in Tulsa, Okla. After Hilti, Kolbeck scaled his leadership skills to manage smaller teams and spent eight years building his own start-up company into a leader in the service industry with multiple locations. Upon transitioning to the VP role at Oseco, Kolbeck noted that the company has held forecasts and managed to recover a growth pattern, even in the face of a low market that only recently began showing signs of recovery. I am confident in our ability as a team to continue this growth trend and sustain our business as we continue to explore expansion into the global market, he said. Furthermore, I am excited by the work ethic of the people that make up this organization and look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together. Darren Doyle, Osecos previous Vice President for Sales and Marketing, now serves the Halma Process Safety sector as Marketing Officer. He will assist with the growth of several companies within the international group alongside Oseco. For more information about Oseco, call 800-395-3475 or email info@oseco.com. Learn more by visiting http://oseco.com, or follow @Oseco on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on Oseco news. Oseco, a Halma company located in Broken Arrow, has precision-manufactured rupture discs, explosion vents and other pressure relief devices for more than 30 years. Oseco is the only rupture disc manufacturer in the world to produce all parts and products exclusively in the U.S. Its high-performance solutions provide life safety and equipment protection across industries, including: Chemical Processing, Fire Safety, and Upstream Oil and Gas. The Sand Springs Chamber of Commerce hosted a forum about the state questions on the ballot Nov. 8 Monday. Oklahoma Policy Institute Policy Director Gene Perry and Dave Bond of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs spoke about the issues and took questions from the audience. State Question 776 State Question 776 would add a section to the Oklahoma Constitution that concerns the death penalty and allow the legislature to designate any method of execution not prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. Additionally, it would prevent death sentences from being reduced because a method of execution is ruled to be invalid, keep the death penalty imposed until a valid execution method can be carried out if another method is deemed invalid and prevent the death penalty from being deemed cruel and unusual punishment under Oklahomas Constitution. Perry said the legislature put the question on the ballot as a reaction to a botched execution in 2015. He said it doesnt protect the ability to use a method of execution if the courts deem it unconstitutional. In the immediate future, theres not going to be a big impact (from the result of the vote on State Question 776), Perry said. As courts argue the question (there could be more of an impact). Bond said the issue seeks to affirm that Oklahoma can continue to use the death penalty in certain instances. Youre seeing efforts to do away with the death penalty, he said. (State Question 776 is) a way to affirm that Oklahoma can continue to use the death penalty... State Question 777 State Question 777, known as the right to farm would add a section to the Oklahoma Constitution that would guarantee the right to make use of agricultural technology, livestock procedures and ranching practices and limit lawmakers ability to interfere with those rights unless the law is justified by a compelling state interest. What this would do is require strict scrutiny of new laws regarding farming and ranching, Perry said. He said farmers and ranchers in the state would still be bound by federal regulations. This is a pretty high bar to pass, Perry said. Bond said Oklahoma would reportedly be the third state to pass such a measure. Its a fair reaction (to heavier regulations in states like California) from a state like Oklahoma that has a healthy farming and ranching industry, he said. State Question 779 State Question 779 proposes adding an article to the state constitution to increase state sales and use taxes by one percent per dollar to provide revenue to be used for common education, higher education and career and technology education. School districts would be prohibited from using the funds for increasing superintendent salaries or adding superintendent positions. It would raise teacher salaries by at least $5,000 per year. The concern is it would give Oklahoma a relatively high sales tax, Perry said. Its (the result of) longstanding frustration that education isnt being funded in a competitive way and teachers arent being paid in a competitive way...Right now, this is the only option on the table. He said sales tax is relatively high in Oklahoma while property tax is low. Bond said the question would make the states sales tax burden among the highest in the country if passed. State Question 780 State Question 780 would amend existing state laws to change the classification of certain drug possession and property crimes from felony to misdemeanor and make the possession of a limited quantity of drugs a misdemeanor. The amendment would increase the threshold dollar amount used to determine whether a property crime is considered a felony or misdemeanor from $500 to $1,000. Oklahoma has massively underfunded and overcrowded prisons, Perry said. (This) tries to focus on low-level charges so it doesnt influence (the classification of)things like drug trafficking...Should we be able to send people to prison for possession of drugs? Thats what this is asking. Bond said law enforcement officials oppose the measures. They disagree that these are good ballot measures, he said. State Question 781 State Question 781 would create a fund from cost savings as a result of State Question 780 if its approved that would go toward rehabilitation programs, such as mental health or substance abuse services, in counties across the state. State Question 790 State Question 790 would remove Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution, which prohibits the government from using public money or property for the direct or indirect benefit of a religion or religious institution. Its likely to lead to more litigation (if passed) and (courts) have been split on this, Perry said. Bond said the issue gathered the attention of the public because of the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from state property. State Question 792 State Question 792 would restructure the laws in the state governing alcoholic beverages. It would eliminate the distinction between low and high point beer, allow liquor stores to sell refrigerated beer and non-alcoholic products, allow grocery stores to sell wine and high-point beer and require clerks to complete specialized training regarding alcoholic beverages. Theres a balance between consumer convenience and some harm to small businesses. I think some may go out of business because of this, Perry said. Bond said it would make Oklahomas laws regarding alcoholic beverages be comparable to the majority of other states in the U.S. CUSHING American Legion Post 108 has been serving this community and its wartime veterans since the hometown boys returned from World War I. But the fifth-largest earthquake in Oklahoma history has left its 92-year-old meeting place with state and national historic designations in jeopardy. I think were the worst building in town, said longtime post commander Jim Hunter as his wife, Lacretia Hunter, cried over the sad state of the place they had painstakingly restored in the early 2000s. An estimated 40 to 50 structures in Cushing received substantial damage as a result of Sunday evenings 5.0-magnitude earthquake, City Manager Steve Spears said in a Monday morning news conference. Spears said it is well too early to say whether the most seriously damaged buildings could be habitable again, but he said Cushing was fortunate that the quake didnt strike during daytime hours, when people would have been more likely to be walking downtown, which is lined with dozens of century-old brick buildings. California might have anticipated earthquakes, but we didnt, Spears said. He described the most common indicators of substantial damage as - to -inch-wide cracks, indications of foundation movement, downed parapets and brick facades. However, Spears said damage assessments would continue for at least a week. All of those signs and more were evident at the American Legion building, 212 S. Noble Ave. After its restoration, the all-white Mission Revival building received designations on the state and national registers of historic places in 2003, and in 2007 it was renamed for Jim Hunter, who has been post commander for 30 of his 60 years of membership. After all of that work! Lacretia Hunter cried as she peered into the front doors of the room that hosts twice-monthly meetings. The refinished old hardwood floors were covered in dust, insulation materials and broken glass from windows and picture frames, and the meeting tables draped in red, white and blue table cloths were littered with the downed dropped ceiling grid and tiles. Outside, the white plaster buildings massive chimney was cracked in half horizontally and shifted outward a couple of inches, and the entire upper portion of the buildings rear wall had rained down, crushing the back steps and air conditioning unit. Members have worked diligently for decades to fund veterans assistance, as well as scholarships for local students to attend the American Legions Boys and Girls State citizenship programs. They post American flags on the graves of 2,200 veterans every Memorial Day, and their color guard is in parades and at nearly 200 other community events every year. Now Hunter, who served in the Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve for eight years, including during the Korean War, said the group itself may need some assistance. Maybe somebody will read your article and want to help. Were gonna try to save it, he said. Another hard-hit building in a 16-block area of downtown cordoned off by police is Cimarron Towers, a seven-story building at 214 E. Broadway St. that offers affordable housing for senior citizens. Emergency responders evacuated 45 to 50 people from the high-rise Sunday evening. Most of the 14 visitors at a Red Cross shelter that was established at the Cushing Youth Center were displaced Cimarron Towers residents, officials said. Assessing the damage Jack Cook has lived in Cushing all of his 59 years and says he had never experienced an earthquake like the one that shook contents out of cupboards and pictures off the walls at his house Sunday night. Older people say you could feel it shake once every 15 years, but I never felt them until they started here in the last 10 years, Cook said. Ive never been through anything like this. It was like everything was gonna collapse. The end of daylight saving time on Sunday made it too dark for Cook to tell whether his house had suffered any structural damage, but he arrived at first light to check out his auto body shop in downtown Cushing. What he found in the old Hudson Hornet dealership from the 1940s was major structural damage. The entire front wall of Jack Cooks Paint and Body had separated from the rest of the structure, pulling down the ceiling grid inside the business office, and there was fallen concrete from the roofline inside his paint room. Former Cushing Mayor Evert Rossiter found extensive damage at his many properties early Monday. The roof of his 25-year-old business, Aqua Pleasure Pools, collapsed under the weight of falling bricks from a much older building next door. I just spent $30,000 replacing one entire wall of this building from previous earthquakes, Rossiter said. I even switched insurance companies and added earthquake coverage. Across the street, his 100-year-old Sinclair filling station was cracked like an egg on a horizontal line running the entire width of the building, and the brick facades of his two modern apartment buildings in the same block appeared to be a total loss. But none of that came close to being the worst thing that broke Sunday night. My wife fell in the shop awhile back and broke her pelvis. When the earthquake hit last night, she was so scared she tried to stand up in her wheelchair and rebroke her pelvis, Rossiter said, with an incredulous laugh. Needless to say, we didnt sleep at all last night. Breaking down the quake Sundays quake was particularly devastating to older structures because it was located much closer to a citys populated center than other recent quakes in Oklahoma have been. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, the 7:45 p.m. earthquake had a depth of 2.7 miles and struck 2 miles west of Cushing. It triggered at least six smaller aftershocks in the same general area between about 8 p.m. and 8:35 p.m. Sunday, the agencys data show. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission said in a statement Monday morning that pipeline operators in the Cushing oil storage terminal had resumed normal operations after a precautionary shut-down for routine safety checks after the earthquake. The commissions Oil and Gas Division is working on an action plan to further modify Arbuckle rock-formation disposal well operations in the area, where injection from drilling operations has already been curbed by the state regulators after previous seismicity. Also, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation inspected 110 state highway bridges within a 30-mile radius of the quakes epicenter and reported finding no damage. State inspectors respond to 4.7-magnitude and higher earthquakes and widen the inspection radius based on the magnitude, a news release from the agency states. ODOT revised its earthquake-inspection policy earlier this year after data showed that bridges affected by earthquakes of 4.6-magnitude and lower were not sustaining damage. Inspections of two bridges in the city of Cushing also revealed no damage, but a related water-main break occurred, according to city officials. On the same day Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for Payne County, state regulators unveiled a directive to shutter seven more disposal wells and reduce volumes of 47 others. A magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck Sunday evening about a mile west of Cushing, inflicting substantial damage to approximately 40 to 50 structures in the small town. Typical signs of the damage were - to -inch-wide cracks, indications of foundation movement, and downed parapets and brick facades. Fallins executive order on Tuesday morning allows state agencies to make emergency purchases related to disaster relief and preparedness, as well as acting as a first step toward potentially seeking federal aid. The governor also praised moves announced Tuesday afternoon by state regulators after the 5.0 quake, which was the unprecedented third of at least that magnitude in 2016. A state-record 5.8 hit near Pawnee on Sept. 3 and a 5.1 rattled off by Fairview on Feb. 13. I support the quick action taken today by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in our state, as it worked closely with state researchers at the Oklahoma Geological Survey to put in place mandatory reductions in activity impacting induced seismicity, Fallin said in a statement. The Corporation Commissions latest actions will close all seven disposal wells that are operating within six miles of the Cushing quakes epicenter. Another four wells already had been shuttered a year ago in response to strong seismicity on the same fault line. Sixteen disposal wells within 10 miles of the epicenter will reduce volumes by 25 percent from their last 30-day average. Thirty-one disposal wells within 15 miles of the epicenter will be limited to their last 30-day average. The deadline for shut-in compliance is Monday. Well operators must comply with volume cutbacks by Nov. 21. It is important to note that this plan is an initial response, and operators are being warned that work is underway on a broader plan that will encompass a greater area and more Arbuckle disposal wells, according to a statement from the Corporation Commission. Work is expected to take several weeks. Wastewater produced in oil and gas activities is at the crux of the issue of man-made earthquakes. Experts point to the approximately 700 disposal wells in the 15,000-square-mile area of interest that inject wastewater into the states deepest geologic formation the Arbuckle as the most pressing cause of induced seismicity. The Tulsa World in mid-January reported on a recent Oklahoma Geological Survey study that detailed an 81 percent jump from 2009 to 2014 in wastewater volumes injected underground. The rise coincides with the states leap in seismicity. Even more strikingly, wastewater injected into the Arbuckle ballooned 141 percent in the same period. Further establishing the connection, the frequency of earthquakes has diminished below 2015s banner year of 903 quakes of 3.0 or greater as regulators have enacted tougher restrictions. So far in 2016 there have been more than 550 of those quakes. There were 579 in 2014. However, 2016 is a record year for seismic energy released in Oklahoma, fueled by the three quakes that were 5.0 or stronger. Large quakes are such a concern because they put out vastly more energy than bunches of weaker ones. For example, the state-record 5.8 quake was nearly 64 times larger than a 4.0 and released more than 500 times its energy. The 5.8 was about 630 times larger than a 3.0 and let off nearly 16,000 times more energy. Correction This story originally contained an incorrect title for Hale High School dean of students Nate Morris. The story has been corrected. Coloring a hand-drawn cartoon depicting her feelings about a Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton presidency, Hale High School junior Nubia Munoz echoed the sentiments of her classmates and many others when she said she doesnt really support either candidate. On posterboard she drew Trumps profile hovering in front of a chaotic scene with buildings and a Make America Great Again sign on fire. Behind Clinton, a building with a Were Stronger Together sign contrasts with a barren tree and the somber demeanor of two people walking on the sidewalk below. Explaining her drawing, Munoz said she doesnt think Clinton would fulfill her promises as president and believes Trump would encourage hate and conflict. Munoz was finishing the drawing Monday in a combined art II and advanced placement art class, where students were designing voting booths for a mock election the school is holding Tuesday. Despite their unenthusiastic feelings about the presidential candidates, the students were grateful for the opportunity to learn about the voting process and encouraged others to fulfill their civic duty. I think its a good opportunity I mean theyre teaching us to get involved, teaching us that our voice actually does matter, and each vote counts, said 17-year-old Robert Garcia. If youre going to complain about it and not vote, then thats your fault, he said. Hale High, one of several Tulsa-area schools holding mock elections Tuesday, will learn the preferred presidential candidate of its 1,120-member student body at the end of a pep rally that will cap off a day of events encouraging civic participation. Before they vote, students can participate in a question-and-answer session at a school assembly in the morning with three speakers: an attorney from the Tulsa County District Attorneys Office, state Rep.-elect Monroe Nichols and community activist DeVon Douglass. Every day, (students) kind of see and live and experience injustices that continue to occur in the Tulsa community and throughout the city, and have for quite sometime, said Nate Morris, dean of students at Hale. I think weve got a lot of kids who have a lot of really good ideas who often go unheard, and we want to make sure that, one, theyre recognized for their ability and willingness to speak up, and we want to give them the platform to do that and to let them know how much focus is on them and how much people are willing to hear what they have to say, Morris said. At Hale Junior High School, the auditorium has been transformed into a polling place where eighth-graders can cast their votes for candidates and state questions to conclude their five-week language arts nonfiction unit that has focused on the elections. This was a real-world example to use, and we get to end with an activity thats going to stick in their minds a lot longer than just answering some questions on a paper or writing a couple of paragraphs, said Michelle McCane, an eighth-grade language arts teacher at Hale. At Skelly Primary Elementary School, about 330 kids in pre-kindergarten through first grade will also participate in an election Tuesday, but their votes will decide between three names for Principal Jennifer Penses new betta fish. We wanted to find a way for them to learn about the voting process but in a way that was more age-appropriate for them, because the presidential election means nothing to them, really, said Candice Bobnock, reading interventionist at the school. The kids have learned about the process by voting in a primary election last week to narrow their options to three names Starfire, Bella and Blaze. And when they return home with I voted stickers on Tuesday, Bobnock hopes theyll remind the adults in their lives to vote as well. We just really wanted them to kind of feel the feeling that you get, being a part of something and having your voice heard, Bobnock said. So were hoping that even though theyre just 6 and 7 years old, that theyll remember that feeling. State Rep. Lee Denney fears that significant damage from Sundays temblor could be the death knell for much of Cushings historic but already economically depressed downtown. A 16-block area downtown has been cordoned off as engineers begin assessing the structural soundness of dozens of brick buildings, which date to the turn of the century when the railroad arrived and oil was discovered in Cushing. Our downtown took a horrible hit. Its almost decimated, said Denney, R-Cushing. The worry is that its going to become a bunch of foundations that are scraped off because people cant afford to save these buildings. Im hopeful the governor will come because disaster relief would be very nice. Gov. Mary Fallin was out of town campaigning for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but she was expected back in the state later Monday. The governor is in constant contact with her office and state emergency management officials on developments in Cushing, said the governors spokesman, Michael McNutt. Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb said he was monitoring the situation and had been in touch with local officials. He pledged to go to Cushing, but said he doesnt know when. Denney, a Republican, is a former Cushing mayor and vice mayor who was elected to the state House in 2005. She described her own terrifying experience Sunday night in explaining this oil-and-gas towns mixed emotions about the potential ties between the industry and Oklahomas rash of significant earthquakes the last several years. Ill tell you what, the violence of the rumble, the violence of the noise and the sustained rumble, was very disconcerting. I was at a friends house for a dinner party and stuff was flying off of her shelves, she said. It was terrifying. It took a couple of hours for your heart rate to calm down. Denney said the cause of Oklahomas earthquakes has been the topic of casual conversation and questions her constituents want answered for a while, but she thinks Sundays quake was a game-changer. Its tough because that is our livelihood, Denney said. We are just constantly trying to find the balance of being a very important town in the oil and gas industry and wanting to keep citizens safe and their homes and belongings intact so they can thrive. We have a lot of those questions. ... People have been very understanding, but theres a lot of angst and uncertainty after last night. Weve lived through lots of small earthquakes, so you start to say, Whats the big deal? Now, we know the big deal. The Iraqi army and its allies on Monday continued to make gains in and around Daesh-held Mosul amid an ongoing campaign -- now in its fourth week -- to purge members of the terrorist group from Iraqs second-largest city. In a statement, General Abdulamir Rashid Yarullah, head of the army's Nineveh Operations Command, announced that Iraqi forces had captured three villages to Mosuls southwest and another village and district to the north of the city. The general added that two Daesh commanders had been killed to the citys south and east, while Iraqi forces southeast of Mosul had captured a tank and a large weapons cache from the militants. According to Colonel Ahmed al-Jubouri, an officer in the Nineveh Operations Command, Iraqi forces now stand some 14 kilometers from Mosuls international airport. "After capturing the village of Al-Zefteyya, Iraqi forces are now about 14 kilometers from the airport from the direction of Mosuls southern Hammam al-Alil area," al-Jubouri told Anadolu Agency. On Saturday, the army announced the recapture of Hammam al-Alil, one of Daeshs last strongholds south of Mosul, soon after storming it. On Oct. 18, the army, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, launched a wide-ranging operation aimed at retaking Mosul, which Daesh overran -- along with additional territory in northern and western Iraq -- in mid-2014. Recent months have seen the Iraqi army retake much territory, especially on the outskirts of Mosul -- regional capital of Iraqs northern Nineveh province -- and in the western province of Anbar. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 22,000 people have been displaced since the Mosul campaign began three weeks ago. If you found over Five Thousand dollars in cash, what would you do? Would you return it? Wel The ABC has rejected criticism of its co-funding arrangements with Netflix for a second season of Glitch. Seven, Nine and Foxtel CEOs have deemed the co-production arrangements as a global giant being subsidised by public funds. Its just another example of how the current system favours multinational media companies, Nine CEO Hugh Marks said. Our industry is one currently pressured by unreasonable and uncompetitive taxes favouring offshore players who dont contribute anything substantial to our national narrative and creative community. An ABC spokesman said the deal delivered a better outcome for Australian audiences and drove the public dollar further. As a result of Netflixs involvement, there is more money being invested in Glitch to fully realise the creative aspiration of series 2, said the spokesman. While Glitch represents its first production spend, Netflix is yet to fully-fund an Australian series. The series will premiere in Australian on ABC. Source: The Australian In December the History channel explores the birth of the Australian surfing boom in the 1 hour documentary, Men of Wood & Foam. Produced by Backbeach Pictures and Panga Productions, this includes interviews with Patricia Little Pattie Amphlett, Layne Beachley, Mark Richards, Nat Young and the late Midget Farrelly. This is narrated by Dan Wyllie. Following the screening, History will also premiere the 1971 classic surf film Morning of the Earth at 8.30pm. This exclusive one-hour documentary uncovers a golden decade in surfing, starting in 1956, when surfing was transformed into a sport and culture with its very own music, movies, fashion and heroes. Underpinning this exciting transformation was a small group of artisans who started out in the 1950s making wooden surfboards in their backyards along Sydneys eastern beaches, before eventually moving to Brookvale where they experimented with blowing foam to make lighter and more responsive surfboards from plastics. These pioneering artisans, Barry Bennett, Scott Dillon, Denny Keogh, Greg McDonagh, Bill Wallace and Gordon Woods became known as The Brookvale Six. The transition from long wooden paddle boards, known as tooth picks, to the modern Malibu Chip surfboard first began in 1956, when American lifeguards arrived in Australia for an international surf carnival being held in conjunction with the Melbourne Olympics at Torquay in Victoria. As soon as the Brookvale board builders saw the surfboards the Americans had brought with them, and the manoeuvres they could perform, the race was on to secure one of them to use as a prototype. Gordon Woods jumped in his car and drove 600 miles to make an offer. By 1958, Bennett had formed the core of The Brookvale Six, building Malibu Chip boards from balsa wood and by the start of the 1960s, surfboard riding really began to take off when the Brookvale pioneers produced the first lightweight foam boards, kicking off a huge Australian surfing boom. Soon, Australia had its own surf champion in Midget Farrelly, its own stomp craze with Little Pattie, The Delltones and The Atlantics, its own surfing movies (Midget Goes Hawaiian, Surfing The Southern Cross) and its own surf magazines. The Brookvale Six had not only supplied the entire country with surfboards, but also made design breakthroughs that put Australia at the forefront of the sport for decades to come inspiring a never-before-seen evolution in Australian surf culture. Surfing is integral to the fabric of Australian lifestyle, said Brian Walsh, Foxtels Executive Director of Television. This fascinating documentary captures the heart and soul of a colourful chapter from our past. We tend to associate surfing with the contemporary stars of todays competitive pro circuit, but this unique perspective demonstrates what a rich history we have in one of Australias favourite past times. Men of Wood & Foam takes viewers on a sentimental journey through the changing years of the sport and brilliantly tells the story of the pioneers who shaped it. I am delighted that the HISTORY Channel continues to tell our stories, Australian stories and this is a very special one, he said. Featuring in-depth interviews with all members of The Brookvale Six: Gordon Woods, Bill Wallace, Scott Dillon, Danny Keogh, Greg McDonagh and Barry Bennett, leading surfers including Layne Beachley, Nat Young and the late Midget Farrelly, famous faces from the time including Patricia Little Pattie Amphlett; as well as rare archival surfing footage spanning seven decades, Men of Wood & Foam explores a truly iconic time in Australian sporting and cultural history. Wednesday December 14 at 7.30pm. ABCs decision to revamp Catalyst continues to attract comment. Last night Media Watch quoted a number of Science experts who questioned the decision to switch from a half hour format to 17 documentaries. Many are dubious a level of quality can be maintained. Fiona Stanley, Professor, School of Paediatrics & Child Health, University of Western Australia, and former ABC board member said: By all means have the big in depth stuff, the panoramas, but we need the short magazine-style pithy stuff. Catalyst was getting good ratings and I wonder what the rationale is behind this massive change. You dont want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Professor Simon Chapman, told ABC Radio: It would be interesting to hear management try to explain why they are tossing out into the street the premier science communication team in this country. Independent producer Simon Nasht told Fairfax: One-hour science films are complicated to make, and very hard to bring in on budget and on time. Award-winning producer Sonya Pemberton also told Media Watch: Seventeen one-hour world-class science documentaries on air in 2017 would be an extraordinary achievement, but is it workable? Catalyst, for all its recent faults, provided a much-needed avenue for accessing quality science programming. Yes, its due for a change, but Im concerned that this is not a workable approach. Meanwhile Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland; Joan Leach, Professor, Australian National University, and Merryn McKinnon, Lecturer, Australian National University collectively wrote in The Conversation: Within the traditional broadcast media context, it is difficult to identify a program that consistently delivers critical appraisals of science and its implications. Sure, there exists plenty of other options for science stories to be told in the media and Australia oozes talent in science communication. This includes the award-winning Jonica Newby of Catalyst who finds her future in question. But all of this talent needs a vehicle. However ABCs Director TV Richard Finlayson said: This change is about what is best for audiences. A single issue, one-hour format will allow us editorial depth, more effective promotion, and more cut-through for ABC Science. 1 SEVEN NEWS 941,000 2 SEVEN NEWS AT 6.30 916,000 3 THE BLOCK 903,000 4 NINE NEWS 6:30 712,000 5 NINE NEWS 709,000 NITV has launched a new five-part global current affairs series, Nations without Borders, featuring in-depth stories from Indigenous Broadcasters from around the World. The series is now available through SBS On Demand ahead of its broadcast on NITV. Fronted by NITV journalist and presenter Natalie Ahmat, it features stories from NITV, Maori Television in New Zealand, Oiwi TV in Hawaii, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) in Canada and Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV). World Indigenous Television Broadcasters Network (WITBN) meet in Sydney for its biennial four-day conference, also hosted by NITV. NITV Channel Manager and WITBN Chair Tanya Denning-Orman said launching the series during the WITBN conference was the perfect opportunity to showcase what the Network is about. Nations without Borders brings audiences important investigative pieces on Indigenous issues as well as stories that celebrate and honour our cultures, she said. The content exchange programs are invaluable to the network and vital in promoting Indigenous stories at an international level. The series includes stories of a Canadian Cree woman in incarceration, to the Amis people of Eastern Taiwan fighting a battle against commercial and government property developers, and Maori tribes findings solutions to widespread homelessness. WITBN already runs a successful news exchange program through a private online platform, where members share content on a daily basis. The next meeting of the World Indigenous Broadcasters will be held in New Zealand, hosted by Maori Television in 2018. Episode one Quest for justice Canadas Indigenous TV network APTN unravels the story of Cree woman Connie Oakes, who was jailed for a crime she claims she didnt commit. More shocking than the murder itself, is lack the of evidence against Connie Oakes which APTN journalist Jorge Barrera uncovered as he followed the trail of this Indigenous womans quest for justice. Episode two Malama Honua In ancient times, Polynesians navigated back and forth across the Pacific Ocean on voyages of discovery and trade. Following a renaissance of this traditional art the Hawaiians are circumnavigating the world in their double hulled canoe, known as a Hokulea. Hawaiis Indigenous broadcaster Oiwi is following their global mission to spread a message about the need to care for the earth. This epic voyage has connected them to Indigenous nations around the world and given them an audience at the United Nations. Episode three The lost territories The Indigenous nations of Taiwan have long suffered from colonial intrusion into their lives and a consequent undermining of language and culture. But now the Amis people of Eastern Taiwan are fighting a battle against commercial and government property developers. A coastal construction spree has left Indigenous communities dispossessed of land and bereft of hope for justice. Taiwans Indigenous broadcaster TITV documents the struggle of the Amis to defend their traditional way of life. Episode four Kimberley healing A huge gap exists between the health of Australias Indigenous nations and its non-Indigenous population. Australias Indigenous TV channel, NITV, investigates the case for having more Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander doctors, to lift the state of health within their communities. Episode five Homeless Aotearoa (New Zealand) is facing a housing crisis. Families are sleeping rough as affordable accommodation slips out of reach. The government has promised funding support for social and emergency housing. Maori Television explores how tribes have stepped up to provide traditional solutions to mitigate this modern problem. Nations Without Borders will be broadcast on NITV from Monday 5 December at 9pm. Stan has signed a new deal with Sony Distribution nabbing Masters of Sex, Underground and Preacher, plus the full suite of Seinfeld episodes. It will become the new first-run home of Masters of Sex, with Season 4 streaming weekly from November. All three previous seasons are already available on the platform. SBS is understood to still have a second window on the series next year. Stan has the first-run exclusive rights to Preacher and will drop all episodes of season one at once in December. Season two will be fast-tracked in 2017, with episodes available the same day as they air on AMC in the U.S. Stan also has the exclusive rights to season one of historical drama Underground from January 2017. The second season will be fast-tracked on Stan in 2017, delivered on the same day as the U.S. premiere. All 180 episodes of Seinfeld will be available from November 11, remastered in widescreen and HD. Executive produced by John Legend with acclaimed performances and gripping storylines, Underground is a must-watch, tension-filled show about a group of escaping slaves. Created by Misha Green and Joe Pokaski, Underground stars Jurnee Smollett-Bell (True Blood, Parenthood), Aldis Hodge (Leverage, Straight Outta Compton), Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SUV, OZ) and Australias Jessica De Gouw (Arrow, Deadline Gallipoli). Season one ranked as WGN Americas most-watched original series. Period drama Masters of Sex chronicles the lives of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, who pioneered the science of human sexuality. Taking place over three decades, Masters of Sex was developed by Michelle Ashford and stars Michael Sheen (The Queen, The Twilight Saga, Frost/Nixon) and Lizzy Caplan (True Blood, Party Down, Mean Girls). Real Madrid have been dealt another blow in midfield with the news Toni Kroos fractured a metatarsal during the Liga leaders' 3-0 victory over Leganes on Sunday. The German international is likely to miss the rest of the UEFA Champions League group stage, with the holders still to secure their passage to the knockout phase. Moreover, he will sit out the forthcoming league visits to Atletico Madrid and Barcelona. With Casemiro a key fixture since Zinedine Zidane took charge last January also currently sidelined, Kroos had been occupying a deeper role to cover for the Brazilian. Now Zidane must rejig his side further without two of his first-choice midfield three. Luka Modric will come back into the Madrid line-up AFP/Getty Images However, it is not all doom and gloom for the Frenchman. Luka Modric made his first appearance since September against Leganes, so the Croatian international pivotal to the 2014 and 2016 UEFA Champions League triumphs should come straight back into the team. Provided Casemiro does not return earlier than expected, Mateo Kovacic, who originally stepped in to fill the void created by Modric's absence, may be asked to drop deeper to shield the back four as Kroos had been doing. This would allow either Isco or James Rodriguez a place in the XI as the most advanced of the midfield three and would not disrupt the balance of the side unduly. Of course, there are alternatives, including deploying Sergio Ramos as a holding midfielder. Although unlikely, particularly with Ramos recovering from a knee injury at present, it would not be the first time the captain has slotted into that position. He put in a stellar display as the Merengues knocked out Atletico in the 2015 quarter-finals, when Zidane was Carlo Ancelotti's assistant, and retained his place for the semi-final defeat by Juventus. Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it. I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends. More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it. The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity. About me: I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS. Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line). Age: 42 Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed. I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it). Patrick Davies, the Deputy Head of Mission from the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. will speak with UH students Thursday, Nov. 10. UPDATE: The following event has been canceled due to a conflict with the speaker's schedule. It will be rescheduled for a later date. The election of a new American President not only impacts the future of the United States, but there are broad international implications as well. Now theres an opportunity to hear how a nation with a special relationship to the U.S. is reacting to the election results. The UH Honors College welcomes Patrick Davies, the Deputy Head of Mission from the British Embassy in D.C., on Thursday, Nov. 10 from 1:30 2:30 p.m. in the Honors Commons. The diplomat will share his reaction to the historic presidential election and its potential global impact. Hell also address the parallels between the rise in anti-establishment voters in the United States and Brexit voters in the United Kingdom. The two nations are very close allies, but how exactly will their so-called special relationship evolve in the wake of such political change? Deputy Davies will address UH students, faculty and staff followed by a question and answer session. Russian-backed militants launched 50 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbas over the past day. This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center. In particular, the militants launched 31 attacks on ATO troops in Mariupol direction. Ukrainian positions near Pavlopol (30 km northeast of Mariupol), Novotroitske (32km south of Donetsk), Marinka (35 km south-west of Donetsk) were shelled from small arms and grenade launchers. The enemy also used 82mm and 120mm mortars and 122mm artillery to fire at Vodiane (16km north-west of Donetsk) and Hnutove (19km north-west of Mariupol). Ten ceasefire violations by militants were recorded in Donetsk direction. The terrorists shelled Ukrainian positions in Pisky (12km north-west of Donetsk), using grenade launchers, and in Luhanske (59km north-east of Donetsk), using machine guns and 82mm mortars. ATO troops in Avdiyivka (18km north of Donetsk) came under 82mm and 120mm mortar, grenade launcher, machine gun, small arm fire. In Luhansk direction, the enemy launched nine attacks on Ukrainian positions. In particular, the enemy used machine guns, grenade launchers, and small arms to shell Novozvanivka (70km west of Luhansk) and Novooleksandrivka (65km west of Luhansk). ol Ukraine plans to actively participate its activities in the United Nations peacekeeping operations, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin stated at a UN Security Council meeting in New York. Ukraine attaches great importance to United Nations peacekeeping, given that it is one of the key objectives of the organization and an important tool for ensuring peace and long-term stability. Despite the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine, we will continue to actively participate in UN peacekeeping operations, the Ukrainian foreign minister stated, , own Ukrinform correspondent repots. In addition, Foreign Minister Klimkin stated that Ukraine supports the need for closer integration of modern technologies and intelligence capabilities in the peacekeeping operations. According to him, it is important that country-contributors be fully provided with operational information about the local situation. iy Iryna Herashchenko, Ukrainian Presidents Commissioner for peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbas and First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, has left for Minsk to participate in the next round of talks of the Trilateral Contact Group. She posted this on her Facebook page. As earlier reported, a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group is to be held on November 9. During the previous meeting on October 26, the sides failed to agree on potential new areas for disengagement of forces along the line of contact and the terms for the withdrawal of troops in the village of Stanitsa Luhanska. iy No Ukrainian soldier was killed, but four servicemen were wounded in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine over the last day, Ukrainian Defense Ministrys Spokesperson for ATO issues Oleksandr Motuzniak stated. No Ukrainian soldier was killed, but four servicemen were wounded as a result of combat actions over the past day, Motuzniak said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. Iy Mark Feygin, the lawyer of illegally arrested Ukrinform journalist Roman Sushchenko, says France should become involved in the situation with Sushchenko, as the journalist was officially accredited and worked in this country. Were planning to launch the work on Sushchenko case in France, as Roman Volodymyrovych is accredited there at all departments. Therefore, France should immediately intervene in the situation and show its position on this issue, Feygin said this in an exclusive interview with Ukrinform. At the same time, he recalled that the primaries for the 2017 election have already kicked off in France (the election is set for April 23, 2017). "Well be seeking for the support from the current Presidential Administration and from the official circles of the country in general, the lawyer said. As reported, Ukrinform correspondent in France Roman Sushchenko was arrested in Moscow on September 30, where he arrived on a private visit. He was accused of espionage, allegedly being a member of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate denied allegations of the Russian Federal Security Service. The Russian court ruled at its closed hearing on October 1 to arrest the journalist for two months until November 30. On October 7, the Russian Federation officially charged the Ukrainian journalist with spying. Sushchenko denies any guilt. iy President Petro Poroshenko and President of Slovenia Borut Pahor signed the Joint Declaration on Cooperation of the Countries following the negotiations. This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State. The Declaration outlines common positions in security issues. The document confirms the existence of prospects for the further development of bilateral cooperation, particularly in trade-economic, scientific-technical and other spheres. The parties reached a compromise on cooperation in the framework of international organizations and noted prospects of cooperation in the sphere of humanitarian demining. ish President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and President of Slovenia Borut Pahor discussed the situation with Russian aggression in the east of our country and illegal annexation of Crimea. This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State. We are grateful to Slovenia for supporting the continuation of sanctions until full withdrawal of Russian troops and restoration of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko said. The President informed that he had discussed the situation in the occupied Crimea with the President of Slovenia. We noted that the lasting militarization of the peninsula and mass human rights violations cause serious concern in the international community, he said. The Head of State also thanked for the assistance to Ukrainians affected by the Russian aggression. According to him, it is symbolic that 240 Ukrainian children who became orphans after the Russian aggression had an opportunity to have a rest in Slovenia and see the benefits of European vector of development. ish | By Alex Likowski Its not buildings alone that make a community, University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay A. Perman, MD, told community leaders at the Howard's Park Dog Park on the night of Nov. 4. Its a sense of personal safety. Its a feeling of creative expression. And its a commitment to the values you share with your neighbors. Perman, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, JD 95, Kirby Fowler, president of the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, and William Cole, president of the Baltimore Development Corporation, addressed residents of the neighborhood near Centre and Howard streets, sharing the accomplishments of the UniverCity Partnership, a group of more than 100 Westside stakeholders, as well as plans to provide additional street lighting to much of the area. Jay and Andrea Perman spend quality time with Molly at the Howard's Park Dog Park. Rawlings-Blake said more than $1 billion of capital investment has been made in the area since the groups founding six years ago, and recounted that the key priorities of the UniverCity Partnership were and are to re-energize redevelopment efforts in the downtown areas Westside, and create a modern, mixed-use urban neighborhood with a balance of historic, commercial, cultural, educational, and retail resources. She also emphasized that success would require providing quality amenities [such as the dog park] to attract a core residential population, including the citys workforce, downtown visitors and investors, as well as university and medical center faculty, staff, and students. Perman shared many of UMBs contributions to community development, including the nearly completed Health Sciences Facility III, the Maryland Proton Treatment Center, the renovation of the Drovers Bank building on North Eutaw Street and the Sons of Italy building on Fayette Street, and the highly anticipated opening of a third commercial lab and office building at the University of Maryland BioPark. UMBs commitment to the Westside wont expire, Perman promised. Weve been here for 210 years, and believe me were here for good. Nigerian refugee Hawali Oumar woke up to the sound of gunfire and the sight of his neighbourhood in flames when Boko Haram attacked his home town of Baga in north-eastern Nigeria. The 43-year-old fisherman desperately looked for members of his family and discovered his father had been shot dead. Despite being unable to round up all his offspring, Oumar fled across the border to safety in Chad. It was heartbreaking when Boko Haram attacked our homes, he said. We scattered with nothing but the clothes we had on. I learnt later that more than 10 people in my extended family were killed. Some of the survivors amongst us ended up in Cameroon, others in Chad, but it took over a year to re-establish contact with everybody. More than 5,000 Nigerians have found refuge In Dar es Salam camp on the Chadian side of Lake Chad after fleeing horrific violence in December 2014. A total of 2.4 million people in north-eastern Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger have been displaced as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency. It was heartbreaking when Boko Haram attacked our homes." Thousands of families are separated and unaware of the whereabouts of loved ones. Oumar was relieved to be reunited two months ago with his 18-year-old daughter Miriam. I never thought I was going to see her again, but here we are all together, he said. She is back at school and we are all hoping to gradually restore an ordinary life. While the Chadian army and a joint regional task force continue to combat Boko Haram in provinces around the lake, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is focusing on protection, shelter and education. This involves extending livelihood programmes and enlarging the pool of refugees who have benefited from assistance to resume economic activity and achieve self-reliance. The livelihood programmes consist of providing the means for lake fishermen to resume work. Beneficiaries have so far received canoes, nets and basic fishing equipment. The influx of refugees has stabilized since last year, but the economy in the lake area has been dramatically affected. The closure of the lake borders with the other three countries of the basin Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger has depressed fishing, herding and farming, and brought regional trade almost to a standstill. These are vital sectors in and around Bagasola, the Chadian town that hosts Dar es Salam camp and most of the refugees who have fled into Chad to escape the Boko Haram threat in Nigeria. Nigerian refugees continue as fishermen, often in partnership with their Chadian counterparts from the host community. UNHCR/Oualid Khelifi Climate change is also having a profound effect on communities around Lake Chad. UNHCR/Oualid Khelifi A local Chadian villager finishes washing her last big catch of the day. UNHCR/Oualid Khelifi Hawali Oumar fled in December 2014 when Boko Haram attacked his town, killed his father and dispersed several members of his community. UNHCR/Oualid Khelifi Hawali Oumar visits his mother after fishing, and plays with one of his nieces. UNHCR/Oualid Khelifi "I cant go back home, said Oumar. "I lost my father and many others in the attacks. I think about it all the time. It feels like it happened just yesterday." Now, even if I am told peace is gradually returning to my village, I prefer to stay in Chad. I am afraid to go back after everything I saw and experienced. Because of the regions volatility and little prospect of the refugees returning home in the near future, UNHCR hopes to step up livelihood programmes for refugees in the camp and for the host community in and around Bagasola. So far, UNHCR has assisted 150 households with fishing boats and materials. Beneficiaries make an average of US$10 a week which helps sustain their families. However, the programme covers only 8 percent of refugees in the camp and around Bagasola. "I lost my father and many others in the attacks. I think about it all the time." More funding is needed so that more fishermen, farmers, herders and traders from the refugee and local communities can be included. Oumar is one of the beneficiaries. I am grateful to be given the tools to resume my work, he said. I am a fisherman, so if I could survive fishing in Nigeria, I can do it here in Chad. But if we had more manpower in this programme, bigger nets and better equipment, we would quickly grow independent of aid, and lift the entire town, refugees and locals together, from economic depression. Chad: A Nigerian refugee family reunited For UNHCR and its partners, providing livelihood support so that the limited resources around Bagasola are shared out is essential to achieving sustainability and cohesion between refugees and the host community. A survey has been conducted to log skill sets and the previous professions of refugees. According to Docteur Koussoumbi, livelihood associate officer at the UNHCR office in Bagasola, the self-reliance programme has been successful for the 150 households that have benefited so far. They now have expertise in all aspects of fishing, from operating the equipment to selling and distributing the produce. I am grateful to be given the tools to resume my work." The challenge now is twofold, he said. First, to enroll more households into the programme and provide them with basic canoes and tools to jump-start their activities. Second, to meet the demands of existing beneficiaries whose operations have been going very well, hence the need for bigger boats and nets to increase their output and strive towards full self-reliance. We are looking at these options, but we are facing significant funding constraints. Climate change is also having a profound effect on communities around Lake Chad, including refugees. Because of the vulnerability of the lake's environment and fluctuation in rainfall, livelihood programmes are a priority for the humanitarian community in both policy and funding. The surface area of the lake has shrunk to less than one twentieth of its size in the 1960s and invasive plant species cover about 50 percent of what is left. The vegetation takes root on the lake floor during dry seasons and when the water level rises after rainfall, it blocks off the shore, preventing communities from sailing their boats. This is a new worrying phenomenon, said Koussoumbi. It is becoming more difficult for fishermen to go out in the lake. The plants also break the nets and disrupt fishing activities." DAMASCUS, Syrian Arab Republic, 7 November 2016 Children in and around the city of Mosul in Iraq have endured extreme suffering for more than two years. Many of them have been forcibly displaced, trapped between fighting lines, or even caught in the crossfire. We escaped the violence to protect our ten children, says Ibtisam. Ibtisam is one of the 927 Iraqi refugees to recently arrive at Al Hol camp in the Syrian Arab Republic. The camp is located in the north-east of the Hasakeh Governorate, close to the border with Iraq. Since early 2016, around 4,600 Iraqis have come to the camp seeking refuge. We used up all of our savings, and we sold everything to escape the fighting, says Ibtisam. The family first moved to Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq, where they lived for two years. Escaping the hail of bullets for the second time, they sought refuge in Al Hol camp. The arduous journey to Al Hol camp was traumatizing for Ibtisam and her children, compounding the multiple sufferings they had already endured. The trip was torturous, we escaped crossfire, she says. We had no food, no water and the children were exhausted. NEW YORK, 8 November 2016 - Worsening inter-communal conflict in Rakhine State, Myanmar is taking a terrible toll on children -- especially those living in the northern part of the state, where thousands of children have been cut off from humanitarian assistance in recent weeks. These children already suffer from high levels of deprivation and malnutrition. Their futures depend on help from doctors, nurses, teachers and others who can provide them with nutrition, health and education services. While some aid has been delivered in recent days, UNICEF calls for full resumption of essential services and the urgent lifting of all restrictions of movement of health and other professionals so they can safely reach children and families. As security operations in the northern part of Rakhine State continue, UNICEF also calls on the Government to take urgent measures to protect children in Rakhine from all violence and to support prompt, independent investigations into possible grave violations against children. ### Date: 14-15 November 2016 Organizer: United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Government of Senegal Location: King Fahd Hotel, Dakar, Senegal The event presented the experience and results of PCP implementation in pilot countries, namely Ethiopia, Peru and Senegal, and sensitize African countries to the principles of inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID). Around 500 participants attended the forum, including high-level representatives from African governments, international and regional financial institutions, technical and financial development partners, and the private sector. Objective: The objective of the forum was to identify ISID solutions in Africa, and in particular to mobilize large-scale investment through the preparation and endorsement of an action plan for the replication of the PCP model in regional economic communities in Africa. Topics of discussion: 1. Importance of regional integration for inclusive and sustainable industrialization in Africa. 2. Regional financing solutions for industrial projects and infrastructure development. Format: The first day consisted of a high-level panel discussion focusing on issues related to regional inclusive and sustainable industrial development, building on experiences gained from the implementation of pilot PCPs. It also presented an action plan for the replication of the PCP model across West Africa. The second day provided a platform for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) meetings, and featured an exhibition of industrial products. A visit to the integrated industrial park of Diamniadio, one of the flagship industrial projects of the Government of Senegal, was also be organized. For more information, please visit here MARRAKECH, Morocco, 7 November 2016 The Government of Morocco, in close cooperation with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), launched a bike-sharing scheme called Medina Bike in Marrakech, which is the host city of the 22rd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is one of a number of initiatives launched in Marrakech to promote sustainability and green development. The initiative aims to promote sustainable transportation and encourage city inhabitants to use non-motorized vehicles by setting up 10 automatic bike rental stations in key areas around the city and equipping them with a total of 300 bicycles. One such station was set up at the site of COP22 to make bike-sharing available to participants of the Conference, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the event. Today Marrakech becomes the first city in Africa to launch a bike-sharing scheme and we hope to replicate this activity in other Moroccan cities. It was rendered possible thanks to the leadership of the citys management and the fruitful cooperation between the city, UNIDO and the GEF, said Hakima El-Haite, the delegate Minister of Environment of Morocco at the launch ceremony. The initiative also serves as an example of how public-private partnerships can address sustainability at the city level. In this scheme, the bike supplier and local advertising company were selected through a competitive process, and then UNIDO and the Ministry of Environment facilitated the dialogue with the Municipality of Marrakech, who ultimately granted the license to the operation system. The bikes and rental systems were then procured and deployed in less than four months. For more information, please contact: Rana Ghoneim UNIDO Industrial Development Officer email Here are 10 things to look for in the much-awaited US presidential elections 2016. By Indo-Asian News Service: Polling opened in the US early on Tuesday for the highly-anticipated presidential elections, with pollsters giving a slight edge to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over her rival Republican Donald Trump. In a battle centered largely on the character of the candidates, Clinton, 69, a former secretary of state and first lady, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman, made their final, fervent appeals to supporters late on Monday to turn out to vote. As Americans go to the polls on Tuesday to elect their 45th president, here's what to watch out for: All 50 states and Washington D.C. go to the polls across six different time zones on election day. Thirteen of the states are operating with split time zones. It is not just winning the popular vote that counts. The US' system is a race to secure 270 out of the 538 votes in the electoral college. Most of the US will have to wait for polling stations to close (typically between 5.30 a.m Wednesday and 6.30 a.m Indian time) for state projections. Once the polls have closed, there will be a projection for each state based on opinion polls taken throughout the day, which are a good indication of the results - but not always correct. The solid Republican states are: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming. The lean Republican comprise Georgia, Iowa, Maine 2nd Congressional District, Ohio and Utah. The solid Democrat states comprise California, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Minnesota and New Mexico. The leans Democrats are Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The Battleground or Swing states (a state where the two major political parties have similar levels of support among voters, important to determine the overall result) are Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Nebraska 2nd Congressional District, New Hampshire and North Carolina. The results are expected to be known in India by 9.30 am IST on Wednesday morning. That's when West Coast polls close and history suggests a winner's declared. advertisement Watch : US elections: Hillary Clinton bags first honours, wins Dixville Notch midnight vote Also read: US Presidential Election LIVE: America votes to choose between Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Hillary Clinton has 90 per cent chance of winning, reveals poll We want America with bridges, not with walls, says Hillary Clinton US presidential elections: Who will win the race to the top? --- ENDS --- The Obama administration assists single moms' return to school. In fact, all moms single or not need to improve skills to be able to cope with the demands of the digital world very soon. The Federal Pell Grant for single moms has been raised up to $5100 from $4050 to entice moms to go back to school despite the circumstances that they are in, as published by Mother's Scholarship. How could it be possible without the utmost support of the people around them? Sarah Thompson is in an overwhelming circumstance when she witnessed her professor's support after she had no choice but to bring her son to school. She posted a photo via Facebook of professor, Dr. Josie Ryan, holding her newborn son, Isaiah during math class at Lander University. Her husband, Chris is also in school aside from working for the family. Thompson felt that she is in a perfect world for all the support that she's been getting. The world definitely needs more teachers like Ryan, added Thompson. When Thompson was pregnant, she had a few teachers who are indifferent on her situation and she became hopeless and suffered anxiety because of their treatments. That is why she wanted to inspire other moms not to lose hope because there are supportive professors out there. The other professors, who are not so involved, should see how their support can count so much in the lives of their students. This is not just for mothers but for all issues that their students can encounter as they go along. Thompson and Ryan were "amazed" with the attention garnered after the Facebook post. However, they've learned to take the outcome so positively to serve as examples to others. Of course, the class would have thought of other means if Isaiah has not been so behaved. The last thing they need is destruction from their math learning, says The Huffington Post. STEM classes are vital for everyone as the workforce nationwide gears up to cope with the evolving demands. A little support from everyone goes a long way. It's not only technology that can better the people's lives but how they deal with each other is the most relevant. In a bizarre and tremendously sweet turn of events, a college student received 6,500 bars of Kit Kat after tweeting that a thief opened his car - and stole nothing but a Kit Kat. Hunter Jobbins, a 19-year-old freshman at Kansas State University, had just returned from a 15-minute run in his Haymaker Hall dorm to find that a thief broke into his car to steal a Kit Kat bar last October 31, reports TIME. The sweet-toothed thief oddly left a note, explaining what he did and why he did the thievery. "Saw Kit Kat in your cup holder," the unknown thief wrote. "I love Kit Kats so I checked your door and it was unlocked. Did not take anything other than the Kit-Kat. I am sorry and hungry." Jobbins had a mixture of reactions, reports the Topeka Capital Journal. He initially felt disgusted at the incident, but later had a laugh about it. "I was a little angry at first that someone took my KitKat," Jobbins said. "Then I read the note and figured it was too funny to be mad about." Jobbins took to Twitter to share his sad loss. Without expecting anything, his post became viral and reached half a million likes, even reaching nothing less than Kit Kat company Hershey's itself. In response, Hershey's told Jobbins that they will replace the Kit Kat that he lost if he would send them a DM, which he did. Left my car for maybe 15 minutes in front of the dorms and I come back to this. College man pic.twitter.com/KlDx5BtXLX Hunter Jobbins (@jabbins) October 30, 2016 "When we heard about what happened to Hunter, we felt his pain," Shilpa Gadhok, Kit Kat senior associate brand manager, explained. "That being said, we also deeply appreciate the 'Kit-Napper's' sincerity in owning up to his craving-we can empathize... sometimes you just need a break." If you find yourself drifting away with your thoughts wandering, maybe you are a daydreamer. Or maybe not. Well, it's normal for your mind to wander from your current situation, whether you are in the middle of doing something, your thoughts can shift from one thing to another. According to the recent studies by the scientists on mind wandering, they say that this activity can take up as much as 50% of our waking hours. And even if psychologists used to view this activity as generally useless, recent studies would suggest that this is a "natural and healthy part of our mental lives". University of British Columbia and the University of California researchers conducted a study on the relationship between mind wandering and the thinking processes that involve creativity and some other mental illnesses. "Sometimes the mind moves freely from one idea to another, but at other times it keeps coming back to the same idea, drawn by some worry or emotion," Dr. Kalina Christoff, lead study author and principal investigator of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Thought Laboratory at UBC, said in a statement. Mind wandering used to be understood as the brain's tendency to think spontaneously without any relation to a specific task or external factor, but according to the researchers, mind wandering is the movement of your mind from one thought to another and this is how they connected it to creative thinking. Researchers explained that creativity goes beyond the limitations of mind wandering, and that highly creative people have the tendency to have the so-called positive-constructive daydreaming. They also explained that because your mind wanders, you have the ability to think beyond your own box of feelings, emotions, memories, and thoughts to create brand new ideas. "Mind-wandering in the sense of the mind moving freely from one idea to another has huge benefits in terms of arriving at new ideas," Christoff said. "It's by virtue of free movement that we generate new ideas, and that's where creativity lies." Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton has been showing a clear lead over Republican Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among the early voters in the recent surveys according to the Reuters/ Ipsos States of the Nation project. Even if the polls do not have all the complete data available showing the results from all of the states, Clinton is still on the lead in Ohio and Arizona, even in the Republican territories of Trump like Georgia and Texas. In the remaining 11 days before the election, Trump plans to travel all over the country and concentrate his efforts on his campaign as he visits the states Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and even Minnesota. At this point, there is no assurance that he will win in these states although he is the favorite in Utah and Iowa because he still falls short of votes. Overall, Clinton is winning majority of the votes in the Electoral College according to Reuters/Ipsos surveys. Her lead among the early voters is being compared to the lead enjoyed by President Barrack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney in the previous US election. At present, Trump's path to being victorious in this upcoming elections seems unclear and if there would be any chance, his hope largely depends on winning in Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. But as of Thursday, the results are still not final in Ohio while Florida and North Carolina are still in favor of Clinton, according to the States of the Nation Results. In order to strengthen his chances of winning, Trump has to win in the following states: Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, or perhaps New Mexico or Minnesota, although the only place he enjoyed a lead in was Nevada. Students and research teams everywhere are vying for that chance to win Elon Musk's challenge to create the fastest transportation is getting a lot of attention. And a few have been chosen to move to the next Hyperloop round. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk challenges students everywhere to create a passenger module that could travel in a tube at speeds of over 1,200 km/hr. And it looks like a team of 120 people, including undergraduates from the University of Waterloo, made the semi-final round along with a few chosen other groups. The University of Waterloo batch is the only Canadian group that made it into the next stage in Musk's Hyperloop Competition, cites CBC. Their design is a passenger pod that is able to travel from point A (Ontario) to point B (British Columbia) in just under three hours. The person leading the U of Waterloo team is Montgomery de Luna and he calls the project "Waterloop." De Luna, whi is currently working on his master's degree in architecture, explains that it is like a train with the speed of an airplane. Using plastic components that came from a 3D printer, and some aluminum, they created a laser cut pod. He also adds that their design levitates. The team successfully created a Waterloop that floats off the ground. At a five millimeter raise, the pod was able to float despite weighing over 225 kilograms. He explains that their design almost does not incur friction when it levitates which means that once it accelerates, nothing can slow it down. Hernando Castano, a member of the team, says that friction is not possible when it comes to breaking because the brake pads will wear out and create heat. Castano helped build the Waterloop's brakes. Although the test takes time to prepare, the team is proud of using low-cost components that can even be purchased from the local hardware store. University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo has won the case against Rolling Stone magazine. The dean sued the publication for libel after it released a story about a group sexual assault in the school without proper investigation of the facts. It was previously reported that Rolling Stone magazine published an article claiming that several members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the school had raped a woman named Jackie. The act was said to have happened during a chapter house party as part of an initiation rite. However, as other journalists checked the claims, they found major discrepancies. This led to Rolling Stone issuing multiple apologies for the story. The now-retracted article, which was published on Nov. 19, 2014, was written by Sabrina Erdely. The retraction of the University of Virginia sexual assault story was recently debated in federal court. UVa dean Nicole Eramo sued Rolling Stone for libel. According to Inside Higher Ed, Eramo argued in court that the article was factually wrong and was based on assumptions that administrators like her are not helpful to rape victims. The dean is asking for $7.5 million. The Washington Post added that the 10-member jury was able to conclude that Rolling Stone reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was guilty of defamation "with actual malice." The magazine and its parent company, Wenner Media, was found to be responsible for defaming the UVa administrator as well. "In our desire to present this complicated issue from the perspective of a survivor, we overlooked reporting paths and made journalistic mistakes that we are committed to never making again," Rolling Stone said in a statement after the verdict. "We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo." "It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students." In another report by The Washington Post, it was revealed that the jury has awarded $3 million in damages to UVa dean Nicole Eramo. $2 million will be from the journalist, Erdely, while $1 million will be from Rolling Stone. There are growing concerns among investors on the delay of the University of Phoenix sale. This comes after the Department of Education's intense scrutiny of the proposal. Inside Higher Ed reported that investors are "getting jittery" while waiting if the Department of Education will approve the proposed sale of the Apollo Education Group to another group of three private equity firms. The group is the owner of the University of Phoenix. Back in February, The Apollo Education Group announced the $1.14 billion deal, which will make the nation's largest university private. Last May, the Phoenix Biz Journal reported that shareholders have approved the merger agreement. New owners of the company will include The Vistria Group LLC, funds affiliated with Apollo Global Management LLC and Phoenix-based the Najafi Cos. They are just waiting on regulatory approvals by the U.S. Department of Education, the Higher Learning Commission as well as state regulatory and programmatic accreditation bodies. It is expected that the deal will be closed by the end of this year. Shareholders have agreed to receive $10 cash per share. "We believe this new ownership structure will allow Apollo Education Group to continue to transform University of Phoenix," Apollo CEO Greg Cappelli said, "further expand our global operations, drive operational efficiency, and serve as the leading provider of high quality education for working adults." There have been no updates from Washington, though. Several experts noted that this is a big task for the Department of Education. "The market doesn't expect it to happen anytime soon," Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said. "The crowd is casting a negative vote." Credit Suisse industry analyst Trace Urdan added that the "perception of general hostility" by the Obama administration toward the for-profit sector may be a major factor in the delay. He believes that this has led investors to an "emerging consensus that the deal is not going to happen." Schools aim to produce the best graduates, and for ACORN Community High School principal Andrea Piper, it's more than just seeing students graduate from high school - she wants them ready for college. ACORN Community High School, located at 561 Grand Ave. in Crown Heights, isn't just focused on meeting the various needs of its mostly black and Caribbean male students, reports DNAInfo. It's focused on their "college readiness." Piper, who has been the school principal since 2009, said the they are focused on helping the students believe that they can achieve higher education. "Some of them are in a place where they're like, 'I don't know if I can do this.' And it's always about getting them to a place where they say 'I can' instead of 'I can't,'" she said. With that goal in mind, ACORN offers its students the chance to earn college credits even before leaving high school: through its own offering of AP and dual-degree classes, as well as college classes made available to ACORN's students through a partnership with Medgar Evers College and Long Island University. Not only that, ACORN also celebrates a "College and Career Readiness" day where alumni are invited to talk to current students about what college life is like. The school also cheers students on as they submit their college applications The school also cheers students on as they submit their college applications. "At the end of that [College Readiness day], we do a big parade down to the post office to mail their applications. We try to hype it up because it's a big deal," Piper said. College readiness, according to the Center for College Readiness, means that a student can enter college without the need for remediation, and succeed in completing entry-level college requirements. ACORN Community High School gives extra effort to meeting the needs of its students. A Learning Environment Survey, conducted by the New York City Department of Education in 2012, has found that according to students, their teachers greatly inspire them to learn in school, and apply what they learned in their lives outside the school. When it comes to women in STEM, two of the first names that come to mind are Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace. However, there are more female scientists throughout history who have helped shape modern science. Some of them were not recognized, even robbed of the honor that were due them at that time. Caroline Herschel Self-described Cinderella of the family, Caroline was the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel. She assisted her brother in building telescopes and became a brilliant astronomer herself. She was a woman of many firsts - the first woman to discover a comet and went on to discover seven more; the first to get her works published by the Royal Society; and the first woman to get paid for her work. She discovered a total of 2,500 star clusters in her lifetime. Mary Sommerville Mary Sommerville became interested in math and algebra when she was just 14 years old and pursued it until her adult life. She conducted various studies on magnetism and wrote several articles on chemistry, mathematics, physics, and astronomy. She also translated Pierre-Simon Laplace's "The Mechanism of the Heavens" to English, which became an important textbook in astronomy. She was also named as an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society along with Caroline Herschel. Maria Mitchell Maria Mitchell's father encouraged her to pursue astronomy and asked her to help him check the accuracy of chronometers. He also taught her how to use a reflecting telescope and a sextant. At 17, she had already established her own school teaching girls science and math. Mitchell was also a woman of many firsts. She was the first woman to get elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the first female astronomy professor in the United States. Lise Meitner This Austrian-Jewish scientist was the one coined the term nuclear fission after she calculated the how much energy was released when a uranium atom split after bombarded with neutrons. Nuclear fission, of course, led to the development of the nuclear bomb. She and Otto Hahn had been life-long collaborators; however, her work and contributions to atomic research were overlooked. Rosalind Franklin History has credited James Watson and Francis Crick for the discovery of the DNA structure. However, the foundation of their work was based on Rosalind Franklin's studies. She had studied the techniques of X-ray crystallography, after which she took X-ray photos of DNA. She was on the verge of discovering the structure of the molecule when fellow researcher Maurice Wilkins showed the images to Watson. The three men received a Nobel Prize for that without any mention of Franklin. Music is a universal language that speaks to all people from all walks of life. And for music therapy students at Concordia University, it does more than just talk. "When the music therapist comes in, their eyes light up," junior transfer student Kiera Morgan told Live Well Nebraska of her experience as a music therapy major having pre-practicum observances at a school in Lincoln. "It's fun to watch kids be excited about what you love." Morgan is just one of the students currently studying music therapy at Concordia University in Nebraska. The American Music Therapy Association had just finally accredited the program this fall, and ever since students have been seeing how music helps solve a variety of needs. Music therapy has been scientifically proven to help improve the lives of people of all ages. "Music therapists work in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, rehabilitation centers, psychiatric facilities, and private practices," Concordia University noted in its Music Therapy webpage. Nicole Jacobs, Concordia's Music Therapy director, works to bring the benefits of music therapy to Nebraska. She said she hopes that many will come to discover the benefits of music therapy, especially those who had never heard of it. "I really hope that since we have students going out at practicums at hospitals and schools and some places where they don't have programs that more places will realize how much it can help," she said. Jacobs added that she was surprised to see 10 students sign up for the program when it started, and to have many others express their intention to learn more about it. For students such as transfer student Kelly Langer, the program is more than just interesting - it enabled her to combine her love for children and music. "I'm really happy to have a program in my state, and I think it's important for Nebraska to finally have a program," Langer said Opposition parties said the PM's stern move to discontinue Rs 500, 1000 currency notes was just 'jumla' and drama before UP polls next year. By Mail Today: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's big gamble against black money by scrapping currency notes has received a mixed response from across the political spectrum, with some calling it a game changer, while others labeling it as 'drama' and 'jumla' before the UP elections next year. In what the PM himself said was a "stern step" in the face of several challenges created by the black market economy of India-corruption, unaccounted for money, Pakistani sponsored terrorism (though he did not name the neighbor) buoyed by fake currency notes of these denominations-the Indian economy stands to be cleansed. advertisement READ | 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money READ | PM Modi's rupee revamp: Scrapping big notes a problem for common man, say people According to political observers, Modi also dealt a hard blow to the prospective use of black money during the UP elections, as also the money involved in fomenting crisis in Kashmir. PRESIDENT WELCOMES DECISION President Pranab Mukherjee was one of the first to welcome and offer support to the decision. In a series of tweets, he called upon people not to panic and follow government guidelines for exchange of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes. He welcomed the bold step of Government of India which will help unearth unaccounted money & counterfeit currency. READ | RBI to launch new Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes from November 10, banks to keep record of exchanges READ | PM Modi's rupee revamp: Don't worry your money stays your money Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu also welcomed it. "This is a major step forward towards wiping out black money. This will also pave the way for eliminating corruption," he said. But opposition parties were quick to denounce the move, saying that the Prime Minister was fooling the nation as most black money exchanges hands through hawala deals and not cash transactions. READ | New Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes: All you need to know READ | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM OPPOSITION STRIKES Congress' national spokesperson Sanjay Jha questioned the PM's silence over Panama Papers, and asked why the move was not introduced during the September black money declaration window. "#ModiSarkar is truly floated another #Jumla. They collected Rs 65,000 crores on Sept 30,2016; why didn't they do this change at that time?" he asked in a tweet. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee called it "a drama". "The PM could not get back the promised black money from abroad from the rich so a drama to divert his failure..." she tweeted. "I want to know from PM how my poorest brothers sisters will buy atta, chai tomorrow," she tweeted. UP CM Akhilesh Yadav maintained a neutral stance. "Central govt must setup special banking counters in villages & district centres to assist the public, villagers & farmers," he said.READ | Here's what you can do with your useless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes advertisement READ | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi --- ENDS --- Page Content Enjoy an evening of music from around the world while raising funds for Suzuki music education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point's 2016 Music of the Masters. Themed "Around the World in 80 Days," the Aber Suzuki Center (ASC) event begins at 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, in the courtyard of the Noel Fine Arts Center. A cocktail and hors d'oeuvres reception will be followed by performances by ASC faculty, students and alumni. Desserts and coffee will be served at 8 p.m. All proceeds support need-based scholarships for music instruction at the ASC. New this year, door prizes will be tucked into a select number of chocolate truffle boxes, on sale for $10 each. Event tickets for the public are $45 before Nov. 1 and $50 after. UW-Stevens Point students may attend for $25. To purchase tickets or for information on the Suzuki program, call 715-346-3033 or go to www.uwsp.edu/suzuki. The annual event is coordinated by a volunteer committee of the American Suzuki Foundation and has been a great success since its inception in 1994. To date, Music of the Masters has raised more than $130,000 to support need-based student scholarships. Last year's concert may be found at https://youtu.be/TF3tEl-i1yM. The ASC has been providing top-notch music lessons to Central Wisconsin community members for 50 years. Its mission is to teach using the philosophical principles and music education methods developed by Shinichi Suzuki - the idea that everyone has talent and can become a successful, sensitive and caring person through the study of music. The Rustom actor, whose father was in the Army, said that he was fortunate to spend time with the real heroes. By India Today Web Desk: Akshay Kumar paid tribute to soldiers who have lost their lives in ceasefire violations, calling them the "real heroes." The actor, who visited the BSF camp in Jammu on Tuesday, said, "I'm fortunate that I got the opportunity to come and meet you. I have always said that I'm a 'reel hero', you are the 'real hero.'" advertisement ALSO READ: Akshay Kumar donates Rs 9 lakh to martyred BSF jawan Gurnam Singh's family The actor, whose father was in the Army, emphasised the need for peace. "Peace is important as many lives are lost while we are at war. I think peace is the only way out", he said. Akshay had donated Rs 9 lakh to the family of martyred BSF jawan Gurnam Singh last month. Earlier, in August, he had donated Rs 80 lakh to the Army. #WATCH: Akshay Kumar pays tribute to soldiers (who lost their lives in ceasefire violations/encounter) at BSF base camp in Jammu pic.twitter.com/IxGoxCFHrD ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016 --- ENDS --- Commissioner Dave Piepkorn continued to voice his concern about the impact that refugee placement will have on Fargo. Piepkorn says the cost statewide for relocating refugees keeps rising, and now it's at 4 million dollars. While Piepkorn is worried about the negative impact to the City of Fargo, Commissioner John Strand disagrees. "I'm glad that you are acknowledging, Commissioner Piepkorn, that this audit is out there and I am just waiting for this to be done on our agendas. You know, every single week, four meetings in a row, we are targeting one particular non-profit." Commissioner Piepkorn says he will keeping questioning refugee spending as long as the numbers keep going up. Nasa astronaut Shane Kimbrough filed his ballot in the US presidential election from the International Space Station. By AP: The lone American off the planet has cast his vote from space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) said that astronaut Shane Kimbrough filed his ballot in the United States presidential election from the International Space Station sometime over the past few days. By casting his vote, Kimbrough followed the Nasa's motto of 'Vote while you float'. He arrived at the orbiting lab in mid-October. advertisement ALSO READ: We want America with bridges, not with walls, says Hillary Clinton APOLITICAL ASTRONAUTS Before launching on a four-month mission, Kimbrough said it was going to be special to say "I voted from space." ALSO WATCH By the time he is back on Earth in February, America will have a new commander-in-chief. Astronauts are "pretty much apolitical," he told reporters last month. "And I'll be glad to welcome the new president, whoever that is." ALSO READ: Donald Trump vows to stop US companies from moving out jobs to countries like India The previous US space station resident, Kate Rubins, also cast an absentee ballot from up there, before returning to Earth a week ago, according to Nasa. HOME IS HOUSTON A 1997 Texas law allows US astronauts to vote from space. For Nasa astronauts, home is Houston when they are not circling the globe. A secure electronic ballot is forwarded to the astronauts by Mission Control in Houston and returned by email to the county clerk. ALSO READ: FBI warns of terror attack in New York on eve of US Election Day Kimbrough is sharing the space station with two Russians. The crew will double in size at the end of next week, adding another American, a Russian and a Frenchman. ALSO READ: ISIS calls for terror attacks in US on election day, asks Muslims to not vote ALSO READ: Trump or Clinton: Indian-American voters can decide next US president ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- The law firm of Marquis & Aurbach is holding its ninth annual blood drive Friday, October 8 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. to benefit United Blood Services (UBS) and the needs of people in the community. UBS alerts there is a constant need for blood in Las Vegas as only two percent of the Las Vegas population donates blood in comparison to six percent across the United States. In the past, Marquis & Aurbach with 85 employees, far exceeded its goals set for them by UBS goals second only to major Las Vegas hotels with 100s of employees and far more than two of the major Las Vegas hospitals. During last years blood drive, Marquis & Aurbach collected 53 pints of life saving blood. The local hospitals go through 200 units per day, and one unit can save up to three lives. Marquis & Aurbach is committed to giving back to the community, and the annual blood drive is one of the many ways it does so. The blood drive is being held at Marquis & Aurbachs office located at 10001 Park Run Drive. Every donation from the public is much appreciated. For an appointment, contact Terri Szostek at 702-821-2419. All donors will receive one complimentary ticket to a Las Vegas Wranglers home game to be used anytime between October 23 and November 13, 2010 as well as an offer to purchase tickets at a discounted rate. By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 7 (PTI) In a first, Delhi government today issued a health advisory asking people to avoid highly- polluted areas and cautioned those with asthma and lung ailments not to venture out for any activities, even as the city continued to battle its worst smog in 17 years. The announcement comes on a day when the administration put into effect a number of measures, including halting of construction and demolition activities, starting of process of deregistration of 15-year-old diesel vehicles and imposition of ban on use of fire crackers. advertisement As per the advisory issued by the Delhi Health Department, citizens have been asked to avoid highly-polluted areas and adopt other measures. "People with chronic airway diseases like bronchial asthma and lung diseases, should avoid outdoor activities including morning and evening walks," the advisory said. It also cautioned those persons to use their regular medicine and inhalers. "In case of breathlessness, giddiness, chest pain, chest constriction or irritation in eyes, etc, visit the nearest hospital, dispensary or a physician," it added. Cases of severe breathlessness, asthma and allergy have sharply risen in Delhi as the city remains blanketed in thick layer of toxic air due to the worst smog the capital has seen in 17 years. Doctors and experts say that besides spike in fresh cases, health complications have aggravated in people having a history of asthma, allergy or other related ailments. The situation earlier had prompted Delhi High Court to observe that it was akin to "living in a gas chamber". The Centre has termed it an "emergency situation" and today called a meeting of Environment ministers of all neighbouring states. The city government, during the meet suggested the Centre to consider engineering artificial rain over Delhi and the NCR region which are grappling with record-breaking levels of air pollution. PTI KND RG --- ENDS --- People gather for a rally in support of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, former president Bill Clinton and US President Barack Obama on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Photo: AFP/Brendan Smialowski) Rockers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi were also on the program for the event in the City of Brotherly Love, the next-to-last rally on the Democratic White House hopeful's agenda for her final day of campaigning. The attendance set a record for Clinton, with the previous high point a rally in Ohio that drew 18,500 people, a campaign aide told reporters travelling with the candidate. The 69-year-old former secretary of state and her Republican rival Donald Trump spent Monday crisscrossing the key battleground states to drum up last-minute support on the eve of Election Day. Clinton -- who hopes to become America's first woman president -- was to wrap up her night with a midnight rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Trump, who made stops earlier in the day in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, planned to make his final campaign pitches to voters in New Hampshire and Michigan. Many households in HCM City use well water although tap water is available at their homes. - Photo baogiaothong.vn The Sai Gon Water Corporation (SAWACO) early last week reported that almost 88,300 water clocks installed at local residences were unused or the families - accounting for about seven per cent of the companys clients, did not use tap water at all. Around 10 per cent of the company clients use a mere one to four cubic metres of water a month. Hoc Mon District has the highest number of households not using tap water with 6,766 out of 27,030. People, especially in districts 9, Hoc Mon, Cu Chi, Go Vap, and Binh Tan do not use tap water for a range of reasons. For example, they said it has a fishy smell, or they were used to well water, which is much cheaper than tap water, as they just paid few million Vietnamese ong to dig a well. A resident in District 12 told Tuoi tre (Youth) newspaper that previously they did not have tap water to use but now, with the increased availability of tap water, they use both tap water and well water. We use tap water for cooking, drinking and bathing, while well water is used for other activities like watering plants or washing vehicles, he said. Head of the water resource division under the citys Natural Resources and Environment Department, Nguyen Van Nga, said that now there were 256,453 wells in the city, of which, 256,131 were used by households and 322 industrial wells served production. The over-exploitation of underground water poses risks of land depression and groundwater pollution. Since 2007, the city Peoples Committee has restricted groundwater exploitation in the city but has so far failed to curb the problem. SAWACO has been expanding water supply networks, with more water pipes and water clocks being installed for local households. However, in 2013, about 57,000 water clocks were reportedly going unused. The number has now increased to nearly 88,300. Nga, from the water resource division, said that the citys environment department would complete a survey on underground water by the end of this year, which is expected to pave the way for a proposal on reduced exploitation of ground water. Bui Thanh Giang, vice director general of SAWACO, warned about a possible intrusion of salt water to local underground water sources. As an impact of climate change, rising sea water levels are becoming more and more severe. When ground water is pumped up, salt water could intrude into it, Giang said. He said that the unused water clocks were also wasted, because the water clocks could have been installed for other people who wanted to use tap water. Earlier this month, at a meeting to announce tap water supply to all households in District 12, Vice Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Le Van Khoa urged people to use tap water instead of well water for cooking to avoid health risks. The move followed a report by the HCM City Preventive Health Centre after testing 197 well-water samples. Most of the samples were taken from districts 12, Go Vap, Tan Binh, Tan Phu, and Hoc Mon. Its tests so far this year found that 42 per cent of the samples had low pH values indicating acidity while the acceptable range set by the Ministry of Health is 6.0-8.5. Another 9.14 per cent had ammonia content exceeding the standard of 3 milligrammes per litre. A high concentration of iron was found in 2.03 per cent of the samples, most of them obtained from districts 12 and Hoc Mon. More than 4 per cent was found to contain E.coli and coliform bacteria in excess of the standard of 20 colonies per 100ml. The centres doctors said water with a low pH value causes itching and badly damages tooth enamel. The ammonia in groundwater turns into nitrate when it comes into contact with oxygen, and leads to methemoglobin when it enters the body, they said. Nitrate and nitrite associated with amino acids in the body creates nitrosamine, which causes cancer, they said. Foreign favourite: Banh my quickly became the daily lunch choice for Spanish expat Gerard Claramont, who has lived in Ha Noi for four months.-VNS Photo Bach Lien Vietnamese sandwiches are what foreigners sometimes call these delicious handheld meals. But for those who have visited the country, they may not forget the street foods Vietnamese name: banh mi. And it is fitting that banh mi is so popular in France, given that its origins link the streets of Paris and the streets of Sai Gon. It turns out that one of the longest lasting influences of French rule in Vietnam was their baked goods. The baguette was introduced to Sai Gon during the French colonial period and spread through the countrys southern cities before arriving to the North of Viet Nam and becoming popular in the whole country. Many lovers of Vietnamese cuisine consider banh mi an excellent example of of fusion food. The It combines ingredients from the French (baguettes, pate, and mayonnaise ) with native Vietnamese ingredients, such as coriander, cucumber, and pickled carrots and daikon. Not only does banh mi exemplify fusion food; it also has become the epitome of street food. The sandwiches are sold almost exclusively from stalls and vendors. It is a simple and cheap street food that anyone can afford, paying only from VN15,000 (US$0.7) to VN25,000 (US$1.1) for a sandwich. It may be a cheap street eat, but its also an international foodie force. You can find the French-Vietnamese fusion dish far beyond the streets of France and Vietnam, and it has quickly become one of the ingredients to Vietnams culinary fame abroad. Banh mi was listed in top 10 of the Worlds best street food by Lonely Planet, and the word Banh mi was added to the Oxford English Dictionary on 24 March 2011. An article published in 2012, the Guardian said: A little-known secret is that the worlds best sandwich isnt found in Rome, Copenhagen or even New York City, but on the streets of Viet Nam. Demand rising What can make it so special? Stephanie Lansaque, a French artist from Paris who has travelled many times between France and Viet Nam with her husband over the last ten years, said:We like banh mi a lot. The first time we ate it, it was in Paris, in the 13th district. Now, Vietnamese banh mi has become very popular in France, in particular in Paris. More and more stalls are open, she said. In French sandwiches, we normally find the salad, and the tomatoes which accompany the meat. In banh mi, we almost always find the wrapped carrots, which are sometimes pickled, the cucumber and the coriander. This gives crunchiness and very fresh tasting. It is surely what pleases French people in banh mi, she said. In general, French people love Vietnamese cuisine, and the banh mi is for them an economical and rapid way to eat Vietnamese food, she adds. Nguyen Thoa, owner of a banh mi stall in Pariss 13th district (where many Asian Parisians live) said that she recently opened a stall to sell banh mi after seeing the raising demand of French people of this dish. I have many clients who keep coming back to the stall to ask for a banh mi for their lunch, I am glad about this. Variations on a theme In three different regions of Viet Nam (North, Centre and the South), banh mi varies greatly in terms of taste. However, banh mi made in Ha Noi style, in Hoi An style or in Sai Gon style still share lot of commonalities. Typical fillings in banh mi include steamed, pan-roasted or oven-roasted pork belly, Vietnamese sausage, grilled pork, pork liver pate, grilled chicken, canned sardines in tomato sauce, soft pork meatballs in tomato sauce, head cheese, fried eggs. Accompanying vegetables typically include fresh cucumber slices, coriander and pickled carrots. Common condiments include spicy chili sauce, sliced chilis, mayonnaise, and cheese. Almost all of these varieties are innovations made by or introduced in Sai Gon which then travelled to Ha Noi. Ask the difference between banh mi Ha Noi and banh mi Sai Gon? Many people who do not often eat the banh mi in those two regions couldnt tell you. But Thai Chung, owner of the BMK restaurant on Ha Nois Nguyen Khuyen street, specialises in banh mi Sai Gon and other Sai Gon specialities. He said that he often mixes fried chicken and crushed pork meatballs in different spices in a style unique to Sai Gon. However, he prefers to keep his recipe secret. However, its easier to distinguish a banh mi Ha Noi and banh mi Hoi An. Banh mi made in Hoi An style differs from banh mi made in Ha Noi style in the sauce, explains Tran Thi Hue, the manager of a banh mi Hoi An shop in Tran Hung ao street in Ha Noi. I find banh mi Ha Noi quite dry because it has too little or no sauce at all. With banh mi Hoi An, we put lot of sauce inside the fillings. The sauce is the juice of simmered pork meat, and this brings our banh mi a unique taste, she said. Banh mi Hoi An are appreciated in Ha Noi. In her shop, about 700 sandwiches are sold every day .Regardless of the regional style, many of the reasons to love banh mi remain constant. The sandwich is cheap and mobile, easy to take away wrapped in recycled paper. And once you sit down on tiny plastic stools to dig in, one can enjoy something that brings together the best flavours of two great culinary cultures, and one can do so with friends. Queen of street food, banh mi brings cultures and people together. Some good banh my stalls in Viet Nam In Ha Noi 1. Banh my Pho Hue: 118 A, Hue street 2. Banh my Tram: 30 inh Ngang street 3. Banh my Hoi An: Bami Bread: 88 Tran Hung ao 4. Banh my Lan Ong: 6 Cha Ca 5. Banh my Ba Dan: 34 Lo Su In Hoi An 1. Banh my Phuong: 2b Phan Chu Trinh street, 2. Banh my Pho co: 2 Le Loi 3. Banh my Lanh: 430 Cua ai 4. Banh my thit heo quay (roasted pork) Minh Thu: 248 Ly Thuong Kiet 5. Banh my Queen (ba Khanh): 115 Tran Cao Van HCM City 1. Banh my Huynh Hoa: 26 Le Thi Rieng street, distr 1 2. Banh my Hong Hoa: 62 Nguyen Van Trang, district 1 3. Banh my thit nuong (grilled pork): 37 Nguyen Trai 4. Banh my op la Hoa Ma: 51 Cao Thang, district 3 5. Banh my Nguyen Sinh: 141 Tran inh Xu, district 1 520 of the Everest models were assembled in Vietnam between May 27, 2008 and October 29, 2008, and one imported unit was manufactured in 2007. These cars need a part of their gear boxes replaced because of an error that could prevent switching gears. Meanwhile, the 539 Focuses were assembled in Vietnam between August 8, 2013 and April 14, 2014, and both the sedan and hatchback versions had a problem with the brake causing it to wear off faster than it should. The recalls are going to end on August 1, 2019 for the Everest and September 1, 2019 for the Focus. At the same time, General Motors Vietnam is recalling 137 Chevrolet Colorado LT and Chevrolet Colorado LTZ models for technical errors. The vehicles were made in Thailand between January 12, 2015 and March 18, 2015. The problem is with the seatbelt and could endanger passengers lives in the event of a collision. Earlier this month, Vietnam Register approved Toyota Motors recalling of 20 RX350 and RX200t completely built units imported from Japan due to the Takata airbag issue, which involves defective inflator and propellant devices that may deploy improperly in the event of a crash, shooting metal fragments at passengers. The 17 RX350 units were made between November 28, 2015 and February 16, 2016. The three RX turbo 200ts were made between November 28, 2015 and June 13, 2016. Due to concerns over the same issue, the agency also approved the recall of 1,345 BMW cars made in Germany. Starting on November 28, Thaco will recall 4,809 Mazda 2 units. The cars were assembled at Vina-Mazda factory in Vietnam between July 15, 2015 and September 26, 2016, with the SkyActiv 1.5 litre engine. The zinc parts inside the car as well as the zinc component of the fuel cause a build-up leading to poor engine performance. Both the sedan and hatchback versions will be recalled. Earlier in June this year, Thaco also recalled 10,100 Mazda 3 units due to the same issue. Both the Mazda 2 and Mazda 3 are equipped with the 1.5 litre SkyActiv engine. Newly-elected French green party EELV candidate for the 2017 presidential election Yannick Jadot arrives at the party's headquarters in Paris. (AFP/Alain Jocard) Jadot, 49, won the party's primary with 54 per cent of the vote, defeating fellow MEP Michele Rivasi who took 40.75 per cent. An environmentalist and humanitarian who coordinated Greenpeace campaigns in France between 2002 and 2008, Jadot was elected to the European Parliament in 2009. Cecile Duflot, a former ecology minister in President Francois Hollande's Socialist government, had been considered the frontrunner but was knocked out in the first round of the EELV party primary on Oct 19. Jadot was the surprise winner, scoring 35.6 per cent to Rivasi's 30 per cent. Turnout in Monday's runoff was 80 per cent, some 10 percentage points higher than for the first round. The presidential vote is set for Apr 23 and May 7, with centre-right former prime minister Alain Juppe tipped to win. Duflot, who was the party's national secretary from 2010 to 2012, conceded when she launched her bid for the EELV nomination that the ecologists had "little space" in the election. The greens' candidate Eva Joly won 2.3 per cent of the vote in the 2012 presidential election. If sources are to be believed, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev is keen to get his niece married to RJD chief Lalu Yadav's elder son and Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav. By Sujeet Jha: A marriage could bring two political heavyweights, backing different ideologies, in a bond together. If sources are to be believed, Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev is keen to get his niece married to RJD chief Lalu Yadav's elder son and Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav. What will be interesting to watch out for is how such a nuptial, if it were to take place, could lead to a realignment of political forces in Bihar. advertisement According to sources, a decision on this will be announced soon. Talks between the two have been so secretive that no one has even vaguely any idea of what's brewing. Ramdev's keenness on this marriage can be gauged from the fact that to boost production of his Patanjali products, he even appointed Lalu's son-in-law an agent or distributor of the same in Bihar. RAMDEV A BJP SUPPORTER, LALU A CRITIC While Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev has been a supporter of PM Modi and the BJP, Lalu has for long termed the BJP communal and constantly sided with the party pitted against it. This marriage, if it is solemnised, could lead to a realigning of political equations in Bihar and throw up some interesting new alliances. With UP elections only months away, the development is bound to be viewed with curiosity and may lead to some surprising tie-ups. Also read: Getting cheeky: Politician Lalu turns model for Ramdev's face cream Although the growing proximity between Ramdev and Lalu in recent days has hinted at the possibility of the marriage, there has been no confirmation from either party just yet. Speculations have been doing the rounds regarding this match. Results of UP elections, in case the anti-BJP vote is not consolidated, could weaken the bond of the Mahagathbandhan alliance in Bihar. Lalu and Ramdev's joining hands could have the former quitting the Grand Alliance. In such a scenario, Lalu will be keen on having his younger son appointed chief minister of Bihar. NO CHHATH AT LALU'S HOUSE THIS TIME According to sources, there have been talks over this issue between the two leaders many times. There was no Chhath puja at Lalu Yadav's residence this time. His wife Rabri Devi was heard saying that the puja will be performed only once the bahu comes home. Also read: Power Yogi: How Baba Ramdev became India's swadeshi FMCG baron Lalu and Nitish have not quite had a perfectly smooth getting-along in the year-old coalition govt in Bihar. RJD MP Shahabuddin's slamming Nitish Kumar after coming out of jail and JD-U's subsequently conveying its displeasure to its ally in the Bihar government has primarily figured as a sticking point. The BJP had slammed the JD-U for joining hands with the RJD, and has in the last one year, alleged that Goonda Raj has returned to Bihar in the wake of the deteriorating law and order situation in the state. --- ENDS --- advertisement Photo source: TTXVN As quoted by newswire dantri.com.vn, at the November 7 meeting of the Hanoi Peoples Committee, Chairman Nguyen Duc Chung said the committee may issue the decision soon. In the meantime, the relevant authorities are going to investigate all karaoke bars for criteria such as the area of rooms, lighting, and accessibility of emergency exits. Also, the big billboards will be taken down, he said. He said the billboards have to meet some size regulations and should not cover the whole facade of the bar, as they often do. According to Trung, the committee received several calls for an investigation of all LED lights imported from China. While LED lights imported from Germany have lifespans of up to 75,000 hours, Chinese lights last only for about 20,000 and their heat dissipation parts are sub-standard, increasing fire hazard. Earlier this month, a karaoke bar in Cau Giay district caught fire, killing 13, 11 of whom were government employees. The fire was likely sparked because welders were working on a signboard at the bar, which had neither a fire safety certificate nor a business operation licence. The disaster followed another karaoke bar fire also in Cau Giay, fortunately without casualties. Since the beginning of the year, a total of 23 fires have broken out at karaoke bars nationwide, causing a loss of VND9.5 billion ($430,000). In Hanoi alone six fires have been reported, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Bui Quang Viet, deputy head of the MPS fire department, said karaoke bars are more susceptible to fires than other establishments because their big billboards block potential escape routes through windows and balconies. Also, to soundproof these bars, a lot of foam, rubber, and sponge, all highly flammable, are used. A chance fire would spread rapidly and the smoke would quickly suffocate the people inside. After the fires, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked the local authorities in major cities nationwide to carry out urgent fire inspections at public places, focusing on karaoke bars, bars, and restaurants. Hanoian authorities have held fire safety inspections at more than 1,200 karaoke venues across the city since November 2. All karaoke venues in Cau Giay have been closed for inspection. This is to reaffirm Hondas pioneering and leading position in the local scooter segment targeting both male and female riders. The SH 1251 and SH150i will be debuted in Vietnam and marketed all over the world. The big-wheeled and flat-floored SH125 /150i adopt the Honda Smart Key system. A new design and the LED head and taillights give an even sportier look, and practicality is improved with a charger socket and increased storage space. Minoru Kato, general director of Honda Vietnam, said at the launching ceremony, Honda has developed the new SH125i/150i with a functional and appealing design. The models are equipped with a liquid-cooled, single-cylinder 125/150cc eSP engine that was developed as the new next-generation engine and designed as the quitest and most fuel-efficient in its class (125cc class, data according to Honda research). As a global model nurtured in Europe, this SH125i/150i is a model that provides riders with comfort and pride. It is a model we can recommend with confidence as a flagship commuter that is second to none in Europe. The models also come with the SMART Key system, an anti-theft feature which provides riders with optimal features, such as Remote Locking and Unlocking, Alarm Functions as well as Location Finding, which is useful to find the vehicle in crowded motorcycle parking areas. Notably, two wireless remote control fob keys are provided by Honda Vietnam for customers ease and comfort. With the fob keys, riders can lock or unlock their motorcycles remotely just like automobile users. Last year, the Ministry of Transports (MoT) Vietnam Register has requested Honda Vietnam to recall a batch of SH scooters due to an error in the anti-theft software. As the ministrys announcement pointed out, Hondas latest SH scooters sport the latest anti-theft software (Honda SMART Key), which will blare automatically for ten days if the scooter is stolen. However, the system was found not to meet the desired design targets. The SH-series have been leading the market since the introduction of the first model, keeping an edge over competition through the adoption of advanced technology, highly useful specs, and equipment, as well as high-quality designa constant renaissance at each model change. Honda Vietnam also offers a three-year/30,000 kilometres warranty with six regular free-of-charge check-ups to ensure customers good quality and reliable products. Nguyen Quoc Vinh, CEO of NeatClean, the franchise partner of JYSK in Vietnam, told VIR, "The new store is the fourth facility in Hanoi and the fifth in Vietnam since we started operations in the country in 2015." The new facility is located in Lo Duc Street, with a total area of nearly 1,200 square metres. JYSK stores bring a unique and homely Scandinavian style for Vietnamese households. "We are seeking favourable locations for four to five other stores in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City next year to meet the growing local demand for lifestyle and interior decor products," he added. These stores are part of JYSKs plan to open a chain of 10-20 stores in Vietnam by 2020 and capitalise on steady growth rates, a growing consumption base of currently more than 90 million people, the strategic location in Southeast Asia, the young population, and fast growing middle class. According to NeatClean's recent study, amid fierce competition from other famous brands in the local market, the watershed between success and failure is selling price. "We expect that when the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) takes effect in 2018, JYSK will enjoy import tariff cuts, enabling us to reduce prices and gain competitiveness in the Vietnamese market, which has become a magnet to a number of foreign players in the field," Vinh noted. NeatClean, which was established in April 2015 by founders operating in retail, trade, import-export, and interior-decor, will take responsibility for developing JYSK's interior-decor retail network in Vietnam. As a leader on the European market in all articles for the bedroom, bathroom, living-room, the window, and the patio, JYSK currently has over 2,300 stores in 43 countries across the globe. The companys turnover is 2.8 billion euro. The recent blaze at a Hanoi karaoke bar has renewed calls for tougher fire regulations - Photo: Le Quynh One week has have passed since a blaze claimed the lives of 13 at a karaoke bar in Hanois Cau Giay district on November 1, but survivor Do Quoc Toan still has not recovered. His group of six saw black smoke leaking through the door, just after they settled into an upstairs karaoke room. They tore down the stairs to escape from the collapsing building. However, not all Toans friends were as lucky as he. Some died in the fire. They may have been trapped in the building due to their failure to find a fire exit in time. Those who escaped were mainly bar staff, who knew well where the exits were, he said. Of all the victims of the lunchtime fire, 11 were government employees from the nearby political training academy. They were out celebrating a finished test during a political training course, said Hanoi Party Chief Hoang Trung Hai. The dead are thought to have suffocated inside the windowless karaoke rooms which spanned several floors. Over the next few days, inspectors picked through the rubble, finding broken beer bottles and motorbikes burnt to a crisp. From the soot-covered windows and denuded billboards, clanking pieces of glass and debris intermittently fell to the ground. Strengthening inspection The fire once again raised safety concerns over Vietnams karaoke bars, the majority of which are residential houses that were renovated to run the businesses. Karaoke remains popular in Vietnam, loved by young and old alike. Large groups routinely frequent these converted residential karaoke bars. However, fire drills are rare and exits are not always provided. Last weeks fire was not the first of its kind in the capital. In May 2014, five people burned to death at a karaoke bar in Hanoi, after an electrical malfunction triggered a massive blaze. In September 2016, another Cau Giay district karaoke lounge went up in flames, though no casualties were reported. Without emergency escape routes, karaoke bars have on occasion become death traps for their patrons. In all, 23 fires have broken out at karaoke bars nationwide this year, causing losses of VND9.5 billion ($430,000). In Hanoi alone, six fires have been reported, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Doan Viet Manh, head of the ministrys Anti-Fire Department, said owners of karaoke bars do not have fire prevention knowledge and are not concerned. Last weeks fire was likely sparked by welders working on a signboard at the bar, which had neither a fire safety certificate nor a business operation licence. Staff tried to contain the flames but failed. The fire spread to three neighbouring buildings, burning a car and many motorbikes on the street and creating clouds of black smoke, said witness Nguyen Thu Ha, a 34-year-old street fruit vendor. The blaze was put out with the efforts of hundreds of firemen and police officers, after raging for over six hours. The owner of the bar had been asked several times to close it down, but it continued to operate, said Duong Cao Thanh, chairman of the Cau Giay district Peoples Committee. MPSs Manh said that there are qualities specific to karaoke bars that make them more susceptible to fires. At a typical neighbourhood karaoke parlour, flashy billboards run the length of the street frontage, blocking potential escape routes through windows and balconies, he said. A single staircase and elevator typically services the entire facility, while hallways on each floor have been narrowed to create more space in each karaoke room. The lights in the building are kept on at all times, even during the day, as all sources of natural light, including emergency exits, have been blocked to soundproof the bar. And each of these bars has a single doorway that serves as both entrance and exit. In the blazes aftermath, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked police to investigate the cause of the fire and deal strictly with any violations. He also told authorities in major cities nationwide to carry out urgent inspections on fire prevention measures in public places, focussing on karaoke parlours, discotheques, bars, and restaurants. Hanois authorities have been inspecting fire safety at more than 1,200 karaoke parlours across the city since November 2. All karaoke venues in Cau Giay have been closed for inspection. Although local authorities are stepping up efforts at ensuring fire safety, the public should also pay more attention to protecting themselves amid a limited fire prevention infrastructure, said 20-year-old karaoke enthusiast Nguyen Thuy Ha, from the Hanoi University of Economics. I never go to karaoke bars that look like too much of a fire risk, she said. It is the first MR vaccine successfully produced in Vietnam through technology transfer under the project on Strengthening Capacity for Measles-Rubella Combined Vaccine Production funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). POLYVAC has been running the project since May 2013, with the total budget of approximately JPY700 million. In March 2016, with technical support from Japanese experts and immeasurable effort from the POLYVAC staff, the MR vaccine was first submitted for clinical trial testing and was assessed to be safe and effective for human use. Since the projects commencement until October 2016, the Japanese technology transfer counterpart, Kitasato Daiichi Sankyo Vaccine Company Limited, has dispatched 197 experts to Vietnam in order to assist POLYVAC and received 36 POLYVAC employees to train at its factory in Japan. In the coming time, POLYVAC will be completing the required procedures to apply for a marketing licence so that the MR vaccine can be used at Vietnams Expanded Programme on Immunisation, which gives free vaccination to Vietnamese children, tentatively starting in 2017. The year of 2015 was memorable to the Vietnamese vaccine industry as the National Regulatory Authority of Vaccines was officially certified by the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2016, Vietnam carved itself a spot on the world map of vaccine production by self-manufacturing high quality MR vaccine applying Japanese technology. Vietnam is proud to be one of the twenty-five vaccine producing countries in the world and the forth Asian country to manufacture the MR vaccine, following Japan, India, and China. Woori Bank has been operating transaction offices in two major cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. With the official establishment of the subsidiary, Woori Bank will boost the retail business with an aim of becoming the top foreign credit bank in Vietnam market. According to the plan, Woori Bank will expand its sales network in Vietnam by establishing transaction offices in Bac Ninh, Haiphong in the north and Dong Nai, Binh Duong in the south by the end of this year. In the next years, Woori Bank will open up to seven more transaction offices annually to expand its network to 20 branches across the country. Woori Bank Vietnam will take a closer step forward to our customers that they can trust and seek secured to use our services, Lee Kwang Goo, CEO and president of Woori Bank said. Meanwhile, we will keep on developing with the motto of becoming the reliable bank for customers and will always accompany with the development of society. Furthermore, we will strongly promote the social activities to support the community development in Vietnam. In particular, Woori Bank will establish a competitive product line up for the subsidiary in Vietnam to strengthen retail sales. It is also working with Woori Card to enter the Vietnamese credit card market in the first half of 2017. Furthermore, in order to expand the base of local customers, Woori Bank plans to connect various deposit and loan products including mortgage, credit loan and bancassurance, which also offers comprehensive financial services to Vietnamese customers. Last July, Woori Bank launched Seoul Woori Bank Guarantee Insurance MCI the cooperative product between Woori Bank and Seoul Guarantee Insurance. Along with that, the mobile banking platform Wibee Bank and Wibee Bank will also be introduced to enhance the banks localised services. Founded in 1899 in Seoul, Korea, Woori Bank is one of the leading investment banks in Asia and the largest lender by assets in South Korea. Recently, Woori Bank has acquired Philippines Wealth Development Bank and is growing its sales network across the country. Meanwhile, bank system of Sotara Woori Indonesia also owns 137 transition offices and has been further expanding the customer base in this country. In last October, as the first foreign bank in India, Woori Bank established transaction offices in major cities like Mumbai va Gurgaon as well as enhance the presence in India market. Especially, Woori also expands New Asia Credit System which is focusing on Southeast Asia. Woori Bank has also set up offices in Finland and the legal entity in Germany in order to boost business capacity in the European market. The bank also pushes ahead with a plan to enter new markets like Mexico, where many Korean businesses are operating. With the ongoing development efforts and revenues around the world, Woori Bank aims to become Asias top 10 and global top 50 financial institutions. Beijing is still grappling with pollution and smoggy days, but the government says the actual level of pollution has actually decreased by 15 per cent in 2016 compared to the previous year. A couple wearing masks walk along an avenue in the haze of China's Beijing on November 4, 2016. (Photo: Reuters) By Ananth Krishnan: Before Delhi's airpocalypse, there was Beijing's. For days at a stretch during the long winter, China's capital was, not unlike Delhi today, covered in smog. But the difference is Beijing, however, is currently waging an all-out battle to conquer the airpocalypse. ALSO READ | Delhi pollution: Smog blanket to continue for next 3 days, says Met Dept advertisement "A series of new emission standards were released in the beginning of this year. There are restrictions on the coal industry, three out of four coal fired plants near Beijing have been shut down and the last will be shut in the beginning of next year. There is also a new environmental law and air pollution law, which all adds up to improve the air pollution issue facing China," says Dong Liansai, a campaigner at Greenpeace in Beijing.. HOW BEIJING IS CLEANING THE AIR: CHINA'S FOUR-PRONGED STRATEGY China has launched a four-pronged strategy to clean up the air: 1. The government commissioned a major study to determine causes of pollution. This showed smog was less from vehicles, more from coal plants, dust and crop-burning 2. All four coal plants in the vicinity of Beijing have been shut down. These will be relocated and replaced with higher tech, lower emitting factories 3. November 2015 Plan to Phase Out Crop Burning: 85 per cent of the 900 metric tons of crop stalks will be collected and used by government programme by 2020 for biomass, fiber and pulp 4. Regulating vehicles: Heavy trucks banned from city, registration of new cars limited every month and determined by a lottery. No odd-even ban as study found owners were buying new cars to evade the ban. Huge investment in expanding the already vast Beijing subway and BRT corridor. Beijing is still grappling with pollution and smoggy days, but the government says the actual level of pollution has actually decreased by 15 per cent in 2016 compared to the previous year. Perhaps the biggest source of pressure forcing the government to act was greater awareness from the public. What helped raised public awareness was media attention, starting with a popular TV host Chai Jing's 2015 documentary, Under the Dome, that went viral. It spoke of how PM2.5 pollution even affects pregnant mothers, triggering debate and an overnight revolution of sorts. The government now sends out Red Alerts before the PM2.5 pollution reaches 200, giving residents some time to prepare for the smog. Various kinds of masks are widely available in almost every Beijing store, with public health clinics even ordered to sell subsidised masks. advertisement Liu Binbin, Manager, Beijing Sanfo Outdoors, says Chinese people "are much more aware now about the ill effects of bad air, so these kind of masks are really popular now". "These come with a filter and valve that allows you to breathe comfortably, and these can really make a difference". Greater awareness in China is perhaps the biggest lesson for Delhi as it figures out how to battle air pollution. Only when China's citizens began to pressure the government did they begin to take a whole range of measures. And it was only when China's citizens said enough is enough, did the government finally act. --- ENDS --- Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as attorney general, dies at 78 after years-long struggle with Parkinsons disease remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Bharti Singh is the new face of the JOY Cosmetics and we love every bit of it. By India Today Web Desk: With unrealistic beauty standards as loyal companions, personal care brands have been trying to make a connect with their consumers to little or no avail. But now, in a bid to shatter beauty stereotypes, JOY Cosmetics has appointed famous stand-up Comedian and actress Bharti Singh as their brand ambassador. Also read: Don't miss Deepika Padukone's smoking hot MTV EMA after party look advertisement The brand's new television commercial has the plus-size comedian promote their body Honey & Almonds Nourishing body lotion range--and needless to say, she is totally slaying it! Picture courtesy: Twitter/bharti_lalli Beauty brands almost always focus on outward appearance and physical beauty, with the chances of an overweight woman endorsing a Body lotion being very bleak. But JOY cosmetics, has made an attempt to break the norm by getting Bharti on board. In the TVC, Bharti Singh of Comedy Nights Bachao fame is seen talking about the fat-shaming she's been through. While she became the best female comedian we have in the country, no one ever called her beautiful. Also read: Demi Lovato, Vidya Balan, Freida Pinto join Global Citizen Festival's star-studded lineup She goes on to speak how this perception has changed and asserts that she's always felt beautiful in her skin! Watch the refreshingly unique ad right here . --- ENDS --- Mindful Eating: Slower Consumption for Better Health With tight schedules and busy lives, sitting down to a meal free of distraction can be more of a luxury than the norm. Mindful eating gets pushed aside for many reasons. Taking a break to satisfy your hunger may also seem like the perfect opportunity to catch up on social As voters head to the polls in perhaps the most contentious US election in recent history, experts have warned that the low level of debate has damaged American interests in developing countries such as Cambodia. Speaking during a recent visit to the United States by a group of Cambodian journalists, their American counterparts and political experts said this had been the craziest election campaign in memory. Donald Trump, a multi-millionaire businessman and Republican candidate, has employed fiery language and stoked controversy with repeated gaffes and threats that have seemingly worked in his favor, while allegations of ties to organized crime and the Kremlin have dogged his campaign. Meanwhile, Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and first lady, has faced conflict-of-interest allegations over her relationship with Wall Street and use of a private email server for official business. Ken Vogel, chief investigative reporter at Politico, a Washington DC-based news organization, said this years campaigning had echoed political campaigns of two centuries ago. [I]n the early days in our country, 200 years ago, we did see very nasty personal claims made by candidates against other candidates, and we saw candidates challenging each other to dual like they were going to shoot each other, he said. It is not entirely new, but it is new in sort of this [modern social media] context, he added, noting this U.S. campaign had mirrored recent elections in Italy, Serbia, Bosnia and the Philippines. Ed Horowitz, associate professor of communications at Cleveland State University in Cleveland OH., asked how this election cycle would be remembered. As a professor, I think about it as two possibilities. Number one: this is a bump in the road because Donald is an unusual candidate, he said. Number two: this campaigning is the beginning of a new type of campaigning. As a professor of communication I am particularly interested in how the candidates use mass media, and Donald Trump has been an expert in using Twitter in a way that no one has ever had done, Horowitz said. Charles Noble, professor with the Department of Political Science at California State University in Long Beach CA, said the debates had raised serious questions about the format and its use. There are questions about how suitable they [the debates] are for our politics, because people think they are increasingly a kind of circus rather than a serious effort to inform, he said. James Sheeler, professor of journalism and media writing at Case Western University in Cleveland OH., said that Trumps suggestion that he would not accept the result of the election if he lost that it would have been rigged potentially could incite violence. Its actually been a very interesting time in journalism in the United States right now because now the American journalists are trying to fact-check Donald [Trump] and Hillary Clinton and call them out, especially now Donald Trump is saying that the election is rigged, he said. This is something that never happened before, for a candidate running, to be saying I might not accept the result for the election, Sheeler said. Southeast Asia experts see parallels in the tone of this years US election and campaigns in those in the region. John D. Ciorciari, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, says, This years U.S. presidential election is deeply troubling. Partisan spin, sound-byte policy pronouncements, and hyperbolic attacks on opposing candidates are nothing new to American politics, but this presidential election has been particularly ugly. Donald Trumps vague accusations that the election is rigged and threat to reject adverse results jeopardize a crucial tenet of U.S. democracy a shared commitment to submit to established electoral mechanisms. Americans are fortunate to enjoy a relatively stable democratic system built over a long period of time. We should not take that system for granted, Ciorciari said. Sophal Ear, Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles CA., said the election this year is the worst election he has ever observed. To a great extent the damage is already done. It took 240 years of work, and one man, in one election cycle, has managed to smash quite a bit of this work. Hopefully, he will just be a footnote in history, but the damage will last for years, if not decades, reputationally, for the brand that is American democracy, Sophal Ear said. He added that the election rhetoric would create a moral equivalence argument for repressive and corrupt regimes, who could create a narrative of, Everyone does it so its neither right nor wrong. However, David Josar, deputy spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, said the countrys election process involved free, wide-ranging debate. No matter who wins the White House, the United States and Cambodia share a strong relationship based on mutually beneficial trade, collaboration on development, security cooperation, and active people-to-people exchanges, he said. A court in Cambodia has sentenced an opposition senator to 7 years behind bars for offenses he was said to have committed during a campaign last year against alleged Vietnamese encroachment on Cambodian territory. Senator Hong Sok Hour of the Sam Rainsy Party, who holds French citizenship, was arrested in August last year after posting online what he claimed was part of a treaty between Cambodia and Vietnam that he said was evidence of Vietnamese transgressions. Ros Piseth, Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge, said on Monday that Sok Hour had been sentenced on three offenses: falsifying a treaty; falsifying public documents; and inciting social chaos, according to Choung Chou Ngy, Sok Hours lawyer. He added that the decision was unfair because no experts had been called to testify as to the authenticity of the treaty extract. [T]he court accused my client of using the Internet to commit a crime, but the court did not use the Internet during the investigation and in the hearing, he said. Judge Piseth could not be reached for comment. Am Sam Ath, monitoring director of Licadho, a local rights group, said there were serious flaws in the evidence presented at the trial. The point is the judge is still refusing to disclose the lawyers exculpatory evidence, he said. Legally, the exculpatory evidence must be disclosed because it enables the judge to consider the case fairly and decide the verdict accordingly. When Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced in China that America has lost me, he became the most recent leader within the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to align with Beijing. Duterte went one better in his speech on October 20 in China, proposing that an alliance between Manila, Beijing and Moscow could follow now that he had announced his separation from the United States. A long-time ally of the US, Dutertes decision to swing Philippine foreign policy 180-degrees from Washington and into Beijings ideological flow, followed international criticism of his shoot-to-kill policy in a so-called war on drugs that has left thousands of low-level dealers and drug users dead in his homeland. Dutertes move toward Beijing marks the third Asean member, along with Cambodia and Laos, to hitch their foreign policies and their fortunes to the promises of an emerging China, particularly Chinese investment, condition-free aid and lots of low-interest loans. Scholars interviewed by VOA Khmer said Manilas cozying-up to China might provide short-term benefits, including the Philippines avoiding conflict with China over maritime claims in the South China Sea. However, Manilas realignment would have negative consequences for US influence in the Asean region diplomatically and economically, analysts said. If you cant beat China, you should join China. I think [Dutertes] also following the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules, said Ear Sophal, an associate professor at the Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Describing Duterte as wily, Sophal said the Philippines president appears to have followed the example of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has long vowed loyalty to Beijing and has often done Chinas bidding within Asean on the South China Sea issue. In return, Hun Sen has received billions in loans and investment from China, eclipsing more traditional aid donors such as Japan and Western countries who have sometimes sought promises of governance reforms in return for financing and development assistance. Duterte is definitely learning from the master himself, PM Hun Sen, Sophal told VOA Khmer in an emailed response to questions. During his visit to China in October, when he made his vow of support, Duterte also signed 13 bilateral agreements with Beijing, including trade agreements and financial assistance worth around $13.5 billion to the Philippines. Its a natural move, said Kung Phoak, president of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS). The economy of any Asian country depends on Chinas trade and investment, as do the Philippines or Cambodia, Phoak told VOA Khmer. John Ciorciari, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, said the Philippines realignment to China would be welcomed by Cambodia, which is now not the only openly pro-Beijing government in the Asean region. Duterte surely hopes for economic benefits from a closer relationship with China, Ciorciari told VOA Khmer. For Cambodian leaders, a less assertive Philippine position on the South China Sea and a weaker US-Philippine alliance may be welcome in the short term, because it may lessen the tension with Asean over how to address Chinas advances in the South China Sea, Ciorciari wrote by email. Longer term, however, He [Duterte] is setting the country on a dangerous path, Ciorciari said. Cambodia is much further along its own path with China, particularly on the South China Sea dispute. In 2012, an Asean foreign ministers summit in Phnom Penh failed to produce a joint statement for the first time in the associations 45-year history after Cambodia blocked any critical mention of China regarding tension in the South China Sea dispute. Cambodia showed its loyalty to Beijing once again when it blocked yet another joint statement at the annual Asean meeting in Laos in July. The Asean communique in Laos had included in draft form a reference to the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration, which had recently ruled in favor of the Philippines and against China in the South China Sea dispute. The case was brought to The Hague court in 2013 by Manila following tension with China over contested areas around the Spratly and Paracel islands. China rejected the court ruling outright. Cambodia had received $600 million in aid and loans from China just prior to the Asean summit. During a visit to Cambodia last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote off about $90 million in debts, and pledged another $230 million in loans to the Hun Sen government, including $15 million in military aid. China has provided around $15 billion in aid and loans to Phnom Penh over the past 20 years. That figure does not include the 1970s and 1980s, when Beijing was the primary donor to the Khmer Rouge government in Phnom Penh and when it was an armed faction in exile on the Thai border. China will not immediately trust that the Philippines has changed foreign policy camps, and it will want to more than words of support from Duterte, said Sophal of the Occidental College. I expect that the Philippines will be a recipient of more Chinese assistance. But these things take time. Its not like China is going to suddenly give the Philippines billions, he said. Chinas relationship with Cambodia is very special. Decades in the making. Plus, remember the Khmer Rouge? Anyhow, China is not stupid. More immediately, the Philippines move gives China more influence in Asean. It obviously means Asean will be less interested in making statements against China, Sophal said. Despite Dutertes much publicized comments on breaking away from Washington in favor of China, the US State Department maintained last week that it had not received any official separation letter from Manila. Speaking at a news conference in Phnom Penh on October 27, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel said Washington respected Dutertes decision, and the independence of the Philippines in matters of foreign policy. Russel said the Philippines turning to China did not reflect the failure of President Barack Obamas rebalance to Asia policy, adding that the rebalance could not be labeled with terms such as success or failure. Ups and downs in bilateral relations are not a verdict on the value of the American engagement, Russel said. Some believe that it is US engagement with Asean that might suffer the greatest following Dutertes swing to Beijing, which seems likely to provide China more influence in Asean, The US security relationship with Philippines is a key pillar of the strategic architecture in Southeast Asia, said Ciorciari, of the University of Michigan. If it cracks, wobbles or collapses, Asean states that see the US presence as helpful will have to adjust. As the Iraqi army, supported by other anti-Islamic State forces, battles to oust the militants from Mosul in Iraq, Kurdish-led forces in Syria are marching toward Raqqa, another major Islamic State stronghold. A U.S.-led coalition is supporting local efforts to defeat the terrorists in both countries. Turkey, however, is critical of any Kurdish-led military action, fearing it would strengthen the Kurdish independence movement. Zlatica Hoke reports. Geneticists in the Czech Republic are urging people to submit a DNA sample in the hope they might be related to a Czech royal family. In this day and age, there aren't nearly as many advantages to being "royalty" as there were a century or so ago. But the scientists say there are some real advantages to knowing your genetic history. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. By Hemender Sharma: Family members of head constable Ramshankar Yadav, who was allegedly killed by the eight SIMI under trials before escaping from the Bhopal Central jail during the intervening night of October 30 and 31, have now demanded a judicial probe into the circumstances in which Yadav was killed. The state government has appointed a judicial commission to probe the alleged encounter in which the SIMI suspects were killed without mentioning Yadav's alleged murder in the points of reference for the commission. advertisement The Madhya Pradesh government's decision to constitute a judicial commission under the chairmanship of retired High Court judge SK Pandey to probe the police claim of killing eight SIMI operatives has also been questioned by ex advocate Anand Mohan Mathur. In a letter to the chief minister, Mathur has raised doubts over the neutrality of Justice Pandey and alleged that he is an RSS sympathiser. PANDEY AN RSS SYMPATHISER "I have known justice Pandey from the days he was a sessions judge in Jabalpur and also when he was appointed as a judge of the high court. He is an RSS sympathiser and supporter of BJP and he will not be able to conduct an impartial inquiry," Anand Mohan Mathur told India Today said. Also read: Bhopal jailbreak-encounter: Eight questions that remain unanswered It is not just Mathur who is unhappy with the Judicial commission that has been constituted to look into the alleged encounter of the eight under trial alleged members of the banned students Islamic movement of India. Family members of head constable Ramshankar Yadav too have expressed anguish over ignoring including the circumstances under which Yadav was killed in the points of reference while appointing the judicial commission. DEMAND PROBE BY STATE GOVERNMENT "The government has specified the points of reference to the judicial commission but have conveniently forgotten to refer to the circumstances under which my father died. I urge the state government to probe into how my father was killed," Shambhu Nath Yadav, son of Rama Shankar Yadav while talking to India Today said. Also read: Politics over Bhopal jailbreak: Opposition doubts BJP government's version, demands independent probe The judicial commission has been asked to probe the circumstances under which the SIMI operatives escaped from the Bhopal jail. The commission will also probe the circumstance under which the encounter took place and decide if the police action was appropriate. Also read: Bhopal SIMI jailbreak: 8 hours that shook the city --- ENDS --- In a potential breakthrough in the fight against Zika, researchers have discovered an antibody that could potentially be fashioned into a vaccine to protect pregnant women against the mosquito-borne virus. Called ZIKV-117, the antibody or immune system protein was isolated from a patient who had been infected with Zika virus. In a study of pregnant mice infected with the mosquito-borne pathogen, ZIKV-117 protected the fetus against infection. The antibody, which stimulates a robust immune system response against the virus, neutralized all Zika strains that were tested. The amount of virus in the mother was greatly reduced, decreasing levels of the pathogen found in fetal placental and brain tissue. Infected male mice given a single dose of ZIKV-117 were more likely to survive than untreated mice, even five days after Zika infection, suggesting that the antibody could be used to treat an active infection. The discovery was made by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in Missouri and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and reported in the journal Nature. A first against Zika It is the first time any sort of treatment for Zika has been found, according to Michael Diamond, a microbiologist and immunologist at Washington University, and a senior co-author of the study. "Before this study, there had been no vaccine or any other study that had done anything in pregnant animals to show that anything could abort or prevent disease, he said. So one thing this does is suggest that antibodies are able to do it, and this actually bodes well for future vaccine efforts." Researchers screened 29 anti-Zika antibodies from five people who had recovered from Zika. ZIKV-117 was identified in one individual with a mild infection. "That's how this one antibody came to the top of the cream if you will, Diamond said. It came to the top of the glass. It turned out to be the best one for inhibiting the virus in cell culture, and then we tested it to see what it could do to Zika virus infection using an animal model in this case, a mouse model of disease. ZIKV-117 proved to be effective in the lab at neutralizing five different strains from around the world. Global reach The virus is sweeping through the Americas, from Brazil to Central America, and cases have been reported in the United States. There have also been cases of Zika in Africa, Asia and the Pacific region, prompting public health officials to worry that the emerging disease could become a global threat. Zika can cause severe birth defects, most notably microcephaly, in the babies of women who are infected with the virus during pregnancy. Newborns with microcephaly have an abnormally small head and brain. Zika is also thought to cause a rare, crippling neurological condition in adults called Guillain-Barre syndrome. Diamond said researchers are now preparing to test the antibody in monkeys, a process that he says could take six to nine months. If those experiments are successful, human trials could begin soon after that. Diamond said ZIKV-117 could be developed into a drug that could be used in a number of ways. "Either you give it before somebody went into a high-risk area if they were traveling, or as soon as they knew they were pregnant and they were not infected already, he said. Or if they were pregnant and then got infected but it was early in their stage of infection, you might be able to administer it and still have beneficial effects." Because Zika can be transmitted sexually, ZIKV-117 might also be given to infected males to prevent the virus spread to their partners. Researchers are also looking to see whether the antibody can treat longstanding infections. However, Diamond said there's early evidence that Zika may cause sterility in men. Research shows the infection can linger in the eyes and testes. A surge in Asian-Americans voting early is being attributed to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by some down ballot candidates. It's also evidence that the demographic has growing clout in U.S. politics. The Democratic analytical firm Catalist reports that Asian-Americans are voting in increased numbers in the swing states that could determine the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Asian-American Democratic congressman Ted Lieu said the increased number of Asian-Americans going to the polls can be traced to Trump's campaign. If you see the early votes that have happened, in Nevada and in Florida, there has been a Trump effect, and that is you have Latinos and Asian-Americans surging in voting. You have a lot of minorities who are low propensity voters now voting because they are either scared or mad at Donald Trump, said Lieu. While Trump's stance and sometimes controversial statements about U.S. immigration policy may be motivating some minority groups to head to the polls, Lieu's Republican opponent, pediatric eye surgeon Kenneth Wright, said border security is one of things that motivated him to run against Lieu. We cant have open borders. There are human traffickers coming across that border. Drug, horrible, terrorist could come across, we cant have open borders. Wright said. Its time citizens stand up against career politicians and get them the heck out and put in people that are citizens that want to work for America. Rising political clout The early voting surge also reflects that the growing Asian-American electorate is a group that is gaining political power in the U.S. The number of Asians running for political office is also increasing said Representative Judy Chu, the first Chinese-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She is also chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. There are currently 33 Asian and Pacific Islander candidates across the country running for federal office according to the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS). Chu and Lieu are both running for re-election in predominantly Democratic districts in Southern California. While Chu represents a district that is largely Asian and Latino, Lieu's district includes a large population of Jewish Americans as well as Asian Americans. Chus Republican opponent, former FBI agent and small business owner Jack Orswell had tried to run against Chu several times before, but this time, he said the Trump effect could make the outcome of races unpredictable. "I dont know what the Trump effect is. All I know is its going to be extremely different from any previous election, and as a down ticket candidate my election chances are dependent on the presidential race, said Orswell. Future of Asian and Pacific Islander candidates Beyond the White House in this election, Chu said the down ballot Asian and Pacific Islander candidates need to be coalition candidates to win their race. Nearly every Asian Pacific Islander candidate runs in a district that is not majority Asian. Thats the nature of America, Chu said. We have to make sure that we reach out to everybody of every ethnic background and that we have a message thats universal for all of them. As for the Asian-American electorate, Chu said this demographic is becoming the margin of victory in many swing states. "In the last decade, we have doubled our voter registration numbers from two to four million and in certain states that are making a big difference in this election, Nevada, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, we are a swing population." Chu said. "Just think if we can swing Nevada, we can swing Virginia, we can actually determine who the next president of the United States will be." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will visit Cuba next week to strengthen ties and boost trade, four decades after his father made a historic visit to the Communist-ruled island and struck up a friendship with revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Canada has long been one of Cuba's closest Western allies. Trudeau will meet with Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother and successor as president, during his visit, Trudeau's office said. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a former prime minister, in 1976 became the first NATO leader to visit the island since its revolution, at one point exhorting "Viva Castro!" Pierre Trudeau's trip was controversial in view of the Cold War enmity between Cuba and the United States. His son's visit is not viewed as such, given the resumption of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic ties last year and a landmark visit by U.S. President Barack Obama in March. Justin Trudeau will follow his stay in Havana with a visit to Argentina, ruled by center-right President Mauricio Macri, on his way to Peru to participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting. "Cuba and Argentina are two of our closest partners in the hemisphere," Trudeau said in a statement. "I look forward to working with President Castro and President Macri to stimulate more trade and investment with Canada, grow the middle class, and foster closer people-to-people ties for the benefit of all our citizens." Canada and Mexico were the only two nations in the Americas to have kept ties with Cuba after the 1959 revolution, and trade, tourism and investment from the two countries has filled in some gaps from the U.S. embargo. Cuba and Canada trade over $1 billion worth of goods per year and Canadian companies have significant investments in mining, power, oil and gas, agribusiness and tourism in Cuba. Many countries are rushing to renew ties with Cuba since its detente with the United States in hopes of capturing a share of Cuban business. A string of foreign leaders including the Iranian president and Japanese prime minister have visited the island in recent months, meeting with Raul and Fidel Castro. It was not yet clear whether Trudeau will meet with Fidel, 90, who became friends with his father and was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral in Montreal in 2000. For weeks, eastern Aleppo has been under siege by Syrian government forces and their Russian backers, who have warned civilians to leave the city before an expected push to retake it from rebel forces. Amid the bombs, sniper fire and mortars, a quarter million people still live among the ruins of the ancient city, including thousands of children. Their existence appears increasingly precarious. For months, day and night, the bombs have fallen all around Bana al-Abeds house in East Aleppo. But mobile phone networks still work, allowing her to communicate the horrors of life in the city. I am afraid of the bombing. I want peace, said Bana, speaking to VOA via Skype. Seven-year-old Bana is becoming a star of social media. With the help of her mother Fatemah, she set up a Twitter account and reports on life in the besieged city from a childs perspective. Also speaking via Skype, Fatemah describes Aleppo as a living hell. "There is always bombing. Especially at night," she said. "When the night starts it is a horrible time for us, and for the kids. They do not take enough time to sleep. And in the day they live like a prisoner. Now they use heavy bombs. Even basements are not safe. Fatemah and her husband have considered fleeing the city with their three children. Syrian government forces, backed by Russia, said last week they had set up safe corridors for civilians to escape the siege. But Fatemah says it is a trap. They open corridors, as the whole world knows. But it is like a trick. It is not the truth. In the first cease-fire, there were snipers, she said. The charity Doctors Without Borders says at least 136 children in Aleppo have been killed and 468 wounded by airstrikes since late September. Hospitals are desperately overcrowded and short of staff and medicines. Abu Almoutassen, an emergency pediatric nurse, says they recently had a child in the hospital who needed surgery, but they could not find a surgeon in the whole of besieged Aleppo, and the child died. Malnutrition rates are soaring. Children are dying not only from the bombs, but also from malnutrition and disease. Fatemah says the siege overwhelmingly targets civilians. Almost all of them are kids. And women. And old men. They want to be here and live in peace, she said. Peace seems a long way off. For Aleppos children, the daily fight for survival is getting harder. A recent upbeat meeting between the leaders of China and Malaysia showcased extended bilateral cooperation despite their maritime sovereignty dispute in the South China Sea. Analysts say last weeks trip by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to Beijing only underscored a long-standing deal by which Beijing offers economic support in exchange for the other side keeping quiet when angered by Chinese vessels in nearby waters. Leaders in Beijing hope this understanding with the country that has the most extensive fossil fuel claims in the contested South China Sea will apply someday to other governments. Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines claim all or parts of the sea, as well. Regional order Certainly some scholars have taken the view that what China wants is a sort of regional order, said Douglas Guilfoyle, associate international law professor at Monash University in Australia. That means essentially a set of rules that say we get to set the kind of broad policy for management of certain regional issues and everyone should defer to us, not simply because were the most powerful but because we are by our own lights well-intentioned and there will be mutual benefits for everyone because were a flourishing economy, he said. The Malaysian leader met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing Thursday. The two leaders agreed during Najibs six-day China visit to oppose intervention in the sea dispute, according to news reports from Beijing. The two countries also pledged stability at sea and called for freedom of navigation crucial. Trade ties China and Malaysia used the visit to sign 14 deals worth a combined 144 billion ringgit ($34 billion), according to Malaysian media. According to one deal, China will sell navy vessels to the other side. Those deals made Najibs visit popular among Malaysians, particularly the ethnic Chinese who are 21 percent of the population, analysts in Kuala Lumpur say. They see China as an opportunity for economic expansion, so the baseline for the relationship toward China is a positive one, said Ibrahim Suffain, director of the Kuala Lumpur-based Merdeka Center for Opinion Research. The local media here talks about many deals, so thats pretty significant in terms of investment potential. China was already Malaysias top trading partner and chief source of direct foreign investment. Last year state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp. bought the Malaysian development firm 1MDBs energy assets in another company for $2.4 billion and China Railway Construction Corp. acquired a stake in the Malaysian property development project Bandar Malaysia. In March, 100 Chinese vessels passed near Luconia Shoals, which Malaysia claims, but the countrys defense minister played it down instead of criticizing China. Malaysia diplomacy China will still probably avoid any military enforcement of its claims near Malaysia at the risk of nudging it toward the United States, analysts say. U.S.-Malaysia security cooperation includes numerous military exercises, ship visits and educational exchanges, according to a 2015 Congressional Research Service document, although Malaysia has assumed a relatively low profile in the South China Sea dispute. Its very obvious that Malaysia wants to play on both sides of the fence, said Jonathan Bogais, associate political science professor at University of Sydney. And that is working very well for them at the moment and it will keep working this way. China's claims on the SCS But Beijing has irritated other governments with claims to the South China Sea by passing vessels through their exclusive economic zones of 200 nautical miles (370 km) off their coastline and reclaiming land to expand disputed islets for its own use. The sea is valued for fishing, marine shipping and the exploration for fossil fuels. Beijing claims about 95 percent of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer (1.4 million-square-mile) body of water stretching from Taiwan to Singapore. It backs those claims with historic records. Washington has helped Vietnam resist China by lifting an arms sales ban and does joint military exercises with the Philippines. China accuses the U.S. government of helping other maritime claimants to keep Chinese expansion in check. Vietnam complains loudly when China approaches its sea claims and a Chinese oil rig sparked deadly anti-China protests in 2014 near Ho Chi Minh City. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken a strong pro-China stance since October, winning aid pledges from Beijing in exchange, but has not officially cut off U.S. military preparedness aid in place since 2014. His predecessor took China to the world arbitration court and won the case July 12. Americans are going to the polls across the country Tuesday to elect a new president, following a long and bitter election campaign, with Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump making last minute appeals to voters. Clinton called the election "the test of our time" while Trump, declared "today is our Independence Day." Each delivered their remarks early Tuesday, as their final busy day of campaigning stretched past midnight. WATCH: Hillary Clinton talks to supporters, reporters after voting Clinton edges Trump in first in-person voting The events -- Clinton's in North Carolina and Trump's in Michigan -- were still going on when results came in from the first in-person voting on Election Day. Clinton got the most votes in the tiny New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch, beating Trump four to two. Results from New Hampshire, the other 49 U.S. states, and the District of Columbia will not be announced until after polls close in each one. By 8 p.m. Washington time (0100 GMT) polls will be closed in much of the eastern and central parts of the country, a group of states that accounts for more than half of the 538 electoral votes at stake. Clinton struck a tone of unity in her final address in North Carolina, telling supporters she wants to be president for both those who vote for her and those who do not. "Years from today, when your kids and grandkids ask what you did in 2016, when everything was on the line, you'll be able to say you voted for a stronger, fairer, better America," she said. "An America where we build bridges not walls, and where we prove conclusively that, yes love trumps hate." Trump: promises 'real change' Trump told his Michigan crowd that his win would bring "real change" to the country and allow working class people to "strike back" at what he said were corrupt politicians and special interests that have ruled the country. "So the first thing we should do, let's get rid of Hillary, okay? That would be a very good first step," he said. Trump also made stops Monday in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all places that will be key in deciding who takes over the White House in January. "We will make American wealthy again, we will make America strong again, we will make American safe again, and yes, we will make America great again," the Republican told his Pennsylvania supporters. Clinton had her own major rally in the state, where her husband, former President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama, joined her in Philadelphia. Clinton said she believes in a "hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America" and that she wants to build on what Obama achieved during his eight years in office. Obama has campaigned for Clinton, who served as secretary of state during his first term, since she became their party's nominee. He told the crowd in Philadelphia that Clinton has the respect of other leaders around the world and that she is "strong, steady and tested." Polls heading into Election Day Tuesday gave Clinton a 2-3 point lead over Trump. Tens of millions of Americans took advantage of early voting provisions in their states to cast ballots before Tuesday. Also Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute lawsuit by the Ohio Democratic Party seeking an order to prevent Trump supporters from carrying out actions that could be interpreted as voter intimidation. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Ohio already has laws in place to prevent such harassment. Trump has called on his backers to watch polling places where he has said the voting might be rigged. Trump has not presented any evidence to back up his suspicion, but some Democratic officials say Trump was thinking about African-American neighborhoods that lean heavily toward the Democrats. WATCH: About US elections.... With public anxiety over terrorist attacks on the rise in the U.S., presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have tried to outflank each other to project toughness on terrorism. Trump blames Clinton for promoting policies as secretary of state that have given rise to terrorism while Clinton says her Republican rival of lacking a real plan to fight terror. But beyond the campaign rhetoric, just how steep are their differences over terrorism? Differences Quite steep, says terrorism scholar Max Abrahms who argues that their differences stem from how each views the root causes of terrorism. Clinton subscribes to the "grievance model" of terrorism, the notion that terrorism is inspired by a sense of injustice, said Abrahms, a political science professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Trump, by contrast, leans toward the "opportunity model," so named for the view that terrorism thrives when there is an opportunity for its growth, he said. I think that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump subscribe to different schools of thought on terrorism, Abrahms says. Trumps proposed ban on Muslims and aversion to nation building and Clintons openness to refugee resettlement and apparent penchant for promoting democracy in the Arab world can best be understood through this prism, Abrahms says. But Michael OHanlon of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, dismisses the notion of a stark philosophical difference between the two, arguing their positions on terrorism are much closer than their campaign speeches suggest. Despite their deep differences over Muslim immigration, neither favors getting the U.S. militarily involved in the Middle East beyond doing a little more than Barack Obama, OHanlon says. Im not persuaded there is as big a difference as might seem the case." Whatever their differences over terrorism, here is what the candidates themselves have said about fighting terrorism, from defeating Islamic State (IS) to protecting the homeland: Clinton Clinton's "Comprehensive Plan to Defeat ISIS and the Threat of Radical Jihadism" summarizes her position. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State. To defeat IS, the plan calls for working with a coalition of European and Middle Eastern nations, using drones and special operations forces, establishing a no-fly zone over northern Syria, and seeking a political settlement to the five-year Syrian conflict. In addition, the plan advocates dismantling the global network that supplies money, arms, propaganda and fighters to the terrorists. To fight homegrown terrorism, Clinton has proposed an "intelligence surge" to give law enforcement the edge in disrupting terrorist plots and a "lone wolf task force" to identify and stop radicalized individuals. The former secretary of state sees the American Muslim community as critical to safeguarding the country against homegrown terrorism. "These Americans may be our first, last and best defense against homegrown radicalization and terrorism," she said in a major speech last December. Shes condemned Trumps proposed Muslim ban but her plan mirrors the Republicans in calling for "rigorous screening" of refugees and immigrants. "I will not let anyone into our country that I think poses a risk to us," she said during the second presidential debate Trump With few exceptions, Trumps plan to defeat IS and protect the American homeland largely mirrors Clintons. Like Clinton, he supports stepping up air strikes against IS targets, working with moderate Middle Eastern allies, and establishing a no-fly zone over northern Syria. But he differs in some areas. Unlike Clinton, Trump has pressed for working with Russia to fight IS and putting additional American boots on the ground. He also sees the Syrian regime as a potential ally in the anti-IS war, opposing arming rebels to overthrow the government. No issue separates the two candidates more than terrorism, a hot-button electoral issue that that dominated the campaign debate over terrorism. While Trump no longer hawks his controversial Muslim ban, he talks about extreme vetting of immigrants from Muslim nations to keep terrorists out of the country. He also opposes admitting refugees from the Syrian conflict, warning that Clintons plan for resettling 65,000 Syrians could unleash a "Trojan horse" of terrorists on the American homeland. "Wait till you see what happens in the coming years," Trump said ominously during the final presidential debate last week. Trump says he wants to establish a Commission on Radical Islam to expose the networks in our society that support radicalization. The Republican has acknowledged Islamophobia was a problem. But he told a Muslim-American questioner during the second presidential debate: Muslims have to report the problems when they see them. If they dont do that, its a very difficult situation for our country. U.S. authorities have arrested a 20-year-old Ohio man for allegedly conspiring to join Islamic State militants. Aaron Travis Daniels of Columbus faces a charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.Daniels, also known as Harun Muhammad and Abu Yusef, was arrested as he tried to board a plane. Authorities said his ultimate destination was Libya. According to the criminal complaint, Daniels sent $250 in January to "an ISIS operative" and had communicated his commitment to violent overseas jihad. Investigators said there was no reason to believe Daniels was trying to recruit others. The complaint alleges that Daniels set up email addresses and a social media account using aliases and expressed his interest in violent jihad and traveling overseas in various communications. If convicted, Daniels could face up to 20 years in prison. European Union finance ministers agreed on Tuesday new targeted sanctions against Crimean officials, adding to restrictive measures adopted after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. "The Council adopted new listings under the restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity," Slovakia's Finance Minister Peter Kazimir told a news conference at the end of a meeting of the Council of EU finance ministers. He was replying to a question on whether new sanctions have been imposed on Crimean officials. Slovakia holds the rotating presidency of the EU until the end of the year. A list of 151 people and 37 entities are already subject to visa bans and an assets freeze in the EU for their role in the annexation of Crimea or the Russia-backed rebellion in eastern Ukraine. The annexation of Crimea has not been internationally recognized and the region is also subject to economic sanctions including bans on importing goods produced in Crimea, investing or providing tourism services there. Five men were arrested Tuesday in Germany on accusations of recruiting fighters for the Islamic State terrorist group. Justice Minister Heiko Mass called the arrests "an important blow to the extremist scene in Germany." Authorities say the suspects were taken into custody following a series of raids in the Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia states. The men face charges of setting up a "jihadist network" that tried to recruit Muslims to go to Syria to fight alongside IS militants. Investigators identified one of the suspects as a 32-year-old Iraqi who goes by the alias Abu Walaa, saying he is the ringleader. Reports say the other suspects include a Turk, a German, a Serbian-German dual citizen and a Cameroonian national. Germany has avoided large-scale terrorist attacks, but fears were stoked earlier this year following two attacks by asylum-seekers in the name of Islamic State. Only the attackers were killed. Authorities say 820 jihadists have left Germany for war zones in Syria and Iraq and have voiced fears about security threats once those individuals return. Bani Judge and Gaurav Chopra are hanging out a LOT with each other these days. We smell romance. By India Today Web Desk: Everyone's favourite reality show Bigg Boss is driving its fans crazy with its numerous twists and shouting matches. And tonight's episode is going to be no different. Here are some of the important highlights from tonight's episode Also read:Bigg Boss 10: Manu Punjabi threatens Om Swami with murder Bani J and Gaurav Chopra just can't have enough of each other advertisement Bani and Gaurav will be seen spending some quality time together. The celeb contestants will also be playing a game with aam aadmi contestant Nitibha Kaul. The two will laugh and hang out together for a considerable amount of time. In fact, Bani will even ask Gaurav to describe the profile of the girl his mother would want him to marry. Why so much interest, Bani? Is something cooking between the two of them, we wonder. Manu Punjabi nominates Manveer Gurjar During the nomination process, Manu Punjabi will nominate Manveer Gurjar. But aren't the two close friends? As a part of the nomination task, and in order to save himself from getting nominated, Manveer Gurjar will have to convince Rohan Mehra to cross-dress. But will Rohan agree to do the task? We are not so sure. Bani J fights with Navin Prakash Once again, Bani and Navin will lock horns over a nomination task. Navin will be seen hurling abuses at Bani, but Bani will also not hold back, and give it to Naveen in full. Bani J breaks down Unable to handle the fights and the drama in the Bigg Boss house, Bani will break down. Her shouting match with Navin will finally get to her, and she will end up crying in front of Karan Mehra, who will seek to make her understand that fights are natural in the house of Bigg Boss, and that he supports her. But Bani will be pay no attention to him, and will ask Karan to leave her alone. But the million dollar question still remains, who will finally get nominated this week? To find out, tune in to Bigg Boss Season 10 at 10:30 pm on Colors TV. --- ENDS --- While foreign policy is often given short shrift in American presidential campaigns, the rest of the world has tuned in this year to find out where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stand on issues over which millions of lives are at stake. Will Americans elect a candidate whos vowed to knock the hell out of ISIS or will they pick a candidate whos said she wants to be caught trying to do something about the conflict in Syria? As Americans go to the polls on Tuesday, here is a look at four foreign policy issues over which the two candidates argued the most and one topic they largely ignored: Fighting IS With voters citing terrorism as one of the most pressing issues facing the country, the U.S.-led fight against the Islamic State (IS) terror group became one of the focal points of the campaign. The issue came up repeatedly during all three presidential debates. Projecting toughness on terrorism, each candidate claimed to have a better plan to defeat IS even if they couldn't agree whether the threat posed by the group was "radical Islamic terrorism" or "radical jihadism." Trump accused Clinton of "founding" IS by promoting policies that created instability in the greater Middle East when she was secretary of state and U.S. senator; Clinton sharply questioned her opponent's temperament, judgment and experience in navigating foreign affairs. Though widely mocked for mentioning a plan to defeat IS but keeping it "secret," Trump did offer some clues about how he intends to fight terror. He proposed a contentious ban on Muslims and said he'd work with "moderate" Arab nations and Russia to defeat IS, rather than arming Syrian rebels to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Beyond the tough rhetoric and some differences over tactic and strategy, however, neither candidate offered a grand plan for defeating IS and ending the conflict in Syria beyond "doing a little more than Barack Obama," as one analyst put it. Russia With U.S.-Russia relations at a post-Cold War nadir and the two candidates holding diametrically opposed views, it was no surprise that Russia emerged as a hot-button issue during the campaign. The disagreement began last fall with Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and deepened as Russia intensified its bombing campaign in Syria and as allegations of Russian hacking of Democratic Party email accounts surfaced. Trump dismissed Russian involvement in hacking Democratic Party computer systems and portrayed Putin as someone he could "get along" with, even as a group of former Republican national security officials warned about it in an open letter opposing his candidacy. Clinton took a tough line on Moscow, vowing to "stand up to Putin," whom she accused of favoring Trump. As secretary of state in Obama's first term, Clinton championed the administration's so-called Russia "reset" policy before it unraveled with Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. Though she pledged to work with the Kremlin on issues of mutual interest, the Democrat threatened broader sanctions against Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea and incursion into Ukraine, and called for investigating Russia and Syria for war crimes allegedly committed in Aleppo. China The debate over China from Chinese trade practices to cyberterrorism to military assertiveness in the South China Sea was the mirror image of the argument over Russia, with Clinton advocating engagement and Trump adopting a tough line that struck critics as go-it-alone unilateralism. Trump repeatedly warned that China was trying "to rip this country" and vowed to renegotiate trade deals with China and other countries. In a major foreign policy speech in April, he warned that the two countries could either have a mutually beneficial relationship or "we can both go our separate ways." Viewing China as a strategic rival rather than an adversary, Clinton pledged to expand cooperation with Beijing when it serves U.S. interests and to stand up to China when necessary. She made headlines last month by proposing a missile defense "ring" around China, but also warned against unilateral action against Beijing. NATO The 68-year-old transatlantic alliance, rarely the subject of controversy in the United States, was thrust into the campaign as Trump questioned its utility and called on NATO members to pay their "fair share" on defense. To the alarm of European allies and critics at home, Trump suggested that he would not automatically come to the aid of NATO's Baltic members if they were attacked by Russia. He also threatened to pull out of long-standing alliances with Japan and South Korea if they did not increase their share of the military burden. Trump supporters have downplayed Trump's comments about NATO, but Trump himself did not budge in his position. Clinton said she agreed with the call for allies to up their contribution to defense, but she accused Trump of seeking to "break up NATO" and pledged to strengthen America's military alliances, including NATO. Afghanistan Despite an intensifying Taliban insurgency, the war in Afghanistan received surprisingly little attention from either candidate. The conflict, often described as America's longest war, came up during one of the three presidential debates and only in passing when Clinton discussed it in the context of NATO's support after 9/11. In his only major speech devoted to foreign policy in April, Trump made no mention of the war. In cursory comments earlier in the campaign, however, both candidates expressed support for President Barack Obama's plan to keep fewer than 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Clinton, who as secretary of state backed Obama's Afghan troop surge, indicated a willingness to extend troop commitments if conditions warranted, but said she didn't want them engaged in ground combat but rather to support and train Afghan forces. Trump has not said whether he'll extend troop levels, but after initially calling the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan a "terrible mistake," he said keeping troops in Afghanistan was necessary if only to keep an eye on its nuclear-armed neighbor, Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, one of the two presidential candidates in the U.S. elections, has emerged the winner in a mock vote hosted Tuesday by the U.S. embassy in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe. More than 300 Malawians, mostly university students, came to the U.S. embassy to vote while the mock polls were open from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. The final results show that 268 people voted for Clinton, a Democrat, while 53 voted for Republican Donald Trump. The voters told VOA they were excited to participate. I have voted today because at least I have an idea of how American elections are conducted, said Olina Sachisani, who attends the Malawi Institute of Journalism. So my voting has enabled me to make a choice, which although would not count much, but at least as a student and a citizen of Malawi, I had that opportunity to participate [in the electoral process]." The voters had different opinions on who would win the actual election in the United States. "I could say Hillary Clinton could win because she has already put out a [better] fight than Donald Trump, because he has been busy accusing other persons instead of setting his goals and telling us what he would do [if elected]," said Frank Nowa, who attends the Malawi College of Accountancy. African Bible College student Ndamya Mwanjabe is not so sure. "Because at first when I was coming to vote, I had in mind that Hillary Clinton would win, Mwanjabe said, but now what I have learned inside there, they have said that it is not all the time that the one who has got more popular votes can be voted to be a president. So as of now it is really difficult to tell who is going to win." The public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy, Edward Monster, told VOA the mock elections were largely aimed to celebrate democracy, which Malawi and the United States enjoy. "Unfortunately, that is not the case with other countries around the world, Monster said. So here in Malawi, we are celebrating today our democracy. We are celebrating the ability and the right and the responsibility of citizens in democracy to exercise their responsibility to vote and elect their leaders." The event aimed to teach university students about the U.S. electoral process. Embassy staffer Millington Bergeson-Lockwood made a presentation about the electoral college, an aspect of the U.S. presidential vote that often confuses foreign observers. He said many students were curious. "The Malawian students were very engaged, Bergeson-Lockwood said. Their questions were great. They asked tough questions, and you can tell that they are really interested in their own democracy." After voting in their mock elections, Malawians are now eager to see if the official U.S. results will reflect their choice. Lech Walesa, the Polish leader of the anti-communist Solidarity movement in the 1980s, is pessimistic about the prospects of internal opposition groups rising up in North Korea. It is questionable at this point whether North Koreans will fight for freedom because they are too poor, he said during an exclusive interview with VOA in Seoul. The labor activist co-founded the first independent trade union in the Soviet Union that eventually helped topple Communism in Eastern Europe, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his pro-democracy efforts and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Walesa was in Seoul recently to attend an international forum and reflected on his own experience leading a peaceful opposition movement within a communist regime, and how the international community can help foster peaceful change in North Korea. For the Polish Solidarity movement, the key to victory was the power of their own conviction, believing that if they stayed united they could force the system to change. What we emphasized was that they could kill us or imprison us, but we had a belief that we would never give up. We wanted to emphasize that we would not work for communism while they at some point would give in, he said. Repressive North However, he admitted the conditions that currently exist in North Korea are more brutal and repressive then those that were in place in Poland and the Soviet Union when his trade union began organizing, and that the government in Pyongyang continues to suppress any potential organized internal opposition. In 2014, a U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in North Korea issued a report documenting a network of political prisons in the country holding 120,000 people and a list of atrocities that include forced labor, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence. The independent group Human Rights Watch says in addition to sending dissidents who criticize North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to prison without trial, the government also practices collective punishment, sending entire families, including children, to prison camps for anti-state offenses. Walesa said the way the Kim government mistreats its people while also developing a nuclear weapons program is ultimately unsustainable. I would like to express that the behavior North Korea is exhibiting now is suicide. If they continue to behave in such way, they will lose, and with an extension of time it will bring negative effects to North Korea, he said. Nuclear threat U.N. Security Council resolutions have banned North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology, and have imposed rounds of increasingly stronger sanctions on Pyongyang since it conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. The most recent set of sanctions imposed in March has not deterred North Korea. Since then Pyongyang has accelerated its developing program by conducting 25 missiles launches and a second nuclear test this year in September. China has reportedly put on hold, until after the U.S. presidential election, Security Council negotiations to impose new sanctions on North Korea for its most recent violations. Rather than focusing only on pressuring Pyongyang, Walesa suggested South Korea and the international community also open up dialogue on the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula by offering increased inter-Korean cooperation, engagement to improve economic conditions and reassuring the elites in Pyongyang that they too would benefit by transitioning to freedom and democracy. What I would like to say at first is that 'the world needs you'. You can live more rich. You can live better, by enjoying freedom. But both need to cooperate well and understand each other. The world is open for North Korea. North Korea does not need to escape. Freedom opens many doors, he said. His views echo recommendations last month by members of a U.S.-based task force, who called for Washington and its allies to change their approach to dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat, saying it is time to rethink the problem. The task force, which was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, recommended offering North Korea real incentives for agreeing to a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, returning to international talks and reaffirming the goal of denuclearization. The Polish Nobel Peace laureates emphasis on engagement is reminiscent of the Sunshine policy of the late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung who also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. He initiated increased inter-Korean assistance and cooperative projects on the premise that they would lead to peaceful co-existence and to some form of unification. Over the years, however, the South withdrew economic aid as the North initiated provocations and continued its defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons. Both Washington and Seoul have offered new talks to work out a deal to provide development assistance and security guarantees if Pyongyang takes concrete steps to halt its nuclear program. They contend it is the Kim government that refuses to engage in serious talks, and that increased sanctions are needed to keep the pressure on the leadership to come back to the negotiating table. Iraqi authorities say the military coalition pressing a huge offensive against Islamic State extremists near the northern city of Mosul have uncovered a mass grave containing at least 100 decapitated bodies. Initial reports Monday from Western and Kurdish journalists say the dead are believed to be civilians. A spokesman for Iraqi federal police said the bodies were discovered at an agriculture college outside the town of Hammam al-Alil, 15 kilometers south of Mosul's center. Police said medical specialists were deployed to the scene to probe the massacre and try to identify the bodies. Islamic State fighters have controlled Mosul and its outlying towns and villages for more than two years, and civilians who have recently escaped have described repeated incidents of mass executions by the extremists. In a separate statement Monday, Iraqi authorities said coalition forces pushing toward Mosul from the east liberated five more villages, while a nearby armored division entered Mosul's eastern neighborhoods. The location of the Iraqi division was not disclosed by late Monday, and it was not clear whether the armored force remained in the city or withdrew. The long-awaited Mosul offensive was launched October 17 by a coalition of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by Shiite militia, Sunni Arab tribesmen and U.S.-led airstrikes. Coalition progress toward encircling the embattled city has been hampered by concrete barricades and roadside bombs deployed by IS fighters seeking to slow the coalition advance. Observers say airstrikes accompanying the push toward the city also have been curtailed to protect civilians attempting to survive in a dense urban setting while at close quarters with extremists. Earlier Monday, Iraqi Kurdish elements of the coalition force launched an offensive to capture the town of Bashiqa, 13 kilometers northeast of Mosul. Kurdish peshmerga forces had surrounded the town for weeks ahead of the assault, and Peshmerga Lt. Col. Safeen Rasoon told Reuters that an estimated "100 IS fighters are inside" Bashiqa. As the U.S. presidential campaign heads into its final hours, Kremlin presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued Russia's own last appeal to U.S. voters: Russia has no intention of interfering in America's elections. Never mind White House charges of Kremlin hacking of Democratic Party computers. Never mind the Wikileaks release of Clinton campaign emails that U.S. intelligence says come from Russia's secret services. And never mind a relentlessly partisan Russian state media campaign that has promoted one candidate over another both at home and abroad. In a year when Russia has assumed a central role in American elections, the Kremlin spokesman dismissed interest in any possible Russian subterfuge as "absurd." "[The Americans] have enough problems without us," said Peskov. Welcome to the next phase of the Kremlin's take on America's elections: Whoever the victor, the outcome will show how broken and corrupt American democracy has become. And the Kremlin is preparing. In the run-up to election day, Russian state television has been warning of "dead souls" rising from the grave to vote (for Clinton); "carousel voting" in the inner cities (for Clinton); decrepit election infrastructure prone to manipulation (by Clinton); and that the will of American voters (for Trump) will be subverted by U.S. electoral college delegates (for Clinton). Dmitry Kiselev, anchor of the weekly Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week), whose nationally televised program has pushed conspiracies surrounding the American vote for months, predicted nothing short of a stolen election (by Clinton). "After these elections, the U.S. may find itself addressing itself with the same phrase that it awards others: that the U.S. elections were not transparent, were conducted without real competition, and included mass falsifications and government abuse. They cannot, Kiselev concluded, be considered free or democratic. The message, says Vladimir Frolov, a foreign policy analyst and columnist with The Moscow Times, is clear. "The intent is to discredit the system," he told VOA. "So-called American democracy stinks. It's a circus and nothing to envy." Kremlin favorite? Even to casual Russia observers, the Kremlin's passive preference for a Donald Trump presidency has been apparent, if not understandable, throughout the election season. Trump's positions on key issues of the day from Syria to Ukraine to NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe dovetail with Russia's own declared interests. Clinton campaign charges that Trump is colluding with the Russian authorities notwithstanding, FBI-led investigations into the issue have found no proof. That, said Frolov, makes little difference from the Kremlin's point of view. "What's not to like?" he asked. By contrast, state media has relentlessly embraced far-ranging conspiracies surrounding Hillary Clinton's campaign: Mrs. Clinton is sick and ailing; she is corrupt and facing certain indictment or prison; and she is beholden to nefarious dark forces, including radical terrorist groups. Most importantly, Clinton is portrayed as virulently anti-Russian. Russian President Vladimir Putin's antipathy to the Democratic Party nominee, in particular, is well known. In 2011, he accused Clinton, then U.S. secretary of state, of "giving the signal" to thousands of Russians to protested rigged elections during the country's parliamentary contests. Polls reflect the pileup of negative coverage since. More than one-third of Russians believe a Trump presidency will bring an improvement in relations. By contrast, a majority think U.S.-Russian relations already deeply troubled will suffer more under a future Clinton administration. A separate poll showed nearly half of Russians think a direct war between the U.S. and Russia is likely. Amid the growing Russia controversy this election season, Putin denounced candidates for "playing the Russia card." Moscow, he said, was willing to work with either Trump or Clinton provided the new White House occupant meets Russian interests half way. But Konstantin von Eggart, a long-time analyst and host of the independent TV Rain channel's coverage of the U.S. elections, says he finds the Kremlin's overt tilt towards Trump "bizarre." "I think Russia's policy is a big blunder," said von Eggart. "Even in the Soviet days, the Politburo wasn't influencing in the U.S. elections because they knew they'd have to work with whoever was the next American president." Yet von Eggart predicts the Kremlin will double down in the event of a Clinton win on November 8. "They'll blow out of proportion any irregularities to say the Trump was denied victory," he said. The hope, he adds, is that Trump will continue to "sow chaos" in the U.S. political system, distracting Washington elites while Moscow defends its own interests. Meanwhile, foreign policy analyst Frolov argues the Kremlin's focus on undermining the current U.S. campaign is merely "a shot across the bow" ahead of Russia's own presidential elections, which are scheduled for 2018. Putin, in and out of power since 1999, has yet to declare his candidacy. But even then, Frolov suggests a future memo to Washington regarding the election day 2018 has already been drafted. The message: "Who are you to judge?" Usually reluctant to vote, Hispanics have turned out in record numbers to vote early this election season leading to speculation that they may affect the outcome of the race in some key states, including perhaps the important state of Texas. Arizona, which had been solidly Republican, is now considered a toss-up state, with the upsurge in Hispanic voters playing a big part. Similarly, states with large Hispanic populations like Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida are in play. Hispanics seem to be responding to rhetoric from Republican candidate Donald Trump on immigration. Trump may have awakened what many call the "sleeping giant" when he described Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers last year. Texas in play? For several years, Democrats have been hoping to capitalize on the large and growing population of Hispanics in Texas to win back the state from Republican domination. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the Lone Star state since 1976, and Republicans have won all statewide offices since 1994. But Texas is a prize worth having. In an electoral system in which the states -- not the nationwide popular vote -- determine the winner of presidential elections, Texas is a big player. It has 38 electoral votes, second only to California. A few polls have shown a narrower-than-expected gap between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Trump. Over the past several presidential elections, the Republican candidate has won by double digits, so polls showing an advantage of only four percentage points raised eyebrows. More recent polls show Trump a few points higher. Hispanics divide Hispanics in Texas favor Democrats, but they are not a solid bloc. Many Catholic Latinos are against abortion as are those in the quickly expanding minority of Evangelical Christian Hispanics. Many prominent Hispanic businessmen identify with Republican policies like regulations and lowering taxes. Some of them can put aside Trumps outlandish attacks on immigrants. Julio, an immigrant, business owner and Trump supporter, told VOA he has not been bothered by Trumps denunciation of criminal immigrants. I am against crime, too, he said, I am against even Hispanics who come and commit crimes. On behalf of Hispanics (immigrants) who come and work and do something good, if they are illegal, I think the government should provide a way for them to become U.S.A. citizens. The Trump backlash Some conservative Hispanics, most notably Houston lawyer Jacob Monty, backed Trump earlier in the year, believing he would bring about real immigration reform. But after Trump returned from visiting Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in August and then gave a hardline speech to followers in Phoenix, Monty and several other people resigned from Trumps National Hispanic Advisory Council. Mariceli, a student at the University of Houston-Downtown, told VOA her family rarely discusses politics, but they are against a certain candidate because his reputation is not very good among Hispanics. A few other Hispanic voters also cited what they regard as hate speech and said, Anybody but Trump. The turnout deficit What has kept Hispanics in Texas and nationally from having more political clout is the large percentage of Hispanics who dont vote. Compared to white and black voters in recent decades, the Pew Research Center reports that Hispanics have been more than 15 percent behind in voter turnout. There has been a more than 20 percent increase in voter registrations by people with Spanish surnames in Texas this year, compared to 2012. But there is no way of telling if those registrants moved from somewhere else, if they are new voters who have reached the voting age of 18, or if they are people who havent voted in the past, but who now feel compelled to participate. Whats more, being registered is one thing and actually voting is another. Texas as a whole has had low voter turnouts compared to other states in national elections. A sign that this year could be different is the record turnout for early voting, in which 46 percent of the states 15.1 million registered voters took part. Officials were bracing for a record turnout Tuesday as well. A leading Malaysian campaign for political and electoral reform is pressing ahead with a major rally this month despite pressure from the government and threats and violence against rally supporters. Maria Chin, chairperson of the Bersih 2.0, a coalition calling for for free and fair elections in Malaysia, says the campaign has included a nationwide convoy launched on October 1 to promote the rally and calls for reform ahead of November 19. But several violent incidents have marred the Bersih convoy with attacks and scuffles on supporters by so-called pro-Malay "red shirts." Violent incidents Maria Chin along with Ambiga Sreenevasan, president of the National Human Rights Society and Mandeep Singh, a staff member of Bersih, all received death threats in October. Later, a car of one of Chins children was splashed with red paint and chicken blood. But Chin, in an interview with VOA, dismissed the threats and called on Malaysian police to maintain law and order. Its not a question of my personal safety, its a question of the safety of the Bersih supporters its not just about me. The police will have to handle the red shirts who may or may not come. We will leave it to the police. As for the rally it will still go on and it will be on the 19th of November, she said. Chin also dismissed a claim by Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Amad Zahid Hamidi, who said Bersih was not permitted to stage the rally as it was not a society registered with the Registrar of Societies. Red shirts opposed to reform movement A key leader of the red shirt movement, Jamal Mohamad Yunos, a state leader with the governing United Malays National Organization (UMNO), was briefly detained after attacks on the convoys. Since then Yunos is reported to have threatened to mobilize 300,000 red shirts to prevent the Bersih rally from going ahead. Several rights groups, under the banner Asia Democracy Network (ADN), released a statement calling on the government to take immediate and effective measures to stop the violent aggression and incitement of violence perpetrated by the red shirts. On Tuesday, red shirt leaders offered to provide security for the rally if it was relocated indoors. Bersih convoy, a coalition of many groups Bersih, founded in 2006, brings together a coalition of 62 non-government organizations (NGOs) calling for reform to Malaysias electoral system. Chin said pressuring the government to make changes remained a major challenge. They know what we are talking about and thats why they are reacting in this violent manner. So definitely they know what we are talking about. Whether it will happen or not to be honest will take some time. Change doesnt happen just because we go in the streets, she said. The Bersih convoy has called for institutional reforms for a "new Malaysia covering elections, governance, a strengthening of parliamentary democracy and empowering the states of Sabah and Sarawak. The pro-Malay red shirt leaders have also attacked reporting by independent online news site Malaysiakini. Rights group Amnesty International said around 100 red shirt supporters rallied outside the papers offices on November 3, chanting slogans and threats to attack the building. Analysts say the clashes and threats against the rally and media outlets have raised fears of violence at the November 19 rally. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Malaysian authorities need to ensure the public safety of those attending the rally. Right of assembly The core of this is the right to peaceful public assembly. And the Bersih people have shown time and time again that this is a peaceful movement that people are exercising their human rights, Robertson said. For the Government to try to say that you cant have the rally because it might be a problem, I think is clearly overkill and clearly an infringement on the human rights of people who have something to say and are demanding to say that publicly, he said. Robertson says the key concerns are of possible violence and force by security personnel, including use of tear gas and water cannons, which they used to disperse a Bersih rally of more than 100,000 in April 2012. Its entirely possible that we will see a major, major problem on November 19, he said. Political tensions in Malaysia have been rising especially since Prime Minister Najib Razak, faced accusations of diverting over $3.5 billion from the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fund. Allegations against prime minister Najib claims he is innocent, saying the funds were dealt with properly and were a genuine donation from Saudi Arabia. But international investigations have followed, including by the United States Department of Justice and authorities in Singapore, of funds being used inappropriately. Other challenges include the recent formation of a new political party, led by former members of UMNO including a former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, who stepped down 2003 after more than two decades in power. Bersih has called for Najib to resign and pave the way for independent investigations over the corruption charges. But analysts say the position of Najib, fresh from an official visit to China with $34 billion in business deals, remains secure, with the new investment expected to underpin Malaysias economy ahead of new elections slated for 2018. The International Organization for Migration says it is working with Libyan authorities to improve conditions and stave off an emerging crisis at the Gharyan Al Hamra detention center, about 90 kilometers south of Tripoli. IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle says his organization is very concerned by the death of a migrant two days ago, the fourth such death in the past three weeks. He says all the men, who most likely came from West Africa, have died from liver failure. Whether that is brought about through malnutrition or something else, I do not know ... this is particularly tragic given that these are migrants trying to make their way to Europe to a better life. They end up in detention and quite often in pretty poor conditions. The humanitarian situation is pretty grim for them. Doyle says the facility holds 1,798 migrants. He says IOM staff was conducting a medical assessment in the facility when it discovered the seriously ill migrant. He says he was subsequently transferred to a hospital where he died November 6. Doyle tells VOA that IOM is working with local and international partners to quickly take care of the immediate needs of detainees in the facility. "We are struggling to bring humanitarian relief to those who are detained. In particular, in helping the detained migrants disinfecting their conditions, fumigating living areas, distributing winter clothing, blankets, bedding and other materials. The conditions are particularly grim and have been for a long time." Doyle says IOM staff identified 300 unaccompanied children who were being detained and have started removing them from the adult population. The International Organization for Migration reports nearly 340,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to Italy this year. This is significantly lower than last year's figure of more than one million arrivals. But IOM reports more than 4,200 migrants have died making the perilous crossing this year, a new high. It expects the number of migrant deaths to climb before the year is out. What happened to the Neanderthals? After splitting from our African ancestors more than half a million years ago, the Neanderthal branch of our family tree thrived in Europe and Central Asia, developing a sophisticated culture. When modern humans moved into the neighborhood 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, the two groups interbred, producing hybrid offspring, with 50 percent of their genome from each side. Subsequent generations would have a different ratio, but the mix would still include a significant amount of Neanderthal DNA. Today, Neanderthal genes are a tiny fraction of the European genome, just a few percent, and only a bit more common in people of East Asian ancestry. Why did natural selection choose to lose the Neanderthal elements? The idea of 'survival of the fittest' suggests that Neanderthals were genetically incompatible with modern humans, so the hybrids did not thrive, but a new study found a different explanation. Geneticists from the University of California, Davis, say a "weak but widespread selection against Neanderthal genes" slowly removed them from our genome. Graham Coop, senior author on the paper published in PLOS Genetics, points out that a much smaller population of Neanderthals was mixing with a large group of modern humans. Genes that are slightly harmful can remain common among a small, inbred group, he explained. Once they mix into a larger genome, they are gradually purged by more beneficial variants. The findings highlight the role population size plays in evolution, and adds to our understanding of our extinct close relative. The adult son of the peshmerga commander nearly collapsed when they told him his 55-year-old father had been killed by a jihadist suicide bomber in the northern Iraq town of Bashiqa. The bomber had emerged from a confounding network of tunnels in the wrecked town early Tuesday and had run at the veteran peshmerga with his arms out in an embrace. The commander's son, who would never know a father's hug again, sat in an SUV and wept. From then on, events moved fast. Much of the day in Bashiqa turned into a riot of gunfire and chase-the-jihadist. For two hours, starting at midday Iraqi time, there was pandemonium in the center of a town once synonymous with olive oil. Kurdish peshmerga were trying to avoid improvised explosive devices and clear remaining jihadists, who kept popping up to attack them. "We have the town under control now," Lt. Col. Omar Abdulrahman told me. "Except for the IEDs and the tunnels," he conceded. "We will have to go house to house and that will take a long time." Earlier, over the radio, I heard peshmerga ordered to try to fill in tunnel entrances to block suicidal jihadists from emerging. But the tunnels are honeycombed under houses. Second day of fighting Tuesday marked a second day of frustration for the peshmerga. On Monday, they'd expected Bashiqa to fall within eight or so hours of an assault being mounted on the town, the last held by the Islamic State terror group in Iraqi Kurdistan. But Monday turned into a long, tough day of vicious fighting that saw peshmerga casualties, including two female Kurdish fighters killed in a mortar blast and two peshmerga killed by snipers firing monstrous homemade guns capable of hurtling a round at a target four kilometers away. During the night, fighting continued. By the early-morning hours, the peshmerga thought they had control of the town. A group of IS fighters who tried to flee west were all shot dead. During the entire assault, the peshmerga managed to catch just three jihadists. Unconfirmed reports suggest IS emirs may have executed 15 militants, several of them wounded, who had tried to surrender Monday. Watch related video report from VOA's Zlatica Hoke: A media group was summoned Tuesday to the ruins of Bashiqa for a press conference with, we were told, a top-ranking Kurdistan Regional Government official. The first sign that not all was calm came with the route we had to take into town approaching from the south down a long, meandering and, in part, desert track, as opposed to established tarmac roads. In the town, amid wreckage and debris and houses mangled into strange wave-like shapes, exhausted peshmerga rested by their Humvees and towering armored personnel carriers that look like something out of a Mad Max movie. Some could be seen worshipping on prayer mats, others ate from plastic foam containers. A peshmerga hauled one of the jihadists' heavy homemade sniper rifles up on to the back of a pickup. Another banged with a stone at the damaged front mechanism of his military bulldozer, which had been caught in a suicide bomber's blast. He pointed to the spray of bullet holes on the left side of his vehicle. Battle ebbs and flows And as we made our way to a group of large houses, gunbattles erupted in two different areas, with bullets ricocheting just a street away. Peshmerga scurried to confront unseen attackers, who they feared might unleash suicide blasts. In a house near where I was standing on a roof terrace, peshmerga chased a jihadist in a tunnel, but he evaded them. Warplanes circled overhead ready to strike, if coordinates could be supplied for a bombing run that wouldn't hit peshmerga or reporters. With the forces intermingled, only two airstrikes could be mounted. For two hours the battle raged, ebbing and flowing, sometimes taking on a rhythm as automatic and small-arms gunfire was exchanged; at other times, swelling into a cacophonous roar with RPG7s and a Dushka heavy machine gun joining in. To the north of the town, a suicide bomb exploded, sending up a dark cloud of smoke. AK-47 bullets whooshed past the roof terrace, forcing me and my fixer to crouch under a wall. Very close by, there was the pop of a handgun being fired in our direction. My driver, Mohammed, a retired peshmerga officer, arrived armed with an assault rifle and stood by. And then it quieted. But as we pulled out of Bashiqa, a warplane roared down, firing off a missile. Yet another huge cloud of smoke was added to the town's skyline. We didn't get the press conference, and the peshmerga may face another night of alarm and close-quarter urban combat before they can call Bashiqa their own. By India Today Web Desk: Rumour mills were abuzz with the speculation that newlyweds Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover were expecting their first child. According to a report on SpotboyE, the couple have been visiting a gynae-obstetrician and had made many rounds of the doctor's clinic over the past month. ALSO READ: Karan Singh Grover's friends upset with Bipasha Basu? advertisement SEE PICS: Karan Singh Grover takes wife Bipasha Basu out on a dinner date ALSO READ: How Bipasha Basu feels about Karan Singh Grover's past marriages Fans of the sexy couple were excited, but Bips was not amused with the rumours doing the rounds. She told MissMalini.com, "I wish people would respectfully leave these major life decisions to us. Absolutely untrue rumors." Recently, Kareena Kapoor Khan became the victim of gossip, as stories began floating around that the actor underwent a sex determination test for her baby. Other rumours suggested that she has already had the baby and that the child would be called Saifeena. Hubby Saif Ali Khan had quashed all speculation with a statement, "To quell all the rumours, I want to let everyone know that we have not yet had our child and we still don't know the sex of the child. We will not be having our child in London and the name of the child will definitely not be called Saifeena." --- ENDS --- The Philippine Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the country's former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, could be buried in a national heroes' cemetery. "There is no law that prohibits the burial," the court's spokesman told reporters. Marcos ruled the Philippines from late 1965 until early 1986. His 20-year presidency was marked by widespread corruption and human rights abuses to silence opponents. He was forced from power in February 1986, when protests following a presidential election marred by widespread fraud forced Marcos and his family into exile in the U.S. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, were accused of funneling billions of dollars of government funds out of the country. Marcos died in 1989 in Hawaii. The government of his successor, Corazon Aquino, initially refused to allow his body to be returned to the Philippines, but in 1993 the family brought the remains to Marcos' hometown, Batac. Current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in August announced plans to inter Marcos at the heroes' cemetery in Manila. The move was opposed by many, including Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo, who asked "How can we allow a hero's burial for a man who has plundered our country and was responsible for the death and disappearance of many Filipinos?" Duterte, whose late father served in the dictator's Cabinet, argued that Marcos deserves to be buried in the cemetery as a former soldier and president. President Rodrigo Duterte has decided to retain the Philippines' security alliance with former colonial power the United States, according to the country's defense minister, but joint military activities will be scaled back, and less combat-focused. Duterte has threatened repeatedly to cut defense pacts and end joint drills involving thousands of soldiers, after lashing out at criticism by the Obama administration for his war on drugs, a centerpiece policy that has killed more than 2,300 people in four months. But Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the security alliance with the United States would not be scrapped, including a 2014 agreement that allows prolonged deployment of American forces in the country. "It will remain," Lorenzana told reporters, referring to the strategic alliance with Washington. "No, it will not be abrogated. But we will reduce the number of activities." However, the navy exercises CARAT, or cooperation afloat readiness and training, and Phiblex, a marine amphibious landing exercise, would be ditched, he said. Both are held annually. Lorenzana said the war games called Balikatan (Shoulder-to-shoulder) involving thousands of American and Filipino soldiers and marines would continue, but would be re-focused to humanitarian, engineering and civic action activities. "We will also retain small unit exercises, like special operations, counter terrorism and anti-narcotics," he said, adding the military would inform its U.S. counterparts about the president's decision at a meeting this month. Duterte's declarations that exercises this year between the two militaries were "the last" because he hated having foreign troops in the country have resonated internationally, and baffled much of the region, as have his overtures to historic rival China. Despite the threats, only one exercise joint patrols inside the Philippines' 12-mile territorial waters has been officially canceled. On Monday Duterte said he had canceled an order for 26,000 assault rifles for the police, after a U.S. senator said he would halt the deal over human rights concerns. The Philippines will cut to six or seven the number of military drills with the U.S. set for next year, from an initial figure of more than a dozen, said a defense ministry spokesman, Arsenio Andolong. "The president hit the reset button and there are new operating parameters when it comes to these agreements," he said. The United States promised to repel external aggression in the Philippines with a mutual defense treaty signed in 1951, a relic of the Cold War. The allies enjoyed special ties until Manila closed U.S. military bases in 1992 upon expiry of an agreement. After a Visiting Forces Agreement struck in 1998, however, the U.S. military returned in 2000 for training and exercises in the Philippines. The relationship was tightened further in 2014, when an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement gave U.S. forces access to military bases and some troop rotation. Duterte has hinted he would abrogate that treaty. Stocks in the United States, Europe and Asia rose after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said it found no reason to prosecute presidential candidate Hillary Clinton when it examined the latest batch of her emails. Investors frightened by the prospect of Republican Donald Trump winning the White House had pushed stock prices down for more than a week after the FBI director previously said the agency was examining newly-discovered emails from Clinton for evidence of wrong-doing. At the close of Monday's trading, key U.S. stock indexes were up strongly, gaining around 2 percent. The advance ended the S&P 500's longest string of daily losses in several decades. Some investors also see Trump's pledge to drastically change the U.S. approach to trade, taxes and regulation as likely to depress the value of the U.S. dollar. One-fifth of the companies in the S&P 500 mentioned "election" as they discussed risks to their business in recent conference calls with investors. The analysis by FactSet showed worries were strongest in the financial, consumer and industrial sectors. Senate races a concern Experts quoted in the financial press said investors see Clinton as a status-quo candidate, while Trump brings uncertainty. In a VOA interview, University of Kansas finance professor George Bittlingmayer said uncertainly makes investors "sit on their hands" and avoid the risks associated with opening a new factory, starting a new product line or expanding overseas. Without companies willing to take risks, economic growth and job creation can slow down. While stock prices made gains when Democrat Clinton's chances of winning the presidency rose, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows a majority of recent campaign contributions from business going to Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate. If the current Republican majority is overturned, a Democrat would head the Senate Banking committee, which the paper says would likely bring closer scrutiny and more regulation to the financial sector. Two Somali pirates have been sentenced to life in prison, and a third has received 33 years because he cooperated with prosecutors in a separate piracy case. The Virginian-Pilot reports that U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson issued the life sentences Monday after a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled last year that he erred when he sentenced the five men convicted in the case to terms ranging from 30 to 42 years. In 2010, pirates attacked a U.S. Navy ship that they mistook for a cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden. Sailors fired back, killing one pirate. The rest were captured. President-elect Donald Trump will have Republican majorities in both houses of Congress when he assumes office in January, boosting chances for enacting major items on his agenda. "The stalemate and deadlock that's gone on with a Democratic president and a Republican Congress probably won't exist next year when Trump is president," said federal budget analyst and political observer Stan Collender. "There's a variety of things from tax reform to major tax cuts to infrastructure spending that will probably get through [Congress] relatively quickly." Republicans are assured at least 51 seats, and possibly as many as 53, in the 100-member Senate, and at least a 41-seat majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives. Just weeks ago, Democrats sounded confident of winning the Senate and thought they had a fighting chance of taking the House. 'Beyond coattails' The forces Trump marshaled to win the presidency saved numerous vulnerable Republican lawmakers as well, according to observers. "It went beyond coattails," said Norman Eisen of the Brookings Institution, referring to a presidential candidate's ability to carry his party's legislative candidates to victory. "The guy [Trump] had a train on a wedding dress. "He bailed the Senate out. The thinking was that Democrats were likely to take control of the Senate. Republicans reversed that. The Trump base that turned out carried the day in the Senate," added Eisen, who served as a special counsel for government reform in the Obama administration. For now, some of Trump's fiercest congressional critics, Democratic and Republican, are sounding a conciliatory note. "We have a responsibility to come together and find common ground," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. "The peaceful transfer of power is the cornerstone of our democracy." "My family and I congratulate President-elect Trump on his decisive victory," Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska said in a statement. Sasse had been among the first Republican lawmakers to disavow Trump earlier this year. "My family and I just prayed that President-elect Trump will be wise and faithful in his new vocation," Sasse tweeted. "We call on all Americans to do as well." House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who reluctantly endorsed Trump and occasionally traded barbs with his party's presidential nominee, said Wednesday, "Donald Trump heard a voice out in this country that no one else heard. He connected in ways with people no one else did. He turned politics on its head, and now Donald Trump will lead a unified Republican government. We will work hand-in-hand on a positive agenda to tackle this county's big challenges." Observers said Trump's relationship with Ryan and other powerful Republican lawmakers going forward was an open question. Things 'could get ugly' "If you heard Trump's speech last night, he reached out to other Republicans as much as Democrats to say, 'I want to work with you,' " said Collender. "But Trump is a pretty vindictive person, and that could get ugly pretty quickly." "The first couple of things we'll see Congress tackle are things on which Trump and congressional Republicans have a pretty clear consensus: tax cuts, an effort to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act, deregulation," said political analyst Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution, a Washington policy research group. But Eisen noted that President Barack Obama enjoyed bigger Democratic legislative majorities for the first two years of his administration, yet struggled mightily to enact major legislation like a stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. He predicted Trump would face similar hurdles. "It's not a huge [Senate Republican] majority," Eisen said. "There has not been 100 percent Republican falling in line behind Trump. There are going to be leadership issues, because the House Republican caucus is fractured. There will be challenges even with one-party rule." But the picture is far from bleak for portions his agenda, particularly on fiscal maters. When it comes to tax cuts, Trump will benefit from Senate rules that allow budgetary items to pass with a simple majority, not the three-fifths supermajority typically required for bills to clear the chamber. Should Republicans maintain unity behind Trump's fiscal plan, Democrats will be hard-pressed to prevent it from becoming law. WATCH: Senate Majority Leader McConnell Discuss Trump, High Court Before the election, some Republican senators had hinted they might take up Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, if Clinton won. Now, the high court vacancy will be filled by a jurist of Trump's choosing. "That will be a very early priority of the new administration and the new Senate," Reynolds said. "The same reasons why we thought that a Democratic president would be able to reshape the court hold for a President Trump. "It's less likely that some of the more liberal justices would choose to retire with Trump in the White House. But several of them are getting on in years, and as we saw in February with the unexpected death of Justice [Antonin] Scalia, we never quite know when a vacancy will appear," she added. "If there is more than just the one vacancy that currently exists on the court, we certainly could see a Trump administration influential in shaping how the Supreme Court looks for years to come." During an election year, the spotlight is on the presidential candidates, their platforms and their campaigns. But months before the election, behind the scenes, the massive job of preparing for the presidential transition begins. Transition of power in the United States is both the working of a sophisticated democracy and a technical feat to ensure there is no gap in governing, following presidential elections. The whole idea of the transition is to maintain that stability, while you change to the policy direction of the winning candidate, says Stephen Wayne, a professor of government at Georgetown University and an expert on the presidency. Complex process Transition takes place in the White House, within the campaigns, but also in the various agencies. For this election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clintons team is led by former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar; Republican rival Donald Trumps is led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Both teams work at a government facility on 1717 Pennsylvania Avenue, very close to the White House, and a budget has been allocated for the process. The day after the election, transition begins in earnest between the winning candidates and the outgoing administrations teams. David Eagles, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service, says his center is helping the candidates teams be ready to govern from day one, should they win. Presidential transitions have always been big and complex and a period of vulnerability for the country, but we feel when managed strategically, it provides one of the greatest opportunities to make government more effective, Eagles says. Transition teams gather information, sift names for cabinet posts and other political positions in the new administration, and coordinate with the incumbent presidents staff. The first transition meeting at the White House took place in August. This meeting of the White House Transition Coordinating Council was focused on the kinds of steps along the way that the federal government and that the representatives of the two candidates will have to take over the course of the next five months as they eventually prepare for one of them to become president of the United States, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest after that initial meeting. Immune from campaign rhetoric No matter how divisive the campaign is and by almost every account, this years campaign has been particularly harsh the transition process has been designed in such a way that the rhetoric of the campaign does not or should not - affect it. The best practice here is that the transition apparatus, the governing apparatus, is completely separate than the campaigning and the willingness to win apparatus, Eagles says. Because, as professor Wayne puts it, Elections divide, but after the elections you have to come together. And the government still operates; people still demand services. They want visas. They want the military to protect them. They want loans if they get them and guaranteed, so you cant say, I am sorry, this is very complex. Eagles says candidates need to understand that governing is different from campaigning, and you have to plan early. If you are not thinking about those things early, youll be one year, two years, into your administration before you even have these people in place, and the American public will not stand for that. And we shouldnt as the public, stand for that, he says. Continuity But it is not only a matter of being ready to carry out your duties. A smooth transition means that the institutional structure of the country is sound. Its very important if you love your country and you love your constitutional system to protect it and not to upset it, and we dont have autocratic government in the United States, and I think we want to prevent that. So helping the new people take over even if you didnt like them, even if you didnt vote for them is very, very important, Wayne says. In his view, the best transition has been from former President George W. Bush, a Republican, to President Barack Obama, a Democrat. In a sign of how continuity transcends political divisions, Earnest says President Obama and his team at the White House benefited tremendously from the effectiveness of that transition. I think it did reflect a commitment to professionalism and democracy that President Obama and his team is determined to live up to," he says. Although some form of transition of power has been carried out for over 200 years, it was only in 1963 during the Kennedy administration that Congress enacted the Transition Act, to provide money for the next transition. With the Kennedy assassination and Lyndon Baines Johnson taking over and subsequently winning the election, the first formal transition did not happen until 1968 when Richard Nixon became president. Droves of U.S. voters are headed to polls across the country Tuesday to elect a new president, the culmination of a long, contentious campaign between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Clinton, a former secretary of state looking to become the first female U.S. president, cast a ballot for herself at a polling place near her suburban New York home. Trump, the blunt-spoken real estate tycoon making his first run for elected office, voted later near his skyscraper home a short distance away in the city, telling poll workers, "Everything's going great." WATCH: Trump tells reporters he's "very excited" before voting Clinton said it was "the most humbling feeling" to vote. "I know how much responsibility goes with this and so many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country, and I will do the best I can if I am fortunate enough to win today. WATCH: Clinton greets supporters, reporters after voting Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accompanied her to the polling place to cast his vote as well, as did Trump's wife Melania at his polling station. 'Amazing process' Trump, in a phone interview with Fox News, described the presidential campaign as an "amazing process," where he encountered the unfulfilled aspirations of many Americans. Trump said he had seen "so many hopes and dreams that didn't happen, that could have been helped with proper leadership." At one of his debates with Clinton, Trump said would "keep you in suspense" about whether he would accept the result of the election unless he wins. Asked after voting what he would do if television networks call the election for Clinton, Trump said, "We'll see what happens." The winner will become the country's 45th president, replacing President Barack Obama, a staunch Clinton supporter, when he leaves office January 20, limited by the U.S. Constitution to two terms in office. In Photos: Americans Head to Polls Voter reaction In Dearborn, Michigan, Saudi-born Clinton supporter Zahraa Alakshi spoke to VOA's Kane Farabaugh after casting her ballot. "That's only my second vote, the first one was for Obama, the first black President, and my second vote is for hopefully the first female President, and I think that's very exciting," she said. In Philadelphia, women's issues and the economy were key for Glenna McDonald who spoke to VOA's Katherine Gypson while waiting in line to vote. VOA's June Soh spoke to voters in Mclean, Virginia, outside Washington, including Ellis Richard Saliva who explained why he voted for Trump. "To save America from people who are putting America down. Obama and Clinton are putting America down," he said. Clinton has narrow lead in polls The two candidates present voters with a vastly different choice. Clinton is the ultimate Washington insider, a fixture in the national capital for the last quarter century, as first lady, a U.S. senator and then the country's top diplomat for four years. Trump has built skyscrapers and casinos and wooed voters with an outsider's message, to upend the business-as-usual life in Washington. Pre-election polls show Clinton with strong support from women, Hispanics and blacks and those with college degrees. Trump's following, the surveys show, to a large extent is coming from white working class men, those without college degrees and rural voters Clinton headed to Election Day with a small, but steady advantage in national pre-election surveys, about a three-percentage edge, and small leads in several polls in key election states that will determine the outcome of the race. U.S. presidential elections are not determined by the national popular vote, but rather by the results in each of the country's 50 states and the national capital, Washington. The most populous states have the biggest influence in the Electoral College, where the winning candidate must amass at least a majority 270 of the 538 electors. WATCH: Electoral College is key Early voting More than 46 million ballots have already been cast in the many states that opened polling places for early voting in the last few weeks, with 80 million to 100 million more votes expected Tuesday. By early Tuesday evening the first vote counts will be disclosed from eastern states in the U.S., even as voting continues in the western part of the country. Trump has alleged, without providing any evidence, that the election is "rigged" against him. His campaign late Monday filed suit in one western state, Nevada, claiming that election officials allowed early voting in the state to extend past closing time. However a judge ruled against the campaign on Tuesday. Long lines In the first hours of Election Day, there were long lines of voters at polling stations throughout the country waiting to cast ballots, but otherwise only sporadic problems with malfunctioning voting machines in one state and technical issues with voter check-in in another. Some female voters wore pantsuits to cast their votes for Clinton, a sartorial nod to her favorite outfits. Many of them were inspired by a Facebook group called Pantsuit Nation that supported the 69-year-old candidate who was the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013, during Obama's first term in the White House. Clinton and the 70-year-old Trump, two of the three oldest candidates for the U.S. presidency, both finished their campaigns in the wee hours of Tuesday. Clinton called the election "the test of our time," while Trump declared that "today is our Independence Day." The events -- Clinton's in North Carolina and Trump's in Michigan -- were still going on when results came in from the first in-person voting on Election Day. Clinton got the most votes in the tiny New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch, just south of the Canadian border, beating Trump, 4 to 2. Results Results from the 50 U.S. states and the city of Washington will not be announced until after polls close in each one. By 8 p.m. Washington time (0100 GMT) polls will be closed in much of the eastern and central parts of the country, a group of states that accounts for more than half of the 538 electoral votes at stake. Clinton struck a tone of unity in her final address in North Carolina, telling supporters she wants to be president for both those who vote for her and those who do not. "Years from today, when your kids and grandkids ask what you did in 2016, when everything was on the line, you'll be able to say you voted for a stronger, fairer, better America," she said. "An America where we build bridges not walls, and where we prove conclusively that, yes love trumps hate." Trump told his Michigan crowd that his win would bring "real change" to the country and allow working class people to "strike back" at what he said were corrupt politicians and special interests that have ruled the country. "So the first thing we should do, let's get rid of Hillary, okay? That would be a very good first step," he said. WATCH: Early a.m. drone video of polling station in Damascus, Maryland Voters across the United States spoke to VOA about the issues that are most important to them, and talked about who they voted for and why. Their opinions and thoughts run the gamut, showing a great deal of passion to accompany their often disparate views. Michigan firsts In Dearborn, Michigan, Saudi-born Zahraa Alakashi said she has a lot of concerns about Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has in the past called for a ban on Muslim immigrants coming into the county. Alakashi is voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton. "That's only my second vote, the first one was for Obama, the first black president, and my second vote is for hopefully the first female president, and I think that's very exciting," she said. WATCH: Voters on ballot issues Virginia polls In McLean, Virginia, outside Washington, Ellis Richard Salvia gave his reasons for supporting Trump. "To save America from people who are putting America down. Obama and Clinton are putting America down. With open borders and all their executive things," he said. "We want America to be the greatest country in the world. When America is in good shape, the globe is in good shape." Big Apple crunch In New York, a voter who self-identified as Jamie said she was glad the bitter election season is coming to an end. "It's been awful, I can't wait for it to be over," she said, while expressing hope the winner will be a woman, in a reference to Clinton. Tony, from Melbourne, Australia, said he came to New York to observe the election, noting he has been an advocate for Trump in Australia for about a year. He said he leads a small group back home Australians for Trump, comprised of more than 1,000 followers that meets regularly. "I come from an immigrant family back home, and I think the way he said it came across wrong, I don't think he hates immigrants because immigration is a good thing," Tony said. "I think with illegal immigration, you could work out something where they could legalize the immigrants and then work on fixing the problem in the future, which I think Trump would be leaning toward with a few of his staff members. That's the way they will go forward, because banning all immigrants is not going to happen." Mexican-American Lucinda Aragon said of Trump, "I think he's a terrible person, I think he is a bad example for children and adults. As the president of the United States, you have to set an example for everybody, so you have to be a good person, you have to think about us all. And I don't think Donald Trump does that. I don't think Hillary is the lesser of two evils, I think she [Hillary Clinton] is a splendid candidate, I think she will do great things, Aragon continued. I think she will bring us all together. And I think Donald Trump has done nothing but try to tear us apart. If any of you have Instagram or Twitter, you know what I'm talking about. I have lost friends, family members over this. I will be very thankful tonight when it is all over and we can resume our normal activities as Americans who love each other and support each other. Texas turnout In Houston, there has been a steady stream of voters at most of the area's voting locations, though most so far have not been experiencing the long lines that were common all through the two-week early voting period. In Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, there was a computer problem at one voting site that delayed operations and resulted in about 100 people waiting in line for an hour before being told to go to another site. Officials say the problem was resolved and that voting is now going smoothly. In Montgomery County, north of Houston, which is considered one of the most conservative in the United States, voting was light at one major polling place. Last week during early voting, lines were moderately long. Trump supporters, as expected, dominated voting there, based on informal queries of voters, whereas the mix between Clinton and Trump was much more mixed in Harris County, which is mostly within the Houston city limits. In past elections, the voting totals in Harris County have been quite close, with the Republican candidate usually in the lead. Philly flavor In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia resident Aurora Davis said women's issues are key to her vote. "Definitely women's issues, someone who will support my interests, be a voice for me: Hillary Clinton. I don't think Donald Trump is supporting women's issues," she said. Polling places in downtown Philadelphia featured long lines at mid-morning, hours after polls opened at 7 a.m. Up and down Broad Street, a main thoroughfare in Philadelphia, voters in a wide range of age groups waited patiently in line. At one polling palace, children from a nearby charter school spent their day off waving signs to passing cars, encouraging people to get out and vote. Poll workers set out boxes upon boxes of donuts for the waiting voters. Many voters were reluctant to say who they would vote for in the presidential race, but some expressed concern about the direction in which the country was headed, along with the divisive rhetoric of this presidential campaign. In the northern African-American neighborhoods of Philadelphia, many voters declined to speak with media. The election judge for Ward 16, Division 1 did address concerns about a voting machine that had been found unlocked Tuesday morning. After being assured the machine would reset to zero, the judge put it to use. The local Philadelphia Republican Party and Mike Roman, the head of election protection for the Trump campaign, have tweeted throughout the day about reports of voter fraud in Philadelphia including reports of electioneering, and election judges entering the voting booth to speak with voters. One Trump poll watcher claimed he left a polling place after being threatened with a belt. Volunteers at Ward 16 in Philadelphia said Trump poll watchers "had come and gone." The Bulawayo City Council has increased its water rationing period from shutting down two days a week to three. The local authority spokesperson, Nesisa Mpofu says the restrictions have been tightened following the burst of a water pipe from the Mtshabezi Dam. The perennial water problem for the city has been further compounded by the El Nino weather pattern. Human Rights lawyer, Tineyi Mukwewa of the rights group, Abammeli Human Rights Lawyers told Studio Seven that the local authority has trampled on the rights of the people of Bulawayo by not giving them advance notice ahead of the closures. This sentiment was echoed by Lizwe Jamela, another human rights lawyer, who adds that the water problems that affect the city are nothing new since they have been there for some time and that need to change. A Magwegwe West resident Caroline Mudzengi told Studio Seven that the local authority has been dilly dallying with information on the closures leading to confusion. United States Secretary Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the American people cast their votes in the U.S. Presidential election on Tuesday (November 8). The candidates and their spouses headed to their local polling stations in New York state and joined the general public to have their say in who they want to run the country for the next four years. Meanwhile, citizens who had already cast their votes gathered at the grave of suffragette Susan B Anthony in Rochester, New York to mark the historic moment. Elsewhere, Bangladeshi Muslim Americans recorded their votes for President at polling stations in the borough of Queens. In Nevada, in front of a banner bearing the word 'Kindness' a voter was getting ready to cast her vote. And in Belhaven, North Carolina, 100-year-old Grace Bell Hardison, who made the headlines when she was mentioned by President Barack Obama after attempts were made to purge from the voter registration list, cast her vote accompanied by her nephew, Greg Satterthwaite. By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) Amid growing demand for organic products, domestic and global companies are expected to clinch business deals to the tune of Rs 100 crore during the three-day international organic trade show here, starting November 10. The international show Biofach India into Organic is being organised by Germanys NuernbergMese India along with Bangalore-based International Competence Centre of Organic Agriculture (ICCOA). advertisement "About Rs 51 crore worth of business was transacted during the last trade show held in Kochi in 2015. This time, we are expected about Rs 100 crore deals," ICCOA Executive Director Manoj Kumar Menon told PTI. More deals are expected as there is higher participation of international buyers as well as domestic players having huge retail presence in India, he said. Emphasising the need to provide a market for farmers to sell organic produce, Menon said: "Organic farming cannot be encouraged unless there is assured market. Adoption and certification is only the first step. Links with businesses to sell organic products at a premium and consistent buying support is essential to keep the farmer motivated." Around 170 exhibitors, 11 state pavilions and 20 international buyers are expected to participate in this years international trade show on organic products. Stating that the market for organic produce in metros is growing fast, NurnbergMesse Managing Director Sonia Prashar said, "This is the reason why the eight edition of the trade show is being held here. The show will create more awareness among consumers about organic produce and provide a platform for retail marketing as also export." In the last few years, more companies are participating in the show to capture wider market in the domestic retail space, which is yet to be tapped fully, she added. Only organic products with a strict certification criteria are allowed in the show to ensure quality of the products on the display. India, which has largest organic farmers in the world, produces organic produce worth Rs 11,000 crore but been able to market only half of it. The country sells Rs 1,000 crore worth produce in the domestic market, while Rs 5,000 crore worth of organic produce in the international market. PTI LUX MKJ --- ENDS --- Droves of U.S. voters are headed to polls across the country Tuesday to elect a new president, the culmination of a long, contentious campaign between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Clinton, a former secretary of state looking to become the first female U.S. president, cast a ballot for herself at a polling place near her suburban New York home. Trump, the blunt-spoken real estate tycoon making his first run for elected office, voted later near his skyscraper home a short distance away in the city, telling poll workers, "Everything's going great." WATCH: Trump tells reporters he's "very excited" before voting Clinton said it was "the most humbling feeling" to vote. "I know how much responsibility goes with this and so many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country, and I will do the best I can if I am fortunate enough to win today. WATCH: Clinton greets supporters, reporters after voting Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, accompanied her to the polling place to cast his vote as well, as did Trump's wife Melania at his polling station. 'Amazing process' Trump, in a phone interview with Fox News, described the presidential campaign as an "amazing process," where he encountered the unfulfilled aspirations of many Americans. Trump said he had seen "so many hopes and dreams that didn't happen, that could have been helped with proper leadership." At one of his debates with Clinton, Trump said would "keep you in suspense" about whether he would accept the result of the election unless he wins. Asked after voting what he would do if television networks call the election for Clinton, Trump said, "We'll see what happens." The winner will become the country's 45th president, replacing President Barack Obama, a staunch Clinton supporter, when he leaves office January 20, limited by the U.S. Constitution to two terms in office. In Photos: Americans Head to Polls Voter reaction In Dearborn, Michigan, Saudi-born Clinton supporter Zahraa Alakshi spoke to VOA's Kane Farabaugh after casting her ballot. "That's only my second vote, the first one was for Obama, the first black President, and my second vote is for hopefully the first female President, and I think that's very exciting," she said. In Philadelphia, women's issues and the economy were key for Glenna McDonald who spoke to VOA's Katherine Gypson while waiting in line to vote. VOA's June Soh spoke to voters in Mclean, Virginia, outside Washington, including Ellis Richard Saliva who explained why he voted for Trump. "To save America from people who are putting America down. Obama and Clinton are putting America down," he said. Clinton has narrow lead in polls The two candidates present voters with a vastly different choice. Clinton is the ultimate Washington insider, a fixture in the national capital for the last quarter century, as first lady, a U.S. senator and then the country's top diplomat for four years. Trump has built skyscrapers and casinos and wooed voters with an outsider's message, to upend the business-as-usual life in Washington. Pre-election polls show Clinton with strong support from women, Hispanics and blacks and those with college degrees. Trump's following, the surveys show, to a large extent is coming from white working class men, those without college degrees and rural voters Clinton headed to Election Day with a small, but steady advantage in national pre-election surveys, about a three-percentage edge, and small leads in several polls in key election states that will determine the outcome of the race. U.S. presidential elections are not determined by the national popular vote, but rather by the results in each of the country's 50 states and the national capital, Washington. The most populous states have the biggest influence in the Electoral College, where the winning candidate must amass at least a majority 270 of the 538 electors. WATCH: Electoral College is key Early voting More than 46 million ballots have already been cast in the many states that opened polling places for early voting in the last few weeks, with 80 million to 100 million more votes expected Tuesday. By early Tuesday evening the first vote counts will be disclosed from eastern states in the U.S., even as voting continues in the western part of the country. Trump has alleged, without providing any evidence, that the election is "rigged" against him. His campaign late Monday filed suit in one western state, Nevada, claiming that election officials allowed early voting in the state to extend past closing time. Long lines In the first hours of Election Day, there were long lines of voters at polling stations throughout the country waiting to cast ballots, but otherwise only sporadic problems with malfunctioning voting machines in one state and technical issues with voter check-in in another. Some female voters wore pantsuits to cast their votes for Clinton, a sartorial nod to her favorite outfits. Many of them were inspired by a Facebook group called Pantsuit Nation that supported the 69-year-old candidate who was the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013, during Obama's first term in the White House. Clinton and the 70-year-old Trump, two of the three oldest candidates for the U.S. presidency, both finished their campaigns in the wee hours of Tuesday. Clinton called the election "the test of our time," while Trump declared that "today is our Independence Day." The events -- Clinton's in North Carolina and Trump's in Michigan -- were still going on when results came in from the first in-person voting on Election Day. Clinton got the most votes in the tiny New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch, just south of the Canadian border, beating Trump, 4 to 2. Results Results from the 50 U.S. states and the city of Washington will not be announced until after polls close in each one. By 8 p.m. Washington time (0100 GMT) polls will be closed in much of the eastern and central parts of the country, a group of states that accounts for more than half of the 538 electoral votes at stake. Clinton struck a tone of unity in her final address in North Carolina, telling supporters she wants to be president for both those who vote for her and those who do not. "Years from today, when your kids and grandkids ask what you did in 2016, when everything was on the line, you'll be able to say you voted for a stronger, fairer, better America," she said. "An America where we build bridges not walls, and where we prove conclusively that, yes love trumps hate." Trump told his Michigan crowd that his win would bring "real change" to the country and allow working class people to "strike back" at what he said were corrupt politicians and special interests that have ruled the country. "So the first thing we should do, let's get rid of Hillary, okay? That would be a very good first step," he said. The city of Richmond recently bought a blighted property in the north business district with tentative plans to demolish the building and resell it. The building was in need of repairs and it also didnt fit the character of the surrounding buildings in the north business district, said Richmond City Manager Jon Moore. There are several options. One of the options that we are probably going to be looking at most closely is demolishing the building and potentially reselling the property, either as a stand-alone parcel or possibly it could be combined with some adjacent parcels. Demolishing the blighted building would allow the property to be combined with the corner properties to the north, if a potential purchaser of the corner assembled the properties for a larger development, Moore explained. The owners of the restaurant Time on Main own two parcels to the north of the property just purchased and both parcels are for sale. Moore said the city paid $30,000 for the property, located at 69360 N. Main St., and closed on it Oct. 31. The Tax Increment Finance Authority approved the purchase at its Oct. 26 meeting. Richmond Mayor Tim Rix said the building, a house located within the business district, had been zoned residential within the business district because its zoning had been grandfathered in. But once the house became unoccupied, its zoning reverted to commercial and the house no longer was compliant with zoning. City officials described the purchase of the building as part of a stepped-up effort to combat blight. Weve stepped up our enforcement this past summer to try and get some of the property owners that havent been maintaining their property to step up and maintain their property and eliminate blight, said Moore. We also, this past winter, were successful in getting a grant to demolish three blighted properties on Park Street. Rix said city officials identified 10 blighted properties on which to take action in a workshop last winter. The city council then modified city ordinance to allow blight and lack of snow removal to be cited as civil infractions. Every day is a new fine, he said. Weve gotten tough but I think weve remained extremely fair, in my estimate, and we have gone out of our way to allow the administration to work with these people and to try to get them to become compliant. Thats all this is about, is compliance. Blight spreads once it takes hold in a community, Rix said, but the opposite is true, and peer pressure to maintain and spruce up once-blighted property can have a positive effect. The goal in Richmond is to clean up a few key properties, which the mayor said he hopes will have a positive impact on surrounding property values. The Richmond Police Department handles blight complaints, with support from administrative staff at Richmond City Hall, Moore noted. Meg LeDuc is a freelance reporter. She can be contacted at leduc.margaret@gmail.com. She can be followed on Twitter at @megleduc5. Moscow called for a special meeting of the Security Council on 28 October 2016, to debate the cooperation between the UNO and the certain regional organisations. Ambassador Vladimir Churkin, who was then presiding the Council, invited the representative of the Commonwealth of Independent States (the Russian Sergey Ivanov, CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (Russian General Nikolai Bordyuzha, CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (Tajik Rashid Alimov, SCO). The three General Secretaries presented the work of their organisations - cooperation between the states of the ex-Soviet Union for the CIS, a military alliance for the CSTO, and a regional cooperation to stabilise central Asia for the SCO. They stressed their contribution to the UNO concerning the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism two subjects which are unanimously approved by the international community, although everyone knows that these plagues are created and controlled by the United States. Although everything started well, and the different ambassadors who are members of the Security Council were congratulatng one another on this breath of fresh air, the meeting took a turn for the worse after the presentations by the ambassadors of Ukraine and the United States. Concerned about preventing these three organisations from troubling the monopoly of NATO and the European Union, they accused Russia of all sorts of crimes, and denounced these organisations as covers intended to mask Russian expansionism. The US ambassador concluded that, in these conditions, it was not possible to envisage any form of cooperation of the UNO with these organisations, including the SCO, in other words, also with China. We find here the position held by various participants during Geneva Conference 2 while everyone is in theory united against terrorism, Washington does not see this problem as being a priority, but puts the demands of its own imperialism first. Except that this time, it has not attacked Syria, but offended both Russia and China. The world is therefore paying for the fog that has surrounded the fight against terrorism since 2001. Let us remember that terrorism is not an enemy in itself, but a method of combat used by enemies. Washington has thus closed the only exit that was open to it. The Obama administration refuses to rcognise the development of Russia, the worlds major conventional military power, and of China, the worlds major economic power. It refuses to let go of the unipolar organisation of the world which was set up after Desert Storm, in 1991, and pursues its wars in the Levant and in Ukraine with the unique aim of cutting the two land supply routes from China to Western Europe. Given that its position is untenable in the short term, and that it does not want a World War, Washington is preparing to separate the world in two. This does not mean a replay of the Cold War, where the world was one, even if it was administered by two powers, but a new structure on one side a unipolar world governed by the United States alone, and on the other a number of independent and refractory states cooperating together around Russia and China, and with the fewest possible number of bridges between these two worlds. This implies the end of world free trade, the organisation of world commerce, and economic globalisation, and thus constitutes a gigantic step backwards. If Washington persists in this direction, it will have to withdraw militarily from Syria and allow peace to return except on the Iraqi border, where it will maintain its interdiction of the Silk Road. Because of the United States this time, an impenetrable barrier will circle the globe and divide Humanity, just as the Berlin Wall separated the population of the ex-capital of Germany, dividing its families for almost half a century. It will therefore become very difficult for the Syrians, who fled to foreign lands to escape the jihadists, to return home and join with their families again. And it will become impossible for a Westerner to spend his holidays in Moscow or buy Chinese computers. The British Minister for Defence, Michael Fallon, has announced that his country is going to reform the Free Syrian Army. This means that his government is going to take over the training programme for the so-called moderate combatants which was launched by President Obama in 2014. The Free Syrian Army was created by France in 2011, and headed by the Libyan chief of al-Qaida, Abdelhakim Belhaj. The operation was presented as an aid to the Syrian deserters led by Colonel Riad el-Asaad. Progressively, the members of the FSA joined al-Qaida. In 2016, the title of the Free Syrian Army was ressuscitated by Turkey, who used it to designate the Turkmen militia. As fot the United States, they spent half a billion dollars for the training of these new rebel combatants. However, the totality of the people they trained have now joined al-Qaida. It is thus very probable that the new British programme hides further support for al-Qaida. Andre Holland. Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photo by Getty Images Minor spoilers for Moonlight follow. Andre Holland doesnt appear until the very end of Moonlight, but when he does hes magnetic. Holland plays the grown-up version of Kevin, the childhood friend and one-time lover of our hero Chiron, and in his brief screen time, he has the tricky task of not only making Chiron fall in love with Kevin, but making the audience do so as well. Hes up to the job: The 36-year-old actor brings a familiarity to the part thats immediate and visceral; its the kind of performance that feels lived-in. Watching him is like finding your favorite sweatshirt, burying your face in it, and discovering it still has that old smell. And really, is there better way to describe your fall crush? Summer crushes come in hot and fast like a Florida thunderstorm, but theres something about the smell of disintegrating leaves and an extra hour of sleep that makes us go a little nuts for an autumn crush. And this fall, theres no better accompaniment for that feeling of drinking warm apple cider spiked with bourbon than crushing on Holland, who, in addition to his role in Moonlight plays the beleaguered Matt Miller in American Horror Story: Roanoke. So lets get to it: Whats Andre Holland, your new fall crush, really like? I dont know why youre crushing on him now. Ive had a poster of him over my bed for years. Youre right! Andre Holland has been doing swoon-worthy work for many years. He was the best part of the short-lived political sitcom 1600 Penn, and he appeared in smaller roles in Selma (as Andrew Young) and 42 (as Wendell Smith). But it wasnt until The Knick that Holland had the opportunity to shine: He plays a talented surgeon, Dr. Algernon Edwards, who chafes under the idiocy of racism in the early 20th century. For his work on that show we named him the best male actor on TV in 2015 Matt Zoller Seitz called his performance masterful, noting how your eye keeps gravitating toward him just to see how he reacts. The moment Kevin looks at Chiron. What makes him so good in Moonlight? Its really in his reactions. Theres a scene in the movie when Kevin looks at Chiron for the first time as an adult, and you can see the surprise mix with desire in his eyes. When I look at Trevante [Rhodes, who plays grown-up Chiron], Andre is looking at Trevante. When Im playing those scenes where theyre supposed to be intimate, Andre is finding something really sexy about Trevante, Holland told RogerEbert.com. I didnt want to hide behind anything. I just wanted to be me. In these scenes, Holland plays someone who exists as both a fantasy the eternal What if guy but also someone whos grounded, tangible, and present. Hes that sexy guy you could imagine a life with. Whew. Im feeling weak. Where did my crush grow up? Holland grew up in the small town of Shades Valley, outside of Birmingham, Alabama. His dad was a salesman and his mother worked at the local steel mill. He has two sisters, one older and one younger. And he says that he would have become a lawyer if he hadnt become an actor. Why havent I seen more of him? Well, it might be because he wont just take any role. If you look at his resume, youll notice a lot of careful choices and a desire to work with talented directors: Spike Lee on Miracle at St. Anna, Ava DuVernay on Selma, and Steven Soderbergh on The Knick. Holland has also done a lot of theater, and has a long-standing relationship with Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the original source material for Moonlight, starring in the playwrights acclaimed trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays. I have specific tastes about what I do and dont want to do, and being on a cop show, or being on a procedural drama thats not really a part of my plan, Holland told Esquire. Opportunities to me are things that come along that are actually in line with what Im looking to do, not just what the business thinks I should be doing. That is really thoughtful! Right? So its no surprise that he brings the same kind of consideration into the political realm too. He has spoken beautifully about the importance of Moonlight centering the black queer experience. Hes also been active with black political struggles, protesting the death of Eric Garner with some of his Selma cast mates before the New York premiere of the film, and speaking at MLKNOW, where he delivered one of Malcolm Xs speeches, Police Brutality and the Mainstream Media. Talented and woke: Just how I like my crushes! Is he single? Our internet sleuthing has yielded no results, although he did say that he definitely does not use Tinder, so you wont have any luck there. So whats my crush up to right now? Besides Moonlight and AHS, Holland has also been cast in Ava DuVernays star-studded A Wrinkle in Time as Principal Jenkins. And if you live close to New York, you can soon see him in the Broadway production of August Wilsons Jitney, which opens January 19, 2017. Okay, now remind me, whats it like when he smiles? Like opening a gate of angels and puppies. Hooray, an episode that isnt about Margaret and Peter! Scientia Potentia Est really drills down on Elizabeth the woman, giving us a different view of the person weve followed for six hours. If youre going to make up a bit of history to give us a fuller picture of Elizabeth, inventing a story where she hires herself a tutor to address the giant gaps in her education is a pretty good choice. For the record, Elizabeths education was probably not quite as empty as The Crown suggests biographies suggest that she wouldve known a lot more history than she seems to in this episode, and she was trained to follow daily politics and the news. She may have even heard the phrase military-industrial complex at some point. The larger suggestion, though, is likely accurate and totally fascinating. Elizabeth did not receive anything like a traditional education in her childhood, and indeed, one of the few really trained educators she knew was the vice provost of Eton. He did focus on constitutional law, to the exclusion of things like math and science. (He also actually kept a pet raven in his study.) So yes, Elizabeth wouldve been remarkably useless in a discussion of Russias nuclear program, and she wouldve had very little to say in a conversation outside of her limited experiences. Her decision to hire a tutor is a remarkable dual gesture of valuing herself and frankly assessing her own limitations. (The episode title, which translates to knowledge is power, is also clearly on Elizabeths side.) I like this episode for a number of reasons. It successfully weaves together several thematically related conflicts in different realms of Elizabeths life. On the foreign front, shes aware of the Cold War, and tries to anticipate Englands new role on the world stage. Within the government, shes dealing with an insurrection of elderly men, trying to hide their ailments and prevent her from fulfilling her constitutional duty. In her official monarchal household, shes managing the transition from an old private secretary to a new one, while feeling out what her powers actually are when it comes to questions of protocol and hierarchy. And within her own life and family, shes identifying the gap between the queen her parents prepared her to be, and the queen her world actually requires. In each of these battles, Elizabeth is trying to negotiate between old systems and new ones that dont even fully exist yet. The episode works because each of those conflicts is fully formed in and of itself, but also because Elizabeth, in each case, is grappling with various angles of the same problem. Who is she and what can she actually do? The Crown hasnt gone into this question much (although this episode is the closest its gotten so far), but its important because the exact nature of Elizabeths power is much less well-defined than we might imagine. The constitution of the United Kingdom is not like ours its not a single document that lays out, all at once, the fundamental structure of how the government works. Instead, its a collection of documents that go back centuries, each of them creating a pile of suggestions and precedents and traditions that strongly suggest what a monarchs role should be, but which can technically be disregarded or changed as circumstances arise. This actually requires extensive interpretation. I bring this up not just because Im thrilled to put the college essay I once wrote on the subject to good use, but also because its relevant to the tensions Elizabeth faces here. Shes come into a monarchal paradigm that suggests her best action, at any point, is to do nothing. Its what we saw her grandmother preach right before her death, its what Churchill and the government seem to expect of her, and its really all her father has prepared her to do. On the other hand, she does have extensive training in this one particular thing what constitutional tradition indicates a queen should do at any given time. And unlike the government we Americans are accustomed to, the question of whether she should (or whether she even has to) do anything at all is much more up for debate than you might think. She is truly making it up as she goes. The episodes big moment is, of course, the dual lecture at the end, when Elizabeth finds out Churchill and Eden have been lying and calls them into Buckingham Palace to deliver a royal smackdown. Winstons is far more courteous and compassionate, and its here that Elizabeth pulls out her old notes from Walter Bagehots The English Constitution and, as gently as possible, reminds Churchill to give her the respect that her office and rank deserve, not the one that my age and gender suggest. Its a good lecture, and Churchill no doubt deserves all of Elizabeths kindly tip-toeing around his age and ill health. The more satisfying lecture goes to Lord Salisbury, who says absolutely nothing while Elizabeth rips him to shreds and then icily hits the youre dismissed bell. Honestly, it made me want to pull out some Broad City reaction GIFs. And there are lots of great one-on-one Elizabeth conversations throughout the episode, too. The dynamic between her and Tommy Lascelles is fascinating. Martin Charteris seems lovely, and its a shame that hes clearly barged into something he knows absolutely nothing about. Elizabeths talks with fictional Professor Hogg are also endearing. But the best scene is surely the most poignant one, as Elizabeth goes charging into the Queen Mothers sitting room and demands to know why she was never given an adequate education. There is so much stuff wrapped up in this fight, and its the most human either of these two characters have ever seemed toward each other. All at once, we get exactly what kind of mother the Queen Elizabeth wouldve been, undermining Elizabeths intelligence while simultaneously mocking her for even wanting to be better informed than she is. Shes defensive and dismissive, telling Elizabeth that no one wants a bluestocking for a queen before turning around and advising that Elizabeth not try to force something that doesnt come naturally. Elizabeth is understandably furious, but mostly incapable of standing up to a mother whos taught her to stay quiet for her entire life. Thanks to a throwaway line, this scene is also the most Ive felt for Princess Margaret so far, and it almost makes me entirely rethink my assessment of her. The Queen Mother tells Elizabeth that she got exactly the training a monarch needs, which is far more than your sister ever got. Alas, poor Margaret. Maybe she really had no idea how much of a mess she and Peter would be. I know full well it isnt going to last, but I also loved the role Philip found for himself at the end of the episode. After struggling mightily through a constitutional crisis, a state dinner that gets thrown and thrown in a matter of days, confronting her own ignorance, and a quiet revolution among her staff, Elizabeth finally catches Philip, half-drunk, stumbling around their rooms. And thankfully, rather than throwing a fit about keeping his name or walking next to her or reading her briefing boxes, he tells her she looks powerful and suggests they blow off Michael Adeane and have sex instead. Yes, Philip. Youre at your best when youre a very attractive and insouciant trophy husband. Lets remember that next time you feel an urge to weigh in on matters of state. Rachel Maddow. Photo: Virginia Sherwood/MSNBC Election Day is finally upon us, and tonight, every major network will be focused on calling the results, with each one offering a different sort of viewing experience. If youre unsure which one is right for you, weve put together this guide on what to watch for every type, whether youre a talking-head junkie or youre looking to cut out all the noise. And if you just want to channel hop to something less stressful, weve got you covered. If you like to kick it old school on Election Night NBC and ABC. Lester Holt and George Stephanopoulos will both be making their debuts solo anchoring their respective networks presidential election-night coverage, but its the veterans that will be surrounding them that make the broadcast networks a worthwhile option. The Peacock network will feature regular commentary from TV news icon Tom Brokaw, whos been covering election night since 1968. And over at ABC, former Good Morning America duo Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer will both be back in prime time to offer insights and analysis, as will the even more senior Cokie Roberts. These broadcast dinosaurs bring context the talking heads on cable generally lack. Sadly, CBS News continues its informal ban on former anchor Dan Rather, meaning youll have to hop on Twitter to find his Election Night Ratherisms. If you check FiveThirtyEight.com three times per day and your politics lean left MSNBC. Progressive icon Rachel Maddow will helm the networks evening coverage starting at 6 p.m. ET, flanked by the dry-witted Brian Williams and ever-hyper Chris Matthews. Its worth enduring Matthewss Drunk Uncle ramblings in order to get Maddows always smarter-than-the-average-bear take on the bigger picture, not to mention MSNBCs deep and diverse bench of anchors and analysts (particularly the super-wonky Joy Reid, Christopher Hayes, and Lawrence ODonnell). The other upside of choosing MSNBC: The network will have access to the resources of NBC News, including TVs best campaign correspondents of the 2016 cycle. If youre on the Trump Train Fox News. Duh. (Though fair warning: Megyn Kelly is set to anchor Foxs coverage. Ironic, dont ya think?) If you want the best, most bigly talking heads on cable CNN. No network offers a bigger assortment of partisan surrogates yammering at, and often over, one another. This has sometimes been a bad thing, particularly when CNN has let some of Trumps most ardent supporters dominate on-air conversations. But the networks willingness to pack as many as eight talking heads on one set has also allowed for some truly interesting and smart voices to emerge, many of them female and non-white. The upside of watching CNN tonight also extends to the networks best-in-the-business team of international correspondents, wholl no doubt be well-utilized to gauge the worlds reaction to the results (and any possible panic should Trump score a victory). If you want to monitor a possible Latinx Wave sinking Trump, in the best possible way Univision. Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas anchor for the nations biggest Spanish-language network, with coverage scheduled to include reports from Florida, where the Hispanic vote could be decisive. Another Hispanic-centric network, Fusion, is scheduled to air at least three hours of reaction to the results, starting at 11 p.m. ET. If you want a global perspective BBC World News. Available on various cable and satellite systems, the U.K.-based outlet will have non-stop coverage from studios in Times Square, including reports from BBC correspondents stationed in various swing states. If you want no commercials and an overall minimalist approach PBS and C-Span. The former will sign on at 8 p.m. ET, with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff anchoring alongside the public broadcasters usual assortment of Very Serious Commentators. C-Span will have results and its always entertaining viewer calls. If youre a Joy Behar superfan Lifetime. The network will air a special two-and-a-half hour live edition of ABCs The View at 9 p.m. ET, with Behar and the other women of the daytime chat show serving up results and comedy. If you suffer from Election Night FOMO DirecTVs Election HQ (Channel 347). The AT&T-owned satellite system has squeezed feeds from six different networks CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, BBC World News, Bloomberg, and Comedy Central on to one channel, with election results set to begin scrolling down the side once they start rolling in. You can only listen to audio from one network at a time, for but political junkies who need to monitor multiple networks at once, this is a dream. the inside game What Obama Is Doing Behind the Scenes to Help Democrats Win What Obama Is Doing Behind the Scenes to Help Democrats Win Lawyer Dick DeGuerin, left, talks with Robert Durst in the Airport Branch of the Los Angeles County Superior Court on November 7, 2016. Photo: Pool/Getty Images Eighteen months after his arrest in New Orleans, a tiny, frail Robert Durst was wheeled into a Los Angeles courtroom on Monday for an arraignment for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman. His lawyers officially entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. During the brief appearance, Durst, 73, spoke only once to respond to a judges questions about the trial schedule. He said he waived his right to a speedy trial, and reiterated, I do want to say right here and now. I am not guilty. I did not kill Susan Berman. Durst, who is hard of hearing, missed most of what was said by lawyers in court, according to his lawyer, including when prosecutors announced they will not be seeking the death penalty against the real-estate heir. The courtroom was filled with members of the press and a few spectators, including lawyer Gloria Allred, who said she had a client connected to the Durst case. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark E. Windham scheduled a preliminary hearing for February 15. Durst, who has been in an Indiana federal prison, was transferred to Los Angeles on Friday, but it remains unclear if he will return to Indiana or be housed in a federal prison in California. Dursts fragile health did not come up during the hearing. In previous appearances in New Orleans, lawyers said he has an acute mental-health condition, has survived cancer, and recently had surgery for an undisclosed condition. His lawyer Dick DeGuerin declined to answer questions after the hearing. Dursts legal problems in California began right after America heard what sounded like a confession on HBOs documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst: What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course. The Jinx ended with those chilling words from the wealthy real-estate heir, who was talking to himself in a bathroom while his microphone was still on. Durst, who has been a murder suspect in three different states over several decades, had just been confronted by the producers of the Emmy-winning six-part series about handwriting on two letters linking him to the 2000 murder of his close friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles. Durst seemed to know he was in trouble. While the series was airing, he disappeared from Houston, his home at the time. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found him hiding in a New Orleans hotel, where he had registered under an alias. After finding an illegally owned handgun in his hotel room, Durst, who is a felon, was arrested on March 15, 2015, hours before The Jinx series finale aired. The following day, the Los Angeles District Attorneys Office charged him with one count of first-degree murder in the death of Berman. Durst pleaded guilty to a separate charge in New Orleans for illegal possession of a weapon in February, and was sentenced to seven years and one month in federal prison. He has been awaiting extradition to California. Durst has always maintained his innocence in his friends murder. In an April 2015 letter to a Los Angeles Times reporter, Durst wrote that he was eager to come to defend himself in Los Angeles: You couldnt print what I think about The Jinx. I didnt kill Susan Berman, and I dont know who did. Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas casino owner and gangster, was a writer living in New York when Dursts first wife, Kathleen Durst, disappeared in 1982 and he became a suspect. (Her body was never found.) Berman was close to Durst at time, helping him deal with the press during the investigation. Police believe her closeness to Durst may have put her in danger when they reopened their investigation into Kathleen Dursts death in the fall of 2000. Days before she was killed, Berman told Durst that New York prosecutors wanted to speak to her, he recounted on The Jinx. She was found dead in her Beverly Hills home, shot in the head, two months later. Durst was in California at the time. The most damning evidence uncovered by The Jinx is a letter that Durst admitted he sent to Berman in 1999, in handwriting strikingly similar to that on an anonymous note sent to Beverly Hills police at the time of Bermans killing, telling them that they would find a cadaver at Bermans house. BJP activist Sunil Dongre, who was a close confidante of Aurad MLA Prabhu Chavan, was murdered in Karnataka on Sunday. By India Today Web Desk: BJP activist Sunil Dongre was found murdered in Aurad taluk, a panchayat town in Karnataka's Bidar district on Sunday. Dongre's body, which was found near a government school, bore multiple stab injuries on the intestine, face and other parts of the body. ALSO READ | Mumbai: 61-year-old RTI activist, linked to AAP, shot dead As per the initial reports, Dongre, who was a close confidante of Aurad MLA Prabhu Chavan, wasn't murdered for political reasons. Police is still investigating the case. advertisement BJP worker found dead in mysterious circumstances Few days back, BJP worker, who is also an RSS activist, was found dead in mysterious circumstances near Magali in Mysuru district with his family and the party alleging that it was a murder. The body of Magali Ravi, in his early 30's, with head injuries was found on November 4, police said, suspecting that an accident might have caused his death, as there were scratch marks on the road and his two-wheeler. --- ENDS --- Photo: David Lee/Paramount Pictures With only a few more major Oscar contenders left to screen for press this year, there remains plenty of uncertainty in the acting categories. Will La La Lands Emma Stone or Jackies Natalie Portman emerge triumphant for Best Actress? Is Manchester by the Seas downcast Casey Affleck vulnerable to a flashy performance yet to come? And does anybody have a clue whats happening in Best Supporting Actor, where we dont even have the semblance of a front-runner yet? Best Supporting Actress, though well, you can put that category to bed. Denzel Washingtons Fences screened in Los Angeles this past weekend, and theres no doubt in my mind that Viola Davis will win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for it. Expect her to take a virtually unopposed path to gold in the vein of prior Oscar-winning locks like Boyhoods Patricia Arquette, Precious star MoNique, and Les Miserables Anne Hathaway. For the twice-nominated, 51-year-old Davis, the third time will be the charm. Shes that good as Rose Maxson, the role that won her a Tony in the recent Broadway revival of August Wilsons classic play. For most of the 1950s-set Fences, Rose takes a backseat to her husband, the domineering Troy (played by Washington, who starred opposite Davis on Broadway and also directed the film version). Its a subservient position shes familiar with, though Rose is unafraid to puncture Troys self-mythologizing monologues with the occasional, good-natured jab. Its her job to keep the family at peace, but as the couples teenage son Cory (the terrific Jovan Adepo) agitates for a life larger than the one his dad has permitted, a chain reaction of confrontations begins that culminates in a breathtaking, no-holds-barred fight between husband and wife. Not many actors can stand up to Denzel Washington at his most imposing hell, Ethan Hawke got an Oscar nomination just for shrinking from him in that squad car during Training Day but Davis can roar with the best of them. As a performer, she boasts both a surgical intellect and a formidable reserve of emotion, and to watch her in action in Fences, performing at the peak of her powers, is like watching a skilled professional self-detonate before your eyes. Most actresses cant take things as far as she can, but whats even more remarkable about the lengths to which Davis goes is that you go with her. The audience is so on her side that at the first screening of Fences, the people around me screamed, gasped, and cried as her surrogates. An Oscar for Davis is in the bag, then, though Washington will have a tougher fight for his. Hes enormous in his role, and unafraid to eschew sympathy; he plays Troy like someone who wants to suck up all the energy in the room, leaving his loved ones gasping for breath and dependent on his mercy. It will be one of Washingtons most iconic roles, and he plays it very differently than the rest of the Best Actor field, which is full of introverted performers ducking their heads. Still, there will be viewers who tire of Troy and they may favor Afflecks modest Manchester loner just as a relief: After all, Washington has more lines of dialogue in his first 10 minutes of screen time than Affleck, Lovings Joel Edgerton, or La La Lands Ryan Gosling have in their entire movies. With that said, I suspect Fences remains well-positioned to pick up the rare two actor Oscars in February, and after becoming the first and only black actor to win a second Oscar, Washington will likely extend his achievement by one. Fences below-the-line chances will be hemmed in by how stagy the adaptation remains: Washington rarely sets the action anywhere but the Maxsons house and backyard, and there are few opportunities for cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen or costume designer Sharen Davis to go big with their work. (Im not sure we even hear the score by Marcelo Zarvos until nearly 45 minutes into the film, so determined is Washington to keep scenes as unadorned as they were on stage.) Still, the film will be a major contender in top categories, and one or two other acting nominations are possible. Mykelti Williamson as Troys brain-damaged brother is the showiest Best Supporting Actor candidate, but I favored Adepo, who anchors the film late in its run. Whether Washington will break into the Best Director category remains to be seen. This branch favors a strong visual take that Fences simply does not provide, and Washingtons work could be devalued simply because hell be perceived as having pilfered from Kenny Leon, who directed the Broadway production that Washington and Davis starred in. (Indeed, Washington rehired nearly the entire cast of the play for his film.) It was smart, then, for Washington to invite Leon onstage with him at the films Los Angeles screening. Leon and the other actors were effusive when it came to Washingtons talent as a director, and Paramount would be wise to delineate the decisions he made in his adaptation. A Best Picture nomination is a certainty, though, and the strong Fences ensemble will resonate with actors, who make up the Academys biggest branch. The Best Picture race still favors La La Land at the moment, but Fences has the sturdy stuff to last the whole season. By India Today Web Desk: A woman in Florida claims that she has been breastfeeding for the past eight years. The bigger news is that she hasn't been breastfeeding just her children, but others' children too. Yes, she recognises herself as something called a wet nurse-a woman employed to breastfeed another woman's child. When 26-year-old Lee Moffitt gave birth to her first, Rose, in 2008, she had troubles breastfeeding properly. According to a report in Daily Mail, she had cracked nipples and had trouble breastfeeding Rose. But when things became smooth, Lee thought she'd leave it up to Rose, when she wanted to stop breastfeeding. advertisement "Rose started weaning off the breast at around the age of four, but it was a slow process until she stopped completely," she told Daily Mail. Rose reportedly stopped breastfeeding after she turned 6. "That's the age when children don't latch on anymore, because their adult teeth have started to grow. Therefore, I've always viewed it as the natural cut off age," said Lee. By the time Rose turned 6, Lee was already pregnant with her second daughter, Amaryllis. And she was working as a nanny when that happened. It was then that Lee found out that the mother she had been babysitting for had troubles breastfeeding her child. "The baby's mum couldn't pump enough milk out to last the whole day while she was working," Lee recalled. "We became friends and spoke about how wet nursing is a normal thing in some other countries." "She said to me, 'if you want to nurse my daughter, go for it'. It was great, because it made putting her to sleep so much easier," she continued. Lee now advertises herself as a wet nurse on a moms' groups on Facebook. She has helped around 12 mothers so far. "It's amazing for me to think, 'this woman that I met two hours ago is fine with me breastfeeding her kid,'" Lee said. "I have had a couple of people check if I'm on medication first, but if I was I wouldn't offer to nurse anyone's children." "They see I'm feeding my own baby, so I guess they trust me, she added. Over the past eight years, Lee has not breastfed only for one month. And Lee has been giving all sorts of reaction from strangers, on social media and otherwise. People think she's "disgusting" for wanting to breastfeed someone else's children. Lee's reaction to their comments is just this: "I've had perverts saying inappropriate things. The problem is some people see breastfeeding as sexual. But I get more supportive comments than negative ones," she told Daily Mail. --- ENDS --- The bodies of the two Kannada actors Uday and Anil, who drowned during the shooting of the film Masthigudi, are still missing, say reports. By India Today Web Desk: A helicopter stunt went horribly wrong during the shoot of the Kannada film Mastigudi yesterday, and resulted in the drowning of two people. According to reports, bodies of the Kannada actors Raghav Uday and Anil, who plunged into the lake, haven't been found yet. ALSO READ: Helicopter stunt goes horribly wrong during Kannada film shoot, 2 actors dead advertisement ALSO READ: 'We will jump. If anything goes wrong, it's in God's hands' Duniya Vijay, Uday and Anil jumped into the Thippagondanahalli Reservoir, 35km west of Bengaluru, from a helicopter as part of a stunt sequence for the film. But soon enough, the climax took a tragic turn. While Vijay swam ashore, the bodies of the other two are yet to be found. Uday and Anil were supposedly playing negative roles in the film. Reacting to the shocking video of the stunt, Kannada superstar Shiva Rajkumar said, "We are ashamed at what happened." Vijay was the last of the three to jump from the helicopter. While he made it to safety, his co-actors weren't as fortunate. In 2014, Uday was awarded the Best Villain for his role in the Kannada film Jayammana Maga. "I will go for this shot with all faith in God," Vijay told reporters before Monday's stunt scene. Apparently, he was aware of his limited swimming skills. Anil and Uday, the actors who were drowned, reportedly did not even have basic training in swimming. Police have lodged a criminal case against Masthigudi makers. The Superintendent of Police of Ramanagara, Karnataka, reportedly said that a suo moto case is being filed against the film team. Masthigudi, which is supposedly based on the life of actor Duniya Vijay, saw the actor joining hands with Nagashekar. The script of the film is said to be inspired from Duniya Vijay's attitude towards life. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: --- ENDS --- The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet will perform with the Waco Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m Thursday at Waco Hall, 624 Speight Ave. The quartet will perform Joaquin Rodrigos Concierto Andaluz for Four Guitars. Ticket prices range from $20 to $50. For tickets, visit www.wacosymphony.com or call 754-0851. Will preparation clinic for veterans Baylor Law School will host its annual Veterans Day Wills Clinic to provide free aid to veterans and their spouses on Friday in Baylors Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center, 1114 S. University Parks Drive. Appointments are required by 5 p.m. Wednesday. To make an appointment, call 710-4244 or email Veterans_Clinic@baylor.edu. Veterans will need to provide the names, addresses and phone numbers of beneficiaries and people who they want to serve in a primary or alternate decision-making capacity for financial, medical, and caregiving decisions. Library story times The Waco-McLennan County Library will have a Native American Celebration story-time program, for ages 3 to 6, at these locations: 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the East Waco Library, 901 Elm Ave. 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the West Waco Library, 5301 Bosque Blvd. 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Central Library, 1717 Austin Ave. 10:30 a.m. Friday at the South Waco Library, 2737 S. 18th St. For more information, call 750-5942 or visit www.wacolibrary.org. Womens social club Newcomers and Neighbors of Waco, a womens social club, will hold its monthly luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Nov. 16 at Ridgewood Country Club, 7301 Fish Pond Road. Carol Cain, director of the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) Museum in Sweetwater, will present a historical view about these important women of World War II. Cost is $ 20, which includes lunch. Reservations are required by 5 p.m. Friday. Submit items for Briefly in printed or typed form to Briefly, P.O. Box 2588, Waco 76702-2588; fax to 757-0302; or email to goingson@wacotrib.com at least one week before an event. The local party faithful wrapped up their get-out-and-vote efforts Monday ahead of a nail-biter of a presidential election Tuesday. Local Republicans tried to smooth out the intraparty turmoil over their candidate, Donald Trump, and show a unified front against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Locally, we are behind Donald Trump completely, county GOP Chairman Jon Ker said. I was a Ted Cruz supporter and was disappointed he did not become our candidate, but our candidate is Trump. Im very pleased with the way the party here has gotten behind him. Ker was confident Trump would win by a wide margin in McLennan County and had a good chance of winning nationally, noting that polls showing him behind have a margin of error. Meanwhile, McLennan County Democrats were confident of Clintons chances nationwide and also saw an opportunity for a close election in Texas, where she is an underdog. Texas is not a red state, Democratic county Chairwoman Mary Duty said. Texas is a state where Democrats dont vote. In early voting and in preparation for Tuesdays election, local Democrats have focused on outreach and transportation for low-income and minority voters, especially Hispanics, who have long been underrepresented in voter turnout. Weve got a lot of brand-new, first-time voters, so were showing them things like, Heres what a voting machine looks like, she said. Its mostly in the Hispanic community. Theyre terribly excited about their first vote. In the 2012 presidential election, only 39 percent of eligible Texas Hispanics voted, compared with 61 percent of eligible whites. But Duty said Hispanics are outraged over Trumps rhetoric about Mexican immigrants and motivated to vote. David Garcia, a son of Mexican immigrants and a Democratic volunteer, said he and a couple of friends registered about 400 Hispanics to vote, mostly by hanging out at a local flea market. Since then, he has driven first-time Hispanic voters to the polls and talked to other Hispanics who were ready to get involved politically. Some of them have been here (as permanent residents) for years, but when they started hearing that kind of hatred and rhetoric, they jumped on it and became citizens as quickly as they could, Garcia said. A lot of them are excited to vote and think its their duty to show were not rapists and drug dealers. Were a hardworking community. I honestly think theyre going to turn out. Based on early voting, both parties are expecting strong turnout this year. Of 136,036 registered county voters, 41 percent have already cast their vote, compared to 33 percent in the 2012 presidential election. Voter registration is also up by 7,350 compared to the last presidential election. At GOP headquarters at Westview Village shopping center, party officials said they have spent months mobilizing voters through phone banks and direct mail. They estimated that they have distributed more than 2,000 Trump-Pence signs. The enthusiasm level has been addicting, McLennan County Republican Party vice chairwoman Barbara White said. We were overwhelmed with the interest at the fair. We had so many people coming up to our booth that we thought we were going to run out. They were begging us for signs. It was interesting to see young people genuinely concerned about the election, she said. There were three young men from Bosqueville High School there, and they said: What are we going to do if Trump doesnt win? Hillarys going to destroy this country. She added that for those Republicans who opposed Trump in the primary, theres a consensus that any of the candidates the Republican Party put forward would be better than Hillary Clinton. Ker, the party chair, said he doubts the video revealed in October of Trump bragging of groping women would have a major impact on voters decisions. Nobody died as a result of him making any kind of comment, he said. Its not excusable. Its a terrible thing, but nobody died, and there have been four deaths in Benghazi as a result of Hillary Clinton. At Baylor University, party volunteers have found high interest in the election, though not always enthusiasm for the candidates. Some people dont feel that either candidate properly represents them, said Sara Grove, co-chairwoman of Baylor College Republicans. Ive heard some friends say theyre voting for a third-party candidate. But she said Trumps anti-establishment campaign has spoken to many voters and may help turnout. I hope Trump wins and it goes his way, but I think it will be a closer election than a lot of people are predicting, she said. Baylor Democrats president Micah Furlong said Baylor students tend to be more conservative, but Trump doesnt necessarily reflect their values. Ive been grateful to see a lot of people in this community who are frankly disgusted by Donald Trump and say he does not represent our Christian values, he said. A lot of people more conservative than myself refuse to vote for him. Still, he acknowledged that Clinton is not popular on campus either. Furlong said he would guess that about 45 percent of Baylor students would vote for Trump, but another 30 percent might vote for independent candidates such as Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin. Contested races locally District 17 United States Representative (more) Bill Flores, R William Matta, D Clark Patterson, L District 22 State Senator (more) Brian Birdwell, R Michael Collins, D District 56 State Representative (more) Charles Doc Anderson, R Clif Deuvall, L McLennan County Commissioner Precinct No. 3 (more) Will Jones, R David Reichert, L City races City of Moody City Council (more) Vote for none, one or two: T.D. Red Watkins Charleen Dowell Tina Herod Eaton John Carpenter City of Robinson Local Option Election (more) Vote for or against: The legal sale of mixed beverages in restaurants by food and beverage certificate holders only. City of West City Council (more) Vote for none, one, two or three: Brian X. Muska Cheryl Marak Stevie Vanek Jack Barber City of West Special Election (more) Vote for or against: Shall the city council of the city of West be authorized to reduce the additional sales tax for property tax relief within the city at the rate of 1/8 of 1 percent to adopt the Type B economic development sales and use tax within the city at the rate of 1/8 of 1 percent, to undertake projects authorized by chapters 501 to 505 of the Texas Local Government Code, as amended, including but not limited to: land, buildings, equipment, facilities, expenditures, targeted infrastructure, and improvements to promote new or expanded business development; expenditures required or suitable for infrastructure necessary to promote or develop new or expanded business enterprises; land, buildings, equipment, facilities, and improvements required or suitable for use for professional and amateur sports, including childrens sports, athletic entertainment, tourist, convention, and public park purposes and events; and the maintenance and operations expenses for any of the above described projects? City of Riesel City Council (more) Vote for none, one or two: Phyllis Koester Deanna L. Mulsow Ray Wornat Jeff Tanner City of Riesel proposition (more) Vote for or against: The adoption of a local sales and use tax in the city of Riesel at the rate of of 1 percent to provide revenue for maintenance and repair of municipal streets. School board races Axtell ISD (more) Vote for none, one, two or three: Joe Scooter Bays James Caldwell Ricky L. Stecher Brian Frankum Moody ISD (more) Vote for none, one, two or three: Leann Sanchez Carol Haas Justin L. Foster Jeff Dean Riesel ISD (more) Vote for none, one or two: Ben Saage Ruth Anne Schroeder Adam Benton Mike Searight Chris Dieterich Kooper Sjolander Leigh Ann Holloway Robinson ISD Place 3 (more) Vote for none or one: Barry Gann Danielle M. Williams 2:38 p.m. At Cesar Chavez Middle School, Roberta Garza, 30, cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has more experience, she said in Spanish. Donald Trump gets very mad and says things that dont make any sense. A naturalized citizen with a Mexican-born mother and American father, Garza was offended by Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric and hoped Clinton would help undocumented immigrants who are already here get legal status. Not all of them are bad, she said. People come here because their economy is not good and they cant get a job. Theyre not stealing jobs from Americans. 2:15 p.m. Fatima Rodriguez entered the voting booth at Cesar Chavez Middle School with her 6-day-old infant in arms and spun the dial for Hillary Clinton. Rodriguez, 26, a secretary, said she was offended by what she called Trumps racist comments on immigration. He has so much anger, she said. What he said pushed me more toward Hillary. She herself is a born citizen, but some family members are undocumented immigrants, and she believes Clinton will provide them a path to legalization. 1:30 p.m. Kaylyn Miller, 25, was at the Bellmead Community Center with her 1-year-old son, Parker. I voted for Trump, because I am pro-life and I didnt like it that Hillary supports abortion. 1:16 p.m. Erica Boswell, 30, said voting on election day was painless with no wait time and several voting stations inside the Bellmead Community Center. I voted for Hillary, because she has a better temperament, shes been in there and been in that environment before, Boswell said. As president, you cant be one-side, neither here nor there, or you cant be influenced by another persons agenda. 12:57 p.m. I voted for the only candidate that I could vote for and not have to go home and take a shower, Hillary Clinton. They have trump-ed up everything they could and none of it has really stuck, Bill Hackathorn, 63, said while voting at the Bellmead Civic Center around noon. I am not voting for Donald Trump. There is just something about him that didnt agree with me. Some of the things that he is saying and some of the things hes been doing, he is not ready to be president, said Brenda Wilson at the Waco Multi-purpose Community Center. I voted for Hillary because of Bill. What she doesnt know, hell know. Donald Trump, the way he put down women and other things, I just had to (vote for Clinton). Wilson was helped at the polls by her younger sister, Alveda Smith. Both said they voted straight-ticket Democratic Party, taking only about five minutes. 12:09 p.m. Jack Morris, voting at the Waco Multi-purpose Community Center, said, It was so important to come vote so everyone can have an input of where we are trying to go in America. I voted for Clinton because I voted for Bill Clinton for president. I dont know much about Trump for his politics. I think its the best move to put Bill back in the office in some form or fashion. 11:52 a.m. Clara Willis, 27, a life insurance worker, turned back after seeing a long line at First Assembly. I only get an hour for lunch, she said. Ill have to come back. Willis said her vote is solidly for Hillary Clinton. Its crazy, seeing them on TV, and the comments that Trump made. He has to realize everyones watching, from children on up. 11:48 a.m. Zack Beck, 38, an online educator, cast his ballot at First Assembly R all the way. Ultimately the Republican Party is the foundation of what I want, a Godly foundation for our country. Still, he said hes not losing sleep over a possibly Hillary Clinton presidency. I think the way our country is set up, there are plenty of different offices for people to move forward. 11:35 a.m. Baylor history professor Barry Hankins, voting at First Assembly of God, said he would have considered a Republican such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. But not Donald Trump, whose campaign rhetoric appalled him. I voted for Hillary Clinton, he said. I would have preferred someone other than Clinton at the head of the Democratic Party, too. But to say shes not optimal is not to say theyre equal. Trump is outside the bounds of civic endeavors. 10:57 a.m. At the First Assembly voting center, Grace McGlauflin, 50, a lab tech, said she thought the lines moved quickly. It was less than 30 minutes, she said. McLaughlin said she was comfortable voting straight-ticket for Republicans, including Trump for president. In the beginning there was (some question), but I had to go with my heartfelt conviction. Im pro-life and pro-gun. ... I dont agree with all his policies. I thought some of his comments were a little unprofessional. However, I had to discount that and vote my personal beliefs. 10:50 a.m. At the First Assembly of God voting center, Jessica Rebber carried her toddler son, Dusty. Rebber, 32, a nurse, said she was worried about the election. Im nervous about the direction our country is going, she said. That its going to be a lot worse off that it already is. ... Im voting for Donald Trump. Hes very pro-American. He feels this is a great country. He wants to turn it around for the people and bring everyone together. 10:35 a.m. At the First Assembly of God voting center, there were about 50 people in line as of 10:30 a.m. 10:00 a.m. Mark Clyne, 18, was at the Waco Convention Center to vote for the first time. His decision? Straight-ticket Republican, including Donald Trump for president. He wouldnt have been my first choice, he said. I didnt get to vote in the primary because I wasnt old enough yet. I would have picked Ted Cruz. Clyne said he also saw his vote as opposition to Clinton. He said he not only disagrees with her policies but doesnt consider her particularly qualified. 9:39 a.m. Erin Hayes, 21, a Baylor student and legal intern, said she was excited to vote for the first time for president. Shes an official with an on-campus group called Bears for Gary Johnson, so there was no doubt shed vote for the Libertarian candidate. Im a Libertarian, and Im for less government involvement, she said. I really like his tax plan, to cut a lot of government-funded things that arent that important and could be funded privately. 9:31 a.m. Victoria Jackson, 63, and her daughter, Daniella Hunter, 27, went to the polls together, which is their tradition. They both strongly supported Hillary Clinton and despised Donald Trump. Hes crazy and out of control, said Jackson, a daycare worker. I wouldnt trust his hand near any kind of button at the White House. Hunter said she was proud to vote for the first woman president and said Clinton has the right ideas. Shes an advocate for children and families, and I have children, she said. 9:17 a.m. Theresa West, 54, and her husband, James West, 58, were motivated to vote by concerns about Donald Trump. Were trying to make sure he doesnt get elected, James said. I dont like the way he talks about women. I voted for Hillary Clinton, Teresa said. She knows more about the economy and how to help children than Donald Trump. He would destroy us. 9:08 a.m. At the Waco Convention Center, several voters said they were confused about signage and directions into the voting area of the convention center. Angel Samalot, an aerospace engineer with SpaceX, said he was dissatisfied with both major candidates and decided to write in Democrat Bernie Sanders. I decided to vote my conscience, he said. Its going to make a difference to my conscience. Voting is such an important right. And if Donald Trump wins then Donald Trump wins. Brent Voss, 27, a maintenance worker, said he voted Donald Trump as a vote against Clinton. Ive heard a lot of people say dont vote, because they dont agree with one candidate or the other. I dont either but Im going to vote. Im going to take the chance and vote for someone who isnt necessarily a politician, whos with the people or says hes with the people, and not the politicians who arent getting it done. EDITORS NOTE: Heres a last batch of campaign letters to the editor as Election Day dawns after nearly 600 days of presidential campaigning. If you havent joined 55,424 of our countys 136,036 voters in already voting, todays your final chance. May the best candidate win. Clinton is deplorable Divisive Hillary Clinton meant it in September when she labeled Donald Trump supporters, including defenders of pre-born lives, a basket of deplorables. She called these citizens so far out of the American mainstream that we are beyond redemption. On Nov. 2, she doubled down with her disdain, calling opponents of more than 1 million abortions each year negative, dark and divisive with a dangerous vision. For pro-lifers who are Catholic, the vitriol elevates several notches. A WikiLeaks email chain involving her campaign chairman John Podesta, along with John Halpin and Jennifer Palmieri of the Center for American Progress, claims Catholics like me are backward and follow a bastardized religion. The bigotry continues with mocking Catholics in the media for raising their children Catholic. Clinton refuses to disown Catholiphobia within her inner circle. Clinton makes it clear that she would take on the pro-life movement with all the firepower she can muster. We are one of the last and strongest roadblocks to her progressive transformation of America. If the Trump resurgence falls short, this pro-life Catholic intends to fight back against attacks and subversion from the corrupt and far-flung Clinton confederacy. John Pisciotta, Pro-Life Waco, director Fight GOP extremism Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence has been campaigning with a stump speech asking Republican voters to come home and support their party standard-bearer. Yet Donald Trump has so offended Republicans that the destination he offers is not what these voters call home anymore. Texas conservative Democrats helped make this state a great place to live and work for 100 years by paying their way and supporting progress like highways and public schools, but then many felt the need to join Republicans in the 1980s Reagan Revolution. Yet todays Republicans can no longer claim the Reagan mantle: They have fallen into an anti-government mode and insist no tax is a good tax philosophy, even as this stops them from securing the greater good for their state or nation. Pro-business, fiscally responsible Texans should return to their roots in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. It will strengthen Texas when rural and suburban voters have an actual choice on Election Day instead of being forced to vote for extreme tea-party or alt-right candidates because these are who now win Republican election primaries. So unashamedly let me throw open the door of the Democratic Party to those who remember what bipartisan actually means for people who dont want to be divided into camps of hatred and discrimination, who remember what my World War II veteran father taught me Your rights stop where your neighbors nose begins and who want to be proud that our government can work for the good of all the people. Allan Griffin, Humble A third way on Election Day For those who have waited till Election Day to vote and are still struggling between the lesser of two evils for president, please take a moment and consider the Gary Johnson/Bill Weld Libertarian ticket. Fiscally conservative and socially inclusive, Johnson and Weld were both two-term Republican governors of the highly Democratic states of New Mexico and Massachusetts, respectively. Johnson improved his states roads and schools without raising taxes and left the state in much better fiscal shape than he found it. As a college entrepreneur, he grew his construction business from doing odd jobs himself to one of the largest construction companies in New Mexico, employing over 1,000 people. He did it by doing what he promised, on time and on budget. In short, he is an honest and respectful man who keeps his word, is highly qualified to be president and looks for sensible solutions to the problems at hand. A journalist who was interviewing Johnson a few months ago said he went looking for scandals on him and there absolutely arent any. Johnsons few negatives pale in comparison, both in size and number, to both Clinton and Trump. He has been endorsed by nine newspapers to date, compared to none of consequence for Trump. If you, like me, believe our president must be qualified, honorable and respectable above all else, Gary Johnson is a candidate you can vote for, not against. Lisa Dragoo, Robinson Advice from on high Lets see, where do I begin? I must admit that with all the corruption in our government, especially over the past eight years with the current administration and ad infinitum with the Clintons, it is difficult to assign a starting point. Trust and faith in our system of government are being progressively destroyed by our so-called progressive party. However, accountability and responsibility are shared by both Democrats and Republicans alike. After all, in many cases, if a politician did not lie, he or she would not have anything to say. We as Americans better wake up soon as we are in the process of losing our constitutionally based government and our Judeo-Christian heritage. I realize that, as a Christian, I am one of the deplorable ones according to the Clintons, but I am thankful and grateful to stand in my shoes for my Christian faith. Gods book of psychology is the book of Proverbs and it states in Proverbs 22:8: The one who sows injustice will reap disaster, the rod of his fury will be destroyed. One more warning from Gods word before I sign off is Galatians 6:7-10: Dont be deceived, God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, he will also reap because the one who sows to the flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So, we must not get tired from doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we dont give up. Giving up requires little effort. My prayer is that as a nation we do not give up. There is still time to right the ship but it is getting late. Weldon Kunkel, MD, Woodway Meanwhile, in the trenches I simply would like to make two comments about this election season: First, I have served as a poll watcher for the first time on several different days and will do so today. I would have loved to have seen the various campaigns demonstrate the respect for each voter and for their right to vote that I have seen in two polling places. Second, I just received a letter asking for my vote to ensure the dominance of conservative values. My reply: I did vote, and am serving as a poll watcher, and I voted for the person who I think does represent and respect the conservative values of: Equal opportunity. Fiscal responsibility (which means our paying for what we decide to spend). Respect for the traditions of others, religious freedom (meaning protection of everyones right to his or her own faith). Corporate responsibility to society and their employees. Free enterprise without the coddling and rules-bending for the wealthy and powerful. Taking care of our veterans. Respecting the Second Amendment but also careful licensing and regulation to enhance responsible use. Honesty and truthfulness. The willingness to compromise. Taking care of ones neighbor and community. Respect for American tradition and history. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, I see very few of those values embodied in most Republican candidates and none of them in Donald Trump. The concept of conservative has become so muddied and stained that I hope the Republican Party takes a good long look at how it has strayed from those ideals and comes back to a principled center. We need that perspective in the national debate, but not one that has sold its conservative soul for the sake of political power, defined mostly by what it is against rather than what it is for. The irony is that the Republican Party rails against a sense of entitlement, yet acts as if its own proponents and leaders are entitled to power and privilege and acts shocked when others disagree. Bill Gaventa, Woodway Constitutional threat As an American citizen, I am embarrassed by the recent information that has surfaced regarding Ms. Clintons actions as secretary of state, her obvious connection with the Clinton Foundation while holding that office and her activities as candidate Clinton. Each of these reports seems to be mostly true and poses a real threat to the safety and security of this country. Its obvious she does not share the importance of the nations security as the rest of us do. I for one believe that she has already endangered our country and its ability to perform the basic function designed for it in the Constitution: protecting us from our enemies, whoever they might be. In my opinion, her activities seem to disregard all the basic laws and restrictions placed on each of us as citizens. Regardless of her promises to the voters, she must be subject to the rule of law and held accountable for her actions. The nature and qualities of the other candidates are important, but Hillary Clinton represents the side of politics that most of us should want to get rid of because she has threatened our very fundamental protections of the Constitution and the way we have chosen to govern ourselves. If she has already done this, what will she do if given the opportunity to do what she pleases when elected president. Sidney Pitts, McGregor Learn the Constitution! Regarding Fred Khourys Nov. 4 letter regarding Hillary Clintons threat to the Second Amendment: Apparently he does not know how the U.S. Constitution works. It takes two-thirds of Congress and two-thirds of the states to repeal the Second Amendment, neither of which either party could come up with. They cant even agree how to run their own parties, let alone repeal any constitutional amendment. Steve Williams, Waco Dont trust the Bushes Yes, I am a Republican. I campaigned for George W. Bush in Michigan. Now I am furious at most of the Bushes for their hypocrisy, which was on display during this election. Jeb Bush has already shown he will not keep his word [to endorse the partys nominee]. Now hes going to give a course at Texas A&M University. How can you believe anything the Bushes say? Virginia Young, Woodway Religious Right hypocrisy Under the Obama administration, we have had record job growth, the unemployment rate is down to 4 percent and President Obama ended a senseless war in Iraq. Obamacare is by no means perfect, thanks to Big Insurance, but millions more now have health insurance. So tell me again, Fred Khoury [Letters, Nov. 4], how Obamas policies are destructive? Of course, if your primary source of information is Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, then no wonder you think this way. By the way, Hillary is not perfect, but there has never been enough evidence to convict her of any crime. She is not my first choice, but the alternative is completely unacceptable. I am still not sure how a person who brags about sexually assaulting women, lies 80 percent of the time and is an out-and-out racist could ever be considered for president. But that only shows the hypocrisy and real moral constitution of our Religious Right. Perhaps many in the Religious Right like Trump because he is just like them. John Vickrey, Norman, Oklahoma Lets bump off Paul Ryan? So now Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is in danger of losing his spot in the Republican Party? Let me get this straight: Paul Ryan will not compromise his principles to support a nasty, pompous, irrational man who is clearly unqualified to be president and so he is reprimanded for it? Really? It seems to me that Republicans, in a state of panic, are turning against their own because they are afraid or ashamed to admit the truth that they were unable to keep a lunatic from gaining their partys nomination, so now they just have to go with him. The fact that Paul Ryan values whats best for our country above whats best for his own career shows his level of integrity and patriotism. He should be commended. Paul Ryan is exactly the kind of man (and the only one who comes to mind) who has the insight, intelligence and moral decency to lead America in such a way as to ever make [it] great again! Carolyn Griffin, Lorena Human paradox The greatness of humanity is the paradox that life is both complete and advancing at the same time. Societies remain great and just only so long as the elements of completion and advancement remain connected. Some examples: equality and freedom; justice and liberty; fraternity and liberty; community and duty; majesty and duty. No matter what happens today, the textbooks of revolution are about to be updated. Mike Mallick, Waco By Ananth Krishnan: China and Pakistan have held talks on creating a "joint counter-terrorism command system" between their militaries, as their special forces held exercises, this past week. Underlining the growing closeness between the two "all weather" allies, the 15-day exercises started from October 27, in Pakistan's National Counter Terrorism Centre in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A report in China's state media on Tuesday, however, said the three-stage exercise was "carried out in a border region between the two sides", but did not mention where this region was. Officials could not be reached for clarification. advertisement The only border region between both the countries is Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). China and Pakistan do not share a border, with China's western Xinjiang region bordering PoK, which India sees as its integral territory. This year, China and Pakistan announced for the first time that they were carrying out joint patrols in the PoK-China border area. The current exercise is aimed in part at addressing security concerns surrounding the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) plan that runs through PoK. CLOSENESS BETWEEN MILITARIES The drills included "door-to-door searches, street battles, and besieging terrorists in a simulated raid on terrorist forces," state media said. Chinese special forces officer, Zhang Baoming was quoted as saying that troops from the two sides "held in-depth discussions on a joint counter-terrorism command system." Also read: India, China discuss pressing bilateral issues; skip NSG and Masood Azhar ban Setting up a "joint command" would underline formalising the growing closeness between the two militaries. "The Chinese and Pakistani forces have conducted in-depth and detailed communication regarding the subjects of construction of a counter-terrorism command system and use of tactics," he said. "The exercise helps strengthening the abilities for the two forces to fight terrorists through coordinated command systems, and further cemented the friendship and the counter-terrorism cooperation mechanism between the two forces." THREE-STAGE DRILLS State media said around 120 soldiers from each side participated in the exercise, with Chinese special forces from the PLA's 21st Group Army and Pakistani SSG commandos. The three-stage drills involve "skill and commanding training, tactical training and comprehensive exercise, which cover such subjects as organisation and coordination, tactical rock climbing, close combat skills, firing of multiple weapons, search and removal of explosives, battlefield reconnaissance, maneuver and penetration, search and capture, ambush and anti-ambush, encounter and separation," state media said. Also read: India's imports from China surge 7 per cent in October This will also include one day of "actual-troop live-ammunition comprehensive exercises with a view to improving the soldiers' tactical and real combat capability, enriching the pragmatic training cooperation between the two militaries, and deepening their traditional friendship." --- ENDS --- advertisement By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) Expressing concern over pollution in Delhi-NCR, industry body CII today announced the launch of Clean Air-Better Life initiative which will engage business, civil society and government to take "actionable steps" to improve the situation. The objectives of the initiatives are to develop an integrated approach that brings together policy makers, industry, academia, community and civil society. advertisement It will also build consensus among stakeholders on actions for improving air quality in National Capital Region (NCR). The initiative will deliver voluntary commitments from stakeholders towards reducing air pollution and influence adherence to existing policies and advocacy towards newer policies. In a statement, CII said it is "concerned about the severe air pollution in recent days which affected normal activity such as schools, construction activities, and ban on diesel generator sets" and has presented several recommendations on working towards cleaner air. The industry chamber recommended collecting soil and road dust by vacuum cleaning and use it for filling low-lying areas. Besides, it said the Government should incentivize use of Happy Seeder to convert rice straw into mulch as fertilizer, suggesting that biomass and agri-waste be used in biomass plants or raw material for pulp and paper industry which will incentivise farmers to reduce burning. CII said the high excise duty on ethanol may also be reduced and more tenders floated by oil marketing companies to encourage ethanol blended clean fuel. "Industrial sources of pollution include thermal power plants, foundries, ready-mix concrete plants, and flyash, among others. Commercial establishments and hotels using coal also contribute to air pollution. "These should be encouraged to switch to cleaner fuels. The construction industry should use water sprinkling, curtains and dust suppression units. Diesel generator set emission norms need to be enforced," the chamber said. PTI RSN JM --- ENDS --- By PTI: New York, Nov 7 (PTI) US-based Cognizant today disclosed that it has identified "potentially improper payments" worth USD 5 million being made for company-owned facilities in India and that certain members of its senior management may have been "aware" or "participated" in matters under probe. In September, Cognizant had said it was conducting an internal investigation into possible violations of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act amid allegations that the IT major had made "improper payments to obtain permits and building licences in India". "At present, the investigation has identified a total of approximately USD 5 million in potentially improper payments for certain company-owned facilities in India... we determined that it was appropriate at this time to record an out-of- period correction of USD 3.1 million related to certain of these payments," Cognizant CFO Karen McLoughlin said. advertisement Cognizant CEO Francisco DSouza said during the course of the investigation it was found that "certain members of senior management may have been aware of or participated in the matters under investigation". "Based on the results of the investigation to date, those who may have been involved are no longer with the company or in a senior management position," he added. McLoughlin clarified that these members may have participated in or failed to take action to prevent the making of the said payments by either overriding or failing to enforce the controls established by the company. The IT company faces potential legal action in the US with law firms like Holzer & Holzer LLC and Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP inviting investors to join the class action lawsuit in case they had suffered losses after Cognizants shares tanked in the aftermath of the September disclosure. Stating that the company is fully cooperating with the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, DSouza said Cognizant has "already started and will continue to enhance internal controls and compliance programs." McLoughlin said the company has already taken and continues to take "remediation measures" in the areas of procurement and accounts payable as they relate to real estate transactions in India. PTI SR MBI MR --- ENDS --- ASADA have deferred their decision on the Lachie Whitfield affair as growing frustration has emerged between the AFL and Greater Western Sydney with the national anti-doping body as the investigation now looks set to enter its 19th month. Almost 18 months after the former No.1 draft pick spent three nights at the home of his then-club welfare boss Craig Lambert, ASADA bosses have told the AFL they required further information before making a recommendation regarding the nature of the charges to be laid against the player, Lambert and Graeme Allan. Lachie Whitfield trains with the Greater Western Sydney Giants. Credit:Getty Images Fairfax Media understands that the prevailing view at ASADA was that the two club officials involved appeared more culpable than Whitfield and should receive harsher penalties. Neither Allan nor Lambert alerted GWS bosses regarding the incident which saw Whitfield allegedly arrive back in Sydney in May last year under the influence of illicit drugs. Allan, now at Collingwood, and Lambert, now at Brisbane, allegedly organised housing the player at the Lamberts for fear he may test positive to a performance-enhancing substance. It has emerged that neither was Whitfield's manager Tom Petroro informed of the incident, which only came out after the player's former girlfriend contacted the club. ASADA now holds the full brief of the investigation, which also saw several of Whitfield's friends who he had partied with on the Mornington Peninsula, interviewed by AFL investigators. League chief Gillon McLachlan indicated at the 2017 fixture launch 11 days ago that he expected a recommendation from ASADA by the end of last week. Now the AFL cannot say when that recommendation will be made. The AFL made no secret of its exasperation with the slow-moving nature of the anti-doping authority during the protracted Essendon drugs scandal. ASADA appear to have become increasingly involved in the Whitfield decision-making process over the past months after initially handing the brief back to the AFL at the start of September. However the AFL itself took more than a year to investigate the incident and took 11 months to interview Allan after being alerted by the Giants. All parties have vehemently denied suggestions GWS will be stripped of early picks in the forthcoming 2016 national draft. By PTI: "The DAC considered and approved the guidelines for "The DAC considered and approved the guidelines for suspension or banning of business dealings with entities," a Ministry source said. For the first time, the Ministry accorded AoN for two Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured (IDDM) products - LCA and Tejas. The LCA cost will include those for simulators and auxiliary equipment. While the IAF will receive 10 LCH, the Army will get 5 to begin with. advertisement The mini UAVs approved for the Indian Army will come under the "Buy Indian" category and the force will now issue a tender for the same. The DAC also cleared the way for the issuance of tender for six additional regiments of the Pinaka rockets for Rs 14,633 crore, sources said. Each regiment consists of three batteries of six Pinakas and each Pinaka battery comprises six launcher vehicles, each with 12 rockets, six loader-replenishment vehicles, three replenishment vehicles, two Command Post vehicle (one stand by) with a Fire Control computer, and the radar. PTI SAP ZMN --- ENDS --- New divisions within the Coalition have emerged over the place of Islam in Australia, as controversial Queensland MP George Christensen accused a Victorian colleague of being part of Parliament's "elitist set". Victorian Liberal Russell Broadbent used a speech to Parliament on Monday to express regret for not immediately criticising a speech Mr Christensen made in September, calling it a "diatribe about the rise of Islam" and accusing the Queensland National MP of "cuddling up to Hansonite rhetoric". "The issues swirling in our multicultural nation are for me public and passionate, but for me they are not personal," Mr Broadbent said. "The truth is I didn't act as I should have because I am not Muslim, Chinese, Afghan or Greek looking. Not Italian, Sri Lankan or Sudanese. Not Aboriginal." The President of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, has backed a proposal to change section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Currently engaged in a public war of words with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Professor Triggs has said the Human Rights Commission a regular target of the Coalition's conservative free speech advocates is open to any suggestions made by a parliamentary inquiry into the controversial section. The government confirmed on Tuesday that Parliament's human rights committee would examine freedom of speech, including possible legislation amending 18C and changes to the commission's complaints-handling process. As it stands, the law makes it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" on the basis of race. Professor Triggs said removing offend and insult and inserting "vilify" would be a strengthening of the laws. Why have just one plebiscite when we could have three? The government's national vote on same-sex marriage may have been rejected by the Senate late on Monday, but a group of crossbench senators believe the door could be opened to a series of plebiscites on hot button social issues. Senate crossbenchers Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hanson want three plebiscite questions to be put to Australian voters at the next federal election, on same-sex marriage, Indigenous recognition in the constitution and voluntary euthanasia. Senator Lambie told ABC radio she held talks with the One Nation leader, NSW senator Brian Burston and Ms Hanson's controversial staffer James Ashby over dinner on Monday night, ahead of a bill being introduced to the Senate in coming months. Time to call an end to proceedings for me, Alex and Andrew. What happened? Labor will oppose the Coalition's legislation that would ban people processed offshore from ever coming to Australia ; will oppose the legislation that would ; there was a very fiery question time as a result with the Coalition going after Labor's record on immigration ; as a result with the going after ; there will be a parliamentary inquiry into the Racial Discrimination Act ; ; Liberal MP Russell Broadbent has hit back at colleague George Christensen's comments about Islam; and has hit back at colleague comments about Islam; and the government wants its superannuation changes passed by the end of the year. Gee - #auspol, where the fun never stops. My thanks to Alex and Andrew for their super work and to you for reading and commenting. You can follow me on Facebook. The fellas and I will be back soon. Hope to see you then. When should we give an ex romantic partner a second chance? When we desperately miss them? When we truly love them? When they commit to changing? Or because they threaten to kill themselves if you don't take them back? Women have the right to reject romantic partners. Credit:Stocksy Last week, 28-year-old doctor Angela Jay was stalked, then brutally attacked, by the man she had been involved with briefly and then rejected. Her attacker, Paul Lambert, was later killed by police. Thankfully, she survived. Dr Jay had dated Lambert for a few weeks before deciding to end the relationship. Court documents revealed she decided to give it another go when Lambert became upset, began crying and sending constant phone calls and text messages. Barker is the third historic boys' school to make the full transition in the last decade and it's a move that other educational institutions would do well to emulate. Last week, it was reported that Barker College will become fully co-ed in 2022, after over a century of predominantly single-sex education (they've been partially co-ed since 1975). Barker principal Phillip Heath called it a "future-minded" decision, saying, "The world is not going to be defined by gender anymore." In year 10 and year 11, many of my classmates transferred to Oakhill and Barker, nearby boys' schools that welcomed female students in the final years of schooling. I felt a mixture of sadness and jealousy as I watched them leave for an environment that seemed much more like the real world. When I switched from a co-ed primary school to a single-sex school, relatives joked that I wouldn't be distracted by boys anymore. This isn't an uncommon argument for the pros of single-sex schooling, but its heteronormative implication erases the existence of LGBT youth in schools: who's to say that a female student won't be distracted by the girls in her class? If anything, the absence of male students made me and many of my heterosexual peers even more distracted by any men we came across. Had we socialised with boys on a day-to-day basis, they certainly wouldn't have seemed like such alien creatures and transitioning from single-sex schooling to university would not have been such a rude awakening for many of us. The pro-single-sex crowd often claims that girls perform better in typically "male" subjects, such as maths and science, when educated without boys but a recent study has drawn inconclusive evidence regarding the advantages of single-sex education, and suggests no significant difference in the way boys and girls learn. "We don't have sex-segregated workplaces so why would we have sex-segregated schools?" psychology Diane Halpern said in the study's media release. "After graduation, virtually everyone will work for and with females and males students need to learn mutual respect and the social skills of interacting. They need to learn how to interact co-operatively and competitively and these are important things that are learnt in school." Pennsylvania: It used to be a truism of American politics that Hispanic voters, though growing in number, did not turn out to vote. The hard right former Arizona governor Jan Brewer boasted exactly that last month in the face of suggestions that Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations might cost Republicans the election. "They don't get out and vote. They don't vote," Brewer, a staunch supporter of race-based police round-ups told The Boston Globe. But early voting data suggests that Donald Trump, who launched his campaign calling Mexicans rapists, has awoken a sleeping electoral giant, one that might already have cost him the election. By some estimates more Hispanics had voted in Florida by the weekend than voted in the entire 2012 election. Without the state of Florida, where an aggregate of polls find the two candidates in a statistical tie, few analysts can see how Trump can win at all. Raleigh: "It's do or die at this point," says Sarah Miller. Miller is a 27-year-old Democrat with a full time job in higher education, who went from volunteering for the Clinton campaign two evenings a week in September, to six days a week as the race intensified, and in these final days before the presidential election, is here at the party headquarters everyday, working the phones and knocking on doors. She lives in North Carolina, a state so critical to the result of this election that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton made time to visit its capital Raleigh on Monday, in a last ditch effort to tip the scales. Here nothing can be taken for granted, every vote must be fought for. "Bottom line, the reason why I wanted to campaign was, God forbid something goes wrong and Trump wins, I want to be able to say I didn't stand by and not try to do something to prevent this," says Miller. Of course, there's no way to know how the Election Day vote will go. Hillary Clinton at a rally in key state Michigan. Credit:Andrew Harnik If Trump wins in Florida, it won't be because the turnout among non-white voters, especially Hispanic voters, was lower than expected. It will be because he generated huge margins among white voters, including white Democrats who crossed over to vote for him. North Carolina Clinton has led in nearly every live-interview survey of North Carolina over the last month, but the state is not looking like a sure thing for her. The final Upshot/Siena poll found a tied race. Trump's position in North Carolina looks stronger than it did a few weeks ago, at least in part because he's succeeded in consolidating Republican-leaning white voters. Many were undecided or supporting Gary Johnson a month ago, but many have returned to the party. Clinton did not have quite as much room for growth. Black voters and well-educated white Democrats already supported her by a wide margin. At the same time, black turnout was lower than in the 2012 early votes. It's not wholly unexpected, but it's not what Democrats were hoping for. Pennsylvania Early in the year, Pennsylvania seemed like Trump's most straightforward path to the presidency. The state has become somewhat more Republican over the last decade, and it has an above-average number of white-working class Democrats. But Trump hasn't led in a live-interview poll of the state in months . Clinton held a comfortable four-point-plus lead in the polls even after the FBI director James Comey's letter to Congress. Trump has one thing going for him: The early vote there is small, and Team Clinton will have to mobilise her supporters within one day. Michigan One of the bigger surprises of the last few weeks was the emergence of Michigan as one of the most contested states. It was on the back burner for most of the year, but Clinton and Obama each visited there over the final few days of the campaign. The public polls suggest that the state may be somewhat tight, but that Clinton still holds a modest lead. Trump hasn't led a poll of the state this year. There are two ways to think about Clinton's late venture into Michigan. One possibility is that her campaign really thinks it's in great danger there. Another is that there just aren't many ways for her to lose this election, if her team feels roughly as secure in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Ohio Ohio was perhaps the most important state of the 2012 election, yet now it's toward the bottom of this article. Clinton's strength in Colorado and Virginia have made the state largely unnecessary, and she's probably stronger in North Carolina or Florida than in Ohio. But Ohio might still be interesting. Trump has generally led in the polls there, but not always and not always by a lot. The early vote in the state was strong for the Democrats, by the limited available measures - turnout among Democratic primary voters, or in Democratic counties. Clinton made two stops in the state in the final few days of the campaign. Her team clearly thinks she has a chance. It probably won't decide the election, but the state could be a compelling secondary story line if Clinton wraps things up early. Nevada Of all of the states carried by Obama that are listed in this article, Nevada might be the one where Trump has done best in the polls. But it's also a state where the polls have a long track record of underestimating Democratic strength, and the early vote data is at least consistent with the possibility that the polls will miss it again. Democrats won the Nevada early vote by a wide margin, nearly matching the Democratic edge from four years ago, when Obama went on to win by nearly seven points. In general, Clinton is thought to have an edge among voters who aren't registered with a party in most of the swing states. To win, Trump will need to defy that expectation or make serious inroads among Nevada Democrats. Neither seems likely. By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: Even as the residents of Delhi and NCR were left reeling under severe smog conditions the past few days, there seems to be no clear call on the exact cause of the pollution due to politics and blame-games. There is no unanimity among different governments or agencies over the real culprit behind the smog that disrupted the lives of the people. advertisement Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal blamed burning of crop stubbles in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana. Union Environment Minister Anil Dave's views are diametrically opposite to those of Arvind Kejriwal. These opposing claims show how the Centre and AAP-ruled Delhi Government work on cross purposes. READ| Delhi smog: Only 12 pollution control officers for 550 checking centres across Capital Refuting Kejriwal's claims, Dave said stubble burning was just 20 per cent of the problem. Delhi's responsibility was 80 per cent, he said. As expected, Congress vice-president and Akali Dal-BJP Government of Punjab sought to rebut Arvind Kejriwal's take over the issue. Scientists had a different take with their observation closer to that of Kejriwal. Gufran Beig, programme director of Safar (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research), was of the view that straw burning in Punjab and Haryana contributed to 70 per cent of the air pollution in Delhi. ARVIND KEJRIWAL Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal likened the outdoors in Delhi to a gas chamber. According to him, prima facie, the biggest reason seemed to be burning of stubble in agricultural fields in Haryana and Punjab in huge quantities. He also said fireworks during Diwali marginally added to the pollution. The other things inside Delhi did not drastically change. So the smog is mainly due to smoke from farm fires, he observed. The main sources of pollution in Delhi, as identified by Kejriwal, are vehicular pollution, road dust and open burning of wastes. He claimed these could not be held responsible for smog. "I saw smoke across Punjab, Haryana during my visits. We need Centre's help. We are hiring an agency in a week or two to study the sources of pollution in Delhi afresh. The Centre needs to intervene," he said. READ | Delhi, the city forever under construction, finally comes to a halt The Delhi CM said in the prevailing circumstances, vehicle restriction measures like odd-even will not succeed in bringing down smog. Arvind Kejriwal was clearly on the defence as his government was blamed for inactivity by rivals BJP and Congress. Kejriwal himself has been blamed for devoting most of his time in poll-bound states of Punjab and Goa rather than focusing on governance in Delhi. advertisement However, as measures to salvage the situation, the Delhi CM announced on November 6 a ban on construction and demolition activity for the next five days and shutting down the city's Badarpur thermal power plant for the next 10 days. Except for emergency services, generator sets have been banned for the next 10 days. Sprinkling of roads began from November 7 and vacuuming from November 10 to contain dust pollution. All Delhi schools have been closed till November 9. READ | For non-smokers, Delhi's toxic air equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes, will lead to cancer in a month ANIL DAVE The Union Environment Minister pegged the share of Delhi government's responsibility for the smog at 80 per cent. He said stubble burning was just 20 per cent of the problem. Burning of petrol, diesel, coal, wood, dry leaves and of garbage at a waste disposal ground led to pollution in Delhi. Burning of crackers can be added to that list as well, Anil Dave said. However, the Environment Minister sought to clarify that he always made an attempt to put an end to blame game. Sensationalism and blame game have become a strategy, he said and added that people get affected by this. "They are having trouble breathing. Deal with that first. I want the states to carry out their responsibilities," he said. advertisement READ | Kejriwal's artificial rain idea to tackle Delhi smog dreamy, impractical: Experts SCIENTISTS Like Arvind Kejriwal, monitoring agency System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), under the Earth Sciences Ministry, also blamed external factors for the smog. SAFAR's project director Gufran Beig said winds are coming from North-North West, the areas where biomass burning is taking place, since November 3. The wind direction is important from the point of view of stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana which falls in the North West region. Wind blowing from that direction brings pollutant-laden smoke to Delhi, he said. READ | A day after Diwali, smog blankets Delhi Beig also said that the proportion of pollutants from crop fires in Delhi's air rose dramatically from almost zero on November 1 to a peak of 70 per cent on November 6. "SAFAR's chemistry transport model gives a clear picture of the share of pollution from external sources. It shows pollution load from crop fires in Punjab and Haryana rose steadily after November 1 due to favourable upper air winds," the scientist said. advertisement Ironically, what Beig said contradicts the Environment Minister's claims. RAHUL GANDHI With an eye on the forthcoming Assembly elections in Punjab early 2017, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi too meddled in the raging controversy. He attacked Arvind Kejriwal over the issue in a bid to defend the Punjab farmers, a prospective vote bank of the Congress. Blaming Punjab/Hry farmers won't solve pollution problem in Delhi.Pl learn from Sheilaji.Rise above blame game Mr Kejriwal &Mr Modi &act now Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 6, 2016 How could Punjab have tolerated Arvind Kejriwal's allegations? Countering the Delhi CM's claims, Punjab Agriculture Minister Tota Singh blamed Delhi for the problem. He said what Arvind Kejriwal had alleged was aimed at tarnishing the image of Punjab and Haryana. The Punjab Government had statistics to prove that the situation in Delhi was its own doing. "Pollution in Delhi affects other states. Crop burning is not a reason at all," he said. At the end of it all, the sufferer remains the common man on the ground. What does he do? Get a mask till it blows over. Also Read: Delhi smog: Only 12 pollution control officers for 550 checking centres across Capital WATCH VIDEO --- ENDS --- Before the results start to flood in, US election day media coverage is dominated by vision of lengthy voting lines, straw polls and the candidates themselves casting their votes. Largely out of view of the cameras, though, is the final frenzied - and for one of them, futile - push to get every last voter out to a polling station. Michael Dukakis with rival Democratic candidate Jesse Jackson in 1988. Credit:AP Back in 1988, I had my first and only exposure to behind-the-scenes campaigning in the US or anywhere else. As a volunteer for the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, I turned up to work on the second Tuesday of November of that year to be handed a telephone book of towns in western Massachusetts. New York: A 46-year-old Queens woman was killed after being pushed in front of a subway train in Times Square on Monday, the New York Police Department said, disrupting traffic at the city's busiest transit hub as trains were diverted and emergency workers converged on the scene. Deputy Chief William Aubry, the commander of Manhattan detectives, said witnesses on both the subway platform and the train itself flagged down police officers and pointed out a suspect. A 30-year-old woman was taken into custody almost immediately. Neither woman was identified by the police. The police were combing through video from the platform and the area to better understand what happened, but the preliminary investigation suggested that the attack was unprovoked. By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 8 (PTI) Onions from Maharashtra will find their way to Pakistan despite a ban by Islamabad on its export from India as the vegetable will travel to the neighbouring nation via Bangladesh through the West Bengal route, a state minister said today. West Bengal market is the biggest exporter of onions, sourced from Maharashtra, to Bangladesh and European nations. Pakistan imports onions from Bangladesh. advertisement Maharashtra Minister of State for Agriculture Sadabhau Khot is on six-day visit to West Bengal and Assam where he will promote the States agri products. Khot started his tour today and is scheduled to meet Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) members in the two States. "As West Bengal is the biggest importer of onions from Maharashtra and exports it to Bangladesh, eastern countries and Europe, farmers from the State will get benefit if we tie-up with new traders there," Khot said here before leaving for the tour. Maharashtra produced 67.67 lakh metric tonnes of onions during 2015-16 season, a rise of more than 20 lakh MT as compared to the previous year, he said. "More than 50 per cent onions exported to West Bengal is from Maharashtra and out of these Nashik contributes 80 per cent." He said due to a bumper production in the State this year, rates of onions have dropped in the local market and hence foreign markets are needed to sell them. Asked whether a ban by Pakistan on import of Indian cotton and onions will affect the domestic market, Khot said, "Pakistan will purchase onions from Bangladesh. Our trade will not be affected even though Pakistan has banned import from India. We have another route through Bangladesh." He said Assam and West Bengal are not producers of onions, but the latter has a big port through which most of the produce reaches other nations. "We will showcase our produce including grapes, pomegranate, mandarin orange, sweet orange, banana, cashew nut, cabbage, capsicum, Alphonso etc to traders and others in Assam and West Bengal," Khot said. PTI MM RSY IKA SRE --- ENDS --- Transit experts from Customs administrations in the East and Southern Africa region discussed the WCO Transit Guidelines at a Workshop held in Lusaka, Zambia, from 31 October to 4 November 2016. The Workshop was run in cooperation with the Zambia Revenue Authority and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Experts from UN-OHRLLS, UNCTAD, UNECE, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, USAID, JICA, IRU, the African Union and the European Union were invited to attend the Workshop. Transit experts from Regional Economic Communities, such as COMESA, EAC, ECOWAS, SADC and UEMOA, also took part. The five-day Workshop focused on discussion of the possible content of the Transit Guidelines, which will offer clear guiding principles and recommended practices for the establishment of effective transit regimes and will incorporate Members existing practices relating to transit operations. During the Workshop, transit experts exchanged views on over 146 standards drafted on different aspects of transit operations, including information exchange, guarantee systems, fees and charges for transit, Customs seals and coordinated border management. Participants visited the One Stop Border Post of Chirundu located at the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. They were able to see how Zambian and Zimbabwean Customs coordinate and cooperate with each other as well as with other relevant border agencies in order to facilitate trade, including transit operations. Participants from Customs administrations, international organizations and development partners acknowledged the necessity and timeliness of the development of the Transit Guidelines by the WCO Secretariat. This new WCO instrument is in consonance with relevant international agreements, such as the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, UN Vienna Programme of Action, Revised Kyoto Convention, TIR Convention, etc., and directly contributes to their implementation at national, regional and international levels. The development partners in attendance manifested their interest in deeper cooperation with the WCO on further practical realization of the Transit Guidelines in developing countries. The development of the Transit Guidelines will be completed next year and this new WCO tool will be launched at the WCO Global Conference on Transit to be held on 10 and 11 July 2017 at WCO headquarters in Brussels. By Hemul Goel: Ekta Kapoor returns with yet another show, though this time her offering is inspired by the 1997 hit, Pardes. On knowing the latter bit, actress Drashti Dhami with her endearing eyes, makes for a fitting comparison in regards to Subhash Ghai's virginal looking film star, Mahima Chaudhry. The show opens on an airport with the heroine, Naina Batra (Drashti) delivering a monologue about the emotions the sight elicits and with that, it starts moving into unreal waters as her overly emotional mother is seen carrying an aarti thaal, with a lit diya and a garland ON the airport. advertisement Also read: Betiyaan aakhir betiyaan hoti hain! Drashti Dhami aka Naina raises a pertinent point in Pardes Mein Hai Mera Dil trailer Thereafter a stereotypically judgmental aunty who seems to be eyeing the family the whole time decides to spend her spare time on the airport by scolding our heroine. Naina on the other hand plays a goody two-shoes and after seeming to have more than enough time in the world to listen to the venom aunty spews, she decides to soften the oldie up by relaying her story. Working as an English professor in a college where she probably teaches some narrow-minded students--who have the gall to call their teacher "despo-aunty types" behind her back, while demanding love advice on her face--Naina takes us through the brief story of her relationship, breakup and patch-up. Towards the end of the pilot, Naina seems to look more at the camera than the aunty, as she subtly shades the oldie for being a stranger who gets so deeply involved in her story, with her judgmental nature intact, after all this while. The eye on the camera, seems like a play on the viewer with Naina constantly reminding the viewer with various examples during the episode to not judge others, especially when one is so unaware about the reality of someone else's life. Also read: Drashti Dhami gets injured while shooting for Pardes Mein Hai Mera Dil Between the voices that seemed dubbed, the echoing dialogues and the cliched mom stuff aside, the one thing the makers got right was the well developed emotional blackmailing abilities and the contradictory attitude that is common to mothers. On one hand they'll pinch pennies and choose discomfort for themselves and at the same time use the other hand to indulge their children without a care. Last seen playing Ritik in Ekta's telly blockbuster Naagin, it's Arjun Bijlani's entry and chemistry with Drashti that is something we totally await, especially taking in the fact that the romance will be set against the scenic locales of Austria. However much the trailers promise to be a visual treat, above all it will be the show's ability to fine tune the balance between a daughter's love life and her duties towards her mother that will hold court. advertisement Till that happens, we want to get a glimpse of the spunky Naina we have been seeing in the show's promos. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Photo: PTI11_8_2016_000127B New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) Launching a drive against public consumption of alcohol, the Excise Department of the Delhi government has arrested 36 persons on the first day with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia warning people of strict action for drinking in the open and pledging to intensify the drive. Sisodia, who also heads the Excise Department, said today that he had written to Delhi High Court Chief Justice G Rohini requesting her to provide 10 mobile magistrates so that challans could be issued on the spot. advertisement The Deputy CM said that the government is committed to completely stop drinking in public as women feel unsafe because of this and it affects business in particular markets and places where such practice is adopted. "Yesterday, we arrested 36 persons for open drinking. They were produced before the magistrates and handed over to police in the night. I appeal to people not to drink in public places. We will intensify drive against such behaviour. "The Delhi government doesnt have any intension to send people to jail, but wont spare them if they are found consuming liquor in public places as common people especially women feel unsafe," Sisodia said at a press conference here. The department has formed 10 special teams of four members each to catch people consuming alcohol in the open. On the first day of the drive, raids were conducted at Karol Bagh, Jamrudhpur, Jankapuri, Jahangirpuri and Nehru Place among others. In North East district, three persons were apprehended while in Central and New Delhi districts, eight people were caught drinking liquor in public places. Ten people were arrested in West Delhi. According to the government, it will strictly enforce the Excise Act under which consuming alcohol at public places attracts a fine of Rs 5,000, which can even go up to Rs 10,000 with a jail term of three months if the offender creates nuisance. Sisodia had last month announced the drive after he, during an inspection of a liquor shop in Mayur Vihar, found that people were drinking alcohol near liquor shops and creating ruckus, thus causing inconvenience to the residents, especially women. PTI BUN SMN --- ENDS --- DU professor Nandini Sundar has been booked on charges of murder of a tribal villager in Chhattisgarh. By PTI: A Delhi University professor has been booked along with Maoists and others on charges of murder of a tribal villager in the insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, police said. "An FIR was lodged against DU professor Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU Professor), Vineet Tiwari (from Delhi's Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate(Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) along with Maoists for the murder of Baghel based on the complaint of his wife on Saturday," Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) SRP Kalluri told PTI. advertisement "This is a vendetta against all researchers, journalists, lawyers and activists who are willing to expose complete lawlessness of police," said Nandini Sundar. "FIR against us is absurd, we haven't been there for months," she added. They were booked under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC at Tongpal police station, the IG said adding, strongest possible action will be taken against those guilty after the investigation". Though the case was registered on Saturday, the matter came to light late on Monday evening. TRIBAL MAN KILLED WITH SHARP WEAPONS Armed Naxals had allegedly killed the villager, Shamnath Baghel, with sharp weapons on late night on Friday (November 4) at his residence in Nama village under Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area. Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading the protest against Naxal activities in their village since April this year. BAGHEL WAS GETTING THREATS FROM MAOISTS "As per the complaint lodged by the victim's wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May this year. Even armed ultras were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday," the IG said. His wife has sought action against Sundar and others accusing them of murdering her husband, Kalluri added. Notably, Baghel and other villagers of the region had earlier given a complaint with Tongpal police in May this year against Sundar, Prasad, Tiwari, Parate and an unidentified woman activist from Sukma for allegedly inciting innocent tribals against the government and seeking their support for Maoists. Villagers of Nama and the neighbouring Kumakoleng village (both under Kumakoleng village panchayat) had started a self-motivated protest against Maoist activities in their villages after forming its own security group named "Tangiya (axe) group" in April this year. "Following the development, according to villagers, Sundar and others went in the village to allegedly threaten them not to oppose the Maoists," the IG said. Sundar had gone to the village with fake name Richa Keshav, he added. A letter was then written to the vice-chancellors of both DU and JNU informing that Bastar police was conducting an inquiry against both the professors following complaint received against them, he added. --- ENDS --- advertisement Your Ultimate Investing Toolkit Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools: Portfolio Monitoring Top Stock Lists Premium Reports Stock Screeners Live News Feed Premium Support Free for your first month. 9 hours ago Its Still Not Too Late To Get Into Energy Stocks If you are wondering if it's too late to get into energy stocks the best answer is no. Energy prices are down from their peak and there is a potential slowdown in demand on the way but, for now, the underlying fundamentals are highly in favor of higher share prices. Read Article After Trump and his supporters questioned how FBI reviewed 650,000 Clinton-related emails so quickly, Edward Snowden explained how old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours. By India Today Web Desk: The release of Hillary Clinton's emails by Wikileaks did lead to an erosion in her poll numbers and so the Democrat candidate's campaign has already slammed the "whopper" of a Wikileaks release which according to them is about to be released. "Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days - it's probably a fake," Clinton's communications director Jennifer Palmieri wrote on Twitter. advertisement For obvious reasons, Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign was using the leak to its advantage and when FBI announced that it had checked all 650,000 emails and found new or incriminating, Trump supporters slammed the law enforcement agency. Also read: Edward Snowden tweets like a boss after Panama leaks The Republican candidate himself told a crowd in Michigan that "you can't review 650,000 new emails in eight days". To add to his support, General Mike Fylnn tweeted that it was "impossible" to check thousands of emails in a short span of time. But it took only 140 characters for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to school the Trump supporters. Also read: Edward Snowden and 6 other Twitterati who own the most retweeted tweets When journalist Jeff Jarvis asked Snowden about the time taken to complete the process of checking 650,000 emails, he answered "minutes-to-hours". He told them that of course FBI could have checked out all Hillary Clinton's emails swiftly as "old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours" as majority of those emails were presumably bunk. "Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours", Snowden tweeted. According to Snowden, all FBI had to do was drop the irrelevant incoming email that Clinton never responded to and check the remaining emails. Also read: US authorised NSA to spy on BJP, says Snowden --- ENDS --- 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. 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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. If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now! Submit By PTI: From Shirish B Pradhan Kathmandu, Nov 8 (PTI) Former Maoist child soldiers, discontent with the party for discarding them unceremoniously during the peace process, have padlocked the office of CPN (Maoist-Centre) of Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda, trapping seven of the leaders inside the building here. The leaders of the party which leads the government have been forced put inside the office since yesterday. advertisement The former minor guerrilla fighters, most of them now in their 20s and struggling to find employment and raise their children, have threatened to continue the padlocking until the ruling party begins implementing the agreements reached with them. They demand proper rehabilitation and compensation. "We lost our childhood fighting for the party. Now our leaders enjoy the power while we are left to struggle for a living," said Lenin Bista, who heads the Discharged Peoples Liberation Army Struggle Committee (DPLASC). At least six of the leaders said they were unable to leave the party office as its main door remained padlocked. The United Nation Mission in Nepal had disqualified 4,008 soldiers of the Peoples Liberation Army of then-rebel CPN (Maoist) saying they were minors, and as late recruits. During the verification that ended in December 2007, it was found that 2,972 guerrillas were minors, while 1,036 were recruited into the Nepal Army under the army integration process in accordance with Comprehensive Peace Accord signed in 2006, when the Maoists joined politics by laying down arms. However, the Maoist leadership delayed their release. The "disqualified" child soldiers spent three years in cantonments in the hope of receiving rehabilitation packages. "We are a young and strong force that has the experience of using weapons. But our strength has not been properly channeled," said Bista, adding they wanted treatment specified by national and international laws related to child soldiers. "My biggest mistake was to quit school to join the PLA. Without proper qualification I have no prospect of a good job," said Manu BK, who was 15 when she joined the Maoist army. She is now 26 and mother of two children aged 7 and 2. Her husband, also a disqualified combatant, left for Qatar two years ago after failing to find work within the country. The Maoist leadership, stating that the party does not have the resource to address their demands, has asked them to wait for the courts verdict. advertisement "The budget for the fiscal year earmarked NRs 200,000 for each of the former child soldiers. Unfortunately, a writ has been filed against the provision," said Pampha Bhusal, the Maoist spokesperson. PTI SBP ABH AKJ ABH --- ENDS --- By WestKyStar Staff & Laura Oswald, Paducah CVB Nov. 07, 2016 | 08:43 PM | PADUCAH, KY The Paducah CVB team received a Gold Award for the Paducah Signature Experiences Promotional Video. The 2015 UNESCO Annual Report and Paducah Signature Experiences Group Travel Profile earned Silver Awards. The Traverse Awards honor talent, creativity and effectiveness of marketing and public relations in the Kentucky travel industry. Each entry is judged by an expert industry panel on its ability to capture attention, relate to the needs of the audience, differentiate the destination from its competition and sell the destination. The Paducah Convention and Visitors Bureau is the official Destination Marketing Organization for Paducah and McCracken County. The CVB exists to create new economic opportunities through destination marketing, management and tourism development. For more information, visit www.Paducah.Travel. The Kentucky Travel Industry Association (KTIA) recognized Paducah Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) destination marketing efforts with three 2016 Traverse Awards at the KTIA Traverse Awards Gala in Lexington, Kentucky on November 2. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 07, 2016 | 09:39 PM | PADUCAH, KY Kentucky's polls have opened statewide, and Election Day is underway.But for more Americans than ever, their choice has already been made. As of Sunday, more than 41 million people had already cast their votes in 37 states that offer early ballots, either by mail or in person.Final totals of early ballots cast could represent more than a third of the vote total in those states. That compares to just 11 percent of early voters in 1996.For those who haven't voted early, today is the deadline to visit your local polling place. First-time voters may be unfamiliar with where their vote can be cast. On the internet search engine Google, the daily "doodle" at the top of the page for Election Day provides the service of locating your personal voting location. Simply go to Google, type in your home address, and it will list the address of your polling place.The Kentucky State Board of Elections also provides a website to locate your polling place, linked below. On the Net: By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 07, 2016 | 07:49 PM | MAYFIELD, KY A Missouri man was arrested Monday after a three county pursuit that started in Mayfield. The Graves County Sheriff's Office said a deputy was traveling North on KY 121 North Monday afternoon when he met a southbound motorcycle traveling 91 mph in a 55 mph zone. Due to traffic conditions, the deputy was not able to stop the motorcycle. Another deputy was able to locate the motorcycle on KY 121 North and when he tried to stop the motorcycle, the operator accelerated in an attempt to flee. A pursuit of the motorcycle ensued traveling from KY 121 North onto US 45 Northbound. The motorcycle then turned onto the Purchase Parkway from US 45. The motorcycle traveled north on the Parkway, where the pursuit reached speeds of up to 150 mph. The operator continued into Marshall County and turned southbound on US 641. The pursuit continued southbound on US 641 into Calloway County, where the operator was able to put some distance between himself and police on the north side of Murray. Some concerned citizens told police they saw the motorcycle pull into the Chesnut Hills Shopping Center in Murray and the operator run inside a store. He was found in a dressing room in the store and was arrested. Police said 21-year-old Jacob M. Dougherty of Crocker, MO was arrested by the Kentucky State Police and lodged in the Calloway County Jail. The Graves County Sheriff's Office charged him with speeding, improper passing, fleeing/evading police, wanton endangerment on a police officer and several counts of 1st degree wanton endangerment. Dougherty will also be charged in Calloway and Marshall counties and by Kentucky State Police. The sheriffs office was assisted by the Mayfield Police Department, Benton Police Department, Marshall County Sheriffs Office, Calloway County Sheriffs Office, Murray Police Department, Murray State University Police Department and Kentucky State Police. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 08, 2016 | 06:30 AM | WESTERN KENTUCKY There are plenty of contested races on the ballot today for western Kentucky voters. In the 1st District House of Representative race, incumbent Republican Steven Rudy is being challenged by Democrat Michael Murphy. In the 2nd District, Democrat Jesse Wright is challenging incumbent Republican Richard Heath. Republican Joni Hogancamp is challenging Democratic incumbent Gerald Watkins in the 3rd District. Republican Lynn Bechler is being challenged by write-in candidate Donald Ellis in the 4th District. In the 5th District, Democrat David Ramey faces Republican Kenny Imes. Democratic incumbent Will Coursey is facing a challenge by Republican Paula Rush Robinson and Libertarian candidate David Watson in the 6th District. Also on the ballot for voters in western Kentucky is the 1st District U.S. Representative's race, where three candidates are vying to replace U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield who announced in September that he would not seek another term in office. Former Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, a Republican, faces Democrat Samuel Gaskins and write-in candidate Terry McIntosh. In the U.S. Senate race, Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul is seeking a second term following his failed presidential campaign last year. He faces a challenge from Lexington Mayor and Democrat Jim Gray, who is hoping to become the state's first openly gay U.S. Senator. There are also contested local races on today's ballot. In Marshall County, seven candidates are vying for six seats on the Benton City Council. Paducah residents will vote for mayor and city commission. There are also city council races in Eddyville and Kuttawa. On the Net: Ballot proposal asks Kentucky voters whether there's a right to an abortion Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. You won't get it till you ask, and ask again, for it. Women in France have decided to stop taking the inequality. So should we. By India Today Web Desk: November 7, 2016, seems like a perfectly inconspicuous day. For women in France, however, it was the day they decided that enough was enough, and walked out of their offices at dot 1653 hours to protest a stark gender pay gap that was staring them in their faces every day. November 7, 1634 hours, was the moment women across France stopped being paid for 2016, thanks to the gender pay gap. advertisement In France, the gap between men and women's average hourly wage was 15.1 per cent in 2010, which, blog Les Glorieuses calculated. This effectively means that a woman in France ends up working 38.2 days more than a man for the same salary. Rebecca Amsellem, founder of Les Glorieuses, told BBC, "To be really honest, I knew there was a huge difference between the pay--but I thought the difference would maybe be 10 working days, not a month-and-a-half." Amsellem was forced to do the math after reading about Iceland, a country that's considered a world leader in gender equality, and has a pay gap of 14 per cent. Also read: Women in Iceland walked out of their offices at 2:38 p.m. Here's why Indian women should follow For the past 11 years, women in Iceland have been walking out of their offices on October 24 at the time they should leave every day, if they were to be paid the same hourly-rate as their male counterparts, reports BBC. The point to be noted here is, the gender pay gap in France is 15 per cent. According to a report published in The Hindu in May this year, the gender pay gap in India stands at 27 per cent. --- ENDS --- Loading... "To the United States, a drone strike seems to have very little risk and very little pain." So said the former US Army general Stanley McChrystal in an interview. "At the receiving end, it feels like war. Americans have got to understand that." This is the essence of drone warfare: death delivered from a distance. It chills because it is so detached. To kill without contact, at such little personal cost, seems godlike and unnatural. Drones makes war seem casual, easy, remote a virtual reality. In changing the nature of war, they raise all manner of issues ethical, political, technological. Director Nicholas Kent's curated collections, short plays spliced with verbatim material, have come at complex subjects from a range of angles. The Great Game, for example, dug deep into Afghanistan's history of conflict. Drones, Baby Drones follows the same formula, but with only two shorts and a single interviewee, it feels a little too like a fly-by. That the two plays overlap on so many points rather disarms them and the complexity of their subject. Intercut with interview material from Clive Stafford-Smith, director of Repreive, the pair examine those involved in the process of drone warfare. This Tuesday, by Ron Hutchinson and Christina Lamb and directed by Kent, pulls together members of the National Security team responsible for making decisions about individual targets each week, while David Greig's The Kid shows us the drone operators responsible for pressing the button marked fire. Greig's is the better of the two. The Kid, directed by Mehmet Ergen, takes us into an all-American living room, where two drone operators and their partners are toasting a successful mission. It is a queasy sight: the home comforts of these suburban 'soldiers,' their raising a glass over a death 10,000 miles away; just co-workers celebrating a good day. Tom McKay's Pete is jockish about the job; Shawna (Anne Adams), his flying partner, is more stoic and sombre, expressionless even. The play picks at the discomfiture of drone warfare well: from its relationship with storytelling, as images that need interpreting, to the flippancy of those firing the missiles. Pete's pre-shot ritual involves reciting The Crazy World of Arthur Brown: 'I am the Lord of Hellfire' Greig tunes into the peculiarities of a world in which people are either pixels or processing units, that can only afford to see children as "collateral." Death has gotten easier, but having kids making a life has gotten harder. It's rather undercut by coming second. This Tuesday pre-empts a lot of the same issues. Following members of the President's advisory team ahead of their weekly meeting, it asks how people can possibly make objective life-or-death decisions? Their messy, human, everyday lives their moods, their mistakes, their misgivings all feed into the room. Maxine (Adams) has come from her daughter's hospital bed, following a late night car crash. Doug (McKay), from a motel room nearby, after a night with his mistress. It hinges on parallels with that crash: a chance event, not predetermined, that comes from a confluence of objects, just as the meeting does people. For all its schlocky, American soap opera-ish tone, and the flatness of Kent's own direction, This Tuesday does lay out the case for drones against the horror they present. They make war more precise, less indiscriminate, albeit with the danger of abuse, error and a slippery slope as they become more accurate and more readily available. Overall, Drones, Baby, Drones could use more of that, especially in its verbatim elements another view to counter Stafford's voice of caution. Drones, Baby Drones runs at the Arcola Theare until 26 November. By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 8 (PTI) A photograph purportedly showing Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis with a "criminal" went viral on social media today, prompting Aam Aadmi Party to launch a scathing attack on the BJP-led state government. According to AAP national spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon, the man seen in the photo with the CM was Akbar Hussain alias Raju Batla, who has a string of cases registered against him. advertisement Raising question about safety and security of citizens, Sharma alleged the state was "unsafe" and the Home department, headed by Fadnavis, as well as police have been "compromised" by the mafia. "Law and order seems to have swept away in Maharashtra completely and the antics of Maharashtra Police have created a sense of fear amongst the citizens. Are they capable of safeguarding our state?," she asked. Earlier, a photograph purportedly showing Fadnavis with an alleged Pune-based gangster Kamlakar Kisan alias Baba Bodke had gone viral. "Raju Batla is a history sheeter who has 23 cases registered against him. The cases vary from smuggling, extortion, attempt to murder and murder. He was arrested in a conspiracy to assassinate BJP Leader L K Advani," Sharma claimed. "In the past few months, there has been a spike in criminal activities. Horrific rapes of children and attacks on police officers themselves have shaken the confidence of citizens. If that was not enough, there is a creeping fear that the current government is cosying up with criminals," she alleged. "A man who should be externed or put behind the bars is found enjoying the company of Chief Minister. This is ridiculous and extremely unacceptable," she claimed. Responding to the allegations, the Chief Ministers Office said, "It is not right to rake up old baseless issues and create doubts in minds of people." As per the CMO, the said photo was taken at a 2015 function. "In 2015, Congress corporator Khairunisa Hussain and her husband Akbar Hussain alias Raju Batla had attended Chief Minister Devendra Fadnaviss function. The CM shook hands and clicked pictures with all who stood in the queue to meet him. "Elected representatives and their families were invited on August 15 at Mumbai University. Government officials, counsel generals of various countries, civic officials attended the programme," it said in a statement. Referring to the controversy over Fadnavis photo with Bodke, the statement said, "One Ujwala Havre had come to meet Fadnavis to invite him for launch of a mobile application on women safety in Pune. Two people had come with her and requested the CM for a photograph before leaving." PTI APM MR NRB NSK SRY SRE --- ENDS --- Abdul Rauf Daud Merchant, an aide of Dawood Ibrahim who is accused of Bollywood musician Gulshan Kumar's murder in 1997, will be handed over to BSF. By Saurabh Vaktania: Abdul Rauf Daud Merchant, an aide of Dawood Ibrahim who is accused of Bollywood musician Gulshan Kumar's murder in 1997, will be handed over to BSF at Indo-Bangla border in a few hours. Merchant had two brothers -- Rashid and Imtiyaz. He stayed with his parents at Tardeo and later shifted to Amrut Nagar in Mumbra. The Merchant family ran a tempo business. They owned several tempos and used to give them out on rent. His father was killed by some tempo drivers in 1993. advertisement During the 1993 communal riots in Mumbai, their Tardeo house was burnt down and therefore they were forced to shift to Mumbra. Later, Merchant purchased three tempos and started his own business. Briefly, he got in touch with Salauddin and Qayyum and committed his first crime of kidnapping a businessman called Chaudhari and extorted Rs 2.5 lakh as ransom. Chaudhari was kidnapped on the orders of Anees, brother of Dawood Ibrahim. Merchant took a suspended armyman into his gang. Also read: Dawood aide accused of Gulshan Kumar murder to be handed over to India After this kidnapping in 1996, Merchant went to Dubai to meet Qayyum, Abu Salem and Anees. Merchant had a meeting with Qayyum, who asked him to kidnap one Shashikant Patel of Khar. This abduction bid, however, could not be successful. MERCHANT WENT TO DUBAI IN 1997 In April 1997, Merchant was again asked to go to Dubai. In exclusive papers (statement of Merchant) accessed by India Today, Merchant says, "After reaching Dubai, Qayyum took me in his car to an 11th floor flat at a hotel in Sharjah. It was Anees' birthday party the next day, which was hoisted in a farm house of Anees, situated along with the Abu Dhabi Road. I went to the party with Qayyum and there were Chhota Shakeel, Sharad, Anees, Anil Parab, Abu Salem, Aftab Butki and on the same night Nawab and Mohammad Ali directly came to the party and the party went on till 4 in the morning." Merchant added, "At about 11 am on May 5, 1997, I reached Qayyum's office. Qayyum told us that he owes Rs 90 lakh from one Gopi of Dharavi, which is the real reason for his being in Dubai. Inside the cabin, there were Nadeem and Abu Salem. Anees arrived in some time and took me inside, where all were present. Qayyum introduced me to Anees. He told Anees, 'Ye Chalega kya'to which Anees replied 'Kaun hai ye'. Qayyum told him 'Jisne Chaudhari ka kidnap kiya tha', to which Anees replied 'Thik Chalega'. advertisement He further said in the statement, "Abu Salem said that Gullu alias Gushan Kumar, who is troubling Nadeem, has to be eliminated and that work is entrusted to me. I asked for a vehicle and firearms, to which Abu Salem told me that everything would be done after he reached Mumbai. After the meeting was over, Qayyum gave me 2500 dirhams and asked me to go for shopping. I did some shopping and later came back to Mumbai." Merchant went on to say, "I agreed to eliminate Gulshan Kumar. I took an oath of Quran and Kaum Patega on the phone itself. A few men from Dubai landed in Mumbai to execute the plan to eliminate Gulshan Kumar." FIREARMS ARRANGED TO KILL GULSHAN KUMAR All the men met and had a detailed discussion about the plan to kill Gulshan Kumar. Firearms, pagers, mobile phone and vehicles were arranged for the execution. Two teams were set up and both were asked to eliminate Gulshan Kumar near a temple at Bharat Nagar locality in Andheri West. Merchant was given a Maruti 800 for this work. For over a month the two teams used to go the temple at Andheri West to do a recee on Gulshan Kumar's movement, time of arrival and who all he met. Merchant used to wait at the hotel whereas his other two associates would wait at a barbar's shop and in the parking space. They came to know that Gulshan Kumar used to come there in a red colour Opel car along with one bodyguard having carbine. They could not dare to kill Gulshan Kumar. advertisement The statement of Merchant, the day the murder was carried out, says, "At 6 am on August 12, 1997, I and Adil got up and drove off to Andheri. We took our position near the temple at Bharat Nagar, Four Bungalow, Andheri West. At about 10 or so when I was standing near the temple, Adil walked up to me and said that Gulshan Kumar had landed without a bodyguard. I rushed towards Kumar with a loaded 9mm pistol. Adil asked me stay away, saying that he would take care of Kumar. Soon Gulshan Kumar came to the temple and performed the puja. When Gulshan was returning with the driver, Adil fired 3 rounds at him. I also fired a few rounds at Gulshan Kumar. Since the crowd was rushing towards Kumar, I fired in the air to scare the public and escaped. Later, I replied to the D gang Anna, saying 'Kaam Ho Gaya'. Qayyum called me, sent me money and asked me to leave Mumbai." advertisement Merchant later escaped to Kolkata and after that to Bangladesh. From Bangladesh, Merchant called Qayyum, who sent him more money. Later Merchant went to Dubai where he was assured by Qayyum that nothing would happen to him as the accused in Gulshan Kumar murder case had been named. TUSSLE BETWEEN ANEES AND QAYYUM Qayyum was at a time one of Dawood's closest aides. Qayyum single-handedly carried out many operations of the gang and is even known as the brain behind the gang. After the Gulshan Kumar murder case, Qayyum and Anees parted ways. Merchant was asked by Qayyum to eliminate one Badgaonkar. From Dubai, Merchant called his punter and Badgaonkar was eliminated in Mahim. In the meantime, Anees warned Merchant to stop working for Qayyum in Mumbai. However, Qayyum gave another work to eliminate Parel, but Merchant's boys stabbed someone else in Parel. Anees arranged a visa for Merchant's brother and mother and called them to Dubai. Merchant's mother told him to stop indulging in such activities. In one such meeting, Merchant decided to work for Qayyum while his long-time friend Anil decided to work for Anees. Qayyum helped get bail for Merchant's brother Imtiyaz. Imtiyaz later with his family went to Bangladesh. SEND PEOPLE FOR TRAINING Merchant said in his statement, "When my brother Imtiyaz was in jail, Firoz Kokani had a mobile inside the jail. I used to frequently talk to Kokani from Dubai and told him my problems. Kokani told this also to Dawood and Chhota Shakeel. They asked me to come to Karachi. In Karachi, I was told to recruit some young boys aged between 17 to 18 for sending them for training in Pakistan and in return, they would look after their family. I agreed to this." He added, "Anees came to know about my visit to Pakistan. Anees created a hue and cry about this to Chhota Shakeel. I told Anees to forgive me and he gave me two lakh rupees. I took my brother and mother to Bangladesh." Merchant returned with his family to India in 1998 and stayed in Mumbra. He later went to the Haji Malang Dargah and stayed there for 15 days. After that, he moved to Bhayandar and stayed there on rent. He purchased three tempos and rented them out. After living there for six months, he noticed a few cops roaming in the area and therefore, he left for Bihar. From there he went to Kolkata, then Bangladesh and later to Dubai. Anees warned that there should be no activities in Mumbai. Qayyum started taking up matters of Kenya. Merchant was sent to Kenya to kidnap one Desai of Mumbai. While he was in Kenya, he came to know about his mother and brother arrested in Lucknow (Devasarif). Merchant begged to Qayyum to help get them released and give him some money. Interestingly, Qayyum refused to help. Qayyum told Merchant that Anees had collected 1 crore 60 lakhs rupees in the Gulshan Kumar murder case. All the above transaction took place through Hawala. Two months later, Chhota Shakeel asked Merchant to give all details about Qayyum and his activities in Mumbai. Merchant disclosed everything. Chhota Shakeel gave him his first work. One day Chhota Shakeel asked Merchant to eliminate Shiv Sena corporator Jainuddin Chougle and Mannan Fawda, who were police informers. Jainudin Chougale was killed, but could not eliminate Fawda. This was the first task carried out for Chhota Shakeel by Merchant. After this work, Chhota Shakeel engaged advocate Mahajan for bail of Merchant's brother and mother. Kayyum got suspicious about Merchant's affiliation to Chhota Shakeel. Therefore, Qayyum sent Merchant to Kenya to kidnap one big businessman Ajay Shah. Before leaving for Kenya, Merchant informed everything to Chhota Shakeel. Shakeel assured Merchant that he would take care of him. From Kenya, he moved to Bangkok and met Munna Zingada. There started the prcosess of extraditing Zingada back to Mumbai. Zingada was the one who had attacked Chhota Rajan. Later in 2000, Merchant came back to India and stayed with his wife. A few days ago, he spoke for a final time with Chhota Shakeel. He told Shakeel, "Bhai bahot din se phone nahi kiya". Shakeel replied, "Bombay police ne mera dono picture chori chori aur chupke chupke band kiya, agar picture release nahi hone diya to unko zatka dene ke liye apun producer Mani Ratnam ka kaam karege, tere koil ladka Madras mein hai to dekh. Waha jaka iska particulars nikal aur ek makam rehne ke liye bandobast karna." --- ENDS --- Bangladesh on Monday freed Dawood Ibrahim's aide on expiry of his jail term for cross-border intrusion, sparking speculation about his extradition to India where he was convicted for killing Gulshan Kumar in 1997. By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: As per sources, Daud Merchant will be handed over to BSF at Indo-Bangla border in the next few hours. Bangladesh on Monday freed a top aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim on the expiry of his jail term for cross-border intrusion, sparking speculation about his extradition to India where he was convicted for killing Bollywood music baron Gulshan Kumar in 1997. advertisement DETAILS OF THE CASE Sources have told India Today that all the preparation for handing over has been done, but sources did not disclose the checkpoint where he would be handed over to India. Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan said Daud Merchant was released as his jail term expired, but did not clarify whether he was handed over to India, where he is to stand trial. "He (Merchant) has been released. His prison term for illegal trespass into Bangladesh ended some time ago," he said. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: Also read: Did Dawood lose Rs 45 crore to his own trusted aide? Merchant walked out of the Dhaka Central Jail on Monday. In 2009, he illegally entered Bangladesh while he was on a 14-day parole. The police later tracked him down and arrested him and an associate on charges of forging passport and trespassing the Bangladesh border. At that time, police said that he was hiding at Bangladesh's Brahmanbaria. In December 2014, he was released on bail but was arrested again four days later outside the jail in Dhaka and placed on remand. Since then he had been lodged in Dhaka Central Jail. Also read: Backstabbed by henchman or squeezed by govt: Is Dawood losing grip on his crime syndicate? EXTRADITION The Indian government had been pressing Bangladesh to fast-track the extradition of Daud Merchant but the issue got stuck under layers of bureaucracy. --- ENDS --- Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/11/2016 (2184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Star, a petite six-year-old Sheltie who competes in dog agility shows, almost missed a contest this month. She had spent the previous night at the vet, totally stoned on pot. Her drug trip was an accident. Star lives in Oregon, where recreational use of marijuana became legal last year. Her owners husband had left some loose-leaf pot on the dining room table and Star got curious. That was days after her sister, Kicker, gobbled up a pot-infused hard candy she found in the car, leaving her wobbling and incontinent. A veterinarian gave both dogs activated charcoal to absorb the toxin, which contributed to nearly US$3,000 in medical bills and caused Star to poop in the ring during her competition. It was a bad week, said the dogs owner, Susan Fry, of South Lebanon, Ore. But it was probably a fairly routine week for the clinic that treated the dogs. As more jurisdictions legalize marijuana, veterinarians across the country say they are seeing a sharp increase in cases of pets accidentally getting high. Tasty edibles such as muffins and cookies that people consume for a buzz are also appealing to animals, who cant read warning labels, and, in the case of dogs, rarely stop at just one pot brownie. Dogs used to kind of chew on the stash growing in the basement. Now theyre finding a big bag of gummy bears, said Heidi Houchen, a veterinarian at VCA Northwest Veterinary Specialists in a suburb of Portland, which treats a few marijuana cases a week. Dogs are Hoovers. Dogs are the rock eaters. These incidents, which are rarely fatal, have driven a 330 per cent increase over the past five years in calls about pets on pot to the Pet Poison Helpline, said Ahna Brutlag, a veterinary toxicologist who is associate director of the Minnesota-based animal poison control centre. Two-thirds of the calls involve marijuana edibles, and nearly all involve dogs, she said. Veterinarians also cited examples of chihuahuas lapping up bong water, cats being exposed to vaping and even rabbits, ferrets and birds getting accidentally stoned. In the year after pot became legal for recreational use in Oregon, DoveLewis, a large emergency veterinary clinic in Portland, saw a 63 per cent increase in marijuana toxicity cases despite a client base growth of just seven per cent, said Alaina Buller, a clinic spokeswoman. Those findings echoed the results of a 2012 study that found such cases quadrupled at two Colorado veterinary clinics in the five years after medical marijuana was legalized in that state. As several YouTube videos illustrate, baked pets look a lot like really high people: Glassy-eyed, teetering, lethargic and pretty pathetic. In the case of Nigel, a one-year-old pet teacup pig who was vacationing with his family in Nantucket this summer, it led to a serious case of the munchies. One member of the family none of whom would agree to be identified in this article had recently been in Colorado, where he had acquired pot peanut butter cookies that were in his backpack. Nigel, who was described as having a voracious appetite when sober, rooted them out and left the empty package as evidence. Very soon, we had a very stoned pig on our hands, said one witness, a 54-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Hes just wandering around the kitchen desperate for food, doing a lot of whining and oinking. Then, eventually, he just passed out. Animals can sleep off a marijuana high in many cases, according to veterinarians interviewed, all of whom said they immediately suspect the substance when an incontinent pet shows up. Other common toxins, such as caffeine or pesticides, can be far more dangerous. But veterinarians say theres growing concern about the increased potency of todays marijuana edibles, many of which are made with butters or oils infused with highly concentrated tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Many also contain chocolate, which can be fatal to dogs. Marijuana ingestion by animals can lead to vomiting, racing or slowed heart rates, tremors or even seizures. Veterinarians said it is usually treated by inducing vomiting or administering intravenous fluids or anti-nausea medications. In some cases, medications to control heart rates or tremors are necessary. Most of them just need a night of detox, said veterinarian Shawn Thomas, who owns Tanasbourne Veterinary Emergency near Portland. The worst cases, Thomas said, involve owners who have also partaken. He recalled one standard poodle that was hospitalized for more than two days after devouring THC-infused butter. Its owner, Thomas said, didnt quickly realize the dog was suffering because he was blitzed out of his mind, too. Ten years ago, we would have told you theres no chance your dog is going to die of this, he said. But now, I tell people, its so much stronger, and you have a four-pound chihuahua and it could die. Anson Graves, whose tiny chihuahua mix ate most of a pot brownie in August, said he really started to worry when the dog still could not walk 12 hours later. Rusty had fallen under the influence accidentally, according to Graves, a 25-year-old waiter amid the revelry of Bourbon Street in New Orleans, which recently decriminalized marijuana possession. Graves and his friends had stopped for beers and cocktails known as Hand Grenades when, he said, he looked down to see Rusty inhaling a packaged brownie lying on the curb. The label indicated it contained 60 milligrams of THC, he said. Ive had my experiences, said Graves, who lives in Patterson, La. Thats quite a bit for a dog. Half an hour later, Rusty was so lethargic that Graves headed home. The next morning, he was like a slinky, said Graves, who posted a video of the stoned dog on his Facebook page. He called his vet, who advised rehydrating Rusty by offering him Pedialyte. That helped, but the dog wasnt fully recovered until the fourth day, Graves said. He was trying to run and jump on the bed. But hed just hit the bed, said Graves, who added that Rustys New Orleans visits are over. That was too much hassle. The upshot to widening legalization and tolerance of marijuana, veterinarians say, is that pet owners now readily admit when they know their animals have consumed it. In some cases, they even acknowledge having given their pets pot for medical purposes, said Lisa Parshley, a veterinary oncologist in Olympia, Wash. Veterinarians are not allowed to prescribe medical marijuana, but Parshley said she had a client who used her own topical cannabis balm on her dog, which had end-stage cancer. The dog got a little drunk on the THC, Parshley said. I convinced her to reduce the dose, and darn if the dog didnt do well for almost another month. Veterinarians say the biggest lesson from the increase in stoned pet patients is an obvious one: Pot, like any potentially dangerous substance, needs to be kept out of a pets reach. Fry said shes now enforcing that with her husband, John, who she said began using marijuana when he contracted multiple sclerosis 30 years ago before it was legal in Oregon. He isnt noted for being a super-clean guy, she said, explaining why hed left the candy in the car cupholder and the pot on the dining room table. Kicker, the candy-eater, had a particularly strong reaction that left Fry who said she tried marijuana once and was not a fan in tears and worried she would lose the feisty little thing. But both dogs bounced back Star so well that she performed two of her agility events flawlessly just two days after her inadvertent overdose. Next month, both dogs are competing at a national event in Arizona where, luckily for them, there are no drug tests. The Washington Post By Vidya : In a bid to remove gender disparity, the Haji Ali Dargah, which had on October 24 sought two weeks' time to lift the ban on the entry of women into the sanctum sanctorum, has implemented the same. Women have been allowed them back in. India Today did a reality check to find out what the status was at the end of two weeks yesterday since the lifting of the ban. advertisement However, both women and men are barred from touching the shrine even now. Also read: Haji Ali Dargah agrees to women entering sanctum sanctorum Raising a pertinent query, Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur had asked, "Why do you have to distinguish between man and woman here?". The Haji Ali Trust, which had until a few months ago protested and opposed the entry of women, has said that they now believe in equality. The trust changed the place where the donation box was placed to see to it that women could access the shrine. POSITION OF DONATION BOX CHANGED Earlier, the donation box was placed right at the entrance of the sanctum sanctorum and the women were barred from entering a room adjacent to it. The box has now been moved closer to the shrine so that women can enter the sanctum sanctorum too. The entrances for both men and women remain separate but with donation boxes placed at the opposite end, men get restricted to a part of the sanctum sanctorum and cannot freely move around and place the blanket on the shrine in reverence, something they could do earlier. At the entrance which is meant for men, people cover their heads with scarf and take turns to touch the sheet, which hangs extended from the shrine. Women cannot do that. Men then hand over the sheets to those standing in attendence near the shrine waiting to pay obeisance, who then spread the sheet on the shrine. Men and women can both hang around reading religious texts in their separate enclosures. AFFIDAVIT FILED BY HAJI ALI TRUST The affidavit filed by the Haji Ali Dargah trust on October 24 had said, "The trust believes in complete equality of men and women and has decided to grant equal access to both. The trust had passed a resolution to that effect on October 11. It devised the scheme of access and had sought two weeks' time to implement the same." A member of the trust, who did not want to be named, pointed out, "If you look at the entire map of the dargah, more space for praying and resting is alloted to them, while less space is given to men. Prayer halls exclusively for women are under construction right now." READ: 'A grievous sin': Why women were banned in Haji Ali Dargah in the first place advertisement Petitioner Noorejehan Safia Niaz, who had fought for the entry of women into the sanctum sanctorum of Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari or the Haji Ali Dargah, is not in Mumbai and she did not want to comment without seeing the latest arrangements. RAISE DEFAULT IN COMPLIANCE WITH BOMBAY HC Supreme Court had made it clear before disposing of the petition that any "default or neglect" in compliance by the Trust could be raised before the Bombay High Court. It was the high court, which on August 26, had ordered that the ban imposed by the Dargah Trust contravened Articles 14, 15 and 25 of the Constitution and had ordered that women be permitted to enter the sanctum sanctorum like men. --- ENDS --- Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/11/2016 (2185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Premier Brian Pallister predicted Monday that shovels will be in the ground to build Freedom Road within 60 to 90 days. The project will get underway in the next 60 to 90 days it will be historic, Pallister said, referring to the long-awaited year-round road into Shoal Lake 40 First Nation. The First Nation, in northwestern Ontario just east of the Manitoba border, supplies Winnipeg with its drinking water. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Premier Brian Pallister: 'The project will get underway in the next 60 to 90 days it will be historic' Pallisters assurance outside the house came after a verbal shoving match between the government and the NDP during question period. Shoal Lake 40 remains isolated, without drinking water, said MLA Nahanni Fontaine. MLA Amanda Lathlin said that the community which uses ferries when the water is open will have to rely on ice roads for yet another winter. We will get it done, where (the NDP) didnt in 17 years, he said, without providing details. Outside the house, Pallister told reporters that Manitoba has to get Ottawa to commit on the project cost before the province can commit to sharing one-third. nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/11/2016 (2184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The day may come when regulations will require the use of biomass materials instead of carbon-based ones in many phases of the industrial process. When that day comes, the Composites Innovation Centre (CIC) will be at the forefront of the standardization of those products. On Monday, the federal government continued its support of the work the Winnipeg-based CIC is doing to get those kinds of products into the commercial marketplace with $2.9 million in new funding from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC). JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jim Carr shakes hands with Sean McKay, President and CEO of the Composites Innovation Centre, after announcing two innovative projects that will provide assurances for quality Canadian biomass and innovative applications for biocomposites. The money will go toward work the CIC is doing in the development of quality standards and measurement techniques for biomass and research into overcoming technology barriers to the adoption of natural fibres in the composites industry. The hope is that instead of carbon-based products such as fibreglass, bus and tractor and even automobile manufacturers will eventually be able to reliably source parts made from biomass materials such as flax or hemp straw, for instance economically and efficiently and to the satisfaction of safety standards. And, most importantly, they will have come from sustainable material. Jim Carr, on behalf of Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay, said there is a growing urgency for the reduction of greenhouse gases around the world and there is increasing demand to create value from products that otherwise have no value, such as agricultural waste. There are literally trillions of dollars of international investment waiting to land into those countries and those companies who are positioned to help us in the transition to cleaner, renewable sources of energy, Carr said. This is both an example and a message that Canada understands very well that we can become leaders and this will happen with both the public and private sectors working hand in hand as you see today. About $1 million will go to help identify and develop quality standards and measurement techniques to facilitate the commercialization of Canadian biomass in four bioproducts sectors: biomaterials, biochemical, biofuels and bioenergy. That work is being done by a cross-Canada entity called Biomass Quality Network Canada which CIC manages. It was created from an AAFC roundtable on industrial biomass. Sean McKay, the chief executive officer of CIC, said the entity was formed because there was a realization test standards and methods to determine the quality of straw in the field and subsequent processing currently do not exist. Standards like that can take years to create, but he said the intention is for Biomass Quality Network Canada to quickly come out with a platform that can be further developed over time. Our focus is to develop a workable standard that could be introduced quite quickly and rapidly, he said. Were not going to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. We are going to put something in place so that it can assist commercialization. The other $2 million will go toward the CICs ongoing FibreCITY initiative to develop methods to process and test fibres from hemp and flax crops and understand how their properties are affected by planting, growing and harvesting practices, plant varieties and the weather. Lin-Ping Choo-Smith, head of FibreCITY, said, Industry needs to know if the material is strong enough and if it meets the products requirement. Grading systems exist for grain when it comes to oil and protein content, for instance. No such standards yet exist for biofibres. We want to develop standards that everyone can understand. martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/11/2016 (2184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. New-home construction activity slowed last month in the Winnipeg area as local builders continued to scale back the number of new multi-family units being built but were still banging out new single-family homes at a healthy pace. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) figures released Tuesday show there were 80 fewer multi-family units started last month in the Winnipeg Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) 146 compared with 226 in October of last year. However, the 35.4 per cent decline in multi-family starts was largely offset by a 31 per cent increase in the number of single-family starts 198 versus 151. FREE PRESS FILES The Hemson report recommends a new 1,800-square-foot residence be charged $18,302 fee; a 850-square-foot residence, $8,647. That left total starts for the month down 8.8 per cent to 344 units from 377 a year earlier. It also left total starts for the year running 12.8 per cent behind last years pace after the first 10 months 3,367 units compared to 3,860 units. Lai Sing Louie, CMHCs regional economist for the Prairies and territories, said an elevated inventory of multi-family units is why builders have been scaling back starts in recent months. But Manitoba Home Builders Association president Mike Moore said that doesnt mean that side of the market is in trouble. The multi-family starts were very high last year and a little bit the year before, too, he said, noting they accounted for nearly 65 per cent of all starts recorded last year in the Winnipeg CMA, which includes Winnipeg and 10 neighbouring communities. By last month, that number had dropped to 54 per cent, with single starts accounting for the other 46 per cent. Thats a reasonable balance between single-family detached and multis, Moore said. The multis are still strong. It has just gone down to a more reasonable percentage. He also said more single-family homes are being built because the demand for that type of home remains strong. I think thats certainly an encouraging sign, he added. Louie noted while the actual number of housing starts was down from a year earlier, the trend in new-home construction activity was still moving in an upward direction. The trend is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of total housing starts. CMHC uses the trend measure to complement the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts to account for considerable swings in monthly estimates and obtain a more complete picture of the housing market. In some situations, analyzing only those data can be misleading in some markets as they are largely driven by the multiples segment of the markets, which can be quite variable from one month to the next. The multis are still strong. It has just gone down to a more reasonable percentage The stand-alone monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates for the Winnipeg CMA decreased to 3,979 in October from 4,166 units in September. Statistics Canada released the September building-permit data Tuesday. It showed there was a 23.8 per cent decline in the value of building permits issued during the month in Manitoba $199.8 million compared with $262.3 million in August. Septembers total was also down 7.5 per cent from a year earlier, when $216.1 million worth of permits was issued. The biggest month-over-month decline was in the number of new non-residential permits issued. That number was down 38.2 per cent to $94.1 million from $152.2 million in August. Residential-permit values were off by only 3.9 per cent $105.7 million compared with $110.1 million. Despite Septembers decline, building-permit values were still running 16.4 per cent ahead of last years pace after the first nine months of 2016 $2.03 billion compared with $1.74 billion. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca By Vidya : Care World TV, the channel which had been ordered to go off air for a week by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry managed to get relief from the Bombay High Court today. The court has stayed the ban on Care World TV for two weeks. The petition has been filed by the Andheri based Seven Star Satellite Private Limited (SSSPL) on Monday. advertisement The Ministry had ordered Care World TV to be taken off air for seven days from November 9 to November 16. The order said that the channel aired content which was found to be "highly obscene and also found not suitable for unrestricted public exhibition." The chairman of SSSPL Atul Saraf said that they had been airing a programme called 'kya karoon mein ab?' for the last 10 years without any complaints. According to Saraf, "the health channel in this programme deals with sexual problems of people. To explain and so that laymen watching the programme understand what we are talking about, there is a small dramatisation and then gynaecologist or sexologist discusses it." VULGAR DRAMATISATION Talking about the IB order he said that someone must have just seen the dramatisation part and decided that it was vulgar. The petitioners also argued that the program also asks for parental guidance and is aired only at 11 pm. In the high court the petitioners were opposed by the lawyer representing the central government however Justice Makarand Subhash Karnik felt that this was an issue that needed to be heard before a regular court. Bombay high court is currently on vacation and a special court has been convened only to deal with urgent matters. Granting the petitioners relief from immediate ban, justice Karnik asked the union government to clarify the provisions under which the ban order was issued. The union government has to reply on affidavit within two weeks. The case will now be heard before a regular bench on November 24. Also read: UPA banned 21 channels, some for airing midnight masala: BJP defends NDTV India ban Democracy in India has never been more vibrant: BJP's reply to Rahul Gandhi --- ENDS --- Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/11/2016 (2184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Winnipeg is one of the fastest-growing technology markets in Canada, according to a new report by CBRE Limited. In its inaugural 2017 Scoring Canadian Tech Talent report, released Monday, the commercial real estate firm said tech employment in Winnipeg has grown 58.5 per cent in the past five years. Of the 10 cities examined in the report, thats second only to Waterloo, Ont., which had growth of 74.5 per cent. The CBRE study also found due to lower salaries and office rents, Winnipeg is also the cheapest city in Canada for a typical tech firm to do business. The average yearly cost for a company with 500 employees and a 75,000-square-foot office is $30.7 million. That is more than $9 million cheaper than the most expensive city, Calgary, which comes in at $39.8 million. Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press files Winnipegs Innovation Alley in the Exchange District. Two other factors working in Winnipegs favour are its affordable housing and its fast-growing millennial population, Raymond Wong, CBREs director of research in Canada, said. He noted the average monthly rent for a purpose-built apartment in Winnipeg is $925, compared with $1,210 in Toronto and $1,268 in Vancouver. He also said its millennial population grew at the fastest pace of any of the 10 cities between 2009 and 2014, at 15 per cent. He said thats significant for the tech industry because 20- to 29-year-olds tend to be more tech savvy. So when you look at Winnipeg there is an opportunity, especially in the tech sector, for growth, Wong said. We think the tech sector will be one of the major driving forces for job creation and employment over the next five years. Wong admitted there were some areas where Winnipeg didnt stack up as favourably. For example, the report looked at 33 different metrics and came up with an overall tech ranking for each of the 10 cities. Winnipegs score of 16.88 out of 100 was second lowest. Top-ranked Toronto had a ranking of 83.94. But Wong downplayed the significance of that, saying its mitigated by the high marks Winnipeg gets for affordability and millennial-population growth. For all of the Canadian cities, there is always room for improvement. But I think it (Winnipeg) starts out at a very good place in the way of availability of labour and affordability, he added. Kathy Knight, CEO of the Information and Communications Technology Association of Manitoba, agreed there were many positives to be taken from the CBRE report. Knight said its also important to remember there hasnt been as much investment in the tech sector here as in some other provinces. Its really just starting to happen here, she said. So I think in part we are a little bit behind some of the other jurisdictions that have kind of woken up to this huge opportunity a little bit faster than we have. But were heading in the right direction, absolutely. I think the recognition of what an investment in the tech sector can do for this province is starting to gain a lot of traction. She agreed there is a need for more tech workers in Manitoba, and one of the ways to address that need is by attracting more women, indigenous youth and skilled immigrants to the industry. One of the advantages to being somewhat behind the curve on this is that we can learn a lot from what hasnt worked in other jurisdictions, she said. murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/11/2016 (2185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. PAINESVILLE, OHIO As director of the Lake County Board for Elections in this picturesque town 50 kilometres east of Cleveland, Janet Clair is a busy woman. Advanced polling has been open in the county since Oct. 12, and Clair has been accommodating 45,000 of the 155,000 registered voters who wanted to vote in the advance polls. Her office is a beehive of activity, with people walking in and out and the phone ringing constantly. Ohio is a swing state voters choose the Republicans or Democrats depending upon the election season. In 2008 and 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama won the state. In 2004, George W. Bush took Ohio. SHANNON SAMPERT / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Janet Clair, director Lake County Board of Elections in Painsville OH 30 miles east of Chicago November 2016 This is Clairs eighth presidential election. She says shes seen nothing like this campaign. Early voter turnout is strong, but so are concerns the process is rigged. While Clair was providing an overview of the voting process to a group of visitors from Canada travelling as part of the State Departments International Leadership Program, a woman wearing an America Strong T-shirt asked to speak with her to voice her concerns that her vote may not be counted properly. She wanted proof what she was marking on the electronic ballot was going to be counted accurately today. Trump has stuck to his allegation the election is rigged and has told supporters to watch polling places to prevent Democrats from stealing the election. Clair attempted to mollify the womans concerns by pointing out the electronic voting machine is not hooked up to the Internet, but instead is a stand-alone machine. She made it clear that what she presented on the ballot is what will be recorded. The voter said: Im not worried about you. I think its higher up. I volunteered for the Democratic party until Obama, so I know about that end. Clair was eventually able to convince the woman and her elderly mother that she took an oath to ensure the process remains fair for everyone. In the end, Clair and the woman hugged, and she left happy. Everyone thinks theres a conspiracy going on, said Clair afterwards. This is what I have to deal with. She blames both parties for stoking concerns about vote-rigging. She says both parties arent willing to accept the outcome tonight. The seeds have been planted. If I dont win, the system doesnt work properly. Its only been since 2008 that rules changed in Ohio to allow early voting for anyone. In the past, voters had to be over the age of 65 or out of town in order to vote early. Now, anyone can do it, and that means the number of people who have taken advantage of the early polls has doubled, but overall voting rates havent increased. SHANNON SAMPERT / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Ballot from Lake County advance ballot Today will be a busy one again for Clair and her staff as more people cast their vote in what has been viewed as one of the nastiest elections in recent history. After that, Clair says her work begins in ensuring that the process was done fairly and accurately. She already has one file open to investigate someone who illegally filled out a ballot for a relative. She laughed when talking about that. I dont take this job lightly, she said. If this person shows up to vote (today), I plan on taking her straight to the prosecutors office. Clair remains committed and upbeat her job. shannon.sampert@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/11/2016 (2185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Quick come up with the name of the man described as follows: a veterinarian charged with the health of military horses during the First World War whose pet was later dubbed pooh, another word for teddy bear. The answer is Lt. Harry Colebourn, the man behind Winnie the Pooh. Monday, the Pavilion Gallery at Assiniboine Park opened a new exhibit on the man behind the bear, titled Remembering the Real Winnie: The Worlds Most Famous Bear Turns 100. WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files Harry Colebourn with Winnie in 1914. The photo is part of the exhibit at the Pavilion Gallery. The exhibit has objects from Colebourns personal collection, including First World War diaries, some from his time at Vimy Ridge and the Battle of the Somme. The diary entry regarding the decision Colebourn made that helped launch a childrens literature industry reads: Aug. 24, 1914. Bought (Winnie) cub bear at White River, Ont. Paid $20. Its marvellous that we have a product that went to war and came back, said exhibition curator Irene Gammel. Colebourn, on his way from Winnipeg to serve in the Great War, was persuaded to buy the brown female cub from a trapper during a stop before heading overseas to England. He named the cub Winnie after the city he called home and took the animal overseas where it became the mascot for the Fort Garry Horse Regiment, in which Colebourn served as a veterinary officer. Also in the exhibit are photos of individual soldiers with Winnie that were mailed back home to family and friends. The photos played a social role for the families. The photos said: Im OK, said Gammel, who was part of a team at Torontos Ryerson University that put the exhibit together. The photos also took soldiers minds off the tedium and danger of war. It is about creating a safe space in a time of war, Gammel said. Gammel solved the mystery of the meaning of pooh, but didnt discover its origins. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Left to right: Cole Davidson, 4, (great-great-grandson of Harry Colebourn), with curator Irene Grammel, Lindsay Mattick (great-granddaughter of Harry Colebourn), Laureen Mattick (granddaughter of Harry Colebourn) and Rob Maycher (great-grandson of Harry Colebourn) at the opening of Remembering the Real Winnie, in the Pavilion galleries in Assiniboine Park. Colebourns great-granddaughter, Lindsay Mattick, was on hand for the ribbon-cutting Monday. The exhibit was inspired by Finding Winnie, her picture book that tells the story behind the real bear. Mattick said she was struck by how a simple loving act (purchasing a bear cub) can create a ripple effect that would change the course of childrens literature. Colebourn kept the bear with him and his regiment while they trained in England, but when they were shipped to France he left the animal at the London Zoo. The bear was about one year old at the time and starting to become rambunctious. When the war was over, Colebourn stayed in England to do post-graduate work at Londons Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Winnie would become a star attraction at the zoo during the war years and through the 1920s and 30s until she died in 1934. British author A.A. Milne and his son, Christopher Robin, saw Winnie at the zoo, and the bear inspired a series of books and poems. The new exhibit replaces the Pooh Gallery, which displayed memorabilia related to the fictional Winnie. The exhibit will remain open for a year and is free to the public. staff The digitized version of the exhibit, including the complete diaries, can be viewed at therealwinnie.ryerson.ca. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 07/11/2016 (2185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. As if by way of foreshadowing, Tom Sophonow reached out to me Sunday in a text. I dont know if his reaching out was some sort of coincidental cosmic message, given that Sophonow is Winnipegs, and one of the nations, most famous faces of the wrongfully convicted; and a victim of the once prevalent tendency of police to have tunnel vision. This is what I woke up to Monday: a CBC story quoting from an interview with a man awaiting trial for murder in the Brandon Correctional Centre, who is suggesting something constituting not only a narrow investigative focus, but in his mind, a nefarious one. Raymond Cormier is the 54-year-old career criminal charged with the 2014 slaying of the troubled indigenous teenager Tina Fontaine. He is not only claiming innocence I didnt harm a hair on Tina Fontaines head hes alleging an attempt to entrap him in a so-called Mr. Big sting; a method that typically involves undercover cops posing as criminals who try to gain the confidence and ultimately, a confession from a target. Cormier was even more direct with his allegation last July when he filed a complaint with the Law Enforcement Review Agency. It was rejected as beyond the agencys scope. He is appealing the decision in court. In his complaint, Cormier accuses police of a clear and malicious act to deliberately manufacture and fabricate false evidence in an attempt to establish a link between me, the murder suspect, with Miss Tina Fontaine. Which, as I was suggesting, is a different way of alleging police tunnel vision and worse. It was Tinas disappearance and death in the summer of 2014 that focused public and eventually political support for a national inquiry into the countrys hundreds of missing and murdered indigenous girls and women. A month before her body was found in the Red River, the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled on the legal limits of the Mr. Big style of investigation; a practice that isnt permitted in either the United States or the United Kingdom. While not outlawing its use, the countrys highest court ruled that confessions extracted in a Mr. Big operation tend to produce unreliable confessions, are open to abuse and must be presumed inadmissible in court. Cormier says the police sting police on him didnt work anyway. Cormier claims he didnt confess to the killing; even when, after months of prepping him, members of the covert operation flew him to Vancouver in December 2015, where he was wined and dined. The next day, he was driven to the ski resort community of Whistler, where he was arrested. That was after, according to Cormier, an undercover agent tried to trick him into confessing to killing the teenager he said he drank and did drugs with. Cormier reportedly recalled the ultimate conversation with one of the undercover cops going this way: He said this: You already admitted about killing Tina, I said The hell with you, I never fking said that to anybody ever. Never. Not once have I ever said that to anybody. What the hell are you talking about? Then I knew that it was cops. That lack of a confession may explain why, when I spoke with someone well-briefed on the case, the covert operation was downplayed as the most crucial part of the evidence against Cormier. This isnt a Mr. Big case thats not how the Crown is making the case, the source said. Meanwhile, when I asked Winnipeg police chief-designate Danny Smyth about Cormier and his Mr. Big allegation, he answered carefully in an emailed statement. Winnipeg police successfully gathered sufficient evidence to secure criminal charges against Raymond Cormier for the murder of Tina Fontaine, Smyth said. After reviewing the evidence, charges were authorized by the Crown. As indicated earlier, some of the evidence gathered was secured through covert operations. The Winnipeg Police Service is fully aware of the controversy associated to so called Mr. Big operations. It is inappropriate to comment further regarding Raymond Cormiers allegations, and we are unable to confirm more detail or the nature of the evidence gathered. His case will be handled by Crown prosecutors during a criminal proceeding. That was it. But thats about all that can be expected in the way of a public statement from a Canadian police chief while a case is before the court. I learned something else Monday. According to the well-placed source, Winnipeg investigators consulted with the Justice Department about their plan to do a Mr. Big operation, undoubtedly with the Supreme Court decision in mind. That consultation suggests Winnipeg police investigators were well aware of the tricky line they walked and dare not cross in the Cormier sting. As a result of that Supreme Court decision, the onus now is on the Crown to prove the reliability of the evidence gathered in a Mr. Big operation. If youre surprised Winnipeg police tried a Mr. Big operation given how controversial and even risky it can be, Im not, because I happen to trust the judgment of John ODonovan, the cop who led the investigation. I like to believe the Winnipeg Police Service has learned from its biggest historic mistakes. And while the pressure to solve Tinas case was immense, I believe police would have been extra careful in a case that meant so much to the girls family and the public. And to the officers involved. As I sit recalling that welcome but unexpected text on Sunday, I wonder what a still-traumatized victim of the old days thinks about all of that. But I dare not ask Tom Sophonow. gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 08/11/2016 (2184 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Montreal Police Chief Philippe Pichet had a difficult meeting last Tuesday behind closed doors with city councillors at the citys Public Security Commission. Opposition councillors, unimpressed with his explanations for the forces electronic surveillance of La Presse columnist Patrick Lagace, were urging him to step aside while the matter was investigated. On Sunday, Mayor Denis Coderre came to the chiefs defence: there should not be a public lynching of the chief, Mr. Coderre said; therefore, he would not ask the chief to resign. He echoed the words of Quebec Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux, who also did not want Chief Pichet suspended. We are not going to indulge in a public lynching operation, Mr. Coiteux said a week ago. As public lynchings go, this one was more like a private committee meeting. La Presse reporters had noticed the name of their colleague Mr. Lagace in records of police investigations into alleged planting of evidence by their anti-gang squad. After Mr. Lagace asked what was going on, the department explained to him that they had been monitoring his cellphone in order to target a police officer who was under suspicion. Mr. Lagace hit the roof. Reporters have to be free to talk to sources without the fear of police looking over their shoulders. If every reporter is inadvertently wearing a wire on behalf of the police, no source will talk to them. RYAN REMIORZ / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Montreal Police Chief Philippe Pichet As the story snowballed, it came to light that the Montreal police had obtained warrants from justices of the peace 24 times this year to track Mr. Lagaces whereabouts using the location chip in his cellphone, and to obtain the identities of everyone he had contacted through the phone. Then the Quebec provincial police force confirmed that it had been spying in the same way on the cellphones of six reporters at Radio-Canada, La Presse and the Journal de Montreal. Crime beat reporters who were not on the surveillance list began to wonder why they had escaped attention. Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard announced new restrictions on police surveillance of journalists, putting them on the same footing as lawyers and members of the Quebec assembly. Freedom of the press had to be protected, he said. But if reporters are to be exempt from surveillance, it may be hard to show why the rest of the public should not also be exempt. The needs of a reporter are not different in kind from the needs of any conscientious citizen who is trying to find out what is going on in the community. Especially in this era of information websites and private bloggers, anyone at all can do at least some of the work of a reporter and distribute the results of inquiry. Some people are paid for this work and some are not. Some do it better than others. But if a legal privilege such as exemption from surveillance is to be extended to journalists, the same privilege should probably be available to any private citizen. Reporters, like any cellphone user, need to be aware that these devices are broadcasting their signals to a worldwide communication network. They are vulnerable to hacking by the Russians, the Chinese, freelance hackers, intelligence agencies, criminal gangs and the local police force. Police surveillance should be restricted, but cellphone users should also find out what precautions would better protect their privacy. Its a shame that Lagace and other journalists have learned that these are steps they may have to take to protect themselves from the actions of the state. By Charu Thakur : It was a regular day for the cast and crew of the Kannada film Masthigudi, who were busy shooting the climax scene on the outskirts of Bengaluru. The chopper was ready and so were the actors. Despite no great swimming skills or safety harnesses, two Kannada actors Anil and Raghav Uday were all set to give their best shot. But little did they know that the stunt will end up turning into a tragedy. advertisement ALSO READ: Helicopter stunt goes horribly wrong during Kannada film shoot, 2 actors dead ALSO READ: We will jump. If anything goes wrong, it's in God's hands, said Anil and Uday before jumping Without any safety measures and hardly any swimming skills, actors Anil and Uday jumped into the Thippagondanahalli Reservoir from a helicopter. But the two never made it out of the lake as the rescue boat failed to pull them out of the water in time. And more than a day after the accident, their bodies are still missing. This incident is indeed a wake-up call for the Indian film industries. But this is definitely not a one-of-its-kind case. More often than not, the actors and stuntmen take such action sequences for granted, caring little about the repercussions. In fact, many actors insist on doing the action sequences themselves, without any safety measures. Here are a few other times that Bollywood actors had a close shave on the sets. Three knee injuries for John Abraham on the sets of Force 2 An actor puts in his sweat and blood while shooting for a film. And John Abraham is definitely one of them. The 43-year-old, hands down, takes the title of undergoing the maximum number of surgeries during the shooting of one film. Within a span of one year, John has undergone three knee surgeries while shooting for Force 2. The action sequences seem to be taking a toll on his health, but that hasn't stopped him from giving his best shot. He recently shared a video of himself undergoing a knee surgery. When we say "blood and sweat" goes into a film..we mean it.On my way to 3 knee surgeries while shooting for @Force2thefilm #cameoutstronger pic.twitter.com/3FADatz6dp John Abraham (@TheJohnAbraham) November 7, 2016 When Anil Kapoor almost killed John Abraham on the sets of Shootout At Wadala Shootout At Wadala could have been John Abraham's last film in Bollywood had the actor not escaped death during the filming of a gunfire sequence. Anil, who played a cop in the film, accidentally shot a blank bullet that was meant to be shot from a minimum distance of 15 feet, from a distance of only 1.5 feet. Due to the close range, it hit John with much intensity. But John was saved as the bullet just grazed the left side of his neck and he escaped without any major injury. advertisement A truck ran over Akshay Kumar's feet on the sets of Holiday It was during the shooting of Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty that Akshay injured his foot. While filming an action sequence with a speeding truck, the driver somehow missed the timing. However, even though Akshay tried his best to avoid the collision, a wheel of the truck ran over his toes. When Ranveer Singh fell from a horse It wasn't a cakewalk to play Maratha warrior Bajirao on screen. Ranveer Singh, who had to ride a horse in the film, had a great fall on the film sets. While shooting one of the action sequences, Ranveer fell from the horse and injured his shoulder. He was out of action for quite some time and had to undergo a surgery to get back in action. Shah Rukh Khan and his tryst with injuries From three broken ribs to an injured shoulder to a broken backbone to a neck injury, Shah Rukh Khan has had a steady relationship with injuries in a career spanning over 25 years. Be it during Farah Khan's Happy New Year or Rohit Shetty's Chennai Express, Shah Rukh has injured himself on the sets of all these films. --- ENDS --- advertisement The Winona City Council hit a wide variety of topics at Monday nights meeting, ranging from bees to stoplights to food trucks. The council unanimously approved suggestions by the Winona Area Pollinators to help protect and encourage the population of bees and other pollinators. Recommendations approved in the resolution include educating city staff on how to foster habitats, reviewing pesticide and chemicals used by the city and its subcontractors, looking for sites to plant pollinator-friendly native plants, and developing a plan to allow habitats to continue existing where reasonably practical. Chad Ubl, communications director for the parks and recreation department, said the efforts would also be in concert with Healthy Lake Winonas efforts to protect the shoreline with strategic mowing, and for this part of the plan there wasnt a cost anticipated. I dont think theres many changes well have to make, Ubl said. New four-way stop; lights removed The council also voted unanimously to replace the signal lights at the intersection of Third and Main streets with a four-way stop. City engineer Brian DeFrang said the cost of fixing or replacing the current lights, which do not have working pedestrian crossing buttons, was estimated from $30,000 to $50,000, and the traffic counts indicated it would easily support a four-way stop instead. Itd be really consistent with the area, DeFrang said. I do not see this being a major impetus for change in the area. There is precedent for the change near the intersection, including four-way stops at the intersections of Second and Main streets and Third and Franklin streets. The total cost is estimated to be less than $3,000. Council member George Borzyskowski said that a four-way could be helpful, especially in low traffic times like the evening. I think it will move traffic better, Borzyskowski said. Food truck stalled The council put the brakes on a second food truck downtown, after an overwhelming number of concerns by council members, ranging from impacts on area businesses to consistency with the ordinance regarding vendors. The petitioner Joel Anacabe, doing business as Anacabes Awesome Eats, requested to put a truck in downtown Winona. Council member Michelle Alexander said that the ordinance requires vendors to also have a brick-and-mortar store, which was true of other food trucks, including Rubios and previously to Zazas. Alexander said it wouldnt be good precedent to allow one to avoid that regulation. I dont think we can waive our ordinance as written, Alexander said. Others, including Borzyskowski and Mayor Mark Peterson, echoed the sentiment that it wouldnt be fair to other businesses that follow that requirement. Council member Gerry Krage said that the city had also had complaints from businesses in the past about the food trucks, and they should revisit the ordinance to see how it stacks up with other areas, and whether the fee was appropriately sized, before they come back to the request. Currently its a $200 fee for operation per year. There are more and more communities doing this, Krage said, if we just had a better handle on it. Sobieski Park contract approved In another step forward on Sobieski Park Pavilion plans, the city approved a contract for $688,000 through Wapasha Construction, pending the receipt of funds from the 4th Ward Neighborhood Watch Group. The city has allocated $250,000 for the project, and the citizens group has indicated that the remaining donations needed to cover the difference will come from the Winona Community Foundation. Recommendations approved in the resolution include educating city staff on how to foster habitats, reviewing pesticide and chemicals used by the city and its subcontractors, looking for sites to plant pollinator-friendly native plants, and developing a plan to allow habitats to continue existing where reasonably practical. Winona voters will be entering the polls Tuesday to vote for candidates and ballot initiatives for everything from the president of the United States, to Winonas next mayor, to how state lawmakers pay could be decided. Its expected to be a busy day for both Winona County and city of Winona polling places, though Winona County, mirroring state and national trends, has already seen high turnout in absentee ballots leading up to Tuesday. POLLING PLACE CHANGES The biggest thing to note for Winona voters are changes in location for two city of Winona polling places from 2014, according to the Winona County auditor-treasurer, Sandra Suchla. Residents of the 1st Precinct of the citys 1st Ward will vote at the Winona Family Community Center in the Maplewood Townhomes, as they did in the August primary. Previously those voters went to the Winona Area Learning Center. Residents in the 3rd and 4th precincts of the citys Second Ward, meanwhile, are now voting in the Cotters John Nett Center, rather than at Madison Elementary for this election. Its a temporary change, due to the ongoing repairs from flooding in the schools gym. Voters of the 2nd Precinct in the citys 1st Ward should also note that the Living Light Church has changed its name to Radiant Church, but its the same location on Hwy. 14 and polling place. All polling places will be open from 7 a.m to 8 p.m., except several rural townships, which will open later in the morning. Fremont, Mt. Vernon, St. Charles, Whitewater and Wiscoy townships polling places will open at 10 a.m. Norton Townships polls open at 9 a.m., while Saratoga Townships open at 8 a.m. WHERE DO I VOTE? Minnesota voters can find their polling places, and whether or not they registered ahead of time (dont worry if you didnt; its not required) at mnvotes.org, a nonpartisan election resource guide run by the Minnesota Secretary of State. The website lists what races will be on your ballot, tips on Election Day law and voting rights, and other resources. Wisconsin voters can get that information from their Government Accountability Board at myvote.wi.gov. ELECTION COVERAGE ONLINE The Daily News will track dozens of local, regional, state and national races today, with up-to-the-minute results published online at winonadailynews.com until the final votes are tallied. Heres a look at a few of the most popular local races and issues well be following: Winona Mayor: Peterson, Tropple Incumbent Mark Peterson is seeking his second term against first-time candidate Connie Tropple. Peterson is the long-time Winona County Historical Society director and has supported the citys investments in development and infrastructure, including the bridge project and proposed repairs to Levee Park. Tropple, a Winona native, returned to the city in 2012 and said she is skeptical about public funding for the Levee Park and downtown development projects, and would focus on reducing taxes. 3rd District county board: Jacob, Ready Steve Jacob is seeking his second term, and similarly to the first time he ran in 2012, the race centers around land-use rights in particular frac sand, and whether or not to institute a county-wide ban. Jacob has advocated for regulation instead of a ban, while first-time candidate Ready has said it should be enacted. 4th District county board: Olson, Conner Like the other contested county board seat, frac sand is the largest issue in this race. Greg Olson, the incumbent seeking his third term, has been a vocal advocate of the frac sand ban while Brian Conner has referred to it as a non-issue. Both races have the potential to push the vote of the county board for or against a ban, which will be addressed again in late November. WAPS referendums Winona Area Public Schools will be seeking to renew an existing operating levy, as well as a technology levy. Here are the questions on the ballot: Question 1: Should the current operating levy be renewed in the amount of $1,527.67 per pupil for 10 years beginning in 2018? Passage of this referendum extends an existing operation referendum at the same amount per pupil as in the previous year. Taxpayers would not see an increase in their property taxes. Question 2: Should a capital projects levy of $1,000,000 a year for 10 years beginning in 2017 be approved to fund technology equipment, infrastructure, upgrades, and services? Having these dollars available for technology needs will free up some state funding currently being used for technology. The freed up funds would then be used to address security, building maintenance, etc. Passage of this referendum will result in an increase in taxpayer property taxes. The passage of Question 2 is contingent on the passage of Question 1. District 28B House: Davids, Trehus The District 28B House race has been attracting attention and money from interest groups of both parties. More than $600,000 in ads have been dispersed to aid both candidates as first-time candidate Thomas Trehus, seeks to upset Greg Davids, the Preston Republican who is seeking his 13 non-consecutive term. Lawmaker pay ballot question The ballot for Minnesota will include a constitutional amendment that would create a new process for how state lawmakers pay is set. The question will read: Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to remove state lawmakers power to set their own salaries, and instead establish an independent, citizens-only council to prescribe salaries of lawmakers? The Minnesota Secretary of State website notes that on these types of questions, not answering is counted as a vote for no. One person was injured Tuesday morning in a crash along Interstate 90 near the Lewiston exit. A Chevy Tahoe towing a tandem-axle trailer was eastbound near the exit about 8:45 a.m. when the driver lost control while going downhill, left the roadway, entered the median, and rolled, according to the Minnesota State Patrol. The driver, whose name has not yet been released, suffered unknown injuries and was transported to a nearby hospital, the Patrol said. The Winona County Sheriffs Department assisted at the scene. The Rick and Jana Craft household went purple this year. The couple visited their polling station at Minnesota State College Southeast at mid-morning Tuesday, their labradoodle, Paige, trotting alongside them. Rick wore a red shirt with Ronald Reagan emblazoned across the chest. Jana wore a blue jacket that popped in contrast. And both wore stickers that declared they had voted. We cancel each other out, and you can guess which is which, Rick said. Weve been having a lot of discussions. We would like to stay married after this. After a bitter election season that was high in conflict and low in just about everything else, a fractured electorate Tuesday had the chance to put either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump into the White House. Here and across the country, voters flocked to polling stations to cast their ballots in federal, state and local elections the biggest draw being the choice between the former secretary of state and the longtime businessman. My vote was for Trump, Connor Schmidt said after leaving the polls at Cotter Schools. I trust him on foreign policy. I think shes a criminal, to be frank. In the race for the county board seat in Winona Countys 4th District, Schmidt said he voted against Greg Olson because of Olsons opposition to frac sand mining. I dont remember who I voted for, Schmidt said, but it wasnt him. Robert Almgren also voted at Cotter after getting a lift from Rick Hanson, who owns the storage garage that Almgren uses as his home address. Almgren is homeless and had been told he was only eligible to vote in the race for president. I looked it up on my iPad, said Almgren, who learned all he needed was someone, perhaps the owner of a storage garage, to vouch for him. Thats how he earned a voice in state and local elections, but the presidential race was still the one that had him talking. I voted for Donald, he said, having based his vote on the sanctity of the Constitution. These people dont think the guys 220 years ago were that smart. They were smart, man. Inside Kryzsko Commons at Winona State University, students leaving the adjacent cafeteria trickled into the voting booths. Many of them were voting for the first time. I voted for Hillary Clinton, because she wants to unite America and make it easier to go to college, said McKenna Gutt, a freshman majoring in exercise science. She has specific ideas about what shes going to do. At the Central Fire Station in Winona, the crowd was steady but not packed, with a mix of older and younger voters. Women working the booths said the traffic was occasionally heavy enough to create a line. Oscar Hedin, who turned 18 Tuesday, said he was excited to be voting for the first time. He described the election as hectic and one that has put the country at a crossroads. Its an important election, he said. Oscar, who came with his father, said he wished more young adults would research the candidates and come to their own decisions, rather than just voting for the candidate their parents support. His father, Jack Hedin, described the election as discouraging and weighed down by personal attacks, rather than being about principles and policies. Jack said it felt good to cast his vote and put it behind him, but that he was still anxious over the outcome. Casey Haverinen and Jessie Hedahl, both first-time voters, said they werent happy with their choices for president. For a long time, Hedahl said she wouldnt even vote. After looking into the third-party candidates, she said, she decided to show up after all. What an election, Haverinen said. On the west edge of town, cars filled the parking lot outside Radiant Church. Louise Matilla said she preferred not to say who she was supporting in any of the races. Rick Garrity said he cast his ballot for the candidate he supported all the way: Hillary Clinton. Im a lifelong Democrat, he said. I think shes the most qualified candidate. As the sun dropped below the bluffs in nearby Rollingstone, people who had spent the day at work showed up at the town hall white and homey and with an American flag snapping out in front. I did not vote for Trump. I did not vote for Hillary, said Randy Schacht, who was accompanied by his son, Nick, a first-time voter. Both Schacht men voted for third-party candidates, a decision they made after growing frustrated with Clinton and Trump, they said. I dont like Trumps loose cannon of a mouth, Nick said. I dont like Hillary and whether shes trustworthy or not. Polling stations across the city and county ran smoothly, according to reports, with small lines and no significant issues. The traffic was kept below traditional levels because of a new state law allowing absentee voting without an excuse, which resulted in more than 650,000 voters casting their ballots before Election Day, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State. Formal turnout numbers in the city of Winona and Winona County were not available Tuesday night, but anecdotal evidence collected at a number of polling places throughout the day suggested that turnout was high, in line with a presidential election year. The Crafts, divided as they are, can see a silver lining in the culmination of this election. Rick and Jana are usually at political odds with each other, but they said this year felt different, felt more hostile than in years past. Their only point of agreement is that Jeremy Miller, a state senator whose district includes Winona County, should be re-elected. We know him, Jana said. It is only a small piece of common ground, they said, but it does bode well for their marriage. The Winona Rotary Club recently hosted a Feed My Starving Children MobilePack event in Winona. We would like to thank the community, the 517 people who volunteered their time to put together the specially formulated food packets, and everyone who helped to raise the $22,000 that was contributed to pay for the food that we packed. Together we were able to pack 117,072 meals. We have received confirmation that the meals we packed have been sent to Haiti to feed starving children suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew. Haiti is facing mass devastation. The FMSC food is vital to their survival. We are thankful to be able to help provide assistance during their time of dire need. The Winona Rotary Club was proud to be able to work with the many wonderful area organizations, businesses, school groups, and churches that helped to make this humanitarian effort possible. Mark your calendars for Oct. 7, 2017, for next years packing event. Mark Patterson, Winona Rotary Club After getting a great response to its Halloween craft nights, the Columbus Rec Department has announced plans to hold a free Thanksgiving craft night for kids on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the lower level of the Firemans Park Pavilion. Kids will be crafting their very own turkeys out of sunflower seeds. Parents are asked to email an RSVP to recreation@columbuswi.us so the Rec Department has enough supplies on hand. A helicopter mishap that ended in the death of two Kannada actors Uday and Anil during the stunt act in the climax scene. Here's what you need to know about the Kannada superstar Duniya Vijay-starrer. All you need to know about Masthigudi By India Today Web Desk: The shooting of the climax of Kannada film Masthigudi went horribly wrong yesterday. The scene required lead actors Duniya Vijay, Uday and Anil to plunge into the sea from a helicopter, and ended in the death of Uday and Anil. ALSO READ: Helicopter mishap goes wrong: Bodies of Kannada actors still not found ALSO READ: Shiva Rajkumar on Helicopter mishap- We are ashamed at what happened advertisement The entire mishap was caught on camera. Here's what we know about the film so far. Duniya Vijay, who shot to fame after acting in the film Duniya, joined hands with Nagashekar for Masthigudi. Masthigudi, which was supposed to be based on Duniya Vijay's life, was nearing the last leg of shooting. According to reports, the script of the film was inspired from Duniya Vijay's ideologies of life. Earlier to this, Duniya Vijay made headlines for his rumoured affair with actor Shubha Poonja, which subsequently resulted in a divorce with his wife. However, it isn't clear if Masthigudi will show on screen Vijay's relationship with Shubha Poonja. Reports also suggested that the movie was inspired from a real life incident which took place at Mastigudi temple near the Kabini dam in the district of Mysore. Masthigudi, which is written by Duniya Vijay, is produced by his friends Sundar P Gowda and Anil Kumar V. Director Nagashekar went on record saying that the highlight of Masthigudi is the climax portion, which was supposed to have been breathtaking. It was this climax scene that was being shot yesterday, which led to the tragedy. Notably, Kriti Kharbanda, who plays the female lead in the film, suffered an injury, which consequently delayed the shoot of Masthigudi. Apart From Duniya Vijay, the film features Amulya, Kriti Kharbanda, Rangayana Raghu and Suhasini Mani Ratnam. Uday and Anil were supposedly playing negative roles in the film. During the stunt act in the climax scene, the hero (Vijay) chases two villains Uday and Anil, who try to escape by getting into a chopper. The hero, too, hops on to the chopper, which takes off and hovers over the lake. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: --- ENDS --- Ken Hamm hopes to bring a fresh change to the district attorneys office when he becomes Juneau Countys lead prosecutor at the beginning of January. Hamm defeated Stacy Smith and incumbent Mike Solovey during the Aug. 9 primary election. He ran unopposed during Tuesdays general election. Having locked up the position months ago, Hamm is anxious to return home and serve Juneau County. Its been a long time coming and Im excited to finally get in there and get started, Hamm said. The district attorneys office will face some significant change in early 2017. Not only is Hamm replacing Solovey, but full-time assistant district attorney Jake Westman is leaving for a position with the state attorney generals office. Many district attorney offices in the state are already overworked, but Hamm believes he is ready for the challenge. As the district attorney, I intend to handle the major cases, but were going to have to figure out how the case load will be divided up, Hamm said. Ive already started giving some thought to it, but when I get in there were going to have to implement that right away. During his campaign, Hamm advocated forming a drug treatment court and has already discussed the idea with fellow DAs in the 50th State Assembly District. Hamm plans to work on grants that could bring funding for the treatment court. Between now and January, I want to sit down with some of the judges, probation officers and some of the drug advocacy groups in the community and figure out how we might structure a court and how we can fund it, Hamm said. Thats something that is pretty high on my priority list and I want to get the ball rolling on that. Hamm also plans to rebuild trust within the office. Solovey had a contentious relationship with some members of the countys law enforcement. Last March, the county board gave Solovey a vote of no confidence, but the incumbent chose to run for reelection. Since winning the primary, Hamm has met with local law enforcement to begin rebuilding ties between the two entities. Im hoping it will be a fresh start. Ive been figuring out what their needs will be and what they expect out of me as far as communication and things like that, Hamm said. I feel this will be a good reset for the relationship between the DAs office and law enforcement. For the past five years, Hamm worked cases for the Wisconsin Public Defenders Agency in Sparta. Hes seen the other side of litigation and feels it will help him thrive as DA for Juneau County. I have a defense perspective on things and for a lot of people who have just prosecuted their whole careers, they might not necessarily have that, Hamm said. As a public defender, Ive dealt with a broad array of different issues, even beyond what a district attorney would deal with: guardianships, mental commitments, various juvenile proceedings and thats one thing I intend to do, talk to the county about those cases too. For the past couple years, child welfare cases have been handled by the countys corporation counsel. Hamm plans to meet with county attorney David Lasker before taking office to discuss the future of those cases. Hamm believes drug offenses continue to be a major problem in the county because it ties into other crimes. It ties into property crimes for theft and vandalism because people need things for drug money, Hamm said. Dealing with the drug issues is going to help a lot of those other areas and thats one of the reasons why I believe the drug issue is so important. While hes young and has never worked a prosecutor, Hamm has dealt with several major cases in Sparta, including a recent homicide trial. His experience in the courtroom is limited, but hes worked a variety of cases in the past few years. I believe I have the experience to manage the office too because Ive worked with people in the office before, Hamm said. Being a public defender, were the ones always in the trenches and the ones with the heavy case load. Ive been under stress before and I feel like Ive come out on the other side. Hamm is looking forward to serving the community he was raised in. Hamm is the son of John and Diane Hamm. His father is co-owner of Wisconsin River Meats in rural Mauston. Im a big outdoors guy; I do a lot of hunting, fishing and camping and those are some of the reasons why I love this community, Hamm said. Ive lived in the city, but Im glad to be back in a rural community. A lot of times when Im not working, Im fishing or canoeing. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Voters in Portage are making their choices today about the direction of their community and their nation. That community is at a crossroads as Portage continues to be challenged and to benefit from the flow of people from across the state and across the U.S. border. I think the region in Portage is going to be a very different place, said Steve Sobiek, Portages director of business development and planning. I think when youre part of the city or community planning process you have to think and I think we are doing this at the Planning Commission level what do we want Portage to look like in another 20 to 25 years? It behooves us all to put our thinking caps on to see what we can do to make Portage a better place and be more attractive, and be more competitive in terms of attracting residents and economic development and retaining and improving the quality of life that we have, said Sobiek. At a July Common Council meeting Sobiek highlighted the good news of growing job opportunities in Portage, which draws new residents, and creates a snowball effect of economic development. Portage is in a comparatively good position, he explained, citing statistics from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, showing the city with a 1.15 percent increase in jobs in 2015, compared with 0.1 percent in Baraboo, -0.01 in Reedsburg and -2.68 percent in Beaver Dam. Were a county seat and we have a great geographical advantage, said Sobiek. We have a lot of people flowing through the city of Portage and some stay and put down roots, and some stay a very short time. Changing demographics Of the many ways to look at the 2016 election, one of the more statistically grounded ways to see it has been as the last gasp of the uncontested authority of the male Caucasian vote. The nations population is quickly becoming younger and more diverse as the United States evolves into a majority-minority nation, in which those who would today identify themselves as a part of a minority, add up together to outnumber Caucasians. Although this change has been less pronounced in rural Wisconsin than in other parts of the country, it is underway. By far the most significant factor in this is the increasing proportion of Hispanics among the population. The first indications of 2016 election results came with word of exceptionally high turnout among Latino communities in Nevada over the weekend, such as Las Vegas reporter Jon Ralson tweeting an update of voting at one Mexican supermarket extended to 10 p.m. with close to 1,000 voters in line. The 2000 U.S. Census recorded a Hispanic population of 356 in the city of Portage. In 2010, that number grew to 414, and in the American Community Service 5-year Estimate, from 2010 to 2014, the figure is 596. In Wisconsin as a whole, there are 370,000 Latinos in the state, and there are 156,000 eligible voters in the state and a majority of them are of Mexican descent, like myself, my mom was from Mexico, said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Fronterra (Voices of the Frontier). A majority are of Mexican descent and born here, and 17 percent are naturalized, referring to those born outside the United States, but gaining citizenship after immigrating to the United States the pathway to citizenship. Neumann-Ortiz has been hard to reach lately as she has been knocking on doors in Milwaukee, encouraging people to get out and vote, and as part of the Voces de la Frontera Action, encouraging voters to support Hillary Clinton and former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, both Democrats. Narrow margins Something I like to tell Latinos to give them an idea of the power of their own political participation, is that what makes Wisconsin unique is that the margins between the two political parties is small, said Neumann-Ortiz. The difference in the 2012 presidential election was around 200,000 votes. You look at that and the Latino vote can definitely have an impact when the margins between the two main parties are so small. However, developing a statistical measure of immigrant communities is complicated by a number of factors, a way to measure the change in this notoriously hard-to-count community is through the needs in the school system. In the Portage system, there are 40 or so, students who speak English as a second language according to Director of Student Services Barb Wolfe. The majority are from families originally from Mexico, while a few are of Vietnamese heritage, another of the Philippines and another of China. Though the district has one ESL (English as a second language) teacher, Wolfe said that fewer than 20 of the students who speak English as a second language need direct support, most having grown up with English long enough for it to be a non-issue. So other than those 15 or 16 that we are directly serving right now, the rest are at that level, where they have English as a second language and their native language is something else, but they are really doing quite well, said Wolfe, pointing out that a great help is the flexibility of teachers. The classroom teachers do see those students as their students. Sometimes you hear when people have different identified things like a disability, language, or whatever, being your students, and thats not what were seeing. Parents harder to reach An arguably greater challenge than reaching the increasing number of diverse students, is reaching their parents, who Wolfe explained are engaged and passionate about their childrens education, but inhibited from involvement with the school by being more likely than the students to have more fluency problems, and simply not being able to get to the school. The families of the students we are working with are really busy people. Many of them are working a couple of jobs, said Wolfe. Although her organization puts much of its focus on Milwaukee and a new branch in Green Bay, they are reaching out to rural communities through statewide radio ad buys as well as spots on the Spanish-language network Telemundo. For Voces de la Frontera, issues include civil rights, worker rights, and as well, immigration rights. Eloisa Guerrero, of Pardeeville, gives a very familiar political summary: Its just blah, blah, blah, and they dont take action on the calls that they are supposed to have for community well being. Guerrero, 56, who moved from Mexico in 1989 and raised six children in the Portage-Pardeeville area, expresses little patience for those who dont appreciate opportunity. My mother would get a big stick and say, There is no school? Show me there is no school. And get the kids by the hand and take him to school, she said. She wouldnt go for less. They are one of the populations that has a drop-off in non-presidential years. Were shifting to a lot of local work where we feel it is important for people to know who their representatives are and assist in getting them involved in the process, said Neumann-Ortiz. Of course, part of the political demands is that we want immigrants to be treated with respect and have their contributions valued. We want immigration reform. We dont want our families broken up. We dont want laws that put us in opposition to the police. After covering the overall frustration of there being the abundance of resources, but still so many things lacking, particularly with more aides and teachers needed in schools, Guerrero hits on something that is particular to immigrant communities. I have met so many people that need their drivers license. They cant work because they have no way to get to work. The ones that dont have any criminal record, theyre supposed to have a drivers license to feed their kids, said Guerrero. One-way traffic on Highway 33 through downtown Portage. A roundabout where Highway 33 meets East Albert Street. Consolidating the intersections of county Highways EE and F with Highway 33, to create one intersection. None of these things is going to happen any time soon. But 30 or so years from now, these are some of the ideas that traffic engineers are considering, to maximize the life of Highway 33 between Highway 12 at Baraboo and Garrison Road just east of Portage a stretch of about 23 miles that includes downtown Portage. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation on Monday held an open house on the Highway 33 corridor preservation study at Portage High School, which attracted about 14 people, including DOT officials and their traffic consultants. A similar meeting is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Baraboo High School. As they did when the Highway 33 corridor study was inaugurated about a year ago, DOT officials emphasized that its just a study. There is no money for construction of any kind, now or in the foreseeable future, and there are no plans for increasing the highways traffic capacity or for a bypass of downtown Portage. But Sue LeBrun, traffic engineer for the Madison-based consulting firm TranSmart Technologies Inc., said creating one-way traffic might be one method for alleviating what people perceive as an excess of semi-tractor-trailer traffic through downtown Portage. An inset on one of the traffic maps displayed on an easel at the Portage High School commons showed that the one-way traffic, if it is ever implemented, might look something like this: Starting at MacFarland Road, Highway 33 would be open only to eastbound traffic through downtown Portage. Westbound traffic would be routed onto West Conant Street. Highway 16 (Wisconsin Street) would be one-way going southeast, and DeWitt Street would be one way going northwest, starting about at Highway 51. Through downtown Portage, on-street parking would be allowed only on one side of the street. LeBrun said traffic studies show that an average of 5,000 to 6,000 vehicles travel on Highway 33 through downtown Portage daily. In Baraboo and West Baraboo, the average daily traffic count is closer to between 10,200 and 11,900, and the number drops to 6,100 to 8,500 in the rural area between Baraboo and Portage. Charles Wade, project manager for TranSmart, said the number actually picks up a little, to about 7,400 vehicles a day, outside of downtown Portage suggesting strongly that many drivers are already diverting themselves from Highway 33 to avoid driving through downtown. Risky turn One of the places drivers who know the area go is to East Albert Street, which reconnects with Highway 33 east of downtown. Its that area, LeBrun said, that is one of the key traffic hazards. People attempting to turn left (east) onto Highway 33 from East Albert Street kind of take a leap, because they cant see, and they get clobbered by westbound traffic, LeBrun said. A roundabout a circular road with continuous traffic around a circular island would likely cut down on crashes, she said. Also, she said, the intersections of Columbia County Highways EE and F are too close to each other, and it would make sense to have just one intersection off Highway 33 east of downtown Portage. Nothing final But none of these, she emphasized, has been decided upon definitely. These are just some ideas for keeping the Highway 33 corridor useable, in its present two-lane form, for as long as possible. Other ideas include passing lanes on the hilly, curvy roadway between Baraboo and Portage, and in eastern Baraboo, one lane for each direction of traffic with a center turning lane. Wade said people who live along this section of Highway 33, or who enter their farm fields there, dont need to worry about losing their driveways. However, any effort at economic development along the corridor should include limiting the number of new driveways cut into Highway 33, and finding other means of entering and exiting new businesses or industries, Wade said. Columbia County Zoning Administrator Randy Thompson said he came to Mondays open house out of both personal and professional interest. Anything that might impact future land use, I want to be aware of, he said. Tom Kratt, project manager for the DOT, said the process of documenting existing environmental, socio-economic and transportation-related issued along Highway 33 is nearly completed, with recommendations expected by next month. However, people still have time to express their opinions. Comments can be directed to Kratt at Thomas.kratt@dot.wi.gov or Wade at cwade@transmartinc.com. Veterans Day services planned The Sauk City American Legion Kuoni-Reuter Post 167 and Sauk Prairie Veterans of Foreign Wars Lachmund-Cramer Post 7694 will jointly conduct community Veterans Day ceremonies on Nov. 11. This is the 71st anniversary of the end of World War II. Area WWII and Korean War veterans will be honored. Vietnam era veterans will receive a 50th anniversary end of Vietnam War Commemorative lapel pin and citation at a ceremony at the VFW post. Activities include: 8:30 a.m. at Sauk Prairie Grand Avenue Elementary School gymnasium, where WWII and Korean War veterans will be recognized. Contact Bart Mauch, VFW adjutant at 608-393-1287 or email bgrantm6@gmail.com to be honored. 9:15 a.m. Maplewood of Sauk Prairie, 245 Sycamore St., Sauk City, for residents and guests. 10:45 a.m. at the Sauk Prairie Area Veterans Memorial on Water Street in Sauk City, where an observance of the 1,055 named veterans from the Civil War to southwest Asia are inscribed on the memorial. At 11 a.m. a moment of silence will be observed and a 21-gun military rites salute and playing of Taps will take place. 12:30 p.m. at the Sauk Prairie VFW, 700 VFW Drive, Prairie du Sac, with the Fay-Robinson Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution will host the America Vietnam War Commemoration. Qualifying U.S. veterans in the Sauk Prairie area are encouraged to apply for this honor and each Vietnam War era veteran will receive a citation and a specially designed lapel pin. Call or email Bart Mauch with the veterans name, branch of service, years of active duty service and location of service and rank at time of discharge. One of Sauk Prairies cold cases just got a little warmer, thanks to the research of a Springfield, Missouri man. Eight years ago a safe and its historical contents went missing from Park Hall in Sauk City. What happened to it remains a mystery, but last week local officials received a welcome clue. Susan Larkin, administrator for the Free Congregation, said she received a call from a man who claimed to have some papers that belonged to the church. When I listened to the message this man left me I was flabbergasted, Larkin said. It was quite a story. In August 2011, Sun Prairie resident Bob Knierim brought some poles and his dog down to the Wisconsin River to do some fishing in Sauk City. Thats when he noticed the top handle of a suitcase sticking out from the riverbed in the mud. I went over to it and pulled it out and stuck it in the back of my truck, Knierim said. When he finally opened it later that day, the smell alone caused Knierim to put it on his back porch. Roughly two weeks went by before he finally took the papers out and set them on his counter to dry. Thats when he started noticing dates on some of the papers from the suitcase. It just blew my mind, he said. Some of the stuff in there was 160 years old. The river water did a lot of damage to the items, which included parts of three volumes of hand-written meeting minutes from the 1950s and 60s, account ledgers from the 19th century and a few individual documents related to the history of the congregation, including original specifications for the construction of Park Hall. Knierim said a lot of what was found was a total loss, as the stuff on the outside disintegrated in his hands when trying to take the paper apart. I feel bad the amount of stuff that was in that suitcase was unsalvageable, Knierim said. He ended up throwing out what he thought couldnt be saved. He reached out to a museum in Baraboo to see if there was interest in the documents, but officials there turned him down. So the information sat for years in a safe, while life for Knierim went on. His daughter was born and he moved a few times, finally settling in Springfield, Missouri, yet all that time he kept the documents in his own safe. Eventually, he found time to start searching the names and buildings that could be identified from the papers. That led him to the Free Congregation, and a call to Larkin. It was a miracle, practically, Larkin said of Knierims find. I know we arent getting that much, but its good to get anything. Its not clear exactly when the documents will be returned to the Free Congregation. Knierim said hed prefer to bring the papers back to the area himself, but because of other obligations, he may have to send them instead. Sauk Prairie Police Department Lt. Travis Hilliard said stolen property often is discovered in waterways. He said he would be interested to speak with Knierim about the find, but doesnt expect it will offer much in the way of evidence. We still dont have any suspects but we have found property, he said. But if a suspect hasnt come up in eight years its good the property was recovered but it doesnt help us with a suspect. Knierim said he was glad to learn that his find will be helpful for someone. To be able to get it back to them I know it means a lot to the congregation, he said. It makes me feel good. Hillary Clinton has a better shot at winning, if betting exchanges and online trading platforms can be relied on. By Reuters: Betting exchanges and online trading platforms on Tuesday said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a far higher probability of winning than Republican Donald Trump. While Trump made modest gains in probability to win on some online platforms as Americans went to the polls on Tuesday, many gave Clinton a better than 75 percent chance of victory. Bookmaker Paddy Power said Clinton's chance of taking the White House dipped slightly to 81.8 percent on Election Day from 83.3 percent, while Trump's probability improved to 22 percent from 20 percent. advertisement "The flow of money is relatively even with it slightly favoring Trump," said Paddy Power spokesman Filim Mac An Iomaire. He said Paddy Power has seen at least 20 four- and five-figure bets placed on Tuesday. Different bookmakers and exchanges have different closing times for placing bets. Record numbers of bettors are pouring millions into online platforms in the hope of capturing a financial windfall from the election. British gambling company Ladbrokes, which has Clinton's chance of winning at 76 percent and Trump's at 24 percent, said it anticipated more wagers coming in for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election than had been placed on the European Union referendum - or "Brexit" vote. "The U.S. election has gripped the nation," said Ladbrokes spokeswoman Jessica Bridge in a written statement. "It [is] the biggest ever non-sporting event the bookmaking industry has witnessed." British-based internet betting exchange Betfair's "Next President" market was on track to surpass Brexit in amount traded, owing to the surprise results of the referendum that were still fresh in many Britons' minds, spokeswoman Naomi Totten said. The market saw just under $150 million wagered since it opened in November 2012, with $7 million traded in just seven hours on Tuesday. While opinion polls went back and forth leading into Britain's June 23 referendum on whether or not to remain in the European Union, betting odds favored the "remain" campaign. Britons voted to leave by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin. Clinton is trading at an 80 percent chance on Betfair and Trump at a 20 percent chance of winning the White House. Trading platforms in the United States showed similar probabilities. --- ENDS --- India said the Council is taking months to consider sanctioning leaders of groups it has itself designated as terror entities. By Press Trust of India: In a sharp criticism of the United Nations Security Council, India said the Council is stuck in its own "time warp and politics", referring to the technical hold on India's bid to get JeM chief Masood Azhar banned by the UN. India's Permanent Representative to the UN ambassador Syed Akbaruddin on Sunday slammed the Council for taking months to consider sanctioning leaders of groups it has itself designated as terror entities. advertisement "While our collective conscience is ravaged everyday by terrorists in some region or another, the Security Council gives itself nine months to consider whether to sanction leaders of organisations it has itself designated as terrorist entities," Akbaruddin said at a session on equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council. ALSO WATCH ALSO READ: India will pursue resolution against Masood Azhar to its logical outcome, says Syed Akbaruddin NEVER-ENDING CAROUSEL OF DISCUSSIONS Earlier this year, China had extended the "technical hold" on India's move to get Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. The six-month validity of the technical hold lapsed in late September and China sought another three-month extension on India's bid. ALSO READ: India, China discuss bilateral issues; skip NSG and Masood Azhar ban Talking about the snail-paced and "never-ending carousel of discussions" on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reforms, Akbaruddin said "it is time to break the impasse" to urgently reform the body that is "unresponsive" to the current global situation. The inability to respond to humanitarian situations, terrorist threats and peacekeeping vulnerabilities during this year itself are part of the price that is being paid for the international community's lack of progress on the critical matter, he noted. ALSO READ: Pathankot fallout: Pakistan freezes accounts of 5,100 terror suspects, including Jaish chief Masood Azhar STUCK IN A TIME WARP "On issues pivotal to international security such as Syria, there is inaction, and on other situations like dealing with the peacekeeping crisis in South Sudan we see fragmented action which is not implemented even months after being agreed upon," Akbaruddin said. ALSO READ: China open to India's NSG bid, but opposes UN ban on Jaish chief Masood Azhar "The Security Council, stuck in its own time warp and politics, can only be described as working randomly on the basis of a mix of ad-hocism, scrambling and political paralysis. Need one say more about the urgency of the need for reform of this relic which has long been unresponsive to the needs of our time," he said. advertisement He pointed out that the Council's global governance structure does not cease to surprise the international community with its persistent inability to even effectively engage with the tasks at hand. ALSO READ: Pakistan daily asks how action against Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar is danger to national security ALSO READ: After blocking India's move to ban Masood Azhar, China now wants action against global terrorists ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom. BT Group plc provides communications services worldwide. Its Consumer segment sells telephones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi extenders through high street retailers, online BT Shop, and Website BT.com; and offers home phone, copper and fiber broadband, TV, and mobile services in various packages. The company's EE segment offers 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile network services; broadband, fixed-voice, and TV services; and postpaid and prepaid plans, and emergency services network. This segment also sells 4G mobile phones, tablets, connected devices, and mobile broadband devices from various manufacturers. Its Business and Public Sector segment provides fixed voice, mobility, fiber and connectivity, and networked IT services to retailers, utilities, public sector, healthcare, sports, construction, finance, and educational sectors. The company's Global Services segment offers business communications and ICT services comprising BT Connect, BT Security, BT One, BT Contact, BT Compute, BT Advise, and BT for financial markets. This segment serves approximately 5,500 customers in 180 countries. Its Wholesale and Ventures segment enables communications providers and other organizations to provide fixed or mobile phone services. Its ventures provide mass-market services, such as directory enquiries and payphones; and enterprise services comprising BT Fleet and BT Redcare. This segment also provides broadband and Ethernet, voice, hosted communication, mobile virtual network operator, managed solutions, machine-to-machine, roaming, and media services. The company's Openreach segment engages in the provision of services over the local access network; and installation and maintenance of fiber and copper communications networks that connect homes and businesses. The company was formerly known as Newgate Telecommunications Limited and changed its name to BT Group plc in September 2001. BT Group plc was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom. Britain PM Theresa May said India will be the first nation to be invited to nominate business executives to the Great Club, a bespoke visa and immigration service. Modi had flagged India's concerns over stringent student visa norms. By Press Trust of India: India on Monday flagged serious concerns to Britain over its stringent visa norms and hike in the threshold limit of annual pay of working professionals to get the travel document, even as Prime Minister Theresa May announced two visa programmes, primarily for Indian corporates. READ | India, Pakistan should hold bilateral talks to resolve Kashmir issue: Theresa May advertisement At the same time, May said her government will consider further improvements to its visa offer to India if speed and volume of returns of Indians with no right to remain in UK is stepped up to which the Indian side conveyed that it will follow international practice and a proper verification process. Also read: India is Britain's most important and closest friend, says Theresa May May, while announcing the UK's offer of two new visa services to improve business travel for Indians to the UK said that under the Registered Traveller Scheme, business travellers will get expedited clearance at the UK border and that India will become the first visa country under the scheme. INDIA FIRST NATION TO NOMINATE BUSINESS EXECUTIVES: MAY Under the second programme, she said India will become the first nation in the world to be invited to nominate business executives to the Great Club, a bespoke visa and immigration service. During the talks with May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged India's concerns over stringent student visa norms which require students to return home after their courses end. The norms has led to a fall in the enrolment of Indian students in British universities by 50 percent. The number of study visas issued to Indian nationals fell from 68,238 in 2010 to 11,864 this year, official UK figures show. Also read: With Brexit a certainty, PM Theresa May moves into 10 Downing Street Earlier, addressing the India-UK Tech Summit with May in attendance, Modi asked Britain to relax student visa rules saying greater mobility of young people must be encouraged while the British Premier said her country has a good system for applications. The contentious issue figured prominently during bilateral talks between Modi and May. --- ENDS --- Quotient Technology Inc. operates as a digital media and promotions technology company that offers power integrated digital media and promotions programs for brands and retailers. The company's Quotient Promotions platform offers digital paperless, print promotion, and cash back rebates, including Coupons.com website and mobile applications; brand and retailer websites and mobile applications; and third-party publishing websites and mobile applications. It also provides Quotient Retailer Promotions Platform that uses consumer data and insights to distribute personalized and targeted media and promotions for retailers of grocery, drug, mass merchant, dollar, club, and convenience merchandise; and Quotient Media Platform, which provides targeted advertising solutions that enables brands to reach shoppers before, during, and after their shopping cycles with digital media campaigns. It also provides Quotient Retailer Performance Media Platform that uses retailer's consumer data to drive sales and enhances the shopper experience; Quotient Analytics provides campaign analytics and measured sales results to brands and retailers; Quotient Consumer Properties; and Quotient Retailer Media Services. It serves approximately 900 consumer packed goods, representing approximately 2,500 brands, including various food, beverage, personal care, and household product manufacturers; retail partners representing various classes of trade, such as grocery retailers, drug, mass merchant, dollar, club, and convenience merchandise channels; and consumers visiting its websites, mobile properties, and social channels. The company was formerly known as Coupons.com Incorporated and changed its name to Quotient Technology Inc. in October 2015. Quotient Technology Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. Alibaba Group Holding Limited is an eCommerce and Internet technology giant headquartered in the People's Republic of China. Its core platform, Alibaba.com, is the worlds 3rd largest eCommerce platform by sales. The company, through its vast network of subsidiary companies, provides the infrastructure and marketing to help merchants of all sizes develop their brands and to connect with customers in the People's Republic of China and internationally. The company also aids other businesses with a vast array of digital and logistical solutions with a reach that spans the globe. Alibaba was co-founded by Jack Ma in 1999 when it became clear the Internet and digitization were the future of commerce. Mr. Ma is a billionaire investor, businessman, and philanthropist who believes in an open and free-market economy. The company went public in September 2014 with an IPO on the NYSE. The IPO set a record with its valuation of $25 billion and the company is now worth more than $225 billion and ranked among the 10 most valuable companies by market cap. Alibaba is also ranked 5th largest globally in regards to its work in AI, and it owns the world's largest B2B, B2C, and C2C eCommerce portals. In 2022, Alibabas Singles Day event brought in $139 billion to set a new one-day record. The principal purpose of Alibaba Group Holding Limited is to open the Chinese market and connect it to the world. The company operates through seven segments including China Commerce, International Commerce, Local Consumer Services, Cainiao, Cloud, Digital Media and Entertainment, and Innovation Initiatives and Others. The companys eCommerce platforms include Taobao Marketplace, Tmall, Alimama, 1688.com, Alibaba.com, Aliexpress, Lazada, Trendyol, and Daraz. Taobao Marketplace is a social-media eCommerce platform while Alimama is a monetization platform for entrepreneurs. 1688.com and Alibaba.com are wholesale marketplaces where individuals and businesses can connect with bulk items and the remainder are eCommerce retail platforms and search engines targeting specific markets. In addition, the company also operated a retail chain called Freshippo and Tmall Global which is an import platform for eCommerce. Other digital services provided by Alibaba include Taoxianda, which is a digital integration service for FMCG goods and grocery retailers, and Cainiao Network which is a logistical services platform complemented by Ele.me, a delivery and services platform. Alibaba also supports the infrastructure of the Internet with a range of products and services that include computing, storage, network, security, database, big data, and IoT connectivity. This segment includes a suite of cloud-based services such as Alibaba Pictures and content platforms that provide streaming media. The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. manufactures, markets, and sells skin care, makeup, fragrance, and hair care products worldwide. It offers a range of skin care products, including moisturizers, serums, cleansers, toners, body care, exfoliators, acne care and oil correctors, facial masks, cleansing devices, and sun care products; and makeup products, such as lipsticks, lip glosses, mascaras, foundations, eyeshadows, nail polishes, and powders, as well as compacts, brushes, and other makeup tools. The company also provides fragrance products in various forms comprising eau de parfum sprays and colognes, as well as lotions, powders, creams, candles, and soaps; and hair care products that include shampoos, conditioners, styling products, treatment, finishing sprays, and hair color products, as well as sells ancillary products and services. It offers its products under the Estee Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Lab Series, Origins, MAC, Bobbi Brown, La Mer, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Darphin, Smashbox, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle, GLAMGLOW, Kilian Paris, Too Faced, Dr. Jart+, DECIEM, and The Ordinary brands. The company sells its products through department stores, specialty-multi retailers, upscale perfumeries and pharmacies, and salons and spas; freestanding stores; its own and authorized retailer websites; third-party online malls; stores in airports; and duty-free shops. The Estee Lauder Companies Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in New York, New York. 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. Amid the cross-border tension, this couple from Karachi and Jodhpur takes its vows with the help of media and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. By India Today Web Desk: Team Groom and Team Bride captured the common rhythm and beats of India and Pakistan as tensions soured along the borders of the arch-rival neighbours. Jodhpur's Naresh Tewani married Karachi's Priya Bachchani in an elegant wedding at a Rajasthani resort on Monday. Bollywood songs, bhangra drumbeats and Sindhi bridal fashion encapsulated the ubiquitous cultural bonds of the two nations. advertisement Bachchani's shimmering jhumar, the intricate embroidery and luxurious finery of her dark-red traditional wedding dress served as an exquisite statement on ethnicity. And so did her groom's outfit as they circled the sacred fire for their wedding vows. Guests from both sides were thankful to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, whose generous mediation had helped the bride and her family secure Indian visas for the November 7 event. "This matrimony should bring India and Pakistan together," cheered Vanshika, a guest from Indore. "Thank you, Sushma Swaraj. Thank you India for helping this wedding take place as scheduled." HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED Hostilities between the two countries, especially after the Uri terror attack and India's surgical strikes on PoK, had jeopardized this trans-national family event. The couple were engaged three years ago. But when the bride and her family received no response from the Indian mission in Pakistan about their visa for the Nov 7 wedding, Tewani turned to Twitter. In a post on Oct 5, the groom requested Swaraj to help his fiancee's family get their visas. The minister responded promptly. "Pl do not worry. We will issue the visa," she tweeted back. Finally, Bachchani and 35 of her family members arrived in Jodhpur on Sunday. "We are thankful to the minister," said the groom. He also praised the media for its role. "It's because of the support of all of you from the media that this wedding could take place on its fixed date," smiled Tewani. An aunt of the bride echoed his views. "It's all because of media support," remarked Kiran Bachchani. --- ENDS --- By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 7 (PTI) India and Sri Lanka need to expeditiously implement some of the large developmental projects that have been under discussion on the ground, President Pranab Mukherjee has said. Mukherjee said this during a meeting with his Lankan counterpart Maithripala Sirisena who called on him yesterday. According to a Rashtrapati Bhawan spokesman, the President said Indian private sector companies were keen to be partners in Sri Lankas infrastructure projects. advertisement Welcoming the Sri Lankan President to India, the President said India believes its growth is linked to the prosperity of its neighbourhood. "India would like to see Sri Lanka utilise the economic growth in India to catalyze its own economic development. This is also Indias message to other partners in BIMSTEC," he said. BIMSTEC -- Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation was formed in 1997 to promote technological and economic cooperation among south Asian and south east Asian countries along the coast of the Bay of Bengal. Besides India, other members of the group are Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. The spokesman said the Sri Lankan President warmly reciprocated the sentiments and said he was happy that India ?Sri Lanka relations have strengthened and a number of high level contacts taken place. He expressed appreciation for the assistance provided by India in various sectors and said his national unity government was convinced of the need to enhance economic and political ties. PTI SKL IKA --- ENDS --- India's imports from China rose by more than 7 per cent in October despite a campaign to boycott Chinese goods, while exports to China fell by 11 per cent, widening the trade deficit to a record $48 billion. By Ananth Krishnan: India's imports from China rose by more than 7 per cent in October despite a campaign to boycott Chinese goods, while exports to China fell by 11 per cent, widening the trade deficit to a record $48 billion. Overall trade fell 3.7 per cent largely on account of a steep decline in India's exports to China, largely comprising commodities, by as much as 11.5 per cent, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said in Beijing. advertisement India's imports from China rose by 7.2 per cent in Yuan terms in October according to GAC data, despite a campaign to boycott Chinese goods, underlining the small contribution of low-end cheap goods to the basket of overall imports. India continues to import large amounts of machinery and power and telecom equipment from China, which makes up a large chunk of imports, even if boycott campaigns have tended to focus on the low-end "Made in China" goods that are pervasive in markets. Bilateral trade after 10 months this year reached 379 billion Yuan or $57.82 billion, of which India's exports to China only accounted for 60 billion or $9 billion, according to new data released on Tuesday by China's General Administration of Customs. Tuesday's figures suggest trade this year is likely to fall from 2015, when two-way trade reached $71.63 billion. India's trade deficit in 2015 reached a record $45 billion. While overall trade is down, the trade deficit has already surpassed last year's figure. After 10 months of this year, the deficit stood at $48.56 billion out of two-way trade of around $58 billion. While Chinese exports to India rose, China's overall exports, the customs administration said, fell by 3.2 per cent in October in Yuan terms, while imports rose by 3.2 per cent. Trade with the EU, China's biggest trade partner, was up 2.3 per cent, while that with its second largest partner, the U.S., was down by 3.2 per cent. Exports of machinery and electronics were down in October, while imports of ores and crude oil had risen, the customs administration said. --- ENDS --- By PTI: Nagpur, Nov 8 (PTI) Indian Society of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (ISSLUP) and National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS & LUP), are jointly organising an international conference on Integrated Land Use Planning for Smart Agriculture in the city between November 10 and 13. During the conference, issues related to emerging techniques in land resource management, land degradation processes and remedial measures, land use dynamics, climate resilient agriculture and land use policy to meet the challenges of food and human health security, energy security, water security, climate change, biodiversity and eco-system services, would be discussed, a release said. advertisement Dr David J Bergvinson, Director General, ICRISAT, Hyderabad will be the Chief Guest and Prof Takashi Kosaki, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan and President Elect, International Union of Soil Science, and Dr S K Chaudhari, Assistant Director General (S&WM), ICAR, New Delhi, will be the guests of honour at the inaugural ceremony. Representatives of World Bank, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Deutsche Gesellschaft fAr Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI), Natural Resource Management Centre, Sri Lanka, will attend the conference. The event is sponsored by ICAR, World Bank, WDD, Karnataka (Sujala-3 Project), NABARD, ICRISAT, DST, ISRO. During the event there will be three memorial lectures. Besides, eight technical sessions dealing with the integrated land resource management and land use planning in view of climate change will also be held. About 350 participants are expected to attend the conference and there will be in-depth discussion on how to manage natural resources for sustainable productivity, the release added. PTI JOE NP AMS SRE --- ENDS --- China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page In a bid to save a passenger's life, the pilots decided to land the aircraft at the nearest possible runway. By Anindya Banerjee: At a time when the tension between India and Pakistan is at its peak, an emergency landing in Pakistan will the last thing on the mind of any pilot operating an Indian flight. A Jet Airways flight today made an emergency landing in Pakistan after a passenger complained of a serious health problem. NEAREST RUNWAY WAS IN KARACHI advertisement The Jet Airways flight 9W 202 took off at 12.05 am. Soon after, a passenger complained of a serious health problem. The pilots had two choices: turn back and head towards the New Delhi airport or land at the nearest runway and save crucial time. ALSO WATCH ALSO READ: Newark-bound Air India flight makes emergency landing in Kazakhstan The standard operating procedure says that the pilot must land the aircraft at the nearest runway. In this case, it was Karachi, Pakistan. The pilots decided to take the aircraft to Karachi airport. The aircraft touched down at the Karachi airport runway at 1.57 am. The Karachi Air Traffic Control (ATC) extended all possible help as per the international obligation and informed the Delhi ATC. ALSO READ: Infant aboard Indigo flight dies despite emergency landing in Raipur PASSENGER NO MORE Despite the pilots trying their best, the passenger was declared dead at the hospital. In the last few weeks, there has been no engagement with Pakistan on plying commercial flights to and from India. Recently, many Indian airlines voluntarily stopped flying over the Pakistani airspace while flying to the Gulf region. ALSO READ: Jet Airways flight makes precautionary landing at Delhi's IGI airport ALSO READ: Pasighat airfield in Arunachal near China border now operational, Sukhoi makes first landing ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- Russia and China outline expanded cooperation 08 November 2016 Share Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister of Russia, and Li Keqiang, premier of China's State Council, today made a joint statement on the development of strategic cooperation between the two countries in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom said the statement "is intended to facilitate implementation" of its major projects in China. "In particular, the heads of government support collaborative construction of two new reactors of Russian design at the Tianwan nuclear power plant site and aim to prepare quickly the signing of an intergovernmental protocol on the project and will contribute to the conclusion of the relevant contracts," Rosatom said. "In addition, construction of the reactors at new sites in China is planned, while cooperation in floating nuclear power plants and fast breeder reactors, which are Generation IV technology, will be developed," it added. Russian-Chinese cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy is based on "many years of experience of effective interaction", Rosatom said. In 2007, the first two units of Tianwan nuclear power plant were was put into operation, which according to the International Atomic Energy Agency is one of the safest nuclear power plants in the world, it said. The two countries are currently working on the second phase of the Tianwan site and the new units are to be brought on line in 2018, it said. In 2011, an experimental fast reactor with sodium coolant was launched with the participation of Russian specialists, Rosatom noted. In the same year and ahead of schedule, the fourth and last in a series of gas centrifuge plants - built in the framework of a Russian-Chinese agreement of 1992 was put into operation. At the end of July 2014, Rosatom subsidiary Rusatom Overseas and China's CNNC New Energy signed a memorandum on the construction of a floating nuclear power plant, which China plans to use for the island territories and deposits for the production of hydrocarbons, the Russian corporation said. In addition, the two countries are cooperating in the production of isotopes in China. Li, who arrived in St Petersburg on 6 November for a four-day official visit, met Medvedev yesterday and Russian President Vladimir Putin today. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics More than nine-tenths of the population in Madagascar is Malagasy, comprising of about 20 ethnic groups and Merina is the dominant group. All these ethnic groups have different cultures, norms, and religious beliefs. The cultural and religious background of the various tribes rotates around the worship of ancestors and sees them as intermediaries between God and the living. It is hard to declare strict regional boundaries for each tribal group as they keep moving and interacting with each other. Ethnic Groups Of Madagascar Merina They are people of dominant highlands and they form 26% of the whole population of Madagascar. They emerged as a politically dominant group in the course of the 17th to the 18th century. They captured non-Merinas and forced them into slavery, and later replaced them with imported slaves from East Africa by 1850. The British missionaries converted the Merina upper-class members to Protestants in the 19th century. Dominion of Merina Kingdom came to an end with the first Franco-Hora War of 1883-1885, and Merina language became the national language. Merina had three different classes comprised of the Andriana who are nobles, the Horas who are free men, and the Andero who were slaves. Their stable food is rice and they circumcise boys after seven years where relatives request for blessing and protection from ancestors. They bury their dead in family tombs located in ancestral villages. Betsimisaraka They are the inhabitants of east central and northern coast of Madagascar and constitute 15% of the total population. They speak a dialect of Malagasy. Moreover, they are inseparable multitudes where they live along the narrow eastern coastal strip thus were able to interact with African Bantu and Asians of astroasian descent. The Betsimisaraka kingdom was founded in early 18th century by Ratsimilao which united various chiefdoms along 400 miles. The kingdom collapsed after the death of the dynasty's third ruler in 1791. They then fell under the rule of the expanding Merina to the West until the advent of colonial rule in 1890s. They are historically reputed as skilled sailors and pirates. They believe in sorcery and a wide range of supernatural forces involving respect for ancestors, spirit possession, ritual sacrifice of zebu and patriarchal social structure. They practice reburial (famadihana) and circumcision (sambatra). Most taboos and folktales revolve around lemurs and crocodiles. Betsileo They began as an administrative subdivision in the 19th century. They were a highland ethnic group and are the third largest group of the population of Madagascar constituting 12% of the total population. Betsileo means 'invincible.' They were once occupants of the southern part of Madagascar plateau and organized into kingdoms of Fandriana, Fisakana, Manandriana, Isandra which existed independently. Randama conquered and reorganized the kingdoms turning most of them into slaves and trading others to the Europeans. They claim a common heritage with Antemoro from the east coast. They live in huts made of wood and some vegetative fiber which have changed to mud and bricks. They believed in diviners and astrologists who set dates for ceremonies and witch doctors who manipulate the magic. Tsimihety Their settlement in Madagascar dates back to the 16th century, and they descend from immigrants from the east coast villages of Betsimisaraka who fled the Merina rule. When a Tsimihety dies and is far from their homeland, they bury him in the land of death and later exhume the body and bring it to their native land, put it in a new coffin and burn the old one. Their music is called Malesa; they dance in an easy way with a man behind a woman. Unlike other tribes the Tsimihety have their unique marriage customs and traditional music. They rarely recognize authority. The Tsimihety are animists, believing in a supreme being who presides over the spirit world inhabited by their ancestors, and perform rituals, offerings and adhere to a strict system of taboos. Historical Demographics Of Madagascar To fully understand the character of Madagascar's population and their historical development, we need to appreciate the inhabitant's common characteristics including language and kinship structure, as well as the divisions based on geographical regions. Among other ethnic groups that exist in Madagascar is Sahara and antandroy though they form the smaller percentages of the total population. These ethnic divisions correspond with the major geographical divisions of the island. Within these regions, the people have certain cultural similarities accentuated by the natural environment. Spain has been described by some historians and explorers as one big mountain range, with 24% of the country being above 1,000 meters above sea level, and the other 76% situated between 500 and 1,000 meters. The country has an average elevation of 660 meters above mean sea level, the second highest in Europe after Switzerland. Some of the mountain ranges in Spain include the Pyrenees, the Sierra Nevada, the Cordillera Cantabria, the Sistema Iberico, the Cordillera Betica, the Sierra de Cuenca, and the Montes de Toledo. The mountains in Spain play a significant role in promoting tourism and nature conservation. Most of the mountains in the country are within the protected areas. The highest mountains in Spain are detailed below. Teide Mount Teide is a 12,195-feet-tall volcano located in the Canary Islands of Spain. It measures 24,600 feet from its base on the ocean floor making it the worlds thirds highest volcano on a volcanic ocean island after Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, two volcanoes in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Mount Teide is an active volcano with the recent eruption taking place in 1909 while the summit has smaller but active fumaroles emitting hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide. The mountain and its surrounding form part of the Teide National Park which was listed UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. According to the tourism statistics, Mount Teide is the most visited natural site in Spain while the national park is the most visited in Europe. The Gauche believed that the mountain was sacred and that it held up the sky. The lava flow from the flanks of Teide forms nutrient-rich soil which supports over 168 species of plants. Mulhacen Mulhacen is the highest mountain of the Iberian Peninsula and on the Spanish mainland at a height of 11,411 feet. The mountain forms part of the Sierra Nevada Range, and it was named after Muley Hacen, the Muslim King of Granada in the 15th Century. Mount Mulhacen is the worlds 64th most prominent mountain, Europes highest peak outside the Alps and Caucasian Mountains, and the third most topographically prominent peak in Western Europe. Mulhacen is a beautiful mountain and very easy to climb even for average climbers. The mountain can be climbed in a day if one uses the route through the Capileira or Trevelez villages. The mountain refuge at Poqueira and the shelters at Caldera can offer accommodation for the climbers who are staying overnight. Aneto Aneto is the third highest mountain in Spain and the highest in both Aragon and the Pyrenees with a height of 11,165 feet. The mountain is located in the Spanish Province of Huesca, and it also forms part of the Maladeta Massif. Mount Aneto forms part if the Posets-Maladeta National Park. It is characterized by the Paleozoic terrain of Mesozoic material with the northern side holding the largest glacier in the Pyrenees. Due to global warming, the amount of glacier has been significantly reduced. The mountain is also estimated to have lost more than half of its surface in the last 100 year, and that it may disappear by 20150. Veleta Veleta is translated to mean "weather vane", and it is the second highest peak in the Sierra Nevada Range at an elevation of 11,145 feet. It is visible from the city of Granada. The final stretch of its summit projects towards the south, appearing akin to a ships bow with rock drops in all directions. The northern slopes house the Sierra Nevada Ski Station. The mountain has an access road which is also the highest paved road in Europe but is no longer used by the public. The United Kingdom has several major rivers passing through its cities, towns, and rural landscapes. Most of these rivers drain watersheds from these areas and join several estuaries which empty into the North Sea, Irish Sea, Bristol Channel, and the English Channel. Rivers play important roles in the UK including transportation of human and goods across cities and towns, major sources of water for households and industries, a source of hydroelectric power, and an important habitat for some of the UKs indigenous wildlife. The rivers are also famous for the sporting activities including canoeing, boat racing, and sailing. The longest rivers in Great Britain are looked at below. Longest Rivers in the United Kingdom Severn The Severn River is the longest river in the United Kingdom, covering a distance of 220 miles. The river rises to an altitude of 2,000 feet on Plynlimon and flows through Shropshire, Powys, and Worcestershire. The river discharges at 107 cubic meters per second at Apperley into the Bristol Channel which finally discharges into the Celtic Sea. River Severn has a drainage basin area of 4,400 square miles while the major tributaries include Vyrnwy, Stour, and Teme. The river has several bridges and rails constructed along its path which are efficient means of transport. River Severn is an important feeding ground for wader and spot ladybird. River Severn has claimed up to 300 lives while the 2007 flooding destroyed properties worth thousands of dollars in the area of Tewkesbury. Thames The Thames River is Englands second longest river, and the United Kingdoms second longest as well, after the Severn with a length of 215 miles. It flows through Southern England passing through several cities including London, Reading, Windsor, Oxford, and Henley-on-Thames. The Thames drains the entire of Greater London and flows into the North Sea via the Thames Estuary. It has its source at Themes Head and Seven Spring. The river contains around 80 islands including the large estuary marshlands and small islets covered with trees. Several wildlife species including birds, fish, and aquatic mammals inhabit the River Themes. Tourists flock the river for sightseeing tours and boat ride. The river also has many bridges including the Swinford Bridge, Folly Bridge, and London Bridge which facilitate crossing from one side to another. Trent The River Trent is the United Kingdoms third longest river with a total length of 185 miles. It has its source at Staffordshire and drains parts of the Midlands and eastern Birmingham. The river goes through Nottingham, Burton upon Trent, and Stock-on-Trent and joins River Ouse at Trent Falls forming Humber Estuary that finally empties its waters into the North Sea. It is known for periodic flooding, especially after storms and snow melt sometimes making the river change its course. River Trent provides habitat for some birds species including wading birds and wildfowl. The river is used for recreation with several activities offered on the water and the river banks including rowing, sailing, and canoeing among several water sports. Conservation of Rivers in the United Kingdom Rivers in the United Kingdom have long been under intense pressures from pollution, climate change, water extraction, and other detrimental human activities. Due to these negative factors, several conservation measures have been put in place to safeguard the rivers. These measures include the UK Rivers Network which aims to mobilize the communities to identify with the rivers and take part in the conservation efforts. Companies have also been challenged to treat and safely dispose waste away from water bodies. Italys Prime Minister is the countrys Head of Government, leading both the Parliament and the Cabinet at the forefront of national politics. The institution of Prime Minister in the Republic of Italy was established in June 1946, when a national referendum established the Democratic Republic in place of the Monarchy. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President and advises the President on the composition of the cabinet. The Prime Minister is mandated by the constitution to direct and control the activities of the ministers. The Prime Minister acts as a mediator between political parties and works to sustain unity in the government. Italy has had many prime ministers since the office was established in 1946, some of which have served in the office for a number of times. The current prime minister is Matteo Renzi, who took office in 2014. Alcide De Gasperi Alcide De Gasperi was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Italy following World War II, serving in the role from 1946 until 1953. He was born on April 3, 1881, in Trentino which was then part of Austria-Hungary, Alcide studied philosophy and literature at the University of Vienna. He had already become involved in Catholic organizations in school and became editor of a magazine called La Voce Cattolica di Trento. Alcide became an MP in the Austrian Parliament in 1911, and he lobbied for Trents unification with Italy during World War I. After the war, the then citizen of Italy, Alcide was one of the founders of the Italian Popular Party. He became a Deputy in the Italian Parliament but was then imprisoned for opposing the fascist regime. After his release in 1929, he distanced himself from politics until 1943 when he helped establish the Christian Democracy Party. He was Prime Minister in eight successive administrations throughout his term. He is credited with guiding Italys economic and moral reconstruction in the aftermath of World War II. He was one of the founding members of the European Union and signed treaties with the victors of the World War II. He died on August 19, 1954, in Trentino, Italy. Giuseppe Pella Giuseppe Pella succeeded Alcide De Gasperi as Prime Minister, a position he held from 1953 until 1954. He was born on April 18, 1902, in Valdengo, Giuseppe graduated with Economics and Commerce and became involved with the Christian Democracy. He held several government positions, namely the undersecretary of Finance, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Treasure. He was elected as Prime Minister on August 17, 1953, and he was also the Minister of Budget and the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs. He caused diplomatic tensions with Yugoslavia after requesting for the authorization to fly the Italian Flag in the Trieste City Hall. He resigned from the position on January 12, 1954, and held his last governmental post in 1972 as Minister of Finance. He was Senator for life until his death in 1981 in Rome, Italy. Amintore Fanfani Amintore Fanfani succeeded Giuseppe Pella and served for several different terms. Specifically, he was in the office in 1954, 1958-1959, 1960-1963, 1982-1983, and finally again in 1987. He was born on February 6, 1908, in Tuscany, Amintore graduated with economics and business degree from the Catholic University of Milan in 1932. He became a professor of economic history and in 1946 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly. He joined the Chamber of Deputies in 1948. He then served in various ministerial posts such as Minister of Labor, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of the Interior. He was elected as Prime Minister and Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Party in 1954. He initiated numerous reform policies and gained Italys admission to the United Nations Security Council. He was one of the few Italian statesmen to admit that his support of the fascist regime had been wrong. He died on November 20, 1999, in Rome, Italy. Mario Scelba Mario Scelba served as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Italy from 1954 until 1955. He was born on September 5, 1901, in Sicily. Mario graduated from the University of Rome, having studied Law. He started his political career in the Popular Party and after the fall of the Fascist regime actively participated in the newly formed Christian Democracy as a chief counselor from 1944. After his election to the Constituent Assembly in 1946, Mario held a succession of government posts such as the Minister of Post and Telecommunications and Minister of the Interior. As Minister of the Interior, Mario ruled with an iron fist and discouraged labor unions and communists. During his term as Prime Minister, his achievements were largely overshadowed by the Portella Della Ginestra massacre and the Montesi Affair. He tightened relations with the US, solved long time war issues such as the recovery of Trieste and ratified the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947. Mario ceased to be Prime Minister in 1955 and served in other government posts before his death on October 29, 1991, in Rome, Italy. Delhi L-G Najeeb Jung today said that missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed was reportedly seen in Darbhanga town of Bihar today. By Atir Khan: Delhi Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) Najeeb Jung has said according to some information, missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed was seen in Darbhanga town of Bihar today. A squad of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been sent to trace him, he said. On Delhi smog, the L-G said the Delhi Police has been given powers to implement ban on construction activities. Those who violate will be fined heavily, he added. advertisement NAJEEB AHMED Najeeb Jung said he does not have a magic wand (to trace missing Najeeb Ahmed). "But today there was information that Najeeb was seen in Dharbanga. An SIT squad has been sent there?," he said. The L-G said there will be no let up in tracing? Najeeb who has been missing since October 15. He met Delhi Police Commissioner Alok Verma today in this regard, he said. Also read: Missing JNU student row: Najeeb's mother among 200 detained by Delhi Police over protests Najeeb Jung informed that the Delhi Police had launched one of the largest search operations. Over 200 police teams have been fanned out in different parts of the country, he said. The L-G said efforts have been made to contact Najeeb Ahmed's friends and relatives. There were pictures of some dargahs in his wallets. All dargahs have been searched, he said. Jung also spoke of the alleged "dragging" of Najeeb Ahmed's mother during a protest in the capital. He said there was inevitability about the treatment her mother got because of the violation of Section 144 of IPC. "Najeeb's mother wasn't willing to move away from the road. It is unfortunate she had to be removed from the road in that manner. Such incidents should be avoided," he said. Also read: JNU siege ends, but protest to continue over missing student; VC calls students 'relentless, adamant' DELHI SMOG Talking about himself, Najeeb Jung said the smog had not affected him much. "I walk and jog everyday," he said. The L-G said he has taken immediate steps. Delhi Police has been given powers to prosecute ?people doing construction. A fine of Rs five lakh will be imposed against those found to be violating the directions. It is possible that construction work has not stopped but he will ensure that it is stopped within 24 hours, he said. Also read: What caused Delhi smog? No one knows as Kejriwal, Centre, scientists differ He agreed with Supreme Court observation that there should be no politics over this issue. Najeeb Jung was of the opinion that there should be a common minimum programme between the Centre and State to ameliorate the pollution problem. The Delhi Government should work on the IIT plan to reduce pollution, he said. advertisement Also read: Delhi smog: Only 12 pollution control officers for 550 checking centres across Capital --- ENDS --- The lion is a big cat belonging to the Panthera genus and family Felidae. The lion is the second largest cat species in the world after the tiger. Currently, wild lions are found in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa and India. Prior to 2017, the two main types of lions were thought to be African lions and Asian lions. The former was believed to be a group of seven extant lion subspecies inhabiting the African continent while the latter was considered to be a single subspecies of lion living in Asia. However, today two subspecies of lions are recognized: P.I. leo, which consists of the Asiatic, West African, Central African, and Barbary lions. P.I. melanochaita, which consists of Southern African lions including the Cape lion and the East lion. By this new classification, the same species of lion occupies Asia and Northern/Central Africa, and the same species occupies Southern and Eastern Africa. Strangely, unlike other cat species, lions are highly social in nature and live in large groups called a pride consisting of several females, their offsprings, and a few adult males. Lions tend to prefer savanna and grassland habitats but are also found in forests and bush. Lions are expert predators and scavengers and mainly nocturnal by nature. Wild lions survive for about 10 to 14 years while captive ones survive as long as 20 years. Below is an overview of some of the lion populations living in the world. 8. Barbary Lion (P.I. leo) The barbary lions (Panthera leo leo) is also known as the North African lion. This lion subspecies previously occurred in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. Currently, it is extinct in the wild due to indiscriminate hunting. The last known wild Barbary lion was killed in 1920 in Morocco. Today, some lions kept in captivity are believed to be descendants of the wild Barbary lions, especially those residing in the Rabat Zoo. The Barbary lion is one of the largest subspecies of lion and individuals with lengths ranging between 9.8 feet and 10.8 feet, and weights of over 200 kg have been previously reported. 7. West African Lion (P.I. Leo) The critically endangered West African lion or the Senegal lion (Panthera leo senegalensis) inhabits western Africa from the Central African Republic to Senegal. The West African lion is the smallest among the sub-Saharan African lions. Only about 1,800 individuals remain as small and fragmented populations in West Africa. 6. Southwest African Lion (P.I. melanochaita) The Katanga lion or the Southwest African lion (Panthera leo bleyenberghi) is found in southwestern Africa in the countries of Angola, Zaire, western Zambia and Zimbabwe, Namibia, and northern Botswana. These lions are one of the largest among the all the types of lions. Males attain lengths between 8.2 feet and 10.2 feet while females have a length between 7.5 feet and 8.7 feet. Males weigh around 140242 kg while females weigh about 105170 kg. The Katanga lions have a lighter colored manes than other lion subspecies. 5. Masai Lion (P.I. melanochaita) The East African lion or the Masai lion (Panthera leo nubica) is found in East Africa where it occurs in the countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Tanzania. The Masai lions have less curved backs and longer legs than other subspecies of lion. Moderate tufts of hair are present in the knee joints of males. The manes of the Masai lion appear to be combed backwards, and older males have fuller manes than the younger ones. Male Masai lions living in highlands above 2,600 feet, and have heavier manes than those living in the lowland areas. Male Masai lions attain a length between 8.2 feet and 9.8 feet. Lionesses are smaller with length ranging from 7.5 feet to 8.5 feet. 4. Transvaal Lion (P.I. melanochaita) The Southeast African lion (Panthera leo krugeri) , also known as the Kalahari lion or the Transvaal lion is found in the southern parts of Africa with significant populations in South Africas Kruger National Park and Swazilands Hlane Royal National Park. Most of the males of this subspecies have a black, well-developed mane. The length of males ranges between 8.5 feet and 10.5 feet while females attain a length between 7.7 feet and 9.0 feet. Male Kalahari lions have a weight of about 150250 kg while females are 110182 kg in weight. 3. Ethiopian Lion (P.I. melanochaita) The Ethiopian lion or the Abyssinian lion or the Addis Ababa lion (Panthera leo roosevelti) is a type of lion that though originally considered to be the East African lion was classified as a separate subspecies after phenotypic and genotypic analysis on lions kept in captivity in the Addis Ababa's zoo. Ethiopian lions have darker manes and smaller bodies compared to other lion subspecies, but this could also be the result of living in captivity. 2. Asiatic Lion (P.I. leo) The Asiatic lion or the Indian lion (Panthera leo persica) though once widespread from Turkey across Southwest Asia to the Indian subcontinent, is currently confined to the Gir National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in the Indian state of Gujarat. Only about 523 of this type of lion remain in this forest. The Asiatic lion is smaller than the largest of the African lions but is similar in size to the Central African lion. The weight of adult male Asiatic lions ranges between 160 kg and 190 kg while that of females ranges from 110 kg to 120 kg. A longitudinal fold of skin running along the belly is the striking morphological feature that helps in the identification of the Asiatic lion. The fur color of the Asiatic lion ranges from ruddy-tawny, buffish-gray or sandy to heavily speckled with black. The lions have a moderate mane growth unlike the African subspecies, and their ears are always visible. The Asiatic lions also exhibit less genetic variation than the African subspecies. These lions are classified as endangered by the IUCN. 1. Endangered Lions All the types of lions mentioned above are threatened to variable extents. Hunting, especially unregulated trophy hunting practices are responsible for the decline of the African subspecies of lions. During trophy hunting (a practice where lions are hunted, and their body parts like the head are offered as a trophy to the hunter) the dominant male lion of the pride is often targeted for hunting since it is the largest and most valuable trophy to the hunters. The death of the dominant male disturbs the structure of the pride. Males from outside now invade the pride and kill off the progeny of former males. Thus, lion cubs are lost, and this causes a lion population decline. Besides hunting, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation also threaten the survival of all types of lions of the world. Sadly, the threats continue to exist despite the implementation of large-scale conservation efforts. There is a greater need to create awareness about the need to save the lions among the public of the countries inhabited by the lions in order to save this big cat species. Many journalists protested outside the Chennai Commissioner's office on Tuesday against police brutality on a photographer of a daily. By Pramod Madhav: Close to a hundred journalists from various media organisations gathered at the Chennai Commissioner's office to protest against police brutality on a photographer of a daily on Tuesday. Sada, a photographer for a daily was stopped by cops for driving with a third passenger on his motorbike. As Sada was apologising, another biker rammed into his motorbike's silencer. advertisement Before Sada could react, Balamurugan, Sub-Inspector of MKB Nagar, slapped him for not getting off the bike. When Sada protested, the cop pushed him into an auto-rickshaw and took him to the police station. Also read: Thiruvananthapuram: 5 lawyers arrested for attacking journalists SADA ASSAULTED REPEATEDLY Sada was repeatedly assaulted in the police station as well. Several complaints have been reported against Balamurugan's brutal behaviour. Sada was admitted to the Stanley hospital for treatment. Unable to meet the Commissioner, reporters, video journalists and photo journalists gathered in front of Commissioner's office and staged a sit-in protest to condemn the attack. Also read: Chennai: Journalists protest against police brutality on photographer Authorities tried to amicably solve the issue and sought 4 days' time to take action against the officer. --- ENDS --- Over 2000 Emergency Food Parcels Given to Wrexham Residents in Six Month Period This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Nov 8th, 2016 Over 2000 residents across Wrexham required emergency food supplies in the past six months hundreds of which were children. Figures released today by the Trussell Trust, the antipoverty charity show that between 1st April 2016 and 30th September 2016 a total of 2,046 emergency food parcels were handed out in Wrexham. Of these 1,364 were given to adults and a further 682 to local children. Overall across Wales foodbank usage remains high with 41,384 people across the country requiring three day emergency food supplies within the six month period. This is compared to 39,245 during the same period in 2015. Trussell Trust say that in Wales benefit delays and changes have been the biggest reasons for foodbank use, accounting for forty-five per cent of referrals to Trussell Trust foodbanks (17% benefit delay; 28.3% benefit changes). Low income was the second largest cause of a crisis, accounting for nearly one in four of all referrals (25 per cent) to a Trussell Trust foodbank, driven by problems such as low pay, insecure work or rising costs. In response the charity is calling for a hotline to each foodbanks local Job Centre Plus to provide support for people referred to foodbanks because of problems with a welfare claim and may prevent them from needing the foodbank again Tony Graham, Foodbank Network Manager for Wales at The Trussell Trust, said: As the number of emergency food parcels provided to people in Wales by foodbanks rises once again, its clear that more can be done to get people back on their feet faster. Many foodbanks now host independent welfare advisers but they cannot solve all the issues. To stop hunger in Wales we must make sure the welfare system works fairly and compassionately, stopping people getting to a point where they have no money to eat. It feels like we could be seeing a new era at the DWP with a consultation on Work Capability Assessments and willingness to engage in dialogue with charities working on the front line. A telephone hotline could build on this and go a long way to improving foodbanks ability to help get people out of a crisis faster. In April 2016 Wrexham.com met with First Minister Carwyn Jones to speak about the increased foodbank usage in Wales. At the time the First Minister noted that the key to tackling poverty is to up skill people and remove the hurdles in getting people back to work . The WikiLeaks' founder welcomed the news and said this will give him a chance to clear his name. By Indo-Asian News Service: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned on November 14 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London over an allegation of rape, Sweden's public prosecutor's office has confirmed. Assange, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, welcomed the news through his lawyer, saying he was looking forward to the "chance to clear his name", the Guardian reported. advertisement DNA SAMPLE MAY BE TAKEN The Swedish authorities said one of the prosecutors on the case, Ingrid Isgren, as well as a Swedish police inspector, would also attend the questioning next week and report the findings to Sweden. ALSO READ: Julian Assange claims his next release will ensure Hillary Clinton is arrested "A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it," the prosecutor's office said. The whistleblower sought refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London in June 2012, fleeing allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden dating back to 2010. Assange, 45, denies the claims. ALSO READ: FBI reopens investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server A CHANCE TO CLEAR NAME The Australian national claims he refused to travel to Sweden for questioning because he feared extradition to the US over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010," Assange's lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name. We hope the investigation will be closed then." WikiLeaks has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks with the damaging leak of tens of thousands of e-mails from the US Democratic party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign. ALSO READ: Hillary takes on US FBI director in latest email flap ALSO READ: Julian Assange turns 45: 15 facts about the whistle-blower ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- Despite longstanding and increasingly vocal opposition to the environmentally destructive and highly speculative Muskrat Falls hydro-electric dam project, the Newfoundland and Labrador government-owned Nalcor began flooding the reservoir for the dam last weekend. Dwight Ball, the provinces Liberal Premier, announced last Saturday that the government had given Nalco the go-ahead to begin flooding what will ultimately be a 41 square kilometer (16 square mile) reservoir. Nalcor engineers have argued they need to raise the water level in the reservoir to 25 meters now so as to prevent winter candle-ice from damaging dam infrastructure. The Muskrat Fall project has been controversial since it was announced in 2012 by Danny Williams provincial Progressive Conservative government and Stephen Harpers federal Conservative administration. The focus of the most recent protests are well-founded concerns about the impact of mercury contamination on the local population, which is largely Inuit and Innu. Studies have shown that flooding Muskrat Falls to create a dam reservoir without first clearing away all, or at least much, of the vegetation and top-soil will dramatically increase methylmercury levels in the water and food chain. This risks poisoning residents downstream in Mud Lake, Rigolet and Happy Valley-Goose Bay (HVGB) who live off fish and other wildlife, like seals, that feed on fish. Methylmercury, explains a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) article, forms in nature when bacteria reacts with mercury in water, soil or plants and becomes increasingly concentrated and toxic as it moves up the food chain. At the top of the food chain, in fish and seals, the concentrations of methylmercury will be 10 million times the concentration found in the local water, explains Trevor Bell, a Memorial University professor who has studied the danger that methylmercury poses to the people leaving south of Muskrat Falls. Nalcor and the government have long known that the flooding will raise methylmercury levels. But they have claimed the toxin will be rapidly washed into, and dissipated, in Lake Melville, the estuary below Muskrat Fall that is the Inuits traditional hunting and fishing grounds. However, scientific studies have shown the increased levels will persist for decades, putting the local population at severe risk of poisoning and/or the loss of their food supply. A study by a team of Harvard researchers found that if, as the government and Nalcor propose, only some of the vegetation is cleared from the reservoir, methylmercury levels could rise by as much as 380 percent. Despite the scientific studies and growing popular anger, Nalcor and the Liberal government continue to downplay the risk of contamination, or blithely declare, as did federal Liberal MP Nick Whalen, that it can be easily mitigated by providing compensation to the Inuit for the loss of their food source. Removing all the organic material, as the Harvard researchers recommended, was, they insisted, prohibitively expensive. There are also concerns that the dam is being built on unstable ground. It is a very uneasy feeling to be living near the Churchill River below Muskrat, let me tell you that much, HVGB resident Edward Mesher told the World Socialist Web Site. Im convinced this whole thing is about certain people profiting greatly from the construction contracts who really dont understand the likely outcome or care about the people around here at all. As Nalcor moved to initiate flooding last month, a wave of protests erupted and continued for the better part of two weeks. Protesters, including native elders, occupied part of the Muskrat Falls worksite and picketed the main gate, succeeding in shutting the project down for several days, as workers expressed their solidarity. In a livestreamed appeal, the protesters said they didnt want to put anyone out of a job, just protect their food and water. In a further expression of the depth of the anger with the government and Nalcor, local mayors in Labrador said they would not allow Nalcor to transport equipment through their towns. There were also protests on the island of Newfoundland, including in Corner Brook and at the provincial legislature in Saint Johns. Scores were arrested on contempt of court and trespass charges. The government has refused to drop these charges despite reaching a settlement on October 26 with the official native leadershipthe Innu Nation, the Nunatsiavut Government and the NunatuKavut Community Council. These government-backed organizations are dominated by the tiny, indigenous petty bourgeois elite, which has close ties to the political establishment in St. Johns. This elite is profiting from various business ventures associated with the Muskrat Fall development, including through the Nunatsiavut Group of Companies. Under the October 26 agreement, the government claims that Nalcor will closely monitor methylmercury levels and will henceforth make all its decisions using scientific-based research. This claim has already been belied by its insistence that it is too costly to remove all vegetation and top-soil from the reservoir. At its unveiling, the Muskrat Falls development was trumpeted by the Williams Conservative government as a green, clean and renewable project that would provide a boost to Newfoundlands economy, generating larger revenues through electricity exports to Nova Scotia and the northeastern US. However, the price of electricity has fallen, while project costs have soared. Initially budgeted at $6.2 billion, the Muskrat Falls hydro-electric project is now expected to cost nearly double that, $11.6 billion. It is now widely conceded that Muskrat Falls is a boondoggle. But with so much money invested in the project and so much of the business elite having banked on profiting from it, there is no question of it being abandoned. Instead the Newfoundland and Canadian ruling elite as a whole are preparing to place the burden for the cost overruns and profit shortfalls on the provinces population through electricity rate increases and further austerity. Last month, as the protests erupted against the Muskrat Falls project, several provincial Liberal ministers joined Barry Perry, the CEO of Fortis, the St. Johns-based international power utility, in New York to celebrate Fortis launch on the New York Stock Exchange. Newfoundland Premier Ball had himself been scheduled to join Perry in ringing the bell at the opening of NYSE trading on October 17, but according to press reports had to cancel. While the people of Newfoundland and Labrador will bear the environmental and financial burdens of the Muskrat Falls project, Fortis, which owns the transmission lines by which the electricity the project generates is to be transported to markets in Newfoundland and beyond, expects to cash in, literally all the way to Wall Street. The author also recommends: Liberals impose austerity in Newfoundland and Labrador [24 October 2016] Representatives from the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Left Party published a pamphlet Friday titled Europe can also work in solidaritya polemic for a different European Union. According to its authors, the pamphlet aims to defend the EU by initiating a reform of its institutions. The authors include politicians, trade unionists and academics who have publicly advocated a red-red-green federal government. These include Gesine Schwan, former presidential candidate for the SPD and current chair of the SPDs commission of basic values; Axel Troost, finance spokesman for the Left Party parliamentary group; Harald Wolf, former economy senator in the SPD-Left Party Berlin state government; Frank Bsirske, head of the Verdi trade union and Green Party member; economics professor and European political adviser to Verdi Klaus Busch (SPD); and others. The authors and editors of the statement are responding to the threatened break-up of the European Union (EU) in the wake of the Brexit vote in Britain. Like all of the parties of the ruling class in Europe, the authors see Brexit as the result of widespread opposition to the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. Millions of workers experience the EU as an instrument of the major concerns, banks and financial speculators intent on destroying their living standards. The EUs brutal austerity policiesimposed for years by the German government and its finance minister, Wolfgang Schaublehave led to a devastating social decline in Greece and many other countries and have placed revolutionary struggles on the order of the day. This fear is shared by the authors of the pro-EU document. They begin with a long list of the sins of the EU, while complaining in the introductory chapter about re-nationalisation tendencies, social crises and the failure of the EU in the refugee crisis. Then comes a selection of hackneyed phrases from earlier resolutions on how to improve the EU. The authors draw on reform proposals made by the EU Commission in 2011, the so-called blueprint for deepening the economic and monetary union. These include a more expansive monetary policy, an equalisation union, to regulate balance of payment imbalances, and a joint debt policy contributing to eurobonds and a fund to pay off state debt. Two of the authors, Klaus Busch (SPD) and Axel Troost (Left Party), complained in the Frankfurter Rundschau, The hopeful reform proposals from the European Commission in 2011 got bogged down. By contrast, austerity policies were the wrong means. Their polemic called for the stricter regulation of the financial markets and a democratically elected and controlled European economic government as well as a social union. The latter meant a joint employment policy, joint wage and income policy and a joint policy for social security systems. Concretely, the paper appeals for a European unemployment insurance system. The proposals, concealed behind a salvo of words about democracy and solidarity, are neither new nor left. But the authors seek to sell them as part of a struggle against nationalism. The world needs less nation state and more international cooperation as well as international organisations, like the EU, to manage these tasks, Busch and Troost write. The left must struggle for the retention of the European project of unity and stand up to the neoliberal and right-wing populist destroyers of Europe! The trick employed by cynics like Klaus Busch and Axel Troost is familiar. They claim that any opposition to the EU is nationalist and reactionary. Therefore, despite its errors in construction, it is necessary to defend the EU and transform it into an instrument for international cooperation and the unification of Europes peoples. Both assertions are false. The mounting anger and opposition to the EU is entirely justified, but must be linked to a struggle against capitalism. This means that the struggle against the EU must be conducted by mobilising workers in every country on the basis of a socialist programme. Precisely because the SPD, Left Party and trade unions refuse to oppose the EU, they leave the opposition open to the right-wing populists and nationalists. Their defence of the European Union strengthens the right. The second claim, that the EU can be reformed and made to serve the interests of the people, has been repeatedly disproved. The representatives of the SPD, Left Party and trade unions know full well that the EU cannot be reformed by clear and critical words or radical demands. It is not a neutral body, which can be controlled and influenced democratically. It serves as an organising centre for the major powers, corporations and banks to launch their assaults on social and democratic rights, strengthen the state apparatus and militarism. The EU was never an international organisation that strived to equalise the standard of living or overcome the nation states within Europe. It always serves the interests of the corporations and banks. German business profited above all from this. Confronted with a deepening political crisis in the US and growing conflicts within Europe, the German ruling elite is seeking to advance to the position of Europes leading power. The EU is increasingly being expanded from an economic union into a military alliance. This is the real reform of the EU currently underway. The demand for a European army, led by the German government, makes this clear. The SPD, Left Party and Greens are not defending the EU because they hold illusions in its reformability, but because they share the same political interests. They are offering their services as a governing coalition to support the EUs social attacks, the strengthening of the state, the construction of European police units and military rearmament. The demand for a joint social policy, which occupies considerable space in the pamphlet, means the exact opposite of what Busch, Troost, Bsirske and Co. claim. It means an intensification of the offensive against the working class throughout Europe and the creation of authoritarian political structures. It was no accident that the French government drew on the assistance of Peter Hartz, whose name was given to the hated welfare reforms in Germany, to impose stricter labour laws. This is the only kind of European unemployment insurance and social union that the German bourgeoisie will tolerate. The recently published EU pamphlet is therefore not a programme for a more social Europe, but rather a signal from the Left Party that it will defend the EU at all costs if it joins a red-red-green coalition. One week earlier, party chairman Bernd Riexinger raised the prospect of an agreement by the party to the Hartz 2010 welfare reforms and foreign interventions by the German army. There is only one way for the workers of Europe to defend their democratic and social rights: they must combine their opposition to the EU with a struggle against the capitalist system, including its right-wing and left defenders in the Left Party. The unification of Europe is not possible on a capitalist, but only on a socialist basis. In a heavy-handed move yesterday, the top Chinese legislative body effectively banned two elected Hong Kong legislators from taking their seats in the territorys Legislative Council for advocating independence from China. Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching were among six young political activists who won seats in the council elections in September on the basis of calling for independence or greater autonomy from China. All were prominent in the 2014 protests that erupted against Beijings decision to restrict the nomination of candidates in the 2017 election, the first by universal suffrage, for Hong Kongs powerful post of chief executive. A protracted dispute emerged in the council after Leung and Yau refused to take the standard oath of office last month, which includes swearing allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region as part of China. Instead, displaying a banner that read Hong Kong is not China, the two pledged allegiance to the Hong Kong nation. Their modified oath provocatively included a derogatory Japanese term for China. The Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress (NPC) in Beijing yesterday issued an official interpretation of Hong Kongs Basic Law that those who support Hong Kong independence do not qualify to run for and serve as members of the legislature and should face legal consequences. In addition, it ruled that those who failed to take the oath of office solemnly should not be permitted to take it again. In comments to the media, Standing Committee Deputy Secretary-General Li Fei branded Leung and Yau as traitors. Advocating separatism, he declared, was not a matter of legal opinion but a legal issue and those doing so should be punished by law. In a particularly menacing threat, he added: Traitors of the country will not have good endings. The NPC ruling pre-empts the outcome of a case before the Hong Kong courts to determine whether Leung and Yau should be permitted to retake their oath of office. It also calls into question the status of the other four legislators, some of whom stop short of calling for full independence but advocate some form of self-determination. Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 on the basis of one country, two systems, not to promote democracy in its former colony, but rather to ensure that it remained a major Asian financial centre. Underpinning its legal system is the Basic Law, which stipulated that Hong Kong was part of China and that the Legislative Council and chief executiverelics of British colonial rulewould eventually be elected by universal suffrage. Beijing has rarely used the right of the NPC to interpret the Basic Law. It has done so in this case out of growing fears that the advocacy of Hong Kong independence will encourage separatist movements in other parts of China including Tibet and Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also fearful that calls for democratic rights in Hong Kong will spill across the border and trigger similar demands, including by the working class, for greater democratic and social rights in China. However, the leaders of the 2014 protest movement base themselves on backward appeals to Hong Kong parochialism and, in the case of Leung and Yau, are explicitly hostile to immigrants and tourists from mainland China. The two stood as candidates for Youngspiration, which in July last year organised a protest to demand that Hong Kong authorities deport a 12-year-old boy who had overstayed a visa and lived with his grandparents for nine years. None of the organisations that dominated the 2014 proteststhe Hong Kong Federation of Students, Scholarism and Occupy Centralhad any orientation to the working class or appealed more broadly to workers and youth over unemployment, social inequality and the lack of public services in Hong Kong. These groups had no basic disagreements with the so-called pan-democratsmore longstanding parties and organisations representing layers of the Hong Kong elite who want greater autonomy for the territory from China. Their overriding concern is that Beijings intrusion into Hong Kongs political and economic life will harm its status as a leading financial centre. The Financial Times commented yesterday: Many legal experts and opposition politicians argue that by unseating elected politicians through a decree, Beijing has dealt another serious blow to autonomy and the rule of law in Hong Kong. Hong Kongs independent legal system is one of the territorys main attractions for foreign investors. For corporations doing business in China, including private Chinese companies, Hong Kongs legal protection of private property, solid commercial law and well-established court system offer a security for investors that is not available in China. While capitalist property relations have flourished under the CCP regime for more than four decades, the legal framework that guarantees private property and profits is still relatively rudimentary. Both the pan-democrats and the newer separatist organisations such as Youngspiration represent layers of the corporate elite and upper middle classes in Hong Kong who are determined to maintain their territorys competitive advantage and the associated profits, business opportunities and careers that go with it. The NPC ruling sets the stage for an escalating political confrontation. Opposition legislator Claudia Mo told the Financial Times that the decision was the beginning of the end for Hong Kong. From now on, Beijing can do what it wants, telling Hong Kong courts and judges how to rule on anything thats politically sensitive. Its a sad situation but we have to fight on because if we dont, we wont get anything, she said. Last week, the Hong Kong Bar Association declared that an intervention by Beijing would deal a severe blow to [Hong Kongs] judiciary. Lawyers and barristers were planning to hold a silent march in protest today. On Sunday thousands of protesters marched through Hong Kong holding signs saying Defend the rule of law and demanding the resignation of Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying. Police estimated the number at 8,000 while organisers put it at 13,000. Later in the evening, a group of hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police outside the Chinese governments liaison office in Hong Kong. Over the past six years the United States and Mexican governments have collectively apprehended nearly 1 million refugees fleeing to the United States from the Northern Triangle countriesEl Salvador, Guatemala and Hondurasdeporting more than 800,000, including more than 40,000 children. Nearly 10 percent of the Northern Triangle countries total population have reportedly left the region. The unceasing flow of refugees has compelled the political establishment to take a series of measures in an attempt to contain the crisis. More recently, the strategy of the Obama administration has been to shift the dirty work of apprehensions and deportations to its southern neighbor, Mexico. Under heavy pressure from Washington, Mexico implemented Programa Frontera Sur in July 2014. The plan, likely crafted by officials within the Obama administration itself, means that those refugees who previously would have reached the US border are now being intercepted by Mexican authorities. Under the Programa Frontera Sur, Mexico has relocated over 300 immigration agents to its southern border with Guatemala to carry out the ruthless dictates of Washington. The program has included setting up mobile checkpoints and conducting regular raids on trains and migrant hostels. The Obama administration has directly supported this campaign with training, technology and intelligence. For migrants, the consequences have been devastating. A year after its implementation in July 2014, apprehensions by the Mexican government increased by 71 percent over the same period the previous year. Likewise, apprehensions of Central Americans by the US border patrol decreased. This shift created the illusion of some measure of effective immigration reform in the US. In reality, even more migrants are being deported than previously; the only change has been in the location of apprehension. Furthermore, due to the absence or deliberate disregard of laws of due process and humanitarian norms, the migrants are often no longer even considered for temporary visas. Instead, they are forced to return, in massive numbers, to some of the most violent and desperate social conditions on the planet. The program has taken a particularly aggressive approach to operations aimed at preventing migrants from riding north on cargo trains, known collectively as La Bestia. Migration authorities have blocked migrants from boarding trains, forcibly removed migrants from trains mid-ride, and raided establishments that migrants are known to frequent, detaining thousands in the process. There have been many reports of excessive use of force and other abuses by the authorities, including a recent shooting of a 15-year-old boy traveling from Guatemala. The government has denied all of the charges. No longer able to board the train in Chiapas, migrants, because of the disruption of the usual route, are forced to rely on different and dangerous modes of transportation, often traveling incredible distances by foot. Without access to the networks of resources and shelters long established on the previous train route, migrants suffer immensely from vulnerabilities on their new path. The Mexican government has turned these methods of repression, forged initially to be used against migrants, towards its own population. Earlier this year the Guardian found that an increasing number of indigenous Mexicans had been detained for possible deportation in Chiapas for not having a valid identificationdespite the Mexican Constitution stating that individuals are able to move freely throughout the country without necessity of a letter of security, passport, safe-conduct or any other similar requirement. It is quite common for babies who are born in indigenous communities in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca to be born without a record of birth. Some reports estimate that as many as 7 million Mexicans do not have a registered name, identity, or nationality. Earlier this year, the WSWS learned of a woman who gave birth to a child in Chiapas and then, en route to the US, became entangled in an immigration web in which the baby became stranded without citizenship in either country. As the tenure of the 44th United States president comes to a close, a balance sheet of the administrations accomplishments regarding immigration should be drawn. Despite grand promises of immigration reform in his first 100 days of office, the Obama administration proceeded to enact draconian immigration legislation and speed up deportations. Obamas actions become all the more significant when one considers that these policies were carried out while the Democratic Party, which continues to posture as a defender of working people and the poor, gained a majority in both houses of Congress after the 2008 elections. In immigrant communities, Obama has become infamously known as deporter-in-chief. Since 2008 there have been over 2.5 million deportations, an average of more than 1,000 per day. This is roughly double the rate that occurred under Republican president George Bush, and totals more than under any other president in US history. In 2013, there were 435,498 removals, an all-time high for a single year. In addition, the administration has prioritized using a more formal removal process, which carries greater consequences if re-entry is attempted by the immigrant. Considering that the most recent statistics only include deportations that have taken place through October 2014, it is quite possible that over 3 million immigrants have been deported to date. After coming to office, Obama vastly expanded a program begun under Bush called Secure Communities. The program united federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an effort to deport immigrants who were already living in communities, as opposed to those attempting to cross the border. A political scientist at the University of Iowa, Rene Rocha, recently told the Christian Science Monitor that, Prior to the Obama administration, there was very little interior enforcement, it was almost all near the border. By the end of 2011, arrests near the border and interior were equal. The program faced extensive criticism for ripping up communities and the lack of regulation of the programs implementation. A study by UC Berkeley found that only 52 percent of individuals arrested through the program were slated to have a hearing before an immigration judge and that 39 percent of individuals arrested had a spouse or children who were US citizens, causing an impact on 88,000 families that included US citizens. In many cases, immigrants who have temporary legal status through programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are held in poorly regulated detention centers throughout the country with few rights. Although these individuals have received temporary legal immunity from deportation, in many states they are not eligible for Medicaid programs, nor are they eligible for the tax subsidies of the Affordable Care Act. In select states that have provided a state-funded waiver to assist the poorest sections of immigrants, such as California with Medicaid, this vulnerable section of the population is often scapegoated by the right wing for their abuse of social programs, in a further effort to divide the working class. The administrations reform measures did not only focus on immigrants already residing in the country but have also focused on strengthening Fortress America at the border. In 2010, Obama signed into legislation a bill that granted $600 million to further militarize the US-Mexico border through the buildup of thousands of border agents and the use of Predator drones to patrol from the sky. The most recent manifestation of Obama reform came in September when his administration announced that it would begin the forced removal of Haitian refugees, an act only briefly postponed in the wake of Hurricane Matthew and the massing of thousands of Haitian immigrants at the US border in cities such as Tijuana, Mexico. Many of these immigrants, who fled Haiti to Brazil following the 2010 earthquake, are now being forced out of economic necessity to make the dangerous journey north from Brazil to the United States. Much like the migrants fleeing the war-torn Northern Triangle region, the Haitian migrants have now become double victims of US imperialism: first, from the devastating situation they faced in their home countries brought on by US imperialism, and later during their perilous journey in search of livable conditions. The criminal immigration policies of the Obama administration carried out over the last eight years are yet another indictment of the increasingly Orwellian nature of the US political establishment. The great anti-war candidate became the first president in history to keep the US at war throughout two full terms in office. Universal health care has turned out to be nothing short of a restructuring of the system to benefit big business. The alleged candidate of working people has overseen the largest transfer of wealth to the top 1 percent in history. As his presidency comes to a close, we should add to the balance sheet immigration reform that has turned out to mean the ruthless deportation of more immigrants than any other administration in US history. For all intents and purposes, Hillary Clinton can be expected to continue the same harsh policies as the Obama administration if she is voted into the White House on November 8. While Clinton demagogically harangues Donald Trump for his plans to build more walls, she has been a firm supporter of deportations, and voted for the increased securing of the border through building a 700-mile barrier between the US and Mexico in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 (a bill also approved by Obama as a senator). Clinton is on record in January of this year trying to distance herself from Trump by dishonestly quibbling over semantics and stating that she supported the building of a fence and not a wall. Based on the Obama experience, it should be clear that whatever rhetoric is decided upon, the reality will be increased attacks on defenseless migrants. Janet Reno, the Clinton administration attorney general during the 1990s who died on Monday at the age of 78, will above all be remembered for her role in the horrific US federal assault against the Branch Davidian religious cult in April 1993, at a cost of more than 80 lives, including those of 21 children. Reno, who was born in Miami, Florida and was state attorney for Miami-Dade County for 14 years, was nominated to head the US Justice Department in February 1993. Clinton, the first successful Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter 16 years earlier, had already been in office for almost a month. He had suffered the embarrassment, however, of two successive nominees to the attorney general position having been forced to withdraw their names after media reports that they had both employed nannies who were undocumented immigrants. Having pledged to appoint a woman to the post, he then turned to Reno, who was unmarried and had no nanny problem. Only two months after taking office, the new attorney general made headlines around the world when she ordered the brutal assault by dozens of federal agents on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco. The attack ended a 51-day siege that began in February, when an earlier raid had led to the deaths of six Branch Davidians and four federal agents. The April 19 assault triggered a massive fire in which almost all of the victims met horrific deaths. The lives of scores of innocent people, including defenseless children, were considered collateral damage as the administration, through Attorney General Reno, sent a message that any defiance of the ruling class would meet with a ruthless and bloody response. The Waco assault was in line with infamous previous examples of ruling class ferocity, including the assault on the Attica, New York prison rebellion in 1971 that led to 43 deaths, the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973, and the bombing of the headquarters of another religious cult, the Philadelphia-based black nationalist MOVE group, in 1985. The Davidians were a tiny and obscure religious fundamentalist sect led by David Koresh. Tracing their theological origins to the Seventh Day Adventists, they combined ultra-right views with apocalyptic visions. Whatever the character of the Davidians religious fanaticism and political backwardness, however, the federal assault was a warning of the ruthlessness with which the capitalist state would respond to a genuine mass struggle by the working class. As the International Workers Bulletin, US predecessor to the World Socialist Web Site, declared in its report of April 26, 1993, just a week after the attack: There is an obvious and enormous discrepancy between the scale of the force used against the Branch Davidians and the actual threat which this tiny religious group represented. This disproportion reveals the tremendous nervousness of the capitalist ruling class, which presides over a society wracked by economic crisis and deepening poverty, unemployment and homelessness. So fearful is the ruling class of the explosive potential of the deep-rooted social antagonisms in America that it reacts with frenzied violence against any challenge, no matter how minor. It seeks to drive home the message, Thus perish enemies of the state. In addition to setting the precedent for future repression, the Waco massacre also fed the propaganda of ultra-right and fascistic elements, who adopted the Branch Davidians as a cause celebre for their own purposes. Exactly two years to the day after the assault on Waco, Timothy McVeigh carried out the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, an act of individual terror that killed 168 people. To this day elements of the extreme right, including the fascist elements that have been emboldened by the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, focus on Waco as a means of prosecuting their own war against the working class. Renos term in office lasted more than seven years after Waco, and she was involved in a number of other high-profile cases, most prominently that of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who was rescued at sea after his mother perished in a risky attempt to cross from Cuba to the United States. Reno presided as Elian was returned to his father in Cuba, a decision that enraged ultra-right Cuban exiles when it took place in 2000. The most significant of Renos decisions, however, was that concerning Waco. The fact that the Waco assault came so early in the Clinton administration was not coincidental. Just as the new president had to signal that his days as a student protester against the war in Vietnam had long since passed, Reno, the first woman to head the US Justice Department, felt the need to demonstrate that she would be merciless in her defense of the state. Almost every news headline noting Renos death has highlighted her allegedly trailblazing role as the first female Attorney General. After 23 years, the novelty of her appointment has long since worn off. The intervening period has seen the appointment of two female secretaries of state (Madeline Albright, followed by Hillary Clinton), two female national security advisors (Condoleezza Rice, followed by Susan Rice), and numerous other women in top positions in the administrations of Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama, not to mention women rulers in other parts of the world, and the candidacy of Hillary Clinton seeking to become the first woman US president. It should be obvious that there have been no changes in policy and no softening of police repression or imperialist aggression because women have occupied these posts. President Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton issued statements lauding former the Attorney General in the hours after her death. Obama said that Reno was tough as nails, and never cowered in her fight for what was right. The Clintons, in their joint statement, mentioned gun control and other issues. Significantly, neither Obama nor the Clintons made any mention of Waco. They would just as soon keep that crucial side of Renos career quiet, while other such crimes are being prepared today. The lessons drawn by the WSWS after Waco have lost none of their immediacy and importance. Hundreds of victimsblack, white, Hispanic and immigrantare killed by police bullets or by other means every year, and the official story is that they exhibited signs of disobedience or lack of cooperation. This loss of life, including those of countless mentally ill as well as others, unarmed and innocent of any crime, are seen as collateral damage in the fight to maintain law and order. Every time a cop walks free after such a killing, which is virtually always, the message is the same as at Waco. This is the nature of the capitalist state, despite all the claims of democracy. Its purpose is organized violence to be carried out on behalf of the tiny ruling elite and against the working class, the vast majority of the population. Sir Richard Shirreff, a recently-retired British general, has publicly declared his opposition to Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump. Speaking to the Conservative Daily Telegraph, Shirreff, NATOs deputy supreme allied commander in Europe between 2011 and 2014, said, Here we are days from the election and thats a real, real threatTrump saying he might not commit to article 5. Article 5 of the US-led NATO constitution commits each of its members to come to the aid militarily of any member facing attack. Shirreff added, The defence of Europe during the Cold War depended on total certainty that whichever president was in the Oval Office, of whatever party, [the US] would come to Europes defence. Shirreff is a vocal advocate of Britain gearing up for war with Russia, as part of NATO. Earlier this year he published a book entitled 2017: War with Russia: An Urgent Warning from Senior Military Command. Among Britains ruling elite there is grave concern for the future of Europe over the outcome of an election being contested by the two most unpopular candidates in US history. Following the June referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU), Britain is in the midst of a constitutional and political crisis without precedent in the post-war period. Such is the febrile atmosphere that the discussion in ruling circles on the US elections is focused on its implications for the NATO alliance, for the security of the European powers and on the issue of war preparations against Russia, in which Britain is playing a major role. Sherriffs intervention was in opposition to that of General Lord Richards, Chief of the Defence Staff from 2010 to 2013. Last week, Richards argued that a devastating war between the US and its allies against Russia was less likely if Trump is elected to the White House. Speaking to Parliaments the House magazine, Richards said, Its non-state actors like Isis that are the biggest threat to our security. If countries and states could coalesce better to deal with these peopleand I think Trumps instinct is to go down that routethen I think theres the case for saying that the world certainly wont be any less safe. Its that lack of understanding and empathy with each other as big power players that is a risk to us all at the moment. Richards warned of the imminent danger of a war with Russia, which would immediately embroil the UK as Americas main ally, if Hillary Clinton came to power. He said of the war in Syria, in which the Russian government is backing the regime of Bashar al-Assad, while opposition militias backed by US and Britain are fighting to remove him: Unless shes [Clinton] prepared to do this properly and go to war with Russia, she shouldnt talk about no-fly zones and nor should we. We would have to shoot down Russian aircraft in order to impose it. Do we really want to go to a shooting war over Aleppo? He warned, The alternative is for the West to declare a no-fly zone and that means youve got to be prepared to go to war with Russia ultimately. I see no appetite for that and nor, frankly, do I see much sense in it. Accompanying Shirreffs comments, Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord and Labour government security minister, commented on a new Russian battle tank. He told the Daily Telegraph he was very concerned about a Russian military build-up. West described Russias economy as a war economy. They have got the GDP of Italy and they are trying to spend the same on defence as America. What they are doing is unsupportable and when something is unsupportable, then anything could happen. One would not know from Wests comments that the main NATO powers are squandering vast amounts of their own GDPs on preparing for war with Russia and China. In August, West told the Daily Star, If the EU starts to break up and things go badly wrong in Europe, which I think they might well do, we have historically twice in the last century had to go and sort it out at immense cost of blood and treasure to our nation. On China, West said, I do not believe we can let the Americans handle that on their own, we have to stand by them. Britains ruling Conservatives, backed by the opposition Labour Party, recently signed off on the renewal of the Trident nuclear missile system at an estimated cost of over 200 billion (almost twice the annual cost of the UKs National Health Service.) The intervention of top military figures in political affairs is now a regular occurrence and is indicative of the disintegration of British democracy. In September 2015, in the immediate aftermath of the landslide victory of Labour left Jeremy Corbyn in the partys leadership contest, the Sunday Times carried comments from a senior serving general that in the event of Corbyn becoming prime minister, there would be the very real prospect of a mutiny. Elements within the military would be prepared to use whatever means possible, fair or foul, the officer declared. Just weeks later Britains highest ranking military officerChief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghtonwas asked by the BBCs Andrew Marr about Corbyns statement that he would never authorise the use of nuclear weapons. He replied, Well, it would worry me if that thought was translated into power. The constitutional crisis opened by the Brexit referendum and the attempt by the defeated pro-EU camp to overturn the vote has prompted a further extraordinary intervention by senior military figures. Lord West and Lord Dannatt, the former head of the army, vented their opposition to last weeks High Courts judgement that Prime Minister Theresa May cannot trigger Article 50beginning the process of leaving the EUvia Royal Prerogative powers bypassing parliament. One of the powers it covers is the control, organisation and disposition of the Armed Forces. Lord Dannatt told the Sunday Telegraph, This judgement should not be allowed to impact on the future use of the Royal Prerogative as far as authorising military action is concerned. I fear it might, but it is up to the Government now to make it quite clear that that linkage is not legitimate and should not be made. He added, That is kind of consensus government, whereas actually the Prime Minister has to be a leader, to take decisions and live with the consequences. Lord West said, There are people who dont like the ability to use the Royal Prerogative to react and go to war rapidly if you need to as a nation and Im afraid they are wrong. We elect a government and the whole duty of a government is to govern. There may be an occasion where you have to take action because the time to act is so little. You cant go and have a debate in Parliament about it. The mounting anxiety over the US elections in Britain is expressed throughout Europe. Most European leaders want a victory for Hilary Clinton, who they believe will safeguard, at least for the time being, transatlantic economic, political and military relations. But there are opposed positions in every country. In France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the neo-fascist National Front is a serious contender in the presidential elections in April/May next year. As someone who has argued for more friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Le Pen has endorsed Trump, stating that he is a less harmful candidate than Hillary Clinton. Clinton is war, she added. The author also recommends: Defence Minister Fallon declares UK ready for war with Russia [3 November 2016] Retired British general predicts war with Russia, denounces Cameron government as semi-pacifist [21 May 2016] According to recent reports, the entire building where Kapil Sharma currently resides is allegedly illegal. By India Today Web Desk: Just as things were starting to look up for Kapil Sharma in the illegal construction case, another storm has been kicked up by the comedian's neighbours, claiming that the entire building where the actor-comedian lives is illegal. The neighbouring Windermere society has sent a legal notice to the DLH Builders about the same and has also stated in the said notice that the plot of the building where Sharma lives was allotted for the construction of a BMC hospital. advertisement Also read:Kapil Sharma bribery tweet: Comedian summoned by Mumbai Police for questioning Kapil courted controversy after he wrote a tweet to PM Modi about bribe asked by BMC officials in Mumbai for construction of his office. Later Maharashtra CM ordered inquiry into the matter and the case even went to Ant-Corruption Bureau (ACB). However, what followed was BMC officials coming out with papers showing that several illegal construction were done by Kapil Sharma at his Bungalow in Four Bungalows area in Andheri. "We have been fighting this battle since a long time and this time we have decided to take them to the court. There have been blatant violations in the building and they have cheated the authorities too," The Times of India quoted Anurag Pathak, chairman of the federation of Windermere co-operative society, as saying. However, DLH Builders have denied all charges. "We have complied with all the norms. In fact, we received the occupation certificate after complete inspection and verification by the BMC," The Times of India quoted a DLH spokesperson as saying. (With inputs from Saurabh Vaktania) --- ENDS --- On the eve of the November 8 election, President Obama traveled to the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to make a last minute appeal to students and workers on behalf of Hillary Clinton in a state that is viewed as critical to the Democratic candidates election chances. The decision to send the president to Michigan reflects the deep concern in the Clinton camp that the state, which had been considered reliably Democratic, could fall to Republican Donald Trump. Clinton strategists are worried that the lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee among students, as well as African Americans, could result in a low voter turnout in a state that voted for Clintons rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, in the primary election. Indeed, Clinton herself made a visit the same day to Grand Valley State University in western Michigan. A campaign stop by Clinton Friday in Detroit attracted largely more-prosperous middle class layers and very few students or workers. Remarks by attendees to the World Socialist Web Site at that event reflected a general lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate among the more working class elements. In Ann Arbor, the audience for Obama, estimated at 9,000, consisted of a large layer of middle class professionals along with a section of students and numbers of health care workers. The Ann Arbor area has been a stronghold of support for the Democratic Party, with Washtenaw County, where Ann Arbor is located, going for Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney by a 2-1 margin in 2012. Chelsea Clinton introduced the president. In her brief remarks, she stressed the standard identity politics themes advanced by Hillary Clinton. She went on to assert that her mother, if elected, would continue the economic policies of Obama and all he has accomplished. This offers cold comfort to millions of college students saddled with massive debt and workers confronting the prospect of dead-end, low-wage and part-time jobs. The economic legacy of the Obama administration has been a bonanza for Wall Street, with huge income gains for the top 1 percent and falling and stagnating wages for the vast majority. The main beneficiaries have been wealthy individuals like Chelsea Clinton herself, who is married to a hedge fund manager. For his part Obama adopted his usual folksy persona. He rattled off a list of the supposed achievements of his administration, including the Affordable Care Act, which has seen a huge rise in insurance rates, with many workers losing employer-based coverage. At one point, Obama even had the gall to criticize Trump for advocating that auto companies shift their operations to nonunion areas to obtain lower wages. This from a president who oversaw the slashing of wages of newly hired General Motors and Chrysler workers by 50 percent as well as benefit cuts for retired workers as part of the auto industry restructuring his administration carried out in 2009, with the collaboration of the United Auto Workers union. Continuing his appeal to the trade union bureaucracy, Obama went into a nationalist rant against China, denouncing Trump for using Chinese steel in his hotels. He is giving jobs to Chinese steelworkers, not American steelworkers, he declared. Referring to the alienation felt by youth and students over the mudslinging by both the Clinton and Trump camps, Obama urged young people to tune that out. The main issue, he asserted, was Clintons greater fitness to be commander in chief. He did not mention the fact that Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone in Syria, an act that could trigger a confrontation between the US and nuclear-armed Russia. Nor did he point out that his own administration has been at war longer than any other US administration. He then spoke of Clintons economic program. The mention of affordable college tuition, a major applause line during the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, drew little response from the audience, an indication that those in attendance attached little credibility to Clintons promises. The last portion of Obamas speech was empty of content, devoted to promoting identity politics and mouthing general platitudes referencing democratic ideals long abandoned in practice by the US ruling elite. In speaking to those attending the event, this reporter was struck by the difficulty that even the most ardent Hillary Clinton supporters had in articulating the actual issues motivating that support. No one expressed any great hope that economic conditions would improve under a Clinton presidency. Many indicated that they were mainly voting against Trump, citing his unfitness for the job. Several workers agreed to share their thoughts at length with this reporter. A common focus was concern over the personal attacks in the Clinton-Trump contest and the lack of discussion of substantive issues. Tammy, a part-time worker whose husband is employed as an automotive engineer, said she understood the economic anxiety tapped into by Trump. Her remarks belied the lying portrait that Obama painted of a prosperous and happy US populace. I think there is a lot of despair. Many people have lost their jobs. They feel they are paying taxes and not getting anything in return. One of my sons had to join the military so he could go to college. When this reporter asked what she thought of the endless wars being pursued under the Obama administration, she replied, It scares my son that one of these little wars could become a big war. Referring to the experience of Obamas Affordable Care Act, she reported that her sister has to pay for medication more than she ever paid before." I understand," she added, "why she is against Obamacare. It is hard to come up with the $800 a month she has to pay for medicine. She is fortunate that she can pay, but what about people who cant? Referring to the general alienation felt toward both big business candidates, she remarked, This is the first election where there are no signs in my neighborhood. Jimmy, a young hospital worker, said that he had decided to vote for Clinton only over the course of the last few days. Before that," he said, "I wasnt going to vote for either. Trump, obviously, but Clinton supported the 1994 crime bill that put a lot of people unnecessarily in jail. This has been the only election where I have not been enthusiastic to vote. The only thing going for Hillary is that she is a woman. I have seen a lot of mudslinging, but no plans for the economy. A retired medical worker said she had been a supporter of Bernie Sanders. Noting Trumps support in Michigan, she remarked, Bernie won Michigan, so the upsetter, Trump, can also win. I had a son who graduated in 2009. He finally got a job, but it took a few years. We are feeling the impact of unregulated markets. When the WSWS asked about the growing threat of a major war erupting with Russia out of the conflicts in the Middle East, or with China resulting from Obamas pivot to Asia, she replied, I hate to say it, but I think the question of war is taken for grantedthe military industrial complex. Remarking on the election, she said, Its the worst Ive seen. I hope its the worst Ill ever see. I have hopes in Clinton, but as far as getting anything done, I dont know. She has ties to Wall Street. I liked Sanders message about economic inequality. It made me hopeful for a movement like that. I think that is needed. But, she continued, we are stuck with two parties. This reporter explained that the Socialist Equality Party was running its own candidates for president and vice president to raise the central issues facing the working class, including the danger of war, that were being ignored by both the Democrats and Republicans. The role of Sanders had been to channel the anger and discontent of workers back into the Democratic Party. She expressed gratitude for our taking the time to discuss the issues and said she would take a look at the World Socialist Web Site . On November 4, a federal court jury in Charlottesville, Virginia found Rolling Stone magazine, journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Wenner Media responsible for defamation, with actual malice, in a case related to the article A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA. The article appeared online in November 2014. The case against Rolling Stone was brought by Nicole Eramo, the former associate dean of students at the University of Virginia. Eramo claimed that Erdelys article maliciously portrayed her as indifferent and uncaring in relation to sexual assault allegations and interested only in protecting the universitys reputation . The jury members agreed with her, 10-0. After deliberating for less than two hours on November 7, the jury awarded Eramo $3 million in damages, $2 million to come from Erdely and $1 million from Wenner Media. Eramo originally sued f or $7.85 million. A Rape on Campus was a lengthy and sensationalistic piece, focused on the alleged horrific gang rape of a then-18-year-old female student, Jackie, at a UVA fraternity house in September 2012. Erdelys article identified the alleged ringleader of the attack and named the fraternity involved, Phi Kappa Psi. Erdelys piece further accused the university of mishandling the case and exhibiting institutional indifference to sexual violence. The World Socialist Web Site in December 2014 correctly characterized the Rolling Stone article as a defamatory travesty of journalism. We noted that the piece, entirely based on the claims of one young person, was a mass of unsubstantiated allegations and anecdotes, stereotypes and dubious statistics. The WSWS commentary added, There is almost nothing in the article that can be pinned down as fact. It is neither convincing nor believable. Erdelys deplorable article, as we noted at the time, provoked an uproar. The fraternity house alleged to have been the scene of the crime was picketed and vandalized, and the university suspended all fraternity activity on the campus until January 2015. UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan and various Democratic Party politicians issued demagogic statements largely corroborating the claims that the UVA campus was a hotbed of sexual assault and sexual violence. The New York Times refused to exclude itself from this moral effluvia. Columnist Nicholas Kristof pontificated, We collectively are still too passive about sexual violence in our midst, too willing to make excuses, too inclined to perceive shame in being raped. However, certain journalists who were paying attention began to pick apart the alleged episode. A Charlottesville police department investigation ultimately found no evidence of an attack. Rolling Stone began to back away from the article in December 2014, noting discrepancies in the piece. As a damage control measure, the magazines management commissioned Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, and two colleagues to investigate the writing and publication of A Rape on Campus. The release of their results, sharply critical of Rolling Stone s reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking, prompted the biweekly magazine to retract Erdelys piece in April 2015. What neither the Columbia School of Journalisms investigation nor any leading voice in the media today will explain is how such a smear job came to appear in a publication that has prided itself for decades on its exposes and hard-hitting investigative journalism. To grasp that, one would have to look critically at the social dynamics of present-day America and the pivotal role that identity politicsthe upper-middle class politics of race, sexuality and gendercurrently plays. Erdely and the Rolling Stone editorial staff had a certain conception of American campuses as places plagued by rampant sexual assault and they largely constructed their story around that, regardless the gaping holes in the articles research, the implausibility of the narrative, and the likely damage to various individuals and institutions. In this effort, they were working with the tacit support of the Obama-Biden administration (whose policies on sexual assault Erdely praised in her original article), which has been shoring up support within the affluent petty-bourgeoisie by its supposed forcefulness on this issue. As we have noted more than once, the fact that the Obama White House is responsible for war, death and misery on a massive scale in the Middle East and has presided over the immiseration of wide layers of the American population is of next to no concern to the warriors on sexual violence. The defamation trial has shed some light on the shoddy methods, carelessness and irresponsibility of Erdely and Rolling Stone and brought out significant facts about the social attitudes of the various participants. In his opening statement, Tom Clare, one of Eramos attorneys, said, This case is about a journalistic failure. According to the [Virginia] Cavalier Daily, Clare argued that contrary to the Rolling Stone articles suggestion that Eramo was uncaring toward Jackie, she arranged meetings between Jackie and police. The newspaper reported further that Eramos attorney told the jury, Rolling Stone knew about these meetingsand included a reference to them in an early draftbut did not include any reference to them in the published article. Various witnesses testified as to Eramos humane and concerned conduct. Clare also contended that the magazine did not check key facts of Jackies story, and pushed Jackie to participate in the story, only to blame her once the story starting falling apart after its publication. On the witness stand, Eramo described her work with sexual assault survivors over the years and her awards for that work. She noted that these efforts were devastated by the Rolling Stone article. She told the court, I was portrayed [by Erdelys piece] as someone who would manipulate young women to not report rapes. Eramo added later, reading from a letter she had written to the magazine following the publication of A Rape on Campus, Perhaps more egregious and shocking were the threats that I received expressing hope that I be killed or raped. Even during the trial, Eramo was heckled as a rape apologist when she went outside during the lunch break. In court, she said she had also received threats aimed at her daughter. Eramo explained that her ultimate goal was to hold Rolling Stone accountable. She asserted, according to the Cavalier Daily, that the magazine had molded her into what they needed to fit its narrative without regard for the consequences on her life and career. I want to restore my reputation as best I can, she said in court. I want to show the real impact on a human beings life. In her testimony, Sabrina Rubin Erdely provided some insight into the conditions of a well-heeled journalist. Endeavoring to prove that Erdely was not under pressure to produce her article on the University of Virginia case, her attorney, Scott Sexton, asked about her career. Erdely replied, I feel very blessed as I advanced through my career. Once I got to Rolling Stone, I had contracts [worth] more than the average journalist makes. The Cavalier Daily continued, Erdely said there was no financial pressure on her while writing A Rape on Campus, as she knew she was being paid on a monthly basis, regardless. She had signed a contract with Rolling Stone guaranteeing her $300,000 for seven feature articles. Under cross-examination, Erdely acknowledged that there were discrepancies between her notes and the final article. In addition, Eramos legal team made clear that the Rolling Stone journalist simply paid no attention to Jackies changing story (and, frankly, psychological instability and unreliability as a source), failed to contact the fraternity in question, made no effort to question the alleged rapists, and so forth. There is no innocent explanation for such an approach. CBS News reported that in Clares closing statement, he argued, Once they [Erdely and Rolling Stone] decided what the article was going to be about, it didnt matter what the facts were. He concluded his summation by asking the jury members to hold the defendants responsible for their actions. In the course of the trial, the jury was shown a May 2016 deposition by Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone, who remained unrepentant about publishing the original article. Wenner claimed, absurdly, that We did everything reasonable and appropriate, up to the highest standards of journalistic [to] check on this thing. In regard to the magazines official retraction of the article in April 2015, Wenner expressed his disagreement with Managing Editor Will Danas action. He said in his deposition, Will Danas retraction is inaccurate. I do not stand by it. Remarkably, addressing Eramo directly, Wenner declared, It was never meant to happen this way to you. And believe me, Ive suffered as much as you have. In his self-involvement and general social obliviousness, Wenner personifies what has become of the American counter-culture of the 1960s. He co-founded Rolling Stone in 1967, at the height of the protest era, supposedly to give a younger generation and its new music a voice. The magazine, thoroughly tamed decades ago, and related enterprises have made Wenner (reportedly worth $700 million) and numerous others fabulously rich. Unsurprisingly, the Rolling Stone publisher was an enthusiastic endorser of Barack Obama in 2008, gushing that the Democratic Party candidate possessed the kinds of gifts that appear in politics but once every few generations. He added, There is a sense of dignity, even majesty, about him. This election year, Wenner claims to be nearly as keen on Hillary Clinton. His endorsement editorial in Rolling Stone in March suggested that Clinton was one of the most qualified candidates for the presidency in modern times. If nothing else, the Rolling Stone-University of Virginia fiasco demonstrates that subordinating the great social questions in America to the issues of gender and sexual violence is a false perspective and inevitably entails false and exaggerated claims. To substantiate the politically charged claim that Erdely and Rolling Stone were self-servingly attempting to provethat a rape culture prevails in Americaobliged them to make things up. The trial in Charlottesville establishes that much. Over 500 people attended a protest in the town of Shellharbour on the New South Wales (NSW) South Coast on Sunday, supposedly called by Unions NSW and associated health unions to oppose the state governments plans to privatise the local hospital and four others in regional areas. The attendance at the rally reflected widespread anger over the latest move in the decades-long gutting of the public healthcare system by state and federal governments, Liberal and Labor alike. However, the aim of the unions that organised this and other protests was to promote the fraud that Labor, a central architect of privatisation and funding cuts to health, would reverse the attacks of the state Liberal government. The featured speaker was NSW Labor leader Luke Foley and the protest doubled as a campaign rally for Labors bid to win the nearby seat of Wollongong in a state by-election next weekend. The NSW Liberal government first unveiled plans to privatise five regional hospitals in Shellharbour, Maitland, Goulburn, Bowral and Wyong late last year. They are to be run as public-private partnerships, involving the outsourcing of public health care to private businesses, whose interest is to minimize costs by slashing services, especially for those who do not have private health insurance. The rate of private health coverage in the area is just 26 percent. People in palliative care, along with other vulnerable patients, will be forced into the new hospital, amid fears that appropriate specialized care will not be available. According to the union, 70 jobs are slated to be axed from the government-funded Illawarra Womens Service. Sundays protest was chaired by Unions NSW secretary Michael Morey. The tone was set by Dr Tony Sara, president of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association, who proclaimed that Australias crisis-ridden public healthcare system was the envy of the world. In reality, hospitals, ambulances and health clinics are chronically under-funded. Doctors have repeatedly spoken out against a major bed shortage in public hospitals. In the three months to September 2015, for instance, over 800 people spent more than 20 hours waiting for medical assistance in hospital emergency rooms across the state. In March this year, doctors at Nepean hospital in Sydneys west told the media that another 140 beds were needed just to continue functioning and ensure adequate care. In September it was reported that health managers and officer workers were being forced to drive ambulances, due to a shortage of paramedics. Saras rosy depiction of the public health system was aimed at covering up the record of Labor and blaming the current privatisation moves on right-wing politicians and their ideological commitment to neo-liberalism. In fact, the so-called neo-liberal assault on health care is the broader bipartisan attack by Liberal and Labor governments on the social rights of the working class across the board. In his speech, Foley also boasted that we have the best health system in the world in Australia. Posturing as an opponent of privatisation, he stated, We live at a time where the government of this state thinks every public asset is there to be sold, and promised that Labor would draw the line in the sand. In fact, in his budget reply speech last year, Foley made explicit Labors support for privatisation and particularly public-private partnerships, stating in parliament, private and not-for-profit sectors should play a significant role in the delivery of our public services. In 2007, it was a state Labor government that privatised services at Sydneys Royal North Shore Hospital. At the federal level, it was the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments for instance, that introduced an Activity Basic Funding system for public hospitals, effectively abolishing base funding and only paying hospitals for each procedure they performed. Between 200607 and 2015-16, public health spending as a percentage of total government expenditure fell from 18.09 percent to 15.97 percent. Foley declared that if the Liberal government did not back down, Labor would make hospital privatisation the centrepiece of its 2019 election campaign. His comments recall the fraudulent campaign Labor waged in the 2015 election, when it postured as an opponent of electricity privatisation. In reality, the Liberals were continuing the agenda of the previous Labor government, which had passed legislation for the sale of the states electricity retail business. Morey concluded the rally by making the worthless pledge that the unions would hold them all to account. In reality, the unions are collaborating with Labor to divert widespread hostility over the privatisations and other attacks on healthcare back into safe parliamentary channels. In a damming self-indictment, Morey compared the current union campaign over hospital privatisation to the one at BlueScope Steel in nearby Wollongong last year. That campaign culminated in the Australian Workers Union, supported by Unions NSW, forcing through 500 sackings, a three-year wage freeze and the removal of longstanding working conditions, in the face of substantial opposition from workers. Reporters from the WSWS spoke to a number of the protesters. John, who works in the pharmaceutical sector said, Im dead against privatisation. Its to nobodys benefit, but those businesses that want to make a profit. There are certain responsibilities that a government has, and funding healthcare is one of them. This a critical issue, a community lives and dies by its ability to support its constituents. Going private is not the solution. Ive worked in the private health system before, and they try to get blood out of a stone. And when its all gone, they keep squeezing. And there are cuts. All of the people rallying here today, a good number of them might not have jobs if this gets through. I might be one of them. Weve been moving this way for at least two decades, maybe more. Its since the 70s that weve had this drive to privatize. Theres not that great a difference between Labor and the Liberals. An area like this is on the cusp of becoming a big welfare sink. People need work, they need purpose, but there arent jobs. Margaret, a pensioner who lives in the area, initially said that she would support anybody who opposed privatisation. But when WSWS reporters pointed to the record of successive Labor governments, she responded, Im dead against what the Labor Party has done to the refugees. Theyre as bad as the Liberals when it comes to asylum-seekers. I dont agree with the cuts that have taken place to healthcare, it doesnt matter which government has carried it out. Health should be for everyone. The health system could be a lot better. We dont want to lose it to the private providers, theyre looking after their shareholders, they dont care about anything else. Im probably thinking more socialist than anything else. She commented on the increasingly dire plight of youth in the Shellharbour and greater Wollongong region, I think its appalling what theyre doing to young workers in this area. Theyre getting rid of the TAFE system, a wonderful system for kids who cant go to university and want to get vocational training. Theyre getting rid of all the good things we have, and giving it all to the private providers and it never works the same. I feel sorry for young people today. Some of them have to work three jobs. Everythings a struggle. I dont think were getting the true figures as far as unemployment is concerned. For a lot of people there are no jobs out there. And for the pensioners, its getting harder and harder, the bills are coming in, rates are going up and you can barely survive. On November 5, the Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality held a conference, Socialism vs Capitalism and War, at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. These are the remarks of SEP presidential candidate Jerry White. SEP presidential candidate Jerry White addresses Socialism vs Capitalism and War conference SNYDEROral historian and radio personality Tumbleweed Smith will be the speaker at Western Texas Colleges annual Veterans Day Ceremony. The observance will take place on Friday, November 11, 2016 at 11 a.m. near WTCs flagpoles just outside Scurry County Museum. The event is WTCs 9th annual observance. Avid radio listeners know Smith as an oral historian and the producer of The Sound of Texas, a radio series that began in Big Spring. Smiths presentations of oral histories made his show the most widely syndicated feature radio show in Texas. The Sound of Texas has been on the air for more than 45 years. As an interviewer, Smith has assembled one of the largest private collections of oral history in the United States. Texas Highways Magazine noted that he has probably recorded the voices of more Texas characters than anyone else. Smith served three years in the Army Security Agency. A flyover by the High Sky Wing Commemorative Air Force based in Midland, Texas is scheduled for the ceremony, weather permitting. Following the ceremony, veterans, their families and the public are invited to a reception hosted by the College inside the Scurry County Museum. U.S. Veterans and the public are invited to attend. By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) Hotel Leelaventure is exploring legal options and may approach the Supreme Court against the the Delhi HC order directing it to pay Rs 258 crore to the Airport Authority of India (AAI) as royalty for possession of the latters property near the Mumbai international airport. "The company is exploring legal options, including moving the Supreme Court," Hotel Leelaventure told BSE. advertisement It further said: "We confirm that the division bench of the Delhi High Court has, in substance, upheld the single judge order dated July 15, 2016 in the matter of company and AAI." Hotel Leelaventure owns and manages The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, which owns 5 hotels, and the rest are only managed by the Mumbai-based hospitality provider. On Monday, the division bench of the high court had upheld the decision of a single judge directing Hotel Leelaventure to pay Rs 258 crore to AAI as royalty for possession of its property near the Mumbai international airport. Hotel Leela had moved the division bench challenging the single judge ruling setting aside the arbitration award in favour of Leelaventure in 2012. AAI, which owned 29,000 square metres near the Mumbai airport, had leased land measuring 9,000 sq metres each to Leela Scottish Lace and Leelaventure Ltd leaving behind 11,000 square metres, which initially was given on a licence to Leela. The dispute relates to the rest 11,000 sq metres of land leased to Leela in February 1996 for 30 years for constructing a wing of 150 rooms to the existing hotel building. The arbitration award had declared that payment of royalty by Leela has become impossible and therefore the parties may enter into a new contract in relation to possession of the property near the Mumbai airport. The arbitrator had also discharged Leela from liability of paying royalty to AAI. PTI KRH ARD --- ENDS --- VALDOSTA, GA. (WTXL)-- Valdosta Police are now searching for a man involved in an armed robbery. According to police, at approximately 4:40 am Sunday authorities responded to a reported robbery at "Unique Kollections." The victim described an African American male who had walked into the business with a gun demanding money. The store employee advised that the man had pointed a gun at her and snatched an undisclosed amount of money from her. Officers searched the area for the offender and after accessing the video surveillance, an officer was able to identify Tyler Morrison. Anyone with additional information on this case is asked to call E-911. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (The News Service of Florida) - Nearly half the Floridians registered to vote in Tuesday's elections had already cast ballots as of Monday morning. The state Division of Elections website reported that 6.42 million votes had been cast in person at early-voting locations or with vote-by-mail ballots. Florida has 12.86 million registered voters. Early voting ended Sunday. Vote-by-mail ballots will continue to be received by county supervisors of elections offices through Tuesday. Of the ballots cast, Democrats had accounted for just over 88,000 more votes than Republicans. Democrats topped the GOP in getting people to early-voting locations, 1.58 million to 1.425 million. Republicans had returned more vote-by-mail ballots, 1,047,119 to 980,440. Voters without party affiliation had cast nearly 1.24 million ballots, while those registered with third parties had submitted 154,326 ballots. University of Florida political-science professor Daniel Smith, who specializes in voter-registration issues, on Monday reported that 4.2 million votes had been cast by white voters, up from 3.3 million in the run-up to the 2012 presidential contest. The number of Hispanics voting before the election had increased from about 552,000 in 2012 to around 976,000 this year, Smith posted on his blog electionsmith.com. The number of black voters casting ballots before Election Day had grown from approximately 764,000 in 2012 to more than 834,000 this year. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (The News Service of Florida) - Janet Reno, who ran for Florida governor after serving as U.S. attorney general under former President Bill Clinton, died Monday at her home in Miami, according to numerous national news reports. Reno, who served as state attorney in Miami-Dade County before being becoming the first female attorney general, was 78. Reno died of complications from Parkinson's disease, her goddaughter, Gabrielle D'Alemberte, told the Associated Press. Reno was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1995 while serving under Clinton but remained in office until his term ended in 2001. In 2002, Reno was narrowly defeated in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by Tampa attorney Bill McBride. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The Latest on Election Day as voters head to the polls in Florida (all times local): 11 p.m. Republican Donald Trump, a part-time resident of Florida, has won the key battleground state following an intense campaign. Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and is now in line to receive Florida's 29 votes in the electoral college. Both Trump and Clinton pegged their campaign fortunes to the state. Clinton and Trump and their allies spent in excess of $120 million dollars in advertising in the lead-up to Election Day, according to Kantar Media's political ad tracker. They repeatedly made campaign swings through the state to boost turnout. Trump won the state even though some had predicted he encounter a backlash among some Hispanic voters. Some Republicans such as U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio did not campaign with him. ______ 10:45 p.m. Democrat Stephanie Murphy thanked supporters after defeating 12-term Republican U.S. Rep. John Mica and said she'd work to end deadlock and dysfunction in Congress. Murphy spoke Tuesday at an Irish pub in Maitland after defeating Mica with about 51 percent of the vote for the District 7 seat in the Orlando area. Murphy said voters want change, security and equality. She promised to fight in Congress for women's rights, veterans and what she called common-sense gun safety measures. Mica had easily won his previous elections, but this year his district wasn't as Republican-friendly after the Florida Supreme Court ordered lawmakers to redraw congressional maps to comply with the state constitution. ______ 10:00 p.m. Florida Republicans are going to remain in charge of the state Legislature. After a tight election that saw Democrats claim several victories up and down the ballot, Republicans still maintained their majorities in both the state House and state Senate. The victories ensure State Sen. Joe Negron will be the next Senate president and Rep. Richard Corcoran will be the next House speaker. Republicans have controlled the Florida Legislature for the last 20 years. Voters in 2010 approved new standards for drawing legislative districts. But this is the first election where those standards were fully implemented and all 160 legislative seats were on the ballot this year. The changes gave Democrats an opportunity to shrink the gap between the two parties, but it wasn't enough to give them a majority. ______ 9:05 p.m. Political newcomer Stephanie Murphy will replace 12-term Republican U.S. Rep. John Mica in Washington, taking advantage of a newly drawn district and riding a backlash against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to victory. Murphy was helped in Tuesday's election by several million dollars pumped into the race by Democratic groups who spotted an opportunity to knock off an incumbent in a year where Trump's comments about women and minorities hurt other Republicans on the ballot. Murphy tied Mica to Trump in television ads, and also criticized him for taking money from the National Rifle Association just days after a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Mica had easily won his previous 12 elections, but this year his district wasn't as Republican-friendly after the Florida Supreme Court ordered lawmakers to redraw congressional maps to comply with the state constitution. ______ 8:55 p.m. U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, one of the sharpest Republican critics of nominee Donald Trump, has been re-elected. Curbelo edged out Democrat Joe Garcia in one of the nation's most competitive congressional districts. Curbelo was able to hold onto the seat even though the boundaries of the district were altered late last year to make it much more Democratic. Curbelo has called for immigration reform and said he believes in climate change. The 26th Congressional District covers Miami's western and southern suburbs, the Florida Keys and a large chunk of the Everglades. Curbelo, a former school board member who defeated Garcia in 2014 to win the seat, never endorsed Trump. He once publicly speculated that Trump was a phantom candidate intended to help the Democrats. ______ 8:55 p.m. An Army veteran who lost both his legs while trying to dismantle a bomb in Afghanistan has won one of Florida's most bitter congressional races. Republican Brian Mast on Tuesday defeated Democratic businessman Randy Perkins, who pumped about $6 million of his money into the race to replace Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. Murphy left the seat to face Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Mast made his military service a focal point of his campaign. He is a former bomb technician who dismantled improvised explosive devices. Republicans cast Perkins as a shady businessman who profits off of others' misfortune. Perkins runs a debris removal company that did cleanup work after disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. ______ 8:50 p.m. Florida voters have rejected a utility-funded ballot measure that would have opened the door for changes to the system of credit earned by homeowners who install solar panels and produce surplus energy. Currently, solar owners who send extra power back into the energy grid earn credit that can offset the price of any energy they might use, in what is known as "net metering." Such homeowners might produce all of their own power - and then some - during sunny periods. They might draw electricity during cloudy periods but will have no net cost if it was offset by power they previously had made available to other users. Utility companies argue that solar homeowners unfairly take advantage of infrastructure costs paid by other customers, and Amendment 1 would have allowed them to make changes to the state's net metering system. ______ 8:40 p.m. Former Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is reviving his political career as a Democrat and will serve in Congress after beating Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly. Crist's victory Tuesday in the St. Petersburg-area seat comes after he lost the 2010 U.S. Senate race as an independent and the 2014 governor's race as a Democrat. Crist decided to run for the U.S. House after the state Supreme Court ordered Florida lawmakers to redraw congressional districts. The new district became more heavily Democratic, making it more difficult for Jolly to retain his seat. Crist was one of the state's most successful politicians until he ran for Senate instead of seeking a second term as governor. Marco Rubio chased him from the GOP primary and Crist's independent bid failed. Crist changed parties after the election. ______ 8:40 p.m. U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the state's longest serving member in Congress, has been re-elected to another term. Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, defeated Democrat Scott Fuhrman in the race for a district that covers a part of Miami-Dade County, including Coral Gables and Miami Beach. The 64-year-old Ros-Lehtinen, who was born in Cuba and moved to the U.S. when she was a young girl, was first elected to Congress in 1989. She has been critical of President Barack Obama's push to re-establish diplomatic ties to Cuba. The 27th Congressional District was reconfigured as part of an overhaul ordered last year by the Florida Supreme Court and became more evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Obama carried the district in 2012. Ros-Lehtinen, however, never endorsed or supported GOP nominee Donald Trump. ______ 8:30 p.m. Florida voters have approved a state constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana, which will broaden access to pot beyond the limited therapeutic uses approved by the legislature two years ago. Currently, the law allows non-smoked, low-THC pot for patients with cancer or ailments that cause chronic seizures or severe spasms. The ballot measure broadens access for diseases with symptoms other than seizures or spasms. The measure lists 10 illnesses: cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, AIDS, post-traumatic stress disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Crohn's disease, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. It also allows doctors to prescribe pot for any other similar kind of ailment. A similar ballot measure narrowly failed in 2014, when opponents expressed concerns including that children wouldn't be adequately protected. Proponents said loopholes were closed this time, including parental consent for underage patients. ______ 8:10 p.m. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio will return to Washington for a second term, emerging victorious from a campaign he jumped into at the last minute after he shut down his presidential campaign. Rubio defeated Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy in Tuesday's election in a race that was seen as critical for Republicans if they were to maintain their Senate majority. Rubio's decision to seek re-election boosted the GOP's chance of keeping the seat, and outside groups pumped millions of dollars into the race to help ensure Rubio's victory. Rubio repeatedly said he wouldn't seek a second term after he dropped out of the presidential race when Donald Trump soundly beat him in Florida's primary. But Rubio changed his mind two days before the deadline to get on the ballot. ______ 5:23 p.m. Darren Windroff, 40-year-old entrepreneur in the Orlando area, says he floats somewhere between being conservative and in the middle. In the past he has voted for Al Gore, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. After eight years of President Barack Obama, he may have wanted to vote Republican this time around but couldn't bring himself to support Donald Trump. So Windroff cast his vote Tuesday for Hillary Clinton. "I feel strongly about it," Windroff said. "It's been a challenging voting process and I've been really disappointed in it. I would say I'm a conservative or in the middle. But I would say I'm disappointed the Republicans don't have a better candidate. I feel the party is terribly organized and it's a shame." Windroff also says he believes Clinton has the background and experience to be a successful President. "There are some things I don't like about her, as well. I think she cuts the rules sometimes and I think she is very scripted but I can understand why she is," he said. _____ 4:08 p.m. Authorities say a woman campaigning for Donald Trump outside a South Florida polling place pepper-sprayed a Hillary Clinton voter during a confrontation. Jupiter police Sgt. Bradley Vince says officers responded to the center Tuesday morning following multiple 911 calls. Police say 52-year-old Tom Garrecht and 58-year-old Donna Tatlici had exchanged words as Garrecht went in to vote, and the argument continued as he left. Statements from Garrecht, Tatlici and witnesses conflicted. Tatlici says she sprayed Garrecht because she was afraid of him. At some point, the woman was knocked to the ground, but it wasn't clear if Garrecht was purposefully attacking her or flailing around after being pepper-sprayed. The state attorney's office will decide whether file assault charges against Garrecht. No arrests were made Tuesday. Both people were treated at the scene. ______ 1:30 p.m. In Miami Lakes, 37-year-old Axel Ortiz says he woke up undecided on who to vote for in the presidential election. But on Tuesday morning, Ortiz says he cast a vote for Republican Donald Trump. He says that while he doesn't like much of what Trump says, he can't trust Democrat Hillary Clinton either. Uncertainly was also an issue for 63-year-old Jack Leviton in Orlando. The retail worker says he usually supports Democrats, but ultimately decided to cast his ballot for the Green Party's Jill Stein because her views more closely align with Bernie Sanders. He supported Sanders in the presidential primary. Leviton says he didn't believe in the messages of either Trump or Clinton. ________ 12:57 p.m. Josee Voigt stopped by a Gainesville church on Election Day to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, adding that as someone who moved to the United States and became a citizen she's been put off by Donald Trump's portrayal of immigrants. But like 73-year-old Wanda Bass who voted for Donald Trump at a church in nearby Waldo on Tuesday morning, 49-year-old Voigt says she's just happy that the election is almost over. Voigt says the stress of the election is causing her 15-year-old daughter to have nightmares. While she doesn't support Trump, the registered nurse says she hopes if he wins he'll "be able to behave as a head of state and not embarrass us." Bass says the divisive election is having a positive impact by inspiring "more people to get involved in the process." Bass says she's not going to worry about who wins, adding "one of them will get in and serve their four years." 8:25 a.m. More than half of Florida's active registered voters have already cast ballots ahead of Election Day. Numbers released by the state Division of Elections early Tuesday show that 6.51 million voters have either voted early or voted by mail. There are nearly 12.9 million active registered voters. Early voting wrapped up over the weekend, but election supervisors can continue to accept mailed in ballots until 7 p.m. on Election Day. The new numbers show Democrats have built up a more than 90,000 vote lead over Republicans. So far 2.59 million Democrats have voted compared to 2.5 million Republicans. More than 1.25 million voters registered with no party affiliation have also voted. Florida could surpass its overall vote total from 2012. During that presidential election more than 8.5 million people voted. ___________ 4:08 p.m. Authorities say a woman campaigning for Donald Trump outside a South Florida polling place pepper-sprayed a Hillary Clinton voter during a confrontation. Jupiter police Sgt. Bradley Vince says officers responded to the center Tuesday morning following multiple 911 calls. Police say 52-year-old Tom Garrecht and 58-year-old Donna Tatlici had exchanged words as Garrecht went in to vote, and the argument continued as he left. Statements from Garrecht, Tatlici and witnesses conflicted. Tatlici says she sprayed Garrecht because she was afraid of him. At some point, the woman was knocked to the ground, but it wasn't clear if Garrecht was purposefully attacking her or flailing around after being pepper-sprayed. The state attorney's office will decide whether file assault charges against Garrecht. No arrests were made Tuesday. Both people were treated at the scene. 1:30 p.m. In Miami Lakes, 37-year-old Axel Ortiz says he woke up undecided on who to vote for in the presidential election. But on Tuesday morning, Ortiz says he cast a vote for Republican Donald Trump. He says that while he doesn't like much of what Trump says, he can't trust Democrat Hillary Clinton either. Uncertainly was also an issue for 63-year-old Jack Leviton in Orlando. The retail worker says he usually supports Democrats, but ultimately decided to cast his ballot for the Green Party's Jill Stein because her views more closely align with Bernie Sanders. He supported Sanders in the presidential primary. Leviton says he didn't believe in the messages of either Trump or Clinton. ________ 12:57 p.m. Josee Voigt stopped by a Gainesville church on Election Day to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, adding that as someone who moved to the United States and became a citizen she's been put off by Donald Trump's portrayal of immigrants. But like 73-year-old Wanda Bass who voted for Donald Trump at a church in nearby Waldo on Tuesday morning, 49-year-old Voigt says she's just happy that the election is almost over. Voigt says the stress of the election is causing her 15-year-old daughter to have nightmares. While she doesn't support Trump, the registered nurse says she hopes if he wins he'll "be able to behave as a head of state and not embarrass us." Bass says the divisive election is having a positive impact by inspiring "more people to get involved in the process." Bass says she's not going to worry about who wins, adding "one of them will get in and serve their four years." 8:25 a.m. More than half of Florida's active registered voters have already cast ballots ahead of Election Day. Numbers released by the state Division of Elections early Tuesday show that 6.51 million voters have either voted early or voted by mail. There are nearly 12.9 million active registered voters. Early voting wrapped up over the weekend, but election supervisors can continue to accept mailed in ballots until 7 p.m. on Election Day. The new numbers show Democrats have built up a more than 90,000 vote lead over Republicans. So far 2.59 million Democrats have voted compared to 2.5 million Republicans. More than 1.25 million voters registered with no party affiliation have also voted. Florida could surpass its overall vote total from 2012. During that presidential election more than 8.5 million people voted. ___________ 8 a.m. In Gainesville, three University of Florida students were among the millions of the state's voters who voted early. Two of them - 21-year-olds Austin Young and TJ Pyche - cast ballots for Democrat Hillary Clinton. In fact, Pyche says he was a registered Republican who changed his party affiliation to no party after John Kasich lost to Donald Trump. The third, 22-year-old Michael Beato, declined to say who he voted for. But he was a Jeb Bush supporter in the presidential primaries. All three say they are glad to see the divisive campaign coming to an end, and hope the country can start to heal after Election Day, no matter who becomes president. Down ballot, all three voted against Amendment 1, which could allow power companies to impose fees on customers who install solar panels. Young and Pyche also voted in favor of a Amendment 2, which would legalize medical marijuana. _______ 7:15 a.m. Polls are open in Florida, where roughly half of the state's active voters have already cast their ballots. Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, could easily tip the presidential election. Both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have crisscrossed Florida in the days leading up to Election Day. Marcy Osier who moved from Georgia to St. Petersburg in October was among those casting early voters in Florida. The 63-year-old retired tax accountant says she's "nervous" about the election because "there are too many undecideds out there." Osier says she voted for Clinton, adding that she's always been a fan. She's mainly concerned about the economy, the middle class and education. She says she voted a straight Democratic ticking, including for U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy. Though she says she knew little about Murphy, she "had no trouble voting for him." ______ 3:19 a.m. Florida voters are deciding whether Republican Sen. Marco Rubio deserves a second term. The election in Florida also will send at least eight new members to Congress, play a critical role in the presidential race and decide whether to broaden access to medical marijuana. Rubio is being challenged by Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. The second-term congressmen has repeatedly attacked Rubio for missing votes while running for president and supporting presidential nominee Donald Trump. The Senate race has been surprisingly close considering Rubio has a huge money and name recognition advantage. Republicans have criticized Murphy for embellishing his education and professional experience. The race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton has also been close in the nation's largest swing state. There's little chance Trump can win the presidency without the state's 29 electoral votes. (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) 11/8/2016 1:34:16 PM (GMT -5:00) TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- U.S Vice President Joe Biden made one last campaigning push for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at Florida A&M University just hours ahead of Election Day. This was Biden's second trip to the Capital City this year, after attending a private fundraiser in August. Hundreds cheered on Biden and his wife Jill at "The Set." They encouraged the crowd to vote and get others to the polls, too. While Biden rallied support for Clinton, he also warned voters about choosing Republican nominee Donald Trump. Biden said Trump is already causing trouble for the country with comments that have made European leaders doubt American military support for NATO. Clinton, he said, remains the only viable pick for president, but she can't win unless voters take action. "Tomorrow is a day that's going to impact on all your tomorrows for the next 10 or 12 years," Biden said. "That's not hyperbole. It's going to impact on your lives like no other tomorrow in terms of the american history since you've been alive." U.S Representative Gwen Graham said she knows Biden pretty well. Her father Bob Graham served in the U.S. Senate alongside Biden, who was a senator in Delaware. "He's just such a genuine, warm, caring person," Graham said. "What you see is what you get with the vice president. He is the best. He's such a good, good person, and he does care -- and that comes through, and I think that came through today with all the Rattlers here." Biden emphasized ways Clinton will continue the work he's done with president Obama. He also said if Donald Trump is elected, issues like healthcare, equal rights for women and minorities, and national security will be compromised. Both Bidens encouraged students to use their political voices Tuesday. FAMU senate president Brandon Johnson said the Capital City is a perfect example of why this election brought them here. "Any time you have three major colleges, two major universities in one little area, you have a lot of voter bases," Johnson said. "You have different backgrounds. You have students who have traveled from across the country, across the world, to get their education here, as well as being in the Tallahassee community, so it's very important to come to Tallahassee to get a vote." In addition to the Bidens and Congresswoman Graham, several speakers addressed the crowd, including interim university president Larry Robinson, Mayor Andrew Gillum and congressional candidate Al Lawson. Biden also took time to lend his support for Patrick Murphy, who is running to unseat Republican Marco Rubio as U.S. Senator for the state of Florida. By PTI: Karachi, Nov 7 (PTI) Two Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LeJ) militants have been arrested for killing Amjad Sabri, one of Pakistans finest Sufi Qawwals, in a sectarian attack, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said today. Sabri, 45, and an associate were travelling in a car in Karachis congested Liquatabad 10 area in June when two motorcycle-borne gunmen fired at their vehicle, killing them. advertisement The victims were apparently heading for the studio of a private TV channel when they were attacked. "The Counter-Terrorism Department headed by Raja Umar Khattab made a major breakthrough and arrested two people from Liaquatabad called Ishaq alias Bobby and Asim alias Capri. Their weapons were also recovered," he said. The men are affiliated with the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi Naeem Bukhari group, the chief minister said. "Asim alias Capri was Sabris neighbour. We have not found any motive (behind the murder) as yet, but it seems sectarian to us because Sabri used to frequent majalis (religious congregation of minority Shia community)," the Dawn quoted him as saying. Shah said there was conclusive proof that the two were part of a gang involved in nine major incidents. "After a probe and forensic investigation, we found proof of (their) involvement in 28 cases," he said. "We will try to follow the lead through the arrested ones and apprehend rest of the gang," he added. The weapons were matched using empty bullet casings collected from crime scenes and bullets retrieved during post mortems, he added. Amjad Sabri was the son of renowned Qawwal Ghulam Farid Sabri whose family is famous in the subcontinent for their contribution to this sufi art and mystic poetry. Sabri was one of Pakistans finest qawwals, known for his soul-stirring renditions of mystic poetry. Some of the most memorable and famous qawwalis of the Sabris were Bhar Do Jholi Meri, Tajdar-i-Haram and Mera Koi Nahin Hai Teray Siwa. Sabri, who travelled widely to Europe and the US for his concerts, was known as the "rockstar" of Qawali due to his modern style of rendition. The two LeJ men were also involved in various instances of target killing of 12 police personnel and seven Shias, Shah said, adding that a large quantity of weapons were recovered from the suspects, including three SMGs, two MP5 rifles stolen from police, 27 pistols, and lots of hand grenades and IEDs. The LeJ has roots in Punjab province and has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Balochistan, particularly against the minority Shias. advertisement The group recently claimed that it killed 61 people, mostly young cadets, during an attack on a police training centre in Quetta, the capital of the restive Balochistan province, in one of the deadliest terror attacks in Pakistan. PTI ZH AKJ ZH --- ENDS --- Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a sudden address to the nation, announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes are being withdrawn from midnight. He said that such notes will become "mere paper". By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes would be withdrawn from the financial system at midnight, saying it was part of a crackdown on rampant corruption. In an unprecedented move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation through Doordarshan, India's state television. He is scheduled to meet President Pranab Mukherjee after his telecast. advertisement This is the first time Modi addressed the nation in this manner since he was elected more than two years ago. The address will be first in Hindi, followed by an English telecast. Modi's address to the nation comes at the end of the day in which he met the three chiefs of the armed forces - Army Chief Dalbir Singh, Navy Chief Sunil Lanba and Indian Air Force Vice Chief BS Dhanoa - to review India's security following the tension with Pakistan. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was also present at the meeting. The Prime Minister then chaired a meeting of his senior ministers. The meeting came as tension along the India-Pakistan border continues, with over 100 violations from the Pakistani side since the surgical strikes that India carried out on terror launch pads in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the intervening night of September 28-29. Highlights: This speech is for a special request that I am going to make to the nation. We are for empowerment of poors and for their rights. The various schemes launched by the government are aimed at empowering the poor. It shows the government is dedicated to the poor. Corruption and black market is a big hindrance in removing poverty. India a bright spot in global economy. This claim is not by us, but by the IMF. Corruption is the biggest bane for us. We are Number 70 on corruption index. Terrorism is being funded from across the border using fake currencies We took many steps to contain the menace of black money We made an SIT on black money with a retiredd judge of Supreme Court We entered into agreements with various countries to contain black money transactions We introduced the amnesty scheme to announce black money\ Corruption, black money etc are such things which are pushing teh country backwards Rs 125 lakh crores came out during amnesty scheme on black money Some people have misutilised their positions for corrupt practices Some honest people have fought corruption as well On one side terrorism, fake note currency is destroying the country and on the other corruption and black money is destroying the country Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes will be invalid from November 8 midnight The process of cash circulation is directly related to corruption in our country impacting the lower classes of our society From Midnight Nov 8, 2016 today, Rs 500 and Rs1000 notes are no longer legal tender You have 50 days (From 10 Nov to 30 Dec) to deposit notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 in any Bank or Post office On November 9 and in some places, on November 10, the ATMs will not work ATMS will limit money to Rs 2,000 a day initially On November 9, all banks will remain closed for public work There will be no change in any other form of currency exchange be it cheque, DD, payment via credit or debit cards etc The new Rs 500 note. (Photo: ANI) The new Rs 500 note. (Photo: ANI) The new Rs 500 note. (Photo: ANI) The new Rs 2000 note. (Photo: ANI) The new Rs 2000 note. (Photo: ANI) advertisement Watch the video here: --- ENDS --- The Ohio hiker who went missing in Central Washington almost a year ago still weighs heavily on the minds of many in the outdoors community. His triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House and threatens to undo major achievements of President Barack Obama. Voters line up in voting booths to cast their ballots at Robious Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. The 30-ft. x 12-ft. image in the background was painted by 3rd and 4th graders at the school in preparation for Veterans Day. AP photo By India Today Web Desk: Donald Trump was elected America's 45th president Tuesday, an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice who capitalized on voters' economic anxieties, took advantage of racial tensions and overcame a string of sexual assault allegations on his way to the White House. FULL COVERAGE His triumph over Hillary Clinton will end eight years of Democratic dominance of the White House and threatens to undo major achievements of President Barack Obama. He's pledged to act quickly to repeal Obama's landmark health care law, revoke the nuclear agreement with Iran and rewrite important trade deals with other countries, particularly Mexico and Canada. advertisement And US is finally voting.Long queues outside polling booth in Upper East Manhattan.Most say-we want it to get over! @IndiaToday @rahulkanwal pic.twitter.com/61B4iunWyD Smita Sharma (@Smita_Sharma) November 8, 2016 ALSO READ | Hillary Clinton has 90 per cent chance of winning, reveals poll Here are the LIVE updates: Donald Trump has pledged to be a president "for all Americans." The president-elect, addressing supporters at his victory party in New York City, asked that the nation to come together, and promised to "represent every citizen of our land." He added that it was "time for America to bind the wounds of division" and "time for us to come together as one." He also declared his administration will be a time of "national growth and renewal." Trump said "America will no longer settle for anything but the best" and said that the nation will "dream big and bold and daring." President-elect Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton called him to congratulate him on his victory. Trump, addressing supporters at his victory party in New York City, said Wednesday that he "congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign." He added that "we owe her a major debt of gratitude" for her service. The gracious sentiment was a far cry from Trump's usually heated rhetoric about Clinton. He has suggested that she should go to jail and chants of "Lock her up!" were a staple at his campaign rallies. American people have spoken: Pence Vice President-elect Mike Pence is declaring Donald Trump's victory "a historic night." Pence, Indiana's governor, addressed Trump's victory party in New York City early Wednesday. Trump's running mate said "the American people have spoken and the American people have elected their new champion." PM Modi congratulated Donald Trump for his landslide victory. Donald Trump wins 276 electorates to be the 45th president of the United states by defeating Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump wins Wisconsin, Arizona. Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman says it has nothing more to say even as votes turn against her. John Podesta told a crowd in New York early Wednesday that with states still uncalled "we're not going to have anything else to say tonight." Clinton wins Maine and 1 congressional district, takes 3 electoral votes; Trump wins 1 district in state, gets 1 vote. Donald Trump wins Utah, Iowa, Alaska Indian-American Kamala Harris scripts history, wins US Senate seat from California. Donald Trump wins North Carolina, Georgia Hillary Clinton wins Oregon, California. Donald Trump wins North Florida. Donald Trump wins Ohio. Ohio has sided with the winning presidential candidate in every US election since 1964. Hillary Clinton wins Colorado and Virginia. Like Russia, China is seen as favoring Trump because he appears less willing to confront China's newly robust foreign policy, particularly in the South China Sea. Donald Trump wins Missouri and Montana. Hillary Clinton wins New Mexico. As of now, Donald Trump has a 58 per cent chance of becoming president: New York Times Donald Trump wins Louisiana. Hillary Clinton wins Connecticut. Republican Donald Trump has won Arkansas and its six electoral votes. Watching the returns at 9:45pm. #ElectionNight #MAGA???? pic.twitter.com/HfuJeRZbod Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2016 Trump wins Nebraska and two of the state's three congressional districts, winning total of 4 electoral votes. Donald Trump wins Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming; Hillary Clinton wins New York, Illinois. Donald Trump wins Mississippi. Hillary Clinton wins Rhode Island. Republican Todd Young will win the Indiana Senate seat. Meanwhile, Trump cake memes going strong. Trump cake memes going strong #ElectionNight pic.twitter.com/oxjcKdQxSlGissur Simonarson (@GissiSim) November 8, 2016 Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. US representative Todd Young has won his senate race in Indiana. Donald Trump wins Alabama. Donald Trump wins South Carolina, Tennessee. Hillary Clinton wins District of Columbia. Republican Rob Portman wins re-election to Senate. Donald Trump wins West Virginia. Polls close in first six states in US election with Trump leading the race by a score of 19-3 against Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump wins Indiana and Kentucky while Hillary Clinton wins Vermont as voting ends. One dead and 3 were injured after shooting was reported near polling site in Azusa, California. Millions of Americans throng the polling booths with only an hour left to mark the end of the race for the next US president. Republican nominee Donald Trump casts his vote in New York. Hillary Clinton arrived to cast her ballot at an elementary school in her hometown of Chappaqua, New York, on Tuesday morning. Hillary Clinton cast her vote at an elementary school in her hometown of Chappaqua Trump, who planned to vote later in Manhattan, began Election Day with a ritual call to the "Fox & Friends" morning news show. "I'm a little bit superstitious," he said. "I've won many primaries speaking to you first in the morning. Donald Trump's son Eric Trump says that his father will concede the election if he loses and the results are "legit and fair." A Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation poll gave Clinton a 90 per cent chance of defeating Trump and said she was on track to win 303 electoral college votes out of 270 needed, to Trump's 235. Grace Bell Hardison, a 100-year-old woman recently mentioned by President Barack Obama after attempts were made to purge her from the voter registration list and hence deny her right to vote, receives an Hillary Clinton is calling on voters to reject Donald Trump's "dark and divisive" vision. She says there's no reason why "America's best days are not ahead of us." Hillary Clinton was serenaded by Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi at her campaign finale in Raleigh, North Carolina, early Tuesday. America on Tuesday will elect its 45th president, making Hillary Clinton the nation's first female commander in chief or choosing billionaire businessman Donald Trump, whose volatile campaign has upended US politics. Clinton enters Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump must win most of the roughly dozen battleground states up in order to clinch 270 Electoral College votes. With hours to go before Americans vote, Democrat Hillary Clinton has about a 90 per cent chance of defeating Republican Donald Trump in the race for the White House, according to the final Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project. Republican Donald Trump expressed confidence on Election Day. Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine says he and Hillary Clinton can clinch the White House if they win any one of the "checkmate" states. Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, voted shortly after polls opened at 6 am at a retirement community near their home. Donald Trump has a final message to his supporters in the election's waning hours: "We have to win." Donald Trump is channeling Hollywood as he kicks off the final rally of his unconventional presidential campaign. Voters line up in voting booths to cast their ballots at Robious Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. The 30-ft. x 12-ft. image in the background was painted by 3rd and 4th graders at the school in preparation for Veterans Day. AP photo Like millions of Americans, Clinton and Trump planned to cast their votes on Tuesday morning. The winner be it Trump or Clinton will inherit an anxious nation, angry and distrustful of leaders in Washington. They'll preside over an economy that is improving but still leaving many behind, and a military less extended abroad than eight years ago, but grappling with new terror threats. The candidates blitzed through the battleground states on Monday, accompanied by their families, political allies and celebrities. CLINTON vs. TRUMP: The two New Yorkers pounded each other relentlessly, each preaching that the other is wholly unqualified, as the race tightened in the final days after a persistent if elastic lead for Clinton, the Democrat, in preference polling. advertisement FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT advertisement Clinton went into Election Day as the favorite to become the first US woman president after spending eight years in the White House as first lady from 1993 to 2001. advertisement But Trump advisers said the level of his support was not apparent in the polling and that they believed the New York businessman was in position for an upset victory along the lines of the "Brexit" vote in June to pull Britain from the European Union. "We have seen enormous momentum," said Trump deputy campaign manager Dave Bossie. Voters: Last minute voters rush to cast their ballots on Election Day at the Christ United Methodist Church precinct in north Jackson. AP Photo While opinion polls showed a close race but tilting toward Clinton, major bookmakers and online exchanges were more confident that she will win. PredictIt put her chances of capturing the White House at 81 percent. Investors, who see Clinton as a known quantity, have also been buoyed FBI Director James Comey announcement on Sunday that cleared her of a cloud of controversy involving her use of a private email server while President Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Voters in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, cast the first ballots in the country at midnight, choosing Clinton over Trump 4-2, according to media reports. LONG QUEUES, INTIMIDATION AND MALFUNCTIONS IMBUES POLLING PLACES Voters reported long lines, malfunctioning equipment, and isolated cases of harassment at polling places in Tuesday's US presidential election as fears of bigger problems did not appear to be materializing. Civil rights groups said they were receiving complaints about intimidating behaviour at voting sites in Pennsylvania and Florida as supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and backers of Democrat Hillary Clinton went to cast their ballots. But a Democratic Party source said the Clinton campaign was not encountering systemic problems beyond the usual Election Day hiccups. Trump sued the registrar of voters in Clark County, Nevada, with a claim that a polling place in Las Vegas had improperly been allowed to remain open last week to accommodate people who were lined up to vote. Nevada is one of several states that allow early voting. US VOTERS WANT A LEADER WHO ENSURES FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY Americans who had cast their votes for the next president early on Tuesday appeared to be worried about the direction of the country, and were looking for a "strong leader who can take the country back from the rich and powerful," according to an early reading from the Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll. The poll of more than 10,000 people who have already cast their ballots in the presidential election showed a majority of voters are worried about their ability to get ahead and have little confidence in political parties or the media to improve their situation. A majority also feel that the economy is rigged to mostly help the wealthy. EYES ON FLORIDA, NORTH CAROLINA An early indicator of the strength of each candidate could come in North Carolina and Florida, two must-win states for Trump that have been the subject of frantic last-minute efforts by both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. Races in both those states were shifting from favoring Clinton to being too close to call. A strong vote for Clinton could jeopardize Republican control of the US Senate, as voters choose 34 senators of the 100-member chamber. Democrats needed a net gain of five seats to win control. The 435-seat House of Representatives was expected, however, to remain in Republican hands. Clinton has vowed to largely continue the policies of Democrat Obama, and Trump, who has never held public office and has positioned himself as a change agent. Majorities of voters have viewed both candidates unfavorably. The long-running US election campaign has been one of the most negative in American history, with each candidate accusing the other of lacking the character and judgment to be president. Trump, a former reality TV star, reveled in the drama and seized the spotlight time and again with provocative comments about Muslims and women, attacks against the Republican establishment and bellicose appeals to build a wall along the US southern border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration. While casting his vote, the presidential nominee was spotted peeking at his wife's ballot. Almost to everyone's surprise, Donald Trump's son Eric Trump was also seen peeking at his wife's ballot while the couple were casting their vote in the historical US presidential election. This picture is everything. pic.twitter.com/m9Blodj90f&; Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) November 8, 2016 Like father like son. Eric Trump takes a peek at his wife's ballot. pic.twitter.com/QamSlibdJh&; Michele (@haymakers) November 8, 2016 But the spotlight was not always kind to Trump. The release of a 2005 video in which he boasted about groping women damaged his campaign and left him on the defensive for critical weeks. Clinton, a former US senator with a penchant for secrecy, sustained damaging blows from her handling of classified information as the country's top diplomat. Comey shook up the race and slowed her momentum with an Oct. 28 announcement the agency was reviewing newly discovered emails that might pertain to her email practices. On Sunday, Comey told Congress that investigators had found no reason to change their July finding that there was no criminal wrongdoing in Clinton's use of the server. With inputs from AP, Reuters --- ENDS --- If you are sending a Letter To the Editor, please be sure to follow these rules: Letters have a firm 200-word limit and will be edited for grammar, clarity and accuracy. The person who signs the letter must be the author. Anonymous letters will not be considered. Letters must address the editor, not a third party. We will not print form letters, libelous letters, business promotions or personal disputes, poetry, open letters, letters espousing religious views without reference to a current issue, or letters considered in poor taste. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer. The Yakima Herald-Republic cannot verify the accuracy of all statements made in letters. Writers are limited to one published letter per calendar month. A furious fight for control of the US Congress being waged alongside the White House race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump ends on Tuesday with elections that will help shape the country's policy decisions for the next two years. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter At stake is Republicans' current grip on the Senate and House of Representatives. If voters hand power to Democrats in either chamber, 2017 will likely bring a more moderate bent to bills that lawmakers send to the new president for signing into law. In order to win control of the Senate outright, Democrats would have to score a net gain of five seats. Republicans currently hold 54 Senate seats to 44 Democratic seats and two independents who align themselves with Democrats. Photo: Reuters For much of the autumn campaign, political analysts were projecting Democrats would pick up anywhere from four to seven Senate seats. But Democrats worried that the FBI's disclosure in late October it was reviewing newly discovered emails to see if they pertained to Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state might tip some competitive races toward Republicans. The FBI said on Sunday the agency had completed its review of the newly found emails and found no reason to change its July finding that no criminal charges were warranted against Clinton. Democrats face a steeper challenge in the House, having to gain 30 seats to win back the majority they last held in 2010. Some analysts have been projecting Democrats could pick up anywhere from five to 20 seats. Tight Senate Contests Republican control of the 100-seat Senate over the past two years and the 435-seat House of Representatives since 2011 has brought a sustained assault against Democratic President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law known as Obamacare. House Republicans have halted progress made in the Senate in 2013 on comprehensive immigration reform and Republicans have generally pushed for rolling back spending on domestic programs while trying to limit environmental and financial industry regulation. The outcome of the presidential race is expected to have a major impact on the outcome of the congressional campaigns. In recent decades, the party that wins the White House has usually fared better in congressional races too. For most of the 2016 campaign season, the Senate races have been center-stage, as Democrats fielded some strong challengers to Republican incumbents. John McCain (Photo: AP) Among them are Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who is giving Republican Senator Roy Blunt an unexpectedly stiff challenge, and former environmental official Katie McGinty, who could unseat Republican Senator Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. John McCain, the Vietnam War hero and 2008 Republican presidential nominee who has served in the Senate for 30 years appears headed to re-election in a race that has been unusually competitive for him. A possible 50-50 tie following Tuesday's elections would mean that the next vice president would cast the tiebreaking vote and determine which party controls the Senate. The Senate that will be sworn in on Jan. 3, whether it is held by Republicans or Democrats, will face a weighty decision early on, voting on a US Supreme Court justice to replace the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February. Since that time, Senate Republicans have refused to consider US President Barack Obama's nomination of federal judge Merrick Garland, arguing the next president should pick a nominee for Senate review. Other issues confronting Congress next year include the need to raise US borrowing authority, something some conservative Republicans oppose without substantial budget cuts, and possible approval of free-trade deals with Pacific Rim countries and Europe if negotiations on the latter conclude successfully. Luxembourg's foreign minister accused Turkish authorities on Monday of using methods reminiscent of those employed by Nazis in a crackdown following July's coup attempt. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In a German radio interview, Jean Asselborn suggested that Turkey's strong economic ties with the European Union could be used to exert pressure on Ankara over human rights issues. Turkey brushed off the accusation, arguing that the movement led by a US-based cleric whom the government accuses of masterminding the failed coup is worse than the Nazis. It insisted it would not be deterred from its efforts to go after cleric Fethullah Gulen's network of followers. Opposition parties in Turkey and human rights groups accuse the government of clamping down on all critics, not just alleged coup plotters. Turkish police spray liquid on a man protesting arrest of Kurdish lawmakers (Photo: Gettyimages) Asselborn told Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio that people who've been fired have their names published, have their passports destroyed, have no chance of finding another job and no income, and risk hunger. "These are methods, one must say this bluntly, that were used during Nazi rule," said Asselborn, who has a record of making outspoken comments. "And there has been a really, really bad evolution in Turkey since July that we as the European Union cannot simply accept." Turkey's EU affairs minister, Omer Celik, retorted that "the issue does not resemble Nazi-era practices, rather the struggle against the Nazis after they were chased from power." "Compared to the (Gulen movement) Nazis would resemble apprentices. They would appear like schoolchildren next to the (Gulen movement)," he said. "No one should think that we would step back from our struggle against an organization that used warplanes, tanks, battleships and helicopters against its own people." Tukish President Erdogan (Photo: EPA) Asselborn said that Turkey's strong economic ties with the EU are "absolutely a means of pressure." "At a certain moment we will not be able to get around using this means of pressure to counteract the unspeakable state of human rights," he added. Germany, the EU's most populous country, sounded unenthusiastic about that idea. "The German government is not participating now in a debate about sanctions," said Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert. He said Europe needs to make clear to Turkey "what effects the repression of the press and the repression of the opposition have on relations ... and for that it is important to keep open channels of communication." Naor Shalev Ben-Ezra, who was just 12 years old when 13-year-old terrorist Ahmad Manasra stabbed him in a terror attack in Jerusalems Pisgat Zeev neighborhood last year , voiced his opinions Monday evening that the sentence handed down to his attacker was lenient Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Manasra was sentenced to 12 years in prison earlier the same evening. The Jerusalem District Court also ordered him to pay NIS 100,000 to Ben-Ezra and NIS 80,000 in compensation to his second victim, 21-year-old Yosef Ben-Shalom who was also injured in the attack. Moreover, the court sentenced him to two years suspended sentence. Stabbing victim Naor Ben-Ezra with Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh (Photo: Ofer Meir) It is a shame that the terrorist did not receive a life sentence, Naor commented later on Monday evening, too emotional to speak in the courtroom itself. Also present in the courtroom as the sentence was being handed down was his father Shai, who also expressed his disappointment in the punishment meted out against the minor who critically wounded his son. While the prosecutor did get the punishment he requested (for the terrorist), he requested half of the maximum, Shai said. From Naors point of view, the attack completely destroyed his adolescence, his Bar-Mitzvah and sent his family into serious disarray. We adults hope that the punishment will be a deterrence but Naor experienced the daily difficulties. Every time he takes off a shirt he has to deal with it. This is now a chapter that has concluded for him and he needs to continue his life. Ahmad Manasra (Photo: AFP) Shai also reflected on the twisted results of Palestinian incitement on children. "I hope the court learns the lesson so cases like this do not happen again. To see a child who is my son's age trying to stab him is very painful and upsetting, it feels like there's no one you can trust. Children are supposed to play and eat candy, not murder." The attack made international headlines when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas publicly accused Israel of executing Manasra in cold blood, while he was in fact alive and being treated for serious wounds at an Israeli hospital. After photos emerged of the boy recovering at Jerusalems Hadassah Medical Center, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Abbas for incitement. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump face the judgment of the voters on Tuesday as millions of Americans turn out on Election Day to pick the next US president and end a bruising campaign that polls said favored Clinton. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In a battle centered largely on the character of the candidates, Clinton, 69, a former secretary of state and first lady, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman, made their final, fervent appeals to supporters late on Monday to turn out the vote. Their final week of campaigning was a grinding series of get-out-the-vote rallies across battleground states where the election is likely to be decided. Donald Trump (Photo: AFP) "We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America," Clinton said in Philadelphia before a crowd of 33,000 - the biggest of her campaign. She was joined by Democratic President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton Trump made one of his final appearances late on Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire, where polls showed a tight race. Trump at a campaign rally in New Hampshire X "Tomorrow, the American working class will strike back," Trump said. "It's about time." He brought much of his family on stage for his last rally in the state where he scored his first victory in the Republican nomination fight. FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT Clinton went into Election Day as the favorite to become the first US woman president after spending eight years in the White House as the first lady in the 1990s. A Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation poll gave Clinton a 90 percent chance of defeating Trump and said she was on track to win 303 Electoral College votes out of 270 needed, to Trump's 235. But Trump advisers said the level of his support was not apparent in the polling and believed the New York businessman was in position for an upset victory along the lines of the "Brexit" vote in June to pull Britain from the European Union. "We have seen enormous momentum," said deputy Trump campaign manager Dave Bossie. Financial markets brightened in reaction to the latest twists in what has been a volatile presidential campaign. Global stock markets and the US dollar surged, putting them on track for their biggest gains in weeks. Investors, who see Clinton as a known quantity, were buoyed by an announcement on Sunday by FBI Director James Comey that cleared Clinton of a cloud of controversy involving her use of a private email server while President Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Hillary Clinton (Photo: AFP) While opinion polls showed a close race, but tilting toward Clinton, major bookmakers and online exchanges were more confident of a Clinton victory. PredictIt put her chances of capturing the White House at 81 percent. Both Clinton and Trump planned to vote on Tuesday - she in Chappaqua, New York, and he in Manhattan. They were then to hold victory rallies about a mile apart in the evening in New York City. EYES ON FLORIDA, NORTH CAROLINA An early indicator of the strength of each candidate could come in North Carolina and Florida, two must-win states for Trump that have been the subject of frantic last-minute efforts by both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. Races in both those states were shifting from favoring Clinton to being too close to call. A strong vote for Clinton could jeopardize Republican control of the US Senate, as voters choose 34 senators of the 100-member chamber. Democrats needed a net gain of five seats to win control. The 435-seat House of Representatives was expected, however, to remain in Republican hands. Voters had to choose between Clinton, who was vowed to largely continue the policies of Democrat Obama, and Trump, who has never held public office and has positioned himself as a change agent. Both were viewed unfavorably by majorities of voters. Clinton speaking at a campaign rally in Philadelphia X The long-running US election campaign has been one of the most negative in American history with each candidate accusing the other of lacking the character and judgment to be president. Trump, a former reality TV star, reveled in the drama and seized the spotlight time and again with provocative comments about Muslims and women, attacks against the Republican establishment and bellicose appeals to build a wall along the US southern border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration. But the spotlight was not always kind to Trump, with the release of a 2005 video in which he boasted about groping women damaging his campaign and leaving him on the defensive for critical weeks. Clinton, a former US senator with a penchant for secrecy, sustained damaging blows of her own linked to her handling of classified information as the country's top diplomat. FBI Director James Comey shook up the race and slowed her momentum with an October 28 announcement the agency was reviewing newly discovered emails that might pertain to her email practices. On Sunday, Comey told Congress that investigators had found no reason to change their July finding that there was no criminal wrongdoing in Clinton's use of the server. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's affordable housing scheme Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Maharashtra state's Housing body MHADA, Board had floated these tenders inviting contractors to build these houses on turn-key basis at a collective cost of Rs 3,611.96 crore. By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: Maharashtra government has stayed the execution of tenders for affordable housing scheme. The state government has also sought explanation from officials involved in the tenders. PM Narendra Modi has been speaking about house for everyone by 2022 but his pet scheme in Maharashtra raised eyebrows when it came under scanner after major irregularities were found in the tenders worth Rs 3,612 crore. These tenders were passed under affordable housing scheme for building homes near Mumbai. advertisement Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's affordable housing scheme Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Maharashtra state's Housing body MHADA, Board had floated these tenders inviting contractors to build these houses on turn-key basis at a collective cost of Rs 3,611.96 crore. The housing projects were planned on lands in Kalyan, Vasai, Thane, Karjat, Khalapur and Raigad near Mumbai. Government has put a stay on the tendering process after noting that the tender conditions favoured just one company. The chief minister has sought clarification from the housing minister in the cabinet meeting held today. Housing Minister Prakash Mehta has said that the tenders have not been cancelled, only stayed them for time being. However, there were certain changes required in the earlier tenders. There was a scope of misunderstanding that the tenders were favoring a particular construction company having expertise in pre cast building technology. This barred other companies from participating in the tendering process, Mehta said. The state government has now sought clarification from the MHADA officials for the mistake. The state has hinted that if any malafide intention is found strict action would be taken. The new tenders would be floated in a day or two. For now, by staying the tenders the state has avoided a major embarrassment. --- ENDS --- The IDF has warned the international community that the water infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza will collapse as long as the Palestinian Authority refuses to cooperate with Israel. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter According to Head of the Coordination for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the joint Israeli-Palestinian water distribution councilwhich manages water infrastructure in the West Bankhasnt met since 2010 due to the Palestinians' refusal to approve water infrastructure upgrades in the West Bank settlements. The major general sent an urgent letter to the UN humanitarian aid coordinator in the West Bank, the head of the Palestinian UNRWA, the head of the Red Cross, head of USAID, and various ambassadors, including the German, UK, Italian, French and EU ambassadors to Israel. COGAT head Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai (Photo: COGAT Spokesperson) The COGAT head said that he wants significant steps to be taken to fix the water crisis in the West Bank and Gaza, saying "the Gaza Strip almost completely relies on its aquifer, and the water quality in it has become very poor as a result of years of over-pumping and pollution." Regarding the West Bank, he wrote that "according to Palestinian estimates, 96% of the water drawn from the aquifer there isn't fit to drink, and thus the Palestinians rely on water from Israel the water infrastructure in place isn't enough to meet the needs of the population, leading to water shortages in certain areas (of the West Bank)." Meanwhile, he continued "waste water treatment (in the Palestinian Authority) is seriously lacking. According to official estimates, there will be huge water shortages amounting to tens of millions of cubic meters of water in the coming years." Israel recently approved sending 10 million cubic meters of water to Gaza and six million cubic litres to the West Bank. Yet despite Israeli efforts to help the Palestinians solve this crisis, the problem still hasn't been resolved. "This additional supply of water to Gaza fulfills the Palestinian request for Israeli aid, and the Palestinians have made it clear that they are not interested in more water," Maj. Gen. Mordechai wrote. The letter went on to say that "the Israeli Water Authority has commissioned a multi-year, long term plan to be written which will fix the water infrastructure for the benefit of the entire population living in the West Bank." "In addition," the COGAT head wrote, "the State of Israel supports the promotion of desalination projects and water and sewage infrastructure in Gaza, including the building of the largest desalination plant ever planned in the Strip." Mordechai said that discussions were currently underway about "two giant projects in Gaza; building a $250 dollar water desalinization plantwhich will be able to desalinate 55 million cubic meters of water and improving the water management system." Truck delivering drinking water in the West Bank (Photo: Elad Municipality Spokesperson) The Palestinian Authority has yet to provide Israel with its estimates for how much water the Authority will require in the future, thereby delaying the creation of a coordinated water management plan. With this in mind Maj. Gen. Mordechai wrote "we are warning the international community that if there is no immediate change in the water situation, we can expect a water crisis by next summer. (Israel) will continue efforts to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority on this issue, and we hope that our efforts will bear fruit. We call on the international community to renew its support of our cooperation, and in support of our projects to advance water infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." "Mobilizing the international community to help us prevent this crisis is of the utmost importance," the letter concluded. "Israel will be happy to assist and support any effort to advance these projects." ANKARA- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Berlin on Tuesday of allowing the Kurdish militant PKK and far-leftist DHKP-C, both of which have carried out armed attacks in Turkey, to operate on German soil with impunity. "The DHKP-C and PKK are carrying out activities in Germany, but they support those because they are against Turkey. Germany is the country that supports terrorist organizations against Turkey the most," Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara. "Germany thinks that they are a first class country, a first class democracy, and that Turkey is second class. We want them to treat us as equal partners," he said. HONG KONG- A British banker was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub. The nine-person jury returned unanimous verdicts against Rurik Jutting after a two-week trial in the High Court. The slayings in 2014 and the disclosures as the case developed highlighted Hong Kong's significant inequality as well as the decadent lifestyles of some members of the former British colony's expatriate elite. Jutting faces a mandatory life sentence. In a statement his lawyer asked to be read into the court record, Jutting said he was sorry and accepted the verdicts as "just and appropriate punishment." He also said he was haunted by his actions and the pain he'd caused to the women's loved ones. He was convicted for killing 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih and killing 26-year-old Seneng Mujiasih days later. BERLIN- German prosecutors say that authorities have arrested five men on allegations they aided the Islamic State group in Germany, recruiting members and providing financial and logistical help. The federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Tuesday that the men were arrested by officers of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The statement says the suspects were focused on recruiting young Muslims in Germany, and raising funds to send them to Syria to join ISIS. They're also accused of providing logistical support for the trips. If Benjamin Netanyahu were voting in Americas presidential election on Tuesday, he might very well write in himself as candidate. For aides to the Israeli prime minister say that although he has said complmentary things about both Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, he mistrusts both candidates. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter While Mr. Netanyahu is said to fear that neither partys nominee can be counted upon to protect Israels vital interests, he suspects that Trump might be the more dependable ally. After all, Trump, unlike Mrs. Clinton, has vowed to move Americas embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Although few political analysts take that pledge seriously, Donald Trumps strongly pro-Israeli statements, the GOPs slavishly pro-Israeli platform, Trumps Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the huge financial support that Trump has received from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of Mr. Netanyahus biggest financial backers, have led Mr. Netanyahu, if not a majority of Israelis, to conclude that a President Trump might not be such a disaster for the Jewish state. Netanyahu and Trump. Not such a disaster for the Jewish state (Photo: Kobi Gideon) A poll published Friday found that many more Israelis prefer Clinton to Trump. Some 49 percent of the 500 Israelis surveyed said they considered the former secretary of state the superior candidate. Only 32 percent preferred Trump, according to an Israel Radio report. American Jews are even more solidly pro-Hillary. Mrs. Clinton is seen by many as a known quantity. Although personal relations between Netanyahu and Obama have repeatedly been strained, ties between Israeli and American intelligence, defense, and national security agencies are stronger than ever. Clinton, moreover, is seen as a steady hand, more pro-Israeli and tougher on Middle Eastern Islamists than Barack Obama. Above all, given her vast government experience, she is seen as predictable. Netanyahu and Clinton. Seen as a steady hand, more pro-Israeli and tougher on Middle Eastern Islamists than Obama (Photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO) Mr. Trump, by contrast, is the opposite. His policies are all over the ideological map. Espousing ever shifting, contradictory views, his ignorance of basic tenets of foreign affairs have proven even more shocking than his unorthodox positions such as his praise for Russias Vladimir Putin as a strong leader. Although Trump has vowed to be great for Israel, skeptics remember his earlier pledge to be neutral on the Israel-Palestine issue. Several Jews who attended his speech last December to the Republican Jewish Coalition saw his claim that many members wouldnt support him because he was rich and didnt need their support as reinforcing Jewish stereotypes. And many American and Israeli Jews are exceedingly wary of, and deeply alarmed by the strong support that Trump has received from the anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan and other right-wing fanatics, his racist remarks about Mexicans, and his assault on female critics as pigs and dogs. On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel-US ties would remain strong no matter who won Tuesdays election, and that despite tension with the Obamas administration over the past eight years, relations with Washington were solid and would remain so. But he has also drawn the same conclusion that others have drawn about Mr. Obamas effort to withdraw from Americas intense involvement in the Arab Middle East and focus more on issues at home. While tradition, aid, and democracy assure that Washington is likely to remain Israels closest ally, Netanyahu has reached out to Russia, China and other states to enhance Israeli ties and profile there. That, too, reflects a wise judgment about Americas isolationist mood. Alexander Aviram, the brother of Reuven Aviram who was murdered by a Palestinian in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv last November, testified Tuesday at the trial of the Palestinian terrorist responsible for his death. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter During his testimony, Alexander addressed his brother's killer directly, tell him, "I came here to look you in the eye and remind you of the pain you've caused to a whole lot of families." The brother then asked the court to sentence the murdererRaed Khalilto a harsh punishment. The two men killed by the terrorist in the Panorama building in Tel Aviv Khalil, from the town of Dura, carried out a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv which left two people killed, including 51-year-old Reuven and Aharon Yisayev, 32, from Holon and injured several more. He was found guilty of two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. His sentencing hearing is scheduled to take place on Tuesday. "It is wrong to kill, it's even wrong to think about it," Alexander said before bombarding the terrorist with a list of emotional questions. "The man took a knife into his hand with the intent to kill a person because that person was Jewish. Our entire community is from Uzbekistan, where we lived amongst 20 million Muslims. We would have never expected (that an Uzbek Muslim would try to kill us). We lived with each other in peace. Why did you drag this down down? We gave you the ability to rise up. Why have you sunk so low?" Raed Khalil, the murderer (Photo: Motti Kimchi) The brother continued, saying "Reuven was 51, healthy, full of life, and was taking a short break from work when he was stabbed repeatedly by the terrorist. He was killed, and my sister and I searched for him for several hours before finding out what happened. His son found out that his father was lying in the morgue only after receiving a video of him via whatsapp. I had to go to the morgue to identify him. My mother couldn't make it today, and she cries every day." The Palestinian terrorist worked in the Panorama building at a kebab shop from where he took one of the knives before starting his murderous rampage. According to the indictment, he carried out the attack because he wanted to become a Palestinian martyr. A lot of evidence on what is taking place in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus bureau was presented Monday evening by journalist Ilana Dayan on her investigative television program Uvda. Some of the evidence is already known, some is new, but none of it made our jaws drop. We have heard, read and published similar things, and even worse, in the past. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter But nothing can be compared to the shock we felt when Dayan, for nearly six minutes, read out the response issued by the Prime Ministers Office to the program we had just watched, which included testimonies from former employees who bravely faced the cameras, speaking sincerely and eloquently, often with tears in their eyes and in a trembling voice. Ilana Dayan reads the prime minister's response to her investigative report (Photo courtesy of 'Uvda') After the prime ministers response was presented to us, it seemed that everything we had seen until that very moment was unnecessary. The response proved in an exemplary manner what has already been said for many months, both in this column and in other placesnamely, that the State of Israel is being run by a paranoid man who is haunted by fears and seized with madness, and whose discretion these days is questionable. His attack on a highly regarded media personality, who does her job professionally and with decency, while failing to address a single thing that was raised in the program but only blatantly slamming the messenger, is a microcosm of Netanyahus relationship with the entire media, and serves as evidence that the State of Israel has been taken hostage by a prime minister who is influenced by other forces. On Monday evening, Ilana Dayan joined a long list of journalists who dared to do their job, thereby becoming an enemy of Israel. Netanyahu. The response proved that the State of Israel is being run by a paranoid person haunted by fears (Photo: Gil Yohanan) I have an assumption that the response read by Dayan, a response that even the word crazy is not enough to describe, involved Sara Netanyahu, as well. One could almost hear the voice of the prime ministers wife hurling those accusations at Dayan, just like she screamed at Vered Swid, the director of the Authority of the Advancement of Women, who testified about it in the program in heartbreaking honesty, or at a prime ministers residence employee who forgot to wish her good night or bought a milk bag rather than a carton. It seems that after reading the response, there is nothing left to add. The words speak for themselves. Its not Dayan, but the prime minister, in his response, who tightened the rope around his neck and kicked the chair. He singlehandedly proved the claims against him. But there is one important thing to say: Netanyahu can stop asking us to leave his wife, the compassionate child psychologist, alone and focus on him. The prime ministers artificial and weary plea becomes increasingly ridiculous as the testimonies on her involvement grow. On Monday, it was once again proved by the prime ministers closest former aides, like Uzi Arad and Yoaz Hendel, that the prime ministers wife is behind many of his decisions, including high-ranking appointments and being present in classified meetings. In her program, Dayan did what should have been done a long time ago by people who have witnessed what is going on around the prime minister. Ministers, Knesset members, advisors, assistantsanyone with the slightest sense of responsibility should have stood up a long time ago and testified about on what they have seen. The fact that the number of those who have dared to speak can be counted on one hand is a first-class badge of shame. Its a disgrace that the people we trust are first of all watching out for themselves and their jobs. The issues raised in Dayans program Monday evening, including the response of the Prime Ministers Office, call for an urgent discussion. We can no longer hold back due to claims of persecution. Just like we demand to know the physical state of the most important person in the country, we should also demand an opinion on his mental stateand on the mental state of those surrounding him. BEIRUT- Iran's top diplomat called on Tuesday for a political solution to the conflicts in Yemen and Syria, saying that continued violence in the war-torn nations would only lead to more bloodshed, with no one winning the war. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's remarks came during the second day of his visit to Lebanon. On Monday, he met Lebanon's newly appointed President Michel Aoun, underscoring the ties between Iran and Aoun's Hezbollah-backed presidency. The Shiite militant group and predominantly Shiite Iran are close allies. MUZAFFARABAD/SRINIGAR- Four people were killed on Tuesday in exchanges of fire between India and Pakistan in disputed Kashmir, officials said, the latest violence amid tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Three civilians were killed and three wounded by Indian shelling in the Battal sector of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Pakistani police official Mir Abid said. "A mortar shell landed on the house of one Zakir Hussain Shah in Mandhol village, killing his 45-year old wife and 6-year old daughter on the spot," said Abid, adding that another man was killed near a bridge in the area. The Clinton's greeted supporters waiting outside the polling place after casting their ballots Tuesday morning. Hillary Clinton said it was "the most humbling feeling" to vote "because so many people are counting on the outcome of this election." Bill Clinton said he's eager to be a political spouse, joking that he had "15 years of practice." West Bengal CM has termed Modi's announcement to discontinue 500 and 1000 rupee currency as draconian, ill-conceived and heartless. Mamata made it clear that the Trinamool Congress will oppose the move in the upcoming winter session of the parliament. By Indrajit Kundu: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee criticised the centre's decision to discontinue 500 and 1000 rupee currency notes on Tuesday. Terming the decision "ill-conceived", Mamata described the decision taken by Modi government to demonetise high value currency notes as a "blow to the common people and the middle class." READ: 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money advertisement Also read: PM Narendra Modi LIVE: Rs 500, Rs 1000 bank notes not valid from midnight; ATMs won't work tomorrow She said that the poor had been subjected to "a financial chaos" and a disaster had been let loose on the common masses. "While I'm strongly against black money, corruption, deeply concerned about common people, small traders. How they will buy essentials tomorrow?" she asked on Twitter. Slamming PM Modi for the sudden decision, Mamata wrote, "PM could not get back the promised black money from abroad from the rich, so a drama to divert his failure. (This is) Heartless and ill-conceived blow on the common people and the middle class in the fake name of anti-corruption." READ: PM Modi's rupee revamp: Scrapping big notes a problem for common man, say people READ: New Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes: All you need to know Raising concern about how small traders and farmers will cope with the sudden announcement, Mamata asked, "Rs 100 notes not available in banks. Without availability in market how will people, small farmers, all employees, labourers purchase essentials? I want to know from PM how my poorest brothers sisters, who have received their week's hard earned wage in one 500 rupee note will buy aata, chawal, tomorrow?" READ: Here's what you can do with your useless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes READ | Rs 500 and Rs 1000 scrapped: Full text of PM Modi's address to the nation Terming the decision "draconian", Mamata made it clear that the Trinamool Congress will oppose the move in the upcoming winter session of the parliament. "Withdraw this draconian decision," she demanded on Twitter. READ: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi --- ENDS --- Most of the world follows US presidential elections closely, but Israel can seem particularly obsessive, endlessly assessing which candidate will better protect its interests and breaking down their every comment for policy clues. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter As America votes on Tuesday, a cartoon in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz captured a sense of that fretfulness, depicting friends sitting outside a typical falafel stand and discussing in nerdy detail how the ballot will turn out. "There's no way he'd lose Utah and Arizona, and you can't count on North Carolina," one says to the other. "They'd need to win Pennsylvania and hopefully Florida," the other replies. The fact is, despite all the nervous introspection, both Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are likely to be reliable for Israel, continuing the broad policy mix US presidents have pursued since the 1980s. L: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Kobi Gideon GPO) It's the Palestinians who may have more to worry about. Over the past four years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had a fractious relationship with Barack Obama, openly campaigning against the US deal on Iran's nuclear programme, including condemning it in a speech to Congress. But ultimately that did not stand in the way of the Obama administration's agreeing a new, $38 billion, 10-year military aid package for Israel. And while the US president has criticized Israel for building more settlements on land the Palestinians seek for their own state, the censure has never gone beyond words, essentially leaving Israel free to build. Benjamin Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO) Analysts say that standoff-ish approach is likely to continue whether Clinton or Trump becomes president, and there are other reasons for Israel to expect a warmer embrace from the next administration than it has had from Obama. The Clintons go to vote (Photo: AFP) Netanyahu has been careful not to show favouritism, meeting both candidates and saying much the same thing afterwards. Trump's note that he sent to the Western Wall Clinton, a former New York senator and US secretary of state, has repeatedly emphasised that she will protect Israel's interests. Trump has said he will move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a popular line that would all but enshrine Jerusalem as the country's capital. (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) "We enjoy and appreciate the strong bipartisan support we get," said Lior Weintraub, vice-president of The Israel Project, a pro-Israel lobby group, and a former chief of staff at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. "We believe either president will continue the tradition of the many presidents from both sides of the aisle of fostering the alliance on every front, from security to culture." 'Trump' supporters in Jerusalem (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) While polls show most Israelis favour Clinton, Trump has a hard-core following among some national-religious Israelis, many of whom are originally from the United States. When it comes to policy, Israeli analysts see Clinton as having a better handle on the issues, and the people who are likely to handle the Middle East if she is elected are more familiar faces than those in Trump's circle. The question is what it may mean for the Palestinians. With deep internal divisions and little prospect of a resumption of peace talks with Israel, Palestinian observers believe neither candidate has their best interests at heart. "Either of them will maintain the US commitment to aid Israel, the two have publicly angered the Palestinians in electoral speeches," said analyst Hani Habib. "The only difference was that Trump promised to move the US ambassador to Jerusalem while Clinton kept silent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Israeli Ambassador to UNESCO Carmel Shama Hacohen (Likud) and Acting Foreign Ministry Director Yuval Rotem to discuss any future relationship Israel might have with the organization. Last month, the United Nations body of UNESCO passed a resolution that stressed Muslims' connection to Temple Mount while failing to recognize Jews' connection to the site. Responding to the report, Israel withdrew Shama Hacohen from the organization and stopped cooperating with it. Shama Hacohen is due to return to Paris within the next few days to meet with UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, in an attempt to reconcile and resume cooperation. Bokova herself stated after the report's publication that she opposed it and that UNESCO will continue to fight against anti-Semitism. After years of abuse and death threats, Duaa Abu-Sharkh had finally divorced her husband, agreeing even to give up custody of her four young children and family property to escape his violent grip. Then, one night in late September, as the 32-year-old mother was dropping off her children after a rare visit, a masked gunman dragged her from her car and shot her in the head before their eyes. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Her killing is the latest in a string of murders of Israeli-Arab women believed to have been carried out by relatives. But after years of silence, the recent outburst has sparked soul searching in the community and unprecedented demonstrations against its mistreatment of women. Israeli Arab women who were murdered in 2016 The killings have some similarities to the "honor killings" elsewhere in the Muslim world, where women can be murdered by relatives for tarnishing the family name through perceived sexual indiscretions. But activists in Israel reject such comparisons, saying the vast majority of the killings are the result of rampant spousal abuse that has been ignored by police in a landscape rife with drugs, crime and poverty. Traumatized by the recent death of Abu-Sharkh and other women in their communities, Arab citizens, who have long been suspicious of Israeli authorities, are now calling for more police and social services in their long-neglected neighborhoods. Though just a fifth of the population, Arabs represent half of the women killed in Israel each year. And half of those women are killed in Arab neighborhoods of Ramla and Lod, cities just outside of Tel Aviv where several large clans involved in organized crime have made weapons easily accessible and allowed violence, particularly toward women, to go unchecked for years. "Women in Arab society have a lower status. So, when there is violence, who pays the price? Women," said Samah Salaime, a social worker who founded the Arab Women in the Center organization to aid victims in the Lod area. She said Israeli authorities treat the oppression of women as a given in Arab society. "They deal with us as if the blood of the Arab woman is cheaper," she said. But things are starting to change. Abu-Sharkh's killing, and that of another divorced mother of four in Jaffa a month later, spurred a series of street protests that drew hundreds of women and men, both Arabs and Jews. A parliamentary committee heard testimony from Arab women and the national police chief said the level of violence was "unacceptable" and vowed to battle it. AGenerally speaking, Israeli Arabs are poorer and less educated than Israeli Jews, and they suffer from discrimination and substandard public services. Arabs also often accuse the police of being indifferent to Arab crime, so long as Jews are not harmed. Earlier this year, after a deadly shooting in downtown Tel Aviv and a subsequent weeklong manhunt for the Arab shooter, Israel launched a campaign to collect illegal arms in Arab towns. Later, it promoted an Arab police officer to deputy commissioner, making him the highest-ranking Muslim ever to serve in the force and putting him in charge of the new law and order drive in Arab communities. Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said families used to tamper with crime scenes and make it difficult for police to collect evidence and testimony in Arab areas. But he said attitudes have changed in recent years and cooperation is much better. The police force is currently recruiting an additional 1,500 Arab officers and holding outreach programs to strengthen its ties to the community, he said. "The days of the instant anti-police, anti-government and anti-establishment sentiment are over," he said. "The main emphasis now is to be there and to connect with the Arab community." Arab lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman, who heads the parliamentary committee on the status of women and gender equality, said that wasn't enough. She noted that 15 women have been killed in the Ramle-Lod area in the past year, but only three men have been charged. "What kind of message is given to the population and what kind of message is given to the perpetrators?" she asked. "You can kill and you will still go on free. And for the women it is a clear message from the police that nobody can protect you." Touma-Sliman said police have been persuaded to stop automatically referring to the deaths of Arab women as "honor killings," saying it was an offensive term "developed by the patriarchal society in order to legitimize the murder itself." In Abu-Sharkh's case, the writing was on the wall. Her ex-husband, who had links to local criminal gangs, would beat her regularly, once breaking her arm and nose, and strangle her until she turned blue, said her mother, Majeda Abu-Sharkh. When they complained to police, the ex-husband threatened to kill Abu-Sharkh and gunmen opened fire at her family's home. Police briefly detained him after her killing but released him for lack of evidence. "If it was a Jewish woman, the police would have found her killer in two hours," Majeda said, clutching pictures of her dead daughter. "Thank God, it is all over with now. She has gone to God and it is better for her there. She is resting." Salaime, the social worker, said such tragedies would hopefully diminish as taboos are broken and the status of women slowly improves. "Men know that the Arab woman is now studying more, has more freedom, and we have left a lot of men behind who still think that an Arab woman is worthless, that her body is a property that you can harm without being held accountable," she said. "The path is very long. It is a very painful journey." Turkey said Tuesday that the US-backed and Kurdish-led forces leading an assault on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa should not enter the city itself but merely help encircle it, a suggestion dismissed by the Kurds. The dispute between the two US allies threatens to complicate efforts to drive ISIS out of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the extremist group's self-described caliphate. The US-backed Syria Democratic Forces, which include Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen fighters, have driven IS from large swaths of territory, but Turkey views the Syrian Kurds who dominate the group as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency raging in its southeast. Online television company Netflix has purchased the Israeli political thriller series Fauda, which is based on the activities of the Mistaarvim unit in the Israeli Army that uses special operatives to infiltrate terrorism cells. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The series main plotline during its first season focused on the units attempt to capture a top Hamas official. The show garnered a great deal of support in Israel and the Arab world, and won the Ophir Award for Best Drama. The cast pf Fauda (Photo: Ohad Romano) Rather than filming an English-speaking version, Netflix will be airing Faudas first season in its original Hebrew and Arabic. The show will be available through Netflixs online services starting December 2. The deal will list Fauda as a Netflix Original Seriesthe first Israeli show to get the title. The company has also already purchased the series second season. Fauda will be launched at a premiere event in Los Angeles on November 28, which will include series creators Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz, who also stars in the show. Last week, Netflix purchased the Israeli television show Mossad 101, which details the fictional preparatory course of Mossad agents. Some Mexicans are already preparing to celebrate a possible loss by Donald Trump in the US presidential election. A Facebook invite is asking people to gather at Mexico City's iconic Angel of Independence statue Tuesday night for a celebration if the Republican candidate loses. At least 5,000 people have already RSVPed that they would come. Trump is unpopular in Mexico for suggesting that many Mexican immigrants are criminals or rapists, and for promising to build a border wall between the countries. By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement scrapping Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination currency notes has generally received backing from politicians. However, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has vehemently opposed the decision. Mamata Banerjee In a series of tweets, Mamata protested the revamping of currency notes. Calling it a Draconian decision, she asked the government to withdraw it. She said, "While I'm strongly against black money, corruption, deeply concerned about common people, small traders. How they will buy essentials tomo?... This is a financial chaos and disaster let loose on the common people of India... The PM could not get back the promised black money from abroad from the rich so a drama to divert his failure... I want to know from PM how my poorest brothers sisters, who've recd their week's hard earned wage in one 500 re note will buy ata, chal, tomo?... Heartless and ill- conceived blow on the common people and the middle class in the fake name of anti-corruption? Rs100 notes not available in banks. Without availability in market how will people, small farmrs, all employees, labourers purchase essentials (sic)." advertisement READ: 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money Akhilesh Yadav Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav welcomed the decision but asked the Central Government to set up special banking counters in villages and district centres to assist the public, villagers and farmers. READ: PM Modi's rupee revamp: Scrapping big notes a problem for common man, say people Amit Shah The BJP president said announcements made by PM Modi are exactly what is needed to uproot corruption, black money, hawala and fake currency rackets. READ: RBI to launch new Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes from November 10, banks to keep record of exchanges President Pranab Mukherjee He called upon all to avail of opportunity provided by the Government to exchange currency notes of Rs 500/1000 for a new legal tender. READ: PM Modi's rupee revamp: Don't worry your money stays your money Congress The main opposition party supported the Narendra Modi Government's decision and hoped that it would be fruitful. READ: New Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes: All you need to know MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan He called it a historic decision and said the epidemic of black money, corruption and terrorism will be checked. The country will progress with more speed, he said. READ: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad He tweeted: "Let's all cooperate to make India a more honest and corruption free country which is free from black money." READ: Here's what you can do with your useless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes Union Minorities Affairs Minister MA Naqvi Supporting the decision, he said the son of Sabarmati had performed a miracle. READ: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi READ: Rs 500 and Rs 1000 scrapped: Full text of PM Modi's address to the nation --- ENDS --- Dobra, k. Szczecina 900 m2 40 miejsc parkingowych Atut: Dodatkowe dochody z paczkomatow InPostu, a juz niedugo i z myjni samoobsugowej. Tradycyjny zakup nieruchomosci, mozliwosc wykupienia uzytkowania wieczystego. By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) The mother of missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed today met Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) Najeeb Jung who assured her that Delhi Police was making all efforts to trace her son. Fatima Nafees met the LG at Raj Niwas and demanded that the police stepped up efforts to find her son who has been missing since October 15. advertisement Ahmed (27), a student of School of Biotechnology in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a native of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, was reported missing on October 15 following an on-campus brawl allegedly with the members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students wing of the BJP, the night before. "The LG told her that Delhi Police was making all efforts to find Najeeb and that several teams have been formed for the purpose," an official said. Earlier in the day, Fatima had met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh who had assured her of all assistance in the matter. On October 31, she had met Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who had assured her that his government would use all its resources to trace her son. "I am with you and will do whatever is required to help trace him. It is a very serious matter and the government will use all its resources to help you out," the chief minister had told her. Fatima had earlier said that she had "lost all faith" in the JNU administration. Alleging inaction on part of the administration in tracing Najeeb, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) has been staging protests. The protesting students had even confined the Vice Chancellor (VC) of the university and other senior officials in the administrative building for over 20 hours on one occasion. PTI BUN RC --- ENDS --- The step is an attempt by Modi to fulfill his election promise of curbing tax evasion and recovering black money. By Rajeev Dubey, Anshuman Tiwari: The 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in your wallet are now only worth the paper they are printed on. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Wednesday that banknotes of these two denominations would be withdrawn from circulation at midnight, saying it was part of a crackdown on rampant corruption and counterfeit currency. The decision is a big blow to those who earn and stash black money and its implications run far and wide. Firstly, it renders all illicit cash in the form of these notes worthless at the end of December 30, 2016. Secondly, it immediately invalidates all fake currency floating within the country. But more importantly, it forces black money hoarders to find new and innovative way to stash the ill-gotten wealth. advertisement "Black money and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty," the PM said in an address to the nation after a Cabinet meeting. READ: Here's what you can do with your useless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes READ | Rs 500 and Rs 1000 scrapped: Full text of PM Modi's address to the nation CRUCIAL MOVE AHEAD OF ELECTIONS The step is an attempt by Modi to fulfill his election promise of curbing tax evasion and recovering black money. Analysts say the timing of the move is crucial as it comes just before key state elections where parties pump in crores of rupees, often from dubious sources. The PM also linked the decision to the fight against terrorism, saying enemies from across the border run their operations using fake currency notes. Honest citizens want this battle against corruption, black money, benami property, terrorism and counterfeiting to continue, he said. Modi said terrorism is a frightening threat. "So many have lost their lives because of it. But have you ever thought about how these terrorists get their money? Enemies from across the border run their operations using fake currency notes. This has been going on for years. Many times, those using fake five hundred and thousand rupee notes have been caught and many such notes have been seized." Watch the video Currently Rs 17,54,000 crore worth of notes are in circulation, according to the RBI's database. Rs 500 notes comprise almost 45 percent of this, while 39 percent of the notes were of the Rs 1,000 denomination, in value terms. In volume, Rs 10 and Rs 100 notes constituted 53 percent of the notes in circulation. Only those who have earned their money through legal means will have the courage to deposit it back into their bank accounts by the December 30, 2016 deadline. READ: PM Modi's rupee revamp: Scrapping big notes a problem for common man, say people READ: New Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes: All you need to know DEMAND FOR GOLD TO SHOOT THROUGH THE ROOF Expect the demand for gold and other such investment avenues such as diamonds and silver to shoot through the roof not just until the deadline, but well after that. That is, until the government finds a way to tap sale of gold across the country as well. advertisement READ: 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money The prices of property, already hitting the trough, are likely to go plummet further as nearly half of all property transactions in India are believed to be done through black money and benami transactions. The move will set major administrative and logistical challenges in the beginning, with experts saying a series of fresh clarifications and relaxations is possible in the next few days as the step has already triggered chaos in homes and markets. READ: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi WORLD'S BIGGEST CURRENCY DESTRUCTION SO FAR This may be a radical step with the aim to curb black money but isn't the first such case of currency discontinuation in the world. Earlier this year, the European Central Bank said it was considering demonetization of euro 500 notes. Even in the US, there have been calls to stop fresh issuance of $100 bills for a while now. In 2010, 2.6 billion $1 bills were destroyed in what was one of the world's biggest currency destruction at that point. advertisement The Centre had in the Budget this year announced a four month compliance window, allowing domestic black money holders to declare their unaccounted wealth, by paying a tax and penalty of 45 per cent and escape prosecution and harsher punishment. It has also encouraged the use of non-cash and digital payments, amended the Benami Transactions Act and implemented the Income Declaration Scheme 2016. However, skeptics point out several flaws in the move, saying that it is bound to prove bad news for those who do not have a bank account in the country. About 49 percent adults in the country have no bank account while only 22 percent accounts are with debit cards, according to several research estimates. In addition to this, the government move will also turn Indian rupee less credible for commoner for the sometime and drive them towards gold, raising the demand for the yellow metal. The Indian rupee may go down beginning Wednesday against major currencies. Already there is an apparent shortage of low denominations currency which have made presses have worked over time to enhance the supply. advertisement READ | PM Modi's rupee revamp: Don't worry your money stays your money --- ENDS --- Amid all the debate about freedom of expression, NDTV's one day ban and freedom of press, this man went to NDTV to ask senior journalist Ravish Kumar to unblock him on Twitter. By India Today Web Desk: Since the time NDTV India news channel got an order from the government to be off-air for a day, debates about freedom and expression, dissent, freedom of press have begun again. Some understand it, some make noise. A one-day ban on news channel NDTV India was ordered by the Information and Broadcasting ministry's inter-ministerial committee claiming the channel revealed "strategically-sensitive information" during its coverage of the anti-terror operations at the Pathankot airbase. advertisement Also read: NDTV India blackout: Opposition leaders, top editors demand withdrawal of ban The committee imposed a blackout of NDTV India channel throughout India from 00:01 hrs on 9th November to 00:01 hrs of 10th November. While many senior journalists and leaders from the opposition opposed this ban and spoke about freedom of expression, some sided with the government's decision. The government maintained that a top-level committee decided to impose the ban for a day instead of 30 days which it considered earlier. Also read: NDTV India banned: Arvind Kejriwal asks other channels to go off air in solidarity Social media users, meanwhile, were divided into two groups, one criticising the Modi government for the ban and anbother slamming NDTV India for compromising national security. Amid all this, Tajinder Pal S Bagga, Editor of Namo Patrika, has been after senior journalist and NDTV anchor Ravish Kumar asking to be unblocked on Twitter. Sir @ravishndtv Pls unblock me, it's like Emergency type Situation . #???_??__? ? pic.twitter.com/cWLxpBzwGQ Tajinder Pal S Bagga (@TajinderBagga) November 5, 2016 Also read: As govt bans NDTV India for a day, Twittertai troll PM Modi with an old tweet After Ravish hired mime artists on his show to explain how the journalistic freedom is being curbed under the BJP rule, and wondered out loud if journalists are not supposed to raise questions, then what they are supposed to do, Bagga reached NDTV's office with a placard asking Ravish to unblock him on Twitter. Bagga was stopped by the security guards. Crying freedom of expression, Bagga insisted Ravish unblocks him. The guards asked him to come back with permission, but he did not budge. In the minor altercation, Bagga's placard was torn by the security guards. Alleging manhandling, Bagga and other Narendra Modi fans are now continuing their protest against NDTV on social media. Emergency like Situation in Delhi, NDTV guards misbehaved with me & tore my placard #?????_???_????_?? pic.twitter.com/DCu1mvzIlh Tajinder Pal S Bagga (@TajinderBagga) November 6, 2016 Right to speech or freedom of expression guaranteed to the citizens is the freedom to express one's views. It however doesn't say anything about a citizen's right to be heard and seen by specific people, but Bagga believes an NDTV anchor choosing to not read his tweets is a violation of his freedom. --- ENDS --- advertisement New York: Democrat Candidate Hillary Clinton cast her vote on Tuesday along with her husband Bill Clinton at a polling station in Chappaqua, New York. Clinton gave a thumbs-up gesture to the crowd, who swarmed around the couple taking photographs. After casting her vote, Hillary said, "It`s the most humbling feeling. So many people are counting on me. I hope to do the best I can." Real Clear Politics average of polls gives the lead to Hillary (45.5) over Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ( 42.2)The first ballots in the U.S. Presidential polls were cast today, just after midnight, in Dixville Notch, a sleepy hamlet, in New Hampshire, traditionally the first in the nation to vote on Election Day. The voters also cast ballots early today in two other small New Hampshire communities, Hart`s Location and Millsfield.Unlike in India, every U.S. state counts and declares its result once the polling is over. A top American pollster has said Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the White House race against her rival Donald Trump. Five Thirty Eight website`s Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the outcome of 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, said Clinton`s projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 per cent from 2.9 per cent. Miami: US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the home stretch of his campaign on Monday was swift to accuse his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of being protected by a "rigged system", a reference to the FBI's decision to close the investigation into her e-mails. "Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system...At least we know it and people in this country because of us have never known it so obviously as they do now," EFE news quoted Trump as saying during a rally in the city of Sarasota, Florida, one of the states most sought-after by both the candidates. The New York business magnate focused his speech on attacking the Democratic candidate in order, he said, to end government by corruption. This Sunday the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey, told Congress there was no reason to bring charges against Clinton for the use of a private server for State Department e-mails, as he said last July and again now after reviewing new information. He appealed to Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Dominicans and Haitians, calling them a wonderful community and promising to be their champion. If elected President, Trump said he will back the Cuban population against the tremendous oppression of the Castros and will defend freedom in Venezuela. He made it clear that the basis of his programme is "America first", which requires a radical change, he said, to create a strong, smart leadership because "this country is going bad. Everything is wrong. Our country doesn't win anymore. We're tired of being led by stupid people. They're stupid people. Stupid". He went on to scare his followers by threatening that if he loses the election, they'll never be able to "drain the swamp" in Washington, not in four years, not in eight years, so they had better get out and vote. The results of three polls published on Monday were close but did not agree on the winner in this state, which Trump must take in order to reach the White House. Two of them, taken by Quinnipiac and Opinion Savvy, give a slight lead to Clinton of 1 and 2 per cent respectively.Quinnipiac and Opinion Savvy, give a slight lead to Clinton of 1 and 2 per cent respectively. On the other hand, another poll taken by the Trafalgar Group gives Trump a 4-point lead over his rival in Florida. Meanwhile the Website RealClear Politics, which takes an average of the latest surveys, gives Clinton a minimal 0.2 per cent lead. In his address, Trump slammed all the ways in which, in his opinion, the Barack Obama presidency has been a failure, starting with the healthcare reform known as Obamacare. Miami: In a US presidential election that's already been out of this world, the lone American astronaut in outer space has cast his vote, NASA has said. Shane Kimbrough became the latest astronaut to join in a long tradition of voting while floating above the Earth, inside the orbiting International Space Station, NASA said. Kimbrough rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS on October 19 to start a four-month mission at the research outpost, along with two Russian cosmonauts. US astronauts have been able to vote from space since 1997, under Texas law. Most astronauts live in the Houston area, home to NASA's mission control and Johnson Space Center. The first American to vote from space was David Wolf, who cast his ballot from the Russian space station Mir. "Current space station resident astronaut Shane Kimbrough is the most recent astronaut to take advantage of the opportunity," NASA said in a statement. The agency did not give details on how the vote was transmitted. There was no word from NASA or Kimbrough on which candidate he picked for president. Stockholm: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned on November 14 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London over an allegation of rape, Sweden's public prosecutor's office has confirmed. Assange, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, welcomed the news through his lawyer, saying he was looking forward to the "chance to clear his name", the Guardian reported. The Swedish authorities said one of the prosecutors on the case, Ingrid Isgren, as well as a Swedish police inspector, would also attend the questioning next week and report the findings to Sweden. "A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it," the prosecutor's office said. The whistleblower sought refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London in June 2012, fleeing allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden dating back to 2010. Assange, 45, denies the claims. The Australian national claims he refused to travel to Sweden for questioning because he feared extradition to the US over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010," his lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name. We hope the investigation will be closed then." WikiLeaks has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks with the damaging leak of tens of thousands of e-mails from the US Democratic party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign. Washington: Continuing with his anti- immigration rhetoric, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that he would scrap the Syrian refugee project to prevent extremists from entering the country if elected and reiterated his promise of building the great wall. Hillary Clinton wants a 550 percent increase in Syrian refugees folks flowing into our country. Her plan will import generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism into your schools and throughout your communities. When Im elected president, we will suspend the Syrian Refugee Program. We have no choice. And yes, we will build a great wall, he told the crowd in Pennsylvania. He told the crowd of supporters that tomorrows election is about whether the US will elect more of the same or whether we are ruled by yourselves, reports the Guardian. In one day one day! we are going to win the great state of Pennsylvania, and we are going to take back the White House!, he roared as he went on to call his Democratic opponent the most corrupt person ever to seek the office of the presidency of the United States. She is the face of failure. She is the face of failed foreign policy. Shes threatened national security; shes sold her office to the highest bidder. She should not be allowed to run for president shes being protected by a rigged system, said Trump speaking in Pennsylvania. Trump then accused the dishonest media of rigging the system in Clintons favor. From now on, its going to be America first America first, Trump said, echoing one of his campaign slogans. The whole world is laughing at us theyre laughing at whats going on in our country, he said. Concluding his speech, he told the audience, we have one flawed candidate to beat. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked a Bihar RJD legislator accused of raping a school girl to surrender for two weeks to enable the rape victim to record her statement before a trial court. Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA from Nawada, Rajballav Yadav, was accused of raping the minor girl in February this year. A bench of Justice AK Sikri and Justice NV Ramana asked Yadav to surrender after senior counsel Dushyant Dave offered the bench that his client would go back to jail for two weeks to enable the alleged rape victim to record her statement. The bench said that the accused should not make any effort to influence the minor victim or other prosecution witnesses. The Court fixed November 23 as the next date of hearing. The Bihar government had moved the apex court challenging the grant of bail to Rajballav Yadav by the Patna High Court in September. The apex court had on October 18 put on hold the deposition of the girl till October 24 as Yadav had sought more time to file his reply to the plea for cancellation of his bail. Yadav was accused of raping the girl at his residence in Bihar Sharif. He was suspended from the party after the incident surfaced. However, he continues to be an RJD lawmaker in the state assembly. Yadav, who was denied anticipatory bail by a local court in Bihar Sharif in February, was absconding but later surrendered in court in March. He was granted bail by the High Court on September 30. Yadav was named one of the five accused in the chargesheet filed in April. Besides Yadav, the others named were Sulekha Devi and others who were accused of supplying girls to the RJD lawmaker. Sukma: A case of murder was registered against Delhi University Professor Nandini Sundar, a JNU professor and others here on the complaint of the wife of a tribal who was killed on November 4 in Chhattisgarh, police said. "A case was registered against DU professor Nandini Sundar, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor Archana Prasad and others by the police on November 5 at Tongpal police station for the murder of Shamnath Baghel on November 4," Superintendent of Police (SP) of Sukma I.K. Elesela told IANS. "They have been booked under the charges of murder, rioting and trespassing," the officer added. According to police, armed Maoists had allegedly killed Baghel in his home in Nama village in Tongpal area of Chhattisgarh. The officer said that Baghel`s wife in her complaint mentioned that he was getting threats from Maoists after he and other villagers complained against Sundar in May this year. New Delhi: The air quality in Delhi and several districts of Uttar Pradesh continued to remain "severe" on Tuesday, though visibility improved in Delhi while Lucknow witnessed thick smog. In a stringent move, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday slapped a ban on all construction activities for a week in the entire Delhi-NCR region. The Tribunal also slammed the Delhi government and the neighbouring states including Uttar Pradesh for not implementing its orders to curb pollution. The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting & Research (SAFAR) showing levels of PM (particulate matter) 2.5 and PM 10 breaching the 500-mark at all locations in Delhi. According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the Air Quality Index (AQI) for Delhi remained severe with the index value 432, while for Lucknow it was 491 and for Kanpur 428. The maximum level of PM 2.5, which can travel deeply into the respiratory tract down to the lungs, was at the level of 500 micrograms per cubic metre or "severe" at all pollution measuring centres, including Anand Vihar in east Delhi, Punjabi Bagh in the west, R.K. Puram in the south, and Mandir Marg in central Delhi. Dwarka in the west had a marginally lower level of 444. As per the CPCB data in Uttar Pradesh, the average value of PM 2.5 in Agra was 425, which falls under severe category, while in Varanasi it was 392, which is "very poor". Even in Jaipur, the air quality was "very poor" with index value 396. Slamming the Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana governments over rising air pollution, NGT Chairman Justice Swatanter Kumar sought to know how they implemented NGT's orders on dust pollution, paddy stubble burning and vehicular pollution. "To bring smog situation in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR) under control, the NGT has slapped a ban on construction activities and stone crushing in the region for the next seven days," Counsel for East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) Balendu Shekhar, who was present during the proceedings, told IANS. The NGT also criticised the Delhi government and the civic bodies in the city for not taking adequate measures to control air pollution. "When PM 2.5 pollutants touched its maximum value, what steps you (the government and civic bodies) took to control it, except doing meetings? Why no strict action was taken in the first five days?" Kumar sought to know. NGT directed the civic bodies to send their 50 per cent staff in the field to ensure that no one burns leaves or waste and violates its orders. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the visibility comparatively improved to 700 metres in the national capital on Tuesday while on Monday morning, it was 400 metres and on Sunday, 200 metres. Delhi Police on Tuesday conducted a special drive to check pollution and challaned 568 vehicles for not having pollution under control (PUC) certificate. Police also checked the entry of vehicles at Delhi borders. There was no respite from hazardous smog in Lucknow and other districts of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday even as authorities tried to control the grim situation. The CPCB has since sounded an alert on smog. Smog-like conditions have been reported from Barabanki, Rae Bareli, Sultanpur, Sitapur, Faizabad and Ambedkarnagar districts as well. The Lucknow Nagar Nigam has announced a fine for burning garbage in the open whereas the Traffic Department has cracked down on polluting vehicles. Officials and experts say the biggest worry in Lucknow was the fact that for the first time PM1 -- one micron thick pollutant -- was detected in the air. According to environment monitoring unit of the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, it was a dangerous sign. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a sudden address to the nation, announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes are being withdrawn from midnight. He said that such notes will become "mere paper". By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes would be withdrawn from the financial system at midnight, saying it was part of a crackdown on rampant corruption. The surprise step appears to be designed to bring billions of dollars worth of cash in unaccounted wealth into the mainstream economy. Here is what you need to know about the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 note. advertisement The Reserve Bank of India is introducing new design banknotes in the denomination of Rs 2000 as part of Mahatma Gandhi (New) Series. The new denomination has motif of the Mangalyaan on the reverse, depicting the country's first venture in interplanetary space. The base colour of the note is magenta. The note has other designs, geometric patterns aligning with the overall colour scheme, both on the obverse and the reverse. The size of the new note is 66mm x 166mm Features of the New Rs 2000 Note Obverse 1. See through register with denominational numeral 2000 can be seen when the note is held against light 2. Latent image with denominational numeral 2000 which can be seen when the banknote is held at 45 degree angle at the eye level 3. Denominational numeral 2000 in Devanagari 4. Portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in the centre 5. Micro letters 'RBI' and '2000' 6. Colour shift windowed security thread with inscriptions 'Bharat', RBI and 2000. Colour of the thread changes from green to blue when the note is tilted 7. Guarantee Clause, Governor's signature with Promise Clause and RBI emblem towards right 8. Mahatma Gandhi portrait and electrotype (2000) watermarks 9. Number panel with numerals growing from small to big on the top left side and bottom right side 10. Ashoka Pillar emblem on the right For visually impaired 11. Raised printing of Mahatma Gandhi portrait, Ashoka Pillar emblem, based and identification mark 12. Horizontal rectangle with Rs 2000 in raised print on the right 13. Seven angular bleed lines on left and right side in raised print Reverse 14. Year of printing on the note 15. Swachh Bharat logo with slogan 16. Language panel towards the centre 17. Motif of Mangalyan - reflecting country's first venture in the interplanetary space Features of the new Rs 500 notes: New Rs 500 currency note. The new Rs 500 notes are different from the present series in colour, size, theme, location of security features and design elements. The size of the new note is 63mm x 150mm. The colour of the notes is stone grey and the predominant new theme is Indian heritage site - Red Fort. advertisement Obverse: 1. See through register in denominational numeral. 2. Latent image of the denomination numeral. 3. Denomination numeral in Devanagari. 4. Orientation and relative position of Mahatma Gandhi portrait changed. 5. Windowed security thread changes colour from green to blue when note is tilted. 6. Guarantee clause, Governor's signature with promise clause and RBI emblem tilted towards right. 7. Portrait and electrotype watermarks. 8. Number panel with numerals growing from small to big on the top left side and bottom right side. 9.Denomination in numerals with rupee symbol in colour changing ink (green to blue) on bottom right. 10. Ashoka pillar emblem on the right. For visually impaired: Raised printing of Mahatma Gandhi portrait, Ashoka pillar emblem, based and identification mark. 11. Circle with Rs 500 in raise print on the right. 12. Five bleed lines on left and right in raised print. Reverse 13. Year of printing of the note on left. 14. Swachh Bharat logo with slogan. 15. Language panel towards centre. 16. Red Fort- an image of Indian heritage site with Indian flag. 17. Denomination numeral in Devanagari on right. advertisement Watch the video here: Also Read: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from tomorrow: PM Narendra Modi All that PM Narendra Modi said about the new Rs 500, Rs 2000 note --- ENDS --- New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar has made a blistering attack on the Narendra Modi government, saying that it can find 3000 condoms but can't locate a missing student of the university. Kumar's statement has given a fresh boost to the ongoing protest by the JNU students against the authorities' failure to trace a missing student Najeeb Ahmed. According to the NDTV, Kumar made the verbal attack on the Centre during the launch of his book, "From Bihar to Tihar". Kumar, who was lodged in Tihar Central Jail for sometime as an accused in a sedition case, took a dig at the BJP government, saying, "They had such intelligence, they could count the number of condoms that were being used in JNU but they can't use that intelligence to find out where is Najeeb after so many days.'' Kumar had apparently made a reference to BJP lawmaker Gyandev Ahuja, who had in February this year said that at least 3000 condoms are used daily by the students living in JNU campus. "In JNU daily you find 3,000 beer cans and bottles, 2,000 Indian liquor bottles, 10,000 cigarette butts, 4,000 beedis, 50,000 bone pieces, 2,000 wrappers of chips, 3,000 used condoms and 500 abortion injections," the BJP lawmaker had said. The JNU students had been on the warpath since Najeeb Ahmed went missing on October 14 following a brawl in his hostel. The Left-linked All India Students Association has alleged that before he vanished, Ahmed was beaten up by activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is linked to the ruling BJP. The ABVP has, however, categorically denied any involvement in his disappearance. Over the weekend, hundreds of students holding a protest near Delhi's India Gate were detained by the police. Najeeb Ahmed's mother was manhandled and detained as well. New Delhi: As Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmed continues to remain missing, reports on Tuesday said the M Phil student was taking anti-depressant medicines. The reports say that Ahmed was taking medicines for insomnia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Najeeb Ahmed went missing on the intervening night of October 14-15 after being allegedly beaten by a 20-strong mob of students who had gone campaigning to his door for hostel elections. Joint Commissioner of Police Deependra Pathak assured that police is trying hard to trace Ahmad. While giving developments about the case, Pathak said Delhi Police has formed eight teams to trace the missing JNU student. Meanwhile, the missing student's case has snowballed into a political controversy with Aam Aadmi Party hitting out at the Modi government and Delhi Poloce for alleged inaction. JNU students staged another protest on Monday at Delhi Police headquarters here, condemning the manner in which police officers subdued the missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed's mother and sister. Ahmed's mother Fatima Nafees and his sister Sadaf Musharraf also took part in the protest. Musharraf was seen with an injured and bandaged hand, which she attributed to the police "roughness" on Sunday. President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday promised action after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged him to direct the Modi government to step up efforts to trace the JNU student missing for over three weeks. New Delhi: In more embarrassment for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, two Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders have been accused of gang-raping a woman. Notably, one of the rape accused is Bhupendra Singh Bidhlan, father of AAP MLA Rakhi Birla. The alleged rape victim has filed a police complaint at Tohini (South) Police Station alleging, the two AAP members, Ram Pratap Goyal and Bhupendra sexually assaulted her on the pretext of getting her a party ticket. The case has been registered under Sections 376D and 506 of the Indian Penal Code. No arrest has been made so far in the alleged rape case. Earlier, ex-Delhi minister Sandeep Kumar was arrested after a woman had lodged a complaint at Sultanpuri police station in North Delhi alleging sexual harassment by the former social welfare and women and child development minister. Kumar was granted bail by a Delhi court on Monday. In fresh trouble for ruling AAP in Delhi, the Election Commission last week issued show cause notice to its 27 MLAs on a fresh petition seeking their disqualification for allegedly holding office of profit. The 27 MLAs include seven legislators against whom the EC is already considering a similar plea for holding the office of parliamentary secretaries. The list also includes Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, his deputy Rakhi Birla, former deputy speaker Bandana Kumari and estranged AAP MLA and Swaraj Abhiyan leader Pankaj Pushkar. Berlin: German police on Tuesday arrested five suspected Islamist militants accused of recruiting fighters for Islamic State in Syria, the federal prosecution office said in a statement. The five men - an Iraqi, a Turk, a German, a Serbian-German dual citizen and a national of Cameroon - face charges of setting up a "jihadist network" that tried to recruit Muslims to go to Syria and fight alongside Islamic State militants. The network succeeded in smuggling a young man and his family to an Islamic State-controlled area in Syria, prosecutors said. They gave no further details. Some 820 people have left Germany to war zones in Syria and Iraq and officials fear they could pose a security threat upon their return. Fears about Islamist attacks rose in July after two separate attacks carried out by two asylum seekers in the name of Islamic State. Only the attackers were killed in both incidents. The five men were arrested in raid in the states of Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia. They had held religious lessons during which potential recruits were handed "radical Islamic" material, prosecutors said. "The lesson served as an ideological and linguistic basis for a future work with Islamic State, particularly to take part in combat operations," the statement said. The main suspect was identified as 32-year-old Iraqi Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A, an open supporter of Islamic State who is accused of overseeing the recruitment process and approving who got to travel to Syria. "This is an important blow to the extremist scene in Germany," Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in a separate statement. Germany`s domestic intelligence agency estimates that 8,900 ultra-conservative Muslims live in Germany. Some 500 of those are considered a security threat, which means they are willing to commit violence, security officials say. Most the 820 people who left to war zones in the Middle East were radicalized by ultra-conservative Muslims. Malkangiri (Odisha): As many as 94 Maoist supporters and 52 militia members have surrendered before Malkangiri police. This is a big blow to the Maoists as the surrenders have taken place close on the heels of the killing of at least 28 rebels in a fierce encounter with Odisha and Andhra Pradesh police on October 24 in the district, police said today. Those who have surrendered were from Sudhakonda and Radulkonda villages under Kalimela Block and included five women and nine village commitee members, police said, adding that they surrendered before Malkangiri SP Mitrabhanu Mohapatra. They have pledged to dissociate themselves from Maoist activities and to remain in the social mainstream for the development of the backward region, the SP said. They would be provided benefits in accordance with the state government's surrender and rehabilitation policy, Mohapatra said. Bhubaneswar: Internal feud in Odisha's ruling BJD came to the fore today when the party's Lok Sabha MP Baijayanta Panda faced opposition reportedly from supporters of former health minister and party MLA Atanu S Nayak at a public meeting in Kendrapara. Chief Minister and BJD president Naveen Patnaik was present at the meeting in Mahakalpada, the Assembly constituency represented by Nayak. Patnaik was in Kendrapara district, where he inaugurated several projects and laid foundation stones for some others. When Panda, who is the MP from Kendrapara, reached the venue, a large number people, reportedly supporters of Nayak, raised slogans against him. "Attended Mahakalpada public event with CM. As expected, a handful of planted ppl raised slogans against me vs. thousands in favor of me," Panda tweeted. Earlier in the day, he had allegedly received a threat asking him not to attend the meeting. "Associates of a colleague who recently resigned on moral grounds threatening me against participation today in a Mahakalpada event w/CM," Panda tweeted earlier in the day. "No one can stop me from visiting Mahakalpada. I will do it as earlier. The people have greeted me, though a handful of people opposed me," he added. Denying Panda's charges, Nayak said, "I do not know who opposed whom. I do not know if anyone has any resentment against any person. All present at the meeting were supporters of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. There are no my or his (Panda's) supporters but everyone here is supporters of Patnaik." BJD vice-president and minister Damodar Rout dubbed the incident as "most unfortunate" and said, "Protesting against the MP at the behest of someone is a very unfortunate incident. Police should not dance to somebody's tune." Panda's supporters staged a demonstration near Raj Bhavan here and demanded action against Nayak for allegedly engineering the protest. Sources in BJD said Panda and Nayak are opposed to each other since long. It has intensified after the Mahakalpada MLA resigned from the council of ministers in the aftermath of the fire tragedy at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar. New Delhi: Indian on Tuesday withdrew three staff members of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, who were accused of being involved in 'subversive activities' in Pakistan. Sources in the External Affairs Ministry that while three Indian officials posted at High Commission in Islamabad returned to the country today, the decision regarding remaining five officials is yet to be taken. The Pakistan government had on November 3 named eight Indian staffers at High Commission and accused them of carrying out 'anti-Pakistan' activities. Pakistan had accused the eight staffers of being members of India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB). The development came after India detained and later expelled a staff member of Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi over espionage charge. Geo News, quoting sources, reported that three officials -- First Secretary commercial Anurag Singh, Vijay Kumar Varma and Madhawan Nanda Kumar left for Dubai from Islamabad on a morning Emirates flight. Five other Indian High Commission officials Rajesh Kumar Agnihotri, Amerdeep Singh Bhatti, Dharmendra Sodhi, Balbir Singh and Jayabalan Senthil -- will leave for India via road through the Wagah border, the report said. However, there was no official confirmation from the Indian government on how many Indian officials had left Pakistan and were expected to leave the country. United Nations: India has strongly criticised the United Nations Security Council for taking months to consider sanctioning leaders of groups it has itself designated as terror entities, in an obvious reference to the "technical hold" on India's bid to get JeM chief Masood Azhar banned by the UN. Asserting that the Security Council is stuck in its own "time warp and politics", India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin yesterday slammed the Council's inability to sanction the leaders of terrorist organisations. "While our collective conscience is ravaged everyday by terrorists in some region or another, the Security Council gives itself 9 months to consider whether to sanction leaders of organisations it has itself designated as terrorist entities," Akbaruddin said at a session on equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council here. Earlier this year, China had extended the "technical hold" on India's move to get Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. The six-month validity of the technical hold lapsed in late September and China sought another three-month extension on India's bid. He lamented that the snail-paced and "never-ending carousel of discussions" on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reforms, saying "it is time to break the impasse" to urgently reform the body that is "unresponsive" to the current global situation. The inability to respond to humanitarian situations, terrorist threats and peacekeeping vulnerabilities during this year itself are part of the price that is being paid for the international community's lack of progress on the critical matter, he noted. "On issues pivotal to international security such as Syria, there is inaction, and on other situations like dealing with the peacekeeping crisis in South Sudan we see fragmented action which is not implemented even months after being agreed upon," Akbaruddin said. "The Security Council, stuck in its own time warp and politics, can only be described as working randomly on the basis of a mix of ad-hocism, scrambling and political paralysis. Need one say more about the urgency of the need for reform of this relic which has long been unresponsive to the needs of our time," he said. Akbaruddin said the never-ending carousel of discussions on UNSC reforms leaves many in the international community perplexed as the crucial reform of the Security Council has been delayed despite both its importance and its urgency. He pointed out that the Council's global governance structure does not cease to surprise the international community with its persistent inability to even effectively engage with the tasks at hand. "But we need absolutely crystal clear and clean water. We need beautiful, immaculate air. We need safety and we need safety. We give billions and billions of dollars away, you can imagine who's taking that money," he said. "We don't even know what happens to it...We will create jobs and opportunities for African-Americans and Hispanic Americans that have been failed so badly. "They've been lied to, they've been cheated to by the Democratic Party. They want their vote, give us your vote, thanks a lot, see you in four years. That's what happens," he said. Trump said he will stop illegal immigration, deport all criminal aliens and dismantle every last criminal gang and cartel threatening the cities. "They're threatening our cities, they are threatening our citizens, they are not going to be here very long, folks. They're gonna be out of here. We will also repeal the Obama-Clinton defence sequester and rebuild our badly depleted military," he said. "We're also going to support our friends in Cuba in their fight against oppression, the oppression of the Castro regime. Tremendous repression. We will demand political and religious freedom for the people of Cuba and stand with our friends in Venezuela in their struggle likewise for freedom we will stand," he said. The United States, he said, has to stand strong with the state of Israel in their fight against Islamic terrorism. "Barack Obama was the worst thing that ever happened to Israel. The worst thing. The worst thing that ever happened to Israel. Barack Obama was a disaster for Israel. "And believe me, the Iran deal where we made them rich, we also gave them a direct path right to nuclear weapons. But we'll be working with Israel very closely, very, very closely," he said. Jammu: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said that a plan should be worked out for construction of individual bunkers and community bunkers for the people of the border areas who usually become targets of cross border shelling. "Mehbooba asked the Chief Secretary to work out a plan for construction of individual bunkers and community bunkers for the people of the border areas who usually become targets of cross border shelling," an official spokesman said. She was chairing a meeting of the Administrative secretaries after opening of offices in the winter capital, here today. She also directed expediting project report formulation for solid waste management at Jammu and Srinagar. On the implementation of Public Services Guarantee Act in the state, the Chief Minister advised adoption of a transparent file tracking mechanism to avoid inordinate delays and ensure speedy disposals. She also asked the officers to be responsive to public grievances and try to mitigate the same to maximum extent possible. She also reviewed the status of biometric attendance in offices and generation of Aadhar cards and directed the IT Secretary to fill in the gaps in the enrolment process. She asked the Secretaries to ensure that the employees and their families are enrolled under Aadhar. She specifically asked the Education Secretary to complete the Aadhar enrolment in schools as many of the welfare schemes for students have now been linked to Aadhar. The Chief Minister was informed that so far 94 lakh people have been enrolled under Aadhar out of which 84 lakh cards have been issued so far. In case of the remaining, the enrolment process is on, the Chief Minister was informed. New Delhi: A Delhi police team is in Darbhanga in Bihar in search of JNU student Najeeb Ahmed, who has been missing since October 15 following an on-campus scuffle allegedly with some members of ABVP the night before, police said today. "Whenever and from wherever any information is coming about Najeeb, teams are being sent there. A team has also been sent to Darbhanga," a senior police officer said. Meanwhile, a Delhi Police team will also be going to Badaun to speak to a doctor, who was treating Najeeb for depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), even as his family members claimed that he was suffering from insomnia only and no other mental disorder. "Najeeb was undergoing treatment for depression since 2012 in his hometown Badaun. A team will be visiting Badaun to question the doctor to know about Najeeb's personality, his behaviour and his thought process," said a senior police officer. Sources said Najeeb's family has not shared details that the JNU student was undergoing in Badaun. However, on the basis the prescriptions found in Najeeb's hostel room, police questioned the doctor whom he had consulted in Delhi. "According to prescriptions, Najeeb had been prescribed an anti-depressant and sleep inducer medicines in August by a doctor at VIMHANS," he said. On September 9, Najeeb had visited the hospital again with his mother and he was prescribed the anti-depressant drug and another drug to treat fits, police said, adding that he didn't visit the hospital after that day. A psychiatrist from VIMHANS, who had been consulted by Najeeb and his mother twice in August and September was questioned by the SIT on October 23 to know about Najeeb's mental condition. "In her statement, she said that she was told by Najeeb's family that he was undergoing treatment for depression in Badaun since 2012. She concluded in her diagnosis after speaking to Najeeb that he is suffering from OCD and depression," said a senior police officer. She stated that people who are suffering from OCD tend to have negative thoughts in their mind, get upset with small things, answer only in 'yes' or 'no'. The doctor also told police that people suffering from OCD are not sure about themselves, tend to forget things and the medication prescribed to them has to be taken daily. If patients don't take medicines regularly, their condition might worsen and may develop suicidal tendencies, she wrote in her statement given to the police. Police is also mulling over the possibility of seeking the opinion of a mental health expert to decode Najeeb's personality. . The victim was pushed onto the tracks as a southbound No. 1 train pulled into the Times Square station, she was pronounced dead on the scene shortly afterward. Members of the New York City police (NYPD) work at the scene after a commuter was pushed in front of a subway train as it arrived at Times Square. Photo: Reuters By Reuters: A woman shoved an unsuspecting traveler off a New York City subway platform into the path of an approaching train on Monday afternoon, killing the victim instantly as bystanders watched in horror, police said. The victim, also a woman, was pushed onto the tracks as a southbound No. 1 train pulled into the Times Square station around 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), and she was pronounced dead on the scene shortly afterward. Witnesses immediately alerted police officers, who apprehended the suspect in the station. advertisement Neither the victim nor the suspect was immediately identified by authorities. "What happened here today is tragic," Joseph Fox, chief of transit for the New York City Police Department, told reporters at the midtown Manhattan subway station, one of city's largest and busiest. NYPD and Metropolitan Transportation Authority work at the crime scene. Photo: Reuters The victim was standing on the platform when the suspect, wearing a pink shirt and scarf, lunged at her, police said. Two hours after the incident, emergency responders were working to remove the woman's body from the tracks and resume subway service at the station before peak evening commuting hours. CCTV FOOTAGE BEING CHECKED Investigators were reviewing surveillance video and interviewing witnesses to determine a motive, said William Aubry, the police department's chief of Manhattan detectives. Many of those who saw the attack were visibly shaken. Some witnesses said the victim and the suspect were involved in a dispute before the fatal shove, Aubry said, but it was not immediately clear whether the women knew each other. Dozens of people are hit by New York City subway trains each year, although most of the incidents are accidental, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the system. Last year, a woman was convicted and sentenced to 24 years in prison for fatally pushing a man into the path of an oncoming New York subway train in 2012. --- ENDS --- New Delhi: The mother of missing student of JNU Najeeb Ahmed on Tuesday met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who assured her of his intervention to find out the youth who has been untraceable since October 15. Fatima Nafees and other family members urged the Home Minister to trace Najeeb, a student of School of Biotechnology in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a native of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh. The Home Minister gave a patient hearing to Najeeb's mother and other family mothers and listened to all their grievances, official sources said. Singh told them that Delhi Police has set up a special team to pursue the case and he was personally taking stock of the progress in the probe. The Home Minister assured the family all kind of assistance, the sources said. SP MP from Badaun Dharmendra Yadav, who accompanied Najeeb's family, said the Home Minister has assured them that efforts are being made to trace him at the earliest. "If police are not able to trace him, we will approach court and raise the issue in Parliament," Yadav told reporters after the meeting. Najeeb's sister Sadaf rubbished allegations that he was mentally unstable and said efforts are being made to "defame" him instead of tracing him. "He had cracked university exams, he is a studious child. Do you think a person studying at such a prestigious institution can be mentally unstable? I request (all) that please don't defame him. He had sleeping problems that children who are studying often have due to pressure. He had no other problem," she said. Najeeb (27) went missing on October 15 following an on-campus scuffle allegedly with some members of ABVP the night before. His mother claimed that she had spoken to Najeeb on the night of brawl and that she was sure that he did not leave the campus on his own. "I spoke to him at 11 PM, he wasn't depressed. He was waiting for me, he had called me up. He did not go anywhere on his own he has been kidnapped...I am sure about it," Nafees said. Najeeb's mother was detained on Sunday by police while attempting to take out a protest march to India Gate. Islamabad: Pakistan on Tuesday summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner JP Singh and lodged a "strong" protest over "unprovoked" ceasefire violations across the Line of Control. Foreign Officer Director General (South Asia & SAARC) Mohammad Faisal summoned Singh and "strongly condemned" Indian ceasefire violations on Monday in the Nikial and Jandrot sectors, resulting in the deaths of three civilians, including a woman, and injuries to four others, a statement said. The Director General urged the Indian side to respect the 2003 ceasefire agreement, investigate the continued incidents of ceasefire violations, instruct the Indian forces to respect the ceasefire, and stop targeting villages and civilians along the LoC, the statement added. The summoning of the Indian official comes as three Indian High Commission officials who Pakistan has accused of working for the Research and Analysis wing left Pakistan. The Indian Deputy High Commissioner has been summoned to the Foreign Office several times in the past weeks, amid rising tensions between the two neighbours. New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement of demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from midnight. He said Modi called on him this evening and briefed about the government's decision to declare that all Rs 1000 and 500 currency notes will cease to be legal tender from midnight tonight. President Mukherjee welcomed the bold step taken by the government which will help unearth unaccounted money as well as counterfeit currency, a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said. Mukherjee called upon people not to panic and to follow the government's guidelines for exchanging currency notes of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 denomination available with them. He reminded that all currency notes below Rs 500 will continue as legal tender. The President called upon all people to avail upon the opportunity provided by the government to exchange currency notes of Rs 1000 and 500 denomination for new legal tender. Modi also informed the President that these notes can be used for certain purpose for a limited period. Chennai: A "cheerful and healthy" Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha is interacting on "important issues with VIPs" and is likely to be discharged in a few days with physiotherapists from Singapore attending on her, a senior AIADMK leader said here on Tuesday. "Amma is able to talk, have her own food and all. She is very cheerful and very healthy. She is consuming semi-solid food," AIADMK leader and party spokesperson C Ponnaiyan told PTI. He said the 68-year-old was holding discussions on important issues with VIPs, in an apparent reference to those in the government, through use of electronic gadgets. He, however, did not specify what kind of electronic gadgets or tools were being used. "All the parameters (of Jayalalithaa) are absolutely alright. She is interacting on important issues with VIPs. We are in the electronic world. Amma is likely to be discharged in a few days. She will come out with flying colours to attend to political agenda as well as the government," Ponnaiyan said. Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals with acute lung infection, he said, adding, the ailment also put some pressure on her heart. However, the best treatment has ensured she is relieved of the said problems, Ponnaiyan added. "The lung infection had resulted in formation of sputum and lung congestion, affecting the lungs and to a certain extent putting pressure to her heart as well," he said. Apollo Hospital, he claimed was one of the best in the country and had ensured top doctors like London-based Richard Beale besides those from AIIMS treated Jayalalithaa. "As on date, Amma is completely relieved of the lung infection and her heart condition is also excellent now. There is no problem at all. Physiotherapy by Singapore specialists is continuing. That might continue for another few days, especially to normalise standing up and walking," he said. Asked when Jayalalithaa would be shifted to a normal ward, Ponnaiyan said the AIADMK supremo was in ICU as she had lung infection and was taking rest. The medical authorities have said she will be shifted to a normal ward any time in the coming days, he said, referring to hospital Chairman Pratap C Reddy's statement that she has completely recovered and that it was up to her to decide on when to return home. Ponnaiyan said the visit of national leaders, including BJP bigwigs Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, to the hospital to enquire about the Chief Minister's health "shows the respect and regard they have for Amma". Jayalalithaa was admitted to the hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration. Later, the hospital had said she was being treated for infection with respiratory support, among others. Specialists from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and from London, among others, have treated her. Muzaffarnagar: A court here has sentenced two persons to five-year imprisonment for slaughtering cows in Shamli district in 2007. Additional district sessions judge Manoj Kumar yesterday convicted Israil and Monu and imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each. According to government lawyer Javed Ali, police arrested Israil and Monu during a raid and seized cow meat from their house in Azizpur village under Jhinjhana police station of Shamli district on August 20, 2007 Srinagar: Increased movement of people and traffic in Srinagar and other main towns of Kashmir hinted at return of normalcy in the Valley where separatists have called for a meeting of all stakeholders on Tuesday to chalk out the future course of action with regard to the current unrest. Srinagar, the summer capital of the state, and some other main towns of the Valley witnessed increased movement of people and public transport, except buses, as more people defied the separatist diktats by coming out to carry out their day-to-day activities, officials said. They said a large number of taxis, auto-rickshaws and private cars were seen plying in the city especially in the areas in civil lines and the outskirts, including in the commercial hub of Lal Chowk here. Inter-district cabs also plied on the routes connecting many district headquarters with the city, the officials said, adding reports of increased movement of traffic were received from other main towns of the Valley as well. Some shops were also open in these areas, while there was huge rush of customers at banks, the officials said. They said there were no curbs on the movement of people anywhere in Kashmir, but adequate deployment of security forces has been made on some vulnerable points to maintain law and order as well as to instill a sense of security among the people to carry out their day-to-day activities. However, most of the shops, fuel stations and other business establishments were shut elsewhere in the Valley due to the separatist-sponsored strike. They are expected to open in the evening as the separatists have announced a 15-hour relaxation in the strike from 4 PM onwards. The ongoing unrest in Kashmir, triggered by killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8, has completed four months. The separatists, who are spearheading the ongoing agitation in the Valley, have called for a meeting of all stakeholders at hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani's residence today to chalk out the future course of action. There is an urge to take all the stakeholders into confidence for taking the ongoing movement forward. All the forums among whom traders, educationists, transporters, civil society members, religious, social and political organizations, bar association and people from other walks of life have been called at Hyderpora to jointly deliberate and discuss future course of action, the separatists said in a joint statement on Sunday. The decision to invite the stakeholders came after a meeting of chairmen of both Hurriyat factions Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and JKLF chief Yasin Malik at Geelani's residence earlier on the same day. As many as 85 people, including two cops, have been killed and several thousand others injured in the ongoing unrest in the Valley. Jammu: One army jawan killed in shelling by Pakistan along LoC in Naushera sector of Rajouri district. The shelling by Pakistani troops at Indian posts and civilian areas in Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir forced Indian troops to retaliate. The Indian Army hit back and caused heavy damage to Pakistan posts. Pakistan violated ceasefire in Naushera Sector. Being countered with heavy volume of fire.@adgpi NorthernComd.IA (@NorthernComd_IA) November 8, 2016 Update CFV. Heavy damage to Pak Army posts. Exchange of fire continues. Own one Jawan fatal in Naushehra Sector.@adgpi NorthernComd.IA (@NorthernComd_IA) November 8, 2016 There was unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district from 1345 hours today, a defence spokesman said. They used 120mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons during the ceasefire violation, he said, adding befitting reply has been given to them without any casualty on our side. It may be recalled that Pakistani troops had violated ceasefire and resorted to firing in Mankote and Balakote areas of Mendhar sector in Poonch district yesterday. On November 6, two army jawans were killed and five others - two soldiers, a BSF officer and two women - were injured as Pakistani army opened fire in an attempt to facilitate two infiltration bids along the LoC in Krishna Ghati and Poonch sectors of Poonch district. There had been over 100 ceasefire violations on Indian posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir after the surgical strike. The worst-ever Pakistani shelling, targeting civil population, took place on November 1 when eight persons, including two children and four women, were killed and 22 injured along the IB and the LoC in five sectors of J&K, forcing Indian troops to give befitting reply by destroying 14 Pakistani posts and killing two of their troopers. The state government had closed over 400 schools along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu region in wake of the ongoing heavy cross-border firing. (With PTI inputs) Jammu: Pakistani troops on Tuesday shelled Indian posts and civilian areas along Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir, forcing Indian troops to retaliate. There has been no casualty or injury to anyone on the Indian side in firing by Pakistani troops, officials said. There was unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district from 1345 hours today, a defence spokesman said. They used 120mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons during the ceasefire violation, he said, adding befitting reply has been given to them without any casualty on our side. Earlier, there has been firing by Pakistani troops along the LoC in Nowshera sector since 8:45 AM today, a senior Army officer said. Indian troops guarding the borderline retaliated, resulting in exchanges. "There has been no casualty or injury to any one in the firing by Pakistan," he said. It may be recalled that Pakistani troops had violated ceasefire and resorted to firing in Mankote and Balakote areas of Mendhar sector in Poonch district yesterday. On November 6, two army jawans were killed and five others -- two soldiers, a BSF officer and two women -- were injured as Pakistani army opened fire in an attempt to facilitate two infiltration bids along the LoC in Krishna Ghati and Poonch sectors of Poonch district. There had been over 100 ceasefire violations on Indian posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir after the surgical strike. The worst-ever Pakistani shelling, targeting civil population, took place on November 1 when eight persons, including two children and four women, were killed and 22 injured along the IB and the LoC in five sectors of J&K, forcing Indian troops to give befitting reply by destroying 14 Pakistani posts and killing two of their troopers. The state government had closed over 400 schools along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu region in wake of the ongoing heavy cross-border firing. A total of 18 people, including 12 civilians, were killed and more than 83 suffered injuries in Pakistani shelling and firing along IB and LoC in Jammu. Jammu: In yet another ceasefire violation, Pakistani troops on Tuesday opened unprovoked firing on Indian posts along the International Border in Rajouri district in Jammu and Kashmir. This is the 110th ceasefire violation in 2 months as Pakistani Rangers resort to heavy shelling at Indian troops in Nowshera Sector of Rajouri. The firing targetting Indian posts along border began in the wee hours today. #SpotVisuals : Ceasefire violation by Pakistan on since morning in Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmir. pic.twitter.com/qpJwhoAgh6 ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016 Yesterday, an army personnel was injured in an encounter between the militants and troops of 62 Rashtriya Rifles and state police in Wangam village of Shopian district. On Sunday, two Indian soldiers were killed in Pakistani shelling when the Army foiled two infiltration bids of heavily armed terrorists along the Line of Control (LoC) in the Poonch sector of Jammu. Amicus curiae Ramachandran has demanded the quashing of death sentence awarded to the accused rapists as "fundamental norms of sentencing" were not followed. By Harish V Nair: The sensational Nirbhaya case took a new twist on Monday with Raju Ramachandran, the senior lawyer assisting the Supreme Court hearing appeals filed by four convicts pleading for quashing their death sentences. Ramachandran, appointed by the court as "amicus curiae" contended that the lower court while sentencing the convicts to death on September 13, 2013 had not followed the "fundamental norms of sentencing" and henceforth needed to be set aside. advertisement ALSO READ: Nirbhaya gangrape: Rs 10 lakh award if iron rod theory is proved, says defence lawyer THE LEGAL COURSE SO FAR Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay have challenged in the Supreme Court the death sentence awarded by the trial court and later confirmed by the Delhi High Court. The SC special bench which also has to confirm the death sentence besides deciding on their appeals, had earlier appointed Ramachandran and another senior lawyer Sanjay Hegde as amicus curiae. READ | Nirbhaya gangrape convict attempts suicide in Tihar Jail While Ramachandran is assisting in the case pertaining to Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde is dealing with the case pertaining to Vinay and Akshay. Incidentally, Ramachandran, who is opposed to capital punishment, had earlier represented 26/11 death convict Ajmal Kasab and Mumbai blast convict Yakub Memon in the Supreme Court. "Differently situated individuals have been sentenced to death by a 'one penalty-fits-all' order without application of mind to their individual characteristics, personality and hits at the at the very root of Article 14 (right to equality)... No separate reasons given. The Trial Court and the High Court was so overwhelmed by the nature of the crime and conviction, that it completely ignored the fact that mitigating factors in the case of each accused could be different. Also Read | 3 years of Nirbhaya gangrape: Delhi government to help juvenile convict set up tailoring shop "DIGNITY OVERLOOKED IF ACCUSED'S INDIVIDUALITY IS DISREGARDED" This disregard of the individuality of the accused overlooks the very dignity and worth of a person, irrespective of the fact that he is a condemned offender, thus offending Article 21 of the Constitution of India," the senior lawyer Ramachandran argued. "Statutory procedure prescribed under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 was not strictly adhered to. Secondly, the tests prescribed by the Supreme Court to be followed while awarding death sentence have been overlooked and/or misapplied both by the Trial Court and the High Court", argued Ramachandran. The incident, which sparked condemnation and spurred changes in laws took place on a private bus which the victim had boarded along with a male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. They were on their way back home after watching the evening show of Life of Pi at a theatre in Saket mall. The accused brutally gangraped the physiotherapy student, beat up her friend and dumped them from the moving bus. The victim died 13 days later at a hospital in Singapore. advertisement Also Read | Nirbhaya gangrape case: Juvenile rapist shifted to secret spot a day before release --- ENDS --- Thrissur: The Kerala Police on Tuesday registered a case against former Kerala Speaker and CPI-M leader K Radhakrishnan for revealing the personal details of a rape victim, in which party workers, including Municipal Councillor PN Jayanthan are the accused. A case has been registered against Radhakrishnan at the East Police Station here, said police officials. The 2014 case became public last week when the 34-year-old victim, along with her husband and two women activists, narrated the incident to the media in the state capital. Radhakrishnan came under fire from various quarters, including even the entire top brass of his party, for his act. Following this, several complaints including by the Bharatiya Janata Party, were filed, which made police conduct a preliminary probe and on Tuesday, a case was registered on the direction of the senior police officials. If the offence is proved, the accused are liable to a two-year jail term and a fine. Meanwhile, former state BJP president V. Muraleedharan slammed former Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan for his silence on the issue. "He is yet to utter a word either on the case or about the manner in which Radhakrishnan named the victim. This clearly shows the hypocritical stand of Achuthanandan who often speaks about women and women's rights," alleged Muraleedharan. Nashik: The Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) today pulled down four unauthorised religious places which had encroached on roads as part of a demolition drive. An anti-encroachment squad of the civic body headed by NMC Commissioner Abhishek Krishna and Deputy Municipal Commissioner R M Bahiram razed these illegal structures in different localities amid heavy police presence, an official release said here. The religious structures, built after 2009, were unauthorised as they were constructed after encroaching on public roads, it said. Ahead of the demolition, idols and other items kept insides these places of worship were removed by people managing them. They were part of 84 unauthorised religious places which are to be pulled down in coming days. The NMC had, after a survey, identified 284 religious places in this North Maharashtra city as illegal and they are to be demolished in phases. Thane: Sitting BJP MLA Narendra Mehta from Mira-Bhayander Assembly constituency in Thane district was today acquitted in a 14-year-old case of bribery by a court here. Special Judge V V Bambarde of the district court let off the legislator after the prosecution failed to prove beyond all doubts the case against the accused who allegedly demanded and accepted a bribe of Rs 20,000 from the complainant in 2002 when he was a corporator. Mehta was today acquitted of all charges under Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988. Besides being the mayor of Mira-Bhayander Municipal corporation, Mehta who got elected as an MLA, was also the city unit president of the BJP. District Government pleader Sangita E Phad, told the court in her submission that it was on December 27, 2002, that Mehta had demanded and accepted a sum of Rs 20,000 from a builder Hanumant Malusare for allowing him illegal construction and protecting it in the Golden Nest area here. The accused was tried under sections under sections 7, 12, 13(1),(d) and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988. Appearing for Mehta advocates Harshad Phonda, Chandrakant Babardesai and Rajan Salunke contested the entire case and said the accused was not at all involved in the offence and was falsely implicated in the case to tarnish his political image. The district court had earlier vide its order in 2010 discharged Mehta from the case stating that elected representatives do not come under the purview of public servants. This order was challenged by Malusare and the state government in the Bombay High Court. The Bombay High Court while setting aside the lower court order held that the elected representatives are public servants and also gave reference to the Rajasthan High Court. Subsequently, the Bombay HC sent back the case to the Thane District Court for re-trial. However, Mehta challenged this order in the Supreme Court. It dismissed his plea and directed the Thane District Court to try the case and dispose of it. After the apex court order, the case was once again tried by the district court by recording evidence and finally decided today. The judge in his order stated that the accused was being given benefit of doubt and being acquitted. He also said that one of the witnesses had deposed against the prosecution and hence ordered the state to prosecute him while setting the MLA free. Chennai: In a reprieve for Amma's supporter, a senior AIADMK leader announced that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa is likely to be discharged from Chennai's Apollo Hospital in less than 15 days. "All her vital parameters are under control. She is being given physiotherapy exercises. In less than 15 days, she is likely to be discharged from the hospital," AIADMK spokesperson C. Ponnaiyan told media. He said Jayalalithaa was now able to sit when the respiratory systems were removed. She was also taking semi-solid food. Queried about the decision to shift Jayalalithaa from the critical care unit (CCU) to a private room, he said: "The difference between the two is the existence of emergency equipments." A decision on shifting her to a private room is yet to be taken by the doctors. Asked about Apollo Hospitals Chairman Pratap C. Reddy's statement that Jayalalithaa was fully cured and it was up to her to decide when to go home, Ponnaiyan said everybody wanted Jayalalithaa to return home as a completely fit person. The AIADMK leaders feel it was better for Jayalalithaa to be in the hospital for some more days under a controlled environment so that there was no relapse of the infection. According to Ponnaiyan, nobody - barring doctors, physiotherapists and nurses - were allowed inside the CCU where Jayalalithaa was warded. "The CCU is big and spacious. Her bed is wheeled to a spot within the CCU from where she interacts with the Chief Secretary and her Advisor through a special audio system," Ponnaiyan said. Jayalalithaa was admitted to the hospital in September with fever and infection. Sonebhadra: With the Narendra Modi government facing flak over its stand on triple talaq, BJP President Amit Shah today asked the partymen to make respect of women, besides development, an issue in the 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. Flagging off the third 'Parivartan yatra' from here, Shah said "There is another question to which people of Uttar Pradesh will have to give their verdict (in the coming Assembly polls). "Should women in the country not get equal rights? SP, BSP and Congress will not speak on (triple talaq) but we do not have any fear. I want to say from this platform that in the coming polls, besides development and eradication of goondas, respect of women should be made a poll issue," Shah said He also asked the three parties to submit their affidavit on whether they back 'triple talaq' or not. Asking whether the Centre's stand before the Supreme Court upholding the dignity and honour of the women and doing away with the triple talaq should have been taken or not, Shah said every single party worker will make women aware that Modi government is committed for their development, honour and rights. Slamming Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Shah alleged that with his stand on the surgical strike, he has made a mockery of the bravery and sacrifice of army jawans. "People of the country are proud of the army and the will power of Narendra Modi for carrying out surgical strikes in Pakistani soil and saving the borders," he added. Etah: A woman was gang-raped allegedly by four persons who also looted cash and gold ornaments from her in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh, police said on Tuesday. The incident took place yesterday when the woman was waiting for a vehicle at the roadways bus stand here and one Tarsem met her. The woman had known him beforehand, police officials told media. According to the FIR lodged by the woman, she went in Tarsem's car in which 3 others were also present. The four men allegedly gave her some intoxicated substance following which she became unconscious, and they raped her. The four men allegedly looted Rs 4,000 cash and gold earrings from the woman, the woman has claimed in her complaint. SSP Mr Rajesh Krishna has directed for speedy arrest of the accused. New Delhi: In more trouble for Azam Khan, the Supreme Court, Tuesday, asked the media organisations to submit the byte of the powerful Samajwadi Party leader in which he made the statement related to Bulandshahr gang-rape case. The apex court also directed Khan to submit his response before the bench by November 17. Khan had stoked a controversy in August 2016 when he said that the Bulandshahar highway rape case could be a political conspiracy to malign the image of the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP government in Uttar Pradesh. An SC bench comprising justices Dipak Misra and C Nagappan had taken note of the alleged controversial statement of the UP MLA. The court framed several constitutional questions including whether a person, holding public office, can give a statement which may create "distrust" in the minds of the victims about a fair probe in the case and whether such a statement can be a part of freedom of speech and expression. The man, whose wife and daughter were gangraped last month on a highway in Bulandshahr, had on August 13 moved the apex court seeking transfer of the case to Delhi, besides lodging of an FIR against Khan as well as several policemen. The brutal incident had happened on the night of July 29 when a group of highway robbers stopped the car of a Noida-based family and sexually assaulted the woman and her daughter after dragging them out of the vehicle which had four other occupants. Kolkata: Muslim clerics in West Bengal attacked the central government on Tuesday for interfering with Muslim Personal Law. At a gathering of clerics from across the state, Mohammad Qamruzzaman, general secretary of the All Bengal Minority Youth Federation (ABMYF), said the government doesn't have the right toAdictate one's choice of religion. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised 'achhe din' but does that mean taking away the right to practice the religion of one's choice or to dictate what one will eat or wear," he said. Qamruzzaman also warned the state Bharatiya Janata Party against disrupting the function of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). "The BJP, in order to disrupt the function of the AIMPLB, has organised a rally on November 18 but we are also ready to counter any attempts by the BJP," he said on the proposed BJP rally against triple talaq on November 18 when the three-day convention of the AIMPLB is scheduled begin. "I urge all Muslims to maintain peace but if they intend to create trouble we are also ready to fight back," he said. The clerics also criticised the Trinamool Congress-led state government for not keeping its poll promises andAdemanded a hike in their allowances and residential apartments for Imams. "The state should find ways to generate revenues from the wakf property in the state and from that it should hike the imams' and muezzins' pay. Besides there should be provision for housing for imams and education for their children, as was promised by (Chief Minister) Mamata Banerjee during her election campaign," he said. Qamruzzaman said the pay per month should be at least Rs 10,000 for the imams from Rs 2,500) and Rs 6,000 for muezzins (from Rs 1,000) as they have it in New Delhi. BEIRUT: Air strikes and government artillery killed at least 20 people, including 10 children, in the largely rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said Russian or Syrian government warplanes pounded the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing seven children and two pregnant women. Warplanes and government artillery also killed 11 people in the village of Baarbo in the southwest of the province, the monitor reported. The Russian Defence Ministry has denied information reported in multiple foreign media outlets about alleged strikes by the Russian Air Force in the region of Khan Sheikhoun near the city of Idlib," Russia`s TASS news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday. "Russian jets did not fly in the area on Nov. 8 and no missile strikes were carried out. Syria`s war pits President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, against an array of mostly Sunni rebel groups, including some backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States. Idlib contains the largest populated area of Syria controlled by rebels - including nationalist groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and Islamist fighters including the former al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. Canberra: Australia's Senate has rejected a government plan to hold a public vote on recognizing gay marriage. The Senate voted by a margin of 33 to 29 late yesterday against the non-binding public plebiscite on same-sex marriage which Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's conservative government had planned to hold on Feb. 11. Marriage equality opponents had supported the plan while most gay marriage advocates had opposed it, warning it would spark a divisive public debate. A lesbian opposition senator Penny Wong had argued against the vote, telling parliament it would denigrate her family. Most marriage equality advocates want Parliament to decide the issue without a public vote. The government has yet to say whether it will allow lawmakers to decide whether same-sex marriages will be recognized. India's action comes within days of Pakistan recalling six of its High Commission officials here after their names were made public by another mission staffer Mahmood Akhtar, who was declared persona non-grata and expelled for running a spy ring last month. By Press Trust of India: India today recalled three diplomats stationed at its High Commission in Islamabad after their identities were made public and Pakistan charged them with "spying". The diplomats, including First Secretary (Commercial) Anurag Singh, were named last week by Pakistan's Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria, who had alleged that a number of Indian diplomats and staffers were involved in "coordinating terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments". advertisement READ: India, Pakistan engage in tit-for-tat, expel mission staffers According to officials, apart from Singh, Vijay Kumar Verma and Madhavan Nanda Kumar left Pakistan by air today. The decision was taken as their security had been "completely compromised" by Pakistan with their names and photographs published and broadcast in the media there, they said. India's action comes within days of Pakistan recalling six of its High Commission officials here after their names were made public by another mission staffer Mahmood Akhtar, who was declared persona non-grata and expelled for running a spy ring last month. Akhtar's expulsion had triggered a tit-for-tat action by Islamabad, which also expelled an Indian High Commission official posted there. Also Read: Pakistan spy game busted: Women, money used to lure Indian officers, Pak high commission staff involved Pakistan spy racket: 2 Indians arrested, embassy staff asked to leave India 46 arrested since 2013: Timeline of Pakistan's spy game in IndiaExclusive: Crime Branch probing role of two mysterious women in ISI spy ring --- ENDS --- Ottawa: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced here on Tuesday that he will pay official visits to Cuba and Argentina from November 15-18, and will travel to Peru from November 19-20 for the 2016 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit "Cuba and Argentina are two of our closest partners in the hemisphere. I look forward to working with President Castro and President Macri to stimulate more trade and investment with Canada," Xinhua news agency quoted Trudeau as saying. On the APEC summit in Peru, Trudeau said it is very important as the Asia Pacific region is critical to his country's economic future and to the growing middle class. "I look forward to promoting Canada as a partner of choice for trade and investment in the region while embracing the theme of quality and inclusive economic growth that Peru has put forward this year," the Prime Minister said. He added that Peru is a valued partner for Canada and he looks forward to meeting President Kuczynski. Canada and Cuba have a diverse relationship based on 71 years of uninterrupted diplomatic engagement and constructive cooperation in various areas. Meanwhile, Canada and Argentina enjoy excellent commercial relations and share similar perspectives on many global issues. Berlin: German police on Tuesday arrested five men suspected of links to the Islamic State organisation, who allegedly sought to recruit fighters for the jihadist group. "The five accused formed a pan-regional Salafist-jihadist network, with the accused Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. Taking on the leading role," said a statement from the prosecutors' office, referring to the 32-year-old Iraqi. "The aim of the network led by him is to send people to IS in Syria," it added. Turkish national Hasan C and German-Serb Boban S were allegedly tasked with teaching the recruits Arabic as well as indoctrinating them with Islamist content. While the group's leader had the authority to approve and organise any departures to Syria, he allegedly left the actual implementation of the plans to the two other men detained today, German national Mahmoud O and Cameroonian Ahmed F Y. At least one young man and his family has been sent by the network to join IS in Syria, prosecutors added. The five men were arrested in the northern state of Lower Saxony and the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, German media reported. According to figures released in May by German intelligence services, 820 jihadists have left Germany for Syria and Iraq. Almost a third have returned and 140 were killed while abroad, while around 420 are still in Syria or Iraq. Germany has so far been spared large-scale jihadist attacks. But it was shaken by two assaults claimed by IS and carried out by asylum seekers -- an axe rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five, and a suicide bombing in Ansbach in which 15 people were hurt. Police said last month they had foiled an alleged plot by a Syrian refugee to bomb one of Berlin's airports. Geneva: Islamic State fighters have abducted 295 former Iraqi Security Forces members near Mosul and forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from the town of Hammam al Alil towards Mosul airport, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Tuesday. "People forcibly moved or abducted, it appears, are either intended to be used as human shields or - depending on their perceived affiliations - killed," she said. The U.N. also had information about the abduction of at least 30 sheikhs in Sinjar last week, and one report that 18 of them had been killed on Friday. Israel: Israel claimed victory Tuesday in blocking a Palestinian bid to join the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol). The body`s annual conference decided Tuesday to suspend the Palestinian bid, instead appointing an advisor to review the application and report back at the 2017 conference. Membership bids from Kosovo and the Solomon Islands were also put on hold. The Palestinians had been seeking to get their membership ratified at the annual meeting, which is being held on the Indonesian island of Bali. "The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs together with the Israeli police... carried out an intensive global effort to thwart the Palestinian initiative," a foreign ministry statement said. "This vote is an accomplishment and a triumph of Israeli diplomacy, reflecting the positive change in Israel`s standing in the international arena," it added. The Lyon-based Interpol currently has 190 member countries, enabling police across the globe to share information. Palestine gained observer status at the United Nations in 2012 and since then has joined 54 international organisations and agreements, according to the Palestinian foreign ministry. Among them are the International Criminal Court and the United Nations heritage body UNESCO. Israel has opposed such moves, delaying payments of taxes to the Palestinians after their 2015 ICC application. Mosul: Iraqi Kurdish forces have retaken Bashiqa, one of the last towns east of Mosul to be held by the Islamic State group, a top security official said on Tuesday. The town is under "complete control", Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the Kurdish regional ministry responsible for the peshmerga security forces, told AFP by telephone. Rabat: A month since winning Morocco`s parliamentary elections, Islamist Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane is still haggling over his future governing coalition. The October 7 poll dealt a resounding victory to Benkirane`s Justice and Development Party (PJD) -- but not large enough to form the majority needed to form a government alone. At the head of a coalition government for five years, Benkirane was reappointed and charged with forming a new government after winning 125 out of 395 seats in the lower house. He has since been haggling with potential coalition partners -- but excluding his party`s arch-rival, the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which came second in the election with 102 seats. Analysts say the election, in which all other parties made net losses, established a bipartisan system. However, the PJD still needs to work with other parties to form a working majority. After a month of talks, Benkirane has won the support of third-placed Istiqlal (45 seats), which in 2013 withdrew from Benkirane`s first government. The formerly communist Party of Progress and Socialism has also said it would join the coalition. But the National Rally of Independents (RNI) has proved harder to win over, imposing preconditions, according to press reports. Late Sunday, King Mohammed VI urged the parties to come to an agreement. "The formation of the next government should not be a matter of arithmetic... or sharing electoral booty," he said. In an annual speech, delivered this year from Dakar where he was seeking support for Morocco`s bid to rejoin the African Union, he said government should have a clear agenda and a "smooth and efficient structure". "I will see to it that the formation of the next government is done in accordance with these criteria and following a rigorous methodology, and I will not tolerate any attempt to depart from that," he said. Geneva: Islamic State fighters forced thousands of civilians to retreat with them from Hamam al-Alil as Iraqi police were recapturing the town, and moved them towards Mosul airport, the UN said Tuesday. Iraqi forces retook the key town from the jihadists on Monday, in a major win in its offensive to wrest back the nearby city of Mosul. But the IS fighters did not leave the town alone: UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva the agency had received reports that the jihadists "forcibly moved about 1,500 families from Hamam al-Alil town to Mosul airport" on November 4. The UN has for weeks warned that IS was forcing civilians living in districts around Mosul into Iraq`s second city, hoping to use them as human shields in an upcoming battle. Shamdasani also said the rights office had received information that the jihadists had "abducted at least 295 former Iraqi Security Forces personnel" from areas around Mosul. "Between November 1-4, 195 former ISF personnel were reportedly abducted in several villages in Tel Afar, and at around midnight on November 3, at least 100 former ISF officers were abducted from Mawaly Village, about 20 kilometres west of Mosul," she said. "The fate of all of these civilians is unknown for the moment," she said. When the Iraqi forces recaptured Hamam al-Alil, they said they found a mass grave at an agricultural college, with the offensive`s Joint Operations Command saying "100 bodies of citizens with their heads cut off" had been uncovered. The UN could not immediately confirm the information, and Shamdasani said her office was still looking into reports last month that IS had killed 50 former Iraqi police officers at the same location. Iraqi forces have been tightening the noose around Mosul since launching the offensive on October 17, with elite troops last week breaching city limits. Upping pressure on the jihadists, the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance on Saturday launched its own offensive on IS`s other main bastion, the Syrian city of Raqa. Raqa and Mosul are the last major cities in Syria and Iraq under the jihadists` control and their capture would deal a knockout blow to the self-styled "caliphate" IS declared in mid-2014. London: The British government said Monday it would appeal this week against a High Court ruling that the prime minister cannot start the process of leaving the EU without parliament`s approval. "It`s likely that any hearing will be scheduled in the Supreme Court in early December," Brexit minister David David told parliament just days after Thursday`s shock ruling. "We would hope the judgement would be provided soon after," he said. "This timetable remains consistent with our aim to trigger Article 50 by the end of March next year," he said, referring to the formal step to begin negotiations with the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday the government`s planned timetable to launch Brexit talks with Brussels remained "unchanged", while admitting she was disappointed with the court`s ruling. Her comments came a day after judges ruled that MPs must have the chance to vote on the process to leave the EU, dismissing the government`s claims it has executive privilege to trigger Article 50. The judgement prompted an angry response from the pro-Brexit camp, which has argued such a decision could see pro-EU lawmakers seek to block May`s attempts to begin formal exit proceedings. "The government is getting on with delivering what people voted for on June 23, which was for Britain to leave the EU," May told the BBC during her visit to India. The referendum saw 52 percent of Britons vote to leave the 28-nation bloc, against 48 percent who voted to maintain the status quo. Ain Issa: A US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance pushed closer to Raqa in Syria while Iraqi forces seized a key town near Mosul as offensives progressed against the two Islamic State group strongholds. After announcing the launch of the long-awaited assault on Raqa on Sunday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance said it had moved south towards the city despite fierce jihadist resistance. South of Mosul, Iraqi forces retook Hamam al-Alil from IS, a key objective in their three-week advance on the city. Iraqi forces said yesterday they found a mass grave in the area containing around 100 decapitated bodies. Raqa and Mosul are the last major cities in Syria and Iraq under the jihadists' control. Their capture would deal a huge blow to the self-styled "caliphate" IS declared in mid-2014. The US-led coalition that launched operations against IS two years ago is providing crucial backing to the offensives, with air strikes and special forces advisers on the ground. SDF spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed told AFP that the alliance's forces had advanced on two fronts towards Raqa amid heavy fighting. SDF fighters had pushed at least 10 kilometres (six miles) south towards the city from the towns of Ain Issa and Suluk, she said. In both cases the SDF was still some distance from Raqa -- on the Ain Issa front at least 30 kilometres away. "The offensive is going according to plan," said Ahmed, adding that the SDF had captured at least 10 villages. An SDF commander said IS was fighting back with its favourite tactic of sending suicide bombers in explosives-packed vehicles against advancing forces. "IS is sending car bombers but coalition planes and our anti-tank weapons are limiting their effectiveness," the commander said, speaking on condition of anonymity. After taking Abu Ilaj north of Raqa, SDF fighters dug trenches and piled sandbags at the entrance to the village. "In every area that we advance we are digging trenches with tractors and bulldozers to protect the front line, to prevent the jihadists from getting in and to stop car bombs," one fighter said. The SDF says some 30,000 of its fighters are taking part in operation "Wrath of the Euphrates", which aims to surround and isolate IS inside Raqa before making an assault on the city itself. Officials have warned that the battle is likely to be long and difficult. "As in Mosul, the fight will not be easy and there is hard work ahead," US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said. Washington: US President Barack Obama has slammed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying he has nothing to offer on jobs, except for describing the current situation as a disaster. "He's got nothing serious to offer on jobs," Obama said at an election rally in New Hampshire yesterday, which has suddenly emerged as a swing state forcing the Clinton Campaign to send him to this State for campaigning. "There hasn't been enough talk about this economy in this election. And you know why?? Because we've created jobs for 73 months in a row now. Wages are rising. Just last week, the unemployment rate was at 4.9 per cent -- that's near the lowest levels in nearly nine years," he said amidst applause from the audience. "So Donald Trump generally avoids facts or he just denies them. So he said this is a 'disaster'. A disaster?", he said. "I just came from Michigan. You want to know what a real disaster looks like, think back to that state and what we were dealing with eight years ago. The American auto industry was flat on its back. Unemployment was soaring. Today's plants across that state and across the region that were shut down -- they're now doing double shifts," he said. "And you know what Donald Trump's idea for the auto industry??He actually suggested that Michigan should send its auto jobs to states that pay their workers less. "By making Michigan workers suffer, they'd have no choice but to accept less pay if they wanted to get their jobs back," he said slamming Trump, for his economic policies. Observing that the manufacturing is growing again over these last eight years -- first time since the 1990s --, Obama said Clinton is going to keep that going. "She's put forward the biggest investment in new jobs since World War II. She's got plans to grow manufacturing, boost people's wages, help students with college debt. That's why she should be the next President of the United States," he said. One army jawan was killed in Pakistan shelling along LoC in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district. By Indo-Asian News Service: The Indian Army today said it has inflicted "heavy damage" on Pakistani posts in retaliatory fire after the Pakistani Army violated the ceasefire in the Nowshera sector in Jammu and Kashmir. One Indian soldier was also martyred in the firing, the Army said. "Heavy damage to Pak Army posts. Exchange of fire continues. Own one Jawan fatal in Nowshera Sector," the Northern Command of Indian Army said in a tweet. advertisement Defence spokesperson Lt Col Manish Mehta said India is "appropriately responding" to ceasefire violations. "We are appropriately responding in the system we find befitting," the spokesperson said. Over 100 ceasefire violations from the Pakistani side have taken place since the surgical strikes that India carried out on terror launch pads in the intervening night of September 28-29. Also Read: India giving befitting reply to Pakistan after series of ceasefire violations: BSF IG Exclusive: How India hit back after Pakistan's multiple ceasefire violations along LoC Also read: Pakistan violates ceasefire in RS Pura sector of Jammu, fires mortar shells --- ENDS --- Ann Arbor: President Barack Obama today urged Americans to make history by electing Democrat Hillary Clinton to succeed him in the White House, and reject the "mean-spirited" politics of Donald Trump. "I ask you to do for Hillary what you did for me," Obama told a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan -- the first of three he is holding for Clinton on the eve of the vote. "You have the chance to reject a coarse, divisive, mean-spirited politics that would take us backwards," he said. "The chance to elect our first female president." Obama and his wife Michelle have been among Clinton's most effective champions, drumming up enthusiasm for the former secretary of state as she battled setbacks in the polls. Michigan, normally a Democratic stronghold, has emerged as a crucial battleground this year, one that Trump, the Republican nominee, hopes will give him a path to victory. Obama reminded voters that his administration rescued the state's dominant auto industry from the brink of collapse in 2008. "All that progress goes down the drain if we don't win tomorrow," he said, adding, "This race will be close here in Michigan, just like it will be in a lot of parts of the country." "I want you just to focus, because the choice you face when you step into the voting booth, it really cannot be clearer. Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief," he said. "The good news is, you don't just have to vote against something. You actually have a candidate who's worthy of your vote. A candidate who is smart. A candidate who is steady. A candidate who's tested. Probably the most qualified person ever to run for this office. The next president of the United States -- Hillary Clinton!" Obama was to rally voters in Durham, New Hampshire later in the day before joining up with Clinton for a big, star-studded campaign event in Philadelphia. He admitted to experiencing some nostalgia campaigning for what he said was likely to be the last time in a while. "It's not that often you've got a chance to move history in a better direction. This is one of those moments. This is one of those moments. Don't let it slip away," he said. London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today defended the website's decision to publish emails from Hillary Clinton's election campaign team and denied a link with Russia, as Americans went to the polls. The anti-secrecy website was behind the damaging leak of tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic Party and Clinton's campaign last month, in the final weeks of the race for the White House. Assange said WikiLeaks had no desire to influence today's election, only to make public the material it had. After earlier publishing Clinton's diplomatic cables and indexing her emails, "we are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us," Assange said in a statement. "We cannot publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump's campaign," he said, referring to Clinton's Republican rival. "The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. "The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications -- because none exists. "Wikileaks remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it." On October 7, WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of emails hacked from the Gmail account of Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. Clinton's team has not denied the authenticity of the messages but accused Russia of directing the hacking in an effort to tilt the election in favour of Trump. The emails did contain any explosive revelations, but some put Clinton on the defensive. Assange, a 45-year-old Australian former computer hacker, has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces longstanding allegations of rape. He fears he would subsequently be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Assange will be finally questioned over the rape allegations next week by an Ecuadoran prosecutor in the embassy, Sweden's public prosecutor's office said yesterday. The green signal by defence ministry has given a 'Make in India" push to defence projects. By Ajit Kumar Dubey: Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday cleared deals worth over Rs 80,000 crore for the armed forces as he gave a major push to Make in India defence projects, including the LCA fighter plane programme. As first reported by Mail Today, the minister-led Defence Acquisition Council cleared the acquisition of 83 Light Combat Aircraft for the Air Force. advertisement DEFENCE MINISTRY'S SHOPPING BAG The order is for Mark1A version of the plane, which would be quite advanced from the LCA Mark1, 40 of which are being delivered by the HAL to IAF. READ| Tejas Light Combat Aircraft: Here's how India created its first Flying Dagger Another major deal to have been cleared was for acquiring 464 T-90MS tanks from Russia which would be built in Heavy Vehicles Factory in Avadi near Chennai, defence ministry sources said. The 10 regiments of the tank would be deployed along the Pakistan border and would be equipped with advanced night sights and other night fighting equipment. The army was also given the go ahead to acquire six more regiments of Pinaka miltibarell. Rocket launchers would add solid muscle to army's tactical firepower. The indigenously designed and developed Light Combat Helicopter was also approved by the all important meeting of the DAC with 15 of them to be procured initially by the IAF and army. The army would get 95 more of these choppers, once the initial ones prove themselves. READ | How India created Tejas: A look at the proud history our first Flying Dagger The army would also get 498 mini drones for Rs 1,100 crore, which would be a Make in India project involving foreign collaborators. The drones would improve situational awareness of troops in counter terrorist operations. The meeting also cleared the long-awaited blacklisting policy for dealing with firms indulging in wrongdoings and corruption in acquisition process. The policy has been in the making for over two years and may projects were held up awaiting its finalisation. EXCLUSIVE: With only two planes and issues unresolved, IAF to bring LCA Tejas home --- ENDS --- 8 hours ago Its Still Not Too Late To Get Into Energy Stocks If you are wondering if it's too late to get into energy stocks the best answer is no. Energy prices are down from their peak and there is a potential slowdown in demand on the way but, for now, the underlying fundamentals are highly in favor of higher share prices. Read Article By PTI: outsiders presence New Delhi, Nov 7 (PTI) A bag containing a pistol and live cartridges was found in the JNU campus, which is witnessing an agitation by a section of students over disappearance of a student Najeeb Ahmed even as the administration blamed the involvement of "outsiders" in the protests. The black coloured bag was noticed by a security guard of JNU in the north gate at around 2 AM today. It contained a 7.65 pistol, seven cartridges and a screw driver, said a senior police officer. advertisement The guard informed about the bag to the JNU authorities who called police. A case under Arms Act has been registered against unknown persons and investigation has been undertaken, said the officer adding that police would be scanning the CCTV footage of the area. "Despite repeated appeals by the JNU administration, protest and public meetings, sit-ins, hunger strike, etc have been organised by certain sections of JNU community and outsiders have been invited to be a part of such demonstrations. "While police was immediately informed to do necessary investigation, such an incident demands utmost caution and alertness from the entire varsity," the administration said in a statement. The university also maintained that it is in process of installing CCTVs throughout the campus in wake of such incidents. A section of JNU students is agitating over the issue of disappearance of Najeeb. They have also been joined by mother and sister of the missing student. Najeeb, 27, a student of School of Biotechnology and a native of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, went missing on October 15 following an on-campus scuffle allegedly with members of ABVP. PTI GJS/VIT SLB RG --- ENDS --- In the wake of repeated ceasefire violations by Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi assessed the situation along the LoC. Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet top officers of the three armed forces today. (Photo: PTI) By Manjeet Negi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today chaired a meeting of the three services at his residence in the wake of heavy shelling from Pakistan at the Line of Control (LoC). The one-hour long meeting was attended by Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba, Air Force Vice Chief Air Marshal Birender Singh Dhanoa and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. advertisement PM ASSESSES PREPAREDNESS At the meeting, the PM assessed the overall defence preparedness and the situation along the border in the wake of unprovoked firing by the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Rangers in the past few weeks. ALSO WATCH ALSO READ: Soldier killed as Pakistan army violates ceasefire in Jammu An Indian Army soldier was killed today in a firing by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir's Nowshera sector. In 2016, Pakistan has so far violated the ceasefire agreement 151 times at the LoC, of which 110 violations occurred in the past two months. ALSO READ: India giving befitting reply to Pakistan after series of ceasefire violations: BSF IG Five soldiers have been killed in such ceasefire violations since India launched surgical strikes across the LoC on terror launchpads on September 29. ALSO READ: Pakistan violates ceasefire in RS Pura sector of Jammu, fires mortar shells INDIA FIRES BACK In the past, the Prime Minister has held timely review meeting with the service chiefs. This review meeting, however, was the first since Indian Army's massive retaliatory operation across the border which destroyed several Pakistani posts on October 29. India resorted to heavy firing and destroyed several Pakistani posts in the Keran sector to avenge the beheading of soldier Mandeep Singh. ALSO READ: Exclusive: How India hit back after Pakistan's multiple ceasefire violations along LoC ALSO READ: BSF head constable Sushil Kumar injured in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in RS Pura martyred ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- Blog Archive Jun 2021 (1) Mar 2021 (1) Dec 2020 (1) May 2020 (1) Mar 2020 (1) Jan 2020 (1) Dec 2019 (2) Sep 2019 (6) Aug 2019 (1) Jun 2019 (1) Feb 2019 (1) Jan 2019 (1) Dec 2018 (1) Nov 2018 (1) Aug 2018 (1) Jul 2018 (1) Jun 2018 (1) Apr 2018 (4) Mar 2018 (3) Feb 2018 (1) Jan 2018 (2) Dec 2017 (5) Oct 2017 (1) Sep 2017 (1) Jul 2017 (2) May 2017 (2) Apr 2017 (3) Mar 2017 (3) Feb 2017 (1) Jan 2017 (2) Dec 2016 (5) Nov 2016 (3) Oct 2016 (1) May 2016 (1) Mar 2016 (2) Jan 2016 (3) Dec 2015 (1) Nov 2015 (1) Oct 2015 (3) Aug 2015 (2) Jul 2015 (1) May 2015 (1) Apr 2015 (2) Mar 2015 (1) Feb 2015 (4) Jan 2015 (3) Dec 2014 (3) Nov 2014 (3) Oct 2014 (3) Aug 2014 (2) Jul 2014 (4) Jun 2014 (2) May 2014 (3) Apr 2014 (2) Mar 2014 (25) Feb 2014 (2) Jan 2014 (4) Dec 2013 (6) Nov 2013 (3) Oct 2013 (2) Sep 2013 (2) Aug 2013 (5) Jul 2013 (5) Jun 2013 (4) May 2013 (3) Apr 2013 (5) Mar 2013 (15) Feb 2013 (3) Jan 2013 (5) Dec 2012 (5) Nov 2012 (6) Oct 2012 (2) Sep 2012 (3) Aug 2012 (1) Jul 2012 (4) Jun 2012 (3) May 2012 (3) Apr 2012 (8) Mar 2012 (9) Feb 2012 (8) Jan 2012 (12) Dec 2011 (18) Nov 2011 (13) Oct 2011 (12) Sep 2011 (16) Aug 2011 (17) Jul 2011 (10) Jun 2011 (13) May 2011 (15) Apr 2011 (24) Mar 2011 (17) Feb 2011 (14) Jan 2011 (21) Dec 2010 (13) Nov 2010 (16) Oct 2010 (17) Sep 2010 (11) Aug 2010 (13) Jul 2010 (11) Jun 2010 (4) May 2010 (15) Apr 2010 (19) Mar 2010 (28) Feb 2010 (32) Jan 2010 (30) Dec 2009 (17) Nov 2009 (15) Oct 2009 (16) Sep 2009 (3) Aug 2009 (16) Jul 2009 (10) Jun 2009 (10) May 2009 (8) Apr 2009 (13) Mar 2009 (6) Feb 2009 (13) Jan 2009 (16) Dec 2008 (12) Nov 2008 (19) Oct 2008 (23) Sep 2008 (18) Aug 2008 (23) Jul 2008 (14) Jun 2008 (17) May 2008 (12) Apr 2008 (10) Mar 2008 (10) Feb 2008 (11) Jan 2008 (10) Dec 2007 (4) Nov 2007 (8) Oct 2007 (8) Sep 2007 (5) Aug 2007 (2) Jul 2007 (6) Jun 2007 (7) May 2007 (7) Apr 2007 (4) Mar 2007 (5) Feb 2007 (10) Jan 2007 (4) Dec 2006 (4) Nov 2006 (2) Oct 2006 (3) Feb 1998 (13) The meeting is considered crucial in the context of continuing ceasefire violations along the Line Of Control. By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be meeting the three service chiefs at 2 pm today to review the current national security. The meeting is considered crucial in the context of continuing ceasefire violations along the Line Of Control. According to sources, a record number of infiltration attempts along the international border have been witnessed this time. The BSF has foiled at least 15 infiltration bids since the surgical strikes of September 29. advertisement INTEL AGENCIES WARN OF POSSIBILITY OF TERROR ATTACK India is on high alert after intelligence agencies warned of the possibility of a terror attack ahead of Pakistan army chief General Raheel Sharif's retirement at the end of this month. If sources are to be believed, the Lashkar chief is planning a big strike on India. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: Also read: Hafiz Saeed planning big strike, Lashkar men may use river route to infiltrate With the security along the India-Pakistan border being increased in the wake of several terrorist attacks, the Lashkar-e-Taiba men are now planning to infiltrate into India through a different route. According to sources, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed is planning to use the rivers, Nikki Tavi and Badi Tavi, to enter India. Saeed has made Lashkar commander Abu Irfan Tandewala the in-charge of the operation. VIGIL INCREASED Sources said that at least eight to nine men are likely to be a part of this operation. The Pakistan Army, said sources, is allegedly helping them infiltrate the border. Also read: Defence Minister and Army Chief review security in Kashmir - meet forward troops Following the reports on terrorists planning to use a river route for infiltration, the vigil along all the rivers and streams in and around the border areas has been increased. The Border Security Force (BSF) has deputed teams along several suspected infiltration routes. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: --- ENDS --- Elected representatives of Hong Kong's Youngspiration party deliberately mangled their oaths of office, refusing to swear loyalty to China (instead swearing to Hong Kong) and pronouncing China as "Shina," a term dating from the Japanese occupation of China (they also held up a banner that said "Hong Kong is not China"). There is a tradition in Hong Kong of adding editorial notes or slogans to oaths of office, but a HK court has previously ruled that the oath itself must be uttered verbatim. The protesting lawmakers, Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching, were associated with the Umbrella Revolution, in which Hong Kong people took to the streets to protest Beijing's insistence on a veto over who could stand for office in Hong Kong, which is, constitutionally, a semi-independent territory. After the Youngspiration reps' oaths were rejected, officials in Beijing intervened without being asked to by HK authorities to insist that they were permanently disqualified from taking office. This alarmed HK lawyers, lawmakers, and activists. The ensuing street protests turned violent in the face of a brutal police crackdown that recalled the worst days of the Umbrella Revolution. Other disputed Chinese territories Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan are watching the crackdown closely (the video above, from notorious news-satire animation studio Taiwanese Animators, should be viewed through this lens). Hong Kong is the most constitutionally independent territory in China, and the other disputed territories will presumably get even less lenience from Beijing. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China with a high degree of autonomy from the mainland, and the Basic Law outlines how this "one country, two systems" principle is put into practice. According to Article 158 of the Basic Law, any interpretation request directed to Beijing should first come from a local authority, specifically a local court: If the courts of the Region, in adjudicating cases, need to interpret the provisions of this Law concerning affairs which are the responsibility of the Central People's Government, or concerning the relationship between the Central Authorities and the Region, and if such interpretation will affect the judgments on the cases, the courts of the Region shall, before making their final judgments which are not appealable, seek an interpretation of the relevant provisions from the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress through the Court of Final Appeal of the Region. This is not the first time the National People's Congress has tried to interpret the Basic Law, but in all four of those past instances the government never challenged Hong Kong's local courts by preempting a ruling. Hong Kong's representative in Beijing reportedly argued that the oath issue concerns "national sovereignty," making it a priority for the national government. Street Protests as Beijing Preempts Hong Kong Courts With New Interpretation of 'Basic Law' [Oiwan Lam/Global Voices] By David French, Hadeel Al Sayegh and Tom Arnold DUBAI (Reuters) - Credit Suisse has been appointed to sell Royal Bank of Scotland's 40 percent stake in Saudi Hollandi Bank <1040.SE>, sources aware of the matter said on Tuesday, in a deal potentially worth around $1.2 billion. Several sources said Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), was considered a likely buyer of the stake. The fund has been buying up assets at home and abroad following plans to turn it into the world's largest sovereign wealth fund with $2 trillion of assets. The sale would be an opportunity for a foreign buyer to gain a foothold in the kingdom's banking sector, in which 12 commercial lenders share total assets worth around 2.22 trillion riyals (478.19 billion). But banking sources expect the holding to go to a domestic player. Spokespeople for RBS and the PIF declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Saudi Hollandi did not respond to a request for comment. RBS, which acquired the stake via its 2007 purchase of ABN AMRO, has been looking to sell it for a number of years as it retreats from international operations and tries to bolster its capital base. The state-backed bank is also still facing hefty legal bills and potential fines for alleged misconduct before and during the financial crisis. There has been a renewed push recently within RBS to get a deal done, which fits with the Saudi authorities' desire to resolve the ownership issue, according to one banking source with knowledge of the situation. As a result, Credit Suisse was appointed in late-October as adviser for the sale, according to two separate banking sources. The Saudi Hollandi stake is the largest holding within RBS's RBS NV division. This is ultimately 97.72 percent owned by RBS, while Banco Santander and the Dutch government have small holdings. RBS management told analysts on a conference call last month following the British bank's third-quarter earnings it was working on winding down the RBS NV unit over time but a deal relating to the Saudi Hollandi stake was not imminent, according to a transcript on RBS's website. The transcript also said that in July, RBS agreed to make a payment to Saudi Hollandi should a sale go ahead. The first banking source told Reuters the agreement was for a payment of 260 million euros (232.07 million). The approval of Saudi Hollandi shareholders on Oct. 31 to allow the bank to change its name was seen as a signal that something was on the cards, finance industry sources said. FIRST BANK IN SAUDI ARABIA Founded in 1926 as the first bank in Saudi Arabia, it had assets of 106.9 billion riyals as of Sept. 30. Its market capitalisation of $3.06 billion, according to Reuters data, would value RBS' stake at around $1.22 billion. Saudi Arabia was an attractive banking market when bumper state oil revenues fuelled strong economic growth. But conditions have changed following the fall in oil prices in the last two years, with liquidity squeezed by governments taking out money to fund budget shortfalls and profitability crimped by higher provisioning for bad loans. Saudi Hollandi has reported flat or falling profits in the past four quarters, with its third-quarter earnings down 46.7 percent on the back of impairment allowances. Difficult market conditions, combined with the Saudi authorities' preference for local ownership of banks, means a domestic buyer is most likely, with the prime candidate the PIF, according to banking sources in the kingdom. "There is no one else out there to do this deal," said one of the sources aware of the Credit Suisse mandate. The fund has also been behind a number of domestic investments in recent months - ownership of a stalled financial district project in Riyadh is to be transferred to the fund, and the fund is expected to make an investment into King Abdullah Economic City. The Saudi government already owns 10.5 percent in Saudi Hollandi. The other main shareholder with 21.8 percent is the Olayan family, a major local merchant group with interests in finance, real estate and food and beverage. (Editing by Jane Merriman) By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) Taking note of the enormity of alarming rise in pollution levels, Supreme Court today asked the Centre to respond within 48 hours and give details about its policy or a "disaster management plan" to deal with the prevailing situation in the national capital region. The court also considered the submisison on alleged differences among various authorities and between Centre and the Delhi government and asked them to devise a "common minimum programme" at least for taking steps to deal with the pollution menace. advertisement "We want to know whether you (Centre) have any disaster management plan. Do you have a policy which deals with graded responses to the situation and provides what action would be taken at which stage? "What is the protocol? Now the time has come where we need to have this," a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A K Sikri and S A Bobde said. During the 30-minute long hearing, the bench sought to know from Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, representing the Centre, about the policy to deal with the rising pollution levels and asked whether the Centre monitored the situation. There should be a policy with regard to steps to be taken at every stage such as at level one, particular decisions would be taken and at level two, odd-even scheme would be implemented and at level three, schools would be closed, the bench suggested while giving illustrations on possible graded responses to emerging situations. The Solicitor General said unregulated "commercialisation" and "industrialisation" of Delhi was one of the reasons for the present situation. "In last 60 years, Delhi has grown in such a manner where there has been unregulated urbanisation. The vehicles have grown in numbers. If you cover a distance in one hour and 20 in contrast to 20 minutes, then it adds to pollution," he said and sought two days time from the court to seek instructions from the Centre in the matter. Meanwhile, Delhi government informed the court that it has so far acquired six vacuum cleaning vehicles and two have been already made functional. (More) PTI SJK MNL RKS ARC --- ENDS --- From November 14th till November 16th, DevIntersection Europe is being held in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Guess what? DevExpress is sponsoring this great conference. If you check the awesome speaker line-up, youll see that I will do 2 sessions as well, so youre invited to join me. To make it even more attractive to attend, I have a special discount code you can use when purchasing the tickets and youll save 10% on your ticket! John and I will be there with our booth giving demos and handing out T-Shirts and other goodies. We will be raffling off some cool prizes like a platform subscription of choice every day. If youre there, make sure to come by our booth to say hello and get your raffle ticket! Free DevExpress Products Get Your Copy Today dpa-AFX Der ukrainische Prasident Wolodymyr Selenskyj hat seine diplomatischen Bemuhungen um eine Losung fur die schwierige Energieversorgung fortgesetzt. In seiner taglichen Videoansprache informierte er am Dienstag uber sein Telefonat mit dem franzosischen Prasidenten Emmanuel Macron und uber den Kiew-Besuch mit der EU-Kommissarin fur Energie, Kadri Simson. Im Mittelpunkt der Gesprache stand dabei vor allem die Sorge um die Energieversorgung in der Ukraine angesichts der fortgesetzten russischen Angri While the currency revamp may have come across as a surprise move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been preparing for the move ever since he came in power. By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled off a major coup today to check black money, he had laid its foundation over two years ago, soon after coming to power in May 2014. Though today's unprecedented financial measure may have come as a rude shock to many, Narendra Modi also gave enough opportunities and threw enough hints in this regard. However, he waited for the festival season of Dussehra and Diwali to get over. advertisement 1. SC-monitored SIT on Black Money The first such initiative came when the Narendra Modi Government, in its very first Cabinet meeting, constituted a Supreme Court-Monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Black Money. 2. Jan Dhan Yojana This was followed by the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojaya (PMJDY) on August 28, 2014. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took personal personal interest in the scheme. He made it a mission to ensure that the scheme was successful. The scheme will be of immense help in the present circumstances. Now that Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency denomination notes have been banned, transactions from banks will acquire importance. Opening of accounts even in the remote areas will help the rural villagers. They will not feel the pinch of the banning of the currency notes. Had the bank accounts not been opened, the people would have faced immense problems. But not now, at least for those who have bank accounts. Till date, 25.45 crore accounts have been opened so far and Rs 45,302.48 crore has been deposited in these accounts. A total of 20.28 crore accounts have been opened in the public sector banks - 11.39 crore accounts in the rural areas while 8.90 accounts in the urban areas. Also read: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi A total of 4.30 crore accounts have been opened in the Regional Rural Banks - 3.70 crore in the rural areas and 0.60 crore in the urban areas. As far as the private banks are concerned, a total of 0.86 crore banks have been opened - 0.53 crore in the rural areas and 0.34 crore accounts in the urban areas. Hence, a whopping 15.62 crore accounts have been opened in the rural areas and 9.83 crore accounts have been opened in the urban areas. 3. Renegotiation of Tax Treaties and Automatic Information Exchange Agreements with Tax Havens The government renegotiated the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with Mauritius to impose Capital Gains Tax if such Capital Asset is situated in India. The Narendra Modi Government also negotiated an Automatic Information Exchange Agreement with Switzerland. Agreements are also being negotiated with other tax havens. From 2017, Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have agreed to share information on foreign account holders with their home countries. advertisement Also read: New Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes: All you need to know 4. The Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 for Foreign Black Money The scheme was launched to bring back black money stashed in foreign countries and tax havens. The scheme ended on 30 September, 2015. The Act also had various stringent provisions for penalty and prosecution of foreign black money holders unearthed during future investigation by the tax department. 5. Income Disclosure Scheme, 2016 The Income Declaration Scheme (IDS) which opened on June 1 gave a chance to black money holders to come clean by declaring the assets by September 30 and paying tax and penalty of 45 per cent on it. The Narendra Modi Government wanted to capture the entire parallel economy flowing in the system of Rs 7 lakh crore in India. The government was upset with the output of IDS scheme. Though the Income Tax department had identified 90 lakh high value transactions without PAN, the final disclosure of black money was to the tune of Rs 65,250 crore. advertisement Also read: Here is what PM Modi said about the new Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes and black money 6. Penalty on Real Estate Transactions undertaken in Cash exceeding Rs 20,000 The Narendra Modi Government imposed a penalty of 20 per cent on all cash transactions exceeding Rs 20,000 to purchase or sell a property (real estate). This was aimed at curbing the role of black money in real estate transactions. 7. Tax Collection at Source on Cash Sales exceeding Rs 2 lakh Another important step to check high value cash transactions and create an audit trail was to impose Tax Collection at Source at a nominal rate of 1 per cent on cash purchases exceeding Rs 2 lakh. Also read: PM Modi's rupee revamp: Don't worry your money stays your money 8. Benami Transaction (Prohibition) Amendment Bill The Parliament passed the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016 (BTP Amendment Act) in August. It came into force from November 1, 2016. The new law seeks to give more teeth to the authorities to curb benami transactions. The notification issued by the Income Tax department, stated that after coming into effect, the BTP Amendment Act, the existing Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988, shall be renamed as Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988 (PBPT Act). advertisement Also read: PM Modi's rupee revamp: Scrapping big notes a problem for common man, say people Watch: RBI to launch new Rs 500, Rs 2,000 currency notes from November 10 --- ENDS --- New grades will help automakers achieve mandated lightweighting targets and promote more sustainable lifestyles 8 November 2016 - ArcelorMittal is expanding its global portfolio of automotive steels by introducing a new generation of advanced high strength steels (AHSS). These innovative steels include the launch of new press hardenable steels (PHS) Ductibor 1000 and Usibor 2000 - both of which are already available for OEM qualification testing in Europe - and martensitic steels MartINsite M1700 and M2000. The company is also preparing to expand its family of third generation advanced high strength steel (3G AHSS), which currently includes Fortiform 1050 in Europe, starting in 2017. Together, these new steel grades will help automakers further reduce body-in-white weight to improve fuel economy without compromising vehicle safety or performance. "The launch of these steels aligns with our Action 2020 program, a strategic roadmap that aims to achieve targeted financial improvements for the company by 2020," said Brian Aranha, executive vice president, global automotive, ArcelorMittal. "Action 2020 efforts include cost optimization and steel shipment volume increases, as well as an improved portfolio of high added value products. These products ensure ArcelorMittal is best positioned to meet customer requirements via a strong technical and product portfolio." ArcelorMittal is now able to provide samples of Ductibor 1000 to customers for qualification testing in North America. Ductibor 1000 is a high-strength press hardenable steel that offers good energy absorption capacity. Typical applications for Ductibor 1000 include energy absorption parts such as front and rear rails and lower B-pillars. Usibor 2000, an aluminum-silicon coated PHS and stronger than its predecessor Usibor 1500, enables automakers to fabricate parts with complicated geometry at a very high strength without formability or springback challenges. Typical applications for Usibor 2000 include strength-critical passenger compartment parts such as rockers, pillars, roof rails and cross members. Usibor 2000 is currently available in Europe for OEM qualifications and will be available in North America in early 2017 with commercial production expected in late summer 2017. "Usibor is our key product in hot stamping and has been a major commercial and technical success in the global automotive industry," said Mr. Aranha. "Looking ahead, the scope of hot stamping products in vehicles will continue to increase with the release of more advanced products like Usibor 2000, which offers 10 to 15% weight savings when compared to existing hot stamping solutions." Usibor 2000 is compatible with standard press hardening technologies and processes. Combining Usibor 2000 with Ductibor 1000 or other PHS into laser welded blanks (LWB) offers several significant advantages. These advantages include weight saving, improved crash behaviour and cost savings through material and manufacturing optimisation. ArcelorMittal is also expanding its MartINsite family of products to include MartINsite M1700 and M2000, joining currently available MartINsite M900, M1100, M1300 and M1500. "MartINsite is a very strong family of steels which are perfect for anti-intrusion parts such as bumper and door beams," explained Mr. Aranha. ArcelorMittal will have MartINsite M1700 and M2000 available for OEM qualifications by mid-2017. The grades will be available for commercial production in early 2018. All MartINsite steels, Usibor 1500 and 2000, and Ductibor 500 and 1000 are all patented by ArcelorMittal. ArcelorMittal is also investing in AM/NS Calvert, its joint venture with Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metals Corp. in Alabama, USA, to produce 3G AHSS cold-stamping steels in North America. Currently available and branded as Fortiform in Europe, these High Formability (HF) steels provide strengths similar to the strongest dual phase steels, but with higher ductility and cold formability. ArcelorMittal will produce cold-rolled and galvanized/galvannealed versions of HF 980 and HF 1180 in North America, targeting OEM qualifications by mid-2017. Commercial production, beginning with the cold-rolled grades, will occur in late 2017. Thanks to their excellent mechanical properties, these HF grades are particularly suitable for components limited by energy absorption, such as front and rear rails and upper motor compartment rails. In Europe, an investment program is underway at ArcelorMittal Gent and ArcelorMittal Liege in Belgium, to increase ArcelorMittal's annual European production of 3G AHSS. Globally, ArcelorMittal boasts some of the most technologically advanced automotive steelmaking operations and incorporates a range of modern steelmaking technologies. Approximately 30% of the company's global R&D budget - $227 million in 2015 - is for automotive research. Half of ArcelorMittal's 1,300 researchers focus on automotive. "ArcelorMittal's current and emerging catalogue of automotive products and solutions supports carmakers in optimising vehicle weight and cost, while meeting stringent safety standards. We are also committed to manufacturing products that advance sustainable lifestyles. Steel helps cars to be lighter, which reduces carbon emissions, but it is also infinitely and easily recyclable. Additionally, compared to competing materials, steel has a significantly smaller environmental footprint." concluded Mr. Aranha. NOTE: Expected release dates are valid as of October 1, 2016 and are subject to change. ENDS About ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal is the world's leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and an industrial footprint in 19 countries. Guided by a philosophy to produce safe, sustainable steel, we are the leading supplier of quality steel in the major global steel markets including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging, with world-class research and development and outstanding distribution networks. Through our core values of sustainability, quality and leadership, we operate responsibly with respect to the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and the communities in which we operate. For us, steel is the fabric of life, as it is at the heart of the modern world from railways to cars and washing machines. We are actively researching and producing steel-based technologies and solutions that make many of the products and components people use in their everyday lives more energy efficient. We are one of the world's five largest producers of iron ore and metallurgical coal and our mining business is an essential part of our growth strategy. With a geographically diversified portfolio of iron ore and coal assets, we are strategically positioned to serve our network of steel plants and the external global market. While our steel operations are important customers, our supply to the external market is increasing as we grow. In 2015, ArcelorMittal had revenues of US$63.6 billion and crude steel production of 92.5 million tonnes, while own iron ore production reached 62.8 million tonnes. ArcelorMittal is listed on the stock exchanges of New York (MT), Amsterdam (MT), Paris (MT), Luxembourg (MT) and on the Spanish stock exchanges of Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid and Valencia (MTS). For more information about ArcelorMittal please visit: http://corporate.arcelormittal.com/ TROY, Mich., Nov. 08, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dart Appraisal, a nationwide, independent appraisal management company (AMC), today announced that Nikole Avers, former executive director of the Tennessee Real Estate Appraiser Commission, has joined the company as a review appraiser. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/49845ce2-300a-4fdf-894c-405e4f6d5b94 A certified real estate appraiser and Appraisal Qualifications Board-certified USPAP instructor, Avers served as the executive director of seventeen regulatory boards at the Department of Commerce and Insurance in Tennessee from 2006-2016. Avers also served as the 2014-2015 president of the Association of Appraiser Regulatory Officials (AARO). In her role at Dart, she performs quality control audits of residential appraisal reports, works closely with Darts Chief Appraiser to provide counseling to appraisers and lenders on complex appraisal assignments, and advises on regulatory compliance issues. Avers also facilitates USPAP training for all of Dart Appraisals operations employees. Nikoles experience as both an appraiser and a regulator adds a truly unique layer to our quality control team, said Michael Dresden, president of Dart Appraisal. Dart is committed to providing quality, compliant appraisal reports to our clients, and Nikoles broad experience helps to strengthen that commitment. Dart Appraisal.com is an independently-owned, nationwide Appraisal Management Company (AMC) founded in 1993. For more than two decades, the company has built a reputation of superior customer service combined with innovative technology to deliver accurate and timely residential appraisals. Thousands of orders are tracked in real time using a proprietary order management platform designed and maintained by Dart Appraisal. With a singular focus on appraisal management, Dart Appraisal has developed a direct relationship with both appraisers and clients. The company manages a nationwide appraiser panel that requires appraisers to meet stringent quality standards to ensure local competence and reliable appraisals. www.dartappraisal.com. MINNEAPOLIS, Nov. 08, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Transwestern today announces it completed a 211,000-square-foot headquarters lease at 1001 Third Ave. S., a five-story, 476,000-square-foot office building in downtown Minneapolis. Select Comfort, which manufactures and sells Sleep Number beds, plans to relocate its headquarters from suburban Plymouth to the downtown facility in October 2017. Transwestern Principal Reed Christianson represented the building owner, DCI Technology Holdings, in the 15-year lease. This property occupies a full city block and, with the exception of a data center, has sat mostly vacant since 2014, said Christianson. Our lease with Select Comfort the citys largest incoming office user in many years will further enhance the up-and-coming southeast corner of downtown and make it a popular destination for employers looking to recruit and retain top talent. Approximately 900 employees will be based out of Select Comforts new headquarters, which, in addition to executive office space, will house a call center and research and development lab. In conjunction with the lease, DCI Technology will complete a multimillion-dollar renovation of the property that will include the addition of a fitness center and cafeteria on the fifth floor, among other common area improvements. These renovations will add additional value to a building that already benefits from its proximity to new retail, restaurant and residential offerings, said Christianson. The addition of Select Comfort, together with ongoing investment in the surrounding neighborhood, including the brand new Kraus-Anderson mixed-use development just a couple of blocks away, is a huge win for downtown Minneapolis, and were proud to be a part of it. ABOUT TRANSWESTERN Transwestern is a privately held real estate firm of collaborative entrepreneurs who deliver a higher level of personalized service the Transwestern Experience. Specializing in Agency Leasing, Management, Tenant Advisory, Capital Markets, Research and Sustainability services, our fully integrated global enterprise adds value for investors, owners and occupiers of all commercial property types. We leverage market insights and operational expertise from members of the Transwestern family of companies specializing in development, real estate investment management and research. Based in Houston, Transwestern has 34 U.S. offices and assists clients through more than 180 offices in 37 countries as part of a strategic alliance with BNP Paribas Real Estate. Experience Extraordinary at transwestern.com and @Transwestern. For updates from the Minneapolis team, follow @TranswesternMN. NEW YORK, Nov. 08, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Labaton Sucharow LLP is pleased to announce the addition of partner Michael P. Canty, and of counsel Thomas P. Preston and Ian Connor Bifferato, to the Firms roster of litigators. The three attorneys bring impressive experience to the Firms deep bench in the Securities and Corporate Governance and Shareholder Rights Litigation practices. Labaton Sucharows track record of success throughout the years is undoubtedly due to a talented group of attorneys who are committed to prosecuting corporate misconduct, remarked Canty. I look forward to bringing my practice to the Firm and joining the team. Working in the Firms New York hub, Canty, a former Assistant United States Attorney who served in the Eastern District of New York, has more than a decade of trial experience in national security, white collar crime, and cybercrime matters. Canty most recently served as the Deputy Chief in the Offices General Crimes Section. He also served in the Offices National Security and Cybercrime Section where he focused on investigating and prosecuting terrorism related offenses. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorneys Office, he served as an Assistant District Attorney for the Nassau County District Attorneys Office, where he handled complex state criminal offenses. Before becoming a prosecutor, Canty worked as a Congressional Staff Member for the United States House of Representatives. He primarily served as a liaison between the Majority Leaders Office and the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. With more than 40 years of experience, Thomas P. Preston is based out of the Firms Delaware office and focuses on analyzing and resolving commercial disputes through mediation, arbitration, and litigation. Prestons extensive background covers several practice areas, including corporate governance, shareholder rights, securities, antitrust, fiduciary duties, bankruptcy, and other financial and regulatory matters, as well as in higher education legal matters. Prior to his new role at the Firm, Preston served as General Counsel for Delaware State University. Joining the Firms Wilmington, Delaware office, Bifferato has over 20 years of experience representing investors in corporate governance and transactional matters, including class action and derivative litigation. Bifferato has worked among a broad range of practice areas, including commercial and complex litigation, alternative dispute resolution, business reorganization, creditors rights, and commercial bankruptcy. About Labaton Sucharow LLP Labaton Sucharow prosecutes precedent-setting class actions, recovering billions of dollars on behalf of defrauded consumers and investors. The Firm offers complex litigation services in the areas of securities, antitrust, consumer protection, corporate governance and shareholder rights law, as well as whistleblower representation. Labaton Sucharows successful reputation is built not only on its team of more than 60 attorneys, but also on its industry-leading in-house investigators, financial analysts, and forensic accountants. For more information, visit labaton.com. Prosafe SE ("Prosafe" or the "Company") calls for an extraordinary general meeting to be held on 30 November 2016 at 08:00 am CET / 09:00 am Cyprus time at the Company's registered office at 126 Stadiou Street, 2nd floor, 6020 Larnaca, Cyprus. The purpose of the extraordinary general meeting is to consider (i) a proposed reversed split of the Company's shares (and related resolutions) and (ii) appointment of chairman and an additional director to the Prosafe board. For further detailed information, please see the attached notice. The notice will be distributed to shareholders in accordance with the Company's articles. Prosafe is the world's leading owner and operator of semi-submersible accommodation vessels. The company operates globally and is headquartered in Larnaca, Cyprus. Prosafe is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange with ticker code PRS. For more information, please refer to www.prosafe.com Larnaca, 8 November 2016 Georgina Georgiou, General Manager Prosafe SE For further information, please contact: Stig Harry Christiansen, Acting CEO Prosafe Management AS Phone: +47 51 64 25 17 / +47 478 07 813 Robin Laird, Acting CFO Prosafe Offshore Services Pte Limited Phone: +65 65 59 19 90 / +65 81 27 21 01 Cecilie Helland Ouff, Senior Manager Finance and Investor Relations Prosafe AS Phone: +47 51 64 25 20 This week with the Naked Scientists you can learn about Neanderthal genetics and what DNA can tell us about ancient societies, the reason why humans cry, the effect of alcohol on the body after a stint of abstinence, and much more. By India Today Web Desk: Prince Harry has finally broken his silence after the news of him dating Suits actress Meghan Markle smeared the internet recently. Translating Prince Harry's discomfort regarding the quality and quality of reportage his alleged love affair with Markle has raked in, the Kensington Palace has released an official statement about the same. Shared on the official Twitter handle of the palace, the statement touches upon topics like Harry's love for privacy, him being sick of rumours and subsequently, him being concerned for Meghan Markle's safety. Kensington Palace has issued a statement this morning about the harassment currently being experienced by Meghan Markle and her family. pic.twitter.com/EuFZ4fmUIj Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) November 8, 2016 advertisement Confirming Prince Harry's relationship with the actress, the letter mentions how "his girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment." "Some of this has been very public--the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social-media trolls and web article comments," the statement reads as it goes on elucidate upon the harassment Markle and her loved ones are being subjected to. With the world bombarding her with attention Prince Harry is believed to be "worried about Ms Markles safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her." --- ENDS --- As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ Priyanka Chopra encouraged her American fans to vote and let their voice be heard. By India Today Web Desk: Priyanka Chopra, America's new sweetheart, is using her position to encourage Americans to vote for the Presidential polls scheduled today. ALSO READ | Deepika on cold war with Priyanka: I was in school when she won Miss World! ALSO READ | Priyanka Chopra is Hollywood Royal now: 5 reasons Desi Girl justifies the tag advertisement ALSO READ | Deepika Padukone says Aishwarya Rai, NOT JUST Priyanka Chopra put India on the global map The actor posted a video on her Instagram account, exhorting the Americans to "be the change (they) want to see." In her short message, Pee Cee said, "I may not be American but I am a global citizen, and the outcome of this election is going to impact the entire world. If you can vote, there is too much at stake in this election not to. Do not underestimate how loud your voice can be. Go out there and vote tomorrow on November 8th. Don't miss your chance of being a part of history. The world is counting on you." "Your voice is powerful, let it be heard," the Dostana actor added in her caption. Your voice is powerful, let it be heard. Tomorrow is the day...you need to #VOTE, America! You can learn more at iwillvote.com. A video posted by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 7, 2016 at 2:00pm PST Priyanka has already cemented her position in the US with her hit television series Quantico. She is currently shooting for Baywatch with Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock and Zac Efron. --- ENDS --- The photographer was allegedly slapped by a cop and repeatedly beaten up at the police station. Protest against the alleged attack on the photographer in Chennai. By Pramod Madhav: Close to a 100 journalists from various media organisations gathered at the Chennai Police Commissioner's office to protest against alleged police brutality on a photographer. Sada, a photographer with a daily newspaper, was stopped by the police for riding with two others on a bike. Sada was trying to apologise and just then another motorbike hit his bike. advertisement ALSO READ: Shocking: Cops openly flout forensic norms, delay of over 10 days in sending samples to labs Before Sada could react, Balamurugan, sub inspector of MKB Nagar, allegedly slapped him for not getting off the bike. He was pushed into an auto-rickshaw and taken to the police station. Sada was repeatedly assaulted at the police station as well. Sada was admitted to the Stanley Medical College for treatment. ALSO READ: Punjab cops get jail for tattooing jeb katri on 4 women thieves ALSO READ: 3 cops, held for stealing Hawala money in Coimbatore, remanded to 15-day police custody Unable to meet the police commissioner, reporters, video journalists and photo journalists gathered in front of his office and staged a protest to condemn the attack. Meanwhile, the police have asked for four days' time to take action against the officer. ALSO READ: Mumbai: RPF cops reunite mentally challenged boy with his parents ALSO READ: Dadri lynching accused dies in jail, NHRC issues notice to Uttar Pradesh top cops ALSO WATCH --- ENDS --- By Anvita Singh: Last night film director Nikkhil Advani's latest TV project, P.O.W.-Bandi Yuddh Ke, hit the small screen, and left us quite emotional, and impressed. Also watch:The trailer of Nikkhil Advani's P.O.W.--Bandi Yuddh Ke is stirring and dramatic Yes, we agree that certain scenes could have been portrayed in a better fashion, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the story telling and acting was top notch. Here are some of the things that make P.O.W. the gripping show that it is. 17 years of wait finally ends! Emotions that can't be expressed in words! #POWonStarPlus pic.twitter.com/IwRFhwUxwF STAR Plus (@StarPlus) November 7, 2016 advertisement The show's plot is unique to Indian television The basic plot of the show has been inspired by an Israeli drama series called Hatufim (Prisoners of War), upon which the hit American TV series Homeland is based. Two men, Naib Subedar Sartaj Singh (Purab Kohli), and Squadron Leader Imaan Khan (Satyadeep Mishra) go missing in action during the 1999 Kargil war, while their respective families struggle to lead their lives normally. But things take an interesting turn when the men finally return 17 years later to their homeland after escaping from the clutches of the Pakistani army. Imaan & Nazneen struggle to not let the sorrows of the past 17 years come in between their relationship. #TheRealPOW, Starts Tonight. pic.twitter.com/GpJEP5hGdN STAR Plus (@StarPlus) November 7, 2016 Strong female characters Imaan's wife, Nazneen Khan (Sandhya Mridul) is trying to move on with her life and after much insistence from her two grown-up children agrees to marry Imaan's brother, Salim. Salim had always nursed a deep affection for Nazneen, which only grew after Imaan went missing. Whereas, Sartaj Singh's wife, Harleen (Amrita Puri), who belongs to a typical middle-class family, (unlike Nazneen, who hails from a well-connected and affluent family) pursues her dream of being a commerce graduate, and lends a helping hand to her father-in-law's business, while still pining for her husband who had immediately left for war right after they had tied the knot. Both Nazneen and Harleen are strong female characters who know that they are much more than just somebody's wife. This is not to say that they don't have the highest regard for their husbands' professions, but they are fighters, and despite the circumstances are trying their best to lead a normal life. The actors Sandhya Mridul, Purab Kohli, Satyadeep Mishra, Amrita Puri, and Manish Chaudhary--who plays the retired Major Vikram Singh--deserve a special mention for their convincing portrayal of the characters. Amrita Puri aka Harleen, who plays Sartaj Singh's (Purab Kohli) wife in the show, is especially brilliant in the 'reunion scene', where she finally meets her husband after a gap of 17 long years. Heart-wrenching. A good cliffhanger A news that keeps the whole nation gripped! How would you react hearing about the story of POWs from across the border? #POWonStarPlus pic.twitter.com/HmoIsMRFXH STAR Plus (@StarPlus) November 7, 2016 The first episode of P.O.W. ends with retired Major Vikram Singh speculating about the motive behind the return of the two men. Singh thinks that both Sartaj and Imaan have been 'turned' by the Pakistani government. He also thinks that the two (Sartaj and Imaan) didn't escape, but were allowed to leave Pakistan. advertisement All in all, a good and gripping first episode that will probably set a new standard for Indian television if things go as well as they have gone in the pilot of the show. P.O.W. will air every Mon-Sat at 10:30 pm on Star Plus. --- ENDS --- Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said while unveiling the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes that RBI will launch the new notes from November 10. By India Today Web Desk: Expressing concern over the circulation of fake currency notes, Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel today said the apex bank will launch new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 currency notes from November 10. "RBI will launch new currency notes from November 10," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said while unveiling the new notes. Both Patel and Das were briefing media after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a sudden address to the nation today, announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes are being withdrawn from midnight. He said that such notes will become "mere paper". advertisement "Banks will keep record of people who will come to exchange cash," Das added. READ FULL SPEECH The new currency notes. HIGHLIGHTS: There will be no impact on the liquidity on the wholesale markets. If at all there is any, we'll make sure that its addressed: Urjit Patel We will review the situation after 24 November, new notes will be in circulation from 10 Nov: Shaktikanta Das, on withdrawing Rs 4000 till 24 November If someone is receiving Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes after tonight, he is doing it at his own risk: Shaktikanta Das This is necessary in medium and long term interest of our economy, it will help in maintaining financial and economic integrity: Shaktikanta Das RBI will release new currency notes with new features, designs and dimensions from November 10 onwards: Shaktikanta Das New Rs 500 note and Rs 2000 note, to be known as Mahatma Gandhi new series of bank notes. There has been no breach of any of the security features but for public the looks of fake Indian currency note is similar to genuine: Urjit Patel We have increased our production and trying to provide new currency notes as soon as possible: Urjit Patel It's a very good step to combat black money: SIT Chairman Justice (retd) M B Shah to ANI on decision to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes RBI has been concerned about growing menace of fake Indian currency notes which has been increasing in numbers: Urjit Patel -With inputs from IANS Watch the video here: --- ENDS --- By PTI: Adani commissions 100 MW solar plant in Punjab New Delhi, Nov 8 (PTI) Adani Enterprises Ltd today announced the commissioning of Punjabs largest solar power plant of 100 MW, at an investment of Rs 640 crore. The plant has been set up by its subsidiary Adani Green Energy Ltd, Adani Group said in a press release. advertisement Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal (rpt) Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and senior officials were present on the occasion. The plant is situated at Sardargarh & Chughe Kalan, Bhatinda. The company said it is using top notch technology to set up the entire 100 MW solar plant project, which has started commissioning almost six months ahead of schedule. Indirect and direct employment opportunities were created for a total of around 300-400 personnel, who worked diligently to achieve this feat ahead of its time, it said. "I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the Chief Minister and the government of Punjab, present here today, for their endless support and playing a huge role in helping us achieve this enormous feat," said Adani Group Renewable Energy Business CEO Jayant Parimal in the statement. The solar plant is not only the largest project in Punjab but will also prove to be the largest tracker-based solar project in the country. The technology used for setting up this plant includes Poly Crystalline Silicon PV Modules and Horizontal Single Axis Tracker (HSAT). This plant will be India?s biggest HSAT plant at a single location. The plant spreads over approximately 641 acres of land with the evacuation of 132 kV Balluana Substation through Double circuit 132 KV transmission line. The annual energy yield is expected to be approximately 88,000 Mwh/annum. Adani Group is a leading player in solar power generation in the country. The company has a 40 MW solar plant at Bitta, Gujarat and has recently unveiled a 648 MW solar power project at Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu which is the world?s largest solar power plant at a single location. Moreover the company has also signed a JV with the Rajasthan government to develop the countrys largest solar park in the state with 10,000 MW capacity. PTI KKS SA MR --- ENDS --- Lenovo took some heat from Linux users a few months ago when it was discovered that some of the companys recent Windows laptops were configured in a way that blocked them from running Linux or other operating systems. Some saw a conspiracy, while others pointed out that it had to do with the lack of Linux drivers for the storage configuration in those laptops. Either way, the end result was that it was difficult, if not impossible to install Linux on a Lenovo Yoga 900 or IdeaPad 710 notebook. But now you can install Linux, because Lenovo has released new BIOS options for those laptops. Theres a bit of a catch though. Lenovos new BIOS has an AHCI option that lets you install Linux but if youre using the new BIOS, then Windows is not officially supported. In fact, Lenovo says its not officially supporting the new BIOS either if you want to install it, youre pretty much on your own if you run into any problems. While Lenovo is presenting this as an either/or solution for choosing whether you want to run Windows or Linux. But some users have discovered that it is possible to set up dual-boot system using the new BIOS, allowing you to choose between Windows and Linux when your computer boots. via PC World Here are all the questions that you are going to frequently ask, answered. By India Today Web Desk: 1. Why this now? There has been a rise in the incidence of fake Indian currency notes in higher denomination. More often that not, the common man fail to distinguish between original and fake notes. Fake notes are used for anti-national, illegal activities, misused by terrorists and for hoarding black money. As India remains a cash based economy and there is a rise in the circulation of fake Indian currency notes, the withdrawal has been introduced to contain the fake note circulation and to hurt those who keep unaccounted money. advertisement 2. What exactly is this? The legal tender character of the notes in denominations of 500 and 1000 stands withdrawn. In simple terms, all the 500 and 1000 rupee notes will be just paper, these cannot be used for transacting business and/or store of value for future usage. Here are 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money 3. How much is my Rs 500/1000 note worth now? Your 500/1000 notes are worth its value till December 30, provided you deposit it in your bank account. You should read PM Modi's rupee revamp: Don't worry your money stays your money. 4. Can I get all in cash? No. You will get up to Rs 4,000, per person, in cash and if you need more, you can get it credited to your bank account. 5. Why can I not get the entire amount in cash when I have surrendered everything in cash? The scheme does not provide for it, given its objectives.6. Rs 4,000 cash is insufficient for my need. What to do?You can use mobile wallets, online payment methods, IMPS, debit/credit cards, and you can also pay by cheque. 7. What if I don't have any bank account? Don't worry. Pick the bank of your choice, and get a bank account opened. Carry the necessary documents required for fulfilling the KYC requirements. 8. What if I have only a Jan Dhan account? You can avail the exchange facility subject to the caps and other laid down limits in accord with norms and procedures. 9. Where can I go to exchange the notes?You can exchange the notes at all Issue Offices of RBI and branches of commercial banks/RRBS/UCBs/State Co-op banks or at any Head Post Office or Sub-Post Office. 10. Will I have to go to my bank branch itself? For exchange up to Rs 4,000 in cash you may go to any bank branch but do carry a valid identity proof. For exchange over Rs 4,000, which will be accorded through credit to bank account only, you may go to the branch where you have an account or to any other branch of the same bank. advertisement In case you want to go to a branch of any other bank where you are not maintaining an account, you will have to furnish valid identity proof and bank account details required for electronic fund transfer to your account. 11. Can I go to any branch of my bank? Yes, you can go to any branch of your bank. Also, here's what you can do with your useless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes 12. Can I go to any branch of any other bank?Yes, you can go to any branch of any other bank. But in this case, you have to furnish valid identity proof for exchange in cash; both valid identity proof and bank account details will be required for electronic fund transfer in case the amount to be exchanged exceeds Rs 4,000. 13. I have no bank account but my relative / friend has an account, can I get my notes exchanged into that account? Yes, you can do that if the account holder, that is your relative / friend, gives you permission in writing. While exchanging, you need to show this proof and your valid identity card at the bank. advertisement 14. Should I go to bank personally or can I send the notes through my representative? It is better if you can visit the branch. In case you are sending a representative, do give him an express mandate, that is, a written authorisation. While tendering the notes, this representative will have to produce the authorisation letter and a valid identity proof.15. Can I withdraw from ATMs?ATMs and banks will remain closed on November 9. It may take a while for the banks to recalibrate their ATMs, and once it's done, you can withdraw up to a maximum of Rs 2,000 per card per day till November 18. The limit will be raised to Rs 4,000 per day per card from the November 19 onwards. This piece will clear more doubts about this question: Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi 16. Can I withdraw cash against cheque? Yes, you can withdraw cash against withdrawal slip or cheque subject to ceiling of Rs 10,000 in a day within an overall limit of Rs 20,000 in a week (including withdrawals from ATMs) for the first fortnight, that is up to November 24, 2016. advertisement 17. Can I deposit withdrawn notes through ATMs, Cash Deposit Machine or cash Recycler? Yes, notes can be deposited in Cash Deposits machines / Cash Recyclers but not on November 9. 18. Can I make use of electronic (NEFT / RTGS / IMPS / Internet Banking / Mobile banking) mode? Yes, these facilities will come handy. You can use NEFT/RTGS/IMPS/Internet Banking/Mobile Banking or any other electronic, non-cash mode of payment. 19. How much time do I have to exchange the notes?The scheme closes on December 30, 2016. The banknotes can be exchanged at branches of commercial banks, Regional Rural Banks, Urban Cooperative banks, State Cooperative Banks and RBI till this date. If you fail to exchange these notes on or before December 30, an opportunity will be given at specified RBI offices. You will have to provide necessary documentation as specified by the Reserve Bank of India. 20. I am right now not in India, what should I do?You can authorise someone who is in India by giving an authorisation letter and get the notes deposited into your bank account. This person will have to go to the bank on your behalf, with a valid identity card and your permission letter. 21. I am an NRI and hold an NRO account, can the exchange value be deposited in my account? Yes, you can deposit the scrapped banknotes to your NRO account. 22. I am a foreign tourist, I have these notes. What should I do? You can purchase foreign exchange equivalent to Rs 5,000 using these notes at the airport exchange counters within 72 hours after the notification, but you will have to present proof of purchasing these notes. 23. If I have an emergency (hospitalisation, travel, life saving medicines) and is in need of cash, then what should I do? You can use Rs 500, 1000 notes for paying off your hospitalisation charges at government hospitals, for purchasing bus tickets at government bus stands for travel by state government or state PSU buses, train tickets at railway stations, and air tickets at airports, within 72 hours after the notification.24. What is proof of identity? Valid Identity proof is any of the following: Aadhaar Card, Driving Licence, Voter ID Card, Pass Port, NREGA Card, PAN Card, Identity Card Issued by Government Department, Public Sector Unit to its Staff.25. Where can I get more information on this scheme? Further information is available on www.rbi.org.in and GoI website. 26. If I have a problem, whom should I approach? You may approach the control room of RBI by email. You can mail to publicquery@rbi.org.in or call 022 22602201 / 022 22602944. --- ENDS --- Jessica Romm Perez is the editorial director at Domino magazine. She is a style expert with a career working for prominent media properties and brands identifying and driving trends in design, home decor, fashion and style. On Nov. 15, the magazines newest book, Domino: Your Guide to a Stylish Home, will go on sale. The book shows how to use art, seating, lighting, textiles, and more to personalize a space and truly make it unique. She can answer questions on the new book and how to create a space you love. Every week, Jura Koncius helps you in your quest to achieve domestic bliss. She and weekly guests, whether Martha Stewart, the Property Brothers or Nate Berkus, answer your decorating and design questions. Jura is always happy to whip out her paint chips, track down a hard-to-find piece of furniture or offer her seasoned advice on practical living and decluttering. For more than ten years, Home Front has been an online conversation about the best way to make your home comfortable, stylish and fun. We invite you to submit questions and share you own great tips, ideas and gripes. No problem is too big or too small, send them over. Sweden to reach NATO's defense spending goal of 2% of GDP by 2026 Lebanon raises electricity price for first time since 1990s Lavrov and Cavusoglu discuss situation over 'grain deal' Turkey not satisfied with Sweden's promises Azerbaijan claims to have 'exposed' Azerbaijanis who acted 'under control of Iranian secret service' Taliban sets up female Interior Ministry unit in Afghanistan to disperse protests U.S. concerned about Iran's 'threats' against Saudi Arabia Lebanon is facing a power vacuum, left without a president Gas exports from Iran to Armenia to double In first 9 months about $1.7 billion is transferred to Armenia Baerbock and Scholz disagree on China Delegations of Ukraine, Turkey and UN temporarily suspend movement of ships in framework of Black Sea grain deal Qatar Energy Minister calls EU proposal to limit gas prices hypocritical Jamshidi: Any capturing of further territories is occupation Putin: Kiev must give real guarantees of strict compliance with the Istanbul agreements Putin and Erdogan discuss results of meeting of Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in Sochi Blinken goes to Germany to meet with G-7 colleagues Iranist: Cooperation between Yerevan and Tehran will prevent further Turkish activism U.S. military conducts field weapons inspections in Ukraine Defense Ministers of Russia and Turkey once again discuss suspension of 'grain deal' Armenian President and ICRC representatives discuss Armenian captives held in Azerbaijan Aliyev's aide visits Nakhchivan Berlin urges Serbia to choose between EU and Russia Armenian Deputy Prime Minister and USAID representatives discuss bilateral cooperation Erdogan: Turkey continues to make necessary initiatives on grain deal Macron promises Ukraine to survive winter and strengthen air defense The Collins British Dictionary chooses main word of 2022 Medvedev: Western countries are pushing the world into a global war Deputy Minister: 50,5 bln AMD will be allocated to North-South transport corridor construction in 2023 Georgia begins preparations for multinational exercise Agile Spirit 2023 Armenia and Iran discuss bilateral energy cooperation Paruyr Hovhannisyan receives Erin Elizabeth McKee Dollar, euro drop in Armenia Erdogan plans talks with Putin and Zelenskyy in coming days Head of Armenian State Revenue Committee: In 2022, the state budget will lack about AMD 84.8 billion Russia's richest billionaires will become $83.4 billion richer in 2022 Expert: expansion of relations between Tehran, Yerevan may prevent corridor creation Governor of Armenias Gegharkunik briefs EU mission on condition of settlements affected by Azerbaijan shelling (PHOTOS) Russia and Iran to sign deal on free trade zone with EEU Armenia National Assembly opposition factions representatives meet with visiting European Parliament members Hearings on South Caucasus to be held in US Senate Central Bank chief: High activity in Armenia economy is maintained in third quarter of 2022 OPEC Secretary General: Europe and U.S. are heading for economic recession Pashinyan briefs Raisi about talks in Sochi and their results Ardshinbank and Mastercard offer to pay with Apple Pay and get cashback Nine people arrested in India after mass deaths in bridge collapse CSTO meeting on Armenia-Azerbaijan border situation to be held on November 23 in Yerevan Zas: CSTO working towards proposals regarding situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector Clinton sues Trump to recover $1 million from him Lukashenko: Armenia turned down proposed settlement plan Raisi: Iran-Armenia trade can be increased to $3bn Zas discusses Baku-Yerevan conflict in Minsk Raisi: Foreigners interference will deepen problems of Caucasus State Security Service conducts operation in Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture Iran expands sanctions on U.S. Cavusoglu discusses relations with Azerbaijan with his Iranian counterpart European gas price falls to $1,246 per 1,000 cubic meters in October Legislature vice-speaker thanks visiting European Parliament lawmakers for supporting Armenia Armenia revenue committee chief: No initiative to ban import of Turkish goods Economy minister: Authorities plan to increase number of tourists in Armenia to 2.5mn annually by 2026 Armenia official: Our border checkpoints are ready to receive Azerbaijanis Flight restrictions extended at 11 airports in south and center of Russia until November 9 Sergey Kopirkin: Unblocking of communications must be based on respect for countries sovereignty Storm Nalgae in the Philippines leaves 110 people killed Lukashenko on Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict: Why did they engage EU? Why are they engaging CSTO there? Ambassador: Russia justifies itself as Armenias ally Kopirkin: September battles between Armenia, Azerbaijan were stopped by Russia militarys efforts Gold price remains stable Death toll in Seoul stampede rises to 156 Armenian PM and Iranian President hold talks in Tehran Kopirkin: Karabakh status issue should be left to next generations 14 people injured in Chicago Halloween night shooting Armenias Pashinyan arrives in Iran Armenia economy minister: Government predicts 7% economic growth in 2023 Turkish and Ukraine defense ministers discuss situation with grain deal Copper prices are rising Russia envoy to Armenia: Many common paradigms being broken in South Caucasus Israel holds fifth parliamentary elections since 2019 Lavrov: Over past decades we managed to lay solid foundations for strategic partnership, alliance with Armenia Oil goes up in price Primakov Readings international forum kicks off in Yerevan One person killed in Toronto shooting Armenias Pashinyan heads for Iran Newspaper: Armenia premier sends intelligence to Artsakh on day of rally Putin on choosing Turkey as Russia natural gas supply junction: Erdogan is man of his word Russia, Turkey FMs discuss South Caucasus Kremlin: Armenia, Azerbaijan confirmed their interest in Russia mediation Armenia PM concludes visit to Russias Sochi Putin: Europe will not be able to exclude Russia from Yerevan-Baku relations normalization process Putin on extending mandate of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh: It will depend on other matters Putin: No Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty yet IMF forecasts $1 trillion unforeseen profit for oil exporter Lavrov and Cavusoglu discuss recent developments in Caucasus Seoul and Warsaw sign key agreements on nuclear energy development in Poland Statement by leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan on results of meeting in Sochi Saudi Arabia and UAE defend OPEC decision Putin: Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan agree on joint statement U.S. wants EU to impose export restrictions against China Thunberg calls UN conference place for lies and fraud YEREVAN. - President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on Wednesday received U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter. Welcoming the guest, the President expressed satisfaction with the fact that since the establishment of diplomatic ties the Armenian-American interstate relations have constantly developed, the two friendly states approaching the 25th anniversary of establishing those ties with serious success achieved in the recent two-three years. Sargsyan thanked the U.S. Government for many year of support in the economic development of Armenia, implementation of reforms in different spheres, as well as establishment of democracy and civil society. He also highly appreciated the role of the U.S. in maintaining stability in the region. Apart from this, Sargsyan attached importance to the Armenian-American cooperation in the defense sphere, specifically underscoring the support of the American side in defense reforms, as well as capacity building in areas of battlefield medicine, humanitarian demining and peacekeeping in Armenia. Sargsyan expressed hope that Michael Carpenters visit will also contribute to the further development of Armenian-American ties. The interlocutors expressed satisfaction with the fact that the current high-level Armenian-American relations are based on the mutual respect and solidarity of the two peoples, Armenia and the U.S. currently having strong partnership ties both on bilateral and multilateral platforms. For his part, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter expressed gratitude for Armenias input in peacekeeping operations. President Sargsyan and Mr Carpenter also discussed issues related to the further development of cooperation in military, international and regional security areas. YEREVAN. Armen Hayrapetyan, head of the State Service for Food Safety (SSFS) of Armenia, on Monday had a working meeting in Moscow with Sergei Dankvert, Director of Rosselkhoznadzor (Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance of the Russian Federation). Hayrapetyan briefed his Russian colleague on the murrain-related veterinarian measures that are successfully implemented in Armenia, and therefore proposed Rosselkhoznadzor to lift its respective temporary ban on the imports of some animals, meat, and raw materials of animal origin from Armenia, SSFS informed Armenian News-NEWS.am. The interlocutors also discussed the activities toward ensuring a new level of biological safety and food safety in Armenia. YEREVAN. Italy supports the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairs efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy, Paolo Gentiloni, who is on an official visit to Armenia, stated the aforesaid at Tuesdays news conference in capital city Yerevan (PHOTOS). Recalling that Italy will assume the chairmanship of OSCE in the future, the Italian FM noted that Rome attaches great importance to the settlement of frozen conflicts. Italy maintains that the Karabakh conflict shall be resolved through peaceful and diplomatic means, stressed Gentiloni. We dont want to see hostilities in the region. YEREVAN. Authorities in Baku are making controversial statements. On the one hand they speak about readiness to meet, on the other hand contradict the statements of the co-chairs, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian told reporters. During his joint media conference with Italian counterpart Gentiloni Silveri, the Minister recalled that the possibility of a meeting at the sidelines of the OSCE ministerial was voiced by one of the co-chairs. Baku also spoke about readiness to meet. However, Nalbandian recalled, Baku has specific perception of the mediator's proposals. Azerbaijan sees only one principle. Mediators name three principles - non-use of force or threat of force, the right of peoples to self-determination and territorial integrity. It has been repeatedly declared that the principles and elements based on them are a whole, and their attempts to divide them will create a difficult situation. Baku should decide whether they want to continue the talks in the current format. On the one hand they speak about participation, and on the other oppose the proposals of the co-chairs. Participation for the sake of participation is an imitation of negotiations, Nalbandian said. The Armenian FM recalled that Azerbaijani side participated in the summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg, but has refused to carry out the arrangements so far. According to him, those who doubt that Azerbaijan can aggravate the situation, got the answer during the April escalation. After the April aggression, the efforts of the co-chairs and Armenia are targeted at creating conditions for the promotion of negotiations. Armenia has never refused to participate in the meetings, and has always accepted the format offered by the diplomats, he said. Several months ago Azerbaijan rejected meetings describing the co-chairs as tourists, Nalbandian added. He noted Azerbaijan's attempts to aggravate the situation in the conflict zone. The Minister recalled the large-scale exercises in Azerbaijan. In accordance with the commitments, Azerbaijan had to inform about the drills beforehand. At the same time Azerbaijani side has increased the number of violations of the ceasefire regime, the Foreign Minister said. Returning to the possible meeting in Hamburg, Edward Nalbandian said that the format is not yet approved. Let's see what the co-chairs will offer, he said, adding that the meeting with the mediators will be held for sure. By India Today Web Desk: If Sridevi was one of the best actresses of her time, Amrita Singh was no less. And decades after these two beautiful women set the screen on fire, eyes are set on their lovely daughters - Jhanvi Kapoor and Sara Ali Khan. With each passing day, these most-talked-about star kids are eyeing their big Bollywood dreams as they take baby steps into the world of cinema. advertisement ALSO READ: Sara Ali Khan turns down Karan Johar's Student Of The Year 2 for Amrita Singh? ALSO READ: Sridevi's daughter Jhanvi Kapoor is a sight to behold at the screening of Mirzya Their beauty has already charmed fans and Bollywood can't wait to see these two divas on screen. Sara and Jhanvi, on their part, are all geared up to make their grand Bollywood debuts sometime next year. Buzz had it that Sara was meant to make her big Bollywood debut in a Karan Johar production. She was said to enter Bollywood alongside Shahid Kapoor's younger brother Ishaan Khattar in a Hindi remake of The Fault In Our Stars. But that seems to be a thing of the past now as Sara has pulled out of the project. Rumour has it that Saif and Amrita's daughter will now be seen opposite Ranveer Singh in Zoya Akhtar's next. According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, Sara has been approached for Gully Boy, and if things go as planned, she will be seen romancing Ranveer on the silver screen. Gully Boy is supposedly a coming-of-age film inspired by two real-life rappers from Mumbai's chawls, Rapper Divine and Rapper Naezy. A source was quoted as telling the tabloid, "Both the producers, Farhan (Akhtar) and Ritesh (Sidhwani), along with Zoya, have been in talks with Sara for a while now and they are almost in the final stages of discussion. Gully Boys could well be her launching pad." If Sara has got the backing from Zoya Akhtar and Ranveer Singh, Sridevi's daughter Jhanvi Kapoor is also not far behind. After making those stunning appearances every now and then, Jhanvi has now set her eyes on her Bollywood dream. A report in Bollywoodlide.com suggests that Jhanvi has already begun prepping for her Bollywood debut. So much so, that she has started getting secretly groomed for her first film which is likely to happen in 2017. And this is not all. Her father Boney Kapoor has hired people to handle her work. And the teenager, who is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer, has also begun working on her diction. If reports are to be believed, the preparations are in full swing. In fact, rumour has it that Boney might himself launch his daughter in Bollywood next year. advertisement With two most-talked-about star kids making their big screen debuts next year, Bollywood should expect some firecrackers on screen. Their beauty has already cast a spell on many, but it is only their acting skills that will determine as to who will take over Bollywood in 2017. --- ENDS --- STEPANAKERT. President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh), Bako Sahakyan, on Tuesday watched the NKR Defense Army military maneuvers, which were conducted in the central part of the country. Subsequently, the President rated the process and results of these military exercises as satisfactory, Central Information Department of the Office of the NKR President informed Armenian News-NEWS.am. In his remarks, Sahakyan stressed that the Defense Army is the greatest achievement of Artsakhs independent statehood, the pivotal guarantee of its independence, sovereignty and its peoples security, and one of the most influential factors for maintaining regional peace and stability. All of us, the whole Armenian people, are proud of our brave soldiers, who, thanks to their everyday humble and courageous demeanor, fulfill the Motherland defenders sacred mission with dignity, and are always ready to stop any encroachment by the enemy, noted the NKR President. As per Bako Sahakyan, the highest command staff of the Defense Army and all the command units will draw the necessary conclusions, and carry out appropriate work toward a consistent increase in the combat-readiness of the army. In addition, President Sahakyan handed valuable gifts to a group of servicemen who achieved high results during these maneuvers. YEREVAN. - President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on Tuesday received renowned French scientist and winner of 2016 Award of the President of the Republic of Armenia in the Sphere of Information Technologies, Louis Pouzin, who is also the CEO of Open Root. The President welcomed the scientist and his wife Chantal Lebrument, stressing that the Armenian Presidents Award is the condensed gratitude and admiration of the Armenian nation for the people, who contribute to the progress of the world and thanks to whose talent the West prevailed technologically over the East only in 500 years. This award has also got another objective: to draw the attention of our youth to the people and their deeds, which are successful, so that all this serves as a guideline for them. We want to prove them that through knowledge it is possible to become renowned, have a prosperous life and enjoy respect, the President noted. Louis Pouzin, for his part, noted that in his whole life he always enjoyed working and communicating with people, who are decisive in their steps. I am sure that there are various people in Armenia, with whom it is possible to work and implement programs. My aim is to constantly keep in touch with them and perhaps develop new programs and carry out work through these ties, he said. After the meeting, a ceremony of special envelope cancellation dedicated to the winners of the Award of Armenian President in the Sphere of Information Technologies took place in the presidential palace. The thematic envelope, which is a unique philatelic product, has two stamps on it issued in 2013 and entitled Award of the President of the Republic of Armenia for global contribution in the area of informational technologies The special envelope, 500 items of which were published, was cancelled with a special seal. The envelope depicts the winner of 2016 Award of the Armenian President Louis Pouzin, as well as the former six laureates. On occasion of handing the award, the presidents palace will host a reception in honor of Louis Pouzin and Chantal Lebrument. By PTI: Pandey panel Bhopal, Nov 7 (PTI) The Madhya Pradesh government today issued a notification appointing retired High Court judge S K Pandey to probe the daring jail break by eight SIMI activists and their alleged encounter killings. The alleged encounter is mired in controversy as doubts are being raised about its genuineness by opposition Congress and other parties amid surfacing of a video clip and audio tapes that reportedly raised a question over the police version of the incident. advertisement "The single-member commission has been mandated to complete the probe within three months and submit its report to the state government," the notification stated. The Pandey panel has been directed to probe the "circumstances in which the SIMI members escaped from the prison and the officials responsible for it". "How and under what circumstances the encounter took place at Manikheda village under Gunga Police Station limits on the outskirts of Bhopal in which all eight prisoners were killed...Whether the action taken by the police is justified under prevailing circumstances," the notification asked. It also asked the commission to recommend steps to be taken to prevent recurrence of such incidents (escaping of prisoners) and any other suggestions it deemed appropriate. The eight SIMI under-trials had pulled off an audacious escape from the high-security Central Jail on the intervening night of October 30-31 after killing a guard, before they were gunned down in an alleged encounter by police on the outskirts of city on October 31 morning. Before ordering the probe by the Pandey panel, the government had announced a probe by an SIT comprising CID officers into the encounter and a separate investigation by former Director General of Police Nandan Dubey into the jailbreak but Congress and other opposition parties had been pressing for a judicial probe. PTI MAS LAL NSK GVS --- ENDS --- Ankara has come down on the EU, accusing it of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party . The hysterics of the Turkish MFA was sparked by the statement of the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini in connection with the arrest of the opposition deputies and journalists. Ankara hurried to state that the EU has lost a fighter for terrorism, since it supports PKK. We consider unacceptable the statement which was made by the head of the European diplomacy on behalf of the EU. The EU, from which we didnt receive expected support after the coup attempt, and which demonstrates biased attitude, persists in its incomprehension regarding Turkeys concern about the struggle against terrorism. The EU will not relieve itself from its responsibilities, merely condemning the terrorist acts in our country. The EU has lost the image of a fighter against terrorism, since it cannot urge PKK to lay down arms, thus allowing terrorists to freely move in European countries, carry out anti-Turkish propaganda and open exhibitions in the EU Parliament building, the statement of the Turkish MFA reads. Such statements have no value for Turkey, the document reads, RIA Novosti reports. Earlier, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, stated that the EU is seriously concerned about the recent events in Turkey, including discussions on reinstating the death penalty and arrests of opposition deputies, and calls for protection of democratic norms and human rights in the country. By PTI: Sirisena Greater Noida, Nov 7 (PTI) Sri Lanka is mooting introduction of plain packaging of tobacco products that prohibits use of logos, colours and brand images, its President Maithripala Sirisena said here today and stressed on the need to think "seriously" about the growing menace of smokeless tobacco in the region. Delivering a special address at the inaugural session of the7th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP7) to World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), he said his country has beenaddressing the tobacco issue in numerous other ways, including by adopting strict laws. advertisement He said he was grateful to his "good friend" Prime Minister Narendra Modi for showing commitment on the subject of tobacco control by hosting the conference. "My minister of health is proposing to introduce plain packaging which is another important measure in the near future. We thank FCTC for the excellent technical support," he said in his address. He said that in line with FCTC, Sri Lanka has set up a National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol. The Sri Lankan President, who arrived in India yesterday, said that his country has accepted various recommendations from FCTC and is one of the first countries in South East Asian region to sign and ratify it. "Since I assumed the Presidents office, tobacco and alcohol control has been on top of my national agenda. I have set up a presidential task force to monitor situation related to drugs and narcotics," he said. "I should be grateful to my good friend Narendra Modi for their commitment to the subject of this conference," he said. He said that Sri Lanka has immensely benefited from the information that WHO FCTC has generated over these years in framing its policies and regulations for tobacco control. "We are also addressing the tobacco issue in numerous other ways, by having adopted strict laws including banning smoking in public spaces, prohibiting advertisement of tobacco," he said. The president said his country recently reviewed tobacco taxation and increased it by 10 per cent and that his governments adoption of strict anti-tobacco laws have shown encouraging results in curbing the tobacco usage in the young and adult population. He also highlighted the growing menace of smokeless tobacco in Sri Lanka and the neighbouring region. "I would urge the FCTC to address the issue of smokeless tobacco very seriously in the years to come as the cost of neglect can be very high," he said. PTI TDS RG --- ENDS --- Nine States Deciding on Marijuana Measures Today The drug testing industry and employers in the states are watching closely. Voters in five states are considering whether to legalize recreational marijuana, and those in four other states are weighing medical marijuana legalization. Though they are overshadowed by the presidential contest mainly pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton, Nov. 8 ballot measures in nine states are attempts to continue the recent trend of broadly legalizing the use of marijuana. The drug testing industry and employers in those states are watching closely, however, as voters in five states consider legalizing recreational marijuana and those in four other states are weighing medical marijuana legalization. The vote with the highest profile is in California, with Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), proposing to legalize the possession of 1 ounce of marijuana flower or up to 8 grams of cannabis concentrates for those 21 and older, growing up to 6 plants, and creating a regulated recreational marijuana industry. Polls indicate this proposition will pass. The other states with legalization of recreational marijuana on the ballot are Arizona, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts. Nevada voters passed medical marijuana in 2000; its initiative would legalize possession of 1 ounce of marijuana by those 21 and older and create a regulated recreational cannabis industry with tax revenue supporting K-12 education. Maine's would legalize possession of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana, while Arizona's Legalization and Regulation of Marijuana Act (Proposition 205) would legalize possession of up to 1 ounce of marijuana and would set up a new agency, the Department of Marijuana Licenses and Control, to oversee the industry. In Massachusetts, Question 4 is an initiative to regulate and tax marijuana for recreational use for adults 21 years and up, and polls suggest this one also will pass on Nov. 8. It would legalize possession up to 1 ounce of marijuana outside an individuals residence, possession of up to 10 ounces of marijuana in an enclosed, locked space within the residence, and growing up to 6 marijuana plants in an enclosed, locked space within a residence and possession of the marijuana produced by those plants in the location where it was grown. This measure would create a new Cannabis Control Commission to oversee regulation of marijuana in the state. Experian is recognized as a leading security solution provider Providing the best fraud solutions is always the end goal Costa Mesa, Calif., Nov. 7, 2016 Experian has been named to Banking CIO Outlooks Top 10 Security Solution Providers, highlighted in the October 2016 issue of the magazine. Fraud patterns are evolving faster than ever, and each new change pushes us to be better. Thats why we developed CrossCore, the industrys first open platform designed to catch fraud faster, improve compliance and enhance the customer experience, said Steve Platt, global executive vice president, Fraud and Identity, Experian. Our goal is to provide the very best fraud solutions to our clients, so its a tremendous honor for Experian and CrossCore to be recognized. Experians CrossCoreTM gives companies an easy way to connect new and existing fraud and identity systems into one central service. This plug-and-play capability allows companies to blend disparate services through a common access point that then enables a layered approach to managing risks. CrossCore includes powerful workflow and strategy design capabilities that allow fraud and compliance teams to rapidly create and adapt strategies based on evolving threats and business needs. We are proud to feature Experian in our magazine as one of the Top 10 Security Solution Providers of 2016, said James Robertson, managing editor of Banking CIO Outlook. Experian Fraud and Identity makes its clients feel safe, valued and confident by protecting them every step of the way. Banking CIO Outlook provides banking professionals with the latest industry trends and news. Each month the magazine identifies experts to help readers address the challenges faced by the banking industry. The October issue highlighted Experian as a top security solution provider, presenting Experians unique value proposition in fraud. Learn more about CrossCore at http://www.experian.com/crosscore. About Banking CIO Outlook Published from Fremont, Calif., Banking CIO Outlook is a print magazine that features CIOs, ITVPs, CTOs and other decision-makers opinions and suggestions that help clients to address the issues in the banking industry. A panel of experts and professionals including board members of Banking CIO Outlook magazine finalized the list of Top 10 Security Solution Providers 2016 and short-listed the best consultants and vendors. For more info, visit http://www.bankingciooutlook.com/. About Experian We are the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to our clients around the world. We help businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. We also help people to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft. In 2016, we were named one of the Worlds Most Innovative Companies by Forbes magazine. Singapore expects only 12.11m international overnight visitors this year. Second place is all Singapore got despite its hard work on luring tourists in with a projection of 12.11 million international overnight visitors in 2016, according to a survey by Mastercard. This is a mere half of what's predicted for top-ranking Bangkok as 21.47 million overnight visitors are forecasted to visit the Thai city. Kuala Lumpur does not fall far from Singapore with an expected 12.02 million number of visitors, followed by Tokyo, 11.7 million, and Seoul, 10.2 million. Hong Kong, surprisingly, is at the bottom half of the list as only 8.37 million visitors are projected to visit the city this year. If the survey is to go by, Singapore will have to hugely thank visitors from Jakarta as they are the biggest spenders with a whopping US$1.8m spend. Visitors from Hong Kong, Manila, Tokyo, and Shanghai come next in the list. Rachel Loh, deputy director, Strategic Planning and Incentive Policy, Singapore Tourism Board comments that despite the survey outcome, Singapore is still an attractive destination. From January to July 2016, our international visitor arrivals grew by 11.5% over the same period in 2015 and barring unforeseen circumstances, we are optimistic of achieving our 2016 forecast growth of 0 3%, she says. She adds that Singapore offers a unique value proposition that is not easily replicated elsewhere. While there is increasing competition, the positive growth in Asia Pacific outbound travel and inbound arrivals to Asia will benefit countries in this region and should continue to do so for the rest of 2016. More From Singapore Business Review China's exports slid 7.3 percent year-on-year to $178.2 billion in October, data showed Tuesday, as weak global demand weighed on the world's second-largest economy. The country's imports fell 1.4 percent to $129.1 billion during the same period, Customs data showed, while the trade surplus dropped to $49.1 billion in the month. It was the seventh straight monthly exports decline, and both imports and exports came in below expectations, with a survey of economists by Bloomberg News forecasting drops of 6.0 percent and 1.0 percent respectively. China is the world's biggest trader in goods and its performance affects partners from Australia to Zambia, which have been battered as its expansion has slowed to levels not seen in a quarter of a century. Customs earlier gave the figure in yuan terms, showing a 3.2 percent drop in exports and a 3.2 percent increase in imports on-year. Analyst Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics called the results "disappointing" and said the outlook appeared challenging with "global and domestic growth unlikely to accelerate much further". CEO Avianto Tiyo speaks about the challenges of running a hardware startup in Indonesia and what the company plans to do to secure the market Running a hardware startup in Indonesia possesses its own challenges, which might explain why many startups in the country tend to focus more on app development. Running a hardware startup requires businesses to double up its capital, Avianto Tiyo, CEO of Eyro Digital Teknologi, told e27 in an interview one morning. The problem is that there is no venture capital firm in Indonesia that is approaching a massive number of hardware startups. Like Cubeacon for example, we have a small team, not because we dont want to hire people, but when we are in production, we transform 40 per cent of our cash into goods, and we havent even talked about those who go into market traction and other things, he further explained. Also Read: Breaking through the fourth wall: How IoT will soon let your TV see and recognise your face Eyro Digital Teknologi is the industrial hardware IoT company behind Cubeacon, a range of iBeacon devices. The companys service also includes Back-end-as-a-Service (BaaS), which allows developers to build a system for retail clients to build a scenario, tracking point, geofencing, and control every Beacon they own. Cubeacon has three products: a transmitter-based cube and card, and an upcoming Reader which will be sold internally via email to existing customers. The first two Cubeacon products are available exclusively through Lazada. Perhaps you have heard of RFID and NFC, which has been used by TransJakarta bus stations; the difference between Cubeacon and RFID/NFC is that the tech can be used massively. One reader can be used to read many devices in one go. RFID may be able to do what Cubeacon does, but it requires many environmental support mechanisms, such as big antennae (40 to 60 cm). The environment aspect becomes more expensive. Besides, Cubeacon has longer proximity, while RFID has to be in touch with the reader, Tiyo added, further describing Cubeacons strength. Story continues Also Read: Huawei launches IoT startup accelerator in Singapore Utilising Bluetooth technology, smartphones can also be used as a Cubeacon reader. Lean as a cube Cubeacon is based in Indonesias second biggest metropolitan, Surabaya, although the startup also has a pre-R&D team in Tokyo. Most of its products are being produced in its Shenzhen factory, though starting from its third product, the startup began manufacturing in Surabaya itself. The worst thing [about manufacturing your own hardware] is that it is exhausting, Tiyo shared. Mass production requires manpower and machinery. You may be able to compile software anywhere you choose, but you cant just compile hardware anywhere, he added. Also Read: Indonesia to have a new online marketplace for IoT products and solutions Despite having no specific reason to choose Surabaya (other than the fact that Tiyo lived in the city), the startup is looking at the possibility to expand its team to Jakarta. We end up looking for talent in this city, and its really hard to persuade them to move to Jakarta. But in the future we are going to enter Jakarta, even if it is just our support and business development teams. We initially planned that for 2016, but I think we have lost it. So well keep it for later, Tiyo said. As he had explained early on, Cubeacon is currently run by a small team of eight people, including its team in Tokyo. Tiyo admitted that the startup had laid off its employees in the past in order to push for better performance. Also Read: Internet of Taiwan: Microsoft launches IoT Innovation Center in Taipei I used to work at the R&D division at Panasonic. The team was not very big in R&D, but they tend to be bigger in operations I think this is something that works well for startups, Tiyo said. When asked about why he chose to quit working in the Japanese multinational electronics company and entered the startup scene, he held nothing back by answering, This company is not going to last for long; soon it will collapse. So I tried to build my own startups, although its not exactly a startup as I am running it with a rather traditional mindset. Instead of becoming a big company in a short time, we try to rely on ourselves Then I began to meet friends at the industry and one planned to transform his holdings company into many industries, one of them being a tech company. And I joined the company, he recalled. Also Read: Indian IoT startup Witworks raises seed round, launches smartwatch Apart from its plan to expand the team to Jakarta in the the future, Cubeacon is hopeful about its next fundraising stage. We have been quiet from the media about our fundraisings, Tiyo says. But at the end of the month, if we pass the auditing process, hopefully we will enter the second round of our funding. The startup also plans to build a more integrated solution for the market. We have a better understanding of what the market wants, be it customer or enterprise. But we will focus on our friends in system integrator or developer community, though we will bridge them towards the end users, because Cubeacon has started to be known among enterprises. We always say that we dont have the advantage to work in the field; our strength lies in building a product But this is a more flexible approach for Indonesia. If we decide to go all the way as an end-to-end solution, we will end up exhausting ourselves, he concluded. - The post Out of square one: How Cubeacon plans to win over the Indonesian IoT scene appeared first on e27. Ambidextrousness is such an essential part of what is necessary to become a pro skateboarder these days that, half the time, it can be hard to tell what stance somebody actually has. The slow disappearance of switch mongo has made this even harder to judge, and with the likes of Carlos Ribeiro and TJ Rogers pushing the boundaries of what can be done in switchstance then it can feel like it is something which has always been a part of skateboarding. However, the rise of switch skateboarding and its potential was not truly realised until the advent of the double kick board, so its roots can be traced back to the early 90s. This article aims to shine a light on some of the innovators of going backwards from obvious legends like Salman Agah and Bob Burnquist, to the likes of Paul Silvester and Rob Selley who were busy pushing the boundaries over on these shores, to perhaps some less obvious choices. Enjoy Cover image: Paul Silvester switch frontside wallrides to put truck to concrete, captured by CJ. Andy Howell. New Deal 1281 (1991) Andy Howell kicks things off in New Deals 1281, with an early piece in the switch skating puzzle. Recognise the roots! The Young Egg Archive continues its interview series, this time with Chris Pfanner talking about growing up in Lagos, moving to Austria, Yama Skateshop, Antihero trips and more. Press play for an insight into the 1-8 ripper, who seems way more mellow than his skateboarding would have you believe As part of the release of their second issue, Bristol-based Young Egg Archive interviewed Sidewalk family member and general uber-human Leo Sharp on growing up... Newsletter Terms & Conditions Please enter your email so we can keep you updated with news, features and the latest offers. If you are not interested you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never sell your data and you'll only get messages from us and our partners whose products and services we think you'll enjoy. Read our full Privacy Policy as well as Terms & Conditions. LinkedIn is a great platform for connecting professionally, finding work and sharing content. But have you ever thought of using LinkedIn for lead generation? We asked 13 members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to explain their best tips and tricks for taking full advantage of the career based site: What is one creative way to use LinkedIn for lead generation? Heres what YEC community members had to say: 1. Introduce Yourself If you feel comfortable enough with the relationship to make a connection with someone on LinkedIn, feel free to go through his contacts. Copy and paste a short list of names youd like to be introduced to, and message him asking if he would be willing to make a quick introduction for you to each of them. Include a blurb the person can use to do so. Its a quick way to get warm intros. ~ Darrah Brustein, Finance Whiz Kids | Equitable Payments 2. Participate in Discussions There are targeted discussion groups on LinkedIn for almost every niche imaginable. These are typically full of people looking for support and answers. Give your expert knowledge freely, and start relationships in these groups youll quickly become a go-to source and will generate new leads for your business. ~ Patrick Conley, Automation Heroes 3. Search for Connections A Boolean search on Google is an amazing way to source leads based on keywords in LinkedIn. In the Google search bar, simply type in your string, which could be something like: site: www.linkedin.com AND (keyword 1 OR keyword 2) AND (Seattle OR Tacoma). Hit search, and all the people on LinkedIn that match those conditions will show up. ~ Ronnie Castro, Porch 4. Find Common Interests Theres a very cool function within the group settings so that you can send free messages to any member of that group, regardless if youre connected with them. You can join up to 50 groups, so maximize that limit with groups of people or prospects you want to connect with. Make sure that you provide a mutual benefit for both parties when you message potential connections. ~ Andrew Vest, Preferling 5. Use Flattery One tactic I used a lot, especially when reaching out to other startups, was to compliment their business. I would say that I thought there were interesting ways for us to work together. It sounds stupidly simple, but its extremely effective. Ive closed hundreds of deals reaching out cold via LinkedIn with this technique or slight variations. ~ Carlo Cisco, FoodFan 6. Collect Leads LinkedIn Ads actually has an optional feature called Lead Collection. This feature allows advertisers to collect leads directly through their LinkedIn ad campaigns. Members who click on your ad are taken to your landing page with a button to request you to contact them. Its incredibly easy for the user, and its easy for you to build up a nice lead gen list. ~ Brett Farmiloe, Internet Marketing Company 7. Research Profile Views LinkedIn has a feature that shows you people who visited your profile. Id contact those people, if theyre a connection, by sending a message that says, Hi, is there anything I can help you with? If theyre not a connection, then do a bit more research on them, and send a note saying, Hi, I noticed you recently visited my profile. Someone who spent time on your profile is likely a lead worth reaching out to. ~ Devesh Dwivedi, Idea2Inception 8. Search with Advanced Filters One of the best features of having a LinkedIn premium account is being able to use advanced filters in search. Not only can you search by company and relationship, but premium advanced search on LinkedIn allows you to search by function, seniority level and company size, too. ~ Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc. 9. Ask Questions Ask questions to the people youre connected to. Most people connect with great professionals but dont keep in touch with them. Use your status updates to engage the people that are connected to you so you can stay top of mind. Post about industry trends, motivational quotes and general business questions. Youll be surprised by how many people start talking. ~ Joe Apfelbaum, Ajax Union 10. Stay Active I think LinkedIn Today is a great tool to find newsworthy content to share with your target market. Staying active on LinkedIn with at least a weekly post will keep you top of mind with your network. That passive awareness becomes important when you reach out for an introduction or when someone in your network has a need for your specialty. ~ Lauren Perkins, Perks Consulting 11. Connect with Twitter Chances are you are pretty active on Twitter. If you are, you can amplify the reach of your updates simply by connecting Twitter to LinkedIn. Now every Twitter update will be reposted to your LinkedIn followers. ~ Pablo Villalba, 8fit 12. Publish Articles We promote our guest contributions on LinkedIn and engage with prospective clients by asking for feedback on the content. If you utilize LinkedIn to educate leads, youll provide more value and ultimately form stronger relationships. ~ Kelsey Meyer, Influence & Co. 13. Be Aggressive Im constantly checking who has viewed my profile on LinkedIn; its one part vanity, another part strategy. I sell to a very niche audience and if I see a target customer sniffing around my profile, I reach out to them to learn what they need. Sometimes its just to pick my brain but more often than not, they are looking to hire and because I caught them at the right moment, they hire me. ~ Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media U.S. Rep. Sam Graves wants to raise the federal governments goal for the amount of government contracts that must be awarded to small businesses. Graves, who heads up the House Small Business Committee, introduced the Greater Opportunities for Small Business Act of 2014. The bill calls for the federal government to award 25 percent of its prime contract work to small businesses. Thats 2 percent more than the federal governments current goal of setting aside 23 percent of government contracts for small businesses. New data shows the federal government is finally meeting its quote of awarding 23 percent of its contracts to small businesses, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. If true, its the first time the federal government has hit its goal since 2005. Last year, we reported that the federal government fell short of its 2012 goal by about $3 billion. But data available through the Small Business Administration shows that the federal government awarded $83.2 billion to small businesses for the year ending in September 2013, about 23 percent according to Bloomberg. The additional two percent proposed by Graves may sound small, but the numbers are large. It could mean up to $10 billion more in federal contracts for small businesses nationwide, according to a statement from the Congressman. Graves also wants to award more subcontracted federal government work to small businesses. Right now that quota is at 35.9 percent. The new bill would raise that goal to 40 percent. In addition to the call for higher award goals, Graves also introduced legislation that aims to hold the federal government more accountable in the way it reports the money awarded to small businesses, the Contracting Data & Bundling Accountability Act of 2014. In a statement, Graves (R- Missouri) said: These two pieces of legislation will go a long way towards increasing opportunities for small companies who want to grow and create jobs by doing business with the federal government. By increasing the federal-wide goal for contracts to small businesses, and requiring greater accuracy, transparency and accountability in contract bundling and consolidation, we make it easier for small businesses to enter this marketplace and compete for contracts. The federal government spends nearly half a trillion dollars on contracted goods and services, therefore, we must ensure that the money is being spent efficiently, and small businesses have proven that they can do quality work cheaper and often faster. Small Business Administration administrator nominee Maria Contreras-Sweet was asked about government contracts to small businesses during her recent confirmation hearing. Contreras-Sweet pledged to work toward getting government agencies closer to their quotas. She said the SBA must do more to help smaller companies bid for this work. Sweet also said that the federal government must work to debundle larger contracts that often go to larger companies. Passengers on-board a plane at the Philadelphia airport were told to leave the aircraft after Galaxy Note 7, the name of the infamous exploding Samsung device, appeared on a list of WiFi networks. The captain forced the passengers to exit and to be searched again as a precautionary measure. Galaxy Note 7 Prompts Commercial Flight Delay The mobile phone was permitted on planes for more than a month after the first reports of Samsungs exploding smartphones. The FAA originally mandated that the electronics be turned off and not charging when on-board. The Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally banned the device from all airplanes Oct. 15. A representative for American Airlines confirmed that Galaxy Note 7 showed up on the available networks, according to CBS3. WiFi networks can be manually changed to any title, so it is not clear if a potentially dangerous device was actually aboard. Samsung stopped production of the Galaxy Note 7 earlier in October. The flight to Miami was ultimately delayed around three hours. Republished by permission. Original here. The Sri Lankan Navy arrested men who dressed like fishermen and were trying to smuggle 50 kg of gold to India. By Akshaya Nath: The relationship between India and Sri Lanka has been in slippery grounds for a long period now, and the Indo-Sri Lanka fishermen issues have been something that have been widely debated about. Within hours after the conversation between the representatives of both the countries and their fishermen representative, to reach an amicable understanding, it was seen that the Indian ocean once again witnessed a smuggling attempt. advertisement The Sri Lankan Navy has arrested two men who dressed like fishermen and were trying to smuggle 50 kg of gold to India. Also read: Over 2,800 fishermen arrested by Sri Lanka since 2012 Their arrest led to more information on smuggling of narcotics. With the basic information that was retrieved, the officials seized 118 kg of Kerala ganja, which is worth Rs 1 million and heroin worth Rs 2 crore. A total of five men were arrested and are now remanded to the Mannar Jail, Sri Lanka. Also read: Five Indian fishermen released from Sri Lankan custody Previously, three Indians were arrested and are under custody in Jaffna for smuggling narcotics to Sri Lanka. In the last three months, several arrests have been made and large quantity of narcotics have also been seized by Sri Lankan government. --- ENDS --- "A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution. A hard Brexit could jeopardise the City of London (LSE: CIN.L - news) 's financial services 'cluster', raising funding costs for companies across the European Union, some of the continent's biggest corporate names have warned. Sky News has obtained a report produced by EY, the professional services firm, which reveals that companies such as Airbus and Volkswagen (LSE: 0P6N.L - news) are concerned that the potential fragmentation of UK-based finance could significantly increase their cost of funding. The work was initially commissioned by the City of London Corporation but evolved into an independent project by EY's European operations. Sent to policy-makers across the EU on Tuesday, it is thought to be the first substantive piece of research examining the anxieties of some of the EU's biggest companies about the possible ramifications of a hard Brexit. Such a scenario could force the UK to surrender ambitions to retain any form of financial services passporting , leading it to seek inferior access to the EU single market. :: London's future as financial centre in question The EY study, marked 'confidential', has the title 'The value of the City of London cluster and the potential impacts of Brexit', and includes detailed responses from 15 big companies, among them Telefonica (LSE: 826858.L - news) , the owner of O2, and the Italian confectioner Ferrero. Sources described it as an initial study that would be followed by wider research covering a larger number of EU-based companies. While limited in its scope, the document reveals that most of the companies surveyed "have concerns that a hard Brexit may break a model that is perceived to be working well and adding tangible benefits, especially for capital-raising, borrowing and risk management". In a speech on Tuesday night, Paul Manduca, chairman of the advisory board of TheCityUK, a lobbying group, was due to warn of the risks of an extreme version of Brexit. While views in the City about the impact of leaving the EU are mixed, a number of large employers - including some of the Wall Street banks which helped to fund the Remain campaign before June's referendum - have warned that some jobs will leave the UK. Story continues Last month, TheCityUK published a report by Oliver Wyman, the consulting firm, which concluded that tens of thousands of City-based jobs could be at risk , along with billions of pounds in tax revenue. The EY study flags the benefits of the City as a cluster for the concentration of talent, globally recognised legal and regulatory frameworks and easy access to a wide range of connected services in a single location. It also highlights warnings from unnamed academics that recreating the City's comprehensive hub for financial services in another location could take more than 20 years. EU corporates believe a more fragmented model for access to financial services is likely to be the outcome of a hard Brexit, with delivery spread more broadly across cities such as Dublin, Frnakfurt, Luxembourg and Paris, the EY study says. Neither EY nor the City of London Corporation would comment. By Krisztina Than BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary's parliament on Tuesday narrowly voted down a plan by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to reject EU quotas for accepting refugees, a setback for the maverick leader that could weaken him in a long-running fight with Brussels. In a rare parliamentary defeat for Orban, his proposed constitutional amendment to ban the resettlement of migrants in Hungary won only 131 votes in the 199-seat parliament, just short of the necessary two-thirds majority of 133. Orban's determination to keep out migrants and refugees, including by building razor-wire border fences, has angered his fellow European Union leaders and complicated their task as the EU struggles to cope with an influx of 1.4 million people since the start of 2015, many fleeing conflicts like the war in Syria. The far-right Jobbik party sealed the bill's rejection by boycotting the vote. But it held out a lifeline to Orban by saying it would throw its support behind the ban if he scrapped a separate scheme allowing foreigners to buy residency rights. Backing down to Jobbik would be politically difficult for the prime minister. Orban's right-wing Fidesz party said its leadership would meet to discuss its next move. "As for Jobbik's ideas, we maintain what we said before: there is no room for political blackmail in case of a national issue," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said in an email to Reuters. "We will be able to talk about further steps in light of the decisions made by Fidesz's presidency." "TEMPORARY FIASCO" Orban had said the amendment was needed to honour an October referendum in which more than 3 million Hungarians, an overwhelming majority of those who voted, rejected EU quotas stipulating how many migrants member states must accept. He said that even though the referendum was not legally binding because of low turnout, it gave him a strong political mandate to stop Brussels imposing the measure. Robert Laszlo, a political analyst at thinktank Political Capital, said the setback would weaken Orban in dealings with the EU, even if it was unlikely to dent him at home, where his party enjoys a strong lead in opinion polls. "This vote today is a temporary fiasco (for Orban), similarly to the referendum which was invalid," he said. "In Brussels, he will not be able to sell this as a success, there his positions will weaken." Following the vote, Jobbik reiterated its demand that the government scrap a residency bond scheme under which foreigners can buy the right to live in Hungary for at least five years on payment of up to 300,000 euros ($331,000). "THOSE ARE THE TRAITORS" Almost 10,000 Chinese have taken advantage of the scheme to move to Hungary, as well as affluent investors from Russia and the Middle East. But Jobbik contends that some of the new arrivals pose a security threat. During the vote, Jobbik lawmakers held up a large banner saying: "Those are the traitors who let in terrorists in exchange for money." Jobbik leader Gabor Vona told reporters: "The moment that Fidesz, the government, scraps the bond programme, Jobbik is ready to back the amendment of the constitution within 24 hours." Jobbik is Fidesz's strongest opposition. The latest poll by research centre Tarki showed its support at 10 percent in October, down from 14 percent in July. Fidesz widened its support to 32 percent from 30, with the opposition Socialists on 9 percent support. The next election is due in 2018. Orban, in power since 2010, has cast the migrant debate as a question of national sovereignty that boils down to "whether a foreign population can be imposed on the people of an EU member state against its will". He has linked migrants to terrorism, telling Hungarians before last month's referendum: "The more migrants there are, the greater the risk of terror." The bill that failed to pass on Tuesday was designed to stop future migrant quotas being imposed on Hungary. It is already fighting an EU relocation scheme established during the height of the crisis last year, which set quotas for each EU country to host a share of the migrants for two years. Along with Slovakia, Budapest has launched a court challenge against that plan. ($1 = 0.9055 euros) (Reporting by Krisztina Than and Sandor Peto; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) putin Rising tensions with Russia mean that up to 300,000 Nato troops will be put on high alert, said Natos secretary-general. The move is a response to Russian weapons tests and aggression against neighbours, said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of Nato. The troops will come from nations across Nato, including the UK. Mr Stoltenberg said, We have seen Russia being much more active in many different ways. We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up over many years tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours. We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among Nato allies and that is exactly the reason why Nato is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War. Britains outgoing Nato representative Sir Adam Thompson said the number of troops being put on alert was likely to be 300,000. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. An Arizona man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for methamphetamine trafficking in New Mexico. Prosecutors say 47-year-old James Thomas Vance of Phoenix also was sentenced Monday to five years of supervised release after he completes his prison term. Vance was arrested in September 2015 and charged by criminal complaint with possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. Homeland Security Investigations agents say they discovered more than 969 grams of methamphetamine in Vances vehicle during a traffic stop. Vance was subsequently indicted in October 2015 and pleaded guilty five months ago. He told authorities he was driving from Phoenix to New Mexicos Bernalillo County and planned to deliver the methamphetamine to other individuals. A 16-year-old girl was arrested by the Surat police after she killed her two-hour old baby by throwing her out of the window. By Gopi Maniar Ghanghar : In a shocking incident, a mother-daughter duo killed a two-hour old baby girl by throwing her from the window of a two-storied apartment. The incident took place near Palanpur Jakat Naka of Surat in Gujarat. The entire incident was caught on CCTV camera that was installed in the society premises. The incident came to light after the baby girl was found dead in the parking lot of the apartment. Police said that the infant died of severe injuries following the fall. The infant's death sent shockwaves across the neighbourhood. advertisement After discovering the dead infant, one of the residents informed the police who rushed to the spot. The residents were in for yet another shock after investigations revealed that the heinous crime was committed by one of their neighbours. The police were able to trace the mother-daughter duo after they examined the CCTV footage. BABY MURDERED TO ESCAPE HUMILIATION Police said that infant was flung out of the window by a mother and daughter who stayed in the second floor. According to the police, the daughter who is a minor give birth to a child after an illicit affair. In order to conceal the shame and escape humiliation, the minor and her mother flung the baby out of the window. The police said that the baby was delivered in the house. Within two hours of the delivery the mother and daughter threw the baby out of the window. Sources from the police said that the family is from Uttar Pradesh and that the minor girl was in a relationship with a man she met at a wedding in Uttar Pradesh. Both the minor girl and her mother has been arrested by the police. The police have also began investigations to track down the man who impregnated the minor girl. Also read: Tamil Nadu: 4-year-old killed by woman after child's father finds out about her affair Odisha shocker: Woman delivers in auto, baby falls on road, dies --- ENDS --- State leaders, voting experts and advocates say they are preparing for an unusual level of confusion and chaos Tuesday as voters cast their ballots in a historically bitter presidential race. Early voters in some states have faced hours-long lines the past several days. Democrats have filed a flurry of last-minute lawsuits alleging voter intimidation by Donald Trump supporters. And there have been some heated polling site confrontations between Trump voters and Hillary Clinton backers. Election monitors are especially worried this year about the specter of voter intimidation after calls by the Republican candidate for his supporters to stake out polling places and watch for fraud. Election officials in Pennsylvania and Arizona have become so concerned in recent days about potential intimidation that they issued advisories spelling out what types of threatening behavior are banned and the exact dimensions of buffer zones surrounding polling places. Individuals who conspire to interfere with a persons right to vote can face up to 10 years in prison, read a notice issued by Pennsylvanias secretary of state after Trump singled out Philadelphia as a place for his supporters to scrutinize. The concerns have led to extensive contingency plans and a heavy workload for state officials, lawyers and election experts, who are trying to monitor voting problems and troubleshoot them in real time. The number and tenor of calls weve received about problems, the amount of litigation you already see, it all reflects the moment were in, said Kristen Clarke, president of the nonpartisan Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. On Tuesday, Clarkes group will be running the nations largest independent effort to field voter complaints, questions and problems. The nonpartisan umbrella organization called Election Protection will have 4,500 legal volunteers answering calls to its 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, and 2,500 volunteers stationed at polling sites around the country. Clarkes group has set up a war room at its headquarters in Washington a cavernous space where hundreds of pro-bono lawyers are stationed at computers as they answer voters calls. But the intensity of this years election, Clarke said, has exhausted many of her lawyers and volunteers before Election Day has arrived. These attorneys have fought attempts to purge residents from voter rolls in New York, Georgia and North Carolina. Theyve investigated reports such as one last week during early voting in Cleveland that a security guard was turning away voters because a parking lot with available spaces was supposedly full. Among Clarkes biggest concerns for Tuesday are long lines. On Sunday, the line at the sole early voting station in Cincinnati stretched at least a quarter-mile, with estimates of those waiting in the thousands. Food trucks at one point handed out free tacos and cupcakes as encouragement. Early voters also faced long lines in California, Arizona and Nevada. In addition to those states, election experts say, extensive waits are a particular concern in Florida and Ohio, given the states election history. In 2012, some precincts in Miami were so clogged that some voters were still casting ballots at 1 a.m. as President Obama was making his victory speech. In the most hotly contested states, many lawyers have been deployed by both parties as well as independent voting rights groups. The lawyers will be stationed inside polling places to help resolve disputes. The Justice Department will send more than 500 workers to 28 states to monitor polls on Election Day. The deployment is significantly smaller by at least 280 from 2012- because of a Supreme Court decision that Justice officials think limits the federal governments role at polling places. With just five lawyers on its voting rights team, the ACLU had to draft its Election Day strategy more judiciously deciding to send them to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Miami and the last location most likely North Carolina. The state laws vary so much that you have to prepare for it. And the states where its close, thats where the temptation will be greatest for voter intimidation tactics, said Dale Ho, the ACLUs voting rights director. His lawyers are landing with restraining orders and injunctions pre-drafted and ready to be filed, he said. Its like those fire tools behind the glass: Break in case of emergency. It remains unclear how widespread the much feared threat of voter intimidation will be, or whether it will materialize. A group called Stop the Steal run by longtime Republican operative and outside Trump adviser Roger Stone has been recruiting vote protectors to stand outside polling stations. As of Monday, the group had signed up 3,191 people pledging to do so. This is our best chance to stop the Democrats from stealing the election from Donald Trump. Help us fight a rigged system, the group said on its website. Democrats have filed several lawsuits against the Republicans, and Stones group is accusing them of planning voter intimidation. In an email last week, Stone called the lawsuit bogus and said that Stop the Steal is conducting a neutral, scientifically based exit poll that would only involve interviews after people cast ballots. The cases have only added to this years unusually heavy flood of last-minute legal battles over issues such as voters being purged from rolls, registration deadlines and election access. During early voting in Florida, Trump supporters were videotaped using bullhorns to shout at Clinton supporters and voters outside a polling site in West Palm Beach. Video posted online showed a Trump supporter yelling, How many Syrian refugees, Muslim refugees, are you taking into your home? Voting advocates complained to authorities, who then ordered the individuals to move farther away from the polling site. Election officials in several states said the potential for clashes has caused them to step up coordination with police ahead of Tuesdays vote. And many state authorities are already on alert after federal officials warned of a vague possible threat of a pre-election attack by al-Qaeda as well as the possibility of Russian hackers trying to sow disinformation. Some worry that more mundane problems could wreak havoc. New voting restrictions including some laws requiring photo ID will be in place for the first time in more than a dozen states, sowing potential for confusion. And legal fights over the laws have complicated the matter further. In Texas for example, after a federal court ruled that the states voter ID law discriminated against minorities, fliers remained up at some polling places, warning voters that photo ID was required. With all there is to worry about on Tuesday, voting advocates have one more concern to add to the pile: That some voters will be discouraged enough to stay home. Im worried about the worrying, said Wendy Weiser, an election expert at the nonpartisan Brennan Center. Theres so much anxiety across the country. You have many people worrried for the first time about the integrity of our election system, which is actually pretty good. You have people talking about needing to watch other people as they watch voters. Its crazy. Mark Berman contributed to this report. voting LAS CRUCES, N.M. Authorities have identified an elderly couple who were found shot to death inside their southern New Mexico home in what appears to be a murder-suicide. Dona Ana County Sheriffs officials say the bodies of 77-year-old Everts Moulton and 78-year-old Suzanne New were discovered at their home near Mesilla on Monday. The couple reportedly lived together for about 30 years, but never married. Sheriffs officials say News daughter was talking to her mother by phone Sunday and said Moulton talked of harming himself. News daughter drove from California to Las Cruces to check on her mother and called 911 after finding the bodies. Sheriffs officials say it appears Moulton fatally shot New and their dog before shooting himself. The couples bodies have been sent to the medical examiners office for autopsies. Heres a wrinkle in the electoral math on Tuesday: What if we told you that 270 electoral college votes wouldnt be enough to elect Hillary Clinton president? That appears to be the situation, after in recent days one Democratic elector in Washington state said he wont vote for Clinton and another in the same state said he wont commit to doing so meaning that if Clinton, the Democratic nominee, wins Washington state, she may have to win at least 272 electoral votes nationwide. The Seattle Times has the details: No, no, no on Hillary. Absolutely not. No way, said Robert Satiacum, a member of Washingtons Puyallup Tribe who had supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee. He had earlier told various media outlets he was wrestling with whether his conscience would allow him to support Clinton and was considering stepping aside for an alternate elector. But on Friday, he sounded firm, even if the election is close. I hope it comes down to a swing vote and its me, he said. Good. She aint getting it. Maybe itll wake this country up. Bret Chiafalo, a Democratic elector from Everett who is also a Sanders supporter, said he is considering exercising his right to be a conscientious elector and vote for the person he believes would be the best president. I have no specific plans, but I have not ruled out that possibility, he said. This actually isnt even the first time this has come up this election cycle. In August, a Georgia Republican elector also announced that he might not vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump, citing his status as an immigrant and Trumps immigration policies. He later resigned. And later that month, a Texas GOP elector threatened to do the same but quickly walked it back. All of these probably would have come into play and deprive Trump and Clinton of electoral votes, given Trump is favored to win Georgia and Texas, and Clinton is almost sure to win Washington state on Election Day. But how can this happen? And is there any recourse? Back when the potential faithless elector in Georgia cropped up, we put together a little explainer. Below, weve updated it. First, it bears noting that these comments are striking because the electors are talking about withholding votes before the general election is even concluded apparently trying to send a message. This is certainly a sign of the times and the unhappiness with the two major-party nominees. But even faithless electors writ large are exceedingly rare. According to the voting reform group FairVote, there have been 157 faithless electors in American history. About 45 percent of those electoral votes were changed because the candidate died before the Electoral College voters were tallied. Among the rest, three electors chose to abstain, while 82 voted for a candidate other than the one they were required to support. Thats fewer than two true faithless electors per election, given that weve had 57 presidential elections. The last time we had a faithless elector in a presidential campaign was more than a decade ago in 2004 and it might have been a mistake. In that case, an anonymous Minnesota elector voted for John F. Kerrys running mate, then-Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., rather than Kerry. It was widely thought to be an error rather than a protest vote. Before that, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons in 2000 abstained from voting for Al Gore, citing the Districts lack of voting representation in Congress. In 1988, a West Virginia Democratic elector did what the Minnesota elector did and cast a ballot for vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen rather than Michael Dukakis for president. In 1976, an impatient Washington state Republican voted for Gerald R. Fords primary opponent, Ronald Reagan, instead of Ford. Richard Nixon lost one elector each in the presidential elections of 1960, 1968 and 1972; all of them went not for the Democratic nominees but for other options. The Georgia and Texas electors did have the right in their states, at least not to vote for the person who wins their states electoral votes. But Satiacum and Chiafolo both face a $1,000 fine in Washington if they dont vote for Clinton. This is telling; some states have no legal requirement preventing faithless electors, while others do but the penalties are usually small, including fines, and generally arent enforced. Although the Constitution does spell out the details of the Electoral College, it does not weigh in on how electors are supposed to vote. According to the National Archives, the Supreme Court has said that political parties may require electors to take pledges to vote for a particular candidate, but it has not weighed in on whether penalties for breaking that pledge are constitutional. Georgia and Texas are two of 21 states without faithless elector laws. The other 29 and the District do have such laws, but no faithless electors have ever been prosecuted, according to the Archives. A big reason nobody has been prosecuted is because faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a presidential election. Which brings us to . . . In a word, yes. But its unlikely. Given that we are just talking about a loss of one or two electoral votes out of 538 for both Trump and Clinton, their margins of victory would have to be very narrow. And assembling a realistic combination of states that gets either of them to 270 or 271 electoral votes the number where one or two faithless electors who prevent them from actually hitting 270 is very tough. Over at the Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, Edward B. Foley assembled a couple instances in which Clinton would win with 270 electoral votes. But one of them involves Trump winning Florida and blue-leaning Colorado and Wisconsin but losing red-leaning Arizona, while the other has him losing Florida while winning blue-leaning Pennsylvania and Virginia. And even if there were more faithless electors, the number of realistic scenarios under which they would actually matter are few. In addition, falling below that 270-electoral-vote threshold probably wouldnt hand the election to their opponent; for reasons well discuss, it would almost definitely instead force the House to make the final call. But will it be just one or two faithless electors? There have been cases in which groups of faithless electors joined forces, although it has been more than a century since the last instance. In 1986 and 1912, groups of four and eight electors, respectively, voted for vice-presidential candidates other than the ones they were pledged for. In 1872, 63 Democratic electors declined to vote for Democratic nominee Horace Greeley, who died after Election Day. In fact, the only time that faithless electors could have changed the outcome of a presidential election was for vice president, and it was a long time ago. In 1836, 23 Democratic electors from Virginia declined to vote for Richard Mentor Johnson for vice president because of his relationship with a black woman, leaving him shy of a majority. But the Senate, which is tasked with resolving vice-presidential elections in which no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, made Johnson vice president anyway. Why it very, very likely wont happen It has been 180 years since a conspiracy to stop a presidential or vice-presidential candidate from taking their rightful victory in the electoral college has truly been hatched. But theres very good reason for that, and its the same reason Republicans didnt really try to stop Trump from taking the GOP nomination at their convention in July: It would be overturning the will of the voters. Theres also the fact that faithless electors almost never cross over and vote for the other candidate. Almost all of the faithless electors described above voted for either another member of their own party or for a third-party option not the other major partys presidential or vice-presidential nominee. The Texas elector was the only one of this years potential faithless electors who has talked about possibly crossing over, though again he quickly reversed course. So if a candidate whether Trump or Clinton lost the electoral college majority because of faithless electors, it doesnt necessarily mean the other candidate wins. Its much more likely that the House would decide (the Senate gets to resolve undecided VP races, but the House gets to pick a president if nobody gets a majority). There certainly have been situations in which faithless electors could have changed the outcome of the election; given George W. Bushs five-electoral vote win of 271 to 266 in 2000 it was 271 to 267 before the D.C. electors abstention only two electors would have had to change their votes to throw the race to the House, and three crossovers (which again, are very, very rare) could have made Gore the president. But the likelihood that the 2016 election would be close enough for faithless electors to make a difference and that there would be enough of them to actually change that outcome makes it a remote possibility. And if it got to that point, theyd probably think pretty hard about being labeled as the people who overturned the result of a presidential election. electors Ahead of Tuesdays presidential election, the Rev. Frank Pavone took an aborted fetus, laid it upon an altar Sunday and posted a live video on Facebook. Pavone, a Catholic priest who heads New York-based Priests for Life, said the fetus was entrusted to him by a pathologist for burial. During an already heated and divisive campaign season, Pavones video has raised questions for some about what is appropriate antiabortion and political activism in the church. As of Monday afternoon, the video, which is 44 minutes long, had 236,000 views. In it, he holds up a poster of graphics of abortion procedures. In Pavones Facebook appeal, he wrote, we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected. A call placed to the spokesman for the Diocese of Amarillo in Texas, which is Pavones diocese, was not immediately returned Monday. The receptionist, however, said her phone has been ringing off the hook. In a blog post for Patheos, Scott Eric Alt argued that what Pavone did was sacrilege, a violation of Catholic Church canon law, which states that the altar is reserved for divine worship alone, to the exclusion of any secular usage. Being pro-life is about respecting the dignity of the human person, Alt wrote. It is the antithesis of respect for the dignity of the human person to use a dead child as a political prop to lobby for your presidential candidate the day before an election. Pavone is a high-profile antiabortion activist who has clashed with leadership within the Catholic Church. In 2014, Cardinal Timothy Dolan cut ties with the priest after Dolan suggested that Pavone had stonewalled financial reform within his organization, which is based out of Staten Island. A spokesperson for Dolan, who is also chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said the archdiocese does not have a relationship with Pavone and has no comment on the video. In a blog post for the Archdiocese of New York, Ed Mechmann wrote about the revulsion he felt about the video. A human being has been sacrificed and the altar of God has been desecrated, all for politics, he wrote. Everyone who respects the dignity of every human person should reject and disavow this atrocity. Trump has been a divisive candidate for antiabortion activists, who have tried to keep women at the forefront. Earlier this year, the GOP candidate suggested that women who have abortions should be punished, a position he later reversed. If anything, Pavones actions are a signal that the older antiabortion groups are on their way out, said Charles Camosy, a bioethics professor at Fordham University and a board member of Democrats for Life of America. The use of graphic images has been a divisive issue in the antiabortion movement, and Camosy said Monday that nearly everyone he knows, including conservatives, have condemned Pavones video. This plays into the narrative so many people have of us, that this is a bunch of wild extremists who will put an aborted fetus on Facebook Live. Come on! Camosy said. This is the death rattle for the culture-war-focused pro-life movement. The video comes after a group of Catholics inserted fliers into parish bulletins in San Diego claiming that a vote for a Democrat is a mortal sin. San Diegos Bishop Robert McElroy criticized the flier. And on Saturday, Pope Francis condemned the political use of fear and the building of walls, describing the refugee crisis as a problem of the world and urging political leaders to do more. texas-priest On the eve of Election Day, civil rights groups and local election officials were reminding voters of the state and federal laws protecting against voter intimidation and advising them where to go if they experience threats or harassment at the polls. Anyone trying to keep a person from voting or to get them to vote a certain way constitutes voter intimidation, according to Election Protection, a nonpartisan voting rights coalition. Voter intimidation is prohibited under federal law, which states that no person . . . shall intimidate, threaten, coerce . . . any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of [that] person to vote or to vote as he may choose. The American Civil Liberties Union says that one example of such intimidation is aggressively questioning a voter about his or her citizenship, criminal record or other qualifications to vote. Other examples include falsely presenting oneself as an elections official and spreading false information about voter requirements, such as the need to present a certain type of photo identification when there is no such requirement, according to the ACLU. Shouting and abusive language is also considered intimidation, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. If a voter is being followed and photographed or has his license plate numbers recorded, that also qualifies as intimidation, as does baseless or discriminatory challenges to ones eligibility to vote and the brandishing of weapons in front of a voter. Most states do not have laws about guns at election polling places. Ten states do have such prohibitions. Six generally prevent guns in polling places (Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas). Four other states prohibit concealed-carry guns in polling places (Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina). In Arizona, the secretary of states office released a long list last week describing illegal intimidating conduct, including blocking the entrance to a polling place, disrupting voting lines, raising ones voice or taunting a voter or poll worker, or photographing or filming voters in a harassing manner. The state also counts any aggressive display of weapons; using threatening, insulting or offensive language to a voter or poll worker; intentionally disseminating false information at a polling place; and directly confronting or asking voters for documentation or other questions that only poll workers should perform. Voting rights advocates are more worried about voter intimidation this election because Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is encouraging his supporters to sign up on his website to be a Trump election observer and to watch the polls. And when I say watch, you know what Im talking about, Trump said at a rally in August. Right? You know what Im talking about. I think youve got to go out and youve got to watch. Trump specifically encouraged supporters in Pennsylvania to be vigilant for voter fraud, saying that cheating is the only thing that could stop him from defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in that battleground state. In Pennsylvania, state officials concerned about potential intimidation or discrimination sent advisories to voters and county election officials. Discouraging anyone from having their voice be heard in the electoral process whether by intimidation, suppression or deception is absolutely unacceptable and wrong, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes said last month. Any attempts to disrupt or interfere with voting by Pennsylvanians should and will be investigated and prosecuted by law enforcement. Individuals who intimidate voters can be fined up to $5,000 and face up to two years in prison, according to Pennsylvania law. Under federal law, a person who conspires to interfere with a persons right to vote can face up to 10 years in prison. A controversial case of voter intimidation allegations occurred in a Philadelphia neighborhood in 2008 when two New Black Panther Party members stood outside a polling place dressed in black paramilitary uniforms. One of them was seen on an amateur video, carrying a black nightstick. The incident led to a lawsuit, but the Justice Department eventually dismissed it. Those who experience intimidation at the polls can contact state or federal officials. Voters can call the Justice Department Voting Rights Hotline at 800-253-3931; TTY line at 877-267-8971 or email the Justice Department Civil Rights Division at voting.section@usdoj.gov. Voters also can call the Election Protection hotline led by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (866-OUR-VOTE), the hotline led by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund (888-Ve-Y-Vota), or the hotline led by APIAVote and Asian Americans Advancing Justice (888-API-VOTE). The Arab American Institute Yalla Vote Hotline is 844-418-1682. In addition, voters can report intimidation to county poll workers, the county clerk, elections officials, local and state officials, or the state board of elections. In some states, police officers are allowed inside polling places. Voters can report harassment and intimidation incidents to the police, who are subject to voter intimidation laws. voter-intimidation SANTA FE Luxury-home builder William Kalinowski was known as a brilliant charmer before he was financially ruined by the housing market crash in 2008. Prosecutors on Monday told a jury that Kalinowski, on trial for nine fraud and embezzlement charges, in addition lied and deceived people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2013, Kalinowski, 71, was indicted on six counts of embezzlement over $20,000 and three counts of fraud over $20,000 for crimes that allegedly occurred in late 2007 and throughout 2008, as the economy and the housing market tumbled. His criminal trial finally started Monday in Santa Fe District Court and is expected to last nine days. Kalinowski, whos been an Albuquerque Public Schools teacher while free pending trial, is accused of bilking investors and homebuyers out of hundred of thousands of dollars by not completing homes in the upscale Las Campanas subdivision near Santa Fe. Several contractors also claim Kalinowski never paid them for the work they did on his projects. Matthew Buillon Mascarenas, a prosecutor from the state Regulation and Licensing Department, said in opening arguments Monday that Kalinowski charmed his way into getting people to invest in his projects and didnt keep his end of the bargain. He conducted himself through lie after lie after lie, Bouillon Mascarenas said. Through force of personality and charisma, he fooled others into believing in him. This case isnt about the accounting, nor is it about the financial crisis. This case is about lies and choices. Its about deceiving people who place trust in you. Marla Sorrels, who was a bookkeeper for Kalinowski, is at the center of the case. Bouillon Mascarenas said Sorrels manipulated bank statements so Kalinowski could get bank loans. The prosecutor said Sorrels once noticed that he owed $750,000 in state gross receipts taxes and that Kalinowski told her it would be taken care of. He has the gift of gab, and he has the gift of making others think its going to be OK when its not, Bouillon Macarenas said. Sorrels is expected to testify in the trial and was granted immunity by Judge T. Glenn Ellington after she made statements to prosecutors in April that would tend to subject her to federal criminal liability, according to court documents. Defense attorney Hans Erickson told the jury that Sorrels was an incompetent bookkeeper who was not going to have a lot of nice things to say about Kalinowski when she testifies. Erickson said Kalinowski was hit hard by the housing market crash of 2008. He had a reputation of being slow to pay people back, Erickson said, but he had always paid his debts. Things got really bad in 2007 and 2008, and Bill wasnt the only person to lose money during this time, Erickson said. He acknowledged that a lot of people didnt get paid when Kalinowskis company went down. Attorney Charles Zimmerman testified Monday that Kalinowki approached him about buying his Las Campanas lot in 2008. He said Kalinowski didnt want to pay the asking price of around $275,000 until after building on the lot. Prosecutor Ben Gubernick showed Zimmerman a letter from Los Alamos National bank around that time that said William and Andrea Kalinowski owed the bank nearly $2 million with interest, which seemed to shock to Zimmerman. If I would have known about this I would have never done business with Mr. Kalinowski, he said. David Weckerly, who was in charge of building projects in Las Campanas, said Kalinowski was a business friend and that he was shocked when he and his colleagues found out that Kalinowski suddenly stopped doing business in 2008. I enjoyed working with him so much, Weckerly said. He was charming and he was brilliant. Hes the smartest builder Ive probably ever worked with. TYLER, Texas A 24-year-old Mexican national has been jailed on a capital murder charge after his 10-year-old female cousin was found dead in an East Texas water well. Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith says 24-year-old Gustavo Zavala-Garcia was booked Saturday into Smith County Jail on a federal immigration detainer. Smith said an arrest warrant was issued for Zavala-Garcia Monday, charging him with capital murder. No attorney or bond setting for Zavala-Garcia is listed in online jail records. His cousin by marriage, Kayla Gomez-Orozco, was reported missing after a Nov. 1 service at a church in Bullard, about 15 miles south of Tyler. Hundreds of volunteers searched the area for days until the girls body was found Saturday down the well of a rented house about 2 miles southeast of Bullard. Twelve-year-old JJ Holmes has been enamored with the 2016 presidential election. By Election Day, the boy would encounter two of the most polarizing figures in this campaign season Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and President Barack Obama and his experiences with them would be vastly different. For months, JJ, who has a severe case of cerebral palsy, has been sitting on his knees at his home in Longwood, Florida, using his nose to type searches on his iPad for Mary Poppins plays and Trump events, his mother said. Throughout the election, she said, he had been itching to go to a rally to express his disdain for Trump, who came under fire last year for mocking a reporter with a disability. I wanted to go because Donald J. Trump made fun of disabled people, JJ said in a video statement Monday to The Washington Post, using his computer vocalization device. On Saturday, JJ got his wish his mother, Alison Holmes, agreed to take him to a Trump rally in Tampa. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, Holmes woke up her son, asking him whether he still wanted to go. She said she had told him what it would mean a 3 a.m. wake-up call, a two-hour drive from their home in Longwood to Tampa, long lines and pushy protesters and, possibly, the boot. JJ made a pouty face his Trump imitation as his signal that he was ready to roll, his mother said. She said JJ had preprogrammed chants, such as Dump Trump and Trump mocks the disabled, into his computer vocalization device. Once he was inside the arena, he pushed a button to say his piece, his mother said. It wasnt that loud, she said about his chants, adding, Trump was laughing about how his supporters drown out JJ. So my daughters and I started chanting. She said the crowd around them turned rowdy. Trump supporters across the arena joined in then Trump reportedly spoke out from the stage. Oh, we have a Hillary Clinton person. Are they paying that person $1,500? Trump said, according to Fox News. Get him out, please. Get him out. The crowd started chanting USA! USA! USA! I must tell you, the Bernie Sanders protesters had much more enthusiasm and spirit than this one, Trump added. The problem with these Hillary protesters is my people make all the noise. You cant even hear the person. At the same time, Alison Holmes said, Trump supporters near them started pushing her sons wheelchair, and calling her a child abuser and telling others to grab her py. The boy and his family were escorted from the arena, she said. I thought we may get kicked out, she said. I didnt think theyd start shoving his wheelchair. Some people also criticized Holmes for taking her son to the rally, accusing her of using him to protest. Hes not some puppet I wheeled in there, Holmes said. This was him this was all him. Trumps media representatives did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment. Outside, a reporter who covered the rally heard that the boy hoped to one day meet Obama, Holmes said; the reporter called Valentina Pereda, Florida press secretary for the Hillary Clinton campaign, who used to be the White House deputy director for Hispanic media. The idea? See how close they could get JJ to the rope line at a Democratic event Sunday in Kissimmee, Florida, where Obama was speaking in support of Clinton. Maybe he would shake JJs hand on his way down the line. Pereda wrote on Facebook about the moment the reporter told her JJs story. I freeze: first in disbelief and, next, feeling utterly helpless, she wrote. What the hell could I do to make this child even slightly forget that experience? Im a nobody! I tell the reporter to share my number with JJs mother and that the only thing I can do is escort them into President Obamas rally the following day. No chance for VIP treatment and much less to meet the President. On Sunday, Pereda said she devised a plan, with help from a friend who she said travels with the president. I point him to where in the VIP area JJ is sitting with the hope that when POTUS would work the ropeline, hed somehow remember JJs story and spend two extra seconds with him, she wrote. And with that, I was satisfied with [what] was to be accomplished. A handshake. Then it happened. Shortly after, colleagues begin to frantically text and call me to tell me my friend from the WH was looking for me, Pereda wrote. I sprint about half a mile back into the stadium and push my way through angry Secret Service agents and thick crowds. I finally spot my friend who, once again, asks me to point out where the boy is sitting, which I do. Then out of the blue I tell him, well, how about I wheel him out of the VIP area and bring him around? Wow, this is really happening, Pereda wrote. At that moment, JJs mom tells him hes going to meet the President. The rest is indescribable. . . JJ jumps out of his seat and erupts into cheer . . . his smile almost bursting out of his face. His body overcome by light, when just the day before it almost succumbed to hate. JJs mother said he told the president he loved him, thanked him for the handshake and asked him, Can you vote? He wanted to make sure he could vote for Hillary Clinton, she said. JJ said Monday that meeting Obama was the highlight of his weekend, but when his mother asked him, Are you happy that you went to the Trump rally? he shouted: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Okay, she said, laughing. OK. He was over the moon, his mother said. He really feels that he made a stand. Video: Boy kicked out of Trump rally types a message for President Obama URL: http://wapo.st/2fyGqHp Embed code: disabled-boy SANTA FE Its Election Day in New Mexico, but more than 524,000 state residents or roughly 40.7 percent of all registered voters have already cast ballots this year during early and absentee voting, shattering the marks set in 2008 and 2012. Click for Journal Voter Guide Where to Vote A heated presidential race in which Republican Donald Trump made two campaign stops in New Mexico and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, launched a final week TV ad blitz in the state captured the attention of many voters, but spirited contests for secretary of state, Congress and the state Supreme Court are among other races and poll questions to be decided today. Control of both chambers of the Legislature is also at stake, as Democrats are hoping to take back the state House of Representatives after a historic GOP takeover in 2014 and are defending a 24-18 advantage in the Senate. Meanwhile, its likely that more than half of the voters who will cast ballots in this years election already have voted, said University of New Mexico political science professor Lonna Atkeson. I think theres a lot of reasons people are voting early, Atkeson said, citing voter political fatigue and anxiety about possible long lines on Election Day as among the reasons. Theres a lot of relief that comes mentally from getting it done. Atkeson, whos been tracking New Mexico elections for years, said she expects an additional 300,000 to 400,000 New Mexicans will vote today, which could boost total turnout to around 900,000 voters or about 70 percent of registered voters. Longtime New Mexico political observer and Journal pollster Brian Sanderoff said he believes 60 percent of the total votes cast in New Mexico may have been cast before today. He also noted that largely urban counties posted particularly robust early voting levels, with nearly 46 percent of registered voters in Bernalillo County having cast their ballots before Election Day and 49 percent of voters in Santa Fe County having voted early or absentee. In contrast, some rural counties recorded lower early voting numbers, which could mean higher Election Day turnout. I think that many rural counties havent developed the early voting culture thats taken hold in more urban counties, Sanderoff said. Registered GOP voters actually ended up outpacing Democratic voters in early voting by percentage 42.3 percent of Republican voters cast ballots early, compared with 39 percent of Democratic voters but Democrats outnumber Republicans statewide. And voters from both of the major parties voted early at a higher rate than did independent voters, or those who decline to state a party affiliation. Ground game As the clock ticked toward Election Day, the leaders of the Democratic and Republican state parties sounded confident Monday in their ground games, or get-out-the-vote efforts. Debra Haaland, chairwoman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, said party headquarters in Santa Fe County was packed with volunteers making phone calls and urging Democrats to vote today. Haaland also said the party is checking with people who said they planned to vote early. Were following up with them, and if they didnt vote, were making sure they vote on Election Day, she said. I also know there are lots of folks everywhere who are offering to give people rides to the polls. We have a huge volunteer operation for the Hillary campaign here, but also every single (state and local Democratic) candidate has a ground game, as well. Debbie Maestas, chairwoman of the Republican Party of New Mexico, said the state GOP made a grand push over the weekend that resulted in more than 100,000 phone calls urging Republicans to vote for Trump. Maestas also said the fact that Trump and Pence made a combined five appearances in the state while Clinton made none during the campaign has energized New Mexico Republicans. Weve got ourselves a horse race, Maestas said, referring to the narrow national polls. The many Trump rallies have helped tremendously towards getting out the vote. Hillary has taken New Mexico for granted, and people more and more understand that their vote actually matters. A Journal Poll conducted last week showed Clinton receiving support from 45 percent of likely New Mexico voters, compared with 40 percent for Trump. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor who is planning to hold an Election Night rally in Albuquerque, got 11 percent in the recent poll. Mudslinging This years election cycle has been marked by vitriol and personal attacks in the presidential race, and some state-level races have had similar mudslinging. New Mexico races have also featured high spending levels, as Democrat Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Republican Nora Espinoza have combined to spend nearly $1 million in the secretary of state race, according to reports filed this month. In a legislative race thats epitomized this years rough-and-tumble election cycle, Senate Democratic floor leader Michael Sanchez of Belen is looking to fend off a challenge from Republican Greg Baca in Senate District 29. A pro-Republican super PAC led by Gov. Susana Martinezs political director, Jay McCleskey, targeted Sanchez with a barrage of hard-hitting TV ads and mailers featuring claims from family members of crime victims that Sanchez is soft on crime. But Sanchez has pushed back by blasting the ads as false and highlighting his opponents criminal record, including charges from years ago. As of earlier this month, Sanchez had spent nearly $400,000 on his re-election bid including thousands of dollars on TV ads. He also enlisted the help of all four Democratic members of the states congressional delegation at a weekend rally in Belen. By the numbers 2016 election year Early and absentee votes 524,506 Total votes cast Not available 2012 election year Early and absentee votes 463,422 Total votes cast 786,522 2008 election year Early and absentee votes 519,295 Total votes cast 833,365 The offices of the New Mexico secretary of state and attorney general said Monday that they will assist county clerks around the state in providing additional support and monitoring of Election Day polling places. There will be special agents and prosecutors at different polling sites around the state, at the discretion of the Secretary of States Office, to ensure that New Mexicans are able to exercise their right to vote, said AGs Office spokesman James Hallinan. Election administrators in all counties across the state are well-prepared to ensure the proper conduct of elections, Secretary of State Brad Winter said. This partnership between my office and the Office of the Attorney General provides for additional support to county election officials if they need it and further instills trust by the public in the electoral process. Voters who have questions or who observe problems or irregularities at polling places can call the secretary of states Election Day hotline at 800-477-3632. They can also call the clerks office for the county in which they are voting. For a list of phone numbers for the county clerk offices around the state, go to www.sos.state.nm.us, click on the voter information tab, then on the drop-down menu under find my voter registration, click on the side menu for county clerk information. For general information about where to vote statewide on Election Day, go to www.sos.state.nm.us or contact the clerks office in your county. Bernalillo County has its own Election Day voter hotline at 243-8683 (243-VOTE). Go to bernco.gov/myvoterinformation for addresses of polling locations and wait times for each. The murder of a tribal man in Chhattisgarh is taking a political twist after Politburo of the CPI(M) condemned BJP government for framing noted intellectuals. By Ashok Singhal: Murder of tribal Shamnath Baghel of Tangiya Group in Chhattisgarh is now started echoing in the political corridors as well. The politburo of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the BJP state government of Chattisgarh for registering a false case of murder against noted intellectuals and activists. Named in the case are Professor Archana Prasad of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Professor Nandini Sundar of Delhi University, Vineet Tiwari of the Joshi Adhikari Research Institute, New Delhi and Sanjay Parate, CPI(M) State Secretary. They have been charged under sections 302, 120B, 147, 148, 149, 452 etc of the IPC. The FIR was filed by the Shamnath`s wife. advertisement Also read: DU professor Nandini Sundar booked for tribal man's murder in Chhattisgarh It may be recalled that a team of the above persons visited Bastar division from May 12-16, 2016 to interact with the people in order to understand the situation concerning the reports of growing atrocities against the tribals in that area. At that time also, the district administration of Bastar tried its best to falsely implicate them on fake charges on the basis of a contrived complaint. CPI-M, CPI APPROACH CM The General Secretaries of the CPI(M) and CPI had written to Raman Singh, the Chief Minister of Chattisgarh and to the Home Minister of India to ensure the smooth conduct of legitimate political activities and to protect the human rights and civil liberties of the people of Chattisgarh. The registration of false murder cases against political adversaries and renowned academicians for a murder that took place only last Friday, when they visited the area six months earlier, is a direct assault on our democratic polity and indicates the growing trend of authoritarianism in the state. The CPI(M) demands that the Chattisgarh government must withdraw this fabricated case immediately. Also read: Chhattisgarh: Maoist gunned down in face-off with security forces The CPI(M) calls upon all democratic-minded people to join in the protest against such blatant authoritarian attacks on people's democratic rights and civil liberties. It may be noted that Nandini Sundar in her statement condemn the whole incident and also distance herself for any murder. She also named IG Bastar Kalluri for the registration of the FIR against her. --- ENDS --- A Thursday evening meeting and a Saturday morning workshop have been scheduled to update the public on efforts to clean up the Kirtland Air Force Base fuel spill. Representatives of the Air Force, the New Mexico Environment Department, the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and the city of Albuquerque will be on hand for Thursdays meeting and Saturdays workshop. A general project update, followed by a question-and-answer period, is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the African American Performing Arts Center at 310 San Pedro Drive NE. The center is on the Expo New Mexico grounds near the intersection of San Pedro Drive and Copper Avenue. Prior to Thursdays meeting, project experts will be available from 5:30 to 6 p.m. in the center lobby with a poster session detailing various aspects of the cleanup project. The public workshop is from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Christ United Methodist Church, 6200 Gibson Blvd. SE. The workshop will provide the opportunity for detailed conversation on issues raised at public meetings. There will be breakout sessions with project staff, and topics for future workshops and meetings will be identified. The public should enter the church from the west parking lot. Persons wishing to attend Saturdays workshop should RSVP by contacting 377 Air Base Wing Public Affairs at 377abw.pa@us.af.mil or Air Force Civil Engineer Center Public Affairs at 866-725-7617 or afcec.pa@us.af.mil. The fuel leak originated in KAFB storage tanks and is believed to have been seeping into the ground for decades before it was discovered in 1999. A plume of contaminated groundwater has migrated into neighborhoods north and west of the Air Force base. WikiLeaks which has skulked around the presidential campaign all year was at it again on Sunday, disclosing still more about the grimy underside of the news. This time, the stateless group of self-styled anti-secrecy advocates disclosed that a CNN researcher had asked the Democratic National Committee for possible questions to ask Donald Trump in a forthcoming interview. The sky predictably fell, or at least it did within the conservative media. New DNC Emails Expose More DNC-Media-Clinton Campaign Collusion, blared the New York Observer (published by Trumps son-in-law). Its story fulminated, The close relationship the DNC and mainstream media maintained with Clinton throughout the primaries is comparable to propaganda tactics employed in dictatorships. The Observer recounted several other alleged incidents of collusion before further tsk-tsking, The medias unethical relationship has yielded no reprimand besides CNN severing ties with DNC interim chair Donna Brazile after emails revealed she forwarded debate questions to the Clinton campaign ahead of time. Theres a reason for that, and its not one Trumps supporters will gladly accept. Except for Brazile, a non-journalist whose behavior CNN deemed indefensible, the WikiLeaks emails expose little more than routine, acceptable reporting practices. They are less evidence of collusion than a continuing lesson in how the news gets made, in all its boring glory. People expressing shock over them are either ignorant of long-standing and yes, bipartisan reporting methods or are simply trying to score a few more points against the dishonest media. What the WikiLeaks emails show is reporters doing their jobs in a good way. If journalists didnt do such things, readers and viewers would know less about the candidates, including Hillary Clinton. The news wouldnt be as complete or as accurate for anyone. Lets take the latest revelation, about a CNN researcher polling DNC sources for questions that could be fired at Trump. News organizations sometimes do this sort of thing to flush out so-called opposition research material the news organization might not have found on its own. Soliciting the other side for questions might yield something worthwhile something that might create a useful and informative exchange with an interview subject, no matter which party he or she represents. In any case, asking for such ammo implies no commitment on the part of the news organization. The journalist might end up asking a candidate about something such an inquiry turns up. Or he might just ignore the whole thing. Hence, CNNs official statement on the matter: This is completely unremarkable. We have similar communications with Republicans. When preparing for interviews we are regularly sent suggestions from rival campaigns and political parties, both solicited and unsolicited. Casting a wide net to ensure a tough and fair interview isnt just common media practice, its smart. How about showing a block of text from an unpublished story to a source, as Politico reporter Glenn Thrush did with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, according to an earlier WikiLeaks dump. This is a less-routine and debatable practice (there are other ways to check a story), but hardly evidence of a conspiracy. What WikiLeaks didnt mention was that Thrush proffered no commitment to Podesta to change his story if Podesta objected to any statement. Thrush simply wanted to get his facts straight, and Podesta who had firsthand knowledge was the best possible source for doing that. Would readers prefer reporters not check? Rolling Stone magazine didnt when it accused a group of University of Virginia fraternity brothers of gang-raping a student. How did that work out? WikiLeaks has also seemingly cast shade on Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperins heads up to Podesta about his appearance in a forthcoming story, and on New York Times magazine reporter Mark Leibovichs request to move off the record comments from Hillary Clinton to on the record. Both episodes are telling because they illustrate what readers dont see behind almost every story the wheedling, coddling and negotiating with the sources in news stories. What Eilperin offered Podesta was a routine courtesy, the kind offered to any source a reporter hopes to get information from in the future. It would perhaps be more satisfying to slash and burn, and damn the consequences, but neither slashing nor burning is a very good long-term strategy for a journalist who wants people to talk to her again. If you want your stories to be less informed the next time, if you want to be shut out altogether because youre a jerk, by all means skip the courtesies. Leibovich (full disclosure: a longtime colleague and friend) also did his readers a solid. He could have accepted the off-the-record terms he agreed to before interviewing the press-averse Clinton. But what would he, and his readers, have gained? Much of what hed learned would have stayed between him and Clinton. Instead, he pressed Clintons palace guard to put in play what was previously off the record and therefore un-reportable the better to inform everyone outside Clinton-ville. Its always advantageous for a reporter to control his or her terms, but on/off record agreements that favor the source are often a precondition for access to the powerful and the popular. The important part of the various WikiLeaks dumps is what you dont see. You dont see reporters lying, dissembling or fabricating. (At worst, the leaked emails do show one reporter, CNBCs John Harwood, flattering Clinton in an effort to get Podesta to grant him an interview with hera tactic journalists sometimes employ to win favor with reluctant interview subjects; not many insult their way in.) And you dont see how theyve dealt with the other side, or sides, in a political campaign, leaving the impression that Clinton was disproportionately the beneficiary. Only the deeply partisan will accept the WikiLeaks documents as evidence of journalistic perfidy. But reasonable and honest people will be more reluctant to call foul on behavior that all sides engage in, and that benefits everyone. wikileaks-comment Donald Trump was on the cusp of a breathtaking upset in the U.S. presidential election, claiming a quartet of prizes Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania and wrestling with Hillary Clinton in other crucial battleground states well into the morning Wednesday. The Republican nominees stunning performance at the polls defied expectations and was a repudiation of the status quo. Trumps improbable candidacy was fueled by legions of aggrieved voters fed up with the political system and mistrustful of Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state. The general election turned on the question of national identity. While Clinton sought to make history as the first female president by assembling a diverse coalition that she said reflected the nations future, Trump built a more powerful and impassioned movement by fanning resentments over gender, race and religion. The presumption, right up to the hours when polls began closing, was that Trump had a far narrower path to victory than the Democratic nominee. But he capitalized on nearly every opportunity across the electoral map. One by one on Tuesday night, electoral prizes that for hours had been too close to call fell into Trumps win column. Clinton claimed Colorado and Virginia, but she was underperforming expectations in the traditionally Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states of Michigan and Wisconsin two states in which Trump campaigned aggressively in the final weeks. Clinton, by comparison, did not hold a single event in Wisconsin during the general election. Around 2 a.m. Wednesday, Clinton campaign manager John Podesta told her supporters gathered at an election-night party in Manhattan that the candidate would not speak because too many of the key states remained too close to call. We can wait a little longer, cant we? Podesta asked. Were still counting votes, and every vote should count. Control of Congress also was on the line, with Republicans appearing poised to maintain their majority in the House and a string of hotly competitive Senate contests going their way as well, giving them renewed hope of maintaining their hold on the upper chamber. The nationalist wave that has swept capitals around the world, including in Britain, which voted to break from the European Union this year, threatened to crash onto U.S. shores. The uncertainty over the U.S. election outcome rattled investors around the world. On Wall Street, all three major stock index futures sank more than 3 percent. Japans Nikkei index plunged more than 2 percent; Hong Kongs Hang Seng index fell by nearly 4 percent. The Mexican peso which had fallen when the Republican nominee rose in the polls during his campaign nosedived to an eight-year low, according to Bloomberg. A Trump victory would almost assuredly produce significant geopolitical repercussions. His aggressive campaign promises have alarmed U.S. allies. He has said he would build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, impose tougher trading conditions on China, stop U.S. manufacturers from moving operations overseas, reevaluate the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to fight Islamic State terrorists. Until polls closed on Tuesday, confidence in the Clinton campaign had been high that she would topple a barrier that has stood for nearly a century after women in the United States got the right to vote and be elected president. For her election-night party, she chose a utilitarian convention center in midtown Manhattan notable for one architectural feature: a glass ceiling. But Clintons historic quest hit head winds early in the evening as key states she had expected to carry easily, such as Virginia, remained in doubt. Though she prevailed there, the contest proved significantly closer than the pre-election polls would have indicated. Inside the Javits Center, the jovial atmosphere quickly grew dark as the night wore on. Senior Clinton aides, who had been circulating among the press risers, had long since disappeared and stopped answering their phones. The only Clinton staff in evidence as the 11 oclock hour approached were fairly junior aides, looking nervous and uncertain. By midnight, supporters were streaming out the exits. Im actually speechless right now, said a dejected Julia Beatty, 38, who left the Javits Center with her Clinton sticker peeling off her leather jacket. I just want to make it safely uptown so I can sob into a glass of wine. Trump was monitoring the returns with his family, friends and advisers early Tuesday evening from his apartment in Trump Tower, according to former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The GOP nominee, he said, was watching everything even though Im telling him not to. Hes calm. Were all cautiously optimistic, Giuliani said when asked to describe the mood within Trumps residence. We think its going to be very, very close. We know there is a populism across the country thats powerful and he has been lifted by it. Trump portrayed Clinton as the ultimate establishment insider and the embodiment of a rigged system that was failing the nation. She faced the additional burden of running for what would be the third consecutive term for one party in the White House something that has happened only once since the middle of the 20th century. Nearly a quarter-century in the nations consciousness, Clinton is a walking paradox, a Rorschach test of what defines character and values. She was hobbled throughout the campaign by her use of a personal email server as secretary of state, which flouted protocol and became the subject of an FBI investigation. FBI Director James B. Comey roiled the campaign 11 days before the election by announcing that a fresh trove of emails had been discovered on the computer of Clinton aide Huma Abedins estranged husband, former New York congressman Anthony Weiner. On Sunday, Comey said the investigation found no cause for the FBI to reverse its earlier decision against an indictment. Still, the developments took Clinton off her stride in the home stretch and contributed to a tightening of the polls. President Obama campaigned vigorously for his former secretary of state and took the unusual step of labeling her opponent temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief, but it appeared that his resurgent popularity had not rubbed off on her. Trumps promise to Make America Great Again became a rallying cry for millions of Americans who felt alienated by the forces of globalization and multiculturalism and had grown deeply frustrated with the inability of Washington to address their fundamental needs. Voters anxious about the economy, convinced that the system was stacked against them, fearful of terrorism and angry about the rising gap between rich and poor gravitated toward Trump. In him, they saw a fearless champion who would re-create an era when he said the country was unchallenged in the world, unthreatened at home and unfettered by the elitist forces of political correctness. Even before the general election, this atmosphere also spawned an unexpectedly potent primary challenge to Clinton in the form of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The self-identified democratic socialist sparred with Clinton, the Democratic establishments anointed favorite, until the final nominating contests in June. Trump proved resilient against an onslaught of negative advertising from Clintons campaign and her allied super PAC, Priorities USA, which portrayed him as racist, misogynist and unhinged. Nearly a quarter-billion dollars was spent on ads supporting Clinton, while just $153 million went into spots backing Trump. Clintons sprawling and supposedly superior data-driven organization which mobilized a broad coalition of Latino, African American, female and young voters did not deliver the knockout blows it had hoped for in critical contests. It appeared that Trump was following through on his promise to remake the political map by igniting a populist rage among working-class whites in huge swaths of the country. A razor-thin margin in Florida, which had decided the 2000 presidential election, was a microcosm of the story in many contested states. Clinton and her allies had helped spur record turnout among Democrats and Latino voters in early voting, but Trump rapidly made up ground on Tuesday with record turnout in exurban communities and GOP-leaning counties. Meanwhile, Trumps unexpectedly strong performance rippled down the ballot. His army of supporters helped power several endangered Republican senators to reelection, including Marco Rubio in Florida, Rob Portman in Ohio and Richard Burr in North Carolina. And in Indiana, Republican Todd Young defeated former Democratic senator Evan Bayh in a closely watched race for an open seat. Rarely in modern electoral history had the two parties offered such a stark choice for voters at the top of the ballot. Trump and Clinton also registered the highest and second-highest personal negative ratings, respectively, of any two major-party nominees in the history of polling. At 70, Trump would be the oldest person ever elected to a first term as president; Clinton, at 69, would be the second oldest. Initially dismissed by the GOP elders and the mainstream media as a mere showman, Trump vanquished a highly credentialed field of 16 other contenders including governors and senators in the nominating contest. Indeed, the last Republican president, George W. Bush, and the partys last nominee, Mitt Romney, refused to support Trump. When they voted Tuesday, Bush and his wife, Laura, did not select either Trump or Clinton, according to their spokesman. Trump resisted building a traditional national political infrastructure, shunning the kind of data analytics that have become the norm in campaigns in favor of mega-rallies and an omnipresence on cable news. It fell to the Republican National Committee to pull together a ground-level operation on Trumps behalf, which it did by following an example that Obama had set in 2008 and 2012. The party built a field operation that refocused on voter contact and early balloting. In New Hampshire alone, party officials said, GOP volunteers and organizers had knocked on 1.5 million doors by the weekend before the election three times as many as Romneys campaign had in 2o12. Trumps unorthodox campaign also severed the Republican Party from its philosophical roots. His populist stance against free trade diverged from the GOPs long-held position, while his harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration flew in the face of the strategy party leaders presented in the wake of Romneys defeat, of championing immigration reform as a means of broadening the GOPs appeal to Latino voters. Clinton, meanwhile, focused on building a diverse coalition that rejected Trumps brand of divisiveness. Her rallying cry was Stronger Together a call for inclusion and tolerance, and for a recognition of how far the country has progressed beyond its founding as a society where power was vested almost exclusively in white men. Ironically, it was not the first female major-party nominee who brought discussions of sexism and misogyny to the forefront of debate this year, but her opponent. Trump unapologetically made frequent boorish references to the physical appearance and intelligence of women. A leaked video from 2005 revealed him bragging of groping and kissing women without permission. Subsequently, more than a dozen women came forward to accuse Trump of various incidents of sexual assault, all of which he denied. It set off a national conversation, involving not just women, but their husbands and sons and brothers. Having lived much of his adult life within range of a microphone, Trump provided decades of fodder for his critics. And once he rode a Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy in June 2015, he said things, again and again, that would have been disqualifying had a more conventional politician said them. He characterized Mexicans who immigrated illegally as rapists and murderers, mocked a disabled New York Times reporter, insulted Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for his time as a prisoner of war, suggested that a female debate moderator had been tough on him because she was having her menstrual period, and tangled with the Muslim parents of a U.S. soldier who was killed in the Iraq War. Yet to Trumps supporters, all of these things were more evidence that he was a truly authentic figure. His rallies teemed with them by the tens of thousands. Trump remained defiant until the final day of his campaign, alleging bias and corruption in the news media, refusing to release his tax returns as all recent presidential nominees have done, and dodging questions about his potential conflicts of interest, charitable giving and other facets of his background. With her singular credentials and experience, Clinton set out to forge a path to the nations highest office that no one had ever walked. At the same time, her public choices and personal ordeals became the emblem of a generation of striving women who had come of age with a feminist movement that promised they could have it all. Clinton struggled throughout the campaign to articulate a simple, pithy reason for running. Her strategists considered 85 possibilities for a general election campaign slogan before settling on Stronger Together, according to an email stolen from Podesta and published by WikiLeaks. None of those matched the simple power of Trumps pledge to Make America Great Again. Gearan reported from New York. The Washington Posts Abby Phillip in New York and Robert Costa, David A. Fahrenthold and Matea Gold in Washington contributed to this report. VIDEO: Embed code for video: elect-121thld-writethru WASHINGTON The House will remain in Republican control next year, after Democrats made only modest pickups, as Democrats also faced bleak odds of wresting the Senate from GOP control. Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto is projected to win the states open Senate seat over Republican Rep. Joe Heck, but returns in other races suggest it would be exceptionally difficult for Democrats to carve out a pathway to majority control in the Senate, even if Hillary Clinton wins the White House. Cortez Masto likely benefited from a powerful turnout machine built by current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who is retiring from the Nevada seat Cortez Masto won. But elsewhere, Democrats were not scoring the victories they had hoped for. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson beat out former senator and favored Democratic candidate Russ Feingold to hold onto his seat. Democrats can at best hope to pick up four seats, which would give them 50 seats in the Senate against the GOPs 50, with Clinton vice-president pick Tim Kaine breaking the tie in the case of a Clinton win. But election returns did not seem to favor that outcome Tuesday night at either the Senate or the presidential level, where by midnight, Donald Trumps electoral vote count was higher than Clintons. With about two thirds of the vote in, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte was polling about three points ahead of Democratic challenger Gov. Maggie Hassan. In Missouri, GOP leadership Sen. Roy Blunt was also polling significantly ahead of Democratic challenger Jason Kander. Democrats have a chance to pick up a seat in Pennsylvania, but with 96 percent of ballots counted, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey held a slim lead over Democratic challenger Katie McGinty, who had been polling above Toomey in recent days. Democrats also suffered losses in other Senate races that they had sought to contest more closely during the campaign season. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was projected to cruise to an easy victory Tuesday night over Democratic challenger Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, despite months of polls showing the two were neck-and-neck. McCain had broken ahead of Kirkpatrick in the most recent polls, but the race was still considered to be among the more competitive ones in the country. In other close contests, mounting ballot counts suggested that Democrats pathways to wresting control of the Senate back from the GOP was narrowing. North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr held onto his Senate seat after coming under a serious challenge from Democrat Deborah Ross, holding an important seat for the GOP as they try to keep Democrats from taking over the Senate majority. Burr, the Senates top Republican on intelligence matters, including cybersecurity, has comfortably held his seat for two terms. Democrats had hoped to oust him in a wave of swing-state victories to take back the Senate majority from the GOP, the chances of which are considerably slim now. Democrats scored their only official pickup thus far from the GOP when Illinois Democrat Rep. Tammy Duckworth beat out incumbent Republican Sen. Mark Kirk for his Senate seat. But so far, that is the only race where Democrats have gained a seat in the fewer than dozen competitive contests that could determine which party controls the Senate, and by extension, the balance of power in Congress. Democrats needed to pick up a total of four seats if Clinton wins the White House, and five seats if Trump wins. Duckworth was a safe pickup bet against Kirk, who had been flagging in the polls against the combat veteran and two-term congresswoman from Chicago. But Democrats had a setback earlier Tuesday night, when Republican Rep. Todd Young beat out Democrat and former senator Evan Bayh in the Indiana Senate race, delivering them a disappointing defeat in their bid to take over the Senate majority. Bayh, who served two terms in the Senate and hails from one of Indianas most powerful political families, was recruited as one of the Democrats stronger candidates, but ultimately fell short against Young, a three-term congressman from the southern part of the state. In Florida, Republican Marco Rubio, who ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign earlier this year, was reelected to his Senate seat Tuesday night, keeping it in the GOPs column as he overcame a challenge from Democrat Rep. Patrick Murphy. But in the House, Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy staged an upset against one of the GOPs veteran members, Republican John Mica, who has held his seat since 1993. Micas race in part was fueled by redistricting that led to a defeat for the normally safe incumbent, who ultimately lost by nearly three points. Democrats also picked up a House seat in Florida from Republican Rep. David Jolly, who lost his reelection battle to former Florida governor Charlie Crist. Crist, who was a Republican and an Independent while governor, joined the Democratic Party in 2012. But Democrats lost the House being vacated by Rep. Patrick Murphy, who lost to Rubio in the Senate race, when Florida Republican Brian Mast beat out Democrat Randy Perkins. In Virginia, Republicans also overcame a Democratic effort to oust Rep. Barbara Comstock, who easily rode to a nine-point victory over Democratic challenger LuAnn Bennett. Republicans are favored to retain their majority in the House, but it will almost certainly shrink. Meanwhile the parties held onto their seats in several other high-profile Senate races. Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who just a few months ago was on the shortlist of incumbents most in danger of losing their seats, was reelected to a second term in one of the earliest races to be called Tuesday night. And in Iowa, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was projected to win a seventh term over Democrat Patty Judge, despite earlier fears that his tenure was in jeopardy. In Maryland, Democrat Chris Van Hollen was elected to his first term as a U.S. senator in the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski , a Democrat, while in California, Democrat Kamala Harris was elected to her first term in the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer. Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who is expected to replace Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid as the Senates top Democrat next year, won a fourth term while Washington Democrat Patty Murray, also a member of the leadership team, won her fifth term. The Senates No. 3 Republican, John Thune of South Dakota was reelected to his third. In Georgia, Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson was reelected to a third term in a race against Democratic challenger Jim Barksdale. While Isakson was not in grave danger of losing his seat, it was not clear that he would clear an an-important 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff until the last days of the election. Elsewhere in the Senate, Vermonts Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy was reelected to his eighth term, while Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby won his sixth, and Idaho Republican Mike Crapo won his fourth. Republicans Tim Scott of South Carolina and James Lankford of Oklahoma and Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii were reelected to their first full terms in the Senate, while Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, John Boozman of Arkansas, and John Hoeven of North Dakota each won a second Senate term. Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet was also reelected to his second full Senate term, while Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden was reelected to his fourth full term. Some bellwether House districts are Illinoiss 10th, where Rep. Bob Dold, a Republican, is fighting the Trump headwinds; New Jerseys 5th District, where Rep. Scott Garrett, a Republican, is in trouble; and Iowas 1st District, where Rep. Rod Blum, a Republican, is fighting for his political life. Control of the Senate isnt actually likely to be determined until polls close in North Carolina and Missouri. Missouris Blunt a member of Senate GOP leadership flooded social media on Tuesday with get-out-the-vote appeals from disparate corners of the Republican Party, including Libertarian-leaning SPaul and conservative one-time GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blamed the Democrats lower-than-expected wins on FBI Director James Comeys decision late last month to tell Congress about possible new information pertaining to the Clinton email probe. Many Democrats had charged that Comeys decision was politically motivated, and Pelosi said Tuesday that it had a definite impact on Democrats efforts to seize more congressional seats. But it is possible that Democrats might knock out one of the GOPs chief attack dogs against the Obama administration, as well as one of its most senior Republicans in Florida races that could measure the force of demographic changes in newly fashioned districts, as well as how minority voting blocs are burgeoning. In California, former House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa who was banging the Republicans Benghazi drum before there was a Benghazi committee could be the GOPs most high-profile House loss of the night if he is bested by Democrat Doug Applegate, a former Marine colonel whose camp has ridiculed Issas recent attempts to recast himself as a friend of the Obama administration. Other competitive House races are all over the country, from Illinois to New Hampshire to Nevada. In the suburbs of Chicago, Dold is defending his congressional seat against the Democrat who used to occupy it, former congressman Brad Schneider. Its unclear how that one might turn out. Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, the likely outcome of a similar matchup between incumbent Republican Frank Guinta and his predecessor, former Democratic congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, is anybodys guess the polling hasnt consistently favored one over the other. Two races in Nevada could turn on whether Democrats have successfully stoked the Latino vote, as Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy faces state senator and Reid protege Ruben Kihuen. One district over, Republican Danny Tarkanian and Democrat Jacky Rosen battle it out over the seat Heck vacated to make a run at the Senate. In Minnesotas 2nd District, Democrats backing Angela Craig have tried to link Republican talk radio host Jason Lewis to Trump over his comments about not-thinking women and cultural suicide by the white population. One of them will replace outgoing Rep. John Kline, a Republican. The Washington Posts Mike DeBonis contributed to this report. elect-congress-9thld-writethru ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A Raton man has pleaded guilty to assaulting and seriously injuring a postal carrier. The U.S. Attorneys Office for New Mexico said Tuesday that 30-year-old Cody Martinez pleaded guilty last week to assaulting a federal employee. Martinez admitted to striking a mail carrier in the back of the head with a brick on Jan. 20 as he was delivering mail in Colfax County. Martinez was arrested shortly after while trying to flee law enforcement officers. The victim suffered serious injuries. Martinez will remain in custody pending a sentencing hearing. He could face up to 20 years in prison. The hunt for big dollars began in January 2015 outside Palm Springs, Calif., at a luxury hillside resort with sweeping views of the sprawling desert floor. There, the emerging crop of Republican presidential candidates jockeyed to impress the millionaires and billionaires who make up the Koch political network. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas jetted in from a forum in Iowa, joined by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. The Koch meeting was the beginning of a busy circuit of donor retreats held in exclusive locales such as Palm Beach, Fla., and Sea Island, Ga., that defined the early months of 2015 an indicator of the new dominance the super-rich would have in this years presidential contest. In the end, there would be plenty of big checks to go around. And rich benefactors, it turned out, would have a limited ability to keep their chosen candidates aloft. But the all-consuming pursuit of mega-donors had a deeper, more fundamental impact on the 2016 presidential race. The magnet of six- and seven-figure contributions tugged at the early White House front-runners in both parties, reshaping their political strategies and their early priorities. It drew them away from the campaign trail, ultimately leaving them vulnerable to the fiercely populist mood gripping voters and to a candidate on the GOP side, Donald Trump, uniquely positioned to harness that anger. It sent the message to the public, much more so than usual, that there was a wealth primary and that the candidates were being selected by a handful of wealthy kingmakers, said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, which seeks to limit money flowing into elections. And it affected the candidates, in the sense that that became what they were focused on. The lure of huge dollars set off an early fundraising stampede, led by former Florida governor Jeb Bush. He helped raise more than $100 million for an allied super PAC in 2015, all while maintaining that he had yet not decided whether to run. Maybe one of the worst things to happen to Jeb was his campaigns amazing ability to raise big money early, said GOP strategist Ana Navarro, who worked in Bushs gubernatorial administration and opposes Trump. In some ways, it worked against him. It reenforced all the establishment stereotypes. Bushs mammoth money operation prompted rivals such as Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to jumpstart their own efforts to secure funds from major donors. In doing so, they seized on the new legal pathways that allow huge sums to flow into both super PACs and political parties. In any other year, a robust war chest would have been seen as a sign of a candidates strength. But Trump on the right and Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left quickly turned their rivals financial assets against them, tapping into a restive electorate disgusted with the powerful elite. Trump made his independence from wealthy donors a centerpiece of his bid, deriding his opponents as puppets of patrons such as industrialist Charles Koch and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Should I take the money? he asked fans at a rally in suburban Atlanta in October 2015. The crowd responded with a loud, Noooooo. No? No? Trump repeated. NO! came back the booming reply. It was a warning: This going to be a different kind of election. Trump had the luxury to exploit his rivals dependence on big donors. The billionaire developer was sustained by not only his personal financial resources, but the many hours of free media air time his provocative candidacy was commanding. This cycle was a good illustration that money is one tool that impacts public opinion, but the media have a larger megaphone than any campaign is able to buy and candidates and the dynamics of the field matter, said Charlie Spies, a Republican campaign finance lawyer who served as counsel for Bushs super PAC. When the 2016 race kicked off, it initially appeared that one of the most valuable weapons would be an outside group stocked with big money. For the first time, personalized super PACs became the norm in a presidential campaign, run by the candidates close advisers. There were supposed to be barriers, of course. Candidates could only ask donors to contribute up to $5,000 to a super PAC. And a campaign could not direct the paid advertising strategy of a big-money group. But with little threat of enforcement from the divided Federal Election Commission, candidates edged closer than ever to their outside allies. Longshot contenders such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and former Texas governor Rick Perry relied on super PACs to effectively subsidize their efforts on the ground, helping draw out their campaigns. Bush set the pace as an aggressive pioneer, blessing the creation of two PACs in January 2015. He immediately set off on a fundraising tear across the country for the groups, headlining events that cost as much as $100,000 a person. The money was piling up so quickly that, at one point, his team asked supporters to hold off giving more than $1 million. By June, when Bush finally announced he was running, he had amassed more than $114 million to bolster his White House run. He shrugged off questions about whether he should have spent so much time fundraising. You might as well front-load it if you can, the former governor said at the Koch summer donor seminar. But his unprecedented haul papered over a fundamental weakness: Bush did not have a broad base of support. His allied super PAC, Right to Rise USA, had raise $103 million of the total. Meanwhile, small donors ponied up just $368,020 to his campaign. Brad Deutsch, a campaign finance lawyer who served as lead counsel to Sanderss campaign, said the 2016 campaign exposed how super PACs can serve as a trap for candidates who arent popular to begin with. They can make up for it by having a few people give them money that will propel them, he said. But at the end of the day, they havent been forced to figure out how to connect with the people they need to connect with. Still, the GOP super PAC embrace rattled Clinton, who decided to speed up her own fundraising schedule out of fear that the FEC would not rein in Bush and other Republicans, according to hacked emails and memos posted by WikiLeaks. Use this to scare our people into giving bigger sums, campaign chairman John Podesta suggested to Clinton and other top advisers in May 2015. Several weeks later, campaign vice chairman Huma Abedin noted that we are looking to add more fundraisers in the last 2 weeks in June to get her to a higher number for this quarter, adding: It is doable, albeit a little crazy. The Clinton campaign also urged donors to contribute to two allied super PACs, including one that was coordinating directly with the campaign. And later that year, officials set up a joint fundraising committee with dozens of state parties that accepted six-figures checks. The tactics ultimately helped bring in $1.3 billion to support Clintons bid. But they also exposed one of her biggest vulnerabilities: her long, deep ties to a network of rich supporters. It was easy ammunition for Sanders, who was powered by an unprecedented online fundraising operation that was vacuuming up millions in small donations. I am very proud, I do not have a super PAC, he jabbed at Clinton during a Democratic debate in January. I do not want Wall Streets money. Ill rely on the middle class and working families. In the general election, Trump picked up that critique, repeatedly accusing Clinton of being corrupt and taking orders from her contributors. He neglected to mention his own billionaire backers, which by then included Adelson, or the array of super PACs that cropped up to support his campaign. Crooked Hillary Clinton is 100% owned by her donors, he tweeted in August. #ImWithYou. Ultimately, the 2016 candidates who lasted the longest- Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders were all sustained by robust small donor bases. And all that big money that dazzled the White House hopefuls at the beginning of the race? Alone, it just wasnt enough. Voters want more than just ads. They want to talk to you, Walker explained in a radio interview in June 2015, as he was preparing to jump in the race. You can have all the money in the world, but if your message isnt connecting, I think at some point large sums of money become a disadvantage. Three months later, the Wisconsin governor had dropped out. His allied super PAC still had more than $18 million in the bank. elect-money JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. Republicans won control of governors offices in Missouri, New Hampshire and Vermont on Tuesday, picking up a trio of previously Democratic seats in their quest to expand their statehouse leadership to their strongest levels in decades. The governors contests in a dozen states were part of a battle for statehouse supremacy that also included nearly 6,000 state legislative elections. Heading into Tuesday, Republicans controlled more than two-thirds of the nations legislative chambers, as well as 31 of the 50 governors offices. They were inching toward their historical high of 34 governorships sent in 1922, with races in North Carolina and Montana still too close to call early Wednesday. In a key legislative battle, Republicans also won control of the Kentucky House the lone remaining Democratic-held chamber in the South for the first time in nearly a century while defeating Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo. And Republicans reclaimed the Iowa Senate from Democrats, giving them control of both legislative chambers and the governors office. The states in play Tuesday included: ___ MISSOURI Former Navy SEAL officer Eric Greitens defeated Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster in the states costliest-ever gubernatorial race. He will succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon to become just the second Republican governor in the past 24 years. Greitens capitalized on his military service and his work as founder of the veterans charity known as The Mission Continues. He cast himself as an outsider going up against a career politician. Koster, a former Republican state senator, had picked up key endorsements from the National Rifle Association and major agricultural groups. Including primary candidates, Missouri governors campaigns raised more than $72 million, easily doubling the previous record. ___ VERMONT Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott defeated Democrat Sue Minter to take over the office held by Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, who chose not to run for another two-year term. Scott is currently the only Republican statewide officeholder in a liberal-leaning state but has tacked to the left by embracing abortion rights and gay marriage and pledged to make government more efficient. Minter was a former transportation secretary for Shumlin. ___ NEW HAMPSHIRE Republican Chris Sununu defeated Democrat Colin Van Ostern in a close race set up by Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassans decision to forgo re-election in order to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte. Sununu is the son of former Gov. John H. Sununu and the brother of former U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu. He has served on the governors Executive Council with Van Ostern. Democrats had controlled the governors office for 18 of the past 20 years. ___ NORTH CAROLINA Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper claimed victory early Wednesday in a close race against Gov. Pat McCrory, but the Republican incumbent told his supporters the election is not over while citing uncounted votes and provisional ballots. Cooper was ahead by just a few thousand votes out of more than 4.6 million counted. The race has become a referendum on North Carolinas rightward shift under McCrory, highlighted by a law that limits anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and directs transgender people to use public restrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates. Cooper has vowed to try to repeal the law as governor. ___ INDIANA Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb won election over Democrat John Gregg to continue a 12-year run of Republican governors in Indiana. Holcomb, a former state Republican Party chairman, had had been appointed to the states No. 2 spot by Gov. Mike Pence and later was nominated as his replacement when Pence dropped his re-election bid in July to run for vice president. Gregg had tried to cast Holcomb as a rubber stamp for Pence, pointing out Holcombs support for a religious-objections law that Pence signed. Opponents said the law, which was later revised, sanctioned discrimination against same-sex couples by allowing businesses to refuse to serve them. ___ WEST VIRGINIA Jim Justices victory will continue a 16-year stint of Democratic governors in a state that has otherwise been tilting toward Republicans. Justice, the states wealthiest resident, cast himself as a political outsider adept at creating jobs. Republican candidate Bill Cole, the state Senate president, had hoped to ride Trumps coattails. But Coles pledge to revive the coal industry was offset by Justice, himself a coal billionaire. Justice will succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. ___ MONTANA Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock was in a close race against Republican Greg Gianforte, a computer software firm founder who poured millions of his own money into the race. Gianforte aired more TV ads than all other statewide executive candidates in the nation, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity of data from the tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG. Bullock was heavily aided by the Democratic Governors Association. ___ OTHER STATES In Delaware, Democratic U.S. Rep. John Carney Jr. was elected to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jack Markell. And in North Dakota, Republican businessman Doug Burgum won election to replace Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple, who did not seek re-election. Republican Gov. Gary Herbert won re-election in Utah, and Democratic Govs. Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington also turned back challengers. ___ Follow David A. Lieb at: http://twitter.com/DavidALieb . Ahead of the U.S. election, North Koreas official mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency, issued a blistering message on President Barack Obamas eight years in power, denouncing the White Houses policies in East Asia. The KCNA article a white paper titled US collapse is its fate in history mocked the Obama administrations pivot to Asia and criticized its plans to counter nuclear proliferation. KCNA, which has referred to the U.S. president as a wicked black monkey in the past and described Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons appearance as that of a pensioner going shopping, declared over the weekend that the United States is home to a completely failed regime that will certainly be buried. Its white paper purported to summarize the failings of U.S. policy or imperialist moves during Obamas tenure. It called out U.S. efforts to halt North Koreas nuclear program, saying they have been consigned to the cesspool of history and reflect only Washingtons ambition for nuclear monopoly. It offered some characteristic (and delusional) tough talk: The Obama administrations hostile policy toward the DPRK [North Korea] and its strategy for dominating Asia are going totally bankrupt [through] the toughest counteraction of Songun Korea to terminate the empire of evil, KCNA said, referring to Pyongyangs formal state ideology. North Korea has spent years developing its covert nuclear program, much to the alarm and ire of the United States and its Asian allies. The specter of the pariah states nukes has hung over the election campaign, with Republican Donald Trump suggesting earlier that he would welcome other friendly countries in the region perhaps obtaining their own atomic weapons something that flies in the face of decades of Washington policy. Nuclear proliferation experts who watch North Korea believe the regime is refining its strategic thinking around when it could deploy its nuclear arsenal, moving away from simple Cold War-era deterrence to actually considering using tactical nukes in conventional warfare. It looks like North Korea is thinking about what it would look like if they had to use these weapons on their own, Vipin Narang, a political scientist at MIT, told my colleague Anna Fifield last month. This program is no longer a joke. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, this week published a doomsday assessment of how a potential nuclear escalation by Pyongyang could spell disaster under a Trump presidency: No country in recent years has consistently thwarted the national security objectives of U.S. presidents in the way that North Korea has. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and their top advisers and negotiators have tried, and failed, to curtail North Koreas nuclear ambitions. Their failures, though, were of the manageable sort: So far, at least, a misstep by an American president has not led to a nuclear exchange on or beyond the Korean peninsula. Goldberg adds: There is nothing in Donald Trumps record to suggest that he has the self-possession, discipline, analytical sophistication, and capacity to assimilate new information that would allow him to cope with a North Korea-sized challenge. nkorea-obama WASHINGTON With the U.S. election campaign at an end, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denied Tuesday that his group has a nefarious allegiance with Russia and said he had come under enormous pressure to halt publication of a trove of emails pirated from Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. In a statement published on the groups website, Assange said efforts to discredit him by linking him to Russian President Vladimir Putin were reminiscent of the red scare tactics used in the 1950s to hunt down communists. He did not explain, however, how he obtained the emails. U.S. officials have accused Russia of the hack that captured the emails and have said their publication by WikiLeaks was part of a plot to influence the U.S. election. WikiLeaks has published tens of thousands of emails in the past month taken from the Gmail account of John Podesta, the Clinton campaigns chairman. So far, WikiLeaks has released 35 batches of the emails. The real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work, Assange wrote. No one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election. The ultimate impact of WikiLeaks on the election appears to have been muted. But there is little debate that the leaks pulled the veil from a range of election issues. It was a leaked email that finally disclosed the contents of Clintons paid speeches to Wall Street, speeches whose secrecy had figured prominently in her primary battle with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders but had lost most of their political relevance when they were revealed a month before Election Day in her battle with Donald Trump. The leaked emails revealed the bad blood between one of former President Bill Clintons confidants and his daughter, Chelsea, and underscored the depth of the personal relationships that tied top Clinton campaign figures to members of the media as well as sitting executive branch officials. Two top Democratic Party figures lost their jobs because of WikiLeaks: Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out on the eve of the partys national convention after leaked emails showed her staff had plotted to undercut the Sanders campaign. Her interim replacement as chair, Donna Brazile, was fired as a commentator by CNN after emails showed shed leaked a debate question to Clinton. None of which appeared to have altered the course of the campaign, however, though journalists and historians are likely to consult the leaked emails for many months, if not years, in search of insights into the skein of relationships and personalities they reveal. Assange also came under attack. Ecuador, in whose London embassy he has sought asylum for the past four years, cut off his internet access out of concern he was interfering in the U.S. election, and he became the target of a bizarre multi-continent smear campaign that has never been explained. On Tuesday, he rebutted criticism that he was seeking to thwart Clintons election by releasing only emails related to her Democratic nomination. We cannot publish what we do not have, Assange wrote, saying WikiLeaks had not received leaks from the campaigns of Trump or lesser candidates that meet our stated editorial criteria. He asserted that traditional media, with its corporate advertisers and dependencies on incumbent power factions, did not measure up to WikiLeaks model of scientific journalism or an individuals decision to inform their friends on social media. As far as allegations that Russian state hackers had obtained the emails, Assange said such charges were untrue. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications because none exists, Assange wrote. WikiLeaks also claimed that the organization had been under unrelenting denial of service attacks that stretched into Election Day. The head of the U.S. government intelligence apparatus, James Clapper, issued a joint statement Oct. 7 with the Department of Homeland Security declaring that they were confident in assessing that Russia and its senior-most officials were behind the intrusions. The statement didnt name the hacks at the DNC and of Podesta directly but it was clear it referred to those penetrations. Private cybersecurity firms that have done forensics on the digital fingerprints left by the hackers also have charged that cadres from Russias security apparatus were behind the penetration. We have not published all of our evidence. We have plenty more that gives us complete confidence, said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, a cyber threat intelligence firm that was hired to conduct security checks on the DNC computer system. Two separate and possibly competing groups of Russian state hackers, dubbed Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, penetrated the DNC servers in the year prior to the discovery of the hack, Alperovitch said. Cozy Bear has been blamed for recent hacks of the White House, State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and other government entities. It entered the DNC network in the summer of 2015, Alperovitch said. Fancy Bear, which is believed in U.S. intelligence circles to be linked to the GRU, Russias premier military intelligence service, penetrated the DNC servers only in April, a couple of weeks before we got there to do a cybersecurity checkup, Alperovitch said. A hacker who goes by the moniker Guccifer 2.0 has claimed the DNC penetration, but Alperovitch said Guccifer 2.0 also claimed a hack of the World Anti-Doping Agency in August that later proved to be the work of Fancy Bear, which released the breached data. Banks will open extra counters and work extra hours from Thursday to facilitate the exchange of currency. By Mail Today Bureau: Expressing concern over the circulation of fake currency notes, Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel on Tuesday said the apex bank will launch new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 currency notes from November 10. "RBI will launch new currency notes from November 10," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said while unveiling the new notes. READ | 8 steps of PM Modi's surgical strike against black money READ | PM Modi's rupee revamp: Scrapping big notes a problem for common man, say people advertisement Both Patel and Das were briefing media after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a sudden address to the nation on Tuesday evening, announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes are being withdrawn from midnight. He said that such notes will become "mere paper". "MODI'S STEP IS BOLD AND DECISIVE" The nation's top two financial managers also shed more light on why the step to scrap the old currency notes was necessary, a step they called as 'bold and decisive'. Patel said that the government had observed that notes of high denomination were being misused and were also being used for financing terror. READ | RBI to launch new Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes from November 10, banks to keep record of exchanges READ | PM Modi's rupee revamp: Don't worry your money stays your money He said although the security features on the two notes were not breached, it was getting difficult for the common man to differentiate between the real and fake notes, such was the quality of the fakes. HOW WILL THE BANKS ACT FROM NOW ON? Meanwhile, banks will open additional counters and work extra hours beginning Thursday to make it easier for people to exchange notes that have been declared invalid from Tuesday midnight. Banks will remain shut on Wednesday to allow stocking of smaller currency notes and the public will be allowed to tender their now invalid Rs 500 and Rs 1000 from November 10. READ | New Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes: All you need to know READ | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Bank will however report any unusual transaction to Financial Intelligence Unit and tax authorities for scrutiny. RBI Governor Urjit Patel said the central bank had ramped up production of the new higher security currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 that will replace the notes being taken out of circulation. He linked the government decision to use high denomination currency notes for terrorism financing and also for holding black money. While overall currency circulation had increased by 40% in last 5 years, Rs 500 banknotes had gone up by 76% and that of Rs 1000 by 109%. advertisement READ | Here's what you can do with your useless Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes READ | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes illegal from midnight, ATMs won't work tomorrow: PM Modi --- ENDS --- Federal Department of Finance Bern, 08.11.2016 - On 8 November 2016, Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer received the Turkmenistan Finance Minister Muhammetguly Muhammedov on a visit to Bern. Both finance ministers signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on technical cooperation in the financial sector. Both finance ministers reiterated in their talks and with the MoU that the two countries would like to intensify their cooperation in financial issues in the future. Turkmenistan should benefit from Switzerland's financial know-how and strengthen its own financial sector. Turkmenistan is a member of the Swiss constituency in the Bretton Woods Institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund). In the financial sector, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) supports the Central Bank of Turkmenistan. The SNB's support during the last monetary reforms in 2009 was appreciated by Turkmenistan. A double taxation agreement between Switzerland and Turkmenistan has been in force since 2013. Address for enquiries Roland Meier, Media Spokesperson FDF Tel. +41 58 462 60 86, roland.meier@gs-efd.admin.ch Publisher Federal Department of Finance https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home.html We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain. GPs must be patient, get the timing right, and listen to what LPs in the market are saying to turn around a struggling fundraise, according to First Avenue partner Michael Henningsen. With over 16 years of advisory experience in alternative assets and capital markets, Henningsen says he struggles to think of many fundraises that have gone 100 per cent smoothly. Those issues can happen at any point during the fundraising period causing the process to grind to a halt. Henningsen told AltAssets, If a GP fails or struggles to raise the desired capital, the issues are not always just performance related. Obviously the performance and track record is critical, but it can be a whole range of issues that actually impacts the ability to raise their next fund. Sometimes its organisational, so you may have succession issues. There are a lot of the more established GPs, who have been around 15 to 20 years, working through succession issues. The more established firms were launched by experienced individuals, but 20 years on those firms are at a point where there has to be a succession plan in place to prevent them from failing. Henningsen said succession issues are something that a lot of groups are grappling with, but are also linked to the broader investment team. Very often funds can struggle because key individuals leave or there is friction within the team, or people dont agree on where the organisation should be heading, he said. When GPs come back into the market with another fund they often see team turnover occurring, with not all the partners or senior team wanting to commit to at least another five years of investment. Alongside the performance, track record, personnel and team issues there are also potential issues with, and from, investors, according to Henningsen. Sometimes you have a very concentrated investor base and a couple of big investors suddenly run into issues, for example you saw that recently with a lot of the bank captives with the Volcker rule around three years ago. That caused huge challenges to a lot of well-established platforms which actually had pretty good track records. Suddenly they were grappling with how they can fund their next fund, when historically they never had to worry about fundraising and just essentially used the balance sheet of a big organisation. There has always been a huge range of fund of funds active in the market, but Henningsen notes that over the last five to six years there have been a lot of changes in the fund of funds universe. As result, GPs that have had very concentrated fund of funds investor bases have really struggled. In recent years, funds may have also struggled because investors have fallen out of love with emerging markets a little bit. A lot of institutions are being quite cautious in a sort of risk-off approach to emerging markets, though we are seeing improved signs in recent months. Back in 2009, when growth was anaemic in the US and Europe, a lot of LPs went to China or India. However, fast forward five or six years and there are now some being very cautious. At the same time, the more successful emerging market GPs are still experiencing incredibly quick fundraisings. You also have things like strategy changes, where a GP doesnt stick to what they are going to do, and sometimes they actually do ok in the new strategy, but the investors dont like it because it is not what they bought into on day one. There are even situations where the market can move away from the GP, and suddenly the strategy is not relevant anymore. When you think of failing funds people often associate the performance lagging, its generally a factor in most situations, but its not always the only one. How can GPs turn the failing fund around? He points out that the notion of a failing fund is common and most of the time an agent gets involved is because something needs to be resolved. If you are in the market for 12 to 18 months it is highly likely that something is going to come up at some point. Having experienced several fund raisings struggling over the years, Henningsen is well placed to know how to get the process back on the right track, but advises that being patient is key. To resolve some of the potential issues, some GPs consistently use agents as they appreciate that they can help between fundraises and they see the value an agent can bring. However, if you have an issue or you think something needs to be resolved with the help of an agent, it is very important to get that advisor in early so you can work together to address the issue. While an agent can assist in turning the fundraise around, whether the majority of the issues can be fixed all depends on how far along the fundraising cycle the GP is before they realise there is a problem. Obviously the best situation is where you realise you have these issues before you launch the fundraise and you are objective about what you need to get done before you can really go back with cap-in-hand asking for more capital. The GPs that make the mistakes are the ones who rush back too quickly to raise capital. Often there have been changes at the GP and the LPs just want to see it bed down. Another consideration high up on Henningsens list of importance is to have a good sense of what the LPs are thinking of you as a GP. One of the challenges is that a GPs perception of themselves can be quite different to what an LP is thinking, and what the market might be generally thinking. They (the GP) may have some close LPs who have a positive view of them, but the broader LP base may not share those views. If you have not been proactive about managing your own investor relations, the broader market may not have a good view of you or a misinformed view of you. Perceptions are one of the hardest things to turn around, it takes time and it is very difficult if you are in a situation where it is mid-fundraise in a tough process to change those perceptions and challenges quickly. Then you get the situations where in the middle of the fundraise you suddenly have to deal with something unexpected. Again it comes down to being realistic, according to Henningsen. You have to listen to LPs. Sometimes GPs make the mistake where they dont necessarily listen initially to what the LPs are saying. If you go too far into the fundraising and keep pushing the LPs you will get a lot of declines, and of lot of LPs saying they are not going to back you this time around. Changing an LPs mind in the middle of a fundraise when they have already said no to a commitment is pretty exceptional. The last couple of years have seen LPs reduce the number of GP commitments, as they write bigger, but fewer cheques, or they are going direct themselves. Henningsen agrees this is a big trend, but again the solution relies in timing and being prepared. You need to know well ahead of time that your LP base is consolidating their GP relationships so you can start planning for it. The smart GPs are out fundraising consistently, it is not a case of I have fund in the market, its I have three years in between fundraisings and I need to figure out how to use my time to invest a fund, manage a firm, and also spend time with LPs. He doesnt see these concerns as major road blocks for GPs though as for all the LPs that are reducing commitments, there are quite a few new LPs coming into the asset class. On balance there is still a healthy flow of capital. Where LPs are going direct or cutting down their relationships, they are getting replaced. Tech and government investment specialist Veritas Capital has made another deal in the wake of its weighty $10.65bn Fund VIII close from earlier this month with the buyout of analytics provider Verisk's energy business. Americans turn out on Election Day to pick the next US president and end a bruising campaign that polls said favoured Hillary Clinton. By AP: Hillary Clinton has voted in the US election alongside her husband and former President Bill Clinton. The Democratic presidential candidate cast her vote at an elementary school in her hometown of Chappaqua, New York. Clinton and Republican Donald Trump face voters as millions of Americans turn out on Election Day to pick the next US president and end a bruising campaign that polls said favoured the Democrat Clinton. advertisement In a battle centered largely on the character of the candidates, Clinton, 69, a former secretary of state and first lady, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman, made their final, fervent appeals to supporters late on Monday to turn out the vote. A Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation poll gave Clinton a 90 percent chance of defeating Trump and said she was on track to win 303 electoral college votes out of 270 needed, to Trump's 235. POLLING BEGINS As Americans go to the polls today to elect their 45th president, here's what to watch out for: All 50 states and Washington D.C. go to the polls across six different time zones on election day. Thirteen of the states are operating with split time zones. Depending on the state, polling booths will open between 6 am and 7 am local time and close between 7 pm and 8 pm (If a voter is in line when polls close, then he or she gets to vote.) But it is not just winning the popular vote that counts. The US' system is a race to secure 270 out of the 538 votes in the electoral college. TRUMP TAKES LEAD IN 3 NEW HAMPSHIRE PRECINCTS Donald Trump is off to a very early lead in the 2016 presidential election, winning over the voters of three New Hampshire precincts by a 32-25 margin over Hillary Clinton. Polls in the tiny New Hampshire towns of Dixville, Hart's Location and Millsfield opened just after midnight Tuesday and closed as soon as everyone had voted. These die-hard voters are proud to have the first word on the big vote. Clinton won more votes in Dixville and Hart's Location, but Trump was the overwhelming favorite in Millsfield, with a 16-4 edge. Libertarian Gary Johnson picked up three votes. Bernie Sanders, John Kasich and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney got write-in votes. Under New Hampshire state law, communities with fewer than 100 voters can get permission to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots. RECORD TURNOUT MAY GIVE HILLARY EDGE A record number of Americans have voted ahead of Election Day, driven by soaring turnout from Latino voters. That could be good news for Hillary Clinton. FULL COVERAGE advertisement At least 46.27 million people have cast ballots by early voting - by mail or at polling stations, according to Associated Press data, surpassing the level seen in 2012. Record levels have been reported in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Millions more ballots are still coming in. The AP estimates that early votes could top 50 million. That comes to nearly 40 percent of all ballots in a presidential election expected to have higher turnout overall due to intense public interest. Four years ago, there were 46.22 million early votes, or 35 percent. "Interest in early voting has been unprecedented in many states," said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor and expert on voter turnout who is a consultant to AP. Also Read: We want America with bridges, not with walls, says Hillary Clinton The latest numbers show declines in voting from blacks in North Carolina - a drop-off after historic levels for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But higher turnout by Latinos, who often lean Democratic, may be buoying Clinton in Florida. Both are must-win states for Donald Trump. advertisement Trump will win US Presidential Elections, predicts Chanakya the fish from Chennai The Hispanic vote is also surging in Nevada and Colorado, where Democrats are running near or above their successful 2012 pace. Trump could be holding an edge in Ohio and Iowa, but that won't be enough if Latinos drive Clinton to victories in other battleground states. Trump calls Election Day 'our Independence Day' Donald Trump is channeling Hollywood as he kicks off the final rally of his unconventional presidential campaign. "Today is our Independence Day," Trump declares at a rally in Grand, Rapids Michigan in the early hours Tuesday. He says, "Today the American working class is going to strike back." Trump had been expected to hold his last rally in New Hampshire - but added one last event to his calendar as his team made an 11th-hour push into traditionally Democratic states. Trump says he doesn't need superstars like Jay Z, Beyonce or Lady Gaga to draw crowds like his rival Hillary Clinton. He says, "All we need is great ideas to make America great again." US presidential election: As campaign closes, the Obamas pass the torch to Clinton In the place where America's democracy took root, with tens of thousands shivering in the cold, Barack and Michelle Obama passed the torch to Hillary Clinton in an emotional but anxious plea to elect her president. advertisement Though the book won't close on his presidency until Inauguration Day, Obama's frenzied, last-minute push for Clinton was a farewell tour of the nation. As he crisscrossed Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, he waxed nostalgic, told old stories and teared up as he thanked the nation for betting, improbably, on "a skinny guy with a funny name." Then the Obamas and the Clintons embraced onstage: The last Democratic president and the current one; the first black president and the woman who, on Tuesday, may break yet another historic barrier. US presidential election: As campaign closes, the Obamas pass the torch to Clinton --- ENDS --- Barack and Michelle Obama passed the torch to Hillary Clinton in an emotional but anxious plea to elect her president. By AP: In the place where America's democracy took root, with tens of thousands shivering in the cold, Barack and Michelle Obama passed the torch to Hillary Clinton in an emotional but anxious plea to elect her president. FULL COVERAGE Though the book won't close on his presidency until Inauguration Day, Obama's frenzied, last-minute push for Clinton was a farewell tour of the nation. As he crisscrossed Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, he waxed nostalgic, told old stories and teared up as he thanked the nation for betting, improbably, on "a skinny guy with a funny name." advertisement He said he'd been asked recently whether the hope that defined his campaign had somehow survived eight trying years. "The answer's yes," Obama said in Independence Mall, not far from the Liberty Bell. He said he was still a believer, "and that's because of you." "In the letters you've written me, in the tears you've shed for a lost loved one, I've seen again and again your goodness and your strength and your heart," Obama said. Then the Obamas and the Clintons embraced onstage: The last Democratic president and the current one; the first black president and the woman who, on Tuesday, may break yet another historic barrier. It was left to Michelle Obama, whose visceral speeches this campaign hit a nerve with many Americans, to cast both families as part of a singular American story: One of inclusive opportunity that she hoped would contrast powerfully with the vision of Republican Donald Trump. She said she marveled at a country where "a girl like me from the South Side of Chicago, whose great-great-grandfather was a slave, can go to some of the finest universities on earth. Where the biracial son of a single mother from Hawaii and the son of a single mother from Hope, Arkansas, can both make it to the White House." US President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appear together at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo: Reuters "Thank you for welcoming us into your communities, for giving us a chance whether you agreed with our politics or not," Mrs. Obama said, in her own send-off to the nation. She said ensuring Clinton wins the election was "perhaps the last and most important thing that I can do for my country as first lady." It wasn't always this way. In 2008, when Obama defeated Clinton in a grinding primary, there was naked bitterness between the two Democrats that only began to soften when Obama named her secretary of state. Nearly a decade later, the Obamas need Clinton as much as she needs them, to prevent their legacy from being eviscerated by a victorious Trump. After all, the president told supporters earlier in Ann Arbor, Michigan, all his accomplishments "go out the window if we don't win tomorrow." advertisement Clinton, too, was meditative about the bruising battles that have led her to this moment. Also Read: We want America with bridges, not with walls, says Hillary Clinton "I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became," Clinton said, without naming Trump. In a less-than-subtle display of political symbolism, she spoke from behind the presidential seal affixed to the podium from which Obama introduced her. The Obamas are keenly aware that whether or not Clinton wins Tuesday, their era is coming to an end, a reality punctuated by both Obamas' insistence that neither will ever run for office again. So in a parting gift to Clinton, Obama offered her his campaign mantra - "Fired up, ready to go" - and told rally-goers in New Hampshire how it had been coined by a supporter he'd never met who showed up at an obscure event eight years ago in South Carolina. "It just goes to show you how one voice can change a room," Obama said - and then a city, a state and a nation. "And if it can change a nation, it can change the world." --- ENDS --- advertisement Closing out a wildly unpredictable White House race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump blitzed through battleground states in a final bid to energise supporters. By AP: Closing out a wildly unpredictable White House race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump blitzed through battleground states in a final bid to energise supporters. Clinton, backed by an emotional appeal from Barack Obama, urged voters to embrace a "hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America," while Trump vowed to "beat the corrupt system." FULL COVERAGE The candidates rallied voters late into the night, a frenzied end to a bitter election year that has laid bare the nation's deep economic and cultural divides. Clinton and Trump were both nostalgic at times, looking back fondly at a campaign that has put each on the brink of the presidency. advertisement Clinton campaigned with confidence, buoyed by FBI Director James Comey's announcement Sunday that he would not recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. The FBI inquiry had sapped a surging Clinton momentum at a crucial moment in the race, though she still heads into Election Day with multiple paths to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the nation's first female president. We want America with bridges, not with walls, says Hillary Clinton Clinton closed her campaign alongside the last two Democrats to occupy the Oval Office, Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as well as first lady Michelle Obama. In a nod to the deep divisions that await the next president, Clinton said she'd come to "regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became." She cast the choice facing voters Tuesday as a "test of our time." "We know enough about my opponent, we know who he is," Clinton said, addressing tens of thousands of people sprawled across Philadelphia's Independence Mall. "The real question for us is what kind of country we want to be." Obama's address amounted to a valedictory for a president whose popularity has grown in his final year in office. "America, I'm betting on you one more time," Obama said. "I am betting that tomorrow you will reject fear and choose hope." US President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appear together at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo: Reuters Trump, who sped through five rallies Monday, recalled the rivals he'd vanquished and how far he's come since launching his improbable candidacy. As he surveyed the crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he declared, "It's been a long journey." Still, Trump was aggressive to the end, slamming Clinton as the "face of failure." Having made the new FBI review a centerpiece of his closing case to voters, he argued that the Democrat was being protected by a "totally rigged system." "You have one magnificent chance to beat the corrupt system and deliver justice," Trump said. "Do not let this opportunity slip away." Also read: US presidential elections: Who will win the race to the top? advertisement The comments were a reminder that Comey's news, delivered in a letter to lawmakers on Sunday, was a doubled-edged sword for Clinton. While it vindicated her claims that the emails would not yield new evidence, it ensured that a controversy that has dogged her campaign from the start would follow her through Election Day. Across the country, nearly 24 million early ballots were cast under the shadow of Comey's initial announcement of a new email review. That number represents about half of the nearly 45 million people who had cast votes by Monday, according to Associated Press data. The inquiry involved material found on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide. Comey said Sunday the FBI reviewed communications "to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state." Clinton tried to fly above the controversy Monday, making no mention of the FBI during her rallies. She was closing out her campaigning with a midnight rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Clinton is banking in part on high turnout - particularly among Obama's young, diverse coalition of voters - to carry her over the finish line Tuesday. Roughly half the states with advance voting have reported record turnout, including Florida and Nevada, which have booming Hispanic populations, a possible good sign for Clinton. advertisement In Florida alone, Hispanic participation is up by more than 453,000 votes, nearly doubling the 2012 level. Black turnout is up compared to 2012, but that share of the total vote is lower due to bigger jumps among Latinos and whites, according to University of Florida professor Daniel Smith In Nevada, where more than three-fourths of expected ballots have been cast, Democrats also lead, 42 percent to 36 percent. Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie downplayed the impact of increased Hispanic participation, telling reporters on a conference call, "We feel that we're going to get a good share of those votes." However, he sidestepped two questions about the level of Hispanic vote Trump needs to win the presidency. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump looks at a mask of himself as he speaks during a campaign rally in Sarasota, Florida, US. Photo: Reuters Without victories in Florida and Nevada, Trump's path to 270 electoral votes would be exceedingly narrow. He already must win nearly all of the roughly dozen battleground states. advertisement Trump had planned to keep up his breakneck travel schedule deep into Election Day, but aides revised plans, keeping the businessman in New York. Midway through his final day of travel Monday, Trump praised his supporters for having created a "movement." But he warned it would all slip away if he loses Tuesday. "Go vote," he urged. "Or honestly, we've all wasted our time." ALSO READ: US gun store ad says will not sell to Muslims, Hillary Clinton backers Trump in trouble? Democrats sue Donald for 'voter intimidation' in 4 states --- ENDS --- It was announced yesterday that a number of Enterprise Ireland client companies have signed contracts worth 7m with Vietnamese partners and companies. The signings took place at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi in the presence of President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins and the President of Vietnam, Tran ai Quang, Companies who signed contracts included University College Cork, Anam Technologies, Escher Group, Novaerus, ECDL (ICDL Asia) and Mainstream Renewable Power. Bilateral trade between Ireland and Vietnam has increased five-fold over the last eight years across a range of sectors, notably education, agri-food, aviation and ICT. Last year, over 60 Irish companies exported to Vietnam and 15 of them established a presence in the country, signifying the great potential that exists to further increase a successful collaboration. Vietnam has a population of over 90 million people, a growing middle-class and a young, dynamic workforce. Enterprise Ireland say demand for new technologies and more sophisticated products and services provides significant opportunities for Irish companies with niche, high-added value offerings. Welcoming the contract announcements, CEO of Enterprise Ireland, Julie Sinnamon said, "A key objective for Enterprise Ireland is to help companies scale their exports in global markets. The range of sectors represented in the contracts signed in Hanoi demonstrates the competence and innovation of Irish companies, and underpins the growing business links between Ireland and Vietnam." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us This month's Fundraising Magazine features the first ever Men and Women survey, which looks at how fundraising careers differ depending on gender. We also include a piece which addresses why women still struggle to get to the top in fundraising. The magazine also features an interview with Paul Vanags, Oxfam's head of fundraising, and an agent provacateur piece from Eleanor Harrison OBE, chief executive of Global Giving, on why charities need to be honest about their failures. See below for links to a selection of articles from this month's magazine and infomation on how to subscribe. Features Regulars Fundraising Magazine is a practical and inspiring magazine that provides fundraising professionals with the tools to unlock new revenue streams, yield better results from campaigns and boost donor income. Subscribe today to receive 10 issues per year and access to premium fundraising content on civilsociety.co.uk. Guide Dogs chief executive Richard Leaman has announced he will step down at the end of the month after six years at the charity. A statement by the charity said Leaman has led the charity through a period of remarkable growth, tripling the number of beneficiaries during his leadership and doubling income from 50m to over 100m over the past year. Leaman said he was exceptionally proud of the charitys achievements. I am particularly proud that Guide Dogs has gone from strength to strength, and is now extremely well positioned to continue to grow in the future, he said. I will be very sad to leave, and will always have a place in my heart for this wonderful charity and the amazing people who work, and volunteer, for it. The role will be filled by deputy chief executive, Steve Vaid, until a new permanent chief executive is recruited. A spokeswoman for the charity told Civil Society News its trustees will appoint a specialist agency to help them recruit a permanent replacement. The charitys chair Jamie Hambro said: During Richards time as chief executive, Guide Dogs has grown dramatically and now changes the lives of more people than ever before. Today, the lives of nearly 5,000 guide dog owners, 1500 children and young people, 1,800 My Guide clients, and nearly 2,000 other adults are being transformed by Guide Dogs. The charitys trustees are immensely grateful for his outstanding work, and wish him every success in in the future. A spokeswoman for the charity did not confirm Leaman's next move but said he will "take time to consider his options for the future before sharing his plans more widely". Cyber Strikeback: Putins Aide Hacked After a series of leaks of hacked emails belonging to senior member of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clintons campaign, recently it was the turn for the disclosure of correspondence belonging to a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The emails suggest direct political and financial ties with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Mr Putin has denied any connection to the separatists, whether with military or financial support, despite widespread evidence to the contrary. Fighting has raged in eastern Ukraine for two years, since rebels in the Donetsk region proclaimed their independence from Ukraine and sought to join Russia. Anywhere up to 10,000 people have been killed. USA Today said a Ukrainian group called Cyber Hunta hacked into the account of an assistant to presidential aide Vladislav Surkov and uploaded more than 2,000 emails this week. Mr Surkov, although under sanctions for his role in the separatist conflict, travelled to Berlin this month with Mr Putin for a summit on Ukraine. The hacked emails include a June 2014 list of casualties from the separatist Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) in eastern Ukraine, sent by then-chairman, Denis Pushilin. Another email listed expenses to set up the DNRs Ministry of Information. The leaks followed claims from US intelligence agencies that Russia was responsible for a series of hacks on American officials. Some analysts suggested these new leaks could be a retaliation. On 16th October, Vice President Biden told NBC that the US would be sending a message over the hacking that Mr Putin would recognise. Hell know it, Mr Biden said. And it will be at the time of our choosing. And under the circumstances that have the greatest impact. Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague told USA Today that while there was no evidence that the leak was the direct retaliation that Mr Biden had threatened, there was plenty to suggest it was. I cannot help but wonder if this is the kind of response that US policymakers have been hinting at, following the various hacks blamed on Russia, either working through Ukrainians or simply handed to them, he said. This kind of a leak is enough to warn the Russians that the USA has certain capabilities and is willing to use them. Welcome to the world of proxy cyberwars. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the emails as fake in comments to Russian news agencies, saying that Mr Surkov did not use an email. But Ukraines National Security Service recently said that the emails were real. The leak of the emails came as a new poll suggested that most Republicans believe Russia is attempting to influence the US presidential election. Some 55 per cent of US adults, including 51 per cent of Republicans and 65 per cent of Democrats, said they thought Russia was trying to tip the scales in the election. The Reuters poll said most believe it is trying to help Mr Trump win. Independent: Ukraine Crisis Fits Cyber War Narrative: We use a range of cookies to give you the best possible browsing experience. By continuing to use this website, you agree to our use of cookies. You can learn more about our cookie policy here, or by following the link at the bottom of any page on our site. See our updated Privacy Policy here. While most of her classmates were preparing for the start of another academic year in early September, Emma Arsenault was preparing for the trip of a lifetime. Emma, a fourth-year Marine Biology student, was the Canadian delegate for the Our Ocean Youth Ambassadors program, which is run by the U.S. Department of State. Along with student delegates from 22 other coastal countries, Emma spent two weeks travelling from San Francisco to New Hampshire to Washington, D.C., learning about marine protection initiatives and policy. Emma was first made aware of the opportunity through her involvement with Students on Ice, an educational polar expedition program that helped to spark her passion for the ocean as a high school student. Im part of (Students on Ices) alumni network and Ive worked with them in a logistics capacity these last few years, Emma says. The U.S. Embassy reached out to them and said there was this huge opportunity, so I put my name forward. Multiple perspectives Emma says each stop on the trip provided a unique insight into how organizations at multiple levels are working to protect the ocean. We met in San Francisco and talked about marine and coastal protection strategies, Emma says. They had some really awesome marine laboratories and Northern California has recently implemented some great protection strategies for some of their coastal environments. In New Hampshire, the focus shifted to local initiatives. We got to participate in a beach cleanup with the community, says Emma. It was really cool to see the difference between the things that were happening at the state level in California as opposed to community-based initiatives in New Hampshire. The final stop in the journey was the Youth Leadership Summit at Georgetown University, which included an opportunity to participate at the Our Ocean conference hosted by the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Emma says the Washington portion of the trip made the biggest impact on her. It was an eye-opener. I didnt know, and I dont know if a lot of people know, what diplomacy looks like, she says. (The conference) was quite a big show, but it also turned out to be quite constructive. Some states made some really big commitments to marine protection. And it was even more valuable to learn from other young people around the world who are working at the community level. That, I think, is where ocean protection will have the biggest impact. According to Emma, she and her fellow Our Ocean Youth Ambassadors were able to share their views while at the same time taking in information about the intersection of science and policy. I was there to bring my perspective as a Canadian working on the North Atlantic, because thats the environment that Im familiar with, and to bring what Ive learned as a Dalhousie student. But for the most part I was trying to be a sponge. Blending science and policy What she absorbed on the trip was a fair trade-off for the two weeks of missed classes, according to Emma. She adds that her professors were supportive of her participation, even though it has meant playing catch-up since her return. Im taking a full course load this semester, but all my profs said I couldnt miss this, says Emma, who is also taking a minor in Political Science. It worked out and now Im working double-time. The Peterborough, Ontario native plans to complete her undergraduate degree in Marine Biology, but the trip reinforced her growing belief that her future lies in marine protection policy, rather than in science. I want to gear my future education to the policy side of things, as well as public education, Emma says. This experience really just solidified that. That was a perspective that seemed to be shared by many of the youth ambassadors I met from other parts of the world, that (policy and education) is where theyre seeing the biggest impact. Thats why Emma is strongly considering Dalhousies Marine Affairs Program for the next step in her education. I think it would be a way to integrate everything Ive learned, she says. My undergraduate degree makes me science-literate, and I think thats a good way work in between science and policy. WASHINGTON, D.C., November 8, 2016 -- A team of researchers in Russia worked together to shed new light on the heterogeneous nature of a polar organic liquid mixed with water. They used laser light as a tool in two ways, dynamic light scattering and phase microscopy, that allowed them to demonstrate the existence of stable nanodroplets of tetrahydrofuran (THF) in the bulk of aqueous electrolyte solutions and to develop a new theory that explains the spontaneous generation of heterogeneous nanoparticles in aqueous solutions of polar organic solutes in terms of nanodroplet formation due to "twinkling" hydrogen bonds. Until recently it was thought that heterogeneous particles in binary mixtures of polar organic compounds could either be gas nanobubbles or giant stable molecular complexes, formed by the molecules of the solute or solvent. In an article appearing this week in the Journal of Chemical Physics, from AIP Publishing, a research team that included scientists from four different Moscow institutions used THF, which has infinite solubility in water and which, in aqueous solutions of low THF concentrations, allows observation of abnormally high scattering of light due to the spontaneous formation of some heterogeneous centers. Combining dynamic light scattering with a novel experimental technique called laser phase microscopy that can measure the refractive index of nanometer-scale objects in liquids in addition to their sizes, allowed them to determine that the nanodroplets being observed in aqueous mixtures of THF at low concentrations basically consist of pure THF. "We began by repeating previous laser light scattering experiments using dynamic light scattering, which actually confirmed the abnormally high level of scattering in this concentration range; demonstrating that the scattering centers are nanometer-scale particles," said N.F. Bunkin, a professor from Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Since the two pure liquids are mixed in a fixed ratio, these particles should consist of THF and water in a certain ratio. The problem, however, is that the light scattering experiments cannot be used to determine the percentage of these components in the scattering particles. "We managed to solve this problem by using a unique phase microscope that we developed in collaboration with other scientists from Russia; one that can measure not only the size of the nanoparticles in a liquid, but also determine their refractive index," Bunkin explained. "We found that the refractive index of the scattering objects in THF-water mixtures practically coincides with the refractive index of pure THF though, in accordance with the reference data, such THF nanodroplets just cannot exist in the solution of such concentration." However, for the research team the biggest challenge was not the experiment, or even the development of the new microscope, but the development of a theory that incorporated and explained their results. Intuition suggests that the spontaneous formation of pure THF droplets in dilute aqueous solutions should be somehow controlled by the parameters of the interaction of water and THF molecules via hydrogen bonding. Roughly speaking, the THF molecule can either form a hydrogen bond with a neighboring water molecule, or not. If quite a large amount of THF molecules, localized in a nanometer-scaled area of the liquid solution, simultaneously rupture the hydrogen bonds with the neighboring water molecules, a nanodroplet of pure THF is created in this area, a fact was observed in this experiment. The team is already looking ahead to the next steps in this research. The kinetics of nanodroplet nucleation is still beyond the scope of their proposed model. They are planning to carry out similar experiments with aqueous solutions of organic liquids from the furan group which has different polarizability and dipole moments, and with solutions of water isotopes (H20, D20 and deuterium depleted water) that have different energies of intermolecular hydrogen bond and to explore the role of dissolved gas. ### The article, "Droplet-like heterogeneity of aqueous tetrahydrofuran solutions at the submicrometer scale," is authored by N.F. Bunkin, A.V. Shkirin, G.A. Lyakhov, A.V. Kobelev, N.V. Penkov, S.V. Ugraitskaya and E.E. Fesenko Jr. The article appeared in the Journal of Chemical Physics November 8, 2016 [DOI: 10.1063/1.4966187] and can be accessed at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/145/18/10.1063/1.4966187. ABOUT THE JOURNAL The Journal of Chemical Physics publishes concise and definitive reports of significant research in the methods and applications of chemical physics. See http://jcp.aip.org. PM Modi's rally in Agra will be held in the Koti Meena Bazar grounds, from where he started his electoral campaign for the Lok Sabha elections in November 2013. By Siraj Qureshi: With the BJP having decided to enter the UP electoral battle without declaring its chief ministerial face, the onus of ensuring the party does well is on PM Modi. The Prime Minister will be touring the state from 14th to 24th of November, holding seven rallies across UP in these 10 days, including one in Agra on 22nd November. advertisement According to the schedule, prior to the start of Modi's statewide tour, the BJP is holding a state-level meeting of party workers in the Agra division to formulate a strategy for these rallies. According to party sources, a crowd of at least 5 lakh people is expected to attend the Agra rally, which will be held in the Koti Meena Bazar grounds, from where Modi started his electoral campaign for the Lok Sabha elections in November 2013. The participants in the rally will be from the Agra and Aligarh divisions. DATE OF AGRA RALLY COULD BE CHANGED However, sources have indicated that the date of the rally could be changed at the last moment and the party is prepared for all contingencies. A senior BJP leader told India Today that the names of party candidates from Agra and Aligarh divisions and a long list of hopefuls could also be announced at the rally. Also read: How BJP is trying to woo Dalit vote bank ahead of 2017 UP Assembly polls Notably, the BJP had earlier said that it would declare its chief ministerial candidate before the dates of the elections are announced. But with PM Modi and BJP President Amit Shah campaigning as the party's star campaigners, the likelihood of the party announcing the chief ministerial candidate's name is very bleak. As both PM Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh are MPs from Uttar Pradesh, with the latter also having served as the chief minister in the past, it has become a prestige issue for both to win as many seats as possible in the state to emerge as a strong contender. SUCCESS OF BJP-BSP ALLIANCE HARD TO PREDICT Analysts believe that a post-poll coalition between the BJP and the BSP is not unlikely. However, how successful such as experiment will prove is hard to predict considering the recent attacks by Mayawati and Amit Shah against each other. Also read: BSP chief Mayawati to back Congress and not BJP for 2017 Uttar Pradesh polls On the other hand, the 'Mahagathbandhan' of all Opposition parties in UP against the BJP and BSP is a daunting challenge confronting PM Modi, who has seen Bihar slip away from his hands due to such a huge coalition earlier. With Akhilesh Yadav having been projected as the chief ministerial candidate of the Opposition parties' coalition still in its infancy, the contest appears to have boiled down to Akhilesh Yadav versus Narendra Modi, a comparison which Modi would like to avoid at all costs, considering his image as a seasoned politician against Akhilesh Yadav, who has often been called a novice in politics. --- ENDS --- advertisement AROUND one in six women (17 per cent) diagnosed with breast cancer go to their doctor with a symptom other than a lump - the most commonly reported breast cancer symptom - according to new research* presented at the 2016 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer conference in Liverpool. Breast symptoms, other than a breast lump, that may be a sign of cancer (termed 'non-lump' in the study) include nipple abnormalities, breast pain, skin abnormalities, ulceration, shape abnormalities and an infected or inflamed breast. Researchers from UCL examined the data of more than 2,300 women diagnosed with breast cancer in England in 2009/10. They found that, although most women with breast cancer sought help quickly, those with 'non-lump' symptoms were more likely to delay going to their doctor compared with women with a breast lump alone. Women with both a breast lump and 'non-lump' symptoms were also more likely to delay seeking help. Women presenting with breast ulceration, nipple abnormalities, breast infection or inflammation, swollen arm or armpit, and pain in the armpit were more likely to wait longer than three months to seek help. The research used data from 2009/10 National Audit of Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care. There are more than 53,600 breast cancers diagnosed in the UK every year and 11,400 deaths from the disease annually. Monica Koo, presenting author based at UCL, said: "Our research shows around one in six women diagnosed with breast cancer have symptoms other than a breast lump. These women are more likely to delay going to the doctor compared to women with breast lump alone." "It's crucial that women are aware that a lump is not the only symptom of breast cancer. If they are worried about any breast symptoms, the best thing to do is to get it checked by a doctor as soon as possible. Diagnosing cancer earlier really is key in order to increase the chances of survival. Symptom awareness campaigns such as the Be Clear on Cancer campaign should continue to emphasise breast symptoms other than breast lump." Dr Karen Kennedy, Director of the NCRI, said: "This research shows that, all too often, women are delaying going to their doctor with symptoms of breast cancer. This could be because people are simply unaware that breast cancer can present in many different ways, not just through the presence of a lump. With a disease like breast cancer, it's essential to be diagnosed as early as possible so that a treatment plan can be developed and started. Awareness campaigns need to raise awareness of all of the potential symptoms of breast cancer so that people know how to spot the signs and when to go to a doctor." ### Cold Spring Harbor, NY - One of the worst cruelties of lethal cancer is the phenomenon called wasting, or in medical terms, cachexia (pronounced ka-CHEX-ia), in which a patient seems literally to diminish in bodily terms as the cancer ravages one or more internal organs. Today, a team at Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, led by Professor Douglas Fearon, M.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and a Distinguished Scholar of the Lustgarten Foundation, publishes in Cell Metabolism results of experiments showing that tumors interfere with the patient's ability to cope with wasting and may even impair their ability to respond to immunotherapy. In mouse models of human pancreatic and colon cancer, the team traces cachexia to a molecular reprogramming of the liver induced by the tumor, the effect of which is to alter the liver's normal response to caloric deficiency. As the caloric deficiency worsens and weight continues to decline, the body responds by releasing stress hormones. The team found that these hormones, in turn, prevent the immune system from responding to the tumor. Thus the new research helps explain two ways in which pancreatic and colon tumors have long vexed doctors attempting to treat them: these tumors themselves set in motion the process that results in wasting; and wasting, in turn, accounts for why immune therapy for such cancers has typically failed. Providing massive caloric supplementation - what doctors call hyperalimentation - does not vanquish wasting; and immune therapy does not impair the tumor's ability to thrive. The researchers in Cambridge, led by M.D.-Ph.D. student Thomas R. Flint and oncologist Tobias Janowitz, M.D., Ph.D., performed experiments demonstrating that in mouse models of pancreas and colon cancer, liver reprogramming begins during pre-cachexia, when wasting has just begun but is not yet manifest. Signals broadcast by tumor cells induce the release of interleukin 6 (IL-6), a molecular beacon of the immune system called a cytokine, that normally helps induce an immune response. IL-6, in turn, impairs the capacity of the liver to respond to caloric deprivation, which is already under way in pre-cachectic mice. The team proposes this liver reprogramming is the result of IL-6 suppressing a gene-regulating protein, or transcription factor, called PPAR-alpha, which in turn suppresses a vital process in the liver called ketogenesis. "Translated into human terms, this means that when a cancer patient loses his or her appetite and decides not to eat, the liver is not going to generate sufficient energy to compensate for the caloric loss," explains Dr. Fearon. Often, cancer patients don't eat, Dr. Fearon clarifies, not because they are nauseous due to chemotherapy; rather, they feel full and simply lose their appetite. Importantly, he adds, his team's discovery that the tumor is programming the liver not to make calories, which are essential for continued brain function, assures two things. One is that wasting will continue; the other is that the body, massively releasing glucocorticoids, or stress hormones, will thereby short-circuit the immune system's ability to respond to the tumor. It's a vicious circle that sadly ends in death. The team's discovery not only sheds light on why conventional caloric supplementation fails to curtail cachexia in cancer patients. It also helps to account for the failure of T-cell checkpoint targeted immunotherapies in pancreatic and colon cancers. The tumor, in effect, is fooling the immune system into thinking the tumor is not a threat but rather just normal regenerating tissue. The team tested several ways of addressing liver reprogramming in pre-cachectic mice. Using a mouse model that recapitulates human pancreatic cancer, they administered an antibody that targets and inactivates IL-6; the same mice received massive caloric supplements via infusion. According to Dr. Flint, "Our data suggest that successful reversal of cachexia in people may well depend on co-administration of anti-IL-6 with nutritional support." The team also noted that their findings may have relevance in a wide range of IL-6-associated illnesses in which weight loss in observed. These include sepsis, HIV, tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiac failure and rheumatoid arthritis. ### The research described here was supported by: The Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research; Cancer Research UK; The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and the Cambridge ECMC. "Tumor-induced IL-6 reprograms host metabolism to suppress anti-tumor immunity" appears November 8, 2016 in Cell Metabolism. The authors are: Thomas R. Flint, Tobias Janowitz, Claire M. Connell, Edward W. Roberts, Alice E. Denton, Anthony P. Coll, Duncan I. Jodrell and Douglas T. Fearon. The paper can be viewed at: http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/home About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,100 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. The Meetings & Courses Program hosts more than 12,000 scientists from around the world each year on its campuses in Long Island and in Suzhou, China. The Laboratory's education arm also includes an academic publishing house, a graduate school and programs for middle and high school students and teachers. For more information, visit http://www.cshl.edu The Lustgarten Foundation The Lustgarten Foundation is the largest private foundation dedicated to funding pancreatic cancer research. The Foundation supports research to find a cure for pancreatic cancer, facilitates dialogue within the medical and scientific community, and educates the public about the disease through awareness campaigns and fundraising events. Since its inception, the Foundation has directed more than $125 million to research and assembled the best scientific minds with the hope that one day, a cure can be found. Thanks to private funding, 100 percent of every dollar donated to the Foundation goes directly to pancreatic cancer research. For additional information, please visit http://www.lustgarten.org. UPTON, NY--Three technologies developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have received 2016 R&D 100 Awards, which annually recognize the 100 most innovative technologies and services of the past year. The Brookhaven Lab winners are the Hard X-ray Scanning Microscope with Multilayer Laue Lens Nanofocusing Optics (a joint award with DOE's Argonne National Laboratory), MoSoy Catalyst, and Nanostructured Anti-reflecting and Water-repellent Surface Coatings. "It is an honor for Brookhaven Lab to be recognized as among the institutions where innovative research and development is taking place," said Brookhaven's Director Doon Gibbs. "Our three winners this year illustrate the wide range of scientific discovery happening at Brookhaven. My congratulations go out to all the innovative researchers being recognized by these awards." Brookhaven's custom-built x-ray microscope has advanced x-ray optics called multilayer Laue lenses for imaging a broad range of materials, with a spatial resolution of better than 15 nanometers--equivalent to 50,000 times smaller than a grain of sand. The microscope is installed at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, where the user community can perform comprehensive structural and chemical studies on everything from soil samples to biological proteins and battery materials. The only one of its kind, this microscope is also the recipient of a 2016 Microscopy Today Innovation Award. Brookhaven physicists Evgeny Nazaretski and Yong Chu led the project. MoSoy Catalyst is a novel catalyst derived from a low-cost, earth-abundant metal--molybdenum (Mo)--and renewable soybeans (Soy). This catalyst produces hydrogen in an environmentally friendly, cost-effective way, eliminating the need for expensive metal catalysts such as platinum to speed up the rate at which water is split into hydrogen and oxygen. Through this water-splitting reaction, hydrogen can be released as a gas and used directly as a fuel or to produce energy-rich hydrocarbons. The project was led by Brookhaven chemists James Muckerman, Etsuko Fujita, and Kotaro Sasaki, with the participation of Wei-Fu Chen (former postdoctoral research associate) and twin sisters Shweta and Shilpa Iyer (former high-school summer students). The nanotextured "coatings" developed at Brookhaven's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), another DOE Office of Science User Facility, are actually nanoscale features etched into the surfaces of silicon, glass, and some plastics. These textured surfaces absorb all wavelengths of light from any angle and also repel water extremely efficiently, with the water droplets carrying away particles of dirt. The method for achieving these textured surfaces leverages the ability of materials called block copolymers to self-assemble into ordered patterns that scientists can then use as templates for etching surfaces. The anti-reflective and water-repellent materials could enable the production of highly efficient self-cleaning solar cells, glare-free cell phone screens, and perfectly transparent windows. Brookhaven physicist and current CFN Director Charles Black led this project. The award winners were announced on November 3, 2016 at a ceremony held during the 54th Annual R&D 100 Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, MD. Winners are selected annually by R&D Magazine editors--who are guided by an independent panel of more than 50 judges--and represent industries, federally funded research institutions, national labs, and university research centers worldwide. Awards are given across five categories: analytical/test, IT/electrical, mechanical devices/materials, process/prototyping, and software/services. Researchers from DOE laboratories won 32 of the 100 awards this year. "The Department of Energy's National Laboratories are a global technology powerhouse that harness innovation to create jobs, support new industries, and help ensure America's competitive edge in areas of national security and science," said Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. "These awards demonstrate the incredible value that our National Laboratories continue to provide by using basic science to address tough challenges, from cryptography to clean energy, X-ray imaging to environmental remediation." ### Since 1987, Brookhaven Lab has won more than 30 R&D 100 Awards for technologies including innovative new materials, chemistry breakthroughs, biomedical products, consumer items, and testing equipment, and for advances in high-energy physics. Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov. FRANKFURT. Microbes are already used on a wide scale for the production of fuels and base chemicals, but for this most of them have to be "fed" with sugar. However, since sugar-based biotechnology finds itself in competition with food production, it is faced with increasingly fierce criticism. Carbon dioxide has meanwhile become the focus of attention as an alternative raw material for biotechnological processes. Goethe University Frankfurt has now taken charge of a collaborative European project, the aim of which is to advance the development of processes for microbial, CO2-based biotechnology. The project will be funded over the next three years with two million Euro. "This application-oriented work is the logical continuation of our successful endeavours over many years to understand the metabolism of CO2-reducing acetogenic bacteria. We can now start to steer their metabolism in such a way that they produce valuable substances and fuels which are interesting for mankind", says Professor Volker Muller, professor at the Institute of Molecular Biosciences of Goethe University Frankfurt. He is coordinating this transnational project in the framework of the "Industrial Biotechnology" European Research Area Network (ERA-NET), within which the German research groups are financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This means that Goethe University Frankfurt now plays a pivotal role in the development of a next-generation technology. The special group of acetogenic bacteria converts carbon dioxide (CO2) in a fermentation process which is independent of light and oxygen. The bacteria use hydrogen (H2) or carbon monoxide (CO) or a mix of both (synthesis gas) as a source of energy. However, the bacteria produce very little cellular energy in this metabolic process. This drastically limits the product range possible with gas fermentation, so that at present only acetic acid and ethanol can be manufactured on an industrial scale. That is why the collaborative European project has set itself the objective of genetically modifying suitable acetogenic bacteria in such a way that these energetic barriers can be overcome. Partners in the consortium are Goethe University Frankfurt as well as the universities in Ulm, Gottingen and La Coruna. ArcelorMittal, the largest steel manufacturer worldwide, is the industrial partner. This microbial, CO2-based biotechnology could in future be an environmentally friendly alternative for the reprocessing of industrial waste gases rich in energy and carbon and reduce our dependency on crude oil. The microbial fixation and transformation of CO2 into raw materials produced biologically additionally makes it possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ### A diagram can be downloaded from: http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/63820642 Acetogenic (acetic acid-producing) bacteria produce acetic acid or ethanol from H2 + CO2 or CO. Energy is released in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in the process. The synthesis of other products interesting for industry from the intermediate product acetyl-CoA, however, also uses up ATP. The aim of this project is to alter the energy balance of the bacteria by means of genetic modification in such a way that the production of such energy-consuming compounds will also be possible. In a study published last Friday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, scientists of the international collaboration of the MAGIC telescopes (Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov Telescope), located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, in Garafia (La Palma), and among which are researchers of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), have announced the discovery of gamma-ray emission more distant than any previous detection. The discovery was made possible by the gravitational lensing caused by a massive galaxy between the quasar and Earth, that "repeated" the light produced by the source. According to Einstein's General Relativity, light is deflected passing close to a large mass. To a distant observer the mass focuses light like a giant lens. The result is a much brighter, although distorted, image of the source and a chance to see distant objects that might otherwise be far too faint to detect. And just like a lens, light can pass through the lens with slightly different path lengths. On cosmic scales, this means photons -- parcels of light -- traveling along different lines of sight arrive at slightly different times. If, in addition, the source is variable, this is "imprinted" on the light with a time delay relative to a fixed first arrival. And this should not depend on the energy of the photons, according to the theory. That makes such observations especially important. QSO B0218+357 harbors a supermassive black hole in a galaxy located halfway across the Universe from Earth. Over 7 billion years ago a gigantic explosion occurred in this object, which led to the emission of an intense flare of gamma rays, which is the highest-energy form of light. In its long journey toward Earth, these photons passed in the vicinity of a foreground -- still distant -- galaxy, B0218+357G, over one billion years later. In passing and being deflected, those photons traveling along the shorter path finally arrived at Earth on July 14th, 2014 and were observed by the Large Area Telescope on board the orbiting Fermi satellite, which scans the entire sky every 3 hours. The detection of this gamma-ray outburst alerted the astronomical community, and many telescopes worldwide were immediately pointed at QSO B0218+357 to learn more from this distant cosmic explosion. Researchers operating the MAGIC telescopes, located on La Palma in the Canary Islands, became excited about the possible observation of this object in very-high-energy gamma rays. These could provide the most extreme perspective of this outburst, but, unfortunately, at that time there was full moon in La Palma, which prevented the operation of the MAGIC telescopes. The MAGIC telescopes measure very-high-energy gamma rays, which are a thousand times more energetic than those measured by Fermi, and a hundred billion times more energetic than any light we see from our Sun. From the earlier measurements of this object in 2012 by Fermi and by radio telescopes the scientists knew that photons arriving along the longer path should arrive about 11 days later. "In other words, Nature could award us with a replay, a second chance to look at the same interesting phenomenon." says the MAGIC Collaboration member Julian Sitarek (University of ?odz, Poland and IFAE former member of the Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies in Barcelona, Spain, when he started this project) who led this study, and continues: "When the time came, the MAGIC telescopes were pointed at QSO B0218+357, and, in accordance with the prediction, a flare of very-high-energy gamma rays was observed, making QSO B0218+357 the most distant object detected in the very-high-energy gamma-ray domain to date." These very-high-energy gamma-rays from any distant source have a high chance to interact with the numerous low-energy photons emitted by galaxies and stars, being lost in the process. With this observation, MAGIC has doubled the previously known visibility range of the Universe in very-high-energy gamma rays. Observation of the delayed signal from QSO B0218+357 by MAGIC showed for the first time that these very energetic photons are also deflected in agreement with General Relativity, a result that is both striking and potentially profound. The signal arriving at the predicted time may rule out some theories of the structure of the vacuum. That awaits further analysis. For the moment, this observation demonstrates a new capability of the very-high-energy gamma-ray observatories and highlights what awaits the next generation of such telescopes, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project. ### MAGIC telescopes MAGIC is a ground-based gamma-ray instrument located on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. The system of two 17m diameter Cherenkov telescopes is currently one of the three major imaging atmospheric Cherenkov instruments in the world. It is designed to detect gamma rays tens of billions to tens of trillions times more energetic than visible light. MAGIC has been built with the joint efforts of a largely European collaboration that includes about 160 researchers from Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, India and Japan. The Observatories of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) are part of the Unique Scientific And Technical Infraestructures (ICTS) network. Fake reviews do nothing for the confidence of customers buying products and services online, they also damage company reputations and can lead to ill feeling about the online marketplace itself. Now, researchers in China have devised an algorithm to help weed out fake reviews on ecommerce sites. They publish details this month in the International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics. Song Deng of the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, China, explains how our shopping habits have changed and more and more people are buying products and services online. One of the mainstays of the modern sales website are customer reviews and there are even complete sites that offer consumers a place to discuss their experiences with a given product. Over the years, there have been several scandals regarding large numbers of fake reviews on major online marketplaces and sites offering travel advice and holiday packages. There is an urgent need to develop a robust algorithm that can detect the fakers and remove their hyperbole and give consumers a truer picture of whether a given product is an five-star or a no-star item. In other words, we need an automatic lawnmower to cut down the "astroturfing", the artificial grass-roots marketing of products. Deng's method recognises deceptive reviews based on how the posters has behaved previously and the content of their earlier reviews. First, it builds a recognition model that can spot fake reviewers, ghostwriters and paid members of the "so-called "water army" based on the number of reviews, frequency and length. It then looks at content features, such as review length, the degree of professionalism, the emotional density, the format and any obvious biases. Finally, the algorithm applies an unsupervised clustering algorithm based on F statistics and a feature degree. When combined, these techniques outshine earlier detection algorithms for reviews of cars, smart phones and computers. Fundamentally, the system combines the advantages of behavior feature and content feature recognition to improve accuracy. ### Deng, S. (2016) 'Deceptive reviews detection of industrial product', Int. J. Services Operations and Informatics, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp.122-135. Social and political factors influence physician and nurse workforce supply world-wide; there is more to positive patient outcomes than organizational resources and infrastructure A key component to achieving good patient outcomes in the healthcare world is having the right number and type of healthcare professionals with the right resources. While this may seem like a simple, obvious concept, it is still a large problem for many countries throughout the world. Social and political determinants impact how healthcare resources such as direct funding, national educational priorities, societal normative gender role assignment, and other factors all contribute to patient outcomes in varying degrees. A recent study in the BioMed Central journal Human Resources for Health, led by New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing (NYU Meyers) Associate Professor Allison Squires, PhD RN, FAAN examines if country-level contextual factors have an impact on Human Resources for Health (HRH) and to what extent. Dr. Squires and her team define "country-level contextual factors" as those broader social and political institutional structures that affect, directly or indirectly, the healthcare system, population health, and health worker supply and demand. They limited the focus of the study to physicians and nurses/midwives because these are the two most consistently identifiable healthcare professions across the world. As such, the data is measuring the Nurse/Midwife per Population Ratio (NMPR) and the Physician per Population Ratio (PPR). "This exploratory observational study is grounded in complexity theory as a guiding framework," said Simon Jones, PhD, MSc, Research Professor in the Department of Population Health, Division of Healthcare Delivery Science, NYU Langone Medical Center (NYULMC), "Variables were selected through a process that attempted to choose macro-level indicators identified by the interdisciplinary literature as known or likely to affect the number of healthcare workers in a country." For the researchers, the combination of these variables attempts to account for the gender- and class-sensitive identities of physicians and nurses. The analysis consisted of one (1) year of publicly available data, using the most recently available year for each country. "The significance of the economic and inequality variables in the model suggests that systematic national policies aimed at reducing social, gender, and economic equality could positively affect health workforce production," said Dr. Squires. "For example, we discovered a strong, positive correlation between the average years spent in school and a population/ health workforce ratio. More schooling equals a better NMPR and PPR." "Another positive factor came from the increase in education, said Jennifer Uyei, PhD, MPH, Research Scientist in the Division of Comparative Effectiveness and Decision Science, NYULMC, "which correlates with a reduction of gender inequality in these professions." The researchers found evidence that gender inequality in nursing/midwives is a larger potentially more systemic problem because of its inherent female gender dominance. "Our results indicate that nurse/midwife production may be more sensitive to broader gender inequality issues than physicians," said Dr. Squires. "In some ways, this may seem like a 'common sense findings', but the prevailing research had not previously quantified it." The team also concluded the finding about the relationship between NMPR and migration rates may also be gender sensitive since men are more likely to migrate than women and with few exceptions, low and middle income country women are more likely to follow their migrating husband than initiate it themselves. The significant physician findings about migration rates may confirm this dynamic. "This analysis is the first of its kind in a multitude of ways," said Hiram Beltran-Sanchez,MS, MA, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA. "Only a few studies have looked at the context of HRH production at a macro-level, but none in this way. It also is one of few to look at gender inequality issues among health professions beyond pay disparities, and among the first of its kind to highlight how political regimes and governance issues influence health workforce production." Dr. Squires and her team notes that the limitations of the study come from the known data quality possibly having inconsistencies in reporting across countries and data coordination failures known to affect cross-national datasets. They also mention that future studies may want to test other variables in the categories they identified to see if these enhance the model's precision. The research team's hope is this data will encourage and assist in further research about these issues; laying the foundation for the addition of a new facet of information about healthcare professionals and worker production. They also are hopeful it will propel the efforts to get policy changes supportive of all cadres of health workers on these issues and as a result, improve healthcare and health outcomes worldwide. ### Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Karina Schless, BSN, RN, and Lismarys Arjona, BSN, RN, for their countless hours pulling and cleaning data to help create the dataset for this study. Funding This study was funded by a New York University Global Health Challenge grant and the Pauline Goddard Junior Faculty Fellowship. Funds were used to pay for research assistant services. Authors' contributions Allison Squires1,2*, S. Jennifer Uyei3 , Hiram Beltran-Sanchez4 and Simon A. Jones5 AS conceived the idea for the study, obtained funding for the project, participated in data analysis, wrote initial paper drafts, and finalized the manuscript for submission. JU contributed to the study design, conducted analyses in STATA, and participated in writing the paper. HBS contributed to the study design, conducted analyses in STATA including supplemental regression models, and participated in writing the paper. SJ addressed statistical methods issues in the study, completed the analyses in R, and contributed to writing the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. 1 Rory Meyers College of Nursing, New York University, 433 First Avenue, New York, NY 10010, United States of America. 2 Research on Medical Education Outcomes (ROMEO) Division, School of Medicine, New York University, 433 First Avenue, New York, NY 10010, United States of America. 3Division of Comparative Effectiveness and Decision Science, New York University School of Medicine, 227 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. 4 Department of Community Health Sciences, California Center for Population Research, University of California, Los Angeles, 650 Charles E. Young Drive South, Room 41-257 CHS, Los Angeles, CA 53706-1393, United States of America. 5 Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, 227 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. Received: 23 February 2015 Accepted: 28 July 2016 Published online 15 August 2016 About the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing is a global leader in nursing education, research, and practice. It offers a Bachelor of Science with a major in Nursing, a Master of Science and Post-Master's Certificate Programs, a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree and a Doctor of Philosophy in nursing research and theory development. An international research team led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators has uncovered details of a new, high-risk subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) as well as a possible targeted therapy. The findings appear today in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The subtype is characterized by chromosomal rearrangements that involve the MEF2D gene and one of six partner genes, most often the gene BCL9. It is called MEF2D-rearranged ALL. "MEF2D is a transcription factor that switches on expression of other genes during normal development," said corresponding author Charles Mullighan, M.D., MBBS, a member of the St. Jude Department of Pathology. "We found that MEF2D chromosomal rearrangements disrupt expression of those genes and create a vulnerability to at least one targeted therapy, the drug panobinostat." Genomic analysis of more than 1,700 children, adolescents and adults with ALL identified 42 with MEF2D rearrangements. Researchers calculated that MEF2D-rearranged ALL accounts for 5.3 percent of the almost 30 percent of ALL cases whose genetic basis was unknown. The MEF2D-rearranged subtype occurred most frequently in adolescents and was associated with reduced survival compared to some other ALL subtypes. Panobinostat inhibits the activity of a family of proteins including HDAC9. Researchers showed that MEF2D-rearranged leukemic cells produced high levels of HDAC9. Investigators tested panobinostat in the laboratory and found the drug stopped proliferation of human MEF2D-rearranged leukemic cells. Panobinostat and similar drugs are known to have broad anti-tumor activity and are currently being tested in therapies for different types of leukemia and lymphoma. Mullighan said MEF2D-rearranged leukemic cells were exquisitely sensitive to panobinostat, which suggested the drug might function in a more targeted manner against cells with the rearrangement. "If further testing of panobinostat, either alone or in combination therapy, confirms the anti-proliferative activity that would lay the foundation for a clinical trial in patients, particularly patients with high-risk disease or those who have relapsed," he said. For this study, researchers sequenced the RNA of 560 ALL patients to discover genetic changes, particularly chromosomal rearrangements that drive tumor growth. The findings were verified by RNA sequencing of 1,164 cases. Two cases also underwent whole genome sequencing (WGS). WGS examines the sequence of DNA that encodes the complete set of instructions needed for life. RNA sequencing provides a snapshot of which genes in the genome are being expressed and the level of their expression. This method of next-generation sequencing is particularly suited for identifying novel gene rearrangements, including fusion genes created when pieces of genes break and fuse when chromosomes break and reassemble. The leukemia samples used in this study came from patients in the U.S., Canada and Europe, including the federally funded Children's Oncology Group (COG) and eight other institutions and research cooperatives. The research involved collaboration with the National Cancer Institute's Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) Initiative. TARGET uses genomic analysis of COG samples to identify therapeutic targets and spur development of more effective treatment for childhood cancer. "Over the past decade we have learned a great deal about the genetic changes that lead to development of ALL," said co-author Stephen Hunger, M.D., of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the TARGET/COG ALL project. "However, as this study shows, we continue to identify new subsets of ALL defined by specific genetic changes in the leukemia cells that often provide important information about treatment outcome and identify new strategies for precision medicine treatments." In addition to patients with the MEF2D-rearranged subtype, researchers also identified 20 patients with chromosomal rearrangements that involved the ZNF384 gene and one of six different partner genes. Both the cases with MEF2D and ZNF384 rearrangements had distinct patterns of gene expression, suggesting the fusions are key drivers of each type of ALL. Researchers also showed a fusion protein resulting from the MEF2D-rearragement led to sustained growth of mouse cells in the laboratory compared to the normal MEF2D or other proteins. "That indicates the MEF2D fusion is a key step in transforming a normal white blood cell with a finite lifespan into a leukemic cell that is immortal," Mullighan said. Laboratory and clinical findings identified other distinctions. For example, ALL occurs most often in children who are between 3 and 5 years old. The average patient with MEF2D-rearranged ALL in this study was 14.The five-year cancer-free survival for MEF2D-rearranged ALL patients was 71.6 percent. That is better than some high-risk ALL subtypes, but it lagged behind the 87.3 percent for patients with certain other high-risk ALL subtypes. ### Zhaohui Gu, Ph.D., a St. Jude postdoctoral fellow, is the first author. The other authors represent 28 medical centers, universities and other organizations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Israel. The research was funded in part by Stand Up To Cancer, the St. Baldrick's Foundation, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Lady Tata Memorial Trust Fund, Alex's Lemonade Stand, grants (CA21765, CA157937, CA114737, CA180820, CA180827, CA180861, CA196171, CA145707, CA98543, CA98413, CA114766) from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health; contract (HHSN261200800001E) from the NCI; and ALSAC. In a study appearing in the November 8 issue of JAMA, Adam M. Leventhal, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, and colleagues examined associations of e-cigarette vaping with subsequent smoking frequency and heavy smoking among adolescents. E-cigarette vaping is reported by 37 percent of U.S. 10th-grade adolescents and is associated with subsequent initiation of combustible cigarette smoking. Whether individuals who vape and transition to combustible cigarettes are experimenting or progress to more frequent and heavy smoking is unknown. In addition, because some adolescents use e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid, adolescent smokers who vape could be more likely to reduce their smoking levels over time. This study consisted of an analysis of data from surveys administered to 10th grade students in ten public high schools in Los Angeles County during the fall (baseline for this report) and spring (6-month follow-up) of 2014-2015. Surveys included e-cigarette and combustible cigarette use questions from prior research, which were used to determine baseline vaping and baseline and follow-up past 30-day smoking frequency and heaviness. Students with complete vaping and smoking data at baseline and follow-up constituted the analytic sample (n = 3,084; 54 percent girls; baseline average age, 15.5 years). The prevalence rates of past 30-day vaping and smoking were low overall. Smoking frequency at follow-up was proportionately greater with successively higher levels of baseline vaping. Similar trends were found for smoking heaviness. Adjusting for baseline smoking, each increment higher on the 4-level baseline vaping frequency continuum was associated with proportionally higher odds of smoking at a greater level of frequency and heaviness by follow-up. The positive association between baseline vaping and follow-up smoking frequency was stronger among baseline nonsmokers than baseline infrequent and frequent smokers; similar trends were found for smoking heaviness. "The role of nicotine and generalizability of these results to other locations and ages, longer follow-up periods, and non-self-report assessments are unknown and merit further inquiry. The transition from vaping to smoking may warrant particular attention in tobacco control policy," the authors write. ### (doi:10.1001/jama.2016.14649; the study is available pre-embargo at the For the Media website) Editor's Note: This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported. Among very low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants, the use of supplemental donor milk compared with formula did not improve neurodevelopment at 18 months, according to a study appearing in the November 8 issue of JAMA. For many VLBW (less than 3.3 lbs.) infants, there is insufficient mother's milk, and a supplement of pasteurized donor human milk (donor milk) or preterm formula is required. With an increasing awareness of the benefits of mother's milk, use of donor milk as a supplement has increased substantially in North America. The Human Milk Banking Association of North America estimated that its members dispensed 3.8 million ounces of donor milk in 2015. Despite this shift in practice, there are limited data evaluating the efficacy of "nutrient-fortified" donor milk compared with preterm formula. Deborah L. O'Connor, Ph.D., R.D., of the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and colleagues randomly assigned VLBW infants to be fed either nutrient-enriched donor milk or formula for 90 days or to discharge when mother's milk was unavailable. Infants were from 4 neonatal units in Ontario, Canada. Of 840 eligible infants, 363 (43 percent) were randomized (181 to donor milk and 182 to preterm formula); of survivors, 299 (92 percent) had neurodevelopment assessed. Average birth weight and gestational age of infants was 2.2 lbs. and 28 weeks, respectively, and 54 percent were male. The researchers found that there were no statistically significant differences in average composite scores on measures of cognitive, language, or motor skills between groups. "If donor milk is used in settings with high provision of mother's milk, this outcome [neurodevelopment] should not be considered a treatment goal," the authors write. The researchers note that a recent systematic analysis of randomized studies found that donor milk as a supplement to mother's milk did however reduce the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis, a severe gastrointestinal emergency. A similar reduction was found in the current study with the use of nutrient-enriched donor milk. ### (doi:10.1001/jama.2016.16144; the study is available pre-embargo at the For the Media website) Editor's Note: This work was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported. Wayanad is one of the most amazing weekend destinations in the state of Kerala. This video will show you why. By Samonway Duttagupta: Kerala is undoubtedly one of the best winter destinations in India. The weather is fine and the verdant landscape is still after the recently concluded rains. One such picturesque destination in the state of Kerala is Wayanad, a quaint town perched up on the mist-laden mountains of the Western Ghats. A major chunk of the district is covered with lush green forests that boast of a unique biodiversity. In the wilderness of this place, one gets to see numerous endangered species. The Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary is the second largest in the state of Kerala. advertisement Home to mountains, forests, coffee plantations and caves, Wayanad is a destination every nature lover would love. Bordered by Bengaluru (278 km) and some other cities and towns, wayanad makes for an amazing weekend getaway for every nature loving traveller. And the latest video released by Kerala Tourism showcases just that. The video shows three travellers, belonging to different walks of life--an air hostess, an army officer, and a backpacker--utilise their off days from work to travel to Wayanad. The four-minute video shows how each of them enjoys the destination in his or her own unique way. Also watch: This travel film will take you to the depths of Kerala's wilderness in Thekkady While the air hostess enjoys her days staying in a beautiful tree house and strolling around the woods and appreciating nature, the army officer is shown riding all the way to the place on his bike and experience the place like a local. The backpacker, on the other hand, camps in beautiful spots and participates in several adventure activities of choice. The three characters in this video will make you relate yourself as a traveller and as a person who deserves a weekend getaway. Besides, it also showcases how dynamic Wayanad is--it caters to travellers of every kind. Watch the full video here: --- ENDS --- Among women with high-risk early breast cancer, the use of tailored dose-dense chemotherapy compared with standard adjuvant chemotherapy did not result in a statistically significant improvement in breast cancer recurrence-free survival, and nonhematologic toxic effects were more frequent in the tailored dose-dense group, according to a study appearing in the November 8 issue of JAMA. Dose-dense therapy, defined as delivery of chemotherapy at shorter intervals without increasing the cumulative dose, has been suggested as a means to improve efficacy of chemotherapy for early breast cancer. Dosing of most chemotherapy agents is calculated based on body surface area, which leads to large interpatient variability in toxic effects and efficacy. Whether tailored dosing can improve outcomes is unknown, as is the role of dose-dense adjuvant chemotherapy. Jonas Bergh, M.D., of the Karolinska Institutet and University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues randomly assigned 2,017 women who had surgery for nonmetastatic node-positive or high-risk node-negative breast cancer to receive tailored dose-dense adjuvant chemotherapy (n = 1,006) or standard chemotherapy (n = 1,011). The study was conducted at 86 sites in Sweden, Germany, and Austria. Among the randomized patients, 2,000 received study treatment (at least 1 cycle of chemotherapy). Median follow-up time was 5.3 years. The researchers found that the groups did not differ in 5-year breast cancer recurrence-free survival (89 percent [tailored dose-dense group] vs 85 percent [control group]), 5-year overall survival (92 percent vs 90 percent) or 5-year distant disease-free survival (89 percent vs 87 percent). The tailored dose-dense group had significantly better event-free survival (EFS) than the control group (5-year EFS, 87 percent vs 82 percent). Grade 3 or 4 nonhematologic toxic effects occurred in 527 (53 percent) in the tailored dose-dense group and 366 (37 percent) in the control group. The authors write that an individual patient data meta-analysis would help to assess whether chemotherapy dose intensification in early breast cancer should be reserved for specific subgroups of patients. ### (doi:10.1001/jama.2016.15865; the study is available pre-embargo at the For the Media website) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc. Strong global and national leadership is needed as lack of access to essential medicines threatens progress towards universal health coverage. The cost of providing a basic set of 201 essential medicines to all people in low- and middle-income countries could be as little as US$1-2 per person per month (US$13-25 per person per year), according to the first analysis of the cost of providing a basket of essential medicines by The Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines. However, one in five countries worldwide spend less than this per person per year on medicines, demonstrating the urgent need for additional financing to meet basic health care needs. At the same time, the world as a whole spends at least 8 times this amount on medicines, highlighting massive inequities and inefficiencies in financing and governance that restrict access to medicines for many people worldwide. Essential medicines are defined as a core set of medicines to meet the priority health needs of populations, and include analgesics such as morphine, tuberculosis, HIV or malaria drugs, medicines for chronic diseases such as insulin or cancer medicines as well as vaccines and contraceptives. The Commission argues that access to affordable and quality-assured essential medicines is central to the Sustainable Development Goal target of achieving universal health coverage by 2030, and that strong government and international leadership is needed to effectively implement essential medicines policies and create accountability. The Commission brings together a group of 21 international experts and makes recommendations to governments, civil society, national health institutions, national medicines regulatory agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry. The report will be launched in London on 8th November [1]. "Countries around the world, regardless of income level, face enormous challenges ensuring equitable access to affordable, quality-assured essential medicines," says co-chair of the Commission Andy Gray, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. "Recent examples such as the EpiPen scandal in the USA, the high cost of Hepatitis C drugs or the failure to develop new antibiotics to treat resistant infections demonstrate that access to safe, quality and affordable medicines is a global issue, at the heart of advancing access to universal health coverage." [2] Paying for a basket of essential medicines Based on disease prevalence, consumption of medicines and medicine prices, the Commission estimates that the cost of providing 201 medicines (378 different products) from WHO's Model list of Essential Medicines [3] to the total populations of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is between US$77.4 and US$151.9 billion per year, or the equivalent of US$12.9-25.4 per person per year (table 1). Recent estimates suggest that the average total spend on medicines in low-income countries (LICs) is US$8.6 per person per year (table 3) - with the majority of funding coming from individuals and households. Additional financing is therefore urgently needed to provide access to essential medicines. Overall, 28 out of 31 LICs and 13 out of 47 LMICs spend less on medicines than the lower threshold identified in the model (figure 3) - a total of 41 countries, or 1 in 5 countries worldwide. Meanwhile, global expenditure on medicines is estimated at US$1.2 trillion in 2017 - approximately 8 times the upper threshold identified in the model. The Commission highlights national and global policies (e.g. promoting generic medicines use, price transparency, pooled procurement) that, when implemented effectively, can make essential medicines affordable and translate into sustainable access for all. Related to this, the Commission warns that flexibilities included in the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which provide governments with options that allow for the protection of public health including access to affordable medicines, are under continual threat from the TRIPS-plus obligations included in bilateral and regional trade agreements. Regulatory systems must be strengthened to ensure quality and safety of medicines Despite some progress, serious problems with medicine quality and safety persist in many low- and middle-income countries. At their most benign, poor quality medicines have no treatment effect, and at their worst cause human disasters. For instance, over 120,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to have died in 2013 because of substandard antimalarial medicines. In many cases, poor quality or unsafe medicines are the result of serious negligence in manufacturing (whether by accident or intent), followed by failures of the quality assurance process. In most high-income countries, National Medicines Regulatory Agencies provide quality assurance, but in the face of weak national regulatory systems in LMICs, many procurement agencies rely on WHO's prequalification programme. Good procurement methods can greatly improve the quality and safety of drugs (see figure 9, Kenya example). The Commission argues that the WHO pre-qualification programme must be evolved to cover a wider range of drugs. At the same time, national medicines regulatory authorities must focus on activities that add value, such as regional collaboration and enforcement of existing regulations; and their performance must be monitored independently. The Commission also warns of inappropriate use of medicines, such as over or underuse (eg, overuse of opioids in the USA vs. underuse in pain management in many LICs), misuse (eg, antibiotics taken for a viral disease) or unnecessarily expensive use (eg, brand-name medicines are used despite the existence of generics). A key driver of inappropriate use is pharmaceutical promotion, which the authors say should be controlled and monitored by robust regulatory agencies. Global R&D policy needs urgent reform The current system, in which market exclusivity and patents are the main drivers of innovation, fails to incentivise research and development into essential medicines. The Commission says that pharmaceutical research must be re-focused on developing affordable new essential medicines to address high priority diseases, by adopting a new global R&D framework, including a Global Research Fund to finance R&D up-front and to delink the costs of R&D from the price of medicines. Following the success of patent pools for HIV medicines, the Commission calls on the international community to create a general essential medicines patent pool, to licence patents to other companies in order to create a competitive generics market and improve access to medicines in LMICs. Initiatives to address the lack of R&D on missing essential medicines are largely dependent on charitable donations, and have helped address some of these problems (eg, new medicines for HIV or tuberculosis), but they do not provide a long-term solution. "Often, the public pay for medicines twice - first through government funded research, and then through high prices. The current system of developing new medicines is in crisis, as it largely fails to produce much-needed products to address the health needs of millions of people. When new essential medicines are developed, market exclusivity, through patents or other mechanisms, allows for pricing that potentially makes them unaffordable, even in high income countries," says co-chair Professor Hans Hogerzeil, University of Groningen, Netherlands. "International agencies and national governments must take a much stronger lead in setting public-health based priorities for R&D, and use patent laws in the interest of public health." Finally, the Commission warns that lack of transparency and access to data on essential medicines is a general obstacle to the effective implementation and evaluation of essential medicines strategies, and propose a set of 24 indicators to measure progress. "We believe that our recommendations can substantially improve access to essential medicines in high- and low-income areas alike," says co-chair Professor Veronika J. Wirtz, Boston University School of Public Health, USA. "But if we cannot measure change, we cannot hold governments and health systems accountable for improving essential medicines as part of universal health coverage. Promoting accountability for improving essential medicines policies will require drastic changes in our approaches to transparency and implementing corrective actions across both sectors, public and private." Working alongside The Lancet Commission, the Youth Commission on Essential Medicines [4], a group of 17 young commissioners from around the world, has provided comment on the report. In a linked Comment, the Youth Commission write: "The factors shaping access transcend borders and demand collaboration to comprehensively address the interaction between economics, trade, and intellectual property rights, rather than expansion of existing solutions which have not yet achieved access globally. If methods to improve access are continually implemented on an ad-hoc basis, the world will forgo opportunities for identifying and tackling the real drivers of inequity in access... The crisis in access to medicines is usually presented as a technical problem, but it is a problem of accountability. Today, no one is held accountable for not delivering access to essential medicines, and progress has not been monitored as the global challenge it represents." In a linked Comment, the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs Lilianne Ploumen and Minister for Health Edith Schippers discuss R&D of essential medicines, including recent negotiations on trade agreements, such as TRIPS. They write: "The system is broken but change is underway to fix it. Governments cannot do this alone. We need meaningful efforts by both the pharmaceutical industry and governments to invest in new medicines, provide full transparency on costs, prices, and who pays what beforehand, and respect the legal space for governments to protect public health. If we don't succeed in these efforts, we cannot guarantee people's access to innovative and affordable medicines. Without fixing this broken system we will not reach the Sustainable Development Goal to ensure healthy lives and wellbeing for all, at all ages. "Leave no one behind", the UN's slogan, will prove to be empty words." ### NOTES TO EDITORS The independent Commission is comprised of 21 international experts who have worked for the report for the past two years. The work of the Commission was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Health Organization, the University Medical Centre Groningen, Boston University, and by all the academic institutions and other organisations that have generously allowed their staff to devote time to the work of the Commission. Further information about the Commission: http://www.bu.edu/lancet-commission-essential-medicines-policies/ [1] To register for the launch event: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-lancet-commission-on-essential-medicines-policies-registration-27989542475 [2] Quotes direct from authors and cannot be found in the text of the Commission [3] WHO model list of essential medicines http://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/ [4] For more information about the Youth Commission, see: http://ycemp.com/ IF YOU WISH TO PROVIDE A LINK FOR YOUR READERS, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WILL GO LIVE AT THE TIME THE EMBARGO LIFTS: http://www.thelancet.com/commissions/essential-medicines The Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago, but little pieces of them live on in the form of DNA sequences scattered through the modern human genome. A new study by geneticists at the University of California, Davis, shows why these traces of our closest relatives are slowly being removed by natural selection. "On average, there has been weak but widespread selection against Neanderthal genes," said Graham Coop, professor in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and Center for Population Biology, and senior author on a paper describing the work published Nov. 8 in the journal PLOS Genetics. That selection seems to be a consequence of a small population of Neanderthals mixing with a much larger population of modern humans. Neanderthals split from our African ancestors over half a million years ago, and lived in Europe and Central Asia until a few tens of thousands of years ago. Archaeological discoveries have shown that they had quite a sophisticated culture, Coop said. Thanks to DNA samples retrieved from a number of fossils, we have enough data on the Neanderthal genome to identify their genes among ours. When modern humans left Africa about 50,000 to 80,000 years ago and spread through Europe and Asia, they interbred with Neanderthals. The first hybrid offspring would have been, on average, a 50-50 mix of modern human and Neanderthal genes, and could then have themselves bred with modern humans, Neanderthals or other hybrids. So what happened to the Neanderthal DNA? Today, Neanderthal genes are a few percent of the genome of people of European ancestry, a little more common in people of East Asian descent, and almost absent in people of African ancestry. Coop and postdoctoral researchers Ivan Juric and Simon Aeschbacher devised methods to measure the degree of natural selection acting on Neanderthal DNA in the human genome. One hypothesis has been that Neanderthals quickly became genetically incompatible with modern humans, so their hybrid offspring were not "fit" in evolutionary terms - they either failed to thrive or were not fertile. Weak but Widespread Selection Against Neanderthal Genes The researchers found something different. Rather than showing strong selection against a few Neanderthal genes, they found weak, but widespread selection against many Neanderthal DNA sequences that is slowly removing it from our genome. Coop said that's consistent with a small, isolated population of Neanderthals mixing with a much larger population of modern humans. Inbreeding in small populations means that genetic variants can remain common even if they're harmful to some degree. But when they mix into a larger population, natural selection starts to act against those variants and weed them out. "The human population size has historically been much larger, and this is important since selection is more efficient at removing deleterious variants in large populations," Juric said. "Weakly deleterious variants that could persist in Neanderthals could not persist in humans. We think that this simple explanation can account for the pattern of Neanderthal ancestry that we see today along the genome of modern humans." The findings are consistent with other recently published work. If Neanderthals had been more numerous when modern humans encountered them, we might have a different mix of Neanderthal and human genes, Juric said. ### The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Juric is currently at 23andMe, Inc., Mountain View, Calif. A weight loss condition that affects patients with cancer has provided clues as to why cancer immunotherapy - a new approach to treating cancer by boosting a patient's immune system -- may fail in a substantial number of patients. Cancer immunotherapies involve activating a patient's immune cells to recognise and destroy cancer cells. They have shown great promise in some cancers, but so far have only been effective in a minority of patients with cancer. The reasons behind these limitations are not clear. Now, researchers at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge have found evidence that the mechanism behind a weight loss condition that affects patients with cancer could also be making immunotherapies ineffective. The condition, known as cancer cachexia, causes loss of appetite, weight loss and wasting in most patients with cancer towards the end of their lives. However, cachexia often starts to affect patients with certain cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, much earlier in the course of their disease. In research published today in the journal Cell Metabolism, the scientists have shown in mice that even at the early stages of cancer development, before cachexia is apparent, a protein released by the cancer changes the way the body, in particular the liver, processes its own nutrient stores. "The consequences of this alteration are revealed at times of reduced food intake, where this messaging protein renders the liver incapable of generating sources of energy that the rest of the body can use," explains Thomas Flint, an MB/PhD student from the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine and co-first author of the study. "This inability to generate energy sources triggers a second messaging process in the body - a hormonal response -- that suppresses the immune cell reaction to cancers, and causes failure of anti-cancer immunotherapies." "Cancer immunotherapy might completely transform how we treat cancer in the future -- if we can make it work for more patients," says Dr Tobias Janowitz, Medical Oncologist and Academic Lecturer at the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge and co-first author. "Our work suggests that a combination therapy that either involves correction of the metabolic abnormalities, or that targets the resulting hormonal response, may protect the patient's immune system and help make effective immunotherapy a reality for more patients." The next step for the team is to see how this discovery might be translated for the benefit of patients with cancer. "If the phenomenon that we've described helps us to divide patients into likely responders and non-responders to immunotherapy, then we can use those findings in early stage clinical trials to get better information on the use of new immunotherapies," says Professor Duncan Jodrell, director of the Early Phase Trials Team at the Cambridge Cancer Centre and co-author of the study. "We need to do much more work in order to transform these results into safe, effective therapies for patients, however," adds Professor Douglas Fearon, Emeritus Sheila Joan Smith Professor of Immunology at the University of Cambridge and the senior author, who is now also working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Weill Cornell Medical College. "Even so, the results raise the distinct possibility of future cancer therapies that are designed to target how the patient's own body responds to cancer, with simultaneous benefit for reducing weight loss and boosting immunotherapy." The research was largely funded by Cancer Research UK, the Lustgarten Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Rosetrees Trust. ### Reference Flint, TR et al. Tumor-Induced IL-6 Reprograms Host Metabolism to Suppress Anti-tumor Immunity. Cell Metabolism; 8 Nov 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2016.10.010 Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased risk of developing bladder cancer, according to a systematic review of seven studies presented today at the Society for Endocrinology annual conference in Brighton. Though further clinical studies are needed to confirm the findings, the study adds to a growing body of evidence on the importance of maintaining adequate vitamin D levels. Vitamin D, which is produced by the body through exposure to sunshine, helps the body control calcium and phosphate levels. Vitamin D can also be obtained from food sources such as fatty fish and egg yolks. Previous studies have linked vitamin D deficiency with a host of health problems including cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and cancer. In countries with low levels of sunlight, it is difficult to obtain enough vitamin D from food alone. In the UK, 1 in 5 adults are vitamin D deficient and 3 in 5 have low levels. This is especially prevalent in people with darker skin: in winter, 75% of dark-skinned people in the UK are vitamin D deficient. In this work, researchers from the University of Warwick and University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, Coventry and the investigated the link between vitamin D and bladder cancer risk. They reviewed seven studies on the topic which ranged from having 112 to 1125 participants each. Five out of the seven studies linked low vitamin D levels to an increased risk of bladder cancer. In a separate experiment, the researchers then looked at the cells that line the bladder, known as transitional epithelial cells, and found that these cells are able to activate and respond to vitamin D, which in turn can stimulate an immune response. According to lead author of the study Dr Rosemary Bland, this is important because the immune system may have a role in cancer prevention by identifying abnormal cells before they develop into cancer. "More clinical studies are required to test this association, but our work suggests that low levels of vitamin D in the blood may prevent the cells within the bladder from stimulating an adequate response to abnormal cells," said Dr Bland. "As vitamin D is cheap and safe, its potential use in cancer prevention is exciting and could potentially impact on the lives of many people." ### Abstract P129 Low vitamin D is associated with increased bladder cancer risk; a systematic review and evidence of a potential mechanism. Rosemary Bland1,2, Corina Chivu1, Kieran Jefferson2, Donald MacDonald2, Gulnaz Iqbal1 & Janet Dunn1 1The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK; 2University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, Coventry, UK. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with the development of some cancers and in vitro 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25D) reduces cell proliferation. We suggest that modification of tissue specific immune responses, as a consequence of local synthesis of 1,25D, may be key. To assess the impact of serum 25D on the risk of bladder cancer we conducted a systematic review. To test our hypothesis, expression of vitamin D signalling components and the synthesis of 1,25D were examined in human bladder epithelial cell lines (T24/83 and RT4). A search of Embase, Web of Science, Medline and Cochrane library (April-May 2016) identified 287 citations. Following title and abstract review by 2 reviewers 7 full papers were appraised. Studies varied in the number of participants (112-1125) and point of vitamin D measurement (pre-diagnosis, diagnosis, or follow-up). Low vitamin D levels were associated with bladder cancer risk in 5 of the 7 studies. Higher vitamin D levels also correlated with better survival and outcomes. The vitamin D receptor and 25-hydroxyvitamin D 1-hydroxylase (CYP27B1; 1-OHase) mRNA and protein were expressed by both cell lines. 24-hydroxylase (24-OHase; metabolises 1,25D) mRNA was almost undetectable in unstimulated cells but was increased significantly by 1,25D (10nM, 3-24 hours; p<0.05). 24-OHase was also induced by 25D (100nM, 6-24 hours; p<0.05) indicating 1-OHase activity. Synthesis of 1,25D was confirmed by EIA. Cathelicidin mRNA was induced by 1,25D and 25D in RT4 cells (10nM/100nM, 6 hours; p<0.05). These data demonstrate that bladder cancer risk correlates with low serum 25D levels. Transitional epithelial cells express functional vitamin D signalling and are able to synthesize sufficient 1,25D to stimulate a local immune response. We propose that in order to initiate a cell-mediated immune response to malignancy adequate levels of serum 25D are required for synthesis of 1,25D by bladder epithelial cells. Notes for editors 1. For further information about the study please contact: Dr Rosemary Bland Honorary Associate Professor University of Warwick Tel: +44 07506102426 Email: rosemary.bland1@gmail.com 2. The study Low vitamin D is associated with increased bladder cancer risk; a systematic review and evidence of a potential mechanism is a poster presented by Dr Rosemary Bland at the Society for Endocrinology's annual conference. Please note this is a conference abstract, and this study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. 3. For press enquiries, please contact the Society for Endocrinology press office: Omar Jamshed Communications Executive Tel: +44 (0)1454 642 206 (office) Tel: +44 (0) 7876824027 (mobile) Email: omar.jamshed@endocrinology.org University of Warwick Medial Relations Manager Nicola Jones email: N.Jones.1@warwick.ac.uk Mobile: 07920531221 4. The Society for Endocrinology's annual conference is held at the Brighton Conference Centre from 7-9 November 2016. The conference features some of the world's leading basic and clinical endocrinologists who present their work. Journalists wishing to attend should contact the Society for Endocrinology press office using the details above. The scientific programme is available on the conference webpage. 5. The Society for Endocrinology is a UK-based membership organisation representing a global community of scientists, clinicians and nurses who work with hormones. Together we aim to improve public health by advancing endocrine education and research, and engaging wider audiences with the science of hormones. http://www.endocrinology.org Alcohol abuse is pervasive in the military, where a culture of heavy drinking and the stress of deployment lead many soldiers down a troubled path. Almost half of active-duty military members in the United States -- 47 percent -- were binge-drinkers in 2008, up from 35 percent a decade earlier. Rates of heavy drinking also rose during that period, according to a 2012 report by the Institute of Medicine. But many in the military avoid seeking help for alcohol abuse, fearing disciplinary action or other repercussions, and few soldiers are referred for evaluation or treatment. "If you're in the military and you seek substance abuse treatment, your commanding officer is notified and it goes on your medical record and your military record. That's a huge barrier," said Denise Walker, director of the Innovative Programs Research Group at the University of Washington School of Social Work. Not surprisingly, there is little research on what type of treatment is most effective for active-duty military members. To shed new insight on that question and remove obstacles to seeking treatment, Walker and a team of researchers tested a telephone-based intervention geared specifically to military members struggling with alcohol abuse -- with promising results. The study, published online Oct. 13 in October in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that participants in the telephone intervention significantly reduced their drinking over time, had lower rates of alcohol dependence and were more likely to seek treatment. The trial involved 242 military members at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in western Washington, who were recruited through advertisements and informational booths at military events. All met the criteria for alcohol use disorder, though none were enrolled in substance abuse treatment programs. Participants had an initial interview by phone to assess their daily and monthly alcohol consumption. They were also asked a series of questions about the consequences of their drinking -- for example, whether it had impacted their physical training or interfered with their ability to fulfill their duties. Then participants were randomized to a treatment or control group. The control group received educational information about alcohol and other drug use, while the treatment group got a one-hour personalized intervention session over the phone that used "motivational interviewing," a goal-oriented approach intended to help people make positive behavioral changes. "The intervention really connects their behavior with their values and goals and wants for themselves," Walker said. "It's a safe place to talk confidentially and freely with someone on the other end who is compassionate and non-judgmental." The counselors also asked participants about their alcohol consumption versus that of their peers, to gauge whether excessive drinking was in part spurred by normative perceptions about alcohol use in the military. "The army has a culture of drinking, so there's a heightened sense among soldiers that their peers are drinking more than they actually are," said Thomas Walton, project director for the study and a UW doctoral student in social work. "When those perceptions are corrected, it can have a strong effect, as heavy-drinking soldiers often reduce their intake to more typical levels." Follow-up interviews were conducted three and six months after the sessions and showed significant decreases in both drinking rates and alcohol dependence. Intervention group participants went from drinking 32 drinks weekly on average to 14 drinks weekly after six months, and their rates of alcohol dependence dropped from 83 to 22 percent. Alcohol dependence also decreased in the control group, from 83 to 35 percent. "Those are pretty dramatic reductions in drinking, particularly for one session with a counselor," Walker said. "That was really encouraging." Participants increasingly sought treatment over time; by the six-month follow-up, nearly one-third of soldiers in both groups had made some move toward seeking treatment, such as discussing substance abuse concerns with an army chaplain or making an appointment for treatment intake. While the intervention led to more dramatic decreases in drinking, providing educational information may be enough to prompt some to take a first step toward making a change, the researchers said. Walker and Walton attribute the intervention's success to its convenience and confidentiality. Participants could enroll without fear of their superiors finding out -- recruitment materials made it clear that military command was not involved -- and could schedule the phone calls at their convenience. "Some did the session on their lunch breaks or in the garage while their family was in the house," Walker said. "They didn't have to walk into a building that says 'army substance abuse program.' It was private and a low-burden intervention." And though the military offers substance abuse programs, Walker said, many soldiers avoid seeking help and are not referred to treatment until their problems reach a crisis point. "People who get into army substance abuse programs are often mandated to go or have gotten into trouble," she said. "That leaves out a huge proportion of the population who are struggling and not doing well." That reality and the protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Walker said, have intensified the need for additional options to help soldiers grappling with substance abuse and other problems. Telephone-based counseling, she said, is a cost-effective way to encourage military members to seek help confidentially, without the barriers of more traditional approaches. "This intervention has the potential to be used for soldiers and military personnel worldwide. It would really help fill the gap in service provision that is currently available to soldiers." ### Co-authors are Clayton Neighbors, professor of psychology at the University of Houston ; Debra Kaysen, a UW professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences; Lyungai Mbilinyi, research social scientist at RTI International; Jolee Darnell, program manager of the Army Substance Abuse Program; Lindsey Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg; and Roger A. Roffman, professor emeritus at the UW School of Social Work. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. For more information or a copy of the study, contact Walker at ddwalker@uw.edu or 206-543-7511. Scientists at the University of York have charted more than 1,000 years of Tanzanian environmental history using sediments extracted from a peat bog. Working in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, where only 15% of the tropical forests remain compared to 1,000 years ago, the team aimed to identify if the region's rich biodiversity had altered over the years and what major events in history, such as the emergence of the ivory trade in the Victorian period, might have contributed to changes in the forests. Researchers took layers of peat from a bog, where material, such as pollen, charcoal from fires, and other remains from the environment, are trapped and preserved over many years in the sediments. Using radiocarbon dating techniques they were able to reconstruct how the ecosystem changed over the past 1,200 years. Research results show that the forest ecosystem remains quite stable -- the same as it was more than 1,000 years go. This suggests that climate change has not yet impacted on the forest, possibly due to its proximity to moist, fresh air from the Indian Ocean. Results also show, however, that the shrinking size of the forest is largely due to human activity. Dr Robert Marchant, from the University of York's Department of Environment, said: "The Eastern Arc Mountains are a biodiversity hotspot, but it has been under threat from human activities for many years. "Forests that are now separated by some miles were once joined together, but what we don't know is just how much these changes have impacted on its biodiversity over time and what activity had the biggest impact on its environment. "With this new data we were able to see at what points the environment started to change and through historical records we matched these changes to particular events in time. For example we start to see pollen from New World crops, such as maize, start to spread from around 1750, as well as evidence of forest plantations of pine trees, and eucalyptus from the Colonial period, which are not native to the environment. "Maize crop enters our record at a time when large parts of the forest were cut down and farmed to accommodate the European ivory trades -- or caravan trades as they were known." In the 1860s European and Arab traders to the region slaughtered up to 70,000 elephants for their ivory each year. It was traded to other countries for the production of a range of items, from ornaments, piano keys, cutlery handles, jewellery, and as part of exhibits. It not only decimated the elephant population, but also the impact the animals had on the forest composition and distribution. Dr Jemma Finch, who carried out the work at York, but is now based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, added: "We start to see large increases in charcoal in the record at about the time colonial forest offices arrive to cut trees for timber trading. "It is only in the 1980s that we start to see less human activity in the records. This was the time when a timber ban was put in place and forest preservation policies established." The researchers highlight that although human activity has been the biggest impact on the forest over the years, and biodiversity is relatively stable today despite the diminished size of the forest, climate change is still a threat to its future. Dr Marchant said: "This research can help us identify the best areas of the forest to conserve for sustainable growth, where plant and animal life and, most importantly, the ecosystem services that sustain the Tanzania nation, are most likely to be supported. "If predictions about a wetter, but much warmer, climate in the future are accurate, then now is the time to start to invest in this important landscape so that it is still here in the next 1,000 years." The research is published in the journal The Holocene. ### Defra minister George Eustice is facing calls to back British agriculture after telling farmers they should move away from the notion of subsidies. Mr Eustice is due to deliver a keynote speech at the Northern Farming Conference in Northumberland on Wednesday (9 November). The risks and opportunities posed by Brexit will be one of the hot topics addressed at this years event, which takes place at Hexham Auction Mart. The government has pledged to maintain the current level of farm support payments until 2020. See also: New farm support system will end payment delays Eustice But earlier this autumn, Mr Eustice described leaving the European Union as an opportunity to move to a totally different way of supporting farming. He added: One of the things weve floated is whether we could move to a totally different type of system where you help farmers manage risks. There was also the potential to reward farmers who committed to practices such as catchment sensitive farming, which aims to reduce water pollution, said Mr Eustice. Mapping madness Doing so would support farmers in a much more natural, holistic way than the CAP system, which involved the madness of trying to map every single feature in the country. After speaking at an NFU fringe meeting during the Tory party conference in Birmingham, Mr Eustice told a meeting in Belfast that farmers should move away from the notion of subsidies. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has now challenged Mr Eustice to back Britains farmers by committing to the EU single market and ruling out a post-Brexit cut in support payments. British farmers could face crippling tariffs on exports if the UK left the single market as well as the European Union, claimed Mr Farron. Many farmers would be driven under unless the government commit to maintaining the current level of farm support payments, he added. Mr Farron said: Farmers are desperate for certainty, and the government should be upfront with them about the future. He added: I am challenging [Mr Eustice] to commit to retaining membership of the single market and to maintaining the level of farm support payments post-2020. Continued support Without continued support and the ability to trade freely, huge numbers of local farmers will be put out of business, and with them will go the landscape and way of life that characterises rural Britain. The Northern Farming Conference will also hear from Peter Kendall, former NFU president and current chairman of the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB). Sir Peter said: We are entering one of the most defining moments for the future of British agriculture, as the terms of Brexit are both proposed by government and finally agreed. Weve always realised that support would be reduced over time, but there is now every chance that this will happen more quickly than it once might have. We also face more competition in domestic and overseas markets. The challenge for British agriculture will be to minimise the risks and to maximise the opportunities this presents us. Impounded cars ransacked, sacred items destroyed; one water protector arrested and held for conspiracy while transporting donated supplies to camp. CANNON BALL, ND, November 3, 2016 Members of the Red Owl Legal Collective (ROLC), a group providing pro bono legal support to the thousands of people encamped near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, are condemning increasing incidents of disturbing overreach by local and state law enforcement.Since August 2016, Indigenous people and allies have been encamped on the shores of the Cannon Ball and Missouri Rivers in North Dakota to protect ancestral land and waters from the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Their numbers have since swelled into the thousands.On October 27, law enforcement launched a violent raid on a new frontline camp. Over 100 armed officers, accompanied by a sound cannon, armored vehicles, and a bulldozer deployed tear gas, mace, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades against Indigenous protectors and horses. But what happened after and since the raid has not been so visible, report ROLC members.As part of the raid, law enforcement created a blockade between protectors and their vehicles, then impounded over 60 of those vehicles after mass-arresting protectors; because many vehicles belonged to protectors who were arrested, dozens were released only to find themselves stranded in Bismarck or Mandan, over an hours drive from camp. And when owners finally regained possession, it got worse.Most of the vehicles had been totally ransacked, said ROLCs Angela Bibens. We saw items removed from cars with no explanation, medicines emptied and scattered around, property destroyed, damage to steering columns, and evidence of attempts to open locked luggage. One protector discovered an airjack a device used to force open car doors in their passenger seat.The property damage didnt stop with cars. A dumpster load of seized property was recovered at a Bureau of Indian Affairs checkpoint on the highway about 2 miles from the camp. When protectors returned for their things, they found sacred item after sacred item had been defaced, with apparent intentionality. One item, a bull skull, had its horns snapped clean off. One protector, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Sabelle, believes these actions are attempts to intimidate potential travelers to the camp. When they target us like this, it makes other people scared of coming, she said.The ROLC also reports two disconcerting incidents of arrests. On November 2, a protector was pulled over, arrested, and told he was he being held for conspiracy charges. He was later charged with impeding government function, a charge Bibens finds disturbing given what the protector was doing at the time of his arrest: driving a U-Haul full of donated kayaks to the camp. On November 3, at least 17 clergy representing multiple faiths were arrested at the governors office [praying] and charged with disorderly conduct and criminal trespass. Rather than bring all the arrestees to a holding facility in Bismarck, law enforcement separated the group by gender, then drove all the women to Fargo, ND, more than four hours drive away. ROLC has found no evidence that this decision was made because of a lack of space. The separation is part of a larger pattern of separating arrestees on seemingly arbitrary bases; ROLC reports that arrestees have been sent to six different facilities all over the state so far.We get treated differently because the color of our skin, when were all human. Its uncomfortable to get targeted like that, said Star, another protector living at the camp. We just want clean water for everyone. We get put in dog kennels they dont care. Were not here to be angry, were here in peace and prayer, for all of us. The only weapons we have are our prayers, our good thoughts, and our humanity.ROLC volunteers have maintained a 24/7 presence at the main camp since August 2016 to deal with the growing pile of criminal cases and civil litigations resulting from the excessive use of force and suppression of First Amendment activity at Standing Rock.####This release may be excerpted or copied in full on the condition of proper attribution to the Red Owl Legal Collective.Red Owl Legal Collective/National Lawyers Guild November 7, 2016 - National Nurses United (NNU)s Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a national network of volunteer nurses, will deploy a second team of RN volunteers to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservationto help with existing medical and first aid support for land and water protectorsNNU announced today. Photo: RNRN nurses at Standing Rock -- Amy Zipperer (Maine), Terry Tate (Louisiana), Amy Bowen (Missouri). As a nurse, I understand the necessity of preserving and protecting our water. Water equals life, and the Dakota Access pipeline threatens the health and well being of millions of Americans, said RNRN volunteer Amy Bowen, RN, who traveled to Standing Rock in October and will return again this month. Nurses honor the sacrifices being made by the water protectors while they stand up for what is right, against corporate greed.RNRN volunteers will assist medic tents at the North/Oceti Sakowin and Sacred Stone camps. RNRN is also working with local partners to establish the Mni Wiconi (Water is Life) clinic to meet the ongoing healthcare needs of the Standing Rock Sioux community and the water protectors. Donations for the Mni Wiconi clinic can be made here: https://crowdfund.ucsf.edu/project/2913/updates/1 NNU has released several statements of solidarity with the standing Rock Sioux tribe and fellow water protectors, who, for months, have sought to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which nurses say poses great risk to public health. The nurses latest statement sharply condemns the violent attacks on protectors.This has become a seminal battle over the First Amendment protection of public protest. It is also a challenge for everyone who is concerned about the rights of First Nation people and their sacred sites and water sources, as well as the threat the pipeline poses to environmental degradation, public health, and to accelerating the climate crisis, said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN.It is long past time to call into question all these dangerous pipeline projects that have become increasingly common, generally with far less public notice than the Dakota Access pipeline, or the similar successful campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline, has garnered. These projects pose a continual threat to public health from the extraction process through the transport to the refinery.Pipelines have proven to leak, including the recent Colonial Pipeline leak in Alabama and subsequent explosion at a second site. Nurses say spills from ruptured pipelines that contaminate water supplies can lead to numerous problems of respiratory ailments and other health symptoms associated with the spills.RNRN Director Bonnie Castillo, RN, says nurses will continue to stand in solidarity with Standing Rock and condemn the violence committed against water protectorswith reports that clearly identified medics have also been attacked and arrested.Nurses will stand with the protectors at Standing Rock, and with our fellow caregivers, the medics to say that DAPL is bad for public health, and those enforcing its construction cannot speak to its safety while simultaneously targeting for attack the very people with the power to heal, said Castillo."As a registered nurse, it was a profoundly moving and humbling experience to live with and serve the water and land protectors at the Sacred Stone encampment on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, said DeAnn McEwan, who volunteered at Standing Rock in October. Nurses feel a moral commitment to lend our skills and do whatever we can do to help protect and promote their health and right to the fresh, pure water that sustains all our lives."RNRN is powered by NNU, the largest organization of registered nurses in the U.S.National Nurses United Standing Rock Sioux Tribe demands government reconsider its finding that pipeline poses no risks. Photo: The DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) being installed between farms, as seen from 50th Avenue in New Salem, North Dakota (TONY WEBSTER / CC BY-SA 2.0). Standing Rock, ND, November 3, 2016 An independent expert hired by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has found that the governments environmental assessment of the pipelines environmental impact was inadequate.With this new information, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe chairman Dave Archambault II has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reassess its conclusion that the pipeline crossing will not affect tribal members.This underscores one of the fundamental deficiencies of the Final Environmental Assessmentit assumes, without foundation, that placing a massive oil pipeline just upstream from the Reservation presents no risk to the Tribe, Archambault wrote in his letter to Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy.An oil spill at Standing Rock would also impact an estimated 17 million people located down stream from the river.Richard Kuprewicz of Accufacts, Inc., a consulting firm that advises government agencies and industry about pipelines, analyzed the governments Environmental Assessment. The firm found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to address pipeline safety and the risk the pipeline poses to the waters of Lake Oahe and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which draws its drinking water from that lake.The environmental assessment significantly underestimated the risk of an oil spill into sensitive areas was the main conclusion of the report. Additionally, the report documented:* Shoddy pipeline construction* The risks posed by landslides were underestimated* Lack of proper safety constructions to contain spills* Failure to review impact to residents and environment downstream of the site* A risk review of industry spills and containment at similar sites that document problematic regulatory oversight of the industry in North DakotaMr. Kuprewiczs findings reflect the common sense point that was somehow lost in the Final Environmental Analysisthat pipelines leak, and that when they do so there are often devastating consequences, particularly when the leak contaminates water, continued Archambault in his letter to Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy. The public record is filled with examples which further substantiate this point.The failure of the Army Corps to adequately assess oil spill risks from the pipeline also raises significant questions about whether the Corps review is legally adequate.The law requires a full and transparent analysis of risks like oil spills prior to issuance of a federal permit. Its clear that never happened here, said Jan Hasselman, who represents the Tribe in its litigation against the Corps. We expect the Corps to give this new report close consideration as it determines whether to move ahead with the permits needed to cross the Missouri Riverpermits that Dakota Access didnt have before starting construction of the pipeline.In light of Kuprewiczs report and the deficiencies contained in the environmental assessment, Archambault asked for the government to reconsider its early decisions and disallow the easement for the pipeline crossing.KEY RESOURCES:* Report: Accufacts Review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Assessment for the Dakota Access Pipeline: http://earthjustice.org/documents/report/accufacts-review-of-the-u-s-army-corps-of-engineers-environmental-assessment-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline * Letter to Assistant Secretary of the Army Jo-Ellen Darcy from Dave Archambault II, Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe: http://earthjustice.org/documents/letter/letter-to-assistant-secretary-of-the-army-jo-ellen-darcy * Frequently Asked Questions: The Standing Rock Sioux Tribes Litigation on the Dakota Access Pipeline:Earthjustice Although President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has advised Ukraine not to hope for EU and NATO membership in the coming 20 to 25 years, Ukrainian officials are choosing to be positive. Although President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker has advised Ukraine not to hope for EU and NATO membership in the coming 20 to 25 years, Ukrainian officials are choosing to be positive. 144 claims that the EU representatives had made against this country were fulfilled, which means in the eye of Poroshenko that visa-free regime is just in Ukraine's pocket. But a visa waiver program is only a small step towards becoming a full member of the European family of nations. All this way promises to be long and thorny. Ukrainian authorities are ready to overcome obstacles; they have no dread of any difficulties and do not stop talking about it, watching word with action. A striking example of this is mutual relations between Ukraine and Poland.Essentially, Warsaw has never hidden its desire for having lands of Western Ukraine back under its control. But now that Kiev tries with all persistence and insistence to win the impenetrable stronghold of NATO and EU, reclamation claims of Polish authorities are increasingly being heard and beginning to resemble unvarnished demands.'If Ukraine wants to enter the European Union, then most certainly, Law adoption on Restitution will be one of the conditions for it', says a member of the Polish political party KORWiN Lilija Moshechkova. 'Without Lviv, the city which has always been loyal to Poland, no Polish people', concretizes Senator from the ruling party Law and Justice Jan Zharin. Not very long ago, we were, to say the least, perplexed by this. But now it is the most natural, normal thing, which is phlegmatically received by Poroshenko's team. Does that mean the country's top executives have gone with it and are ready to make concessions?On October 20, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Declaration of Memory and Solidarity with a majority of votes, in which it stated that the USSR together with Hitlerite Germany was responsible for the outbreak of World War II. The main value of this document, initiated by Chairman of Verkhovna Rada Andriy Parubiy is condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and decisions of the 1945 Yalta Conference. Thus, in fact, the deputies acknowledged that Ukraine had received the country's western regions illegally, which means that now Poland has the reason to require the redrawing of national borders. The deputies could be accused of stupidity and unwillingness to have just a quick look at what they voted for, except for one thing the Declaration of Hope.Prophet Moses had been wandering with his people in the desert for 40 years so that generation of mental slaves could die off. We don't have that load of time. And just because of it we are awaiting not only words of encouragement, but certain steps by our European friends. Since Maidan, it has become clear that Ukrainians are ready to accept any sacrifice to strive for real unity with Europe. Would Europe be willing to give a helping hand to Ukraine and accept us into common European home in exchange for our renunciation of Communist inheritance?There is no doubt that the country's leadership has decided to settle the western lands upon Poland. But it is not clear whether this giving would be greatly appreciated by all EU members, and as a result of it, Ukraine will become a full member of the European family of nations.Obviously, this will not be enough for NATO membership. The Alliance will require 'more blood' to complete this ritual; it will demand to 'solve the Crimean and the South-East problem'. And what is left of Ukraine after settling all territorial claims on this country, maybe, that will enter the NATO, in the end. Update 10am: Parent's Council president Paul Mooney has warned that students are missing out because of the recent strike action by ASTI teachers. What were trying to say is that whatever the dispute is about, they can deal with the dispute, but do not involve students, its a simple as that, he said. The benefits to ASTI teachers would probably be marginal compared to whatevers available to the TUI is that sufficient reason to have 200,000 pupils not at school? Earlier: Hundreds of secondary schools will be shut for a second day in a row as teachers stage the latest in a series of planned strikes over equal pay. The action by the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) is expected to force the closure of more than 500 secondary schools. The strike comes just a day after a separate row over substitution and supervision pay forced almost two thirds of secondary schools to close their gates. That dispute centres on the refusal of ASTI members to cover break times, absent colleagues and free periods amid claims that the Government reneged on a deal to resume paying them for the additional duty. If not resolved it could force schools to close indefinitely for health and safety reasons if trained and vetted replacement staff cannot be secured. On the first day of the strike over equal pay for newly qualified staff, in the Thursday before the Halloween mid-term, 507 schools out of 735 closed. The walkouts are planned to run on five other days this month before culminating in a two-day shutdown of schools on December 6 and 7. Talks with the Department of Education over the mid-term break failed to identify the prospect resolution. The union refused to sign up to the Lansdowne Road Agreement public sector pay deal prompting the complicated, protracted and increasingly divisive disputes over pay rates for recent graduates and pay for duties outside normal teaching. Michael Moriarty, general secretary of Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI), urged union and Government officials to engage in talks. "ETBI is concerned about the effect that an ongoing campaign of industrial action will have on students in particular, but also on parents, teachers and management, not merely in our sector, but across the education sector at post-primary level," he said. "Continuing dialogue is necessary to seek to facilitate a timely resolution." The Iraqi military says it has found some 100 decapitated bodies in a mass grave south of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul. The spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, said the bodies were discovered on Monday near the agricultural college in the town of Hamam al-Alil. Most were reduced to skeletons. A forensics team from Baghdad will investigate the site on Tuesday. The state of the bodies made it difficult to tell by their clothes if they were soldiers or civilians. IS has carried out several massacres since it swept into northern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014, often documenting them with photos and videos circulated online. Iraqi forces launched a massive operation last month to drive the extremists from Mosul and surrounding areas. Iraqi Kurdish fighters exchanged heavy fire with militants earlier in the day as they advanced from two directions into a town held by the IS east of Mosul. The offensive to reclaim the town of Bashiqa is part of the broader push to drive IS out of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the militants' last major urban stronghold in the country. Combat began at dawn with a Kurdish barrage of heavy artillery, Katyusha rockets and mortar rounds striking IS positions, providing cover for the advance of armoured vehicles. Smoke rose from the town throughout the day, with large explosions sending dark clouds into the sky. "We have the coordinates of their bases and tunnels, and we are targeting them from here in order to weaken them so that our forces can reach their targets more easily," said Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga commander Brigadier General Iskander Khalil Gardi. Bashiqa, which is believed to be largely deserted except for dozens of IS fighters, is located about 8 miles north-east of the edge of Mosul and about 13 miles from the city centre. Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, backed by a US-led coalition and joined by government-sanctioned militias, are fighting to drive IS out of those surrounding areas and open additional fronts to attack Mosul itself. Bashiqa has been surrounded by Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, for weeks but Monday's push appears to be the most serious yet to drive IS from the town. Kurdish forces launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery into the town on Sunday in advance of the offensive. More artillery and air strikes hit the town on Monday as the Kurdish forces' advance got under way. Iraqi special forces entered Mosul last week and have made some progress in gaining a foothold on the city's eastern edges. But progress inside the city has been slowed as troops push into more densely populated areas. The troops are suffering casualties as the militants have bogged them down with suicide car bombs, booby traps and close-quarters fighting along narrow streets. IS still holds territory to the north, south and west of Mosul. As Iraqi forces struggle to solidify gains in neighbourhoods in eastern Mosul, more and more civilians are fleeing the city, according to special forces Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Aziz. "Daesh is trying to draw a line," he said of the heavy fighting in Mosul's easternmost neighbourhoods, referring to IS under its Arabic acronym. "They have a lot of fighters there and they forced families to stay." Civilians fleeing Mosul are screened at a small checkpoint on the edge of Gogjali, Mosul's easternmost neighbourhood, to catch any IS fighters who may be hiding among them. Since Iraqi forces first pushed into the eastern edge of the city last Tuesday, dozens of people have been arrested. At the checkpoint, men were waiting for their names to be screened by a pair of informants from the area and multiple Iraqi government databases. Women and children waited further back from the road near an abandoned building. Gayda, a 42-year-old woman from Mosul, said she fled the Samah neighbourhood in the city's east just hours earlier, after a car bomb exploded next to her home. When they reached the checkpoint, her husband and son were separated from her and her daughter, and held for questioning a few yards away. "How can he be from Daesh, he's so young," she said of the 18-year old son. "We are good people, we don't have any enemies." New accounts filed by Just Eat Ireland Ltd show it came on the heels of a profit of over 641,800 in 2014. Numbers employed by the business last year fell slightly by five to 36 people, while employment costs totalled 1.43m. The firm achieved the profit on the back of orders increasing by 40%. Earlier this year, the company increased its commission by 1 percentage point to 13%. When it established here eight years ago, the firm charged 8% on orders made through the service, which subsequently increased to 10% before jumping another 2 percentage points to 12% in 2014. The additional money from the increase in charges will be used to invest in technology, innovation and marketing this year, the company said. Its cash pile increased from 1.4m to 1.9m. Shareholder funds at the end of December last totalled 2.2m. Just Eat Irelands managing director, Amanda Roche Kelly, told the Irish Examiner: Just Eat Ireland has enjoyed a strong period of growth, saying that with more than 1,800 restaurants offering a range of over 30 types of take-away food, growth continues for the company in Ireland. The Just Eat app has been downloaded over 700,000 times since it launched in October 2013. It is the number 1 app under Food and Drink in the App Store in Ireland and has been consistently [so] since launch. Just Eat said it processes over 76% of its orders via mobile devices, including its app and mobile sites. Just Eat is the worlds leading marketplace for online food delivery operating in 13 markets. In the UK, Just Eat shrugged off its UK summer slowdown to bolster full-year profit guidance for a third time this year as its push into growing European markets and new technology pays off. As an online company, we are always looking for new and innovative ways to improve that user experience and make it even easier for the end user, be they customers or restaurant partners, said Ms Roche Kelly said. Earlier this month, it nudged up its guidance after like-for-like orders grew 34% in the third quarter, with more than 80% coming from mobile devices. The company said it had slightly increased its expectations for underlying core earnings to 109m (112.5m) to 111m, from 106m to 108m, on revenue forecast to be 371m. Orders in Britain are continuing to rise, but at a slower pace than a year ago. They were up 28% compared to 50% a year ago. Additional reporting: Reuters John McCarthy, from Ballyvourney, Co Cork, was out for an evening walk with his three sons, Luke, Ryan, and Cathal last April when he heard shouting from the nearby Sullane river. A 60-year-old woman had been trying to remove her dog from the river and had fallen into a deep pool and couldnt stay upright as she kept slipping on stones lining the riverbed. She couldnt swim and was taking in a lot of water as she attempted, unsuccessfully, to stand up. Mr McCarthy ran to a safer part of the river, jumped in and carried the woman to the riverbank. Visibly shaken, she returned home that night but had to attend hospital by ambulance later as she had suspected hypothermia. The lady was very thankful. She called up to me afterwards with a voucher for dinner at a nearby restaurant, he said. She had genuinely thought she going to die and as she was going under, was thinking people would be questioning how somebody could possibly drown in just five or six feet of water, he added. In 1996, Mr McCarthy was driving to work in Bantry at 6am when he rescued another woman from the water. A strong swimmer, Mr McCarthy said his five children all attended swimming lessons as he says he understands the value of swimming. A former teacher in Ballyvourney, Sean Kelleher, nominated Mr McCarthy for the Irish Water Safety (IWS) award which will be presented by Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government Simon Coveney at Dublin Castle today. The 47 people who will be rewarded today saved 32 lives in total. Among those to be honoured are Davitt Walsh and Stephanie Knox who made headlines earlier this year when they rescued four month old, Rionaghac-Ann McGrotty from drowning. The couple were driving close to Buncrana pier in Co Donegal when they spotted a 4x4 in the water. Mr Walsh, 29, swam 40m to rescue the baby. He handed her to Ms Knox on shore who wrapped her up in her coat until emergency services arrived. The infants father, Sean, and two brothers, aged 12 and eight and Ruth Daniels, 57, and Jodie Lee Daniels, 14, died in the water. Tragically, an average of 133 people drown in Ireland every year, said IWS chairman Martin OSullivan. And although thats 133 too many, the figure would be even higher but for the dramatic efforts of these individuals who saved others from drowning and the ongoing work of volunteers teaching swimming and water rescue skills, he said. Lifeguards rescued 649 people from drowning nationwide this summer and reunited 662 children found lost near water. Thirty children, aged 14 and under, drowned in the last 10 years. Representatives from the Irish Naval Service will also receive awards for saving thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean while on humanitarian missions. Long-Service Awards will also be presented, recognising 1,510 years of personal service of 82 Irish Water Safety volunteers for teaching swimming, rescue and water-survival skills in communities nationwide. Mr Kenny also said that Ireland must not prioritise short-term opportunities caused by the political crisis and should focus on longer-term needs. Speaking at a crowded Brexit forum meeting in Dublin citys Westin Hotel, Mr Kenny said the issues must be resolved sensibly. Stressing the benefits of an open border with Britain and of the common travel area between the Republic, the North, and the UK, Mr Kenny said that both governments have agreed there must be no return to a hard border. However, he added that Britain will want a British solution to its future relationship with the EU, and that if EU nations insist there can be no softening of the rules for the UK, he did not know what impact this may have on Ireland. Mr Kenny also said Ireland cannot prioritise tactical, short-term opportunities caused by last Junes Brexit vote to the detriment of future needs. He said that short-term thinking has been a consistent problem for Irish governments, and that the current coalition needs to focus on the long-term benefits of policies to Ireland. Maintaining a long-term view, identifying where we want to be as a country, and ensuring that we have the right policies in place to get us there has traditionally not been a strong suit in this country, said Mr Kenny. We have too often been driven by the here-and-now, and insufficiently attentive to the challenges that lie further down the road. While acknowledging that there are ongoing issues within the EU which contributed to the surprise Brexit result and which must be resolved, the Taoiseach said that future decisions within the EU bloc cannot be a moonshot. He said sensible positions must be taken to implement important decisions and deliver concrete results for its citizens, and that while the EU doesnt have to define the next great challenges, it needs to demonstrate that it can respond effectively to them. Mr Kennys comments came just days after the cross-border All-Island Civil Dialogue in Dublin, which was focussed on allowing detailed political, business, and social responses to the Brexit vote. During that meeting, the Taoiseach said the UKs departure from the EU could be triggered as soon as next month, instead of the expected March 2017 date. The position was directly contradicted by Downing Street later in the day, and was followed 24 hours later by a UK court decision stating the Brexit result must be voted on by the British parliament. Mr Kenny said yesterday that it remains to be seen whether the court ruling will delay any Brexit move. The core claim of the families is that the EU-Turkey deal on migration, agreed on March 18 by the European Council (EC) the 28 EU heads of state, including Taoiseach Enda Kenny was made outside the powers of the EC and breaches EU law. The deal allowed Greece return to Turkey all new irregular migrants arriving there since March 20. That deal, and Irelands sanctioning of it, is incompatible with Irelands obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and breaches various EU treaties, including the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, they claim. The plaintiffs are a married couple, Mr and Mrs D, their two daughters, aged 10 and 15 (a son is in Germany), and Mr S and his 13-year-old daughter (whose wife and other child are in Germany). They say they are entitled, under the EU Dublin III regulations of 2013, to be transferred to Germany to join their family members who have secured international protection but claim they are unlawfully prevented doing so due to the EU-Turkey deal. They have been detained in Greece since March 20 when they arrived with 58 people in a rubber dinghy from Turkey following a dangerous journey during which, they allege, they witnessed the push-back and killing of Syrian asylum seekers by Turkish forces. The case came before the High Court yesterday via applications by the plaintiffs for a preliminary trial of EU law issues and/or to decide if issues should be referred to the Court of Justice of the EU. Padraig McCartan, for the plaintiffs, said the matter was very urgent. His clients were illegally arrested by Greece as an agent of the EC, were entitled to be transferred to Germany, and wanted undertakings that they would not be returned to Turkey pending determination of the case. Counsel for the respondents said they had no instructions to give the undertaking and the State intended to apply to have the action dismissed on grounds Ireland is not the appropriate forum for it. Mr Justice Paul Gilligan adjourned the pre-trial matters to November 22. Having spent several weeks in refugee camps on the Greek islands of Chios and Leros, Mr Ds family is now being put up by a charity in a house on Leros. Mr S and his son have been lodged in part of a building used for the mentally ill. They claim their passports and other papers remain confiscated by the Greek authorities. In an affidavit, Mr D said people detained in Chios and Leros are under considerable stress and desperate. Theft in the camps is common with a consequent growing threat of violence and there was inadequate healthcare, bad food, and unacceptable drinking water, he said. The plaintiffs claim they have no information when their protection applications will be processed but the Greek system will eventually assess them as suitable for return to Turkey, not on grounds of their own circumstances but because of a pre-determination Turkey is a safe third country. They dispute this and allege the Greek asylum system is not working. November 8, 2016 - Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL) today announced third quarter financial and operating results THIRD QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS AND SIGNIFICANT ITEMS (compared to Q3 2015) Net income applicable to common shareholders of $25.7 million, or $0.07 per share. Sales of $179.4 million, up 71%, a record. Adjusted EBITDA of $75.2 million, up 323%. 1 Cash provided by operating activities of $87.0 million, up 225%. Includes $16 million of insurance proceeds for the Troy Mine reclamation. Free cash flow of $27.7 million, up $38 million. 2 Total silver production of 4.3 million ounces, up 67%. Gold production of 52,126 ounces, up 19%. Silver equivalent production of 10.3 million ounces, up 17%. 3 Last 12 months net loss of $13.7 million and adjusted EBITDA of $234 million. 1 Net debt/adjusted EBITDA (last 12 months) of 1.4x, a 49% decline. 1,4 Cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments of $192.4 million at September 30, 2016, up $33 million over the second quarter. Completed the acquisition of the Montanore project, located near the Rock Creek project. Reduced estimate for 2016 cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver ounce to $4.00 and increased estimate for 2016 cash cost, after by-product credits, per gold ounce to $750.5 "Hecla's quarterly production growth, record sales, cash provided by operating activities of $87 million and free cash flow of $28 million reflect how our commitment to invest when prices were lower allows us to now reap the benefits of having more production at higher prices," said Phillips S. Baker, Jr., Hecla's President and CEO. "This quarter was just another step towards establishing new 125-year records in 2016. Our free cash flow and strengthening balance sheet allow us to immediately invest in more innovation, exploration and high-return projects. And with the acquisition of our second large undeveloped silver project, Montanore, we expect to generate additional value in the future." FINANCIAL OVERVIEW Third Quarter Ended Nine Months Ended HIGHLIGHTS September 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 September 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 FINANCIAL DATA Sales (000) $ 179,393 $ 104,941 $ 481,712 $ 328,230 Gross profit (000) $ 58,685 ($2,561 ) $ 147,958 $ 26,776 Income (loss) applicable to common shareholders (000) $ 25,651 ($10,028 ) $ 48,871 ($24,419 ) Basic and diluted income (loss) per common share $ 0.07 ($0.03 ) $ 0.13 ($0.07 ) Net income (loss) (000) $ 25,789 ($9,890 ) $ 49,285 ($24,005 ) Cash provided by operating activities (000) $ 86,976 $ 26,795 $ 173,114 $ 78,968 Net income applicable to common shareholders for the third quarter was $25.7 million, or $0.07 per share, compared to a net loss applicable to common shareholders of $10.0 million, or $0.03 per share, for the same period a year ago, the result mainly due to the following items: Sales were 71% higher than the third quarter of 2015, mainly due to 67% increase in silver production and 19% increase in gold production, as well as higher silver and gold prices. Cost of sales and other direct production costs and depreciation, depletion and amortization ("cost of sales") of $120.7 million was higher by 12% mainly due to San Sebastian being in commercial production. Cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver ounce decreased to $3.68 from $7.52, or 51% over the prior year period, mainly due to the addition of silver production at San Sebastian and higher silver production at Greens Creek and Lucky Friday. 6 Cash cost, after by-product credits, per gold ounce increased to $915 from $793, or 15% over the prior year period principally due to the expensing of stripping costs, which were previously capitalized, for the new East Mine Crown Pillar ("EMCP") pit. 6 A $2.4 million foreign exchange gain compared to a $9.1 million foreign exchange gain in the prior year period due primarily to strengthening of the Canadian dollar on deferred tax assets. Income tax provision of $9.5 million versus a benefit of $5.5 million in the prior year due to higher taxable income this quarter and the recording of a valuation allowance against the future benefit of U.S. net operating losses in the prior year. Higher production and metals prices resulted in cash provided by operating activities of $87.0 million, $60.2 million higher compared to the third quarter of 2015. Capital expenditures (excluding capitalized interest) at the operations totaled $42.0 million for the third quarter 2016. Expenditures were $17.6 million at Casa Berardi, $14.2 million at Greens Creek, $9.7 million at Lucky Friday, and $0.5 million at San Sebastian. Metals Prices The average realized silver price in the third quarter was $19.53 per ounce, 34% higher than the $14.54 price realized in the third quarter of 2015. The average realized gold price in the third quarter was $1,341 per ounce, 20% higher than the prior year period. Realized lead and zinc prices also increased by 10%, and 22%, respectively, from the third quarter of 2015. Base Metals Forward Sales Contracts There is no quantity of base metals committed under financially settled forward sales contracts for forecasted future sales at September 30, 2016. OPERATIONS OVERVIEW Overview The following table provides the production, cost of sales, and cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver and gold ounce summary for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015: Third Quarter and Nine Months Ended Greens Creek Lucky Friday Casa Berardi San Sebastian September 30, 2016 Silver Gold Silver Gold Silver Gold Silver Silver Gold Production (ounces) Q3 4,316,663 52,126 2,445,328 11,988 887,364 31,949 8,361 975,610 8,189 9 Mos 13,200,765 170,779 7,020,688 39,497 2,721,991 104,282 24,034 3,434,052 27,000 Increase/(decrease) over Q3 2015 Q3 67 % 19 % 23 % (17 )% 50 % 9 % 15 % 100 % 100 % 9 Mos 66 % 32 % 19 % (9 )% 33 % 22 % 16 % 100 % 100 % Cost of sales and other direct production costs and depreciation, depletion and amortization (000) Q3 $ 84,413 $ 36,295 $ 58,398 N/A $ 19,483 $ 36,295 N/A $ 6,532 N/A 9 Mos $ 227,116 $ 106,638 $ 146,985 N/A $ 56,696 $ 106,638 N/A $ 23,435 N/A Cash costs, after by-product credits, per silver or gold ounce6,7 Q3 $ 3.68 $ 915 $ 4.80 N/A $ 9.07 $ 915 N/A $ (4.03 ) N/A 9 Mos $ 3.54 $ 750 $ 4.68 N/A $ 9.34 $ 750 N/A $ (3.40 ) N/A Third Quarter and Nine Months Ended Greens Creek Lucky Friday Casa Berardi San Sebastian September 30, 2015 Silver Gold Silver Gold Silver Gold Silver Silver Gold Production (ounces) Q3 2,591,546 43,635 1,992,037 14,376 592,243 29,259 7,266 9 Mos 7,947,293 128,977 5,884,128 43,368 2,042,436 85,609 20,729 Cost of sales and other direct production costs and depreciation, depletion and amortization (000) Q3 $ 70,043 $ 37,459 $ 52,238 N/A $ 17,806 $ 37,459 N/A N/A N/A 9 Mos $ 196,056 $ 105,398 $ 146,761 N/A $ 49,295 $ 105,398 N/A N/A N/A Cash costs, after by-product credits, per silver or gold ounce6,7 Q3 $ 7.52 $ 793 $ 4.82 N/A $ 16.60 $ 793 N/A N/A N/A 9 Mos $ 5.98 $ 861 $ 3.79 N/A $ 12.30 $ 861 N/A N/A N/A The following table provides the production summary on a consolidated basis for the third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2016 and 2015: Third Quarter Ended Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 September 30, 2016 September 30, 2015 PRODUCTION SUMMARY Silver - Ounces produced 4,316,663 2,591,546 13,200,765 7,947,293 Payable ounces sold 4,284,842 2,392,798 12,222,084 7,305,740 Gold - Ounces produced 52,126 43,635 170,779 128,977 Payable ounces sold 50,348 44,937 161,217 124,969 Lead - Tons produced 10,411 9,123 31,840 28,526 Payable tons sold 9,967 8,315 28,380 24,068 Zinc - Tons produced 14,825 17,435 50,321 51,037 Payable tons sold 13,596 13,487 37,948 36,821 Greens Creek Mine - Alaska Silver production of 2,445,328 ounces increased 22.8% and gold production of 11,988 ounces decreased 16.6% over the prior year period. Increased silver production resulted from higher grades, while gold production was lower due to slightly lower ore grades and throughput. The mill operated at an average of 2,201 tons per day (tpd) in the third quarter 2016. The cost of sales was $58.4 million, and the cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver ounce of $4.80 decreased slightly from $4.82 in the third quarter 2015.6 The estimated 2016 silver production is increased to 8.5 million ounces and gold production remains unchanged at 53,000 ounces. Lucky Friday Mine - Idaho Silver production of 887,364 ounces was 49.8% higher than the third quarter of 2015 due to higher grades and ore throughput in the current period and ventilation repairs made in the prior year period. The mill operated at an average of 809 tpd in the third quarter 2016. The cost of sales was $19.5 million, and the cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver ounce of $9.07, decreased from $16.60 per ounce in the third quarter of 2015.6 This decrease was principally due to higher silver production as a result of mining higher-grade material. The focus of the #4 Shaft Project, having reached its final depth of 9,600 feet below surface in early May, is on equipping the shaft with steel sets, guides, skip loading facilities and electrical infrastructure. The work is proceeding as planned, with commissioning expected to begin by year end. The estimated 2016 silver production is increased to 3.4 million ounces. Casa Berardi - Quebec Gold production of 31,949 ounces was 9.2% higher than the third quarter of 2015 due to higher ore throughput and mill recoveries. The mill operated at an average of 2,805 tpd in the third quarter 2016. The Company has received a permit to increase production to 1,250,000 tonnes (1,378,000 tons) per year from 1,100,000 tonnes (1,213,000 tons) per year, and with minimal changes to the plant, we have seen record production days in the third quarter over 3,400 tonnes per day (3,750 tpd). The cost of sales was $36.3 million, and the cash cost, after by-product credits, per gold ounce of $915, increased from $793 in the third quarter of 2015 due to the expensing of stripping costs for the new EMCP pit that were capitalized in previous quarters before ore was encountered.3 The estimated 2016 gold production is unchanged from 145,000 ounces (surface and underground). The estimated 2016 cash cost, after by-product credits, per gold ounce has been increased to $750 from $700 to reflect expensing of stripping costs. San Sebastian - Mexico Silver production was 975,610 ounces at a cost of sales of $6.5 million, and a cash cost, after by-product credits, of ($4.03) per ounce in the third full quarter of production since reopening.6 The strong cash cost, after by-product credit, performance was due to the production of 8,189 ounces of gold, which is used as a by-product credit. The mill operated at an average of 437 tpd in the third quarter 2016. The estimated production for 2016 remains unchanged from prior estimates at 4.35 million ounces of silver and 35,000 ounces of gold. The estimated 2016 cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver ounce has been reduced to ($2.00) from $1.00. The Company is working on a plan to transition from open pit to underground mining around the end of 2017. The mill has been secured for a third year (2018) and studies are underway to incorporate recent discoveries of high-grade material into an underground mine plan. EXPLORATION AND PRE-DEVELOPMENT Expenditures Exploration and pre-development expenses were $3.9 million and $0.6 million, respectively, in the third quarter of 2016. This is a decrease of $1.7 million and $1.1 million, respectively, compared to the third quarter 2015 as a result of reduced discretionary spending in exploration and pre-development expenses. Full year exploration and pre-development expenses are expected to be about $19 million. The Companys exploration efforts are focused on discovering high-grade deposits near its existing operations, particularly at San Sebastian, where the results continue to be encouraging. As a result of consistent exploration success over the last ten years across all projects, the level of reserves has shown a remarkable resilience despite changes in commodity prices; production has been replaced and reserves have grown steadily. A summary of this activity in the quarter is provided below. San Sebastian - Mexico Exploration activities at San Sebastian are focused on defining extensions to the current open pits and identifying new resources that could prolong high-margin precious metals production. Shallow drilling along strike and below the current Middle and North vein pits have cut vein extensions and in combination with past drilling show intervals of near-surface mineralization beyond the current open pits that may represent an opportunity to expand and possibly connect the Middle and North vein pits. Drilling of the West Middle Vein approximately 1,200 to 2,400 feet west from the current Middle Vein pit has confirmed the continuity of a new zone of high-grade mineralization that is being upgraded to indicated resource category. This high-grade zone is over 1,250 feet in strike length and located about 350 to 800 feet below surface. Assay results from West Middle Vein drilling in the quarter include 0.24 oz/ton gold and 50.1 oz/ton silver over 8.6 feet, and 0.60 oz/ton gold and 149.3 oz/ton silver over 2.7 feet. This zone is currently being evaluated for potential underground mining options and shallower portions of this zone may be amenable to open pit mining. The horizontal control of dominantly oxide with some supergene mineralization is open to the west and continues to be evaluated with step-out exploration drilling. To the east and northeast of the East Francine pit, drilling continues on silver-bearing quartz vein and breccia extensions of the East Francine Vein. Current drilling has defined a 4 to 15-foot wide vein/breccia zone that can be traced for 800 feet and is best developed at 350 to 500 feet from surface. However, recent shallow drilling has defined this vein closer to surface. Drilling also continues on a new target area referred to as the West Francine Vein that is about 3,000 feet west of previous mining at the Francine Vein. Drilling has defined a continuous vein with over 1,600 feet of strike length that varies in thickness from 2 to 16-feet wide and the vein is open in all directions. Drilling to the east will likely connect this veining with the current western extent of the Francine resource. Most of the additional 2016 exploration spending at San Sebastian is expected to follow up on results on the Middle and West Francine veins. Casa Berardi - Quebec During the third quarter, drilling at Casa Berardi focused on both underground 118, 121, 123, 124 and Lower Inter zone targets, and near surface targets at the 124 and 134 zones. Up to six drills have been operating underground and two on surface. Drilling of the upper 118 Zone from the 530 level down to the 610 level has defined multiple shear zones that extend for over 1,000 feet down-plunge and include a series of continuous mineralized intervals up to 0.47 oz/ton gold with good mining widths. This zone continues to plunge to the west at depth and there is good potential to add both new reserves and resources. Drilling of the 121 Zone from the 790 level is a continuation of the high-grade 123 Zone to the west but recent drilling shows that the zone is also open both up-plunge above the 710 level with an intercept of 0.21 oz/ton over 17.4 feet and down-plunge below the 810 level with an intersection of 0.22 oz/ton gold over 24.1 feet. Drilling of the 123 Zone from the 870 level continues to intercept high-grade mineralization, including 0.77 oz/ton gold over 7.5 feet along western vein extensions that are open to exploration. Underground exploration drilling is in progress at the west end of the mine off the 360 Drift to refine and expand four distinct mineralized zones. Recent drilling has intersected mineralization in the 104 Zone below the Lower Inter Zone. Surface and underground drilling of the 124 Zone has identified high-grade lenses with continuity up to 350 feet of strike length. Recent drilling of the 124 Zone from the 290 level included intersections of 0.47 oz/ton gold over 4.6 feet. Surface drilling of the 134 Zone to the east of the proposed Principal pit has intersected mineralization with good continuity at and north of the Casa Berardi Fault. These broad zones of mineralization vary in width from 150 to 330 feet and intersections include 0.10 oz/ton gold over 69.6 feet and 0.11 oz/ton gold over 21.7 feet within 350 feet of surface. Greens Creek - Alaska At Greens Creek, definition drilling is refining the resources of the 9A, Upper Southwest, East Ore and NWW zones for expected conversion to reserves. Recent definition drilling of the 9A Zone confirmed continuity of the mineralization and refined the geometry to the south end of the resource model. Drill intersections of the 9A Zone include 21.6 oz/ton silver, 0.03 oz/ton gold, 20.7% zinc, and 7.0% lead over 15.3 feet. Drilling of the southern portion of the NWW Zone defined mineralization of similar overall geometry as the resource model but thinner and of slightly lesser extent in places. Mineralization is present primarily along the lower fold, spanning from the fold nose to the upper limb and is represented by multiple distinct mineralized bands near the mine contact. Recent drill intersections include 55.3 oz/ton silver, 0.51 oz/ton gold, 4.1% zinc, and 2.3% lead over 10.0 feet. In addition, definition drilling of the Upper Southwest Zone around previously mined levels has identified mineralization that could be incorporated into a future mine plan. Recent drill intersections include 46.9 oz/ton silver, 0.03 oz/ton gold, 15.1% zinc, and 7.9% lead over 13.3 feet. Initial definition drilling of the East Ore Zone shows that overall the mineralization is thinner than expected compared to the model, but this drilling is now advancing into the stronger mineralized portions of the resource to the north and south. Revised resource models for the 5250, 9A, West, NWW and Deep 200 South zones are expected by the end of the year and all will likely contribute to increased reserves. Exploration drilling of the Gallagher Zone at the southwest corner of the mine is defining a new flat-lying zone just west of the Gallagher Fault about 450 feet beneath the current Gallagher Zone resource. This drilling has also moved the location of the Gallagher fault further east than originally interpreted, allowing room into which this mineralization could be extended. Additional drilling in the near future should systematically test for the down-plunge extent of this mineralization with extensions of Gallagher exploration drillholes. Drilling of the upper limb of the Southwest Bench fold has defined an intermittent mineralized contact and lies along trend of the upper 5250 Zone and middle Southwest Zone trends of mineralization opening up a new area for possible expansion of resources. More complete drill assay highlights from San Sebastian, Casa Berardi, and Greens Creek can be found in Table A at the end of the release. Other Properties At the Rock Creek and Montanore projects in Montana, validation and check assay work including the integration of data for revised resource models is nearly complete. From these revised resource models, future definition and exploration programs will be developed for implementation if the projects are successfully permitted. 2016 ESTIMATES For the full year 2016, the Company increased its production estimates at Greens Creek and Lucky Friday. It also lowered the cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver ounce, estimate at San Sebastian and increased the cash cost, after by-product credits, per gold ounce, estimate at Casa Berardi. The Company currently estimates: Mine 2016E Silver Production (Moz)9 Prior 2016E Silver Production (Moz)9 2016E Gold Production (oz) Prior 2016E Gold Production (oz) Cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver/gold ounce5 Prior cash cost, after by-product credits, per silver/gold ounce5 Greens Creek 8.50 8.30 53,000 53,000 $5.00/silver oz $5.00/silver oz Lucky Friday 3.40 3.10 $9.00/silver oz $9.00/silver oz San Sebastian 4.35 4.35 35,000 35,000 ($2.00)/silver oz $1.00/silver oz Casa Berardi 145,000 145,000 $750/gold oz $700/gold oz Total 16.25 15.8 233,000 233,000 $4.00/silver oz $4.75/silver oz AgEq Production8: 44.5 44.0 AuEq Production8: 582,000 576,000 2016E capital expenditures (excluding capitalized interest) $150 million 2016E pre-development and exploration expenditures $19 million DIVIDENDS The Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.0025 per share of common stock, payable on or about December 2, 2016, to stockholders of record on November 21, 2016. The realized silver price was $19.53 in the third quarter and therefore did not satisfy the criteria for a larger dividend under the Company's dividend policy. The Board of Directors also declared the regular quarterly dividend of $0.875 per share on the 157,816 outstanding shares of Series B Cumulative Convertible Preferred Stock. This represents a total amount to be paid of approximately $138,000. The cash dividend is payable on or about January 2, 2017, to shareholders of record on December 15, 2016. CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST A conference call and webcast will be held Tuesday, November 8, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss these results. You may join the conference call by dialing toll-free 1-855-760-8158 or for international by dialing 1-720-634-2922. The participant passcode is HECLA. Hecla's live and archived webcast can be accessed at www.hecla-mining.com under Investors or via Thomson StreetEvents Network. ABOUT HECLA Founded in 1891, Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL) is a leading low-cost U.S. silver producer with operating mines in Alaska, Idaho, and Mexico and is a growing gold producer with an operating mine in Quebec, Canada. The Company also has exploration and pre-development properties in seven world-class silver and gold mining districts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and an exploration office and investments in early-stage silver exploration projects in Canada. Nov. 8, 2016 - Mitchell Resources Ltd. ("Mitchell" or the "Company") (TSXV: MI) is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement (the "Agreement") with the shareholders of Hannan Metals Ltd. ("Hannan Canada"), a private British Columbia company, to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Hannan Canada (the "Proposed Acquisition") and, consequently, a 100% interest in Hannan Canada's rights, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Hannan Metals Ireland Ltd. ("Hannan Ireland"), to the Clare prospecting licences in County Clare, Ireland (collectively, the "PLs"). Mitchell also wishes to announce a concurrent "part and parcel" financing of common shares (the "Shares") at $0.075 per common share to raise aggregate gross proceeds of up to approximately $786,000 (the "Financing"). Proceeds from the Financing will be used to fund the Proposed Acquisition, complete initial exploration on the PLS, and for corporate and general working capital. Description of the Prospecting Licences The Clare zinc-silver-lead-copper property (the "Clare Property") consists of 7 PLs for 25,282 hectares located in County Clare, Ireland, the western extent of which lies 1.5 km from the town of Ennis. PLs 3509, 3640, 3643, 3679, 3787, 3788 and 3789, issued by the Exploration and Mining Division ("EMD") of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment are 100% owned by Hannan Ireland. The Irish base metal ore field is one of the world's best mineralized zinc provinces and is considered highly prospective for new zinc discoveries. In 2015 Ireland was the world's 10th largest zinc producing nation with 230,000 tonnes produced. The Clare Property is underlain by an open syncline comprised of Upper Devonian (sandstones) to Lower Carboniferous (sandstones and limestones) rocks. The Lower Carboniferous sequence includes the Waulsortian Limestone, which hosts most of Ireland's important zinc-lead sulphide deposits, such as the Lisheen and Galmoy deposits. The Clare Property has a rich history of small scale 19th century mining (Figure 1). Modern exploration efforts from the mid-1960's, by Irish Base Metals, Rio-Finex, Central Mining Finance, Billiton and Belmore Resources Ltd followed up some of these earlier historic mines. There are two known Waulsortian-hosted zinc-lead deposits on the property, the flagship Kilbricken prospect (see below) and the smaller Milltown prospect, where Belmore Resources Ltd ("Belmore") intersected 13.3m @ 5.8% Pb and 10.5% Zn from 45.4 metres in drill hole 3788/19 in 1994. The lowest part of the sequence is also prospective for copper-silver mineralization and contains numerous copper showings, most notable at Ballyvergin where Irish Base Metals drilled hole BV11 which intersected 31.5m @ 1.0% Cu from 51.7 metres in the 1960s. In 2008, Belmore, a private Irish company, drill tested the base of the Waulsortian Limestone beneath near-surface sulphidic and calcite veined shelf carbonates at the historic Kilbricken lead mine. The discovery drillhole at Kilbricken, DH04, intersected 10m @ 13.8% Zn, 5.5% Pb, 0.08% Cu, 62.8g/t Ag from 448.1 metres at the target base of Waulsortian Limestone. After this initial discovery, Lundin Mining Exploration Limited ("Lundin"), a subsidiary of Lundin Mining Corporation (TSX:LUN), joint ventured Kilbricken and wider tenure package from Belmore. In 2011, Lundin purchased 100% of Belmore. Drilling by Lundin from 2009 to 2012 continued to intersect sulphide mineralization in the hanging wall of a the Main Kilbricken fault. Significant intersections from Lundin's drilling programs are shown in Table 1. Hole_ID Mineralized Intersection DH46 20.5m @ 7.5% Zn, 9.9% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 74.6g/t Ag from 415.3m DH06 21.3m @ 11% Zn, 4.8% Pb, 0.06% Cu, 94.4g/t Ag from 441.9m DH50 11.8m @ 9.8% Zn, 5.7% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 178.2g/t Ag from 484.6m DH43 9.4m @ 4.1% Zn, 12% Pb, 0.52% Cu, 242.8g/t Ag from 442.1m DH04 10.0m @ 13.8% Zn, 5.5% Pb, 0.08% Cu, 62.8g/t Ag from 448.1m DH52 19.3m @ 7.2% Zn, 1.2% Pb, 0.18% Cu, 64.6g/t Ag from 425.7m DH44 17.2m @ 2.9% Zn, 4.4% Pb, 0.11% Cu, 83.5g/t Ag from 447.9m DH167 4.5m @ 0.8% Zn, 2.6% Pb, 18.91% Cu, 867.6g/t Ag from 616.5m DH161 10.4m @ 8.4% Zn, 3.9% Pb, 0.09% Cu, 26.5g/t Ag from 607m DH206 10.0m @ 0.9% Zn, 8.7% Pb, 0.16% Cu, 90.7g/t Ag from 619m DH111 4.1m @ 21.5% Zn, 5.7% Pb, 0.1% Cu, 95.4g/t Ag from 447.6m Table 1: Kilbricken better mineralized drill intersections The main Kilbricken mineralization (Figures 2 and 3) has been drilled within an area of 1,500 metres by 800 metres in plan view and remains open in most directions. Mineralization, defined as 4.0m @ 4.00% Zn Eq or 16m% Zneq where Zn Eq = Zn% +(Pb% x 1.15) + (Ag ppm x 0.037917), ranges in thickness from 2 metres to 31 metres thick and averages 7.5 metres thickness. Two main mineralized zones have been discovered to date: The initial discovery area, the Zinc Zone, has been drilled within an area of 950 metres by 400 metres, between 360-440 metres vertically below surface. Significant drill results in this zone include DH46: 20.5m @ 7.5% Zn, 9.9% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 74.6g/t Ag from 415.3m and DH06: 21.3m @ 11% Zn, 4.8% Pb, 0.06% Cu, 94.4g/t Ag from 441.9m. and DH06: The Copper Zone was found later in the Lundin program and is drilled within an area of 400 metres by 200 metres, between 520-670 metres vertically below surface. Significant drill results in the Copper Zone includes DH167: 4.5m @ 0.8% Zn, 2.6% Pb, 18.91% Cu, 867.6g/t Ag from 616. Lundin completed significant work on the property. A total of 216 drill holes for 116,230 metres were drilled by Lundin in the Kilbricken area. Lundin also undertook regional exploration in the remainder of the Clare Property, largely focussed on other Waulsortian-hosted zinc-lead prospects. Lundin carried out 616 metres of drilling at the Ballyvergin prospect with the objective of discovering additional zones of copper-silver mineralization. Lundin drilled a total of 2,370 metres on the Kilmurry Project, located within the Clare project area 26 kilometres along strike from Kilbricken. In addition, significant surface geochemical and multiple geophysical surveys have been undertaken by Lundin and previous operators on the Clare project area. Of particular note are a 3D seismic survey over the main Kilbricken mineralization in 2011, and 2D seismic survey conducted in 2012 that consisted of 8 traverses (3-3.5 km long) over a total 10 kilometre strike length, spaced between 1-2 kilometre across the regional Kilbricken extensions. Massive sulphide mineralization at Kilbricken most commonly consists of early massive-textured, fine-grained pyrite, galena and sphalerite cross-cut by coarse-grained sphalerite and galena, resembling sulphides found in the overlying veins. It differs from most other Irish zinc/lead prospects in that it is rich in silver, most commonly associated with galena-rich zones. The Kilbricken Project is considered by Hannan Ireland to be highly prospective for the discovery and potential development of zinc-lead-silver suphide deposits. The Kilbricken deposit is open along strike and down-dip. The two-fold aim to explore the Clare Property is: Explore along the immediate extensions from the drilled high grade mineralization at Kilbricken, and; Search for new discoveries and extensions of known mineralization in the well-endowed 25,282 hectare regional block. A detailed 3D compilation of geological and seismic datasets to create a basinal to local scale structural and stratigraphic model is now underway, with concurrent re-interpretation of 2D and 3D seismic data. Hannan Ireland then plans to outline the first resource model on the property. An initial budget of CDN$200,000 is planned, with follow up drilling when further capital has been raised. Transaction Summary The Company has entered into the Agreement with the principals of Hannan Canada, Michael Hudson and Mark Saxon, to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Hannan Canada at cost, being nominal consideration, as a means to acquire a 100% interest in Hannan Ireland's rights to the PLs. The Company will assume all obligations of Hannan Ireland. The PLs were assigned to Hannan Ireland, and were acquired, effective September 21, 2016, pursuant to an Assignment Agreement (the "AA") between the Irish Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Hannan Ireland and Lundin. Under a separate Asset Purchase Agreement (the "APA"), dated June 3, 2016, Hannan Ireland purchased all exploration data associated with the PLs from Lundin for a cash payment of US$150,000. Hannan Ireland must make two additional cash payments to Lundin Mining of US$425,000 each on September 21, 2017 and March 21, 2018. Lundin retained a 2% net smelter return royalty on all sales of mineral products extracted from the area of land subject to the PLs, subject to a 0.5% buy back right of Hannan Ireland for US$5,000,000, which must be exercised within one year from the date of commercial production. Hannan Ireland is required to pay Lundin a one-time bonus payment of US$5,000,000 within the earlier of (i) Hannan Ireland's decision to proceed with mine construction or (ii) within 90 days of the establishment of a commercial financing to finance capital costs for mine construction. Additionally, Hannan Ireland will be required to pay a one-time cash fee of US$2,000,000 less cash payments already made to Lundin, if it transfers its rights to the PLs to an arm's length party (which excludes Mitchell) for US$10,000,000 or greater within 18 months of the execution of the APA. On the closing of the Proposed Acquisition, it is expected that Michael Hudson will be appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Company and will join existing directors Nick DeMare, Harvey Lim, David Henstridge and Michael Iannacone on the Company's board of directors. Mr. Michael Hudson, B.Sc. (Hons 1st) is an explorationist and entrepreneur. During the last 25 years he has developed and financed mineral exploration properties. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1990 with a B.Sc. (Hons 1st) in Geology and more recently received the Tolhurst Noall Prize for "Mining Investment Analysis" in Victoria, Australia for the FINSIA Graduate Diploma. Starting his career underground for 3 years in Broken Hill in 1990 with Pasminco Ltd., he has managed and developed exploration to pre-feasibility projects in Pakistan, Australia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Ireland for major and junior mining companies. He was an integral team member for the discovery of the Portia gold deposit in the Olary district of South Australia, the Duddar Pb-Zn mine in Pakistan, the Norra Karr REE deposit in Sweden and the Rompas-Rajapalot gold property in Finland. Since 2004 has headed Mawson Resources Ltd (TSX:MAW) as founding Chairman, CEO and Director. He is also a founder and Chairman of Leading Edge Materials (TSXV:LEM) a critical metals company in Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and Member of both the Society for Economic Geologists and Australian Institute of Geoscientists. The Company also proposes to change its name to "Hannan Metals Ltd." on the closing of the Proposed Acquisition. Completion of the Proposed Acquisition is subject to a number of standard conditions precedent, including, without limitation, the completion of satisfactory due diligence on the PLs by the Company, the completion of the Financing and the receipt of all regulatory approvals, including the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). In order to obtain requisite acceptance from the Exchange with respect to the Acquisition, the Company will have to satisfy the Exchange requirements, which include delivery of an independent technical report in respect of the PLs prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). Source: Mitchell Resources President Park Geun-hye will meet National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun on Tuesday to discuss solutions to a deepening political crisis sparked by a corruption scandal involving her confidante. Park will visit the parliament at 10:30 a.m., the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said. The president and speaker are expected to discuss a range of issues, including her recent nomination of a new prime minister, which opposition parties, as well as some members of the ruling party, have demanded be withdrawn, Jung Youn-kuk, presidential spokesman, told reporters. Along with Chung, the president also hopes to meet with the leaders of the opposition parties, the spokesman added. A day earlier, the opposition parties led by the Democratic Party rejected Park's recent offer for talks with the leaders of both ruling and opposition parties, demanding she first cancel her premier designation. (Yonhap) A U.N. population organization has forecast a slight increase in the life expectancy for North Koreans this year from the previous year, a U.S. broadcaster, monitored here, reported Tuesday. In its latest "State of World Population 2016" report, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) predicted the life expectancies of North Korean males and females born from 2015-2020 at 67 and 75, respectively, the Radio Free Asia (RFA) said. Comparable figures for males and females born from 2010-2015 were respectively 66 and 73. The 2016 North Korean figures are still far cries from those of South Koreans -- 80 for male and 86 for female, according to the report. North Korea's fertility rate is estimated at 1.9 per woman this year, down from 2.0 in the previous years, the report said. The North's total population was calculated at 25,300,000 this year, up 100,000 from a year before, according to the report. (Yonhap) Were excited to announce that metalbulletin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving metals market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. Ghanaian model and CEO of TM Management, Idris Prince Ibrahim, has said he does not demand sex from female models before offering them jobs. His modelling agency, he revealed, has been operating under strict and professional rules and doesn't cross the lines of giving models raw deal. He said his agency respects talent and doesn't dabble in negative activities that will bring the company and his reputation to disrepute. Anyone who knows how TM started will know I don't do stuff like that. Also, we go beyond that because we are looking for true talents. I know people say sex exists everywhere and not only in our industry. It happens everywhere but we at TM don't promote that. We stand for quality. We don't do that because we know what we stand for, he told NEWS-ONE. Prince's claim follows recent reports that Ghana's modelling industry is not growing as compared to other modelling industries out there because some models have been selling themselves very cheap by allegedly accepting sexual offers before they are given modelling jobs. Sex for job exists in our industry. It does. It is everywhere. Because if you won't do it, other girls will do it. It does exist in the modelling industry, not just some other industries, Aisha Med, a Ghanaian international model who is currently signed to a Romanian-based modelling agency called MRA, told NEWS-ONE last week. Yes, I have had an encounter like that and I had to just go home because I didn't want to do that and I was in a relationship as well. I didn't do it not just because I was in a relationship but I don't see myself sleeping with somebody because I wanted a modelling job, she added. But, Prince has reiterated that he doesn't do that. Sex is no no for me. I don't have sex with anyone I work with. I don't believe in that. Once you start that with anyone you work with, your brand is not going to last. You are not going to go far. I have never exchange sex for work, he added. Prince's agency has been around for a while now and is recognised as one of the busiest modelling agencies around. Its models just returned from Lagos Fashion Week in Nigeria. Prince himself has been a professional model since 2009 after he trained at the Exopa Modelling Agency. He comes from the Northern Region of Ghana and a Dagomba by tribe. He hopes to help raise standards in Ghana's modelling industry. By Francis Addo (Twitter: @fdee50 Email: [email protected]) 08.11.2016 LISTEN All is set for the maiden edition of the GIJ Eminence Awards to take place on Friday, November 11, 2016. Favourite actor and actress, Kwadwo Nkansah Lilwin and Nana Ama Mcbrown including a host of celebrated Ghanaian entertainers are on the awards night going to be honoured. Reigning VGMA artiste of the year, Elorm Adabla better known as EL will be honored with the Eminent Music Personality of the year together with BET nominee, MzVee. EIB Networks Berla Mundi, Jon Germain and KOD will on the other hand be honored as Eminent Media Personalities. Performing on the night will be Nii Funny with guest appearance by Choir Master, Aaron Leslie Adastsi, Dromeryda among others. The 'Yooko ebreki' hitmaker is expected to thrill patrons who troop to the event with back to back hits on the night. The much anticipated event is expected to see 30 awards given out to deserving students who excel in their various chosen fields away from the academic work. Students will be awarded in Categories such as Best Print Reporter of the year, Outstanding Student Writer/Blogger, Outstanding Student TV Host of the year, Outsatanding Student in Music, Student Photographer of the year, among others. The GIJ Eminence Awards is a brain child of the RAD Africa franchise who can be credited for the highly commended Ghana Tertiary Women Award. The event, which is partnered by EIB Network, Niwills events and Echo Of Leadership comes off at the Christ the King Parish Hall. Renowned actor, Majid Michel says his new-found love for preaching is a genuine one inspired by his understanding of the Bible. The actor explained that unlike in most cited instances by people, he did not receive any special calling from God to preach the word. For some time now, Majid Michel has been spotted at several churches ministering. Recently, he visited the Zoe Chapel International at Tabora, Accra to preach to the congregation. The actor, in the company of two colleagues, Pascal Anangfio and Timothy Bentum, were present during the church service where Majid prayed and laid his hands on some of the members of the congregation. Speaking about his new life, the actor explained in an interview on TIG Show with Franky5 on Hitz FM that, I had a great sense of guilt, so that limited my sinful nature. I fell a couple of times but could not continue, I always came up with a new to identify with the mistake and correct it. He added Then I discovered great revelations in the Bible. Growing up I hardly understood the word of God so as a result, I have discovered great revelations from reading the Bible. I understood it better and it's simpler for me and that was my greatest urge to teach the word of God for people to understand it. For him, he has always been a pastor. I didnt hear a voice or see a dark cloud or hear the voice of God like the ocean sound or like waves pounding the sea. I didnt have any experience, I did it as a pastor, well I have always been [a pastor]. Read: Majid Michel slams pastors who only seek wealth and fame Recently, Majid Majid Michel, in an Instagram post, expressed disappointment at pastors who seek wealth and fame than the core job of winning souls and leading their congregations to Christ. He expressed worry that some pastors these days do not focus on the dictates that come with their job but rather meddle in immoral acts and also compete against each other for fame and wealth. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Ernest Dela Aglanu (Twitter: @delaXdela / email: [email protected]) Ghanaian actor, John Dumelo, might just be working in line with Gods works if he is ready to dedicate himself to the ministry as he has been up and doing with dishing out advices to his fans. This time, the actor has come out to say one of the most important thing some Christians continue to run after as he pointed out that some Christians depend on prophesy than going to God in prayers. He stated that Christians look for miracles from one pastor to one church looking for answers forgetting that the said prophesies can only manifest if the person involved also go into prayers to seek Gods face for it to take place. A lot of people are looking for miraclesthey hop from one pastor and one church to another looking for answers. Dont get me wrong, men of God are there to guide you, help you grow spiritually and mentally. But sometimes the answers we are looking for are right beside us.when you pray to God He reveals. When you pray to God He answers. Some people want men of God to prophesy to them before their lives can change. A prophesy will only come to life if and only if you work at it. Dont just listen to prophecies and think it will automatically happen. You need to work hard! You need to pray hard, spend time with God, talk to Him , listen to Him and your life will be directed accordingly.your miracle is waiting to happen! Receive it! he warned. Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. Tunis (AFP) - Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed heads to Paris on Wednesday in a bid to drum up French investment in the struggling economy of its former North African colony. Chahed, 41, will meet his counterpart Manuel Valls and President Francois Hollande during the "strategic" visit, he told AFP in an interview on Tuesday. "Five years after the revolution, we have succeeded in the democratic transition... (but) today we face an important economic challenge to consolidate the Tunisian democratic experience," Chahed said. "We obviously rely on France to help Tunisia at this critical moment." Tunisia remains mired with high unemployment and anaemic growth nearly six years after a popular uprising unseated longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, launching the 2011 Arab Spring wave of regional protests. Chahed took over as prime minister in August after lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in the previous government following just 18 months in office. "The democratic transition was enormously costly to Tunisia," Chahed said, adding that his country "today needs huge aid at the economic level". The years since the 2011 uprising have seen Tunisia hit by a string of jihadist-claimed attacks, including assaults last year on its vital tourism sector which killed dozens of foreign visitors. Tunisia's economy grew just 1.2 percent in the first half of 2016, according to official figures, with unemployment at 15 percent. The country's efforts to rebound from unrest have also been undermined by chaos in neighbouring Libya, according to Chahed. "All of this has a cost and I think our partner France must assume... the cost when it comes to Tunisia," the premier said. While acknowledging that France was making "important efforts" to help, Chahed said that French military aid could be "far higher" than the 20-million-euro security plan the two countries agreed in October 2015. "Tunisia needs direct foreign investment and (Wednesday's visit) will be an occasion to restart the investment machine to create jobs," he said. "We are trying to create a favourable climate for French investments in Tunisia... we're trying to get a return of French tourists," Chahed added. Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - Gunmen believed to be cattle rustlers have killed 36 miners in northern Nigeria, the government and residents said Tuesday, the latest in a long-running series of such raids. Motorcycle-riding gunmen suspected to be cattle thieves invaded a goldmine late Monday outside Bindin village in northern Zamfara state, shooting dead miners and gold merchants. Many local herders turn to mining to boost their income. A policeman, D/Cpl Albert Ahiave has died in a daredevil operation at the airport area last Friday. The deceased met his untimely death when the driver of a stolen car he was trying to arrest allegedly drove into a wall killing him instantly. According to reports, the officer jumped onto the bonnet of the Ford Explorer vehicle to prevent the driver from escaping but he sped off and crashed into a wall. The policeman was said to have fallen off the car and the wall collapsed on him leading to his unfortunate demise. The driver of the vehicle, however, reversed quickly and sped off but every security man in the area left his post and gave him a hot chase until he was apprehended. The driver of the stolen Ford Explorer is now in custody at the Airport Police Station assisting in investigations. The body of the policeman was later seen in the rubble and has been sent to the 37 Military Hospital morgue for autopsy. By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA Wa, Nov. 6, GNA - The Ghana Agricultural and Rural Development Journalists Association (GARDJA) has called on government address the main challenges facing the agricultural sector in the country. GARDJA cited low agricultural production, low level of technology, inadequate number of agricultural extension officers, shortage and high cost of labour and prevalence of pests and diseases as some of the challenges confronting the agricultural sector. The others are high cost of farm inputs, limited credit facilities, frequent land disputes, poor marketing network and facilities, and low prices of farm produce. This was contained in a press statement issued and jointly signed by Mr Richmond Frimpong and Mr Ernest Kofi Adu, the President and the Secretary of GARDJA respectively to mark the celebration of this year's National Farmers Day. The statement said the use of modern agricultural technologies was limited, and farm work was highly manpower-based. 'No doubt, this is thwarting efforts of farmers to ensuring increase in productivity toward achieving food security and profitability. The statement said the high cost of funding and the cumbersome procedures, coupled with lack of collateral demanded by banks and other financial institutions has made it difficult for farmers to get the needed financial assistance for their farming activities. The Journalists were not happy why the national policy on fertilizer subsidy deliberately excluded phosphate fertilizer, which was badly needed by the people of Upper West Region to grow leguminous crops. The statement said two-thirds of soils in the Upper West Region were seriously deficient of phosphorus. The Journalists saluted farmers and fisher folks for their continuous support to food security and contribution to the economy. GNA By Bajin D. Pobia, GNA Busa (U/W), Nov. 6, GNA - Mr Alhassan Abu, 39, was adjuged the best farmer in the Wa Municipal at this year's Farmers Day celebration held at Busa. Mr Abu, who was among 17 other award winners, had been in the farming business for the past 21 years obtained his knowledge and skills from his late father. For his prize, he took away a tricycle and other farming inputs. Mr Issahaku Nuhu-Putiaha, Wa Municipal Chief Executive, said government had invested massively in the agricultural sector in its bid improve food production and incomes of farmers. He said government was also using agriculture to provide sustainable employment opportunities for the youth to produce more for domestic consumption and for export. Mr Nuhu-Putiaha said government has invested GHC 347.2 million of the 2015 budget in intervention policies such as the Fertilizer Subsidy Programme, Agricultural Mechanisation Services, the Youth in Agriculture and the Block Farming Programme. Others were the Northern Rural Growth Programme, which had facilitated the development of rural roads to link to farming communities and markets, the Livestock and Fisheries Development Programme, the Irrigation and Mechanisation of Systems Development, the Rice Sector Support Programme and the Free Agricultural Extension Services. The Municipal Chief Executive urged the youth to take advantage of government's interventions to turn their fortunes around. He announced that with the collaboration between the Wa Municipal Assembly and its development partners, such as USAID, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation and the Agence Francaise De Development, agricultural performance had improved in the municipality. He said the Veterinary, Animal Husbandry and the Crop Extension Officers have carried out livestock vaccination against diseases, treatment of livestock against minor ailments, and established crop and livestock demonstrations and organised Field Days, home and farm visits. Pests and disease surveillance was also put in place and 15,879 livestock, 12,348 birds, 2,700 cattle, 380 sheep and goats and 531 pets were vaccinated against various diseases. Mr Nuhu-Putiaha said seven technologies were disseminated to 60,000 farmers to help them increase their crop yields and about 337 hectares out of 773 hectares of developed rice valleys were cropped with about 179 farmers benefiting from the interventions. Sixty farmers based organisations were linked to various credit institutions to access credit to enhance their farming activities under the Northern Rural Growth Programme. Mr Nuhu-Putiaha said a total of 26,312 bags of NPK and 8,950 bags of Urea fertilizers were distributed to farmers in the Wa Municipality during the cropping season this year. He said as a result of the various interventions, crop production in the Wa Municipality was expected to increase by 20 per cent while livestock production would also increase by 15 per cent at the end of the farming season. Naa Ali Pelpuo, Paramount Chief of the Busa Traditional Area, expressed disappointment that many farmers were still depending on hoes and cutlasses to do their farming activities and this he said had resulted in the cultivation of few acreages. He appealed to government to invest more resources in the agricultural sector, especially provision of tractors, harvesters and planters as well as fertilizers at affordable prices to enable farmers to undertake large-scale farming to produce more for home consumption and for export. Naa Pelpuo said post-harvest losses was still a challenge among farmers in the area and appealed to agricultural extension officers to address it while helping to expand the Busa Dam to improve large scale vegetable production. The Busa-Naa appealed to government to release lands on the defunct Animal Husbandry Project to the Busa Traditional Council to enable the Council to use it for development purposes. GNA Ashaiman (GAR), Nov. 6, GNA - Mr Ibrahim Baidoo, the Ashaiman Municipal Chief Executive, has said government would continue to put in place right policies to ensure that the agriculture sector grows. He said by so doing, the government would be raising productive income and create more jobs for the teaming youthful population. Mr Baidoo gave the assurance when he addressed the Farmers Day celebration at Ashaiman organised by the Municipal Assembly. This year's event was held under the theme: 'Agriculture, A Business Response to Economic Growth.' Farmers Day is a national day set aside yearly to give recognition to farmers and fishermen, to motivate and support them and share relevant information on appropriate technologies for a sustainable food production and security. Mr Abdul Malik Yaba, was the Overall Best Winner of the Ashaiman Municipality for the 2016 Award. His business includes cattle, sheep, guinea fowl and donkeys rearing and this is besides the cultivation of maize and a mango plantation at located at Kordiabe in the Shai-Osudoku District. He was presented with a pair of Wellington boot, four cutlasses, four bags, a double-door fridge, a flat-screen television, a Knapsack sprayer and a piece of wax print. Mr Baidoo said it is important appropriate measures are taken to ensure that the agriculture sector becomes attractive to the youth. 'Over the years, it is agriculture which has managed to sustain the country's economy. But the sector has been left in the hands of the old and aged people. Most of the youth today do not want to go into agriculture,' he noted. The MCE said the theme for this year underscores the importance of commercial agriculture as a critical factor in the country's development agenda and there is a strong need for sustainable and responsible investment. Madam Selina Mensah, a Government Appointee at the Assembly, suggested that the landowners should reserve some of the farmlands for the future generation rather than giving them out to estate developers. Nii Annan Adzor, the Regent of Ashaiman and the Chairman for the occasion, expressed gratitude to the farmers for their hard work and in ensuring they produce to meet the needs of the nation. GNA By Iddi Yire, GNA Koforidua, Nov. 07, GNA - The Ghana News Agency (GNA) is well positioned to sustain and enhance its role in the news and information industry not only in Ghana but also on the entire African continent. Alhaji Mohammed Nurudeen Issahaq, the Acting General Manager of GNA said despite the fact that the Agency is currently going through turbulent times, it is not in an entirely hopeless situation. 'We have a strong brand, a wide network of reporters and stringers in all 10 regions of Ghana, and an editorial team that is capable of producing all the content we need to drive our own diversified products, as well as satisfy the content needs of our subscribers,' Alhaji Issahaq remarked at the end of a three-day workshop for editors, reporters, stringers and technical staff of the nation's only wire service at Koforidua. The workshop is also part of the 'GNA Tracks Election 2016 Project', being funded by GOIL, the state oil company and CIMG 2015 Petroleum Company of the year. The Acting General Manager said the commercialisation path remained a feasible option that could enable the Agency to wean itself off government's subvention, but added that the path to commercialisation, nonetheless, required that a conducive environment be created to ensure the success of such a bold move. 'The Management of GNA has submitted proposals to the government asking for a recapitalization fund to kick-start the process of de-listing the Agency from subvention,' he said, adding that a well-though-through financial analysis indicates that within a projected period of five years, GNA would have adequate finances to stand on its own. 'By that analysis, if for example the Agency is given a seed capital of five million Ghana Cedis, it would hit a revenue figure of about GHa10 million in five years.' The Acting General Manager appealed to the government to give serious consideration to the proposal which in the view of the GNA Management is the only path to giving the Agency a new lease of life. 'Besides, it would also reduce the burden on the Consolidated Fund and allow the Government to channel funds that would have been used to finance the GNA's operations into other endeavors of national development.' On the December 7 elections, Alhaji Issahaq said journalists and stringers have it as an obligation to disseminate truthful, accurate and unbiased news to the Agency's subscribers and the general public. 'GNA's stories should be fair to all political parties and candidates so as to create a level playing field that would enhance the credibility of the poll and make its outcome acceptable to all stakeholders.' He said in going about their coverage of the elections, journalists must emphasise more on the media's role in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and reconciliation rather than use the power of the media to incite violence. 'We owe it as a moral duty to preserve and keep this nation of ours together in one piece, both during and after the elections. That is what the GNA's 'One Ghana' Campaign is all about", he said. He cautioned against hate speech and urged journalists to exercise a great deal of circumspection in the way they handled speeches from politicians and also in the exercise of our editorial judgement, bearing in mind their responsibility to the society. He expressed the appreciation of the Management and staff of GNA to Goil for its kind generosity, which had made the capacity-building workshops for the Agency's journalists and stringers across the country possible. The' GNA Tracks Election 2016' Project seeks to sensitize the electorate on the various issues raised by political parties, the elections management body and other governance institutions. It aims at ensuring gender and social inclusion in national politics and to provide voice for the youth, vulnerable groups, opinion leaders and the broader spectrum of the society, as well as contribute to the achievement of the overall objective of having a peaceful poll on December 7. Reporters and Stringers who attended the Koforidua workshop were drawn from the Greater Accra, Volta, Eastern, Central and Western Regions. A similar workshop was also organised at Abesim near Sunyani for participants from the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Northern, Upper East and West Regions. GNA Accra, Nov. 7, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has announced that the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) governing law would be appropriately review to better position the Authority to facilitate, develop and promote non-traditional exports (NTEs). Speaking at the 26th President's National Awards for Export Achievement, President Mahama said the government was aware of the strategic importance of GEPA to the country's NTE sector hence the move to provide dedicated funds from the EXIM Bank to support businesses in the export sector. President Mahama, whose speech was read on his behalf by Mrs Helen Mona Quartey, the Deputy Minister of Finance, commended GEPA for the awards scheme to help motivate exporters in the NTE Sector. He asked the exporter community to enhance quality and ensure compliance to their production processes since that was the only way to maintain their competitive edge in the global export market. Touching on the establishment of the EXIM Bank, President Mahama said it was envisaged to support the private sector to diversify and expand its supply base as well as its domestic and export markets and the entire production and export chain of high earning export products. The EXIM Bank, he said, would provide the much-needed funds to implement the National Export Development Programme (NEDP) as it related to the eleven priority export products, including cashew, medicinal plants and processed cocoa, which had been earmarked to lead the growth and increase of the Export sector and the Non-Traditional Export (NTE) sector, respectively. He said the overall objective of the five-year National Export Strategy was to develop the potential of the NTE sector to enable it make maximum contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and national development in order to consolidate and enhance Ghana's middle-income status, create formal decent job opportunities and ensue high standards of living for the people. President Mahama said to further increase the production volume and export value of processed cocoa products, which continued to be the lead product in the NTE sector, government was maintaining the target of processing at least 60 per cent of cocoa beans produced in Ghana by supporting major chocolate manufacturing companies to establish and upgrade their processing plants. Mr James Tiigah, the Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, said the annual event aimed to acknowledge and encourage as well as celebrate export excellence of companies operating in the NTE sector. In 2015, total revenues from NTEs amounted to $2.522 billion up marginally over $2.514 billion in 2014. Mr Tiigah said although the growth was modest, there is hope that with the implementation of the National Export Strategy, export revenues would witness significant amount of growth in the next few years. The awards, which were held on the theme: 'Celebrating Export Excellence,' had companies received awards for 2014 and 2015 performances. Niche Cocoa Industry Limited emerged the Exporter of the year for both 2014 and 2015. Other award winners include UNIDO, Kingdom Exim Ghana Limited, Ghana Nuts Company and Dasoa Company Limited. GNA By Joyce Danso, GNA Accra, Nov. 7, GNA - The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday unanimously ordered that all suits relating to disqualification of all 2016 Presidential Nominees before the High Courts be put on hold. The seven member panel said: 'We find it necessary and expedient to make further order to stay all court proceedings pending in the various High Courts against the applicant (Electoral Commission) by some of the disqualified Presidential Candidates on the same issue of having been denied a hearing to enable the EC to carry out its mandate in line with these orders'. The SC also ordered that the EC extend nomination period for all disqualified applicants to Tuesday, November 8. 'It is hereby ordered that the applicant extends the nomination period from today Monday, November 7, 2016 to the close of working day of Tuesday November 8, 2016. 'Wherefore we accordingly stay all such proceedings in the High Courts,' the Court said. The SC held that 'the applicant should invite the interested party and all the presidential candidates who were able to submit their nomination papers by the close of the nomination day on September 30, 2016 and were disqualified without a hearing and give them hearing within the extended period. According to the Court that was to 'afford candidates, the opportunity to comply with regulation 9 (2) of the Public Election Regulation, 2016 (CI 94).' The Court opined that their direction was to enable the Commission give fair hearing to all parties who have been disqualified including the Progressive People Party (PPP) Presidential Nominee, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom. According to the highest court of the land, their decision was also delivered in the interest of fairness and national interest. The ruling gives room for all disqualified flag bearers to amend their nomination forms and submit same on to the EC. The decision of the SC sparked jubilation at the court when supporters who were grouped outside the courtroom were informed. Sympathisers powered talcum on themselves amidst singing and dancing. The Supreme Court last Friday sat over on an application by the Electoral Commission (EC) challenging the judgement of the High Court that overturned the Commission's disqualification of Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom. The EC had gone to the highest court of the land to seek clarity following the decision of the High Court quashing the Commission's decision to disqualify Dr Nduom, the Presidential Candidate of the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), from the presidential race on December 7. The seven member panel which sat over the case are; Justice Sophia Adinyira (presiding), Justice Anin Yeboah, Justice Paul Baffoe Bonney, Justice Vida Akoto Bamfo, Justice Yaw Appau, Justice Amapah Benin, and Justice Gabriel Pwamang. Mr Ayikoi Otoo, Counsel for PPP, was of the opinion that the extension of nomination should have been on Wednesday so that all those disqualified would be given the ample time to effect corrections. According to him his client had only one amendment to make. On November 2, this year, Justice Gabriel Pwamang sat over the case as a sole judge but when the case was called Friday morning seven judges had been empanelled. The EC had rejected Dr Nduom's nomination claiming the number of subscribers to his forms did not meet the requirements of Regulation 7 (2) (b) of CI 94, the law governing the conduct of the 2016 Elections. The Commission said one of his subscribers endorsed the forms with different signatures in both portions of the nomination forms, raising questions as to the legitimacy of one or both signatures. The PPP, however, argued that the EC did not give them the opportunity to correct the errors on the nomination forms hence proceeded to the High Court to contest the matter. The High Court, presided over by Mr Justice Eric Kyei Baffour, on October 28 this year, ordered the EC to give the PPP the opportunity to amend anomalies on the nomination forms of the Party's Flagbearer for him to re-submit. The EC, in its statement on Monday, October 31, dissented the judgment, saying that presidential candidates must ensure the accuracy of information provided to public institutions and must take full responsibility thereof GNA The vice presidential candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has asked Ghanaians to accept goodies given to them by members of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), ahead of the December elections. Dr. Bawumia, while speaking in the Bunkpurugu constituency of the Northern Region, urged the people to accept the monies and all other goodies being given to them for their votes, but vote against the NDC on December 7. Because the NDC has not done any work, you see that they dont have a message so when I leave here, when we all leave here in a few days' time, you will see that the NDC will come, they will come with propaganda; but most importantly they will come with goodies. He said the NDC would come with sowing machines, motorbikes and money. My advice to you is that, when they come, collect the motorbikes, sewing machines; and collect the monies and spend it very well because this is your own money, this is money they should have used to develop you, so collect it, it's your money. It's coming, you wait, you will see them coming with it in trucks, when they come collect it, it is the money that they should have used for the schools, roads, hospitals, the money that they should have used to subsidize fertilizer, they have not done that, they have chopped this money and they have now come to bribe us with this money to be able to vote for them. Chop it well and vote for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, he added. Don't be deceived by Mahama's goodies Flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo Addo, has also said Ghanaians should expect several attempts by President Mahama to ' buy their votes with goodies' ahead of the December polls. As election draws closer, expect more goodies from this government, we are going to see this and that. They are going to spend a lot of money on freebies in a way to convince you to vote for them, he said at one of his campaign tours in the Greater Accra Region. By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @AlloteyGodwin Following an attempted jail break by the notorious criminal, Johnson Kombian, and two others, the Nsawam Medium Security Prison has been locked down. Eastern Region Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, DSP Courage Atsem, told Joy News officers on duty at the prison foiled the jail break attempt. There was an attempted escape [on Sunday], which was foiled by the officers on duty. Everybody is in intact. The Police have begun a full-scale investigation into the incident to get the full details of what occurred, he confirmed. Johnson Kombian murdered two policemen at Nakpanduri in the Northern Region was sentenced to death by hanging by the Accra Fast Track High Court. The seven-member jury unanimously found Kombian, a convicted jail-breaker and notorious armed robber, guilty of conspiracy to commit crime and murder of the two police officers Constables Prince Agyare and Owusu Frimpong. He was also sentenced to 30 years for conspiracy to commit murder and to death by hanging for murder. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com The Supreme Court in a unanimous decision yesterday ordered the Electoral Commission (EC) headed by Charlotte Osei, to allow the 12 disqualified presidential candidates to correct errors on their nomination forms ahead of the December polls. The seven-member panel of justices presided over by Sophia Adinyira was emphatic that the EC must invite the interested parties and all the presidential candidates who were able to submit their nomination papers by close of September 30, 2016 and were disqualified without a hearing, to rectify the errors for which they were disqualified. The ruling has open the floodgate for all aggrieved disqualified aspirants, including the Progressive People's Party's (PPP's) Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom to take a second bite at the cherry if only they can meet the deadline set by the court. The other aspirants in contention of the EC's earlier decision are Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlngs of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Hassan Ayariga of the All People's Congress (APC), Dr Edward Mahama's People's National Convention (PNC), Kofi Akpaloo's Independent People's Party (IPP) and lately Alfred Kwame Asiedu Walker, an independent candidate. Akua Donkor of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP) who has already joined the NDC campaign, is reported to have indicated her intention to take a second chance to file her nomination forms. However, they all have up till the close of work today to go through the process. The EC therefore, set in motion the process to get all the disqualified aspirants on board by writing to them, especially those already in court litigating over their plight. Orders In the view of the Supreme Court, the EC must also extend the nomination period effective yesterday, November 7, until the close of day today. Justice Adinyira indicated in the landmark ruling that the electoral body in appropriate cases must afford candidates the opportunity to comply with Regulation 9(2) of the Public Elections Regulations, 2016 (CI 94). According to the justices, Consequent to the above directives, we find it necessary and expedient to make a further order to stay all proceedings pending in the various High Courts against the applicants by some disqualified presidential candidates on the same issue of having been denied a hearing to enable the EC to carry out its mandate in line with these orders. Justice Adinyira said that the decision of the court was based on the principle of fairness and national interest. The SC however, granted the application by the EC that the high court exceeded its jurisdiction to compel the EC to allow the PPP to make corrections on its nomination forms. Other panel members were Justices Kwasi Anin-Yeboah; Paul Baffoe-Bonnie; Vida Akoto-Bamfo; Anthony A. Benin; Yaw Apau and Gabriel Pwamang. The EC, led by its lawyer, Thaddeus Sory, had ran to the apex court in an attempt to overturn a high court ruling compelling it to reverse its disqualification of Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom. New Errors However, Dr. Nduom may have new hurdles to cross as the EC says it has discovered new errors on his forms. It announced that there were new errors on Nduom's nomination forms after the Supreme Court had ordered the commission to allow all the presidential aspirants to correct the errors on their forms. The EC in a letter to the PPP, asked them to bring before it one Richard Aseda, who subscribed to the party's flag bearer's forms in two different districts. Kindly take the requisite steps to procure the attendance of Mr. Richard Aseda (who is listed as a subscriber on pages 21 and 39 of your nomination) at the head office of the commission, prior to the close of nomination, to confirm that he actually subscribed to your forms and the district in which he is subscribed, a letter from the EC stated. It also said, Please find attached a list of other concerns and discrepancies found on your nomination form within the extended nomination period. These include signatures which do not tally across copies of your form. The EC accused Aseda of subscribing to Nduom's forms in two different districts. But the PPP and the other parties sued the commission for taking such an action against them. In response to the PPP's suit, the EC went to the Supreme Court to quash the decision of the High Court which favoured Dr. Nduom. Other Cases On the heels of that was another High Court ruling delivered by Justice Barbara Tetteh-Charway in favour of Hassan Ayariga. It is not clear whether a third ruling expected at a General Jurisdiction High Court on Thursday involving Dr. Edward Mahama, a presidential hopeful of the Peoples National Convention (PNC) could be delivered. On Friday, the EC was dismissed in a case seeking to push aside an Accra High Court Judge, Eric Kyei Baffour, from hearing the case in which the National Democratic Party (NDP) had sued the commission. The EC had wanted the judge who delivered a judgement in favour of Dr. Nduom to be removed from hearing the case involving the NDP and its flag bearer, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings because he has an opinion. By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson [email protected] President John Dramani Mahama has expressed optimism in winning the December 7 presidential election, in spite of events on the ground that suggests that Ghanaians want to change him and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. He said the election is about leadership and added, Ghanaians, I am confident, will once again vote for a leader who not only reflects the aspirations of modern Ghana, but also better represents who we truly are. The state of the race is very favourable and continues to be better with each passing day. We are winning the race! The president is currently campaigning vigorously for a re-election, but his confidence runs counter to the increasing desire by many Ghanaians for a change of government due to widespread economic hardship and rampant corruption associated with his tenure. Open Letter President Mahama has written an open letter to NDC supporters and the entire populace titled, 'The Homestretch,' in which he took time to explain some of his policies and made assurances for his next term in office, if he is re-elected. In the letter which started with the sentence, We are winning the race! President Mahama expressed his gratitude for the continuous support that Ghanaians have accorded him. For giving me, John Dramani Mahama, the rare opportunity to serve you as President, I remain humbled and eternally grateful, he said. He noted that Ghana's collective gains under his tenure had been overwhelming saying, These gains could certainly not have been possible without the blessings of our God Almighty, your patriotism, sense of duty and dedication to the development and economic progress of Ghana. It is these attributes that have propelled me when the going got tough. I stayed focused, listened to your suggestions, took responsibility as your leader and pursued the Agenda for Transformation, notwithstanding the adverse global and domestic environment, which greeted the beginning of my administration in 2013. He re-echoed the fall in commodity prices, almost a year-long election petition, market fires and the inferno at the Central Medical Stores in Tema, among others, and said they were just a few of the obstacles we overcame. 'Ghana Is Up And Rising' According to President Mahama, his NDC government had shown what he termed 'sensitivity' to the plight of Ghanaians adding, Till this date, my appointees and I have taken pay cuts to support efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality. A directive to provide government vehicles with specialised number plates (green) is being implemented. Apart from this, ministers and political appointees were migrated onto the prepaid metering system for electricity supply and billing. Electricity Bills In spite of the monstrous electricity bills bombarding Ghanaians, President Mahama said, We have taken steps to rationalize the anomalies in the Electricity Company's billing system to the relief of consumers. He said students' loans had been reviewed upwards and the producer price of cocoa had been increased to an all-time high. The president said over GH1 billion was paid to cover claims from service providers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) where outpatient utilization alone in 2015 increased to 29 million from 9 in 2008. The United Nations' Human Development Index puts our nation within the Medium Human Development category, ahead of our neighbours like Cote D'Ivoire and Nigeria, and this is better than what we have ever achieved in the past, President Mahama asserted. Fight Against Corruption He said Transparency International (TI) had lauded the strategies adopted to fight corruption in Ghana and pointed out that the NDC's worst record in the TI's anti-corruption league table over the years, was better than the opposition NPP's best record while in office, maintaining, In the coming years, I pledge to implement more robust interventions, including the National Anti-corruption Action Plan (NACAP) to make corruption unattractive and a higher risk activity. Economic Indicators The head of state posited that relative macroeconomic stability had been achieved, Ghana's debt profile was improving and the economy would grow by 8% from 2017, adding, The Ghana cedi is one of the best performing currencies on the continent this year, and the rating agency Moody's, and our development partners, are posting favourable reviews about our performance in economic management and medium term prospects. In the face of massive unemployment particularly among the youth, President Mahama said more jobs had been created and added that In the health and education sectors alone, 23,411 nurses and 78,000 teachers respectively have been employed into the public sector. He said, We have developed infrastructure schools, hospitals, public houses, roads, expanded airports and these alone have created over 400,000 jobs. By William Yaw Owusu America is making history today November 8, 2016, whichever way the pendulum swings. Either by putting the first ever woman (Hilary Clinton) in office as president of the United States. Or putting the most terrible presidential candidate ever in the history of US politics Donald Trump in power. A lot of people both within and beyond the shores of North America tend to agree with that description of Donald Trump. I have been in the US for some months now and everyone I meet has a problem with the dumb policies, uncensored language and poor moral values of Trump. But it remains strange how his support base continues to grow, how his rally grounds get filled and most fundamentally, how he managed to come this far in the first place. I believe that is a subject that will continue to remain a key area of research for political scientists for a very long time to come. All other things being equal, this election should have been over a long time ago. With all the scandals, both action wise and talk wise that have characterized Trumps journey to the White House, Mrs. Clinton should probably have opened a 10 point lead over him by now. So that we will all go to sleep on election night, firm in our minds that we will not wake up to a surprise that will make the numerous polls predicting a victory for her false prophecies. But not when you have someone with a dark history like Hilary Clinton as candidate on the other side. Her own track record especially outside politics, display of terrible judgment in her work as Secretary of State, and the business as usual posturing when it comes to policies for the future beyond 2016 have not helped matters. Many analysts think Trumps promise to Americanise America is what has caught up with most citizens, and kept his campaign alive all these months. But I believe there is more to it than that. If we were living in normal times, no one will vote a divisive figure like Trump - who preaches racism and bigotry - as president. No one will vote for a man who brags about sexually harassing women and calls them dogs and fat pigs. No one would vote for a candidate who plans to ban Muslims from entering America as president. No one will vote a candidate who plans to deport all undocumented immigrants as president because that could well be your family and friends. No one will vote a candidate who encourages nuclear proliferation as president and is promising a trade war with China by imposing infinite taxes on their goods. And no one will vote for a candidate who plans to withdraw from major global trade deals and international protocols to deal with climate change. But unfortunately, these are not normal times. America is not that prosperous economy with opportunity for all that it used to be. And people sit around on tenterhooks everyday in fear that the next terrorist attack could well happen in their neighbourhood. Sadly, when you read through Hilary Clintons vision for America as I have done over and over, you dont find any fresh, clearly spelt out specific plans as Trump has laid out - no matter how crazy they are - aimed at dealing with the fragile economy, troubling unemployment statistics and national security challenges that prompted those over the top promises by Trump. Maybe, apart from increasing the amount of tax paid by the wealthy. I may be wrong but for me, nothing else stands out. Be it the immigration crisis or health care challenges or whatever, she is offering the same old strategies Barack Obama has implemented over the last 8 years that have not exactly fixed the problems. Only promising to build on or reform or expand them.So, the people backing Trump are right when they say with Clinton in the Oval Office, the challenges may never go away. Why should they stick with her? And her own darkened past has not helped matters either. Her handling of the attack on the US Embassy in Libya and the crisis in Syria; and her use of private emails for official government business in this era where every smart wannabe hacker is targeting the American government to get hold of state secrets and publish, just to mention a few. And concerns of conflict of interest in how she, her husband and daughter have managed their Clinton Foundation. Not forgetting how she has responded over the years to allegations of her husband harassing women sexually. Now all these are coming back to haunt her. Trumps CV looks even more terrible. I dont think I need to say much about his horrible track record in business with how he takes advantage of everyone and everything including his own country. These are too well known and documented facts. But this is the point that I am driving at. In judging contestants for leadership position, I believe three main criteria should be the guide; previous achievements in other leadership spaces, personal values and how you uphold them, and what your plans are for the future. I will score both candidates below the pass mark on all three criteria, and I am sure a lot of Americans agree with me. I followed the 2008 and 2012 elections in America very keenly; the grueling battles between Barack Obama and John McCanin, and subsequently Mitt Romney. Those campaigns were filled with a lot of hope for tomorrow, exciting plans for the future, people of integrity with hard to question moral values, and candidates track records every American can be proud of. Fast forward to 2016, the standards have fallen to unprecedented levels, if you ask me. If I were an America voter, I will have voted for Hilary Clinton by the way. Not because I believe she is the best candidate in the race, but because as we commonly say; she is less of the two evils. That is not a vote you can be proud of. That is not a vote you can look back to in future and proudly say you nailed it fair and square. That is the kind of vote that you cast and leave your head bowed down for the four years that follow. So, we have had close to one year of campaigning that gave more attention to Trumps loose talk and Clintons email scandal than the real bread and butter issues that affect America. We have come to the end of a grueling campaign that discussed Trumps lifestyle and Clintons husbands immoral behaviour more than the issues of children dying in Syria and Haiti. Thank God we have come to the end of a campaign that focused more on Trumps insulting tweets and how much cooperate America paid Clinton for closed door speeches than the demands by activist groups on facebook for action on climate change. Now, the media can probably begin re-focusing on the real issues that matter after today. If I were an American Voter, I will be very sad today. Regardless of who is declared winner of the polls later tonight, I dont think there will be much to celebrate. Although people will still have reason to celebrate because every victory, no matter how rough or small, deserves a bottle of champagne. But that is not a victory for the country. That may well be a victory for Hilary Clinton and her Democratic Party. Im still trying to figure out where America will go from here but for now, wishes of good tidings to Hilary Clinton, and may God bless the United States of America. By Joseph Opoku Gakpo/www.josephopokugakpo.wordpress.com The Electoral Commission (EC) is creating yet another controversy following the reported award of contract for the printing of election materials (including the Pink Sheets) to a company many see as having a questionable track record. The company in question Aero Vote was registered in Ghana less than a year ago but the commission, chaired by Charlotte Osei, has given it the green light to print the election materials which will cost Ghana a whopping $8.95 million. It is even emerging that Aero Vote went bankrupt in the United Kingdom (UK) but was resurrected and incorporated in Ghana last December (11 months ago) and has spectacularly won the bid to print the ballot materials and related carbonized election results forms. However, the EC boss, Charlotte Osei, had dismissed the report suggesting that the printing contract was awarded to a dissolved printing firm in the UK at over-bloated prices. According to her, the contract was awarded to a Ghana-based company, after it had met all the requirements. Materials such as the Statement of Poll for the Office of Member of Parliament and Statement of Poll for the Office of President (Pink Sheets), the Certificate to be Endorsed on Writ (Form EL1 B for parliamentary election) and the Certificate to be Endorsed on Writ (Form EL 1 B for presidential election); and the Parliamentary Elections Results Collation Form (Form EL 23A) and the Presidential Elections-Result Collation Form (Form EL 23B) are going to be printed by the company. Buck Press, the locally-owned company that printed the ballot materials for the 2012 general election, is reported to have put in a bid with very less quotation ($4.2) for the contract, but the EC allegedly overlooked it and selected Aero Vote which quotation was more than two times that of Buck Press'. It is even turning out that per the calculation, the company is charging Ghana $100 per Pink Sheet and related carbonized election results forms; and there are even astonishing claims that Aero Vote's machines for the printing are quite obsolete. Apart from Buck Press, the other locally-owned companies that put in bids were Acts Commercial Printing and Innolink. Sources at the EC indicate that printing of parliamentary ballot papers begins this weekend. Under the contract, Aero Vote is supposed to print only 3,000 extra copies of the carbonized pink sheets for each of the 29,000 polling stations for both presidential and parliamentary results in order to avoid the printing of duplicated Pink Sheets as it happened in 2012. Aero Vote was a United Kingdom-based commercial printing firm owned by a Kenyan and three Britons of Indian descent, until it went insolvent three years ago. It was essentially only five years in business set up in 2008. It collapsed when it failed to win the ballots printing contract for Kenya's general election in 2013. For printing 275 carbonized Constituency Collation Sheets (Forms EL 23B) for the presidential election, Aero Vote is charging $34,210, although one of the local companies offered to do it for $15,125 over 50% less than Aero Vote's. For the Pink Sheets (Form Eight), a local company offered to print 29,000 for $1,595,000 for both parliamentary and presidential polls while Aero Vote won the bid with $2,884,920 for parliamentary and $3,915,290 for the presidential. The local company again offered to print the additional 3,000 replacement Pink Sheets for either the presidential or parliamentary poll again at a constant price of $165,000 while Aero Vote is to be paid $298,440 for the parliamentary and $405,030 for the presidential. On the printing of Constituency Results Summary Sheets (EL 24A and EL24B), Aero Vote won the bid with a cost of $21,615 and $21,615, respectively while a local company offered $13,200 for parliamentary and the same $13,200 for the presidential. By William Yaw Owusu Goma (DR Congo) (AFP) - A young girl was killed and 31 Indian peacekeepers were injured Tuesday in a grenade explosion in Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said. "A grenade exploded regretably killing a girl of roughly eight-years-old... another civilian was injured," said Bilamekaso Tchagbele, the information chief for the UN's force in the country, adding that the blue helmets were struck as they were exercising. By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Accra, Nov. 7, GNA - The EXIM Bank Ghana has donated two tractors to two farmers at the just ended farmer's day celebration held at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region. The event, which saw Ariku Martin Akudugu, 39-year from the Upper East Region, first runner up picked up one of the brand new tractors. Mr Samuel Abiyaga from Bulsa Upper East Region, who won the National Lives Stock Farmer of the year, also got the second tractor donated by the Bank. The Export Trade, Agricultural Investment Fund (EDAIF), Law was repealed, which led to the establishment of the EXIM Bank has been a key stake donor in supporting farmers and the celebration of farmer's day over the years. Dr Osei Baffour, the Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in an interview with GNA said, EDAIF started with a mandate on agriculture and agro processing, hence the need to reward farmers during the annual celebration. Dr Baffour said the Bank would remain committed to its usual support to farmers and the agriculture sector. This year's celebration was on the theme: 'Agriculture; A Business Response to Economic Growth,' was in line with the promise of a mandate of EXIM Bank. The CEO said there was a better and wider scope of support for farmers and other areas of its mandate on entrepreneurial initiatives, technical as well as advisory services for farmers aimed at changing perceptions on farming. In a related development, Dr Baffour said the EXIM Bank was not coming to compete with commercial banks but to fill those gaps that were left by commercial banks. He said EXIM Bank could borrow from donors and other agencies that had interest in the businesses that they did. This year's farmer's day marks the 32nd celebrations of Farmers day in the history of the country. President John Dramani Mahama encouraged farmers to practice farming as a business, saying 'farming is a business and must be approached in a business manner'. The President said Cabinet had approved the establishments of Farmers Service Centres to be done in all assemblies across Ghana beginning with 50 to provide services including ploughing, hallowing, and harvesting among others to farmers who needed supports. He encouraged supporting agencies in agriculture to continue their support in collaboration with governments to help improve the countries agriculture challenges and also make Ghana an agriculture export country in the sub-region. President Mahama said supporting agencies and programmes like EXIM has Sponsored Rice Project and the Rice Sector Support programme has helped increase rice production to more than 60 per cent. GNA Accra , Nov. 7, GNA - The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called African countries attention to the importance of using the 'One Health approach' in order to more successfully prevent and manage public health emergencies and threats. One Health is an approach to designing health systems and services in ways that account for the link between human, animal and environmental health. A statement signed by WHO Africa Regional Office and copied to the Ghana News Agency said on November 8- November 11, the WHO Africa Region, in collaboration with global and regional partners, would convene the West African Regional Conference on One Health in Dakar, Senegal. 'More than 200 policymakers, experts and civil society advocates will discuss the importance of designing health systems and programmes that incorporate the One Health approach in order to contain diseases in animals and the environment before they spread to humans and become global crises. 'Ministers responsible for human health, animal health and wildlife from 17 countries are expected to attend,'' it said. The statement said in recent years, 75 per cent of emerging infectious diseases have been caused by pathogens that spread to humans from animals or animal products. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa began when a child came into contact with the virus, likely through an infected animal. It said from that single interaction, the virus then spread to more than 28,000 people and 10 countries, including five capital cities, killing more than 11,000. West Africa is now grappling with outbreaks of other zoonotic diseases, such as avian influenza in Cameroon and Nigeria and Rift Valley Fever in Niger, as well as vector-borne threats such as a Zika virus strain from Brazil that is responsible for current outbreaks in Cabo Verde and in Guinea-Bissau. The statement said West African Regional Conference on One Health would provide a powerful platform for West African leaders to discuss strategies for addressing health threats across the region. It said it would also give them the opportunity to commit to implementing the One Health approach at the country and sub-regional levels. 'Health security and emergency preparedness are issues too big to be handled by any one stakeholder, organisation or country - and too important for us to wait any longer,' said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. 'This conference will be an opportunity to learn from each other's successes and obstacles, identify resource gaps and, ultimately, create a sub-regional roadmap for preventing and combating zoonotic diseases and other public health threats using the One Health approach. 'One Health will play a key role in the implementation of WHO's Regional Strategy on Health Security and Emergencies 2016-2020, which was agreed upon at the 66th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this past August. The West African Regional Conference on One Health is being co-hosted by WHO in collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the WHO for Animal Health, ECOWAS, which included the West African Health Organisation and Regional Animal Health Centre, the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN By Fatima Anafu -Astanga Bolgatanga, Nov. 7, GNA - Mr Gomez Adongo, Regional Programmes Officer for the National Commission for Civic Education. (NCCE), on Wednesday stated that the level of patriotism of Ghanaians should be sustained and this should help project developments. Mr Adongo said this in response to some concerns raised by political representatives at a focus group engagement held in Bolgatanga for political party representatives, faith based organization, women and people with disability in connection with the 2016 general elections. The meeting was to educate participants towards achieving a high voter turnout and ensure increased commitment and comportment from the citizenry during the 2016 elections. He said some party faithful deliberately remained at polling stations after casting their votes purposely to foment troubles and added that such actions did not augur well for the country's democracy. Mr Adongo urged all Ghanaians to sustain the peace enjoyed in the country. Mr Mawuli Agbenu, Programmes Officer, at the Bolgatanga Municipal office of the NCCE, in a presentation on 'Concepts of Democracy towards Free and Fair Elections', reiterated some of Ghana's achievements in promoting free and fair elections. He mentioned some indicators in place to include legal framework, election management, and transparency in polling, dispute resolution and voter registration. Mr Agbenu noted that democracy was inclusive and therefore participation of all, irrespective of ethnicity was crucial, adding that the vulnerable, especially women, the aged, disabled, and pregnant women should not be prevented from voting. Ms Mary Nyamekye Ankrah, Assistant Director at the NCCE, said the overwhelming ballot rejections experienced in past elections was a minus to the growing democracy and urged the participants to be true ambassadors' of their parties and share the training received. Ms Ankrah took the participants through voting procedures and prepared posters for distribution to the participants. GNA The opposition New Patriotic Partys (NPP) Zongo Caucus, known as the Nasara Club, has organized a special Islamic prayer for peaceful elections on December 7. The event was organized by the National Nasara Coordinator, Kamaldeen Abdullah, who assembled Islamic Clerics in Tamale, to pray for the nation's peace and tranquility. A renowned Islamic scholar, and a teacher at Tamale Senior High School, Sheikh Alhaji Eliasu Umar, officiated the prayer which coincided with Kamaldeen Abdullah's daughter (Huraya-Tungteiya's) naming ceremony. Sheikh Eliasu Umar, decried instances where some recalcitrant Muslim youth are hired by selfish politicians to cause mayhem during elections. It is very expedient that Muslims avoid troubles and involve in activities that will bring chaos in our state. He thus urged all Muslim youth to act as peace ambassadors in their localities. We need peace, and we are really encouraging the youth to avoid any circumstances because of small monies to go and cause trouble. Don't allow somebody to buy your integrity because of his own desires. He further reminded Muslims to be guided by Islam's cardinal principle of peace and total submission to the will of Allah, before, during and after the December polls. The former Chief Imam of Kamina Barracks in Tamale, Sheikh Eliasu Umar, called for transparency and fairness throughout the processes leading to the general elections. The convener, Kamaldeen Abdullah, dispelled the widespread misconception that some Muslim youth particularly those living in Zongo communities caused anarchy during elections. I think it is very important we lay bare the fact that violent youth necessarily do not come only from the Muslim or Zongo communities. The youth of this country in general are prone to violence which has to do with hardships, joblessness and issues that militate against their own welfare. He nonetheless proffered a solution to electoral violence saying, What we need to do as a people and as a country is to rather educate ourselves towards achieving a peaceful election; and again ensuring that justice is key in whatever we are doing. If an institution like the Electoral Commission is supposed to play a role in these elections, it ought to play that role and make sure that everybody is satisfied. If the judiciary are supposed to play their role, they have to play it and make sure everybody is satisfied; and the executive arm of government itself where security is vested in their arms, they ought to play it fairly to ensure that everybody is satisfied. Muslim scholars and youth from Bolgatanga, Accra and Kumasi participated in the event. By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citifmonline.com/Ghana The Peoples National Congress (PNC) has confirmed the receipt of the triplicate copies of the partys Flagbearers nomination forms it asked the Electoral Commission (EC) to provide so it could adequately correct all errors on the forms. This was confirmed by the partys General Secretary, Atik Mohammed. The PNC had threatened to head to the Supreme Court to further extend the nomination period if it did not receive all the copies by 8:00 am today [Tuesday]. The PNC explained that its demand was to ensure that all minor errors across the four sets of nomination forms and not just one are carefully and thoroughly addressed. The EC gave the PNC a single copy of the nomination forms despite the fact the party submitted the forms in quadruplicate. The party explained that it would be unable to effectively correct the errors without the originals or copies of all the nomination forms submitted in triplicate. The PNC Flagbearer, Dr. Edward Mahama, and 12 other presidential aspirants were handed a lifeline by the Supreme Courts order of extension after they were initially disqualified from the presidential race after varying errors were detected on their filed nomination forms. Dr. Mahama in particular was disqualified on the grounds that some of the subscribers who endorsed his nomination forms from the regions, forged signatures while others endorsed more than one candidate. By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana Otumfuo Osei Tutu II , king of the Ashanti kingdom has urged President Mahama to continue to sell his Changing Lives; Transforming Ghana achievements and good works to the electorates. At a meeting in the manhyia palace yesterday where President Mahama called on the Asantehene at the manhyia palace, the Asante monarch, Otumfuo listed projects such as the Kumasi Central market, the over one thousand hospital beds to be added to the Ashanti regions hospital bed stock few months from now, the road and water projects, the military hospital, among others as achievements the president must continue selling to electorates. President John Mahama as part of his efforts to seek re-election in the upcoming December 7 General elections, is on a campaign tour in the Ashanti Region where his ubiquitous presence, by virtue of his humbling persona and his extraordinary achievements in the Ashanti Region is said to have sent down shivers down the spine of the New Patriotic Party in the Ashanti Region. The Ashanti Region is the traditional stronghold of the New Patriotic Party but political analysts and pollsters have indicated that the infrastructural and developmental projects instituted in the region by President Mahama is most likely a factor that is going to shore up the fortunes of the NDC in the upcoming elections. The NDC have set a target of 1 million votes, how ever it is said that the NDC is likely to achieve and surpass this target A report filtering in reveals that Swiss Company, Trafigura, has denied all responsibility for its health damaging business levelled against it by Public Eye in their recent report of dirty diesel trade in Africa. This took place at Geneva when flanked by a container full of dirty air from Ghana's capital Accra, Public Eye handed Trafigura a petition signed by almost 20'000 people asking the commodities giant to stop selling Dirty Diesel to Africa. While Trafigura continues to deny all responsibility for its health damaging business, public pressure moved the government of Ghana to toughen its national sulfur standard by a factor of 60. The report noted that this campaign success of Public Eye and its African counterparts is an important step on the way to reducing air pollution and protecting people's health. Accompanied by the sounds of African drums and dozens of activists, Public Eye on Monday November 7th noon dropped off the container full of dirty air from Accra and a petition signed by almost 20'000 people at the corporate offices of Trafigura. This symbolic "return to sender" action was the last invitation for the Swiss commodities trader to stop its systematic exploitation of weak African sulfur standards and live-up to its sustainability promises by becoming the first supplier of clean diesel and gasoline. Trafigura accepted the petition but continues to hide behind the legality of its toxic business model, claiming that any such decision is the sole responsibility of African governments. Of course Trafigura is not the only Swiss company with such a profoundly unethical attitude: other dirty diesel culprits such as Vitol, Glencore, Addax & Oryx, and Mercuria put their African profit margins before the health of millions of people. According to the report, while the commodities trading firms continue to turn their backs on their responsibilities, the political authorities in other countries responded quite promptly by contrast. The biggest step was taken by the government of Ghana which significantly toughened its national sulfur standards after strong public protests. At a meeting organized by the UN environmental program (UNEP) the National Petroleum Authority announced that the legally permitted sulfur content of diesel imports would be lowered to 50ppm (parts per million) by March 1, 2017, down from a current 3000 ppm. The European standard is 10ppm. The national refinery TOR which covers only 15% of the domestic demand will have to produce 500ppm after this date and is given a deadline of 2020 to make the necessary investments that will allow it to improve its quality to 50ppm. Ghana's historical decision provides a good template for other West African governments when they meet in early December in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss this issue. Its added that meanwhile, the "Dirty Diesel" report also got the political ball rolling in the ARA region (Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp) where most "African quality" fuel is produced. The city council of Amsterdam as the owner of the city's port is weighing the option of putting an end to this illegitimate Swiss business model. The report indicated that in concert with its African partners, Public Eye will continue to fight against the import of toxic fuel. Corporations that exploit these scandalous double standards and the governments of importing and producing countries must quit wasting time and honor the affected populations' right to health, its stated. The reformed Youth Employment Agency [YEA], now a fully fledged public institution, has so far employed 62,825 youth as part of measures by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to address the unemployment situation in the country. A document picked up by this reporter shows figures representing a total number of 62,825 youths employed under various job modules including Persons living With Disability within the last four to eight months this year (April to October). The figures includes Community Police Assistant 4832, Community Education Teaching 20,603, Community Health Workers 19,500, Fire Service Assistant 2000, Prisons Service Assistant 2000, E-health Workers 1000, Environment Protection Officers 2500, Arabic Teachers 5000, Youth in Coastal Sanitation 5000, Marine Engineering Technician 200 and 190 Paid Intern. YEA has recruited 21 PWDs as permanent staff and over 600 Persons With Disability Deployed across modules with 10% quota for all modules reserved. This, however notwithstanding, the figures further revealed that Northern Region is leading on the pack with 8,965 of the youth being enrolled into various jobs modules followed by the Ashanti Region 8,267, Volta Region 7,285, Western Region 6,983, Brong Ahafo Region 6,489, Central Region 6,158, Greater Accra 5,345, Eastern Region 4,993, Upper East Region 4,755 and the least being Upper West Region with 3,585. According to the statistics, the YEA has employed more women than men 13,858 being female employed whiles the remaining 30,967 are male. The Agency has targeted to offer employment to 100,000 youth between the ages of 15 and 35 through skills training and internship modules. Speaking at a news conference in Accra, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Agency Mr. Kobina Obu Beechem said the YEA is the second largest agency that has employed persons with disability. YEA is to facilitate employment for all youth including the disabled, able - bodied, illiterate and literate, therefore registration for employment is ongoing, He added. Mr. Beechem said YEA has three core functions that seek to facilitate youth employment through the effort of both the private and public sectors and has decentralized its activities in 216 districts and 10 regional offices to ensure effective and easy access. The YEA boss indicated that the Agency has deployed trained persons to various modules including Community Police Assistants (CPA) Community Health Workers and E-Health worker, Community Teaching Workers, Environmental Protection Officers among others. He noted that their main aim is to produce the next generation of entrepreneurs for the nation adding that the Community Health Assistants and E-health module are the largest to be trained and deployed. According to Mr. Beechem, the new and improved YEA now has a legal department to support deployed staff at their various work places. He concluded that the Agency will train and deploy 2000 youth under a Greening Ghana and other new sub-modules such as 5000 for NVTI, 710 for Department of Cooperatives, 1000 for Suame Magazine, 1000 for Road Safety, 4,500 for Garment Production and many more before the end of December this year. On Tuesday November 1 2016, on behalf of the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League (RCEL) based in the United Kingdom, the UKs Defence Advisor to Ghana, Lt Col Simon Westlake RM, was extremely proud to be able to hand over to Commodore Obimpeh (Retired) of the Veterans Administration of Ghana (VAG), a new hearse. In his speech, Lt Col Westlake expressed the pride the UK continues to hold for Ghanaian veterans of both historical and contemporary conflicts, noting especially the contribution and sacrifice made by those who fought during the Second World War. The new hearse has been donated to replace an older version, which had also been donated by the RCEL. Commodore Obimpeh expressed his appreciation for this donation, and also commented on the increasing numbers of veterans who were now sadly passing, including the VAGs own late Executive Director Lt Col Chris Nutakor who would regrettably be the first to be conveyed in the new hearse. The Commodore also noted that this donation was a sign of the continuing historic relationship between the RCEL and the VAG. The ceremony was conducted at a very fitting time, as 11th November nears, when both the UK and Ghana will mark the sacrifices made by our service personnel and their families across numerous conflicts. This donation and ceremony therefore provided a timely reminder of the strong historic defense relationship between the UK and Ghana, which continues to this day. The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the complex attack that occurred on 6 November 2016 near Douentza, in the Centre of Mali, during which two Malian civilians and one Togolese peacekeeper of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) were killed and others injured. The members of the Security Council expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy to the families of the victims, as well as to the Government of Mali and Togo and to MINUSMA. They paid tribute to the peacekeepers who risk their lives. The members of the Security Council called on the Government of Mali to swiftly investigate these attacks and bring the perpetrators to justice. They underlined that attacks targeting peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law. The members of the Security Council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. The members of the Security Council underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice. They stressed that those responsible for these killings should be held accountable, and urged all States, in accordance with their obligations under international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, to cooperate actively with all relevant authorities in this regard. The members of the Security Council reiterated that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed. They reaffirmed the need for all States to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and other obligations under international law, including international human rights law, international refugee law and international humanitarian law, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts. The members of the Security Council reiterated their full support for MINUSMA and the French forces that support it. They reiterated their strong support for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Mali, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, and for MINUSMA to assist the Malian authorities and the Malian people in their efforts to bring lasting peace and stability to their country, including through MINUSMAs support to the implementation of the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali. The members of the Security Council expressed their concern about the security situation in Mali, including the recent violations of the ceasefire arrangements. They urged the Malian parties to fully implement the Agreement without further delay. They noted that the full implementation of the Agreement and the intensification of efforts to overcome asymmetric threats can contribute to improving the security situation across Mali. The members of the Security Council further stressed the importance that MINUSMA has the necessary capacities to fulfill its mandate and promote the safety and security of the United Nations peacekeepers, pursuant to Security Council resolution 2295 (2016). Ghanas oil marketing industry is being rated as one of the competitive sectors in the country following the implementation of petroleum price deregulation. The regulator of the industry the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) introduced the Petroleum Price deregulation, in 2015. The deregulation policy allows Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) to fix their own prices, in an attempt to introduce competition to the ultimate benefit and protection of the consumer. Its implementation was geared at sanitizing the country's petroleum downstream sector. Currently, the NPA supervises the ceiling at which the OMCs cannot go beyond in pricing their petroleum products. The deregulation has led to competitive pricing among OMCs. Majority of the companies in a bid to stay competitive have come up with various promotions and strategies to ensure high patronage of their products and services and also to give customers the best value for their money. Oil Marketing Company, Total for example tells Citi Business News the introduction of a number of new products as well as promotions has contributed in the companys growth in the past months. Sales and Marketing Manager for Total Petroleum Ghana Limited, Abdul- Rahim Siddiqe, tells Citi Business News deregulation of the sector has pushed most OMCs to step up their game. 'The deregulation has brought up in its wake very active competition in the industry and within that competitive environment if you are selected for an award it makes you to value it more, that even in this environment of stiff competition you are doing something good'. Total on Monday launched the Total Wo Adze Oye Promotion. The aim of the promotion is further push the total brand out into the market and give its customers value for their money as well as the chance to win fantastic prizes To be part of this promo customers will have to buy a minimum of sixty Ghana cedis fuel with cash or fifty Ghana cedis with your B2C Total card. Scratch gently the card you receive from the attendant to reveal your card number. Text the card number at no cost to 1936. Eg. TOTAL A25B1. You will receive a notification confirming your successful entry. Customers also stand the chance of winning amazing prizes at the end of every two weeks. The final draw for Northern and Southern zones will be on the 6th of January 2017, where the network sites would be divided into zones, namely Northern (Kumasi and Tamale Areas) and Southern zones (Accra and Takoradi Areas) with the following prizes for each zone. The first prize is a brand new Mitsubishi ASX gls for two winners. The second prize is an all expense paid trip to Gabon to watch the Afcon 2017 for four winners. The third prize is a Suzuki motor bike with a branded helmet for two winners. The fourth prize is six thousand Ghana cedis free fuel each for two customers for a year. There will be 7 consolation prizes of a hamper of total products in each zone during the final raffle draw and three Samsung S7 edge phones for customers with high number of entries. By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana Richard Aisuebeogun (middle) with Ikechi Uko (right), organizer of the Akwaaba Event Players in the air transport industry in Africa have expressed concern about the excessive taxation and charges on the continent. Richard Aisuebeogun, former MD/CEO, Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria, who was speaking at this year's edition of Akwaaba African Travel Market (AfTM) held in Lagos, Nigeria, said the high cost of operations is a great challenge to African airlines which hampers their growth. He said, African governments should not see airlines as cash cows, but as vital economic catalysts to be supported to drive the larger economy. In view of that, he said African Civil Aviation Authorities (CAAs) must attune their regulation in order not to stifle the growth and sustainability of African airlines. Failed Airlines Many failed airlines litter our airports in Africa, both privately and government owned, but where is Ghana Airways, Air Gabon, Serria National Airline, Air Afrique, Nigerian Airways (WT), Cameroon Airlines, Chanchagi, ADC Airlines, Bellview Airlines and Air Zimbabwe, Mr. Aisuebeogun said. He called on the political establishment to support airlines in times of need through bailouts and waivers. To date in Nigeria airlines have to lobby and call high powers to free their engines and parts from the 10% duties and tax slammed on these imports, Mr. Aisuebeogun said. He stressed the need for African governments to deepen understanding through continual education of Ministries of Interior, Trade and Investment to improve aviation policies, stimulate real sector to drive production to feed cargo airlines. Competition and liberalization are excellent and airlines must be equipped to compete, Mr. Aisuebeogun added. By Cephas Larbi [email protected] Francois Pujolas (middle) flanked by Dick van Nieuwenhuyzen (left) and Jean-Raul Tauzin (right) at the press conference Air France is expected to begin direct flights from Accra to Paris beginning February 28 next year, the airline announced Thursday. Jean-Raul Tauzin, General Manager of Air France/KLM for Ghana and Nigeria, officially disclosed this at a press conference presided over by Francois Pujolas, French Ambassador to Ghana and Dick van Nieuwenhuyzen, Air France/KLM Country Manager. He said the three weekly flights would take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. From 28th March, 2017, AF780 leaves Paris-Charles de Gaulle at 3:30pm and arrives at the Kotoka International Airport at 07:50pm the same day. AF731 leaves the Kotoka International Airport at 11:40pm and arrives at Paris-Charles de Gaulle at 08:00am the following day. Air France would fly passengers from Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport at 1:30pm and arrive at the Kotoka International Airport at 07:05pm the same day. The flight then leaves Kotoka International Airport at 10:25pm and touches down at Charles de Gaulle's Airport at 06:00am the following day. This event follows the visit of the French Prime Minister to Accra last weekend where he announced and welcomed the opening of this direct line in February 2017 during a reception held for the French community. Starting 28th February 2017, Air France will offer three weekly flights to Accra, Ghana from Paris-Charles de Gaulle. In this way, Air France is expanding on one of the most important markets on the African continent through traffic to and from Europe and North America. On this occasion, the Ambassador of France to Ghana recalled that this new line represents a symbol of the growing relationship with Ghana, as does the commencement of the construction of the new French Embassy in Accra in 2017. He said that it is a reflection of increased exchanges between the two countries in the field of trade and investment, culture and education. The Ambassador added that Ghana is very keen on developing its tourism industry, therefore this direct line shows confidence in what the country can achieve in this regard. The Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food (RAAF-ARAA) under the auspices of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has organised a three-day capacity building workshop for stakeholders on mainstreaming social safety nets in agriculture to ensure food security and nutrition. A regional workshop dubbed, Training of Trainers Workshop for Potential Projects Backers on Social Safety Nets for Food Security and Nutrition in West Africa, would allow national actors in ECOWAS member states to have a common understanding of the concept of social safety nets and its application to agriculture. The workshop is expected to enhance the knowledge of potential project backers on the instruments commonly used in the design and implementation of social safety net projects, as well as allow national actors of ECOWAS member states to formulate and implement projects of social safety nets. Thirty delegates made up of potential local and international project backers, NGOs, producer organizations and state actors from 15 ECOWAS countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are participating. Opening the conference in Accra, Usseini Salifu, Executive Director of RAAF-ARAA, stressed the need for the sub-region to ensure food security through the integration of safety nets in the agricultural sector. He said although the region is recording progress in agriculture, its malnutrition rate is also increasing, adding that that had come about as a result of the gap in the implementation of projects and programmes related to social safety nets in agriculture at the national level. Mr Usseini Salifu said the countries, however, have an obligation to implement the ECOWAS regional agricultural policy (ECOWAP), which is also benefitting from the support of the Spanish International Cooperation Agency for Development (AECID) in financing innovations on the ground projects in the area of safety nets for food security. This is the reason in 2012 ECOWAS initiated a Regional Programme of Support to the National Social Security Nets in West Africa to promote preventive social safety net programmes targeted at people on the basis of vulnerability rather than on the basis of exposure to a shock. This is in opposition to reactive safety nets which aim at responding to shocks and crises, Usseini Salifu recounted. The Executive Director said the first call for proposals launched in January 2015 selected 10 projects on social safety nets for an aggregate grant of $2,146,789, adding that a second call for proposal would be launched by the end of 2016. According to him, at the end of the training, the concept of social safety nets would be understood by all while the instruments of social safety nets, the conditions for their use, as well as a network of national actors would be established for the capitalization of projects on social safety net programmes. In a speech read on his behalf, Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna, Ghana's Minister of Food and Agriculture, said agriculture remains critical for rural development and associated cultural values, social stabilisation, environmental sustainability and serves as a buffer during economic shocks. He expressed the hope that through the workshop, the region would make great strides in the agricultural sector, especially in improving the lot of vulnerable populations. Berhanu Bedane, Country Representative of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), expressed the hope that participants would be provided with tools, approaches and practical methods to allow them to make good projects proposals on safety nets and to implement them with the most appropriate teams in the various countries. By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri The New Patriotic Party (NPP) suspects a grand scheme by the Electoral Commission (EC) not to provide a level playing field for the December 7 general election. At a press conference in Accra yesterday, Director of Elections of the party, Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, gave varied reasons why they suspect foul play on the part of the elections organizing body. Key among them, he said, was the commission's refusal to give the party a hard copy version of the voter register as has often been the practice for every general election. He indicated that 31 out of the 275 constituency files in the form of soft copy of the voter register given to the NPP were all corrupted. Even those, he said, did not include the list of proxy, transfer, special and absentee voters' lists. According to him, all their complaints to the EC for the past two weeks had fallen on deaf ears as the commission had still not shown any sign of good faith. Concerns Martin claimed that the EC had released all the lists to not only the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) which is the NPP's main contender in the elections, but also the other political parties and therefore, wondered why the elections organizing body had refused to give his party the same documents if it's not part of a grand scheme to frustrate the efforts of the NPP leadership. There is no legitimate reason for the EC to discriminate against the NPP. It shows bad faith and it shows that the EC has failed in its important constitutional responsibility to be impartial, fair and transparent, he stated. His reason was that The NDC has admitted publicly that it has the final list. The CPP also admits to have been given the final list. The EC admits that it has not given us the final list. The EC is deliberately frustrating our programme of a thorough scrutiny of the final voter register and the accompanying lists before the elections. We need to ascertain whether the right people needed to be on both the final register and the accompanying lists are indeed those there, and also whether all names on the various lists have been extracted from the final register to avoid repetition of names in the lists and final register. We are being denied all these, he emphasized. The NPP Director of Elections also raised concern about the proxy voters' list saying, We took daily count of all proxy applications within the district offices of the Electoral Commission nationwide and can report that in all the 10 regions, a total of 378 proxy applications were received and approved with the breakdown as follows : Greater Accra 98, Brong Ahafo 38, Western 43, Upper West 03, Eastern 36, Volta 12, Northern 04, Upper East 01, Central 37 and Ashanti 106. Suspicion Meanwhile, according to Mr Martin Adjei-Mensah Korsah, Available data which has been pushed to the commissions district offices as final proxy list and which the commission has refused to serve the NPP with copies, indicates that these figures have changed, saying the EC must explain this. By Charles Takyi-Boadu James Kofi Annan, the President of Challenging Heights, displaying the AGI overall Social Enterprise award 08.11.2016 LISTEN Challenging Heights has received the Best Social Enterprise award at the 5th edition of the Association of Ghana Industry (AGI) awards. This is in recognition of the organisations innovative and sustainable approach to addressing the issue of child trafficking in Ghana, and how the organisation has developed a number of livelihoods and income generating ventures to support its operations. The newly introduced award category, sponsored by the British Council, is aimed at encouraging social entrepreneurs whose businesses focus on grassroots development through sustainable investments that create employment opportunities. The President of the AGI, Mr James Asare-Adjei in his keynote address said Ghanas prospects for job creation will improve if local industries experience sustainable growth to alleviate the graduate unemployment situation. Mr Asare-Adjei urged the government to provide special fiscal and financial incentives to give local industries some edge over the prevailing competition. The British Council, in its solidarity statement said that start-up social enterprises in Ghana are increasingly becoming vital parts of local economic growth and employment as well as active change agents in communities around the country. The statement said early stage social enterprises face a stifling range of interconnected challenges such as harsh regulations, non-existent early stage investment opportunities and a lack of relevant market insight. Inclusive growth remains at the heart of the British Councils support to the local social enterprise ecosystem, the statement said. The British Council said it supports the social enterprise award due to its efforts to recognise business that has society at its core. The President for Challenging Heights, Dr James Kofi Annan, in an interview, said Challenging Heights would continue to be driven by its passion of delivering social justice interventions to children, women and underserved communities in the coastal and farming communities of Ghana. He said through the establishment of sister companies, namely, Run-Off restaurant, CH Cold Store, Nyce Media and the Friends International Academy, Challenging Heights has created sustainable means to support the organisations goal of ending child trafficking on Lake Volta, while at the same time generating income for its own operations. Challenging Heights is currently the highest private employer in Winneba. The establishment of these enterprises has created jobs which are aimed at empowering communities and breaking the cycle of poverty; a main cause of trafficking, he added. Dr Annan urged the Government to create conducive environments for local businesses to operate and create more job opportunities to deal with the countrys high unemployment rates. After the public announcement of my familys declaration of intent to solidly throw their weight behind Nana Akufo Addo, the biblical Joseph and David of our time, and the NPP, to win the upcoming 7 December 2016 Election, we have in less than no time taken our determination to chase out President Mahama from the presidency a step forward. We have come out with a movement and political slogan for Election 2016 called MAHAMA MUST GO! President Mahama has served his term(s). He must be voted out for Ghanaians to have a breathing space away from the economic and financial rot he has by his actions and inactions brought to bear upon majority of Ghanaians like a tormenting curse from Satan. He has eroded away all the economic gains chalked by former President John Agyekum Kufuor through his corrupt practices, incompetence and cluelessness hence the precariously difficult living conditions faced by the majority of Ghanaians today, under his government. Ghanaians are no longer going to put up with the harshest economic situation they find themselves in under President Mahama who turns out not to have the least respect for them. He has abused his mandate. People can no longer entrust their lives into his hands because of his inability to manage the affairs of the country to benefit the majority of the citizens if not all citizens. Under his watch, Chinese have flocked into Ghana to engage in illegal surface mining (galamsey), spoiling our lands and water bodies, or the ecosystem. Under his watch, nomadic Fulanis have invaded the lands of the people of Asante Agogo, raping their women, burning their farms and killing their men. Under his watch, a Chinese woman and probably other foreigners have flooded Ghana dealing in arms or better put, selling arms to people to commit armed robberies. Under his government, armed robbery has become rampant, although the worst nightmare of every Ghanaian except the perpetrators of the crime themselves. Ghanaians are very much aware of the situations he has created over years to enable dubious persons who may be his cronies or otherwise, to defraud the nation of millions of Ghana New Cedis. For all these, Ghanaians feel it is about time he got out of the office of the President to allow someone else to come to serve them. We are not ready for him to overstay his welcome as the President of Ghana because we cannot cope any further with his deplorable administration. Therefore, my family and I have decided to team up with other patriotic Ghanaians to bid President Mahama a good bye on 7 December 2016. He has served his term so he has to go to create room for someone else, of course, for Nana Akufo Addo, a man of integrity, to come to serve Ghanaians with respect, selflessness, honesty and incorruptibility. My familys movement and slogan for voting out President Mahama come 7 December 2016 is MAHAMA MUST GO! This reminds me of the infamous fate that befell Ghanaians in Nigeria in 1983 that gave a name to some bag that came to identify with all Ghanaians being deported from Nigeria. It was called Ghana Must Go. (Same bag is called in France by Ghanaians as Arab bag because the Arabs use them a lot when proceeding on holiday to their North African countries). This is because that bag was within easy reach of all the Ghanaians who hurriedly needed them to pack their few items into to run to Ghana. Sorry for that inhumane treatment meted out to my fellow Ghanaians. As it was with Ghana/Ghanaians must go in those days, so should it be with President Mahama by voting him out of power. We should not allow him to insult our intelligence any further. He is now promising that in his next 4-year term administration, he will implement policies to curb the official corruption in Ghana of which his own very Ministers and government appointees are the orchestrators and perpetrators. Check the underlying web link to read what he had to tell Ghanaians on 7 November 2016. What an insult! It is too little too late. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/I-ll-make-corruption-unattractive-in-my-next-term-in-office-Mahama-484555 I call on all friends both home and abroad to join my family to move forward their agenda Mahama Must Go! Share this message with all your friends until it has reached every Ghanaian in every nook and cranny of the country. The movement has chosen to go with Mr Ampongs song of which the video link below takes you to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI57R2z_hIY Look out for the Movements strategy in my next publications. Every discerning Ghanaian who wants to benefit from the blowing wind for change is an automatic member of the MAHAMA MUST GO! movement. Anyone can print the slogan into their clothes and wear them in public as a support for the cause of the Movement. There is no time to delay. There is no any other better time to campaign to vote out President Mahama than now! President Mahama is now clutching on to a straw but it will be of no use in the face of the blowing wind that is sweeping everything out of its path. God is great! The battle is still the Lords! Rockson Adofo 08.11.2016 LISTEN Peace Peace Peace! All over the country, everybody is calling for peace. Yes we want peace before, during and after the election but calling for Peace without hammering on fairness is an act of hypocrisy. Peace is not given. Peace does not come by itself. Peace comes out of transparency and fairness. It is quiet surprising that non of the Peace Advocates or Peace Ambassadors have hammered on Transparency and Fairness in their campaign messages. Peace in an election is achieved when the election is carried on transparent and equal grounds for all. At the end of an election, when non of the candidates felt cheated, obviously there would be peace. Ensuring peace before, during and after an election is a responsibility of all most especially the Electoral Commission, who bears the greatest of the responsibility. For peace to prevail in the coming election, let's not pretend to tell the Electoral Commissioner and her Commission to conduct the election on the grounds of equal opportunity for all. The commission must not favour any of the candidates and the ruling party must also not interfere the work of the commission. The ruling party must not employ coercive tactics by using the National Security operatives to intimidate or victimize political opponents. The laws of the land and the laws bordering the elections must be applied to all parties and candidates without fear or favour. We must not be cowards to tell the Security of the state to discharge their duties without favouring any of the political parties be it the ruling party or opposition. Mostly, because the leadership of the Security agencies are appointed by the ruling party; the IGP, Major General, Director Generals and among other ranks and files in the various security agencies turn to favour the party that appointed them. In some instances, the strongholds of the opposition parties are packed with thousands of security personnel to use all dubious means to scare electorates from voting. When this happens, peace wouldn't prevail. In other instance, when there is an issue in a polling station, the security at times arrest those from the opposition wrongly leaving the members of the ruling party. When this happens, there wouldn't be peace. The security must not be bias in discharging their duties especially regarding elections. The role of the media ensuring peace before, during and after an election is not just about playing Peace Songs and showing movies of war-tagged nations. The media must report as it is. The state media must not be used to favour the ruling party. Mostly, because the government controls the state media and the chairman of the National Media Commission is appointed by the President, The Commission in collaboration with state-own media houses turn to favour the ruling party. The Peace Council since its creation has always been silent on sensitive issues. In my personal view, the existence of Peace Council is a waste of national resource. The peace council has eyes to see the wrong things that comes from the opposition only. The Peace Council is a useless entity created to do the bidding of the government. Peace Council is nothing but the Welfare Committee of the ruling party. I'm yet to be told whether America and Britain have something called "Peace Council" Yes, we must call for Peace but we must as well hammer well on fairness else our efforts would be in vain. Peace is not given. Let fairness prevail and Peace will come as a by-product. Nana Ofori Kissi Ratina Anti-Corruption Crusader 08.11.2016 LISTEN On Day 1 of COP22, the theme was 'Africa in Action.' Foreign Minister of Morocco and President of COP22 Salaheddine Mezouar said in his opening remark that the conference being held "on African soil demonstrates a whole continents commitment to contributing to the global effort" to fight climate change. He emphasized the importance of helping all African countries fight climate change because the "sun does not ignore a village because it is small." The Africa pavilion, a large tent housing several separate country pavilions, was animated with big screens depicting desert, ocean, and forest scenes from around the continent. Space filled quickly with delegates, observers, and journalists as the opening plenary concluded and the conference was officially underway. The pavilion will host many events throughout the 11 days. Getting rural areas more reliable access to energy and working with the international civil aviation industry were just two of the panel discussions taking place today. Several countries even hosted events and panel discussions to highlight each of their efforts in climate action. Tunisia and Ethiopia partnered to discuss with German representatives how the three could create carbon market-based solutions to dealing with their environmental issues. Tunisia is especially interested in involving its cement sector. The Paris Agreement included a provision for loss and damage, a term that refers to what Pacific Island nations and the poorest countries around the world face as a result of natural disasters. A panel of scientists discussed climate insurance, of particular help to African farmers facing drought. Information booths have been set up in a separate area of the venue as well to help make sense of the information being disseminated to participants. Hosts include climate activist organizations, private sector businesses, and academic research organizations. For further information: www.infomediacop22.com The most cherished and trusted telecommunications brand in Ghana, MTN has won three envious prizes at the just ended 5th Institute of Public Relations (IPR) Awards held at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra on Friday, November 4, 2016. The communications giant (MTN) was adjudged the PR Organization of the Year (telecommunication sector) whiles Georgina Asare Fiagbenu (senior manager at MTN, Corporate Communications Department) won the PR Discovery of the Year. MTNs Heroes of Change also won the Best Community Relations Programme of the Year. The PR Excellence Award, an initiative by the Institute of Public Relations seeks to promote professionalism in the practice of PR in various facets of the profession. Meanwhile, Corporate Service Executive of MTN Ghana, Mrs. Cynthia Lumor noted how critical Public Relations is to the sustainability of her outfit. MTN Ghana considers Communications and Public Relations very critical to its business growth and sustainability. This is why the company continues to work closely with all stakeholders to implement strategies that will enable it build goodwill and generate trust, she said. MTN is a successful African story and it will continue to grow through the implementation of consistent, strategic and creative Public Relations initiatives, she added. Mrs. Lumor also lauded the effort of Senior Manager of the Corporate Communications Department (Georgina Asare Fiagbenu) for making MTN proud. We also celebrate the recognition given to the Senior Manager of the Corporate Communications department, Georgina Asare Fiagbenu. For many years she has collaborated with the various players within and outside MTN Ghana to tell the MTN story, Mrs. Lumor acknowledged. Follow Amisty on twitter @ElAmistyNobo Email: [email protected] . 08.11.2016 LISTEN Quite recently, I had the opportunity to be in the office of a very successful businessman in this country. In his presence, I tried to ask him to give me an idea of his journey, how long it took him to achieve success, what he had to do and the challenges he faced along the way. He showed me some of his olden days pictures, and there I gained wisdom and understood his path to success and greatness had been long as it took him several years to arrive at his current pedestal. Indeed, there are similar stories of men and women chronicled in our newspapers or in the history of our daily lives who have achieved success not overnight but through many years of hard work and whose journey to success have been full of failures, challenges and difficult times but with patience and determination they have achieved their goals and are living their dreams and enjoying the fruits of their labour. Take for instance, the Archbishop Nicholas Duncan Williams and the Action Chapel International. We all point with pride to the achievement of this great man of God and his prosperous church, but how many have stopped to consider his journey and the things he had to endure and the sacrifices he had to make to build his life and the church to its current beauty and glory? This did not happen overnight and he is not an overnight success. It is refreshing to note that the Archbishop has been a pastor for forty years counting which presupposes that it took him forty good years to build the church to its current level. Similarly, the great and famous companies we see today which are impressively doing well and have become multinationals were not built overnight and are not instant success stories but have been operated for decades, if not centuries for them to arrive at where they are today. The Mistake of Young People Success in life is the heart desire of many as we all dream of achieving great exploits at one time or the other. Young people are not left out on this noble desire to achieve something with their lives, but they are in a hurry to make it happen overnight. They are in a hurry to succeed and are therefore not patient enough to go through the process. They see successful people do the things they do, drive what they drive, and eat what they eat and live in places and choice locations they live in, and they want the same for themselves overnight. Perhaps, forgetting that these people they admire and want to be like started from somewhere and they did not arrive at where they are today overnight. The stories of successful people reveal most of them at one point in their lives had no decent accommodation, no food to eat, no fine clothes on their back, no money in their pockets, wore worn out shoes and more often than not walked and used the public transport until such a time they broke through in life. It is a true assertion that with the rapid pace of technology and its accompanying impact on the society with speed and instantaneity of everything, young people are no longer patient to subject their desires for success to the process of time. They want success and they want it now. Many are in a hurry to start a business today and be on the front pages of newspapers and magazines tomorrow. They want to start a music career today and make it onto the television screens today. They want to finish the university tomorrow and drive luxurious cars and live the expensive lifestyle of the rich and the wealthy overnight, and they want to start a ministry or church and overnight record a thousand member congregation. However, learning from the pages of history teaches us that success and greatness are products of time. Nobody succeeds in life overnight. No matter how urgent a woman wants a baby, she cannot deliver one in three months. If she wants it, she has to go through the process and be patient for nine months to have one. It takes time to build a successful business, and it takes time to build a successful life. Success has phases and stages it goes through. Dangers of Overnight Success Success needs preparation and as one goes through the stages and phases, he gets himself prepared. When you wish for an overnight success, you wont be mentally prepared and experienced enough to deal with the fame and the fortune and you will crash and burn. I have seen in this country young men and women with promising futures who came on the scene prematurely without proper preparation and today are nowhere to be found. They had a very short career and have disappeared into thin air. When you are not prepared to handle a lot of money before you come into money, chances are that you may not be able to handle the money well and you may even kill yourself before your time. This accounts for the reason why many who had money yesterday are today broke and begging. Wishing to become successful very quickly or unexpectedly is a trap which will destroy. Success Is a Product of Time Greatness does not happen instantly. It takes time to happen as success and greatness is product of time. Joseph in the Bible came into his greatness 17 years after his preparation, and same can be said of David after his 20 years of preparation to become king. During this period, these men were worked on through the process of time to take their place in destiny. Any great destiny takes time to happen and in life, anything great goes through phases and stages to become great. You must learn to give God time and give yourself time and not be in a hurry. Anything that happens overnight also quickly disappears overnight. Paying the Price Any rise in life has a price to pay. You know what to do, you have the desire to do it and you are willing to do it. Young people must be ready to pay the price as nothing good comes cheap. They must avoid the temptation and the deception to get big overnight. So many people know what to do to become successful but do not want to commit themselves to doing it and are therefore looking for the shortcuts. What you do not pursue never think to possess. As young people, you can get anything as long as you are ready to pay its price as nothing comes for free. Men and women who have become great are also those who made sacrifices for their greatness. You must be willing to make sacrifices for the things you want today so that tomorrow you will have what others do not have. Get busy, the success you desire is possible, but it will not come for free. You got to pay something for its manifestation. Avoid the overnight success mentality and be ready to work for it. Yes, you can become successful. Charles Anyomi Charles Anyomi is an author and an entrepreneur. He writes on business, entrepreneurship, self-improvement, national issues and the development of the African continent. He challenges young Ghanaian businessmen and women to think big and think global. You can email him at [email protected] or find him at his Facebook page: WWW.Facebook.com/charlesanyomi Sierra Leone must lift a deeply discriminatory ban on visibly pregnant girls attending school and taking exams, which continues to entrench gender inequality in the country and puts thousands of teenage girls futures at risk, Amnesty International said today, a year on from its report on the issue. The prohibition on visibly pregnant girls attending mainstream schools and taking exams is hopelessly misguided, and is doing nothing to address the root causes of Sierra Leones high teenage pregnancy rate, which surged during the devastating Ebola crisis, and remains high despite this ban said Alioune Tine, Amnesty Internationals Regional Director for West and Central Africa. Rather than humiliating and excluding teenage girls, Sierra Leones authorities should focus on increasing sexual and reproductive health information in schools, and protecting girls from sexual violence and abusive relationships. Unless these issues are addressed the cycle of unwanted early pregnancy will continue for generations to come. The prohibition was declared official government policy in April 2015, shortly before schools re-opened following the Ebola crisis. More than a year and a half later Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the ban is still in place, despite national and international criticism. Amnesty International spoke to 68 girls aged between 15 and 20 years who were either pregnant or had given birth recently in the Western Urban and Western Rural areas of Sierra Leone. They also spoke to 26 national and international civil society actors, teachers and government officials in order to assess the impact of the ban. The majority of girls interviewed had become pregnant during the Ebola outbreak, when there was an increase in teenage pregnancy, accompanied by a spike in sexual violence. The negative economic impact of the Ebola crisis led to an increase in exploitative and abusive relationships. Impact of the ban on pregnant girls Most girls said the policy had left them feeling abandoned and discouraged at not being able to go to school. They described their frustration at being unable to sit exams they had studied hard for. One girl told our researchers: I would have been able to do the exam. I was frequently with my books. Even if you are pregnant, if you have been studying you will be able to do the exam Girls also spoke about their frustration at having to repeat the year after they give birth as they have missed out on the opportunity to sit the exam when pregnant: I have to repeat the year again. I feel bad as I see my friends moving forward to the next year, a 17-year-old girl told Amnesty International. Stigma surrounding teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone means that girls are made to feel ashamed for being pregnant and sometimes ostracized, or even abused, by their families and teachers. One girl Amnesty International spoke to said she had voluntarily dropped out of school after seeing how her class mates were treated in the past: One teacher announced that the girl was pregnant in front of the whole school, took her bag away (she was protecting her stomach) and beat her with a cane. Special schools for pregnant girls In May 2015, in response to international and national pressure, Sierra Leones President Ernest Bai Koroma announced the establishment of an alternative bridging education system that would allow pregnant girls to continue going to school, but in different premises or at different times to their peers. Despite this parallel system providing the girls with access to a limited form of education, President Koroma, in his March 2016 Womens Day address, appeared to confirm that it was based in part on negative stereotypes about pregnant girls when he stated, They will continue to receive formal education without allowing them to mingle in the same class with other school going girls. Let's go back to the basics and protect our values and culture." Ministry of Education officials told Amnesty International that 14,500 girls initially registered for the scheme and that around 5000 had been reintegrated into mainstream school after giving birth. Classes were held three times a week for around two to three hours a day. The learning curriculum used in the scheme differed to that of mainstream schools and focused only on core subjects. Girls were also provided with health information and services, such as family planning. The majority of the girls Amnesty International spoke to had positive feedback about the bridging system. A few girls said they preferred it to their normal school due to the stigma faced. One girl told Amnesty International: I was ashamed, in the normal school everybody would had laughed at me. However, several girls stated that they would have preferred to stay on in their normal school if they had a choice. [They] only taught us maths and English but I was learning commercial studies in school and they did not teach us that, one girl told Amnesty International. Another girl said, I would choose to go to my school if I had a choice as the school would give me results [exam grades]. When I give birth I will continue at my own school and the learning centre is only for when I am pregnant. The bridging scheme ended in August 2016 but alternative classes for pregnant girls will continue under a new scheme, run by the Ministry of Education with support from UNICEF and the UK government, which will have a broader focus on girls who have dropped out of school for a variety of reasons as well as interventions to help keep girls in school. The new scheme will run for 17 months from November 2016. International and national experts have welcomed the continued focus on girls education through this programme. However, concern still remains about the lack of choice for pregnant girls due to the ban and their inability to sit exams which is contrary to Sierra Leones legal obligations to provide equal access to quality education for all children. Limited access to sexual and reproductive health information Special schools for pregnant girls are not the solution to addressing Sierra Leones high teenage pregnancy rate. Despite recommendations from Amnesty International, the Child Rights Committee and national organisations, sexual and reproductive health information is still not part of the formal school curriculum. The majority of girls told Amnesty International that they did not know about family planning and had little or no sex education before becoming pregnant. One girl told our researchers In school they do not really teach us about family planning. They think we are too young, or it is bad or that it will encourage you to have sex. Girls also had a lot of fear and misinformation about family planning. A 19 year old girl who was four months pregnant said: I used the injection for 1 or 2 years but I did not get my period. Someone told us that the injection killed a girl as you dont get your period. I thought let me stop the injection until I get my period. I did not know where I could ask questions about this. Then I got pregnant. Challenges to go back to mainstream school Girls who become pregnant can face complex, intersecting barriers to continuing their education. Beyond the pregnancy ban, school fees were also a major concern for the majority of girls Amnesty International spoke to. In a country where 72% of the population lives in extreme poverty, these fees, and the cost of having a child, can be crippling. In addition, the stigma around teenage pregnancy means that many families withdraw their financial support which makes it very difficult for many girls to return to mainstream education even after their babies are born. As one girl told Amnesty International: I cant go back to my school as I cant pay the fees. I am trying to do business and going to a private lesson. I dont have anyone to help me. Unless barriers to education are removed, Sierra Leones government is badly letting down its girls and putting their futures at risk. In line with its international obligations the government should take concrete steps to progressively ensure access to education for all girls including subsidies for girls who require them as part of its education strategy, said Alioune Tine. Eradicating the stigma surrounding pregnant girls is also key. Sierra Leone has made great efforts to tackle stigma for Ebola survivors, and it should ensure that teenagers in highly vulnerable situations are protected and supported by their teachers, families and their communities; rather than shamed and blamed. Pictures can be downloaded in this lightbox : https://adam.amnesty.org/asset-bank/images/assetbox/5af8a09f-4e60-4a4d-a4f7-cc3932b9415b/assetbox.html For more information or to arrange an interview please call Amnesty International's Regional Media Manager in Freetown, Sierra Leone +232 303 663 09 or Email : [email protected], Twitter: @AmnestyWaro Background In November 2015 a report by Amnesty International estimated that up to 10,000 girls were affected by the ban on visibly pregnant girls attending school and sitting exams. Various studies have reported there was an increase in teenage pregnancy during the Ebola outbreak. A study in 2016 by the Secure Livelihoods Consortium stated that UNFPA surveys indicate 18,119 teenage girls became pregnant during the Ebola outbreak. Even before Ebola broke out in late 2013, Sierra Leone had one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world, with 28% of girls aged 15-19 years pregnant or having already given birth at least once The Committee on the Rights of the Child in its recent review in October 2016 urged Sierra Leone to immediately lift the discriminatory ban on pregnant girls attending mainstream school and sitting exams, and ensure that they and adolescent mothers are supported and assisted in continuing their education in mainstream schools. Similar recommendations were made by many countries during the Universal Periodic Review process by the Human Rights Council in January 2016, which were not accepted by Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Human Rights Commission, Education for All Coalition, Civil Society Collective on Early Marriage and Teenage Pregnancy and the United Nations Country Team in Sierra Leone issued statements in 2015 opposing the ban. The practice of excluding pregnant girls from mainstream education and sitting exams has been a common practice in Sierra Leone for over a decade; however the official declaration of the ban in April 2015 turned an informal, sporadic practice into government policy, formalising and exacerbating the issue. Over 10 years ago, after the end of the civil war, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made an imperative recommendation that the practice of expelling girls who become pregnant from educational institutions is discriminatory and archaic. This month, the British Army and the RSLAF will be training and exercising alongside each other in Sierra Leone. This is the first time joint UK-RSLAF jungle warfare training has taken place in Sierra Leone and represents a step change in the growing Defence links between the two countries. The joint exercise, taking place in the Guma Valley, will improve both militaries in parallel as they will be learning from each other and forging enduring ties. The United Kingdom has invested heavily in this exercise. The B Squadron of the Queens Dragoon Guards will be here till December. The Government of Sierra Leone is supporting the exercise with troops, transport, logistics, training site security and the use of the Peace Mission Training Centre. As a result of the exercise, the RSLAF will also be left with a fully functioning refurbished Jungle Warfare School. The United Kingdom routinely conducts a variety of exercises for its Armed Forces in challenging overseas environments to ensure that they are able to operate and be fully effective in a variety of conditions and climates. This is their first joint training exercise in Sierra Leone and it is hoped that this will provide the foundation for future joint exercises in this country. The United Kingdoms Armed Forces have a long history of cooperation with Sierra Leone and the RSLAF. In 2014 the Government of the Republic of Sierra Leone invited the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Minister of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom to consider using Sierra Leone for overseas training exercises. Exercise GUMA SUN is the result of a maturing bilateral Defence relationship between our Nations and the first step on the path towards increased partnership in Defence. Speaking about the exercise, the British High Commissioner, Guy Warrington said I am delighted that the Government of Sierra Leone invited the UK Armed Forces to exercises in Sierra Leone. The United Kingdom is grateful for this opportunity and is looking forward to the experience of training and learning alongside Sierra Leones military. This elevates the well established cooperation between our military forces to a new level and embodies our confidence in the defense partnership. The UK government has been a committed partner of Sierra Leone for many years in the security sector and has invested in the professionalisation and development of Sierra Leones military, police and security structures. The fact that, in a fairly short time since the end of the War, Sierra Leone has become a respected provider of troops for Peace Support Operations in Africa, helping bring greater stability to Somalia, is also a development of which Sierra Leone can be proud and a sign of just how much it has developed. Our commitment remains firm and continues to deliver bespoke training to the security sector through the International Security Advisor Team (ISAT). This is in addition to the UKs 240 million pledge to support the post-Ebola recovery priorities. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) calls on all parties to the conflict in Galkayo to take all precautionary measures to protect civilians, health care staff and medical facilities. Its vital that the civilians caught in conflict families, mothers, and children be allowed to move out of the conflict zone safely. Civilians, as well as medical professionals, are not part of the conflict and must not be targeted, said Jordi Raich Curco, the ICRC Head of Delegation for Somalia. Last week the ICRC provided 60,000 displaced people with emergency relief including food for one month and water. Last Monday the ICRC donated medical supplies to hospitals that received 140 people wounded in the recent fighting. The Writer 08.11.2016 LISTEN JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, 8 November 2016,-/African Media Agency (AMA)/- Over the last year, all eyes have been on Africa's technology sector. And for a very good reason: infrastructure growth is booming. Between 2010 and 2016, seven new undersea cables brought fast data connections to the continent, with two more already under development. Meanwhile, mobile providers have invested $13.6billion into getting 500,000,000 Africans online by 2020. But as necessary as infrastructure investment is, it alone won't take African business global. So what technological development or product has the potential to make African businesses global players? Tech sector already outperforms expectations A common misconception is that raw materials are the big African growth story of the last decade. But according to research by Freshfields, since 2004 Africa's technology companies have delivered 19% annualised returns, compared to just 11% in commodities. A clue to why the African tech sector is growing can be found in the East African mobile payments industry. In most of the world, mobile payments is a niche sector, because consumers have many other convenient ways to pay -bank cards, credit cards and banking transfers, for instance. But in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 34% of people have a bank account. This used to be a significant barrier to any transaction that wasn't small-scale or local. Or, in plain English, it was a huge inconvenience. Change began in 2007, when local telco Safaricom teamed up with Vodafone to develop the mobile-payment system M-Pesa. Its creators expected M-Pesa to have 250,000 customers by the end of its third year. After just two years it already had over two million customers. By 2014, the East African mobile-payments market was worth US$61 billion. There were 41 new African mobile-payment start-ups. A huge 80% of all the world's mobile payments were African. And global players were looking to Africa to see what lessons they could learn. So is mobile-payment the technology that could take African business global? There's clearly huge potential for the industry to grow and act as an enabler for other sectors: in particular African SMEs and sole traders, who need a means of making and accepting online transactions. But for a fundamental transformation to take place, it needs to be about more than just one industry. Overcoming barriers through technology Another brake on the globalisation of African business is the tariff and non-tariff barriers that inhibit the growth of a single African market. This is something that African businesses need to change if they are to grow to the point of being ready to operate on a global scale. Here again, signs are positive. For instance, the NGO, TradeMark East Africa, worked with the Ugandan government to develop an online reporting system for non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to trade. Exporters in East Africa can now report NTBs online or via SMS, resulting in a 20% reduction in the time taken to move goods around the region. This is expected to lead to increased trade, lower costs and higher regional GDP. At the same time, the adoption of online revenue, legal and other government systems is helping African countries cut red-tape and increase the speed at which businesses can operate. In Addis Ababa, for instance, tax assessments can now be made online: giving taxpayers access to faster decisions, with less form filling. Without doubt, institutional barriers to trade and growth need to be broken down, if African business is to go global. But technology is only one part of the solution. Much more depends on political will and clout. The foundation of any technological revolution To take on the world, African business will need investment in technological infrastructure. It will need break-out technologies that allow it to disrupt and then likely lead existing global markets. And it will need technology solutions to problems that currently hold it back. But there is something more fundamental than all of these factors: Africa is the world's youngest continent. This will give it a demographic dividend, just as the last generation of economic tigers is beginning to age. But only 1% of the 11 million African young people who come of age every year have even basic software coding skills. This is a waste of talent and a barrier to growth. Without basic STEMS skills, let alone coding knowledge, African entrepreneurs won't be able to grow their businesses to the point of being ready to compete on the global stage. In April 2016, Africa Internet Group (AIG) - the holding company for a range of online businesses - was valued at US$1 billion, making it the first 'African tech unicorn'. AIG's success is not a one-off. M-Pesa in Kenya, the mobile advertising platform Twinpine in Nigeria, and South Africa's content-distribution service 8bit - among many other successes - prove that. "If it works in Africa, it'll work anywhere", jokes Juliana Rotich, the co-founder of BRCK, a Kenyan-made Wi-Fi hotspot and battery designed for use in the field. And there are hundreds of African technology companies with innovative ideas, ready to prove her right. But in order to do it, they need access to a skilled, digital workforce. The technology that will take African business global? As AIG and M-Pesa have shown, it's the software developer's kit, in the hands of an African programmer and entrepreneur who's been trained to use it. The time to start training the next generation of African programmers is now. The paramount chief of Offinso in the Ashanti Region, Nana Wiafe Akenten III, has called on his fellow chiefs and subjects to support President Mahama in his bid to retain the seat as President for a second term. Nana Wiafe Akenten III was speaking at a gathering of chiefs in the area when the President paid a courtesy call on him as part of his Ashanti Regional campaign tour. For me I know, God who has kept you until now will be with you. All I am requesting from my brothers is that by any means we can, we should support him [Mahama] to continue his good works. I am asking you to do this wholeheartedly to support him to finish the works God has tasked him to do, Nana Wiafe Akenten III said. He said President Mahama must be given the nod to complete all the projects he has initiated. Nana Wiafe Akenten III added that President Mahama has done a lot of work for the people of Offinso and is hopeful he will do more for the area if he is given the nod to govern for another four-year term. Someone will say he [Mahama] will continue the good works when he is given the nod, but the President is the best person to continue these works because he is the one who crafted them. All that I am pleading of you is to give him all the support, because he has done a lot for Offinsoman and he continues to do more. We are grateful and will never forget you. he said. 'Asantehene warns partisan chiefs' Nana Wiafe Akenten III's open declaration of support for President Mahama appears to be in defiance of a charge by the overlord of Asanteman, Otumfou Osei Tutu II who told chiefs in the Ashanti Region not to meddle in politics nor openly indicate their political leanings before, during or after the upcoming general elections. Though Nananom has their choice of party, they still need to be neutral by embracing any political party that comes to their palace during the 2016 election campaign, he said. Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II cautioned chiefs under his jurisdiction to desist from partisan politics as he says such acts denigrate the chieftaincy institution. Addressing the final 2016 session of the Ashanti Regional House of Chiefs in Kumasi, the Asantehene warned chiefs under his jurisdiction not to meddle in politics. Mahama promises establishment of Tomato factor Meanwhile, President Mahama who is currently on a four-day tour of the Ashanti region is promising the people of Offinsoman a Tomato factory if he is given the nod to serve another four-year term. According to him, the factor, when established, would help farmers reduce post-harvest loses and also provide jobs for several youth in the area. By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana I could hardly believe my eyes when I skimmed through President John Dramani Mahamas pledge to tackle the menace of corruption in his next term in office when given the mandate to govern the country (See: Ill make corruption unattractive in my next term in office-Mahama; kasapafmonline.com/ghanaweb.com, 7/11/2016). In a letter to his teeming supporters and Ghanaians in general dated November 7, 2016, the number one gentleman of the land said he will implement measures already proposed by policy makers and civil society organisations to make corruption unattractive in the country. In the coming years, I pledge to implement more robust interventions including the National Anticorruption Action Plan (NACAP) to make corruption unattractive and a higher risk activity, he noted in his five-page letter that was released in the Ashanti Region. He said although the country has not been able to bring down corruption to an appreciable level, what his government and the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) have achieved over the last couple of years is better than the opposition New Patriotic Partys (NPP) while in office. I am afraid, President Mahamas hasty pledge to tackle the existential corruption if given the nod in the forthcoming general election is a mere rhetoric and political inebriation designed to lure the unsuspecting voters. It is well-documented that President Mills, late, set up a Committee to investigate the acquisition of five jets handled by the then Vice President Mahama. So, President Mahama must do the honest thing by providing further and better particulars and give the green light to the committee set up by late President Mills to resume its work immediately without any interference, if he is really serious about combating corruption. All the same, let us remind President Mahama and his NDC apparatchiks that corruption is a key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development. Thus, it came as no surprise when the international community came together and adopted the UN Convention against Corruption in 2003, and followed it up with its implementation in 2005. In its resolution 55/61 of 4 December 2000, the General Assembly recognized that an effective international legal instrument against corruption, independent of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (resolution 55/25, annex I) was desirable and decided to establish an ad hoc committee for the negotiation of such an instrument in Vienna at the headquarters of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The 2005 UN Convention against Corruption encapsulates: Countries are obligated to take anti-corruption measures in public and private sectors. These can include establishing anti-corruption bodies and enhancing transparency in political financing. States must take measures to ensure public services are subject to safeguards that promote transparency, efficiency and merit-based recruitment. Public servants should be subject to codes of conduct, financial disclosures and disciplinary measures. Transparency and accountability in public finance must be promoted, and specific anti-corruption requirements, especially in the judiciary and in public procurement, must be established. Countries are called to promote the involvement of civil society, to promote awareness of corruption and to promote practices aimed at preventing corruption. Countries are required to establish a wide range of criminal offences, including basic forms of corruption (like bribery and embezzlement), trading in influence and the concealment and laundering of the proceeds of corruption. Apparently, the UN Convention against Corruption is the first meaningful universal instrument enacted to prevent and combat corruption with a view to networking and building on a broad international consensus. In fact, one of the most relevant provisions of the UN Convention against Corruption is the procurement clause which most countries have given meaning in their national laws, including Ghana. This is why we must all extol former President Kufuor and his NPP government for signing the all-important UN Convention against Corruption on 9th December 2004, and ratifying on 27th June 2007. More importantly, former President Kufuor took pragmatic steps and transposed some of the relevant provisions of the UN Convention against Corruption into our national law. All the same, the crucial question is: has President Mahama been able to fulfil Ghanas obligations under the 1969 Vienna Law of Treaties following the ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption? Disappointingly, however, Ghanas ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption did not dissuade President Mahama and his NDC government from indulging in gargantuan sleaze and corruptions over the years. Take, for instance, in recent years, President Mahama and his NDC apparatchiks have been under the radar for numerous bribery and corruption allegations, inter alia, the furtive gift (the Ford Expedition)by the Burkinabe Contractor Djabril Kanazoe; the Embraer 190 scandal; Armajaro; Mabey and Johnson; SADA; SUBA Info Solutions scandal and many others. Unfortunately, President Mahama and his NDC apparatchiks are bent on embezzling Ghanas resources to the detriment of the poor. How bizarre? Regrettably, President Mahama and his NDC government corrupt practices have resulted in excessive public spending, less efficient tax system , needless high public deficit and destabilization of national budgets, heightened capital flight and the creation of perverse incentives that stimulate income-seeking rather than productive activities (create, loot and share-apologies to JSC Dotse). If you may recall, somewhere in October 2010, the British media brought up sensational reports about how the then Vice President John Dramani Mahama, was lobbied by a British Cabinet Minister to get a reprieve for the ban imposed on Armajaro Holdings, one of the cocoa buying companies who were found guilty for smuggling the commodity out of Ghana. The fact of the matter is that the Armajaro Company was banned together with a few other companies, when the award winning investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas exposed the smuggling of uncountable bags of cocoa into neighbouring Cote dIvoire. Shockingly, however, the British media reported that subsequent to the meeting between the then Vice President John Dramani Mahama and the British Cabinet Minister, Armajaro Company was given a needless reprieve and then started its operations. Moreover, the manner in which the then Vice President Mahama handled the STX Housing deal leaves much to be desired. Even though the deal did not materialise, the then Vice President Mahama, gave us a bill of an excess of $250 million. How bizarre? Besides, after the failed deal with STX to build 30,000 housing units for the nation's security agencies, the NDC government entered into another deal with the GUMA Group, for the construction of 500 housing units. The deal which was championed by President Mahama was widely criticised by various stakeholders, just as the STX deal, following the decision to side-line local construction firms in favour of the foreign company. The unusually high cost of the project was also a source of concern to many. Whats more, President Mahama and his NDC apparatchiks handling of dubious judgment debt payments also leaves much to be desired. To be quite honest, it is only the heartless and uncaring who will shamefully give gargantuan sums of money belonging to the nation to people who have no entitlement. Do you remember Wayome scandal? As a matter of fact, there is nothing wrong to pay genuine judgment debts. However, I strongly believe that if President Mahamas government had handled the payments parsimoniously, the purported GH850 million judgment and settlement payments would have been brought to the barest minimum. The all-important question the discerning Ghanaians should ask President Mahama and his selfish and corrupt appointees then is: If just under eight years, you have paid dubious judgment debts in an excess of GH850 million, how much would you pay in twelve years? It is in the light of these unresolved corruption scandals that I am humbly appealing to discerning Ghanaians to be mindful about President Mahamas weird pledge to make corruption unattractive if given the nod in the forthcoming general election. K. Badu, UK. The Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ms Nomaindiya Mfeketo, will pay an official visit to two Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, from 9 to 13 November 2016, and Turkmenistan from 14 to 15 November 2016. Whilst Deputy Minister Mfeketo has visited Kazakhstan previously, it will be the first visit by a South African Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation to Turkmenistan since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992. Deputy Minister Mfeketos first stop on her Central Asian tour will be Astana, capital city of Kazakhstan. The visit to the Central Asian country, which will also include a brief stop-over in Almaty, the commercial hub of Kazakhstan, is aimed at strengthening bilateral and economic relations between South Africa and Kazakhstan. During the visit, Deputy Minister Mfeketo will co-chair the 5th Round of the South Africa-Kazakhstan Bilateral Political Consultations with Mr Akylbek Kamaldinov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan. South Africas main objectives with the 5th Round of Bilateral Consultations are to strengthen bilateral political and economic relations, by intensifying cooperation in trade and investment and supporting the expansion of cultural and people-to-people interaction between the two countries. Deputy Minister Mfeketo, who will be accompanied by delegations from the Departments of Trade and Industry and Science and Technology, will also have high-level meetings with business sector representatives and academia to promote South Africa as a destination for trade, investment and tourism and to explore future academic cooperation and skills exchange. Kazakhstan has a significant multilateral profile and will, on 1 January 2017, become the first Central Asian state that will take up a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. With this in mind, the Deputy Ministers visit is viewed by both countries as an opportunity to discuss multilateral matters of mutual concern such as the slow pace of reform of important international institutions such as the UNSC. Deputy Minister will then proceed to Turkmenistan from 14 15 November 2016. It is expected that the Deputy Minister will meet with her Turkmen counterpart and also pay a courtesy call on the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The visit to Turkmenistan will furthermore be utilised to identify possible areas of cooperation in the energy, mining and agricultural sectors. South Africa enjoys cordial relations with both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan as all three are developing economies and share many similar views in the multilateral fora. The South African Government believes that the consolidation of its bilateral relations with these two Central Asian countries will assist to achieve some if its main objectives to address the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Samira Bawumia, wife of vice presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has criticized the current Mahama administration for imposing untold hardship on Ghanaians who currently beg for arms. She said that a chunk of the nation's resources are being controlled by a few individuals in government while the majority of Ghanaians continue to suffer. According to her, owing to the situation, many Ghanaians struggle to make ends meet. Mrs Bawumia urged Ghanaians to vote out Mahama-led NDC and bring back the NPP to improve their living conditions. Everybody has become a beggar in Ghana under the leadership of John Mahama. When your children are going to school you have to go and beg for money for them. When your child is sick you have to go and beg for money before you can send him or her to the hospital. Why? Are we going forward or backward? she quizzed. Hajia Bawumia made the disclosure while speaking to members of the Muslim community and some traders at the Community 1, Tema. She wondered why the NDC is asking for another four-year term. Mrs Bawumia said retaining the NDC government in power would further push Ghanaians down the abyss of poverty with dire consequences. The NDC have been in government for eight years and they couldnt perform to the satisfaction of Ghanaians, but they are again asking for another term in office. If they couldnt deliver on their promises to Ghanaians in eight years, would they be able to deliver on those promises in four years? she asked. According to her, social intervention programmes put in place by the previous Kufuor administration to improve the lot of Ghanaians have all collapsed as a result of the mismanagement of the economy. She noted that under the NDC administration, National Health Insurance Scheme(NHIS), which benefited mostly the poor in society, has collapsed, despite the huge resources at the disposal of the Mahama administration. This years elections should be a serious matter for many people who must change NDC so we do not continue to suffer. She indicated that Ghana requires a selfless and incorruptible person like Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to improve the country's economy in order to bring relief to the suffering masses. Nana Akufo-Addo did not accept allowances meant for ministers and also did not stay in government bungalow for eight years when he served as a minister in Kufuors government, she said. She reiterated that the next NPP government, led by Nana AkufoAddo, would introduce policies such as the Zongo Development Fund, one-district -one factory, as well as 1 million dollars seed fund to be allocated to each constituency. Hajia Bawumia appealed to the Muslim community to vote massively for Nana Akufo-Addo in the upcoming general elections, saying NPP is the only party that cares about Muslims. The Member of Parliament (MP) for Tema East constituency, Daniel Nii Kwartei Titus Glover, called on Ghanaians to elect Nana Akufo-Addo as president to lessen their plight. He described Nana Addo as an incorruptible and visionary leader who would improve the lives of the people. Mr Titus-Glover appealed to his constituents to renew his mandate to enable him continue the good works he initiated during his first term. From Vincent Kubi, Tema The determination of the Electoral Commissioner as the Returning Officer for the Presidential Elections to still rig the elections by disqualifying all the 13 disqualified candidates in spite of the Supreme Courts ruling of yesterday, 7th November 2016, must be obvious to all reasonable people in the new grounds of discovered defects in their nomination forms the Commissioner submitted to each of the candidates after the Courts decision and orders were made. The defects in Nduoms nomination forms, according to press reports, have now moved from one (1) to one hundred and five (105). This is in spite of the fact that the case of Ex Parte Papa Kwesi Nduom in the High Court for which the Commissioner went to the Supreme Court was decided upon the one defect conveyed to Nduom in writing by the Commissioner dated 10th October 2016 which was an exhibit in the case. The change in the number of defects allegedly now detected by the Commissioner after her letters of 10th October 2016 to each of the candidates shows that she is using the Supreme Court ruling to change the goal post in her determination to disqualify all the 13 candidates and permit the rigging of the 2016 Presidential Elections. I take the view that she is again taking advantage of the Supreme Courts ruling to wager on the fact that she is entitled by the Courts ruling within the new nomination period to put forth alleged new and profound errors that will make it impossible for even Nduom and those others who have judgments in their favour to alter or amend the specific errors for which they obtained their respective judgments in the High Court. I am of the view that she cannot do that, based upon the Supreme Courts ruling even though the Court quashed the order of the High Court directing the Commissioner to allow Papa Kwesi Nduom permission to make alterations and amendments necessary to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper. This is because Nduoms action in the High Court was for a hearing specifically to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper and not new ones. That is the hearing the Supreme Court ordered for Nduom and all the other candidates who received letters pinpointing their errors on or around 10th October 2016. The Commissioner appears to be relying upon a tricky part of the Supreme Court ruling in which, after quashing the order of the High Court permitting Nduom to make alterations and amendments necessary to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper, the Court also ordered that in appropriate cases to afford candidates the opportunity to comply with regulation ((2) of the Public Election Regulations, 2016 (C.I. 94). I do not think the Court intended to go beyond the subsisting judgments in favour of some of the applicants and those without judgments to allow the Commissioner to change the goal posts anew. Nduom and the others may rush to the Supreme Court again for interpretation of its decision of yesterday. My worry is that the Commissioner is still deliberately determined to rig the elections by disqualifying the 13 candidates and is wagering on the fact that before the Court interprets its decision there would be no further time left before the close of today 8th November 2016. I wait to see whether or not the candidates have sufficient time to apply to the Supreme Court today for interpretation and whether or not there would be enough time to consider them before the close of day. I fear the Commissioner is determined to render nugatory the decision and orders of the Supreme Court on technical grounds. Let us wait for how the Supreme Court will rise to the occasion of this new twist to its ruling should any applications be made to it today. In the meantime patriotic citizens should continue defending the Constitution by vigilantly watching the rigging conduct of the Commissioner in this election year. Martin A. B. K. Amidu 8th November 2016 The Lordina Foundation has received a cheque of an undisclosed amount from the Chinese government to acquire start-up tools to support artisans in the rural areas of the country. The donation comes after the First Lady Mrs. Lordina Mahama, who is the president of the foundation, made a request to the Chinese Ambassador Madam Sun Bao Hong during a meeting in Accra. Supporting artisans is another area the Lordina Foundation has been focusing on for some time now aside the medical supplies and equipment she presents to hospitals. The Lordina Foundation's new focus of assisting artisans across the country was partly as a result of show of enthusiasm by artisans to their work and also how most of them struggle to start and sustain their own businesses for lack of working capital and start-up kits to enhance their work. With support from its sponsors and partners, the Lordina Foundation has presented assorted working tools to support the work of Tailors, Beauticians and Barbers Associations in number of regions and districts all over the country. The items presented included sewing machines, embroidery machines, over-lock machines, hand dryers, hairdryers as well as sterilisers aimed at assisting the artisans to expand their businesses and improve their income earning capacity. With the donation from the Chinese Ambassador, the Lordina Foundation will be able to procure more items to support more artisans across the country. I have been reading in some news outlets that Johnson Kombian, the man who is on record to have broken Tamale prisons and escaped when he was serving a prison term there has made attempt to break the Nsawam medium prisons too. The state is just keeping this Kombian guy at the risk of these prisons officers just to worry them for nothing. Assuming this Kombian guy succeeded in breaking the jail, that is when we would have seen a tall list of prison officers who are lined up and ready to be dismissed for not doing their work well when in actual fact, there is a court ruling that this man should be killed for "crimes against humanity". Most of these officers who are probably junior ranks would have found themselves in serious trouble and committees and boards may have been set up to investigate how the Kombian guy might have managed to escaped. As these committees and boards may be sitting comfortably in some cooled air conditioned rooms investigating how Kombian might have escaped, he might have already found himself on the streets causing havoc to unsuspecting and innocent Ghanaians. Which country koraaaa is this? Our laws are very clear on the fate of people like Kombian as far as criminal justice is concerned. To put it in a biblical way, our laws endorse "he who draws the sword, dies by the sword". To put it in express way and deeply rooted in the law, section 46 of Act 29/60 categorically states that "whoever commits murder shall be liable to suffer death". Initially we advocated against instant justice and mob attacks and told the people that the courts are the only mandated bodies to find people who are suspected to have committed crimes guilty or otherwise so that justice can prevail. The court have succeeded in finding Kombian guilty after prosecution has proven beyond all reasonable doubts and here we are moving Kombian from one prison to the other wasting precious state resources on him. Very funny country like Ghana with bad security arrangements at times. Kombian is a "death goat" who doesn't care whether he breaks jail or not. In fact if he succeeds in breaking the jail, it will add up to his criminal CV since he is on record to have broken one in Tamale. People like Kombian who have been slapped with death penalty and knows that no amount of appeals will exonerate them, will always take the risk to break the jail anytime, at the least opportunity. It is however, to his advantage should he succeed in breaking the jail. We are just keeping this guy at the risk of the prison officers and their families for nothing. The law says he should be killed and whoever that is responsible to ensure that Kombian is killed is just being irresponsible. It is very unfortunate we have organisations like Amnesty International and others going about advocating that death penalty should be abolished from our law books without recourse to how structures in our prisons should be improved first to contain hardened criminals like Kombian. These organizations compare prisons situations in USA, Canada, Britain, Netherlands and other developed nations to our prisons situations to here in Ghana which are very appalling. Here we are in Ghana, we are now granting bails to hardened criminals and making move to abolish death penalty because there seem to have some international pressures on us as a country without making appropriate arrangements towards the agenda these organizations are pushing us to. For us in the police, the death of constable Prince Agyare, constable Owusu Frimpong who lost their lives as a result of attacks on them by this Kombian guy leaves a big scar in our memories. In fact is still fresh in our minds how our colleagues were murdered in cold blood and we are still in fear of attacks especially when Kombian is making attempts to break the jail. I remember how corporal Owusu who Frimpong who survived the attacks recounted his pains and neglect whilst the state looks on. The corporal said openly to hearing of the whole world how he was supposed to have been flown abroad for further treatments and surgeries but nothing has done about it. This year alone, a lot of police officers have gone down as a result of robbery attacks and fighting of other dangerous crimes and we cannot afford to have Kombian too on the streets again. I have been told it's the president who signs the death warrant for people like Kombian to be executed. Ever since Kombian was found guilty by the court, I keep asking myself what prevents those responsible for signing the warrants for people like Kombian who have committed heinous "crimes against humanity" be killed? My checks shows that the last time somebody was killed was in 1993 and since then all those who are on death rolls are dumped in the prisons and are allowed to be rotten by nature. Those who stay in prisons for much longer are at times given amnesty after wasting other people's lives freely. The behaviour of Kombian if not nibbed from the bud will continue to be a threat to the prison officers since he is likely to recruit more people to buy into his "break the jail ideology" in the prisons. When the like minded of the Kombian types grow in our prisons, the prison officers themselves know the threat that it posses to them. He will continue to be a thorn in our fresh if he is allowed to be lingering in our prisons making attempts to break the jail. If not all, Kombian alone should be executed to decongest our prisons and also to make our prisons safer for the inmates in general and our prisons officers in particular. Ahanta Apemenyimheneba Kwofie III [email protected] #Ahantadiaries_2016_11_08 More than four hundred (400) supporters of the Progressive People's Party (PPP), from across the country, have arrived in Accra to append their signatures to the nomination forms of the party's presidential nominee, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, before it is re-submitted to the EC later today. The party is racing against time to ensure it corrects the errors, to ensure that Dr. Nduom participates in the upcoming presidential election on December 7. Citi News' Fred Djabanor reported that, the supporters, clad in party colours arrived in busses at the party's Headquarters at Asylum Down in Accra. The party is expected to correct and re-submit its presidential nomination forms to the Electoral Commission (EC) by the close of day today [Tuesday, November 8] before its Presidential hopeful is allowed the opportunity to contest in the upcoming elections. According to the EC, the PPP has over 105 errors to correct on its nomination forms. The Commission had earlier indicated that, the PPP needed to correct one error on Dr. Nduoms nomination forms. But following a Supreme Court judgment on Monday, November 7, the EC said in a letter to the PPP that it had detected additional errors that the party needs to correct. In the letter sighted by citifmonline.com, the EC also asked the party to bring before it one Richard Aseda, who subscribed to the party's flagbearer's forms in two different districts. PNC, NDP others unhappy with EC Meanwhile, the People's National Convention (PNC), has expressed disappointment in the EC over the recent developments ahead of the elections. The party, whose presidential nominee, Dr. Edward Mahama, was disqualified from the race for improperly filling his nomination forms, demanded that the Commission provides copies of all four submitted nomination forms, so it can adequately correct all the errors on the forms. The party thus threatened it will head to the Supreme Court, to compel the EC to further extend the nomination period, if it did not receive all the copies early enough before Tuesdays deadline. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings' National Democratic Party (NDP), has also threatened it will go to court if the EC does not desist from using what the party terms as oppressive tactic, to ensure its presidential nominee does not contest in the upcoming polls. The party in a statement issued on Monday [November 7], said it was unfair and absurd for the EC to announce that it has discovered 33 new errors on the party's presidential nomination forms. By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana Billing itself a "seven-star" hotel -- the first of its kind in Shanghai -- the Wanda Reign on the Bund certainly makes the appropriate first impression. The exterior is an awe-inspiring mix of glass and steel, shaped by British design firms Foster + Partners and Heatherwick Studio. Upon entering the lobby, guests walk across Art Deco-inspired jade inlaid floors toward a wall-sized abstract painting of Shanghai by renowned Chinese contemporary artist Shi Qi. Large marble columns extend to a 10-meter-high ceiling. Other artworks, commissioned specifically for the hotel, are paired with old Shanghai elements to reflect the city's style during the 1920s and '30s. Magnolia patterns and amber-colored rhinestones, 3D mosaic murals and elaborate embroideries are all accompanied by plenty of crystal, jade and marble. New addition to the Bund Opened in June after three years of construction, the $516 million hotel is the latest addition to the many high-end hospitality options along the iconic Bund waterfront of the Huangpu River, joining the likes of the Peninsula, Waldorf Astoria and, across the river, Shangri-La and Grand Hyatt. It's the 51st hotel of the Wanda Hotels & Resorts group, part of the Dalian Wanda empire under the helm of China's richest man, Wang Jianlin . And in less than six months, it has become the destination of choice for China's elite. World's fanciest private karaoke room? On a recent Saturday morning, two young women still in makeup, short black designer dresses and gold-embroidered silk slippers venture sleepily to the plush breakfast buffet. Just ahead of them, a man in pajama shorts -- also in slippers -- fills his plate with steamed dumplings and fried rice, all while talking loudly through his iPhone 7's wireless headset. The three guests appear to be no older than 30. Their ages are noteworthy because they are exactly the type of clients Wanda Reign has been known to attract, thanks mainly to the hotel's association with Wang Jialin's 28-year-old son, Wang Sicong , who many consider the brainchild behind the property. For the uninitiated, Wang Sicong has grabbed headlines for his ostentatious displays of wealth -- and millennial cool. He booked an entire island resort for his 27th birthday and made headlines for purchasing iPhone 7s and Apple watches for his dog. While some disparage the youngster's lifestyle, others -- mostly China's second-generation rich, the sons and daughters of tycoons -- look at him as a model nouveau riche. MORE: Shanghai's hidden bars "People are curious" "Many of our current clients are relatively young," says Christie Chen, director of marketing and communication for Wanda Reign. "They often come in at the weekend to party and book one of our suites. The fact that Wang's name is behind the hotel is certainly a draw; so is the 'seven-star' tag. People are curious." Both the rating and Sicong's name might just be marketing ploys, however. No authorized global travel body has granted Wanda Reign its seven stars, as there is no such international standard. And while social media and Wang Sicong's entourage have emphasized the youngster's involvement to generate hype, it is the father, not the son, who owns the property. But that hasn't kept the hotel from embracing the opulence. Designer uniforms and Rolls Royce car services Take Club Reign on the second floor, a private club for those who are part of the Wanda Hotels and Resorts membership plan. It's a world unto itself, with stained glass windows in the corridors and chandeliers hanging over leather armchairs and mahogany furniture. A personalized butler is always on call, and the bar is stocked with bottles of Chateau Lafite and Louis XIV cigars. There's a three-room spa as well as a state-of-the-art KTV room kitted with professional audio equipment and mauve lights, in case guests want to recreate the dance club experience without leaving the premises. Got an urge to strum? The Chairman's Suite has its own harp. Then there's the car service, featuring luxury vehicles starting at $110 per trip -- that's for a BMW 5 Series -- all the way up to $800 for a four-hour ride in a Rolls Royce. As many young, wealthy Chinese can't get enough of expensive cars, the service fills a need. Even the staff uniforms are high-end; Laurence Xu, the first Chinese designer to show at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week, was asked to create liveries using fine Chinese silk and other traditional Chinese motifs. Chef Marc Meneau of now closed two-Michelin star restaurant L'Esperance runs the show inside French restaurant MARC, while at the Japanese restaurant HE, everything -- from the ingredients to the crockery, the water and your can of Sprite -- is imported from Japan. Five-star luxury for seven-star prices? Despite the large-scale glitz and pervasive comforts, the Wanda Reign on the Bund is hard-pressed to live up to its "seven-star" moniker. What the hotel offers is certainly very good, but not unparalleled when compared to other luxury hotels. Even Chen admits, "Internally, we think of it as a five-star." But it's the hotel's connections to the country's moneyed twentysomethings that gives it its shine -- and an edge over competitors. It remains to be seen how long that will last, but for now, this far-reaching and extravagant property is the newest playground for China's high-spenders. Marianna Cerini is a freelance journalist writing about innovation, lifestyle and luxury in China. On the 7th December 2016, you should cast your vote for Akufo Addo. Nana has a message campaign fixated on breaking away from the corruption and incompetence that has symbolised so much of NDCs leadership over the past four years. He has demonstrated a notable coalition for a change, consisting of ordinary voters and working-class Ghanaians. He is arguably the closest non-corrupted politician to become the president of Ghana politics seen in a generation. That's why millions of Ghanaians will be voting for him. Ghana has a clear parallel to recent Nigerian elections. Nigerian voters who supported voting out Jonathan Goodluck were not Right-wing extremists; they were ordinary people who wanted to reclaim control of their economic lives. JM Twaso has national bureaucrats of corruption to contend with - not in Flagstaff but in NDC as a whole. Voting for Nana is a means of reaffirming Ghana's domestic economic interests against a self-interested elite that dreams of reforming the country in its own image, as overinflated contract deals negotiated in secret by civil servants and his government. Nana will reopen corruption scandals that the incumbent considers closed. Ghanaian voters would like tougher enforcement of the laws against corruption. The NPP policy is favored by citizens of all ethnic backgrounds, but not by the NDC technocrats, who think less of public order than what corruption contributes to the bottom line of national interest. Likewise unemployment and economic mismanagement: Ghanaians are repulsed by the inefficient use of state resources over the past four years by the NDC administrations, which have yielded only economic chaos and gains for political corruption. JM Twaso has the worst record of democratic political dictator, corruption and economic mismanagement as the President of the 4th Republic of Ghana: JM Twaso as the democratic dictator supported the: Suspension of Dr. Josiah Aryeh (Former Secretary) The suspension of Mr. Kofi Adams as Deputy General Secretary. The pushing out of Dr. Obed Asamoah from NDC who went to form DFP. The dismissal of Frances Assiam (former National Womens Organiser) Suspending 23 members of which 3 were current MPs this month (November 2016). Mr. Kwaku Baah (National VC) who resigned fighting against corruption. Konadu Rawlings (former Vice Chairman of NDC) to form the NDP. JM Twaso supporting the refusal to accept the forms of Mr. George Boateng to contest against him. The pushing out of Goosie Tanoh and Tweretwie Opoku to form the Reform Party. Dismissing the accountant of NDC who issued the form to JM Twaso to contest against the president. The resignation of Mr. Bede Ziedeng as the Deputy General Secretary of the NDC. JM Twaso as the president of CORRUPTIONS in modern Ghana presiding over: DUBIOUS DEBTS JM Twaso is the president of many unprecedented payment debts, Woyome, Isofoton, etc. GYEEDA JM Twaso is the president of youth unemployment. SADA JM Twaso is the president of non-stimulating growth and lack of addressing the northerners human and social development needs. FORD JM Twaso is the president of kickbacks. Nana is not looking to abrogate and remove chiefs from traditional stools. But he has raised a question that the citizen has long been asking, explicitly, whether Ghana is carrying too much debt for inflated infrastructure and economic mismanagement and too much corruption. Since elected to office, the self-declared corrupt government experts have made and paid so many catastrophic debts - involving themselves in scandals while instantaneously antagonizing Ghanaians with hardships and depending on IMF/China for big time borrowings to increase our debt - that they have lost the public's confidence. It's no illogicality to state Nana may strengthen the young JM Twaso and his political elites by lawfully forcing to justify themselves of corruption after the December 2016 elections. Ghanaian voters have seen how Supreme Court judges took it upon themselves to invalid the will of the people. Nana is no opponent of Voltarians or the Northerner's economic developments: he has made a good judgment call by nominating one of the finest economists from the north as the VP. Nana opposes corruption, however, and has promised to create independent prosecutor to fight corruption in his gov't. The premise of all Nana's policies has been to give the Ghanaian citizen back its economic self-independence. Nevertheless, instead of JM Twaso and his NDCs babies with sharp teethes addressing Twaso campaign in these terms, JM Twasos political and media opponents target Nanas personal activities, exaggerate his hasty and politically incorrect propensities, to paint him as an extremist and a madcap. When Ghanaians vote on the 7th December 2016 for Nana, they are taking back economic and corruption responsibility for their own lives. On the enormous economic challenge questions, Nana is right. We should be with him. Vote for your life and not for the life of those who have not made a socio-economic difference in your life for the past four years. Chief Asare 08.11.2016 LISTEN THE UPPER East Regional Director of the Ghana Health Services, Dr. Kofi Issah has lifted an embargo he placed on the salary of a Medical Officer at the Regional Hospital in Bolgatanga for three months on the grounds that the officer had vacated post. It will be recalled that on Thursday October 27, 2016, The Chronicle published a story under the caption; 'Medical Officer to Sue GHS, HFC Bank for Freezing His Salary'. In the story, we indicated that Dr. Issah declined and Dr. Patrick Atobrah, the Medical Director of the regional hospital declined to speak to us on the issue. HFC Bank branch in Tamale also declined to speak to us. Meanwhile, The Chronicle had seen a letter written and signed by Dr. Issah, dated 15th July, 2016, and addressed to the branch Manager, HFC Bank Ghana Ltd, Tamale, requesting the manager to withhold payment of Dr. Amoo's salary on the condition that he had vacated post. However, Dr. Amoo mounted a strong self-defense as he dismissed this allegation in a strappingly worded letter, and explained the circumstances that led to him taking 18 days leave which the regional director used as basis for blocking his salary without hearing from him. But, barely 24 hours after our first publication on the issue hit the newsstand, the embargo was lifted, paving way for the medical officer to have access to his bank account at the HFC Bank, Tamale branch. This was confirmed by Dr. Amoo, who said he went to the bank on Tuesday November 1, 2016, to check on bank clearance and was informed the embargo had been lifted. Though he now has access to his bank account, Dr. Amoo has vowed to drag his employer, the Ghana Health Service to court for defamation of character and other possible charges. Meanwhile, he is also in the process of changing his bank because he was not happy with the manner in which his current bank handled the issue. On the duty roster for prescribers at the Out-Patient Department of the regional hospital for November/December 2016, The Chronicle observed Dr. Amoo's name was not captured, even though he is at post. However, when Dr. Samuel Aborah, Clinical Coordinator, who prepared the duty roster was contacted, he admitted it was an unintentional omission on his part and explained the omission has been explained to Dr. Amoo and his name will be immediately included. From William Nlanjerbor JALULAH, Bolgatanga . 08.11.2016 LISTEN SOME Union Members of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) have called for a full scale investigation to unravel the circumstance under which a vessel considered as scrap was fraudulently sold out, without recourse to tender procedure. The Union members, who are based in Takoradi, believe that the process leading to the sale of the MV Askelad as exposed by The Chronicle in its Tuesday, November 1, 2016 edition, indeed calls for a thorough investigation into the alleged fraudulent sale. This comes at the time the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), for reasons best known to the Office, failed to investigate the matter when a petition regarding the sale of the vessel was sent to it. Speaking in separate interviews with this reporter, days after the story broke, the GPHA workers expressed diverse opinion on the issue. The MV Askelad, according to sources, berthed at the Takoradi Port in 2012 and accumulated a debt of $85,992.02 consequently. Following the inability of the vessel to pay the above debt, management of GPHA sought refuge at a Sekondi High Court to detain the vessel to compel its management to defray the debt, which the court upheld and ordered the owners to cough up the sum owed the Authority. This was after the agents of the Vessel, Acquatic Diving Services Limited had filed an appearance notice, arguing that it was only an agent and so could not be held liable for the Vessel's debt. But, before the vessel could attempt to clear the debt, the Director General (DG) of GPHA, Richard Anamoo, without following tendering process and financial advice had ordered that, as much as $60,992.02 should be written off the debt owed by MV Askelad. Strangely, GPHA went ahead and declare MV Askelad as scrap and sold it a cost of $25,000 to the same agents (Acquatic Diving Services Limited), which had refused to defray the debts on the grounds that it was not the owner of the Vessel. In a letter dated July 31, 2015, Captain James Owusu-Koranteng, the then Director of the Takoradi Ports, wrote on behalf of the DG of GPHA, indicating that GPHA accepts the offer of US$25,000 for the vessel, MV Askelad and agrees to write off the indebtedness of the vessel to GHPA. Another letter confirming the sale of the vessel between GPHA and the agent/buyer was also circulated to heads of departments of the GPHA, Takoradi Ports. Auditor of the Takoradi Port, Ms. Gifty Adzanklu who was one of the departmental heads who were copied or informed about the sale of the vessel has questioned why the ship was sold at such a low price compared to the debt owed GPHA. The worries of the Auditor were similarly shared by a courageous worker who wrote a petition to question the deal. But before the whistle blower, Fortune Agboza could avail himself before a five member committee set up to look into his petition; he was interdicted and consequently fired from work. Though management of GPHA had come out to confirm the sale of the Vessel, they (GPHA management) argued that it was a scrap. This is because it was sinking at the time it was on the anchorage, hence the decision to sell the vessel. Checks by this reporter indicate that the vessel, which was not towed, moved on its own and is currently in active working service at the Tema Port. Answering questions on why the GPHA through its DG decided to write off the $60,992.02 as bad debt, the Authority responded through its General Manager in-charge of Legal, Edward J. Mettle-Nunoo that: The debt of Vessel Askelad cannot be said to have been written off. GPHA was only able to recover US$25,000 out of a total outstanding debt of $79,684.94. The balance is still due. Interestingly, though on paper, the MV Askelad was sold to Acquatic Diving Services Limited, after which it sailed off to the Tema Harbour in the name of Star Maritime Agency Limited, documents in the hands of The Chronicle point to the fact that the Vessel now belongs to Star Maritime Agency Ltd and is currently in active working service in the name of Star Maritime Agency Ltd. It is as a result of the story exposing the fraudulent sale of the vessel disguised as a scrap that the union and workers of GPHA have called for a thorough investigation to unravel the circumstances leading to the shocking sale of the vessel at that low cost and the consequent writing off the debt owed by the vessel. Information available to this reporter indicates that though the Economic and Organized Crime (EOCO) office was petitioned and the necessary document giving it to investigate the sale, the office surprisingly chose the option to sleep over the investigation. Below are answers provided by management of GPHA in a response to a questionnaire sent by this paper when it begun investigating the story. 1) The Vessel MV Askelad was berthed at the Port of Takoradi. Its agent was Aquatic Diving Services Limited. The Vessel was registered in St. Vincent and Grenadines 2) The Vessel during its stay at the Takoradi Port incurred marine charges totaling $79,684.94. This debt remained unpaid for a long time despite several demand notices and reminders 3) Following the failure on the part of the vessel/agents to pay the accumulated debt of $79,684.94, the GPHA instituted action at the High Court Sekondi on the 5th of November 2014 for the recovery of the debt, together with interest and legal costs. 4) The vessel MV Askelad was subsequently arrested by an order of the High Court, Sekondi on the 13th of November 2014 upon an application by GPHA on the strength of section 66 of the GPHA Act, 1986 (PNDCL 160) which gives GPHA the right to detain a vessel for failure to pay its fees and charges. 5) On receipt of the writ and statement of claim, Aquatec Diving Services Limited, the agents of the vessel on 18th November, 2014 responded by filing an appearance and a defense to the action. By the said defense, Aquatec were basically saying that they were only agents of the vessel and not the owners and therefore were not liable for the indebtedness of the vessel. 6) There was no response by way of appearance nor statement of defense filed on behalf of the Vessel. 7) The Vessel having failed to respond to the Court processes as required by the rules of Court, upon an application by GPHA, the High Court, Sekondi on 22nd January 2015 entered final judgment in favor of GPHA for the recovery of a debt of $79,687.94 together with interest and cost against it. 8) Judgment having been entered in favor of GPHA against the vessel, it followed up with the necessary processes to enforce and recover the Judgment debt by attaching the vessel under a writ of fifa. 9) The attached Vessel it must be noted, had been left unattended with no crew on board for a long while and was in deplorable state. Surveyors engaged to conduct a valuation of the vessel before its sale could not undertake the valuation as it was under lock, denying them aces. 10) The Maritime Operations Department of GPHA advised that the Vessel had started listing, that is, it had tilted to one side and was in danger of sinking in the Port of Takoradi. 11) GPHA therefore had to an operational decision to move the Vessel MV Askelad immediately out of the Port to avoid the danger of sinking inside the Port, with it attendant consequences 12) The Agents, o behalf of the Owners of the Vessel, offered to pay GPHA $25,000.00 which was accepted in part satisfaction of the judgment debt, and also to move the Vessel from the Port of Takoradi to prevent it from sinking in the Harbour Basin. In the event that the Vessel sinks in the Port, GPHA would be saddled with a cost of $100,000.00 to raise it from the bed of the Harbor Basin 13) Being part of the execution process to recover the Judgment Debt, the Registrar of the High Court, Sekondi was duly notified 14) The sale of the Vessel being a judicial sale, GPHA did not have to go through competitive tender for its sale 15) The debt of Vessel Askelad cannot be said to have been written off. GPHA was only able to recover $25,000.00 out of the outstanding debt of $79,687.94. The balance is still due and owing. However, there is no property of the vessel owners available to attach in further execution and recovery of the debt. 16) GPHA did not receive a petition from a worker on the attachment and subsequent sale of the vessel. 17) No committee was set up to investigate the sale of the Vessel. From Alfred Adams, Takoradi. 08.11.2016 LISTEN Anyone who claims Ghana has had its politics and governanceright is only peddling fiction. We've had terrible politics and governance, at least since the Fourth Republic. Yes, it's been terrible till now and it's even getting worse. The politics and governance we have had over the years is definitely not the one Kwame Nkrumah and the founders of our nation dreamt about and wished for us. They wished for us, a prosperous nation and laid a solid foundation for same. Not only have we failed to build on the foundation, we have excavated and destroyed it. The politics we'vehadhas been one that divides us rather than unites us; it has been one that is fuelled by greed, powered by deception and anchored on grand corruption. We have the kind of politics that allows politicians to continuously massage our minds to remain hopelessly hopeful in our despair. Our leaders had loved mediocrity and led us to celebrate trivialities in our national affairs. Our politics has been one that abhors truth and adores falsehood. Our kind of politics can simply be defined as the shortcut to absurd riches through state looting. It is the kind of governance in which the ruling class and their cronies enjoy the dividends of their daytime state robbery with impunity,while the majorityof the people continue to suffer daytime nightmares within their confined prisons of poverty and anguish. Yes, that is the politics and governance we've had. We have had a kind of politics and governance that cares less about future generations; one that has corrupted the minds of many young folks into believing that patriotism no longer matters;money is everything and that the synonym for the word future is now. It's a sad state. But we have to have hope. We need to hope that one day, the politics and governance we have had over years, shall give way to the kind of politics and governance Ghana needs and deserves. The politics Ghana needs is one that is inspired by patriotism and motivated by a sense of Ghana first; one that detestsgreed and punishes corruption. The politics and governance Ghana needs is one that is anchored on our motto freedomand justice where wrongdoers are punished irrespective of their party affiliation and status. Politics and governance that deals with the root causes of our problems rather than theireffects is what Ghana needs; one in which Presidents will focus on big picture policies, and changes to national orientation and aspirations; one in which Presidents will feel embarrassed to see national resources spent on putting their faces on public buses while a huge number of citizens live on less than a dollar a day and don't have potable water. The politics Ghana deserves is one that is based on truth rather than falsehood; honesty rather than propaganda; and sincerity rather than deceit. The politics and governance needed is one that is characterised by genuine concern for the welfare of the people at all times; rather than what we currently have which is characterised by pretentious and deceitful show of concern for the people only when elections are approaching. So yes, our politics and governance has been bad. Change is, therefore, crucial and change must happen. But I am not talking about the kind of changes we have had in the past two decades, which have just been changes in the name of parties and persons who lead us. In other words, I am not talking about a change that will simply be a swap of names of party and president from NDC to NPP and from John Dramani Mahama to Nana Akufo Addo. No, I am talking about real change in our politics and governance regardless of which party or president is in power. I don't know who will offer the real change we need whether NDC or NPP. I can imagine NPP and NDC supporters debating this. I imagine the NPP supporter saying: Change is coming, Nana is bringing Change, while the NDC supporter rebuts and says: you are dreaming of change when we are already changing lives. So both NPP and NDC are talking change. But their type of change is not what I am talking about. The real change will be the one that takes us from the politics we have had in the last two decades to the kind of politics we need. I remain doubtful about the NPP or NDC giving us that type of change. My scepticism is based on the fact that we have had promises of change in the past and we have had changes before. But they all turned out to be simply changes in the name of party and leaders that lead us, rather than changes that brought real change to the destiny of our nation. In the year 2000 for example,the NPP asked Ghanaians to change, they called it positive change. At the time,President Rawlings and his NDC desperately asked that Ghanaians should continue to be with them. Change was necessary at the time and had to come. So there was a change that brought the NPP in. It turned out to be just a change in the name of the party and president who led us. The NPP didn't give us the politics we need. In 2004, the NDC was singing the change song. The people of Ghana ignored them. The people wanted to give President Kufour and his NPP a second chance and they did. The NPP could not get the people the kind of politics and governance they needed. So in 2008 when the NDC increased the amplitude of their change song, the people decided to teach NPP a lesson in the hope that the NDC had learnt some bitter lessons in opposition and will thus reform. So NDC was brought back. Apparently, the NDC had learnt no lessons. They have opted to serve the people with a cocktail of the same politics we have rather than the politics we need. So eight years on, the NPP is back with loud melodious rhymes of change. My conviction is that they are talking about the same kind of changes we have had in the past change in the name of party, president, ministers and in the list of potential beneficiaries of state goodies rather than the politics we need. So I am not sure about any real change in our politics and governance soon. But I have a prayer: May the winner of this year's elections be a leader who will get our country's headlights on, and get us on the right path. And may the party that will get us closer to the politics we need be the winner. By Sulemana Braimah ([email protected]) 08.11.2016 LISTEN The Afigya Kwabre South Constituency Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Odeneho Kwaku Appiah, has launched a passionate appeal to the National Peace Council, Christian Council of Ghana, Muslim Council, and other groups, to, as a matter of urgency, prevail upon the Electoral Commission to refrain from any action that can plunge the countrys democracy into chaos. The NPP Chairmans appeal follows what he said were rumours that the EC Chairperson, Mrs. Charlotte Osei, and her Commission are planning to run the parliamentary elections before the presidential. According to Chairman Odeneho, the EC has a potential plan to go ahead with the parliamentary polls in the event it does not meet the deadline for the presidential polls, as a result of the legal dispute between the Commission and some aspiring presidential candidates. Addressing supporters of the NPP at a rally held in Afrancho, the NPP Constituency Chairman pointed out that since there is no strict constitutional provision requiring that both should be held the same day, the EC Chairperson will exploit that loophole to implement that heinous plan. It is for this reason that the NPP Constituency Chairman is sounding the clarion caution to all stakeholders, particularly the Peace Council and other respected bodies, to quickly intervene and stop the EC from creating confusion. It is the duty of all of us to stand up against any threat that has the tendency to jeopardise the countrys democracy. The EC Chairperson and her colleagues must not be allowed to do things their own way, he said. On his part, the NPP member of Parliament (MP) for the area and candidate-elect, Owuraku Aidoo, charged supporters of the party to rally behind the flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, with a few days to the elections, and ensure that the party emerges victorious. From Issah Alhassan, Kumasi. 08.11.2016 LISTEN The General Secretary of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr. Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, says it would be disastrous for Ghanaians, if they mistakenly vote for Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), come December 7, this year. Speaking to party supporters at Bongase during the launch of the Banda Constituency campaign in the Brong-Ahafo Region, Mr. Asiedu Nketiah said this year's election is about the choice between peace and stability of the country, and violence. According to the NDC General Secretary, the opposition NPP is not well prepared to govern the country, because, They are not united, and there is no way a divided party can win power and lead the country in peace. He continued that the NDC stands for peace, unity and development, which is obviously the right choice for Ghanaians, therefore, Ghanaians must not be deceived by the empty promises which are borne out of the NPP's desperation to win power. Mr. Asiedu Nketiah described the NPP as the most violent party in the country, led by their presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo. Like father like son. As Nana Akufo-Addo is, so is his team or followers, particularly the parliamentary candidates and party officers, they are akin to violence. He called on NDC faithful not to mistakenly give power to someone who believes violence is the way to go. According to the NDC General Secretary, Ghanaians must not gamble with the peace and development of the country, but vote for John Mahama and the NDC, who have demonstrated peace unity and development, for continuity. I urged you, the power is in your hands; don't give it to the wicked and the violent to hurt you with it; don't fall for his deceit and give him the power, otherwise, you'll have him to contend with, the NDC scribe added. He reiterated that Akufo-Addo and his running mate, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, will say anything just to secure power, with no intention of fulfilling them, and, therefore, entreated the electorate not to fall for the numerous unrealistic promises of the NPP. Please ignore all the phantom promises they go round making. Take Nana Addo as a man who will say anything just for power, and Bawumia as a man who will give any lecture for a similar purpose. My brothers and sisters, there is a saying that a woman who will not stay in matrimony for long does not replant cassava after harvesting, he entreated. Mr. Asiedu Nketiah disclosed that the NDC has targeted 3,000 votes difference in the Banda Constituency against the NPP, to silence them for good. He said the difference is clear between the NDC and the NPP, explaining that when the NPP was in power, whenever Banda's name was mentioned, in terms of education, it was miserable, because Banda was a hub for teachers who were stubborn and were being punished by the Ghana Education Service (GES) through transfers, due to the abundance of guinea worm infection and Oncho cases. Though Banda is a young district, during the current NDC tenure, teachers now rushed to be posted to Banda for teaching, because the district now has 100% electricity coverage, while previously the lack of potable water in the district was the cause of the increasing rate of guinea worm infections, but, currently, the availability of potable water has helped eradicate the canker. Among the speakers who graced the occasion was the Majority Leader of Parliament, Alban Kinsford Bagbin, former Minister of Power, Dr. Kwabena Donkor, 1st Vice-Chairperson, Anita De-Souso, Ghana Ambassador to Algeria, Kwadwo Nyamekye Marfo, and other national and regional executives of the party. The parliamentary candidate of Banda who is also the Deputy Majority Chief Whip in Parliament, Ahmed Ibrahim, was officially introduced to the electorate by Mr. Asiedu Nketiah. Ahmed Ibrahim indicated that the NDC will win 70% of the votes cast in the Banda Constituency, due to the enormous development projects done by President Mahama and the NDC. From Michael Boateng, Bongase. 08.11.2016 LISTEN Presided over by Mrs Justice Sophia Adinyira, the Supreme Court extended the nomination date to tomorrow, November 8, to enable all disqualified candidates to correct the mistakes on their forms and thus make themselves eligible to contest the Presidential elections. The Supreme Court order is victory for common sense. Unfortunately, it is also a slap in the face of the recalcitrant chairperson of the Electoral Commission, who appears to be on a suicide mission and scheming to go down with this lovely republic and its citizens. Now that the Supreme Court has spoken, it is the wish of The Chronicle that Mrs. Osei and her commission would obey the order and do the right thing. With barely one month to the polls, this is not the time to litigate over mundane issues. We would like to believe that those unseen faces pulling the strings and making the chairperson and her Commission to dance to their tunes would leave the Commission alone to do an honest job. The 2016 election is key to the survival of this nation-state. After eight years of what a Supreme Court judge labeled as create, loot and share, the people of Ghana must be allowed their freewill to decide on who among the 17 candidates contesting the polls, has the right programme and attitude to pull this nation out of the mess. When Attorney-General Marietta Brew-Oppong wrote to the Supreme Court to withdraw the state from chasing the GHc51.2 million bungling state officials paid to Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome for no job done, it told the story of an administration neck deep in corruption. Obviously, the die is cast for Mr. John Dramani Mahama and his moribund administration. Unfortunately for most Ghanaians, the head of state is fighting tooth and nail to remain at Government House. As Mrs. Gifa Attivor, the former Minister of Transport, who resigned in disgrace in the debacle over the Smartty deal, President Mahama and his appointees are apparently fighting to avoid being thrown into jail, after recklessly dissipating public funds. It is quite obvious from the way the President is throwing away public funds in his quest to remain in power, that the Head of State is defending something more, than the right to remain in power. Be it as it may, the people of Ghana are only clamouring for free and fair elections. It looks as though the Electoral Commission is on a mission other than the fairness of the vote. Only the appointing authority knows what went into bringing Mrs. Charlotte Osei to head the Commission. This is a woman born in Nigeria to a Nigerian mother. Our Constitution is very clear on the nationality clause. Yet, President Mahama and his advisers at the Council of State, unfortunately populated at the top, mainly by those who pursued the agenda of throwing out the Constitutional Government of President Hilla Limann, went ahead and brought this woman, who in all honesty, is emotionally attached to her country of birth. Since occupying the chair at the Commission, Mrs, Osei has been interested more in the affairs at the periphery than the serious business of preparing the Commission for the vote. All the time and resources were wasted throwing out the old logo featuring this nation's Coat-of-Arms in favour of a school boy's drawing with crayon. All this time, the real issue at stake was the vexed question of the over-bloated register. As it is, this nation is going to the polls with a register than cannot truly represent the population of this country. As it is, over 15 million people are hooked on the register of a country whose population is well short on 30 million. In our part of the world, it is universally acknowledged that there are more children than adults. If this universal truth is applicable to Ghana, then surely, 15 million people cannot be registered to vote. Mrs. Osei would not want to know about this serious anomaly and still go about pontificating on working to deliver a clean vote. The Chronicle does not trust this woman to deliver an honest vote. The signs are all over the place. We take consolation in the fact that in this world, man proposes and God disposes. The Supreme Court verdict vindicates some of us who believe that there must be some mischief up the sleeves of this Nigerian-born Chairperson of the Electoral Commission. With this slap in the face, has Mrs. Charlotte Osei any credibility left to conduct the polls? We doubt very much. ENYIMGUASE AWAABA! Since 92, Ghana and the US have voted in the same direction and somehow towards a similar ideology at every general elections Even though one can rightly argue that in Ghana political ideologies rarely reflect in approach to governance, our major political parties think in line with their US counterparts- on paper at least The NPP believe that if the big becomes bigger, it will have a trickledown effect on those at the bottom. The NDC believe that the way to develop is to develop those at the base to catch up with those at the top. The Democrats are closer to the NDC whereas the Republican are closer in approach to the NPP in ideology This similarities has gone perfectly with the voting trend since 92. Whenever Americans have voted the way of the Republicans, Ghana has voted the way of the NPP and whenever Americans have voted the Democrats, Ghanaians have voted the NDC Interestingly, all 3 US Presidents since 92 have visited their Ghanaian counterparts. Over that period, all individual presidents were given the chance to complete their second term. The case is different in Ghana now, whereas President Obama, who was elected with President Mills has ended his two terms, the death of Atta Mills ensured there was a change of candidate for the ruling party in their second term bid. The NPP says NDC have had their two terms: NDC say Mahama as a president has only served for 1 term and deserves a second chance like his predecessors. Time and will tell. Back to Ghana US This is how the voting pattern has been since 1992 1992: US voted Bill Clinton a Democrats Ghana Voted Jerry Rawlings of NDC 1996: Clinton was retained in 96 the same as Rawlings was 2000: The US voted for a Republican President and Ghana went the way of NPP in the person of John Agekum Kuffour 2004: Kuffour retained his seat in 2004 a month after George Bush had done same. Significantly, both the losing Democrats and the NDC candidates disputed the credibility of the result with the late Prof Mills accepting it but proceeding to court. It was more dramatic in the US because whereas Mills' doubts were given very little attention, John Kerry's boycott of the elections became a global issue and still very much talked about. Fast forward, 2008, Bush had ended his tenure and a new person was to be elected to lead the nation. Would it be a Democratic or a Republican? Your guess is as good as mine: the answer is called Obama. The US the very first time elected a black man on the ticket of the Democrats. Significantly, Ghana went the way of the US by same changing political party and continued with the trend of Democrats Party to NDC, Republican Party to NPP The beneficiary this time was President Mills who was the first African president to be visited by Obama i Obama retained his seat for the Democrats in 2012 and NDC did same albeit with a new candidate due to the demise of President Mills 5 months to the elections President Mahama was the beneficiary of the US and Ghana voting pattern. He won the elections and had to sweat to prove he did that cleanly and deservingly. The NPP and at least 40% of Ghanaians, mainly their supporters still dispute the authenticity of the result despite the Supreme Court yessing it in a split decision after almost 7 months of daily litigation covered live on National Television. 2016 is here with us, Ghana and the US go to the polls. Today, the US will elect a president. Will it be a Democrats or a Republican? It looks like America is going the way of the Democrats and end the 8 years cycle of change in ruling party It appears largely so because the Republican have chosen a candidate who doesn't understand diplomacy and does politics from his heart instead of his head. But people should not be deceived, Trump is speaking the minds of the indigenous Americans, I mean the real Americans. Not the Muslim American, not the Latinos or African Americans. Those people hold on to views deemed discriminative and therefore are usually reserved and keep their thoughts to themselves. He is speaking for the UK kind of Americans who voted for BREXIT. Unfortunately, he is on the wrong side of history and civilization and that is the reason Hillary Clinton looks to have advantage even though she is equally unliked by majority of Americans. Trump is speaking the minds of people who cannot come out to defend him due to modernizing. But I can say this on authority: if Trump will lose, it will have nothing to do with his policies or hate for certain category of people: his widely known immoral behaviour is what might go against him this years. Republicans dont like such characters. They are the conservatives, the Christians. Those against abortions, those against same sex marriage. They are the custodian of high grade morality. However, people can disagree with a person on issues but their real persona is demonstrated in the ballot box. The d day will tell if Americans really are against Trump as the polls suggests. In 2012 for instance, throughout the campaign, my choice candidate was Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom. He was the candidate of my heart. When I got the ballot paper, I voted for the candidate of my head. I won't tell you who though People can hate Trump and change their minds at the last minute because he is also pushing the agenda of majority of Americans who see their youth scramble for limited job opportunities with by force citizens. They say America must work again, America must be for Americans. This is why Trump remains a threat despite his unlikable nature. He is leading an AMEXIT campaign. (see BREXIT for details) Hilary Clinton is only popular because of Trump. She may be one of the most unliked candidates to win presidential elections in America. People everywhere hate political dynasty. America still discriminates against women. This can go against Hilary Clinton. Her only advantage now is that she brings a cool head to the White House. Trumps brings war: Hilary brings war with wisdom The question then is, what bearing will the US elections today have on the Ghana elections? What I know is that the NDC want Donald Trump and the Republican Party to lose. If it does happen, they will use it as a campaign message from tomorrow. The vice president proved that with his description of the NPP campaign as Trumpian on two different occasions. President Mahama referred to Hilary Clintons promise to commit 200 Billions Dollars into infrastructural development in defence of his governments approach The NPP on the other hand to the best of my knowledge have stayed clear off the US elections. Probably due to lack of confidence in a Trump victory. But everyone knows how they spoke about the Nigerian elections as a testament to our need for change. They will definitely use the vice Presidents subtle dig at Donald Trump in the final days of their campaign should the republican candidate wins. If it goes the other way round, they will have a good defence because they have not taken sides. In view of this, I want to think that the NDC will be more disappointed with a Trump win than NPP will feel should Hilary win as largely expected What I know is that our priorities are different even though both countries have some similar problems they find needful addressing. The priority of Ghanaians is job: America places security above everything else even though employment is very high on their agenda as always The NDC candidate, John Dramani Mahama has promised to create 3 million jobs in his second term after dedicating 80% of his attention to infrastructural development in his first term Nana Akuffo Addo of the NPP has promised to set up over 216 factories. One in each district and provide water for farmers in the 3 Northern Regions Similarly, both countries want a paradigm shift from the way things have been done of the years. Those who will vote for President Mahama will do so in the view that after his first term was biasly dedicated to infrastructure, his second term will be focussed on job creation. The point is, even if President Mahama wins, Ghanaians require him to change. In the same way, Americans want whoever wins to do things different The most important aspect of the American elections is that it has the potency of shocking the world like BREXIT did because the Americans proper want America back in the hands of Americans and not legalised immigrants. Trump represents that candidate; Hilary isnt It is a typical battle between American egoist and realists. Time will tell In Ghana, those going with the NPP believe that they are best people to wrestle the nation form the ailing economic and create jobs for the people. Those going with the NDC believe that President Mahama deserves a second term. What I can say for a fact is that one of our two political parties will start telling Ghanaians that we need to go the American way from tomorrow. Isaac Kyei Andoh [email protected] A former Attorney General, Martin Amidu, has accused Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC) of unfairly introducing new guidelines on the re-submission of nomination forms by disqualified presidential aspirants. According to Martin Amidu, the Commission is relying on a tricky part of Monday's Supreme Court judgment, to still disqualify the disgruntled presidential aspirants. Mr. Amidu, who has already criticized the EC Chairpersons handling of the electoral body and the issues arising, has in his latest statement, stated that, the current posture of the EC indicates the Commissioner is deliberately determined to rig the elections. Nduom and the others may rush to the Supreme Court again for interpretation of its decision of yesterday [Monday]. My worry is that, the Commissioner is still deliberately determined to rig the elections by disqualifying the 12 candidates, and is wagering on the fact that before the Court interprets its decision, there would be no further time left before the close of today 8th November 2016, his statement said. Read the full statement THE ELECTORAL COMMISSIONER IS STILL DETERMINED TO RIG THE ELECTIONS BY DISQUALIFYING ALL 13 ASPIRING CANDIDATES AGAIN: BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU The determination of the Electoral Commissioner as the Returning Officer for the Presidential Elections to still rig the elections by disqualifying all the 13 disqualified candidates in spite of the Supreme Court's ruling of yesterday, 7th November 2016, must be obvious to all reasonable people in the new grounds of discovered defects in their nomination forms the Commissioner submitted to each of the candidates after the Court's decision and orders were made. The defects in Nduom's nomination forms, according to press reports, have now moved from one (1) to one hundred and five (105). This is in spite of the fact that the case of Ex Parte Papa Kwesi Nduom in the High Court for which the Commissioner went to the Supreme Court was decided upon the one defect conveyed to Nduom in writing by the Commissioner dated 10th October 2016 which was an exhibit in the case. The change in the number of defects allegedly now detected by the Commissioner after her letters of 10th October 2016 to each of the candidates shows that she is using the Supreme Court ruling to change the goal post in her determination to disqualify all the 13 candidates and permit the rigging of the 2016 Presidential Elections. I take the view that she is again taking advantage of the Supreme Court's ruling to wager on the fact that she is entitled by the Court's ruling within the new nomination period to put forth alleged new and profound errors that will make it impossible for even Nduom and those others who have judgments in their favour to alter or amend the specific errors for which they obtained their respective judgments in the High Court. I am of the view that she cannot do that, based upon the Supreme Court's ruling even though the Court quashed the order of the High Court directing the Commissioner to allow Papa Kwesi Nduom permission to make alterations and amendments necessary to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper. This is because Nduom's action in the High Court was for a hearing specifically to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper and not new ones. That is the hearing the Supreme Court ordered for Nduom and all the other candidates who received letters pinpointing their errors on or around 10th October 2016. The Commissioner appears to be relying upon a tricky part of the Supreme Court ruling in which, after quashing the order of the High Court permitting Nduom to make alterations and amendments necessary to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper, the Court also ordered that in appropriate cases to afford candidates the opportunity to comply with regulation ((2) of the Public Election Regulations, 2016 (C.I. 94). I do not think the Court intended to go beyond the subsisting judgments in favour of some of the applicants and those without judgments to allow the Commissioner to change the goal posts anew. Nduom and the others may rush to the Supreme Court again for interpretation of its decision of yesterday. My worry is that the Commissioner is still deliberately determined to rig the elections by disqualifying the 13 candidates and is wagering on the fact that before the Court interprets its decision there would be no further time left before the close of today 8th November 2016. I wait to see whether or not the candidates have sufficient time to apply to the Supreme Court today for interpretation and whether or not there would be enough time to consider them before the close of day. I fear the Commissioner is determined to render nugatory the decision and orders of the Supreme Court on technical grounds. Let us wait for how the Supreme Court will rise to the occasion of this new twist to its ruling should any applications be made to it today. In the meantime patriotic citizens should continue defending the Constitution by vigilantly watching the rigging conduct of the Commissioner in this election year. Martin A. B. K. Amidu 8th November 2016 By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana Born in a village called Agona, Wiamoase in the Ashanti Region in Ghana, Despite began life as a petty trader selling all sorts of merchandise including; music cassettes, padlocks, feeding bottles, and other merchandise at Dunkwa Offinso. His family background never stopped him from doing something for himself. For many young entrepreneurs who may identify with him, this must be a wake-up call- your success must not be limited by your place of birth. It is a blessing to have wealthy parents but the unavailability of such parents should not become a deterrent in your own pursuits to build an enterprise. In his own words during a rare recent interview, Despite said, though I had dreams, I never knew, I will get this far but God has made all things possible. 2. KWAME DESPITE WENT BANKRUPT IN 1983 Only the strong-minded few are able to turn their lives around after a major setback such as losing all their investment, and Osei Kwame is amongst them. In 1983, the Nigerian government deported millions of Ghanaians living then in Nigeria, Kwame Despite who was also then living in Nigeria was forced to return to the country and he returned with only, a chain-saw machine and a trident cassette player to start all over. This must inform all young entrepreneurs today that temporary failure or set back in life should never be misconstrued to be the end of life. From a trident cassette player and a chain saw machine, Despite Group of companies now owns Peace FM, Neat FM, Okay FM, Best Point Savings & Loans, Neat Fufu, Neat Banku, and Special Ice. This must inspire everybody today that with the right planning, investments, persistence, dedication and the belief of a Higher Power above, everything is possible under the sun. 3. A HUMBLE SOLDIER For anyone to achieve this feat of success, it will be quite easy for a bit of arrogance and superiority complex to creep in but not Osei Kwame. In his recent interview he granted Kwame Sefa Kai , Despite attributed his success to the efforts of his dedicated untiring staff and Almighty God. He said to the host, Let me laud the efforts of all my untiring workers for their commitment and dedication towards making the Despite Group of Companies a success. Despite, later advised the youth to persevere, work hard and never give up. The life experience of Osei Kwame should be a guiding principle for many today; that success is a journey and until the journey is completed, one should never give up in life. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com| G.K. SARPONG| RAW AFRICA Embattled Presidential nominee of the People's National Convention (PNC) Dr Edward Nasigre Mahama has described the Electoral Commission (EC) as Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible who dreamt and didn't want to tell his dream but wanted people to conjure the dream and give interpretations. The Supreme Court unanimous decision ordered the EC to allow all the disqualified candidates rectify the anomalies on their nomination forms. Majority of the political parties have been complaining that the EC has pointed out fresh errors on their nomination forms. They have within 24 hours to submit their forms to the EC. Dr Mahama complained that the EC has refused to give four books to them (PNC) to compare notes to correct their mistakes on the forms, threatening to sue if it goes on that tangent. He said the EC is pushing the country into a brink for taking that posture of being unforgiven. Speaking on Ultimate Breakfast Show hosted by Lantam Papanko he wondered why 303 fresh errors have been pointed out on his nomination forms, adding that it would be difficult to rectify the anomalies if the EC does not give them the books. 'We were given four books with each region, naturally you cannot take all the books to region to region because we have limited time. So we toured Ashanti region, Brong Ahafo and now you said you have discovered mistakes, give us all four books, you are saying you won't give us the books, we know that maybe the answers are in one of the books you are holding. If they don't give us the books we would have to be in Court, It's not fair, the corrections are in other books and you say you won't give to us. EC is behaving like Nedbucadnesser in the Bible, he says I have a dream, but I won't tell you the dream, tell me the dream and the answer, that is what they are doing, only God knows why,' he fumed. He expressed disappointment over the entrenched position taking by the EC, asking why the EC does not want to allow Ghanaians to choose their President. 'I am very surprised I don't know what the EC is up to, the EC is not mandated to screen people out, it should allow people to choose their leaders, the EC thinks it's a Judge or an emperor favouring some people. The EC Chairperson Charlotte Osei thinks that I don't deserve to be chosen by the people to be President hence my disqualification. If an independent auditor is to audit the forms of National Democratic Congress (NDC), New Patriotic Party (NPP), Convention People's Party (CPP), they will see the same mistakes,' he pointed out. -ultimatefmonline The Bank of Ghana(BoG) has disclosed that it will soon publish a reviewed draft document designed in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), aimed at enhancing good corporate governance in the banking industry. The draft document which was originally designed in 2014 is also aimed at strengthening the oversight responsibilities of the central bank to protect depositors' funds. Speaking at the launch of the BoG/IFC partnership in Accra, the Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana Dr. Johnson Asiama highlighting some areas of the document maintained that it will transform the banking industry. He pointed out that , the tenure of CEOs will be capped at a maximum of three terms of five years per term, secondly non-executive directors shall have a tenure of three years for no more than two terms and shall be in the majority of every board. He added that at the minimum, every bank shall have at least two board sub-committee specifically on audit and risk. Fourthly the risk and audit committees shall be chaired by non-executive director. Fifth the non executive director's independence has been explicitly defined, he said. He disclosed that the managing director and board chair positions of foreign banks cannot be occupied concurrently by an individual. Outlining some more provisions in the reviewed document, Dr. Asiama stated that competencies for board membership of banks shall be explicitly defined in accordance with Basel requirements. The size of bank boards shall be limited as well as the retiring age for directors prescribed. Nine, disclosure of attendance at board meetings by directors in annual accounts shall be enforced, he said adding that cross directorship will be discouraged He stated that another important area of the document is that additional directorship engagement will be limited to no more than five, while evaluation of individual directors performance and collective performance by external agents shall be enforced. Meanwhile, a Senior Country Officer of the IFC, Joseph Akwasi Kuma told Citi Business News Ghana's banking sector needs Good Corporate Governance to reassure international investors of transparency. According to him, it is important to have people with integrity in the banking sector. By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana Lydia Agyiri, the New Juaben Municipal Electoral Commission (EC) Director, has pleaded with various political parties not to engage the services of drunkards as their polling agents in this years elections. Mrs. Agyiri made this call during a presentation at a days workshop organized by the Regional Peace Council for some representatives of parliamentary candidates and party executives at Koforidua in the Eastern Region. She said, there have been situations where political party polling agents come to polling centres drunk, raising unnecessary alarm on everything that goes on, causing problems and delaying the electoral process. She added that, party polling agents who talk a lot at polling centres fail to observe the electoral exercise well, they go tired, some fall asleep and the rest leave the centres in no time. Mrs. Agyiri urged political parties to engage competent polling agents who are well vest and abreast with the electoral process to help make the exercise very smooth and easy. She explained that working with agents who understand the ins and outs of our electoral system and how it works makes our work very easy. She then encouraged the political leaders to build healthy relationships with their various District Electoral Commission Directors to get first hand information and not to rely on social media. Mr. Paul Lawer Narh, the Municipal Director of NCCE for New Juaben, speaking on electoral education at the workshop, expressed worry about the number of rejected and spoilt ballots during the 2012 elections. He said the issue of rejected and spoilt ballots is of much concern to us. He added that civic education is not the work for only NCCE staff, but you all should come on board to compliment our efforts, we are doing our best to solve the issue of spoilt ballots but we need your help to achieve that. Rt Rev Prof Twum Baah, the Eastern Regional Chairman of the Peace Council, addressing the political leaders on maintaining peace, also touched on the worrying issue of spoilt ballots and charged political parties to educate their people on how to vote for them. He said after going out from door to door persuading and encouraging people to come and vote for you, use projectors and other pictorial elements and show them how to vote for you on election day. He added that it will be very painful and disheartening going through all this sleepless nights of campaign to rally a lot of followers only for them to make simple mistakes on the ballot sheets for it to affect your party. He then advised the political party executives to report all campaign misconduct and violent incidents to the inter-party dialogue committee, which has been set up to deal with such issues timely. Mr. George Amo, a national representative of the Peace Council, adding his voice to ensuring peace said our grand fathers left for us a peaceful Ghana and now it is our time to also leave a more peaceful Ghana to our grand children and generations unborn. He advised the party executives to choose dialogue and not weapons in settling disputes and also cautioned communicators to choose their words carefully on air. He said In addressing issues, always stick to the facts of the matter, do away with insults and falsification since it has a greater tendency to influence the activities of listeners. The workshop, which was sponsored by the USAID and UNDP in collaboration with the Electoral Commission and NCCE, also had representatives of all parliamentary aspirants in the New Juaben North and South Constituencies, Akuapim North and South Constituencies and Okere constituency. It was aimed at educating political parties at the constituency level on electoral laws, and processes to ensure a peaceful election before, during and after elections. By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana The two leading political parties in Ghanas 2016 elections, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), have intensified their campaigns in various regions of country. For instance in the Volta Region which is the NDCs stronghold, the NPP is targeting 30% of valid votes for the 2016 elections, whilst the NDC is targeting 50% of valid votes in the Eastern Region, which is largely considered as one of the NPPs strongholds. The infographic below gives a snaphot of how the two leading politicals parties perfomed in the various regions in 2012. By: Mawuli Tsikata/citifmonline.com/Ghana Together with African partners, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and German universities of applied science, the Federal Foreign Office is planning to set up a German-East African University of Applied Sciences. The aim is to train qualified experts and managerial staff to work for businesses based in the region. The University is going to be in Kenya and the Kenyan Government has given an assurance of its financial support and other input. Foreign Minister Steinmeier: "The German-East African University of Applied Sciences is a tailor-made training solution to satisfy the huge need for trained staff in the region. I am convinced that such a university of applied sciences will serve as a flagship project for Germanys practical cooperation with the countries in eastern Africa and will provide important momentum for staff training on the ground." Today German businesses and foundations discussed the project with a view to developing training in the university of applied sciences sector that is coordinated with businesses and which meets their needs. The project has attracted great interest. Participants were discussing, for example, training partnerships, support for faculty chairs and scholarships. Background information: The Federal Foreign Office is extending its engagement in the education and business sector of eastern Africa. The region is attractive to international investors due to its long-standing high economic growth of 6% of GDP, the discovery of important oil, gas and mineral deposits, dynamic innovation trends through digital transformation and considerable infrastructure investment which is already under way. Kenya, in particular, is turning into the economic and technological heartland in the region and is also attracting German businesses. The country is seeing on the one hand a growing shortage of experts and managerial staff and on the other hand high youth unemployment. What is crucial for the university landscape is to develop practice-oriented training options for engineers in all sectors which are coordinated with industry as quickly as possible. This is where the German model of university of applied sciences and the expertise provided by German businesses can feed in perfectly. A former Attorney General, Martin Amidu, has accused Ghana's Electoral Commission (EC) of unfairly introducing new guidelines on the re-submission of nomination forms by disqualified presidential aspirants. According to Martin Amidu, the Commission is relying on a tricky part of Monday's Supreme Court Judgment, To Still Disqualify The Disgruntled Presidential Aspirants. Mr. Amidu, who has already criticized the EC Chairperson's handling of the electoral body and the issues arising, has in his latest statement, stated that, the current posture of the EC indicates the Commissioner is deliberately determined to rig the elections. Nduom and the others may rush to the Supreme Court again for interpretation of its decision of yesterday [Monday]. My worry is that, the Commissioner is still deliberately determined to rig the elections by disqualifying the 12 candidates, and is wagering on the fact that before the Court interprets its decision, there would be no further time left before the close of today 8th November 2016, his statement said. Read the full statement THE ELECTORAL COMMISSIONER IS STILL DETERMINED TO RIG THE ELECTIONS BY DISQUALIFYING ALL 13 ASPIRING CANDIDATES AGAIN: BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU The determination of the Electoral Commissioner as the Returning Officer for the Presidential Elections to still rig the elections by disqualifying all the 13 disqualified candidates in spite of the Supreme Court's ruling of yesterday, 7th November 2016, must be obvious to all reasonable people in the new grounds of discovered defects in their nomination forms the Commissioner submitted to each of the candidates after the Court's decision and orders were made. The defects in Nduom's nomination forms, according to press reports, have now moved from one (1) to one hundred and five (105). This is in spite of the fact that the case of Ex Parte Papa Kwesi Nduom in the High Court for which the Commissioner went to the Supreme Court was decided upon the one defect conveyed to Nduom in writing by the Commissioner dated 10th October 2016 which was an exhibit in the case. The change in the number of defects allegedly now detected by the Commissioner after her letters of 10th October 2016 to each of the candidates shows that she is using the Supreme Court ruling to change the goal post in her determination to disqualify all the 13 candidates and permit the rigging of the 2016 Presidential Elections. I take the view that she is again taking advantage of the Supreme Court's ruling to wager on the fact that she is entitled by the Court's ruling within the new nomination period to put forth alleged new and profound errors that will make it impossible for even Nduom and those others who have judgments in their favour to alter or amend the specific errors for which they obtained their respective judgments in the High Court. I am of the view that she cannot do that, based upon the Supreme Court's ruling even though the Court quashed the order of the High Court directing the Commissioner to allow Papa Kwesi Nduom permission to make alterations and amendments necessary to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper. This is because Nduom's action in the High Court was for a hearing specifically to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper and not new ones. That is the hearing the Supreme Court ordered for Nduom and all the other candidates who received letters pinpointing their errors on or around 10th October 2016. The Commissioner appears to be relying upon a tricky part of the Supreme Court ruling in which, after quashing the order of the High Court permitting Nduom to make alterations and amendments necessary to correct the double subscription to his nomination paper, the Court also ordered that in appropriate cases to afford candidates the opportunity to comply with regulation ((2) of the Public Election Regulations, 2016 (C.I. 94). I do not think the Court intended to go beyond the subsisting judgments in favour of some of the applicants and those without judgments to allow the Commissioner to change the goal posts anew. Nduom and the others may rush to the Supreme Court again for interpretation of its decision of yesterday. My worry is that the Commissioner is still deliberately determined to rig the elections by disqualifying the 13 candidates and is wagering on the fact that before the Court interprets its decision there would be no further time left before the close of today 8th November 2016. I wait to see whether or not the candidates have sufficient time to apply to the Supreme Court today for interpretation and whether or not there would be enough time to consider them before the close of day. I fear the Commissioner is determined to render nugatory the decision and orders of the Supreme Court on technical grounds. Let us wait for how the Supreme Court will rise to the occasion of this new twist to its ruling should any applications be made to it today. In the meantime patriotic citizens should continue defending the Constitution by vigilantly watching the rigging conduct of the Commissioner in this election year. Martin A. B. K. Amidu 8th November 2016 From Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Lagos (Nigeria), Nov. 8, GNA - Mr Richard Aisuebeogun, Former Managing Director of Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FANN), has called for the commercialisation of airports in Africa to support the Aviation industry. He said until countries saw this as a commercial entity the growth of the industry would remain stunting. Mr Aisuebeogun was speaking at the 12th Edition of Akwaaba African Market Tourism Conference, on the topic: 'State of Aviation in Africa and Why Airlines Fail,' in Lagos, Nigeria. The three-day event was aimed at transferring knowledge covering travel, hospitality and aviation sectors from globally rated experts. He said African Airports had evolved overtime from the use of old archaic state of infrastructure to a much more modern state of the art buildings and structures. He said the performance of the African aviation industry was lagging behind to those of the rest of the world at less than three per cent of global revenue passenger kilometres. He said the growth was heavily constrained by the high industry costs, inadequate infrastructure at a number of airports, slow implementation of the Yamoussoukro Decision, lack of a single traffic rights negotiating body with respect to third parties like the EU. He said, nonetheless, demand for air transport has increased steadily over the past years with passenger numbers and freight traffic growing significantly. Over the period 2010-2015, Africa has become one of the fastest growing regions in the world in terms of international traffic with an average growth rate of 6.1 per cent compared to the global average of 5.8 per cent. However, African aviation needs to grow at double digit rates to be a significant player in the global industry. He noted that many Airlines had failed or were barely surviving in Africa due to many factors such as Management Business Plan, Safety Regulation, Economic Regulation, Low cost Airlines, Multi-Hub Strategy, Service Excellence, which he grouped as internal. Others are external, namely: Cost of operating environment, Economic Diversification, Political Environment, improved airport infrastructure, Airports supports, Improved Air navigation infrastructure and unfair competition. 'The economic benefits of airlines are enormous and increasing, because airlines are not just part of the economy but a key economic catalyst recognised as vital to the growth and achievement of National, Regional and Global economic goals,' he said. GNA Afrancho (Ash), Nov. 8, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has pledged to build a tomato processing plant in Afrancho in the Offinso-North District to assist farmers to boost the production of the vegetable and returns. He said the goal was to end the recurring production losses because of the absence of storage facilities. The area is a major producer of the vegetable, accounting for more than 20 per cent of the national annual production. President Mahama, who was addressing the chiefs and people of the town as part of his four-day election campaign tour of the Ashanti Region, said irrigation facilities were also going to be provided. That, he indicated, would allow for all-year round production of tomato by the farmers. The election promise comes amid increasing importation of tomato and other vegetables from Burkina Faso and other neighbouring West African countries to make up for the production shortfall. President Mahama spoke of the strong progress the government was making to grow agriculture, citing, what he said was the massive investment in the cocoa sector. Over the last two years, Cocobod had freely distributed about 120 million high-yielding cocoa seedlings to farmers across the nation with the Region receiving in excess of 20 million of the seedlings. He said, added to this were the supply of inputs including fertilizers, rehabilitation of roads leading to the cocoa growing communities and the upward adjustment of the crop producer price. He hinted that the Afrancho, Nkenkaasu and Akomadan town roads would be tackled under phase three of the cocoa roads rehabilitation programme to give these places the needed facelift. Nana Yaw Amoah, the Chief of Afrancho, called for substantial investment in agriculture by the government, saying, doing that is critical to the transformation of the lives of many Ghanaians. He appealed for the construction of a well-equipped hospital in the area to enable the people to have access to quality healthcare. President Mahama also visited Akomadan and Abofour, where he told the people about the achievements of his government and why its mandate needed to be renewed on December 7. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN By Laudia Sawer, GNA Tema, Nov 7, GNA - The Tema Regional office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) between January and September this year, recovered about 2.4 million cedis of stolen power. The amount was part of 2.8 million cedis worth of power some customers in the Region consumed illegally. Mr Emmanuel Seidu, acting Regional Commercial Manager, revealed this to the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of a media engagement with management of the Tema Regional ECG office. Mr Seidu stated that 37,482 customers were visited during an operation and billed after it was detected that they stole power. He cautioned customers against the stealing of power as they would be detected and billed with it. He said mass installation pre-paid metres in four out of the seven districts in the Region was on going. The Tema South District, he said, has completed 95 per cent of the installation, while the Nungua, Afienya and Prampram districts have done 70, 60, and 50 per cents installations respectively. He indicated that customers currently not receiving bills for power used under the Self Help Electrification Project (SHEP) would be billed with all the power used when transferred onto the pre-paid metres. Mr Seidu however noted that the company have decided to spread the payment of the compiled bills over a period of three months to reduce the burden on customers. Mr Mark Asomani-Wiafe, ECG Tema Regional Engineer, said Tema had one of the best operation systems in the country as the region used overhead lines making it easy for engineers to identify faults. Mr Asomani-Wiafe added that his outfit had also adopted the preventive maintenance approach as against the corrective maintenance system it used to run. Mr Jones Ofori-Addo, Tema Regional ECG General Manager, said the engagement was to deepen relations between management and media practitioners as well as to address issues of concern to customers. Mr Ofori-Addo gave the assurance that there were no sub-standard metres in Ghana as the Ghana Standard Authority had certified all meters before installation. He however said metres could be faulty and such faults should be reported at their offices. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN Accra, Nov. 8, GNA - Two Nigerians, who have been accused of recruiting girls between the ages of 17 and 20, from Nigeria to Ghana, and engaging them in prostitution have appeared before an Accra Circuit Court. They are Joy John, a beautician and Sandra Sunday, a hair stylist. Joy has been charged with human trafficking, while Sandra is facing a charge of abetment of crime. They have pleaded not guilty and the Court, presided over by Mrs Ruby Aryeetey, has remanded them into custody. According to the Court, the accused persons were foreigners and their current place of abode per the facts of the police was a guest house. Therefore, they are to reappear on November 18. Meanwhile, the accused persons' accomplice, known as Mercy, is at large. DSP C.K. Abandamlora, the prosecutor, said the complainant was a fashion designer residing at Kasoa, while the accused persons resided in Classic Guest House at Nungua-Adegon, in Accra. In August this year, the Prosecution said Joy went to Nigeria and recruited three of the victims who were about 17 years, 18 years and 20 years under the pretext that they were going to work in a restaurant in Ghana. On arriving in Ghana, the prosecutor said, Joy, however, took the victims to the guesthouse at Nungua-Adegon and sent out them every night to go and engage in prostitution. According to DSP Abadamlora, the victims were to render account between GH 100 and GH 150. The Prosecution said Sandra abetted the crime when she was tasked by Joy to collect the daily earnings from the victims for nine days when she (Joy) travelled to Nigeria. When Joy returned from Nigeria, Sandra gave her GH 500 as proceeds from the victims. The Prosecution said on November 30, this year, at about 0100 hours, the complainant and her friends who knew the victims in Nigeria saw them at a spot known as Kris berry at Nungua Adegon, and they asked the victim what they were doing there. The complainant asked the victims to lead her with her friends to their place of abode and Sandra was arrested. She led the Police to arrest Joy but Mercy escaped. GNA A GNA feature by God will Arthur-Mensah Takoradi, Nov. 8, GNA - Water is life as the popular saying goes because it's an essential commodity for man's survival since the resource constitutes 70 per cent of the human body and the earth. Water also plays a major part in the productive life of Ghanaians for both domestic and industrial purposes. In Ghana, there are 26 rivers including Ankobra, Tano, Bia and Densu that serve as source of drinking water, irrigation and other commercial purposes. Pra River is the largest of the three principal rivers that drain the area south of the Volta divide. It originates from Kwahu Plateau, near Mpraeso in the Eastern Region and flows southward over 230 kilometres through rich cocoa and farming and forest areas in the Akan lowlands and enters the Gulf of Guinea in Shama. The river has many cataracts, notably the Bosomasi Rapids at Anyinabrim and other tributaries like Ofin, Anum and Birim rivers. River Pra is one of the major rivers in the Western Region that serves as a source of raw water for treatment by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) for distribution to more than one million residents in the Wassa East, Shama and Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis. However, since 2009, the river had suffered massive pollution as a result of illegal alluvial mining otherwise known as 'galamsey', which had turned the hitherto clean water into brownish colour. The illegal miners placed 'changfan' a type of mining machine introduced by the Chinese for alluvial mining, which dug the river bed in search of gold ore and in the process polluting it. These miners who are armed with dangerous weapons have been waging war against security agencies who undertake swoops in their territories. In 2013, the Western Regional Security Taskforce in a bid to clamp down on illegal mining undertook an unannounced operation against the galamseyers on the Pra River, but it ended up tragically with two naval ratings drowning in the river at Sekyere Wusuta in the Wassa East District. The activities of the illegal miners have rendered the river unwholesome and threaten the very survival of the river and other surrounding water bodies. The influx of the Chinese into the illegal gold business has worsened the situation as they hire the indigenes as labourers in their illegal activities and protect their investments with sophisticated weapons. Sometimes, these Chinese open fires on Ghanaians who protest against the destructive effects of their activities on the environment. The river which previously boasts of many marine lives such as shrimps, periwinkles (Apofiee) and crabs are now extinct because of the pollutants in the river such as mercury and other dangerous chemicals used for processing the gold ore. In spite of the Ministerial Taskforce which was established by the government in 2013 to combat the menace of illegal mining, the practice remains rife thus, destroying water bodies and polluting the environment. The GWCL had constructed a water treatment plant at Bosomasi in the Wassa East District that pumps water from the Pra River for treatment and supplies about six million gallons of water per day to residents. Water consumers from River Pra in recent times have been complaining that when they store treated water from the river, they observe dirt settling at the bottom of the storage facilities even though it has been treated by the water company. Some consumers also experienced black particles in the water while others said the water flowing from their taps sometimes smells bad and brownish in colour. Mr Mark Teiko Cudjoe, the Western Regional Manager of the GWCL, said the River Pra had deteriorated five times since 2010 to 2015 with the turbidity levels increasing from 199.66-908.18. He said the Company in 2010 used 75.90 milligrams of Aluminum Sulphate (Alum) to treat a litre of raw water from the river, but as of 2015 it used 102.55 miligrams to treat the same quantity of water, and thus increased the cost of treatment. 'The extent of pollution of the Pra River is worrying and serious matter that needed collective efforts of all stakeholders to curb this menace,', Mr Cudjoe pointed out. The Regional Manager stated that small-scale mining should be done in places that would not have effects on water bodies because the mercury and other chemicals used in processing the ore could have devastating health implications on water consumers and the environment at large. Meanwhile, the Regional Communication Officer of the GWCL, Mr Kwamena Acquah, noted that the activities of illegal miners in the river had choked its Daboase in-take point; therefore the company spent huge sums of money for desilting the silt from the point. He said the company's pumps found it extremely difficult to pump raw water from the river for treatment and the pumps often got damaged and warned that if the illegal mining continues, they may shut down the water plant at Bosomasi in the near future, saying the situation would cause severe water shortage in Sekondi-Takoradi and its surrounding communities. The Communication Officer lamented that other stakeholders such as the Water Resources Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Minerals Commission that supposed to safeguard the river and the environment are not doing enough to protect the river from pollution. In this vein, it is important for the state institutions mandated to protect water bodies in the country to enforce section 81 and 99 of the new Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703), in order to safeguard the health of the people. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN By Laudia Sawer, GNA Old-Ningo (GAR), Nov 7, GNA - Mr Michael Borboryoe Nartey, Overall Best 2016 Farmer for the Ningo-Prampram District, says the Greater Accra Region would in some few years lose all its farmlands. Mr Nartey, who had been farming for the past 32 years, said the rate at which estate developers were acquiring farmlands in the Region was alarming. He therefore pleaded with landowners, to preserve parcels of lands for farming activities. He said the situation could be salvaged if government lands are made available for farming instead of for housing projects. Speaking to the Ghana News Agency at the Old Ningo in the Ningo-Prampram District, he called for the provision of more irrigation dams to attract the youth into farming. He explained that it was difficult to engage in farming without the availability of water in the lean season as most farmers depended on the rain which had not been reliable lately. The Ningo-Prampram District 2016 Best Farmer also expressed unhappiness about some of the items presented to award winners. He questioned what a fisherman would do with a sprayer or cutlass and therefore advised organizers of the programme to consult stakeholders and present prizes relevant to the winner's vocation. Fifty-nine years old Mr Nartey cultivated maize, rice, vegetable, water melon, and poultry farming. Mr Nartey, who was the best farmer for the then Dangme West District in 2009, also reared cattle, sheep, and goats as well as engaged in aquaculture business. Mr Fred Kwame Boadi, Ningo-Prampram District Agric Director said 2,428 bags of fertilizers were distributed and sold to farmers from May this year. Mr Boadi said an estimated land of 4,133.9 hectres of major crops had been cultivated in the District. The District, he added, also had 14,259 cattle, 12,154 goats and 4,315 sheep. Over the period, the agriculture directorate embarked on a comprehensive anti-rabies programme which saw the vaccination of 638 animals comprising of 542 dogs and 96 cats. Alhaji Sa-Rhack Nartey, Ningo-Prampram District Chief Executive, also enumerate government's interventions for the agriculture sector and urged farmers in the district to take advantage of them to improve upon their yields. GNA Sekondi, Nov. 8, GNA - Mr Pius Acolatse, Public Relations Officer of the Parliamentary Resource Centre (PRC), Sekondi-Takoradi, has expressed worry over how written submissions made by the public to the House always did not conform to due process. He observed that the House has procedures, standards and guidelines for addressing problems and issues from the public, and that failure to follow them always made it difficult for such grievances to be addressed. Mr. Acolatse told the GNA in an interview in Sekondi stated that 'management of the Centre has observed that some of the written submissions from the public generally entitled 'MEMORANDUM' that are addressed to Parliament, do consistently bear a number of presentation flaws'. He explained that the Resource Centre was seen as a tool for drawing Ghana's Parliamentary institution closer to the citizenry in order to obtain institutionally enriching outcomes. 'A strategic objective of the Centre is also to facilitate public input into parliamentary business by extending the reach of Parliament to regions, districts and constituencies,' he added. He said the submissions presented are usually in response to express requests from Parliament, Parliamentary bodies or agencies soliciting for public concerns and perspectives on a publicized legislative proposal or some other policy-making document. Mr Acolatse said the common presentation flaws observed in the responses from the public included poor structuring and wording disjointed details, adding, 'Personnel have to spend precious time and effort in filtering out the essential issues for discussion, a situation which deserves a cure'. He therefore called on the public to be meticulous and provide relevant information which comprise 'Addressee's Details: the Contact details of the officer, body or agency of Parliament to receive the Submission'. He said the information must be carefully reproduced to enable the Submission get to its intended destination with minimal delay. He said the information should also include the Identity of the Originator of the Submission: official name and full contact details including postal and email addresses, telephone number(s), Status of the Originator of the Submission: either a non-governmental organization, a business entity, private individual among others. According to the PRO, the Subject Reference of the Bill or of other parliamentary documents seeking public input should consider the date of Submission, justification for the submission in a clear and easy to digest English. 'It should be devoid of grammatical mistakes, unnecessary repetition and jargon. The language of the Submission should communicate courtesy to the intended recipient, he stated. 'Indeed it is necessary to remind the public that while the Originator of the Submission may have a passion for the subject, she or he should avoid sounding harsh or disrespectful if she or he expects the Submission to be favourably received', Mr. Acolatse added. He mentioned that the statement of concerns should be based on authoritative, comprehensive and accurate sources of information and where the concerns are multiple; they may be separated by bullet points to ensure easy identification. Mr Acolatse asked that any recommendations in the Submission be numbered off with Roman numerals in order for them to stand out. The Parliamentary Resource PRO added that in this era of information overload, successful communication depended heavily on good information management and that creating a structure to simplify the communication process between the public and their representatives in Ghana's Parliament was imperative. GNA Accra, Nov 8, GNA - Mrs Della Sowah, Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, has admonished Queenmothers to use their influence to educate the youth to understand the outcomes of war and violence ahead of the December 7 elections. She said queenmothers must engage the youth in peace-building activities by enlightening them on the need to respect divergent views and appoint influential leaders among them as ambassadors to avoid behaviours that could threaten the country's peace. Mrs Sowah made the call in Accra at the Third National Council of Women Traditional Leaders festival on the theme 'Promoting Peace and Unity in Election 2016 through Advocacy and Public Engagement: The Role of Women Leaders, the Media and the Youth'. The event brought together Queenmmothers across the country to chart the path in discussing issues to ensure peaceful elections. She noted that the youth formed over 50 per cent of the population which could be a powerful resource, adding that they could be incited to violent activities before, during and after the elections if their strength and capacity were not properly harnessed. The minister said the media played an important role in determining the mode, behaviour and reaction of people before, during and after the elections, and as such must be professional in their utterances to ensure peace prior to the December 7 polls. 'The country needs peace to embark on developmental projects and it is imperative to come on board to ensure a peaceful election since the most affected group of people in times of conflict are women and children,' she added. Dr Enyonam Canice Kudonoo, an Alternative Dispute Resolution Consultant, said the country had witnessed six successive elections without mayhem and that it behoved on all and sundry to maintain the record ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections. She urged Ghanaians to be tolerant and respect the views of others and always use dialogue to settle their differences. 'Diversity of ideas should not lead to misunderstanding but should promote ideas of different arena for the good of society,' she stated. She appealed to the youth not to be allowed by politicians to indulge in violence during the electioneering campaigns. The Council pledged its unflinching support to the queenmothers in their advocacy roles as community leaders to ensure the populace conducted themselves in an atmosphere of peace and unity ahead of the elections. GNA Accra, Nov. 8, GNA - The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) is to join forces with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) to further tighten the corruption noose as spelt out in the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP). Mr Richard A. Quayson, Acting CHRAJ Commissioner, explained that the commission had analyzed the strategic role of the GNA as a national wire service and affirmed that the anti-corruption action plan would not succeed without the utmost support of the Agency serving as a watchdog. Mr Quayson stated during preliminary engagement with the GNA team, including Mr Francis Rex Annan, Director of Administration, and Mr Francis Ameyibor, a Deputy News Editor in charge of GNA Project Coordination, to iron out details of a Memorandum of Understanding. The Acting CHRAJ Commissioner said the media played an important role in investigating and reporting corruption and building support to combat it. 'A free and independent media, with adequate access to information, is extremely important in the fight against corruption. The GNA therefore, with its nationwide network, will serve as a key partner to 'name and shame' without compromise. 'It is by exposing incidents of corruption that there will be an environment in which corruption is a high-risk and low-gain undertaking,' Mr Quayson stated. He said CHRAJ needed a communication partner like the GNA to operate in an impartial manner and avoid sensationalizing cases. 'Bias and sensationalism can undermine the ability of anti-corruption agencies to deal effectively with corruption, hence the partnership with Ghana News Agency.' As part of the collaboration, GNA reporters and stringers will be properly trained in principles and techniques of investigating and reporting cases and monitoring corruption trends and practices. Mr Annan said the GNA was ready to collaborate with the anti-corruption constitutional body to fight corruption through multiple actions which included joining forces to educate, promote and protect fundamental human rights and freedoms. Others are to assist CHRAJ to implement the NACAP and oversee activities intended to inculcate in the citizens of Ghana awareness of their civic responsibilities and an appreciation of their rights and obligations as free people. He said the two bodies would also step up educational campaign as well as sensitize the general public about corruption and enlist public support to fight corruption at all levels of society. Mr Annan said GNA and CHRAJ would develop the capacity of the Agency's reporters and stringers with the necessary skills and knowledge to join forces with CHRAJ for the projection of positive dynamics in the fight against corruption. This, he said, would be done by providing consistent reportage to sensitize the public on corruption and its impact on society and how to address it. Mr Ameyibor explained that the GNA had rolled out plans to reshape the agency's manpower and operational logistics to meet national and international mandate to ensure that it remained relevant to its numerous subscribers and to sustain a cohesive nation state. He said, as part of the broader scope, GNA had identified strategic partners, including the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), CHRAJ, Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) and other social-economic actors to join forces to revamp the media landscape. Mr Ameyibor noted that in the digital era, news had become universal as people accessed it in multiple layouts on manifold stages and on innumerable devices. 'The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone, GNA therefore is moving towards a holistic news gathering to serve the information needs of the nation as a whole. 'This entails strong commitment to principles of national inclusiveness, accuracy, speed and objectivity, strong enough to ensure that the agency continues to play a critical role in the national communication system,' he said. Established in 1957 as the first news agency in Sub-Saharan Africa, GNA contributed to African and Ghanaian emancipation. Ghana's first President, Dr. Kwame Nkumah, regarded GNA as a counterweight to biased reporting by international news agencies. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN A GNA Feature by Bajin D. Pobia, GNA Lawra (UWR), Oct. 28, GNA - Miss Issah Barikisu, past student of Bagri Baptist Junior High School says when she was a little girl there was no school at Bagri, her hometown in the Lawra District of the Upper West Region. As she attained the school going age her parents were wondering how they could send her to school at the next community-Tabier and Lawra just as her elder siblings did. She knew she was going to stay at her village, probably betrothed to a man at her tender age, undergoing the agony associated with marriage in a man dominated cultural society, where a marriage woman was considered as a property of her husband and not a lifelong development partner. Maybe another option for her, she says would have been escaping from her village and migrating to the south in an attempt to break out of the shackles of poverty. She would have eventually become a 'wage slave', smarting under heavy loads to get few coins to hold brief for herself on daily basis. Perhaps, she could have also suffered from the knock downs by cars and some health risks, especially rape and sexually transmitted diseases, as some of her colleagues are faced with in the cities. A number of her colleagues, suffered similar difficulties and are unable to attend school to unearth their talents, while many more children, especially girls in the communities dropped out of schools not only in the Lawra District but the entire region because of some of the challenges Miss Issah mentioned. However luck fell on the way of young and pretty Barikisu, at the time she could start her schooling, the Bagri Baptist School was built through the support of a United Kingdom Faith Based Charity, the Savannah Education Trust (SET). The establishment of the school helped her parents and herself immensely. Her parents did not have to buy a bicycle for her to enable her attend primary school at Tabier and Junior High School in the District capital. Walking a far distance to school became a thing of the past. Miss Issah has successfully completed Junior High School this year and has gained admission to the Lawra Senior High School to read General Arts. Sharing her experience with the Ghana News Agency, she said but for the Savannah Education Trust, her entire life would have been jeopardised and the future bleak and meaningless for her. No wonder the name SET has become a corporate and a household word in the lips of people in the District, as a worthy development partner whose educational interventions have helped improved the lots of children in deprived communities who otherwise would have been denied education largely due to the lack of access and poverty. SET has taken up the challenge as a stakeholder in education development in the district and its contribution to education is huge and beneficial to the people. In recognition of the good works that SET has done in the past 10 years and continues to do, the Lawra-Naa, Naa Puowelle Karbo and Elders enskinned Mr Howard Hickman, a Trustee of SET as Maalu Naa (Development Chief) of the traditional area at a durbar of chiefs and people at this year's Kobina Festival. Conferring the Maalu-Naa tittle on Naa Hickman, the Chief described SET as a worthy development partner and a lifeline of the children's education in the District, considering the huge investment made in education, the remarkable achievement of the Trust to making education available and accessible to children in deprived communities. 'It is therefore our prerogative as Chiefs and Elders to confer the higher tittle Maalu-Naa to Naa Hickman, the first of its kind given to anybody in the traditional area', he said. The enskinment was to remember the good works of SET and other past heroes who contributed more in various ways towards the betterment of the people. Naa Karbo said the provision of 10 fully functional schools, was one of the best help a development partner could provide for deprived people like ours to bring education to the many youth who would have been social misfits in society. The issue of financing education cannot be carried out by central government alone with increase in population and high demand for quality education. Naa Karbo said if all civil society organisations and non-government organisations were like SET, a positive change would have been made this time round in our educational efforts and the impact would have been enormous. 'Development is education, physical development is the last tail end of development,' Naa Karbo said, adding, the impact made was great and commendable. Naa Karbo said the traditional area was basically an agricultural based economy and it has been confronted with development challenges, and issues of environmental degradation, poverty and unemployment among the youth, resulting in massive migration to the cities to look for jobs. He therefore appealed to the newly enskinned Naa Hickman to focus his attention to solve those challenges to improve on the livelihoods of the people. Naa Karbo congratulated Naa Hickman on his conferment and looked forward to strengthening the already excellence relations that exist between the Traditional Area and SET. Maalu-Naa Hickman thanked Naa Karbo and the paramouncy and people of the District, saying: 'I am now a member of the Lawra people and I will focus more to improving lives and conditions in the area.' Naa Hickman assured the people of his personal support in all endeavours in the future. Mrs Theresa Ninnang Song-Aabo, District Director of Education enumerating the achievements of SET, said the charity supports education both in cash and in kind, to ensure access and participation, provision of quality education, support to girl child education and education management. SET does this through the provision of infrastructure, teacher professional development, sponsoring of teacher trainees, carrying out in-service training for teachers, provision of assorted teaching and learning materials and provision of school uniforms among others. The Education Director said SET established the Baptist Education Unit in the District and provided educational infrastructure to open schools at Bagri Baptist, Gbier Baptist, Pavuu Baptist, Koh Baptist and Mettoh and Tolibri Baptist Schools. All these schools have been provided with decent school blocks which include classrooms, teachers' offices, and multi-purpose halls, well equipped with furniture, kitchens urinals and toilets. These schools have helped to provide access and participation in education to children in these communities who would otherwise not have been enrolled and retained in school. Mrs Song-Aabo, said the total enrolment in the Kindergarten stood at 306 pupils and in the primary 773 pupils and junior high school, 113, giving a grand total enrolment of 1,192 pupils. She said SET introduced an e-reading pilot-project at Pavuu Baptist Primary School in 2015. Pupils in the school have been provided with electronic tablets, which contain all textbooks and syllabuses to facilitate reading in the school and at home. It has also delivered assorted teaching and learning materials such as textbooks and exercise books to schools to facilitate the teaching and learning processes while it provided boreholes for potable water and mid-day meals for the pupils. Mrs Song-Aabo, said those make the teachers and pupils comfortable to carry out teaching and learning. The District Directorate of Education received GHa 7,000 from the charity to organise the 2015 Best Teacher and workers award ceremony, which served as motivation for the teachers while supported the 2015 and 2016 'My First Day at School activities with cash and fuel. The cash was used to purchase assorted candies for the pupils. These gestures enable the Directorate to welcome new pupils to school, which would help these new arrivals to be happy and stay to complete school. SET also donated a desktop printer to the Directorate to help enhanced office work and the gesture had impacted positively on education delivery. Madam Patricia Ayiko, Regional Director of Education said the Lawra Naa had chosen a good path to tread on, once he was able to honour individuals and organisations that were working to develop the traditional area. Those recognised and honoured would be enthused and motivated to work even harder than before and produce better results. Madam Ayiko said nothing was rewarding than providing quality education to individuals in the communities and advised parents to consider the education of children as a collective responsibility, which should be the concern of stakeholders. Parents, guardians and all other stakeholders should not leave the education of children in the hands of teachers alone and turn to blame them at the end when results at the BECE and WASSCE are poor. Parents and guardians should visit the schools of their wards from time to time to interact with the teachers and see how their wards are faring, that is to know of their challenges and see what remedies could be provided towards to finding solutions to challenges affecting education. Madam Ayiko appealed to other traditional rulers in the Region to recognise the work of teachers and other workers in the education industry to motivate them to improve their output and to improve the performance of the pupils and students in the schools. She urged parents and guardians to send their girl- children to school and keep them in school till they complete, while appealing to the chiefs and queen mothers to stop all cultural practices that hindered the education of the girl- child in their traditional areas. Mr Charles T. Karbo, Country Director of SET said, the organisation subsidised the cost of school uniforms for the pupils and this enabled poor parents who would otherwise not be able to buy uniforms and enrol their wards in school. He said it was only good that government shared the cost of education with stakeholders to enhance quality education. GNA New Abirem (E/R), Nov. 8, GNA - Two Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have paid for the cost of surgery of some 54 patients, from the Birim North District, at the New Abirem Government Hospital of the Eastern Region. Other 80 patients also received free health screening at the Out-Patients Department of the hospital. The NGOs, which offered the five-day service are the Ntiamoah Foundation of Ghana; and the Ghana Hope Foundation based in America. The patients, who underwent surgery were suffering from illnesses such as hernia, fibroid, bladder prolapsed, lipoma and hydrocele. They came from Ntronang, Okaikrom, Afosu, Maamaso among other communities. Madam Jacqueline Erikson, a Founding Board Member of Ghana Hope Foundation, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the organisation was formed in 2010 and it had given a lot of support to the New Abirem Government Hospital. She said the support was also in the form of donating a number of medical items on numerous occasions. Madam Erikson said the Foundation sponsored two surgeons from America to assist doctors at the New Abirem Hospital to perform the surgery and to also equip the doctors at the facility with more knowledge in carrying out their jobs. Madam Shannon Carefoot, also a Founding Member of the Ghana Hope Foundation, said an Internal Communication System (Intranet) that cost 2,700 US dollars had been presented to the hospital to enhance communication. Mr Shiver Oppong, the Public Relations Officer of the Ntiamoah Foundation, said a survey was underway to determine the next health centre to assist with the initiative. Mr Victor Apandia, the Health Service Administrator of the New Abirem Hospital, expressed gratitude to the NGOs for their efforts in elevating the health centre to hospital status. He said with the intervention of the Newmont Akyem Mines, Ghana Hope Foundation and the Ntiamoah Foundation the facility was elevated to a hospital status in 2010. Mr Apandia, however, appealed to benevolent organisations for assistance in the aid of the Children's Ward, Emergency Department and also a fence wall for the safety of patients. Madam Asabea Bertha, who had her three -year-old boy benefiting from the free hernia surgery, expressed gratitude to the benefactors, saying the case of his son had been her headache. GNA Cairo (AFP) - IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Tuesday she will recommend the institution approve a $12 billion loan for Egypt when the board meets Friday to support the country's "ambitious" reform program. Lagarde praised the country's economic reforms, including floating the Egyptian pound last week, and said the loan is needed to help restore stability and growth to the economy. The International Monetary Fund had made floating the pound -- which resulted in a steep devaluation and sharp price rises -- a condition of the loan. Egyptians are looking at a period of hardship as the government unrolls austerity measures ahead of the IMF program. The country has endured months of shortages of products ranging from sugar to baby formula. Cairo governments had avoided the measures fearing unrest, but President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says Egypt no longer has the luxury of postponing them. The November 3 move came amid a dollar crunch that led to a thriving black market and a slump in imports, and caused the pound to plunge to about 16 to the US dollar from 8.9. The government also announced a 7 percent salary increase for civil servants, who number about six million out of a total population of more than 90 million. Lagarde said in a statement that the moves, which also include cutting fuel subsidies, "will notably improve Egypt's external competitiveness, address shortages of foreign currency, support exports and tourism and help attract foreign investment." The program aims "to put the country's economy on a sustainable path and achieve job-rich growth," she said. Comfort Adwubi Kete, 24, is trying to connect with her family again after recovering from a mental illness that caused her to wander off from Accra to Sandema in the Upper East Region. Comfort was rescued by Alhassan Seinu, a mental health nurse at Sandema who spends his own resources, treating and trying to rehabilitate persons with mild forms of mental illnesses, in his bid to contribute to making his community a better place. Alhassan Ayanu Seinu, 37, is a practicing mental health nurse working with the Chuchuliga Health Centre in the Builsa North District of the Upper East Region. Alhassans duty post is at least eight miles away from Sandema where he resides, but every morning, he spends sometime with some mentally challenged persons he believes can be rehabilitated. Alhassan does not have a place to keep these mentally challenged persons so he rides his motorcycle to the places where they can be located. He feeds and caters for their medication, using his own resources. He also interacts with them as a way to monitor their progress. Its my passion. I see it as part of me to help these people because I sometimes ask myself how I would expect society to treat me if I found myself in their situation, Alhassan says. Alhassan has now endeared himself to community members who often come up to him with what they can offer; words of encouragement. Joy News checks confirm Alhassan is indeed, a mental health nurse whose work has been recognised by the Builsa North District Assembly even though the assembly has not financially supported his endeavours. Pictures of some of Alhassans patients before and after he met them show some good progress. Twenty-four year old Comfort Adwubi Kete suffered a mental condition that caused her to wander off from Accra and about a month later, found herself in Sandema in the Upper East Region. Alhassan recalls, Comfort was still unwell and not in touch with reality. He described her condition at the time as schizophrenic. This photo shows the state in which Comfort was when she was first sighted in Sandema. After weeks of treatment by Alhassan, Comforts condition has now improved. She has regained her memory and with the help of Alhassan and some of his friends, has found a job at a canteen in Sandema. Speaking to Joy News, Comfort said she remembers being taken by her father from their hometown in the Eastern Region to a pastor in Accra, who was supposed to treat her. She was left in the care of this pastor. Comfort According to Comfort, the Pastor started to maltreat her so one day, she decided to run away with the intention to go to her aunt at Tema in the Greater Accra Region. When she got to the lorry park, she heard the conductor of a bus calling for passengers who wanted to go Tema and so, she joined the bus. Unknown to her, the conductor was rather calling for passengers who were going to Tamale in the Northern Region and not Tema as she had assumed. Eventually, she found herself in Tamale and kept wandering about and eating from dust bins until she ended up in Sandema where she was rescued by Alhassan. Comfort remembers every member of her family and wants to reunite with them. My father stays in the Eastern Region Kyebi. He is called Richard Osafo Kojo Ampini. My brothers are Eric and Michael Angelo Ampini. I need them to look for me and take me back home, a confident but distraught Comfort told Joy News. For Alhassan Seinu, with the needed support, he could do more for these mentally challenged persons with the help of their families. He is appealing to Comforts family where they may be, to get in touch and take her back home and help her settle back into normal life. The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), has described the Electoral Commission's (EC) detection of new errors on the nomination forms of the previously disqualified presidential aspirants for the December polls as deeply troubling. This follows a Supreme Court judgment ordering the EC to allow the 13 disqualified presidential aspirants, to correct the errors on their nomination forms, by extending the nomination period. The affected parties have since revelation of the new errors, accused the EC of shifting the goal post on the issue. The CDD has thus described the Commission's claim of new errors as manifestly unfair and a breach of administrative justice. The CDD in a statement reminded that the EC took the matter to the Supreme Court, ostensibly to bring finality to the many suits at the courts, challenging its decision to disqualify a number of presidential aspirants. In light of this, the Centre questioned why the EC would go off on a tangent and introduce new issues that have the potential to instigate new suits, a situation the Supreme Court sought to prevent with the December 7 elections a month away. In the CDD's view, the EC had already detailed reasons for disqualifying the 13 presidential aspirants on October 10, 2016, and it was for these reasons that the aspirants went to court seeking to overturn the disqualification. Thus, the CDD argued that,all presidential aspirants should have a legitimate expectation that they will be asked to correct the mistakes that were publicly identified by the EC as reasons for their disqualification, anything more than that is an improper use of discretionary power. Find below the full statement CDD-GHANA STATEMENT ON EC'S COMPLIANCE WITH THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON THE DISQUALIFICATION OF PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRANTS The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has taken note of the forward looking and unprecedented ruling of the Supreme Court, yesterday, 7th November, 2016, ordering the Electoral Commission to allow all disqualified presidential aspirants to correct the errors on their forms and re-submit them to the Commission by close of day on Tuesday 8th November 2016. The Center is however, dismayed by the news that the EC at this late stage in the electoral process claims it has discovered new errors on the nomination forms of the disqualified presidential aspirants. The EC, as the news indicates, is therefore asking the aspirants to correct the new errors, in addition to the earlier ones within the stipulated time period. The Center finds this new twist to the processing of nomination forms of presidential aspirants deeply troubling, especially because it was the EC that took the matter to the Supreme Court, ostensibly to bring finality to the many suits at the courts challenging its decision to disqualify a number of presidential aspirants. The Center also note that the EC implored the Supreme Court to invoke its supervisory jurisdiction in order to avert a constitutional crisis, taking into account the time sensitive nature of the 2016 electoral timetable. It is difficult to comprehend the EC's decision to introduce new issues that have the potential to instigate new legal suits, which the Supreme Court in its lucid ruling and extraordinary consequential orders, had sought to abate after the Court has heeded to the EC's pleadings and issued pragmatic orders for management of the process. In our view, the claim of new errors after the Supreme Court ruling is manifestly unfair and a breach of administrative justice. The EC detailed reasons for disqualifying the thirteen presidential aspirants on 10th October 2016.It was for these reasons that the aspirants went to court and obtained a favourable outcome. Therefore, all presidential aspirants should have a legitimate expectation that they will be asked to correct the mistakes that were publicly identified by the EC as reasons for their disqualification, anything more than that is an improper use of discretionary power. The Center wishes to remind the EC and all key election stakeholders that democratic governance and credible elections in particular are what is at stake for Ghanaians and for Ghana on December 7. Failure to manage the electoral process wisely puts our democracy at risk. Per the electoral calendar, we have already missed the original date for the publication of the Notice of Poll, which will now be published, hopefully, on Thursday, 10th November 2016 in accordance with Supreme Court orders that is if the parties do not return to court. We commend the Chief Justice and the Judiciary for the display of great proactivity, and acting with a sense of urgency and responsibility. Every effort must therefore be made to support their initiative. However, the EC, presidential aspirants, and all stakeholders in Ghana's democratic governance must understand that it is not healthy or safe for the Supreme Court of the land to be the only institution for preventing descent into political chaos. The Center respectively calls on the EC to pull back from the brink of electoral and potential constitutional chaos, as well as collapse of our nascent democratic experiment, and to allow the disqualified aspirants to correct the errors that formed the basis of their earlier disqualification, as ordered by the Supreme Court. Quick compliance with the orders will also afford the EC a little more time to carry out critical tasks ahead of this election including, educating voters about the voting procedure as well as some of the new innovations it has introduced to deal with rejected ballots and the transmission of results. We call on all civil society organizations, professional bodies, faith-based groups, youth groups, the union movement, academia, and indeed on all citizens of Ghana to support the Center's call to the EC to avoid a potential constitutional crisis. God bless Ghana! -Citifmonline ,From Ernest Best Anane,. A volunteer health worker, Mr. Mohammed Salam, has been adjudged the overall Best Farmer for the Afigya Kwabre district in Ashanti. He entered the race with13 cows, 10 goats, 35 Guinean fowls, 35 fowls, 11 Turkeys and 7 geese. He received 3 cutlasses, 32 LD flat screen TV, Wellington boots, two bars of key soap, mixed blower freezer and a piece of cloth at the 32nd Farmers day observation held at Wawase, where 18 individual farmers were awarded in various farming categories. The theme for this year's Farmers' day was Agriculture; Business Respond to economic growth. Mr. Kaakyere Oppong Kyekyeku, District Chief Executive of Afigya Kwabre entreated farmers to diversify from old traditional agriculture to the promotion of large scale agriculture. According to him, using improved agricultural innovations and planting materials would enhance overall agricultural productivity. He said there is the need to promote alternative income generation activities through non-traditional farming (rearing of grass-cutters, rabbits, snail, mushroom production and backyard poultry, among others in the district. According to him, it is government vision to come out with measures to enhance cocoa production in Ghana, and to make the vision a reality, the government has intensified projects and programmes towards increase in cocoa production, notable among them include the cocoa mass spraying programme which distributes free insecticides, fungicides and fertilizers to boost production. The DCE revealed that, the government has distributed 60 million cocoa seedlings to support farmers to rehabilitate over aged cocoa farms, diseased farms and start up farms, and has also secured $1.8 billion to purchase cocoa beans for the 2016/2017 crop season, while the cocoa roads projects are ongoing nationwide under the Ghana Cocoa Board Road Programme of which the district is a beneficiary. He said under the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP)/MOFA, the District has established a total of ten rice, maize, cassava demonstration fields across the District, the purpose of which he said is to enable farmers to learn on-farm agricultural innovations and enhance availability of improved planting materials for farmers, as more than one thousand, four hundred (1,400) farmers have benefited from free improved rice seeds, maize seeds and cassava planting materials. Mr. Kwame Amoako, the District agric director, also explained that, the selection of best farmers is guided by criteria set by Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and that selection of award winners was not based on any political, social, economic and religious conditions. At Manso Abiram in the Amansie West district, 28 hardworking farmers were honoured at this years farmers day ceremony with 53-year-old farmer, Mr. George Asamoah of Manso Abodom emerging the overall best farmer. For his prize he received a motorcycle, four pairs of Wellington boots, knapsack spraying machine, sic cutlasses, soap and certificate of honour. The District chief executive for Amansie West, Mr. Alex Kwame Bonsu said the Government through Cocoa Board provided free 40,000 bags of fertilizers, 38,000 liters of insecticide and 43,680 boxes of fungicides to improve cocoa production in the district for the 2015/2016 crop year. From Nyamebekyere in the Bosome-Freho District in the Ashanti Region The Chronicle gathered that 32 farmers engaged in crop and animal production were honoured. Mr. Kwaku Arhin, 42, from Anyanso was adjudged the overall Best District Farmer. He owes 50 acres of cocoa, seven acres of plantain, 8 acres of maize, 17 acres of oil palm, 5 acres of cassava, 3 acres of vegetables, 5 acres of cocoyam, alongside 47 goats, 32 sheep, 150 pigs, 4,120 hens, 17 ducks, and 12 guinea fowls with 30m X 50m fishpond and rice farming. He took home a 32 Digital TV set, a radio set, a knapsack spraying machine, half piece cloth, two cutlasses, weed size and a certificate. In his acceptance speech, the overall Best District Farmer, Mr. Kwaku Arhin expressed his appreciation for the honour bestowed on him and therefore, admonished the youth to see agriculture as a business and sustainable source of employment venture to generate income for improved living conditions and a secured future. The District Chief Executive for Bosome-Freho, Hon. Kwame Adarkwah assured the farmers of government's support to enable them produce more food to feed the nation. He said government is on course making the agriculture sector a pivot around, which the economy would grow. Hon. Adarkwah appealed to the youth to take advantage of government interventions in the sector to take up farming seriously to better their lot and forget about the non-existing white colour jobs. The Bosome-Freho District Director of Agriculture, Mr. Paul Acheampong, announced that government has instituted a grant to motivate farmers to produce enough food to feed Ghanaians. He said the district had won the best regional cassava award for two years running and therefore, urged farmers in the district to seek more advice from Extension officers and Business Advisory services available to improve their farms and businesses. Member of Parliament(MP) for Shama,Mr.Gabriel Kodwo Essilfie,has asked the electorate to retain President John Dramani Mahama in power as he needed another term to complete the numerous infrastructural projects initiated in the last four three and half years. He noted that the Mahama-Amsisah Arthur led administration had done many developmental projects in almost all the communities which provide a springboard for development in human aspirations. Mr.Essilfie was addressing a mammoth rally of NDC party faithfuls and sympathizers and inhabitants of Assorkor-Essaman at Assorkor in the Shama constituency of the Western Region. He said government had established a fish processing plant already at Abuesi in the constituency hence the NPP's promise of establishing a fish processing plant in that community was not feasible. The MP added that government had also concluded negotiations with an Indian company to produce fertilizer in the constituency to help boost farming activities. He was cocksure that the NDC was going to win the elections and appealed to the communications team of the party to go all out and use the green book to teach Ghanaians on the achievements of government. National Communications Director of the NDC,Mr. Solomon Yaw Nkansah said the NDC has the track record to propel the nation to an accelerated economic development. He asked the people of Shama to consider the massive projects embarked upon by President Mahama and retain the government in the December elections. Mr. Nkansah reminded the "to be wary of politicians who craft their words only to persuade and deceive the people just to win their mandate and later reject them when they taste power. He appealed to the youth to campaign in a humble,disciplined manner devoid of insults and attacks in a bid to win more votes for the party in the up coming polls. District Chief Executive(DCE) for Shama,Mr.Eric Cobbinah said the District could boast of 8 CHPS compound within the last three and half years which has catered for health care needs of the people with a drastic reduction in maternal mortality. He said a Ceramic factory which would employ 1,500 people is under construction with an 18km road asphalted in the district and an additional 19.5km of asphalt road from Asemasa is underway. On education he said the District topped the 2016 BECE results with 76% which was a marked improvement on the 33% record in the NPP administration. The NDC government has also built 37 schools in the district with 34 of them enjoying the school feeding programme as well as the construction of an ultra-modern educational complex with 2 modern pick-ups. " 08.11.2016 LISTEN The Central Regional capital, Cape Coast is a fishing port and one of the most historical cities in Ghana, founded by the people of Oguaa and is situated on its south to the Gulf of Guinea. According to 2010 population census, Cape Coast had a settlement population of 169,894 people. Cape Coast is a humid area with mean monthly relative humidity varying between 85% and 99%. The area is dominated by batholith rock and is generally undulating with steep slopes. Tourist sites include the Cape Coast castle, Kakum National Park, Hans cottage among several others. Despite the above exciting description, the city has suffered a major setback on health related development. Problems such as bad sanitation, cholera outbreaks are plethoric in recent times. This feature will focus on the cholera outbreak which has come to public eye lately with inhabitants of Cape Coast seeking perpetual solution. Cholera still remain a big threat to public health and is a key indicator of poor environmental and personal hygiene, inadequate sanitation and lack of social development in the affected areas. The re-emergence of cholera has been noted in Akotokyira, Pedu, Abura and other suburbs of Cape Coast parallel with the ever-increasing size of vulnerable populations living in areas with poor or unsanitary conditions. During the national cholera crises in 2014. Cape Coast recorded 2,874 cases of which 60 people lost their lives. With this, there was a remote possibility that we would be rescued in subsequent years by putting tentative measures on board. In the year 2015. Cholera was somehow brought under control as there was no death out of the eight (8) reported cases. Maxwell Attah, a freelance journalist who took a keen interest in the recent outbreak reported that at the middle of the 45th week of the year, 157 cholera cases have been reported in Cape Coast with Abura being the hotspot. Despite the immense number of people contracted with the infection, no death has been recorded since the outbreak on October 21, 2016. At the end of the same week, University of Cape Coast (UCC) Hospital has recorded 36 confirm cholera cases. Other available statistics unveiled that Cape Coast Teaching Hospital is the first Hospital to have reported a confirm case. An infected person admitted at the later Hospital who spoke with Maxwell Attah on anonymity said she experience a watery diarrhoea after she ate a food (waakye) that she purchased at Abura, subsequently leading to her diagnosis. CHOLERA is an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease cause by Vibrio cholerae. Which is a Gram-negative, comma-shaped bacterium. CAUSES Some of the causes include: Open defecation in Water bodies. consuming Vegetables grown with water containing infected human wastes. consuming Raw or undercooked fish and seafood caught in waters polluted with sewage. SYMPTOMS cholera symptoms could be mild or severe and begins as soon as a few hours or as long as five (5) days after infection. About one in 20 people infected have severe watery diarrhea accompanied by vomiting, which can quickly lead to dehydration and a possible shock or death if left untreated in some hours. Although many infected people may have minimal or no symptoms, they can still contribute to spread of the infection. TREATMENT According to Health Experts, the treatment of cholera depends on the severity of diarrhoea. With this, hydration is the mainstay of treatment for cholera, which consist of oral or intravenous solutions to replace lost fluids. Also, Antibiotics are used to rid-of the bacteria. PREVENTIVE MEASURES The linchpin preventive measure World Health Organization (WHO) recommends is provision of sufficient safe water and adequate sanitation and hygiene (WASH) Other Official recommendations include: the use of oral cholera vaccines (OCVs) as a supplementary public health tool for preemptive or reactive control of cholera outbreaks. Again When visiting cholera epidemic area, below precautionary measures should be observed. Wash hands frequently with soap or ash under safe running water after taking care of patient, visiting the toilet and before handling food. Drink water from safe sources such as chlorinated or boiled water. Wash fruits and vegetables with clean water from safe source. Use chemical toilets or burying feces if no restroom is available. Dispose refuse in a properly constructed refuse pit. Cook food throughly and eat it whilst hot. Avoid Shaking hands at public gatherings, particularly funerals during a cholera outbreak. Avoid defecating in any water bodies. Many first time affected people may wonder how to move cholera cases or patients to the health facility using public transport. Here are some tip offs. Avoid direct contact with the sick person. Cover seats with rubber sheets which can be disinfected or destroyed after use. Wear water resistant gown or apron, gloves and boots or cover hands and body with any water resistant or rubber product. Wash hands with soap under safe running water after handling sick persons. Receiving health facility should clean and disinfect the vehicle/taxi. Effective cholera control requires not only a professional assessment, but also consideration of community-based prioritize. Politicians, civil society groups and individuals therefore have a paramour role in cholera prevention. It is very blatant that leaders at the helm of managing state resources have failed to prioritize well as most communities still lack social amenities. Community-based cholera control has faced hanky-panky in that wittingly or unwittingly people kept on blighting the environment, Politician reneging their promises on improving social amenities and sanitation. Also Civil servants mismanagement of state resources, failure of Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to implement sanitation bye laws and Government inability to employ graduate hygiene officers has made cholera Control cumbersome. However, many celebrities have join bandwagon of cholera control. In August 2016 Nana Ama McBrown featured Strongman on Cholera Song which aim at cholera prevention. In an interview with the Ghana Health Servics (GHS) Central Regional Deputy Director of Public health (DDPH), Dr. kweku A. Karikari said the best way to control cholera is to ensure good health habit as well as creating an environment that will not facilitate the thriving microbes. Highlighting on the health tips on cholera alert, he admonished that in case of diarrhoea and vomiting, start taking ORS or Coconut water and report immediately to the nearest health facility. "Talk to your local health worker about how to deal with discharges and soiled clothes because they are potential source of infection and further spread of the disease". He added. The Environmental health and sanitation Unit of Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly is distributing Aqua tab to the various households as well as disinfecting the infected area. This move is to curb the recent outbreak. The Ghana Red Cross society of Central Region who has a responsibility of putting interventions to combat Public Health Emergencies has also started disinfecting the infected place, markets and other places that could aid the thriving of the microbes. Cholera can be prevented. Play your role in your capacity. Be a true and committed Ghanaian. Maxwell Attah (Freelance Journalist) E-mail; [email protected] 4th November 2016. A UK trade delegation visited Guinea from October 31 to November 3, 2016 to meet with local mining companies. The objective of this mission was to meet with mining stakeholders in Guinea to find business and partnerships opportunities. The delegation included representatives of some companies such as Concrete Canvas, PW Mining International Limited, SRK Consulting, Joy Global, MonuRent and the UK International Trade Department. It was also an opportunity to create partnerships with major British companies, to support the efforts of the President Alpha Conde in its policy to attract investors in Guinea. The British Ambassador in Guinea Catherine Inglehearn The expansion of the bauxite sector is a great opportunity for Guinea. UK will always work to support Guinea in this sector and maximize its mining potential. Visiting sites in mining areas The delegation visited the mine sites (port, mine infrastructure and equipment) including CBGs (Compagnie de Bauxite de Guinee) executives members to discuss business opportunities. Conakry The trade delegation also met with several national, international mining companies and institutions such as the Ministry of Mines, Ministry of Investment, the World Bank, ANAIM (Agence nationale de lamenagement des infrastructures minieres) in order to discuss business opportunities and establishing contacts. Meeting with the Prime Minister Mamady Youla Guinea is the first country in terms of mineral reserves in the world. Guinea has the largest iron store none operates in the world. The government is working with investors so that they are involved and that each party meets its commitments. As a government, we are promoting investment, but investments are open for private. The government is currently working to pool different projects. In the development of a mining project, it is important to create infrastructure (port, rail and equipment) but not only the operation. Said Mr. Prime Minister Mamady Youla. Some customers of DKM Microfinance Company have threatened to hit the street on Friday November 11, if the Official Liquidator of the company fails to rectify all anomalies related to the payment of their locked up cash. The Official Liquidator for DKM, the Registrar General's Department, yesterday November 7, told Citi Business News, all aggrieved customers will receive their monies by the end of this week. The Principal Company Inspector for the Official Liquidator, Jones Nathaniel Ansah explained that work is ongoing to resolve all anomalies, as well as compile the final list of customers whose names did not appear on an earlier list. But speaking to Citi Business News, spokesperson for the DKM customers, Mohammed Ibn Issaka , expressed dissatisfaction with the turnout of events, blaming the Registrar General's Department for the delay in rectifying the anomalies. We don't trust them anymore because some time past the same promises were given to us, only for us to go there for the names to be released but it did not have majority of the customers on the list. We intend embarking on demonstration because things are too silent, he charged. He was of the view that the inability of the Official Liquidator to keep its promise has eroded the confidence the aggrieved customers have in the Registrar General's Department. They keep promising us that they are still doing the validation and we do not know when the list will be out. We intend embarking on demonstration because things are too silent, he reiterated. He warned that the customers will use all legitimate means available to get their investment back. Background of DKM debacle Thousands of customers of DKM Microfinance Company lost their investments, running into millions of cedis after the company was declared bankrupt for wrongfully investing its funds. The customers thronged to the offices of the company in different parts of the country demanding their investments after the news of the bankruptcy went viral on social media and mainstream media. The BoG stepped in and confiscated all the assets of the company and announced a liquidation process to reimburse the customers. By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana The Progressive Peoples Party has replaced the subscriber, whose endorsement led to the disqualification of the partys flagbearer Papa Kwesi Nduom. Richard Aseda, who endorsed Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom in the Central and Volta Regions of Ghana, contrary to the Election Regulation has been replaced by two different subscribers, Joy News Joseph Ackah Blay reported Tuesday. Lawyer for the PPP Ayikoi Otoo, who disclosed to Joy News the news about the replacement also disclosed that the party has ignored the other errors which were brought to their attention only yesterday by the Commission because those mistakes were not in contention before the Supreme Court. He stated that even though the EC officials told him that the other mistakes were things they should aver their minds to, as far as he was concerned, it was only one mistake they were to correct and they did just that. Background The EC disqualified Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom and 11 others for various infractions on their nomination forms. For the PPP, the election organising committee indicated that one of the 432 subscribers of Dr Nduom had endorsed the candidate in two separate districts. By law, a voter can only register and vote in one district and so it was an aberration for Aseda to have endorsed the PPP leader in two different districts. The PPP despite conceding to the error stated categorically that the error was not basis for disqualification. The party then proceeded to the High Court and secured a ruling in their favour, a ruling that directed the EC to allow the candidate to correct their error. The EC was also not happy with the ruling and proceeded to the Supreme Court in a bid to have the decision quashed but the EC upheld the earlier decision by the court and directed the EC to allow Nduom and all other disqualified candidates to correct the errors which were brought to their attention. The court also directed the EC to extend the nomination period by a day to allow all the candidates to correct those infractions. However the parties were hit with a mountain of new errors found by the EC and which they were to correct before close of nomination on Tuesday November 8, 2016. The PPP according to Lawyer Ayikoi Otoo had their errors move from one to 105; the PNCs errors moved from four to 303, whilst that of APC moved from two to 95. The candidates have expressed their displeasure with the conduct of the EC with some of them threatening to go back to the Supreme Court if they are unable to complete their nomination by close of day Tuesday. Lawyer for the PPP, who led the partys flagbearer in two successive victories at the court told journalists they have corrected the anomaly which was brought to their attention by the EC on October 10, 2016- the anomaly which formed the basis of their disqualification and the fodder for the court room drama. He said the 104 other errors brought to their attention only yesterday were not contention before the courts and so they have rectified what came before the Supreme Court. However Joy News has learnt that despite the posture of Ayikoi Otoo, the party is bent on correcting the mistakes. Ackah Blay reported that the partys Director of Communications, Paa Kow Ackon has brought new subscribers to the EC office, in an attempt to correct some of the mistakes raised by the EC in the last hour. -Myjoyonline Eight out of the 13 disqualified presidential candidates have resubmitted their nomination forms as at 5 p.m. Tuesday, the Electoral Commission (EC) has said. Deputy EC Communication Director, Yussif Ayuba explained that per the ruling of Ghanas apex court candidates who could not present their forms stand automatically disqualified. He nonetheless told Raymond Acquah, host of Joy FMs Top Story programme that this precludes individuals who are on the premises of the Commission before 5 p.m., the deadline. The parties who successfully submitted their forms include the Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), National Democratic Party (NDP), All Peoples Congress (APC), Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), and United Progressive Party (UPP). The rest are the United Front Party (UFP), Peoples National Convention (PNC), and an independent candidate, Asiedu Walker. The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday ordered the EC to afford the 13 disqualified presidential candidates an opportunity to make corrections on their nomination forms, errors behind their disqualification. The ruling followed an application filed in the apex court by the EC after it was displeased by an Accra High Court ruling describing its disqualification of PPP's Presidential Candidate, Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom as unfair. The lower court said the economist's right to natural justice that a man cannot be condemned until granted an audience was flouted, hence its decision. A statement signed by the Commission explained its decision to head to the SC was in the interest of public policy and the nation as a whole. The highest court upheld the ruling of the lower court, directing the EC to add two days which started on Monday for the candidates to effect changes on their forms. The candidates had accused the Commission of deliberately refusing to point their errors for the correction to be made on the forms. But Mr Ayuba said from Monday when the nomination process was reopened, candidates who come in to meet the Commission had their errors pointed to them. He hoped the forms resubmitted by the candidates would meet the requirement of the C.I.94, the law governing the 2016 elections. According to him, the forms would be given to the EC boss, Charlotte Osei who is the Returning Officer for determination to be made on them. Mr Ayuba said by close of business Wednesday, the Commission would make public those candidates who went through the process successfully for the presidential balloting on Thursday. Ghana is topping the list of countries outside the United States (US), searching for the ongoing elections in America, Google Trends has revealed. Ghana is one of the African countries with strong ties to the United States. The US is home to many Ghanaians aside the country being one of Ghanas lead international donor. Google Trends is an online search tool that allows the user to see how often specific keywords, subjects and phrases have been queried over a specific period of time. US election The US, which is regarded as one of the most powerful countries in the world is electing a new leader. The race is primarily between Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump, who is the Republican Candidate, with a few third party and independent presidential candidates also running in the election. Mrs. Clinton cast her vote with Bill Clinton in New York state, describing it as a humbling experience. Mr Trump cast his vote in New York city with a call for proper leadership. Both candidates targeted battleground states on Monday, with campaigning taking them to rallies in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Americans are choosing a new president after one of the most rancorous election campaigns the country has seen. Democratic contender Mrs Clinton urged voters to back a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America while Mr Trump told supporters they had a magnificent chance to beat the corrupt system. Polls give Mrs Clinton a four-point lead over Republican Mr Trump. A record number of Americans more than 46 million have voted early by post or at polling stations. There are signs of a high turnout among Hispanic voters, which is believed to favour Mrs Clinton. Long queues have formed at polling stations in the key battleground state of Virginia, a BBC correspondent reports. The rivals held the final rallies of their campaigns after midnight Mr Trump in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Mrs Clinton in Raleigh, North Carolina. Today the American working class is going to strike back, finally, said Mr Trump, pledging to reverse job losses. Earlier, in New Hampshire, he told supporters: We are just one day away from the change you've been waiting for all your life. Together we will make America wealthy again, we will make America strong again, we will make America safe again and we will make America great again. Mrs Clinton told her audience that they did not have to accept a dark and divisive vision of America. She looked forward to a fairer, stronger, better America. An America where we build bridges, not walls. And where we prove conclusively that love trumps hate. Election day follows a bitter campaign during which the candidates have traded insults and become mired in a series of scandals. By: Marian Ansah with files from BBC /citifmonline.com/Ghana Follow @EfeAnsah 08.11.2016 LISTEN Accra Nov. 8, GNA - Thomas Kofi Owusu, a block manufacturer who reported to the Police at Amasaman that he had killed his wife and injured his step son after locking them in a room has appeared before a District Court in Accra. Owusu is alleged to have smashed the heads of the deceased and her son with a hoe several times following a misunderstanding. Owusu aged 56 who is being held for murder and causing harm had his plea reserved. The court presided over by Mr Worlanyo Kotoku remanded Owusu into custody to reappear on November 22. The case as presented by the prosecutor Deputy Superintendent of Police Mawunyo Nanegbe said Faustina Esinu Owusu aged 40 years was the wife of Owusu and they had been married for the past four years. Owusu and Faustina lived at Danchira, near Amanfrom in the Greater Accra Region. According to the prosecutor, accused and Faustina lived with the victim Benedict Agboada, the son of the deceased and Comfort Akoto, niece of the deceased aged 13 years. On October 30, this year at about 8:30 pm, Owusu went to Amasaman Police station and reported that he had killed his wife Faustina and injured his step son Agboada and locked them up in their room. Prosecution said the Police immediately arrested Owusu and escorted him to his house and found his wife dead in a pool of blood in their living room while his step son, Agboada also was found lying beside her mother with severe wounds to head gasping for breath. According to the Prosecutor, Agboada was rushed to the Amasaman government hospital for treatment and later transferred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital where he is receiving treatment at the Intensive Care Unit. DSP Nanegbe said the body of Faustina was initially deposited at the Police Hospital but has since been transferred to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital Morgue awaiting autopsy. Prosecution said Owusu in his investigation caution statement admitted killing his wife and causing harm to his step son. According to the prosecutor preliminary investigations conducted revealed that on October 30, this year at about 8:00 pm while the couple were retiring to bed, a misunderstanding ensued between them in their bedroom. In the process, prosecution said Owusu pulled deceased from the bed room to their living room and hit her head with a hoe several times till she fell unconscious and died. Not satisfied with the act, Owusu hit his step son's head with the hoe and become unconscious. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN By Godfred Polkuu Bolgatanga, Nov.8, GNA - Students of the Bolgatanga Nurses Training College (BNTC) have been urged to eschew violence and act as peace ambassadors in the coming elections. The students were at the launch of the College's 19th Ghana Nurses and Midwives Trainees Association's (GNMTA) week celebration held on the theme: 'Unveiling the multifunctional role of a trainee nurse as a care giver and a peace advocate.' Mr Kelvin Christopher Asima, the Upper East Regional Youth Coordinator of the Women's Situation Room (WSR), said they would need a peaceful environment to study and perform well. The WSR was formed by the Angie Brooks International Centre as a project to empower women in peace-building in any democracy and was implemented in Liberia's 2011 presidential and legislative polls. Mr Asima said the WSR would launch a toll-free telephone number which would be well publicised to enable the general public to report any act of violence that would affect the elections. He said as part of WSR's plan to ensure a violence free election, it would create a Situation Room made up of prominent stakeholders including political party leaders and telephone operators who would receive calls from election observers about any act or threat of violence on election day. The coordinator said if telephone calls were received, the prominent people in the room would use their influence to reduce tension and control the situation. He said acts such as snatching electoral boxes on Election Day would not be treated as an electoral offence, but would be handed to the police to deal with as a criminal offence. Mr Emmanuel Geyevo, former National GNMTA president, said some nurses and nurse trainees on clinical attachments to the wards sometimes engaged in political discussions at the expense of their duties and urged them to stop such practices. He called on the College's GNMTA executives to work hard to complement the efforts of the institution's management to achieve its goal of academic excellence. Mr Edward Atiim, a tutor of the College, entreated them to be modest in the week long celebration as the institution had lost three students over the years during such GNMTA celebrations. Mr Achire Abraham, the Bolgatanga NTC- GNMTA president, said lack of lavatories, poor lighting system and lack of water on campus were some of the challenges that hindered academic performance and called on stakeholders to come to the aid of the College. The weeklong celebration was sponsored by the Tigo communication Network. GNA By Iddi Yire, GNA Accra, Nov 08, GNA - Mr Ayikoi Otoo, Counsel for the Progressive People's (PPP) says the Electoral Commission (EC) has accepted the amended presidential nomination forms of Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, Flagbearer of the Party for the December 7 polls. This was after the Supreme Court had ordered the EC to re-open nominations, to enable presidential nominees the Commission had earlier disqualified to make the necessary corrections and resubmit by close of work on Tuesday, November 8. It would be recalled that at the close of nominations, the EC acting on statutes regulating the filing of nominations for Presidential Elections - the 1992 Constitution, Public Elections Regulations 2016 (CI 94), Representation of People's Law, 1992 (PNDC Law 284) and the Presidential Elections Law, 1992 (PNDC Law 285) disqualified Dr Nduom and 12 other presidential nominees. Dr Nduom however, proceeded to the High Court and overturned the EC's decision. Not satisfied with the verdict of the High Court, the EC also took the matter to the Supreme Court, which also ruled in favour of Dr Nduom. Addressing the media at the EC Head Office in Accra, Mr Otoo said the only error the EC pointed out on the presidential nominee's forms was that of the double signature of one Richard Aseda of the Buem Constituency in the Volta Region and at Hemang Lower Denkyira Constituency in the Central Region. He said the Party had since replaced him in both constituencies. Mr Otoo said the PPP had presented Mr Aseda before the EC Chair, who testified that we had nothing to do with the Hemang Lower Denkyira Constituency. On the issue of the EC identifying 105 additional errors on their presidential nominee's forms on Monday after the Supreme Court verdict, Mr Otoo said, the Commission only pointed out the errors which were bordering on signatures; adding that the forms were in triplicate and that the EC was not a forensic expert to determine the authenticity of signatures. He said when they appeared before the Commission, they were told that they did not ask to amend the issues raised and that the Commission demanded an apology from the PPP on that issue. Mr Otoo noted that in the filing of the nominations, under the laws of Ghana, the Returning Officer and in the case of presidential, the EC Chair had no power to disqualify anybody and that the Chair could only draw a nominee's attention to errors to be corrected. He said after the nominee had resubmitted the forms after the corrections, the Returning Officers would then consult with the Commission within a space of one week before announcing a verdict. Mr Otoo also recommended that in view of the law, the filing of nominations and closing deadline for corrections should be a week apart. On the question of whether the PPP Flagbearer's candidature had been approved or not, Mr Otoo replied, that it was up to the Commission. GNA By Samuel Akapule, GNA Garu(U/E), Nov. 8, GNA - Mr Albert Akuka Alalzugah, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Parliamentary Candidate for the Garu Constituency, has appealed to his constituents to vote him as the Member of Parliament(MP) for the area to enable him enhance the pace of development in the area. He made the appeal during the launch of his campaign which was largely patronized by the party's executives and supporters. Mr Alalzugah, who is also the Garu-Tempane District Chief Executive, unseated the incumbent MP, Mr Dominic Azembe during the party's primaries, making him the parliamentary candidate in the forthcoming Parliamentary election. He said his experience as the DCE for the area had helped him understand the dynamics, the problems and the plight of the people and that gave him an advantage over the other contestants to address the challenges of the area. Recounting some of the development projects he had initiated as DCE in the constituency, he cited the construction of 59 schools, twenty-four dams, fifteen feeder roads and 15 acres of mango plantation under the Climate Change Project. He said over 80 per cent of the beneficiaries under the Ghana Social Opportunities Project were women and as part of the Better Ghana Agenda, the Assembly has also built eleven CHPs Compounds in the communities to make it very accessible for women to access their health needs. Mr Mahama Ayariga, the MP for the Bawku Central Constituency, who is also the Minister of Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment , appealed to the constituents to ensure that they voted for both the Parliamentary Candidate and President Mahama, to enable him execute more projects to improve upon their livelihoods. Alhaji Mumuni Bolnaba, the Regional Chairman of the party, said unlike other political parties the NDC was the only party that had implemented a lot of pro-poor policies and programmes to improve the lot of the people in the society. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN Senya Bereku (C/R), Nov 8, GNA - The Director General, Ghana Education Service, Mr. Jacob A. M. Kor, has reiterated the need for teachers to move away from the old ways of doing things to enable them produce functional graduates who would be very useful to the nation. He said that producing useful graduates meant offering the nation the required students who would practically and purposely lead the country to achieve its goals. Mr Kor was speaking at the 50th Anniversary and Speech and Prize- Giving Day of Senya Senior High School. He said where teachers continued to use old methods to teach, students would not produce the requisite man-power in this modern technological era. The Director General said modern students were faced with globalised competition. He charged all stakeholders in education especially parents and teachers to re-visit the vital role they played in the education of children. Mr Kor urged teachers to inculcate Information Communication Technology skills into their teaching methods, since that was the surest way to go. He assured the management of senior high schools of the Ghana Education Service's determination to continue to offer them the needed support in their bid to equip the students with the requisite skills and knowledge in the various programmes they offered. Madam Ancilla Mensah-Ashun, Headmistress of Senya Senior High School, commended the government through the Secondary Education Implementation Project (SEIP) for providing the school with a three unit classroom block and a washroom. She said work on the GETFund Girls' dormitory of the school was also progressing steadily. Madam Mensah-Ashun praised the Awutu Senya West District Assembly for constructing what she describe as a portable dining hall for the school and stressed the need for more classrooms, staff accommodations, which she stated was urgently needed and dormitory for the boys as some of the challenges facing the school. According to the Headmistress, out of the 431 candidates the school presented for the 2016 West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) the school scored 60 percent passes and expressed determination that the school will achieved more laudable successes in the coming years. Prizes were present to deserving students and hard working staff of the school and some other personalities who had contributed to bring the school. GNA By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Accra, Nov. 8, GNA - Ethiopian Airlines, the fastest growing and most profitable African airline, is set to increase flight frequency to Cape Town to 10 times weekly beginning from December 1. Mr Busera Awel, the Chief Commercial Officer, Ethiopian Airlines said: 'Serving Africa is our prior commitment as a Pan-African carrier, and increasing services to Cape Town, known for the Table Mountain is part of this commitment.' He said the increase in flight frequency to Cape Town, their third gateway in South Africa, would enable tourists and business travellers to enjoy convenient connectivity options to and from 95 Ethiopian global networks on-board our state-of-the-art fleet, Boeing 787. He said the 10 times weekly service would enhance the Airlines' capacity to more than 400 per cent in a year time. 'We always strive to offer the best possible passenger and cargo services the industry has to offer, including a wide variety menu of meal services with the newly inaugurated modern In-Flight Catering facility, served with a multiple award winning inflight services,' he added. Ethiopian currently flies to three cities in South Africa, namely: Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. In its seven decades of operation, Ethiopian has become one of the continent's leading carriers, unrivalled in efficiency and operational success. GNA By Josephine Naaeke, GNA Marrakech, Morocco (Courtesy UNFCCC) Marrakesh (Morocco), Nov. 8, GNA - The 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) on climate change started in Marrakesh, Morocco on Monday, November 7, with the election of the COP22 President, Mr Salaheddine Mezouar, Morocco's Foreign Minister. The event being organised by the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is expected to end on November 18. The COP 22 will engage key players in climate action especially the universities and research centres. High on the agenda for the two- week conference includes the adoption of the rules of procedure, agenda, election of officers, admission of organisations as observers, organisation of work, including the sessions of the subsidiary bodies, dates and venues of future sessions. Others are the adoption of the report on credentials, reports of the subsidiary bodies, report of the subsidiary body for Scientific and Technological advice, report of the subsidiary body for implementation, report of the ad hoc and working group on the Paris Agreement. The rest are preparations for the entry into force of the Paris Agreement and the first session of the COP serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris agreement. With 197 Parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement. The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise of the century well below two degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN By Hafsa Obeng, GNA Accra, Nov. 8, GNA - An Accra Circuit Court on Tuesday granted bail in the sum of GHa 200,000.00 to two persons who were said to have conspired and stolen an amount of GHa 123,610.00 belonging to Airtel Ghana Limited. Eric Owusu, Sales Manager and Delali Anku, Sales Executive are put before the court for conspiring and stealing amount of GHa 123,610.00 belonging to Airtel Ghana Limit. They pleaded not guilty to the charges and were granted bail with four sureties each. They are to reappear before the court on November 22. Prosecuting, Police Chief Inspector Kwabena Adu, told the court that the complainant was a Marketing Officer at Airtel Ghana Limited at Accra while the accused persons were employees of the same company. He said Airtel Ghana sold communication data to six companies including Amadeus, Discoxerytel, Ecobank Limited, ETG Integrated Services, Horizons and IFDC. He said after using the data the companies issued cheques for payment. The two accused persons were responsible for the collection of the cheques from the companies and payment of same into the company accounts. The prosecution said during the month of June, the complainant detected theft of some of the cheques, conducted a preliminary investigation into the matter, which led to the arrest of Eric and he was subsequently handed over to the Nima Police for further investigations. He told the court that an auditor at the company was asked to audit the accounts of the accused person, and detected that Eric had collected 10 cheques with face value totaling GHa 123,00.00 from six companies and used the cheques to buy Airtel re-charge cards, which he sold to customers in traffic and used the proceeds. Police Chief Inspector Adu said on September 19, Eric informed the police that he committed the offence with Delali and, he had GHa 94,932.75 as his share of the booty whist Eric had GHa35,463.00 as his share. He told the court that when he Eric was arrested, Delali asked him not to mention his name and that he would refund the money to him but failed. Eric told the police that he recorded Delali on his mobile phone, when the conversation was going on. He also produced GHa 3,000.00, which he said was Delali who gave him as part payment of his booty. The prosecution said Eric also produced a printed text message he sent to Delali acknowledging receipt of the GHa 3,000.00. He said Delali was subsequently arrested and cautioned. GNA 08.11.2016 LISTEN By Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Accra, Nov. 8, GNA - An Accra Circuit Court has set November 22, to rule on a bail application filed by counsel for four accused persons standing trial for various offences. The accused persons pleaded not guilty for all the charges levelled against them with the prayer of their counsel for the court to grant them bail. The prosecution objected to the bail application compelling the judge to fix a date to rule on the application. The accused persons: Kwame Konadu, Trader, Abdulai Rashid, Driver, Benjamin Aidoo, Trader and Kwame Tawiah Goldsmith were charged for conspiracy to commit crime, robbery and dishonestly receiving. Chief Superintendent of Police Duuti Tuaraka told the court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh that the complainant in the case was Assistant Commissioner of Police. He said on November 1, at about 3:30am, the complainant and her family were asleep when Konadu and Rashid and one Kofi now at large scaled the fenced wall and entered their compound. He said the accused persons forced opened the sliding door of the ground floor and entered the house. 'They met three young men of the complainant family, who were fast asleep in their room and attacked them, subjected them to severe beating and later tied up and finally locked them in their bathroom. He said the alleged robbers ransacked their room and took their Sony play station four two iphone six, Toshiba google chrome laptop, one Samsung Galaxy S5, Apple iphone six, Compaq laptop and cash, the sum of GH120.00. The Prosecution said Kawme and Rashid moved to up-stairs of the house and attacked the complainant herself, subjected her to severe beatings together with her husband. Chief Supt Tuaraka said the accused persons tied the husband of the complainant and robbed them of their Acre computer, jewelleries, tablet, iphones, Samsung phones, police Gota and Cash, the sum of GH7,40.00, a200 and their wedding rings. He said the accused persons took the items to one Kofi Kwei at Pokuase and sold same to Benjamin. A complaint was lodged and investigation led to the arrest of Benjamin with the Acre laptop, two iphones, tablet, Samsung phones, two ipads and Police Gota were retrieved. He said Benjamin mentioned Kwame and Rashid as those who sold the items to him and they were arrested. Benjamin led the Police to Kaneshie, where they sold the complainant's gold wedding ring to the Goldsmith at the cost of GH580.00 and he was arrested. In the Goldsmith's caution statement, he told the police that he had melted the ring and used same to make another ring for his customer. GNA - An aide to Goodluck Jonathan accuses the EFCC of victimizing him because of his loyalty to the former president and his family - Waripamo-Owei Dudafa says the anti-graft agency is desperate to perpetually detain him because he has refused to yield to their demands to implicate the first lady - However, the EFCC has dismissed Dudafas claims as untrue Dudafa who served as a senior assistant on domestic matters Jonathan under the last administration claims the EFCC is planning to incriminate Patience with false statement. An aide to former president, Goodluck Jonathan, has alleged that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is mounting pressure on him to incriminate the former first lady, Patience Jonathan, over alleged money laundering. READ ALSO: Corruption: 25 Jonathans ex-ministers, aides under probe Waripamo-Owei Dudafa, who is facing corruption trial by the anti-graft agency made the accusation in a petition to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) claiming he was being deliberately punished by the commission because of his loyalty to the former president and his family, Premium Times report. Dudafa served as a senior assistant on domestic matters to Jonathan under the last administration. He said despite meeting the bail conditions granted him by two federal judges, the anti-graft agency was desperate to perpetually detain him because he has refused to yield to their demands to implicate the former first lady. READ ALSO: Abdullahi Dikko returns money to EFCC, mansion seized My only sin is that I have refused to yield to the Commissions pressure to write false statements to incriminate the former first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, said Dudafa in his petition dated November 4. But in reaction, the EFCC on Monday, November 7, dismissed Dudafas claims as untrue. Wilson Uwujaren, the EFCC Spokesperson said the anti-graft agency does force anybody to do things against their will. I dont know the petition you are talking about but whatever petition there is, the Commission does not force anybody to do anything, Uwujaren told Premium Times. The EFCC had arraigned Dudafa and two others in June before Justice Mohammed Idris of the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court on a 23-count charge of concealment and retention of proceeds of crime totalling N1.67 billion. He was also arraigned, alongside two persons and four companies, before Justice Babs Kuewumi of the same federal court for money laundering to the tune of $15 million. Mrs. Jonathan has since claimed the money belonged to her. In the case before Mr. Idris, the judge granted Mr. Dudafa bail in the sum of N500 million with three sureties in like sum. But Dudafa in his petition claimed that despite meeting all the herculean bail conditions as ordered by the two courts, the commission has failed to fulfill its part, by verifying his bail documents with the aim of keeping him in custody in violation of a court order granting him bail. In a related development, details have emerged how Forbes wealthiest African woman Bola Shagaya made suspicious bank transaction to accounts belonging to former Nigerias first lady Patience Jonathan. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said Shagaya, a Nigerian business woman has been under the commissions investigation for about six month. The commission has also frozen one of Shagayas bank account. Source: Legit.ng Gholamreza Sharafi, the Parliamentary representative for Abadan, states that the actual number of unemployed Arabs in the province in more like 50%. In cities like Hoveyzeh, this number climbs to 70%. Abortions are illegal in Iran but are permitted if the lives of the mother or foetus are in danger, but even then they must obtain an abortion permit. A nurse, who works in a midwifery clinic in Southern Ahwaz, said that she has seen 90 illegal abortions carried out in her clinic alone. She said: We are asked by the parents to carry out the abortions not because theres a problem with the mother or the foetus but solely for such reasons as poverty, deprivation, or being jobless. The nurse, who wished to remain anonymous, said the woman confirms her agreement to the procedure in writing and pays $250- $330. This does not account for the back-alley abortions which will be the only route for families that cannot afford the $330 payment; ordering abortion medication over the internet, home remedies and even the ingestion of poison, can result in the death of the women who have to resort to them. The National Council of Resistance of Iran wrote: By ignoring [the] issue of widespread abortion in the province, the regime leaders and officials are actually revealing the other side of the plundering, astronomical frauds and wasting away the countrys resources in their war against the people in the region, the disasters we will continue to witness in Iran as long as this regime is in power. Mousavi Chalak said: Among 185 countries, Iran is ranked 105, and regarding the worlds unhappiest countries, Iran is at the bottom of the list behind Iraq. We are the second saddest country in the world after Iraq. The reasons for unhappiness under the Iranian Regime include the high rate of mental illness which rises to 80% in some areas of Tehran, high unemployment rate, the increase in child prostitution, the Regimes repression and the rise in drug addiction and alcoholism. Mousavi Chalak said: Some of the officially announced statistics do not reflect the reality, rather, these unreal statistics are a sign of the officials incorrect [view on] these issues. For instance, the number of addicts has been announced to be 2.3 million people while the actual figure is much more than that. He continued: The number of addicts in Iran is equal to the number of addicts in India, whereas Indias population is 15 times as much. He said: In the past, we thought that we could prevent these issues by a harsh treatment and heavy punishments, but today we think otherwise. Abdi was charged with assembling and colluding against national security and this was upheld by the Tehranian Appeal Court on October 7. EI said this was an unjust charge which contravenes human rights conventions, including freedom of expression and association, and the right of unions to be consulted on education policies. EI encourages its member organisations and individual affiliates to petition the authorities through the LabourStart appeal. Abdi had previously been unfairly detained in 2015, along with three other Iranian teacher unionists, to prevent them from attending the 7th World Congress of Education International in Ottawa, Canada. His much-publicized hunger strike and solidarity campaigns across the globe resulted in his release in early 2016. The Regime have created a crisis in the countrys educational system. They have privatised the education system which contradicts any notion of equal opportunity in Iran. It has resulted in 3.5 million students, specifically girls, the poor, and those from rural or nomadic backgrounds, being banned from attending school. Teachers are denied their basic rights, often their wages are below the poverty line. Iranian teachers have organised nationwide protests and strikes, demanding systematic change. Authorities constantly attempt to silence these teachers through repression and incarceration. This means that up to 150,000 highly-skilled Iranians emigrate every year because of high unemployment, as well as political oppression and lack of religious freedom. November 7, 2016 Morgan Warthin , (307) 344-2015 MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, WY Federal land managers within the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) invite the public to join them in a conversation to help assess ecosystem issues and to build stronger relationships in the future. The meeting will be held on November 15 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Cody Public Library in Cody, Wyoming. Managers intend to develop and strengthen their working relationships with the public and stakeholders by understanding and collaborating on the joint challenges of managing these shared landscapes. Additional information about the meeting can be found at http://www.fedgycc.org/ meetings-and-events/. The public can meet the federal land managers who make up the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC), get updates from its working groups, and hear a presentation from guest speaker Arthur Middleton of the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Middleton will talk about the critical role that elk and other ungulate migrations play in sustaining the ecosystem and local economies. He will also show how photography and mapping are helping to tell the story of these migrations. This work is on display in Cody in the Invisible Boundaries exhibit at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. The GYCC has a new executive coordinator who will facilitate the meeting in Cody next week. David Diamond was selected to coordinate the GYCC Executive Managers and the ten GYCC Subcommittees. Mr. Diamond brings a wealth of skills gained through more than 15 years of federal service with the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As a Presidential Management Fellow, Mr. Diamond served in the Secretary of the Interior's office in Washington D.C. and the Idaho State Office of the BLM. In the Yreka Fish and Wildlife Office of FWS, he brought together diverse partners, including federal and state agencies, tribes, farmers, ranchers, and NGOs to solve complex natural resource issues in the Klamath River basin in Oregon and California. And, in the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary for Operations at NOAA he provided senior leaders with alternatives and evidence to support sound decision-making. Mr. Diamond received his masters degrees in public administration and environmental science at the School for Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. He received his bachelors degree in history and environmental science from the University of Virginia. We are fortunate to have David facilitate the GYCC because of his deep experience in federal land management, said Superintendent Wenk. He will bring a renewed emphasis on creative problem solving and community involvement in the Greater Yellowstone region, added Bureau of Land Management Western Montana District Manager Richard Rick Hotaling, GYCC Chair. The GYCC includes federal land managers from national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges and Bureau of Land Managements National System of Public Lands across the GYA: the largest, essentially intact natural area in the lower 48 states. Together, these agencies manage 15 million acres of federal land. The committee was formed to pursue opportunities of mutual cooperation and coordination in the management of core federal lands within the GYA. Participating federal land managers administer three national parks (Yellowstone, Grand Teton & John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway), two national wildlife refuges (National Elk Refuge, Red Rock Lakes), five national forests (Bridger-Teton, Caribou-Targhee, Shoshone, Custer Gallatin, and Beaverhead-Deerlodge), and Bureau of Land Management lands in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Information about the GYCC and links to member agency websites are available at: http://www.fedgycc.org/. For more information please contact David Diamond at e-mail us or 406-587-6733. They have called on the UN Security Council and General Assembly, especially the European and Arabic member states, and the Human Rights Council and High Commissioner for Human Rights, to start an international investigation into the massacre and bring those responsible to trial. Otherwise, the Federation warns, this impunity would encourage the Regime leaders to continue committing more heinous crimes against the people of Iran and other countries. Their statement read: Arab Federation for Human Rights calls on Arab Gulf Cooperation Council, Arab League, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Arabic and International non-governmental and human rights organizations to strongly condemn this crime against humanity that is in stark contrast with (and violation of) all international covenants and laws and the Islamic and human values. The Federation urges them to try to use regional and international mechanisms to realize accountability and punishment of the officials responsible for these crimes against humanity so that justice is served for the victims who are oppressed because of lack of the support that the international community should have provided them. The 1988 massacre of political prisoners began after the then-Supreme Leader, Khomeini, issued a fatwa demanding their execution. Over a period of a few months, 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), were murdered and secretly buried in mass graves. An audio recording of Ayatollah Montazeri (Khomeinis former heir), that leaked in August 2016, revealed that the Regime also executed pregnant women and young children. Photo by Innocent kaneza, CC BY This is the Hotel des Mille Collines, but better known as Hotel Rwanda, my guide/driver said as we approached a security checkpoint flanked by off-white walls with the name of the hotel written on them in blue. Wait, what? I responded. Clearly, I hadnt done my research. This is the hotel the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda was based on; the very property that 1,268 Tutsi and Hutu refugees hid in during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Yes, it was partially filmed on the property, according to my guide Gilles, but youd never guess it was a landmark that saved thousands of lives. They dont gloat or tout themselves as the place that saved lives. And why would they? While the manager, Paul Rusesabagina, and the building itself were heroes, this is not a time people want to remember. The only reason the Oscar-nominated film starring Don Cheadle was made in the first place was because something so horrid happened. So, why would they advertise that only two decades later? What do they even do? Put a plaque by the entrance that said, This is the very spot thousands of innocent civilians hid terrified for their lives? The hotel, which has seen multiple owners since the genocide, has moved on. First Impressions I had never seen the movie or learned about this particular hotels role in the genocide, so I was slack-jawed. I was quickly brought up to speed as we pulled onto the long driveway that led to my accommodations for the night. Hotel des Mille Collines opened in 1973 as Rwandas first grand hotel. When the Hutus began their 100-day slaughtering, the Hutu manager, Rusesabagina, risked his life to protect his Tutsi wife and other targets, and the hotel became a safe haven. The 113-room hotel with four restaurants and bars and an expansive lobby didnt have the space for all of these people, but Rusesabagina didnt turn anyone away. He provided sanctuary to refugees free of charge, with sometimes 10 people to a room and others sleeping in the hallways or by the outdoor bar/pool area. Blown away by this true story, I looked for a sign of this heroism at the hotels entrance, but all I found was an off-white block building with four stories of angular balconies, a handful of flags, an overhang above the entrance and a security X-ray machine directly inside the front doors. It may not be the most elegant entrance, but it makes sense; it was only 20 years ago that the hotel was stormed and shot at by Hutu militants. Clearly, people are capable of all types of evil; better to be safe. After a quick search, I walked down a few steps into the bright and airy lobby, where Rusesabagina saved the lives of hundreds by bribing the militants with fancy spirits and fine cheese, which the four-star hotel still serves in its rooftop restaurant Le Panorama. Right in front of me was a stone wall, which hints at a story waiting to be told, but they veered away by opting for an otherwise modern theme. Turning right brought me to a seating area and reception desk. Cream walls, ceilings and tiled floors demonstrate the desire for a clean slate, as does the work by local artists that is featured in the lobby and rotated as each piece is sold. When I was there, there were beautiful multicolored elephants hanging behind reception. Large windows on the opposite side, facing the brown reception desk, frame a vast view of Kigali from above. Looking out onto the city, its hard to picture a time when smoke and fired filled the sky and terror filled the streets, as the city is now a burgeoning metropolis. Patterned couches and wallpaper on one wall give the lobby a bit of character without sacrificing sophistication. The Rooms Photo by Innocent kaneza, CC BY While the hotel has been renovated since 1994they had to; the carpets had been scorched by guests cooking meals on them and walls destroyed by attacksthe rooms arent the most updated Ive experienced. However, I saw the understated design as a way to pay respect to the hotels past by not overpowering its story or painting over the tragedy that occurred in Rwanda with bright paint or funky furniture. A dark brown wooden headboard matches the desk and contrasts the cream walls and curtains. Each room has a balcony (some have city views, mine had a parking lot view). My queen-sized bed was two smaller beds pushed together. The rooms feature all the essentialsTV, wifi, snacksand nothing excessive or lavish, which reminded me of how little we need to survive, proven by the hundreds who went with little food, water and respite for months during the genocide. The African-themed art livens up an otherwise basic space. What Pops Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty I think its pretty obvious what pops. The hotels history and its heroic former manager (pictured above with Don Cheadle). However, what really stuns is how the hotel deals with said history. If my driver hadnt mentioned it to me upon arrival, I would never have made the connection, as I didnt recognize the name. The only sign of what happened here is a beautiful marble memorial by the parking lot. This hotel isnt still standing for exhibitions sake; they arent hosting tours or attracting tourists who just want to take pictures outside. It exists to serve and to represent Rwanda with pride and grace. Which is exactly how Rusesabagina would have wanted it. However, just as the genocide was not so long ago, remnants of what happened here are not so far away, and if you want to feel a connection, you can. For example, take a walk around the pool that refugees once drank from when the water was shut off. At the same time, this history is by no means thrown in your face. The sparkling pool is surrounded by palm trees, and sits next to the large bar under a tiki-style hut, turning the back of the hotelonce a sight of extreme desperation and hopeinto an oasis. The Locale The Hotel des Mille Collines sits atop a hill that looks over central Kigali. A bit removed from the bustling city, the hotel is a few minutes drive to major attractions, like the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Address: 2KN 6th Ave Website: Hotel des Mille Collines Room Rates: $228 $280 Maggie Parker is Paste Magazines assistant travel editor. How do you guarantee getting pick-pocketed in Colombia? First, look like a gringo. For me, its easy. Red hair. Green eyes. Freckles on pale Celtic skin. They can tell by the way we walk, my gringo friend Kendrick insists. He got this on good authority from Colombian buddies who confided the fact during a night on the town. A night on the town is a second step in getting your pocket picked in Bogota. On October 20, Adela, my fiancee, and I marched in a big raucous crowd of Colombians supporting an endangered peace proposal that Presidentand new Nobel Peace Prize laureateJuan Manuel Santos doggedly continues to pursue. The nation voted NO to the accord by a razor-thin margin in early October. Santos believes ending a 52-year civil war with leftist guerrillas that has cost 220,000 lives might be worth the time and trouble. We joined a 3,000-person throng snailing its way along the Septima, Carrera 7, passing a dozen blocks of central city Bogota. The demonstration began in daylight and ended by flashlight beams from smart phones lighting a path through the dark. The Septima empties into the great Plaza de Bolivar, where stand the citys most historic cathedral and monumental houses of government. Authorities close off the blocks nearest the plaza to automobiles, and free from the menace of scofflaw taxi drivers and swarms of motorcycles, an amazing assembly of street vendors and performers ply their trades here. Salted and buttered ears of corn roast over open coals. Bootleg CDs litter colorful blankets, these placed beside more blankets, then even more blankets. Vendors hawk jewelry, books, toys, bric-a-brac, you name it. Among the vendors, a sequin-gloved Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalked to Billie Jean. He drew an audience agog at a perfect step-by-step simulation of The King of Pops famous live performance at the Apollo Theater in 1983. The faux Michael provided the third component for getting your pocket picked in Bogota, distraction. Like a clever magician who can pull a rabbit out of a hat, a skilled pickpocket canpop!pull a cell phone out of the most unexpected places. Likepop!right out of a pocket. Is there a certain romance associated with picking pockets? I confess that I have in the past held this sort of crime a little separate, higher in respect, from, say, robbing a 7-11 or bribing public officials for sewage contracts. My attitude was shaped by Oliver Twist, where Fagin teaches those poor street urchins to survive by kipping a pocket fob from a fop without rustling so much as a top hat. I found more glamorization in a short story by Roald Dahl, The Hitch-Hiker. Here, a man offers a ride to a pickpocket a finger-smithwho in turn uses his gifted digits to save the driver from an unpleasant situation with a policeman. An Irish prostitute named Chicago May achieved some turn-of-the-20th-century celebrity by relieving her customers of, well, lets just say she relieved them. (Rare is the man who calls authorities to report a wallet he lost in a brothel.) Cutting Ball, a colorfully named Elizabethan cutpurse, enjoyed notoriety until caught, and hanged. (Picking pockets was a capital offense in jolly olde England.) Pickpockets have even entertained us. In the 1950s, Borra, a.k.a. The King of Pickpockets, earned the highest pay of any circus performer in the world. Traveling with the Swiss National Circus, he worked crowds under the big top, liberating watches from wrists, wallets from pockets, even eyeglasses from faces. (Borra would place a swiped pair of spectacles on his own nose while he calmly chatted with their rightful owner.) His obituary in the United Kingdom newspaper The Independent reported Borra made enough money picking circus-goer pockets to to buy a whole street of houses in Austria, which was named after him, the Borraweg. Finally, according to Wikipedia: Professional illusionist David Avadon featured pickpocketing as his trademark act for more than 30 years and promoted himself as a daring pickpocket with dashing finesse and the countrys premier exhibition pickpocket, one of the few masters in the world of this underground art. Daring. Dashing. Underground art. See what I mean? The skill of picking pockets, finely done, has an allure, some kind of mystique. Until its your own pocket thats picked. Believe me, then the thrill is gone. It happened on the Septima, among small groups and couples headed home after the peace march. The evening felt finished, consummated. What bad could happen? Tired couples drifted, arm in arm. Students passed, exhilarated by their roles in Something Historic, voices hoarse, faces flushed. Music came from storefronts. A young man appeared, longish blonde hair, a part in the middle. He knew his target: that gringo. The young man aggressively pushed some brightly printed pages into my face, something he insisted I buy. He acted urgent, like he could actually save my life if I just bought what he sold. He helped me read the Spanish by waving the pages wildly. His right shoulder bump me hard. He continued pressing with his chest, shaking the papers, making his passionate sales pitch. Distraction! That was the moment, I feel sure, when his goddamned clever hand slipped into my left outside jacket pocket. He irritated, intimidated. To make him go away, I fished pesos from my jeans and dropped those in his palm buying freedom, I thought. Oh, how disappointed the young man looked at those few coins. And then, how disappointed I felt mere minutes later, realizing Id just given a pickpocket a tip for stealing my cell phone. Any bubble of romanticism about pickpockets burst that moment. One feels very foolish reaching for a phone to summon an Uber, only to find a flat, empty pocket. It feels even more foolish to search other pocketswindbreaker, shirt, pantslooking for a phone and not finding it. And it feels still more foolish to search those pockets over and over only never find a missing phone. The Motorola was new, nothing too valuable stored yet in its little brain or photo archive at least nothing that couldnt be replaced next morning for, oh, several hundred U.S. dollars. So, good reader. Do you want to get your pocket picked in Bogota? Look like a gringo. Go to a crowded public place. Get distracted. Youll get your pocket picked. The up side? My wonderful friend Rosanne Cash wrote an essay a few years back for Never Say Goodbye, a collection of remembrances about New York City. She wrote of a peculiar NYC christening ceremony: One of the few times I actually went inside the deli (Jack and Jill, on Carmine Street), a junkie bumped up against me and took my wallet. I was shocked but oddly relieved. Id been living in New York less than a year. I was glad to get that particular initiation over with it was the initial skin-thickening crime imprimatur that every new city dweller needs. Here I stand, Bogota. Fully initiated. Skin thicker. New phone in hand. Image: Kyle M Lease, CC-BY Charles McNair is Pastes Books Editor emeritus. He served the magazine as writer, critic and editor from 2005-2015. Cue the music, the arm-waving, the fanfare, and out onto the podium waddles the Presidential candidate. A nausea-inducing wreck, whose gimlet eyes and pouty lips are framed by a wild floppage of orange peels, curls of which some biologists identified as hair. Donald J. Trump, one of natures curiosities, born with an unnatural talent for mass-producing millions of little lies, all clamoring out of him like the countless offspring of a seahorse in the act of giving birth. Not a nice picture, and certainly not a nice man. Trump derives from an aristocracy of idiocy that includes such ignobles as George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama Governor, who sought the White House on the violent platform of Law and Order. Elections, in our current age, are forever based on the cult of personality rather than on issues. Political grifters slick up their filthy engines of charm, then plow full-steam ahead as they manipulate crime statistics for their advantage. Consider, if you might, that in 2015, police killed at least 102 unarmed black people. Thats nearly two killings a week. One in three of all black people killed by police, might I add, were unarmed. Not to mention the countless cases that have gone unreported. Any appeals to the black community from Trump are vacuous, as activist Deray McKesson has diligently reminded people. Trump was never counting on black people to vote for him, but solidifying a racist base. He has not been trying to recruit black voters so much as give his own cult more public cover to patronize and smear the black community. I can see why rapper Rejjie Snow remarked how he resembles, that white stuff that accumulates at the corner of your mouth. For years, this insufferable furball-in-a-suit has depicted the country as being plagued by rampant crime, fecklessly finger-pointing at different non-white communities, including urban blacks, Hispanic immigrants, and Native Americans. Trumps hatred of women, also, has never been more crystal-clear than in the recent leaking of a 2005 Access Hollywood tape. On the tape, Trump, then a D-list celebrity at best, was heard to be bragging that he could grab a woman by the pussy without her consent and get away with it because he sees himself as a star. Cathy Heller recently became the ninth woman to have publicly accused Trump of allegedly sexually assaulting her, including accounts of kissing and groping. Trump has vehemently denied all the allegations, suggesting they are surfacing now because of a smear campaign to derail his candidacy. Trump, lest we forget, argued in favor of unleashing the New York Police Department to remedy social unrest. And which, pray tell, upstanding models of Law and Order might one imagine he finds more fanciful? Vladimer Putin of Russia, the communist dictator who opposes the personal expression of marginalized minorities in the country he controls. Trump, of course, has done some failed business with Russians before; one need only google the words Bayrock, Trump SOHO to unlock a casket of inflammatory information. Other failed enterprises include Trump Casinos and Trump Vodka. Ever the jester, one of Trumps more jocular yet dangerous suggestions, was how useful it might be for Russia to hack the American governments website. I am rather confident that Edward Snowden found this one funny, and no doubt Chelsea Manning split her sides laughing, if not of course, from the pain inflicted on her by the so-called caretakers stationed in the ghastly Guantanamo Bay. Manning made her second suicide attempt in recent days in reaction to not getting adequate medical assistance for her gender transition, a gross human rights violation imposed by the US State. Torture as technique, was endorsed by Trump in regards to Muslim immigration and terrorism suspects, terrorism being that frenzied neurosis that appears at all times, everywhere. I recently put the question of torture as a tool to Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, while she visited Dublin, and she admitted it is time to repeal its contemptuous implementation. Other luminaries in the aforementioned Aristocracy of Idiocy, from which Trump descends, include Ross Perot and Lee A. Iacocca, modern industrialists who got into politics and fanatically expressed wide-eyed conspiracy theories about Asia and Latin America. Trump incidentally, expressed compliments for the Chinese governments handling of the Tiananmen Square riots in China in 1989, when troops with assault rifles and tanks killed at least several hundreds student demonstrators and civilians. If not thousands. As for industry, when it comes to business and Trump, there is almost never any truth to be found. This is exactly why, after generating so many falsehoods, Factcheck.Org declared that in the twelve years since its founding, they have never seen any of his claims match. And that was even before this year began. When asked by Anderson Cooper if he used a $916 million loss to avoid paying taxes for nearly twenty years, Trump clumsily replied, Of course I do, and so do all of her donors. He further declared that this made him smart. I suppose that makes millions of working class people dumb, by his estimation. This was the same debate, incidentally, in which he threatened Clinton with jail over her email scandal, if he was in fact elected. An outcome that looks increasingly unlikely in the final run up to the election. There is a trash heap of lies Trump has regurgitated. There was the time he told Larry King that he had been paid more than $1 million to give a speech about his business acumen, when in fact he was only paid $400,000. Then there was the rigmarole surrounding his deferment from serving in Vietnam. Trump received several deferments during the Vietnam War. Five times in total, actually, because of heel spurs. The condition of heel spurs are protrusions caused by calcium built up on the heel bone, treated through stretching. In the 2005 biography, ambitiously titled The Truth About Trump, author Michael DAntonio described interviewing the ginger-furred gas-bag, who at one point slipped off his loafer to display a tiny bulge on his heel. Being questioned about it at a news conference last year, Trump could not recall which heel had been involved, prompting his campaign to panic and release a statement saying that it had been, in fact, both heels. This inconvenient fact drew fresh scrutiny after the grief-stricken parents of an Muslim-American soldier who was murdered in Iraq, publicly questioned if Trump had ever sacrificed for his country. Trump responded by belittling the parents of the slain Muslim-American, saying that the father delivered the entire speech because the mother was not allowed to speak up. There are, of course, occasions when Trump does indeed endorse women speaking in public, not least of all when his wife Melania delivered a speech at the Republican National Carnival, when she reportedly plagiarized a speech once given by another woman, a woman who happens to be married to the current President. This woman is Michelle Obama, who gave a devastating address in New Hampshire last week. This is not normal. This is not politics as usual, Michelle Obama said, regarding Trumps treatment of women, as she teetered on the verge of tears. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesnt matter what party you belong to Democrat, Republican, independent no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse. That speech will be remembered for its powerful condemnation of the abuse and harassment that women endure on streets and in the workplace in a speech delivered, fittingly, almost exactly 25 years from the date another talented black attorney, Anita Hill, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about having been harassed by Clarence Thomas, who had been nominated for the Supreme Court. Regarding that Republican Convention Carnival? one of the most bizarre events held was a photography exhibition, Twinks 4 Trump, curated by a young Republican called Lucian Wintrich. One of the speakers attending was Geert Wilders, leader of the third most popular party in the Netherlands, a right-wing movement gaining in his countrys polls. This is war, Wilders recently declared via Twitter, and it will not stop until we close our borders, for Islam and de-Islamize our societies. No more Terror! No more Islam! Wilders have many things in common with Trump, not least of all a freakish fixation for hairstyles inspired by the film genre science fiction. Wilders is currently under scrutiny for a legal investigation for his hate speech. Now, in the final stretch of the election, with almost everything indicating that Clinton is to become the next President of the United States, and the first woman to ever hold that office, we should probably ask ourselves how someone like Trump could manage to gain so much support. I think of how liberal a society Germany was at the start of the last century, and how quickly that changed. On 6 May 1933, while Magnus Hirschfeld was on a lecture-tour of the US, the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organized attack on the Institute of Sex Research. A few days later, the Institutes extensive library and archives on sex research were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz, while Nazi officials gave speeches to crowds. Around 20,000 books and journals, and 5,000 images, were destroyed. I point out this tragedy because it is always worth acknowledging that another casualty of tyranny is civilization itself. We must always be vigilant that tyrants who appeal to the destructive and uncivilized aspects of human nature never be enabled or put in positions that allow them to destroy what generations of hard-working, decent, creative people have built to pass on to younger generations. The most dangerous thing in the world is not hate, but indifference. We need to inspire people out of indifference and to mobilize against bigotry, stigma, and destruction. One way of doing this is to prevent dangerous idiots like Trump from ever having positions of power. I hope enough people agree with me for the betterment of our world. CIC Builds Stronger Bridges For Small to Mid-Sized Construction Businesses Giving Owners and Entrepreneurs The Forum to Gain Expert Knowledge on Growth Strategies And Contracting Opportunities By: CIC Contact Elizabeth Johnson ***@mwebbcom.com Elizabeth Johnson End -- The Construction Industry Conference (CIC), the most comprehensive conference for small and mid-sized construction and professional services businesses announces its 4th annual conference line up including expert construction business speakers, 'Ask The Expert' sessions, networking opportunities, and educational panels on 'all things construction'. CIC also brings together contracting opportunities from federal, state, county, and city agencies for small, mid-sized, disadvantaged, veteran-owned and women-owned construction businesses, architecture and engineering firms."The majority of small and mid-sized construction company owners start their business because they are good tradesman, but, in many instances, have had limited or no access to information and know-how on what it takes to run a construction business. The conference will help bridge the information gap and deliver valuable resources to these businesses,"says CIC founder Suzanne Stantley.Held on November 10 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, registration is available at: http://www.constructionconference.net/ 2016-registration Keynote speakers include:Mr. Robert Theel, Chief Architect and Director of the Design & Construction Division for the Great Lakes Region of the General Services Administration.Kenneth Osmun, Group President of Construction at Wight & Company; Mr. Osmun brings years of expertise in the field; as president of construction at Wight & Company, Ken leads the firm's construction group and co-leads the multidisciplinary group of architects, engineers, and construction managers who make up project teams.Panels this year include: "How to Forge A Relationship with Unions, "Safety Oversight and Competent Person Requirements for Construction"(with speakers Gilbert Velez and Atty. Robert Shipley), "Five Ways to Get Your First Federal Government Contract" (with speakers Richard Hernandez and Michael Wolff), "OSHA Recordkeeping"(with speaker William Coulehan), "The Value of Safety, EPA, HR,& Occupational Medicine for the Construction Industry", where panelists will share the most recent rules and regulations, "Strategic Partnering.How to Work with Primes and Project Owners" and "Why You Need to Develop a Strategy to Prepare Your Business To Secure Financing" ( http://www.constructionconference.net/ speakers-and- sessions ) moderated by financial expert, Dwain Speese.The all-day conference will be held November 10 from 9:00am until 5:00pm at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Hermann Hall, 3241 S. Federal Street. Registration opens at 8:00am and runs until 2:30pm. This information packed day also provides tremendous networking and personal meetings with the exhibitors and presenters.For exhibiting and advertising opportunities, go to: http://www.constructionconference.net/exhibiting-and-advertisingConstruction Industry Conference founder Suzanne Stantley has founded and operated several successful businesses during her career, starting with Image Advertising in the mid-80's. In 1990 she co-founded and served as CEO of National Black Expo for twelve years in Chicago and several other cities until 2002. Throughout her career, Suzanne has sought out and identified solutions that would positively impact the viability of varying business segments. These efforts have aided in strengthening the capacity of small, mid-sized, and socially and disadvantaged businesses through education, training, strategizing, consulting and advising. She continues to keep her finger on the pulse of business opportunities for companies and aggressively seeks out information to assist emerging firms.Contractor Advisors Business Development Inc. is a 501 c3 organization focused on education and training. It is the non-profit branch of Contractor Advisors Inc., a professional services firm whose key product is Surety Bonding. Business development services offered in collaboration with strategic partners include business plans, marketing and construction accounting. The founder and president, Suzanne Stantley, an MBA degreed professional with more than thirty years experience in marketing and communications also co-founded and was CEO of the highly successful National Black Expo, a consumer exposition that ran twelve years in Chicago and other cities until 2002 and 40 other programs through her career. She is a proven leader in business development, community engagement and collaboration and is a vocal proponent of inclusion that open up the doors of opportunities for all who are prepared to meet the challenge and seeks partnerships and alliances to solve problems.Elizabeth Johnson, (213) 713-4865 (tel:%28213%29%20713-4865), elizabeth@mwebbcom.com Javier Vinasco and the Q-Arte String Quartet perform works by Del Aguila, Atehortua, Garrido-Lecca and Posada. Javier Vinasco & Q-Arte String Cuartet Contact North/South Consonance, Inc ***@att.net North/South Consonance, Inc End --kicks off its 37th consecutive season with a concert Monday eveningfeaturing clarinetistand theThese outstanding performers hailing from Colombia will introduce New York City audiences to recent chamber works especially written for them byandThe concert will take place at the intimate and acoustically superior auditorium of Christ & St Stephen's Church (120 West 69th Street) on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The free-admission event will start atand end around 9:30 PM. The auditorium is ADA accessible. No tickets or reservations needed.The performers are available for interviews and media events and may be contacted through our office atSince its inception in 1980, thehas brought to the attention of the New York City public over 1,000 works by composers hailing from the Americas and elsewhere representing a wide spectrum of aesthetic views. Its activities are made possible in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs as well as contributions by numerous individual donors.ABOUT THE COMPOSERS AND THEIR MUSIC(b. 1957; Montevideo, Uruguay) attended the San Francisco Conservatory and the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna. His musical style has been described by the press as "dependably brilliant" and "sonically dazzling." Hisearned a Grammy nomination in 2015. De Aguila'sis a romantic, quiet and delicate music that should be played at night under the stars. The quasi-improvisatory work weaves together elements derived from the blues and Brazilian folk-song.Colombian composer(b.1943; Antioquia)studied with Alberto GInastera at the Torcuato di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires. Also active as conductor and pedagogue, his portfolio includes over 250 instrumental and vocal compositions. His four movement-- written at the request of Javier Vinasco -- is a great example of the composer's penchant for combining formal schemes from the Baroque Era with rhythmic and melodic elements derived from Colombian folk-music.Peruvian(b. 1926; Piuria) was awarded the Tomas Luis de VIctoria prize in the year 2000. He studied in Peru and Chile before visiting the US during the early 1960's at the invitation of the Institute for International Education. A Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him to participate in the Tanglewood Music Festival and the Inter-American Festival held in Washington, DC. In 1965 he accepted a professorship at the University of Chile and began a fruitful artistic relationship with Victor Jara, themaster. He returned to his homeland in 1975 to take the helm of the Lima Conservatory. Written in 1994, the music of(meaningin Quechua) is meant to evoke ancestral Inca culture.Colombian(b. 1954, Medellin) earned an advanced degree in composition at the Mannes College of Music before returning to his homeland to establish the music department at EAFIT University. A winner of the 1989 Valentino Bucchi composition contest, his works have been performed in Europe and throughout Latin America.is a one movement composition. In the manner of a helix or spiral, the music grows out of a brief motif introduced at the opening by the viola. VIrtuosic clarinet candenzas and impressive string passages propel the music to a dramatic climax eventually disappearing into silence.MEET THE PERFORMERSColombian clarinetistwas nominated for a Latin Grammy for his album devoted to the music of Astor Piazzolla and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Much in demand as recitalist, clinician and pedagogue, Vinasco has appeared on concert stages throughout his native country as well as in many Asian and Latin American nations. He has premiered and recorded numerous compositions written especially for him by Latin American composers. He earned a doctorate in performance at Mexico's National University and holds a professorship at the prestigious EAFIT University in Medellin, Colombia. A Vandoren artist, the press has referred to him asTheis one of the most innovative and exciting chamber ensembles in Colombia. Active since 2008, it maintains an busy performance schedule while also being involved in pedagogic undertakings at the Universidad Javeriana and Colombia's National University. The quartet's interpretations -- full of rhythmic force, energy and precision -- have been described asandThe members of the ensemble are violinistsandviolistand cellistFor the complete Winter/Spring concert series schedule please visit John Burkeen from Kansas, won the 2016 Hi-Tech Dream Giveaway sponsored by New Beginning Children's Homes. By: New Beginning Children's Homes The Hi-Tech Dream Giveaway winner, received a $10,000 Apple Store gift card. Contact DGGroup,Inc., Kim Meyers ***@dggroupinc.com DGGroup,Inc., Kim Meyers End -- The 2016 Hi-Tech Dream Giveaway, a nationwide drawing sponsored by New Beginning Children's Homes, ended on September 27, 2016. John Burkeena 55-year old electrician from Kansaswas the grand-prize winner. Mr. Burkeen was awarded a $10,000 Apple gift card!Mr. Burkeen is a generous Dream Giveaway supporter who made two donations in April and July 2016. His strategyspilt his money across different giveawaysproved to be a smart one. "I think these giveaways are fantastic and I'm glad that I was able to help some great causes," he said.On Friday, October 14, 2016, Dream Giveaway Garage Director of Communications Christopher Phillip surprised Mr. Burkeen with the announcement that he had won the. "I have never won anything in my life," he said. "I was just completely shocked. My family and I are very happy."Mr. Burkeen enjoys wrenching on hot rods and Harley-Davidson motorcycles in his free time."Believe it because this is for real!" he said, when asked what he would tell people who see amazing Dream Giveaway prizes on TV, in magazines, and online at www.dreamgiveaway.com The sponsor of this promotion was New Beginning Children's Homes (NBCH), a 501(c) 3 provider of family-style long-term residential care with a mission to provide foster children a safe and faith-centered family atmosphere where they can heal, grow, and be loved while working through difficult life issues. In addition to the funding they received, NBCH provided grants to several worthwhile charities, including Disabled American Veterans, National Guard Educational Foundation, Smile Network International, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Bright Pink and Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries.For low-res and high-res photography and video assets, please contact Kim Meyers.A Dream Giveaway spokesperson is available for press interviews for traditional print, broadcast, and radio media and digital-only sites. Please contact Kim Meyers ( kmeyers@dggroupinc.com ) to arrange a press interview. Local author Cooper H. Wingert will be signing copies of book End --Much like the rest of the nation, South Central Pennsylvania struggled with slavery. The institution lingered locally for more than fifty years, although it was virtually extinct everywhere else within Pennsylvania. Gradually, antislavery views prevailed. The Appalachian Mountains and the Susquehanna River provided natural cover for fleeing slaves, causing an influx of travel along the Underground Railroad. Locals like William Wright and James McAllister assisted these runaways while publicly advocating to abolish slavery. Historian Cooper Wingert reveals the struggles between slavery and abolition in South Central Pennsylvania.Cooper H. Wingert is the author of ten books and numerous articles on slavery and the American Civil War. He is the recipient of the 2012 Dr. James I. Robertson Jr. Literary Award for Confederate History, in recognition for his book The Confederate Approach on Harrisburg.Barnes & Noble58 South 32StreetCamp Hill, PA 17011Saturday, November 19th, 2016 at 11:00 a.m.Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or online.The combination of Arcadia Publishing & The History Press creates the largest and most comprehensive publisher of local and regional content in the USA. By empowering local history and culture enthusiasts to write local stories for local audiences, we create exceptional books that are relevant on a local and personal level, enrich lives, and bring readers closer - to their community, their neighbors, and their past. Have we done a book on your town? Visit www.arcadiapublishing.com Text Blast has become the chosen Bulk SMS service provider for start-ups as well as big businesses across UK. By: Text Blast Media Contact Mr. Swadhin Dikpati ***@textblast.co.uk 0121 285 9672 Mr. Swadhin Dikpati0121 285 9672 End -- Businesses, both big and small, are constantly looking for effective but more economical ways to reach out to customers and push their products and services. Text Blast is athat offers optimal benefits to businesses of all shapes and sizes with its SMS marketing solutions. For companies that want to connect to customers across UK and even across the globe via SMS, it is the best resource.This SMS marketing company based in Birmingham, UK, provides customers with a powerful tool that can help them to schedule messages, easily upload all mobile contacts and also create multiple marketing lists in a convenient way. The whole process is extremely easy. Business owners can easily create a free account with Text Blast and start sending SMS to customers after payment. Businesses, other than sending affordable and branded SMS messages, can also shorten long URLs with the help of Text Blast.The custom solutions offered by Text Blast helps create mobile advertising campaigns at minimal rates, and boosts response rates from customers. This has made it more popular asservice provider. The agency has many years of experience as an SMS solutions provider in the area. It is backed by a team of highly qualified specialists and industry professionals, who constantly work to develop powerful solutions to ensure SMS marketing in ways that are more effective. Its professionals also try to devise economical solutions for businesses that opt for the Text Blast platform.The company ensures fast and immediate delivery of SMS messages, helping businesses get optimal benefits from their association with Text Blast. Text Blast is constantly trying to develop and integrated newer features to make its platform better and trendier for its clients. It is not surprising that the company has managed to bag top customers in its client list. At the moment, Text Blast covers all the main UK mobile networks such as Virgin, Vodafone Ltd, T-Mobile (UK) Limited, BT Fixed Line, Orange, Manx Telecom and Cable and Wireless UK.The intuitive software from Text Blast comes without any setup costs, but can allow customers to send huge amount of messages. It can allow tracking and engaging of customers and marketing products and services at minimal expenses. The platform can also be integrated into CRM software, which can help improve customer engagement and the flow of information. The official Text Blast website also has tutorial videos to help technologically challenged business owners to understand the entire process.An SMS marketing company based in Birmingham, UK, Text Blast is the one-stopsolutions provider for big businesses as well as small start-ups in the country. The agency is known for low-cost SMS marketing services and tailor-made solutions for all types of businesses.For further information and enquiries, you can visit http://textblast.co.uk/ Contact Person: Mr. Swadhin DikpatiText BlastLanchester House, Montgomery Street,Birmingham, B11 1DT, UKPhone no: 0121 285 9672Email id: help@textblast.co.uk By: Rotarex Firetec Contact Charles Strobel strobel.charles@ rotarex.com Charles Strobel End -- Rotarex Firetec, a business unit of Rotarex SA, introduced its new DIMES System for Inert Gas to ensure fixed installation fire system readiness 24/7/365. This digital IG cylinder contents measuring system is the first to be able to adjust for temperature variations on pressure to deliver a precise real gas reading.Dr. Thomas Andreas, Head of Firetec R&D, commented: "Accurate monitoring of cylinder contents is important since leaks can happen, especially in in applications subject to vibration or motion."If the volume of gas in the cylinders drops lower than the design concentration level needed to extinguish a fire, the fire protection system can fail.Research shows that traditional pressure gauges often give inaccurate readings because they fail to take into account the effect of temperature on the pressure reading. Consequently, this can lead to inaccurate readings or false alarms.Dr. Andreas elaborated, "Take, for example, a wind turbine that is protected by an IG system with an alarm threshold set at 270 bar. On a very hot day it can be more than 45 C inside the turbine. So if there is a leak in an IG cylinder, the pressure may not fall below 270 bar yet there is not enough gas remaining to extinguish a fire. Conversely, on a very cold day, let's say the inside temperature falls below 5 C, the pressure drops below 270 bar even though the cylinders are full and not leaking. This will trigger a false alarm."The new DIMES System for inert gas solves this problem. Using advanced sensor technology and algorithms, DIMES measures both pressure and temperature, then calculates the real gas cylinder contents at ambient temperature with 99.9% accuracy. The percent gas fill level is clearly shown on a digital display on each cylinder. Plus, to enable remote monitoring, a software interface is available.DIMES is designed for use with cylinder pressure from 0 to 400 bar. The algorithm is configured for the 4 main types of inert gases used in fire suppression:Nitrogen (IG01), Argon (IG 100), IG 55 and IG 541.DIMES is manufactured with the same robust traceability protocols as medical devices. In addition, traceability data relative to each cylinder such as date of service, maintenance schedules and more is built into the software.Dr. Andreas concluded, "This DIMES inert gas system leverages technology from our DIMES CO2 system, which has been in service for many years. So engineers, installers and property owners can have more confidence that their IG fire protection system will be ready at all times, 24/7/365."The Rotarex Firetec DIMES System for Inert Gas is now available through Rotarex sales centers and distributors worldwide.About Rotarex FiretecBusinesses, building owners, engineers and installers worldwide confidently choose Rotarex Firetec systems, components and accessories. We've become a world leader in fire suppression valves thanks to the expertise we've developed over 80 years and our enduring commitment to quality and technical excellence. Focused on innovation, we continue to develop breakthrough products that keep people, buildings and equipment safer from fire. And we create products and systems that improve productivity, require minimal maintenance and deliver outstanding ROI over time. You can find us in 65 countries and can count on us to provide responsive service. For more details visit us at: http://www.rotarexfiretec.com Occasion was a seminar on 'Capacity Building & Youth Empowerment' for LPU students By: LPU End -- His Excellency, Minister of Defence and National Security (Government of Maldives) Adam Shareef Umar visited Lovely Professional University. Occasion was Maldivian Minister's dialogues of utmost importance to LPU students on the topic 'Capacity Building & Youth Empowerment', which is of great interest to both India and Maldives. His interaction with LPU students proved gratifying when HE personally recognized potentiality of LPU in capacity building for engaging youth. He was accompanied by his wife Ms Zeenaz Adnan and Principle Director of Department of International Defence Cooperation and Policy (Maldives) Colonel Abdul Matheen Ahmed. Lovely Group Vice-Chairman Mr Naresh Mittal welcomed the high profiled guests from Maldives.One of the top Maldivian politicians, Mr Adam Shareef is also 'Special Envoy' of the President of the Maldives. Graduating from the University of East Anglia (UK), with an MA in Education, he has also served as Minister of State for Education after starting his career as a primary teacher more than 30 years back. Being basically a teacher, he completely understands what are the existing needs & aspirations of students and what are expectations from them in present scenario. Now, coming closer LPU and Maldives will work together on various capacity building projects for engaging maximum of youth on positive notes in both the countries.Referring LPU as one of the best universities in the world with bountiful resources, Mr Minister said to students: "Be better & responsible persons; help & educate your colleagues & class-fellows too; and help in creating society a better existence globe over." Lamenting the materialistic pursuits in the 21century, he guided students to avoid unhealthy exercises and unexpected behavior. He also expected students not to be merely money focused and economics oriented. Informing about great bondage between India and Maldives, he said: "Both the countries have a long history of esteemed and strong bonding between people and people. There exists common culture, special loving feelings without any of the conflicts, and indeed great relationship between the two. We in Maldives always believe that India is ever-ready to help us in any of the crises." He also shared that many of his staff members are also getting special training at LPU.LPU Executive Deans Dr Lovi Raj Gupta & Dr Sanjay Modi apprised HE Adam Shareef about different endeavours being taken by LPU towards capacity building and youth empowerment. Associate Director of International Affairs at LPU Mr Aman Mittal also shared the main dais. One of the Maldivian students Ismail, who is pursuing B Sc Biotechnology at LPU said: "We are greatly inspired to see great leaders of our country amid us to inspire and guide the entire young generation. We are fortunate to be at LPU which always provides us bigger platforms to co-exist in an individual and special way to be a better part of global society." The conference, attended by the mayor of Sassari, the director of the Amnesty International and its Italian representatives and a delegation from the Iranian Resistance, condemned the Iranian Regime for the massacre and the suppression of women and supported those seeking justice for the victims. The political-cultural advisor of Sassaris Mayor, Raffaella Sau, welcomed the Iranian Resistance delegation. Sau said: I want to express my gratitude to the Association of the Iranian youths in Italy for holding the conference. I also thank those who resist in order to attract the worldwide attention. I appreciate you for your activities which shape our public opinion against violence and genocide in your country. Elahe Arjmandi, a member of the Womens Commission of NCRI, emphasized that the Iranian Regime still contains nearly 60 people who were instrumental in the murder of 30,000 Iranians. Many of the Regime leaders are still orchestrating mass executions today. She insisted that they must be investigated and tried in an international court. At the end of the reference, a statement was read out which condemned the massacre and all participants signed. There was much debate about the suppression of women under the Regime and their roles in the Resistance. Dr. Stefania Fusco and Dr. Maria Cristina Carta both discussed the misogynistic laws of the Regime and their suppression of women in general, while Elham Zanjani spoke about the repression of women under the Mullahs regime and emphasised that women played a vital role in the overthrow of the Iranian Regime. The Mayor of Sassari, Nicola Sanna, said: I congratulate the ladies who participated in this conference since the president of the Iranian Resistance is a woman and this contains a significant concept and message. The women lead the resistance at the national and international levels and they are the actual champions of freedom and democracy. Sanna continued: We and our city are on the side of the freedom fighters and the revolutionaries. We welcome the delegation of the Iranian Resistance and we support their struggle for freedom and democracy. By: Business France Contact Catherine Ryall ***@businessfrance.fr Catherine Ryall End -- In a global market worth almost 200 billion (around 173 billion) a year, the medical devices and in vitro diagnostics sector is particularly innovative in France. Across the Channel, the sector is comprised of over a thousand companies, employing almost 65,000 people with expertise encompassing medicine, mechanics, material physics and digital technologies. The French market is estimated to be worth 15 billion (around 13 billion) with around 700 new patent applications filed every year, considerably boosting the sector's value. Despite being largely made up of SMEs along with some microbusinesses and a few large groups, almost 74% of these organisations have R&D and/or production departments.The healthcare industry is navigating profound changes and, in response, is using innovation as a growth driver. R&D generates brand new solutions that deliver performance and security for both patients and doctors alike. Medical robotics is making technical medical interventions easier. French companies are at the leading edge of all of these technologies, helping to achieve what was previously believed to be impossible.Six French companies, particularly at the cutting edge of medical technology, will be in the spotlight in the Innovation zone at Medica 2016 in Hall 17 (17A40A 0 17A40E and 17C24F): http://www.axilumrobotics.com/ en/?noredirect= en_US ) will be presenting the world's first and only robot designed for transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Its non-invasive neurostimulation technique offers therapeutic applications for psychiatric and neurological conditions, severe depression, chronic neuropathic pain and post-stroke conditions which are resistant to drug therapies. TMS could change the lives of millions of people living with chronic pain. It can considerably lessen drug-resistant symptoms by acting on affected parts of the brain. These robotic solutions, marketed since 2014, are sold or leased with maintenance contracts.(http://www.mdoloris.com/en/) (17C24F) is the first global player able to provide hospital practitioners with non-invasive systems to continuously monitor pain. Of the three components of anaesthesia, analgesia is the only one not to have previously been measured objectively. For the very first time, this monitoring solution allows clinicians to objectively measure the pain felt by patients, enabling them to administer personalised quantities of painkiller to both conscious and unconscious patients.www.mdoloris.com(http://miravas.com/index.php/en/home-2/) is exhibiting VBOX, the first medical device to treat varicose veins with water vapour, for use in the operating room. Similar to other endothermic techniques (lasers, radiofrequencies, water vapour), its mechanism of action, that is emission of heat into the vein, causes collagen fibres in the vein wall that are obstructing the vein to retract. VBOX delivers its steam treatment by sufficiently heating the body of sterile water contained in its handpiece so that it turns into steam. This heating process also raises the pressure in the handpiece up to saturation vapour pressure, allowing water vapour to be injected into the vein through a catheter or needle.VBOX is a competitively priced and medically congruent device that makes it possible to treat the full spectrum of venous diseases in the doctor's office. ItsCE certification ensures it is available to angiologists and vascular surgeons in Europe.www.miravas.com(http://www.physioassist.com/)specialises in medical devices aimed at patients with obstructive respiratory illnesses. Its Simeox rangeoffers healthcare professionals access to breakthrough technology in bronchial decongestion and meets the primary needs of patients with cystic fibrosis or chronic bronchitis. Its performance, which has been proven in a clinical tolerance trial, improves the medical service delivered. It enables patients to carry out effective bronchial clearance independently and less painfully whilst also considerably reducing treatment costs. The Simeoxmedical device and its consumables are now CE-labelled so that they can be marketed to physiotherapists via distributors for European markets, as well as countries with EEA trading agreements in place. It comes with a connected touchscreen interface and a travel pouch with space for storing medical consumables and the remote control.www.physioassist.com(http://www.robosoft.com/en/home/) will be presenting Kompai, the connected assistant for caregivers that helps frail people live independently at home or in institutions. This robot improves people's physical independence, helps them feel safe, especially in the event of a fall, monitors health to improve prevention, provides cognitive stimulus and facilitates day-to-day life by supporting social contact, allowing users to send emails by voice command. It also offers data processing capabilities.www.robosoft.com(http://www.therapixel.com/)is revolutionising surgery through touchless visual recognition with Fluid, a medical image navigation system designed for the operating room. Operated entirely by gesture-based commands, it offers efficient access to patients' radiological files in sterile conditions. No need to touch anything! The operating room diary is used to preload examinations in advance. Patient information is loaded by selection from the daily operating list. Fluid is compatible with all PACS on the market and gives access to all patient images, both pre and intraoperative, regardless of how they were generated.www.therapixel.comAlong with these 6 innovators, a total of 218 French companies will be exhibiting at the group pavilion run by Business France the national agency supporting the international development of the French economy at Medica, the global healthcare exhibition, onin Dusseldorf.With eight partners on-site at the France Pavilion ALSACE BIOVALLEY - BCI - LILLE EURASANTE CCI FRANCHE COMTE CCI LIMOGES - MADEELI I-CARE MEDICEN - TECHNOPOLE TBS SYNERGIA (Caen La Mer) and SUD DE FRANCE, come and meet the French exhibitors representing this growing industry.Business France UK (The French Trade Commission)Catherine Ryall, Press Officercatherine.ryall@businessfrance.fr+ 44(0) 207 024 3613www.youbuyfrance.com/uk/ By: GSF Mortgage Corp. Coby Matush and Brian Salak Contact Alyssa Schwabe ***@gogsf.com Alyssa Schwabe End -- GSF Mortgage Corp. is pleased to welcome both Coby Matush and Brian Salak as mortgage loan originators located in Brookfield, Wisconsin. They are both new to the industry and have recently completed the Xinnix Training for Loan Officers course as part of GSF Mortgage's initiative to welcome millennials into the mortgage business.Matush is a recent graduate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a major in business and a duel focus on HR management and general management. He has always had an interest in the financial services industry so becoming a loan officer was a natural fit. He will treat all of his clients as if they are a close friend and understands that taking care of his customer's needs is what it takes to develop a successful business plan.Salak is a recent graduate from California University of Pennsylvania with a degree in business administration with an accounting concentration. He found the mortgage industry very appealing as it is hands on and he can use his accounting background. He looks forward to building strong relationships with his customers and referral partners and knows that earning their trust is a vital part of being successful in the industry."I have extremely high expectations for both Coby and Brian. They were chosen to be a part of our expansion project for non-experienced loan originators and they have been excellent selections so far. Both are highly intelligent and extremely hard workers. They have everything it takes to be successful in the mortgage industry and I am proud that they are beginning their careers here at GSF. You will see great things from both of these young men," says President Chad Jampedro.Matush can be reached at (262) 901-1472 or cmatush@gogsf.com.Salak can be reached at (262) 901-1432 or bsalak@gogsf.com.GSF Mortgage continues to seek mortgage rockstars for a number of positions throughout the United States including branch managers, mortgage underwriters and mortgage processors. If you are looking for a dynamic company with a great work culture, benefits and a remarkable reputation, please visit gogsf.com/careers.# # #Founded in 1995, GSF Mortgage is an established and experienced direct mortgage lender. With 20 years of lending experience, GSF professionals originate, process, underwrite, and fund all loans. We continue to serve the next generation of homeowners with the GoGSF brand. We are focused on flexible and transparent mortgage lending and are on a quest to continue hiring the "best of the best" in the mortgage industry. With many locations, our strengths keep GSF Mortgage "Lending in Your Favor". Interested in finding out more about us? Visit us at GoGSF.com and check out our available career opportunities. Contact Jennifer Gatti ***@liebertpub.com Jennifer Gatti End -- Over a 6-year period, patients with the genetic disease lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD) who received a single gene therapy treatment of alipogene tiparvovec had a marked reduction in the severity and frequency of pancreatitis. No cases of severe pancreatitis and only one admission to the intensive care unit for an LPLD-related abdominal event were reported in the study published in, a peer-reviewed journal from(http://www.liebertpub.com/). The article is available free on the(http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/hum.2015.158)website until December 8, 2016.and coauthors from Universite de Montreal, Canada, Academic Medical Center and uniQure BV (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Chiesi Farmaceutici (Parma, Italy), Beaujon Hospital, Denis Diderot University (Paris, France), University Hospital of North Midlands (U.K.), and Erasmus Medical Centre (Rotterdam, the Netherlands)present their findings in the article entitled "Long-Term Retrospective Analysis of Gene Therapy with Alipogene Tiparvovec and Its Effect on Lipoprotein Lipase Deficiency-Induced Pancreatitis ( http://online.liebertpub.com/ doi/full/10.1089/ hum.2015.158 )."The researchers assessed LPLD-related acute abdominal events that required hospital care in a small group of patients treated with a single dose of the gene therapy product Glybera. The results support an association between gene therapy for this rare genetic disease and overall reductions in healthcare costs and resource utilization."As gene therapy moves forward into the mainstream of medicine, it will be critical to define the evidence of its benefit to patients with specific diseases," says Editor-in-Chief, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education and Dean, Provost, and Executive Deputy Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. "This work with alipogene tiparvovec provides an evidence-based guideline for its use in patients with LPLD going forward."the Official Journal of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, French Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, German Society of Gene Therapy, and five other gene therapy societies, is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly in print and online. Led by Editor-in-Chief, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education and Dean, Provost, and Executive Deputy Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Medical School,presents reports on the transfer and expression of genes in mammals, including humans. Related topics include improvements in vector development, delivery systems, and animal models, particularly in the areas of cancer, heart disease, viral disease, genetic disease, and neurological disease, as well as ethical, legal, and regulatory issues related to the gene transfer in humans. Its companion journals,published bimonthly, focuses on the application of gene therapy to product testing and development, and, published quarterly, features data relevant to the regulatory review and commercial development of cell and gene therapy products. Tables of contents for all three publications and a free sample issue may be viewed on the(http://www.liebertpub.com/hgt) website.(http://www.liebertpub.com/)is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, includingandIts biotechnology trade magazine,), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the(http://www.liebertpub.com/)website. Harley Davidson Roadster and Road Glide Special have been added to the company lineup along with a range of Milwaukee Eight engines to be seen on its touring range of motorcycles within the country. 2017 Harley Davidson Roadster exudes power and performance and gets a price tag of INR 9.70 lakhs. It is powered by a V-Twin 1,200cc air cooled engine also seen on board the 1200 Custom. This engine is capable of 96 Nm peak torque at 4,000 rpm, while true to company policy, power figures have been kept a secret. The new Roadster receives 4 digital instrumentation indicating time, trip meter and gear indication. 2017 Harley Davidson Roadster will be assembled at company plant in Bawal, Haryana. 2017 Harley Davidson Road Glide Special is priced at INR 32.81 lakhs and will go on sales from the end of this month. It boasts of aggressive styling and ideally suited for touring while high mileage is its plus point. The Road Glide Special will be powered by a new Milwaukee Eight 107 Single Cam V-Twin ending offering peak torque of 150 Nm at 3,250 rpm. It will receive features that include a 6.5 touchscreen infotainment system and BOOM! 6.5 GT audio system. 2017 Harley Davidson Street 750 Motorcycle is priced at INR 4.91 lakhs and comes in two color schemes of Vivid Black Deluxe and Fire Red Deluxe. The bike gets fitted with a new tank badge and is offered with ABS. In fact, each of the 2017 models get fitted with anti lock braking system which is now on offer across all the 13 Harley Davidson models Street, Sportster, Dyna, Softail and Touring models on sale in India. Milwaukee Eight range of engines offered in three different states of tunes offer more power while liquid cooling ensures that heating is considerably reduced. Fitted with rubber mountings ensures better balance, lower vibrations and an overall better ride. News Release Custom Off-roader Concept based on Harley Davidson Street 750 New BMW G310R is powered by a single cylinder liquid cooled 313 cc engine, which is rated at 34 hp at 9,500 rpm and 28 Nm at 7,500 rpm. This engine is mated to a six-speed gearbox. Weighing 158.5 kgs, power to weight ratio stands at 212.7 hp/tonne, which is lesser than rival KTM Duke 390s 262 PS/ tonne. Claiming a mileage of about 36 kmpl, it has a fuel tank capacity of 11 liters. Some of the highlights include upside down forks in the front, mono shock rear suspension, disc brakes with dual channel ABS, short wheelbase for easy manoeuvrability, Michelin tyres hugging the 17 inch 5 spoke alloys, 300 mm front disc with 4-piston fixed caliper and 240 mm rear disc with 2-piston floating caliper, LED side indicators, center stand, 12V charging socket, etc. Expect price to be in the INR 2 lakh range in India. Making global debut late last year, India will get the BMW G310R by March 2017. This new naked motorcycle is the first fruit under BMW Motorrad TVS JV which was formed in 2013. Under this JV, BMW and TVS will jointly launch a series of new motorcycles in India in the under 500 cc segment. The technology co-operation agreement between BMW Motorrad and TVS sees the German entity responsible for product development. TVS is responsible for manufacturing both new bikes. Production should commence at TVS Hosur plant. The first motorcycle is a BMW product, second will be a TVS product a fully faired motorcycle based on the G310 platform. This was showcased as a concept at the 2016 Auto Expo, called Akula 310. We expect it to be named Apache 300 upon launch. Speaking about product rivalry between TVS and BMW, distinct body styles will eliminate a situation of cannibalization, and help both manufacturers reach out to target audiences. BMW G310R Techspecs Renault India has launched extended warranty options on all their cars on sale in the country. Renaults Anytime Warranty Plan allows owners of Renault cars and SUVs to avail of an extended warranty by 1 year/20,000 kms, starting from the third year until the seventh year of ownership. However, there is a cap of 1 lakh kms under this scheme. This extended 7 year warranty is on all models in the company lineup except for the Kwid which comes in with a 4 year/1 lakh km standard warranty. Renaults Anytime Warranty Plan offers owners the chance to extend standard warranty to cover the vehicle for a period of 7 years or upto 1 lakh kms. This benefit is offered to customers if their current standard warranty pack has expired or if the car has not been serviced at the companys authorized service stations. The warranty covers all major components which include the engine, gearbox, ECM and starter besides the alternator, differential, AC compressor and steering box. Roadside assistance is also a part of this warranty package. This extended warranty covers all Renault vehicles which include the Triber, Lodgy, Duster, Captur and also the Koleos, Fluence and Pulse. For those cars serviced at the companys authorized service centers, prices of the Anytime Warranty Plans range from Rs.5,775 for the 3rd year for the Renault Kwid going up to Rs.21,550 for the 7th year for the Renault Lodgy. Detailed price list can be seen in the images in this post. In the case of vehicles that have been serviced at third party garages, these prices range from Rs. 8,390. In the case of the Koleos, Fluence and Pulse which have been discontinued from the company lineup, the extended warranty pack (for existing owners) is priced from Rs. 7,820 to Rs. 94,810 and will be as per model, year of coverage and service history. Along with the Anytime Warranty Plan, Renault India is also offering cash discounts on the Renault Duster, Kwid and Captur through the month of November 2019. Buyers of the Duster can avail benefits upto Rs.1.25 lakhs in addition to loyalty bonus of Rs.10,000 and Rs.20,000 as exchange. The Kwid also comes in with loyalty benefits upto Rs.50,000 on select stocks along with a 4 year/1 lakh km warranty while the Renault Captur SUV gets the highest discount of Rs.3 lakhs along with a corporate discount of Rs.5,000. An eclectic range of electric two wheelers have already started arriving in the market and it looks like the existing conventional motorcycles and scooters are about to witness weakening of their appeal. If the government has its way, we could be bidding farewell to sub-150 cc two wheelers sooner than later. Even if that happens, we would still be left with too many IC engined two wheelers that are already in use. What could be done about them? Well, a mechanical from Hisar, Haryana, has come up with a potential solution. He simply took a conventional commuter motorcycle, got rid of its petrol engine and replaced it with a battery. A typical jugaad that we as a nation is known for. Watch the detailed video of a similar installation below. He used BLDC motor with speed controller for this modification. He has used deep discharge battery, so there no risk of any blast or fire hazard. Specifications are not known but we could see that the entire system is pretty simple. We dont see any dedicated power electronics module, so we reckon it is a simple DC motor which derives its current directly from the battery. The motor then drives the sprocket directly without the help of a gearbox. Also, we dont see any provision to plug the battery in to a socket directly for charging. We guess, the battery needs to be recharged the same way a dead vehicle battery is recharged (use distilled water, connect the negative and positive terminals using clips to a power source). Using this Hero Splendor electric motorcycle could be a cumbersome exercise. Moreover, a truck battery (that too used) is not likely to have adequate cycle life for a sustained EV application. While this modified motorcycle is interesting as a garage build, we have serious doubts over its practicality. For starters, the mechanic has removed the engine and modified the tubular frame to accommodate the battery. We are not sure how much did this modification compromise the chassiss strength. Total cost of this modification is Rs 7,000 for the e-kit, plus the cost of battery. Given that the electric motor varies its speed very drastically during normal operation of the motorcycle, the battery is loaded dynamically and this could push it beyond its designed limits, leading to fire, or in extreme cases, an explosion. So, it is imperative to have a properly designed battery, relevant power electronics, and a carefully designed battery management system. We expect a wide variety of retrofit EV kits for existing two wheelers to be available off-the-shelf in the coming months. We hope, the government intervenes and regulates this segment by allowing only the approved vendors and fitters to make the powertrain swap. What would happen if a lengthy disruption befell the major mode of transportation of U.S. corn and soybeans? What ramifications would that have on U.S. producers and the national economy? How would that affect U.S. competitiveness in world grain markets? While hypothetical, these concerns are very real as the barge corridor in question contains a total of 36 locks and dams that have long since surpassed their designed lifespan. This corridor is the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway (UMR-IWW) that serves as the primary corridor for the movement of bulk commodities in the U.S. Corn and soybeans comprise nearly 90 percent of food and farm products on these waterways. Barge transportation is of great importance to U.S. agriculture because of its comparatively low transport costs as compared to overland modes. However, the inefficiencies of the locks are currently creating additional fuel and labor costs to barge operators, ultimately increasing transportation costs of grain and oilseeds, which means less profit for producers, higher costs for consumers and a handicap when competing in the world market. U.S. grain and oilseed producers have frequently expressed concerns about navigational inefficiencies of these aging and constrained waterways. Congress authorized the Navigation and Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP) in 2007 to address the capacity constraints on the most congested segments on these waterways; however, implementation of NESP has been delayed due to a lack of appropriations from Congress. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service asked Edward Yu, associate professor at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AREC), to lead an economic analysis of the navigability on the UMR-IWW, which is crucial and timely to the U.S. agricultural sector and could help evaluate the need for NESP appropriations. Yu was selected due to his considerable experience and expertise in agricultural transportation economics. Professor Burton C. English and Jamey Menard, research leader, assisted Yu by estimating the economic impacts that would occur as a result of lock closures. Estimated economic impacts from the study include: Aggregate economic activity related to grain barge transportation reduces by $933 million (or 40 percent decrease) if Lock 25 on the upper Mississippi River is closed from September to November during the 2024/25 marketing year. The reduction reaches to nearly $2 billion if the lock is unavailable for the marketing year. Decline in economic surplus in the corn and soybean sector due to Lock 25 closure could cause a decrease of more than 7,000 jobs, $1.3 billion in labor income and about $2.4 billion of economic activity (total industry output) annually. While similar consequences are anticipated if LaGrange Lock on the Illinois River is closed for a period of time, the degree of magnitude is less. "Resulting study recommendations stress how crucial it is to maintain the navigability of the UMR-IWW system for U.S. food and farm products and the risk of delaying infrastructure improvements," said Yu. The full report of this study can be found at http://tiny.utk.edu/9nhrs A new analysis indicates that many men with prostate cancer obtain second opinions from urologists before starting treatment, but surprisingly, second opinions are not associated with changes in treatment choice or improvements in perceived quality of prostate cancer care. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings also explore motivations for seeking second opinions, and suggest that second opinions may not reduce overtreatment in prostate cancer. Cancer societies encourage patients with cancer to obtain second opinions prior to starting treatment to help them understand their disease and to thoroughly weigh the risks and benefits of their options. Given the ongoing debate concerning whether prostate cancer patients are being overtreated, second opinions in this context are important because management options vary widely from surgery and radiation therapy to active surveillance programs. However, the study did not find that second opinions affected treatment among low-risk men -- the most likely candidates for active surveillance -- casting doubt on whether second opinions are sufficient to reduce overtreatment among this group. Archana Radhakrishnan, MD, MHS, of Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, and her colleagues sought to assess the frequency of and reasons for second opinions for localized prostate cancer, and the characteristics of those who seek them. They also evaluated whether second opinions are associated with certain treatment choices or perceived quality of prostate cancer care. The investigators surveyed men as part of the Philadelphia Area Prostate Cancer Access Study (P2 Access). A total of 2386 men who were newly diagnosed with localized prostate cancer in the greater Philadelphia area between 2012 and 2014 responded. Forty percent of men obtained second opinions, commonly because they wanted more information about their cancer (50.8 percent) and wanted to be seen by the best doctor (46.3 percent). Overall, obtaining second opinions was not linked with receiving definitive treatment or with perceived quality of cancer care. Men who sought second opinions because they were dissatisfied with their initial urologist were 51 percent less likely to receive definitive treatment, and men who wanted more information about treatment were 30 percent less likely to report excellent quality of cancer care compared with men who did not receive a second opinion. Men who obtained second opinions because they wanted more information, were seeking the best doctor, or had been encouraged to by family or friends were more likely to ultimately receive surgery. The authors suggest this could indicate that for some men, second opinions represent a way to pursue the treatment they already plan on receiving, rather than to explore other treatment options "Patients often report getting second opinions for prostate cancer. Their impact on care that patients receive remains uncertain," said Dr. Radhakrishnan. Rosen, who is also a United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) Advisory Board Member, wrote this to coincide with the 37th anniversary of the hostage crisis. The Iranian Regime celebrated the anniversary with anti-American rallies in which they burned the American flag and demonstrators chanted slogans like Death to America and Death to Israel. Rosen emphasised that the next American President had to deal with Iran; not only their constant violations of the nuclear deal but also making anti-American statements and allying with terrorists like Al Qaeda. He wrote: It is imperative that the Presidential candidates and our policymakers in Congress understand that the Iranian regime that held my colleagues and me hostage has not reformed its ways. He continued: My fellow survivors and I are dismayed to see the same actions being taken against fellow Americans in Iran today. There have been a number of dual nationals held on unsubstantiated chargesjust like I wassentenced to years in Iranian prisons without recourse. There are currently five American citizens and residents being held on dubious charges in Iran. Rosen wrote: The next President must be prepared to take a hard line against Khamenei and his regime as they push the envelope The fanciful notion that the nuclear deal would bring about better relations between our two countries has been dispelled; a new administration will have the chance to cast a spotlight on Iran for the bad global actor it is. "How do massive stars form?" is one of the fundamental questions in modern astrophysics, because these massive stars govern the energy budget of their host galaxies. Using numerical simulations, Professor Wilhelm Kley, Dr. Rolf Kuiper and Dr. Dominique Meyer from the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Tubingen in a collaboration with Dr. Eduard Vorobyov from the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Vienna revealed new components of the formation of massive stars, which were already known from the formation process of low-mass as well as primordial stars. The study has now been published in the peer-review journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The birth of massive stars is still a mystery to us, because these stars are embedded in an extremely dense medium of gas and dust, says Rolf Kuiper, the leader of the Emmy Noether Research Group for Massive Star Formation, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). "This opaque envelope makes it difficult to directly observe the birth process even with modern telescopes. In other words, we see the cradle in which these stars are born, but we can't detect the stars themselves." Therefore, the researchers modeled the birth process within a numerical simulation. For this ambitious, computationally expensive study they made use of high-performance computers within the bwHPC initiative of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg. The simulation starts with a cloud of gas and dust, which collapses under its own gravity and eventually forms a so-called accretion disk around the hot young star. The material in such a disk rotates around the central star and slowly transports gas and dust towards it. For the first time, the resolution of these simulations was sufficient to infer the formation of high-density clumps within the gravitationally unstable disk. Once formed, these clumps start to migrate through the disk and finally sink into the central star. "Like throwing logs into a fireplace, these episodes of clump consumption produce violent luminosity outbursts outshining the collective effect of one hundred thousand Suns," says Eduard Vorobyov. A similar process of episodical luminosity bursts was already known with respect to the formation of the first stars in the Universe and for low-mass stars like our Sun. The new investigation suggests now that the formation of stars of any kind and epoch are controlled by the same universal processes: "It is amazing to see these similarities, as if star formation on all scales and epochs is controlled by a common DNA forged in the early Universe," says Dominique Meyer, the first author of the study and post-doc in the Emmy Noether Group. The clumps, explains Wilhelm Kley, are also excellent candidates for the formation of Solar-type companions to massive stars: "These companions will also influence their future evolution." The results will help to develop new observing strategies for detecting these luminosity outbursts -- and even for directly imaging the high-density clumps in accretion disks around very young massive stars. This will be a task for modern observing facilities such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) or the future European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Life in the wild harbors the risk of predation, food shortages, harsh climates, and intense competition. Zoo animals, by contrast, are protected from these dangers. UZH researchers were part of an international team that studied over 50 mammalian species to determine whether the animals live longer in zoos than in the wild. How long do animals live? Although the question seems trivial, it is not easy to answer -- especially in the case of free-ranging animals, as it is extremely difficult to determine accurate dates of birth and death of all members of a specific population. By comparison, zoos meticulously record the births and deaths of the animals in their care. Now, however, studies of known-aged individuals in the wild are available, making it possible to compare demographic parameters, including longevity. Smaller species attain greater longevity The research team led by the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich assessed the demographic parameters of more than 50 mammalian species. The scientists discovered that longevity was higher at the zoo for more than 80% of the mammals studied -- species such as African buffalos, reindeer, zebras, beavers, or lions. "All 15 carnivore species in our dataset attained greater longevity at the zoo," states Marcus Clauss, professor of nutrition and biology of zoo and wild animals at the University of Zurich. "It seems that even for predators, life in the wild is not necessarily without its perils." The greater longevity at the zoo was particularly prominent among smaller species having a generally shorter lifespan, for instance, tree shrews, weasles, white-tailed deer, or African wild dogs. The juveniles and adults of these species typically fall victim to predators or to intraspecific competition in the wild, thus reducing their average longevity. "With regard to long-lived species that generally have lower mortality rates in the wild, there is less that zoos can protect them from. As such, the effect is not as great and, indeed, in some cases is even reversed," says Clauss. Time lag in success measurement The researchers emphasize that their results reflect historic animal husbandry conditions at zoos and not currently practiced conditions. "In order to evaluate longevity of a population, we only consider the 'extinct cohort' -- that is, a group of individuals born in a certain period, all of which have died. Individuals that are still alive would skew the analysis," says Dr. Jean-Francois Lemaitre from the University of Lyon and researcher at the Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).This means that changes in the husbandry of long-lived animals introduced in the last decade have not yet influenced the results, as many members of the cohorts affected by these changes are still alive. Whether changes made today influence longevity can therefore only be determined thirty years from now. Zoo ethics The researchers emphasize that longevity as a single contributing factor cannot support complex ethical judgements on keeping animals. "A thorough assessment of the husbandry of a species demands consideration of many other aspects. The most important insight of our study is possibly that it demonstrates that life in the wild is not a life in paradise," says Prof. Clauss As mammals evolve, so do mammalian viruses. In doing so, they develop creative and effective ways to counter and evade the antiviral responses of their mammal hosts immune systems. Researching those mechanisms at the molecular level can reveal key insights into the principles of such strategies relevant to therapy development. An international team of scientists, led by prof. Savvas Savvides of the VIB Inflammation Research Center at Ghent University, set out to do just that. By zooming in on GIF a protein secreted by the virus that causes Orf, or thistle disease they unraveled viral molecular strategies to counter the mammalian immune system. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, provide the basis for developing antiviral therapies and for exploiting the potency of viral proteins to tweak the human immune system to counter inflammatory diseases and cancer. Orf disease is highly contagious and causes painful scabby lesions on the lips and nostrils of animals such as sheep, goats and other livestock. As a zoonotic disease, it can also be transmitted to humans. In fact, Orf is in the top 20 most important viral diseases affecting the rural poor in developing countries especially in economies that depend heavily on animal farming and agriculture. Although seldom fatal, the disease not only potentially leads to high mortality rates in young animals and children when lesions make it impossible for them to eat; lesions can also impact livestock reproduction and make infected hosts vulnerable to other infections. It is clear that determining just how the virus goes about its infectious business is of major socioeconomic significance. An integrative, cross-border approach Coordinated by prof. Savvas Savvides from VIB-Ghent University and spearheaded by Dr. Jan Felix, an international team of scientists rose to the challenge of shedding light onto how Orf cripples the mammalian immune system. The aim? To obtain structural and mechanistic information through an integrative structural biology approach on how GIF one of the proteins secreted by the Orf virus inactivates two key cytokines of the host immune system: IL-2 and GM-CFS. Both proteins play key roles in cell signaling and immune system regulation. Prof. Savvides (VIB-Ghent University) said, Our approach involved the use of various methods in the spirit of integrative structural biology, including x-ray crystallography and electron microscopy, combined with biochemical and biophysical studies. To achieve this, we worked closely with colleagues from France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. In addition, much appreciated research funding from national and international agencies, as well as access to specialized facilities at the European level proved to be crucial for our research. A rare and surprising discovery Prof. Savvides (VIB-Ghent University) said, We investigated GIF because we are intrigued by how viruses use specialized proteins to change the immune systems response. What we discovered was surprising: it is very rare that one viral protein can target two different host proteins to dodge the immune response, yet this functional duality is exactly what characterizes GIF. Most surprising was the finding that GIF uses its structure in distinct ways to target the cytokines IL-2 and GM-CSF with high affinity. Remarkably, GIFs structure does not look anything like the natural receptors of the cytokines it targets, yet it is able to mimic their ability to bind to IL-2 and GM-CSF to prevent the normal functions of the two cytokines. A scary feat! Great potential for innovative therapies Prof. Savvides (VIB-Ghent University) said, By unveiling how GIF works, we have taken an important step towards understanding the molecular virtuosity that viral proteins develop as they evolve, and how they interact with their hosts immune systems. As our research moves forward, we would like to consolidate our findings. This, in turn, may help us use viral protein structures, like GIF, to target human proteins in a therapeutic context to combat inflammatory diseases and cancer. A precise measurement of absolute beam intensity is essential for many areas of science. It is a key parameter to monitor any losses in a beam and to calibrate the absolute number of particles delivered to the experiments. However, this type of measurement is very challenging with traditional beam current diagnostics when it comes to low energy, low intensity beams due to the very low signal levels. Particle accelerator experts from the University of Liverpool have now experimentally demonstrated a new type of monitor in a collaboration with CERN, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research and Friedrich Schiller University and Helmholtz Institute Jena. A paper just published in the IOP Superconducting Science and Thechnology journal, the challenges of implementation and first beam measurements are reported. These are the first-ever measurements of this type performed in a synchrotron using both coasting and short bunched beams. The Antiproton Decelerator (AD) is a synchrotron that provides low-energy antiprotons for studies of antimatter. These studies rely on creating antimatter atoms (such as anti-hydrogen) and using them as probes for the most fundamental symmetries in nature such as the invariance of CPT, or of the gravitational acceleration on matter and antimatter. A precise measurement of the beam intensity in the AD is essential to monitor any losses during the deceleration and cooling phases of the AD cycle, and to calibrate the absolute number of particles delivered to the experiments. However, this is very challenging with traditional beam current diagnostics due to the low intensity of the antiproton beam which is of the order of only 10 Million particles, corresponding to beam currents as low as a few hundred nano-Amperes. To cope with this, a Cryogenic Current Comparator (CCC) based on a Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) was developed and installed in the AD, in a collaboration between accelerator experts from the University of Liverpool and CERN, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, Friedrich Schiller University and the Helmholtz Institute Jena. Previous incarnations of CCC's for accelerators suffered from issues concerning sensitivity to mechanical vibrations and electromagnetic perturbations. Furthermore, these setups were used for measuring slow beams, usually from transfer lines of accelerators, and were unable to measure short bunched beams presenting fast current variations. In order to measure the beam current and intensity throughout the cycle of a synchrotron machine such as the AD, the CCC needed to be adapted to cope with the fast signals of bunched beams. In an open access paper just published in the IOP Superconducting Science and Thechnology journal, Miguel Fernandes and co-authors describe the challenges of implementation and first beam measurements. These are the first-ever CCC beam current measurements performed in a synchrotron using both coasting and short bunched beams. The paper demonstrates the exciting prospects of this new type of beam diagnostics device. Examining how land-use changes may affect water quality and fisheries resources in lakes and rivers will help natural resource agencies manage wildlife populations, according to Steven Chipps, leader of the U.S. Geological Survey, South Dakota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at South Dakota State University. The fisheries biologist and Muthiah Muruganandam, a Fulbright scholar from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, will use existing data to track changes in the characteristics and water quality of surface waters in northeastern South Dakota. As a senior scientist at the Indian Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Muruganandam has been doing research on natural resource management and fisheries and aquatic system management, in particular, for more than 20 years. The 18-month research project is supported by the Fulbright Scholar program. Recent changes in land use have been well documented in South Dakota, according to Chipps, an adjunct faculty member in South Dakota State University's Department of Natural Resource Management. Between 2006 and 2012, more than 1.4 million acres of grasslands were converted to cropland, with the largest change occurring in east central and northeastern South Dakota. Nested within this landscape are surface waters that include lakes and rivers, Chipps pointed out. "We don't know how changes in land use may affect surface water quality or to what extent lakes and streams in eastern South Dakota have been impacted." The researchers will access more than 20 years of data from federal and state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, the East Dakota Water Management District, U.S. Geological Survey and the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department. "We're doing a lot of data mining," Muruganandam said. They hope to use long-term data from water quality assessments to evaluate relationships between beneficial water uses and land use patterns. Those beneficial water uses include fish and wildlife propagation, recreation and stock watering sources, in addition to more specific uses such as domestic water supply. Accumulation of sediment and nutrients, such as nitrates and phosphates, adversely impacts water quality, according to Muruganandam. Increased vegetation, lower oxygen levels and decreased water clarity can adversely impact recreational fish, such as yellow perch, bass and crappies. However, Chipps explained, "A lot of things come into play, not just land use." Northeastern South Dakota typically goes through cycles of drought and flooding that affect water availability and aquatic production. "That dynamic has gone on for eons," he said. In terms of fish populations, Chipps noted, "A newly flooded lake is very productive. When the water level decreases or stays static, fish production declines over time. We end up with a stagnant system." The researchers hypothesize that current approaches for dealing with excess water, such as wetland draining and tiling, could stabilize water levels in small lakes and impoundments. This then interrupts the normal ebb and flow that is advantageous to fish populations. "If the data show that lake water levels are becoming more stable, this will change how we look at managing fish," Chipps noted. Environmental impacts on water resources can put pressure on aquatic ecosystems that, in the short term, can have a more dramatic effect than climate change. It's no secret that mislabeling is rampant around the world. Recent studies estimate up to 30 percent of seafood served in restaurants and sold in supermarkets is actually something other than what is listed on the menu or label. Why mislabeling happens is a little squishier. Fraud, human error or marketing ploys -- combined with an often multicountry traverse from boat to restaurant -- make it possible you are eating a different fish than what's on the menu. A University of Washington study is the first to broadly examine the ecological and financial impacts of seafood mislabeling. The paper, published online Nov. 2 in Conservation Letters, finds that in most cases, mislabeling actually leads people to eat more sustainably, because the substituted fish is often more plentiful and of a better conservation status than the fish on the label. "One of the motivations and hopes for this study is that we can help inform people who are trying to exert their consumer power to shift seafood markets toward carrying more sustainable options," said co-author Christine Stawitz, a UW doctoral student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and the Quantitative Ecology and Resource Management program. The researchers, all UW graduate students in aquatic and fishery sciences, aggregated data from 43 published papers that tested the DNA of fish at various locations, including ports, restaurants, grocery stores and fish markets to determine whether mislabeling occurred. They then matched the conservation status and estimated price for each of the mislabeled and true fishes listed in the studies. They found a wide range of conservation status and price differences, but two general trends emerged: True fish sold are of a better conservation status and slightly less expensive than the species named when fish are mislabeled. advertisement "We found a lot of diversity in conservation status across taxa," said co-author Margaret Siple. "Depending on what you order or purchase, you can get a fish that is more endangered than what you ordered, or something that is actually of better conservation status. What we want to emphasize is how diverse these differences are." Their analysis found that true fish are valued at about 97 percent of the mislabeled seafood. That means consumers are paying on average a little more for mislabeled fish. The study didn't examine the potential reasons behind this, but the researchers speculate that while it could be intentional mislabeling to rip off consumers, it is just as likely restaurants and markets are serving and stocking fish they think match the label, but are cheaper, more plentiful options. A white-fish filet can look like any number of species, they explained, and substitutions could happen anywhere in the supply chain. The new study also summarizes which fish are most likely to be mislabeled and of those which varied the most in conservation status between true fish and mislabeled fish. For example, snapper is one of the most frequently mislabeled fish. Its conservation status is vulnerable to endangered -- meaning its population isn't doing well -- but the fishes most often substituted for snapper are considered critically endangered. Results from this study could be useful in helping consumers make sustainable purchasing decisions by avoiding fish that are most likely to be mislabeled. That list is led by croakers, shark catfish (or "basa"), sturgeon and perch. Consumers can also look out for fish commonly replaced with species that are not from sustainable stocks. Examples include eel, hake and snapper. These results could also help seafood certification efforts such as the Marine Stewardship Council and the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch focus efforts on fisheries that are most likely to be mislabeled, the researchers say. The Marine Stewardship Council certifies fisheries for sustainable fishing practices and traceability from the port to markets. A fish often travels from the port to processors and several distributors before reaching the end market, and this change of hands is likely where mislabeling happens, the new study found. "We hope this study can help certifiers understand where in the chain of custody they should be putting their efforts," Siple said. More than 90 percent of ivory in large seized shipments came from elephants that died less than three years before, according to a new University of Utah study. Combining radiocarbon ivory dating with genetic analysis provides a picture of when and where poachers are killing elephants, useful tools in the ongoing battle against illegal animal product trade. The study was published November 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This work provides for the first time actionable intelligence on how long it's taking illegal ivory to reach the marketplace," says Lesley Chesson, the study's co-author and CEO of Isoforensics, "The answer: Not long at all, which suggests there are very well developed and large networks for moving ivory across Africa and out of the continent." "Apart from the actual killing there's the trade on the ground before it gets to ports, the actual shipments through shipping containers, and then the problem of the demand side," says Thure Cerling, the study's first author and distinguished professor of geology and geophysics. This additional information can be helpful to people trying to address those issues." The ivory trade In June 2016, the United States banned almost all buying or selling of elephant ivory, after Hawaii, California and New York, previous centers of the U.S. ivory trade, enacted similar bans. The U.S. bans come 26 years after a 1990 ban on international trade in ivory, aimed at curtailing the widespread poaching of elephants, whose populations plummeted in the 1980s. Despite efforts to stop the ivory trade, poaching claims an estimated 8 percent of African elephants each year, or around 96 elephants per day. Demand for elephant ivory and other illegal products derived from endangered animals has grown in Asia in recent years, opening a fresh battleground in the struggle against illegal ivory even as U.S. markets shut down. advertisement Bans usually allow the sale of ivory that was legally acquired prior to 1976, including heirloom or antique pieces. Confirming the age of those pieces, however, relies on proper documentation. Traders in illegal ivory sometimes use this clause as a cover, claiming that their wares are older than they really are. Radioisotope analysis Cerling and his colleagues applied a forensic science method to objectively estimate the age of samples in seized ivory shipments -- radiocarbon dating. Aboveground atomic testing in the 1960s doubled the concentration of radioactive carbon-14 in the atmosphere. As plants took up this radioactive carbon, the heightened carbon-14 signature was preserved in the plants and transferred to animals. As elephants grow new material at the base of their tusks, the ivory contains the carbon-14 signature of the plants the elephant had recently eaten. Because radioactive carbon-14 levels have been slowly declining since the 1960s, scientists can use the carbon-14 signature in a bone, tusk or tooth to determine, within about a year, when the material was formed. Chesson says that forensic scientists have used the so-called "bomb carbon" signature to estimate the ages of human remains in cold cases and to track the transit time of cocaine from South America to the United States. Cerling, Chesson and their colleagues applied the same method to seized ivory. "Age-dating modern materials helps to answer questions of when in the investigation of the Five Ws: Who, what, when, where and why," Chesson says. "Related techniques help to answer questions of where." Samuel Wasser, of the University of Washington, led collection of ivory samples from large stockpiles seized by law enforcement officials between 2002 and 2014. Alerted by contacts in law enforcement, officials in the seizing country or from internet monitoring, Wasser collected some samples himself and directed colleagues in sampling the rest. Wasser says seizing countries were helpful and cooperative. "They really appreciate the collaborative effort," he says. advertisement Samplers cut small sections, only one or two inches on a side, from the inside surface of the base of the tusk -- the freshest material with the radiocarbon signature most recent to the death of the elephant. Wasser says that the sight of so many tusks in one place is distressing, particularly the tusks of young elephants shot by poachers to attract other larger elephants. "Sometimes, many of the tusks are so small that you can't understand why the animal was even killed," he says. "Tusks can weigh less than one pound, with almost no carvable ivory on them." The story of the evidence Of the 231 samples Wasser collected, only one returned an age of greater than 6 years between the time of the elephant's death and the seizure of the ivory (lag time). Nearly all of the analyzed ivory had a lag time of around 2-3 years, suggesting that the shipments did not come from stockpiles or from old sources, but rather that large shipments of ivory are likely composed of recently poached pieces. "This work demonstrates that little or no 'old' ivory, like that held in government stockpiles, is ending up on the black market, which is good news for the security and monitoring of those stockpiles," Chesson says. "There is no other way to get such intelligence without a technique like bomb-curve radiocarbon dating." Combining Cerling's radiocarbon data with Wasser's genetic analysis to determine the geographic origin of the ivory, the researchers were able to construct a picture of which regions have established rapid pipelines to get poached ivory to market. In the study, seized ivory is classified as either originating in East Africa, in the Tridom region of west-central Africa, West Africa or Zambia. Additionally, samples were classified as having a rapid (less than 12 months), intermediate (12-24 months) or slow (more than 24 months) lag time. Ivory attributed to East Africa had a higher proportion of rapid-transit samples than the other regions, suggesting a strong distribution pipeline from the region. Ivory from Tridom was more likely to contain slow-transit ivory, and both West African and Zambian ivory exhibited intermediate lag times. The information, Cerling says, can help law enforcement focus on the worst poaching regions and can also provide information on the health of elephant populations. "If all of the seizures are really recent, within the past two to three years, we can use that to determine the overall killing rate of elephants is in Africa," Cerling says. It is vital to stop the killing of elephants for their ivory, a feat made more difficult by the emergence of Asian markets within the last two decades. But demand in North American and European markets have slowed over the same time period, Cerling says. "It really became unacceptable for people to buy ivory." Despite progress, elephants are still killed at alarming rates. "The extinction of elephants and other wildlife due to demand for illegal wildlife products is a major problem," Cerling says. "I'm glad we can apply the latest science to that and that I can be part of it." Do severe wildfires make forests in the western United States more susceptible to future bark beetle outbreaks? The answer, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is no. By leading to variability in the density and size of trees that grow during recovery, large fires reduce the future vulnerability of forests to bark beetle attacks and broad-scale outbreaks. "Fire creates a very heterogeneous landscape," says study co-author Kenneth Raffa, professor of entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Beetles can only reproduce in an individual tree once, so they take advantage of this patch of trees and that patch of trees as they become available, but when the number and size of trees vary a lot, it's hard for a large outbreak to develop." Bark beetles attack trees in order to reproduce, and outbreaks occur primarily in forests in which the beetle's host trees are large and abundant. It can take decades for young, post-fire trees to reach the size they prefer. But the researchers, including UW-Madison Professor of Zoology Monica Turner, surmised that if large numbers of suitable trees became available at the same time, post-fire forests could become more susceptible to outbreaks. However, the researchers also considered another possibility: If forests regenerate as mosaics of suitable trees on the landscape (based on size and density), though individual trees may come under attack by bark beetles, this variability might also protect the forest from broad-scale outbreaks. The study team also includes lead author Rupert Seidl of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna (who spent his sabbatical at UW-Madison in 2015) and Daniel Donato at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, a former postdoctoral researcher in Turner's lab. advertisement To test their questions, the team used long-term data from large and severe fires that burned 36 percent of Yellowstone National Park in 1988. "The Yellowstone Fires are often considered to have ushered in the new era of fire activity in the west," Turner says, and she, her students and her colleagues have studied the recovery of those forests ever since. With the data they simulated 130 years of growth following the Yellowstone Fires using a computer model calibrated to the study area and used by forest and land managers around the U.S., called the Forest Vegetation Simulator. "We use models because trees grow slowly, from a human perspective, and we won't be able to observe these changes over 100 years," Turner says. They measured how susceptible the forests would be to bark beetle outbreaks each year following fire based on the characteristics of the dominant tree species in Greater Yellowstone: lodgepole pine and Douglas fir. They compared this to the susceptibility to outbreak assuming the forests regenerated homogenously -- in other words, if tree density and size did not vary. advertisement For lodgepole pine, the model showed it would take 79 years for the first post-fire stands to become highly susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks, and 115 years for half of the stands to reach vulnerability. By 130 years, 89 percent of the stands would be at risk of an outbreak. For Douglas fir, the first stand became vulnerable to bark beetle outbreak after 99 years following the start of post-fire regeneration, according to the model. At 130 years, still just half of the stands were susceptible. "This variation persists over 130 years," Turner says. "In contrast, the homogenous stands become vulnerable early and at the same time." The researchers documented enormous variability in the tree density, size and growth rates among areas that burned in 1988. Turner and Raffa say land and forest managers may want to consider promoting and maintaining this natural variability to help protect forests from bark beetle outbreaks. When large numbers of trees are relatively uniform on the landscape, a sudden or even a chronic stress such as old age can make a sizeable forest resource available to beetle populations all at once. Following fire, managers sometimes thin recovering forests, which can encourage growth of large trees and can even decrease the susceptibility of particular stands to beetle attacks. However, Raffa and Turner say that thinning employed uniformly over large areas might inadvertently increase the risk of outbreak if trees become susceptible all at once. Dense "dog-hair" stands (so-called because of the large number of short trees growing closely together, like the fur of a dog) are not usually valued, but they may play an important ecological role not previously recognized, Turner adds. In the American west, beetles and their well-adapted host trees are locked in an ever-changing arms race. Bark beetles attack a tree and the tree exudes a resin to thwart the beetle. Beetles use chemical pheromones to call in other beetles as reinforcements when they've found a good tree, but the tree subsequently changes its chemical composition to make itself less attractive and more toxic, killing some of its own tissue in the process. "The tree launches a scorched-earth defense against the beetle, but the beetle converts the tree's toxins into attractants, like an early version of jiujitsu," says Raffa. Trees that are stressed -- through drought, age, defoliation and more -- are at increased risk of attack by bark beetles, and subsequently, death. As the climate has warmed, western forests have suffered both an increase in stress and increased beetle overwintering survival, which gives advantage to the bark beetles. The forests have also experienced more frequent and severe fires. "Climate change is creating more opportunity for beetles," Turner says. "Because temperatures are warmer, the beetles don't die off in the winter, and beetles are able to expand their range, impacting trees that are less well-adapted to defending themselves from attack." For instance, Raffa says bark beetles have "breached a historical barrier," showing up in typically cooler places like Alberta, Canada. "The boreal forest now provides a connection between the mountain pine beetle and Midwestern forests for the first time, and no one knows how quickly the beetle will advance or how big a problem it will be," he says. Native bark beetles can present problems in Wisconsin, too. Raffa works with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to refine guidelines and perform ongoing research on bark beetles in the state. Some species have long existed here, he says, but they are less aggressive than the species found out west. Fighting computer viruses isn't just for software anymore. Binghamton University researchers will use a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how hardware can help protect computers too. "The impact will potentially be felt in all computing domains, from mobile to clouds," said Dmitry Ponomarev, professor of computer science at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Ponomarev is the principal investigator of a project titled "Practical Hardware-Assisted Always-On Malware Detection." More than 317 million pieces of new malware -- computer viruses, spyware, and other malicious programs -- were created in 2014 alone, according to work done by Internet security teams at Symantec and Verizon. Malware is growing in complexity, with crimes such as digital extortion (a hacker steals files or locks a computer and demands a ransom for decryption keys) becoming large avenues of cyber attack. "This project holds the promise of significantly impacting an area of critical national need to help secure systems against the expanding threats of malware," said Ponomarev. "[It is] a new approach to improve the effectiveness of malware detection and to allow systems to be protected continuously without requiring the large resource investment needed by software monitors." Countering threats has traditionally been left solely to software programs, but Binghamton researchers want to modify a computer's central processing unit (CPU) chip -- essentially, the machine's brain -- by adding logic to check for anomalies while running a program like Microsoft Word. If an anomaly is spotted, the hardware will alert more robust software programs to check out the problem. The hardware won't be right about suspicious activity 100 percent of the time, but since the hardware is acting as a lookout at a post that has never been monitored before, it will improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of malware detection. "The modified microprocessor will have the ability to detect malware as programs execute by analyzing the execution statistics over a window of execution," said Ponomarev. "Since the hardware detector is not 100-percent accurate, the alarm will trigger the execution of a heavy-weight software detector to carefully inspect suspicious programs. The software detector will make the final decision. The hardware guides the operation of the software; without the hardware the software will be too slow to work on all programs all the time." The modified CPU will use low complexity machine learning -- the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed -- to classify malware from normal programs, which is Yu's primary area of expertise. "The detector is, essentially, like a canary in a coal mine to warn software programs when there is a problem," said Ponomarev. "The hardware detector is fast, but is less flexible and comprehensive. The hardware detector's role is to find suspicious behavior and better direct the efforts of the software." Much of the work -- including exploration of the trade-offs of design complexity, detection accuracy, performance and power consumption -- will be done in collaboration with former Binghamton professor Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, who moved on to the University of California-Riverside in 2014. Lei Yu, associate professor of computer science at Binghamton University, is a co-principal investigator of the grant. Grant funding will support graduate students that will work on the project both in Binghamton and California, conference travel and the investigation itself. The three-year grant is for $275,000. Today's turtles don't have teeth; they cut off their food using hard ridges on their jaws. But their ancestors were not so dentally challenged. A team of international researchers including Dr. Marton Rabi from the Biogeology Lab of the University of Tubingen has now discovered that turtles with remnants of teeth survived 30 million years later than previously thought. The researchers found evidence of this at a major excavation site in China's western Autonomous Region of Xinjiang. Up to now, the most recent finds of toothed turtles were 190 million years old. The new discovery also helps to fill in some of the puzzle pieces in the chelonian family tree and in the distribution of the family over many millions of years. The researchers have published their findings in the latest edition of BMC Evolutionary Biology. The Xinjiang site of Wucaiwan is well known for the remarkable Middle to Late Jurassic dinosaur fossils found there. But among the extinct giants are the fossils of many other animals which shed light on the long evolutionary history of tortoises and turtles, of which more than 350 different species live around the world today. A team headed by study co-author Dr. Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing identified a previously unknown extinct chelonian species, naming it Sichuanchelys palatodentata -- the turtle with a toothed palate. "Scientists had previously known that the earliest turtles still had teeth in their palates, a primitive feature they inherited from their reptilian ancestors," says lead author Dr. Walter Joyce from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. "Previously, the last toothed turtle, however, was known from 30 million years older rocks. It is therefore a great surprise to find a toothed turtle that survived even longer." The researchers were able to classify the new turtle among the known families of chelonians -- as well as learning more about the biogeographic history of turtles. "Our analysis revealed that the new turtle is the closest known relative of a large terrestrial turtle, Mongolochelys efremovi, that lived almost 100 million years later in central Asia," says Dr. Rabi. "It seemed a bizarre turtle that previously had no known close relatives, but now we see that it represents the final links of a long lineage that persisted throughout Asia for much of the Mesozoic." "Although living turtles are not particularly mobile, people had not previously recognized significant links between the distribution of fossil and recent turtles and the configuration of the continents, as they did for frogs or other amphibians," says Dr. Clark, a coauthor from George Washington University, USA. "Our analysis reveals that the initial diversification of turtles was controlled by the breakup of the super continent Pangea during the Jurassic to Cretaceous," says Dr. Joyce. "Each continent thereby developed its own unique turtle fauna, like the extinct turtle lineage we newly discovered from Asia." ISNA News Agency, affiliated with the regime, reported on November 5, that Esmail Qaani, the Deputy Qods Force Commander, made these remarks at the commemoration of one of the commanders of IRGC in Syria, Hossein Hamedani, in the Military University of Imam Hossein. Qaani referred to the Syrian Civil War as a fundamental battle for the regime. He told the IRGC and those who were deployed to Syria that, this war requires very strong and firm people who attend on the battlefield and fight with all of their dignity. He added, of course this war will continue and it will not simultaneously end with the incidents of Iraq and Syria since this war is based on identity and existence and it will continue. Today Syria needs the commanders who can impose the will of the Islamic Republic of Iran to their enemies. It is actually a significant character that each commander of the Assads regime should have. His comments are explicit regarding the position of Iran in the conflicts of Syria. The Deputy Commander of Qods Force said that the plans of the Syrian regime have failed, the enemies made an effort to break our will. We could not fulfill the IRIs will unless our commanders resisted. I appreciate the commander Hossein Hamedani who did not withhold any attempt to fight with the enemies in the Syrian war. By the time he was appointed as the commander of the Advisory Forces in Syria, the situation in Syria was so critical that an airplane was targeted with a shell while landing at Damascus Airport. The Takfiris Forces fired the presidential palace with shells and they have marched until the back of the Iranian Embassy in Syria. The Guardian, as well as several other media outlets, reported that Hossein Hamedani was killed in Aleppo in October 2015, and this incident indicates the growing support of the IRI for the Assads regime. Brigadier General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of Qods Force, issued a statement to Basij and IRGC forces, asking them to pay no attention to criticism expressed at his policies, or the role of IRGC in Syria and other regions. The Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei personally directs the operations of Qods Forces outside the borders, and the regime does not reveal the death tolls or the amount of money spent on the war to the people of Iran. However, the significance of the statement of the Commander of Qods Force, and the remarks of his Deputy, Esmail Qaani, show that the Syrian Civil War is criticized by some military commanders and political authorities in the country. From a geographical point of view, the Caucasus is far from an island or even a peninsula, being a relatively big mountainous region appearing as a fence at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. However, a study into the chromosome structure of mosquito larvae of the species Glyptotendipes salinus, living by a saltwater lake in the foothills of the Caucasus, suggests that the region could be imagined as an "island" in the "sea" of steppes. Scientists Dr Mukhamed Karmokov, Tembotov Institute of Ecology of Mountain territories, Russian Academy of Science, and Dr Azamat Akkizov, Institute of Biomedical Problems, RAS, and Center of Medico-Ecological Researches, have their paper, where they describe the Caucasian population of the species, published in the open access journal Comparative Cytogenetics. Earlier, it has been known that in the Tambukan Lake, located at the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, lives at least one of the representatives of the genus Glyptotendipes, more precisely, the species G. salinus. Actually, the process of studying the fauna of the genus in the Caucasus region has just began and many questions have remained unclear. During their research, the authors collected a sufficient amount of larvae of G. salinus that made it possible to study the chromosome structure, rearrangements and peculiarities of the Caucasian population of the species. In addition, the authors tried to understand how the population relates to the previously studied ones, living in the Altai region of Russia and Kazakhstan. Researchers found interesting, some of them even striking, peculiarities in the chromosome structure and morphology of the larvae from Caucasus. Namely, they found four new chromosome rearrangements, likely unique for the Caucasus. Also, some of the chromosome characters were most similar to the mosquitoes from Altai, while others -- to the population in Kazakhstan. The most curious difference of the Caucasian larvae in comparison to data from earlier studies was that they were twice as short. In conclusion, the authors note that from the obtained data it could be deduced that that the Caucasian population had undergone a significant divergence, or even that it represents a subspecies. Also, it turns out that the Caucasus itself is a relatively isolated and complex region in terms of microevolution. "The Caucasus, in some sense, can be imagined as a relatively isolated territory, a special place, where evolution has made some unexpected twists," they say. A study of children born in Sweden suggests a small association between exposure to anesthesia for surgery before the age 4 with slightly lower school grades at age 16 and slightly lower IQ scores at 18, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. Pia Glatz, M.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and coauthors conducted a nationwide study of more than 2 million children born in Sweden from 1973 through 1993 by using a variety of national health care databases, school achievement registries, and the military conscription register. The main study group included 33,514 children who had one surgery and exposure to anesthesia before the age of 4 and then no subsequent surgery or hospitalization until the age of 16, along with 159,619 comparable children who had not had surgery or been exposed to anesthesia before the age of 16. Another group of 3,640 children with multiple surgical procedures also was studied. In the main study group, exposure to anesthesia for surgery before the age of 4 was associated with an average difference of 0.41 percent lower school grades and 0.97 percent lower IQ test scores. There was no difference in schools grades with one exposure to anesthesia for surgery before the age of 6 months, between 7 to 12 months, between 13 to 24 months or between 25 to 36 months, according to the results. Among children with multiple surgical procedures before the age of 4, those with two exposures to anesthesia had 1.41 percent lower average school grades and those children with three or more anesthesia exposures had 1.82 percent lower average school grades, the authors report. The authors note the study is unable to disentangle the potential effects of anesthesia, the influence of perioperative management, the influence of surgery or its underlying cause. "While more vulnerable subgroups of children may exist, the low overall difference in academic performance after childhood exposure to surgery is reassuring. These findings should be interpreted in light of potential adverse effects of postponing surgery," the authors conclude. Ancient feeding marks from hungry insects in South American leaf fossils are shedding new light on the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. Scientists analyzed insect feeding damage to thousands of leaf fossils from Patagonia, Argentina, over the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, and found evidence that ecosystems there recovered twice as fast as in the United States. The findings, published today (Nov. 7) in the new journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, offer important evidence of how terrestrial ecosystems outside the U.S. responded after an asteroid struck Chicxulub, Mexico, some 66 million years ago, marking the end of the Cretaceous period. "Most of what we know about terrestrial recovery comes from the western interior United States, relatively close to the Chicxulub crater, which has limited our knowledge of recovery in the rest of the world," said Michael Donovan, doctoral student in geosciences, Penn State and lead author on the paper. "We are giving another view of what was happening during that time, far away from the impact site." Donovan and his international team found leaf-mining insects completely disappeared in Patagonia during the extinction event, as previous studies show happened in the U.S. But unlike the U.S., where it took 9 million years to return to pre-impact insect diversity, recovery happened in just 4 million years in Patagonia. "Insects and plants are the most diverse multicellular organisms in the world, and they are known to respond to major environmental changes," Donovan said. "So they make a great resource to study our past." The team analyzed 3,646 fossils from Patagonia searching for signs of leaf miners -- insect larvae named for the type of damage they cause tunneling though leaves for food. These feeding paths, and the insects' droppings, both create distinctive patterns and can be compared among fossils at different sites. advertisement "Michael developed this technique of very detailed examination of leaf miners, and new methods for looking at the critical differences among these feeding trails in fossil leaves," said Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences, Penn State and paper co-author. "He's teased apart this huge story from the tiny differences in how baby insects did their business in leaves that lived 66 million years ago." The scientists found no evidence that individual leaf miner species from the Cretaceous survived the extinction event in Patagonia, indicating the far south did not offer a refuge for the insects as Donovan's team first hypothesized. "There was no evidence of survival, which is similar to what I found when working on my master's research at the Mexican Hat site in Montana," Donovan said. "But what we do find in Patagonia is a pretty diverse group of novel leaf miners that appear much sooner than in the western U.S." The researchers suggested Patagonia's further distance from the impact crater in Mexico and its ground zero effects could be responsible for insect diversity returning more rapidly to the southern location. "The richness of plant-insect associations that we observed during the recovery may be a contributing factor to insect biodiversity in modern South America," Donovan said. "We can look far into the past and see these patterns that influence life on Earth as it is today." Wilf said the study, the first of its kind outside the western U.S., can help scientists answer questions about modern global biodiversity. "Our modern world is the legacy of this disaster," Wilf said. "As we try to understand how today's biodiversity evolved and why Earth's millions of species live where they do, the global impact of this major catastrophe is a big sleeping elephant in a dark room -- we can't see much of it and just don't know enough about it. As we turn on the lights, we see more of the elephant and understand our world better. This paper is a welcome step in that direction." Everyone in the Cherney household knew a baby was on the way. But of all the dogs, Artie seemed the most excited about the incoming baby. When Sadie sent baby blankets home from the hospital - hoping to get the dogs used to the scent - the dachshund would drag them back to his bed and snuggle up to them. When baby Ben finally arrived at the family's Greenville, South Carolina, home, it quickly became obvious that Artie's feelings for Ben were mutual. Dodo Shows Comeback Kids Family Stops At Nothing To Help Their Great Dane Run This browser does not support the video tag. Instagram/sadieuga "Since Ben has been able to recognize our dogs, he's always had an affinity towards Artie," Sadie tells The Dodo. "As Ben got older, he started seeking Artie out, and once Ben realized that Artie was short enough to lick him on the face, the friendship was set." Of course, the family's other dogs embraced little Ben. But Artie just refused to let him go. Maybe he connected with Ben so powerfully because the tiny dog, in many ways, had already been the baby in the family. The Cherneys had adopted him from a friend four years earlier, after the dog had injured his back and lost movement in his lower body. "Before we had Ben, people told us that Artie was like our human child," Sadie says. "Because he's partially paralyzed, his special needs required a little extra attention, and we often say he helped us transition to being parents of a newborn." When Ben came along, the Cherneys found themselves with two babies. Artie would ride in Ben's stroller with him. The pair even raced each other - both of them, of course, crawling. "We joke that Artie was the inspiration for Ben to crawl," Sadie says. "Like most toddlers, Ben has wild moments, but he's always gentle with Artie. They ate together. "Once Ben realized that he could feed Artie his food - an enormous treat, our dogs never got people food before Ben - their friendship was set in stone," Sadie says. But Artie's enthusiasm for people food never trumped his gentleness toward Ben. "Artie is so careful with Ben's little fingers," Sadie explains. "Not to mention, they both know they're not supposed to be sharing food, so it's like a stealth mission for them." One thing that Ben and Artie don't hide is their love for each other. They wear it on their sleeves.Ashley Garcia
A pit bull mix named Eddie Milo was left without the use of his back legs after a suspected car accident. Second Chance Rescue (SCR), an organization in New York City, took in the paraplegic pit bull and searched for options to help him recover. Eddie Milo's rescuers landed on something called hydrotherapy. Eddie Milo having fun during passive range of motion treatment | Ashley Garcia A new approach to healing pets with injuries like Eddie Milo's, hydrotherapy, or water therapy, has gained popularity in recent years, and is poised to make a difference in countless animals' lives. Water therapy has been recognized as a beneficial form of rehabilitation in both humans and horses for many centuries, according to Horse & Hound. Only within the last few decades, however, has water therapy spread to help dogs as well. While initially gaining traction in the U.K., hydrotherapy centers have begun popping up in the United States. Eddie Milo in his kennel before therapy | Kellie Stevens Water4Dogs in New York City is one such water therapy rehab center that, in addition to hydrotherapy, incorporates holistic and "dry therapy" treatments, such as range of motion (measuring the movement around a specific joint or body part), massage, stretching, acupuncture and cold laser treatment - a specialized treatment that penetrates deep tissue and stimulates the release of healing chemicals within the body. Today, Eddie Milo is perhaps one of the more widely known patients at Water4Dogs thanks to social media. He has been working with dry therapy and hydrotherapy for a month now to great results. Dodo Shows Little But Fierce Pocket-Sized Kitten Grows Up To Be A Wild Woman Therapist Jennifer Hall with Eddie Milo on the underwater treadmill | Kellie Stevens Since starting therapy, he has shown remarkable progress and signs of movement in his back limbs during tail stimulation. "With damage to the spine and paraplegics," Jennifer Hall, a therapist at Water4Dogs, told The Dodo, "getting the nerves and the brain to communicate is a big deal." The Water4Dogs team is hopeful that, with continued therapy, Eddie Milo may regain use of his back legs someday. This hope is supported by the story of a small dog named Max. Neurologists referred Max to Water4Dogs after he was attacked by another dog, according to therapist Ashley Garcia. He suffered a spinal injury that caused tetraparesis (paralysis of all limbs), but through rehabilitation is now able to walk again. Max on multiple physio rolls, which help with balance, strength, weight-bearing/shifting and stretching | Ashley Garcia Another Water4Dogs patient, an 11-year-old golden retriever mix named Riley, began suffering from arthritis years ago. Therapist Jean Marie Cooper and Riley | Kellie Stevens His mom, Vaydre Parsons, began looking for something to help with his muscle and back issues and, after much research, decided to give hydrotherapy a try. Therapist Jean Marie Cooper and Riley | Kellie Stevens For three years now, Riley has been going to Water4Dogs once a week for a combination of hydrotherapy and dry therapy treatments. "She's always energized after we leave, and it has just made the biggest difference," Parsons told The Dodo. Riley | Kellie Stevens Parsons said she can always notice a difference in Riley if they have to skip a session. She feels the therapists genuinely care about the wellbeing of her dog. After receiving her dry treatments, Riley spends some time on an underwater treadmill, which promotes strength using buoyancy, resistance and controlled movements. Then she goes into a heated pool (generally 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit) with a therapist named Jean Marie Cooper to work on her range of motion and overall fitness. While swimming may not have been her favorite activity, Riley was well taken care of by Cooper, and encouraged by her mom. Thor, a Water4Dogs patient, in the hydrotherapy pool | Ashley Garcia About 80 percent of Water4Dogs' clients come in for basic rehabilitation, with the most common reason being recovery after breaking a bone. However, ideal candidates also include animals who experience ongoing medical problems, senior pets looking to prevent injury and strengthen deteriorating joints, pets with neurological issues and even those with spinal cord injuries that prohibit movement in limbs. Dr. Dipolo administering cold laser treatment to a patient named Kodi | Ashley Garcia Though not all dogs take to the water immediately, most are genuinely excited when they realize they are coming in for treatment. "They get very excited coming off of the elevator," Tanya Reynoso, another therapist at Water4Dogs, told The Dodo. "Clients tell us their pets know at a certain point in their route that they're coming to us. They're very interested in the time they share with us." A happy Scout after completing some dry therapy exercises | Lara Dellar Scout, a 6-year-old golden retriever, has been attending Water4Dogs for about seven weeks now, after tearing an ACL during off-leash time in Central Park earlier this year. Scout started dry therapy the week after her ACL operation two weeks ago, Larry Green, Scout's owner, told The Dodo. Scout has always loved swimming, so beginning hydrotherapy has been a really fun recovery activity for her, Green said. Scout on the underwater treadmill | Kellie Stevens Also, though dogs make up the majority of the Water4Dogs clientele, it does have some cats on its treatment roster as well. Cats present a different set of challenges, as they generally don't like water and are often difficult to keep still for dry therapy, according to DiPolo. Dr. Jonathan Block, another Water4Dogs doctor, performing acupuncture on Balthazar the cat | Water4Dogs Facebook However, the benefits of water therapy can outweigh the obstacles in getting cats to accept treatment, and therapists are skilled in working with both types of animals. Of course, pets aren't the only ones who enjoy their time at Water4Dogs. If one common theme came up among the veterinarians and therapists at the facility, it would be how rewarding their work is. Hamlet, a Water4Dogs patient, on the cavaletti bars | Ashley Garcia Dr. Francisco DiPolo, Water4Dogs' cofounder, told The Dodo that he finds working with rescue animals in particular "very fulfilling, challenging and interesting." The clinic works with a number of rescues in the NYC area, including Second Chance Rescue, Animal Haven, Mighty Mutts and The Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals. It also provides discounts to rescue organizations whenever possible. Happy therapist Cooper with Thor after a good swim session | Ashley Garcia Bell Canada customers with an active @bell.net or @sympatico.ca email address started moving to a new email system this year. How did it go? For many people, it was a breeze. For some, it was a rough ride. Luis Allegretti runs a website that rates and reviews Internet and home phone providers. He has not seen an increase in complaints about Bell. While Im not necessarily a big fan of Bell, they have done a decent job explaining what the email migration entails, Allegretti says. My dads Internet is with Bell and his was uneventful. But if you do a search for Bell email migration on social media, you will find some distressed users. @bell you are totally blowing it with the email migration. Send someone to my house ASAP, Chris Crosbie tweeted last May. A giant step backwards, said Ray Gregory, a business customer, at Bell Canadas Facebook page. My email functionality is now greatly reduced as a result of your upgrade. Gregory received 158 comments from other customers. The main complaints are slowness, cumbersome navigation, difficulty in searching emails, missing emails and contact lists, plus an increase in spam and pornographic emails. Bell has a series of 20 questions and answers at its website, explaining the mechanics of migrating to a new email system. The forced migration, said Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo, was a result of Microsofts decision to wind down its Outlook email platform used by a number of Internet service providers worldwide. Bell developed its own email service, which offers better access on mobile devices and improved data storage options. Overall, it has been a successful migration, though a small number of customers did encounter technical issues not unexpected with an undertaking of this magnitude, he said. The overwhelming majority of customers made the switch without issue, and of those who had problems, we were able to quickly assist them fixing the issues. The phone number for Bells technical support team is 1-844-310-7873. I recently heard from Susan S (who doesnt want to use her full name). She started getting a large number of spam emails this fall, often sexual in nature. I consistently get 20 to 30 spam emails every day from different addresses. I am currently caring for a cancer patient and every time my phone dings announcing an email, I worry there is an emergency, she said. I cant spend hours on the phone with Bell. Is there anything you can do? Does Bell have other customers who find the spam filters useless? The spam filters Bell offers to customers are essentially the same as those available on the previous platform, Laszlo said. While no filter will completely block all incidents of spam, our email service includes very effective tools to reduce spam when used correctly. We will get in touch with the customer to explain in detail how to do this, he promised. One day later, Susan wrote back to thank me for the intervention. Your email worked wonders. In all my previous attempts, no one got back to me with an explanation or follow-up, she said. The tech rep I spoke to in Ottawa was professional and patient and finally made me feel that Bell does know what it is doing. I still get spam, but the volume has gone down (knock plastic!). A tip she found useful: Each email needs to be marked as spam. This allows Bell to track the spam emails. Just deleting them does not allow tracking. Now its your turn, readers. Did the Bell email migration cause problems for you or was it a non-event? Please let me know. In a separate issue, customers who subscribe to Bell Fibe TV have had recent service interruptions. Some lost their signal for two or three days. A few had their PVR recordings wiped out. A recent software upgrade to our Fibe TV service did impact the PVR recordings of some customers, Laszlo said. Bell satellite customers were not affected. Bell has identified fewer than 2,000 customers who lost their recordings. It is apologizing to them and offering goodwill credits on a case-by-case basis. Ellens advice Ask for compensation if you lose the services you pay for each month. Dont take the first offer. Keep negotiating until you get a satisfactory amount. Escalate to a higher level. Bell uses call centres outside Canada (Fibe TV calls go to El Salvador) and cant always deal with complaints that fall outside the norm. Write to the executive office and the CEO. Use mainstream and social media. Make your voice heard. If you switch Internet providers, look beyond your phone or cable company. Check out CanadianISP.ca, a website that lists 137 providers serving 1,524 cities across Ontario, as well as GoneVoip.ca. Ellen Rosemans column appears each week in Smart Money. SHARE: Echoing the outrage and upheaval that this attack caused across the Muslim world, he added: Naturally, this incident was condemned by all the entities in the world, except the Iranian regime. He went on to confirm the well-founded suspicions that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been supporting the Houthis, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and other separatist movements. He stressed that the regime has been supplying these rebel forces with weapons in order to further destabilise the Middle East. In the article, Mr. Moalmi also outlined the intentions of the regime. The Assistant General Coordinator of the military headquarters of Khatam al-Anbiya, the Commander Salar Abnoush endeavors to defend the so-called Islamic Jurist by establishing a new [Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution] IRGC around the world. He stated that is not surprising, considering the way the Iranian regime has been supporting terrorist organisations in order to destabilise the region. He also examined the sources of encouragement for these actions and discussed the impact that the Western sanctions have had on Tehran. Irans oil exports to Asian countries have increased by 92% in August 2016 in comparison to the same period in 2015, he stated. The economic development would benefit Tehran to financially supply the military equipment, as well as its development. There are many indicators for this. In the recent period, the military officials of the Iranian regime introduced their plans for developing the military organs and they named themselves as Fatehan (the conquerors) brigade. In addition to that, Iranian military officials have threatened not to recognize the borders. Their main task is actually to defend the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist in Iran. Mr. Moalmi went on to criticise the international bodies for their failure to monitor these developments. Tehran has knowingly evaded the trivial supervision and it stealthily builds its military and intelligence arsenals. As the evidence emerges, Irans goal is to develop ballistic missiles and to provide the terrorist organs with training, information, communication and the financial support. He stated that the Iranian regime is very transparent in its operations and, undoubtedly, will have a big part to play in holding any talks with the West. Mr. Moalmi outlined what he believes to be the next step in the development, referring to the IRGC commander, Colonel Mahdi Hadavand and Fatehan Brigade commander. Mahdi Hadavand stipulated that the Resistance forces including the Iranian and foreign ones will be trained and thus Tehran continues to provoke the conflicts and civil wars as well as supporting the gangs and thugs of the region. As the final piece of evidence, Mr. Moalmi referred back to the remarks made in Afghanistan, by the spokesman of the Taliban, who confirmed that the Taliban has very good relations with the Iranian regime. Mr. Moalmi concluded that all this provides enough evidence to suggest that Iran actively supports terrorism. Donald Trump ran for president on a platform of lies. From small fibs to toxic whoppers the size of Macedonia, he spent the better part of 18 months giving the truth a wedgie. He put reality in a headlock. On Tuesday, as the U.S. election comes to a merciful end, Trump could hold up a picture of a triangle, call it a circle and his supporters would chant, Yeah, a circle! Lock her up! Win or lose, this is Trumps legacy: he stumbled into politics, a field not exactly marked by lush honesty, and carpet-bombed every fact in sight. He hijacked the party of Abraham Lincoln and animated it with the instincts of a shameless asbestos salesman. He made Lance Armstrong, Stephen Glass, James Frey and Ryan Lochte look like clergy by comparison. Or as Barack Obama put it on Sunday, referring to the way Trump blatantly invented a tale about how the U.S. president screamed at a protester when he was defending the man: He thought it was OK to just lie. Wasnt even trying to be sneaky about it. That says something about how unacceptable behaviour has become normal. . . . (Trump) said the exact opposite of what happened. This is Trumps modus operandi and raison detre, all rolled into a Jolly Rancher farce starring a racist Pinocchio. If it emerges that Trump is worth only 500 bucks or that he once sexually assaulted the Statue of Liberty or that his name is Dave, nobody would gasp with horror. Not now. Not after this election cycle exposed the bottomless depths of his unacceptable behaviour. If he loses on Tuesday, its tempting to believe Trump will melt into a pool of introspection and audit his profound shortcomings as a human. But this too is a lie. Sociopaths dont have the capacity for remorse. The truth is, Trump never really wanted to be president. Thats not a great life for anyone with the attention span of a newborn. You cant succeed as Commander-in-Chief when you have the self-control of a Bonobo chimp in heat. You cant plot multilateral agreements or chart domestic policy when youre too busy slurring enemies on Twitter. Trump just wanted the ego hit in knowing he could be president. For a man obsessed with status, this was always the secret prize. But what Trump will regret is that he is now a pariah among the famous. Hes a joke to the rich. He is radioactive to the celebrities who turned out in glittering droves to support Hillary Clinton: from LeBron James to Katy Perry, Lady Gaga to Shonda Rhimes, Steven Spielberg to Robert De Niro, George and Amal Clooney to Jay Z and Beyonce, Ellen DeGeneres to Amy Schumer. The list is endless and it touched every demographic. On Monday night, Bruce Springsteen serenaded Clinton fans in Philadelphia. Born in the U.S.A. is now an anti-Trump anthem and you just know irony must be killing him. By contrast, who stumped for Trump? Chachi? Ted Nugent? Contrary to the biggest lie Trump tried to pass off that hes a champion for the working class hes never cared about everyday Americans. Most of his diehard supporters wouldnt even get interviews for entry-level jobs at his company. Trump cares about poor people in the same way he cares about book learning. But what hes always cared about and why running for public office was such a colossal personal mistake was the belief he was part of the very cultural elite his followers disdain. That he was a TV star, a successful tycoon without peer, a one-man brand powerhouse, all of which is now demonstrably untrue. Does Trump really care about moving into the White House? No. And thats why he was always disproportionately unhinged by the Saturday Night Live sketches, by the dazzling concerts for Clinton, by the mockery from late-night comedians, by the dismissive jabs in lifestyle and fashion magazines, by the now consensus in Hollywood that he is an evil narcissist with an insatiable need for attention. Coming from Hollywood, thats saying something. If his voters, many of whom have legitimate economic anxieties, believe Trump will remain as their de facto voice in the event of a Clinton victory, they are even more delusional than previously imagined. Trump spent zero days in politics before his candidacy and hell spend zero days after the dust settles. Screw the voters. Screw America. Now its time for his Mission Impossible sequel: Make Trump Great Again. SHARE: What love shes seen this literary-prized season both here at home and abroad: Lauded Montreal author Madeleine Thien won the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize Monday night. With her hands shaking and tears in her eyes, the Vancouver-born, Montreal-based writer came up on stage to accept the award for her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing. She wanted me to be free in this world to love and be loved, Thien said in a tribute to her mother, who died in 2002. But theres a quiet strength behind her words, which reflects the book. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is set in China before, during and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The heart of the story involves three Chinese musicians who are studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the 1960s, and explores the revolution that occurred under Mao Zedong and the many political campaigns that pulled apart peoples lives. In her presentation of Thiens novel during Mondays televised gala, award-winning composer and recording artist Tanya Tagaq said: Do Not Say We Have Nothing ... enchants the jurors with its detailed, layered, complex drama of classical musicians and their loved ones trying to survive two monstrous insults to their humanity. It is a beautiful homage to the music in the human spirit, Tagaq said. Thiens top-selling novel recently won a $25,000 Governor Generals Literary Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. She beat out titles from Montreals Mona Awad and Catherine Leroux, London, Ont.-based author Emma Donoghue, Toronto-based Zoe Whittall and Hamiltons Gary Barwin. The six titles were chosen from 161 books submitted by 69 publisher imprints by this years jury, which included Canadian writers Lawrence Hill, Jeet Heer and Kathleen Winter, along with British author Samantha Harvey and Scottish writer Alan Warner. At a reception at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel held ahead of the CBC-televised Giller gala, Thien spent time meeting and greeting several guests who were effusive in their praise of their work. Among them were former interim Liberal leader Bob Rae. His wife, Arlene Perly Rae, told Thien she spent a portion of their recent road trip in the U.S. reading the book aloud in the car on their journey. I feel kind of like its a really wonderful night to celebrate everything that has happened for me, for the shortlisted authors, Thien said in an interview. These things dont come along very often in a writers career. I think I just feel really at peace. Happy for the book. So happy for the book. Maybe thats why Im not nervous, she added. The book has found its way into the world. A prize can help that and it has already helped that, but that was the most important thing all along. I wanted it to be read. Her editor Lynn Henry said of Thien, shes interested in how do we live a good life, what does it mean to be a creative person. She has a unique perspective. Theyre all such good people, Thien said of her fellow Giller finalists. Theyve all really struggled with their books and theyve all worked so hard. I think were all in it together, and I think theres a lot of love and support on the shortlist together. Hill told the Star that the jury was set to meet for four hours early Monday they decide the winner amongst themselves the morning of the awards ceremony but he said it only took them three hours, usually a sure sign that the jurors were in agreement. The Giller awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists. The prizes founder, Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, named it in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. With files from The Canadian Press SHARE: OTTAWAProminent Inuit politicians are urging Canadas leaders indigenous and otherwise to protect children from the scourge of sexual abuse and suicide running through indigenous communities, saying no child deserves to have their innocence stolen. The head of Canadas national Inuit organization says it is incumbent upon all leaders to proclaim that abuse in indigenous communities is unacceptable. Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, is himself no stranger to intergenerational trauma; his own father struggled with alcoholism after falling victim to sexual and physical abuse at a residential school. There is no way to talk about this issue without it being difficult, Obed said in an interview. I always think of the children, the children that shouldnt be abused and they are at the centre of my thoughts. Children deserve the right to live happy, healthy childhoods and to fulfil their potential, he added. We need to do more to keep our children safe, Obed said. We know the risk factors that child sexual abuse is for suicide. Talk of sexual abuse often falls on deaf ears at all levels of government, a frustrated Iqaluit Mayor Madeleine Redfern said Monday following a Canadian Press investigation that highlights the alarming prevalence of sexual abuse in some indigenous communities and the fact that it remains an open secret. If you acknowledge it, you have to deal with it, Redfern said. Just the same way that the Catholic Church abuse went on for decades; that was an open secret until media . . . decided that those stories needed to be told. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stuck to a familiar script when asked about the issue Monday, citing existing government investments and the Liberal commitment to establish a new relationship with Canadas indigenous people. The one thing we will not do is decide from Ottawa how to fix these problems because thats part of what has got us into successive failures, Trudeau said. We will work in respect and in partnership with indigenous communities, indigenous leadership, to ensure that we are addressing these problems together for the long-term. Researchers, indigenous leaders and victims told The Canadian Press the level of abuse in some communities is shockingly high, although there is limited data to indicate exactly how pervasive the problem is across the country. Independent Sen. Murray Sinclair, the chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that explored the depths of Canadas residential school legacy, said data is sorely lacking that could point to the magnitude of the problem inside indigenous communities. Sexual abuse has gone beyond residential school survivors, their children and grandchildren, said Sinclair. The cycle of abuse has infected subsequent generations, he warned. Children are abusing each other across generations; members of street gangs are victimizing young girls; and women are being hauled into the sex trade. Mental-health resources to address the issue and research possible connections to the alarmingly high number of indigenous suicides are sorely lacking, especially in Canadas far North, Sinclair noted. In the 2007-08 Inuit Health Survey conducted in Nunavut, a staggering 52 per cent of women and 22 per cent of men said they experienced severe sexual abuse during childhood. A 2012 Statistics Canada report found rates of sexual offences against children and youth were highest in the territories the Northwest Territories and Nunavut recorded the highest rates in Canada, followed by Yukon. Fear remains a very real barrier for victims to speak up about abuse, Redfern said, noting many are concerned about possible retaliatory attacks from community members themselves, including family and friends. They are very scared of their abusers . . . often if it is family members or close family friends, especially if the person is in a position of power, if that person is an elder, a politician, a community leader, a leader within their family a father, a grandfather, she said. Society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest numbers. SHARE: LONDON, ONT.A 28-year-old Ontario man is facing drug charges after allegedly importing a fentanyl product into Canada. The RCMP say Canada Border Service Agency Officers in Vancouver intercepted a package on Oct. 24 from China that was destined for London, Ont. They say officers examined a parcel weighing more than 30 grams that was declared as plastic bags, but an x-ray image indicated it contained suspected powder. The RCMP say the parcel allegedly contained 10 grams of furanyl-fentanyl. The CBSA alerted the RCMP and a search warrant was then carried out at a home in London. Justin Donald Brown has been charged with possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking and importing a controlled substance. The investigation involved officers from the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and London police. The production of fentanyl-laced drugs in clandestine labs can lead to fatal concentrations of illicit substances, said Insp. Joe Czenze, the officer in charge of the London RCMP detachment. This is an excellent example of several law enforcement agencies working together to prevent the importation and trafficking of a dangerous substance. Read more about: SHARE: MONTREALPrime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Vancouver on Monday adding what is presumably the next-to-last piece to the puzzle of the approval by the federal cabinet next month of an expanded Trans Mountain pipeline. Trudeau announced a more stringent environmental protection regime for British Columbias coast. With Parliament adjourned for Remembrance week, this is the kind of announcement that could have been dealt with at the ministerial level. Trudeaus cabinet is fanning out across the country this week to preside over dozens of good-news events. Having the prime minister front the rollout was meant to draw attention to the fact that his government is meeting one of the B.C. governments key conditions to support Kinder Morgans project. B.C. Premier Christy Clark has made her approval of the pipeline expansion contingent on a world-leading marine spill response plan. The hope is that Clark will find Trudeau has provided her with enough political cover to come onside with the bid to bring more Alberta bitumen to tidewater off the greater Vancouver area. In B.C., as in other regions of the country, Trudeau has political capital to spare. The resilience of his popularity places him in the superhero category. But even the powers of Superman are not limitless. In practice, Trudeau may well be about to reach for a piece of political kryptonite. That, at least, is the conclusion anyone would come to after reading the just-released 60-page report of the ministerial panel tasked by the federal government to complement the regulatory approval process of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The three-member panel was not asked to make a recommendation on the way forward. Instead, it delivered a clinical summary of the public opinion landscape in the two provinces directly affected by Kinder Morgans pipeline plans. Its findings make for sobering reading. The report essentially suggests that Trudeau and Clark if the premier is willing to link arms with the prime minister on this issue leading up to a spring provincial election are about to walk onto a pipeline minefield. There is little trace in the panels report of the kind of public ambivalence about the Trans Mountain pipeline that is liable to be swayed by a persuasive popular prime minister willing to walk the extra mile on environmental protection. What the group predictably did find was an Alberta pro-pipeline consensus that spans that provinces political spectrum matched by a no less significant anti-pipeline consensus in B.C. There was a time, under Stephen Harper, when the Canadian government of the day could look to the United States for some relief from this divisive domestic conundrum. Those days are gone. This is yet another file that Tuesdays American presidential election can only complicate. A Hillary Clinton victory would drive the last nail in the coffin of TransCanadas Keystone XL project. That pipeline would link the Alberta oilsands to the refineries of the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. President Barack Obama has vetoed it. That veto compounded the pressures on the federal government to act as a facilitator for pipelines to get Albertas bitumen to tidewater along Canadian routes. Donald Trump would reverse Obamas veto. But that would be no cause to uncork the champagne. A Trump administration would also turn its back on the Paris agreement on climate change. An American withdrawal from the latest international protocol on global warming would upset the already delicate balance Trudeau has been trying to achieve between his environment and his energy agendas. He believes a more proactive approach to climate change will translate into more public goodwill on pipelines. But the recent federal plan to set a national floor price on carbon was drafted under the assumption that the U.S. would comply with the Paris agreement. Absent an American commitment to reduce greenhouse gas, Canadas carbon-pricing policy could put its energy industry at a serious competitive disadvantage. A Trump victory would signal an unprecedented escalation in the pipeline wars, one that would not be contained to the U.S. and its Republican administration. If, as expected, Trudeau approves a controversial pipeline in B.C. next month, he will be pitting his government against a host of First Nations communities, the environmental movement and scores of his own election supporters. Depending on the outcome of Tuesdays vote, he could also find himself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump on the pipeline front line. Kryptonite indeed! Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Read more about: SHARE: In a world of poster children, Adam Capay has become an unlikely poster prisoner: Exhibit A in the campaign against solitary confinement. Hes no Nelson Mandela neither a political prisoner nor necessarily an angel. He stands accused of murdering a fellow indigenous inmate in a Thunder Bay jail, and the victims family isnt shedding any tears for him. But like any human being, whether in a brutal dictatorship or a supposedly progressive province, he deserves better than to be locked up in isolation beyond the 15 days deemed cruel and unusual punishment by the United Nations. Now, he is becoming famous. For being forgotten. Over the past four years he has languished in his own cell awaiting trial locked away not only from the outside world, but even from the inside world of a jailhouse. Unaccountably and unconscionably, he has been held in what is known, in penal jargon, as administrative segregation. Or in human terms, an incontrovertibly inhuman sentence: solitary confinement. Never mind that one isnt sentenced, specifically, to solitary. It is a fate imposed on prisoners by their wardens, not a judge and jury. To call it Dickensian would not be an overstatement. Like the fictional character Doctor Alexandre Manette in A Tale of Two Cities locked up alone in a Bastille dungeon for 18 years 24-year-old Capay has been slowly losing his mind in the isolation of a basement cell. Charles Dickens wrote his novel in the mid-1800s about pre-revolutionary France. Such cruel incarceration shouldnt find an echo in todays Ontario. Because its 2016. Capay has been locked in isolation all this time, but he is hardly alone. More than 500 inmates are stuck in segregation cells across Ontarios 26 institutions at any one time and hundreds more across Canada many of them diagnosed with mental illnesses that dont respond to retribution and isolation. People like Ashley Smith, the troubled 19-year-old who killed herself in a segregation cell the same age as Capay when he was first locked up and locked away from human contact in 2012. How could this happen? There are as many excuses as explanations. But where is the accountability? Instead of facing the problem head on, the politicians responsible for Ontarios correctional institutions prefer to duck by delegating the decision-making to outsiders. As minister of community safety and correctional services, David Orazietti responded to mounting criticism of segregation by announcing, not for the first time, that it would only be a last resort. At which point the minister proclaimed, again not for the first time, that Queens Park would study the matter further. Just like his predecessor, Yasir Naqvi, who announced last year a comprehensive review of the segregation policy and its use in correctional facilities. Now, nearly 20 months later, Orazietti has succeeded Naqvi without success. His latest variation on the theme of perennial penal studies calls for a more thorough and comprehensive review of solitary confinement than the last one, and he will name someone to the task Tuesday. Why dont they read the repeated recommendations from inquests and human rights experts calling on our authorities to limit solitary to 15 days? Why not recognize that those suffering from mental illness are especially vulnerable to the psychological toll of isolation? Compare Ontarios circumlocution on solitary confinement to Ottawas recent straight talk: When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed his federal justice minister last year, he issued a mandate letter instructing Jody Wilson-Raybould to act on the restriction of the use of solitary confinement rather than resorting to the euphemism of segregation used by Queens Park. By contrast, Oraziettis instructions from Premier Kathleen Wynne last summer contain no such injunction. Her letter lapses into bureaucratic doubletalk about operational updates to the ministrys policies on the use of segregation in correctional facilities. Under pressure, Queens Park announced last month that it would halve the limit from 30 days to 15. But its track record hardly inspires confidence. Capays situation in Thunder Bay District Jail only made headlines last month when OPSEUs local union president, corrections officer Mike Lundy, alerted the visiting head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Renu Mandhane, to the situation. The embattled minister countered by moving Capay out to a regular cell. Why did Orazietti need the newspapers to wake up to the story? Under current rules, his ministry gets automatic reports every 30 days when an inmate is in solitary which adds up to dozens of reports over Capays four-year ordeal. Dickens first wrote about the inhuman incarceration of a literary character in a work of fiction more than 150 years ago. What would he say about the reality of our own homegrown torture on this governments watch? In present-day Ontario, solitary confinement bespeaks a cruelty and indignity that indicts us all. Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn Read more about: SHARE: OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeau will retrace some of his fathers most historic footsteps next week when he travels to Cuba and quite possibly meets an old family friend retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Officially, Trudeau will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over his countrys leadership in 2008 from his brother, the leader of Cubas communist revolution in 1959 and the decades-long antagonist to the United States. Cubas ambassador to Canada says there may also be an opportunity to visit with Fidel Castro too. I think this question has been worked out, and there is a chance. I dont know how it will end, ambassador Julio Garmendia Pena said in an interview Monday. Im sure Fidel would like to meet him, and it would be a great opportunity for him to say hello to a friend of his father, and for Fidel to greet his closest friends son as a prime minister. Fidel Castro has maintained a sporadic public profile since he formally ceded control of the Caribbean island country, 135 kilometres off the southern tip of Florida, to his younger brother. He has met world leaders, including the visiting president of Portugal just weeks ago, and Pope Francis last year, said Pena. Pierre Trudeau became the first NATO leader to visit Cuba when he touched down on Jan. 26, 1976, with his wife Margaret, and his then four-month-old son Michel in tow. The three-day visit rankled some of Canadas allies as Margaret Trudeau sang to Castro, while Trudeau at one point exhorted, Viva Castro. The photos of the visit, especially of the bearded father of the communist revolution holding the prime ministers infant son, have become iconic. From a personal point of view, it impressed us that he came to Cuba with his family. He brought his son, who was only three months and 26 days old, Castro told the CBC National Magazine in an October 2000 interview. I met that little baby when he came here when he wasnt even four months old, and he won everyones heart. Trudeaus youngest son died in a British Columbia avalanche in 1998. Two years later, Castro made a stunning appearance at Pierre Trudeaus funeral in Montreal, where he also rubbed shoulders with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Pena was at the quarter-century mark of his own 41-year career in Cubas foreign service when word of Trudeaus death reached Havana. Fidel Castro immediately dropped everything and made plans to travel to Montreal, he said. It was prepared in hours. He met Sacha and Justin, said Pena, referring to the current prime ministers younger brother, Alexandre. I think the family appreciated very much the presence of our former president at that sad moment. Next week, Trudeau will spend less time in Havana than his father. He is to arrive Tuesday night and depart on Wednesday, said Pena. Trudeau will meet Raul Castro and other government officials, and will likely tour Old Havana. He may also visit a university where he can interact with Cuban youth, said Pena. The Cuban government also hopes that the visit will highlight potential trade and investment opportunities for Canadian businesses in Cuba, particularly in the biotechnology sector, he added. Cuba hopes that the decision of the Barack Obama administration in December 2014 to restore diplomatic ties might make some Canadian companies a little less skittish about running afoul of the U.S. government and seek some long-term investment opportunities. Canadas decision to host the secret talks between the U.S. and Cuba that led to Obama thawing relations with Cuba was a pivotal step in the long process towards his countrys normalization of relations with the U.S., said Pena. Canada served as the connection to be able to carry out such important conversations talks in a discreet manner, said Pena. Not because of anything against the press, but because things could not be achieved if there was a leak. Trudeaus visit to Cuba will be part of a larger trip that also includes stops in Argentina, where he will meet the countrys president, and Peru, where he will participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders meeting. Cuba and Argentina are two of our closest partners in the hemisphere. I look forward to working with President Castro and President Macri to stimulate more trade and investment with Canada, grow the middle class, and foster closer people-to-people ties for the benefit of all our citizens, Trudeau said in a statement issued Tuesday. Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said Julio Garmendia Pena was near the beginning of his career when Pierre Trudeau died. SHARE: Bus shelters will force people to think about everyday racism against black Torontonians. Ads in shelters are part of an awareness campaign by the City of Toronto and Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI), following controversial ads in the summer that targeted Islamophobia. One of the new ads shows the faces of a black man and a white man. Quick, hire one it says, adding: Anti-black racism happens here. Lets confront it. Another shows the faces of a black woman and a white woman. Quick, rent to one, it urges the viewer. Debbie Douglas, OCASI executive director, said that, while Toronto celebrates its diversity, she and others routinely experience racism. The ads are meant to make people think twice about their assumptions based on skin colour, she said. Black people continue to face marginalization, discrimination and racism when it comes to employment, housing, access to services, and in many other areas of daily life, Douglas said. Its essential for us to create a Toronto For All that dispels any form of discrimination and racism and provides equal opportunities for all our residents. Toronto is not a racist city, Michael Thompson, city councils only black member, told a news conference Tuesday. But systemic racism against black Torontonians exists and we cant end it if we dont name it, he said. Mayor John Tory predicted the ads will be controversial, and he said thats okay if it makes people think about the issue. Similar ads in June showed a young white man squaring off against a young woman in a head scarf. Go back to where you came from, he says. Where, North York? she replies. Those ads, meant to educate people before the arrival of Syrian refugees, sparked debate including allegations they pitted Torontonians against each other instead of trying to bring them together. The new ads roughly 50 posters and 75 digital signs are appearing until Nov. 27. SHARE: Rui Nabico died just after noon on Friday, near his family home on a typically quiet residential street in the citys northwest corner. The beloved son, brother and uncle became Torontos fourth police-involved fatality this year. Few details of Nabicos death have been released by the Special Investigations Unit, the provincial police watchdog now probing the 31-year-old mans death. Citing a controversial policy requiring the permission of next-of-kin, the agency is not releasing his name, but the Star has confirmed Nabicos identity with his family. The fatal interaction occurred after police were summoned to Sagres Cres., near St. Clair Ave. and Old Weston Rd., by witness reports of a man brandishing two knives and screaming. While details of Nabicos death are scarce, his case already stands out from other police-involved deaths in Toronto: though the exact cause of death is still not known, Nabico went into medical distress after police fired a conducted energy weapon (CEW), more commonly known as a Taser. He was pronounced dead in hospital. Unlike shootings, fatalities where a Taser was the sole weapon deployed by police are rare. But Nabicos death comes just as Toronto police are pushing to expand the weapons deployment throughout the force by nearly 50 per cent. Critics say Nabicos death is a tragic reminder that the health risks of Tasers are far from understood. The death Friday contradicts assurances that Tasers dont kill, Pat Capponi, co-chair of the Toronto police services board mental health sub-committee, said Monday. She has asked for an emergency meeting between Toronto police chief Mark Saunders and members of the sub-committee to discuss the proposed expansion. Police need less weapons not more, and the message has to come from the top, she said. Currently, Toronto police have 545 Tasers, available only to a select few uniform front line supervisors and selected members of specialized units. The force allocated $750,000 in its proposed 2017 budget for an additional 250 Tasers to be given to some frontline officers. Last month, the Toronto police services board passed a motion to conduct community consultations on the broader deployment of Tasers. This is in response to the continued need for a less lethal force option to help safely resolve high risk encounters with community members, reads a Toronto police service document presented at a budget meeting last month. Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash declined to comment further on Taser expansion plans Monday, citing the ongoing SIU investigation into Fridays fatality. In a statement on behalf of Toronto mayor John Tory, Keerthana Kamalavasan said Tory believes de-escalation should always be at the forefront of policing. We need to equip our front line officers with the training and tools to enable them to decrease fatal encounters between police officers and people in emotional crisis, she wrote in an email. Kamalavasan added that Tory will await the results of public consultations on the expanded use of the Taser before going forward. Conducted Energy Weapons are designed to incapacitate a person so an officer can gain control of a subject. The weapon works by causing involuntary muscle spasms and temporary loss of motor control. Tasers have surged in popularity as a less-lethal option for officers in comparison to a firearm, and juries at several Ontario coroners inquests into fatal police shootings have recommended greater deployment of the weapon. In his review of Toronto police use of force on people experiencing a mental health crisis, retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci recommended Toronto police launch a pilot project allowing frontline officers greater access to Tasers with some caveats. Among Iacobuccis concerns was the unknown health risks posed by the weapon, particularly to people with mental illness. He expressed concerns the population may be particularly vulnerable to the potentially serious effects of Tasers due to a higher likelihood of pre-existing medical conditions, prescription medications, substance abuse issues and high levels of agitation. The absence of definitive research into the risks of CEWs for populations who are likely to encounter the police in non-criminal contexts is a problem, Iacobucci wrote in his 2014 report. The retired judge therefore recommended Toronto police advocate for an interprovincial study of the medical effects of CEW use on various groups of people (including vulnerable groups such as people in crisis). It was among the few recommendations Toronto police chose not to implement. While the Service recognizes the value of continual research, it remains satisfied that the current medical research has found no persuasive evidence of risk to vulnerable persons, states a Toronto police status report on Iacobucci report implementation, which says 79 of 84 recommendations were implemented in full or in part. The report cites the Ontario governments 2013 decision to ditch its regulation limiting Taser access to supervisors and specialty units, instead allowing individual police services to decide which officers could carry the weapon. The provinces decision was made after a review of current medical literature, a jurisdictional scan and consultation with stakeholders, including police and civil liberties advocates, reads Toronto polices Iacobucci implementation document. Critics, however, have questioned the quality of research on CEWs. Among concerns raised by former Ontario Court of Appeal judge Stephen Goudge in his 2013 report on the medical effects of CEWs was that many of the studies were been conducted or funded by the manufacturers of the weapons. Since the province stopped restricting Tasers use to supervisors and select officers, every police service in Ontario has expanded use of the weapon except Toronto and Orangeville, according to Erick Laming, a doctoral student in criminology at the University of Toronto who has studied Taser use in the province. Despite that, serious injuries or deaths havent seen a significant jump, in part because many instances of use of the weapon are whats called demonstrated force presence. It refers to the action where an officer pulled out the weapon to gain compliance, but didnt fire it. He supports the Toronto police effort to allow more frontline officers access to the weapons. But he said there should be stronger guidelines for its use. Currently, Ontarios provincial regulations only restrict Taser use on the elderly, pregnant women, and children, Laming said. The province should follow the lead of Nova Scotia and British Columbia, where there are also restrictions on Taser use on people suffering from mental illness. Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca Read more about: SHARE: The case of a woman who claims she should be recognized as a victim of crime because she developed post-traumatic stress disorder after serving as a juror in a horrific murder trial goes before Ontarios top court on Tuesday. The woman, who cannot be identified, was a juror in the trial of Michael Rafferty, who was convicted in 2012 of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering 8-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford, of Woodstock, Ont. The 57-year-old argues that she suffered psychological injury as a result of coming face to face with Raffertys horrific crimes and is seeking compensation as a victim of crime. She first sought compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board a tribunal that assesses financial compensation for victims and family of deceased victims of violent crimes in Ontario but her application was dismissed. She then appealed to the Divisional Court, which also dismissed her case. She then turned to the Court of Appeal for Ontario. This is a test case, the womans lawyers argue in documents submitted to the court. It examines what it means to be a victim as defined by the Compensation for Victims of Crime Act, and whether that definition may include a juror in a criminal trial who suffers PTSD as a result of her participation in that trial. The womans lawyers argue that unlike those who choose to work in the criminal justice system, jurors are effectively ordered to participate in it and have evidence of violent crime imposed upon them. As a juror (the woman) was brought face to face with Mr. Raffertys crimes of abducting, raping, desecrating and murdering eight-year-old Tori Stafford, her lawyers argue. As a result, (the woman) claims she suffered an injury of nervous shock, now more commonly known as post-traumatic stress disorder. (The woman) continues to suffer a psychological injury and to struggle emotionally and financially. But the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board argues the woman was not a victim under the Compensation for Victims of Crime Act and found she did not meet all legal criteria for a claim of mental or nervous shock, according to documents it submitted to the Appeal Court. The board argued the womans interpretation of victim under the act would allow for an indefinite expansion of those who may claim compensation as victims, potentially including court staff, lawyers and individuals that watch news that depict a crime of violence, the documents said. The CICB also concluded it was absurd to suggest that a jury member was a victim of crime, the documents said. It was the hearing of evidence about a crime at a criminal trial that caused her emotional distress, not a crime itself. The board is asking that the appeal be dismissed or, if its allowed, that the matter be sent back to the board for a new hearing. The juror a mother of two alleges that immediately after the trial she began to experience significant impairments in concentration and short-term memory, depression, anxiety particularly about the safety of her children and had vivid flashbacks of evidence from the trial, her lawyers argue. The woman took time off work and went on long-term disability and claimed she was formally diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety disorder, they said. Medical professionals have concluded that being exposed to the crimes of Mr. Rafferty caused (the womans) condition, her lawyers argued. They further argued that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and the Division Court didnt correctly assess if the woman was considered a victim of crime. The woman is asking the Appeal Court to set aside the earlier dismissals of her case, issue an order that she sustained a serious psychological injury from her participation in Raffertys trial as a juror, and direct the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board to assess the compensation to which she claims she is entitled. A lawyer for the attorney general for Ontario, which was granted intervenor status in the case, argues that the Compensation for Victims of Crime Act is not the vehicle which can provide the compensation sought by the juror. The legislation provides compensation to individuals who have been directly harmed by a criminal act. The CVCA does not insure the public generally against other negative impacts of crime, the lawyer argued in documents submitted to the Appeal Court. Providing compensation to jurors is an issue that requires policy analysis and a clear understanding of the implications of such a decision, the documents said. SHARE: We invite articles submitted by our readers. You can add an article (subject to editorial approval) by emailing the Juan Wilson with what you want to post.We will include your name as the author, or, if you are forwarding another's words, we will add you as the source. The final day of the U.S. election campaign brought feelings of excitement and anticipation for one American expat. For another, tension and unease. After more than a year, the world will finally know whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is the next president of the United States, putting an end to what was a very divisive election campaign. Despite the many differences Trump and Clinton supporters have one another, by now they share common ground in their relief the election campaign is finally over. Maybe, maybe, we can start getting sleep again, said Ed Ungar of Democrats Abroad Canada. The polls have been looking pretty good so far, but frankly were all very, very on edge. Mark Feigenbaum, chairman of Republicans Overseas Canada, thinks Trump could surprise. This is entertaining, if nothing else, he said. A lot of media in Canadas reported how one-sided it will be and how no one will vote for Trump. Were seeing now that its actually going to be a much closer election than anyones expected . . . . Its going to be, at least in the popular vote, very close. Ungar isnt taking Trump lightly. Despite his view that Clinton is the only viable candidate, he knows her opponent stands a chance. He said hed be devastated if Trump wins. Because Trump is the leader of one of the two major parties, he has a reasonable chance of getting elected and that means that, if he wins, there is also a reasonable chance that Canada could be the last remaining mature democracy on the continent, Ungar said. His candidacy is a threat to the whole idea of democracy. Ungar, a Philadelphia-native, said Trump has succeeded by blaming other people for their legitimate problems. Feigenbaum said he doesnt share Trumps social values, but reconciles himself to this because he agrees with his fiscal views. The party does have to band behind their flag-bearer, Feigenbaum said. Theres nobody that wholesale believes 100 per cent of everything . . . . If I were a Democrat, I could listen to all of (Clintons) speeches and say Im not sure I, 100 per cent, believe that either. Feigenbaum said it wouldnt be the end of the world to him if Clinton defeats Trump, nor should it be that way for others if Trump were to win. I also really doubt that thered be hoards of people moving to Canada, he said. I really doubt it would be that drastic. Whether in seriousness or hyperbole, many have made such a declaration throughout the campaign. But despite the unique factors of this election, the threat of moving to Canada is something that comes up almost every four-year cycle, according to Michael Niren, a Toronto immigration lawyer. Its a little bit more active this round than I would say last, Niren said. I think they think theyre serious. Its an emotional thing, so its driven by anxiety more than a well-thought out decision to move countries across borders. Its more reactive, and, when the dust settles, often, we dont hear from them again. But Alan Regan of Moving2Canada.com, a recruitment agency that helps people plan their move to Canada, said the organizations website has seen a consistent bump in traffic from Americans this year compared to 2015, especially in October which had a 65-per-cent increase. A lot of people who write in say they dont care who wins, said Rob Calabrese, who launched cbiftrumpwins.com, a website devoted to helping disgruntled Americans move to Cape Breton Island if Trump wins. They seem to be, and, maybe justifiably so, just angry, and feel that their country is going in a wrong direction. Its the social climate, the political climate that they are getting tired of. Feigenbaum, who voted in California, said hes curious to see if future elections reflect the atmosphere felt in 2016 or if it was simply an aberration. I think thats going to be one of the most fascinating things that comes out of the election is to see how the next election goes, he said. Ungar fervently hopes the election turns out the way he would like. With Obama, especially in 2008, there was a feeling of hope. Here, there is a feeling of dread, especially if he actually wins, he said. In order to, frankly, defend the basic United States 240-year experiment in democracy, we must defeat him (Trump). Read more about: SHARE: Nearly 200 years ago, shortly after fleeing slavery in the United States using the Underground Railroad, Lucie and Thornton Blackburn became leaders in their newly adopted community in Toronto. They helped construct the historic Little Trinity Anglican Church on King St., and Thornton established Torontos first cab company a red-and-yellow horse-drawn carriage that seated four. On Wednesday, George Brown College will honour the story of the Blackburns, naming a conference centre at their student residence, The George, after the courageous couple and unveiling a mural designed and painted by George Brown students. This goes beyond the incredible story of a couple fleeing slavery to seek freedom in Canada, building incredible community partnerships and opening up the doors to blacks in Toronto, said Nikki Clarke, the president of the Ontario Black History Society. Their story runs parallel to many peoples stories: taking refuge, seeking safety, and trying to start over in a new country. It resonates with many. The Blackburns escaped their Kentucky slave owners in broad daylight in 1831 and began a new life in Detroit. But two years later, they were spotted by an acquaintance from Kentucky and the couple was taken to court and thrown in jail. With the help of the local abolitionist movement, the Blackburns again escaped, this time to Canada. Despite demands for extradition from the governor of Michigan, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada at the time refused to return them and the Blackburns settled in Toronto in 1834. The Blackburns were highly respected as both activists and business people in Toronto. Thornton established the first cab company in Upper Canada, a single-horse carriage painted red-and-yellow called The City. Karolyn Smardz Frost wrote a book about the couple after a public archeological dig uncovered the remains of the Blackburn home in 1985. Their achievement is remarkable and an example for all of us, Smardz Frost said. They built the fabric and infrastructure of our country and we stand on their shoulders. Adrienne Galway, special advisor to George Browns president Anne Sado and chair of the Blackburn Conference Centre Committee, said naming the building after the couple was an obvious choice for many reasons. The location of the Blackburns former home is just steps away from the downtown campus, not to mention George Brown and the Blackburns worked together on the anti-slavery abolitionist movement. Today, the Blackburns are buried beside George Brown at the Necropolis Cemetery. That diversity is what we like to represent as a downtown Toronto college, said Galway. Its a great fit, especially given that the conference centre is going to be the spot where people will be coming to exchange ideas. There will be a private unveiling of the conference centre on Wednesday, and open house for the public on Thursday from noon to 8 p.m. RELATED: More on thestar.com SHARE: With a crucial transit agreement heading to council on Tuesday, some councillors say they dont have enough information to approve the millions of dollars in spending it entails. The proposed deal was approved last week by Mayor John Torys executive committee, and will govern cost-sharing between the city and province as the two governments partner to build and operate new LRT lines, and implement Torys SmartTrack project. But although council is being asked to commit to taking on new transit costs, some councillors say there are crucial questions about the projects that wont be resolved until after the council meeting. This is the thinnest transit agreement Ive ever seen, said Councillor Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale High Park). We agree in principle to pay all these provincial costs without knowing how were going to pay for it or exactly what were getting. A spokesperson from the mayors office said that council cant afford to not approve the agreement. Council has a clear choice this week: it can take the extensive information it has before it and decide to get on with building transit or it can ask for further study, further reports and further debate, which just means more delay, wrote Amanda Galbraith in an email. In addition to potential future costs, the recommendations before council seek a firm commitment for $71 million for SmartTrack planning and $217.5 million for GO Transit upgrades, much of which would support the provinces regional express rail program on which SmartTrack depends. The recommendations would also add $2 billion in SmartTrack capital costs to the citys capital program. On Monday, the Star detailed questions around tax increment financing, which city staff now acknowledge cannot pay for all of the citys SmartTrack costs, as the mayor proposed during his 2014 election campaign. Here are three more key questions that council likely wont know the answer to by the time it votes: How much will it cost the city to operate new transit? The agreement would commit the city to paying operating and maintenance costs of provincial LRT projects. According to a city spokesperson, it would cost $227.4 million a year to operate and maintain the Eglinton Crosstown, Finch West, Sheppard East, and Eglinton West LRTs by 2026, assuming they all open by that time. That sum would be offset by fares and other revenues from the LRTs, which under the terms of the agreement the city would be allowed to retain. But the city report didnt provide a final figure for the net costs. Using the citys projections for the Crosstown, which were the most detailed in the report, the net costs for the four LRTs could be about half of the $227.4 million, or $113.7 million a year.Thats equivalent to a property tax increase of 4.2 per cent. Its going to be a huge burden for the people of Toronto, and we dont know how to pay for it, said Councillor Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches East York). The agreement would also commit Toronto to paying for the operating and maintenance costs of the six new stations being added to the provinces regional express rail program and branded as SmartTrack stops. According to the city report, those costs have not yet been estimated. What will SmartTrack service look like? At last weeks meeting, city manager Peter Wallace said that in order for SmartTrack to function as projected, it was an absolute necessity that passengers be able to pay a TTC fare to ride it. That is not guaranteed. Under the terms of the agreement, fares for SmartTrack would be set as part of a larger initiative being led by Metrolinx to integrate fares across all 10 transit operators in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The terms of the proposed agreement say only that the fare integration process must consider fare-related requests from the city. Metrolinx wont finish the fare integration project until next year, at the earliest. The citys proposal for SmartTrack also assumes being able to run trains through Union Station on GOs Stouffville and Kitchener corridors, instead of turning them back at Union, as some GO trains currently do. Asked whether through service for SmartTrack stations would be a part of regional express rail, Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said it is possible, and is under consideration as part of ongoing work. How will the western portion of SmartTrack be completed? The western heavy rail spur that Tory originally pitched as part of SmartTrack has been replaced with an extension of the Crosstown LRT known as the Eglinton West. The LRT would cost an estimated $2.5 billion, and the city would be responsible for paying to build it. Staff are counting on a federal contribution of $822.9 million, and a combined $470.1 million from the city of Mississauga and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. None of the contributions have been confirmed, and some Mississauga councillors have balked at the idea of chipping in. Without funding from Mississauga, the city could have to find another source of funding to extend the line all the way to the airport or the nearby Mississauga Airport Corporate Centre. At last weeks meeting, chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat described linking up with the employment-rich airport area as a critical connection and the primary rationale for building the LRT extension. The lack of funding details for the extension have given ammunition to its critics of the project. Councillor John Campbell (Ward 4, Etobicoke Centre). He argued that with or without funding commitments from the GTAA or Mississauga, the Toronto should spend its money on transit projects like planned LRT lines on the waterfront, which he said are a higher priority. He said he plans to move a motion at council to defer approval of the Eglinton West LRT. Even if they said, oh were fully on board, should the city of Toronto be spending a billion dollars on a dubious link to the airport? he asked. SHARE: BEIJINGChinas top legislature took the rare step Monday of intervening directly in a local Hong Kong political dispute by effectively barring two legally elected separatist lawmakers from taking office, setting the stage for further turmoil in the semi-autonomous city. Beijing moved to deny the two a second chance to take their oaths after being disqualified on their initial attempt last month for using anti-China insults and foul language. But the manoeuvre circumvented Hong Kongs courts, raising fears that the citys independent judiciary is being undermined. The decision was intended to nip in the bud the rise of separatist sentiment, but it has raised the spectre of more political unrest in Hong Kong. Major street demonstrations two years ago failed to win greater democracy but spawned an independence movement. On Sunday, thousands rallied against the anticipated Chinese government announcement. Police used pepper spray and batons against demonstrators trying to reach Beijings liaison office. Four people were arrested and two officers were injured, police said. The dispute centres on pro-independence lawmakers Sixtus Leung, 30, and Yau Wai-ching, 25, who altered their oaths to insert a disparaging Japanese expression for China. Displaying a flag reading Hong Kong is not China, they vowed to defend the Hong Kong nation. Their oaths were ruled invalid and subsequent attempts have resulted in mayhem in the Legislative Councils weekly sessions as the councils president refused to let them try again until the governments legal challenge is settled. But Beijing decided to act more quickly. The National Peoples Congress Standing Committee, the countrys top legislative panel, issued a ruling on a section of Hong Kongs Basic Law, or miniconstitution, covering oaths taken by officials. It said talk of independence for Hong Kong is intended to divide the country and severely harms the countrys unity, territorial sovereignty and national security. It also said those who advocate independence for Hong Kong are not only disqualified from election and from assuming posts as lawmakers but should also be investigated for their legal obligations. Its the first time Beijing has stepped in to block elected Hong Kong lawmakers from taking office. Its also the first time that Beijing has interpreted the Basic Law before a Hong Kong court has delivered a ruling on a case. In three of four previous interpretations, the NPC Standing Committee has delivered an opinion only after the Hong Kong government or the top court requested it. For the young people this is going to definitely create a backlash. This is going to further fuel the independence movement, said Samson Yuen, a politics lecturer at the Open University of Hong Kong. He added that protests and collective action have hit a dead end. Rationally for young people the only way out is to fight more radically, he said. The U.S. State Department expressed disappointment over Mondays developments and voiced strong support for Hong Kongs Legislative Council and independent judiciary. We believe that an open society with the highest possible degree of autonomy and government by the rule of law is essential for Hong Kongs continued stability and prosperity, spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters in Washington. In Beijing, Li Fei, a deputy secretary general of the NPC Standing Committee, denied that the central government was escalating its interference in Hong Kongs affairs. He told reporters that the Basic Law stipulates that Beijing holds the legal power to make interpretations, and it is the central governments duty to step in when there is a difference of legal opinion. He also warned that promoting independence was not a matter of freedom of speech. Breaking one-country two-systems is violating the law, not voicing a political view, said Li, referring to a principle under which Beijing is supposed to let Hong Kong keep its capitalist economic and political system separate from mainland Chinas until 2047. The central governments stance is absolute, he said, adding, There will be no leniency. Ming Sing, a professor of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said Beijing was making a disproportionate response to the threat of a separatist movement, given that polls show an overwhelming majority of Hong Kong citizens do not support breaking away from China. Eddie Chu, an independent pro-democracy lawmaker, said Beijing was making a needless intervention because Hong Kongs courts could have handled the dispute. He said Beijing was trying to deter those seeking greater self-determination for the city. Chu is also among a group of pro-democracy candidates, also including Leung and Yau, who were elected for the first time in September. Leung and Yau are members of the radical Youngspiration party. They did not respond to media requests for comment Monday. Hong Kongs Beijing-backed leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, said the government will fully implement the standing committees interpretation. He said the duo had not only advocated independence, but even insulted the country and the Chinese people in their words and deeds. In Beijing, Li decried the two as traitors and recounted Japanese World War II atrocities in Hong Kong in graphic detail, telling of nurses raped and bodies bayoneted and tossed into the Hong Kong harbour. I hope the people of Hong Kong wont forget the history of Japanese invaders, he said. All the traitors who sell out the country never have good endings. Read more about: SHARE: PITTSBURGHClosing out a wildly unpredictable White House race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump blitzed through battleground states Monday in a final bid to energize supporters. Clinton, backed by an emotional appeal from Barack Obama, urged voters to embrace a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America, while Trump vowed to beat the corrupt system. The candidates rallied voters late into the night, a frenzied end to a bitter election year that has laid bare the nations deep economic and cultural divides. Clinton and Trump were both nostalgic at times, looking back fondly at a campaign that has put each on the brink of the presidency. Clinton campaigned with confidence, buoyed by FBI Director James Comeys announcement Sunday that he would not recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. The FBI inquiry had sapped a surging Clinton momentum at a crucial moment in the race, though she still heads into Election Day with multiple paths to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the nations first female president. Clinton closed her campaign alongside the last two Democrats to occupy the Oval Office, Obama and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, as well as first lady Michelle Obama. In a nod to the deep divisions that await the next president, Clinton said shed come to regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became. She cast the choice facing voters Tuesday as a test of our time. We know enough about my opponent, we know who he is, Clinton said, addressing tens of thousands of people sprawled across Philadelphias Independence Mall. The real question for us is what kind of country we want to be. Obamas address amounted to a valedictory for a president whose popularity has grown in his final year in office. America, Im betting on you one more time, Obama said. I am betting that tomorrow you will reject fear and choose hope. Trump, who sped through five rallies Monday, recalled the rivals hed vanquished and how far hes come since launching his improbable candidacy. As he surveyed the crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he declared, Its been a long journey. Still, Trump was aggressive to the end, slamming Clinton as the face of failure. Having made the new FBI review a centrepiece of his closing case to voters, he argued that the Democrat was being protected by a totally rigged system. You have one magnificent chance to beat the corrupt system and deliver justice, Trump said. Do not let this opportunity slip away. The comments were a reminder that Comeys news, delivered in a letter to lawmakers on Sunday, was a doubled-edged sword for Clinton. While it vindicated her claims that the emails would not yield new evidence, it ensured that a controversy that has dogged her campaign from the start would follow her through Election Day. Across the country, nearly 24 million early ballots were cast under the shadow of Comeys initial announcement of a new email review. That number represents about half of the nearly 45 million people who had cast votes by Monday, according to Associated Press data. The inquiry involved material found on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide. Comey said Sunday the FBI reviewed communications to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state. Clinton tried to fly above the controversy Monday, making no mention of the FBI during her rallies. She was closing out her campaigning with a midnight rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Clinton is banking in part on high turnout particularly among Obamas young, diverse coalition of voters to carry her over the finish line Tuesday. Roughly half the states with advance voting have reported record turnout, including Florida and Nevada, which have booming Hispanic populations, a possible good sign for Clinton. In Florida alone, Hispanic participation is up by more than 453,000 votes, nearly doubling the 2012 level. Black turnout is up compared to 2012, but that share of the total vote is lower due to bigger jumps among Latinos and whites, according to University of Florida professor Daniel Smith In Nevada, where more than three-fourths of expected ballots have been cast, Democrats also lead, 42 per cent to 36 per cent. Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie downplayed the impact of increased Hispanic participation, telling reporters on a conference call, We feel that were going to get a good share of those votes. However, he sidestepped two questions about the level of Hispanic vote Trump needs to win the presidency. Without victories in Florida and Nevada, Trumps path to 270 electoral votes would be exceedingly narrow. He already must win nearly all of the roughly dozen battleground states. Trump had planned to keep up his breakneck travel schedule deep into Election Day, but aides revised plans, keeping the businessman in New York. Midway through his final day of travel Monday, Trump praised his supporters for having created a movement. But he warned it would all slip away if he loses Tuesday. Go vote, he urged. Or honestly, weve all wasted our time. MORE ON THESTAR.COM FBIs handling of Clinton email case throws organization into turmoil What will Donald Trump diehards do if he loses? How Donald Trumps presidential campaign revealed who he really is Donald Trump said 560 false things, total Read more about: SHARE: ROCKWELL CITY, IOWAAt least 1,000 law enforcement officers and much of the small Iowa community of Rockwell City gathered Tuesday to mourn the death of a 24-year-old police officer nearly a week after he and another officer were gunned down in their patrol cars. Residents and officers packed into a middle school gymnasium to remember Justin Martin, a rookie officer in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale who grew up in Rockwell City. The community of 1,700 people is about 75 miles (120 kilometres) northwest of Des Moines. Urbandale Police Chief Ross McCarty told mourners that his department and Rockwell City had both suffered a tremendous loss. This past week, the Urbandale Police Department lost our young man, but the community of Rockwell City lost their son, McCarty said. An Urbandale man is charged with first-degree murder in the Nov. 2 shooting deaths of Martin and 38-year-old Des Moines police Sgt. Anthony Beminio. A funeral for Beminio was held Monday. Few knew Martin as well as Urbandale officer Brady Farrington, who also grew up in Rockwell City. The Des Moines Register reports he spoke at the service about first meeting Martin in kindergarten and remaining close throughout their lives. Martin was born to serve, Farrington said, and loved his hometown and adopted city of Urbandale. Justin was intense, in all facets of his personality, Farrington said. Justin wanted to be part of something bigger than himself. After the funeral, Martins body was driven across town along flag-lined streets and through farmland for burial in Rosehill Cemetery. SHARE: WASHINGTONMingling with tourists at the wrought-iron gates that surround the White House, it remains incomprehensible that Donald Trump could occupy these illustrious premises. I cant find any mention in news databases that the Republican presidential nominee has ever actually stepped foot inside the building, even as an invited guest for a state dinner. (Which would put me one-up on Trump: 1985, Ronald and Nancy Reagan gala-feting the Prince and Princess of Wales, Diana famously dancing with John Travolta.) A photo does exist of then-first lady Hillary Clinton, smiling with Trump and his two older sons, which may have been taken at the White House though not even the photographer can recall the details except that Trump set up the op-session. Trump did, five years ago, offer to pay for a new opulent ballroom worth at least $100 million, an out-of-pocket bestowal he resurrected in pre-primaries January, when his bid for the Oval Office still seemed quixotically absurd. Trump can throw the money around. It wont help him here, in the District of Columbia, which has always voted Democrat and always by a wide margin Barack Obama received 13 votes for every one vote captured by Mitt Romney in 2012. A mere three electoral votes are at stake. D.C. is the quintessential company town 38 per cent of its workforce are government employees. Trump is the quintessential outsider, which he wears like a badge. Certainly its a key explanatory factor for his apparent popularity among the restive working class, miserable about sinking prospects. Though billionaire Trump is the antithesis of a working-class hero. Washington is also middle-class strong, with a highly educated and well-paid workforce that presumably would view Trump dimly. Not half as dimly, however, as the governing class on both sides of the aisle that Trump has relentlessly mocked and attacked. Gutless Republicans on the Hill and in the Senate may have attached their lips to Trumps zipper but hes no friend of theirs either. Thats a crucial component of his demagoguery, the maverick un-pol, a dark renegade banging at the gates of power. POTUS vox populi. Manifestly and monumentally unfit, unqualified, to be president of the United States and commander-in-chief. Yet here we are were one sleep away from the most consequential U.S. election in modern history, with Trump and Hillary Clinton bombarding battleground states on Monday in a final mad dash for votes. Polls shmolls. The professional pulse-taking that put Clinton narrowly ahead this week are no more definitive than polls which slimly favoured Trump a few weeks ago. It would be foolhardy to take anything for granted in these short-stroke hours, especially in the swing states where both candidates have been furiously campaigning. Trump, its generally acknowledged, has no hope of winning if he doesnt take Florida, for example, and was making like a Mexican jumping bean you should forgive the expression pinging around five blue states Monday, straining to turn at least one of them red. Trump clearly still believes he was gifted a crucial nudge with FBI director James Comeys astonishing interference last month, publicly disclosing the agency was investigating another trove of Clinton emails, casting a pall of renewed suspicion upon the Democratic candidate. Comey clumsily walked it back over the weekend, telling the Senate the FBIs review hadnt found evidence to reverse its July decision, that there should be no charges related to Clintons use of a private server while secretary of state. Yet a Trump super-PAC was still running ads Monday accusing Clinton of criminal misconduct as if shes been indicted. Of course, truthiness as devastatingly documented by my Star colleague Daniel Dale has hardly been a hallmark of Trump, his acolytes and his sadly beguiled supporters. Lost count of how many times Monday, at the North Carolina rally, Trump used the phrase Crooked Clinton. And crooked is one of the least barbarous terms Trump has flung at his opponent. The Great Vulgarian has single-handedly, single-mouthedly, dragged the political process never noble into the septic tank. Every time he opens that small pursed mouth, bilge spews. Advisers plead with Trump to stay on point. But Trump may in fact be smarter, in a grotty way, than the tall foreheads. Trumpists dont want a rhetorically cautious candidate; thats the whole pith of his appeal. Saying the un-say-able, going where no rational, non-deranged person has gone before. Hes cracked open unexplored territory, a slimy landscape where misanthropy thrives. All indications are that Trump has only the narrowest path to victory available in the electoral math. But the butterfly effect remains in play a sliver of chaos theory whereby the tiniest fluctuation can have walloping impact at another time and place. If not necessarily in the voting booth Tuesday, then in how America will look Wednesday morning, picking up the pieces of a horrendously toxic campaigning season. The damage Trump has wrought, his politics of fear and division, wont be dispelled by losing this election. Too much bile has been coaxed to the surface. Trumps Troops, emboldened, have crawled out of the corners and crevices, transforming the extremist into the tenable, the intolerant into the tolerable. This election is not, as so many have insisted, a choice between the lesser of two evils, the premise primarily advanced by a right-wing commentariat that would rather hold its nose and vote Trump than unstiffen in their pathological hatred of Clinton. There is zero equivalency between the shortcomings of the Democratic contender and the dastard who would be president, who champions walls, who demonizes immigrants, who doesnt read, who desecrates a slain Muslim serviceman, who smears and slanders women, who mocked a disabled reporter, who slicked five deferments to avoid Vietnam, whos a fan-boy of Vladimir Putin, who hate-tweets, who wouldnt release his tax filings, whos piled up a heap of mendacious campaign promises from returning manufacturing jobs to the Rust Belt to wiping ISIS (what we call Daesh) off the map just dont ask him how. There isnt a fault line in American society that Trump hasnt mined for traction, a hurt that he hasnt picked at and inflamed. Make America great again, yes, exactly: Citizen Trump instead of President Trump. Read more about: SHARE: WASHINGTONRepublicans held onto their slim Senate majority Wednesday, a stinging blow to Democrats in a night full of them. Democrats had been nearly certain of retaking control but saw their hopes fizzle as endangered GOP incumbents won in Missouri, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and even Democrat-friendly Wisconsin. GOP-held New Hampshire remained too close to call in the early morning hours Wednesday, but even if Democrats eked out a win there it would not make a difference. Republicans started the night with a 54-46 majority in the Senate and were on track to end up with at least 52 seats, presuming they win a December runoff in Louisiana, as expected. The outcome added to a debacle of a night for Democrats, who lost the presidency and faced being consigned to minority status on Capitol Hill for years to come. Republicans celebrated their wins, already looking ahead to midterms in 2018 when Democrats could see their numbers reduced even further with a group of red-state Senate Democrats on the ballot. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who will serve in that role next year under a President Trump, issued a statement congratulating the president-elect. After eight years of the Obama administration, the American people have chosen a new direction for our nation. President-elect Trump has a significant opportunity to bring our nation together, McConnell said. It is my hope and intent that we succeed in the years ahead by working together with our colleagues across the aisle to strengthen our national and economic security. As the night wore on, Democratic operatives struggled to explain why their optimistic assessments of retaking Senate control were so mistaken. Some blamed unexpected turnout by certain segments of white voters, or FBI Director James Comeys bombshell announcement that he was reviewing a new batch of emails connected with Democrat Hillary Clinton. In Pennsylvania, GOP Sen. Pat Toomey won a narrow victory for his second term over Democratic challenger Katie McGinty. It was a race Democrats expected to win going into the night and one that many Republicans felt nearly as sure theyd lose. The story was the same in Wisconsin, where GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, written off for months by his own party, won re-election against former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in a rematch. In Missouri and North Carolina, where entrenched GOP incumbents Roy Blunt and Richard Burr faced unexpectedly strong challenges from Democrats, both prevailed in the end. Democrats did grab a Republican-held seat in Illinois, where GOP Sen. Mark Kirk lost to Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a double-amputee Iraq war vet. That stood as the one Democratic pickup as the early morning hours ticked toward Wednesday. The other bright spot for Democrats was in Nevada, where Minority Leader Harry Reids retirement after five terms created a vacancy and the one Democratic-held seat that was closely contested. Reid manoeuvred to fill it with his hand-picked successor, Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevadas former attorney general who spoke often of her familys immigrant roots in a state with heavy Latino turnout. Cortez Masto will become the first Latina U.S. senator. She beat Republican Rep. Joe Heck, who struggled with sharing the ticket with Donald Trump, first endorsing and then un-endorsing Trump to the disgust of some GOP voters. Indeed the Senate races were shadowed every step of the way by the polarizing presidential race between Clinton and Trump. Yet in the end, Trump was apparently not the drag on GOP candidates widely anticipated. Republicans like Johnson who endorsed him and stuck with it won re-election, as did others like Pennsylvanias Toomey who never backed Trump until the very end. And so did a few like GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona who un-endorsed Trump after audio emerged of him boasting of groping women. McCain, at age 80, won his sixth term in quite possibly his final campaign. The 2008 GOP presidential nominee was re-elected without much difficulty despite early predictions of a competitive race, and struck a reflective note ahead of the outcome. While as Yogi Berra said, I hate to make predictions, especially about the future, Im not sure how many more I have in me, McCain said. In Indiana, GOP Rep. Todd Young beat former Democratic senator and governor Evan Bayh, who mounted a much-ballyhooed comeback bid, but wilted under scrutiny. And in Florida, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio beat Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, giving Rubio a platform from which he could mount another bid for president in 2020. In New York, Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats leader-in-waiting for a new Congress, easily won re-election. But the results elsewhere meant he would be leading a Senate minority when he replaces Reid in the leaders role. Even though the GOPs renewed control of the Senate will be narrow, the advantages of being in the majority are significant. The controlling party holds the committee chairmanships, sets the legislative agenda and runs investigations. First up is likely to be a nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. MORE ON THESTAR.COM Polarized America heads to the polls America on the edge: Lessons from covering the Clinton, Trump campaigns Donald Trump said 560 false things, total Read more about: SHARE: HONG KONGA British banker was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub. The nine-person jury returned unanimous verdicts against Rurik Jutting after a two-week trial in the High Court. The slayings in 2014 and disclosures as the case developed highlighted Hong Kongs significant inequality as well as the decadent lifestyles of some members of the former British colonys expatriate elite. Jutting bowed his head briefly as the verdicts were read out to a packed courtroom but otherwise showed little reaction. He was given an automatic mandatory life sentence, While he has the right to an appeal, his defence lawyer indicated ahead of the verdict that Jutting would request a transfer to a British prison to serve out his sentence there. In a statement his lawyer asked to be read into the court record, Jutting said he was sorry and accepted the verdicts as just and appropriate punishment. He also said he was haunted by his actions and the pain hed caused to the womens loved ones. Jutting, a Cambridge University graduate who worked for Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, was convicted of killing 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih and then killing 26-year-old Seneng Mujiasih days later. The two originally came to Hong Kong as foreign maids but ended up as sex workers. As statements from their families were read out by the prosecutor, Jutting stared at the floor. Jurors were shown graphic smartphone video clips taken by Jutting of his apparent torture of Sumarti, which the judge deemed too graphic for the public to view. He slit her throat and then nearly decapitated her when she didnt die immediately, according to facts agreed upon by both the prosecution and defence. He then stuffed her body inside a suitcase that he left on the balcony of his upscale apartment near Hong Kongs famous Wan Chai red-light district. Jutting had planned to torture Mujiasih with about $900 worth of tools and sex toys he had bought hours before. But he killed her when she spotted a gag in his apartment and wouldnt stop screaming, according to the two sides. After the verdict, Judge Michael Stuart-Moore called the case one of the most horrifying murder cases to come to the courts in Hong Kong. There are insufficient superlatives to describe the cruelty that Jutting inflicted on Ningsih and planned for Mujiasih, he said, adding that the defendant had not shown one shred of remorse and rejected his apology. He called Jutting an archetypal sexual predator and cited testimony from an expert psychiatric witness who said Jutting would be prone to committing sexual violence again. The judge said his sentencing remarks were aimed at notifying authorities in Britain, who must hold their own sentencing hearing if his transfer is granted, of the immense danger Jutting poses if he is allowed out of prison. Ningsihs brother, Suyit Khaliman, said the family welcomed the verdict and was grateful that Jutting was given the maximum penalty under Hong Kong law. Justice finally has been upheld after two years, Khaliman said. The sentence is still incomparable to the pain that is felt by us who lost Ningsih in such a terrible way. Khaliman said the family, from Central Java province, has suffered financially and emotionally since the death of Ningsih, who has a son, now aged 7. Read more about: SHARE: PHILADELPHIAAmerica now decides what kind of place it wants to be. The campaigning portion of a momentous, bitter, surreal U.S. presidential election ended Monday with Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump zipping around the country from morning to late at night to scrap for votes in critical states. Both of them made a case that did not sound, after all these months, like an exaggeration: Tuesdays vote is a referendum on Americas soul. Clinton appealed to voters better angels. We dont have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America, she said in Pittsburgh. Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America. Our core values are being tested in this election. Trump appealed to voters anger. U.S. Election: Live updates You have one magnificent chance to change a corrupt system, he said in Raleigh, and to deliver justice for every forgotten man, woman and child in this nation. Clinton said America needs more love and kindness. Trump said America needs to eradicate its rigged system. The last batch of polls suggested Clinton was on track for a comfortable historic victory. The woman seeking to become the first female president led by about four percentage points on average and by as many as six points. But the former secretary of state, senator and first lady showed no sign of complacency in an unpredictable year, playing both defence and offence on a four-rally day headlined by an appearance with her husband, the Obamas, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi at a giant concert rally in Philadelphia her second rally of the day in critical Pennsylvania. Im betting that tomorrow, America will reject a politics of blame and resentment, Barack Obama said at Independence Hall. Im betting that tomorrow, you will reject fear, and you will choose hope. Im betting that the decency and the generosity of the American people will win the day. And thats a bet Ive never lost. Clinton also showed up in Michigan, one of a few reliably Democratic states Trump might have to flip if he is to compensate for losing Pennsylvania, where he has not led in any poll in months. She was to hold one last event at midnight in Raleigh, finishing in a state where she and Trump are locked in a dead heat. Trump did even more campaigning than Clinton as he tried to find a way, any way, to overcome a daunting deficit. He started in Sarasota, Fla., a must-win state for him. He proceeded to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, with a grand finale scheduled for Grand Rapids, Mich. More than 70 million Americans are expected to cast ballots on Tuesday, joining more than 40 million who have already voted. They will choose between two candidates who share a home state and financial privilege but little else. The election pits a consummate Washington insider vowing to protect the presidents legacy against an outsider vowing to drain the swamp. It pits a polarizing feminist icon against a macho man with a history of sexism and alleged sex assault. It pits a conventional liberal against an unorthodox conservative. Scripted against improvised, disciplined against erratic, prepared versus blustering. One attempting to build a broad multiracial coalition, one appealing to the nostalgia, resentment and economic anxiety of white people. Above all, the election was about questions of identity, national and personal. Should America open its arms to the world or fortify itself both metaphorically and with an actual wall? Were illegal immigrants to be assimilated or summarily evicted? Were African-Americans making gains or mired in joblessness and hopelessness? Were Muslims a security threat or a part of the national fabric? The electorate was sharply split along racial and gender lines. Trump was looking to turn out disaffected whites who have stayed home in past elections; Clinton was seeking a surge in voting among Hispanics, which early-voting results in Florida and Nevada suggested might be happening, and a better-than-usual showing with female white moderates dismayed by Trumps behaviour and personality. Trump, a businessman and reality television star whose candidacy was widely treated as a joke 17 months ago, managed to stay in contention despite an unceasing series of revelations that would have sunk a conventional politician. He spent his final hours in his typical atypical fashion: raging at assorted things that drew his ire. He railed repeatedly against the filthy language of Beyonce and Jay-Z, who performed at a Clinton rally on Friday, and asked mockingly if they were singing or talking. He assailed the president for using Air Force One to campaign for Clinton, saying it would hurt the ozone layer. And, as so often, he boasted about himself. He drew massive crowds to the end. Hearing the roar of one of them, in Scranton, Pa., he said, This is not the sound of a second-place finisher. At least twice, he claimed he had the greatest movement ever in the history of our country. Both Trump and Clinton remained unpopular throughout the campaign, Clinton slightly less than Trump, and they tried Monday to do what they had always done: focus voters attention on the other. Clinton, seen to have a superior temperament, said the choice is between strong and steady leaders and loose cannons who could put everything at risk. Trump, seen to be more authentic, blasted Clinton as Crooked Hillary and a cheat. There are also two prominent third-party candidates on the ballot, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein. Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, has plummeted from relevance over the last month, but he remains at about 5 per cent in the polls, Stein at about 2 per cent. Clinton and Trump will hold their respective Tuesday victory parties within a few kilometres of each other in New York City. Trump will be at a hotel, Clinton at a convention centre under an actual glass ceiling. Read more about: SHARE: Police Admit to Monitoring Reporters Phones. Id forgive you for thinking that headline was ripped from the front pages of a foreign country known for the daily, dictatorial abuse of power. But this is a headline were seeing in Canada. In 2016. The same country where just last year, while campaigning to be prime minister, Justin Trudeau boldly chastised a room of his own supporters for booing a journalists tough questions. We respect journalists in this country, they ask tough questions and theyre supposed to Trudeau said to uproarious applause. But nobody is cheering about open journalism now. Last week, we learned that up to 10 Quebec journalists, and possibly more, have reportedly been spied on by their provincial government or local police force for the apparently egregious offence of doing their job. All journalists should be standing with our colleagues in Quebec. Unfortunately, we welcome these reporters to the ever-growing club of Canadian journalists up against the wall of state interference in their craft. In February 2015, the RCMP served VICE News journalist Ben Makuch with a production order, asking him to give up his sources on a considerable story of public interest. It was one of the earliest known cracks in what seems to be a spreading erosion of press freedom in Canada. This is a fight were still engaged in with the courts, and in public, along side Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Reporters without Borders and the Fahmy Foundation, among others. Our appeal is set for early 2017. In the meantime, weve launched an online campaign asking the Trudeau government and the RCMP to drop demands for Makuchs private material and correspondence with sources, and institute rules that protect the independence of journalists in Canada. Were going to keep fighting like hell for our reporter, and the disturbing precedent his case could set for journalists everywhere. All reporters require the freedom to push boundaries. A free press isnt just a fundamental Canadian right, its a value at the very core of news organizations around the world. Many young, hungry, and dogged journalists, such as Makuch, are what Canada needs now more than ever. Our society needs this new generation of journalists to be as bold and daring as the gutsy reporters who came before them. They need to be encouraged and defended in an era where the industry can seem so inhospitable to original work the last enemy we need is our own government and police. More than any generation before them, todays journalists lean on an ever-growing set of digital tools that reporters around the world to directly engage with anonymous sources from Russian hackers to Daesh recruits all in the pursuit of stories urgently in the public interest. All reporters should be encouraged to responsibly chase down this kind of work, knowing full-well they are operating without shield laws in this country, while their U.S. colleagues in 48 states and the District of Columbia do. But more than ever before, the digital trail inherent in our work needs to be safeguarded whether it is encrypted data, social media chat, or as we are seeing in the Quebec cases, GPs-tracking. Reporters across the country are now at the forefront of a new battle for cybersecurity; one with crucial implications for our democracy. And in an era of the global threat of cyber leaks and hacks, it is devastating they now need to rank Canadian police as a real-time threat to their work. News outlets, such as VICE, have explored the margins of society and have used new digital tools to do so. But with attacks on press freedom becoming more frequent in Canada, our own case is dragging us into an uncomfortable mainstream of digital surveillance and lack of source protection. You can count on us to kick and scream the whole way there. Michael Gruzuk is director, news and digital, for VICE Canada. SHARE: The perennial push to privatize Toronto Hydro, the publicly owned power provider, appears to be making unprecedented progress. But as the stars align for the sell-off, or perhaps more accurately, are engineered into alignment, the city should proceed with caution. The Star revealed earlier this year that some of Mayor John Torys senior staff and advisers had long been working toward a partial sale of the utility, which could bring in up to $1.5 billion for the cash-strapped municipality. Last month, Toronto Hydro hired two former senior Tory advisers to lobby council to consider a sell-off. And last week, Calgary-based energy giant Enbridge Inc. hired another former Tory operative to pitch its purchase of part of the energy provider. Meanwhile, policy-makers sympathetic to the sale have been chipping away at the traditional arguments against. One was that the province would gobble up much of the money through a longstanding transfer tax meant to discourage the privatization of public assets. Premier Kathleen Wynne, perhaps with a potential hydro sale in mind, lowered the levy significantly in her governments last budget. Now another anti-privatization argument looks ready to crumble. It has never been clear that the benefits of a one-time payoff would outweigh the sacrifice of annual dividends that flow to the city a revenue source that has pumped almost $210 million into Torontos coffers since 2010. But Toronto Hydros board of directors is now looking at ending the subsidy on the grounds that it needs the money to update the citys dilapidated power grid. (It may or may not have the authority to do this.) By withdrawing the payout, the utility would significantly weaken the case against privatization. The trouble is the appearance that paving the way to privatization is what this is all about, rather than, say, doing whats best for the city. Toronto Hydro recently received $2.25 billion earmarked for capital spending from the Ontario Energy Board, a boost that has reportedly contributed to a considerable hike in profits. Its not at all clear that the dividend is needed to cover the costs of a grid update. Needless to say, the timing is rather suspicious. Public officials should be facilitating, not manipulating, the debate over privatization. Besides the financial considerations, the sell-off of any public utility raises questions of how best to protect the public good. Toronto Hydros 747,000 customers deserve assurance that they wont suffer undue effect from a sale, especially if its to a private sector operator like Enbridge. Ongoing green initiatives and conservation efforts have to be supported and the citys say in key decisions at the utility will need protection. The recent history of partial privatization in Ontario from eHealth to ORNGE should be read as a cautionary tale. The allure of a sell-off to those working toward it is clear. Premier Wynne may well hope a sale would provide political cover for her governments own, unpopular privatization of Hydro One, not to mention a big cash infusion in the lead-up to the election. Tory, who has promised not to raise property taxes and has been reluctant to talk about other revenue tools, is surely enticed by what he sees as a more politically palatable, even if one-time, source of funds. Enbridge is no doubt eager to enter a potentially lucrative new market. But none of that has much to do with whether selling part of this important public asset would, on balance, be in the best interests of Torontonians. The promise of short-term benefits, whether to our cash-strapped city or to particular politicians, must be weighed against the long-term costs. Selling part of Toronto Hydro may be a wise move. But as long as officials continue to manipulate the debate, the utilitys true owners wont be able to decide. Read more about: SHARE: Re: Racism in policing is about outcomes, not intentions, Opinion Oct. 27 Racism in policing is about outcomes, not intentions, Opinion Oct. 27 Congratulations to Desmond Cole. He is so right about racism. How outrageous that the Ottawa police chief would argue that racist behaviour, if well intentioned, is not racist. This confirms what many of us suspect police and other strong figures of authority have no intention of changing their behaviours, only to justify them with specious arguments. Carol Rawson, Toronto SHARE: Re: TTC must fight assault, Editorial Nov. 1 TTC must fight assault, Editorial Nov. 1 If the number of sexual assaults on the TTC is to be more effectively addressed and prevented, a much-needed and long-awaited strategy to fight and prevent sexual violence recently announced by the Quebec government (in response to a crisis of sexual assaults in Montreal) should be given immediate consideration by Toronto city council and the Toronto Police Service. Some 50 measures including awareness campaigns increased training for police personnel who work with victims the establishment of a police unit specializing in sexual crimes and video-conferencing tools to assist victims to keep in contact with the authorities are foremost in the methodology to deal with sexual crimes. Relationships between the victim(s) and the crown attorney would be more personal and build trust between the victim, the Crown, and the police that would in turn create a more supportive atmosphere. This would make it easier for victims to step forward to testify without fear of retribution or experiencing undue shame. Bruce H. Bryer, Toronto As a student and woman who uses the TTC quite often, it saddens me that these incidents are still occurring in the 21st century, despite all that is being done and has been done to combat them. However, the statistics in this article should serve as a wake-up call to our institutions and companies to take a greater step in creating more awareness of these crimes. There needs to be a greater focus on ensuring the safety of those that use services like the TTC. Using the public transit system is necessary for a majority of Canadians, and it is our right that we feel safe when doing so. There must be change, and fast. Yodika Singh, Ajax SHARE: Re: Kimbo comes home, Nov. 2 Kimbo comes home, Nov. 2 Shame on the family that adopted Kimbo for accepting $5,000 to return this lost dog to its original owners. Granted, its not always easy to do the right thing. But to take more than the adoption fees and possibly dog food and any vet expenses for this lost dog is just disgusting. One can only wonder how the adopters would feel if the shoe were on the other paw. And just what is the Toronto Humane Society doing brokering or encouraging a ransom-like deal for a lost pet? Did the THS take a cut of the $5,000 fee paid, perhaps in the form of a donation from the adopting family? Anyway, a big bark out must be given to Lawrence Dalle Vedove, a total stranger, for giving up his vacation savings to come to the aid of the Daniels family and get Kimbo back to them. As for the adopting family, its now your turn to do the right thing give the $5,000 back to Mr. Vedove so you can sleep at night. Keith Noble, Toronto Lawrence Dalle Vedove is an incredible gentleman! I once lost a very beautiful dog and spent eight hours a day searching, four hours before work and four hours after. I did this even after getting a new dog. It took me 10 months to give up the ground searching and two years before I stopped following leads from Get Me Home and other lost dog services. Its been six years now and I still tear up when it crosses my mind to wonder what happened to my little Maus. It is so sad that it all came down to money for the people who had adopted Kimbo. They could have been the ones to bring such joy! Anyone who has ever lost their dog knows the excruciating pain and understands the incredible joy of being reunited. Thank you Lawrence Dalle Vedove. Jennifer Temple, Welland My dog Henry is a St. John Ambulance therapy dog and we visit the palliative care unit of a local hospital. We are well aware of the sad longing many unwell people experience they are separated from their best friends. While I applaud this mans act of generosity, the flip side of the story is the complete selfishness of the adoptive family. Even if there were children involved, this situation could have formed a learning experience about kindness and charity. Instead we have extortion and the realization that doing the right thing has a price. The adoptive owners should be ashamed of themselves. I would suggest donating that $5,000 to a pet rescue organization that helps pets who have never been loved as much as Kimbo. Karin McLean, Toronto I cannot believe that the people who adopted Kimbo from the Toronto Humane Society shortly after he was reported missing would refuse to return Kimbo when notified of the owners situation. These people could hardly have had time to ascertain the dogs situation with their family. Then, for them to hold out for money, $5,000, smacks of extortion to me. These are people who should never, ever be permitted to be in possession of any animal. C. J. Duffy, Thorold I wish you had included the names and photos of the heartless people who wouldnt return Kimbo. At first I thought maybe they fell in love with the dog, but turns out they need $5,000 to do the right thing. Despicable. They are probably on their way down south for a beach holiday with the money. Watch your pets carefully, there are greedy people out there. Louise Ross, Toronto Great feel good story about the return of Kimbo to Karl Daniel and his family. Kudos to Dalle Vedova who paid $5,000 to the family that had adopted Kimbo. Darts to that same family who only returned the dog after payment of what seems like ransom money. Shame on them for accepting the money. Decency has a price, I say. Carlton Stewart, Mississauga I have nothing but admiration for the stranger who paid $5,000 out of his own pocket to return a lost dog to his owner of 10 years. I also have nothing but contempt for the person who accepted such a ransom, rather than return the dog out of a sense of compassion and generosity. I sincerely hope this shameful example of greed and selfishness will not spark a rash of for-profit canine kidnappings. Raphael Vigod, Toronto Laurels to the Hamilton man who paid $5,000 to the family that adopted Kimbo in order to return him to his loving family. Darts to the family that didnt have the decency to return Kimbo to the Toronto Humane Society as soon as the adoption mistake was discovered. I remember reading how attached they had become to the dog after just two days. Some attachment that they were willing to take a strangers hard-earned vacation money to part with someone elses dog. Shame on them. Leslie Chisholm, Markham Shame on the people who refused to return Kimbo to his rightful owner. And shame on the people who only did so with a $5,000 bribe. And you consider yourselves dog lovers? Barbara Martin, Toronto What a kind and generous person Dalle Vedove is, donating his vacation money to ensure the return of Karl Daniels dog to him. Too bad he had to pay the new owners of Karl Daniels dog to secure its return. Wouldnt it have been great if the new owners had taken the opportunity to teach their children an invaluable lesson: That the dog shouldnt have been made available for adoption, that its owner was an ill, elderly, person, who had had the dog for years and that person needed his dog back. Such lessons are likely what helped make Dalle Vedove the good man he is today. Barbara Leslie Reid, Toronto SHARE: Concerns over a Donald Trump victory on Tuesday have sent markets into decline in recent days. Even the stocks that stand to perform well under a Trump presidency have struggled. TheStreet's Donald Trump Stock Portfolio, a set of 15 stocks identified that could surge with the real estate magnate in the White House, fell 1.57% in the week leading up to the election, from market close Friday, Oct. 28, to market close Friday, Nov. 4. Since we began tracking the Trump portfolio in July, it has declined 2.95%. The usually boisterous Trump spent much of his final week on the campaign trail trying to stick to the script and allow negative headlines about Hillary Clinton dominate the conversation. He even gave himself a pep talk at a rally. A New York Timesstory over the weekend provided a window into Trumpland in the final stretch: a candidate who doesn't want to be alone, a daughter who tries to brush campaign ads under the rug, aides who have finally wrestled Twitter away from their nominee. Trump's poll numbers have climbed heading to Election Day, though he remains the race's underdog. FBI director James Comey delivered a small blow on Sunday when he announced a renewed review of Clinton's emails would not lead to any charges. Here's what's been happening with the Trump-friendly stocks: U.S. Steel (X) was the top portfolio in the Trump portfolio last week. Its price rallied 2.85%, to $19.86. The Pittsburgh-based company posted a strong quarterly performance last week but lowered its full-year guidance. It also announced an agreement to sell U.S. Steel Canada, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2014, to Bedrock Industries. U.S. Steel is the only stock in both the Trump and Clinton portfolios, as both candidates' policies--specifically in relation to China--would benefit it. Another steel company, Steel Dynamics (STLD) , surged last week as well. It climbed 2.68%, to $27.55. The Indiana-based steel producer, like U.S. Steel, would benefit from Trump's stance towards China. He pledges to instruct the Treasury Secretary to label the country a currency manipulator and instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring cases against it. The Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) was the worst performer in the Trump portfolio last week. Its price tumbled 7.18%, to $97. Though Bitcoin declined last week, it may be a haven for investors concerned about market uncertainty triggered by a Trump victory. Lockheed Martin (LMT) tumbled 4.73%, to $236.28, by market close Friday. The company tussled with the Pentagon over a $6.1 billion contract for F-35 fighter planes, arguing the contract was not mutually agreed-upon soon after it was announced. Trump has said he would increase military spending as Commander in Chief--Lockheed Martin, the U.S. government's biggest single contractor, would almost certainly get a boost from that. Here's how the entire Trump portfolio did last week, leading with the top gainers: U.S. Steel 2.85% Steel Dynamics 2.68% Geo Group (GEO) 0.34% Oracle (ORCL) 0.29% Randgold Resources (GOLD) 0.05% Northrup Grumman (NOC) -1.38% ExxonMobil (XOM) -1.43% Tetra Tech (TTEK) -1.56% Microsoft (MSFT) -1.94% Capital One Financial (COF) -2.05% Boeing (BA) -2.43% Elbit Systems (ESLT) -2.78% Cemex (CX) -4.25% Lockheed Martin -4.73% Bitcoin Investment Trust -7.18% Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, has no positions in the stocks mentioned. About 2.8 million Samsung washing machines are being recalled in the U.S. following reports that the machine tops can unexpectedly detach during use, posing risks and causing injuries. The recall, which involves 34 models of top-load washing machines, comes about a month after Samsung announced it would cease of production of Galaxy Note 7, which had persistent problems with overheating, catching fire and sudden explosions. Samsung has received 733 reports of washing machines experiencing excessive vibration or the top detaching from the washing machines, nine of which are related reports of injuries, according to a Nov. 4 statement from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). "Our priority is to reduce any safety risks in the home and to provide our customers with easy and simple choices in response to the recall," says John Herrington, senior vice president and general manager of Home Appliances, Samsung Electronics America. "We are moving quickly and in partnership with the CPSC to ensure consumers know the options available to them and that any disruption in the home is minimized." The latest safety problem deals another blow to the Seoul-based multinational conglomerate whose global recalls of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones may ultimately result in more than $6 billion in losses. Despite what seems to be complex and hard-to-solve safety issues with Samsung's electronics and appliances, some industry experts are positive about the company's ability to resuscitate its business and emerge more or less unharmed from its recent setbacks. Eric Schiffer, chief executive officer of Reputation Management Consultants, a company that helps celebrities and corporations manage brand crises, believes that Samsung made a strong move by killing the Note 7. "Recalling its washing machines will not hurt Samsung's reputation because consumers see a further protective move in a niche most people rarely tie to the firm," said Schiffer. "After the new latest 'explodalabra' recall, if the revised washing machines have problems, Samsung should bury them in a brand cemetery next to the Note 7." Meanwhile, the newly revealed artificial intelligence feature that will come with Galaxy S8, set to be released after the Mobile World Congress trade show in late February next year, could also help Samsung make a comeback, the Wall Street Journal reported. The added AI button will be akin to Apple (AAPL) 's Siri, Microsoft (MSFT) 's Cortana, Amazon (AMZN) 's Alexa and Alphabet (GOOGL) 's virtual assistance. The improved AI service is likely to come from Samsung's acquisition of American AI startup Viv Labs Inc. in early October. Apple and Alphabet are a holdings in Jim Cramer'sAction Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AAPL or GOOGL? Learn more now. Customers at U.K.-based Tesco Bank may have made history last weekend, but not for the reasons one might have imagined. This after 20,000 Tesco Bank clients were victimized by cyber-thieves who breached the bank's security firewall, and withdrew money directly from client accounts. The hackers' "systematic, sophisticated attack" differs from most data breaches in that the cyber-thieves eschewed traditional theft targets like driver's licenses or credit card numbers. Instead, they figured out a way to access customer bank accounts directly, just as easily as they had a customer's ATM card of their own. The cyber-attack occurred over the weekend, with 40,000 Tesco bank accounts breached, and 20,000 accounts having cash taken out by cyber-hackers. On November 6, Benny Higgins, CEO at Tesco Bank, issued an alert to the financial institution's 137,000 customers that the bank would stop online transactions from current accounts and that debit transactions would not be available. Cash withdrawal and payment with chip and PIN cards would still be possible. Higgins also said the bank would refund any money lost to customers due to the security breach by November 7. Cyber security experts call the Tesco breach unprecedented, but not necessarily surprising. "I've not heard of an attack of this nature and scale on a U.K. bank where it appears that the bank's central system is the target," notes Alan Woodward, a security consultant, with experience working for Europol." The real threat is that now, apparently, cyber-criminals are targeting bank customer accounts directly, experts say. "It's extremely unusual to see an attack of this scale directly on consumer bank accounts," says Tim Erlin, Senior Director of IT Security and Risk Strategy for Tripwire, a security services firm based in Portland, Ore. Erlin says he wouldn't expect Tesco or law enforcement authorities to understand exactly how this attack has been carried out for quite some time. "It's clear the criminals responsible have executed a well-planned and coordinated attack," he says. "The complexity of the systems involved will make it challenging to unravel exactly what has happened here." Tom Kellermann, CEO of Strategic Cyber Ventures, a cyber security technology company, views the Tesco breach as a landmark data security incident, with far-reaching implications. "This breach serves as a canary in the coal mine," Kellerman says. "It highlights the failure of current bank cybersecurity standards." Kellerman views the Tesco breach as unsurprising, given that most financial institutions have underinvested in cybersecurity programs. "They are over-reliant on perimeter defenses which are being circumvented by organized cybercrime syndicates," he explains. "Greater investment must be made in technologies which monitor what occurs inside the vault. User behavior analytics and deception security technologies can greatly enhance the safety and soundness of our banks." Kellerman also says that hackers could easily replicate the attack against U.S, banks. "Some banks are better defended than others," he says. To fight back, Kellerman advises U.S. banks to wake up and recognize the threat they're facing - and beef up security defenses significantly. "The security standards for banks must be modernized as right now, those standards are inadequate in thwarting the modern Dillinger gangs," he says. The same goes for banking consumers. "U.S. banking customers should update all their software every Tuesday, use Firefox as a browser; use anti-virus software, change their password to pass phrases with numbers and never use public Wifi or respond to an email from their bank asking for their information," he adds. Other cyber-security gurus say it's frustrating banks haven't done more to prevent what security professionals have been predicting for years. "Absolutely, hackers could do the same thing to U.S. banks," says Michel Benaroch professor of management information systems, at Syracuse University. "There is nothing unique that U.S. banks are doing that would make them immune to similar hacks. The technology and information technology management issues at the core of such hacking incidents are the same across most banks. In fact, we know of enough instances where hackers penetrated U.S. banks systems and stole confidential customer data. The distance from there to actually manipulating customer accounts is not that big." There is, however, a strong measure of comfort for financial consumers. Anna Chernobai, an assistant professor of finance at Syracuse University, says U.S. banking customers shouldn't "panic" after hearing about the Tesco breach. "It's scary to think that hackers might end up with money you have deposited in a bank," Chernobai says. "The good news is that technology systems offer audit trails that banks can use to trace data breaches and the customer accounts that have been effected." "In the end, the probability of your individual personal account holdings being affected by hackers is still extremely low, almost negligible in practical terms." Maybe so, but tell that to 20,000 Tesco customers - who have to wonder whether or not their bank accounts will ever be safe again. As Saudi Arabia struggles with an oversupply of cheap oil and squabbles with its neighbors, one Wall Street analyst has a simple suggestion for the kingdom: how about hedging? The oil market is heading for a supply crunch in the next two or three years, RBC Capital Markets strategist Michael Tran argues in a research note that was circulated to investors on Tuesday morning. That may put Saudi Arabia in a position where it could increase its market share without necessarily making major adjustments to its output numbers. By trading over-the counter derivatives such as fixed-price swaps and put and call options, the Saudis could be able to keep perpetual downward pressure on the term price of oil - the cost of future delivery of a barrel, Tran wrote, blocking long-cycle projects in the process. Long-cycle global projects like deep-water oil extraction off the coast of Brazil and oil sands processing in Canada generally need higher term oil prices to economically justify their high overhead costs and lengthy development time frames. "The majority of global long-lead time projects won't ever be commissioned [in this scenario]," Tran said in a phone interview. The kingdom would simultaneously profit from gains in the spot price of oil -the cost of immediate delivery of a barrel -, thanks to its immense supply of proven oil reserves. "OPEC producers [like Saudi Arabia] generally sell on a spot basis," Tran said. "Which means if you're a low-cost producer, you can sell products at a higher spot basis." As global supply contracts, the spot price should rise. But in a hypothetical scenario in which the term price remains depressed at around $54 or $55 a barrel, the Saudis could be able to impose their will on the market. WTI Crude was trading at $45.25 a barrel Tuesday afternoon, a far cry from the $75-a-barrel spot price benchmark Tran's note used. "I think when the overwhelming majority of people think about OPEC and the market share battle, they only think of it from a physical barrel standpoint," Tran said. The concept of a sovereign oil producer hedging against the market is not fantastical. Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil producer, hedged roughly 250 million barrels of its oil this summer through put options. For now, though, Saudi Aramco is wholly owned by the kingdom, and any future hedge the producer makes as a public (or private) company remains purely in the realm of thought experiments. Envestnet, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides wealth management software and services in the United States and internationally. It operates through Envestnet Wealth Solutions and Envestnet Data & Analytics segments. The company's product and services include Envestnet | Enterprise, which provides an end-to-end open architecture wealth management platform, as well as offers data aggregation and reporting, data analytics, and digital advice capabilities; Envestnet | Tamarac that provides trading, rebalancing, portfolio accounting, performance reporting, and client relationship management software; and Envestnet | MoneyGuide that provides goals-based financial planning solutions to the financial services industry. It also provides Envestnet | Retirement Solutions, which offer a suite of services for advisor-sold retirement plans; and Envestnet | Portfolio Management Consultants that provide research and consulting services to assist advisors in creating investment solutions for their clients, and portfolio overlay and tax optimization services, as well as data aggregation and data intelligence platform, which offers cloud-based innovation for digital financial services. Envestnet, Inc. was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The following companies are subsidiares of American International Group: AGC Life Insurance Company, AIG APAC HOLDINGS PTE. LTD., AIG Aerospace Insurance Services Inc., AIG Asia Pacific Insurance Pte. Ltd., AIG Asset Management (Europe) Limited, AIG Asset Management (U.S.) LLC, AIG Assurance Company, AIG Australia Limited, AIG Brazil Holding I LLC, AIG CIS Investments LLC, AIG Canada Holdings Inc., AIG Capital Corporation, AIG Capital Services Inc., AIG Claims Inc., AIG Credit Management LLC, AIG Egypt Insurance Company S.A.E., AIG Employee Services Inc., AIG Europe Holdings S.a.r.l, AIG Europe S.A., AIG Federal Savings Bank, AIG Financial Products Corp., AIG General Insurance Co. Ltd., AIG Global Asset Management Holdings Corp., AIG Global Operations Inc., AIG Global Real Estate Investment Corp., AIG Global Reinsurance Operations, AIG Holdings Europe Limited, AIG Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, AIG Insurance Company China Limited, AIG Insurance Company JSC, AIG Insurance Company of Canada, AIG Insurance Company-Puerto Rico, AIG Insurance Hong Kong Limited, AIG Insurance Management Services Inc., AIG Insurance New Zealand Limited, AIG International Holdings GmbH, AIG Investments UK Limited, AIG Israel Insurance Company Ltd, AIG Japan Holdings Kabushiki Kaisha, AIG Kenya Insurance Company Limited, AIG Korea Inc., AIG Latin America I.I., AIG Latin America Investments S.L., AIG Lebanon SAL, AIG Life Holdings Inc., AIG Life Limited, AIG Life South Africa Limited, AIG Life of Bermuda Ltd., AIG MEA Holdings Limited, AIG MEA Limited, AIG Malaysia Insurance Berhad, AIG Markets Inc., AIG Matched Funding Corp., AIG PC Global Services Inc., AIG Philippines Insurance Inc., AIG Property Casualty Company, AIG Property Casualty Inc., AIG Property Casualty International LLC, AIG Property Casualty U.S. Inc., AIG Re-Takaful (L) Berhad, AIG Resseguros Brasil S.A., AIG Seguros Brasil S.A., AIG Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., AIG South Africa Limited, AIG Specialty Insurance Company, AIG Technologies Inc., AIG Travel Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., AIG Travel Assist Inc., AIG Travel Assist Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., AIG Travel EMEA Limited, AIG Travel Inc., AIG Uganda Limited, AIG Vietnam Insurance Company Limited, AIG WarrantyGuard Inc., AIG-FP Pinestead Holdings Corp., AIG-Metropolitana Cia. de Seguros y Reaseguros S.A., AIGGRE Europe Real Estate Fund I GP S.a r.l., AIGGRE Europe Real Estate Fund II GP S.a r.l., AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund I GP LLC, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund II GP LLC, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund III GP LP, AIGGRE U.S. Real Estate Fund IV GP LLC, AIU Insurance Company, AM Holdings LLC, Ageas Protect, AlphaCat Managers Ltd., American General Corporation, American General Life Insurance Company, American Home Assurance Co. Ltd., American Home Assurance Company, American International Group UK Limited, American International Realty LLC, American International Reinsurance Company Ltd., American International Underwriters del Ecuador-Holding S.A. en Liquidacion S.A., Arthur J. Glatfelter Agency Inc., Blackboard Insurance Company, Blackboard Specialty Insurance Company, Blackboard U.S. Holdings Inc., C.A. de Seguros American International, Commerce and Industry Insurance Company, Crop Risk Services Inc., Eaglestone Reinsurance Company, Ellipse, Franklin Life Insurance Company, Fuji Fire and Marine, Glatfelter Insurance Group, Glatfelter Underwriting Services Inc., Globe and Rutgers Insurance Group, Grand Isle SAC Limited, Granite State Insurance Company, Illinois National Insurance Co., Inversiones Segucasai C.A., Johannesburg Insurance Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, Laya Healthcare Limited, Lexington Insurance Company, Lexington Specialty Insurance Agency Inc., National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh Pa., National Union Fire Insurance Company of Vermont, New Hampshire Insurance Company, PCG 2019 Corporate Member Limited, PT AIG Insurance Indonesia, Pine Street Real Estate Holdings Corp., Risk Specialists Companies Insurance Agency Inc., SAFG Capital LLC, SAFG Retirement Services Inc., Service Net Warranty LLC, Stratford Insurance Company, SunAmerica Asset Management LLC, Talbot Holdings Ltd., Talbot Underwriting Holdings Ltd., Talbot Underwriting Ltd., The Insurance Company of the State of Pennsylvania, The United States Life Insurance Company in the City of New York, The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company, Travel Guard, Travel Guard Group Canada Inc./Groupe Garde Voyage du Canada Inc., Travel Guard Group Inc., Tudor Insurance Company, VALIC Financial Advisors Inc., Valic Retirement Services Company, Validus Holdings, Validus Holdings (UK) Ltd., Validus Holdings Ltd., Validus Reinsurance (Switzerland) Ltd, Validus Reinsurance Ltd., Validus Ventures Ltd., Volunteer Firemen's Insurance Services Inc., and Western World Insurance Company. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Caterpillar: Advanced Tri-Gen Power Systems LLC, Anchor Coupling Inc., Asia Power Systems (Tianjin) Ltd., AsiaTrak (Tianjin) Ltd., Banco Caterpillar S.A., Berg Propulsion International Pte Ltd., Bucyrus, Bucyrus Australia Surface Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Holdings Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Limited, Bucyrus International (Chile) Limitada, Bucyrus International (Peru) S.A., Bucyrus Mining Australia Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Mining China LLC, Bucyrus UK Limited, Cat Rental Kyushu LLC, Caterpillar (Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar (China) Financial Leasing Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Machinery Components Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (HK) Limited, Caterpillar (Huainan) Machinery Service Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Langfang) Mining Equipment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Luxembourg) Investment Co. S.a r.l., Caterpillar (NI) Limited, Caterpillar (Newberry) LLC, Caterpillar (Qingzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Logistics Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar (U.K.) Limited, Caterpillar (Wujiang) Ltd., Caterpillar (Xuzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Zhengzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar Acquisition Holding Corp., Caterpillar Americas C.V., Caterpillar Americas Co., Caterpillar Americas Funding Inc., Caterpillar Americas Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Asia Limited, Caterpillar Asia Pacific L.P., Caterpillar Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Asset Intelligence LLC, Caterpillar Belgium S.A., Caterpillar Brasil Comercio de Maquinas e Pecas Ltda., Caterpillar Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Brazil LLC, Caterpillar Castings Kiel GmbH, Caterpillar Centro de Formacion S.L., Caterpillar China Limited, Caterpillar Commercial Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Commercial LLC, Caterpillar Commercial Northern Europe Limited, Caterpillar Commercial S.A., Caterpillar Commercial S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Commercial Services S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Communications LLC, Caterpillar Corporativo Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Cote DIvoire, Caterpillar Credito S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., Caterpillar DC Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Digital Services & Solutions SARL, Caterpillar Distribution International LLC, Caterpillar Distribution Services Europe B.V.B.A., Caterpillar East Real Estate Holding Ltd., Caterpillar Emissions Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Energy Solutions GmbH, Caterpillar Energy Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions S.A., Caterpillar Energy System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Engine Systems Inc., Caterpillar Equipos Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Eurasia LLC, Caterpillar FS (QFC) LLC, Caterpillar Finance France S.A., Caterpillar Finance Kabushiki Kaisha, Caterpillar Financial Acquisition Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Aftermarket Solutions Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Australia Leasing Pty Limited, Caterpillar Financial Australia Limited, Caterpillar Financial Commercial Account Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Corporacion Financiera S.A. E.F.C., Caterpillar Financial Dealer Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Funding Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Caterpillar Financial Leasing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial New Zealand Limited, Caterpillar Financial Nordic Services AB, Caterpillar Financial Nova Scotia Corporation, Caterpillar Financial OOO, Caterpillar Financial Receivables Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Renting S.A., Caterpillar Financial SARL, Caterpillar Financial Services (Dubai) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services (Ireland) plc, Caterpillar Financial Services (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Argentina S.A., Caterpillar Financial Services Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Financial Services CR s.r.o., Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Services GmbH, Caterpillar Financial Services India Private Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Leasing ULC, Caterpillar Financial Services Limited Les Services Financiers Caterpillar Limitee, Caterpillar Financial Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Caterpillar Financial Services Netherlands B.V., Caterpillar Financial Services Norway AS, Caterpillar Financial Services Philippines Inc., Caterpillar Financial Services Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Financial Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, Caterpillar Financial UK Acquisition Funding Partners, Caterpillar Financial Ukraine LLC, Caterpillar Fluid Systems S.r.l., Caterpillar Fomento Comercial Ltda., Caterpillar Forest Products Inc., Caterpillar France S.A.S., Caterpillar GB L.L.C., Caterpillar Global Investments S.a r.l., Caterpillar Global Mining America LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Equipamentos De Mineracao do Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Global Mining Equipment LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Europe GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Expanded Products Pty Ltd, Caterpillar Global Mining Germany Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining HMS GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong AFC Manufacturing Holding Co. Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Global Mining SARL, Caterpillar Global Mining U.S. Parts LLC, Caterpillar Global Services LLC, Caterpillar Group Services S.A., Caterpillar Holding (France) S.A.S., Caterpillar Holding Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Holdings Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Hungary Components Manufacturing Ltd., Caterpillar Hydraulics Italia S.r.l., Caterpillar IPX LLC, Caterpillar IRB LLC, Caterpillar Impact Products Limited, Caterpillar India Private Limited, Caterpillar Industrial Inc., Caterpillar Industrias Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Industries (Pty) Ltd, Caterpillar Insurance Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Insurance Company, Caterpillar Insurance Holdings Inc., Caterpillar Insurance Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Finance Designated Activity Company, Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg I S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg II S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Product SARL, Caterpillar International Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Services del Peru S.A., Caterpillar Investment Limited, Caterpillar Investment One SARL, Caterpillar Investment Two SARL, Caterpillar Investments, Caterpillar Japan LLC, Caterpillar Latin America Services S.R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Panama S. de R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Servicios de Chile Limitada, Caterpillar Latin America Support Services S. DE R.L., Caterpillar Leasing (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar Leasing Chile S.A., Caterpillar Leasing GmbH (Leipzig), Caterpillar Leasing Operativo Limitada, Caterpillar Life Insurance Company, Caterpillar Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Logistics (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Logistics Inc., Caterpillar Logistics ML Services France S.A.S., Caterpillar Logistics Services China Limited, Caterpillar Luxembourg Group S.ar.l., Caterpillar Luxembourg LLC, Caterpillar Luxembourg S.a r.l., Caterpillar Machinery Nantong Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, Caterpillar Marine Power UK Limited, Caterpillar Marine Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Maroc SARL, Caterpillar Materiels Routiers SAS, Caterpillar Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Mexico S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Mining Canada ULC, Caterpillar Mining Chile Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Motoren (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Motoren GmbH & Co. KG, Caterpillar Motoren Henstedt-Ulzburg GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Rostock GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Verwaltungs-GmbH, Caterpillar Netherlands Holding B.V., Caterpillar North America C.V., Caterpillar Operator Training Ltd., Caterpillar Overseas Credit Corporation SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Investment Holding SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Limited, Caterpillar Overseas SARL, Caterpillar Panama Services S.A., Caterpillar Paving Products Inc., Caterpillar Paving Products Xuzhou Ltd., Caterpillar Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Power Generation Systems (Bangladesh) Limited, Caterpillar Power Generation Systems L.L.C., Caterpillar Power Systems Inc., Caterpillar Power Ventures International Ltd., Caterpillar Precision Seals Korea, Caterpillar Prodotti Stradali S.r.l., Caterpillar Product Services Corporation, Caterpillar Propulsion AB, Caterpillar Propulsion International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Italy S.R.L., Caterpillar Propulsion Namibia (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar Propulsion Production AB, Caterpillar Propulsion Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Singapore Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar R&D Center (China) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe LLC, Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe Servicios S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Reman Powertrain Indiana LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Shanghai) Co. 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Ltd., Tecnologia Modificada S.A. de C.V., Towmotor Corporation, Traction & Mining Motor Repairs Pty Ltd, Turbinas Solar S.A. de C.V., Turbinas Solar de Colombia S.A., Turbinas Solar de Venezuela C.A., Turbo Tecnologia de Reparaciones S.A. de C.V., Turbomach, Turbomach Endustriyel Gaz Turbinleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited, Turbomach France SARL, Turbomach GmbH, Turbomach Netherlands B.V., Turbomach Pakistan (Private) Limited, Turbomach S.A. Unipersonal, Turbomach Sp. Z o.o., Turner Powertrain Systems Limited, UK Hose Assembly Limited, Underground Imaging Technologies Inc, United Industries LLC, VALA Inc., Vasky Energy Ltd., Wealdstone Engineering, Weir - Oil & Gas Division, West Virginia Auto Shredding Inc., Western Gear Machinery LLC, Wetland Sustainability Fund I LLC, Williams Technologies, Yard Club, Zhengzhou Siwei Mechanical and Electrical Equipment Sales Co. Ltd., and okyo Rental Ltd.. Read More NextEra Energy, Inc. is the largest electric utility holding company in the US. It operates a network of power generation and distribution facilities that include fossil-fuel-generated and green energy. As of mid-2022, the company was capable of generating 58 GW of electricity with nearly 60% of the load produced by green sources including wind and solar. In their view, going green isnt an option, its the solution. NextEra Energy has been recognized multiple times as a leader in clean energy and ESG practices and was ranked the #1 electric and gas utility on the Forbes list of Most Admired Companies. The company is the result of several mergers that begin with FPL Group. FPL Group is now a subsidiary of NextEra Energy and the third-largest provider of electricity in the US servicing nearly half of Florida. FPL and its affiliates are the single largest provider of renewable energy generated from wind and sun. The group changed its name in 2010 following a decision to shift focus onto renewable energy sources. Today, NextEra Energy, Inc through its subsidiary FPL serves about 12 million people in eastern and southwestern Florida. The company employs nearly 14,900 people who service 5.8 million accounts. The company is in business to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to retail and wholesale clients. Electricity is generated through wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired facilities. The company is also engaged in the construction and operation of new facilities, specifically renewable power generation, storage, and delivery facilities, and can offer custom solutions tailored to any need. Offerings include tailored services to assist businesses with their transition to clean energy. NextEra Energy also owns and operates 7 nuclear power stations in Florida, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin generating power for the wholesale market. Unlike other companies that are targeting net-zero emissions, NextEra Energy has a plan to reach real zero and is investing heavily to reach that goal by 2045. The company had invested nearly $50 billion in green energy infrastructure and initiatives by mid-2022. The plan is to first work on reducing its own emissions and then take its knowledge and expertise to the world. Mastercard Incorporated, a technology company, provides transaction processing and other payment-related products and services in the United States and internationally. It facilitates the processing of payment transactions, including authorization, clearing, and settlement, as well as delivers other payment-related products and services. The company offers integrated products and value-added services for account holders, merchants, financial institutions, businesses, governments, and other organizations, such as programs that enable issuers to provide consumers with credits to defer payments; prepaid programs and management services; commercial credit and debit payment products and solutions; and payment products and solutions that allow its customers to access funds in deposit and other accounts. It also provides value-added products and services comprising cyber and intelligence solutions for parties to transact, as well as proprietary insights, drawing on principled use of consumer, and merchant data services. In addition, the company offers analytics, test and learn, consulting, managed services, loyalty, processing, and payment gateway solutions for e-commerce merchants. Further, it provides open banking and digital identity platforms services. The company offers payment solutions and services under the MasterCard, Maestro, and Cirrus. Mastercard Incorporated was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Purchase, New York. The Buckle, Inc. operates as a retailer of casual apparel, footwear, and accessories for young men and women in the United States. It markets a selection of brand name casual apparel, including denims, other casual bottoms, tops, sportswear, outerwear, accessories, and footwear, as well as private label merchandise primarily comprising BKE, Buckle Black, Salvage, Red by BKE, Daytrip, Gimmicks, Gilded Intent, FITZ + EDDI, Willow & Root, Outpost Makers, Departwest, Reclaim, BKE Vintage, Nova Industries, J.B. Holt, and Veece. The company also provides services, such as hemming, gift-packaging, layaways, guest loyalty program, the Buckle private label credit card, and personalized stylist services, as well as special order system that allows stores to obtain requested merchandise from other company stores or its online order fulfillment center. As of March 11, 2022, it operated 440 retail stores in 42 states under the Buckle and The Buckle names. The Buckle, Inc. also sells its products through its website, buckle.com. The company was formerly known as Mills Clothing, Inc. and changed its name to The Buckle, Inc. in April 1991. The Buckle, Inc. was incorporated in 1948 and is headquartered in Kearney, Nebraska. South Korean President Park Geun-hye (in red) walks past members of the minor opposition Justice Party at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 8, 2016. (Stringer/Reuters) A humbled South Korean president essentially withdrew her nominee for prime minister Tuesday, marking another setback in her attempts to quell a snowballing corruption scandal. Park Geun-hye had to walk past opposition lawmakers holding signs saying step down to get into the National Assembly on Tuesday, where she made a rare visit to see Chung Sye-kyun, the speaker of South Koreas parliament. I came to meet the speaker, as it is my great responsibility to normalize state affairs, Park told Chung, from the opposition Minjoo Party, during their 10-minute meeting, according to local reports. Park is fighting for her political life after revelations that she had been taking secret advice from a lifelong friend who has no public policy background. The friend, Choi Soon-sil, used her connections to raise millions of dollars for two foundations and allegedly embezzled the money. Choi is now under arrest, and several of Parks top aides have been detained or are being investigated. Park went on live television twice in 10 days to apologize for her lack of judgment in trusting Choi, the daughter of a cult leader, and the president has replaced some of her senior advisers. South Korean President Park Geun-hye arrives to meet with National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. (Bae Jae-Man/AP) She also planned to replace her prime minister with Kim Byong-joon, who served as policy chief to a liberal president a decade ago. However, the opposition chafed at the conservative presidents unilateral decision and said it would not confirm Kim. With some lawmakers calling on Park to resign or risk being impeached, politicians from across the political spectrum are urging her to hand over day-to-day management of domestic affairs to a prime minister. Park on Tuesday asked lawmakers to recommend a new candidate for prime minister, saying she would let him run her cabinet. If the National Assembly recommends a new prime minister, I will appoint him and let him control the cabinet, she said, according to Yonhap News Agency. Her efforts have so far done little, if anything, to assuage public criticism over the way she has operated as president. Parks approval ratings last week plumbed new depths of 5 percent, according to a poll from Gallup Korea. It was the lowest recorded approval rating since South Korea democratized in 1987. Tens of thousands of South Koreans protested in central Seoul on Saturday night for the second week in a row, and organizers said they are planning an even bigger demonstration this weekend. Read more As a bizarre scandal unfolds, South Koreas president depicts herself as lonely The South Korean political scandal started with a card game in Macau South Korean president says shes willing to be investigated in corruption scandal Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news LABOR Philadelphia transit strike ends with deal Philadelphias crippling, week-long transit strike ended early Monday, ensuring that buses, trolleys and subways will be running Election Day. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and the union representing about 4,700 transit workers announced a tentative agreement before daybreak. By 9 a.m., subways were operating on a reduced schedule. Limited trolley service was also restored by midmorning. SEPTA said it usually takes 24 hours for all buses, trolleys and subways to be running after a shutdown. On Sunday, the city sought an injunction that would have forced SEPTA workers to provide service Election Day. The state announced it would join SEPTA in court to permanently end the strike. But a deal reached overnight made a continued court fight unnecessary. SEPTA Chairman Pasquale Deon said the agreement provides wage increases and pension improvements and maintains health-care coverage levels while addressing rising costs. The five-year deal is subject to union ratification. Associated Press SMALL BUSINESS Owners fear election impact, survey shows Small business owners are concerned about the impact the election could have on their companies, but they hold mixed views about how supportive the candidates are on different issues, a survey by researchers at Pepperdine University says. In Graziadio School of Business and Management survey, more than 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned about the election effect, with about half of those saying they were very concerned. Between the two presidential candidates, 66 percent of the more than 1,350 business owners surveyed said Republican Donald Trump was more supportive on tax issues. Sixty-four percent called Trump more supportive on regulatory issues. Regarding equal pay for male and female workers, 59 percent said Democrat Hillary Clinton was more supportive. Fifty-eight percent said Clinton was more supportive of family leave. The survey covered random companies in Dun & Bradstreets database with annual revenue of $5 million or less. Associated Press Also in Business Coming Today From news services WikiLeaks which has skulked around the presidential campaign all year was at it again Sunday, disclosing still more about the grimy underside of the news. This time, the stateless group of self-styled anti-secrecy advocates disclosed that a CNN researcher had asked the Democratic National Committee for possible questions to ask Donald Trump in a forthcoming interview. The sky predictably fell or at least it did within the conservative media. New DNC Emails Expose More DNC-Media-Clinton Campaign Collusion, blared the New York Observer (published by Trumps son-in-law). Its story fulminated, The close relationship the DNC and mainstream media maintained with Clinton throughout the primaries is comparable to propaganda tactics employed in dictatorships. The Observer recounted several other alleged incidents of collusion before further tsk-tsking, The medias unethical relationship has yielded no reprimand besides CNN severing ties with DNC interim chair Donna Brazile after emails revealed she forwarded debate questions to the Clinton campaign ahead of time. Theres a reason for that, and its not one Trumps supporters will gladly accept. Except for Brazile, a non-journalist whose behavior CNN deemed indefensible, the WikiLeaks emails expose little more than routine, acceptable reporting practices. They are less evidence of collusion than a continuing lesson in how the news gets made, in all its boring glory. People expressing shock over them are either ignorant of long-standing and, yes, bipartisan reporting methods or are simply trying to score a few more points against the dishonest media. What the WikiLeaks emails show is reporters doing their jobs in a good way. If journalists didnt do such things, readers and viewers would know less about the candidates, including Hillary Clinton. The news wouldnt be as complete or as accurate for anyone. Lets take the latest revelation, about a CNN researcher polling DNC sources for questions that could be fired at Trump. News organizations sometimes do this sort of thing to flush out so-called opposition research material the news organization might not have found on its own. Soliciting the other side for questions might yield something worthwhile something that might create a useful and informative exchange with an interview subject, no matter which party he or she represents. In any case, asking for such ammo implies no commitment on the part of the news organization. The journalist might end up asking a candidate about something such an inquiry turns up. Or he might just ignore the whole thing. Hence, CNNs official statement on the matter: This is completely unremarkable. We have similar communications with Republicans. When preparing for interviews we are regularly sent suggestions from rival campaigns and political parties, both solicited and unsolicited. Casting a wide net to ensure a tough and fair interview isnt just common media practice, its smart. How about showing a block of text from an unpublished story to a source, as Politico reporter Glenn Thrush did with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, according to an earlier WikiLeaks dump? This is a less-routine and debatable practice (there are other ways to check a story), but hardly evidence of a conspiracy. What WikiLeaks didnt mention was that Thrush proffered no commitment to Podesta to change his story if Podesta objected to any statement. Thrush simply wanted to get his facts straight, and Podesta who had firsthand knowledge was the best possible source for doing that. Would readers prefer reporters not check? Rolling Stone magazine didnt when it accused a group of University of Virginia fraternity brothers of gangraping a student. How did that work out? WikiLeaks has also seemingly cast shade on Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperins heads up to Podesta about his appearance in a forthcoming story, and on New York Times Magazine reporter Mark Leibovichs request to move off-the-record comments from Hillary Clinton to on the record. Both episodes are telling because they illustrate what readers dont see behind almost every story the wheedling, coddling and negotiating with the sources in news stories. What Eilperin offered Podesta was a routine courtesy, the kind offered to any source a reporter hopes to get information from in the future. It would perhaps be more satisfying to slash and burn, and damn the consequences, but neither slashing nor burning is a very good long-term strategy for a journalist who wants people to talk to her again. If you want your stories to be less informed the next time, if you want to be shut out altogether because youre a jerk, by all means skip the courtesies. Leibovich (full disclosure: a longtime colleague and friend) also did his readers a solid. He could have accepted the off-the-record terms he agreed to before interviewing the press-averse Clinton. But what would he, and his readers, have gained? Much of what hed learned would have stayed between him and Clinton. Instead, he pressed Clintons palace guard to put in play what was previously off the record and therefore unreportable the better to inform everyone outside Clintonville. Its always advantageous for a reporter to control his or her terms, but on-/off-record agreements that favor the source are often a precondition for access to the powerful and the popular. The important part of the various WikiLeaks dumps is what you dont see. You dont see reporters lying, dissembling or fabricating. (At worst, the leaked emails do show one reporter, CNBCs John Harwood, flattering Clinton in an effort to get Podesta to grant him an interview with her a tactic journalists sometimes employ to win favor with reluctant interview subjects; not many insult their way in.) And you dont see how theyve dealt with the other side, or sides, in a political campaign, leaving the impression that Clinton was disproportionately the beneficiary. Only the deeply partisan will accept the WikiLeaks documents as evidence of journalistic perfidy. But reasonable and honest people will be more reluctant to call foul on behavior that all sides engage in, and that benefits everyone. Tessie October, 40, holds her daughter Charlise Bruce while casting her vote at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Md. Nov. 8, 2016 Tessie October, 40, holds her daughter Charlise Bruce while casting her vote at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Md. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post What election day looks like in the D.C. area What election day looks like in the D.C. area An anxious and divided electorate turned out in heavy numbers across the Washington region Tuesday with a surge of Latino and Muslim voters supporting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, while a determined core of Republicans remained loyal to GOP nominee Donald J. Trump. Amid scattered reports of technical problems, polling stations were inundated with voters who endured long lines to render their verdict in what has been the most bitterly contested presidential race in generations. While Clinton expects resounding victories in Maryland and the District, both of which are heavily Democratic, she was hoping to hold off Trump in Virginia, a key swing state where she has led in polls. No matter their choice, many voters expressed anguish over an election defined by unyielding barbs and whiplash-inducing revelations. Nelvia Diaz and her husband Leonel Diaz, who are originally from Guatemala and now live in Manassas, voted for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats because of Donald Trump's stance on immigrants. (Photo by Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post) (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) I am so disillusioned in our political system, said Belinda Randle, 59, a D.C. resident who cast her ballot for Clinton. I am voting because its my duty, but I dont expect any of them to do anything anymore. Others were more enthusiastic, whether crowing over the raw tone of Trumps campaign or the thrill of possibly electing the nations first female president. Its not because shes the lesser of two evils, said Monica Sukhatme, a 33-year-old resident of Chevy Chase, Md., explaining her vote for Clinton. Its because she deserves to win with the record shes had. Turnout among Latino voters seemed especially robust in Northern Virginia, with immigrants such as Marie Vargas, 72, saying they had recently become citizens so they could vote for Clinton. Vargass granddaughter, Jesenia Gomez, 19, also chose Clinton as the recipient of her first vote after growing fed up with Trumps criticism of Latinos and promise to build a wall separating the United States from Mexico. Its time for a change and I dont think separating people is what we need right now, Gomez said at a polling station in Woodbridge. Yet, Trump supporters were also discernable among the immigrants who voted. Before polls opened at 6 a.m., voters in Northern Virginia were already in line to cast their vote at Langley High School on Election Day. (Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP, Getty, Video/WUSA 9) Polash Chowdhurry, 60, a Muslim who immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1985, said he was voting for Trump because he would break up what he described as Washingtons cartel. Referring to Trumps promise to ban Muslims from the United States, Chowdhurry said, Hes not against Muslim people. Hes against Muslim terrorists. Voting proceeded smoothly in most places, though there were occasional reports of problems. By midday, voters at one Prince Georges County polling station were waiting nearly two hours because only one ballot scanner was available for a precinct of 2,600 registered voters. [The latest Election Day news] At the Clearview Elementary School polling station in Herndon, voters expressed a wide spectrum of views about Clinton and Trump, their often clashing perspectives echoing divisions that have emerged nationally. I looked at Trump and said, Oh hell, no, said Tom Robinson, a systems analyst for the Defense Department. He has zero experience in government and has no idea what hes doing, and people in his own party cant stand him. Hes a nasty, vindictive individual. Nancy Fish, 65, a retired teachers assistant in special education, said she couldnt vote for Clinton because of the dishonesty factor. Trump and the Republicans have the same policies that match my Christian convictions, she said. In the suburban Richmond swing territory of Henrico County, one woman left her polling place in tears, her teen-age daughter at her side. I would love to go down in the history books as voting for the first woman ever, a woman said after voting in a suburb outside Richmond. But she said she found Clinton too objectionable. As for Trump, she said he was off the table ever since he made fun of a disabled reporter. I made a choice but dont feel good about it, she said, refusing to identify who got her vote. In Maryland, voters were choosing between Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) and Republican Kathy Szeliga, a state delegate from Baltimore County, to succeed retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D). In Virginia, Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) faced a robust challenge from Democrat LuAnn Bennett in the 10th Congressional District, which includes Loudoun and portions of Fairfax and Prince William counties. In Washington, voters in Ward 7 are expected to elect Vincent C. Gray to the D.C. Council, capping a political rebirth for the former mayor, who lost reelection in 2014 amid a campaign finance scandal. [Tim Kaine casts his ballot in Virginia, ending Democratic campaign close to home] Ballot initiatives in the region include a statehood referendum in the District that, if passed by voters, would require congressional approval. At the Hendley Elementary School in D.C.s Ward 8, a low-income and heavily African-American neighborhood that so far has reaped few of the benefits of the gentrification, a number of voters said they were opposed to D.C. statehood. All agreed that the topic needed a fuller public airing. I prefer to remain a District. I dont know that being a state is going to do anything for me that being a District wont do for me, said Cynthia Purnell, 69, a registered Democrat. I dont want D.C. to be a state, said Nikki Taylor, a 42-year-old registered Democrat, who said she worried that statehood would mean more taxes. In her neighborhood, few knew or cared about city elected officials quest for statehood, Taylor said. Even William Brown, 79 who said he had voted yes on the statehood initiative acknowledged he didnt understand statehoods potential consequences. To be frank with you, I dont know all of the details involved with it, he said. Ive never really lived in a state. Ive been living in the District since I was 16 or 17 years old. In Virginia, a right to work measure, if ratified, would incorporate into the state constitution a measure that weakens labor unions. At the county level, voters in Fairfax will decide on a proposed meals tax to fund public education. In Prince Georges, an initiative to expand the county council is on the ballot, while Montgomery voters will decide whether to enact term limits. Im against term limits. Its up to the voters, said Bob Levin, 76, of Chevy Chase. They want to throw the bums out? Let them throw the bums out. The regions most rollicking local race is in Richmond, where scandal-tarred independent Joe Morrissey, a former Democratic state delegate, is running for mayor against five opponents, including Levar Stoney, a protege to Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), and Jack Berry, who has vast support within the citys business community. Morrissey spent three months in jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor for sleeping with a teenager. The woman is now married to Morrissey and the mother of his two children. But the days main event was the White House race. Though Clinton has led in the commonwealth for months, Trumps campaign in the final three weeks said it was spending $2 million on television advertising in the state. [Have you experienced problems voting? ] Nathan Brinkman of Arlington County voted for Trump after having chosen Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during Virginias GOP primary. I viewed him with no small amount of skepticism, Brinkman, 40, said of Trump. But he obviously tapped into something the more conventional candidates missed. He seems to have sparked a movement. Northern Virginias growing immigrant population, however, may give Clinton an edge. After 31 years in the United States as legal permanent residents, Marco and Susana Tanchez finally became citizens earlier this year so they could vote for the Democrat. Melissa Sargent, a 32-year-old mother in Woodbridge, said it was her son who motivated her to vote for the first time in her life Tuesday. The 10-year-old boy labeled Nov. 8 on his calendar as the the day I am scared. The family is part Mexican, and he worried that Trump would deport them. Our children should not feel scared, she said. They should feel happy and protected and good in their own country. James Daly, 58, a former Air Force photo intelligence officer, declared his allegiance to Trump as he voted in Prince William County. She's a liar. A crook! he said of Clinton, his voice rising in anger. Trump speaks to how people feel, and he's going to help people get working again. Democrats were taking nothing for granted. On Monday night, Clintons running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, campaigned with Vice President Biden at George Mason University. The popular former governor then finished the campaign with a rally near his home in Richmond. Early Tuesday, Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, arrived at their local polling place, the Hermitage, a retirement community in Richmond. After he voted, Kaine was greeted with applause by those waiting on line behind him. [How to vote in each state] Anne and I have been voting in this precinct for 24 years, and its so nice to just be able to walk over from our house, Kaine told reporters. Its kind of like weve done all we can do, and now its in the hands of voters. In Virginias 10th Congressional District, Comstock was fighting off a stiff challenge from Bennett, a business executive who is the ex-wife of former congressman James P. Moran Jr. In a district rife with moderate voters, Comstock struggled for months to distance herself from Trump, even as she was wary of alienating Republicans. Comstock only renounced Trump last month, after a 2005 videotape emerged in which he had bragged about groping women. Nelvia Diaz, a voter in Manassas, said that was a dealbreaker. When she learned that Comstock had not immediately renounced Trump, Diaz said, I stopped listening to her. In Marylands Senate race, Van Hollen, a popular Montgomery County-based congressman, led throughout the campaign against Szeliga. He is expected to take over a seat occupied for the last 30 years by Mikulski, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate on her own. Grays return to the Districts political stage seemed more than unlikely after he lost the 2014 Democratic primary to Muriel E. Bowser, who went on to become mayor. At the time, Gray was the target of a federal investigation into his 2010 mayoral campaign. Gray was never charged with a crime and has remained infuriated by the duration of an investigation that he has blamed for his defeat, and that continues to sour some voters. Ever since that scandal he was involved in, I dont trust him, said Danielle Duncan, a 33-year-old registered Republican. Robert Contee, 61, was in a more forgiving mood, saying he welcomed Grays return. I say everybody deserves a second chance give him a second chance, Contee said. Its just like you would do from a parent to a child. The child might make an error, but you as a parent have to forgive the child. Polls will be open until 7 p.m. in Virginia and until 8 p.m. in Maryland and the District. Ian Shapira, Peter Jamison, Alejandra Matos, Taylor Hartz, Theresa Vargas, Arelis Hernandez, Hamil Harris, Steve Hendrix, Peter Jamison, Josephine Peterson, Katherine Shaver, Shaun Courtney, Antonio Olivo, Patricia Sullivan, Ovetta Wiggins and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report. Tessie October, 40, holds her daughter Charlise Bruce while casting her vote at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Md. Nov. 8, 2016 Tessie October, 40, holds her daughter Charlise Bruce while casting her vote at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Md. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post What election day looks like in the D.C. area What election day looks like in the D.C. area Fears of attempted vote suppression, with armed observers and violent clashes at polling places, failed to materialize in closely contested Virginia. In fact, Tuesday was largely a typical Election Day for a most atypical election season. There was a scattering of logistical problems, and the mix of high interest and limited resources meant some voters waited hours to cast ballots. Observers and party officials reported no confrontations in Virginia, which was seen as a possible hot spot with its open-carry firearm laws, a large concentration of Latino immigrant voters and Donald Trump supporters encouraged to keep an eye on polling places. In the District, election officials said out-of-date voter rolls meant some recently registered voters had to re-register or cast provisional ballots, leading to waits as long as four hours for a few. Voters across Maryland complained about precincts with only one ballot scanner, but officials said operations mostly ran smoothly. [State officials prepare for unusually chaotic Election Day] Residents of Prince George's County, Md. cast their votes at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, where only one ballot scanning machine left people standing in line for about two hours. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Virginia Virginia attracted election watchers from liberal and conservative groups, the federal government and even internationally, but they had few issues to report Tuesday. Fairfax and Prince William counties were among the 67 jurisdictions where the Justice Department said it would deploy federal poll monitors. Officials said that monitors would examine compliance with federal laws requiring equal treatment for minority voters and, in Fairfax, that ballot materials in Spanish were available as required. A group called Virginia Civic Engagement Table, which is backed by liberal-leaning groups, deployed 300 volunteers to educate voters about their rights and operated three hotlines. Most reports it received were routine problems. An exception was Coates Elementary School in Herndon, Va., where advocates say wait times reached two hours as election workers checking in voters used an incomplete poll book. The problems were resolved by evening as Fairfax County election officials provided updated voter rolls. We really havent seen the kind of massive intimidation that people were afraid for, said Julie Emery, executive director of the Virginia Civic Engagement Table. [Long lines reported across the D.C. region] No Trump volunteers could be found at several Northern Virginia voting sites where the campaign announced it would deploy poll watchers. Judicial Watch, a conservative group, trained 25 poll workers who were slated to visit as many as 80 precincts to watch for irregularities or election violations. Police in the southern Virginia city of Chesapeake disputed a viral tweet saying they were escorting black voters to polling places because Trump supporters were harassing them. Voters cast their ballots at Yorkshire Elementary School in Manassas, Va. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) Some precincts reported problems with machines that led to long lines early in the day, but election observers described them as minor glitches. International observers from the election observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe surveyed sites in Northern Virginia. As they stopped by Alexandria City Hall, Christine Muttonen, an Austrian representative, said they had few concerns. [Hundreds of foreign election monitors are in the D.C. area to observe voting] In Loudoun County, officials sent a Spanish-speaking poll worker and a laptop to a Sterling polling place after a report that there were no election staffers there who could assist Spanish-speaking voters. We do want to be able to help people, said Judy Brown, elections director in Loudoun County. We dont want people to think they cant come and vote because of a language issue. One voter at the precinct, Meymo Sturges, said she notified election officials of the problem after seeing the voter in front of her, who did not speak English, struggling to cast a ballot. It is morally reprehensible, Sturges said. I believe in the sanctity of the ballot. I believe it is reprehensible not to have multiple languages posted. In tiny Westmoreland County on Virginias Northern Neck, new precincts hadnt been listed on the states polling-place-lookup website. General Registrar Kristin Hicks said voter databases were slow to update and that some notices about the precinct changes hadnt gone out until Friday. The county planned to air Election Day radio advertisements to spread the message about the precinct changes, Hicks said. Voters who came to outdated precincts were able to cast provisional ballots. The District Across Washington, voters who thought they had registered this fall were told otherwise when checking in at polling places, even though some of their names showed up in the Districts online verification system. Unfortunately, there was a lag time between what was uploaded into our poll pads and the time that the voter registration cards went out, said Tamara Robinson, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Board of Elections. Robinson said people who came to polling stations with a drivers license or another proof of address should have been able to register and cast a regular ballot, while those without proof could cast a provisional ballot. She said the problem affected less than 1 percent of voters. For Samantha Randazzo, that meant a four-hour ordeal at her Woodley Park precinct. After receiving her voter registration card in the mail several days ago, Randazzo, 25, waited an hour in line, only to be told her name didnt appear in the system. Then she waited nearly two hours in line as one poll worker processed same-day registrations, only to be told she needed to bring a lease or utility bill. Why would I have brought proof of address when I had my voter card on me and it has my address on it? said Randazzo, who ran back to her apartment to grab a pile of mail. But the Hillary Clinton supporter said the ordeal was worth it to vote in a election she described as the most disturbing of her lifetime. If, God forbid, we wake up tomorrow to Trumps America, I dont want to think that I didnt have my voice heard, Randazzo said. Maryland In Maryland, top state election administrators Linda Lamone and Nikki Charlson said voting got off to a mostly smooth start, with some reports of long lines and the replacement of about 20 paper ballot scanners. Election officials in Dorchester County, on Marylands Eastern Shore, alerted state police to a man falsely telling voters that a precinct was closed, but he was gone by the time authorities arrived. Montgomery County police received a report of someone impersonating a federal immigration officer asking about illegal immigrants voting, but could not find that man or the person who reported him. In Prince Georges County, election judges reported backlogs at Judith Hoyer Elementary School and Eleanor Roosevelt High School, where the wait time approached two hours during the lunch rush with one ballot scanner and hundreds of people in line . Voters echoed similar concerns elsewhere in the state. Multiple voting machines had been reserved for the largest precincts, leaving others with voters who had to show a great deal of patience. This is for the birds, said Mary Shiflett, 74, a retired former cook who waited nearly two hours to cast a ballot in the tiny blue-collar town of Edgemere east of Baltimore. Voters at an elementary school in Edgemere waited in line for nearly three hours to cast their ballots. At 7 p.m., more than 200 people were standing in a line that wrapped about 100 yards around the school. In Baltimore, voting went more smoothly than it had during the April primary, when several precincts opened late, hundreds of election judges didnt show up, and nearly 1,200 provisional ballots were improperly counted. But there was a tumultuous start at the Beth Am synagogue, where voting started nearly an hour late after multiple election judges didnt show up. The chief election judge caused a disruption and was asked to leave the precinct, said Armstead B.C. Jones Sr., Baltimores election director. Dana Hedgpeth, Faiz Siddiqui, Tom Jackman, Abigail Hauslohner, Josh Hicks and Arelis R. Hernandez contributed to this report A lieutenant colonel in the army was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday after pleading to production of child pornography in August, prosecutors said. In August, Steven Jon Frederiksen, 42, of Stafford, a former employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he used online chat programs including Kik on his government-issued laptop to convince four girls between 14 years old and 17 years old to produce child pornography, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a statement. Frederiksen also asked two other minor girls online to produce child pornography, possessed other images of child pornography and exchanged child pornography with other people on the Internet, the statement said. Frederiksen was sentenced to 240 months in prison and 20 years of supervised release for production of child pornography and attempted coercion and enticement of a minor using social media and instant messaging apps, prosecutors said. On the night of April 16, 2015, prosecutors say, David Black broke into his estranged wifes Arlington home, crept upstairs to her bedroom and stabbed her in the heart and throat as their two young children slept nearby. But Blacks lawyers say the government has it wrong. Black was not in his wifes house that spring night, his attorneys say, arguing that police did not cast a wide enough net in their search for Bonnie Delgado Blacks killer. David Black was a natural suspect from the beginning, defense attorney Ryan Campbell told jurors during closing arguments Monday. The police saw only what they wanted to see and looked only where they wanted to look. After a two-week trial in Arlington Circuit Court, a jury Tuesday is set to begin deliberations on charges of first-degree murder and burglary while armed against David Black, 45. Prosecutors say the brutal murder was the culmination of a bitter divorce battle. No one hated her as much as he did, Arlington Chief Deputy Commonwealths Attorney Andrew Parker said in court. Nobody stood to gain as much financially as him. Bonnie Blacks body was found the morning of April 17, 2015, after her then-5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were spotted wandering outside. Bonnie Black, 42, was a psychologist who did contract work for the FBI. [Mother of murder victim describes daughters bitter divorce ] On Monday, Parker described David Black as a husband who controlled his wife through intimidation and emotional abuse. The prosecutor said that when the couples divorce was about to be finalized and Black knew he would finally lose control of his wife he turned to murder. Parker told jurors that David Blacks DNA was found on the screen door through which police think he entered his wifes house, and on a switch to a light in Bonnie Blacks bedroom, among other areas of the house. Campbell argued that police should have expected to find David Blacks DNA at the home. Black had lived in the house for years before moving to the couples second home, blocks away, in 2014. Even while the couple were separated, Campbell said, his client sometimes returned to the house to access the garage, where he kept supplies for his business renovating and flipping houses. Campbell also questioned why David Black would turn on the light to his wifes bedroom, knowing that he would risk waking their daughter, who slept nearby. During the trial, prosecutors turned to the testimony of those close to Bonnie Black, as well as court records, to describe a tumultuous marriage marred by custody disputes. Bonnie Black had filed for divorce in April 2014, months after she moved to the basement of the couples home in October 2013. She testified during divorce proceedings that her husband had looked at me with his menacing look and he said, If you ever leave, I will take the children and you will never see them again. Bonnie Black also recalled a separate incident before she filed for divorce when, upon returning in the middle of the night from a business trip, she inadvertently woke her husband, angering him. He was just towering over me and screaming and yelling, she said, recalling that she ran to the basement and locked the door. During the divorce proceedings, David Black said his wifes behavior had become increasingly impossible. Usually she is hot or cold and then somewhat randomly to me shell get very angry at me and explode, he said. It just has been making life miserable. Parker also said Monday that David Black had secretly placed a cellphone in his wifes bathroom to take videos of her, which he then used to compile thousands of images. Campbell acknowledged that his client made bad choices, including the videos, but reminded the jury thats not what this is about. He said that prosecutors claims of David Black resenting his wife was not enough to convict him of murder, calling it dangerous to assume a stranger could not have killed Bonnie Black. During the trial the victims mother, Bettyann Armstrong, testified that her daughter had called on April 16. Bonnie Black told her mother she planned to come visit in Pennsylvania, where Armstrong lived, as she waited for the divorce to be finalized. She was found dead the next day. THE DISTRICT Man with gun near White House detained A 23-year-old man who police said was wearing a mask and was arrested with a gun near the White House on Saturday was ordered detained on Monday by a D.C. Superior Court judge. Mathew Taylor Bruce of Amelia County, Va., is charged with illegal possession of a handgun. Police said in an arrest affidavit that an officer saw Bruce about 1:15 p.m. in the 1500 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW, near the Treasury annex, with a pistol holder sticking out of his waistband. Police said they demanded he put his hands behind his back and that he stepped back, clenched his hands and said, What for? Police said they struggled with the suspect, who allegedly swung his arms at officers as he yelled expletives and ignored commands. Once in custody, police said they found a Smith & Wesson handgun loaded with 10 bullets in his right waistband. While in custody, [Bruce] stated it was his constitutional right to carry a pistol anywhere, the police affidavit says. [Bruce] stated his sole purpose of carrying a pistol was for protection. Peter Hermann MARYLAND Man, 29, is fatally struck by SUV A Landover man has died after being struck by an SUV as he was attempting to cross the street. Glendale McLaurin, 29, was trying to cross Landover Road near Dodge Park Road about 10:45 p.m. Sunday when he was hit by an SUV. The driver of the SUV stayed on the scene and McLaurin was taken to a local hospital, where he died. Police said preliminarily that it doesnt appear that McLaurin was in a crosswalk. Lynh Bui Man, 61, is identified as fatal victim of fire Authorities have identified a man who died in a fatal fire in Landover last month as Nevile Gilgeous, 61. Gilgeous was in a house in the 1500 block of Ballinger Avenue when a fire broke out about 3:20 a.m. on Oct. 30, according to the Prince Georges County Fire and EMS Department. One man had jumped out of a second-story window to escape, but Gilgeous was found in a room and was pronounced dead, officials said. The home had working smoke alarms; investigators are trying to determine the cause of the fire. Lynh Bui VIRGINIA Alexandria teen is killed in car crash An 18-year-old from Alexandria was killed after the car she was riding in crashed along Interstate 85, about 35 miles south of Petersburg, Va. The crash happened just after 10 a.m. Saturday as a 2007 Saturn Aura was headed south on the interstate, according to Virginia State Police. The initial investigation said the car went off the left side of the road, struck a tree and flipped. The passenger, later identified as Amari S. Newton, died at the scene. She was not wearing a seat belt. The driver was wearing a seat belt and was not injured. Police said another passenger, a 20-year-old man, suffered serious injuries and was taken to a hospital. He was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the car. The driver, Destiny A. Freeman, 18, of Lorton, Va., was charged with reckless driving. Dana Hedgpeth Sylvester Hall, 79, lost his right to vote in Virginia after a conviction in the 1970s. Hall voted on Nov. 8 after regaining his voting rights under an executive order issued by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe earlier this year that restored voting rights to thousands of former felons who had completed their sentences. (The Washington Post) Sylvester Hall, 79, lost his right to vote in Virginia after a conviction in the 1970s. Hall voted on Nov. 8 after regaining his voting rights under an executive order issued by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe earlier this year that restored voting rights to thousands of former felons who had completed their sentences. (The Washington Post) When Sylvester Hall was convicted of buying $25 worth of cigarettes with another mans bank check in 1978, he lost a year of his life to jail, his livelihood and his home. And the Virginia man lost another thing of value: the right to vote. On Tuesday, the 79-year-old Hall cast a ballot in Falls Church, the first time since voting for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Hall, who maintains his innocence and unsuccessfully appealed his conviction, is among about 67,000 felons whose voting rights have been restored in the past four months by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). The governors spokesman said 20,000 of those with newly restored rights had registered to vote. McAuliffe said the move was to allow those who had already served time for their crimes to again participate in society as full citizens. He underscored that barring all felons from voting, a prohibition far broader than most states, particularly impacted black residents in the Commonwealth: nearly one in four could not vote because of a felony conviction. [McAuliffe vows to restore voting rights l Sylvester Hall, 79, exits the polling station at Bailey's Community Center. Hall was unable to vote because of a 1979 conviction for using another man's bank check to buy $25 worth of cigarettes. Hall, who maintains his innocence, was one of 60,000 felons who regained their right to vote due to a move by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. (Moriah Balingit/TWP) (Moriah Balingit/TWP) Republicans challenged the move, calling it an overreach and sued to stop it. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in their favor, saying the governor did not have the authority to issue a blanket order to restore voting rights to 200,000 felons at once. Instead, McAuliffe did it individually, giving some 60,000 the right to vote. [Vas highest court says McAuliffe not in contempt on felon voting rights] Republicans have criticized the action, calling it a naked attempt to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton win the state. Republican nominee Donald Trump joined the chorus of opposition at a rally in Leesburg, Va. on Monday, saying the governor had restored the rights of felons illegally. Hall, who is African American, tried to vote in 2008. He lined up at Bailey Community Center before sunrise that November morning eight years ago to vote for Barack Obama. He had not attempted to vote since he had been released from jail, but seeing an African American so close to the White House inspired him. But a poll worker turned him away, saying he was no longer on the rolls. His felony conviction, then three decades old, would keep him from voting. I was embarrassed, Hall said. People were asking Whats wrong? For Hall, losing his right to vote was another indignity heaped upon a pile of injustices, another price to pay for a crime he maintains he never committed. Hall said he has never recovered from the damage the conviction wrought on his life. When he was put away, he and his wife were eyeing a high-rise apartment, paid for by his union wages maintaining trucks at a local dairy. But when he was released, they were forced to move into the unheated basement of the family home. Hall, who has remodeled the basement, still lives there more than three decades later. After he was turned away from the polls in 2008, Hall began speaking openly about his criminal conviction. At Springdale Civic Association meetings, Hall introduced himself Felony 3617. Civic association president Willy Coleman and his wife Margaret were moved to help Hall apply to have his rights restored. Willy Coleman has known Hall his entire life, and both belong to long-established African American families in Fairfax County. The Colemans assisted Hall with the paperwork and Margaret Coleman, a former intelligence analyst, said she personally called the state to ensure Hall would be eligible to vote. On Tuesday, Halls trip to the polls at Baileys Community Center went differently. He was shuttled there by Willy Coleman in Colemans shiny black Mercedes, wearing track pants and clean white sneakers and clutching a disposable camera to capture the moment. He would be greeted by his aunt, Elizabeth Hall, who worked the front desk. He would fill out his ballot, supporting Democrats down the ticket. He had missed his chance to vote for the first African American president, but he would get the chance instead to support the first woman to win a major party nomination. Grinning ear-to-ear, he slipped behind the voting machine, his aunt cheering him in the background, fists in the air. The Colemans stood on either side of him to witness him feed the paper into the machine, a moment that was both mundane and weighted with meaning. Willy Coleman promised to buy him a steak dinner at Ruths Chris Steakhouse to celebrate. Then, a message flashed on the screen. Thank you for voting, it read. Your vote has been counted. As he left the community centers auditorium, he struggled to put into words what he felt. It was as if a weight had been lifted, he said. Its hard to describe, Hall said. Its been beautiful. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, one of Hillary Clintons closest friends and biggest boosters, cast his ballot for her at 8:20 a.m. after waiting in line for an hour at Richmond City Library. Yeah, it was an hour wait, but the greatest hour of my life, McAuliffe (D) said. You think of the history of this election. I believe were going to elect the first woman in the history of the United States of America. Were going to have the first Virginian on the ticket, Tim Kaine, first time in 100 years. I can give an hour. [Tim Kaine casts ballot in Va., ending campaign close to home] Delivering Virginia for his longtime political ally has been a priority for McAuliffe, but he has mostly played a behind-the-scenes role. While keeping up a busy schedule as governor, he has closely monitored the race through former president Bill Clinton, with whom he speaks almost daily, and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, who also led McAuliffes 2013 campaign. But in the final sprint, McAuliffe has played a more public role. He spent the past weekend trying to fire up campaign volunteers, zipping between canvass kickoffs and phone banks in Richmond and its suburbs, Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia and back again. Late Monday, he warmed up the crowd at Richmond International Airport, where Kaine held a rally. 1 of 23 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad What election day looks like in the D.C. area View Photos Post Photographers capture the regions residents as the cast their votes Caption Washington Post photographers capture the regions residents as they cast their votes. Nov. 8, 2016 Tessie October, 40, holds her daughter Charlise Bruce while casting her vote at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Md. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. McAuliffe was scheduled to stay in Virginia on Tuesday until the election is called in the state. Then he will head to New York for Clintons party, traveling by private charter plane, spokesman Brian Coy said. After voting, McAuliffe spoke briefly to reporters. I have a son in the Marine Corps, he said. And I speak for every parent who has a son or daughter in military uniform today, who are out fighting for us. This is the greatest democracy in the world. Everybody needs to come out and vote today and show the world why were the greatest democracy. He also put in a plug for Levar Stoney, a former Cabinet secretary running for Richmond mayor. Stoney has had a huge financial advantage in the crowded field but has lagged in the polls. The front-runner: Joe Morrissey, a state delegate best known for commuting to the General Assembly three years ago from jail while on work release. Then 55, he was serving a sentence related to his relationship with his 17-year-old receptionist. [A political bad boy upends race for Richmond mayor] Im a full supporter of Levar Stoney, McAuliffe said. Levar worked for me as the secretary of the commonwealth. He and I worked together to restore the rights of 200,000 Virginians. We need some bright, exciting leadership here in Richmond. Its a great city. We need to take it to the next level. Some new, dynamic young leadership is exactly what we need. I support all Democrats, but I just think Levar head and shoulders hell bring some new energy. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine wrapped up the 2016 campaign at home in Virginia, casting his ballot before dawn Tuesday at his familys longtime polling place in Richmond. Hillary Clintons running mate was clearly pleased to be among familiar faces after months of crisscrossing the country on the campaign trail. He and his wife, Anne Holton, walked two blocks from their home to the polling station at the Hermitage, where they have voted for the past 24 years. Its kind of like weve done all we can do, and now its in the hands of voters, the Virginia senator said. But we feel really comfortable about it. And its so nice to be back here in the neighborhood. The couple were not first in line, despite arriving 10 minutes before polls opened. Ahead of them was 89-year-old Minerva Turpin, president of the residents association at the Hermitage, a retirement community. She planted an I voted sticker on Kaine after he turned in his ballot, and he gave her a kiss. [State officials prepare for an unusually chaotic Election Day] It was still dark outside as Kaine left the building, but a long line of voters had formed. Some of them broke into applause for their neighbor, a popular former Virginia governor who began his political career as a Richmond City Council member more than two decades ago. Now he stands a chance of becoming vice president of a bitterly divided nation. Kaine told reporters that if he and Clinton are fortunate enough to win, they will work hard to address the grievances of voters who cast their ballots for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In the tone of the things that we say, in the team that we put together, and the policies that we promote, we have to show that we want to govern for all, not just those who voted for us, he told reporters. Thats something that Hillary and I have already talked about a good bit. Kaine and Clinton have often criticized Trump for his statements about Muslims, immigrants and women. Asked what it means, then, that Trump will probably garner millions of votes Tuesday, Kaine said he believes that most Trump supporters are motivated by anxiety about the economy. [Voters wait and wait in long lines at the polls] There are an awful lot of people in the country who still dont see the path for themselves, and I think that is the principal concern that we have to speak to, Kaine said. Not just to win over people who might not be supporters, but weve got to speak to it to make sure this country continues to hold a promise that tomorrows generation can have it better than their parents did. As lines grew at polling stations around the state and the nation, Kaine said he hopes citizens turn out in great numbers Tuesday. He recalled how he took voting for granted until he moved to Honduras as a young man. 1 of 23 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad What Election Day looks like in the D.C. area View Photos Washington Post photographers capture the regions residents as they cast their votes. Caption Washington Post photographers capture the regions residents as they cast their votes. Nov. 8, 2016 Tessie October, 40, holds her daughter Charlise Bruce while casting her vote at Temple Emanuel in Kensington, Md. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. To live in a country where people couldnt vote, and they prayed for the day when they could, it really made me now not take it for granted. I think the sign of a vigorous democracy is one where a lot of people participate, Kaine said. All the early-vote signs are very strong in terms of peoples energy and desire to participate. But I just hope that carries through the day. On the day that could dramatically change his life, Kaine said that after having breakfast with friends and going for a morning walk under brilliant blue Virginia skies, he would head to New York with his family, and then just be nervous for a while. Nelvia Diaz and her husband, Leonel Diaz, voted for Hillary Clinton because of Donald Trumps stand on immigrants. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) Morena Solis was burdened by more than her own civic duty as she waited to vote in Woodbridge, Va., Tuesday. The preschool teacher from El Salvador said she wasnt just voting for herself. She was voting for her fiance, who is undocumented. He is trying to get his papers, she said, growing emotional outside R. Dean Kilby Elementary School. I dont think that will happen under Trump. A few spots away in line, another Hispanic American said he was voting in honor of an uncle who was deported to Peru. And in Maryland, a Latina college student disillusioned by the Democratic primary said she was finally driven to vote for Hillary Clinton after meeting dozens of undocumented immigrants who wished they could. From the 81-year-old Peruvian woman who pumped her fist as she exited an Arlington, Va., polling station to the Dominican grandmother in Hyattsville, Md., who said she was desperate to protect her fellow immigrants, Latino Americans voting in this election said they were casting ballots for something larger than themselves. In Virginia, Latinos filed almost twice as many in-person absentee ballots as they did four years ago, according to the data firm Catalist. Preliminary exit poll data suggests that large majorities of Virginia voters believe illegal immigrants should be offered the chance to apply for legal status, and 6 in 10 say immigrants help the country rather than hurt it. While it remains to be seen whether Latinos voted in higher numbers than they have in past elections in Virginia or elsewhere, many who came to the polls said their choices felt more urgent and personal this time around. When Donald Trump said that Mexican immigrants were rapists and thieves, it hurt me and it hurt all Latinos, said Oscar Menjivar, who came to the United States from El Salvador in 2000 and on Tuesday cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton. He woke at 4 a.m. and arrived by 5 a.m. at Kilby Elementary, where he was one of the first waiting in line in the pre-dawn cold. Most of us are good, hard-working people, said Menjivar, 54. Insulting us was a grave error. Muslim Americans in the immigrant-rich suburbs of the nations capital said they, too, were motivated to vote in this election because of Trumps rhetoric. Last December, the GOP nominee called for a total and complete ban on Muslims entering the United States, although he has since backed down, saying he would instead stop immigration from certain countries. American by choice. Thats how Waqas Mahmood describes himself. Mahmood became a U.S. citizen this year after immigrating from Pakistan. Tuesday, he voted in his first election. We accompanied Mahmood to his polling place in Northern Virginia to capture his first vote. (Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post) Ijaz Chaudrey cast an early ballot at a Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles office in Woodbridge. Chaudrey, 54, said hes tired of the angry tone of this election cycle. We want to see this country peaceful. (Antonio Olivo/TWP) If one person can come into office and just point a finger at ethnic groups and a religion, this is not America, said Ijaz Chaudry, a Muslim from Woodbridge who cast an early absentee ballot. United States means united. Everybody is welcome here. A native of Pakistan who became a U.S. citizen in the 1990s, Chaudry said being a Muslim in America has always been a tentative existence, especially after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. For the most part, however, his family has lived a quiet life in a welcoming community in suburban Virginia, where his three sons play sports in school and volunteer at a local homeless shelter. This years presidential race, he and many other Muslims said, may have placed all that in jeopardy. In Fairfax County on Tuesday, Shanzay Khan, 19, described being harangued in a park by a man who asked me, if I was a Muslim, why wasnt I wearing a towel on my head? I didnt know he said that, interrupted her sister Shazreh Khan, 24. Shanzay shrugged. He went on for about half an hour. Both young women voted Tuesday at Great Falls Library for Clinton. Their parents are physicians who came to the United States from Pakistan in the 1980s. Their father is a political independent who has voted Republican in the past. Not this time. My father bothered to get up at 6 a.m. so he could come vote to crush Trump, Shanzay said. Yasmin Martinez, who was born in Guatemala, has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years. But she had never cast a ballot in this country before Tuesday, when she stepped proudly into Yorkshire Elementary in Manassas, Va. I voted to boot out Donald Trump, said Martinez, 45, who was joined at Yorkshire Elementary by her sister Nelvia Martinez, brother-in-law Leonel Diaz and other relatives. Marco and Susana Tanchez had waited even longer. After more than three decades in the United States, they became citizens this year so they, too, could cast votes for Clinton at Yorkshire Elementary. The couple fled Guatemalas civil war in the 1980s. Now, with new generations crossing the border to escape gangs and drug cartels, they feel a responsibility to vote for the candidate who they believe is more likely to help. Clinton has a good position for those without papers, Marco Tanchez said. Voters cast their ballots at Yorkshire Elementary School in Manassas, Va. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post) Juan Balbuena, a 46-year-old air conditioning technician in Woodbridge, stood in line and thought of his uncle, who was deported back to his native Peru. He was here for 12 years, paying taxes, before he was sent back home, Balbuena said. I fear for those who are here illegally, trying to make a decent living. In Hyattsville, Md., Francia Familia, 55, had her 6-year-old granddaughter at her side as she cast her ballot at Nicholas Orem Middle School. Hes going to kick us all out, the immigrant from the Dominican Republic said of Trump. We are desperate. Jocelyn Nolasco, the 19-year-old daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, cast her vote knowing there are many other Latinos undocumented and noncitizens who wish they could, too. (Arelis Hernandez/TWP) Jocelyn Nolasco, 19, the daughter of immigrants from El Salvador, considered not casting a vote for president. The University of Maryland sophomore said she was going through Obama withdrawal. She supported Bernie Sanders during the primaries, was unenthused with Clinton and couldnt imagine voting for Trump. Three weeks ago, Nolasco volunteered for a voter-registration drive at a Prince Georges County high school. One by one, teenagers and adults walked up to register. About half were ineligible because of their immigration status. Nolasco found herself explaining to many of them in Spanish why they couldnt vote, and asking if they perhaps had other family members who would be able to cast ballots. It breaks my heart, Nolasco said after submitting her ballot for Clinton at an early-voting station. Now I know that my vote is not just my vote but a vote for 30, 40 or 50 people. Taylor Hartz, Steve Hendrix and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this report. This image from the report shows what the proposed gondola system might look like across the Potomac River. (--/Gondola study report) Regarding the Nov. 3 Metro article Study: A Potomac gondola is feasible: The gondola would be an incredible benefit to my fellow rowers at the Potomac Boat Club, located at the D.C. end of the gondola path. That would take care of 10 or so commuters daily. Georgetown University students and staff would provide an additional 100 or so riders daily. Unfortunately, tourists, the majority of riders, would be dumped blocks from their likely Georgetown destinations not an attractive option, winter or summer. And who wants to travel to Rosslyn from Georgetown, anyway? If you really want to make Georgetown a competitive commercial destination (seriously?) instantly and inexpensively, turn the Whitehurst Freeway into a parking lot. Please stop funding the gondola boondoggle. Cal Sutliff, Washington SOUTH KOREAN President Park Geun-hye has emerged as a solid and constructive U.S. ally during her nearly four years in office. With coaxing from Washington, she mended a rift with Japans right-wing prime minister over World War II comfort women. She has taken a tough and principled line on North Korea, holding out the prospect of freedom for its people and punishing the regime for its pursuit of nuclear weapons by withdrawing lucrative economic concessions. She agreed to move forward on the deployment of U.S.-supplied missile defenses despite strong opposition from China as well as domestic critics. From Washingtons point of view, it consequently can be only disturbing to see Ms. Park embroiled in a domestic scandal that seems sure to greatly weaken her authority during her final year in office if it does not force her to resign. The president already has been obliged to apologize, shake up her cabinet and appoint a new prime minister because of her relationship with a longtime friend who has been accused of corruption. The first reports about Choi Soon-sil accused her of secretly advising Ms. Park, including editing some of her speeches. That may sound innocuous to Americans accustomed to presidents seeking advice outside the bureaucracy, but Koreans were outraged, in part because of Ms. Parks long entanglement with the Choi family. Ms. Chois father, the founder of a religious sect, befriended Ms. Park decades ago when she was the daughter of the president. Prosecutors say the younger Choi will be charged with crimes her father was also suspected of: using her connections with Ms. Park for extortion. Ms. Choi allegedly used her influence to obtain $70 million in donations from large South Korean companies for two foundations and then appropriated some of the money for her own use. Its not clear if Ms. Park knew of the scheme, but prosecutors said one of her senior aides helped Ms. Choi. The scandal has erupted at a particularly bad time for U.S. interests. With President Obama headed toward lame-duck status, China has been pressing for advantage around the region, courting U.S. allies including the Philippines. North Korea itself is racing to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and miniaturized warheads that would allow it to reach the United States with a nuclear strike. Addressing that threat, which the Obama administration has neglected, will necessarily be one of the first priorities of the next president. Ms. Parks firm stance on North Korea and willingness to partner with the United States could have made her an important ally in any attempt to head off the North Korean threat. Now she may have less authority in that role, especially if she is forced to invite opposition leaders into her cabinet. If she must resign, then South Korea may be in turmoil until its presidential election next year. In short, the big winners in this scandal may be North Korea and China while the next U.S. president will inherit one more Asian headache. Deaths are often called untimely. But Janet Renos this week was anything but. She was the attorney general who refused to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the Clinton administrations fundraising White House solicitations that metastasized into a scandal that few can remember and none can explain. It had to do with campaign advertising, but it was really just an excuse for the Gangs of Washington to duke it out. The fuss started on Page 1 and just sort of evaporated, making it the perfect Washington scandal high emotion, melodramatic accusations, references to Watergate and then . . . nothing. It was Benghazi before its time, the emails before they mattered any, the Clinton Foundation before Bill Clinton flew private. There was no crime. Reno, who knew the difference between the monumental and the trivial, held firm. May she rest in peace. But she will not if she pays attention to what is about to happen in Washington. The town will honor an Election Day pause and then, much like with the Christmas truce of World War I, madness will soon resume. If Hillary Clinton is the next president, she might have to deal with a Congress gone criminally insane. It has become a ravenous parliamentary beast determined to ignore the most pressing concerns and instead traffic in investigations. She might even be impeached. Thats a terrible thing to say, and I cant imagine any columnist at any time in U.S. history writing such a sentence. But an intended impeachment of a President Clinton has already been promised. I guarantee you in one year shell be impeached and indicted, Rudy Giuliani vowed just last week. Its just going to happen. Giuliani has become Donald Trumps palooka, a brawler who has taken too many punches. Hes been a very strange avatar of morality and stability ever since he called a news conference to tell his second wife he was leaving her for his third and later suggested he should be mayor of New York for life. He is the brooding Quasimodo of Trump Tower, where madness is the norm and ignorance is better than bliss its policy. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton traveled across the United States on Nov. 7, holding final rallies in swing states before Election Day. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) Trump himself has vowed a similar persecution of Clinton, whom he routinely calls a criminal, specifying allegations of which shes been cleared. In this he has been joined by important Republican members of Congress. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairman of what amounts to the Permanent Committee to Investigate Hillary (actually, the House Oversight Committee), promises investigations until the end of time or Fox News loses interest, whichever comes first. We will hear again of emails and Benghazi and the Clinton Foundation and maybe, just for a ratings punch, get an appearance by the Macbethian harridans of Bill Clintons interesting past. Tim Kaine, too, could be investigated on the assumption that theres something wrong with a person whos so clean. Democrats, too, know how to investigate. They smeared Clarence Thomas, managing to turn a mediocre lawyer into a monumental martyr, but in general they dont have quite the taste or talent for inquisition as does the GOP. Still, a President Trump would very quickly give them cause. Among other things, he has your average Nicaraguan army officers grasp of our Constitution. He might order the return of torture measures a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding, he has said. He might name Chris Christie to the Justice Department a bridge too far? and the two of them might round up everyone of dark complexion Democrats of Color, they might be called trampling on well-established rights as they muck around in the government. Democrats will fight back. [] Renos death also serves to remind us of how unnecessarily daunting government service can be. After all, she was Clintons third choice for attorney general. She followed Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, both of whom had picayune problems regarding nannies. Neither one of these women went to jail. The punishment was instead meted out to the nation. It was deprived of their considerable talents, and many others got a warning: Leave government service to the pure. Gather them all in a phone booth, if one still exists. The Gangs of Washington are primed. They will fight over policy and personnel, which is standard, but also because they have no regard for what they do and the government they do it for. The Republicans, above all, play the cheaters game: heads Trump wins, tails Clinton loses. Bad days are coming. Read more from Richard Cohens archive. The Supreme Court seemed inclined Tuesday to allow Miami to pursue its lawsuit against the big banks whose discriminatory lending practices, the city claims, led to foreclosures, a downturn in tax revenue and neighborhood blight. Several justices were concerned that allowing cities to use the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to recover damages from the banks might open the door to a landslide of litigation. Additionally, the said, it would be extremely difficult to put a price tag on their claims. [To recoup losses from housing crisis, Miami uses novel legal strategy] But on the shorthanded, eight-member court, it was hard to count five votes against allowing Miamis suit to move forward to trial. A tie vote would reaffirm the appeals court decision that said the lawsuit could proceed. Civil rights groups consider the case one of the sleepers of the Supreme Courts term, and cities across the country are watching the outcome with similar litigation in mind. But the Election Day oral argument was subdued. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., did not ask any questions; and the usually talkative liberal Justice Stephen G. Breyer ventured only a few. Miami sued Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup under the Fair Housing Act, which bars discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing. The law states its purpose as providing for fair housing throughout the United States. The city says that it can prove the lending institutions discriminated against Hispanic and African American residents by directing them into high-interest, risky loans. The resulting defaults destabilized Miamis poorest neighborhoods, and the resulting loss of tax revenue sent the city to the brink of bankruptcy, the city says. Robert C. Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation, representing Miami, told the court that discriminatory and predatory lending practices hurt the city in the way the FHA was designed to prevent. Minority borrowers are getting more expensive and riskier loans that are quicker to foreclosure, and that foreclosure may be as many, for some minorities, seven times as frequently as the nonminority borrowers,Peck said. But Neal K. Katyal, arguing for the banks, said Miami was not entitled under the FHA to make claims for damages arising from property tax losses and that the city cannot show a direct link from the banks lending practices to the harm it says it suffered. The line of causation is too long, he said. You have to have discriminatory loans, Katyal said. Those discriminatory loans have to lead to defaults. The defaults have to lead to foreclosures. The foreclosures need to lead to increase in vacancies. The increase in vacancies needs to lead to reduction in property values. And then that is supposed to reduce it. But he received a hard pushback from Justice Elena Kagan, who seemed to be the justice most on the side of the cities. The Fair Housing Act was not mean to provide protection just for individuals, she said. The FHA is a very peculiar and distinctive kind of anti-discrimination statute, which really is focusing on community harms, Kagan said. Every time a bank redlines neighborhoods or offers minorities the kinds of mortgages that lead to default and foreclosure, she said, its communities who are harmed. And who better than the city to recognize that interest and to assert it? Katyal did not dispute that in some cases the city can qualify as the aggrieved person the FHA authorizes to bring suit. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy referred to that as Katyals concession. But they seemed to share his view that agreeing with Miami could open the door to endless litigation, and that it would be difficult to put a figure on how much the foreclosed property actually cost the city. If the city can sue for damages caused by neighborhood blight, Roberts asked, where would the line be drawn? Other justices speculated as potential litigants neighborhood grocers, dry cleaners or real estate agents. Assistant Solicitor General Curtis E. Gannon acknowledged that the governments interpretation is that the zone of interest is wide indeed. So wide that even Kagan seemed concerned that it was too broad. The damages in question also seemed to concern some justices. But Breyer said it did not need to be decided in this case. That would be something for the lower court to wrestle with at trial, he said. Peck said the federal government has won settlements in similar cases for Baltimore and Memphis, and each was for less than $10 million. But Katyal said the same lawyers representing Miami are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in a suit in Atlanta. There are 19,300 cities in America, Katyal said. If you adopt their theory, you would be allowing all of them to bring complaints just like this. Citibank did not join the other banks in the consolidated cases the Supreme Court heard Tuesday, Bank of America v. Miami and Wells Fargo v. Miami. From left, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) were among the candidates who participated in a Republican primary debate in March. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Long before the first polling places opened on Election Day 2016, the race for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination was already underway. It has been unfolding in early primary states, where potential candidates have been introducing or reintroducing themselves. It has been on display in purple battlegrounds where they are helping in down-ballot contests. And behind the scenes, would-be contenders have sought face time with party power brokers eager to size them up. I think its already happening now, said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), a longtime GOP strategist. Cole identified another significant way the prospective candidates are laying a foundation: by embracing or shunning Donald Trump. Youve seen some pretty dramatic reversals of people deciding they couldnt be for Trump and they are for Trump. Now, part of that, to me, is about positioning for presidential contests. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have been mentioned as possible 2020 presidential candidates in the event of a Donald Trump loss. (Chris Keane/Reuters) If Trump loses the presidency on Tuesday, Republicans will be forced to choose yet again from a full slate of ambitious candidates-in-waiting with wildly divergent visions for the partys future. Even if Trump wins, he will begin his term far from safe against the threat of a primary challenge in 2020, because an ample cross-section of his party has spoken out against him. A Trump win also probably would set off a potentially chaotic scramble on the Democratic side to field a challenger in four years. Democrats have not built a robust bench during President Obamas time in the White House, in part because of the down-ballot drubbings the party has experienced in the midterm elections and partly because Hillary Clinton effectively froze the field as she considered her 2016 run. No Republicans have announced that they will run in 2020 if Trump loses. Most have avoided even broaching the subject publicly, to avoid appearing presumptuous. [How the stampede for big money enabled Donald Trumps rise] But interviews with more than a dozen Republican strategists, elected officials, donors and rank-and-file voters show that the party has begun to ponder its future options and that the auditions have started. Among the names mentioned most often are several unsuccessful 2016 candidates who eventually and awkwardly came around to supporting Trump: Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). Some consider Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has held firm in his opposition to Trump after losing to him, a possibility. Republicans also are intrigued by Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.), an early Trump critic. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is often mentioned as a potential 2020 presidential contender. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post) Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, also comes up frequently as a possibility if the 2016 ticket loses, as does House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who has had a rocky relationship with Trump. Republicans also are interested in fresher faces, including first-term Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Joni Ernst (Iowa); and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Bobbie Kilberg, a Northern Virginia-based Republican fundraiser, said that she has been approached by possible candidates seeking meetings after the election to lay out their visions for the partys future. She declined to say who has sought her out. If Trump loses, I think it is very important that we do not again have eight to 10 highly qualified center-right candidates running, Kilberg said before Election Day, referring to the packed 2016 field. We have to over time not now, its too early coalesce around one or two, maybe three, people on the center-right. However, that lane appears to be no less clogged than it was four years ago. Kasich made a late-summer return to New Hampshire, an early nominating state no politician visits by accident. Rubio was up for reelection, and his win Tuesday will help wash away the stain of a stinging home-state primary loss to Trump and give him new life in the party that some backers hope he will parlay into another White House run. Cotton, a national security hawk who is an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, spent time in Iowa last month. In the closing days of this campaign, he has hit the trail on behalf of GOP Senate contenders in tight races in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, a swing that could earn him some key allies down the road. Trumps unlikely primary triumph, which came without early support from party elites, has emboldened many Republicans to push for an outsider again in 2020. If theres one thing that this campaign cycle has shown, there is some competitive advantage for folks who are not viewed as being rooted in the establishment and the status quo, said Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state. Cruz, who has clashed with party leaders, claimed an outsider mantle as he ran for president this cycle. But it fell flat against Trump, and his pitch could face new obstacles if he runs in 2020. Cruz only recently backed the GOP nominee, months after declining to do so during a Republican National Convention speech that drew boos from many Trump supporters. Cruzs most immediate priority is winning reelection in 2018. [The 7 charts that explain the 2016 election] Ryan also has a near-term campaign that does not involve the presidency: winning reelection as speaker. His bid could provide a snapshot of his standing in the party after months of a turbulent relationship with Trump. Its also not clear that Ryan, who was the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2012, wants to jump back into a long national campaign. One person whose name comes up among Republicans from different ends of the ideological spectrum is Pence, who has been a loyal and on-message running mate for Trump. Pence is well liked by GOP leaders and Trump, too, making him something of a hybrid. But whether Pence could energize Trumps base of loyal supporters remains to be seen. His style soft-spoken and folksy contrasts sharply with Trumps brashness and willingness to pick fights with members of his party, which drove his popularity in the primary. Ive known a little bit about Mr. Pence. Now, Mr. Pence I like what he has done in the state of Indiana economically overall, but Mr. Pence, he is a standard-issue Republican. Im not a Republican. Im a conservative independent, said Conrad Baker, 40, who lives in St. Francis, Minn., and attended a recent Trump event in Eau Claire, Wis. Many Republicans say they dont expect Trump to step away from politics completely if he loses, nor do they expect his supporters to walk away from politics en masse. So the trajectory of the next primary could rest heavily on how popular or unpopular he is in the lead-up to 2020. But Trumps anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric has many Republicans worried that his views are hurting the GOPs already struggling standing among minorities and putting the party further out of step with a swiftly diversifying country. Some Republicans said a Trump loss could spur the party to walk down a path similar to one Democrats traversed after a third straight White House loss in 1988. In 1992, they nominated Bill Clinton, a centrist who won the election, helping the party reassert itself on the national stage and shedding the image that it was too liberal for mainstream Americans. That may be easier in theory than in practice for Republicans to replicate in their next primary. If you look at the Republican primary electorate compared to the Democratic primary electorate in 1992, the Republican primary electorate is more homogeneous and . . . much more ideologically skewed, said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University. After Trumps unlikely rise, which few saw coming at this point for years ago, Republicans are bracing themselves for unexpected twists and turns in the coming months and years more than ever before. My one prediction about 2020 is it wont look anything like what we think it will look like the day after the election, said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group. Jenna Johnson in Eau Claire, Wis., contributed to this report. The hunt for big dollars began in January 2015 outside Palm Springs, Calif., at a luxury hillside resort with sweeping views of the sprawling desert floor. There, the emerging crop of Republican presidential candidates jockeyed to impress the millionaires and billionaires who make up the Koch political network. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas jetted in from a forum in Iowa, joined by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. The Koch meeting was the beginning of a busy circuit of donor retreats held in exclusive locales such as Palm Beach, Fla., and Sea Island, Ga., that defined the early months of 2015 an indicator of the new dominance the super-rich would have in the presidential contest. In the end, there would be plenty of big checks to go around. And rich benefactors, it turned out, would have a limited ability to keep their chosen candidates aloft. But the all-consuming pursuit of mega-donors had a deeper, more fundamental effect on the 2016 presidential race. The magnet of six- and seven-figure contributions tugged at the early White House front-runners in both parties, reshaping their political strategies and their early priorities. It drew them away from the campaign trail, leaving them vulnerable to the fiercely populist mood gripping voters and to a candidate on the GOP side, Donald Trump, uniquely positioned to harness that anger. Supporters cheer outside as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses a campaign rally early Nov. 7 in Leesburg, Va. (Molly Riley/AFP/Getty Images) It sent the message to the public, much more so than usual, that there was a wealth primary and that the candidates were being selected by a handful of wealthy kingmakers, said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center, which seeks to limit money flowing into elections. And it affected the candidates, in the sense that that became what they were focused on. The lure of huge dollars set off an early fundraising stampede, led by former Florida governor Jeb Bush. He helped raise more than $100 million for an allied super PAC in 2015, all while maintaining that he had not yet decided whether to run. Maybe one of the worst things to happen to Jeb was his campaigns amazing ability to raise big money early, said GOP strategist Ana Navarro, who worked in Bushs gubernatorial administration and opposes Trump. In some ways, it worked against him. It reinforced all the establishment stereotypes. Bushs mammoth money operation prompted rivals such as Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to jump-start their efforts to secure major donors. In doing so, they seized on the new legal pathways that allow huge sums to flow into super PACs and political parties. In any other year, a robust war chest would have been seen as a sign of a candidates strength. But Trump on the right and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) on the left quickly turned their rivals financial assets against them, tapping into a restive electorate disgusted with the powerful elite. [Voters are mad about mega-donors, and its helping Trump and Sanders] Trump made his independence from wealthy donors a centerpiece of his bid, deriding his opponents as puppets of patrons such as industrialist Charles Koch and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Democratic U.S. presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate in New York on April 14. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) Should I take the money? he asked fans at a rally in suburban Atlanta in October 2015. The crowd responded with a loud, Noooooo! No? No? Trump repeated. No! came back the booming reply. It was a warning: This is going to be a different kind of election. Trump had the luxury to exploit his rivals dependence on big donors. The billionaire developer was sustained by not only his personal financial resources but also the many hours of free media airtime his provocative candidacy commanded. This cycle was a good illustration that money is one tool that impacts public opinion, but the media have a larger megaphone than any campaign is able to buy and candidates and the dynamics of the field matter, said Charlie Spies, a Republican campaign finance lawyer who served as counsel for Bushs super PAC. When the 2016 race kicked off, it initially seemed that one of the most valuable weapons would be an outside group stocked with big money. For the first time, personalized super PACs became the norm in a presidential campaign , run by the candidates close advisers. There were supposed to be barriers, of course. Candidates could ask donors to contribute only up to $5,000 to a super PAC. And a campaign could not direct the paid-advertising strategy of a big-money group. But with little threat of enforcement from the divided Federal Election Commission, candidates edged closer than ever to their outside allies. Long-shot contenders such as then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and former Texas governor Rick Perry relied on super PACs to effectively subsidize their efforts on the ground, helping draw out their campaigns. Bush set the pace as an aggressive pioneer, blessing the creation of two PACs in January 2015. He immediately set off on a fundraising tear across the country for the groups, headlining events that cost as much as $100,000 a person. The money was piling up so quickly that, at one point, his team asked supporters to hold off giving more than $1 million. By June, when Bush finally announced that he was running, he had amassed more than $114 million to bolster his candidacy. He shrugged off questions about whether he should have spent so much time fundraising. You might as well front-load it if you can, the former governor said at the Koch summer donor seminar. But his unprecedented haul papered over a fundamental weakness: Bush did not have a broad base of support. His allied super PAC, Right to Rise USA, had raised $103 million of the total. Meanwhile, small donors ponied up just $368,020 to his campaign. Brad Deutsch, a campaign finance lawyer who served as lead counsel to Sanderss campaign, said the 2016 election has exposed how super PACs can serve as a trap for candidates who arent popular to begin with. They can make up for it by having a few people give them money that will propel them, he said. But at the end of the day, they havent been forced to figure out how to connect with the people they need to connect with. Still, the GOP super-PAC embrace rattled Clinton, who decided to speed up her fundraising schedule out of fear that the Federal Election Commission would not rein in Bush and other Republicans, according to hacked emails and memos posted by WikiLeaks. Use this to scare our people into giving bigger sums, campaign chairman John Podesta suggested to Clinton and other top advisers in May 2015. Several weeks later, campaign vice chairman Huma Abedin noted that we are looking to add more fundraisers in the last 2 weeks in June to get her to a higher number for this quarter, adding, It is doable, albeit a little crazy. The Clinton campaign also urged donors to contribute to two allied super PACs, including one that coordinated directly with the campaign. And later that year, officials set up a joint fundraising committee with dozens of state parties that accepted six-figure checks. The tactics helped bring in $1.3 billion to support Clintons bid. But they also exposed one of her biggest vulnerabilities: her long, deep ties to a network of rich supporters. [How mega-donors helped raise $1 billion for Hillary Clinton] It was easy ammunition for Sanders, who was powered by an unprecedented online fundraising operation that vacuumed up millions in small donations. I am very proud I do not have a super PAC, he jabbed at Clinton during a Democratic debate in January. I do not want Wall Streets money. Ill rely on the middle class and working families. In the general election, Trump picked up that critique, repeatedly accusing Clinton of being corrupt and taking orders from her contributors. He neglected to mention his own billionaire backers which by then included Adelson or the array of super PACs that cropped up to support him. Crooked Hillary Clinton is 100% owned by her donors, he tweeted in August. #ImWithYou. Ultimately, the 2016 candidates who lasted the longest Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders were sustained by robust small-donor bases. And all that big money that dazzled the White House hopefuls at the beginning of the race? Alone, it just wasnt enough. Voters want more than just ads. They want to talk to you, Walker said in a radio interview in June 2015 as he was preparing to jump into the race. You can have all the money in the world, but if your message isnt connecting, I think at some point, large sums of money become a disadvantage. Three months later, the Wisconsin governor had dropped out. His allied super PAC still had more than $18 million in the bank. HOUSING Supreme Court hears arguments on lending Supreme Court justices signaled they may divide over the ability of cities to use the Fair Housing Act to sue banks for discriminatory lending practices. The high court grappled Tuesday with a case that grew out of the subprime mortgage crisis. A federal appeals court read the Fair Housing Act as giving Miami the right to sue Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. Miami says the banks targeted minorities for riskier loans, leading to foreclosures that cost the city property-tax revenue and forced it to spend more on police and fire services. Some of the liberal justices indicated that they would vote to let the cases go forward. Everything about this complaint is about racial segregation, it seems to me, Justice Elena Kagan said. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy suggested that they saw a need to limit the types of suits that could be filed under the landmark 1968 housing law. Bloomberg News ENERGY Iran, French firm sign $4.8 billion gas deal Iran on Tuesday signed a preliminary $4.8 billion natural gas agreement with the French company Total. It was the first such deal after a nuclear accord with world powers ended international sanctions that had squeezed the nations fossil fuel-based economy. The deal, to be finalized next year, is for new development at the vast South Pars gas field and aims to produce 1.8 billion cubic feet of gas per day for domestic consumption and export. Total would have a 50.1 percent stake; China National Petroleum would have 30 percent, and Petropars, a subsidiary of Irans national oil company, would have 19.9 percent ownership. Associated Press Also in Business From news services Coming Today [November 07, 2016] New Relic Infrastructure Enables IT Operations Teams to Deploy With Confidence Across Diverse Environments Digital intelligence leader New Relic, Inc. (NYSE: NEWR) today launched New Relic Infrastructure, providing IT operations teams unprecedented visibility into the performance of their cloud and hybrid infrastructure and the related configuration changes to it. Available November 16, 2016, in conjunction with FutureStack, New Relic Infrastructure is a key component of the New Relic Digital Intelligence Platform, a unified platform providing full-stack visibility and analytics that deliver actionable insights about your digital business, and is designed to scale to support your business growth. Modern IT infrastructure is now very dynamic and software teams are constantly making changes to it and deploying on top of it. New Relic Infrastructure is designed to help operations teams handle these challenges and have greater control of these environments to: Move fast and deploy with confidence by correlating configuration changes with health metrics in real time. Powerful infrastructure-wide search across every host enables your team to find inconsistent configurations to detect and resolve issues quickly. by correlating configuration changes with health metrics in real time. Powerful infrastructure-wide search across every host enables your team to find inconsistent configurations to detect and resolve issues quickly. Scale and adapt to diverse environments with any combination of cloud instances, microservices, containers, or traditional servers. Tag-driven dashboards and alerts scale with your dynamic infrastructure reducing administrative overhead. with any combination of cloud instances, microservices, containers, or traditional servers. Tag-driven dashboards and alerts scale with your dynamic infrastructure reducing administrative overhead. Gain full-stack visibility with the New Relic Digital Intelligence Platform - a unified view from your infrastructure to application code performance to customer experience, in one seamless context. Correlate host health with your application metrics from New Relic APM (News - Alert) and understand how your infrastructure performance impacts business metrics through New Relic Insights. Two Editions with Flexible Cloud Pricing New Relic Infrastructure Essentials and Professional are available under the company's flexible and scalable cloud pricing model which is based on the size, number, and total time running for your instances. Both editions ship with native support for Amazon EC2 and Docker containers, enabling companies to migrate and optimize their cloud or hybrid infrastructure with confidence. New Relic Infrastructure Professional offers longer-term data retention and expanded monitoring functionality for popular Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS) products including CloudFront, DynamoDB, EBS, Elasticache, Elastic Load Balancing, IAM, Kinesis, RDS, SNS, SQS, and VPC. Additional integrations will be available natively within New Relic Professional on an ongoing basis. Supporting Quotes "IT operations teams are tasked with supporting more services that have short lifespans and dramatically increasing the number of code updates they push," said Jim Gochee, chief product officer, New Relic. "New Relic Infrastructure gives modern operations teams unparalleled visibility of their dynamic infrastructure, eliminates silos, and brings teams together to quickly identify and resolve problem areas." "New Relic Infrastructure extends the range of real time monitoring capabilities from applications to the systems they run on - CPU, memory and disk - providing visibility and alerting on key health metrics across dynamically changing infrastructures," said Tim Grieser, program vice president, Enterprise System Management Software, IDC (News - Alert). "These new capabilities will help application owners and IT organizations alike to understand the experience users are receiving and with identifying and troubleshooting the root causes of slowdowns or outages - whether they occur in the application or the supporting infrastructure." Additional Resources and Availability New Relic Infrastructure will be generally available beginning November 16, 2016 and launched at New Relic's FutureStack conference. New Relic Infrastructure will be available in two versions, Essentials and Professional and pricing under New Relic's cloud pricing model. New Relic Infrastructure Professional will be available with a free 30-day trial. For additional information please visit https://newrelic.com/infrastructure. New Relic will be hosting a series of webinars introducing New Relic Infrastructure and they open today for registration. Real-time Infrastructure Monitoring for Modern Ops Teams on November 18th is tailored for companies new to New Relic. For current New Relic APM customers, New Relic Infrastructure 101 will be held on November 18th and 21st. About New Relic New Relic is a leading digital intelligence company, delivering full-stack visibility and analytics with more than 14,000 paid business accounts. The New Relic Digital Intelligence Platform provides actionable insights to drive digital business results. Companies of all sizes trust New Relic to monitor application and infrastructure performance so they can quickly resolve issues, and improve digital customer experiences. Learn more at newrelic.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking" statements, as that term is defined under the federal securities laws, including but not limited to statements regarding New Relic Infrastructure, including availability, pricing, features, and potential benefits to customers, as well as webinar availability and market trends, such as with respect to technology adoption, agile development and DevOps culture. The achievement or success of the matters covered by such forward-looking statements are based on New Relic's current assumptions, expectations, and beliefs and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that may cause New Relic's actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement. Further information on factors that could affect New Relic's financial and other results and the forward-looking statements in this press release is included in the filings New Relic makes with the SEC (News - Alert) from time to time, including in New Relic's most recent Form 10-Q, particularly under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations." Copies of these documents may be obtained by visiting New Relic's Investor Relations website at http://ir.newrelic.com or the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. New Relic assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Social Media Links: Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn New Relic is a registered trademark of New Relic, Inc. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161107006508/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Indians crowd a gas station, one of the few places still accepting 500- and 1,000-rupee notes in New Delhi on Tuesday evening. (Manish Swarup/AP) In an ambitious move to crack down on illicit money, India announced Tuesday that existing large-currency bills will no longer be valid, starting at midnight. Curbing the prevalence of illegal and unaccounted wealth was a key campaign pledge of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came to power two years ago. We have decided that currency notes of 500 and 1,000 Indian rupees will not be acceptable for transaction from midnight onwards, Modi said in a televised address. A thousand Indian rupees is worth about $15. Modi said the target is terrorism financing and corruption. In the last few years, the specter of corruption and black money has grown, he said. Have we ever thought about how the terrorists get their money? They are using fake currency. On the one hand, the threat of terrorism, on the other hand, the challenge posed by corruption and black money. Citizens have 50 days to exchange their old bills for new ones. But banks will be closed Wednesday, and ATMs will be closed until Friday. Minutes after Modis address, panic-stricken crowds thronged bank machines. What will I do in the next two days? I have no small bills with me, said Brajesh Kumar, as he pulled out a wad of cash. This is all too sudden. Even with the growth of credit cards, Indians routinely use cash. About 30 percent of all land transactions involve cash, analysts say, and land is the preferred parking place for politicians, business executives and movie stars seeking to hide illegal money. Between 2011 and 2016, circulation of 500-rupee notes increased by 76 percent and 1,000-rupee notes by 109 percent, according to the government. Total black money hidden in India and overseas is estimated at $400 billion to more than $1 trillion. You cannot have a shadow economy representing a substantial percentage of the real economy, said Shaktikanta Das, secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs. Last year, the government urged Indians to voluntarily disclose illegal wealth stashed in foreign bank accounts. It was one thing to bring back black money from banks abroad. But we always knew that the bigger problem is the black money inside the domestic economy. This was always the more difficult step, said Gurcharan Das, a business historian and columnist. The banks will now keep a record of how much old cash you are bringing, he said. They will now have a way to track the cash and tax later. This is the largest strike against black money. German police on Tuesday morning arrested five men accused of recruiting members for the Islamic State terror organization. The suspects, aged between 26 and 50, formed a national jihadist network, the countrys chief prosecutor announced in a news release. Officials said the arrests were made in the states of North-Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony and identified the suspects by their given names and initials of their last names. They said the groups ringleader was 32-year-old Iraqi national Ahmed Abdulaziz Abdullah A., also known as Abu Walaa in Islamist circles. He is said to have openly professed his allegiance to the Islamic State and is accused of instigating and helping young men join the group in Syria. Two other suspects, identified as Turkish national Hasan C. and German-Serb Boban S., are alleged to have taught Arabic and radical Islamist thought to potential foreign fighters. German citizen Mamoud O. and Cameroonian Ahmed F.Y. are suspected of having organized the trips. At least one young man and his family were sent to Syria by the group, according to the prosecutor. The five are set to be arraigned by Wednesday. The incident follows a string of similar arrests in Germany. Last week, police in Berlin detained a 27-year-old Syrian accused of having ties to the Islamic State. More than a dozen people have been arrested in Germany this year on suspicion of supporting the terrorist group. Justice Minister Heiko Maas called Tuesdays arrest an important strike against the extremist scene in Germany. According to German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung, the investigation against the group had been launched a year ago. At the end of last month, a 22-year-old who had renounced the Islamic State after returning from several months in a Syrian region held by the group, incriminated A. as the Islamic States No. 1 in Germany, the paper wrote. Read more: A U.S. conservative group tried to depict Germany under radical Islamist control. Germans werent happy. Islamic State claims German suicide bomber was former militant fighter Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news [November 07, 2016] Fitch Affirms Avago Technologies Ratings at 'BBB-' on Acquisition of Brocade; Outlook Stable Fitch Ratings has affirmed the ratings for Broadcom (News - Alert) Limited's (Broadcom) wholly-owned subsidiary, Avago Technologies Cayman Finance Limited (Avago Technologies) at 'BBB-' on news Broadcom will buy Brocade Communications Systems (News - Alert), Inc. (Brocade). The Rating Outlook is Stable. Fitch's actions affect as much as $14.2 billion of total debt (pro forma for the transaction, as much as $20.1 billion if Broadcom funds the deal entirely with debt), including the undrawn $500 million revolving credit facility (RCF). A full list of ratings follows at the end of this release. Brocade (News - Alert) is the market leader in fibre channel storage area network (FC SAN) switching and internet protocol (IP) networking. Broadcom will retain the FC SAN switching business and divest the IP networking business, including assets from Brocade's recent acquisition of Ruckus Wireless. Fitch believes the acquisition of Brocade strengthens Broadcom's enterprise storage portfolio by connecting its leading positions in fibre channel integrated circuits (IC) and fibre channel host bus adapters (HBA), providing opportunities for increased penetration from significant customer overlap. Brocade's FC SAN business adds $1.4 billion of highly profitable annual revenue. Despite mid-single digit negative growth for the FC SAN switching market from workload migration to the public cloud, higher average selling prices (ASP) from storage upgrades to support customers' mission-critical data will offset lower unit demand. More fully integrated component platforms also should drive increased customer penetration for Broadcom. As a result, Fitch expects at least low-single digit organic growth for Broadcom through the intermediate-term. Brocade should be immediately accretive to Broadcom's profitability, given Brocade's more than 70% gross profit margins, versus Fitch's estimate of gross profit margins (adjusted for the impact of purchase price accounting, restructuring and stock-based compensation) in the mid-50s for Broadcom. Fitch expects Broadcom's profitability will continue expanding from incremental cost savings from ongoing acquisition-related restructuring. Brocade could add as much as $900 million of operating EBITDA (upon divestiture of the IP networking business), resulting in a Fitch estimated $7.6 billion of combined operating EBITDA at closing. Fitch expects Broadcom will remain on track to achieve its long-term total leverage (total debt to operating EBITDA) target of 2x, despite incremental debt to fund the Brocade and potentially additional acquisitions. Fitch expects significant annual free cash flow (FCF) and mandatory amortization and cash flow sweeps related to the term loans could reduce debt to below $18 billion, resulting in a Fitch estimated total leverage of 2.4x, pro forma for the acquisition (assuming the deal is 100% debt-funded) in the second half of fiscal 2017. KEY RATING DRIVERS Solid FCF Profile: The acquisition strengthens Broadcom's FCF profile, and Fitch expects $3 billion to $4 billion of annual FCF through the intermediate term. Solid profitability should strengthen from up to $750 million of run rate cost synergies 18 months following the acquisition's close and from the company's fab-light manufacturing model. End Market Diversification: Fitch expects increased revenue diversification away from wireless will reduce longer-term operating volatility. Fitch expects Broadcom will continue to benefit from technology leadership in the Bulk Acoustic Airwave market for smart phones with its premium FBAR filter. However, increased sales from longer-cycle products, including broadband and set-top boxes will reduce volatility associated with handset product cycles or model ramps, although Broadcom also continues diversifying wireless customers as well. As a result of the Brocade acquisition, enterprise storage revenue will increase to more than 20% of total revenue from mid-teens currently, modestly diversifying significant wired infrastructure and wireless communications exposure. Acquisition Risk: Fitch expects Broadcom will remain acquisitive through the intermediate-term, potentially delaying debt reduction and increasing integration risks. However, fewer large targets within the semiconductor space exist after the latest wave of industry consolidation. In addition, Broadcom's growing scale and ability to potentially fund smaller deals with FCF partially mitigate Fitch's concerns around integration risk. Strong Market Positions: Fitch expects Broadcom's #1 market positions in FBAR filters for handsets, and wired infrastructure markets, including ethernet switching, fibre optic components and set-top boxes, will drive less volatile operating results. With the Brocade acquisition, Broadcom also gains the leading and most comprehensive platform of components for enterprise storage. Debt Reduction Focus: Fitch expects Broadcom will remain focused on debt reduction, in the absence of significant acquisition activity. The company repaid $1.3 billion of term loans during the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2016 with a combination of FCF and $630 million of net proceeds from the completion of previously announced divestitures. Fitch anticipates Broadcom will use net proceeds from the divestiture of Brocade's IP networking business for debt reduction, in addition to a percentage of FCF over the intermediate-term and until total leverage of below 2x. Credible Cost Reduction Roadmap: Fitch expects Broadcom will drive profit margin expansion with top line growth but also lower fixed costs from acquisition related cost synergies. Fitch expects operating EBITDA margins in the mid-30s to low-40s through a normalized semiconductor cycle, driven in part by up to $750 million of annual cost savings associated with the acquisition of legacy Broadcom, which the company expects to achieve on a run rate basis 18 months following the acquisition's close. Fitch expects more modest cost synergies for the Brocade deal, particularly given the more complementary nature of Brocade's product offerings. KEY ASSUMPTIONS --Broadcom continues more than low-digit organic revenue growth through the intermediate-term, driven by broad-based demand across its franchises. --Broadcom closes the Brocade acquisition and enters into an agreement to divest the IP Switching and associated Services business during fiscal 2017 and both close at the end of fiscal 2017. --Brocade's revenue growth is flat with higher ASPs from product upgrades offsetting lower unit volume from workload migration. --Broadcom continues using annual FCF for debt reduction, resulting in total leverage below 2.5x in fiscal 2018. --Fitch expects operating EBITDA margin in the low 40x, with ongoing benefits from acquisition related restructuring offset by modestly net dilutive profit margins from future acquisitions. --Fitch assumes 10% annual dividend growth and no meaningul share repurchases beyond offsetting dilution over the intermediate-term. --Annual FCF (includes dividends) of $3 billion to $4 billion through the intermediate-term with potential upside from acquisitions. RATING SENSITIVITIES Positive rating action could occur if: --Broadcom replaces its secured debt with an unsecured capital structure more consistent with an investment grade rating and Fitch believes the company will manage debt levels to maintain total leverage below 2.5x; and --Fitch expects Broadcom will sustain operating EBITDA margins in the high 30s to low 40s through a normalized semiconductor cycle, resulting in annual FCF structurally above $3 billion. Negative rating actions could occur if: --Fitch expects total leverage to remain above 3x from serial debt financed acquisitions or the initiation of more aggressive shareholder returns prior to anticipated debt reduction; or --Material share losses resulting in negative revenue growth and lower operating EBITDA margin sustained below 30%, resulting in annual FCF insufficient to achieve targeted debt reduction. LIQUIDITY Fitch believes Broadcom's liquidity was solid at July 31, 2016 and supported by: --$2 billion of cash and cash equivalents, all of which was readily available given the company's offshore incorporation; and --An undrawn $500 million senior secured revolving credit facility expiring Feb. 1, 2021. Fitch's expectation for annual FCF for $3 billion to $4 billion in the intermediate term also supports liquidity. Total debt was $13.9 billion ($13.7 billion less unaccreted and unamortized debt issuance costs associated with the term loans) at July 31, 2016 and consisted primarily of: --$4.7 billion of Senior Secured Term Loan A due Feb. 1, 2021; --$9.1 billion of Senior Secured Term Loan B-1 due Feb. 1, 2023; and --$139 million of legacy Broadcom senior unsecured notes with various maturities. Broadcom announced it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Brocade in an all cash deal for $5.9 billion ($12.75 per share), including $400 million of Brocade's existing net debt. Broadcom will finance the deal with a mix of new debt and available cash. The company expects the deal will close in the second half of fiscal 2017 (ending Oct. 31, 2017), pending approval by Brocade's shareholders and subject to certain regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. In connection with the acquisition, Broadcom will seek to divest Brocade's internet protocol (IP) switching and related services businesses, which Fitch estimates represents roughly a third of Brocade's $2.3 billion of total revenue for the latest 12 months (LTM) ended July 30, 2016. The IP networking business is growing in the low single digits on an organic basis with Fitch estimated gross profit margins of roughly 50%. The IP switching business does not fit with Broadcom's high value components strategy and, otherwise, would result in Broadcom competing with its systems provider customers. Fitch believes net proceeds for the divestiture could be in the $1.2 to $1.4 billion range based upon an assumed 2x revenue multiple, which Fitch believes Broadcom would use for acquisitions or debt reduction. FULL LIST OF RATING ACTIONS Avago Technologies Cayman Finance Limited: --Long-Term Issuer-Default Rating (IDR) 'BBB-'; --Senior Secured Revolving Credit Facility (RCF) 'BBB'; --Senior Secured Term Loan A 'BBB'; --Senior Secured Term Loan B-1 'BBB'; --Senior Secured Term Loan B-3 'BBB'. Date of Relevant Rating Committee: Nov. 3, 2016 Summary of Financial Statement Adjustments - Fitch made no financial statement adjustments that depart materially from those contained in the published financial statements of Broadcom Limited. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com. 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(AP) Its not often that one gets a glimpse inside the bedroom of one of the worlds most controversial leaders. And the creators of the Yasser Arafat Museum here hope it will change some perceptions of the late Palestinian leader. Officially opening Thursday, 12 years after Arafats death in France, the museum details his metamorphosis from a hunted revolutionary and guerrilla leader to a diplomat and peacemaker. At the same time, it recounts the Palestinian peoples struggle against Israeli occupation. Visitors will be able to see the original office, meeting room and even the 54-square-foot bedroom where Arafat spent the final three years of his life in a compound surrounded by the Israeli army. We have kept it exactly as it was, Nasser al-Qidwa, Arafats nephew and president of the new Arafat Institute, told journalists recently during a preview tour of the new facility. The importance to Palestinians of the museum, which has been more than six years in the making and cost around $7 million, is clear. The gleaming white building sits adjacent to the Palestinian presidents headquarters, known as the Muqataa. Its entrance takes visitors past Arafats tomb, a solemn Ramallah landmark where admirers come to pay respects to their legendary leader. In this Dec. 10, 1994, file photo, PLO leader Yasser Arafat, left, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, center, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, right, pose with their medals and diplomas, after receiving the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo's City Hall. (AP) The Yasser Arafat Museum displays the Palestinian experience, said Mohammad Halayka, the museums director. It is the only venue in Palestine that presents the Palestinian narrative of events from the last century. Inside, more than 120 displays detail in words and photos the lives and travails of Palestinian leaders and people. Rare footage of events such as what Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe the 1948 war when Palestinian civilians were uprooted from their ancestral homes during Israels creation plays on state-of-the-art television screens. An enclosed footbridge brings visitors into the austere quarters where Arafat lived from 2001 to 2004. The tiny bedroom, with its meager furnishings, seems intended to negate Israeli reports that the Palestinian leader siphoned off millions of dollars in aid meant for his people. In his former room, a single metal-framed bed sits neatly made in a corner. Nearby, a traditional Muslim prayer rug is draped over a simple wooden chair, and opposite is a closet displaying four stiff military uniforms and a pile of more than a dozen keffiyehs, the traditional Arab headdress that became the Palestinian leaders trademark. Also on display is an outdated television set probably Arafats only link to the outside world as well shoe-shining equipment and a collection of his woolen hats. In his office, a pair of Arafats dark-rimmed eyeglasses sits on his desk. Trophies and gifts bestowed by international admirers decorate a bookshelf. On the wall is a photo of his daughter, Zahwa, and the portraits of two pro-Palestinian activists: American student Rachel Corrie, killed in 2003 by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, and Tom Hurndall, a British activist with the International Solidarity Movement, killed in 2004. The museums message contrasts starkly with Israels version of Arafats life story as well as with the Palestinian narrative. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attends Friday prayers May 17, 2002, at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images) The controversy starts almost from the first display: a replica of a house overlooking the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalems Old City. A sign says it was the home of Arafats grandfather and the exact place where the Palestinian leader was born. Yet Israelis, and most historians, say Arafat was born in Egypt, arriving in Jerusalem only after the death of his mother when he was 4 years old. Another mystery is how Arafat died in November 2004 at age 75. Many Palestinians, including his wife Suha, believe he was poisoned by radioactive polonium-210. Although there has been no conclusive evidence, some Palestinians say he was assassinated by Israel, while others point to an internal Palestinian conspiracy. I am totally convinced his death was not a natural death, and most likely he was poisoned. Israel assassinated Yasser Arafat, said Qidwa, his nephew. Wherever he was born and whatever the cause of his death, Arafat came into the world in 1929, and his actions helped to shape and unify the Palestinian national identity. His involvement in the Palestinian cause began when he was a teenager, even before Israels creation in 1948. But it was only after 1967, when Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War, that Arafat became the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a powerful symbol of Palestinian resistance. For the next 20 years, Arafat and his followers launched countless attacks on Israel, cementing his reputation among Palestinians as a revolutionary leader and among Israelis as a murderous terrorist. In the 1990s, Arafat changed his tactics and his politics when he began to engage in diplomacy with the Israelis, leading eventually to the now-failed Oslo Peace Accords. That new path earned him a share of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. There is not really enough space in any museum to adequately display Arafats legacy, said director Halayka. He brought unity, national pride, freedom and fight to the Palestinian people, and people really miss him. William Booth and Sufian Taha contributed to this report. Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news A member of the Iraqi forces checks a mass grave they discovered Nov. 7 in the Hamam al-Alil area, which the Islamic State used to hold. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images) There are bodies here and they were dumped on piles of trash in a windswept field of dirt at the edge of a small Iraqi town that until two days ago had been occupied by Islamic State fighters. Other things were less clear. The latest mass grave in a series of mass graves left behind by captured, retreating or dead Islamic State militants was discovered Monday. Iraqis expect that many more clandestine burial sites will be found in the coming weeks as Iraqi forces take more territory from the Islamic State. The identities, cause of death and even the number of bodies left behind at the outskirts of a bombed-out agricultural college on the outskirts of Hamam al-Alil were unknown. The Iraqi federal police on Monday said 100 corpses were found. A team of investigators in an hours time on Tuesday uncovered 20, maybe 25. It was hard to tell, they said. The dogs got at them, said Dhargam Kamil, the director of the mass graves unit at the Al Shuhada Foundation in Baghdad. How did the victims die? That would have to await forensic teams, too. They were still searching for bodies but were unsure if land mines had been laid in the area. [Dozens of decapitated bodies found at school near Mosul] Initially the Iraqi military suggested the bodies had all been decapitated. But the evidence did not support the early claim. Two corpses had been pulled from the top of a trash pile. One had been decapitated; the other not. There was evidence of torture, said Muhammad Tahir Al Tamimi, an official from Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis office. The investigators from Baghdad said some of the bodies had been bound at the wrists and ankles. Some were blindfolded. They assumed most were probably shot. They were killed by ISIS in acts of revenge, Kamil said. In very brutal ways, it appears. Dumping the bodies like this was also a part of the punishment, he said. Their message was that these men did not deserve a proper burial, that they were thrown out like trash. Locals told Iraqi federal police that over the past three weeks Islamic State fighters have been rounding up former members of Iraqi security forces. The investigators said, based on the state of decomposition, the bodies were probably dumped in the last few weeks. In the center of recaptured Hamam al-Alil, neighbors brought two Washington Post reporters into a villa they say had been used as a kind of courthouse, interrogation center and jail. In darkened rooms on the second floor, there were five numbered makeshift cells with heavy metal doors. The cells were tiny, with just enough room for a man or two to stand. Over the last three weeks, since the Iraqi offensive to retake Mosul began, the Islamic State brought men bound and blindfolded into the building, said Hussein Ahmed Sayir, 19, who lives across the street. They tortured them, he said. The teenager said the neighbors could hear screams at night. The locals here said they think that some of these men probably ended up in the mass grave outside of town. An Iraqi police intelligence officer stopped by the house and confirmed that it was used as a jail. [Islamic State tunnels below Mosul are a hidden and deadly danger] A United Nations human rights organization on Tuesday charged that Islamic State fighters recently abducted 295 former Iraqi security forces members from towns and villages to the south and west of the ISIS stronghold in Mosul. The militants also forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from Hamam al-Alil to the Mosul airport, where U.N. officials fear they will be deployed as human shields. People forcibly moved or abducted, it appears, are either intended to be used as human shields or depending on their perceived affiliations killed, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, during testimony in Geneva, according to Reuters. Previously, the United Nations group said it had gathered reports that 50 former police officers were executed in Hamam al-Alil last month. It is possible that some of these men are at the mass grave. Villagers in the surrounding area have said that Islamic State militants rounded up men at gunpoint as Iraqi forces advanced and made them walk to Hamam al-Alil. Some who later escaped said that former police and army officers were separated from them and summarily executed as the militants grew suspicious they were collaborating with the advancing Iraqi forces. Loveday Morris in Irbil contributed to this report. Read more: The battle for Mosul Islamic State sends car bombs against U.S.-backed forces advancing on Raqqa Civilian casualties are starting to rise as Iraqi forces push into Mosul Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Early voters use electronic ballot casting machines at the Franklin County Board of Elections on Nov. 7 in Columbus, Ohio. (John Minchillo/Associated Press) On the eve of Election Day, civil rights groups and local election officials were reminding voters of the state and federal laws protecting against voter intimidation and advising them where to go if they experience threats or harassment at the polls. Anyone trying to keep a person from voting or to get them to vote a certain way constitutes voter intimidation, according to Election Protection, a nonpartisan voting rights coalition. Voter intimidation is prohibited under federal law, which states that no person . . . shall intimidate, threaten, coerce . . . any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of [that] person to vote or to vote as he may choose. [Have you experienced problems voting?] The American Civil Liberties Union says that one example of such intimidation is aggressively questioning a voter about his or her citizenship, criminal record or other qualifications to vote. Other examples include falsely presenting oneself as an elections official and spreading false information about voter requirements, such as the need to present a certain type of photo identification when there is no such requirement, according to the ACLU. People wait in a long line to vote in a primary election in Chandler, Ariz. (David Kadlubowski/Associated Press) Shouting and abusive language is also considered intimidation, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. If a voter is being followed and photographed or has his license plate numbers recorded, that also qualifies as intimidation, as does baseless or discriminatory challenges to ones eligibility to vote and the brandishing of weapons in front of a voter. Ten states have laws about guns at election polling places. Six generally prevent guns in polling places (Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas). Four others prohibit concealed-carry guns in polling places (Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina). In Arizona, the secretary of states office released a long list last week describing illegal intimidating conduct, including blocking the entrance to a polling place, disrupting voting lines, raising ones voice or taunting a voter or poll worker, or photographing or filming voters in a harassing manner. The state also counts any aggressive display of weapons; using threatening, insulting or offensive language to a voter or poll worker; intentionally disseminating false information at a polling place; and directly confronting or asking voters for documentation or other questions that only poll workers should perform. Voting rights advocates are more worried about voter intimidation this election because Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is encouraging his supporters to sign up on his website to be a Trump election observer and to watch the polls. Donald Trump has called for his supporters to "watch" the polls in some cities. But claims of election rigging didn't begin with Trump's candidacy. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) And when I say watch, you know what Im talking about, Trump said at a rally in August. Right? You know what Im talking about. I think youve got to go out and youve got to watch. Trump specifically encouraged supporters in Pennsylvania to be vigilant for voter fraud, saying that cheating is the only thing that could stop him from defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in that battleground state. In Pennsylvania, state officials concerned about potential intimidation or discrimination sent advisories to voters and county election officials. Discouraging anyone from having their voice be heard in the electoral process whether by intimidation, suppression or deception is absolutely unacceptable and wrong, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro A. Cortes said last month. Any attempts to disrupt or interfere with voting by Pennsylvanians should and will be investigated and prosecuted by law enforcement. Individuals who intimidate voters can be fined up to $5,000 and face up to two years in prison, according to Pennsylvania law. Under federal law, a person who conspires to interfere with a persons right to vote can face up to 10 years in prison. A controversial case of voter intimidation allegations occurred in a Philadelphia neighborhood in 2008 when two New Black Panther Party members stood outside a polling place dressed in black paramilitary uniforms. One of them was seen on an amateur video, carrying a black nightstick. The incident led to a lawsuit, but the Justice Department eventually dismissed it. Those who experience intimidation at the polls can contact state or federal officials. Voters can call the Justice Department Voting Rights Hotline at 800-253-3931; TTY line at 877-267-8971 or email the Justice Department Civil Rights Division at voting.section@usdoj.gov. Voters also can call the Election Protection hotline led by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (866-OUR-VOTE), the hotline led by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund (888-Ve-Y-Vota), or the hotline led by APIAVote and Asian Americans Advancing Justice (888-API-VOTE). The Arab American Institute Yalla Vote Hotline is 844-418-1682. In addition, voters can report intimidation to county poll workers, the county clerk, elections officials, local and state officials, or the state board of elections. In some states, police officers are allowed inside polling places. Voters can report harassment and intimidation incidents to the police, who are subject to voter intimidation laws. Read more: Justice Department severely curtails election observers inside polling places on Election Day Voters in some battleground states still confused about voting rules after court battles on new election laws Advocates worry that voters are not clear on the current rules surrounding photo ID and early voting. The Post's Sari Horwitz visited North Carolina, where voting laws have recently changed, to find out more ahead of Election Day. (Monica Akhtar,Sari Horwitz/The Washington Post) Advocates worry that voters are not clear on the current rules surrounding photo ID and early voting. The Post's Sari Horwitz visited North Carolina, where voting laws have recently changed, to find out more ahead of Election Day. (Monica Akhtar,Sari Horwitz/The Washington Post) State leaders, voting experts and advocates say they are preparing for an unusual level of confusion and chaos Tuesday as voters cast their ballots in a historically bitter presidential race. Early voters in some states have faced hours-long lines the past several days. Democrats have filed a flurry of last-minute lawsuits alleging voter intimidation by Donald Trump supporters. And there have been some heated polling site confrontations between Trump voters and Hillary Clinton backers. Election monitors are especially worried this year about the specter of voter intimidation after calls by the Republican candidate for his supporters to stake out polling places and watch for fraud. [Have you experienced problems voting?] Election officials in Pennsylvania and Arizona have become so concerned in recent days about potential intimidation that they issued advisories spelling out what types of threatening behavior are banned and the exact dimensions of buffer zones surrounding polling places. Individuals who conspire to interfere with a persons right to vote can face up to 10 years in prison, read a notice issued by Pennsylvanias secretary of state after Trump singled out Philadelphia as a place for his supporters to scrutinize. The concerns have led to extensive contingency plans and a heavy workload for state officials, lawyers and election experts, who are trying to monitor voting problems and troubleshoot them in real time. The number and tenor of calls weve received about problems, the amount of litigation you already see, it all reflects the moment were in, said Kristen Clarke, president of the nonpartisan Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. On Tuesday, Clarkes group will be running the nations largest independent effort to field voter complaints, questions and problems. The nonpartisan umbrella organization called Election Protection will have 4,500 legal volunteers answering calls to its 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, and 2,500 volunteers stationed at polling sites around the country. Clarkes group has set up a war room at its headquarters in Washington a cavernous space where hundreds of pro-bono lawyers are stationed at computers as they answer voters calls. But the intensity of this years election, Clarke said, has exhausted many of her lawyers and volunteers before Election Day has arrived. These attorneys have fought attempts to purge residents from voter rolls in New York, Georgia and North Carolina. Theyve investigated reports such as one last week during early voting in Cleveland that a security guard was turning away voters because a parking lot with available spaces was supposedly full. Among Clarkes biggest concerns for Tuesday are long lines. Donald Trump has called for his supporters to "watch" the polls in some cities. But claims of election rigging didn't begin with Trump's candidacy. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post) On Sunday, the line at the sole early voting station in Cincinnati stretched at least a quarter-mile, with estimates of those waiting in the thousands. Food trucks at one point handed out free tacos and cupcakes as encouragement. Early voters also faced long lines in California, Arizona and Nevada. In addition to those states, election experts say, extensive waits are a particular concern in Florida and Ohio, given the states election history. In 2012, some precincts in Miami were so clogged that some voters were still casting ballots at 1 a.m. as President Obama was making his victory speech. In the most hotly contested states, many lawyers have been deployed by both parties as well as independent voting rights groups. The lawyers will be stationed inside polling places to help resolve disputes. The Justice Department will send more than 500 workers to 28 states to monitor polls on Election Day. The deployment is significantly smaller by at least 280 from 2012 because of a Supreme Court decision that Justice officials say limits the federal governments role at polling places. With just five lawyers on its voting rights team, the ACLU had to draft its Election Day strategy more judiciously deciding to send them to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Miami and one last location, most likely North Carolina. The state laws vary so much that you have to prepare for it. And the states where its close, thats where the temptation will be greatest for voter intimidation tactics, said Dale Ho, the ACLUs voting rights director. His lawyers are landing with restraining orders and injunctions already drafted and ready to be filed, he said. Its like those fire tools behind the glass: Break in case of emergency. It remains unclear how widespread the much feared threat of voter intimidation will be, or whether it will materialize. A group called Stop the Steal run by longtime Republican operative and outside Trump adviser Roger Stone has been recruiting vote protectors to stand outside polling stations. As of Monday, the group had signed up 3,191 people pledging to do so. This is our best chance to stop the Democrats from stealing the election from Donald Trump. Help us fight a rigged system, the group said on its website. Democrats have filed several lawsuits against the Republicans, and Stones group is accusing them of planning voter intimidation. In an email last week, Stone called the lawsuit bogus and said that Stop the Steal is conducting a neutral, scientifically based exit poll that would only involve interviews after people cast ballots. The cases have only added to this years unusually heavy flood of last-minute legal battles over issues such as voters being purged from rolls, registration deadlines and election access. During early voting in Florida, Trump supporters were videotaped using bullhorns to shout at Clinton supporters and voters outside a polling site in West Palm Beach. Video posted online showed a Trump supporter yelling, How many Syrian refugees, Muslim refugees, are you taking into your home? Voting advocates complained to authorities, who then ordered the individuals to move farther away from the polling site. Election officials in several states said the potential for clashes has caused them to step up coordination with police ahead of Tuesdays vote. And many state authorities are already on alert after federal officials warned of a vague possible threat of a pre-election attack by al-Qaeda as well as the possibility of Russian hackers trying to sow disinformation. Some worry that more mundane problems could wreak havoc. New voting restrictions including some laws requiring photo ID will be in place for the first time in more than a dozen states, sowing potential for confusion. And legal fights over the laws have complicated the matter further. In Texas, for example, after a federal court ruled that the states voter ID law discriminated against minorities, fliers remained up at some polling places, warning voters that photo ID was required. With all there is to worry about on Tuesday, voting advocates have one more concern to add to the pile: that some voters will be discouraged enough to stay home. Im worried about the worrying, said Wendy Weiser, an election expert at the nonpartisan Brennan Center. Theres so much anxiety across the country. You have many people worried for the first time about the integrity of our election system, which is actually pretty good. You have people talking about needing to watch other people as they watch voters. Its crazy. Mark Berman contributed to this report. Read more: How to vote in your state Battleground states still fighting over voting laws, potential Election Day confusion Can you rig a U.S. presidential election? Experts say its basically impossible. Geo-political tensions between India and Pakistan surged over the weekend as cross-border firing continued in both directions along the Line of Control (LoC), the de-facto border between the Indian- and Pakistani-held portions of disputed Kashmir. More than two dozen people, mostly civilians, have been killed in military exchanges over the past two weeks. According to an Indian defence spokesperson, in the latest incident on Sunday, two Indian soldiers were killed and two more soldiers and three civilians were injured in the Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district by Pakistani fire. Lt. Col. Manish Mehta boasted: Indian troops [are] responding befittingly and have caused heavy damage to Pakistani army posts. An Indian intelligence sources cited by the media declared, While Pakistan targeted Victor post of the Indian Army, their Copra post caught fire in retaliatory fire by the Indian troops. Pakistan has also suffered some casualties in retaliatory fire. However, their exact number could not be known. The artillery exchange on Sunday took place after a lull of four days. On the previous Sunday, the Indian military said it inflicted heavy casualties, destroying four Pakistani army posts in the Keran sector of Pakistani-held Kashmir. The massive fire assault was supposedly in retaliation for the beheading of an Indian soldier by terrorist infiltrators on October 28. The ongoing clashes along the LoC highlight the dangerous standoff that has brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war. The Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is waging an aggressive military campaign against Pakistan, blaming it for Islamic separatist attacks on an Indian army base in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir on September 18. The governments of both India and Pakistan are whipping up reactionary chauvinism and militarism, creating explosive tensions on the subcontinent. Accusations of spying have led to diplomatic expulsions and withdrawals from each others capital. The Pakistan Express Tribune reported on November 4 that both countries may temporarily recall high commissioners. Last Thursday, in an unprecedented move, the Pakistani Foreign Office named eight Indian diplomats in Islamabad as agents of Indias intelligence agenciesthe notorious Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB). Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria told the media: As you are aware, a number of Indian diplomats and staff belonging to the Indian intelligence agencies RAW and IB have been found involved in coordinating terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments. Pakistani authorities outlined a long list of charges: espionage, subversion and supporting of terrorist activities in Balochistan and Sindh, sabotaging the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), creating unrest in Gilgit-Balistan, damaging Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, fabricating evidence to portray Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism, fueling sectarianism and maligning Pakistan with propaganda on human rights issues, carrying out activities in AJK [Pakistani-held Kashmir] detrimental to the Kashmir cause and misleading the international community about indigenous movement for self-determination in IOK [Indian-held Kashmir]. Indian Prime Minister Modi has made no secret of his governments backing for separatist movements in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. He has cited Islamabads alleged atrocities in that province to counter Pakistans accusations of human rights abuses by the Indian military in Indian-held Kashmir. Modi has exploited the Balochistan issue in international forums like the UN as part of a diplomatic campaign to isolate Pakistan. India is opposed to the CPEC, a network of rail links, highways and pipelines connecting western China with the Pakistani port city of Gwadar. New Delhi cites the fact that the CPEC runs through Gilgit-Balistan and Pakistani-held Kashmirareas claimed by Indiabut its real concern is that the corridor could give a boost to both Pakistan and its other regional rival, China. Under Modi, India has forged even closer ties with the US as it seeks to encircle China with allies and strategic partners. The CPEC offers China an alternate means of importing energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East. The Pentagons war planners have foreshadowed the imposition of a naval blockade of China using key choke points such as the Malacca Strait in the event of conflict with China. The diplomatic feud was triggered on October 27 when India declared Pakistani High Commission staffer Mehmood Akhtar as persona non-gratia for alleged espionage activities. Akhtar was arrested by Delhi police allegedly with sensitive defence documents for the Pakistani military spy agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). He was expelled from India. The Indian government has been backed by the US in its bellicose campaign against Pakistan following the Uri attack. Washington regards New Delhi as an important partner in its pivot to Asiaa comprehensive strategy aimed at undermining the influence of, and preparing for war with China. The US has showered India with important concessions, including a civilian nuclear deal that gives India access to global nuclear market, an offer of advanced defence technology and support for New Delhis strategic outreach into South East Asia and Africa. Despite its formal calls for restraint on both sides and appeals for a negotiated settlement, the US has supported Indias moves to isolate Pakistan internationally by branding it a terrorism sponsoring state. It has blamed Islamabad for the terrorist activities of separatist groups in Indian-held Kashmir and backed the Modi governments military aggression, including its so-called surgical strikes inside Pakistans territory on September 28-29. The escalating geo-political tensions between India and Pakistan underscore the utterly reactionary nature of nation-state structure in South Asia, created through communal partition of British India into a Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated India in 1947. The decades-long geo-political rivalry in South Asia has already led to three declared wars and countless war crises between India and Pakistan. Now an all-out war between India and Pakistan could become the trigger for a catastrophic global conflict that would draw in the US, China and all the nuclear-armed powers. NATO will place hundreds of thousands of troops on alert for military action against Russia in the coming months, top NATO officials told the Times of London on Monday. The US-led military alliance is planning to speed up the mobilization of forces numbering in the tens of thousands and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands and millions that are to be mobilized against Russia. Beyond its existing 5,000-strong emergency response force, NATO is tripling its incumbent response force to 40,000 and putting hundreds of thousands of troops on higher alert levels. The Times wrote, Sir Adam West, Britains outgoing permanent representative to NATO, said he thought that the goal was to speed up the response time of up to 300,000 military personnel to about two months. At present a force of this size could take up to 180 days to deploy. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, We are addressing what we call the follow-on forces. There are a large number of people in the armed forces of NATO allies. We are looking into how more of them can be ready on a shorter notice. According to the Times, Stoltenberg explained that NATO is looking broadly at methods for improving the readiness of many of the alliance's three million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. The target of these deployments, the largest since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, is Russia. We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up of many years, tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours, Stoltenberg said. We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among NATO allies and that is exactly the reason why NATO is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War. These statements show how NATO planning for a horrific war against Russia has continued behind the backs of the people throughout the US presidential election campaign. Military deployments and war preparations by the Pentagon and the general staffs of the various European countries are set to go ahead, moreover, whatever the outcome of the election in the United States and those slated for 2017 in the European NATO countries. Stoltenberg's vague attack on Russian propaganda in Europe is an allusion to the instinctive opposition to war that exists in the European and international working class and popular distrust of the anti-Russian propaganda promoted by NATO officials like Stoltenberg and West. Last year, a Pew poll found broad international opposition to NATO participation in a conventional war against Russia in Eastern Europe, even in a scenario that assumes Russia started the conflict. Under these hypothetical conditions, 58 percent of Germans, 53 percent of French people, and 51 percent of Italians opposed any military action against Russia. Opposition to war in the poll would doubtless have been higher had pollsters mentioned that NATO's decision to attack Russian forces in Eastern Europe could lead to nuclear war. This opposition is rooted in deep disaffection with the imperialist Middle East wars of the post-Soviet period and the memory of two world wars in Europe in the 20th century. The arguments Stoltenberg presented against it are politically fraudulent. The primary threat of military aggression and war in Europe comes not from Russia, but from the NATO countries. Over the past 25 years, the imperialist powers of NATO have bombed and invaded countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Within Europe, they bombed Serbia and Kosovo in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, pushed NATOs borders hundreds of miles to the East, and backed a violent, fascist-led putsch to topple a pro-Russian government in Ukraine in 2014. The aggressive character of NATO policy emerged once again last Friday, when NBC News reported that US cyber warfare units had hacked key Russian electricity, Internet and military networks. These are now vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the US deem it necessary, NBC stated. Russian officials denounced the activities highlighted in the report and the Obama White House's silence on the matter. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, If no official reaction from the American administration follows, it would mean state cyber terrorism exists in the US. If the threats of the attack, which were published by the US media, are carried out, Moscow would be justified in charging Washington. The geo-strategically disastrous consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracy's dissolution of the Soviet Union and restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe are ever more apparent. With NATO troops or proxy forces stationed in a geographic belt extending from the Baltic republics to Poland, Ukraine and Romaniaeither a short distance from or on Russia's bordersNATO is now poised for a major war against Russia that could escalate into a nuclear conflagration. An examination of Stoltenbergs remarks shows that NATOs plans are not defensive preparations to counter a sudden conventional invasion of Europe by the Russian army. In such a scenario, Russian tank columns would overrun the few thousand or tens of thousands of troops in NATOs various emergency response forces, depriving the broader ranks of NATO follow-up forces of the 60 to 180 days they need to mobilize. Rather, the plan for mobilizing successive layers of follow-on forces is intended to allow NATO to threaten Russia in a crisis situation by gradually bringing to bear more and more of its collective military strength, which, although split between 28 member states, outweighs that of Russia. Russia's population of 145 million is far smaller than that of the NATO countries, at 906 million. The aggressive character of NATOs agenda is illustrated by a report issued last month by the CIA-linked Rand Corporation think tank on the military situation in the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The small military forces NATO has posted in the Baltic republics, Rand wrote, are inviting a devastating war, rather than deterring it. They calculated that Russian forces, if they actually invaded, could overrun these countries in approximately 60 hours. On this basis, the think tank called for launching a vast NATO military build-up in the Baltic republics, virtually at the gates of St. Petersburg. It wrote that it would take a force of about seven brigades, including three heavy armored brigadesadequately supported by air power, land-based fires, and other enablers on the ground and ready to fight at the onset of hostilities to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states. This would cost the NATO countries $2.7 billion each year. As the NATO countries intensify their threats against Russia, there are increasingly bitter conflicts among the NATO imperialist powers themselves. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi bluntly opposed new sanctions on Russia as called for by Washington at last month's European Union summit in Brussels, and there are deepening tensions between Germany and the United States as officials in Berlin and Paris call for an independent EU military. Prospects of increased US-led military provocations against Russia are sharpening tensions within Europe. In an article titled Whether Clinton or Trump wins, for Germany things will get uncomfortable, German news magazine Der Spiegel warned of the long-term implications of an aggressive US-led policy against Russia, which it assumed would continue regardless which of the two candidates secured the White House. The magazine wrote, The motto will be: If you want (nuclear) US protection from Putin, you must either pay us more money or re-arm yourself. Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 234 shut down the six-day strike of nearly 5,000 Philadelphia transit workers Monday morning ordering strikers back to the job without any opportunity to vote or even see the details of the announced five-year package. The sabotage of the strike, which shut down the sixth largest transit system in the US, was aimed at bolstering the get-out-the-vote campaign for Hillary Clinton who faces a tight race today in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate the anti-working class alliance between the trade unions and the Democratic Party, which from Obama down to the municipal level has directed the attack on transit workers, teachers and other public sector workers jobs, living standards and health and pension benefits. The states Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, denounced the strike and backed a motion filed by the Democratic-controlled city government to break the strike on the grounds that it was denying citizens of the right to vote. In the end, however, officials relied on the union to smash the strike making Monday mornings scheduled hearing on an injunction a moot point. With trains, buses and trollies running again, Clinton held her final campaign rally at Independence Hall in Philadelphia Monday evening, along with former President Bill Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama. Given the refusal to release any details it is possible that the TWU ended the strike without actually having a contract agreement in hand. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) shut down the 45-day strike by 40,000 Verizon telecom workers last spring claiming it had reached an agreement. Five months after the end of the strike Verizon workers have still not seen a formal contract. The action of the TWU confirms the warning of the World Socialist Web Site, which wrote, state and city officials have decided to postpone a direct legal confrontation with the strikers, fearing that it would only incite workers who might also defy a judges decision, and have instead relied on the Transport Workers Union and the other municipal unions to isolate the strike and try to wear down the resistance of workers. Were going to support Hillary Clinton, TWU Local 234 President Willie Brown said before falsely claiming the election didnt really play a factor with me. Last week strikers told reporters for the World Socialist Web Site that they were prepared to a judges order. This would have provoked a direct confrontation with the Democratic Party on Election Day and further exposed that it is a party of the banks and big corporations, no less than the Republicans. Under Obama, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations have limited strikes to the lowest level since the end of the Second World War. This allowed the Democratic president to restructure class relations after the 2008 financial crash based on slashing wages and shifting health care and pension costs onto workers. The major issue in the Philadelphia strike was the efforts of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)a body that includes Democrats, such as US Congressman Bob Brady and State Representative Dwight Evansto sharply increase out-of-pocket health care costs for workers. A leak Sunday night said SEPTA wanted to increase worker contribution four-fold. Workers were also opposed to the insulting wage offer and SEPTAs determination to maintain a $30,000 cap on pensions, which means poverty for retirees in one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country. SEPTA, the Democratic Party politicians and the unions conspired to shut the strike before it became a catalyst for a far broader movement of the working class against austerity by the Democrats and Republicans, who have limitless resources for bank bailouts, corporate tax cuts and war. The transit agency has insisted there is no money to address workers demands. SEPTAS chairman since 1999real estate mogul Pasquale T. Deon Sr.has boasted that he has continually kept the agencys budget balanced. This has been accomplished on the backs of the transit workers by writing schedules that maximize productivity by minimizing breaks, and by various concessions on wages, health benefits, and pensions; and the riders through fare hikes about every three years in a city with a poverty rate of more than 25 percent. The local unions executive board will vote on the settlement before rank-and-file workers in a process that could take weeks. The transit agencys board of directors also has to vote on it. The attack on public sector workers will only be escalated whether Clinton or Trump wins. Philadelphia workers and all workers should draw the lessons from the betrayal of the strike. The unions are not working class organizations; they are organizations of upper-middle-class bureaucrats that are tied to the Democratic Party and big business. The fight to defend the working class requires the building of new organizations of struggle, democratically controlled by the rank-and-file and based on the methods of the class struggle. This must be combined with the development of a political counter-offensive by the working class and the fight for a socialist program, including the seizing of the ill-gotten gains of the financial aristocracy and the pouring of trillions of dollars into public services. [November 08, 2016] ZTE and Mojio Make Nearly Any Car A Part of the Internet of Things SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced alongside Mojio, the leading open platform for connected cars, their successful first step as partners for the launch of T-Mobile's SyncUp DRIVETM. Available beginning November 18 from T-Mobile, the T-Mobile SyncUP DRIVE solution combines ZTE's innovative Internet of Things (IoT) device developed by ZTEWelink, a subsidiary of ZTE focused on M2M/IoT, with Mojio's cloud-based platform and mobile app, Motion -- all powered by T-Mobile and the nation's fastest 4G LTE network. T-Mobile SyncUP DRIVE is an affordable, easy-to-install connected car solution that propels nearly any car into the Internet of Things, enabling a whole new suite of connected car experiences that provide something we've all been searching for -- peace of mind about our cars and the people in them. "Over the next five years the global economy will continue to transform and be connected together more than ever," said Lixin Cheng, SVP of ZTE Corporation. "Our M-ICT 2.0 strategy is helping us lead this transformation and we're excited to showcase this through teaming up with Mojio and T-Mobile in bringing the T-Mobile SyncUP DRIVE solution to consumers in the U.S." Working with most vehicles from 1996 and newer, the T-Mobile SyncUP DRIVE solution plugs in to the car's OBD-II port to not only unlock 4G LTE Wi-Fi access for passengers, but enable enhanced features such as virtual fences to know when your loved ones are arriving and departing common locations, real-time vehicle notifications to help keep your family safe and vehicle disturbance alerts to help keep your car secure, even wen you're not with it. T-Mobile SyncUP DRIVE users are the first to access Mojio's new connected car app, Motion, which provides enhanced connectivity and capabilities car owners have been wanting. "The Motion app combines years of research with an intuitive user interface to enable a new kind of automotive peace of mind," said Kenny Hawk, CEO of Mojio. "The goal of this IoT collaboration is to improve the relationship we have with our cars by adding enhanced safety, security and connectivity capabilities to the cars we already drive." Identify problems to help avoid stressful breakdowns Short and long term car maintenance leads to healthier cars. Car diagnostics and alerts to possible issues and malfunctions are communicated in real-time. Long-term service, warranty, and maintenance information based on the make, model, and year of the car are one tap away. Assess driving habits to become a smarter, safer driver Unlocking car data offers a profound look at driving habits on a large or small scale. Data reveals where and when speeding, harsh breaking, and rapid acceleration happen -- and the impact of those driving behaviors on fuel consumption. Connect your car with other IoT devices, apps and services T-Mobile SyncUP DRIVE users get the advantage of Mojio's open platform and growing connected car ecosystem. Mojio's platform integrates with several IoT solutions, including IFTTT and Amazon Alexa, where the real-world usefulness of connecting data from your vehicle to other digital apps and services is improving every day. About ZTE ZTE is a provider of advanced telecommunications systems, mobile devices, and enterprise technology solutions to consumers, carriers, companies and public sector customers. As part of ZTE's M-ICT strategy, the company is committed to provide customers with integrated end-to-end innovations to deliver excellence and value as the telecommunications and information technology sectors converge. Listed in the stock exchanges of Hong Kong and Shenzhen (H share stock code: 0763.HK / A share stock code: 000063.SZ), ZTE's products and services are sold to over 500 operators in more than 160 countries. ZTE commits 10 per cent of its annual revenue to research and development and has leadership roles in international standard-setting organizations. ZTE is committed to corporate social responsibility and is a member of the UN Global Compact. For more information, please visit www.zte.com.cn. About Mojio Founded in 2012, Mojio is the leading open platform for connected cars. Trusted by some of the world's top wireless carriers, including Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile US, Mojio is the platform of choice for scalable deployment of secure connected car services for enterprise customers, including wireless carriers, auto manufacturers, car dealers, insurers and fleets. Based in downtown Vancouver and Silicon Valley, Mojio develops enterprise-grade connected car solutions for a growing suite of customers in North America, Europe and beyond. For more information, visit www.moj.io. For career opportunities, visit Mojio on LinkedIn. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] On Sunday, Turkeys pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) declared that it would halt all its parliamentary activities. In a press conference on Monday, HDP spokesperson Ayhan Bilgen said that they would not attend to the general assembly or commissions of the Turkish parliament, saying, We have decided to halt our work in the legislature. The decision came as a response to the arrest of nine HDP lawmakers on November 4, including its co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, who were imprisoned for alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish nationalist organisation waging guerrilla war against the Turkish state. The legal grounds of the detentions were prepared last May, when the immunity of more than 130 representatives, largely from opposition parties, was lifted by a parliamentary vote with the support of the social-democratic Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The political beheading of the HDP came days after the arrest of Gultan Ksanak and Frat Anl, the co-mayors of the Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Diyarbakir for alleged links with the PKK, on October 30. Since the last general elections of November 2015, thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists, from both the HDP and its sister party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), have been arrested on similar charges. Also, on November 5, an Istanbul court arrested nine journalists and executives of Cumhuriyet, one of Turkeys oldest and best-known newspapers. This stunning operation, following the last wave of bans on some 20 television and radio stations a week ago, was based on accusations that the suspects were committing crimes on behalf of the Fethullahist Terror Organisation (FETO) and the PKK. This all takes place as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) move towards an authoritarian presidential system by drafting a new constitution. Erdogan and his government have already gained the full support of the fascistic MHP, which incessantly calls for the arrest of HDP deputies as legal extensions of the PKK, the reintroduction of capital punishment, and the invasion of northern Syria and Iraq. The latest state of emergency decree on October 29which dismissed an additional 10,000 civil servants and banned 15 media outletshas also given Erdogan the power of appointing rectors to universities directly without considering the preferences of academics. Authority to directly appoint rectors was part of an omnibus bill that the AKP sought to pass in recent months, but that was ultimately retracted. Having largely acquiesced to the governments authoritarian measures, especially since the failed coup attempt of July 15, the opposition CHP was finally alarmed by the last wave of detentions of Cumhuriyet journalists and HDP lawmakers. Covering up his support to the parliamentary vote to lift the HDPs legislative immunity, Kilicdaroglu condemned the detention of the HDP deputies, saying: We are against the jailing of politicians, scientists and journalists over their views. If you defend democracy, then you should recognise that those who come to power with elections should go with elections. If not, you will slaughter democracy. Speaking to supporters in Izmir, on November 4, Kilicdaroglu also criticised the AKP government for its cross-border operations in Syria and Iraq. In fact, Kilicdaroglu has declared his partys support to the Turkish armys cross-border operations, so long as they target the PKK in northern Iraq. Meanwhile, the Turkish military continues to deploy tanks, armoured vehicles, and thousands of troops to Silopi, a Kurdish-populated town near the Iraqi border, challenging the Iraqi governments decision opposing Turkish participation in the offensive on Mosul. Ankara has insistently demanded that Turkish troops be allowed to actively participate in the attack against the Islamic State in Mosul. On Saturday, Erdogan threateningly said that his government would have a different response for Shiite militias if they cause terror in Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul largely populated by Iraqi Turkmen. The state terror launched by the government at home is tightly coupled with Ankaras escalating warmongering moves in the Middle East, which would easily spark a conflagrationa regional war in the Middle East, and a broader war between NATO and Russia. All events of the last decade have proven that CHP or HDP and their satellite trade unions cannot and do not want to oppose the authoritarian and militarist agenda of the imperialist powers and the Turkish ruling class, carried out by the AKP government. For years, these two bourgeois left parties sought a reconciliation with the AKP, under cover of a impotent calls for peace and democracy. Just a few months ago, the CHP, in the name of fighting the July 15 coup attempt, obeyed the so-called Yenikap spiriti.e., national unity behind the AKP government. The HDP complained for its part of its exclusion from the national consensus reached by the AKP, CHP and MHP after the attempted coup. Now, even as they are targeted by the government, these two bourgeois opposition parties and their allied trade union bureaucrats and pseudo-left followers are swearing allegiance to the rule of law, calling on workers to respect the rule and order, and relying upon the support of US and European imperialism. This docility is not accidental; the difference between the AKP government and these opposition parties is not of principle but on tactical differences over how best to serve the vital interests of the imperialist system. Thus, both the CHP and HDP support the predatory, US-led war in the Middle East in the name of human rights and democracy and national interests, as does the AKP. Their conceptions of what these national interests are differ from each other, however. The CHPtogether with the AKP and MHPsupports the Turkish invasion in Syria, while the HDP aims to exclude Ankara from the ongoing imperialist re-division of Iraq and Syria, so long as Ankara does not accept the Kurdish nationalists as its main partner. The role of the Kurdish nationalist movement, constitutionally represented by the HDP, is no less reactionary. A movement serving as US imperialisms main proxy force in Syria and Iraqwhose leader, PKK head Abdullah Ocalan, has for years called for a Turkish-Kurdish axis based on the National Oath of the Ottoman Parliament in 1920 (a declaration recognising parts of Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia and Iraq as Turkish territory)cannot seriously oppose the dictatorial and militarist drive of the Turkish government. Whatever decision the HDP may take, it will not be in the interests of either the working class and the youth or of Kurdish suffering masses in their struggle for social and political liberation. On the contrary, seeking a greater share of profits from the exploitation of Kurdish working class and poor peasants by global conglomerates, the HDPs actions, based on the perspective of identity politics, inevitably escalates the social counterrevolution and the danger of war. Cases of this rare disease that affects the nervous system are spiking in the U.S. After eight children in Washington state were diagnosed with acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) last week, doctors are scrambling to find answers about the polio-like condition that has recently surged in the United States. AFM first garnered attention in 2014, when more than 120 people were diagnosed across the country. The number of cases fell to 21 in 2015, but the disease has spiked again this year: Last week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a total of 89 cases between January and September. Even with the increase in cases, AFM is an extremely rare disease, the CDC points out. Still, the organization is concerned because it does not know what causes AFM or how to prevent it. It appears that AFM is not just one disease, Malcolm Thaler, MD, a primary care physician at One Medical Group in New York City, explained in an email to Health. Rather, its the most severe manifestation of infection with a number of different viruses, including some that typically cause uncomplicated respiratory infections (adenoviruses), West Nile virus, and a class of viruses called enteroviruses, which includes polio. RELATED: 15 Diseases Doctors Often Get Wrong Whats most disturbing is how swiftly the disease can damage the nervous system. People who have AFM syndrome experience a rapid onset of weakness in one or more limbs, says Aileen Marty, MD, a professor of infectious diseases at Florida International University. The median age of victims is 7 to 9 years old, and most report having suffered from an illness, usually one that includes a fever about five days, before they begin to get better for a little bit, and then develop headaches, stiff neck, or pain in the neck and back, Dr. Marty explained in an email. Respiratory symptoms (such as a runny nose, cough, and sore throat), as well as vomiting and diarrhea, may also occur. Initial presentations vary, says Dr. Marty, but the clinical symptoms of AFM include weakness or paralysis and reduced muscle tone in the arms or legs, drooping eyelids, facial droop, slurred speech, and difficulty swallowing and moving the eyes. The signs and symptoms are indistinguishable [from polio] on clinical grounds, she says. Story continues RELATED: 12 Vaccines Your Child Needs Why some people develop this condition with devastating consequences is difficult to pin down. Its usually a combination of time, place, exposure, environment, and personal risk factors (including genetics) that determine if an individual becomes ill with AFM, says Dr. Marty. There is no specific treatment for AFM, but it may involve immunosupressors, steroids, and plasmapheresis, a blood replacement procedure. Five of the eight children with AFM in Washington state have been sent home with their families; three are still being treated at the hospital. (The sudden death of a six-year-old boy last week was thought to be the first in this cluster of cases, but tests have shown he did not have AFM, CNN reports.) Despite the troubling spike in AFM, its important to keep in mind that the odds of getting the disease are less than one in a million. I can't stress enough that AFM is very, very uncommon, says Dr. Thaler. While concern is certainly appropriate, anxiety and panic are not indicated and never do anyone any good in any case. RELATED: I Survived the Bubonic Plague (Yes, You Read That Correctly) Dr. Thaler suggests simply following your normal stay-well routine to protect your family from germs. Take the usual steps to avoid mosquito bites, make sure to wash your hands and your child's hands frequently (especially after changing diapers), and avoid touching young children with unwashed hands in order to minimize exposure to and transmission of viral infections. If youre around someone whos under the weather, he adds, its best to avoid kissing, hugging, and sharing glasses and eating utensils. Finally, make sure you and your kids are up to date on recommended vaccinations, especially the polio vaccine. Getting a polio virus vaccine greatly reduces your risk of AFM, says Dr. Marty. Russell Brand has a new funnybone and tummy! to tickle. The Get Him to the Greek star, 41, became a dad for the first time, he reportedly announced onstage Sunday during a stand-up routine in Nottingham, England. He was conscious of the clock and made sure he was off stage by just approaching 9 p.m. as he needed to get down the fing M21 as my girlfriend has just had a baby,' a fan told Mirror Celeb, with another source telling the publication the baby arrived late last week. Brands rep did not immediately respond to request for comment. Brand and girlfriend Laura Gallacher, a lifestyle blogger, have been together since 2015, rekindling their relationship at that time after having dated off and on since 2007. Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. The couples baby news was first reported in May, as a source close to Brand and Gallacher told British publication The Sun. Brand himself confirmed his impending fatherhood in July, via social media. For more celebrity videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS. Right then. My Mum bought me this. Time to get ready! he captioned an Instagram snap of himself peeking over the edge of a copy of The Expectant Dads Handbook. Related Video: Russell Brand Confirms Hes Going to Be a Dad: Time to Get Ready! In October, Brand told ES Magazine that he and Gallacher werent planning on finding out their babys sex. I might never find out, he joked. I may never look. And though Brand admitted at the time that around domestic issues, my vote is often secondary, he cant wait to tackle this new chapter in his life. I feel lit up by the idea, he said of becoming a father. Im very excited about becoming a dad and Im preparing myself. I am just getting ready to be with a new little person and see what it is they want. Hillary Clinton This election has been called the Twitter Election as everyone has taken to the social media site to share opinions, make statements, and fire insults and come-backs especially the candidates themselves. Twitter was even the star of one of Hillary Clinton's favorite and often-repeated one-liners: "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons." Twitter was certainly a favorite tool for Donald Trump, who used it to voice everything from thank-you's to supporters to displeasure with those who didn't support him. So Twitter sifted through itself to look at how the election was actually tweeted. It discovered that people in the US sent about 1 billion election-related tweets since the primary debates began in August, 2015 and the most retweeted tweet of the entire election was from Hillary Clinton's account: Ironically, that tweet was also probably one of the least understood. While there were quite a few people who probably also wished he would delete his account, it's actually a common sort of Twitter insult meme, the social media equivalent of "go take a hike." That said, people also loved Trump's comeback to this insult. It was his most retweeted tweet of the election. How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted? https://t.co/gECLNtQizQ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016 Clinton's second most retweeted tweet was about fact-checking debate. In this tweet, Clinton is calling Trump out on his comments over climate change. Story continues Her third most retweeted tweet was her official announcement that she was running for president back in April, 2015. I'm running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion. H https://t.co/w8Hoe1pbtC Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 12, 2015 Trump's second most retweeted tweet expressed his frustration over the news reports that parts of his wife's speech were identical to parts of a speech previously given by Michelle Obama. The media is spending more time doing a forensic analysis of Melania's speech than the FBI spent on Hillary's emails. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2016 And his third most retweeted tweet was the one referenced in Clinton's second most retweeted tweet. It's a comment Trump made about climate change. The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012 Twitter also discovered one more interesting thing. No matter who wins the actual presidential election, Trump seems to have won Twitter. People mentioned him on Twitter more than they mentioned Clinton. Good, bad, or ugly, people couldn't stop tweeting about Trump. Twitter election 2016 NOW WATCH: How to choose the best cut of steak according to Anthony Bourdain More From Business Insider Many Americans will be heading to the polls at some point today to cast ballots on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. So who picked that day, and why do we still observe it? Election Day in Philadelphia, 1815 Do some people vote on other days in the fall? Here are some answers to those and other questions about Election Day. 1. Elections took place way before the Constitution was ratified The English in particular conducted voting soon after they landed in Virginia in the 17th Century. But not everyone could vote and not every office was up for election. But many colonies allowed white male adults who owned land to vote for legislators who served in lower assemblies. 2. George Washington and Election Day drinking In 1758, a young candidate in Virginia for the House of Burgesses footed a huge liquor bill to woo voters on Election Day. George Washington spent his entire campaign budget, 50 pounds, on 160 gallons of liquor served to 391 voters. Buying votes with booze was already a custom in England. Washington also was following a Virginia tradition where barrels of liquor were rolled to courthouse lawns and polling places on Election Day. 3. We wouldnt recognize an Election Day about 200 years ago Not only were eating, drinking and parading common, votes could be conducted a public voice votes. Also political parties would hand our pre-printed ballots for voters to cast, to ensure that people voted for a party ticket. It wasnt until the 1890s that the Australian ballot, also known as the Secret Ballot, became commonly used in America. 4. The Constitution didnt spell out when Election Day was The administration of elections was left up to the individual states in the Constitution, with the exception of some basic requirements for presidential and congressional candidates. So states were left to pick their own election days, including when elections for federal offices were held. But any federal election involving the Electoral College needed to be resolved by mid-December. Story continues 5. The weather and farming dictated when elections were held In the 1800s, the agrarian economy was an important factor, and farmers werent able to travel easily until the harvest was over. Also, the onset of winter conditions in areas that had winter conditions made travel a problem, so elections happened in the late fall. 6. Election Day also wasnt on a fixed day until the mid-19th century Congress finally stepped in to set a uniform day for presidential elections in 1845 as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This was a scheme borrowed from New York state and it allowed people to observe the Sabbath, travel to vote, and return home for Wednesday, which was observed as Market Day. This was just for presidential elections every four years, but it started a trend. 7. Election voting machines are a 20th Century innovation The mechanical lever voting machine was patented in 1889 but it took decades for the machines to become commonplace. Jacob H. Myers built the first lever machine used in an election, back in 1892. Meyers said the devices were needed to prevent rascaldom. 8. The mechanical voting machine is extinct The classic mechanical lever voting machine was phased out by 2010 in the United States. Most votes are now conducted using electronic digital voting machines or by using paper ballots that are sometimes optically scanned. 9. The chance of a hanging chad is almost extinct, too By 2012, punch card voting machines only accounted for 0.02% of machines in used. Back in 2000, it was a problem with the chads, or the rectangular pieces of a card punched to indicate a vote, that caused problems with the presidential vote in Florida. 10. Not all states vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November In years when federal elections arent held, not all states feel the need to have an election on a traditional Election Day. In 2015, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana held elections later in the month. Election Resources on Constitution Daily Ballot initiatives around the country A recent voting history of the 15 Battleground states Explaining how recounts and contested presidential elections work Who are the Electors in the Electoral College? woman work working job employee listen Are you killing it at work, or are you barely scraping by? It's not always obvious. Sometimes, certain bosses or office environments just aren't that big on feedback. These subtle signs can help you determine if you are, in fact, an exemplary employee: 1. You get along great with your colleagues Not only are you a delight to be around in the office, you're an awesome team player. Plus, this probably means that you're a great fit for the culture of your organization. 2. You're honest Good bosses love workers with integrity. You're forthright with your boss and colleagues. You speak frankly and candidly. Most importantly, you don't stoop to using nefarious means to get ahead. In organizations with toxic cultures, honesty may be overlooked it might even get you in trouble. But when you're in a company with a strong, ethical grounding, honesty tends to pay off in the long run. 3. You're restless In Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash Broadway hit "Hamilton," the titular Founding Father ascends to great heights by virtue of never being satisfied. (This drive also gets him into a bit of trouble, but let's just ignore that for now.) At a certain point, most of us settle for good enough. Truly stellar employees are never quite content. They're constantly learning new things, trying new approaches, and striving to work smarter. They're a bit restless and always seeking to improve themselves. 4. You hold yourself accountable Again, in a workplace without integrity, doing this might be a bit of a disadvantage. But if you've got a decent boss, holding yourself accountable and taking on responsibility will likely go over well. 5. You're dependable You're not flashy. You're like clockwork. You say you're going to do something, and you do it right every time. You're trustworthy and dependable, which makes you invaluable on important projects. 6. You rise above office politics In corporate America, no one is 100% immune to office politics. Learning to navigate your workplace is an important part of succeeding at your job. (Unfortunately, too often this takes precedence over actually being good at your job.) Story continues However, if you're one of those people who can successfully sail through potentially contentious workplace situations without ever getting mired in the drama, that's a good sign. 7. You mentor others If others are looking to you for guidance, you can rest assured that they already see you as an excellent worker. You're so good at your job that not only are you successful on your own, but you're able to reach out and help others succeed as well. 8. You do things without being asked You don't sit around waiting to be told what to do. You go out, find problems, and then work to discover solutions. This allows you to seize each and every day. 9. You speak up Effective communicators make for dream employees. You don't bottle things up, and you express yourself clearly. That's an important skill. 10. You finish what you start Ambition and imagination are nothing without perseverance. You might have plenty of great ideas and plans, but if you don't finish any projects, you'll never be a standout worker. Managers love people who communicate what they intend to do and then actually go out and do it. 11. You're conscientious not nice As Business Insider previously reported, being nice is good, but it won't always get you ahead in the workplace. Employees who get noticed tend to be conscientious characterized by being hardworking, persevering, orderly, and hungry for achievement. Coming into work every day with a positive, conscientious attitude will allow you to establish yourself as a model employee. 12. You don't overdo it The best employees work hard without burning themselves out. This means taking care of your mental, physical, and emotional well being. You shouldn't have to become a work martyr in order to do your job well in fact, in the long run, burnout will leave you ineffective and drained. 13. You know your weaknesses The top workers are confident without being arrogant. You're probably in a good place if you know of a few areas where you could use some improvement. But you don't beat yourself about your weaknesses you acknowledge them and work to correct them going forward. NOW WATCH: Ivanka Trump says this is the one thing you should always do before firing someone More From Business Insider 19 Celebrities show off their I voted stickers and make us feel super patriotic at the same time Today is Election Day, which means its time to get out and vote! While you are preparing to cast your ballot, or celebrating because you already mailed it in, celebrities are proving they are just like you, by posting photos of their I Voted stickers all over social media. Some celebrities voted last week, while others are going to the polls today, but either way theyre showing off those fun stickers and giving us major patriotic vibes. In fact, weve rounded up some of the cutest, funniest, or just shots full of American pride and spirit below to get you pumped for the 2016 Presidential Election. Yay, America! Jessica Biel gave a shoutout to her husband Justin Timberlake, who Snapchatted as he voted last week, in her voting photo. When youre so turnt up about voting that you do a photo shoot with your sticker and think its cool but then second guess it, but youve already posted, but at least you waited to get home before snapping so you wont almost go to jail, shout out to @justintimberlake, she wrote. When you're so turnt up about voting that you do a photo shoot with your sticker and think it's cool but then second guess it, but you've already posted, but at least you waited to get home before snapping so you won't almost go to jail, shout out to @justintimberlake. A photo posted by Jessica Biel (@jessicabiel) on Oct 31, 2016 at 12:38pm PDT Karlie Klosss work schedule didnt deter her from getting her ballot into the polls, even if that meant doing it in the hair and makeup area on a shoot. One of the greatest privileges we have as Americans is a voice. Im proud to say I did my part, now its your turn. #ImWithHer A photo posted by Karlie Kloss (@karliekloss) on Nov 8, 2016 at 5:07am PST Fashion designer, Lauren Conrad gave a subtle shoutout to the fact that she voted last week, with this cheeky photo. A photo posted by Lauren Conrad (@laurenconrad) on Nov 2, 2016 at 10:27am PDT Our family voted and we couldnt be happier. How bout you?? Lena Dunham wrote alongside a photo of her and boyfriend Jack Antonoff in New York City this morning. Story continues Our family voted and we couldn't be happier. How 'bout you?? A photo posted by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) on Nov 8, 2016 at 8:28am PST Drew Barrymore showed off her election spirit last week after she sent in her vote and has been posting up a storm all day pushing others to get out and vote as well. Read my article for @refinery29 I wrote about the documentary I made about voting in 2003. It is personal and spirited and non partisan. Link in bio! And thank you for anyone who takes the time! I promise it's optimistic. Ps I voted today!!!!!!!!! #gotthesticker A photo posted by Drew Barrymore (@drewbarrymore) on Nov 2, 2016 at 11:08am PDT Anne Hathaway rocked oversized sunnies and a sweatsuit as she got out today to cast her vote! Today is #ElectionDay! Have you made your voice heard yet? Check the link in my bio to find out where to vote A photo posted by Anne Hathaway (@annehathaway) on Nov 8, 2016 at 7:06am PST Frozen star, Idina Menzel, posed in NYC after voting early last week. Feels so good. #GoVote #ImWithHer A photo posted by Idina Menzel (@idinamenzel) on Nov 1, 2016 at 1:42pm PDT Katy Perry gave herself a birthday treat and sang while she dropped her ballot in the box last week. GAVE MYSELF THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER BY VOTING TODAYWish @hillaryclinton a Happy Birthday tomorrow with your EARLY vote. Check www.rockthevote.com to see where your poll is. #HBDTOME #HAPPYBIRTHDAYHILLARY #SCORPIOSISTERS, she captioned her Instagram video. GAVE MYSELF THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER BY VOTING TODAYWish @hillaryclinton a Happy Birthday tomorrow with your EARLY vote. Check www.rockthevote.com to see where your poll is. #HBDTOME #HAPPYBIRTHDAYHILLARY #SCORPIOSISTERS A video posted by KATY PERRY (@katyperry) on Oct 25, 2016 at 7:07pm PDT Eva Longoria looked so excited as she showed off her finished ballot. Today is National Early Vote Day! Most states allow you to vote early at a time that fits your schedule. Find out more at iwillvote.com/locate A photo posted by Eva Longoria Baston (@evalongoria) on Nov 1, 2016 at 11:44am PDT Justin Theroux voted all the way from Germany! Vote=rocked. #berlin Oh! And since Im in Germany #germanfunfacts! #inGermanythewordfor kindergarten is kindergarten,' Theroux captioned his voter shot. Law & Order: SVU actress, Mariska Hargitay (aka Olivia Benson) gave us a glimpse of her voting today, with a behind-the-scenes look at her actually casting her vote. #VOTE A photo posted by Mariska Hargitay (@therealmariskahargitay) on Nov 8, 2016 at 5:24am PST Mad Men star, January Jones, got cozy in her tub, but was still able to cast her ballot last week. Multitasking the crap out of today.. voted..in the tub. I feel like my decisions were better made while super chill and slightly overheated. #somanyprops A photo posted by January Jones (@januaryjones) on Oct 27, 2016 at 10:18am PDT Taylor Swift shared a pre-voting photo of herself standing in line and doing her part for America this morning. Today is the day. Go out and VOTE A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Nov 8, 2016 at 8:01am PST Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Martin Luther King Jr. #VOTE, How I Met Your Mother actor, Neil Patrick Harris captioned his sticker shot. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King Jr." #VOTE A photo posted by Neil Patrick Harris (@nph) on Nov 8, 2016 at 4:13am PST Talk about being patriotic! Anna Kendrick sported an all-American shirt as she hit the polls on Tuesday. A photo posted by Anna Kendrick (@annakendrick47) on Nov 8, 2016 at 7:43am PST Candice Cameron Bure was all smiles as she shared her sticker photo. Go VOTE!! A photo posted by Candace Cameron Bure (@candacecbure) on Nov 8, 2016 at 4:42am PST Live! With Kelly star, Kelly Ripa brought her son to the polls with her for his first time voting and their photo is just too cute! Nothing like the feeling of witnessing your child vote for the first time. Nothing. MAKE IT COUNT! A photo posted by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa) on Nov 8, 2016 at 5:15am PST Ariel Winter posted this ecstatic video after she voted. I VOTED! A video posted by ARIEL WINTER (@arielwinter) on Nov 8, 2016 at 1:36pm PST Have you voted yet? The post 19 Celebrities show off their I voted stickers and make us feel super patriotic at the same time appeared first on HelloGiggles. From Seventeen Every election is important, but this year the stakes are historic. We could elect our first female president, or we could elect the first president who's never held political office or a military position. No matter which issues concern you most - from abortion to police brutality to gun control - you want to make sure your voice is heard. If you're 18 or older, the best way to do that is by casting your vote. This year tons of first-time voters turned out bright and early to cast their ballots. And the selfies are TOO GOOD. So much joy! So much patriotism! Voting is a beautiful thing, y'all. And it never gets old. Tag @seventeen in your selfie on Twitter or Instagram and you might see it added to this post! 1. Heather's vision for America's future is as sharp as her eyeliner. 2. Rachel voted after completing her journey to citizenship. At 10, Rachel immigrated to the USA from Tanzania. Today, at 18, she voted for the first time for @HillaryforIA. #WithHerFirst pic.twitter.com/VuhkEle8Fv - Bailey Romans (@b_romans21) November 2, 2016 3. Madison cast her ballot in patriotic red, white and blue. 4. Amanda voted in perfect selfie lighting. (Karma from the electoral gods?) 5. Heather voted early #withher. I voted for the first time ever today! Thanks for being such an inspiration this election @angela_rye #dontBOOvote #imwithher pic.twitter.com/x7TQRk8Xk7 - heather (@flanneItee) November 4, 2016 6. While Elizabeth turned out for Donald Trump. 7. Elisa "nose" that voting is a civic duty. First time voter! I'm positive I'll always remember this election. #ThisIsMyVoterFace pic.twitter.com/PfUzxSImNM - Elisa C (@Elle22Lisa) October 27, 2016 8. Carly's Bitmoji tagged along in the booth. Proud first time voter! pic.twitter.com/ExIxhscPTH - Carly Fahey (@Carlyfunsox) October 27, 2016 9. Noemi voted with her family in mind. Noemi is a first time voter who was thinking of her undocumented parents when she voted #NVVOTES2016 #latinopower #DreamVoter pic.twitter.com/0yPqD54MdS - Maria Praeli (@mariapraeli) October 23, 2016 10. Robyn got double the swag for her first time voting. The sweet old man gave me two for being a first time voter pic.twitter.com/MOybYUqSmQ - Rob (@robynzawatsky) October 27, 2016 11. This girl cast her vote on her birthday, which she shares with Hillary Clinton. Happy birthday to my first time voter. Sharing it with a candidate too. pic.twitter.com/0NiW9etbiS - Rhonda Bannard (@rhondabannard) October 26, 2016 12. Katie looks calm, but note the three exclamation points announcing her first vote. 13. Kiara was all smiles after her Sunshine State vote. 14. Senior student, freshman voter. Go, Michaela! 15. Karla's grandparents are her election inspo. Karla is a first time voter! She was encouraged by her immigrant grandparents to vote & Trump's sexism! #NVVOTES2016 pic.twitter.com/1h5bltLD4V - PLAN Action Fund (@PLANactionNV) October 22, 2016 16. On her birthday, Anastazia gave herself the gift of a vote. Anastazia is excited to vote early 4 @HillaryClinton on her birthday!!! + she's a first time voter! #OHVotesEarly pic.twitter.com/7tv3skTxZu - Jessie Gorovitz (@JessieGorovitz) October 12, 2016 17. Juliana and Kate carpooled to the polling center. Just drove Kate, a first time voter and OWU student, to vote at the BOE! #OHVotesEarly pic.twitter.com/HMwOA08u1F - Juliana Amin (@jules_amin) October 14, 2016 18. If Shuazong's sign doesn't make you smile, her t-shirt will. 19. Nicole now knows that voting brings on ~all the feelings~. First time voter and man did I get emotional #PresidentialElection2016 pic.twitter.com/aktz0BnN2G - Nicole Villegas (@nicolevil10) October 19, 2016 Happy voting, everyone! Story continues Hannah Orenstein is a writer at Seventeen.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. You Might Also Like The Daily Beast STRINGER/ReutersVideo footage shows pedestrians attempting to sway an Indian suspension bridge in the moments before it catastrophically collapsed, leaving at least 141 people dead as of Monday.Rescuers expect the death toll to continue to rise after the bridge fell apart in the western state of Gujarat on Sunday. The majority of those killed were women, children, or elderly people, a local official told the BBC. Almost 180 people were successfully rescued, however, in an overnight operation inv This year's presidential election has divided the country in a way that few other elections in U.S. history have managed. However, throughout it all, the fictional heroes of the Marvel and DC comic book universes have remained above the fray in all but the most coded of ways. This wasn't always the case, however; as recently as 2008, DC's heroes took very specific political stands - including declaring which party they stood beside. DC Universe: Decisions was a four-issue miniseries published in the run-up to the 2008 election, written by Bill Willingham and Judd Winick, with art by Rick Leonardi and Howard Porter. The plot, such as it was, was slight - a killer targets each of the candidates in the primary races for both the Democratic and Republican parties, meaning that each candidate is given superheroic bodyguards to protect them - but the real appeal of the series was seeing favorite superheroes express their political opinions in a manner sure to upset at least half of their fan bases. In many ways, it's an idea that seems unthinkable today. For all that Captain America is an inherently political figure, it's hard to imagine Marvel allowing him to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump today despite the obvious reasons Cap would feel uncomfortable with the latter. Why risk upsetting half of your potential customer base? That's not to say that endorsements wouldn't come following the election - President Obama famously appeared in a best-selling issue of Amazing Spider-Man released a week ahead of his inauguration in January 2009 - or that other, independently owned, superheroes would declare their allegiances; the September 2008 issue of Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon featured an alternate cover where the hero stood beside Obama, declaring "I'm Savage Dragon and I endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States!" But the big-name, company-owned characters? That would be way too risky. Story continues Of course, Decisions didn't go so far as to use real-life politicians. Instead, the fictional universe that had once elected Lex Luthor to the Oval Office - it didn't go well, unsurprisingly - was choosing between Davis Brewster and Martin Suarez on the Democratic side, and Katherine McClellan and Bob Ridgeway for the Republicans. Of the top-level DC characters, the Republicans came out on top, scoring two separate Green Lanterns, as well as Lois Lane and Wonder Woman. The Democrats, meanwhile, got the support of Batman and Green Arrow. The Flash and Superman went undeclared throughout the entire series - the speedster because of a joke that went viral, leaving him responsible for PR cleanup instead of sharing his opinion, while the Man of Steel purposefully kept his decision to himself, leading to a climactic speech where he explained his thinking. "It would be unconscionable of me to share [my endorsement] with you," he explained. "Whoever is elected to the highest office in the land should not think that they will not have our full support. That our allegiances are stronger with a defeated candidate. We don't take sides. The battles we fight are larger than those on the political spectrum. It would pain me to think the president would believe that he or she couldn't count on us, turn to us, or rely on us." It's a meta moment, with Superman explaining another (less cynical) reason why politicizing superheroes might not be a good decision - while there's a certain fun to creating a personal canon where Wonder Woman joins Beyonce in supporting Hillary Clinton as a fellow female warrior, superheroes really should be for everyone, regardless of whom they choose to vote for. Sure, Superman personally might not want to vote for a politician who lies, or makes hateful remarks, but it only makes sense that he wouldn't speak out against him publicly - especially as he wrestles with the idea that the country he loves has chosen a leader he can't stand. And, sure - I'm talking about Lex Luthor here. Definitely. If there's one fault with DC Universe: Decisions, beyond the arguments one might have with the political leanings of any given superhero (Plastic Man as a Republican? Nah), it's that there isn't a scene where a superhero explains that each and every person who votes is just as much a hero as they are - or one where Spider-Man swings by from the Marvel universe to remind people that, with great power must come great responsibility. A small oversight, perhaps, but a noticeable one. Perhaps good enough reason for a Decisions 2 in 2020? Read more: 'Wonder Woman': 12 Key Moments from the New Trailer [November 08, 2016] Farsight Security CTO Merike Kao To Spotlight How To Combat Cybercrime Utilizing DNS Intelligence at O'Reilly Security Amsterdam SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 08, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Farsight Security, Inc., provider of the worlds largest real-time DNS threat intelligence, today announced that Merike Kao, global information security expert and Chief Technology Officer for Farsight Security, Inc., will present, Mapping Adversary Infrastructure Using DNS on Thursday, November 10, 2016 at the OReilly Security Conference at RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The presentation will take place at 2:10 PM CET in Room G104/105. Farsight Security is a sponsor for this event and will demonstrate its flagship solution, DNSDB, the worlds largest historical Passive DNS database, and latest Passive DNS solutions at booth #414. In her presentation, Ms. Kao will discuss the latest threat landscape, including some recent IoT DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, and how incident responders, security analysts, and other cyber professionals use rea-time global Passive DNS observations to significantly improve the accuracy and response time to todays cyberattacks around the world. Counterfeiters, scammers and other criminals routinely abuse the Domain Name System (DNS) to commit fraud, phishing attacks, and other cyber attacks. Virtually every cybercrime involves IP addresses or domain names. Using Farsights Passive DNS database, DNSDB, analysts can take a single domain name and IP address and uncover previously hidden criminal infrastructures. I am looking forward to sharing my knowledge about todays threat landscape and how Passive DNS can be used to reduce risk to organizations, said Ms. Kao. In her presentation, Ms. Kao will cover: Specific examples of malware scams, including targeted phishing campaigns and counterfeiting legitimate businesses The correlation of IP addresses and domain names to map malware campaigns Actionable intelligence provided by newly observed domain names How DNS changes can be used to alert SOC analysts to potential criminal behavior The value of combining Passive DNS and WHOIS information for deeper intelligence About Merike Kao, Global Information Security Expert Merike Kao is the CTO of Farsight Security, where she is responsible for developing the companys technical strategy and executing its vision. Previously, Ms. Kao held positions as CISO for Internet Identity (IID), where she created the strategic direction for improving and evolving the corporate security posture, and founder of Doubleshot Security, where she worked with numerous companies creating strategic operational security and resilient networking architectures. She has led security and IPv6-focused strategies at numerous companies, including Boeing, Comcast, and T-Mobile, and worked for Cisco Systems, Inc. She is the author of Designing Network Security (Cisco). In 2007, she was named an IPv6 Forum Fellow for continued efforts to raise awareness of IPv6 related security paradigms. About Farsight Security, Inc. Farsight Security, Inc. provides the world's largest real-time threat intelligence on changes to the Internet. Leveraging proprietary technology with over 200,000 observations/second, Farsight provides the Internet's view of an organization and how it is changing purposely, inadvertently or maliciously. For more information on Farsight, please visit https://farsightsecurity.com. Farsight Security, Inc. Karen Burke [email protected] 650-814-3764 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] On Sunday, the snake-fearing passengers of an Aeromexico flight learned their fears were rational and well-founded, when a green snake of some variety dropped from the ceiling of the plane into the cabin mid-flight. I wish I could say this is the first time a curious snake has shown up in a shocking place, frightening all cursed to look upon it but it is not. Turns out these reptiles have a long rap sheet when it comes to trespassing, showing up in many places where they just shouldnt be. If you suffer from Ophidiophobia, it may be time to slither your way out of this post while the rest of us put on a brave face and press on. Snake on Plane Causes Emergency Landing Sound familiar? Our Sunday snake is far from the first reptile to turn Snakes on a Plane into a reality. In December of 2012, an Egyptian cobra was snuck onto an Egypt Air flight by a passenger. The scaly stowaway eventually got sick of hiding, bit the man who brought him on and escaped into the cabin. The Eternal Struggle of Snake and Beer Can These animals have a complicated history with ale. Numerous snakes get caught in beer cans each year because of their scales. Since snake scales only run forwards, they allow snakes to easily slide into cans to investigate, but make it very hard for snakes to slither out. One who recently found himself betrayed by his body is this red-bellied snake in Australia, who was thankfully rescued by a group of concerned citizens and snake handlers. Python in the Potty ( function() { var func = function() { var iframe_form = document.getElementById('wpcom-iframe-form-62a846acf4bbdb95e7eebe31afbcd809-582254f674081'); var iframe = document.getElementById('wpcom-iframe-62a846acf4bbdb95e7eebe31afbcd809-582254f674081'); if ( iframe_form && iframe ) { iframe_form.submit(); iframe.onload = function() { iframe.contentWindow.postMessage( { 'msg_type': 'poll_size', 'frame_id': 'wpcom-iframe-62a846acf4bbdb95e7eebe31afbcd809-582254f674081' }, window.location.protocol + '//wpcomwidgets.com' ); } } // Autosize iframe var funcSizeResponse = function( e ) { var origin = document.createElement( 'a' ); origin.href = e.origin; // Verify message origin if ( 'wpcomwidgets.com' !== origin.host ) return; // Verify message is in a format we expect if ( 'object' !== typeof e.data || undefined === e.data.msg_type ) return; switch ( e.data.msg_type ) { case 'poll_size:response': var iframe = document.getElementById( e.data._request.frame_id ); if ( iframe && '' === iframe.width ) iframe.width = '100%'; if ( iframe && '' === iframe.height ) iframe.height = parseInt( e.data.height ); return; default: return; } } if ( 'function' === typeof window.addEventListener ) { window.addEventListener( 'message', funcSizeResponse, false ); } else if ( 'function' === typeof window.attachEvent ) { window.attachEvent( 'onmessage', funcSizeResponse ); } } if (document.readyState === 'complete') { func.apply(); /* compat for infinite scroll */ } else if ( document.addEventListener ) { document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', func, false ); } else if ( document.attachEvent ) { document.attachEvent( 'onreadystatechange', func ); } } )(); Story continues Can you name a worse place to spy a snake than hanging from the ceiling of your plane? How about nestled in your toilet bowl? This was the fate of one Thai man who was surprised by a 10-foot python that slithered into his toilet and bit his genitals back in May. Hiss, Hiss, Hiss! Merry Christmas In 2011, an Indiana family awoke to the gift of a snake in their Christmas tree. Thinking the snake was a fake toy at first, dad was shocked to find it was the real deal and called the fire department for help. While firefighters didnt believe the report could be real at first, they did eventually help the family with their festive pest problem. Snake in a Sandbox Unexpected snake sightings dont have to be scary! Take this tiny little guy, who surprised us all by popping out of a sandbox, and looking pretty darn adorable while doing so. Panama is often recommended as a good choice for American retirees looking for a place that is accessible, comfortable, sunny and cheap. But the town you choose to live in plays a bigger role in your retirement lifestyle than the country you select. When retiring anywhere in the world, you've got to thin-slice your options. Here's a look at some of the regions of Panama where you might choose to reinvent your life overseas: [See: 10 Affordable Places to Retire Overseas in 2016.] Panama City. Panama City is no longer the bargain retirement option it was two decades ago. Panama City has evolved over the past 20 years into a global business hub that attracts investors, entrepreneurs, executives and opportunity seekers from around the world. Panama's capital is a competitive financial services center and a banking haven. Big businesses from Dell and Proctor and Gamble to Caterpillar, DHL and Dole Food have based themselves here, invested in brick-and-mortar operations and imported and attracted foreign workforces that total in the tens of thousands. All this global attention and demand has translated into a steadily rising cost of living. It has also meant continued development of city services and of the available standard of living. Panama City now deserves a place among the world's brand-name cities for the luxury-level lifestyle it provides. While not all parts of the city are luxurious, Panama City residents can rent (or own) a Pacific Ocean-view penthouse apartment with a doorman, concierge, gym, spa and pools with poolside bar service. You can eat out in five-star restaurants every night of the week. You could spend your days shopping for brands like Hermes, Cartier and Jimmy Choo and your nights hopping from club to club or engaged in high-stakes poker playoffs. On weekends you can take off in your SUV for your beach house or hop aboard your yacht for a weekend cruise. This kind of jet-set lifestyle is increasingly common in Panama City. If that's the kind of lifestyle you dream of for your retirement, then put Panama City at the top of your list. Luxury living Panama City-style is a relative bargain and comes at a fraction the cost of a comparable lifestyle in, say, Miami. Story continues You don't necessarily need to be wealthy to live in Panama City, but life in this city can become much less comfortable on a more limited income. Other cities offer a cosmopolitan retirement at a lower price. The biggest downside to Panama City living on any budget is the weather. It's hot and humid year-round. [See: 10 Places to Retire on a Social Security Budget.] City Beaches. The nearest beach destination to Panama City has become an extension of the city itself as well as a weekend escape. Coronado, the best known of the points along this stretch of coastline, is not a luxury living option. Coronado is mid-market and overrun with tourists, foreign and domestic. That's a good thing for the rental property investor, but doesn't make for an ideal get-away-from-it-all beach escape. However, other City Beaches spots offer both comfort and privacy at a fraction of the cost of a fully appointed coastal lifestyle in many other parts of the world. East Coast of the Azuero Peninsula (Chitre, Las Tablas and Pedasi). The east coast of Panama's Azuero Peninsula has been attracting retirees for the past dozen years and remains an appealing option for a more rustic coastal lifestyle. The area is adding shopping and services, but doesn't yet have the variety of top-line condo and beach house options you find along the City Beaches coast. West Coast of the Azuero Peninsula (Mariato, Torio and Los Islotes). The western Azuero coast remains a frontier, and life on the frontier isn't without challenges. This part of Panama is remote and undeveloped. Services can be unreliable and roads may be rutted. The flip side of remote is private. If that is a priority agenda for you, this stretch of Pacific coast could be the paradise you seek. And it won't remain remote and undeveloped forever. Services are catching up, as are other foreign investors and tourists, especially fishermen and surfers. This is not only one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in Panama, but in the world, and both the fishing spots and the surf breaks just offshore are world-class. Wealthy locals feeling crowded at the City Beaches are beginning to move out to western Azuero. Those choosing to make the longer drive for their beach escapes are rewarded with more elbow room, lower prices and impressive land and seascapes. Boquete. The tiny mountain village of Boquete was targeted for development for the foreign retiree market. Boquete is now home to one of the biggest communities of foreign retirees in the world, which has advantages and downsides. More English is spoken on the streets and in the cafes of Boquete than Spanish, and there are plenty of other foreign retirees to pal around with. A retiree moving to Boquete doesn't have to learn a new language if he doesn't want to and can easily find a support network to help with all phases of the transition. That might sound like just the kind of place you're hoping to find for your overseas retirement reinvention or a place filled with other foreigners that you'd rather avoid. [See: 10 Retirement Hot Spots in the U.S.] Santa Fe. Santa Fe is a lovely mountain village with a small local population and limited infrastructure and services. It is a beautiful, tranquil, picture-postcard highlands escape. As in Boquete, the climate is more comfortable than down at sea level. Life in Santa Fe could be simple, safe and affordable. This is a place where you could live on as little as $1,000 per month if you're up for going very local. Kathleen Peddicord is the founder of the Live and Invest Overseas publishing group. With just hours to go until the polls close on Election Day, pollsters and predictors have released their final maps of the 2016 electionand most agree that Hillary Clinton will win, but no one agrees by how much. If the projections of economic and political analysts prove true, the Democratic presidential nominee will be named the victor once ballots are tallied on Tuesday night. Though each map shows Clinton inching toward victory, even without clinching votes in Ohio and North Carolina, each provides a different path to victory. Some predict Clinton will ride into the White House with more than 300 Electoral College votes. Others provide a narrower path, with Clinton receiving a little over 290 votes on her projected path to victory. Here are seven maps, from seven different sources, that show analysts forecasts for Tuesday night. Associated Press The Associated Press projects that Clinton could pull off a win as long as there are no surprises in 17 solidly Democratic states including California, Maryland, and Illinois and maintains leads in six critical left-leaning statesthink Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada. The path to 270 is tougher for Trump, who is projected to be able to count on 144 Electoral College votes in 18 solidly Republican states and 46 in right-leaning states like Georgia, Alaska, and Arizona. Seventy-four Electoral College votes are up for grabs, according to AP predictions. Associated Press Prediction Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver successfully predicted every state that President Obama would win and lose during the 2012 election, so naturally folks are looking to him and his FiveThirtyEight blog for answers this election. The 2016 model projects Clinton has a 71.8% chance of winning on Tuesday, with 48.5% of the popular vote and 301 Electoral college votes. Trump, according to Silvers model, has a 28.2% change of winning on Tuesday with 45% of the popular vote and 235 Electoral College votes. Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight Prediction Princeton Election Consortium Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium wrote Monday that if Clinton does not win on Tuesday it will be a giant surprise given the current election models. In fact, the Election Consortium has Clintons win probability range in the 98-99% range. Their model projects Clinton will win if she clinches Electoral College votes in Florida, Nevada and splits Maines votes with Trump. Story continues Princeton Election Consortium Prediction Larry Sabato Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, who forecasted wins for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, called the election Clinton on Monday, projecting the former Secretary of State would clinch 322 Electoral College votes. Sabatos team projects the closest calls will come in both North Carolina and Ohio, though they suspect Ohio will go for Trump. Florida, which Trump has recently predicted he will win, goes to Clinton in the Sabato map. Sabato's Crystal Ball, Nov 8th, 2016 Rothenberg & Gonzales Political analysts Stu Rothenberg and Nathan Gonzales project Clinton could walk away with 323 Electoral College votes on Tuesday if she is able to win the 100 votes in states that lean-Democratic. Included in that count is Maine, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Trump can solidly rely on 132 votes, according to their projection and about 59 votes are likely. Twenty four votesjust Iowa and Ohioare up for grabs according to their projection. Rothenberg and Gonzales Prediction Moodys Analytics Moodys Analytics model, which has accurately called the outcome of the election since the 1980s, says Clinton will win with 332 Electoral College votes. The projection, which is based on political and economic trends, has Clinton taking Electoral College votes in all but three states along the Eastern seaboard. Despite the widespread support for Trump, Moodys says President Obamas approval ratings and low gas prices make for a friendly environment for Democrats. Moody's Analytics Los Angeles Times The Los Angeles Times map gives Clinton the most decisive victory, projecting the Democrat will win 352 Electoral College votes on Election Day and 186 for Trump. Frank Mouque returned to the French town of Armentieres, 72 years after he helped liberate it from the Nazis. And he did it without leaving the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the home for British army veterans where the 91-year-old lives, about 186 miles away. Read: 104-Year-Old WWII Veteran Becomes A College Freshman, Realizing His Lifelong Dream Mouque, wearing a virtual reality device, was serenaded by a group of local children, who sang him a nursery rhyme. Mayor Bernard Haesebroeck called the veteran a hero and awarded him a medal of honor. Mouque readily remembers the Normandy invasion. It was chaos. We were bombed, shelled, sniped, fired at, constantly, he says in a video by Mutiny Media. The project was orchestrated by Twine, an online freelance network. There were quite a lot of casualties. I lost a lot of my friends, one way or another, he said. He was a corporal in the 263 Field Company of the British Royal Engineer, tasked with laying and defusing mines and blowing up structures, including bridges. On D-Day, he helped clear a path through a beach thick with landmines in advance of his fellow invaders. His virtual reality experience felt so real, Mouque was momentarily overcome. Fantastic! he exclaimed, shaking his head. Im sorry. Im just lost for words. Read: Singers Surprise World War II Vet With Emotional Tune: 'He Had Tears in His Eyes He will treasure the medal, he said. Im honored, on behalf of all of us who were there. I mean, Im 91. "Theres still hundreds of us, but were a diminishing breed, arent we? On behalf of all the people who were with me, they would say thank you, too. Watch: 90-Year-Old Vet Gets Diploma After Leaving School to Fight World War II Related Articles: Alex James of Blur. (Photo by Christie Goodwin/Redferns via Getty Images) The debate surrounding how many times a week people should wash their hair has been ongoing for quite some time now. Some swear by a simple, once-a-week wash, while others are dedicated washers every single day. However, one man recently highlighted by the Daily Mail claims he hasnt washed his hair in over a decade, and his hair has never been better. Alex James, bassist for Blur and a cheese maker based in the U.K., said in an interview with Living Magazine that he never washes his hair at home and that the only thing to prompt a recent wash was when his daughters used a Halloween hairspray on his hair: Other than this week when both my daughters were keen to give me a Halloween makeover and emptied a whole can of grey-colored hairspray into it and it set solid, I havent washed it for 10 years. However, thats not all plenty of other people have come forward regarding their decision to stop shampooing and have had some pretty positive reviews about the experience. I started to see what my natural hair was like when I wasnt constantly doing stuff to manipulate it, one woman explained to Yahoo! Beauty. It was silky and wavier and totally frizz-free. But is the no poo movement (which plenty of celebrities, including Jessica Simpson, stand behind) actually good for your hair? While many say it will train your strands to be less greasy and return your hair to its natural state, not everyone agrees. The scalp beneath the hair needs to be regularly cleaned of oil, dried sweat, dirt, and dead skin cells, said Robert Dorin, a board-certified hair transplantation surgeon in New York City, in an interview with CBS News. People who dont use detergent shampoo to clean the scalp run the risk of developing fungal and bacterial infections. Alex James (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images) However, some scalps are more tolerant of a lack of washing, and plenty of hairstylists and dermatologists agree that you shouldnt use detergent shampoos along the length of the hair (where the strands are dry and brittle) and instead should stick to using it at the scalp. Story continues Knowing this, its important to realize that how often you wash your hair is entirely dependent upon your hair type and texture. Some people go longer without shampooing and end up with better results, while others need more frequent washes. The only way to know what works for you is to experiment with the time between shampoo sessions. However, theres no need to wait a full decade like Alex James in order to realize which length of time is best for your hair, starting with a simple three or four days should suffice. Read This Next: A 5-Step Routine to Wash Your Hair Less Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Dont we love seeing actresses who are fashion forward, giving us major style goals! Be it on the red carpet or at a party, some actresses love to take risks with their designer wear. Heres a look at some Bollywood actresses, who went bold with their red carpet outfits and rocked a thigh-high slit. Deepika Padukone: Deepika made her first international appearance at the MTV EMAs 2016 recently and chose a bold Monisha Jaising outfit for the event. With a shimmery black bralet teamed with an olive green skirt, Deepika showed off her sexy, long legs in a thigh-high slit. Priyanka Chopra: Priyanka has made many international red carpet appearances till now, but one of the most memorable one was at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards, where she wore an Atelier Versace backless blue dress. It wasnt just the cerulean halter dress that turned heads on the red carpet, Priyanka slayed with a thigh-high slit too. Katrina Kaif: At the Van Heusen + GQ Fashion Nights, Katrina turned up the hotness quotient in a cut-out Philipp Plein gown. Looking bold and beautiful in black with bold red lips, the peek-a-boo dress and thigh-high slit did wonders for Kat. Kareena Kapoor Khan: Only Kareena can rock a military-colored, free-flowing gown with a thigh-high slit at a family party. With a beautiful glow on her face and turning up the oomph quotient with the slit, it is safe to say that Kareena has nailed the pregnancy style. Jacqueline Fernandez: At the HT Most Stylish Awards, Sri Lankan beauty Jacky, who is known for her cute smile and sexy style, made heads turn in a blue Paolo Sebastian gown and totally rocked the thigh-high slit. Also read: These Bollywood beauties show you how to bare your shoulders! 5 actresses who set temperatures soaring in a bikini on their vacation These 5 actresses will teach you how to suit up and look sexy [November 08, 2016] Verifone and ATIO Group Partner on Comprehensive Forecourt and mPOS Solution for Petroleum Retailers in Mexico Verifone (NYSE: PAY), a world leader in payment and commerce solutions, and ATIO Group, a leading provider of retail fuel technology in Mexico and other Latin American markets, have announced a partnership to provide integrated payments technology to Mexico's petroleum retailers. Mexico is the sixth largest consumer of motor gasoline and diesel with more than 11,000 filling stations across the country, and its energy market deregulation allows foreign companies to import, own assets, and sell other fuel brands. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005270/en/ The agreement combines ATIO Control Gas POS and Verifone Commander Site Controller to provide a certified solution for at-the-pump and in-store payment acceptance, fueling operations, and back office control. Using the powerful capabilities of the Verifone e355, a flexible mobile payment device that is agnostic to smartphone and tablet form factors and supports all major OS options including Android (News - Alert), iOS and Windows, merchants can accept payment from anywhere in their gas station and store. Consumers will experience the convenience of paying for fuel and merchandise with debit or credit cards, as well as barcodes on cards and coupons. "Deregulation of the Mexican energy market presents a unique opportunity for retailers to provide new payment and commerce-enabling options to their customers," said Pablo Gualdi, CEO, ATIO Group. "With Verifone solutions, our clients can accept virtually all payment options plus deliver fast, convenient transactions and better customer service. Our local knowledge and leadership combined with Verifone's 25-year experience in petro payment solutions, offers a smart way for retailers to benefit from the changing local marketplace." "Verifone's Commander platform helps gas stations and convenience stores in Mexico leverage our industry-leading payment, loyalty and forecourt solutions, and enhance their business in the same way they do in the U.S.," said Dan Yienger, SVP and General Manager of Petroleum for Verifone. "With our handheld, long-lasting mPOS device, we are offering access to an advanced technology solution that will drive remote payment acceptance of all forms in a transforming environment. Our partnership with ATIO Group sets a new standard for the advanced and innovative solutions that are possible for local retailers." The Commander Site Controller is Verifone's single site management software platform that supports all petroleum and card brands with payment technology. It incorporates the latest Conexxus Mobile standard-based API to streamline fuels and convenience store retailers' ability to support mobile payment apps, while offering loyalty schemes, improving business processes, reducing costs, and increasing productivity. Commander serves as a local gateway that interfaces with full-service attendant sites, and a combination of full- and self-service sites. Verifone and ATIO Group expect to begin deployment of the combined solution in early 2017. Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 for VeriFone Systems, Inc. This press release includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs and on currently available competitive, financial and economic data and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements herein due to changes in economic, business, competitive, technological and/or regulatory factors, and other risks and uncertainties affecting the operation of the business of VeriFone Systems, Inc., including many factors beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those associated with: successful rollout of our petro payment solutions in Mexico, execution of our strategic plan and business initiatives and whether the expected benefits of our plan and initiatives are achieved, short product cycles and rapidly changing technologies, our ability to maintain competitive leadership position with respect to our payment solution offerings, our assumptions, judgments and estimates regarding the impact on our business of the continued uncertainty in the global economic environment and financial markets, our ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses into our business and operations, our ability to protect against fraud, the status of our relationship with and condition of third parties such as our contract manufacturers, distributors and key suppliers upon whom we rely in the conduct of our business, our dependence on a limited number of customers, the conduct of our business and operations internationally, our ability to effectively hedge our exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, and our dependence on a limited number of key employees. For a further list and description of the risks and uncertainties affecting the operations of our business, see our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date such statements are made. Verifone is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise. About Verifone Verifone is transforming everyday transactions into opportunities for connected commerce. We're connecting payment devices to the cloud-merging the online and instore shopping experience and creating the next generation of digital engagement between merchants and consumers. We are built on a 30 year history of uncompromised security with approximately 29 million devices and terminals deployed worldwide. Our people are known as trusted experts that work with our clients and partners, helping to solve their most complex payments challenges. We have clients and partners in more than 150 countries, including the world's best known retail brands, financial institutions and payment providers. Verifone.com | @verifone About ATIO Group ATIO Group is a set of companies dedicated to supply technology products and services for fuel management and distribution. With 22 years in the Mexican market, is the absolute leader with +3300 gas stations automated with ControlGAS, and the 61 Mexican airports with FuelGATE, software for into-plane aviation fueling operations. ATIO offers service coverage for Latin America with its corporate headquarters in Mexico City, as well as its regional offices in Miami and Buenos Aires, and a network of 20 authorized distributors throughout the region. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005270/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Launched just under two years ago by Gary Farkas, Clement Lepoutre and Olivier Muller, the Paris-based production company Vixens is building a stylish slate of director-driven, genre-bending projects, including Turkish helmer Can Evrenols Housewife, Swedish-Iranian director Milad Alamis The Charmer and French director Christophe Deroos Beyond The Wall of Sleep. Housewife marks the English-language debut of Evrenol, an up-and-coming Turkish helmer who made his debut with Baskin. A surreal horror pic, Baskin played at TIFFs Midnight Madness section and earned Evrenol a best director nod at Fantastic Fest. Baskin was released in the U.S. by IFC. Described by Vixens as being in the vein of Rosemarys Baby and Dario Argentos films, the film was written by Evrenol with his co-scribe on Baskin, Cem Ozuduru. Turkish outfit Mo Film is co-producing. Vixens is currently negotiating with several partners on Housewife, including Lene Borglum at Space Rocket Nation, the Danish production outfit behind Nicolas Winding Refns films, Manuel Chiches French company The Jokers and XYZ in the U.S. Shooting will take place in January in Istanbul. Beyond the Wall of Sleep, meanwhile, will be the sophomore outing of Christophe Deroo, whose debut Sam Was Here played at Sitges, Etrange Festival in Paris and Gerardmer, among other festivals. An adaptation of a novel by Howard Phillips Lovecraft by the same name, the Gothic supernatural film will be shot in two parts against a backdrop reminiscent of The Revenant. Shooting will kick off during the last quarter of 2017. The Charmer, meanwhile, marks the first feature film of Alami, a promising emerging filmmaker whose shorts Mini,Void and Mommy have played at festivals including Karlovy Vary, Goteborg and Cannes Directors Fortnight. The Charmer, a psychological drama with some thriller elements, turns on a Danish-Iranian under-achiever who lives under a fake identity and is forced to reconsider his life after falling in love with a woman. The Charmer will have an disturbing, surreal atmosphere, said Farkas, who previously worked at Wild Bunch. Denmarks Good Company Films is lead-producing the project. Story continues Also on Vixens roster is David Raboys The Giant, English-speaking horror film in the vein of It Follows. Sold by Insiders MadRiver, The Giant will be shooting in the summer. The outfits first and only French-language project is Martin Scalis directorial debut Un Prince, which is a crime drama set to start shooting next year in France. As its now basting a large slate of projects, Vixens has just welcomed two new partners: Julie Mathieu, who previously worked at Iconoclast, and Arie Chamouni, who worked at Pierre-Ange Le Pogams Stone Angels. Aside from its film biz, Farkas, Lepoutre and Muller also run Phantasm, an outfit handling commercials and musicvids with a prestigious client list including Kanye West, Travis Scott and Foals, as well as Yves Saint Laurent, Apple Music and Warner Music U.K. Related stories Wild Bunch Tries to Regain Its Standing Amid Big Flops and Debt World Premiere of Wild Bunch-Sold 'The Odyssey' Closes San Sebastian Wild Bunch to Sell Part of Its Library to Orange Studio (EXCLUSIVE) Marrakesh (Morocco) (AFP) - Four of the 10 countries hammered hardest in 2015 by climate-boosted extreme weather are in Africa, according to a report released Tuesday at UN climate talks in Marrakesh. "Africa is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change," said Sonke Kreft, lead author of the Global Climate Risk Index 2017 report, issued annually by risk analysts Germanwatch. Poor countries in general are more exposed to the ravages of superstorms, drought, heatwaves and flooding, all of which have become more intense and frequent due to human-induced global warming. "The distribution of climatic events is not fair," Kreft said, noting that the world's least developed countries have emitted only a small fraction of the greenhouse gases heating up the planet. Mozambique tops the list of nations most affected on the 2015 climate risk index, followed by Dominica, Malawi and India. Myanmar, Ghana and Madagascar are also among the top 10. The index measures level of exposure and vulnerability to extreme events. Climate models predicting that global warming enhances both the intensity and frequence of such events have been borne out by a crescendo of deadly weather, especially over the last decade. More than half-a-million people worldwide died as a direct result of almost 11,000 extreme weather events from 1996 to 2015, according to the report, which has been tracking risk, country-by-country, for more than a decade. Storms, heatwaves, floods and other climate-related natural disasters caused upwards of three trillion dollars (2.7 trillion euros) damage over the same period. During those two decades, the countries worst hit were Honduras, Myanmar and Haiti. The Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand were also among the worst affected, taking into account both lives lost and the cost of damage. The report does not factor out what percentage of the damage done can be attributed directly to global warming. The UN talks, tasked with implementing the landmark Paris Agreement inked last December, run through November 18. BEIRUT (Reuters) - Air strikes and government artillery killed at least 20 people, including 10 children, in the largely rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said Russian or Syrian government warplanes pounded the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing seven children and two pregnant women. Warplanes and government artillery also killed 11 people in the village of Baarbo in the southwest of the province, the monitor reported. The Russian Defence Ministry has denied information reported in multiple foreign media outlets about alleged strikes by the Russian Air Force in the region of Khan Sheikhoun near the city of Idlib," Russia's TASS news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday. "Russian jets did not fly in the area on Nov. 8 and no missile strikes were carried out. Syria's war pits President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, against an array of mostly Sunni rebel groups, including some backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States. Idlib contains the largest populated area of Syria controlled by rebels - including nationalist groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and Islamist fighters including the former al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. (Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; editing by Andrew Roche) (Reuters) - British lender Aldermore Group Plc (ALD.L) said its non-executive chairman, Glyn Jones, had decided to step down to focus on chairing Old Mutual's (OML.L) wealth arm as its Anglo-South African financial services parent gears up to spin off the unit. * Aldermore, which lends to small and medium-sizedbusinesses (SMEs), homeowners and landlords, said Jones haddecided to step down following a review of his time commitmentsand that it had commenced the process of finding a new chairman. * However, if a replacement was not found by Jones'departure date of Feb. 6, Senior Independent Director DanutaGray would take up the role on an interim basis, the bank said. * Aldermore was one of the banks to list in London with theaim of challenging Britain's "Big 5" lenders. Jones, who joinedAldermore in March 2014 has led the company through its listingon the London market in March 2015. * Old Mutual, which is planning to break itself up into itsfour main businesses by end-2018, is considering listing UKasset management unit, Old Mutual Wealth, but is also open toselling the business. * Old Mutual Wealth posted a sharp drop in third-quarterclient inflows October and said markets would remain difficultfollowing Britain's vote to leave the European Union. (Reporting by Esha Vaish and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri) Alibaba Pictures has unveiled a pact with the Shanghai Theater Academy and Studio 8 backer Fosun Group to develop talent for the film and TV industries. The three plan profound innovations in the school model as they integrate the STAs resources with others around the world. The move comes at a time when Hollywood has been accused of whitewashing and under-representing Asian roles in their studio films. And also at a time when the lack of Chinese stars of international repute, means that Chinese-made films struggle to find global audiences. The cooperation with STA will help deepen and broaden the implementation of Alibaba Pictures strategy for the young, and to foster talent that will facilitate the Companys development and business, said Alibaba Pictures chairman Zhang Qiang in a statement. Related stories China Approves New Cybersecurity Law Japanese Hit 'Your Name' Wins China Release 'Doctor Strange' Enjoys $44 Million Opening in China The Fundraiser, which will be on Saturday, December 10, 2016, was Originally Inspired by a Teenage Girl who was Battling Cancer LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 8, 2016 / The founders of Alpha Connect, a business services company based in Phoenix, Arizona, are pleased to announce that they are sponsoring the 5th Annual Ignite Hope event with Phoenix Children's Hospital. To learn more about this amazing and inspirational fundraiser, which will take place on Saturday, December 10, 2016, please visit http://phoenixchildrensfoundation.org/event/signature/ignite-hope-2/. As a spokesperson for Alpha Connect noted, the Ignite Hope candlelight walk was initially inspired by a brave 15-year-old girl who was battling cancer. After being touched that her friends held a candlelight vigil outside of her window, the teen wanted others to be reminded that they are not fighting their health battles alone. The fundraiser will begin with a family-friendly event at North High School, including a visit from the Jolly Old Elf from the North Pole. Superheroes will be on hand to greet adults and kids alike, and there will be music and refreshments. The 1.1 mile walk to Phoenix Children's Hospital will be led by the Phoenix Fire Department and the top-fundraising team. Walkers, who will carry battery-operated candles, will enjoy holiday songs from carolers stationed along the route, and once they reach the hospital, they will be greeted by patients waving candles from their windows. The fact that Alpha Connect would take the time and money to help sponsor such a meaningful holiday event will not surprise the many clients who have worked with them over the years. The company has been increasingly focused on giving back and helping the local community. "We are always looking for additional ways to help our community. We are proud to give back to charities and causes that make a positive impact on the communities and the people within them," noted the company spokesperson, adding that they are looking forward to being part of such an important fundraiser. Story continues "Giving back is an essential part of our company culture. Alpha Connect is committed to building strong relationships together with our community partners." About Alpha Connect: Alpha Connect specializes in providing world class domestic customer support and business services for a variety of specialty businesses. For more information, please check out Alpha Connect company website here: : http://alphaconnect.com/. Contact: Kim Baker admin@rocketfactor.com (949) 555-2861 SOURCE: Alpha Connect Thank you to James Fallows for his Trump Time Capsule on the destruction of norms. Through his knowledge of aviation issues he may have heard of the term the normalization of deviance. It is a term used in the analysis of safety issues, both in aviation and in the large field of safety (including trying to apply it to medicine). The concept is that people work under rules that have been established for proper practice, and that over time people start ignoring those rules out of short-term expediency. The problem then is that to the psychology of the people doing it, those deviations from the rules become the new normal. There is then a mental incapacity to see deviations as deviations, and a mental inertial against doing the extra work required to follow the proper rules. Once everybody knows that the speed limit sign on a certain street can be ignored, then it doesnt seem right or natural to follow it. The point in the safety community in coining the phrase is to start the conversation about how it can be corrected. When the powers on top believe in following the rules, and the deviations are only being done by those on the bottom, then arguably you can just come down like a ton of bricks on those not following the rules. The real problem, however, is when the deviations are inherent in the power structure itself. I hate to always be harping on it, but it is documented by those studying it that preventable medical mistakes kill over 400,000 Americans each year, at an estimated cost of at least one trillion dollars a year. The root cause of the problem is that the hospitals and the doctors dont want to measure the mistakes, because all they want to measure are the benefits of the current state of affairs. By not measuring the deviation, the deviation doesnt exist, so no one sees a problem. The aviation industry, on the other hand, is famously safety conscious and has an amazing safety record. A customers enters the Sears store in North Vancouver, British Columbia February 23, 2011. REUTERS/Andy Clark Starting Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day might not actually make much financial sense, but a handful of retailers are still clinging on to hope that they can transform the holiday into a national shopping bonanza. Sears announced Tuesday that it would be starting its Black Friday sales at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, CNBC's Krystina Gustafson first reported. Macy's and Toys R Us will open at 5 p.m. and Kohl's will open at 6 p.m. on the holiday. In a statement, a spokesperson for Sears said that the store has opened on Thanksgiving the past four years. "We've closely monitored member response from prior years, considered shifts in member shopping behavior, the competitive landscape, and came up with the best plan to serve them and address the needs of the business," the statement said. In recent years, retailers have begun kicking off Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving in an effort to get as much money out of shoppers as possible during the holiday shopping season. But the movement has largely backfired. Opening on Thanksgiving has diminished the allure of shopping on Black Friday, which has long been considered the biggest shopping day of the year in the US. RetailNext, a firm that tracks retail shopper traffic, expects that Black Friday will lose that distinction this year. The firm predicts that the biggest shopping day of the year will be Friday, December 23. "Black Friday historically has been such a great shopping day," Stephen Lebovitz, CEO of the mall operator CBL, told CNBC. "It's lost its luster because we've diluted it." CBL, which operates 89 regional malls and shopping centers, is closing 73 of its locations on Thanksgiving and not opening until 6 a.m. on Black Friday. There's also mounting pressure on retailers to let employees spend the holiday at home with their families. The Mall of America will be closed on Thanksgiving this year for the first time in five years. "We think Thanksgiving is a day for families and for people we care about," Jill Renslow, the mall's senior vice president of marketing, told The Associated Press. "We want to give this day back." Story continues A number of other retailers, including Costco, REI, IKEA, and Nordstrom will stay closed on Thanksgiving Day this year. According to Moody's analyst Charles O'Shea, opening on Thanksgiving doesn't always make financial sense. "We doubt that the majority of specialty retailers benefit from involvement in this annual Thanksgiving opening arms race," O'Shea wrote in a research note in October. Sears has been in trouble for some time as sales continue to fall. In September, Moody's analysts downgraded Sears' liquidity rating, saying the company was bleeding cash. Hayley Peterson and Kate Taylor contributed reporting NOW WATCH: We put the most popular frozen pizzas to the test the winner was clear More From Business Insider Demonstrators protested on the steps of the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro on November 8, to demonstrate against Jorge Piccianni, president of the assembly, who declared support for a government austerity package. A group of demonstrators broke into the palace and invaded the assembly rooms, causing damage. The ALERJ published an official statement, calling the protest a crime and an affront to the democratic state. Credit: Facebook/PSTU Nacional via Storyful [November 08, 2016] Stokes Inc. Chooses Jesta I.S as Their Technology Partner to Fuel New Channels and Drive Growth Jesta I.S. Inc., a global leader in ERP software for apparel, footwear and hard goods enterprises, announced today that Stokes Inc., the top Canadian tableware, kitchenware and giftware retailer, has chosen Jesta's integrated solution to manage all operations, including sourcing and demand, merchandising, distributed order management, point of sale (including mobile), financials and business intelligence. Since being founded in 1935, Stokes Inc. has expanded to include over 150 stores in all ten Canadian provinces, one U.S. location and several international locations under their two brands Stokes and Think Kitchen. The Montreal-based specialty retailer is renowned for providing a wide array of fashionable and quality products as well as exceptional customer service. Stokes Inc. will leverage Jesta's industry-leading wholesale and retail platform to support day to day operations, and manage core enterprise data to optimize all business processes. The organization will take advantage of business intelligence and mobility tools at all levels of the organization to support decisions and identify opportunities for growth. By adopting an omnichannel retail solution, Stokes Inc. expects to create a seamless and connected shopping experience for their customers across all channels - including online and in-store. Morris Shiveck, CEO of Stokes Inc., says: "As an organization, we weren't simply looking for a vendor, but a technology partner that shares our passion for retail and for providing an inspiring experience for customers. We're confident that we've found that in Jesta and that the deployment of their integrated platform will help us expand into new channels and promote organizational growth." "We're thrilled to be partnering with an exemplary organization like Stokes Inc. as they are industry leaders in terms of the outstanding products and services they offer their shoppers," remarks Moris Chemtov, President of Jesta I.S. The comprehensive capabilities of Vision Suite will provide a unified view of their entirebusiness to enhance decision-making and infuse efficiency at every touchpoint. As with all of our valued clients, we are committed to helping Stokes continue to achieve at the highest level." Alexander Popov, VP of Information Technology at Stokes Inc. states: "As we have multiple channels from store to web to franchisees and marketplaces, our priority was to find ERP software that would provide us with robust functionality and an easy and intuitive user interface that can support all our processes on a single platform for increased productivity and efficiency across our entire supply chain. We found Jesta's Vision Suite to be the ideal solution for our needs. Jesta I.S. fits our vision of an end-to-end service partner that is committed to their clients' success, so we are looking forward to a smooth transformation." "Stokes is a great Canadian kitchenware story, and has been offering an incredible assortment of products to its customers nationwide for over 80 years. We are proud to be a partner in their future Canadian growth and expansion in the U.S. and we look forward to enhancing the associate and customer experience by leveraging the industry best practices within Vision suite during this next phase of business growth and omni-journey," added Arvind Gupta, COO Jesta I.S. To discuss your technology needs and get a personalized demo of the Vision Suite solution, visit http://go.jestais.com/integratedERP About Stokes Inc. Founded in 1935 and based in Montreal, Canada, Stokes Inc. operates a chain of kitchenware, tableware, and giftware stores in Canada. For over 80 years, they have been offering customers the best in home products including dinnerware, stemware, specialty food preparation tools and home decoration accessories. The company currently operates over 150 stores in all ten Canadian provinces as well as several international locations under their two banners Stokes and Think Kitchen. For more information, please visit https://www.stokesstores.com/ About Jesta I.S. Jesta I.S. is an international supplier of integrated software solutions for brand manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers specializing in apparel, footwear, and hard-goods verticals. Jesta's Vision Suite is a modular platform that eliminates the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of disjointed applications. It builds scalable business operations, helps increase market share and improves margins across the entire supply chain - from product design to omnichannel retail. Clients include Harry Rosen, Perry Ellis International, Puma, Genesco, J.McLaughlin, Town Shoes, The Marine Corps Exchange, Cole Haan, Corporativo Ferrioni, DSW and Carter's, among others. For more information, visit http://go.jestais.com/integratedERP View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005225/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] BRUSSELS, Nov 8 (Reuters) - ArcelorMittal, the world's largest producer of steel on Tuesday posted third-quarter core profit below expectations, and added that its final quarter would be weaker than the third. The group said its final quarter would be hit by lower steel prices in the United States and the impact on margins of higher coal prices elsewhere. Core profit rose 40 percent year-on-year in the third quarter to $1.897 million, but was below the $1.966 billion expected in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. The group, which had guided for core profit (EBITDA) to be above $4.5 billion in 2016, compared with $5.2 billion in 2015, already crossed the guidance threshold at the end of the first nine months. (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; editing by Philip Blenkinsop) Ashlee Simpson is giving us major Olsen twins fashion vibes right now When it comes to that bewitching, bohemian look that captures the hearts and closets of the fashionable set every few seasons, few do it better than Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. For the uninitiated, that means: lots of black, billowing silhouettes that almost completely cloak your figure, midi to floor-grazing lengths, silky fabrics, and an all-around Stevie Nicks-esque vibe. They execute it flawlessly at high-fashion events again and again, but it looks like an unexpected style star is giving them a run for their billions none other than former pop princess Ashlee Simpson. At the God vs. Trump Los Angeles Premiere, the blonde beauty was arm-in-arm with husband Evan Ross in an ensemble that she clearly pulled from the closets of our our favorite fashionable twosome. A fluid, black sheer dress was on the agenda for Simpson accented with a maxi length and low-cut neckline. She accessorized her vintage-inspired ensemble with black cutout sandals and a floral embroidered bag. Her long blonde waves, barely-there makeup, and strong brows made us do a double-take for the Olsen duo too. Just take a look at the sisters at the CFDA Fashion Awards last year: marykateolsen2015cfdafashionawardswinners And heres a couple of side-by-sides if you need more proof! Were all for Simpsons style proclivities if theres more where this came from. The post Ashlee Simpson is giving us major Olsen twins fashion vibes right now appeared first on HelloGiggles. By Michelle Price HONG KONG (Reuters) - The chief of one of Asia's most prominent financial trade bodies on Tuesday said new cyber security rules in China could make it harder for foreign companies operating in the country to manage risk as cyber threats become increasingly cross-border. Speaking at the Thomson Reuters Pan-Asian Regulatory Summit in Hong Kong, Mark Austen, chief executive of the Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA), said the rules marked a "worrying" development because regulators globally have to work together to address cyber risks rather than attempt to isolate their jurisdictions. China adopted a cyber security law on Monday to counter what the government said were growing threats such as hacking and terrorism. Foreign business and rights groups expressed concern that the law could, for instance, bar foreign companies from certain sectors. The legislation, set to take effect in June 2017, includes requirements for security reviews and for data to be stored on servers in China. "No matter how well you cut yourself off from the rest of the world, we're all interconnected. Favoring the development of domestic IT and forcing firms to use domestic software and not allowing firms to offshore [means] you can't manage risk on a global basis," said Austen. "The threat is global. This is why we find these Chinese laws so worrying on the face of it," he said. However the rules may become more flexible by the time they are implemented next year, he said. Cyber security was propelled to the top of the financial services agenda in February when it emerged hackers stole $81 million from the Central Bank of Bangladesh [BDCB.UL] via SWIFT, the global financial messaging system. The funds were transferred to accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Speaking at the same event in Hong Kong, Catherine Simmons, managing director and head of Asia Pacific Government Affairs at Citi, said regulators globally would have to work more closely together to address emerging cyber threats. "The very nature of technology and cyber threats emerging and cyber security risks, it's cross border. Regulators are not going to just focus on their domestic markets ... they are going to have to talk to other countries about what to do. We are just seeing that discussion emerge." (Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Christopher Cushing) By Linda Sieg and Gayatri Suroyo TOKYO/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Win or lose, Donald Trump's campaign has changed the way countries in Asia view their relationships with Washington. Final polling suggests the most likely outcome is a victory for Hillary Clinton. But even Clinton, an architect of the U.S. strategic pivot to Asia, has some work ahead of her in rebuilding trust, analysts and former officials in Asia said. "With or without Trump, this marks the end of U.S. leadership, in particular, moral leadership," said a former Japanese diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic. "I don't think it's a question of Trump as an individual, but a question of the U.S. society that produced this man as the Republican candidate." Trump upended U.S. democratic traditions during his White House campaign, drawing enthusiastic crowds where people cheered his often provocative and outrageous remarks. Critics labelled him ignorant, uncouth, a racist, hypocrite, demagogue and a sexual predator, all accusations he denied. He described a dark America, knocked to its knees by China, Mexico and the Islamic state. Trump's harnessing of a populist backlash against immigration and global trade has challenged the ideal of benevolent American power that helped shape the global economy - and the forces of globalisation - since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Now the United States faces a rising China, long an economic force and now becoming more assertive in geopolitics - building its military capability and ignoring an international tribunal's ruling against its claims to most of the South China Sea. TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP Asia is most worried about trade protectionism - exports make up a quarter of Asia's GDP and a fifth of them go to the United States. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, championed by Barack Obama in part to increase U.S. influence in Asia, was to be an essential feature of Washington's strategic pivot to Asia - an "economic NATO". It now looks dead in the water. Both Clinton and Trump oppose the deal, which would set up a free trade zone among 12 countries that excludes China. Former Indonesian finance minister Chatib Basri told Reuters the TPP "is an important instrument for the U.S. pivot to Asia". "There is some kind of a rivalry between America and China, and the way America can get into Asia is with TPP," said Basri, now a visiting professor at Australian National University. With U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore among the biggest winners of an open trade regime, a more isolationist and protectionist stance will cost Washington influence in Asia. Ironically, it would be China, the subject of many of Trump's tirades, that could emerge the big winner as uncertainty over Washington's future commitment to Asia pushes countries into dealing more closely with Beijing. "If the U.S. pulls out of TPP, that will certainly increase China's influence in Asia," said Kanti Bajpai, Professor of Asian Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. "Already, U.S. criticism of domestic issues in Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia has alienated those countries and caused them to lean towards Beijing. Pulling out of the TPP will help China geopolitically." Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been particularly hostile towards Washington over its criticism of his lethal anti-drugs campaign, announcing a "separation" from the United States during last month's visit to China. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak came back from a visit to China last week with $34 billion worth of deals and an agreement to buy four Chinese naval vessels. SECURITY WORRIES China has long been in Trump's sights, with promises to declare it a currency manipulator and impose punitive tariffs on imports. But any such moves could also hurt Asian exporters who ship components there for assembly and export to the United States, at a time when global trade is already weakening. Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist at Capital Economics, said the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea were the emerging Asia economies most vulnerable to a Trump presidency. "Perhaps the biggest risk to the region's economies, however, stems not from Trump's trade policies, but from his foreign policy," Leather said. Trump has created doubts over his commitment to security alliances, suggesting Japan and South Korea need to pay more for a U.S. military presence and that they should even develop their own nuclear capability to counter China and North Korea. Clinton, who was secretary of state when the Obama administration launched its Asia pivot, is expected to maintain Obama's foreign policy, with some seeing her as being more hawkish. The divisive U.S. presidential campaign has already done a lot of damage to the reputation of the United States in Asia, regardless of the election outcome, according to some analysts. "The broader question is whether the United States can assert global leadership," said Jesper Koll, CEO at fund manager WisdomTree Japan. "All my Chinese friends say, 'We thought we would run the world in 20 years. Now it's going to be in January'. This is not a joke. It's the natural state of development," Koll said (Additional reporting: Nicole Nee in Singapore. Writing by John Mair. Editing by Bill Tarrant.) By Linda Sieg and Gayatri Suroyo TOKYO/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Win or lose, Donald Trump's campaign has changed the way countries in Asia view their relationships with Washington. Final polling suggests the most likely outcome is a victory for Hillary Clinton. But even Clinton, an architect of the U.S. strategic pivot to Asia, has some work ahead of her in rebuilding trust, analysts and former officials in Asia said. "With or without Trump, this marks the end of U.S. leadership, in particular, moral leadership," said a former Japanese diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic. "I don't think it's a question of Trump as an individual, but a question of the U.S. society that produced this man as the Republican candidate." Trump upended U.S. democratic traditions during his White House campaign, drawing enthusiastic crowds where people cheered his often provocative and outrageous remarks. Critics labeled him ignorant, uncouth, a racist, hypocrite, demagogue and a sexual predator, all accusations he denied. He described a dark America, knocked to its knees by China, Mexico and the Islamic state. Trump's harnessing of a populist backlash against immigration and global trade has challenged the ideal of benevolent American power that helped shape the global economy - and the forces of globalization - since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Now the United States faces a rising China, long an economic force and now becoming more assertive in geopolitics - building its military capability and ignoring an international tribunal's ruling against its claims to most of the South China Sea. TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP Asia is most worried about trade protectionism - exports make up a quarter of Asia's GDP and a fifth of them go to the United States. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, championed by Barack Obama in part to increase U.S. influence in Asia, was to be an essential feature of Washington's strategic pivot to Asia - an "economic NATO". It now looks dead in the water. Both Clinton and Trump oppose the deal, which would set up a free trade zone among 12 countries that excludes China. Former Indonesian finance minister Chatib Basri told Reuters the TPP "is an important instrument for the U.S. pivot to Asia". "There is some kind of a rivalry between America and China, and the way America can get into Asia is with TPP," said Basri, now a visiting professor at Australian National University. With U.S. allies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore among the biggest winners of an open trade regime, a more isolationist and protectionist stance will cost Washington influence in Asia. Ironically, it would be China, the subject of many of Trump's tirades, that could emerge the big winner as uncertainty over Washington's future commitment to Asia pushes countries into dealing more closely with Beijing. "If the U.S. pulls out of TPP, that will certainly increase China's influence in Asia," said Kanti Bajpai, Professor of Asian Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. "Already, U.S. criticism of domestic issues in Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia has alienated those countries and caused them to lean towards Beijing. Pulling out of the TPP will help China geopolitically." Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been particularly hostile towards Washington over its criticism of his lethal anti-drugs campaign, announcing a "separation" from the United States during last month's visit to China. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak came back from a visit to China last week with $34 billion worth of deals and an agreement to buy four Chinese naval vessels. SECURITY WORRIES China has long been in Trump's sights, with promises to declare it a currency manipulator and impose punitive tariffs on imports. But any such moves could also hurt Asian exporters who ship components there for assembly and export to the United States, at a time when global trade is already weakening. Gareth Leather, senior Asia economist at Capital Economics, said the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea were the emerging Asia economies most vulnerable to a Trump presidency. "Perhaps the biggest risk to the region's economies, however, stems not from Trump's trade policies, but from his foreign policy," Leather said. Trump has created doubts over his commitment to security alliances, suggesting Japan and South Korea need to pay more for a U.S. military presence and that they should even develop their own nuclear capability to counter China and North Korea. Clinton, who was secretary of state when the Obama administration launched its Asia pivot, is expected to maintain Obama's foreign policy, with some seeing her as being more hawkish. The divisive U.S. presidential campaign has already done a lot of damage to the reputation of the United States in Asia, regardless of the election outcome, according to some analysts. "The broader question is whether the United States can assert global leadership," said Jesper Koll, CEO at fund manager WisdomTree Japan. "All my Chinese friends say, 'We thought we would run the world in 20 years. Now it's going to be in January'. This is not a joke. It's the natural state of development," Koll said (Additional reporting: Nicole Nee in Singapore. Writing by John Mair. Editing by Bill Tarrant.) Two Atlanta brothers were sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday after attempting to kill their parents. Chrisopher and Cameron Ervin were also sentenced to 30 years probation in a Georgia court. The two brothers were arrested in early September of 2015 after allegedly beating their parents, Yvonne and Zachary Ervin, in their home. Christopher, 22, spoke first, apologizing to the court and everyone there. He blamed the incident on his addiction to drugs and alcohol, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Cameron, 17, expressed his regret and remorse, saying During my time that I have spent in the Gwinnett County Detention Center fighting this case, Ive spent two birthdays in here. Ive had at least one visit a week, which is at least 60 visits, with my parents, one on one. Thirty minutes a visit, he continued. Thats over just a day, two days spent talking to one another. And I realize how much I love them. And I realize how much I love them. And I realize how much they love me. The Ervins parents, who survived their sons attack, asked the judge to give them 10 years in prison, the lightest sentence legally possible. Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor sentenced them to 20 years in prison with 30 years of probation after that. In a frantic 911 call later released by Georgia police, Yvonne breathlessly spoke to the dispatcher, saying Please send someone to my house. My children are trying to kill me. Yvonne, 50, also told the operator that her sons had attacked her and her husband after drugging them with Xanax. I heard them saying that they put Xanax in our drink, she said. Thats why we were so sleepy; we didnt understand why we were so sleepy, but thats why. Theyre trying to strangle us and shoot us, she continued. They beat me up, they beat up. Theyre trying to kill us. Please hurry. Her husband distracted his sons long enough for his wife to call police. He stumbled to the garage and attempted to blow the car horn. Story continues When the dispatcher asked why their sons were attacking them, Yvonne didnt have an answer. I dont know why theyve done this, I really dont, she said. I guess they want the insurance money; Im not sure. When police arrived at the scene, Zachary was hospitalized in critical condition. Their sons were immediately arrested within the home and charged with two counts of felony aggravated assault and two felony counts of first-degree arson after police noticed that the homes gas line had been tampered with, according to WSB-TV at the time. Yvonne and Zachary both took the stand on their sons behalf, asking for leniency. These are not the sons we raised. My sons would not do something like this, she said. Her husband reiterated the message, adding That night, being in that room, being in that house that night, I saw Satan. And I knew shortly after that that what had happened to us wasnt my sons. And thats why Ive been able to stand with them to be advocates for them. Today in 5 Lines Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are making their closing arguments ahead of Election Day: The Democratic nominee is pitching an optimistic view of Americas future, while the Republican nominee is denouncing the political establishment. Janet Reno, the first female U.S. attorney general, died at age 78. President Obama warned Americans not to be bamboozled by Trump in a speech at the University of Michigan. The Justice Department said it would send more than 500 people to monitor polling locations across the country. Jury selection was postponed in the trial of Dylann Roof, the man accused of fatally shooting nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015. Today on The Atlantic The Clinton Disciples: A number of women gathered last week to encourage voter turnout for Hillary Clinton. Many of them see the candidate as more than the potential first female president; they also see someone who looks, thinks, lives, and talks kind of like them. (Nora Kelly) The Damage Is Done: Trumps campaign has trafficked in anti-Semitic rhetoric, symbols, and organizations unlike any other seen in recent years. In doing so, hes hurt the GOPs relationship with Jewish votersand the damage may last for years to come. (Julian E. Zelizer) Making Waves: Demographic and geographic factors will play a big role in the outcome of the 2016 election. Here are the four groups that will determine the results. (Ronald Brownstein) Follow stories throughout the day with our Politics & Policy portal. Recommended: Election Day 2016: Live Coverage Snapshot Tesla Zombek, 1, lies on the ground before Donald Trump holds a rally at Atlantic Aviation in Moon, Pennsylvania. What Were Reading They Always Wanted Trump: Hillary Clintons team couldnt believe their luck when Donald Trump emerged as the Republican front-runnerbut they found themselves woefully unprepared to campaign against him. (Gabriel Debenedetti, Politico) Story continues Recommended: The Four Groups That Will Decide the Presidential Race The Gaslighting of America: The Washington Posts Ben Terris recalls witnessing a Donald Trump staffer grab a female reporter last springan incident that would serve to highlight Trumps early campaign strategy of gaslighting his critics. Fight Over Finance: Financial experts have historically moved from Wall Street to leadership roles in Washington, D.C., but some liberals are pushing back against the trend, which they argue leads to government decision-making that favors corporations. (Alec MacGillis, The New Yorker) 650,000 Emails, Eight Days: On Sunday, the FBI announced it would not charge Hillary Clinton over newly discovered emails related to the former secretary of state. Trump has questioned the bureaus thoroughness in reviewing them all in eight days. But it turns out, vetting emails in that time is possible. (Andy Greenberg, Wired) Changing Times: The 2016 election may serve as a turning point for the United States, as demographics continue to shift and white voters make up less of the electorate. Success will come to whichever party can adapt more quickly. (Domenico Montanaro, NPR) Visualized Bueller? Bueller?: Working-class white Americans could be the key to a Trump win on Tuesdaybut will they show up? These graphs break down Americas voting-age population and the largest voter groups by county. (Ford Fessenden, The New York Times) Question of the Week This has been a highly unusual, contentious, and seemingly never-ending election year. But soon, itll all be over. If you had to give this election a movie title or TV series title, what would it be? Send your answers to hello@theatlantic.com, and our favorites will be featured in Fridays Politics & Policy Daily. -Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey) and Candice Norwood (@cjnorwoodwrites) Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. DailyFX.com - Talking points: Chinas exports plunged 7.3% in October This was better than Septembers 10% swoon, but still clearly weak AUD/USD was already pressured and duly slipped further The Australian Dollar edged down against its US cousin on Tuesday after another set of quite gloomy Chinese trade data. Exports fell 7.3% on-year on a USD-denominated basis in October. That was better than the 10% plunge seen in September, but clearly another weak month. Imports declined 1.4%, which was also better than the previous month when the fell 1.9%. Those data left China with a trade surplus of US$49.06 billion, above Septembers US$41.99 billion. The Australian Dollar often functions as the foreign exchange markets favourite China proxy. The currency can provide investors with a liquid bet on Chinas fortunes given Australias vast export ties to the worlds number-two economy. However, the Aussie was already on the backfoot on Monday, thanks to a generally stronger greenback and a weaker reading for Australian business confidence (according to a survey from NAB, a bank). The Chinese data appeared to do little to shake these themes. AUD/USD traded around 0.77 or so before before the numbers, and 0.76951 right afterward. Of course Austrralian markets are watching the US presidential vote as closely as all the others, which may account for the Aussie Dollars relative torpor in the wake of these numbers. The trade data will add to ongoing worries about Chinese industrial overcapacity, regional house prices and the expansion of credit. AUD/USD: Heading down anyway AUD/USD Remains Pressured After China Trade Data Chart created using TradingView original source DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets. Learn forex trading with a free practice account and trading charts from FXCM. Yahoo Celebrity With the final season of "Dead to Me" dropping on Netflix on Nov. 17, Applegate said, "This is the first time anyones going to see me the way I am. I put on 40 pounds; I cant walk without a cane. I want people to know that I am very aware of all of that." SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's plan to permanently ban asylum seekers who arrive by boat from ever entering the country was in jeopardy on Tuesday when the opposition Labor said it would not support the ban. Under the plan asylum seekers who are deemed genuine refugees and resettled in a third country would be permanently denied access to all Australian visas, including tourist and business. "The idea that a citizen of the United States or Canada or New Zealand faces a life-time ban preventing them from visiting Australia in 30 or 40 years time is simply unacceptable to me and my Labor colleagues," said Labor leader Bill Shorten. Conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull does not control the upper house Senate and without Labor support faces the complicated scenario of gaining the backing of eight of the 10 crossbenchers to legislate the ban. Turnbull, whose popularity has hit a 14-month low, is struggling to implement policies without control of the Senate. On Monday the Senate rejected a government plan to hold a national vote on whether to allow same-sex marriage, with opponents warning a public vote would be divisive, preferring a parliamentary vote to decide the issue. Same-sex marriage is supported by 61 percent of Australians, a Gallup poll in August found. Under Australia's tough border security laws, asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach the country by boat are sent for processing at detention camps on Papua New Guinea's Manus island and the tiny South Pacific island nation of Nauru. Some 1,200 people are currently held in the camps. The legality of forever barring people from entering Australia after they have been resettled in a third country, having been officially recognized as refugees, has been questioned by rights lawyers and refugee support groups. The United Nations has said the plan would probably breach the Refugee Convention. (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Michael Perry) Canadian author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell thinks that if Donald Trump is elected, he won't be in office very long. In an interview with The National, the Outliers author predicted that the GOP presidential candidate "will be in jail within a year" because of the various legal issues he faces. "He's got so many legal problems, I suspect he will spend the next few years huddled with his lawyers," Gladwell said, referencing the candidate's Trump University fraud case, "Russian ties" and questionable charity donations. Read more: Clinton Aims High, Trump Goes Hard in Closing Push When asked why voters are talking about Hillary Clinton's emails in the last days before the election instead of those legal problems, Gladwell explained: "Welcome to the great mystery of the American election 2016." On Clinton, Gladwell said that people are opposed to her as a candidate simply because she is a woman. "People had a preexisting mental notion of what a female candidate would look like, and she doesn't look like it." He added that it is "difficult for society to accept an openly ambitious woman," which worked against her during her campaign (and during her career at large). "To me, the most disturbing lesson about this election is that the United States is a good deal less open to women in positions of power than it would like to pretend that it is," he concluded. "One guy is the child of privilege who grew up in a multimillion-dollar household, and has every advantage handed to him on a silver platter. The other candidate is a woman who came from the most ordinary of circumstances," explained Gladwell. "Who is the elite in this battle?" If Clinton does win, Gladwell said, "the forecast for the next four years is just a stalemate," because he predicts Republicans will investigate her on day one and not give up until she leaves office. Read more: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton Make Final Pitch to Voters in 'USA Today' Watch the interview below. Avenged Sevenfold crowns Billboard's Top Rock Albums, Alternative Albums and Hard Rock Albums charts (dated Nov. 19), as new LP The Stage starts with 72,000 copies sold in the week ending Nov. 3, according to Nielsen Music. The set is the fourth No. 1 on each chart for the band, and the fourth that has led all three charts at the same time, making Avenged Sevenfold only the second act to earn the honor that many times. (Top Rock Albums began in 2006, while Alternative Albums and Hard Rock Albums followed in 2007). Nickelback first did so with four albums between 2006 and 2014. Avenged Sevenfold initially led all three tallies with its self-titled album in 2007 and followed with 2010's Nightmare and 2013's Hail to the King, before The Stage. On the all-genre, consumption-based Billboard 200, The Stage starts at No. 4 with 76,000 equivalent album units, becoming the band's fourth top 10, two of which (Nightmare and Hail) debuted at No. 1. Meanwhile, the new album's title-cut lead single jumps 12-10 on the Mainstream Rock Songs airplay chart in its fourth week (up 15 percent in plays), marking the band's 12th top 10, and zooms 20-13 on Hot Rock Songs. An additional song from the new record, "God Damn," debuts on Hot Rock Songs at No. 38. The Stage is the quintet's seventh studio album and first with new drummer Brooks Wackerman. It comes as somewhat of a surprise release; although fans were aware that the album was to be released soon, its Oct. 28 release date was not revealed until the album suddenly appeared for sale. THAT'S DOPE: Also on Top Rock Albums and Hard Rock Albums, Dope returns with Blood Money, Part 1, the Illinois metal act's first studio album in seven years (since No Regrets was released in March 2009). Blood Money debuts at No. 3 on both charts with 15,000 sold, easily the band's best sales week, topping the 9,000-copy start of 2005's American Apathy. It's the first time that Dope has appeared on Top Rock Albums, while the band earns its best position on Hard Rock Albums, besting the No. 11 peak of No Regrets. Its No. 27 arrival on the Billboard 200 is also Dope's best rank, topping No Regrets (No. 88). Blood Money marks the return to a classic lineup of sorts for Dope; the quartet, which formed in 1997, had not performed with the roster of Edsel Dope, Virus, Acey Slade and Sketchey since 2002. Frontman Dope has been the only constant member of the band since its inception. The group charted five tracks on Mainstream Rock Songs in the 2000s, beginning with its cover of Dead or Alive's new wave-dance favorite "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)"; the remake debuted and peaked at No. 37 in 2000. She was born to run. Hillary Clinton spent Election Day eve with music icons, the First Family and her own tribe, closing out her presidential campaign with a star-studded bang. With 33,000 people in attendance with several thousand additional people watching from outside the perimeter several high profile Democrats attended Clintons rally at Philadelphias Independence Hall on Monday night, including President Barack Obama who stumped for Clinton in three states earlier in the day First Lady Michelle Obama, daughter Chelsea Clinton and husband, former President Bill Clinton. Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi were also on hand to provide a soundtrack to the spirited evening. Bon Jovi played a full set, telling the crowd: Youve got a front row seat at history. He further urged the crowd at Independence Hall to vote for Clinton, whom he called his friend of more than 20 years. Remember tomorrow, the world is watching, he said. Before turning the stage over to Springsteen, Bon Jovi dedicated his last song to Mrs. C and sang Here Comes the Sun. Springsteen had a similar message for the audience, saying Lets get out there and vote tomorrow. Bill and Chelsea Clinton took the stage together, thanking people for their support. Chelsea mentioned her bias toward her mother and excitement, but admitted that my dad is probably even more excited. The former president spoke after his daughter, telling the crowd I have watched as our candidate lived the campaign as she has lived her life we can move forward together. Were stronger together. Bill Clinton introduced Mrs. Obama, who said she was feeling emotional because asking the Philadelphia crowd to vote for Clinton was the last and most important thing I can do for my country as First Lady. President Obama spoke after his wife, telling the Philadelphia crowd that they had someone extraordinary to vote for, despite Clinton having to face sexist rhetoric since the beginning of her campaign, which caused him to bite his tongue. Story continues She will work and she will deliver she wont just tweet, he said. Im betting that young people turn out to vote because your future is at stake. Im betting that America will reject a politics of resentment and a politics of blame, and choose a politics that says we are stronger together. Im betting that tomorrow youll reject fear and choose hope. That is a bet that I have never, ever lost. The president introduced the Democratic presidential nominee, who expressed her happiness about finishing the campaign with her husband and daughter by her side. Every issue you care about is at stake. And thats just the beginning because we have to bridge the divides in our country, Clinton said, adding I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became, to which someone in the crowd yelled, Not your fault! Clinton continued: I believe with all my heart that Americas best days are still ahead of us. We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America. I will be a president for all Americans, democrats, republicans, indepents, not just the people who support me in this election everyone. RELATED VIDEO: 16 People Who Influenced The Presidential Election Clinton didnt stop her final plea to voters there though the former first lady and her family hopped aboard a plane and jetted to North Carolina, where Lady Gaga performed for the gathered crowd at the Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh. D.J. Samantha Ronson was also on hand for the midnight Get Out the Vote rally, and Bon Jovi took the stage once again. Bon Jovi has performed for the former secretary of state before: Over the summer, he joined Paul McCartney for a Hamptons Clinton fundraiser. Bon Jovi sang Who Says You Cant Go Home and joined Jimmy Buffett for a rendition of Brown Eyed Girl and Buffetts hit song Margaritaville. Heading into Election Day, Clinton held a four point lead over opponent Donald Trump, nationally, according to a CBS News poll. An NBC News/Survey Monkey poll similarly gave Clinton a lead although larger, with the Democratic nominee polling at 47 percent to Trumps 41 percent. MUMBAI (Reuters) - Axis Bank Ltd, India's third-biggest private sector bank by assets, said on Tuesday none of its ATM machines had been compromised in a recent cyber attack. Axis said it had detected suspicious transactions on its credit cards on Sept. 1 and debit cards on Sept. 15 and 16. The bank said it had identified a third-party machine, likely from Hitachi, as a "suspected point of compromise." Hitachi was not reachable for a comment outside of regular business hours. A slew of banks in India are replacing or asking their customers to change security codes on as many as 3.25 million debit cards due to fears the card data may have been stolen. (Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in Mumbai; Editing by Mark Potter) Congratulations to AshLee Frazier! The former Bachelor contestant has found her happily ever after with longtime friend Aaron Williams, ET confirms. The Houston-based real estate developer popped the question during a trip to New York City on Saturday. EXCLUSIVE: Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell On Why They're Living Together Before Marriage The couple was walking along the Brooklyn Bridge when Williams stopped at the very top, got down on one knee and asked Frazier to marry him. The romantic moment was witnessed by a crowd of tourists who cheered for the newly engaged pair. Frazier tells ET that she was "in a fairy-tale daze until the entire bridge of people around us roared with cheers." "I was so surprised and trying to hug him all while he was still putting the ring on my shaky finger on the bridge over the water," she gushes. "Can you imagine how he must have felt?" "After a 10-year friendship and 11-month courtship, I am marrying my best friend," Frazier adds. "It was all very romantic." RELATED: 'Bachelorette' Alum Ashley Hebert and Husband J.P. Rosenbaum Welcome Baby Girl! Williams and Frazier later dined at New York City restaurant Scarpetta to celebrate the happy news. While the 36-year-old blogger -- who competed for Sean Lowe's heart on Season 16 of The Bachelor and later appeared on season one of Bachelor in Paradise -- has yet to post a photo of the ring, she did commemorate the special moment on Instagram. " Best walk. Best view. Forever in my heart!," she captioned a video of herself walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Best walk. Best view. Forever in my heart! A video posted by Lifestyle * Blogger (@ashleefrazier) on Nov 7, 2016 at 5:50am PST RELATED: 'Bachelorette' Alum Michael Stagliano Welcomes Baby Boy, Can't Stop Posting Adorable Pics While Frazier enjoys her recent engagement, other Bachelor alums are gearing up for their own wedding. Story continues ET recently caught up with former Bachelor Ben Higgins and his fiancee, Lauren Bushnell, who revealed that they'd love to have a televised wedding. "When it comes to the wedding, if that's an opportunity or possibility, it's a really great one for us," Higgins said. "It would almost be stupid not to. And you're going to have cameras at your wedding anyway. There's going to be people following you around no matter what, so why not add a whole production crew?" WATCH: 'The Bachelor' Gets a Premiere Date and It's Going to Be a Happy New Year for Nick Viall Additional reporting by Darla Murray. See more in the video below. Related Articles Stephen Fry has underlined his status as the Bob Hope of the BAFTAs, having been named as host for the next awards ceremony for a 12th time (although he's still a bit short of Hope's Oscar tally of 18 emcee stints). The British actor and TV personality is set to host the biggest film awards outside of the U.S. on Feb. 12, with organizers on Monday also revealing a new venue: London's Royal Albert Hall. Cirque de Soleil, which will be in residence at the iconic concert hall at the time, will perform at the ceremony. "Both BAFTA and the Royal Albert Hall enjoy a long history of showcasing world-class talent, making this iconic and treasured building the perfect fit for the film awards," BAFTA chief executive Amanda Berry said in a statement. "I am also thrilled we have the opportunity to work with Cirque du Soleil, during its season at the Royal Albert Hall, and have no doubt that next year's ceremony will be all the more magical for this creative collaboration." Daniel Lamarre, Cirque du Soleil's president and CEO, added: "To have the opportunity to be part of the BAFTA ceremony and join our longtime partner the Royal Albert Hall in a celebration of Britain's best film talents is both a great honor and a source of inspiration." The BAFTA film nominations will be announced on Jan. 10. Read more: BAFTA Awards: Complete Winners List * Many European banks scaling back shipping exposure * Global shipping debt estimated at $400 billion By Jonathan Saul LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Bank of Ireland said it is winding down its shipping business, joining other banks looking to cut non-core lending and exposure to an industry suffering its worst downturn. Many European banks are already bogged down by a sluggish economy and face tough capital demands from regulators which are eroding profitability, leaving many looking for ways to shore up their balance sheets. Parts of the shipping industry are suffering their deepest ever downturn as international trade slows. Around 90 percent of world trade is transported by sea. "As previously stated, Bank of Ireland no longer lends within the shipping finance sector and we have been winding down the portfolio," the bank, Ireland's largest by assets, told Reuters on Tuesday. According to data from industry publication Marine Money and shipping sources, Bank of Ireland's shipping finance portfolio reached close to $2 billion at its peak before 2009. The bank declined to comment on the size of the remaining portfolio but finance sources estimate it has less than $500 million left in shipping loans. Bank of Ireland led a return to profitability following years of losses after the country's 2008 banking crash. Ireland's two main lenders, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, were among European banks that fared worst in the last European stress test in July. INVESTEC DRAWS LINE Separately, South African bank and asset manager Investec , which is also listed in London, told Reuters it had decided not to take on any new shipping lending after conducting an assessment of the portfolio. "We are not taking any new loans in shipping at this time," she added, declining to provide details on how big the firm's existing portfolio was but confirming that Investec's head of shipping, Jeremy Dean, had left. Finance sources said at its peak Investec's shipping portfolio was estimated to be in the region of $1 billion. Story continues "What we are seeing is smaller banks are also cutting new lending to shipping. It means there are even less options around for shipping companies at such a tough time," one source said. In a further sign of the stress, German shipping group Marenave said this week two of its banks had rejected a restructuring plan aimed at repaying loans and the company was examining "whether the positive going concern forecast for Marenave can continue to be upheld". In September, Royal Bank of Scotland said it had begun winding down its shipping business after decades of being a top lender to the sector. Meanwhile German banks - behind up to a quarter of the world's $400 billion of outstanding shipping debt - are struggling to recoup their loans. Sources told Reuters last month that Deutsche Bank was among more than 20 bidders in talks to buy a 3.2 billion euro ($3.53 billion) loan portfolio, which included shipping debt, from state-owned rival HSH Nordbank. ($1 = 0.9072 euros) (Additional reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Editing by Alexander Smith) By Jonathan Saul LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of Ireland (BKIR.I) said it is winding down its shipping business, joining other banks looking to cut non-core lending and exposure to an industry suffering its worst downturn. Many European banks are already bogged down by a sluggish economy and face tough capital demands from regulators which are eroding profitability, leaving many looking for ways to shore up their balance sheets. Parts of the shipping industry are suffering their deepest ever downturn as international trade slows. Around 90 percent of world trade is transported by sea. "As previously stated, Bank of Ireland no longer lends within the shipping finance sector and we have been winding down the portfolio," the bank, Ireland's largest by assets, told Reuters on Tuesday. According to data from industry publication Marine Money and shipping sources, Bank of Ireland's shipping finance portfolio reached close to $2 billion at its peak before 2009. The bank declined to comment on the size of the remaining portfolio but finance sources estimate it has less than $500 million left in shipping loans. Bank of Ireland led a return to profitability following years of losses after the country's 2008 banking crash. Ireland's two main lenders, Allied Irish Banks (ALBK.I) and Bank of Ireland, were among European banks that fared worst in the last European stress test in July. INVESTEC DRAWS LINE Separately, South African bank and asset manager Investec (INLJ.J), which is also listed in London (INVP.L), told Reuters it had decided not to take on any new shipping lending after conducting an assessment of the portfolio. "We are not taking any new loans in shipping at this time," she added, declining to provide details on how big the firm's existing portfolio was but confirming that Investec's head of shipping, Jeremy Dean, had left. Finance sources said at its peak Investec's shipping portfolio was estimated to be in the region of $1 billion. Story continues "What we are seeing is smaller banks are also cutting new lending to shipping. It means there are even less options around for shipping companies at such a tough time," one source said. In a further sign of the stress, German shipping group Marenave said this week two of its banks had rejected a restructuring plan aimed at repaying loans and the company was examining "whether the positive going concern forecast for Marenave can continue to be upheld". In September, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) said it had begun winding down its shipping business after decades of being a top lender to the sector. Meanwhile German banks - behind up to a quarter of the world's $400 billion of outstanding shipping debt - are struggling to recoup their loans. Sources told Reuters last month that Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) was among more than 20 bidders in talks to buy a 3.2 billion euro ($3.53 billion) loan portfolio, which included shipping debt, from state-owned rival HSH Nordbank [HSH.UL]. (Additional reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Editing by Alexander Smith) By Olivia Oran and Sumeet Chatterjee (Reuters) - Big global banks, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co and HSBC are bracing for potential tumult on financial markets after Tuesday's U.S. election. As the outcome of the most bitterly fought U.S. presidential elections starts to roll out by Wednesday in Asia, the regional markets will the first to trade on the results. As a result, Asia-focused banks HSBC and Japan's Nomura Holdings Ltd are among institutions boosting staff levels, while others are raising the margin requirements for trading to cope with a possible spike in volume or volatility. Bank preparations ahead of the election reflect their experience following Britain's shock vote to leave the European Union in June, when the S&P 500 fell 3.6 percent the day after the poll. In the United States, Morgan Stanley told staff to consider using stop-loss orders, an automated trading mechanism that sells an investor's position as soon as a stock hits a preset level, if the result causes trading volumes and volatility to spike. The bank also told advisers in its wealth management unit to prepare for election-related conversations with clients and pointed them to relevant pieces of research, according to a Nov. 7 memo reviewed by Reuters. U.S. brokerage TD Ameritrade is adjusting staff rotas to make as many people as possible available to talk to investors who may be unnerved by any election-related volatility. "When the markets move, it can be difficult to put emotion at bay and stick to your plan," said Kim Hillyer, spokeswoman for TD Ameritrade. TWO PERCENT SWING Traders expect U.S. stock prices to swing by about 2 percent in either direction on Wednesday, the day after the election, based on the price of S&P 500 index options. Options on the PowerShares QQQ Trust Russell 2000 ETF, are pricing similarly large swings before the week is out. Some banks are projecting a more extreme drop in the event of a victory for Republican Donald Trump, with Citigroup Inc estimating that a Trump victory could trigger a 3 percent to 5 percent sell-off for the S&P 500. U.S. stocks rose on Monday as Democrat Hillary Clintons prospects brightened after the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it would not press criminal charges related to her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Investors have tended to see Clinton as a more status quo candidate, while Trump's stances on foreign policy, trade and immigration have unnerved the market. The "market pretty much told you who was going to win today," said one capital markets official at a major bank who was not planning any extraordinary staffing measures. Another official at a rival bank said Monday's 2.2 percent rally in U.S. stocks had lowered Wall Street's collective angst over the election to DEFCON 4 from DEFCON 2, referring to the U.S. Defense Department's levels of alert. ASIA IMPACT Brokerage Nomura said in a report on Monday the election was the largest "known unknown" markets have had to contend with since the global financial crisis. It said a Trump victory would likely lead to a more than 6 percent drop in Asian equities. The election could result in both higher trading volumes and higher volatility as it's a bigger event for investors in this region than Brexit, said Stephane Loiseau, head of Societe Generale's Asia Pacific cash equities and global execution services. It plans to increase front office, back office, and technology staff, "ensuring we have a clear escalation system for handling decision-making", and possibly raising risk limits." Chris Weston, chief markets strategist at IG Markets in Melbourne, said his firm had raised margins on U.S. indices and some dollar trades to 1 percent from 0.5 percent, but doesn't expect to see "a massive collapse or spike". HSBC will bolster staff on trading floors in major hubs including London and Hong Kong to deal with client requests, said a person with direct knowledge of the plan. "Around any high profile, potentially market-moving event, it is not unusual for some trading desks to increase staffing levels," said a spokesman for Europe's biggest bank. No U.S. stock exchange plans extraordinary measures to cope with potential market volatility, exchange officials told Reuters on Monday. More than half of the stock and bond fund managers polled by Northern Trust in the third quarter said they expected the election to cause a large increase in market volatility. The extra staffing is similar to what the bank did during Britain's vote to leave the European Union, he said. (Additional reporting by David Henry, Elizabeth Dilts and Saqib Ahmed in New York; Michelle Price, Sumeet Chatterjee and Julie Zhu in Hong Kong; Swati Pandey in Sydney and Abhirup Roy in Mumbai; Editing by Dan Grebler and Lisa Shumaker) Lisbon (AFP) - Former European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso on Tuesday said controversy over his appointment to a job at Goldman Sachs revealed anti-US hostility in Europe. Barroso headed the Commission, the EU's powerful executive arm, from 2004 until 2014, emerging as a high-profile public figure with political and business connections worldwide which critics say he could use unfairly to Goldman's advantage. But speaking at the annual Web Summit in Lisbon, the former Portuguese prime minister said Europeans need to change their mentality to catch up with the United States. He noted that a week ago a European Commission ethics committee had cleared the advisory appointment to the US investment bank, which was particularly targeted by critics over its role in the 2008 financial crisis. "But the very fact that the issue was raised shows a negative attitude of many people towards international finance, being in this case a United States institution, and it shows there are still a lot of cultural negative attitudes in Europe towards the new world, the financial world, the global integrated world we are living in. "And I think it's a mistake. We need a more innovative finance contribution," Barroso said, arguing that startup companies in the United States face fewer regulatory obstacles and greater access to venture capital than in Europe. Nationalism and protectionism are certainly on the rise in the United States, he stressed, as US voters headed to the polls on Tuesday to elect either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as their next president. "But in Europe, in some quarters, there is a negative attitude towards the United States of America, everything that comes from the United States of America, and I think it's a mistake." Such thinking prevented job creation through deeper trade cooperation across the Atlantic, he said, describing hostility in parts of Europe towards a long-negotiated trade pact with Canada as "irrational". NEW YORK But not yet gone. There is still time today for the pundits to turn to electoral maps and potentially a few nationally-televised meltdowns on the major media networks, and much more time after that for the historians to judge President Barack Obamas foreign policy legacy. For now, we, like many American voters, can take comfort, and a moment or hours waiting in line at the polls to reflect on one of the most bombastic, caustic, and utterly fantastic American presidential elections in our lifetimes as it draws to a close. And that, for all the threats to withdraw from alliances at the foundation of the global order and to close Americas famed doors to refugees on the basis of their religion, for all the episodes of cyber espionage believed to be directed by the Russian state and warring leaks out of institutions from WikiLeaks to the FBI, for all the mutation and proliferation of terrorist threats and unending war in the end, the very American voters whom Republican nominee Donald Trump maligned to motivate his presidential campaign are the ones who appear ready to hand him the loss he so fears. And the candidate whom Obama himself called (with sly self-deprecation) the most qualified to ever run for the presidency, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, appears positioned to win. And Americas first black president appears likely to hand off the title of commander in chief to the countrys first woman president. We can still savor that history-making moment. Its not yet gone. Sign up for FPs Editors Picks newsletter here to receive Battleground 16, our take on the presidential race, each Wednesday through November. Will the Expat Vote Matter in 2016? If the election is tight, record-high overseas balloting might make a difference. No, no, no, no. I dont want any credit if we lose. During a Monday rally in Saracosta, Florida, GOP nominee Donald Trump describes his response to being told his campaign would get a tremendous amount of credit, win or lose. Story continues Obama Is Scrambling to Nail Down His Foreign-Policy Legacy Even if Clinton wins, some of the presidents biggest national security and diplomatic policies arent a sure thing. With less than three months left in office, President Barack Obama will soon relinquish his foreign-policy legacy to the gimlet-eyed gaze of historians and presidential scholars. But before that happens, the White House is hellbent on completing an ambitious to-do list that will face a considerable head wind in Congress. Alert: Hillary Clinton Is Stealing the Election in Ohio* *Hacking voting machines isnt necessarily what you should be worried about. Its fake headlines like this one that could upend Election Day. False claims of election hacking and voter fraud and suppression could cause widespread chaos and cast into question the validity of the election outcome. And such a misinformation campaign, experts say, is far easier to pull off than hacking election machines on a mass scale and picking a winner. +3.0 Hillary Clintons lead nationwide, according to a Real Clear Politics average of final polls. Could Hillary the Hawk Have a Dove to Thank for Control of the Senate? If Dems win the senate, they may have a foreign policy-heavy senate race in Wisconsin and a dove in Russ Feingold to thank for it. Come, Lets Check in on Melania Trumps Native Slovenia On Americas election eve, we ask: How is Melania Trumps native Slovenia doing? This Lifetime GOP Voter Is With Her Why Im voting for Hillary Clinton, and why real Republicans should, too. Dictators Everywhere Are Stumping for Trump From Cambodia to Zimbabwe to North Korea, the Republican nominee has cornered the authoritarian autocrat demographic. Sign up for FPs Editors Picks newsletter here to receive Battleground 16, our take on the presidential race, each Wednesday through November. Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustrations In November, when the John Hardy (johnhardy.com) jewelry company opens its two-story flagship location in Manhattan, visitors will be able to view Balinese craftspeople using wax carving, chain weaving, and other generations-old techniques to create the brands intricate designs. The presentation is part of the companys Artisans in Residence series, an ongoing exhibition that will showcase the skills involved with making pieces such as the two shown here: the Ular Pelangi cobra cuff ($42,000) and the Rantai Hutan cuff ($12,000). These one-of-a-kind gem-covered designs are part of the companys Cinta collection, which is named after the Balinese word for love. More From Robbreport.com How Much Is Reggie Jacksons Ferrari Worth? Be a Designer at Jonathan Adlers Newestand LargestShowroom Bartenders Best-Kept Secret Wine Investments That Pay Dividends in the Glass An Inside Look at Air Frances Mile-High Gourmet Cuisine See the Best in Intergalactic Fashion with Ritz-Carlton, Denvers Star Wars Offer Doctor Stranges Benedict Cumberbatch visited with James Corden on Monday, telling the Late Late Show host an epic tale about a lady in beige (Hillary Clinton) and a big orange monster (Donald Trump). VIDEOSJon Stewart, Hamiltons Javier Munoz Visit Colbert Ahead of Election Day The fable, aptly titled The Story of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, followed Clinton, a lady who wanted to rule the kingdom very, very much, on her journey through a scary forest with lots of computers filled with emails. Though nearly defeated by an old man with hair of white and a face like that of a wizard (aka Bernie Sanders), her biggest opponent turned out to be a orange-tinted creature who had already defeated the likes of a prince named Jeb, a sleeping beauty named Ben Carson and a Texas senator named Ted who came from a tea party. By the end of the story, Corden was left fearing what the creature might do should he ever get his hands on his beloved stuffed pussycat. VIDEOSSarah Paulson Debuts Hillary-Themed One-Woman Show on Samantha Bee Press PLAY on the video above to watch Cumberbatch recite his election-themed bedtime saga, then drop a comment below and tell us how you think the unfinished tale will eventually conclude. Launch Gallery: Election 2016: Best & Worst Late-Night TV Moments Related stories South Park Recap: How Did They Parody the Trump Presidential Win So Fast?! Law & Order: SVU Episode Based on Donald Trump Pushed Again, to 2017 President Obama Addresses Nation: 'We're All on One Team' Things got strange on The Late Late Show Monday night as Benedict Cumberbatch read James Corden the scariest bedtime story of all: The Story of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Cumberbatch, who played Cordens dad in the skit, read about a lady who wanted to rule the kingdom very much, very, very much some would say too much who wore a jacket of beige and trousers of beige and shoes of beige aka Hillary Clinton. The heroine got lost in the scariest forest filled with the news fox, trolls, and computers with emails, which she made disappear. Disappear, where did they go? Corden asked. Nobody knows, son, but apparently neither did she, Cumberbatch responded. But none of those threats were are horrifying as the big orange monster, which had already swallowed 16 other monsters. The Doctor Strange star pulled out his best Donald Trump impression, saying, Ill huff and Ill puff and Ill put a ban on all Muslims. The lady, fortunately, made it out of the forest, but the tale had an open ending as the narrator didnt know if she made it to the beautiful White House. The big orange monster wont grab me in the night, will he? a terrified Corden asked before snuggling under the covers. When Cumberbatch insisted he was safe, Corden wondered What about my p-? Will he try to grab my p-? referring to his stuffed cat. Related stories 2016 Election Results: Live Updates 15 Biggest Media Winners and Losers From Election 2016 Alec Baldwin on Donald Trump: 'I Often Wonder if There's Something Wrong With Him Medically' Welcome, Neighbor! Thank you for sharing my journey with me. It's a bumpy ride, but hopefully you'll find it worthwhile! To reach out to me, send me an e-mail at jamesbradfordpate@yahoo.com. Jack Dorsey Tech companies are known for their perks, from slides connecting floors of an office to the lavish cafeteria lunches employees get for free three times a day. Yet, this year some tech companies are introducing a new one: getting Election Day off to vote. Hunter Walk of Homebrew Ventures started the "Take Off Election Day" movement and has been keeping a running tally of companies that have promised to give their employees the day off. So far, more than 340 companies of all sizes and industries have pledged to give their employees a free holiday, including Patagonia, Columbia University, Ford, and General Motors. Others, like Slack, are letting employees volunteer their time for the elections instead of coming into work. Here's some of the biggest tech names on the list and just how many people are getting the day off: AboutDotCom: 201 to 500 employees in New York Autodesk: 5,001 to 10,000 employees in California Canvas: 21 to 200 employees in Virginia Casper: 51 to 200 employees in New York DoorDash: 201 to 500 employees in California Evernote: 201 to 500 employees in California Giphy: 51 to 200 employees in New York Honor: 51 to 200 employees in California MongoDB: 501 to 1,000 employees in New York PitchBook Data: 201 to 500 employees in Washington Plated: 201 to 500 employees in New York Spotify US: 1,001 to 5,000 employees in New York Square: 501 to 1,000 employees in California Survey Monkey: 501 to 1,000 employees in California TaskRabbit: 51 to 200 employees in California Tinder: 51 to 200 employees in California Twilio: 501 to 1,000 employees in California WebDAM: 500 to 1,000 employees in California Wikimedia: 201 to 500 employees in California While the list notably doesn't include tech giants like Facebook, Apple, Google, or Netflix, there's still hundreds of companies across the US that have given their employees the day off. Read the full list here. Story continues NOW WATCH: Watch Donald Trump get booed while he goes to vote More From Business Insider Election Day is finally here, and Wall Street tycoon Warren Buffett wants to make sure you vote -- so much so that he hired a trolley to drive Nebraska voters to their polling locations, reports the Associated Press. Buffett says sick people or those with car trouble have a more difficult time, and he's aiming to pitch in to ensure all can vote. The owner of Berkshire Hathaway (ticker: BRK.A, BRK.B) made it clear he would help out Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with voter turnout at a rally for the former secretary of state back in August. Though Buffett supports Clinton, Tuesday he said he was interested in motivating all to vote, no matter the party. He has more than 1,000 volunteers who want to help. Amid a storm of election-related news, Twitter still paid attention to Buffett's efforts. Ollie the Trolley and Warren Buffett en route to SouthO to pick up voters as part of the Drive2Vote campaign. @KETV pic.twitter.com/lE1zrwJOtt" -- William (@GospelQue) November 8, 2016 #Election2016 Warren Buffett is devoting part of Election Day to get-out-the-vote efforts -- as he helps drive voters to polls on trolley -- Jatin Verma (@JatinVerma05) November 8, 2016 Warren Buffett rented Ollie the Trolley to drive voters to polls. How much do you tip in this situation? A buck? -- Brad Dickson (@brad_dickson) November 8, 2016 Yes! I have heard Warren Buffett is a fast driver, too. https://t.co/nmocniHe85 -- Chapin Springer (@chapinspringer) November 8, 2016 Warren Buffett waits in line to vote before taking other voters to the polls on Ollie the Trolley in #Omaha @KETV pic.twitter.com/i1OZHTf9ee -- Jeremy Maskel (@JerMaskel) November 8, 2016 7 Notable Quotes From Warren Buffett Warren Buffett's 10 Biggest Deals More From US News & World Report By Tife Owolabi and Alexis Akwagyiram LAGOS (Reuters) - A blast on Tuesday rocked a pipeline operated by Nigeria's state-run oil firm that feeds the Forcados terminal in the southern Niger Delta energy hub, a spokesman for Nigerian National Petroleum Corp (NNPC) said. The explosion occurred while the pipeline was being repaired following an attack last week, NNPC spokesman Garba Deen Muhammad said. A week ago, community leaders from the restive region, the source of most of Nigeria's oil, met the president and asked him to pull the army out of the energy hub, order oil firms to move headquarters there and spend more on development to end militancy in the region. "Militants bombed major contractors' equipment at Eresigbene along the Trans Forcados Pipeline," said Muhammad, who added that the attack took place shortly before 12:30 a.m. (2330 GMT). The NNPC spokesman said some equipment used by the contractors - including a barge and crane - had sunk. The repairs were being carried out following an attack at the same location, near the southern city of Warri, last week. Last week's attack forced the closure of the Trans Forcados Pipeline, the main contributor to the Forcados crude stream, cutting the OPEC member's oil production by at least 200,000 barrels per day (bpd). "There was a serious fire and most people working narrowly escaped being shot by the gunmen, who opened fire on them," said a community leader, who did not want to be identified, describing the latest attack. He said the attack happened because "the boys claimed they were not happy" that repair work was being carried out. Last week's attack pushed Nigeria's output back below 2 million bpd a day after the minister of state for oil said overall production had recovered to around 2.1 million bpd. Months of attacks on oil installations had cut output by more than 600,000 bpd. (Editing by Dale Hudson) LONDON (Reuters) - British workers at BMW's (BMWG.DE) Mini and Rolls-Royce car plants have backed strike action in a consultative ballot over plans by the German automaker to close the firm's final salary pensions, a union said on Tuesday. Over 4,000 employees who are members of the Unite union at five locations, including the Mini plant in Oxford and Rolls-Royce facility in Goodwood, were asked whether they wanted to take industrial action. Unite said turnout was 75 percent and 96 percent had voted in favour. "Unite will now be making arrangements to move to a full statutory industrial action ballot which, given the strength of feeling, could result in industrial action in the coming months," it said in a statement. BMW wants to close its two final salary pension schemes from June next year and move all staff to a less generous scheme which new starters have been part of since 2014. (Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison) In the moments immediately after my father died in 2001, after a long fight with cancer, I sat beside him, ready to be overwhelmed by the tsunami of grief that I had subconsciously rehearsed for seven years. That came, for sure. But first, a harder, colder, selfish thought slammed into my mind: Death is real! I'm going to f - ing die too! Yes, I suppose I'd had warning of this, through relatives, friends, celebrities and millions more in wars and famines, all who'd seemingly "died." But until my own silly dad took his last breath right in front of me, I realized I'd been treating death like a CG movie monster - convincing, disgusting but not really, truly real. Which brings me to Donald J. Trump. Sorry to break this to you, but he's real, too, and he's perilously close to being able to grab the world by the pussy. "Of course, he's real, you idiot," you mutter. Why, in this depressing, utterly addictive tornado of lies, insults and Anthony Weiner that passes for an election, would you waste time reading something you already know? Thing is, I'm not sure you do know. Not in your heart. Yes, you've seen Trump's abuse, his lies, his racism, his climate-change conspiracy theories, his vile impersonation of a disabled man. You know - I hope you know - that he fled a stage on Saturday night because his own supporters were assaulting a peaceful Republican protester, then got many other supporters to retweet that he'd been the victim of an assassination attempt. You know how despicable he is. Yet still I'm here, a crazed evangelist door-stepping your screen to tell you, brother or sister: Donald Trump is real! He is alive, has risen and unless you act quickly, we are all going to die for His sins! Gropezilla is stomping down the street, grabbing screaming women and squashing Mexicans; he's heading for the city. I'm not attacking you for your lack of faith. I was once an unbeliever, too, bouncing happily off the walls of my echo chamber, treating Trump as a sick but harmless joke. But then Story continues .Brexit! A quick recap of this shameful shit show: On June 23, the U.K. held a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union. The choice seemed clear: Remain part of a modern, multicultural Europe, committed to cooperation, open trade and free movement of people - or take a rain-powered DeLorean back to a misty, mythical time of Toad in the Hole, London Bobbies and typhoid, before "that lot" came over to blow us up and take our jobs. Keep Calm and Poles Out. To many, Brexit was a joke, especially all those smart, open-minded British millennials who'd spent their university gap years backpacking around Europe, probably having threesomes with French millennials, the bastards. The polls agreed; morons like UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage - a gurning Little Englander Wormtongue to Trump's tiny-handed Saruman - were going to be left with cage-free European egg all over their faces. Of course, that's not what happened. The public, amped up by blatant lies about mass migration, voted to leave Europe by 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. The morning news was grim indeed: Many Leavers expressed instant buyer's remorse, looking like naughty children caught with chocolate all over their faces as they bleated, "I didn't think we'd win! I just wanted to make a point!" Thousands, having cast their vote, belatedly Googled "What is the EU?" Others, happier with the outcome, took to the streets, attacking foreigners and belching happy racist bile into any phone camera pointed their way. A British radiologist of Pakistani parentage was asked by a patient, "Why are you still here?" Many others genuinely believed - I shit you not - that the "Leave" option literally meant foreigners must leave. Such mass idiocy hadn't been seen on our shores since an angry mob in my own country of Wales attacked the home of a pediatrician, thinking that's someone who has sex with children. What a big, horrible, burst-open sick bag of what-the-actual-f - ing-f - this was. But truly heartbreaking were the news interviews with younger people, horrified at the result, yet shamefacedly admitting to not having voted at all. Those who stood to suffer the most from this travesty had done the least to try to stop it. Ten years ago this week, a movie that I co-wrote, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, was released. In it, Sacha Baron Cohen exposed some of America's uglier, hidden attitudes on race, sex and anti-Semitism (and had a naked fight with a very large man). One big thing has changed in the intervening decade: Revolting views that at the time had to be drawn out by Borat are now shouted from the rooftops by a presidential candidate and his fans. Brexit is coming to a White House near you. Maybe you're wondering what business a Brit has telling you to vote, and whom for? First, I'm a U.S. citizen. Second, this will be everyone's business if the hate-soaked Tic Tac clown gets his hands on the nuclear codes. And believe me, Brexit will seem like a small, quaintly racist dolls' tea party in comparison. The attacks on foreigners we saw? Imagine that with guns, committed by "proud Americans" like the prick who was filmed shouting "Jew S-A!" at reporters at a Trump rally. At worst, Trump will be sending nuclear tweets at 3 a.m.; at best, he'll be an unmitigated disaster. (See Ross Douthat's excellent New York Times piece, "The Dangers of Donald Trump," for a master class in sober yet terrifying reporting of the upcoming apocalypse. If anyone's been to Nov. 9, it's him.) And unlike other disasters, both natural and manmade, Trump won't be a single event. At least a crashing plane has the decency to stop crashing at some point; a ship stops sinking; even the meteor that struck Earth hundreds of millions years ago, having made its point, stopped wiping out the dinosaurs. But Trump will be the disaster that just keeps disasting. They say a week is a long time in politics; four years - four f - ing years - will be an eternity, assuming we live that long.* (*Nukes) Okay, so here's why I'm still here, still ranting on your doorstep. If you're a millennial, only 46 percent of you voted in 2012. 46 percent. Not nearly enough. Maybe you don't feel part of the system. Or, having grown up in a world of culture on demand, you're not satisfied with the two main choices you're offered. You're bewildered that you can't mix and match the candidates' flavors like at Yogurtland. Yes, you hate Trump, but Hillary doesn't meet the high standards you've been raised to set for your life choices. Maybe you believe that not taking part in this broken political process is its own form of self-expression. You're thinking of transferring your Bernie Sanders vote to the Libertarian idiot who couldn't name a single world leader, whose name escapes me at the moment, or to Jill Stein, who can do nothing to save the planet. It's disgusting that neither candidate was asked a single question about climate change in three debates; but only one of them has a policy on this, while the other tweeted that the whole idea was invented by China. And only one has Bernie on her side. Maybe you're a bit thrown by Trump. Yes, he seems pretty awful, but maybe it's not the end of the world if he wins?* And all politicians lie, no? (*Nukes) But Trump's lies are different. They're massive and stupid and complicated, yet they fit together beautifully, like bigoted Lego: There's this whole giant elitist, crooked, Mexican, Black Lives Matter, Wall Street, George Soros globalistical thing, see, that won't let you in, Mr. Angry White Man! Many watch horrified from outside the Trump rally, wondering how these people can't see through the bullshit about rigged elections. But Trump's lie that Twitter was burying his words? His most shared tweet that day. To Trump and his fans, truth has become irrelevant. His words - and the countless bogus "stories" whooshing along Facebook networks you or I don't even know about but are Aunt Patricia in Florida's main news source - are to truth what performance-enhancing drugs are to sports: a lovely rush of energy to the outrage gland. Trump's awfulness is his superpower. This is a man who, having been accused by multiple women of sexually assaulting them, says, "Nobody respects women more than I do," thus managing to both lie and brag in the same sentence. It's impressive. Maybe his genius lies in the sheer number of terrible things he does; in committing such a dizzying blur of gaffes, he makes none. If only there were just one or two terrible qualities to focus on, rather than hundreds: He's a lying racist! Or he's a gropey tax avoider! A bullying misogynist! Any of those failings in isolation would have sunk a less appalling man, but Trump is the idiocy ninja. And yet, for all the complexity of his nastiness, if Trump showed up in a movie screenplay, he'd be sent back for a rewrite. He's a bigoted Darth Vader rip-off, a reverse Terminator, sent from the 1950s to destroy everyone. And maybe here's another key to why you're not nearly enough worried about this guy: He's a bad guy, and we've been so saturated with the comic book version that when we get a real one, with actual powers, our brains turn him into a joke. He barks, at rallies broadcast to millions, that women who accuse him of sexual assault aren't hot enough for him to grope, then denies saying it! We laugh, we shake our heads and imagine what if he actually got in? But of course he won't The thing is, kind young friend, you haven't been sucked into Trump's hate storm. You're not terrified of "that lot": the Latinos, the gays, the media, Rosie O'Donnell. Go to Uncle Gary's Facebook page and read what he's reading. Look at the murder in the eyes of Trump supporters, screaming as if Hillary Clinton just pulled off a puppy's head and hid a load of emails in the neck hole: "Burn the witch! She deleted some stuff! I'm not sure what, maybe they were in her junk folder? You know, those ones that pretend to be from FedEx but they're just trying to get your bank details? PUT HER IN THE CHAIR! FRY, BITCH!" Trump's people aren't movie extras. They're real, too: the men in "Hillary Is a Cunt" t-shirts, beside the angry white women waving "Blacks for Trump" signs. Would it help if we converted the video of these people shouting racist abuse to grainy black-and-white? Or put a scratchy, old-timey audio effect on them shouting the Nazi slur "Lugenpresse" at journalists? Or remind you that you're about to put your future in the hands of a man who, whilst openly knowing nothing of the science of climate change, wants to rip up the Paris Agreement and drill for oil in Antarctica? Now will you vote? Pleeease? By the way, by "You," I'm not primarily addressing that subgroup of millennials who are planning to vote for Trump; who will support him WHATEVER THE HELL HE DOES. Maybe you happen to be reading this because you're visiting your gay-ass liberal white brother in Los Angeles (the one who called his son Nurture and offered you a kale smoothie for breakfast). You've gone on his computer and stumbled on this piece. Hi. Nice to meet you. You're angry, white, you're understandably hurting and you think Trump cares about you. And even if he turns out to be the reanimated corpse of Osama Bin Laden in an old Donald Trump Halloween mask, you're voting for him. I can shout all I want that THIS MAN IS NOT YOUR FRIEND, but you've put your fingers in your ears and are going to be singing, "La la la la la Lock her up!" right up until Election Day. But to the rest of you I say: The monster has almost reached the city, and it really wants those nukes. And if you're still planning on not voting, for any of the reasons above, please know this: By not voting for Clinton, you are voting for the monster. Imagine, every day for the next four years (assuming that period isn't curtailed*), hearing a variation on "Today President Trump ." Seriously, is there any sentence beginning that way that doesn't make you shudder? "President Trump said ." "At a meeting today with Angela Merkel, President Trump grabbed ." Even "President Trump today pardoned a Thanksgiving turkey" is traumatizing. And given how he likes to rip up the rulebook, it's more likely to be "President Trump winked at the camera, then shouted, 'You're fired!' at both turkeys, before decapitating each bird. He then watched the animals run headless around the Oval Office, blood spraying the carpets, statues and himself. Catching one of the turkeys, the president unzipped his pants and made love to it, while forcing the other bird's headless, spurting neck into his own anus. Having ejaculated, President Trump used fresh hot turkey blood mixed with his own semen to write, 'I've never paid a cent of tax and of course I assaulted all of those bitches, you f - s. Gonna impeach me, derp? Try it. I'll NUKE YOUR FAT UGLY ASS!' At which point, countless Americans cheered at the screen, saying, 'Now that's a guy I could have a beer with .'" (*Nukes nukes nukes nukes nukes nukes) "President Trump." Just say those words quietly to yourself. The most dangerous kind of idiot, the one who would have screamed prematurely at the Chicago Cubs game from the armchair of his sweaty man cave that he could play better than all them assholes combined, despite having a heart stent paid for by Obamacare. That moron - but now he owns the team, has given each player a nuke and now, just as the Cubs are about to make historyBOOM! Be afraid. Be very afraid. Imagine this man in the Trump Armageddon - previously known as the White House - in January. Imagine Lennon's "Imagine," but with all the nice sentiments about everyone living life in peace, replaced by words of division, hatred and cooking your cat in your basement, over a burning Bernie Sanders bumper sticker, as your face peels off. Please vote. Even if some bastard tries to stop you, like North Carolina Republicans did to Grace Hardison, the 100-year-old African-American whose voter registration was challenged despite her living in the same place her whole life. Vote, even if there's a wannabe American Sniper turd in a Duck Dynasty hat patrolling your polling station with his gun, accusing you of voting 11 times or being dead, or both. This isn't the time to register your silent protest. It's maybe not even the time to be right. When the ship is threatening to sink, you don't have a choice of lifeboats. Maybe Bernie Sanders was the closest you'll ever get to the candidate you approve of and when he quit the race, so did you. But a) he didn't win, b) He's With Her and c) He's going to be in power, too. Friend, your country needs you, your world needs you. Your future needs you. Vote for Hillary Clinton. Vote vote vote vote vote. Vote in your Halloween Deadpool costume if it helps you feel ironic and above all this bullshit; do it dressed as Simone Biles, Hodor, Walter White or BB-8. Vote in a clown outfit while luring other millennials into the woods. Vote dressed as Trump, shouting, as your pen hits the ballot, "Look, everyone, I'm grabbing Hillary's box!" Yes, lame but a lame vote for Hillary. Google "Polling Booth Glory Holes" to see if you can develop an anonymous voting/sex fetish. If you're one of the nine people still playing Pokemon Go, see if any polling places are also Pokestops. Vote your socks off. Vote all over my willing Welsh face. Donald Trump is real. But so is Hillary Clinton. Vote for her on Tuesday. Make Trump Fake Again. Peter Baynham is a film and television writer/producer who is voting for Hillary Clinton. Read more: Why Can't Today's Candidates Be More Like 'The Candidate'? A 12-year-old Florida boy with cerebral palsy got to meet one of his idols President Obama a day after the boy and his family were allegedly kicked out of a Donald Trump rally for protesting the GOP nominee. Since he saw Trump mock a reporter with a disability during one of his rallies, JJ Holmes had long hoped to make it to such a gathering to show the presidential hopeful what he thought of him, the boy and his mother told The Washington Post. I wanted to go because Donald J. Trump made fun of disabled people, JJ said through a computer vocalization device in a video statement to the paper. JJs wish was granted Saturday when his mother, Alison Holmes, woke him at 3 a.m. to drive two hours from their Longwood home to Tampa, where the boy used his vocalization device to voice his disdain for Trump. The real estate moguls supporters drowned out JJ as he chanted Dump Trump and Trump mocks the disabled, which Trump allegedly laughed at, Holmes told the newspaper. So my daughters and I started chanting, she said. Read: Presidential Hopefuls Cast Their Votes as Topless Women Protest Trump's Polling Station In response, the crowd started chanting USA! USA! and began to push JJs wheelchair, as nearby Trump supporters called Holmes a child abuser and yelled to "grab her p****," Holmes said. JJ and his family were escorted out of the arena. Trump allegedly spoke from the stage, saying Oh, we have a Hillary Clinton person. Are they paying that person $1,500? Get him out, please. Get him out. InsideEdition.com has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment. JJs experience caught the attention of a reporter covering the rally, who learned that the politically-minded boy hoped to one day meet Obama. The reporter called Valentina Pereda, Florida press secretary for the Hillary Clinton campaign and who used to be the White House deputy director for Hispanic media, and told her what happened, Pereda recalled on social media. Story continues While I'm listening to this story, I freeze first in disbelief and, next, feeling utterly helpless. What the hell could I do to make this child even slightly forget that experience? I'm a nobody! she wrote in a Facebook post. But she and her colleague, Angela Johnson, set out to get JJ as close to the rope line at a Democratic event Sunday in Kissimmee, where Obama was stumping for Hillary Clinton. Resolute on trying to get JJ at least some form of contact with Obama, Pereda reached out to a friend who she said traveled with the President. I point to him where in the VIP area JJ is sitting with the hope that when POTUS would work the ropeline, he'd somehow remember JJ's story and spend two extra seconds with him, she wrote. And with that, I was satisfied with was to be accomplished. A handshake. Read: Campaign Stop: Bon Jovi Joins Clinton Camp for Mannequin Challenge But instead, Pereda was able to secure much more for JJ. Shortly after, colleagues begin to frantically text and call me to tell me my friend from the WH was looking for me, she wrote. I sprint about half a mile back into the stadium and push my way through angry Secret Service agents and thick crowds. I finally spot my friend who, once again, asks me to point out where the boy is sitting, which I do. Then - out of the blue - I tell him, well, how about I wheel him out of the VIP area and bring him around? My friend thinks about it for a second, looks around for other accomplices, and nods his head with approval. When told he would not only get a glimpse of the president, but would actually meet him, JJ was overjoyed. JJ jumps out of his seat and erupts into cheer... his smile almost bursting out of his face. His body overcome by light, when just the day before it almost succumbed to hate, Pereda wrote. My lesson: Always have the courage to do what feels right. The universe will always conspire. Obama met with JJ, speaking with him and posing for pictures that left the boy delighted, Pereda and Holmes said. JJs mother told the Post that her son told Obama that he loved him, thanked him for the handshake and asked him, can you vote? He wanted to make sure he could vote for Hillary Clinton, she said. Watch: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Cast Their Vote In New York Related Articles: Bring Me the Horizon made a grand statement with its 2015 album That's the Spirit, progressing from metalcore to more accessible, yet similarly enthralling modern rock. The British quintet will continue to tour behind its fifth studio album into 2017, announcing a run of North American dates on Monday (Nov. 7) with U.S. counterparts Underoath and Beartooth. The 16-date American Nightmare tour hits the United States and Canada, beginning March 10 and concluding April 8. After the trek is through, frontman Oli Sykes has suggested BMTH will focus on crafting its sixth studio album. BMTH's next release -- on Dec. 2 -- is a DVD/audio recording of a recent show they performed alongside a live orchestra at London's Royal Albert Hall, with all proceeds going toward the Teenage Cancer Trust. Back in September 2015, That's the Spirit debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, with 55,000 albums sold in its opening week, according to Nielsen Music. This marked Bring Me the Horizon's biggest U.S. sales week yet, so the touring cycle behind the new album has indeed marked prosperous times for the band. Find the American Nightmare tour dates below: The American Nightmare Tour, on sale Friday 10am. pic.twitter.com/sHuuF3XEaw - Bring Me The Horizon (@bmthofficial) November 7, 2016 Brussels (AFP) - EU finance ministers on Tuesday painfully agreed on the criteria to draw up a European blacklist of tax havens, but Britain watered down the proposal, eager to protect low tax dependencies such as Bermuda and Guernsey. Europeans have struggled to agree on the basis of an EU-wide tax haven blacklist, even after revelations in the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks scandals shocked the general public on the strategies used by the rich people and big companies to reduce tax bills. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has taken the lead on cracking down on tax havens and wants to draw up a list of problem jurisdictions by the end of next year. Britain, as well as Malta and the Baltic states, however blocked a push to include zero or near-zero corporate tax rates as one of the criteria to land on the EU's blacklist, diplomats said. The ministers agreed to delay that decision for now -- presumably at least until after Britain leaves the EU after its Brexit divorce, expected in 2019. But it ordered a task force to explore the idea further. "What was very important for some countries was the near zero corporate tax rate, which is important for us too, but maybe as an indicator not as an actual criteria," said Spanish Economy Minister Luis De Guindos after the talks. The 28 ministers agreed other criteria however including a demand that third countries automatically exchange tax information and agree to an already existing set of G20 standards to fight tax evasion. A spokesman for the British government said the new criteria "will encourage those few tax jurisdictions that refuse to follow internationally agreed best practice to do the right thing." EU Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said the EU would notify a very broad list of countries by the end of January, from which the far more narrower blacklist would be drawn before 2018. Activists criticised the watered down proposal, adding that the process still lacked transparency. Story continues "If the EU blacklist is to be a useful tool in the fight against tax dodging, and not just a gimmick, politicians can't afford to fudge it," said Esme Berkhout, tax policy advisor for Oxfam. The EU blacklist in one of many ideas given in reaction to the leak of thousands of documents last Spring on anonymously-owned shell companies from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that specialised in setting up such firms. It also comes after the LuxLeaks scandal, which revealed in 2014 that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's native Luxembourg gave companies huge tax breaks while he was prime minister. * Retailer to close about 30 UK stores, switch 45 to food only * UK space to be 50 pct clothing and home, 50 pct food * Will shut 53 owned stores in 10 international markets * First half profit down 19 pct, clothing sales fall * Shares down up to 7 pct (Adds comments by CEO, investor, analyst; updates share price reaction) By James Davey LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Britain's Marks & Spencer plans to shut more than 80 stores at home and abroad at a cost of up to 550 million pounds ($684 million) as its new boss tries to revive the retailer by switching space towards food and away from fashion. M&S's latest attempt at a turnaround after several false dawns will see its UK space profile shift to 50 percent clothing and homeware and 50 percent food, from a current two-thirds/one-third split. The news came as the company reported a 19 percent slump in its first-half profit on Tuesday and another decline in quarterly clothing sales. The shares fell up to 7 percent before closing down 5 percent at 331 pence, a 25 percent drop so far this year. The number of M&S shares out on loan has risen 60 percent since mid-September with investors betting they will fall, data from FIS's Astec Analytics showed. Steve Rowe, a company veteran who took over as chief executive in April, is tasked with reviving a 132-year-old institution that has fallen out of fashion over the last decade but remains Britain's biggest clothing retailer. "These are tough decisions, but vital to building a future M&S that is simpler, more relevant, multi-channel and focused on delivering sustainable returns," he told reporters. M&S has seen its market share eroded by rivals like Next and a push from supermarkets into clothing, while younger shoppers favour Primark and H&M. Rowe plans to close about 30 UK stores selling clothing, homewares and food and downsize or convert another 45 into food stores over five years. That will mean a reduction of 10 percent in floorspace devoted to racks of skirts, jumpers, trousers and towels. Story continues After taking account of store openings in under-served areas a net 60 fewer UK stores will be selling the full M&S range by 2021. The cost of the programme is expected to be 350 million pounds. "This is not about the M&S brand disappearing," Rowe told reporters. "In fact with our Simply Food (opening) programme we will be in more locations in the future than we are in today." M&S plans over 200 new food stores by 2018/19. Traditionally lower margin, food contributes over half of the group's revenue and about a third of its profits. M&S also added another chapter to its chequered history abroad. Undoing some of the expansion overseen by his Dutch predecessor Marc Bolland, Rowe plans to close 53 stores in 10 loss-making markets, including France, Belgium, Holland and China, at a cost of 150-200 million pounds over the coming year, concentrating instead on its profitable franchise model. Some 2,100 employees will be affected. Staff at M&S's Brussels store immediately went on strike. "PRAGMATIC" Rowe's moves were described as "sensible" by Simon Gergel, chief investment officer for UK equities at Allianz Global Investors, a top-40 M&S shareholder according to Reuters data. "It feels like they're taking the right types of action and being fairly pragmatic about it. It's encouraging, they haven't ducked the issue," he said. But Tony Shiret, analyst at Haitong Research, said Rowe hadn't been radical enough. "It should have gone further in its UK clothing space closure - 10 percent over five years is not that much in the context of UK clothing and home sales densities in-store down 20-25 percent over the last five years," he said. M&S will seek to simplify its clothing ranges by removing the Indigo, Collezione and North Coast labels. Rowe has also pledged to revive the clothing business by improving ranges and availability, cutting prices and reducing promotions. However his plan, outlined in May, came with a warning of a short-term dent to sales and profit. He said on Tuesday there were "early signs of improvement", pointing to a rise in full-price clothing market share in the second quarter. M&S reported an underlying pretax profit for the six months to Oct. 1 of 231 million pounds - better than analysts' consensus forecast of 216 million pounds. Quarterly underlying clothing and home sales fell 2.9 percent - ahead of analysts' average forecast of down 3.9 percent and an improvement on a first quarter slump of 8.9 percent. Food sales fell 0.9 percent. ($1 = 0.8061 pounds) (Additional reporting by Emma Thomasson and Maiya Keidan; Editing by Keith Weir, Louise Heavens and Greg Mahlich) By Farah Master HONG KONG(Reuters) - A British banker was jailed for life on Tuesday for the "sickening" murders of two Indonesian women he tortured in his Hong Kong apartment in what the judge said was one of the most horrifying cases the Chinese-ruled territory has known. Rurik Jutting, 31, a former Bank of America employee, had denied murdering Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, in 2014 on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to alcohol and drug abuse and sexual disorders. He had pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in a case that gripped world media due to graphic video footage seen by the jury and the brutality of the killings. The jury unanimously found Jutting guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in prison. His lawyers have said he will apply to serve his sentence in Britain, the former colonial power in Hong Kong, where prisoners can in some cases apply for parole after a fixed number of years. Judge Michael Stuart-Moore agreed for an application to be filed, but said he would inform the authorities in Britain exactly what they would be dealing with and urged caution against falling for Jutting's "superficial charm". Cambridge-educated Jutting, wearing a blue shirt, looked down and showed no emotion when the verdict was read out in an open courtroom, packed with international and local journalists. It took the jury, made up of four women and five men, around six hours, including a lunch break, to reach its decision. In closing remarks, the judge described Jutting as the "archetypal sexual predator" who represented an extreme danger to women, especially in the sex trade. He cautioned that the possibility of a repeat crime would have been very likely. The murders were even more damning because Jutting had been given every possible material advantage in life from a very privileged upbringing to a great career and immense pay cheque, the judge said. "They are sickening in the extreme and beyond a normal person's imagination... There are insufficient superlatives to describe what he did." Ningsih's 61-year-old father, Ahmad Kaliman, said he thought the verdict was appropriate. "I want to say thank you to Hong Kongs legal system for what they've done," he told Reuters TV calmly in his village in central Java. "I hope we can get compensation to support (Ningsih's son)." Ningsih leaves a seven-year-old son. In a statement read out by Jutting's lawyer, Tim Owen, Jutting said he was haunted daily by what he had done. "The evil can never be remedied by me, nevertheless... I am so sorry. I am sorry beyond words," Owen said, citing Jutting. Jutting, the grandson of a British policeman in Hong Kong and a local Chinese woman, had argued cocaine and alcohol disorders as well as personality disorders of sexual sadism and narcissism had impaired his ability to control his behavior. The prosecution rejected this, stating Jutting was able to form judgments and exercise self-control before and after the killings, filming his torture of Ningsih on his iPhone as well hours of footage in which he discussed the murders, binging on cocaine and his graphic sexual fantasies. Jutting exhaled deeply as he walked out of the courtroom, flanked by three police guards. (Additional reporting by Reuters TV in Jakarta; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Nick Macfie) Hong Kong (AFP) - A British banker was jailed for life Tuesday for the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment, in a cocaine-fuelled rampage the judge called "sickening in the extreme". Cambridge University graduate Rurik Jutting, 31, tortured Sumarti Ningsih for three days -- filming parts of her ordeal on his phone -- before slashing her throat with a serrated knife and stuffing her body into a suitcase. Days later, and with Ningish's corpse rotting on his balcony, the Bank of America worker picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same sick fantasies, but killed her when she started screaming. "This must rank as one of the more horrifying murder cases ever to come to court in Hong Kong," judge Michael Stuart-Moore told the court. Jutting's crimes were "sickening in the extreme and beyond a normal person's imagination". He described the case as touching the "very depths of human depravity" and said Jutting had not shown a shred of remorse. "You go to prison for life," he said, at the end of a case that has shocked and captivated the city. Stuart-Moore said Jutting was "highly likely" to kill again if he were ever freed. Defence counsel Tim Owen had earlier told the court that Jutting would apply for transfer to a prison in Britain. The former Winchester College private school student remained almost expressionless during sentencing at Hong Kong's high court, only breathing out heavily as he left the dock. In a gruelling 10-day trial, the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture -- fantasies he had acted out on his first victim, Ningsih. High on cocaine and alcohol, he tortured her for three days and recorded parts of her torment on his iPhone -- footage the jury was forced to watch. - 'I lost my child' - In a final humiliation, he made the young mother lick his toilet bowl before cutting her throat. Story continues In hours of self-recorded ranting on his iPhone after that murder, Jutting described his attacks on Ningsih using pliers, sex toys and a belt. Days later he murdered Mujiasih, slashing her throat in his living room. He had prepared to torture her but killed her quickly when she began to scream after spotting a rope gag by his sofa. Both women were found dead in his US$2,500-a-month flat in the early hours of November 1, 2014, after he called police. Ningsih and Mujiasih were in their 20s and had gone to Jutting's apartment after he offered them money for sex. Jutting cut Mujiasih's throat hours after meeting her at a bar near his home in the Wanchai district on October 31. Both victims were from poor farming families in Indonesia and their relatives had relied on them for financial support. Ningsih's mother Suratmi, 51, on Tuesday told AFP she welcomed the verdict, but she would never recover. "I lost my child and the pain will never be cured," she said, speaking from her home in Cilacap on Indonesia's main island of Java. She called for the Indonesian government to support her efforts to seek compensation from Jutting to help support Ningsih's seven-year-old son, who lives with her in Indonesia. In a letter read to the court by his defence counsel after the verdicts, Jutting apologised to his victims' families. "The evil that I've inflicted cannot be remedied by me," the letter said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry beyond words." But Stuart-Moore dismissed the apology. "It's the first mention of saying sorry about what he had done and I don't accept it," he told the court. He described Jutting as an "archetypal sexual predator" who presented an extreme danger to women. Jutting's defence had argued that his self-control had been impaired by his heavy use of cocaine and alcohol, combined with narcissistic personality and sexual sadism disorders. Jutting had admitted manslaughter, but denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. But Judge Stuart-Moore said the high-flying securities trader had known exactly what he was doing. "The defendant could and should have been able to exercise self control...but he chose not to do so," he said. Rurik Jutting, the 31-year-old British former banker who in the fall of 2014 tortured and murdered two Indonesian women in his luxury high-rise apartment in Hong Kong, has been found guilty of murder. He will be jailed for life. Jutting, appearing healthier and many pounds lighter than he was when he was arrested just over two years ago, was stoic when the jury delivered its unanimous verdict in Hong Kongs High Court on Tuesday afternoon. He had pleaded not guilty to murdering 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih and 28-year-old Seneng Mujiasih, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. His defense attempted to bolster this claim by pointing to various disorders that supposedly impacted Juttings capacity to act rationally: narcissistic personality disorder, cocaine-and-alcohol-abuse disorders, and sexual-sadism disorder. A smattering of applause went around the public gallery of the courtroom when the jurys foreman read the verdict. Justice Michael Stuart-Moore said: You get prison for life. That is all. You can go now, thank you. In a statement he wrote that was read by his barrister, Tim Owen, Jutting expressed remorse. As has been commented on throughout the hearings, my actions in the deaths of Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih in the days preceding the deaths was horrific, even by the standards of homicide trials, Jutting wrote. The nine jurors were attentive and thoughtful. They have delivered a verdict to which I cannot have any objection He said he remained haunted daily by the crimes. We have been made to dredge the very depths of depravity in the defendants descriptions of what he did in three days of torture, Justice Stuart-Moore said after the jury was read. He describes himself as evil and a monster. Neither description is adequate to bring home the horror of what he did. Story continues In a statement released yesterday, Senengs family stressed the financial hardship her death had caused. Our family hope the perpetrator can be punished as heavily as possible, the statement read. The verdict marks the end of a two-week trial that was alternatively gruesome, awkward and tedious. It was, Justice Stuart-Moore said on the first day of the trial on Oct. 24, a particularly strange legal affair: a murder trial in which the most incriminating evidence the iPhone footage shot by Jutting both leading up to and immediately after the killings was willfully created by the defendant himself. It was in these videos that the nine members of jury became apprised of what happened on the 31st floor of the J Residence, a luxury apartment building in Hong Kongs Wan Chai district, during the last week of October 2014. In the early hours of Oct. 25, Jutting left his apartment and made his way into the thick of Wan Chai, a bustling neighborhood famous for neon-lit bars with names like Club Bunny, where scantily clad girls linger out front. There, he met Sumarti, a single mother who, in 2011, had left her infant son with family in Indonesia and came to find work in Hong Kong as a domestic helper one of hundreds of thousands of such women in the former British colony, many of them from the Philippines and Indonesia. Like some of her peers, Sumarti occasionally moonlighted as a sex worker for extra income. Jutting, who had been transferred by Bank of America Merrill Lynch from London to Hong Kong in the fall of 2013 had paid Ningsih for sex before. On that occasion, he had become so violent that she had offered to refund half his money if he would let her go home. Following his arrest, Jutting told police that to bring her home on the night of Oct. 25, he had to offer a particularly large sum to coerce her. He contacted her on his cell phone, in which she was saved simply as Indo, for Indonesian. She consented, and together they returned to his apartment. By Juttings account, things escalated quickly. I made her get naked, he said to his iPhone camera shortly after her death. I held her throat, then she tried to force me off her. But theres nothing she could do. For three days, he kept her prisoner. He said he bound her, beat her, violated her sexually, and at one point forced her to eat his excrement. He finally killed her by slitting her throat as she licked his toilet bowl. After killing her, he dragged her body into his shower, and later shoved it into a suitcase he put on his balcony, and began to record the hours of monologue that two years later would be used to incriminate him. Heavily under the influence of drugs, alcohol, and sleep deprivation, he babbled about his cocaine addiction, his history of sadistic fantasies, and Sumarti herself. I learned more about that girl over three days than I have about people Ive worked with for years, he said to the camera. She is was a remarkable person. Many of the finest people Ive known have been prostitutes. In the days that followed, Jutting continued to binge on cocaine and Red Bull as Sumartis body began to decay on his balcony. He did not leave his apartment, subsisting on Pizza Express delivery and spending virtually every minute reading and watching pornography, as he later told police. Eventually, he said, he had a plan to torture. I realized how much I enjoyed that combination of alcohol and cocaine and physical torture it gave me a sense of enjoyment Id never had with anything, he later told police. I knew I would do it again. Eventually, he left his apartment, going first to a sex shop in Lan Kwai Fong, a nightlife district near downtown that is popular with expatriates and tourists, to buy bondage rope and other items. On his way home, he stopped at a hardware store, purchasing nails, sandpaper and a blowtorch, which he planned to use for torture. Lets be clear about these, I am going to use these to torture someone in the most inhumane way possible, he said. However, when he solicited Seneng on the night of Halloween, leaving his apartment and returning with her shortly after midnight, there was no prolonged period of torture, unlike with Sumarti. The court heard that Seneng began screaming after finding a knife on Juttings couch, prompting him to quickly cut her throat. He was, at that point, reportedly delirious, hallucinating that police and special forces were outside his apartment, preparing to seize him. He eventually called 999, Hong Kongs emergency hotline, and asked if he could surrender. The dispatcher evenly asked if they could instead send officers to his home, and he complied. He was arrested by dawn. Jutting has spent the past two years in prison in Hong Kong, where he has been interviewed by several psychiatrists who have served as witnesses for the defense during the trial. On the stand, Dr. Richard Latham and Professor Derek Perkins have rendered a portrait of a man with incredibly high intelligence he recorded an IQ score of 137 but sadistic tendencies and a pathological narcissism that rendered him incapable of emotionally handling blows to his ego. When, as an adolescent, he applied and was accepted to Winchester College, a prestigious boarding school in the U.K., he was reportedly devastated that he came sixth in the scholarship assessment, rather than first. Later, after graduating from Cambridge with a first-class degree in history but a second-class degree in law, he challenged university administrators regarding the latter, claiming the examiners did not understand him well enough, which Perkins attributed to an entrenched sense of entitlement. After Cambridge, in 2008, he forewent plans to practice law and instead took a job at Barclays in London in the structured-capital-markets division, then moved to Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2010. Around this time, the court heard, he began drinking excessively, going on long binges where he would solicit sex workers and do cocaine with them. (He would later admit that he had spent more than a million dollars on sex workers in the two years preceding the killings.) His professional performance gradually began to suffer. In September 2013, Bank of America Merrill Lynch moved him from London to Hong Kong, allegedly to get him out of the way after an investigation into a dubious tax product he had tried to sell in Luxembourg, the court heard. The defenses expert witnesses inferred that it was the move to Hong Kong that precipitated his final mental collapse. He had no social life, instead spending his time drinking copious amounts of liquor and wine in his luxury residential tower and seeing sex workers from the neon-lit bars nearby. He traveled to the U.K. for a friends wedding in March 2014, where he reportedly did so much cocaine that he missed a work meeting in London. He blamed his absence on having HIV. His physical and mental atrophy continued upon his return to Hong Kong, and in September 2014, he found a cocaine dealer of his own, who was named to the court simply as Marvin. Marvin, the court heard, was bringing Jutting massive sums of cocaine on a regular basis; the defendant claimed he was doing several grams in a day. From there, his apparent decline into instability was rapid. He rarely went to work; when he did, he did so erratically, showing up only for short stretches. He later described his rage and humiliation when his boss send a junior employee to look for him at home. He spent his days watching and reading violent pornography that trafficked in themes like rape, kidnapping and torture. The defense concedes that parole for Jutting is highly unlikely to impossible. Asked outside the courtroom if he was surprised by the verdict, Michael Vidler, Juttings attorney, simply shrugged. The jury has spoken, he said. Justice Stuart-Moore said that if Jutting applied for transfer to a British prison, the English authorities will know exactly the type of person they are dealing with. With reporting by Yenni Kwok / Hong Kong Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi rocked the streets of Philadelphia in front of Independence Mall on Monday night (Nov. 7) in support of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Springsteen did not mince words, taking aim at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a man "whose vision is limited to little beyond himself." "Tomorrow those ideas and that campaign is going down," he said, urging voters to remember the outcome of Tuesday's election as the day "we stood with Hillary Clinton on the right side of history and a dream of a better America." The rally also included appearances by former President Bill Clinton, daughter Chelsea, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. "How great was it to have Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen with us?" Hillary Clinton said from the stage. Armed with an acoustic guitar, Springsteen opened with "Thunder Road" and played "Long Walk Home," which he called a "prayer for post election," before wrapping up with "Dancing in the Dark." Springsteen praised Clinton as a candidate who embraces an inclusive country. "The choice tomorrow couldn't be any clearer. Hillary's candidacy is based on intelligence, experience, preparation and an actual vision of America where everyone counts," he said. "Hillary sees an America where the issue of income distribution should be at the forefront of our national conversation. She sees an America where an issue of immigration reform is dealt with realistically and compassionately." Jon Bon Jovi took the stage with three other musicians -- including Carl Gentry on guitar, violinist Lorenza Ponce and percussionist Everett Bradley -- for a four-song set that included "Who Says You Can't Go Home," "Someday I'll Be Saturday Night," "Livin' on a Prayer" and a cover of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun." "Think of Mrs. C when you hear this one," he said. "Philadelphia, we have been through a lot together," said Bon Jovi, who said the seeds of his charitable organization, The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, were planted in the city. He also read a letter from Philadelphia resident, Dan Box, a Republican voting for Clinton. "I'm a Republican. I'm a gun owner. I'm a Catholic. And yesterday, I voted," read Bon Jovi, who will fly to Raleigh, North Carolina, on Clinton's jet to a rally in North Carolina with Lady Gaga. Hillary Clinton enlisted Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi to perform before tens of thousands gathered at Philadelphias Independence Mall on Monday, as she rallied voters in the penultimate event of her presidential campaign. They were joined by Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. We dont want to shrink the vision of this country; we want to keep expanding it, Hillary Clinton said, in a speech that emphasized the inclusiveness of her campaign in contrast to the divisiveness of rival Donald Trumps rhetoric. Making his first his appearance for her campaign, Springsteen said, The choice tomorrow couldnt be any clearer. He sang Thunder Road, Long Walk Home and Dancing in the Dark. He said that Clintons candidacy was based on an actual vision, while her rival Donald Trump is a man whose vision is limited to little beyond himself. Tomorrow, Trumps campaign and his ideas are going down. He performed for Barack Obama in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns, as well as for John Kerry. In brief remarks, Springsteen made a reference to the type of working class economic issues that are at the heart of so much of his music. Hillary sees an America where the issue of income distribution should be at the heart of the national conversation, he said. Where the progress we made in reducing unemployment is not enough. We much do better. She has a vision of universal healthcare for all that will build on the work of President Obama. Bon Jovi has been a frequent presence on the campaign trail for Clinton, and at the rally he said that she has proven to be a unifier. President Obama, who has been on a blitz of campaigning for Clinton, also contrasted her with Trump, telling the crowd that he was betting that tomorrow you will reject fear and choose hope. Clinton will work and deliver. She wont just tweet, he said. Around the same time as the Philadelphia rally, Madonna held an impromptu performance at Washington Square Park in New York for Clinton, which was broadcast on Facebook Live. She urged those gathered to vote with your hearts. Vote with your spirits. Vote with your should. She sang Imagine, Like a Prayer and If I Had a Hammer. Story continues Do you believe in the power of unity? Do you believe in the power of prayer? Do you believe in the power of love? Amen, she said. She also quipped, Lets hope I get invited to the White House this time. She noted that she never got one under the presidency of Barack Obama. Clinton is wrapping up her campaign with a midnight rally in Raleigh, N.C., where she will be joined again by Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga and Samantha Ronson. At one of his final rallies in New Hampshire, Trump took note of Clintons celebrity support, and even called it demeaning to the political process, as he did on Saturday. But he also noted that Tom Brady told him earlier in the day that he would vote for him, and he read a letter from Bill Belichick, general manager of the New England Patriots, congratulating him on the campaign. You have dealt with an unbelievable and slanted media and have come out beautifully, Trump read. Update: At Trumps final rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., Ted Nugent performed what he called a Hillary Clinton version of the National Anthem, in which he simply made sheep noises and said, Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. A short while later, in Raleigh, N.C., Lady Gaga spoke, telling the crowd of Clinton, No matter how absurd and mean he became, she smiled bravely, she said. We watched her endorse such hateful language with dignity. Trump opened his rally by saying, We dont need Jay Z or Beyonce. We dont need Jon Bon Jovi. We dont need Lady Gaga. Related stories Fox Election Coverage: Dour Early Focus on a Divided America Chris Matthews on Why the Concession Speech Is 'The Best Part of Politics' Hillary Clinton Endured a Rough Campaign of Misogyny, Like Suffragettes Before Her None of our fellow Americans are more deserving of respect and concern than our military personnel. Amidst the political gridlock and a polarized electorate, perhaps, this is the one topic that can bring our country together. So, why haven't we done more to tend to their wounds of war -- lost limbs, injured brains and traumatized psyches -- particularly those injuries that are psychological in nature? Almost one-third of all service persons in the ongoing Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and its complications of suicide and addiction. Our veterans are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than their peers in the civilian population -- and the rates are rising. Between 1999 and 2010, the overall suicide rate among males in the U.S. was 19.4 per 100,000, and 4.9 per 100,000 for females. The current rate for military personnel is 38.3 per 100,000 males and 12.8 per 100,000 females; at one point, more soldiers were dying from suicide than from enemy combatants. [See: 9 Things to Do or Say When a Loved One Talks About Taking Their Life.] It has long been known that war produces overwhelming psychological stress and can indelibly alter a person's brain function and mental state. Soldiers who enter military service perfectly normal are somehow never the same again after a firefight, an IED explosion or the sustained stress of repeated deployments -- even though they have no apparent physical injury. The constellation of symptoms that characerize PTSD -- a diagnostic term that was coined following the Vietnam War and described in earlier wars as "Soldier's Heart," "Shell Shock," "Battle Fatigue" and "Combat Neurosis" -- include anxiety, hypervigilance, insomnia, irritability and flashback memories of varying levels of intensity. Despite PTSD's long history and the rising number of soldiers affected due to the ever more powerful weaponry and lethality of warfare, there has been limited progress in the medical understanding and ability to treat PTSD. Military medicine made extraordinary advances in the 20th century, when rates of severely injured combatants went from 80 percent dying to over 80 percent surviving between World War I and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Moreover, medical research has successfully confronted seemingly impossible challenges from human disease within lesser spans of time. Story continues There is no better example of this than AIDS, which first appeared in the late 1970s as a mysterious disease with a fatal outcome. The government responded to an urgent cry for help by the gay community and their advocates and mounted a furious research campaign to find its cause and develop treatments. As a result, researchers identified the human immunodeficiency virus in 1983 and introduced the first medication, AZT, in 1987. Subsequently, treatments such as antiretroviral and protease inhibitor drugs -- and then their combination in "triple therapy" -- have turned a deadly scourge into a chronic illness with which people can live normal lives. In little more than a decade, AIDS went from a mysterious plague to a treatable, and in some cases even curable, illness. We currently see similar heroic efforts in research being made for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and autism, which begs the question: Why hasn't the same been done for the terrible affliction of those who valiantly defend our country? There are three reasons. First, the idea of psychological weakness is antithetical to military culture with its ethos of aggression and invulnerability -- so military leaders were reluctant to recognize and accept its existence. In the interim, many soldiers were accused of cowardice, in some cases punished and even executed, for their infirmity. Second, mental disorders are not tangible and have no visible physical signs. Hence, they are not seen as real and are often ignored or minimized. Third, PTSD was considered to be a military problem and thus the responsibility of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. [See: Coping With Depression at Work.] Consequently, the National Institutes of Health did not prioritize PTSD research and fund biomedical researchers at academic medical institutions to address this problem. Most funding for PTSD research was provided through the VA and to researchers at VA hospitals; we have already heard many reports of how the VA did not optimally serve our nation's veterans. The combination of the first two reasons created an ambivalence that diminished the motivation to launch an all-out effort to solve the mystery of PTSD, and the third did not engage the best and brightest scientists. Two grievous errors are apparent in this scenario. One is that just because there is no physical lesion associated with PTSD, that doesn't mean it's not a real medical condition that can be distressing and disabling. The other is that psychological trauma is not limited to the military but also occurs in the civilian population to victims of violent crime, natural disasters and other forms of experiential trauma. Therefore, PTSD affects the entire population and should concern the entire biomedical research community. Of the 265 disorders described in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, aside from substance use disorders, only PTSD has a known cause: psychological trauma. Moreover, it is one of the few mental disorders that can be modeled in animals. Therefore, its pathology can be studied in the laboratory, and treatments can be developed to alleviate the symptoms of people who have PTSD and potentially prevent its development in those who regularly go into harms way, such as first responders and military personnel. [See: How to Find the Best Mental Health Professional for You.] The first step is for the VA to convene a task force of leading scientists to develop a strategic plan to do the same thing that was done for AIDS: elucidate the pathological basis of and develop treatments for PTSD. Next, Congress must allocate funding to support the necessary research to be carried out under the auspices of the NIH. The NIH Office of the Director would be responsible for monitoring progress and reporting to the president and Congress. This effort would be sustained until sufficient progress has been made to alleviate the psychological wounds of war. The final step entails empaneling a network of medical centers to provide specialized services for PTSD in addition to the VA Hospitals, plus establish mechanisms for reimbursement. With Veteran's Day right around the corner, and with a new president and Congress about to take office, what better time for our elected officials to redress this historic health disparity, which has been endured for far too long by those who have placed themselves in harm's way to defend our country? 8 Things You Didn't Know About Counseling Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, is a nationally-renowned psychiatrist at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he is the Lawrence E. Kolb professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry -- the largest department of psychiatry in the United States. He also directs the New York State Psychiatric Institute and is psychiatrist-in-chief of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Lieberman is a past president of the American Psychiatric Association and is a member of numerous scientific organizations. In 2000, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. He is the author of "Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry" (Little Brown & Company, March 2015). The opinions expressed here are his own. Traders are looking for Encana to keep rallying for the rest of the year. OptionMonster's monitoring program shows that about 5,100 December 11 calls were purchased mostly for $0.35 today. This represents fresh buying, as volume was more than 14 times the open interest in the strike. Long calls lock in the price where investors can buy stock, allowing them to profit from a rally with limited capital at risk. Their cheap cost can also generate significant leverage on a percentage basis if shares move in the right direction. (See our Education section) ECA is up 0.93 percent to $10.31 in midday trading and has risen 17 percent in the last three months. The oil and natural-gas producer reported bullish results last Thursday and is expected to announce its next quarterly numbres in pre-market hours on Feb. 23. Overall option volume is about average in ECA so far today, but calls outnumber puts by a bullish 4-to-1 ratio. More From optionMONSTER PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy was fined in absentia on Tuesday for accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of having fake Facebook page "likes", the latest government case against the opposition before a general election in 2018. Hun Sen is taking a belated leap into the digital age in a bid to court young, urban voters ahead of the election, tipped to be the biggest test of his three-decade rule. Hun Sen's Facebook page has surged to over six million likes, comparing to Sam Rainsy's 3.3 million, after he embraced the platform following almost losing a 2013 election when the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) won a surge of support online. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found exiled CNRP president Sam Rainsy guilty of defamation over his social media post in March accusing a ruling party senior official of ordering civil servants to boost Hun Sen's Facebook page "likes" by creating fake accounts. The court ordered Sam Rainsy to pay a total of $6,250 in fines and compensation. Som Soeun, a government official who handles Hun Sen's Facebook page, said that Sam Rainsy was embarrassed after his rival's surge in likes so he had made up the allegation. "This is like a competition," Som Soeun told reporters. "When he lost, he cried foul." Sam Rainsy's lawyer said the opposition planned to appeal. Tension between Cambodia's two main political parties, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party and the CNRP, has risen in recent months, with the opposition complaining of a crackdown in a bid to intimidate critics before the election. The court jailed an opposition senator on Monday for seven years over his Facebook posting of a fake government pledge to dissolve the border with Vietnam, a verdict opposition members say could fuel tension in the Southeast Asian nation. (Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Editing by Nick Macfie) * Canadian dollar at C$1.3366, or 74.82 U.S. cents * Bond prices lower across the yield curve TORONTO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar strengthened against its U.S. counterpart on Tuesday but traded in a tight range as investors readied for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. Cautious expectations of a win for Democrat Hillary Clinton have helped support the loonie at the start of the week after it touched its weakest level since March at C$1.3466 on Friday. A victory for Clinton is seen as less of a threat to Canada's trade-intensive economy. U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has gained on Clinton in recent opinion polls, has said he would renegotiate or scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement if elected. At 9:16 a.m. EST (1416 GMT), the Canadian dollar traded at C$1.3366 to the greenback, or 74.82 U.S. cents, slightly stronger than Monday's close of C$1.3372, or 74.78 U.S. cents. The currency's strongest level of the session was C$1.3351, while its weakest was C$1.3391. Modest gains for the loonie came despite lower oil prices. U.S. crude prices were down 0.85 percent at $44.51 a barrel, pressured by a retreat in U.S. stock index futures and a firmer U.S. dollar. Canadian housing starts slowed in October as condo construction pulled back after a surge in September, data from the national housing agency showed. In other domestic data, the value of building permits fell by 7 percent in September from August, making for the biggest drop in eight months, data from Statistics Canada showed. Canadian government bond prices were lower across the yield curve, with the two-year down 2 Canadian cents to yield 0.564 percent and the benchmark 10-year falling 9 Canadian cents to yield 1.229 percent. Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Lawrence Schembri will give a speech in Halifax on the prospects for Canadian exports. The central bank recently acknowledged that some of the weakness in exports is likely structural. Investors will watch the speech for any further updates on the bank's outlook for the sector, which is seen as being key for Canada's growth. The central bank will release Schembri's prepared remarks at 11:05 a.m. EST (1605 GMT). (Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) * Canadian dollar settles at C$1.3305, or 75.16 U.S. cents * Currency notches strongest close since Oct. 24 * Bond prices lower across the yield curve By Alastair Sharp TORONTO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar gained against a broadly higher U.S. currency on Tuesday, supported by expectations that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is likely to prevail over Republican rival Donald Trump in the U.S. election. The Canadian dollar settled at C$1.3305 to the greenback, or 75.16 U.S. cents, stronger than Monday's close of C$1.3372, or 74.78 U.S. cents. That was its strongest close since Oct. 24, and comes after it touched its weakest level since March at C$1.3466 on Friday. A potential victory for Clinton is seen as less of a threat to Canada's trade-intensive economy than a win for Trump, who has said he would renegotiate or scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement if elected. But the end of the acrimonious campaign could turn focus for the country's currency to other catalysts including the outlook for oil, a major Canadian export. "A clear path to the White House for her would probably mean that fundamentals are coming back, and that is where the Canadian dollar could face some issues," said Alfonso Esparza, a senior market analyst at OANDA. He pointed to a reading of U.S. oil inventories due on Wednesday and a meeting of oil producers later this month seeking agreement on a production cut as key drivers for the loonie post-election. The Canadian currency's strongest level of the session was C$1.3286, while its weakest was C$1.3391. Oil prices settled little changed on the day. Canadian housing starts slowed in October as condo construction slipped after a surge in September, data from the national housing agency showed. In other domestic data, the value of building permits fell by 7 percent in September from August, the biggest drop in eight months, data from Statistics Canada showed. Canadian government bond prices were lower across the yield curve, with the two-year down 5.5 Canadian cents to yield 0.582 percent and the benchmark 10-year falling 49 Canadian cents to yield 1.273 percent. Story continues Structural weaknesses are weighing heavily on Canada's export sector but an improved mix of fiscal and monetary policy has taken some pressure off the central bank to stimulate demand, a senior Bank of Canada official said. The federal Liberal government is pouring money into infrastructure spending in a bid to revitalize a limping economy, investment Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz has supported. (Additional reporting by Fergal Smith, editing by G Crosse) By Catherine Ngai VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Canada's Liberal government on Monday vowed to toughen its response to oil spills at sea, a move that some critics say will increase local tanker traffic and hurt the environment. As part of a marine safety plan to protect oceans, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would spend C$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) over five years on better response measures and research into how to clean up oil spills. Trudeau said the plan "will make Canada a world leader in marine safety." However, environmentalists said the announcement was a sign Ottawa will approve the hotly contested Trans Mountain pipeline expansion next month, which will run from Alberta's oil sands to the Pacific Coast. Trudeau declined to comment on whether he will approve the pipeline. The government has until Dec. 19 to decide whether to allow Kinder Morgan Inc to nearly triple the capacity of the pipeline and expand an existing marine terminal. Environmentalists are concerned about the impact of developing Alberta's oil sands. Aboriginal activists feel they were not consulted fairly. Canada's energy industry and the Alberta government are pressuring Ottawa to approve the project. "Today's announcement ... is the strongest signal yet that the Liberal Government is trying to create a context that would justify their approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline," environmental group Stand.earth said in a statement. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark praised the plan, telling reporters on a call that the new measures appear to address all of the safety, environmental and operational gaps her government previously raised to the federal government. She added that they still need to work out details. Critics say if the pipeline is approved, it will lead to more tanker shipping and boost the chances of an accident. In a statement, Trudeau said the government would make shipping safer by providing better charting in key areas of high traffic, opening new radar sites and increasing the size of an industry fund that pays compensation for spills. Trans Mountain runs from Alberta to the Pacific province of British Columbia, where the local government has laid down five conditions which must be met before it allows pipelines to be built on its territory. One of the demands is that Ottawa upgrade its ability to tackle oil spills. The expanded pipeline would primarily carry heavy crude oil, the bulk of which would be loaded onto tankers at Kinder Morgan's Vancouver marine terminal. ($1 = 1.3367 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Catherine Ngai, writing by David Ljunggren; additional reporting by Nicole Mordant; Editing by Alan Crosby and Lisa Shumaker) VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 8, 2016 / Canamex Resources Corp. (TSXV: CSQ) (OTCQX: CNMXF) (FSE: CX6) ("Canamex") is pleased to provide a progress report on the fall drilling campaign at the Bruner gold project in Nye County, Nevada. The Company has completed 14 holes to date focused on in-fill drilling at the Paymaster resource area. More than half of the holes completed to date have intersected silicified and quartz-veined rocks adjacent or in proximity to old workings, similar to intercepts in 2014 which encountered good gold values up to 12 feet (3.66 meters) grading 1.18 oz/ton (40.33 gm/tonne) Au (drill hole B-1457: 135-147 feet) in silicified and quartz veined rock adjacent to old workings. Production from Paymaster in the 1920s was reported to have averaged $54.61/ton (Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Bulletin 99B, 1984). The price of gold in the 1920s was fixed by the US government at $20.67/ounce, so the old reported production averaged approximately 2.6 ounces/ton. We are targeting the silicified zones surrounding and between these old high-grade workings which carry significant grade but which was not mined previously. A capping grade of 7 gm/tonne (gpt) Au was applied to resource estimation at the Paymaster zone because a significant number of the Paymaster database assays above 7 gpt Au came from previously collected underground channel samples which were not statistically represented in the drill hole data base at the time of the resource estimate. The increased drill density in the area surrounding the old workings is intended to provide sufficient drill hole assay data to reconsider the application of a capping grade in future resource estimations. Roughly half of the ounces estimated in the Paymaster resource area are not included in the NI43-101 resource estimate as a result of the grade capping applied. Samples from the first fourteen holes have been delivered to ALS Minerals' sample preparation facility in Sparks, Nevada, along with independent standards and blanks for proper QA/QC purposes, where they will be dried, split, crushed, and pulverized and sub-sampled for assaying. Representative splits will be sent to the ALS Vancouver laboratory for gold and silver assays. Turnaround time is expected to be 25-30 days. An additional eight holes will be drilled at the Paymaster resource to complete the fall drilling program there. The Company has also completed the first groundwater test hole in the proposed leach pad area on patented claims. No groundwater was encountered, which is as anticipated. Three other groundwater test holes are planned in the proposed heap leach pad and pond area to determine depth to groundwater (if any is encountered within 500 feet of the surface). This information is critical to allow the Company to commence the project permitting process with the State of Nevada Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and will determine whether or not groundwater monitoring wells will be required. Greg Hahn, President and COO and a Certified Professional Geologist (#7122) is the Qualified Person under NI43-101 responsible for preparing and reviewing the data contained in this press release. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD SIGNED: "Gregory A. Hahn" Gregory A Hahn, President and COO Contact: (720) 244-2022 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY NOTE TO US INVESTORS REGARDING RESOURCE ESTIMATION Canamex Resources prepares its resource estimates in accordance with standards of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum referred to in Canadian National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101). These standards are different from the standards generally permitted in reports filed with the SEC. Under NI 43-101, Canamex Resources reports measured, indicated and inferred resources, measurements, which are generally not permitted in filings made with the SEC. The estimation of measured resources and indicated resources involve greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic feasibility than the estimation of proven and probable reserves. U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that any part of measured or indicated resources will ever be converted into economically mineable reserves. The estimation of inferred resources involves far greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic viability than the estimation of other categories of resources. CAUTION CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release includes certain forward-looking statements or information. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements in relation to the timing, cost and other aspects of the planned 2016 program on the Bruner property; the potential for development of the mineral resources; the potential mineralization and geological merits of the Bruner property; and other future plans, objectives or expectations of the Company. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's plans or expectations include the risk that actual results of current and planned exploration activities, including the results of the Company's 2016 drilling program(s) on the Bruner property, will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; the geology, grade and continuity of any mineral deposits and the risk of unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade and/or recovery rates; fluctuating metals prices; possibility of accidents, equipment breakdowns and delays during exploration; exploration cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses; uncertainties involved in the interpretation of drilling results and geological tests; availability of capital and financing required to continue the Company's future exploration programs and preparation of geological reports and studies; delays in the preparation of geological reports and studies; the metallurgical characteristics of mineralization contained within the Bruner property are yet to be fully determined; general economic, market or business conditions; competition and loss of key employees; regulatory changes and restrictions including in relation to required permits for exploration activities (including drilling permits) and environmental liability; timeliness of government or regulatory approvals; and other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators. In connection with the forward-looking information contained in this news release, the Company has made numerous assumptions, including that the Company's 2016 programs will proceed as planned and within budget. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. SOURCE: Canamex Resources Corp. Company Hires Patrick Burke as Chief Operating Officer to Focus on Product Development DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / November 8, 2016 / CannaSys, Inc. (MJTKD), a leading marketing, branding and technology company focused on the regulated cannabis industry, today announced it plans to launch its core product, Citizen Toke, into the Colorado market in time for Thanksgiving. Additionally, the Company has hired Patrick Burke, an alumnus of University of Colorado at Boulder and a Penn State MBA, as its Chief Operating Officer. Patrick is a strong addition to the core team and is spearheading product development and product launch. Citizen Toke is a mobile web based platform that communicates deals and distributes coupons to cannabis consumers and patients through a unique text message based system. The system is designed not only to enhance consumer's retail experience but also provide incentive for consumers to download and redeem coupons in a timely manner. Since closing on the acquisition of Citizen Toke from Betakillers, LLC in August 2016, CannaSys has executed a recapitalization and had not been able to finance the launch of its Citizen Toke product. The Company emerged from recapitalization on October 17, 2016 and has since been focused on market penetration of Citizen Toke. The Company has substantial demand for the product in Colorado as well as California, where we will all be watching the elections closely on November 8. Michael Tew, CannaSys CEO noted, "We are excited to bring Patrick Burke on board to manage the launch of Citizen Toke during this crucial holiday period. Patrick has the right experience in both marketing and product development to help ensure a successful launch period for our core product." "I am delighted with the opportunity to join CannaSys, particularly during this key holiday season," said Patrick Burke, newly appointed COO of CannaSys. "I look forward to working closely with the Company's CEO, Michael Tew, and the Betakillers team as we execute our plan to accelerate user adoption alongside our beta launch partners in Colorado." Story continues About CannaSys, Inc . CannaSys is a leading technology solutions, marketing, and branding company in the regulated cannabis industry. Its core products are delivered "software as a service" to facilitate point-of-purchase transactions, customer relationship marketing solutions, and regulated cannabis laboratory information management systems. CannaSys plans to develop, acquire, and build strategic relationships with other businesses in order to bring additional solutions to market in both established and developing medical and recreational cannabis states. For more information, please visit www.cannasys.com FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This release includes forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, continued acceptance of CannaSys's products, increased levels of competition for CannaSys, new products and technological changes, CannaSys's dependence on third-party suppliers, and other risks detailed from time to time in CannaSys's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Contact: CannaSys, Inc. Michael A. Tew Chief Executive Officer Tel: 720.420.1290 Email: michael.tew@cannasys.com Web: www.cannasys.com SOURCE: CannaSys, Inc. Bob Dole appearing in a Pepsi commercial. Credit: YouTube As the 2016 presidential campaign enters its final hours, most national polls show Hillary Clinton holding a slight lead over Donald Trump. So if Trump doesnt win, what will he do after November 8? Though Trumps unfavorables are at a historic high, past failed presidential candidates have not always been branded as losers. John McCain went on to serve as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and John Kerry is the current secretary of state. But many candidates returned to or joined the private sector. Yahoo Finance researched several unsuccessful candidates over the past 25 years to see what they have been up to after failed White House bids. Mitt Romney Mitt Romney. Credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images Lost to President Barack Obama in 2012 Before he entered public office, Mitt Romney co-founded private equity titan Bain Capital. He went on to serve as chief executive of the the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. After his narrow defeat to Obama in 2012, Romney returned to the private sector. He rejoined Marriott Internationals (MAR) board of directors and became executive partner and Group Chairman of Solamere Capital LLC, a private investment firm co-founded by his son, Tagg Romney. Romney has been a vocal opponent of Trump throughout the election, attacking his character, his business career and his failure to release his tax returns. Al Gore Director Davis Guggenheim shares his Oscar with Al Gore. Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni Lost to President George W. Bush in 2000 Gore is the co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a member of Apples board of directors, his website notes. These roles have allowed Gore to amass a fortune estimated at $200 million. Not a bad consolation prize. Gore is most well known as an environmentalist, though. He has written several books on global warming, including An Inconvenient Truth, which was released alongside a documentary with the same title. In 2007, Gore was the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Bob Dole Bob Dole, left, with Mike Pence in July 2016. Credit: John Moore/Getty Images Lost to President Bill Clinton in 1996 Bob Dole continued to play an active role in public policy after his presidential defeat. The 93-year-old currently serves as special counsel at the law firm Alston & Bird LLP, and was selected to co-lead a bipartisan commission investigating problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007. Story continues Dole also found a second career as a spokesperson. He starred in Viagras first little blue pill television commercial, and later went on to appear in ads for Pepsi, Visa, Dunkin Donuts and Target. Ross Perot Ross Perot in September 2014. Credit: AP Photo/Bruce Smith Lost to President Bill Clinton in 1992 The only non-major party nominee on this list, Ross Perot shares some traits with Trump. Both candidates ran on their successful business records, turned their political inexperience into a positive, outsider trait, and knew how to use cable news networks to receive millionsand by some counts billionsof free media advertising. After his defeat in both 1992 and less notably in 1996, Perot has been largely removed from the political and public sphere. While his influence may have run dry, his bank accounts have not: Perot currently sits at No. 142 on the Forbes 400 list with a net worth of nearly $4 billion from his careers in computer services and real estate. Donald Trump? Donald Trump in July 2015 Credit: AP Photo/Darren Abate If Trump loses, he will have to face the prospect that the famous Trump brand will struggle in his traditional markets of real estate and hospitality. One analysis from Foursquare shows the moguls properties may be losing significant business. Even his daughter, Ivanka Trump, is reportedly concerned about the damage the campaign has done to her brand. Yet Trump may still have some new business ventures on the horizon. The launch of a nightly Facebook Live show, Trump Tower Live, last month fueled reports that the former reality star may be launching a right-wing network after the election. If that happens, he may take a page from James M. Cox, the Democratic candidate for president in 1920 who went on to build the media conglomerate Cox Enterprises. Read Yahoo Finances complete coverage of the election and the economy here. From Cosmopolitan For the past few weeks, our country has watched in horror as the presidential nominee of the Republican party has been exposed by his own words as a sexual predator, then stood on the debate stage in front of the country and displayed profound ignorance of womens experiences. I dont know a single parent in the world who wants their sons to treat women the way Donald Trump does. While watching Trump degrade women and bully immigrants, Muslims, and people with disabilities is terrifying for so many Americans, its even more alarming that the policies hes proposing reflect those views and would take the next generations health, opportunities, and rights back decades. And I dont know a woman in the world who wants the next generation to have fewer rights than she had growing up. But heres what a Donald Trump presidency would mean to our futures, and the futures of the next generation. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. If this happens, those under 26 will no longer be guaranteed coverage under their parents' plans. Insurance companies will no longer be required to cover birth control with no copay, which costs one person up to $600 per year just on birth control pills. Preventive care - like cancer screenings and annual exams - will no longer be guaranteed without out-of-pocket costs. And over 20 millions Americans could lose their health care altogether. At the same time, he is attacking providers who support communities by providing low-cost care. Both Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, have vowed to defund Planned Parenthood. What this really means is that millions of women who rely on critical federal health programs will lose access to breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, well-woman exams, and other preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers. For many, these health centers are the only health-care provider they will see all year. That is why we need Hillary Clinton in the White House. She has been fighting her whole career to ensure that people in America have access to health care. When the health insurance industry stopped her from passing health-care reform in the 1990s, she got right back up and worked with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to help create what is now called Childrens Health Insurance Program, which currently covers more than 8 million children nationally. Story continues And to this day, Hillary Clinton continues that fight. She used the stage at the last presidential debate to embrace reproductive rights, which, according to a CNN a focus group, was the most favored moment of the entire debate. The Trump-Pence administration would do whatever they could to stop women from making their own family-planning decisions. Donald Trump wants Roe v. Wade overturned and has said women should be punished for getting an abortion. While Trump wants to treat us like criminals, Hillary Clinton will stand up to protect our rights to make our own decisions about when to start a family. While Donald Trump thinks pregnant women are an inconvenience for employers, Hillary Clinton believes were well overdue for catching up to the way families live and work today. We are the only industrialized nation that doesnt have paid family leave. She will change that, giving peace of mind and economic security to not only new mothers, but to fathers and adoptive families, as well as others caring for a family member. Thats real progress that respects all our families. Its not just the wage gap that can hold women back. Many of the millions of students in college now will leave with loans that cost more than a down payment on a house. They need better options than being saddled with student debt for the rest of their lives - options such as Hillarys plan to allow every student to graduate from a public college or university in their state tuition-free. For the generation coming of age now, theres a lot at stake in this election. Put simply, its a choice about what kind of country we want to be, what kind of future we want for this generation and the next one. Do we want a president who has worked her entire career to expand opportunities for women and families, who has made the health and well-being of children her priority? Or do we want someone who has spent his lifetime insulting and degrading women, and would set us back decades in ensuring equality and economic security for ourselves and our families? I have been involved in turning out voters my whole life, including when my mom, Ann Richards, was running for governor of Texas. Ive never seen an election with more on the line for women. We will not stand for a president who attacks and bullies us, and demeans our experiences. We deserve one who will work to expand opportunities. so everyone can build their futures and chase their dreams. Hillary Clinton has been doing this her entire life, which is why we need her in the White House. Cecile Richards is the president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Follow Cecile on Twitter. You Might Also Like Chance the Rapper lead Chicagos Parade To The Polls yesterday, and why werent we there?! After that Kit Kat commercial, we didnt think we could love this guy more. Just yesterday, Chance the Rapper lead Chicagos Parade To The Polls, and gave fans a pretty solid musical start to the big day. After performing a set for his Get Out the Vote concert, his parade went straight to an early polling site to vote for Americas next president. Chance the Rapper has been extremely vocal and incredible regarding this election, and its so amazing that hes making the voting experience so memorable for so many. An avid Hillary Clinton supporter, Chance is all about getting millennials out to vote. Were loving the fact that he knows how important it truly is. Chance the Rapper leads hundreds of young voters to long early voting lines downtown so they can cast their ballots: https://t.co/rhnWdcFV6W pic.twitter.com/kURCV0peYr ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) November 8, 2016 (And, were also loving the fact that thousands not hundreds of people voted last night. And he made sure people knew it was thousands.) Dont believe it? Just take a look at this crowd. all these people on their way to vote thanks to @chancetherapper #StayWokeAndVote pic.twitter.com/usAjmjUhsr mads (@madelinejane__) November 8, 2016 And if that wasnt enough Story continues Not only does Chance bring out a crowd, but he inspired people to rock the vote. Surely a lot of I Voted stickers were handed out last night, and were definitely impressed. Even if you werent at the Grant Park show last night, you can still find a way to participate today. Find your local polling place, and dont let lines convince you to turn around and go home. This is a privilege thats definitely worth the wait. And, hey if your line is as long as Chicago lines last night, just download some songs from Chance the Rappers newest release, Coloring Book, and enjoy his incredible tunes in the meantime. The post Chance the Rapper lead Chicagos Parade To The Polls yesterday, and why werent we there?! appeared first on HelloGiggles. Chevron Corporation CVX, the second-largest U.S. oil producer, yielded first gas from Alder field a gas condensate field in the Central North Sea. The Alder project is an initiative by Chevron North Sea Limited and leading integrated energy player ConocoPhillips COP. Chevron's subsidiary Chevron North Sea is the operator of the field with a 73.7% interest in the project. The remaining 26.3% is held by ConocoPhillips. The field is forecast to have a capacity of 110 million cubic feet per day of natural gas and 14,000 barrels per day of liquid condensate. All the production from this field located about 100 miles off of Scotland will be sent to the ConocoPhillips operated Britannia platform via a 17 mile pipeline. Per Chevron, the Alder project was originally considered impossible due to the challenges of the field's reservoir, which lies 14,700 foot beneath the seabed. However, the application of innovative subsea technologies designed to meet the temperature and pressure challenges of Alder helped in the development. Notably, this was the first ever production by the Alder project since its discovery in 1975. The Alder project complements Chevrons strategy of investing and developing resources in the U.K., enhance the production capacity of its portfolio and increase the field life of Britannia a vital asset of Chevron in the North Sea. San Ramon, CA-based Chevron is one of the largest global publicly traded oil and gas companies, based on proved reserves. It is engaged in oil and gas exploration and production, refining and marketing of petroleum products, manufacturing of chemicals, and other energy-related businesses. CHEVRON CORP Price CHEVRON CORP Price | CHEVRON CORP Quote Chevron currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), which implies that the stock will outperform the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months. Some similar-ranked players from the broader energy sector include Braskem S.A. BAK and Ultra Petroleum Corp. UPLMQ. Both these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Story continues In the last four quarters, Braskem posted an average positive earnings surprise of 105.5%. Ultra Petroleum, on the other hand, posted an average positive earnings surprise of 65.91% in the last four quarters. Confidential from Zacks Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand.Click to see them now>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report CHEVRON CORP (CVX): Free Stock Analysis Report BRASKEM SA (BAK): Free Stock Analysis Report CONOCOPHILLIPS (COP): Free Stock Analysis Report ULTRA PETRO CP (UPLMQ): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Chinas National Peoples Congress Standing Committee has given approval to a controversial new cybersecurity law. The law restricts online commentary, requires user identification, and obliges foreign companies to participate in protection of national security. It comes into effect in June next year. Companies that operate in China may be required to cooperate with authorities in security probes by providing technical support. They will have to pass regular security reviews. Companies in key sectors including information services, transport, and finance may also be required to store data locally in China and to only use approved equipment. Failure to do so could mean that they lose their operating license or are shut down completely. Some companies fear that will help their Chinese competitors, while also opening them to corporate or state-backed espionage. Approval of the law was immediately criticized by business groups including the U.S.-China Business Council, the American Chamber of Commerce, and the European Chamber of Commerce. The law also restricts freedom of expression. Online postings that damage national honor, disturb economic or social order, or promote overthrowing the socialist system will be criminal offences. Approval of the law was also criticized by groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the European Union. Despite widespread international concern from corporations and rights advocates for more than a year, Chinese authorities pressed ahead with this restrictive law without making meaningful changes, Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said in a report on Reuters. Related stories Alibaba Pacts With Fosun, Shanghai Academy For Talent Development Japanese hit 'Your Name' Wins China Release 'Doctor Strange' Enjoys $44 Million Opening in China Nov 8 (Reuters) - China Zhongwang Holdings Ltd said the U.S. Commerce Department found in a preliminary determination that some aluminum exports by the company to the United States flouted anti-dumping restrictions imposed in 2010. The Commerce Department initiated the investigation into China Zhongwang after the U.S. Aluminum Extruders Council alleged that the company evaded U.S. import tariffs on aluminum extrusions. China Zhongwang said it did not participate in the voluntary probe as it had stopped production of the aluminum products nearly two years ago. The Commerce Department's determination has no impact on the company's sales and operations, China Zhongwang President Lu Changqing said. Changqing said the company exported an "insignificant" amount of 5050 extrusions - in response to customer requests between 2013 and early 2015. China Zhongwang is the world's second-largest producer of aluminum extrusions - the process of shaping aluminum by forcing it to flow through an opening in a mould to make products for use in industries ranging from electronics to aerospace. The exports made up less than 0.1 percent of the company's total sales over that period, Changqing said. The Commerce Department could not immediately be reached for comment. Over the past year, Europe and the United States have accused China of exporting its excess aluminum and steel production, pressuring global prices. (Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) By Norihiko Shirouzu BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co said on Tuesday it is aiming to more than double its annual vehicle sales to two million cars globally by 2020, riding growth in its Volvo brand and its new Lynk & Co brand. Geely said on its official Wechat micro-blog account that it plans to launch more than 30 new or significantly redesigned vehicle models and aims to become a top 10 global automaker by volume by 2020. Since its acquisition of Swedish luxury brand Volvo from Ford Motor Co six years ago, Geely has taken a lead among Chinese automakers seeking a foothold in the global market. Geely Chairman Li Shufu and Volvo chief Hakan Samuelsson are pursuing a strategy combining Volvo engineering with Chinese capital and manufacturing. State-owned Chinese automaker SAIC Motor and Great Wall Motors Co among others are also looking at breaking into advanced Western markets including the United States. Buoyed by the fast-selling Geely GC9 and its crossover SUV variants, which Geely developed with engineering help from Volvo, sales of Geely cars, including those sold outside China, have been growing faster than the company forecast at the outset of this year. Geely initially projected sales for 2016 at around 600,000 vehicles, but has revised its projection twice and is now forecasting sales of about 700,000 vehicles. We should be able to sell one million cars next year, said a Geely official who declined to be named because that figure is not an official company forecast. Until recently Geely executives have said their cars are not ready for sale in markets such as Europe and the United States dominated by global automakers like Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE), General Motors Co (GM.N) and Toyota Motor Corp . Geely's latest moves indicate the company, controlled by billionaire Li Shufu, is now emboldened to take on mature markets. Last month, Geely unveiled a new brand of cars called Lynk & Co developed in part with Volvo. Geely is aiming Lynk at the middle of the global market. Lynk cars will go on sale in China next year and in Europe and the United States in 2018, the company said. Story continues Geely is expected to build Lynk-brand cars at a new joint plant with Volvo in Taizhou, in eastern Zhejiang province. The plant, operated by Volvo, is expected to start ramping up production this quarter, and will produce compact cars based on an "advanced" vehicle architecture called Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) which the two companies developed together in Sweden. (Reporting By Joe White; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) (Adds background on Geely, Volvo collaboration; other Chinese automakers efforts to expand globally) By Norihiko Shirouzu BEIJING, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co said on Tuesday it is aiming to more than double its annual vehicle sales to two million cars globally by 2020, riding growth in its Volvo brand and its new Lynk & Co brand. Geely said on its official Wechat micro-blog account that it plans to launch more than 30 new or significantly redesigned vehicle models and aims to become a top 10 global automaker by volume by 2020. Since its acquisition of Swedish luxury brand Volvo from Ford Motor Co six years ago, Geely has taken a lead among Chinese automakers seeking a foothold in the global market. Geely Chairman Li Shufu and Volvo chief Hakan Samuelsson are pursuing a strategy combining Volvo engineering with Chinese capital and manufacturing. State-owned Chinese automaker SAIC Motor and Great Wall Motors Co among others are also looking at breaking into advanced Western markets including the United States. Buoyed by the fast-selling Geely GC9 and its crossover SUV variants, which Geely developed with engineering help from Volvo, sales of Geely cars, including those sold outside China, have been growing faster than the company forecast at the outset of this year. Geely initially projected sales for 2016 at around 600,000 vehicles, but has revised its projection twice and is now forecasting sales of about 700,000 vehicles. "We should be able to sell one million cars next year," said a Geely official who declined to be named because that figure is not an official company forecast. Until recently Geely executives have said their cars are not ready for sale in markets such as Europe and the United States dominated by global automakers like Daimler AG, General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp. Geely's latest moves indicate the company, controlled by billionaire Li Shufu, is now emboldened to take on mature markets. Story continues Last month, Geely unveiled a new brand of cars called Lynk & Co developed in part with Volvo. Geely is aiming Lynk at the middle of the global market. Lynk cars will go on sale in China next year and in Europe and the United States in 2018, the company said. Geely is expected to build Lynk-brand cars at a new joint plant with Volvo in Taizhou, in eastern Zhejiang province. The plant, operated by Volvo, is expected to start ramping up production this quarter, and will produce compact cars based on an "advanced" vehicle architecture called Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) which the two companies developed together in Sweden. (Reporting By Joe White; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) From Esquire Donald Trump supporters have had it with Bruce Springsteen. During a Trump rally near Pittsburgh on Sunday night, loud speakers blared Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." until, according to reporters on the ground, the crowd booed so loudly that the person running the music switched it to another Springsteen classic, "Glory Days." More boos. Once they killed "Glory Days," the crowd went nuts. ICYMI, from Trump's PA rally last night: The Boss got booed. pic.twitter.com/m5OknTLTz7 - Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) November 7, 2016 Springsteen is an outspoken proponent of Hillary Clinton and, before her, President Obama. He's also called Trump a "moron." But there's also something ironic about Trump supporters rejecting Springsteen. For decades he's sung about the plight of American's labor force, the same people turning up at many of Trump's rallies. "Born in the U.S.A." is-despite its reputation as a jingoistic chest thumper-a biting rebuke of a nation that sends its men off to war and then ships their job overseas to the very same people they were sent to kill. The Trump crowd is booing Bruce Springsteen. We, as nation, no matter your politics or beliefs, can not tolerate this. - Benjamin Bailey (@BenHBailey) November 7, 2016 The one Springsteen fan caught in the middle is Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor, who's also part of Trump's inner circle, is an outspoken fan of the Boss. In August, he was seen singing and dancing to "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" during a show in East Rutherford, N.J. In a series of messages sent to a Springsteen email listserv in 1999 and 2000-which which Politico uncovered uncovered-Christie recounted a run-in with the Boss. "He was everything I hoped he would be if I ever got a chance to meet him-gracious and incredibly normal in a truly extraordinary way," Christie wrote. "That was my Christmas gift." Story continues On Monday night, the eve of the 2016 election, Clinton is holding a final rally in Philadelphia, where Springsteen is scheduled to play along with another of New Jersey's native sons, Jon Bon Jovi. The Obamas are also expected to attend. Dilemma for @GovChristie: free @springsteen concert at Clinton rally Monday night, just 40 minutes away on the streets of Philadelphia -- pic.twitter.com/7vccRJjwSZ - Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 7, 2016 Is any potential cabinet appointment worth the FOMO Christie will experience? You Might Also Like MATTOON -- The Alpha Upsilon Chapter of ESA is currently conducting its annual "Socks for Soldier's" drive. New socks (black or white, tube socks or crew) are being collected for military men and women through Friday. These socks will be sent to soldiers overseas, as well as to veterans in need. This project is in connection with the Illinois State Council's "Hope for Heroes" campaign. Collection boxes, decorated in patriotic colors, are located at the following areas: the Mattoon Area Family YMCA, Mattoon Rural King, the Sarah Bush Lincoln METS Department and at the following schools: Riddle, Williams, Mattoon Junior High, High School and St. Mary School. The members of Alpha Upsilon thank everyone for their support of this cause. On Nov 7, we updated our research report on CIGNA Corp. CI. The companys third-quarter 2016 consolidated revenue increased 5% year over year to $9.9 billion. It reported adjusted income from operations of $503 million or $1.94 per share, reflecting strong performance in its Commercial Health Care and Global Supplemental Benefits business lines and improving results in its Group Disability and Life segment. The company is consistently making investments in value-based care programs and incentive payment models to provide quality care at affordable cost. It tries to achieve this via collaborative accountable care (CAC) arrangements. It has 160 such arrangements in place across 29 states, serving over two million customers. Its CAC initiatives have also helped in controlling medical cost. Also, the companys Global Health Care and Global Supplemental Benefits businesses are performing strongly with high customer retention levels and solid revenue and earnings growth. Cigna has been growing it membership for the past many quarters. The company ended the third quarter with more than 15.2 million medical members, up 2.2% year over year. We expect a rise in membership going forward, driven by organic growth in Cignas Middle Market, International, Select, and Medicare segments. For 2016, the company expects global medical membership to increase in the low single-digit percentage range. CIGNA CORP Price and Consensus CIGNA CORP Price and Consensus | CIGNA CORP Quote Nevertheless, the company faces a ban on selling private Medicare plans this enrollment season because of an investigation by U.S. regulators. The ban was imposed because the company was found guilty of non compliance with rules relating to Medicare policies. The company has also been sued by the Justice Department over its acquisition by Anthem Inc. ANTM. Cigna carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Other health insurers that have reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings like Cigna include UnitedHealth Group Inc. UNH and Humana Inc. HUM both with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Confidential from Zacks Beyond this Analyst Blog, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report CIGNA CORP (CI): Free Stock Analysis Report HUMANA INC NEW (HUM): Free Stock Analysis Report UNITEDHEALTH GP (UNH): Free Stock Analysis Report ANTHEM INC (ANTM): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Amy Tennery NEW YORK (Reuters) - Betting exchanges and online trading platforms on Tuesday said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a far higher probability of winning than Republican Donald Trump. While Trump made modest gains in probability to win on some online platforms as Americans went to the polls on Tuesday, many gave Clinton a better than 75 percent chance of victory. Bookmaker Paddy Power said Clinton's chance of taking the White House dipped slightly to 81.8 percent on Election Day from 83.3 percent, while Trump's probability improved to 22 percent from 20 percent. "The flow of money is relatively even with it slightly favoring Trump," said Paddy Power spokesman Feilim Mac An Iomaire. He said Paddy Power has seen at least 20 four- and five-figure bets placed on Tuesday. Different bookmakers and exchanges have different closing times for placing bets. Record numbers of bettors are pouring millions into online platforms in the hope of capturing a financial windfall from the election. British gambling company Ladbrokes, which has Clinton's chance of winning at 76 percent and Trump's at 24 percent, said it anticipated more wagers coming in for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election than had been placed on the European Union referendum - or "Brexit" vote. "The U.S. election has gripped the nation," said Ladbrokes spokeswoman Jessica Bridge in a written statement. "It [is] the biggest ever non-sporting event the bookmaking industry has witnessed." British-based internet betting exchange Betfair's "Next President" market was on track to surpass Brexit in amount traded, owing to the surprise results of the referendum that were still fresh in many Britons' minds, spokeswoman Naomi Totten said. The market saw just under $150 million wagered since it opened in November 2012, with $7 million traded in just seven hours on Tuesday. While opinion polls went back and forth leading into Britain's June 23 referendum on whether or not to remain in the European Union, betting odds favored the "remain" campaign. Britons voted to leave by a 52 percent to 48 percent margin. Clinton is trading at an 80 percent chance on Betfair and Trump at a 20 percent chance of winning the White House. Trading platforms in the United States showed similar probabilities. On PredictIt, launched in 2014 and jointly run by Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and Washington, D.C.-based political consulting firm Aristotle International Inc, Clinton had an 80 percent chance of victory down from 81 percent Sunday, while Trump was at 22 percent, up from 20 percent. (This story corrects to say opinion polls went back and forth on 'Brexit' vote instead of most opinion polls predicted Britons would choose to remain in EU, paragraph 11) (Reporting By Amy Tennery; editing by Grant McCool) From Esquire A sudden downpour interrupted the end of Hillary Clinton's speech in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Saturday, and the scene of her enthusiastically wrapping up her speech in the midst of aerial wetness found itself to exuberant Democratic Facebook pages everywhere. Look at her! So indefatigable, even in the face of precipitation! This is the Hillary we rarely get to see, one who is able to soldier on, with or without an umbrella! (People see what they want to see: Alex Jones' InfoWars, for example, called the moment "Hillary Clinton Goes Full Demon.") While her bravery in the face of suboptimal weather should be applauded, it must be noted that she is not a maverick in this area: Rather, she is simply replicating a road-tested move from President Barack Obama, who knew the power of rain optics and utilized it to great benefit in 2008 and 2012. Because if we've learned anything from The Shawshank Redemption, The Notebook or one of the only watchable moments in the Matrix sequels, nothing says "I'm beating the odds" like standing in dramatically-lit rain. If Clinton wants to continue to ride this wave all the way to the White House tomorrow, she should follow some of POTUS's more advanced rain tips, inspired by some of our wisest meteorologists.* Don't Even Notice It. Seen here in Chester, PA in 2008, the then-senator barely seems to acknowledge the deluge, as if to connote that there are far more important issues at stake than mere dampness. "The moment you acknowledge the weather is the moment you cede power to it." - Al Roker, 2008 Transparency as a Metaphor. In 2012, an up-for-reelection Obama visited Glen Allen, Virginia, in rolled-up shirtsleeves that, when soaked, showed his arms. What better symbolic way to say, "I have nothing to hide"? "Embrace the rain and it washes away all artifice. Run from it and be exposed as nothing more than a moist coward." - Willard Scott, 1978 Story continues Bring a Running Mate. Nothing indicates a stronger bond like sneering "F you" to the rain with a friend. This 2008 pose between Obama and Joe Biden in Fredericksburg, Virginia, says, "We can weather any storm together," and means it on at least four levels. If Clinton truly wants to clinch this election, she should meet Tim Kaine at the nearest low-pressure system, pronto, and give him a piggyback ride, dodging lightning bolts right after sunset. "Spend a storm with a friend and you'll have twice the umbrellas and three times the smiles." - Sam Champion, 2012 *These are not actual quotes but oh, if only they were. You Might Also Like Two former Obama administration officials are likely to be named to run Hillary Clintons transition at the State Department and Pentagon if she wins the White House, the two most important agencies for the new presidents foreign agenda. Foreign Policy has learned that Kathleen Hicks, a former Pentagon official and defense policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is helping lead the transition team for the Defense Department. Kurt Campbell, who served as the top diplomat for Asia during President Barack Obamas first term and now is CEO of the Asia Group is assisting with the State Department transition, according to people familiar with the planning. The Clinton campaign is closely guarding the names of agency transition leaders until after the election, wary of appearing overconfident while voters are still heading the polls. People close to her campaign said other Clinton allies currently assisting in the transition process will also be named to lead the process of setting up staff at the Pentagon and State Department. The Clinton team has not publicly put forward agency and department leads for several reasons but principally because you dont start doing an end zone dance on the ten-yard line, Jim Ludes, who worked on President Barack Obamas Pentagon transition team in 2008, told FP. At the State Department, a ballooning list of names are vying to replace John Kerry as secretary of state, including Bill Burns, the former deputy secretary of state, and Wendy Sherman, a former State Department under secretary. At the Pentagon, Michele Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense for policy, is by far the most likely choice for secretary of defense, though Ash Carter has indicated his desire to stay on the job. Campbell, the former assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, is one of a handful of individuals credited with crafting Obamas pivot to Asia, an economic and military policy aimed at cementing Americas presence in the region. A key pillar of the rebalancing is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free trade deal with 11 other Pacific Rim countries. Story continues Since leaving office, Clinton says she no longer supports the deal in its current form. In April, Campbell said it would be very difficult to renegotiate the deal, but adjustments could be made to allay the concerns of the U.S. public. There are always opportunities to adjust on the margins and figure out how to ensure that weve got an agreement which legislators can sell back home, Campbell told the Truman Center, a Washington think tank. Hicks, before joining CSIS, served as principal deputy under secretary for policy, a job overseeing defense strategy and operations. During the election campaign, she sharply rebuked Trumps claims that the United States spends too much on military bases all around the world. In an April op-ed she co-wrote for FP, Hicks called Americas forward military presence a bargain. The job of ensuring a smooth transition from one presidency to the next is a daunting one given the 4,000-plus political appointments a president must make to fill his or her administration. For the State Department and Pentagon, it also involves identifying immediate geopolitical challenges, recommending priorities, and collaborating with the outgoing presidents team in hopes of a smooth handoff. Just controlling the flood of transition papers gushing out of government agencies and outside organizations is a significant challenge. There are now rivers of memos coming in from think tanks, campaign policy teams, and every department, said Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a security and nonproliferation group. Scoring a top position on a presidential transition team can lead to a senior position in the executive branch, but not always. In 2008, the two Pentagon transition leaders for President-elect Obama were Michele Flournoy and John White, a former deputy secretary of defense. While Flournoy advanced to under secretary of defense for policy, White returned to Harvard as a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government. Besides sifting through scores of resumes, a big part of running a transition team is making sure the White House and the picks for cabinet secretaries have the same talking points, especially when it comes to looming national security decisions. One issue either candidate will have to tackle, for instance, is the threat posed by North Koreas nuclear weapons program, which tripped up members of the George W. Bush administration during the 2001 transition. Colin Powell, Bushs pick for secretary of state, surprised the White House when he said the United States would resume negotiations with North Korea started by the Clinton administration aimed at eventually removing Pyongyangs nuclear weapons capability. President Bush and the White House quickly denied this claim, creating confusion and an early embarrassment for Powell. Bush cut him off at the knees and said no were not, said Cirincione. Powell was wounded on day one. Transition officials will be responsible for making sure everyones on the same page. In August, the Clinton campaign announced the most senior members of the transition team, including chair Ken Salazar, a former senator and interior secretary, and four co-chairs: Tom Donilon, a former national security advisor, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan, and Maggie Williams, director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard. Donilon is said to be playing a leading role in the transition process for the intelligence community, as speculation swirls about the selection of the next CIA director and director of national intelligence. Names bandied about include Michael Vickers, the former under secretary of defense for intelligence; Matt Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center; Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA; James Stavridis, a retired admiral and former NATO commander; and Donilon himself. The agencys current director, John Brennan could be asked to stay on in the Clinton administration, a move that would avoid an early, contentious confirmation battle. Morell, Vickers, Stavridis, and Olsen are all rumored to be in the running to head up the Office of the Director of National Intelligence if they dont snag the CIA. Other names in the mix for the State Department are Donilon and Campbell, as well as Nick Burns, an under secretary of state during the Bush administration. Other possibilities include John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, and Stavridis. Photo credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images New York (AFP) - Billionaire populist Donald Trump, tapping into an electorate fed up with Washington insiders, was on the verge of a shock victory Wednesday over Hillary Clinton in a historic US presidential election that sent world markets into meltdown. State-by-state, one-by-one, the 70-year-old maverick Republican tycoon racked up victories in defiance of the forecasts of pundits and pollsters, before arriving within striking distance of the White House. Key races in Michigan and Pennsylvania remained to be called at 0630 GMT, but the 69-year-old Democrat's supporters were in a state of shock and the markets did not wait for a concession speech to react. US futures markets fell five percent in after-hours trading, mirrored by falls in London and Tokyo as the news broke that the world's greatest economy could soon be in the hands of an untested protectionist. The dollar tumbled against the yen and the Mexican peso slumped to a historic low against even the weaker greenback, on concerns that Trump might make good on his vow to build a wall on the US border. In New York, it was a tale of two poll-watching parties -- as Trump's supporters whooped it up in anticipation of a victory for his populist campaign, Clinton's camp succumbed to silent, stunned grief. "It's unbelievable. I didn't know Trump was really going to pull it off," said Glenn Ruti, a New Yorker who works in telecommunications. "I think he's going to go all the way. The country wants change." Attendees at Trump's victory party at a Midtown hotel began chanting "Call it, call it!" In America as a whole, it was a tale of two countries -- as Trump's largely-white fan base celebrated a repudiation of free trade, open borders and diverse communities, liberals and minorities cringed. "It's just unbelievable," said 51-year-old Anabel Evora, who works for a non-profit and flew into New York as a supporter of Clinton's historic bid to be America's first woman president. Story continues "I am praying, and I am not religious," she told AFP. "I am sad. I'm about to cry." At the Mexican-American bar Campeon in Manhattan's Union Square, the mood was one of disgust and apprehension. "If Trump wins, I am going to throw up," said 27-year-old Amy Goldstein. Trump's win, if confirmed, would halt Clinton's quest to reach the White House for at least another four years -- and instead confer the title of president on a man who has been accused by a dozen women of sexual assault and misconduct. "He's so un-American. We're outraged. It's shocking. Racism, stereotyping by religion and sex," said Kate Kalmyka, a 36-year-old lawyer. - 'Drain the swamp' - At the bar in the soaring Trump Tower, the Republican's home base and headquarters, a well-heeled crowd cheered and chanted "Drain the swamp" -- Trump's anti-corruption slogan. "Without a strong United States of America, the rest of the world is in trouble," declared Rina Corey. "We were saved once by Ronald Reagan and I think Donald Trump is in the same path. He's a citizen and not a politician. We need him desperately." In the Florida city of Miami, Cuban Americans -- traditionally strongly pro-Republican -- honked their horns and cheered as they gathered at the iconic Cafe Versailles in Little Havana. "We didn't like the fact that the country was leaning socialist, we lost many jobs," said 45-year-old Miguel Alejandro. "This isn't the country I found in 1993 when I arrived by raft, when they received us with great excitement." As of 0630 GMT Wednesday, Trump had won at least 25 states and 245 electoral college votes, just short of the 270 he needed, and had narrow leads in partial counts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Both these states were won by incumbent president Barack Obama when he was elected in 2008 and re-elected 2012 as America's first black president, and pollsters had expected Clinton to keep them. But an apparent collapse in Democratic support among white voters -- not fully compensated for by increased Latino turnout -- appeared to have doomed Clinton in blue-collar areas of America's Rust Belt. - 'Whatever happens, thank you' - On the legislative side, the Republicans were on course to retain their majority in the US House of Representatives, according to network projections. Clinton and her husband former president Bill Clinton were holed up in their hotel, but she tweeted: "This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything." Trump cast his ballot alongside his wife Melania in a Manhattan school gymnasium. "Right now it's looking very good," he told reporters -- paying no heed to protesters who welcomed him with chants of "New York hates you!" The 2016 race was the most bruising in modern memory. Obama's election in 2008 had raised hopes of uniting Americans. But the current contest has only highlighted the country's divisions -- and the fact that voters are not necessarily happy with their options. Exit polls by ABC News and NBC News found that both Clinton and Trump are seen as untrustworthy by majorities of voters, while most find Trump's temperament unpresidential. By Amanda Becker and Emily Stephenson PHILADELPHIA/MANCHESTER, N.H., Pa. (Reuters) - The U.S. presidential campaign neared its end on Monday in the same angry tone it began, with Republican Donald Trump calling Democrat Hillary Clinton a "phony" and Clinton accusing him of splitting the country, as a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll showed Clinton with a strong chance of winning. Clinton and Trump raced through several battleground states in a last-ditch attempt to encourage their supporters to show up and vote on Tuesday. Clinton sought to capture more support from Latinos, African-Americans and young people, while Trump looked to win over disaffected Democrats and rev up a middle class that he said has been sidelined by the political establishment. The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project gave Clinton a 90 percent chance of defeating Trump, seeing her on track to win 303 Electoral College votes out of the 270 needed, to Trump's 235. With surveys indicating a tight race in Michigan, which Democrats have long counted on winning, both candidates made campaign appearances there. Pennsylvania, another vote-rich state, was also seen as fertile ground by both camps in the closing hours of their campaigns. Clinton held the biggest rally of her campaign in Philadelphia on Monday night, drawing a crowd that the city's Fire Department put at 33,000 to hear her and President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and rockers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. "Tomorrow we face the test of our time," Clinton told supporters, saying they could decide what sort of country they wanted to live in. "We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America." Obama, who campaigned earlier in the day for Clinton in Ann Arbor, Michigan, reiterated his charge that Trump is "temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief, and said Clinton offered an experienced and accomplished alternative. "You don't just have to vote against someone, you have someone extraordinary to vote for," Obama said. "She will work and she will deliver, she won't just tweet." Trump told voters at an evening rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, they had one question facing them at the ballot box on Tuesday. "Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want America to be ruled again by the people?" he asked. "Tomorrow the American working class will strike back." With only hours left before Election Day, the Clinton campaign was boosted by Sunday's unexpected announcement by FBI Director James Comey that the agency stood by its July decision not to press any criminal charges in an investigation of Clinton's email practices while she was secretary of state. The latest opinion polls measuring popular support for each candidate showed Clinton narrowly ahead. She had a 5 percentage point lead over Trump nationally, with 44 percent to 39 percent support, according to latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. Races in the hotly contested states of Florida and North Carolina were shifting, however, from favoring Clinton to being too close to call. Clinton, who is trying to become the first woman elected to the White House, had a 4 percentage point lead over Trump in separate polls by Fox News and CBS News released on Monday. Financial markets brightened on the latest twists in what has been a volatile presidential campaign. Global stock markets surged, as did the U.S. dollar, putting them on track for their biggest gains in weeks, as investors saw Sunday's announcement by Comey as boosting Clinton's chances of winning. Clinton's comfortable lead had eroded since late last month and investors had been unnerved by the tightening race. Clinton is considered a known quantity, while Trump is considered a political wild card. Victory is ultimately determined not by the popular vote, but by capturing a majority of the votes in the Electoral College, which awards votes on a state-by-state basis, meaning that a handful of states where the race is close assume an outsized importance. "LED BY STUPID PEOPLE" Trump, a former reality TV star who had never previously run for public office, began his last day of campaigning in Sarasota, Florida. He and Clinton have been locked in a tough battle Florida, with its large Hispanic-American population. Trump gave no ground to Clinton or to polls showing her with a narrow lead. Predicting he would win, he told supporters in Sarasota that Clinton "is such a phony," saying, "We're tired of being led by stupid people." Trump also stopped in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before closing with a late-night rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Clinton, in addition to Philadelphia, stopped in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and visited Michigan before wrapping up with a midnight rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. COMEY SURPRISE The FBI's Comey sent shockwaves through the race when he told Congress on Sunday that investigators had reviewed recently discovered emails and found no reason to change their July finding that there was no criminal wrongdoing in Clinton's use of a private email server, rather than a government system, while she was the top U.S. diplomat from 2009-2013. Trump, who drew wide criticism last month when he said the election was rigged against him and that he would not yet commit to respecting the outcome, questioned the thoroughness of the FBI review and said the issue would not go away. Tammy Regis, 42, a disabled Army veteran who served in Iraq and now lives in Palmetto, Florida, said she would not trust the outcome if Clinton wins. "If she wins, no I won't. I just think it's really shady," Regis said, adding that she did not know why Comey "flip-flopped" on Clinton's emails. Since entering the race in 2015 and then seeing off 16 Republican rivals to win the party nomination, Trump has challenged political norms with bombast, personal attacks and unorthodox policies, including proposals to bar Muslims from entering the United States and build a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. In October, his campaign was rocked by the circulation of a 2005 video in which he boasted about groping women. While such controversies have given Clinton the edge among women and minorities, Trump enjoys solid support among non-college-educated whites. For both candidates, turning that support into actual votes is critical to building the electoral votes needed to win. The make-up of Congress is also at stake on Tuesday. As candidates running for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives wrapped up their campaigns, Republicans were seen as making some gains in their quest to hold onto majority control of both chambers. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Ann Arbor, and Alana Wise, Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey in Washington, and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Writing by Richard Cowan and John Whitesides; Editing by Alistair Bell and Leslie Adler) MATTOON -- Starting Friday night, Mattoon Area PADS leaders plan to hold a week-long series of special events to share information about local hunger and homelessness. Community members are invited to spend a "Night Without a Home" outside the PADS shelter Friday and dine at a community breakfast there Saturday. Other events include a presentation about local poverty and hunger, a panel discussion with PADS guests, and a fundraising meal for a new shelter. PADS Executive Director Michael Stopka said the events, timed to coincide with National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, are being held to raise awareness about PADS and share information with the community about this nonprofit group's temporary shelter and soup kitchen services. The events will kick off at 9 p.m. Friday with "Night Without a Home," when participants can experience homelessness by staying overnight in cardboard boxes outside of the PADS shelter at 2017 Broadway Ave. PADS will provide the boxes, and the event is set to go on regardless of weather conditions. "It's a big commitment and a big ask, but I think it will be a big eye-opening experience," Stopka said. He added that participants are welcome to warm themselves in the shelter if they are cold, use the restrooms there, and tour this facility. The following morning, "Night Without a Home" participants and other community members are invited to attend a community breakfast from 5 to 10 a.m. Saturday at the shelter. PADS' events will continue on Tuesday with a "Seminar on Local Poverty and Food Insecurity" by Eastern Illinois University professor Michael Gillespie, who studies this topic in East Central Illinois. His presentation will be held at 6 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 312 N. 20th St., Mattoon. Current and past overnight guests of the PADS shelter are scheduled to lead a "Faces of PADS Panel" discussion at 6 p.m. Nov. 16 at Maranatha Baptist Church, 3400 DeWitt Ave., Mattoon. "I think this will be a great evening for the community to come out and see who has stayed here, who is staying here and how their lives have changed because of PADS," Stopka said. Shelter Services Coordinator Dana Tell said she thinks it's important for Mattoon area residents to know that the shelter's overnight guests are community members too. "These are people we went to high school with. These are our neighbors," Tell said. The special events will conclude with a cornbread and bean supper from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 18 at Wesley United Methodist Church, 2206 Fourth St., Charleston. Stopka said this benefit is part of PADS' fundraising campaign to construct a new shelter building on donated land at 1812 Western Ave. In addition, PADS representatives are scheduled to speak at local churches on Sunday and Nov. 20. Tell said PADS will continue giving such presentations throughout the month, and later upon request. "We have just been going to churches to explain our mission and how we help the community," Tell said. More information is available by calling the shelter at 217-234-7237 or going online to www.mattoonareapads.org. What could possibly make this election season worse? If it didn't end on Election Day. Although most people, regardless of their side of the aisle, are hoping that the presidential race will be over by Nov. 9, there is a rare chance that the election could drag on. That could happen if the Electoral College votes result in a tie, or if no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes. There are nearly 100 different scenarios in which the Electoral College could be tied 269-269, according to 270towin.com. "You can always get a 269 tie if you put together the pieces just right," said James Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine at Farmington. [Election Day 2016: A Guide to the When, Why, What and How] Still, most political analysts aren't holding their breath for a tie. "It's very unlikely," Sam Wang, a neuroscience professor at Princeton University who runs the Princeton Election Consortium website, told Live Science in an email. Recent polling and election prediction sites such as fivethirtyeight.com put the odds of a tie at just 0.6 percent and the odds of electoral deadlock (when no one gets a majority because of third-party candidates) at just 1 percent. Tiebreakers In the event that neither candidate gets the majority of the vote, the House of Representatives would decide the president, said Lyle Scruggs, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut. However, congress is still bound by the electoral vote. [Election Day 2016: How Are the Votes Counted?] According to Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, "[t]he Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse [sic] by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have [sic] a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse [sic] the President." Story continues In other words, if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump each have 269 electoral votes, then the current House of Representatives must choose one of them. Because Republicans hold a majority in Congress, Trump would very likely be chosen, Scruggs said. If neither candidate gets a majority of votes, then third-party candidates come into play if they can earn electoral votes. (The 12th Amendment subsequently limited Congress to choosing among the top three candidates.) Because of the winner-takes-all structure of most states' electoral votes, third-party candidates typically face an uphill battle in presidential elections. For instance, in 1992, Ross Perot won nearly one-fifth of the popular vote but earned 0 electoral votes, Scruggs said. The last third-party candidate to take a significant chunk of the electoral college was the segregationist George Wallace in 1968, who had a strong showing in the South, Melcher said. [7 Great Dramas in U.S. Congressional History] This year, a third-party candidate's chance of disrupting the race is slim. "There's only one person who has a chance, really, of getting any electoral votes besides Trump and Clinton," Scruggs told Live Science. "His name is Evan McMullin." McMullin, a former CIA operative who hails from Utah, has a decent shot at taking electoral votes in his home state, a heavily Republican state that has recoiled from Trump's candidacy, Scruggs said. "In three-person polls [in Utah], they're polling pretty closely together," Scruggs said. "Some have McMullin with 30 percent, Trump with 32 percent and Clinton with 28 percent." If McMullin prevails in Utah, the House could, theoretically, choose him, though it's extremely unlikely that the Republicans would disregard the popular vote and choose a relatively unknown candidate, Scruggs said. When the Constitution was originally written, the second-place finisher in the presidential race would become the vice president. The flaws in that setup became crystal clear in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson's enemy, Aaron Burr, tied him for electoral votes and the House picked Jefferson as president only after 35 votes. (This spurred the passage of the 12thAmendment, which separates the presidential and vice presidential races.) [The Nastiest, Strangest Political Elections in U.S. History] Historical roots Though the idea of Congress picking the president may seem odd, the framers of the Constitution actually envisioned the president being chosen by representatives similar to how Parliament chooses a prime minister in the United Kingdom, Scruggs said. "Because there weren't political parties, they expected the House would typically choose their president," Scruggs said. When the political system was designed, the Founding Fathers envisioned each state sending its electoral votes to a local or regional favorite. With several candidates vying for the top post, Congress would have the final say, Scruggs said. "The idea was that the electors were going to use wise judgment," Melcher said. However, that system quickly degenerated. "The idea of electors being robots who are mostly going to vote predictably that kicks off in 1800," Melcher said. Jefferson essentially created the notion of voting for an elector who will promise to vote a certain way, Melcher said. By creating the seeds of political parties, Jefferson also ensured that third-party candidates would have a much tougher time gaining a foothold, Melcher said. The last time Congress chose the president was in 1824, after a four-way race resulted in no one gaining a majority of electoral votes. After much wheeling and dealing, Congress chose John Quincy Adams as president, Melcher said. Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Hillary Clinton appeared poised to win the presidency on Tuesday after a bitterly divisive campaign in which she vowed to take a tougher stand against Russia and other U.S. adversaries, while her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, seemed to embrace Moscow and questioned the underpinnings of modern American foreign policy. But despite her hawkish inclinations, the countrys first female commander in chief will find her room for maneuver severely constrained by the legacy of caution left by her predecessor, broader global trends undermining Washingtons position, and growing skepticism at home of the internationalist ethos that has girded U.S. foreign policy since World War II. I think Clinton will feel a lot of pressure to at least look more hawkish, said Richard Gowan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. But the reality is in a lot of cases be it Syria, be it the South China Sea there is no simple military gesture that will reassert American power overnight. National tracking polls and early-voting results suggested that Clinton held a slight lead ahead of Tuesdays vote, though Donald Trumps campaign pointed to recent gains in battleground states such as Florida and Ohio to insist it still has a path to victory, albeit a narrow one. Down ballot, Democrats are only slightly favored to wrest control of the Senate from the Republicans, with the outcome hinging on a few tight races. As the top diplomat in President Barack Obamas first term, Clinton often pushed for more forceful action but was sometimes overruled. In 2012, she and other members of the cabinet argued for providing weapons to moderate Syrian rebels, but Obama decided to hold off. In Libya, in 2011, Clinton urged prompt military intervention by the United States and its allies to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, persuading Obama to back a NATO-led coalition that eventually toppled Muammar al-Qaddafis regime. Now, with an expected victory on Nov. 8, Clinton will finally have a chance to put her recipe diplomacy backed by hard power to the test. In many areas, that will simply translate into a continuation of Obama-era policies. She has endorsed the U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the targeting of the groups leaders, and efforts to counter its online propaganda. And like Obama, she has ruled out the possibility of deploying a large ground force to defeat the Islamic State. Story continues In other areas like how to face down Russia in Syria or give new life to NATO Clinton has shown signs of her talons, compared with Obamas more detached approach. But in the four years since Clinton stepped down as secretary of state, Americas influence and leverage have deteriorated abroad, from the Middle East to Europe to the South China Sea, complicating her ability to shape the world more in Washingtons favor. Years of aloof policies from the Obama administration from the ill-fated red line in Syria to halfhearted support for the so-called pivot to Asia will sap the credibility of the next administration even before it is sworn into office. Russia and China have asserted themselves militarily and diplomatically, harking back to Cold War-era competition for influence in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and East Asia. Both countries have also modernized their armies, navies, and air forces, narrowing the technological edge upon which the U.S. military relies. And a populist wave of anger in the United States and around the world hostile to migrants, free trade, and globalization threatens to derail international efforts to tackle an unprecedented refugee crisis, sluggish economic growth, and climate change. Credibility gap Washington has steadily lost leverage in the Syrian civil war since Obamas about-face in August 2013. After declaring that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime against civilians would represent a red line, Obama then declined to take military action against President Bashar al-Assad after he gassed his own people in the suburbs of Damascus. That moment, which left U.S. allies bewildered and outraged, has come to define Obamas handling of the Syrian war. Critics on the left and right say U.S. credibility writ large has been seriously damaged by the episode. Rightly or wrongly, that decision not to act when a presidential red line had been crossed is seen elsewhere as a sign of U.S. weakness and/or isolationism, said Peter Westmacott, who served as British ambassador to the United States until last January. So the next president, whoever it is, will have to think about restoring perceptions of U.S. leadership, both to reassure nervous allies and to show tyrants they cant do as they please, he told Foreign Policy. And the red line, experts and foreign diplomats say, has echoes in other foreign-policy setbacks, from Russias annexation of Crimea in Ukraine to unchecked Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. Dwindling U.S. credibility extends to other issues that promise to complicate Clintons agenda. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) a 12-nation trade deal between the United States and big Asian and Latin American economies had for years been billed as the crown jewel of the U.S. rebalance to Asia. But bipartisan opposition to the agreement in Washington including from Clinton herself, a onetime champion of the TPP has doomed the deal. The likely demise of the TPP, following years of painstaking negotiations, has dealt a blow to Americas reputation among allies in Asia and opens the door for China to ink a regional trade pact of its own. Clinton helped lay the groundwork for the trade agreement but withdrew her support in the face of strong opposition within her own party, led by her opponent in the Democratic primaries, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and later by her Republican rival. Reality check The erosion of U.S. credibility comes as the world has been radically transformed since Clinton left the State Department, let alone since her last stint in the White House. A more muscular Russia and China are carving out global roles for themselves, the Middle East is riven by a violent sectarian rivalry, Europe is weak and divided, and once steady U.S. allies, like the Philippines, are now courting Beijing. In Syria, thanks to a largely hands-off approach to rebels fighting the Syrian regime, the United States now has little influence over opposition fighters battling Damascus and few viable options to strengthen them. And North Korea seems to have found the way to pair nuclear weapons with long-range missiles, potentially putting U.S. territories and not just American allies at risk. Clinton has proffered hawkish prescriptions for years. In the Senate, she voted for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and as the top U.S. diplomat, she backed sending more troops to Afghanistan, keeping U.S. forces in Iraq, arming rebel forces in Syria, and bombing forces loyal to Qaddafis regime in Libya. Some of her critics say her outlook is outdated and fails to take into account the limits of Americas influence and the rise of new powers. Shes stuck in the 1990s, said Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor of international relations and history at Boston University. She appears to think that the United States is the sole superpower and the indispensable nation, tropes that no longer describe reality. That new reality means military options are often less palatable and, in some cases, almost unworkable. In Syria, for instance, Clinton has often spoken of a no-fly zone that could shield civilians. At the final presidential debate last month, Clinton said it would offer a way to stem the flow of refugees and frankly gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians so that perhaps we can have the kind of serious negotiation necessary to bring the conflict to an end and go forward on a political track. But she has never explained in detail precisely what she has in mind or what she is prepared to do to safeguard Syrian civilians from the regimes barrel bombs and chemical weapons or the missiles of Russian fighter jets. Nor has she addressed the possibility that a no-fly zone could gradually morph into an all-out military assault on the Syrian regime, as NATOs 2011 intervention did in Libya. And with Russian warplanes based in Syria bombing rebels and civilians in Aleppo, and advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles deployed across government-held territory, Clintons pledge to create such a zone could prove impossible unless the next president is ready to risk a direct conflict with Russia. She could arm Syrian rebel forces more aggressively than the Obama administration, which has been wary of indirectly equipping extremists. And some foreign-policy experts and former U.S. officials have called for launching limited missile strikes or airstrikes on the Syrian regimes bases if Damascus violates cease-fire agreements. But confronting the Syrian regime carries the risk of dangerous unintended consequences, by either triggering a shooting war with Russia or giving aid to al Qaeda-linked extremists. And Syria is not the only place Russia is testing the United States. Moscows nuclear saber rattling, its armed intervention in Ukraine, its cyber-interference in the U.S. election, and its aggressive posture toward European neighbors have all sparked greater tensions with Washington. Early in the next administration, the new president have to weigh the risks and rewards of retaliating against Russia for its efforts to disrupt the American election by hacking the Democratic National Committee and her campaign. Even before U.S. intelligence agencies announced in October that Russia was behind the hacks, Clinton told the American Legion that as president, she would treat such cyber-espionage like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic, and military responses, she said. Clintons options for hard power in Asia arent much more appealing. As secretary of state, Clinton traveled frequently to Asia and rebuked China over its human rights record and its coercive tactics in the South China Sea. But translating that tougher posture into a more hawkish approach is fraught with peril, too. Clinton could try to reassert U.S. power by backing more frequent and more aggressive freedom of navigation patrols by U.S. ships and aircraft in the South China Sea. That is something Obamas White House was often reluctant to do to avoid upsetting Beijing and endangering other big-ticket bilateral diplomatic initiatives, from curbing North Koreas nuclear program to battling climate change. But the U.S. military position in Asia has been thrown for a loop by the election of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, an upstart populist nursing a longtime grudge against U.S. influence in his country. If Duterte succeeds in curtailing defense cooperation with Washington, limiting U.S. forces access to air and naval bases near the South China Sea, that will further complicate U.S. efforts to push back against Beijing. Toxic politics The vocal U.S. opposition to the TPP underscores the challenges Clinton will face in trying to advance a more interventionist and engaged foreign-policy agenda while being bogged down by a toxic domestic political climate. The next president will be faced with the daunting challenge of trying to reassure Americans their countrys political system is not dysfunctional and foreign partners that U.S. democracy is not in decline. The election has called into question not just the health and legitimacy of U.S. democracy but a decades-old consensus about the broad outlines of Americas place in the world. Apparently sick of an expansive and expensive role as the worlds police, most Americans now oppose military adventurism abroad and favor redirecting resources to domestic priorities. A source close to the Clinton campaign acknowledged to FP late on Monday that she would face constraints on foreign policy, but argued the former secretary of state would be well-positioned to navigate those challenges. Part of her task going in will be addressing an American public that has also lived through this election campaign where the basic tenets of American foreign policy over the last several decades have been questioned, he said, adding that the case for American leadership in the world has not been celebrated or discussed in the ways that you want it to over the course of this campaign. It remains unclear to what degree Clinton will be able to even focus on foreign policy, given the divisive political atmosphere and the pressing need to address Americans economic anxieties. Philosophically more in tune with many Republican lawmakers on some questions of national security, Clinton will have an uphill battle trying to find common ground. Even those who opposed Trump have cause to fear a backlash in conservative districts if they are seen to be cooperating with a new president who is deeply disliked by most Republican voters. Making matters worse, Clinton cannot bank on full-throated support from her own party, either. Some Democrats in Congress gave her calls for a no-fly zone in Syria a lukewarm response. And if Democrats manage to defeat some hawkish GOP incumbents such as in Wisconsin or North Carolina to retake a majority in the Senate, Clinton could actually find herself with fewer potential foreign-policy allies. Ultimately, events could waylay the best-laid of plans, hawkish or otherwise. Syrian and Russian forces are gearing up to finish off rebel fighters in Aleppo and secure control over the city before the next president takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, delivering a troubling fait accompli that could hamstring the president-elect. You may have a situation, Gowan said, where the first test will be to essentially manage defeat. Photo credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images CHICAGO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - CME Group Inc said on Tuesday it permanently barred from its markets two traders who prearranged trades to transfer equity between accounts two years ago. The owner of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange banned Jun Jin for prearranging transactions in CME FX option instruments from May 2014 to July 2014, according to a disciplinary notice. Jin was also fined $50,000. Diego Di Stefano was banned for prearranging trades in E-mini S&P futures from September 2014 to November 2014 and fined $75,000, another notice said. Contact information for the traders could not immediately be found. A CME panel found each guilty after they failed to answer the charges against them, according to the notices, which did not say whether the cases were related. (Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Alan Crosby) CHICAGO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Chicago Mercantile Exchange live cattle futures on Tuesday were weakened by expectations for steady-to-lower cash prices by Friday, said traders. * They said sporadic short-covering and bargain buying provided downside market support. * At 09:29 a.m. CDT (1527 GMT) December was down 0.075 cent per pound to 101.575 cents, and February was 0.225 cent lower at 102.575 cents. * Investors anxiously await the sale of slaughter-ready, or cash, cattle that last week in the U.S. Plains brought $102 to $105 per cwt - steady to $3 lower than a week earlier. * Future's recent losing skid, about 14,000 more cattle for sale than a week ago and seasonally lackluster wholesale beef demand could pressure cash prices, said analysts and traders. * The strategy by packers to maintain brisk slaughter rates, while taking advantage of their highly-profitable margins, has pumped more beef into the retail sector, a trader said. * Monday afternoon's choice wholesale beef price slumped $1.43 per cwt from Friday to $187.27. Select cuts dropped 71 cents to $172.32, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. * Wednesday morning's Fed Cattle Exchange auction may offer cash price direction. This week's auction has close to 13,000 animals for sale. * A few cattle and hog packing plants will be closed on Friday in observance of the U.S. Veteran's Day holiday. * On Veteran's Day a year ago, packers processed 103,000 cattle and 403,000 hogs, according to USDA estimates. FEEDER CATTLE - November was down 0.375 cent per pound to 123.700 cents, and January was up 0.300 cent to 116.550 cents. * CME feeder cattle felt pressure from generally weak live cattle contracts, but were supported by their discounts to the exchange's feeder cattle index for Nov. 4 at 126.46 cents. LEAN HOGS - December was up 0.075 cent per pound to 47.175 cents, and February was 0.400 cent higher at 54.375 cents. * Monday's pork cutout price bump, and only modest cash price declines despite robust hog production, underpinned CME lean hogs, said traders. Story continues * USDA reported Monday afternoon's average cash hog price in Iowa/Minnesota at $43.81 per cwt, down 7 cents from Friday. * The afternoon wholesale pork price on Monday rose 96 cents per cwt from Friday to $74.30, the USDA said. * Packers on Monday processed 443,000 hogs, 12,000 more than a year ago, according to U.S. government estimates. (Reporting by Theopolis Waters in Chicago) After a campaign that made media coverage an election issue, Variety examines the spin throughout Election Day across major TV news outlets. 4:17 p.m. CNN has been giving a fair amount of attention to issues in North Carolina, jumping on breaking news that the states board of elections will keep polling places in eight precincts open late though not as late as the 90 minutes that the Durham board of elections wanted. The extensions were a result of computer glitches at polling places that caused massive delays and long lines with some voters being turned away. North Carolina has been a hub of concern over voter suppression this election, and CNN has turned to the state multiple times throughout the day. Earlier in the broadcast, Trump surrogate Andre Bauer even echoed the sentiments of Democratic surrogates on the panel, saying that he wanted Republicans to win but for them to win fairly. CNN noted that Durham is 38% African American. 4 p.m. PT: Just before the top of the hour, CNN calls Indiana and Kentucky for Trump and Vermont for Hillary Clinton its first states of he night. Keep in mind that the network barely has any poll results from those states. Is the network making these calls because some threshold has been crossed in terms of data received, or because its a way to gin up the drama of the moment? 3:20 p.m. PT: with the first East Coast polls having closed, CNN is entering number-crunching mode even if the numbers arent particularly crunchy. At the giant touchscreen map, Wolf Blitzer and John King pour over vote totals for Indiana and Kentucky with 1% of the vote having been counted in each state. Both Indiana and Kentucky have long been expected to go to Trump anyway. With more polls closing at the top of the next hour, CNN is transitioning from What will the news look like? to This is what the news looks like. As that transition occurs, the network is leaning slightly less on its panel of pundits and surrogates, moderated by Anderson Cooper, and more on data and analysis from the likes of Blitzer, King, Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and political direct David Chalian. But without any real news to report yet, the coverage is all urgency and little substance. Story continues We have another key race alert, Blitzer says as the network comes back from commercial before announcing with the aid of surging music and flying graphics that 2% of the vote is now in in Indiana. But that doesnt mean that the panel which consists largely of pundits with allegiances on either side of the race is going away. As data moves in, it looks likely that the panel will turn into a spin room of sorts, at least until the race starts to take shape. 2:10 p.m. PT: CNN touts its first exit-poll numbers of the night. On the question of when voters decided on a candidate, 7% said in the last few days, 5% in the last week, 13% in October, 13% in September, and 62% before September. On which qualities matter most in a candidate, 15% answered cares about me, 38% said can bring change, 22% said right experience and 22% said good judgment. This is the networks first new data of the day besides turnout numbers, but its being treated as if its relating a lot more information than it is. The first polls close at 3 p.m. PT. More interesting is the exit pollings breakdown early on of the demographics of the electorate 70% white, 12% black, and 11% Hispanic. The breakdown of the 2012 electorate was 72% white, 13% black, 10% Hispanic. 11 a.m. PT: Reporting from outside Trump Tower, CNN reporter Sara Murray made note of the lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign Tuesday in Nevada, where Trump claimed that early-voting polls stayed open illegally late to allow voters who showed up after polls closed to vote. Clark County officials, Murray said, claimed that they only stayed open long enough to allow voters who were in line before polls were set to close to vote. We have at least our first legal challenge of the day, Murray said. 9:40 a.m. PT: With polls open from coast to coast, CNN anchors and pundits wrestled with the question of how what was supposed to be a conventional Presidential election wound up being the most fraught and vitriolic in modern history. I think were missing a yuge sea change here in our country, said journalist Carl Bernstein, sitting on a political panel on At This Hour with anchors Kate Bolduan and John Berman and appropriating one of GOP nominee Donald Trumps signature expressions. And thats the most significant thing about this election, the idea that a demagogue could run an essentially racist, anti-immigrant, nativist campaign, become the nominee of the Republican party, almost capture the presidency and perhaps capture it this is astonishing. Bolduan attempted to reel the conversation and the Trump phenomenon back into the mainstream. But millions of voters who voted for Donald Trump and millions who support him dont describe that man in that way at all, she said. But Bernstein appeared to fight against the CNN tendency toward false equivalence, arguing that there is evidence within Trumps biography and the events of the campaign to talk factually about that campaign being racist, even if all Trumps supporters are not. In terms of the campaign he ran, in terms of his personal history, in terms of the radical notion of who this candidate is, this is a yuge event in our history, he said. It reflects a change in terms of who the people of the country are and how they view our political system, and it is going to reverberate for many, many years. Did anybody think there was a possibility of this when it started? The dour, soul-searching tone characterized a broadcast that seemed to be marking time until news worth reporting would begin to pour in later in the day. With no exit-polling yet, much less poll results, a group of panelists with takes more analytic than partisan attempted to make sense of an event that would soon end, but whose final chapter had yet to unfold. When Donald Trump announced that he would run for President 16 months ago, it happened during this show, Berman said. And I admit that I was one of those people who thought he would never run. Once he announced, I thought he would never stay in the race. Once he stayed in the race I thought he would never win the nomination. Aside from punditry, analysis, and hand-wringing, CNN also offered the remotes from polling places typical of election-day broadcasts. Reporter Rosa Flores appeared live from Pottawattamie County, Iowa. The word here is efficiency, Flores said, Because these poll workers have been working very very hard to ensure that the lines are short. The camera then moved to a table in a mostly empty hall behind which sat six poll workers and in front of which stood one lone voter. As the camera panned the room, it showed poll workers outnumbering voters roughly two-to-one, with most voting booths empty. Related stories Hillary Clinton 'Delete Your Account' Dis to Donald Trump Is Most-Retweeted Post of 2016 Election (So Far) George W. Bush Didn't Vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton Photo of Donald Trump Peeking at Wife Melania Voting Goes Viral More than 11 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, or COPD, according to the American Lung Association -- and many more have the serious lung disease but don't know it. The third leading killer of Americans, COPD -- a catch-all term for emphysema and chronic bronchitis -- leads to shortness of breath and can disrupt sleep, work and life in general. Though it's not curable, treatment can provide some relief and improve quality of life. Yet frequently environmental factors that may worsen symptoms go unchecked. Case in point: uncomfortably hot temperatures inside and indoor air pollution, namely particulate matter from secondhand smoke to dust. A study conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers found that people with COPD reported an increase in symptoms -- breathlessness, cough and sputum, or saliva plus mucus coughed up from the respiratory tract -- and the use of rescue inhaler medications associated with an increase in indoor temperatures. The study was conducted in Baltimore during the warmest months, when the maximum temperature inside homes routinely exceeded 80 degrees on days when study participants didn't use central air conditioning to cool their homes. Increases in indoor air pollution exaggerated the adverse effects, according to the research published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society in September. "The conditions of having indoor heat and then indoor pollution result in an effect that's greater than either of those alone," says Dr. Meredith McCormack, the lead study author and an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. [See: 16 Ways Your Body Adjusts to a New Climate.] Amid concerns about climate change that's expected to lead to more frequent and severe heat waves in places like Baltimore, researchers say the study supports strategies aimed at changing the indoor environment to minimize health risks for those with COPD. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, exposure to indoor air pollution is one of the foremost environmental public health risks, as studies show that air pollution is frequently more highly concentrated indoors than out. We also spend the vast majority of our time indoors, the agency notes. Dr. Barry Make, a pulmonologist with National Jewish Health in Denver, says patients he sees with COPD frequently complain about feeling worse when it's hot. "So this extended that observation from outdoors to indoors," he says of the research, adding that it documented respiratory symptoms are worse when it's hotter. To lessen the potential effect for people with COPD when it's warmer outside, he advises monitoring symptoms and turning on the air condition as necessary to stay cool and comfortable. For people who aren't able to keep their homes sufficiently cool during heat waves, McCormack advises getting to a cooling center -- an air-conditioned public space set up by local authorities to provide just such relief, where available -- or another cool place, like a mall. The research led by McCormack didn't find any effect on lung function from higher indoor temperature and air pollution, despite increases in COPD symptoms. And the study didn't evaluate whether being hotter inside raises a person's risk of dying from COPD. "But large studies have been done at the population level that have shown with increases in temperature -- for example, heat waves -- we have increases in deaths; and the people that are usually affected the most are the elderly and are those with chronic medical problems, including COPD," McCormack says. [See: 7 Things You Didn't Know About Lung Cancer.] To reduce indoor air pollution, experts say don't let anyone smoke in the home. Despite the known ill effects of secondhand smoke, Make says people still frequently smoke inside. In addition to addressing indoor air pollution, McCormack says air purifiers with HEPA, or high-efficiency particulate air, filters reduce particulate matter in the home. She notes studies demonstrating health benefits have largely used portable air purifiers with HEPA filters, which are commercially available and cost roughly $150 to $500. She also recommends ensuring the stove is properly vented to the outdoors and making sure appliances, including heaters, are inspected and are in good working order. Keep in close contact with your doctor as temperatures increase. "When it's hot, it's more likely you're going to need more of your medications, says Dr. Gerard Frank, a pulmonologist and clinical professor of medicine at UCLA. That said, Frank notes as the researchers do that given the study is based in Baltimore, the results don't necessarily reflect what occurs in other parts of the country. "Baltimore tends to be humid, and there may be differences in effects in different regions, including those with dryer climates," McCormack says. She adds that population studies that have looked at outdoor temperature or heat waves and death rates or hospitalization have suggested that heat effects may vary somewhat by region. "Extremes of heat may have greater adverse impact in climates that are milder compared to those that are generally warmer," she says. [See: 7 Lifestyle Tips to Manage Your Asthma.] Taking in the bigger picture, McCormack adds climate change must be addressed at a policy level, since even turning on air conditioning, which may help an individual get comfortable, contributes to the greenhouse effect that's gradually warming the planet. Large-scale solutions, she says, are ultimately needed to solve the effects of increasing heat on human health. Michael Schroeder is a health editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at mschroeder@usnews.com. marco rubio Marco Rubio won reelection to his Senate seat, with the Associated Press calling the race just after 8 p.m. EST. In what's been one of the most closely-watched Senate races of the 2016 cycle, the battle between Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and his challenger, Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy was heated. The seat is crucial to both Republican and Democratic hopes of controlling the Senate. And with results pouring in from the Sunshine State, Rubio held a more than 500,000 vote lead over Murphy. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich two fellow GOP presidential hopefuls in 2016 congratulated Rubio on Twitter shortly after the race was called. "Congratulations on the great victory, @marcorubio!" Bush tweeted. "Florida is critical to keeping the Senate." "Sen. @marcorubio with a big victory down in Florida," Kasich wrote. "Senator, you earned this win. Congrats!" In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Rubio held a 3.7-point lead over Murphy. Data-journalism outlet FiveThirtyEight gave Rubio a nearly 90% chance of winning the seat Tuesday. Rubio made a failed bid for the presidency in 2016, falling well short of the nomination even though many pundits concluded early in the race that he was the favorite to win. He earlier announced he would not seek reelection to the Senate, a body he was not much of a fan of. But, he made a late June entry into the Republican primary race for his seat after a deadly nightclub shooting in Orlando. Murphy, just 33-years-old and seeking to become the youngest member of the Senate, was a Republican himself until 2011. His business career faced intense scrutiny in the 2016 race, with reports showing Murphy had exaggerated his credentials. Still, he received plenty of help along the trail from big-name Democrats such as President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who all sought to cost Rubio his Senate seat. Story continues Florida polls closed at 8 p.m. EST. Developing... NOW WATCH: A model that has correctly predicted the presidential election since 1980 says Clinton will have a landslide victory More From Business Insider Kelly Ayotte It's likely to go down to the wire in the tightly contested New Hampshire Senate race between incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. And with 83% of returns coming in, Ayotte holds a roughly 2,000 vote lead over Ayotte. In the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, Ayotte led Hassan by 1.5 points. But data-journalism outlet FiveThirtyEight gave Hassan a very slight edge over Ayotte, projecting the New Hampshire governor has a 52.7% chance of victory on Tuesday. Ayotte, a one-term senator, has been frequently pushed on her support for Republican nominee Donald Trump. She's backed away from the party's nominee in recent weeks following the release of a leaked "Access Hollywood" tape that showed him boasting of being able to make unwanted sexual advances on women because he was famous. She previously walked back a statement that Trump was a role-model. Hassan, a two-term governor, had been hit with a campaign finance controversy during her stint as governor. In August, she had refused to say in an interview with CNN whether she thought Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was trustworthy. Her campaign later clarified that she did find Clinton to be honest, and the two have campaigned with each other when the former secretary of state made trips to New Hampshire. New Hampshire polls close at 7 p.m. EST., but polling locations around Dover were permitted to stay open until 8 p.m. Developing... NOW WATCH: Obama: Trump couldnt get a job at 7-Eleven More From Business Insider Picture use Unless otherwise stated all photos on this site are copyrighted Jim Budd. They should not be used without authorisation and due credit. Please contact me on budmac@btinternet.com for all use. There will usually be a charge for use in commercial publications papers, magazines, websites etc. and for other commercial uses. Photos that are used for commercial use without permission will be charged double the fee for the use of photo and for breach of copyright. Commercial organisations asking to use photos for no payment may not always receive a polite response. donald trump Polls are set to close later Tuesday evening in Nevada, one of the key battleground state where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have run neck-and-neck. Both candidates campaigned hard across the state over the past several weeks, making several stops each and deploying key surrogates in the hopes of capturing the state's six electoral votes, which could be crucial to either campaign's path to the White House. Though Clinton maintained a lead in most public opinion surveys in the months leading up to the election, Trump appeared to gain steam in late October. The Real Clear Politics average on Tuesday of recent polls showed Trump with less than a one-point lead over Clinton, while the FiveThirtyEight forecast gave the former secretary of state a 58% chance of winning the state. Despite Trump's late boost in the polls in Nevada, Clinton supporters took comfort over the weekend in early vote returns in the state showing the Democratic presidential nominee leading Trump by a wide margin in Clark County, the most populous county in the state. Many observers attributed the strong Democratic early voting to a boost in turnout among Latino voters. "Never before has the Hispanic vote played such a critical role in electing an American president," Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Javier Palomarez told Business Insider. "Never again will an American president be elected without courting the Hispanic vote." This post will be updated... NOW WATCH: Trump had a great response when he was asked to name one thing he liked about Clinton More From Business Insider Donald Trump Donald Trump won the key battleground state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, a huge upset over Hillary Clinton, according to the Associated Press. Since August, Clinton appeared to run slightly ahead of the Republican presidential nominee. The Real Clear Politics average of recent polls showed Clinton with a 1.9-point lead over Trump early on Tuesday, while FiveThirtyEight puts her odds of winning in the state at 77%. Clinton campaigned hard in Pennsylvania, making numerous stops in the state over the past months, and dispatching high-profile surrogates like President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Sen. Bernie Sanders to the state in recent weeks. The former secretary of state joined her husband former President Bill Clinton, both Obamas, Bruce Springsteen, and Jon Bon Jovi for a final campaign rally in Philadelphia on Monday night. For his part, Trump focused significant energy on Pennsylvania, attempting to woo voters in the rural and suburban middle parts of the sate. Though the Republican presidential nominee's campaign cancelled ads in some Pennsylvania markets last month, Trump repeatedly claimed without basis that the only way he would lose the state is "if cheating goes on." A Clinton win could have buoyed the fortunes of other Democratic candidates down-ballot. Strong Democratic turnout could have helped boost Democratic senate nominee Katie McGinty, who lost to Sen. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania late Tuesday. This post will be updated.... NOW WATCH: Animated map reveals who would win the election if only certain demographics voted More From Business Insider Comedian, actor and writer Richard Lewis is letting go of a stylish Los Angeles home for a relatively modest $1.559 million. The two-bedroom, two-bath home was built in 1926, the same year the nearby Chateau Marmont and Sunset Tower first opened their doors, the listing points out. But its not just the neighborhood that has Old Hollywood ties: the property was previously owned by screen legend Eddie Albert, who starred in Roman Holiday and The Heartbreak Kid among others. Prospective residents will find an open-air living room with a wet bar well-suited for a Hollywood lifestyle, old or new. Multiple terraces and Mediterranean stylings also lend the place the feel of a cliffside villa. This one, however, is tucked into Laurel Canyon a short distance from the Sunset strip instead of a rocky Italian coast. RELATED: Tobey Maguire Lists His Flipped Santa Monica Home for $2.9 Million After Divorce The penthouse level features a master suite with a separate office and city views. Downstairs a second bedroom serves as guest accommodations. A formal dining room, eat in kitchen and media room round out the property. RELATED: Alyson Hannigan Lists Her California Traditional Home for $8.8 Million In addition to playing himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lewis made regular appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, Rude Awakening and 7th Heaven, as well as starring alongside Jamie Lee Curtis in Anything but Love and fellow comedy legend Don Rickles in Daddy Dearest. His 2,508-square-foot home is listed with Peter Maurice and Tregg Rustad of Rodeo Realty. Russell Brand has reportedly welcomed his first child! The comedian is said to have announced the joyous news during a stand-up gig in Nottingham, England on Sunday night. WATCH: Russell Brand Is 'Excited' to Become a Dad An audience member told The Mirror that the 41-year-old Get Him to the Greek star shared that his fiancee, Laura Gallacher, had given birth before exiting the stage. "He didn't confirm if it was a girl or a boy," the fan told the U.K. newspaper. "He was conscious of the clock and made sure he was off stage by just approaching 9 p.m. as he 'needed to get down the f***ing M21 as my girlfriend has just had a baby.'" The newspaper also reported that the baby arrived last week and that a fan had congratulated the entertainer on a "baby girl." Brand confirmed rumors of Gallacher's pregnancy in July, posting a photo on Instagram showing him reading The Expectant Dad's Handbook. WATCH: Russell Brand Is Going to Be a Dad -- See His Funny Announcement He recently shared his excitement about parenthood during an interview with ES Magazine. "I feel lit up by the idea," Brand told the U.K. outlet. "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." See more on what the British star had to say about becoming a dad in the video below. Related Articles While all eyes are on the U.S. presidential race, Washingtons foreign-policy machine is grappling with a day-after humanitarian crisis in a northern Iraqi city poised for liberation from the Islamic State. As Iraqi security forces fight their way street by street into the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, the United States, United Nations, and international nongovernmental organizations are mustering as much preparation as possible to deal with the aftermath of the citys liberation. Weve known for weeks and months [Mosuls liberation] is coming, a senior State Department official told reporters during a Monday call. As such, the international community has one of the best prepared responses to a humanitarian emergency that is expected that we have seen, certainly in a long time, another senior State Department official added. Both officials spoke on condition of not being identified by name. Planning has not been Washingtons strong suit when it comes to Iraq: The Defense Department fretted in 2002 that policymakers in George W. Bushs administration had not clearly thought through what would happen after the March 2003 invasion. As it turned out, the U.S. military remained in Iraq for nearly nine years, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and suffering the deaths of nearly 4,500 American troops. In Mosul, the challenge is also daunting. Last month, the U.N. refugee agencys top representative in Iraq, Bruno Geddo, warned the battle for Mosul could create one of the largest man-made disasters in years. The Iraqi Army has begun pushing into districts near Mosul, a week after fighting for the citys eastern front. While the United States mulls sending military advisors in, it is augmenting Iraqi forces with close air support. But taking the city will not be easy. Islamic State fighters, dug in and expecting a fight, have bogged down Iraqi forces in a fierce battle of close-quarters urban warfare complete with car bombs, sniper fire, and improvised explosive devices. This leaves civilians looking to flee the city at great risk. Story continues The numbers, as compiled and distributed by the State Department, speak for themselves: Since the operation in Mosul began, 33,000 people have been displaced. Although this is lower than initially expected, Iraqi and Kurdish forces have not yet reached the populous areas of Mosul city, said one senior State official, meaning the United States anticipates the worst is yet to come. Washington is planning for a worst-case scenario with up to 700,000 people displaced in the wake of the Mosul operation. Food for 1.25 million people has been prepositioned in anticipation of Mosuls liberation. Medicine and medical equipment is stockpiled to serve 300,000 people with 100 ambulances at the ready. Fifty trucks are running per day in a scramble to preposition supplies. Beyond immediate prepositioned supplies, the State Department said the United States and international partners had food ready for 2.3 million people. By mid-December, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) expects to have camps ready for 250,000 people displaced by the fighting. The international community has secured pledges of $2 billion to support the Mosul operation. The United States has given $1.1 billion in aid to Iraq since 2014 and $513 million in 2016 alone. Since the Islamic State began seizing land in Iraq in 2014, 3.2 million people have been forced from their homes and 10 million need assistance. But all this preparation may not be enough. The Mosul post-liberation operation is prepared and well-coordinated, said the State Department official. But it is war, and so its unpredictable and uncertain. Photo credit: BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump What is left to say? This election has been exhausting and it has made all of us dumber, but I don't agree with Matt Yglesias that we've overlooked key policy implications of the election. The core question of this election is so simple that I think even most ordinary voters understand it intuitively. Press coverage of this election has often been trivial in part because there is only so much to say about this simple core question. On Tuesday, Americans will decide whether we want a continuation of the past few decades of social changes that have uplifted minorities and women and also served educated elites quite well. Alternatively, we will decide we are angry about change and want a society that is more hostile to nonwhites, more authoritarian, and more focused on restoring old social hierarchies. Put even more simply, we will answer this question: Do we want taco trucks on every corner? It's true that there will be important tax and fiscal policy differences between a Clinton administration and a Trump one. But these are less important than the social changes a Trump election would bring about. Trump would bar Muslim immigrants from the country on the basis of their religion, force Mexican-Americans to look over their shoulders for government agents, and protect the police from rising scrutiny of their mistreatment of members of the public, especially black men. Trump would also do a great deal to normalize the sexual harassment and degradation of women, and to promote rudeness toward all members of society except himself. He would ensure that America remains a place where, if you're a star, you can grope women and they'll be afraid to tell anyone. All of this is more important than taxes and spending, an idea conservatives used to pay lip service to when they talked about the importance of "civil society" as a companion to government policy, before they said Trump should be president. Story continues There has been far too much focus on Trump's white working-class supporters, allegedly upset about trade and alienated by economic stagnation. Frankly, economic status is a poor predictor of presidential vote this election. Economic anxiety is not generating support for Trump among the nonwhite working class. Among whites, education is a clearer vote predictor than income. Trump has his poor fans and his rich fans, fans who have been hurt by economic changes and fans who are doing just fine. What his fans share is that nearly all of them are white, and they are, for whatever reason, resentful. Donald Trump supporter As liberals like pointing out, many of these Trump voters would have higher real incomes under Clinton's policies than Trump's. Some are benefitting from Obamacare. Some would pay higher taxes under Trump's plan than hers. Trump's trade policies would create an economic downdraft that would lower output across the whole economy, reducing pretax incomes for most people. But that doesn't necessarily make Trump voters irrational. If voters are upset about too many Mexicans in America, or too much acceptance of Muslims, or too little police impunity, then they're not necessarily acting irrationally by voting for Trump, even if his election might lower their income. That is, you shouldn't assume Trump's voters are experiencing false consciousness; in many cases, they just want bad things. Opposition to immigration does not necessarily have to be rooted in bigotry, but when encountered in practice among voters it almost always is. That's why 2012 nominee Mitt Romney's relatively wonky and technical approach to immigration restriction didn't catch fire in the way Trump's bigotry-first approach did. It's also why nobody cares that Melania Trump appears to have briefly worked in the country illegally: The Trump campaign was never about keeping white immigrants out of America. Most voters, I think, have correctly diagnosed the Trump campaign as a primal scream of white resentment. The alarming thing is that so many are in favor of the scream. donald trump I think the electorate is making only one major error of analysis, separate from this major error of preference I discuss above: Most Trump voters have not properly understood how poorly equipped Trump is personally for the duties of the presidency and how dangerous his temperament would be in commanding the American military. That is, even if you want a more racist and sexist and stupid country, and Trump delivers one, you're still made worse off if he gets you killed in a nuclear war. His voters even the most deplorable ones have not given enough consideration to the worst downside risks of his presidency that would be harmful even by their standards. There also has been insufficient consideration of the risk that Trump would shred America's constitutional safeguards in pursuit of absolute power. Meg Whitman is on top of this, but few other Republicans seem to remember they used to claim to care about limitation of government power. Fortunately, it looks as if just enough voters don't want a nastier, more bigoted, stupider country, and we will be spared a Trump presidency by an uncomfortably close margin. And Trump's voters are right about one important thing: The rising ethnic diversity of the country will make it even harder for a candidate like Trump to be elected in future years. We have probably dodged a bullet. But we have learned some very ugly things about many of our fellow Americans in the process. NOW WATCH: A model that has correctly predicted the presidential election since 1980 says Clinton will have a landslide victory More From Business Insider Are you ready to USE your TALENTS to make the world a better place for Children? If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the worlds leading childrens rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote childrens survival, protection and development. The worlds largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 7, 2016 / CWN Mining Acquisition Corporation (CWN.V) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Wenjun Chu as the Vice President of Investments, effective on November 07, 2016. Mr. Chu has held Senior Management positions with Metath Investment Co., Ltd, Shanghai Heng Ji Pu Ye Asset Management Co. Ltd and Shanghai Puye Investment Co., Ltd since July 2005. Mr. Chu also held automotive engineering positions, including 8 years with Shanghai General Motor Ltd. Mr. Chu holds a bachelor's degree in automotive engineering from Tsingnua University. Effective on November 07, 2016, Mr. Huijun Wang stepped down from his role as Vice President of Investments, and was appointed as Vice President of Administration. Mr. Wenjun Chu's appointment is subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. About CWN Mining Acquisition Corporation CWN Mining Acquisition Corporation is a mineral exploration company incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act with its head office in Surrey, British Columbia. The business of CWN is to further explore the TOP Project property with the objective of confirming and expanding the extent of mineralization on the property. Neither 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. For further information please contact Andrew Liu, Chief Financial Officer at (778) 389-9960. SOURCE: CWN Mining Acquisition Corporation And here are 3 cheapest European destinations for Singaporeans. Singapore's wealth fund GIC has bought a top European warehouse developer and manager for 2.4 billion euros in Europe's biggest real estate transaction this year. According to a joint statement by the four companies, GIC has acquired P3 Logistic Parks from US-based TPG Real Estate and Canada's Ivanhoe Cambridge. Read more here. The National Environment Agency is raising the refuse collecton fees for households in Singapore starting next year due to high operating costs. The monthly fees will increase to $8.25 for households living in HDB flats and condominiums that have not opted out of the public waste collection scheme, compared to the previous $7.49. Those living in landed homes will see their fees go up from the current $24.81 to $27.47. Get to know the full story here. A trip to Europe would usually end with maxed out credit cards and pile of shopping bags. But a Euro trip doesn't have to be expensive. Get to know three of the most beautiful European destination that would not cost that much for Singaporeans by clicking this link. More From Singapore Business Review On the 27th of November 2000, the nation was left stunned, heartbroken and devastated when 10-year-old schoolboy, Damilola Taylor, was murdered as he made his way home after school. Damilola was found bleeding to death in the stairwell of his housing estate, having been stabbed after a group of young people tried to rob him. Sammy Kamara played Damilola in the moving drama. Last night, the BBC aired their TV drama about the high-profile killing, Damilola: Our Loved Boy, and the incredible show left viewers reaching for the tissues. The 90 minute programme documented Damilolas family as they made the decision to move to the UK from Nigeria just seven months before his death, hoping to get better treatment for their ill daughter in Britain. It also depicted Damilolas bright and bubbly personality as he adjusted to life in Britain and his familys devastation and heartbreak following his tragic death. The cast were praised for their brilliant performances. As a result of the murder, Damilolas father, Richard, decided to do something about youth crime in London, opening the Damilola Taylor Community Centre to help young people get off the streets, and watching the last few years of the Taylors family lives unfold on the small screen was all too much for some including Leigh-Anne Pinnock from girl group Little Mix: No but seriously big up BBC this is what that gangland rubbish was missing. A clear message. #DamilolaOurLovedBoy ???????? (@OiLozzz) November 7, 2016 Who stabs a 10 year old? I still don't understand #DamilolaOurLovedBoy Hi (@__WesleyBD) November 7, 2016 A story that should never be forgotten.. absolutely heartbreaking ????leigh x #DamilolaOurLovedBoy Little Mix (@LittleMix) November 7, 2016 #DamilolaOurLovedBoy is breaking my heart already! To think Damilola left Nigeria with such great expectations of England #RipDamilola Lovinglife (@SJMMlovinglife) November 7, 2016 Damilola Taylor's story always makes me upset even many years later a life cut short way too soon #DamilolaOurLovedBoy YT sairassecret (@sairassecret) November 7, 2016 Respect for BBC to have this shown during a prime time evening period. This boy's story shouldn't be ever forgotten #DamilolaOurLovedBoy Diego Dan$o (@OhYeahGuy) November 7, 2016 My Heart Feels So Heavy After Watching #DamilolaOurLovedBoy ???????????? K.Ashantii (@KayziaAshantii) November 8, 2016 The BBC gave outdone themselves on #DamilolaOurLovedBoy that poor poor innocent boy didn't deserve that he deserved a prosperous life #RIP Chelsea Mabey (@Chelsea_Laa) November 8, 2016 #DamilolaOurLovedBoy So heart breaking He would have been my little brothers age if he survived. A young man such a waste! ???? Billo_Rani (@London_Blogger1) November 8, 2016 Heartbroken watching #damilolaourlovedboy such a sad, sad story. What an amazing family. Laura Bangay (@laurabangay) November 8, 2016 #DamilolaOurLovedBoy performed well and heartbreaking to see how it affected the family. I cried way too much but it was needed to be seen! doyinaj (@ermdoyin) November 8, 2016 It took six years and three trials before anybody was convicted for Damilolas death, with brothers Danny and Ricky Preddie eventually being convicted of manslaughter in 2006. Story continues They were aged just 12 and 13 when they murdered the schoolboy. Damilola Taylor was murdered aged 10. The BBC drama was made with the permission of Richard Taylor. Damilolas mum, Gloria, passed away in 2008. Surfers in San Diego shot through the Ocean Beach pier as dangerous high surf hit the coast on Monday, November 6. The National Weather Service issued a high surf advisory on Monday, luring daring surfers to the beach. Forecasters warned of strong rip currents and 10-foot waves for that week. This video, taken by Shawn White, said waves reached 10 feet on Monday. Credit: Shawn White via Storyful By Jazz Monroe. A commemorative David Bowie statue is set to go up in Aylesbury, the town just north of London where Bowie debuted Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust songs. A Kickstarter campaign is seeking 100,000 ($123,000) in funding for the project, which organizers say has been approved by the local council. The weathered bronze statue, by sculptor Andrew Sinclair, would appear in the Market Square, which Bowie referenced in the opening lines of Five Years. Above its head, organizers intend to install a soundsystem that would play a Bowie song on the hour throughout the daytime and evening. To celebrate the campaign, HOLY HOLY, featuring Bowie associates Tony Visconti, Woody Woodmansey, and Heaven 17s Glenn Gregory, will play a set of Bowie covers at Friars Aylesbury (where the above picture was taken) on April 3, 2017. Read Pitchforks Afterword tribute to Bowie. Read How to Mourn an Icon: Rob Sheffield on the Brilliant David Bowie Book He Wrote in a Month on the Pitch. This story originally appeared on Pitchfork. More from Pitchfork: The 50 Best Rap Mixtapes of the Millennium The Top 30 Artists You Need to Follow on Social Media The Influence of Kanye Wests 808s & Heartbreak The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s 20 Overlooked Albums of 2016 Is 2016 Musics Biggest Year in Decades? By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senior Democrats said on Monday their chances of winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives had been hurt by the FBI's surprise announcement last month that Hillary Clinton's email practices were again figuring in a federal investigation. Voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to choose Democrat Clinton or Republican Donald Trump for president, but also to fill 34 U.S. Senate seats in the 100-chamber body and all 435 House seats. Both the House and Senate are currently controlled by Republicans. FBI Director James Comey's letter to Congress in late October that the agency would examine newly found emails that might pertain to Clinton's use of a private server while she was secretary of state, "had a tremendous adverse impact with our standing with independents," said Representative James Clyburn, a member of the House Democratic leadership, referring to independent voters. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, while calling Comey's action "out of line," said it resulted in a spike in small campaign donations. But she added: We would be in a better place (without the letter) and in the manner he did it. Clyburn's and Pelosi's remarks, seen by Reuters, were delivered during a phone call House Democratic leaders had with rank-and-file members. Continued Republican control of Congress could stymie the legislative agenda put forth by Clinton if she wins the presidency. A Trump win along with a Republican Congress could spell doom for Democratic President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law known as Obamacare, which has been the target of a sustained attack by Republican lawmakers. If voters hand power to Democrats in either chamber, 2017 will likely bring a more moderate bent to bills that lawmakers send to the new president for signing into law. A senior Democratic aide said the October controversy, which consumed U.S. political campaigns for over a week, could reduce by at least 10 the number of House seats Democrats may be able to capture from Republicans on Election Day. Comey informed Congress on Sunday that he was standing by his July decision that no criminal charges were warranted against the Democratic presidential candidate in the emails investigation. But coming only two days before national elections, Comey's latest decision may have come too late for Democrats who were hoping for big wins on Tuesday to help them regain control of the House for the first time since 2010 and the Senate for the first time since 2014. "It's terribly damaging to us," the aide said, adding that Clinton's support in battleground states could be depressed, which in turn would hurt the party's House candidates. With that in mind, the aide said Democrats could end up gaining only 12 to 16 House seats on Tuesday, instead of the 30 or so needed to win back the chamber. Representative Tom Cole, a senior House Republican, said in a telephone interview he found it "mystifying in how he (Comey) has interjected himself in the election on three different occasions in ways that were probably inappropriate." Cole was referring to the initial announcement in July that Clinton would not be prosecuted, the late October letter to Congress that FBI agents were again reviewing the issue and Sunday's information that the agency would not change its July findings. Of Sunday's good news for Clinton, the Oklahoma lawmaker said: "I think it certainly takes a little steam out of the Republicans." To win control of the Senate outright, Democrats would have to score a net gain of five seats. Republicans currently hold 54 Senate seats to 44 Democratic seats and two independents who align themselves with Democrats. For much of the autumn campaign, political analysts were projecting Democrats would pick up anywhere from four to seven Senate seats. TIGHT SENATE CONTESTS The outcome of the presidential race is expected to have a major impact on the outcome of the congressional campaigns. In recent decades, the party that wins the White House has usually fared better in congressional races too. For most of the 2016 campaign season, the Senate races have been center stage, as Democrats fielded some strong challengers to Republican incumbents. Among them are Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, who is giving Republican Senator Roy Blunt an unexpectedly stiff challenge, and former environmental official Katie McGinty, who could unseat Republican Senator Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. John McCain, the Vietnam War hero and 2008 Republican presidential nominee who has served in the Senate for 30 years, appears headed to re-election in a race that has been unusually competitive for him. A possible 50-50 tie following Tuesday's elections would mean that the next vice president would cast the tie-breaking vote and determine which party controls the Senate. The Senate that will be sworn in on Jan. 3, whether it is held by Republicans or Democrats, will face a weighty decision early on: voting on a U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last February. Since that time, Senate Republicans have refused to consider Obama's nomination of federal judge Merrick Garland, arguing the next president should pick a nominee for Senate review. Other issues confronting Congress next year include illegal immigration and border security, the need to raise U.S. borrowing authority, something some conservative Republicans oppose without substantial budget cuts, and possible approval of free-trade deals with Pacific Rim countries and Europe if negotiations on the latter conclude successfully. (Reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney) Copenhagen (AFP) - The Danish government on Tuesday announced a four-year trial programme for medical cannabis use starting in 2018, saying it would target "some of the patients who self-medicate with illegal products." "Patients with a number of selected diseases and symptoms that have previously been treated with relevant, approved drugs, can be prescribed medical cannabis at the individual doctor's responsibility," the country's health ministry said in a statement. An estimated 500 patients would be included when the programme starts in 2018, with the number rising to up to 1,500 in 2021, a ministry spokesman told AFP. Patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, paraplegia, chronic pain and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting could become eligible for the programme, according to recommendations from the Danish Medicines Agency. The move was criticised by the chairman of the Danish Medical Association, Andreas Rudkjobing, who told daily Politiken that there was "not enough documentation" of "what happens with patients who use this for a long time." Several political parties in Denmark want to legalise recreational use of cannabis, but the three biggest parties -- the Social Democrats, the anti-immigration Danish People's Party and the ruling Venstre party -- are against. COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish energy group DONG Energy (DENERG.CO) plans to quit the oil and gas business to focus solely on offshore wind power, adding to billions of dollars of North Sea oil and gas assets already up for sale. DONG said last month it would sharpen its focus on wind power and could shed its oil and gas business, having hired JP Morgan to review the assets. DONG's decision follows similar steps by European utilities E.ON (EONGn.DE) and RWE (RWEG.DE), which have both divested their oil and gas business to try to become simpler structures, free up cash and remove conglomerate discounts on their shares. "We want to get to the right transaction, that obviously provides value to shareholders and provides the oil and gas business with the right long term opportunities," Chief Executive Henrik Poulsen said on a conference call on Tuesday. "We are still in a very early stage of exploring market interest, but it is our impression that there is interest in an asset of this kind," he said, adding the company had not set a deadline for selling the business. DONG Energy, the world's biggest operator of offshore wind power, listed in Copenhagen in June, marketing itself as a renewable energy play rather than an oil and gas company. Analysts at Sydbank valued said DONG's oil and gas assets could be worth up to 14 billion Danish crowns (2 billion pounds). DONG produced 115,000 barrels of oil and gas per day last year, although that has fallen to 89,000 barrels daily this year. DONG's sale would directly compete with billions of dollars of oil and gas assets already up for grabs, many in the North Sea where costs are relatively high due to the basin's maturity. PROFIT FORECAST MAINTAINED The wind business became its biggest contributor to earnings in the first half of 2016, overtaking oil and gas with 42 percent of operating profit. DONG said Tuesday it expects the oil and gas business to turn cash flow positive this year, one year earlier than previously guided. Story continues Reporting its third quarter results on Tuesday, the company maintained its full year profit (EBITDA) forecast for 20-23 billion crowns. DONG's shares were trading 0.16 percent lower at 253.6 crowns each by 0905 GMT. DONG shares currently trade at 5.3 times EV/EBITDA, a discount to groups with a clearer focus on renewables such as Britain's SSE (SSE.L), Portugal's EDP Renovaveis SA (EDPR.LS) and Germany's Innogy (IGY.DE), which was split off from RWE last month. DONG has stakes in 24 fields off Norway, including a 14-percent stake in Ormen Lange, a gas field that can provide up to 20 percent of Britain's gas needs, and is the operator of two fields, Oselvar and Trym. Statoil (STL.OL) and AkerBP (AKERBP.OL) could be interested in Dong's Norwegian licenses. Both companies have been buying up assets from companies wanting to exit Norway and have both said they are on the lookout for more opportunities. DONG also stakes in 14 fields in the Danish part of the North Sea, where it operates five producing oil and gas fields. In September, A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO), which runs the world's biggest container shipping line, said it was seeking alliances or a separate listing for its energy operations while bulking up its transport business. (Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche and Christoph Steitz; Editing by Louise Heavens and Keith Weir) Forget the Running Man Challenge! By now, youve probably heard that the latest Internet craze is the Mannequin Challenge, basically a 2016 version of freeze tag. Its a big hit with kids and adults alike. On Monday, Kelly Rowland posted this video of herself, Beyonce, and Michelle Williams in what looks to be a childs playroom. Bey, in a frilly off-the-shoulder dress, is poised to receive a big orange ball from Michelle, while Kelly is armed with a long blue balloon. Were guessing the former members of Destinys Child may have been spending some quality time together because Rowlands son Titan turned 2 last week. ???????????? A video posted by kellyrowland (@kellyrowland) on Nov 7, 2016 at 9:13am PST But the ladies werent the only ones getting silly while still. The Dallas Cowboys, riding the wave of their seventh straight win, just posted their own version yesterday, with the added excitement of being on a plane. Wonder how long it took them to get their frozen poses just right All right, time to get to work on choreographing your own #MannequinChallenge, folks. With endorsements like these, one might ask, who needs enemies? Last week, as an enervating U.S. election race reached its final stretch, Republican nominee Donald Trump secured the support of another of the worlds leading authoritarians. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a pugnacious former soldier who has dominated his countrys politics for over three decades, threw his support behind the real estate mogul and former reality TV host. He did it, he said, for the sake of world peace. To be frank, I do want to see Trump win, Hun Sen told an audience of police cadets on Nov. 3. If Trump wins, the world can change. Trump does business, so Trump would not want to have war. Its tempting to put Hun Sens endorsement down to shared authoritarian traits an expression of strongman respect. For more than half his life, the 64-year-old Hun Sen has ruled his country through a blend of force, guile, and The Apprentice-style theatrics. Like Trump, he is thin-skinned; he is also partial to rambling speeches. Neither figure has any tolerance for opposition, which both see as a sign of treason or shadowy conspiracies (the whole system is rigged). While Trump has threatened to arrest his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, if he wins on Nov. 8, Hun Sen has effectively done it in advance. Since mid-2015, he has jailed more than 25 government critics, including two opposition lawmakers, while the main opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, has been forced into exile in France. To top it off, Hun Sen has repeatedly warned that the country will descend into civil war if his Cambodian Peoples Party, or CPP, is not re-elected at the next national poll in 2018. Theres also the magnetic attraction of Trumps wealth. The Donalds vulgar flaunting of the gilded and the marble not only reflects the rococo tastes of Cambodias own ruling elite. It also appeals to an aspect of Cambodias Buddhist-inflected political culture in which those with money are seen as persons of merit: rich because virtuous, virtuous because rich. Hun Sen might expect that an able and meritorious businessman like Trump would be liable to treat a wealthy counterpart with respect and do deals with Cambodia of the sort Washington now does with allies like Saudi Arabia or Vietnam deals that would spare him lectures on civil rights or the treatment of workers. Story continues Hun Sens endorsement of Trump, however, goes beyond superficial affinities of character or style. Indeed, an administration headed by Trump stands to produce something concrete for Hun Sen: a slackening of Washingtons position on the state of human rights and democracy in Cambodia. The Cambodian leader isnt the only autocrat to see the upsides of a Trump presidency. In recent months, Russias Vladimir Putin, North Koreas Kim Jong Un, and Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe have all expressed support for the Republican nominee. (So has Ashin Wirathu, a rabidly nationalist monk in Myanmar who has fanned the flames of hate against his countrys Muslim minority.) For these leaders, Trumps appeal goes beyond issues of style to touch on something more troubling: the possibility of a sudden and dramatic reshaping of U.S. power. One of the few consistent themes to emerge from the bag of tricks of emotional appeals and knee-jerk nativism that comprises the Trump foreign-policy platform is the prospect of a broad American retreat from the world. Throughout the campaign, Trump has railed against free trade and slammed U.S. military adventures in the Middle East. Trump has made virtually no reference to democracy promotion, another sacred cow of U.S. foreign policy. His campaign has even adopted the slogan America First, annexed from the isolationist movement of the early 1940s whose spokesman, the noted aviator and racist Charles Lindbergh, praised the organized vitality of Nazi Germany and argued against U.S. involvement in World War II. America first, Trump said during his first major foreign-policy address in April, will be the overriding theme of my administration. For a dictator like Hun Sen, this approach to foreign policy has obvious appeal. Since the early 1990s, as he has slowly bent Cambodias threadbare democratic system to his will, U.S. criticism has been a constant thorn in his side. When the Cambodian leader ousted his coalition partner Prince Norodom Ranariddh in an armed coup in July 1997, the United States immediately cut off aid, restoring it only after fresh elections the following year. (Hun Sens CCP won.) Even then, a vocal bipartisan congressional lobby, representing the large Cambodian diaspora in the United States, has kept up a steady drumbeat against a leader who some have referred to as Saddam Hun Sen. In 2013, facing another call from the U.S. Congress to cut off aid, Hun Sen said, People can say what they want, but the right to decide the countrys destiny is in the hands of the people of Cambodia. International pressure has grown especially strong over the past year as the CPP, reacting to an unexpected loss of support at the last election in 2013, has tightened the vise on its opponents. In July, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution condemning this latest crackdown, which Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said laid bare the thuggish nature of the Hun Sen regime. Similar condemnations have been issued by the European Parliament and the U.N. Human Rights Council. Although the U.S. Congress would operate independently of a possible Trump White House, an executive who stays out of Cambodias domestic affairs, and maybe even offers a measure of legitimacy, would be something of a dream come true for Hun Sen. In line with Trumps America First philosophy, the former Apprentice host has also made repeated threats to withdraw U.S. forces from Europe and East Asia, depicting the United States as a colossus that is being leeched by a host of ungrateful allies and suggesting he would abandon long-standing obligations to protect NATO members and other allies. Threats to reconsider U.S. military deployments in South Korea until Seoul pays its way have led North Korean state media to offer their own endorsement of Trump, writing that he is not the rough-talking, screwy, ignorant candidate they say he is, but is actually a wise politician and a prescient presidential candidate. For similar reasons, Trump also appears to have won some limited support within the political establishment in China. Although Trumps very pronunciation of the countrys name drips with insinuation and disdain, and much of the countrys ruling elite appears to support Hillary, a weakened U.S. presence in East Asia would be a clear strategic win for Beijing. Trump could in fact be the best president for China, a commentator on Phoenix Television, a private station in Hong Kong that skews nationalist and pro-Beijing, said in April. Another commentator on Phoenix Television, recently declared, It looks like Trump is Gods tool to end American imperialism. For the first time in living memory, a presidential candidate is offering a break from what has long been a firm bipartisan foreign-policy consensus: that the United States can, and should, do what it can to make the world safe for democracy. And although solid arguments can, and should, be made for the scaling back of American adventures abroad, Trumps apparent willingness to toss out long-standing alliances in a vague bid to start winning again threatens a sudden realignment of the global security environment that carries serious and unpredictable risks. Hun Sen might be right: A President Trump is unlikely to go abroad in search of monsters to slay. But the Donalds policies, such as they are, herald a world of dangerous uncertainty. Dictators of the world, rejoice. Photo credit: The Asahi Shimbun / Getty Images Dita Von Teese posted a super glam, yet super important, message about voting As youre well aware by now, today is Election Day, which means if you havent already, you need to get your butt to the polls to cast your vote. Plenty of celebrities are taking to social media to encourage fans and followers to vote, and model Dita Von Teese is the latest to join the ranks Dita posted an important message about voting to her Instagram. Dita, a Michigan native, is currently overseas enjoying the sights of Rome, according to Just Jared, but she made time before leaving to do her research and voted early, telling her followers that any excuse against voting is point blank simple-minded rhetoric. And all we can say is shes totally RIGHT. Of course, Dita looks incredibly glam (as always!), rocking lingerie and showing off her matching red lips and nails while holding up a #GOVOTE clipboard, but its her message that we should all heed on this Election Day. Dita says, Greetings from Paris! Before I left for Europe, I researched the new propositions and candidates of all offices that are up for election, and I voted early. If your response to this is your vote doesnt count anyway, well thats simple-minded rhetoric. There are other things to vote for; if we are ever going to change things you might also want to start looking at the other offices and proposals in elections. Ditas post also encourages voters to wear white when at the polls, adding, Wondering what you should wear to the polls this Election Day? In 1992 the Supreme Court found that a 100-Foot campaign-free zone around polling locations did not violate the first amendment, and therefore some states prohibit explicitly political garb at election spaces (it can be interpreted as electioneering). We suggest wearing plain white instead to honor the historically white-clad suffragettes who made this election possible! Of course, no matter what you choose to wear to the polls (though we always endorse a Dita-inspired red lip!), the important thing is just to get out there and vote. There simply arent any good excuses not to. The post Dita Von Teese posted a super glam, yet super important, message about voting appeared first on HelloGiggles. Notch another victory for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Doctor Strange opened to a far better-than-expected $85 million in North America over the weekend, despite featuring a lesser-known superhero in Stephen Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. And overseas, where the pic began rolling out less than two weeks ago, the Marvel Studios and Disney movie has earned $240.4 million for a rowdy 13-day global haul of $325 million. No one was quite sure how Doctor Strange would stack up in comparison to other first installments in the Marvel franchise stable. Prerelease tracking suggested the movie would open in North America anywhere between $65 million and $70 million. Instead, the film posted the third-best opening for a first installment in the MCU behind the $98.6 million domestic debut of Iron Man in 2008 and the $94.3 million bow of Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. (This excludes superhero team-up The Avengers, since it featured characters who had already been introduced in the MCU.) To boot, both Iron Man and Guardians had the advantage of opening in summer rather than in November. The pic's success has made a sequel almost inevitable, although nothing has been officially announced. Doctor Strange was no doubt buoyed by stellar reviews, an A CinemaScore and Cumberbatch's growing star power - as well as the ever-increasing clout of the Marvel brand. By week's end, Doctor Strange will pass the $370.4 million grossed by Captain America: The First Avenger over its entire run. In the film, Cumberbatch plays a top surgeon who, after his hands are injured in a car accident, seeks out the help of the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), a master of the mystical arts. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mordo, a character that a post-credits scene teases will take on an even larger role in the MCU in movies to come. Rachel McAdams also stars in Doctor Strange, which marks the biggest domestic opening for all four actors. Read more: Disney Has Biggest Year Ever at Global Box Office With $5.85B Story continues Cumberbatch's Strange is rumored to cameo in next November's Thor: Ragnarok (a mid-credits scene featured Chris Hemsworth's God of Thunder) and he is confirmed to appear in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, which also will see characters from Guardians of the Galaxy teaming up with the Avengers. For Marvel, director Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange represents a creative victory as it looks to expand its roster of MCU characters to prepare for the inevitability that some of the original Avengers cast will retire from their roles. For now, the core Avengers cast is set to appear in Infinity War, as well as an untitled fourth Avengers film in 2019 - with both directed by the Russo brothers. The MCU has a healthy upcoming lineup set, which also included Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (May 2017), Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 2017), Black Panther (February 2018), the Paul Rudd sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 2018) and Brie Larson starrer Captain Marvel (2019). "Marvel is the hottest brand out there right now, and is widely considered to be in the same league as Pixar," says box-office analyst Jeff Bock. "Audiences no longer need to be even vaguely familiar with the source material as Marvel is one of the most trusted production entities when it comes to new films. That type of overwhelming critical and fan support has unleashed a new wave - call it a tsunami - of fanboys and fangirls, and led to the golden age of comic book movies." Read more: China Box Office: 'Doctor Strange' Revives Local Market With $44.5M Debut Uh-oh. A mortgage scam that targets the most vulnerable home sellers and buyers is making a comeback. Wraparound mortgages, which bundle together the purchase of the home and the mortgage on it, might sound like a great idea for those who dont have the credit to qualify for a loan. But its an idea thats ripe for exploitation, say housing attorneys who have seen an uptick in this type of seller financing. Typically, the homeowners need to sell their property in a hurry, say because they have to move for work. But they cant find a buyer, so they turn to middlemen. These folks find buyers who are similarly eager to buy and not so savvy, who move into these homes and take over the mortgage payments. The buyers receive a title for the residence, but the mortgage remains in the sellers name. So far, so good, right? That is until the middleman, who usually isnt regulated, starts pocketing those monthly mortgage payments and the bank forecloses on the home. Then the sellers credit is ruined and the life savings the buyer plunked down on the home is gone. Theyre taking advantage of poor people who dont have a lot of knowledge about purchasing a home and putting them at great risk, says K-Sue Park, an attorney at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, who is representing a family who claims they were ensnared in one of these scams. Her clients, Santa Martinez and Michael Moreno, lost about $22,000 on the El Paso, TX, home they bought because the middleman wasnt turning their mortgage payments over to the bank, according to the El Paso Business Journal. Its meant to be a fix for people who are falling behind on their mortgages, Park says of wraparound mortgages. They can also help a family who cant access a traditional bank loan to buy a house. Wraparound mortgages were a big problem in the 1980s and 1990s, Park says. But then it was mostly replaced by subprime mortgageswhich targeted buyers with bad credit and, typically, low income, who couldnt really afford to become homeowners. Story continues Real estate attorney Cassandra McGarvey, at Sanders Willyard in Houston, started seeing a resurgence of these loans about two years ago. Theyre common in Texas, but are also done in other parts of the country, she says. She recommends that sellers who need to sell in a hurry rent out their homes if they cant find a buyer. Even if they lose money, at least their credit wont be wiped out in a foreclosure. And aspiring homeowners who cant qualify for a traditional mortgage should work on their credit instead of signing up for one of these wraparound loans, says Park. Dont fall into this trap, Park says. [Buyers] stand to lose everything. The post Experts Warn Against Snuggling Up to Wraparound Mortgages appeared first on Real Estate News and Advice - realtor.com. After spending months warning of a rigged election and predicting darkly that Democrats would vote many, many times, Donald Trumps only Election Day lawsuit alleging voter improprieties so far ended with a whimper. The Trump campaign filed a suit Tuesday morning against Joe P. Gloria, the registrar of Clark County, Nevada, alleging that he allowed certain polls in mostly Hispanic areas to remain open after closing time on Friday, the last day of early voting in the state. Trump called it evidence of a rigged system. A lawyer for the Trump campaign asked that Gloria be compelled by court order to retain information on the individual poll workers assigned to the polling stations in question, and to separate out any early ballots that were cast Friday evening. Clark County District Court Judge Gloria Sturman refused on privacy grounds. She explained that Gloria is already statutorily obligated to preserve information about the operation of the polling places in question, and that any act of the court would create a risk that individual poll workers and voters would be identified publicly and harassed. Brian Hardy, a lawyer representing the Trump campaign, dismissed the notion. There would be no harassment, he said. Judge Sturman, who has since become a trending item on Twitter under the hashtag #NevadaJudge, was clearly incredulous. How can you tell me that? Have you watched Twitter? Have you watched any cable news show? she asked. Why would I order them to make available to you people who work at polls, when its not already a public requirement to do so, so those people can be harassed for performing their civic duties? The Trump campaign wants to make names of Nevada poll workers public. Judge's response: pic.twitter.com/tes99IMbbH Deadspin (@Deadspin) November 8, 2016 I am not going to expose people doing their civic duty to help their fellow citizens vote to public attention, ridicule and harassment, she said, adding that taking any move to sequester ballots so that the Trump campaign could link voters with votes cast seems to go against the very principle that a vote is secret. Story continues In the lawsuit, the Trump campaign alleged that a handful of polling places in Clark County were allowed to stay open after closing time and that they processed voters ballots that had not been in line at the time that the polls closed. Its unclear if either is illegal in the state during the early voting period. Under Nevada state law, the county clerk can keep polls open for as long as necessary to process all voters who were in line before polls closed. The clerk also has full authority to determine when temporary polling places are open during the early voting period only. Voting at a temporary branch polling place may be conducted on any one or more days and during any hours within the period for early voting by personal appearance, as determined by the county clerk, according to Nevada state law 293.3572. That appears to be different than the Nevada state law that applies on Election Day itself. Under that law, reflecting the standard in all states, people can vote so long as they were in line at the time that the poll was scheduled to close. A Nevada state elections official did not immediate return calls requesting clarification. During the hearing Tuesday, Judge Sturman attempted to disambiguate the law before the court. If you were in line when the polls close, you get the chance to cast your ballot, but there has to be an end of the line but you need to be in line by a certain time? she asked. If a line still still exists, you can cast a vote, a lawyer representing the county replied. Its different from Election Day and always has been. Neither Gloria nor any other official in Clark County has filed a formal complaint with the Nevada Secretary of State, Barbara Cegavske, a Republican who was elected in 2014, who is responsible for pursuing an investigation if she identifies wrong doing. Officials with the Republican National Committee seemed to intimate Tuesday that Gloria, the county clerk, was masterminding widespread illegal activity, although they produced no evidence. Even more concerning is that Clark County employees seem to be facilitating illegal activity, at the direction of Joe Gloria, whose primary function is to ensure the integrity of elections in Clark County, they said in a statement. Dan Kulin, a spokesperson for the county, told reporters that the county had not extended the hours of any polling place. For the first time in over 70 years, New York City will host two presidential nominees on election night when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hold dueling Tuesday night events in Manhattan. Not since 1944 has the presidential race featured two New Yorkers as major-party candidates - Trump resides at Midtown's Trump Tower, also his campaign headquarters, and Clinton lives outside the city in Chappaqua, with her headquarters in Brooklyn. On Tuesday night, however, the opponents will be only two miles apart: Clinton preparing for victory under a symbolic glass ceiling on the West Side and Trump hosting an invite-only gathering at a Midtown hotel, surprisingly not bearing his name. Read more: Inside Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's NYC Election Night Parties At the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center (655 W 34th St.), the Hillary for America Election Night Event kicks off at 6 p.m. The West Side's six-block glass fortress has an atrium with a glass ceiling - an apt symbol for Clinton's potential to make history as the first female president of the United States. When celebrating her historic nomination at the Democratic National Convention, she "shattered" a digital glass ceiling declaring: "I can't believe we just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet!" The nominee had planned to shoot a celebratory fireworks display over the Hudson River, but NYPD chief of intelligence Tommy Galati said during a Monday press conference on Election Day security that the potential victory show was canceled, despite the campaign having a permit. The fireworks were reported to last for two minutes at 9:30 p.m., a half-hour after polls close in New York. Read more: Election Day: Footage of Donald Trump Appearing to Glance at Melania's Ballot Goes Viral The Clinton campaign website still instructs guests to dress for outside weather, as well as prepare for "airport-like security." The event is open to the public and hundreds of her supporters lined up for tickets on Monday. Story continues As for the GOP nominee, the Donald J. Trump Victory Party opens its doors at 6:30 p.m. at the New York Hilton Midtown (1335 Ave of the Americas), only a few blocks from Trump Tower. Trump and running mate Mike Pence will be hosting friends and supporters of the Trump-Pence campaign. Though the quintessential New York hotel has hosted many high-profile events, as well as past presidents, the intimate ballroom setting diverges from Trump's usually large rallies. The atrium in his Trump Tower, however, is a privately owned public space and the nominee was fined $10,000 by the city of New York when he used it to launch his campaign last year. The Washington Post cited a source close to the campaign who said the low-key victory celebration is due to Trump being "superstitious" and not wanting to jinx the results with an over-the-top celebration. Read more: Donald Trump Named President-Elect of the United States One thing guests at both events can expect is heightened security, and plans for street closures indicate that Clinton and Trump will be narrowing their distance even further as the night goes on. Also during Monday's press conference, NYPD Chief of Department Carlos Gomez said there will be full street closures at the Peninsula Hotel, on 55th Street from Fifth Avenue to Sixth Avenue, starting Tuesday afternoon. He added that Tuesday morning will also begin to see street closures at Trump Tower, on East 56th Street from Fifth to Madison avenues. "We'll do that as long as Donald Trump is in the tower," he said. "When he goes out, we'll try to open traffic best we can." According to the New York Post, Clinton is planning an afterparty at the Peninsula Hotel on Fifth Avenue - which stands only one block from Trump Tower. Amid all the anticipated Midtown hubbub, much of Broadway has closed their shows on election night. The Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall also will be dark. "This is by far the largest election detail the NYPD has ever had, it is more than double our previous high," said Gomez, who compared the planned security to New Year's Eve and Pope Francis' Big Apple visit. New Yorkers can expect street closures near both Clinton and Trump's official venue locations starting Tuesday afternoon: on 11th Avenue between 34th and 40th Streets, and 34th Street between the West Side Highway and 10th Avenue near the Javits Center; and West 53rd and 54th Streets between Sixth and Seventh Avenues near the Hilton. Check here for live updates inside both Clinton and Trump's election night events. Read more: 5 Things to Know About Javits Center, Hillary Clinton's Election Night Venue Donald Trump Jr. said on MSNBCs Morning Joe on Tuesday that his father Donald Trump would concede the election to Hillary Clinton if he loses if its legit and fair, of course. If he loses, and its legit and fair, and theres not obvious stuff out there? Without question, yes, Trump Jr. said when co-host Willie Geist asked if his father will concede if he loses the election. Trump Jr. mentioned there are a lot of different paths to a victory for his father, and he thinks the results will be different from the mainstream medias narrative. Also Read: Anderson Cooper Tears Into Kellyanne Conway Over 'Irresponsible' Donald Trump (Video) All we want is a fair fight, and I think thats what we want, not just for this election, but for all elections, so that everybody has a chance to actually have their voice be heard and not have it manipulated, Trump Jr. said. Trump famously said during a recent debate that he would keep everyone in suspense regarding if we would concede to Clinton on Election Day if he loses. His answer shocked many old-school politicians but coincides with his claim that the process if rigged. Watch the video above. Related stories from TheWrap: Donald Trump Boasts That Tom Brady, Bill Belichick Have Voted for Him Anderson Cooper Tears Into Kellyanne Conway Over 'Irresponsible' Donald Trump (Video) Kellyanne Conway Denies Donald Trump Has Lost Twitter Privileges (Video) Donald Trump At just after midnight on Tuesday, Donald Trump embarked on the final raucous rally of his unprecedented presidential campaign and pleaded with voters to make the day the US's "independence day." Hitting on many of the themes common throughout the hundreds of prior Trump rallies, the Republican presidential nominee bellowed to a packed, late-night audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan, early Tuesday morning Election Day that "today is our Independence Day." "Today the American working class is going to strike back," he said, adding disbelief throughout the rally that the day had arrived, at last. "The election is now, the election is now. Can you believe it? It's today." The Manhattan billionaire said there was "no place" he'd rather be for his grand finale of a rally than Michigan. He guaranteed a win later Tuesday night, outlining the next step for his historic political movement. "It's going to be the very beginning of a new adventure," he said. "The new adventure is making America great again. We're going to do it." The rally was the culmination of what became the hallmark of Trump's presidential campaign: a free-flowing, off-the-cuff rally in front of thousands of supporters. Perhaps no element of the Trump candidacy sparked more news, more controversy, and more fandom for Trump than his wild rallies. For much of the primary season, he would simply appear onstage and speak with little or no script, often for more than an hour. Even after adding a teleprompter, he still frequently went off script, making statements that overshadowed his speech. It was at his rallies that he labeled Sen. Marco Rubio as "Liddle Marco," Sen. Ted Cruz as "Lyin' Ted," former Gov. Jeb Bush as "low energy," and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as "Crooked Hillary." He pulled stunts such as spraying a water bottle to mock Rubio, pretending to shoot a belt buckle in reference to the backstory of Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, and even giving out Sen. Lindsey Graham's cellphone number onstage. Story continues During his late-night Michigan speech, he made sure to give a hat tip to all of those he savaged along his way to his party's nomination and throughout his subsequent quest toward the Oval Office. "It's hard to believe," Trump said. "We started a year and a half ago. We started with 17 people. Very talented. Senators. Governors. Dr. Ben Carson ... And now we have one flawed candidate left to beat." Donald Trump It was also during his rallies that he would make his most pointed statements on his chief policy items. He painted them in as extreme a light as he possibly could, riling up the massive crowds. He called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a landmark free-trade agreement supported by the Obama administration, the continuing "rape of our country." He proclaimed that "Mexico will pay for the wall" he said he would build along the southern border of the US. And he announced in December one of the most controversial proposals of his campaign, one to bar Muslims from entering the country "until we can figure out what the hell is going on." Tuesday was no exception. "I just want to ask you one question here at 1 a.m.," Trump said. "Who is going to pay for the wall?" "Mexico!" the crowd roared back. "One hundred percent," Trump said in response. "They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay." Chants of "build that wall" had already broken out. "We will suspend the Syrian refugee program," Trump continued. "And we will keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. One hundred percent. We have no choice. We have no choice. But we all have big hearts, and we'll build safe havens in Syria." And he torched trade, too, in the Rust Belt state, blasting NAFTA and the TPP. He promised to come back to Michigan during his presidency "every time we open up a new factory or automobile plant." I'll "stop the jobs from leaving the US, and stop the jobs from leaving Michigan," he promised. "That I can tell you, 100%." "Now the cars are made in Mexico, and you can't drink the damn water in Flint," Trump continued. "What the hell?" trump rally Another all-too-common theme of the Trump rally was his frequent lambasting of the press, whether it was calling them "dishonest," "scum," or "low-lifes" or calling reporters out by name. He once accused the media in mocking fashion of claiming that he "loves" deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Last month, he promised to sue all of the women who went to the press whom he deemed as "disgusting" to accuse him of making unwanted sexual advances. On cue, he saved some vitriol for his final rally. "The world's most dishonest people," he said of the media, adding that "they're not happy" with his success. "They're saying, 'What is going on?'" he said. Often hand-in-hand with his commonly used lines about the media were his complaints that they did not show the size of the crowds at his rally. "Isn't it too bad that the corrupt media doesn't show the crowds!" he said, adding that the press would "say, 'Donald Trump is speaking before a crowd of people' ugh, these people are the worst." And the crowd booed the media as Trump painted them as the enemy. At previous recent rallies, attendees have responded with chants that "CNN sucks," which joined the more common "build that wall" and "lock her up." Tuesday, they joined in unison with Trump in his latest rally cry: "Drain the swamp." Draining the swamp, as Trump describes it, is lockstep with his claims of a "rigged" system, such as when he felt the primary was being taken from him, the general election would be "stolen," or when he believed the FBI and Justice Department were "protecting" Clinton amid the investigation surrounding her use of a private email server. And on that final note, he doubled down again early Tuesday morning. "She is being protected by a totally rigged system," he said. "She's been protected by a rigged system for so long." trump rally There are seemingly countless other themes and tropes from Trump's events that were continuing news stories in and of themselves. The wild opening acts. The fights that broke out. Even the playlist that preceded and followed Trump. Recently, top Trump ally and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich went as far in suggesting to Politico that the rallies could continue if Trump doesn't win on Tuesday night. That thought was not present in the convention hall in the early hours of the morning. "Let me just tell you, if we don't win, this will be the single greatest waste of time energy and money in my life," he said, a line he's spoken many times before. "We have to win. To do what we want to do, we have to win. We can't just have something that looks good in the history books in 30 years." Then, at just after 1 a.m., he made his last appeal to America. "To all Americans tonight in all of our cities and all of our towns, I pledge to you one more time, together, we will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again," he said. Then he added a new instruction. "Go to bed!" he insisted of his audience, his final words from a presidential campaign rally. "Go to bed right now! Get up and vote!" NOW WATCH: Watch Trump repeatedly photobomb Clinton during the debate More From Business Insider voting on tuesdays last week tonight john oliver hbo Don't be fooled: You can't vote from home via text message. That might sound obvious, but some people have been using social media to try to convince voters otherwise. The misleading posts, shared on Twitter, Reddit, and 4Chan in the days leading up to Election Day, proclaim that you can vote online or by text "from the comfort of your own home." This is false. As Fusion notes, Twitter has begun blocking fake ads, though it originally said the messages did not violate its terms of service (which state "accounts portraying another person in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended"). Twitter reversed its statement on the images after they started to spread. The post below targets voters in Pennsylvania, a swing state. It features a typeface similar to the one used by the Hillary campaign. Be wary of crap like this, folks. NO state has "online voting". Period. This is what "rigging an election" looks like. pic.twitter.com/oPUb4v3ro6 Matthew Ciszek (@mciszek) October 17, 2016 Here are a few others that have been making the rounds, which originated from Twitter user @TheRickyVaughn. The original tweets containing the image below have since been deleted (presumably by Twitter): text vote Please report this account. Also the source of Sid Miller's C-word tweet. pic.twitter.com/NrSOOAM5kI Robert McNees (@mcnees) November 1, 2016 text vote 3 When I texted the number, I got a response that read "the ad you saw was not approved by iVisionMobile OR Hillary for America in any way" and offered the real number for text updates from the Clinton campaign. text vote 2 Story continues Registered voters in a few Virginia counties (also a swing state) have also reported receiving fake letters that said their registration status was in question. The letters said they came from the Voter Participation Center (a nonpartisan organization that seeks to increase voter turnout) and Americas Future Inc. (a right-wing group based in New York City). These seem to be hopefully unsuccessful attempts to keep people out of the polls. NOW WATCH: This Lego-style home can be built in a few weeks with just a screwdriver More From Business Insider By Rod Nickel and Ankur Banerjee (Reuters) - Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc (VRX.TO) on Tuesday cut its revenue forecast for the year and warned that 2017 could be even more challenging as some products face new competition, sending shares down more than 20 percent. Valeant's grim expectations come as U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has promised, if elected, to pursue price gouging by drug companies and as the U.S. Department of Justice investigates possible price collusion among generic drugmakers. Nitropress and Isuprel are among Valeant's neurology drugs that lose market exclusivity by next year, and there will also be a likely "material" dropoff in its generics business, said Chief Financial Officer Paul Herendeen, who started work in September. The result will be lower overall revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) next year, Herendeen said on a conference call. Revenue and EBITDA in core businesses should grow, he said. "We will dig our way out of part of the growth hole ... but we will not crawl all the way out of that hole" in 2017 Herendeen said. "It will be a down year." Rival Endo International Plc (ENDP.O) is also facing increased pricing and competitive pressures in its U.S. generics business and the trends will likely worsen in 2017, newly appointed Chief Executive Paul Campanelli said on Tuesday. Valeant's U.S.-listed shares (VRX.N) were down 21.5 percent at $15.02 on Tuesday afternoon, after touching a more than six-year low. The company's high-yield bonds fell in heavy trading. The company, whose biggest investor is Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management, replaced former chief executive Mike Pearson with Joe Papa in spring as it sought to rebuild trust with investors. Steep drug price increases and its unorthodox use of a specialty pharmacy under previous leadership drew scrutiny of politicians and regulators. Herendeen emphasized he was not offering formal guidance for 2017, and simply wanted to be transparent. Story continues BAND-AID FIX? But one analyst expressed scepticism that the company has the right plan beyond cutting costs and investing in research and development. "I'm hearing more Band-Aid solutions. Am I missing something?" Stifel analyst Annabel Samimy asked executives. Papa said the company was taking numerous steps, including recruiting new executives. Analysts have also raised concerns about Valeant repaying its $30 billion debt pile after years of serial acquisitions under Pearson. Robert Ilowite, a dermatologist in New Jersey and a small Valeant shareholder, said he would likely hold on to his shares. "I think a lot of the problems stem from the previous CEO," he said in an interview. "It's probably not worth it (now) to sell and take the loss." Oliver Marti, portfolio manager at Columbus Circle Investors, a Valeant shareholder, said despite the company's "bumps," the new CFO is making the right decisions to turn it around. "I do think the company is on track." The Laval, Quebec-based company expects total revenue of $9.55 billion to $9.65 billion in 2016, down from its previous forecast of $9.9 billion-$10.1 billion. Adjusted earnings are forecast to be $5.30-$5.50 per share, compared with the previous forecast of $6.60-$7.00. Valeant has received significant inquiries from potential buyers for assets, Papa said, without elaborating. The company took a charge of $1.05 billion in the latest quarter, reflecting lower fair value of some U.S. businesses, mainly Salix, which makes irritable bowel syndrome drug Xifaxan. Valeant said last week it was in talks with third parties to sell Salix and other assets. The company reported smaller-than-expected quarterly adjusted profit due to faltering sales of dermatology products and Xifaxan. Valeant's net loss was $1.22 billion, or $3.49 per share, in the third quarter, compared with profit of $49.5 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, Valeant earned $1.55 per share, below analysts' average estimate of $1.73, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue fell 11 percent to $2.48 billion. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba, additional reporting by Ransdell Pierson in New York; editing by Marguerita Choy and Matthew Lewis) Dubai (AFP) - Dubai agreed a deal Tuesday with a US startup to "evaluate" the construction of a near-supersonic transport link that could slash travel times to Emirati capital Abu Dhabi to minutes. The cash-flush city state, which has recently hosted other hi-tech transport pilots, said it would conduct a "feasibility study" with Hyperloop One to sound out the scheme. The California-based firm hailed Tuesday's "historic" agreement. "We begin to evaluate the delivery of the world's first hyperloop system across the country," CEO Rob Lloyd told reporters. "We will initially focus on the value that Hyperloop One will deliver in Dubai and across the (United Arab) Emirates." The deal will see both parties explore a route for a vacuum-sealed pod transportation system, which could potentially slash travel times between Dubai and Abu Dhabi -- 150 kilometres (90 miles) apart -- to around 12 minutes. The system could later be expanded to link the UAE with neighbouring Gulf countries so that a trip between Dubai and Saudi capital Riyadh -- currently two hours by plane -- could be completed in under 50 minutes. Lloyd said his company has also been in talks with transport authorities in Abu Dhabi to discuss the proposal. While no costs or time-scales were revealed, Lloyd said in a statement that "from a technological point of view, we could have a Hyperloop One system built in the UAE in the next five years." Mattar al-Tayer, Dubai Road Transport Authoritys director general, told reporters that the cost of building the system will be "an important factor when making such a strategic decision on whether or not we can have hyperloop" in addition to questions over safety and demand. - 1,200-kph journey - Hyperloop is a futuristic passenger and freight transport system that promoters say offers the promise of near-supersonic speeds. Earlier this year, Hyperloop One held a first public test in the desert outside Las Vegas, trying out engine components designed to rocket pods through reduced-pressure tubes at speeds of 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) per hour. Story continues The company says the system offers better safety than passenger jets, lower build and maintenance costs than high-speed trains, and energy usage, per person, that is similar to a bicycle. Last month, port colossus DP World Group of Dubai announced it was investing in the concept, joining backers including French national rail company SNCF, US industrial conglomerate General Electric and Russian state fund RDIF. Home to Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower where Tuesday's conference took place, Dubai is a leading tourist destination in the Gulf, attracting 14.2 million visitors in 2015. In September, it unveiled its first driverless bus service, launching a month-long trial period for the electric vehicle with a view to expanding it across the city state. Hyperloop One, which has so far raised more than $160 million (145 million euros), was set on an idea laid out three years ago by billionaire Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind electric car company Tesla and private space exploration endeavour SpaceX. PARIS (Reuters) - France's would-be president, Nicolas Sarkozy, says children who do not eat pork - the case for many of the country's large Jewish and Muslim minorities - should order a double portion of chips when their school canteen puts ham on the menu. Sarkozy, trailing rival Alain Juppe in opinion polls as they campaign for conservative party backing in the presidential election six months from now, has sought to present himself as the voice of a silent majority in a formally secular country where the majority are of nonetheless of Catholic origin. Two weeks from a primary election organized by his party, Les Republicains (The Republicans), the man who was president from 2007 to 2012 held a political meeting overnight in his conservative fiefdom of Neuilly, west of Paris. "If a little guy's family does not eat pork and the menu at the (school) canteen is a slice of ham and chips, well, he skips the ham and eats a double helping of chips. In a republic, it's the same rule and the same menu for everyone," he said. France, with a total population of more than 65 million, is home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities. After attacks claimed by Islamist militants that killed more than 230 people in the past 18 months, security and religious-based tensions are firmly in focus before the election, which will be held in two rounds next April and May. Opinion polls suggest Sarkozy's main center-right rival, Juppe, a former prime minister, is favored both to win the conservative party candidacy and is best-placed to defeat Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, in a possible runoff . The 'let them eat chips' suggestion is reminiscent of one often - and probably wrongly - attributed to Marie-Antoinette, beheaded wife of King Louis XVI, who in urban legend is reported to have said of bread shortages for the poor: "Let them eat cake". (Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Andrew Callus, Larry King) During a recent UFC 205 conference call, Conor McGregor took his smack talk where few fighters have gone before: he brought Eddie Alvarezs family into it. The brash Irishman declared Im going to really, truly rearrange his facial structure. His wife and kids wont recognize him again. Those comments were probably designed to rile Eddie Alvarez up and get into his head. But as far as the scrappy Philadelphia born fighter is concerned, its a sign that McGregor desperately wants him off his game by fight night. This guy is so offensive minded and never on the defense, that whenever you put him on the defense he gets so flustered and so upset, Alvarez said in the latest UFC Embedded video. At a certain point in the press conference he got desperate and started talking about my wife and kids and things like that. And for me, its just a sign of desperation. You dont talk about another mans family unless youre through the roof pissed off. Just to see him cross that its good. Its a good sign for me. Hes already on tilt. As far as how he sees the fight going, Eddie has been saying since the fight was announced that Conor doesnt have the gas tank to beat him. He is a tough guy in the beginning rounds of the bout, Alvarez told UFC.com. But at eight minutes, even if hes dominating, he doesnt like to fight past that and he doesnt like to get into a fight. He likes to dominate and hes a little bit of a frontrunner. Those eight minutes should be a bit doubtful for him. Thats how I feel those eight minutes will go, that were going to implant nothing but doubt inside his head constantly, and I dont think hell do well in the face of that. Alvarez might be talking about a different McGregor, though. The Conor that only lasted 8 minutes was the one that was defeated by Nate Diaz. Since then, McGregor redoubled his efforts at the gym and locked in his nutrition. In his rematch with Nate, he managed to pull out the fight in the fifth due to his enhanced gas tank. Will that tank last him through 25 minutes of Eddie Alvarez pressure? Thats the question well find the answer to this Saturday night in New York City. For investors looking to avoid underperformance, VanEck Vectors Egypt Index ETF EGPT is probably on radar now. The fund just touched a 52-week low and EGPT is down nearly 37.6% from its 52-week high price of $41.80/share. But is more pain in store for this ETF? Lets take a quick look at the fund and the near-term outlook on it to get a better idea on where it might be headed: EGPT in Focus EGPT is the sole ETF tracking Egypt and holds 26 stocks in its basket. The fund is highly concentrated in the real estate and the financial sector with each accounting for more than one-fourth of the allocation. The fund charges investors 98 basis points a year in fees and its top holdings are Global Telecom Holding, Commercial International Bank and Edita Food Industries (see all Africa-Middle East Equity ETFs here). Why the Move? Egypt has been an area to watch lately as its central bank floated its currency for the first time in order to boost investment and ease dollar crunch. While stocks jumped the most in eight years, the local currency nosedived almost 50% against the U.S. dollar. The country is looking to secure a $12 billion bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). More Pain Ahead? Currently, EGPT has a Zacks ETF Rank of 4 or Sell rating with a High risk outlook, suggesting its continued underperformance in the coming months. While the government alongside the central bank has been implementing a series of reforms aimed at reviving the economy, there is still some downside risk signaling caution, and investors should wait until the sector bottoms out before jumping into this ETF. Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week. Get it free >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report VANECK-EGYPT (EGPT): ETF Research Reports To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Egypt entered into an uncharted territory as its central bank floated its currency for the first time in order to boost investment and ease dollar crunch. In consequence, stocks jumped the most in eight years, while the local currency nosedived almost 50% against the U.S. dollar (read:Will IMF Loan Boost the Egypt ETF?). Egypt's central bank stated that the free float of the currency would reflect supply and demand better despite increasing volatility and uncertainty in the short term. It will also help in eliminating the black market for dollars, which has been thriving lately. This move by the countrys central bank is expected to improve its external competitiveness, support exports and tourism and attract foreign investment in addition to aiding growth and job creation. Egypts economy has been suffering for some years now, thanks to political unrest in 2011 and a string of terror attacks. This has led to a massive decline in tourism and foreign investments, key sources of hard currency. As a result, the countrys foreign reserve has dwindled to almost half since the uprising. A foreign-currency shortage has affected the domestic businesses badly. The country has been in a tight spot with its current account deficit hitting a record 6.7% of GDP in the first quarter. Egypt, after free floating its currency, is looking to secure a $12 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As per the preliminary agreement with the IMF, Egypt will get parts of the loan over the next three years. However, the bailout still has to be formally approved by the fund's board. While the government alongside the central bank has been implementing a series of reforms aimed at reviving the economy, a loan from the IMF could help speed up the process. ETF in Focus Keeping these points in mind, we highlight the sole ETF tracking EgyptVanEck Vectors Egypt Index ETF EGPT. The fund has lost 25.7% in the last five days as of November 4, 2016. Let us take a look at this ETF in detail (see all Africa-Middle East Equity ETFs here). EGPT, launched in February 2010, tracks the MVIS Egypt Index focusing on companies that are listed on an exchange in Egypt and generate at least 50% of their revenues from the country. The fund holds 26 securities in its basket and its top three holdings include Global Telecom Holding, Commercial International Bank and Edita Food Industries. It is highly concentrated in its top 10 holdings with an allocation of 66.7%. As far as sector allocation is concerned, the product is highly concentrated in the real estate and financial sector with each accounting for more than one-fourth of the fund allocation, followed by telecom (15.2%), materials (10%) and consumer staples (8.3%). The ETF is quite overlooked as it manages $14.4 million in its asset base and trades in a paltry volume of around 38,400 shares per day. It is highly expensive, charging 98 basis points from investors per year. The fund has a Zacks ETF Rank #4 or Sell with a High risk outlook (read: Bremain or Brexit: No Worries for EM ETF Investing). Story continues Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week. Get it free >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report VANECK-EGYPT (EGPT): ETF Research Reports To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report There will be wall-to-wall coverage of Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 8 as the country votes to elect either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. From broadcast outlets like CNN and Fox News to newspapers like The New York Times (which has dropped its paywall through Wednesday, Nov. 9), election coverage will be hard to avoid. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others will also be live streaming coverage during throughout the day and evening. The Hollywood Reporter has put together a guide to some of ways cord-cutters can stay up-to-date on the live election results. CBSN The streaming outlet of CBS News will have live coverage online all day on Tuesday as well as during the night from 7 p.m. ET until 2 a.m. ET. - available via CBSNews.com and CBS News mobile apps and set-top box apps. The daytime broadcast will be anchored by Josh Elliott with correspondents Vladimir Duthiers and Reena Ninan and the evening stream will feature live network broadcast coverage led by Scott Pelley, Norah O'Donnell, John Dickerson, Gayle King, Charlie Rose, Elaine Quijano and Bob Schieffer. Facebook Several news outlets will broadcast live election programming from the social network. They include NowThis, which will host a stream with comedian Jordan Carlos called "No Sleep Til POTUS," CNN, which will stream live from a different battleground location every hour from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from watch parties and other spots the rest of the evening, and satirical news site The Onion, which plans to debut on Facebook Live during Election Day. In addition, OZY Media has partnered with Wired to broadcast a cocktail party live from Washington, D.C. Other outlets planning live coverage on Facebook include ABC News, NYT, Univision and The Washington Post. Google The search giant will integrate national and local election results into its search engine, continuously updating as new information becomes available. Story continues Twitter Beginning at 6 p.m. ET, Twitter will broadcast live coverage of the election from BuzzFeed News' New York headquarters, complete with guest interviews, exclusive videos from President Obama and the cast of Hamilton, and live update from BuzzFeed reporters around the country. The news organization also plans to work with Decision Desk HQ to call states for each candidate. YouTube The Google-owned streamer will offer live coverage from NBC, PBS, MTV, Bloomberg, Telemundo and The Young Turks. In addition, Complex News will deliver live Election Night programming from YouTube Space NY. Read more: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton Make Bids at Rallies Before Election Day It seems like the 2016 election has everyone on edge. Though threatening to flee the country during an election year has become somewhat of a tradition in recent years, this particular election between two wildly different candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has given those threats a tinge of seriousness. People are seriously thinking about moving to Canada if their candidate doesn't win, and the numbers show that it may not be just hyperbole this time. According to data from job search site Monster, the number of Americans looking for jobs in Canada has spiked 58% over last year. "Between January and October of this year, Monster saw 30,296 job searches using the keyword 'Canada' on Monster's U.S. website, which is a jump from the 19,693 in all of 2015," a Monster rep told The Cheat Sheet. While these numbers are still relatively small, it does go to show that the 2016 election has people seriously considering some life-altering decisions in fear of the fallout. Move to Canada? Mull it Over, First Of course, talk is cheap. People threaten to move to Canada every election year, and very few ever actually follow through. But again, this election seems different, and if Monster's numbers are any indication, there may actually be a bigger migration north of the border in coming years than we've seen before. Keep in mind, however, that it may not be the best long-term move for most Americans. As far as the data on searches goes, Monster's team said the majority of Americans looking for jobs in Canada are looking in Ontario, with Toronto being the most often-searched destination. Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver followed close behind. In terms of the types of jobs Americans are searching for, engineering jobs had the highest hits. That's trailed by IT work and jobs in the financial industry. But when it comes to where the opportunity lies, Monster's team ran down the top five jobs with the most openings (per its data) in Canada. If you truly plan to make a run for the border after the dust settles, these will probably be the easiest jobs to get. Story continues 1. Retail Workers With 25,843 openings listed in Monster's database, retail jobs present the most opportunity for American political refugees fleeing to Canada. These jobs can be challenging no matter where you're living, as they're commonly known to wear you down and often don't pay extremely well. 2. Retail Management All those retail workers need management and supervision, and there are plenty of opportunities for that in Canada. Per Monster's data, there are 12,926 openings for retail managers and supervisors across Canada. You'll still be in the retail sector, which may not be thrilling, but if you're looking to build your management experience, this could be a good route. 3. Truck Drivers With 13,002 openings, it's clear that truck drivers are needed to transport cargo all across Canada. U.S. Census data has shown that truck drivers have one of the most common professions in the country, and given Canada's similar layout namely, sprawling geography ranging from the Pacific to the Atlantic truckers are needed up north as well. 4. Sales & Account Representatives Sales is a hot field in Canada, at least according to the Monster numbers. There are 12,411 openings for sales and account representatives, which may be an attractive field for those who wish to remain in the sales game, but don't want to go into the retail sector. These jobs typically pay more as well. 5. Customer Information Reps Finally, customer and information representatives, with 11,696 openings, fills out the list. Essentially, these jobs require workers help customers. That can include walking them through product choices or fixing any issues with their purchases. If this sounds like it's more up your alley than straight-up sales, there are jobs to be had. [Editor's Note: Remember, if you're simply looking for a new job in the U.S., it's important to remember that many employers look at a version of your credit reports as part of the application process. Because of this, it's a good idea to know where your credit currently stands. You can see two of your credit scores for free, updated every 14 days, on Credit.com.] navy seals It's a stressful day. If watching the results of the exit polls is giving you heart palpitations so that you can barely focus on doing your work, you're hardly alone. But ordering yourself to focus, focus! probably isn't the most effective strategy for calming down. In fact, it can sometimes backfire, because now you're nervous and angry that forcing yourself to stop being nervous didn't work. Here's a better solution: Trick yourself into a calmer state. Specifically, instead of telling yourself to relax, pretend that you already are relaxed by breathing deeply, the way a super-relaxed person would. Your body and mind will probably soon follow suit. That tip comes courtesy of Eric Potterat, the former head psychologist for the US Navy Seals. Potterat is currently the scientific advisor at Thync, which makes wearable technology that helps reduce stress. He told us about this technique in relation to preparing for a stressful meeting at work, but it works just as well on a stressful day. Potterat calls the breathing technique "tactical breathing," and has taught the strategy to elite athletes. It's a component of arousal control, or diminishing the body's stress response and kickstarting the relaxation process. Potterat likens the stress response to the body's "gas pedal": The sympathetic nervous system goes into action, meaning your heart rate increases and your breaths become shallow. Fortunately, Potterat said, the body also has a "built-in brake system to help recover and relax." You can activate that brake system, also known as the parasympathetic nervous system, simply by taking a few deep breaths. This strategy works for two reasons. One, Potterat said you don't think about the stressor at hand because you're focusing on breathing. Two, and perhaps more importantly, it "exactly counteracts the human stress response." In other words, you're working from the outside in, behaving the way a relaxed person would, so that your body thinks you are in fact relaxed. Story continues When you're under extreme stress, Potterat recommends finding a private place to take a few depth breaths for four to five minutes. "It's a technique anyone should and could do," he said. NOW WATCH: Firefighters and athletes use the same strategy to overcome stress More From Business Insider Its Election Day, and HelloGiggles urges you to vote! To say this election has been exhausting would be an understatement if you need a break from social media for awhile, we totally get it. Because regardless of which presidential candidate you side with, its true that these last couple years have been polarizing in terms of our countrys political and social climate. Weve heard a lot of hateful words, weve read countless stories from all kinds of perspectives (many we dont agree with), weve witnessed a kind of clashing in the U.S. that is unique to our generation. And its all coming to a head today, Election Day. Which brings us to say, make sure you vote today (if you havent already). We dont know who youre voting for, and we dont really care either way. Whats important is that you, reader, are letting your voice be heard. And while we are total proponents of post-election self-care, go out and cast your ballot so we can collectively heal as a nation. Heres who HG editorial is voting for and why. Growing up, I did not know that it was possible for a woman to be President of the United States. It never once crossed my mind and was a scenario I couldnt even imagine, a fairy tale of sorts. That, in and of itself, is a significant and far-reaching problem but we now have a chance to change this. To make what was once a dream, a reality for young girls everywhere. -Anna Gragert, Associate Editor Im with Hillary because she is the only person on the ballot with the experience to run our country. The FBI has found no criminal wrong doing in her email #scandal. Even the parents of a Benghazi victim dont even blame Hillary! If you think shes a liar or untrustworthy, I would urge you to check Politifact, a Pulitzer prize winning site that fact checks all politicians statements and systemically rates Hillary as more trustworthy than even Bernie Sanders! -Madison Vanderberg, Senior Editor Story continues Hillary Clinton was an icon to me back in elementary school in a way, I feel like I grew up with her. Im not voting for Hillary because shes a woman, but Im voting for her because shes living proof that strong women are completely capable of successfully leading our country. Shes got everything it takes to make America shine even brighter, and Im so thrilled that shes representing the Democratic party. -Karen Belz, Writer Im voting for Hillary because, full disclosure, Im a passionate Democrat and her platform is in line with many of my basic values. But MORE than that, Im with her because a reality in which a person like Donald Trump represents me, my country, or our collective values is unthinkable. -Toria Sheffield, News Editor A few years ago, I got to see Hillary Clinton speak here in L.A. She explained her goals and accomplishments as Secretary of State with such grace and clarity I thought if I ever needed brain surgery, Id want her in charge of my operation. Obviously, now I want her in charge of our country! #HillYES -Christina Wolfgram, Video Producer Im voting for Hillary for a whole lot of reasons but *especially* because I want a president who will protect health care access, protect my right to bodily autonomy, and appoint Supreme Court judges who advocate for social justice. Im voting for Hillary because she is so strong. She is brilliantly capable and astoundingly experienced like, more experienced than any candidate ever. -Rachel Sanoff, Features Editor Of course, Im voting for Clinton because of her extensive experience and her policies, if enacted, are in line with my values. This might sound sort of sappy, but I was super sold the moment I saw her hug Chelsea and rub her back when she came onstage at the DNC. She just looked like a MOM. Like, thats a mom-hug. It made me realize how important it will be to have a woman in the WH. Yes, its about politics, too, but its also about what makes someone good at politics. I think shes just a critical thinking, power-through it, authentic human being (which means she makes mistakes, too).Thats who I want in the White House and representing Americans abroad. Also, she admitted that she watches Madame Secretary and The Good Wife and the fact that shes into CBS Sunday drama kind of cracks me up. -Karen Fratti, Weekend Editor There are many reasons I am proud to vote for Hillary Clinton, but I will distill it to two short and sweet sentences: Hillary has dedicated her live to serving the people and she seeks to unify, not divide, our country. Im With Her because womens rights are human rights. -Emily Popp, Deputy Editor And as for me, I already mailed in my ballot, but Im with Hillary all the way because Im excited about the things shell be able to do for women (empower them, support their right to choose what they do with their bodies, and recognize that equal pay is an important issue we must put to the forefront), as well as the country. Regardless of who you support and why, we encourage you to vote, vote, vote! The post Its Election Day, and HelloGiggles urges you to vote! appeared first on HelloGiggles. After the most poll-obsessed, data-driven campaign in memory, the news networks are at last going into the climax of election night. It will likely come as a relief to most of America, but for those in the media, it is a night fraught with journalistic risk. ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, and the Associated Press are sticking with their commitment not to report results of exit-poll information in a particular state until voting has closed there. But there will be a tidal wave of data and anecdotal information flowing in throughout the day, including from a new venture that promises to give a real-time readout of the way things are trending. This year, a group called VoteCastr has teamed with Slate to provide real-time voter information based not on exit polls but on analytics and turnout tracking. VoteCastrs editorial director and chief strategist, Sasha Issenberg, says the service is providing information that campaigns can rely on internally. He has called the networks embargo on information a de facto self-imposed gag order, and says it only makes sense to provide this information in real time. We will estimate the total number of votes cast in a state and how we think, based on our survey work, they split across the candidates, Issenberg says. VoteCastr will stop short of declaring early winners or losers. Were leaving election-night calls until the polls close and the votes can be counted, he says. Ever since NBC News, relying on exit-poll data, called the 1980 presidential race for Ronald Reagan at 8:15 pm ET, when polls were still open across the country, the networks have been under scrutiny over when and how they call a particular state for a candidate. After that year, some members of Congress put pressure on the major networks to withhold declaring a winner until the polls have closed, and the networks have ever since adhered to keeping race projections under wraps until that time. The issue arose again in 2004, when some early exit-poll data leaked online and was published by Drudge Report, giving a great deal of the world the idea that John Kerry was on his way to defeating President George W. Bush. Even many in Kerrys campaign were convinced that their candidate would win. Story continues Ever since the 2006 midterm elections, the information has been quarantined at an undisclosed location, as Joe Lenski, the co-founder and executive vice president of Edison Research puts it. His firm conducts the exit-polling information for the six news organizations, called the National Election Pool. Only a handful of media representatives are allowed to be at the undisclosed location as the data comes in, Lenski says, and they have to surrender their communication devices. No cell phones, laptops, smoke signals, nothing, he says. The journalists can get their devices back at 5 p.m. ET; even then, the networks have released only exit-poll data about topics such as the makeup of the electorate and voter sentiment toward certain issues. The networks will begin to make projections only when polls have closed in each state. But Sam Feist, CNNs Washington bureau chief and senior vice president, says, We are in no rush. There is no race to be first. We will be methodical as we go through the data. It could be a very late night. He said that they will not use exit polls to project winners in competitive races, but rely on actual vote totals. The purpose of exit polls is to get a sense of who voted and how they voted. Its better to be last and right than first and wrong, says ABC News executive producer of special events and election-night coverage, Marc Burstein. I dont care what other websites or other networks are doing. Our Decision Desk [analysts] tell me when News is ready to project a winner. I dont know what other networks are saying, nor do our anchors. Its just not part of our equation. Everyone wants to avoid what happened in 2000, when Florida was called first for Al Gore, then for George W. Bush. Then everything was thrown into question until the contentious recount could play itself out at the Supreme Court. We dont just have egg on our face, NBCs Tom Brokaw said at the time. We have an omelet. Four years ago, after Fox News called Ohio for President Obama, which put him over the top of 270 electoral votes, Karl Rove questioned the call. Thats when Megyn Kelly took the cameras to an area off the set, where analysts explained how they had reached their conclusion. Its not hard to see some of the same questions and doubts arising this year. Our aim is to describe for viewers everything thats happening in a race, even after we call a race, says Anthony Salvanto, elections director for CBS News. He says the network is deploying more polls and models and analytics than ever and, in terms of making a projection, will be transparent about how it reached that conclusion. We really want people to come away feeling that they were able to watch the race firsthand, and that we report it as we see it. Whats been happening in recent cycles is a shift in the way people vote, with weeks of early and absentee voting, which is being estimated at close to 40% this year. Lenski says Edison Research has been conducting telephone surveys of those who have already voted to complement its exit-poll data. Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., argues that despite all the data available, the risks of making a wrong call remain. The main problem is the way in which modern news-gathering is evolving, says Farnsworth, co-author of The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2008. The new challenge is that everyone wants to get the information first, and if you dont do the due diligence required, youll have it first, but youll have it wrong, too. this election has been unpredictable just about the only sure thing has been a viewership spike for campaign coverage, in whatever form. That will surely be the case on Election Day, when coverage will be ubiquitous well beyond the news channels. For example, Showtime is tapping Stephen Colbert for a live show in which he may be able to be a little looser than on the more restrictive environment of CBS Late Show. Lifetime is doing a two-and-a-half-hour live installment of The View. Executive producer Candi Carter says it was a no-brainer to do the special given that the show has been covering the election every day. The special aims to be counter-programming to hard-edged news by presenting an election-night party atmosphere with the View hosts and celebrity guests. Juju Chang, co-anchor of ABC News Nightline, will provide news updates throughout the broadcast. This will give people the best of both worlds, Carter says. Election night will also have somewhat of a celebratory atmosphere on the streets of New York, with both candidates throwing parties in the city. Forty years ago, NBC News dazzled election-night coverage by featuring a large electronic map of blue states and red states. This year, as it has in recent cycles, the network will transform Rockefeller Center into Democracy Plaza, with its 30 Rock building showered in red, white, and blue lighting. The ice rink will be made into an augmented reality map of the U.S. ABC News will place giant LED screens in Times Square, with Good Morning America host Michael Strahan in the crowd. Its all part of the storytelling, Burstein says. We all get the same data at the same time. The only way we can distinguish ourselves is by what we do with the data. Brian Steinberg contributed to this report. Related stories Hollywood Election Donations Heavily Lopsided in Favor of Hillary Clinton Sarah Paulson Performs Dramatic Reading of Hillary Clinton's Emails (Watch) Remembering Some of the Most Memorable Quotes From the 2016 Election Dublin, Ireland-based Endo International plc ENDP is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on branded and generic pharmaceuticals products as well as over-the-counter medications through its operating companies. The company has several products including Lidoderm, Opana ER, Supprelin LA and Fortesta Gel in its Branded Pharmaceuticals portfolio. Endo has implemented a growth-by-acquisition strategy. The company has acquired privately held Par Pharmaceutical, which boosted its generics portfolio and pipeline. The company also acquired a broad portfolio of branded and generic injectable and established products focused on pain, anti-infectives, cardiovascular and other specialty therapeutics areas from a subsidiary of Aspen Holdings. Endo has been consistently beating earnings expectations. In fact, Endo posted a positive surprise in each of the trailing four quarters, with an average positive surprise of 6.66%. ENDO INTL PLC Price and EPS Surprise ENDO INTL PLC Price and EPS Surprise | ENDO INTL PLC Quote Currently, Endo has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), but that could definitely change following the companys earnings report which was just released. We have highlighted some of the key stats from this just-revealed announcement below: Earnings Beat: Endo surpassed third-quarter 2016 earnings. The company reported EPS of $1.01 while our consensus called for EPS of 81 cents. Revenues Beat: Revenues also came in above expectations. Endo posted revenues of $884.3 million, compared to our consensus estimate of $867 million. 2016 Guidance Maintained: Endo reiterated its outlook for 2016. The company continues to expect revenues in the range of $3.87 billion to $4.03 billion. It still expects earnings in the range of $4.50 to $4.80 per share. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings is $4.55 per share on revenues of $3.91 billion in 2016. Pre-Market Trading: Shares are up around 7% in the pre-market trading. Check back later for our full write up on this ENDP earnings report later! Confidential from Zacks Beyond this Tale of the Tape, would you like to see Zacks' best recommendations that are not available to the public? Our Executive VP, Steve Reitmeister, knows when key trades are about to be triggered and which of our experts has the hottest hand. Click to see them now>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report ENDO INTL PLC (ENDP): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research (Adds details about banks, context) By Liz Hampton Nov 8 (Reuters) - Energy Transfer Partners LP on Tuesday said it was not slowing down construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota that is contested by environmentalists and Native Americans groups. The owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Tuesday said it was moving equipment to prepare for tunneling under Lake Oahe, the water source that has been a focus of protests, even as federal regulators have not given a go-ahead signal that the line will be able to proceed. Army Corps spokesman Thomas O'Hara told Bloomberg News on Monday that the company had agreed to slow down construction, a statement Energy Transfer refuted. "The statement released last night by the Army Corps was a mistake and the Army Corps intends to rescind it," Energy Transfer said in a statement released on Tuesday. "To be clear, Dakota Access Pipeline has not voluntarily agreed to halt construction of the pipeline in North Dakota." The Army Corps of Engineers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Construction on part of the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline was halted in September following protests from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others, who said the line would desecrate sacred grounds and a spill could contaminate drinking water. President Barack Obama last week said the U.S. government was looking at ways to reroute the pipeline. The continued construction comes amid mounting pressure from activists on banks financing the pipeline to pull their support. Citigroup Inc on Tuesday said it had discussed its concerns with Energy Transfer Partners and urged it to reach a resolution with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Norwegian bank DNB this week said that it would reconsider its participation in the financing of the pipeline if concerns raised by Native American tribes are not addressed. "It's clearly causing a lot of public concern and this is really a challenge to the reputation of the banks involved in this loan and how they stand on human rights and indigenous rights," said Amanda Starbuck of Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group that opposes the line. Story continues Energy Transfer said it was confident that it will receive an easement from the Army Corps for two strips of land adjacent to Lake Oahe, and expects no significant delays in its plans to drill under the lake. The company said also construction of the pipeline is complete on each side of Lake Oahe. The 1,172-mile (1,885 km) pipeline would deliver oil from the Bakken shale of North Dakota to markets in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast. (Reporting by Liz Hampton in Houston; additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) By Liz Hampton (Reuters) - Energy Transfer Partners LP on Tuesday said it was not slowing down construction of an oil pipeline in North Dakota that is contested by environmentalists and Native Americans groups. The owners of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Tuesday said it was moving equipment to prepare for tunneling under Lake Oahe, the water source that has been a focus of protests, even as federal regulators have not given a go-ahead signal that the line will be able to proceed. Army Corps spokesman Thomas OHara told Bloomberg News on Monday that the company had agreed to slow down construction, a statement Energy Transfer refuted. "The statement released last night by the Army Corps was a mistake and the Army Corps intends to rescind it," Energy Transfer said in a statement released on Tuesday. "To be clear, Dakota Access Pipeline has not voluntarily agreed to halt construction of the pipeline in North Dakota." The Army Corps of Engineers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Construction on part of the $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline was halted in September following protests from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others, who said the line would desecrate sacred grounds and a spill could contaminate drinking water. President Barack Obama last week said the U.S. government was looking at ways to reroute the pipeline. The continued construction comes amid mounting pressure from activists on banks financing the pipeline to pull their support. Citigroup Inc on Tuesday said it had discussed its concerns with Energy Transfer Partners and urged it to reach a resolution with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Norwegian bank DNB this week said that it would reconsider its participation in the financing of the pipeline if concerns raised by Native American tribes are not addressed. "It's clearly causing a lot of public concern and this is really a challenge to the reputation of the banks involved in this loan and how they stand on human rights and indigenous rights," said Amanda Starbuck of Rainforest Action Network, an environmental group that opposes the line. Story continues Energy Transfer said it was confident that it will receive an easement from the Army Corps for two strips of land adjacent to Lake Oahe, and expects no significant delays in its plans to drill under the lake. The company said also construction of the pipeline is complete on each side of Lake Oahe. The 1,172-mile (1,885 km) pipeline would deliver oil from the Bakken shale of North Dakota to markets in the U.S. Midwest and Gulf Coast. (Reporting by Liz Hampton in Houston; additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Istanbul (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lodged a criminal complaint against the main opposition for insulting him at a party meeting criticising a relentless crackdown. Erdogan's lawyer Huseyin Aydin placed the complaint on Tuesday against all MPs of the Republican People's Party (CHP), including leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, with Ankara prosecutors, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Prosecutors will now decide whether to open an investigation. The petition has been launched over a meeting of party MPs led by Kilicdaroglu on Monday denouncing the crackdown under the state of emergency imposed in the wake of the July 15 failed coup. It came after 10 MPs from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in parliament, were arrested on charges of terror links. Nine staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper were also remanded in custody at the weekend. The CHP had shown solidarity with Erdogan in the wake of the failed coup, with Kilicdaroglu even meeting him at his controversial palace and attending a mass rally in Istanbul addressed by the president. Erdogan had previously lodged several criminal complaints against Kilicdaroglu -- including for calling him a "tinpot dictator" -- but had dropped them as a gesture of thanks for the support after the coup. The new criminal complaint suggests that any remaining unity between the two men has now finally crumbled. At the meeting on Monday, the CHP's party council said the government only had itself to blame for the coup and was now attacking the founding values of modern Turkey. "Turkey is now going through a dark and authoritarian coup staged by the presidential palace," the CHP said. "The current political situation poses a serious threat against the freedom of our people and future of our country." Thousands of ordinary citizens, journalists and even a former Miss Turkey were prosecuted on the charges of insulting Erdogan in the last years but most of the cases were dropped after the coup. The co-leader of HDP Selahattin Demirtas, who was one of the MPs arrested, said in his latest message from jail on Tuesday that he was "taken hostage... in a civilian coup d'etat". "This is a new step taken by those who have, step by step, implemented various plots to consolidate a one-man rule," he said in a statement released by the HDP. Tallinn (AFP) - Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas on Tuesday refused to step down a day after his three-party coalition collapsed, and now faces a confidence vote in parliament that he is unlikely to survive, local media said. Amid the political chaos, party leaders on course to form the next government vowed that the Baltic state would remain firmly rooted in the eurozone and NATO as it gears up to assume the EU's rotating presidency in the second half of 2017. With his Reform party commanding just 30 seats in the 101-member parliament, Roivas's fate appeared to be sealed Tuesday when leaders of the five other parties in parliament gave him an ultimatum: step down or be voted out. "We are calling upon the prime minister to step down himself by 2 pm (Wednesday) at the latest," they said in a joint statement quoted by public broadcaster ERR. "Otherwise the head of government will be faced with five political parties' joint motion of no confidence, which is unprecedented. "Estonia is a democratic state and it is time for the prime minister to recognise that the coalition has folded." The confidence vote is set for Wednesday, according to ERR. It also quoted Roivas, 37, as vowing Tuesday he would not leave "quietly", but admitted the coalition forged in April 2015 was "finished". Roivas added that he wanted to "look members of the Riigikogu (parliament) in the eye when they vote in favour of moving to the left". Two junior coalition partners, the centre-left Social Democrats SDE and the conservative IRL party, demanded Roivas resign on Monday, ending cooperation with his centre-right Reform party amid disputes over his leadership. Both also began coalition talks with an opposition party. - Pro-EU and NATO - IRL leader Margus Tsahkna said Tuesday that "the change of coalition will not affect Estonia's course on foreign and defence policy". "Estonia is grateful to our NATO allies and will continue the course of pro-European Union and be NATO orientated despite the change of government," Tsahkna told AFP via an email Tuesday. Story continues Social Democratic leader Jevgeni Ossinovski, 30, told ERR Monday that he saw Juri Ratas, a deputy speaker of parliament and the freshly elected head of the opposition Centre party, as Estonia's next prime minister. Commanding 27 seats, the Centre party is popular among the sizeable ethnic Russian minority who account for a quarter of Estonia's 1.3 million people. Ratas replaced Edgar Savisaar, 66, whose perceived ties to Russia scared off potential coalition partners amid heightened tensions with Moscow. NATO leaders endorsed plans in July to rotate troops into Estonia and the other Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Poland, to reassure them they would not be left in the lurch if Russia was tempted to repeat its 2014 Ukraine intervention. Since then, the Kremlin has stepped up its military presence in its Soviet-era backyard in the Baltic Sea area and its jets frequently test the airspace of small NATO allies such as Estonia. Brussels (AFP) - The European Union has added several people, including some recently elected to Russia's parliament, to its sanctions blacklist for their role in supporting Moscow's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, officials said Tuesday. "The Council (of EU member states) adopted new listings under the restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence," Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir said. Kazimir, whose country holds the current six-month rotating EU presidency, was replying to a reporter's question about officials in Crimea being hit with asset freezes and travel bans. The minister said he could not give any further information, with full details due to be published on Wednesday. EU diplomatic sources said six Crimea deputies elected to Russia's Duma had been added to two already on the blacklist. The 28-nation EU refuses to recognise Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and insisted Russian parliamentary elections held there in September were illegal. In June, it rolled over for another year asset ban and travel freeze sanctions against individuals and companies said to have aided Russia's takeover of the Black Sea peninsula. In September, the EU extended by six months similar sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian individuals for aiding and abetting pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine. In July, the bloc extended much more damaging economic sanctions against Russia for another six months, citing a lack of progress in resolving the Ukraine conflict. EU leaders are due to review these economic sanctions at a summit in December amid sharp differences over how effective they are. By Gabriela Baczynska and Tulay Karadeniz BRUSSELS/ANKARA (Reuters) - The European Union stepped up criticism on Tuesday of Turkey's crackdown on opponents and alleged plotters behind a failed coup, drawing a sharp retort from Ankara, which accused Europe of failing to grasp the threats it faces. But neither seems ready to take the kind of active reprisal that might completely damage a delicate relationship of mutual dependence. Brussels needs Ankara to keep stopping migrants reaching Europe and Turkey, seeing its currency hit record lows on instability fears, wants to keep access to European markets. The EU said recent events in Turkey were "extremely worrying" but that it would maintain dialogue with Ankara on its - all but distant - prospects of joining. But on the eve of an annual report on Turkey's progress to membership, it ignored calls from some for talks to be halted or for other sanctions. Nonetheless, a strong statement by the EU and its states saying Turkey must stop polarizing its society and safeguard its democracy, plus a personal dig by EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker at President Tayyip Erdogan, underline concern that a vital Muslim ally and a buffer against the chaos of the Middle East risks pitching itself into a new era of instability. EU leaders are also under pressure at home to speak out on Turkey's crackdown on the media and Kurdish politicians, while for its part, Ankara is seeking to satisfy expectations among Turks that it stand up to criticism from a historic adversary. As it faces violence in the Kurdish southeast and its forces confront Islamic State across the borders in Iraq and Syria, the Foreign Ministry said Europeans had lost credibility with Turks after demands that it loosens anti-terrorism laws and goes easy after arresting journalists, Kurdish lawmakers and tens of thousands of public servants over a botched coup in July. Since then, the two sides have been sharply divided by rhetoric. Europeans have voiced understanding for the challenges that Erdogan faces, but a new round of arrests, including those last week of leading Kurdish lawmakers, has strained that reserve. DRIFTING APART Leaders on both sides speak of drifting apart. Juncker said in a speech on Tuesday: "I note with bitterness that Turkey is day by day distancing itself further from Europe ... All that the Turkish authorities are doing today leads me to believe that in the end Turkey does not want to ... meet European standards." Insisting that the EU would not ease visa requirements for Turkish travelers, as promised in the March deal that helped stem the influx of refugees and migrants to Europe, until Turkey amended its harsh anti-terror law, Juncker cited Erdogan by name and said Turks would blame him for any failure to free up travel to Europe. "We need Turkey," he said. "But we cannot give up on our main principles." For his part, Erdogan said in a speech on Sunday that he did not care being labeled a dictator: "Europe has been on a course that is leading to its own demise," he said. "Those who are willing to drown the rest of the world in blood to preserve the sense of security and peace inside their own borders move further from humanity each day." Despite occasional threats, however, Turkey has made no move to break the agreement with the EU, under which it agreed to take back Syrian refugees and others who might make it to Greece in return for EU funding for the Syrians living in Turkey, a new start on EU accession talks and a liberalization of EU visas. From Europe, as long as the weekly arrivals from Turkey stay in the dozens compared to tens of thousands this time last year, there is little urgency in seeing Turkey meets the 72 criteria that would trigger the easing of visa controls. Major elections due next year in the Netherlands, France and Germany, where anti-immigration parties are doing well and oppose fostering a closer relationship with Turkey, adds to the sense that Brussels is in no hurry to push to complete the deal. The pro-Kurdish HDP party, whose leaders were arrested last week, issued a statement in Brussels on Tuesday, however, to warn that Europe's cooperation with Erdogan could backfire. Accusing EU states of keeping quiet to protect the migrant deal, it said: "The current campaign of repression ... can cause a wave of millions of Kurdish and Turkish refugees heading for Europe." (Additional reporting by Clement Rossignol and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall in Ankara; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Tom Heneghan) Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - More than 20 senior European diplomats visited Gaza on Tuesday, calling for the Israeli blockade on the impoverished Palestinian enclave to be lifted. Ambassadors from 22 European Union states visited to assess the state of Gaza's reconstruction in a trip organised and led by the EU. It was the first such delegation since late 2014, which took place after that summer's devastating 50-day war with Israel left 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead, according to the United Nations. Ralph Tarraf, head of the EU delegation to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, called on Israel to end the blockade on Gaza. He called for "steps to bring about a political, security and economic change." He said all sides should work towards "ending the closure, taking into account the legitimate security concerns of the Gaza Strip's neighbours." Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza for a decade, which it says is necessary to keep its enemy Hamas, which runs the strip, from bringing in material that could be used for military purposes. UN officials say such actions are collective punishment and have repeatedly called for the blockade to be eased or lifted. The EU provides around $330,000 million (300 million euros) to the Palestinian people annually, with almost half of this going to Gaza, a spokesman said. * One case involves steel shipments diverted via Vietnam * Vietnam says ready to work with EU anti-fraud office * EU declines details on other cases By Maytaal Angel LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The European Union's anti-fraud office (OLAF) is investigating whether Chinese companies shipped steel through other countries to avoid anti-dumping duties, as trade disputes with the world's largest steel producer heat up. OLAF is looking into several cases where Chinese steel firms shipped the metal to another country, disguised its origin, and then shipped it on to Europe in a process known as "transshipment". The fraud agency would not give any details on its current investigations. But according to a filing on the Vietnamese trade ministry's website, OLAF is investigating 190 cases of Chinese coated steel coils that arrived in Portugal, Spain and Poland from Vietnam in 2013-2014. The EU is ratcheting up trade defences against China, under political pressure from a spate of bankruptcies, capacity closures and job losses in the steel sector that have fired up anti-globalisation sentiment. OLAF estimates the shipments via Vietnam were worth about $19 million and that the steel was given Vietnamese certificates of origin, the Vietnamese trade ministry said on its website. If confirmed, OLAF would apply retroactive duties of 58 percent on the shipments, it added. Chinese trade authorities declined to comment. Vietnamese authorities told Reuters they were ready to receive a delegation from OLAF. "We will be co-operating actively with the EU to investigate ... and have appropriate measures in place," said the head of the Vietnam Industry and Trade Ministry's European Market Department, Dang Huu Hai. Steel is the second largest industry in the world after oil and gas, with an estimated global turnover of $900 billion. Steelmakers face sluggish demand growth, chronic overcapacity what they say is a flood of Chinese steel sold at a loss. Beijing denies it is "dumping" or exporting steel at a loss, saying overcapacity is a global problem. Nevertheless it has committed to cutting 150 million tonnes of capacity by 2020. Story continues "The (EU's) determination to protect the domestic steel industry remains high...There will be more and more hurdles for the Chinese," said Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke. The latest EU investigations follow news that the U.S. Commerce Department on Monday opened an probe into allegations that Chinese steel producers are diverting shipments through Vietnam to avoid tariffs. The United States has slapped anti-dumping duties of more than 500 percent on some Chinese steel products. "There is no doubt that EU decision-makers look at what the U.S. is doing, and sometimes there is even coordination. It makes sense... because U.S. measures (if effective) can easily lead to the diversion of trade flows to the EU," said Laurent Ruessmann, a partner at lawyers FieldFisher. China's steel output rose for a seventh straight month in September and its exports are on track to beat last year's record 112 million tonnes. (Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio, Minh Ho, Georgina Prodhan and Josephine Mason, editing by Louise Heavens) BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission has identified six types of electrical products where it wants to see lower energy consumption in order to help meet Europe's climate goals, among them kettles and hand dryers, Vice President Frans Timmermans said on Tuesday. Plans for so-called eco-design legislation will be announced later this year after which the European Commission will negotiate with manufacturers and industry groups before the new products hit the market. The eco-design policy has often been cited by those critical of the EU as an example of Brussels meddling in people's daily lives, as there are fears that the Commission wants to ban some higher-powered versions of devices such as fast-boiling kettles. http://reut.rs/2fB1yg0 However, Timmermans said the legislation was necessary to reach the climate ambitions agreed between nearly 200 nations in Paris a year ago. "If we want to make sure we do what we need to do after the Paris agreement we absolutely need eco-design to provide for those results," Timmermans told a meeting at European consumer organization BEUC in Brussels. The Paris agreement aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions by shifting away from fossil fuels to limit global warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times. Apart from kettles and hand dryers, new energy saving rules are expected to be drawn up for lifts, solar panels, building automation and control systems and refrigerated transport containers. "What we are doing is evidence-based. We want to put the products on the list that have the highest energy yield. That is why kettles are on the list, because they are very high in terms of energy yields, and toasters are not on the list," Timmermans added. BEUC estimates that through eco-design initiatives already in place, such as energy saving light bulbs and more efficient tumble dryers, consumers are already making electricity savings worth about 330 euros a year. (Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Greg Mahlich) LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - European shares edged higher in cautious trading ahead of Tuesday's U.S. presidential election, with encouraging results and updates from some companies underpinning the broader market. The pan-European STOXX 600 index was trading 0.3 percent higher in early trading, after surging 1.5 percent in the previous session on improved chances of Hillary Clinton becoming the next U.S. president. Clinton's chances of winning got a boost on Sunday when the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said it stood by its July finding that the democratic candidate was not guilty of criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private email server. Clinton is seen as offering greater certainty and stability, and was ahead in five polls released on Monday. Shares in Primark owner Associated British Foods surged 6.8 percent, the top STOXX 600 gainer, after the company said it expected profits to increase in the next fiscal year. It also added that earnings could ultimately benefit after Britain's vote to leave the European Union. However, ArcelorMittal fell 5 percent after the world's largest producer of steel reported third-quarter core profit below expectations and said its final quarter would be weaker than the third. (Reporting by Atul Prakash) BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered a personal warning to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday that he would be held responsible if Ankara fails to meet EU criteria for granting Turks visa-free travel. An EU offer to liberalize its visa system was part of a deal in March under which Turkey has agreed to all but halt the flow of Syrian refugees and other migrants into the EU via Greece. But, Juncker said in a speech at Bruges that visas would not be eased if Turkey fails to meet criteria, including amendments to its anti-terrorism law. "Everything the Turkish authorities are doing today leads me to believe that in the end Turkey does not want to be ready to respect European standards," he said. And if visas were not eased, he said, Erdogan would have to explain to Turks why that was so. "We need Turkey ... but we cannot give up on our main principles," Juncker concluded. (Reporting by Alastair Macdonald; editing by Philip Blenkinsop) ANKARA (Reuters) - Comments by European foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini concerning Turkey are "unacceptable", the Turkish foreign ministry said on Tuesday, saying the bloc failed to understand Ankara's sensitivities in the fight against terror. The EU issued a strong new call on Turkey on Tuesday to resume political dialogue with opposition groups and safeguard its democracy, describing recent developments as "extremely worrying". In a written statement, the Turkish foreign ministry said the EU had lost credibility with the Turkish people concerning the fight against terror. (Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz and Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan) From Harper's BAZAAR Earlier this morning, cult-favorite brand, Everlane, looked to Snapchat to announce its latest product line. Teaming up with Sweet, the lifestyle publication exclusively on Snapchat Discover, Everlane unveiled its first small leather goods collection including card cases, wallets, clutches and its first-ever cross-body bag. The collection, which will be called the Cadiz Shop, features 8 unisex leather goods all made-in Spain. Photo credit: Everlane Despite the Cadiz Shop not officially launching until Thursday, Snapchat users will be able to design their own monogram on a small leather good of choice and snap it to Everlane to complete an order today. Here's how to custom monogram your Everlane piece on Snapchat today: Visit Sweet on Snapchat's Discover Page on November 8th Design your monogram on your favorite bag or wallet Screenshot and save your design Message your design to @Everlane on Snapchat Email your design and initials to Sweet@everlane.com Everlane's dedicated Snapchat community and following makes its exclusive snap partnership with Sweet (who has partnered with brands like Carolina Herrera and Gucci in the past), seem like a natural fit. "Through our partnership with Sweet, we can now bring shopping to the platform in a way that not only provides a personalized experience, but encourages interaction with the product," Alyssa Bergerson, communications at Everlane, said in a statement. Despite the rise of Instagram Stories, it looks like we can still rely on Snapchat for plenty of shoppable exclusives. You Might Also Like Running for president requires endless traveling across the country to meet and greet voters, raising funds for compelling advertisements, and delivering heartfelt speeches. It also takes a positive public persona and a presidential-worthy look. Hillary Clinton has been working nonstop during the past year to convince America (yet again) that she is the woman for the White House. And a team of professionals has been with her 24/7, helping keep Clinton looking her best while out on the campaign trail. Here is everything that we know about Clintons glam squad. The Hair Team Izzy Salon owner Isabelle Goetz keeps Hillary Clintons mane perfectly coiffed while on the road. (Photo: Izzy Salon) Clintons hair has certainly evolved in the past few years. Shes gone from Scrunchies and headbands, which she donned during her husbands administration, to her current short and layered power cut, strategically spiced up with golden highlights that soften her natural features. In order to keep her hair looking its best on the trail, Clinton relies on her longtime hairstylist, Isabelle Goetz. The French native owns the Izzy Salon in Washington, D.C.s Georgetown and has been Clintons personal hair guru since 1997. Goetz travels with the Democratic candidate and is on full-time flyaway duty. According to the stylist, a typical day on the Clinton campaign involves waking up at 4:45 a.m. to wash and style her clients hair or give it an occasional trim when it starts to appear heavy. I blow out her hair with a round brush and volumizing spray, then I give her a face mask that she holds to protect her from the hairspray. Its like a windshield with a handle. Shes getting a lot of hairspray during the day, and I dont want it to go in her face, she says. Goetz also reveals that shes constantly weatherproofing Clintons do. Im always checking the weather if its humid or if its windy. If shes out there speaking, Im always praying that the wind doesnt move her hair in her face because its distracting. I want to make sure her hair is never an issue. Goetz uses Kerastase Paris mousse and Oribe products on Clintons tresses. Story continues When in New York City, Hillary Clinton puts her locks in the hands of hairstylist John Barrett. (Photo by Gary Gershoff/WireImage) Clinton recently made media waves when she and her entourage paid several visits to John Barrett at his Fifth Avenue-based John Barrett Salon for pricey treatments. The spa is located on the penthouse level of the designer department store Bergdorf Goodman. The stylist charges $600 for a haircut and an additional $600 for color. Barrett also has managed the locks of such A-listers as Judi Dench and Martha Stewart. When Clinton arrives, Bergdorf provides a private entrance and elevator bank. According to an interview with Goetz, the former first ladys recent visit to see Barrett was for color and other beauty treatments. She also has the occasional blowout with Santa Nikkels, the owner of a top salon in Chappaqua, N.Y., where she and husband Bill reside. If Clinton becomes the first female president, she will be sworn in with an edge over her male predecessors. Youre not going to see me turn white in the White House, she said during a 2015 speech at the South Carolina Democratic Womens Council. Just pull up the images in your head: All our presidents come into office looking so vigorous. Think about what they look like on Inauguration Day. And then we watch them they grow grayer and grayer. And by the time they leave, they are as white as the building they live in. I have one big advantage: Ive been coloring my hair for years, Clinton joked. The Makeup Team Clinton has gone on record in the past saying that she would never have plastic surgery because shed be scared to death that something could go wrong. So instead of going under the knife, she relies on the skills of talented makeup artists to freshen up her look. Makeup artist Kriss Soterin-Blevens is known for giving Hillary Clinton a glamorous makeover for her first run as president. (Photo: Krisscosmetics.com) To get her face ready for the 2008 presidential race, the candidate turned to Kriss Soterin-Blevens, who is credited with giving Clinton a total beauty transformation. The cosmetologist owns a studio space in Manchester, N.H., and has done makeup since 1992 for a number of presidential candidates running in the states primaries. To soften Clintons appearance, Soterin-Blevens initially relied on moisturizing her skin, then blended concealer around her eyes, and used blush to highlight her cheeks. I went with cool colors, where she normally wears more of a red lipstick. I went with plums and custom-blended everything, said the renowned makeup artist in an interview with Inside Edition. The lipstick that Soterin-Blevens used for Clinton was from her own collection, a Signature Kriss Lipstick in a shade called Debate. For this current race, the politician is rumored to have hired away her former personal makeup artist, Barbara Lacy, from her current job on HBOs Veep. Clinton worked with Lacy for more than a dozen years, including her stint as secretary of state. In an interview with The Hill, Lacy said the goal of campaign makeup is to make a candidate look like theyre taking care of themselves. They look healthy; they look natural; they dont look fake. She said her job is ultimately to make Clinton to look rested, with barely noticeable makeup. Clinton hasnt revealed where she gets her nails done. But to keep them looking their best, her team opts for simple manicures that dont easily show wear and tear. We often see the candidate with steely gray polish or natural-hued nails. The Image Experts Hillary Clintons political image surely has transformed over the years. (Photo: Yahoo/Getty Images) Clintons famous pantsuits are very well thought out. During the 2016 campaign, the nominee has been working with a team of consultants who have helped upgrade her outfits. She has traded in what some have referred to as her dowdy matronly personal style for upscale designer pantsuits and ensembles. Even though memes of Clinton in pantsuits has become a comedic Internet trend, the presidential hopeful has embraced the scrutiny. Her Twitter page even has pantsuit aficionado listed in her profile description. Clintons team has worked with her to strike a balance between looking polished but not too overdone and vain. Pants are comfortable and can help give a sense of confidence and power since the look is inspired by, or derived from, menswear, said celebrity stylist Jen Rade. Clintons campaign outfits have included pieces from designers such as Ralph Lauren. And aside from working with a few top-notch fashion gurus, such as Nina McLemore, Clinton has reportedly looked to Vogues Anna Wintour as a fashion consultant throughout her campaign. Clinton also has tapped Kristina Schake, a former aide to Michelle Obama, to assist her with style, body language, and PR tactics to shape the candidates public persona. For instance, Clinton has been taught to smile with her eyes, a technique psychologists refer to as a Duchenne smile (genuine smile). Weeks of campaigning can take its toll, but Clinton has been looking refreshed and glowing. This is all the result of the skilled folks in her glam squad who work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring out her very best. Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. (Corrects second bullet point to read 'investment firm' instead of 'hedge fund') * To launch Hashemi Asset Management in new year * Has $200 mln backing from investment firm Lighthouse - source * Latest in a number of departures from BlueCrest Capital By Maiya Keidan LONDON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Ex-BlueCrest portfolio manager Ardy Hashemi plans to launch an equity hedge fund with the backing of $200 million from U.S.-based Lighthouse Investment Partners, sources close to the matter told Reuters. Lighthouse, which manages about $8.5 billion in assets, currently has 110 investments in a wide range of hedge fund strategies. Hashemi is expected to start London-based Hashemi Asset Management in the new year and will focus on European equities as part of a so-called long-short strategy, one source said, betting on both rising and falling share prices. Hashemi, 32, joins a number of people to leave BlueCrest Capital Management, the $8 billion hedge fund firm founded by billionaire Mike Platt that announced it was closing to outside investors in December 2015. Citadel recently hired a team that once ran one-fifth of BlueCrest's assets while another former portfolio manager, Takashi Makita, is launching his own computer-driven hedge fund firm. Hashemi's new venture will receive $200 million from Florida-based Lighthouse, a second source said, placing it among the largest start-ups in Europe this year. A spokesman for Lighthouse declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. Just 11 funds launched globally in 2016 manage a similar amount, data from industry tracker Preqin showed. At BlueCrest Hashemi had been an equities portfolio manager at BlueCrest between April 2013 and September this year, a third source said. He also previously worked at Japanese investment bank Nomura and hedge fund giant Millennium Capital Partners, the website of British regulator the Financial Conduct Authority showed. The launch comes amid lacklustre returns at equities-focused hedge funds, which have made gains of 3.71 percent on average in the year to end-October, compared with losses of 0.97 percent in 2015 and gains of 1.81 percent in 2014, according to data from Hedge Fund Research. (Reporting by Maiya Keidan; Editing by Greg Mahlich) By Ginny McCabe CINCINNATI (Reuters) - A former University of Cincinnati police officer charged with murdering a black man during a traffic stop said on Tuesday he acted in self-defense, fearing he would be killed if he did not shoot. Officer Ray Tensing, 26, said in Cincinnati's Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas he would have been run over or pinned against a guard rail by Samuel DuBose, 43. Tensing stopped DuBose in July 2015 for driving without a front license plate. "I remember thinking 'Oh my God, that he is going to run me over and kill me,'" Tensing, who is white, told the court. Tensing earlier pleaded not guilty to murder and has been free on $1 million bond. If convicted, he could face life in prison. An emotional Tensing paused multiple times as he was questioned by his attorney, Stew Mathews, and at one point wiped tears from his eyes. Body camera video of the stop showed that Tensing shot DuBose in the head after pulling him over. The entire incident lasted a few minutes. Tensing asked DuBose to take off his seatbelt and tried to open the car door, but DuBose did not comply and closed the door. The vehicle started rolling forward slowly as Tensing pulled his gun and fired once. Tensing said Tuesday he did not intend to kill DuBose when he fired, and that DuBose "mashed the accelerator" while Tensing's arm was inside the car, dragging him down the street. The killing fueled demonstrations over what protesters said was unwarranted lethal force by Tensing. There have been nationwide protests over excessive force by white officers against unarmed blacks and other minorities. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said on Tuesday that Tensing's story was not supported by evidence. Tensing was also asked by Mathews about a black T-shirt he wore under his uniform on the day of the shooting, which featured a Confederate flag. Tensing said the shirt was a gift and the flag had no meaning to him. Story continues The court was shown footage from Tensing's body camera of multiple other traffic stops he made on the day of the DuBose shooting. All of the stops occurred without incident when the drivers complied with the officer. DuBose's relatives were unmoved by Tensing's emotional testimony. "His tears don't mean anything when you are lying every word," Terina Allen, DuBose's sister, told reporters afterward. Closing arguments are scheduled for Wednesday. (Writing by Ben Klayman and Timothy Mclaughlin; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Matthew Lewis) By Pamela Barbaglia, Agnieszka Barteczko and Martinne Geller LONDON/WARSAW (Reuters) - At least six indicative offers have been submitted by industry players and buyout funds for a group of beer brands being sold by Anheuser-Busch InBeviframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.
The youth vote: Penn State students stand in line inside the Student Union waiting to cast their ballots on Tuesday
Field trip: Mariah Hickman, a Dillard University student march in unison with fellow students, to a polling place to vote in New Orleans
Waiting their turn: Residents of New Orleans waiting in line to cast their vote on Tuesday morning
Billion-dollar hug: Warren Buffett hugs Lace Hughes as he greets voters outside Evans Tower as part of his Drive 2 Vote campaign in Omaha, Nebraska
High turnouts: Voters fill out their forms and wait to vote at a polling station in the Brooklyn borough of New York
Lines grew longer once the polling places began to open in Virginia on Tuesday morning
Crowds: Voters in Brooklyn, New York line-up outside a polling station on Tuesday morning as they prepare to cast their vote
Signs for the many candidates and ballot questions line the sidewalk outside a Virginia polling station
Braving the cold: Voters in Boston line-up in close to freezing temperatures to wait and cast their votes on Tuesday
New York voters stand outside Trump Place in New York City on Tuesday morning waiting to cast their ballot, with one of Donald's buildings also being an official polling station
Picture perfect: A voter in Brooklyn takes a selfie with their child before casting their vote in the election
The USC/LA Times Daybreak tracking poll shows Trump leading Clinton by three percentage points, 46.8% - 43.6%, which is less than the lead of six percentage points he had at one point over the summer
In a four-way race, the IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll shows Trump with a two-point lead over Clinton, 45% to 43&, with Gary Johnson getting 7% and Jill Stein 2%
The battle is over this: The last projection by CNN of the state of the states on Monday which shows where the battlegrounds will be
'It is the most humbling feeling,' said Clinton after casting her ballot on Tuesday.
'I know how much responsibility goes with this.'
After casting her vote, many cheered for Clinton as she went around hugging some of those who were there and shaking hands with others waiting to vote.
Trump got a far frostier reception outside his polling spot, where he was greeted by a chorus of 'boos' as he went in to vote with his family.
Once inside though he bought a cookie from a young boy who was having a bake sale, handing him a $20 bill and telling him he could keep the change.
When asked after he voted if he would concede should the networks call the race for Clinton, Trump said: 'We'll see what happens.'
Also voting early on Tuesday was Clinton's vice presidential pick Tim Kaine, who brought his mother Mary with him to his Virginia polling station.
Eric Trump also cast his vote on Tuesday and shared a photo of his filled out ballot, which is technically illegal in the state of New York.
And shortly after Trump went to the polls, his running mate Mike Pence voted with his wife in Indiana.
The USC/LA Times Daybreak tracking poll shows Trump leading Clinton by three percentage points, 46.8% - 43.6%, which is less than the lead of six percentage points he had at one point over the summer.
In a four-way race, the IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll shows Trump with a two-point lead over Clinton, 45% to 43%, with Gary Johnson getting 7% and Jill Stein 2%.
When Stein and Johnson are taken out of the equation, it is Clinton who leaded trump by a percentage point in that poll.
NBC New York reports that a number of voters were experiencing problems at their polling stations in the city, from scanners and machines that were not working to locations that opened hours later than expected.
In North Carolina, the Durham County Board of Elections asked that voting time be extended by 90 minutes on Tuesday after a glitch a glitch in their electronic voter check-in system.
That error led to longer waiting times for those in the area, where 37 percent of registered voters are African American.
There were also problems reported with voting machines in Washington County, Utah, forcing a switch to paper ballots.
And in Hoboken, New Jersey, the city's own mayor reported that she was asked for an ID, which is a violation of voting laws in that state.
'I just got asked for ID to vote in my polling location at Boys & Girls Club. This is not ok Hudson County Board of Elections!' tweeted Dawn Zimmer.
Big day: An emotional Hillary Clinton was seen as she head in to cast her vote in Chappaqua, New York (above)
Weighing the options: Bill Clinton with his glasses on takes a look at the ballot on Tuesday while Hillary fills her in to the right
Chelsea Clinton headed back to New York City after spending the previous night campaigning with her mother (above with Marc Mezvinsky and daughter Charlotte)
Doing her part: Chelsea proudly wore her sticker showing that she had voted earlier in the day
Big moment: Trump gets his ballot to fill out while his son-in law Jared Kushner waits behind him
Sticker time: Ivanka placed a sticker on Arabella's coat after casting her vote on Tuesday (above)
Family huddle: Donald speaks to his daughter Ivanka shortly after the two voted in New York City
For the children: Trump bought a cookie from a young boy who was having a bake sale, handing him a $20 bill and telling him he could keep the change
Real estate tycoon Trump has built a devoted following of tens of millions, including large numbers of Americans who have never voted before.
Along the way he angered some in the Republican Party establishment who saw him as a reckless insult-generator destined to alienate large swaths of the American electorate.
Clinton and her 800-strong campaign team stitched together an agenda that was unremarkable for a typical Democrat, save for a leftward tilt brought about during an unexpectedly strong primary challenge from Senator Bernie Sanders.
She pledged to raise the minimum wage, provide paid medical leave, build infrastructure, and try to reform the nation's immigration system.
But with Republicans likely to keep control of Congress, one of her chief requisite challenges will be to play defense and protect Obama's legacy from continued GOP attacks while protecting her own administration from investigations that Republicans have already telegraphed.
Clinton pulled off an organized, scripted, and visually stunning convention that whipped up the party faithful, tended to interest groups and crystalized concerns about Trumps anti-immigrant appeals and a proposed Muslim immigration ban with a passionate speech by a Gold Star father whose son died in Iraq.
Right hand woman: Huma Abedin also joined the Clintons as they cast their vote on Thursday, dressed in a unique outfit for the big day
Rock the vote: Tim Kaine cast his ballot Tuesday morning with his mother Mary in Virginia (above)
Let's do this: Kaine said in an interview on Thursday morning that he believes Clinton has a good shot at winning what he calls the 'checkmate' states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida
On the way: Mike Pence and his wife rode their bikes to their local polling place in Indiana on Tuesday (above)
Filling it out: Pence and his wife Karen cast their ballots together in Indiana before preparing to fly to New York
Eric and Lara Trump posted a photo of themselves after voting on Tuesday at their polling station in New York
Proud son: Eric also shared a photo of his ballot after casting his vote in New York on Tuesday (above)
Every vote counts: Libertarian vice presidential candidate Bill Weld gets instructions before casting his vote in Canton, Massachusetts
More Trumps: Donald Trump Jr. and wife Vanessa brought daughters Kai and Chloe and sons Tristan ajnd Spencer to the polls with them on Tuesday, but not Donald III
Picking his replacement: Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden prepare to cast their votes in Delaware
Ta-da: Chris Christie voted first thing Tuesday morning in New Jersey with very little fanfare
Sitting and writing: Bernie Sanders posted a photo of himself voting in Vermont on Tuesday afternoon
New York state of mind: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio casts his vote near his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday
With her: Elizabeth Warren submits her ballot and gets her sticker after voting in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tough decision: Senator John McCain with his wife Cindy McCain talk to the media after casting their ballots in Arizona
Trump, who crushed Republican opponents through improvised and slashing attacks, immediately engaged, staging a Twitter and TV war with Khizr Khan in an unorthodox moves that caused a media frenzy but failed to appeal to centrist voters he needed.
Trump gave his enemies ammunition by repeating more than 500 times a pledge that as president he would wall off America from Mexico, stemming the flow of narcotics and human chattel while defending the border from an unchecked flood of immigrants with no legal right to be in the U.S.
More damaging still was a series of episodes that angered feminists and other powerful women in a year when Trump was running against America's would-be first female president.
His candidacy brought women out of the woodwork to accuse him of sexual misconduct of varying severity, including one woman who sued him for an alleged teen rape and then withdrew the case when her story fell apart.
Vote and shop: Voters cast their ballots on Election Day at the Foodland Grocery Store and Mercado in National City, California
Garage station: Poll worker Bea Iwig helps first time voter John Wickenhiser complete his ballot in San Diego
Getting out there: Voters in Phoenix line up before their polling station is open to prepare to cast their vote
Pennsylvania: A woman and her daughter leave their polling location after voting in the 2016 US presidential election in the West Oak Lane neighborhood of Philadelphia
Fill them up: Voters stand in line at Peerless Cleaners in Corpus Christi, Texas to cast their ballots
Lengthy process: The line to vote at one polling station in Manhattan's Upper West Side stretched three city blocks
Midwest measures: Local residents cast their ballots in the general election in precinct 39 at the First Church of the Open Bible in Des Moines, Iowa
Worth the wait: People voting at Congress Elementary School in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Tuesday morning
Setting up shop: A clerk gets ready to receive voters inside a polling station in Christmas, Florida (above)
Civil servants: Workers take an oath prior to opening a polling station in Las Vegas on Tuesday
Decided voter: In Florida, voters line up in Christmas to cast their ballot on Tuesday morning
Helping hand: Kirsten Bosch, of Des Moines, Iowa, gets help from her six-year old daughter Parker while filling out her ballot
Thumbs up: Kirk Redmann of Louisiana finishes casting his ballot at St. Dominic's School on Tuesday
A ways to go: Voters waiting in a long line to vote on Tuesday in Ridgeland, Mississippi
Having her say: Fatemeh Hussain puts her ballot in the scanner to be tabulated after voting at Oakman Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan
Cheat sheet: Ryen Buchanan wrote on her arm to remember what to vote for as she waits in line in Alabama
Trump denied every charge, calling his accusers rank opportunists who sought 15 minutes of fame. Some, he said, were Democratic plants, and others were cashing in.
He had a harder time explaining a hot-mic audio recording from a 2005 taping of 'Access Hollywood,' in which he was recorded lewdly describing the ease with which famous men could sexually assault women in their orbits.
Through it all, Trump's campaign crowds grew, with his reality-show star power outdrawing every other candidate in both parties.
Trump's massive media exposure created both fans and detractors, hardening positions on both ends of the political spectrum and inside the GOP, where 'NeverTrump' Republicans pledged not to support him even at the cost of delivering the White House to a second Clinton.
Ultimately Trump won over most of his party's establishment as he lent his charisma to fundraising events that benefited conservative candidates in other races.
But more importantly, an army of torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding 'Trumpkins,' as his political enemies styled them, embraced his rough edges as signs of solidarity.
Hillary Clinton, pictured second left, was joined on stage in the early hours of this morning with her daughter Chelsea, left, and musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga in Morrisville, North Carolina
Prior to her stop in North Carolina, Clinton was in Philadelphia for a rally with President Obama and the First Lady
Jonathan Pozzie, center, looks clearly emotional as Donald Trump addresses a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire last night
Trump's team, including campaign manager Kellyann Conway, left, and Tiffany Trump, right, watched the candidate in his final campaign stop early this morning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the Republican's hope they can take the state
Polls on the east coast will open at 6am EST with the earliest polls closing 12 hours later in areas of Indiana and Kentucky
Trump, pictured leaving Grand Rapids, Michigan, returned home to New York where he will vote in Manhattan on Tuesday
In Manchester, New Hampshire, Trump was joined on stage by most of his children and their spouses
Red, white and blue: Frank Butler, left, and Don Moore wave Trump signs to traffic outside the Clay County Republican Party victory headquarters on Election Day in Florida
Clinton's own weaknesses were just as hard to paper over.
For nearly the entire length of her campaign she had to contend with nonstop barrages of stories and charges about her conduct in the State Department, her husbands foundation, and charges of pay to play corruption.
The focus begin in part with the release of Clinton Cash, a book that drew connections among the interlocking webs of Clinton donors, confidants, foreign governments and longtime friends.
TRUMP GETS SHOCK BOOST FROM EARLY VOTING IN FLORIDA AND NORTH CAROLINA Early voting numbers in North Carolina and Florida two states that Donald Trump needs to win suggest that Hillary Clinton may be underperforming President Barack Obama in 2012, while Trump is doing better than GOP nominee Mitt Romney. In North Carolina, 305,000 fewer Republicans have turned out. However, Republican voters were trailing Democrats by 447,000 four years before and Romney won the state by 97,000, as Republican voters more prone to come out on Election Day then head to the polls early. In Florida, Democrats are ahead by just around 33,000 votes. But, with 6.1 million early votes cast, that lead only amounts to .5 percentage points of the in-person early vote total. Back in 2012, Democrats had a 3.7 point advantage in early voting, which was enough to hold back Republican Mitt Romney from taking the state. Advertisement
In March 2015, a bombshell rocked the campaign when it was revealed Clinton had maintained a private email server at her New York home. Then began the drip-drip-drip of thousands of State Department emails, which not only showed Clinton dealt with secret and sensitive matters on her, but brought forth an array of damaging stories.
The drumbeat grew so intense that even Sanders pronounced Americans 'sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails' in a primary debate.
After a lengthy investigation, FBI Director James Comey announced he would not recommend charges, but still called Clinton out for her extremely careless behavior.
Wikileaks dumped the other trove of documents that defined the campaign, hacked emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. They exposed myriad internecine battles, cozy contacts with the press, and efforts to kneecap Sanders primary run.
They were also embarrassing and could continue to rattle careers inside Clintons inner circle. But the leaks, which U.S. officials link to a Russian government hack, didnt appear to bring a major turn in the race.
Americans will learn Tuesday night whether history will remember Trump's unusual approach as a groundbreaking innovation or as a one-off flop.
He said Monday that he's not interested in becoming a chapter in a political science textbook.
'If we don't win, Trump said during his penultimate rally in new Hampshire, 'it will be the biggest waste of energy, time and money in my whole life.'
The first result came in after midnight Tuesday, with the tiny community of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire casting their ballots as Monday became Tuesday. They backed Hillary Clinton by a vote of 4 to 2. Mitt Romney, the unsuccessful Republican nominee four years ago, won a surprising write-in vote.
It will be nearly 24 hours, and maybe longer, before the world knows whether the northern New England town was a bellwether.
Polls opened in some eastern states as early as 6:00 a.m. Tuesday, and the final votes will be cast in Alaska when it's 1:00 Wednesday morning in New York - ending an election season that has enthralled and horrified in equal measure.
It's impossible to tell when forecasters from TV networks and wire services will project a winner. In 2012 the race was called for President Barack Obama shortly after 11:00 p.m. Eastern time.
The Electoral College system provides one vote for each member of Congress, including both the Senate and the House of Representatives. A candidate needs to claim 270 votes, the smallest possible majority, in order to claim the White House.
Difficult year: Flint resident Carroll Kinkade casts her ballot on Tuesday morning in Michigan
Family day: Christina Ditty casts her ballot accompanied by her sons, Koper, 4, and River, 2, at the 135th precinct at Christ Church Presbyterian in Evans, Georgia
Double checking: A voter confirms his address with a poll worker before voting on Tuesday morning in Brooklyn
Bilingual: A sign that reads 'Spanish is Spoken Here' hangs as voters check in at the North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Library polling station in Los Angeles
Rock Mountain voters: Local residents vote at a polling location for the 2016 US presidential election in Denver, Colorado
Zen polling place: Mary Roca posts signs on the door of Chua Phat To Gotama Temple before it opens in Long Beach, California
Chilly day: People wait in line as polls open at Marmalade Library in Salt Lake City, Utah
Cleaning up: Election worker Harry Nein empties a drive-by ballot drop box outside Multnomah County election headquarters in Portland, Oregon
In the first results of the day, residents in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire voted in favor of Hillary Clinton
Clay Smith, who cast his ballot late last night, saw four of his fellow residents in Dixville Notch supported Clinton/Kaine, while two ballots were cast for Trump/Pence. One protest voter wrote in Mitt Romney with the final vote going Johnson/Weld
If the margin is tight all evening and the result is in doubt, western battleground states like Nevada, Colorado and Arizona could turn the tide. Their polling places will be among the last to call it a night.
Both candidates are voting in New York, and there is one certainty about the victory party: It will be in New York City. The Trump and Clinton campaigns booked celebration venues just two miles apart in Manhattan.
New York City police officers will flood the streets Tuesday to prevent violence and disorder breaking out when the results are announced.
There are similarly massive security presences the nation as the FBI has put law enforcement agencies on alert for an ISIS attack. The CIA and other spy agencies are on guard for potential cyber attacks aimed at monkeywrenching the electoral process.
One public safety issue New York City won't have to deal with is a promised fireworks display launched from a Hudson River barge as Clinton's Election Night party declares victory.
Campaign officials withdrew their application for a pyrotechnics permit, limiting the risk of mockery if she were to lose.
DIXVILLE NOTCH: THE TINY NEW HAMPSHIRE COMMUNITY THAT VOTED AT MIDNIGHT Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, voted at midnight and announced its results earlier than the rest of the country Dixville Notch, an unincorporated community in Dixville township, New Hampshire, voted at midnight in the early minutes of Tuesday, as per tradition. Town moderator Tom Tillotson was pictured arriving with ballots Monday night. A whopping total of eight votes were cast and the community announced its results before the rest of the country. Dixville Notch voted Democrat for the first time since 1968 as four out of eight votes went to Clinton. Trump came in second, with two votes. One vote went to Gary Johnson and the last one was a write-in for Mitt Romney. Dixville Notch suffered a 20 per cent drop in population this year when two people moved away. But a new resident moved in not long afterwards, bringing the total current population to nine. Voters in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire traditionally cast their votes at midnight. Town moderator Tom Tillotson is pictured arriving with ballots Monday Advertisement
THE LONGEST DAY - AND NIGHT: HOW ELECTION WILL UNFOLD Midnight: First in the nation to vote is Dixville Notch, New Hampshire 6am: The earliest polls on the East Coast open. Though some in New Hampshire open at midnight. 6pm: EST-time zoned areas of Indiana and Kentucky close 7pm: Polls close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. All EST-time zoned areas (the majority) of Florida close 7:30pm: North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia polls close 8pm: Polls close in Washington, DC, and 16 states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan (the EST-time zoned part, aka most of it) and New Hampshire. Other states include Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Tennessee. The CST-time zoned parts (the panhandle) of Florida close at 7pm CST 8:30: polls close for Arkansas 9pm: Polls close in 14 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Wisconsin. Michigans CST-time zoned area closes. Also closing are Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, New York and Wyoming 10pm: Polls close in four states, including Iowa, Utah and Nevada and Montana If the 2012 election is any indication on how results roll in, Romney was winning until 10:30pm, and an hour later - as California results started to come in - Obama was on the brink of re-election 11pm: polls close in California, Washington state, Oregon, North Dakota (FYI some close at 10), Idaho and Hawaii 11.12pm: this was when the 2012 election was called by NBC, with CBS and Fox News following at 11.16pm, CNN at 11.18pm and ABC the last at 11.23pm. Wednesday Midnight: Results on House of Representatives will likely be in by now. First polls close in Alaska. In 2012 Mitt Romney delivered his concession speech a few minutes after midnight. 1am: Final polls close in Alaska. Advertisement
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is under pressure from the Labor Party to allow a free vote in federal parliament on same-sex marriage.
Labor has called for a parliamentary vote on the issue after Monday's senate vote against holding a plebiscite in February, reported SKY News.
The Senate voted down the bill enabling a national poll to go ahead in February and for marriage law changes to be made in early 2017.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (pictured) is under pressure from the Labor Party to allow a free vote on same-sex marriage
Labor has called for a parliamentary vote on the issue after Monday's senate vote against holding a plebiscite in February. Pictured is a same-sex marriage rally in Sydney
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Labor doesn't apologise for blocking the government's proposed plebiscite, and said Mr Turnbull had been 'too weak' to kill off the plebiscite idea.
'Labor makes no apologies for helping to block the plebiscite - the LGBTI community didn't want it, and the Australian community didn't either,' Mr Shorten said on Tuesday.
But he said the issue was not off the agenda and Labor would continue to campaign for a free parliamentary vote.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said many Australians would be happy their relationships would not be subject to a nationwide vote.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten (pictured) said Labor doesn't apologise for blocking the government's proposed plebiscite. He said Mr Turnbull had been 'too weak' to kill off the plebiscite idea
'This has been a difficult period for many Australians, I know they'll be relieved at this decision but this is not where the fight for marriage equality ends.'
The idea of a plebiscite was first proposed by former prime minister Tony Abbott last year under pressure from coalition right wingers.
Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and independent Derryn Hinch voted against the bill on Monday.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek (pictured) said many Australians would be happy their relationships would not be subject to a nationwide vote
Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said it was time to move onto other issues after the government's election mandate was rejected.
'People in the Senate know full well the promise that was made to the Australian people and the alternate promise that was made by Mr Shorten,' he told reporters in Canberra.
'The coalition won and, if nothing else, you should respect the will of the Australian people.'
Australian Marriage Equality spokesman Alex Greenwich said his organisation would continue to lobby federal politicians for a parliamentary vote.
Several gay senators, including Labor's Penny Wong and Louise Pratt, made impassioned pleas against the plebiscite, telling parliament it would denigrate their families and subject them to hate speech.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie said those opposed to the plebiscite had 'killed off people power'.
Along with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, she is discussing putting legislation to parliament to hold plebiscites on same-sex marriage, indigenous recognition and euthanasia at the next federal election, likely to be in 2019.
A schoolboy stabbed his teacher to death in the classroom after he was told he couldnt drop her subject, a report reveals today.
The parents of Will Cornick felt they werent listened to when they met Spanish teacher Ann Maguire and their sons head of year to say his relationship with her had broken down and reiterated his wish to stop having lessons.
Two months later, the 15-year-old GCSE pupil walked up to Mrs Maguire, 61, during class and stabbed her seven times in the back and neck with a knife he had brought to school.
He then calmly sat down and said good times.
Will Cornick stabbed Ann Maguire, 61, seven times in the back and neck
The learning lessons review into the case also revealed how Cornick underwent a personality change, becoming intolerant, aggressive, angry and judgmental after being diagnosed with diabetes in 2010.
A psychologist believed his powerful angry thoughts and feelings may have been initially triggered by the diagnosis and that he didnt manage his diabetes well.
The review concluded that his parents and staff at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds were unaware of his deep antipathy towards Mrs Maguire, and said no concerns about his mental health had been reported.
Cornick talked about his intention to kill Mrs Maguire, messaging a friend to say she deserved more than death and even showing off his knives to other pupils.
Will Cornick's parents 'werent listened to at Corpus Christi Catholic College (pictured)
But in asking whether the attack in April 2014 could have been foreseen, the reports independent author Nick Page said: I do not consider that such a heavy responsibility can or should be placed on Wills peers and friends.
Other pupils put the threats down to Cornicks dark sense of humour and never believed he would actually carry them out.
Mr Page, who spoke to Cornick, said the teenager claimed to have been in a red mist, not conscious of his surroundings.
He added that in contrast to what Cornick told police, Will now states that he wanted to be stopped from stabbing Ann.
The college was filled with floral tributes to the popular teacher after her murder in 2014
The report, commissioned by the Leeds Safeguarding Children Board, also described a meeting at school in February 2014 with Cornicks parents to discuss his bad behaviour.
They are said to have accepted head of year Andrew Kelletts decision not to let him drop Spanish as the course was nearing its end and he was predicted a good grade.
The report said: Mr and Mrs Cornick are critical of the schools handling of Will and his wish to stop studying Spanish but in no way suggest that this contributed to Anns murder.
Leon Brittan's widow has snubbed an invitation to meet Britain's most senior policeman in protest at Scotland Yard's 'shoddy' and 'disrespectful' handling of its disgraced VIP child abuse inquiry.
Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe offered to see Diana Brittan shortly before Tuesday's long-awaited publication of a damning report into the investigation, which saw a number of high-profile people including her late husband falsely accused of rape and murder by a suspected fantasist known as Nick.
But Lady Brittan was only given a few days' notice of the proposed interview slot with Sir Bernard and is unhappy she may not be shown crucial sections of the review of Operation Midland relating to her husband, a former Tory Home Secretary.
Inquiry: Diana Brittan with her late husband Leon in 2013
'She is less than happy with the way the falsely accused and their families have been handled by the Met,' a friend said last night.
'We are going to wait and see what they publish on Tuesday and then we will digest it and see what additional information we want.
'She is not going to meet Hogan-Howe at all unless she has all the necessary information from Operation Midland that relates to her husband.
'If Hogan-Howe's office had been on top of Operation Midland as much as it has been involved in dealing with the public relations fall out from it - then we would not be in this situation in the first place.'
The friend also criticised the Met's decision to publish the report by ex High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques on the day of the US presidential election which critics claim is a blatant attempt to bury bad news.
'It is the public relations strategy you associate with (Labour spin doctors) Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell 20 years ago,' Lady Brittan's confidante added.
Rather than meet Sir Bernard, who dramatically quit as Met boss in late September as Sir Richard finished his report, Lady Brittan will go ahead with chairing a charity meeting in Northern Ireland.
Her friend said she is disappointed with the 'shoddy' and 'disrespectful' way she has been treated by the Met.
Lady Brittan's decision to snub Sir Bernard came after one of his most senior officers, Assistant Commissioner Helen King, wrote to her on Friday to say the Met intends to publish material from Sir Richard's report today.
Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe offered to see Diana Brittan but she declined
Operation Midland, which cost more than 2 million, ended in March after the Met belatedly concluded that there was insufficient evidence to arrest anyone, let alone ask prosecutors to consider a charge.
Detectives did not find a shred of evidence to support his extraordinary claims against ex Army chief Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan, ex PM Ted Heath, former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, and the late Labour peer, Lord Janner.
Yet in December 2014, a senior Met officer described Nick's allegations of serial rape and murder as 'credible and true', and police search teams later raided the homes of Lord Bramall and Mr Proctor, as well as two homes Lord Brittan shared with his wife before his death in January last year.
Since receiving an initial draft copy of Sir Richard's review, Sir Bernard has met D-Day veteran Lord Bramall, 92 interviewed under caution over Nick's abuse claims - to apologise.
Daniel Janner QC, Lord Janner's son, said Nick should be charged with criminal offences for making false allegations. He said: 'If the CPS do not prosecute Nick, I will consult my legal team with a view to instituting a private prosecution.'
Thousands of small-business owners are finally set to get compensation over claims their firms were destroyed by RBS.
The bank will today admit that mistakes were made by its infamous global restructuring group an operation which was meant to be a crack rescue unit for struggling companies during the recession.
Small-business owners claim the bank deliberately drove their companies to the wall to seize their assets and shore up its ailing balance sheet. The taxpayer-backed lender will deny allegations it sought to profit from their suffering, but it will at last acknowledge that some company owners are entitled to a payout.
Thousands of small-business owners are finally set to get compensation over claims their firms were destroyed by RBS
The decision due to be announced this morning before markets open is likely to be welcomed by entrepreneurs who saw their livelihoods, homes and marriages destroyed as their businesses went bust. Hotel firms, a student accommodation company and a pharmacy chain were all allegedly pushed into administration by the bank.
RBS chief executive Ross McEwan has already admitted that the bank, which owns NatWest, made mistakes. It follows years of criticism which were first met with a staunch defence from the lender even though as far back as 2009, City bankers were saying they would take the keys of properties if they could not get their money back during the financial crisis.
RBS has faced a stream of allegations since then, culminating in a damning report by Government-backed entrepreneur Lawrence Tomlinson.
Compiled three years ago, the review claimed that executives at many companies were forced to stand by and watch an otherwise successful business be sunk by the decisions of the bank. Its publication triggered widespread outrage but was hotly contested by RBS, which commissioned its own internal report that found no systematic wrongdoing.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) then ordered an independent report, which is expected in the coming months. It is expected to criticise RBS but clear it of the worst allegations.
The bank will today admit that mistakes were made by its infamous global restructuring group an operation which was meant to be a rescue unit for struggling companies during recession
Banking campaigners last night welcomed the compensation programme but warned that the bank must offer redress which is proportionate to the damage caused.
Labour MP Wes Streeting, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: This just serves to underline the importance of the FCA publishing its report.
Its in the interest of customers, the bank and everyone else that we get to grips with the extent of the problem and what appropriate action needs to be taken.
The decision to offer compensation followed explosive allegations last month. Leaked documents from 2008 described the restructuring work as a dash for cash to help the banks bottom line.
RBS bosses said they had seen nothing to support the allegation that the bank artificially distressed otherwise viable SME businesses or deliberately caused them to fail. The bank has nonetheless been facing a string of lawsuits from bosses who believe they suffered unjustly.
With the price of everything from Marmite to laptops going up in recent weeks, its been a gloomy start to winter even before we saw temperatures plummet.
And while many would like to cheer themselves up with some winter sun, doom-laden warnings about Brexit and the impact of the falling pound may have left them resigned to shivering at home.
But it seems that amid all the price hikes, theres a bright light on the horizon.
Yesterday Ryanair revealed plans to cut fares by up to 15 per cent this winter
Yesterday Ryanair revealed plans to cut fares by up to 15 per cent this winter.
Experts predicted the move would spark a price war, forcing other budget airlines, such as main competitors easyJet and FlyBe, to lower their fares.
And they said the lower flight costs would also see the price of package holidays fall, making it a great time to book a holiday for this winter, or next summer.
Ryanair said its costs were down due to lower than expected fuel prices, with savings to be passed on to customers.
Chief executive Michael OLeary (pictured) said that while the reduced fares will mean shareholders have to wait for returns, the savings should entice winter sun seekers to keep booking with the company
Chief executive Michael OLeary said that while the reduced fares will mean shareholders have to wait for returns, the savings should entice winter sun seekers to keep booking with the company. He said: Were looking to a winter where, as far as we can see, fares will keep falling. That should be good for demand. Were 2 per cent stronger booked into the winter period than we were this time last year.
I think well continue to trade strong, its very good news for customers but shareholders will have to wait a little for returns.
Around 250 people boarded a Ryanair flight every minute between April and September, with each customer accounting for an average of 15 in profit. With the price slash, the airline expects to make just 3 profit per passenger between October and March.
Ryanair, which already runs winter flights on routes such as Gatwick to Alicante for a little as 19.99, is the latest airline to slash prices in a bid to entice customers searching for winter sun. Last week Emirates Airlines cut the costs of flights from the UK to Dubai in a winter season flash sale.
EasyJet said its fares have fallen consecutively year on year due to an increase in the number of passengers, seats and routes available.
EasyJet said its fares have fallen consecutively year on year due to an increase in the number of passengers, seats and routes available
Travel search engine Kayak said flight prices to Britains top holiday destinations, including Spain, Amsterdam and Italy, fell by an average of 15 per cent between July to September this year compared to the same period last year. The average cost of flights from the UK to Dublin has fallen from 84 to 48, while the cost of a ticket to Milan fell from 164 to 88.
Flights to Czech capital Prague have dropped from 158 to 100.
Travel search engine Kayak said flight prices to Britains top holiday destinations, including Spain, Amsterdam and Italy, fell by an average of 15 per cent between July to September this year compared to the same period last year
Last night Emma Coulthurst, of holiday price comparison site, TravelSupermarket, said: The reason why Ryanair is cutting its fares is, no doubt, due to the massive amount of competition, with more and more low cost operators coming into the market or expanding.
Ryanair will be hoping it can gain market share and put downward pressure on other competitors.
She added: Ryanairs decision to cut its fares is likely to spark a price war. If it becomes cheaper to fly away for a city break or sun holiday, holiday package prices which are often made up of low cost flights will be even better value too.
Now is a great time to get your holiday package or flights for next summer as you get what you want and at the best price.
Suzanne Perry, travel expert at Kayak, said the price war was unlikely to affect high-end airlines, as they do not typically compete with Ryanir.
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Donald Trump called on Americans to deliver justice at the ballot box as he and bitter rival Hillary Clinton spent the closing hours of the presidential election making their final pitches.
Amid calls from politicians from both sides for FBI chief James Comey to resign for meddling in the election, voters cast their ballots today after the most toxic campaign in US political history.
Speaking in North Carolina, Republican candidate Mr Trump who called himself Mr Brexit during the campaign promised that today was gonna be Brexit plus, plus, plus.
Hillary Clinton, pictured second right, was joined on stage in the early hours of this morning with her husband Bill, right, her daughter Chelsea, centre, and musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga, left, in Morrisville, North Carolina
The Democratic candidate covered more than 2,000 miles covering three states and four states on the final campaign day
Clinton's aide Huma Abedin, whose estranged husband Anthony Weiner was responsible for the latest email scandal was standing behind the former secretary of state as she waited to go on stage at North Carolina State University last night
Donald Trump, pictured, added a final campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a traditional Democratic heartland, but the Republicans think they might be able to turn the state red by securing the support of disillusioned rust belt workers
Dixville Notch in New Hampshire became the first area to return a result for the election with four voters choosing Clinton/Kaine, two picking Trump/Pence and two deciding on other candidates, although the first accurate indications of who will win will not be known until about 4am GMT tomorrow although a final result could take several days
Both Trump and Clinton continued their campaigning well into election day in an effort to scoop up any remaining votes
Wearing a red pantsuit, Hillary Clinton visited three states and four cities during her marathon final day on the campaign trail, covering more than 2,000 miles.
Along the way, she held rallies with President Obama, President Bill Clinton, Bruce Springsteen, Jon BonJovi and Lady Gaga.
She flew threw Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Allendale, Michigan; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Raleigh, North Carolina - three swing states, all vital to secure a historic win Tuesday and become America's first woman president.
The Democrat is looking to lock in key battleground states to block any path her Republican opponent Donald Trump might have to the White House.
Donald Trump made an attempt to turn the traditionally Democrat Michigan into a red state with a last minute campaign stop to Grand Rapids.
Speaking in just hours before the polls were due to open, he told the crowd: 'Today is our Independence Day. Today the American working class is going to strike back.'
He was due to finish his campaign in New Hampshire, but added Michigan in an effort to secure the support of disillusioned rust belt workers.
Both candidates returned home to New York after an exhausting final day on the campaign trail.
Midway through a speech lambasting Mrs Clintons star supporters Jay Z and Beyonce for their crude language, Mr Trump broke off to indulge in some brief levity as he admired a latex mask of himself brandished by a fan in Sarasota, Florida
As Trump attempted to woo the crowd in key state Florida, Hillary was also on the campaign trail. Here she addresses a passionate rally in Michigan, another key state, yesterday
In Vancouver yesterday, Trump pumps his fist at a rally as hundreds of supporters wave signs in the air carrying his famous slogan throughout the campaign: 'Make America great again'
Clinton is four points ahead in the polls but Black voters have proved particularly unexcited about voting for her, prompting her campaign to rely heavily on Barack Obama, pictured today in New Hampshire
CAN HE DO IT? The CNN electoral college prediction after it fell under 270 - with North Carolina, Florida and New Hampshire not just in play but being visited by both candidates at the last minute
Calling on voters to reject a media and political elite that has bled our country dry, he added: Its going to be amazing. Were going to drain the swamp.
With Democrat Mrs Clinton, 69, four points ahead in three separate polls of likely voters yesterday, both campaigns concentrated on a clutch of battleground states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as well as some in the northern Midwest such as Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin which have shown signs of weakening in their traditional support for the Democrats.
Mr Trumps best chance of snatching victory was hampered by the FBIs decision to drop its investigation into Mrs Clintons emails, but the billionaire used the bureaus 11th-hour intervention to revive his claims that the election is rigged and that his opponent has been reckless with state secrets.
And amid accusations that he has been the most Machiavellian FBI boss since the notorious J Edgar Hoover, under-fire Mr Comey faces serving one of two candidates, both of whom have publicly effectively accused him of political bias.
Mr Trumps best chance of snatching victory was hampered by the FBIs decision to drop its investigation into Mrs Clintons (pictured yesterday in Michigan) emails was announced by FBI chief James Comey
The billionaire used the bureaus 11th-hour intervention to revive his claims that the election is rigged and that his opponent has been reckless with state secrets
Donald Trump addresses supporters at Macomb Community College, also in Michigan, one of the states he must win if he is to have any chance of emerging from the brutal election campaign victorious
With Democrat Mrs Clinton, 69, four points ahead in the polls, both campaigns concentrated on a clutch of battleground states such as Michigan, which have shown signs of weakening in their traditional support for the Democrats
Waiting in the wings as Trump gave his address were Eric Trump, his son, and Eric's wife Lara Yunaska use their iPhones
Veteran Republican Newt Gingrich said Mr Comey caved in to pressure to close the investigation and had been twisted into an indefensible pretzel of contradictions. Democrats, meanwhile, are furious that many Americans exploited the chance to vote early during a period of uncertainty about the FBI investigation when Mrs Clintons likelihood of winning plunged in polls.
Thousands of supporters packed an arena in Sarasota, Florida, to hear Mr Trump, 70, speak in the first of five rallies yesterday.
Campaign: Chelsea Clinton yesterday
As newly released Clinton campaign emails revealed how the CNN network had asked her aides for help on deciding interview questions for Mr Trump, he attacked the US media for favouring the Democrats. Dismissing the late polls predicting a Clinton victory as a phony deal, he said: They are so worried. You ought to see them on television this morning.
He added: Hillary Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system. And now its up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box tomorrow.
Midway through a speech lambasting Mrs Clintons star supporters Jay Z and Beyonce for their crude language, Mr Trump broke off to indulge in some brief levity as he admired a latex mask of himself brandished by a fan.
Nice set of hair, Ill say that, he said. Is there any place more fun to be than a Trump rally? Showing no sign of preparing for defeat, the Trump campaign is reportedly considering who will join him in government. It is reported the tycoon is thinking of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani becoming his Attorney General and Mr Gingrich his Secretary of State.
Facing a tough but not impossible task, Mr Trump must win all of the main swing states including Florida, Ohio and North Carolina as well as crack Mrs Clintons so-called blue wall by taking some traditional Democrat states.
Mrs Clinton tried to strike an upbeat tone yesterday, insisting she genuinely wants to be a president for everybody. She promised a crowd in Pittsburgh that she would listen even to voters who rejected her and made a late plea for more love and kindness.
With many Democrat voters lukewarm about her or confident of victory, Mrs Clintons main problem is to ensure her supporters get out and vote today.
Black voters have proved particularly unexcited about voting for her, prompting her campaign to rely heavily on Barack Obama.
The President was hugged by Mrs Clintons daughter Chelsea as he appeared in Michigan at the close of what may be his final political campaign. He said Mr Trump was temperamentally unfit to be the US commander-in-chief.
HOW DOES THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WORK? The electoral college is made up of 538 voters - 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, plus three electors for the District of Colombia. A candidate needs to win a majority of 270 electoral college votes to become President. This voters' college make their pick based on which candidate receives a majority of votes in their corresponding states. That candidate receives all that state's electoral college votes. An exception is made in Nebraska and Maine, where votes are assigned by proportional representation - meaning either candidate could receive votes from different congressional districts. It is possible to win the electoral college vote and lose the popular vote - as with George W Bush in 2000. He eventually won the presidency over Al Gore following a Supreme Court ruling which had the ultimate effect of awarding Florida's votes to Bush. The creators of the Constitution set up the system as a limit on direct democracy - or in Alexander Hamilton's words, as a way of preserving 'the sense of the people' - in other words to avoid a malicious majority forming. It also tries to ensure the rights of smaller states. The electors cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December and are counted in Congress on January 6. The new President is then sworn in on January 20. Advertisement
DIXVILLE NOTCH: THE TINY NEW HAMPSHIRE COMMUNITY THAT VOTED AT MIDNIGHT Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, voted at midnight and announced its results earlier than the rest of the country Dixville Notch, an unincorporated community in Dixville township, New Hampshire, voted at midnight in the early minutes of Tuesday, as per tradition. Town moderator Tom Tillotson was pictured arriving with ballots Monday night. A whopping total of eight votes were cast and the community announced its results before the rest of the country. Dixville Notch voted Democrat for the first time since 1968 as four out of eight votes went to Clinton. Trump came in second, with two votes. One vote went to Gary Johnson and the last one was a write-in for Mitt Romney. Dixville Notch suffered a 20 per cent drop in population this year when two people moved away. But a new resident moved in not long afterwards, bringing the total current population to nine. Voters in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire traditionally cast their votes at midnight. Town moderator Tom Tillotson is pictured arriving with ballots Monday Advertisement
A woman donned a 'full burka' and posed as longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin at a New York City polling station in an attempt to prove the ease with which voter fraud is committed.
The video, created by Project Veritas, was posted on YouTube just one day before the elections showing the 'undercover' woman being given an affidavit paper ballot to vote under Abedin's name.
It is unclear when the clip was filmed, but a federal judge ruled on Friday night that the New York City Board of Elections must provide affidavit ballots to all voters whose names do not appear on the registration rolls.
While the poll worker handed the Abedin impostor an affidavit ballot as mandated by the order, what the video did not make clear was that paper ballots are verified against BOE records before they are counted.
A woman donned a 'full burka' and posed as longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin at a New York City polling station in an attempt to prove the ease with which voter fraud is committed
The imposter is greeted by an election official who says that her 'name is not in the book'
At the polling station, the woman was eventually told by one official: 'Your name is not in the book...but that doesn't mean you can't vote by paper ballot. You just can't vote by machine'
Project Veritas released videos in October suggesting Democrats hired people to incite violence at Donald Trump's rallies. One Democratic operative was fired as a result, and another stepped down.
But James O'Keefe, the conservative behind Project Veritas, a group that claims to 'investigate and expose corruption', has also been repeatedly slammed for being a 'hoax artist' for his heavily edited videos.
The video posted on Monday showed a woman who claimed to be a journalist heading to a polling station in New York City and giving her name as 'Huma Abedin'.
The video was edited to include footage from a holiday party in 2015, where Alan Schulkin, Commissioner of the BOE, also suggested voter fraud was widespread
In edited footage interspersed throughout the three-minute clip, a woman's voice can be heard talking to Alan Schulkin, Commissioner of the Board of Elections, at a holiday party in 2015, claiming that voter fraud would be easy to accomplish with the help of a burka.
Federal judge Nicholas Garaufis (pictured) signed a hand-written notice that requires the BOE in New York to actively disperse its new affidavit ballot policy
While the YouTube video title claims the woman wore a 'full burka', her face is shown at the beginning of the video in a hijab, and Abedin does not wear any religious garments.
Back at the polling station, the woman was eventually told by one official: 'Your name is not in the book. For some reason, it's not here, but that doesn't mean you can't vote by paper ballot. You just can't vote by machine.'
The impostor then asked: 'Okay, so I can vote today?'
The poll worker responded: 'By paper, yes.'
When she was finally handed a paper vote, the impostor pulled back and said she would return after making a call to her husband, Anthony, in a reference to the disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, Abedin's real-life husband.
When Abedin's impostor was finally handed a paper vote, she pulled back and said she would return after making a call (pictured, Abedin)
In the video footage from the holiday party, Sculkin also talked about voter fraud and verified the woman's claims, saying: 'Your vote isn't really counting because they can go in there with a burka on and you don't know if they are a voter.'
Edited together, the video suggested voter fraud is rampant and easy to accomplish.
While voter fraud certainly exists, the 'experiment' was misleading, because paper ballots are then vetted against BOE records before they are actually counted.
On Friday, federal judge Nicholas Garaufis signed a hand-written notice that requires the BOE in New York to actively disperse its new affidavit ballot policy to poll workers.
The order read: 'If you believe you are registered to vote, and your name does not appear in the poll book, you are entitled to an affidavit ballot. Your vote may be counted.'
So while the poll worker handed the Abedin impostor an affidavit ballot, it did not mean it would be automatically accepted, since paper ballots are verified against BOE records first.
The new ruling also gave the following directive to poll workers: 'You must also advise the individual that he or she receive notice as to the status of whether the ballot was counted.'
Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the presidential election is being fixed against him by Clinton supporters, the media and even polling place workers.
Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the presidential election is being fixed against him by Clinton supporters, the media and even polling place workers
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, found just 31 incidents of voter impersonation between 2000 and August 2014, among more than a billion ballots cast in elections at both the local and national levels.
Christopher Ashby, an attorney and veteran campaign operative who is listed on the Republican National Lawyers Association, debunked claims of a rigged election through a firestorm of tweets.
He explained the system of checks in place, like ID requirements and election officials who are required by law to consist of both Republicans and Democrats, to prevent voter fraud.
Ashby also said the voting machines are tested and then sealed, adding: 'Voting machines are equipped with multiple interconnected counters that make it impossible to add or remove votes secretly.
After the election, the count and recount is conducted through a public process, with officials keeping detailed records, which are open to inspection, he wrote.
Acknowledging human error and a 'small fraction' of attempted cheating, the attorney wrote: 'To rig an election, you would need technological capabilities that might exist only in Mission Impossible movies.'
He added: 'So any candidate who implies that his/her followers need to take the law into their own hands on E Day is horribly manipulating them.'
'Watching doesnt mean loitering menacingly in and around a polling place. Thats not poll watching, thats voter intimidation,' he wrote.
Engulfed in crisis: Tesco Bank
An international crime gang stole millions of pounds in the unprecedented cyber-attack on Tesco Bank, it emerged last night.
Fraudsters in Brazil and Spain hit more than a quarter of Tesco's current-account customers in the biggest ever raid on a British bank.
The bank was forced to freeze all online transactions yesterday, causing further problems for anxious customers who had already faced long waits to speak to staff.
As police investigated the attack and the crisis engulfing the company deepened it emerged yesterday that:
Tesco Bank has faced repeated warnings over its lacklustre security systems;
Criminal gangs in Brazil have been targeting its customers for months;
The Financial Conduct Authority and Information Commissioner's Office are investigating the weekend's cyber-attack;
The Tory MP who heads the Commons Treasury committee called on the bank to explain what had happened.
Tesco saw a sharp fall in its share price yesterday as City regulators began a probe that could result in millions of pounds in fines if a breach of security rules is found.
Experts said the cyber-attack was the most significant ever on a UK bank, leading to fears a criminal network or even a foreign government may be responsible.
The National Crime Agency, which tackles organised and international crime, has also started investigating the hack. Since February Tesco Bank customers have been targeted by criminal gangs operating in Brazil a hub of banking fraud where much of the stolen money was channelled.
The bank yesterday had to apologise after customers accused staff of treating them with 'complete contempt' and making derisory offers of 25 compensation.
Tesco Bank customers checked balances online after being alerted to 'fraudulent activity' to find amounts from 20 to 3,000 had disappeared. File image
The security breach unfolded on Saturday night, when criminals are thought to have gained access to Tesco Bank's computer systems, possibly using log-in information that had been stolen previously.
Customers checked balances online after being alerted to 'fraudulent activity' to find amounts from 20 to 3,000 had disappeared.
'I COULDN'T BUY ANY FOOD' Mother of three Clare Monaghan said she was considering leaving Tesco banking after a 'nightmare' two days of being unable to withdraw money. She said she was blocked from her online account and has been unable to use her cards since the weekend. Mrs Monaghan, from Hertfordshire, was alerted to the problems when she noticed fellow outraged customers on social media on Sunday. Tesco Bank did not contact her until yesterday morning, when she received a text. She said the freeze on her account meant she has unable to do vital food shopping and had also scuppered her plans to buy Christmas presents during a one-off toy sale. 'This should never have happened in the first place and to be left without any money is outrageous and unfair,' Mrs Monaghan added. Advertisement
The firm initially claimed fewer than 10,000 accounts had been affected, but Tesco Bank's boss yesterday revealed its scale was much more significant.
Benny Higgins said hackers gained access to 40,000 of the bank's 136,000 current accounts, and took money from 20,000.
If each of those affected had 1,000 taken, that would mean 20million was stolen in total.
Tesco Bank, which has more than 7million customers overall, has refused to reveal how much was taken or how the hackers gathered the details of so many customers.
But some customers say multiple payments were siphoned from their accounts primarily to firms based in Brazil, but also some in Spain.
Nearly half of Brazil's residents have fallen victim to banking fraud in the past five years.
Criminals began targeting the bank earlier this year with 'phishing' messages that try to trick customers into handing over information. The messages, sent between January and April, secretly re-directed users to a number of Brazil-based websites.
Other account-holders suggested the perpetrators may have found a way to access the details of debit cards linked to current accounts.
Tesco Bank, which has more than 7million customers overall, has refused to reveal how much was taken or how the hackers gathered the details of so many customers. File image
One said somebody tried to pay for goods in Rio de Janeiro at 9am on Sunday with his card, despite the fact he never used it himself. He said: 'It appears to the bank that someone has worked out the algorithm to create card numbers and start/end dates.
'They told us that the specific transaction was a card-holder present and it was a swipe of the magnetic strip-type of transaction.'
'IT'S SHOCKING. I TRUSTED THEM' 500 missing: Customer Mark Noakes, 49 Mark Noakes discovered that about 500 was missing from his joint account when he received a text message yesterday morning. The 49-year-old, from Northamptonshire, said he spoke to Tesco customer services who confirmed there were transactions on his account that were not made by himself or his wife. He said a staff member refused to confirm the amounts involved and that there was no information on the companies which had received the money. The technical manager for a food firm described the lack of details as 'concerning', adding: 'She could confirm there was money taken out but she had no more information on it. 'It's shocking more than anything, as you trust someone with your money only to find out it's gone. They have been slow to respond to something so major.' Mr Noakes, who thankfully had access to cash in accounts with other banks, added: 'I think it is a flaw with their security.' Advertisement
Tesco Bank was forced to cancel an unknown number of credit cards earlier this year over a 'data breach', and was the target of a widespread phishing scam last year.
Tory MP Chris Philp, who sits on the Commons Treasury committee, said a 'very well-equipped organisation' was behind the attack, and even suggested it may have been 'state-sponsored'.
He said: 'I think it is deeply worrying that a respectable institution like Tesco Bank has apparently been victim to a massive-scale hacking operation.'
He also called for regulators to ensure banks spend enough on maintaining their 'often crumbling' technological infrastructure.
The committee's chairman, Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, said he will write to Mr Higgins to demand answers and seek reassurances a similar attack will not happen again.
'This is just the latest in a long list of failures and breaches of banking IT systems, exposing many thousands of customers to uncertainty and disruption,' he said.
Tesco Bank was criticised for its hapless response to concerned customers, who faced jammed phone lines as they tried to get answers.
And current-account customers had to endure yet more frustration yesterday as online transactions and debit payments were frozen by the bank.
Experts said the fraudsters may have targeted current accounts as they are linked to a higher number of payments than savings accounts, therefore allowing the criminals more access before the alarm would be raised.
US cyber-security firm boss Tom Kellermann said: 'It is remarkable how many of these accounts were compromised and then pillaged in a relatively short period of time.'
Professor Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, added: 'I've not heard of an attack of this nature and scale on a UK bank where it appears that the bank's central system is the target.'
Attacks on financial institutions in Britain have risen from five in 2014 to more than 75 so far this year, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
The attack came days after Chancellor Philip Hammond announced a 1.9billion strategy to deal with the increased cyber-security threat faced by the UK.
Mr Higgins said: 'We can reassure customers that any financial loss as a result of this activity will be resolved fully by Tesco Bank.'
In an apparent attempt to intimidate voters, at least a dozen trucks and other vehicles were caught on video parading around early polling stations in Florida waving Confederate flags.
All of the vehicles were outfitted with the American and Confederate flag along with other flags that read: 'Trump for president.'
The incident was caught on camera by John Zaccaro, Jr, who was volunteering as a poll observer in Florida, according to his sister Donna Ullman.
In an apparent attempt to intimidate voters, at least a dozen trucks and other vehicles were caught on video parading around early polling stations in Florida waving Confederate flags
All of the vehicles were outfitted with the American and Confederate flag along with other flags that read: 'Trump for president'
Ullman posted the video on Facebook along with several photos of the Confederate-flag wielding motorcade on Monday.
She wrote that her brother was 'seeing blatant voter intimidation and suppression efforts'.
In the short clip, the Donald Trump supporters can be heard honking and shouting at individuals entering the polling station.
It's unclear where this particular location is, but the individuals were apparently driving around to several polling locations in Florida.
The post received several outraged comments by Florida residents, with some calling Trump 'desperate' for votes, while others said the individuals were 'classless'.
But the incident in Florida isn't the only obstacle facing voters as Election Day is just less than 24 hours away.
The incident was caught on camera by John Zaccaro, Jr, who was volunteering as a poll observer in Florida, according to his sister Donna Ullman
Several states have and are still facing different obstacles involving voters who either don't have the proper identification or who have somehow been removed from voting lists within the past few days before the election.
Below is a breakdown of some of the top voting concerns in key states:
Alabama
This is the first presidential election in Alabama in which voters will be asked for photo identification.
A lawsuit challenging the voter ID law is pending, with trial set for next year.
The plaintiffs have argued the law disenfranchises voters who are unable to obtain a state-issued ID.
Arizona
State Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging some Republicans are planning to intimidate voters at the polls.
Arizona also was one of two states in which hackers over the summer attempted to breach voter registration systems.
Florida
During the 2012 presidential election, Florida had the longest average wait time among all states 45 minutes, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Some of the most populous counties have since expanded early voting hours in the hopes of reducing long lines on Election Day.
Meanwhile, legal battles continue over voter registration. After Hurricane Matthew hit Florida's eastern coastline, Democrats sued to extend the deadline for voters to register.
After a court order, about 107,000 people registered during the extension, but there was a concern that not all those applications would be processed before early voting began.
Several states have reported voting obstacles. A sign encouraging voting is seen here in New York's Times Square
Georgia
The state's process for handling voter registrations and maintaining its voter lists has been the subject of lawsuits this year.
One pending lawsuit was filed against Secretary of State Brian Kemp over a policy allowing for people to be removed from state voter rolls for failing to vote in recent elections.
Lawyers in the Georgia case said roughly 372,000 voters were purged between 2012 and 2014.
Long lines have also been reported in some places since early voting began on October 17, including a four-hour wait in one metro Atlanta county on the first day.
Indiana
Indiana State Police have said they are investigating some voter registration applications submitted by Patriot Majority USA, a Washington, DC-based voter mobilization group with ties to the Democratic Party.
The probe is examining whether some applications contained forged signatures or other possible elements of fraud.
Democrats from several states have filed lawsuits to prevent Republicans from intimidating voters at the poll
Kansas
A Kansas court fight focused on whether a group of as many as 50,000 residents could vote even though they did not submit citizenship documents, as required under state law, when registering at motor vehicle offices or with a federal form.
Federal courts had previously ordered the state to count their votes in federal elections. The secretary of state's office had sought to toss out their votes in state and local races, something a state judge has since blocked.
New York
The state's 2016 primary was marred by widespread reports of people in Brooklyn saying they were unable to vote.
This happened after about 126,000 Brooklyn voters were removed from voter registration lists or deemed inactive between November 2015 and April of this year.
Just days before the presidential election, a lawsuit was filed claiming the New York City Board of Elections had improperly removed voters from the rolls.
North Carolina
In 2013, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina passed a package of measures that required voters to show photo ID, reduced early voting and eliminated same-day registration during the early voting period.
In July, a federal appeals court struck down several parts of the law, saying they 'target African Americans with almost surgical precision.'
Republican officials have said discrimination was not their intent.
A week before Tuesday's election, the state chapter of the NAACP filed a lawsuit alleging thousands of people, many of them black, had been removed improperly from voter rolls after being challenged by private citizens.
A judge ordered those registrations restored, citing a federal law that prohibits such removals too close to an election.
Ohio
A federal judge ruled in October that voters who were wrongfully removed from Ohio's registration lists can cast ballots in Tuesday's election.
The number of voters covered by the ruling is not known, although some have estimated it to be in the tens of thousands.
That decision follows an earlier ruling that found Ohio's process for maintaining its voter rolls wrongfully removed eligible people based on their failure to vote in recent elections.
Trump has warned for weeks of a 'rigged' election, asking supporters to head to the polls to watch for voter fraud, and mentions Philadelphia as a place that could have problems
Pennsylvania
Trump has warned for weeks of a 'rigged' election, asking supporters to head to the polls to watch for voter fraud, and mentions Philadelphia as a place that could have problems on Election Day.
A judge rejected a lawsuit by Republicans challenging a state law that requires poll watchers to be registered in the county where they want to monitor the vote.
Another judge rejected a late effort by state Democrats to obtain a court order to prevent Republicans from intimidating voters at the polls, saying they had not produced evidence of an effort to suppress voters.
Texas
A federal appeals court ruled this summer that the state's 2011 voter ID law discriminated against minorities and the poor, ordering officials to relax the ID requirements for the November election.
Experts had said the law was among the toughest in the nation, requiring voters to show one of seven acceptable forms of photo identification that included a concealed handgun license but not a college student ID.
It was estimated that more than 600,000 registered voters in Texas lacked an acceptable ID under the law.
Wisconsin
The voter ID law was initially blocked by the courts, and then went into effect for the presidential primary in April.
The annual Project Homeless Connect community-wide event will be held on Thursday, from 9 a.m until 1:30 p.m. The event will again be held at the National Guard Armory on Holtzclaw Avenue.
Project Homeless Connect is a nationwide grassroots program that provides the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless resources, services, and information. This event is thanks to the dedication, generosity, and goodwill of the National Guard Armory and scores of providers, social service agencies, schools and colleges, businesses, government agencies, medical professionals, churches, volunteers, and students.
The services available include employment resources, healthcare services and resources, housing counseling, family resources, clothing give-away, on-site dentists, on-site haircuts, veterans services, veterinary information, voter registration information, and more.
Approximately 600 individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless are expected to attend the event.
Volunteers are the heart of Project Homeless Connect and there are many ways to become involved, including helping people check in for the event, escorting a client through needed services, or sharing a meal in the Connect Cafe. A full list of volunteer opportunities, as well as sign-up documents, is available at http://chattphc.weebly.com/.
Some Labour MPs have reached the stage that when Speaker Bercow yesterday called David Davis to make a Statement and referred to his title as minister for 'Exiting the European Union', they laughed at the very notion.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry London lawyer curled her lip like a stale samosa. Through much of Mr Davis's speech she maintained a low murmur of heckles. Jeremy Corbyn was present, too, but the Opposition benches were far from full. Nick Clegg (Sheffield Hallam) was the only Lib Dem I saw. The Tory benches were better filled. Good Whipping by Mr Davis? Or a sign that many Labour MPs realise their party will be in danger if voters feel it has sided with Remainers and judges against the referendum result?
Cheers and jeers: David Davis in the House of Commons yesterday
'We believe in and value the independence of our judiciary,' said Mr Davis. Labour cheers, Tory silence. 'We also value the freedom of our Press.' Labour silence, a few Tory cheers. Beside Mr Davis, looking a little pink, was the Attorney General, Jeremy Wright, who led the Government's unsuccessful arguments in the High Court. Mr Davis said that legal team had been 'brilliant'. A whistling silence in the House.
It is rumoured incorrectly, we are told that Stephen Phillips (the multi-spondoolicks QC who just quit as Tory MP for Sleaford) pooh-poohed Mr Wright's advocacy and called him a 'third-rate provincial conveyancer'. In my experience, third-rate provincial conveyancers (I have known some) are a great deal more likeable than top-guinea London barristers, even if they do make a Horlicks of your house purchase.
The Statement's hour or so basically amounted to this: Labour waxed indignant about Press mockery of judges; Tories wanted the Government to crack on with things and, perhaps, hold a Commons vote before the Supreme Court reviews the legal arguments next month. Mr Davis seemed to warm to that latter suggestion a little, particularly when answering questions from Sir Oliver Letwin (W Dorset) and Christopher Chope (Christchurch).
Labour's position, such as it is, was put by frontbencher Sir Keir Starmer, until recently director of public prosecutions.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry
Sir Keir has not yet conquered the Commons. One expects allegedly so ace a brief to be more honeyed, more droll, more debonair and impervious to rhubarb. He is none of these things. He may improve, I suppose, but the presence of smirking Miss Thornberry at his side left a hint that perhaps he is not yet entirely his own man.
Owen Paterson (Con, N Shropshire) shook an arm at the Remainers and said the voters had chosen to 'take back control'. A Labour woman: 'Is he real?' Frank Field (Lab, Birkenhead) repeated his line that 'woe betide' MPs if they dared to ignore the referendum result. Ian Paisley (DUP, N Antrim) said that his party supported the Government on this issue. 'The courtroom is not the place where the politics of Britain should be conducted,' said Mr Paisley.
Unexpectedly emollient noises came from Nicky Morgan (Loughborough), until recently seen as Queen of the Tory Remainers. It was 'time to heal the rift', she said and she wanted an early vote on Article 50. Eurosceptic Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest E) was scoffed at when he suggested that had the referendum result gone the other way, Leave supporters would have accepted the result. Mr Lewis is usually shown greater respect by Labour.
Time and again we heard moans about the Press tweaking the judiciary's snout. Twitchy Bob Neill (Con, Bromley & Chislehurst) and Chuka Umunna (Lab, Streatham) were among these blowhards. I do not remember them complaining when the Mail (and, for that matter, David Davis) stood by former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain when he, outrageously, was threatened with prosecution for criticising a judge.
A man with a swastika tattooed on his neck has been sentenced after his 'personal drug lab' was found in his mother's home.
Shannon Hinchey's dismantled drug set-up was found hidden inside an esky along with ice, cannabis and amphetamines on July 3 last year, the District Court in Gladstone, Queensland heard.
The 28-year-old's 'unsophisticated operation' was for his personal use and Barrister Tom Polley said that Hinchey thought manufacturing his own drugs was better than stealing to fund his habit, the Gladstone Observer reports.
Shannon Hinchey (pictured with his swastika neck tattoo) was charged after his 'personal drug lab' was found in his mother's home
But while Judge Douglas McGill found that 'the production is relatively minor,' he pointed out that it was the second time the tattooed Hinchey had been convicted of the offence.
Hinchey has a 'long history' involving drugs, having begun smoking cigarettes and cannabis at just nine-years-old.
The young Hinchey was given the drugs in exchange for his prescription dexamphetamines, normally used to treat Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
His habit developed and he begun using 'amphetamine-type products' at just 13-years-old.
'He reports that he didn't have any friends prior to this and when he was taking the products, he was able to socialise and feel normal,' Barrister Tom Polley said.
The 28-year-old pleaded guilty to producing ice, and possessing ice, cannabis and amphetamines.
Hinchey was given a parole date of April 6, 2017.
Hinchey has a 'long history' involving drugs, having begun smoking cigarettes and cannabis at just nine-years-old
The widow of notorious underworld figure Carl Williams has been declared bankrupt by the Federal Court, after owing nearly $300,000 in unpaid taxes.
The estate of Roberta Williams, 47, has been ordered to be sequestrated, following an application by the deputy commissioner of taxation on June 9.
The gangland widow owes the Australian Tax Office $295,632 in unpaid taxes, and registrar Daniel Caporale has ordered that costs of $7203 be paid from the estate to the ATO.
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Roberta Williams, 47, (pictured at the funeral of her husband and convicted murderer Carl Williams in 2010) has been declared bankrupt by the Federal Court
Carl Williams (pictured) was a key figure in Melbourne's brutal underworld war of the 1990s. He was beaten to death at Barwon prison in April 2010
Ms Williams didnt appear in court on Tuesday morning, but has flagged that she would fight the matter, the Herald Sun reports.
Brankruptcy proceedings began in 2013, after the 47-year-old failed to follow the orders of the Supreme Court and pay the tax office $230,623.
Since then the debt has increased by $65,009.
Ms Williams unpaid taxes are reportedly associated with payments from media organisations for her story with relationship with the deceased drug lord, The Age reports.
Carl Williams was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the murder of four people but was murdered at Barwon prison in April 2010.
He was beaten to death with the seat of an exercise bike.
The estate of Roberta Williams, 47, has been ordered to be sequestrated, following an application by the deputy commissioner of taxation on June 9
Ms Williams (pictured in 2004) didnt appear in court on Tuesday morning, but has flagged that she would fight the matter
Williams, known as the baby-faced killer, was a key figure in Melbourne's brutal underworld war of the 1990s.
He eventually claimed more than 25 lives, with a sentencing judge describing him as a 'puppet master' who decided who lived and who died.
Evidence of Ms Williams dire financial situation emerged in June when she failed to pay $10,712 for a high-end granite headstone for her late husband, according to The Age.
Growing fears over job security have fuelled a slump in sickies in the workplace, according to a new report yesterday.
For the latest research shows that the number of days British workers are taking off for coughs, cold and flu has fallen once again, as concerns over job security, Brexit and letting colleagues down have combined to keep the workforce battling into work even when ill.
The annual Fishermans Friend Cold and Flu Survey found that while last years annual study recorded the first rise in eight years in terms of the number of days taken off by UK workers, the latest study found that the average worker took just 1.67 days off in the last year for minor ailments (2015 - 1.85). This is despite suffering with three bouts of illness that would usually have merited more time off work.
Research shows that the number of days workers are taking off for coughs, cold and flu has fallen once again, as concerns over job security, Brexit and letting colleagues down have combined. Stock image
The report shows that concerns about reduced job security have returned after a turbulent year and the results are a far cry from the average five days that British workers were taking off sick when Fishermans Friend conducted its first annual survey back in 2008.
In its latest survey of 2,000 Britons, the iconic lozenge maker found that more than half of workers (51%) havent had a single day off due to minor ailments in the last year, with just one in seven (15.55%) notching up more days off this year than last. Three in four (73.75%) workers also admitted heading into work within the last year despite feeling ill enough to stay at home.
Of the three out of 10 workers who have taken less time off this year, one in four (25.62%) said not wanting to let colleagues down was a contributing factor, while one in five (22.81%) cited concerns over job security and one in 12 (8.4%) said uncertainty following the Brexit referendum had made them determined to battle on even when ill.
The study found that female workers were most concerned about letting their colleagues down (30.91% compared with 19.27% of men), while workers aged 18-24 were most likely to take less time off to support colleagues (40.38%).. Worry over Brexit was much more likely to be the driving force behind fewer days off for men compared with women (12.73% males vs 4.85% females) and younger workers were found to be the most concerned (12.57% of 25-34 year olds). Workers over the age of 55 were the least likely to take days off because of Brexit worries (3.03%).
Northern Irish workers took the most days off this year at an average of 2..8 days. Once again, those in the North East were found to be most hardy with the fewest average number of days off (1.35).
Concerns over job security, Brexit and letting colleagues down have combined to keep the workforce battling into work even when ill. Stock image
Those working outside in the environmental and agricultural industries took the most days off work this year (2.95). Meanwhile, the transportation and logistics industry had the highest proportion of workers who took no days off for minor ailments (seven out of 10).
Yet despite British workers stoicism, only three out of 10 said they would be opting for a flu jab to help them through this winter. Of those, one in four said they didnt believe the jab worked, while one in five (18.56%) said they didnt want to fork out the cash to do so.. One in 18 of those surveyed said they were so scared of needles that they were willing to risk falling ill rather than take the jab, while one in seven (14.29%) claimed they were so confident of not getting flu that they didnt see the need for immunisation.
Despite last years rise in the number of days off for the first time in eight years, this years Fishermans Friend Cold and Flu Survey once again shows that workers concerns are real and have an impact on attitudes towards taking time off work to recover from illness, said Fishermans Friend spokesman Rob Metcalfe.
As there was no difference between how men and women voted in the EU referendum, we were surprised to find that women appear much less concerned by the potential effects of Brexit than men. However, as they appear to be more concerned than their male counterparts about letting colleagues down, it could be that theyre just more willing to move onto new challenges that they can have a more immediate influence on.
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Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reunited with their families on the campaign trail Monday evening at a pair of huge swing-state rallies that signaled an end to their respective marathon presidential campaigns.
Clinton met up with her husband Bill and her daughter Chelsea in Philadelphia, where they were joined at the outdoor event across from Independence Hall by President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and musicians Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
'Thank you for coming out for one last rally before election day tomorrow,' Clinton said at the Pennsylvania rally and concert. 'I am so happy to be finishing this campaign with my husband and my daughter by my side.'
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Hillary Clinton, pictured second right, was joined on stage in the early hours of this morning with her husband Bill, right, her daughter Chelsea, centre, and musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga, left, in Morrisville, North Carolina
The Democratic candidate covered more than 2,000 miles covering three states and four states on the final campaign day
Donald Trump, pictured, added a final campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a traditional Democratic heartland, but the Republicans think they might be able to turn the state red by securing the support of disillusioned rust belt workers
Both Trump and Clinton continued their campaigning well into election day in an effort to scoop up any remaining votes
Trump, his adult children - Tiffany, Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka - their spouses - Lara, Vanessa and Jared - and his VP pick, Mike Pence, campaigned in Manchester, New Hampshire. The White House candidate's wife Melania and young son Barron were noticeably absent from the family portrait.
'I've been reading about Hillary Clinton having all these surrogates,' Trump said at his rally, when a laser light show and fog machines were switched off. 'I had the best surrogates of all,' he asserted, meaning his kids. 'They were all over.'
The president spent much of the last seven days crossing the country for Clinton, and he delivered a stirring defense of her at tonight's rally, near the building where the nation's founding fathers signed the Constitution.
He urged Americans to 'reject a politics of resentment and a politics of blame and choose a politics that says we are stronger together,' Clinton's slogan, and to'reject fear and choose hope' on Election Day.
The Democratic politician who trounced Clinton in the 2008 primaries only to name her as his secretary of state hailed his party's nominee as 'this fighter, this stateswoman, this mother, this grandmother, this patriot our next president of the United States of America'.
Hillary Clinton arrived back in Westchester New York almost 24 hours after departing on her final day on the campaign trail
Jon Bon Jovi and Lad Gaga raised Clinton's arms at the packed campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina last night
Hillary Clinton, pictured, received the support of stars such as Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga
President Bill Clinton, left, placed a supportive arm around his wife's shoulder as they watch Lady Gaga perform in North Carolina in one of the final rallies of the most divisive election campaign within living memory
Clinton (pictured with Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Chelsea and Bill) apologized for the angry tone the campaign took for the past few months, prompting someone from the crowd to yell: 'Not your fault!'
Upset? Trump, his adult children - Tiffany, Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka - their spouses - Lara, Vanessa and Jared - and his VP pick, Mike Pence, campaigned in Manchester, New Hampshire
President Obama (pictured welcoming Hillary Clinton onstage) delivered a stirring defense of the woman he helped set up to succeed him at a large outdoor rally in Philadelphia Monday night
Clinton (pictured with the president Monday night) took the stage after Obama and hailed him and his family's 'grace, strength, brilliance, and a whole lot of cool'
Michelle Obama (pictured next to Bill Clinton) spoke earlier in the evening, telling the crowd of thousands: 'We deserve a leader who sees our diversity not as a threat, but as a blessing'
The crowd (pictured) listened to President Barack Obama, who urged Americans to 'reject a politics of resentment and a politics of blame and choose a politics that says we are stronger together'
The Democratic nominee drew thousands of supporters, with help from both Barack and Michelle Obama, her husband Bill, daughter Chelsea and Bruce Springsteen, who warmed the crowd (pictured)
Jon Bon Jovi (pictured) performed earlier in the evening at Independence Mall, warming the crowd before Springsteen, the Clintons and the Obamas stepped onstage too
Trump meanwhile relied on musician Ted Nugent to warm the crowd at his rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan Monday - even though he has criticized Clinton for bringing celebrities to her own events
Trump meanwhile called his opponent the 'face of failure' as he appealed to 'all of the Democratic voters in our country who are thirsting for change like everybody else.'
THE LATEST POLLS The latest poll of polls, cited by CNN, gives Clinton a four-point lead over Trump and predicted she'd get 46 per cent of the vote, compared to his predicted 42 per cent. Clinton is likely to win the election if she wins every traditionally Democratic states and a couple of swing states. But Trump has built up strength in the Midwest, especially in Michigan - and the race in swing states remains tight. Advertisement
'Everybody is thirsting, thirsting for change,' he said during the third of five rallies scheduled for the final day of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Campaigning in Pennsylvania, he said, 'She's the face of failure! She's the face of failed foreign policy.'
At his final rally of the night, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which wrapped up shortly after 1am today, he vowed: 'I am with you. I will fight for you. And I will win for you. I promise.'
While voting is already underway, he was making a final pitch:
'The election is now. The election is now. Can you believe it?' he asked. 'It's today. It's today. It's unbelievable.'
'You can make every dream you've ever dreamed for your country and your family come true. You have one magnificent chance to beat this corrupt, rigged system and to deliver justice for every forgotten man and forgotten woman and forgotten child in this nation.'
As he heard the roar of applause for the last time as a candidate, he issued one final instruction: 'Go to bed! Go to bed right now! Get up and vote!'
The twin senses of finality and uncertainty hung in the air as Trump worked to add extra flourishes to his stump speech.
Hoping for one last shout of 'Mexico' at a signature moment, he acknowledged the lateness of the hour: 'I just want to ask you one question, if you don't mind, at 1 o'clock in the morning: Who is going to pay for the wall?'
Finishing a favorite anecdote about cars that once were made in Flint and water that no one could drink in Mexico and making his switcheroo he boomed that 'you can't drink the damned water in Flint!'
'What the hell? Unbelievable!' Trump sniped.
The Clinton clan reconvened in Raleigh, North Carolina to end the last day of the 2016 presidential campaign. Lady Gaga (pictured with Bill and Chelsea) performed and addressed the crowd in the early hours of Tuesday
Jon Bon Jovi (pictured with Bill, the Democratic nominee and Lady Gaga) also took part in the next rally, ending Clinton's marathon day after his performance in Philadelphia
Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga later performed together and sang his hit, Livin on a Prayer. We just started this in a phone call. So we are truly doing this together for the first time, Bon Jovi told the screaming crowd
Lady Gaga spoke to the crowd on the campus of North Carolina State University and performed some of her songs as well as duets with Bon Jovi, who also came to support the Democratic nominee
Lady Gaga (pictured with Clinton after the rally in Raleigh) performed Poker Face and Angel Down a song she prefaced by saying Black Lives Matter'. The pop star wrapped up Clinton's star-studded day
More than 33,000 people gathered on Independence Mall Monday night for one of Clinton's last campaign events and listened to the Democratic nominee as well as the Obamas, Bill and Chelsea
Hillary Clinton attracted her usual share of barbs.
'We are finally going to close the books on the Clintons, and their lies, their schemes and corruption,' he said.
But in a rust-belt state that has hemorrhaged jobs for decades, the Republican rested on his unconventional partnership with grease monkeys and welders, janitors and mechanics.
'Today is our Independence Day,' he said, forging the last bit of kinship with them.
'Today the American working class is going to strike back, finally.'
Clinton mostly stuck to her stump, going after Trump for his battle with Gold Star father Khizr Khan, a Muslim whose son, Captain Humayun Khan, died in Iraq, attesting that she has the 'stamina' to be president, vowing to 'build bridges, not walls' and telling her audience in closing that 'love trumps hate.'
Channeling her surroundings, Clinton commented on her love of country, and 'what it stands for,' adding, 'not that we are blind to its flaws, its problems, its challenges.'
'I believe with all my heart that Americas best days are still ahead of us, if we reach for them together,' she said. 'We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America, an America where everyone has a place, everyone is included, everyone has a chance to live up to their own God-given potential.'
Obama said he was 'betting' that Americans wouldn't let them down.
'You bet on me all those years ago, and I will always be grateful for the privilege you gave me to serve. But Ill be honest with you: Ive always had the better odds because Ive always bet on you,' he told the crowd. 'And America, Im betting on you one more time.'
The president predicted that mothers and fathers 'across America wont cast their vote for someone who denigrates their daughters from the highest office in the land' and that 'most Americans wont vote for someone who considers minorities and immigrants and people with disabilities as inferior, who considers people who practice different faiths as objects of suspicion.'
The Republican nominee's supporters gathered in Grand Rapids, Michigan for one last rally before Trump wrapped up his busy day around 1 am, like his Democratic opponent
Tiffany Trump (right) and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (left) both attended Trump's final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which stretched into the early hours of Tuesday
Trump, who managed to hit four swing states across five events on the last day of his presidential campaign, ended the day in Grand Rapids, Michigan with one final rally
A countdown clock finally announced zero hours until election day on the press charter that covers Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in Grand Rapids, Michigan
The White House candidate's wife Melania and young son Barron were noticeably absent from the family portrait Monday night. Trump is pictured next to Donald Jr, Pence and Ivanka
'I've been reading about Hillary Clinton having all these surrogates,' Trump (pictured kissing Ivanka) said at his rally. 'I had the best surrogates of all,' he asserted, meaning his kids
Trump (pictured next to his running mate Mike Pence) meanwhile called his opponent the 'face of failure' as he appealed to 'all of the Democratic voters in our country who are thirsting for change like everybody else'
'Everybody is thirsting, thirsting for change,' Trump (pictured as his daughter Ivanka and running mate Pence clap for him) said during the third of five rallies scheduled for the final day of the 2016 presidential campaign
Standing in front of the building where Americans forged their founding documents, he said, 'Im betting that tomorrow, true conservatives wont cast their vote for someone with no regard for the Constitution.'
Young people should turn out because 'your future is at stake,' he lectured. African-Americans should back Clinton 'because this journey weve been on was never about the color of a president but the content of his or her character.'
'Im betting that men across this country will have no problem voting for the more qualified candidate who happens to be a woman,' he said. 'Im betting that the wisdom and decency and generosity of the American people will once again win the day. And that is a bet that I have never, ever lost.'
Making one of his most forceful cases for Clinton of the campaign, Obama said, 'If you want a president who shares our faith in America, whos lived that faith in America, who will finally shatter a glass ceiling and be a president for each and every one of us, then I am asking you to work as hard as you can this one last day.'
Clinton took the stage after Obama and hailed him and his family's 'grace, strength, brilliance, and a whole lot of cool.'
She continued by saying she was proud to serve in 'I am proud that I could watch the extraordinary service of our first lady.
'Like them, I love America, and I know you do too,' Clinton said. 'We love what it stands for not that we are blind to its problems, it's challenges.'
Clinton urged voters to cast their ballots on Election Day as a nod to the Obamas and all that they have accomplished.
'I'm pretty sure that the best way to thank them is to do something really important tomorrow,' she continued. 'Every single one of you and every person you know. Because as the president just pointed out, there is a clear choice in this election.
'A choice between division and unity. Between an economy that works for everyone or only those at the top. Between a strong leadership or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk.'
Her star-studded event helped the Democrat attract the largest crowd of the election. Her campaign says 33,000 people showed up and several thousand more couldn't get in.
Clinton urged voters to go to the polling stations on Election Day, telling the crowd they had 'a choice between division and unity. Between an economy that works for everyone or only those at the top'
Michelle (pictured next to Bill and Chelsea) spoke earlier in the evening, saying speaking at the rally was the last and perhaps most important thing she could do for her country as first lady
The president,summoned emotion at the end of a speech and hailed Clinton as 'this fighter, this stateswoman, this mother, this grandmother, this patriot our next president of the United states of America'
The first lady (pictured hugging Chelsea) told the crowd: 'We deserve a leader who sees our diversity not as a threat, but as a blessing. A leader who sees us not as rich or poor but as hard-working folks who do the best we can with what we have'
Michelle (pictured with Bill and Chelsea) urged the crowd to vote on Election Day, saying: ' 'If we get out and vote tomorrow, Hillary Clinton will win. But if we stay home or we play around with a protest vote, then Hillary's opponent will win'
America's next leader, the first lady said, should see its people 'not as black or white, immigrant or native-born but as brothers and sisters'. She is pictured addressing the crowd Monday night
'I believe with all my heart that America's best days are still ahead of us if we reach for them together. We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America,' Clinton told the crowd on Independence Mall
Clinton apologized for the angry tone the campaign took for the past few months, prompting someone from the crowd to yell: 'Not your fault!'
When it was over, Bill Clinton joined his wife on her campaign plane, with Bon Jovi along for the flight to Raleigh, North Carolina for a midnight rally.
The two walked back towards the press. Clinton made a gesture like she couldn't hear, with a smile. Bill spoke briefly.
Clinton planned to extend her final day on the trail even longer with a greeting with staff and supporters planned for her arrival in Westchester as late as 3 am.
Huma Abedin, the vice-chairwoman of Clinton's campaign, was spotted stepping off the campaign plane Monday night - meaning she is back on the trail after laying low for a few days.
Abedin became a rare sight on the campaign trail after the FBI announced on October 28 it would probe some of her emails found on estranged husband Anthony Weiner's laptop. Weiner was being investigated due to accusations that he sent explicit messages and photos to a 15-year-old girl.
The bureau announced two days before the election that the latest investigation wouldn't lead to criminal charges against Clinton.
CRAZY DAY: Both major party candidates crisscrossed eastern swing states on Monday, with Trump (in red) visiting four states and Clinton three
Clinton completed her celebrity-packed final campaign tour with an appearance in Raleigh, featuring performances by Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi on the campus of North Carolina State University.
TRUMP GETS SHOCK BOOST FROM EARLY VOTING IN FLORIDA AND NORTH CAROLINA Early voting numbers in North Carolina and Florida two states that Donald Trump needs to win suggest that Hillary Clinton may be underperforming President Barack Obama in 2012, while Trump is doing better than GOP nominee Mitt Romney. In North Carolina, 305,000 fewer Republicans have turned out. However, Republican voters were trailing Democrats by 447,000 four years before and Romney won the state by 97,000, as Republican voters more prone to come out on Election Day then head to the polls early. In Florida, Democrats are ahead by just around 33,000 votes. But, with 6.1 million early votes cast, that lead only amounts to .5 percentage points of the in-person early vote total. Back in 2012, Democrats had a 3.7 point advantage in early voting, which was enough to hold back Republican Mitt Romney from taking the state. Advertisement
By the time the poll closes tomorrow we are gonna be Livin on a Prayer, Clinton quipped.
She also got words of support from the performers.
We cant elect somebody that doesnt care for the people. We can only elect somebody who does, said Gaga. When she did her hit Born this Way, she added, Dont judge me cuz Im voting for Hillary, I was just born this way.
Then she joined with Bon Jovi on his hit, Livin on a Prayer, taking the high part in an acoustic duet. We just started this in a phone call. So we are truly doing this together for the first time, Bon Jovi told the screaming crowd.
The time is here the time is now, Bon Jovi said when they were done. This state is razor close and thats why the two of us are here. North Carolina, you know that the road to the White House leads through your state, he said.
Lady Gaga also performed Poker Face and Angel Down a song she prefaced by saying Black Lives Matter.
Bill Clinton implored the crowd, I would ask you not to quit until the polls close.
He took a cue from a sign in the crowd that said, Dorothy was right, you own yourself, a reference to Hillary Clintons mom. She was an unbelievable human being, and she was right, Bill Clinton said.
Both Trump and Clinton wrapped up their last day on the campaign trail near 1 am.
Michelle Obama spoke earlier Monday evening in Philadelphia, telling the crowd that speaking at Clinton's rally was the last and perhaps most important thing she could do for her country as first lady.
She thanked the American people for giving her, her husband and her daughters the honor of serving as first family.
'We believe that our responsibility to you doesn't end when we leave the White House,' she said. 'We deserve a leader who will ensure that our daughters are safe and respected and that our sons understand that truly strong men are compassionate and kind.
'We deserve a leader who sees our diversity not as a threat, but as a blessing. A leader who sees us not as rich or poor but as hard-working folks who do the best we can with what we have.'
Trump covered four states on Monday as he wrapped up his presidential campaign. His daughter Ivanka, who has been one of his most valuable surrogates, was by his side in Manchester, New Hamsphire
Clinton's rally, with more than 33,000 attendees drew the largest crowd of the election but Trump's supporters wore imaginative costumes - like these two dressed as 'campaign lawn signs'
Supporters came to cheer on Trump on the last day before the election. They are pictured at his rally in Manchester, New Hampshire - one of five events Trump held in four different states
America's next leader, the first lady said, should see its people 'not as black or white, immigrant or native-born but as brothers and sisters'.
'This election is on us. It is in our hands,' she continued. 'If we get out and vote tomorrow, Hillary Clinton will win. But if we stay home or we play around with a protest vote, then Hillary's opponent will win. Period. End of story.'
She ushered her husband to the stage, adding it was perhaps her last chance to introduce him as the President of the United States.
'I'm proud of not just what he has done but how he has done it,' she said, adding that he always went 'high when they go low'.
'Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you the love of my life, the president of the United States, Barack Obama,' she said.
DIXVILLE NOTCH: THE TINY NEW HAMPSHIRE COMMUNITY THAT VOTED AT MIDNIGHT Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, voted at midnight and announced its results earlier than the rest of the country Dixville Notch, an unincorporated community in Dixville township, New Hampshire, voted at midnight in the early minutes of Tuesday, as per tradition. Town moderator Tom Tillotson was pictured arriving with ballots Monday night. A whopping total of eight votes were cast and the community announced its results before the rest of the country. Dixville Notch voted Democrat for the first time since 1968 as four out of eight votes went to Clinton. Trump came in second, with two votes. One vote went to Gary Johnson and the last one was a write-in for Mitt Romney. Dixville Notch suffered a 20 per cent drop in population this year when two people moved away. But a new resident moved in not long afterwards, bringing the total current population to nine. Voters in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire traditionally cast their votes at midnight. Town moderator Tom Tillotson is pictured arriving with ballots Monday Advertisement
Huma Abedin, the vice-chairwoman of Clinton's campaign, was spotted getting off of the campaign plane on Monday night (right) - meaning she is back on the trail after a few days off following the FBI's latest probe of her emails
Hillary Clinton (pictured Monday at the airport) made her final pitch to voters with the massive rally Monday night in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - a state she must win to get to 270 electoral college votes on Tuesday
The first couple hugged and the president gave his wife a kiss on the cheek before addressing the crowd.
Earlier on, Springsteen lent his star power to the huge outdoor rally then used his voice to tout her candidacy and rip into Trump. Bon Jovi performed too.
'The choice tomorrow couldn't be any clearer,' the Boss told a crowd outside Philadelphia's Independence Hall.
'Hillary's candidacy is based on intelligence, experience ... and actual vision of an America where everyone counts men and women, white and black, Hispanic and native,' Springsteen said.
After hailing Clinton, Springsteen a powerful validator because of his appeal across the political spectrum and across class lines unexpectedly began to lace into Trump.
'This is a man whose vision is limited to little beyond himself,' the Boss calmly told the thousands gathered on a chilly evening.
He said Trump had a 'profound lack of decency that would allow him to' prioritize 'his own ego.'
Without naming him, Springsteen said the GOP candidate would 'damage our long cherished and admired system' and pointed to Trump's own 'epic failure.'
'That campaign is going down,' Springsteen said.
Springsteen opened with his his 'Thunder Road,' playing a mellow acoustic version and playing a bit of harmonica.
He said Clinton would 'address our problems in a reasonable and thoughtful way. That vision of America is essential to sustain no matter how difficult its realization,' Springsteen continued.
Thousands gathered to support Clinton as she wrapped up her campaign with some of her highest-profile supporters. Among them, Springsteen (pictured) performed songs and praised Clinton before lacing into Trump
Bill and Chelsea (pictured) opened the night after Springsteen, with Chelsea saying it had been the greatest honor of her life to hit the campaign trail on behalf of her mother
The Democratic nominee and her husband walked back towards the press. Clinton made a gesture like she couldn't hear, with a smile (pictured). Bill spoke briefly
The Obamas returned to the White House after giving Clinton one final push in Philadelphia. They are pictured stepping out of Marine One Monday night
Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Tim Kaine was dispatched to Virginia Monday and spoke at a campaign rally at George Mason University in Fairfax
Republican vice presidential nominee Pence joined Trump at his rally in Manchester, New Hampshire and is pictured running onstage to introduce him
Former Vice President Al Gore covered Colorado on behalf of Clinton Monday. He is pictured speaking during a campaign rally in Lakewood
THE LONGEST DAY - AND NIGHT: HOW ELECTION WILL UNFOLD Midnight: First in the nation to vote is Dixville Notch, New Hampshire 6am: The earliest polls on the East Coast open. Though some in New Hampshire open at midnight. 6pm: EST-time zoned areas of Indiana and Kentucky close 7pm: Polls close in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. All EST-time zoned areas (the majority) of Florida close 7:30pm: North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia polls close 8pm: Polls close in Washington, DC, and 16 states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan (the EST-time zoned part, aka most of it) and New Hampshire. Other states include Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Tennessee. The CST-time zoned parts (the panhandle) of Florida close at 7pm CST 8:30: polls close for Arkansas 9pm: Polls close in 14 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Wisconsin. Michigans CST-time zoned area closes. Also closing are Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, New York and Wyoming 10pm: Polls close in four states, including Iowa, Utah and Nevada and Montana If the 2012 election is any indication on how results roll in, Romney was winning until 10:30pm, and an hour later - as California results started to come in - Obama was on the brink of re-election 11pm: polls close in California, Washington state, Oregon, North Dakota (FYI some close at 10), Idaho and Hawaii 11.12pm: this was when the 2012 election was called by NBC, with CBS and Fox News following at 11.16pm, CNN at 11.18pm and ABC the last at 11.23pm. Wednesday Midnight: Results on House of Representatives will likely be in by now. First polls close in Alaska. In 2012 Mitt Romney delivered his concession speech a few minutes after midnight. 1am: Final polls close in Alaska. Advertisement
Then he took the liberty of going into some detail about Clinton's agenda, speaking in nuanced terms like a politician.
'Where the progress we've made in reducing unemployment is not enough, we must do better,' he said. 'She has a vision of universal health care for all that would build on the work of President Obama,' Springsteen continued.
He said Clinton would look to have the high courts address all citizens, 'not just the privileged,' and that she knows immigration must be 'dealt with realistically and compassionately.'
He said under Clinton the 'unfinished business of protecting the rights of women is not an afterthought but a priority.'
'Thanks a lot. Let's get out there and vote tomorrow,' Springsteen said after his three-song set.
Bill and Chelsea opened the night after Springsteen, with Chelsea saying it had been the greatest honor of her life to hit the campaign trail on behalf of her mother.
She gave a nod to the staffers and volunteers who have worked tirelessly to help make Clinton's presidential bid a reality.
'I am so fiercely, ridiculously proud of my mom. And I am unapologetically biased towards her,' Chelsea said. 'I hope that many of you now understand after this campaign why that is so true for me.'
The New Yorker giddily said she 'cannot wait' to vote for her mother on Tuesday. 'And I like to think Im the most excited person here, but my dad might be even a little bit more excited than I am,' she said.
Bill Clinton drew cheers when he reminded Clinton's supporters that this country 'started here', hailing the historic spot where the nation's founders met.
The crowd applauded and Clinton continued: 'With people who pledged to form a more perfect union. In other words, we're stronger together.'
Clinton reminded the crowd that it is 'better to lift somebody up' then to take people down - an apparent swipe at Trump, whom the Clinton campaign has painted as a bully.
Voters in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire voted at midnight per tradition, meaning the unincorporated community announced its results earlier than the rest of the country. Four out of eight votes went to Clinton, two went to Trump, one went to Johnson and there was one write-in for Mitt Romney.
The latest CNN poll on Monday gave Clinton (pictured backstage before a rally in Pittsburgh Monday) a four-point lead over Trump and predicted she'd get 46 per cent of the vote, compared to his predicted 42 per cent
CAN HE DO IT? The CNN electoral college prediction after it fell under 270 - with North Carolina, Florida and New Hampshire not just in play but being visited by both candidates at the last minute
HOW DOES THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WORK? The electoral college is made up of 538 voters - 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, plus three electors for the District of Colombia. A candidate needs to win a majority of 270 electoral college votes to become President. This voters' college make their pick based on which candidate receives a majority of votes in their corresponding states. That candidate receives all that state's electoral college votes. An exception is made in Nebraska and Maine, where votes are assigned by proportional representation - meaning either candidate could receive votes from different congressional districts. It is possible to win the electoral college vote and lose the popular vote - as with George W Bush in 2000. He eventually won the presidency over Al Gore following a Supreme Court ruling which had the ultimate effect of awarding Florida's votes to Bush. The creators of the Constitution set up the system as a limit on direct democracy - or in Alexander Hamilton's words, as a way of preserving 'the sense of the people' - in other words to avoid a malicious majority forming. It also tries to ensure the rights of smaller states. The electors cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December and are counted in Congress on January 6. The new President is then sworn in on January 20. Advertisement
Both Clinton and Donald Trump canvassed eastern swing states on Monday. Clinton planned to hit Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, while Trump traveled to Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan.
The latest CNN Poll of Polls on Monday gave Clinton a four-point lead over Trump and predicted she'd get 46 per cent of the vote, compared to his predicted 42 per cent.
The CNN Poll of Polls, which doesn't have a margin of error, is an average of the seven most recent nationwide telephone polls.
Fox News also gives her four points ahead of Trump, at 48 points to 44.
Clinton is likely to win the election if she wins every traditionally Democratic states and a couple of swing states.
But Trump has built up strength in the Midwest, especially in Michigan - and the race in swing states remains tight.
Shares on Wall Street looked up on Monday, as the FBI announced it would not press criminal charges against Clinton.
US stocks were set for their biggest percentage gain in one day since March 1.
Investors have shown they seem to expect a stronger economy if Clinton becomes president but tend to equate a Trump presidency with more instability.
FBI Director James Comey, who has come under fire for his handling of the latest probe into Clinton's private email server in the final days of the presidential campaign, received an award Monday night.
The nonprofit Federal Drug Agents Foundation gave him its lifetime achievement award from, whose former recipients include Attorney General Loretta Lynch, US Attorney Preet Bharara, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and US District Judge Richard Sullivan.
The Federal Drug Agents Foundation's board includes several people with longtime ties to Trump, including the CEO of the National Enquirer.
An FBI spokesman told the Associated Press the foundation provides disability, bereavement and personal crisis support to federal agents and educational and charitable grants.
It is unclear whether Comey, who used to work as a US attorney in Manhattan knew of the board members' ties to Trump.
MINUTE BY MINUTE: THE PRESIDENTIAL'S CANDIDATES LAST DAY ON THE TRAIL 10:27 am Clinton's plane is wheels up from White Plains, New York, en route to Pittsburgh. On the tarmac, she tells reporters, 'We're just going to work until the last vote is counted.' 11:05 am Trump takes the stage at a rally in Sarasota, Florida. He tells the cheering crowd, 'In one day we are going to win the great state of Florida, and we are going to take back the White House.' 11:27 am Clinton lands in Pittsburgh. 12:25 pm Trump's press plane is wheels up from Florida to North Carolina. (Exact departure times for Trump are unknown because he does not let the media on his plane. The press travels on a plane that typically takes off and lands either just before or just after.) 12:28 pm Clinton kicks off a rally in Pittsburgh where she says to voters, 'Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America.' 1:56 pm Trump's press plane is wheels down in Raleigh, North Carolina. 2:13 pm Clinton's plane is wheels up from Pittsburgh to Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2:55 pm Trump starts rally in Raleigh at an arena on the state fairgrounds. 'I think it's going to be Brexit plus, plus, plus,' he says. 3:03 pm Clinton lands in Grand Rapids, gets off the plane nearly 20 minutes later and leaves for Grand Valley State University. 3:42 pm Trump finishes up Raleigh rally. 4:11 pm Clinton takes stage in Allendale, Michigan, where she told voters she hopes that in the future they will be able to say that 'you voted for a better stronger, fairer America.' 4:20 pm Trump press plane wheels up from Raleigh to Scranton, Pennsylvania. 4:46 pm Clinton concludes remarks in Allendale with her rallying cry 'Love Trumps hate.' 5:20 pm Trump press plane lands in Scranton. 6:19 pm Trump takes stage at rally in Scranton, telling a roaring crowd, 'I think we're going to blow 'em out tomorrow.' 7:26 pm Trump press plane leaves Scranton for Manchester, New Hampshire. 7:27 pm Clinton plane lands in Philadelphia. 8:15 pm Trump press plane lands in Manchester. 8:54 pm Trump takes stage before a packed crowd. He's got fog machines and strobe lights. 'It all began for me in New Hampshire,' he says. 9:10 pm After musical performances by Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and speeches by President Bill Clinton, first lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama, Clinton comes out on stage in Philadelphia. She is greeted by tens of thousands of people. 'I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became,' Clinton says. 9:29 pm Clinton concludes remarks, waves at voters with her family and the Obamas. 9:36 pm Trump wraps up Manchester rally. 10:16 pm Trump press plane leaves Manchester for his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 10:32 pm Clinton plane takes off from Philadelphia for Raleigh, North Carolina. 11:32 pm Clinton plane arrives in Raleigh. 11:44 pm Trump press plane arrives in Grand Rapids. 12:30 am Trump takes the stage for his very last rally. 12:51 am Clinton goes onstage in Raleigh after a performance by Lady Gaga. Source: The Associated Press Advertisement
Warning: Judge James Boasberg (pictured) said that the recently discovered Clinton emails could be opened up to the public - but warned it could take five years to do
Emails regarding Hillary Clinton's time as secretary of state found on Anthony Weiner's laptop can be made public, a Federal judge said Monday - but he warned the process could take five years.
During the hearing, it was said that the FBI would most likely release the documents to the State Dept, which is the subject of existing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits targeting the other emails.
But US District Judge James Boasberg wasn't happy that it might take five years for all Clinton emails to be cleared for the public by the State Dept.
'I'm not satisfied saying, "Fine, go ahead and take five years,"' he said, according to US News.
Things are still extremely uncertain with regard to the Weiner files.
Trouble: The renewed probe into Clinton's email server caused trouble for her campaign. The FBI is expected to hand the new emails to the State Dept, which will prepare them for release
Justice Department attorney Lisa Olson told Boasberg that the State Dept believes it has a standing request with the FBI to receive additional Clinton documents.
But she added that it doesn't yet have the 650,000 Weiner emails, which are believed to have been sent between his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin and the Clinton server.
If it does get them, she said, she 'assumes' that they will be reviewed for possible disclosure.
And the State Dept is the subject of a number of FOIA suits from conservative transparency organization Judicial Watch, which will demand the files.
Judicial Watch attorney Chris Fedeli said the group would sue the FBI as well if the documents were not handed over to the State Dept, but felt confident that they would be.
However, questions remain about how long it will take for all of the Clinton emails - including Weiner's - to be made public.
Boasberg suggested it might take five years, based on how fast the State Department is currently processing them.
Investigated: The emails were found on the laptop of ex-Rep Anthony Weiner. Judicial Watch is suing the State Dept for the non-Weiner emails
That's just an estimate, though, and could change depending on how many pages long each email and its associated documents are, and whether there are total or partial duplicates among the emails.
Boasberg acknowledged that he couldn't force the FBI to hand the documents over to the State Dept, but scheduled a meeting on November 29 anyway, to review progress.
The Weiner emails were discovered by FBI agents during a separate investigation into sexts sent by Anthony Weiner to an underage girl, exposed by DailyMail.com.
The FBI was looking for child pornography on his laptop at the time. Weiner has denied the charges.
On October 28, FBI director James Comey announced that the Bureau was reopening the Clinton email server probe - which accused her of using a private server to send classified information - thanks to the newly found emails.
That announcement rocked the Clinton campaign, and has been linked to poll gains made by rival Donald Trump in the last two weeks.
Comey said Sunday that the FBI had reviewed the emails and would not change his July recommendation to not charge Clinton with mishandling classified information.
The rant was found to be 'less
A truck driver sacked for broadcasting anti-Islamic comments to 100 colleagues over an internal radio station will return to work after his rant was found to be 'less offensive' because it was directed at people who shared his views.
BHP Billiton fired a man in February after a conversation between him and two colleagues discussing whether they would attend an upcoming Reclaim Australia rally was broadcast on a staff radio station, attracting complaints from two staff.
Workers at Mt Arthur coal mine in Muswellbrook, north west of Sydney, heard the man agree he had a 'complete gutful' of Muslims trying to 'change our way of life' and accused them of being 'f***ed up' after '1,400 years of bloody inbreeding'.
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BHP Billiton have been rodered to rehire a Reclaim Australia (pictured) supporter sacked for broadcasting anti-Islamic comments to 100 colleagues over an internal radio station
He agreed that a hitman should be hired to 'cull dirtbag Australians' who did not 'deserve to be in this country', a report by the Fair Work Commission stated.
The driver also made homophobic slurs by suggesting a colleague was researching how to 'eat c**k' and would enjoy a 'a good tea-bagging' or to have his 'rear end banged up'.
The man blamed his behaviour on fatigue and said the conversation was just 'banter' and 'blokes having fun' to keep them awake during a 12.5 hour shift, but told bosses the comments were 'true' when questioned about the matter.
The man also mentioned that he had no problems with killing Muslims as they had 'no problem' with executing Australians when during discussions with BHP about what disciplinary action should be taken against him.
The man blamed his behaviour on fatigue and said the conversation was just 'banter' and 'blokes having fun' to keep them awake during a 12.5 hour shift
He pointed out there were no Muslim workers rostered on that night and argued he would not have made the same comments on-air if there had been.
The mining giant launched an eight-week investigation into the matter and found the driver did not follow procedure relating to fatigue or safely using the radio channel and fired him for breaching company policy and not upholding 'charter values'.
The man remained unemployed for several months until an unfair dismissal claim was launched with the Fair Work Commission in July.
Commissioner Tony Saunders said the man's exemplary behavioural record with the company was not taken into account when he was disciplined and found BHP's reaction 'too harsh', the Herald Sun reported.
The man remained unemployed for several months until an unfair dismissal claim was launched with the Fair Work Commission in July (stock image)
He agreed the comments 'incited derogatory views' of a race or religion but argued the rant was not highly offensive as it was not directed at an individual.
BHP appealed the decision as it believed the offensive material broadcast to its staff should be considered highly serious as it incited anti-Muslim views.
The appeal was struck down on Friday and BHP were ordered to re-hire the driver.
Fair Work vice-president Adam Hatcher and deputy president Nicole Wells agreed the offending was less serious as there was not an individual victim who felt persecuted.
Fair Work Commission found the comments 'incited derogatory views' of a race or religion but argued the rant was not highly offensive as it was not directed at an individual (Pictured: Reclaim Australia supporters at a protest in Adelaide)
'It is reasonable to conclude, for example, that for an employee to personally direct anti-Muslim comments at a fellow employee who is known to be of the Islamic faith is objectively more serious than the expression of anti-Muslim opinions to fellow employees who are known to hold similar views,' they said in their report.
Commissioner Leigh Johns was appalled by his colleagues and argued that while the driver is entitled to his opinion, it was 'unjust' that he not lose his job for broadcasting it to the workforce.
'Mount Arthur [the BHP subsidiary] took decisive action to eliminate Islamophobia and homophobia in its workplace. It should have been commended for its action, not punished by being required to take [the miner] back.'
Four people have been taken to hospital after a parked car suddenly accelerated and crashed through two shops on the Sunshine Coast yesterday.
Dramatic CCTV captured the moment a Toyota Prado ploughed through the window of a computer shop at around 4pm on Monday in Mooloolaba before driving into a massage parlor next door.
The male driver, a woman getting a massage and two female massage parlor staff were taken to hospital, though none of their injuries were life threatening.
Four people including the driver were taken to hospital yesterday after a Toyota Prado ploughed through a computer store and into the massage parlor next door
One woman, believed to have been getting the massage, suffered head injuries and lacerations while the other two women had minor injuries.
Meanwhile the driver was taken to hospital to be assessed after apparently losing consciousness behind the wheel.
Sarah Moore, who was nearby at the time of the crash, told the Sunshine Coast Daily: 'I came out and all of the front of the shop was obliterated.
'The guy tried to get out of the car, so I helped him get out of the car and walk him to a seat.
A woman getting a massage is believed to have suffered head injuries and lacerations, while two staff members received minor injuries
The male driver was also taken to hospital after apparently losing consciousness behind the wheel, telling a witness he 'couldn't remember' what had happened
'He said he didn't really remember what had happened, and then I could see the girls through the massage parlour, they were over the top of the broken wall, so I knew that they were injured as well. We just tried to help everyone.'
Senior Sergeant Collins, from Queensland Police, said that fortunately the computer store was closed at the time, otherwise the situation could have been far worse.
Police say the crash is still under investigation, including what caused the car to lurch forward into the store.
Bosses at Cadbury have registered the name 'Dark Milk' for a new variant of its best-selling chocolate bar containing more cocoa.
There is speculation the move is designed to protect the brand from breaking EU rules after the Brexit vote.
There are concerns that when the UK leaves the EU, other countries will block sales of Cadbury's on the Continent by redefining chocolate.
Bosses at Cadbury have registered the name 'Dark Milk' for a new variant of its best-selling chocolate bar containing more cocoa
The problem stems from the fact Cadbury's Dairy Milk contains vegetable fat, which, historically, has not been allowed by the EU.
Chocolate purists like the Belgians, French, Italians and Spanish have been particularly critical of British chocolate.
The Europeans only agreed to accept our chocolate in 2000 after the UK won a 30-year-battle to allow sales.
Former deputy Prime Minister and Liberal-Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, told food industry leaders last week that this agreement could be torn up following the Brexit vote.
In that case, Cadbury and other British manufacturers would need to change their recipes to include more cocoa and remove vegetable fat if they still want sell their products as 'chocolate' in Europe.
Cadbury is now owned by Mondelez, following a takeover by the US food giant Kraft, which has registered the name Cadbury Dark Milk with the Intellectual Property Office under the chocolate, biscuits and cakes category.
The company has refused to give any reasons for doing so, prompting the speculation about the impact of Brexit reported by The Grocer magazine.
There is speculation the move is designed to protect the brand from breaking EU rules after the Brexit vote
It said: 'This week Nick Clegg warned that exports of UK chocolate to the Continent could be stymied once the country completed its withdrawal from the EU.
'Chocolate containing higher levels of vegetable fat and milk were only permitted in Europe following 30 years of wrangling amid arguments from bureaucrats that they should be called 'chocolate subsitutes'.
'Cadbury-style milk chocolate may once again face such prohibition claimed the former deputy PM.'
The Europeans believe that only products made with cocoa butter rather than vegetable fat are worthy of being called chocolate.
Mondelez has refused to comment on its plans. It said: 'Mondelez International can explore hundreds of ideas at any one time. Some will make it to the market and some will not.'
Before the EU referendum, it said: 'As a business that sells products across the EU, we look forward to having clarity on the UK's role within Europe so that we can have certainty and make long term plans for our business.'
The Grocer said one other possibility for registering the name is that Cadbury wants to tap into a growing demand for artisanal chocolate containing higher levels of cocoa.
Rocky Allen (pictured) was sentenced to 6.5 years behind bars for stealing a syringe full of fentanyl from an operating room
A former hospital surgery technician, who is HIV positive, was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison on Monday for stealing a syringe filled with powerful painkillers from an operating room.
Rocky Allen pleaded guilty in July to taking the syringe filled with fentanyl, a drug he got hooked on while serving as a medic in Afghanistan.
His public defender, Timothy O' Hara, said during the hearing that Allen also became addicted to drugs to cope with PTSD caused by sexual abuse that began when he was 3 years old.
Allen, who was dressed in a gray suit told the judge that he 'learned war is horrible', the Denver Post reported.
'It was a start to a downward spiral to addiction and depression. I was alone on an island only I knew about.'
The 28-year-old also pleaded guilty to leaving behind one syringe with saline to be used on an elderly woman about to undergo surgery at the Swedish Medical Center in January.
Before Allen entered the room, the patient had already received a dosage of the fentanyl and the syringe wasn't used on her.
But the discovery of the missing drug raised fears that patients who underwent surgery at the hospital while Allen, who is HIV positive, worked there may have contracted the disease through potentially dirty needles he may have left behind.
The 28-year-old pleaded guilty to leaving behind one syringe with saline to be used on an elderly woman about to undergo surgery at the Swedish Medical Center in January. He is pictured walking toward a court house in Denver on Monday
His public defender, Timothy O' Hara, said during the hearing that Allen became addicted to drugs to cope with PTSD caused by sexual abuse that began when he was 3 years old, adding that he also took them while serving in Afghanistan
To date, about 2,400 patients were tested, but no transmission of HIV has been found.
He also tested positive for Hepatitis B and C, according to CBS Denver.
Allen, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving a Navy medic at a hospital in Kandahar, read from a letter to US District Judge Raymond Moore, apologizing for the suffering he has caused.
He also thanked the hospital for reporting his theft to authorities, which has led to him getting help.
'I believed this saved my life,' he said.
Moore said in court that he doesn't 'believe he (Allen) gives a damn about people', according to the Post.
He stressed the fact that Allen stole a fentanyl syringe that was for an elderly woman about to undergo surgery.
Moore also said Allen was under the influence of fentanyl and marijuana when he went into another operating room, putting a burn victim he was supposed to tend to at risk, the Post reported.
The judge said in court that he doesn't believe Allen (pictured) cares about anyone. He said Allen was under the influence of fentanyl and marijuana when he went into another operating room, putting a burn victim he was supposed to tend to at risk
Allen (pictured) was eligible to receive up to 14 years in prison, but federal prosecutors had asked for 10 years, partly because of his guilty plea
Allen was eligible to receive up to 14 years in prison, but federal prosecutors had asked for 10 years, partly because of his guilty plea.
O'Hara, had asked for 2.5 years, noting that other addicts with longer criminal histories had been treated more leniently than that around the country.
He also said there was only one other case where Allen was accused of leaving behind a needle for patient use, which occurred at Scripps Green Hospital in San Diego, California, where he worked for 20 days in 2013.
Moore said Allen's punishment had to account for the fear of hundreds of patients confronted with the possibility of contracting HIV.
'Your conduct shows me disdain for others,' he said.
He added that Allen should also be accountable for the pattern of concealing his previous firings amid allegations of drug thefts once back in the US after being shown leniency for stealing drugs at the Kandahar hospital.
1955 Town and Country Bear's Den Shelton's Restaurant on Central Avenue Chow Now Previous Next
The premiere of Where Did You Eat? an Old Town Productions documentary will be shown at the Cleveland Public Library in the community room on Sunday at 3 p.m. The showing is free to the public.
Dustin Coleman, who wrote and narrated the 51 minute project, said, This project was done to preserve another segment of local history and to bring back some wonderful memories of the places that many Cleveland and Bradley County residents enjoyed for years.
The film focuses on the restaurants and cafes that served local citizens in Cleveland and Bradley before the chain restaurants made their way to the community. Mr. Coleman said, Every community had a restaurant that was part of the character of that community such as Beas in Chattanooga, Couchs in Ooltewah, the 411 Steak House near Benton, and the Cherokee Huddle in Athens.
Where Did You Eat? includes photos and even some videos of those by gone days. Featured restaurants and eateries are Snack House #2, the Ever Ready Cafe, the Grand Lunch, Dooleys Ice Cream Shop, the Country Kitchen, The Spot and The Rebel. We have a lot of photos and ads of many other restaurants from our community and made an attempt to identify locally owned non chain restaurants currently serving this community, said Mr. Coleman.
John Cook wrote and performed two new songs for the project, Debbie Moore served as the historical advisor and Ron Moore directed the project.
This is the fourth documentary released by Old Town Productions. Caney Creek: Coming Home and Its a Dirt Track Life both won Awards of Distinction from the East Tennessee Historical Society for saving and promoting history. Earlier in 2016, Old Town Productions released Its Home: Memories of the Ducktown Basin a documentary about living in an area devastated by activities associated with the mining of copper.
Ron and Debbie Moore of Old Town Productions host a weekly radio show on WOOP FM about local and regional history.
The showing of the documentary is sponsored by the Bradley County Historical and Genealogical Society.
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An eerie scene of a tree bursting into flames in the shape of a religious cross has captured the eye of passing motorists and firefighters overnight.
The NSW Rural Fire Service took advantage of the cool weather on Monday night to gain the upper hand on 41 fires across the state by backburning the bush near the street.
But one fire did not behave like the rest and remarkable pictures show a tree near Port Stephens exploding with embers and taking on the appearance of a metal spark fire against the dark backdrop of the highway.
An eerie scene of a tree bursting into flames in the shape of a religious cross captured the eye of passing motorists on Medowie Road in the NSW Hunter Region overnight
remarkable pictures show a tree near Port Stephens exploding with embers and taking on the appearance of a metal spark fire against the dark backdrop of the night sky
The inferno illuminated the trunk and two branches near the canopy of the bush and gave the illusion of a religious cross.
Headlights from firetrucks and other vehicle approaching the blaze were the only other light visible in the photographs.
The massive amount of embers appeared to explode over a nearby powerline, but it was quickly contained by workers.
Overnight backburning on Monday allowed the fire crews to bring the number of uncontained fires down to 13 by Tuesday morning.
The massive amount of embers appeared to explode over a nearby powerline, but it was quickly contained by workers
The inferno illuminated the trunk and two branches near the canopy of the bush and gave the illusion of a religious cross
Overnight backburning on Monday allowed the fire crews to bring the number of uncontained fires down to 13 by Tuesday morning
Medowie residents were not evacuated and there was no damage to property.
Three major fires at Kundabung, Port Stephens and Cessnock were downgraded and the NSW Rural Fire Service said it hopes forecast rain will bring further relief.
But there are fears hot and windy weather through the day could stoke the 41 fires that continue to burn around the state.
'Very high' fire danger warnings remain in place for the Greater Sydney, Greater Hunter, Far North Coast regions and have been extended to the north coast and New England areas.
Medowie (Medowie Road, pictured) and port Stephens residents were not evacuated and there was no damage to property
Three major fires at Kundabung, Port Stephens and Cessnock were downgraded and the NSW Rural Fire Service said it hopes forecast rain will bring further relief
There are fears hot and windy weather through the day could stoke the 41 fires that continue to burn around the state. Firefighters tackling a blaze on Medowie Road is pictured
The massive Lone Pine fire, near Port Stephens, has burned through more than 8000 hectares and remained close to the township of Medowie, an RFS spokesman said on Tuesday.
People in the area of Karuah, Limeburners Creek, Medowie, Nine Mile Creek and Swan Bay were urged to continue monitoring the situation and remain alert to burning embers.
There was no immediate threat to the townships of Karuah, North Arm Cove and Carrington on Tuesday morning.
People in the area of Karuah, Limeburners Creek, Medowie, Nine Mile Creek and Swan Bay were urged to continue monitoring the situation and remain alert to burning embers
The victim of a horrific Tinder stalker attack is a 'bright and bubbly' Californian doctor who delivers babies for a living and shaved off her hair for a cancer charity.
Port Macquarie obstetrics and gynecology doctor Angela Jay was brutally attacked at her home by her psychopathic date Paul Lambert about 6pm Thursday.
Lambert waited at her home for her to finish her shift, doused her in petrol and stabbed her eleven times.
But the 28-year-old managed to escape the bloody scene - fleeing to a neighbour's house and calmly talking him through first aid until paramedics arrived.
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Stabbing survivor: Port Macquarie doctor Angela Jay (pictured) - originally from California - has been described as an 'American sweetheart' and is well-loved by friends
Dr Jay (left, right) shaved off her hair for a cancer charity a while back
Paul Lambert (pictured) laid in wait when Dr Jay clocked off from work and returned home. He was later gunned down by police - in what is now the subject of a critical incident investigation
Dr Jay had met Lambert (pictured) just weeks ago and had already applied for an Apprehended Violence Order
'She's actually an American sweetheart,' said one of the many friends, family and former patients who have rallied around Dr Jay in recent days.
Lambert, originally from Brisbane, fled the scene and was shot dead by police hours later near Coffs Harbour, about 150 kilometres further north.
Dr Jay has since been released from hospital.
She is said to be recuperating well from her horrendous ordeal and has been deluged with well-wishes from both Australian and U.S. friends.
It is understood Dr Jay - known as 'Ang' - and family members have lived in Australia for several years.
She has variously been described by friends as 'smart, beautiful and bubbly' and helps deliver babies in her job.
A recent patient spoke glowingly of Dr Jay, describing her as an 'amazing' and 'lovely' woman.
Paul Lambert (pictured) was shot dead by police in Coffs Harbour after the attack
Blood was seen splattered on the streets outside her home in Port Macquarie
'She helped me through an extremely hard couple of days and performed surgery on me only this time yesterday,' the patient said online.
' She is absolutely in my thoughts & prayers'.
It's understood Dr Jay may have posted pictures online with Lambert. But these were torn down recently.
One of Dr Jay's neighbours described how she remained calm as she explained to him and another neighbour what needed to be done to stop her from bleeding out.
'I heard a scream and initially thought someone had hurt themselves, I checked my family and then went outside,' the neighbour recounted to Daily Mail Australia.
He said even when he saw stab wounds on her arms and legs it 'took a while to click'.
'She was over at the [other] neighbours when I got there... even when I saw the bleeding I still didn't register what had happened.'
Dr Jay's neighbour recalled seeing stab wounds on her arms and one on her leg with her attacker, Paul Lambert, nowhere to be seen.
'He was either gone or hiding by the time we were helping her,' the neighbour said.
'She was extremely calm the whole time - we all kept each other calm ... When she started dozing off I just kept her talking. Asking her mundane questions.'
Dr Jay stumbled up her steep driveway where on Saturday a trail of blood was left behind - the only sign of the horror that took place in the quiet suburban home.
She had not returned home and she is believed to be in the care of close friends and family in the area.
Paul Lambert harrassed and terrorised Fox News reporter Brittany Ann Keil (pictured) for months until she could not sleep or eat and was crying daily
Paul Lambert (police mugshot pictured) continued his campaign of harassment for months until he was arrested, charged with stalking and extortion and later deported from the country accompanied by two U.S. federal marshals
Just 18 months ago, her attacker Lambert was kicked out of the United States for stalking a TV news reporter who he had a brief relationship with.
Then going by his birth name Paul Michael Scales, he was arrested in Orlando, Florida, on May 11, 2015 for breaching a restraining order.
This time, the object of his obsession was Emmy award-winning TV reporter Brittany Ann Keil, 32, with whom he had a brief relationship until his 'erratic' behaviour forced her to end it.
The 36-year-old then waged a campaign of 'manipulation, guilt, harrassment, control and emotional terrorism' to compel her to continue their relationship.
The object of his obsession was Emmy award-winning TV reporter Ms Keil, 32, with whom he had a brief relationship in the U.S. until his 'erratic' behaviour forced her to end it, according to court documents
He invented dead relatives, a brain injury, and a terminal brain tumour, threatened suicide many times, and even pretended to have nine personalities - all while bombarding her with dozens of calls, emails and messages.
'Paul... maliciously threatened her reputation, threatened to expose her to disgrace, expose her secrets which would affect her personally and professionally, with the intention to compel Brittany to see him,' court documents read.
'He also has attempted to extort money in exchange for no contact with her and in exchange for not following through with his malicious attempts to use his personal knowledge to ruin her life.'
It went on for months until he was arrested in Orlando, Florida, on May 11, 2015, charged with stalking and extortion.
His son revealed fury over Barron 's release after seven-and- a-half years
John Donnelly, 60, was run over as he walked home in December 2007
victims called the re-offender 'a risk to the WA public'
The son of a man killed by a convicted drink-driver has revealed his fury over his release from prion after seven-and-a-half-years.
Kevin Barron, 55, killed three people in three different alcohol-fuelled collisions including John Donnelly, 60, who was run over as he walked home just days before Christmas, 2007.
The 60-year-old's son Daniel posted his rage over Barron's release from Wooroloo Prison Farm online and called the re-offender 'a risk to the WA public.'
WA police have claimed he was one of the state's worst road offenders, 9 News reports.
Kevin Barron, 55, (pictured) killed three people while driving under the influence including John Donnelly, 60
'Barron is the driver who ran down and killed my dad, four days before Christmas back in 2007,' Mr Donnelly posted on Facebook.
'While Barron walks free and returns home to his family, my family will never see our father again. Our loss is a life sentence.
Mr Donnelly also believes the repeat offender would more than likely break his lifetime driving ban.
'Any reasonable person would surely have learnt their lesson after being caught over the blood alcohol limit once, let alone killing someone because of it,' he wrote.
'But Barron has never learnt his lesson. He's continued to reoffend. Now, he's finally been given a life driving ban. But given his history, we have no faith that he'll abide by that.'
He further urged WA residents to share images of Barron, to 'stop him taking another innocent life.'
The 60-year-old's son Daniel (pictured) posted his rage over Barron's release from Wooroloo Prison Farm online and called the re-offender 'a risk to the WA public'
Mr Donnelly also believes the repeat offender would more than likely break his lifetime driving ban
Barron killed his brother Denis, 19, in 1983 and received a jail term of 12 months.
Then in 1996, he was given an 18-month sentence after a work colleague was killed while riding in the passenger seat as Barron drove.
Then in 2007, he ran down Mr Donnelly while four times over the legal limit, leading to his third dangerous driving causing death conviction.
Barron has denied being an alcoholic and called his actions while driving 'bad luck.'
Even WA Deputy Premier and Police Minister Liza Harvey said people had every right to be alarmed, Perth Now reports.
'Police are going to watch him very carefully,' Mrs Harvey said.
Australia should hear the result sometime from 3pm on Wednesday
The long-winded U.S. presidential election is finally upon us more than a year after Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each announced their candidacy.
When and where can Australians follow live results? What are the key battleground states, what could push either campaign over the line, and how does the U.S. system work?
The election is regarded as one of the most important the world has seen. Make sense of it here.
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OVER TIME: Polling of preferred candidates over the past year from November 2015 to Monday November 8, 2016
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump wears a hat with his campaign slogan, 'make America great again'
When does voting start and when will the election be called?
WHEN AND WHERE RESULTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED The election results could be called as early as 3pm on Wednesday, Australian time (AEST). Electoral maps and figures will be updated live on the Daily Mail's election coverage. Australian television networks will begin live coverage from 10am on Wednesday. Nine will have Karl Stefanovic and Laurie Oakes reporting from New York. 10's The Project host Waleed Aly has been in Philadelphia interviewing Trump supporters. Seven will have reporters based in Washington DC and in both Clinton and Trump camps. ABC will begin the coverage from 6am with hourly live-crosses and continuous coverage from 10am with election analyst Antony Green, Charlie Pickering in New York and Chaser member Chas Licciardella on social media. There will also be live-crosses to Clinton and Trump camps. Advertisement
The election is Tuesday, November 8. But in Australian time (AEDT), the first votes will be cast about 10pm and go overnight, with most of the drama unfolding on Wednesday.
Results could be called from 3pm on Wednesday (or 11pm in the US, Eastern Standard Time).
There are six different time zones across the U.S., and most polls open locally between 6am or 7am and close between 7pm and 8pm depending on the state.
Australian time, the first polls will open about 4pm on Tuesday, or 10pm when polls in some east coast states open.
First counting will begin about 10am on Wednesday AEDT.
The polls in the eastern states, with some of the key battlegrounds, will begin to be counted from 11am AEST or 7pm EST.
Remaining polls will begin to be counted throughout the day as they close, until voting in the west coast closes at 3pm, AEDT. Polls close in Alaska at 5pm AEDT, but the state is considered unlikely to swing the election.
3pm AEDT (11pm Tuesday EST) will be the first chance for the election to be called.
Hillary Clinton is pictured speaking at a campaign rally on Monday
Pundits tend not to wait for California to call the election, which is a safe Democrat state with polls closing 11pm EST.
WHAT THE POLLS ARE SAYING Either candidate must receive at least 270 electoral colleges for an absolute majority to win. Hillary Clinton was tipped to win 203, Trump with 164, and 171 a toss-up as of Monday. Source: RealClearPolitics Advertisement
But this election could be closer with other states running neck-and-neck, and the race could go long into the night locally.
Clinton and Trump will hear the results from their election events. The HRC campaign party will be at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre, while the Trump campaign will party at the Hilton Midtown, ABC reported.
Where can we watch results?
Daily Mail will have the results as soon as the election is called, along with major updates.
Australian television networks ABC, Channel Nine, Channel Seven, Channel 10, and SBS will all have rolling coverage of the election.
As the state-by-state results trickle in, electoral maps will be coloured in red for Republicans or blue for Democrats to show which candidate the state has fallen to. Electoral maps and figures will be updated live on the Daily Mail's election coverage.
Clinton is slightly ahead of Trump in the polls, with 171 electoral votes still in play
Polls as at Monday, EST time, show Clinton holds 203, Trump holds 164, with 171 still in play
What are the polls saying?
The polls have narrowed more than most political pundits could have predicted.
Either party must win 270 electoral colleges for an absolute majority. Polls as at Monday, EST time, show Clinton holds 203, Trump holds 164, with 171 still in play.
Removing the toss-up states, Clinton is predicted to win 272 and Trump sits just behind on 266, according to RealClearPolitics.
Anti-Trump protesters, mostly women, rally outside Trump Tower earlier this month in New York
A woman wears an 'I'm with her' t-shirt, which was part of a major campaign for Hillary Clinton to become the first woman president
WHAT IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE? The electoral college are people in the U.S. who represent the states and are spread across them by population. The college members formally cast votes, following the popular vote. When U.S. citizens vote for a presidential candidate they are effectively voting for a college member, who supports one of the candidates. There are a total of 538 college members - and therefore electoral votes - across the country. A candidate must win at least 270 to win an absolute majority and become president. Advertisement
What are the battleground states?
The key states are Arizona, Florida, Maine 2nd District, Nebraska 2nd District, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah, which together have 87 electoral votes. Winning these states is crucial for a candidate to win the election.
Florida will be a main player, with 29 electoral college votes and polls showing Clinton with a lead of just 1 per cent well within the margin of error. Trump will likely need the state to win.
The result in Ohio has long been an indicator of who will be successful, picking the past 13 elections.
Trump thinks he can challenge Democratic strongholds. But he would have to turn more states than Obama won over in 2008, even if he took Florida, North Carolina and all the states 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney won, The Australian reported.
Without Florida, North Carolina or Pennsylvania, Trump is unlikely to win and go to the White House.
Clinton's chances have also been bolstered by excitement for America's first woman president, while Trump's campaign was damaged by alleged sexism, harassment, assault and adultery (Trump pictured on Monday with 'women for Trump' posters)
Earlier this month, Clinton greeted a student wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt for Eric Garner, 43, a father shot by police who witnesses said could be heard saying 'I can't breathe' before he died
HOW THE STATES WILL FALL BATTLEGROUND: Arizona, Florida, Maine 2nd District, Nebraska 2nd District, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah (87 total electoral votes). SOLID DEMOCRATIC: California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state (213 total electoral votes). LEANS DEMOCRATIC: Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (59 total electoral votes). LEANS REPUBLICAN: Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, Texas (73 total electoral votes). SOLID REPUBLICAN: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming (106 total electoral votes). Source: AP Advertisement
What else could determine the results?
Both campaigns have been marred by controversies, but the polls have only tightened.
What could push Clinton or Trump over the line to take victory?
Outgoing president Barack Obama had mobilised a record black American turnout in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
This time, Trump appears to have rallied Latino voters against him after referring to Mexicans as criminals and rapists, and proposing to build a wall between the countries.
The controversial and 'racist' statements appear to have boosted the Clinton campaign, with a record turnout of Latin-American voters expected.
Early voting from Florida shows a 74 per cent increase from 2012, with about one of the 6.2 million votes already cast from the Hispanic population, New York Times reported.
Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona all show an increase in votes from the same demographic.
Trump is likely to have also alienated Muslim voters.
A man carries a 'blacks for Trump' sign at a campaign rally in Michigan on Sunday
Clinton's chances have also been bolstered by excitement for America's first woman president, while Trump's campaign was damaged by alleged sexism, harassment, assault and adultery.
Polls have shown the majority of black and women voters have preferred Clinton to Trump.
That momentum towards a Clinton victory could be wounded by disaffected, working class white voters who are expected to turn out in large numbers for Trump.
Clinton has also been hit by the controversies regarding her emails, despite the FBI clearing her of wrongdoing.
A Trump-supporter carries a 'Hillary's lies matter' sign and wears an orange jumpsuit, suggesting the Democratic nominee should be jailed
How does the system work?
The successful candidate must win 270 electoral votes, an absolute majority of the 538 electoral college members.
The popular vote in each state selects members of the electoral college, who pledge support for a candidate.
There are 538 members who are spread across the states according to population.
The U.S. does not have mandatory voting, and only 146 million of the 218 million eligible have registered to vote, according to reports, and has a historically low voter turnout.
The country also has no preferential voting, so a vote for other candidates Jill Stein, Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin could be perceived to be a wasted vote.
The constitution covers the possibility of a tie between the two major candidates, or nobody reaches 270 for an absolute majority.
Obama will remain in the White House until January next year, leaving time for a recount if necessary.
A line of early voters are pictured on Monday in Columbus, Ohio
What does Australia think?
Australian politicians haven't been holding back when it comes to criticising Trump ahead of the election.
In a highly unusual departure from diplomatic protocol, they've joined world leaders including French President Francois Hollande, ex British prime minister David Cameron, ambassadors and even the Pope in voicing concerns about the billionaire.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said he had 'pushed the boat out so far' that politicians of all persuasions have felt the need to speak out.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has been one of Trump's most vocal critics, describing him at various times as 'barking mad' and 'difficult'.
South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi wears a 'Make Australia Great Again' hat and throws his support behind Trump
'By his own words and his own actions, he has confirmed the worst fears of millions in the United States and beyond its borders - he is entirely unsuitable to be leader of the free world,' Mr Shorten told a Committee for Economic Development of Australia conference in October.
Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop have both said Australia will work with whoever is elected.
But senior minister Josh Frydenberg wasn't afraid to call Trump a 'dropkick'.
Politicians in NSW Parliament's upper house went further, unanimously agreeing 'with those who have described Mr Trump as a 'revolting slug unfit for public office'.'
But not all Australian politicians are against Trump.
South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi told his supporters last week he'd be 'cheering on a Trump victory' and described Clinton as a 'poster child for everything that is wrong with the American political system'.
A woman high on meth broke free of her handcuffs, climbed through a sliding window in the back of a police car after and then led authorities on a high speed chase.
Jennifer Hillard had been handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car outside her home at Alexandria in Minnesota on Sunday night after she allegedly started a fire in her apartment.
The 35-year-old was caught on police cameras breaking free of her handcuffs and sliding through an 11 inch window in the back of the car - as unsuspecting officers investigated the fire.
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Jennifer Hillard, 35, is accused of stealing a police vehicle in Alexandria, Minnesota on Sunday after she was arrested for arson and placed in the back of the squad car
Footage captured Hillard waiting patiently for police to move away from the vehicle before she took off her sweatshirt so she could climb through the small gap.
The security cameras captured the moment she drove off with the lights flashing.
Police say Hillard led officers on a high speed pursuit reaching speeds of more than 120mph.
She was eventually stopped after a Minnesota State Trooper deployed stop sticks. The police car was damaged in the pursuit.
The ordeal was sparked after police and fire crews were called to her home following reports of a fire just after 6.30pm on Sunday.
The 35-year-old was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car outside her home just after 6.30pm on Sunday after she allegedly started a fire in her apartment
She was caught on police security cameras breaking free of her handcuffs and sliding through an 11 inch window in the back of the car - as unsuspecting police investigated the fire
Hillard took off her sweatshirt so she could fit through the tiny window of the police car
Hillard was found hiding in the ceiling as officers managed to extinguish a small fire in her living room.
Police say Hillard was arrested after she fell through the roof and crashed into an adjacent laundry room.
She was allegedly found with a meth pipe and lighter.
Hillard was charged with arson, theft of a motor vehicle, feeling an officer, driving while impaired, possessing a controlled substance, reckless driving and speeding.
She is in custody at Dakota County Jail and is due to face court.
Voters in Puerto Rico elect a new governor today amid a massive financial crisis that has forced thousands of islanders to move to the mainland United States.
Almost two million voters on the Caribbean island will choose a new leader to lead them out of a crippling recession which has put the island $70 billion (56 billion) in debt, its worst crisis in six decades.
David Bernier of the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) and Ricky Rossello, of the New Progressive Party (PNP) are running neck-and-neck in the polls.
The PNP supports full US statehood instead of the current commonwealth status. In 2012 a non-binding referendum found Puerto Ricans in favour of becoming the 51st state but the necessary legislation was never passed by the US Congress.
Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony until the US drove them out in 1898 but it has never succeeded in becoming the 51st state
Famous faces of Puerto Rican origin Singers Jennifer Lopez (left) and Marc Anthony (right) with Hillary Clinton at a recent fundraiser in Miami Jennifer Lopez - The singer, known as JLo, was born in the Bronx, of Puerto Rican parents Rosario Dawson - New York-born actress, whose mother Isabel was from Puerto Rico Benicio del Toro - Hollywood actor, who was born in San Juan and spent his childhood in the Santurce barrio Felix 'Tito' Trinidad - three-time world champion boxer who defeated, among others, Oscar De La Hoya Marc Anthony - ~New York-born singer, born Marco Antonio Muniz, to parents who hailed from Yauco in Puerto Rico Advertisement
The island's 1.8 million voters will also pick candidates for the local legislature as well as mayors of 78 towns.
The former Spanish colony has been a US commonwealth since 1952.
People born on the island are US citizens and can move to the mainland but cannot cast ballots in presidential elections.
Rosello is leading Bernier 40 percent to 28.9 percent, according to a poll by Precision Research for Univision.
In August, President Barack Obama named a powerful new oversight board for Puerto Rico.
The White House said the seven members of the Financial Oversight and Management Board would be charged with helping San Juan restructure its $70 billion debt.
Having already defaulted on more than $2 billion in debt payments, Puerto Rico is blocked by US law from copying Detroit and seeking protection in bankruptcy courts.
One town in northern Puerto Rico has closed its city hall and put nearly all of its employees on unpaid leave because officials say they do not have the money to pay their salaries.
The Mayor of Toa Baja, Jorge Ortiz, claimed the island's struggling Government Development Bank owed the city more than $1million.
David Bernier tweeted this message last night: 'Tomorrow the fate of Puerto Rico is in your hands. I will go to vote. If we vote, we win!'
The city had its bank accounts frozen recently by the IRS because of a $1.5million debt.
One small ray of hope came today when a company which manufacturers labels and packaging announced a $6m investment in the town of Sabana Grande, which will create 80 jobs.
Outgoing Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla, who is not running for re-election said the company received $1.6 million in incentives.
Amid the doom and gloom on the island there are growing hopes that the so-called 'Mandela of Puerto Rico' could be released by Obama.
Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was jailed 35 years ago for his role in the island's failed struggle for independence, is hoping to win a presidential pardon, one of Obama's last acts.
Kayla Gomez-Orozco had been missing since November 1, and her body was discovered on Saturday
A 24-year-old Mexican national has been charged with capital murder after his 10-year-old cousin was found dead in an East Texas water well.
Kayla Gomez-Orozco had been missing since November 1, and her body was discovered on Saturday.
Hundreds of volunteers joined a search for her after she vanished after a church service in Bullard, about 15 miles south of Tyler.
Her body was found in a well next to the home of Gustavo Zavala-Garcia, her cousin by marriage, who is in Smith County Jail accused of her murder.
Reports suggest he is in the US illegally, having been deported for a violent crime in 2014.
Jail records indicate he served 30 days behind bars for assaulting his wife.
Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith told KETK: 'A family member resides at the residence that we conducted the search where the body was recovered.
Gustavo Zavala-Garcia (center) has been charged with capital murder after Kayla's body was discovered in a well close to his home
Efrain Gomez, center, wipes his eye, while seated next to his wife, Balvina, left, during a vigil for their daughter Kayla Gomez-Orozco
'He voluntarily accompanied law enforcement officers to be interviewed. Upon the completion of the interview, a federal immigration detainer was issued for his detention.
'He is now in the Smith County jail, without any possibility of making bond at this time.'
Authorities initially believed that Kayla may have been snatched by a stranger.
Hundreds of people joined in searches for 10-year-old Kayla, who disappeared after a prayer service on November 1
Kayla's father told a vigil of hundreds of people after his daughter's death that every day with her was a 'precious day'
At a vigil on Sunday, her tearful father, Efrain Gomez, told hundreds of people who attended, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reports: 'Every day was a precious day with her.
'When she disappeared for four days, hundreds and hundreds of people gathered together to help find her, to console the family, to pray together.'
Officers said she was in 'grave danger' when she first disappeared.
Gustavo Zavala-Garcia, 24, is accused of murdering the 10-year-old, who was his cousin by marriage
Hundreds attended a vigil in memory of the youngster.
On a Facebook page, Help Find Kayla Gomez, supporters were urged to rally round the family after the killing.
A post on the page read: 'There is confirmation that Kayla has been found deceased.
Her disappearance sparked a huge response from the community, with volunteers joining in searches for her
'However, please remember that there is a family involved, and respecting this family who is in more pain than you imagine needs considered first and foremost. Thank you for your respect of the family at this time.
Kayla's body was found in a well close to Zavala-Garcia's home
'Please focus your efforts on prayer and comfort for this family at this time.'
Cherokee County Sheriff James Campbell described Kayla as a 'sweet little girl, just as cute as she could be'.
Bullard City Manager Jay Abercrombie said: '(There are) a lot of mixed emotions for a small community like ours. Shock is one of the main things.'
The western Sydney MP failed to explain why he is still the preferred PM
A new Labor MP found herself tied up in knots during a press conference after she was called out by reporters over her contradictory statements.
Emma Husar called a press conference on Tuesday to triumphantly declare that the latest Newspoll showed Australians rate Malcolm Turnbull a 'dud'.
But while voter support for federal Labor had soared to its highest level since Mr Turnbull became prime minister, his approval rating is still higher than Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.
When quizzed about that finding, Ms Husar began to contradict herself.
New Labor MP, Emma Husar, struggles through an awkward press conference in Canberra
So polls, theyre a dime a dozen. They come and they go. I dont put too much weight into them at all, she said during the presser in Canberra before asking a reporter, 'what are you laughing at?'.
'Its just very contradictory. You said you believe in the polls that were good for you, but then not the ones that were bad, the reported said.
The western Sydney MP then went on to use more standard lines, saying it was best not to give polls much weight before ending the press conference.
Well I dont really put any weight into any of the polls. They [the polls] said I was going to lose. They said I shouldn't be here, she said.
The western Sydney MP said Australian's found Malcolm Turnbull a 'dud' but struggled to explain why is he is still the preferred MP
When quizzed about the poll's findings, Ms Husar began to contradict herself
Three boys 'played with her' for hours before leaving her for dead in a van
A woman who was violently gang raped by three teenage boys when she was just 12-year-old has revealed her horror after the judge said she might have consented if she 'retained some degree of consciousness'.
In 1981, a friend convinced Xan Fraser to go to a party near her Eagleby home in Logan, Queensland, where she was plied with alcohol until she passed out.
She was then carried to a secluded bush block by three older boys, who sexually assaulted and 'played with' her for hours before leaving her for dead in an old panel van, according to the ABC.
The offenders were found guilty of indecent dealing and attempted rape, but avoided jail with Justice John Macrossan saying the 'offence occurred as a result of the large quantity of drink'.
Ms Fraser, now 47, said it took her more than 30 years to finally read the judge's remarks and when she did she 'felt as if she had been raped again'.
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In 1981, a friend convinced Xan Fraser (pictured with the young girl who will play her in the upcoming production Project Xan) to go to a party near her Eagleby home in Logan, Queensland, where she was plied with alcohol until she passed out and raped by three boys
Ms Fraser (pictured with her daughter she had at just 13) was then carried to a secluded bush block by three older boys, who sexually assaulted and 'played with' her for hours before leaving her for dead in an old panel van
'That's probably the most traumatised I have ever been in my life, reading that statement,' she told the 7.30 report.
'I was reading what this man had written about me and I was totally disgusted. I was totally enraged. I was shaking in my lounge room'.
Justice Macrossan, who went on to become the Chief Justice of Queensland before he died in 2008, said Ms Fraser did not appear physically 'upset' by her horrific experience.
'I do not think I have ever heard in the witness box from a more composed 12-year-old,' he told the court while Ms Fraser was not present.
All three teenagers were sentenced to two years probation for the sexual assault.
Ms Fraser said after the attack, the teenage boys forced her naked body onto the dashboard of the panel van and pushed her head through the steering wheel.
Ms Fraser's (pictured with daughter) offenders were found guilty of indecent dealing and attempted rape, but avoided jail with Justice John Macrossan saying the 'offence occurred as a result of the large quantity of drink'
Ms Fraser, who is a grandmother, now lives in Melbourne with her daughter and partner (pictured)
The hairdresser said she would have died in the freezing temperatures if it was not for two passerbys who called paramedics.
She awoke in hospital to her mother holding her hand and was told what had happened.
After the three boys were found guilty but avoided jail, Ms Fraser said she endured a torrent of bullying from her peers, including having lit cigarette put out on her legs and her jaw dislocated. She was expelled from two schools for retaliating.
She gave birth to her daughter when she was just 13-years-old and said she fell pregnant to try and stop people hitting her.
After the court case, Ms Fraser (far left) fell pregnant at 13-years-old to stop bullies from attacking her
Ms Fraser, who is a grandmother, now lives in Melbourne with her daughter and partner
Ms Fraser, who is a grandmother, now lives in Melbourne with her daughter and partner.
Western Australian playwright Hellie Turner saw Ms Fraser's story on the 7.30 report and immediately got in touch about possibly taking the story to the stage.
She willingly signed on for the play, called Project Xan, and even appears in it as an actor alongside Daisy Coyle, who plays a young Ms Fraser.
Project Xan opens in Perth on November 8.
Flanagan pleaded not guilty to common assault and deprivation of liberty
A driver has described the terrifying moment a police officer pulled out a gun and threatened to 'put a hole in him' for speeding.
Lee Povey was driving over the speed limit on the Landsborough Highway in Longreach, Central West Queensland, last May when he was pulled over by Senior Constable Stephen Flanagan, 46.
Footage shows the officer pulling out his gun and swearing.
Flanagan has pleaded not guilty to charges of common assault and deprivation of liberty, the ABC reports.
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Lee Povey described the terrifying moment Senior Constable Stephen Flanagan (pictured) pulled out a gun and threatened to 'put a hole in him' for speeding
'I took my seatbelt off, looked over and there he was,' Mr Povey told the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Tuesday.
'He said 'do you know I could put a f***ing hole in you'.'
Mr Povey said he felt the firearm pressed in between his shoulder blades as he was handcuffed.
The driver told the court he was compliant the whole time and didn't try to argue with the officer.
He said he seen a police car driving behind him with no flashing lights or sirens.
He thought the officer was either trying to overtake him or was escorting a wide load, the ABC reports.
Povey's partner, Anna Cruse, was sitting in the passenger seat and filmed the exchange with her phone.
She initially believed it was a 'stitch-up' and didn't know what was happening.
'I've been pulled over by the police a couple of times before for speeding ... never been pulled over with a gun before - I thought it was some sick prank that someone had set up,' she told the court.
Lee Povey (left) was driving over the speed limit on the Landsborough Highway in Longreach, Central West Queensland, last May when he was pulled over
Mr Povey's partner Anna Cruse (right), was sitting in the passenger seat and filmed the exchange with her phone
Flanagan pleaded not guilty to charges of common assault and deprivation of liberty
Footage taken from Ms Cruse's phone and from the officer's dashboard camera was played to the court.
Flanagan's patrol car is heard blaring its horn repeatedly at the silver truck, as the officer shouts profanities, before the other vehicle finally pulled over.
The officer is then heard screaming and swearing at the driver after he got out of the truck.
Flanagan pleaded not guilty to charges of common assault and deprivation of liberty.
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It was Hillary Clinton's night in Philadelphia Monday, but it was Michelle and Barack Obama who stole the show.
The outgoing First Couple stepped up before a packed-out crowd of thousands in Independence Square, outside the very building where the Declaration of Independence was signed, to reflect on the past eight years and to look forward to a promised future of hope and prosperity - pending a Clinton presidency.
The crowd had already been warmed up by music from Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, and a speech by Bill Clinton, but even that build-up wasn't enough for the emotional heights that Michelle Obama reached in her time on the podium.
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Moving: Michelle Obama appeared visibly moved as she talked up Hillary Clinton for President Monday - something that she said would be 'probably the last and most important thing' she could do as First Lady
Victory lap: Obama spent much of his speech reflecting on his own election in 2008 and the successes of his administration - establishing Clinton as his successor and promising only she could continue the work that he had done
Entertainment: Prior to the Obamas, who introduced Clinton, were performances by Bruce Springsteen (left) and Bon Jovi, and a speech by Bill Clinton
Mrs Obama has become quite the professional orator - and arguably Team Obama's MVP - over the past few months, but her voice quavered as she opened up her speech.
'This truly an emotional moment for me for so many reasons,' she said. 'First we are one day away from one again making history. Tomorrow we have the chance to elect someone who is singularly qualified to be our president: our friend Hillary Clinton.'
She gave a dramatic sigh as she went on to roll out a list of Clinton beneficiaries - with a particular focus on mothers and kids - and Clinton's qualifications both as a politician and as a parent.
But a big reason for her heightened emotions was, she said, because 'speaking here tonight is perhaps the last and most important thing I can do for my country as First Lady'.
It was the first in a series of remarks Monday night that set up Clinton as the successor to the Obama legacy.
High expectations: Michelle Obama said that she and her husband had always tried to live up to the expectations of the American people, and suggested that Clinton was the only potential President she would want her children to emulate
Historic: The speeches were made in front of crowds of thousands in historic Independence Square - outside the building in which the Declaration of Independence was signed. Barach Obama drew on that history in his own speech
Before carrying on, however, Mrs Obama took time out to thank the viewers - always a smart move to get the crowd on-side - for welcoming her and The President into their homes and communities.
'Every day you have inspired us with your courage and your decency, and every day we have tried to make you proud and live up to the standard of citizenship that you set.
'Because we know that our words and actions are a reflection to the world of who we are as a nation, and more importantly our actions are a reflection of what behavior we hope our children will emulate, and we believe that our responsibility to you does not end when we leave the White House.'
It was their duty, they said, to hand over the country 'to a leader that we believe we all can trust.'
Jon Bon Jovi performs in Philadelphia outside the very building where the Declaration of Independence was signed
Trump wasn't invoked by name, but his shadow was on the wall as Clinton spoke of deserving a leader 'who will ensure that our daughters are safe and respected and that our sons understand that truly strong men are compassionate and kind'
The list of Clinton's positives were clearly designed to illustrate by absence Trump's negatives: Mrs Obama called for someone who would celebrate diversity, unite parties, races and classes, and see all people as 'infinitely worthy, all an important part of this great American story.'
Clinton was that candidate, she said, as the audience whooped and cheered.
'Tomorrow with your vote you can stand up to those who seek to divide us and make us afraid,' she said, revving up her engines for the climactic push. 'You can declare with one voice that we are always stronger together.
'Tomorrow with your vote you can say that this country has always been great, that it is the greatest nation on Earth, a country where a girl like me from the South side of Chicago, whose great, great grandfather was a slave, can got to some of the finest universities on earth.
'A country where the biracial son of a mother from Hawaii and the son of a single mother from Hope, Arkansas, can both make it to the White House.
'A county that a young woman determined to do all the good she can, can do on to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling and become President.'
Opposites: Michelle Obama subtly pointed out flaws in Trump's character as she promoted the best aspects of Clinton's, saying Hillary sees all people as 'infinitely worthy, all an important part of this great American story'
Links: Obama established Clinton as the next logical link in the chain of progress from Barack Obama - something her husband played up in his own speech. She ended by promising that voters would 'make history' by choosing Clinton
Those lines, of course, setting up a line of succession from Clinton to Obama and back to Clinton, while setting up 'first female President' as the logical progression from 'first black President' - not something that will appeal to dynasty-hating voters or a big chunk of the Trump crowd, but in the moment a stirring piece of rhetoric.
'That is... the history you can make tomorrow, but only if we get out and vote for Hillary Clinton,' Mrs Obama promised.
Then she took it down a gear, as she welcomed her husband to the stage. 'I'd like to take a moment to say how proud I am of all he has done for this country,' she said to cheers.
'I'm proud not just of what he has done but how he as done it - getting the job done in the face of unimaginable challenges, always going high when they go low.'
'Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the love of my life, the President of the United States: Barack Obama.'
Love: Michelle Obama then introduced the 'love of my life' and outgoing President, Barack Obama. He returned the affection, beginning his speech by calling her his 'rock' and 'love.' His speech was less emotional, but more stirring
Evocative: Obama evoked the optimism of his 2008 election - a panacea for this year's increasingly bitter and savage contest - and promised that 'smart, steady, tested' Hillary Clinton would carry that torch of hope
It was a heck of an introduction, but the President kept the energy way up by enjoying a little call-and-response before thanking his wife for being 'my love, my rock and an amazing First Lady.'
Then the Obama Family double-feature was into its second act, with Obama evoking the halcyon days of his first election - the days of 'Yes we can' and 'The Audacity of Hope' - as part of his victory lap.
'Eight years ago I asked all of you to join me on an unlikely journey,' he began. 'We set out not just to change programs or policies,' he said, but to reform Washington to give a louder voice to voters; to inspire the world with US ideals; and to 'shape a changing America so that everybody belongs and everybody has... a responsibility.'
Before dissenting voices could question how much of that was achieved, he segued into the problems faced by his administration: economic disaster, and 'in some cases unprecedented obstruction and a cynical Washington.'
'But we stayed with it,' he said. 'We stayed with it. And because of your resilience, because of your strength, because of your faith, we turned "Yes we can" into "Yes we did."
'Look at the road we've traveled,' he continued, pointing to 15.5million new jobs, a 'resurging' auto industry that's 'lead the fastest manufacturing growth since another Clinton was President', and rising incomes, falling poverty and '20million more Americans [having] health insurance.'
Attack: Obama also went on the attack, calling Trump 'uniquely unqualified' to lead the country, lacking 'a basic understanding of the world' and being a massive liability for America and its interests
Reduced pollution, marriage equality and soldiers brought back from war were namechecked too.
'Because Bill Clinton is here,' he said, 'I did some math, a little arithmetic,' that added up to 'jobs going up by more than 30million' under the last two Democratic presidents, with deficits down and millions more Americans getting health insurance
Meanwhile the last two Republican president saw 'basically flat' job growth and rising deficits, he said.
'So yes, with Democrats in charge, America is stronger,' he said 'Those are just the facts.'
Building on the themes of succession and progress set up by Michelle Obama, he promised that 'smart, steady, tested' Hillary Clinton would carry that same torch he and Bill Clinton had carried.
But unlike Michelle, Obama was willing to namecheck Trump himself, calling him 'uniquely unqualified' to handle the economy, a threat to ecological and financial regulations, liable to start a trade war and at risk of putting millions of Americans out of work.
Trump would be a terrible Commander in Chief, too, Clinton said: he 'lacks a basic understanding of the world, justifies torture, suggests abandoning our allies.'
And then he pulled out a new jibe that he'd tried out to great success Sunday, referencing a New York Times story that revealed Trump's had been kicked off his own Twitter account by his advisers for fear that he would ruin his own campaign.
'Over the weekend his campaign took away his Twitter account,' he said to chuckles from the crowd, 'because he's erratic. If his closest advisers don't trust him to Tweet, why would any of us trust him with the nuclear codes?' he asked to cheers and applause.
'Anyone who sees women as objects, minorties and immigrants as threats, other faiths as presumtively un-American, cannot lead this diverse, big-hearted nation that we love,' he said.
And then he switched up tack, going from reasons not to vote, for reasons to pick 'outstanding' Clinton.
'I'll be honest, I've had to bite my tongue' when hearing the 'vicious, crazy attacks' and 'double standards applied to her' Obama said - especially as Republicans commended her turn as Secretary of State, he said.
'I agreed with Republicans then,' he said, 'she's a reason why we're so respected around the world.'
But they tore her down because it was 'politically expedient,' he said - and despite the withering attacks, 'she doesn't complain, she doesn't buckle, she brushes it off. Like the American people she is strong and tough and she knows that government service isn't about her, it's about you.'
Joker: Obama also joked that Trump's aides didn't trust him with his own Twitter account any more because he was too 'erratic' and said he couldn't be trusted with nuclear codes. After his speech, Obama shook hands with Bill Clinton
She would work her heart out for the voters, she said - children, mothers, students, immigrants, 'everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these last eight years - she will work, she will deliver, she won't just tweet.'
That line got laughs, but when Obama told voters to pick Democrats down the ticket, too, and elect would-be Senator Katie McGinty, he - or rather she - got boos.
Obama stirred up a chant of 'Katy! Katy!' to drown out the haters, but the discontent was still there. His pleas to help give Clinton a Democrat Senate may have fallen on deaf ears - in Philadelphia, at least.
That didn't stop the great orator, however, as he pressed on with a story about being asked whether he now doubted the idealism of his 2008 run.
'I still believe in America,' he said. 'I have seen again and again your goodness, your strength and your heart.
'In 2008 you gave me a chance - a skinny guy with a funny name and for these past eight years I saw how hard you work in the face of impossible odds,' he said.
'I saw the values you teach your children, I saw the way you trust strangers in need, I've seen the young men and woman in uniform who meet every mission and the military families who serve and sacrifice just as well, and the wounded warriors who never, ever quit.
'You bet on me all those years ago and I will always be grateful for the privilege you gave me to serve but I will be honest with you: I've always had the better odds, because I've always bet on you.
'And America, I'm betting on you women more time,' he said, before calling on disparate corners of American society - moms, dads, conservatives, young people and African-Americans - to draw on their better nature and vote for Clinton over a litany of Trump's defects.
Support: Jon Bon Jovi (far right) joined the Clintons and Obamas on the stage at the end of Hillary Clinton's speech to lend his support. Obama's own speech spoke to the decency and hope in the American voter
Better: Obama said he was 'betting that America will reject a politics of resentment... reject fear and choose hope'
'I'm betting that America will reject a politics of resentment, a politics of blame, and choose a politics that says we are stronger together, he said, raising up the audience with that preacher style he's deployed so successfully so many times before.
'I'm betting you will reject fear and choose hope. I'm betting that the wisdom the decent and generosity of the American people will once again win the day. And that's a bet that I've never, ever lost.'
With the audience high on self-congratulation, Obama masterfully swept them Clinton-wards, promising her to be 'this fighter, this statesman, this mother, this grandmother, this patriot - our next President of the United States of America - Hillary Clinton!'
He slammed the podium and grinned as the audience, whipped up into raptures of starry-eyed excitement, cheered and howled and drowned out Clinton's own entrance music.
Whether the spell he weaved will last till tomorrow remains to be seen - but as a sign-off from this President, it couldn't be beaten.
A man who shot an 18-year-old during a pre-arranged fight after the pair got into a pub scuffle during the State of Origin will spent at least 13 years behind bars.
Matthew James Perry was sentenced to a maximum of 17 years jail in the New South Wales Supreme Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to murdering Jed Coates.
Perry, 24, shot the 18-year-old in the neck less than an hour after the men - who knew each other from school - got into an altercation at Colyton Hotel, in Sydney's west, during a State of Origin match in June 2014.
Matthew James Perry (pictured) has been sentenced to 17 years jail for murdering Jed Coates
The 24-year-old panel beating apprentice shot Mr Coates (pictured) in the neck less than an hour after getting into an altercation at the Colyton Hotel during a State of Origin match
Perry, a Queensland supporter, and Mr Coates, who backed New South Wales, were ejected from the pub after staff saw them throwing punches.
But instead of going home to cool off the pair started speaking on Facebook.
'U think imma back DOWN u gotta another thing coming,' Mr Coates wrote on Facebook according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
'Hahaha. Come on c**t come at me as hard as you can!!! You don't know wtf you are in for,' panel beating apprentice Perry replied.
Perry armed himself with a rifle after agreeing to meet Mr Coates to settle their dispute
Mr Coates (pictured) took a shovel to the pre-arranged fight in Sydney's west
The 18-year-old ignored desperate pleas from his mother, Julie Lowe (pictured), not to go
Both men ignored desperate pleas from family members to ignore the challenge and armed themselves before going to a pre-arranged location in Colyton.
Perry's mother stopped her son going to the fight with a knife and knuckledusters, but was unaware that he was also armed with a .22 calibre rifle he had earlier purchased and hid under the house.
Mr Coates took a shovel to the fight and yelled 'just shoot me' when his opponent pointed and waved the 40 centimetre long firearm at him and a friend.
Residents also heard someone saying: 'Just walk away Jed' and 'I'll f***king shoot you'.
Perry fired the gun and a bullet entered Mr Coates' neck, which became lodged in his back.
The single gunshot wound proved to be fatal, with the 18-year-old dying at Westmead Hospital after being rushed from the scene by paramedics.
Perry fired the gun and a bullet entered Mr Coates' neck, with the 18-year-old (pictured) dying at Westmead Hospital after being rushed from the scene by paramedics
The altercation started at Colyton Hotel (pictured) as the two men barracked for opposing teams during the 2014 State of Origin
The court heard the pair had previously been in a dispute as Perry believed Mr Coates had attempted to steal his motorcycle.
Mr Coates also accused Perry of stealing cash left at the pub on the night of the altercation.
The court heard testimony from a psychologist who said Perry was a 'hard-working and caring' man with no history of violence before his sentence was handed down on Tuesday.
Acting Justice Jane Mathews noted that Perry had pleaded guilty, shown no previous signs of aggression or violence and 'expressed extreme remorse for his actions', the ABC reported.
'His intention was not to kill anyone ... but to frighten the two men away,' she said during sentencing.
Justice Mathews sentenced Perry to a maximum of 17 years six months' imprisonment, with a four year non-parole period.
She acknowledged the victim's distraught family may consider the sentence as 'quite inadequate', but said Perry had a spinal condition that would make his jail time harsh.
The court was full of supporters from both families, who remained silent as the sentence was delivered.
Four toddlers have been injured, one critical and another in a serious condition after a large tree fell in a daycare centre playground.
The children under three years old are believed to have been injured after being struck by the branches of the fallen tree at Discoveries Educare Newmarket in Auckland, on New Zealand's North Island.
The tree fell on the playground equipment trapping bicycles and the slide but luckily none of the 25 children believed to have been in the play area at the time, NZ Herald reported.
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Four children under three were injured, once critical and another in serious condition after a large tree fell in a daycare centre play area in Auckland New Zealand (pictured)
The children are believed to have been injured after being struck by the branches of the fallen tree at Discoveries Educare Newmarket (pictured)
Discoveries Educare owner Ajit Singh has since visited Starship, the hospital caring for the children, to check on their condition.
'Two are with minor injuries and are going to be fine, thank God,' he said.
'Two others are being taken care of but they are more stable.'
The rest of the children continued their daily routine with staff members in hopes of keeping them calm.
The play centre will be closed on Wednesday and no announcement has been made as to when it will reopen.
The children who were luckily escaped injury continued their daily routine in hopes of keeping them calm (pictured)
The incident (pictured) has since been passed on to WorkSafe NZ
Mr Singh said he was unaware there was any issue with the tree but windy conditions over the past few days may have played a role.
The incident has since been passed on to WorkSafe NZ.
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Photographs have emerged of the house where a mother and her teen daughters were allegedly raped and murdered in 1974.
Garry Reginald Dubois is on trial for the 1974 alleged murders of Brisbane woman Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters has pleaded not guilty. The trial started in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Monday morning.
Dubois pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder, two counts of rape and one count of deprivation of liberty.
The prosecution case is that Barbara McCulkin and her daughters Vicki and Leanne were taken from their Highgate Hill home in inner Brisbane on or about January 16, 1974.
It's alleged Dubois assisted his co-accused, Vincent O'Dempsey, to deprive the McCulkins of their liberty and murder them. It's further alleged Dubois raped one of the daughters and assisted O'Dempsey to rape the other.
The McCulkin family home in Highgate Hill in Brisbane where Barbara McCulkin and her daughters were allegedly murdered
Brisbane housewife Barbara McCulkin and her daughters Leanne (left) and Vicky (right) vanished from their Highgate Hill home in inner Brisbane on January 16, 1974
Dennis Lynch QC (left), defence barrister for Garry Dubois, arrives at the Supreme Court in Brisbane
A man with the same nickname as the man on trial for the murders of McCulkin and her two daughters was at their Brisbane home the day they allegedly vanished, a court heard on Tuesday.
Garry Reginald Dubois is charged with allegedly murdering and raping siblings Vicki and Leanne McCulkin and killing their mother Barbara in 1974.
The prosecution alleges Dubois and his co-accused, Vincent O'Dempsey, took the McCulkins from their Highgate Hill home on or about January 16 that year and murdered them.
Then neighbour, Janet Gayton, has told the Brisbane Supreme Court how she saw two men at the McCulkin's home that evening, the same night a birthday party was being held for her sister.
Ms Gayton, then aged 13, said she went to the McCulkin's house about 6.30pm to get the girls and saw two men, including one inside called Vince whom she'd previously met.
She said the other man was in the yard with one of the McCulkin's cats, with Vicki later telling her it was 'Shorty', which the court has been told was Dubois' nickname.
Garry Reginald Dubois is charged with murdering and raping siblings Vicki and Leanne McCulkin and killing their mother Barbara in 1974 at the house
The mother and daughters disappeared from the house in 1974 and were never found
'I think I asked what Shorty's real name was; they told me but I don't recall what it was,' Ms Gayton told the court.
Dubois has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder, two counts of rape and one count of deprivation.
It's alleged Dubois assisted his co-accused to deprive the McCulkins of their liberty and murder them.
It's further alleged Dubois raped one of the daughters and assisted O'Dempsey to rape the other.
The trial before Justice Peter Applegarth continues. O'Dempsey is yet to face trial.
Barbara McCulkin, pictured with 13-year-old daughter Vicky, both vanished on or about January 16, 1974
The mother was also criticised for not taking the matter to court
The father was reprimanded for denying his son, 15, an education
The boy ran away from father's home to live with his mother, a court heard
Queensland father refuses to let his son attend school for almost two years
A father refused to let his 15-year-old son attend a school for almost two years because it was near his ex-wife's home, a court heard.
The Queensland father, who had sole authority over his son's schooling, refused to grant the school permission to accept his son's application.
When the father was asked by Brisbane Family Court why the consent was not given, he replied, 'why should I?,' The Courier Mail reported.
A 15-year-old boy didn't attend school for almost two years after his father refused to grant permission because it was near his ex-wife's home (stock photo)
The young teenager continuously ran away from his father's home to live with his mother, a family report writer in 2014 heard.
The father was reprimanded Justice Jenny Hogan for failing to ensure his son received an education.
'That the father himself has benefited from significant educational opportunities only magnifies the appalling nature of his behaviour,' Justice Hogan said.
The mother was also criticised for not taking the matter to court to address the situation.
The mother was eventually granted sole custody of her 15-year-old son last year.
The father appealed the ruling to the Full Court of the Family Court but it was dismissed on October 14.
A Facebook event titled 'Yeah The Boys Meet Up' has come under fire after its online discussion page turned into a forum for sexist abuse and threats towards women.
The so-called 'lads-only meetup', said to be taking place on November 26 at Coogee Beach in Sydney's east, follows on from the success of the 'Yeah The Boys' Facebook page, which regularly posts about binge drinking, drug use and women.
But the event, which jumped from 200 to 10,000 members overnight and was shut down just before 4.30pm on Tuesday, has become inundated with young male users issuing vile misogynistic attacks and death threats.
One man threatened to 'kill any woman' that dared travel to the beach, while another tagged the meetup 'Cronulla riots 2' - in reference to the notorious Sydney race riots in 2005.
A Facebook event titled 'Yeah The Boys Meet Up' has come under fire after its online discussion page turned into a forum for vile sexist remarks
The page follows on from the success of the Yeah The Boys Facebook page (status pictured), which regularly posts about drugs, drinking and women
The event, scheduled to be taking place at Coogee Beach on November 26, was flooded with misogynistic remarks and the occasional death threat
'Never trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die,' wrote one man.
'Bring your misses (female partner) and she's getting put on the spit (derogatory sexual act),' added another.
'Women are equal and deserve respect. Just kidding they should suck my d***,' one man commented.
When Sydney university graduate Tilly Lawless pointed out that the term 'two-hole' which the group crudely uses to refer to women was 'disgusting and degrading' she was met with a barrage of insults.
'Not only is calling a person with a vagina a 'two hole' disgusting and degrading, it's also completely incorrect,' Ms Lawless wrote online.
'By looks of things this is a rant of a smelly taco eater who doesn't shave her armpits because it makes her feel empowered,' one man responded.
'F*** up you 2 holed c** bucket,' jeered another.
Sydney university graduate Tilly Lawless pointed out that the term 'two-hole' (which crudely describes a woman) was anatomically inaccurate she was lambasted online
One man described her post as the 'rant of a smelly taco eater who doesn't shave her arm pits'
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Ms Lawless said she was trying to ignore the 'disgusting' comments because they made her anxious.
'I thought it was ridiculous and embarrassing that all these 'boys' were trying to dehumanise women in such a crass way, but are such repetitive lemmings that they couldn't even get the anatomy right,' she said.
'No surprise we have such a problem with violence against women in our society,' she added.
Another woman questioned why such 'disgusting misogyny and homophobia' was being left unchallenged by other males on the thread.
'Get the f*** out tranny sl**,' one man responded almost immediately.
'You should come with this guy (who called the group out for being sexist) and we'll give you both a left right goodnight,' said another.
Another woman was treated to a barrage of insults for calling out the misogyny and homophobia
Eastern Beaches Local Area Command told the Daily Telegraph that they were aware of the planned event.
'It is suspected that this may be a troll page however we currently have our intelligence unit now looking into it to assess the credibility of the site and the information that it contains,' a spokesman for the command said.
'Our bosses are also aware of this and are making further inquiries.'
'At this stage on the basis of what the intelligence section can gather in terms of its legitimacy will determine if any further action is required and what type of police action will be deployed if necessary.'
A former child soldier and refugee turned criminal lawyer has been crowned New South Wales Australian of the Year.
Deng Adut was recognised for his contribution to reducing discrimination, helping juvenile offenders and promoting inclusiveness when he received the top honour from Premier Mike Baird in Sydney on Monday.
The 33-year-old, from Sudan, was forced to fight as a child soldier at the tender age of six before he was smuggled out of the country and brought to Australia - the nation he now regards as his 'home'.
'You are not Australian because you are born in Australia. You are Australian because Australia is born in you,' he said, re-wording an African saying.
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Deng Adut won the 2017 NSW Australian of the Year award in Sydney on Monday night
The dedicated student taught himself to read English at 15, studied law and now runs AC Law Group in Sydney, with a focus on fighting for members of the Sudanese community from his home in Blacktown in Sydney's west.
The modest award recipient said he had never anticipated being recognised on such a large scale for his efforts in the legal field.
'I never dreamed of anything, even (being) a fisherman,' he told AAP.
The tale of his remarkable accomplishments was thrust into the public arena following an advertising campaign for Western Sydney University.
The dedicated student taught himself to read English at 15, studied law and now runs AC Law Group in Sydney's west - focusing on helping the Sudanese community in Blacktown
The tale of his remarkable accomplishments was thrust into the public arena following an advertising campaign for Western Sydney University (pictured)
Mr Adut told of how he was rescued by the UN and granted asylum in 1998 after being torn from his family and conscripted into Sudan's People Liberation Army.
The 33-year-old endured unbelievable torture, witnessed horrific atrocities and was shot in the back.
The advertisement (pictured) explored his story dating back to the age of six
His strong willed attitude landed him in hot water with the army as a child, with superiors torturing him several time for not following orders.
But Mr Adut never let his past stop him pursuing his dreams once given the opportunity to get an education in Australia, even happily living in his car during his studies.
Yes I was scarred in the army, I got a lot of injuries, physical and mental but it doesnt mean that I have to give up my life,' he said.
'I look at it as positive image rather than to use it to brag about it or complain about it. Or to make it anything that diminishes my ability to do things, he said.
Mr Adut never let his past stop him pursuing his dreams once given the opportunity to get an education in Australia, even happily living in his car during his studies
'I look at it as positive image rather than to use it to brag about it or complain about it. Or to make it anything that diminishes my ability to do things, Mr Adut said
He has been a passionate advocate for refugees in Australia and often speaks out against the government's treatment of asylum seekers.
'They're innocent children, they have no reason to be in that situation,' Mr Adut told Daily Mail Australia during discussions about Tony Abbott's treatment of Syrian refugees.
'These future generationswhatever trauma they're being put through they will be the next oppressors of the future.'
Mr Adut said he hopes his title as Australian of the Year will help him combat issues surrounding discrimination, juvenile justice and domestic violence prevention.
Mr Adut said he hopes his title as Australian of the Year will help him combat issues surrounding discrimination, juvenile justice and domestic violence prevention
'I'd like to be working with kids in jail to help them transition into the workforce.
'One day I'll be able to visit every single school in Australia and be able to tell my story.'
Hatched plans on the same night Senate killed off gay marriage plebiscite
Controversial senators Pauline Hanson and Jacqui Lambie hatched plans over dinner for plebiscites on gay marriage, euthanasia and constitutional recognition of indigenous Australian.
They met on the same night the Senate voted 33 to 29 to kill off Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's plans for a plebiscite on gay marriage.
Ms Hanson's gay chief-of-staff James Ashby, who privately supports same-sex marriage, was also present at the Canberra dinner on Monday night.
Pauline Hanson (pictured centre) and her gay chief-of-staff James Ashby (pictured right) attended the dinner with Jacqui Lambie on Monday night
Pauline Hanson (pictured left) and her chief-of-staff James Ashby (pictured right) at Parliament House in Canberra facing the media
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie confirmed she had dinner on Monday night with Queensland Senator Hanson, her chief of staff Mr Ashby and another One Nation Senator Brian Burston.
They discussed the idea of pushing for plebiscites on the three controversial issues.
'I was very lucky, I met up with Pauline Hanson and Brian and James Ashby and we had some dinner and we're talking now about putting a bill through, so that we have dates, we haves times, so we can get this bill and take the vote at the next election,' Senator Lambie told the ABC on Tuesday.
'Let's give these people some peace of mind, let's give them another direction, and tell them when they can take the vote, because they want to take this vote.'
'Three questions. Simple. Take your vote while you're (at the ballot box).'
Jacqui Lambie (pictured) has confirmed she met with fellow senator Pauline Hanson on Monday night to discuss pushing for plebiscites on gay marriage, euthanasia and recognising indigenous Australians in the constitution
Senators Pauline Hanson and Jacquie Lambie believe gay marriage should be decided by a plebiscite
Senator Lambie, who voted in favour of the same-sex marriage plebiscite, said she was disappointed it had been canned by Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and independent Derryn Hinch, who want a free parliamentary vote on the issue.
'Finally the Australian people had some power and they've killed off the people power,' she said.
Gay Liberal senator Dean Smith is opposed to the Liberal-National coalition's push for a gay marriage plebiscite.
In 1996, Pauline Hanson told 60 Minutes she regarded homosexuality as unnatural.
Mr Ashby previously worked for former speaker Peter Slipper, who he accused of sexual harassment.
However the case became controversial when he also made accusations about his former boss's travel entitlements.
Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke (pictured) campaigned for the Northern Territory's short-lived right-to-die laws, which came into effect in 1996
It's had a roughly 50:50 success rate in predicting Presidents since 1960
Obama and Romney were tied in 2012, so the write-in could be sour grapes
The village usually votes Republican, but also supported Obama in 2008
Four people voted Clinton, two Trump, one Johnson and one Mitt Romney
Dixville Notch, population nine, was the first to count its ballot
The 2016 US election has officially begun, with Hillary Clinton coming out on top in the first results to come back - the nine-person community of Dixville Notch.
Clinton came out with just under half the vote, as a whopping four people picked her to win. Trump did half as well with two, while Gary Johnson racked up one.
But the real surprise was a written-in vote for 2012 candidate Mitt Romney.
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Results in: The nine-person community of Dixville Notch has picked Clinton with four votes; Trump got two, Gary Johnson one and Mitt Romney a single write-in
Clinton's success may seem odd: Not only does the community usually vote Republican, there are only two women and seven men.
Then again, the remote New Hampshire community voted overwhelmingly for Obama in the 2008 election - giving him 15 votes to John McCain's six.
Grudge: Romney tied the 2012 election in Dixville Notch with five votes to five. His appearance as a write-in this year may suggest a grudge in the sleepy community
That was the first time the majority chose a Democrat since 1968, when they plumped for Humbert H Humphrey II against eventual winner Richard M Nixon.
In fact, the town's hit rate in the elections has been only slightly over 50:50 since 1960.
It could be Dixville Notch voters were swayed Clintonwards this election by the Obama's full-throated support of the Democratic candidate in Philadelphia tonight.
Then again, it's not like Obamania has kept a total hold on the town: the 2012 election saw Obama tying with Mitt Romney after they both got five votes each.
So Romney's appearance on the ballot tonight could signal bad blood in the remote New Hampshire community.
This election has been especially thrilling, as the population dropped by a full 20 percent earlier in the year when two people moved away.
The community only has four female voters, and is down one voter from last election. Obama was tied with Romney and won 2008 - though it's historically usually gone to a Republican
However, the population increased to nine when someone moved to the community shortly afterward.
Clinton and Trump reunited with their families for a final push on the campaign trail Monday evening at a pair of swing-state rallies that marked the beginning of the end of their respective presidential campaigns.
Clinton met up with her husband Bill and her daughter Chelsea in Philadelphia. They were joined at the outdoor event across from Independence Hall by President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and musicians Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
'Thank you for coming out for one last rally before election day tomorrow,' Clinton said at the Pennsylvania rally and concert. 'I am so happy to be finishing this campaign with my husband and my daughter by my side.'
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton along with her husband former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton wave at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina November 8
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump addresses supporters during a campaign rally on November 8, 2016 in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Trump, his adult children - Tiffany, Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka - their spouses - Lara, Vanessa and Jared - and his VP pick, Mike Pence, campaigned in Manchester, New Hampshire. The White House candidate's wife Melania and young son Barron were noticeably absent from the family portrait.
'I've been reading about Hillary Clinton having all these surrogates,' Trump said at his rally, when a laser light show and fog machines were switched off. 'I had the best surrogates of all,' he asserted, meaning his kids. 'They were all over.'
The president spent much of the last seven days criss-crossing the country for Clinton, and he delivered a stirring defense of her at tonight's rally, near the building where the nation's founding fathers signed the Constitution.
He urged Americans to 'reject a politics of resentment and a politics of blame and choose a politics that says we are stronger together,' Clinton's slogan, and to'reject fear and choose hope' on Election Day.
The Democratic politician who trounced Clinton in the 2008 primaries only to name her as his secretary of state hailed his party's nominee as 'this fighter, this stateswoman, this mother, this grandmother, this patriot our next president of the United States of America'.
At the end of a final day of campaigning, Hillary Clinton accompanied by former President Bill Clinton, left, boards her campaign plane at Raleigh Durham International Airport in Morrisville, N.C. to travel to Westchester, N.Y. in the early hours of Tuesday
Trump waves to the audience exiting a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Tuesday, as he ends the final day of campaigning
Trump meanwhile called his opponent the 'face of failure' as he appealed to 'all of the Democratic voters in our country who are thirsting for change like everybody else.'
Trump had made five stops during the final campaign push, stopping at Sarasota in Florida, Raleigh in North Carolina, Scranton in Pennsylvania, Manchester in New Hampshire and Grand Rapids in Michigan.
Anti-vaccination activists have unmasked and allegedly harassed the wrong man they believe to be a pro-immunisation blogger.
Byron Bay physiotherapist Peter Tiernan, 51, and his family have been receiving harassing phone calls and Facebook messages from anti-vaxxers for about twoweeks, ABC reported.
The activists, who run Anti-Vaccination Australia Facebook page and Septic Skeptics website, began contacting the Tiernans after apparently unmasking him as the Reasonable Hank blogger.
But the pro-immunisation blogger is in fact be Peter Tierney.
Byron Bay physiotherapist Peter Tiernan (pictured), 51, and his family have been receiving harassing phone calls and Facebook messages from anti-vaxxers for about two-weeks
Mr Tiernan's wife was the first to be contacted by the anti-vaxxers, when she received a Facebook message which said: 'I'd like to talk to you about your husband.'
His 14-year-old daughter and other family friends have also been reached on Facebook.
Phone calls and text messages from unknown numbers to Mr Tiernan followed, despite him claiming to have never heard of Reasonable Hank.
When he researched the blogger, he discovered Reasonable Hank received threats online.
Anti-Vaccination Australia have outed and harassed the wrong person, Mr Tiernan said
'We give great pleasure in announcing after several weeks of investigations we have found and located "Reasonable Hank",' Anti-Vaccination Australia incorrectly wrote on Facebook
'They were sending messages to him using my profile picture from Facebook and saying: "We know who you are",' Mr Tiernan told ABC.
'They told him if he didn't take his blog down they would expose me and my family.'
Photos of him and his family, as well as his workplace have been shared on the anti-vaccination Facebook page and website.
Mr Tiernan said his daughter's school had also been named.
He said it felt like he was being stalked and had been unable to sleep, but his wife was probably the worst affected.
Reasonable Hank responded to the reports on Facebook on Sunday
'I told them [the anti-vaccination people] that it wasn't me; I just felt powerless,' he said.
Mr Tiernan has since changed his phone number and deleted Facebook.
He said police were investigating and he was seeking legal advice.
But Anti-Vaccination Australia has denied the allegations, with a spokesperson saying: 'There's no evidence to suggest we have harassed him and we have also never attempted to contact his daughter and find that very inappropriate.'
On Facebook, Reasonable Hank said he wanted legal redress for Mr Tiernan and his family who 'have been doxxed and vilified in the most repugnant terms by these delusional people'.
'They have rung him. They have rung his work. They have contacted his wife. They have contacted his child. They have threatened to submit vexatious and false AHPRA complaints. One ugly individual is even threatening to report him to the Australian Taxation Office, based on her gut feelings which, in turn, are based on a bizarre conspiracy theory regarding Mr Tiernan's employment.'
Reasonable Hank referred Daily Mail Australia to his website, where he has publicly posted some of the threats he's received from the anti-vaxxers
'You're a f***ing dead man walking c***,' one of the threats Mr Tierney received in 2014 said
'Guess what c*** I found where you live,' another message to Mr Tierney, sent last year, said
Another social media user called Mr Tierney a 'turd' and made crude sexual references
'This is the harm done by conspiracy theorists. They are not harmless nutters.'
Reasonable Hank referred Daily Mail Australia to his website, where he has publicly posted some of the threats he's received from the anti-vaxxers.
Mr Tierney, who runs Reasonable Hank, reiterated to Daily Mail Australia he was not Peter Tiernan.
He confirmed he had spoken to Mr Tiernan and said he hoped the people responsible, of Sydney, are held to account.
Mr Tierney said he had also received phone calls to his private mobile number.
Despite numerous reports Anti-Vaccination Australia had the wrong man, the group has accused the media of 'trying to hide Reasonable Hanks' identity' with 'false and misleading' articles.
The Septic Skeptics website describes two 'detectives' had 'worked tirelessly over the last few months tracking this slime ball's every move'.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Tiernan.
'You deserve bomb threats for writing unreasonable blogs,' Mr Tierney was told on Facebook
Duckworth, Dems Tout 'Historic' Ticket In Get-Out-The-Vote Push
By Stephen Gossett in News on Nov 8, 2016 2:18PM
Current U.S. Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth (IL-8th) is heavily enough favored to defeat Sen. Mark Kirk in their race for the U.S. Senate, its probably safe to characterize her favorite status as prohibitive. But the representative appears to be taking nothing for granted as she works to leverage her popularity across the ticket in the final moments of the campaign.
A get-out-the-vote campaign took Duckworth from the north suburbs to the Far South Side on Monday afternoon before culminating at a high-wattage rally in River North in the evening, where candidates and speakers reminded supporters of Illinois Democrats diverse, female ticket.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois comptroller candidate Susana Mendoza, Cook County States Attorney hopeful Kim Foxx, and a host of community leaders all joined Duckworth at Monday nights rally, at the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters.
What other party would put together a ticket of these women that are just bad asses? said Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st).
Foxx called the ticket historic. Duckworth noted the importance of pointing out to children that the first eight names on my ballot were women.
A Duckworth victory is crucial if the Democrats are to have a chance to regain the Senate. Democrats need to gain four seats to tie and five for an outright majority.
Earlier on Monday, Duckworth met with volunteers at a phone bank in Arlington Heights before speaking with senior voters at Casa Maravilla Senior Center, in Pilsen, and greeting commuters at the 95/Dan Ryan Red Line CTA Stop, in Roseland.
Duckworth on Tuesday plans to crisscross the Chicago area again in a final get-out-the-vote push.
Hillary Clinton pulled out all the stops for her final campaign tour with a celebrity haul that put Donald Trump to shame.
Clinton rolled out appearances from Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen for her celebrity-packed final night of campaigning in Raleigh, North.
But over in Trump's camp, the Republican nominee relied solely on musician Ted Nugent to warm the crowd at his Grand Rapids, Michigan rally.
Hillary Clinton pulled out all the stops for her final campaign tour with a celebrity haul, including Jon Bon Jovi, that put Donald Trump to shame
Lady Gaga lent her star power to the Democratic clan Monday night, joining Clinton's rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Gaga performed for the crowd and addressed the rally
Clinton took to the stage at 12.53am to quip that 'by the time the poll closes tomorrow we are gonna be Livin' on a Prayer'.
She also got words of support from her celebrity performing cohort.
'We can't elect somebody that doesn't care for the people. We can only elect somebody who does,' Gaga said.
When she did her hit 'Born this Way,' she added: 'Don't judge me cuz I'm voting for Hillary, I was just born this way.'
Clinton drew thousands of supporters, with help from both Barack and Michelle Obama, her husband Bill, daughter Chelsea and Bruce Springsteen, who warmed the crowd (pictured)
Gaga then joined Bon Jovi on his hit, 'Livin' on a Prayer,' taking the high part in an acoustic duet
'This state is razor close and that's why the two of us are here,' Bon Jovi said after finishing his performance with Lady Gaga.
Gaga then joined Bon Jovi on his hit, 'Livin' on a Prayer,' taking the high part in an acoustic duet.
'We just started this in a phone call. So we are truly doing this together for the first time,' Bon Jovi told the screaming crowd.
'The time is here the time is now,' Bon Jovi said when they were done.
'This state is razor close and that's why the two of us are here. North Carolina, you know that the road to the White House leads through your state,' he said.
Lady Gaga also performed 'Poker Face' and 'Angel Down' a song she prefaced by saying 'Black Lives Matter.'
Trump meanwhile relied on musician Ted Nugent to warm the crowd at his rally on Monday - even though he has criticized Clinton in the past for bringing celebrities to her own events.
Trump meanwhile relied on musician Ted Nugent to warm the crowd at his rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan - even though he's criticized Clinton for bringing celebrities to her events
'Everybody is thirsting, thirsting for change,' Trump said during the third of five rallies scheduled for the final day of the 2016 presidential campaign
A little girl has been reunited with her mother after a man found her wandering the streets at 3am and posted her heartwarming rescue in a now viral video.
Soloman Jones and his friend were out late at night when the pair saw the girl walking outside in Memphis without a jacket.
Jones, who has a two-year-old daughter himself, picked up the little girl and called the police before recording a Facebook video scolding the absent parents.
Thousands watched the video and called Jones a hero, imagining what could have happened to the girl if the considerate man was not around.
Now, it has been revealed the child's mother is local and the pair have been reunited. It is unclear if any further police investigation or charges are pending against the woman, but the child's rescuer has insisted she is a 'good' mother who made a mistake.
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Rescue: Memphis man Soloman Jones (pictured) and his friend found this little girl out at 3am, crying and without a jacket. They tried to find her parents before eventually calling police
'Everybody dats making mess up comments about da parents everybody makes mistakes there good ppl we talk forgive me for any bad thing I said,' the girl's rescuer posted on his Facebook page.
He later added: 'I know date she safe'
His comments come a day after he posted the video which captured hearts across the world and sparked an angry debate about parenting.
'This a message for all you sorry parents,' Jones said in the clip, before introducing the little girl to the camera.
'Luckily god left us out here,' he says. 'It's three o'clock in the morning and here come a two-year-old child walking up the street crying.'
After mentioning his own daughter, he continues: 'I ain't no snitch but yeah, I called the police because I don't know who this child belong to, you know what I'm saying?
'...And yeah her parents can't get her back until they talk to the police.'
He signs off by saying it's 'sad,' speculating that the mom is 'out somewhere in the club while her baby asleep.
'But we got her though, we gonna make sure she get home. And keep something for her stomach.'
Jones told WREG that he and his friend had walked around the neighborhood trying to find the girl's parents before calling the police.
Many took to Jones' Facebook page to express their distaste for the parents of the child and to herald Jones a hero.
A gofundme page was also set up on Tuesday to reward the young father for his good deed.
Feelings: Jones later said on his Facebook page that the scene had left him feeling sad
Harsh: In the video Jones scolded the mom, saying she was probably out at a club. He later met her and said she and the girl's dad were 'good people' and he regretted his comments
He says he's just a regular guy trying to do good.
'I don't think I'm a hero,' he told WREG. 'I think I'm just somebody doing my part for the community, doing my part to keep people safe.
'I'd want somebody to do that for my little girl.'
Footage shows the moment a friend leapt on car in attempt to stop theft
The six-month-old baby girl was reportedly safe and well when found
The theft happened in Coburg, Melbourne's north, on Tuesday about 3pm
A woman has desperately thrown herself onto the bonnet of a moving car in an attempt to stop a thief from escaping in a luxury car with a baby still strapped inside.
Dramatic footage of the moment was taken on Tuesday about 3pm when Mercedes Benz four-wheel-drive was stolen from a mother at a school pick up in Melbourne's north.
Police released footage of the car driving down a Melbourne road moments after it was stolen, showing a family friend on the bonnet of the 4WD banging on the windscreen.
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The woman is seen desperately banging on the car which was stolen during a school pick up in Melbourne on Tuesday about 3pm
Police said the driver ignored the woman and continued to drive with her on the bonnet for 400 metres until she fell off.
She was remarkably uninjured.
The baby girl's mother can then be seen running down the road chasing after the car, which still had her child in the backseat.
The mother was waiting to pick up her three primary school-aged children from a Coburg school when the car was stolen.
She said she was standing just beside the car with the engine still running when the man barged his way into the driver's seat and took control of the vehicle.
The child's mother - and owner of the stolen car (pictured) - can be seen running down the road chasing after her car
Another male, believed to be working together with the driver, fled the scene in a silver Toyota Camry sedan with a rear spoiler, report police.
The mother lunged at the vehicle but was unable to stop the man before he took off with her sleeping child in the backseat.
Other parents at the school also tried desperately to chase after the car but were unable to stop it.
The six-month-old baby girl (pictured) was still strapped into the car when it was stolen at a school pick up in Melbourne on Tuesday
The stolen car was found a short time later dumped in Haig Avenue about three kilometres from the corner of O'Hea and Ross Street where it was first stolen.
A man was seen leaving the Mercedes when he dumped it in Haig Avenue, police report.
Police said the man told a witness there was a baby in the car and he didn't know what to do with it.
The baby girl was reportedly safe and well when she was found, and was quickly reunited with her mother.
She was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital for medical assessment.
One of the men believed to be behind the car theft (pictured) is described as having dark hair tied up in a bun
The man has been described as European in appearance, about 30-years-old, wearing a light coloured t-shirt, dark pants, and with dark wavy hair.
The other man is in his late 20s with dark hair tied up in a bun and was wearing a green t-shirt and dark pants, according to police.
A manhunt is now underway for the thief and his alleged accomplice.
Coburg resident Sarah Czajka, who lives near Haig Avenue where the car was dumped, said she noticed a 'commotion' when police swarmed the street.
One of the men believed to be behind the theft (pictured) is described as being in his late 20s with dark hair tied up in a bun and wearing a green t-shirt and dark pants
But she told the Herald Sun the drama calmed down once the child was discovered well and in the care of family.
'The baby looked perfectly fine, but they did have an ambulance on scene,' she said.
'It was a happy little baby.'
to be transformed in the 20million Illuminated River art project
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London's bridges are a step closer to being lit up in one of the largest art projects in UK history.
Seventeen bridges in the capital are set to be bathed in light in the 20million Illuminated River project with 105 designs narrowed down to a shortlist of six.
It will see the bridges which span six nautical miles of the city from west to east stand out in the night sky.
The final six entries vary from a subtle low light installation to bright patterns that would cover main road, rail and pedestrian bridges between Albert Bridge and Tower Bridge.
A competition to light up 17 iconic London bridge's has been narrowed down to six proposals in a 20million art project that is one of the biggest ever in UK history. Pictured is Adjaye Associates 'Invisible Ripples' design for London Bridge
The Illuminated River project was started by writer and filmmaker Hannah Rothschild to 'breathe new life' into the capital at night. Pictured is Adjaye Associates' vision for Tower Bridge
Seventeen bridges across six miles of the city will be bathed in light, with Sam Jacob Studio's entry planning to create a 'ribbon of light' between all of them, including Chelsea Bridge, pictured
The lighting would be installed in 2018 and, in US-based studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro's proposal, be bright enough for people to dance under, as seen in a artist's impression of Waterloo Bridge
The lights would extend from Albert Bridge in the west to Tower Bridge in the east. Pictured is a bird's eye view of the vision of American artist Leo Villareal, who created the Bay Lights in San Francisco
Illuminated River was launched by writer and filmmaker Hannah Rothschild, who told the Guardian: 'Imagine going to Paris or Rome and not being able to walk alongside the Seine or the Tiber. Imagine New York without the Brooklyn Bridge lit up.
'And what would Londoners think if St Paul's or the Houses of Parliament or the National Gallery were dark most of the time? The Thames is our liquid history and we must reclaim it.'
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, added: 'This is a really exciting opportunity to breathe new life through the heart of London each night in a new, permanent, fluid light art installation across the capital's historic bridges.
It will throw a spotlight on the river and its banks, and extend their daytime bustle and buzz into the darker hours, supporting London's burgeoning nighttime economy.
Mr Villareal's design, seen here on London Bridge, is a more subtle proposal than some of his rivals, using lights below the bridge
French firm Les Eclairagistes Associes have opted for a more eye-catching design using flashy patterns, pictured here on Waterloo Bridge
If chosen, the French firm will bring a touch of British pride to Westminster Bridge featuring the colours of the Union Jack, pictured
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, based in New York, would light up the night's sky as well as London Bridge, pictured, using spotlights if their design was approved
But Waterloo Bridge would be in the pink, pictured, if Leo Villareal gets the nod. The competition will be decided by a jury which includes Ms Rothschild and her billionaire father Lord Rothschild
So far 10million out of the 20million has been raised towards the project, while all the designs will go on show in a free exhibition at Royal Festival Hall. Pictured is Adjaye Associates' plan for Southwark Bridge
If London-based Adjaye are chosen they would light up the capital's bridges in a variety of colours, pictured here
'A dazzling, free outdoor art gallery, for Londoners and all of our visitors to enjoy would encourage new investment and promote our great city to the rest of the world.
'With the right design, we can remind the world that London continues to be the global leader in innovation, sustainability and artistic creativity.'
A statement on the project's website said: 'Running through the heart of London, the River Thames has been at the centre of the city's evolution, shaping its communities and driving its economy.
'By day, the river continues to provide a huge source of pleasure for both Londoners and for millions of visitors each year, but at night much of this liquid history fades into a ribbon of darkness.
'London is a dynamic, commercial, twenty-four hour city and the Thames should be a place to enjoy after dark.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro has an incredibly innovative idea for Chelsea Bridge, projecting words on to a wall of water, pictured
Another patriotic design comes from Adjaye who would illuminate Chelsea Bridge, pictured, with the Union Jack
A close up of Sam Jacob Studio's plan for Westminster Bridge, pictured, shows how the beams of light would be streamed across the entire Thames
The full Sam Jacob Studio 'ribbon of light' is seen in full focus here, pictured, streaming across the Thames and would help make it a place to 'enjoy after dark'
Even in the emerging dawn, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's proposal for London Bridge, pictured, would see it glowing
Diller Scofidio + Renfro would bring another glow to Westminster Bridge, pictured, if they win the design competition, with the victor announced in December
'The Illuminated River, a major new public art initiative, will transform central London by using its varied bridges as canvases for light.
'Focusing on the seventeen crossings from Albert to Tower, it will illuminate these structures to create a ribbon of light that will grace the River Thames at night.'
So far around 10million has been raised towards the project - 5million from the Rothschild Foundation and another 5million through the Arcadia Fund run by philanthropist couple Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.
The six designs will go on show at a free exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall in London from November 9 to November 29 between 10am-10pm.
A winning concept, selected by a jury, will be announced on December 8 with the first phase of the project set to start in 2018.
The jury includes Ms Rothschild and her billionaire investment banker father Lord Rothschild, London's deputy mayor for culture Justine Simons and Dame Julia Peyton-Jones, co-director of the capital's Serpentine Galleries.
All of the proposals will be on show at the Festival Hall until November 29, including this low light idea for Westminster Bridge, pictured, by Leo Villareal
Les Eclairagistes Associes would bring the red, white and blue theme across all of the bridges, including Chelsea, pictured
With the aim of lighting up London, it would be extremely hard to miss the brightness if Diller Scofidio + Renfro wins, with their spotlight plan to shoot beams into the air across the city
The project's mission statement is to stop London's 'liquid history fading into darkness', something that would certainly be accomplished at London Bridge, pictured, in this design by Les Eclairagistes Associes
Daniel Hatton, 53, has lost his appeal after being convicted of nearly biting a man's penis off during a fight in September last year
A man who nearly bit off a victim's penis has defended his actions by arguing he would only lock his jaws onto another man's genitals if he feared for his life.
Daniel Arthur Hatton has lost his appeal over his conviction for his role in a fight which over a box trailer which left a large rip in Peter Peterson's denim shorts on September 22 last year in Gosford, on the NSW Central Coast.
The 53-year-old told the Gosford District Court of Appeal he bit Mr Peterson to defend himself because he was unleashing a flurry of punches at his head, The Daily Telegraph reported.
'I didn't bite him on the penis I bit him on the leg No man is putting his mouth near another man's penis unless his life is in danger,' he said.
He said Mr Peterson, who sought medical treatment after the fight, 'tampered with' the shorts by ripping them closer to the zipper.
The 53-year-old also accused Mr Peterson of spinning a web of lies with both his police story and the one he told the courts.
'One minute he's pushing my head off and the next he's on top of me and can't get his penis out of my mouth,' Hatton said.
Judge Michael Bozic found Mr Peterson suffered a 5cm laceration to the underside of his penis shaft, and the evidence suggested Hatton had instigated the fight.
The grisly dispute was reportedly sparked over a stolen box trailer.
Hatton (pictured) accused the victim, Mr Peterson, of spinning a web of lies with both his police story and the one he told the courts.
He said Mr Peterson, who sought medical treatment after the fight, 'tampered with' the shorts by ripping them closer to the zipper
A mass grave containing the remains of about 100 people has been discovered inside a school in a town close to Mosul.
Iraqi forces found the chilling site in the School of Agriculture on the outskirts of Hammam al-Alil, a town recaptured from ISIS on Monday.
One haunting picture showed a soldier pulling a child's stuffed toy from the scraps of clothing and rotting flesh, swarming with flies.
A member of the Iraqi forces holds a skull they dug up from the mass grave
Iraq forces drag a body out of a mass grave they discovered in the town of Hammam al-Alil
Iraqi forces, wearing protective masks to cover up the smell, yank a body out of a grave
One of the skulls found within the grave still had the blindfold worn by the victim before he was beheaded by ISIS executioners
Iraqi forces found a mass grave at an agricultural college, with the offensive's Joint Operations Command saying '100 bodies of citizens with their heads cut off' had been uncovered
Iraqi troops had noticed a strong smell while advancing into the town of Hammam al-Alil
The investigators, some of whom wore face masks because of the smell, took notes at the grave site
The discovery was the latest instance of mass graves being uncovered in territory won back from the death cult.
In Iraq and Syria so far, ISIS has killed thousands of people in summary executions and extrajudicial killings, the graves a dark testimony to its brutality.
Associated Press footage from the site showed bones and decomposed bodies among pieces of clothing and plastic bags being dug out of the ground by a bulldozer.
Iraqi troops had noticed a strong smell while advancing into the town of Hammam al-Alil on Monday.
The town lies some 19 miles from Mosul.
Iraqi forces inspect a body after they recaptured the town of Hammam al-Alil from ISIS
The chilling find was the latest instance of mass graves being uncovered on ground wrested from ISIS militants
Two Iraqi soldiers pull the remains of one corpse away using rope
Mohammed Taher al-Tamimi, head of the operations room in the general secretariat of the cabinet, described the killings as a 'massacre' and said the victims had been blindfolded with their hands and feet bound.
Some bodies were decapitated, while others had been broken into pieces, he said.
Men in Iraqi police uniforms used ropes to pull bodies from the grave but they were later told to return them to their original locations.
The investigators, some of whom wore face masks because of the putrid smell, took notes at the grave site.
Iraqi investigators carry out an initial examination on the mass grave site near Mosul
An Iraqi federal police officer holds a stuffed toy at the site of a mass grave in Hammam al-Alil
An Iraqi federal police officer points to the site where the mass graves were discovered
ISIS militants have carried out a series of massacres since seizing large swaths of southern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014, often documenting them with sick photos and videos circulated online.
The campaign to drive them from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the extremists' last major urban stronghold, began on October 17.
Iraqi troops and the Kurdish peshmerga forces are now converging on Mosul, although their progress has been halted by ISIS militants sending suicide bombers in explosives-packed vehicles against advancing forces.
Despite that, Iraqi troops have now seized the town of Bashiqa, as US-backed militia forces advance on the jihadists' Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.
In Iraq and Syria so far, ISIS has killed thousands of people in summary executions and extrajudicial killings, the graves a dark testimony to its brutality
Officials at the site said the bodies, found inside a school, were decapitated
More than a million people are believed to be in Mosul.
Raqqa had a population of some 240,000 before the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and more than 80,000 people have since fled there from other parts of the war-torn country.
The Mosul offensive has advanced faster than expected, but the battle for Raqqa is more complicated.
Unlike in Iraq where the coalition has a state-controlled ally in federal forces, in Syria its ground partner is comprised of local militias, including some rebel groups that have battled President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Russian fighter jets are constantly probing Nato's defences over the Baltic states, with more than 600 'interceptions' so far this year.
Ironically, considering the history, the Nato pilots defending the skies over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are often German.
Seven German fighter pilots are based at an air base at Amari, west of the Estonian capital Tallinn.
A Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker is pictured flying near Moscow. The Flanker is one of several Russian planes which are regularly spotted in the skies over the Baltic
Lieutenant Colonel Swen Jacob, the commander of the German pilots, said they often flew as close as 10 yards from the Russian jets and one occasion a Russian pilot gave him a middle-fingered salute.
Lt Col Jacob joked to the Washington Post: 'Maybe he watched too much "Top Gun".'
But the situation in the Baltic is deadly serious, with the Russian air force clearly under orders from President Vladimir Putin to be more aggressive in the air.
An RAF Eurofighter Typhoon plane takes off over a field of poppies. German Typhoons are currently based in Amari, Estonia, and it is possible they will be replaced by British Typhoons in January
The Typhoon jet (left) is flown by the German air force and the RAF aswell as the Italian and Spanish air forces. It is matched in the air with the Russian Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker (right)
The German pilots have scrambled 34 times since they were posted in Estonia on August 31, with Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker jets the most common threat.
The Russian planes are free to fly along an international airspace corridor running between St Petersburg and the Kaliningrad enclave and west as far as the Danish island of Falster.
Russian pilots often fly without transponders, making them virtually invisible and increasing the danger of mid-air collisions.
Lt Col Jacob told the Post: 'The fighter aircraft are almost always armed to the teeth. Six kinds of missiles. They could carry up to 10.'
This Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker showed off its abilities at the Farnborough air show a few years ago, before the icy blasts of the new cold war descended on Europe
The Flanker's full armoury includes Vympel R-27, R-73 and R-77 air-to-air missiles, Zvezda Kh-35U anti-ship missiles, S-8 and S-13 rockets and a collection of guided bombs and cluster bombs.
The French air force also has four fighter jets based at Siauliai in Lithuania.
Both the French and German contingents are due to be rotated out of the area in January and replaced by other Nato pilots, including possibly RAF pilots from Britain.
Goodybe Mr President: Russia's President Putin (left) has massively increased Russian military spending and anti-Western rhetoric and most experts agree he has outmanouevred President Obama (right) militarily and politically
The Baltic states seized their independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991 and, increasingly worried about the Russian bear on their doorstep, joined Nato in 2004.
Putin was enraged that Nato was within 100 miles of Russia's second city, St Petersburg, and in the last year he has been increasingly probing Nato's defences in the region.
Yesterday Nato chiefs announced plans to put together a force of 300,000 troops which they can put on 'high alert' in eastern Europe.
Relations between Russia and the West have plunged in the last year, with Moscow's insistence on backing its Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, at all costs leading to serious tension with the US, Britain and France.
Most Nato members cut their defence spending dramatically since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 but Russia has been bolstering its military capabilities, holding parades involving more than 100,000 troops each year.
Nato soldiers stand on a pontoon bridge constructed across the Vistula river in Poland during the NATO Anaconda-16 exercise earlier this year
Moscow has been throwing its weight around in recent years - in 2008 Russian troops humiliated the Georgians and in turn the White House by invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia in support of pro-Moscow rebels.
Then in 2014 Russia annexed Crimea and supported ethnic Russian rebels in the eastern Ukraine.
President Obama's 'Russian reset' policy, which was designed to improve relations with Moscow, has looked increasingly like a policy of appeasement.
At the weekend Russian soldiers, dressed in World War Two era uniforms, commemorate the 75th anniversary of a famous parade in 1941 when the Red Army headed out of Moscow to take on the Nazis
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has been accused of attempting to interfere with the US election process by hacking into the emails of senior members of the Democratic party and recently moved the Iskander nuclear-capable missiles into the Kaliningrad enclave, on the borders with Poland.
But Nato members like Estonia, Poland and Romania, who are feeling increasingly threatened by Moscow, are now being promised a rapid deployment force.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Times this week: 'We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among Nato allies and that is exactly the reason why Nato is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War.
'We have seen Russia being much more active in many different ways.
'We have seen a more assertive Russia implementing a substantial military build-up over many years; tripling defence spending since 2000 in real terms; developing new military capabilities; exercising their forces and using military force against neighbours,' added Mr Stoltenberg.
Russia recently moved its nuclear-capable Iskander missiles into the Kaliningrad enclave. The missiles could take out targets in Berlin
Britain's permanent representative to Nato, Sir Adam Thomson, told The Times it would currently take Nato six months to deploy a force of 300,000, which was simply too slow.
At the weekend British military intelligence officers issued a warning over a new Russian 'super tank' which they claim is far superior to anything which is available to Nato.
The document claims that Britain's Challenger II main battle tank could be overpowered by the Kremlin's new Armata tank.
Officials believe the new Russian tank is 'revolutionary' and blames the government for failing to provide a proper response.
The new tank has several highly advanced features including an un-manned turret which makes the machine safer for crews
Yesterday's military parade in Red Square commemorated a pivotal moment in World War Two when German forces were turned back from the gates of Moscow
A Russian soldier in a World War Two era vehicle in Red Square yesterday. Despite its name Red Square was not named after the red flag of communism but dates from an earlier era
The Russians showed off their new Armata tank at the annual May Day parade.
Intelligence experts believe the new Russian tank has a lower profile than Western heavy armour, is faster and lighter.
The turret has the ability to self-load its ammunition, including high explosive and armour piercing rounds. It also has the ability to fire anti-tank missiles.
Russian soldiers in World War Two era uniforms, carrying skis. In the depth of the Russian winter Soviet soldiers, equipped with skis, were able to outmanouevre the German enemy
Russian servicemen and women dressed in World War Two uniforms seen in Moscow's Red Square ahead of yesterday's military parade. The Soviet Union was years ahead of the West in allowing women to serve on the frontline
The Armata is the first totally new Russian tank since the introduction of the T-72 in 1973 and would be crucial to any Russian military offensive.
The crew of three is smaller than most Nato tanks who normally have four people on board.
The vehicle's hull is made from steel, ceramics and composite materials. It is also protected by explosive reactive armour.
The tank's 125mm main gun loads itself an is capable of firing anti-tank missiles.
The missiles have a range of approximately five miles.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said recently: 'The truth is, however, that Russia is not going to attack anyone, that's ridiculous.'
The new Armata is the first Russian tank which considered the crew's ability to survive
He added: 'Russia values its independence and own identity
'We don't want world domination or expansion or confrontation with anyone.'
Putin's assurance came as Russia launched a new super stealth submarine which will be deployed to the Black Sea.
Last month Putin ordered the deployment of the aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean to continue his was war in support of Bashar Al-Assad.
A Russian airborne infantry fighting vehicle BMD-2 parachutes from a plane during the joint Russian, Belarusian and Serbian military exercise at military airport Kovin
A Russian drone descends after a flight during the joint Russian, Belarusian and Serbian military exercise
A Russian BMD armoured personnel carrier descends to the ground from an IL-76 transport plane
Serbian soldiers sprinted across a plain during the exercise
A Russian soldier launches a drone during the joint Russian, Belarusian and Serbian military exercise
Reece Scobie, 23, was dressed in full police gear, including body armour and handcuffs, when he gained backstage access at the Palace Theatre in Soho, central London
A babyfaced sex offender, who pretended to be a policeman to get the phone numbers of stars in the West End play Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, has been jailed.
Reece Scobie, 23, was dressed in full police gear, including body armour and handcuffs, when he gained backstage access at the Palace Theatre in Soho, central London.
He went in and asked performers for their details, including phone numbers and email addresses, Westminster Magistrates' Court was told.
But shortly after, doubts were raised about his identity and he was arrested at the nearby Z Hotel, which he had booked for a two-week stay.
He admitted impersonating a police officer and wearing a police uniform with intent to deceive in court yesterday.
Darren Watts, prosecuting, said: 'It is accepted the (hotel) booking was for two weeks.
'The concern is the fact that he quite deliberately and fraudulently posed as a police officer to go to a London play where the two main adult stars were playing children's parts, in order to gain access to them and this individual is known sexual offender.
'He attended at the show purporting to be a police officer needing to speak to the two stars.
'He was then ushered backstage and said that there were individuals who wanted them. He proceeded to request various personal details, including mobile phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses.'
Scobie also breaching sexual offences prevention order requirements by failing to notify police of a change of address and using a bank account not registered with the police to book the hotel and theatre tickets.
Mr Watts added: 'Using that back account, he has obviously booked these hotel rooms and he also used that bank account to book tickets to the show every night for 14 nights.'
The Scot had been likened to Leonardo DiCaprio's character in the hit movie Catch Me If You Can when he was jailed for a global travel con in 2014.
He fleeced travel agents out of more than 70,000 while booking flights around the world, and staying in hotels used by A-list celebrities.
Scobie admitted impersonating a police officer and wearing a police uniform with intent to deceive at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday
Scobie, who suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, was jailed for 12 months in Iceland last February for fraud and possessing indecent images of kids.
He was arrested when his New York-bound flight, paid for with a fake credit card, touched down to refuel in Rekjavik.
Scobie had admitted fraud charges as well as possessing and distributing 4,750 photographs and 345 videos of child porn at the District Court of Reykjanes.
Scobie, from Inchture, Perth, admitted impersonating a police officer, wearing a police uniform with intent to deceive and two counts of breaching the notification requirements of the sex offenders register.
Senator Penny Wong willing to work with rivals who support gay marriage
Openly gay Labor Senator Penny Wong says she is willing to work with any Liberal politician who supports same-sex marriage in an open vote in parliament.
The South Australian senator made the comments after the Senate voted against holding a plebiscite on the issue in February.
'I am willing to work with any Liberal who is prepared to do the right thing and vote with their conscience,' she said at the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday.
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Gay Labor Senator Penny Wong (pictured) has said she is willing to work with any Liberal politician who supports same-sex marriage in an open vote in parliament.
Labor has called for a parliamentary vote on the issue after Monday's senate vote against holding a plebiscite in February. Pictured is a same-sex marriage rally in Sydney
Senator Wong said she believed 'a majority of Australians do want marriage equality, in fact, the majority of our Parliament do want it and this is a time where people can work together'.
'Now we believe in the equality of men and women. We don't believe gay people are to be cast out.'
The Senate voted down the bill on Monday, enabling a national poll to go ahead in February and for marriage law changes to be made in early 2017.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Labor does not apologise for blocking the government's proposed plebiscite, and said Mr Turnbull had been 'too weak' to kill off the plebiscite idea.
'Labor makes no apologies for helping to block the plebiscite - the LGBTI community didn't want it and the Australian community didn't either,' Mr Shorten said on Tuesday.
But he said the issue was not off the agenda and Labor would continue to campaign for a free parliamentary vote.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (pictured) is under pressure from the Labor Party to allow a free vote on same-sex marriage
Opposition leader Bill Shorten (pictured) said Labor doesn't apologise for blocking the government's proposed plebiscite. He said Mr Turnbull had been 'too weak' to kill off the plebiscite idea
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said many Australians would be happy their relationships would not be subject to a nationwide vote.
'This has been a difficult period for many Australians, I know they'll be relieved at this decision but this is not where the fight for marriage equality ends.'
The idea of a plebiscite was first proposed by former prime minister Tony Abbott last year under pressure from coalition right wingers.
Labor, the Greens, the Nick Xenophon Team and independent Derryn Hinch voted against the bill on Monday.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek (pictured) said many Australians would be happy their relationships would not be subject to a nationwide vote
Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said it was time to move onto other issues after the government's election mandate was rejected.
'People in the Senate know full well the promise that was made to the Australian people and the alternate promise that was made by Mr Shorten,' he told reporters in Canberra.
'The coalition won and, if nothing else, you should respect the will of the Australian people.'
Australian Marriage Equality spokesman Alex Greenwich said his organisation would continue to lobby federal politicians for a parliamentary vote.
Several gay senators, including Labor's Penny Wong and Louise Pratt, made impassioned pleas against the plebiscite, telling parliament it would denigrate their families and subject them to hate speech.
Independent senator Jacqui Lambie said those opposed to the plebiscite had 'killed off people power'.
Along with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, she is discussing putting legislation to parliament to hold plebiscites on same-sex marriage, indigenous recognition and euthanasia at the next federal election, likely to be in 2019.
Some Chicago Area Voters Grapple With Huge Lines & Ballot Problems
By Stephen Gossett in News on Nov 8, 2016 4:13PM
Photo: Padraig McCoid
By Stephen Gossett and Rachel Cromidas
Updated 2:00 p.m.: When do you need to show ID before you vote, and when are you good to go without one? Get the answer here.
It was a tale of two very different voting experiences on Election Day in Chicago on Tuesday. Some lines were virtually nonexistent on Tuesday morning and the process glided along smoothly for voters; others encountered hour-plus waits and ballot issues, including incomplete ballots and confounded poll workers.
The line was longer than Ive ever seen, Padraig McCoid, who waited nearly an hour to vote, told Chicagoist. In 2008, I was in and out. In 2012, I waited three or four minutes to vote. Padraig, who voted at Alden Lincoln Park Rehab, in Lakeview, also said he received a text from a friend who was at a nearby polling place where that line was out the door.
The wait time at McCoids poll was a bit shorter after he voted, approximately 30 to 35 minutes, officials told the line. McCoid said it was "absolutely" worth the wait.
At my polling place this morning in Chicago. Line is 70 people deep at 6:40. So far longer wait than 2008. CognitiveDissonance (@dissonance_pod) November 8, 2016
The polling place where I am at has an average wait time of 1 HOUR!!! #AmericaDecides David Vox Mullen (@DavidVoxMullen) November 8, 2016
Nick Libert arrived at his polling place at 6:15 a.m. to a huge line, which stretched around the corner, at Agassiz Elementary School, also in Lakeview. But well-organized officials kept the queue in motion, he said. The line went very fast, Libert told Chicagoist. Three precincts were voting at once, and the poll workers very friendly.
Libert shared video of the huge, snaking line:
This is the 6:15 am line to #vote at Agassiz elementary in #Chicago -YES you will wait in line just as our forefathers stood the picket lines & fought on the front lines to do so. It's THAT important, especially this year. YYYYYY A video posted by Nick Libert (@nicklibert) on Nov 8, 2016 at 4:26am PST
Bryan Hearn told Chicagoist he waited an hour and 15 minutes to vote at the 44th Ward's District 5 polling place at Wellington and Pine Grove this morning. "Voting is important to me so I decided it was worth the wait," he said.
Jared Sagoff, 31, of Lincoln Park, told Chicagoist he waited nearly 90 minutes to vote this morning at the Lincoln Park Library.
"The line didn't look absurdly long at the beginning, maybe 40 to 45 people, but I spent over an hour just in line waiting to vote," he said. "It was inspiring because this was the first time I'd seen this kind of turnout."
Sagoff said some of the delay was probably caused by confusion among the poll workers over what documents voters needed to show before voting. Sagoff also said it was important to him to stay in line and finish voting despite the unexpectedly long wait.
"I have a workplace that understands that voting is important and that this is an essential part of what it means to be American and have a functional democracy," he said. "I feel all elections are important, but this one especially so in terms of protecting the values I believe in and working to ensure a just, equitable society. I spent part of the weekend going to Wisconsin to do Get Out The Vote in Kenosha, so I would have been a hypocrite to encourage other people to vote if I didn't end up voting myself."
Some Chicagoans have also reported problems with their electronic or paper ballots Tuesday morning. A 26-year-old Rogers Park woman (who requested anonymity) told Chicagoist that she initially did not receive the second page of her paper ballot when she went to vote around 6 a.m.
"After completing my ballot, I realized that some of the measures I'd read up on weren't on it. I went back to the man who had given [the ballot] to me and, after eventually getting his attention, asked, 'Wasn't there supposed to be a Lockbox Amendment on this, for Illinois?'" she said. "He looked at me blankly and finally a guy next to him said 'There's a second page' and handed it to me. The first guy said, 'Well I didn't know.'"
The woman completed her ballot, and then called the Department of Justice to report the problem at her polling site. She said it was unclear whether any other voters at her site did not receive their full ballots either.
A West Side woman who voted electronically at the Greater Youth Center at 3679 W. Grand Ave. told Chicagoist she couldn't vote for more than the first three races on the ballot because of problems with her voting machine. She said she and a poll worker contacted the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners to report the problem, but because she had already selected "cast ballot," it was too late to fix the problem for her.
"Because the ballot is already cast, I can't vote the remaining races," she said. "Lesson learned, ask for help sooner next time."
We're far from the only city with long lines to the polls this morning; check out our sister site Gothamist's coverage of New York City's lines here.
A German neo-Nazi who went swimming at a public baths with a picture of the death camp of Auschwitz tattooed on his back has been jailed.
Marcel Zech, 28, is a politician with the far-right NPD party which the German government has been unsuccessfully trying to ban for years.
He also had the words 'Jedem das seinem' etched on his skin.
This sinister motto translates as 'everyone gets what he deserves' and was inscribed at the entrance to the brutal Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
Marcel Zech was jailed for combining an image of the Auschwitz death camp with the slogan from the Buchenwald concentration camp's gate, 'Jedem das Seine' 'to each his own'
The German politician has been jailed for eight months after originally getting a suspended sentence in December
More than a million Jews were killed at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland during the war, while tens of thousands of people were murdered and worked to death at Buchenwald.
Displays of Nazi images in public are strictly forbidden under Germany's postwar constitution and Zech was jailed for eight months by a court in Brandenburg on Monday for sedition.
The sentence was the result of an appeal by prosecutors against an earlier court verdict which handed him down a six month suspended jail term.
Marcel Zech admitted displaying the tattoo while at a swimming pool. Prosecutors appealed after a district court in Oranienburg gave him a six-month suspended sentence in December
Jorn Kalbow, the court chairman said; 'A suspended sentence would have been perceived by the population as a retreat from the dangers of right-wing radicalism.'
Zech horrified bathers at a swimming pool in the state of Brandenburg near Berlin last year when he was seen with the hate-filled tattoos on show.
The 28-year-old has a criminal record for race hate crimes.
In June last year he was ordered to pay 360 Euros after posing as a police officer to try to learn the identities of anti-fascist demonstrators who tore down NPD posters in his town.
In a 2013 court appearance he was fined 1,200 Euros for assault. In 2014 he was elected as a local councillor in Barnim.
He works as a window cleaner and, according to media reports, has been seen at least once before swimming in a lake with his tattoos on show. On his stomach he has a tattoo of an old Reich eagle - not a forbidden symbol.
Zech horrified bathers at a swimming pool in the state of Brandenburg near Berlin last year when he was seen with the hate-filled tattoos on show
On his left arm he has a black sun, a typical Nazi-era symbol.
Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency, lists him as a 'neo-Nazi.'
He belongs to one group which provocatively buried a wooden swastika in the ground opposite the gates of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.
In court he wore a Thor Steiner sweat shirt - an apparel line in Europe favoured by far-right sympathisers - and appeared shocked when he was told he would be going to jail.
His lawyer said the Auschwitz tattoo had since been modified to portray popular German cartoon characters Max and Moritz. But the Buchenwald script apparently remains unchanged.
A family-of-13 has been awarded 30,000 in damages after 11 members of the party were struck down with a crippling stomach bug during a five-star Thomson holiday.
Retired couple Brian and Pamela Pilling from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, had organised the luxury 17,000 break for their family to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt.
But the trip turned to disaster just days after arriving at the Sea Club Resort hotel after 11 family members fell ill and two became so sick they had to be put on drips.
They were so ill with sickness, stomach cramps and fever that many were unable to return to work when they arrived back to the UK with Mr Pilling, 69, a retired labourer, blaming poor food hygiene at the hotel for their illnesses.
Brian and Pamela Pilling (front) from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, had organised the luxury 17,000 break for 13 family members to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt but all but two of them fell ill
The trip turned to disaster just days after the family of 13 (above) arrived at the Sea Club Resort hotel after 11 family members fell ill with two becoming so sick they had to be put on drips
The family has now been awarded a 29,850 settlement by Thomson after appointing personal injury claim lawyers on their return to the UK.
In total, Mr Pilling said the family spent 17,000 on the break but were left further out of pocket by paying doctors fees while they were at the resort.
He said the family had hoped for a dream break with visits to the beach and the pool as well as camel trekking and quad biking.
But instead, their trip was ruined as all but two of the party fell ill, forcing some to seek medical attention, writing off the rest of their trip and leaving them with nothing but hundreds of pounds of doctor's fees.
He said: 'When I retired at 66 I decided to pay for all of the family to stay in a five star hotel in Turkey. It was a fantastic holiday and was the first time we had all been together in such luxury.
'Everyone enjoyed themselves so much that they wanted to do it again, but obviously I could not afford to pay for it all again so they all scrimped and saved going without a lot of comforts to save up for the holiday in Egypt.
'We were all so excited thinking it would be as much fun as the Turkey holiday. The anticipation was unbelievable.
The Pilling family (Brian and Pam are pictured) has now been awarded a 29,850 settlement by Thomson after appointing personal injury claim lawyers on their return to the UK
Mr Pilling said the family spent 17,000 on the break but were left further out of pocket by paying doctors fees while they were at the resort. A total of 11 of the 13 family fell unwell
'Our biggest worry was the mosquitos, but this turned out to be the least of our problems.
'When I woke up early on the fifth day of the holiday feeling sick with stomach pains I thought at first it would just be a day thing, a little gastric upset but wow was I wrong.
'I spent all morning on the toilet fortunate that there was a sink right next to it so I could just lean over it - I couldn't keep anything down.
'In the end, we had to ask the hotel doctor to visit. He immediately put me on an intravenous rehydration with antibiotics and paracetamol.
'The following morning, everyone else all started dropping like flies to varying degrees, with Pam joining me as being one of the worst hit.
'She needed the same treatment as me but had to have an extra bottle of fluids as her dehydration was worse than mine.
'The holiday was a great disappointment devastated by illness and I wish we had never gone.
'One very expensive holiday ruined.'
Solicitor Sue Robinson, from law firm Your Holiday Claims, handled all 13 members of the family (pictured) claims for compensation and secured a settlement of 29,850 in total
The family believe food at the Sea Club Resort hotel in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt was to blame
Even after the family returned home to the UK, all were left suffering from sudden bouts of diarrhoea with some forced to seek further medical attention.
Some were unable to return to work for a number of days due to the persistence of their illness.
Mr Pilling said that he and his wife, 66, were forced to cancel a planned holiday to France scheduled a month after their return, as the GP feared the couple were still too weak to travel.
He is certain that poor hygiene at the Sea Club Resort was responsible for his family's suffering.
'All the food seemed to be of quite good quality but my son-in-law spotted some chicken that still looked pink at the BBQ,' he said.
The holiday was a great disappointment devastated by illness and I wish we had never gone. One very expensive holiday ruined Brian Pilling
'As the area was dimly lit, we only noticed the colour of the meat after most of the family had already eaten.
'We were also concerned by the number of sparrows flying around and in the beach restaurant.
'Although the restaurant was covered and surrounded by netting, the birds had an entrance to fly in and out of and were always seen around any uncovered food,' he said.
Solicitor Sue Robinson, from law firm Your Holiday Claims, handled all 13 claims for compensation and secured a settlement of 29,850 in total.
She said: 'I am overjoyed that I was able to help Brian, Pamela and their family obtain compensation after such a dreadful experience at the Sea Club Resort.
'Throughout 2015 and 2016, we were inundated with enquiries from stricken Sea Club guests. Many had suffered gastric illness symptoms, like the Pillings, and faced out of pocket expenses for medical care or missed days at work on their return home.
'I would strongly urge anyone who has suffered from illness on a package holiday at this resort within the last three years to come forward and contact Your Holiday Claims.'
A domestic violence victim has reduced her tormentor to tears in court with an emotional letter to him in which she detailed how he had broken her into pieces.
The woman, aged 22, of Oldham, Greater Manchester, was beaten up by boyfriend Scott Hughes, 28, in jealous rages after he wrongly accused her of being unfaithful to him.
In one attack Hughes tied her up in his flat and threatened to dump her on the former killing fields of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady at Saddleworth Moor.
The victim, aged 22, of Oldham, Greater Manchester, was beaten up by her boyfriend Scott Hughes (pictured) in jealous rages after he wrongly accused her of being unfaithful to him
In another he stamped on her head and bit her before stabbing her in the side of her torso with a kitchen knife, Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester heard.
She was treated for six days in hospital for a wound below her rib cage and doctors discovered she had a fractured rib from a previous incident.
Scott Hughes was tried and sentenced at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester (pictured)
Police who arrested Hughes discovered he had a string of previous convictions - including domestic violence upon a former partner.
Hughes was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to false imprisonment, common assault and causing grievous bodily harm.
He fought back tears as the letter was read as follows: You always said you will know when you have grown up because you will notice you chose the grown up decision.
Something inside me has changed now. Im not even going to try and hide it but want you to know you have completely destroyed and broken me into pieces.
Ever since that date Ive been unable to do things on a daily basis. The things that now leave me in fear and panic.
I dont eat the same, sleep the same or walk down the street the same - and this is all down to you and your actions.
Threat: In one attack Hughes tied up the woman in his flat and threatened to dump her on the former killing fields of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady at Saddleworth Moor (pictured in 1965)
I want to thank you because I did learn a lot from you and you did make me believe in myself. I will never be the same girl again but maybe thats not a bad thing.
Im a strong person both inside and out, despite how you broke me down. I have good days and bad days and a feeling of a constant dull ache.
I get flash backs of that day on repeat mode in my head and I cant erase that. The panic in your eyes when you realised what happened.
Waiting for the ambulance to arrive felt like ages. Scott, you dont know what you did to someone you were supposed to love.
The scars I have are emotional, mental and physical and will be with me for possibly my life. I wish I could take them away but I cant.
I hope any future relationship youre in doesnt end up in the same way, or even worse. I would never have hurt you in the way you hurt me - you could have killed me.
The couple began dating in August 2015 after meeting in a shop where she worked as an assistant.
Duncan Wilcock, prosecuting, said: He told her he was on probation for domestic violence in the past but that didnt put her off - if anything it reassured her he was being honest.
But problems began in the relationship from October when it seems she told him small white lies and he found out, and began to doubt whether she had been faithful to him.
He would check her mobile phone and delete male members off her Facebook page. She gave up her job.
Last December she was at Hughess flat when he suddenly began accusing her of being unfaithful towards him and he tied her to a chair for one and a half hours.
Mr Wilcock said: Throughout that time he was abusive towards her and threatened to take her on to the moors.
He even made a pretend phone call to a friend asking for the friend to bring a white van round. She genuinely believed at that stage that that threat would be carried out.
Ultimately she was released after the hour and a half. Through fear she continued with the relationship.
IN FULL: EMOTIONAL LETTER BY THE VICTIM 'You always said you will know when you have grown up because you will notice you chose the grown up decision. Something inside me has changed now. 'Im not even going to try and hide it but want you to know you have completely destroyed and broken me into pieces. Ever since that date Ive been unable to do things on a daily basis. The things that now leave me in fear and panic. 'I dont eat the same, sleep the same or walk down the street the same - and this is all down to you and your actions. I want to thank you because I did learn a lot from you and you did make me believe in myself. I will never be the same girl again but maybe thats not a bad thing. 'Im a strong person both inside and out, despite how you broke me down. I have good days and bad days and a feeling of a constant dull ache. I get flash backs of that day on repeat mode in my head and I cant erase that. The panic in your eyes when you realised what happened. Waiting for the ambulance to arrive felt like ages. 'Scott, you dont know what you did to someone you were supposed to love. The scars I have are emotional, mental and physical and will be with me for possibly my life. I wish I could take them away but I cant. I hope any future relationship youre in doesnt end up in the same way, or even worse. I would never have hurt you in the way you hurt me - you could have killed me.' Advertisement
Last May Hughes punched her in the stomach and ribs repeatedly leaving her with bruising and following month set about her again during another jealousy-fuelled argument.
The prosecutor said: He began calling her names and accused her of seeing somebody else.
She said she would undergo some lie detector tests to show she hadnt been with anyone else but he began assaulting her.
She would try to move away but he would grab her. He punched her a few times in the back and had bitten on her finger.
He also tried to strangle her two or three times. He stamped on her head twice and began to hit her with punches.
She went into another room and started putting her clothes into a bag but he followed her in and she felt a pain to her right side, it felt very sore and when she looked down she saw there was a lot of blood.
She was in pain and felt confused and saw knife in the bedroom. He appeared to change, saying Im sorry, baby girl.
In her statement she described how she had been a bubbly person and felt that had been taken away, she no longer trusts any body and is very wary.
Hughes, from Oldham, had 19 previous convictions including 12 assaults dating back to 2004. One related to a former partner who was strangled and punched.
Julian Goode, defending, said: There is clear remorse and shame and has a desire to change. He had a difficult background.
His parents separated at nine and he was removed from the school system at 13.
He witnessed domestic violence and was the victim of physical abuse at the hands of his parents. Hes a man who requires medication.
But passing sentence, Judge Timothy Mort told Hughes: You cannot control your jealousy and instead you had to control this relationship and you were always suspicious she was in a relationship with someone else.
This obviously completely destroyed the element of trust. She wanted to carry on and she loved you for all your faults but despite that there were these very serious incidents which occurred.
You executed your male strength over her and it must have been terrifying. This was a heart rendering account of a woman who was very fond of you. Indeed you caused her huge emotional damage because of the way you treated her.
Im aware of the tragic background you have but in each relationship you have, some problem seems to crop up. My concern is protection of the public.
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Eerie images of an abandoned boarding school for the Nazi elite, that was attended by Hitler's nephew Heinz, have emerged from Germany.
The series of haunting pictures show grand assembly halls where children as young as 11 would have been brainwashed with the Nazis' evil ideology.
There were 38 Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (National Political Institutes of Education) built all over Germany after Hitler's ascent to power in 1933.
Imagine the dozens of students who sat in these chairs in the 1930s and 1940s, having Nazi ideology inculcated into their impressionable minds
The building is spectacular from the outside. It's a typically massive Nazi building, borrowing elements from neoclassicism
Photographer Jan Bommes, 41, from Kiel, took these photographs of one of the former schools, which lies abandoned in Ballenstedt, near Leipzig.
The school's purpose was to 'educate the students to National Socialists, strong in body and mind for the service to the people and the state'.
This one was the only-purpose built school, the other 37 having been converted schools, castles, hospitals and monasteries.
After the war it is thought the school was converted for use by the communist authorities in East Germany. It is not known if these projectors date from the Nazi era or the Soviet era
The building, which was used as a school up until fairly recently, contains reams of oddities from days gone by
After the war it was converted for use as a school by the German's Democratic Republic (GDR) - better known as communist East Germany.
The school was still in use after the reunification of Germany in 1990 and only became derelict relatively recently.
Wasps and horseflies buzz around two large projectors, which sit in an abandoned hall.
There were 38 of these schools in Nazi Germany but this was the only purpose-built one. The only part of the school which is still used is the old dining hall, which was converted into a modern gymnasium and is still being used by local sports clubs
Hitler's nephew Heinz (pictured, left) attended the school in the 1930s. He later joined the Wehrmacht and was killed after being captured on the Eastern Front in 1942
Once they would have played anti-Jewish propaganda or newsreels of the Nuremberg rallies to mould the minds of the impressionable students, who included Hitler's nephew, Heinz.
Born in 1920, Heinz attended the school in the 1930s. As a teenager Heinz and his friends got into the usual scrapes.
His classmate Hans-Wolf Werner recalled: 'One of the lads had a car. They tore through (nearby) Magdeburg without a licence. The police stopped them and he showed his ID - Heinz Hitler - and the police just saluted and let them drive on. Haha.'
He dutifully joined the Wehrmacht just before the war, serving on the Eastern Front but being captured by the Red Army.
The Soviets learned of his identity and he was mercilessly tortured to death at the Butyrka prison camp near Moscow.
The classrooms now stand empty but in the 1930s and 1940s the students were taught half-baked theories about eugenics and the superiority of the German race
The school contains a first aid room (left) and an office (right), which contains old film projection material
The assembly hall would have looked virtually identical 85 years ago as the students were brainwashed by their teachers
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Theresa May is on the last day of her trade trip to India
Theresa May donned a sari on the final day of her visit to India, as she declared the trade mission a success in her drive to build 'global Britain'.
Mrs May wore the traditional Indian clothing as she visited the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple in Bangalore, the southern city which has become the IT sector hub of the sub-continent.
The PM has been leading a business delegation with the aim of bringing down barriers to commerce and paving the way for a free trade agreement following Brexit.
Speaking to Sky News at the end of her three-day visit, she said: 'Leaving the EU presents us with a world of opportunities and I'm determined to seize them.
'That's why I'm here in India, delivering on global Britain. And I have to say the response has been very good.
'During this visit, we've seen 1 billion worth of deals being signed and we've come to an agreement with the Indian government that we will work together with them on developing our trade relationship for the future.
'What does that mean? It means more jobs, more investment in the UK, more trade for British businesses and that's good for everyone.'
The first leg of Mrs May's visit, in the capital, New Delhi, was dominated by tensions over visas, with Indian PM Narendra Modi putting pressure on the UK to ease restrictions on students and skilled workers coming to Britain.
Mrs May announced new measures to make trips to the UK easier for senior business executives, and she offered to discuss improvements in the visa application process for Indian citizens in return for greater co-operation over the return of migrants who overstay their permission to remain.
The PM donned traditional garb as she visited the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple in Bangalore
Theresa May hailed a joint UK-Indian hi-tech engineering project as she visited the city of Bangalore as part of a drive to boost trade. Pictured, the Prime Minister watches a flypast by the Indian Air Force with pupils at a primary school in Bangalore
Mrs May, who was this afternoon flying back to Britain, made India the first destination outside Europe for her first bilateral as PM
But for the Prime Minister, trade has been the priority, with deals sealed during the trip expected to create more than 1,300 jobs in the UK.
Mrs May issued a warning on Monday of the risks of stagnation and falling incomes if the UK fails to make a determined push for new trade opportunities after Brexit.
'As Britain leaves the EU, we're determined not to turn our backs on the world but to forge a new, global, outward-looking role for ourselves,' she told a business summit in New Delhi.
Mrs May went to the temple on the final leg of her visit to India today, before boarding her official plane for the flight home
Mrs May told ITV News: 'The message I've had here is that people actively want to do business with the UK.'
'Because we know from history what happens when countries do not embrace the opportunities of the world - they stagnate, they get poorer, they don't protect their people, they make them worse off.'
Mrs May said she had detected real interest in India in doing more trade with Britain after its departure from the EU, which she aims to complete by 2019.
She told ITV News: 'The message I've had here is that people actively want to do business with the UK.'
'The message I'm getting is that everybody wants to build on the trade relationship that the UK has with India. They see opportunities and benefits for India and the UK going forward.'
Mrs May received a gift after visiting the Sri Someshwara Temple after she had earlier travelled to Bangalore on a three-day trade mission designed to pave the way for close commercial links with the south Asian giant after Brexit
Mrs May's trip has seen memorandums of understanding signed on intellectual property rights and the ease of doing business in India, and she and Mr Modi agreed to co-operate on cyber-security and tackling violent extremism online
An Indian Hindu priest escorts British Prime Minister Theresa May during her visit to Someshwara Swamy temple in Bangalore, India
Although EU rules block the UK from entering formal negotiations on a free trade deal with India until withdrawal is complete, Mrs May has made clear she is determined to do the groundwork for an early post-Brexit agreement and to tackle barriers to trade which can be dealt with immediately.
Her trip has seen memorandums of understanding signed on intellectual property rights and the ease of doing business in India, and she and Mr Modi agreed to co-operate on cyber-security and tackling violent extremism online.
Although EU rules block the UK from entering formal negotiations on a free trade deal with India until withdrawal is complete, Mrs May has made clear she is determined to do the groundwork for an early post-Brexit agreement
During her trip, Mrs May announced new measures to make trips to the UK easier for senior business executives, and she offered to discuss improvements in the visa application process for Indian citizens
Mrs May left the Someshwara Temple in Bangalore surrounded by aides and other staff after her visit in Bangalore
In Bangalore, she visited a Dynamatic Technologies factory where Indian workers assemble components machined in the company's Swindon and Bristol facilities for Airbus jets.
And she joined flag-waving children at the city's Stonehill Primary School to witness a flypast of Indian Air Force jets and helicopters in her honour.
The flypast was the first of its kind offered to a visiting head of government, and follows a similar display by the Red Arrows during Mr Modi's visit to the UK last year.
First stop was the Dynamatic Technologies factory where Indian workers assemble components machined in the company's Swindon and Bristol facilities for Airbus jets.
The contract for flap track beams for Airbus 330s is worth 120 million to the UK economy over 10 years and has created 60 new jobs across Dynamatic's two UK sites and 100 jobs in Bangalore.
Theresa May travelled to the IT capital of India on the final day of a three-day trade mission designed to pave the way for close commercial links with the south Asian giant after Brexit. Pictured, the Prime Minister meets pupils at a Bangalore primary school
Therea May watches a flypast by the Indian Air Force with pupils at a primary school in Bangalore today
Theresa May (pictured being greeted at Bangalore's airport today) announced new measures to make trips to the UK easier for senior business executives, and she offered to discuss improvements in the visa application process for Indian citizens in return for greater co-operation over the return of migrants who overstay their permission to stay
Touring the Bangalore plant, Mrs May said: 'This collaboration between Dynamatic Technologies UK and Indian workforce demonstrates the strength of the UK's partnership with India.
'It showcases British technology with Indian manufacturing and delivers real benefit to both our economies, creating jobs back in Swindon and Bristol as well as here in India.'
The first leg of Mrs May's three-day visit, in capital New Delhi, was dominated by tensions over visas, with Indian PM Narendra Modi putting pressure on the UK to ease restrictions on students and skilled workers coming to Britain.
Mrs May announced new measures to make trips to the UK easier for senior business executives, and she offered to discuss improvements in the visa application process for Indian citizens in return for greater co-operation over the return of migrants who overstay their permission to stay.
A desperate 19-year-old in China has posted an advertisement to sell herself in order to raise money for her ill mother's medical treatment.
In a post on Chinese social media, Cao Mengyuan said the treatment would cost around 350,000 Yuan (41,000), but whoever offered the highest price would win the right to 'use her body at will'.
An insider today told MailOnline that a 'generous boss' had responded to the advertisement and agreed to help Cao cover her mother's medical bills.
However, the insider declined to reveal what the man intended to do with Cao.
'I am selling myself': 19-year-old Cao Mengyuan has posted an advertisement to sell herself
Cao's mother (right) was diagnosed with cancer, but her family couldn't afford the treatment
Cao posted the advertisement titled '(I am) selling myself' on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, reported QQ.com
Cao claimed in the post that she was born and raised at a rural household in Gaozhou city of southern China.
She said her mother was 45 years old and had been a farmer all her life.
She also said her mother had been diagnosed with skin cancer recently and had been admitted into the Gaozhou People's Hospital for almost a week.
She added that her mother's health was deteriorating and serious infection had started developing on her right thigh.
Cao said that to treat her mother's illness, they would need about 350,000 Yuan (41,604), however her mother did not have medical insurance and her family would not be able to afford the cost.
Cao wrote in the post: 'I wish that a kind-hearted person could buy me, so my mother can undergo the operation.'
The message went on: 'After the transaction, I am willing to work at the will of the buyer in return. I will do whatever the buyer asked me to do. I never go back on my word.'
At the end of the post, Cao wrote: 'Everything I said is true. I will sell myself to the highest bidder.
Then the young woman left her contact number.
Cao also said that she was the eldest of five children in her family and that she was responsible for her family's misfortune.
Heart-breaking: The desperate woman said to treat her ill mother it would cost around 41K
Cao said her family could't afford the treatment and hoped kind-hearted people could help
According to the report on QQ.com, Cao dropped out of high school due to her family's poor financial situation and is currently working as a labourer picking up casual shifts.
She earned less than 1,000 Yuan (118) every month to support her family members, including her elderly father and young siblings.
The report also said that the doctors at the Gaozhou People's Hospital had suggested her mother, named Wu Zhaofang, be transferred to a larger hospital.
However, Cao and her family couldn't afford to do so.
Cao's social media post has ignited thousands of comments on QQ.com, with many people expressing sympathy towards Cao.
One user said: 'If I were her, I might do the same thing.'
Another one said: 'Rich kids can spend 350,000 yuan in a few months, while it's astronomical for a poor family.'
A third user said: 'Although she's innocent, I really don't think we should encourage such behavior.'
Cao (left) said her mother (right) had been admitted into the hospital for almost a week
The doctors suggested her mother be transferred to a larger hospital, but Cao couldn't afford
Huang Qiliang, the founder of a Chinese charity, told MailOnline today that Cao's story was true.
Mr Huang runs Gong Yi Pai Ke, an nonprofit organization which helps connect donors with people in need of medical funds and tuition fees.
He told MailOnline that he visited Cao and her mother at Gaozhou People's Hospital on November 6.
Mr Huang also said that a 'generous boss' had agreed to pay all the medical bills for Cao's mother after seeing Cao's post.
Mr Huang declined to reveal what the man intended to do with Cao.
However, he added: 'It has been settled. She doesn't have to sell anything now.'
Perth Zoo's only male lion has tragically died during a routine dental surgery.
Mandela, who was 14 years old, died suddenly from heart failure as he was having dental surgery to remove two fractured teeth on Tuesday.
The West Australian zoo said veterinarians did everything they could to revive the lion, but could not save him in the end.
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Perth Zoo's only male lion, Mandela (pictured), has died during routine surgery
Perth Zoo spokesperson Danielle Henry told WA Today it was a textbook procedure but Mandela went into heart failure right towards the end.
She said vets performed CPR on Mandela and managed to revive him twice.
But on the third time, Ms Henry said Mandela crashed again and they were not able to bring him back.
'It definitely wasn't something we were expecting and it was quite sudden,' she said.
Vets performed CPR on Mandela (pictured) and managed to revive him twice, but failed to save him in the end
Ms Henry said Mandela was part of the family at Perth Zoo and staff were left shattered.
'We've cared for him since 2007 and our staff are absolutely devastated,' she said.
The loss of Mandela was felt particularly hard because he was the only male lion left, after his brother Nelson succumbed to pneumonia in April 2016.
Mandela the lion (pictured) died suddenly from heart failure during dental surgery to remove two fractured teeth
Both lions were taken to Perth Zoo's Savannah in 2007 and were 14-years-old when they died.
After his passing, Mandela was described by the zoo as a dominant male 'with the battle scars to show for it'.
While the loss of both its male lions this year rocked the zoo, Perth Zoo said it still had a lioness, Shinyanga, who was born in 1999 and had lived at the zoo since 2012.
Senior veterinarian Simone Vitali said Mandela was a very sociable animal who captured the hearts of people who both worked at and visited the zoo.
Perth Zoo said the loss of Mandela (pictured) was devastating and staff were left shattered
'The loss of Mandela within the same year (as Nelson's death) is a real blow for everyone ... a total shock for everybody,' Ms Vitali told ABC News.
'Everybody is trying to deal with that now and go through their processes and get support from one another.'
Ms Vitali said the dental procedure was very routine for the zoo and there were no signs leading up to his cardiac arrest that would suggest anything was wrong.
She said the anesthetic was running routinely, and his health was in good condition right up until he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating.
The zoo said it was now in the process of conducting an autopsy on Mandela to discover what caused his heart to give way.
Engulfed in crisis: Tesco Bank boss Benny Higgins must face MPs over the crisis - but he has been warned by experts there may be an inside man or woman
An international crime gang stole up to 17million in the cyber-attack on Tesco Bank but security experts have warned bosses it could be an inside job.
Britain's FBI are investigating claims fraudsters in Brazil and Spain hit more than a quarter of Tesco's current-account customers in the biggest ever raid on a British bank.
Benny Higgins, Tesco Bank's red-haired four times married boss, is to be hauled before MPs after 40,000 accounts were hacked and 20,000 had millions emptied from them.
Despite clear links to fraudsters abroad, IT security experts believe there was probably a mole inside Tesco Bank helping the thieves.
Cliff Moyce, of DataArt, said: 'The chances of the crime being a remote technical hack via a network intrusion is much less than 50 per cent. Far more likely is the action or inaction of a human actor, or weak process management controls.'
Security expert Ed Macnair, of CensorNet, said: 'People are the weakest link for most organisations, and I would not be at all surprised if that's the case here. It's pretty hard to remotely hack into a network without some sort of assistance.'
The bank was forced to freeze all online transactions yesterday, causing further problems for anxious customers who had already faced long waits to speak to staff.
As police investigated the attack and the crisis engulfing the company deepened it emerged yesterday that:
Tesco Bank has faced repeated warnings over its lacklustre security systems;
Criminal gangs in Brazil have been targeting its customers for months;
The Financial Conduct Authority and Information Commissioner's Office are investigating the weekend's cyber-attack;
The Tory MP who heads the Commons Treasury committee called on the bank to explain what had happened.
Tesco saw a sharp fall in its share price yesterday as City regulators began a probe that could result in millions of pounds in fines if a breach of security rules is found.
Experts said the cyber-attack was the most significant ever on a UK bank, leading to fears a criminal network or even a foreign government may be responsible.
The National Crime Agency, which tackles organised and international crime, has also started investigating the hack. Since February Tesco Bank customers have been targeted by criminal gangs operating in Brazil a hub of banking fraud where much of the stolen money was channelled.
The bank yesterday had to apologise after customers accused staff of treating them with 'complete contempt' and making derisory offers of 25 compensation.
Tesco Bank customers checked balances online after being alerted to 'fraudulent activity' to find amounts from 20 to 3,000 had disappeared. File image
The security breach unfolded on Saturday night, when criminals are thought to have gained access to Tesco Bank's computer systems, possibly using log-in information that had been stolen previously.
Customers checked balances online after being alerted to 'fraudulent activity' to find amounts from 20 to 3,000 had disappeared.
'I COULDN'T BUY ANY FOOD' Mother of three Clare Monaghan said she was considering leaving Tesco banking after a 'nightmare' two days of being unable to withdraw money. She said she was blocked from her online account and has been unable to use her cards since the weekend. Mrs Monaghan, from Hertfordshire, was alerted to the problems when she noticed fellow outraged customers on social media on Sunday. Tesco Bank did not contact her until yesterday morning, when she received a text. She said the freeze on her account meant she has unable to do vital food shopping and had also scuppered her plans to buy Christmas presents during a one-off toy sale. 'This should never have happened in the first place and to be left without any money is outrageous and unfair,' Mrs Monaghan added. Advertisement
The firm initially claimed fewer than 10,000 accounts had been affected, but Tesco Bank's boss yesterday revealed its scale was much more significant.
Benny Higgins said hackers gained access to 40,000 of the bank's 136,000 current accounts, and took money from 20,000.
If each of those affected had 1,000 taken, that would mean 20million was stolen in total.
Tesco Bank, which has more than 7million customers overall, has refused to reveal how much was taken or how the hackers gathered the details of so many customers.
But some customers say multiple payments were siphoned from their accounts primarily to firms based in Brazil, but also some in Spain.
Nearly half of Brazil's residents have fallen victim to banking fraud in the past five years.
Criminals began targeting the bank earlier this year with 'phishing' messages that try to trick customers into handing over information. The messages, sent between January and April, secretly re-directed users to a number of Brazil-based websites.
Other account-holders suggested the perpetrators may have found a way to access the details of debit cards linked to current accounts.
Tesco Bank, which has more than 7million customers overall, has refused to reveal how much was taken or how the hackers gathered the details of so many customers. File image
One said somebody tried to pay for goods in Rio de Janeiro at 9am on Sunday with his card, despite the fact he never used it himself. He said: 'It appears to the bank that someone has worked out the algorithm to create card numbers and start/end dates.
'They told us that the specific transaction was a card-holder present and it was a swipe of the magnetic strip-type of transaction.'
'IT'S SHOCKING. I TRUSTED THEM' 500 missing: Customer Mark Noakes, 49 Mark Noakes discovered that about 500 was missing from his joint account when he received a text message yesterday morning. The 49-year-old, from Northamptonshire, said he spoke to Tesco customer services who confirmed there were transactions on his account that were not made by himself or his wife. He said a staff member refused to confirm the amounts involved and that there was no information on the companies which had received the money. The technical manager for a food firm described the lack of details as 'concerning', adding: 'She could confirm there was money taken out but she had no more information on it. 'It's shocking more than anything, as you trust someone with your money only to find out it's gone. They have been slow to respond to something so major.' Mr Noakes, who thankfully had access to cash in accounts with other banks, added: 'I think it is a flaw with their security.' Advertisement
Tesco Bank was forced to cancel an unknown number of credit cards earlier this year over a 'data breach', and was the target of a widespread phishing scam last year.
Tory MP Chris Philp, who sits on the Commons Treasury committee, said a 'very well-equipped organisation' was behind the attack, and even suggested it may have been 'state-sponsored'.
He said: 'I think it is deeply worrying that a respectable institution like Tesco Bank has apparently been victim to a massive-scale hacking operation.'
He also called for regulators to ensure banks spend enough on maintaining their 'often crumbling' technological infrastructure.
The committee's chairman, Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, said he will write to Mr Higgins to demand answers and seek reassurances a similar attack will not happen again.
'This is just the latest in a long list of failures and breaches of banking IT systems, exposing many thousands of customers to uncertainty and disruption,' he said.
Tesco Bank was criticised for its hapless response to concerned customers, who faced jammed phone lines as they tried to get answers.
And current-account customers had to endure yet more frustration yesterday as online transactions and debit payments were frozen by the bank.
Experts said the fraudsters may have targeted current accounts as they are linked to a higher number of payments than savings accounts, therefore allowing the criminals more access before the alarm would be raised.
US cyber-security firm boss Tom Kellermann said: 'It is remarkable how many of these accounts were compromised and then pillaged in a relatively short period of time.'
Professor Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey, added: 'I've not heard of an attack of this nature and scale on a UK bank where it appears that the bank's central system is the target.'
Attacks on financial institutions in Britain have risen from five in 2014 to more than 75 so far this year, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
The attack came days after Chancellor Philip Hammond announced a 1.9billion strategy to deal with the increased cyber-security threat faced by the UK.
Mr Higgins said: 'We can reassure customers that any financial loss as a result of this activity will be resolved fully by Tesco Bank.'
Brisbane was battered by huge hailstones and more than 3,000 lightning strikes as fierce storms pounded south-east Queensland.
More than 2,000 homes were without power after the storm on Tuesday afternoon, which saw 18mm of rain fall in just 30 minutes.
Shocked residents filmed as massive hailstones crashed to the earth, with 5cm chunks of ice coming down in Ipswich, west of Brisbane.
The ferocious storm is the just the start of the bad weather in Queensland this week, with four more days of thunder and lightning ahead.
Brisbane was battered by huge hailstones and more than 3,000 lightning strikes as fierce storms rolled into Queensland
The first flashes of lightning were spotted at around 3pm on the outskirts of Brisbane and continued until at least 6pm
Flash: As many as 3,000 lightning bolts hit Brisbane and Ipswich today, but no one was hurt
The first flashes of lightning were spotted about 3pm on the outskirts of Brisbane and continued until at least 6pm.
As many as 3,000 lightning bolts hit Brisbane and Ipswich today, according to Weatherzone, but fortunately no one was hurt.
The summer storm came on the hottest day in parts of Brisbane since February, with highs of just under 38C.
But the temperature quickly plummeted by up to seven degrees as the rain and hail swept in.
More than 2,000 homes are with out power, with most of the blackouts on the Sunshine Coast, the Brisbane Times reported.
There were further power cuts in Ipswich and Brisbane's CBD.
Shocked residents filmed as massive hailstones crashed to the earth, with 5cm chunks of ice coming down in Ipswich
The ferocious storm is the just the start of the bad weather in Queensland this week, with four more days of thunder and lightning ahead
The summer storm came on the hottest day in parts of Brisbane since February, with highs of just under 38C
Calm: This cat did not seem too fussed by the a huge bolt of lightning outside its window
Darwin is also facing a week of storms, with no sign of a day without thunder and lightning in the next week.
After a balmy weekend, Sydney is in for a couple of cooler few days.
Showers are forecast on Wednesday and Thursday, with the sunshine returning in proper on Sunday, when temperatures could reach 29C.
It will be a wet week in Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide too.
Perth is set for showers too, with rain on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. But the west coast city will be bathed in sunshine on Sunday and Monday, when temperatures could reach 31C.
Meanwhile, in Hobart, it will be cloudy tomorrow, with highs of 20C, before a week of rain.
This is the moment a man was set ablaze in front a huge crowd before he went running into the darkness engulfed in flames,
The stunned audience watched as fearless fireball Antony Britton ran for over 50 seconds before falling to the ground in a crumpled heap.
An emergency crew with fire extinguishers rushed to his aid and miraculously daredevil Antony escaped with only minor injuries.
Prior to making the run, which took place before 2,000 people at Wandle Park in Croydon, Antony Britton said he was focused and comfortable despite not being able to see clearly
Then he was soaked with accelerant and set ablaze and immediately set off on his world record attempt
Wearing anti-burn barrier gel, three pairs of overalls, balaclavas and boots Mr Britton ran 181.2m whilst cloaked in flames and smashed a world record for the longest distance covered by a burning man.
The previous best was 161.27m set in 2013 by American stuntman Ted Batchelor.
But as he threw himself to the ground for his support team to extinguish the flames, he had no idea whether he'd succeeded.
'I knew what my goal was and that I had to go for it,' he said.
'I got as far as I possibly could. But at the 100m mark I turned my right ankle. I thought I'd gone down before the record. I asked how I'd done and they said: 'You smashed it!' I was ecstatic and the crowd was going berserk.'
Prior to making the run, which took place before 2,000 people at Wandle Park in Croydon, Antony said he was focused and comfortable despite not being able to see clearly. Then he was soaked with accelerant and set ablaze.
'It was like looking into the abyss. I was nervous but focused. I knew what I had to do. The problem wasn't the heat, it was the pain from my ankle. I had to grit my teeth and get through it.'
The fire run is the latest in a string of stunts for Antony. Previously he has been buried alive and has had to escape from a straitjacket while suspended from burning ropes 40ft above the ground.
Wearing anti-burn barrier gel, three pairs of overalls, balaclavas and boots Antony Britton ran 181.2m whilst cloaked in flames
He smashed a world record for the longest distance covered by a burning man, which was set at 161.27m in 2013 by American stuntman Ted Batchelor.
But as he threw himself to the ground for his support team to extinguish the flames, he had no idea whether he'd succeeded
He was urged to do something 'normal' by friends to raise money for charity. The fire run was as close as he got.
'I've been told not to put my life on the line, but that's not me. Anyone can do a sponsored walk or run. When I heard about the full body burn I thought, "Now we have a challenge". The best bit was bringing the world record back to the UK.'
Antony has a message 'Bring it on' for any rival intent on breaking his record. And to youngsters inspired by his fiery derring-do he warns: 'Don't try this at home!'
The Linthwaite daredevil, who is now waiting for adjudicators from the Guinness Book of Records to confirm that he's regained the title for the longest distance run full body burn without oxygen.
Last year he tried to outdo Harry Houdini by being buried alive in handcuffs underneath six feet of soil.
Last year he tried to outdo Harry Houdini by being buried alive in handcuffs underneath six feet of soil
He almost died trying to copy Houdini's feat,
He was hauled out unconscious by crew members after he failed to break through to the surface almost nine minutes into the escape bid.
A British diver survived 17 hours in shark-infested waters off the Queensland coast after strong currents pulled him 15 miles away from his yacht.
Les Brierley, 68, originally from Bury but who now lives on the Sunshine Coast, was saved by his flippers and oxygen tank which he clung onto as he swept away from his boat 'The Moonlight Dancer'.
Recalling his ordeal he said: 'I was debating in my mind which would be the preferable way to go...drowning or getting eaten by a shark.'
Les Brierley, 68, was saved by his flippers and oxygen tank which he clung onto as he swept away from his boat
Les Brierley, 68, (pictured), who was lost at sea, was found nearly 17 hours later on Monday
Mr Brierley got into difficulty off the coast of Queensland after spending 17 hours in the water
Mr Brierley had taken himself off for a weekend trip to a dive site where an old wreck lies, called the SS Yongala mooring.
He told ABC TV: 'It was a dive I'd always wanted to do because it is supposed to be a spectacular dive and I thought "today's the day to do it...it's just perfect conditions."'
But after the first dive on Sunday afternoon he quickly got into difficulty.
He said: 'When I came to the surface with my goggles on I was like three meters behind the boat and I thought "Jesus, this isn't good."
The 68-year-old frantically tried to swim to the boat but was dragged further away by the strong current.
Rescuers pull Mr Brierley to safety after he was reported missing when he failed to return home
'I used all my energy trying to swim back to the yacht, but the mast was growing shorter and shorter all the time.'
He kept trying to swim until cramps set in and he decided to conserve his energy by letting the current carry him along.
He told ABC: 'I knew it was going to be a long night and then I was worried about sharks and that sort of thing as well.
'I was debating in my mind which would be the preferable way to go...drown or getting eaten by a shark.'
Speaking to Sky News, he added: 'I was worried about sharks especially first thing in the morning after I'd swum all night, you know, the birds feed when the sharks and the mackerel are all around and there was a couple of flocks of birds really close to me, I thought "oh, this isn't good".
"A couple of the birds were flying overhead sizing me up as a possible meal and I just yelled to one of them "go and get some help'."
The helicopter had only stumbled upon the missing diver as they tracked back to refuel after 90 minutes of searching
He had been in the water for 17 hours with no food or water before the rescue helicopter spotted him.
He told 7 News Queensland: 'It was an awe-inspiring moment when smoke bomb dropped next to me to know it was all over.
'It's an experience I wouldn't want to repeat...but you can count on search rescue people.'
Mr Griffiths said it appeared the diver didn't realise how strong the currents around the Yongala wreck could be
Mr Brierley said he usually carried a personal locator beacon with him, but he had taken it out to clean it and forgotten to replace it.
However he had remembered to message a friend, Jillian du Bois, to tell her if he was late back then she should contact the authorities.
Ms du Bois told ABC it was only luck she checked her emails.
When she had tried to call Mr Brierley and received no answer she had a 'very strong instinct' something was not right.
She then contacted the authorities who mounted a search.
Rescuer Alan Griffiths (pictured) was on the helicopter searching for the missing man
Rescuer Alan Griffiths said his team only stumbled upon the missing diver as they tracked back to refuel after 90 minutes of searching.
He said the first thing Mr Brierley did when he was lowered down to rescue him was hold out his arm to shake his hand.
'He put his hand out so I could shake it [that] says a little bit about him, and the type of gentleman he is,' Mr Griffiths told MailOnline.
Mr Griffiths - an Air Rescue Officer - was on the helicopter searching for Mr Brierley when they spotted him.
Mr Griffiths said the 68-year-old did not realise how strong the currents around the Yongala wreck could be.
'He'd gone by himself, which is a bit naughty, he jumped in the water from his boat and then realised the current was so strong and he simply couldn't get back,' he added.
Rescuers say they found a 'needle in a haystack' after plucking the solo diver out of the ocean
Searchers found his boat at the dive site around 8.45pm on Sunday but there was no sign of the 68-year-old.
He was eventually spotted the following day waving to the rescue helicopter in waters before being winched to safety.
He has been taken to hospital with mild hypothermia and his boat was towed back to the Water Police base in Townsville.
Said Lambert bombarded her with texts and emails, causing her 'fear'
Third woman Tarnie Johnston has told of
Australian woman Tarnie Johnston has told of how she was harassed by Tinder Stalker Paul Lambert ten years ago
A third victim of Tinder stalker Paul Lambert has come forward to tell of how he harassed her ten years before he savagely attacked his girlfriend.
An Australian woman named by A Current Affair as Tarnie Johnston was bombarded with texts and emails from Lambert a decade ago.
She also noted a disturbing resemblance between herself and his other victims, doctor Angela Jay and Fox News reporter Brittany Ann Keil.
The attack sent shockwaves through the nation after Lambert doused Dr Jay in petrol and stabbed her eleven times outside her home in Port Macquarie, on the NSW Mid North Coast.
Lambert, originally from Brisbane, fled the scene and was shot dead by police hours later.
Ms Johnston said the revelations about the psychopathic stalker have reopened old wounds from her past.
'All of the emotion, fear and memories came flooding back instantly. Paul's behaviour towards Angela and Ann was reminiscent of what I had experienced 10 years ago.'
'What's even worse is we all look the same.'
Experts on the program warned his harassment of Ms Johnston was before the rise of popular dating app Tinder, which played a crucial role in his harassment of his other victims.
Ms Johnston said the revelations about the psychopathic stalker have reopened old wounds from her own past
She noted a disturbing similarity between the phycical appearances of his three victims
The program also shared disturbing messages Lambert exchanged with friends about his plans to move to the US to pursue Ms Ann.
'Moving over to Orlando, fresh start for everything,' he told a friend, who asked when he was jetting off.
'Hopefully in next month, huge gamble.'
It comes after details emerged on the victim of Dr Jay, described as a 'bright and bubbly' Californian doctor who delivers babies for a living.
The 28-year-old managed to escape the bloody scene - fleeing to a neighbour's house and calmly talking him through first aid until paramedics arrived.
'She's actually an American sweetheart,' one of the many friends, family and former patients, who have rallied around Dr Jay in recent days, said.
Doctor Angela Jay (pictured) - originally from California -was doused in petrol and stabbed eleven times
Paul Lambert (pictured) laid in wait when Dr Jay clocked off from work and returned home. He was later gunned down by police
Dr Jay has since been released from hospital.
She is said to be recuperating well from her horrendous ordeal and has been deluged with well-wishes from both Australian and U.S. friends.
It is understood Dr Jay - known as 'Ang' - and family members have lived in Australia for several years.
A recent patient spoke glowingly of Dr Jay, describing her as an 'amazing' and 'lovely' woman.
Just 18 months ago, her attacker Lambert was kicked out of the United States for stalking a TV news reporter who he had a brief relationship with.
This time, the object of his obsession was Emmy award-winning TV reporter Brittany Ann Keil, 32, with whom he had a brief relationship until his 'erratic' behaviour forced her to end it.
Paul Lambert (pictured) was shot dead by police in Coffs Harbour after the attack
Blood was seen splattered on the streets outside her home in Port Macquarie
A Syrian refugee was kicked to the ground and beaten by an angry mob after he molested a woman in Turkey.
Omar Monda, 29, is said to have touched the woman, 25, inappropriately as she was walking in the city of Mersin, in southern Turkey.
The city, which lies just 185 miles from the Syrian border, has seen a vast influx of migrants fleeing their war-ravaged region.
This footage shows the moment a Syrian refugee was kicked to the ground in Turkey for inappropriately touching a 25-year-old woman
The migrant was beaten on the ground by an angry mob in Mersin, in southern Turkey
The migrant was kicked and beaten on the ground after he inappropriately touched a woman
Monda was attacked when the woman, named only by her initials 'EA', screamed when he touched her.
Dramatic video footage shows a man fly kicking him to the ground before kicking him twice in the head.
The migrant was left lying in the pavement, unable to stand, and had to be given water by a nearby shopkeeper.
Monda was later arrested after the woman lodged a formal complaint against him.
He was sent to a local court where he was convicted of sexual assault and sent to prison.
The migrant was left lying in the pavement, unable to stand, and had to be given water by a nearby shopkeeper
A higher court will determine the length of his sentence.
Mersin, which is Turkey's biggest seaport and known as the country's 'Pearl of the Mediterranean', is one of the most popular destinations in Turkey for Syrian refugees.
Bill Clinton branded Jeremy Corbyn 'practically a guy off the street' in private remarks to Democratic donors, it was revealed today.
The former President mocked the Labour leader as an 'interesting' example of what not to do while his wife Hillary was battling for her party's White House nomination last year.
Mr Clinton's remarks came in a private fundraiser with party donors and saw him endorse David Miliband as the man who should have won Labour's leadership contest in 2010.
He also compared Mr Corbyn's rise to that of the far left Syriza party in Greece as a reaction to people feeling 'shafted', warning it led people to back the 'maddest person in the room'.
Bill Clinton claimed Jeremy Corbyn was practically a 'guy off the street' when he was elected as Labour leader last year
The comments - published by the Wikileaks website - could prove tricky if Mrs Clinton wins the White House today and meets Mr Corbyn in the future.
Mr Corbyn has faced regular criticism for being scruffy since he was first elected Labour leader in the aftermath of last year's general election.
He was mocked in the Commons by David Cameron, who told up to 'do up his tie, put on a proper suit and sing the national anthem'.
Mr Corbyn has smartened up his image since being re-elected, aided by a neighbour buying him a new Marks and Spencer suit to celebrate the occasion.
Mr Clinton's remarks were attached to an email sent by Clinton aide Varun Anand and sent to staffers including John Podesta, whose email archive was leaked to Wikileaks.
The former President said the 'winner of any election is determined by what people think the election is about'.
Mr Clinton said Hillary was campaigning to appeal to all of the 'struggling, the striving and the successful' while her Democrat rival Bernie Sanders said 'just go get the money from the millionaires'
Mr Clinton's remarks (pictured) were attached to an email sent by Clinton aide Varun Anand and sent to staffers including John Podesta, whose email archive was leaked to Wikileaks
Mr Clinton continued: 'And it sounds good because theres to a lot of people, if you look all over the world the British Labor Party disposed of its most (inaudible) leader, David Miliband, because they were mad at him for being part of Tony Blairs government in the Iraq War.
'And they moved to the left and put his brother in as leader because the British labor movement wanted it.
'When David Cameron thumped him in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadnt moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labor Party, who I saw in the press today said that he was really a British citizen and had real British (inaudible).'
MailOnline has approached Mr Corbyn to comment.
Hundreds of people answered an appeal to attend the funeral of a World War Two veteran who died with no known relatives.
Royal Pioneer Corps veteran John Kearns, who was 95, was cremated at Markeaton Crematorium, Derby at 9am today with the service packed out by well-wishers.
He had no surviving family and was visited by only one friend at the Royal Derby Hospital before he died.
Pauline Smart, who is a close friend of the woman who visited him, thought they would be the only mourners at the funeral, but instead an incredible 200 people turned out to pay their respects.
Hundreds of mourners turned out for the funeral of World War Two veteran John Kearns today, pictured, after he died with no known relatives
The service at a crematorium in Derby was packed out, pictured, after a friend of Mr Kearns contacted the Royal British Legion, who launched a social media appeal for veterans to attend
Veterans, pipers and standard bearers also performed a special tribute, pictured, for the 95-year-old outside the service
Mr Kearns, pictured, enlisted in 1943 and served in the UK, Egypt, Cyprus, Germany, Aden, and Bahrain
Ms Smart said: 'We thought there would only be the two of us at John's funeral, and it is wonderful that, on suggesting the British Legion be informed, that so many people are rallying round to give this wonderful man, who served his country for so many years, a true Army farewell.'
She told her friend, who does not want to be named, to contact the Royal British Legion to see if any Army veterans would like to attend the funeral.
The Legion launched a social media appeal to try and get as many veterans to attend as possible. Within hours the plea was shared hundreds of times.
Ms Smart said her friend had been asked to clear Mr Kearns's belongings from his home, in Long Eaton, Derbyshire and they subsequently found his Army records.
She said: 'Nobody seems to know why, but he always introduced himself as Paul. He was married to Eileen but she died 18 months ago and he went downhill from there.
'My friend, who visited him on a regular basis, has in her possession his Army records.
Mr Kearns friends and neighbours Alan Mann, 75, left, Pauline Smart, 71, centre and Josephine Flear, 73, right, helped launch the appeal for people to come forward and pay their respects
Current soldiers also attended the service to pay their respect to the veteran, who was a private for his entire 30-year career in the Army
He was described as a 'completely reliable and trustworthy' soldier in a letter from a commanding officer found among his belongings
A large crowd gathered outside Markeaton Crematorium, pictured, ahead of the service
'The records say that John enlisted on August 5, 1943, and that he enlisted in the Royal Army Pioneer Corp in Belfast and served with them for the whole of his Army career as a private.'
In one of the records was a letter from his commanding officer, which said: 'Pte Kearns is an extremely pleasant and likeable man who has seen long service in the Army.
'Whilst not being interested in promotion during his long career he has, nevertheless, always proved himself to be completely reliable and trustworthy in all aspects of military life.'
The letter was signed by the Commanding Officer 522 Coy RPC at Temple Herdewyke Nr Leamington Spa Warwicks on August 1, 1975.
Ms Smart said: 'He served in the UK, Egypt, Cyprus, Germany, Aden, and Bahrain.
'He held the Coronation Medal, Cyprus, Radfan and South Arabia Good Service Medals, and various others which he always used to talk about - those and his wife, whom he was married to for 40 years.'
Mr Kearns served in the forces for 30 years and 314 days.
Philip Skawski, chairman of the Royal British Legion in Derbyshire, said: 'A plea was sent out from Derby Hospital to the Royal British Legion in Derby a few days ago.
'A Large number of veterans and serving soldiers from 162 Regiment Royal Logistic Corps were there to send their former comrade on his way with honour and dignity.'
A piper and flag bearers from the Royal Pioneer Corps and Royal British Legion marched ahead of the hearse as it arrived at the crematorium where more than 200 mourners had gathered.
A procession through the streets of Derbyshire, pictured, came before today's ceremony
Well-wishers lined the street outside the crematorium to welcome the hearse's arrival
Veterans and current servicemen and women alike stood in silent tribute during the service
Flag bearers from the Royal Pioneer Corps and Royal British Legion, pictured, marched ahead of the hearse as it arrived at the crematorium
The coffin was draped in the flag of the Royal Pioneer Corps.
Members of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regimental Association, the Derby branch, were also in attendance.
Its chairman, Alan Derbyshire, said: 'We heard about this from the Association which sent out an email. We had to get involved.
'This man had no close family, but as servicemen we're his family.
'There's a connection and a bond which stays forever. Nobody should die alone and that's why we're here.'
Members of the Royal Engineers from Nottingham were also there.
Royal British Legion members arrived to 'send their former comrade on his way with honour and dignity'
Flowers and wreaths, pictured, were laid down in tribute to the veteran outside the Derbyshire crematorium
Sergeant Sean Killen, from the Engineers, said: 'We're all serving soldiers and we have come to pay our respects.
'We heard about his death on social media and were touched by it. No soldier should die alone. I think it's brilliant that so many people are due to come. It's so fitting.'
Chris Black, from the Derbyshire branch of the Royal British Legion, said: 'I'm proud that so many local people turned out.
'It was an act that was in keeping with what the Legion is all about, caring for former soldiers.
Bahsid McLean, 26, from the Bronx, New York, is pictured posing for a selfie with his mother's severed head
A man who stabbed his mother, dismembered her body with a power saw and then took a selfie with her severed head has been found guilty of murder.
Bronx man Bahsid McLean, 26, has been convicted of second-degree murder and unlawful dissection of a human being, prosecutors said on Monday.
The court heard how he killed his mother, Tanya Byrd, 52, inside their Morrisania apartment on February 26, 2013.
McLean stabbed the home health aide in the neck, after she told him he was a bad father.
Police say he then called them to report his dead mom missing.
'If you can kill somebody, you should be able to cut them up too,' McLean told authorities, in a video played in court.
'If you can't do that, if don't have the stomach to cut them up, then you're a coward.'
'The defendant fatally stabbed his mother and then chillingly took photos with her mutilated corpse,' Bronx DA Darcel Clark said, the New York Daily News reports.
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Tanya Byrd (left), a 52-year-old home health aide, was stabbed in the neck at her home after she told McClean (right) he was a bad father
After the killing, McLean called police to report his mother missing. Her body parts were found dumped around the neighborhood
His defense team previously claimed that jurors should acquit McLean by reason of mental defect or disease, claiming he is 'broken' and has had voices in his head since he was a child.
His lawyer Lynn Calvacca held up a picture to the court, showing McLean smiling as he held up his mother's severed head.
'Does this look like someone who knows what he is doing is wrong?' she said in her opening statement at the trial in Bronx Supreme Court in October.
After McLean killed his mother he then went to a hardware store and bought a power saw to carve up her body, police said.
Prosecutors said the killing of his mother, pictured, was 'cold-blooded'
Her chopped up remains were found stuffed into bin bags in four suitcases scattered around the neighborhood where she lived
Tanya Byrd was killed on February 26, 2013 inside the Morrisania apartment that she shared with her son
He paused to take a smirking selfie with her dismembered head before stuffing her remains into bin bags.
Her dismembered corpse was found in the bin bags inside four different suitcases that had been dumped around the neighborhood, and police later discovered the smiling selfie on McLean's phone.
Prosecutors said the killing was 'cold-blooded' and said McLean knew what he was doing at the time of the alleged murder.
Cassandra McLean, 53, Byrd's sister, previously told the New York Daily News that her nephew was a danger to society and should be jailed for life.
'If he could do that to his own mother, imagine what he could do to a stranger. I don't hate him I pity him,' she told the paper.
He will be sentenced on December 5 and faces up to 25 years in jail.
The sister of the two inmates who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 has said the men who fled from HMP Pentonville copied her brothers' 'ingenious' prison break.
John and Clarence Anglin, along with Frank Morris, left papier-mache heads in their beds before fleeing the island prison, off the coast of San Francisco, on a raft.
Their audacious escape bears a striking resemblance to that of James Anthony Whitlock and Matthew Baker who left mannequins in their beds before going on the run from Pentonville over the weekend.
It has now emerged that Whitlock, 31, previously broke out of HMP Edmunds Hill in June 2010 and was on the run for five months.
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John (left) and Clarence Anglin (right) famously escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 and were never seen again
Their sister Mearl Anglin Taylor (right) believes two prisoners who recently escaped from HMP Pentonville were inspired by her brothers' notorious prison break
The two men are being helped by those on the outside with a place to stay, money and clothes, police said.
Despite a widespread appeal Whitlock and Baker remain at large two days after escaping.
Scotland Yard's Flying Squad and murder squad detectives are helping local CID officers in trying to track down the pair.
The Met said anyone who spots either men should not approach them as they could become violent but dial 999 immediately.
Mearl Anglin Taylor said she believed the prisoners were inspired by her brothers, telling the Mirror: 'My brothers were ingenious in what they did.
'They have inspired countless escapes. Sounds like the men in Pentonville copied Clarence and John too.'
She said she was not sure whether her brothers, who would now be in their 80s, had survived the daring escape.
The Anglin brothers and Morris were never seen again after setting off into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay on the raft - which was made from stolen raincoats.
They had chiselled the vent duct openings in their cells with spoons until they were wide enough to fit through and climbed up to the roof.
James Anthony Whitlock, left, and Matthew Baker, right, used diamond cutters to break out of their cell in HMP Prison, north London, leaving mannequins to trick guards
To mask their escape, they had placed realistic-looking dummy heads in their bunks which used human hair from the prison barber shop.
They then grabbed makeshift paddles and plunged an escape raft.
Following their disappearance, Alcatraz officials and the FBI insisted that the men drowned. They say no one has ever successfully fled from the notorious jail.
Ms Taylor said she believed they survived and got away.
The escape was made into the 1979 film Escape From Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood.
Whitlock, 31, and Baker, 28, appear to have been inspired by the incredible prison break.
The audacious bid has echoes of the notorious 1962 Alcatraz prison break, when escaped US inmates created mannequin heads out of paper, paint and hair and left them in their beds
A prison guard kneels by hole in Frank Morris' cell through which he and the Anglin brothers escaped
They are now on the run after breaking out of the north London jail using diamond cutters.
It is strongly believed drones were used to fly cutting equipment into the prison, which the inmates used to slice through bars on a window.
At about 10.40pm on Sunday, they clambered from their fifth-floor cell in G wing on to the roof of the jail's chapel, then jumped on to the 20ft high perimeter wall.
From there they used bed sheets to drop to the pavement. It is understood a getaway car was waiting for them in the street.
The inmates had folded pillows and piles of clothing to fool staff into believing they were asleep.
Baker and Whitlock were not found to be missing until about 11.45am.
Baker had been awaiting sentencing after he was found guilty of attempted murder two weeks ago for stabbing a man in Dagenham, east London.
The escape was made into the 1979 film Escape From Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood. Above, a prison guard discovers the mannequins in a scene from the film
A scene from the film is reenacted in 'The Rock', a former high-security prison which is now visited by tourists as a museum
Frank Morris (left) also escaped, pictured (right) is one of the dummy heads used in the escape
Whitlock was on remand having been charged with conspiracy to burgle over 19 alleged ATM thefts.
It has now emerged that Whitlock, 31 walked straight out of HMP Edmunds Hill in June 2010 after giving the name of another inmate due for release.
The Prison Service even gave him the green light to leave the Category C prison after applying to be let out on licence using the lag's name - only after he'd gone did they realise their blunder.
After a police appeal, he was arrested by cops in Dudley, West Midlands, in December.
One of his close family members has urged Whitlock, who is dyslexic, to turn himself in.
'I think he should turn himself in, but they'll be cruel. They'll give him years when he doesn't deserve it,' the relative said.
'He had a tough time in school and then he didn't want to go to school. He's very close to his two sisters and I reckon he doesn't really know what to do.
'James would have had his reasons to escape like if he was threatened or worried and I'm glad he did it.
'For him to escape when his court case was this month there would have had to be something really wrong.'
BOTTLE ATTACK VICTIM OF ESCAPEE IS 'NOT SCARED' The man who was repeatedly stabbed with a broken bottle by Matthew Baker is 'not scared' by his attacker's escape from HMP Pentonville, his family said. Baker had been awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of attempted murder two weeks ago for stabbing Matthew Bennett at a house party in east London. Bennett, known to his family as Matty, was left with almost 50 scars to his body as well as injuries to his heart and lung following the brutal attack in March. One of his family members said: 'Matty is a friendly and lovely boy but he would not be scared by his attacker escaping. 'He wouldn't go into witness protection, he's just not like that. 'The family are very close knit, they don't talk to outsiders and they keep things between themselves.' Matthew's father Andrew Bennett said the matter was in police hands. He said: 'We don't want to talk, no comment. Advertisement
A prison source claims the men used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to break the bars of the cell they shared before scaling the perimeter wall at HMP Pentonville, pictured today
A former detective said he believed the escapees will be 'close to home with friends or relatives'.
The ex-officer, who asked not to be named for security reasons, added: 'They won't have left the country.
'It's unlikely they've gone too far because leaving the country takes a lot of resources and I don't think they'll have the scope to do it.
'They will be with friends or family going to ground. I doubt they'll still be together, I don't think there is a link between them other than they got together and did this.'
Scotland Yard warned members of the public not to approach the escapees as they 'could become violent'.
It is understood that because they were not assigned to a work programme, they were not expected to leave their cell until lunchtime.
A Prison Service investigation into the breakout will focus on exactly how the machinery was smuggled behind bars, why staff did not hear the sound of the drill and whether the men had any help.
A former inmate who was released from Pentonville just hours after the escape said he was several doors down from the escapees.
He said: 'They did it from the fifth floor, they were both in the same cell.'
A male visitor, who also wished to remain anonymous, said he was told the escapees folded bed sheets in the shape of bodies to trick prison guards. Pictured, HMP Pentonville
Escapes from within prisons have become increasingly rare with only two recorded in 2015/16, according to the latest Ministry of Justice figures
Whitlock is described as a white man of slim build. He has the word 'Tracy' tattooed on his torso. Baker is described as a white man with ginger hair.
It is not known what clothing either had at the time of the escape.
Andrew Neilson, Director of Campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, blasted the prison service and blamed the breakout on 'chronic overcrowding and staff shortages'.
He said: 'Less than a month after a man was killed in Pentonville, this escape is more shocking evidence of a prison that is out of control.
It comes less than a month after Somalian-born gang member Jamal Mahmoud, 21, died after being stabbed at the 174-year-old prison in an attack which left two others injured.
Andrew Neilson, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, blasted the Prison Service and blamed the breakout on 'chronic overcrowding and staff shortages'. He added: 'Less than a month after a man was killed in Pentonville, this escape is more shocking evidence of a prison that is out of control.'
HMP Pentonville, which opened in 1842, has regularly been criticised for its low standards.
The category B prison was last year singled out by then justice secretary Michael Gove as 'the most dramatic example of failure' in the prison estate. A report by the chief inspector of prisons said the jail, which is supposed to hold 900 inmates but houses 1,300, had blood-stained walls, piles of rubbish and food waste, and spiralling violence and drug abuse.
The overcrowding and a shortage of prison officers means 'temporary regimes' are set up in which inmates are confined to their cells so that safe staff-prisoner ratios can be met.
who arrived in Australia in 2013 by boat
An asylum seeker who allegedly held a 15-year-old girl hostage at his western Sydney home for a month and raped her has had his visa cancelled.
Rashadul Islam, 29, lived with up to eight flatmates in a derelict bungalow on Balmoral Street in Blacktown, where he allegedly kept the young girl against her will for four weeks until she escaped last week.
Islam, a Bangladesh National who arrived in Australia by boat in 2013, had his bridging visa cancelled on Monday by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Rashadul Islam, 29, lived with up to eight flatmates in a derelict bungalow on Balmoral Street in Blacktown (pictured), where he allegedly kept the young girl against her will for four weeks
An asylum seeker who allegedly held a 15-year-old girl (pictured) hostage at his western Sydney home for a month and raped her has had his visa cancelled
Neighbours woke to the girls screams at 1.30am on Thursday before a passing police car saw her running barefoot down Balmoral Street with Mr Islam chasing after her.
When police saw the horrific scene unfold, the girl and her alleged captor were both taken to Blacktown Police Station.
She told police she had been sexually assaulted by Mr Islam and kept against her will in the boarded up house for a month.
The 15-year-old girl was reported missing in early October by the foster home facility where she lived.
Neighbours woke to the girls screams at 1.30am on Thursday, before a passing police car saw her running barefoot down Balmoral Street with Mr Islam chasing after her
It is believed she met Mr Islam in passing after running away from her foster parents.
On Tuesday in Penrith Local Court Mr Islam withdrew a scheduled bail application and interrupted proceedings to complain about the cancellation of his visa.
'Why won't the court grant me bail for seven days so I can sort out the visa?' Mr Islam said through an interpreter.
'I can't talk to anyone to take on my visa matter.'
He was told the local court had no jurisdiction to change his visa.
The father of slain school teacher Stephanie Scott will be farewelled at the same venue where Stephanie's funeral was held and where she was meant to be married.
Stephanie's father Robert Scott, 59, died in a freak accident after he was struck by a falling tree at the family farm in the New South Wales central west.
His dead body was found at the family's Canowindra property about 12pm on November 1.
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Robert Scott (left), father of late school teacher Stephanie Scott, has died in a freak accident. Here, he is pictured speaking at a memorial for his daughter in April 2015
Mr Scott's death was a shocking second tragedy for the Scott family, coming just 18 months after his daughter Stephanie was raped and killed.
Mourners have been invited to farewell former high school maths teacher Mr Scott, known as Bob, at a funeral service at Eat Your Greens on Wednesday.
Eat Your Greens, just outside Eugowra in NSW's central west, is the same venue Stephanie Scott's funeral was held in April 2015, and the same venue she was due to be married just days after her tragic death.
What should have been a joyous venue for the Scott family will now be the setting for two funerals for two separate family members.
Together for justice: Mr Scott stood by his wife Merrilyn as she read out a statement outside Griffith Local Court on October 13
Robert Scott's funeral will be held at Eat Your Greens, the same place Stephanie's funeral was held and her would-be wedding
In a funeral announcement published in the Central Western Daily, Mr Scott was remembered as a 'much loved husband for 38 years to Merrilyn loved brother, brother-in-law and uncle to all his family loved by all'.
Mr Scott has a beer with family after his daughter's killer is sentenced in October
People who knew Mr Scott, a retired school teacher, have once again been asked to make their way to the Eugowra function centre to pay their respects to a beloved friend and family member.
Mr Scott's family were reportedly 'beside themselves' after learning of his death at the beginning of November.
His family knew something was wrong when he failed to return home from the family's Canowindra property.
Just weeks before his tragic death, Mr Scott stood beside his wife, Merrilyn, and held her hand as she read a victim impact statement about her slain daughter Stephanie.
Mrs Scott detailed the 'harrowing' 18 months her family endured since their daughter's murder.
'So much has been taken away from us. Stephanie has had everything taken away from her,' Mrs Scott said.
'Losing her has shattered so many lives and we are all struggling with the consequences.'
Eat Your Greens should have been a joyous venue for the Scott family but it will now be the setting for two funerals for two separate family members
Eat Your Greens, just outside Eugowra in NSW's central west, (pictured) is the same venue where Stephanie Scott's funeral was held in April 2015
Stephanie Scott planned to get married at Eat Your Greens (pictured), a wedding due to go ahead just days after she was murdered
Stephanie's funeral was held in April 2015 after she was brutally raped and murdered, (her parents, Robert and Merrilyn are pictured at her funeral)
The only sign that Stephanie's wedding was due to take place at the function centre was a touching memorial at the venue's entrance, which was made up of flower bouquets and yellow balloons
Tributes to Ms Scott were left at the gates of her wedding venue. Her big day was supposed to take place on the Saturday after she was killed
Robert Scott (right) pictured with his daughter Stephanie (left) as a child
Stephanie Scott (pictured), a school teacher, was due to get married just days after she was murdered
The next day, Mr Scott and his family sat in court while Vincent Stanford was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Stephanie Scott.
Mr Scott and his family were praised by presiding judge Robert Allan Hulme for their 'inspiring dignity' during the difficult sentencing.
There's a new chapter in the Golden Gaytime craze, and this one might be the cream of the crop.
The Golden Gaytime burger is made up of two of the ice creams sandwiched between a sweet brioche bun with a liberal drizzle of caramel sauce.
The one-off creation is rolling into Sydney's north-west for two days, serving as the latest in a wave of spins on the Aussie ice cream classic.
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The Golden Gaytime burger is the latest in a wave of wacky spins on the Aussie Ice Cream favourite
The burger is the brainchild of Sydney dessert truck Kayter co and is being served up at The Park Feast at Bella Vista Farm this Saturday and Sunday only.
It comes hot on the heels of the Gaytime Doughnut, a pastry using caramelised crepes filled with honeycomb custard and with crushed biscuits on the side.
The summer treat was released in all of the Doughnut Time stores across Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne last month.
Earlier this year the Gaytime 1.25L tub sent the internet into a spin, before the Golden Gaytime shake followed in hot pursuit.
Last month the Gaytime Doughnut was launched: a pastry using caramelised crepes filled with honeycomb custard and with crushed biscuits on the side
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A man who presented a failed petition to local authorities stabbed three people randomly with a kitchen knife in Kunming, southwest China's Yunan province on Sunday.
The man is arrested 80 meters from the scene on Sunday, November 6th, 2016. [Photo:Yunnan.cn]
The suspect, surnamed Yang, was in his 40s and from southwest China's Sichuan province. He carried out the random attack at Kunming railway station on Sunday afternoon.
He was spotted by the paramilitary police after the attack only 80 meters from the victims. He was detained at a local police station.
After an incident that changed his family circumstances, the suspect had been pursuing official complaints. When they proved unsuccessful he decided to attract public attention by randomly attacking pedestrians on the street.
The victims were sent to the hospital immediately after the incident and their injuries were not life-threatening.
The case is still under investigation.
Nigel Farage speaks to the media outside the US presidential election night party at the US Embassy in London earlier this morning
Nigel Farage hailed Donald Trump's 'courage' today as he caught the first plane to America to congratulate his Republican ally following his emphatic election victory.
In a slap in the face to Barack Obama, the Ukip figurehead said Britain would benefit from having a President 'who likes our country and understands our post-Brexit values'.
He said the 'establishment is in deep shock' after Mr Trump's unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton, describing it it as 'bigger than Brexit'.
And Mr Farage, who oversaw the first seismic political shock this year with his lead role in the Brexit campaign, warned of similar political earthquakes ahead of next year's crucial elections in France and Germany.
A jubilant Mr Farage said: 'Prepare for further political shocks in the years to come.'
Mr Farage, nicknamed 'Mr Brexit' by his friend Mr Trump, watched the results come in at the US presidential election night party at the US embassy in London, before catching an early morning flight to America.
And as he laughed and joked with journalists this morning, he was already outlining a role he could fulfill: President Trump's ambassador to the EU.
In a statement issued at lunchtime today, Mr Farage said: 'Today, the establishment is in deep shock. Even more so than after Brexit.
'What we are witnessing is the end of a period of big business and big politics controlling our lives.
Nigel Farage has helped Donald Trump in his campaign to win the presidency, joining him on stage in Jackson, Mississippi in August, pictured, where the Republican introduced the interim Ukip leader as 'Mr Brexit'
'Voters across the Western world want nation state democracy, proper border controls and to be in charge of their own lives.
'I commend Donald Trump for the courage with which he has fought this campaign and I look forward to a closer relationship between the USA and the UK.
'We now have a President who likes our country and understands our post-Brexit values. 'Prepare for further political shocks in the years to come.'
Appearing on LBC Radio, Mr Farage said: 'Is he going to offer me a job? I'm hoping he might do.
'He will be in need of a proper Eurosceptic ambassador in Brussels for the European Union. I would rather like that job.'
He added: 'Being a foreigner will not disqualify me. As long as we can bring the EU down, it doesn't matter how we do it.'
I'm off to America! Nigel Farage booked himself on an early morning flight to the US after celebrating Donald Trump's victory at the US embassy in London
Mr Farage, who is serving as interim Ukip leader until next month, said he would do the job 'very well' having been an MEP in Brussels for nearly two decades.
Mr Farage was so confident Mr Trump will win the presidential race that he's booked a flight to the US for later this morning.
He is searching for a new job as he will finally be replaced as Ukip leader next month and will lose his 8,213 per month salary when Britain leaves the EU following June's historic Brexit vote.
Asked whether he would accept a job under Mr Trump, Mr Farage told ITV's Agenda programme on Monday night: 'Well I have booked on the plane Wednesday morning, so we'll just have to see.
'I don't know what's going to happen, all I can say is... this election is very simple: it's rather like Brexit.
'It's do you want a change, or do you want to stick exactly as you are? That's what it's all about.'
ITV's Robert Peston asked Nigel Farage if he would accept a job from Donald Trump if the Republican wins the US Presidency, to which the interim Ukip leader said: 'If he did offer me a job I would quite like to be his ambassador to the European Union'
Interim Ukip leader Nigel Farage made the comments on ITV's The Agenda show last night
Nigel Farage, pictured on ITV's This Morning show this morning with TV presenter Selina Scott today, said he would happily accept a job from Donald Trump
He added: 'If he did offer me a job I would quite like to be his ambassador to the European Union. I think I would do that job very well.'
His comments drew widespread laughter from the audience and even fellow panelist Jan Halper-Hayes, the vice-president of Republicans Overseas, couldn't hold back from laughing at the irony of Mr Farage being handed an EU-related job.
Mr Farage has flown to the US several of times over the last few months to take part in the election campaign.
He joined Mr Trump on stage in August at a rally in Jackson in Mississippi, where the Republican nominee introduced him as 'Mr Brexit'.
FORMER TOP JUDGE WARNS SUPREME COURT NOT TO OVERTURN BREXIT APPEAL Lord Judge, the former lord chief justice, said it would be seen by the public as a victory for protesters if the Supreme Court rules in favour of the Government Faith in Britain's justice system could be undermined if the Supreme Court overturns last week's controversial High Court ruling that MPs must be given a vote on Brexit, the UK's former top judge has said. Lord Judge, the former lord chief justice, said it would be seen by the public as a victory for protesters if the Supreme Court rules in favour of the Government. He also criticised the Government for being too slow in defending the three High Court judges who decided last week that Theresa May could not use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50. But he insisted the press had the right to criticise the judges and said a free press was as much a guarantor of democracy as judicial independence. Ukip leader Nigel Farage is planning to lead a 100,000-strong march outside the Supreme Court to coincide with the start of the Government's appeal. Lord Judge, Britain's most senior judge in England and Wales between 2008 and 2013, told BBC's Newsnight: 'People can march as much as they like,' he said. 'I don't think it makes any difference to the judicial decision but it does make a difference to public order. 'Let's say for the sake of argument the Supreme Court decides the High Court was wrong, it will undoubtedly be conveyed as a victory for the demonstrators. 'It won't be but that's what will be conveyed. And if that is conveyed, you've undermined the administration of justice.' Advertisement
And the Ukip leader helped Mr Trump prepare for his presidential debate against Mrs Clinton last month and was the billionaire tycoon's guest of honour.
But Mr Farage is set to play a prominent role in UK politics over the coming weeks.
He is planning a 100,000-strong march to the UK's Supreme Court next month to coincide with its historic ruling on whether Parliament must be given a vote on Brexit.
It will serve as a 'reminder' about June's historic Brexit vote and is being organised by the Ukip-affiliated Leave.EU group.
The march would start in Trafalgar Square and move down Whitehall towards Parliament Square and to the Supreme Court in Westminster.
It is expected to coincide with the start of the Supreme Court's four-day hearing of the Government's appeal against last week's hugely controversial judgement that Parliament must be given a vote on triggering Article 50 - the formal process for leaving the EU.
The hearing is expected to start on December 5, but a decision is unlikely until January.
But issuing a warning about the march today, Britain's former lord chief justice Lord Judge said Britain's justice system could be undermined if the Supreme Court overturns the High Court's controversial ruling.
He said it would be seen by the public as a victory for protesters if the Supreme Court rules in favour of the Government.
He also criticised the Government for being too slow in defending the three High Court judges who decided last week that Theresa May could not use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50.
But he insisted the press had the right to criticise the judges and said a free press was as much a guarantor of democracy as judicial independence.
Lord Judge, Britain's most senior judge in England and Wales between 2008 and 2013, told BBC's Newsnight: 'People can march as much as they like.
'I don't think it makes any difference to the judicial decision but it does make a difference to public order.
'I don't think it makes any difference to the judicial decision but it does make a difference to public order. Lord Judge, Britain's most senior judge in England and Wales between 2008 and 2013, told BBC's Newsnight: 'People can march as much as they like
'Let's say for the sake of argument the Supreme Court decides the High Court was wrong, it will undoubtedly be conveyed as a victory for the demonstrators.
'It won't be but that's what will be conveyed. And if that is conveyed, you've undermined the administration of justice.'
You're hired: Donald Trump, pictured at a last-minute campaign rally in Michigan last night, is a big fan of 'Mr Brexit' Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage joined Mr Trump on stage in August at a rally in Jackson in Mississippi, pictured, where the Republican nominee introduced him as 'Mr Brexit'
The former chairwoman of the beleaguered inquiry into child abuse was branded 'disgraceful' today by MPs demanding she give evidence on her resignation.
Dame Lowell Goddard quit the vast probe in August and has since faced allegations about her behaviour and conduct in the lucrative post.
Dame Lowell, who has returned to her native New Zealand, has answered questions posed by the Home Affairs Committee in writing but refused to return to London to appear in person or give evidence over video link.
Yvette Cooper, the chairwoman of the influential committee, said: 'Dame Lowell Goddard's refusal to give evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee about her resignation from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Is disgraceful.
Dame Lowell Goddard has refused to appear before MPs to explain her shock resignation in person, insisting she can better explain her position in writing. Home Affairs committee chief Yvette Cooper branded her position 'disgraceful'
She warned Dame Lowell the committee would now investigate what powers it had to summon her to Parliament should she ever return to Britain.
Ms Cooper continued: 'Dame Lowell has been paid significant amounts of public money to do an extremely important job which she suddenly resigned from, leaving a series of questions about what has been happening over the last 18 months and why the Inquiry got into difficulties.
'Yet rather than give oral evidence to answer these questions she is relying on the fact that she is out of the UK to avoid the requirement to give evidence to Parliament.
'This is an astonishing response from a paid public servant who should know how important transparency is in an inquiry as sensitive and crucial as this one.
Home Affairs Committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper branded Dame Lowell's response 'astonishing'
'Child abuse survivors have been let down by the extremely rocky start to this inquiry and we do need answers as to why it went wrong in order to be confident it is back on track now.
'The Committee has always believed it is vital that Dame Lowell Goddard gives oral evidence to us and we will explore what options are available to us to require her to come before the Committee should she enter the UK again at any time in the future.'
Last week, Dame Lowell told MPs she believed campaigners published articles in the press in the hope of dealing a 'fatal' blow to the inquiry by forcing her to become the third head to resign the post.
She was replaced by Professor Alexis Jay, who had been serving as a member of the inquiry panel, who has previous experience running inquiries into abuse allegations.
In her eight-page written submission to the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC), the New Zealand judge acknowledged there were 'tensions' within the inquiry team.
Professor Alexis Jay became the fourth chairwoman of the inquiry after Dame Lowell's shock resignation from the post in July
Explaining the background to her resignation, Dame Lowell said the inquiry had been subject to 'real and increasing strain' since March from 'intensifying' media criticism.
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. Advertisement
This centred on claims of unfairness in the investigation of allegations against late Labour peer Lord Janner and 'developed into widening personal attacks on me and my competence', including reports about her extended absence overseas, she said.
By late July, the reports had had 'a damaging internal impact on the inquiry and me', said Dame Lowell, adding: 'I believe this is when the team lost their nerve about my ability to continue leading the inquiry, which I perceived to be the objective of those behind the publications.
'I considered both the impact of this campaign and the effect which I saw it to have. The allegations were false but they had already done their damage.
'I nevertheless believed that, having made the commitment to the victims and survivors, I had to continue to see it through.
'I was also very concerned that if the inquiry lost a third chair that might prove fatal for it, which was clearly what the campaigners were seeking to achieve.
'The pressure was relentless, as was the impact on panel members and all who felt deeply their responsibility to the inquiry.'
It was only after three members of the inquiry's panel came to see her on August 4 and made clear she no longer had the support of senior colleagues that she decided to quit.
Dame Lowell insisted that the decision to resign was hers alone, adding: 'There was no contact with the Home Secretary or the Home Office before I made my decision and no earlier pressure either.'
She said she regarded the decision as 'right', but she regretted not calling Home Secretary Amber Rudd personally to tender her resignation.
She said a panel member had later confirmed that the team's 'loss of confidence in my leadership' had been prompted by adverse press commentary on her performance at a preliminary hearing into Lord Janner's case on July 26. But she insisted she did not regard the criticism as 'justified'.
She added: 'I categorically deny that there was any basis for any allegation of misconduct raised, or causing, or connected to my resignation.'
Dame Lowell said she had been aware of 'natural tensions' within the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) before the August 4 meeting, but believed that they were 'not serious'.
She acknowledged that her management of the inquiry had caused 'discomfort' among members of the inquiry's expert panel - who wanted to be involved in legal, procedural and managerial decisions which she believed were for her alone.
A meeting called in March to bring panel members to 'a better understanding of their role' resulted in 'heated' discussions about the inquiry's spending and management of legal work, she said.
But she insisted that the meeting - which she did not attend - was 'successful', and denied suggestions that an external facilitator had been called in to improve her working relationship with the panel.
Dame Lowell insisted that she had 'the apparent support, both given and expressed' of the panel throughout her chairmanship, and said that members agreed that attacks on her were 'aimed at undermining me for the wider purpose of undermining the inquiry itself'.
Four states are set to vote for more restrictive gun control measures
Opinion polls suggest Bloomberg's cash could impact some of the votes
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has donated $65million ahead of today's election supporting gun control measures and soda taxes.
However, the billionaire mogul has not donated a single cent to either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns.
Bloomberg has heavily backed candidates who share his views whether Republican or Democrat and has also invested heavily in referendums.
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Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent $65 million during this election period but has not donated a single cent towards either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump's campaigns
Instead the billionaire philanthropist has put money into local campaigns on gun control and sugar tax and actively supported candidates who share his views regardless of the party
According to the Federal Election Commission returns, Bloomberg has donated more than $19million to his Independence USA PAC which is pro gun control.
The PAC spent more than $6million on gun control adverts.
Bloomberg condemned Trump during the Democratic convention in July.
According to Politico, the adverts were in support of Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey who has championed gun control since the Newtown shooting.
In New Hampshire, the PAC backed Democrat Governor Maggie Hassan after her rival, Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte opposed gun control.
Bloomberg is funding candidates who support increased background checks and actively punishes those who oppose the measures.
Bloomberg is supporting Republican US Senator Pat Toomey's re election campaign as he is supportive of measures to expand background checks on prospective gun buyers
Yet, in New Hampshire, Bloomberg's money is buying adverts supporting Democrat challenger Governor Maggie Hassan, right, over the Republican incumbent Senator Kelly Ayotte, left
According to the New York Post, Bloomberg has also spent $20million promoting a penny-an-ounce sugar tax in Oakland and San Francisco.
The former New York Mayor led an unsuccessful campaign to cut soda sizes in the Big Apple in 2014.
As late as February, it was believed the businessman, whose wealth is estimated at more than $35 billion, was considering running for the White House in a self-funded campaign.
In a speech at a book launch, he said: 'From my time in both business and government, I know that you don't solve problems by pointing fingers, or making pie-in-the-sky promises.
'You solve them by bringing people together around common goals, promoting innovation, demonstrating independence, and recognizing that compromise is not a bad word.
'We will have a very bright future - but only if we build it together,' Bloomberg said.
However, instead, he decided to support candidates and measures he agrees with.
According to opinion polls, gun control-related ballot measures in four states are expected to pass after gun safety advocates poured a massive amount of money into backing the initiatives.
In Maine and Nevada, residents will vote on whether to mandate universal background checks for firearm sales, including private handgun transactions.
If those two measures pass, half of all Americans would live in states that have such expanded checks. Eighteen states and Washington, DC, have already approved similar laws.
Voters in Washington state, meanwhile, will consider allowing judges to bar people from possessing guns if they pose a danger to themselves or to others, such as accused domestic abusers.
The National Rifle Association has spent $4.8 million opposing additional gun control measures in Nevada which would require potential owners to undergo background checks
In California, a referendum would ban large-capacity ammunition magazines and require certain people to pass a background check to buy ammunition.
The US Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, and gun rights advocates fiercely contest any attempt to restrict that freedom.
The votes in Republican-leaning Maine and Nevada represent a key test of the gun control movement's decision to turn to a state-by-state strategy after efforts to pass nationwide legislation failed in Congress.
Opponents in Maine and Nevada say the laws are confusingly written and would burden legal gun owners while doing nothing to stop criminals.
NRA spokesman Ryan Hamilton said: 'We know today that the place where criminals are getting guns, the black market, they aren't subjecting themselves to background checks. It doesn't target criminal behavior, it targets law-abiding behavior.'
But proponents say background checks are widely backed by the public and would save lives.
Jennifer Crowe, a spokeswoman for the pro-initiative campaign in Nevada, said research had shown nearly one in 11 people who purchased guns online would have been barred from doing so by a background check.
She said: 'We have this huge online marketplace that we know criminals are using to get guns.'
Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group founded by billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has spent tens of millions of dollars in Washington state, Nevada and Maine, while the National Rifle Association has focused much of its spending on supporting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
It was a nonpartisan event but Chance has voiced support for Clinton
The event was aimed at mobilizing
Chance the Rapper has led thousands of people from a concert he headlined through Chicago's business district and to an early voting site.
Chance, real name Chancellor Johnathan Bennett, who is from the West Chatham neighborhood of Chicago, is hoping to mobilize Latinos, African-Americans and young people to vote.
The 23-year-old, who collaborated with Justin Bieber in 2013, took to the stage with other entertainers such as Twin Peaks on Monday afternoon at Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park.
'I want you to bring all that energy [to the polls],' Chance told the hyped crowds.
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Chance the Rapper led a crowd of thousands through Downtown Chicago to the polling stations
The event sponsored by his nonprofit group Social Works was geared toward millennial voters.
Afterward, at around 6pm, Chance led the crowd through rush-hour traffic to the voting site, where a long line of voters was already waiting to cast ballots.
'I think everyone felt really empowered. We're sure of ourselves, and we know that we can go out and make a difference,' voter Ariel Pritchard told ABC7.
People taking part in the march shared video and images on social media alongside the hashtag #StayWokeAndVote.
Chance the Rapper is a Hillary Clinton supporter but led the nonpartisan Parade to the Polls through Chicago on Monday night
America will decide who its next President is on Tuesday as Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's campaigns come to a close
Twitter user Madeline Jane shared a video of people walking through the streets with the caption 'all these people on their way to vote thanks to Chance the Rapper'.
Christen Calloway said 'this is what democracy looks like'.
Paige Davis shared a clip from the concert and wrote 'thank you for bringing us together for something this powerful'.
Chance went inside the polling place and voted.
On Friday, Chance the Rapper performed at a Clinton rally in Cleveland alongside Beyonce, Jay Z, and J Cole
Lady Gaga attempted to whip up support for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Raleigh, N.C., on Monday night
The Parade to the Polls on Monday was a nonpartisan event but Chance has previously voiced his support for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
On Friday he performed at a Clinton rally in Cleveland alongside Beyonce, Jay Z, and J Cole.
Illinois' State Board of Elections says nearly 1.3million people cast in-person early ballots through Sunday, surpassing turnout in previous presidential contests.
The head of Scotland Yard today made a grovelling apology to a former Tory MP for 'significant failings' in the bungled VIP child abuse inquiry Operation Midland.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe told Harvey Proctor, who was falsely accused of rape and murder by a fantasist known as Nick, that it had been 'wrong' to search his home in connection with the inquiry.
The apology came in a letter to Mr Proctor just hours before an independent report into Operation Midland, by ex High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques, is made public by the Met.
Sir Bernard told Mr Proctor: 'Now that we have received the final version of Sir Richard Henriques' report I am writing to formally convey my apologies for the failings by the Metropolitan Police Service that Sir Richard has identified in the way in which we handled Operation Midland in which you were a suspect.
'Sir Richard has concluded, and I accept, that there were significant failings in the way the Operation Midland investigation was conducted.'
Met Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has apologised to ex Tory MP Harvey Proctor over failings in Operation Midland, the bungled probe into a so-called 'VIP paedophile ring'
Mr Proctor, who has been a fierce critic of the police's handling of the inquiry, saw his home raided and was twice interviewed under caution
The police chief continued: 'In particular I accept the following points:
The approach adopted in believing the complainant at the outset was wrong.
Insufficient attempts were made to test the credibility of the complainant.
While it was right that the allegations had to be investigated, the effect of the approach adopted was to unnecessarily prolong the length of the investigation.
It was wrong to have searched your property.
'For these failings by the Metropolitan Police Service, I would like to offer you now an unreserved apology.'
Legal sources now believe that Mr Proctor could be in line for a huge compensation payout from the Met.
Mr Proctor today accepted Sir Bernard's apology and has replied, writing a letter to him headed 'without prejudice'.
He wrote: 'I write to accept your fulsome apology your letter contains. I accept your kind efforts in offering this unreserved apology.
'But as I am sure you will be aware, the detrimental impact of Operation Midland on my family, friends and myself, has been irreversible.
'I have always had huge respect for the policing of our country and admiration for the work police officers do. This is undiminished. I hope this travesty will never occur again.'
Operation Midland was set up to investigate an alleged 'VIP paedophile ring' who, it was claimed, operated out of a flat in Dolphin Square in Westminster
Operation Midland, which cost more than 2million, ended in March after the Met belatedly concluded that there was insufficient evidence to arrest anyone, let alone ask prosecutors to consider a charge.
Detectives did not find a shred of evidence to support Nick's extraordinary claims against Mr Proctor, ex Army chief Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan, ex PM Ted Heath, and the late Labour peer, Lord Greville Janner.
Yet in December 2014, a senior Met officer described Nick's allegations of serial rape and murder as 'credible and true', and police search teams later raided the homes of Lord Bramall and Mr Proctor, as well as two homes Lord Brittan shared with his wife before his death in January last year.
Since receiving an initial draft copy of Sir Richard's review, Sir Bernard has met D-Day veteran Lord Bramall, 92 interviewed under caution over Nick's abuse claims - to apologise.
Daniel Janner QC, Lord Janner's son, said Nick should be charged with criminal offences for making false allegations. He said: 'If the CPS do not prosecute Nick, I will consult my legal team with a view to instituting a private prosecution.'
Sir Bernard's apology represents a humiliating climb-down for Britain's most senior policeman, who had previously defended the conduct of Operation Midland.
D-Day veteran Lord Bramall (left) and former Home Secretary Lord Brittan (right) were two of those investigated in the 16-month probe, which ended without a single arrest
The inquiry began to unravel in September last year when the Daily Mail exclusively revealed that detectives had 'grave doubts' about Nick's testimony and the running of the investigation.
A number of subsequent reports by the Mail cast further doubt on the inquiry but Sir Bernard refused to accept criticism of it before asking Sir Richard to carry out an independent review of the fiasco.
Sir Bernard unexpectedly announced his retirement in September, as Sir Richard concluded his report. He is due to leave in February but will now be under pressure to go earlier.
According to reports, the police watchdog is on standby to investigate possible misconduct in Operation Midland.
Lord Brittan's widow has snubbed an invitation to meet Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe in protest at Scotland Yard's 'shoddy' and 'disrespectful' handling of its disgraced VIP child abuse inquiry.
Sir Bernard had offered to see Diana Brittan shortly before today's long-awaited publication of a damning report into the investigation, which saw a number of high-profile people including her late husband falsely accused of rape and murder by Nick.
The late former Prime Minister Edward Heath was also among those investigated
But Lady Brittan was only given a few days' notice of the proposed interview slot with Sir Bernard and is unhappy she may not be shown crucial sections of the review of Operation Midland relating to her husband, a former Tory Home Secretary.
'She is less than happy with the way the falsely accused and their families have been handled by the Met,' a friend said.
'We are going to wait and see what they publish on Tuesday and then we will digest it and see what additional information we want.
'She is not going to meet Hogan-Howe at all unless she has all the necessary information from Operation Midland that relates to her husband.
'If Hogan-Howe's office had been on top of Operation Midland as much as it has been involved in dealing with the public relations fall out from it - then we would not be in this situation in the first place.'
The friend also criticised the Met's decision to publish the report by Sir Richard on the day of the US presidential election which critics claim is a blatant attempt to bury bad news.
'It is the public relations strategy you associate with (Labour spin doctors) Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell 20 years ago,' Lady Brittan's confidante added.
Her friend said she is disappointed with the 'shoddy' and 'disrespectful' way she has been treated by the Met.
Lady Brittan's decision to snub Sir Bernard came after one of his most senior officers, Assistant Commissioner Helen King, wrote to her on Friday to say the Met intends to publish material from Sir Richard's report today.
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A clearly touched Hillary Clinton arrived at her Chappaqua, New York polling place this morning, with husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side and expressed gratitude when being embraced and applauded by follow voters.
'It is the most humbling feeling,' Clinton said of casting a vote for herself in the election at the Douglas G. Grafflin Elementary School. 'Because I know how much responsibility goes with this and so many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country and I will do the very best I can if I'm fortunate enough to win today.'
If Clinton wins tonight against rival Donald Trump, she'll make history as the first female president of the United States.
Yesterday, in a mad dash to the finish, Clinton appeared alongside President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama on the mall of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She brought along Bruce Springseen and Jon Bon Jovi to attract a crowd of 33,000 people, with several more scattered through the various parks outside the security perimeter.
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Hillary Clinton looked touched by the greeting she received at her local polling place by fellow New Yorkers as she cast her vote to become the nation's first female president
Hillary Clinton smiled as she met supporters outside her New York polling place, with many of them yelling 'good luck!' to the former secretary of state
Hillary and Bill Clinton appeared together on Election Day morning after not returning to New York last night until well after 3 a.m.
If Hillary Clinton routs Donald Trump in today's election, she'll be the first female president of the United States
Hillary Clinton arrived at her polling place around 8 a.m. after getting back from a long day of campaigning at 3:22 a.m., with supporters greeting her plane in Westchester
Hillary and Bill Clinton were mobbed by the media and fellow voters as she cast a vote for herself this morning from Chappaqua, New York
Hillary Clinton, sporting a leather jacket and with Bill Clinton at her side, hugs a fellow New York voter at her polling place this morning
Hillary Clinton's close aide Huma Abedin again joined her on the campaign trail after spending several days in New York after the FBI announced it was looking at Clinton emails found on Abedin's estranged husband Anthony Weiner's computer
She then zipped to North Carolina one final time for a midnight rally in Raleigh. Bon Jovi appeared here too and sang a duet with a last-minute add, pop star Lady Gaga.
The former secretary of state didn't get back to the Westchester, New York airport until 3:22 a.m., where hundreds of supporters were gathered to greet her plane.
Bon Jovi who traveled with the Clinton campaign on Hill Force One even said hello.
Hillary Clinton (right) was escorted to the polls by her husband ex-president Bill Clinton (left) - as the political power couple both casts their votes in Chappaqua, New York
A polling worker tried to calm the chaos - asking who was actually there to vote - as Hillary and Bill Clinton arrived at their polling place in New York this morning at 8 a.m.
Hillary Clinton grinned as she was mobbed by supporters when casting her vote for president - a vote for herself - this morning in New York
It was Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine, voting at his local precinct in Richmond, Virginia, who was the early riser on the Democratic team.
He arrived at his polling place at 5:50 a.m., with only one woman in front of him, 89-year old Minerva Turpin, who later placed an 'I Voted' sticker on the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Kaine later talked to reporters about his Election Day plans.
'I'm going to go get on TV a little, doing some morning shows to encourage people to vote,' the Virginia governor-turned-senator explained.
'I'm going to go have breakfast with my buddies,' he added.
'Then I'm going to come home after breakfast and Anne and I and my folks are going to hang out,' he continued. 'We may go for a walk or something it's such a nice day in the neighborhood. And then midday or so, we'll start to move up to New York and then just be nervous for awhile.'
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, was the second person in line at his Richmond polling location - the first being 89-year-old Minerva Turpin (right)
After Sen. Tim Kaine (left) voted, 99-year-old Minerva Turpin (right) put an 'I Voted' sticker on the Democratic nominee for president
As promised, Sen. Tim Kaine got breakfast with his friends after voting for himself and his running mate Hillary Clinton in Richmond, Virginia
Sen. Tim Kaine hit up a Richmond area diner after voting early Tuesday morning, telling reporters earlier he planned to hang out with his wife and take a walk later in the day
Clinton, surrounded by a crush of media, arrived at her polling place at 8 a.m.
'Oh, I did,' she replied when asked by the New York Times if she thought about her mother as she headed in to cast her vote.
Several voters yelled, 'Good luck,' at the nation's first female major party nominee.
A polling worker tried to keep her supporters calm asking: 'Is anyone actually here to vote?'
Soon, Bill and Hillary Clinton had their ballots and made their selections. The couple worked the rope line outside briefly until 8:19, when the motorcade took off.
A handful of people yelled out 'Huma!' upon spotting Clinton's chief aide Huma Abedin, who rejoined her on the campaign trail after the FBI cleared Clinton, once again, of prosecution for her emails.
YOUNG DEMOCRATS: Chelsea Clinton and her husband Marc Mezvinsky were spotted out and about in New York City with both their children Aidan and Charlotte
Former and perhaps future first daughter Chelsea Clinton was spotted walking with her family in New York City sporting an Election Day 'I Voted' sticker
Chelsea Clinton greets a passerby as she and her family were out in New York City this morning. Her mother will come into Manhattan for Election Night festivities later today
The new batch of emails were found on a computer belonging to Abedin's estranged husband, disgraced ex-congressman Anthony Weiner.
Later in the morning, daughter Chelsea Clinton, accompanied by her husband Marc Mezvinsky and children Charlotte and Aidan, was spotted in New York City sporting an 'I Voted' sticker on her beige trench coat.
Both major party candidates will host their election night shindigs in New York City tonight, with Clinton occupying the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a venue that has a literal glass ceiling.
Spotted on site at the Javits center, Clinton campaign chairman laughed when asked by DailyMail.com for an Election Night prediction, saying he thought the Democratic hopeful would do well.
Trump will hold his election night fete at a Hilton property in Midtown Manhattan, instead of his trademark Trump Tower.
He appeared on 'Fox & Friends' this morning, after doing five rallies yesterday in the run-up to Election Day.
'I know it's taken you 17 months; it's been a long odyssey for you. As you cast your vote today, have you decided who you're going to vote for?' asked 'Fox & Friends' host Steve Doocy. 'Who you going to vote for?'
Trump, the Republican nominee, had a nice laugh. 'Well I've really worked on this hard, but I have made that final decision yes,' the billionaire said.
He claims he was called a 'dirty Jew' and was only defending himself
Buchler, 64, admitted striking Mr Barrane but said it was an accident
Incident took place in Harrods in London on New Year's Eve 2015
David Buchler, 64, was accused of breaking James Birrane's nose' in Harrods by his wife Rosaria Birrane (pictured)
A woman whose husband's nose was broken by the former vice chairman of Tottenham Hotspur in a row in Harrods made racist posts about Jews and Muslims, a court heard today.
Sicilian born Rosaria Birrane was with her husband James when his nose was broken by David Buchler in a New Year's Eve melee at the luxury store, when Buchler allegedly queue-jumped to pay for two croissants.
Buchler, 64, who ran Spurs in the early 90s and oversaw Sir Alan Sugar's takeover of the north London club, is accused of punching Mr Birrane, 57, after getting into a dispute with his wife at the till.
But Isleworth Crown Court heard today Mrs Birrane - who said the incident 'destroyed' her husband's life - was accused of being a racist with a 'vendetta against Jews'.
The jury was told that Mrs Birrane, 54, had fabricated the allegation and had a history of posting Islamophobic and antisemitic comments on social media.
And when asked whether she believed in a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, she swore at Jonathan Goldberg QC before telling him to 'shut up'.
Mr Goldberg, representing Buchler, also accused her of waging a 'Sicilian blood feud' against the 64-year-old. He said: 'Are you a racist? Do you have anything against Muslims?'
Mrs Birrane said: 'Oh, you've been on my Facebook. I don't have anything to hide. Knock yourself out. I don't have anything against muslims per se.
'I have something against some of the aspects of the religion.'
The QC shared with the court an article about Islamic repression of women which Mrs Birrane had apparently shared on Facebook in which she is alleged to have written: 'Some cultures are better than others. All cultures are better than Islam.'
Defending her comment, she said: 'Absolutely. That's what they do in Islam.'
Mr Goldberg also showed the court an article about a 'Jewish conspiracy to take over the world' and said: 'Just to show you're an equal opportunity racist.'
Mrs Birrane shouted: 'Jewish conspiracy to take over the world? Oh, for f***'s sake. Do shut up.'
Another webpage that Mrs Birrane allegedly shared showed Hasidic Jews dancing in a religious ceremony with her comment: 'Wow.'
Mr Goldberg suggesting the comment was 'mocking' - but Mrs Birrane said she was 'celebrating them' and had just watched a documentary that she 'enjoyed very much'.
Another article criticised the Rockefeller and Rothschild families, which Mr Goldberg said, 'shows the classic conspiracy theory that Jews run the world, that Jews are running the financial markets, that the Jews are starting wars'.
Mrs Birrane said that her mother-in-law was Jewish, adding: 'She is Jewish whether she says she is or not. She's ashamed of being a Jew.'
The jury was also told that many aspects of her evidence in court did not match the statement she had given to police shortly after the alleged attack.
Buchler (pictured) said Mr Birrane was 'extremely aggressive' and that his 'eyes were on fire' before he lifted an arm to defend himself hitting his nose with his elbow
Mr Goldberg said: 'There's not a word about the cashier being upset, not a word about the fact that you said, 'f*** this, f*** that, f*** the other', not a word about reducing the poor girl to tears, not a word about you intervening to help the poor girl.'
Mrs Birrane said: 'Well, everything is on camera and it wasn't my place to say any of that.'
The court also heard that Mrs Birrane had made it her mission to 'get justice' for her husband after the court heard how Mr Birrane was left 'bleeding like a pig'.
Mrs Birrane said: 'My husband was left with a nose so broken that it couldn't be fixed. I don't know whether it was an open hand, military-style punch, or what.
'I didn't know the gentleman - I didn't know him before and I don't know him now.
'The result of the injury allowed me assume that he had been hit with a closed fist, because he was bleeding like a pig.'
Mr Goldberg said: 'You are running a vendetta against this man.'
She replied: 'Absolutely. I cry when I see my husband not being able to drive, not being able to read a newspaper.
'I remember [Buchler] every day of my life. I do not want anything but for him to say sorry, for him to apologise. I don't want anything. I don't want money. I just want justice.'
Mr Goldberg said: 'I suggested you are running a vendetta. You said, 'absolutely'. A vendetta is a Sicilian blood-feud.'
It was alleged that Buchler told Rosaria Birrane to 'f*** off' before punching her husband and breaking his nose.
Buchler admitted hitting a shopper in the face after being called a 'dirty Jew' for jumping the queue in Harrods, the court heard.
He said he was trying to buy Jewish bread and some croissants when a couple aggressively accused him of pushing in.
Buchler, pictured with Glenn Hoddle, right, during his time as Tottenham Hotspur vice chairman, claims one of the couple called him a 'dirty Jew' and that he was defending himself
But Mr Buchler claims that he raised his arm in self-defence after the couple became aggressive, telling him to 'f*** off' and calling him a 'dirty Jew'.
This afternoon, Buchler outlined his version of events from New Year's Eve last year - his 64th birthday.
He said he was approached in the queue, first by Sicilian Rosaria Birrane and later by her husband, and the pair accused him of queue jumping.
Buchler said Mr Birrane was 'extremely aggressive' and that his 'eyes were on fire' before he lifted an arm to defend himself hitting his nose with his elbow.
He told the court, he had suffered a slipped disc earlier in that year and had to carefully manage his diet due to his diabetes.
Mr Buchler said he had returned to the queue at the bakery in Harrods on Knightsbridge to buy a croissant and a pain-au-raisin because 'I felt like I needed a bit of food'.
Recounting the incident, he said: 'I bought a challah, because on a Friday night, you say a blessing for having food, a blessing for having wine or a drink - that's a very common thing I would do.
'I wasn't in any particular hurry. We had friends to go to for a party.'
Asked whether he told the girl behind the till to 'fucking hurry up', Buchler said: 'No, never. I'm not a man who swears.
'I'm not an angry chap. I can be firm if I need to be firm, but I'm always courteous.
'I see absolutely no reason to swear or use bad language, certainly in the context of what happened.'
Buchler told the court that at that moment, Mrs Birrane came up beside him and accused him of pushing in.
Mrs Birrane, pictured with her husband James, was accused of having a 'vendetta against Jews' and 'a history of Islamophobia', the jury heard
He said: 'She was really, really irritated. It was just amazing that somebody could become quite so irritated quite so quickly. She told me to bugger off to the end of the line.'
'I explained I'd been in the other queue, had bought a challah. I used the word challah once.
'She was constantly shouting and swearing at me. So I told her to shut up.'
Buchler told the jury that Mr Birrane then walked up behind him, adding: 'There was eye-contact, but it wasn't specific.
'I don't think he did much, actually, until he told me to 'f*** off'. The 'fuck off' that I got, which was in a very gutteral tone, came from behind me.
'That's what, for me, was frightening, from Mr Birrane.
'The whole thing has taken me unawares. She has been extremely aggressive, extremely aggressive, and at the same time there's also this 'dirty Jew'.
'My hackles were up. Seeing him in my peripheral vision him coming towards me, the 'dirty Jew' was secondary, to be honest, but it was part of the red lights that I got.
'There's no question it was said. It was said almost at the same time, which is why I think it's more likely to be Mrs Birrane, as he said, "f*** off'.
'I felt I was about to be hit, so I turned around, and as I did, as he came towards me, my elbow contacted his nose. My hands never contacted him.'
Buchler told the court he was not aggressive 'in the slightest' and had 'never hit anybody in [his] life'.
He added: 'I connected with him and he then staggered back. He then came forward again, grabbing at my face.
Newly appointed Tottenham Hotspur manager Glenn Hoddle (second from right) poses for photographers with his agent Dennis Roach (back, left), assistant John Gorman and Spurs executive vice-chairman David Buchler (right)
'I was wearing my glasses. He was clawing at my face and trying to get hold my face, but got my glasses and threw them down. They ended up on the floor by the bread counter. It was done aggressively.
'He was coming towards me and then people around tried to pull him off me and make sure I was not going to go back to him.
'We were both held, parted. I remember looking for my glasses and wanting to try and just see what was going on.'
Mr Goldberg asked: 'Mrs Birrane told us that she gave them back: did she?'
Buchler said, 'no', and added: 'There was a gentleman from Harrods, who I went with to stand and wait for security to arrive.
'After five or ten minutes waiting, nobody had come and I said, "Do you think it's okay to carry on doing my shopping as long as I give you my card so you know who I am", which he agreed to.
'I left and carried on with my shopping, bought some slippers in the basement, Uggs, and was later approached by security who said I should follow him.'
Buchler said he was then interviewed by police regarding the alleged punch, and was irritated that the police had assumed he was guilty.
Asked why he agreed to speak to police without a lawyer present, he said: 'I was in a prison cell for the first time in my life felt a great sense of injustice.
'So when I had the opportunity to give a statement of what happened, I was happy to do it, because I had really been given no opportunity to give a proper statement before that.
The incident took place at Harrods, pictured, in London on New Year's Eve 2015
'No one was really interested in whether I had punched a man or not punched a man - they just assumed I had.
'The officer said he saw CCTV that I had punched a man. I was fairly bewildered because I had not punched anyone. I acted in self defence.'
The jury at Isleworth Crown Court were played a tape of his police interview shortly after the incident on New Year's Eve 2015.
Buchler said: 'It's all terribly surreal to me now.'
After the dispute, he told police: 'To be honest, everything happened so quickly. He then moved behind me in a very aggressive manner and I thought he was going to hit me.
'I put my arm up, my left arm, about shoulder height in order to protect myself, and caught him on the face with my left elbow.
'I had been explaining to the lady that I had bought the challah, I was just paying and had given the money to pay for the croissant and other piece and I was showing her inside the bag.
Buchler, pictured outside Isleworth Crown Court, denies one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm
'That's when the guy said, in a verbal way, 'f*** off you dirty Jew', and started moving behind me.
'It was all in a split second. This was all very quick - I saw him move behind me and I thought to myself, he's going to hit me.'
He added: 'I did not know what his intentions were. I felt he was just about to become physically aggressive as opposed to verbally aggressive.'
Buchler told the police that Mr Birrane definitely told him to 'f*** off', but that: 'I cannot 100 percent say whether it was him or his wife that said, "you dirty Jew".
He added: 'That's when I felt the alarm bells ringing in my head and I thought, 'are you going to be attacked or are you not going to be attacked'.
Buchler said he waited with security, because he 'didn't want to leave in an improper way', before being given the all clear by the guard and heading downstairs 'to buy some slippers'.
He added: 'I was defending myself, but I am so sorry if I have really hurt him and he has broken his nose. I'm devastated. I'm just so sorry.'
Both Mr and Mrs Birrane deny calling Buchler a 'dirty Jew'.
She added: 'I didn't sleep all night. You are going to have to apologise because I'm not having that on my reputation or my husband's reputation.'
Buchler, of Mayfair, central London, denies one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Education officials said the professor would be fired over the display
Some students are seen running out of room in Makhachkala, Russia
Footage shows professor walking around lecture hall with no clothes on
An anatomy professor left students shocked after stripping off and walking around completely naked during a lecture.
Footage shows some students running from the lecture hall after the professor took his clothes off at the Dagestan State Medical Academy in Makhachkala, south-west Russia.
The video shows the professor, identified as Kamil Magomedov, walking around the lecture hall with no clothes on.
An anatomy professor left students shocked after stripping off and walking around completely naked during a lecture at the Dagestan State Medical Academy in Russia
Students reported that he took his clothes off without warning and only put his trousers back on after he saw that female students were running out of the class.
In the video, one of the male voices can be heard saying: 'I told you he is crazy. He definitely will be fired after this. Girls, do not look at him!'
One student told Russian media: 'We could not understand what was happening. He started to take his clothes off all of a sudden without any warning, and then he was totally naked.
Students reported that he took his clothes off without warning and only put his trousers back on after he saw that female students were running out of the class
'He didn't even have his underwear on. To be honest people didn't know what to do, the girls were running out scared and only then did he put his pants back on.'
It is not clear what made the professor, who was delivering a lecture on microscopic anatomy, strip off during the class.
Education officials said that the professor, who has been working at the university for 10 years, would be fired over the incident.
Education officials said that the professor, who has been working at the university for 10 years, would be fired over the incident
US intelligence chiefs are working overtime to avert any cyber attacks planned during today's Presidential election.
Officials in the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department, FBI, CIA, the Pentagon and the NSA will be monitoring potential threats.
Hackers could try to undermine the electoral process by taking out communications or power networks.
US military chiefs are monitoring the threat posed by cyber attackers during today's election
Vladimir Putin has denied he has any interest in interfering with the US election process
The Russian government has denied it has any intention of interfering with the US election.
One senior intelligence official told NBC: 'It's all hands on deck. There is a whole-of-government effort in cyber around the election.'
Analysts have been warned to watch out for false 'WikiLeaks-style' documents being dumped on the internet in an effort to destroy the credibility of a candidate.
Joe Hill, chief technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology warned some election machines may be vulnerable to threat: 'Election administrators are trained to run elections, not defend computer systems.
'The voting systems we use in many cases don't keep the kind of evidence one would need to detect an attack, let alone recover from it, without disruption or loss of votes.'
Donald Trump has warned about possible fraud saying he was 'afraid the election is going to be rigged'.
Princeton historian Julian Zelizer said: 'The biggest potential surprise in 2016 comes from the internet, and the potential for state-sponsored or hacker-instigated data dumps and turbulence that are disconnected from the campaigns.'
35 per cent of Russians believe that a Trump victory would be better for their interests
Analysis of the hacking attempts on the Democratic Campaign Committee provided evidence that Russian-based cyber criminals were behind the data thefts.
Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins cryptography expert, offered a simple solution to stave off ballot hacks: 'There is only one way to protect the voting system from a nation-state-funded cyberattack. Use paper.'
Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russia had any plans to hack today's election.
He said: ' We have neither a right nor an intention to interfere in the US election process. There are a lot of problems even without our interference.'
Peskov branded as 'absurd' claims Russia wanted any particular candidate to win.
He said any accusations of electoral fraud were an internal matter for the United States.
Nicola Sturgeon has vowed to join the legal battle against Theresa May triggering Brexit without permission from MPs.
The Scottish First Minister announced she is applying to join the case over whether parliamentary approval is needed to invoke Article 50.
She insisted that Holyrood and other devolved institutions should also sign off before the formal process of cutting ties with Brussels can begin.
The High Court ruled last week that Theresa May cannot use executive powers to launch the two-year mechanism for leaving the EU.
The Supreme Court confirmed today it would hear the Government appeal over four days from December 5 - but warned it was unlikely to publish a result before the New Year.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (pictured in Sheffield yesterday) has said she will be applying to join the case against the UK government in the Supreme Court
The decision in favour of Remain supporters including businesswoman Gina Miller is threatening to throw the PM's Brexit timetable into turmoil, with pro-EU MPs and peers set to fight a desperate rearguard action to limit the impact.
But the government has set the stage for a dramatic showdown by announcing it will appeal to the Supreme Court next month. The outcome could potentially shape the country's future.
Confirming that Scotland's top law officer will apply to join the case, Mrs Sturgeon said it 'simply cannot be right' that rights linked to membership of the EU 'can be removed by the UK Government on the say-so of a Prime Minister without parliamentary debate, scrutiny or consent'.
She added: 'So legislation should be required at Westminster and the consent of the Scottish Parliament should be sought before Article 50 is triggered.'
A Downing Street spokesman said it was a matter for the Scottish government to decide whether to join the legal case but insisted: Clearly the UK as a whole voted to leave the EU and the UK government will deliver on those instructions.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE LEGAL BATTLE ABOUT? The landmark legal dispute over Brexit centres on who exactly holds the power to start the process of Britain's exit from the EU. The Government had insisted Theresa May could do it without consulting Parliament, invoking Article 50 of the EU treaties to start a formal two year negotiation to complete Britain's departure from the EU. But Remain campaigners insisted only Parliament could make the decision because filing the Article 50 notification was irreversible and would therefore cancel rights granted under the EU treaties. But in a shock ruling, senior judges at the High Court backed the campaigners and rejected the Government case - even though it was personally made by Attorney General Jeremy Wright. Advertisement
The spokesman said Mrs May is still committed to the timetable of triggering Article 50 by the end of March next year. We believe that timetable is still deliverable, he said.
Mrs May insisted today that ministers have a strong legal case to press ahead without an MPs' vote by use of royal prerogative.
Speaking during her trip to India, she said the Government had been given a mandate to take Britain out of the EU by the June 23 referendum.
And she shrugged off suggestions that she should seek a personal mandate by calling an early general election.
Mrs May said: 'The Government has a mandate from the British people. We were elected, the Conservative Party was elected into government in 2015. And the Government has a mandate from the British people to leave the EU.
'Remember Parliament gave the choice to the people, Parliament voted six to one to say to the British people 'What is your view? Should we remain or should we leave?'
'I'm determined we are going to deliver what the British people want, and that is what they said they wanted in the referendum on June 23.'
Theresa May, pictured on a trade trip in India today, has insisted she believes the UK government has a strong case
The PM made clear she wanted to draw a line under the arguments which split the nation in the run-up to the referendum.
'I think what we need to do now is not focus on what happened during the campaign.
'People voted on whether or not they wanted to leave the EU. They voted to leave the EU and what I'm focusing on now and what I'm determined to do is to deliver on that and make a success of it.
'That's why I'm here in India looking at the trade relationships we can develop with other countries around the world. I'm going to deliver on global Britain - more jobs, more investment, more trade for British business.'
The Scottish Government's intervention in the case comes after Mrs Sturgeon warned a second referendum on Scottish independence is now 'highly likely'.
The First Minister said: 'Let me be clear - I recognise and respect the right of England and Wales to leave the European Union. This is not an attempt to veto that process.
'But the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland and the national Parliament of Scotland cannot be brushed aside as if they do not matter.'
The Supreme Court has set aside four days to hear the appeal from December 5. All 11 justices, chaired by Lord Neuberger, pictured in the court building, will reserve its judgement and plan to deliver a result in the New Year
Ms Sturgeon went on: 'The Prime Minister said that on June 23 people across the UK had voted with, in her words, 'emphatic clarity' when they voted by a margin of four points to leave the EU.
'The margin for Remain in Scotland was 24 points - a far more emphatic and clear result.
'So the Prime Minister needs to live up to her promise to treat Scotland as an equal partner in the United Kingdom and listen to the will of the people of Scotland.'
The First Minister said she would not go into the detail of what the Lord Advocate will argue, but made it clear she personally believes the UK Government should seek approval for triggering Article 50 through a legislative consent motion at Holyrood.
She said: 'When you read the High Court judgment last week and all the rights that are affected by the triggering of Article 50, then it doesn't take much to see the rights that are then affected in Scotland. It strikes in many ways right at the heart of the devolution settlement.
The Scottish Government's intervention in the case comes after Mrs Sturgeon warned a second referendum on Scottish independence is now 'highly likely'
'So I believe that as a matter of politics and as a matter of fairness and respect to the devolution settlement, before we even get into matters of law which are not for me to determine, then it is inconceivable that the UK Government would try to ignore or not seek the approval of the Scottish Government.
'And while I don't speak for them, I believe there are those both in the Welsh Government and indeed in the Northern Irish Government who would take a similar view about their own parliaments.'
Ms Sturgeon dismissed a suggestion that the move would be seen by Leave voters as the Scottish Government 'interfering' in the process.
She said: 'This is not an attempt to frustrate the will of people in England and Wales but it is part of our overall attempt to protect the will of the Scottish people.
'It's not a question of interfering, this is a decision that affects all of us and it affects the people of Scotland here just as much as it affects people right across the UK.'
Following the revelation that several SNP MSPs voted for Brexit, she said it was up to her party's parliamentarians whether they wanted to reveal their vote or not.
'There is no doubt in my mind the vast majority of opinion in the SNP and our parliamentary groups was for Remain,' she said.
Tiexi District in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, was a Stalin-style industrial center from the 1950s to the 1980s. Now, it is synonymous for "slum town," after the planned-economy factories collapsed in China's market economy reform in the 1990s.
In fact, Tiexi's glory dates back to the 1930s, when Japanese occupiers started turning it into an "Oriental Ruhr." After nearly 20 years of painstaking management, they left many factories and industrial infrastructures there after their unconditional surrender to China in 1945.
Working in Tiexi's state-owned factories meant a reliable income and decent life for the locals. The factories provided cradle-to-grave services for workers, who enjoyed a much higher social status than farmers.
In the late 1950s, Tiexi was the No. 1 provider of steel and machine tools. In its golden times, 90 out of Shenyang's 99 large- and medium-scale state-owned enterprises were located in the district.
A large number of old factories and workers' apartment buildings have been demolished since the 1990s. There used to be 143 apartment buildings for workers in five clusters in Tiexie, which were built according to Soviet Union architects' blueprints and called Workers Village.
In the village were post offices, kindergartens, groceries, grain supply centers, small parks, squares, clubs, cinemas, primary schools and middle schools. Today, only 32 buildings are left, which were turned into a provincial-level cultural relic site under government protection in 2014.
Old workers like visiting the old buildings. The furniture and decoration in some rooms have been kept as they were in earlier decades. Visitors can see the changes of the workers' life throughout the years.
An old worker surnamed Liu said: "In the 1950s, only the model workers and retired-soldier workers could live in the community. Although the room is small, it has electricity, running water, heaters, gas and flushing toilets. In a word, it was dream home for all back then."
The other old worker echoed: "At that time, when people asked what communism looks like, many will answer like the Workers Village in Tiexi."
Liu said that neighborhood relations in the village were much better than those of modern residential communities today. "People knew each other very well, and neighbors lived like close relatives. They shared the public kitchen and toilet. They worked in the same factory, and their children went to the same schools. And their earnings were on the same level."
Locals are reluctant to talk about "the most difficult 1990s," when most old state-owned enterprises collapsed.
The workers lost their jobs, and the social pyramid was turned upside down. Many farmers set up their own business in cities after they were allowed to work as migrant workers in the cities. Workers in their 40s and 50s experienced most difficult times as job hunters in the employment market.
In early 21st century, all enterprises in Tiexi were relocated to an industrial park in a new development zone in the west of Shenyang, giving place to some high-technology corporations from Japan, France, the United States and Germany. The old neighborhood has become a memory of the old workers, who mostly moved to new residential communities funded by government subsidies.
In August 2012, the last factory left Tiexi, marking the end of an era.
An Australian mother accused of killing an Indonesian police officer said she wants to apologise to his family as her co-accused boyfriend has revealed he still loves her.
Sara Connor, a 45-year-old mother-of-two from Byron Bay, and her British DJ partner David Taylor are preparing for their murder trial in Bali on Wednesday over the death of Wayan Sudarsa.
Mr Sudarsa was found allegedly beaten to death with more than 40 wounds on Kuta Beach on August 17.
Connor, who was holidaying with Taylor, claims a fight broke out between the officer and her boyfriend when she tried to intervene. Both deny murdering Mr Surdarsa.
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British man David Taylor (middle) and Australian woman Sara Connor (left) will face separate murder trials
Connor (right), an Australian mother who is accused of killing a Bali police officer with Taylor (left), said she wants to apologise to the victim's family
Ketut Arsini (pictured), the wife of dead police officer Wayan Sudarsa (right), refuses to forgive Byron Bay woman Sara Connor and Briton David Taylor for their part in his death
One of Connor's attorneys, Robert Khuana, told The Daily Telegraph he had visited her on Tuesday to prepare her for her trial.
'She wants to express her sympathy to the family and if it's possible, if there is assistance that she can give she will give assistance,' Mr Khuana said.
Mr Khuana said he had not yet got in touch with Mr Sudarsa's widow, who said she cannot bring herself to forgive the pair for her husband's death.
It comes as Taylor's lawyer Haposan Sihombing revealed his client still loved his girlfriend.
'Fact is, David loves Sara,' Mr Sihombing told The Sydney Morning Herald after visiting Taylor at Kerobokan jail on Tuesday.
'I asked him "Do you love her?" He said: "I love Sara. I love her even more".'
Taylor, 34, (pictured) and Connor took part in a reenactment of 'scenes' from the night Sudarsa was allegedly murdered on Bali's Kuta Beach
Taylor sent a letter (pictured) to Ms Arsini begging for her forgiveness
Connor (left) and Taylor (right) deny murdering Wayan Sudarsa in Bali
The heartbroken widow of Mr Sudarsa, Ketut Arsini, believes her husband of 31 years would still be alive if Connor had sought help instead of leaving him dying on the deserted beach.
Ms Arsini rejected a letter sent by Taylor, where he asked for forgiveness for bashing the police officer's head with a beer bottle.
'I really cannot believe that my terrible actions may have contributed to the taking of another life,' Taylor, 34, wrote in the letter to Ms Arsini.
But Ms Arsini cannot find forgiveness for the pair after the father-of-two, who served as a Bali police officer for 35 years, was killed.
'If she is such a good person, why did she leave my husband like that? If she was really trying to help, if she got help, maybe they could have saved [him]. They just left him, he was found much later. No good person would do that. That's just her excuse,' she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
She also felt that Taylor's letter meant nothing and that it was too late now to apologise for his actions.
Connor and Taylor are pictured laying on top of a police officer acting as Mr Sudarsa during the reenactment 'scenes'
Ms Connor and Mr Taylor embrace as a police officer holds up their name tags as they continue the recreation of 'scenes'
Taylor has admitted to brawling with Mr Sudarsa on the sand and hitting him with binoculars, a smashed beer bottle and a sharp object but that he did not kill him.
'I still want to rip the letter [he wrote], I want to rip it. I can't forgive him. We can't forgive him. Whatever they are saying, that it was an accident, [that] they didn't mean it, are all just excuses,' Ms Arsini said.
Connor and Taylor both face charges of unpremeditated murder, group attack or assault leading to death. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail.
In September Connor and Taylor spent several gruelling hours re-enacting 'scenes' from the night Sudarsa was allegedly murdered on Bali's Kuta Beach in August.
Ms Connor, 45, had originally told police Mr Sudarsa was a 'bad cop' who had pinned her down in the sand with his body weight.
A 'fixer' who makes thousands of pounds selling fake IDs to illegal immigrants to help them stay living in Britain has been caught in an undercover sting.
The conman, known only as Adil, has been exposed for selling fake residency cards to immigrants in Birmingham and charging up to 600 per ID card.
He boasted that he can supply 'top quality' fake versions of a biometric residence permit - which holds a migrant's name, date and place of birth, alongside a photograph, fingerprints and immigration status in the UK.
The cards, which are supposed to be issued only by the Home Office, allow an individual to stay, work or study in the UK and can be used as ID when opening a bank account, applying for work or benefits, or getting a domestic flight.
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The 'fixer', known only as Adil, has been exposed in an undercover sting for selling fake residency cards to immigrants in Birmingham and charging up to 600 per ID card. He is pictured (left) handing over the fake biometric residence permit to the undercover reporter
Adil boasted that he can supply 'top quality' fake versions of a biometric residence permit - which holds a migrant's name, date and place of birth, alongside a photograph, fingerprints and immigration status in the UK. The undercover reporter gives him 460 cash for the fake ID
Adil has been exposed by investigative journalist Paul Connolly (left, while confronting Adil) for a new Channel 5 documentary - Undercover Criminal: The Great British Fake Off
Adil claims people travel from around the country to his 'very successful business' in which he charges hundreds of pounds to replicate the ID cards.
He has been exposed by investigative journalist Paul Connolly for a new Channel 5 documentary - Undercover Criminal: The Great British Fake Off.
It comes amid growing controversy around Britain's immigration policy, with the use of biometric visas put in the spotlight today when Prime Minister Theresa May said she wants India to take back overstayers based on biometric data alone, rather than piles of paperwork.
She said that in return the UK could make changes to the visa process, such as lowering fees. But Government officials stressed they would not alter the criteria needed to obtain a visa or commit to letting more people in.
Highlighting how easy it is for fraudsters to replicate the biometric documents in the UK, investigative journalist Connolly briefed a fellow undercover reporter who visited Adil's run-down office in Birmingham city centre pretending to be a contact of an illegal immigrant in need of some identification.
In footage of the sting, the undercover reporter - wearing a hidden camera - asks Adil for a fake biometric residency permit and the pair agree a price of 600.
Not suspecting he is being set up, Adil boasts about the 'top quality' of the fake IDs.
He says: 'Obviously you know looking at the backhand this card is not registered. The rest you will see, that it looks professional. That's the main thing.'
The undercover reporter then asks: 'You know how to do this?' but Adil responds: 'Yeah, don't worry about it'.
He then adds: 'You will see it. If you don't like it, don't pay.'
The undercover reporter visited Adil's home in Birmingham and asked if they could do business. Adil (above) got out some examples of his fake IDs and presented them to the poser
Adil boasted to the reporter that he could do 'top quality' replicas of the fake biometric IDs
An undercover reporter visited Adil's run-down office in Birmingham city centre (Adil pictured in it) pretending to be a contact of an illegal immigrant in need of some false identification=
The reporter is asked to hand over a photograph and a date of birth, before the pair agree to meet at a later date.
WHAT IS A BIOMETRIC RESIDENCE PERMIT? Youll get a biometric residence permit (BRP) from the Home Office if you: - Apply to come to the UK for longer than 6 months - Extend your visa to longer than 6 months - Apply to settle in the UK - Transfer your visa to a new passport - Apply for certain Home Office travel documents Advertisement
A few days later, they meet in a car and Adil dressed down in casual clothes hands over the fake biometric residence permit.
He tells his 'client': 'There you, here are your keepsakes,' before boasting about the time and effort gone into replicating the Home Office card.
He says: 'This is what the money is all about. You see the monogram, it takes a lot of hard work on that.
'That's what the craftsmanship is all about.
'That's why we have a package, that's why we are very famous here for the work we do.'
The reporter is then seen handing over a large amount of cash wads of 20 notes to pay for the ID card.
In another clip of the documentary, which is to be aired tonight at 10pm, the reporter goes to visit the Birmingham office again but this times tells Adil he has 'something to show him in his car outside'.
Connolly confronted Adil after jumping out of a parked car and approaching him in the street
Connolly told Adil (right) that his undercover sting had caught his dodgy document business
Investigative journalist Connolly presented Adil with the fake ID his reporter managed to buy
Adil follows him to the vehicle around the corner when Connolly jumps out of a nearby parked car and confronts Adil.
He asks the fraudster: 'The man you know as Khamir is an undercover investigator, he is one of my colleagues, he works for me.
'And all of the little chats you've been having over the last while, he's been recording.
'Adil, we have you selling him forged residency cards. This is the card that you sold him and this guy the picture you put on the ID is also one of my staff.
Adil claimed he had no idea what he was talking about when he was confronted by Connolly
Connolly and the Channel 5 cameras are pictured confronting Adil in Birmingham city centre
The investigative reporter confronts Adil and asks him 'why you are doing this' in the street
Adil refuses to respond to Connolly's approach, instead saying: 'I haven't done it, it isn't me'
'And I want to hear what you have to say Adil. I want you to tell me why you are doing this. We have you admitting to this, we have you detailing to every little aspect of your operation. So, what is it? Money? Greed?'
Adil refuses to respond to Connolly's approach, instead saying over and over: 'I haven't done it, it isn't me.'
He adds: 'I haven't done anything. I don't know what you're talking about'.
Cemetery is staying open late on Election Day so people can pay respects
Earlier this year, people put the 'I Voted' stickers on the grave site after voting for Democratic
After waiting in line at the polls and receiving an 'I Voted' sticker for casting their ballot, a throng of Americans flocked to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, to put those stickers on the grave of suffragette Susan B Anthony.
While the tradition sprung up in the last two years, Tuesday is particularly special as people visit the grave of the first woman to cast a ballot after having voted for the first female presidential candidate of a major party, Hillary Clinton.
Hundreds of people waited for their turn to place their sticker upon the tombstone and snap a picture of the moment where past and present meet.
As some people affixed their sticker, they smiled. Some laughed.
Others wept with the gravity of knowing that by the end of Tuesday, the United States could have its first female president.
Items bearing Clinton's name and campaign slogan, America flags and flowers have been piled high at the site.
A sign on top of the grave, just above the tombstone covered in stickers, shows Clinton's picture next to Anthony's - an emblem of how far American women have come since Anthony's history law-breaking vote.
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Long lines have appeared at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York, where people are waiting to place their 'I Voted' sticker on Susan B Anthony's grave
Hundreds of people waited for their turn to place their sticker upon the tombstone and snap a picture of the moment where past and present meet
Voters are flocking to the grave of Anthony, who led the fight for women to be able to cast ballots, in order to symbolically place their 'I Voted' stickers on her tombstone
In November of 1872, Anthony convinced a Rochester election inspector to allow her to vote for Ulysses S Grant in the presidential election.
It was still illegal for women to vote at this time - the 19th Amendment would be ratified nearly 50 years later in 1920.
Two weeks after Anthony cast her ballot, she was arrested for voting.
After her arrest, she campaigned around New York state fighting for women to earn their right to the vote.
Many have brought items bearing Clinton's name and campaign slogan, America flags and flowers have been piled high at the site
A sign on top of the grave, just above the tombstone covered in stickers, shows Clinton's picture next to Anthony's
And earlier this year, in April after primary votes were cast for Clinton, a layer of 'I Voted' stickers appeared on Anthony's grave
In one address she said: 'It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union.
'And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people women as well as men.'
Anthony died in 1906 - 110 years before voters would go to the booths to cast ballots for the potential first female president.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren called, 'a rite of passage for many citizens'.
The cemetery closes at 5.30pm on Tuesdays, but because of the droves of voters wishing to place their sticker of Anthony's grave, the site will remain open until 9pm on Election Day, the Washington Post reported.
Lights have been installed for guests but they are still advised to bring flashlights.
It is believed people began visiting the grave in 2014 to place 'I Voted' stickers on Anthony's tombstone.
And earlier this year, in April after primary votes were cast for Clinton, a layer of 'I Voted' stickers appeared on Anthony's grave.
While the pilgrimage is mainly taken by New Yorkers, some travel to the cemetery to honor Anthony's fight for equality
The cemetery closes at 5.30pm on Tuesdays, but because of the droves of voters wishing to place their sticker of Anthony's grave, the site will remain open until 9pm on Election Day
It is believed people began visiting the grave in 2014 to place 'I Voted' stickers on Anthony's tombstone
'It was definitely like I was putting it on her lapel, like, "This ones for you, Susan, here you go", Brianne Wojtesta told The Washington Post in April.
While the pilgrimage is mainly taken by New Yorkers, some travel to the cemetery to honor Anthony's fight for equality.
'Ever since I first found out about people putting their "I Voted" stickers on Susan B. Anthonys grave, it has been on my bucket list to do the same,' Maryland resident Elissa Blattman told ABC News.
A benefits scrounging mother-of-12 is facing a jail sentence after she admitted handling money stolen from parking meters.
Cheryl Prudham, 34, from Warrington, pleaded guilt to handling cash allegedly stolen by her ex-partner Robert Prudham and another man Jacob Underdown.
Once dubbed the Queen of Benefits, Cheryl Prudham was not in the dock with the two men at Maidstone Crown Court today appeared over a TV link with Cheshire's Warrington Crown Court.
Robert Prudham from Maidstone, arrives at Maidstone Crown Court where he is charged with stealing 10,758 from Meteor Parking and Vinci Parking
Mother-of-12 Cheryl Prudham, who has previously made national headlines after raking in 40,000 a year in benefits, was accused of handling the cash stolen by her estranged husband
She admitted one offence of handling stolen goods - money belonging to Meteor Parking Ltd - between February 12 and 14 2014.
The mother and her family have previously lived in the Kent town of Gravesend and the village of Teynham, near Faversham, but now live in Grasmere Avenue in Warrington.
She is said to rake in more than 40,000 a year in state benefits, which is spent on lavish gifts and holidays for her brood.
Wearing beige trousers, a green top and a black parka coat, Prudham spoke only to confirm her name and to plead guilty during the brief hearing.
Her barrister, Fiona Dunkley, told the court she has previous convictions dating back to 2004 and asked for a pre-sentence report.
Details of the convictions were not given.
Judge Adele Williams adjourned sentencing until December 16 but warned Prudham jail was a possibility.
Part-time cleaner Cheryl had six children by two different men before she had six more with now-ex husband Rob - who she booted out for a sordid threesome involving his own cousin
She said: 'The fact I am re-admitting you to bail and ordering a pre-sentence report gives no indication that the court on the next occasion won't send you to prison.
'All sentencing options remain open.'
Prudham was released on bail with the condition she live and sleep each night at her home address.
Technical problems with the TV link meant Robert Prudham, 31, and Jacob Underdown, 27, appeared together in a separate hearing.
Rob Prudham arrives at Maidstone Crown Court
They pleaded not guilty to four offences of theft totalling 4,787 from Meteor Parking Ltd between January 4 and February 14 2014.
The cash was allegedly taken from car parks in Woolwich Arsenal, Bromley, Eltham and Mottingham in south east London.
Prudham and Underdown are also accused of stealing from meters at Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford, Kent, Fremlin Walk shopping mall in Maidstone, Kent, and car parks in several other locations across Kent including: Borough Green, Chatham, Hildenborough, Longfield, Maidstone, Meopham, Rainham, Sevenoaks and Staplehurst.
Robert Prudham, of Milton Street, Maidstone, also denied fraud between September 9 2013 and February 14 2014.
It is alleged he told Folkestone-based Red Eagle recruitment agency that he was of good character with no criminal convictions.
Prudham's barrister, Eve George, told Judge Williams that he is illiterate and cannot read or write.
He is also known as Robert Ring and will stand trial with Underdown, of Emerald View, Warden Bay, Sheerness in Kent, in April.
A 57-year-old Georgia man has been charged with killing a sheriff's deputy and critically wounding another after shooting them at close range, authorities said.
Ralph Stanley Elrod faces a murder charge and four counts of aggravated assault on a police officer following the Sunday attack on Peach County Deputy Sgt. Patrick Sondron, 41, who was killed, and Deputy Daryl Smallwood, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge J.T. Ricketson said on Monday.
The deputies were shot upon approaching Elrod's home while responding to a report that he used a rifle to threaten two young men who were riding a motorcycle and a four-wheeler near his property.
During the fatal encounter, Elrod fired more than 50 rounds at Sondron and Smallwood from his handgun, according to Action News Jax.
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Ralph Stanley Elrod, 57, of Georgia has been charged with killing Peach County Deputy Sgt. Patrick Sondron (left) and critically wounding Deputy Daryl Smallwood (right) after shooting them at close range, authorities said
Elrod had initially appeared calm when the deputies confronted him on Sunday afternoon, Ricketson told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
However, Elrod pulled a handgun from his waistband when the deputies informed him that he would be arrested for threatening to shoot a neighbor, Ricketson said.
'The deputies were not on any kind of alert,' Ricketson said told the AJC.
'It appears to us that their guard was not up when they were confronting this guy.'
Elrod reportedly fired every bullet in his handgun as he shot Sondron, who was about an arm's distance away, and Smallwood, who was about 10 feet away before returning inside his home, myAJC reported.
Elrod then came back out wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with a rifle, which he allegedly used to fire at Byron police officers who responded after Smallwood and Sondron were shot.
Sondron (left) was pronounced dead at 6.40pm after being rushed to Peach County Medical Center. It's unclear how many times he was shot
Sondron (left) was responding to a dispute between neighbors on Hardison Road at Ga. 42 at about 5.30pm when he was shot along with Deputy Daryl Smallwood
Byron police officers returned fire and Elrod suffered a wound to his abdomen during the exchange, WGXA reported.
Elrod, who has no known criminal history, was later taken to Macon medical center for treatment.
He is now conscious after previously being medically sedated and was served with the arrest warrants while in hospital, according to WMAZ.
It is not known when he will be released from hospital.
On Monday, authorities obtained security footage from Elrod's home showing him putting on a bulletproof vest after shooting the two deputies, the station reported.
The footage also reportedly shows the deputies and Elrod in a brief exchange before he allegedly opened fire.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), who is reviewing the footage, is set to release copies of it sometime this week, Ricketson told WMAZ.
Small, a divorced father who is married to be engaged (pictured with his fiancee above) was listed in critical condition on Sunday night and remained on life support on Monday
Smallwood (pictured) was rushed to Navicent Health medical center after the deadly shooting that happened on Hardison Road at Ga. 42 at about 5.30pm
On Sunday night, deputies from the Crisp County Sherriff's Office where Smallwood used to work as a deputy, gathered to pray for his recovery
At this time it is not clear if Elrod - who is the father of a deputy in Jones County, northeast of Macon - has an attorney, investigators said.
Following Sunday's shooting, Sondron was pronounced dead at 6.40pm after being rushed to Peach County Medical Center, The Macon Telegraph reported.
'He was a very good person,' Peach County Coroner Kerry Rooks said of Sondron, who was a married father.
'He was just a great deputy. He did his job well and was always willing to help.'
Meanwhile, Smallwood was rushed to Navicent Health medical center after the deadly shooting that happened on Hardison Road at Ga. 42 at about 5.30pm.
He was listed in critical condition on Sunday night and remained on life support on Monday.
Smallwood is also a father and had previously been married before he divorced. He is engaged to get married, according to myAJC.
Smallwood is currently in critical condition at Navicent Health medical center. Above authorities are gathered outside the hospital
The countys coroner, Kerry Rooks, told the AJC while he is optimistic Smallwood will recover, there is a chance he may not survive, adding 'it does not look very good at all.'
Ricketson said on Sunday he was contacted by the sheriff's office who requested assistance with a shooting around 6pm.
He explained that the deputies were responding to 'a dispute between neighbors'.
'When they arrived, they were under gunfire,' Ricketson said at the scene, the newspaper reported. 'They returned fire.'
Ricketson explained the deadly incident started with two people who were riding on ATV and a motorcycle up and down Hardison Road when they were confronted by Elrod who came out of his home.
The GBI said Elrod threatened them with a gun and the two people went home to call 911.
J.T. Ricketson, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) office in Perry, said when the deputies arrived to the scene, 'they were under gunfire.' Above authorities are gathered outside the hospital
The deadly shooting happened on Hardison Road at Ga. 42 at about 5:30pm (scene above)
Sondron and Smallwood responded to the scene and spoke to the two people before going to Elrod's home.
As soon as the two deputies got out of their vehicles, Elrod opened fire on them, the GBI said.
The two neighbors who were allegedly threatened by Elrod witnessed the shooting and called 911 again to report that the officers had been shot.
Several law enforcement agencies responded to the scene and opened fire at Elrod, who was hit and taken into custody.
A neighbor who lives roughly about a quarter mile from where the shooting happened told The Macon Telegraph they heard many gunshots fired.
He explained that he did not know the gunman, but said the community is in shock over what happened.
'This is a quiet little neighborhood,' said the neighbor, who did not want to be publicly named.
'This is about the peaceful place you can find. Nobody here can believe this has happened.'
Video courtesy of Action News Jax
Peach County Law Enforcement is being assisted by Bibb and Byron counties deputies (scene above)
On Sunday night, deputies from the Crisp County Sherriff's Office where Smallwood used to work as a deputy, gathered to pray for his recovery.
'Members of Crisp County Sheriff's Office gathered for prayer tonight in honor of the two Peach County deputies that were shot earlier this evening responding to a disturbance between neighbors,' a post on the Crisp County Sheriff's Facebook page read.
'One of the officers, Deputy Sondron sucummed (sic) to his injuries earlier tonight and the other, Deputy Daryl Smallwood, a former Crisp County Deputy is fighting for his life.
'Please keep these and all our men and women in blue in your prayers.'
As of late Monday, funeral arrangements for Sondron - a 12-year veteran of the Peach County Sheriffs Office - were pending, according to myAJC.
A former cadet instructor who decorates his home with thousands of Christmas lights every year has been convicted of possessing indecent images of children.
Married bus driver Alex Hopkinson, 36, of New Addington, south London, was charged with possessing and making indecent images of a boy.
He claimed he took the picture because the boy wanted to take part in an online craze to raise awareness of prostate cancer.
Married bus driver Alex Hopkinson, 36, (pictured) a former cadet instructor of New Addington, south London, was charged with possessing and making indecent images of a boy
Hopkinson was also a cadet instructor for the South West London Army Cadet Force, and had to go through safeguarding training.
He underwent a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check no adult volunteers are allowed to be left unsupervised with cadets until this is complete.
Despite denying the charges against him, Hopkinson was found guilty of one count of possessing indecent images of a child, and will be sentenced at the end of January.
He was found not guilty of 13 other offences, which included sexually abusing four different boys - the youngest aged just eight.
Croydon Crown Court heard how Hopkinson, who has been married to his wife for nine years, was accused of touching two young boys.
Hopkinson was also a cadet instructor for the South West London Army Cadet Force (headquarters pictured), and had to go through safeguarding training
A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said that Hopkinson had '25 category 'C' still images of a child.'
Hopkinson was a well-known member of the community in New Addington, where he organised the massive annual Christmas lights display.
He revived the show in 2013 in memory of his father, who founded the event attended by hundreds.
A New York voter is suing Donald Trump and the Republican Party for $1billion in compensation due to the emotional distress allegedly caused by thecandidate's campaign of 'intimidation, threats, and retaliation'.
Louis Tafuto of Warwick, New York filed papers with the United States District Court in the southern district of New York claiming Trump is not fit to become president.
The papers, lodged yesterday, claimed Trump was guilty of intimidation of voters, coercion of political activity, conspiracy against rights and interfering with the 26th Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote.
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Donald Trump has been accused of inciting violence and revolt in a $1billion court case
New York voter Louis Tafuto has accused Trump of intimidating voters, fellow Republicans, the media, his opponents and anyone who has criticized his White House campaign
The case alleges Trump is 'wholly untruthful and therefore unqualified' to become president
Trump is accused of targeting 'under-educated voters' and getting them to believe their lives are 'falsely under threat'.
Trump is joined in the case by his running mate Mike Pence, the Republican National Committee and its chairman, Reince Priebus.
Tafuto said he was suing the defendants for 'punitive and compensatory damages in the amount of $1,000,000,000 for severe emotional pain, and suffering and for the deliberate and willful, obstruction of Plaintiff's constitutional rights'.
He is also seeking an 'order of protection against the defendants from making further false statements that incite violence, revolt, assassination, or insurrection'.
According to the court documents: 'Donald John Trump's words and actions have proven him wholly untruthful and therefore unqualified and incapable of taking an oath of office or honoring and international treaty as President of the United States.
'Donald John Trump's words and actions have proven he does not have the temperament, knowledge, or political belief to adhere to the principles of the US Constitution.'
Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, left, has also been named in the new lawsuit
Vice president candidate Mike Pence center, is also included in the 25-page lawsuit
In the 25-page complaint, Tafuto said Trump 'did knowingly and willingly engage in a large scale strategic effort to target, coerce and intimidate the vulnerable demographic groups of the under-educated electorate into falsely believing their personal safety, their family, their children, their property, their lives and their country were in grave danger under the Presidency of any of his opponents'.
The court document accused Trump of:
Falsely claiming that the only way he would lose the election would be because the United States election system was 'rigged' citing 'widespread voter fraud'
Insisting he would only accept the election results if he wins
Declining to accept the election results should he lose
Tafuto said Trump used these lies 'to incite his volatile support base of under-educated voters to reject the election result should he use'.
According to the case, Trump has a '72 per cent level of dishonesty and a four per cent level of complete truthfulness for significant, newsworthy, or potentially influential statements throughout the presidential campaign'.
The case alleges that Trump's supporters are 'under-educated' and are willing to act unlawfully on his behalf by 'punching protesters and deterring voter fraud at the polls'
The case also accuses Trump of violating the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of religion over the candidate's anti-Muslim statements.
He also claimed the candidate was inciting 'anger, intimidation and abuse' against the media.
The case also alleges Trump incited violence against protesters using his 'under-educated' supporters, describing them as 'having less than a college degree'.
It is claimed: 'Under-educated voters can present a vulnerable demographic because they more than likely have not been taught to understand the value, method or procedure for critical thinking or to be able to research whether or not a statement is true or false'.
A student filming an attack on a fellow classmate so it could be posted online is just one of a growing number of cyber-bullying cases.
The issue is becoming a bigger problem for young people than drugs, according to psychologists.
The NSW Education Department revealed 152 instances of cyber-bullying were reported from public primary and high school last year, including exchanging nude videos or graphic images, sexting and blackmail, The Daily Telegraph reported.
It is the first year schools have been ordered to report any incidents involving technology, which affects about 20 percent of adolescents, adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg said.
More than 150 cases of cyber-bullying at NSW public schools were reported last year, including exchanging nude videos or graphic images, sexting and filming fights (stock image)
'There is a parallel [with drug abuse] - the difference is it's the parents giving the kids the mobile phones,' he said.
In 2015, there were 299 drug incidents reported in NSW schools
This was up from 68 in 2012, The Daily Telegraph reported.
With more children owning mobile phones, the issue of online bullying is now 'moving down the stream into primary schools,' Voluntary Parents Services Co-operative chairman David Jordan said.
It is the first year schools have been ordered to report any incidents involving technology to the NSW Education Department (stock image)
'You have to spend a lot of time educating students on how they should be using technology, and it should be starting in primary schools because kids are getting phones younger and younger,' he said.
'Schooling is moving way from banning them to making them more responsible for themselves.'
Swift access to such technology also leads the way for potential bullying 24 hours a day, Chris Presland, NSW Secondary Principals' Council president, said.
it is illegal to post pictures from inside the voting booth
Trump's son was boasting of voting for his father but failed to
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Like father, like son! Eric Trump was photographed peeking at Lara's ballot paper and was aped hours later by his father across town.
Donald Trump was pictured sneaking a glance at Melania's vote as they made their selection just before 11am on Election Day.
Presumably neither Trump man was in any doubt at their spouses choice but the light-hearted pictures provided a moment of light relief at the end of one of the most divisive election battles in recent history.
The billionaire businessman and his wife were met with boos in their home city and then even louder shouts as they exited Manhattan's Public School 59, just a few blocks from Trump Tower.
The reception was unsurprising given Manhattan is typically a Democratic stronghold - although a handful of Trump backers were also on hand to cheer on their nominee.
Eric also caused controversy later on Tuesday by posting a picture of his ballot on Twitter.
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Sneak peek? Donald Trump appeared to be casting a glance in his wife Melania's direction as she made her choice in the voting booth
Like father like son: Eric Trump was photographed overlooking his wife Lara's selection while Donald did the same to Melania across town
With Arabella all set with her Election Day sticker the Trump family: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump and Melania Trump paused for a precinct picture
Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner (left) was also at Public School 59 to vote on Tuesday. The couple left their two youngest sons at home
Ivanka and Jared have a talk while voting on Tuesday at Public School 59 in New York City
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He was accompanied by wife Lara as they both voted at 53rd Street Public Library. It is illegal to take photos in the voting booth in New York and Trump later deleted the Tweet.
WHAT TIME WILL WE GET A RESULT? Election call times have varied by more than seven hours in recent years - and even by several days thanks to 2000's contentious Bush v Gore battle A result should be known by 11pm EST this year but there is always the possibility of an upset In 1976 incumbent Gerald Ford went to bed expecting he had won, but the result came in at 3.31am for Jimmy Carter. In contrast in 1984, the election was called at 8.02pm for Ronald Reagan over Walter Mondale For the past three elections the call time has hovered around the 11pm mark which most analysts agree should be the same tonight. Advertisement
Thankfully it wasn't all bad news for The Donald as he made his final public appearance before tonight's vote.
The billionaire won the smiles of a local youngster selling sweet treats on the door of the school polling center.
The Republican bought a cookie and handed the boy a $20 note, telling him to keep the change.
Trump handed the treat to his wife Melania who then handed it to their secret service detail.
Melania arrived at the school wearing sunglasses, a camel military-inspired jacket draped over her shoulders with a cream dress and heels.
'Exciting day, fantastic day,' she told reporters.
One light-hearted moment came when photographers appeared to catch a snap of The Donald peeking at his wife's ballot paper.
The couple were accompanied by Trump's daughter Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner and their eldest daughter Arabella, 5.
'Very good,' Trump replied when a reporter asked for an update on early voting returns.
'Tough decision,' he added, when asked which presidential hopeful was getting his vote.
Donald Trump arrived at his polling place a little before 11 a.m. on Election Day in Manhattan, a precinct a short distance away from Trump Tower
Donald Trump and Melania Trump grabbed paper ballots and cast their votes for president of the United States today in Manhattan
Donald Trump made his selection for president at the same time as his wife Melania, while daughter Ivanka Trump surveyed the process
Donald Trump arrived at his Manhattan polling place just before 11 a.m. on Election Day, alongside his wife Melania Trump
The billionaire bought a sweet treat from a youngster on his way into his polling location, situated nearby his home in Trump Tower
Nearby at Trump Tower, where the Republican nominee lives and has headquarted his campaign, sanitation trucks are being used as barricades
Donald Trump gives a wave from his motorcade in New York City today. He'll hold his election night festivities at a Hilton hotel nearby his Trump Tower
When Trump was asked if he would concede to his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, if the election is called in her favor, Trump replied, 'We'll see what happens.'
Posing for the many cameras in the precinct, Ivanka Trump plopped an 'I Voted' sticker on her daughter and gave a smile.
Following them at the same polling station minutes later was Donald Trump Jr, his wife Vanessa and four of their children. The couple's eldest son Donald J. Trump III, age seven, was not present.
A smiling Donald Jr., 38, walked into the school with his daughter Kai, age seven, and Spencer, age four, while his wife carried two-year-old Chloe and held onto the hand of five-year-old Tristan.
Donald Trump Jr's family from left to right: Tristan, age five; Chloe, age two; Vanessa; Kai, age seven; Spencer, age four
Donald Trump Jr and his wife Vanessa brought four of their five children to the polling station on Tuesday
Kai poses with her dad Donald Jr, left, and uncle Eric, right, after voting on Tuesday
The Trumps were all smiles as they voted on Tuesday morning. They are unlikely to make another public appearance before the results start pouring in
Later, Donald Jr posted a fun photo of him and brother Eric, 32, holding up Kai, while she wears a 'Make America Great Again' hat.
'Just another adorable deplorable ready to see Grandpa take home a victory!' Donald Jr wrote.
Eric Trump and wife Lara cast their ballots at a different polling station just a few blocks away at the 53rd Street Public Library before Eric's Twitter snafu.
Eric Trump later got into trouble for posting a picture of his felled out ballot to Twitter, which is illegal in New York. He has since deleted the tweet
Eric Trump and his wife Lara cast their ballots just a few blocks away at the 53rd Street Public Library
Today is actually an important day for Eric and his wife in more ways than one, as it also marks their two-year wedding anniversary.
In a post on Twitter, Eric wrote: 'Who would have thought that our wedding anniversary would happen to be Election Day! Happy anniversary.'
It's unclear where Tiffany Trump, Donald's 23-year-old daughter from his second marriage to Marla Maples, cast her vote today. Trump's youngest son Barron, age 10, also was not present to watch his father and mother Melania cast their votes.
While Trump arrived at his polling place via motorcade, his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, was spotted out Election Day morning riding bikes with his wife.
Shortly before noon, the governor and his wife showed up at their precinct in Indianapolis.
The Democratic ticket beat Trump to the polls this morning, with Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton' running mate, showing up at his Richmond polling place at 5:50 a.m., to vote for the Democratic ticket.
Donald Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (right), rode bikes with his wife Karen Pence on Election Day morning
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, after taking a bike ride this morning with wife Karen, showed up at his polling place in Indianapolis slightly before noon
Clinton was originally supposed to vote in Chappaqua, New York, around 6:45 a.m., but didn't show up to the polls until 8 a.m.
'It is the most humbling feeling,' she said. 'I know how much responsibility goes with this.'
After casting her vote, many cheered for Clinton as she went around hugging some of those who were there and shaking hands with others waiting to vote.
She was joined by her controversial aide Huma Abedin who is back in the campaign fold after emails found on her husband's laptop were cleared in the recent FBI probe.
Also voting early on Tuesday was Clinton's vice presidential pick Tim Kaine, who brought his mother Mary with him to his Virginia polling station.
Chelsea Clinton headed back to New York City after spending the previous night campaigning with her mother.
Like Trump, Hillary had a late night campaigning, holding her final midnight rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, a state that would all but dash the Republican's hopes if she wins.
Big day: An emotional Hillary Clinton was seen as she head in to cast her vote in Chappaqua, New York (above)
Weighing the options: Bill Clinton with his glasses on takes a look at the ballot on Tuesday while Hillary fills her in to the right
Right hand woman: Huma Abedin also joined the Clintons as they cast their vote on Thursday, dressed in a unique outfit for the big day
Trump, on the other hand, spent his last few hours on the campaign trail in Michigan, a traditionally blue state that the Republican believes is more competitive and could flip his way if his voters turn out.
Trump's trip to the polls is his only public appearance scheduled for election day, though, like Clinton, he'll participate in a number of radio interviews.
Both major party candidates will host their election night shindigs in New York City tonight, with Clinton occupying the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a venue that has a literal glass ceiling.
Trump will hold his election night fete at a Hilton property in Midtown Manhattan, instead of his trademark Trump Tower.
He appeared on 'Fox & Friends' this morning, after doing five rallies yesterday in the run-up to Election Day.
'I know it's taken you 17 months; it's been a long odyssey for you. As you cast your vote today, have you decided who you're going to vote for?' asked 'Fox & Friends' host Steve Doocy. 'Who you going to vote for?'
Trump, the Republican nominee, had a nice laugh. 'Well I've really worked on this hard, but I have made that final decision yes,' the billionaire said.
'I've decided to vote for Trump,' the GOP nominee said.
The couple that votes together...: Hillary was joined by husband Bill as she made her way into their polling station
Chelsea Clinton headed back to New York City after spending the previous night campaigning with her mother (above with Marc Mezvinsky and daughter Charlotte)
An estate agent was nearly blinded in one eye after acid was squirted in his face outside his shop, a court heard.
Samiul Alom was left screaming in agony after he confronted members of a street gang outside McKenzie Homes near West Hams old ground in Upton Park, east London.
Mr Alom was rushed to hospital with serious injuries to his left eye but will never have perfect vision again, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
Ahmed Macow and Jason Brown, both 20, were allegedly part of a gang who congregated outside Mr Aloms shop in Green Street staring through the glass front as he worked inside last December 1.
Jason Brown, left, and Ahmed Macow, right, are accused of attacking estate agent Samiul Alom with acid in east London, leaving him almost blind in one eye. Macow allegedly sustained facial injuries in the attack but denies he was there
Mr Alom was repeatedly asked: Youre one of those P-Road boys?
He approached the gang at the doorway and insisted he was not a member of the P-Road boys, said Rupert Kent, prosecuting.
Ultimately, what happens there is that from some sort of squirty bottle, and without warning, a corrosive substance, acid we call it, was squirted in his face,
He was hit in the eye, particularly the left eye, causing very serious harm to his face.
He was hysterical, screaming and shouting about having been burned with acid.
Two colleagues, Mr Aloms relative Shah Alom and Mohammed Iqbal, tended to him before heading after the gang and confronting them in Fairfield Road.
The prosecution say at this point Mr Macow and another male on Mr Iqbals evidence, who has never been arrested or identified, pulled out a bottle again and squirted acid towards Mr Iqbal and Mr Alom, said Mr Kent.
As they were being squirted, the prosecution say, Mr Brown pulls out a knife from his person, a combat knife, and shouted, apparently referencing the acid being used before outside the estate agents: "We have more bottles".
Neither Shah Alom or Mr Iqbal was seriously injured but Samiul Alom was rushed to Newham University Hospital.
He suffered significant reduction in his vision, abrasions to the upper eye lid along with singed eye lashes and was transferred to Whipps Cross Hospital.
Mr Alom is currently awaiting reconstructive surgery to his eye with a 70 per cent chance of improving his deteriorated vision.
The defendants were pictured outside Snaresbrook Crown Court today and both deny all charges, including administering a poisonous or noxious substance with intent
It is an extremely severe eye injury and he will, at least, never have perfect vision again, said Mr Kent.
It is a serious weapon that has been used, this acid, and it has had very serious consequences in the case of Mr Samiul Alom.
Macow claims he was not even present during the attack and was mistakenly identified as a suspect.
Brown admits he was present at certain points but not when the acid attacks took place, the court heard.
Macow and Brown, deny causing grievous bodily with intent and three counts of administering a poisonous or noxious substance with intent.
Brown also denies a further two counts of threatening another with a knife.
People walk past a screen showing a media advertisement for the voting day at the Times Square in New York, the United States, Nov. 7, 2016. The U.S. general election will be held on Nov. 8. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)
The make or break moment for the two rivals in the U.S. presidential race has finally been reached. Regardless of its outcome, ordinary Americans will take a sigh of relief at the conclusion of this long and excruciating campaign.
Exit polls, opinion surveys and popular mood show Hillary emerging as victor in this battle for the Oval Office. She has proven to be a tough contender and may be on the path to become the first woman president of the country.
She deserves a lot of appreciation for her grit and political struggle. It was hard to imagine that she would rebound from the defeat she suffered at the hands of Barack Obama eight years ago when she lost the democratic primaries. But she arguably gave a very tough time to Obama before surrendering.
Obama was an outsider and initially horrified the "system." Every country has its own "system." It is the core ring of top policy makers, the so-called institutions and all mighty ones considered as guardians of the country. Hillary was a favorite of the system but she lost due to the exuberance generated by the new entrant after the divisive years of George Bush.
Now she faces another outsider who has once again scared the "system" in a different way. Trump's remarks about Muslims and Latinos, and his scandalous and careless description of women left many red faced. Criticism poured from left and right, forcing him to step back.
Trump has the potential to stage an upset. He has already shown us the mortal side of Hillary umpteen times. His attacks left her battered. If she wins, she will have to really put together her heart, body and soul to recuperate fully.
By comparison, Hillary is hardly a better choice than Trump. At times she could be as careless and callous as her rival. The issue of emails is far from settled. She faced some serious questions after the killing of an American ambassador and others in Libya.
She was accused by Trump of helping the Islamic State emerge. She was also part of some bad decision as Secretary of State when President Barack Obama withdrew troops from Iraq without a plan to deal with a resurgence of insurgents.
It has been said that her advantage is being an insider of the "system." She has been closely linked with power corridors for more than two decades. Starting with her husband Bill Clinton's presidential election in 1992, followed by her election as senator and then as foreign secretary.
But this advantage is also heavy baggage. What she can do to the people of America that her husband failed to do, or she failed to do as a senator and later as key part of Obama administration?
Trump is new in this regard. Now donning the mantle of Republican Party, Trump is roaring.
But his blunt statements were seen as a warning that Trump was dangerous. So people hardly have a choice. To avert the bigger danger, they should elect Hillary.
It seems that Americans are on the verge of making history. Regardless of her shortcomings, Hillary's success would be an inspiration for millions of women in the world.
Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
Children walking to school in a region of Russia have been armed with axes because of the fear of attacks by wolf packs and bears.
The students have to walk through a snow-covered forest because no bus is provided to get them from their home village of Verkhny Nugush to their classes in Galiakberovo, in oil-rich Bashkortostan.
But recently a wolf emerged in front of them causing the children to flee in terror back to Galiakberovo.
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The walk to school in Bashkortostan is not easy. Apart from being a round trip of six miles, the snow and the freezing cold, there is also the danger of attack by wolves and bears
Now they are routinely armed with axes for their dangerous walk while education chiefs ponder providing a bus or other solutions to pick them up and avoid the treacherous forest.
A video shows them dicing with death on their way to school, with one of the children holding the axe to fend off wolves.
One mother said: 'When our children were walking home, a wolf came out just in front of them.
The children were terrified when they spotted a wolf but now they have been kitted out with axes to defend themselves
'The kids were horrified and ran all the way back. Another woman and I walked to pick up the children later, with axes and torches in our hands.'
Verkhny Nugush has a population of only 60 and when the village school was closed the children were forced to walk around six miles to classes in neighbouring Galiakberovo.
Rustam Sharipov, head of Burzyansky district, said he had ordered the local education department to deal with the problem.
The walk through the forest can be quite terrifying and the parents are hoping a bus can be found to transport the children
He said: 'So far there is no bus to the nearby village where school is located. As for wolves, there is always a risk of attack.'
The children were safe from bears for the moment, he said, because they were hibernating at the moment.
Local prosecutors have announced they are checking the legality of the decision to force children to walk through the forest with the danger of wolf attacks.
The village of Verkhny Nugush (pictured) is quite remote. In the summer it is a pleasant walk through the forest but in winter it becomes quite a different matter
One solution would be for students to live during the week with families in the Galiakberovo, and special funding may be provided for this, said an official quoted by a Russian news agency.
A local Ministry of Ecology official admitted the number of wolves is higher than average in Bashkortostan.
He said: 'However, no attacks have been registered recently.'
Bashkortostan is an area of western Siberia, which is made up of the ethnic Bashkir people and people who came from Russia many years ago
Viktor Valuyev, a local zoologist, said a pack of wolves had attacked a hunter in a neighbouring district inflicting injuries that required hospital treatment.
He said: 'He survived, although he stayed in hospital for a while. Wolves attack only those who they can easily deal with.
'Children shouldn't have to protect themselves from wolves on the way to school.'
Verkhny Nugush (pictured) is situated in an idyllic landscape but wolves live in the forest
A four-year-old girl was decapitated and had her arms chopped off in India after a teenager lost her mobile phone - and her parents used black magic to find it.
The child's mutilated body was discovered in a patch of forest close to a tea estate in north east India's Upper Assam region having gone missing from her home in Charaideo.
It has since emerged that she may have been sacrificed as part of a bizarre ritual aimed at finding a phone belonging to a local 14-year-old girl.
A four-year-old girl was decapitated and had her arms chopped off in Charaideo (file picture), India after a teenager lost her mobile phone - and her parents used black magic to find it
The 14-year-old's parents had allegedly turned to black magic to retrieve the phone and held a prayer ritual led by a village 'black witch priest', the Washington Post reports.
The four-year-old was then kidnapped before being brutally sacrificed, it has been claimed.
According to local reports, the teenager's parents and the priest's helpers have been arrested over the killing. The priest is understood to have fled.
The Washington Post reports that the two families involved knew each other but that the teenager was not arrested because she was a minor.
Both families and the priest were from a tribal community, known locally as Adivasis.
While the overwhelming majority of Indians practice mainstream religions, there are occasional reports of human sacrifices in rural areas such as the remote and impoverished northeast of the country. File picture shows a Sadhu or Hindu holy man dressed as Lord Shiva at Kamakhya temple in Guwahati in Assam
While the overwhelming majority of Indians practice mainstream religions, there are occasional reports of human sacrifices in rural areas such as the remote and impoverished northeast of the country.
In May last year a suspected occultist beheaded a five-year-old boy in a ritual sacrifice before being lynched by angry villagers, police said.
The father of the decapitated youngster said his son, Sanatan Bag, had been enticed into the home of Nanu Mirdha who then butchered him as an offering to the Hindu goddess of power, Kali, in front of a makeshift temple.
After Sanatan's body was found in a pool of blood, villagers then turned on and killed Mirdha, according to the police chief for Assam's Sonitpur district.
Days later Indian police launched an investigation over the brutal murder of a 55-year-old man who was believed to have been beheaded as a sacrifice to the gods by locals desperate for rain to end the country's heatwave.
The decapitated body of Thepa Kharia, an unemployed man, was found inside his house on Sunday in a remote tribal village in the impoverished state of Jharkhand.
Mr Kharia's brother has told police a group of occultists broke into the house and cut off Kharia's head for burial in a field as part of a local ritual intended to increase crop yields and improve rainfall.
Human sacrifices in deeply religious and superstitious India usually occur in remote and poor areas where some people both fear and revere practitioners of so-called black magic.
The victims are often killed by 'witch doctors' to please or appease deities.
A 63-year-old man was found dead inside the Russian Consulate in New York on Tuesday morning.
The man, a security guard at the building, had suffered 'unknown trauma to the head' and was unresponsive, authorities said.
Officers responded to a 911 call reporting an unconscious man inside the building, located in Manhattan's Upper East Side neighborhood, around 7am.
A 63-year-old man was found dead inside the Russian Consulate in New York (pictured on Tuesday morning). He suffered 'unknown trauma to the head'
Sources said he was found by another guard inside the security office, according to DNAinfo New York.
He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities do not suspect any criminality was involved. A Medical Examiner will determine the man's exact cause of death.
An American physician admitted into the Consulate's building 'clearly ruled out signs of a violent death', the Consulate General of Russia added in a statement on Monday.
A man, who would not identify himself, leaving the Russian Consulate told DailyMail.com that the man who died was a security guard and he had a heart attack.
He also said reports that the man had fallen from the building were false.
It is believed a medical condition may have contributed to the man's death, according to police.
A security guard working nearby told DailyMail.com he saw the NY Medical Examiner's truck pulled into the alley alongside the Consulate, which is protected by steel shutters (pictured)
An official of the Russian Consulate could not be immediately reached for comment.
A security guard working nearby told DailyMail.com that he seen NYPD detectives outside soon after 7am.
He said the New York Medical Examiner's truck pulled into the alley alongside the Russian Consulate, which is protected by steel shutters. The truck left around 8am.
An employee of a nearby coffee shop said he had also seen men on the scene in unmarked cars who appeared to be undercover.
The investigation is ongoing.
The Russian Federation maintains consular offices in the US and each has its own jurisdiction.
In the dock: Ben Bamford, 18, pictured today, is accused of killing 52-year-old Paul Jefferies in a cottage after meeting him on Grindr
One of George Osborne's top Treasury advisers was murdered at his country cottage by a drug addict teenager he met using the gay dating website Grindr, a court heard today.
Ben Bamford, 18, is accused of killing 52-year-old Paul Jefferies in a 'sustained attack' at his property in Coggins Mill Lane, Mayfield, East Sussex, on February 23.
Openly gay Mr Jefferies, a senior HMRC official who had reportedly advised ex-chancellor George Osborne's Treasury team, had his throat slashed and thumb almost severed.
Lewes Crown Court heard how police alerted by worried colleagues found blood-covered Mr Jefferies lying naked on his kitchen floor with a tea towel over his head.
Prosecutor Jeremy Carter-Manning QC said Bamford had 'sought out' Mr Jefferies on the night he was killed after Bamford had built up drugs debts of around 400.
Opening the Crown's case, Mr Carter-Manning said: 'Unknown to Mr Jefferies, Benjamin Bamford was desperate for money, say the prosecution.
'He had involvement in drugs and a drug debt at the time of 400 or so, and was being pressurised by a known person who supplied drugs.'
Mr Jefferies, described by colleagues as 'diligent, personable but very private', moved to Sussex from London about five years before his death following the breakdown of a relationship.
He struck up contact with Bamford through the Grindr website from the early summer of 2014, and they met a number of times either at Mr Jefferies' home or in his car, Mr Carter-Manning said.
In one of a number of text exchanges read to jurors, Bamford asked Mr Jefferies for money. Mr Jefferies replied: 'Oh OK, it's just that introducing money changes the whole dynamic but we can talk about it when we meet.'
Shocking: Police alerted by worried Treasury colleagues found blood-covered Mr Jefferies lying naked on his kitchen floor with a tea towel over his head.
On the night Mr Jefferies was killed, the jury was told Bamford was under pressure to pay money to a drug dealer and contacted Mr Jefferies by text, asking whether he wanted to meet up.
Mr Carter-Manning said: 'The indication is, say the prosecution, that this defendant was at the time under pressure to pay money and you will hear from the police that the contact who is relevant to these matters is a known drug dealer.
'He was someone who was going to get his money. This defendant had to pay. He sought out Mr Jefferies that night with the intention of robbing him.'
Jurors heard how after arranging to meet on the night of the killing, Bamford's mobile phone connected automatically to the internet router at Mr Jefferies' home.
'That connection lasted from 9.34pm to 10.57pm, by which time, say the prosecution, Ben Bamford had killed Paul Jefferies,' said Mr Carter-Manning.
'Having struck what was a fatal blow, the defendant left Mr Jefferies lying dead or dying on his kitchen floor.
'He put a tea towel to cover Mr Jefferies and he took from the house his car keys and the house keys. He locked what was a mortice lock and stole the car - an Audi TT.'
A neighbour heard the sound of wheels spinning on gravel as the car pulled out of the shared driveway as Bamford made 'his escape as quickly as possible' and headed off to see two friends.
They took him to Eastbourne Hospital where he told medics he had suffered injuries to his arms and hands by self-harming.
Photographs were taken by his friends and he was later transferred to another hospital where he underwent surgery on his arm.
After he was discharged Bamford had a row with his mother at home where he confessed to attacking a man in his home.
Mr Carter-Manning said: 'He said he had been attacked by a man. He said he had been drinking, taking diazepam and smoking cannabis and the man had come onto him and tried to rape him.'
The jury was told Bamford had tried to escape but had found all the doors locked and had gone back and confronted Mr Jefferies and demanded he open the doors and let him out.
Mr Carter-Manning said: 'There was a struggle and he had stabbed him.'
Mr Jefferies body was found after work colleagues raised the alarm after he had failed to turn up in work on two consecutive days.
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He is renowned as Britains greatest ever aviator.
In a flying career straight from the pages of Boys Own, Captain Eric Winkle Brown flew a record 487 different types of plane, survived 20 near-death crashes and helped interrogate top Nazis after the Second World War.
Following his death at the age of 97, his unparalleled collection of medals and honours is up for sale, expected to fetch up to 200,000.
Hero: Captain Eric Winkle Brown, who died at the age of 97, became the first naval pilot to land a jet on an aircraft carrier
On the carrier deck: Capt Brown flew a record 487 different types of plane and survived 20 near-death crashes
Medals: There are fears this hugely important piece of Britains military history will be snapped up by a foreign collector
Research unit: The aerodynamic flight team in June 1945 at Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough in Hampshire
But there are fears this hugely important piece of Britains military history will be snapped up by a foreign collector and potentially lost to the nation forever.
In his 31 years service, Capt Brown - who was known as Winkle due to his diminutive stature helped to change the course of naval aviation, including becoming the first naval pilot to land a jet on an aircraft carrier.
That feat at the controls of a Vampire in 1945 was just one of a record 2,407 carrier deck landings through his career, and saw him awarded an OBE.
He had already been given an MBE after being chosen to lead the deck landing and take-off trials of the Mosquito aircraft, the first time this had been achieved in a twin-engined aircraft.
Capt Brown (bottom centre right, pictured with his crew), survived 20 near-death crashes and helped interrogate top Nazis
On the carrier deck: Britains greatest ever aviator Capt Brown enjoyed a flying career straight from the pages of Boys Own
Aircraft base: Capt Brown, the son of a First World War biplane pilot, was known as Winkle due to his diminutive stature
Medal: The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire award given to Capt Brown for his outstanding service
Capt Brown also received the Distinguished Service Cross for action against enemy aircraft, including single-handedly shooting down a Focke-Wulf in 1941.
Capt Brown, who is believed to be pictured above in the 1980s, was also the sole survivor of a U-boat attack
Throughout his extraordinary career during which he was also the sole survivor of a U-boat attack he meticulously documented his brave exploits in ten log books.
Methodically making notes on every new aircraft he flew in - be it British, German, American and Russian his language was often far from technical.
Aircraft he didnt like were labelled shambles and chaos in the cockpit, while after testing a Gloster Meteor jet fighter he commented that it climbs like the clappers.
Describing his miraculous escape when the engine of his Hawker Tempest blew up and caught fire in July 1944, he recorded having to step out at 1,000ft at 170mph and parachute into the sea.
Another crash-landing which saw his aircraft plough through telephone wires and a tree, bounce on a hillock, mow down anti-invasion poles and two brick walls before crashing to earth was described as a really shaky do!!!
His family has now decided to sell his honours and logbooks as a single lot, which will go under the hammer in London later this month.
But military historians fear the important medals may be lost to Britain as a result.
Simon Luxmoore, chief executive of the Royal Aeronautical Society, said: We house a wide variety of rare aviation archives at our National Aerospace Library and often work with families who are making their personal choices about what to do with historical collections.
We hope that these medals belonging to Capt Brown go to a good home and are appreciated as much as the man himself was given all that he achieved in his career.
Capt Brown is pictured landing his plane on an aircraft carrier. He held the record for the most carrier deck landings at 2,407
Landing: Capt Brown received the Distinguished Service Cross for action against enemy aircraft
The RAF base: In his 31 years service, Capt Brown helped to change the course of naval aviation
In flight: Throughout his extraordinary career, Capt Brown meticulously documented his brave exploits in ten log books
Aviation historian Paul Beaver, Capt Browns biographer, added: The big money is not in Britain so its a risk but its the wish of the family and of Eric, its a risk we take. Personally I would like to see them remain in Britain.
Born in Leith, Scotland, and the son of a First World War biplane pilot, he decided he wanted to follow his fathers footsteps after a trip to Germany in 1936 when he met Ernst Udet, the highest scoring German air ace of the First World War behind the Red Baron.
Udet took the 17-year-old flying in a two-seater plane and performed a number of aerobatics which left the teenager speechless.
Capt Browns wartime flying involved attacking Nazi oil tanks in Norway and German U-boats.
Flying his aircraft: Methodically making notes on every new aircraft he flew in his language was often far from technical
Diary: Aircraft he didnt like were labelled shambles and chaos in the cockpit, while he said one climbs like the clappers
Dangerous job: He had a miraculous escape when the engine of his Hawker Tempest blew up and caught fire in July 1944
Outstanding service: Capt Brown's Air League Founders' Medal is pictured. The legendary pilot died at the age of 97
Standing in his plane: Capt Brown once recorded having to step out at 1,000ft at 170mph and parachute into the sea
In December 1941 he miraculously survived the sinking of escort carrier HMS Audacity after a U-boat torpedo attack. He was one of 24 men who spent the night drifting in the freezing Atlantic and by the time rescue arrived he was the only one alive.
Before that he crashed a plane in while performing an aerobatic roll in front of Winston Churchill and swam clear with minor injuries.
After achieving series of firsts he continued as a test pilot after the War, flying at the speed of sound and to heights of 64,000ft as well as testing ejector seats.
During his service he met Winston Churchill and King George V and flew for the Queen and Prince Philip.
Daring: One crash-landing saw Capt Brown's aircraft plough through telephone wires and a tree and bounce on a hillock
Chopper: Capt Brown's family has now decided to sell his honours and logbooks as a single lot
Auction: Military historians fear his important medals may be lost to Britain if they are bought by a foreign collector
Smiling for the camera: Born in Leith, Capt Brown decided he wanted to follow his fathers footsteps after a trip to Germany
Crash landing: He made a record 2,407 carrier deck landings through his career, which helped see him awarded an OBE
Capt Brown saw the harrowing liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and later used his fluency in German to question some of the most prominent Nazis including Hermann Goring and Heinrich Himmler.
But his closest brush with death came in 1946 during a failed attempt to break the speed of sound in bad weather. He was unable to operate his ejector seat due to the G-force but was saved when he flew into calmer conditions.
On a visit to the National Museum of Flight shortly before his death he recalled taking the controls of the worlds first rocket-powered fighter, the Messerschmitt Komet.
I remember watching the ground crew very carefully before take-off, wondering if they thought they were waving goodbye to me forever or whether they thought this thing was going to return, he said.
Heroic pilot: Capt Browns wartime flying involved attacking Nazi oil tanks in Norway and German U-boats
Brave: In December 1941 he miraculously survived the sinking of escort carrier HMS Audacity after a U-boat torpedo attack
He once crashed a plane in while performing an aerobatic roll in front of Winston Churchill and swam clear with minor injuries
After achieving series of firsts he continued as a test pilot after the War, flying at the speed of sound and to 64,000ft heights
During his service Capt Brown met Winston Churchill and King George V and flew for the Queen and Prince Philip
Having survived his audacious exploits against the odds, he was picked as the subject for the 3,000th edition of Desert Island Discs in 2014, with presenter Kirsty Young commenting that his dare-devil life makes James Bond seem like a bit of a slacker.
Capt Brown died aged 97 in February this year at East Surrey Hospital following a short illness.
British astronaut Tim Peake tweeted a tribute from space, writing: So sad to hear that Capt Eric Winkle Brown has died - to my mind the greatest test pilot who has ever lived.
A spokesman for auctioneers Bonhams said: The family has decided that now is the right time to move his medals and log books on and maybe benefit a museum or other institution.
It is a complete archive and it is something we as auctioneers would never split up. He was a true hero and a pioneer whose brave and courageous work changed the course of aviation.
The archive is being sold in London on November 23.
Diary entries: His closest brush with death came in 1946 during a failed attempt to break the speed of sound in bad weather
In a memory given shortly before his death he recalled taking the controls of the worlds first rocket-powered fighter
Having survived his audacious exploits, he was picked as the subject for the 3,000th edition of Desert Island Discs in 2014
BBC radio presenter Kirsty Young commented that his dare-devil life makes James Bond seem like a bit of a slacker
Disgraced: Former Indiana teacher's aide Kisha Nuckols, 38, was spared prison time and instead sentenced to home detention and probation after she pleaded guilty to having sex with a 17-year-old student
A former teacher's aide from Indiana was spared prison time after she pleaded guilty to having sex with a 17-year-old student while her husband and children were in the house.
Kisha Nuckols, a 38-year-old married mother-of-four, was sentenced on Monday to two years of home detention, followed by two years of sex offender probation. She will then have to register as a sex offender for 10 years.
Nuckols was a teacher's aide, lifeguard and substitute teacher in the Mount Vernon School District northeast of Indianapolis.
She was arrested in April and faced three counts of child seduction, as well as a count of dissemination of material harmful to minors, a charge related to allegations she sent nude photos to a student.
Nuckols pleaded guilty on September 14 to a single count of child seduction after reaching an agreement with the prosecution.
Investigators have alleged that Nuckols may have had inappropriate relationships with at least six current and former Mt.Vernon High School students.
Nuckols (pictured left and right with her child) was a teacher's aide, lifeguard and substitute teacher in the Mount Vernon School District. She was arrested in April and pleaded guilty in September to a single count of child seduction
Victims told police Nuckols would make initial contact with them via social media sites such as Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram, and then meet them in person for sex.
Fortville police were alerted to the allegations on March 29 by an administrator with the Mt. Vernon Community School Cooperation.
According to court documents, Kisha Nuckols had sex with one 17-year-old at her Fortville home and would do so 'at least 10 times'.
Court filings stated that Nuckols would tell the boy they had to be quiet because her husband and children were at home at the time.
The 38-year-old wife and mother also had sexual encounters in parked vehicles, with one car reportedly belonging to her own daughter.
According to court records, when questioned about the allegations by police, Nuckols confessed to having inappropriate relationships with multiple students, reported CBS 4 Indy.
Investigators alleged Nuckols may have had inappropriate relationships with at least six current or former Mt.Vernon High School (pictured) students
'Ive embarrassed my family, community and schools,' Nuckols was quoted as having said. 'I never should have had relationships with students. I brought the schools into a dark spotlight.'
Prosecutors had asked to sentence Nuckols to prison, but the judge declined after hearing a tearful plea from the woman back in September.
She had been employed with the district for approximately three years. Nuckols was fired from her job after the criminal charges were filed against her in the spring.
A young Florida boy confined to a wheelchair met President Barack Obama just 24 hours after he was ousted from a Donald Trump rally for protesting the Republican nominee's mocking of the disabled.
When Trump made headlines last November for mocking a disabled reporter during one of his campaign rallies, JJ Holmes took notice and decided to do something about it.
Holmes is a 12-year-old boy with severe cerebral palsy, a congenital disorder that affects muscle movement. Wise beyond his years, JJ was closely following the election campaign.
When he learned that the Republican presidential nominee was going to hold a rally within driving distance of his Longwood, Florida, home, he was eager to go.
'I wanted to go because Donald J. Trump made fun of disabled people,' JJ told The Washington Post.
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JJ Holmes (left), 12, greets President Barack Obama during a rally for Hillary Clinton in Kissimmee, Florida, on Sunday
Since he lacks the ability to speak on his own, he uses a computer vocalization device.
Holmes and his mother drove to the Trump rally in Tampa Saturday.
In the middle of the rally, JJ repeatedly hit play on his pre-programmed anti-Trump chants like 'Dump Trump' and 'Trump mocks the disabled'.
'It wasn't that loud,' JJ's mother, Alison, said about his chants.
So a Trump supporter just KICKED a woman pushing a child in a wheelchair. THIS IS TRUMP'S AMERICA. #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/Va562uNeBK Diane N. Sevenay (@Diane_7A) November 5, 2016
One day prior, Holmes (seen in the circle with his mother, Alison) was removed from a Donald Trump rally in Tampa where he went to protest the nominee's comments about the disabled
Holmes (seen here posing with Obama and an unidentified girl) attended the rally to make a statement, his mother said
'Trump was laughing about how his supporters drown out JJ. So my daughters and I started chanting.'
When Trump supporters at the rally began to get hostile, the candidate took notice from the dais.
'Oh, we have a Hillary Clinton person. Are they paying that person $1,500?' Trump said, according to Fox News.
'Get him out, please. Get him out.'
As Secret Service agents escorted the mother and her children out of the arena, one person at the rally began pushing the wheelchair.
Holmes was able to meet Obama after a reporter contacted a close aide to Obama, who arranged for the boy to greet the president at the Sunday rally in Kissimmee
Holmes had urged his mother to take him to the Trump rally in order to protest the Republican nominee's prior mocking of a disabled reporter
According to the Post, other supporters called her a 'child abuser' while another said to 'grab her p****.'
'I thought we may get kicked out,' she said. 'I didn't think they'd start shoving his wheelchair.'
A newspaper reporter who was covering the rally had heard the boy wanted to meet President Barack Obama.
That reporter then reached out to Valentina Pereda, the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's campaign in Florida.
Pereda had once worked for the Obama administration as the White House deputy director for Hispanic media.
The hope was that Pereda could arrange for JJ to get close to Obama during a rally in Kissimmee on Sunday.
The president was scheduled to speak at the event.
'I tell the reporter to share my number with JJ's mother and that the only thing I can do is escort them into President Obama's rally the following day,' Pereda wrote on her Facebook page.
'No chance for VIP treatment and much less to meet the President.'
Pereda then contacted a friend who often travels with Obama and told him about JJ's story.
Trump (seen here during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday) has been criticized for mocking disabled people
'I point him to where in the VIP area JJ is sitting with the hope that when POTUS would work the ropeline, he'd somehow remember JJ's story and spend two extra seconds with him,' she wrote. 'And with that, I was satisfied with [what] was to be accomplished. A handshake.'
'Shortly after, colleagues begin to frantically text and call me to tell me my friend from the WH was looking for me,' Pereda wrote.
'I sprint about half a mile back into the stadium and push my way through angry Secret Service agents and thick crowds. I finally spot my friend who, once again, asks me to point out where the boy is sitting, which I do. Then out of the blue I tell him, "Well, how about I wheel him out of the VIP area and bring him around?"'
'Wow, this is really happening,' Pereda wrote.
'At that moment, JJ's mom tells him he's going to meet the President. The rest is indescribable... JJ jumps out of his seat and erupts into cheer... his smile almost bursting out of his face. His body overcome by light, when just the day before it almost succumbed to hate.'
Alison Holmes said that her son never regretted attending the Trump rally.
Miller locked toddler in padded closet for hours and sometimes teased him by scratching the walls and saying rats were coming to get him, according to court filings
She allegedly poured hot sauce in his mouth and denied him water, fed him 'poop beans' with laxatives, and left him in soiled pull-ups
Charging documents say Miller had boy's legs wrapped in a sheet and tied with duct tape in a game she dubbed playing mermaid'
him for being Duke's child from another woman
A Pennsylvania mother has been jailed on charges she fed her 4-year-old stepson laxative laced beans and hot sauce, locked him in a closet for hours and otherwise tormented him out of anger that he was another woman's child.
Danielle Miller, 31, was in the Lancaster County jail Monday unable to post $300,000 bond on eight felony counts of endangering a child, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, terroristic threats, reckless endangerment, and harassment.
The victim's father, 30-year-old Nathan Duke, was jailed on $100,000 bond on conspiracy and endangerment charges because police say he did nothing to stop the abuse and failed to report it.
Parents charged: Danielle Miller, 31 (left), is accused of abusing her four-year-old stepson for months. Her husband, the boy's father Nathan Duke, 30 (right) is accused of doing nothing to stop the abuse
Scapegoat: Police say Miller, pictured here with her husband and one of her biological kids, targeted her stepson because she resented that he was Duke's child by another woman
When questioned by police, the husband reportedly said he did not seek medical attention for his son because he knew his injuries, including bruises and lacerations, looked like they were the result of child abuse, reported the station WGAL.
According to investigators, Miller bound her stepson's legs with duct tape, kept him in a padded third-floor closet for hours on end and sometimes teased him by scratching the walls and saying rats were coming to get him.
The toddler was also beaten, burned and insulted by Miller who allegedly threatened him with beatings and called him a 'f***ing pig' with a 'stupid f***ing ugly face.'
State police say they launched an investigation into the family after getting a tip from a concerned relative, who reported witnessing on numerous occasions over the course of four months how Danielle Miller verbally, physically and psychologically abused her stepson.
The family of six, including Duke and Miller's three biological children, lived in his home in Quarryville, Pennsylvania
Charging documents allege that Miller fed her stepson 'poop beans' with laxatives, poured hot sauce into his mouth, tied him up and locked him in a padded closet for hours
Miller has three biological children, including one with her current husband and two from a previous relationship. The four-year-old victim is Nathan Dukes son by another woman.
Police believe the mother resented the boy because he was not her biological child.
The documents filed in the case state that the abuse started when the toddler was three years old and continued until July of this year, when he was removed from Millers home in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.
Doctors who examined the toddler at Lancaster General Hospital concluded that his many injuries were 'too numerous to be explained by normal childhood activity' and many of them appeared to be intentional or suspicious, according to ABC27.
According to a press release from the Lancaster County District Attorneys Office, the 4-year-old had his legs wrapped in a sheet and then secured with duct tape in a practice allegedly dubbed by Miller as playing mermaid.'
Tell-tale signs: Duke, pictured with Miller and their daughter, reportedly said he did not seek medical help for his son because he knew his injuries looked like they were the result of child abuse.
The little boy was also force fed 'poop beans' spiked with laxatives, had hot sauce poured into his mouth and then denied water for up to 15 minutes, and made to sit on the toilet and defecate on command.
If the toddler had a bathroom accident, he was forced to wear his soiled pull-ups for hours, the documents stated.
The boy was sometimes taken to a creek, but he was left alone in the car with a bandanna tied around his eyes while his stepsiblings played.
There was no evidence of abuse whatsoever with her kids but the one that wasn't hers was the target, Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman told the station Fox43.
The Mayor of Florence is being sued for $20million by McDonald's after he refused to let them open one of their restaurants in the shadow of the city's famous Duomo.
The American fast-food giant wanted to open an outlet in the Piazza del Duomo, deep in the heart of renaissance Florence.
But the Mayor, Dario Nardella, told the city council earlier this year: 'McDonald's has the right to submit an application, because this is permitted under the law, but we also have the right to say no.'
The Piazza del Duomo is dominated by the Duomo, or Dome, of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (St Mary of the Flowers), parts of which date from the 13th century
Mr Nardella's decision was upheld by a panel of conservationists who are in charge of preserving the city's most historic areas.
But the company, which has more than 36,000 diners around the world and is worth $37billion, has not accepted his ruling and is now suing for 17.8 million euros.
McDonald's opened its first restaurant in Italy in 1986, near the Spanish Steps in Rome, and now has dozens around the country.
The Mayor of Florence refused permission for the famous Golden Arches sign (right) to be raised above the famous Piazza del Duomo (left)
Last month it was reported that the Vatican was not keen on plans to open a branch in a piazza near St Peter's Square.
McDonald's said the decision to turn down its application in Florence would cost it millions of euros in lost income over the next 18 years.
A Mississippi woman has come forward with footage of several mice running through the kitchen of her local Waffle House.
Santavia Dotson said she had just finished her meal at the at the Waffle House on Highway 61 in Robinsonville when she saw the vermin crawl out from underneath the grill. So she got her phone and started filming.
'Once we got finished eating, we saw four mice come from under the grill. They kept coming out,' Dotson told WREG.
Vermin: The video taken inside the Robinsonville Waffle House shows several mice crawl out from underneath the grill in the kitchen
Dotson said she was 'shocked' by the sight, and went to complain to the staff about it.
Surprisingly, the staff told her to post the footage online, because the restaurant manager had been ignoring previous complaints.
'The employees were like, ''The manager, she don't believe us'',' Dotson said.
According to Mississippi Department of Health records obtained by WREG, officials granted the Waffle House a permit to open this year, despite officials finding it 'not in compliance' for insects, rodents and animals.
'They need to close the place down, clean it real good, get it inspected and then reopen,' Dotson said.
Santavia Dotson (right) said she had just finished a meal with friend Jessica Wright (left) at the at the Waffle House on Highway 61 in Robinsonville when she saw the vermin
Waffle House released a statement after the footage emerged, saying that the restaurant had been closed for four hours while exterminators came in for a deep clean.
'We apologize to our customers and associates that this situation occurred. We took action yesterday to correct the issue,' the statement said.
'The restaurant was closed for four hours while the extermination company was out to rectify the situation. In addition, they sealed the exterior of the building and pressure washed inside and outside before reopening.
Gross: Incident occurred at the Waffle House on Highway 61 in Robinsonville
The statement continued: 'Our Senior Vice President has been in contact with the local management and is scheduled to be at the restaurant tomorrow to inspect the location. We again apologize to our customers and associates about this matter.'
Flash
Vincent Xie was excited on Nov 2 when he received a letter from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
"We got more than 8,000 followers in less than one hour after we put the letter online. Now the number is almost 60,000," Xie, founder of the Civil Rights WeChat account and PhD holder from an American university, said on Saturday. "The Chinese community is very excited to see the letter. Most responses are positive."
The letter, signed by Trump and translated into Chinese, stressed the common values shared by the Chinese community and Trump.
"For too long, Chinese Americans have been ignored by Washington," it reads. "I have a lot of respect for Chinese people and Chinese Americans especially. We share a lot of the same values. Work hard. Push our children to be good - no drinking, no drugs and do well in school. Make our parents and grandparents proud of us. Work to build a lasting legacy.
"I will make our schools better and safer," the letter continues. "We will build a wall and make a strict screening process to keep out terrorists. ... I will lower taxes and bring down our deficit by encouraging US companies to bring their trillions of tax sheltered profits back.
"When this election is over, I will work to bring our country together to be greater than before," Trump said. "But this can only happen with your help! ... Help me make America great again!"
The letter encourages viewers to make donation varying from $6 to $200.
The Chinese-American community, with a population of 4 million, which accounts for nearly a quarter of the Asian-American population in the US, according to a Pew Research report in 2013, has become a battleground for minority votes from both sides.
With widespread and easy access to Chinese followers, WeChat has become a channel to reach potential voters.
Xie said he received the letter from Trump after he asked for it when someone from Trump's campaign team approached Xie, telling him that Trump's campaign appreciated the support from the Chinese-American community and wanted to reach out to more Chinese Americans.
He created the account in California in late 2013. By last month, it had about 2.4 million different views and more than 1.6 million followers. Between Nov 2, 2015 and Nov 1, 2016, it has more than 15.2 million different views and more than 10.7 million followers. And 76.4 percent of the followers live in the United States, according to its recent survey.
'Polarized' citizens
Cliff Li, an adviser to the Asian Pacific US Advisory Committee for the Trump campaign, said US citizens are "polarized" politically.
"The momentum is good for Trump," said the executive director of the National Committee of Asian-American Republicans. "Hillary has more offices in swing states and more surrogates than Trump has. But her advantage is declining."
"I dislike Trump's temperament, but I feel he's the one, between Hillary and Trump, to bring the country in the right direction," said Li, citing Trump's 100-day contract with the US voter and Hillary's plan for the first 100 days.
Hillary Clinton's aides commissioned a vulnerability survey on the prospective presidential candidate two months before she launched her campaign.
Chief among their concerns was that the former first lady, who hadn't driven herself in nearly 25 years, would come across as 'out of touch' to voters and her speeches to Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs would come bank to haunt her.
They also tested her against attacks that she was campaigning for 'Obama's third term,' a hacked email obtained by Wikileaks shows, and 'ineffective' as secretary of state.
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Hillary Clinton's aides commissioned a vulnerability survey on the prospective presidential candidate two months before she launched her campaign. She is pictured voting today
Mandy Grunwald, a senior communications adviser, wanted the group conducting the study to probe voters' reaction to the messages: 'We need a new direction or 'We need to change course.'
John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama who'd left the White House that month to sign on as Clinton's campaign chairman, agreed.
'To pile on' to that point, the Clinton loyalist said, the campaign should test the message: 'Obama's tried big government solutions for 6+ years and they haven't worked. Now she promises more of the same. We need a change in direction...'
Grunwald also made the point that Clinton's comment a year before about the last time she drove a car, in 1996, could be problematic.
'Should we add that HRC hasn't driven a car in thirty-five (?) years? (The Republicans love that one!). Also does "dead broke" go here or in the later videos??' she asked, referring to Clinton's comment that she and her husband were in dire straights when they left the White House.
They would go on to make millions off of public speeches to large corporations and the financial sector.
Grunwald advocated for a message test that asked, 'When HRC recently spoke to bankers at Goldman Sachs, instead of holding them accountable for their activities that crashed the economy, she told them that banker bashing was foolish and had to stop.
'She said "soothing" that we all got into our economic problems together," ' the fake attack ad was to say.
Communications Director Mandy Grunwald, left, and Senior Adviser John Podesta, right, exchanged possible criticisms of Hillary
The political consultant also suggested they drudge up someone saying, 'Clinton flew all over the world, but she can't name a single major accomplishment she made as Secretary of State.'
She also wanted to survey voters' reactions to positions that Clinton could take up on the trail in Iowa, including 'specific populist policy proposals -- or at least trying to get a sense of their corporate villains.'
'Does this still make sense? Or should we just stay focused on the negatives?' she asked.
One of Clinton's pollsters chimed in to say that they might want to ask in Iowa specifically about an article that accused her of paying her female Senate staffers less than the men and a conservative attack ad that had just come out that targeted the Clinton Foundation.
A final copy of the internal poll that they conducted over the phone included all of those points in addition to others about the taxpayer funded bailout of Wall Street Clinton backed, the money her family charity took from Middle Eastern countries 'that have been linked to terrorism,' mismanagement of funds at the Clinton Foundation, ethics investigations into her and her husband like Whitewater and the job she did as secretary of state.
One question was entirely dedicated to the terror attack in Benghazi.
The study asked voters whether they'd be more inclined to vote for Clinton or Jeb Bush, revealing that Clinton's aides viewed the former Florida governor as a major threat
The survey asked whether 'criticisms of Hillary Clinton's role in Benghazi are mostly fair and have merit in the facts' or not.
Others asked about her plans to 'continue the failed policies of Barack Obama,' including amnesty for illegal immigrants and Obamacare, and her tall tale about being shot at in Bosnia.
The study shows that Clinton's campaign also wondered if voters also believed she underestimated the threat posed by ISIS, should have voted against the war in Iraq and was wrong to have supported NAFTA.
Finally, it asked voters whether they'd be more inclined to vote for Clinton or Jeb Bush in the presidential election, revealing that Clinton's aides viewed the former Florida governor as a major threat and a likely GOP nominee.
They also also asked about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ended up flaming out early, months before voting started.
A mother and two children died in a fire inside a home where no working smoke detectors were found, the Maine fire marshal's office said.
Firefighters were called to the home in Old Town around 10.15 pm on Monday after neighbors reported the fire.
Crews arrived and learned that people were trapped inside.
Firefighters removed a boy and girl from an upstairs bedroom, but the children could not be resuscitated.
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A mother and two children died in a fire inside a home where no working smoke detectors were found, the Maine fire marshal's office said. Scenes from the Monday fire above
Firefighters were called to the home in Old Town around 10.15 pm on Monday after neighbors reported the fire
The woman's body was found in a first-floor bedroom. At this time, the names of the victims have not been released and autopsies are planned.
When fire crews arrived at the home, flames were blowing through the garage and into the house, Old Town Fire Chief Steve O'Malley told WABI-TV.
'They [crews] were quickly told that they had entrapment, people trapped inside,' he said.
'So they quickly went in to quick attack mode, also at the same time doing a search and rescue.
Firefighters removed a boy and girl from an upstairs bedroom, but the children could not be resuscitated. The woman's body was found in a first-floor bedroom
'We were actually able to remove some of the people from the building, it was just the fire was too large and the smoke was too heavy.'
One neighbor said she is heartbroken following the incident.
'My heart is broken it really is I didn't sleep all night I just came back from voting I stopped by to see the Pastor at the Church,' Holly Garrett told WLBZ 2/News Center.
'It's just my heart is really heavy today. Very sad day.'
A serial killer linked to seven deaths and the kidnapping of a woman who was found chained inside a storage container may have eerily posed as one of his victims on Facebook.
When Charlie Carver, 32, and his girlfriend Kala Brown, 30, disappeared in Anderson, South Carolina, on August 31, friends and family continued to receive Facebook messages from someone pretending to be Carver.
This person even updated Carvers Facebook statuses. On October 1 they posted the final lines of The Eagles song Hotel California, a report from the Daily Beast reveals.
Last thing I remember, I was running for the door. I had to find the passage back to the place I was before. Relax, said the nightman. We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Detectives are now investigating whether it was serial killer Todd Kohlhepp who was posing as Carver after the 32-year-old was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds on farmland belonging to Kohlhepp on Friday.
Police are investigating if Todd Kohlhepp posed as Charlie Carver on Facebook. Carver was found dead on Friday and his girlfriend Kala Brown was found chained by her neck and ankle on Thursday
Kohlhepp is believed to have posted part of the same lyrics on an Amazon.com review of some master padlocks, which he gave five stars, the Daily Beast reports.
Now my locks have locks... place is hotel california now, he wrote on January 14 2015.
Postings on Amazon by a user named 'Me' on a wish list linked to Kohlhepps name began in 2014, close to the time he purchased the farmland and told local hunters to keep off in the future saying: 'You're hunting days are over.'
For a shovel with a folding handle, the user posted a review suggesting, 'keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies and you left the full size shovel at home'.
The same user left a review for a knife that read: 'havnet (sic) stabbed anyone yet...... yet.... but I am keeping the dream alive and when I do, it will be with a quality tool like this...'
One of the bodies exhumed from a shallow grave is that of Charles Carver (left), who was shot dead in a killing said to have been witnessed by his girlfriend Kala Brown (right) who was held captive for two months in chains on Kohlhepp's property
Postings on Amazon by a user named 'Me', believed to be Kohlhepp, shared the same Hotel California lyrics
In a review about a padlock, the Greenville News reports that the user wrote: 'solid locks.. have 5 on a shipping container.. wont stop them.. but sure will slow them down 'til they are too old to care.'
Kohlhepp, 45, became a suspect after Carvers girlfriend Kala Brown was found Thursday chained by her neck and ankle in a metal storage container on his 95-acre property near rural Woodruff.
The body of Carver was found a day later. The couple had been missing for about two months.
The remains of two other bodies were found near one another Sunday and Monday, and authorities are not sure who they are.
A local resident showed DailyMail.com the chilling picture that Kohlhepp took and posted on Facebook.
His page has since been closed down.
The image shows a woman walking through Kohlhepps 96-acre property in Woodruff, South Carolina, and is seemingly photographed without her knowledge.
The woman in the purple dress has blonde hair and is walking away from or past the suspect, whose land was open to public access until he installed a wire fence around the entire perimeter.
No clue was given by the suspected serial killer of her identity, but an observer posted underneath it after his arrest: 'Could this be one of his victims?'
Authorities have searched Kohlhepp's land and have now extended their search to other properties connected to him. They have found three bodies so far. They are pictured digging in Woodruff, South Carolina
Duncan First Baptist church members,with South Carolina State Rep. Bill Chumley, hold a prayer service on Todd Kohlhepp's property in Woodruff on Monday
A police investigator on an ATV collects evidence on Todd Kohlhepp's property in Woodruff on Monday
Coroner Rusty Clavenger, pictured, said he could not give any information about whether the two bodies found with Kohlhepp's help were male or female
Investigators were expected back at the property on Tuesday, but Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger said he didn't think there were any more bodies.
"As the coroner, that's all I have been advised of. That was the total number of bodies I was told was on the property. If I am told there are more, I will be back," he said.
Following Kohlhepp's arrest, he confessed to a 2003 quadruple slaying at a motorcycle shop in the small town of Chesnee, said Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright.
Those killed in 2003 have been named as Brian Lucas, Scott Ponder, Beverly Guy and Chris Sherbert.
He was denied bond Sunday on four murder charges for gunning down the motorcycle shop's owner, service manager, mechanic and bookkeeper.
Wright has said Kohlhepp gave details only the killer would know. His confession came a day before the 13th anniversary of the crime, which many feared would never be solved.
On a review of a knife posted on 13 September 2014, the user said: 'havnet (sic) stabbed anyone yet...... yet.... but I am keeping the dream alive and when I do, it will be with a quality tool'
For a shovel, the user wrote a review, suggesting: 'keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies and you left the full size shovel at home'
The Amazon user posted 140 reviews in all with the majority between May and September 2014
Before his confession, authorities granted him three requests, WSPA-TV reported. One was to transfer money to a girl Kohlhepp says he's helping raise, to help pay for college. The second was to give his mother a photograph, and the third was to let him talk to his mother.
Kohlhepp is charged with kidnapping the woman, and more criminal counts are expected. He has chosen to represent himself and not hire an attorney, Wright told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
Wright, who was first elected about a year after the Superbike Motorsports killings, is now investigating what appears to be a crime spree stretching over more than a decade.
As a teen, Kohlhepp was sentenced to 14 years in prison in Arizona for binding and raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint. Released in 2001, he managed to obtain a real estate license in South Carolina in 2006.
The search for human remains has now expanded to other properties he owns or used to own, including places outside of South Carolina, Wright said Sunday. He declined to elaborate.
Kohlhepp showed investigators Saturday where he says he buried two other victims on the property he bought two years ago.
'We're not even close' to identifying the remains or cause of death, Wright said. 'We can't tell anything.'
Kohlhepp did not tell investigators who was buried there. Removing the remains to 'preserve every bit of evidence' is a meticulous, time-consuming process, the coroner said.
Serial killer Todd Kohlhepp posted a picture of a woman walking through his farmland and posted it to his Facebook page
The gravesites Kohlhepp pointed to are in addition to Carvers body found Friday in a shallow grave at the site.
His girlfriend Brown, 30, was found chained by the neck and feet inside a rusty-colored container by officers who entered the land with a warrant last Thursday.
Local sheriff Chuck Wright told DailyMail.com: 'I'm going to be honest with you. I don't chain my dogs up and I wouldn't treat my dogs the way this lady was treated.'
Further postings by Kohlhepp on Facebook have also been included as part of the investigation.
On September 15, two weeks after Brown and her boyfriend went missing, Kohlhepp posted: 'Reading the news..this person missing, that person missing, another person missing, oh wait, that person just went to beach with friend, other person found with her parole violation boyfriendin the event I become missing, please note no one would take me.
'I eat too much and I am crabby, they would just bring me back or give me 20 bucks for a cab ride, most likely if I am missing, its because my dumb a** did something on that tractor again and I am too stubborn to go to the doctorI got 9 lives...I ain't done yet.'
On September 30 he added: 'Just admit it..you look at the news, you see the political crap and the school shootings and just general wth (sic) is going onzombie apocalypse is starting to look better and better every day.'
In another posting the same month, he said: 'Another day at camp ohs**tthisisgonnahurtinthemorningbushhogged all day yesterdaylooks like another day of it todayI don't care hos (sic) sexy she thinks my tractor isby the time you get off the damn thing all you want is a shower and the noise to stopthink I need to invest in concrete and green paint.'
On November 3, he added on Facebook: 'We need ebola to come as a huge snowstorm, wipe out half the population, then melt awayjust tired of entitlement, rude a** people for no reason..people who race to cut in front of you to slam on brakes to make right turnand that mother------ that stands in the isle (sic) at the grocery store ( and dude you know who you are) that blocks the isle (sic) checking out the microbrews and blocking everyone on their way to their average Michellobb***h move.'
This is the moment a young woman tried to crash the wedding of the man she claimed to be the father of her newborn son.
The incident happened in the town hall of the Peruvian city of Chimbote where a group wedding had been organised last weekend.
Some 84 pairs participated in the ceremony and were greeted by the mayor, Julio Cortez Rojas.
The woman claimed her child belonged to the groom and wanted to stop the marriage from happening
The incident happened in the town hall of the Peruvian city of Chimbote where a group wedding had been organised
But when resident Ever Franco Rojas came in with his future wife, things took an unexpected turn as 19-year-old Yeli Fernandez Lozano came to the ceremony alongside her sister and new born baby.
The woman claimed the child belonged to Rojas and wanted to stop the marriage from happening.
But Rojas' relatives stopped her from reaching him.
According to local media, the newlyweds temporarily left the venue so they would not have to meet the 19-year-old mother
Yeli Fernandez Lozano told local media: 'He didn't want to recognise the child. He found out I was pregnant and ran away, and married someone else.'
Her sister, who was not named, added: 'He has to recognise his son. It's true that he's getting married. But the kid is two months old and he doesn't even pay child support.'
According to local media, the newlyweds temporarily left the venue so they would not have to meet the 19-year-old mother.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that Russia may try to interfere in her country's elections next year, amid claims of Kremlin meddling in the US presidential battle.
Washington has accused Russian hackers of trying to interfere in the election, with FBI director James Comey linking cyber attacks to 'bad attackers' supported by Moscow.
Now Merkel said there are already signs of the same thing happening in Europe.
Angela Merkel has warned that there are already signs of 'internet attacks' coming from Russia
She said today: 'We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information.'
She said dealing with this is already a 'daily task', and added: 'So it may be that this could also play a role during the election campaign.'
The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed allegations that it is backing hackers trying to interfere with the US election.
Merkel's comments came in response to a question about whether Germany could experience the same type of cyber attacks that have plagued the White House race - notably targeting Hillary Clinton's Democratic party.
Washington has formally accused Vladimir Putin's Russia of trying to interfere with today's Presidential election
Databases in Illinois and Arizona were successfully breached in the summer - but officials stressed that voting and tabulation machines used on Election Day are not accessible online.
The FBI director said in September that his agency is investigating the 'mischief' the Russians might be up to.
Washington last month formally accused the Russian government of trying to 'interfere' in the election by hacking US political institutions, charges the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed.
Germany's domestic secret service earlier this year accused Russia of a series of international cyber spying and sabotage attacks.
These included a case which targeted the German lower house of parliament last year.
I either drink from one dirty river, or another dirty river, my New York limo driver told me late last night.
He was talking about todays US Election, and his vote.
I dont think Ive ever seen a human being look more genuinely forlorn and angst-ridden at the agonising decision awaiting him.
Either way, he added, I fear for what will happen to my country. I am so disgusted by the hateful tone of this race.
He will not be alone in these painful thoughts today.
Many Americans feel repulsed, sickened, angry and thoroughly depressed by what has been happening over the past 18 months.
Elections are supposed to be momentous events in a nations history, filled with hope, excitement and optimism for the future.
This one feels like the complete opposite.
Many Americans feel repulsed, sickened, angry and thoroughly depressed by what has been happening over the past 18 months.
Its fair to say the level of public discourse in this campaign has often descended into the kind of vile, name-calling, abusive trash talk more commonly heard in the run-up to a big Floyd Mayweather fight.
Donald Trump set the low tone on the day he declared, denouncing illegal Mexican immigrants coming over the Southern border as druggies, criminals and rapists.
He went on to mock Senator John McCain for being captured in Vietnam, suggested Fox News star Megyn Kelly had blood coming out of her wherever, appeared to mimic a disabled reporter, hammered the Pope, announced plans for a ban on Muslims coming into America after a terror attack, and even took on a Gold Star heros parents.
Oh and he belittled and berated his GOP nominee rivals with brutal nicknames like Lyin Ted, Low Energy Ted, and Little Marco.
They responded in kind.
Trump set a low tone on day one of his campaign, and since then insulted every other candidate in the primary, John McCain, and Megyn Kelly, to name a few, and since securing the nomincation has viciously attacked Hillary and Bill
Jeb Bush called him a jerk, Ted Cruz said he was a liar, Mitt Romney sneered he was a phony fraud, and Marco Rubio even insinuated Trump had a small penis, to which the eventual Republican nominee responded: I can guarantee you theres no problem.
There was, though, a big problem with his Access Hollywood hot mic Grab them by the p***y comments about women which outraged the world.
Trump retaliated by flying in some of Bill Clintons ex-lovers and alleged sex abuse victims to sit near him during one of the presidential debates.
He reserved his most vicious rhetoric, though, for Hillary Clinton, demanding she be jailed for her criminality over her private email server, and claiming shes a lying, shameful, race-baiting bigot.
Trump encouraged his stump crowds to chant LOCK HER UP, branded the Washington political system she represents rigged against the people and declared he was going to drain the swamp.
Hillary, meanwhile, has slaughtered not just Trump but all his 'basket of deplorables' supporters and happily scraps in the gutter with the Republican nominee
Hillary, for her part, has repeatedly slaughtered not just Trump in a very personal way, but also his tens of millions of supporters.
She branded half of them a basket of deplorables, and said they were sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.
Last week she was at it again, ranting: I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive, dangerous vision and anger of the people who support Donald Trump.
President Obama joined in too, saying Trump was a small-brained, star-f***ing, Ku Klux Klan tolerating loser born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
So nobody in this race, with the exception of the honourable Bernie Sanders, has fought fair.
Its been shockingly nasty and appallingly mean-spirited.
Trump may have more offences, literally, against his name.
But Hillarys shown shes more than happy to scrap it out in the gutter with him.
The combined effect of all this has been to render America a laughing stock around the world.
Even President Obama has joined in , saying Trump was a small-brained, star-f***ing, Ku Klux Klan tolerating loser born with a silver spoon in his mouth. No wonder 70% of Americans don't like the direction the country is headed
This, in turn, has enraged American people of all colour, creed, age and gender.
Who, after all, wants to be an object of ridicule?
Now, as the campaigns spit and snarl their way to the finishing line, there is a moment of relative calm before the result is announced to reflect on what happens after tomorrow.
Trump and Clinton are the two most unpopular candidates in US presidential history.
Both are equally loved and loathed in equal measure.
Those who hate them REALLY hate them and everything they stand for.
The fear, paranoia and fury in both camps of supporters are genuine and dangerous.
So whoever wins tonight, the absolute first priority of the new President must be to work urgently to restore some dignity and respect to this great country.
Millions of Americans feel lost, helpless, abandoned and resentful.
Trumps extraordinary success in the race to this point illustrates just how large that number of people is.
We also know from recent polls that 70% of Americans dont like the way the country is going.
Yet its important to keep perspective.
America has been in far worse places: Civil War, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbour, civil rights riots, 9/11, political assassinations, Watergate.
So I dont believe Americas broken, as Trump likes to say.
But it IS breaking and it needs re-setting.
When you break a bone, you go see a doctor and get it healed.
What America needs now from President 45, be it Trump or Clinton, are some metaphorical plaster casts, pain-killers and peaceful recuperation.
Not yet more division, acrimony, hatred and distrust.
Its not so much time to drain the swamp as time to clean the dirty river.
A former drama teacher at a prestigious New York high school who acknowledged sexually abusing three students will be required to register as a sex offender as part of a revised plea deal that was approved by a judge.
As part of a deal with prosecutors, Christopher Schraufnagel, 41, pleaded guilty on Monday to misdemeanor child endangerment and sexual abuse charges, having admitted to subjecting two underage students to sexual contact.
A third student also fell victim to Schraufnagel, the teacher admitted.
Schraufnagel will be placed on probation for three years and he will be required to register as a sex offender.
Christopher Schraufnagel (seen in this undated photo outside New Castle Justice Court), 41, will be placed on probation and is also required to register as a sex offender
The plea deal is a revised edition of an agreement between Schraufnagel and prosecutors this past August, when he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of child endangerment but was not prosecuted for felony sexual assault.
The judge who presided over the case threw out the deal because it did not require any jail time for Schraufnagel.
The deal also did not require him to register as a sex offender.
The revised agreement which was announced on Monday calls for Schraufnagel to be sentenced in February.
He pleaded guilty on Monday to one misdemeanor-level count of sexual abuse and two misdemeanor-level counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
He admitted that all three acts happened at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, where Schraufnagel taught.
The newly approved deal is similar to the old agreement in that Schraufnagel, who is battling cancer and has undergone surgery twice, will not have to go to jail.
The original criminal complaint against Schraufnagel alleged that the teacher had oral sex with a 15-year-old student while forcing others in his class to engage in role-playing that involved kissing and sexual contact.
From May 1, 2011, to June 5, 2015, the defendant, a former speech and drama teacher at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, New York, engaged in numerous instances of sexual assault, inappropriate sexual conduct and contact with a total of three underage students of the school, according to the complaint as reported by The Journal News.
Between May 1, 2011, and June 24, 2011, the defendant engaged in oral sexual conduct with a then fifteen-year-old student of the school inside the school.
Schraufnagel (above) pleaded guilty on Monday to misdemeanor child endangerment charges after he admitted to sexually abusing three students over the span of four years
Between December 1, 2014, and December 25, 2014, the defendant asked a student at Horace Greeley High School at the time to participate in a slideshow kissing every student in one of the defendants classes while the defendant took pictures.'
'The next day, another student of the defendant was directed by the defendant to have the same victim kiss additional male and female students while being photographed. Thereafter, the defendant publicly displayed the slideshow to one of his classes full of students in an attempt to humiliate the students.
Between October 1, 2014, and June 5, 2015, the defendant had a number of instances of inappropriate conversations with strong sexual overtones and sexual contact with another student of the school.
A civil lawsuit later filed against Schraufnagel alleged that he 'engaged in sexual acts with students' and plied them with alcohol and drugs.
He is alleged to have engaged in sex-themed games during his drama classes, one of which was called 'Train Wreck', where students would be asked to discuss intimate details about their sexuality.
Another perverse game was dubbed 'Sick Secret Santa' played by theater rep students which required them to give the most outlandish gifts possible, said the lawsuit.
These included a scone with pubic hair baked into it, a dead bird, a cup of semen and a coffee cup filled with feces.
The prosecutor says the incidents involved students at Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua (pictured) between May 2011 and June 2015
Attorney David Engelsher represents four students who have accused Schraufnagel. Engelsher calls the guilty plea 'partial vindication' for them.
The 41-year-old was hired in 2003 and started work in 2006 after which he ran a successful theater program for 12 years.
A mum left unable to walk or talk after a medical blunder in childbirth has been awarded a 'substantial' settlement, which will help to provide her care for life.
Lucy Cookson suffered a catastrophic brain injury after she was rushed to theatre with a massive haemorrhage following the birth of her daughter Millie.
The 25-year-old, who lost six pints of blood on New Year's Eve 2013, underwent surgery and was given a spinal anaesthetic instead of a general anaesthetic.
Lucy Cookson (left, with husband Adam in 2013) suffered a catastrophic brain injury after she was rushed to theatre with a massive haemorrhage following the birth of her daughter Millie (right, as a baby)
She suffered a cardiac arrest during the procedure at Pinderfield's Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, which starved her brain of oxygen and plunged her into a coma.
Despite improvements, the young mum is still unable to walk or talk properly and relies on family and carers for help and support for everyday tasks.
Lucy's husband, Adam, of Wakefield, and her parents Bev and Andrew Schofield were left 'heartbroken' at what had happened to Lucy.
Speaking about the impact on the family, Bev, 52, said: 'As a family we are still shell-shocked and heartbroken at what has happened to Lucy.
'We are still trying to come to terms with what the future holds for Lucy and the rest of the family.
'Lucy was so excited about the prospect of being a mother and they both looked forward to being parents for the first time.
'Millie and Lucy have a close and loving relationship, but it is heartbreaking that Lucy can't do the things that she would have done with Millie.'
Bev added: 'To know that mistakes after Millie's birth and if the complications had been managed properly that Lucy would have avoided the damage, is devastating.'
Lucy's condition improved since lapsing into a coma shortly after her baby girl's birth and by the end of January 2014, she had started to move her head and right arm.
Later that year she started to vocalise and more recently her therapists believe that she has started to consistently respond to questions.
Mrs Cookson suffered a cardiac arrest at Pinderfield's Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, which starved her brain of oxygen and plunged her into a coma. The young mum is still unable to walk or talk properly
But a Serious Untoward Incident Report conducted by the Trust following the incident declared the severity of Lucy's care as causing 'very severe harm'.
Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust admitted there was a failure to appreciate Lucy's cardiovascular instability and that a general anaesthetic should have been used during her procedure.
The Trust also admitted that Lucy was not monitored correctly during her pregnancy and that there was a lack of senior staff involvement when Lucy suffered the post-partum haemorrhage.
Bev said: 'Lucy spends four days a week at home and will come home permanently when the house is adapted and live with us and Millie.
'It's hard not to be angry about the findings of the Trust's internal investigation as it is clear more could have been done to prevent the brain damage she suffered.'
Personal injury law firm Irwin Mitchell secured a lifetime care and rehabilitation package from the Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The settlement for Lucy came after a hearing at Leeds High Court on Tuesday, which will provide her with the funds needed for her long-term care.
The settlement includes a lump sum and annual payments for the rest of Lucy's life.
Bev added: 'We wanted accountability and transparency from the Trust about exactly what happened which is why we instructed our legal team at Irwin Mitchell.
This is a truly tragic case that has left a young mum with devastating, permanent brain damage Partner and expert medical negligence lawyer Rachelle Mahapatra
'The settlement we have now received will ensure that Lucy continues to access the specialist lifelong care, facilities and equipment she will need in the future.
'You never expect this sort of thing to happen during childbirth nowadays but Lucy is proof that it does.
'We have one hundred 'what ifs' about what more could have been done for her but we believe if maternity staff had more support and better training in crisis situations they would be better placed to react and provide the best possible care.
'We believe more needs to be done in improving services so no one else has to go through the same horrific ordeal and is left in the impossible situation we now face.'
Partner and expert medical negligence lawyer Rachelle Mahapatra, from Irwin Mitchell, said: 'This is a truly tragic case that has left a young mum with devastating, permanent brain damage.
'This has also had a huge effect on the rest of her family, her husband Adam and her parents and sister.
Donald Trump's campaign has failed in its lawsuit filed overnight over early voting in Nevada.
They asked a judge to impound ballots from certain sites because of alleged violations.
The Trump campaign claimed that Clark County election officials, where Las Vegas is located, allowed early voting sites to be kept open after the 7 p.m. Friday deadline.
The order requested by Trump's campaign would have impounded ballots to make sure if they were cast by voters who didn't make it into line within the agreed time limits.
'I am not going to expose people doing their civic duty to help people vote ... to public attention, ridicule, and harassment,' Clark County Judge Gloria Sturman said onTuesday during an emergency hearing. 'I'm not going to do it.'
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Donald Trump's campaign is protesting early voting polling locations that stayed open late Friday to accommodate the long lines
Reports from those areas suggested a large turnout among Latino voters, which would have bolstered the Democratic vote.
The Trump campaign has been grumbling about the long early voting lines in Clark County for days.
Nevada COP Chairman Michael McDonald said on Saturday in Reno that, 'Last night in Clark County they kept a poll open 'til 10 o'clock at night so a certain group could vote.'
Clark was likely referring to the long lines at Cardenas supermarket, which is in a heavily-Hispanic neighborhood in Las Vegas.
Those voters were likely casting ballots for Hillary Clinton.
The legal challenge likely stems from the long lines reported at Cardenas supermarket, an early voting location that attracted a heavily Hispanic vote
'The polls are supposed to close at 7 p.m.,' McDonald complained. 'This was kept open 'til 10 p.m.'
'Yeah, you feel free right now?' he said, alleging cheating. 'You think this is a free and easy election.'
Trump echoed the sentiment.
'It's being reported that certain key Democratic polling locations in Clark County were kept open for hours and hours beyond closing time to bus and bring Democratic voters in. Folks, it's a rigged system,' the GOP hopeful said.
When asked about it Sunday by CNN's Jake Tapper, Trump's campaign manager said that the campaign just wanted to see the rules followed.
'And I predict that you're going to see really long lines, serpentine-like lines on Tuesday, of folks there for Donald Trump,' Conway predicted. 'You're going to see record turnout in many of these places.'
'But look, it's concerning when you hear reports about special favors and perhaps special rules for Democratic voters,' Conway continued. 'We already know that their presidential nominee has special rules for her.'
Tapper questioned Conway's allegation that Democrats weren't following the rules.
If people are in line by the time the polls are supposed to close, they're allowed to vote in the state of Nevada.
'You want that to happen on Tuesday with Trump voters,' Tapper pointed out, after Conway had suggested that Trump voters would be waiting in their own long lines.
'We have not been able to well, we have not been able we have not been able to independently verify that,' Conway said.
Mr Justice Jay ruled that the gender segregation policy was not discriminatory
A judge has refused to name an Islamic school at the centre of a sex discrimination row after ruling its strict gender segregation policy is legal.
The school, known only as school X, was put in special measures by Ofsted earlier this year over concerns it discriminated against female pupils.
Inspectors found boys and girls are separated from the age of nine and also discovered sexist books in the school library.
The school was able to censor Ofsted by applying for judicial review in the High Court, with judges banning publication of the original report and the schools identity.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Jay ruled that the gender segregation policy was not discriminatory - although the school still deserved to fail its inspection because of the library books.
Ofsted has now been ordered to re-write their report, removing any criticism of the segregation.
Watchdog chief Sir Michael Wilshaw said he was disappointed with the ruling and has vowed to take the case to the Court of Appeal.
The case has huge implications for the local community, but now many parents may never know the reports original contents.
The ban on identifying the school was imposed to prevent a media storm and tensions and fears for parents.
But yesterday, open justice campaigners said the parents right to know was more important than avoiding embarrassment for the school.
Former Lib Dem MP John Hemming, who has campaigned on free speech, said: Personally I have no problem with single sex education, all of my children go to single sex schools.
However, would the parents not want to know what has been going on?
Public scrutiny of the court process is an important element of our system of justice.
Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has said parents have a right to know 'what is going on' at the school in question
The ruling is a blow for the governments drive to tackle extremism in schools.
It was launched two years ago in the wake of the Trojan Horse scandal, which saw hardliners try to impose an Islamic agenda on state schools.
Ofsted are now required to ensure all schools teach fundamental British values, which includes gender equality and respect for women.
Ensuring equal treatment for boys and girls is also a legal obligation.
Critics of gender segregation in mixed sex religious schools say it implicitly implies that women are inferior to men.
The schools watchdog has marked down a number of Islamic schools for gender segregation but yesterdays decision may prevent them doing so in future.
The case is the first of its kind involving a faith-based school challenging the education regulator in the courts.
The judge said the special measures were justified because the offensive books in the school library clearly treated women as subordinate to men.
Two of the books stated that husbands were allowed to beat their wives while one said a wife could not refuse sex.
But regarding the gender separation rules, the judge said: There is no evidence in this case that segregation particularly disadvantages women.
Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw said he was disappointed with the ruling and has vowed to take the case to the Court of Appeal
Responding to the ruling, Sir Michael said: We are disappointed that the court has determined that the practice of completely segregating boys and girls in this publicly funded mixed-sex school does not amount to unlawful discrimination.
I do not believe that segregating children without an educational reason is in their best educational interests.
The matters that went before the court are of great public importance and have far reaching implications for our schools and for our society.
As a society, we expect men and women to integrate freely and fully both in the workplace and in social settings.
Here was a mixed-sex school where children were being kept apart on the grounds of gender.
This segregation took place in all lessons, in the corridors, during breaks and lunchtimes and for all social and extra-curricular activities.
Ofsted is charged with inspecting how well schools are promoting British values.
Mrs Munro said she wanted to ask Leathem why he murdered Paige
Her mother Pamela Munro said she wants to speak to her daughter's killer
The grieving mother of murdered teenager Paige Doherty has said she wants to meet her daughter's killer.
Pamela Munro said she wants to speak to John Leathem face-to-face to ask him why he murdered her 15-year-old daughter.
Leathem, 32, was given a life sentence after he admitted to stabbing the teenager 61 times in a 'savage and frenzied' attack at his deli in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, on March 19.
Paige Doherty, left, was murdered by John Leathem in a 'savage and frenzied attack' on March 19. Her grieving mother Pamela Munro, right, said she wants to meet her daughter's killer
In court he claimed that Paige had threatened to report him for sexual assault after she applied for a job at the sandwich shop.
Mrs Munro said her daughter 'never said that' and wants to 'clear her name'.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, Pamela said: 'I'd like to sit with him in front of me and to ask him why and I'd also like to ask him why he's made his excuse a reason as to why he's done it.
Murderer John Leathem was jailed for life
'Paige isn't here to clear her name and I know as Paige's mum she never said that. And I know everybody that knows her knows she never said what he's saying.
'For Paige's sake I could do anything. If I thought there was a tiny bit of hope he would say "I made that up" I could sit in front of him. I just think it would give me a wee bit of peace knowing I've tried to clear Paige's name.'
Mrs Munro said attending the murder trial at the High Court in Glasgow was the 'worst thing' she has done.
She said she tried to make eye contact with Leathem in court but that he refused to look at her or her family.
Mrs Munro, who has three children aged 11 months, five and 10, said it is becoming even harder to cope with the loss of her daughter.
'It gets harder as it gets longer,' she said. 'I find myself struggling more as the days go on because I miss her.'
'My [10-year-old] son, he's not coping great. He has good days and bad days. They did everything together, she used to take him swimming, shopping, to the cinema.
'He misses her being there. He comes and cuddles up to me and cries. It's hard to watch him struggle.'
Leathem, 32, was given a life sentence after he admitted to stabbing the teenager 61 times in a 'savage and frenzied' attack at his deli in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, pictured
Leathem was told he would spend at least 27 years behind bars but recently lodged an appeal.
Mrs Munro said he had 'a cheek' to appeal the sentence.
This shocking footage shows prisoners openly moving contraband between their cell windows in the latest security breach at a British jail.
Three inmates at Wormwood Scrubs in west London can be seen passing goods to each other by swinging a length of rope with a package at one end.
It is the latest sign of the security crisis facing UK jails, which have faced intense criticism following a riot and a break-out on two consecutive days.
One inmate (circled) reaches out of a window and begins swinging a length of material with a package at one end
The clip, which lasts for a minute and a half, was filmed by a workman in Hammersmith Hospital, which overlooks the Category B man's jail.
The man, who did not want to be identified, started filming at midday after noticing movement while looking out from an upstairs window.
He told MailOnline: 'I was having a little look at the prison and from the corner of my eye I saw something fly out of one of the windows.
'It looked like a little piece of string with a parcel on the end. The first man started swinging it then threw it over into the cell one floor down.
'Then that happened again and the next guy took it in. It could of been a mobile phone, tobacco, porn, who knows.'
The source said he was disturbed at how easy the process had seemed, adding: 'I couldn't believe that I was seeing.
The package is then passed down one floor and taken into the downstairs cell. The process then starts again, with an inmate swinging the rope and handing it down to someone below
It is the latest sign of the security crisis facing UK jails, which have faced intense criticism following a riot and a break-out on two consecutive days. Picture inside Wormwood Scrubs
'It is just basic security to stop the inmates getting away with stuff like that. Where are the guards on the outside?
'Especially this week after the escape from Pentonville and then the Bedford riots. It all seems like the system's in trouble.'
Meanwhile, two prisoners remain on the run after breaking out of HMP Pentonville in north London.
James Anthony Whitlock, 31, and Matthew Baker, 28, escaped the north London prison in an audacious Alcatraz-style break out.
They were discovered missing just before midday on Monday.
The men used diamond cutters - reportedly sent in by a drone - to break out of their cell and left mannequins in their beds in a bid to avoid detection.
He man who filmed the video told MailOnline: 'I was having a little look at the prison and from the corner of my eye I saw something fly out of one of the windows'
On Sunday, Bedford jail went into lockdown as 200 inmates, some wielding knives, went on the rampage for more than six hours
Baker had been awaiting sentencing after he was found guilty of attempted murder two weeks ago for stabbing a man in Dagenham, east London.
Whitlock was on remand having been charged with conspiracy to burgle over 19 alleged ATM thefts.
Scotland Yard warned members of the public not to approach the escapees as they 'could become violent'.
And on Sunday, Bedford jail went into lockdown as 200 inmates, some wielding knives, went on the rampage for more than six hours.
Footage showed prisoners raising their hands in triumph after guards 'abandoned' their posts in the chaos.
There were reports of explosions heard from inside the prison as specialist security teams swarmed outside in a bid to regain control.
The two incidents came a week after the chair of the Prison Officers Association, Mike Rolfe, warned British jails had been engulfed by a 'bloodbath'.
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said on Twitter: 'More troubling news concerning our prisons.
'The Justice Secretary needs to do more urgently to tackle crisis.'
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'The Justice Secretary has been clear that levels of violence in prisons are unacceptable.
'We announced a major overhaul of the prison system last week including 2,500 extra frontline prison officers.
Lindsay Jo Rimer was murdered more than 20 years ago
A 63-year-old man from Bradford has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of teenager Lindsay Jo Rimer more than 20 years ago, West Yorkshire Police said.
Lindsay, who was just 13-years-old, was last seen on November 7 1994 when she went to buy cornflakes from a shop in the town of Hebden Bridge.
The Yorkshire schoolgirl's body found weighted down at the bottom of the Rochdale Canal five months after she disappeared.
The grim discovery was made by two workmen about a mile upstream of the town centre as they worked in the water in April 1995.
The man was arrested this afternoon - almost 22 years to the day Lindsay disappeared, and is currently being questioned by detectives in police custody.
This April, new forensic leads in the cold case were investigated by West Yorkshire police, when detectives sent new DNA evidence to Canada and Germany to be analysed using the latest scientific techniques.
Detective Superintendent Simon Atkinson said at the time they were waiting for the 'golden nugget of information that will finally crack the case'.
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The schoolgirl was last seen on November 7 1994 when she went to buy cornflakes from a shop in the town of Hebden Bridge
Lindays mother Geri vowed to continue to fight for answers after the schoolgirl's death remained unsolved for more than two decades
Lindsay's sister Juliet - who was just a baby when she went missing - has spoken publicly about growing up without her sibling.
Speaking on the 21st anniversary of the schoolgirls body being found she said: 'When I turned 13, it was like everyone closed ranks around me, in an effort to protect me from the world, as if the same thing might happen.
Speaking earlier this year, Lindays mother Geri vowed to continue to fight for answers.
My little girl deserves justice. My little girl does not deserve to be dead,' she said.
I made a vow when her body was found that I would not give up until the conclusion. We owe it to Lindsay.I miss her every day we all do.
'A piece of everyone's soul is missing and I often wonder how our lives would have been if we were not a broken family.
'Not knowing what happened is the worst part. You walk down the street and wonder: "Was it them? Do you know something?".
The Russian navy is planning a massive attack on Aleppo within the next 24 hours, according to a Ministry of Defence source.
A group of ships including an aircraft carrier, a nuclear power guided missile cruiser and two destroyers is reportedly ready to strike from the Mediterranean Sea.
But the Russian source insisted the missiles will aim for areas surrounding Aleppo to avoid harming the 200,000 civilians still living there.
The Russian navy is planning a massive attack on Aleppo within the next 24 hours, according to a Ministry of Defense source. Pictured: The aftermath of previous strikes there
Syrians carry out search and rescue work after warcrafts belonging to Russian army carried out airstrikes over Urum al-Kubra region in Aleppo
'The group's main goal is to carry out missile strikes on terrorists outside of Aleppo that are attempting to get into the city', they told Gazeta.ru.
'The strikes will avoid the city of Aleppo to prevent civilian casualties, because terrorists continue to use city residents as human shields.'
The source added that the details of the strike are still being finalised as they navy zeros in on exact targets around the Syrian city.
The strikes could apparently include Kalibr cruise missiles, launched from a submarine.
The strikes could apparently include Kalibr cruise missiles, although these would be launched from a submarine
Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov is among the group in the Mediterranean Sea
It comes on the day of the US election, after American officials have condemned Russia's bombing campaign in Syria.
Secretary of state John Kerry has called on Russia, which supports dictator Bashar-al-Assad against rebel groups, to stop bombing civilians in what he described as the 'largest of humanitarian disasters'.
But President Putin has denied any 'war crimes' and asked for evidence that his forces are bombing innocents.
Russian planes were allegedly responsible for a strike killing at least seven children and two pregnant women in Syria's rebel stronghold province of Idlib on Tuesday.
Russian planes were allegedly responsible for strikes killing at least seven children and two pregnant women in Syria's rebel stronghold province of Idlib on Tuesday
The strike hit the town of Khan Sheikun in the south of the province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
The Britain-based group, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
In Moscow, the defence ministry denied that Russian aircraft had been in the area on Tuesday, and accused the Observatory of 'information provocations'.
Russia began its air campaign in support of the government in September 2015, saying it was targeting 'terrorists.'
'The strike hit a street where children were playing. Three of the dead children were from one family and were visiting their grandfather,' Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Hershey sent a representative to the campus with 6,500 Kit Kat bars last week, which Jobbins handed out to fellow students
The freshman tweeted a picture of the note, attracting sympathy from hundreds of thousands of users
He returned to find an anonymous note from the thief who admitted to taking the bar
Generous act occurred after he had candy bar stole out of his car last week
Hershey has come to the rescue of a college student who had his Kit Kat bar brazenly stolen by sending him 6,500 of the chocolate candy bars.
Kansas State University freshman Hunter Jobbins, 19, left his car unlocked with a Kit Kat in the cup holder last week before running into his dorm building.
When he came back 15 minutes later, the candy bar had been replaced with a semi-apologetic note left on a tissue from the thief claiming they were 'sorry and hungry.'
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Hershey has come to the rescue of Kansas State University student Hunter Jobbins, 19, by sending him 6,500 Kit Kat bars after he one his brazenly stolen from his car last week
Jobbins handed out the candy bars last Thursday while swarms of student waited to receive one
Kit Kat tweeted last week writing that the thief can keep their candy bar now that Jobbins 'has ALL the candy'
The thief wrote: 'I love Kit Kats so I checked your door and it was unlocked. Did not take anything other than the Kit Kat. I am sorry and hungry.'
Jobbins tweeted about his loss attracting the sympathy of hundreds of thousands and earning him the nickname 'Kit Kat guy' on campus.
Kit Kat themselves also got in touch and offered to send him a free chocolate bar.
Hershey made good on their promise and sent a representative to the campus with 6,500 Kit Kat bars last week.
'Sorry and hungry': Jobbins had left his car outside his dormitory and returned to find his Kit Kat missing and a semi-apologetic note from the thief last week, pictured
Jobbins stuffed the bars in his car and handed them out around campus last Thursday.
He said he was initially saddened by the incident but that he quickly saw the funny side.
He told Daily Mail Online: 'At first I was upset that someone had gotten into my car and took my Kit Kat.
Jobbins poses outside his car with a sea of red Kit Kat boxes stacked up to the roof of his car
Jobbins hands out candy bars to fellow students. Since sharing the note on Twitter it was re-tweeted over 180,000 times and liked by nearly half a million users
Jobbins tweeted thanking students for coming out last week and a special thanks to Kit Kat
'But after reading the note all of my frustration turned into laughter. It's hard to be mad after reading something like that.'
Hunter said last week that he had yet to catch the culprit but that he would like to find him to give him more chocolate bars.
'I still don't know who took my candy bar but I wish I did. I'd love to give him as many Kit Kat bars as he wanted,' he said.
Since sharing the note on Twitter it was re-tweeted over 180,000 times and liked by nearly half a million users.
University fame: The incident has earned him the nickname 'Kit Kat guy' on campus
Australia should hear the result sometime after 3pm on Wednesday
As America decides on the next President, the rest of the world is bracing to find out how the results will affect them.
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have cast their votes, more than a year after each announced their candidacy.
In Australia, regional security, trade, terrorism, immigration and the economy will likely bear the brunt of any huge changes.
So when and where can Australians follow live results? What are the key battleground states, what could push either campaign over the line, and how does the U.S. system work?
The election is regarded as one of the most important the world has seen. Make sense of it here.
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Hillary Clinton, here with husband and former President Bill, is seen here greeting supporters after voting on Tuesday
OVER TIME: Polling of preferred candidates over the past year from November 2015 to Monday November 8, 2016
Republican nominee Donald Trump watches as his wife Melania voted in New York
When does voting start and when will the election be called?
WHEN AND WHERE RESULTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED The election results could be called as early as 3pm on Wednesday, Australian time (AEST). Electoral maps and figures will be updated live on the Daily Mail's election coverage. Australian television networks will begin live coverage from 10am on Wednesday. Nine will have Karl Stefanovic and Laurie Oakes reporting from New York. 10's The Project host Waleed Aly has been in Philadelphia interviewing Trump supporters. Seven will have reporters based in Washington DC and in both Clinton and Trump camps. ABC will begin the coverage from 6am with hourly live-crosses and continuous coverage from 10am with election analyst Antony Green, Charlie Pickering in New York and Chaser member Chas Licciardella on social media. There will also be live-crosses to Clinton and Trump camps. Advertisement
The election is Tuesday, November 8. But in Australian time (AEDT), the first votes were cast about 10pm on Tuesday night, with most of the drama unfolding on Wednesday.
Results could be called from 3pm on Wednesday (or 11pm in the US, Eastern Standard Time).
There are six different time zones across the U.S., and most polls open locally between 6am or 7am and close between 7pm and 8pm depending on the state.
Australian time, the first polls opened at 4pm on Tuesday, or 10pm when polls in some east coast states open.
First counting will begin about 10am on Wednesday AEDT.
The polls in the eastern states, with some of the key battlegrounds, will begin to be counted from 11am AEST or 7pm EST.
Remaining polls will begin to be counted throughout the day as they close, until voting in the west coast closes at 3pm, AEDT. Polls close in Alaska at 5pm AEDT, but the state is considered unlikely to swing the election.
3pm AEDT (11pm Tuesday EST) will be the first chance for the election to be called.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump wears a hat with his campaign slogan, 'Make America Great Again'
Hillary Clinton is pictured speaking at a campaign rally on Monday
Pundits tend not to wait for California to call the election, which is a safe Democrat state with polls closing 11pm EST.
WHAT THE POLLS ARE SAYING Either candidate must receive at least 270 electoral colleges for an absolute majority to win. Hillary Clinton was tipped to win 203, Trump with 164, and 171 a toss-up as of Monday. Source: RealClearPolitics Advertisement
But this election could be closer with other states running neck-and-neck, and the race could go long into the night locally.
Clinton and Trump will hear the results from their election events. The HRC campaign party will be at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre, while the Trump campaign will party at the Hilton Midtown, ABC reported.
Where can we watch results?
Daily Mail will have the results as soon as the election is called, along with major updates.
Australian television networks ABC, Channel Nine, Channel Seven, Channel 10, and SBS will all have rolling coverage of the election.
As the state-by-state results trickle in, electoral maps will be coloured in red for Republicans or blue for Democrats to show which candidate the state has fallen to. Electoral maps and figures will be updated live on the Daily Mail's election coverage.
Clinton is slightly ahead of Trump in the polls, with 171 electoral votes still in play
Polls as at Monday, EST time, show Clinton holds 203, Trump holds 164, with 171 still in play
What are the polls saying?
The polls have narrowed more than most political pundits could have predicted.
Either party must win 270 electoral colleges for an absolute majority. Polls as at Monday, EST time, show Clinton holds 203, Trump holds 164, with 171 still in play.
Removing the toss-up states, Clinton is predicted to win 272 and Trump sits just behind on 266, according to RealClearPolitics.
Anti-Trump protesters, mostly women, rally outside Trump Tower earlier this month in New York
A woman wears an 'I'm with her' t-shirt, which was part of a major campaign for Hillary Clinton to become the first woman president
WHAT IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE? The electoral college are people in the U.S. who represent the states and are spread across them by population. The college members formally cast votes, following the popular vote. When U.S. citizens vote for a presidential candidate they are effectively voting for a college member, who supports one of the candidates. There are a total of 538 college members - and therefore electoral votes - across the country. A candidate must win at least 270 to win an absolute majority and become president. Advertisement
What are the battleground states?
The key states are Arizona, Florida, Maine 2nd District, Nebraska 2nd District, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah, which together have 87 electoral votes. Winning these states is crucial for a candidate to win the election.
Florida will be a main player, with 29 electoral college votes and polls showing Clinton with a lead of just 1 per cent well within the margin of error. Trump will likely need the state to win.
The result in Ohio has long been an indicator of who will be successful, picking the past 13 elections.
Trump thinks he can challenge Democratic strongholds. But he would have to turn more states than Obama won over in 2008, even if he took Florida, North Carolina and all the states 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney won, The Australian reported.
Without Florida, North Carolina or Pennsylvania, Trump is unlikely to win and go to the White House.
Clinton's chances have also been bolstered by excitement for America's first woman president, while Trump's campaign was damaged by alleged sexism, harassment, assault and adultery (Trump pictured on Monday with 'women for Trump' posters)
Earlier this month, Clinton greeted a student wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt for Eric Garner, 43, a father shot by police who witnesses said could be heard saying 'I can't breathe' before he died
HOW THE STATES WILL FALL BATTLEGROUND: Arizona, Florida, Maine 2nd District, Nebraska 2nd District, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah (87 total electoral votes). SOLID DEMOCRATIC: California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state (213 total electoral votes). LEANS DEMOCRATIC: Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (59 total electoral votes). LEANS REPUBLICAN: Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, Texas (73 total electoral votes). SOLID REPUBLICAN: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming (106 total electoral votes). Source: AP Advertisement
What else could determine the results?
Both campaigns have been marred by controversies, but the polls have only tightened.
What could push Clinton or Trump over the line to take victory?
Outgoing president Barack Obama had mobilised a record black American turnout in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
This time, Trump appears to have rallied Latino voters against him after referring to Mexicans as criminals and rapists, and proposing to build a wall between the countries.
The controversial and 'racist' statements appear to have boosted the Clinton campaign, with a record turnout of Latin-American voters expected.
Early voting from Florida shows a 74 per cent increase from 2012, with about one of the 6.2 million votes already cast from the Hispanic population, New York Times reported.
Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona all show an increase in votes from the same demographic.
Trump is likely to have also alienated Muslim voters.
A man carries a 'blacks for Trump' sign at a campaign rally in Michigan on Sunday
Clinton's chances have also been bolstered by excitement for America's first woman president, while Trump's campaign was damaged by alleged sexism, harassment, assault and adultery.
Polls have shown the majority of black and women voters have preferred Clinton to Trump.
That momentum towards a Clinton victory could be wounded by disaffected, working class white voters who are expected to turn out in large numbers for Trump.
Clinton has also been hit by the controversies regarding her emails, despite the FBI clearing her of wrongdoing.
A Trump-supporter carries a 'Hillary's lies matter' sign and wears an orange jumpsuit, suggesting the Democratic nominee should be jailed
How does the system work?
The successful candidate must win 270 electoral votes, an absolute majority of the 538 electoral college members.
The popular vote in each state selects members of the electoral college, who pledge support for a candidate.
There are 538 members who are spread across the states according to population.
The U.S. does not have mandatory voting, and only 146 million of the 218 million eligible have registered to vote, according to reports, and has a historically low voter turnout.
The country also has no preferential voting, so a vote for other candidates Jill Stein, Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin could be perceived to be a wasted vote.
If there is a tie between the two major candidates, or nobody reaches 270 for an absolute majority, which the U.S. constitution covers.
Obama will remain in the White House until January next year, leaving time for a recount if necessary.
A line of early voters are pictured on Monday in Columbus, Ohio
What does Australia think?
Australian politicians haven't been holding back when it comes to criticising Trump ahead of the election.
In a highly unusual departure from diplomatic protocol, they've joined world leaders including French President Francois Hollande, ex British prime minister David Cameron, ambassadors and even the Pope in voicing concerns about the billionaire.
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said he had 'pushed the boat out so far' that politicians of all persuasions have felt the need to speak out.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has been one of Trump's most vocal critics, describing him at various times as 'barking mad' and 'difficult'.
South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi wears a 'Make Australia Great Again' hat and throws his support behind Trump
'By his own words and his own actions, he has confirmed the worst fears of millions in the United States and beyond its borders - he is entirely unsuitable to be leader of the free world,' Mr Shorten told a Committee for Economic Development of Australia conference in October.
Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop have both said Australia will work with whoever is elected.
But senior minister Josh Frydenberg wasn't afraid to call Trump a 'dropkick'.
Politicians in NSW Parliament's upper house went further, unanimously agreeing 'with those who have described Mr Trump as a "revolting slug unfit for public office".'
But not all Australian politicians are against Trump.
South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi told his supporters last week he'd be 'cheering on a Trump victory' and described Clinton as a 'poster child for everything that is wrong with the American political system'.
A 23-year-old woman and her boyfriend have been accused of killing an Alameda County Sheriff's Office volunteer.
Sheriff's Office Explorer Karla Ramirez-Segoviano's body was found beaten, stabbed, burned and discarded in a creek bed in East Oakland on Thursday, The East Bay Times reported.
Prosecutors on Monday charged Laura Rodgers, a former friend and co-worker of the victim, and Rodgers' boyfriend, Curtys Entoine Taylor, both 23, with murder.
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Laura Rodgers, left, and her boyfriend, Curtys Entoine Taylor, right, both 23, with murder on Monday in the death of Alameda County Sheriff's Office Volunteer Karla Ramirez-Segoviano
Rodgers and Taylor are accused of killing an Alameda County Sheriff's Office volunteer Karla Ramirez-Segoviano who was found dead on Thursday
Rodgers had worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in East Oakland with Ramirez-Segoviano and knew her for a few years, according to The East Bay Times.
A source told CBS SF that Rodgers thought Ramirez-Segoviano was having an affair with her boyfriend.
Authorities said they believe the murder stemmed from a 'personal matter'.
Rodgers, who is also charged with use of a deadly weapon, told police she planned the murder and discussed it with Taylor beforehand, according to court documents.
Rodgers had allegedly persuaded Ramirez-Segoviano to pick her up and drive her to Arroyo Viejo Park in East Oakland where Taylor was waiting with a can of gasoline.
Rodgers then stabbed Ramirez-Segoviano several times before Taylor poured gasoline over the victim's body, according to court documents.
Ramirez-Segoviano's body was found beaten, stabbed, burned and discarded in a creek bed (pictured) in Arroyo Viejo Park East Oakland on Thursday
Scene where the victim's body was found shown above. The victim suffered multiple stab wounds, blunt force trauma and burn marks on the upper portion of her body
They then allegedly lit a match, setting her body on fire, burning her nearly beyond recognition, prosecutors said.
Her body was so badly burned that the coroner had difficulty lifting a fingerprint, SF Gate reported.
The victim suffered multiple stab wounds, blunt force trauma and burn marks on the upper portion of her body, KRON4 reported.
They drove off in the victim's car before tossing the keys, knife, gasoline can and the clothes Rodgers had on during the slaying into a dumpster at a Days Inn hotel in Hawyard, police said.
The car was found abandoned near Highway 880 in Hayward, according to CBS SF.
After Ramirez-Segoviano was found unresponsive Thursday morning, Rodgers was brought in for questioning and admitted her role in the killing, according to SF Gate.
Ramirez-Segoviano, left and right, served as a police explorer for the last four years as part of the department's explorer program. She was reprotedly in college studying to become a sheriff's deputy
Rodgers had worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in East Oakland (pictured) with Ramirez-Segoviano and knew her for a few years
She was taken into custody that day and Taylor was arrested the next day following what police called a 'senseless' and 'heinous' killing.
Ramirez-Segoviano's parents had reported her missing on Wednesday after she did not return home after dropping off a friend in San Leandro, authorities said.
'The fact they planned to kill this poor girl shows how much disdain and malice the suspects had toward Karla,' Sheriff's Office spokesman Sgt. JD Nelson told The East Bay Times.
'Hopefully, when this case is finally adjudicated, a judge will have the same disdain for them during sentencing.'
A possible motive for the killing has not been released, but police believe it was unrelated to Ramirez-Segoviano's work as a police explorer.
Rodgers and Taylor pictured in Facebook photos, left and right. A possible motive for the killing has not been released, but police believe it was unrelated to Ramirez-Segoviano's work as a police explorer
She served as a police explorer for the last four years as part of the department's explorer program which youth can participate in until they are 21, Nelson told KTVU.
After she was aged out the program, she had moved on to mentoring young participants, Nelson said.
Nelson added that he did not personally know Ramirez-Segoviano, who was in college studying to become a sheriff's deputy, but said he had met her before.
Meanwhile, her family has been left shocked and devastated following her death.
'We never knew of anyone that had a problem with her,' her aunt, Ana Ramirez told CBS SF on Friday.
'She was a responsible young lady. She worked, went to school.'
On Friday, her family held a rosary service in honor of her, KNTV reported.
A Mississippi cop accused of manslaughter over the hot-car death of her three-year-old daughter has pleaded not guilty.
Officer Cassie Barker told police she had only planned to leave her daughter Cheyenne in the car for a few minutes while she visited a fellow officer's home on the morning of September 30.
But authorities say she fell asleep and when she returned to the car four hours later her daughter was unresponsive. Chyenne died at a nearby hospital shortly after she was found.
Barker was charged with manslaughter and appeared in court today where she denied the charges.
Mississippi police officer Cassie Barker, 27, accused of manslaughter over the hot-car death of her three-year-old daughter (pictured with her) has pleaded not guilty
Her attorney, George Blair, argued for a preliminary hearing Tuesday, but prosecutor Olin Anderson said the former Long Beach officer was not entitled to one because she is already out of jail on bond.
The Sun Herald reports Justice Court Judge Tommy Carver agreed. He ruled there was enough evidence in the case to automatically send it to a grand jury to review for an indictment.
Barker told police she had left Cheyenne in the car when she arrived at the Kiln home of Sgt Clark Ladner just before 9am, with the engine running and turned the air conditioner on.
Ladner, 36, was one of Barker's shift supervisors and both officers had just finished an overnight shift.
Officer Cassie Barker told police she had only planned to leave her daughter Cheyenne in the car for a few minutes while she visited a fellow officer's home on the morning of September 30
The sergeant told police Barker had come to his home to discuss a 'work-related incident', according to the Sun Herald.
Ladner told police he had taken a sleep aid and fell asleep while the two officers were talking. He said Barker also fell asleep a short time later.
The mother woke up four hours later and found Cheyenne unresponsive when she returned to her car.
Ladner said Barker ran back into his home and told him something was wrong with Cheyenne. He began CPR on the toddler while she called 911.
Authorities received a report of an unresponsive child at 1.52pm. Chyenne died at a nearby hospital shortly after she was found.
Officers at the scene found that all the windows in Barker's patrol car were rolled up and that the air conditioner was set 'halfway between cold and heat'.
Cheyenne's official cause of death has not yet been determined pending an autopsy report, but investigators believe it was from overexposure of heat.
Barker told police she had only planned to leave Cheyenne in the car for a few minutes when she arrived at the Kiln home of Sgt Clark Ladner (left) just before 9am on Friday
Temperatures reached 82F in Kiln on Friday, according to the Weather Channel.
Barker threatened to harm herself and had to be hospitalized after Cheyenne was discovered. She will be charged as soon as she is released.
Both Barker and Ladner were fired from the Long Beach Police Department on Tuesday night for violating department policies.
Hancock County Chief Deputy Don Bass said it remains unclear what their relationship was, saying only that Ladner was a 'friend' of Barker.
Bass added that Ladner will not be charged, as he told investigators that he did not know Cheyenne was in the car.
It has since been revealed that this wasn't the first time Barker was caught leaving her daughter alone in the car.
Barker was disciplined in April 2015 after leaving Cheyenne, who was two years old at the time, alone in the back of her personal vehicle outside a strip mall in Gulfport.
Authorities said Barker left Cheyenne alone in the car for four hours. It is believed Cheyenne died from an overexposure of heat
A passerby saw Cheyenne in the car and called the police.
Barker was suspended for one week without pay and her one-year probationary period was extended by 90 days.
The Department of Human Services also took temporary custody of Cheyenne.
But Ryan Hyer, Cheyenne's father, only learned of the 2015 incident after his daughter's death last week.
'That was a tell-tale sign that something was wrong,' he said.
'And if I would have been notified or if she lost custody of Cheyenne then, my daughter would be alive today. I wouldn't have lost my child.'
'If this would have been me or you or somebody else, the situation would have been totally different,' he added.
Barker was disciplined in April 2015 after leaving Cheyenne, who was two years old at the time, alone in the back of her personal vehicle outside a strip mall in Gulfport
'We would have been in jail. Records wouldn't be expunged. My daughter would still be here.'
Hyer said he and Barker were together for the first two years of Cheyenne's life, and he would watch their daughter while she went through the police academy.
When the couple broke up, Hyer returned to his hometown in Jacksonville, Florida, where he now hopes to lay to rest the daughter he called 'Shy' for short.
'Every time I close my eyes, I picture her suffering and then I picture her laying in this coffin,' he said.
'I still see her smiling and laughing in my head and I would assume that smile and laughter turned to pain and suffering in that instance.'
'It's an image I don't want to have, but it's one I can't get rid of.'
Hyer said he hopes that Barker will be punished for Cheyenne's death.
'As a parent, you are supposed to protect your child,' he said. 'And Cheyenne is gone because her mother didn't protect her.'
Dreamworld's deadly Thunder River Rapids Ride will be closed and demolished 'out of respect' for the four victims who died in last month's tragedy.
Siblings Kate Goodchild and Luke Dorsett were farewelled at a funeral in Canberra on Monday, two weeks after they were killed alongside Roozi Araghi and Cindy Low when a ride malfunction caused their raft to flip.
On Wednesday, Ardent Leisure CEO, Deborah Thomas, said the victim's families would be invited to erect a memorial for their loved ones at the site of the decommissioned ride.
'The closure of the ride is the only respectful and appropriate course of action,' she said.
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Although the investigation is ongoing, police handed back the theme park to its owners on Monday (pictured is the scene of the accident)
Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate said he wants Dreamworld's owners to talk with the families of the four people who died in a raft accident last month before opening its doors to the public again (pictured if the coffin of victim Kate Goodchild)
'Out of respect for the memories of Cindy Low, Roozbeh Araghi, Kate Goodchild and Luke Dorsett, and their deeply affected families, the ride will be permanently decommissioned'.
The memorial will be built for the victims 'as soon as 'it is appropriate'.
Ms Thomas also said an external review of Dreamworld by an expert engineering firm was underway and theme park staff were also working closely with Workplace Health and Safety.
'No ride at Dreamworld will operate until the Workplace Health and Safety Audit has been completed and unless it passes the multi-level internal and external review process,' Ms Thomas said.
On Tuesday, Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate said the park should seek permission from the families of the victims before reopening.
Police handed back the site to Dreamworld's owners on Monday.
A service for Ms Goodchild and Mr Dorsett was the last of the funerals for the two men and two women killed when a raft on the Thunder River Rapids ride flipped onto a conveyor belt, trapping them underneath.
After an initial plan to reopen just three days after the accident was scrapped, Dreamworld bosses said they would not discuss re-opening the park until the funerals were completed.
The memorial will be built for the victims 'as soon as 'it is appropriate'
On Wednesday, CEO of the Gold Coast theme park, Deborah Thomas, said the victim's families would be invited to erect a memorial for their loved ones at the site of the decommissioned ride
The park (pictured) is expected to make a public statement on Wednesday and Mr Tate hopes any re-opening plan has the support of victims' families
It comes as victims Kate Goodchild and her brother Luke Dorsett (pictured together) were farewelled at a funeral in Canberra
'The timing of re-opening Dreamworld...they know what to do but I would ask that they talk to the families and get their OK on that,' Mr tate (pictured) said
Shayne Goodchild (centre), father of Ms Goodchild and Mr Dorsett is consoled during their funeral in Canberra on Monday
An independent safety review of every ride at the park would also have to be completed before the park reopens, Dreamworld chief executive Craig Davidson said.
The park is expected to make a public statement on Wednesday.
Mr Tate hopes any re-opening plan has the support of victims' families.
'It's been a difficult time,' Mr Tate said.
'The timing of re-opening Dreamworld - I'd leave that to the management of Dreamworld - they know what to do but I would ask that they talk to the families and get their okay on that.'
Mr Dorsett's partner Roozi Araghi (right) and Sydney mother Cindy Low (left) also died during the incident
The husband and son of Cindy Low, Matthew and Kieran (left), depart with other mourners following her funeral at the Palmdale Hillside Chapel on the Central Coast on Thursday
Meanwhile organisers of a fundraiser for victims' families have confirmed a portion of the $200,000 raised so far will be made immediately available to help with funeral expenses.
The givit.org.au appeal is ongoing but funds currently raised are being passed on to the families.
Mr Tate encouraged people to continue to donate to the appeal.
'I'm happy but I'd say give it some more. You've got kids there who are going to be growing up without a parent,' he said.
WikiLeaks, which has released tens of thousands of emails and documents from hackings of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's inner circle, said on Tuesday that it has come under 'unrelenting' cyber attacks.
Numerous visitors to the anti-secrecy organization's website reported on Tuesday that they received error messages when they tried to open up links to emails from the hacked account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman.
'We have been under unrelenting DDoS attacks over the last 24 hours,' the organization tweeted on Tuesday.
Initially, the attacks were reported to have prevented WikiLeaks from releasing additional batches of Podesta's emails.
This Twitter user speculated that WikiLeaks came under a DDoS cyber attack on Tuesday after encountering an error message on its site
WikiLeaks confirmed the Twitter user's assessment, saying that it indeed had come under cyber attacks
As of this writing, however, emails that were released on Tuesday were accessible through the WikiLeaks website.
DDoS refers to Distributed Denial of Service, a kind of cyber assault that usually involves thousands of unique IP addresses.
These kinds of attacks are designed to shut down a network resource, thereby denying access to it from users.
The timing of the attacks is sure to raise eyebrows, given that it came on the same day that Americans go to the polls to elect a new president.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (left) denied that his organization's leaks of hacked emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta (right) were aimed at influencing the election
In a statement posted online (above), Assange wrote that his organization would have revealed information about Donald Trump if it had any
WikiLeaks has been accused of trying to influence the election and sway American public opinion to Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
It has thus far released thousands of emails from Podesta's private Gmail account.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denied on Tuesday that he intended to influence the presidential election by publishing copies of emails linked to Clinton and suggested he would do the same to Donald Trump, if he could.
The secret-spilling website in recent months has published troves of electronic messages sent to or by people in Clinton's campaign, disclosing embarrassing, if not damaging, inside conversations.
Bill and Hillary Clinton, vote in Chappaqua, New York, on Tuesday. WikiLeaks has released thousands of emails linked to Clinton in recent weeks
'This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election,' Assange said in a statement, denying that the publications were designed to bolster support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or to take revenge on the Democratic Party for the jailing of Chelsea Manning.
Manning, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013 for passing secret US government documents to WikiLeaks.
Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for four years evading legal proceedings in Sweden, indicated WikiLeaks would not hesitate to publish material on Clinton's Republican rival, if it received the right material and judged it newsworthy.
'To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump's campaign, or Jill Stein's campaign, or Gary Johnson's campaign or any of the other candidates that fulfills our stated editorial criteria,' he said.
The US government has said Russia was responsible for hacking at least some of the emails released by WikiLeaks - including those from the private account of Podesta.
Thomas Suarez described the creation of Israel as a 'racist', 'fascist' endeavour, and linked the 'cult' of Zionism to the Nazis
The Israeli Embassy has reacted with fury after a 'hate speaker' delivered an hour-long rant on Jews and Zionism to students at a top London university.
Thomas Suarez described the creation of Israel as a 'racist', 'fascist' endeavour, and linked the 'cult' of Zionism to the Nazis.
Yiftah Curiel, spokesman for Israel's diplomatic mission, accused SOAS of letting 'racist conspiracy theories' go unchallenged during the talk at the Palestine Society.
He told MailOnline: 'We are surprised and disappointed that SOAS would give a platform to a hate speaker.
'He equates Zionism - the Jewish people's right to national self determination - with Nazism and Fascism.
'It is regrettable that instead of promoting coexistence and dialogue, SOAS would hold an event at which outlandish, racist conspiracy theories regarding Zionism and the Jewish people, were presented as fact.'
The university responded by saying the event was organised independently by the Students' Union and it wanted to maintain a 'neutral platform' for different opinions.
Mr Curiel tweeted a section of footage, filmed by blogger David Collier, in which Mr Suarez discussed the Balfour Declaration, which created the modern state of Israel.
Yiftah Curiel, spokesman for Israel's diplomatic mission, accused SOAS of letting 'racist conspiracy theories' go unchallenged during the talk at the Palestine Society
He told the students: 'Only when Zionism's exposed as the racial fascist movement that it is will Britain be forced to distance itself from the Balfour Declaration.'
Mr Suarez - a professional violinist who has written a book on Israel - also described Zionism as 'parallel to Nazism' and accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.
Mr Collier described the speech, which took place on the SOAS campus, as 'sickening' to watch.
'He was there in front of students, just feeding them these conspiracy theories,' he told MailOnline.
'I expected there to be dodgy stuff, because I knew what his credentials are. The guy is a violinist, not a historian.'
Mr Curiel's comments have led to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism filing a formal complaint with the university.
Mr Curiel's comments have led to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism filing a formal complaint with the university (pictured)
A section of the letter read: 'SOAS is sometimes referred to in the Jewish community as the 'School of Anti-Semitism.
'We hope that by your actions you will demonstrate that this reputation is no longer deserved.'
'EXPROPRIATION AND ETHNIC CLEANSING': THE FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE 'Almost to the day of the 99th anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917, the SOAS Palestine Society, in collaboration with Olive, invites everybody to a talk by Tom Suarez on British colonialism and Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine... British officials and Zionist leaders colluded to lie about the scheme of expropriation and ethnic cleansing in Palestine from the very beginning.' Advertisement
A SOAS spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'SOAS is committed to maintaining a neutral platform and ensuring that all members of our diverse community are free to express their opinions in a mutually respectful and collegial environment.
'The event referred to was not a SOAS organised or run event. The talk was not part of any SOAS teaching programme, nor of any lecture or seminar series run by the School.
'It was an an event organised by a student society, which operate under auspices of the Students' Union - which is a separately constituted body from the School itself.
'A wide range of opinions and views are expressed at events held at SOAS and it does not mean that the school endorses or supports the views.'
MailOnline has contacted the Palestine Society and Thomas Suarez for comment.
Investigators searching for a California woman who went missing while out for an afternoon run last week have found long strands of blonde hair and a pair of earbuds along her jogging route.
Despite the new clues and an increased reward for information, officials with the Shasta County Sheriff's Office conceded that they were no closer to locating Sherri Papini, who has not been heard from since last Wednesday afternoon.
The 34-year-old married mother-of-two was last seen jogging alone on Sunrise Drive in Redding at around 2pm on Wednesday.
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New clues; Deputies have found blonde hair strands and earbuds belonging to Sherri Papini (pictured), 34, who went missing while jogging Wednesday afternoon
Keith Papini (pictured with his wife and children) said his wife who vanished while out jogging has insisted must have been abducted because she would never not pick up their children from daycare
Papini was reported missing at around 6pm after she failed to return home from her run and didn't pick up her children from daycare.
'She was definitely taken against her will,' her husband Keith Papini told ABC News. 'Everybody who knows my wife knows that there;s no reason for her to leave.'
He added: 'Knowing that she didn't pick up our kids - there is no way that ever happens.'
Papini said that he'd traced his wife's cell phone using Apple's 'Find My iPhone' locator app and found it on the side of a road.
'She could drop her phone but she would never in a million years not pick up our children on a time that she normally would have,' he said.
Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said investigators went to search that location and found strands of blonde hair and earbuds belonging to Papini, reported the station KRCR-TV.
Detectives are now in the process of sorting through 150 tips that have come in so far and reviewing surveillance footage from homes and businesses along Sherri Papini's jogging route.
On Saturday, Bosenko said the missing woman, who was last seen wearing a pink running top, was 'considered at risk due to the suspicious circumstances.'
Before her routine jog, Papini texted her husband, Keith Papini (pictured), and asked him if he was coming home for lunch. He responded no and when he came home from work, he found an empty home. His wife would usually pick up their two children but they were left at daycare
Before her routine jog, Papini texted her husband and asked him if he was coming home for lunch, her sister Sheila Koester the Ventura Star.
Koester told the Star that Papini's husband replied that he wasn't.
Upon his return home from work, no one was home.
He then used his Find My iPhone app and located his wife's phone near the intersection of Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise Drive in Redding, according to a GoFundMe account set up to aid in finding Papini safely.
Her husband was also unable to locate their two children, whom he later discovered had not been picked up from daycare.
Her sister said that Papini usually picks up the couple's two children and jogs in the afternoons.
Video courtesy of KRON4
Papini was last seen jogging between Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise Drive (pictured)
Search crews (pictured) have been looking for Papini for the last four days in the area where her cell phone was discovered
Papini loved her children and she would not just leave them at daycare, Koester told KRCR TV.
'She wouldn't leave her babies,' Koester said.
'There is no way she would do anything to disrupt her children's routine,' Keith's sister, Suzanne Papini added.
Keith then called 911 to report his wife missing around 5.51pm, police said.
'She wouldn't just drop her phone if she was running away,' Keith's sister, Suzanne Papini, told the New York Daily News.
'At least it's giving us some kind of information. This is a pretty sickening situation.'
Search crews have been looking for Papini since she disappeared to no avail.
Her sister, Sheila Koester (left) said that Papini (right) usually picks up the couple's two children and jogs in the afternoons. But on the day she went missing the children were left at daycare, which Koester says is not something her sister would do
Keith's sister, Suzanne Papini, posted this photo on Facebook. The family believes this is the top that she was wearing when she went missing
On Wednesday night and Thursday, more than 20 searchers combed the area where the phone was found.
And on Friday, more than 100 people gathered to search for the missing mother.
Secret Witness of Shasta County, Inc, initially offered up to $10,000 for anyone who has information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of a suspect behind the disappearance of Papini.
But that reward has since increased to $50,000, according to her family.
The family also posted a photo on Facebook of what they believe Papini was wearing on the day she disappeared.
Police have not identified anyone involved in her disappearance, Sheriff Bosenko told the newspaper.
Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Kanubhai Ramdas Gandhi (pictured) died aged 87 on Monday at a hospital in India
Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, who went on to become a top NASA scientist in the US, has died aged 87 in poverty at a hospital in India.
Kanubhai Ramdas Gandhi reportedly suffered a heart attack and brain hemorrhage which left him partly paralyzed and in a coma on October 22.
His wife Shivalaxmi allowed him to be taken off ventilator support on Monday night.
It was a quiet end for a man who had been related to the 'Father of the Nation', as Gandhi was known, and had lived a luxurious life in the United States for 40 years.
Kanubhai left India after Gandhi was assassinated, ready to forge a new path in America.
He was recommended by the US Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith to study applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kanubhai then moved with his wife to Hampton, Virginia, where he worked at the NASA Langley Research Center and the US Department of Defense.
'I used to do research on aircraft wing structures for the fighter planes,' Kanubhai told The Hindu in May. 'I had secret clearances and all that.'
Shivalaxmi, who had a PhD in biochemistry, did research at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute.
It was a time where the couple often traveled the world and attended glamorous parties.
'We had fun,' Kanubhai said. 'We were invited to so many parties, as there are a lot of Indian diamond merchants there.'
'We were living a glamorous life,' Shivalaxmi added, 'Until recently.'
Kanubhai (pictured in May) reportedly suffered a heart attack which left him partly paralyzed and in a coma on October 22. His wife Shivalaxmi allowed him to be taken off the ventilator
Kanubhai reportedly lived in a life of poverty when they returned to India in 2014 after living in the US for 40 years. Pictured is one of the last senior homes he lived in before his death
Kanubhai and his wife eventually settled in an old-age home in May known as the Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram of Delihi (pictured), where most 130 residents slept on the floor
The couple decided to leave the United States just two years ago and return to India.
'We destroyed everything we had and we came here,' Shivalaxmi said. 'It's a long story.'
Kanubhai had hinted in interviews that he wanted to return to land where Gandhi's journey began to spend the last years of his life.
'Gujarat-Rajkot is where the roots of our family are,' he told the Hindustian Times in June.
'I would like to move there and stay for the rest of my life.'
But their return was not what the couple expected, as they jumped moved to four different shelters in the past two years.
Kanubhai was famously known as the little boy holding his grandfather's stick in this photograph taken in 1930 during the salt marches
They eventually settled in an old-age home in May known as the Guru Vishram Vridh Ashram of Delihi.
An air conditioner and a bed were installed in the home's Intensive Care Unit when the couple arrived.
The rest of the ashram's 130 residents slept on the floor, with four toilets available.
Dhimant Badhia, an old friend of the Gandhi family, has to raise money for Kanubhai's treatment after he suffered a recent heart attack, according to CBS News.
The couple had previously said they received no help from his famous family.
'Our relatives here are not helping us during our times of pain. Bapu's children are his opposites,' Kanubhai told NDTV in May.
India's Prime minister Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delihi, were among the first politicians to lead tributes
'We want to be in an environment where we can talk to other intellectual people, discuss ideas,' Shivalaxmi added. 'But it's too late to go back to the United States.'
It was a devastating end to the life of the man who was once the little boy leading Gandhi by his walking stick in an iconic photo of the Salt Marches.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted as he led tributes to Kanubhai on Monday night.
'Pained by the demise of Kanubhai Gandhi, the grandson of Gandhi Ji. Remembering my various interactions with him. May his soul rest in peace,' Modi wrote.
Soon after, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, as well as a host of other politicians, also took to the social media site with similar sentiments.
It had been earlier claimed by the Hindustan Times that Kanu had been left fighting for his life in a charitable hospital, with little financial support.
Many branded the 'poverty' Kanu spent his last days in as 'shameful'
Because of this, a number of people fired criticism at the government for not doing more to help him, with some making reference to 'fake' Gandhi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is not at all related to the Father of the Nation.
'Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Kanu Gandhi, died in poverty today,' wrote Manoj Jain. 'And fake Gandhis and supporters with vested interest rule the Congress party.'
'When Gandhi's grandson Kanu Gandhi was alive no politician took care to take a note of his deplorable condition,' added Sahil Prasad.
Vineeta posted: 'Very sad. We failed. Shame on us. We could not care for Kanu Gandhi and his wife. May God give us good sense.'
Paramedics were called to a polling station in Virginia today after a man collapsed while waiting to vote.
However, the elderly voter insisted on casting his ballot at the 4th District station in Chesterfield County while ambulances attended the scene.
According to reports, the man - believed to be 71-years-old - was suffering chest pains and having difficulty breathing while in line around 6.30am. The man has not been identified.
Scene: A photo taken by a witness shows an ambulance arriving at the voting station in Virginia's Chesterfield County around 6.30am Tuesday to help an elderly man who collapsed
A local woman who was in the voting queue tweeted about the incident under the handle Hedi Lou Who.
Writing on Twitter, Heidi said: 'Older man at polling place having chest pain & trouble breathing, insisted on casting his ballot as the ambulance was called.'
She also posted pictures of paramedics arriving at the scene and taking the man away. His condition remains unknown.
Virginia, with a population of 8.3 million, is considered a crucial state for Hillary Clinton to win as the polls close. A loss there could indicate a red wave in the states that follow.
Clinton seems likely to win Virginia, but recent polls suggest the race is tightening between her and Donald Trump.
A Twitter user at the polling station took photos of the paramedic arriving to aid the man
A voter who goes by the Twitter handle Heidi Lou Who posted online what happened
The polls have narrowed more than most political pundits could have predicted.
Either party must win 270 electoral colleges for an absolute majority. The latest polls show Clinton holds 203, Trump holds 164, with 171 still in play.
Removing the toss-up states, Clinton is predicted to win 272 and Trump sits just behind on 266, according to RealClearPolitics.
The key states are Arizona, Florida, Maine 2nd District, Nebraska 2nd District, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah, which together have 87 electoral votes. Winning these states is crucial for a candidate to win the election.
Long lines: Voters queue to cast their ballots at Tabb High School in York County, Virginia
Florida will be a main player, with 29 electoral college votes and polls showing Clinton with a lead of just 1 per cent well within the margin of error.
Trump will likely need the state to win.
The sister of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby says her sibling can immerse herself in her tapas bar when she returns home from Bali after serving nine years in prison.
Mercedes Corby, 42, says her restaurant, Laneway Bar and Dining, is finally finding its feet after opening its doors two months ago and will be a great spot for her sister to pull up a stool and relax after her ordeal that lasted more than a decade.
'She will come and sit here and drink beer, probably,' she told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Schapelle was released from Kerobokan Prison in February 2014 after serving nine years for couriering 4.2 kilograms of cannabis.
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Mercedes Corby (right) sister of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby (left) says her sibling can 'drink beer' at her tapas bar when she returns home from Bali after serving nine-years in prison
Mercedes Corby (right) is the older sister of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby (left)
Mercedes Corby, 42, says her restaurant, Laneway Bar and Dining (pictured) will be a great spot for her sister to pull up a stool and relax after her ordeal that lasted more than a decade
With Schappelle's parole set for mid-2017, her sister and mother-of-three says she's not '100 per cent sure' when the convicted drug smuggler will touch down in Queensland, but believes 'it'll be before August'.
After Schapelle was found guilty by a judge to smuggling drugs in May 2005, Mercedes moved to Indonesia where she started a family.
She refused to leave the country until her younger sister was free.
But after spending more than a decade by her sisters side, Mercedes returned to the Gold Coast earlier this year with her three children, Wayan, 17, Nyeleigh, 15, and nine-year-old Nyoman after splitting with her Balinese husband Wayan Widyartha.
Her older two chidren have taken up work at the tapas bar, which Mercedes started with friend and former pro-surfer Trudy Todd.
Mercedes doesn't know if Schapelle would want to take part in the 'family business', saying her sister would probably enjoy being in front of the bar.
'We'll wait to see what happens,' the 42-year-old told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
'For now it's just nice to wait and see what happens when it gets closer to her coming home.'
Mercedes (pictured left for Ralph Magazine and right) says she's waiting to see what happens, as the date for Schapelle's return to the Gold Coast approaches
Schapelle was released from Kerobokan Prison in February 2014 after serving nine years for couriering 4.2 kilograms of cannabis
After Schapelle (left) was found guilty to smuggling drugs in May 2005, Mercedes (right) moved to Indonesia where she started a family
Mercedes returned to the Gold Coast with her three children, Wayan, 17, Nyeleigh, 15, and nine-year-old Nyoman, where she set up the tapas bar
Her older two chidren have taken up work at the tapas hotspot, which Mercedes started with friend and former pro-surfer Trudy Todd (right)
The Queen was joined by former IRA commander Martin McGuinness as she unveiled a new portrait of herself by a Belfast-born artist.
Mr McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, applauded as the monarch pulled the satin cover off the painting at a reception in London today.
The Duke of Edinburgh and First Minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster also attended.
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The Queen was joined by (pictured from left to right) First Minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, and Irish Minister Frances Fitzgerald
Mr McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, seen behind the Queen, applauded as the monarch pulled the cover off the painting at a reception in London today
Mr McGuinness posed beside the portrait of Her Majesty by a Belfast-born artist
Painted by celebrated contemporary artist Colin Davidson, the portrait shows Her Majesty in a blue blouse, brooch and pearls.
Mr Davidson is known for his large, detailed portraits usually showing the head and shoulders of the sitter, captured in a reflective or contemplative mood.
His previous subjects include German Chancellor Angela Merkel and actors Liam Neeson and Brad Pitt.
The portrait was commissioned by Co-Operation Ireland, a charity working to foster ties between Northern Ireland and communities on both sides of the Irish border.
The Queen, 90, made a historic State Visit to Ireland in 2011 which heralded a new chapter in Anglo-Irish relations.
Painted by artist Colin Davidson, the portrait shows Her Majesty in a blouse, brooch and pearls
The Queen, right, was joined by the Duke of Edinburgh, left, at the charity reception today
The Queen wore a pale pink suit, gloves and black heels for the event at Crosby Hall
The monarch's conciliatory words and gestures during the tour won over many critics of the Royal Family.
The following year marked another milestone when the Queen met Mr McGuinness at a cultural event in Belfast's Lyric Theatre.
Almost 33 years after her cousin, Lord Mountbatten of Burma, was murdered by an IRA bomb as he holidayed with his family, the Queen momentously shook hands with Mr McGuinness, one of the terror group's former commanders.
Debra said tenants taking advantage of private landlords is an '
A woman was shocked to learn the 'decent' people she leased her beautiful house to were actually the 'tenants from hell' after they left the house in squalor.
Debra found piles of rubbish, broken bottles, drug paraphernalia and dog poo when she went to collect the keys to her investment property in Cooloongup, a suburb in Perth's south, on Tuesday, the West Australian reported.
The private landlord has only inspected the home eight weeks earlier but became concerned when her tenants stopped paying rent and her daughter warned rubbish had built up on the lawn and graffiti was scrawled on the walls.
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Debra found piles of rubbish, broken bottles, drug paraphernalia and dog faeces when she went to collect the keys to her investment property in Perth's south on Tuesday
She said she could not believe the destruction when she entered the property, which she privately leased after finding tenants on Facebook.
The walls were damaged, carpets stained and mould had built up on the furniture.
Debra said a four-year-old boy had lived in the filthy conditions, with the child's toys splayed amongst shards of broken glass and bowls of rotting food.
A bong fashioned from a plastic bottle was found on the ground inside the four-bedroom home alongside discarded alcohol bottles and plastic zip-lock bags used to hold small quantities of drugs.
A bong fashioned from a plastic bottle (pictured) was found inside the home alongside discarded alcohol bottles and plastic zip-lock bags used to hold small quantities of drugs
Debra's daughter Casey (pictured) lives across the road and told her mother rubbish started piling up outside the house
Debra said she could not believe the destruction when she entered the property, which she privately leased after finding tenants on Facebook
A stolen shopping trolley full of rubbish was among the unusual items left inside, while the back yard was also left in a state of ruin.
The tenants fled the home before Debra could confront them about the money they owed in unpaid rent or the state they had left her investment property in.
'When they moved in they seemed like decent people,' she told the West Australian.
'I don't know how anyone can live like that.'
As Debra leased the house privately, the cost of cleaning is not covered by a real estate agency who would in turn claim the costs back from an unruly tenant.
As Debra leased the house privately, the cost of cleaning is not covered by a real estate agency who would in turn claim the costs back from the unruly tenant
The disgruntled landlord said her story is not unique, describing it as an 'epidemic', and said she heard many similar tales from others in the same situation after she posted a plea for help on Facebook.
She said landlords in Perth were often being taken advantage of as a low demand for rental properties gave tenants the upper hand.
'We are in a bind, we can't sell it because we can't get back what we paid for it,' she told the West Australian.
Donald Trump has fired back at George W Bush after it emerged the ex-President had refused to vote for him.
The Republican candidate was asked about the recent revelation that Dubya and wife Laura had voted for neither him nor Hilary Clinton, while on WRKO's Howie Carr Show Tuesday evening.
'I think it's sad,' Trump said. 'I think it's sad, you know.'
'When I see George Bush do that, and look I was very critical of him for getting us into Iraq, which was obviously a horrible decision, and getting out the way Obama got us out was a horrible way to get out too - the combination.'
But Trump was philosophical about the impact of the ex-President's vote, adding: 'I don't think it has any impact, frankly. I think it has no impact.'
Opting out: Both George W Bush and wife Laura decided not to vote for Trump - but they said they won't go for Clinton either. It's not clear whether they voted third-party or with a write-in
'Sad': Trump said that it was 'sad' Bush didn't vote for him, and blamed his criticism of the Iraq War for the ex-President's reaction before saying it didn't really matter
Earlier Tuesday, Bush and wife Laura were left fuming after conservative DJ Rush Limbaugh outed them for not voting for Trump when they cast their early votes two weeks ago - and wrongly accused them of choosing Hillary Clinton.
On Tuesday Limbaugh told his listeners that their supposed choice of Clinton was 'personal' for Jeb Bush's humiliation at Trump's hands, but also about 'loyalty... issues... the direction of the country.'
But on Tuesday Bush's team poured scorn on that claim - and demanded that Limbaugh apologize.
'Rush Limbaugh is wrong and needs to apologize to his listeners. President and Mrs Bush voted two weeks ago (not today) and did not vote for Hillary Clinton,' communications director Freddy Ford said, according to The Wrap.
In September it was reported by that George HW Bush was voting Clinton. But his spokesman has kept tight-lipped and said he would vote privately
The Bushes confirmed their decision not to vote for Trump or Clinton in an email to The Wall Street Journal.
But they didn't say whether they voted for a third-party candidate or chose a write-in submission.
Many members of the Bush seem to have veered away from Trump over the past year.
In September, Maryland Lt Gov Kathleen Kennedy Townsend posted a picture of herself with George HW Bush on Facebook with the caption 'The President told me he's voting for Hillary!!'
The former President himself was tight-lipped on the matter, with his spokesman saying only that he would be 'voting privately.'
In February, George HW Bush's wife, Barbara - never less than outspoken - said in an interview with CBS This Morning that she couldn't see why women would vote for Trump, who was 'like a comedian.'
Cross-party party: George W's daughter, Barbara Bush (center) was pictured partying with Clinton aide Huma Abedin (far left) in Paris at a Clinton fundraiser in October
She took particular affront to Trump's remarks about Megyn Kelly's attitude being affected by her menstrual cycle.
'I don't know how women could vote for someone who said what he said about Megyn Kelly,' she said. 'Its terrible! And we knew what he meant too.'
And in October George W Bush's daughter, 34-year-old Barbara, was caught partying in Paris with long-time Clinton aide Huma Abedin - having paid at least $5,000 to the Clinton campaign for the privilege.
Trump punching-bag Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has remained silent on who he chose in his early vote in October.
In September he joked about 'President Johnson' and reportedly mouthed 'Gary Johnson' to one many who complained about not liking either candidate.
But he later refused to be drawn on whether he would vote for the Libertarian leader, and denied mouthing Johnson's name.
Taunted: Jeb Bush, who was humiliated on the national stage by Donald Trump in the early Republican debates, has not been drawn on his pick - but he's been linked to Gary Johonson
Divided: Jeb's son, George P Bush (pictured left, with poll volunteer) said he will vote Trump, while fellow Republican and failed Presidential candidate John Kasich (right) has said he won't
Jeb's son, Texas land commissioner George P Bush, bucked the apparent family trend by saying in August that he would back the man who bullied his father on national TV.
He also said at the start of the month that both the ex-President Bushes might 'potentially' choose Clinton - though he later told reporters he was just speculating.
The Bushes are not the only members of the Republican old guard to turn away from Trump this election.
Last Monday John Kasich revealed that he had also voted for neither Trump nor Clinton, instead choosing to write in John McCain on his absentee ballot.
Kasich had been vocal about his distaste for Trump's outlandish performance - in every sense - during the Republican primaries.
His choice, John McCain, said likewise. Although he had initially suggested he was behind Trump, he said in October he had been driven away from the candidate.
He said on October 8 that the 'disclosure of [Trump's] demeaning comments about women and his boasts about sexual assaults, make it impossible to continue to offer even conditional support for his candidacy.'
Colin Powell, who has long had an amicable relationship with Clinton - albeit one tested by her team's recent attempts to blame the server scandal on his advice - said on Sunday that Clinton would serve 'with distinction.'
Pro-Clinton: Colin Powell said that he believed Clinton would serve 'with distinction' while Trump 'insults' his supporters with his actions and is selling the public 'a bill of goods'
His remarks came during a meeting of the Long Island Association, in which he also said Trump 'insults' his supporters with his actions and is selling the American public 'a bill of goods.'
Fellow W Bush cabinet member Condoleezza Rice was similarly scathing in October, having previously said she wouldn't get involved.
'Enough!' she said on Facebook. 'Donald Trump should not be President. He should withdraw. As a Republican, I hope to support someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth.'
Upset: Mitt Romney (pictured conceding to Barack Obama in 2012) said he 'couldn't ignore what Mr Trump was saying and doing,' and would not vote for him
Mitt Romney - who received one write-in vote from the first ballot cast this election, in tiny Dixville Notch - said in May he couldn't vote for Trump in good conscience.
'I wanted my grandkids to see that I simply couldnt ignore what Mr Trump was saying and doing, which revealed a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world,' he told The Wall Street Journal.
Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator for South Carolina, tweeted Tuesday that he was planning to vote for independent Evan McMullin.
In a second tweet he explained: 'In the prez race, voting for Hillary Clinton was always a non-starter and I couldn't go where Donald Trump wanted to take the USA & GOP.'
On Sunday John Couriel, a Republican running for Marco Rubio's old seat, announced that he'd delivered a write-in vote for Jeb Bush and said that he thinks his typically Republican district will go for Clinton, according to The LA Times.
Independent: The Bushes aren't the only ones jumping off the Trump train. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted Tuesday that he picked independent Evan McMullin
A Michigan congresswoman vowed on Tuesday to 'get to the root' of the deaths of two Marine recruits who may have been the victims of hazing at the corps' main training facility at Parris Island in South Carolina.
The Marines announced on Tuesday that they had identified the second inductee to die since March under unusual circumstances.
Zachary Boland, 18, of Madison, Alabama, was the Marine who died on November 4 after he was found unconscious in his barracks at approximately 8pm.
A spokesperson for the corps said emergency responders were called to the scene and they transferred Boland to Beaufort Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead 90 minutes later.
Marine recruit Zachary Boland (above), 18, of Madison, Alabama, died last week. He was pronounced dead 90 minutes after he was found unconscious in his barracks at Parris Island
Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, began to take an interest in the culture among fresh recruits at the Marines base following the death of one of her constituents, Raheel Siddiqui of Taylor, Michigan.
Siddiqui, 20, leaped to his death from a balcony in March just 11 days after his initial induction as a Marine recruit.
A subsequent investigation found that Siddiqui had committed suicide after being branded a 'terrorist' and being physically abused by instructors at a Marines boot camp.
Siddiqui's death, the fourth at the camp since 2005, found a widespread culture of hazing and abuse in his battalion.
Raheel Siddiqui (above) committed suicide on March 18, just 11 days after he was inducted into Marine Corps boot camp
Siddiqui took his own life on March 18 after a drill instructor slapped him, called him a terrorist and forced him to keep running from one side of the barracks to another after he said he was ill, the report finds.
No charges have been filed following Siddiqui's death.
But up to 20 senior leaders and commanders are facing suspension, while several have already been fired including Colonel Paul Cucinotta, who was in charge of training new recruits.
'I was deeply disturbed to learn of the recent incidents at Parris Island, including the death of a second recruit,' Dingell said in a statement released by her office on Monday.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (above) began to inquire about the goings on at Parris Island because Siddiqui was one of her constituents
'Since the death of Raheel Siddiqui earlier this year, I've been working to get answers for his family and ensure the Marine Corps has processes in place to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again,' the congresswoman said.
'I want the facts on Friday's tragedy, but the loss of a second recruit raises serious questions.'
'I am committed to getting to the root of this issue. The men and women who sign up to serve our country should not be dying in boot camp, and this third incident within eight months must be investigated thoroughly and expeditiously.'
'I have already reached out to my colleagues in the Congress from Michigan to help ensure that.'
Boland was a member of the 2nd Recruit Training Battalion.
Meanwhile, another recruit remains in critical condition after falling from a building Oct. 28.
The recruit has not been identified, according to his family's wishes, the Marines spokesman said.
Marine Corps recruits (seen above in this stock image) undergo intense training at boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina
'The recruit arrived at Parris Island on Oct. 24 and was undergoing initial processing prior to beginning recruit training,' Carrol said.
He fell from the second story of the recruit training center, the spokesman said.
Dingell said she wants to see complete investigations into all the incidents.
Ed Buice, a spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said it is conducting separate investigations into Boland's death and the Oct. 28 fall.
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Having sex with Miss Mexico, enjoying a naked spray tan and throwing wads of money around the Oval Office - this is Donald Trump's first day in power, according to Alison Jackson.
The renowned celebrity artist, 46, has set up a series of spoof photos using real-life lookalikes of The Donald as he hopes to claim the White House for his own in today's election.
One snap shows him being sprayed by an aide fully nude as he tops up his infamous tan, while another depicts a raunchy scene on the desk of the Oval Office with Miss Mexico as Jackson gives a glimpse of what life could be like inside a Trump White House.
Having sex with Miss Mexico, enjoying a naked spray tan and throwing wads of money around the Oval Office - this is Donald Trump's first day in power, according to Alison Jackson
Jackson depicted racy scenes - including one that shows The Donald playing roulette in the Oval Office with two models
Photos from the project were released only days before the general election and one depicts the Donald seducing a woman at work
The Republican candidate also dons some very dodgy military regalia in Jackson's impression, released in her new book Private.
At the launch of the book, women held signs reading 'Grab America by the p***y' in reference to Trump's contentious 2005 remarks about groping women.
Social commentator Jackson, from Hampshire, England, also snaps Trump lookalikes posing for selfies with world models and throwing wads of money around the Oval Office.
Photos from the project were released only days before the general election.
The Republican candidate also dons some very dodgy military regalia and appears to grope bikini-clad women on city streets in Jackson's impression
One snap shows him being sprayed by an aide fully nude as he tops up his infamous tan, while another depicts a raunchy scene on the desk of the Oval Office with Miss Mexico
The renowned celebrity artist, 46, has set up a series of spoof photos using real-life lookalikes of The Donald. Pictured: A Donald lookalike at the launch of Jackson's book today
The women are holding signs reading 'Grab America by the p***y' in reference to Trump's contentious 2005 remarks about groping women at the book launch
One photo shows a Donald lookalike posing at a hot dog stand with a woman as she eats a sausage at the book launch
This morning, billionaire businessman Trump and his wife were met with boos in their home city of Manhattan when they voted.
They were met with even louder shouts as they exited Manhattan's Public School 59, just a few blocks from Trump Tower.
The reception was unsurprising given Manhattan is typically a Democratic stronghold - although a handful of Trump backers were also on hand to cheer on their nominee.
His son Eric Trump also caused controversy later on Tuesday by posting a picture of his ballot on Twitter.
More images available in Private: Alison Jackson, out now on Amazon for 14.99.
One snap showed the Republican candidate posing for selfies with models in the artist's impression
One of Alison Jackson's photos shows a Donald lookalike reading a playboy magazine in the Oval Office
One snap shows a Donald lookalike entertaining some groupies in the city streets at the book launch
Social commentator Jackson, from Hampshire, England, also snaps Trump throwing wads of money around the Oval Office
A suspicious package left in a driveway was actually a box of love letters and a teddy bear left from a woman for a man she met on Tinder.
The 36-inch cardboard box, decorated in Christmas wrapping paper with the words Open ASAP written on it was left on a driveway in Cross Plains, Tennessee, last week.
The person who lived there called 911 after discovering the unusual package, according to WTVF.
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A suspicious package (above) left in a driveway was actually a box of love letters and a teddy bear left from a woman for a man she met on Tinder
In the 911 call, the caller told a dispatcher that theres not anybody we know that would leave something like that.
Somebody has put a big box, wrapped like a Christmas present. It says "Open ASAP" and I dont want to open it, the caller added.
Responding officers determined the package was suspicious but then using a small scope with a video camera attached, they discovered what was inside.
There was a teddy bear, two envelopes and two soda bottles.
The 36-inch box was decorated in Christmas wrapping paper with the words Open ASAP on it
There were love letters, two love letters, a photograph of a female laying in the river, clothed, and it was an attempt to contact a man she met on Tinder, Cross Plains police officer Logan Abernathy told the local station.
When he wouldnt contact her, she left the items on the driveway.
He added: I would definitely try another method of working your personal problems out.
Robertson County EMA Director, R.L. Douglas added he had to assume the package was suspicious as normally people dont get Christmas packages on Halloween.
A woman armed with an assault rifle killed one person and injured three near a polling place before barricading herself inside a house in California.
The shooting prompted authorities to lock down the polling place, a surrounding park and adjacent schools.
Azusa police Chief Steve Hunt says the suspect began firing at arriving officers who returned fire before they took cover near a park.
Officers were initially pinned down as they arrived on the scene, about 25 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Azusa police and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office said.
Initially, police said two to three people, all civilians, were struck by gunfire at around 2pm, though their conditions were not immediately known.
A sheriff's sergeant said later that four people had been wounded.
The Azusa Police Department subsequently wrote on Twitter that one person had been killed, two were taken to hospitals in critical condition and there was 'one additional down near primary residence.'
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Azusa police chief Steve Hunt revealed the suspect is a female armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle and had barricaded herself into a residence
There was no immediate indication that the incident was related to Election Day or the polling station, said Deputy Vincent Plair, a spokesman for sheriff's department.
But the Los Angeles County Registrar and Recorder's office issued a Twitter advisory urging voters to avoid the area around two polling locations, one in Memorial Park and one in Dalton Elementary School, and to cast their ballots at alternate polling sites.
'Voters should avoid the area and, if necessary, cast a ballot at an alternate polling location,' LA County Registrar Dean Logan said on Twitter.
A dispatcher answering phones at a nearby fire station that also was serving as a polling place said that location remained opened to voters.
Polling stations are on lockdown and a manhunt is underway for a 'heavily armed' gunman who killed one person and injured another three in California
Police officers are seen at the scene of a shooting near a polling station, in Azusa, California
In a press conference later on Tuesday afternoon, Azusa police chief Steve Hunt revealed the suspect is a woman who has barricaded herself into a residence near the scene of the shooting.
He added there were conflicting reports of a second suspect, who is reportedly a man dressed in tactical gear.
Hunt said six police officers responded to the shooting, but none of them were hurt. He confirmed all the victims were adults, but did not elaborate further.
Nearby Memorial Park, a polling station, was locked down and later evacuated, he said.
Two schools, Slauson Middle School and Mountain View Elementary School, were also locked down and were being evacuated, Chief Hunt said.
Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Gustavo Medina said one person was dead on arrival
A woman picks up her daughter at Slauson Middle School, which was on lockdown
A SWAT team sniper moves on top of the Memorial Park gymnasium to cover a barricaded suspect on Fourth Street east of Orange Avenue after several people were shot there
Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Gustavo Medina said one person was dead on arrival after the shooting in Azusa on Tuesday.
Two people were airlifted to hospitals and a fourth was being treated, he added. But he was unable to say whether the four people had been shot.
Azusa Police said the shooting began at 2.02pm with reports of shots fired near Memorial Park at 320 N Orange Avenue.
Police said no arrests have been made and advised residents to shelter in place until further notice.
A nearby elementary school that's also a polling place was on lockdown after the shooting.
About 20 people were casting ballots when the gunfire erupted.
Police vehicles outside a middle school in Asuza, California, after the shooting nearby
Police said no arrests have been made and advised residents to shelter in place
A nearby elementary school that's also a polling place was on lockdown after the shooting
Azusa police Officer Jerry Willison said the shooter fired on officers at the scene, but none of them were hurt.
He also was unable to say whether those injured had been shot, but confirmed that no arrests have been made.
'This is a very volatile and critical situation,' Willison said.
Willison said arriving officers 'were met with gunfire at the scene' and found themselves 'pinned down.' He says the officers were forced to seek cover.
The shooter fired at least 20 shots at police, a source told the LA Times.
Azusa is around 40 miles from San Bernardino, where a radicalized gunman and his wife killed 14 people in a terrorist attack in December.
Shockingly another motorbike ran over her and the man fled the scene too
an ambulance ignored her
The motorcyclist fled the scene and the woman lay on the ground injured
was walking on zebra lines in China when she was hit
A pedestrian in China became the victim of two hit-and-run accidents in less than one minutes after dozens of passersby ignored her lying injured in the middle of the road.
The incident took place on November 2 in the city of Leshan, south-west China's Sichuan Province, according to Huanqiu.com, an affiliation to the People's Daily.
Having survived both accidents, the woman reportedly sustained minor injuries in the scalp and soft tissues and had been discharged from the hospital.
The woman walking on a zebra crossing on Tonghe Road in Leshan last Wednesday (circled)
The woman, surnamed Zhang, was knocked down as she was trying to cross the zebra lines
CCTV footage, released by QQ.com, shows the woman, surnamed Zhang, walking on a zebra crossing around 7am last Wednesday on Tonghe Road near the city's Forest Bureau in the Shawan District.
A motorbike suddenly sped towards her and knocked her down on the zebra lines.
The woman, the motorbike and the motorcyclist fell to the ground.
The motorcyclist climbed from under the bike and stood up to check the conditions of the woman.
The man, who was wearing a black shirt, tried to pull Zhang up by her arm.
However, he failed to do so as Zhang was twitching on the floor.
He immediately returned to his bike and fled the scene of the accident.
The driver tried to pull her up by arm but failed, so he quickly returned to his bike and fled
Afterwards, the video shows that more than dozens people ignored the victim as they passed by - leaving the woman lying in the middle of the busy road injured.
Among them, a man who was driving a white vehicle stopped in front of the injured woman. He got off the car and stared at the woman, however he did not help.
Another motorcyclist, in orange shirt, also turned his head back to look at the injured woman without stopping.
Some other motorcycles took detours deliberately to avoid the woman.
Nobody took action to move Zhang to the side of road and she was abandoned in the middle of the traffic lane.
The woman was left lying in the middle of the busy road after the hit-and-run accident
Motorcycles took detours deliberately to avoid the woman and nobody stopped to help her
Seconds later, a shocking scene appeared as another motorbike entered the frame and ran straight over her body.
This time, the motorcyclist did not stop.
A white vehicle, which was following the motorbike, had to apply emergency brake to avoid hurting the woman further.
It then drove around Zhang and carried on its journey.
In total, over 15 vehicles, several motorbikes and dozens of pedestrians walked by as the woman lay on the ground in need of help.
At last, a female pedestrian stopped in front of Zhang.
She waved her hands to catch other drivers' attention and prevented Zhang from being run over again.
Footage showed how dozens of pedestrians and motorcyclists ignored the injured woman
Shockingly, another motorbike ran straight over Zhang's body as she lied in the road
According to QQ.com, the second motorcyclist who ran over Zhang, who is surnamed Chen, has been arrested.
Chen said he was on his way to work that morning.
He said he felt that the woman was not hurt by him in the first place, and that was afraid of shouldering all responsibilities which promoted him to fled the scene.
An ambulance passing by the scene earlier returned to take Zhang to the hospital, the report said.
The ambulance driver said they had not ignored the woman in the first instance as the paramedics were on their way to save another victim of a traffic accident.
Zhang reportedly sustained minor injuries and has been discharged from the hospital.
Now Facebook has suspended using WhatsApp customers' data in the UK
EU privacy watchdogs said the companies had not obtained valid consent
Earlier this year, WhatsApp started 'coordinating' accounts with Facebook by sharing users' mobile phone numbers.
This subtle but significant change was met with opposition from privacy watchdogs around Europe, who suggested WhatsApp had not obtained valid consent from its customers.
Now, in an important step, Facebook has agreed to suspend using data collected from UK WhatsApp users for advertising purposes, after the threat of legal action.
European watchdogs have sent letters to WhatsApp over of its sharing of information with parent company Facebook. This was its first change in policy since Facebook bought the messaging service two years ago
WHATSAPP'S DATA SHARING WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook in 2014, said it would share user data with its parent company to better fight spam and improve users' experiences of both services . The move was a subtle but significant shift for the messaging app, which has long promised to safeguard the privacy of more than one billion users around the world. In September WhatsApp started 'coordinating' accounts with Facebook by sharing users' mobile phone numbers. The two share device information, such as the type of operating system and other smartphone characteristics. Facebook uses the phone number internally to better identify WhatsApp users on Facebook. This means it can recommend friends or show targeted advertising. The ads come through a Facebook program called 'Custom Audiences'. Advertisement
The UK privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced the news yesterday.
In August, the ICO said it would monitor WhatsApp's new privacy policy.
WhatsApp had started to share user data with its parent company, to better fight spam and improve users' experiences of both services, it said.
This was its first change in policy since Facebook bought the messaging service two years ago.
The two companies have also come under scrutiny from the European Union's 28 data protection authorities, who last month requested WhatsApp pause sharing users' data with its parent company until the appropriate legal protections could be assured.
'We're pleased that they've agreed to pause using data from UK WhatsApp users for advertisements or product improvement purposes,' the head of the ICO, Elizabeth Denham, said in a statement.
'If Facebook starts using the data without valid consent, they may face enforcement action from my office.'
The regulator said it had also asked Facebook and WhatsApp to sign an undertaking committing to better explaining to customers how their data would be used and to give them ongoing control over that data.
So far, the companies have not agreed.
'We think consumers deserve a greater level of information and protection, but so far Facebook hasn't agreed,' Denham said.
'WhatsApp designed its privacy policy and terms update to give users a clear and simple explanation of how the service works, as well as choice over how their data is used,' a Facebook spokesperson told MailOnline.
'These updates comply with applicable law, and follow the latest guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office.
'We hope to continue our detailed conversations with the ICO and other data protection officials, and we remain open to working collaboratively to address their questions.'
Denham said she did not think users had been given enough information about what Facebook would do with their data and that WhatsApp had not obtained valid consent.
A recent Amnesty report, published last week, ranked 11 companies that run the world's most popular messaging apps, including Skype, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger
MESSAGING APPS' PRIVACY In a report published last week, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were declared the most secure messaging apps to use, according to a new report by Amnesty International. However, security experts dispute exactly how safe they are. The Amnesty report ranked 11 companies that run the world's most popular messaging apps, including Skype, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger. The human rights charity looked at how the firms protect users' privacy and their freedom of expression. The organisation based its rankings not on testing, but on privacy and security information that it requested from the 11 tech firms. From those approached, three of the firms - BlackBerry, Google and Tencent - did not respond, says Amnesty. Advertisement
Several other European privacy watchdogs, such as Spain's, have said they intend to contact Facebook about WhatsApp's privacy policy change but have not yet done so.
Facebook suggested it would be inappropriate to agree on a specific solution with one regulator before receiving all the others' questions.
Enforcement action could ultimately lead to fines. Such fines are small compared with the revenues of the companies concerned.
However, a new EU-wide data protection law coming into force in 2018 would change that with fines of up to 4 per cent of global turnover.
Denham said she would keep pushing the issue along with other privacy watchdogs, notably the Irish authority, which has the most sway over Facebook, since the US company's European headquarters are in Ireland.
Facebook says the data WhatsApp collects is extremely limited and only a part of what is then shared with Facebook.
It was one of the worst attacks ever seen on the Internet.
A massive co-ordinated series of cyber attacks forced hundreds of major websites including Amazon and Twitter offline Friday - and some fear the security breach could be 'practice for election day'.
Now experts examining the code used in the attack say is was simple enough even a high school student could have written it.
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Internet users across the globe were hit throughout the day as 'several' massive cyber attacks hit a DNS service provider. This image shows problems reported with Level 3, a business service provider.
WHAT IS A DDOS ATTACK? DDoS attacks are a primitive form of hacking using botnets - networks of computers that hackers bring under their control. They do this by getting users to inadvertently download software, typically by following a link in an email or agreeing to download a corrupted file. Even smart home gadgets such as connected cameras and DVRs can be taken over in this way. These botnets are then used to bombard the servers with simple requests for information carried out simultaneously, causing them to become overwhelmed and shut down. Advertisement
According to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer with security firm F-Secure, the culprits are easy to spot.
'Kids,' he told Vice.
'Kids who have the capability and don't know what to do with it.'
According to Flashpoint, an online security firm, the infrastructure used in the attack also targeted a well-known video game company, ehich it believes could help reveal who was behind it.
'The targeting of a video game company is less indicative of hacktivists, state-actors, or social justice communities, and aligns more with the hackers that frequent online hacking forums,' it claimed.
'These hackers exist in their own tier, sometimes called 'script kiddies,' and are separate and distinct from hacktivists, organized crime, state-actors, and terrorist groups.
'They can be motivated by financial gain, but just as often will execute attacks such as these to show off, or to cause disruption and chaos for sport.'
Dyn, the firm at the center of the attack, said it believed tens of millions of IP addresses were being using at the attacks peak to disrupt its systems.
It described the events as a 'very sophisticated and complex attack.'
Dozens of different systems were believed to have been used.
One the the techniques used was a botnet powered by popular malware known as Mirai.
Flashpoint believes the attacks are connected to the English-language hacking forum community, specifically users and readers of the forum 'hackforums[.]net.'
One of the few known personalities that have been associated with Mirai malware and botnets used in the attack is known to frequent these forums.
'The source code that was released could have been written by a high school student, a smart high school student, but a high school student nonetheless,' security expert Rob Graham told Vice after examining the malware used in the attacks.
'It wasn't particularly sophisticated.'
Dyn, the firm at the center of the attack, said it believed tens of millions of IP addresses were being using at the attacks peak to disrupt its systems.
How the attack spread: Malware Tech posted this 18 minute recording from its Mirai monitoring network at 5x speed, showing how the malware can spread between machines.
It described the events as a 'very sophisticated and complex attack.'
Dozens of different systems were believed to have been used.
One the the techniques used was a botnet powered by popular malware known as Mirai.
This was released by hackers just a few weeks ago, sparking fears it could lead to a major attack such as today's.
It is capable of using 'internet of things' (IoT) devices, such as the plethora of smart home gadgets, which can be used to bombard websites with requests, overloading them and effectively shutting them down.
In previous attacks using it, security cameras and DVRs in homes and offices around the world have been used.
'We are seeing attacks coming from a number of different locations.
'We're seeing attacks coming from an Internet of Things botnet that we identified called Mirai, also involved in this attack,' Dale Drew, chief security officer at Level 3 Communications, said on a livestream on Friday afternoon.
The massive co-ordinated series of cyber attacks has forced hundreds of major websites from Amazon to Twitter offline across the globe - and WikiLeaks believes its supporters are to blame
Several groups have claimed they were behind the attacks.
WikiLeaks believes its supporters were responsible and urged them to 'stop taking down the US internet', saying: 'Mr Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing.'
It then tweeted: 'The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate.'
The Ecuadorian government switched off Assange's internet service in its UK embassy Sunday after he released another tranche of emails showing the contents of a speech given by Hillary Clinton to Goldman Sachs.
WikiLeaks accused John Kerry and the US Government of asking Ecuador to shut down Assange's internet connection, but the South American country denied it came under any pressure from the US or any other government.
The Department of Homeland Security has already launched an urgent investigation into Friday's crash, amid claims it could be a precursor to an attempt to disrupt the US Presidential election further.
The White House called the disruption malicious and a hacker group claimed responsibility, though its assertion couldn't be verified.
Wikileaks has already come under fire for its decision to publish around 20,000 emails from John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair.
Internet service company Dyn, which controls the 'address book' of the internet for dozens of major companies, said that it had suffered its first denial of service (DDoS) attack shortly after 6AM ET (11AM BST), in an attack that mostly affected the east coast of the US.
It told CNBC the attack is 'well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions of IP addresses at same time.'
The Department of Homeland Security has already launched an urgent investigation into the crash, amid claims it could be a precursor to an attempt to disrupt the US Presidential election further.
It confirmed a second attack at 1PM ET, which appeared to be centered on UK servers, and later said 'several' attacks were underway on servers across the globe, with the west coast being particularly badly hit.
'The complexity of the attacks is what is making it so difficult for us,' said Kyle York, the company's chief strategy officer. 'What they are actually doing is moving around the world with each attack.' He said an East Coast data center was hit first; attacks on an offshore target followed later.
Dyn said Friday evening a third cyber attack 'has been resolved'.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible and Gillian Christensen of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the agency was 'investigating all potential causes.'
Political commentor Keith Olbermann even raised the possibility it could be a precursor to an attack on election day.
'Say, not to panic anybody, but what if the (attacks) today were practice for 11/8 ?' he tweeted.
'TENS OF MILLIONS' OF SMART HOME GADGETS IN BOTNET Dyn, the firm at the center of the attack, said it believed tens of millions of IP addresses were being using at the attacks peak to disrupt its systems. It described the events as a 'very sophisticated and complex attack.' Dozens of different systems were believed to have been used. One the the techniques used was a botnet powered by popular malware known as Mirai. This was released by hackers just a few weeks ago, sparking fears it could lead to a major attack such as today's. It is capable of using 'internet of things' (IoT) devices, such as the plethora of smart home gadgets, which can be used to bombard websites with requests, overloading them and effectively shutting them down. In previous attacks using it, security cameras and DVRs in homes and offices around the world have been used. 'We are seeing attacks coming from a number of different locations. 'We're seeing attacks coming from an Internet of Things botnet that we identified called Mirai, also involved in this attack,' Dale Drew, chief security officer at Level 3 Communications, said on a livestream on Friday afternoon. Advertisement
Despite WikiLeaks' claims its supporters were behind the attacks, members of a shadowy collective that calls itself New World Hackers also claimed responsibility via Twitter.
They said they organized networks of connected 'zombie' computers called botnets that threw a staggering 1.2 terabits per second of data at the Dyn-managed servers.
'We didn't do this to attract federal agents, only test power,' two collective members who identified themselves as 'Prophet' and 'Zain' told an AP reporter via Twitter direct message exchange.
'Prophet' said hacktivists of the broad, more amorphous Anonymous collective piled on in the third wave of attacks on Friday afternoon.
It was not immediately possible to verify the claims.
Dyn officials said they have received no claim of responsibility, but are working with law enforcement.
Pictured are maps from Down Detector of the first two attacks, the first of which mostly affected the east coast of the US, while the UK bore the brunt of the second after many services were restored in about two hours
The collective, @NewWorldHacking on Twitter, has in the past claimed responsibility for similar attacks against sites including ESPN.com in September and the BBC on December 31.
The collective has also claimed responsibility for cyberattacks against Islamic State. The two said about 30 people have access to the @NewWorkdHacking Twitter account. They claim 20 are in Russia and 10 in China.
Another collective member the AP previously communicated with via direct message called himself 'Ownz' and identified himself as a 19-year-old in London. He told the AP that the group or at least he sought only to expose security vulnerabilities.
New Hampshire-based Dyn lists some of the world's biggest online brands among its customers
Amazon.com Inc's web services division, one of the world's biggest cloud computing companies, also disclosed an outage that lasted several hours on Friday morning.
Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn, told Reuters he was not sure if the outages at Dyn and Amazon were connected.
'We provide service to Amazon but theirs is a complex network so it is hard to be definitive about causality at the moment,' he said.
Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment.
WHAT ARE DOMAIN NAME SERVERS USED FOR? Anonymous in 2010 targeted the DNS provider EveryDNS as retribution for denying service to WikiLeaks Domain name servers are a crucial element of internet infrastructure, converting numbered Internet Protocol addresses into the domain names that allow users to connect to internet sites. The loose-knit hacktivist network Anonymous in 2010 targeted the DNS provider EveryDNS among others in 2010 as retribution for denying service to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks. Though such attacks are not uncommon, Friday's incident immediately underscored the interconnected vulnerabilities for large portions of the internet, with brand-name companies affected by an attack on a single company. 'The internet continues to rely on protocols and infrastructure designed before cyber security was an issue,' said Ben Johnson, a former engineer at the National Security Agency and founder of the cyber-security company Carbon Black. Advertisement
The two separate attacks can clearly be seen in this graph of crash reports for Twitter
New Hampshire-based Dyn said its server infrastructure was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack, which works by overwhelming targeted machines with malicious electronic traffic.
The level of disruption caused was hard to gauge, but Dyn provides internet traffic optimization to some of the biggest names on the web.
'This morning, October 21, Dyn received a global DDoS attack on our Managed DNS infrastructure in the east coast of the United States,' said Scott Hilton, executive vice president for products at Dyn, in a statement.
'DNS traffic resolved from east coast name server locations are experiencing a service degradation or intermittent interruption during this time,' Hilton added.
'We have been aggressively mitigating the DDoS attack against our infrastructure.'
Twitter reported multiple problems and is believed to have been hit by both attacks
The reports show two seperate attacks - with services coming back online before disappearing again for many users
DDoS attacks are a primitive form of hacking using botnets - networks of computers that hackers bring under their control.
They do this by getting users to inadvertently download software, typically by following a link in an email or agreeing to download a corrupted file.
These botnets are then used to bombard the servers with simple requests for information carried out simultaneously, causing them to become overwhelmed and shut down.
A chart shows Twitter outages over the last 24 hours with a huge peak later in the day
The attack was first reported on website Hacker News, which named social media giant Twitter along with music service Spotify among a list of 'sites down'.
'O-M-G Twitter is down.That's what you may have heard many of your friends, family members and work colleagues saying today if they were based in the US and some other parts of the world,' said Lee Munson, security researcher for Comparitech.com.
'The reason being, online criminals have once again gone after a significant site with a DDoS attack.
'Not Twitter, or other popular and equally affected sites such as Spotify, Reddit, Github and SoundCloud though, but rather DNS provider Dyn.
'And that highlights a problem any company running its own website may well have its own technology in place to mitigate DDoS attacks, but it's all for nought if the DNS provider itself is not applying a sufficient enough level of protection to its own servers and data centres.'
Users in the UK were mostly unaffected by the issue.
WHO WAS HIT BY THE ATTACK? Thousands of sites were hit, including:
Twitter
Reddit
Spotify
Esty
Box
Wix Customer Sites
Squarespace Customer Sites
Zoho
CRM
Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)
Github
The Verge
Cleveland.com
hbonow.com
PayPal
Big cartel
Wired.com
People.com Urbandictionary.com
Basecamp
ActBlue
Zendesk.com
Intercom
Twillo
Pinterest
Grubhub
Okta
Starbucks rewards/gift cards
Storify.com
CNN
Yammer
Playstation Network
Recode Business Insider
Guardian.co.uk
Weebly
Yelp
Commenting on this, Richard Meeus, VP technology EMEA at NSFOCUS, a DDoS mitigation company, said: 'DNS has often been neglected in terms of its security and availability from an enterprise perspective it is treated as if it will always be there in the same way that water comes out of the tap and electricity is there when you switch it on.
'This attack highlights how critical DNS is to maintaining a stable and secure internet presence, and that the DDOS mitigation processes businesses have in place are just as relevant to their DNS service as it is to the web servers and datacentres.'
Reports suggest that some of the affected websites have since improved in reliability.
An FBI representative said she had no immediate comment on the outages.
Dyn is a provider of Internet infrastructure services, including managing DNS activity that connects a user to a website's servers.
David Gibson, VP of strategy and market development at Varonis said: 'Like many of our aging technologies, DNS wasn't built with security in mind.
'Unfortunately, DNS is a foundation technology for the internet that allows people to connect to internet resources with human names rather than IP addresses (think of them as internet phone numbers), and when its vulnerabilities are exploited attackers can do a lot of damage computers don't know which 'phone number' to call when you want to connect to a particular site, like Hacker News.
'DNS is one of the aging technologies the industry is struggling to update, along with one-factor authentication (password-only security), unencrypted web connections the list is very long, and the stakes have never been higher.
Advertisement
It is a first look at what travelling on a Hyperloop will really be like.
Stunning new concepts for the first commercial use of Elon Musk's radical transport system were revealed today.
They show small levitating Hyperloop pods that hurtle through tunnels at 760 mph (1,220 km/h), and then driving on normal roads to complete journeys to and from stunning stations.
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The futuristic city-state of Dubai announced a deal with Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One, to study the potential for building a line linking it to the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi. Artist's impression of the Hyperloop with Dubai in the background, pictured
The city recently hosted a competition for designs related to the high-speed system first proposed by Tesla co-founder Elon Musk in 2013, and today announced a deal with Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One, to study the potential for building a line linking it to the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi within the next five years.
The announcement of the deal took place atop the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, with the panorama view of the skyline of this futuristic city-state serving as both a backdrop and a sign of Dubai's desire to be the first to rush toward the future.
Organisers suggest the Dubai-Abu to Dhabi travel time by Hyperloop would be only 12 minutes - significantly down from the hour-plus journey it now takes by car between the two cities.
The system could later be expanded to link the UAE with neighbouring Gulf countries so that a trip between Dubai and Saudi capital Riyadh -- currently two hours by plane -- could be completed in under 50 minutes.
A spokesman from Hyperloop One told MailOnline the company plans to build the system within five years.
'Technology is evolving and transforming how we live, yet we lack real innovation in mass transportation and the current system has stagnated,' said Shervin Pishevar, Executive Chairman of Hyperloop One.
'Hyperloop One is focused on transport that's far more efficient, fast and clean. It will change the dynamics of how we move goods and people.
Pods would also be able to operate autonomously away from the pressurized tubes, meaning they could travel on regular roads.
Inside a pod: Different interior environments and seating arrangements offer passengers a travel experience tailored to their needs, whether travelling solo or in groups, for business meetings or casual trips
'Dubai makes perfect sense for Hyperloop One because this is the 21st century's global transport hub and its leaders understand that Hyperloop One is ushering in the next era of transportation.'
Hyperloop One will now work with McKinsey & Co. and the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) on a detailed feasibility study.
According to BIG, the design of the scheme is based on a study of 'how an urban and inter-city transport network should integrate with existing infrastructure.'
They describe it as autonomous, point-to-point and able to vastly simplify the experience of 'getting from front-door to final destination.'
HOW DUBAI'S HYPERLOOP WILL WORK The stations are called portals. All departure gates are immediately visible upon entering the portal, and a simple numbering system allows passengers to quickly identify them. Passengers will travel in pods that have room for 6 people. Hyperloop's control room: The study revealed how the system would work and be controlled from a central location The pods are contained within a transporter, a pressure vessel attached to a chassis for levitation and propulsion that can accelerate the transporter to 1,100km/h.' 'Passengers board the next pod that is available, which moves onto a transporter to their final destination. All departure gates are immediately visible upon entering the portal, and a simple numbering system allows passengers to quickly identify them. The relatively small unit-size of the pods paired with a high arrival and departure-rate allows for on-demand travel. Different interior environments and seating arrangements offer passengers a travel experience tailored to their needs, whether travelling solo or in groups, for business meetings or casual trips.' Passengers will travel in pods that have room for 6 people. The pods are contained within a transporter, a pressure vessel attached to a chassis for levitation and propulsion that can accelerate the transporter to 1,100km/h. Different interior environments and seating arrangements offer passengers a travel experience tailored to their needs, whether travelling solo or in groups, for business meetings or casual trips. Advertisement
The locations of the initial route in the UAE have been selected by passenger density and proximity to existing or planned transportation hubs.
The designers said that 'all of the portals have been designed as individual answers to different contexts, yet appear similar and easily recognizable.'
According to the designers, 'all elements of the travel experience are designed to increase convenience and reduce interruptions.
The main objective of the design is to eliminate waiting from the passenger experience.
Hence, the stations are called portals.
All departure gates are immediately visible upon entering the portal, and a simple numbering system allows passengers to quickly identify them.
The announcement of the deal took place atop the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, with the panorama view of the skyline of this futuristic city-state serving as both a backdrop and a sign of Dubai's desire to be the first to rush toward the future.
Rob Lloyd, the CEO of Hyperloop One, left, shows a model to Emirati officials including Mattar al-Tayer, the director-general and chairman of Dubai's Roads & Transport Authority, third left, in Dubai.
Passengers will travel in pods that have room for 6 people.
The pods are contained within a transporter, a pressure vessel attached to a chassis for levitation and propulsion that can accelerate the transporter to 1,100km/h.'
'Passengers board the next pod that is available, which moves onto a transporter to their final destination.
The relatively small unit-size of the pods paired with a high arrival and departure-rate allows for on-demand travel.
Different interior environments and seating arrangements offer passengers a travel experience tailored to their needs, whether travelling solo or in groups, for business meetings or casual trips.'
The Hyperloop station design for the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.
The two designs will fit into the existing city infrastructure, the designers claim
'The pods operate autonomously from the transporter, which means they are not limited to the portal area and can move on regular roads and pick up passengers at any point.
'At portals, pods are loaded onto the transporter and hyperjump to another portal, where they merge onto the street and drop passengers off at their final destination.'
No financial terms were immediately discussed and the technology itself remains under testing.
'This is an opportunity to help transform the UAE from a technology consumer to a technology creator, incubating expertise for a new global industry, in line with the UAE's Vision 2021,' Chairman of the RTA, His Excellency Mattar Al Tayer, commented on the agreement.
There would be several stations throughout Dubai connecting the hyperloop system to Abu Dhabi. The amin station there is pictured here.
At portals, pods are loaded onto the transporter and hyperjump to another portal, where they merge onto the street and drop passengers off at their final destination.
'With Hyperloop One, we will create a new means of transportation, keeping our region at the forefront of transportation technology and innovation.'
The deal announced today would be far simpler.
There would be several stations throughout Dubai connecting the hyperloop system to Abu Dhabi.
The pods would then be able to carry passengers and cargo between the cities.
Slide me How the tubes will work: Two two tubes will be used to allow trains to travel both ways on the system
Already, government-backed port operator DP World has signed an agreement with Hyperloop One to explore the feasibility of the using the technology at Dubai's sprawling, man-made Jebel Ali Port.
'With Hyperloop One we have given form to a mobility ecosystem of pods and portals, where the waiting hall has vanished along with waiting itself,' says Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG.
An Emirati takes a photograph of the Hyperloop One logo with his mobile phone in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. The futuristic city-state of Dubai announced a deal on Tuesday with Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One to study the potential for building a line linking it to the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi.
'Collective commuting with individual freedom at near supersonic speed.
'We are heading for a future where our mental map of the city is completely reconfigured, as our habitual understanding of distance and proximity time and space is warped by this virgin form of travel.'
Hyperloop One will work with McKinsey & Co. and the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) on a detailed feasibility study
'The momentum is global and accelerating,' adds Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd.
'The world will see the test of the first full-scale Hyperloop system in early 2017 at our Test and Safety Site in Nevada and we will have multiple operational Hyperloop systems within five years.'
HYPERLOOP IN EUROPE 'The world will see the test of the first full-scale Hyperloop system in early 2017 at our Test and Safety Site in Nevada and we will have multiple operational Hyperloop systems within five years,' said Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) met with Slovakian government officials earlier this year to finalise and sign an agreement. They are looking to build a local Hyperloop system, with the vision of creating future routes connecting Bratislava with Vienna, Austria and Budapest, Hungary. They wants the first stage to be complete by 2020. But the company has not secured funding yet, and the project is expected to cost $200-300 million (141 211 million). Meanwhile Hyperloop One is working with FS-Links AB on a Hyperloop system that will operate between Finland, Sweden and Estonia. Advertisement
In October, Dubai hosted a competition to design a Hyperloop track.
In that 48-hour project, designers presented ideas for a possible track between Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central, Dubai International Airport and Fujairah International Airport.
Under their plans, the Hyperloop trip of some 90 miles (145 km) over a mountain range would be 10 minutes or less, compared to the current hour and 20 minutes by road.
There would be several stations throughout Dubai connecting the hyperloop system to Abu Dhabi. The pods would then be able to carry passengers and cargo between the cities. Artist's impression of the pods pictured
The hyperloop is essentially a long tube that has had the air removed to create a vacuum. The tube is suspended off the ground to protect against weather and earthquakes
With an estimated two billion people moving into cities over the next 25 years, people are being forced to make the most of the little space they have.
Now, a new furniture company may have an innovative way to lend a helping hand.
Expand Furniture creates shape-shifting furniture with 'multi-functional abilities', including a 16 person bench that can fold away into a 20cm-wide structure.
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Expand Furniture creates transforming furniture with a multi-functional ability, including a 16 person bench, which can be folded away into a 20 centimetre wide structure
THE 16 PERSON CHAIR Another piece of furniture on offer is the 'Flexible love 16 chair.' When fully folded, the chair, which is made of paper, measures just 64cm x 56cm x 19.7cm (25inch x 22inch x 7.7inch). But when extended out, in the same way that an accordion can be pulled to inflate with air, the tiny chair grows all the way into a 16 seat bench, measuring 64cm x 56cm x 720cm (25inch x 22inch x 283.4inch). Incredibly, the seat is made of 100 per cent recycled paper, but can take 120 kg in weight per seat, or 1920 kg total. But despite being made of a cheap material, the chair comes at a cost, and will set buyers back $960 (773). Advertisement
The Vancouver-based firm has over 130 products on offer, which all transform from fairly simple structures into a more elaborate pieces of furniture.
On its Facebook page, Expand Furniture claims its products 'will help you create space in your home that you did not know you had.'
Among the 135 products is a range of smart wall beds.
At first glance, the structure appears to be a wall shelving unit, with a white table.
But when the table is folded back, the entire wall can be swivelled, revealing a hidden bed on the other side, which folds out.
One of the other products transforms into what appears to be a cube-shaped seat into five individual stools.
When one of the sides of the cubes is lifted, a series of frames are revealed inside, which become stools when the other sides of the cube are added.
Another piece of furniture on offer is the 'Flexible love 16 chair.'
The company has a range of 'Smart Beds' on offer, which cleverly fold away and transform into other structures
When fully folded, the chair, which is made of paper, measures just 64cm x 56cm x 19.7cm (25inch x 22inch x 7.7inch).
But when extended out, in the same way that an accordion can be pulled to inflate with air, the tiny chair grows all the way into a 16 seat bench, measuring 64cm x 56cm x 720cm (25inch x 22inch x 283.4inch).
Incredibly, the seat is made of 100 per cent recycled paper, but can take 120 kg in weight per seat, or 1920 kg total.
One of the other products transforms what appears to be a cube-shaped seat into five individual stools.
Several expanding tables are also on offer, which sit almost flat against the wall, but can be pulled out into huge dining tables
But despite being made of a cheap material, the chair comes at a cost, and will set buyers back $960 (773).
Several expanding tables are also on offer, which sit almost flat against the wall, but can be pulled out into huge dining tables.
While space saving products can be found in many other shops, Expand Furniture believes their products are better value for many.
The firm said: 'You can find space saving products in many stores, but we carry amazing or unique items that cost a fortune elsewhere, are hard to find and in many cases do not exist from other companies.'
We've all been there you get all the way to one side of the supermarket before realising you've forgotten to pick up a key ingredient from the other.
But there may be help at hand with the invention of a new supermarket app.
Dubbed Ubamarket, the app guides shoppers to the location of their products through a logical route, and scans off the items to save time at the till.
We've all been there you get all the way to one side of the supermarket before realising you've forgotten to pick up a key ingredient from the other. But there may be help at hand with the invention of a new supermarket app
HOW DOES THE APP WORK? Users create their shopping list within the app and select a participating store they wish to shop at. The app then re-arranges the items in the order they appear in the aisles - meaning an end to the frustration of criss-crossing the shop searching for products. Once they reach the checkouts, users scan the app at a payment point and pay without having to load all their purchases onto the conveyor belt. Loyalty points can also be accrued within the app and future editions will enable automatic payment via a pre-stored credit card. Advertisement
The free app allows users to make a shopping list on their phone which is automatically converted into the order items appear in a particular store.
Shoppers then follow a logical route to pick up their goods which are 'ticked off' by scanning their barcode - meaning no queues at the till to pay.
The app is the brainchild of British entrepreneur, Will Broome, who hit on the idea four years ago as he aimlessly wandered around a shop searching for products.
It has now launched at a Budgens store near his home in Moreton-in-Marsh, and will shortly be rolled out to a further 5,000 shops across the UK.
They include other branches of Budgens and Morrisons, Spar and Nisa shops.
Mr Broome, 42, said: 'Four years ago something dawned on me - I wasn't the only person in the supermarket with my head buried in my phone, staring at a shopping list that had been texted to me and wondering where to start!
'Of course, when I did eventually get started, I embarked upon a journey that would have made an expedition across Middle Earth seem less complicated.
'I thought to myself - wouldn't it be cool if you walked in and your list was magically in the right order? And Ubamarket was conceived. Right there on aisle nine.'
Shoppers follow a logical route to pick up their goods which are 'ticked off' by scanning their barcode - meaning no queues at the till to pay
Users create their shopping list within the app and select a participating store they wish to shop at.
The app then re-arranges the items in the order they appear in the aisles - meaning an end to the frustration of criss-crossing the shop searching for products.
Once they reach the checkouts, users simply scan the app at a payment point and pay without having to load all their purchases onto the conveyor belt.
The app allows users to make a shopping list on their phone which is automatically converted into the order items appear in a store
Users can scan the items through the app as they shop, saving them time taking everything out of the trolley and the till
Loyalty points can also be accrued within the app and future editions will enable automatic payment via a pre-stored credit card.
Guy Warner, managing director of Warner's Budgens Supermarkets, said: 'I'm delighted to be the first store in the world to offer Ubamarket to our Taste Club members and customers.
'I feel that this revolutionary new app will effectively bridge the gap between online convenience and the in-store experience that Warner's Budgens shoppers enjoy.'
The app is the brainchild of British entrepreneur, Will Broome, who hit on the idea four years ago as he aimlessly wandered around a shop searching for products
Once they reach the checkouts, users simply scan the app at a payment point and pay without having to load all their purchases onto the conveyor belt
Sainsbury's introduced a very similar app last year, which lets users gradually build up a list of items they need over the course of a week or fortnight, for example.
And when that shopper enters a local store, a map appears on the phone showing the customer where their groceries are to save them time trawling the aisles.
Ubamarket is now available to download on iOS from the App Store and will shortly be available on Android.
It is a true modern love story which has moved at anything but a snail's pace.
Rescued from a compost heap in London, Jeremy the 'left handed' snail was plucked from obscurity and recognised as one of a kind.
After discovering his shell swirled the 'wrong' way compared to other snails, scientists put out a call last month to find the mollusc a mate to preserve his genetic legacy.
Now two potentials snail mates, and fellow lefties, have been found - one in Ipswich and a second potential suitor in Majorca.
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Researchers are hoping Jeremy the snail (pictured left), whose shell swirls the wrong way, could reveal more about the genetic basis of a health condition in humans. Following a nationwide appeal they have found another rare snail, Lefty from Ipswich (pictured right)
Scientists at the University of Nottingham believe the snail's unique swirls are related to a rare human health condition, in which patients have their heart on the wrong side of their chest, on the right.
The same genes are believed to cause this condition, called dextrocardia, in people and to twist snails' shells round the wrong way.
The hope is to mate two of these 'left-handed' snails in order to zero in on the genes responsible for their altered body plan in snails, as well as the human condition thought to affect one in 10,000 people.
Jeremy will now be paired with Lefty from Ipswich, after owner Jade Sanchez Melton responded to the appeal.
The hope is to mate two of these 'left-handed' snails in order to zero in on the genes responsible for their altered body plan in snails, as well as the human condition thought to affect one in 10,000 people. Pictured is Lefty on top and Jeremy underneath
LEFT-HANDED SNAILS AND HEART CONDITIONS Jeremy the snail was found close to a compost heap in South London by a retired scientist from the Natural History Museum. The snail was found to have a shell which swirled counterclockwise, a rarity in snails. Researchers believe the genes for this could also be at the basis of a similar condition in humans, in which their organs are flipped to a mirror image of what would normally be expected. They hope that by finding an equally rare mate for the 'left-handed' snail they can study its offspring and zero in on the genes responsible for the mirror image body plan. Advertisement
Ms Sanchez Melton said: 'Scientifically speaking, this is something which I believe has never been done and I am going to be fascinated to see whether breeding these two snails will result in more lefties or whether their offspring will feature the more common clockwise coiling shells.'
The two snails will now meet in Ipswich, where they will be watched for signs of mating over two weeks.
But if things don't work out in the UK, Jeremy could have a second stab at love in the form of an overseas interest.
A snail farmer in Majorca also contacted the university with news of another 'lefty'.
Dr Angus Davison, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Nottingham and Jeremy's minder, said: 'Following the call that we put out to find another rare lefty snail as a partner for Jeremy, I was amazed at the response from the general public, but hardly dared hope that it would actually work.'
He added: 'In the end, we found not one but two other rare lefty snails, one in Suffolk and another Tomeu in Spain.
Looking for love in all the right places: Two potential mates for Jeremy (pictured left) were found after a nationwide appeal - Lefty in Ipswich (pictured right) and a second potential 'lefty' suitor at a snail farm in Majorca
Pictured is the University of Nottingham's Dr Angus Davison (left) with Lefty's owner, Jade Sanchez Melton, in Ipswich
Researchers believe that the same genes controlling basic body design are responsible in both the snail's condition and in dextrocardia, generating a mirror image of the typical layout of organs (stock image used)
'Both of the finders must have very keen eyes in spotting what is a very rare condition.'
Snails are hermaphrodites so can reproduce on their own without the need for another mate.
But the molluscs only do this in the absence of a suitable mate, preferring to hook up with another snail.
Researchers say the data from offspring of two lefty snails would also be far more valuable for genetic studies.
Dr Davison added: 'Ultimately, if the difference is due to an inherited condition, we would try to find the gene responsible and to see if the same gene is also present, and perhaps has the same function, in other animals, including ourselves.
It has already mastered the art of selling and delivering cleaning products, but soon Amazon could be keeping your house clean with a personal housekeeper as well.
The retail giant has begun advertising for 'home assistants', fueling rumours it is set to launch its own housekeeping service.
Two Seattle job postings are looking for people to join 'Amazon Assistants,' which the company describes as 'experts in helping Amazon customers keep up their home.'
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According to to the ad, workers will be 'working with customers each day with tidying up around the home, laundry, and helping put groceries and essentials like toilet paper and paper towels away.'
According to to the ad, 'You will be an expert in helping Amazon customers keep up their home.
'You will be working with customers each day with tidying up around the home, laundry, and helping put groceries and essentials like toilet paper and paper towels away.
'You will assure that customers return to an errand-free home.'
Workers will offer'timesaving assistance to Amazon Prime members,' so they can run an 'errand-free' home, according to the ad, first spotted by The Seattle Times.
However, the ad was later changed to remove the reference to Prime members.
'If you love making a house feel like a home then this role is for you,' the ad continues.
Amazon.com reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Thursday as expenses rose and the company provided a disappointing fourth-quarter revenue forecast.
RECORD PRIME DAY SALES The world's biggest online retailer said its net sales rose to $32.71 billion in third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $25.36 billion a year earlier. Amazon said in July that customers placed 60 percent more orders worldwide in its second Prime Day sale. Advertisement
'You will: Travel to customers homes to provide time-saving assistance, Identify opportunities to delight customers, Maintain a positive and professional demeanor Help provide high-quality cleanings and meet any special requests
Amazon.com reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit earlier this month as expenses rose and the company provided a disappointing fourth-quarter revenue forecast.
Amazon, whose shares were down 6.8 percent in after-hours trading, said its net income rose to $252 million, or 52 cents per share, from $79 million, or 17 cents per share, a year earlier.
It was company's sixth straight profitable quarter.
But earnings per share were far short of the average estimate of 78 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Total operating expenses rose 31.5 percent to $10.94 billion as the company invests in Amazon Web Services, expands its Prime program internationally, builds up its warehouse and delivery infrastructure and increases its original video offerings.
Amazon forecast net sales of between $42.0 billion and $45.5 billion for the current-quarter, which includes the all-important holiday shopping season.
Analysts on average had expected fourth-quarter sales of $44.58 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Amazon said earlier this month it would hire more than 120,000 seasonal workers in the United States for the holiday season, 20 percent more than last year, highlighting the growing threat the company poses to traditional retailers.
The company reported a 29 percent rise in quarterly revenue, in line with expectations, boosted by a big jump in sales from its Prime Day annual shopping festival, strong back-to-school shopping and its market-leading cloud services business.
AMAZON SHARES TAKE A TUMBLE Earnings per share were far short of the average estimate of 78 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. FindTheCompany | Graphiq Advertisement
The world's biggest online retailer said its net sales rose to $32.71 billion in third quarter ended Sept. 30 from $25.36 billion a year earlier.
Amazon said in July that customers placed 60 percent more orders worldwide in its second Prime Day sale.
It didn't provide sales figures at the time.
Revenue from Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud services business, surged 55 percent to $3.23 billion, beating the average estimate of $3.19 billion, according to market research firm FactSet StreetAccount.
Long known for heavy spending and losses, Amazon has now found consistent profit from selling computer storage and services in the cloud.
The meteoric rise in sales in the market-leading business reflects how companies globally are turning to Amazon and Microsoft Corp to host their data, leaving once critical software programs and hardware in the dust.
Amazon's net sales in North America, its biggest market, jumped 25.8 percent to $18.87 billion in the latest quarter.
Northrop Grumman is working with the U.S. Air Force to develop radical new laser weapons for supersonic fighter jets and hopes to test them in 2019, it has been revealed.
The technology, known as 'directed energy systems' will be fitted to future craft to allow them to protect themselves.
The laser weapon will be housed in a pod attached to a fighter-sized aircraft.
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The technology, known as 'directed energy systems' will be fitted to future craft to allow them to protect themselves. The laser weapon will be housed in a pod attached to a fighter-sized aircraft.
LASER WEAPONS 'COMING SON' Air Force bosses have boasted combat lasers will be fitted to fighters planes 'very soon' and have revealed a full scale prototype is being built. 'I believe we'll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon,' Air Force General Hawk Carlisle has claimed at the Air Force Association Air & Space conference in a presentation on what he called Fifth-Generation Warfare, according to Ars Technica. 'That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is.' Advertisement
The system will be tested on a tactical aircraft flying at speeds up to supersonic.
AFRL expects to begin flight testing the integrated system by 2019.
'Northrop Grumman will help the U.S. Air Force mature its plans to use directed energy systems for self-protection on current and future aircraft under a contract awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory,' the military contractor confirmed.
The contract calls for Northrop Grumman to develop and produce the beam control portion of an airborne laser weapon demonstration system that AFRL is developing under its Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) program.
'Our Northrop Grumman-led team is integrating an innovative beam director with proven beam control technologies to help the Air Force define and successfully demonstrate a laser weapon capability for current and next generation aircraft,' said W. Mark Skinner, vice president, directed energy, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.
The beam control system characterizes the flight environment for atmospheric disturbances that could distort the laser beam, acquires and tracks incoming targets, determines an aim point for the laser, then 'shapes' and focuses the outgoing beam on the target, added Skinner.
Northrop Grumman has previously revealed a tantalising image of a new stealth 'superjet' capable of the firing laser weapons.
The so called 'sixth generation fighter' is rumoured to fly at supersonic speeds, although Northrop Grumman, who are developing it, say the specifications are still secret.
The stealth craft is expected to use advanced cooling systems to help disguise its laser systems.
Chris Hernandez, Northrop's vice president for research, technology and advanced design, told BreakingDefence the sixth-gem fighter will be long range because it won't have many bases to operate from overseas; it must 'carry a lot of weapons;' survivability will be key.
What do those requirements and physics lead you to?
ADAM LASER DISABLES BOATS Several firms have working laser weapons, and Lockheed Martin recently showed off its laser weapon. The 30-kilowatt fibre laser called Athena burnt through the manifold in seconds, despite being fired by a team from Lockheed Martin positioned more than a mile away. The security firm said the test signifies the next step to fitting lightweight laser weapons on military aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks. The laser, known as Athena, was built by Maryland-based security firm Lockheed Martin. During the test, the 30-kilowattfibre laser burnt through the trucks engine (pictured) and disabled it from more a mile away Athena is based on the firms Area Defense Anti-Munitions (ADAM) laser weapon system. In tests off the California coast in May, Adam was used to successfully disable two boats at a range of approximately one mile (1.6km). The high-energy laser burnt through multiple compartments of the rubber hull of the military-grade small boats in less than 30 seconds. Lockheed Martin previously demonstrated the systems capabilities on airborne targets in flight, including small-calibre rocket targets and an unmanned aerial system target. The system can precisely track moving targets at a range of more than 3.1 miles (5km). Advertisement
'This looks a lot like a baby B-2 and this is really getting into our sweet spot,' Hernandez said.
Northrop Grumman has two design teams working on the new aircraft.
However, the firm would not discuss the plane's speed, saying that would have to wait for clearer direction from the Pentagon in the future.
It is expected to use laser weapons - and this has caused major problems around heat.
Boeing (pictured) and Northrop Grumman are both developing concepts.
As Northrop president for aerospace Tom Vice said, managing heat will be key.
'Add in all the aircraft's power and thrust systems, and you have an enormous heat challenge,' said Hernandez.
The craft is expected to be used in 2030.
In April 2012, the Navy issued a formal request for information for the F/A-XX.
It calls for an air superiority fighter with multi-role capabilities to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircraft in the 2030s,
Boeing and Northrop Grumman are both developing concepts.
Lockheed Martin has been working on next-generation air dominance-related activities with the U.S. Armed Services and most recently the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to determine the best way to maintain air dominance in the post-2035 world.
In October of 2012, Frank Kendall, Undersecretary of Defense, tasked DARPA to explore concepts for the next generation of air dominance.
In an attempt to break the battle space into smaller pieces, DARPA defined separate focus areas that span capabilities across the air dominance battle space.
'This decomposition may not be perfect and will most certainly be fine-tuned over time, but it does provide a logical construct for looking at the future battle space,' said Mark Jefferson, director of Next Generation Air Dominance programs at the Skunk Works.
Previous reports say the superjet might even not have a pilot.
According to the Pentagon, it may partially fall in the hands of artificial intelligence (AI).
Reports say that both the US Navy and Air Force are planning next-generation fighters that don't have just a human pilot.
Future fighter jets may have an AI co-pilot on board that can help with sensory data in addition to autonomously landing the plane on an aircraft carrier.
According to the US Naval Institute (USNI), artificial intelligence will feature prominently on the successors to the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.
The US Navy is working on the F/A-XX and the Air Force on the F-X, with both designed to replace their predecessors by 2030 at the earliest.
'AI is going to be huge,' a US Navy official told the USNI.
While the exact purpose of AI in aircraft isn't known yet, it could have a number of uses from acting as a co-pilot to carrying out autonomous landings.
According to Popular Science the robotic co-pilots would be especially helpful for aircraft carriers, which are difficult to land on.
Recently the Navy's X-47B experimental drone landed autonomously on an aircraft, demonstrating the usefulness of AI in such a situation.
AI could also help with something known as advanced sensor fusion.
This involves combining data from various sensors to get a more accurate reading of a situation or location.
Only a few people have reportedly missed their trains as a result of change
Move has already seen an improvement in
Germany is famed for its efficiency and with good reason.
Now in a move aimed at improving punctuality, rail bosses have announced that train doors will be closing 30 seconds before their scheduled departure time.
Every second counts for holidaymakers who may not be aware of the decision by Deutsche Bahn which has proved largely successful with residents.
A new move by rail bosses sees train doors in Germany closing 30 seconds before their scheduled departure time (stock image)
German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, reported that, following testing in Cologne and Hanover, trains would now leave 30 seconds before departure rather than just 10.
During the testing period it reported that only a few people missed their train as a result of the early closing doors.
An improvement in on-time performance has already been observed over the past few weeks, the company noted - which will come as relief to passengers previously infuriated by poor efficiency.
Train delays are said to have risen by almost a third since 2009 due to overdue repairs and modernisation taking place across the 33,000km rail network and a chronic lack of investment.
In the first half of 2016, only about 78 percent of high-speed German trains arrived on time, according to Germans news magazine, Stern.
The decision by Deutsche Bahn was made in a bid to improve punctuality in the country - and has proved successful
Moreover, throughout 2015, one-third of all Deutsche Bahn trains were delayed by at least five minutes.
However, it's hoped that the new decisions to close doors earlier will improve punctuality in the long term.
Further attempts to improve efficiency include print-at-home train tickets being reduced to one page rather than three, enabling passengers to quickly print it out and dash for their train if running late.
Russians are popular in China and Indians are attractive in Eastern Europe
Travellers have taken to social media to share baffling phenomenon
they are better looking
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it seems that often it is even more powerful if that beholder is from a different country.
Much like how people with straight hair want curly hair or those with pale skin indulge in fake tanning, men and women often find that they are significantly more attractive when visiting another country.
Travellers have taken to social media to share their tales of this confusing yet pleasant phenomenon.
Women different skin colours and hair types have been sharing how they are found to be much more attractive when travelling in foreign countries (picture posed by models)
Men from Asian countries who claim they are considered distinctly average at home say they have become studs in Western countries while Eastern European ladies of a similar ilk said they have attracted huge amounts of attention in places like China.
Tourists have now been sharing the details of these eye-opening visits on Quora.
In a forum post, they detailed just how much more attractive they were considered in a country other than their own, and why.
For some, it was that their dark skin seemed exotic to locals, in other cases it was the colour of their hair or slim build.
To find out where you need to holiday next for a bit of an ego boost, read on.
Tourists in foreign countries often discover they are considered unusual and attractive when they holiday (picture posed by models)
An American woman in Scandinavia
Marie Horace from South Florida said: 'I am mostly of Latin Afro Caribbean descent and it's quite diverse where I live, so I am considered pretty average looking.
'Most guys go for full-figured women like the Kardashians but I am what most people here would label as "skinny" and I got teased at school quite a bit actually because of it.
'Imagine my surprise when at University I went on a trip to Scandinavia, and got reactions there from men I never in a million years thought possible - I was called beautiful more times than I could count and I've seen Swedish women, they are gorgeous!'
An Indonesian woman in Europe
LLolyta from Indonesian said: 'In my home country, I am not considered as beautiful but when I went to Europe last summer I got a lot of attention, especially from Western guys.
One women revealed that her tanned skin tone wasn't attractive in her home country, but was perceived as very beautiful when abroad (picture posed by model)
In Indonesia, having a tanned skin tone is not considered beautiful - fair or light skinned with long straight hair are the basics "rules" of being attractive.
A Russian woman in China
Katherine Mesh, from Siberia in Russia said: 'One of the best countries to feel more attractive is indeed China.
'I am from Siberia, where there are more beautiful and uptight ladies than anywhere else.
'But in China, even after workout or with no make-up at all you are still beautiful and exotic to Chinese people.'
An Asian-American in Singapore
Wansai Ounkeo from the US, said: 'In America, my dating life was pretty barren - I was this 5'7", introverted Asian guy, with what my brother considered to be "bland Asian physical characteristics that make you forgettable".
'After landing in Singapore, my dating life basically exploded and just kept exploding.
'I even had strangers follow me and proposition me for various sexual activities.'
A Nepalese woman in Eastern Europe
Pooja Gautam from Nepal said: 'In Nepal, I used to be considered average looking and girls with lighter skin always got way more attention than myself.
'Here in Poland though, its not very common to see darker foreigners and I have received unusually high levels of attention from the locals.
'Tanning salons are a big thing in Polish cities and some Poles find it hard to believe when I tell them that many Nepalese people carry umbrellas on hot, sunny days to prevent their skin from turning darker.
The women of Siberia, left, have very pale skin which is often seen as exotic when they visit China, right
An Indian woman in Africa
Sonali Gupta from India said: 'I am a typical Indian girl and I certainly don't fit in the category of beautiful.
'I recently went on a trip to South Africa and was pleasantly surprised to receive so many compliments on my looks.
'It felt really nice to be called beautiful and receive comments on my smile, as well as hair.'
An Eastern European woman in the UK
Alzbeta Ze from the Czech Republic said: 'I have never been considered particularly beautiful - the beauty standard in the Czech Republic is tanned women with slim bodies but proper boobs and hips, long hair, clear skin and symmetrical faces.
'I'm not fat but I have quite a lot of curves and my skin is really, really pale.
Donald Trump's shocking promise to ban Muslims from entering the US if he becomes president sent shock waves across the world when he first announced the plans last December.
But one Middle Eastern airline took the threats with a pinch of salt, deciding instead to make use of the speech with a tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign.
Ahead of the presidential election today, Royal Jordanian airlines has been trying to sell flights to customers in case the outspoken hotelier does get the keys to the White House.
Royal Jordanian airlines have been trying to sell flights to customers in case Donald Trump wins the US presidential elections today
The company, which is the flag carrier airline of Jordan, posted a picture on Twitter that reads: 'Just in case he wins...Travel to the US while you're still allowed to!'
The advert went down a storm on social media, attracting more than 800 retweets and 500 likes in just four hours.
Many commending the social media team for their topical wit, saying the post should win a prize for marketing campaign of the year.
Trump's call for 'a total and complete shutdown' of Muslim immigration into America during a speech last December was met with disbelief and disgust by members of both political parties.
Donald Trump sent shock waves across the world when he promised to ban Muslims from entering the US if he became president
The Republican front runner said that all Muslims should be banned from entering the United States following the deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino where 14 people were killed by two suspected ISIS sympathisers.
'I think that we should definitely disallow any Muslims from coming in. Any of them. The reason is simple: we can't identify what their attitude is,' said Trump.
In the wake of Trump's policy announcement, Hillary Clinton and others warned that his divisive rhetoric was playing into the hands of terror groups such as Al-Shabaab, its affiliate Al Qaeda, and others like ISIS.
Clinton even went as far as to brand Trump 'ISIS' best recruiter', adding: 'They [terrorists] are going to people showing them videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.'
His scathing one-liners and contemptuous grimaces have won him a reputation as the meanest judge on Strictly Come Dancing.
And Craig Revel Horwood cemented his status as the BBC show's villain as he took aim at contestant Daisy Lowe, 27, branding the front-runner's body 'a bit lazy'.
Speaking to Radio Times, he also revealed a change of heart towards Ed Balls, as he predicted that the 'entertaining' MP could win the whole thing.
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Harsh words: Speaking about model Daisy Lowe, 27, Craig Revel Horwood said: 'Her body tends to be a little bit lazy and she isnt as energetic as she needs to be'
Speaking about model Daisy in his 'half-term report' for the publication, Craig quipped: 'Her body tends to be a little bit lazy and she isnt as energetic as she needs to be.
'She can sometimes lack attack. She also started by scoring a nine from Len in week one - unfortunately, theres only one way to go on the wheel of fortune, and thats down.'
Discussing Strictly's history of model contestants, he added brutally: 'Ive learnt not to expect a lot from supermodels - weve had them on Strictly before and theyve been horrendous.'
Could he do it? Craig remained positive about Ed's chances of making it to the final, commenting: 'Anything is possible! I mean, he could go on to win it'
Impressive: Daisy Lowe and Aljaz scored an impressive 34 with their Viennese Waltz to Daisy Bell
Angelic: Bruno described their dance as: 'You was floating around like a weightless petal caught in a soft breeze'
'Some of them cant even walk, and to think thats all they do for a living!' he quipped.
Craig added that Daisy's tall frame hindered her performance and made her slower to perfect routines.
'She is a tall girl so it takes her a little longer to create perfect lines, which means shes got to put double the energy in than someone half her size.
'Thats her difficulty. She needs to keep practising and pushing herself to the limit,' Craig advised.
Close bond: Ed denied he would ever fall victim to the Strictly curse, although he did state he understood how people training together in such an intense environment could get caught up
Impressive: Ed and Katya performed a fantastic Quickstep to Help! by The Beatles on Saturday
'She also needs to give everything shes got in each performance.'
However, the notoriously hard-to-please judge did concede: 'But Daisy has a lovely personality, is beautiful to watch and seems to be able to take to any style, which is great.
'For some reason, though, the public just arent voting for her.'
Discussing her relationship with Slovenian pro Aljaz Skorjanec, 26, Craig concluded: 'Shes got a great relationship with Aljaz, they are just so gifted together, so I hope the public give them a chance and they get somewhere close to the final.'
Progress: Judge Craig confessed: 'I can't believe I'm actually saying this - you are actually improving and that's brilliant to see'
The judge was surprisingly more sympathetic towards Ed, who he hailed as 'entertaining' and having 'good timing'.
Ed and Katya bowled the judges over on Saturday, as they danced a fantastic Quickstep to Help! by The Beatles.
In a shock move, Craig confessed after their dance: 'I can't believe I'm actually saying this - you are actually improving and that's brilliant to see.'
He noted: 'Much to my surprise, he actually keeps good timing. Even more to my surprise, he is entertaining. And probably to everyones surprise, the public love him.
Back in school: Ed gave a typically scathing appraisal of this year's contestants of Strictly Come Dancing for Radio Times
Craig remained positive about Ed's chances of making it to the final thanks to his huge popularity.
'Ann Widdecombe got through to week ten, so anything is possible! I mean, he could go on to win it.
'Its entirely up to the audience in the end, but of course if he ever ends up in the bottom two hell be out straightaway.'
He continued: 'I was expecting him to be a lot worse than he is - I definitely didnt think he would throw himself into the dancing as much as he has!'
Giving his appraisal of Ore, Craig gushed: ' For someone who has never had any training before, my goodness, he can dance!'
Cheeky! Ore and Joanne performed the Salsa to Turn The Beat Around, with Len hilariously remarking: 'I had a blimming good look at your bum!'
Shake it! The star impressed with his hip shaking action
The judge added scathingly that his biggest weakness was that he possessed 'absolutely no semblance of technique whatsoever.'
He added that Ed could train even harder, but he lacked the 'flair for dance' that could elevate him to the level of frontrunners Danny Mac or Ore Oduba.
Elsewhere, the judge turned his attentions to 19-year-old gymnast Claudia Fragapane, who he hailed a 'little powerhouse'.
Gifted: Elsewhere, the judge turned his attentions to 19-year-old gymnast Claudia Fragapane, who he hailed a 'little powerhouse'
Passionate in pink: Claudia Fragapane and AJ Pritchard finished off the show with a passionate Paso Doble that earned them a respectable 33 points
The young athlete and AJ Pritchard finished off the show on Saturday with a passionate Paso Doble that earned them a respectable 33 points
'She has a wonderful strength in her core, which is to be expected in a world-class gymnast,' Craig gushed.
'Shes also not scared to try anything - some of the lifts AJ has given her are pretty terrifying, but she throws herself into it all with guts and gusto.'
Meanwhile, on Sunday night series favourite Ore Oduba and his partner Joanne Clifton found themselves in the bottom two against Laura Whitmore and Giovanni Pernicci.
While Laura and Giovanni did their best to impress as they danced away to Bamboleo by Gipsy Kings, Ore and Joanne's salsa to Vicki Sue Robinson's Turn The Beat Around proved to be more impressive.
Giving his appraisal of Ore, Craig gushed: ' For someone who has never had any training before, my goodness, he can dance!
'Hes a real natural and fantastic to watch. I just wish he had trained as a dancer when he was younger, he would have made a brilliant dancer, absolutely brilliant!
On the topic of the 29-year-old presenter, he added: 'Honestly, I didnt really notice him before that first dance and thought hed be useless, but Ive been very pleasantly surprised.'
Discussing the rivalry with Ore and Danny Mac, Craig said: ' I have a feeling that the end of this series will be a battle of the boys! I just hope they dont choke under the pressure.'
She's rumoured to be dating Dancing With The Stars pro Val Chmerkovskiy.
But the 30-year-old was nowhere to be seen when Amber Rose headed out for lunch with a mystery man in Los Angeles on Monday.
The 33-year-old flaunted her curvalicious figure in a sizzling, skin-tight bodysuit with a low cut neckline.
Caressing every curve: Amber Rose wore a very revealing black bodysuit as she went out for lunch with a mystery man in Los Angeles on Monday
It showed off her capacious decolletage and generous booty to the max.
The beautiful blonde completed her outfit with a pair of comfy white trainers.
And the celebrity, who didn't appear to be wearing any make-up beyond a touch of lipstick, added a pair of square-rimmed glasses.
Her lunch companion, who walked behind her, looked like a much younger man.
Monochrome match up: The 33-year-old flanted her curvalicious figure in the sizzling, skin-tight garment with a low cut neckline as her lunch date, decked out in white, followed behind
He was dressed in a white cap, white sweatshirt, white sweat pants.
And he committed the ultimate male fashion faux pas - wearing white socks with his black Nike slides.
In fact the sandals and the rucksack he threw over one shoulder were the only back items in his ensemble.
Amber and Val were last seen out together at Halloween when they joined a bunch of pals at a party.
She dares to bare: The 33-year-old celebrity, who wore prescription glass with square black rims, appeared to be make-up free aside from a hint of dark pink lipstick
Date night: Amber and Dancing With The Stars pro Val Chmerkovskiy left LA hot spot Delilah restaurant together on October 28
She posted a group snap that showed the dance star as a zombie with a firm grip on her bountiful bottom, and his head intimately nuzzled in her bosom - which seemed to prove that they are an item.
Rumors sparked that they were dating when they were seen cozying up to each other at Amber's birthday party on October 21
Amber danced with Val's brother Maksim in the current season of Dancing With The Stars but was eliminated in mid-October.
Stranger Things' directing duo Ross & Matt Duffer have added three more castmembers to the highly-anticipated second season.
According to EW - Sean Astin joins the ensemble as RadioShack manager Bob Newby, who went to the same high school as Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour).
It's no coincidence that the Duffers selected the 45-year-old Oscar nominee, who played Goonies leader Mikey Walsh in Richard Donner's 1985 treasure hunt classic.
Welcome to Indiana! Stranger Things' directing duo Ross & Matt Duffer have added three more castmembers to the highly-anticipated second season
Perhaps Bob will provide low-fi technology to the eighties gang of precocious tweens on bikes.
The Goonies famously featured DIY spy gadgets and booby traps as well as a gaggle of Oregon kids facing foreclosure.
Also new to Hawkins is Paul Reiser, who will play Department of Energy representative Dr. Owens 'tasked with containing the events of last year.'
Pictured September 22: According to EW - Sean Astin joins the ensemble as RadioShack manager Bob Newby, who went to the same high school as Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour)
Nostalgia: It's no coincidence that the Duffers selected the 45-year-old Oscar nominee, who played Goonies leader Mikey Walsh (L) in Richard Donner's 1985 treasure hunt classic
Souping up their bikes? Perhaps Bob will provide low-fi technology to the eighties gang of precocious tweens
On a mission: The Goonies famously featured DIY spy gadgets and booby traps as well as a gaggle of Oregon kids facing foreclosure
It's sounds similar to the corporate villain the 59-year-old Golden Globe nominee played in James Cameron's 1986 sci-fi action masterpiece Aliens.
'Very psyched to be joining great cast of @Stranger_Things!' the Mad About You alum tweeted.
Perhaps Dr. Owens will replace Hawkins Laboratory head Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), whose character was attacked by the monster.
Mad about you! Also new to Hawkins is Paul Reiser, who will play Department of Energy representative Dr. Owens 'tasked with containing the events of last year' (pictured in 2015)
Weyland-Yutani scoundrel: It's sounds similar to the corporate villain the 59-year-old Golden Globe nominee played in James Cameron's 1986 sci-fi action masterpiece Aliens
Reiser tweeted: 'Very psyched to be joining great cast of @Stranger_Things!'
Dead? Perhaps Dr. Owens will replace Hawkins Laboratory head Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), whose character was attacked by the monster
Modine tweeted a snap of himself on Monday captioned: 'A bitter brew. The good old days. Life's just not the same. #StrangerThings without #DrMartinBrenner'
Modine tweeted a snap of himself on Monday captioned: 'A bitter brew. The good old days. Life's just not the same. #StrangerThings without #DrMartinBrenner @milliebbrown #UpsideDown.'
The third addition to the binge-watching favourite was newcomer Linnea Berthelsen, who attended East 15 Acting School in London.
The Danish 22-year-old will be playing Roman, a character similar to Jane 'Eleven' Ives who suffered a 'great loss as a child.'
San Francisco-based: The third addition to the binge-watching favourite was newcomer Linnea Berthelsen, who attended East 15 Acting School in London
Number 9 or 10? The Danish 22-year-old will be playing Roman, a character similar to Jane 'Eleven' Ives who suffered a 'great loss as a child'
The casting news came three days after the Duffer Bros. shared an 'Upside Down' picture of the first table reading of the second season script.
Aside from Millie Bobby Brown and other series regulars, the b&w snap included newcomers Sadie Sink and Dacre Montgomery.'
The Madmax, The Storm, and The Brain are just three of the titles for the nine-episode second season - set a year later in fall 1984 - streaming next year on Netflix.
'Back in production see you next year!' The casting news came three days after the Duffer Bros. shared an 'Upside Down' picture of the first table reading of the second season script
'011 is back!' Aside from Millie Bobby Brown (M) and other series regulars, the b&w snap included newcomers Sadie Sink (L) and Dacre Montgomery (R)
She can soon be seen strutting her stuff down the runway for the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show while rocking just lingerie and Angel wings.
And it's hard to believe that somehow Alessandra Ambrosio bared even less for her latest photoshoot.
The 35-year-old supermodel left little to the imagination as she stripped down to nothing for the November cover of GQ Brasil.
Sexy in the sand! Alessandra Ambrosio left little to the imagination as she stripped down to nothing for the November cover of GQ Brasil
A photo posted by Alessandra Ambrosio (@alessandraambrosio) on Nov 3, 2016 at 4:26pm PDT
The mother-of-two looked sexy as she sat on a beautiful beach near the picturesque shoreline covered in nothing but sand.
Alessandra flaunted her tan flesh and perfect physique as she sat naked in the sand with her legs crossed and pulled in toward her chest.
The only thing that adorned the brunette bombshell for the cover shot was a couple of gold bracelets - one each arm.
The Brazilian native left her long tresses down to blow in the wind and she showed off her natural beauty with minimal make-up.
A photo posted by Alessandra Ambrosio (@alessandraambrosio) on Nov 3, 2016 at 4:24pm PDT
As if the front of the monthly wasn't steamy enough one of the inside black and white photos featured a nude Alessandra basking in the sun.
The stunner laid out on wooden steps while strategically placing her arm and positioning in her legs in a way to cover up just a bit.
The runway star - who is married to Jamie Mazur - is currently in the midst of preparing for the annual Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which will air on December 5.
Couldn't help a final pic from our @gqbrasil @shangrilamaldives shoot... @alessandraambrosio in all her glory A photo posted by Stewart Shining (@stewartshining) on Nov 6, 2016 at 12:38pm PST
@gqbrasil #foreveronvacation @stewartshining A photo posted by Alessandra Ambrosio (@alessandraambrosio) on Nov 3, 2016 at 3:59pm PDT
This year's show will take place in Paris, France with models Adriana Lima, Stella Maxwell, Lily Aldridge and Martha Hunt taking to the VS runway.
Other newcomers for this year's show include Bella Hadid, Dilone and Georgia Fowler.
While Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner will be walking the show for the second year in a row.
Jasmine Tookes was chosen to wear this year's coveted Fantasy Bra, which is worth $3 million.
Damilola: Our Loved Boy
Rating:
Most nights see half a dozen murders on television, at least. Sometimes it is the full gory excess of a Scandi-noir, others the more genteel carnage of a Poirot, but its rare for an hour to go by without sudden demises on one channel or another.
Death on TV hardly bothers us, even barely raises our heartbeat. It is as unreal as a Halloween mask.
The murder of a cheeky, smiling 11-year-old named Damilola Taylor was treated differently. The true-life drama Damilola: Our Loved Boy (BBC1) attempted to depict the grief of a shattered family after their son the youngest of three children was stabbed on a South London housing estate and left to bleed to death in the stairwell of a block of flats, in 2000.
Gloria Taylor, played by Wunmi Mosaku, and Damilola Taylor, played by youngster Sammy Kamara
The killing did not occur on screen: we watched Dami, played by the blithely michievous Sammy Kamara, skipping out of his schools computer club, and never saw him again, bar the briefest glimpse through a mortuary doorway.
We did not see the faces of the youths who attacked him with a broken bottle. There was barely a hint of the long police investigation, except for a couple of short court scenes, and the only indication of the ensuing political furore was a rant from a taxi driver.
TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK The two biggest productions on telly right now are BBC1s Planet Earth II, and Netflixs regal costume drama The Crown. But what, or rather who, have they in common? The answer is German maestro Hans Zimmer, who composed the themes for both. Advertisement
Everything in this 90-minute drama was shown from the point of view of his parents and siblings. They had not been present when he died, and so neither was the camera. They were aware only tangentially of the murder hunt, so it happened out of our sight, too.
All they knew was their grief, tearing them apart. That is what was shared with viewers.
It was a brave approach, done with the full support of Damilolas father and brother, and I wish I could say it was completely successful. Unfortunately, it demonstrated why TV needs the detectives and the trail of clues. Unlike theatre or books, television is no good at philosophy and monologues: it demands action.
Damilolas father Richard (Babou Ceesay) was consumed by anger, seething with himself for remaining in Nigeria while his wife and children travelled to Britain. Mother Gloria (Wunmi Mosaku) was left fatally broken-hearted: she died, a few years after the events of this film.
Such deep sadness hardly translates to the TV screen. Instead, it becomes endless shots of feet slowly trudging up stairs while a plangent piano plays, of single tears dribbling down faces and of mournful eyes staring through rain-spattered windows. On the box, real grief can look a lot like trite cliche.
This was a genuine attempt to pay tribute to a lovely boy and to the family that was so badly wounded by his loss. Its a shame that it didnt work better, though thats a trivial regret when compared with all they have suffered. After all, this was only television.
Dark Angel
Rating:
If you think Im callous to say most deaths on TV make little impact, count them up in Dark Angel (ITV). Mary Ann Cotton (Joanne Froggatt) was burying children as fast as she could spoon out the arsenic.
Within the first five minutes, she had bumped off two of her new husbands kiddies, and accidentally disposed of the last survivor of her own brood after leaving a poisoned teacup on the bedside table.
Then she wiped out a bigamous hubbie, her best friend, a lover and a stepson every one gone in the time it took to boil a kettle.
Even though this was based on a true story a case from the police files almost 150 years ago the sheer speed of her slaughter was almost comical. When the poisoner reached for her pewter teapot, we felt no chill of dread, just a feeling that there ought to be a stopwatch ticking away in the corner of the screen. Mary Ann had turned murder into an Olympic event.
There's no doubt that Zoe Saldana knows how to spend a proper weekend with her family.
The 38-year-old actress was out and about with her Italian husband, Marco Perego, 37, and her one-year-old twin sons on Saturday in Los Angeles at the Observatory.
Not only did the family of four visit the astronomy site, but they also played around on the grassy area, reveling in each other's company.
Family fun day! Zoe Saldana spent the day at the Observatory on Saturday with her husband, Marco Perego and her twin boys
The Star Trek star stepped out make-up free, showcasing her natural beauty, as she pulled her brunette locks back in a ponytail.
She paired her casual look with a white-and-black striped top, joggers and black boots while keeping her jewelry to a minimum.
Her artist husband donned his trademark look wearing a patterned shirt, black vest, and faded jeans.
Zoe's twin boys, Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio, went with a matching look in red and blue striped shirts and denim jeans.
All smiles: The 38-year-old actress showcased her natural beauty as she stepped out make-up free, wearing a black-and-white striped top with off-the-shoulder sleeves, joggers and black booties
Fun and games: The Star Trek actress decided to let loose and play around in the grassy area with her one-year-old twin boys, Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio
Upside down! Her artist husband, 37, playfully held his son upside down as he wore his trademark look with a black vest, patterned shirt and faded jeans
With the Avatar star currently filming I Kill Giants, she certainly deserved a much-needed break, frolicking with her family.
They were all seen chasing each other freely on the grassy area, where at one point Marco playfully held his son upside down.
Later, the parents tucked their boys back in the double stroller as they headed towards the car.
Loving: Zoe and Marco began dating in March 2013 and wed three months later in an intimate ceremony in June
Off time: The busy actress knew how to spend her free time right as she is currently in production with the film, I Kill Giants
Zoe - who is also set to star in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 in May 2017 - began dating Marco in March 2013.
The couple tied the knot in an intimate ceremony three months later in June, attended by just a few close friends and relatives in London.
The actress and the Italian artist welcomed their twin boys the following year in November 2014.
Feeling like a kid again: Zoe's Italian beau was certainly enjoying the sunny day outdoors with his family
Feeling free: The star seemed to have no worry in the world
Meeting someone on a blind date always has the possibility of ending in a disaster.
And that is exactly what happened during Tian Tan's appearance on First Dates New Zealand earlier this month.
During his first meeting with a brunette lady, the contestant revealed he 'loves tits in my face', sending social media into meltdown a short time after.
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Shocking: First Date's New Zealand Tian Tan sent social media into meltdown after he admitted to his blind date, 'I love tits in my face'
Tian Tan posted his short-edited scene onto his Facebook page and received 1.2million views within 14 hours and 24,000 comments.
But while the shocking confession came as a shock to many viewers, Tian Tan was in fact putting on an act for the camera.
Moments before stumbling along the statement, his date asked him to 'act like a really arrogant cocky guylike "I just rooted two girls last night".'
All an act: But while the shocking confession came as a shock to many viewers, Tian Tan was in fact putting on an act for the camera
How she played it: Moments before stumbling along the statement, his date asked him to 'act like a really arrogant cocky guylike "I just rooted two girls last night"'
Earlier in the episode, Tian Tan left his brunette date stunned after he admitted to her she looked a lot older than 19.
'Oh, you're 19...You look older,' he commented, before attempting to backtrack, adding: 'like more mature, not as in like, you know'
The female looked less than impressed by the statement and simply replied, 'um, yeah'.
Borderline: Earlier in the episode, Tian Tan left his brunette date stunned after he admitted to her she looked a lot older than 19
Wording: He said, 'Oh, you're 19...You look older,' before attempting to backtrack, adding: 'like more mature, not as in like, you know'
Unimpressed: The female looked less than impressed by the statement and simply replied, 'um, yeah'
After their meeting, the pair decided to not meet up again and to go their separate ways after having an argument over who would pay the bill.
'I don't know. I don't feel like we'll be in the same group circles kind of thing,' Tian Tan said.
He later posted on Facebook: 'Even though I didn't get along super well with my date I'm still really happy she was the one there with me for this experience and wish her all the best.'
Padma Lakshmi looked winter chic as she was seen taking her daughter to school in New York City on Monday.
The Top Chef host wrapped up warm in a white fur coat and grey leggings as she strode side by side her mini me.
Her six-year-old daughter, who she shares with Adam R. Dell, Krishna was wearing the same coat but in black.
Ready: Padma Lakshmi looked winter chic as she was seen taking her daughter to school in New York City on Monday
The pair looked cozy and warm and they braved the cold NY chill.
Padma looked extra stylish adding a pair of designer sunglasses to her look. Her hair was also perfectly styled beneath her hood.
She added a pair of monochrome trainers to finish off her gym chic look.
Stylish duo: The Top Chef host wrapped up warm in a white fur coat and grey leggings as she strode side by side her mini me
Fashionista: Her six-year-old daughter, who she shares with Adam R. Dell, Krishna was wearing the same coat but in black
Meanwhile the cookbook author looked radiant last Wednesday at the Elton John AIDS Foundation's benefit gala in New York City.
She showed off her enviable figure in a strapless, hip-hugging, bold orange gown, and completed her look with a two-layer matching beaded necklace.
The raven haired beauty took to Instagram to share a picture of her gorgeous gown, as well as tell her followers that she had a wardrobe malfunction.
Captioning her radiant photo, the author wrote: 'So this was clearly BEFORE I split my dress tonight! AND let's hear it for some back cleavage, am I right ladies? Luckily you can't see it here!!! #toomanysamosas.'
Runway ready: Padma looked extra stylish adding a pair of designer sunglasses to her look
Despite being a host on a cooking show, the mother-of-one is still in great shape.
The beauty revealed her thoughts on indulging.
'First and foremost, I never feel guilty about taking pleasure in eating any food, regardless of how healthy or gluttonous it may be,' she said to FOX News.
'That said, I try not to eat fried chicken too many days in a row. The healthiest kitchen habit I recommend is to pick a weekend day or evening when you would normally be binge-watching Netflix, and use that time to pre-cut your staple veggies for the week.'
The big dramas on Made In Chelsea concerned the gripping condition of Louises rocky relationship with Ryan and Ollies split with Nick.
Frankly, they werent that gripping or big. Nothing involving Louise Thompson is.
Dont worry if you have no idea who these people are - Louise and Ollie that is, let alone their other halves.
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Tears: The big dramas on Made In Chelsea concerned the gripping condition of Louises rocky relationship with Ryan
Unless they follow MIC most of the country hasnt heard of Louise Thompson or Ollie Locke, despite years starring in the series. While even viewers who do watch the show know nothing whatsoever about Nick and Ryan.
Theyre so insignificant they dont even have surnames.
In the end, Ryan was still with Louise and Ollie had still dumped Nick. What do you mean its almost as if nothing actually happened?
This would be to overlook the incident that will go down in Made In Chelsea history as Email-Gate.
At the start of the episode, Lady Thompson was at pains to stress how happy she and Ryan X were.
Tight bond: At the start of the episode, Lady Thompson was at pains to stress how happy she and Ryan X were
Tension: It was because she felt so guilty about how she ended things with Alik (and not remotely because she was toying with old Aliks affections) that she sent him an email -0 leaving Ryan distraught
Bink-air, hi ham definite-lair the most happ-air hi have ever been right how-now-brown-cow, little Louise told Binky, trying to sound as posh as the other gals.
She even revealed: Ryan rilly rilly wants a babe-hair.
This sounded scary, or kinky, but was actually referring to the concept of a Ryan Junior someone even smaller than Louise.
There was a spoke in the wheel though in the unsightly shape of Alik Alfus, Louises ex-boyfriend, New Yorker, and manufacturer of hideous leather waistcoats.
Hi kee-hee-heep thinking about Alik, Louise sighed. Basical-air I felt so-ho-ho guilt-air about the way everything hended I just burst into tears in the shower.
Confession: Hi kee-hee-heep thinking about Alik, Louise sighed to Binky and Ollie
Guilt: Basical-air I felt so-ho-ho guilt-air about the way everything hended I just burst into tears in the shower, she said
A horrible thought youll agree. She could have been washed down the plughole in the deluge.
It was because she felt so guilty (and not remotely because she was toying with old Aliks affections) that she sent Alik an email. She then felt so guilty about the email she resolved to tell Ryan about it even though she knew he is go-wing to freak art.
I just wanted to mention something to you which isnt bad, she started - a sentence which is always bad.
I feel really scared talking about this but I dont need to, she stuttered which suggested she did.
I composed a message to Alik, she reflected loftily, as if she was in Downton Abbey rather than Made In Chelsea and she had sent a telegram rather than an email.
It was quite long, she continued digging. I didnt want him to be suffering. The idea that Ive made someone really sad is really difficult.
Candid: I see it as a massive betrayal, Ryan later complained to JP during a rare night out for the boys on MIC
Outraged: Judging by JPs reaction he was having flashbacks about how (in his mind) Binky had treated him in the same heartless, disobedient, manner
Struggling: Ryan said: 'As much as I love the girl Im really struggling to let this one go. Im packing up. Leaving. Getting my things out of the house. Removing myself from Louises life
The message was clear: it was harder for HER than for Ryan.
Maybe because were in such a good place, it made me feel bad about how I ended things with my ex.
This was certainly an ingenious way of spinning things: saying that it was basically Ryans own fault that she had contacted her ex-boyfriend because he had made her so happ-air.
You gave me your word that it was done, closed. You just opened it back up again, whined Ryan.
But we haff no-ho problem in hour relationship, Louise protested.
Well we do now, snarled Ryan. Why do you have to f**k things up by getting in contact with him again?
Painful: Nicks plan to win back Ollie backfired rather horribly
Awkward date: I just wanted to do something that would put a smile on your face, he simpered as Ollie looked unsurprisingly suicidal after Nick took him to the Emu Enclosure at Battersea Park
Our thoughts exactly...
I see it as a massive betrayal, Ryan later complained to JP during a rare night out for the boys on MIC.
Judging by JPs reaction he was having flashbacks about how (in his mind) Binky had treated him in the same heartless, disobedient, manner. The veins in his neck began bulging and he started frowning furiously.
You cant ALLOW something that small to AFFECT you, he concluded which was pretty rich coming from JP.
Ryan was having none of it though.
As much as I love the girl Im really struggling to let this one go. Im packing up. Leaving. Getting my things out of the house. Removing myself from Louises life.
Yes, we get the picture...
Closure: Eventually Ollie was forced to admit that there was more to it than his original explanation for wanting to split up that Binky getting back together with JP had made him depressed (as it had us all)
Leaving for good: The spark has gone, Ollie told Nick and walked away
Meanwhile, by complete coincidence, Louise was lamenting to Binky and Ollie: This whole thing has erupted into something so big ! - which it hadnt.
I wish Id never sent that stupid email.
Binky and Ollie reassured her she shouldnt have been so hard on herself. After all, it was in the script...
Even Louises shiniest, orange, smile failed to appease Ryans floppy-fringed angst.
Clear-lair hi did nort think hi wars go-wing to haffect you like this whore I would nort haff sent the eeeeeeee-mail, she stressed even though it was obviously not true.
How can you f**king think that? Ryan fumed. You reduced me to tears over the same f**king issue not that long ago. I would never ever treat you that way.
Group date: Earlier in the episode, Louise told Binky: Bink-air, hi ham definite-lair the most happ-air hi have ever been right how-now-brown-cow'
Cheeky kiss: Binky and JP shared a quick smooch during the dinner date
I dont think that I treat you bardly ! Louise objected, regally. Haff hi given you any reason to think that I want to be-hee-hee back with my hex?
The answer to this, unfortunately, was: Yes.
You said in Cannes: Ive actually been thinking about being back in New York a lot, Ryan reminded her.
OK but apart from that, Louise argued.
I dont know what to do from here, he stumbled, suggesting he had forgotten the script. My heads telling me to leave but Im so in love with you I cant allow myself to walk away from you.
Going strong: Louise and Ryan shared a kiss before she broke the news to him
Can't help it: When Louise confessed about contacting Alik, Ryan said: 'My heads telling me to leave but Im so in love with you I cant allow myself to walk away from you
And with that they kissed and made up. It was the end of Email-Gate - the most superficial scandal in the MIC history and the shortest, appropriately for Louise...
As for the episodes other troubled romance, Nicks plan backfired rather horribly.
I just wanted to do something that would put a smile on your face, he simpered as Ollie looked unsurprisingly suicidal after Nick took him to the Emu Enclosure at Battersea Park rather than, say, taking him up the Shard.
Eventually Ollie was forced to admit that there was more to it than his original explanation for wanting to split up that Binky getting back together with JP had made him depressed (as it had us all).
The spark has gone, Ollie told Nick.
To be honest it was never there.
Back on! After the confrontation the couple kissed and made up
Stranger Things star Shannon Purser has revealed she used to self-harm.
The teen actress, who became an audience favourite for her portrayal of doomed geek Barb in the hit show, posted an image of a razor blade as she made the emotional confession on social media.
And she tried to encourage other self-harmers by insisting things will get better and begging them not to 'give up on yourself.'
'Recovery is possible': Strangers Things star Shannon Purser revealed she used to self-harm on social media on Monday
In a tweet she described as a 'trigger warning,' the 19-year-old said: 'I haven't self-harmed in years, but I kept this around, "just in case." I forgot it was there and now it's in the trash.'
And she tried to galvanise any of her fans suffering from the condition by adding: 'Recovery is possible. Please don't give up on yourself.'
She previously revealed her joy at the recognition her turn as ill-fated Barb, the nerd best friend of show heroine Nancy Wheeler who ended up being killed by a bizarre otherworldly lifeform in the Netflix sleeper hit.
She said: 'The fan response has been absolutely incredible! This was my first acting credit, so I didnt really know what to expect. I loved the character from the very beginning, and I was really excited to play her.'
While fans of the show may never get to see Barb come back from the dead, it has emerged the programme is helping to resurrect the careers of some eighties stars.
'I kept this just in case': She shared an image of a razor blade as she made her confession
'Don't give up on yourself': She posted an inspiring message to others sufferers that things will eventually get better
For the shows sibling directing team Ross and Matt Duffer have added more cast members to the highly-anticipated second season.
Gooneys favourite Sean Astin is to play RadioShack manager Bob Newby, who went to the same school as Winona Ryder's character Joyce and David Harbour's Hopper.
And comedy star Paul Reiser will play Department of Energy representative Dr. Owens, who is ordered to contain the events of that occurred in the show's first season
The role is more akin to the 59-year-old's turn as corporate shill Carter Burke in 1986 classic Aliens than as gentle financial adviser Michael Taylor in classic eighties sitcom My Two Dads.
They recently revealed they are living completely separate lives after being together for 32 years and appearing on The Block.
But on Tuesday's episode of the Channel Nine series, the oldest Blockheads appeared closer than ever.
Hairdresser Carleen, 52, gushed about Handyman Dan, 55, to camera, which bought him to tears, saying: 'He's a pleasure to live with and share my life with.'
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'He's a pleasure to live with and share my life with': On Tuesday's episode of The Block, Carleen and Dan seemed closer than ever but appear to have gone their separate ways soon after the scene, admitting to living separate lives since filming ended
She added: 'I'm very proud of Dan, he's done a great job, he's worked really hard.'
'He's always supported every decision I've made.'
The pair then shared a smooch.
'I'm very proud of Dan': It comes after the duo revealed to Woman's Day recently that they are living completely separate lives
It comes after the duo revealed to Woman's Day recently that they are living completely separate lives.
Carleen confessed that while she remains in Perth, Dan lives hours away down the Western Australian coast.
'I still have commitments in Perth. Dan has two brothers who live down there and he decided he wanted to work there,' Carleen said.
Dan also confessed that the couple's businesses have suffered in recent times, but they were striving to provide for their three adult sons.
Far apart: Carleen confessed that while she remains in Perth, Dan lives hours away down the Western Australian coast
'We're actually going broke doing this... The biggest challenge has been trying to get continual work and giving the boys a good education.
'You push yourself to give your kids a better life.'
Tuesday's episode of The Block, saw the contestants leave their apartments and have crowds walk through thanks to them being open for inspection.
The contestants all spoke to camera about their time on The Block, saying how much they've enjoyed the challenging show.
Julia commented to camera: 'I'm just proud of the fact we're still alive,' she joked.
Drawing a crowd: Tuesday's episode of The Block, saw the contestants leave their apartments and have crowds walk through thanks to them being open for inspection
Grueling: Julia (R, seen with partner Sasha, L) commented to camera: 'I'm just proud of the fact we're still alive,' she joked
She and partner Sasha also spoke about how they've had some highs and lows on the show.
'We've definitely come out stronger because at those times one of us has been low, we've picked the other one up,' Julia said to camera.
She added: 'If you can do something for somebody you love, that's a wonderful thing.'
Sasha meanwhile commented: 'We love each other...it's a good partnership, because we cry together!'
Getting emotional: She and partner Sasha also spoke about how they've had some highs and lows on the show, seen here tearing up
Could be awkward! Also during the episode, the contestants met the judges Darren Palmer, (R) Shaynna Blaze (centre) and Neale Whitaker (L) for the first time while having a BBQ
Also during the episode, the contestants met the judges Darren Palmer, Shaynna Blaze and Neale Whitaker for the first time while having a BBQ to celebrate their last night on The Block.
Kim and Chris were reluctant to speak to the judges, after often getting slammed week after week in judging.
Kim admitted to Darren and Neale: 'I'm just a little bit hurt. It was heartbreaking,' she said.
The judges meanwhile told them their feedback was constructive criticisms so they could try and improve.
The finale will be aired on Sunday.
Gal Gadot played along with speculation that her Wonder Woman character could be bisexual and picked Halle Berry to play a potential future love interest.
The 31-year-old Israeli actress will play the superhero on the big screen in 2017 in a full-length feature with Star Trek star Chris Pine, 36, as her romantic interest.
Greg Rucka, 46, who previously wrote Wonder Woman comics recently announced he believes the warrior princess of the Amazons is bisexual.
Love interest: Gal Gadot, shown with Halle Berry last month in Beverly Hills, chose the Catwoman star as a potential love interest for her Wonder Woman character
Gal was asked by Israeli talk show Good Night With Guy Pines about Wonder Woman possibly being bisexual and if she had an actress in mind to play her love interest.
'I saw her the other day, Halle Berry. She's so beautiful,' Gal replied.
'Wow! She's gorgeous! So yeah, I could do it with her,' the Israeli-born actress said in Hebrew.
Halle, 50, and Gal both attended the star-studded bash last month celebrating the unveiling of a Tiffany & Co. store renovation in Beverly Hills, California.
Warrior princess: The Israeli actress is shown in a promo still for the upcoming Wonder Woman film
Gal last month told Variety that it was entirely plausible that Wonder Woman could be bisexual.
The DC Comics superhero does not have any same sex relationships in the upcoming film, but Gal said it wasn't unreasonable that living in female-only Themyscira would impact her sexuality.
'She's a woman who loves people for who they are,' she told Variety. 'She can be bisexual. She loves people for their hearts.'
Israeli actress: Gal, shown last month in West Hollywood, was asked about a bisexual love interest for Wonder Woman by an Israeli talk show
She added that her character's proposed bisexuality 'never came to the table'.
Gal made her debut as Wonder Woman earlier this year in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice.
She will reprise her role in the stand-alone Wonder Woman film due out on June 2, 2017.
Gal revealed on Sunday that she was expecting her second child with husband Yaron Versano.
Forget Kanye West's Pablo merch, there's a new celebrity T-shirt line on the block.
Lindsay Lohan wants everyone to speak Lilohan for a good cause.
On Monday night, the star revealed exclusively to the DailyMail.com that she has released a line of T-shirts, sweaters and tanks having a laugh at the recent controversy about her accent.
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'I only speak Lilohan': Lindsay Lohan wants everyone to speak Lilohan for a good cause, with the star revealed exclusively to the DailyMail.com on Monday night that she has launched a line of T-shirts
The star has launched the collection on Represent.com and the tops all read 'I only speak Lilohan'.
Lindsay, of course, jokingly dubbed her now more European sounding accent 'Lilohan' last week.
The tops come in black, white and red with the tanks and sweaters using the same manufacturing company, Gildan, which Kanye used in his now sold out cult Pablo Tour merchandise.
The tops retail from $24.95 to $39.95 but Lindsay says part of the proceeds from each shirt sold will benefit Caudwell Children - which helps disabled children in the UK.
Top it off: The tops come in black, white and red with the tanks and sweaters using the same manufacturing company, Gildan, which Kanye used in his now sold out cult Pablo Tour merchandise
Choices: The tops retail from $24.95 to $39.95 but Lindsay says part of the proceeds from each shirt sold will benefit Caudwell Children - which helps disabled children in the UK
Funds will also go to The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD), which in addition to putting in earthquake safety measures and providing aid to those effected by earthquakes in Turkey, is helping to support Syrian refugees.
Lindsay told the DailyMail.com, the tops were her way of giving back.
She said: '[Represent and I] decided to make the t-shirts to turn mainstream media into something positive for the world and thought it would be a nice thing to do.
Near and dear to her heart: Funds will also go to The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD), which in addition to putting in earthquake safety measures and providing aid to those effected by earthquakes in Turkey, is helping to support Syrian refugees
Doing her bit: Lindsay told the DailyMail.com, the tops were her way of giving back and meant she was able to make the attention her accent was getting into 'something positive for the world and thought it would be a nice thing to do'
'The shirts will support young children suffering and help raise money for Turkey to help with Syrian refugees, I'm very excited we could make this happen!
'The design was a team effort we all put some ideas into it.'
Fans better put the tops on their Christmas wishlist as the star agreed if enough sell by the holiday season, she will recreate her famous Mean Girls' Jungle Bell Rock dance.
The star confirmed she would with an emphatic 'yes' and already has her eye on a specific backup dancer.
Christmas cheer: Fans better put the tops on their Christmas wishlist as the star agreed if enough sell by the holiday season, she will recreate her famous Mean Girls' Jungle Bell Rock dance (pictured Lacey Chabert, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried)
Eyes set on the White House: The star said she would do the dance if the new President - whether that be Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump - does it with her
'YES! I'll do the Jingle Bell Rock but only if it is with the new President.'
As to whether that will be Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton will be decided on Tuesday during America's presidential; elections.
The shirts come after video of Lindsay speaking outside her Greek club opening last month emerged last Tuesday causing the internet to go wild with speculation over just what Lindsay's new sound was.
What started it all: The shirts were inspired by the fact that Lindsay and her accent all became a trending topic after she sounded different in a video from her Club Lohan opening
The 30-year-old confirmed to the DailyMail.com she does sound different these days but suggested it was no big deal.
The now-London based actress put it down to a thirst for leaning languages, but no doubt her trans-European lifestyle also is partially to blame.
Lindsay told the DailyMail.com: 'It's a mixture of most of the languages I can understand or am trying to learn.'
Pretty polyglot: The actress put her new accent down to a thirst for leaning languages, but not doubt her trans-European lifestyle also is partially to blame
And for those wondering at home, the pop culture icon is well on her way to knowing six languages fluently.
'I've been learning different languages since I was a child. I'm fluent in English and French can understand Russian and am learning Turkish, Italian and Arabic.'
As for all the attention her new accent was getting, the famed-redhead said was not shocked by it.
'Nothing really shocks me these days. I moved to London four years ago and the taxes seem to be getting higher.'
Lindsay and her accent all became a trending topic after video from her Club Lohan opening in mid-October surfaced.
In the video, the actress told local reporters of her hopes for her club and also sought to clarify her relationship with business partner Dennis Papageorgi.
But, as she did, her well known American accent and husky tone was very different.
The star told reporters of why she opened the club: 'I said maybe there is something for me to do more here so I have a reason to come back.
'My first time coming to Athens with Dennis, my friend, and that's all he is my friend and business partner! But his mother became a very close person to me and his sister as well... When I went through hardships with my ex I really found ''good family'' in these people from Greece.'
Fluent in Lilohan: While some fans claimed it was a mix of everything from Australian with Turkish to Greek with Saudi Arabian, Lindsay joked on Twitter with the DailyMail.com that her accent should have its own name which lead to the term Lilohan
Lindsay went on to discuss her work with refugees after visiting Turkey last year.
She said: 'Just as I did in Turkey with refugees. So where people are scared of refugees and everything in the world, there's a minimum, there's a line of where we can make happiness and shine a light in every situation that is bad and make it good.
'Whereas in the past I've been associated with nightclubs and clubbing I said why not do my own and make it a good place. Where there's bad things happening in the world we can focus on the bad things and fix them with the club we can create charity with the club.'
Angelina Jolie will continue to have sole custody of her six children with Brad Pitt in an agreement reached by the actors, a representative for the actress said Monday.
The agreement calls for the former couple's six children, who range in ages from eight to 15, to continue to have 'therapeutic visits' with Pitt.
Jolie filed for divorce in September, days after Pitt was involved in a disturbance during a private flight with his family. She cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for the breakup, and an attorney said at the time she filed for divorce 'for the health of the family.'
Monday's statement said the agreement was reached more than a week ago in consultation with childcare professionals. It says no further details could be provided, and it makes no mention of an investigation by child welfare workers into the plane incident.
Pitt and Jolie Pitt reached a temporary custody agreement in late September that included at least some of the same terms visitation with his children and both sides agreeing to meetings with therapists.
'In accordance with this agreement,' the statement from Jolie's rep claimed, 'the six children will stay in their mother's custody, and the children will continue therapeutic visits with their father. This has been determined by childcare professionals to be in the children's best interest.'
'We are not in a position to discuss the details,' the rep continued. 'We hope now that it is clear that the events which led to the dissolution filing involved minor children and their wellbeing, there will be understanding of the sensitivity of the family situation.'
'We believe that all sides are committed to healing the family and ask for your consideration during this difficult time,' Monday's statement concluded.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have reached a custody agreement regarding their six children. He is seen with them in 2014
While Entertainment Tonight reports the agreement between the former couple is 'indefinite' and is separate from the voluntary safety plan implemented by the Department of Child and Family Services.
A source told ET the agreement has 'no time frame to it, it is in place until they decide to make a change'.
Other reports emerged on Monday claiming the agreement was temporary and not legally binding.
TMZ claims the custody arrangement is only temporary until the Department of Children and Family Services closes its investigation.
The website reports that the agreement is simply an extension of a prior arrangement reached by the estranged couple with Pitt having monitored visitations with the children under the guidance of a therapist as the DCFS continues its investigation.
According to TMZ, the agreement was extended last week but is not a settlement nor does it bear on Pitt's filing for joint custody.
Reps for both Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have been contacted by Daily Mail.
The news comes after Pitt, 52, asked for joint physical and legal custody of the six children he shares with Jolie on Friday, which appears to conflict with the statement released by Jolie's rep.
Documents obtained by DailyMail.com show Pitt has asked for joint physical and legal custody. Pictured at LAX on June 6, 2105, left to right, is Vivienne, Shiloh, Maddox (back), Knox and Zahara
Papers seen by DailyMail.com were filed in the Superior Court of California, Los Angeles, on Friday.
Pitt states on the document that he is ending his marriage with Jolie over 'irreconcilable differences'.
He also lists the same separation date, September 15.
He then mentions his children - Maddox, 15, Pax, 12, Zahara, 11, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Knox, and Vivienne - and puts down that he is seeking joint custody.
Jolie filed for divorce in a Los Angeles court September 19.
In the filing, she said she separated from her husband on September 15 a day after the couple and son Maddox were involved in an alleged altercation on their private plane.
The actor was accused of physically attacking Maddox while drunk.
Child services in Los Angeles have launched an investigation into what happened.
The FBI has said it is gathering information before deciding whether to launch a federal probe into the allegations.
They interviewed Jolie for four hours after the alleged altercation, according to reports.
The actor has denied the claims.
Reports initially suggested that Pitt was seeking joint custody, and wanted to avoid a court battle.
A source recently told People that the pair were still trying to iron out differences during their acrimonious split.
'They are still working on issues that they can't agree on. It seems their issues still involve the kids,' the insider close to the family said.
'Brad and Angie haven't had any contact, and it's all being worked out via their teams,' said the family source recently. 'It's just a sad situation.'
Pitt and Jolie were together for 12 years after becoming close while filming 2005's 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith.'
When they weren't acting, the couple were seen as devoted parents and global philanthropists, creating a joint foundation in 2006.
Court documents filed by Pitt show he wants joint custody for both the children. However, like Jolie, he has not specified child support
Pitt have the same date of separation as Jolie in the papers filed on Friday
The 52-year-old actor listed 'irreconcilable differences', the same as Jolie, as the reason he wanted to end the marriage.
Pitt is seen with (left to right) Pax, Shiloh and Maddox at the premiere of 'Unbroken' in 2014
She's The Bachelor star who has never been shy of flaunting her ample curves.
And Kirralee 'Kiki' Morris was back at it again on Tuesday, giving onlookers a good glimpse of her cleavage.
The 29-year-old sported a skimpy black tank top, teamed with a pair of short shorts and trainers as she was spotted running errands at Sydney's Bondi Beach.
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Busting out! The Bachelor's Kirralee 'Kiki' Morris, 29, flaunted her ample curves in a skimpy black tank top, teamed with a pair of short shorts, as she was spotted running errands at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Tuesday
Taking to the streets of Sydney's eastern suburbs, Kiki drew attention to her toned curves.
A low-cut skin-tight black top revealed her ample cleavage and lean arms while a pair of coordinating short shorts focused in on her bronzed legs.
Accessorising with a pair of casual sneakers and gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, the reality star carried all of her belongings in an oversized black bag.
Low-key: Kiki teamed the look with a pair of casual trainers and shielded her eyes behind a pair of gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses
Sweeping her long tresses into an effortless style at the nape of her neck, Kiki appeared to sport a neutral makeup palette of a flawless base, defined brows and a matte nude lipstick over her plump pout.
The buxom blonde has certainly been making the most of her newfound fame, hosting a luncheon on Monday with fellow Bachelor rejects Keira Maguire and Noni Janur for dating app Bumble Australia.
Held at Sydney's prestigious eatery Cafe Del Mar, Kiki cut a relaxed figure wearing a baby blue frilled playsuit.
All the frills: The buxom blonde has certainly been making the most of her newfound fame, hosting a luncheon on Monday for dating app Bumble Australia
Reality stars: Also in attendance were fellow Bachelor rejects Keira Maguire (left), 29, and Noni Janur (right), 25
Fellow Bachelor contestants Keira, 29, and Noni, 25, also kept their attire casual chic.
Keira donned a floor-length deep navy frock with a daring split up the front, while Noni opted for a black two-piece ensemble that showed off her midriff.
Despite hosting an event for a dating app, Kiki has since found love.
Taking to Instagram on Sunday, the former glamour model was seen cozying up to Jeremy Banks in an affectionate snap.
New man: Despite hosting an event for a dating app, Kiki has since found love, taking to Instagram to share a series of snaps with beau Jeremy Banks (pictured)
The caption read: 'We're more like a really small gang,' adding a wink emoticon.
She added: 'Recovering from my weekend by hiking and swimming on this amazing Sunday.'
The pair debuted their new love on social media two weeks ago as they celebrated Halloween.
Sharing a shot of the pair dressed up in costumes, Kiki wrote: 'When you find good selfie light and Bae just wants to suck your blood! Happy Halloweeny. Girl Scout for life (sic).'
It is just shy of 50 years since she floated around in the nude on the silver screen in Barbarella.
And Jane Fonda was looking almost as good as ever as she graced the red carpet at a New York University theatre benefit on Monday.
The actress was looking great at 78 as she flaunted her feminine figure on the red carpet of the Tectonic At 25 event at the NYU Skirball Centre.
|Great at 78: Jane Fonda looked fantastic for her age at a theatre benefit on Monday
The Klute star looked in fine form indeed cream trench coat,trousers and classy silver stilettos.
At one point she took to the stage to address the audience, where she no doubt delivered an uplifting speech.
Also in attendance was Sex And The City Cynthia Nixon, 50, who showcased her figure in a blue dress before delivering a monologue to the thrilled crowd.
Jane was appearing following the death of her left wing political activist former husband Tom Hayden last month. They were married in 1973 and divorced in 1990.
It's been 44 years years since she shocked the American public by straddling a Viet Cong anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam War.
Drinking at the fountain of youth: Jane was looking remarkably well-preserved
Cream of the crop: She looked in fine form in her colour-coordinated outfit
Uplifting: The Barbarella star shared her wisdom with the adoring audience
She wrote in her 2005 autobiography that she'd been tricked into that gesture and has since apologised for her radical stance.
In 1972, she visited Hanoi, Vietnam, where she spoke out against the U.S. military and was photographed seated with Viet Cong soldiers wearing one of their helmets.
In a 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, Fonda expressed regret about some of her comments, but many more conservative Americans have never forgotten.
A highly publicised appearance on QVC was axed in 2011 after the cable shopping channel received complaints from customers threatening a boycot due to her anti-war stance.
She blue them away: Cynthia Nixon also showcased her form at the exciting event
No sweat: The perspiring actress took to the stage to deliver a fascinating monologue
On Tuesday, the Philippines' new ambassador to China Jose Santiago Santa Romana said that with the return of Philippine fishermen in the disputed Scarborough Shoal, it proves that China is actually complying with the July ruling of the International Arbitration Tribunal in The Hague even though they do not acknowledge it.
The ambassador said that now that Beijing has pulled out its Chinese coast guard out of the disputed areas, they are actually adhering to the terms of the ruling even though they refuse to recognize it. The fishermen themselves have said that the Chinese coast guard has left them alone to return to the Scarborough Shoal to fish since the time Preisdent Rodrigo Duterte returned from his state visit in China last month.
Santa Romana also said in a forum, "China is now complying with the arbitration court's ruling, that's what our American lawyer is saying." The country had paul Reichler serve as their chief legal counsel for the case in 2013.
He also adds that, "China has insisted sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal but promised to do something about our fishermen when the president raised the issue."
China has been against the Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling regarding the South China Sea as it ruled that the "nine dash line" claim has no basis and that the Scarborough Shoal is a traditional fishing ground that all claimants are entitled to exploit.
Since the ruling, the Duterte administration has been reaching out to the Chinese government and even sent a team, led by former Philippine President Fidel Ramos, to Hong Kong to meet with Chinese officials to discuss how they can break the ice with the mainland. Santa Romana was a part of this team and remarked, "China has made a commitment that it will not reclaim the shoal, preserving it as a marine sanctuary, so it is not allowing even Chinese fishermen to fish inside the lagoon."
"The two countries should now work out some rules of engagement between our two coastguards to avoid a repeat of the standoff."
In their end, the Chinese foreign ministry said last week that the situation in the Scarborough Shoal remains unchanged and will not change in any way.
Strictly Come Dancing producers and judges are said to be 'at loggerheads' over Ed Balls' unprecedented success on the series.
The former Shadow Chancellor, 49, has sailed through the competition week after week, not once finding himself in the bottom two, nor having to face a dance off after proving hugely popular with viewers of the BBC One show.
But judges Len Goodman, Darcey Bussell, Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno Tonioli reportedly are not seeing the funny side and are concerned the politician is making 'a mockery' of Strictly, according to The Sun.
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Star of the show? Strictly judges are at loggerheads with BBC producers over Ed Balls as he gets closer to competing in the final
According to an inside source, the judges believe Ed should throw in the towel and quit the show, now that he is creeping ever closer to the grand finale next month.
However, producers at the BBC have watched ratings climb every week, and put a lot of it down to the public support that Ed is receiving from the public.
While the politician's 'dad moves' concern the likes of Darcey and Len - who worry the show is becoming somewhat of a circus - the producers consider it TV gold.
A source told The Sun: 'The judges publicly say Ed is entertaining because he is. But privately they think its making a mockery of the show if he gets to the final as there are so many talented dancers this year.
Not impressed: Craig Revel Horwood, Darcey Bussell, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli are said to be concerned the politician, 49, is 'making a mockery' of the show
Inner camp: The producers at the BBC have watched ratings climb every week, and put a lot of it down to the public support that Ed is receiving
'The producers are over the moon hes still in it and have been congratulating themselves as it has boosted ratings over The X Factor.'
MailOnline has contacted a spokesperson for Strictly Come Dancing for comment.
Ed's success on the Saturday night prime-time show doesn't seem to be waning - he and his professional dance partner Katya Jones, 27, scored 27 out of 40 at the weekend - their highest mark yet.
This boost in confidence has seen Ed insisting he won't quit, and that while the public continue to root for him he will keep doing his best to get through.
Shock result: Despite the alleged chagrin felt by the judges, Craig was full of praise on Saturday night's installment of the current season, following Ed and Katya's quickstep routine
Personal best: Ed's success on the show doesn't seem to be waning - he and his professional dance partner Katya Jones, 27, scored 27 out of 40 at the weekend - their highest yet
He told Grazia magazine this week: 'People are supporting you and paying to vote. The only way Ill stay in beyond a certain point is if my dancing is clearly getting better. The problem is, there isnt anybody else this year thats worse.
'I've always known I had this strong inner camp. Ive just never quite revealed it in this way.'
He added that he doesn't want to be seen as the 'joke act' - a brush previous politician contestants have been tarred with on past seasons of the show.
Dad moves: While the politician's 'dad moves' concern the likes of Darcey and Len - who worry the show is becoming somewhat of a circus - the producers consider it TV gold
'The one thing I did decide right at the beginning was that I did not want to be this years John Sergeant or Ann Widdecombe,' he said, candidly.
Despite the alleged chagrin felt by the judges, Craig was full of praise on Saturday night's installment of the current season, following Ed and Katya's quickstep routine.
'I can't believe I'm actually saying this - you are actually improving and that's brilliant to see,' he told Ed.
He also told the Radio Times that 'he could go on to win it'.
Sunday evening saw Laura Whitmore voted off the series, leading to a rush of furious Twitter users slamming the show for allowing Ed to get so far in the competition.
Axed! Sunday evening saw Laura Whitmore voted off the series, leading to a rush of furious Twitter users slamming the show for allowing Ed to get so far in the competition
Tweets to the tune of 'if @edballs had any balls he'd do the right thing and resign from #Strictly to stop better dancers leaving. #notalentnoshame,' cropped up on the social networking site.
'Let's face it... Ed Balls is gonna win #Strictly,' wrote one disgruntled viewer, who added they'd 'lost all faith in the British public'.
But in his Digital Spy blog, professional dancer Brendan Cole - who was voted off the series alongside partner Lesley Joseph last weekend - showed his full support for Ed, even rooting for him to win.
'[Ed's] improving week upon week and that's what the show's all about,' he wrote. 'It's not about being a great standard and then just being the same every week - you've got to get better and better and better, and he's actually doing that.
'All of the things you don't expect to see from him, he's starting to deliver, and I think that's a really important thing in this process.'
'I absolutely do think Ed could get to the final or even win - and I hope he does in many ways. I think it would be a great thing for the show.
Strictly Come Dancing continues this weekend on BBC One.
She made headlines last month when reports emerged claiming she and her television executive husband John McAvoy had split.
But Tara Brown, 48, appeared to dispel these whispers by wearing her wedding ring on the red carpet as she attended the Channel Nine Upfronts event in Sydney on Tuesday.
The 60 Minutes reporter wasn't shy to let her ring do the talking as she posed up a storm in an off-the-shoulder gown.
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Flashing her rock: Tara Brown, 48, appeared to dispel whispers of her reported split from husband John McAvoy by wearing her wedding ring on the red carpet as she attended the Channel Nine Upfronts event in Sydney on Tuesday
The sighting comes after a report published in Woman's Day claimed that she had ended her 16-year marriage.
A source told the publication the marriage broke down under the pressure of Brown constantly working away from home, and that the claimed break-up occurred before Tara's infamous botched Lebanon kidnapping operation earlier this year.
'It's hard to keep starting over every time you get back from an extended overseas assignment,' said the insider.
Front and centre: The 60 Minutes reporter wasn't shy to let her ring do the talking as she posed up a storm in an off-the-shoulder gown
'This year has been really awful for her', they later added.
The insider also told the publication it was likely the pair would remain amicable for the sake of their children.
'Tara and John are both sensible adults,' they told the magazine.
'This year has been really awful for her': The sighting comes after a report published in Woman's Day claimed that she had ended her 16-year marriage
'They plan to remain friends for the sake of their kids.
Back in April, Tara and several Nine colleagues were arrested in Beirut following a failed kidnapping operation concerning mother Sally Faulkner.
They were taken into custody after Tara's team attempted to snatch Sally Faulkner's two children, Lahela, five, and Noah, three, on a busy street.
Controversy: Back in April, Tara and several Nine colleagues were arrested in Beirut following a failed kidnapping operation concerning mother Sally Faulkner
She's expecting her first child with jailbird on-off beau Bradley Wright next year.
And Amy Childs looked as though pregnancy was suiting her down to the ground as she posed for a sweet snap with her cousin and former TOWIE co-star, Harry Derbidge, 22, in Brentwood, Essex, on Sunday.
Proudly showing off her baby bump, the TV personality, 26, looked lovely as she slipped into a comfortable and cosy khaki velour tracksuit.
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Bumping along: Amy Childs looked as though pregnancy was suiting her down to the ground as she posed for a snap with cousin and former TOWIE co-star, Harry Derbidge, 22, on Sunday
With Harry tenderly cradling her bump as she gazed into the lens, Amy wrote alongside the sweet family shot: 'Uncle Harry'.
In spite of her relaxed look, the beautician was preened and pampered to perfection for her lazy weekend.
Amy wore her dyed red locks in a glossy mane of tumbling curls and accentuated her plump pout and pretty features with plenty of make-up.
It seems the entrepreneur was putting her feet up for a well-earned rest during the weekend, as she posted another snap of her enjoying a cup of tea from the comfort of her sofa.
And relax: The TV personality, 26, was putting her feet up for a well-earned rest during the weekend, as she posted another snap of her enjoying a cup of tea from the comfort of her sofa
Amy announced she was expecting her first child last month.
The former TOWIE star confirmed to OK! magazine that she was pregnant with her jailbird boyfriend Bradley Wright after trying for a family before he served his five-month spell in prison for handling stolen goods last year.
In the interview the delighted star revealed she was 'shocked but happy' as she awaits the arrival of her first child - she did not think she could get pregnant.
Amy, who reunited with her on-off beau in March, delightedly announced the news to the magazine as she revealed the happy couple are overjoyed after wanting a child for some time.
The pair met in a pub in Essex two years ago but their relationship came to a halt last year when Bradley was sentenced to 16 months in prison for handling stolen goods.
Pregnancy style:Amy announced she was expecting her first child last month
However, the jailbird, who is already father to daughter Lexi from a previous relationship, only served five months of his sentence as he was released early for good behaviour leading to their eventual reunion.
As she unveiled her bump in a stunning shoot, in the accompanying interview she said: 'We wanted (a baby) before Bradley went to prison but it didn't happen. I didn't think I could get pregnant.
'We'd been together for nine months and I came off the pill in the summer and I thought it might take me ages. I was taking folic acid but it didn't happen. I was really panicking.
'I went online to find out why and it was the worst thing I could have done. I got so stressed out about it that I was drinking. Brad told me off for it but I couldn't help it.'
Love's young dream: The TOWIE star confirmed to she was pregnant with jailbird boyfriend Bradley Wright after trying for a family before he served his five-month prison sentence
Amy, who soared to fame in TOWIE's 2010 inauguration, spoke of their desperation to start a family as she said: 'We wanted kids together soon after we met.
'I love kids, especially because Bradley has Lexi, and spending time with her made me want a baby more. I have a big family so I love having my nieces and nephews around.'
Amy, who is set to welcome her baby to the world in May, tells the magazine: Weve wanted a baby for so long, so were happier than weve ever been. We were both so shocked, so emotional and so happy at the same time.
Delighted Bradley, 25 added: Im so excited, I cant wait until the baby is born.
The couple have already discussed names for their tot, as Amy revealed: Brad likes Archie for a boy and our top name for a girl is India. I definitely dont want a home birth.
Buying plenty of pink? The pregnant star later seemed to hint that she was expecting a girl during an appearance on ITV1's This Morning last week
'I couldnt think of anything worse! Sam Faiers wanted one but it didnt work. I want a water birth. Brad will be amazing during the birth because hes really calm.
The star later seemed to hint that she was expecting a girl during an appearance on ITV1's This Morning last week.
Amy said: 'I have already given it [the gender] away by accident but I don't want to say just yet. I'm worried I am accidentally going to say it.'
She was then asked about her cosmetic surgery regrets and whether or not she would let her child do the same as she has.
Amy said: 'They are not allowed to go down that route. My daughter... if I have a daughter... there will be no surgery.'
A trip to her popular London salon created another window of opportunity for Tamara Ecclestone to spend some quality time with her treasured daughter Sophia on Monday afternoon.
The wealthy socialite, 32, was accompanied by her only child with property developer husband Jay Rutland as she paid a visit to the Westbourne Grove blow dry bar she launched to much fanfare in 2015.
With winter temperatures continuing to plummet Tamara opted to stay warm in a thick woollen dress as she cradled Sophia, two, shortly after venturing out.
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A mother's bond: A trip to her popular London salon created another window of opportunity for Tamara Ecclestone to spend some quality time with her treasured daughter Sophia on Monday afternoon
The daughter of billionaire Formula 1 owner Bernie Ecclestone completed a rather understated look over-the-knee suede boots, while her brunette lock were effortlessly styled with a simple side parting.
As always Tamara devoted her attention to Sophia, who was sensibly insulated against the biting cold in a pink winter coat.
The youngster was in typically high spirits as she held her mothers hand following their latest appearance at the opulent salon.
Flying visit: The wealthy socialite, 32, was accompanied by her only child with property developer husband Jay Rutland as she paid a visit to the Westbourne Grove blow dry bar
Seasonal attire: With winter temperatures continuing to plummet Tamara opted to stay warm in a thick woollen dress as she cradled Sophia, two, shortly after venturing out
Finishing touches: The daughter of billionaire Formula 1 owner Bernie Ecclestone completed a rather understated look over-the-knee suede boots
The blow dry launch came after Tamara opened her first SHOW Beauty hair styling collection in 2013, followed by a network of in-store hair styling bars at retailers Harvey Nichols, House of Fraser and Fenwick.
'My home was the inspiration, this could be in my house,' she told FEMAIL of her London salon.
'The ceiling was inspired by the range's packaging and the rose gold and black is very on brand; I wanted it to be an extension of what I already started.'
Stepping out: Tamara and Sophia made their way onto the street after calling into the Blow Dry bar, launched by the socialite after opening her first SHOW Beauty hair styling collection in 2013
Good cheer: Sophia was in typically high spirits as she held her mothers hand following their latest appearance at the opulent salon
Despite possessing a body that looks impeccably toned and gym-honed, busy mother-of-one Tamara recently admitted that she doesn't spend any time in the gym.
As far as workouts go, it's running around after Fifi 24/7 and pushing her in the stroller,' she explained.
'As for food, I tend to have porridge for breakfast, wholegrain pasta for lunch and then quinoa and chicken for dinner.'
He plays the greatest contributor of quotes to the Oxford English Dictionary in his forthcoming film, but onlookers were still lost for words as Sean Penn made his latest appearance in Dublin.
With wild, unkempt hair and a bedraggled beard the usually suave veteran actor, 56, looked unrecognisable while relaxing between takes on the set of new movie The Professor and the Madman.
A dishevelled Penn also sported bloody medical dressing across his brow and nose as he made his way towards his trailer in ill-fitting, grubby trousers and bathrobe during the location shoot on Monday afternoon.
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Transformed: With wild, unkempt hair and a bedraggled beard the usually suave Sean Penn looked unrecognisable while relaxing between takes on the set of new movie The Professor and the Madman in Dublin on Monday afternoon
The forthcoming film sees him play William Chester Minor, a former US army surgeon who contributes more than 10,000 entries to the Oxford English Dictionary while being held at an asylum for the criminally insane.
Minor, who passed away in 1920, became a devoted contributor after answering a call for volunteers from Scottish lexicographer Sir James Murray - the dictionary's primary editor.
Actor and director Mel Gibson, 60, who takes the role of Murray, was not present on the Irish set as Penn made his brief appearance.
In character: A dishevelled Penn also sported bloody medical dressing across his brow and nose as he made his way towards his trailer in ill-fitting, grubby trousers during the location shoot.
Quite a difference: The forthcoming film sees him play William Chester Minor, a former US army surgeon who contributes more than 10,000 entries to the Oxford English Dictionary while being held at an asylum for the criminally insane
Gibson, whose enormous beard - essential for his portrayal of the 19th century academic - has seen him undergo his own radical transformation, was last seen shooting scenes on Wednesday.
The actor looked rather eccentric as he strolled across set baring his chest under a black coat teamed with dark blue jeans.
Thumbing his way through the pages of a shooting script, Mel appeared animated while chatting to a member of the production team.
Latest role: Mel Gibson, whose enormous beard - essential for his portrayal of 19th century academic Sir James Murray - has seen him undergo his own radical transformation, was last seen shooting scenes on Wednesday
The Professor and the Madman sees Gibson reunite with writer and director Farhad Safinia, his screenwriting partner on 2006 hit Apocalypto.
Other stars to feature on the period project include Natalie Dormer, Ioan Gruffudd and Jeremy Irvine.
She's remained tight-lipped in the face of her ex-husband Professor Green's new music.
And Millie Mackintosh took to social media to share a blissfully happy snap of herself with her 'love' Hugo Taylor on Tuesday, just as the rapper gave an interview about how the pair moved in different circles.
Looking remarkably fresh faced following their gym class, Millie captioned the couple selfie: 'My and spin partner'.
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Inseparable couple: Millie Mackintosh took to social media to share a blissfully happy snap of herself with her 'love' Hugo Taylor on Tuesday
Meanwhile, Pro Green insisted he never felt out of his depth with his Quality Street heiress ex-wife - a former star of reality show Made In Chelsea - and her pals because he stuck with the same friends he's always had.
Asked if he felt at odds in Millie's usual haunts, he told Grazia magazine: 'I never moved into that west London world.
'I have the same morals and values anywhere I go and I have the same circle of friends that I've always had.'
Despite his personal upheaval, Green - whose real name is Stephen Manderson - insists he is feeling 'content' and he is taking positive lessons from his divorce.
Speaking out: Pro Green insisted he never felt out of his depth with his Quality Street heiress ex-wife, adding that he's a 'happy' man these days
He said: 'The end of my marriage has taught me there's no permanence in life... These days I'm just happy.'
This comes after Millie reportedly covered her wedding dress in fake blood that she 'wished was his' for a tongue-in-cheek Halloween costume.
And Pro Green seems to have found humour in the most recent attack on their two-year-and-a-half marriage, after telling This Morning hosts that he was pleased she got to wear it again.
The rap artist, who completed his divorce from the reality star last year, had seemingly angered her with a new tell-all break-up track, but he now claims that she involved in that, too.
Seeing the funny side: Pro Green laughed off Millie's recent Halloween costume, which saw her cut up and bloody her wedding dress from their ceremony afterparty in 2013
'Millie was on the intro of [One Eye On The Door] initially,' he told Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield on Monday morning.
'When the song was coming out she text me to say you must be happy it's finally coming out. The song was written when we were still going out.'
The explosive track hints that cheating was a factor in the demise of their marriage, as well as a lack of action between the sheets and even substance abuse.
And despite the lyrics being leaked on the day of Millie's jilted bride Halloween costume, the musician insists that it was not meant to be personal, saying: 'Its not revenge - revenge for what?'
Moving on! Millie, 27, reportedly 'ripped' and 'bloodied' her 1,500 Grace Loves Lace wedding reception gown to create her Halloween costume this year, according to The Sun
Transformed! An inside source revealed to the paper that she 'ripped it to shreds and covered it with blood splashes'
Saying goodbye: The dress bears remarkable similarities with the gown she wore for the evening reception of her wedding
The Sun reported on Sunday that the former Made in Chelsea star, 27, 'ripped' and 'bloodied' the Grace Loves Lace gown she had worn to the evening reception of her wedding to the musician for the spooky festivities at Albert's in West London.
Onlookers told MailOnline that the 1,500 wedding dress was formed of a delicate lace, and it was pictured on her friend's Instagram to feature spaghetti straps and a plunging back - matching the description of her second dress.
The paper's source continued: 'She ripped it to shreds and covered it with blood splashes. She even joked she wished it was Stephen's blood.'
They added: 'Millie was joking that she was glad she had finally found good use for it!'
No drama: The musician was speaking to This Morning hosts about his marriage to Millie
Seeing the funny side, Professor Green quipped on Monday: 'At least she got to wear it again! It's hers to do what she wants with.'
He added: 'If you cant have a sense of humour... Divorce is horrible but if you cant look back at your marriage with any kindness then it was a mistake.
'If I was bitter about it then it would have been a mistake. We never got married to get a divorce we got married because we were young and in love.'
Professor Green was on the show to talk about his new documentaries about suicide and about legalising marijuana, as well as child poverty.
Seeing the funny side: He revealed that Millie 'sings' on his new break-up track One Eye On The Door
Opening up: He was also on the show to talk about his new documentaries
And while he is rumoured to have moved on in the dating world with model Fae Williams, Millie seemed to have rekindled her romance with former Made In Chelsea co-star Hugo Taylor just one week after her divorce was finalised.
Now-inseparable Millie and Hugo first dated during her stint on E4 reality show Made In Chelsea in 2011.
The pair went public with their relationship again in May - after the fitness fanatic was granted a 'quickie divorce' from the rapper, which dissolved the marriage in just 30 seconds.
The original: Millie first wore a 4,000 Alice Temperley dress on her wedding day to Professor Green (above) at Babington House in Somerset back in 2013
In a joint statement at the time, they said: 'It is a mutual decision, we still care deeply about each other and would like it to be known that it is on amicable terms and we wish each other well.'
In summer 2015, it was then reported that Millie had demanded a divorce during explosive row in Istanbul, before the pair announced their separation in February the following year.
Millie and Professor Green married at Babington House in Somerset back in 2013, in front of an intimate gathering of family and friends.
On the day, she wore a 4,000 Alice Temperley dress but later changed into a second, white Grace Loves Lace gown.
Sprightly: Professor Green was then seen out and about in London hours after the reports emerged on Sunday morning
Mr popular: The singer has been a hit after a charming appearance on Channel 4's Sunday Brunch
Loved-up: Millie was out celebrating Halloween with her new love Hugo Taylor - who she confirmed she had reunited with in May, after a brief romance in 2011
She's due to welcome her first child in just a few weeks time.
And Stephanie Davis seemed to be making the most of her pregnancy as she cradled her baby bump on holiday in Spain.
Clad in an orange bikini, the 23-year-old reality starlet looked in good spirits as she soaked up the sunshine by the pool.
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Yummy mummy-to-be! Stephanie Davis seemed to be making the most of her pregnancy as she cradled her baby bump on holiday in Spain
The neon bikini did wonders to offset her glowing complexion, whilst the cut of the garment exposed her chest tattoo.
Accentuating her natural beauty with a neutral make-up palette, the yummy mummy-to-be also wore her raven coloured locks.
Just one swimsuit wasn't enough for the former Hollyoaks star as she also showcased her pregnancy curves in a chic one-piece.
Oh baby! She's due to welcome her first child in just a few weeks time and Stephanie looked in good spirits as she made the most of her final days of pregnancy
Orange you glad to see me! Clad in an orange bikini, the 23-year-old reality starlet looked in good spirits as she soaked up the sunshine by the pool
Healthy glow: The neon bikini did wonders to offset her glowing complexion, whilst the cut of the garment exposed her chest tattoo
Brunette beauty: Accentuating her natural beauty with a neutral make-up palette, the yummy mummy-to-be also wore her raven coloured locks
The garment featured a halter neckline and a high rise cut that exposed her floral thigh tattoo.
Whilst Stephanie looked happy and healthy in the snaps, on Wednesday she sparked concerns after being rushed to hospital.
Thankfully, the Celebrity Big Brother star took to social media on Monday to confirm she and the baby are well.
Bumping along nicely! Just one swimsuit wasn't enough for the former Hollyoaks star as she also showcased her pregnancy curves in a chic one-piece
Loving life: Stephanie looked a picture of bliss as she cradled her baby bump through the swimsuit whilst taking it easy around the edge of the pool
She wrote: 'Hi everyone just wanted to let you all know I'm finally home and on the mend.
'Thank you so much for all your lovely messages and continued support over the last week. It really means a lot. Love always Stephanie and Bump xxx'.
Meanwhile Jeremy, 26 - who has denied being the father of her unborn child - also took to social media to delete all negative comments about his ex.
Reach for the skies: Stephanie seemed to be getting some exercise in as she lifted herself onto her toes before jumping in the pool for a quick dip in the sunshine
Whilst Stephanie did not reveal what exactly was her mystery illness, a spokesperson for the star told OK! Online at the time: Stephanie Davis has been subject to a number of rumours online the last few days regarding her pregnancy.
We can confirm Stephanie has been in hospital since Wednesday 2nd November due to an illness and is currently undergoing further tests.
We would like to confirm that Stephanie has not given birth and her unborn baby boy is doing well.
She's preparing for her 17th time down the Victoria's Secret runway, this month.
And practise very much seemed to make perfect as Alessandra Ambrosio enjoyed a relaxing pre-show holiday in Dubai this week.
Relishing the calm before the inevitable storm, the mother of two slipped into a teeny bikini to show off her model credentials in full for her many followers.
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Bikini babe: Alessandra Ambrosio was sharing pictures from her idyllic holiday in Dubai on Tuesday
Despite spending a few days relaxing at the beach, Alessandra hopped straight over to Hong Kong on Tuesday to continue her adventure.
She will soon be destined for Paris, France where the lingerie brand is hosting its annual catwalk show.
Due for her 17th appearance as a model, the 35-year-old shared a sneak peek at her costume with E! news last week.
'I love the colours,' she said, describing an exquisite winged costume with teal lingerie.
Runway ready: The previous day Alessandra flaunted her incredibly toned abs in a skimpy black bikini in an Instagram post
'It's from the segment called The Road Ahead, and it's all [about] exotic places. It has beautiful colors from all over the world, very exotic. I got beautiful yellow feathers with sparkles in it, and this beautiful green jewellery.'
She also teased, 'Lots of gold and beautiful elements' for the holiday show, which is due to air in December.
This year's show will feature fellow models Adriana Lima, Stella Maxwell, Lily Aldridge and Martha Hunt.
Other newcomers for this year's show include Bella Hadid, Dilone and Georgia Fowler.
Sunkissed: The 35-year-old beauty shared a rather saucy snap on Instagram on Sunday from her Middle Eastern trip which was sure to highlight her model features
'Bond style': Alessandra took to Snapchat to show off herself and two gal pals exiting the ocean on Monday
Inspiration? It was much like the iconic scene featuring Ursula Andress from 1962 James Bond flick Dr. No
While Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner will be walking the show for the second year in a row.
Jasmine Tookes was chosen to wear this year's coveted Fantasy Bra, which is worth $3 million.
Aside from modelling, Alessandra seemed to be giving it her best 'Bond Girl' at the weekend, when she was seen emerging from the sea with her friends, on her travels.
She has taken to Instagram and Snapchat to document the vacation.
In one of the more eyebrow raising snaps, she could he seen seductively making her exit from the ocean much like the iconic scene featuring Ursula Andress from 1962 James Bond flick Dr. No.
Alessandra proudly put her svelte model figure on display as she emerged from the water in a skimpy patterned bikini.
She was rocking her own clothing line as she captioned the image: 'Ale by Alessandra Bond style.'
Rest and relaxation: The 35-year-old model rocked a chic colourful patterned bikini from her Ale By Alessandra range
'Girls just wanna have fun': She also shared a snap of she and her two gal pals splashing around
Colourful character: She put her signature brunette tresses in a braid
Model figure: She proudly put her statuesque figure on display in a matching black Victoria's Sport sports bra and leggings combination with the caption 'train like an angel'
Keri Russell worked with Adam Driver - who played Star Wars' latest bad guy Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens - on Monday night.
The beauty was there to support the actor - who is the founder of Arts In The Armed Forces - at the 8th Annual Armed Forces Performance on Broadway held at Studio 54 in NYC.
The 40-year-old actress looked slim in an understated outfit just six months after welcoming her last child.
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Subtle and elegant: Keri Russell joined Adam Driver, who is the founder of Arts in the Armed Forces, at the 8th Annual Armed Forces Performance on Broadway held at Studio 54
Driver, former Marine, founded the non-profit organization Arts In The Armed Forces, which is dedicated to bridging the divides between the military and civilians.
Wearing a black oversized sweater with the sleeves rolled up and cropped dark blue jeans, the actress looked effortless as she turned the attention over to the great cause for the day.
The outfit showcased her small frame and slender legs - the actress is a tiny 5ft3in.
The mother-of-three donned a pair of comfortable-looking, black pointed boots that widened at the ankle. Sticking her hand into her pocket, Keri was the epitome of cool at the sold-out AITAF event.
Laid back: Sticking her hand into her pocket, Keri was the epitome of cool at the sold-out AITAF event
The Felicity star had her brunette locks blown out in a wavy, windswept fashion.
Her blue eyes stood out with the help of smoked-out eyeshadow, dark eyeliner, and layers of mascara.
She wore a swipe of berry red lipstick and peach rouge.
Piercing blue: Russell's blue eyes stood out with the help of smoked-out eyeshadow, dark eyeliner, and layers of mascara
Little: Russell looked tiny in comparison to her co-stars of the day, Adam Driver and Pablo Screiber at the event that took place in NYC on Monday
His big franchise: Driver played Star Wars' latest bad guy Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens
Keri took the stage along with Driver and Orange Is The New Black's Pablo Schreiber. who is the brother of Liev Schreiber.
The actors performed a stage reading of Stephen Belber's provocative drama Tape, according to Playbill.
Just six months after giving birth to her third child and her partner Matthew Rhy's first, Keri is back to her pre-baby slender frame.
Love on set: Russell and her The Americans co-star Matthew Rhys started dating in 2013, around the same time that their show aired
The Golden Globe winner has two children, Willa Lou Deary (four) and Russell Deary (nine) with ex Shane Deary.
Russell and her The Americans co-star Matthew Rhys started dating in 2013, around the same time that their show aired.
The Strictly judges aren't rumoured to be fans of Ed Balls, with some reports suggesting that they think the fan favourite is 'making a mockery' of the dance programme.
And the BBC show's head judge Len Goodman poked fun at the former MP's weight on tonight's The One Show.
'Just look at him, the chubby little chap,' he told Alex Jones and guest host Caroline Quentin as footage was played over Ed performing last week.
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Critique: Len Goodman described Ed Balls as a 'chubby little chap' on Friday night's The One Show
Unimpressed, Caroline ticked Len off, saying: 'There's nothing wrong with being chubby, Len. Chubbiness is not the problem, clearly!'
However, Len was optimistic about the former MP's chances of scoring an unlikely victory in the BBC1 show.
'Who knows it could well happen,' said Len. 'Every week I think he's been bottom with the judges but every week he must have been top with the viewers.
'He's good. He's not like Anne Widdicombe was, just sliding around the floor. I love Anne. But Ed does come out and dance. He has a go. '
Ticked off: Caroline Quentin told Len there
Unlikely favourite: Fans have been voting in their droves for the former MP and his partner Katya Jones
He has a go: Len did admit that he was pleased Ed 'comes out to dance' on the show
Len's comments come after reports he and fellow judges Darcey Bussell, Craig Revel Horwood and Bruno Tonioli are not seeing the funny side of Ed's success, and are concerned the politician is making 'a mockery' of Strictly, according to The Sun.
An inside source told the newspaper the judges believe Ed should throw in the towel and quit the show, now that he is creeping ever closer to the grand finale next month.
However, producers at the BBC have watched ratings climb every week, and put a lot of it down to the public support that Ed is receiving from the public.
It takes two to tango: Ed and his partner have proved an unlikely hit
While the politician's 'dad moves' concern the likes of Darcey and Len - who worry the show is becoming somewhat of a circus - the producers consider it TV gold.
A source told The Sun: 'The judges publicly say Ed is entertaining because he is. But privately they think its making a mockery of the show if he gets to the final as there are so many talented dancers this year.
Ed has sailed through the competition week after week, not once finding himself in the bottom two, nor having to face a dance off after proving hugely popular with viewers.
When Gordys Market opened its third grocery store in Chippewa Falls in May 2015, its president, Jeff Schafer, hinted the time would come when he would step down from the all-consuming job of running the rapidly-growing family owned-and-operated business.
That time came Monday, not only for Jeff Schafer, 54, but for his brother, Rick, 55, who was the companys vice president of facilities. Two of the driving forces behind that expansion across western Wisconsin combined to work for more than 80 years for Gordys.
Their joint retirement was announced Monday by their parents, Gordy and Donna Schafer, who founded the business a half-century ago with a single store in Chippewa Falls. Now, they have stores in 20 other communities.
David Schafer, a younger brother of Jeffs and Ricks, was promoted from chief financial officer to Gordys chief executive officer.
All three brothers were unavailable to discuss the changes Monday, but they all offered comments through a statement from the company.
It has been an incredible journey working with my family and the hardworking team at Gordys Market, Jeff Schafer said. I am proud to turn the business over to the fully capable hands of my brothers, David and Dan, sister Jenna, as well as the third generation of Schafers who are now an instrumental part of the family business.
We have truly enjoyed serving our communities, meeting so many of our customers and helping my parents further the family business, Rick Schafer said.
Gordys growth has come at a phenomenal clip. For many years, they had the downtown Chippewa Falls store and another by Lake Wissota. Then they began moving into Eau Claire, taking over a store on Birch Street in 2005.
The last several years the dominoes have begun falling, as Gordys assumed control of most of the grocery market in Eau Claire. It bought Rons Castle Foods in 2012, and took over the Mega Co-op grocery stores in an agreement announced in January.
Gordys has also added stores in many other western Wisconsin towns, and its growth opportunities are not expected to stop.
More moves
Jenna Schafer, a daughter of Gordy and Donna Schafer, is moving from vice president of information technology and human resources to serve as chief information officer. Along with David, she began her career as a part-time clerk at Gordys Lake Wissota store.
We have a great deal of fond memories working with our brothers (Jeff and Rick), and have been lucky enough to grow Gordys Market from the one store on the south side of Chippewa with our father and mother to now 26 (stores), David Schafer said.
Jenna and I are looking forward to the next 50 years and leading the team of 2,000 employees here at Gordys, he said.
In another promotion announced Monday, Joel Jacobson will be chief operating officer of Gordys Market. Jacobson, who first started working for Gordys when he was a junior at Chippewa Falls High School, had been vice president of sales.
With the company growing so quickly, one of Jacobsons goals was trying to bring stability to everything. That including working closely with vendors.
I was just in a meeting with a vendor, a guy Ive known since 1993, Jacobson, who started working at the lake store in the frozen foods and dairy department, said Monday.
We want to continue to be a great employer, and a great partner to our vendors and our wholesalers.
As the non-Schafer part of the family team, Jacobson was asked what made the family business so successful.
Theyre a great family to work for, and they give us a culture of ownership. They are very good at allowing us to make decisions and trust us and not just me. Im talking about our store managers, our department heads, all the way down the line, Jacobson said.
I still see Gordy weekly. I still talk to Jeff and Rick weekly. Theyre good people. They want the best for the community first. That is a really important thing around here.
They made a rare red carpet appearance together at the Hollywood Film Awards.
And Hugh Grant and his girlfriend Anna Eberstein were making a triumphant return to London on Tuesday following the Bridget Jones star being honoured at the glitzy ceremony.
Hugh, 56, and Anna, 37, kept a low profile as they flew into Heathrow Airport from Los Angeles, sporting low-key ensembles.
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Back on home turf: Hugh Grant and his girlfriend Anna Eberstein were making a triumphant return to London on Tuesday following the Hollywood Film Awards
The romcom king was dressed smartly in a white shirt and suit jacket, pushing a trolley filled with luggage.
Anna added a military touch to her travelling ensemble thanks to a gold button embellished jacket.
She sported a pair of skinny jeans and toted a leather holdall in one hand.
Low-key couple: Hugh, 56, and Anna, 37, kept a low profile as they flew into Heathrow Airport from Los Angeles
Chic: Anna added a military touch to her travelling ensemble thanks to a gold button embellished jacket
While it is not known where they met, Hugh and Anna have two young children together - a son John, born in 2012, and a second child welcomed in October last year.
The sex and name of the baby remains a mystery, but the birth was confirmed by Anna's mother who told a local Swedish newspaper that she had another grandchild.
The star also raises two other children - a daughter Tabitha, four, and son Felix, two, with Chinese beauty Tinglan Hong.
Public appearance: The pair made a rare red carpet appearance together at the Hollywood Film Awards over the weekend
Hugh was recognised for his turn opposite Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins, where he played the famed heiress and socialite's husband St. Clair Bayfield.
The actor's Four Weddings And A Funeral lover Andie MacDowell fitting handed him his best supporting actor gong at the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday.
Self-effacing Hugh told her: 'I'm just depressed at how much better preserved you are than I am after 22 years. Do you use any special creams or anything like that?
Hugo also said he was astounded to actually get recognised for his acting, saying his award would receive pride of place in his spacious residence.
'I almost never get a prize and I'm so pleased with this one. It will not be in my loo or used as a doorstep.'
She routinely delivers high-energy performances packed with impressive choreography.
And on Tuesday morning pop star Jennifer Lopez proved that all that dancing does a body good as she showed off her perfect pins while headed to the gym in New York.
The 47-year-old had her sculpted legs on fine display in a pair of spray-on leggings and wrapped up warm in a black jumper with the word LOVE spelled in cream-coloured capitals.
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Stepping out: On Tuesday morning pop star Jennifer Lopez showed off her perfect pins while heading to the gym in New York
The Waiting For Tonight hit-maker banished the icy wind with a plush winter coat, which skimmed her thighs and included a luxurious fur lining, and a fabulously furry hood, which kept her warm while also affording her a degree of anonymity.
J. Lo pounded the pavement in a pair of on-trend utility boots, which gave the 5ft 5in stunner a bit more height while adding even more edge to her funky winter outfit.
Her coat featured a long silver zip up the front and two very deep pockets, which the mother-of-two used to keep her hands warm ahead of her workout.
Keep it hot: The Waiting For Tonight hit-maker banished the icy wind with a plush winter coat, which skimmed her thighs and included a luxurious fur hood
Practical: Her coat featured a long silver zip up the front and two very deep pockets, which Jen used to keep her hands warm while walking to and from her workout
After her morning exercise session, she left the gym wearing a pair of neon orange Nike trainers with matching shoestrings and white soles.
The star was spotted later filming scenes for her Shades of Blue series, on the streets of NYC.
Her hair was styled in her character's curls, as she joined Ray Liotta on the set in Queens.
The workout routine had paid off, as she showcased her slim waist and toned physique in a hip-hugging pair of trousers.
Pop of colour: After her morning exercise session, J. Lo left the gym wearing neon orange Nike trainers, which helped jazz up her largely black ensemble
The Bronx-born beauty may have been squeezing exercise in ahead of Tuesday night's U.S. presidential election results and one of the star-studded viewing parties that will take place as the results roll in.
In recent months Jennifer, who is of Puerto Rican descent, has thrown her weight behind Hillary Clinton by frequently encouraging Latino voters to rally behind her at the polls.
On Monday she made a final appeal, uploading a short video to Instagram that attracted more than 1.7 million views within 24 hours.
Busy: The star was spotted later filming scenes for her Shades of Blue series, on the streets of NYC
Ready for action: Her hair was styled in her character's curls
Looking good: The workout routine had paid off, as she showcased her slim waist and toned physique in a hip-hugging pair of trousers
Shock! She practiced her surprised face alongside Ray Liotta on the set in Queens
Working: The pair were filming scenes for the cop drama
Speaking to her 54 million followers, she said: 'Florida! This place is very special to me. This year 27 million Latinos will be eligible to vote. So that means we have a powerful voice and will impact this election.
'We must show up and vote! Dont let me down. Lets show that were with her.'
At the end of October, Jennifer and her ex-husband Marc Anthony, who shares her Puerto Rican heritage, performed at a special concert for Hillary at the Bayfront Park Amphitheater in Miami.
Doing her part to inspire the audience, the Gigli actress slid into a typically showstopping outfit, comprised of a black satin robe with a hem at mid-thigh.
The former First Lady, 69, joined them onstage and embraced the Out Of Sight star and her erstwhile partner, 48.
Following the concert, the Miami Herald reported that whilst onstage, Hillary took the opportunity to encourage voters to hit the polls early.
According to the paper, she said: 'We just heard Jennifer perform "Lets Get Loud." Well, I say: "Lets Get Loud" at the voting booth. You can vote early. Dont wait another day to vote.'
Swing state realness: Jennifer, who is of Puerto Rican descent, has worked hard to encourage Latino voters to get out and support Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. At the end of October she performed at a special concert in support of the former First Lady in Miami
His day job is as a high school teacher of television production in Perkasie, Pennsylvania.
But on Monday Richard Curtis was back in the co-host chair at ABC's Live! With Kelly Ripa.
'It's amazing how daytime talk shows have taken over the school,' he joked as he returned to the show after making his debut on October 21.
'It's amazing!': High school teacher Richard Curtis couldn't contain his excitement as he returned to the co-host chair at ABC's Live! With Kelly Ripa on Monday
Curtis, a 30-year-old father-of-two, won a social media contest to fill in the spot left vacant six months ago following the departure of Michael Strahan.
While Kelly's sidekicks have mostly been celebrities, Curtis was an unexpected hit with viewers with producers bringing him back due to public demand.
He said during his appearance Monday that he had to tell himself, 'wake up, Richard, you're dreaming,' when he learned he was being invited back, adding it was 'fantastic.'
Popular: Curtis, 30, a married father-of-two from Perkasie, Pennsylvania, won a social media contest to be a guest host. His first appearance on October 21 was so successful, he was invited back
Not everyone is impressed, though, he revealed. Apparently his five-year-old daughter told her grandmother she'd rather he was on the Disney channel.
On Monday, Curtis interviewed former Sex And The City star Jessica Parker about her new HBO series Divorce.
The actress appeared to be impressed.
'I feel like you've secretly being doing talk shows for, like, the last 10 years,' she told him. 'It's really quite something.'
A source told ET last month that the executives 'really' like Curtis, and 'he's definitely in the running' to replace Strahan as Kelly's permanent sidekick.
However, the source also added that the show's producers 'are being cautious because he's unproven.'
'They love that he could go from being a school teacher to a daytime talk show host. They think that's a really cool story,' the insider stated.
She's been happily soaking up the sunshine with her beau Alex Bowen.
And Olivia Buckland made the most of her final day in Barbados as she slipped into a skimpy swimsuit for a sizzling snap on Sunday.
Showing off her phenomenal figure, the 22-year-old Love Island star slipped into the plunging one-piece that flaunted her hourglass curves.
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Sun like it hot! Olivia Buckland, 22, made the most of her final day in Barbados as she slipped her phenomenal figure into a skimpy swimsuit for a sizzling snap on Sunday
Struggling to contain her ample assets in the scanty garment, Olivia flashed her generous cleavage and some sideboob in the ensemble.
The denim look swimsuit also featured tie up detailing at the side which showed her slender waist and gave more of a glimpse at her enviably peachy posterior.
Wearing her golden locks loose and tousled, she finished off the look with a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses.
Chest a glimpse! Struggling to contain her ample assets in the scanty garment, Olivia flashed her generous cleavage and some sideboob in the ensemble
Cute couple: Later in the evening, Olivia made the most of her final evening in paradise with her man, as she snuggled up to Alex Bowen during a romantic dinner
Gorgeous in green: Clad in a plunging khaki dress, the reality starlet oozed glamour in the sizzling shots, working her angles like a professional
Later in the evening, Olivia made the most of her final evening in paradise with her man, as she snuggled up to Alex during a romantic dinner.
Clad in a plunging khaki dress, the reality starlet oozed glamour in the sizzling shots, working her angles like a professional.
Meanwhile, Alex, 24, looked equally as stylish as his partner, showing off his gym-honed physique in an open white shirt and black skinny jeans.
Bikini babe: Olivia has been showing off her impeccably toned and tanned figure on her romantic Barbados getaway with her handsome beau
Alex and Olivia found love during the second season of the ITV2 show and their relationship has gone from strength to strength.
The handsome star recently moved into his girlfriend's Wolverhampton home, and the pair bought an adorable French bulldog puppy together called Reggie.
Speaking to Femail about her beau, Olivia recently gushed: 'I know it sounds cliche but I honestly dont think it could be any better.
'When Im with him it just feels so right, its like nothing Ive experienced before. My mum always told me that when you find The One youll see why your past relationships werent right. Alex is The One.'
She's one of the more famous faces throwing caution to the wind and heading into the outback this year.
But if Carol Vorderman has any fears about what she's let herself in for in the Australian jungle, she didn't show it when she landed in Brisbane, on Tuesday.
Strolling through arrivals at the airport with a big smile on her face, the 55-year-old former Countdown star looked delighted to have arrived Down Under.
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Ready to rumble: if Carol Vorderman has any fears about what she's let herself in for in the Australian jungle, she didn't show it when she landed in Brisbane, on Tuesday
Clearly keen to squeeze in as much comfort as possible ahead of her sojourn into the jungle, the former Countdown star cut a casual yet chic figure.
The British TV star opted to keep herself warm on the flight over from UK by throwing on a white pullover.
She teamed the comfy knitwear with a pair of tight-fitting beige trousers, which clung to her frame and accentuated her lithe figure.
These boots are made for the jungle: She rounded her ensemble off in a sassy manner with a pair of suede knee-high boots
Slim and trim: Carol showed off her fit figure in the tight fitting ensemble
She rounded her ensemble off in a sassy manner with a pair of suede knee-high boots.
Wearing her long blonde hair loose and tousled, the star rocked a natural bed-head do, which framed her features.
Carol wore a huge smile on her face as she pushed her trolley through the airport, clearly looking forward to the challenge of what lays ahead.
Ready for the jungle: Carol seemed excited about her televised challenge which begins on Sunday
Speaking about her decision to forsake all comforts and head into the jungle, the presenter revealed she was relishing the chance to turn her life upside down and head into the infamous outback.
A fan of the show for many a year, the former Countdown star explained her decision.
She said: 'I have been watching the show for years and have laughed so much. It is so funny.
'I'll be 56 in December and there is life in the old bird yet!': The presenter revealed she was relishing the chance to turn her life upside down
'Now I am a menopausal Mama, I am having the time of my life, and I'm doing a lot more adventurous stuff. Its the sense of adventure that I love about this show.'
She jokingly added: 'I'll be 56 in December and there is life in the old bird yet!'
Joining Carol in the jungle are the likes of Lisa Snowdon, Scarlett Moffatt, Ola Jordan, Adam Thomas, Wayne Bridge, and Larry Lamb.
Her on-stage portrayal of Vera in the play Stepping Out has been gaining rave reviews.
Yet Amanda Holden proved all her years in the public eye haven't gone to her head as she did her good deed for the day while enjoying a spot of shopping in Portsmouth on Tuesday.
After a passer-by dropped his wallet, the TV personality, 45, and her pal sprung into action by shouting at the man to get his attention in order to hand back his possession.
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Good deed! Amanda Holden, 45, shouted at a man to get his attention in order to hand back his wallet which he accidentally dropped in Portsmouth on Tuesday
All warmed up in a long black coat, black jeans and scarf, the Britain's Got Talent judge's attention was diverted from her phone to the personal item which accidentally dropped to the floor.
With her handbag and another furry wrap draped on her arm, the blonde star looked concerned as her pal quickly bent down to pick up the wallet.
Satisfied that the wallet was being handed back to the rightful owner, Amanda continued on with duties on her phone.
Her sighting comes just before she's set to take the stage at Chichester Festival Theatre for her last stretch of dates for the musical, Stepping Out.
Doing the right thing: Satisfied that the wallet was being handed back to the rightful owner, Amanda continued on with duties on her phone
The comedy charts the lives of seven women and one man attempting to tap dance.
The cast includes Tamzin Outhwaite, Angela Griffin, former EastEnders star Tracy-Ann Oberman and Emmerdale's Nicola Stephenson.
Amanda plays Vera in the theatre show while Tamzin has been on tour for nearly a month with the play, which is hitting the West End next year.
Holden has also struck up quite the friendship with Tamzin and stepped out to celebrate her 46th birthday in style, punting on the River Cam in Cambridge on Saturday.
The stunner looked in her element as she enjoyed a selfie with the birthday girl as they passed King's College wrapped up in a number of blankets.
Pals: Holden has struck up quite the friendship with her on-stage co-star Tamzin Outhwaite and stepped out to celebrate her 46th birthday, punting on the River Cam in Cambridge on Saturday
It's also been quite a difficult time for Amanda on the family front as her sister Debbie was recently involved in a serious car accident.
Following her crash on October 6, Debbie was described as being in a 'critical but stable' condition at a hospital in Cornwall.
A source told MailOnline at the time that the family hoped Debbie would 'make a full recovery' and was 'out of the worst'.
Debbie, who is single without children, also escaped death during a Nepal earthquake in April last year.
Kate Bosworth seems to always have time for her fans.
And she proved it on Monday as the 33-year-old actress stopped to sign an autograph for a young male admirer as she headed into the Los Angeles International Airport.
The blonde Blue Crush star looked chic in a black leather jacket and jeans.
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Happy to stop: Kate Bosworth signed an autograph for a male fan when she headed into LAX airport in Los Angeles on Monday
Seasoned jetsetter: Wearing a plain white tee and two-toned loose blue jeans that cut above the ankle, the actress looked cool and casual for her departing flight
The stylish celeb amped up the look with a black, structured suede jacket that gave off rocker vibes and fresh white Adidas sneakers.
The Blue Crush starlet's fresh face was partially hidden behind large black sunglasses.
Her blonde hair was let down in a natural wave.
Comfy glam: The jeans were ripped at the ankle, giving a hipster vibe
The actress, who is married to writer-director Michael Polish, seemed to be in high spirits.
Though super casual and comfy, Bosworth's loose blue jeans, cut above the ankle, are definitely on-trend.
Kate will soon be seen in BBC miniseries SS-GB which follows the exploits of a British homicide detective who must investigate a murder in a German-occupied England during World War II.
Busy blonde: Kate will soon be seen in BBC miniseries SS-GB which follows the exploits of a British homicide detective who must investigate a murder
She is is also set to star in The Domestics, which has been described as a thriller and a survival love story.
In it, a young husband and wife must fight to return home in a post-apocalyptic mid-western landscape plagued by brutal gangs.
He's set to hit screens this month in the highly-anticipated Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
But Eddie Redmayne nearly ruled himself out of the role of legendary wizard Newt Scamander in favour of playing Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The 34-year-old actor revealed he missed out on the role after fluffing his audition for the part of the film's villain, saying his 'best "kooh paaah"' wasn't enough.
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'I did my best "koohh paaah"!': Eddie Redmayne nearly ruled himself out of the role of legendary Newt Scamander in favour of playing Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Speaking to Mike Ryan for Uproxx, Eddie explained that he and Irish actor, Domhall Gleeson, often go up against each other for the same roles.
Asked if it was the First Order's General Hux that he was auditioning for, the role that Gleeson landed, Eddie revealed he was in fact reading for Adam Driver's Kylo Ren.
Speaking about his brush with the Dark Side of the Force, Eddie said: ' I was going for, I think, for Adam Driver. They gave me like a Star Trek scene or like something from Pride and Prejudice.'
He explained: 'It was one of those films. That's so top secret, they dont give you the actual lines.Then they tell you youre auditioning for the baddie.'
Not quite a wand: The actor, 34, revealed he missed out on the role of Kylo after fluffing his audition for the part of the film's villain, saying his 'best "kooh paaah"' wasn't enough
But it seems the audition with acclaimed casting director, Nina Gold, didn't go so well, as Eddie revealed he came up short with his villainous inspiration.
'If youre me, you then put some ridiculous voice on,' he laughed.
He went on to explain he did his best version of Darth Vader's iconic rasp, the product of James Earl Jones' vocal magic, which didn't impress Nina.
'There was a hilarious moment because it was Nina Gold, who I have to thank a lot because shes cast me in several films, and she was just sitting there and I was trying again and again with different versions of my kind of koohh paaaah voice,' he said.
'I was going for, I think, for Adam Driver': Asked if it was the First Order's General Hux that he was auditioning for, Eddie revealed he was in fact reading for Adam Driver's Kylo Ren
'If youre me, you then put some ridiculous voice on': But it seems the audition with casting director, Nina Gold, didn't go so well, as Eddie said he came up short with his villainous display
Some inspiration... Eddie revealed it was his Darth Vader impression that let him down, saying: 'I was trying again and again with different versions of my kind of koohh paaaah voice'
'And after like ten shots shes like, You got anything else? I was like, No.'
But luckily for Eddie, his failure to become a Sith Lord meant that he was able to take on the role of Newt, in the Harry Potter spin-off.
Eddie plays the lead of Newt Scamander, a wizard who inadvertently unleashes a plague of magical beasts on the city of New York - seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book at Hogwarts.
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them hits screens on November 17.
Diane Kruger is known as a top-notch actress thanks to turns in Inglourious Basterds and The Infiltrator.
But in the 1990s, the beautiful blonde German actress was just another model in the crowd.
On Tuesday the 40-year-old siren shared a clip of herself on the catwalk. And behind her was another model-turned-actress, Jaime King. 'Omg Jaime King, we were actually children,' the ex of Joshua Jackson captioned the 30 second clip.
Memories: Diane Kruger shared a clip on Tuesday from when she worked as a model on the runway. Behind her is Jaime King
Lasting friendship: Nearly two decades later, the two are still good friends, here they are pictured in February
Though both Kruger and King have had long careers and made a name for themselves as actresses in Hollywood, this throwback clip proves that the blondes' teenage years were spent in the fashion world in the 90s.
Kruger was first on the runway.
She sashayed away, showing off her tiny waist in a taupe toned crop top and matching pants.
What waist?: Kruger made the first appearance, showing off her tiny waist in a taupe toned crop top and matching pants
Multitalented: This throwback clip proves that the blondes' teenage years were spent dominating the fashion industry of the 90s
All that: The actress rocked her signature blonde hair that fell just past her shoulders parted to one side and crimped in true 90s style
A video posted by Diane Kruger (@dianekruger) on Nov 8, 2016 at 5:29am PST
Kruger rocked her signature blonde hair just past her shoulders, parted to one side and crimped in true Nineties style.
Her younger counterpart King strutted right behind her and wore a spaghetti strap sheath dress that matched the color of Kruger's crop top and pants combo.
The Hart Of Dixie star had her long fluffy blonde hair crimped and cascading down her back, pushed behind one ear.
Chick flick: The 30 second clip featured a young Kruger and King strutting the runway
The looks in the video would all be envied today - the models look like they may have just stepped onto a Yeezy stage.
It seems the two beauties both enjoyed a bit of reminiscing on the early days of their stardom:
King, who is now a mother of two, reposted the video on her Instagram to her one million followers, captioning it 'REPOST.'
Hair envy: The Hart of Dixie star had her long blonde hair crimped and cascading down her back
Diane has made a habit of sharing sentimental thoughts with her 510k Instagram followers.
The newly single actress posted a quote as a 'final thought' on Instagram following her split with Joshua Jackson, 'A relationship without trust is like having a phone with no service. And what do you do with a phone with no service? You play games.'
The actress and Joshua Jackson ended their own 10-year romance in July.
Since People revealed via their reps that they'd broken up, the actress has shared a number of quotes possibly pertaining to love and dating.
Sentimental: The actress has shared a number of quotes possibly pertaining to love and dating
Four weeks past, she'd reposted a photo by the Instagram account J Iron Word.
A bit of a typewriter was visible, and the paper protruding form it bore the words: 'Tell me your past so I may understand you, but give me your now, so I may love you.'
The Inglourious Basterds actress' own caption read: 'Hopeless romantic.'
A week before that, she'd posted some free verse from Instagram poet Cleo Wade, the 27-year-old Page Six claimed is dating 47-year-old US Senator Cory Booker.
The poem exhorted: 'what you want must be held in the same hand as what you give.'
She was once a glamourous model and ex-fiancee of billionaire James Packer before recently reinventing herself as a Jewish woman named T'zipporah Malkah.
And in the hours leading up to the US presidential election, Kate Fischer has lashed out at fans who question her support for Donald Trump, while also slamming Hillary Clinton on social media.
The 42-year-old former socialite shared a photo of herself in bed while wearing a T-shirt with Trump's face adorned on the front, captioning it: 'The world will never be the same- go Daddy! (sic)'
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'Go daddy!' Kate Fischer, who now goes by her new Jewish name T'zipporah Malkah, has lashed out at fans while endorsing Donald Trump
T'zipporah went on to explain in the comments section that she adopted the term 'go daddy' from Milo Yiannopoulos, an outspoken British personality and fervent Trump supporter.
When fans questioned why the former model was endorsing the polarising candidate, she wasn't shy about hitting back.
'Tell me why Hillarys better (sic),' she wrote underneath the photo.
Controversial: The 42-year-old also slammed Hillary Clinton while going on her Instagram rant
Speaking up: The former model also revealed she refuses to be bullied for voting against the majority
Another asked: 'You are endorsing this man? What the f*** happened to you?'
In responding to the question, T'zipporah also revealed she's been bullied in the past and is standing up for what she believes.
'What happened to me is that I grew a spine and decided to stand up to bullying,' she told the fan.
Transformation: The ex-fiancee of billionaire James Packer revealed her name change on Facebook last month
Lashing out: T'zipporah also slammed a fan who said they'd met Trump and didn't like his behaviour
'We don't use disrespectful, hostile language and behaviour at those who choose to vote differently to us,' she continued. 'So let me repeat: what happened to me is that I do not condone bullying.'
Meanwhile, she also hit back at another fan who said they'd had a negative encounter with Trump.
'You said you met Trump and you didn't like him? You yourself call yourself a sneaky snake on your instagram profile. Maybe like many sane ppl he doesn't like sneaky snakes? (sic)' she responded.
Outspoken: Tzipporah also went on a Facebook rant to slam Democratic candidate Clinton
'Except that Donald trump CAN string 2 sentences together etc etc but not bad for a Leftie I reckon (sic),' T'zipporah wrote on social media
T'zipporah has also been sharing propaganda relating to Trump's rival Clinton on Facebook.
She then took to the comments section and took a swipe at Clinton, writing: 'Except that Donald trump CAN string 2 sentences together etc etc but not bad for a Leftie I reckon (sic).'
Last month, she revealed her name change to fans in a Facebook post talking about her new life as T'ziporah.
Reinvention: The former socialite has been living a new life out of the spotlight and told Daily Mail Australia exclusively that she's happy
In the impassioned update, she asked fans to stop calling her Kate while also taking a swipe at body critics.
'Kate got fat! Kate got fat! Kate got fat is older news than Moses,' she said, before adding: 'And anyway that's not my legal name anymore.'
T'zipora also exclusively told Daily Mail Australia that she's happy with the new life she leads, one that is completely out of the spotlight.
She headed to the voting booth this Election Day just like so many others.
And Halle Berry was one proud voter after she cast her ballot in Beverly Hills on Monday.
The 50-year-old Oscar winning actress wore not one but three I Voted stickers on her blue denim hat.
Hat's off you her! Halle Berry was one proud voter after she cast her ballot in Beverly Hills on Monday
Halle was smiling as she headed outside in a slouchy taupe turtleneck and baggy jeans.
The actress looked proud as she headed outside with her wallet and keys in hand, along with a pair of sunglasses to dress up the look.
Her extra casual yet comfy ensemble was made complete with a pair of sandals from Ipanema and studded earrings.
Like so many others, the actress took to Instagram to share with fans that she had voted.
Patriotic: The 50-year-old Oscar winning actress wore not one but three I Voted stickers on her blue messenger hat
In the photo, the actress had a smile on her face as she showed off her sticker-adorned hat.
'No caption necessary,' she wrote in the image.
She also made no secret of who she was supporting.
'No caption necessary': In the photo, the actress had a smile on her face as she showed off her sticker-adorned hat
On Monday, Halle revealed she was backing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as she posted an image of herself clad in a red, white, and blue shirt that read 'With Her.'
'Let's exercise our right to vote and our right to choose!', she captioned the snap. 'Let's do our best to respect the choices of others even if we don't agree ...that's what democracy is all about! us (heart emoticon).'
Meanwhile, Halle's divorce from her 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.
'That's what democracy is all about!': On Monday, Halle revealed she was backing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as she posted an image of herself clad in a red, white, and blue shirt that read 'With Her'
'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.'
Halle and Olivier have three-year-old son Maceo together.
She also has eight-year-old daughter Nahla with her ex, Gabriel Aubry.
The actress recently revealed to Extra that she is doing well post-split.
'I just feel happy, you know? I've arrived at a really good place once again, and thats always good news. Down time, dark times, dont last forever. So, the sun is out again and it feels great.'
She's the highly flying career woman and mother of a two-year old daughter.
And morning show host, Sonia Kruger, 51, stunned in a white jumpsuit with sheer bell sleeves and a high neck at the Channel Nine Upfronts on Tuesday.
The ensemble featured a low-v-neck back detail which showcased her golden tan.
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White hot statement! Sonia Kruger stunned in a white jumpsuit with sheer bell sleeves and a high neck at the Channel Nine Upfronts on Tuesday
Sonia wore her blonde locks up and her makeup bold with a bronzed eye and matching lip.
She accessorised her look with gold jewellery and matching metallic strappy heels.
Looking every inch the sexy mama, Sonia cut a relaxed figure as she posed against the media wall.
Golden lady: The ensemble featured a low-v-neck back detail which showcased her golden tan
Accessorise! She accessorised her look with gold jewellery and matching metallic strappy heels
At one stage the blonde beauty joined David Campbell and cheekily took a selfie in front of the media wall.
Meanwhile, it was recently rumoured that Sonia may not return as the host of The Voice.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the publication was told by Channel Nine that the outspoken Today Extra host was on annual leave, which was arranged well before her controversial comments.
Her contract with Nine is 'ongoing,' according to the spokesperson.
Kruger set off a social media firestorm in July when she argued on Today Extra that there is a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks.
Say cheese! At one stage, David Campbell cheekily took a selfie with his co-host, Sonia, in front of the media wall
The former Strictly Ballroom star said she had 'a lot of very good friends' who were Muslims and peace-loving, beautiful people.
'But there are fanatics,' she said.
She's endeavored to become an advocate for refugees by visiting Syrian families in Turkey.
She's also opened a night club in Athens that she hope will promote peace and love, has invented a new accent she calls Lilohan and is selling t-shirts for those who 'speak Lilohan' to benefit charity.
And on Tuesday Lindsay Lohan turned her hand to U.S. politics by conducting an informal exit poll on her Twitter.
'Heart for Hillary or retweet for Trump!' she tweeted.
Making another headline: Lindsay Lohan turned her hand to predicting the outcome of the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday by conducting her own informal exit poll via Twitter
New direction: The flame-haired actress divides her time between London and Greece and seems to be trying to establish herself as a humanitarian and politically-engaged celebrity
Within an hour, the tweet had generated more than 4.2 thousand 'likes' and just 325 retweets.
It's the latest indication that the former Mean Girls star is working hard to establish herself as a kind of humanitarian and politically-engaged celebrity.
The now London-based American actress signaled a change in direction with her trip to southeast Turkey to visit with Syrian refugees living there.
With her head covered, the former Parent Trap child star made a plea for the world to do more to help those displaced by the ongoing civil war in the Middle Eastern country.
Advocacy: Lindsay visited with Syrian refugees in southeast Turkey back in August and has spoken out about the need for more to be done to help those displaced by the civil war in Syria
New venture: The former Mean Girls star also opened a night club in Athens, Greece, last month and said she hopes to 'create charity with the club'
Then late last month, the flame-haired Lindsay made another impassioned plea on behalf of refugees at the opening of her new night club named for her by Greek business partner Dennis Papageorgi.
In a bizarre accent, she told reporters: 'Whereas in the past I've been associated with nightclubs and clubbing I said why not do my own and make it a good place. Where there's bad things happening in the world we can focus on the bad things and fix them with the club we can create charity with the club.'
After her new and unusual way of speaking made headlines, she described it as 'speaking Lilohan' and has just launched a line of T-shirts, sweaters and tanks that read: 'I only speak Lilohan'.
'The shirts will support young children suffering and help raise money for Turkey to help with Syrian refugees, I'm very excited we could make this happen!' she told DailyMail.com.
In addition to benefiting The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD), proceeds from the sales of the clothing will also go to help Cauldwell Children, a British charity that helps disabled children in the U.K.
US tycoon Robert Durst pleads not guilty in LA murder
New York real estate tycoon Robert Durst, whose bizarre life was the focus of an acclaimed HBO series, appeared in a Los Angeles court on Monday and denied killing a friend 16 years ago.
"I am not guilty. I did not kill Susan Berman," Durst, 73, who was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, told the judge.
The real estate scion is charged with the execution-style killing of Berman in December 2000, a day before she was due to be questioned by police who had reopened an investigation into the 1982 disappearance of Durst's first wife, Kathie Durst, in New York.
New York real estate heir Robert Durst speaks at the Los Angeles County Superior Court on November 7, 2016, during his trial where he pleaded not quilty for the December 2000 murder of Susan Berman Kevork Djansezian (Pool/AFP)
Berman, a Las Vegas mobster's daughter, had acted as a spokeswoman for Durst after he became a suspect in the disappearance of his wife.
The 55-year-old was shot in the back of the head at her Benedict Canyon home near Los Angeles on December 23.
According to the charge sheet, two handwriting experts believe Durst is behind an anonymous letter sent to authorities to alert them to a "cadaver" at Berman's home.
Durst first came into the spotlight after he was arrested in 2001 for the gruesome killing of his 71-year-old neighbor Morris Black, whose body parts were found stashed in trash bags in an estuary in Texas.
Despite his testimony describing how he cut Black into pieces, Durst was acquitted in 2003 after a sensational trial during which he pleaded self-defense.
He grabbed headlines again after he appeared to make an unwitting confession to a number of killings during filming of the six-part HBO television documentary "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst."
The series, which aired last year, focused on the deaths of Berman and Black, as well as the disappearance of his first wife, who vanished from the couple's New York cottage.
- 'What a disaster' -
In the final episode Durst was heard muttering to himself, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course," apparently unaware that a wireless microphone remained switched on while he used the bathroom.
"There is it, you're caught," he said at another point. "What a disaster."
He was arrested in March 2015, a day before the finale of "The Jinx" aired, when police found a .38 caliber revolver and marijuana in his New Orleans hotel room.
He was sentenced to seven years in prison on a weapons charge and, as part of a plea deal, was transferred last week to Los Angeles from a prison in Louisiana.
Durst's lawyers -- including Dick DeGuerin, who represented him in the Texas murder case -- said they want to go to trial as soon as possible to clear their client of the murder charge, which they said was driven by TV ratings.
Authorities in Los Angeles said the documentary had played a role in their decision to seek the multimillionaire's arrest for Berman's murder.
Prosecutors said they would not be seeking the death penalty. The next hearing is scheduled for February 15.
The trial, likely to receive widespread coverage and generate tabloid headlines, isn't expected to begin for at least a year.
Durst has long been estranged from his family with whom he had a drawn-out legal battle after his younger brother was placed in charge of the family business.
He agreed in 2006 to cut ties with the family and give up his claims to several Manhattan skyscrapers, reportedly in exchange for a payout of about $65 million.
Australia gay marriage lobby to push for vote by MPs
Advocates of gay marriage in Australia vowed on Tuesday to keep fighting for a parliamentary decision on legalising same-sex unions after a planned referendum was blocked.
Australia's upper house Senate late Monday rejected a government proposal for a plebiscite of 15 million people on the issue, with the Labor opposition, Greens and crossbench MPs arguing it would be expensive and spark divisive debate.
Several gay senators, including Labor's Penny Wong and Louise Pratt, made impassioned pleas against the plan, saying it would denigrate their families and subject them to hate speech.
Pro-gay marriage supporters rally in Sydney, in June 2016 Saeed Khan (AFP/File)
Many gay rights campaigners agree and instead favour a free vote in parliament.
"The plebiscite was a policy that no-one will miss, yet wasting time dancing on its grave will not achieve marriage equality," Australian Marriage Equality chair Alex Greenwich said.
"Now that the prospect of a plebiscite has been defeated, no-one need be distracted by a debate by politicians on a public vote versus a parliamentary vote.
"The path ahead is clear and direct and remains what it has always been, a vote in parliament by our elected representatives."
Debate on gay marriage has gone on for more than a decade in Australia and conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a long-time supporter of equal rights, wanted to resolve the issue via a plebiscite on February 11.
He argued that a public vote, costing some Aus$170 million (US$130 million), would allow all Australians to express their view.
Turnbull has not spelled out what he plans to do now, but conservative politicians have previously warned that defeat for the plebiscite would push the issue off their agenda and delay same-sex marriage for years.
The New South Wales Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby said a conscience vote in parliament -- where politicians are not restricted to party policy -- was the most appropriate place to resolve the standoff.
"Marriage equality is supported by MPs of all persuasions," said the organisation's co-convenor Chris Pycroft.
"We urge Mr Turnbull to allow his coalition colleagues a vote on legislation so that we can get this done once and for all."
Despite strong popular support for marriage equality, Australia is seen as lagging behind nations that allow homosexual couples the right to wed.
Same-sex couples can have civil unions or register their relationships in most states across Australia, but the government does not consider them married under national law.
Attorney-General George Brandis pressed ahead and introduced the plebiscite bill into the Senate, where the government does not hold an outright majority, despite Labor and the Greens making clear they would scupper it.
During the fiery debate, he urged the upper house to "stop playing politics with gay people's lives".
Tiny town casts first US votes -- Clinton wins
A tiny New Hampshire town cast the first votes in the US presidential election at the stroke of midnight Tuesday, and the results are in: it chose Hillary Clinton.
Dixville Notch, a hamlet about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the Canadian border, has maintained the tradition of first-in-the-nation voting since 1960.
But the outcome in this mountainous Republican stronghold near Quebec is seen as more of a curiosity than a national bellwether.
A man casts his ballot inside a polling station just after midnight on November 8, 2016 in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire Alice Chiche (AFP)
A crowd of media and others dwarfed the exactly seven residents -- five men and two women -- of Dixville Notch who lined up to vote as Democrat Clinton and Republican rival Donald Trump battled in a tight race.
"Trump, he talks about jobs, that he's going to give jobs. The others do nothing," said Andre Grondin, speaking in French. The 40-something owner of a public works company has proudly raised a huge blue Trump banner above dozens of his backhoes.
Just seconds after midnight, the ballots had been placed in a wooden box in the middle of the "ballot room" at the hotel of The Balsams ski resort.
Dixville Notch's eight votes, including one absentee ballot, were swiftly counted and the tally announced: Clinton won four votes, in a relative landslide to the Republican billionaires's two.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won one vote. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee who lost to incumbent President Barack Obama in 2012, garnered a write-in vote.
That year Obama and Romney each won five votes. In 2008 Obama was the first Democrat to win Dixville Notch, breaking Republican dominance.
- Small state counts -
Though northeastern New Hampshire is one of the country's smallest states, Clinton and Trump have done battle here in recent days for its four electoral votes which could be decisive in a neck-and-neck race.
In the White House race, the winner needs at least 270 of the 538 electoral votes up for grabs.
Nancy DePalma, a hotel worker voting in the village for the first time, said she backed Clinton, the former first lady, secretary of state and senator.
"I believe she's a strong person. She's got the experience. I think she's going to lead our country in the right direction," DePalma told AFP.
She said she had backed Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from neighboring Vermont, in the Democratic primary race.
For Trump supporter Peter Johnson, who has cast his ballot here since 1982, the real-estate tycoon Trump "has done well for this country" no matter who wins the national election.
He welcomed Trump's maverick campaign as part of a populist movement spreading around the world.
Another of the midnight voters, Ross Vandeursen, said the presidential campaign had been tense and sensationalized.
"I'm not very proud of the state of the campaign we've run," he said.
Leslie Otten, the owner of The Balsams, said the vast majority of people in America were not satisfied with Clinton or Trump.
"That is unfortunate. But we'll have to vote," he said.
The results of the US election were not expected to be known before 0300 GMT Wednesday.
Philippines' Marcos: a US-backed dictator with charisma
Few leaders began their presidency with such promise and ended with such ignominy as the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos.
Born in 1917 to a prominent political family in the rural north of the Southeast Asian archipelago, Marcos easily won the 1965 presidential elections -- widely regarded as a fair contest -- with an abundance of charisma and superb oratory skills.
He could also credit his wife, beauty queen Imelda Marcos, who he married in 1954 and whose glamour and singing voice helped attract crowds to his campaign rallies.
Supporters of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos flash 'V' signs behind portraits of Marcos (L) and his son, former senator Bongbong Marcos, in front of the Supreme Court in Manila, in October 2016 Ted Aljibe (AFP/File)
The magnetic couple also proved irresistible to the United States, which during the time of the Vietnam War saw Marcos as an important ally in its efforts to quash the communist threat in Southeast Asia.
Marcos was re-elected to a second four-year term in a landslide in 1969 but allegations of corruption and authoritarianism had already begun to cloud his presidency.
Then in 1972, to the shock of the nation, Marcos declared martial law, saying it was needed to save the country from communist insurgents.
By doing so he could stay in power longer than the constitutionally mandated limit of eight years.
With the continued backing of the United States, the Philippines' former colonial ruler, Marcos ruthlessly moved to stamp out dissent.
Television, radio stations and newspapers were only allowed to promote his "New Society", so the public was fed a constant stream of praise for Marcos and his jet-setting wife, whose extravagance was a sharp contrast to the poverty of most Filipinos.
Opposition politicians, including Marcos arch-critic Senator Benigno Aquino, as well as student leaders and other dissidents, were thrown behind bars, as the Philippines descended into a climate of fear.
"The Marcos government appears, by any standard, exceptional for both the quantity and quality of its violence," wrote American academic Alfred McCoy, one of the pre-eminent historians on the Philippines.
McCoy said the regime's security forces killed 3,257 people -- many of the victims first abducted, then abused and finally murdered and dumped on a roadside in a warning to others.
An additional 35,000 were tortured and 70,000 were unfairly imprisoned under Marcos, according to McCoy.
- People power begins -
Behind closed doors, Filipinos whispered about how Marcos, his relatives and cronies had seized control of the economy, monopolised key industries, skimmed off money from foreign debt-funded infrastructure projects and stashed the wealth abroad.
The end for Marcos began when Aquino, who had been allowed to go to the United States for medical treatment, returned to the Philippines in 1983, seeking to convince his old rival to step down peacefully.
Marcos troops gunned him down as he was descending from the plane at Manila airport in an act that enraged the public. Slowly, more and more Filipinos found their voice, denouncing Marcos.
This culminated in a popular revolt in 1986 led by Aquino's widow, Corazon, that sent the ailing Marcos and his family fleeing to Hawaii, finally restoring democracy to the Philippines.
In the wake of the peaceful "People Power" uprising, the carefully manufactured image of a courageous war hero-turned-leader concerned only for his people quickly fell apart, and his wife became a figure of ridicule.
The crowds that surged into the presidential palace found a trove of 3,000 shoes belonging to Imelda, which became enduring symbols of extravagance as more evidence of corruption was uncovered.
Government investigators subsequently found that, while the country wallowed in poverty, the Marcos family had plundered about $10 billion from state coffers.
Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989 as one of the most despised rulers of the Philippines, although his family returned after his death and were able to start rehabilitating his reputation.
British banker Jutting guilty of 'sickening' Hong Kong murders
A British banker was jailed for life Tuesday for the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment, in a cocaine-fuelled rampage the judge called "sickening in the extreme".
Cambridge University graduate Rurik Jutting, 31, tortured Sumarti Ningsih for three days -- filming parts of her ordeal on his phone -- before slashing her throat with a serrated knife and stuffing her body into a suitcase.
Days later, and with Ningish's corpse rotting on his balcony, the Bank of America worker picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same sick fantasies, but killed her when she started screaming.
A Hong Kong jury has found British banker Rurik Jutting guilty on two counts of murder over the killings of two Indonesian women in his upscale apartment in 2014 Philippe Lopez (AFP/File)
"This must rank as one of the more horrifying murder cases ever to come to court in Hong Kong," judge Michael Stuart-Moore told the court.
Jutting's crimes were "sickening in the extreme and beyond a normal person's imagination".
He described the case as touching the "very depths of human depravity" and said Jutting had not shown a shred of remorse.
"You go to prison for life," he said, at the end of a case that has shocked and captivated the city.
Stuart-Moore said Jutting was "highly likely" to kill again if he were ever freed. Defence counsel Tim Owen had earlier told the court that Jutting would apply for transfer to a prison in Britain.
The former Winchester College private school student remained almost expressionless during sentencing at Hong Kong's high court, only breathing out heavily as he left the dock.
In a gruelling 10-day trial, the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture -- fantasies he had acted out on his first victim, Ningsih.
High on cocaine and alcohol, he tortured her for three days and recorded parts of her torment on his iPhone -- footage the jury was forced to watch.
- 'I lost my child' -
In a final humiliation, he made the young mother lick his toilet bowl before cutting her throat.
In hours of self-recorded ranting on his iPhone after that murder, Jutting described his attacks on Ningsih using pliers, sex toys and a belt.
Days later he murdered Mujiasih, slashing her throat in his living room.
He had prepared to torture her but killed her quickly when she began to scream after spotting a rope gag by his sofa.
Both women were found dead in his US$2,500-a-month flat in the early hours of November 1, 2014, after he called police.
Ningsih and Mujiasih were in their 20s and had gone to Jutting's apartment after he offered them money for sex.
Jutting cut Mujiasih's throat hours after meeting her at a bar near his home in the Wanchai district on October 31.
Both victims were from poor farming families in Indonesia and their relatives had relied on them for financial support.
Ningsih's mother Suratmi, 51, on Tuesday told AFP she welcomed the verdict, but she would never recover.
"I lost my child and the pain will never be cured," she said, speaking from her home in Cilacap on Indonesia's main island of Java.
She called for the Indonesian government to support her efforts to seek compensation from Jutting to help support Ningsih's seven-year-old son, who lives with her in Indonesia.
In a letter read to the court by his defence counsel after the verdicts, Jutting apologised to his victims' families.
"The evil that I've inflicted cannot be remedied by me," the letter said.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry beyond words."
But Stuart-Moore dismissed the apology.
"It's the first mention of saying sorry about what he had done and I don't accept it," he told the court.
He described Jutting as an "archetypal sexual predator" who presented an extreme danger to women.
Jutting's defence had argued that his self-control had been impaired by his heavy use of cocaine and alcohol, combined with narcissistic personality and sexual sadism disorders.
Jutting had admitted manslaughter, but denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
But Judge Stuart-Moore said the high-flying securities trader had known exactly what he was doing.
"The defendant could and should have been able to exercise self control...but he chose not to do so," he said.
Migrant workers protest in support of the victims of British banker Rurik Jutting (pictured bottom L), accused of murdering two Indonesian women in his Hong Kong apartment two years ago, outside the High Court, on November 8, 2016 Anthony Wallace (AFP)
Iraqi Kurds seize IS-held town near Mosul
Iraqi Kurdish forces have seized the town of Bashiqa near Mosul from the Islamic State group, an official said on Tuesday, as US-backed militia forces advanced on the jihadists' Syrian stronghold Raqa.
Capturing Bashiqa would be a final step in securing the eastern approaches to Mosul, three weeks into an offensive by Iraqi forces to retake the country's second city.
Iraqi troops have also seized the town of Hamam al-Alil south of Mosul, and Tuesday investigators carried out an initial examination of a mass grave site discovered in the area.
Smoke and dust billow following an air strike in Bashiqa on November 8, 2016, as the Iraqi Kurdish forces pushed deeper into the town during street battles against Islamic State group jihadists Odd Andersen (AFP)
Bashiqa was under the "complete control" of Kurdish peshmerga forces, Jabbar Yawar, secretary general of the Kurdish regional ministry responsible for the fighters, told AFP.
"Our forces are clearing mines and sweeping the city," Yawar said.
An AFP correspondent on the outskirts of Bashiqa said clashes were continuing, with three air strikes hitting the town and gunfire and an explosion heard.
The peshmerga said there were still some suicide bombers and snipers there, and about five percent of Bashiqa remained under jihadist control.
Iraqi forces have been tightening the noose around Mosul since launching the offensive on October 17, with elite troops last week breaching city limits.
Upping pressure on the jihadists, the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia alliance on Saturday began its own offensive against IS's other main bastion, Raqa in Syria.
Raqa and Mosul are the last major cities in Syria and Iraq under IS control, and their capture would deal a knockout blow to the self-styled "caliphate" it declared in mid-2014.
- 'Determined to succeed' -
The US-led coalition that launched operations against IS two years ago is providing crucial backing to both offensives, with air strikes and special forces advisers on the ground.
SDF forces have been pushing south from areas near the Turkish border towards Raqa, and alliance spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed said Tuesday they had moved to within 36 kilometres (22 miles) of the city.
"Two more villages have been taken since yesterday," she told AFP, adding that SDF forces had so far advanced 14 kilometres (nine miles) closer to Raqa from Ain Issa, the operation's main staging point.
"The fighting continues; morale is good and our fighters are determined that this offensive will succeed," she said.
The fighting has prompted a steady trickle of civilians to flee IS territory, most heading towards Ain Issa.
"We were afraid of the planes, and we were afraid of the IS fighters," said 34-year-old Wazira Al-Jeely from Al-Tuwaila village.
"When the strikes started, we took off our burqas and said 'we're done with you' and we ran away."
Dozens fled the area aboard pick-up trucks and vans. Some left on mopeds, while others escaped on foot with their sheep and goats.
SDF fighters stopped them a few kilometers from Ain Issa, checking their identities and searching belongings to avoid infiltration by jihadists.
As in the battle for Mosul, the goal of the Raqa offensive is to surround and isolate the jihadists inside the city before mounting a street-to-street assault.
In both cases officials are warning of long and bloody battles ahead, with IS expected to put up fierce resistance and use trapped civilians as human shields.
More than a million people are believed to be in Mosul. Raqa in 2011 had a pre-war population of some 240,000, and more than 80,000 people have since fled there from elsewhere in Syria.
Iraqi forces scored another victory against IS on Monday by establishing full control over Hamam al-Alil, about 15 kilometres from the edge of Mosul and the last town of note on the way to the city from the south.
- Mass grave site -
They said a mass grave was found at an agricultural college in the area, with the offensive's Joint Operations Command saying "100 bodies of citizens with their heads cut off" had been uncovered.
An AFP journalist Tuesday said body parts and bones were visible among rubbish dumped there.
Men in Iraqi security forces uniforms used ropes to pull two bodies, one headless, from the grave, and also removed a decapitated head.
"Today, the team conducted an initial examination," said Mohammed Taher al-Tamimi, an Iraqi cabinet official.
Tamimi said the victims had been blindfolded with their hands and feet bound.
He said around 25 bodies were initially visible, but investigators believed "very large numbers" of corpses were there.
Dhiyab Tareq, a 32-year-old from the area, said he had heard shots when IS carried out executions at the site.
"I was sitting close to the door and heard the gunshots," Tareq said, adding that the next day IS members boasted about killing security forces members.
IS's rule has been marked by atrocities including mass beheadings and other executions.
The Iraqi offensive to retake Mosul was launched on October 17
Kurdish fighters with the Freedom Party of Kurdistan (PAK) hold a position on the outskirts of the Iraqi city of Mosul, on November 6, 2016 Safin Hamed (AFP)
DR Congo blast kills schoolgirl, wounds 32 peacekeepers
A seven-year-old schoolgirl was killed and 32 Indian UN peacekeepers were wounded Tuesday in an explosion in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the world body said.
The blast occurred just before 6:30 am (0430 GMT) as the peacekeepers were exercising in the Kyshero district of Goma.
"An explosive device exploded this morning... when the Indian peacekeepers were conducting their morning exercise," the MONUSCO peacekeeping force said in a statement.
Indian Blue Helmet peacekeepers stand guard next to United Nations vehicles in Goma on November 8, 2016 Eduardo Soteras (AFP)
"The blast left one child dead and several people wounded, one civilian and 32 peacekeepers, five of whom were admitted to MONUSCOs hospital with serious injuries."
Witnesses said the child killed was a girl aged around seven who was on her way to school when the explosion occurred.
A source close to MONUSCO who asked not to be named said the attack "deliberately targeted the peacekeepers at a time when they were unarmed".
The source added that the "home-made" device had been hidden in a can and had been detonated remotely.
The peacekeepers were taken to a UN military hospital.
The UN force has more than 20,000 troops in the country -- where it first deployed in 1999 -- protecting civilians and disarming dozens of rebel and splinter groups after two decades of conflict in the east of the country.
- Twisted bolts, metal balls -
Several hours after Tuesday's blast, blood could be seen drying on the dirt road.
A group of children showed journalists about 10 twisted bolts as well as small metal balls.
Witnesses said the metal fragments were spread out over an area 10 metres (yards) from the explosion and that MONUSCO and police officers collected most of them.
Santas Acenti Foruguta, a watchman at a nearby building site where a Catholic cathedral is under construction, said he fled as soon as he heard the explosion.
When he returned a short time later, he said he saw Indian peacekeepers "putting injured people in sports gear into their vehicles" before going off, leaving behind the young girl.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the killing and appealed in a statement issued by his spokesperson for "rapid action to bring the perpetrators of this attack to justice".
MONUSCO head Maman Sambo Sidikou said the peacekeeping force "remains determined to carry through its mission of protecting the civilian population in support of the DRC governments efforts".
MONUSCO's mandate has been beefed up over the years. In 2013 its troops worked alongside Congolese army soldiers to dismantle the M23 rebel movement.
DRC's political crisis deepened last month after a presidential election, which had been due before the year's end, was postponed until April 2018.
The opposition has accused President Joseph Kabila, who has been in office since 2001, of manipulating the electoral system to stay in power after his second term ends on December 20.
A 2006 constitutional provision limits the presidency to two terms.
The decision to delay the vote was taken in October by the government and fringe opposition groups following a "national dialogue" -- boycotted by much of the opposition -- to calm tensions.
Bolts found at the site of a blast of an improvised explosive device (IED) in Goma on November 8, 2016 Eduardo Soteras (AFP)
Just as voters fill public spaces Tuesday, students at the Chippewa Falls Middle School were filling their own town hall, courthouse and public library Monday as part of a mock election.
The student body of approximately 1,100 students went to their library to vote for their presidential candidate of choosing.
The winner? Republican Donald Trump and running mate Mike Pence with 376 votes, or 49.3 percent. Finishing second was Democrat Hillary Clinton with running mate Tim Kaine with 297 votes, or 39 percent. Coming in at third place was Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and running mate William Weld with 59 votes, or 7.7 percent. And last was Green Party candidate Jill Stein and running mate Ajamu Baraka with 27 votes, or 3.5 percent.
Eighth grader Jay Schroetter said he is curious to see how many people will be voting for the major party candidates. In social studies, he is learning about the American Revolutionary War and the formation of parties, and has taken that into consideration when thinking about the civic duty of voting.
I do think its important to vote because as Americans, people fought for our right to be able to have freedom of speech and to be able to vote on things, Schroetter said. I think its important for us to exercise that right.
Stations at the school were set up labeled Town Hall, Courthouse and Public Library to simulate traveling to a real polling place.
Students were asked to show their school ID in order to vote. And if they didnt have one, they were not allowed to do so. Afterwards, they were given a stamp to show they had voted. Students also had the option to abstain from voting.
Nicole Brown, librarian and coordinator of the mock election, said the school has been talking about doing this for months. Originally they were going to focus more on the issues but she said since the election has been so loud and noisy, they decided to look at the process more.
A number of students who voted Monday were 14 years old, making them eligible to vote in the next election in 2020. Brown said this is the last time theyll practice voting and wants to get them familiar with their civic duty.
Its a right that we have but its also a responsibility, Brown said. Knowing how to be an informed voter, not just going to the polls and choosing who your friends say.
Jeff Newton, 7th grade social studies teacher, said the school has always done a mock election but has traditionally done them on paper ballots. This is the first year the school is using Chromebooks and Google to count and tabulate the student ballots.
Brown said different grades of social studies approached the election with different intensities.
In 6th grade, she said they were talking about some of the issues and where students fell within them.
In 8th grade, some classes were taking quizzes on www.isidewith.com to see which candidate they would most relate to.
And when it came time to vote, Brown said she found students carefully weighing their options.
I had a couple kids already sitting at the computer and theyre really focused and I asked them, Do you need help? Are you logged in OK? Yep, Im thinking about it, she said. I made sure to tell them thats great. Take your time, think about who youre voting for because it is such a big decision.
The results of the mock election will be announced before the national election results so students can talk with their parents about how they voted. Brown said they will also publish an article in their newsletter about the mock election and have a breakdown of the four candidates and how many voted for each of them.
Lindbergh's lost flying hat could turn up a fortune
The flying hat aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh lost while doing loop-the-loops over Paris after becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic is to be auctioned in the French capital.
The leather and sheepskin cap which Lindbergh managed to lose twice in the space of a week after making history in May 1927, could make 80,000 euros ($88,000), Hotel Drouot auction house said Monday.
The "Lone Eagle" first lost the hat when he was mobbed after his plane, the Spirit of St Louis, landed at the Bourget airstrip near the French capital on May 21, 1927.
Charles Lindbergh stands next to his monoplane -- Spirit of St-Louis -- after landing at Paris-Le Bourget airport in 1927 to complete the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight
A mechanic handed the hat in to the US embassy that evening only for Lindbergh to lose it again seven days later when he was given special permission to perform aerobatic feats over the city in a borrowed French fighter.
The next morning a woman near Bourget found it in her vegetable patch.
The hat, which will go under the hammer on November 16, has been kept by the same family since. It wasn't actually identified as Lindbergh's until 1969.
Lindbergh returned to the US a hero, but six year later was hit by tragedy when his baby son, Charles Junior, was kidnapped from the family home. The body of the 20-month-old was later found nearby.
Charles Lindbergh's leather and sheepskin cap could fetch 80,000 euros ($88,000) when it goes under the hammer at the Hotel Drouot auction house on November 16
UK banker murder victim 'felt haunted' days before death
An Indonesian woman brutally murdered by a British banker in his upmarket Hong Kong apartment told her family days before her death she felt haunted and threatened, her father said Tuesday.
Sumarti Ningsih was one of two Indonesian women murdered by Rurik Jutting, 31, who was jailed for life for carrying out the killings in a cocaine-fuelled rampage which the judge called "sickening in the extreme".
He tortured Ningsih for three days before slashing her throat and stuffing the body into a suitcase. Days later, the Bank of America worker picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same sick fantasies, but killed her when she started screaming.
An Indonesian migrant worker holds up a placard during a vigil for slain colleagues Seneng Mujiasih and Sumarti Ningsih in Hong Kong Tengku Bahar (AFP)
Speaking after the Cambridge University graduate was sent to prison Tuesday, Ningsih's father Ahmad Kaliman welcomed the guilty verdict and thanked the jury in Hong Kong.
He also revealed new details, saying Ningsih had called him -- sounding anxious about the attentions of an Englishman -- several days before her murder.
"She told me that she was being haunted and threatened by an Englishman, Kaliman, 61, told AFP, speaking from the family home in Cilacap on Indonesia's main island of Java.
She wanted to go home, leave Hong Kong because she felt threatened by an Englishman... Well it must have been Rurik, this Rurik guy.
In a gruelling 10-day trial, the Hong Kong jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture -- fantasies he had acted out on Ningsih.
Ningsih's mother Suratmi, 51, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, also welcomed the verdict, saying Jutting had "tortured my daughter".
"I lost my child and the pain will never be cured," she told AFP.
Both victims, who were in their 20s, were from poor farming families and used to financially support their relatives back in Indonesia.
Ningsih's family urged the Indonesian government to help them seek compensation from Jutting to help support the murdered woman's seven-year-old son, who lives with them in Indonesia.
"She was the breadwinner. Who else will support her son? Rurik has to be responsible," Kaliman said.
The family of Mujiasih said in a statement they had been "devastated" by her death as she was the main support for her parents, and they were also seeking compensation.
British banker Rurik Jutting sits in a prison van as he arrives at a Hong Kong court for a hearing in May 2015 Anthony Wallace (AFP)
Migrant workers protest in support of the victims of British banker Rurik Jutting (pictured bottom L), accused of murdering two Indonesian women in his Hong Kong apartment two years ago, outside the High Court, on November 8, 2016 Anthony Wallace (AFP)
The law of retribution is a central part of Islam's sharia code but has been
An Iranian thug has been blinded as punishment for throwing acid in the face of a four-year-old girl who then lost her sight.
It was the second time this year that Iran had carried out the strict eye-for-eye punishment that can be imposed for such crimes in the Islamic republic.
The law of retribution is a central part of Islam's sharia code but has been condemned by international human rights groups.
Ameneh Bahrami (pictured) was blinded by a man who threw acid in her face
The head of criminal affairs for the Tehran prosecutor's office, Mohammad Shahriari, said: 'In 2009, this man threw lime into the face of a little girl of four years in the Sanandaj region, leaving her blind.
'Today, the law of retribution was applied in my presence and that of experts,' he said, without giving further details.
Victims can choose to spare their attackers the punishment often in exchange for blood money.
In 2011, young Iranian woman Ameneh Bahrami, one of a number who have been blinded and disfigured in acid attacks in recent years, used the right, saying she did not want her attacker to endure what she had.
Earlier this year, it was reported that an Iranian man was due to be completely blinded in an 'unspeakably cruel' punishment for having blinded a taxi driver with acid in 2009.
Barroso says job controversy shows EU must change mentality
Former European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso on Tuesday said controversy over his appointment to a job at Goldman Sachs revealed anti-US hostility in Europe.
Barroso headed the Commission, the EU's powerful executive arm, from 2004 until 2014, emerging as a high-profile public figure with political and business connections worldwide which critics say he could use unfairly to Goldman's advantage.
But speaking at the annual Web Summit in Lisbon, the former Portuguese prime minister said Europeans need to change their mentality to catch up with the United States.
At the annual Web Summit in Lisbon on November 7, 2016, Jose Manuel Barroso said Europeans need to change their mentality to catch up with the US Patricia De Melo Moreira (AFP)
He noted that a week ago a European Commission ethics committee had cleared the advisory appointment to the US investment bank, which was particularly targeted by critics over its role in the 2008 financial crisis.
"But the very fact that the issue was raised shows a negative attitude of many people towards international finance, being in this case a United States institution, and it shows there are still a lot of cultural negative attitudes in Europe towards the new world, the financial world, the global integrated world we are living in.
"And I think it's a mistake. We need a more innovative finance contribution," Barroso said, arguing that startup companies in the United States face fewer regulatory obstacles and greater access to venture capital than in Europe.
Nationalism and protectionism are certainly on the rise in the United States, he stressed, as US voters headed to the polls on Tuesday to elect either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as their next president.
"But in Europe, in some quarters, there is a negative attitude towards the United States of America, everything that comes from the United States of America, and I think it's a mistake."
Raid kills 7 children in Syria rebel bastion: monitor
At least seven children and two pregnant women were killed in an air strike on Syria's rebel stronghold province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitor said.
The strike, which hit the town of Khan Sheikun, in the south of the province, appeared to have been carried out by Syrian government ally Russia, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
The Britain-based group, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
Volunteers search for victims amid the rubble of destroyed buildings on October 24, 2016, following air strikes in the rebel-held town of Kafar Takharim, in Idlib province Omar haj kadour (AFP/File)
In Moscow, the defence ministry denied that Russian aircraft had been in the area on Tuesday, and accused the Observatory of "information provocations".
Russia began its air campaign in support of the government in September 2015, saying it was targeting "terrorists."
"The strike hit a street where children were playing. Three of the dead children were from one family and were visiting their grandfather," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
He said the dead children were four girls and three boys, but did not immediately have their ages.
Also in Idlib Tuesday, 11 civilians including three children were killed in air raids and regime bombardment of a village in the southwest of the province, the Observatory said.
Idlib province is mostly controlled by a rebel alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which groups Islamist factions with jihadists of the Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate.
Fateh al-Sham is blacklisted by the United Nations and the United States as a "terrorist organisation" and Russ1ia says its fighters are a legitimate target.
Elsewhere, Syrian state media said government forces had advanced southwest of divided second city Aleppo, seizing the 1070 district from rebel forces.
Abdel Rahman also reported the advance, saying it would allow government forces to protect areas already under their control on the southern outskirts of Aleppo.
Rebels have sought to penetrate regime territory on the southern outskirts of Aleppo to end the government siege of the opposition-held east of the city.
The Observatory said that regime forces on Tuesday retook Minyan district in the west from rebels.
Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012, but in recent months regime troops have surrounded the east, laying siege to it.
Iraqi investigators examine mass grave site near Mosul
Iraqi investigators carried out an initial examination on Tuesday of a mass grave site discovered in an area south of Mosul that was recently retaken from the Islamic State group.
Iraqi security forces announced the discovery of the site in the Hamam al-Alil area the day before, after retaking it as part of the operation to recapture Mosul, the last IS-held Iraqi city.
A dirt barrier borders the site, where body parts and bones are visible among rubbish that has been dumped there.
A member of the Iraqi forces covers his nose as they check a mass grave they discovered in the Hamam al-Alil area on November 7, 2016 Ahmad al-Rubaye (AFP)
Men in Iraqi security forces uniforms used ropes to pull two bodies, one of them headless, from the grave, and also removed a decapitated head, but they were later told to return them to their original locations.
The investigators, some of whom wore face masks because of the smell, took notes at the grave site.
"Today, the team conducted an initial examination," said Mohammed Taher al-Tamimi, an official from an Iraqi cabinet office that he said is coordinating and supporting efforts to investigate the site.
Tamimi described the killings at the site as a "massacre", and said the victims had been blindfolded and had their hands and feet bound.
Some bodies were missing their heads, while those of others had been broken into pieces, he said.
Iraq's Joint Operations Command said on Monday that 100 headless bodies had been found in the Hamam al-Alil area -- an assertion contradicted by Tamimi.
- Sound of gunshots -
"From what we saw today, I believe that there are around 25 bodies visible. But this does not mean that this is the total number. We believe that there are very large numbers there," Tamimi said.
Dhiyab Tareq, a 32-year-old from the area, said he had heard shots when IS carried out executions at the site.
"I was sitting close to the door and heard the gunshots," Tareq said, adding that the following day IS members boasted about killing members of the security forces.
Captain Mahmud Ayil, a federal police media official, said the grave site was discovered after people provided information about its location.
"The units entered and found that they (IS) had rigged its outskirts" with explosives, Ayil said.
Another police officer said that the way into the site had been cleared of bombs but that there may be more on the edges of the site.
Another bomb-rigged mass grave was discovered in the Sinjar area west of Mosul last year.
Bombs are a key part of both offensive and defensive operations by IS, and pose a danger even after places are recaptured from the jihadists.
IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, declaring a cross-border "caliphate" that also included territory in Syria.
Its rule has been marked by repeated atrocities including mass beheadings and other executions that it has documented in photos and videos lauding the violence that its supporters share online.
Iraqi forces have since regained much of the territory that IS seized, and have uncovered a series of mass graves and massacre sites as they have pushed the jihadists back.
EU diplomats on Gaza visit want Israeli blockade lifted
More than 20 senior European diplomats visited Gaza on Tuesday, calling for the Israeli blockade on the impoverished Palestinian enclave to be lifted.
Ambassadors from 22 European Union states visited to assess the state of Gaza's reconstruction in a trip organised and led by the EU.
It was the first such delegation since late 2014, which took place after that summer's devastating 50-day war with Israel left 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis dead, according to the United Nations.
EU Representative Ralph Tarraf (C) speaks during a visit to Gaza City, on November 8, 2016 Mahmud Hams (AFP)
Ralph Tarraf, head of the EU delegation to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, called on Israel to end the blockade on Gaza.
He called for "steps to bring about a political, security and economic change."
He said all sides should work towards "ending the closure, taking into account the legitimate security concerns of the Gaza Strip's neighbours."
Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza for a decade, which it says is necessary to keep its enemy Hamas, which runs the strip, from bringing in material that could be used for military purposes.
UN officials say such actions are collective punishment and have repeatedly called for the blockade to be eased or lifted.
India pulls 500, 1,000 rupee notes to fight graft
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered the withdrawal of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation on Tuesday in a shock announcement designed to tackle widespread corruption and tax evasion.
Modi said that while people could exchange their old notes for new bills at banks or post offices until the end of the year, or deposit them in their accounts, they would no longer be legal tender from midnight.
"To break the grip of corruption and black money, we have decided that the 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes presently in use will no longer be legal tender from midnight that is 8 November, 2016," he said in a televised address to the nation.
An Indian resident holds 500 and 1000 rupee banknotes in New Delhi, on November 8, 2016 Prakash Singh (AFP)
"This means that these notes will not be acceptable for transaction from midnight onwards."
After a one-day shutdown of all banks and ATMs, new 500 and 2,000 rupee denomination notes would be issued from Thursday by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country's central bank.
The 500 and 1,000 notes, which are worth around $7.50 and $15 respectively, are the largest bills in use in India which is still a massively cash intensive economy.
Since coming to power in 2014, Modi has pledged to crack down on so-called black money -- vast piles of wealth kept hidden from the tax authorities -- with a series of new measures, including 10-year jail terms for evaders.
The latest announcement comes a little over a month after the government raised nearly $10 billion through a tax amnesty for Indians to report undeclared income and assets.
Finance Secretary Shaktikant Das said the decision was "a very bold and powerful and a very decisive step to fight the menace of black money and the use of fake Indian currency notes".
- Spy cameras -
He warned those with hidden stashes of cash that banks would be extra vigilant with CCTV cameras to record identities and all banking transactions.
While the use of debit and credit cards has increased in the last decade in India, many small family-owned businesses insist on taking cash to evade tax or else ask for mark-ups to cushion the blow.
Most business leaders welcomed Tuesday's announcement although there were some concerns about the impact on small traders.
"It is perhaps the most significant move ever taken to curtail the parallel economy," said Chanda Kochchar, chief executive of ICICI Bank.
"This move will give a sharp boost to all formal channels of payment which in turn will help the formal economy to grow."
Some $439 billion left the country illicitly from 2003-2012, according to estimates from the Global Financial Integrity group in Washington.
Many of India's wealthiest citizens channel money to tax havens and convert it into jewellery and antiques to avoid tax.
Domestically, targets for investigation include temples and ashrams, where lavish donations can be a front for money laundering, and cricket betting. The property sector too is awash with black money.
Only 2.89 percent of Indians pay any income tax at all, India's previous finance minister told parliament in 2013.
The prime minister said that the move was also designed to counter Pakistan-based extremist groups who carry out attacks on India, saying "enemies from across the border" were financing their activities by mass producing counterfeit Indian notes.
Finance secretary Das said there had been a disproportionate rise in the number of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in circulation in the last five years.
He revealed that the new 500 rupee note would bear the image of Delhi's iconic Red Fort while the new pink 2,000 rupee note would feature India's "Mangalyaan" Mars orbiter.
RBI chief Urjit Patel told reporters the central bank was ready to get the new notes into circulation swiftly.
"The RBI has been concerned with the growing menace of fake Indian currency notes which has been increasing in numbers," he added.
While the old bills will no longer be legal tender in shops, hospitals and transport operators will continue to accept them for the next 72 hours.
Tunisia PM seeks economic boost from France trip
Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed heads to Paris on Wednesday in a bid to drum up French investment in the struggling economy of its former North African colony.
Chahed, 41, will meet his counterpart Manuel Valls and President Francois Hollande during the "strategic" visit, he told AFP in an interview on Tuesday.
"Five years after the revolution, we have succeeded in the democratic transition... (but) today we face an important economic challenge to consolidate the Tunisian democratic experience," Chahed said.
Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, seen in August 2016, said the transition to democracy was costly for his country, which relies on France for help "at this critical moment" Fethi Belaid (AFP)
"We obviously rely on France to help Tunisia at this critical moment."
Tunisia remains mired with high unemployment and anaemic growth nearly six years after a popular uprising unseated longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, launching the 2011 Arab Spring wave of regional protests.
Chahed took over as prime minister in August after lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in the previous government following just 18 months in office.
"The democratic transition was enormously costly to Tunisia," Chahed said, adding that his country "today needs huge aid at the economic level".
The years since the 2011 uprising have seen Tunisia hit by a string of jihadist-claimed attacks, including assaults last year on its vital tourism sector which killed dozens of foreign visitors.
Tunisia's economy grew just 1.2 percent in the first half of 2016, according to official figures, with unemployment at 15 percent.
The country's efforts to rebound from unrest have also been undermined by chaos in neighbouring Libya, according to Chahed.
"All of this has a cost and I think our partner France must assume... the cost when it comes to Tunisia," the premier said.
While acknowledging that France was making "important efforts" to help, Chahed said that French military aid could be "far higher" than the 20-million-euro security plan the two countries agreed in October 2015.
"Tunisia needs direct foreign investment and (Wednesday's visit) will be an occasion to restart the investment machine to create jobs," he said.
"We are trying to create a favourable climate for French investments in Tunisia... we're trying to get a return of French tourists," Chahed added.
Today, "the security situation is stable in Tunisia. I'd say we're no more threatened than any other country in the world."
Mexican drug lord set to appeal US extradition
Lawyers for Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman could file on Tuesday an appeal to prevent his extradition to the United States, arguing he could face the death penalty.
Jose Refugio Rodriguez, one of Guzman's lawyers, told AFP that the defense team planned to present two challenges to a court in Mexico City.
A "college," or panel, of judges would then review the appeal but Rodriguez said he would also take the case up to the Supreme Court.
Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, seen in January 2016, faces two extradition bids to the US: one in California for drug distribution and one in Texas for murder and money laundering charges Alfredo Estrella (AFP/File)
The appeal will be introduced at the same court that rejected a previous legal challenge by the Sinaloa drug cartel leader on October 20.
Guzman is facing two extradition bids, one in California for drug distribution and another in Texas on charges that include murder and money laundering.
When the foreign ministry approved the extradition in May, it said in a statement that the US government had given "enough guarantees that the death penalty will not be applied."
There is no death penalty in Mexico and in the past the government has criticized the execution of Mexican nationals in the United States.
But Rodriguez said the guarantees were given by the US embassy and "its function is only to present" the extradition document.
"It can't take decisions for a federal court, which is in charge of imposing sentences," he said.
"It is very serious that there is no certainty that this pledge will be maintained in the United States and they could apply the death penalty," the lawyer said.
Guzman's defense team is also arguing that the charges in California have reached their statute of limitations and that the wrong US embassy official signed the extradition request.
The Mexican government says Guzman could be extradited to the United States in January or February.
The slippery drug lord was recaptured in January, six months after his brazen escape from the Altiplano maximum-security prison through a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel that opened in his cell's shower.
He had previously escaped from another prison in 2001 and was arrested in 2014.
In an op-ed published last month, President Barack Obama proposed a partnership between the government and the private sector in pursuit of this goal: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time.
Obama says that the space program represents a central part of our character curiosity and exploration, innovation and ingenuity, pushing the boundaries of whats possible and doing it before anybody else.
Ordinarily, Im a sucker for this sort of aspirational rhetoric. My childhood coincided with the early days of the space race, a time when the original seven Mercury astronauts Glenn, Grissom, Shepard, Schirra, Carpenter, Cooper, Slayton were national heroes.
And I remember distinctly the night of July 20, 1969, when a significant portion of the world watched a grainy black-and-white broadcast of Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the surface of the moon: Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Is it time to begin working toward the next logical, long-deferred step, Mars?
The prospect of going to Mars is exciting, but the question of whether we should commit the energy and resources necessary to put humans on the Red Planet and bring them back is as much philosophical as it is technical and scientific.
Obama suggests that space exploration is an expression of a central part of our character, but thats only a fancy way of saying that one of the fundamental paradigms of civilization is the possession, overpopulation, resource exhaustion and abandonment of territory and the subsequent conquest of new territory. This is a very human process, and throughout history weve done it repeatedly.
Ordinarily it involves considerable damage to the environment and considerable suffering if native populations happen to be in the way. And ordinarily its driven by a strain of nationalism. Thus, during the so-called Age of Discovery, the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese battled each other viciously to stake out the choicest parts of the New World for themselves.
And thus President Obama cant resist couching Americas proposed push toward Mars in competitive terms: doing it before anybody else.
Dont get me wrong: it would be cool to go to Mars, and I would follow the effort with considerable interest. But I wonder if the paradigm occupy, exploit, abandon, conquer new territory is a purely terrestrial concept that doesnt transfer well to the vast reaches of outer space.
Humankind evolved in a specific ecological niche called Planet Earth. An outpost on Mars may be as implausible as a Siberian tiger transplanted into Manhattan.
Of course, if wed always thought like this there would be no United States and, maybe, no progress. But just as the earths resources have inevitable limits, so may the realm of humankind.
At the least, the fantasy of going to Mars has the dangerous potential to distract us from problems closer to home. We have befouled our nest here on earth. The climate is changing, the sea levels are rising, populations are being displaced and the stresses of resource depletion are already causing conflict.
Of course, Im talking about Mars during a week when its hard to think about much else besides the election. And, in fact, by the time you read this we may have chosen a new president. Everyone agrees that whoever wins will have a tough challenge to bring our badly fractured country back together again.
But nothing brings people together like a common goal. We could develop a unifying national project of going to Mars, just as President John F. Kennedy set a national goal to reach the moon before 1970. Or we could decide to save the planet by devoting our curiosity and exploration, innovation and ingenuity to finding ways to live within our ecological means.
I like the second goal better. In fact, maybe we need to devote our energies to figuring out how to live on earth before we think about moving on to Mars.
Two candidates register for Gambia presidential vote
Gambia's main opposition figure said Tuesday he had resigned his party position to stand as a unity candidate in December's presidential election, while a former ruling party MP formalised his own bid.
In a letter to the Electoral Commission, Adama Barrow said he was standing down as a member of the main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) so that he could represent the broad coalition that nominated him last month.
"As the standard bearer for the opposition coalition... I wish to inform you that I shall be contesting as an independent candidate," wrote Barrow, who until October was a little-known businessman.
51-year-old candidate Adama Barrow said he was standing down as a member of the main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) so that he could represent the broad coalition that nominated him in December's presidential election
"In the light of the above, I do hereby tender my resignation as a member of the United Democratic Party."
Barrow is expected to formally submit his candidacy on Wednesday, while President Yahya Jammeh -- who is expected to run for a fifth term -- has until Thursday to present his own name.
Several of UDP's top officials are serving jail sentences for holding public protests over the death of a party member in custody in April, and Barrow is expected to win the majority of opposition support.
His declaration came the day after the electoral commission accepted the candidacy of former ruling party parliamentarian Mama Kandeh -- the only other contender.
Kandeh modestly declared his chances of winning were "90 percent as of now", though strongman Jammeh, in power for 22 years, is expected to be a shoo-in.
Defending himself against accusations of being used to divide opposition votes, Kandeh sought to reassure the public that "no political party or individual" had pushed him to run.
"I am not funded or put up by President Jammeh to contest against him," Kandeh added.
Kandeh was expelled from the ruling Alliance for Patriotic Re-Orientation and Construction party in April 2013 for reasons that remain obscure.
Mexican drug lord appeals US extradition
The Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman filed an appeal on Tuesday to prevent his extradition to the United States, which the government hopes to carry out in early 2017.
His lawyer Andres Granados dropped off the documents at a court in Mexico City, which will hand them over to a "college" of appellate judges.
The higher court could take three to six months to issue a ruling, Granados said, although the lawyer also plans to take the case up to the Supreme Court.
Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, seen in January 2016, faces two extradition bids to the US: one in California for drug distribution and one in Texas for murder and money laundering charges Alfredo Estrella (AFP/File)
"We know it's a high-profile case, which is very complex because it has to do with Mr Guzman," he told reporters after filing the appeal.
"We hope that the federal government won't interfere like it did" when a lower court rejected a previous legal challenge on October 20, he said.
The Mexican government has said the Sinaloa drug cartel leader could be extradited to the United States by January or February.
Guzman is facing two extradition bids, one in California for drug distribution and another in Texas on charges that include murder and money laundering.
Approving the extradition in May, the foreign ministry said in a statement that the US government had given "enough guarantees that the death penalty will not be applied."
Mexico, which has no capital punishment, has previously criticized the execution of Mexican nationals in the United States.
Another Guzman lawyer, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, told AFP the guarantee is not ironclad because it was issued by the US embassy, whose real function in the matter is "only to present" the extradition document.
"It can't take decisions for a (US) federal court, which is in charge of imposing sentences," he said.
"It is very serious that there is no certainty that this pledge will be maintained in the United States and they could apply the death penalty."
- Slippery drug lord -
Guzman's defense team is also arguing that the charges in California have reached their statute of limitations and that the wrong US embassy official signed the extradition request.
The slippery drug lord was recaptured in January, six months after his brazen escape from the Altiplano maximum-security prison through a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel that opened in his cell's shower.
He had previously escaped from another prison in 2001 and was arrested in 2014.
He was taken back to Altiplano after his January arrest, but was abruptly transferred in May to a prison in Ciudad Juarez, a city bordering Texas.
Guzman's extradition would lead to a major drug trial for the head of a cartel accused of providing tons of drugs to addicts in the United States while fueling violence in Mexico.
President Enrique Pena Nieto had balked at extraditing Guzman before his July 2015 escape, preferring to put him on trial in Mexico.
But Pena Nieto changed his mind after Guzman was returned to prison.
Suspected cattle rustlers kill 36 miners in Nigeria: government
Gunmen believed to be cattle rustlers have killed 36 miners in northern Nigeria, the government and residents said Tuesday, the latest in a long-running series of such raids.
Motorcycle-riding attackers struck late on Monday at a goldmine outside Bindin village in northern Zamfara state, shooting dead miners and gold merchants, they said.
The state governor condemned the attack "in strongest terms" in a government statement, describing it as an "act of terrorism".
Gunmen believed to be cattle rustlers have killed 36 miners in northern Nigeria, the government and residents said, the latest in a long-running series of such raids Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP/File)
The statement said an investigation had been launched, while local residents said it was just the latest deadly raid by cattle thieves on herding communities in the state.
"We have no doubt that the cattle thieves that have been terrorising us were behind the attack," resident Lawwali Usmanu told AFP.
"We buried 36 bodies of those killed in the attack today. For us it is a day of mourning," he said.
Zamfara is known for its huge gold deposits and mines still using traditional methods. A local chief said the gunmen entered the mine tunnels, shooting dead the miners after killing traders standing at the surface.
Many local herders and subsistence farmers turn to gold mining to boost their income.
Rural communities in the state have long been plagued by cattle thieves, who kill villagers, loot and torch homes, prompting locals to form vigilante groups to fight off the gangs.
In July, Nigeria deployed troops to rid the state of cattle rustling and other criminal activities.
Attacks by nomadic Fulani herdsmen on farmers have been a persistent headache for Nigeria this year, adding to security woes in a country already grappling with the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency.
The mainly Muslim Fulani herders and largely Christian farmers have clashed for decades over increasingly scarce land and resources, particularly in Nigeria's religiously mixed central states.
But the violence has escalated in recent months and spread further south.
Police: Oklahoma man, 22, arrested in California murders
LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) A 22-year-old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been arrested in the shooting deaths of a Long Beach mother and her 4-year-old daughter as they returned home from grocery shopping, authorities said Monday.
Brandon Colbert was arrested Sunday after being matched to DNA submitted by detectives, Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said. Investigators believe Colbert boarded a Greyhound bus from Tulsa to Los Angeles three days before the shooting on Aug. 6. He had recently been arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department for allegedly stealing a vehicle.
No motive has been established, and Luna said the investigation remains active.
"We haven't ruled out the possibility that others may be involved in this horrific crime," Luna said.
Detectives urged anyone who had had contact with Colbert to contact authorities. A $40,000 reward previously offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction is still available, Luna said.
Carina Mancera, 26, and her daughter, Jennabel Anaya, had just parked their car and were walking back to their apartment with the child's father at about 10:20 p.m. when they were shot, police said. Mancera was pronounced dead the scene. Anaya was transported in critical condition to a hospital and died early the next morning. Mancera's boyfriend was also shot at but not injured.
The girl's father told investigators he did not recognize the shooter.
Detectives reviewed countless hours of surveillance video while forensic crime scene evidence was being processed, Luna said. In September, authorities announced they had identified a person of interest on a surveillance video from a local business. In early October, detectives upgraded that individual to a suspect in the case and said they were able to track him to the scene.
Police asked the public to help identify the man and followed up on every tip, but none led to a match, Luna said.
Then, on Oct. 31, the county crime lab notified detectives that the DNA recovered was positively linked to Colbert.
"An investigation of this magnitude that began with no leads is very difficult to work," Luna said. "Sometimes a case like this can take years to solve. So I'm extremely proud of our police department."
Colbert has been booked into jail. Police plan to present their case to Los Angeles County prosecutors on Tuesday.
DA: Man dies in attack on officer, clerk at police station
SELMA, Ala. (AP) A man died Monday after attacking an officer and booking clerk at a police station in central Alabama, authorities said.
The man died from a gunshot wound after a struggle with an officer at the Selma Police Department, but Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson said it wasn't clear whether he was shot during the confrontation or killed himself after fleeing to another part of the building.
Authorities have not released the dead man's name.
The incident began Monday morning when the man was being arrested on domestic violence charges for an incident involving his mother, Jackson said.
Armed with a razor or box-cutter-type blade, the man cut the booking clerk's throat and then grabbed a police officer's gun, Jackson said. Shots were fired during the struggle for the gun and the man fled into an old section of the jail, Jackson said. The police officer was also cut during the struggle.
Selma Police Chief John Brock told The Selma Times-Journal (http://bit.ly/2faYpXq ) that officers found the man slouched over in a cell with a gunshot wound to the body and the officer's gun still in his hand.
The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting.
Man acquitted of attempted murder in mall shooting
PITTSBURGH (AP) A man charged in a Pittsburgh-area mall shooting that wounded three people has been acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of other charges.
A judge convicted 18-year-old Tarod Thornhill of aggravated assault, reckless endangering and firearms crimes Monday in Allegheny County.
Defense attorney Chris Urbano acknowledges Thornhill shot his 20-year-old target and wounded two shopping bystanders in February 2015 in Macy's at the Monroeville Mall. But he says Thornhill was mentally ill and didn't know his actions were illegal or was unable to control them.
Prosecutors say Thornhill was recorded on a jail phone call being told by a woman to fake insanity.
Colorado city to pay $2.6M to family of man killed by police
DENVER (AP) A Colorado city will make sweeping police reforms and pay $2.6 million to relatives of an unarmed black man who was fatally shot by an officer in 2015, officials announced Monday.
Officials in Aurora have pledged to increase the use of body cameras, expand the police unit that investigates allegations of officer wrongdoing, bolster civilian oversight and improve diversity on the force as part of the settlement over the March 2015 shooting of Naeschylus Carter Vinzant.
The settlement and payout, a record for Colorado's third largest city, located east of Denver, was reached to avoid a potentially costly and divisive lawsuit, city attorney Mike Hyman said.
FILE - In this undated booking file photo provided by the Jefferson County, Colo., District Attorney's office, Naeschylus Carter Vinzant is viewed. The Colorado city of Aurora will make sweeping police reforms and pay $2.6 million to relatives of Vinzant who was fatally shot by an officer in 2015, officials announced Monday, Nov. 7, 2016. (Jefferson County, Colo., District Attorney Office via The Denver Post via AP, File)
"Aurora has honored the family's wishes by using Naeschylus' death as an occasion for introspection and positive change in its police department," said Qusair Mohamedbhai, an attorney representing Vinzant's family.
Vinzant's death came amid a national debate over whether officers are held accountable for on-duty shootings.
His former wife, Bernadette Allen-Carter, said Aurora's reforms are a step toward improving police-community relations.
A grand jury in December declined to indict Officer Paul Jerothe, concluding he acted reasonably when he shot Vinzant once in the chest while trying to arrest him.
Vinzant was on parole for an assault conviction and had cut off his monitoring bracelet and fled after beating his wife and taking their 2-month-old child four days before the shooting, authorities said.
Jerothe, who is white, was a member of a tactical team that converged on Vinzant as he walked down a street.
Jerothe and other officers who were at the scene told the grand jury they believed Vinzant was about to pull a gun and open fire.
An officer initially said he overheard Jerothe say the shooting was an accident. But the officer retracted the statement when he was formally interviewed, saying he didn't know if that was a direct quote or just his interpretation of Jerothe's comment.
Prosecutors have acknowledged discrepancies among officers' initial recollections of the encounter and what they later told investigators.
Jerothe, interviewed six days after the shooting, told investigators he did not remember what he uttered in the immediate aftermath of the shooting but fired in fear for his safety.
Jerothe, who received national recognition for saving lives in the 2012 Colorado movie theater shooting, is still on the job. Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz said the department will now decide where to assign him.
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Son of famed percussionist killed in Chicago shooting
CHICAGO (AP) The son of a famed percussionist has become a victim of Chicago's ongoing gun violence.
Twenty-two-year-old Adama Moye was killed in a drive-by shooting late Saturday while sitting in a vehicle in the Longwood Manor neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. He was the son of Famoudou Don Moye, a leading performer with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, an avant-garde quintet inspired by African and Caribbean music.
Authorities say Adama Moye was waiting for a friend when a vehicle pulled alongside his car and someone inside fired shots, wounding him in the chest. The medical examiner's office says Moye was taken to an Oak Lawn hospital and pronounced dead there.
British banker guilty of murdering Indonesians in Hong Kong
HONG KONG (AP) A British banker was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub.
The nine-person jury returned unanimous verdicts against Rurik Jutting after a two-week trial in the High Court. The slayings in 2014 and disclosures as the case developed highlighted Hong Kong's significant inequality as well as the decadent lifestyles of some members of the former British colony's expatriate elite.
Jutting bowed his head briefly as the verdicts were read out to a packed courtroom but otherwise showed little reaction. He was given an automatic mandatory life sentence.
FILE - In this Monday, Nov. 10. 2014, file photo taken through tinted glass, Rurik Jutting, a British banker, is escorted in a prison bus to a court in Hong Kong. Rurik was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)
While he has the right to an appeal, his defense lawyer indicated ahead of the verdict that Jutting would request a transfer to a British prison to serve out his sentence there.
In a statement his lawyer asked to be read into the court record, Jutting said he was sorry and accepted the verdicts as "just and appropriate punishment." He also said he was haunted by his actions and the pain he'd caused to the women's loved ones.
Jutting, a Cambridge University graduate who worked for Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, was convicted of killing 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih and then killing 26-year-old Seneng Mujiasih days later. The two originally came to Hong Kong as foreign maids but ended up as sex workers.
As statements from their families were read out by the prosecutor, Jutting stared at the floor.
Jurors were shown graphic smartphone video clips taken by Jutting of his apparent torture of Sumarti, which the judge deemed too graphic for the public to view. He slit her throat and then nearly decapitated her when she didn't die immediately, according to facts agreed upon by both the prosecution and defense. He then stuffed her body inside a suitcase that he left on the balcony of his upscale apartment near Hong Kong's famous Wan Chai red-light district.
Jutting had planned to torture Mujiasih with about $900 worth of tools and sex toys he had bought hours before. But he killed her when she spotted a gag in his apartment and wouldn't stop screaming, according to the two sides.
After the verdict, Judge Michael Stuart-Moore called the case "one of the most horrifying murder cases to come to the courts in Hong Kong."
"There are insufficient superlatives to describe the cruelty" that Jutting inflicted on Ningsih and planned for Mujiasih, he said, adding that the defendant had not shown "one shred of remorse" and rejected his apology.
He called Jutting an "archetypal sexual predator" and cited testimony from an expert psychiatric witness who said Jutting would be prone to committing sexual violence again.
The judge said his sentencing remarks were aimed at notifying authorities in Britain, who must hold their own sentencing hearing if his transfer is granted, of the "immense danger" Jutting poses if he is allowed out of prison.
Ningsih's brother, Suyit Khaliman, said the family welcomed the verdict and was grateful that Jutting was given the maximum penalty under Hong Kong law.
"Justice finally has been upheld after two years," Khaliman said. "The sentence is still incomparable to the pain that is felt by us who lost Ningsih in such a terrible way."
Khaliman said the family, from Central Java province, has suffered financially and emotionally since the death of Ningsih, who has a son, now aged 7.
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Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
Police display pieces of evidence used to convict British banker Rurik Jutting of murder in the High Court, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Hong Kong. Jutting was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Police display a piece of evidence used to convict British banker Rurik Jutting of murder in the High Court, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Hong Kong. Jutting was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Prosecutors: Suspect hid before opening fire on family
LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) An Oklahoma man charged in the murders of a young mother and her 4-year-old daughter in Southern California hid behind a sign before opening fire on the family with a shotgun, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office charged Brandon Colbert, 22, of Tulsa, with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder as well as special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and multiple murders in the Aug. 6 shooting.
Colbert was ordered held without bail at an initial court appearance in Long Beach on Tuesday afternoon. He did not enter a plea and his attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
This undated photo provided by the Long Beach Police shows Brandon Colbert, of Tulsa, Okla. Colbert has been charged with two counts of murder in the Aug. 6, 2016, shooting deaths of 26-year-old Carina Mancera and her daughter Jennabel Anaya in Long Beach, Calif. (Long Beach Police via AP)
He was arrested Sunday after being matched to DNA submitted by detectives. Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said no motive has been established in the case that has startled residents in the coastal city 22 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. A $40,000 reward previously offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction remains.
"We haven't ruled out the possibility that others may be involved in this horrific crime," Luna said Monday.
Carina Mancera, 26, and her daughter, Jennabel Anaya, had just parked their car and were walking back to their apartment with the child's father when they were shot, police said. Mancera was pronounced dead the scene. Anaya was transported in critical condition to a hospital and died early the next morning. Mancera's boyfriend was also shot at but not injured.
The girl's father told investigators he did not recognize the shooter.
Detectives reviewed countless hours of surveillance video while forensic crime scene evidence was being processed, Luna said. In September, authorities announced they had identified a person of interest in surveillance video from a local business. In early October, detectives upgraded that individual to a suspect in the case and said they were able to track him to the scene.
Police asked the public to help identify the man and followed up on every tip, but none led to a match, Luna said.
Then, on Oct. 31, the county crime lab notified detectives that the DNA recovered was positively linked to Colbert.
"An investigation of this magnitude that began with no leads is very difficult to work," Luna said. "Sometimes a case like this can take years to solve. So I'm extremely proud of our police department."
Colbert left Tulsa on a Greyhound bus Aug. 3 and arrived in Los Angeles the following day, Luna said. He was arrested Aug. 27 by the Los Angeles Police Department in connection with driving a stolen vehicle and was still in custody when he was identified as a suspect in the Long Beach slayings.
Reached by telephone Monday, Yolanda Colbert, who identified herself as the suspect's mother, said, "My son is innocent. That's all I want to say."
Votes cast in likely Democratic counties account for 56 percent of the early votes cast in Wisconsin, according to a Cap Times analysis of the latest data provided by the state elections commission.
As of Monday morning, 797,740 absentee ballots had been returned throughout the state, according to a Wisconsin Elections Commission report.
That's a 21 percent increase from 2012.
Of the ballots returned this year, 444,791 were cast in counties that voted for President Barack Obama in 2012. Counties that voted for Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 accounted for 352,916 of the ballots returned this year, or 44 percent.
The highest-turnout counties for absentee voting were liberal Milwaukee and Dane counties, at 128,492 and 117,714 votes, and conservative Waukesha County, at 88,363 votes.
Early voting began on Sept. 26 in the cities of Milwaukee and Madison. The city of Waukesha began offering in-person absentee voting nearly one month later, on Oct. 24.
Municipalities were able to expand early voting hours and locations this year because of a lawsuit filed by the liberal group One Wisconsin Institute. Federal Judge James Peterson in July overturned laws that limited in-person absentee voting to one location, limited early voting hours and eliminated weekend voting.
The 2013 law signed by Gov. Scott Walker limiting hours for in-person absentee voting "intentionally discriminates on the basis of race," Peterson ruled.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week the Legislature will "probably have to" revisit the state's early voting laws to make voting more uniform across rural and urban areas.
"These record numbers show that voters vote when given the opportunity to vote," said One Wisconsin Institute executive director Scot Ross in a statement. "And expanded early voting makes it easier and more convenient than ever for legal voters to participate in our democracy."
The majority of absentee ballots cast this year were done in person, according to the elections commission. Of the 828,248 total absentee ballots issued this year, 650,782 were cast in person.
The last day for in-person absentee voting was Friday in most cities, with a few continuing through Saturday and Sunday. Mail-in absentee ballots must be returned to clerks offices or polling places by Tuesday to be counted.
Michael Haas, the state's chief elections official, said the record-breaking absentee voting numbers don't necessarily predict higher overall turnout.
"A number of factors may be contributing to this years higher absentee turnout, but the long term trend has been toward increasing use of absentee voting both by mail and in clerks offices," Haas said in a statement.
The elections commission is predicting 3.1 million people will vote in Tuesday's election, or 70 percent of the state's voting-age population.
Perez securing Madrid's future with in-house players
MADRID (AP) Piece by piece, Florentino Perez is making sure Real Madrid remains a top contender.
And he is doing it without resorting to more "galacticos," instead sticking to the current group who helped the team thrive in recent years by extending the contract of Madrid's top players past 2020.
At the core of this group is Cristiano Ronaldo, who on Monday became the latest player to have his link with the club extended. The three-time world player of the year signed a new deal that ties him to Madrid until June 2021, when he will be 36 years old.
Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo, right, poses with the club's President Florentino Perez after signing a new contract at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, Spain, Monday, Nov. 7, 2016. Real Madrid have extend Ronaldo's contract until June 2021, when the three-time world player of the year will be 36. Financial details were not released, although the star forward is expected to remain the team's top-paid player. (AP Photo/Paul White)
"You don't get tired of winning and that is why Real Madrid wants you to continue here forever," the club president said to Ronaldo. "You're already a Real Madrid legend."
Before Ronaldo, Perez had renewed the contract of Gareth Bale, securing the Wales forward until 2022.
"I extended my contract because I feel very happy here," Bale said. "I think we can keep winning titles."
Bale was the player in which Perez spent big on a transfer, paying Tottenham 101 million euros in 2013, a record amount that stood until Manchester United shelled out 105 million euros for Paul Pogba in August.
The president didn't choose to go on another spending spree this year even though he knew of a looming one-year signing ban handed down by FIFA after the club was found guilty of breaking rules protecting underage players.
Instead, he preferred to keep the group of players that in May led the team to its second Champions League title in three seasons.
Croatia midfielder Luka Modric had his contracted extended last month until 2020, and fellow defensive midfielder Toni Kroos got a new deal until 2022. Young forward Lucas Vazquez signed a new contract keeping him in Madrid until 2021.
Ronaldo, Bale, Kroos and Modric have been nominated for FIFA's best player of the year award.
There are doubts about whether Perez will try to stick with France forward Karim Benzema after his current contract ends in 2019, but the club has already secured youngster Alvaro Morata, who returned to Madrid after playing well with Juventus in Italy. Morata is staying until 2021.
Perez now will have to turn his focus to the defense, as Pepe's current contract ends next season. In a few years, the president will likely have to negotiate with captain Sergio Ramos, left back Marcelo and right back Dani Carvajal, whose contracts end in 2020.
Madrid has a two-point lead over Barcelona in the Spanish league, a competition it hasn't won since 2012. It will play the city derby against fourth-place Atletico Madrid at Vicente Calderon Stadium on Nov. 19, after the international break.
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Tales Azzoni on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tazzoni
Israel pleased as Interpol suspends membership applications
PARIS (AP) Interpol has suspended applications from Palestine, Kosovo and Solomon Islands to join the international police organization, a decision hailed by Israel as a "triumph" for its diplomacy.
Interpol said in a statement Tuesday that it appointed an adviser to be in charge of making recommendations on future memberships. The adviser's study will be presented at Interpol's general assembly next year in Beijing.
Interpol says "all current and future applications for membership including those from the Republic of Kosovo, the State of Palestine and the Solomon Islands have been suspended."
Thin peaks: Britons grumble as Toblerone chocolate shrinks
GENEVA (AP) More valleys, fewer peaks: The maker of Toblerone Swiss chocolate has widened the spaces in some of its iconic, triangle-array bars, offering about 10 percent less product for the same price. Fans are outraged.
The multinational says the move which affects products globally, though mainly in Britain was necessary to cope with higher prices for ingredients. But many consumers are livid at the perceived sleight of hand and the change to the traditional look of the treat, first created in 1908 in Switzerland.
"The shape of the bar may have looked like the Swiss Alps before, now it's a bit more Holland," said British consumer Tony Mathews.
In this photo illustration two bars of the Toblerone Swiss chocolate are shown, at front is the new style 150 gram bar showing the reduction in triangular pieces, in the background is the older style 360 gram bar, pictured in London, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. More valleys, fewer chocolate peaks: The maker of Toblerone Swiss chocolate says it's widened the spaces in its iconic, triangle-array bars for some discount shops in Britain to keep prices down. Mondelez International says the move aims to meet pricing targets by customer Poundland and other discount retailers, and has nothing to do with Britain's vote to leave the European Union. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
For many, the Toblerone is linked to travel a gift purchased at the airport before boarding a plane home though it is increasingly available in supermarkets and shops.
Mondelez International, based in Deerfield, Illinois, said that pricing targets by U.K. discount customer Poundland prompted the change in Britain. It said the retailer, which sells goods for one pound ($1.22), resisted a price increase, leading to the solution of offering less chocolate instead.
Poundland declined to comment.
Mondelez said that Britain's vote to leave the European Union was not to blame. But it comes as British food retailers have faced rising prices for imported goods due to the drop in the value of the pound since the June vote.
In a shift akin to widening a donut's hole, the tweak in Britain involves shrinking a 170-gram Toblerone sold by British discounters like Poundland to 150 grams, said Mondelez spokeswoman Heide Hauer. The price remains the same.
Some British consumers likened the new shape to a toothless comb, others to the mouth of a crocodile. Some joked about how the issue was grabbing headlines on the same day as Americans were electing a new president.
The signature 100-gram Toblerone bar and other vendors are not affected, Hauer said. But Toblerone also has trimmed its super-sized 400 gram product often sold in airports to 360 grams globally, for the same recommended retail price, said Hauer.
Michael Payne, executive director of the International Association of Airport Duty Free Stores, noted that duty free stores sell Toblerone in a variety of sizes, so he's not sure how this change would affect sales.
Hauer from Mondelez cited "a multitude" of factors like rising commodity prices, a regular review of pricing and the fallout from a weakening of the Swiss franc in early 2015 that caused a spike in production costs.
The switcheroo in Britain, which began in September, was weeks in the making: Toblerone's official Facebook page featured a post on Oct. 15 explaining that the company was facing higher costs for "numerous ingredients."
"We carry these costs for as long as possible, but to ensure Toblerone remains on-shelf, is affordable and retains the triangular shape, we have had to reduce the weight of just two of our bars in the U.K., from the wider range of available Toblerone products," it said.
Economist Pippa Malmgren, who has studied what she calls the corporate practice of "shrinkflation," believes the company was using the recent political situation in Britain to test to see if people would notice.
"Whole divisions of major companies" are devoted to shrinking a product while keeping the price stable, she noted. She estimated that about 10 percent of the Toblerone candy bar was dropped.
"This is an art form," she said. "This is not random."
Another analyst warned of a possible consumer backlash more broadly.
Robert Haigh, director at consultancy Brand Finance, said the move by Mondelez was "quite risky" and could be seen as "deceptive."
"They don't seem to have the reverence for traditional confectionery that the previous owner did," said Haigh said, comparing the chocolate bars to a well-known British savory spread made from yeast extract. "Like Marmite, Toblerone has an impact on the cultural consciousness that far outweighs its actual popularity."
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The Latest: Central European ministers discuss migrants
PARIS (AP) The Latest on the influx of migrants into Europe (all times local):
4:25 p.m.
Central European countries have asked Balkan nations to be partners with them on how to handle the continent's migration crisis.
A woman mops the floor outside her tent inside the building of the Kalochori refugee camp, set up in a disused supermarket, on the outskirts of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. More than 60,000 refugees are stranded in Greece, unable to continue their journeys northward to more prosperous European Union countries after Balkan countries shut down their land borders to refugees earlier this year. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
The defense ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Bosnia met in Sarajevo and discussed ways to include their militaries into plans for decreasing the influx of migrants through the Balkans.
As this is not just an EU problem, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro should be included into future plans on how to protect the continent's borders, according to Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil.
Czech Defense Minister Martin Stropnicky said that their contribution in keeping the region stable won't be forgotten when their efforts to join the European Union and NATO will be judged.
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11:15 a.m.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has inaugurated a new migrant reception center, which she hopes will prevent migrants from camping in squalid places in the city and ease tensions in affected neighborhoods.
The center in a northern district can hold 400 people. City officials said the first group of migrants was expected to arrive later this week.
More than 18,000 migrants have been removed from Paris streets and parks and given shelter since June 2015.
Earlier this month, French authorities cleared a makeshift camp near the Stalingrad metro station where more than 3,000 people camped in tents. The operation followed the relocation of nearly 7,000 people from a camp in Calais on the French side of the English Channel which was called "the jungle" by migrants.
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10:30 a.m.
Hungary's prime minister has failed in his attempt to push through constitutional amendments to oppose any future plan by the European Union to resettle asylum seekers among members of the bloc.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party failed to secure any opposition support and fell two votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary in Tuesday's vote.
Orban proposed the changes after an Oct. 2 referendum in which over 98 percent of voters supported the government's anti-migrant position. However, the plebiscite was invalid due to low voter turnout.
Analyst Zoltan Cegledi said Orban's failure was a "defeat of power politics ... which puts Orban in the difficult position of having to explain why he isn't capable of achieving anything."
Children play inside a building at the Kalochori refugee camp, set up in a disused supermarket, on the outskirts of the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. More than 60,000 refugees are stranded in Greece, unable to continue their journeys northward to more prosperous European Union countries after Balkan countries shut down their land borders to refugees earlier this year. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
The Latest: New Zealand heading to US dreading Trump win
MEXICO CITY (AP) The latest on world reaction to the U.S. election (all times EST):
11:45 p.m.
Watching the results of the U.S. election at a New Zealand bar, 22-year-old student Sarah Pereira says she is looking forward to working as an intern in the U.S. Congress, but dreads the prospect of Donald Trump winning the presidency.
A woman walks by banners of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during an election watch event hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. The United States headed for the polls to vote for their new president on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Pereira, a master's student in strategic studies, says she will leave for Washington this weekend after winning a scholarship to work for Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks.
She predicts the effects of a Trump on international relationships would be "catastrophic."
Pereira commented while attending an event hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Wellington.
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11:20 p.m.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has told an aide that "the competition is closer than expected" in the U.S. election.
Aide Tateo Kawamura tells Japan's Kyodo News service that Abe is following the vote count in his office.
The Japanese government has remained neutral in public statements, but analysts on both sides of the Pacific have talked about a possible change in U.S. policy toward Japan and the rest of Asia if Republican candidate Donald Trump should win.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga is reaffirming his government's commitment to the U.S.-Japan security alliance. He tells reporters that whoever is the next president, the Japan-U.S. alliance will remain the cornerstone of Japan-U.S. diplomacy.
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11 p.m.
Chinese state media outlets are casting the U.S. election as the embodiment of America's democracy in crisis in contrast to China's perceived stability under authoritarian rule.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency says the campaign has highlighted that, in its words, "the majority of Americans are rebelling against the U.S.'s political class and financial elites."
The official Communist Party newspaper People's Daily says in a commentary that the presidential election reveals an "ill democracy."
On Tuesday, the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV ran man-on-the-street interviews with unidentified American voters in which they expressed disgust with the system and dissatisfaction with both candidates.
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10:45 p.m.
The Mexican peso has fallen sharply against the U.S. dollar as early returns show a tight race for the White House.
Financial research firm FactSet says the currency is currently trading at 20.45 to the dollar. The Bank of Mexico's interbank rate stood at 18.42 at the end of Tuesday's trading day.
The peso has closely tracked the U.S. presidential race during the campaign, hardening when Clinton's chances are seen as bullish and weakening when Donald Trump is seen as rising.
Financial analyst Gabriela Siller of Banco BASE issued a forecast Tuesday that a Trump victory could cause the peso to fall to 24 to the dollar next year and lead to a 3 percent economic contraction in Mexico.
Trump has threatened to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and vows to build a wall along the United States' southern border and force Mexico to pay for it.
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10:30 p.m.
Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, says this could be a historic U.S. election comparable to her father John F. Kennedy breaking a religious barrier in 1960 as the first Catholic president and Barack Obama become the first African American one in 2008.
That will be true if Hillary Clinton wins the race and becomes the first female U.S. president. In Kennedy's words, "This year is another chance to break a barrier with a woman on the top of a major party ticket for the first time."
Kennedy supported Obama in 2008 and, while she didn't support Clinton by name, she made clear that the Democratic candidate is her preference. She added: "I think we're going to get the president we deserve," she concluded.
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10:10 p.m.
U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus says "the world's most important relationship" between Beijing and Washington will remain stable regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
Asked by a Chinese reporter about Trump's proposal for a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods imported in the U.S., Baucus says that "people say a lot of things in the heat of a campaign that are not quite as feasible as they think when they're elected."
Trump has also pledged to withdraw U.S. support for the Paris climate change agreement that was reached largely through hard negotiating with China.
Baucus says he doesn't believe the two countries would stop collaborating on issues already agreed to, including climate change, containing North Korea's nuclear ambitions and reaching a political settlement in Afghanistan.
In his words, "The issues are the same, the good faith is the same."
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10 p.m.
Chinese state media and government-backed commentators are continuing to signal Beijing's preference for a Donald Trump win in the U.S. presidential election.
Like Russia, China is seen as favoring Trump because he appears less willing to confront China's newly robust foreign policy, particularly in the South China Sea. Clinton, by contrast, is disliked in Beijing for having steered the U.S. "pivot" to Asia aimed at strengthening U.S. engagement with the region, particularly in the military sphere.
Writing in the Communist Party newspaper Global Times, scholar Mei Xinyu says: "From a comprehensive view, it would make it easier for China to cope if Trump is elected. This is because under the policy line advocated by Obama and Clinton, the political and military frictions between China and the U.S. will be more frequent."
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9:45 p.m.
Japanese are tweeting about their interest in the U.S. election, and retweeting developments, though not everyone is happy. One Twitter user complains: "The U.S. presidential election is the only thing I can see on any channel!"
Several major television stations have suspended their regular morning programming to cover the vote, with a running tally of results and explanations of the U.S. electoral vote system.
A dramatic sinkhole in Fukuoka city eclipsed the U.S. election on the front pages of Japan's major newspapers, but online editions and media such as Yahoo! Japan have launched special election pages.
The Nikkei economic newspaper calls it an "unprecedentedly heated U.S. presidential election."
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8:20 p.m.
New Jersey-born Heather Bennett, 40, and sons Stirling, 11 months, and Macquarie, 30 months, were among dozens of Americans and Australians who gathered at P.J. O'Reilly's Irish Pub in Canberra to watch the count on TV.
Married to an Australian and living in Canberra, Australia's capital, Bennett said watching the U.S. election from afar gave her a different view of American politics.
"It's interesting because you get a different perspective. I think that's pretty cool," she said. "Usually in the U.S. you feel like you're in your own little bubble. You don't get to see the reactions of other people around the world in the U.S."
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5:15 p.m.
More than 100 people have gathered at the U.S. Ambassador to Senegal's residence in Dakar to discuss the American presidential election.
University students and professionals posed next to life-size cutouts of the two main candidates and mingled, holding glasses of ginger, bissap and baobab juice in the residence's gardens.
In a mock vote cast throughout the evening, the overwhelming majority voted for Hillary Clinton over Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Matel Bocoum, a 37-year-old journalist for Senegal's Le Soleil Business, said she'd vote for Clinton.
"Never did we think a black man would become the head of the United States, and now, we have the same hopes for a woman. And if a woman becomes the head of the United States, it's a beautiful lesson for women all over," she said.
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5:05 p.m.
A senior Australian government minister says he thinks Hillary Clinton will win the election easily, which would be the best outcome for Australia.
Minister for Defense Industry Christopher Pyne said the Democratic candidate was better on free trade and U.S. engagement in the Asian-Pacific region than Donald Trump.
"I think Hillary will win and win easily and I think that would be the best outcome for Australia because she does support free trade, she does support the United States being deeply engaged in our Asian region which is critical to us," Pyne told Ten Network television late Tuesday.
Australian government leaders generally avoid commenting on U.S. politics, saying they are prepared to work with whoever occupies the White House
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4:25 p.m.
Some Mexicans are already preparing to celebrate a possible loss by Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election.
A Facebook invite is asking people to gather at Mexico City's iconic Angel of Independence statue Tuesday night for a celebration if the Republican candidate loses. At least 5,000 people have already RSVPed that they would come.
Trump is unpopular in Mexico for suggesting that many Mexican immigrants are criminals or rapists, and for promising to build a border wall between the countries.
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3 p.m.
Few countries have more riding on the U.S. election than Cuba. Republican candidate Donald Trump has promised to reverse Barack Obama's normalization of relations with the communist-run island. Clinton has pledged to continue the process. Normalization with the U.S. is almost universally popular in Cuba, where people said they were rooting for Clinton and a future of better relations.
"We have to respect whatever decision Trump would take but we don't want him to be president," Havana resident Lina Osorio said. "We need relations between the two countries."
Fellow Havana resident Rangel Galindo said simply: "I want it to be her, not him."
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1:30 p.m.
Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra says a win by Republican Donald Trump in the U.S. election would stall recent moves to improve relations between the countries.
Malcorra told Argentine television channel Todo Noticias that the conservative government of President Maurico Macri had opened a new phase of cooperation and trade with Washington after years of strained relations under former President Cristina Fernandez.
But she said Monday night that there might be a "big stop" in this process if Trump wins, and "depending on the results, there might be big changes" in U.S.-Argentine relations.
The Argentine foreign minister said the "more closed, isolationist and xenophobic" model represented by the Republican candidate would have a major impact on the world and relations with Latin America.
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12:40 p.m.
Germany's foreign minister says the bitter U.S. election campaign will leave a "difficult legacy" for the next president because it has deepened the country's divisions.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says both Germans and many Americans "are glad that this special election campaign is coming to an end."
He says the campaign "has left a more or less divided country" and it will be difficult for the incoming president to bridge the differences.
Steinmeier has been sharply critical of Republican contender Donald Trump. He brushed aside suggestions that relations between Europe and the U.S. would also become more complicated under Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton saying that he knows Clinton and doesn't fear that.
He spoke in Berlin on Tuesday.
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12:30 p.m.
Kenyans in President Barack Obama's ancestral hometown have held their own version of the U.S. presidential election, leaning heavily toward Obama's own favorite in the race: Hillary Clinton.
Tuesday's mock poll was held in Nyangoma-Kogelo, the birthplace of Obama's father. Kenyan comedian Laurence Oyange was an organizer. He says it's a way Kenyans can connect to America.
Oyange said the poll was boycotted by Malik Obama, the president's half brother who has said he supports Trump.
There were 105 voters and 78 percent of them favored Clinton. Eleven percent went for Donald Trump. Other ballots were spoiled or disqualified.
Oyange says the community also held mock U.S. elections during Obama's elections.
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12:15 p.m.
Italian Premier Matteo Renzi is offering an Election Day swansong honor to Barack Obama, saying the first black American president "wrote an indelible page of history" that should inspire generations to come.
Renzi pointed to U.S. job creation, investment in energy and health care as some of Obama's domestic victories. Renzi cited the Cuba detente and the Iran nuclear deal as international achievements for the Obama administration.
Renzi writes in his weekly e-newsletter that "Obama was a point of reference for those who still believe in the American dream, for those who believe in the Democratic Party, for those who believe in politics."
Renzi is the leader of Italy's Democratic Party and has said he hopes Hillary Clinton wins.
Renzi writes that Obama will continue "to be a source of inspiration and encounter for the new generation."
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12:05 p.m.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a victory for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election would be a step toward gender balance among world leaders.
Merkel says she's awaiting the election result "with suspense," while declining to comment directly on Clinton or rival Donald Trump.
But asked Tuesday about the possibility of a woman winning the White House, she said: "Then we'd come a little bit closer to a balance of women and men in leading positions."
Germany's first female leader was speaking alongside Erna Solberg, Norway's second female prime minister. Solberg said it "may be inspiring for many young women to see politics not just as something that belongs to men."
But she added: "There isn't some kind of global girlfriends network that wants to rule the world."
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12:00 p.m.
Poland's foreign minister says Eastern Europe is closely watching the U.S. elections but will reserve judgment on who would be a better president.
Witold Waszczykowski declined to say whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would better serve the region's security and political interests.
He says a future U.S. president would be judged after selecting "prominent figures to run foreign policy and the military sector."
Nine senior diplomats and foreign ministers of NATO's eastern flank members met in Bucharest Tuesday to discuss Russia, regional security and the U.S. election.
Waszczykowski says he doesn't think the words and ideas expressed during the campaign are necessarily "a guide for a future president."
A staff carries balloons to decorate the venue during a live broadcasting of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election results at U.S. Ambassador's residence in Tokyo, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Patrons gather at a restaurant to watch the live telecast of the U.S. presidential elections on TV in Beijing, China, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. The United States headed for the polls to vote for their new president on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, center, watches a live broadcasting of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election results at U.S. Ambassador's residence in Tokyo, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Guests watch the screen showing a live broadcasting of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election results at U.S. Ambassador's residence in Tokyo, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Matel Bocoum, a journalist for Senegal's Le Soleil Business, looks at a cardboard cutout of United States Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Dakar, Senegal, on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, during an event to learn about and discuss the U.S. elections. Asked which candidate she would vote for, Bocoum said Hillary Clinton. "If a woman becomes the head of the United States, it's a beautiful lesson for women all over." (AP Photo/Carley Petesch)
Pins reading " The America Decide " are displayed during a reception organized by the U.S. Embassy to wait for the results of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, in Rome, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Comedians stage a mock election in the village of Kogelo, the home town of Sarah Obama, step-grandmother of President Barack Obama, in western Kenya, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. Residents of the town made famous by its association with President Obama cast their "votes" for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, with Clinton winning according to an organizer. (AP Photo)
People queue outside for an Election Night Party at The United States Embassy, in London, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. The US headed for the polls to vote for their new president. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)
A woman, wearing a Stars and Stripes-designed pants, cuddles her baby outside an American fast food chain on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. The Philippines as in most of the countries around the world are watching the U.S. presidential election pitting Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Comedians stage a mock election in the village of Kogelo, the home town of Sarah Obama, step-grandmother of President Barack Obama, in western Kenya, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. Residents of the town made famous by its association with President Obama cast their "votes" for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, with Clinton winning according to an organizer. (AP Photo)
Italian Premier Matteo Renzi adresses a rally under a banner reading in Italian "Future", in Florence, Italy, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016. Italian vill vote for a constitutional referendum next Dec. 4, a vote on which the government's current leader has staked his future. (Maurizio Degl'Innocenti/ANSA via AP)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel smiles during a joint news conference as part of a meeting with the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski speaks during a press conference in Bucharest, Romania, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. Poland's foreign minister said Eastern Europe is closely watching the U.S. elections but will reserve judgment on who would be a better president, at the end of a meeting of senior diplomats and foreign ministers of NATO's eastern flank members which discussed Russia, regional security and the U.S. election. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
PICTURED: Americans cast ballots for their next president
Americans across the country headed to the polls Tuesday to elect the 45th president of the United States. Here's what some voters had to say on Election Day:
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Roy Brook, a retiree from Bessemer, Alabama, stood outside the Muscoda Community Center waiving two small American flags after being the first in line to vote.
Roy Brook, 67, stands outside the Muscoda Community Center holding American flags after being the first in line to vote, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Bessemer, Ala. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
He said there is one and only one path to a better America.
"Donald Trump," the 67-year-old Republican voter said. "There is only one of the two candidates who will put America first."
Casting a ballot for Trump was to some degree a catharsis for Brook.
"Going to vote was a sense that I finally got to express my feelings." He added that he feels "very optimistic" about the outcome of the vote.
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Balda Burns voted her party affiliation, casting a ballot for Democrat Hillary Clinton at the St. Mark's Day School in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
The election, she said, was "bad" for the United States.
"It was too radical," said Burns. "I'm glad it's over, and we can just be at peace now."
What does she ask of the winner of the presidential race?
"Peace and love. Just listen to help the people that are suffering. It's very important to bring jobs back," she said.
"Whoever gets in I'll be OK with it," the 86-year-old retired nursing assistant said. "I just ask God to give me a few years more of life."
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Russell Madison of Humansville, Missouri, bemoaned the selections available on the presidential ballot.
The 80-year-old rancher said it was hard to believe that "out of 300 some million people, we have two of the poorest people running for president that I can imagine."
Still, the self-described independent cast his vote for Donald Trump.
"No way in a person's right mind would someone vote for Hillary," he said of the Democrat Clinton.
"Even though I don't particularly like Trump, I think he has a lot of good ideas."
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On a chilly, pre-dawn morning in Boulder, Colorado, 57-year-old MJ McCoy dropped her ballot into an official county voting box.
She was excited about the possibility of a female president.
"I think it is really awesome, and it's been overshadowed by all the negativity in the campaign," said McCoy, a food industry recruiter. She voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Republican Donald Trump.
"It meant a lot to me that women finally have a chance to have the highest office in the country," McCoy said.
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Yoana Baraschi voted along with her daughter for Clinton at a school in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where a line stretched down the block. She identifies as a Democrat.
"It's a right and privilege to be able to vote so I think we should all do our part," said Baraschi, a 60-year-old designer who emigrated from Romania 30 years ago.
Hoping to help elect the country's first female president, Baraschi said, "It's about time."
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Republican Amanda Pacilli of Hinesburg, Vermont, kept her choice of president close to the chest.
The 29-year-old customer service manager said, however, that she is a Republican and that she felt relief that Election Day had finally arrived.
"If my candidate does not win I will definitely not be let down," Pacilli said. "No matter what, I will accept who our president is because I feel that the president is just a face for the rest of our government and the people ... there are really a lot of people behind the president that are really making things happen."
She added: "I would have much rather had a more positive female person on our ballot than Hillary Clinton."
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Peter McGough, a 58-year-old artist from New York, is a self-described "Bernie person." But he bit the bullet and cast his vote for Hillary Clinton.
"I want the Democrats to win," he said as he voted in a school cafeteria in the West Village. "I am filled with optimism. I think she'll try her best to bring the country together and bring a message of hope to America."
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At the stroke of midnight, polls in three tiny New Hampshire towns flung open. State law allows communities with fewer than 100 voters to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots.
"If 100 percent of this small town can get up in the middle of the night to vote the rest of the electorate should be able to spend an hour of their day to vote," said Tom Tillotson, the town moderator in Dixville Notch.
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Donald Trump got the votes of John and Colleen Kramer, a retired couple from Stockton, Missouri.
John, 64, says he was a Republican but is "fed up" with what the party has done after getting control of Congress. Still, he voted for Trump at the Caplinger Mills Trading Post, a general store at a popular outdoor recreation area in the Missouri Ozarks. He hopes for national unity after the election.
"If Trump is elected I hope it will come together, if not were gonna have two separate societies in this country," he said.
Colleen, 68, describes herself as an independent. She says she wouldn't mind voting for a female president just not the one currently on the ballot.
"I have no problem with a woman president, I have a problem with the person running today," she said. "It's not at all about the gender, it's what the person stands for and how they've lived their lives before I vote for someone to lead this country."
Balda Burns, 86, takes a moment to look over her ballot before casting it at a polling site in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. "It was so bad for the United States. It was too radical," said Burns about the election. "I'm glad its over and we can just be at peace now." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Russell Madison, from Humansville, Mo., votes in a game room on a family farm Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 near Humansville, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
Russell Madison, from Humansville, Mo., votes in a game room on a family farm Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 near Humansville, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
MJ McCoy, who works as a food industry recruiter, puts her completed voter ballot into a drop box at a recreation center before dawn in Boulder, Colo., Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. Regarding the significance of having a woman on the ballot, McCoy, who voted for Clinton, says: "It meant a lot to me to see that women finally have a chance to have the highest office in the country. I think it's really awesome, and it's been overshadowed by all the negativity in the campaign." (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
Yoana Baraschi, left, looks over a ballot while waiting for a machine to open up to vote in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. "We all have a conscious and if we look at what brings light into our life, it'll be easier. We all have it," said Baraschi when asked what she feels could bring the country together after the election. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Amanda Pacilli, 29, holds the door open for a fellow voter arriving at the town hall, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Hinesburg, Vt. "I'm so relieved that Election Day is finally here," said Pacilli. "I'm just happy to see other people involved in voting." (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Peter McGough, left, talks with Adam Scheffer as they vote in a school cafeteria in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. "We need to come together on all these issues and get to know each other," said McGough. "It's the separation that's killing us." (AP Photo/David Goldman)
CORRECTS TO DIXVILLE NOTCH FROM DIXVILLE NOTCHE AND CLARIFIES VOTES- Dixville Notch's first voter Clay Smith drops his ballot into the box as moderator Tom Tillotson watches Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Dixville Notch, N.H. Dixville Notch, where the nation's first voters cast their ballots on Election Day, had Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton beating Republican Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Serene Wetzell, a Chinese-American, votes at the Neptune Society Columbarium Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in San Francisco. Built in 1898, the columbarium is one of the last remaining cemeteries in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Billy Tolson casts his vote at the Venice Beach lifeguard headquarters Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A voter works on her ballot at a polling station on election day in Omaha, Neb., Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
John and Colleen Kramer, of Stockton, Mo., vote at the Caplinger Mills Trading Post on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Caplinger Mills, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
A line of voters stretches around the block while waiting to cast their ballots at a polling site in New York as One World Trade Center stands at left in the background, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Adam Fohlen and his son Ari, center left, wait in line outside a polling place at the Nativity School as a poll watcher sits nearby, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
A voter arrives to vote at the town hall Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Woodstock, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Voters cast their ballots at historic Holley Hall, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Bristol, Vt. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A voter casts a ballot at a polling site at a school in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Asia Thomas exits a polling booth after casting her vote on Election Day at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Democratic polling judge John Ramirez, right, is reflected in a mirror as he assists a voter as she fills out her ballot at Delia's Beauty Salon on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Jocelyn Hernandez watches her mother Gabrele, vote at the Su Nueva Lavenderia on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
People cast their votes at Echo Park Pool on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A voter fills out a ballot in the gymnasium at the St. Mary's Academy building on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Hudson, N.Y. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)
Voters cast their ballots at Cynthia Mann Elementary School in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Otto Kitsinger)
College student has Kit-Kat stolen, company sends 6,500 more
MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) Hershey has come to the rescue of a college student who had his Kit Kat bar brazenly stolen.
Kansas State University student Hunter Jobbins tells The Wichita Eagle he left his car unlocked with a Kit Kat in the cup holder last month before running into his dorm building. When he came back, the candy bar had been replaced with a note. The thief wrote, "I love Kit Kats so I checked your door and it was unlocked. Did not take anything other than the Kit Kat. I am sorry and hungry."
Jobbins' picture of the note went viral on Twitter, and Hershey responded by sending a representative to the campus with 6,500 Kit Kat bars.
In this Nov. 3, 2016, photo Hunter Jobbins, freshman at Kansas State University, poses in his car filled with nearly 6,500 Kit Kat bars in Manhattan, Kansas. Jobbins told The Wichita Eagle he left his car unlocked with a Kit Kat in the cupholder last month before running into his dorm building. When he came back, the candy bar had been replaced with a note. The thief wrote, I love Kit Kats so I checked your door and it was unlocked. Did not take anything other than the Kit Kat. I am sorry and hungry. Jobbins picture of the note went viral on Twitter and Hershey responded by sending a representative to the campus with 6,500 Kit Kat bars. (Colin E. Braley/AP Images for The Hershey Company)
US-TopRaces,100
In the 435 U.S. House races, the Republicans have won 238 seats
and are leading in the races for 2 seats. The Democrats have won 193
seats and are leading in the races for 2 seats. Independent and other
party candidates have won or are leading for 0 seats. The Republicans
have retained control of the U.S. House and if trends continue will
lose 7 seats.
In the 34 U.S. Senate races, the Republicans have won 21 seats
and are leading in the races for 1 seat. The Democrats have won 12
seats and are leading in the races for 0 seats. Independent and other
Canada disease employee may have been exposed to Ebola virus
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) An employee at Canada's National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease may have been exposed to the Ebola virus.
Dr. John Copps said Tuesday the employee was working with six infected pigs Monday and noticed a split in the seam of his protective suit during decontamination after working in the Level 4 lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The lab director says the risk to the employee, co-workers and the community is considered to be low.
The employee met with a doctor and was offered an experimental Ebola vaccine. Officials, citing privacy, wouldn't say whether he received the vaccine.
The employee is in isolation and will be monitored for 21 days by local health officials.
El Salvador raises alert for security forces after 2 killed
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) Authorities in El Salvador have increased their vigilance in an effort to protect their own against gang attacks.
Vice President Oscar Ortiz says the government has decided to raise the alert level for all 23,000 police officers and soldiers. Members of each group have been targeted, most often while on leave. A national police officer and a soldier were killed in separate incidents Tuesday.
So far this year, 39 police officers, 19 soldiers and a prison guard have been killed. Last year, gangs killed 62 police, 17 soldiers and six prison guards.
North Dakota regulators eye fine against pipeline company
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) North Dakota regulators are proposing a fine of at least $15,000 against the company building the four-state Dakota Access pipeline.
The Public Service Commission said Monday in a complaint that a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners didn't get regulators' approval to proceed with construction after artifacts, including stone cairns, were found last month.
The company diverted construction so the artifacts weren't disturbed, a plan the State Historic Preservation Office concurred with. But the PSC says the company should have gotten clearance from regulators.
Energy Transfer Partners can agree to a fine or request a hearing. Spokeswoman Vicki Granado says the company doesn't think it did anything wrong but is working with the PSC.
Americans register anger, desire for change with their votes
WASHINGTON (AP) Americans emphatically declared their anger at government Tuesday as they elected a political outsider who failed to generate much excitement but offered the prospect of change.
Exit polls recorded the simmering discontent of the American electorate.
Four in 10 voters said they were hungry for change, and those voters overwhelmingly favored Republican Donald Trump. Smaller voting blocs who were seeking a candidate with good judgment, experience or who cared about them favored vanquished Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
Adriana Palek wears her mother's "I Voted" sticker on her nose after her mother voted on Election Day at the Jewish Community Center in Utica, N.Y., Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (Tina Russell/Observer-Dispatch via AP)
Nearly 7 in 10 voters said they were unhappy with the way the government is working, including a quarter who said they were outright angry, according to preliminary results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.
Three-fourths of those angry voters backed Trump. Six in 10 voters said the country is on the wrong track.
Other findings from the exit poll:
TRUMP'S WORKING-CLASS WHITES TRUMP CLINTON'S COALITION
Trump won by dominating among white voters, especially non-college-educated men, trumping Clinton's coalition of women, minorities and young people.
Trump, who once famously declared that he loved the uneducated, got plenty of love back from white voters who never graduated from college: He got 7 in 10 votes from non-college-educated white men and 6 in 10 votes from non-college-educated white women.
The advantage Trump had among whites without a college degree compared with whites who graduated from college was the largest seen in exit polls for a Republican since the surveys started in 1972.
Clinton, meanwhile, got the support of less than a quarter of white men without a college degree; Barack Obama, by contrast, drew about a third of their votes four years ago.
Clinton did make some inroads with college-educated white women. Just over half supported her, while four years ago just over half of that group had backed Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.
TIMES TWO
What kind of impact did third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein have on the race? They siphoned more votes from Clinton than from Trump.
A quarter of Johnson and Stein voters said they would have backed Clinton if they had to pick between the two major-party candidates. About 15 percent would have backed Trump.
But most Johnson and Stein voters said they would have just stayed home if their only choices were Clinton and Trump.
RACIAL SPLIT
Even with his tough talk about Mexican immigrants, Trump held on to roughly the same share of Hispanic voters as Romney had claimed four years ago. Likewise, he was drawing about the same levels of support from black voters as Romney won.
The Republican was drawing about a quarter of Hispanic voters and about less than 1 in 10 black voters.
Clinton did better with Hispanic voters who were naturalized citizens, getting about 8 in 10 of their votes. She got about 6 in 10 Hispanic voters who were born U.S. citizens.
Trump was winning more than half of white voters, who made up 70 percent of the electorate.
TO BE HONEST ...
Neither Trump nor Clinton gets bragging rights when it comes to honesty.
About 6 out of 10 voters said they don't view Trump as honest and about the same share felt the same way about Clinton.
Opinions were more mixed on the question of temperament.
Only about a third of Americans said Trump had the temperament to be president, while more than half felt Clinton did.
THE GENDER GAP
It was Trump's working-class white men who helped to produce a gender gap with a capital "G'' for Clinton.
Tuesday's election was on track to produce the largest gender gap since the exit poll began: The gender gap for Clinton the difference between the number of men who voted for her and the number of women who voted for her hit 13 percentage points.
Clinton's support among women was roughly even with the support that women gave Obama in 2008 and 2012. The bigger factor in this year's wide gender gap: less-educated white men, who favored Trump far more heavily than they did Romney in 2012 or GOP nominee John McCain in 2008.
The only presidential candidate that came close to Clinton's gender gap this year was Democrat Al Gore, who had a 12-point gender gap in 2000.
MILLENNIALS VS. ELDERS
Clinton largely managed to hang on to the millennials who were such a big part of Obama's winning coalition.
Young people age 18-29 supported Clinton over Trump by nearly as strong a margin as their support of Obama over Romney in 2012.
Those between 30 and 44 also were much more likely to support Clinton than Trump. Trump won the favor of those 45 and over.
PESSIMISM AND ANGER
There were grim strains woven into voter sentiments as they cast their ballots.
Nearly 7 in 10 voters said they were unhappy with the way the government is working, including a quarter who were outright angry.
Six in 10 voters said the country is seriously on the wrong track and about the same number said the economy was either not good or poor.
Two-thirds saw their personal financial situation as either worse or the same as it was four years ago. One in three voters said they expect life to be worse for the next generation.
HOLDING THEIR NOSES
Americans held their noses as they picked between the candidates: More than half of voters cast their ballots with reservations about their candidate or because they disliked the others running.
That was true both for those backing Trump and those supporting Clinton, the exit polls showed
After a long, hard-fought campaign, just 4 out of 10 voters strongly favored their candidate.
The prospect of a Trump victory was downright scary to plenty of voters: Seven in 10 Clinton voters said they'd feel scared by Trump victory.
WOMEN'S ISSUES VS. EMAIL ISSUES
After all of the sound and fury over Trump's treatment of women, it turned out the issue bothered half of all voters a lot and women were more concerned about it than men.
About 6 in 10 women were bothered a lot, compared to about 4 in 10 men, the exit poll found.
It turned out voters were somewhat less concerned about Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state.
That issue mattered a lot to about four in 10 voters, including about 9 in 10 Trump voters.
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The survey was conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research with 23,583 voters as they left their polling places at 350 randomly selected sites throughout the United States supplemented by 4,404 telephone interviews with mail, early and absentee voters. The results among all those voting have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
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Associated Press Writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
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People line up to vote at Dendy Recreation Center on Election Day in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (Margo Reed/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)
May hails success of 'global Britain' drive during India trade mission
Prime Minister Theresa May donned a sari on the final day of her visit to India, as she declared the trade mission a success in her drive to build "global Britain".
Mrs May wore the traditional Indian clothing as she visited the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple in Bangalore, the southern city which has become the IT sector hub of the sub-continent.
The PM went to India at the head of a 33-strong business delegation with the aim of bringing down barriers to commerce and paving the way for a free trade agreement following Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May visits the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple in Bangalore
Speaking to Sky News at the end of her three-day visit, she said: "Leaving the EU presents us with a world of opportunities and I'm determined to seize them.
"That's why I'm here in India, delivering on global Britain. And I have to say the response has been very good.
"During this visit, we've seen 1 billion worth of deals being signed and we've come to an agreement with the Indian government that we will work together with them on developing our trade relationship for the future.
"What does that mean? It means more jobs, more investment in the UK, more trade for British businesses and that's good for everyone."
The first leg of Mrs May's visit, in the capital, New Delhi, was dominated by tensions over visas, with Indian PM Narendra Modi putting pressure on the UK to ease restrictions on students and skilled workers coming to Britain.
Mrs May announced new measures to make trips to the UK easier for senior business executives, and she offered to discuss improvements in the visa application process for Indian citizens in return for greater co-operation over the return of migrants who overstay their permission to remain.
But for the Prime Minister, trade has been the priority, with deals sealed during the trip expected to create more than 1,300 jobs in the UK.
Mrs May issued a warning on Monday of the risks of stagnation and falling incomes if the UK fails to make a determined push for new trade opportunities after Brexit.
"As Britain leaves the EU, we're determined not to turn our backs on the world but to forge a new, global, outward-looking role for ourselves," she told a business summit in New Delhi.
"Because we know from history what happens when countries do not embrace the opportunities of the world - they stagnate, they get poorer, they don't protect their people, they make them worse off."
Mrs May said she had detected real interest in India in doing more trade with Britain after its departure from the EU, which she aims to complete by 2019.
She told ITV News: "The message I've had here is that people actively want to do business with the UK."
"The message I'm getting is that everybody wants to build on the trade relationship that the UK has with India. They see opportunities and benefits for India and the UK going forward."
Although EU rules block the UK from entering formal negotiations on a free trade deal with India until withdrawal is complete, Mrs May has made clear she is determined to do the groundwork for an early post-Brexit agreement and to tackle barriers to trade which can be dealt with immediately.
Her trip has seen memorandums of understanding signed on intellectual property rights and the ease of doing business in India, and she and Mr Modi agreed to co-operate on cyber-security and tackling violent extremism online.
In Bangalore, she visited a Dynamatic Technologies factory where Indian workers assemble components machined in the company's Swindon and Bristol facilities for Airbus jets.
And she joined flag-waving children at the city's Stonehill Primary School to witness a flypast of Indian Air Force jets and helicopters in her honour.
The flypast was the first of its kind offered to a visiting head of government, and follows a similar display by the Red Arrows during Mr Modi's visit to the UK last year.
The Prime Minister had a garland of flowers placed around her neck as she arrived at the temple to the sound of musicians playing drums and horns.
The visit ended with Mrs May taking part in a Hindu blessing, drawing her hands together across the top of a candle flame and touching her eyes, in a traditional ritual. She was then given red powder to dab a single spot on her forehead.
She later welcomed plans for the Science Museum in London to host a season of exhibitions and events dedicated to Indian innovation next year as part of the UK-India Year of Culture 2017-18.
Mrs May said: "This celebration of India's rich culture and history of innovation is another clear demonstration of the close ties between our two countries."
The PM went to India at the head of a business delegation with the aim of bringing down barriers to commerce and paving the way for a free trade agreement following Brexit
Prime Minister Theresa May at the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple on the final day of a three-day trade mission to India
Trade has been the priority during the trip, with deals sealed expected to create more than 1,300 jobs in the UK
Theresa May at the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple in Bangalore
The Prime Minister was given a tour of the Sri Someshwara Hindu temple
Prime Minister Theresa May on the final day of a three-day trade mission to India
Humanitarian centre and hospital among next stops on royal tour
The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will continue their tour of the Middle East in Dubai and Bahrain today.
They will first visit the International Humanitarian City (IHC), where warehouses used by humanitarian organisations are located.
Doors to some of the warehouses will be open to allow Charles and Camilla see the scale of operations.
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at the Al Jahili fort in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, earlier in their tour
They will meet frontline aid workers from charities and private sector companies as they tour the site.
The IHC is within eight hours by air of two-thirds of the world's population and has delivered assistance in some of the worst humanitarian crises of the past decade.
These include the 2004 tsunami in south-east Asia, the recurring drought in the Horn of Africa, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the crisis in Syria.
Charles will then join young people at Dubai's Expo 2020 bureau, which is under construction.
Dubai won the bid to host Expo 2020 and it is expected to bring 25 million visitors and billions of dollars of economic benefits to the country in the next five years.
Camilla will visit Al Jalila Children's Specialty Hospital, the first dedicated children's hospital in the United Arab Emirates.
She will tour the hospital, which has a partnership with Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool, and meet children, parents, doctors and nurses.
The Duchess will then tour the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children, which is a shelter for victims of domestic violence, child abuse and human trafficking.
It supports women both at the hospital and outside it and received more than 3,000 calls last year.
Camilla will meet children aged between five months and 10 years who have been victims of violence and will listen in on a call in the call centre.
Since 2009, she has worked to raise awareness of the issues facing those affected by sexual violence and domestic abuse.
Charles will attend events in Sharjah to learn about the regional efforts to protect cultural heritage.
The couple will then depart the UAE for Bahrain, where they will be welcomed by His Royal Highness, The Crown Prince of Bahrain and Her Highness Sheikha Hessa bint Khalifa Al Khalifa.
The King of Bahrain will receive Charles and Camilla for a private audience. They will later attend a royal banquet hosted by the King.
Rotherham whistleblower Jayne Senior set to receive MBE
Youth worker Jayne Senior, whose revelations about child sexual exploitation in Rotherham helped expose a scandal that shocked the nation, will be awarded an MBE by the Queen today.
Mrs Senior is being recognised for services to child protection in the South Yorkshire town where she repeatedly raised concerns about girls being groomed and forced into prostitution, while she worked for a youth project.
She went on to collaborate with a national newspaper and their work started a chain of events which led to the Jay Report in 2014 which highlighted the widespread extent of the abuse.
Jayne Senior helped expose child abuse in Rotherham
During the Buckingham Palace investiture ceremony two of David Cameron's former cabinet colleagues, nominated in the ex-prime minister's resignation honours list, will receive awards.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon will be made a knight commander of the Order of the Bath while Sir Patrick McLoughlin, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will receive the honour of knighthood.
Mr Cameron was criticised for cronyism after his resignation honours list recognised a string of political supporters, Conservative Party donors and Downing Street staff.
Also being honoured is Professor Dame Sue Black of Dundee University, the forensic anthropologist who leads the department which reconstructed the face of King Richard III, whose remains were found under a car park in Leicester in 2012.
London is money laundering capital of world for Putin's 'bad guys', boss claims
London is the money laundering capital of the world, a high-profile campaigner against corruption in Russia has warned MPs.
Bill Browder told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin's "bad guys" enjoyed coming to London with their "dirty money".
The head of Hermitage Capital Management said the UK has robust legislation against money laundering, but law enforcement agencies are reluctant to go after suspects in case the court action failed and they were forced to pay the legal costs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
He called for structural changes to ensure watchdog agencies did not have to foot the court bill if their investigations fail to result in a guilty verdict.
If this happened, Mr Browder told MPs: "You might actually get the same type of robust investigations which would preclude and dissuade people from using London as the money laundering centre of the world.
"The rules in the UK, in terms of money laundering, are quite robust, the enforcement of those rules are exceptionally weak."
Mr Browder, a former investor in Russia, branded president Putin a "Mafia boss" who has amassed a personal fortune of $200 billion from corruption and embezzlement.
The long-term Kremlin critic called for Britain to impose sanctions against individual members of Mr Putin's circle believed to be involved in corruption and human rights abuses.
He said Britain was uniquely placed to have an impact on the Kremlin elite because London was a favoured destination for them and their families.
"All the bad guys in the Putin regime like to come to London, they like to send their kids to school in London, they like to keep their dirty money in London. This gives us huge leverage."
Mr Browder suggested that countries like Latvia were better at dealing with money laundering than the UK.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formally Russia's richest man who was imprisoned after he fell out with Mr Putin, also told the committee that the UK could do more.
"The UK certainly can do quite a bit. The UK is a rather popular place, after all, for depositing illegal assets of the Russian political elite. The United Kingdom applying consistently its legislation can actually do more than its doing as of today."
After $195 mln in talc verdicts, J&J strives to change court
By Brendan Pierson
Nov 6 (Reuters) - After a $67.5 million jury verdict against Johnson & Johnson on Oct. 27 marked its third straight trial defeat in an onslaught of lawsuits claiming its talc-based products cause ovarian cancer, the company is hoping to reverse the trend by having the cases heard in a different court.
All three awards, totaling around $195 million, were handed down in state court in St. Louis, Missouri, with the same judge presiding. Women or their families have filed 2,500 similar claims, the vast majority in the same court, which is one of several in the United States that attracts consumer lawsuits.
The plaintiffs claim studies show J&J's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products, when used in the vaginal area, increase the risk of ovarian cancer. The company counters that larger, more comprehensive studies show no such link.
In a court filing in August, J&J argued the case should be dismissed because plaintiffs' lawyers tainted the St. Louis jury pool. The company said the other side spent almost $10 million on national and local television commercials in the previous year, with a disproportionate share of them running in St. Louis. The women's lawyers have denied J&J's claim.
The company also contended that, because most of them are not from St. Louis and the New Jersey-based company has no strong ties to the area, the cases should not have been heard there. The judge rejected both arguments.
John Beisner, one of the top lawyers representing J&J, said the company plans to make the same arguments to the Missouri Court of Appeals. If the St. Louis court is found not to have jurisdiction, the cases would have to be refiled elsewhere.
Beisner compared the St. Louis verdicts to a favorable ruling in September from a state court judge in New Jersey. That judge, who is presiding over some 200 talc cases, disqualified the plaintiffs' experts on the grounds that their scientific testimony was too speculative.
In the same decision, he dismissed the first two cases set for trial and the ruling is being appealed.
J&J unsuccessfully tried to block the testimony of the experts in St. Louis on similar grounds. The company will make the same challenge on appeal, Beisner said.
Last week's $70 million verdict followed Missouri jury awards of $72 million in February and $55 million in May.
The first big talc verdict in February was won by the family of Jacqueline Fox, who died in October 2015. Their lawyers said she used J&J Baby Powder and Shower to Shower Powder daily for 35 years for genital hygiene before she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2013.
Jere Beasley, whose firm has filed hundreds of talc cases, including the three Missouri wins and two New Jersey dismissals, said the verdicts should prompt J&J to make a deal.
"If I were representing them, I would say, folks, we need to sit down and regroup and start trying to settle these cases," he said.
LARGE VERDICTS
Large verdicts are relatively common in major product liability cases, and they are often reduced or overturned on appeal. One lawsuit against Merck & Co over its recalled painkiller Vioxx produced a $253 million verdict in 2005, which was thrown out three years later. Merck eventually settled most Vioxx cases for $4.85 billion in 2007.
Shareholders in J&J, which had sales of $70 billion last year, have so far shrugged off the three talc verdicts, the first of the cases to go to trial. But if the trend continues, liability could mount. The company has not reported setting aside any litigation reserve to deal with talc cases, as it has with previous claims over antipsychotic drug Rispardal and recalled hip implants.
J&J no longer sells Shower to Shower, which was acquired by Valeant Pharmaceuticals in 2012. Though not a major seller on its own, Baby Powder is a recognized symbol of J&J's baby care line, which brought in $2 billion in revenue in 2015.
Some legal experts said it made sense for J&J to fight on.
"Ordinarily I would say three verdicts like that would prompt you to think about settlement," said University of Georgia Law School professor Elizabeth Burch, who researches product liability cases, but she said J&J's case is somewhat different.
A settlement would not necessarily cap J&J's liability, Burch said, because its talc products are still on the market, unlike companies whose products have been recalled.
Howard Erichson, a professor at Fordham School of Law, said the company also had valid concerns about the impact of a settlement on its position in the market.
Romanian parliament okays big wage rises for school, health workers
BUCHAREST, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Romania's parliament approved double-digit average wage rises for state employees in the education and healthcare sectors on Monday, going against government recommendations ahead of a Dec. 11 election.
The technocrat government, which has a one-year mandate and fragile parliamentary support, has calculated that the hikes and other bonuses approved on Monday would raise the public sector wage bill by 4.85 billion lei ($1.2 billion).
The bill, championed by the leftist Social Democrat Party, did not address imbalances in the public sector wage bill - such as similar staff earning vastly different pay - and did not specify a funding source.
The hikes could also prompt other state workers to demand rises, critics added.
Labour Minister Dragos Pislaru said the bill favoured those whose salaries were already higher.
"It isn't natural to raise salaries of people in management positions by over 50 percent when our problem is the village teacher," he told lawmakers.
Coupled with previously-agreed tax cuts, exemptions and pay rises, Monday's hikes put the budget deficit for 2017 at risk of overshooting the European Union's 3 percent of GDP ceiling.
The hikes could also be illegal, as under Romania's fiscal responsibility laws any wage and pension rises cannot be approved six months before elections. The government has said it plans to challenge the wage bill at the Constitutional Court.
"The fiscal responsibility law refers to the government, not parliament," leftist leader Liviu Dragnea told the lower house. "Nowhere in the world can a parliament be stopped from legislating."
Dragnea also said the European Union state could afford the hikes, and that the impact would be smaller given that some of the hikes will return to the budget as taxes.
Romania posted the EU's fastest growth rate in the second quarter, driven by booming consumption due to previous tax cuts and wage hikes.
Britain's FTSE ends five-day losing streak, led by mining, bank shares
By Kit Rees
LONDON, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Britain's top share index ended higher on Monday, with mining companies tracking a rally in metals prices after the FBI again said no charges regarding her email practices would be brought again Hillary Clinton, viewed by markets as a status quo candidate with more predictable policies.
Financial stocks were helped by a jump in HSBC shares after it reported results.
The blue chip FTSE 100 index, up nearly 8 percent this year, closed 1.7 percent higher after falling for a fifth straight session on Friday to a seven-week low. The mid-cap index also advanced to close up 1.1 percent.
HSBC was the standout performer, jumping 4.6 percent and recording its biggest one-day rise since mid-April, after reporting a rise in its core capital ratio and improving the outlook for near-term dividend payments.
The UK banks index closed more than 3 percent stronger, the biggest one-day gain in three months.
"If you look at the underlying numbers, actually those showed that if you strip out the one-off items, revenues were up, costs were down and profits were up, and those are three things that markets like," said Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
Last week, the FTSE 100 recorded its biggest weekly loss since January as markets were hit by jitters before the U.S. presidential election. Nerves settled on Monday, after the FBI said for the second time no criminal charges would be brought after an investigation of Clinton's email.
"A second all-clear for Hillary Clinton from the FBI has seen renewed market confidence that the Democratic nominee will take the White House," said Accendo Markets analyst Henry Croft.
Mining stocks were among the biggest gainers on the index, with Glencore, BHP Billiton, Antofagasta , Rio Tinto and Anglo American all up 3.6 to 6.3 percent as the prices of underlying commodities rose on increased hopes of a Clinton presidency.
Markets are attempting to strike a balance between a Clinton win and the possibility of a sell-off in commodities if Republican Donald Trump is elected.
The UK mining index surged 3.9 percent.
However, shares in precious metals miners Fresnillo and Randgold Resources were down 3 percent and 1.7 percent respectively as investors dumped perceived safe-haven assets such as gold.
Pastor Defends Speech in US Against International Law Claim
Contact: Liberty Counsel, 800-671-1776, Media@LC.org, Press Kit
SPRINGFIELD, Mass., Nov. 8, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Tomorrow Liberty Counsel will present oral arguments in a lawsuit filed by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) against Pastor Scott Lively, in which SMUG seeks to silence and impose significant financial penalties against Lively for speech about homosexuality in Uganda. The hearing concerns Lively's request for summary judgment to put an end to SMUG's egregious assault on Lively's right to speak the truth. The lawsuit against Pastor Lively is being bankrolled by George Soros.
The lawsuit is based upon the Alien Tort Statute, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this law cannot be used to allege violation of international or foreign law against U.S. citizens. In the suit, SMUG alleges that Lively committed "crimes against humanity" in violation of "international law"akin to genocide and war crimesby simply sharing his biblical views on homosexuality during three visits to Uganda in 2002 and 2009. The suit makes the sensational claim that Lively's visits were part of a "conspiracy" to "persecute" the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) population of Uganda.
Four years, 100 hours of depositions, and 40,000 pages of documents later, SMUG failed to produce a shred of evidence of any conspiracy or persecution by Lively. The evidence shows that, in a country where homosexuality has been illegal for decades, Lively urged treatment of LGBTI people with respect and dignity, and he encouraged the liberalization of Uganda's laws against homosexuality, even as he spoke in favor of biblical sexual morality and against the LGBTI political agenda.
"This ridiculous case has never had any merit," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, "but we have had to spend four years and countless hours defending an innocent pastor against a lawsuit designed only to intimidate. The suit is an attempt to silence Pastor Scott Lively because of his speech about homosexuality and pornography. However, the implications of this suit are frightening because SMUG is trying to punish a U.S. citizen for constitutionally protected speech under some vague and undefined international law," said Staver.
Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
Weaker Venezuela, wary U.S. will test Nicaragua's re-elected leader
By Enrique Pretel and Alexandra Alper
MANAGUA, Nov 7 (Reuters) - After clinching a third straight term by a landslide, Nicaragua's president faces headwinds from an economic crisis in financial ally Venezuela and increasingly rocky relations with top trading partner the United States.
Boosted by a robust economy, former Marxist guerilla leader Daniel Ortega won over 72 percent of the vote in a final count, buoyed by robust growth and a sharp decline in poverty on his watch, neutralizing critics who allege he is setting up a family dynasty.
That bonanza for the second poorest nation in the Americas was in part the result of a thaw in ties with Cold War foe the United States that allowed trade and investment to blossom, and billions of dollars that have flowed from socialist fellow traveler Venezuela.
Now both pillars of support are on shaky ground. Washington harshly criticized Ortega's "flawed" victory on Monday, and a law under discussion in the U.S. Senate seeks to sanction Nicaragua unless it improves its record on human rights and democracy.
The outcome of Tuesday's U.S. election is likely to further affect ties and trade. While Republican candidate Donald Trump is arguably the bigger threat to Nicaragua, with policies seen as isolationist and anti-Latino, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is cooler on trade pacts than her predecessors.
In Venezuela, economic and political turmoil is jeopardizing millions of dollars in annual loans.
Venezuelan financial support to Nicaragua plunged 37 percent in the first half of the year following a cut of almost 40 percent to $300 million in 2015, central bank figures show.
"It's a perfect storm, because it affects growth and economic stability, two open flanks," said economist Nestor Avendano of the troubles with Nicaragua's leading partners. "President Ortega will need to seek political consensus."
Thanks to close ties with late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, an ideological ally, Ortega has negotiated more than $3.7 billion in cheap loans from Caracas since 2007, according to Nicaraguan central bank figures.
A deeper financial crunch in oil-rich Venezuela could drain more assistance, leaving Ortega on the hook for popular social programs and oil imports that have been backed by petrodollars.
Nicaragua has a "moderate risk of external debt distress," the IMF said in a report this year, warning that "continued uncertainty around the Venezuela oil collaboration poses important downside risks to public finances."
'CLOUD ON THE HORIZON'
Ortega, whose wife Rosario Murillo ran as his vice presidential candidate, kept a comfortable majority in Congress, results showed. His mandate runs through 2021.
Emerging as a leader of the Sandinista movement that toppled Anastasio Somoza in 1979, Ortega has undergone a dramatic shift from revolutionary Marxism to careful pragmatism, keeping relatively cordial relations with U.S. President Barack Obama.
Solid growth and falling poverty have helped Ortega weather attacks by opponents over alleged electoral fraud, constitutional changes that ended presidential term limits and the posting of family members in key government jobs.
But there are signs patience is wearing thin, at least in Washington. State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Monday said the election was not free and fair.
Meanwhile, a bill, known as the Nica Act, which conditions financial aid to Nicaragua on improvements in democracy, human rights, and battling anti-corruption, passed the U.S. House of Representatives in September. It still needs to pass the Senate.
"We just flagged this as sort of a cloud on the horizon, but it's not a storm. It is not raining," said Joydeep Mukherji, a Standard & Poor's analyst, noting that passage was uncertain and that it was unclear how it would be implemented.
Perhaps most worrying for Ortega is the protectionist rhetoric that has dominated the U.S. election campaign. Despite his leftist roots, Ortega has embraced free trade and annual commerce with the United States has grown to $4.4 billion. Apparel, gold, coffee and appliances are top exports.
Working with entrepreneurs, Ortega won plaudits from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for sound fiscal policies. Growth was buttressed by high prices for meat, coffee and gold exports, as well as remittances and foreign investment.
But Nicaragua faces a tough trading environment in the future. Trump has threatened to totally rewrite U.S. trade ties, and Clinton, who is favored to win, has taken a harder stance on free trade deals than Obama.
Clinton voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which has helped Nicaraguan exports to the U.S. jump by 170 percent from 2005, U.S. data show. She and Trump both oppose the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Ortega has expressed interest in joining.
Jury awards $3 million in damages over Rolling Stone rape story
Nov 7 (Reuters) - A federal court jury awarded $3 million in damages on Monday to a University of Virginia administrator that was found last week to have been defamed by Rolling Stone magazine's now-retracted story about a gang rape.
The 10-person U.S. District Court jury in Charlottesville, Virginia, determined that the writer of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, should pay $2 million in damages and the magazine $1 million to the administrator, Nicole Eramo.
Eramo, the former associate dean of students at the university, had sought at least $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages in the high-profile case.
"With careful consideration of the facts in evidence for determining damages, the jury made its determination. We were proud to execute our civic duty," said jury forewoman Deborah Parmelee, reading from a brief statement from the jury after the hearing on Monday, according to the New York Times.
Samuel Bayard, an attorney for Rolling Stone, declined to comment when reached by phone following the verdict on Monday night. The magazine apologized to Eramo after last week's verdict.
Following a three-week trial, the jurors on Friday found Rolling Stone, owner Wenner Media and Erdely liable for actual malice against Eramo in the magazine's November 2014 story "A Rape on Campus."
The magazine reported that a female student identified only as "Jackie" was raped at a university fraternity in 2012. The story sparked a national debate about sexual assault at U.S. colleges and resonated with many who saw it as a battle cry against sexual violence on campuses.
Rolling Stone admitted that it never sought comment from the seven men accused of the alleged rape and retracted the story in April 2015. An outside review found the magazine had failed to follow basic journalistic safeguards in an embarrassing blow to the pop culture publication, founded by Jann Wenner in 1967.
Eramo accused the magazine of portraying her as the story's villain and as being focused on hushing up sexual assault reports. She has claimed damages from the story including harm to her reputation, embarrassment, emotional distress and humiliation.
Eramo now works in an administrative role at the almost 200-year-old university, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson and has long ranked as one of the top public universities in the United States.
Poland - Factors to Watch Nov. 8
Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):
PGE
Poland's biggest power group PGE is to release full third quarter results after market closes. The company said in October that its net profit in the first nine months of the year totalled 1.2 billion zlotys, according to a preliminary estimate.
CIECH
Polish chemicals group Ciech said on Monday that it will recognise in its third quarter financial results a deferred tax asset of about 50 million zlotys.
COAL MINING
The loss on coal sales in Polish mines shrank by 0.53 billion zlotys year on year in the first three quarters of 2016 and came in at 1.38 billion zlotys ($352.14 million), Puls Biznesu said quoting a state-run mining agency ARP which analyses the market.
DEVELOPERS
Property developers listed on the Warsaw bourse sold 12 percent more flats in the third quarter than in the same period last year, Puls Biznesu daily said.
ENERGY
The European Commission has questioned some parts of the Polish law on renewable sources of energy, including these which introduce an auction system that will result in a guaranteed electricity price for clean energy producers in the long-term, Parkiet daily said.
The renewables law is being amended though, the daily also said.
****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Nov 8
MOSCOW, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
VEDOMOSTI
www.vedomosti.ru
- No matter who wins the presidential election in the United States, Russia does not expect significant changes in bilateral relations, the daily says.
- Alexei Kukura, the son of the First Deputy Head of Lukoil Sergei Kukura, has become one the biggest landowners in Russia after his farming company acquired about 50,000 hectares of land in the Lipetsk region sold by state bank VTB in September, the daily says.
KOMMERSANT
www.kommersant.ru
- Russia and China could consider setting up tax free trading zones, the daily says, commenting on talks between officials of the two states taking place in Russia.
- Archaeologists from Sakhalin are asking President Vladimir Putin to help in saving areas of settlement of ancient peoples in the region from being leased for farming purposes.
- The farming company "Prodo" set up by Millhouse in 2004 has acquired a 25 percent stake in the company "Greenhouse", controlled by Roman Abramovich's son, Arkady. "Greenhouse" is planning to invest up to 6 billion roubles ($94.10 million)in growing vegetables in greenhouses.
IZVESTIA
www.izvestia.ru
- Russia will harvest 117 million tonnes of grain this year, the Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev says, adding that this will be an absolute record for modern Russia.
Imperial Brands announces new investment as profits rise
LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Imperial Brands, the world's fourth-biggest tobacco company, reported higher full-year sales and profit on Tuesday, helped by the acquisition of brands in the United States and a weaker British currency.
The maker of cigarettes including Winston and Gauloises also announced a new wave of investment of 300 million pounds ($372 million) that will be funded by new cost savings. The company is targeting an additional 300 million pounds of annual savings by 2020, at a cost of 750 million pounds.
The company said net revenue of its tobacco business rose 9.7 percent to 7.17 billion pounds for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Adjusted operating profit rose 10.4 percent to 3.5 billion pounds.
Imperial got a boost last year from its $7 billion purchase of certain brands from Reynolds American. The move sharply increased its exposure to the lucrative U.S. market.
Romania - Factors to watch on Nov. 8
Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Tuesday.
DEBT TENDER
Romania sold a planned 400 million lei ($98.44 million) worth of Feb. 2020 treasury bonds on Monday, with the average accepted yield at 1.83 percent, central bank data showed.
WAGE HIKES
Romania's parliament approved double-digit average wage rises for state employees in the education and healthcare sectors on Monday, going against government recommendations ahead of a Dec. 11 election.
AVERAGE WAGES
Romania's net average monthly wage rose by 14.2 percent on the year to 2,094 lei ($514.69) in September and edged up 0.9 percent on the month, the National Statistics Board (INS) said on Monday.
CEE MARKETS
Budapest stocks rose to record highs on Monday after Moody's lifted Hungary's credit rating to investment grade last week, echoing similar upgrades by Fitch and Standard and Poor's earlier this year.
RENEWABLES
Romania has fallen out of the top 40 most-attractive countries for renewable energy developers, due to sharp changes to its support scheme and uncertainties over the medium and long term, Ernst&Young's Renewable energy country attractiveness index showed.
FUNCTIONAL ILLITERATES
Roughly 42 percent of 15-year-old Romanian students are functionally illiterate, compared with a European average of 20 percent, a study showed.
For the long-term Romanian diary, click on
For emerging markets economic events, click on
For an index of all diaries, click on
Nippon Steel says high coking coal prices likely to stay awhile
By Yuka Obayashi
TOKYO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp , the world's third-biggest steelmaker, does not expect coking coal prices to fall any time soon as China's steelmakers maintain high output while the country's coal producers trim supply, an executive said.
And with Japan's biggest steelmaker bracing itself for a long period of high prices, more producers could be prompted to boost coking coal output. Glencore last week said it would restart a mothballed mine in southeastern Australia, with a surge in prices breathing life into the sector.
Prices of coking coal and coke, which typically account for 20 percent of steel production costs, have rallied more than twofold this year amid China's push to curb overcapacity and pollution, limiting supply available to domestic consumer.
The most-traded coking coal for January delivery on the Dalian Commodity Exchange hit a record high on Tuesday.
"There is a gap in China's reform speed and reform scale between steelmakers and coal producers," Kazuo Tanimizu, managing executive officer in charge of raw materials at Nippon Steel, told Reuters in an interview on Monday.
"The gap will stay until we see consolidations among Chinese steel mills," he said, and that means steelmaking material prices would remain at high levels for a while, although Tanimizu provided no further specifics.
China's crude steel output rose 3.9 percent in September from a year earlier as steel mills in the world's top producer raised output amid a demand pick-up, although there are signs of output cuts more recently.
Supply disruptions at coking coal mines in Australia, including South 32's Illawarra and Anglo American's German Creek, are also lasting longer-than-expected, Tanimizu said.
"I'm worried that their production may not be back in time for our negotiations in December with global suppliers to set prices for the January-March quarter," he said.
"It will be a tough negotiation."
Both coking coal and iron ore prices in the next quarter will likely exceed the levels for this quarter, he said.
Nippon Steel and Peabody Energy last month set the October-December coking coal contract benchmark at $200 a tonne, more than double the previous quarter's price.
Premium hard coking coal prices <_.PHCC-AUSSI> in Australia, which dominates global exports, rose to $289.30 a tonne on Monday, up from about $85 at the beginning of June.
To cushion pains from surging raw material prices, Nippon Steel is aiming to use more cheaper low-grade coal and metal scrap, Tanimizu said.
Coal prices will eventually fall if global suppliers start ramping up supply, he said.
Elephants kneel to pay respect to late Thai king Bhumibol
BANGKOK, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Eleven elephants from Thailand's ancient capital of Ayutthaya knelt in respect for the country's late king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, during a procession in Bangkok on Tuesday.
The elephants and about 200 handlers marched to the glittering Grand Palace before the animals crouched down for the observation of a minute of silence in memory of the king, who died last month, aged 88, after 70 years on the throne.
"This is the biggest event in my life," said Ayuthaya Elephant Palace owner Laithongrien Meephan, who led the procession.
The animals were decorated to look like white elephants, an auspicious animal in Thailand, and cloaked in gold and black ceremonial garments.
One elephant carried a picture of the king, while the handlers, dressed in black as a sign of respect, sang the royal anthem in tribute.
France could face winter power cuts, hit by nuclear dependence
By Bate Felix and Geert De Clercq
PARIS, Nov 8 (Reuters) - France could impose power cuts this winter due to an electricity shortage, an unprecedented step in the wealthy nation which would expose the vulnerabilities of its dependence on nuclear power.
The warning was issued on Tuesday by grid operator RTE, which said power supply had been hit by the closure of around a third of the country's ageing nuclear reactors for safety checks. The country's regulator has ordered a review of the strength of crucial steel components after the discovery of manufacturing irregularities.
France relies on nuclear for three-quarters of its power, more than any other country. RTE said the amount of nuclear power available was at a record low for this time of year, around 10,000 megawatts lower than a year ago - equivalent to more than twice the consumption of Paris and Marseille combined.
"During some periods of the day in winter, and during some days, we may need to use exceptional measures to guarantee the balance of electricity demand and supply on the network," RTE President Francois Brottes told reporters at a news conference.
RTE would start by boosting power imports and could also pay some industrial customers to switch off their machinery or curb usage, but Brottes said the gird operator might also have to impose short, rolling power blackouts in parts of the country.
Power supplies are likely to be most stretched in the first three weeks of December, RTE said. With about a third of French homes heated by electricity, the country is highly sensitive to cold snaps.
GENERIC DESIGN
The discovery last year of weak spots in the steel of the EPR reactor state-backed utility EDF is building in Flamanville in northwest France led nuclear regulator ASN to take a closer look at manufacturing procedures of state-owned reactor builder Areva.
In May, the ASN said the anomalies found in Flamanville had also been discovered in reactors being operated by EDF and ordered safety tests on 18 out of EDF's 58 reactors.
Unlike other nuclear countries such as the United States and China, which have used different reactor models and suppliers, all French reactors are pressurised water reactors made by the same manufacturer, a forerunner of Areva.
This standardisation allowed France to build reactors relatively quickly and cheaply, but also created the risk that a generic design flaw or manufacturing problem would affect many reactors and incapacitate a large part of the fleet. Green activists have warned of this possible scenario for years.
Traditionally, France is a net exporter of power, but RTE said it could become a net importer during cold snaps this winter, bringing in up to 7,000-9,000 megawatts from abroad.
France is well linked to neighbouring countries via interconnector cables with a capacity of nearly 10 percent of France's generating capacity.
But Britain has warned that power supply this winter will be tight, Belgium has had problems with the availability of its own nuclear reactors, Italy is chronically short of power and links with Spain have relatively low capacity.
That leaves just Germany and Switzerland as reliable backups, although Germany's large reliance on intermittent renewable energy makes it less suitable as a provider of baseload power.
"The outlook is pessimistic, notably for the first three weeks of December," said a Paris-based power trader, adding that power outages could easily happen.
PROFIT WARNING
The reactor closures are weighing on the power sales of EDF, which has cut its nuclear production target three times this year. They are also forcing the utility to buy expensive power on the market, further weighing on its profitability.
Ratings agency Moody's said on Tuesday that EDF was unlikely to benefit from rising power prices offsetting the expected shortfall in volumes.
Last week, EDF issued its second profit warning of the year, lowering its 2016 core earnings forecast to 16-16.3 billion euros from the original 16.3-16.8 billion euros.
The company finally secured approval from the British government in September to go ahead with its 18 billion pound ($22 billion) project to build two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in England.
EDF has faced internal dissent over the project, with many critics saying the company's balance sheet is already too stretched. EDF needs to borrow money just to pay its dividend, and will have to spend about 50 billion euros ($55.1 billion) on upgrading its ageing nuclear fleet and several billion more for its planned takeover of the reactor division of Areva ($1 = 0.8059 pounds; $1 = 0.9074 euros)
Hungary's Jobbik says will back PM on migrant ban if residency bonds scrapped
BUDAPEST, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Hungarian radical nationalist party Jobbik said it would back Prime Minister Viktor Orban's law to ban the resettlement of migrants as soon as the government abolishes a residency bond programme for foreigners.
Earlier on Tuesday, Hungary's parliament narrowly rejected Orban's plan, as opposition parties boycotted the vote.
It is now clear that La Nina is not going away, and may hang around into next winter. Cold water is entrenched over the central and east...
Turkey, EU trade barbs, but little sign of action
By Gabriela Baczynska and Tulay Karadeniz
BRUSSELS/ANKARA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The European Union stepped up criticism on Tuesday of Turkey's crackdown on opponents and alleged plotters behind a failed coup, drawing a sharp retort from Ankara, which accused Europe of failing to grasp the threats it faces.
But neither seems ready to take the kind of active reprisal that might completely damage a delicate relationship of mutual dependence. Brussels needs Ankara to keep stopping migrants reaching Europe and Turkey, seeing its currency hit record lows on instability fears, wants to keep access to European markets.
The EU said recent events in Turkey were "extremely worrying" but that it would maintain dialogue with Ankara on its - all but distant - prospects of joining. But on the eve of an annual report on Turkey's progress to membership, it ignored calls from some for talks to be halted or for other sanctions.
Nonetheless, a strong statement by the EU and its states saying Turkey must stop polarising its society and safeguard its democracy, plus a personal dig by EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker at President Tayyip Erdogan, underline concern that a vital Muslim ally and a buffer against the chaos of the Middle East risks pitching itself into a new era of instability.
EU leaders are also under pressure at home to speak out on Turkey's crackdown on the media and Kurdish politicians, while for its part, Ankara is seeking to satisfy expectations among Turks that it stand up to criticism from a historic adversary.
As it faces violence in the Kurdish southeast and its forces confront Islamic State across the borders in Iraq and Syria, the Foreign Ministry said Europeans had lost credibility with Turks after demands that it loosens anti-terrorism laws and goes easy after arresting journalists, Kurdish lawmakers and tens of thousands of public servants over a botched coup in July.
Since then, the two sides have been sharply divided by rhetoric. Europeans have voiced understanding for the challenges that Erdogan faces, but a new round of arrests, including those last week of leading Kurdish lawmakers, has strained that reserve.
DRIFTING APART
Leaders on both sides speak of drifting apart.
Juncker said in a speech on Tuesday: "I note with bitterness that Turkey is day by day distancing itself further from Europe ... All that the Turkish authorities are doing today leads me to believe that in the end Turkey does not want to ... meet European standards."
Insisting that the EU would not ease visa requirements for Turkish travellers, as promised in the March deal that helped stem the influx of refugees and migrants to Europe, until Turkey amended its harsh anti-terror law, Juncker cited Erdogan by name and said Turks would blame him for any failure to free up travel to Europe.
"We need Turkey," he said. "But we cannot give up on our main principles."
For his part, Erdogan said in a speech on Sunday that he did not care being labelled a dictator: "Europe has been on a course that is leading to its own demise," he said.
"Those who are willing to drown the rest of the world in blood to preserve the sense of security and peace inside their own borders move further from humanity each day."
Despite occasional threats, however, Turkey has made no move to break the agreement with the EU, under which it agreed to take back Syrian refugees and others who might make it to Greece in return for EU funding for the Syrians living in Turkey, a new start on EU accession talks and a liberalisation of EU visas.
From Europe, as long as the weekly arrivals from Turkey stay in the dozens compared to tens of thousands this time last year, there is little urgency in seeing Turkey meets the 72 criteria that would trigger the easing of visa controls.
Major elections due next year in the Netherlands, France and Germany, where anti-immigration parties are doing well and oppose fostering a closer relationship with Turkey, adds to the sense that Brussels is in no hurry to push to complete the deal.
The pro-Kurdish HDP party, whose leaders were arrested last week, issued a statement in Brussels on Tuesday, however, to warn that Europe's cooperation with Erdogan could backfire.
Accusing EU states of keeping quiet to protect the migrant deal, it said: "The current campaign of repression ... can cause a wave of millions of Kurdish and Turkish refugees heading for Europe."
New Philippine ambassador says China is complying with arbitration ruling
By Manuel Mogato
MANILA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - By letting Philippine fishermen return to the disputed Scarborough Shoal, China is complying with an international arbitral ruling, just without acknowledging it, Manila's incoming ambassador to Beijing said on Tuesday.
Jose Santiago Santa Romana, an academic and political appointee of President Rodrigo Duterte, said Beijing's end to its blockade of the South China Sea shoal meant that it was essentially following the July award by the tribunal in The Hague - a ruling China refuses to recognise.
Filipino fishermen say that since Duterte returned from his high-profile visit to repair ties with China last month, the Chinese coastguard has largely left them alone.
"China is now complying with the arbitration court's ruling, that's what our American lawyer is saying," he told Filipino businessmen at a forum, referring to Paul Reichler, the chief legal counsel for the Philippines in the case it lodged in 2013.
"China has insisted sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal but promised to do something about our fishermen when the president raised the issue."
The remarks by Santa Romana, a scholar who specialises in China, may not be to Beijing's liking given its disdain for the tribunal.
It has bristled at calls by Western countries to comply with the award by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which it called a "law-abusing tribunal", a "farce" and a "puppet" of external forces.
China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.
The tribunal ruled in favour of the Philippines in numerous areas, saying China's "nine-dash line" denoting its maritime sovereignty claims has no basis. It also declared the Scarborough Shoal a traditional fishing ground that all claimants were entitled to exploit.
The ambassador-designate said the Scarborough Shoal was discussed at length when he joined a team led by former Philippine president Fidel Ramos to meet "old friends" in Hong Kong in August with a view to breaking the ice with China.
"China has made a commitment that it will not reclaim the shoal, preserving it as a marine sanctuary, so it is not allowing even Chinese fishermen to fish inside the lagoon," he said, referring to what was discussed.
"The two countries should now work out some rules of engagement between our two coastguards to avoid a repeat of the standoff."
3G Capital raising $8 bln-$10 bln for M&A - Brazil Journal
SAO PAULO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Brazilian buyout firm 3G Capital is seeking to raise $8 billion to $10 billion through a new fund to finance an acquisition, website Brazil Journal said on Tuesday, citing sources close to the company.
The report cited 3G, which is partly owned by billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, as saying it would likely target a company in the consumer goods sector, without disclosing which.
There is market speculation that 3G wants to acquire Oreo-maker Mondelez International Inc through its Kraft Heinz Co unit, according to the news article.
At least 10 Brazilians have committed to invest a minimum of $100 million each in the new acquisition fund, the website said.
Reuters calls to 3G's Rio de Janeiro office for comments went unanswered.
3G, known for pursuing aggressive cost-cutting strategies, last teamed up with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc in 2013 to acquire H.J. Heinz and last year merged it with Kraft Foods.
Endo warns of more pressure on generics business in 2017
By Natalie Grover
Nov 8 (Reuters) - Endo International Plc is facing increasing pricing and competitive pressures in its U.S. generics business and the trends will likely worsen in 2017, newly appointed Chief Executive Paul Campanelli said on Tuesday.
The warning overshadowed Endo's better-than-expected quarterly results that were driven by higher demand for its generic drugs, which accounts for about 60 percent of total revenue.
Endo's shares, which gained more than 4 percent in premarket trading, reversed course to trade down 9 percent at $14.29 in regular trading hours on Tuesday.
The 45 percent increase in Endo's U.S. generic business in the third quarter was driven by the drugs it acquired when it bought Par Pharmaceuticals last year, while sales declined in the company's legacy generics business.
The deeper-than-expected "erosion trends" in Endo's legacy generics business as well as pricing pressure in the quarter indicate "stronger headwinds on the front as we exit the year," Campanelli said on a post-earnings call.
These pressures could also eat into Endo's adjusted gross margins and the company's pursuit of drug approvals, said Campanelli, who led the generics business until he took over the CEO role in September.
Generic drug makers such as Endo, Mylan NV and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd have come under heightened political and regulatory scrutiny over suspected price collusion.
Endo, which slashed its earnings forecast in May amid fierce competition, on Tuesday reaffirmed its full-year revenue and profit forecast.
The company's total revenue rose 18.6 pct to $884.3 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, beating analysts' average estimate of $862.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Excluding items, Dublin, Ireland-based Endo earned $1.01 per share, handily beating analysts' average estimate of 81 cents.
Endo, whose net debt was $7.7 billion as of Sept. 30, has not decided to divest any assets, Campanelli said, promising an update in February.
The company has discussed a sale of Paladin Labs Inc, its Montreal-based specialty pharmaceutical unit, to Canadian drug maker Knight Therapeutics Inc, Reuters reported last week, citing sources.
Endo, much like its Canadian peer Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc , is reeling with a large debt load and facing mounting pressure over its pricing strategies, after years of relying on acquisitions to juice growth.
Brazil's Temer sees return to growth taking time
By Anthony Boadle and Lisandra Paraguassu
BRASILIA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - President Michel Temer said on Tuesday he expects Brazil's economy to emerge from a severe recession in the second half of next year, later than expected by most economists.
He added Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, is making strides toward restoring business confidence and recovering the investment grade credit rating that it lost last year.
Addressing the powerful industrial lobby CNI, Temer said chopping Brazil's budget deficit and pulling the economy out of recession "takes time."
"Our hope is that we will not have negative growth in the second half of 2017," Temer told the conference on building and financing infrastructure, adding that high unemployment, with 12 million Brazilians out of work, would start to fall then too.
Brazil's recession has lasted two years, marking the economy's deepest downturn since the 1930s.
Economists widely expect the economy to start growing again in the first quarter of 2017
Based on recent data, the industrial sector shows signs of stabilizing and corporate investments have started to pick up. Consumer and business confidence have risen off record lows.
Temer, who took over in August when his leftist predecessor as ousted in an impeachment trial, said his center-right government is seeking to increase the private sector's role in modernizing infrastructure.
He urged Congress to approve a federal spending cap this year, to be followed by a reform of the costly pension system in 2017 to restore fiscal discipline.
Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles, speaking after Temer, said public spending had reached unsustainable levels under previous governments and Brazil was only now, for the first time, tackling its biggest problem of spending more than it earned.
Meirelles said the pace of economic recovery would depend on business confidence. He said the government was strengthening regulatory agencies to improve the business climate as it looks for private investment to rebound.
Temer said renewed confidence since he stepped in to replace Dilma Rousseff has improved the chances of Brazil recovering its investment grade.
Former Philippine dictator Marcos to get hero's burial 3 decades after death
By Karen Lema
MANILA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Philippine Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for a hero's burial for former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, resolving an issue that has divided the nation since his death in 1989 three years after he was ousted in a "people power" revolt.
Voting 9-5, the Supreme Court threw out petitions filed by leftist activists and victims of human rights abuses, ruling that President Rodrigo Duterte was within his powers to order Marcos be buried in the heroes' cemetery, south of Manila.
"The president committed no grave abuse of discretion," the Supreme Court said, adding that no law prohibited a hero's burial for Marcos.
In August, Duterte, saying he was fulfilling a campaign promise, ordered the army to bury Marcos at the cemetery, prompting anti-Marcos groups to seek a ruling from the court.
Marcos's son and namesake, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who narrowly lost a May election for vice-president, described Tuesday's decision as "magnanimous" and expressed hope it would "lead the nation towards healing."
Duterte shared the sentiment.
"We hope the matter will finally be laid to rest, and that the nation finds the wherewithal to move forward and to continue forging a nation that is peaceable, just and fair to all," his spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said in a statement.
More than a hundred Marcos supporters, carrying Philippine flags and wearing Marcos T-shirts, gathered outside the Supreme Court and cheered the decision.
But others were angry.
"History has lost its meaning, and it's confusing and frustrating that after so many decisions against Marcos, the Supreme Court turned itself around," said former congressman Neri Colmenares, one of thousands of Filipinos persecuted during the era of martial law.
He said leftist groups would appeal the ruling.
Marcos ruled the Philippines for 20 years, during which time he, his family and cronies amassed an estimated $10 billion in ill-gotten wealth, a commission found. Thousands of suspected communist rebels and political foes were killed.
He was a soldier and guerrilla leader during World War Two when the former U.S. colony was occupied by Japanese forces.
Marcos died in exile in Hawaii and his family returned to the Philippines in the 1990s to became powerful local politicians representing his home province of Ilocos Norte.
His wife, Imelda, a third-term congresswoman, denies amassing wealth illegally.
His daughter Imee, the Ilocos Norte governor, said getting the hero's burial had been a long struggle.
"This was what I promised him," she said. "This has been my promise to him for nearly 30 years, now we're old."
Previous governments refused to allow the Marcos family to bury him at the cemetery, amid opposition. His embalmed body is now on display in a mausoleum in Ilocos Norte.
However, Marvic Leonen, one of the five judges who voted against the burial, said Marcos was no hero and his burial would not lead to national healing.
Massive crocodile rescued in Sri Lanka
Nov 8 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan wildlife officials rescued a massive crocodile on Monday after it got stuck in a canal in the southern city of Matara while looking for food, according to local media.
Reports said the reptile, discovered in a canal leading to the Nilwala river, was believed to weigh close to a ton and measured 17 feet (5.18 m) long.
"We found a similar size crocodile four, five months back in the Polathumodara river. This is the maximum these type of crocodiles grow," environmentalist Uppala Jayatissa told local television.
Local media said the crocodile was searching for food after water levels rose due to heavy rain.
No-confidence motion against South Africa's Zuma will fail -ANC
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 8 (Reuters) - A motion of no confidence in South Africa's President Jacob Zuma "has no chance of succeeding" when parliament votes on Thursday, the secretary-general of Zuma's African National Congress (ANC) party, Gwede Mantashe, said on Tuesday.
The vote was called by the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party last week after South Africa's anti-corruption watchdog called in a report for a judicial inquiry into allegations of influence-peddling in Zuma's government.
"The DA has now made this an annual and frivolous ritual that is fast losing its meaning," Mantashe told a media briefing, referring to the no-confidence vote.
"This vote of no-confidence has no chance of succeeding."
He added that the report did not find anyone guilty, and that calls by the opposition urging Zuma to quit over its findings were "premature".
The report by the Public Protector stopped short of saying crimes had been committed, but said a judge should investigate whether Zuma, cabinet members and some state companies acted improperly in their dealings with wealthy Indian businessmen.
Zuma denies granting undue influence to the Gupta family of business tycoons, who run a business empire from media to mining, or anyone else. The Guptas have also denied any wrongdoing.
The scandal highlighted in the report has rattled investors in Africa's most industrialised country and raised the risk the stagnating economy's credit ratings will be downgraded.
Zuma, 74, has already survived two no-confidence votes related to other scandals this year. His ruling ANC controls about two-thirds of the 400-member assembly.
With tunnels and guile, militants battle overwhelming force in Iraq
By Michael Georgy
BASHIQA, Iraq, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Judging by the huge number of bullet holes that penetrated a house in this northern Iraqi town, the sniper who had been defying Kurdish and American forces should have died quickly.
But a look inside the villa in Bashiqa one day after Kurdish peshmerga forces said he was eventually killed by an air strike showed how he evaded death for almost an entire day of fighting.
It also revealed how jihadist snipers use innovation and guile to take on enemies with far greater fire power.
The house used by the sniper as a base to target the Kurdish and American forces as they push towards Islamic State's main stronghold in the city of Mosul had clearly been turned into a battle centre.
The militants had punched holes through the walls into nearby houses, allowing the sniper to run back and forth safely as Kurdish forces used an array of weapons -- from wire-guided missiles to artillery -- to try to eliminate their enemy, and U.S. special forces pounded the house with the computer-guided machine guns on their armoured MRAP vehicles.
In several rooms there were huge mounds of dirt left over from digging tunnels. One tunnel was tall enough for an average size man to move through quickly whilst slightly crouching down.
Even though there was no sign of the sniper or his comrades who ruled Bashiqa for two years, peshmerga forces were on edge.
Major-General Mohammad Yasseen arrived to inspect the damage. Pointing to several rows of houses in the neighbourhood he said: "There are tunnels beneath all these houses."
The Iraqi military has captured at least one industrial tunnel boring machine with a diameter of around 2 metres, and Kurdish officials say a far greater and more complex network of Islamic State tunnels awaits Iraqi forces in Mosul.
SNIPER THREAT
Clearing those tunnels and making sure there are no booby traps or hidden suicide bombers will be a laborious task. Snipers like the one who held up the peshmerga in Bashiqa will also pose a lethal threat in a large city.
"Snipers are our biggest concern at this point ... You don't know where and when a sniper will strike. It's nerve-wracking," an officer in the elite Counter Terrorism Service told Reuters.
In front of the house in Bashiqa was a burnt-out car. A Kurdish fighter inspecting the villa turned and said: "Be careful, there could be a suicide bomber hiding in one of these rooms."
When Islamic State swallowed up towns like Bashiqa in 2014 they made their sectarianism quite clear. In Bashiqa, Kurdish officers said, they destroyed and ransacked the houses of any non-Sunnis, including Shi'ites, Yazidis and Christians.
Some nearby shops, now abandoned, had the word 'Muslim' written on them, apparently by Islamic State to differentiate them from the others.
The sniper's house had clearly been turned into a military fortification.
Some remaining belongings of people who once lived there were scattered about. A blue shirt lay on the floor and a few Turkish coffee cups were next to a small silver trophy. Some blankets were covered in dust.
Kurdish officers said there were only about 20 Islamic State militants left in the town. They appeared to be the target of occasional shooting and a few artillery rounds - far less intense than the day before when peshmerga stormed the town.
Mexico peso dips slightly amid U.S. election day nerves
MEXICO CITY, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Mexico's peso was slightly weaker in Tuesday morning trade, amid caution as Americans voted in a presidential election race that the local currency has served as a trading proxy for.
The peso was 0.27 percent weaker at 18.6245 pesos per dollar, despite the fact that polls were seen favoring Hillary Clinton heading into election day.
The currency had rallied to its strongest in two weeks on Monday as traders boosted bets on a Clinton victory, after the FBI said it would take no further action against her.
The peso has seen volatile trade in recent months amid market fears over the rise of Republican candidate Donald Trump and his policies, which are seen as harmful to Mexico's economy.
Credit Suisse hired to sell RBS's Saudi Hollandi Bank stake- sources
By David French, Hadeel Al Sayegh and Tom Arnold
DUBAI, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Credit Suisse has been appointed to sell Royal Bank of Scotland's 40 percent stake in Saudi Hollandi Bank, sources aware of the matter said on Tuesday, in a deal potentially worth around $1.2 billion.
Several sources said Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), was considered a likely buyer of the stake. The fund has been buying up assets at home and abroad following plans to turn it into the world's largest sovereign wealth fund with $2 trillion of assets.
The sale would be an opportunity for a foreign buyer to gain a foothold in the kingdom's banking sector, in which 12 commercial lenders share total assets worth around 2.22 trillion riyals ($592 billion). But banking sources expect the holding to go to a domestic player.
Spokespeople for RBS and the PIF declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Saudi Hollandi did not respond to a request for comment.
RBS, which acquired the stake via its 2007 purchase of ABN AMRO, has been looking to sell it for a number of years as it retreats from international operations and tries to bolster its capital base. The state-backed bank is also still facing hefty legal bills and potential fines for alleged misconduct before and during the financial crisis.
There has been a renewed push recently within RBS to get a deal done, which fits with the Saudi authorities' desire to resolve the ownership issue, according to one banking source with knowledge of the situation.
As a result, Credit Suisse was appointed in late-October as adviser for the sale, according to two separate banking sources.
The Saudi Hollandi stake is the largest holding within RBS's RBS NV division. This is ultimately 97.72 percent owned by RBS, while Banco Santander and the Dutch government have small holdings.
RBS management told analysts on a conference call last month following the British bank's third-quarter earnings it was working on winding down the RBS NV unit over time but a deal relating to the Saudi Hollandi stake was not imminent, according to a transcript on RBS's website.
The transcript also said that in July, RBS agreed to make a payment to Saudi Hollandi should a sale go ahead. The first banking source told Reuters the agreement was for a payment of 260 million euros ($287.1 million).
The approval of Saudi Hollandi shareholders on Oct. 31 to allow the bank to change its name was seen as a signal that something was on the cards, finance industry sources said.
FIRST BANK IN SAUDI ARABIA
Founded in 1926 as the first bank in Saudi Arabia, it had assets of 106.9 billion riyals as of Sept. 30. Its market capitalisation of $3.06 billion, according to Reuters data, would value RBS' stake at around $1.22 billion.
Saudi Arabia was an attractive banking market when bumper state oil revenues fuelled strong economic growth. But conditions have changed following the fall in oil prices in the last two years, with liquidity squeezed by governments taking out money to fund budget shortfalls and profitability crimped by higher provisioning for bad loans.
Saudi Hollandi has reported flat or falling profits in the past four quarters, with its third-quarter earnings down 46.7 percent on the back of impairment allowances.
Difficult market conditions, combined with the Saudi authorities' preference for local ownership of banks, means a domestic buyer is most likely, with the prime candidate the PIF, according to banking sources in the kingdom.
"There is no one else out there to do this deal," said one of the sources aware of the Credit Suisse mandate.
The fund has also been behind a number of domestic investments in recent months - ownership of a stalled financial district project in Riyadh is to be transferred to the fund, and the fund is expected to make an investment into King Abdullah Economic City.
The Saudi government already owns 10.5 percent in Saudi Hollandi. The other main shareholder with 21.8 percent is the Olayan family, a major local merchant group with interests in finance, real estate and food and beverage.
Arab forces kill six Al Qaeda fighters in Yemen - security official
ADEN, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Arab coalition forces killed six al Qaeda militants and arrested four others during a raid in southern Yemen on Tuesday, residents and a security official said.
The raid took place at a village west of the city of Mukalla on the Arabian Sea, the Yemeni security official told Reuters.
The Arab coalition was formed early in 2015 to fight Yemen's Iran-allied Houthi group after it took control of the capital Sanaa and forced the internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee into exile.
Its mostly Gulf Arab members are also now battling Islamist militants in Yemen, including al Qaeda and Islamic State.
AB InBev attracts at least six bids for Pilsner Urquell, other brands-sources
By Pamela Barbaglia, Agnieszka Barteczko and Martinne Geller
LONDON/WARSAW, Nov 8 (Reuters) - At least six indicative offers have been submitted by industry players and buyout funds for a group of beer brands being sold by Anheuser-Busch InBev , sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
First-round bids for the brands, which include Pilsner Urquell in the Czech Republic and Tyskie and Lech in Poland, were due on Monday, according to the sources, who declined to be identified as the process is private.
Worth more than 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion), the brands were put up for sale as part of AB InBev's $100 billion-plus takeover of SABMiller, which closed last month.
Japanese brewer Asahi Holdings and Czech investment firm PPF Group have submitted rival bids, while Hungarian energy group Mol has teamed up with Polish juice maker Maspex Wadowice Group and Polish insurer PZU group to table a joint offer, the sources said.
Private equity investors Bain Capital and Europe's Advent, have joined forces, while KKR has made a joint offer with Mid Europa Partners, the sources said.
Another consortium includes Swiss investment firm Jacobs Holding and Canadian pension fund PSP Investments with additional backing from Czech family office R2G, the sources said.
Polish billionaire Sebastian Kulczyk told Reuters earlier this month that he may use some of the proceeds from the sale of his stake in SABMiller to buy the Central and Eastern European beer brands. The sources mentioned recent talks between Kulczyk and the KKR-led consortium but said the parties have so far failed to reach an agreement.
China Resources, which took full ownership of the Chinese joint venture it had with SABMiller, was also interested in the assets, according to the sources, but it was not immediately clear whether it has tabled a competitive bid.
European private equity firm BC Partners, which initially looked at the business, has dropped out of the process, they added.
AB InBev, PPF, MOL, Jacobs, PSP, R2G, Bain and BC Partners declined to comment, while no one at Asahi, Maspex, PZU, Kulcyk Investment or the other private equity firms was immediately available for comment.
The sources expect second-round bids to be submitted next month.
Shares in AB InBev, the world's largest brewer, were up 1.6 percent at 103.55 euros in Brussels at 1618 GMT.
Asahi has bought SABMiller's Western European brands Peroni and Grolsch and could be interested in expanding its European presence, the sources said, adding that private equity funds were keen to take advantage of the growth in markets such as Poland and Czech Republic, where alcohol consumption remains strong.
Pilsner Urquell, for example, has about a 40 percent share of the Czech beer market, which has the highest per-capita consumption in the world.
1-Mexico peso plunges to life low as Trump homes in on U.S. presidency
By Michael O'Boyle and Noe Torres
MEXICO CITY, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Mexico's peso plunged to its lowest-ever levels on Tuesday night as U.S. Republican Donald Trump led in the key battleground state of Florida and had an edge in a clutch of other states, driving investors to contemplate that Trump could likely be the next U.S. president.
Concerns of a Trump victory weighed heavily on the peso for months on his threats to rip up a free trade agreement with Mexico and tax money sent home by migrants to pay for building a wall on the southern U.S. border.
The peso weakened by more than 13 percent in Tuesday after-market trading for Mexico and in Wednesday trading in Asia, breaking past 20 pesos per dollar - its biggest intraday fall in at least 19 years.
"There's a lot of panic in the market, it is definitely an outcome it was not expecting," said Juan Carlos Alderete, a strategist at Banorte-IXE. "The movements are very strong, the market is showing higher risk aversion in search of safe-haven assets."
A Trump-inspired peso tumble could push Mexico's central bank to raise interest rates or directly intervene in forex markets to stem the bleed.
Three economists told Reuters they expected Mexico's central bank to raise its benchmark interest rate by an impromptu 75 to 150 basis points on Wednesday if Trump wins, while one of them said the bank could instead opt for a swap with the U.S. Federal Reserve pending how the peso evolves.
The central bank has already hiked its rate three times this year, lifting it to 4.75 percent to anchor inflation expectations following a sharp depreciation of the peso.
"I don't think a Trump scenario was taken seriously in the last days by the market. Hopefully there are some contingency plans by authorities and they can take measures to protect the Mexican economy," said Ernesto Revilla, an economist at Banamex and the government's former chief economist.
Mexican central bank head Agustin Carstens last week said the country was ready in case of an "adverse" result in the U.S. election, which he has said could hit Mexico like a "hurricane."
Earlier on Tuesday, the Mexican currency had rallied nearly 1.4 percent before official election results began to be released, as final polls showed a Clinton advantage.
Measures of peso volatility, or bets on potential swings in the currency, spiked to their highest levels since the financial crisis, while the volume of wagers in peso futures contracts surged to a record high during the last 50 days.
"This is truly a historic moment. I don't recall such an extreme outlook on the U.S. economy that could be so negative to the Mexican economy," said Benito Berber, an analyst at Nomura in New York.
Berber said a Trump win could drive the peso to between 23 and 26 per dollar.
Implied volatility in one-week peso-dollar options contracts surged to the highest level since the financial crisis ahead of the election, although levels dipped this week.
Daily volume in the front-month future peso contract has averaged more than 61,000 contracts over the last 50 days, nearly three times the historic mean of around 23,000.
Major banks told clients to expect volatile currency markets in the aftermath of the U.S. election. One Goldman Sachs client said the bank advised on Monday it would not accept new stop-loss orders on the peso until further notice.
A deep slump in the peso could stoke inflation, but it would also help compensate exporters, who could face new tariffs under a Trump presidency.
Air strikes and artillery kill 20 in NW Syria - monitoring group
BEIRUT, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Air strikes and government artillery killed at least 20 people, including 10 children, in the largely rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said Russian or Syrian government warplanes pounded the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing seven children and two pregnant women.
Warplanes and government artillery also killed 11 people in the village of Baarbo in the southwest of the province, the monitor reported.
"The Russian Defence Ministry has denied information reported in multiple foreign media outlets about alleged strikes by the Russian Air Force in the region of Khan Sheikhoun near the city of Idlib," Russia's TASS news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday.
"Russian jets did not fly in the area on Nov. 8 and no missile strikes were carried out."
Syria's war pits President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, against an array of mostly Sunni rebel groups, including some backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States.
The FBI-Justice Department war has gone nuclear. Comey's decision on Clinton's emails won't fix the fallout.
By Tim Weiner
Nov 8 (Reuters) - The end of the most bitter presidential contest in memory is upon us. One candidate says he may or may not respect the results. The other has been the subject of a long national-security investigation by the FBI.
Americans have been justly afraid of a crisis before and after the ballots are cast. What if a cyberattack strikes Monday? If self-proclaimed poll-watchers confront voters with violence on Tuesday? If a clear loser refuses to concede and rejects the will of the people on Wednesday?
FBI Director James B. Comey broke ranks with his superiors at the Justice Department on October 28 and fired a loaded weapon in the form of a letter to Congress. On Sunday, that bullet ricocheted. He has inflicted a wholly unnecessary wound on the Democratic presidential nominee and left a scar on the American body politic.
The Justice Department and the FBI have to help protect Americans from all threats, foreign and domestic. To succeed, they must cooperate. But they went to war instead. They afflicted their authority and ability to act in a crisis. It's a tragedy for this country.
Comey took office in 2013 with a sterling reputation for speaking truth to power. His boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, was sworn in at the Justice Department last year, succeeding Eric Holder.
Attorneys general are sworn to uphold liberty and justice for all. The FBI has to protect the national security of the United States. The framers of the Constitution knew that liberty and security are conflicting forces. They also knew America must have both.
Comey's bureau is, first and foremost, an intelligence service, charged since 9/11 with preventing another catastrophic attack, working closely with the CIA, its longtime rival. The FBI also has to fulfill its traditional 20th-century role of federal law enforcement, operating under the aegis of the Justice Department to uphold U.S. constitutional freedoms.
Comey has to strike that balance while serving both the president and Congress. He now is being damned for appearing to put his thumb on the scale of the presidential election without rhyme or reason. But give him a moment of sympathy before calling him the devil.
He began to get athwart of the White House a year ago. He decried the "Ferguson effect" - the idea, broadly stated, that the Black Lives Matter movement and videos of police brutality impeded American law enforcement. President Barack Obama pushed back. "Stick with the facts," Obama said in a speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, we can't "use anecdotal evidence to drive policy or to feed political agendas."
It's almost shameful to be compelled to state the following facts: Lynch and Holder are African-Americans. Like Obama, they are lawyers steeped, by training and experience, in struggles over civil rights - and the FBI is, in Comey's own words, "overwhelmingly white and male."
FBI agents in the field? About 5 percent are black. The top brass? About 90 percent are white. They are, by their own training and experience, ever-vigilant spies and cops. The political culture of the bureau has always been conservative. It's fair to surmise that a significant number of the folks at the FBI's field offices and its Washington headquarters - the J. Edgar Hoover Building - skew to the right.
It's beyond question that the Justice Department and the FBI went to a war footing on October 28. That day, Comey told Congress that his agents were investigating whether classified information was contained in emails of Huma Abedin, a top aide to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, found on the laptop of her estranged husband, disgraced former Representative Anthony Weiner (no relation of mine).
The implication was explosive. The FBI's pursuit of alleged national-security violations in Clinton's handling of her own classified emails while at the State Department - an investigation Comey had said was closed in July - might be reopened and unending. Then came a torrent of leaks from present and former FBI agents, some factual, some false. The Justice Department's top brass, in turn, began bad-mouthing Comey to reporters.
It's clear that some FBI agents were frustrated by digging dry wells as they investigated Clinton. It's likely that they wanted Comey to go to Congress. But it's absolutely certain that his superiors at Justice told him not to. Comey's disclosure was in clear violation of Justice Department guidelines - and in open defiance of Lynch's directive - because you just don't talk about an FBI investigation in progress.
And you never, ever, talk about a probe that could conceivably sway a presidential race right before Election Day. Though no cause and effect can be proved, the race tightened after Comey's disclosure.
Then, on Sunday evening, November 6, barely 30 hours before polls were set to open in New Hampshire, a bulletin: Comey announced that there was no new evidence concerning Clinton. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving.
Obama wasn't kidding when he said the fate of the republic is at stake this week. The presidential election is probably going to be fraught with potential national-security and federal law-enforcement problems.
Every U.S. intelligence agency agrees that Russia is trying to hack the election system. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has appeared to encourage that. Reuters reports that Moscow has forged political documents intended to discredit Clinton and sow chaos in her campaign.
Voting rights are under assault. A federal judge in Ohio has enjoined the Trump campaign from intimidating voters. That order is under appeal at this writing. But worse things are happening than a wrangle in a courthouse. Some voters going to the polls have reason to fear vigilantes may confront them. Someone fire-bombed a black church in Mississippi and spray-painted "Vote Trump" on a charred wall.
Could there be a worse time for the Justice Department and the FBI to have gone to the mattresses as the political crossfire reaches a crescendo? Now neither institution can take action without appearing politically partisan.
The Appeal Court today issued an interim order suspending the Colombo High Court's remand order on former MP Tiran Alles.
The Bench comprising Justices P.R. Walgama and S .Devika De L.Tennekoon directed the Welikada Prisons Authorities to release Mr. Alles from remand and ordered him to appear in the High Court on November 10.
Court instructed the Registrar to convey the Appeal Court order to the Superintendent of Prisons by fax and by phone.
Court also issued notice on the Attorney General -- cited as the respondent -- returnable for November 22.
Romesh de Silva PC with Nalin Ladduwahetti PC and Sugath Caldera appeared for the petitioner. (S.S. Selvanayagam)
The Medical Faculty Students' Action Committee staged a protest in outside the Hulftsdrop Magistrate's Court today urging the government to abolish the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM). Pix by Kithsiri de Mel
PHU General Secretary and MP Udaya Gammanpila yesterday claimed there would be a risk to the unitary nature of Sri Lanka because of the intervention of federal experts in the proposed new constitution based on the resolution approved in Parliament on March 9.
Mr. Gammanpila said the proposals in sub-committee report on the Central Government and Provincial Councils had proved that there was a conspiracy to include federalism in the proposed new constitution.
The government has repeatedly stressed that it would not compromise on the unitary nature of Sri Lanka. But the situation has changed with there being none to speak up on the unitary state in the sub-committee though there are several federal experts in it, he said.
The MP said this would lead to the setting up of a Constitutional Assembly based on racism.
He said according to the sub-committee reports the police powers were to be devolved to the provincial councils.
The central government should retain police powers, the MP said and warned that if there were to be a war in Sri Lanka in the future, it would be between the Army and and the Police in Northern Province.
He said the sub-committee report proposes to hand over ownership of the lands in the Northern Province to Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran who is currently on a mission to expel Sinhalese from the Northern Province.
Giving powers to the provincial councils will mean supporting Mr. Wigneswaran. It is evident from his actions that he is racially motivated, the MP said.
Meanwhile, he invited patriots to refrain from voting for the proposed new constitution in a referendum. (Kalathma Jayawardhane)
Video by Sanjeewa
A cross-section of fisher leaders has expressed disappointment over the outcome of the recent high-level meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in Delhi to find a solution to the long-standing livelihood issue of Tamil Nadu fishermen.
We are not at all satisfied with the decision to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG), joint patrolling and hotline between the Coast Guards of the two countries to address the issue as none of the measure would help to find a solution to the issue, a leader who was part of the delegation that held talks with their Sri Lankan counterparts, ahead of the high-level meeting, said.
The leaders had high hopes that the two governments would work out a solution and allow Tamil Nadu fishermen to fish in the Lankan waters in the Palk Bay for specific period till they switched over to deep-sea fishing or phased out bottom trawling; but, they were disappointed.
The whole exercise turned out to be futile and it was totally disappointing, U. Arulanandham, president of the Alliance for the Release of Innocent Fishermen (ARIF), told The Hindu . It was shocking that Ms. Swaraj could not prevail upon the Sri Lankan government to secure the release of 115 boats detained in the island nation for more than one-and-a-half years, he said.
Most of the boats were badly damaged and the fishermen would receive only some wooden planks and scraps when the Sri Lankan authorities returned the boats, he rued. The Tamil fishermen from northern Sri Lanka, who were crying foul about destruction of marine resources, should understand the steps taken by the State government to protect the marine resources, he said.
Mr. P. Sesu Raja said it was unfortunate that the Indian government, which wrested an assurance from the Sri Lankan government that the fishermen would not be attacked, failed to secure an assurance that they would not be arrested till alternative arrangements were made.
It was also distressing to note that Ms. Swaraj could not secure the release of the mechanised and country boats held in Sri Lanka, he said.
Mr. M. Ilango, leader of the National Fishworkers Forum (NFF), said the decision to set up a JWG was only an eyewash. If Ms. Swaraj and Mr. Samaraweera could not decide on securing the release of the boats, it will be foolish to hope the JWG will secure the release, he said.
The decision to set up joint patrolling and establish hotline between the two coast guards was aimed at chasing away the Tamil Nadu fishermen, he said. No doubt Ms. Swaraj, recovering from an illness, took sincere efforts to find a solution, but the exercise went in favour of the Sri Lankan fishermen, he alleged.
Both India and Sri Lanka failed to note it was the livelihood issue of Tamil Nadu fishermen and it has to be approached with a humanitarian touch, he told The Hindu .
In the wake of Chinese Ambassador Yi Xiangliang'a critical remarks on Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake , Foreign Secretary Esala Weerakoon yesterday contacted the envoy over the phone and said the government of Sri Lanka was always prepared and open to discuss any issue of concern, it is learnt.
As a result, Mr. Weerakoon is reported to have said that there is no need for the Ambassador to discuss such matters through the media.
The Ambassador told a news conference last week that he asked the Finance Minister as to why fresh Chinese loans were sought if they were expensive.
It created a diplomatic furore between the two countries with the Minister responding to it. (Kelum Bandara)
The international community needed to intervene in the incidents taking place in the Northern Province as the government was no longer in control, Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran said.
Speaking to the United Kingdoms Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Baroness Anelay yesterday, the Chief Minister said the citizens in the province could not accept the solutions provided by the government.
Highlighting the need for an international investigation in to war crimes, Wigneswaran said they could not accept a domestic mechanism. It was essential that an investigation be conducted internationally with the participation of international judges, he said.
Meanwhile, the Baroness said she would discuss the requests made by the Chief Minister with high ranking government officials. (Romesh Madushanka)
Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama welcomed the participants of the 10th Annual Forum of Development Countries Investments Negotiations, which was organised by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the South Centre and co-hosted by the Development Strategies and International Trade Ministry and Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI).
Samarawickrama stated that he was very proud and thankful to the organisers for having selected Sri Lanka as the venue for hosting the 10th Annual Forum.
In his address Samarawickrama stated that Sri Lanka and particularly the BOI recognized the very important role that investment has to play in developing the economies of the countries in the Asian region.
For this reason, the Government of Sri Lanka has identified the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) as one of its key policies in bringing about the rapid development of the country.
One vital element in the process for attracting investment is to create strong economic bonds between all countries by entering into investment agreements at the intraregional level. This can be achieved by developing the necessary capabilities for negotiators to initiate discussions at the bilateral, regional and multilateral level.
As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, this forum will prove to be very useful as the country is engaged in the process of negotiating FTAs with several key partners in the Asian region such as China
and Singapore.
The forum is very much an international event with over 50 countries represented and therefore an excellent platform where delegates with a vast knowledge and experience can share ideas and know how in many areas relating to investment negotiations.
Samarawickrama therefore concluded that the forum offers considerable potential for capacity building, networking and the exchange of ideas and experiences.
Finally, Samarawickrama elaborated on some the many improvements that have taken place in Sri Lanka, which international participants will be able to witness during their visit in the country. These include the rapid developments taking place in the City of Colombo and the large-scale development projects.
He added that while developing Sri Lanka continues to be an island paradise with a rich cultural heritage and many natural beauties.
Aris Protonotarios, Head of Technical - Nestle South Asia Region; Mr. Upul Jayasuriya, Chairman - Board of Investment of Sri Lanka; Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor - Central Bank of Sri Lanka and Shivani Hegde, Nestle Lanka Managing Director, opening the new UHT milk plant
NestleLanka opens new UHT milk plant as a commitment to developSri Lankas dairy industry; Invests LKR 500 million
Nestle Lanka achieved another big milestone in the history of the company with the opening of a new UHT milk plant in its factory in Kurunegala. Continuing the investments the company has made in the country, it invested another LKR 500 million this year on this new production facility, as a commitment to develop the local dairy industry.
The UHT milk plant was inaugurated by Chief Guest, Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and Guest of Honour, Mr. Upul Jayasuriya, Chairman of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka.
Said Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy External debt is a real challenge the country faces today. Nestle however,has greatly benefited the country by helping Sri Lanka earn and save its foreign-exchange reserves through the local manufacture of Nestles strong brands. Nestle is also a fine example of a company that has fully integrated itself into the domestic economy through its many initiatives to empower the lives of 20,000 local dairy farmers. I want to congratulatethe company on this expansion; it is a great testament to the jobs they have created and their long term commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility.
Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor - Central Bank of Sri Lanka unveiling the plaque. Looking on are Shivani Hegde, Nestle Lanka Managing Director; Mr. Upul Jayasuriya, Chairman - Board of Investment of Sri Lanka and Rohit Mittal, Nestle Vice President - Technical
We are currently preparing for an investment drive in Sri Lanka. I am happy to note that through their dairy development initiatives, Nestle began their journey in investing in Sri Lankas future over thirty years ago, contributing significantly to the development of the country.Said Mr. Upul Jayasuriya. Their new investment will further increase import substitution and exports in the country. I want to offer my thanks to Nestle for giving me this opportunity to witness this reality and wish them all the success in their future investment plans.
Said Shivani Hegde, Managing Director for Nestle, The new UHT milk plant we opened will positively impact the farmers we work with daily, strengthening our efforts to develop the local dairy industry, contribute to its prosperity, and ultimately, enhance the quality of life of the people of Sri Lanka.
Nestles factory in Kurunegala is home to its production facilities that manufacture, amongst others, its dairy based products. Through this new investment on a UHT milk plant, Nestle plans to expand the companys production capacity for its popular dairy based beverages,providing local consumers with more milk based products that cater to local tastes and nutritional needs. The new plant will manufacture RTD (Ready-To-Drink) products like Milo, Nespray Nutri-Up, Nescafe Ice and Nestomalt.
Nestle has been operating in Sri Lanka for 110 years and prides itself on being a local multinational. The company focuses on manufacturing products locally, largely using local ingredients.Nestle, which is Sri Lankas largest private sector collector of fresh milk, contributed LKR 3.6 billion in 2015 to its dairy farmers as payment for fresh milk, to manufacture its products like Nespray, Milo and Milkmaid.
Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor - Central Bank of Sri Lanka and Mr. Upul Jayasuriya, Chairman - Board of Investment of Sri Lanka observing the RTD (Ready-to-Drink) production line of the new UHT milk plant. Looking on are Bandula Egodage, Nestle Assistant Vice President Corporate Affairs and Communications; Shivani Hegde, Nestle Lanka Managing Director and Aris Protonotarios, Head of Technical - Nestle South Asia Region
The Nestle Lanka Kurunegala Factory
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday said that some recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that could be implemented would be put into practice in the coming years.
The Prime Minister made these remarks at last evening's commemoration lecture on one time Attorney General C R De Silva who chaired the LLRC.
Mr Wickremesinghe was referring to late Mr De Silva who was his classmate with his pet name Bulla.
Late Mr De Silva chaired the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). Its recommendations were controversial; I agreed with some and disagreed with others. I asked Bulla you could have hit harder but why you didnt do it. He said he would have put something more but chances of being accepted was far less. I wrote a document but could not persuade. There are some things in the LLRC to be rounded up and finished up in the coming years, the Prime Minister said.
He paid a glowing tribute to late Mr. De Silva by recalling that late attorney general was a man who stood for the rule of law.
Bulla believed that the judiciary should be above controversy. If the judiciary is controversial, the rule of law would suffer. You have to uphold the rule of law. To that all of us are committed whatever differences we have. I am happy as Bulla was one of those who contributed to keep the rule of law alive, he said.
"Last Friday I read a judgment which gave a lot of hope to the rule of law. That was by the high court of UK. That was a judgment on the secretary of state on the exit from Europe. The Attorney General contended that UK could have exited from Europe by informing European Union under article 50 of European treaty. Article 50 said, once you trigger the exit, you give notice but if you are not successful you are out in two years time. The other side contended that once you trigger there is no going back. The Parliament has passed a law, the European community law. There was a referendum to join the EU, the law was passed and the treaty was applicable in UK. There were a fair number of new rights and benefits to the citizens of UK. The Parliament said they cant now exit and take away the rights. The queen or the executive cannot override what was done by Parliament. This was interesting judgment as there was a notion that the executive is higher than Parliament. The UK court's action to uphold the rule of law is applicable to all. Bulla also stood for the rule of law in the same way, he further said. (Yohan Perera)
Pix by Pradeep Pathirana
I have come because I have nothing else but India, and because I hope India will one day truly encourage free thought. I wish to live in this country and be allowed the freedom to express my opinions even if they are contrary to others'.
I wish for neighbouring nations to learn from India's example and be inspired, they who yet do not know the meaning of the freedom of speech.
Not that I have a completely stress-free life in India either; the old threats have continued and taken on new forms.
Nearly 12 years ago, an imam from Kolkata had set a price of 20,000 rupees for my head, a sum that had soon increased to 50,000 and eventually to an unlimited sum.
A director of the Muslim Law Board from Uttar Pradesh had also declared a reward of 500,000 rupees, while an ISIS offshoot from Kerala had put up a post on Facebook calling for my assassination.
A leading politician had expressed his ire over whatever I had allegedly written against Islam years ago and declared that I should not be allowed any access to the media to express any views whatsoever on Islam.
Everything that I was made to go through - the ban on my book, my exile from West Bengal, stopping my articles from being published in newspapers and journals, stopping the telecast and production of the TV series written by me - was a result of the government's vote bank politics and blatant appeasement of the fundamentalist elements.
A politics built on sycophancy is the first sign of a rotting democracy. Aren't our political mavericks aware that fanatics seek to plunge society into darkness, that they are against human rights and women's rights, and that they consider any opinion contrary to theirs a sort of violation?
Writers across the world are being persecuted, whipped, tortured, incarcerated and exiled. But, leave alone dictatorships, even democratic governments are no longer interested in safeguarding the freedom of speech and expression.
Whenever I try to point out the significance of such a fundamental right, I am informed that even the freedom of speech must have its limitations and that it cannot be used to hurt someone's sentiments.
Wouldn't it be extremely difficult to ensure that you never hurt someone's sentiments?
People keep hurting us, intentionally or not, by words or deeds. Our world is populated by a multitude of opposing mindsets.
They clash and hurt each other constantly but they also have an inbuilt mechanism to manage hurt. Unfortunately, a few bigots within Islam use the excuse of injured sentiments to cause further mischief, refusing to listen or be placated. It is a moment of crisis for democracy when a citizen is robbed of their right to speak and express their opinions.
Social change makes it necessary that a few feathers will be ruffled and a few egos will be wounded. It hurts people's sentiments when you try to separate religion and the State, when you attempt to abolish misogynist laws; good things cannot be achieved without hurting religious sentiments.
Exile: A Memoir; Rs 599; Penguin Randomhouse. (Photo credit: Google)
A lot of people had been outraged when the Crown and the State were being forcibly separated in the Continent. Galileo's and Darwin's views had upset many pious people of their times. The superstitious are routinely offended by the evolution and advancement of science.
If we stop expressing our opinions because someone will be hurt by them, if we curb the growth and development of scientific knowledge, if we forcibly try to stall the march of civilisation, we will end up inhabiting a stagnant quagmire, bereft of knowledge and growth.
If the objective is to say exactly what everyone would love to listen to, then we would have no need for the freedom of speech and expression. Such rights are important primarily for those whose opinions usually don't follow the status quo.
Freedom of speech is the freedom to say something you might not like to hear. Those who never hurt other's sentiments do not need the freedom of speech.
A State that chooses to side with those who seek to oppose such freedoms, instead of ensuring that they are brought to book, will be responsible for its own eventual annihilation.
Some time back one such draconian law against freedom of speech was abolished by the government of India. I was among those who had worked towards this goal and our success was a significant acknowledgement of the systematic persecution many have had to go through because of such laws.
I have had to face it too, which is why I am glad to have been part of such a reform initiative, despite not being a pure-born citizen of India. The world is constantly vigilant that no one hurts the sentiments of those who are opposed to human rights and women's rights.
When will the world learn to see all as equal? When will it learn to stop pleasing extremists and begin according respect to reason and humanism instead?
This crisis is not India's alone; it is being felt across the world. It's not so much a battle between two faiths but a war between two opposing world views - the secular and the fundamentalist, the progressive and the prejudiced, the rational and the superstitious, between awareness and ignorance, freedom and enslavement.
In this fight I know whose side I am on; I am forever in favour of my opponents' freedom of opinion even if I do not wish to support or respect it. My lack of support does not mean that I will attack my opponent during their morning jog, or shoot them in public, or hack them to death.
I will neither kiss nor wound my opponent; I will instead express my opinions through my writings. If someone does not like what I have to say, they have the right to respond to my opinions in kind - in words. They do not have the right to kill me.
This is a basic condition for the freedom of speech which many fanatics wilfully choose to ignore. Can faith be sustained thus? There were once so many religions and yet so few exist to this day.
Where are the imperious gods of the Greeks and where is their Olympus? Where are the powerful deities of the Romans or the exotic divinities of the Egyptian pharaohs?
They have been cast into history, just like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism too will be forgotten one day, to be replaced by an epoch-appropriate new faith or a rationalist and scientistic outlook.
The terrorists at the Dhaka cafe were around twenty years old. They were not poor, not illiterate. Heavily indoctrinated in Islam, they shouted "Allahu Akbar" while slaughtering people. Those who could recite a verse from the Quran were spared while others were tortured and hacked to death with machetes. Those terrorists had nothing but religion as their guide.
Young men have been brainwashed with Islam, at home, madrasas and mosques. They have been fed the belief that non-believers, non-Muslims and critics of Islam should be exterminated.
By killing them, they have been convinced, they will go to heaven. They have also been taught that jihad is mandatory for every Muslim and Muslims should strive to turn Dar-ul-Harb (the Land of the Enemy) into Dar-ul-Islam (the Land of Islam).
In the early 1990s, when I was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists, a fatwa was issued against me, a price set on my head, and hundreds of thousands of Muslim fundamentalists took to the streets demanding my execution; meanwhile, the intellectuals remained silent.
The government, instead of cracking down on the fundamentalists, filed a case against me on charges of hurting the religious sentiments of people. I was forced to leave the country and that was the beginning of what today's Bangladesh is - a medieval and intolerant nation of bigots, extremists and fanatics.
Without allowing criticism of Islam, it will be difficult for Muslim countries to separate the State and religion, to make personal laws based on equality, or to have a secular education system.
If this does not happen, Muslim countries will forever remain in darkness, breeding and training people indoctrinated by religion to not tolerate any differences, and where women will never enjoy the right to live as complete human beings. People like to believe that Islam is a religion of peace.
I, however, have witnessed the opposite since my childhood. The time has come for people to unequivocally tell the truth and be willing to listen to it too. Islam and Islamic fundamentalism don't have too many differences; Islam isn't compatible with democracy, human rights, women's rights, freedom of expression.
You will not be able to kill terrorism by killing terrorists. You have to kill its root cause. You have to stop brainwashing children with religion. In the present scenario, a call for sanity and introspection is as good as a cry in the wilderness. This must end.
The good and the sensible must break their silence; the inaction of the good is the asset of the malevolent. This is how the world will continue to endure - ignorance, stupidity and bigotry walking hand in hand with awareness and intelligence.
The narrow-minded and the political will forever seek to plunge society into darkness and chaos, while a handful of others will always strive for the betterment of society and to have good sense prevail.
It's always a few special people who seek to bring about change; that is how it has always been. I hope no one else is exiled for being different ever again. I hope no one ever has to suffer the ignominy I went through.
If the Met department forecast of "mist in the morning followed by clear sky" for Wednesday is to hold good, in less than 24 hours, Delhi's air should be better than the horrid gas chamber that the Delhi-NCR region has become since Diwali day, Sunday, October 30.
If farmers from Haryana and Punjab are to be believed, the burning of residual stubble in farms being readied for rabi sowing will be completed by November 15, their cut-off date. The smoke travelling from neighbouring states to Delhi was attributed as a major reason for one of the worst air pollution spells, prompting the Delhi government to shut schools down for three days.
A NASA satellite capture of pollution in North India. Credit: NASA
And then, if Delhiites are to be trusted, things would be back to being as they were - taking out SUVs, buying another one just in case the government decides to be strict with the odd-even scheme; the burning of garbage in colonies; resumption in massive construction dust, et al. And for the Delhi government? It will also continue to not take any punitive measure against those who pollute, it will also continue to not monitor its own sources of pollution and it will also continue to not take proactive measures all year round.
What went wrong
Doing nothing. Because, for emergencies such as this one, announcements and some action by the Delhi government were more like knee-jerk reactions rather than pro-active measures.
Starting October 29, 2016, a day prior to Diwali, Delhi (and many parts of NCR) witnessed an alarming increase in air pollution. Several people could feel their eyes smarting and throats choking due to increased air pollution; visibility reduced to almost 500 metres or less as dense smog engulfed the atmosphere.
PM2.5 and PM10 levels reached unprecedented heights, breaking all records (PM or particulate matter are the extremely small solid and liquid particles suspended in air - so small that they can enter even the lungs and cause various respiratory problems, even leading to death).
Emergency measures - including shutting down of schools, asking people to work from home, a five-day moratorium on power plants and construction activity - were more-or-less ineffective and the only ray of hope, and sun (pun intended), came on Monday with some wind movement.
There was enough case for taking preventive measures, and following it up with punitive action well in time. But despite the "you just cannot miss or ignore" signals, not enough was done.
The list is endless:
a) Vehicular pollution has been talked about much, but there are no clear studies about pollution caused due to release of global warming gases through refrigerators and air conditioners, two of the most common appliances found across households in Delhi.
b) While National Green Tribunal (NGT) has always pointed fingers at diesel vehicles for vehicular pollution, not much is said about petrol-run vehicles (of the almost 60 lakh vehicles on Delhi roads, more than half are two-wheelers that run on petrol; public transport that runs on CNG is but a small percentage of the total vehicles on the road).
c) Construction dust: For the last two years, Delhi-NCR has witnessed massive construction activity, with the expansion of Delhi Metro being one of the major developments. Work on expansion of the Mathura Road national highway at Faridabad as well as making the route signal-free, and yet another round of fresh properties being developed in sectors that surround the already-developed city centres in Gurgaon and Noida.
There is constant recycling of dust, all of which is of unquantified quantum.
d) Delhi has become a hub for battery recycling and also for e-waste recycling, but in both cases, the processes followed by the unorganised sector are mostly unscientific. Hundreds of illegal units across Delhi - many of them running from residential areas apart from those in designated industrial areas - add to the already toxic mix. Lead smelters, cooking (tandoors from thousands of hotels, dhabas and even plush restaurants), furnaces of various small units, all contribute generously to the smoke chamber.
"The new gases that are used in ACs and refrigerators are not exactly climate neutral. This needs to be studied in detail. When it comes to lead smelters, tandoors and other such point sources of combustion, we find that many of these are not even registered. The Delhi government ought to carry out a fresh survey of all such illegal operators, issue notices for upgradation to better technology and in absence of it, straightway shut down all such shops," says Ravi Agarwal of Toxics Links, an environmental NGO.
It is not that the government is not aware. Both Delhi government and the Centre are very much aware. During a hearing at the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) had, in its affidavit, said dust was the highest source of pollution in Delhi and that it contributed 52 per cent of the particulate matter in the air compared to 6.6 per cent by vehicular emissions.
The problem lies with ineffective or lack of monitoring and missing punitive action against the defaulters. That is something the Delhi government can focus all year round - beyond November 15 - not just in the winter when this problem aggravates.
The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) does not have either the manpower or the logistics to even carry out such surveys. So, if Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is serious about any long term action for fighting air pollution, he will need to fix DPCC's shenanigans.
High amplitude denotes the record high AQI in each city.
Vehicular pollution, irrespective of its share in the overall problem, continues unabated as more and more vehicles are added to the choked arteries of the national capital.
Delhi government claims the transport lobby has proved to be a hindrance in bringing in more buses in Delhi as part of the plans to expand DTC fleet. Instead of blaming the Centre, the state government can work in cohorts with the Ministry of Surface Transport to seek a solution to the problem.
Centre cannot remain in denial mode
But Centre too needs to get its act together. It cannot be in a perpetual state of denial over its role and share of work. Earlier in June, former environment minister Prakash Javadekar literally trashed a research paper by scientists from Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) published in the reputed journal Geophysical Research Letters.
It claimed the life expectancy in Delhi had reduced by almost 6.4 years on account of air pollution and pegged the premature mortality for Delhi at 0.059 per cent. The research also shed light on "an alarming country-wide situation - India has hit the mark of half a million premature deaths due to air pollution." The Ministry of Earth Sciences (under which IITM, Pune falls) later offered a so-called scientific explanation as to why the government rejected this paper while replying to a question in Lok Sabha.
Unfortunately, the government does not trust its own researchers.
Surprisingly, health ministry's July 22, 2016 reply to a Parliament question admitted to premature deaths quoting the Global Burden of Disease Study in 2010.
This study claimed that approximately 1.6 million premature deaths are caused due to air pollution in India per year.So, while governments - both at the state and the Centre - continue to ignore the harsh realities, Delhiites too go on about their lives with the business-as-usual attitude - traffic jams have not reduced, crackers were burst for Chhath Puja and furnaces/chimneys continue to puff smoke like on other days.
All we can do is just hope that the efforts to curb pollution will continue even after November 15 and that the Delhi government, helped by the Centre, will seriously think of both short-term and long-term solutions.
AutoZone, Inc. retails and distributes automotive replacement parts and accessories. The company offers various products for cars, sport utility vehicles, vans, and light trucks, including new and remanufactured automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products. Its products include A/C compressors, batteries and accessories, bearings, belts and hoses, calipers, chassis, clutches, CV axles, engines, fuel pumps, fuses, ignition and lighting products, mufflers, radiators, starters and alternators, thermostats, and water pumps, as well as tire repairs. In addition, the company offers maintenance products, such as antifreeze and windshield washer fluids; brake drums, rotors, shoes, and pads; brake and power steering fluids, and oil and fuel additives; oil and transmission fluids; oil, cabin, air, fuel, and transmission filters; oxygen sensors; paints and accessories; refrigerants and accessories; shock absorbers and struts; spark plugs and wires; and windshield wipers. Further, it provides air fresheners, cell phone accessories, drinks and snacks, floor mats and seat covers, interior and exterior accessories, mirrors, performance products, protectants and cleaners, sealants and adhesives, steering wheel covers, stereos and radios, tools, and wash and wax products, as well as towing services. Additionally, the company provides a sales program that offers commercial credit and delivery of parts and other products; sells automotive diagnostic and repair software under the ALLDATA brand through alldata.com; and automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products through autozone.com. As of August 27, 2022, it operated 6,168 stores in the United States; 703 stores in Mexico; and 72 stores in Brazil. The company was founded in 1979 and is based in Memphis, Tennessee.
Oshkosh Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets specialty vehicles and vehicle bodies worldwide. The company's Access Equipment segment provides aerial work platforms and telehandlers for use in various construction, industrial, institutional, and general maintenance applications. This segment also offers rental fleet loans and leases, and floor plan and retail financing through third-party funding arrangements; towing and recovery equipment; carriers and wreckers; equipment installation services; and chassis and service parts sales. Its Defense segment provides heavy, medium, and light tactical wheeled vehicles and related services for the department of defense. The company's Fire & Emergency segment offers custom and commercial firefighting vehicles and equipment; and commercial fire apparatus and emergency vehicles, such as pumpers, aerial platform, ladder and tiller trucks, tankers, rescue vehicles, wild land rough terrain response vehicles, mobile command and control centers, bomb squad vehicles, hazardous materials control vehicles, and other emergency response vehicles. This segment also provides aircraft rescue and firefighting, snow removal, and broadcast vehicles, as well as command trucks, and military simulator shelters and trailers. Its Commercial segment offers front-and rear-discharge concrete mixers for the concrete ready-mix industry; refuse collection vehicles and related components to commercial and municipal waste haulers; and field service vehicles and truck-mounted cranes for the construction, equipment dealer, building supply, utility, tire service, railroad, and mining industries. Oshkosh Corporation provides its products through direct sales representatives, dealers, and distributors. The company was formerly known as Oshkosh Truck Corporation and changed its name to Oshkosh Corporation in February 2008. Oshkosh Corporation was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
The following companies are subsidiares of Cummins: Anvl, Apollo FC Holdings Ltd., Atlantis Acquisitionco Canada Corporation, Atlantis Holdco UK Limited, Brammo, CIFC Worldwide Partner C.V., CMI Africa Holdings BV, CMI CGT Holdings LLC, CMI Canada Financing Ltd., CMI Canada LP, CMI Foreign Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings C.V., CMI Global Holdings B.V., CMI Global Partner 2 C.V., CMI Global Partners B.V., CMI Group Holdings B.V., CMI Group Holdings Cooperatief U.A., CMI International Finance Partner 1 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 2 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 3 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 4 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 5 LLC, CMI Mexico LLC, CMI Netherlands Holdings B.V., CMI PGI Holdings LLC, CMI PGI International Holdings LLC, CMI Turkish Holdings B.V., CMI UK Finance LP, CMI UK Financing LP, Cherry Island Renewable Energy LLC, Consolidated Diesel Company, Consolidated Diesel Inc., Consolidated Diesel of North Carolina Inc., Cummins (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Cummins (Xiangyang) Machining Co. Ltd., Cummins Africa Middle East (Pty) Ltd., Cummins Afrique de l'Ouest, Cummins Americas Inc., Cummins Angola Lda., Cummins Argentina-Servicios Mineros S.A., Cummins Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Cummins Aust Technologies Pty. Ltd., Cummins BLR LLC, Cummins Battery Systems North America LLC, Cummins Belgium N.V., Cummins Botswana (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins Brasil Ltda., Cummins Burkina Faso SARL, Cummins CDC Holding Inc., Cummins CV Member LLC, Cummins Canada ULC, Cummins Caribbean LLC, Cummins Center of Excellence Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Centroamerica Holding S.de R.L., Cummins Child Development Center Inc., Cummins Colombia S.A.S., Cummins Comercializadora S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Corporation, Cummins Cote d'Ivoire SARL, Cummins Czech Republic s.r.o., Cummins Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Diesel International Ltd., Cummins Distribution Holdco Inc., Cummins EMEA Holdings Limited, Cummins East Asia Research & Development Co. Ltd., Cummins Eastern Marine Inc., Cummins Electrified Power Europe Ltd., Cummins Electrified Power NA Inc., Cummins Emission Solutions (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Emission Solutions Inc., Cummins Empresas Filantropicas, Cummins Energetica Ltda., Cummins Engine (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Trading & Services Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine Holding Company Inc., Cummins Engine IP Inc., Cummins Engine Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Engine Venture Corporation, Cummins Enterprise LLC, Cummins Filtration (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtration GmbH, Cummins Filtration IP Inc., Cummins Filtration Inc., Cummins Filtration International Corp., Cummins Filtration Ltd., Cummins Filtration SARL, Cummins Filtration Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtros Ltda., Cummins Franchise Holdco LLC, Cummins Fuel Systems (Wuhan) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Americas Inc., Cummins Generator Technologies Germany GmbH, Cummins Generator Technologies India Private Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Italy SRL, Cummins Generator Technologies Limited, Cummins Generator Technologies Romania S.A., Cummins Generator Technologies Singapore Pte Ltd., Cummins Ghana Limited, Cummins Ghana Mining Limited, Cummins Global Financing LP, Cummins Global Technologies LLP, Cummins Grupo Comercial Y. de Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Grupo Industrial S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Holland B.V., Cummins Hong Kong Ltd., Cummins India Ltd., Cummins Intellectual Property Inc., Cummins International Finance LLC, Cummins International Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Cummins International Holdings LLC, Cummins Italia S.P.A., Cummins Japan Ltd., Cummins Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins LLC Member Inc., Cummins Ltd., Cummins Maroc SARL, Cummins Middle East FZE, Cummins Mining Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Mobility Services Inc., Cummins Mongolia Investment LLC, Cummins Mozambique Ltda., Cummins NV, Cummins Namibia Engine Sales and Service PTY LTD, Cummins Natural Gas Engines Inc., Cummins New Zealand Limited, Cummins Nigeria Ltd., Cummins Norte de Colombia S.A.S., Cummins North Africa Regional Office SARL, Cummins Norway AS, Cummins PGI Holdings Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (S) Pte. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (U.K.) Limited, Cummins Power Generation Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Power Generation Inc., Cummins Power Generation Limited, Cummins PowerGen IP Inc., Cummins Research and Technology India Private Ltd., Cummins Romania Srl, Cummins S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Sales and Service Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins Sales and Service Philippines Inc., Cummins Sales and Service Private Limited, Cummins Sales and Service Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Sales and Service Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Sinai ve Otomotiv Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Cummins South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins South Pacific Pty. Limited, Cummins Southern Plains LLC, Cummins Spain S.L., Cummins Sweden AB, Cummins Technologies India, Cummins Trade Receivables LLC, Cummins Turbo Technologies Limited, Cummins Turkey Motor Guc Sistemleri Sats Servis Limited Sirketi, Cummins U.K. Holdings Ltd., Cummins U.K. Pension Plan Trustee Ltd., Cummins UK Global Holdings Ltd., Cummins UK Holdings LLC, Cummins Vendas e Servicos de Motores e Geradores Ltda., Cummins Venture Corporation, Cummins West Africa Limited, Cummins West Balkans d.o.o. Nova Pasova, Cummins XBorder Operations (Pty) Ltd, Cummins Zambia Ltd., Cummins Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Costa Rica S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica El Salvador S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Guatemala Ltda., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Honduras S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins S.A., Distribuidora Cummins Sucursal Paraguay SRL, Distribuidora Cummins de Panama S. de R.L., Dynamo Insurance Company Inc., Efficient Drivetrains, Efficient Drivetrains (Beijing) New Power Technology Co. Ltd., Efficient Drivetrains (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hilite International, Hydrogenics, Hydrogenics Corporation, Hydrogenics Europe N.V., Hydrogenics GmbH, Hydrogenics Holding GmbH, Hydrogenics USA Inc., Markon Engineering Company Ltd., Nelson Burgess Ltd., Nelson Industries, Newage Engineers GmbH, Newage Ltd. (U.K.), Newage Machine Tools Ltd., OOO Cummins, Petbow Limited, Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) B.V., Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) Ltd., Power Group International Ltd., Quickstart Energy Projects SpA, Shanghai Cummins Trade Co. Ltd., TOO Cummins, Taiwan Cummins Sales & Services Co. Ltd., Worldwide Partner CV Member LLC, Wuxi Cummins Turbo Technologies Co. Ltd., Wuxi New Energy Automotive Technologies Co. Ltd., and ZED Connect Inc..
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Humana Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a health and well-being company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Retail, Group and Specialty, and Healthcare Services. The company offers medical and supplemental benefit plans to individuals. It also has a contract with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to administer the Limited Income Newly Eligible Transition prescription drug plan program; and contracts with various states to provide Medicaid, dual eligible, and long-term support services benefits. In addition, the company provides commercial fully insured medical and specialty health insurance benefits comprising dental, vision, and other supplemental health benefits; and administrative services only products to individuals and employer groups, as well as military services, such as TRICARE T2017 East Region contract. Further, it offers pharmacy solutions, provider services, and home solutions services, such as home health and other services to its health plan members, as well as to third parties. As of December 31, 2021, the company had approximately 17 million members in medical benefit plans, as well as approximately 5 million members in specialty products. Humana Inc. was founded in 1961 and is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky.
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry. The company's Investor Communication Solutions segment processes and distributes proxy materials to investors in equity securities and mutual funds, as well as facilitates related vote processing services; and distributes regulatory reports, class action, and corporate action/reorganization event information, as well as tax reporting solutions. It also offers ProxyEdge, an electronic proxy delivery and voting solution; data-driven solutions and an end-to-end platform for content management, composition, and omni-channel distribution of regulatory, marketing, and transactional information, as well as mutual fund trade processing services; data and analytics solutions; solutions for public corporations and mutual funds; SEC filing and capital markets transaction services; registrar, stock transfer, and record-keeping services; and omni-channel customer communications solutions, as well as operates Broadridge Communications Cloud platform that creates, delivers, and manages communications and customer engagement activities. The company's Global Technology and Operations segment provides solutions that automate the front-to-back transaction lifecycle of equity, mutual fund, fixed income, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivatives, order capture and execution, trade confirmation, margin, cash management, clearance and settlement, reference data management, reconciliations, securities financing and collateral management, asset servicing, compliance and regulatory reporting, portfolio accounting, and custody-related services. This segment also offers business process outsourcing services; technology solutions, such portfolio management, compliance, fee billing, and operational support solutions; and capital market and wealth management solutions. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Lake Success, New York.
KAR Auction Services, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides used vehicle auctions and related vehicle remarketing services for the automotive industry in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. The company operates through two segments, ADESA Auctions and AFC. The ADESA Auctions segment offers whole car auctions and related services to the vehicle remarketing industry through online auctions and auction facilities. It also provides value-added services, such as auction related, transportation, reconditioning, inspection, title and repossession administration and remarketing, vehicle research, and analytical services, as well as data as a service. This segment sells its products and services through vehicle manufacturers, fleet companies, rental car companies, finance companies, and others. As of December 31, 2021, this segment had a network of approximately 70 vehicle logistics center locations in North America. The AFC segment offers floorplan financing, a short-term inventory-secured financing to independent used vehicle dealers; and sells vehicle service contracts. The company provides wheel repair and hail catastrophe response services. It serves vehicle manufacturers, vehicle rental companies, financial institutions, commercial fleets and fleet management companies, and dealer customers. The company was formerly known as KAR Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to KAR Auction Services, Inc. in November 2009. KAR Auction Services, Inc. was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in Carmel, Indiana.
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.
CULPEPER A Culpeper grandmother will spend 12 years in a state penitentiary for putting out a hit on family members after she lost custody of her now-5-year-old grandson.
Tammy Smith Kelly, 45, of Stevensburg, was sentenced Monday in Culpeper County Circuit Court by Judge Richard Potter after she pleaded guilty in August to four counts of solicitation to commit murder.
Kelly plotted to have the boys maternal grandparents and his uncle and aunt all of Louisa killed last November, but police became aware of the plot the week before Thanksgiving last year and set up an undercover operation.
The sting, involving the Culpeper County Sheriffs Office and Virginia State Police, was caught on tape, a portion of which was played Monday in court. Kelly could be heard in it describing a narrow window for the planned murders to take place.
The maternal grandparents adult children the boys uncle and aunt were referred to by the defendant as collateral damage in the foiled murder plot.
The childs great-grandmother, Dorthula Johnson, talked about the impact the attempted crime has had on the family, saying her daughter was emotionally unable to face Kelly. Learning of the murder plot was an unbelievable and horrible nightmare, she said, recalling a phone call from their son revealing the details on Nov. 19, 2015.
We were in total shock that she had plotted for a hit man to kill them, she said. This cant be real.
Johnson said the pressure of learning of the attempted crime was so intense that felt like her head was going to explode. Johnson described feeling fearful afterwards, always looking outside to see who was driving up or who might be hiding in the bushes.
I was always making sure our windows and doors were locked, which I never did before, and wondering what the dogs were barking at, she said.
Johnson said she hoped her great-grandson would one day be able to love Kelly and that the family was learning to forgive her.
My head is still spinning, Johnson said.
Culpeper County Commonwealths Attorney Paul Walther described the failed attempt on the four individuals lives as heinous, saying it was hateful and shockingly evil.
Look at the motive, he said. Look at what was going to be done. How much worse can it get?
Defense attorney David Randle admitted that his client made a terrible mistake but asked the judge to consider it in the context of highly emotional domestic issues.
Thankfully, no one was hurt, he said, and the family is willing to forgive her at some point.
A tearful Kelly looked to the Johnson family sitting in the courtroom and apologized for her actions Monday, saying she deeply regretted what she had done. She said the past year in jail had given her a lot of time to think about how she could have better handled the custody situation.
I was raised better than this, Kelly said.
She raised the possibility of undiagnosed mental health issues and said that she had attended college, had a full-time job and raised her own children.
You think, think, think about what you could have done differently, Kelly said.
She said she missed being in the church band and seeing her mom, who she said was wasting away in a nursing home.
I believe I am a good person who made a very bad choice, Kelly said.
A search warrant executed last November at her Fairfield Road home uncovered computers, printers and tablets used in the production of $2,500 in counterfeit bills, according to the sheriffs office, in addition to a 9mm handgun, financial documents and cellphones.
In handing down a sentence, Potter weighed Kellys limited criminal record and the murder plot she initiated, which involved actions so devious and dangerous, the judge said. He sentenced her to six years on each of the four counts before suspending half of the sentence.
Potter ordered Kelly to be on probation for 25 years after her release, pay court costs, be subjected to random drug screening and have no contact with the family she victimized.
Four local education leaders participated Monday morning in a panel discussion on the future of education in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia.
The panel, hosted by the UVa Student Council, featured Charlottesville City Schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins, Albemarle County Public Schools Superintendent Pam Moran, UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan and Piedmont Virginia Community College President Frank Friedman.
The four participants took questions from both the audience and moderator Zaakir Tameez of the UVa Student Council. The majority of the time was spent discussing topics such as restructuring classroom curriculum and spaces to best serve the needs of all students, as well as ensuring equity and access to quality education for students in all schools and the importance of early-childhood education.
I think that what you heard from all four of us is that we really see education changing rapidly to become something thats much more focused on competency-based learning, much more project-based, much more focused on getting kids engaged and passionate about the work they do, Moran said after the discussion.
Tameez said the purpose of putting the panel together at Newcomb Hall was to have an ongoing conversation about the future of education, particularly in Charlottesville.
Its a conversation that affects all of us, he said. Its very important for the future of Charlottesville, and so its a conversation that we hope is ongoing.
After the discussion, Moran said equity and access to quality education is a challenge facing schools nationwide.
One of the things that we were talking about today is that whether it is the city schools, the county schools, Piedmont or even the University of Virginia being able to make sure that all young people get access to quality educational experiences and have an equity of access is absolutely critical, she said.
Atkins said one of the things they need to keep in mind for school and classroom models is that students today have lived in a technology-rich environment. She said that should be taken into consideration as they rethink the future of education.
They not only live in technology-rich worlds and theyre growing up in those worlds, but they communicate with it and they actually navigate life with technology, she said.
When the panelists were asked about the best conversations theyve had about education, Sullivan mentioned when she was presented in 2009 with the value of preschool education.
The information suggested that the investment in preschool education was more valuable in the long run than it was for higher education, which Sullivan admitted was something she didnt want to hear at that moment.
But the data were pretty overwhelming, and then they talked about the extent of which so many children in America are neglected before they start their formal schooling at age 5 or 6, she said.
U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. spoke at UVa on the same subject last week.
Sullivan added that investment in pre-K education could potentially benefit higher-education settings in the long run.
If they start off at a disadvantage in kindergarten or in first grade, that disadvantage is likely to cumulate over time, she said. If we could reverse that trend with a better pre-K education, that could really pay off for us.
Shuttles at the University of Virginias Observatory Hill Dining Hall a center of activity among first-year students transported groups of students to their designated polling station at Alumni Hall throughout most of the day.
Many first-year students milling around the dining hall said they were excited for the chance to participate in their first election, even if they werent keen on any of the candidates.
Sam Currie, who supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the Republican primary, said she voted for Clinton primarily out of a desire to avoid a Trump presidency. But the choice of candidates didnt dampen her enthusiasm.
This is an exciting day for me, she said. I wish it was for someone I really loved and wanted to become president.
Some students said they believe the divisive election season is contributing to a hostile environment on Grounds.
In the weeks leading up to the election, the university has dealt with a series of incidents involving hateful or offensive graffiti. Racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic graffiti has been found at or near UVa at least five times since September.
Kristina Washington said she thinks Trumps rhetoric has exacerbated tensions on Grounds.
You have someone exposed to the world whos spewing this hatred, Washington said. People have called him out on it, but hes still allowed to say pretty much whatever he wants.
The hostility has not come through in in-person discussions, said Blake Hesson, and people have generally been civil when talking with people across the aisle.
Most people just keep it on an academic level, Hesson said.
Still, theres quite a bit of tension, Hesson said, noting that the University Democrats and College Republicans held separate viewing parties for the last two debates.
Observatory Hill will be the site of a bipartisan election viewing party, but Summer Harvey said shell skip it to watch the results with her friends.
Its going to be really scary and theres going to be a lot of yelling, Harvey said. I think whatever happens tonight, a lot of people are going to be really angry.
Update 5 p.m. Charlottesville officials reported that 16,964 votes had been cast, or 58.1 percent of active registered voters, by 4 p.m. That's up from 16,060 votes in 2012, though that number represented 58.9 percent of voters in that election.
As of 4 p.m., Albemarle officials reported 43,122 total votes, representing 55.82 percent of total registered voters. By that time in 2012, Albemarle recorded 41,047 votes, representing 55 percent of voters.
Update 1 p.m. As of 1 p.m., Albemarle County officials said 33,880 people had voted, approximately 46.54 percent of registered voters in the county. In 2012, as of 1 p.m. 43.47 percent of Albemarle registered voters had voted.
As of 1 p.m., Charlottesville officials estimated that 45.2 percent of active voters had cast their ballot. In 2012 at 1 p.m., 44.4 percent of active voters had voted in the city.
Central Virginia voters lined up early this morning to cast ballots for U.S. president, Congressional seats and two proposed amendments to the state constitution.
Most polls reported being busy at the 7 a.m. opening, with some waits estimated about 30 to 40 minutes.
As of 9 a.m., Charlottesville officials estimated that 22.4 percent of active registered voters had cast ballots, excluding those who voted absentee.
Albemarle County officials estimated that nearly 21 percent of voters had cast ballots by 9 a.m.
The pace slacked as the morning wore on, but most poll workers said turnouts remained strong going into the lunch hour.
At the University of Virginia's Alumni Hall, the mood was "high energy," according to Tim Snider, who was overseeing the polls there.
Snider said he and other poll workers were greeted by a crowd of about 60-70 voters when it opened at 6 a.m., which he said is "very unusual." By noon, the precinct had nearly matched the roughly 1,200 vote total it reported during the 2012 presidential election.
The voters themselves seemed unusually eager this time around, Snider said.
"They all say 'I've waited a long time to vote in this election,'" Snider said. Over the years, the state has gone from solid Republican to toss up, creating a greater sense of urgency, he said.
"It's more competitive now," Snider said.
Jeana Ripple, of Charlottesville, said she was anxious to take action "after so many months of listening."
"I'm excited to see a woman president," said Ripple, who voted for Clinton. "And I'm terrified of the alternative."
Mark Tramontin, who is 67, said it is the most important election of his lifetime. Tramontin, also a Clinton supporter, said he's fearful of a Trump presidency.
"It sort of frightens me and thrills me at the same time," Tramontin said.
Not everyone was anxious or excited, however. Matt Weedlun said he showed up primarily to vote on state issues.
He didn't have much to say in the presidential race, and wrote in the phrase "better choices" rather than voting for a candidate.
Weedlun, who describes himself as a centrist, supported Dr. Ben Carson in the Republican primary. He said he didn't want to throw his support behind either nominee or vote third party.
"I'm over it," he said. "I'm just glad it's finally here and we can finally move on."
No major issues have been reported with voting or machinery in the region, but nationally some issues have been noted, according to the Associated Press.
In Utah, election officials say voting machine problems are forcing poll workers to use paper ballots, potentially affecting tens of thousands of people.
Utah Director of Elections Mark Thomas says a programming problem has affected all voting in Washington County, but so far appears it appears limited to that county.
He says about 52,000 registered voters there have yet to cast their ballots.
Election workers are trying to fix the computer problem and hope they can start using the voting machines later in the day.
Thomas says officials were prepared with backup paper ballots. But he said they will need to print more if the problem persists.
There are about 80,000 total registered voters in Washington County. Some 28,000 have already cast their ballots through early voting.
In Connecticut, the wrong ballots were delivered to a polling place in northern Hartford and voting went on for more than an hour before the problem was discovered.
Officials said the ballots contained the wrong candidate for the state legislature and those votes will be discounted.
Detention Center
The inmate count at the Platte County Detention Facility Monday was 85, with 55 from Platte County and 30 from out of county.
Police
Oct. 16
3:04 p.m. In the 2200 block of 10th Street, Shane Young, 44, 1051 21st Ave., No. 4, was cited for leaving the scene of an accident.
5:13 p.m. In the 2800 block of 23rd Street, Matthew Loseke, 20, 2811 35th St., was cited for failure to maintain control.
Nov. 2
8:06 p.m. In the 3000 block of 23rd Street, Karina Garcia-Ortiz, 18, 3052 48th Ave., No. 13, was cited for failure to yield right of way.
Nov. 4
11:52 a.m. Criminal mischief at Gerrard Park, 4340 27th St., no loss amount.
2:14 p.m. Burglary at 1711 17th St., under investigation.
Nov. 5
5:02 p.m. Theft at Ramada Inn, 265 33rd Ave., cellphone stolen, no loss amount.
Sheriff
Nov. 4
11:33 a.m. Traffic violations on U.S. Highway 30 east of Behlen Mfg. Co., Kirk Nelson of Columbus cited for failure to yield right of way and Vicente Macias of Fremont cited for no operators license.
4:02 p.m. Wanted person at the District Probation office at 2282 E. 32nd Ave., Cathrine Sorrells of Columbus jailed on Platte and Dodge county warrants.
11:06 p.m. Traffic violation south of 197th Street on 370th Avenue, Brittni Mosel of Norfolk cited for speeding.
Nov. 5
1:41 a.m. Traffic violation on Highway 30 near East 14th Avenue, Cassandra Hill of Petersburg jailed for driving under the influence.
Nov. 6
1:49 a.m. Traffic violation at the intersection of Monastery Road and 68th Street, Derek Bopp of Columbus jailed for driving under the influence and cited for speeding.
9:35 p.m. Theft from a building at Country Shadows, lock box with $1,330 cash inside was stolen.
9:50 p.m. Traffic violation at mile marker 135 on U.S. Highway 81, Raudelkys Castro of Florida cited for speeding.
Fire
Nov. 5
7:48 a.m. In the 200 block of 33rd Avenue, medical.
8:41 am. In the 1100 block of 23rd Street, medical.
8:36 p.m. In the 5300 block of West Meadow Drive, medical.
Nov. 6
2:38 a.m. Accident at the intersection of Highway 81 and Lost Creek Parkway.
1:47 p.m. In the 500 block of East 23rd Street, medical.
2:10 p.m. Ambulance intercept with Humphrey, in the 300block of Highway 81, medical.
2:24 p.m. In the 3400 block of 53rd Avenue, medical.
4:21 p.m. In the 3300 block of 20th Street, medical.
6:30 p.m. In the 3000 block of 39th Avenue, medical.
9:54 p.m. In the 2400 block of 23rd Avenue, medical.
Culpeper County voters waited in line to vote for the next president Tuesday and there was no dearth of opinions about who he or she should be. Voting activity was brisk across the county, as expected, and the weather was prime featuring blues skies and temperatures near 70.
In the countys second largest precinct, East Fairfax, nearly 1,100 of 4,239 registered had voted by noon time and the line was still out the door.
Were not going to get a break, said officer of the election John Flanagan. The machines are always full. Its been a steady flow and Im sure Im going to have at least 100 in line when we close.
The polls close at 7 p.m.
Twenty-year-old Dimitri Stanton voted for the first time on Tuesday.
I really hope Hillary wins. Shes going to be the first woman president might as well have a woman in charge, he said. She could do a lot of things right for the country.
His mother, 55-year-old Gloria Stanton, was more tepid in her support for the Democratic candidate.
To be honest, I dont like neither one of them, but I dont have no choice, Im between a rock and a hard place, she said. Donald Trump is not going to be right. I think hes going to send us into war.
The lifelong Culpeper resident had unflattering things to say about the Republican candidate.
Donald Trump is a racist, he lies, he sexually harasses women, he thinks its cute, said Gloria Stanton. He is using his power, his fame to get away with stuff. Everybody should be created equal, not because you have money you can do what you want.
She said she felt Clinton was qualified to be president.
Theres nobody else on the ballot that stands a chance to win besides Hillary, Stanton said.
Voter Sally Humphries felt differently.
I really believe what Donald Trump has to say. I believe we need the strength of his leadership at this particular time in history, just like England needed (Winston) Churchill, we need Trump, said the local senior citizen, a semi-retired writer. Neither one of them were choir boys, but they were what their countries needed at that time.
Humphries said everything was at stake in Tuesdays election.
It will decide which way this country goes whether it goes socialist or stays a republic, she said.
Vietnam veteran Charles Jameson said he was supporting Clinton because she was the better of the two major party alternatives.
I wish that there was someone different, but I really just cant bring myself to vote for Donald Trump. I just dont believe that he is for our country. I cant trust him, said Jameson.
Libertarian voter Steve Chalke, a retired computer programmer, said he had a dozen reasons for supporting Trump.
The main reason is the next president is going to pick the next Supreme Court justice and thats the most important issue going forward its going to change this country for the next 100 years, he said. Also we need to get rid of Obamacare which Hillary would never do and Hillary is just corrupt to the bone.
Chalke said he didnt think it was money that corrupted politics.
In the case of Clinton and Obama, it has to do with the corruption of law itself, the fact that the justice department will not do its job, the fact that people are not equal under the law, thats not the American way and Trump will change that, he said.
Martha Bickers came out of the town polling location with a big smile on her face.
I cast my vote for a woman president for the first time. I am very excited, she said, adding, I have been a small-town Democrat my whole life.
The 32-year-old self-employed property manager said Clintons extensive political career and her dedication to championing the rights of women and children makes her qualified to be president.
I am someone who respects actually doing the work and playing by the rules, Bickers said, commenting on the stakes of Tuesdays election: Whether or not we are going to continue progressing as a civilized nation or just descend into pop cultural madness.
Up in Brandy Station, about half of the precincts registered voters had cast ballots by 2:30 p.m. The polling station experienced a pretty big backup when the polls opened at 6 a.m., and saw steady participation throughout the rest of the day, according to Barbara Kile, chief election officer at the site.
This year was Kiles first working the polls in a presidential contest.
I feel strongly about the integrity of the election. Its an important job and someone has to do it. A lot of the time I find that people appreciate it, she said.
Brandy Station voter Gary Groves said he picked Trump because the country needs a change, but wasnt sure exactly what kind of change.
I think the economy is kind of stagnated right now. Id hate to see the idea of Bill Clinton getting back in the White House. Hes the one who started that NAFTA trade agreement which has sent a lot of our jobs to Mexico and overseas, Groves said, adding, Obamacare isnt working. Insurance companies are dropping out.
He admitted he felt he was choosing between the lesser of two evils in casting his vote Tuesday.
Yeah, sort of; I dont like either one of them, Groves said. People say (Trump is) a shoot from the hip type of guy. He says a lot, but hes only going to do what the president is allowed to do.
Voter Tim Raines didnt like his options either at the polls, but went for Clinton.
I dont want to live in a world where Donald Trump is president, said the 51-year-old. I dont think hes fit to do the job.
Both major party candidates have baggage, added Raines, saying he thinks Clinton is nonetheless up for the job.
The media wants to paint this picture of her with the emails and Bills scandal, but there are a lot of other things we dont hear much about. From everything Ive read, shes extremely intelligent. I like some of the tax ideas she had about exit taxes and hitting Wall Street harder, things like that, he said.
Brandy Station voter Sara Glines, 42, also voted for Clinton on Tuesday.
I think she stands up for human rights and respects of all people, she said, noting that she did not think the same of Trump. Theres been so much unrest and movement in our country. I think we need a strong leader who can see things from all angles and views. I dont think Donald can do that.
Novant Health UVa Health System Culpeper Medical Center received its ninth consecutive A rating in patient safety from The Leapfrog Group, according to hospital spokeswoman Ashton Miller.
The independent national non-profit organization assesses 2,600 hospitals every six months and assigns a score between A to F based on performance in 28 categories related to the delivery of safe care.
Some of the safety measures include: hand hygiene, communication about medicines, falls/trauma, nurse communication and physician staffing just to name a few evaluation areas.
Providing high-quality, safe care for the communities we serve is something we take very seriously, said Greg Napps, CEO, Culpeper Medical Center. This remarkable achievement of a ninth consecutive A is made possible by the dedicated employees and medical staff at Culpeper Medical Center.
The purpose of the Leapfrog Group survey is to challenge hospitals to make giant leaps forward in the safety, quality and affordability of health care in the United States by promoting transparency and value-based hospital incentives, according to hospital officials. An A grade helps patients assess the safety of a hospital. The higher the grade, the safer the hospital, according to the grading system.
Leapfrog has awarded Novant Health UVa Health System Culpeper Medical Center straight As since 2013.
The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade measures in two areas: process/structural measures and outcome measures, each accounting for 50 percent of the overall score. Process measures represent how often a hospital gives patients recommended treatment for a certain medical condition or procedure. Outcome measures signify what happens to a patient while receiving care. And structural measures represent the environment where patients receive care.
This latest grade makes Culpeper Medical Center one of 113 hospitals out of 2,600 nationwide and one of only 12 hospitals in Virginia to attain consecutive As, according to Leapfrog officials. Culpeper Medical Center also meets the qualifications to be considered for Leapfrogs top hospital award recognition for the highest performing hospitals on the Leapfrog Hospital survey.
Leapfrog ranks top hospitals in three sectors: urban, rural and childrens.
To view Culpeper Medical Centers scores as they compare nationally and locally, visit the Hospital Safety Score website at hospitalsafetyscore.org, which also provides information on how the public can protect themselves and loved ones during a hospital stay. The score is also visible on the mobile app found on the same website.
Also, the score is listed under the hospitals former name, UVa Culpeper Hospital.
Rhonda Simmons can be reached at rsimmons@starexponent.com or 540/825-6397.
LONDON - England - Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has been revelling in her new found fame by posing outside the Houses of Parliament.
I used to be a model you know, Miller says every two minutes.
She seems to be enjoying the limelight and fame of being one of the foreign interests who was instrumental in attempting to block 52% of British voters who voted to leave the EU.
Posing in defiance, Ms Miller, a native of Guyana, brings out her new hat, acquired at some posh shop no doubt, or a betting shop lavatory to be more precise.
Do you like my new hat? she scowls, as the primping begins in earnest.
The photographer adjusts his lens, then sniffs loudly.
Scuse me Miss, but whats that awful smell? It smells like a turd that has festered in satans butt hole for a thousand years.
Its my hat, or shall I say crown. I shall wear it wherever I go from now on, and anyone who looks at me will see my beautiful crown that I wear so proudly, and think of me.
At that moment, four dozen bluebottle flies plop themselves on Gina Millers crown and tuck down to some good nosh.
In the background, the spire of Big Ben looms over the scene, and as the coughing photographer clicks away, a wry smile comes over Gina Miller, she is the Queen today, the Queen of No-Brexit, and she will cherish this moment of fame for the fifteen minutes it will afford her.
Enjoy your crown Gina Miller, you will wear it for the rest of your pitiful life.
LINCOLN The University of Nebraska is freezing hiring and readying for potential cuts across the system with predictions of a $910 million shortfall over the state's next two-year budget cycle.
The Nebraska Economic Forecasting Advisory Board said last week low commodity prices are largely responsible for the lower-than-expected tax collections -- which will likely affect NU's budget.
The university's day-to-day operations are funded chiefly through state aid and tuition dollars.
In a letter sent to university staff on Monday, NU President Hank Bounds said he has discussed "navigating this downturn" with Gov. Pete Ricketts and state lawmakers.
"While we are continuing to analyze the numbers as they evolve, there is no question that we have difficult decisions ahead," Bounds said. "Cuts to our state funding would almost certainly impact people, programs and affordability across our campuses."
Following discussions with the four NU system chancellors, Bounds said the university will:
freeze hiring for all positions funded in any way through tax dollars, including positions where searches are underway. Some exemptions will be granted for positions labeled as mission-critical, he said.
limit travel and purchasing to what is deemed "absolutely necessary" by senior administrators.
prepare for making budget cuts at the campus level by seeking faculty, staff and student input.
Bounds said he doesn't expect those actions alone will completely "solve the budget challenges ahead."
More than 80 percent of spending goes to salaries and benefits, meaning "any major change in our budget ... necessarily impacts people and the programs in which they serve," Bounds added.
Lawmakers will begin crafting a 2017-18 and 2018-19 state budget in January.
The C-segment sedan will also likely come powered by a petrol as well as a diesel motor, which will get mated to both manual and automatic gearboxes as options.
Tata Motors likes to cover all segments, as it covers only about 60% of the segments with its current portfolio. It believes that the 40 per cent that is left out will be crucial to gain a larger slice of the passenger car market.
So, with the introduction of the new models, Tata Motors aims at the third spot as the largest automaker in India by the turn of 2019-2020. Market leader Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai hold the top two spots respectively.
Tata Motors met with success with the Tata tiago hatchback, which had an overwhelming reception, since its launch in April 2016 in India. So, this has revived Tatas hopes of winning the third spot, as a high volume seller in India in the passenger car market. Tata is also gearing up for the launch of the Tata Hexa, which is scheduled for launch in January 2017.
As Tata Motors plans to launch products in the remaining 40 per cent segments, it will launch what it has not had so far in its portfolio. So, Tata Motors will begin developing a compact SUV, premium hatchback and C-segment sedan. The launch of these models will take place in a span of 4-5 years.
The C-segment sedan will be priced in its range of Rs. 8-11 lakhs and so it will sit above the Kite 5 and the Zest. The rivals of the Tata Motors C-segment sedan will be the Honda City, Hyundai Verna, Skoda Rapid, Maruti Ciaz Volkswagen Vento and the Fiat Linea.
The C-segment sedan will also likely come powered by a petrol as well as a diesel motor, which will get mated to both manual and automatic gearboxes as options. Eyeing new potential customers, Tata Motors has made huge investments to make its presence felt in all the segments, as it runs up to around Rs. 3,500-4,000 crores for both passenger and commercial vehicles.
Source: Vicky.in
GTL Infrastructure had raised total debt of USD 226.25 million (Rs 1,509 crore) through bonds which include USD 111.74 million (Rs 745.3 crore) worth of Zero ZCCCB due 2017.
New Delhi: Telecom tower company GTL Infrastructure said a committee is scheduled to meet on November 8 to discuss conversion of USD 5 million (Rs 33.35 crore) foreign debt into equity.
"Meeting of the committee will be held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 to consider allotment of equity shares consequent to conversion notices received for conversation of FCCBs at a conversion price of RS 10 per share," the company said in a BSE filing.
As per the filing, GTL Infrastructure had raised total debt of USD 226.25 million (Rs 1,509 crore) through bonds which include USD 111.74 million (Rs 745.3 crore) worth of Zero Coupon Compulsory Convertible bonds (ZCCCB) due 2017 and USD 207.54 million (Rs 1,384.29 crore) worth of interest bearing convertible bonds due 2017.
The company said that it has outstanding ZCCCB bonds worth USD 32.72 million as on date. Out of this, notice to convert USD 5 million worth ZCCCB bonds have been received by the company.
Post conversion of USD 5 million bonds into equity, the company will be left with bonds worth USD 221.25 million as outstanding debt. Shares of GTL Infrastructure were trading at Rs 4.42 a unit, down 1.56 per cent from previous close, at BSE on November 8.
New Delhi: Unfazed by yoga guru Ramdev-led Patanjali's anti-MNC campaign, Nestle India today said its commitment to India will be "unwavering" with a history of over 104 years of presence in the country and described itself as "99.9 per cent" Indian.
"We have been in India for 104 years, 99.9 per cent of my company is Indian starting with me... I am proud of this heritage that we have in this country and proud of what the company has done in this country," Nestle India Chairman and Managing Director Suresh Narayanan told PTI.
Stating that the company's consumers, suppliers, vendors, partners and shareholders are all Indians, he said: "My contribution to taxes and salaries are all to Indians and therefore I am at a loss to understand as what else must I be doing to be called as Indian."
He was responding to a query on how the company views allegations by Patanjali through various advertisements that just like the way "East India Company enslaved and looted us, multinational companies are still doing the same by selling soap, shampoo, toothpaste, cream, powder and similar daily items at exorbitant price".
Narayanan further said: "So, while the statements are read also by my board both India and globally in Switzerland, we do not change our views simply because of the rhetoric."
Choosing not to get into a slanging match, he said: "Irrespective of what people might say, they have their points of view, I respect their point of view. Nestle's purpose and value will be unwavering and its commitment to this country would also be unwavering."
Reiterating that the "bond and relationship" with India built over the course of a century "are rock-solid", he said "the dignity and respect that we command as an entity is something we are grateful for and we would always be grateful".
Citing the example of the Maggi crisis, Narayanan said not even once that during the entire crisis, the company had a single incident of unrest. Even though Nestle India shut down five factories for five months due to the ban on Maggi, it did not have a single problem at any of the plants, he added.
"No distributor left us or supplier left us and no shareholder betrayed us and that tells you that they are happy dealing with us as a company and they are happy with the trust and relationship that we have established these years," Narayanan said further.
"If all these remain with me and I do not change my behaviour, then why should I be worried what people might say or think about my antecedents." On whether Nestle India will foray into ayurvedic FMCG products, which is fast becoming popular, he replied in the negative.
"The difference for Nestle is Nestle looks for nutrition and does not look at the origin or the source of the nutrition. This is a company involved in science, technology and R&D in nutrition," he explained.
According to Narayanan, Nestle India's aim is to make efficacious products and it does extensive trials to ensure the items are sustainable and stable and give the right kind of nutrition as far as consumers are concerned.
"I do not see our strategy changing from a primacy of nutrition, science, technology and wellness to a primacy which needs to say that something from this stream of medicine simply because it's nice one to use. That as a company, we do not have that philosophy," Narayanan clarified.
In the earning statement for six months ended September 30, SoftBank wrote off 58.14 billion yen in the value of shares in its investments in India.
New Delhi: Japan's SoftBank Corp has booked an investment loss of 58.14 billion yen (USD 560 million) on its investments in India including cab-hailing firm Ola and e-commerce company Snapdeal.
In the earning statement for six months ended September 30, SoftBank wrote off 58.14 billion yen in the value of shares in its investments in India, which include ANI Technologies, owns country's largest cab aggregator Ola, and Jasper Infotech, which runs e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal. Of that, 29.62 billion yen was due to a currency impairment.
"Gain or loss arising from financial instruments at FVTPL (fair value through profit or loss) comprises mainly changes in fair value of preferred stock investment including embedded derivatives, such as ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd and Jasper Infotech Private Limited in India, designated as financial assets at FVTPL," SoftBank said in the earnings statement.
The Japanese firm had led a USD 210-million investment in Ola and USD 627 million in Snapdeal in October 2014. It made follow-on investments in both firms. Both Ola and Snapdeal are looking at raising fresh funds to sutain operations amid growing competition from rivals.
Bengaluru-based Ola has so far raised about USD 1.2 billion from a clutch of investors including Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners, SoftBank Group and Didi Chuxing.
Last year, Snapdeal.com raised USD 500 million from Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group, Foxconn Technology Group and existing investor SoftBank Group, which then valued the Delhi-based firm at about USD 4.8 billion post money.
SoftBank has so far invested close to USD 2 billion in India and earlier this year it stated that it is looking to scale up the investment to USD 10 billion in next 5-10 years.
Last month, it said it will form a new fund with Saudi Arabia's public investment fund to invest as much as USD 100 billion in the global technology industry in the next five years.
"My goal is to become the Warren Buffett of the tech industry. We're aiming to be the Berkshire Hathaway of tech," SoftBank Group Corp Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said after the earnings announcement.
For the July-September quarter, SoftBank posted a net profit of 512 billion yen, compared with 213 billion yen the year before, boosted by gains from the sale of stakes in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Finnish game maker Supercell Oy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi walks with his UK counterpart Theresa May in lawns of Hyderabad House before a meeting in New Delhi on Monday. (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: India will identify those sectors and areas where it has strong competitive advantage while negotiating a possible Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Britain, a government official said today.
Citing a study, Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said if India and the UK enter into an FTA, the latter would benefit more but "the effort will certainly be to identify those sectors and those areas in which we have a strong competitive advantage".
India and the UK both have shown keen interest to negotiate an FTA with a view to boost trade in goods, services and investments. However, a formal negotiation on the pact cannot start before Britain's exit from the European Union.
She further said that India would like to engage and look at the opportunities to deepen trade ties with the UK. "The UK is an important market for us. In future certainly, an FTA would be realistic, would be opportune, and would perhaps be to our benefit," Teaotia said at a seminar organised by Ficci and the Centre for WTO studies.
The Secretary said at this point of time, the priority will be finding out constraints coming in the way of development of economic relationship and also those issues which may crop up during FTA talks.
Referring to India's ongoing FTA negotiations with the EU, Teaotia said the issues which led to stalled talks with the 28-nation bloc may prove to be a roadblock in a pact with the UK as well.
With the EU, there are issues related with greater market access for automobile sector, alcoholic beverages and wine, besides the demand for data security. "Now many of these issues are exactly the same for the UK and therefore, we are going to be talking about very very similar issues when we sit down to negotiate (FTA with the UK)," she added.
She, however, expressed optimism that at this point of time the UK negotiators would be more flexible and constructive in recognising the fact that there is a benefit for both sides.
Further, she said there are issues in the services sector which need to be discussed between the two countries. Citing example of the healthcare sector, she said increasingly India is providing both goods and services in this sector for its trader partner countries.
"For instance, the UK has robust and strong national health services. Using India's world class generic industry, there is a possibility of leveraging and making it be a useful asset for the UK to be able to procure these medicine for their systems and it certainly would be a big fillip to our pharma sector," she said.
Teaotia said there is a huge pool of Indian hospitals which are globally accredited and they are providing treatment to patients from all over the world at a fraction of the global practices.
"Recognition by the UK insurance companies of these accredited hospitals will reduce the health bill for the national health services and will certainly be a benefit for India's growing healthcare sector. These are the issues we will choose to discuss," she said.
New Delhi: The Modi governments move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and issue new Rs 500 bank notes would leave that around Rs 15 lakh crore worthless, as per earlier estimates. People have been given 50 days to turn in their Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes with the banks to get new notes.
Replacing all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will be a massive task for the banks and the government. There are 16.5 billion notes of Rs 500 in the market. As far as Rs 1000 notes are concerned 6.7 billion notes have been printed and are in circulation in the market.
While the total number of bank notes in circulation rose by 40 per cent between 2011 and 2016, the increase in number of notes of Rs 500 denomination was 76 per cent. As for Rs 1,000 denomination notes were concerned there was an increase of 109 per cent during this period.
In this period the Indian economy grew by 30 per cent. This means that there has been a very high increase in printing of high denomination of notes, said economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das.
New Series bank notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 denominations will be introduced for circulation from 10th November, 2016. Infusion of Rs 2,000 bank notes will be monitored and regulated by RBI. Introduction of new series of bank notes which will be distinctly different from the current ones in terms of look, design, size and colour has been planned.
In panic, people queue up outside atms
As the news of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes being banned went viral on social media and instant messaging platforms like Whatsapp on Tuesday evening, the general public panicked and rushed to nearest ATM centers to withdraw lower amount like Rs 400 for currency of Rs 100 denomination.
It was chaos at all ATM centers in the city, especially at the Secunderabad railway station and the MGBS bus station. The situation was worse as ATMs will not function for the next two days.
Mr Pankaj Chaturvedi, a tourist from New Delhi who was returning on Tuesday night, said that he only had Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. I was shocked when I entered the railway canteen for dinner. The manager of the canteen cautioned me before entering and said that they would not accept these notes. When I tried to withdraw currency in denominations of Rs 100, there was a long queue. If I wait for my turn at the ATM, I will miss my train. I am returning from Hyderabad with an empty stomach, he said.
A railway staff at the reservation counter said that they were given instruction to accept Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes till 12 am. We shall wait for further instructions after 12 am. If our higher officials direct us to accept these notes, we shall do it, the staff said. RTC commuters faced a similar experience at MGBS and JBS bus stations.
New Delhi: Government's move to withdraw currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination is its boldest step and a "surgical strike on black money", Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said today.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight announced demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from midnight, making these notes invalid in a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption.
"This is the biggest and the boldest step by the government for containing black money. It is like a surgical strike on black money," Adhia tweeted.
This is the biggest and the boldest step by the Government for containing black money. It is like a surgical strike on black money. Dr Hasmukh Adhia (@adhia03) November 8, 2016
Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said the step is another move to attack the biggest menace facing the country.
"Citizens must understand, cooperate & join the fight against corruption," Lavasa tweeted. Modi said people holding notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 can deposit the same in their bank and post office accounts from November 10 till December 30.
New Delhi: Stock exchanges BSE and NSE today said they have sought clarifications from 5 banks SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Yes Bank on the debit card data breach issue.
"The exchange has sought clarification from the companies with respect to news item captioned 3.2 million debit cards compromised...the response is awaited," NSE said.
Similar notices were issued by the BSE to these 5 banks. Exchanges have asked these banks to provide clarification /confirmation on the news items in detail including whether such event stated in published news were taking place.
"If so, you are advised to provide the said information along with the sequence of events in chronological order and the material impact of this article on the company," it said.
Concerned over the biggest-ever breach of debit card data, a Parliamentary panel will examine various security issues related to payments in the banking sector and has asked government officials and representatives of some banks to appear before it.
As many as 32.14 lakh debit cards data was compromised and 641 customers were duped of Rs 1.3 crore using stolen debit card data.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance headed by Congress MP Veerappa Moily, which is scheduled to meet tomorrow, has asked officials from the Finance Ministry, the Corporate Affairs Ministry and various banks to appear before it.
Representatives of State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Yes Bank have been asked to brief the panel on "security-related issues concerning payments in the banking sector", according to a Lok Sabha secretariat notice.
The Reserve Bank of India has also initiated forensic audit to investigate the entire matter. RBI held a meeting with senior officials from select banks, the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) and card network operators to review the steps taken by various agencies to contain the adverse fall-out of certain card details alleged to have been compromised.
Forex dealers said a higher opening in domestic equity market and a weak dollar against some other currencies overseas also supported the rupee.
Mumbai: The rupee edged higher by 5 paise to 66.69 against the US dollar in early trade on November 8 on selling of the American currency by exporters and banks amid fresh foreign fund inflows.
Forex dealers said a higher opening in domestic equity market and a weak dollar against some other currencies overseas also supported the rupee.
Yesterday, the rupee had lost 4 paise against the US currency to end at 66.74 on fresh dollar demand from importers and corporates.
Meanwhile, the benchmark BSE Sensex spurted by 141.72 points, or 0.51 per cent, at 27,600.71 in early session on November 8.
One of the pictures of Salman Khan from his shooting for 'Tubelight' in Manali.
Mumbai: The team of the film Tubelight had shot for the first schedule in Ladakh, where Salman Khan had shot with Chinese actor Zhu Zhu and also visited Dalai Lama with his rumoured girlfriend Iulia Vantur. The next schedule of was in Manali where the cast and crew were stationed for almost a month where Salman was seen shooting for a song with locals, and also going river rafting amid the shooting.
Salman has since returned to Mumbai, and fans of the superstar have been wondering where the next schedule of the film will be held and if the film has already been completed.
The director of the film, Kabir Khan, cleared those doubts when he took to Twitter to state that the last schedule of the film will be held in Mumbai, starting on November 22.
Tubelight also stars Sohail Khan and the film will be up for release during Eid next year.
Akshay Kumar has given Rs 9 Lakh to th family of a martyred jawan in the past. (Pic courtesy: Instagram/akshaykumarlive and akkistaan).
Mumbai: Akshay Kumar flew down to J&K and visited BSF Camp to pay homage to the martyrs who have lost their lives to ceasefire violations and encounters across the LoC. The superstar went on his own chartered aircraft and did not let the government pay for his visit. He had even refused to take security cover.
He addressed thousands of jawans at the BSF Jammu frontier headquaters and called himself fortunate that he could meet them.
"Fortunate that I got the opportunity to come and meet you. I have always said I'm a reel hero, you are the real hero, Akshay was quoted as saying.
After paying homage to the martyrs, the actor was seen posing for pictures with the jawans and shaking hands with them.
In the past, Kumar had also provided monetary assistance to the families of BSF martyrs and had contributed Rs 80 Lakh to the army.
While addressing the jawans, the Rustom star suggested that the army could design an app for those who are keen on helping the armed forces. The superstar also visited the International Border in Suchetgargh and interacted with the BSF troopers.
"I have come to tell them that the country is proud of them and all of us stand firmly with them, he said.
Akshay, who is shooting for his upcoming film Toilet- Ek Prem Katha', flew back to his shoot location.
Mumbai: Unlike Fawad Khan, Imran was lucky to escape the verbal thrashing for featuring in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. But the popular Pakistani star is heartbroken that the film, which is by far his finest project in Bollywood, did not screen in his country.
When asked how he feels about the self-imposed ban on films and TV series in both the nations, the actor confessed to being upset about it and expressed his concern over the heightening tension between these two neighbouring countries.
It felt bad, more so because of the tense relationship between India and Pakistan. But its a very sensitive subject and I wouldnt want to get into it. Having said that, Im sad that Bollywood movies arent showing in (Pakistani) cinemas.
Imran also revealed that he knows people who have flown out of Pakistan just to watch Ae Dil Hai Mushkil.
I know though that fans of Karan [Johar], Ranbir [Kapoor] and Anushka [Sharma] here would watch ADHM anyway, on pirated DVDs, or via torrent downloads. I even know of people who went to Dubai to watch the movie in theatres, revealed Abbas.
A couple of days back, news of Abbas confirming over social media that Karan Johar has chopped out four of his scenes from ADHM were doing the rounds. When asked, he clarified that he has not even watched the film yet.
Imran, who had debuted opposite Bipasha Basu in Creature 3D and also featured as the male lead in Jaanisar alongside Pernia Qureshi, has no hard feelings against India where he has only received love.
But in normal circumstances, it would be very different. I can vouch for that because I have got great love from the Indian public. I never faced any negativity, confessed Abbas.
If normalcy returns between the two nations, he would love to come back to Bollywood.
I had a great time working in the Hindi film industry, and any actor would only be happy to get the chance to be part of Bollywood. But I am not obsessed about any particular workplace. I am open to good offers from literally anywhere in the world, he explained.
Mumbai: Richa Chadha, who is busy wrapping up the shoot of her web show Powerplay, and the prep work for Fukrey 2, has taken time out of her busy schedule for the noble cause of spreading education. The actress has joined hands with her aunt who runs a charitable school in Bulandshahr, a small town in Uttar Pradesh.
The school has been run for the past five years by Richas aunt, who left her cosmopolitan New Delhi life to provide free education for kids coming from low-income backgrounds.
A close source reveals, Richa has now stepped in to help setup a solar project for the school. This is going to be a big help, since power outages often disrupt the functioning of the school. Richa is working on the project and will soon be visiting the school to inaugurate it.
Mumbai: Even after nineteen hours of relentless search, the bodies of the two Kannada actors, Raghav Uday and Anil Verma, presumed dead, have not yet been recovered.
According to a report in NDTV, producer of the Duniya Vijay film, Masti Gudi has been charged with a case of culpable homicide. The producer has been absconding ever since the incident took place.
There have been accusations of blatant negligence towards safety measures, since safety harnesses were provided only to the lead actor Vijay, one of Sandalwoods top stars, and not the supporting stars.
The scene in question needed the three to jump from a helicopter, 30 feet down to the leak. The two stars had revealed they werent great swimmers before the shot had been canned, but decided to leave everything to chance.
"The rescue operations are still going on. We will be booking case against those responsible and also inquire into all aspects - whether all adequate measures and permissions were taken or not," Ramanagara Superintendent of Police Dr Chandragupta had told PTI.
Speaking to a Kannada news channel before performing the stunt, Raghav Uday had said he was "scared" of the stunt and was not good at swimming.
"I'm very scared first of all. I have not done (such stunt) so far, nor have I seen anyone performing such stunt so far, so I'm scared. Whatever safety is done there is always a fear within oneself, despite that the situation is that I have to perform it... He also said he was not good in swimming. "...I'm not that good in swimming, I can fall (into water) and come out, but I have never fallen into water from such a height, so there is some sort of fear within me."
Stating that precautionary measures had been taken by the team, he said "preparation is what they have done, they have said that once we fall they will come (in boat), we are dependent on it, if there is anything above it, there is God."
BENGALURU: Two young actors were robbed off their lives, dying in a tragic and needless accident during a film shoot on Monday afternoon when they jumped from a helicopter into the TG Halli reservoir. Neither Raghav Uday or Anil knew how to swim. And despite knowing they could not swim, neither man had been given life-jackets by the film makers!
The bodies of the young men, declared dead, have not yet been found although the reservoir is still being trawled by the Fire and Emergency department.
The third actor, lead actor Duniya Vijay who also jumped into the restricted area of the waterbody for the aerial sequence of the stunt, survived the mishap with questions being raised on why he was the only one given a life-jacket even though he could swim. He was rescued by local fishermen who were on a barge nearby.
Sources said that the plan was to have the two men picked up by a boat as soon as they landed in the water but the boat hit a snag and could not be started.
The Kannada film, Maasthi Gudi being directed by Nagashekar featuring Duniya Vijay was being shot in the presence of the stunt choreographer Ravi Verma, at 2.30 pm without the required permission, and was in clear violation of the safety requirement.
Tollywood has been talking about a small film Vellipomake, which is going to hit the screens soon. The film is directed by Yakub Ali, an aspiring director, who is a dentist by profession. The film is also in the news because popular producer Dil Raju has decided to release it.
Hailing from Jayaram village near Warangal, Yakub admits he always wanted to become a director, but his father asked him to complete his education first. He says, I am passionate about films and wanted to become a filmmaker. But I never expressed this at home, be-cause I knew that they wouldnt agree to it. Coming from a family of doctors, Yakub completed his BDS (Bachelor in Dental Surgery) in Vijayawada and started his practice in Hyderabad.
It was only after he completed his dental course that Yakub told his father that he wanted to enter the film industry. His father responded with a two-year deadline, failing which he had to return to his job as dentist. Vellipomake was also inspired by my friends life, while I added a few cinematic scenes, he says.
Yakub did not approach any producer or director when he joined the industry. I joined Ramanaidu Film School where I studied filmmaking, he says. Days were spent at school and nights at the clinic to earn money. Once I completed the diploma in acting school, I decided to do my own film, he says.
He prepared his own script and two friends supported him financially. In fact, Yakub juggled several roles for this film that of director, writer, costume designer, story writer and production designer. Interestingly, Yakub turned to social media to rope in new artistes for his film, finally selecting Vishwak Sen, who studied acting at Anupam Khers Actor Prepares, as the lead actor.
The film was completed in four months, mostly shot in Hyderabad. Yakub says, Before the shoot, we did many rehearsals. Each day, I would check the output and reshoot the next day if it wasnt good. We did not make this film for a Youtube release or to make money. We made a film based on my ideas.
The film trailer on Youtube attracted a lot of attention. I got a call from Dil Rajus office and we met him. After watching it, he immediately said that he wanted to release it, says Yakub. After Dil Raju entered the picture, big directors like Sukumar and Vamsi Paidipalli watched and praised the film.
Dil Raju garu suggested a few changes but appreciated the quality of the film which was made in a very limited budget," says Yakub, remaining tight-lipped on the details of the budget.
The film is all set to hit the screens soon. After watching Vellipomake, Dil Raju even asked him to prepare another script to produce. Its been two years of hard work for our team and we got paid for it, says Yakub.
Actress Parvathy Nair who will be seen along with Rahul Ravindran in Shoban Babu has signed yet another Telugu film. This time, with Adivi Sesh in his upcoming film with brother Saikiran Adivi.
The film is a drama which is heightened by a love story and the search was for someone who could strike a balance between the contemporary and traditional look. Parvathy felt like the perfect fit, shares a source.
While an official announcement is awaited, it seems certain that she'll begin work once the film goes on the floors. Shes heard a detailed narration and is happy with the way her role is written, adds the source.
For years, Paulo Coelho has been advocating that free content is not a threat to the book business. (Photo: AP)
New Delhi: Celebrated author Paulo Coelho, a known advocate of pirated books, feels piracy is like a medal to any writer whose biggest reward is being read.
In a Twitter post, the Brazilian author of bestselling novels like "The Alchemist", "Eleven Minutes", "Adultery", "Like the Flowing River", "Brida", and "The Zahir" says, "Some call this 'piracy'. I call it a medal to any writer who understands that there are no better reward than to be read."
He also posted a picture of boy selling books on a road along with his tweet. The boy has books like "Adultery", "When Only Love Remains" (Durjoy Datta), "Your Dreams are Mine Now" (Ravinder Singh), "Half Girlfriend" (Chetan Bhagat) and "I Am Malala". For years, Coelho has been advocating that free content is not a threat to the book business.
The more people 'pirate' a book, the better, he had said a few years ago. He had also used file-sharing networks to promote his books. Piracy is a huge problem faced by India's publishing industry. The "Nielsen India Book Market Report 2015: Understanding the India Book Market", conducted in association with Association of Publishers in India and the Federation of Indian Publishers, had listed piracy as one the challenges facing the industry.
"Piracy is widespread, with virtually every street in the country home to stalls selling pirated texts," it said. British writer Jeffrey Archer is among the writers who want the Indian government to act against piracy. "While I'm aware of the tremendous support I receive in India for my books, the government still needs to do something about pirating," the 75-year-old author, who was once asked by a young boy in Mumbai selling pirated books if he wanted the latest Archer novel, had said.
Last year, Archer had expressed his anger over some Bollywood producers "stealing" his work without making any compensation. According to him, his novel "Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less" was made into the rom-com "Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl" and "Kane and Abel" into "Khudgarz" without his permission.
Twitter was abuzz for hours with speculation over the brand of his jacket (Photo: Twitter)
Indonesia: Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for calm after a violent protest by hardline Muslims last week, yet it was his khaki bomber jacket that excited social media and triggered a rush by Indonesians to snap up similar clothing across the country.
The president, who normally wears a simple, white long-sleeved shirt, is rarely seen as a fashion icon by young Indonesians, who are among the world's biggest users of social media like Twitter and Facebook.
But Twitter was abuzz for hours with speculation over the brand of the jacket Widodo wore in a televised appearance shortly after midnight on Friday, in which he blamed 'political actors' for stirring trouble at a rally attended by more than 100,000 protesters.
Kyungsoo & Mr. President of Indonesia wore same jacket (almost seem same, diff zipper) pic.twitter.com/66LxphejES kes (@ibaekrawls) November 6, 2016
Apparently there's quite a crowd at Zara Grand Indonesia going for the bomber jacket that the president wore last night pic.twitter.com/XJ75TdZ2io Aulia Masna (@aulia) November 5, 2016
#INDONESIA#PRESIDENT#JOKOWI
have to wear the same jacket with #D.O#SEHUN#EXO
Cool... pic.twitter.com/vfPN1n9EXg EunChan (@EunchanSsi) November 6, 2016
Police resorted to using tear gas and water cannon after clashes with Muslim hardliners calling for the resignation of Jakarta's Christian governor.
An executive at an Indonesian company that owns the franchise rights for Zara in the country said the jacket in question was made by the Spanish clothing retailer and it was already sold out in almost all of its stores.
"The demand for these jackets keeps coming and we have placed a repeat order for them," Fetty Kwartati, corporate secretary of PT Mitra Adiperkasa Tbk, told Reuters by telephone. A presidential spokesman declined to comment.
A Zara employee at a Jakarta shopping mall said customers had bought more than 100 of the jackets, which sell for 899,900 rupiah ($69) each, in just a few days and the store was trying to re-stock as fast as possible.
Local media reported that they were also sold out in other Indonesian cities like Surabaya. "Everybody started talking about it," said Rovan, a 25-year-old hotel worker who was trying out the jacket. "After I saw it on social media, I am kind of interested in it."
The difference was less than the impact of mothers level of education (Photo: AFP)
Sweden: Kids who are exposed to surgical anesthesia before age four tend to have slightly lower school grades at age 16 compared to other kids, but the difference is very small and shouldnt discourage parents from proceeding with necessary surgeries, researchers say.
The "low overall difference in academic performance after childhood exposure to surgery is reassuring," they write in JAMA Pediatrics.
Studying the health and school records of more than 2 million children born in Sweden between 1973 and 1993, the researchers identified 33,000 children who had one surgery with anesthesia before age four and 159,000 children who were similar in most ways but had not had surgery or anesthesia before age 16.
On average, kids whod had anesthesia had 0.41 percent lower school grades at age 16 and 0.97 percent lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores at age 18. Kids who had been exposed to anesthesia two or three times before age four had school grades between one and two percent lower than the comparison group of kids, the authors report.
The difference was less than the impact of mothers level of education, gender and even month of birth, said lead author Dr. Pia Glatz of Kalmar County Hospital in Sweden
Surgical management, the surgery itself and whatever caused the surgery to be necessary in the first place may also have played a role, although none of the children in this study had any serious medical diagnoses, the authors note.
No child is exposed to anesthesia and surgery unless it is absolutely necessary, Glatz told Reuters Health by email. Necessary conditions could be serious malformation, inguinal hernia or urological conditions or ENT (ear-nose-throat) disorders with hearing impairment.
Based on recent animal studies, anesthesia exposure may change brain development, but the doses and durations used in pediatric practice have not caused structural changes in the brains of animals, she said.
Based on these findings, families and caregivers should not hesitate to provide surgery to young children when necessary, and the magnitude of any adverse effect of anesthesia and surgery should be interpreted in light of potential adverse effect by postponing surgery, Glatz said. We need to further understand whether there are certain high risk groups within the pediatric surgical population and if so, we need to come up with preventive strategies to avoid neurocognitive adverse effects in these children.
The alternatives, i.e. postponing surgery, are most likely worse, said Dr. Tom G. Hansen of Odense University Hospital in Denmark, co-author of an editorial accompanying the study.
Surgeries in young children are urgent and important, Hansen said.
In the relatively inexpensive test, blood is drawn from an individual that may have suffered a concussion as the result of a sudden blow to the head. (Representational Image)
Toronto: Scientists have developed a new blood test that identifies with over 90 per cent accuracy whether an adolescent athlete has suffered a concussion or
not.
Diagnosis of a clinically significant concussion, or a mild traumatic brain injury, can be difficult as it currently relies on a combination of patient symptom assessment and clinician judgement. Equally problematic are the decisions to stop play or activities, or when patients who have suffered a concussion can safely return to normal activities without risking further injury.
Researchers from Children's Health Research Institute and Western University in Canada, have demonstrated that a blood test can now accurately diagnose a concussion using a form of blood profiling known as metabolomics. In the relatively inexpensive test, blood is drawn from an individual that may have suffered a concussion as the result of a sudden blow to the head (or from transmitted forces from a sudden blow to the body) within 72 hours of the incident.
The scientists measure a panel of metabolites - small molecules that are the products of the body's metabolism - in the blood to search for distinct patterns that indicate a concussion has occurred. "This novel approach, to use blood testing of metabolites as a diagnostic tool for concussions, was exploratory and we were extremely pleased with the robustness of our initial results," said Douglas Fraser from Children's Hospital, who led the study with his co-investigator Mark Daley, a professor at Western University.
"We looked at a host of patterns and it appears that those who suffered a concussion have a very different pattern than those who have not had a concussion," Fraser said. In this latest successful attempt, the researchers took a
different approach and investigated a full spectrum of 174 metabolites.
"We looked at all of these metabolites in concussed male adolescent patients and in non-concussed male adolescent patients and it turns out that the spectrum is really different," said Daley. "There is no one metabolite that we can put a finger on but when we looked at all of them, those profiles are different enough that we could easily distinguish concussed patients from non-concussed," said Daley.
In fact, with fine tuning we can now look at sets of as few as 20-40 specific metabolites and maintain the diagnostic accuracy level of the test over 90 per cent," said Daley. Concussion is a major public health concern, often
resulting in significant acute symptoms and in some individuals, long-term neurological dysfunction. The study was published in the journal Metabolomics.
Will be done under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) (Photo: AFP)
New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry has approved the introduction of pneumonia vaccines in Himachal Pradesh along with four other states under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP).
The pneumonia vaccines will be introduced in a planned manner from 2017 in Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
Union Health Minister J P Nadda said with its introduction, a new milestone will be achieved in expanding the coverage of full immunisation in Himachal Pradesh.
"The Health Ministry approved introduction of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) under Universal Immunisation Programme.
"Himachal Pradesh will be among states where pneumonia vaccines will be introduced along with Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in a planned manner from 2017," said an official statement.
Nadda said this will give a unique opportunity to the state to demonstrate the combined effect of Diarrhoea Vaccine (Rotavirus) and Pneumonia Vaccine (PCV) reduction intervention on the overall child mortality and morbidity in the State.
"I am sure Himachal Pradesh will be hugely benefited with this new PCV Vaccine. We want our children to be healthy and this intervention is one step forward in ensuring that," he said.
The Health Ministry had earlier this year introduced Rotavirus Vaccine to combat diarrhoea in the four states of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Odisha.
"Adding this life-saving vaccine such as PCV and Rotavirus to our immunization program will not only improve the health of our children but will also reduce hospitalisation and other conditions associated with diarrhoea and pneumonia such as malnutrition, delayed physical and mental development among children.
"Reduced hospitalisation reduces the economic burden on the family and the health cost burden on the country," Nadda added.
Kenya: People have different sexual interests often categorised as fetishes in popular lingo, but sometimes these can go to another level and culminate into perversion which can be described as revolting to say the least.
Sexual assault against women and children is already a major cause for concern in different parts of the world but people getting caught while forcing themselves on animals is outrageous.
A man in Kenya was nabbed by villagers for such an act when he was caught having sex with his neighbours goat. After barely escaping being lynched by angry residents, Gabrielle Simiyu confessed saying he took to bestiality after being rejected by women at funeral.
Villagers were infuriated and said that this wasnt the first time Simiyu had been caught assaulting animals and alleged that he was previously found to be having sex with cows and chicken.
Local media reported that Simiyu had confessed to his actions and asked for forgiveness. He said that he had a problem since he would suffer pain after repeatedly being rejected by women and pleaded villagers to take him to a hospital to find out what was wrong with him.
He said that he had been rejected by women at a funeral the same night he assaulted the goat as he has been arrested and charged with bestiality.
The mention of dental retainers usually brings about mental images of socially awkward teenagers struggling to smile in photos. But Taiwanese dentist and artist Kuang-Yi Ku has shown that certain dental aids can also play a major role in intensifying pleasure during a blow job.
Kus art exhibit The Fellatio Modification Project which examined bodily transformation aimed at enhancing sensory pleasure during oral sex, particularly in male gay culture was on public display from November 1 to the 4th. The exhibit also included The Cunnilingus/ Anilingus Modification Project in which fourth-year dentistry students Anisha Gupta and Carly Billing focused on making a single-use wearable oral device that could be used during those sexual acts.
But Ku believes that this is only the beginning. In the future, I imagine people might want to permanently modify their mouths. They might get the soft tissue added into the roofs of their mouths, he told Dazed Digital.
Kerala: India is a country with people with diverse religious and cultural backgrounds with marriage being a big deal for people across the region. Apart from the diversity, matrimonial advertisements in India also reflect casteism and other prejudices in society.
While people can easily get into trouble for taking a dig at religion in India, a group of people came up with a religion called Dinkoism after the popular animated mouse Dinkan in Kerala. The mock religion became a movement for rationalists and now a follower of Dinkoism has come up with a unique matrimonial.
While people make a point to mention the boys caste with his educational qualifications in their ads with specific preference for a girl from the same caste, a man called Ramsin Shivashankar put an ad in a paper that read, Dinkoist very handsome 29 boy MTech self-employed nationality no bar.
He then posted a picture of his matrimonial ad in a Facebook post where he asked followers of Dinkan to help him find a Dinkoist and mentioned that even entries from Pakistan are welcome.
The man looking for a woman who worships Dinkan says that he has an account on Bharat Matrimony which doesnt have an option for Dinkoism and described it as discrimination against a minority.
Raipur: A Delhi University professor and a JNU professor have been booked along with Maoists and others on charges of murder of a tribal villager in insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.
"An FIR was lodged against DU Professor Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU Professor), Vineet Tiwari (from Delhi's Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate (Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) and others along with Maoists for the murder of Shamnath Baghel based on the complaint of his wife on Saturday," Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) S R P Kalluri told PTI last night.
They were booked under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC at Tongpal Police Station, the IG said adding, "strongest possible action will be taken against those guilty after the investigation".
Though the case was registered on Saturday, the matter came to light last night.
Armed Naxals had allegedly killed Baghel with sharp weapons on Friday night at his residence in Nama village under Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area, around 450 kms away from Raipur.
Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading the protest against Naxal activities in their village since April this year.
"As per the complaint lodged by the victim's wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May this year. Even armed ultras were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday," the IG said.
The complaint also mentioned that during the attack on him, Maoists kept telling Baghel that he was being punished because he did not listen to Sundar and others, and continued opposing them.
Baghel's wife has sought action against Sundar and others accusing them of murdering her husband, Kalluri said.
Baghel and other villagers of the region had earlier given a complaint to Tongpal police in May this year against Sundar, Prasad, Tiwari, Parate and an unidentified woman activist from Sukma for allegedly inciting innocent tribals against the government and seeking their support for Maoists.
Villagers of Nama and the neighbouring Kumakoleng village (both under Kumakoleng village panchayat) had started a self-motivated protest against Maoist activities in their villages after forming its own security group named "Tangiya (axe) group" in April this year.
"Following the development, according to villagers, Sundar and others went in the village to allegedly threaten them not to oppose the Maoists," the IG said. Sundar had gone to the village with the alias Richa Keshav, he said.
A letter was then written to the Vice Chancellors of both DU and JNU informing that Bastar police was conducting an inquiry against both the professors following complaint received against them, he added.
Efforts are being made to ascertain the identity of the woman on the basis of some items recovered from the bag, police said. (Photo: Representational Image)
Jaipur: The body of an unidentified woman was recovered from a bag at Gandhi Nagar railway station in Jaipur, police on Tuesday said.
A man late last night spotted blood dripping from the bag lying on the platform and informed police about it, they said.
The bag was containing the body of a woman, aged around 24-25 years, police said. Possibility of the girl being raped before murder is not ruled out, they said.
The body has been sent for postmortem, police said. Efforts are being made to ascertain the identity of the woman on the basis of some items recovered from the bag, they added.
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
New Delhi: Asserting that there are some vested interests by those who are creating misplaced apprehensions among the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students, Joint Commissioner of Police, Southwest, Deependra Pathak on Tuesday said eight separate teams have been formed to investigate the missing Najeeb Ahmed's case.
Pathak said the police are constantly communicating with Ahmed's family and have been informing them about the investigation's progress.
"These protesting students are aloof from the truth. Eight separate teams are investigating the case. We have been communicating with the victim's family on a daily basis and informing them of our progress," Pathak told ANI.
The Joint Commissioner further said that special emphasis is being put on the reconstruction of the incident and of the personality to asses different dimensions of the case.
"Under reconstruction of personality, we examine individuals' health condition and psychosomatic condition. The fundamental aim of the police is to find different dimensions arising out of this," he added.
On Sunday, the Delhi Police detained JNU students who were staging protest against the authorities at the India Gate here for not taking firm steps to locate their Ahmed.
Najeeb's sister Sadaf Mosharraf, who was also among those detained by the police, vented her ire at the men in uniform.
"We were protesting very peacefully but the Delhi Police detained us without any reason," she said.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal criticised the incident saying the Centre si adopting 'dictatorship' policy and violating the constitutional right of an individual by adopting such measures.
Kejriwal also met President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday to seek his intervention into the matter.
Najeeb went missing on the intervening night of October 14 and 15 after allegedly being beaten up by a mob of 20 students comprising of the ABVP members, who had gone campaigning to his room for hostel elections.
New Delhi: Minutes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that 500 and 1,000 rupee notes would be withdrawn from circulation from midnight in a bid to tackle corruption; the Finance Ministry said that the move was necessary to maintain Indias economic integrity.
This is necessary in medium & long term interest of our economy, it will help in maintaining financial & economic integrity, said Shaktikanta Das, Secretary Economic Affairs.
He warned that if someone is receiving Rs 1000 & Rs 500 notes after tonight, he is doing it at his own risk. He also said that new currencies of various denominations will soon be circulated in the country, including Rs 20, 100, 1000 and others. He added that the new notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2000 with come with greater security features and design and will be circulated from November 10.
The Finance Ministry said Rs 500 notes circulation went up by 76% from 2011 to 2016 and Rs 1000 notes by 109% as against 40% rise in all currency notes.
(From right) Consul General of Israel in Bengaluru Yael Hashavit, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bengaluru Margit Hellwig Botte and Ambasssador N. Parthasarathi during the memorial service for former Prime Minister of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres in Bengaluru on Monday (Photo: R. Samuel)
Bengaluru: The Consulate General of Israel, the Indian Economic Trade Organisation and the Consular Corps Karnataka paid their tributes to late Shimon Peres, a Nobel laureate and former Israeli President and Prime Minister, who was laid to rest on September 28.
The guests hailed Mr Peres as Israels warrior of peace and remembered his contributions to the world. Ms Yael Hashavit, Consul General of the Israeli Consulate in Bengaluru, said that Mr Peres shaped the course of Israeli history into what we know today and that he was a man ahead of his times.
He was an optimist, a statesman, a diplomat and a man who believed in humankind. He was there when our enemies attacked us and pushed us into brutal wars. He was there when the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan were signed and amidst all this, he was relentlessly trying to find a path for peace with the Palestinians.
He will always be one of the most enlightening examples of a leader in Israels history, she said fondly. Mr Asif Iqbal, president, Indian Economic Trade Organisation, Ms Margit Hellwig Botte, Consul General of Germany, Mr Hendrik Van Dord, Diplomatic Corps Protocol Officer, Mr Parthasarathi, former Ambassador and Secretary General of FKCCI, and others were present.
I am grateful to him for what he did for our country, said Ms Botte in her eulogy at the ceremony held at Taj West End on Monday evening in the city. He reached out a helping hand always towards Germany and he was always there as a friend no matter what the situation was. It is such a great loss not just to his country but us too. If it hadnt been for him we wouldnt be who we are today.
Mr Parthasarathi detailed contributions made by Mr Perest to friendly relations that India and Israel share. He held every position possible in the Isreali government and it was he who sowed the seeds of peace and friendship with India since 1985.
Mr Asif Iqbal, president, IETO, said, Mr Peres was the guiding force for promoting peace around the world. He often spoke about how India was fortunate to have two great and unforgettable leaders in Gandhi and Nehru.
The memorial service also featured a musical performance by husband-wife duo Tanisha Herbert on vocals and Arun Rozario, who dedicated an ancient Hebrew prayer, Avinu Malkeinu, to the late politician.
New Delhi: CPI(M) stands for Indian nationalism and not Hindu nationalism, its general secretary Sitaram Yechury said on Tuesday as he launched a veiled attack on RSS over its alleged efforts to implement Hindutva agenda in an intensified manner.
"The CPI(M) stands not for Hindu nationalism but for Indian nationalism," Yechury tweeted without naming the Sangh.
The comment from the Marxist leader follows his attack on RSS on Monday in Thiruvananthpuram, where he launched a year- long celebrations marking centenary of Great October Revolution.
During his address, the Rajya Sabha member had accused the Modi government of intensifying efforts to implement Hindutva agenda allegedly under the control of RSS.
"The situation has gone to an extent that the RSS is now issuing certificates of patriotism. They are propagating that Hindutva equates to Indian nationalism," he had observed.
The CPI on Tuesday urged the Tamil Nadu government to declare Cauvery delta districts as drought hit. (Representational image)
Chennai: The Communist Party of India (CPI) on Tuesday urged the Tamil Nadu government to declare Cauvery delta districts as drought hit and announce a financial aid for affected farmers.
"Cauvery delta districts, including Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam should be declared drought hit," party's State Secretary R Mutharasan said in a statement.
He said the state and Central governments should come forward to provide a financial aid of Rs 30,000 per acre for farmers and Rs 25,000 for families of agriculture labourers.
He said the farmers were "deeply shocked" as they could not even raise a single Samba paddy crop as also Kuruvai crop. Ryots and farm hands were facing 'unprecedented distress'.
Mutharasan said the continuing deaths of farmers allegedly due to crop failure were a matter deep concern.
"Central and state governments have a duty and responsibility to prevent such deaths," he said.
On November 3, a farmer of Tiruvarur district reportedly committed suicide by consuming pesticide. The next day another farmer from the same district collapsed suddenly when he was inspecting his farm and died.
Villagers staged a road roko and demanded that a solatium be paid to his family. The man had gone for direct sowing of paddy and was distressed over crop failure.
The Excise Department of the Delhi government has arrested 36 persons on the first day of a drive against public consumption of alcohol. (Photo: PTI/File)
New Delhi: Launching a drive against public consumption of alcohol, the Excise Department of the Delhi government has arrested 36 persons on the first day with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia warning people of strict action for drinking in the open and pledging to intensify the drive.
Sisodia, who also heads the Excise Department, said on Tuesday that he had written to Delhi High Court Chief Justice G Rohini requesting her to provide 10 mobile magistrates so that challans could be issued on the spot.
The Deputy CM said that the government is committed to completely stop drinking in public as women feel unsafe because of this and it affects business in particular marketsand places where such practice is adopted.
"Yesterday, we arrested 36 persons for open drinking. They were produced before the magistrates and handed over to police in the night. I appeal to people not to drink in public places. We will intensify drive against such behaviour.
"The Delhi government doesn't have any intention to send people to jail, but won't spare them if they are found consuming liquor in public places as common people especially women feel unsafe," Sisodia said at a press conference here.
The department has formed 10 special teams of four members each to catch people consuming alcohol in the open.
On the first day of the drive, raids were conducted at Karol Bagh, Jamrudhpur, Jankapuri, Jahangirpuri and Nehru Place among others.
In North East district, three persons were apprehended while in Central and New Delhi districts, eight people were caught drinking liquor in public places. Ten people were arrested in West Delhi.
According to the government, it will strictly enforce the Excise Act under which consuming alcohol at public places attracts a fine of Rs 5,000, which can even go up to Rs 10,000 with a jail term of three months if the offender creates nuisance.
Sisodia had last month announced the drive after he, during an inspection of a liquor shop in Mayur Vihar, found that people were drinking alcohol near liquor shops and creating ruckus, thus causing inconvenience to the residents, especially women.
New Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday came down hard on Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, saying that the three state governments had done nothing to combat the emergency till Monday.
"When all this mess was going on, when PM 2.5 pollution went up above 1000, what steps did you take except doing meetings? Why could you not deploy helicopters to sprinkle water? It is shocking that you did not do anything for the first five days, said the tribunal according to a report.
The NGT also said that no stone crushers or brick kiln would operate in the National Capital Region (NCR) for a week.
NGT also directed Delhi and 4 neighbouring states to give complete mechanism on implementation of its directions to curb air pollution.
Lawyers for all three state government admitted that they had not fully read series of orders by the National Green Tribunal on combating pollution.
Proceeding to question Punjab and Haryana for burning paddy straw, the bench said, "Tell us one instance where you put out farm fires or provided machines for managing crop stubble."
Delhi has been covered with a thick fog of smoke for nearly a week, with people complaining of burning eyes, sore throats and other problems. The AAP state government has declared holiday for schools till Wednesday and all construction projects have been shut.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has asked residents to stay indoors as much as possible and work from home.
Kejriwal has declared Delhi a gas chamber, primarily blaming crop-burning by farmers in neighbouring states like Haryana and Punjab for the smog.
On Monday, water sprinkling on streets began in the national capital in a bid to reduce pollution levels in the city.
The AAP government had also announced that it was considered restarting the odd-even car scheme in the city.
The Centre also held a meeting with environment ministers of neighbouring states on Monday to discuss measures to combat the crisis.
The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas is inducted into the 45 Squadron (flying dagger) of the IAF at a ceremony, at HAL (ASTE) in Bengaluru. (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: The Defence Ministry on Monday cleared a new blacklisting policy that will do away with blanket bans on companies indulging in corrupt acts and approved projects worth over Rs 82,000 crore for purchase of fighter aircraft, tanks, rockets and mini drones.
Contrary to expectation, the Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, did not take a decision on the Navy's proposal to purchase 12 US2I amphibious aircraft from Japan, though the issue came up for discussion.
However, it is expected that there would be some forward movement on this issue during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming visit to Tokyo on November 11-12.
The DAC also gave Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) to Indian Air Force's plan to purchase 83 Tejas Mark 1A aircraft at a cost of Rs 50,025 crore, Defence Ministry sources said.
It also accorded AON for the purchase of 15 Light Combat Aircraft being manufactured by HAL for the Army and Air Force for a tentative cost of about Rs 2,911 crore.
AoN was also given for the repeat order of 464 Russian origin T90 tanks which are being manufactured by the Ordnance Factory Board for Rs 13,448 crore, besides for procurement of 598 mini UAVs at a cost of Rs 1,100 crore.
However, the most significant take away from the DAC is the clearance of the new blacklisting policy.
Though Defence Ministry officials remained tight-lipped about the features of the new policy maintaining it will be put up on website in the next few days, sources said it will ensure that while companies are dealt with harshly, it will not affect the modernisation process.
As per the new policy, the focus is on graded blacklisting and fines. This means that if a defence conglomerate is caught doing wrong in a particular project, it will be banned for a specific number of years from dealing in that particular segment only.
It can continue to pitch for projects in other segments.
"It will be a product specific ban rather than blanket blacklisting. Also, there will be an option for heavy penalties besides those in contract and even individuals can be banned," a source said.
The new policy would also allow many of the stuck programmes, like the heavy weight torpedos for the six Scorpene submarines, to move ahead with clarity.
"The DAC considered and approved the guidelines for suspension or banning of business dealings with entities," a Ministry source said.
For the first time, the Ministry accorded AoN for two Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured (IDDM) products - LCA and Tejas.
The LCA cost will include those for simulators and auxiliary equipment. While the IAF will receive 10 LCH, the Army will get 5 to begin with.
The mini UAVs approved for the Indian Army will come under the "Buy Indian" category and the force will now issue a tender for the same.
The DAC also cleared the way for the issuance of tender for six additional regiments of the Pinaka rockets for Rs 14,633 crore, sources said.
Each regiment consists of three batteries of six Pinakas and each Pinaka battery comprises six launcher vehicles, each with 12 rockets, six loader-replenishment vehicles, three replenishment vehicles, two Command Post vehicle (one stand by) with a Fire Control computer, and the radar.
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan jointly flagged off the first pilot run of the LNG-powered bus in Thiruvananthapuram.
Thiruvananthapuram: Scripting a new chapter in the country's transport sector that moves towards clean fuel, India's first liquefied natural gas-driven bus was launched in Keralas Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.
Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan jointly flagged off the first pilot run of the eco-friendly bus on the sidelines of the fourth meeting of the Group of Ministers, set up by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, in Thiruvananthapuram.
"Along with Hon'able CM of Kerala, flagged off India's first ever LNG fuel bus for the test run today at Thiruvanthapuram," Pradhan later tweeted.
The LNG-driven bus was rolled out as part of the Centre's plans to use LNG, considered to be a cleaner and safer fuel which emits 50 per cent less carbon, for mass transportation.
It has been a joint effort of Petronet LNG Limited (PLL), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd and Tata Motors Ltd to introduce LNG as a fuel in commercial vehicles in the state capital.
As it is a pilot project, the LNG-driven bus will run on a trial basis before it can be certified for commercial application.
Speaking on the occasion, Pradhan said the launch of the LNG bus heralds the start of eco-friendly long-haul commercial vehicles in the country.
Applauding the Kerala government for taking the lead in adopting LNG, which is greener and more economical compared to diesel for public transportation, he said the state has an important role to play in developing the hydrocarbon sector.
The LNG pipeline was one the major topics of discussion between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pinarayi Vijayan during the latter's first New Delhi visit after taking charge as Kerala Chief Minister, the minister said.
After the meeting, the Prime Minister had asked him to coordinate things in this regard and Kerala CM had assured all help to complete laying of GAIL pipeline in Kochi-Mangaluru stretch, Pradhan said.
Kerala's decision to roll out more LNG and CNG buses would contribute to realise Modi's vision of 'Climate Justice', he said.
Pointing out that Kerala had a very important role to play in developing the Hydrocarbon sector, he said besides the refinery expansion project at Kochi, two other projects- LPG import terminal at Kochi and a POL terminal at Payyannur- are also being implemented.
These projects would give a boost to the petroleum sector in the state economy.
There are nine terminals/ depots, seven LPG bottling plants and eight aviation fuel stations in the state to meet the growing demand of petroleum products.
On Kerala's natural gas expansion plans, Pradhan said IOC planned to set up five CNG stations at Ernakulum by March 2017 and would provide Piped Natural Gas to 4000 households.
The PNG connections would increase to 41,000 by 2020.
The company has also finalised an arrangement with Kerala State Road Transport Corporation to set up an integrated fuel complex at its various depots in the state having provision to dispense different fuels, including LNG and CNG to vehicles, he said.
In his inaugural address, the Chief Minister said the LDF government planned to convert all KSRTC buses to CNG fuel driven ones in the next five years.
There were also plans to modernise check posts to ensure unhindered flow of inter-state vehicles, he said.
An electric bus, solar powered-auto rickshaw and an electric rickshaw were also flagged off on the sidelines of the function.
Later, in a meeting with the Kerala Chief Minister, Pradhan sought assistance for the development of petroleum sector in the state.
He asked to provide necessary assistance to GAIL, which would expedite the laying of Kochi-Koottanad-Bengaluru/ Mangaluru pipeline.
The union minister requested the state government to complete the survey and panchnama works for acquisition of RoU project works and also provide support to start the construction work.
He suggested instituting a joint mechanism to monitor the monthly progress of the project.
Pradhan also requested the LDF government to withdraw the recently introduced VAT on LNG.
He emphasised that the natural gas industry is still in its nascent stage and needs government's support for its development and stressed the need for joint mechanism to promote the gas-based industry.
The discussion also covered issues related to oil sector such as feasibility of gas operated BSES power plant, and laying of pipeline from Kochi refinery to Palghat.
Pradhan also expressed concern over frequent strikes by crews of dealers and transporters over issues in the transportation tender by IOC, which is affecting normal operation of oil companies and may result in adverse impact on movement of petroleum product in the states.
He asked the officers of ministry of petroleum and state government to jointly address the issue at the earliest.
During the discussion, Vijayan requested the Centre to make available the kerosene to fishermen.
In this regard, Pradhan asked the state to identify the eligible beneficiaries and digitised the data.
One jawan was killed in Pakistani firing in Nowshera Sector of Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI/Representational)
Jammu: One jawan was killed in Nowshera Sector of Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district on Tuesday when Pakistani troops Indian posts and civilian areas along Line of Control, forcing Indian troops to retaliate.
There was unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch district from 1345 hours on Tuesday, a defence spokesman said.
They used 120mm mortar bombs and automatic weapons during the ceasefire violation, he said, adding befitting reply has been given to them without any casualty on our side.
Pakistani troops are firing along the LoC in Nowshera sector since 8:45 am, a senior Army officer said.
Indian troops guarding the borderline retaliated, resulting in exchanges.
"There has been no casualty or injury to any one in the firing by Pakistan," he said.
It may be recalled that Pakistani troops had violated ceasefire and resorted to firing in Mankote and Balakote areas of Mendhar sector in Poonch district on Monday.
On November 6, two army jawans were killed and five others two soldiers, a BSF officer and two women were injured as Pakistani army opened fire in an attempt to facilitate two infiltration bids along the LoC in Krishna Ghati and Poonch sectors of Poonch district.
There had been over 100 ceasefire violations on Indian posts and civilian areas along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir after the surgical strike.
The worst-ever Pakistani shelling, targeting civil population, took place on November 1 when eight persons, including two children and four women, were killed and 22 injured along the IB and the LoC in five sectors of J&K, forcing Indian troops to give befitting reply by destroying 14
Pakistani posts and killing two of their troopers.
The state government had closed over 400 schools along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu region in wake of the ongoing heavy cross-border firing.
A total of 18 people, including 12 civilians, were killed and more than 83 suffered injuries in Pakistani shelling and firing along IB and LoC in Jammu.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday requested visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May to review the new visa rules announced by the UK government, saying movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority.
"Under the new visa rules announced by the UK Home Office, anyone applying after November 24 under the Tier-2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category would be required to meet a higher salary threshold of 30,000 pounds from the earlier 20,800 pounds. I request you to review the new policy so that the earlier threshold is continued," he said.
During an interaction with May on her arrival at a private hotel at the Kempegowda International Airport Limited here, he said the movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority rather than an immigration.
"Madam Prime Minister, our fast growing and high value tech sectors rely upon an effective immigration policy that attracts high-skilled workers and minimises barriers to the flow of talented people," he said in his remarks, made available to the media by the Chief Minister's Office.
He said the temporary placement of highly-skilled individuals into the UK provided a significant economic boost while having a negligible impact on net migration.
Siddaramaiah also said the state government was looking forward to the early setting up of the UK Health City Project coming up on 400 acres of land earmarked for this initiative at Dharwad.
"We are also keen to collaborate with the UK in the fields of maternal and child nutrition and higher education in the public health and health care," he said.
He welcomed the UK Government and British industry to actively participate in this year's much-acclaimed Aero India show in February 2017 here, to chalk out a clear cut plan to build up on our mutual strengths of aerospace and defence.
Siddaramaiah said the government seeks investments from the UK-based firms in renewable energy and for creating smart cities.
The government also would be happy to work together to identify opportunities for the UK to work with Karnataka for creating next-generation logistics, infrastructure and connectivity across fast growing regions of southern and western India, Siddaramaiah said.
He also said 15 per cent of the UK-based companies in India were in Karnataka employing 23,000 people.
The Strategic Plans Division, which manages Pakistan's nuclear weapons, has 25,000 troops available to guard Pakistani nuclear stocks and facilities. (Photo: AFP)
New Delhi: Pakistan cannot be welcomed into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) because it uses front companies and other deceptive methods to obtain dual-use goods for its nuclear programme, a UK report has said.
According to Project Alpha, established in 2011 with British government funding, China is either complicit in supplying Pakistans nuclear programmes, or negligent in monitoring its state-owned companies.
This is so given the massive scale of Islamabads procurement of sensitive material from Beijing, the report says.
Pakistan also maintains a network of at least 20 trading companies in mainland China, Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore that it uses to covertly funnel dual-use goods to its strategic programmes, the report alleged.
This in turn undermines Pakistans claim that it is a responsible nuclear power and thus deserves entry into the NSG.
Pakistan cannot expect to be welcomed into the NSG when it continues to secretly and systematically undermine NSG members national export control systems by targeting companies through the use of front companies and other deceptive techniques, the report says.
China is the most important supplier of all forms of goods to Pakistans nuclear and missile programmes, and most procurements from China are probably from unwitting private suppliers, the report by Project Alpha added.
The revelations of the report are significant given how China has repeatedly blocked Indias entry into the NSG, making Pakistans admission to the group a precondition for India to join it.
The incident happened on flight 9W 202 that departed from the national capital late night on Monday. (Photo: Representational Image)
New Delhi: A passenger travelling in a Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Doha passed away onboard despite the plane being diverted to Karachi following the medical emergency.
Even as the flight was diverted and medical assistance duly coordinated prior to arrival at Karachi airport, "the guest succumbed on arrival in Karachi," according to Jet Airways.
The incident happened on flight 9W 202 that departed from the national capital late night on Monday.
After the passenger developed a "medical condition", the captain decided to land the flight at Karachi, the nearest airport given the emergency, Jet Airways said in a statement.
Details about the passenger could not be immediately ascertained.
According to the airline, the aircraft is returning to the national capital and the staff are making full arrangements to hand over the body to the authorities as per standard operating procedures.
The carrier has also expressed its heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family. As many as 141 passengers were on board the Boeing 737 aircraft.
"The airline is planning re-accommodation on alternate flights for the rest of guests who missed their connections due to this unfortunate development," the statement said.
New Delhi: Welcoming the Narendra Modi-governments move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, President Pranab Mukherjee called upon the people of the nation, asking them not to panic and follow the guidelines.
He reminded people that all currency notes below Rs 500 will continue as legal tender.
Mukherjee said this step of the government will help unearth unaccounted money as well as counterfeit currency.
Read: To choke black money, Modi withdraws old notes, to introduce new Rs 500, Rs 2k notes
The Prime Minister had announced demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from Tuesday midnight, making these notes invalid in a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption.
Modi said people holding notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 can deposit the same in their bank and post office accounts from November 10 till December 30.
"To break the grip of corruption and black money, we have decided that the 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes presently in use will no longer be legal tender from midnight ie 8 November, 2016," Modi said in a shock announcement on television.
Modi said that although the existing notes would be "worthless", members of the public would be able to exchange them for new bills at banks until the end of the year.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in order to tackle the menace of black money, but with certain temporary exemptions at limited places.
Speaking at a specially televised conference, the Prime Minister said that the order would come into force from the midnight of November 8.
People holding notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes can deposit the same in their bank and post office accounts from November 10 till December 30, he said.
However, Modi took cognisance of the inconvenience that the move is expected to bring and announced certain temporary exemptions.
The exemptions would last for 72 hours at the following places:
People, in need of medical emergency, can use the existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 at government hospitals till Friday, November 11.
The existing notes will also be accepted at ticket booking counters of railway stations, government buses and airports.
Petrol, diesel and gas stations authorised by public sector oil companies.
Consumer co-operatives stores authorised by state or central governments.
The notes will also be accepted at milk booths authorised by state governments, crematoria and burial grounds till the next 72 hours.
Shahabuddin, who had been in jail for more than 10 years in connection with multiple cases, was granted bail by the Patna High Court on September 7. (Photo: PTI)
New Delhi: Supreme Court Justice Uday Umesh Lalit has recused himself from hearing the case of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Member of Parliament (MP) Mohammad Shahabuddin on grounds that he had appeared as a lawyer for the latter. The apex court is now likely to hear the matter after four weeks.
Last month, the apex court had issued a notice to Shahabuddin, the Bihar Government and the Centre seeking their replies to shift Sahabuddin from the Siwan district jail in Bihar to the Tihar jail in Delhi.
The hearing of the case is now scheduled to be held on November 28. Slain journalist Rajdeo Ranjan's widow Asha Ranjan had filed a plea before the apex court seeking their replies on the same.
Hearing Asha Ranjan's plea on October 17, an apex court bench headed by Justice Dipak Mishra had directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to complete the murder probe within three months.
The apex court also issued notices and sought responses from Shahabuddin and Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap Yadav.
During the last hearing, Tej Pratap had admitted that he had accepted a bouquet from one of the murder accused, but denied his involvement in the murder.
Forty two-year old Ranjan, the bureau chief of The Hindustan, was shot dead in July this year at Phal Mandi near the Siwan railway station, barely half-a-kilometer from the police station.
The Bihar Government has recommended the Central Bureau Investigation (CBI) probe into the case.
The case came into limelight again after a photograph appeared in the media showing murder suspects Mohammad Kaif and Mohammad Javed with gangster-politician Mohammed Shahabuddin after his release from jail.
Kaif, however, later rubbished all accusations against him and said he has no involvement in Rajdeo's murder case.
Meanwhile, a separate petition filed by Chandrakeshwar Prasad, whose three sons had been murdered at the behest of the RJD leader.
Shahabuddin, who had been in jail for more than 10 years in connection with multiple cases, was granted bail by the Patna High Court on September 7 in connection with the murder of a man who witnessed the killing of two brothers in Siwan.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday cancelled the bail of rape-accused RJD MLA Raj Ballabh Yadav and ordered him to surrender by tomorrow in the Bihar lower court.
The matter will next be heard on November 23rd and in the meantime, the prosecution would be examined.
Earlier, Yadav was granted bail by the Patna High Court on September 30.
In April, Yadav was named as one of the main accused in a charge-sheet filed by Nalanda Police, after he allegedly raped a minor girl at his Biharsharif residence on February 6, following which he was immediately suspended by the party.
After absconding for almost one month, Yadav had surrendered in March before a chief magistrate's court in Bihar Sharif in Nalanda and was sent to jail.
However, he was granted bail by the Patna High Court on September 30, which the opposition used to criticize the state government for not placing facts against the RJD MLA before the Patna High Court.
Hyderabad: Faced with protests from the opposition, the TRS government in Telangana on Tuesday gave administrative sanction for the release of Rs 2019.19 crore towards the third installment of its crop loan waiver scheme.
"...government hereby accords administrative sanction for an amount of Rs 20,19,19,00,000 to the Commissioner of Agriculture, Telangana, Hyderabad, under Non-Plan from the Budget Estimate Provision 2016-17 towards meeting the expenditure for the second trenche amount of third instalment under Crop Loan Waiver Scheme 2014," a Government Order (GO) issued by the Agriculture Department said in Hyderabad.
The TRS government had announced a waiver of about Rs 17,000 crore for agriculture loans to farmers in the state, a major promise of TRS in the 2014 Assembly elections. The decision was expected to benefit about 36 lakh farmers.
The state government had released Rs 4,250 crore of the as the first installment and released another Rs 4,250 crore in the second installment.
The government is expected to clear the pending dues of the scheme in the fourth and final installment.
The state government's decision to release the funds for the third installment of farm loan waiver scheme came against the backdrop of intensified protests by Congress, TDP, BJP and other opposition parties for fulfilling the loan waiver at one go.
The opposition parties have hit the Streets undertaking 'padayatras' and other protests against the TRS government.
Slamming the TRS government for its move to build a new secretariat by demolishing the existing one, state Congress president and MLA N Uttam Kumar Reddy recently alleged that the government is not releasing funds for farmers' loan waiver but sought to waste public money by demolishing the existing secretariat.
"It is sad and ironic that your government does not release overdue amounts for farmers' loan waiver scheme or students' fee reimbursement scheme but indulges in such wasteful and unnecessary spending. As the first CM of Telangana state, we expect that you will conduct all matters like a statesman.
"The voice of the opposition parties, members of civil society, NGOs and the lay public must be heard by you and the move for a new secretariat building dropped," the TPCC chief said in a letter to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao recently.
Stuntmen Raghav Uday and Anil take a selfie just before jumping into the helicopter for the shoot that ended in the tragedy, at Thippagondanahalli Reservoir on Monday (Photo: KPN)
Bengaluru: What should have been another typical day at outdoor shooting turned fatal for two budding actors when the team of 'Maasthi Gudi' decided to shoot aerial shots when a BWSSB engineer left the spot for lunch.
Assistant Executive Engineer Anusuya attached to the Thippagondanahalli subdivision was present at the spot where the Kannada film was being shot since morning. Around 2.30 pm, she left the reservoir to have lunch, sources said.
"Every officer must give spot instructions when permissions are sought to shoot at reservoirs or near any other water bodies. The AEE was present at Thippagondanahalli since morning and had briefed the team where they were allowed to shoot. She had even explained to them that they should not enter prohibited areas. But soon after she left the spot for lunch, the crew ventured out to shoot in the prohibited area. Even before she returned, the damage was done," a source maintained.
It's polluted water at dam
For long, Thippagondanahalli Reservoir was the only drinking source for North and West Bengaluru. In 2012, when water contamination became very high due to direct flow of raw sewage from Hessarghatta and nearby villages, the BWSSB stopped pumping water from the reservoir.
"Apart from direct flow of sewage, even industrial effluents from Peenya and surrounding areas enter the water body, making it unfit for consumption. With very high levels of total dissolved solids and total organic carbon, it was no longer fit for human consumption," a BWSSB official said. He stressed that compared to normal water, it is difficult to swim in polluted water because of the presence of dissolved solids.
BWSSB rule violated
On the permission given by the BWSSB officials, it clearly states that the film team did not have permission for an aerial shoot, and not in the restricted areas.
The police have registered a case, listing the prima facie violations, with senor officials directing that a criminal complaint be registered against the directors, the producers and others involved in the film.
Permission not to shoot in water
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Mr Jagadish, chief administrative office, BWSSB said, "For long, wed not given permission for any film shoots at Thippagondanahalli reservoir. This time we had given permission as were been accused of not encouraging Kannada films by denying permission for film shoots."
"According to the media visuals I saw, it appears that the film crew violated the permission we gave for the shoot. They were not permitted to shoot inside the reservoir which is a protected area. They were permitted only to use the backwater and forest areas", Mr Jagadish said.
Stating that he has sought a report from the local BWSSB engineers, Mr Jagadish said "Only after receiving the report will I know the violations done by the film crew. Suitable action will be also be taken against the BWSSB engineers if they are found guilty and for letting them shoot in prohibited areas".
At 11 pm, Ramanagaram SP Chandra Gupta visited the spot and monitored the late night rescue operations. Two special teams comprising 20 NDRF personnel were formed to fish out the two bodies.
Those present at the reservoir said that the personnel used special lights to continue the rescue operations in the midnight. The police maintained that even if the bodies were entangled in silt, they would be able to fish out the bodies.
Police to register criminal case
The Tavarekere police till late night had not registered a case in connection with the incident. Sources said that no complaint was received and they could not register an FIR as all senior officers were busy with the operation to retrieve the bodies of Uday and Anil.
However, it is learnt that the police will register a criminal case against the crew, mainly the stunt choreographer, for his negligence and not providing the artistes with proper safety gear before the shoot. It is said that the police would also arrest a few of the crew members in connection with the incident.
Sandalwood mourns
Senior actors, technicians and film personalities expressed shock over the tragic incident. Majority of them felt that 'unplanned' shooting without proper precautions could have led to the incident.
From auto driver to actor...
Raghava Uday, who was an auto driver shot to fame as an actor with the film Jayammana Maga starring Duniya Vijay in the lead. A close friend of Vijay ever since, he had a rapid rise in popularity and was seen in most of the recent big films including Nagarahavu, Santu Straighforward and Dodmane Hudga.
Anil was a childhood friend of Vijay and was the right-hand man of Duniya Viay. He has acted in almost all films of Duniya Vijay and is also the president of the Duniya Vijay's fans club. He s now survived by his wife, two children, family members and relatives.
Sonbhadra: With the Narendra Modi government facing flak over its stand on triple talaq, BJP President Amit Shah on Tuesday asked the partymen to make respect of women, besides development, an issue in the 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
Flagging off the third 'Parivartan yatra' from Sonbhadra, Shah said, "There is another question to which people of Uttar Pradesh will have to give their verdict (in the coming Assembly polls).
"Should women in the country not get equal rights? SP, BSP and Congress will not speak on (triple talaq) but we do not have any fear. I want to say from this platform that in the coming polls, besides development and eradication of goondas, respect of women should be made a poll issue," Shah said
He also asked the three parties to submit their affidavit on whether they back 'triple talaq' or not.
Asking whether the Centre's stand before the Supreme Court upholding the dignity and honour of the women and doing away with the triple talaq should have been taken or not, Shah said every single party worker will make women aware that Modi government is committed for their development, honour and rights.
Slamming Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Shah alleged that with his stand on the surgical strike, he has made a mockery of the bravery and sacrifice of army jawans.
"People of the country are proud of the army and the will power of Narendra Modi for carrying out surgical strikes in Pakistani soil and saving the borders," he added.
Ahmedabad: Criticising what he called "English mentality" that makes Indians encourage their children to speak in English, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday stressed the need to promote use of mother tongue among kids.
"We should teach our children to speak in mother tongue. Whether it is Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Malayali, Assamese, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, whatever it is, we should teach mother tongue to our children, the language that comes from the womb," Naidu said, addressing a Swachh Bharat Mission programme here.
"When leaving the country (after India gained Independence), Englishmen left behind English mentality because of which we teach our children to say 'mummy', 'daddy'," the Urban Development and Information and Broadcasting Minister said.
He showed through gesture how the word 'maa', which in many Indian languages mean to address mother, comes from the gut while 'mummy', an English word, comes from the lip.
"When talking to each other, children should be encouraged to speak in Gujarati (mother tongue), why use English?" Naidu said, giving example of how on their recent visits to India, the Chinese, French and Russian Presidents spoke in their mother tongue despite knowing English.
"I am not against English, we should learn English, as well as Hindi, but we should always practice, speak and teach kids to speak in mother tongue.
"Otherwise, in the coming times, all those speaking in their mother tongue will also begin talking in broken English," he quipped.
During the programme, Naidu announced that the Centre has handed over a cheque of Rs 290 crore to Gujarat for urban development programme.
While praising the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said Modi's mantra of "reform, transform and perform" has improved service delivery to beneficiaries while cutting out middlemen.
Several Indian websites have come under attack this year. Last month, Pakistan-based hackers targeted more than 7,000 Indian websites. (Photo: Pixabay)
New Delhi: Indian officials were trying Tuesday to restore the websites of seven Indian embassies in Europe and Africa that were hacked and had data dumped online.
The security of the websites of Indian embassies in Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Libya, Malawi, Mali and Romania was breached by hackers who identified themselves to the media as Kaputsky and Kasimierz L.
"We are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told reporters on Tuesday.
Attempts were being made to track the IP addresses of the hackers, who posted online the names, email addresses, phone numbers and passport numbers of some embassy staff members.
Several Indian websites have come under attack this year. Last month, Pakistan-based hackers targeted more than 7,000 Indian websites after India launched a series of attacks on terror camps in Pakistan. Also in October, the security of around 3.2 million debit cards in India was breached when hackers inserted malware through an ATM network.
Kairana (UP): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday claimed that the self-respect of mothers and sisters is being looted in a campaign speech in Uttar Pradeshs Kairana.
Rajnath claimed that if BJP is voted to power in the state, it will act against those using muscle power to terrorise people.
Speaking in Kairana, whose BJP MP Hukum Singh had accused Muslims of forcing Hindus to migrate, the Home Minister alleged that people of the region were being framed in false cases with the connivance of the UP government.
Rajnath promised to probe and withdraw the false cases if the BJP government came to power. He challenged those looting the self-respect of mothers and sisters that hum dekhenge ki usne kitna maa ka doodh piya hai.
The BJP slogan in the region is Ma behno ki aan mein, BJP maidan mein a slogan designed to attract disgruntled Hindus.
Later, BJP MP Hukum Singh said that whenever he raised the issue of the exodus of Hindus, secular people said he was communal. To protect the lives of these people, he said, I am ready to become communal.
He said the BJP would stop the exodus when it came to power, and claimed that the Central government fully supported him on the issue.
Kairana has been at the centre of a controversy ever since Hukum Singh alleged Hindus were being coerced to migrate. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and National Commission for Minorities (NCM) have differed on the situation in Kairana.
The UP elections are scheduled for early 2017.
Bhopal: Chhattisgarh police booked 10 people including Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar and Jawaharlal Nehru University teacher Archana Prasad on charges of conspiring to kill a tribal spearheading a protest against Maoists in a village in insurgency-hit south Bastar district of Sukma.
Somnath Baghel, a local Congress leader and head of village defence committee established by tribals of Nama a tiny adivasi habitation under Kumal Kuleng under Darabha block in Bastar district in Chhattisgarh was hacked to death by armed rebels on the night of November four when he was sleeping in his home.
Incidentally, Somnath along with fellow villagers had lodged a complaint with the local police against the two Delhi-based professors accusing them of coercing them to side with Naxals and not cooperate the police in May this year, a few days after the two academicians visited Kumar Koleng.
On the complaint of Baghels widow and local villagers, an FIR was filed in Tongpal police station under Sukma district against Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad, Vineet Tiwari who is with the Delhi-based NGO, Joshi Adhikar Sansthan, Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) secretary Sanjay Parate and Maoists, Bastar district superintendent of police (SP) Rajendra Narayan Das told this newspaper on phone on Tuesday.
They have been booked under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (armed with deadly weapon), 149 (unlawful assembly), 302 (murder), 452 (trespass), and 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), he added.
Prof Sundar who was away abroad gave her reaction in social media describing the charges against her as conspiracy by Bastar range inspector general police S.R.P. Kalluri.
I feel sad for the incident (killing of the tribal). I had nothing to do with the incident, she said in her reaction. The DU professor has been associated with Bastar since 1991 raising the issue of tribals being caught in the conflict between insurgency and counterinsurgency, according to her local contacts.
Bengaluru: Around four divers from the NDRF, one of them fitted with an underwater camera too, searched for the bodies for nearly an hour, but as the water was murky with silt deposits and weeds, the visibility was zero after a certain depth, an NDRF official said.
At around 30 feet depth, the lake starts to get dark. The place where the actors jumped, according to the film crew was said to be having a depth of 40 feet, but the local villagers claimed the depth in that area was more than 80 feet.
There are deep gorges inside the lake running to the depth of even 110 feet, one of the villagers pointed out. If the bodies drifted and got trapped in these gorges then it will be difficult to retrive them, and one can only wait until it comes afloat after a couple of days.
Some of the locals, who claim they come across at least two drowning cases in a month in the lake, hinted that by now fishes may have started to feed on the bodies.
No insurance?
Both of deceased were aspiring actors, who were paid Rs 3,600 per shoot. They were stunts-men who mostly acted as villains or in supporting roles. While there are insurance available with film fraternity/film makers of the neighbouring states such as Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, there is no such privilege for Sandalwood actors, a source from the Film Chambers of Commerce stated adding the film producer should make sure that dangerous stunts performed or shot, the actors should have insurance for hospitalization and life.
Both Raghav Uday and Anil were childhood friends and had no personal insurance as they were aspiring actors and wanted to first become popular in the industry sacrificing even their incomes, said Mohan a cousin of Raghav Uday.
Anxious wait for family members
On any other day, this congested lane in Kadirenahalli Cross could have easily been written off as yet another street in the suburbs of South Bengaluru. But on Tuesday, a sea of people thronged the lane. Anxious policemen were in force too, to avert any protest or outburst from distressed relatives.
In stuntman Anils house, all hoped that theres some good news. Anils sister Ashwini asked, Please bring my brother back just once. Can the Sandalwood actors or the government bring my brother back? Anils elder sister Aarthi said, Let the government take the responsibility of finding my brothers body.
Let NDRF use some technology and machinery to continue the rescue operation in the night. Where is Vijay who called my son his brother? The movies lead actor Duniya Vijay addressed my son Raghav Uday as thamma (younger brother). Yesterday, he saw his thamma drown and did nothing to save him. Where is Vijay? Not a single actor visited us and asked how we are surviving, said Kausalya, Udays mother.
She said that on Sunday, Uday was suffering from a head injury. He was unwell and had fever the previous night. Despite that he was shooting since morning. The film crew should have been more considerate about his health. I lost my son because of the crews negligence, she said.
She alleged that the crew was ready with a boat to rescue Duniya Vijay but not the other two. Why couldnt they use the same boat to save Uday and Anil? Probably, our lives dont matter, we are poor, she said.
Shivaraj Kumar, Yash, Jaggesh visit spot
Apart from Shivaraj Kumar, Sandalwood actors who visited the spot included Jaggesh, Yash, Sadhu Kokila, Rangayana Raghu, Prejwal Devraj, Nikhil Gowda, and Ragini.
Curious locals from nearby villagers were seen rushing to the spot using shortcuts and hundreds of bikes were parked on the either side of the Magadi main road to catch a glimpse of the sandalwood actors and some even tried to capture selfies walking in front of them.
Divers from Mangaluru
Divers from Mangaluru who are experts in fishing out bodies even during night, arrived on Tuesday evening at the T.G. Halli reservoir to search for the bodies after installing search lights on boats.
According to Vigilance and Enforcement director, Mr Elusing Meru, in September 2016, 36 cases were booked across Telangana for cheating under 420 IPC and provisions of the Essential Commodities Act. (Representational image)
Hyderabad: A Vigilance and Enforcement department probe has uncovered an organised scam in the Telangana State public distribution system, whereby rice meant for the poor in the state is being smuggled out to West Africa via Kakinada port.
Warangal Regional Vigilance and Enforcement officer Mr V. Surender Reddy said, "In the most recent case, on October 23, 2016, we seized three truck loads at Dornakal containing Rs 44.5 lakh worth of PDS rice bound for Kakinada port, which was ultimately destined to reach West Africa.
The consignment for which the way bill was given by the commercial tax department originated from Sai Krupa Traders of Janagoan to Sarala Foods Private Limited in Kakinada, a government rated exporting house.
Since April this year, around 46 cases have been booked in Warangal and Khammam region alone and Rs 2.8 crore worth of rice has been seized," officials said.
It has been estimated that the PDS rice scam is worth hundreds of crores as loads of lorries are diverted to Kakinada port, particularly from erstwhile Khammam, Warangal and Nalgonda districts.
Those who are meant to benefit from the PDS scheme by getting cheap rice are taking it from PDS shops, but are not consuming the rice and instead selling it to dealers and traders.
According to Vigilance and Enforcement director, Mr Elusing Meru, in September 2016, 36 cases were booked across Telangana for cheating under 420 IPC and provisions of the Essential Commodities Act.
TS Commissioner of Civil Supplies Mr C V Anand claims that "the rate of PDS rice diversion is slowly coming down. Several loads of PDS rice goes out of the country via ports, particularly to African countries which are rain deficient and produce little. The rice is sold at Rs 35 to Rs 40 per kilo, which is pretty cheap for them."
Director of the Rs 100 crore Kakinada based Sarala Food Private Limited, Mr Vinod Kumar Agarwal, says Sarala Foods procures rice from millers and we dont know if they fine polish the rice and sell it to us.
Regarding procurement, we have been buying from Sai Krupa Traders but we don't know what rice they are transporting till it reaches us. Usually we procure through brokers. We reject if we find it is PDS rice. We will never buy PDS rice. Only after surveyor okays it and it passes quality test do we buy any rice. We have rejected rice on several occasions. He says his company is doing crores of rupees of business.
Bengaluru: A meeting at the brand new five star facility just outside the Kempegowda International Hotel between Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and visiting UK premier Theresa May on Tuesday, skirted the visa pothole and drove straight over to the heart of what could be the foundation for a new connect - the start-up revolution.
The British premier suggested Karnataka set up a nodal agency to handle Small and medium industries. While inquiring into how Bengaluru became the start-up capital of the country, she said Great Britain and Karnataka should be partners, and take forward the start-up eco-system.
Mr Siddaramaiah while welcoming Ms May raised the visa issue. "Under the new visa rules announced by the UK Home Office, anyone applying after November 24 under the Tier 2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category would be required to meet a higher salary threshold of 30,000 pounds from the earlier 20,800 pounds. I request you to review the new policy so that the earlier threshold is continued," Mr Siddaramaiah said.
Mr Siddaramaiah recalled the partnership between UK and Karnataka and and said 15 per cent of the UK companies that operate in India, are in Bengaluru with an employment of 23,000.
He said in partnership with UK government, a health city was being developed at a sprawling 400-acre campus at Dharwad. Mr Siddaramaiah said the IT and BT and tourism minister, Priyank Kharge who would be visiting UK soon, would work towards strengthening the ties.
Later in the afternoon, British delegation continued talks IT and BT minister, Priyank Kharge. Later Mr Kharge told DC that the two sides, zeroed in on two areas where partnership would take place.
"Both UK and Karnataka would partner in promoting incubation centres for start-ups. Similarly, we agreed to the skill and knowledge transfer. I am leaving for UK on Tuesday night to take part in tourism related event where we will continue talks on ITand other trade-related issues," he said.
Chennai: In line with an announcement made by Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in the Assembly, the Tamil Nadu Government on Monday issued an order extending maternity for women government employees from the present six months to
nine.
The Government Order (GO) dated November 7, 2016, says the new policy will be applicable to all married women government servants with less than two surviving children.
Ms Jayalalithaa had on September one announced in the Assembly that her government would increase the maternity leave from the existing 180 days to 270 days for the benefit of working women. It was the AIADMK government under Ms Jayalalithaa in 2011 that increased the maternity leave from 90 days to 180 days.
Increasing the maternity leave was an election promise that the AIADMK made to the people in the run up to the May 16 Assembly elections. The Government, after careful consideration, based on the announcement made in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly by the Hon'ble Chief Minister on 01.09.2016, under rule 110 of the Legislative Assembly Rules order that the maternity leave admissible to married women government servants with less than two surviving children, which is 6 months (180 days) at present, be enhanced to 9 months (270 days), the GO read.
The maternity leave might be spread over from the pre-confinement rest to post-confinement recuperation, at the option of the women Government servant, the order said, adding that those under maternity leave at present are also eligible for 270 days of leave.
Though the order was restricted only to government employees, women working in the private sector were also elated about the decision. Harshitha Prasad an IT employee said multitasking after delivery is a tough task for any woman. The extension of the leave would not just relieve the mother about the financial tensions, but also her worries about nursing the infant, she said.
B.N. Padmaja Priyadarshini, an entrepreneur, said extending the maternity leave is good for both mothers and infants as the babies start their activities mostly after six months. If that initial term is spent with the baby, the bondage between the mother and infant would develop grow well, she said.
Chennai: The Madras high court dismissed a petition challenging the validity of the Left Thumb Impression of AIADMK general secretary J.Jayalalithaa in the Form A and B of nomination papers filed by the party candidates for three state assembly constituency elections.
Dismissing the PIL filed by social activist Traffic Ramaswamy, a division bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R.Mahadevan said, We may note that the petitioner is not a contesting candidate in the election process but seeks to obligate himself such kind of general public scrutiny merely because in various PILs he has been entertained.
The bench said the additional solicitor general appearing for Election Commission of India has produced before the court a communication dated October 27, 2016 addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu in respect of the representation of the AIADMK regarding authentication of thumb impression of AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa on Forms A and B in terms of provision 13 of the Symbols Order for current election to the legislative assembly.
The ECI has specified the medical officer of any government hospital as the officer before whom the thumb impression may be affixed in Form A and B by her and who may attest such thumb impression. He also submitted that such an attestation has been done and the nomination papers have been filed, the bench added.
The bench had said the petitioner was aggrieved by the alleged non-examination of his representation dated October 29, 2016. The case of the petitioner was that the nominations filed in question for the purposes of allotment of symbol of the AIADMK party was through a process of affixation of thumb impression by the general secretary of the party who was hospitalised and may not be in a position actually decipher what was sought to be done. It was his further case that mere declaration by doctors must not be accepted as gospel truth and must be put to test and satisfy the public that the democratic process was not flawed in filing crucial election papers, the bench added.
The bench said, "In our view, it is for the ECI to verify the authenticity of the papers so far as the assignment of scrutiny is concerned and if there are any infirmities in the election process which makes the election capable of being challenged. That is a matter of election petition. We have already noticed that in the present case, the election symbol already stands allotted. We are not inclined to interfere. The present PIL filed in this behalf is dismissed".
While this decision will render most of the bigger currency redundant, people who hold Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes can still get their money exchanged from the banks, till December 30.
Mumbai: India Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced, on Tuesday that the government has rendered Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes redundant, effective from Wednesday.
This decision by the government is mainly aimed at curbing the circulation of black money in the country.
While this decision will render most of the bigger currency redundant, people who hold Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes can still get their money exchanged from the banks, till December 30.
However, the holders of black money will face the heat of this move, as anyone who tries to exchange the old notes for the new ones, will have to produce their identification at the banks.
Also, a cap of Rs20,000 per week has been kept for exchanging the notes. This means that a person can exchange a maximum amount of Rs 1.6 lakh till December 30.
However, anyone who deposits any amount of money in their bank account, as to disclose the details to the government. Hence, black money holders will either be caught, or have their cash rendered redundant from Wednesday, November 9.
Chennai: Playing the Cauvery card to win the bypolls to the three Assembly constituencies, leader of Opposition and DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin on Monday appealed to the voters to support his party to teach a lesson to the Central and state governments on the inter-state river dispute.
He asserted that the bypolls would teach a lesson to the ruling party and people should be always ready for a new dawn in Tamil Nadu, addressing partymen at a marriage function in the city. Stalin said the present government remain paralysed without any governance activities and the farmers in the delta districts are suffering.
Tamil Nadu wants the Centre to set up the Cauvery Management Board as per the Supreme Court verdict. He said the ruling party is unable to convene an all-party meeting on the Cauvery issue. He said his party is also demanding the convening of the Assembly and passing of a resolution demanding Cauvery Management Board.
Karnataka government is convening the Assembly and holding all-party meetings to justify its unjust acts, besides passing resolutions justifying their activities. On the other hand, Tamil Nadu is not making unjust demands and is only asking for the implementation of the Supreme Court order.
Since, the state government had not arranged an all-party meeting, a few farmers organisations asked the DMK to convene an all party meeting. The DMK invited all the parties, but a few parties did not attend the meet, he said and lamented that there is unity among Tamil Nadu parties. The bypoll results that would be a lesson to the ruling party would transform the present circumstances, he added.
The all-party meeting convened by the DMK was boycotted by the DMDK, BJP, PMK and the four parties in the People's Welfare Front, MDMK, VCK and Left parties. The parties had alleged that the DMK is planning to use the Cauvery dispute to gain political mileage ahead of the bypolls to three constituencies, Aravakurichi, Thanjavur and Thirupprankundram.
Before formation of TS and AP in 2014, there were a few instances of Speakers delaying their decisions. (Representational image)
Hyderabad: In a way, the Supreme Courts decision on Tuesday, in referring a key issue to the five-member Constitutional Bench that whether Higher Courts can exercise their writ jurisdiction over a matter that is under consideration of a Speaker, especially on deciding disqualification of Members on the grounds of defection, will provide much relief once for all as there are umpteen such petitions pending for disposal by the Presiding Officers, particularly in TS and AP.
In both states, and even before bifurcation, there had been large-scale defections of MLAs and the respective Presiding Officers had preferred a slow approach to suit their political interests rather than disposing the petitions seeking their disqualification in a fair and fast manner.
They claimed immunity under the 10th Schedule of the Constitution, Para 6, of which states that the Speaker is the final authority in deciding any matter connected to disqualification of a member.
Para 6 (2) says all proceedings on these matters are deemed to the proceedings of Parliament within the meaning of Article 122 and Assembly within the meaning of Article 212, which again states any proceedings of the House cannot be called in question by any court.
Before formation of TS and AP in 2014, there were a few instances of Speakers delaying their decisions. Interestingly, TRS was the victim when it petitioned against nine of its MLAs who had proposed the candidature of an Independent in the MLC elections in 2007, seeking their disqualification from then Speaker K.R. Suresh Reddy who took almost two years and at the end of the term of that particular Assembly pronounced his verdict.
However, the delay was also from the TRS, which filed a case in High Court and then moved the Supreme Court seeking direction to the Speaker for early disposal of their petitions. However, the Apex Court had said that it could not interfere in the matter as it was the exclusive domain of the Speaker to decide on such matters.
After formation of Telangana, TRS came to power with 63 MLAs, and over 25 Legislators switched their loyalties to it without resigning their memberships.
Petitions filed by the Opposition during the last 2.5 years seeking disqualification of the defectors are lying undecided with the Speaker.
Same was the case in AP, where more than 20 Legislators from Opposition YSR Congress defected to the ruling TD, and petitions seeking their disqualification are still pending with the AP Assembly Speaker.
Similar petitions filed by the YSRC Parliamentary Party against the defections of Nandyal MP S.P.Y. Reddy and Araku MP Kottapalli Geetha have not been disposed till date by the Lok Sabha Speaker.
Though recently a single Judge Bench of the Hyderabad High Court had directed the TS Assembly Speaker to take a decision on the petitions filed against a Telugu Desam MLAs defection to the TRS within three months, an appeal against the direction is pending. When YSR Congress filed a petition on similar grounds, the High Court single judge referred the matter to the Division Bench.
The Supreme Court in a rightful manner has now decided to refer the matter to a large Constitutional Bench to decide whether or not courts (High Court and Supreme Court) can interfere in these matters and issue directions to Presiding Officers while the disqualification petitions are still under his consideration.
When the World Banks ease of doing business rankings showed that India has only gone up by one notch from 131 to 130, it sent the whole government into a tizzy. At the same time, the department of industrial policy and promotion with the World Bank also put out a comparison of Indian states on how their EoDB has been performing. Thus, India has been lately focusing more on the aspect of ease of doing business. Following the cue, a lot of Indian states are pushing reforms on taxes, environmental and labour reforms, single-window online clearance and setting up of commercial courts. This has ensured a competitive spirit among Indian states, each trying to lure the private sector. Finally, they seem to have understood the reason for driving the business, i.e. to stay in business.
A review of indicators for rankings reveals the predominance of ease with which businesses can obtain permits from relevant government departments. For instance, both rankings cover ease of obtaining permits with respect to construction, getting electricity and registering property. Other permit-related indicators, covered in at least one of the reports, include environmental clearance, single-window clearance, starting a business and labour regulation enablers. The resources required to obtain permits are easier to measure and compare, and thus, unsurprisingly find mention in such reports. As part of an ongoing project focused on EoDB among North Indian states with the perspective of improving competitiveness, our team had undertaken a field visit to six North Indian states (Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab). The initiative will culminate in a conference in Jaipur (on November 17-19), which will create a forum for all stakeholders to discuss some of the implementation challenges.
The ease of obtaining permits cannot be equated with the ease of doing business. Obtaining permits is only one of the factors in doing business, after which the unease of doing business often begins. Several Indian states, such as Uttarakhand, have implemented a concept of deemed approval under its single-window clearance mechanism. While this laudable reform has helped the state move up the rankings, feedback from investors reveals that such deemed approval is not considered equivalent of in-principle approval by financial institutions, limiting the ability of small and medium enterprises to raise finance. Similarly, while the efforts of the Uttar Pradesh government to institutionalise a dedicated body for providing approvals for setting up of business are worth appreciating and emulating, frequent transfers of key officials seems to have rendered this body dysfunctional. Single-window clearance mechanisms of states like Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh are also reported to be functioning below par despite being in existence for a considerable period.
Thus, the single-window clearance mechanism should not just be a mere mirage which hides several windows behind one single window but should be implemented in a manner which offers an actual one-stop shop for investors, as done in Punjab. The government of Punjab has established a separate institution for single-window clearance (Invest Punjab), by bringing on board staff from various government departments under one roof and one command. For example, an electricity utilitys employee is deputed to work in Invest Punjab. She has full powers to sanction the electricity connection and convey it to the field staff. In other states, the single-window service for electricity is still dependent on the power utilitys distant staff to get the connection done. Thus, the institution is able to take decisions on time and efficiently implement the same.
Like the cross-country ranking, which compares reforms in top cities of countries (Mumbai and Delhi in Indias case), the inter-state comparison also seems to have focused on the capital city in the state and neighbouring areas. Such narrow focus might nudge states to improve performance within the limited geographical area relevant for rankings. For instance, a review of economic development in Haryana points to the state governments focus on developing the region within NCR and huge income disparity between Gurgaon and other cities. Such phenomenon is more evident in hilly states like Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, so people in hilly areas tend to migrate to the plains for jobs.
The ease of obtaining labour-related approvals does not ensure the availability of skilled and committed labour at all times. For instance, while Haryana adopted labour reforms in March 2016, state-based industries have suffered with frequent strikes and labour unrest. This has resulted in business coming to a standstill. Punjab has a perennial problem of lack of skilled labour, and has a limited grievance redressal mechanism for labour-related issues. Unfortunately, these issues do not get mentioned in any of the rankings.
We need to create many more jobs in India to ensure that our demographic divided is not converted into a demographic liability. One understands that big corporations wont create a large number of jobs, as many would prefer to move towards automation. Thus, it would be the MSMEs that are going to be the important sources of job creation. While North Indian states have taken several steps to encourage the growth of MSMEs, there are a plethora of challenges that they face, from accessing finance to delay in receiving payments, which negatively impacts their growth. According to a World Bank report, 35 per cent or one in three MSMEs receive payment only after 90 days or more. While larger corporations can alleviate the adverse effects of delayed payments, managing cash flows is a struggle for MSMEs due to the nature of their businesses.
Thus, the need to periodically review measures adopted by states is important to gauge progress. However, it is essential to confront such implementation bottlenecks to make real progress on the ease of doing business and improving overall competitiveness. Without addressing these, good policies carry the risk of resulting in bad outcomes. Ascertainment of implementation challenges requires a bottom-up approach. This comprises consultation with key stakeholder groups, including employers and labour, mid-level government officials, experts and civil society representatives. Such comprehensive consultation exercises help to identify bottlenecks to inclusive growth and devising strategies to address these. Looking at the other side of the aisle also helps in assessing if the governments have been merely enamoured by the rankings or have made sincere efforts to improve the level of competitiveness and the ease of doing business.
The full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post admitted the company "fell short" on its promise of delivering "breakthrough technologies that enrich people's lives."
Samsung took out advertisements on November 7 newspapers to apologize for the Galaxy Note 7 scandal in which fire-prone batteries forced a global recall of the popular smartphones.
The full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post admitted the company "fell short" on its promise of delivering "breakthrough technologies that enrich people's lives."
"For this we are truly sorry," the company said.
It promised a full and open investigation into the Galaxy debacle.
The huge South Korean manufacturer was forced to recall some 2.5 million of the flagship Note 7s following complaints that its lithium-ion battery exploded while charging and at other times. The company also had to recall the first replacements it sent out to consumers after they proved just as dangerous.
"We will re-examine every aspect of the device, including hardware, software, manufacturing and the overall battery structure. We will move as quickly as possible, but will take the time needed to get the right answers."
The ads also noted the recall that Samsung announced last week for nearly three million clothes washers to fix the tops, which could become loose and fly off while the machine is running.
"Safety remains our top priority," the company said.
The smartphone problem resulted in a 30 percent plunge in Samsung's third quarter profits and appeared to boost phone sales for rival Apple.
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Facebook and WhatsApp have also come under scrutiny from the European Union's 28 data protection authorities.
Britain's privacy watchdog said on November 7 that Facebook has agreed to suspend using data from UK users of its WhatsApp messaging app for advertisements or product-improvement purposes after the watchdog said consumers weren't properly protected.
The watchdog said the social media giant faces action if it uses such data without valid consent.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had said in August that it would monitor WhatsApp's new privacy policy, after WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook in 2014, said it would share user data with its parent company to better fight spam and improve users' experiences of both services.
The two companies have also come under scrutiny from the European Union's 28 data protection authorities, who last month requested that WhatsApp pause sharing users' data with its parent company until the appropriate legal protections could be assured.
"We're pleased that they've agreed to pause using data from UK WhatsApp users for advertisements or product improvement purposes," the head of the ICO, Elizabeth Denham, said in a statement. "If Facebook starts using the data without valid consent, they may face enforcement action from my office."
The regulator said it had also asked Facebook and WhatsApp to sign an undertaking committing to better explaining to customers how their data would be used and to give them ongoing control over that data. So far, the companies have not agreed.
"We think consumers deserve a greater level of information and protection, but so far Facebook hasn't agreed," Denham said.
A Facebook spokeswoman said WhatsApp "designed its privacy policy and terms update to give users a clear and simple explanation of how the service works, as well as choice over how their data is used.
"These updates comply with applicable law, and follow the latest guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office. We hope to continue our detailed conversations with the ICO and other data protection officials, and we remain open to working collaboratively to address their questions."
Denham said she did not think users had been given enough information about what Facebook would do with their data and that WhatsApp had not obtained valid consent.
Several other European privacy watchdogs, such as Spain's, have said they intend to contact Facebook about WhatsApp's privacy policy change but have not yet done so.
Facebook suggested it would be inappropriate to agree on a specific solution with one regulator before receiving all the others' questions.
Enforcement action could ultimately lead to fines. Such fines are small compared with the revenues of the companies concerned. However, a new EU-wide data protection law coming into force in 2018 would change that with fines of up to 4 percent of global turnover.
Denham said she would keep pushing the issue along with other privacy watchdogs, notably the Irish authority. It has the most sway over Facebook, since the US company's European headquarters are in Ireland.
Facebook says the data WhatsApp collects is extremely limited and only a part of that is then shared with Facebook.
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Combined with crippling debt and threats of violence, it helps perpetuate a cycle of exploitation in which many victims then become perpetrators, returning to Nigeria as "madams" to recruit more girls, police and rights groups say. (Photo: YouTube Screengrab)
Edo, Nigeria: Sitting on the floor surrounded by vials, animal bones and sheets stained crimson with blood, spiritual doctor Olor Elemian described how he scares girls into blind obedience with potions and spells known as "juju".
Pimps, madams, smugglers and even parents bring girls to his shrine in Amedokhian village near the southern Nigerian city of Uromi, where they drink concoctions brewed with pieces of their own fingernails, pubic hair, underwear or drops of blood.
"I can make sure she never sleeps well or has peace of mind until she pays what she owes," said the 39-year-old spiritual priest known in his neighborhood as "Doctor".
"Something in her head will keep telling her: 'Go and pay!'"
Juju is a potent ingredient in a cocktail of coercion that keeps thousands of Nigerian women and girls in sex slavery in Europe, mostly in Italy, after making the treacherous journey across North Africa and the Mediterranean in search of better lives.
Combined with crippling debt and threats of violence, it helps perpetuate a cycle of exploitation in which many victims then become perpetrators, returning to Nigeria as "madams" to recruit more girls, police and rights groups say.
In Edo state - a southern Nigerian hub for human trafficking - many girls begin their journey into prostitution willingly. Most have little clue of the nightmare to follow.
Some even visit native doctors like Elemian of their own accord, hoping juju will help them prosper while selling sex in Italy.
"It's not how hard a person works that determines how much money she will make," he said, showing off his new mobile phone and modern bungalow, which stands out amid his neighbors' mud huts.
These trappings of wealth are all funded by grateful clients from Italy, he said.
Managed by Madams
According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC), more than nine in 10 Nigerian women smuggled to Europe come from Edo, a predominantly Christian state with a population of 3 million.
Traffickers in Nigeria are exploiting Europe's migration crisis, moving girls to lawless Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean to Italy, anti-slavery activists say.
"Edo women started going to Italy to buy gold and beads in the early 1980s and saw a thriving market in prostitution," said Kokunre Eghafona, a professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Benin and a consultant researcher for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
"They came back and started taking family and friends."
These women, known as "madams" - who make up around half of Nigeria's traffickers, UNDOC says - are mostly former victims-turned-brokers who prey on others to escape prostitution.
Many such traffickers believe they are being helpful rather than doing harm, calling themselves sponsors rather than madams, a more positive title, according to Eghafona.
Speaking from her home in the city of Warri with her one-year-old son crying in the background, madam "Mama Anna" said that with so many girls looking for traffickers to take them to Italy, she no longer needed to deceive or trick them into going.
"Some ask me what they will do when they get there," said Mama Anna, boasting of her reputation as a broker who sends interested girls to Italy to work for her older sister, also a madam.
"I tell them they will go and hustle," she said. "They ask: 'What kind of hustle?' I tell them. Some refuse to go, others agree."
Bonded By Debt
For an insight into what drives young women to travel to Italy and sell sex, look no further than Uromi, with its pothole-ridden roads and derelict buildings with wells in front yards evidence of the town's lack of running water.
One neighborhood stands out. Its nickname is "Little London" and it is known for sleek, modern houses behind imposing iron gates, many said to be funded from the proceeds of prostitution.
Faith, a 23-year-old hairdresser, traveled more than 300 km (almost 200 miles) to Uromi from her home in Akwa Ibom, dreaming of joining the ranks of thousands of sex workers smuggled to Europe each year.
"I want to go to Italy because I want to make money," she said. "If it is prostitution, I'll do it."
In the past, girls like Faith would have been tricked into prostitution, promised jobs like hairdressing or supermarket before being forced to work for pimps.
"Before, nobody knew - it was a secret thing," said 30-year-old Anita, who was sex trafficked to Italy in 2011, after being deceived into thinking she was going to work as a hairdresser.
"But now, even children know that when you get there, it is prostitution."
After escaping her traffickers, Anita spent days on the streets. She was finally arrested and deported back to Nigeria.
Before arranging their passage through contacts in Libya, traffickers like "Mama Anna" make the girls sign a contract to finance their move - leaving them with debts that can spiral to tens of thousands of dollars and take years to pay off.
Girls are then taken to a spiritual priest, who conducts the "juju" rituals designed to bind them to their traffickers.
Such rites instil fear in victims, who believe that they or their relatives may fall ill or die if they disobey their traffickers, go to the police or fail to pay off their debts.
Fearful that the juju "spell" may be turned on them, many Nigerian parents become complicit, insisting that their daughters obey their traffickers, testimony from Italian court documents shows.
It's then on to Europe via well-trod smuggling routes through Niger and Libya.
Public Enemies
At Uromi market, several stalls display secondhand winter jackets and mittens, which one trader, Linus, described as a thriving market due to the number of people heading to Europe.
More than 12,000 Nigerian women and girls have reached Italy by sea over the past two years - a six-fold increase over the previous two-year period - with around four in five of them trafficked into sex work, according to data from the IOM.
Human trafficking by Nigerian organized crime gangs is one of the greatest challenges facing police forces across Europe, according to the EU's law enforcement agency, Europol.
For Nigeria's anti-trafficking agency, NAPTIP, efforts to combat the traffickers are being thwarted not only by the criminals themselves, but also by members of the public.
"Everybody believes that the streets of Europe are paved with gold," said Arinze Orakwe, an official at NAPTIP. "People see us as a problem, as stopping them from reaching El Dorado.
"One mother asked me if I would prefer her daughter to have sex with a young boy in Edo and get pregnant, when she can do the same thing in Europe and earn foreign currency," he said.
NAPTIP officials have been attacked by mobs in Edo while informing people of the dangers of trafficking, and angry relatives often snatch their daughters away from training or rehabilitation centers and threaten the staff, Orakwe added.
"These people, they are enemies, because this country is too rough now," said Igose, a mother-of-eight who relies on money sent by her 22-year-old daughter in Italy to feed her family.
While Igose in Benin City, the capital of Edo state, fears for the future of her family, in neighboring Uromi, Faith is still searching for a madam to arrange her passage to Italy.
Sometimes she is tempted to abandon her dream.
"I see pictures on my phone of people drowning in the sea," she said. "It is risky".
The 20-second video clip shows a man wearing khaki coloured hat, shirt and short pants, probably a farmer, trying to stuff the wailing victim in a coffin, threatening to set him on fire. (Photo: YouTube Screengrab)
KwaZulu-Natal: In a shocking incident, a South African landowner was accused of forcing a man into a coffin and threatening to feed him to a snake. The entire incident was captured on camera by his accomplice and uploaded on social media, sparking outrage.
The video is believed to be shot at a farm in KwaZulu-Natal, a coastal South African province.
The 20-second video clip shows a man wearing khaki coloured hat, shirt and short pants, probably a farmer, trying to stuff the wailing victim into a coffin, threatening to set him on fire.
He not only forces to man into the coffin but also threatens to set him a blaze. In the video, the man can be heard saying, "Get in, I want to throw some petrol."
The accused's accomplice who shot the video, is then heard saying that he will put a snake in the coffin.
The video clip ends with the men closing the lid of the coffin while the victim cries in terror.
Obama spent the day campaigning for his first secretary of state, jetting from Michigan to New Hampshire to Pennsylvania. (Photo: AFP)
Philadelphia: Barack Obama on Monday harnessed history and all of his vaunted oratorical skill in a final campaign push to see Hillary Clinton elected the first woman president of the United States.
Obama spent the day campaigning for his first secretary of state, jetting from Michigan to New Hampshire to Pennsylvania.
But his last speech before electors cast their ballots to replace him -- before tens of thousands of Democrats in Philadelphia -- indeed felt like a rousing final farewell.
"You gave me a chance" he told the diverse crowd gathered on a chilly night in the City of Brotherly Love. "A skinny guy with a funny name."
"You bet on me," he said, "I've always had the better odds, because I've always bet on you."
This was Clinton's event, but it seemed tailor-made for the 44th president.
Obama, critics might say, has never found a problem to which the answer is not a speech.
But even his fiercest opponents would acknowledge his rhetorical prowess and his writer's sensibility for history.
Perfect venue
On Monday, he was speaking at the city's Independence Mall, amidst a bank of floodlit buildings that almost seemed to have been wheeled in as theatrical props, were it not for the deep history they represented.
Beyond Obama's podium, beyond the illuminated sea of faces lay Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were forged.
Of all the sites with a claim to be the birthplace of American democracy -- Provincetown, Boston, Lexington or Concord -- Philadelphia's voice perhaps rings loudest.
The venue was made for that message. Democrats -- Obama above all -- have framed this election as an existential choice: Trump or the Republic, the unifier or the outlier.
Against that backdrop, Obama did what he's done so many times before -- he presented the sweep of American democracy as culminating in a single place and a singular time.
Eight years ago, that place was Grant Park in Chicago and that moment was Obama's own election as America's first black president.
Then, Obama saw his campaign as a tourniquet for the cynicism and racism that had poisoned the bloodstream of US politics.
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," he told the emotional crowd in the Windy City.
His victory was painted as a logical next step, or as Obama might say --paraphrasing his hero Martin Luther King Jr -- bending the moral arc of the universe a little closer toward justice.
Passing the baton
Now, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Obama portrayed electing Clinton as America's first woman president as the next logical step.
"In this place, where our Founders forged the documents of freedom, in this place where they gave us the tools to perfect our union, if you share my faith, then I ask you to vote," he said, expressing a faith in voters that others may not see after this inglorious campaign.
Obama expressed typical confidence in the outcome.
"I'm betting that tomorrow, most moms and dads across America won't cast their vote for someone who denigrates their daughters," Obama said.
"I'm betting that tomorrow, true conservatives won't cast their vote for somebody with no regard for the Constitution," he added.
"I am bettipng that African-Americans will vote in big numbers because this journey we've been on was never about the color of a president, but about the content of his or her character."
"I am betting that America will reject a politics of resentment and a politics of blame, and choose a politics that says that we are stronger together. I am betting that, tomorrow, you will reject fear and choose hope."
Within hours, Americans will prove him right or wrong.
Washington: Defence and counter-terrorism would be two key pillars of Indo-US strategic ties under Donald Trump, his top military advisor has said while asserting that India will be "absolutely critical" to the Republican candidate's foreign policy as president.
"This is a country that shares our values, this is a country that shares a lot of geo-political interest and I think, his (Trump's) work is going to be continuing the tradition of Bush Administration which made a lot of progress in that regard," Alexander Gray, a senior military advisor and author of several of the ambitious defence policies of Trump, said.
"We (Trump Administration) would be looking to strengthen not just the cultural and economic aspect, but also on the defence side there is so much common ground with India. At a time when India's foreign policy is changing because of China and Pakistan, because of Islamic terrorism, we need to be there to greet them with open arms. I think, the Trump Administration is ready to do that," Gray said giving an insight into the India policy of a possible Trump administration.
Trump is the only presidential candidate to have addressed a meeting of Indian Americans and directly spoken about a strong India-US relationship.
Gray, who has emerged as a key player in evolving the defence and military policies of the Trump Campaign, said India would be "absolutely critical" in Trump's foreign policy.
Co-author of a major policy paper on 'Donald Trump's Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia Pacific' which was published in the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine, Gray said India is "on top of the list" of Trump's Indo-Asia Pacific policy to which the defence aspect would be an important pillar.
"Strengthening defence relationship with India would be at top. This is what the Congress has been looking at for a long time," he said, indicating that a Trump Administration would be looking at legislative changes towards strengthening India- US defence ties.
"The Trump Administration would not give a passage to what China is doing in South China Sea, what it is doing in East China Sea, what it is doing along the border in India," Gray said in response to a question.
A strong partnership with US would deter China from making any aggressive posture against India, said Puneet Ahluwalia, a member of the Trump's Advisory Committee on Asian Americans.
"A strong US defence with India would give India much dependable ally to fight of threats from its neighbours and from terrorism by creating strong navy and latest technology in cyber and other areas," he said.
Ahluwalia, a Washington DC-based lobbyist, said he will work aggressively with the Trump Administration and the Pentagon to remove the obstacles in regards to transfer of technology and enhance defence trade and develop the blue economy.
Obama has addressed as many as 17 election rallies in the last 10 days, including the last one in Philadelphia. (Photo: AP)
Washington: US President Barack Obamas popularity rating has hit a new high, a latest poll has said, just before the polls to elect his successor at the White House.
Gallup said Obamas approval rating hit 56% on Monday. It is rare that two-term president has an approval rating of 56% towards the end of his presidency.
It is also the highest for Obama since he was re-elected in 2012.
Shortly before his re-election, his popularity hit 57%.
Obamas popularity has been rated high in other recent polls as well.
This is one of the reason why the Clinton Campaign has used his services in campaigning in key battleground states.
Obama has addressed as many as 17 election rallies in the last 10 days, including the last one in Philadelphia.
Whatever credibility Ive earned after eight years as president, I am asking you to trust me on this one, Obama said at an election rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
He is urging people not to give into the temptation to not be as focused on this election just because hes not on the ballot. As youve heard him say many times, his agenda, his legacy is on the ballot, White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters travelling with Obama on Air Force One.
Philadelphia: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Monday made an Election Eve show of political force at a massive rally in Philadelphia -- with her president husband Bill, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle at her side.
Clinton urged the roughly 40,000 people gathered near Independence Hall -- where the Founding Fathers adopted both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution -- to reject her "loose cannon" opponent Donald Trump.
"There is a clear choice in this election, a choice between division or unity," Clinton, 69, told the rally.
"Between an economy that works for everyone or only those at the top, between strong, steady leadership or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk.
"Make no mistake, our core values are being tested in this election," she said, delivering her campaign pledge to be a president for all Americans.
"Tomorrow, we face the test of our time."
Clinton took the stage after Obama, who galvanized the crowd by explaining how his former secretary of state was uniquely placed to succeed her as the nation's commander-in-chief.
"You have bet on me. I was always grateful for that. I always had the better odds, because I always got to bet on you," Obama said.
"I am betting that, tomorrow, you will reject fear and choose hope," he added.
"I'm betting that the wisdom and decency and generosity of the American people will once again win the day and that is a bet that I have never, ever lost."
Clinton was headed to Raleigh, North Carolina for the final stop in her marathon last day of campaigning, while her Republican rival -- whose New Hampshire rally unfolded while she was on stage in Philadelphia -- was headed to Michigan.
The Democrat has had a narrow but consistent lead in opinion polls as she strives to become America's first woman president, but her battle with the 70-year-old Manhattan billionaire has tightened in recent days.
And the campaign has been bruising -- she has been dogged by allegations that she put US secrets at risk on her private email server while at the State Department and the race remains perilously close in a handful of key states.
Support for Trump dropped after footage emerged of him bragging about sexual assault and at least a dozen women came forward to accuse him, but polls have grown closer as the big day approaches.
Rock legend Bruce Springsteen warmed up the crowd, hailing Clinton for her "vision of an America where everyone counts."
Clinton was joined on stage after the rally by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, her daughter Chelsea and the Obamas.
Washington: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton held a four percentage point lead over Republican Donald Trump in the ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Monday, one day before the US presidential election.
In a survey of 1,763 likely US voters, 47 per cent said they backed Clinton and 43 per cent said they supported Trump. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, according to the Washington Post.
A separate Bloomberg Politics-Selzer & Co poll released earlier on Monday showed Clinton with a 3 point lead.
Read: Emails, hate, penis debate: 11 most surreal moments in a presidential race from hell
A tiny New Hampshire village cast the nation's first ballots at the stroke of midnight. Dixville Notch has had the honour of launching the voting, symbolically, since 1960.
Clay Smith was the first of the seven residents, including five men and two women, to vote as Tuesday's long awaited Election Day began. An eighth person voted by absentee ballot.
The tally was announced in a matter of minutes, the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton beat out her Republican rival Donald Trump, four to two.
Trump vs. Clinton
In a battle centered largely on the character of the candidates, Clinton, 69, a former secretary of state and first lady, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman, made their final, fervent appeals to supporters late on Monday to turn out to vote.
Their final week of campaigning was a grinding series of get-out-the-vote rallies across battleground states where the election is likely to be decided.
"We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America," Clinton said in Philadelphia before a crowd of 33,000 - the biggest of her campaign.
She was joined by Democratic President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Trump made one of his final appearances late on Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire, where polls showed a tight race.
Tomorrow, the American working class will strike back, Trump said. Its about time.
He brought much of his family on stage for his last rally in the state where he scored his first victory in the Republican nomination fight.
Mexico City: Mexicans on the US border anxiously awaited the outcome of the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, plagued by fears of economic disaster if Republican Donald Trump wins and tries to choke local industry, isolate the country and deport millions.
Trump's campaign has been one of the most unpopular in living memory in Mexico, ranging from stinging verbal attacks on its migrants, threats against its trade agreements, to his repeated vows to seal off the country behind a huge border wall that he insists Mexico will pay for.
Nowhere has the bad-tempered contest been felt more acutely than in the Mexican cities straddling the U.S. border, which hundreds of thousands of people cross for work every day, and acts as a bridge for $500 billion in annual bilateral trade.
Trump launched his bid accusing Mexico of sending rapists and drug peddlers across the border, prompting the government to accuse him of stirring up hatred and fanning concerns on the border that racial prejudice is becoming more acceptable.
The tycoon says he could scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement that took effect in Mexico, the United States and Canada in 1994, and he has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 35 percent on Mexican-made goods to help U.S. industry.
"We're very worried. We know what Donald Trump is looking to do, which is limit the imports, he wants to manufacture everything in the States," said Marcello Hinojosa, president in the border city of Tijuana of industry group Canacintra.
"But this has been analyzed by both the United States and by Mexico and it's suicide for both countries."
Mexican business leaders say about 40 percent of the average Mexican factory export is made of U.S. content and argue the two manufacturing sectors are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to take steps against one without damaging the other.
Trump, who polls show trailing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a tight race, says Mexico is "killing" the United States on trade. However, commerce between the two has grown much faster than their respective economies since NAFTA, World Bank and U.S. data show.
Mexico sends more than 80 percent of its exports to the United States, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says roughly 6 million American jobs depend on trade with Mexico.
Trump has also blasted U.S. companies for investing in Mexico, which houses billions of dollars worth of manufacturing plants, especially around Mexico's northern border. Trump blames the Mexican factories for jobs losses in the United States.
If protectionist policies gain ground, prices for products and services would go up, and jobs would eventually be lost in Mexico, putting pressure on people to migrate - or exposing them to the lure of violent crime, Hinojosa said.
Pride and Prejudice
Rarely have Mexicans expressed such strong views about U.S. presidential candidates as during the current campaign.
Mexicans favor Clinton in the race by 10 to 1, according to a poll published in Mexico in late September. But the tightening of polls in the last two weeks has rattled their confidence she will win.
"Personally, though I think I speak for many Mexicans, I hope Trump loses," said Rodolfo Monroy, 85, a restaurant owner in the border city of Nogales, opposite Nogales, Arizona. "Why? Because he's rude, because of what comes out of his mouth. He doesn't like us Mexicans," he said, with a flash of anger on his face. "We're going to be in real trouble (if he wins)."
Wadih Kuri, Chief Executive of ABC Aluminum Solutions, a local aluminum company, recalled being labeled "beaner" as a Mexican studying across the border, the sort of prejudice he said Trump's campaign was encouraging again.
"Are we still at the same place where kids need to be ridiculed because they're from Mexico? And that's all he's doing. So If I'm nervous, I'm nervous for the culture that he's inspiring," said Kuri, who now lives in San Diego.
Trump's threats to deport more than 11 million undocumented migrants living in the United States, roughly half of whom are Mexican, could also put Mexican authorities under strain, said Cuauhtemoc Galindo, the mayor of Nogales, Mexico.
Nor was it wise economic policy, he added.
"Having someone govern who feeds racism, hate, this sort of thing ... will also make a lot of Mexicans stop visiting (the United States) out of fear, out of a sense of pride, which will also hurt the U.S. economy," Galindo said.
Crossing into the United States from Tijuana, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the hemisphere, construction worker Alejandro Ortiz said "every aspect" of his life would be affected if Trump wins - which he fears will happen.
"This is going to affect me whenever I cross the border, they're going to investigate me more, just because of my color, because I speak Spanish," said Ortiz, 36, who was born in the United States but grew up in Mexico.
United Nations: India has strongly criticised the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for taking months to consider sanctioning leaders of groups it has itself designated as terror entities, in an obvious reference to the "technical hold" on India's bid to get Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar banned by the UN.
Asserting that the Security Council is stuck in its own "time warp and politics", India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin on Tuesday slammed the Council's inability to sanction the leaders of terrorist organisations.
"While our collective conscience is ravaged everyday by terrorists in some region or another, the Security Council gives itself 9 months to consider whether to sanction leaders of organisations it has itself designated as terrorist entities," Akbaruddin said at a session on equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council at the UN.
Earlier this year, China had extended the "technical hold" on India's move to get Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. The six-month validity of the technical hold lapsed in late September and China sought another three-month extension on India's bid.
He lamented that the snail-paced and "never-ending carousel of discussions" on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reforms, saying "it is time to break the impasse" to urgently reform the body that is "unresponsive" to the current global situation.
The inability to respond to humanitarian situations, terrorist threats and peacekeeping vulnerabilities during this year itself are part of the price that is being paid for the international community's lack of progress on the criticalmatter, he noted.
"On issues pivotal to international security such as Syria, there is inaction, and on other situations like dealing with the peacekeeping crisis in South Sudan we see fragmented action which is not implemented even months after being agreed upon," Akbaruddin said.
"The Security Council, stuck in its own time warp and politics, can only be described as working randomly on the basis of a mix of ad-hocism, scrambling and political paralysis. Need one say more about the urgency of the need forreform of this relic which has long been unresponsive to the needs of our time," he said.
Akbaruddin said the never-ending carousel of discussions on UNSC reforms leaves many in the international community perplexed as the crucial reform of the Security Council has been delayed despite both its importance and its urgency.
He pointed out that the Council's global governancestructure does not cease to surprise the internationalcommunity with its persistent inability to even effectivelyengage with the tasks at hand.
At her final rally before Election Day, Hillary will campaign in Philadelphia, joined by President Obama and Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton. (Photo: AP)
Washington/New York: Americans have begun voting for their next President, making either Hillary Clinton the nation's first female commander in chief or choosing billionaire businessman Donald Trump, whose volatile campaign has upended US politics.
A beaming Hillary Clinton was seen casting her vote in New York at around 6.30 pm (India time) on Tuesday while Donald Trump continued to exude confidence of winning the White House race.
Read: Emails, hate, penis debate: 11 most surreal moments in a presidential race from hell
Following are the latest developments in the US elections
President Barack Obama is hitting the radio airwaves to encourage Americans to go to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The White House said Obama gave Election Day interviews to six radio stations that target listeners in Orlando, Detroit and Philadelphia. The cities are in states where the race is believed to be close between Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
Obama told syndicated host Jana Sutter that continuing the work of the past eight years depends on having a "steady, smart, serious" president follow him into office. He praised Clinton and reiterated his view that Trump is unfit to be president.
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Donald Trump says the presidential campaign has been an "amazing process" that put him in touch with the unfulfilled aspirations of the American people.
Interviewed by phone Tuesday on "Fox and Friends," the Republican presidential nominee said he's seen "so many hopes and dreams that didn't happen, that could have been helped with proper leadership."
Trump says he "took a little heat" for bringing up "illegal immigration" from the day he launched his campaign, but "in the end it was the right thing to do."
Trump said his campaign is a "movement" and the American people are "incredible." Asked if he had any regrets, Trump said "sure, there's things I would have done different." He didn't name any.
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Eric Trump says that his father will concede the election if he loses and the results are "legit and fair."
In an Election Day interview with MSNBC's Morning Joe, Donald Trump's son said that "all we want is a fair fight, not just for this election but for all elections."
The Republican presidential nominee has repeatedly warned of a "rigged election," though there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the electoral system.
Eric Trump said, "we've seen states where a few thousand votes can make a difference." Pressed by MSNBC anchors, he said of his father, "if he loses and it's legit and fair, and there's not obvious stuff.
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Republican Donald Trump is expressed confidence on Election Day. In a phone interview Tuesday morning on "Fox and Friends," the Republican presidential nominee said: "We're going to win a lot of states." But in a rare moment of uncertainty, he added: "Who knows what happens ultimately?"
If rival Hillary Clinton wins, Trump says he won't be looking back positively on a failed bid for the White House. He said: "If I don't win, I will consider it a tremendous waste of time, energy and money."
Trump said he's spent over $100 million of his own money on his campaign. Federal Election Commission reports, however, show he's more than $30 million short of that claim. According to fundraising records, Trump's investment so far is about $66 million.
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Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine says he and Hillary Clinton can clinch the White House if they win any one of the "checkmate" states.
In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America Tuesday, Kaine said the battleground states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio each hold the key to a win for the Democratic running mates.
He said that Tuesday's election is a "history-making race" but he also warned against complacency, saying that "democracy always works better when people participate."
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Tim Kaine has cast his ballot for president in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee and his wife, Anne Holton, voted shortly after polls opened at 6 a.m. at a retirement community near their home.
Kaine was cheered by supporters waiting in line.
After voting, he spoke to reporters where he encouraged Americans to vote and said that if elected, he and running mate Hillary Clinton would try and bring the country together.
"The sign of a vigorous democracy is one where a lot of people participate," Kaine said.
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Donald Trump has a final message to his supporters in the election's waning hours: "We have to win."
The GOP nominee tells his final rally crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan that: "If we don't win, this will be the single greatest waste of time, energy and money in my life."
Trump's final event at a local convention center was surprisingly staid, with none of the theatrics of an earlier rally in a packed arena in New Hampshire.
As he spoke, dozens of people streamed toward the exit, forming a procession in front of an area where reporters were stationed.
Some said they were trying to get closer to the door. But most said they were leaving because they were tired, wanted to beat traffic or had heard enough.
Trump says now that he's finished his campaign, his "new adventure" will be "making America great again."
Washington: Americans are choosing a new president Tuesday, but not just that. They are making history, reshaping Congress, saying good riddance to a campaign of numbing negativity and setting the political calculus of a nation that won't be healed any time soon.
Whether the glass ceiling shatters or not, precedent will.
Never before has the country had a woman as president, not to mention the spouse of an ex-president. Never before has the country had a president like, well, Donald Trump, unique in lacking the public-service background that everyone in our lifetimes and deeper into the past brought to the office (both his weakness and his strength). Whether the 45th president is Hillary Clinton or the billionaire outsider, the U.S. is turning a corner.
Clinton vs. Trump
The two New Yorkers pounded each other relentlessly, each preaching that the other is wholly unqualified, as the race tightened in the final days after a persistent if elastic lead for Clinton, the Democrat, in preference polling. Those who dreamed of Bernie Sanders for the Democratic ticket or anyone but Trump for Republicans face their time of reckoning. Will they come home to their party, or just stay home?
Clinton, inheritor of Barack Obama's vaunted campaign apparatus and a skillful (and well-financed) organizer in her own right, fielded an impressive professional and volunteer operation. She had big names on the stage, loads of people tracking down supporters and getting them to early-voting places, committed and well-heeled interest groups behind her and lots of money for sustained advertising.
Trump's effort paled in comparison, seeming as unpolished and improvised as the candidate himself. What he had, that she didn't, were the pulse and the passion of huge crowds. Election Day should settle the question of which counted for more.
To those in Trump country, no boastful, stomach-turning video about women, no "lock-her-up" insult from the stage, no toxic tweet in the wee hours, could peel them away from the man whose crudities only made him more authentic in their eyes. To many of the Republicans who didn't come to the rallies - and to some of the lawmakers who faced the prospect of working with him in Washington - he was a disaster, a Republican Titanic sailing alongside Clinton's Democratic Lusitania. To the country at large, and much of the world, he polarized, repelled, entertained, shocked and fascinated.
Did that make Clinton less of a divisive figure?
Not to the Republicans who are already itching to impeach her if she wins.
What to watch
Virginia could be a harbinger for the night. An early win for Clinton in that state bodes well for her; a contest that drags on until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. EST could mean a good night for Trump. Results begin to come out when polls close at 7 p.m. in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. More waves come just after 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., when polls will have closed in 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Trump and Clinton fought fiercely over Florida, a big prize. Trump also made an audacious play for Minnesota and scared Clinton in Michigan, which drew both the Democratic nominee and President Barack Obama on the campaign's final day.
Republicans fretted about Utah, normally as GOP-friendly as can be. The state was courted by an independent who tapped anti-Trump sentiment among the state's many Mormons.
Fizzling October surprise
FBI Director James Comey's disclosure that the agency discovered more emails potentially connected to its investigation of Clinton's email practices roiled the race. That shadow lifted when Comey said Sunday that the review had found nothing to change the FBI's recommendation in July that she not face charges. Between his two announcements, though, nearly 24 million ballots were cast in early voting.
Senate suspense
The night's second big mystery is which party will control the Senate, now Republican dominated. Democrats need to gain five seats to take an outright majority. If they gain only four - and if Clinton is elected - her vice president will be able to break 50-50 Senate ties.
Indiana could give an early hint of where the night is going. Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina could tip either way. Republican incumbents were in particular danger in Illinois and probably Wisconsin.
The math made it tough for the GOP: Republicans had to defend 24 seats compared with only 10 for the Democrats. Some were between a rock and a hard place - risking rejection from anti-Trump Republican voters if they were too close to him and rejection from his core supporters if they pushed him away. Squirmy rhetoric ensued.
House hunting
Barring a shocker, Republicans will keep control of the House. They populate that chamber in numbers not seen since the 1930s.
The breakdown is 247-188 for the GOP, with three vacancies. GOP losses of 10-15 seats have been predicted by people in both parties.
Notable names: Republican Liz Cheney is expected to win the Wyoming seat once held by her father, Dick Cheney. GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California, investigator of the Benghazi, Libya, episode and other Obama administration actions, could be upended.
Resume review
Rare is the U.S. president who has come to office without having held any previous public office.
To be sure, some were branded resume lightweights in their campaigns: ex-governors George W. Bush of Texas, Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Ronald Reagan of California, among them. But they came from the tradition of having served somewhere - whether in Congress, states or in a high post in an administration. Dwight D. Eisenhower had no political experience but plenty of leadership cred - as well as war hero status - as allied commander in Europe in World War II.
Trump comes purely from the business and reality-TV worlds, making him distinctly a political outsider even if he's firmly part of the elite. No one questions Clinton's breadth of experience, as secretary of state, a New York senator and, uniquely, as a policy-driven first lady during her husband's two terms. The question is what voters make of her experience and his lack of it.
She-nanigans/he-nanigans?
Trump pronounced in advance that the election is rigged, in what sounded like a hedge should he lose. He warned without evidence that Clinton partisans would commit fraud and prodded his supporters to watch for misdeeds at polling stations. The prospect of vigilante election monitoring and the anger seething behind that impulse raised concerns about confrontations Tuesday, especially if the result is close.
Ballot bonanza
Voters in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada are deciding whether to legalize recreational marijuana use; Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota are weighing whether to do so for medical marijuana. Arizona, Colorado and Maine are deciding whether to raise the minimum wage to $12 by 2020; Washington state is considering $13.50. The federal minimum is $7.25. Voters in several states may tighten controls on guns and ammunition.
Some politics is local
Of a dozen races for governor, at least seven appear competitive and most of those have Democrats on the hook. Republicans went into the campaign with 31 governorships, just one short of their historic high. And Republicans control more than two-thirds of statehouse chambers.
Meanwhile, as early voting continued in many parts across the US, with a record 46.2 million turning up to exercise their franchise, top American pollster Nate Silver has handed Hillary a narrow lead over her Republican contender.
"Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the election," said FiveThirtyEight website's Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the outcome of 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
This is up from a 65 per cent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton, 69, has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign, he said.
Clinton's projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 per cent from 2.9 per cent, Silver said.
In the 19 latest polls taken into account by the poll, Clinton is leading in 17 polls while Trump, 70, leads in just two polls.
Clinton's poll margin ranges from six per cent to two per cent, while Trump's ranges from two to five per cent.
"Seven of the 19 polls have Clinton leading by 4 points; another four have her ahead by 3 points, then we have a smattering of 1's, 2's and 6's, along with two pollsters, IBD/ TIPP and Los Angeles/USC Dornsife, who still have Trump ahead.
"On average, Clinton leads by 2.9 points in the polls, although the highest-rated pollsters have her a bit higher at 3.8 points, on average. As is usually the case, the range of national polls closely matches the FiveThirtyEight popular- vote forecast," Silver said.
On the eve of the elections, Clinton had a lead of 2.9 percentage points over Trump in the website's average of polls.
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama claimed the presidency eight years ago in Chicagos Grant Park, declaring a new dawn in American history and promising the enthusiastic crowd of a quarter-million people that we as a people will get there. Because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America, the new president-elect vowed.
But as the nation prepares to choose Mr Obamas successor on Tuesday, the bold agenda he described that morning remains incomplete. What Obama discovered and what his successor will learn is that every presidency lasts for only a brief moment in time.
Mr Obamas health care bill gave insurance to millions, but he now faces calls for big changes to it. The economy is markedly better, but incomes and growth remain stubbornly low. The immigration overhaul he wanted is tied up in legal limbo, as are his tough new climate rules. Fewer Americans are fighting in overseas wars, but the Islamic State has emerged as a new threat.
There is a lot of unfinished business, said Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate leader from South Dakota, a longtime supporter of Mr Obama. The satisfaction comes in knowing that he has changed the landscape in a very profound way. The frustration comes in knowing what might have been.
Healthcare
Obama's Affordable Care Act, 2010, gave insurance to millions but even Democrats agree that much more needs to be done to improve the cost and quality of that care.
Climate
Obama successfully pressed world leaders to aggressively confront the threats from a warming planet. At home, he demanded tougher fuel standards for cars.
Economy
The economy is markedly better, but incomes and growth remain stubbornly low. The immigration overhaul he wanted is tied up in legal limbo.
By arrangement with the New York Times
The agreement seeks to wean the world economy off fossil fuels in the second half of the century, limiting the rise in average world temperatures to "well below" 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial times. (Photo: AP)
Tokyo: Japan on Tuesday ratified the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement to cut emissions and prevent climate change, four days after the global pact officially entered into force.
The agreement seeks to wean the world economy off fossil fuels in the second half of the century, limiting the rise in average world temperatures to "well below" 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial times.
The delay in ratification could limit Japan's ability to influence negotiations on the finer details of the agreement. Those talks were set to formally begin during the COP-22 meeting in Morocco that started on Monday.
Representatives from nearly 200 countries convened in Marrakesh, Morocco for two weeks to discuss the nuts and bolts of the Paris accord and the policies, technology and finance needed to ensure the Paris goals are achieved.
"Japan aims to play a leading role in crafting arrangements that raises transparency in each country's emission cuts to help accomplish the spirit of the Paris agreement," Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a statement on Tuesday.
Backing for the accord from several European nations, Canada, Bolivia and Nepal last month pushed the agreement past the 55 percent of emitters limit needed for implementation, with U.S. President Barack Obama calling for other nations to sign up "as soon as possible."
The agreement is meant to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to limit floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising ocean levels.
Japan has also been criticised for pressing ahead with plans to open scores of new coal-fired power plants at home and as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government pushes coal burning power technology abroad.
Seoul: South Koreas president said on Tuesday she will allow parliament to choose her prime minister, a major political concession to growing anger as she scrambles to defuse an escalating influence-peddling scandal.
The announcement by Park Geun-hye, who has faced tens of thousands of protesters and an investigation into whether a mysterious confidante manipulated government decisions, could severely curtail her ability to govern in the 15 months she has left in her term.
Parks decision, which came during a meeting on Tuesday with national assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun, means that the liberal candidate for prime minister who she nominated last week as a way to settle growing anger will apparently be replaced. But opposition and ruling party lawmakers must first agree on someone else.
The political tug-of-war over the prime minister, who is typically chosen by the president as a No. 2, comes as opposition lawmakers demand that Park distance herself from domestic affairs because of the scandal involving Parks long-time confidante, Choi Soon-sil, who has no official government role.
Park giving up the presidential prerogative to choose a prime minister will further weaken her politically. She already faces terrible approval ratings and calls from the public to step down.
Earlier Tuesday, South Korean prosecutors raided the Seoul office of Samsung Electronics, the nations largest and most valuable company, in connection with the scandal.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office linked the Samsung raid to an investigation into the scandal but provided no other details. South Koreas Yonhap news agency said investigators were following a suspicion that Samsung gave Chois daughter illicit financial help.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Seoul over the weekend, demanding Parks removal from office.
Nam Jeong-su, spokesperson of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the more militant of South Koreas two large umbrella union groups, said he expects 150,000 unionists, plus supporters, to gather Saturday and march to the presidential Blue House.
The photo shows Indonesia woman Sumarti Ningsih Sumarti (L) with an unidentified friend at a Hong Kong bar. (Photo: AFP)
Cilacap: An Indonesian woman brutally murdered by a British banker in his upmarket Hong Kong apartment told her family days before her death she felt haunted and threatened, her father said on Tuesday.
Sumarti Ningsih was one of two Indonesian women murdered by Rurik Jutting, 31, who was jailed for life for carrying out the killings in a cocaine-fuelled rampage which the judge called "sickening in the extreme".
He tortured Ningsih for three days before slashing her throat and stuffing the body into a suitcase. Days later, the Bank of America worker picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same sick fantasies, but killed her when she started screaming.
Speaking after the Cambridge University graduate was sent to prison Tuesday, Ningsih's father Ahmad Kaliman welcomed the guilty verdict and thanked the jury in Hong Kong.
He also revealed new details, saying Ningsih had called him -- sounding anxious about the attentions of an Englishman -- several days before her murder.
"She told me that she was being haunted and threatened by an Englishman," Kaliman, 61, told AFP, speaking from the family home in Cilacap on Indonesia's main island of Java.
"She wanted to go home, leave Hong Kong because she felt threatened by an Englishman... Well it must have been Rurik, this Rurik guy."
In a gruelling 10-day trial, the Hong Kong jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture -- fantasies he had acted out on Ningsih.
Ningsih's mother Suratmi, 51, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, also welcomed the verdict, saying Jutting had "tortured my daughter".
"I lost my child and the pain will never be cured," she told AFP.
Both victims, who were in their 20s, were from poor farming families and used to financially support their relatives back in Indonesia.
Ningsih's family urged the Indonesian government to help them seek compensation from Jutting to help support the murdered woman's seven-year-old son, who lives with them in Indonesia.
"She was the breadwinner. Who else will support her son? Rurik has to be responsible," Kaliman said.
The family of Mujiasih said in a statement they had been "devastated" by her death as she was the main support for her parents, and they were also seeking compensation.
The federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Tuesday that the men were arrested by officers of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)
Berlin: German police on Tuesday arrested five men suspected of links to the Islamic State organisation, who allegedly sought to recruit fighters for the jihadist group.
"The five accused formed a pan-regional Salafist-jihadist network, with the accused Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. taking on the leading role," said a statement from the prosecutors' office, referring to the 32-year-old Iraqi.
"The aim of the network led by him is to send people to IS in Syria," it added.
Turkish national Hasan C. and German-Serb Boban S. were allegedly tasked with teaching the recruits Arabic as well as indoctrinating them with Islamist content.
While the group's leader had the authority to approve and organise any departures to Syria, he allegedly left the actual implementation of the plans to the two other men detained Tuesday, German national Mahmoud O. and Cameroonian Ahmed F. Y.
At least one young man and his family has been sent by the network to join IS in Syria, prosecutors added.
The five men were arrested in the northern state of Lower Saxony and the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, German media reported.
According to figures released in May by German intelligence services, 820 jihadists have left Germany for Syria and Iraq.
Almost a third have returned and 140 were killed while abroad, while around 420 are still in Syria or Iraq.
Germany has so far been spared large-scale jihadist attacks. But it was shaken by two assaults claimed by IS and carried out by asylum seekers, an axe rampage on a train in Wuerzburg that injured five, and a suicide bombing in Ansbach in which 15 people were hurt.
Police said last month they had foiled an alleged plot by a Syrian refugee to bomb one of Berlin's airports.
The collection also containing a gold cluster ring, a silver mirrored box and a silver holder still containing Braun's bright red lipstick was sold to a private collector based in the UK. (Photo: Videograb)
London: A pair of lilac knickers belonging to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's wife Eva Braun have sold at an auction in the UK for nearly 3,000 pounds, seven times the estimated price.
The collection also containing a gold cluster ring, a silver mirrored box and a silver holder still containing Braun's bright red lipstick was sold to a private collector based in the UK.
The briefs, part of a collection that went under the hammer at the Philip Serrell auction house in Malvern, Worcestershire, were estimated to sell for around 400 pounds, but fetched 2,900 pounds.
The knickers, featuring a lace and ribbon trim, are embroidered with Braun's initials, the auction house said.
The gold ring, set with an opal surrounded by six rubies, was auctioned for 1,250 pounds, while the silver lipstick case engraved with 'EB' sold for 360 pounds, 'BBC News' reported.
"It is generally people fascinated with that period of history. I think people who were bidding on them were private collectors more than dealers," Sophie Jones, auctioneer and valuer at Philip Serrell, said.
A collection of early 20th century black and white photographs depicting Braun, some with Hitler, sold for 100 pounds at the auction.
Paris: Ex-French economy minister Emmanuel Macron, a 38-year-old former banker who has vowed to transform the country's politics, has decided to stand in next year's presidential election, aides told AFP Tuesday.
Macron "will declare his candidacy before December 10", a member of his team said, putting an end to months of speculation over his intentions since he quit the Socialist government in August.
"All the conditions are in place," the aide said, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Macron, a business-friendly former protege of Socialist President Francois Hollande, will aim to exploit the deep divisions in the French left to make a run for the presidency.
Hollande, who has some of the lowest popularity ratings of any post-war president, is expected to decide by the end of the year if he will make a bid for re-election.
Macron founded his own political movement, En Marche ("On the Move"), in April saying he wanted to promote "new ideas neither of the right nor the left".
His straight-talking, anti-establishment flair has seen him attract many young, cosmopolitan supporters, but his appeal to the wider electorate is untested.
Polls currently show that the presidential election will come down to a second-round runoff between a centre-right candidate who is still to be decided and the leader of the far-right National Front (FN), Marine Le Pen.
The abductions took place last week as Iraqi government forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militias backed by US-led air strikes pushed an offensive to recapture Mosul from Islamic State. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)
Geneva: Islamic State fighters abducted 295 former Iraqi Security Forces members near the militant stronghold of Mosul and also forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from Hammam al Alil town, the United Nations human rights organization said on Tuesday.
The abductions took place last week as Iraqi government forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militias backed by US-led air strikes pushed an offensive to recapture Mosul from Islamic State.
"People forcibly moved or abducted, it appears, are either intended to be used as human shields or depending on their perceived affiliations - killed," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
About 100 of the former ISF officers were taken at around midnight on Nov. 3 from Mawaly village, which is about 20 km (12 miles) west of Mosul. A further 195 were abducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4 from villages in Tal Afar district.
The abducted families were being taken from their town to Mosul airport, Shamdasani said.
"The fate of these civilians is unknown for the moment," she told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
The United Nations also had information that at least 30 sheikhs were abducted in Sinjar district on Nov. 2 or Nov. 3 and taken to an unknown location. It was trying to verify a report that 18 of them had been killed on Nov. 4 in Tal Afar district, Shamdasani said.
The operation against Islamic State's Iraqi stronghold has entered its fourth week and Iraqi forces have so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.
The UN human rights office has sources on the ground but the information they are able to provide is "patchy", Shamdasani said.
She could not confirm media reports of a mass grave being found but said it happened to be in the same agricultural college in Hammam al Alil where the U.N. reported the execution of 50 police officers last month.
The 18-year-old, who gave her name as Mariam, was taken at gunpoint from her house in the Zareh district of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan in early July. (Representational image)
London: A young Afghan woman who went to the police station to report being raped was then raped by the district police commissioner in his office, she said on Monday.
The 18-year-old, who gave her name as Mariam, was taken at gunpoint from her house in the Zareh district of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan in early July.
The man took her to a house on the same street where he and another man raped her, she said.
"When I went with my father to report the rape case, the police commissioner ordered my father to wait outside, and took me into his office where he also raped me," said Mariam.
After raping her, he warned her to "keep her mouth shut" or she would be killed, Mariam said by phone from Kabul where she is staying with her father.
Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous countries to be a woman or girl in, and a shortage of female police officers means women rarely report abuse, rights groups say.
Research indicates that more than eight in 10 women in Afghanistan have been sexually, physically or psychologically abused, but only a few thousand cases are reported each year.
For cultural and social reasons it is very difficult for an Afghan woman to approach a male officer, Oxfam has said, and when they do their complaints are rarely handled properly. In some cases the police assault or even rape women who come for help, the aid agency said.
In this case, the police commissioner, Akram Zareh, denied any wrongdoing.
"I am an honest policeman. I am 60. She is like my daughter," Zareh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. "This is a plot against me."
Mariam's father, Khairuddin, brought his daughter to the capital Kabul to draw attention to her story and seek justice.
"My daughter said that she would burn herself alive, because she could not go out of the house and could not make eye contact with anyone due to shame," Khairuddin said by phone.
He said he met Afghanistan's attorney general who promised to investigate the case.
"Respecting her privacy, the attorney general asked Mariam to tell her story to a special female anti-violence officer in private," Baktash Azizi, the attorney general's chief of staff, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
"After hearing the case, the attorney general appointed the Balkh provincial prosecutor and a special military prosecutor to investigate and present their findings as soon as possible."
Zareh is still serving as the district police commissioner, and was already being investigated in another rape case, Azizi said.
In Kabul, Mariam said she would not go home until he was removed from office. "I will burn myself, but will not go back home where he is ruling. I will stay here until I get justice," she said.
Idlib province is mostly controlled by a rebel alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which groups Islamist factions with jihadists of the Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)
Beirut: At least seven children and two pregnant women were killed in an air strike on Syria's rebel stronghold province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitor said.
The strike, which hit the town of Khan Sheikun, in the south of the province, appeared to have been carried out by Syrian government ally Russia, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
The Britain-based group, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
Russia began its air campaign in support of the government in September 2015, saying it was targeting "terrorists."
"The strike hit a street where children were playing. Three of the dead children were from one family and were visiting their grandfather," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said
He said the dead children were four girls and three boys, but did not immediately have each of their ages.
Idlib province is mostly controlled by a rebel alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which groups Islamist factions with jihadists of the Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate.
Fateh al-Sham is blacklisted by the United Nations and the United States as a "terrorist organisation" and Russia says its fighters are a legitimate target.
An Iraqi federal police officer holds his nose as he points towards a mass grave in Hamam al-Alil, Iraq. (Photo: AP)
Baghdad: Iraqi investigators were probing a mass grave on Tuesday that was discovered the previous day by troops advancing further into Islamic State-held territory near the city of Mosul, where soldiers have captured a sliver of land but later halted their advance.
The chilling find was the latest instance of mass graves being uncovered on ground wrested from IS militants. In Iraq and Syria so far, the group has killed thousands of people in extrajudicial killings, the graves a dark testimony to its brutality.
Associated Press footage from the site shows bones and decomposed bodies among scraps of clothing and plastic bags dug out of the ground by a bulldozer after Iraqi troops noticed the strong smell while advancing into the town of Hamam al-Alil on Monday.
"Investigators flew in this morning and are on their way to the grave to conduct examinations and determine the cause of death," said Cabinet official Haider Majeed, in charge of mass grave investigations.
The first officials at the site said the grave, behind an earthen embankment near an agricultural college, likely holds about 100 bodies, many of them decapitated. The town lies some 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Mosul.
It was unclear who the victims were, but a soldier at the site pulled a child's stuffed animal from the scraps of clothing and rotting flesh, swarming with flies.
IS militants have carried out a series of massacres since seizing large swaths of southern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014, often documenting them with photos and videos circulated online.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office said it was investigating whether the discovery at Hamam al-Alil was connected to reports about the alleged killing of police officers in the same area.
"We had reports that 50 former Iraqi police officers had been killed in a building outside Mosul city," spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. "This building was actually the same agricultural facility, agricultural college, that has been cited right now as the site of these mass graves."
The campaign to drive IS fighters from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the extremists' last major urban stronghold in the country, began on Oct. 17.
Iraqi troops and the Kurdish peshmerga forces are now converging on Mosul, although the deepest advance into an eastern sliver of the city has stalled after militants counterattacked advancing special forces from within built-up, populated areas.
To the northeast, some 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the city, the peshmerga forces continued their push on the town of Bashiqa, believed to be largely deserted except for dozens of IS fighters.
Mortar fire, automatic weapons, and explosions rang out through the morning, as a thick plume of smoke hung over parts of the city, obscuring the view of aircraft.
The United Nations says over 34,000 people have been displaced from Mosul, with about three quarters settled in camps and the rest in host communities.
In a report issued overnight, the U.N. human rights office said the world organization and its humanitarian partners have distributed food, water and medicine to more than 41,000 displaced people and vulnerable residents fleeing the fighting.
Since the battle for Mosul reached the city itself on Nov. 4, some 11,000 people have fled eastwards from the city, while some electricity and water supplies have been cut in eastern neighborhoods.
"Parts of the resident population could face shortages of food and water," OCHA said, also highlighting an urgent need for trauma care due to a lack of facilities.
One of the accused will be given 2,500 lashes in 50 sessions and will be jailed for 17 years. (Representational Image/ AFP)
Riyadh: A Saudi Arabian court has awarded four men with 7,000 lashes and 52 years in prison after they confessed to gangraping a woman in front of her husband and daughter.
According to a report in the Daily Mail, the gang of four were slapped with the punishment by the Jeddah court. One of the accused will be given 2,500 lashes in 50 sessions and will be jailed for 17 years while two of his accomplices will be given 1,500 lashes each and were jailed for 15 years.
On the other hand, the fourth accused was sentenced to only five years in prison with 1,500 lashes.
Police officials said that the accused broke into the victim's home in Jeddah, tied up her husband with an electric wire and attacked the woman. They stripped her in front of her husband and their young daughter and raped her.
Authorities said that the accused stole10,000 riyals and eight mobile phones before fleeing -- only to return after sometime and rape the woman again at knifepoint.
Soon after, the victims lodged a complaint based on which the accused were arrested. Their confession sparked an outrage among people who demanded that the accused be executed.
Saudi Arabia, a leading Arab ally of the United States and the birthplace of Islam, follows the strict Wahhabi Sunni Muslim school and gives the clergy control over its justice system.
Last month a prince of Saudi Arabia's ruling Al Saud family was given lashes in a prison in Jeddah as a court-ordered punishment, less than a month after the kingdom executed another prince for murder.
Islamabad: Three Indian High Commission officials out of the eight accused by Pakistan of being members of Indian intelligence agencies, left for India on Tuesday, according to a media report.
Geo News, quoting sources, reported that three officials -- First Secretary commercial Anurag Singh, Vijay Kumar Varma and Madhawan Nanda Kumar left for Dubai from Islamabad on a morning Emirates flight.
Five other Indian High Commission officials Rajesh Kumar Agnihotri, Amerdeep Singh Bhatti, Dharmendra Sodhi, Balbir Singh and Jayabalan Senthil -- will leave for India via road through the Wagah border, the report said.
Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria last week had read out a statement at his weekly briefing saying that a number of Indian diplomats and staffers were involved in "coordinating terrorist and subversive activities in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic assignments".
He had named the eight Indian officials, accusing them of being members of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB).
There was no official confirmation on how many Indian officials had left Pakistan and were expected to leave the country.
Last month, Pakistan had declared Indian High Commission official Surjeet Singh persona non-grata after India's action against Pakistan High Commission official Mehmood Akhtar following Indian police's busting of an ISI-run spy ring.
On November 2, Pakistan had pulled out six of its officials in the wake of the spy scandal.
The petition filed on Monday in the Peshawar High Court by two Pakistanis seeks orders to place the ancient structure under the administrative control of the archeology department. (Photo: Representational Image)
Peshawar: A petition has been filed in a Pakistani court against "secret demolition" of a 150-year-old non-functional Hindu temple being carried out in Peshawar's old city to build a commercial plaza, a media report said on Tuesday.
The petition filed on Monday in the Peshawar High Court by two Pakistanis seeks orders to place the ancient structure under the administrative control of the archeology department.
The petitioners, Muhibur Rehman and Waqif Saleem advocate, said the "issue of the alleged changes made to the temple's building" was reported few months ago following which the government had sealed the property and arrested two tenants.
However, "those elements in connivance with the evacuee trust properties department had resumed the temple's demolition to construct a plaza there", the Dawn reported, quoting the petitioners.
The petitioners added that different newspapers had reported, along with pictures, that the ancient Hindu temple located in Mohallah Wangrhi Garah in Karimpura locality was being secretly demolished so a commercial plaza could be constructed there.
They also quoted the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government's spokesman as saying after the reports that "the government had taken step as the Constitution guarantees equal rights to the minorities and protection of their religious places.
"The temple is as reserved for us as for the minority communities and we cannot tolerate its demolition."
The petitioners said the deputy commissioner along with archaeology director Dr. Abdul Samad Khan had visited the temple and formally sealed its premises.
However, it appeared that all those officials could not stop the influential elements from demolishing temples, they claimed.
They added that the temple in question was over one-and- a-half century old and its structure still appeared fresh and firm.
Sharbat Gula became a symbol of Afghanistan's long wars when a photo of her as a young refugee was published in National Geographic magazine in 1985. (Photo: AP)
Islamabad: Pakistan on Monday delayed the planned deportation of Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed "Afghan Girl" whose 1985 photo in National Geographic became a symbol of her country's wars, an Afghan official said.
Now in her 40s with four children, Gula has been hospitalised for most of the time since her arrest last month on charges of living illegally in Pakistan. A judge sentenced her last week to be deported.
Waheedullah, a spokesman for the Afghan consulate in Peshawar, said Afghan diplomats had convinced Pakistani authorities to allow her to stay in hospital until Wednesday. She then would be delivered to the Afghan border authorities at Torkham on Wednesday and from there she would be flown to Kabul where Afghan President Ashraf Ghani would host a function in her honour.
"The Afghan president has also announced a house for her in Kabul where she will live with her children," said Waheedullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name.
A senior Pakistani official on condition of anonymity confirmed her deportation, planned for Monday, had been delayed until Wednesday. Sharbat Gula became a symbol of Afghanistan's long wars when a photo of her as a young refugee was published in National Geographic magazine in 1985. She had been living in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar city for years with her husband and children. Her family has said her Afghan husband died a few years ago.
Tipu hated the very presence of the British on Indian soil. In pursuit of his objective to oust them, he strove to forge an alliance of Indian forces and the French armies. If only Tipu had the support of a few native rulers of the day, the Indian history would have been different.
Born on Nov 10, 1750, Tipu was named after a Muslim saint, Tipu Mastan to whose tomb in Arcot his mother Fakhr-un-nisa had visited on a pilgrimage to pray for a son. Tipu succeeded to the Mysore throne in Dec 1781 after the demise of his father Hyder Ali near Chittoor when the second Mysore war was in progress. Tipu continued the war against the British with more vigour and concluded the treaty of Mangalore in 1784.
However, Tipus crusade against the British power and his heroic exploits were well reflected in his next two wars, the third and the fourth Mysore wars. Cornwallis, with the military support of the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas, conducted the war on Tipu during 1790-92 and the treaty of Srirangapatna, that crippled his state was signed in 1792 bringing the third Mysore war to conclusion.
The arrival of Wellesley as the governor general in 1798 led to the outbreak of the fourth Mysore war. The large British army commanded by future Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, the younger brother of the governor general, who attacked Srirangapatna from several directions. On May 4, 1799, Tipu, after putting a heroic resistance fell fighting in the battlefield. Tipu, probably, is the only ruler in modern times to have died fighting in a battle.
It is not only his military abilities for which Tipu Sultan is rightly remembered but his administrative capabilities have equated him to be on a par with several notable leaders in world history. His voluminous correspondence in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and French, the languages in which he was proficient, reflect his abiding interest in administration. His issue of coins of fine calligraphy, his ordinances prohibiting liquor, his reforming of the calendar, introduction of new scales, weights and measures, experiments in judicial and revenue regulations and his zeal to change the names of towns and cities in his kingdom show his creative ability and desire for modernisation.
Tipu was a great economic innovator. He showed great interest in starting irrigation works in his kingdom to improve agriculture. He made banking and money lending a government monopoly.
A firm believer in mercantilism, Tipu established a Board of Commissioners for trade that looked after the development of foreign as well as internal trade. He took special interest in the development of industries in Mysore. The Chinese experts assisted in refining sugar, for production of which a factory was established in Channapatna. Malabar coast during his time thrived with pearl fishing.
Tipu had a great penchant for modern technology and succeeded in manufacturing arms like muskets, canons and pistols. The rockets he used in the wars stunned the British so much that by taking the remnants of Tipus rockets they developed modern rockets by subjecting to reverse engineering. He even built ships on modern design to create a navy that would effectively challenge the British.
Diplomatic missionsTipu was fond of having contacts with the outside world through numerous diplomatic missions and trade agents. Mysore then was known for ivory, sandalwood, spices, silk, coconut and tobacco. He established several centres for the culture of silk worms and cultivation of mulberry plants was encouraged. Several countries like the Ottoman empire, China, Muscat, Peru, Armenia, Jeddah and Ormuz showed interest in purchasing Mysore products.
On the religious front, Tipu was more tolerant than what he is made out to be. He held the Hindu sadhus and saints in high esteem. He often consulted Hindu astrologers and gave land grants to temples. He sought blessings of goddess Chamundeshwari before embarking on every military expedition. His numerous grants to Sringeri mutt and his regard for the seer there, is well known.
If Tipu crushed Hindus in Coorg and Malabar, it was for political expediency as they were in league with the English and not because they were Hindus. He never spared his co-religionists if they were guilty of similar offences. The highly biased contemporary British writings and testimonies have come in handy for many a British apologists to defame him as a religious fanatic.
If the legacy of the indomitable Tiger Tipu, who for political freedom staked everything including his life, is overlooked today even to be commemorated, then there seems to be nothing left in our history to take pride in.
(The writer is retired professor of History, University of Hyderabad)
The fact that for decades even after the death of Tipu Sultan in 1799, housewives in England used his name to calm their crying babies, speaks of the terror he infused in the minds and hearts of the average English man, leave alone the British soldiers and generals who were engaged in the numerous protracted wars with him.
Rallying behind Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama has said the Democratic presidential nominee was more qualified to be the next US president than him or Bill Clinton as he termed her Republican rival Donald Trump "temperamentally unfit" to lead the country.
Appearing with his wife Michelle Obama, former president Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea Clinton for a grand rally here on election eve, 55-year-old Obama exhorted a crowd of thousands to go out and vote for Hillary.
Describing Hillary as "smart" and "well-tested", Obama said she was more qualified than he or her husband was to lead the country. "It's been a long campaign, with a lot of noise and distraction. It felt more like a reality show and parody," Obama said.
Noting that Trump is "temperamentally unfit to be the Commander-in-Chief", he said the Republican nominee lacks basic understanding of the world and justifies torture.
Hitting out at Trump's aides who took control of his Twitter account, Obama said if the Republican nominee's closest aides do not trust him to tweet then he should not be trusted with nuclear codes.
"Anyone who sees women as objects, minorities and immigrants as inferior, then he cannot lead our diverse and dynamic big-hearted country," Obama said.
Obama said in Hillary, Americans have "somebody extraordinary to vote for." He said he had to "bite my tongue" several times when Hillary was attacked viciously and described her as one of the "most effective" Secretaries of State who "did a great job for America."
"She is a big reason why we are more respected around the world today," he said, adding that Hillary does not "complain, doesn't buckle, juts like the American people."
"She is strong and tough and she will work and deliver. She won't just tweet." Urging the crowd, especially the young to go out and vote, Obama said in "2008 you gave me a chance, a skinny guy with a funny name."
"I'm betting on you one more time," he said, expressing confidence that on election day, the American people will not vote for a candidate who denigrates their daughters from the highest office in the land or looks at people with differences as objects and with suspicion.
"Tomorrow America will reject politics of resentment and blame, you will reject fear and chose hope," he said.
Passengers on a commercial flight in Mexico were given a start when a serpent slithered into the cabin in a scene straight out of the Hollywood thriller "Snakes on a Plane."
The green reptile appeared suddenly on an Aeromexico flight from Torreon in the country's north to Mexico City on Sunday, emerging from the ceiling behind an overhead luggage compartment.
Cellphone video shot by passenger Indalecio Medina showed it wriggling briefly as if trapped before partially dropping down into the cabin.
"I was reading a magazine and the passenger next to me saw it and, 'Oh my word!'" Medina told The Associated Press by phone yesterday. He estimated it was over 3 feet in length.
Passengers hastily unbuckled themselves to get clear of the dangling snake before it dropped to the floor, where people trapped it between rows 5 and 6 with blankets provided by a flight attendant, Medina said.
"It was a frightening situation ... but people remained calm because it didn't get out of that space and nobody became hysterical," Medina said. "Some people got up to see what kind of reptile it was, but nobody got carried away."
After the pilot radioed ahead, the plane was given priority landing in Mexico City and touched down 10 minutes later. Passengers exited out the rear, and animal control workers came on board to take the stowaway into custody.
Aeromexico said in a statement that it was investigating how the snake got into the cabin and would take measures to keep such an incident from happening again.
"Snakes on a Plane" was a 2006 action movie that was about exactly what the title suggests. It is treasured by fans for its campy premise and star Samuel L. Jackson's profanity-laced declaration of war on the CGI-generated serpents.
An explosion killed a child and injured 32 Indian peacekeepers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma on Tuesday, the U.N. mission there said.
The blast hit the peacekeepers while they were out on a morning run in the western Goma neighbourhood of Keyshero, the mission added. The cause was not immediately clear.
Ismael Salumu, an imam at a nearby mosque, said three peacekeepers were killed. "We just heard the explosion and the cries. We then ran over to see," he told Reuters.
About 18,000 uniformed U.N. personnel operate in Congo, where millions died in regional conflicts between 1996-2003 and dozens of armed groups continue to operate.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today requested visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May to review the new visa rules announced by the UK government, saying movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority.
"Under the new visa rules announced by the UK Home Office, anyone applying after November 24 under the Tier-2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category would be required to meet a higher salary threshold of 30,000 pounds from the earlier 20,800 pounds. I request you to review the new policy so that the earlier threshold is continued," he said.
During an interaction with May on her arrival at a private hotel at the Kempegowda International Airport Limited here, he said the movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority rather than an immigration.
"Madam Prime Minister, our fast growing and high value tech sectors rely upon an effective immigration policy that attracts high-skilled workers and minimises barriers to the flow of talented people," he said in his remarks, made available to the media by the Chief Minister's Office.
He said the temporary placement of highly-skilled individuals into the UK provided a significant economic boost while having a negligible impact on net migration.
Siddaramaiah also said the state government was looking forward to the early setting up of the UK Health City Project coming up on 400 acres of land earmarked for this initiative at Dharwad.
"We are also keen to collaborate with the UK in the fields of maternal and child nutrition and higher education in the public health and health care," he said.
He welcomed the UK Government and British industry to actively participate in this year's much-acclaimed Aero India show in February 2017 here, to chalk out a clear cut plan to build up on our mutual strengths of aerospace and defence.
Siddaramaiah said the government seeks investments from the UK-based firms in renewable energy and for creating smart cities.
The government also would be happy to work together to identify opportunities for the UK to work with Karnataka for creating next-generation logistics, infrastructure and connectivity across fast growing regions of southern and western India, Siddaramaiah said.
He also said 15 per cent of the UK-based companies in India were in Karnataka employing 23,000 people.
Millions of Americans today voted to elect either the country's first woman president or a political outsider in the White House as the race between Hillary Clinton and her rival Donald Trump remains too close to call after an acrimonious campaign.
Fighting for every single vote at stake, Democratic nominee Clinton and her Republican rival Trump made their last-minute forceful arguments before the American people with their own vision for the world's largest economy.
Clinton, 69, was joined by husband Bill when she voted at an elementary school near their home in Chappaqua in New York state this morning.
"I'm so happy, I'm just incredibly happy," said Clinton as she emerged from the polling station, shaking hands, chatting with her supporters amid chants of "Madam President".
Last night she addressed a massive rally in Raleigh in the key battle ground state of North Carolina, which was entertained by Lady Gaga.
Trump, 70, made a last minute scheduled stop in Michigan to address thousands of his supporters hoping that he might be able to swing this state from the Democrats.
Their rallies ended around 1 AM (local time), just five hours before opening of the polling booths in the East Coast.
The first ballots were cast in a sleepy hamlet in New Hampshire, traditionally the first in the nation to vote on Election Day, with Clinton winning the contest.
Clinton registered her first 'win' in the 2016 elections by four votes to two against Trump soon after midnight in the remote Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.
While Clinton is close to victory mark, Trump must win most of the battleground states to clinch the magic figure of 270 Electoral College votes.
Arizona (11), Florida (29), Nevada (6), Nebraska 2nd Congressional District (1), New Hampshire (4) and North Carolina (15) are key battleground states.
An estimated 200 million people are eligible to cast their votes to elect the country's 45th president along with hundreds of Congressmen and members of state legislatures and local civic bodies.
A record 42 million have already voted using the "early voting" provision of the American electoral system, surpassing the 2012 record when 32.3 million people had voted in advance.
More than half a dozen Indian-Americans are also seeking to enter the Congress including Kamala Harris from California.
Those in the race for the US House of Representatives are incumbent Ami Bera and Ro Khanna (California), Pramila Jayapal (Washington State), Raja Krishnamoorthi (Illinois), Peter Jacob (New Jersey) and Alok Kumar (Michigan).
Long queues were witnessed in the Indian-American dominated neighborhoods of Loudon and Fairfax counties in Virginia since early in the morning.
The home state of Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Tim Kaine, Virginia is seen as a key swing state, even as the Republicans are trailing by four-six points in recent polls.
Clinton and Trump crisscrossed several stops in key battleground states on the final day of campaigning which the US media has termed as the ugliest and the most divisive.
"This election is basically between division and unity in our country. It's between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk. It is between an economy that works for everyone or one that is even more stacked for those at the top," Clinton told a cheering crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina.
"None of us, none of us, want to wake up on Wednesday morning and wish we had done more," she said, which she repeated in her other election rallies including the one in Philadelphia, which was also addressed by US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle.
Latest poll indicated that while the election seems to have tightened in the last few days, Clinton maintains a slight lead over Trump. Almost all major polls are predicting a victory for Clinton, but Trump appeared confident of winning some of the key battleground states and thus wrest the White House from the Democrats after a gap of eight years.
"Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class. Or do you want to be ruled by you, the people," Trump said in Michigan. "Political establishment has brought distraction of factories and jobs," Trump said.
"Tomorrow the working class will strike back," he said in New Hampshire and in Michigan he declared "today is the Independence Day".
Trump kicked off his Monday engagements with a rally in Florida.
"We're going to be one country. We're not going to be a divided nation anymore, we're a divided nation. We are a divided nation. We will also cancel billions and billions of dollars in global warming payments to the United Nations where those payments disappear. And we're going to use all that money to invest in the infrastructure and we could even say the environmental infrastructure of our country," Trump said.
Trump would be spending the election day in New York. His 'victory rally' has been schedule at a hotel in New York, a few kilometres away from the 'victory rally' of Clinton.
The Republican presidential nominee's election journey has been sensational as from a rank political outsider he has come close to becoming the US President.
This year, the Republican field began with a long list of 17 candidates, including Indian-origin Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush. The Democratic field, on the other hand, was not as crowded, with just Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders in the race.
Unlike India, in the US campaigning can be done even as voting continues. Every state would start counting the votes as polling concludes.
One of the main highlight of the last few weeks has been the electioneering blitz by Obama. In the last 10 days, he addressed 17 rallies - rare for an outgoing President.
In the last phase of the campaign, the Clinton campaign also brought in popular singers, which Trump alleged was a move to attract crowd.
The two campaigns have different theme. While 'Make America Great Again' is the theme of Trump, 'Stronger Together' is Clinton's slogan.
Both the candidates have said they would accept the results of the elections, but reserve the right to challenge in case of close results. The new president would be sworn in on January 20.
Till then the winner would be called president-elect and would have a transition team in place working from Washington.
Several high-profile figures, including Vice President Joe Biden, have voted in the polls early this morning.
Indian-Americans are traditional Democratic voters with some of the polls showing that as many as 80 per cent of them would be voting for Clinton.
But the recent effort of the Trump Campaign to woo the Indian-Americans appears to have made some dent in the Indian-Americans vote bank.
For instance Dr Anand (not his real name) has voted for Trump this time, as he supports Trump's policies on immigration and terrorism. Same is the case with his wife.
But his parents, who live in Maryland, voted for Clinton.
Maryland is a traditional Democratic State, but many Indian-Americans have switched sides this time.
"It's Trump this time, for a change," said Swati (not her real name), who runs a home day care center in the Bethesda neighborhood of Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC.
Salabh Kumar of the Republican Hindu Coalition, who ran an anti-Clinton campaign on local Indian television channels and blasted Indian-Americans with emails and flyers, argued that a large number of Indian-Americans are voting for Trump.
But disagreed Manish Singh, a long time Democratic supporter from Maryland.
"Indian-Americans are string Democratic supporters. I do not see a change in our voting pattern this year. Hillary Clinton is the most popular among Indian-Americans," he said.
"She is the best bet for Indian-Americans and India," said Ajay Jain Bhutoria, a major Clinton Campaign fund raiser.
"We are all for Clinton. She is highly popular among us," said Rajwant Singh who has campaigned for the Clinton Campaign in Maryland and neighboring Pennsylvania.
With a string network, Dr Singh said after anti-immigrant rhetoric from Trump, it is unlikely that any Indian American would vote for Trump.
This is the message that Singh and other Indian American democrats are getting from the ground.
Over a month and half after the triple suicides of an ex-army man and his wife and daughter in South West Delhis Jaffarpur Kalan, Delhi Police have started the process to make the two men who allegedly abetted the suicides as proclaimed absconder.
The step was taken after Police raided several known places of the accused in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar but couldnt find them.
We have procured a non-bailable warrant against the two and the process to declare them proclaimed absconder has begun, said a police officer.
Alok Sinha and Naseem were accused of abetting the suicide of Bhagwan Dass, 50, his wife Sharda, 48, and daughter Sarita, 20. They are also accused of cheating the family, said police.
A resident of Vaishali in Ghaziabad, Sinha and his partner Naseem were medical consultants by profession and claimed to facilitate admission of students in medical colleges in lieu of money.
Police said their residences and office in Jamia Nagar in South Delhi were found shuttered when they raided it. A team of investigators also visited Sinhas home town in Patna and questioned his father about his whereabouts but still couldnt trace him.
They both have fled along with their family members. In Patna we found out that Sinha had married second time recently and is absconding with his wife. Naseem has a house in South Delhis New Freinds Colony, but we found it locked. Once they are declared proclaimed offender by the court process to confiscate their property would take place, the officer added.
Dass and his daughter were found dead at their house in South West Delhis Jaffarpur Kalan area on September 9, while his wife died a few hours later in a hospital. They all had consumed poison, police said.
A seven-page suicide note was found from the house in which Dass had stated that the family was depressed over the death of their only son Kuldeep, 25, who passed away a day after Raksha Bandhan in August under mysterious circumstances. Kuldeep, who was home on a break, was an MBBS student in Kyrgyzstan. Police later concluded that Kuldeep had also committed suicide.
According to the note left by Dass, in 2014 he had paid Alok Sinha and Naseem Rs 30 lakh in cash and a demand draft worth Rs 5 lakh to facilitate Kuldeeps admission in a medical college in Bhopal. Despite paying the requisite amount, Sinha did not get Kuldeep admitted in any college, nor did he return the money.
Family members said Dass mortgaged his property to take the required loan. In the suicide note, Dass also allegedly charged the college authorities with conniving with the cheats.
A year after this, Kuldeep joined a college in Kyrgyzstan, for which Dass sold part of his property to come up with the Rs 10 lakh required for his academic and living expenses.
In the suicide note, Dass wrote that Kuldeep topped the course in the first year, but lack of money stalled further studies. Kuldeep returned home on August 17. He asked Sinha to return their money, but was rebuffed. Two days later, Kuldeep was found dead in the bathroom.
Bhagwan blamed Sinha and Naseem for his financial woes and the reason why the family was taking this extreme step.
DH News Service
Voluntary organisations cannot assume powers of law enforcement agencies, a Delhi court has observed while pulling up an NGO worker for getting seven buffaloes detained, saying she did it "in connivance" with an animal care centre.
The court made the observation while dismissing the plea of a woman petitioner, member of an NGO, against the release of the buffaloes from the Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre and imposed an exemplary cost of Rs one lakh on her to be deposited with Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.
"There is no law which permits the voluntary organisations or so-called NGOs themselves to assume powers, jurisdiction, duties and responsibilities of law enforcement agencies and replace the police machinery in this regard," Additional Sessions Judge Lokesh Kumar Sharma said.
The court said the petition filed by the woman, a member of NGO Gau Gyan Foundation, appeared to be an attempt to gain "cheap popularity" and waste the court's precious time as the woman did not have locus standi to approach the court in the absence of an FIR in the matter.
"Present petition appears nothing but an attempt on the part of the petitioner to somehow gain cheap popularity and is the sheer wastage of precious time of this court as the petitioner has failed to make out her locus standi to file the present petition as she is neither the IO of the case, nor the complainant in any case qua the present animal stock.
"Instead of pursuing her matter for lodging of a valid FIR against the alleged cruel treatment of animals by their owner/occupier, petitioner sat over the matter quietly and in a satisfied manner after recording of the DD (daily diary) Entry," it said.
The judge said "it is interesting to note that petitioner herself has pleaded for payment of charges to the Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre, whereas the centre itself had chosen to remain silent on this aspect, which goes to show that she was in connivance with the centre."
The court also noted that since there was no FIR in this case, "hence, neither any investigation was required nor the animal stock could have been detained at the Sanjay Gandhi Animal Care Centre."
"Hence, the revision petition is dismissed being devoid of any merits with exemplary cost of Rs 1,00,000 to be deposited with Prime Minister's National Relief Fund by the petitioner."
The court noted that on September 11, the woman had lodged a complaint against some unknown persons for allegedly transporting seven buffaloes for slaughtering. After recording the DD, the buffaloes were taken away from the owner by the police and sent to the animal care centre and the woman did not get an FIR registered.
The owner pleaded before a magisterial court seeking release of the buffaloes - four adults and three calves - which was allowed, with the court saying he was the genuine owner of those animals.
A "cheerful and healthy" Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa is interacting on "important issues with VIPs" and is likely to be discharged in a few days with physiotherapists from Singapore attending on her, a senior AIADMK leader said here today.
"Amma is able to talk, have her own food and all. She is very cheerful and very healthy. She is consuming semi-solid food," AIADMK leader and party spokesperson C Ponnaiyan told PTI.
He said the 68-year-old was holding discussions on important issues with VIPs, in an apparent reference to those in the government, through use of electronic gadgets.
He, however, did not specify what kind of electronic gadgets or tools were being used.
"All the parameters (of Jayalalithaa) are absolutely alright. She is interacting on important issues with VIPs. We are in the electronic world. Amma is likely to be discharged in a few days. She will come out with flying colours to attend to political agenda as well as the government," Ponnaiyan said.
Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospitals with acute lung infection, he said, adding, the ailment also put some pressure on her heart.
However, the best treatment has ensured she is relieved of the said problems, Ponnaiyan added.
"The lung infection had resulted in formation of sputum and lung congestion, affecting the lungs and to a certain extent putting pressure to her heart as well," he said.
Apollo Hospital, he claimed was one of the best in the country and had ensured top doctors like London-based Richard Beale besides those from AIIMS treated Jayalalithaa.
"As on date, Amma is completely relieved of the lung infection and her heart condition is also excellent now. There is no problem at all. Physiotherapy by Singapore specialists is continuing. That might continue for another few days, especially to normalise standing up and walking," he said.
Asked when Jayalalithaa would be shifted to a normal ward, Ponnaiyan said the AIADMK supremo was in ICU as she had lung infection and was taking rest.
The medical authorities have said she will be shifted to a normal ward any time in the coming days, he said, referring to hospital Chairman Pratap C Reddy's statement that she has completely recovered and that it was up to her to decide on when to return home.
Ponnaiyan said the visit of national leaders, including BJP bigwigs Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, to the hospital to enquire about the Chief Minister's health "shows the respect and regard they have for Amma".
Jayalalithaa was admitted to the hospital on September 22 after she complained of fever and dehydration. Later, the hospital had said she was being treated for infection with respiratory support, among others.
Specialists from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and from London, among others, have treated her.
For a 12-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, being booed out of a Donald Trump campaign rally has turned out to be 'lucky' as he got to meet President Barack Obama a day later.
JJ Holmes had been sitting on his knees for months at his home in Longwood, Florida, and using his nose to type search on his iPad for 'Mary Poppins' plays and Trump events, his mother Alison Holmes said.
Throughout the election, Alison said, he had been itching to go to a rally - to express his disdain for Trump, who came under fire last year for mocking a reporter with a disability.
"I wanted to go because Donald J Trump made fun of disabled people," JJ said in a video statement to The Washington Post, using his computer vocalisation device.
On Saturday, JJ got his wish - his mother agreed to take him to a Trump rally in Tampa.
She said JJ had preprogrammed chants, such as 'Dump Trump' and 'Trump mocks the disabled', into his computer vocalisation device. Once he was inside the arena, he pushed a button to say his piece.
But, to their surprise, the crowd around them turned rowdy, she said.
Trump supporters across the arena joined in then Trump reportedly spoke out from the stage.
"Oh, we have a Hillary Clinton person. Are they paying that person USD 1,500?" Trump said, according to Fox News.
"Get him out, please. Get him out."
"I must tell you, the Bernie Sanders protesters had much more enthusiasm and spirit than this one," Trump was quoted as saying. "The problem with these Hillary protesters is my people make all the noise....You can't even hear the person."
At the same time, Trump supporters near them started pushing her son's wheelchair, Alison said.
And soon the boy and his family were escorted out, she said.
Outside, a reporter who covered the rally heard that the boy hoped to meet Obama one day, Holmes said.
The reporter called Valentina Pereda, Florida press secretary for the Clinton campaign, who used to be the White House deputy director for Hispanic media.
Pereda offered to escort JJ and Alison to Clinton's Sunday rally in Kissimmee, Florida, where Obama was scheduled to deliver one of his final campaign speeches.
At the venue, Pereda led JJ and his mother through crowds of people to the VIP area near the stage, she said.
With the help of a White House staffer friend, Pereda was able to set up a brief meeting between JJ and Obama.
After the president's speech, Pereda's friend escorted them to the other side of the barricades that separated rally attendees from the stage. Obama leaned forward, shook JJ's hand and smiled for a photo.
Taking Delhi and its neighbouring states to task for not even reading its orders to curb pollution, National Green Tribunal today castigated them and the Centre for "playing a joke" on the people by doing nothing in the first five days when toxic smog engulfed the national capital region.
The green panel slammed the states for not taking steps to control stubble burning and gave a slew of directions, including giving a complete mechanism to implement its directions to curb air pollution by tomorrow.
Criticising the secretaries of Environment and Urban Development of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for not implementing its orders on crop burning, the tribunal asked them to read all its judgements and analyse and inform the steps they would take to implement them.
"First, we want to know how many of you have read the (NGT) orders on air pollution fully and implemented them? And if you say yes, remember you are falling into a trap because we will ask you about it. If you have not read it, be clear and honest. There can't be two answers,"it asked the officers.
When all of them replied in the negative, the bench asked them to go through all judgements, saying "this shows your first intention of being totally insensitive towards the environment."
Coming down heavily on the states for severe air quality, the bench said, "When all this mess was going on and Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 pollution went up above 1000, what actual steps did you take on the ground except doing meetings?
"See what kind of joke you people play. You ask people who fix lights on the streets to sprinkle water with cranes to control dust pollution. Why could you not deploy helicopters to sprinkle water all over NCT Delhi?
"Is it beyond imagination? Even by common sense, only water can bring down the PM levels and improve air quality. It is shocking that for the first five days nobody did anything, be it the states or the Centre. Everybody was watching and waiting for the smog to intensify," the bench said.
As an interim measure, NGT banned all construction work in Delhi and NCR for the next 7 days to bring the smog under control and ordered halting operations of stone crushers and brick kilns in Delhi and NCR.
It directed the municipal corporations of Delhi to depute half of their staff to go to various sites across the city to ensure that no dust pollution is caused due to construction and there is no burning of municipal solid waste.
The NGT also asked Central Pollution Control Board to collect ambient air quality data for a period of one week in collaboration with Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC).
During the hearing, the bench also castigated the AAP government for shutting schools without conducting any scientific study and asked how it came to the conclusion that pollution indoor was better than outdoor for children.
The green panel directed Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh governments to submit "preventive precautionary and punitive" measures to deal with such emergency situations and sought to know how complete coordination and cooperation can be done amongst them.
The environmental court said it was the duty of the states to see the alarming situation and act accordingly when Supreme Court, High Court and NGT were making "hue and cry".
"You suddenly wake up one day. Tell us why were these meetings not held prior to the harvesting season in Punjab and Haryana. These are known factors and they did not emerge suddenly. Your meteorological department can predict everything. Didn't you know about this," the NGT said.
Punjab government told the tribunal that out of 30 lakh hectares of agricultural land, nearly 19.70 million tonnes of crop residue is generated every year and only 1.02 million tonnes of remnant was being disposed by machines.
"Did any of the state governments provide incentives to farmers for not burning agriculture residue in the open as per our last year judgement? If you would have adequately compensated them and given them financial assistance, they would not have put fire to the crop residue," the bench told the states.
"How many machines have you provided to the farmers for agriculture waste disposals? On one hand your governments give free power to the farmers, why don't you withdraw assistance provided to the farmers if they persist with the default," the bench said.
It also directed the municipal corporations to go for mechanised cleaning of roads and use vacuum cleaning machines for the same.
The NGT deferred the matter for hearing tomorrow after it was informed that the Supreme Court was also hearing the case.
Upping the ante against Congress government over the celebrations of "Tipu Jayanti", Karnataka BJP President B S Yeddyurappa today asked the party cadre to scale up the protests against it on November 10 when the event will be held.
Speaking at an "anti-Tipu Jayanti" rally here, as the party held state-wide protests on the issue, Yeddyurappa asked the party cadre to observe November 10 as a "black day" and court arrest on that day.
Yeddyurappa declared that within 24-hours of coming to power, the BJP government would cancel Tipu Jayanti.
Tipu Jayanti, slated to be celebrated across the state on November 10, is being observed since last year following a Congress government decision, which had triggered a major row and caused violence in Kodagu district in November last.
Tipu Sultan was the 18th century ruler of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom, on whose reign academics, historians and eminent public personalities hold differing views, often engaging in public sparring.
Tipu Sultan is treated by some as a "religious bigot" who ruthlessly killed and converted people to Islam, while others consider him as a great secular ruler who fought the British.
Yeddyurappa also said that he would call on Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi tomorrow and explain the precarious law and order situation in Karnataka.
All the cases of murder of RSS/BJP workers that have taken place in Karnataka must be referred to the National Investigating Agency (NIA) if truth has to come out, he said.
Flaying the Siddaramaiah government, he said 'the beginning of the end of the Congress rule' in the state had begun.
"At the most, Siddaramaiah can carry on his Tughlak Durbar for one year," he said.
In July, Mumbais main zoo welcomed a waddle of living penguins the first to be displayed in India in nearly two decades to spruce up its flagging image. But last month, one of them, affectionately named Dory, died of a bacterial infection.
The death of Dory was an unfortunate incident, zoo director Dr Sanjay Tripathi told me. The upkeep of penguins here is being done according to international standards.
Many are not convinced. The 143-year-old zoo, spread over three acres and home to 400 animals, is one of Indias oldest, and most shambolic, parks.
Animals saunter listlessly in grubby enclosures. A crocodile suns itself in algae-covered water. Outside, the leafy walkways overflow with canoodling couples. In tiny, unkempt parks, children play on rotting swings and jungle gyms. Gaudily painted penguin-shaped litter bins complete a slovenly landscape.
One grim report says more than 160 birds and animals died here between 2010 and 2011 alone. In January 2006, a stampede of blackbuck at the zoo resulted in the deaths of 13 animals.
A 2003 report by a non-profit organisation Zoocheck Canada recommended the zoo should be shut down. It was a shameful reminder of what zoos continue to do in the name of conservation and education, said Shubhobroto Ghosh, one of the inspectors and author of the Indian Zoo Inquiry.
But prompted by an enthusiastic local politician, authorities went ahead and procured eight penguins aged between one and three - from a private aquarium in Seoul. Their purchase, upkeep for five years, and a special enclosure, will cost Mumbais taxpayers $2.5m. Mumbai zoo director Dr Tripathi believes critics are panicking too much.
For one thing, officials say the penguins belong to the Humboldt species. Originally from South America, these penguins are normally found around coastal areas of Peru and Chile.
They are intrepid swimmers and breed and survive in higher temperatures than, say, some of the more famous Antarctic penguins. But Humboldt penguins are also officially listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which means they are at immediate or imminent risk of becoming endangered.
More than 120 countries, including 21 in Asia, display some 15,000 Humboldt penguins in captivity (there are estimated to be some 24,000 of these penguins in the wild). Unlike the Antarctic penguins, which can survive in temperatures of -40 degrees C, the Humboldts can thrive in captivity in temperatures ranging between 12 -20 degree C, officials say.
Since their arrival on July 26, the birds have been kept in quarantine in a 200 sq ft room with a small 2m-deep pool, where six three-tonne air-conditioners and a number of freezers are helping maintain temperatures between up to 18 degree C. They are being fed a lot of fish.
Next month, if things go according to plan, the penguins will be shifted to a climate-controlled 1,800 sq ft (167 sq m) enclosure in a brand new three-storey building in the park. Penguins are hardy birds and can survive some of earths most extreme conditions. So what happened to Dory?
Doctors say on October 18, she became dull, lost her appetite, had laboured breathing, and an upset tummy. She did not respond to treatment and died five days later. Dorys death has triggered outrage among animal lovers and environmentalists who say their worst fears have come true.
They have questioned the wisdom of importing penguins who need controlled environments to survive in captivity into a city with erratic water supply and scarce local expertise to look after them. There have been allegations about the credentials of a private contractor entrusted with the upkeep of the birds. The authorities have denied the charges.
As with most things in India, the death also sparked a political row which bordered on the farcical. Opposition politicians demanded a condolence meeting to mourn Dory's death, others wanted lemon and chillies hung near the quarantine room to ward off bad luck.
Penguin deaths are not uncommon around the world. In September, 10 birds died at Devons Exmoor Zoo over the course of two weeks. Avian malaria was a suspected cause, although the post mortems proved inconclusive. But it is certainly true that India does urgently need to renovate most of its dismal zoological parks, and look after the animals in captivity better.
Whimsies of politicians
Even the government admits this. In India, many well-designed zoos were set up in some of the states, but for the most part, zoos have not been able to meet the challenges imposed by the changing scenario and still continue with the legacy of the past - displaying animals under conditions which are neither congenial to the animals nor educative and rewarding to the visitors, says a Central Zoo Authority 2014 report.
The story so far of the Mumbai penguins also mirrors what many believe is a mismatch between grandiose aspirations and modest capacities. It also shows the perils of policies drafted around the whimsies of politicians.
After penguins, theres even a bold plan to develop an African savannah, with zebras and giraffes on a seven-acre plot in the same zoo. It would be sobering to look at the travails of a lion safari planned in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a pet project of a ruling regional politician: five lions, including two cubs, have already died.
Then there are other questions. Is it worth spending so much money on procuring penguins when most of our zoos are cash-strapped and you are not able to look after what you already have? wonders wildlife expert Aniruddha Mookerjee. Also, how many Indians are really dying to see Humboldt penguins?
The Byculla zoo is expected to get a $25m makeover in the coming years. That is good news. For the moment, authorities are depending on faith to keep Mumbais penguins alive. We should now pray, says zoo director Dr Tripathi, that the other penguins survive.
Unorganised builders and secondary (resale) property market would be adversely impacted following the government's decision to demonetise Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from midnight, according to real estate developers and consultants.
Housing prices could witness downward pressure, helping revive demand in the sluggish housing segment, they added.
"We are moving toward the cashless economy which is a sign of maturing economy. It's a step in the right direction," DLF CEO Rajeev Talwar told PTI.
"The blackmoney was mostly in land purchase. But in last 6-7 years, there has been no major land buying in this sector. Big builders and organised players are already using bank channel and they would gain from this decision. Unorganised players and the secondary market would be impacted," he said.
Asked about impact on real estate sector especially housing, Talwar said: "There could be downward pressure on prices, which will boost demand".
When contacted, JLL India Country Head and Chairman Anuj Puri said: "It will not have any impact on the primary residential segment as the buyer in this sector are driven by mortgage. The impact will be felt in the secondary market and the unorganised developers community where there were still cash dealing."
Terming it as a very good move, Puri said: "This decision will help institutionalise the real estate sector".
"Its a fantastic and bold move by the government. A lot of money will get into the banking systes," CREDAI Chairman Irfan Razack told PTI.
"Listed entities and organised players will not be affected from this decision," he said, adding that there would not be much impact on housing demand and sales.
Razack, who is chirman of bengaluru-based Prestige Estates, said there could be some impact on secondary market of big cities but primary market is largely through banking channel.
Realty industry body CREDAI President Gitambar Anand said that primary market will not be impacted but resale market will feel the pinch.
NAREDCO President Parveen Jain said: "It is a very good move as this step will help in keeping a check on the illegal black money movement. If we talk about real estate sector, affordable and mid housing segment will not be affected as these transactions are primarily routed through bank borrowings."
Rohit Gera, MD, Gera Developments and VP, CREDAI- Pune Metro, said: "The move by the Prime Minister to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes to eliminate corruption and black money is a fabulous move."
"The impact of this will be huge in many markets where payment of cash is mandatory and the major form of profit taking. These markets will see a major crash making an already difficult situation even more challenging," he added.
"The banning of higher currency notes is a major move which will help curb unaccounted-for cash in the real estate sector. We have just witnessed a tremendous step towards increased transparency in the Indian real estate industry. The effects will be far reaching and immediate, and shake up the sector in no uncertain way," JLL's Puri said.
"Black money deals are more common in the unorganized market, but this practice has, in fact, been on the decrease with greater awareness on the part of buyers. Before too long, the caricatured version of black money driving Indian real estate is no longer applicable," he added.
Egyptians threaten to launch a Revolt of the Poor on Nov 11 to protest soaring prices, lack of clean drinking water, shortage of sugar and cooking oil, cutting fuel subsidies, and new taxes.
The movements Facebook page has more than 1,00,000 followers who are urged to oust the corrupt regime and liberate the country from those who have betrayed and humiliated the Egyptian people.
In mid-October, an anonymous tuk-tuk (auto) driver castigated the government headed by President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi for investing billions of dollars in high profile developments but spending little on providing food, education, agriculture and health care for the countrys struggling poor.
You watch Egyptian television and (Cairos) like Vienna, you go out in the street and its like Somalias cousin. We had sufficient sugar and enough rice before the last presidential election and we even exported it... They squander our money on so-called national projects that are useless and education in Eg-ypt is very bad, even worse than you can imagine, he told an independent television channel.
The video was picked up by social media and viewed by millions before it was removed, prompting angry Egyptians to accuse the government of repressing criticism of its rule and the authorities to mount fresh arrests of dissidents.
Cairo has serious reasons for concern. The widely watched video was followed by the self-immolation of a taxi driver in the port city of Alexandria to condemn rising costs. The 2011 Arab Spring uprising across the Arab world was triggered when a Tunisian vegetable vendor set himself alight to protest police harassment.
Few Egyptians believe the Revolt of the Poor could draw tens of thousands to Cairo's iconic Tahrir (Liberation) Square as did the demonstration on January 25, 2011, and over the next 17 days, topping 30-year president Hosni Mubarak.
However, the volatile situation is unpredictable. Organisers of the 2011 event had told Deccan Herald at that time they had not expected more than 150 to turn up in response to the social media call for a rally. Over 50,000 took part.
The crackdown on all dissent since the army ousted president Muhammad Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood stalwart, in July 2013, has united the opposition consisting of supporters of the outlawed Brotherhood and the marginalised secular revolutionaries who led the 2011 mass campaign.
Army chief Sisi who both removed and succeeded Morsi was elected president by 97% of voters who expected him to address the demands of the uprising: Bread, freedom and social justice. He has failed to do so, turning Egyptians against him and undermining the respect enjoyed by the army.
Todays conditions are very different from the days of the uprising. At that time, riot police and security officers attacked the protesters with birdshot, water cannon and lathis.
The army stayed aloof, prom-pting demonstrators to shout, The people and army are one hand! Today, the army is blam-ed for the collapse of the economy, the suppression of political dissent, massive spending on trophy projects and corruption.
Finally, Morsis ouster unleashed anti-government attacks by Brotherhood backers and prompted jihadis linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State to step up violence against the army and police in the Sinai Peninsula and mount operations in Cairo and elsewhere.
Getting priorities wrong
Sisi would have had nothing to worry about if he had halted the collapse of the economy. Enlargement of the Suez Canal, a main revenue source, has failed to bring in more money.
Money invested in a nuclear power plant and a new administrative centre outside Cairo was ludicrous at a time 40% of 94 million Egyptians live below the poverty line. Sisi got his priorities wrong. Soaring prices of state-subsidised food deny Egyptians sustenance while the lack of schools, health centres, and jobs deny Egyptians a decent future.
Egypt has only $19.6 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Due to the low price of oil and strained relations between Cairo and Riyadh, Egypt can no longer expect huge injections of Saudi cash $25 billion since 2011 to keep the country afloat.
The lack of Saudi funds could not have come at a worse time for the economy. Tourism has fallen dramatically, imports are being reduced, and the currency is in free fall until the governm-ent devalued it by 48% and announced it would be allowed to float. This will increase costs for manufacturers and importers, including those who bring in rice, sugar and other essentials.
Faced with demands for parliament to vote no confidence in the government, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail argued Egypt's economic collapse is due to the failure of former governments to embrace radical reform or make difficult decisions.
Unfortunately, the difficult decisions his government is facing include the International Monetary Funds demand to raise taxes and reduce subsidies in exchange for a $12 billion loan, moves that could fuel the Revolt of the Poor whether or not it manages to mount protests on Nov 11 or not.
Influenced by the tech prowess of Indian startups, British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday exhorted the need for deep technology partnership between the countries, especially with Bengaluru, and wooed them to set up offices in her country.
May got an overview of Indian startups through a panel discussion and a roundtable interaction with the selected five startups at Indias Silicon Valley, organised by the British High Commission.
According to Nasscom Product Council Chairman Ravi Gururaj, who participated in both meetings, British Prime Minister pointed out that there is a lot of opportunities for Indian startups to interact with the UK ecosystem.
The UK is a launch pad for startups to Europe. Also, she pointed out that the UK companies can also come to Bengaluru and avail opportunities in the Indian market.
Besides collaborating in deep tech research with academia and startups, she wanted to explore the ways to link Bengaluru to the startup cluster in the UK, he said.
The startups that met May included Radiowalla Chief Executive Officer Anil Srivatsa, English Dost Founder Ram Kakkad, Cardiac Design Labs Founder and CEO Anand Madanagopal, Data Glen CTO and Co-founder Tanuja Ganu, and SAHA Fund CEO Ankita Vashishtha.
Talking to DH after meeting the PM, Vashishtha said it was really a great focussed interaction, as she reached out to startups, investors, corporates and policymakers.
She started off with the need for strong bonding with India, especially with Bengaluru, Vashishtha said, adding that she highlighted that the UK wants to invest in innovation and technology. She also pointed out that the UK is the sixth best destination in ease of doing business. Obviously, post-Brexit, they want to highlight the importance of the UK and want others to explore it, Vashishtha said.
She also said that the PM wanted many Indian businesses to invest there and vice-versa. She highlighted the importance of sending more focussed delegation to each countries and make investment a reality, she said.
Madanagopal said it was interesting that she took time from all the people gathered and decided to spend time with the startups.
Her acknowledgment and appreciation of the work done by startups here gives great brand value for the startup eco system of Bengaluru, he said. Madanagopal also pointed out that the event was an interesting one with the government, senior executives from the industry and startups together.
According to Srivatsa, England is reaching out to India when Brexit is right on their minds and they are losing on the probable collaboration with the other European Union nations. India seems to be a great partner to them. Her reach-out was to ensure that the investors over here come out and invest in England. That was I think was her primary objective, he said.
Sharing her experience with DH, DataGlen Inc Co-Founder and CTO Tanuja (Bapat) Ganu said it was definitely a pleasure to meet British PM.
Her visit to Bengaluru and specifically meeting the delegation of SMEs shows the commitment from UK to increase business collaboration with India. There are a lot of Indian start-ups, including DataGlen, who work in bringing innovations in energy, healthcare, transportation etc. which are applicable to Indian as well as UK markets, she said.
Ganu also pointed out that systematic approach for this Indo-UK collaboration would help Indian start-ups to explore opportunities in UK market in terms of investors, partners and customers.
It would also help Indian start-up eco-system to learn from the experiences and success stories of UK ecosystem, adds she.
Dream come true for Dynamatic CEO
It is really a dream come true for Udayant Malhoutra when British Prime Minister Theresa May visited Dynamatic Technologies as part of her visit to Bengaluru on Tuesday.
I am really overwhelmed by her decision to visit Dynamatic Technologies. It is really a net result of our focus on innovation-led manufacturing where latest technologies are converging, he said. Malhoutra also pointed out that India can be a manufacturing hub provided it has a global delivery model.
Largest fitness chain Talwalkars Better Value Fitness (TBVFL) on Tuesday inaugurated 20 gyms under the Power World Gyms brand in Bengaluru, as part of its expansion strategy.
We have opened 20 gyms on a single day with an investment of Rs 45 crore. This expansion is continuation of the companys strategic partnership with Power World Gyms (PWG), Sri Lanka, Talwalkars MD and CEO Prashant Talwalkar said. Talwalkars has over 176 gyms across 84 cities, offering a diverse set of services including gyms, spas, aerobics and health counselling. In October last year, Talwalkars made a significant investment in PWG, its maiden acquisition outside the country. At present, we have 17 gyms in Sri Lanka and we will be foraying into other countries soon, said Talwalkar.
PWGs operating model makes available high-class fitness facilities and training in gyms at an affordable price. We will be taking this model to other cities soon, he added.
An army soldier was killed in fresh ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.
Defence spokesman Lt Col Manish Mehta said Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked small arms firing and used 120mm mortar shells in Nowshera sector of Rajouri and Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch from Tuesday morning.
The Pakistan army used 120 mm mortars and automatics to target Indian positions, which was adequately responded to by our troops. Shelling and firing exchanges are still going on in the area, Mehta said.
Army sources said two others were injured in the shelling.
On Sunday, two soldiers were killed and five others, including two armymen, a BSF officer, one policeman and a woman, were injured as the Pakistani army opened fire in an attempt to facilitate two infiltration bids along the LoC in Krishna Ghati sector. Indian troops had successfully thwarted the infiltration attempts, forcing the militants to retreat to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
There have been more than 100 ceasefire violations on Indian posts and civilian areas along the LoC and International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir following the surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army on terror launch pads in PoK on September 29.
Nearly 22 people, including 11 civilians and 11 security personnel, have been killed and 80 others, mostly civilians, were injured in these incidents. India shares a 198-km IB and over 510 km-long LoC with Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
The state government has closed over 400 schools along the IB and the LoC in the Jammu region in the wake of the ongoing heavy cross-border firing.
A day after British Prime Minister Theresa May rejected New Delhis call for easing visa restrictions, Deputy Mayor of London for Business Rajesh Agarwal on Tuesday called on her to relax the rules.
In the aftermath of Brexit, it is more important than ever that companies in London and across Britain have access to the global talent they need to grow and create jobs and prosperity, said Agarwal.
Agarwal, who hails from Indore in Madhya Pradesh, migrated to the UK in 2001. He was appointed deputy mayor last June.
If we are to make the most of the opportunities presented by Brexit, we need to be more open to highly skilled workers from countries, including India, coming to work for British companies, said Agarwal, who is in New Delhi to attend the India-UK Tech Summit. Theresa on Monday made it clear that London would grant visas to more Indians, only if the countrys citizens, who had been overstaying in the UK, returned expeditiously.
Her comment came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi nudged her to ease restrictions on visas for Indians, particularly for students aspiring to study in the UK universities. The stricter British visa rules on the return of students from non-EU nations at the end of their studies resulted in a steep fall in the number of applications from the Indian youths to study in the UK. Indian companies have also been concerned over the implication of stricter visa rules by the British government on the ability of its professionals to work in the UK.
An emergency landing in Karachi will be the last thing on the mind of a pilot operating an Indian flight when tension between India and Pakistan is at its zenith.
A Jet Airways pilot did just that in the wee hours of Tuesday when a passenger on board developed medical problems mid-air. As many as 141 passengers were on board the Boeing 737 aircraft.
The pilot of the 9W 202 that departed from Delhi for Doha had to choose between flying back to Delhi or landing in Karachi, which was closer, and he chose the second option.
The flight landed in Karachi airport around 2 AM with the Karachi Air Traffic Control (ATC) extending all help as per the international obligation. They informed their counterparts in Delhi. Despite the best efforts, the passenger could not be saved.
Our flight 9W 202 of Nov 7 from Delhi to Doha was diverted to Karachi due to a medical health emergency on board. Since one of the guests developed a medical condition, the Captain decided to land at the nearest airport, given the emergency, the airline said in a statement. Medical assistance was coordinated prior to the flight's arrival.
However, the passenger succumbed on arrival in Karachi, it said.
The aircraft returned to the capital on Tuesday morning. The staff has made arrangements to hand over the body to the authorities as per standard operating procedure.
Guests have deplaned and our Delhi airport team is providing all required assistance, including refreshments & hotel accommodation, the airline said.
We regret the incident and convey our deepest and heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family. We have taken utmost care to ensure that the family of the deceased is duly informed and also providing all the required assistance, it added.
The airline is accommodating the other passengers, who missed connecting flights due to the detour, on alternative flights, it said.
Like father, like daughter. Life has come a full circle for prominent Kannada director Girish Kasaravalli, who has strode like a colossus on off-beat, art cinema Kannada marquee. The proud father is basking in the glory of his equally prodigious daughter Ananya Kasaravalli.
Tutored by her illustrious father, and schooled at LV Prasad Film & TV Academy, Chennai, under the stewardship of renowned Tamil director K Hariharan, for her Masters, Ananya, with a couple of award-winning short films under her belt, is basking in the success of her maiden directorial feature Harikatha Prasanga (Chronicles of Hari).
The film will vie for the Centenary Award for Best Debut Feature of a Director at the 47th International Film Festival of India, 2016, in Goa, which gets under way on November 20. The winner will receive the prestigious Silver Peacock, along with citation and Rs 10 lakh cash prize.
Ananyas Harikatha is contesting with six other films Israeli film One Week & A Day by Asaph Polonsky, Chilean film Rara by Pepa San Martin, Lebanese film Tramontane by Vatche Boulghourjian, Algerian-French film Two Birds, One Stone by woman director Fejria Deliba, Wolf & Sheep, a Danish-Afghan film by Shahrbanoo Sadat and Wrath.
Ananyas nuanced Harikatha Prasanga addresses gender identity issues, social prejudices, and how it destroys a talented artiste stri veshadhari coming to terms with his fragmented life as he straddles his search for acceptance, finally subsuming himself in the role he plays, following societal opprobrium.
Haris life is captured through two young documentary filmmakers. He is believed to have killed himself despite popularity in playing female roles. Providing different perspectives into his persona, the film, shot in Byndoor and Kundapur, spotlights on his strained relationship with his brother, failed marriage, travails as artiste, and the final decision to go for gender change to take on a womans personality completely.
Ananyas film has been creating a buzz, receiving rave reviews at Busan International Festival, Jio Mumbai International Film Festival and is being featured at Kerala International Film Festival, in India Cinema Now Section.
A closely guarded proposal to dismantle the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has triggered a sense of unease among public health campaigners, who plan to approach the Supreme Court seeking its intervention on the move.
Over the past three weeks, government and Niti Ayog officials had two rounds of consultations.
A report has been prepared on why NPPA must be dismantled and how the drug price control mechanism would work in the absence of the authority that has been fixing the ceiling price of essential medicines since 1997.
We would request the Supreme Court to seek clarifications from the government as the move is meant to appease only the industry, said S Srinivasan of LOCOST, a non-governmental outfit that advocates affordable medicine.
No document on the plan to dismantle NPPA has been released in the public domain. The two consultations on October 19 and November 7 were attended by officials from the departments of health, pharmaceuticals, industrial promotion, commerce and Niti Ayog.
None of the NPPA members were invited for these meetings, sources told DH.
The minutes of one of the meetings suggest officials wanted to delink the drug price control order from the national list of essential medicine.
NPPA in its present form may be wound up and deployed in the departments of pharmaceuticals, and the right to regulate prices should be vested with the government, a government official said.
While approving new drugs, the bureaucrats proposed that a drug might be considered new for a period of 10 years instead of the current four years. If implemented, this would restrict manufacturing of low-cost generic medicine.
The Supreme Court has held that the government has a Constitutional obligation to ensure the affordability of essential medicines. What is astonishing is the manner in which the government is simply capitulating to industry demands without a thought for patients, said Srinivasan.
NPPA currently fixes the prices of 376 molecules and more than 500 formulations, accounting for just about 12% of the Indian pharmaceutical market. Indias domestic pharmaceutical market is estimated to be worth Rs 1 lakh crore, besides an equally big export market.
Nearly 80% of medical care costs have to be paid by the patients out of their own pocket. Of this, 70% of the expenditure is on medicines. Denial of essential life-saving medicines due to lack of affordability is a harsh reality, said Mira Shiva of the All India Drug Action Network, which is the petitioner in an ongoing case on affordable medicine before the apex court.
The state government is contemplating grant of official status to the Kannada flag.
The Kannada flag, rectangular in shape, with a strip of yellow (top half) and red in equal measure, symbolises Kannada and Karnataka.
We are contemplating enacting a law to give the Kannada flag an official status, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters in Bengaluru. Officials in the Kannada and Culture Department said a meeting of officials, experts and legal luminaries will be held soon to work out the modalities. So far, its only an idea, no proposal as such is ready, the official said. The flag was first conceived by Bengaluru-based social activist M Ramamurthy, who used it as a flag for a party founded by him Kannada Paksha in 1965. The Kannada Development Authority in 1998 did recommend that official status be granted to the Kannada flag. However, the law department turned down the proposal citing legal hurdles.
In 2012, the then BJP government issued a circular making it compulsory for government offices, schools and colleges to hoist the Kannada flag on November 1. However, a division bench of the Karnataka high court questioned the governments move to hoist any flag other than the national flag. The circular was subsequently withdrawn.
Not merely an allegation by New Delhi, Pakistans role in pumping fake currency notes into India was recognised by international agencies too.
That high-quality Fake Indian Currency Notes or FICNs were printed in Pakistan and smuggled into India was highlighted even by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) an intergovernmental organisation coordinating global efforts to combat money laundering and terror financing.
Announcing de-monetisation of currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday tacitly blamed Pakistan, when he accused enemies across the border of pumping FICNs into India.
The FATF also recognised that FICNs printed in Pakistan were also used for financing terrorism against India.
The Interpol an intergovernmental organisation for police cooperation too noted that Pakistan had been the source of counterfeit currency notes being smuggled into India. In its June 2013 report, the FATF stated that high-quality counterfeit Indian notes were printed in Pakistan and then smuggled into India through transit points at Dhaka (Bangladesh), Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates and Bangkok (Thailand).
The FATF noted that the problem of counterfeit currency in India had domestic as well as international dimensions. The high-quality counterfeit Indian currency notes, however, invariably have strong international linkages. The involvement of OCGs (overseas criminal groups) based in the neighbouring countries is clearly seen by the Indian LEAs (Law Enforcing Agencies), added the intergovernmental organisation.
The FATF has altogether 36 nations as its members. The European Commission is also member of the organisation, which has Israel and Saudi Arabia as observers. India joined the FATF in 2010.
India is among the countries which reported to the FATF that individual terrorists used counterfeit currency and distributed it through terrorist networks. The proceeds were invested to strengthen terrorist support infrastructure and to finance individual attacks.
The FATF report referred to use of counterfeit currency notes by David Coleman Headley, whom Pakistan-based terror organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba had sent to Mumbai on reconnaissance missions before the November 26-28, 2008 terrorist attacks. The FATF report referred to Headley, who was later arrested in the US, as Person X and quoted him saying that an agency of a neighbouring country had provided him high-quality FICNs worth Rs 40,000 to meet his expenses during the reconnaissance missions, which provided the LeT inputs for planning the carnage in Mumbai.
The FATF also reported that a network of over-ground workers had been used to collect FICNs from Bangladesh and transfer it to Jammu in India (1,500 km away) to be further handed over to terrorists of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
The Interpol in February 2012 reported a seizure in Hong Kong of bundles of FICNs, which had been found concealed in a shipping consignment from Pakistan to Nepal.
New Delhi conveyed to the FATF that meticulous examination of the fake currency notes seized over the past few years made it clear that they had been printed using very sophisticated technologies, which did not appear to have been indigenously developed in Pakistan. India has been working with the FATF to nudge the developed countries to restrict supply of certain materials and advanced printing technologies to Pakistan, where they end up being used to print FICNs.
The Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) has also come out against the proposed steel flyover, saying the government didnt conduct proper public consultation on the project and that better alternatives are available.
The project lacks a holistic approach to the problem and will take a toll on the aesthetics and lush greenery of the city, T S Subbaiah, honorary secretary of the Indian
Institute of Architectss Bengaluru chapter, said at a press conference here on Tuesday.
The steel flyover is not validated by any master plan or broader transit policy on how to effectively manage traffic. There was no public debate on the project. Other alternatives like commuter rail, promoting public transport and opening an alternative route to the airport were never explored, he said.
Besides, Subbaiah said, the project has not been approved by the Bangalore Metropolitan Planning Committee, which is a constitutionally mandated democratic institution through which the citys planning must be carried out. The project lacks transparency as details have not been put in public domain, Subbaiah added.
The IIA said that huge money would be spent on the project without any reasonable benefits.
Eventual congestion
A transit strategy that only seeks to increase road capacities will have a very short life as it will incentivise the use of private vehicles. The increased road capacity will soon be overwhelmed by the resultant growth in vehicle numbers, Subbaiah said and added that the steel flyover would relocate congestion than resolve it.
The Indian Institute of Architects has suggested six alternatives to the steel flyover: a) build an efficient and inclusive public transport system, b) bring various modes of public transit into a coordinated network, c) create supporting infrastructure that will be pedestrian friendly, d) reduce turbulence in the road system by implementing systematic road standards, e) encourage other modes of shared transit such as carpooling, and f) examine land use planning to minimise the number and length of trip.
The association has suggested opening the Hennur-Bagalur Road up to the Kempegowda International Airport and the commuter rail to improve connectivity to the airport.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is learnt to have told Chief Miniser Siddaramaiah on Tuesday that she is not against techies coming into her country but wanted the right people with the right promises to come in.
According to officials sources, May was responding to a request made by Siddaramaiah, at an interaction in Bengaluru, to relax visa norms to minimise barriers in the flow of talented people, particularly in the IT sector.
May said the United Kingdom was looking at a long-term business exchange with Karnataka. She said the UK government had issued 4.5 lakh visas to Indians during the last one year and that itself was an indication that her country was open for talent from India. Siddaramaiah had told May the movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority rather than an immigration issue, the sources added.
The new UK visa rules announced recently specify that anyone applying after November 24, 2016 under the Tier 2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category would be required to meet a higher annual salary threshold requirement of 30,000 pounds from the earlier 20,800 pounds. Siddaramaiah requested May that the earlier threshold be continued.
The meeting, held at a five-star hotel on the Kempegowda International Airport premises, soon after May landed in Bengaluru went on for about half-an-hour. The British side comprised six- members including Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox and British High Commissioner to India Dominic Asquith.
Investments
In his speech, copies of which were released to the press, Siddaramaiah sought investment from UK-based firms in renewable energy and for creating smart cities.
Siddaramaiah pointed out that the State was in the process of putting in place Bengaluru-Mumbai Economic Corridor, under which three green field self-contained townships would be set up. He sought that Karnataka and the UK work together to identify opportunities for creating logistics, infrastructure and connectivity across fast growing regions of southern and western India.
He said the state looked forward for the early setting up of the UK Health City Project in Dharwad, for which a Memorandum of Understanding had already been signed. He said the project, which will come up in a 400 acre campus, would support manufacturing and research and, development in medical devices and equipment.
In response, May said the UK is looking at working with Karnataka in the sectors of aerospace, Information and Communication Technology and pharma.
Sixty-seven underprivileged women graduated from Gurukul of non-profit startup The Nudge Foundation, where they completed a programme in Life Management.
Gurukul, the flagship product of the company which aims to pull youngsters out of poverty, has completed a year. In all, about 300 students have graduated and 190 students are currently studying in their various centres.
Chief guest M N Reddi, DGP, Fire & Emergency Services, addressed the graduating batch and said, Life is not going to be easy, but you have crossed the first milestone. Going forward you must not just stand by what you will gain economically; you must stand for what you will give back to India.
Said Nandini, a 20-year-old student, I had to stop studying to take care of my school-going daughter and my family. I was afraid to talk to people or even get out of my house. After I joined the Gurukul, I decided that I am going to be independent no matter what. I want to educate my daughter so she never has to go through what I went through.
The students in this batch were trained in beauty services and data entry. The foundation also trains students in driving.
These professions were identified after extensive surveys of youngsters in the target group. During the four-month residential programme, the students were equipped with digital and financial literacy, numeracy and language beside skills for their chosen professions.
The foundation is supported by Nandan Nilekani and Tata Trusts among others.
Customers of the Santa Fe Irrigation District, who saw their water bills go up by an average of 9 percent on June 1, face another rate hike of as much as 15.8 percent on Jan. 1, 2017.
At its meeting on Nov. 17, the board of directors of the district, which serves customers in Solana Beach, Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks Ranch, will consider the second installment of a three-year rate plan approved in May. That plan calls for three annual rate increases, averaging 9 percent per year.
The board also approved a pass-through provision, meaning that General Manager Mike Bardin is authorized to pass along to Santa Fes customers cost increases from its suppliers, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the San Diego County Water Authority and the San Elijo Joint Powers Authority.
According to a district staff report, Santa Fes costs from those suppliers will rise by a total of 6.8 percent on Jan. 1, 2017.
Therefore, if the Santa Fe board approves the full 9 percent increase contained in its rate plan, as district staff recommends, plus the 6.8 percent pass-through, customers bi-monthly bills will jump by an average of 15.8 percent on Jan. 1. Due to the way the districts bills are calculated, the specific increase faced by customers will vary by their classification, the amount of water they use and their meter size.
The Santa Fe board has split 3-2 on the rate increases, with directors Greg Gruzdowich and Marlene King voting against the measures. In May, the district received 1,324 written protests from customers about the proposed rate plan, short of the majority needed to block the increase, but setting a record.
That split may carry over to the Nov. 17 meeting, which will be Gruzdowichs last, since he opted to step down from his seat rather than seek a new four-year term.
Im definitely going to vote against it, Gruzdowich said of the proposed rate increase, and hope that I can convince one board member to change their mind.
Gruzdowich has argued that the cost of service study was flawed, and that it is unfair to larger water users, because they are in effect subsidizing those who use less water.
Santa Fe directors are elected by geographic divisions; Gruzdowich and King represent Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks Ranch, which have larger lots, while directors Augie Daddi, Michael Hogan and Alan Smerican represent Solana Beach, which has smaller parcels. Daddi, Hogan and Smerican, who is also stepping down from the board after the Nov. 17 meeting, supported the rate plan.
Hogan said he has not seen the staff report on the proposed 9 percent increase yet, but that if financial conditions have not changed since May, when the three-year rate plan was approved, he would support the second installment of the three planned increases.
I would be inclined to support the increase per the plan, if the assumptions we made back in May are still holding true, Hogan said.
As for the cost of service study, Hogan said it was completed by a highly regarded consultant, and that the resulting rate plan is both valid and legally defensible.
Theres a fundamental disagreement. He (Gruzdowich) is questioning some of the assumptions (in the consultants study). Thats his right. I dont agree with him, Hogan said.
In supporting the three-year rate plan, district staff said the rate increases were needed due to increased costs for buying and treating water, maintaining the districts pipes and pumping stations, building its reserves and developing alternative water sources.
If the board approves the full 9 percent increase on Nov. 17, as of the first of the year, a household that uses 120 units of water every two months (the district average) will see its bi-monthly bill increase to $582.29, from the current $542.46, according to figures provided by the district. That scenario is for customers with 3/4-inch meters.
At the top end of the spectrum, a household that uses 275 units of water every two months, and has a 1-1/2-inch meter, will see its bi-monthly bill rise to $1,624.48 from the current $1,493.59.
Those who use 14 units of water every two months will see their bill rise to $113.25 from the current $104.93.
The Department of Public Safety has published the 2020 Crime in Alaska report, the annual report on instances of crime in Alaska reported a decrease in Alaskas overall crime rate by 18.5%. This also reflects the lowest total number of reported offenses since 1975 and continues the downward trend in Alaska crime that started in 2018.
While Alaskas reported violent crime rate decreased by 3.7% last year, the crime rate for rape increased slightly from 2019 to 2020. Alaskas property crime rate decreased 22.9% in 2020, and the total number of reported property offenses were at their lowest level since 1974.
The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is a nationwide effort by federal, state, city, county, and tribal law enforcement agencies to report data on crimes reported in their jurisdiction. The report is a resource for measuring the trend and distribution of crime in Alaska. Under Alaska law, law enforcement agencies in Alaska are required to submit UCR data to the State of Alaska. In 2020, 32 agencies reported crime data to DPS. These agencies represent 99.5% of the states population.
The overall decrease in Alaskas crime rate is encouraging and shows real progress in our efforts to make Alaska a safe place to live and raise a family. However, we must continue to double-down on our efforts to eliminate the scourge of sexual assault and domestic violence in our state and invest in meaningful public safety in rural Alaska, said Alaska Department of Public Safety Commissioner James Cockrell. Every Alaskan, regardless of their address, gender, or race, deserves a life that is free of crime, and the Department of Public Safety is committed to doing our part to meet that goal.
Caution should be exercised when comparing data from year to year and making conclusions as the report does not account for when an incident occurred; it accounts for when it was reported. For example, burglary or theft occurring in November of one year may not have been discovered and reported until February of the next year. The incident is not retroactively applied to a previous years data; it is counted in the year it was reported.
Rape offenses are counted by victim, and each separation of time and place a rape occurs will also be counted. Sexual assaults spanning years will result in numerous counts of rape offenses being reported for a single victim.
The 2020 Crime in Alaska report was authored by the Alaska Department of Public Safetys Division of Statewide Services. The Division of Statewide Services provides technical and specialized services to the Department of Public Safety and law enforcement agencies across the state. Past Crime in Alaska Reports and Felony-Level Sex Offenses reports can be found online.
The UCR and Crime in Alaska reports are based on the Federal Bureau of Investigation UCR Program definitions of crimes to ensure consistency and uniformity in reported offenses on a national level. The definitions do not always echo state definitions; therefore, federal publications cannot accurately be compared to reports that use the state definitions for crimes as these are unique to each state. Additionally, the population counts for Crime in Alaska come from the US Census.
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by the Akiak Native Community
This is a letter dated March 31, 2021 sent to Secretary Janet Yellen, United States Department of the Treasury from the Akiak Native Community.
I write on behalf of the Akiak Native Community, a federally-recognized Tribe located on the Kuskokwim river in remote Western Alaska. Our village is only accessible by boat or plane most of the year, but COVID-19 has still found its way here and exacerbated the many challenges faced by our community residents.
We thank you for providing the opportunity to consult on the Treasurys allocation of the additional Coronavirus Relief Funds provided in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP). Given the unique circumstances of our Tribal communities, we ask Treasury to distribute at least a quarter of the Funds to Alaskas 229 Tribes.
Allocation Recommendations
The ARP set aside $20 billion to support Tribes in their effort to reduce the rate of transmission, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19. In addition to health-related goals, the relief package is designated to improve access to clean water and electricity, to facilitate access to reliable internet, and to improve the economic condition in Tribal communities. These service deficiencies are perhaps most extreme in Alaska, where many of our remote communities still rely on the honey bucket and have limited access to clean water, and broadband is virtually non-existent. These goals align directly with the needs of Alaska Tribes.
First, the previous CARES Act relief package left Alaskas Tribes in need when it did not account for the unique nature of our Tribal governments and the communities we serve. In addition to not accounting for the geographic realities of our state and the corresponding cost and infrastructure differences, the packages funding formula was inequitable.
Because of the unique structure laid out in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), the previous plans calculation that was based on each Tribes annual revenue and number of employees was fundamentally unfair. ANCSA left Alaskas Tribal governments without land to manage. This reality simultaneously limits Tribal employment opportunities and keeps annual revenues low.
In addition to a lack of land to manage, Alaskan Tribes do not have the opportunity to create jobs and revenue through sources common to other Tribes, like tobacco sales and casinos. In short, the CARES Act disbursement plan left Alaskan Tribes, that already have limited means to earn revenue, without sufficient support to protect their communities from COVID, let alone engage in any sort of long-term projects to alleviate the conditions that contribute to disease spread overall.
ANCSA also skewed how Tribal membership is counted in Alaska. Many Alaskan Native people are not formally enrolled in a Tribe they may instead be shareholders of an Alaska Native corporation, which is sufficient to prove eligibility for federal Indian-specific programs. As a result, any distribution based on enrollment data will undercount Alaska Natives by a significant amount, especially for Alaska Natives that live in urban areas.
IHS user population data may be a better proxy for Tribal population. But, metrics aside, a population based distribution will never provide enough to overcome the structural obstacles that have hindered COVID response in Alaskas remote Tribal communities. Individual villages are relatively small and we lose many members to our larger urban centers due to the inability to provide basic services, like water and sewer infrastructure and reliable internet. A population based distribution will not be sufficient to meet the overwhelming need in our communities.
Second, in addition to problems with generating income, the especially remote nature of Alaskas Tribal communities has made it difficult to battle the pandemic. The vast distances from the nearest city have made it challenging for Tribes to access PPE, administer tests, and support those who test positive.
Due to the remote nature of their homes, Tribal members who develop acute symptoms must be transported by medevac to the nearest ICU. It is a sad reality that Tribal members have died while waiting for the weather to clear enough for a medevac team to arrive. In these cases, having supplies or trained individuals on the ground and in the community could have saved lives.
Remote living also presents a problem with housing, which makes social distancing virtually impossible. Because it is challenging and expensive to ship building supplies to the rural tundra, the few homes in town tend to house several generations of family members. The lack of housing combined with inter-generational living means that when a family member tests positive for the virus, there is often nowhere for them to isolate. The lack of social distancing combined with a lack of healthcare, PPE, cleaning supplies, and running water has led to a perfect storm for the spread of the virus.
Unfortunately, there are several Tribes in my region whose battle with the virus was so acute that only a few weeks after the first positive was detected, over fifty percent of their members contracted the virus.
The short construction season and late distribution of CARES Act funds also prevented many Tribal communities from shipping in building supplies in time to build adequate quarantine or isolation facilities.
Because most Tribal communities have no access to a hospital or even a local health clinic an effective vaccine distribution effort would have been impossible without a complicated and expensive plan. For example, the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation implemented Operation Togo, a plan that was so remarkable it made national news.
Operation Togo directed healthcare professionals to fly from village-to-village to inoculate Tribal members across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (Y-K Delta). The delicate nature of the vaccine combined with the remote nature of Tribal communities led nurses to administer many shots on snowy runways before flying to the next village. This was not surprising given that most Alaska Tribal communities received their vaccines from healthcare professionals who came in for only a few hours before traveling to the next village.
Third, to complicate matters, many Alaskan Tribes still live without access to running water. Indeed, many Tribal members battle the virus by hauling water to their homes for cleaning and handwashing. The need for water infrastructure was clearly illustrated when the only source of water in a nearby village (Tuluksak) burned down in January.
Tribal members there had to boil river water for forty-five days before the problem was resolved. The health and safety of many other Tribal communities that rely on a singular water source are equally as precarious. Given that the stated purpose of the ARP is to improve water infrastructure, adequate funding is necessary for Alaskas Tribes.
Fourth, the majority of Alaskas Tribes do not have access to broadband internet connection. Even when communities have access to internet services, families must pay hundreds of dollars per month for a subscription. This has made it challenging for Tribes to communicate with the outside world.
For example, it is difficult for Tribal members to communicate with their doctors who work in a faraway city. This concern is especially acute when travel restrictions and COVID precautions have moved many Tribal members medical appointments online.
In addition to concerns about access to telemedicine, the lack of internet has made remote schooling especially challenging. When equity in education is already a top priority for Alaskas Tribes, this only exacerbates a bad situation. After schools closed, Tribal communities that were fortunate enough to provide technology to each family have utilized an intranet system to allow students to work from home. Other communities asked teachers to deliver packets of homework for students to complete independently every week. Whatever the system, our students have not done well during the pandemic.
Indeed, one larger community has reported that between one third and one-half of students from early elementary school to middle school did not even turn enough homework to receive a grade for the first semester.
Funding for affordable broadband internet will address immediate educational challenges caused by the pandemic and will make great strides in our goal to improve equity in education for our students.
Fifth, even before the pandemic damaged our financial stability, Alaskas Tribal communities were already impoverished. The high cost of living that necessarily comes with remote living only amplifies the effects of poverty. For example, because Alaskas villages are not connected to an energy grid, most rely on imported oil for heat and generators that require imported diesel fuel for electricity.
Similarly, food and other necessities are especially expensive in Tribal communities. For example, a gallon of bleach could cost thirty dollars and a twelve ounce can of coffee beans can cost fifteen dollars-and that was pre-COVID surge pricing.
Whats more, problems caused by poverty and a high cost of living are left unchecked because there are simply very few jobs available. Here in Akiak, for example, one of our only opportunities for employment comes from the highly controversial Donlin Gold Project.
Finally, remote living and poverty limit our ability to address climate change, which has had an especially distinct impact on our Tribes. Alaskas ancient communities face competing problems of extreme weather, melting tundra, erosion, flooding, and more.
To illustrate, Napakiak, which is about thirty miles downriver from Akiak, is anxious to find funding to replace its school that is a mere ninety-seven feet from being engulfed by the Kuskokwim River.
Other villages, like Newtok have already been forced to move their entire community to a new location due to rapid erosion.
Compliance and Reporting
The compliance and reporting requirements associated with the last distribution of Coronavirus Relief Funds (from the CARES Act) was confusing and burdensome. First, Treasury should issue clear guidance on the use of funds at the time of distribution. With the CARES Act funds, Treasury issued guidance and then updated that guidance and FAQ document just about every month thereafter.
With program guidelines constantly changing, it was nearly impossible to determine what was allowable. Moreover, many Treasury clarifications impacted expenditures Tribes had already made on an emergency basis to aid our Tribal members. We need clear rules that are easy to understand on where the lines are regarding allowable expenditures.
We should not need to rely on consultants and lawyers to provide guidance for every anticipated expenditure. And we need Treasury to be flexible in its interpretations to provide the maximum benefit to Tribal members instead of being overly restrictive and impeding those of us trying to help our communities.
Treasury should similarly make reporting relatively easy. Many Tribes are having to conduct an audit for the first time due to the influx of Tribal funds and they are new to this process. Having to conduct quarterly reports in a different software system is difficult and may overwhelm small Tribes.
Keep in mind that many of these Tribes have a Tribal Administrator that is handling COVID funds on top of their regular job duties we do not have many skilled accountants or professionals in the village standing by that can be hired to help on a short-term basis solely for COVID. Thus, we must figure this all out on our own or hire an outside firm to provide assistance remotely. Treasury should keep in mind that the more we spend on consultants, the less we have for assistance to our Tribal members.
Communications, Training and Technical Assistance
We need more technical assistance from Treasury. Treasury should provide a number of consultation sessions where Tribes can ask more detailed questions about allowable expenditures and get clear answers. Similarly, before the first reports are due, Treasury should host webinars in which it walks Tribal staff through the reporting system and reporting requirements and answers questions from Tribes. These training and technical assistance would help those of us that are trying to wade through all these requirements on our own.
* * *
Alaskas Tribes were shortchanged by the prior distribution methodology. They have some of the most severe needs in the country and now need an allocation of $5-10 billion to transform our communities and bring them into the 21st century in terms of water, sewer, internet and other infrastructure needs. These needs have become crucial during this pandemic, as recognized by the stated goals of the American Rescue Plan. We need support in the distribution of PPE and cleaning supplies. We need support in the reduction of transmission, hospitalization, and death. But we also need support to develop our water and utility systems. We need access to high-speed internet. We need tools to improve our economic circumstances. And we need the government to fulfill its promise to help Tribal communities meet these needs.
Michael Williams, Sr., Chief
Akiak Native Community
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by the Bethel VFW Post and Post Auxiliary
VFW Post 10041 would like to say Happy Veterans Day to all Yukon-Kuskokwim Area veterans who wore our nations military uniform, past and present. Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day in 1918 the end of WWI. In 1954, the day was renamed Veterans Day to honor WW2 and Korean War Veterans.
In the past, schools would honor all veterans in their villages, even in Bethel. With this pandemic COVID-19, this year it will not happen but that doesnt mean we as YK Delta residents can still honor our vets. Honor our veterans, by just saying Thank You. I can tell you that being recognized really means so much to a veteran. Thank them for courage, selfless duty and sacrifice for keeping our country free.
I can tell you that our people here in Alaska, especially the YK Delta are very patriotic. This showed during WW2 where our parents-grandparents joined the Alaska Territorial Guard to safeguard our country. So many of our young adults joined our military forces in the past and present: U.S Army, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marines. On this day, please thank them for their service.
I offer this Veterans Day Prayer:
Almighty God, Father of us all, we, your servants, turn to you for continuance of your blessings upon us. You who have spared us veterans from the grasp of our enemies, grant us the full understanding of your precious comfort.
We thank you for the privileges of life and the blessing we enjoy through your graciousness in our country, the land in which we are given Freedom of Speech, Religion, and the pursuit of happiness. Assist us to know you better and the wisdom to acknowledge you as the God of the universe and our ideal.
In your mercy, may we the living find our peace. Grant us from above, this day, the challenge of high endeavor, the beauty of a humble spirit, the strong courage and will, without exertion, to continue to glorify you, to praise you, and to love you to the end of time.
AMEN.
In closing we pray for our military who now guard the gates of freedom to our country, the United States of America.
-Henry J. Hunter SR., VFW Post Commander, Robert V. Lindsey Post 10041
-Tess Guinn, VFW Post Auxiliary President, VFW Post 10041
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by Alaska Division of Forestry
July 13, 2019: Eleven new lightning-caused fires were discovered in the Alaska Division of Forestrys Southwest Area on Friday and more new fires are anticipated as a result of thousands of lightning strikes over the past three days.
More than 1,500 lightning strikes were recorded in Alaska on Friday, down considerably from the two days previous when 10,000 and 20,000 strikes, respectively, were detected across the state on Wednesday and Thursday. From Wednesday through Friday, there were 40 new lightning-caused fires discovered or reported in the Southwest Area around McGrath.
State forestry is currently staffing four fires in the Southwest Area, mainly to defend life, property, and values including commercial and historical infrastructure, remote cabins, and Native Alaskan allotments of land. There are currently 58 active fires in the Southwest Area, most in limited suppression areas with no known values at risk. Those fires are being monitored by air when conditions allow.
Here is a rundown of the four staffed fires in the Southwest Area, as well as the new fires reported late Thursday night and on Friday.
Staffed Fires
The Smith Creek Fire (#534), formerly the Grouse Creek Fire, was started by lightning on July 12 and is 13 miles northwest of Crooked Creek. The fire is 100% active in black spruce and multiple structures are threatened, notably the Donlin Gold Mine. Non-essential mine personnel are being relocated, and eight smokejumpers are in place to provide structure protection. A 20-person crew is being mobilized to the incident.
The McCally Creek Fire (#487) was caused by lightning on July 10 and is one of three fires that started on the same day within 3 miles of the village of Red Devil on the Kuskokwim River. The three fires are being managed as one. The other two fires are the 50-acre Barometer Mountain Fire (#491) and the 300-acre Barometer Foothills Fire (#499). Aircraft initially attacked the Barometer Foothills Fire to allow eight smokejumpers that had been deployed to try to suppress the other two smaller fires. The initial attack on the Barometer Foothills Fire was unsuccessful and all resources retreated to Red Devil to plan for structure protection. Smokejumpers were demobilized from Red Devil Friday morning and the fires were turned over to a Type 4 organization. However, the smokejumpers were brought back to the incident later that night because of increased fire activity. There are a total of 35 firefighters in place at Red Devil. The fire is burning in black spruce and tundra.
The Tundra Lake Fire (#474) was started by lightning on July 10 and is 50 miles northwest of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, about 10 miles south of Lime Village. Eight smokejumpers are defending a cabin and a Native Alaskan allotment near the fire, which is 450 acres in size and 90% active.
The Hidden Creek Fire (#464) began on July 9 and is 20 miles northwest of Nikolai in the area of the Nixon Fork Gold Mine. Seven smokejumpers and 16 firefighters from McGrath are in place at the mine, setting up pumps, hose lays and sprinkler systems on area structures, which have not been impacted by the fire. The 300-acre fire is burning in mixed spruce and hardwoods, and the cause is under investigation.
New Fires
The Aghaluk Creek Fire (#544) started by lightning on July 13 near the Kuskokwim River, 25 miles southwest of Crooked Creek. The fire is 1,000 acres in size, burning in black spruce and tundra. A helitack crew from McGrath has been ordered to provide structure protection on a nearby cabin.
The Gemuna Creek Fire (#540) was started by lightning on July 13 about 6 miles northwest of Crooked Creek. The unstaffed fire is 30 acres in size, burning in black spruce and tundra. No additional information is available at this time.
The Buckstock River Fire (#543) was started by lightning on July 13 about 15 miles southeast of Aniak. The unstaffed fire has burned 25 acres in tundra. No known values are at risk and the fire will be monitored by air.
The Peary Creek Fire (#536) was caused by lightning on July 12, approximately 15 miles north of Crooked Creek. The fire has burned 2,200 acres of black spruce. There is no additional information on the fire and it is being monitored by aircraft.
The Middle Hoholitna Fire (#532) was started by lightning on July 12, about 45 miles southwest of Lime Village. The unstaffed fire is 3 acres in size and 80% active in black spruce. No known values are at risk and the fire will be monitored by air.
The Hoholitna River Fire (#531) was started by lightning on July 12, about 35 miles south of Stony River. The unstaffed fire is 15 acres in size and 60% active in black spruce. No known values are at risk and the fire will be monitored by air.
The Middle Hoholitna Fire (#528) was started by lightning on July 12, approximately 15 miles south of Stony River. The unstaffed fire is 80 acres in size and 100% active in black spruce and tundra. No known values are at risk and the fire will be monitored by air.
The Diamond Peak Fire (#527) was started by lightning on July 12 and is 15 miles west of Lime Village. The unstaffed fire is two acres in size, and 30% active in black spruce and tundra. No known values are at risk and the fire will be monitored by air.
The East Stony River Fire (#523) was started by lightning on July 12, approximately 4 miles east of Stony River. The unstaffed fire is burning in black spruce, hardwoods and tundra and is 5 acres in size. Smokejumpers and air tankers were ordered for the fire.
The Tishimna Lake Fire (#521) was started by lightning on July 12 and is about 25 miles northwest of Lime Village. The unstaffed fire was estimated at 2 acres, 10% active, burning in black spruce and tundra. There is a cabin 1.5 miles from the fire but it is not threated at this time.
To check on fires currently being monitored in the Southwest Area and to get information about other fires in Alaska, go to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center Daily Situation Report.
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Ideal for receiving high resolution and high framerate data from Sony CMOS Image Sensor
YOKOHAMA, Japan-- November 08, 2016 -- Macnica, Inc., a global leader in distributing semiconductors, electronic components, and network equipment, with its headquarter located in 1-6-3 Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Japan (Macnica), today expanded its Mpression IP portfolio releasing SLVS-EC interface IP core for ALTERA FPGA compliant with SLVS-EC interface technology newly incorporated into Sony CMOS Image Sensor. Users can quickly develop and introduce their products early into market with SLVS-EC technology.
Macnica is a global, technology oriented distributor particularly focusing on demand creation. Macnica not only offers outstanding technical support for its product lines but also provides its original products and services under its Mpression brand for satisfying customer needs and solving issues.
Sony CMOS Image Sensor with SLVS-EC interface capable of high speed data transfer will be introduced into CMOS Image Sensor market to satisfy needs for trending higher resolution and higher framerate.
Mpression SLVS-EC Rx IP Macnica has developed can support and contribute users who develop advanced products supporting SLVS-EC interface.
Macnica has paid attention to SLVS-EC interface in the early days and realized a world first solution to receive high speed image data transmitted over SLVS-EC interface on ALTERA FPGA.
Now, the IP enables to connect Sony high resolution and high framerate CMOS Image Sensor to FPGA easily. It is ideal for a various applications like the products with CMOS image sensor and FPGA to receive the image data.
Macnica is licensing the IP worldwide through its subsidiaries or partners. ATD Electronique, an affiliate of Macnica sells and supports it in Europe.
Macnica will exhibit demonstration of SLVS-EC Rx IP at the booth of ATD Electronique in VISION SHOW held in Stuttgart, Germany from November 8 to 10.
About Macnica:
Macnica has been established since 1972 as a semiconductor distribution company headquartered in Yokohama, Japan servicing customers in Japan, the Americas and Asia through its 75 sales offices around the world. Total number of employees is over 2,000 worldwide and total revenue for fiscal 2015 was approximately US$4B. Macnica is famous for having an excellent engineering team of more than 800 application engineers with strong focus on providing technical support for its customers. Macnica is continuing to improve its presence globally by having successful partners in strategic areas in the electronics market. Macnica Inc. and ATD Electronique have entered into an agreement for Macnica to acquire 49% of ATDs outstanding shares on July 22nd, 2016.
About ATD Electronique:
ATD Electronique, who was founded in 1990 represents and distributes innovative electronic component brands and offers engineering services for machine vision and imaging applications through its offices in France and Germany and its representatives in Italy and Spain. Its product portfolio includes image sensors, controller & interface ICs, ISPs as well as development tools and design services enabling fast and efficient realization of new high performance camera systems for markets such as automotive, medical, security and machine vision.
About Mpression:
Mpression represents an integration and collection of all original technology solutions of Macnica group such as software, platforms, evaluation boards, and others which has been developed, provided and supported in each country by each Macnica group companies.
Macnica provides its advanced and ready-to-use system level solutions to customers based on the accumulated know-hows by the very experienced engineers from worldwide group companies, and thus leads to maximizing the value of products as well as shortening customer's development time.
Macnica is going to propose and support the IP offering one-stop services through its group companies in all regions from country to country in Europe, USA, China, and Asia.
Please visit our web-site (http://m-pression.com/) for a full detail of Mpression.
Ram Gopal Varma To Make His First International Project At Cost Of Rs. 340 Crore!
Beleaguered Brazilian operator Oi is unlikely to receive a government bailout, according to the countrys communications minister.
Gilberto Kassab noted that while the government is keen to expedite Ois exit from bankruptcy, it is not as yet considering any kind of direct intervention, saying: Theres no such intention, we are just preparing ourselves in case of an event that could lead to an intervention.
But, I can tell you, so far, theres no reason to intervene Oi. We are doing our part to lend Oi support, added Kassab. He noted that the government was aiming to find a market-based solution to allow Oi to prosper once it is out of creditor protection.
Kassab also hinted that the government could overhaul Brazils bankruptcy laws to facilitate Ois situation. This would likely involve a significant rewriting of current operator regulation.
Oi is the largest fixed player in Brazil and fourth largest overall. In June this year, it filed for bankruptcy protection as it attempts to deal with its significant debt. In September, American Movil expressed an interest in acquiring some or all of Ois assets, while billionaire telecoms investor Naguib Sawiris has also thrown his hat into the ring.
'Most importantly, safety remains our top priority. We are grateful for your ongoing support and again, we are truly sorry'
Samsung Electronics is running full page ad apologising for the Galaxy Note 7 recall, in major US newspapers. The apology ad pledges to thoroughly look into what led to the massive recall of its Galaxy Note 7 device. The move is seen as an effort to restore the lost confidence and renew its commitment to consumer safety.
"An important tenet of our mission is to offer best-in-class safety and quality. Recently, we fell short on this promise. For this we are truly sorry," Samsung's full page ad reads. The ad appeared on Monday in major US dailies namely the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The apology is signed by Gregory Lee, the president and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America.
Full-page apology ads are the future of print media: pic.twitter.com/fBAZ9uXFmD Rurik Bradbury (@RurikBradbury) November 7, 2016
"We will re-examine every aspect of the device, including all hardware, software, manufacturing and the overall battery structure. We will move as quickly as possible, but will take the time needed to get the right answers, the ad reads. Samsung says it's continuing to investigate the cause for Galaxy Note 7's battery overheating issue. The company plans to investigate the device's development and manufacturing processes to fully understand what went wrong and caused the battery to overheat and catch fire.
Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 7 (in India) in August and recalled over 2.5 million units globally since the rollout. Samsung recently said that around 85 percent of all the devices have been replaced in the US.
The Samsung ad also mentions the voluntary recall for its top-loading washing machines. 'Most importantly, safety remains our top priority. We are grateful for your ongoing support and again, we are truly sorry," the ad concludes.
Samsung is leaving no stone unturned to limit the damages to its brand, post the Galaxy Note 7 debacle. However, it would be important for the company to understand the cause and fix the same before the launch of its next Galaxy flagship device.
After announcing the Lenovo Phab 2 Plus( 13999 at amazon) back in Lenovo Tech World this year, the company has finally launched the smartphone to India. The new phablet features a large 6.4-inch display, putting it in competition with the Xiaomi Mi Max. The phone shares similar dimensions as the Mi Max, but is a little bit thicker, and has a dual camera setup on its rear.
On the inside, the phablet uses a MediaTek SoC, the new octa-core MediaTek MT8783. This is the latest budget SoC from the company, designed specially for tablets and phablets in mind. It uses eight ARM Cortex A-53 chips running at a max clock speed of 1.3GHz. This is coupled with ARM Mali-T720 MP3 GPU and is aided by 3GB of RAM. While we will be sharing proper test results after thorough testing, here is a quick look at some synthetic benchmarks.
Going by the synthetic benchmarks, it is quite evident that the phone is not very powerful and in the short time we were able to use it, that notion does not change. The phone lags constantly, there are stutters in apps, which further dampens the whole experience. Here is how the phone fares against the Xiaomi Mi Max, which is currently the best phone in the budget phablet department.
Lenovo Phab 2 Plus Xiaomi Mi Max SoC MediaTek MT8783 Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 Display Size 6.4-inch 6.44-inch Display Resolution 1920 x 1080p 1920 x 1080p RAM 3GB 3GB Storage 32GB 32GB Rear Camera Dual 13MP 16MP Front Camera 8MP 5MP Battery 4050mAh 4850mAh OS Android 6.0 Android 6.0 Price Rs. 14,999 Rs. 14,999 Weight 218g 203g Thickness 9.6mm 7.5mm
Lenovo hasn't announced if it plans to launch the Phab 2 Pro, which is the more powerful of its phablets. It also makes use of Googles Project Tango technology, providing higher level of AR support to mobiles.
Buy Lenovo Phab 2 Plus from Amazon at Rs. 14,999
Bouyirdane confirmed to have bought the device off the internet this June and plans to sue the company
After Galaxy Note7, reports have emerged of its budget smartphone, the Galaxy J5 to have exploded in France. Samsung Galaxy J series is one of the most successful smartphone range for the Korean company in emerging markets.
The Associated Press reports that Galaxy J5 caught fire and exploded on Sunday. Samsung Galaxy J5 is the budget smartphone range from Korean electronics maker. Lamya Bouyirdane, the owner of the affected Galaxy J5, told AP that "she noticed the phone was very hot after she asked her four-year-old son to pass it over during a family gathering at her home. She said she threw the phone away when she realized it had 'swollen up' and smoke was coming out."
Bouyirdane is confirmed to have bought the device off the internet this June and plans to sue the company.
Samsung recently recalled over 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 devices worldwide after the company failed to find and fix the cause for the batteries catching fire. Samsung recently confirmed that it has replaced 85 percent of affected Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in the US and has reportedly lost over $5 billion dollars.
France: la batterie dun Samsung Galaxy J5, smartphone sorti en mars dernier, explose a Pau /SudOuest pic.twitter.com/VD4aKzsLrB LesNews (@LesNews) November 6, 2016
Samsung, in a statement issued to CNET, said, "We are unable to comment on this specific incident until we obtain and thoroughly examine the device. Customer safety remains our highest priority and we want to work with any customer who has experienced an issue with a Samsung product in order to investigate the matter and support them. The issues with the Galaxy Note 7 are isolated to only that model."
While Samsung is trying hard to replace all the existing Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in the market, some of the fans seem to be holding onto the $800 product. Samsung has announced plans to limit battery to 60 percent charging in the US via software update while Note 7 owners in New Zealand won't be allowed to connect to carrier networks. While Samsung is yet to analyse the cause for Galaxy J5's battery explosion, it is important for the company to fix the battery issue before releasing its next flagship.
Orogen Gold said the first hole of its step-out Mutsk gold project drilling programme in southern Armenia has intercepted gold mineralisation 160m south of previous bores.
"The new drilling supports Orogen's belief that Mutsk represents a substantial gold discovery with potential for significant expansion," the company said.
It anticipated providing further information on completion of the drilling programme and receipt of remaining assays.
AIM-quoted Orogen said Hole OG16-57 had intersected 14.2m @ 0.83g/t Au, as well as several narrower zones of higher grade.
The deposit was traced by drilling for at least 800m and was still open to north and south.
A second hole 340m further to the south had cut alteration zones, with gold assays awaited. A further step-out hole to the north was in progress.
"If both (of these) holes are successful the strike footprint will be in the region of 1.4 km which will very positively end our 2016 Mutsk drilling campaigns," said CEO Colin Bird.
Overall, Bird penned the latest drill result is very satisfying, stating it had vindicated Orogen's belief that the deposit was open to the south.
At about 11:58 GMT, shares in Orogen were up 2.94% to 0.02p.
The trial, which is confined to patients in Germany and commences immediately, will confirm the efficacy and safety of sedation with isoflurane in ventilated intensive care patients.
Sedana Medical is based in Sweden with operations across Europe, and is the market leader in the emerging inhalation sedation market. This is when medical practitioners use volatile gases to sedate patients in the intensive care unit.
Venns chief executive officer Tony Richardson said: "I am pleased to see the addition of a significant new project for Venn, in such a critical area of care as patient sedation. The generation of quality clinical data can be a real value driver for Sedana Medical and we are delighted that they have entrusted their programme to us."
At 0930 GMT, the shares were up 7% to 25p.
Online property booking website Airbnb s market share in London rose nearly threefold last year, according to a study published on Tuesday.
A report by Colliers, a US-based commercial estate service company, using data from AirDNA, revealed that 7.6% of overnight stays in the capital were booked using Airbnb in December 2015, a 2.8% increase from January.
The report showed that there were 2m overnight stays in London in 2015 with a rise in the average daily rate to $142 per night, compared to $220 for hotels.
About 38% of people stayed in homes that were listed by people who had only one property, while the remaining listings were posted by people who had more than one property.
Marc Finney, Colliers head of hotels consulting, said Airbnb was more of a complement rather than a direct competitor with hotels, as multiple landlords were more likely to affect the private rental sector.
Airbnb said that people who had several listings could be advertising different rooms in a house and some people manage listings on behalf of others.
However, Jeroen Oskam from hotel business school Hotelschool The Hague, said Airbnb hosts with multi-listings account for more than half of all Airbnb listings in London, pointing to Colliers' figures that 42,559 of the London Airbnb rentals were from a landlord with multiple properties, which is double the number of homes that were built in London in 2014.
When you consider the characteristics of these units and their spatial distribution, it is clear that these rentals are primarily a commercial activity; the uncontrolled expansion of which is not only harmful to the hotel market, but also to city neighbourhoods and the housing market, Oskam said.
Of all the London boroughs, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea and Hackney accounted for 1m Airbnb stays last year, more than half of all the websites bookings in the city.
Airbnb landlords reported revenue of $286m last year with hotels realising $8.1bn in revenue.
Dirk Bakker, head of EMEA hotels for Colliers, said: Due to the current oversupply of Airbnb accommodation in London and the increasing demand figures, a healthier balance in demand and supply is expected in the future. This will lead to higher average daily rate levels and revenues, which overall paints a very positive outlook for Airbnb hosts.
Tesla announced the news on its blog on Tuesday, saying that after upping its output target to 500,000 cars a year by 2018, it began searching for the best engineering talent in automated manufacturing systems.
The company said: This transaction will bring Mr Grohmanns leadership, a world-class team and unique expertise in-house. Moreover, it will serve as the initial base for Tesla Advanced Automation Germany headquarters, with other locations to follow. We expect to add over 1,000 advanced engineering and skilled technician jobs in Germany over the next two years.
Grohmann Engineering will become Tesla Grohmann Automation and will continue to be led by founder and chief executive officer Klaus Grohmann. Tesla said several critical elements of its automated manufacturing systems will be designed and produced in Prum, where Grohmann is based, to help make its factories the most advanced in the world.
Combined with our California and Michigan engineering facilities, as well as other locations to follow, we believe the result will yield exponential improvements in the speed and quality of production, while substantially reducing the capital expenditures required per vehicle.
A group led by French oil giant Total has signed a $4.8bn deal with Iran to develop part of a gas field in the country.
The deal follows the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, which could pave the way for more foreign investment in a largely untapped emerging market.
In January, economic sanctions were lifted after the country agreed to scale back its nuclear activities, in a deal reached with world powers in July 2015.
Total has signed a heads of agreement with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to develop phase 11 of South Pars, the world's largest gas field, which will produce 1.8bn cubic feet per day, or 370 000 barrels of oil equivalent, and will be fed into Iran's gas network.
Total will operate the project with a 50.1% interest alongside Petropars, a subsidiary of NIOC which will have a 19.9% stake, and Chinese state-owned oil and gas company CNPC with a 30% stake.
As part of the deal, the consortium will conduct negotiations to finalise a 20-year contract within the framework of the Iranian petroleum contract, which was recently approved by the Iranian Parliament.
Total also said it will start engineering studies and a call for tender process so construction contracts can be given immediately when a final agreement is reached.
Patrick Pouyanne, chairman and chief executive of Total, said the agreement followed the company's development of phases two and three of South Pars in the 2000s.
Total will develop the project in strict compliance with national and international laws and looks forward to working alongside the Chinese state-owned company CNPC in this additional international partnership. This project fits with the groups strategy of expanding its presence in the Middle East, where the origins of the group lie and growing its gas portfolio by adding low unit cost, long plateau gas assets.
The SP11 project will be developed in two phases, the first phase, costing around $2bn dollars will consist of 30 wells and two well head platforms connected to existing onshore treatment facilities by two subsea pipelines.
At a later stage, a second phase will be the construction of offshore compression facilities.
Shares in Total were down 0.24% to 42.81p at 1131 GMT.
Markets in Asia mostly ended higher on Tuesday in sessions that bobbed above and below the waterline, as investors turned towards the US presidential election.
Japans Nikkei 225 lost 0.03% to 17,171.38, with the yen weakening during the session - it was last off 0.04% against the greenback at JPY 104.50 per $1.
Printing equipment maker Brother Industries leapt 7.38% during the session after it increased its operating profit outlook for the year to March 2017 by 13.4% to JPY 55bn, as a result of cost cutting.
On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite finished 0.47% higher at 3,148.02, while the Shenzhen Composite was 0.66% firmer at 2,080.44.
Fresh data from Beijing during the day showed Chinas dollar-denominated exports fell 7.3% year-on-year in October, though that was still an improvement on Septembers 10% measure.
Dollar-denominated imports were down 1.4% in the same period.
Foreign exchange reserves in the Peoples Republic were also down $45.7bn to $3.12trn, which was the biggest drop in the official reading for nine months.
This suggests a modest degree of intervention to slow the pace of yuan depreciation, on top of negative valuation effects, noted Mizuho Bank foreign exchange strategist Chang Wei Liang.
Market attention will be on dollar/yuan today given the decline in reserves and the release of Chinese trade data.
In South Korea, the Kospi was off 0.29% to 2,003.38, while Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index was up 0.47% at 22,909.47.
Seouls Samsung Electronics saw its share price rise 0.24% during the session after reports of prosecutors raiding the firms offices, as part of the investigation into Korean president Park Geun-hye and the influence she allowed those close to her to have politically.
Mondays news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had cleared Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server was still having an effect, underpinning global markets.
The view is we see the Democrats take back the Senate and the Republicans retaining the House, although the race for the Senate in actuality is a 50/50 proposition, noted IG chief market strategist Chris Weston.
Oil prices were surprisingly stable after surging in US trading overnight, with Brent crude last up 0.9% at $46.59 and West Texas Intermediate adding 0.64% at $45.18.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 added 0.13% to 5,257.79, pulling back some earlier gains of more than 0.3%.
The benchmark was underpinned by its energy subindex, up 1.49%, and materials, which rose 1.43%, though the hefty financials sector lost 0.59%.
Business conditions in the sunburnt country apparently softened in October, according to National Australia Banks survey of more than 500 companies.
Fertiliser and explosives manufacturer Incitec Pivot was off 1% after it reported a 26% drop in annual underlying profit compared to a year ago.
The company also cautioned that it expected markets for its primary product groups to remain softer in the coming year.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia also saw its stock fall, by 0.63% after flat first quarter results.
The bank - one of the big four in Australia and New Zealand - said the result was a product of margin pressures, as funding costs rose.
New Zealands benchmark S&P/NZX 50 added 0.3% to 6,894.35, led higher by specialist dairy exporter The A2 Milk Company, which rose 4.6%.
The firm reported first quarter sales of NZD 112.5m, in line with expectations, with infant formula and milk driving the companys growth.
Both of the down under dollars were weaker against the greenback, with the Aussie last off 0.21% at AUD 1.2968 and the Kiwi retreating 0.02% to NZD 1.3617 per $1.
London stocks edged higher on Tuesday as many analysts put Hillary Clinton as the likely victor of the US elections as voters headed to the polls.
The FTSE 100 climbed 0.06% to 6,811.30 points.
Americans began voting in the early hours of Tuesday morning in New Hampshire. The village of Dixville Notch was the first in the US to declare with Clinton coming out on top over her Republican rival Donald Trump.
Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex, said: In terms of the election Clinton seems to have momentum on her side. She is the clear market favourite, has a 71.6% chance of victory according to star-statistician Nate Silver, and is at a Democrat to win binary spread of 76.9%-83.4% against her orangutan opponents 16.6%-23.1%.
Of course, this was basically the situation for the Remain camp pre-referendum, and with that result, Leicester winning the Premier League and the Cubs taking the World Series 2016 has already proven its willingness to still a middle-finger up at sense and logic throughout the year.
On this side of the pond, data from the Office for National Statistics showed UK manufacturing production rose 0.6% in September compared to a month ago, up from Augusts 0.2% increase. Economists had expected a 0.4% increase.
In contrast, UK industrial production fell 0.4% in September for the second consecutive month, the ONS said, versus the consensus estimate for a flat reading.
"Looking ahead, the upbeat tone of the latest business surveys suggests that the manufacturing sector will sustain its recent strength in the final quarter," said Ruth Gregory, UK economist at Capital Economics.
"Indeed, the fall in the pound appears to be performing its role as a 'shock absorber' in the wake of the Brexit vote, by improving the competitiveness of domestic producers."
Separate data from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG showed UK like-for-like sales increased 1.7% in October, up from the 0.4% rise the month before.
Elsewhere, China exports and imports fell more than expected in October. Exports fell 7.3% from a year earlier while imports shrank 1.4%, according to official data. Economists had expected a 6% decline in exports and a 1% drop in imports. The trade surplus widened to $49.06bn in October from $41.99bn, missing forecasts of $51.70bn.
In company news, Marks & Spencer erased earlier gains as the retailer said first-half profits fell almost 19%, with new chief executive Steve Rowe announcing a 350m investment plan to close 113 stores in the UK and overseas markets to try and return the retailer to profitable growth.
Primark owner Associated British Foods rallied as it reported a rise in full-year revenue and profit.
On the downside, bank stocks were the top fallers after the Royal Bank of Scotland announced it was setting aside 400m to compensate up to 12,000 small business customers that it allegedly mistreated in the wake of the financial crisis.
Tobacco company Imperial Brands fell after it reported a drop in profit for the year to end of September, but said revenue rose and upped its dividend by 10%.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 6,811.30 0.06%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 17,423.37 -0.20%
techMARK (TASX) 3,307.36 0.17%
FTSE 100 - Risers
Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,615.00p 5.06%
Mediclinic International (MDC) 927.00p 2.21%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,795.00p 1.80%
easyJet (EZJ) 1,012.00p 1.76%
BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,241.50p 1.64%
Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 1,664.00p 1.40%
Mondi (MNDI) 1,602.00p 1.39%
Centrica (CNA) 212.00p 1.39%
Informa (INF) 688.00p 1.25%
Hammerson (HMSO) 558.00p 1.09%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
Imperial Brands (IMB) 3,711.50p -2.41%
Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 343.30p -1.63%
Persimmon (PSN) 1,662.00p -1.54%
Glencore (GLEN) 247.50p -1.47%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 183.80p -1.45%
HSBC Holdings (HSBA) 613.40p -1.43%
International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 439.20p -1.37%
Barratt Developments (BDEV) 456.40p -1.21%
Barclays (BARC) 183.20p -1.08%
Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 140.80p -1.05%
FTSE 250 - Risers
Evraz (EVR) 205.50p 3.68%
Atkins (WS) (ATK) 1,560.00p 2.03%
Hochschild Mining (HOC) 264.40p 1.34%
UDG Healthcare Public Limited Company (UDG) 674.00p 1.28%
SSP Group (SSPG) 342.00p 1.27%
Tullett Prebon (TLPR) 400.60p 1.26%
Electra Private Equity (ELTA) 4,473.00p 1.24%
AA (AA.) 259.70p 1.21%
Caledonia Investments (CLDN) 2,443.00p 1.16%
Electrocomponents (ECM) 365.90p 1.13%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT) 984.50p -3.57%
Sports Direct International (SPD) 313.80p -3.45%
Paysafe Group (PAYS) 416.60p -3.16%
McCarthy & Stone (MCS) 168.90p -2.82%
Kier Group (KIE) 1,314.00p -2.38%
Restaurant Group (RTN) 359.50p -2.34%
Halfords Group (HFD) 335.40p -2.30%
JRP Group (JRP) 117.20p -2.25%
Rank Group (RNK) 196.00p -2.15%
Hastings Group Holdings (HSTG) 210.50p -2.09%
Stocks in London nudged just a touch higher in early trade as investors erred on the side of caution ahead of the US presidential election.
At 0820 GMT, the FTSE 100 was up 0.2% to 6,819.27. Meanwhile, oil prices were fairly steady, with West Texas Intermediate down 0.2% to $44.80 a barrel and Brent crude flat at $46.17.
Spreadexs Connor Campbell said: Somewhat predictably the markets have lost their appetite this Tuesday morning, the size of yesterdays gains, and the proximity of the US election, seemingly ruling out any more explosive growth.
The morning session could be a bit of a duff one this Tuesday, given that nothing concrete from the US in terms state-voting etc is going to be out until this evening. It is likely going to be one of those days where the seismic nature of an event renders the market inert for around 24 hours.
In corporate news, Marks & Spencer gained ground. The retailer held its interim dividend as first-half profits fell almost 19%, with new chief executive Steve Rowe announcing a 350m investment plan to close 113 stores in the UK and overseas markets to try and return the retailer to profitable growth.
Direct Line Group edged higher after it said gross written premiums for ongoing operations rose 4.2% in the nine months to the end of September with continued growth in Motor own brands, up 9.7%.
Primark owner Associated British Foods rallied as it reported a rise in full-year revenue and profit.
Aveva was little changed after the FTSE 250 engineering software provider said it swung to a profit in the first half of the year as revenue rose despite continued tough trading conditions".
On the downside, tobacco company Imperial Brands fell after it reported a drop in profit for the year to end of September, but said revenue rose and upped its dividend by 10%.
On the macroeconomic front, figures released by the General Administration of Customs earlier showed Chinese exports fell 7.3% in October from a year earlier following a 10% drop in September. Meanwhile, imports were down 1.4% compared to a 1.9% drop in September. Analysts had been expecting a 6% fall in exports and a 1% decline in imports.
On the UK data calendar, industrial and manufacturing production figures are due at 0930 GMT.
Campbell said manufacturing production is forecast to rise from 0.2% to 0.5% month-on-month, while industrial production is expected to bounce back out of negative territory once again, from -0.4% to 0.1%. So nothing too exciting but potentially enough to give sterling a short-term boost, he said.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 6,809.78 0.04%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 17,456.19 -0.01%
techMARK (TASX) 3,300.18 -0.05%
FTSE 100 - Risers
Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,582.00p 3.74%
Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 1,680.00p 2.38%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,775.00p 1.50%
Informa (INF) 689.50p 1.47%
Severn Trent (SVT) 2,260.00p 1.30%
Mondi (MNDI) 1,600.00p 1.27%
Next (NXT) 5,050.00p 1.24%
CRH (CRH) 2,631.00p 1.11%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 1,243.00p 0.89%
Mediclinic International (MDC) 915.00p 0.88%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
Imperial Brands (IMB) 3,724.00p -2.08%
HSBC Holdings (HSBA) 614.90p -1.19%
Glencore (GLEN) 248.30p -1.15%
Persimmon (PSN) 1,672.00p -0.95%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,460.00p -0.68%
Barclays (BARC) 184.05p -0.62%
Shire Plc (SHP) 4,534.00p -0.57%
Barratt Developments (BDEV) 459.50p -0.54%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 185.50p -0.54%
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 55.88p -0.34%
FTSE 250 - Risers
OneSavings Bank (OSB) 297.50p 2.44%
BBA Aviation (BBA) 251.90p 1.94%
Allied Minds (ALM) 350.00p 1.86%
DFS Furniture (DFS) 239.20p 1.79%
Unite Group (UTG) 568.00p 1.43%
Wetherspoon (J.D.) (JDW) 867.00p 1.17%
Aggreko (AGK) 817.00p 1.11%
Investec (INVP) 504.00p 1.10%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 155.50p 0.97%
Assura (AGR) 59.20p 0.94%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Sports Direct International (SPD) 314.10p -3.35%
Lancashire Holdings Limited (LRE) 704.00p -3.03%
Ascential (ASCL) 286.40p -2.85%
Safestore Holdings (SAFE) 348.40p -2.35%
Workspace Group (WKP) 632.50p -2.24%
CMC Markets (CMCX) 199.10p -2.16%
Rank Group (RNK) 196.10p -2.10%
Paysafe Group (PAYS) 422.20p -1.86%
Zoopla Property Group (ZPLA) 293.00p -1.48%
CLS Holdings (CLI) 1,576.00p -1.44%
Stocks in London were set to open broadly flat on Tuesday, with investors likely to err on the side of caution ahead of the US presidential election, amid cautious optimism that Clinton will win.
The FTSE 100 was called to open five points higher than Mondays close at 6,812.
CMC Markets Michael Hewson said: Whichever way the result goes there is one inescapable fact that investors surely cannot ignore. Even if Donald Trump loses, the political narrative in the US has changed irrevocably and probably not for the better, as any new President will have to preside over a nation more divided than ever, and that could make any new government policies, whoever is elected, much less business and free trade friendly.
Of more importance of who becomes President will be the makeup of the respective houses and if the Republicans maintain their blocking majorities then Mrs Clinton could well find out that her ability to do anything will be constrained in the same way President Obamas has been over the past few years.
Although the election is the main focus, Chinese data released earlier may also garner some attention. Exports fell 7.3% in October from a year earlier, according to the General Administration of Customs, following a 10% drop in September. Meanwhile, imports were down 1.4% compared to a 1.9% drop in September. Analysts had been expecting a 6% fall in exports and a 1% decline in imports.
On the UK data calendar, industrial and manufacturing production figures are due at 0930 GMT.
In corporate news, Marks & Spencer held its interim dividend as first-half profits fell almost 19%, with new chief executive Steve Rowe announcing a 350m investment plan to close 113 stores in the UK and overseas markets to try and return the retailer to profitable growth.
Revenue in the 26 weeks to 1 October of 4.99bn was down 0.9% on the equivalent period last year, but underlying pre-tax profit was down 18.6% to 231.3m due to lower Clothing & Home sales.
Direct Line Group posted a trading update for the nine months to 30 September on Tuesday, with gross written premium for ongoing operations 4.2% higher, and the company claiming continued growth in Motor own brands, up 9.7%.
The FTSE 100 firm said motor and home own brands in-force policies were up 4.3% year-on-year, with strong customer retention and continued growth in Green Flag direct and Direct Line for Business.
Its total costs of 669.5m were 16.1m higher than the first nine months of 2015, after absorbing 24m of Flood Re costs in Q2 2016.
Associated British Foods reported a rise in full year revenue as it expanded the selling space of discount clothing retailer Primark, while it was affected by the weak value of sterling.
Revenue grew 5% for the year ended 17 September to 13.4bn, compared to last year, or 4% on a constant currency basis.
Deliveroo , which classes its couriers as self-employed contractors, is under pressure from the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain to give its riders employment rights.
The unions general secretary Jason Moyer-Lee said: "We are seeking a collective bargaining agreement with Deliveroo in order to negotiate pay and terms and conditions of our members."
"We are also challenging the bogus employment status of Deliveroo drivers as 'independent contractors'. The drivers clearly work for Deliveroo, should be considered 'workers' and as such should be entitled to paid holidays, at least the minimum wage, and collective bargaining rights."
The challenge by the IWGB comes less than a month after a London employment tribunal ruled that Uber drivers have the right to be classed as workers rather than self-employed.
The ruling said Uber had resorted in its documentations to fictions, twisted language and even brand new terminology".
The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our mind faintly ridiculous."
Maria Ludkin, general director of the GMB, the union for professional drivers that brought the case against Uber, said the ruling was a monumental victory.
Uber drivers and other directed workers do have legal rights at work. The question for them now is how those rights are enforced in practice. The clear answer is that the workforce must combine into the GMB union to force the company to recognise these rights and to negotiate fair terms and conditions for the drivers.
This loophole that has allowed unscrupulous employers to avoid employment rights, sick pay and minimum wage for their staff and costing the government millions in lost tax revenue will now be closed. Uber drivers and thousands of others caught in the bogus self-employment trap will now enjoy the same rights as employees.
UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) is leading a criminal probe into the recent cyber attack on Tesco Bank , which saw about 20,000 accounts raided by tech-savvy hackers.
It said the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) was working with Tesco Bank and others to provide direct assistance to the company, at its request.
"Given the investigation thus far and the evidence at hand, the NCSC is unaware of any wider threat to the UK banking sector connected with this incident," the NCA said in a statement.
NCSC was set up up about a year ago with the task of handling cyber incidents in UK.
Meantime, about 20,000 Tesco Bank customers had money filched from their accounts by hackers over the weekend.
Some account holders had up to 600 siphoned off. Tesco Bank initially claimed less than 10,000 customers were affected.
On Monday, it said about 40,000 customer current accounts had been "subject to online criminal activity" with half that number seeing money being withdrawn fraudulently.
The bank took the precautionary measure on Monday of temporarily stopping online transactions from current accounts. It has 136,000 accounts.
It was not immediately clear how much dosh the hackers had taken, but preliminary back-of-envelope workings based on the above figures suggested up to 12m. Tesco Bank would need to confirm the precise amount.
Apart from saying the fraud was committed via "online criminal activity", the bank has not yet given any details of how exactly the fraud was committed.
Professor Alan Woodward, a security consultant who has worked with Europol, told the BBC he thought it might have been the biggest ever cyber attack on a UK bank.
"I've not heard of an attack of this nature and scale on a UK bank where it appears that the bank's central system is the target," he said.
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BeWarned: Free App for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People
Published: 2016-11-08 - Updated: 2018-05-13
Author: Disabled World | Contact: disabled-world.com
Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A
Jump to: Main Digest | Publications
Synopsis: BeWarned app aids deaf and hard of hearing to detect dangerous sounds, communicate with people, make emergency calls and dance to their favorite music. The BeWarned app helps the deaf and hard of hearing to detect dangerous sounds, communicate with people, make calls in case of emergency and dance to their favorite music. One of the app's founders, who is himself hard of hearing, is sure that it will be useful for him as well as for the deaf and hard of hearing from all over the world.
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Main Digest
The BeWarned app helps the deaf and hard of hearing to detect dangerous sounds, communicate with people, make calls in case of emergency and dance to their favorite music. One of the app's founders, who is himself hard of hearing, is sure that it will be useful for him as well as for the deaf and hard of hearing from all over the world.
Vitaliy Potapchuk has wanted to create useful things for people around him ever since he was little.
When he was only two years old, he lost his hearing. Ever since that time, he has found it difficult to communicate with people. Vitaliy's biggest hobby is programming; that is why he entered the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute at the age of 18 to study computer science. Right after Vitaliy finished his Master's degree, he was offered to work for the civil airway of Ukraine. While working at for the civil airway, he also developed SIMO application using the augmented reality technology. Later, he joined the BeWarned Team to develop an app for deaf and hard of hearing people. Today, Vitaliy is a Co-Founder of the startup. He is in charge of development of a bot for the deaf, a unique sound recognition engine as well as numerous other essential features of the app.
According to the statistics provided by the World Health Organization, the number of deaf and hard of hearing individuals around the globe is around 400 million people, and this number is constantly growing.
Every day they face difficulties in communicating with the hearing society in which they live; they don't feel safe and cannot phone their friends just to talk or seamlessly call emergency services whenever in trouble. "I love driving, but I often notice how drivers stop by my car and frown at me. Whenever they are saying something to me, I usually feel helpless: I find it difficult to explain to them that I am deaf and that I hadn't heard their cars honking or any other sounds around me", - explains Vitaliy Potapchuk, - "Being hard of hearing, the communication barrier is the biggest problem I have to deal with in my life. It is not merely my problem but also that of the whole deaf and hard of hearing community. That is why my primary goal is to eliminate it and make communication easier. So, I joined BeWarned to make it happen!"
BeWarned is a single platform that unites deaf and hard of hearing people from all over the world.
In 2016, we launched its large-scale beta-testing among the citizens of the USA. 88,9% of testers stated that they would recommend this app to their friends.They shared their suggestions on what other features they need in an app.
"BeWarned is a real must-have for the deaf. Without it, the deaf won't be able to deal with the daily activities like shopping or meeting with friends so easily", - states Marina Epstein, Certified Deaf Interpreter, one of the first people to test BeWarned.
BeWarned onsists of four must-have features:
1. Sound Monitor detects sounds of possible danger in real-time. Should a dangerous situation arrise, our feature informs the user about it with the help of flashing lights and vibration signals. With Sound Monitor, you will always feel safe and will never have to worry about the lives of your loved ones ever again.
2. Connect helps the deaf and hard of hearing to communicate with society they live in. Users can chat to each other via special dialog and create unlimited number of templates to reach someone really fast.
3. Dance will let users enjoy their favorite tracks that are converted into vibration signals or flashing lights and feel the rhythm of the track with the help of a visual equalizer on the screen of user's smartphone.
4. Emergency Call is useful in any instance where user needs to inform his friends about an emergency situation he is in at the moment.
BeWarned is a non-profit startup funded by its Co-Founders and users' donations. The app is absolutely free of charge for all the users. You can download it right now for Android and iOS.
Co-Founders of the project are not only IT-geeks, passionate about state-of-the- art technologies, but also people that care about the needs of the deaf society. The BeWarned Team is aiming to unite deaf and hard of hearing people from all over the world in a single platform.
BeWarned is the only unified platform for deaf and hard of hearing people from all over the world. It was founded in 2013 by Sergey Maliukov (CEO and a Founder), Vitaliy Potapchuk (Co-Founder and a Partner) and Ivan Verenych (CTO and Co- Founder). This startup is specialized in developing special software and hardware for the deaf and heard of hearing. The initial project startup is on November 16, 2016.
The BeWarned App is Now Available For
iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bewarned-app-for-deaf-hard/id990607348?mt=8
And at the Google Play Store for Android Devices.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getbewarned.app
You can also learn more about BeWarned at getbewarned.com and on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/GetBeWarned/
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): Disabled World. (2016, November 8). BeWarned: Free App for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People. Disabled World. Retrieved November 1, 2022 from www.disabled-world.com/assistivedevices/computer/bewarned.php
Permalink: BeWarned: Free App for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People
Ohio Senate candidates J.D. Vance, Tim Ryan to appear at live town hall
The candidates in the Ohio Senate race will answer questions during a live town hall broadcasted on Fox News Channel.
Newspapers gear up for extra sales
NEW YORK (AP) Print newspapers may be disappearing like the home telephone, but not after Election Day.
Remembering the frenzy for old-fashioned papers the morning after Barack Obama's historic win in 2008, newspapers are printing extra copies and setting up temporary retail stands this year, regardless of whether the nation elects the first woman or reality TV star as president. The Los Angeles Times is also selling a commemorative printing-press plate of the front page.
Many people now rely on Facebook and apps for news, but a screenshot doesn't have quite the same romance as a newspaper's front page.
We like to hold on to things that remind us of the experiences we've had, like campaign buttons, theater programs or shells from a visit to the beach, said Naomi Baron, an American University professor who studies the interplay of language and technology.
A physical version of a newspaper recounting a life-altering event like 9/11 or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an extension of those keepsakes that a website or app can't replace, she said. Paper has a certain kind of look and feel and smell to it that digital equivalents don't.
Even so, after a long, sour campaign season, demand for a front page may be more muted than in 2008. Ben Redington, a 34-year-old graphic designer from Wichita, Kansas, likes buying papers after major events, such as the Chicago Cubs' first World Series win in 108 years. But he doesn't care for either Clinton or Trump and has no plans to buy a newspaper Wednesday. (He didn't buy an Obama front page either.)
Newspapers were caught off-guard eight years ago when people wanted keepsake copies of the enormous photos and dramatic headlines declaring Obama the nation's first African-American president. Bookstores, convenience stores and newsstands across the country sold out. People descended on newspapers' headquarters in search of copies.
They were stealing it off people's doorsteps, Washington Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti said. It was crazy here.
Many newspapers restarted printing presses to meet demand. The Post had two extra print runs and issued a thinner commemorative edition in a third.
For this year, Coratti wouldn't say how many additional copies the Post is planning, but she said it's similar to what the Post printed for Pope Francis' visit in 2015. She said the newspaper is prepared for a second printing if needed, leaving plates on the presses. The Post will also sell copies online and at its offices.
The New York Times sold out in many parts of Manhattan before noon and ended up printing 225,000 extra copies, said Mark Weitzel, who manages circulation and retail sales for the Times. That's more than double a typical day's sales at newsstands, coffee shops, convenience store and other street sales.
This year, he's ready for a run on a Wednesday paper with a photo of a President Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, both of whom are New Yorkers. The Times plans to print at least 225,000 extra copies and will sell papers outside its headquarters (though because newsstand sales have declined since 2008, the paper is sending out fewer papers overall).
Elsewhere, The Seattle Times is doubling the number of papers available at stores and coin boxes. The Los Angeles Times will send out more than triple the average number of papers and put a kiosk in front of its building. The Plain Dealer of Cleveland is tripling how many newspapers it sends to stores, to about 100,000, and will have another 10,000 to 15,000 on standby at the plant if needed.
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FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) Multiple security changes are being implemented at the Fairbanks North Star Borough administrative building.
Borough Mayor Karl Kassel has had problems with people barging into his office, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported. Kassel recently had a security door installed at the front of his suite of offices. He said more security changes are planned for the building, including the main lobby.
. . .
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SITKA, Alaska (AP) The Sitka Historical Museum is moving forward with plans to reopen next summer with new exhibits that tell more about the city's rich past.
The museum closed in July 2015 to make way for renovations in Harrigan Centennial Hall. Since then, museum employees have worked on designs for the new space, refined its collection of artifacts and raised money, The Sitka Sentinel reported.
. . .
France's Total on verge of deal to develop Iran oil, gas field
The head of French oil and gas company Total said on Monday that his firm would be happy to be the first Western oil company to reach an agreement with Iran, but he said a deal had not yet been signed.
"Discussions are going on and we'll see if we can sign in the coming days," Patrick Pouyanne told CNN Money on the sidelines of an Abu Dhabi petroleum conference. "I would be happy to be the first Western company to sign an agreement with Iran."
Total, which has a long history in Iran, said a deal could happen within days. And a source at the Iranian energy ministry said a document setting out the key terms of a proposed agreement would be signed Tuesday in Tehran.
Asked about the estimated $6-billion value of the potential deal, Pouyanne said, "Developing a phase of South Pars (gas field) is more in the range of $2 billion dollars than $6 billion."
Iran's SHANA news agency said on Monday that Total and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) would sign new contracts on Tuesday with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) on the second phase of the South Pars gas field.
Total has had a previous involvement in South Pars, one of the largest natural gas deposits in the world, which is located in the middle of the Persian Gulf. In 1997, Iranian authorities awarded the development of phases 2 & 3 of the field to a Total subsidiary.
"We developed some phases of South Pars in the past," Pouyanne told CNN Money. "We were on the verge of sanctioning a project in 2010 just before the sanctions," he said, referring to sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear programme.
"Naturally we have engaged discussions with Iran on this topic. So, let see if we can conclude a satisfactory deal for all the parties," Pouyanne said, adding that he would not be travelling to Tehran himself.
The lifting of sanctions in January has allowed Iran to pump up its oil output. So far this year, it has increased oil production by about 900,000 barrels per day to 3.7 million.
Its immediate aim is to produce four million barrels per day and it has clear potential to become a much bigger player. The country sits on 9 per cent of the world's proven oil reserve and claims nearly a fifth of the planet's natural gas.
Websites of 7 Indian embassies hacked, data dumped online
Indian officials were trying today to restore the websites of seven Indian embassies in Europe and Africa that were hacked and had data dumped online.
The security of the websites of Indian embassies in Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Libya, Malawi, Mali and Romania was breached by hackers who identified themselves to the media as Kaputsky and Kasimierz L.
"We are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told reporters. The websites were reported to be working by this evening.
Attempts were being made to track the IP addresses of the hackers, who posted online the names, email addresses, phone numbers and passport numbers of some embassy staff members. The leaked data was published on the pastebin.com, which has been blocked by the Union government.
The hackers have leaked details about registered Indian nationals, including details about 161 Indians in South Africa, 35 in Switzerland, 145 in Italy, 305 in Libya, 74 in Malawi, 14 in Mali and 42 in Romania.
A twitter handle @Kapustkiy, which identifies itself as security pentester and cyber detective, in a series of tweets, said, "Breached the several Indian Embassy of India. Not all there database were leaked, fix your security and credits to @Kasimierz_ for help."
"But lets being seriously, why in the world does an ''embassy'' has such alot vulnerabilities....After this database breach, they will improve there security better," it said in another tweets.
Several Indian websites have come under attack this year. Last month, Pakistan-based hackers targeted more than 7,000 Indian websites after India launched a series of attacks on terror camps in Pakistan. Also in October, the security of around 3.2 million debit cards in India was breached when hackers inserted malware through an ATM network.
The exact impact that BREXIT will have is dependent on how the UK will try to define its relationship with the EU and how the EU responds to that, Mr Paddy Malone of Dundalk Chamber of Commerce told last week's All-Ireland Dialogue on Brexit at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
He said nearly 3,000 commuters cross the border daily in the Dundalk area.
These people have to know how long that journey will take in order to plan school and creche deliveries and pick-ups plus other commitments.
Transport costs, including wages, diesel, (particularly if refrigerated); insurance, will all rise forcing business to identify other customers/suppliers.
At the time of the budget we said we could compete as long as sterling was in the 80s but not if it crossed 90p. We need specific targeted relief in this area and specifically central Government to subsidise retail rates for a limited period.
Finance should be made available for all SME long the border and not just exporting or agri business. The Living City Initiative tshould o extend to Dundalk, but to be targeted and amended for Dundalks special needs.
Peace IV and the projects need to be guaranteed funding to 2020 and beyond.
Tourism potential of the Mourne Gullion Cooley region to be developed jointly by the relevant agencies on both sides of the border.
Education support through Horizon 2020 and other schemes is guaranteed beyond 2020.
The immediate call is for support to the retail sector specifically and the wider SME sector along the border. This could be by way of a rates subsidy, loans to the wider SME, and Dundalk inclusion in the Living City initiative, Mr Malone said.
He also stated it is not only border towns and counties that will be hit by Brexit.
THOSE ISSUE WILL EFFECT EVERY GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT AND EVERY PERSON ON THIS ISLAND
Stroke survivors from Louth recently attended an Oireachtas briefing in Leinster House to share their experiences regarding the lack of available rehabilitation services.
Among them was David McGrane and Patrick Bromley, both from Dundalk.
The information session was hosted by the Irish Heart Foundation with the support of Medtronic, one of the worlds largest medical technology, services and solutions companies.
On behalf of 50,000 stroke survivors in Ireland, Louth survivors and campaigners joined with others from around the country to meet their local TDs and highlight the need for better rehabilitation services.
The day was organised by Irish Heart Foundation with support of Medtronic ahead of World Stroke Day.
A study launched on the day, conducted by the Irish Heart Foundation and the HSEs National Stroke Programme, showed large gaps in vital recovery services for stroke patients around the country, with just one in four rehabilitation hospitals having a dedicated stroke unit; 60% lacking a stroke specialist to oversee rehabilitation; and less than one in three having any access to psychological services.
The audit also showed major organisational deficits across the rehabilitation hospital network.
For example, half of the hospitals couldnt provide accurate information on the numbers of stroke patients they had admitted or discharged in the previous year, whilst bed access was restricted based on age in 12 of the 26 hospitals audited.
Dennis is winner of The Scholarship 2016
Published On Tue 8 Nov 2016 by Grant Hill
This years winner of The Scholarship, the Apprentice-style radio reality show that offers talented Ghanaian students the chance to win a fully paid postgraduate place in Scotland, has matriculated at the University of Dundee.
Dennis Asares prize, worth 30,000, includes a one-year postgraduate scholarship for the MSc Energy Studies course and travel, living, and learning material allowances. The initiative is a joint collaboration operated by Accra-based radio station Joy FM and educational consultancy firm Go Study Abroad.
Each hour-long instalment of The Scholarship features interviews and debates designed to test the knowledge and resolve of university graduates live on radio. Listeners vote for their favourite candidate while judges assess the performance of each contestant. The final was held at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra and saw Dennis and two other finalists battle through round after round. After the customary dramatic pause, 24-year-old Dennis was named as the winner of The Scholarship 2016.
I was surprised to win because there were so many intelligent young people from Ghana in the competition, said 24-year-old Dennis. I had heard about the University and, in particular, CEPMLP so when the show offered a way to progress to Dundee I had to apply. The show has made Dundee very popular in my home town of Kumasi. A lot of people have asked me how they can apply to come here.
This is a wonderful opportunity. It will give me the skills and knowledge to go back to Ghana and make a real difference in our energy sector. The industry needs support to grow, especially in the policy area, and this is why this partnership is so good for us.
The Scholarship was the brainchild of Go Study Abroad in response to an acknowledged shortage of individuals in Ghana with the skills and training to help the countrys natural resources sector develop. The company, who work with several UK universities, recognised that CEPMLP was the leading provider of natural resources law, policy and management education and asked management to become their host institution.
The show has proven transformative for its two previous winners. Inaugural champion Dennis Akande is currently working as an Energy Data Scientist in Cape Verde while season two winner Joseph Nii Tettey Ashong recently had a paper examining Ghanas energy policies published in Renewable Energy Law and Policy Review.
Dennis, who has already demonstrated his commitment to giving back to Dundee by signing up as an international student ambassador, continued, It is a very supportive environment here. The lecturers have been really helpful and there is a community of African students which has helped me settle in. The only thing I need to get used to is the weather!
CEPMLP Director Professor Peter Cameron said, The Scholarship has enabled CEPMLP to massively increase its profile in Ghana and throughout Africa. It is a pleasure to welcome Dennis to Dundee. He showed great intelligence and aptitude in winning the show and I am sure he will, like the two previous winners, make the most of this opportunity. The University aims to transform lives and that is exactly what this initiative is doing.
For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
Tel: +44 (0)1382 384768
Mobile: 07854 953277
Email: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
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There has never been a more eagerly awaited election in living memory. American voters will line up on November 8th to cast their vote, most will be for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Their decision will not simply affect political change in America, it will have far reaching global effects that will reverberate all the way to Australia. Small businesses across the country could be impacted, but the question is how?
Four years ago, the American public were debating between President Obama and Mitt Romney. Regardless of the impending candidate, global markets remained steady. Largely, it was a campaign without huge scandal. Conversely, both Trump and Clinton have attracted controversy. This is an election that has split not only America, but divided the world.
A Trump victory is guaranteed to cause shock (despite the close polls) and not simply in Democrats hearts. Trump has no political experience, and his policies are polarising. A Trump win is likely to cause a selloff in emerging markets (equities, currencies and bonds). There is already an existing correlation between Trump and emerging markets performance. When Trump increases his share in the polls, the emerging markets start selling off, and conversely rallying when Clinton was predicted to take the Presidency.
The Australian dollar could easily be impacted by the damaging domino effect if Trump is elected president. He is a novice in global politics and his penchant for isolationist foreign policy could send shockwaves across the world, especially in China, with which Australia has increasingly strong ties. The US is Australias third largest trade partner, behind China and Japan, and any trade tariffs Trump puts in place could be harmful to exports from Australia to the US. In spite of a Trump victory, there is a slight hope that an overwhelming Republican senate would be able to reign in their controversial leader, and steady the ship through his incendiary barbs. It will be a waiting game, but it is a safe bet to presume that the fluctuating Australian dollar could be affected adversely in the event of a Trump ascension.
Beyond political correspondents, financial traders across the world have been watching the election polls closely. The Federal Reserve is likely to take a tentative approach to the election, and wait and see who is elected. Consensus seems to hold that the Federal Reserve will remain on hold if Trump becomes President. Conversely, if Clinton wins, it will be seen as business as usual with a hike in December. Similar to Brexit, it seems unlikely, but that does not mean that Trump will not be elected President. Australian small businesses are reliant on global import and export, which will now be braced for price changes in the event of a fluctuating global economy.
The Australian economy remains stimulated in part by Chinese investment. Trump has at times coveted a close relationship with China, but also used provocative language that appears counter-productive: China will be on notice that America is back in the global leadership business and that their days of currency manipulation and cheating are over. Trump has no experience of international diplomacy, and his relations with China will have to be monitored carefully. Australian small businesses who utilise Chinese investment will hope that the future American president will continue to work to build diplomatic ties, rather than stultify them.
A Clinton victory should result in a global relief rally and ultimately a long-term decline in any economic volatility. However, there are real concerns that Clintons chances have been battered by a multi-faceted assault. Clintons campaign will have breathed a sigh of relief after she was once again not charged by the FBI. The markets will share her relief, with a sharp rally away from safe haven assets at the time of writing.
It was perhaps difficult to truly envision the concept of a Trump victory, even a few months ago. However, he resonates with a large amount of the American electorate that gloss over his flaws, and focus on his ability to cut to the chase.
Regardless of who is elected on November 8th, the world will wait with baited breath. Rarely has an American election had the potential for such wide reaching effects.
About the author
William Shepherd, Head of Treasury with OFX, an Australian online foreign exchange and payments company.
Google last week launched a Fact Check tag to help readers find fact-checking in major news stories published in the United States and the UK.
Readers will see tagged articles in the expanded story box on news.google.com and in the Google News & Weather apps for iOS and Android.
One factor the Google News algorithms consider in determining whether an article might contain fact checks is the Schema.org ClaimReview markup.
Another is whether sites follow commonly accepted criteria for fact checks.
Although theres a slew of biased media reports about the presidential candidates, the Fact Check tag is aimed at all stories, not just political ones, Google said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by company rep Maggie Shiels. The tag has just launched, so you will likely see an uptick in the coming weeks.
Applying the Fact Check Label
Google requires that discrete claims and checks be identified easily in the body of Fact Check articles. Readers should be able to understand what was checked, and what conclusions were reached.
Analysis must be transparent about sources and methods, with citations and references to primary sources.
The organization must be nonpartisan, with transparent funding and affiliations. It should examine a range of claims in its topic area instead of targeting a single person or entity.
Article titles must indicate that a claim is being reviewed, state conclusions reached, or simply indicate that the contents consist of fact checking.
Google News may apply the Fact Check tag to content published with fact-checking content adhering to its criteria.
Google may remove sites that dont follow the criteria for the ClaimReview markup from Google News, or ignore the sites markup.
Whats in a Tag
Done well, where valid news stories that report ethically and accurately are used, this could really help journalism and the public, said Lynn Walsh, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
For journalists, its just one more validation that their work is trustworthy, she told TechNewsWorld. For the public, it provides a way to cut through the clutter that sometimes exists like articles that dont clearly distinguish between fact and opinion.
However, theres a risk that tagged articles may not be fully vetted, accurate or ethically reported, Walsh warned. With this just launching its too early to tell, but this is something I think journalists and news organizations should watch closely.
Who Watches the Watcher?
It appears that Googles depending on fact checking collectives to police themselves and is then simply utilizing fact checkers that conform to the standards of the collectives, said Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.
This is OK, but Google may face issues unless it makes the quality of its fact checking very clear, he told TechNewsWorld. A disavowal of the accuracy of fact checking seems likely at some point.
Another concern is whether Google is attempting to credential articles and reporters as legitimate, and others as non-legitimate, Walsh said.
Theres a need for legitimizing sources, but this could be a slippery slope, she cautioned. We have a right to publish and speak freely in this country no matter who you are.
By Ryan Dolan
In August, I embarked on a journey that very few people will ever experience. Leaving the U.S. and a sultry summer behind, I traveled south almost as far as you can go, to the bottom of the world.
At the southern tip of Chile, I boarded the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a U.S. National Science Foundation vessel, to join a group of experts on a month-long research voyage to the Antarctic Peninsula. I was traveling to the region two months before a multinational marine conservation management body was set to consider a proposal to create the worlds largest marine protected area, in the Ross Sea off Antarctica. I wanted, among other things, to see this extraordinary environment firsthand.
Crabeater seal resting on an ice floe in Bransfield Strait, Antarctica. Ryan Dolan
Even among the Antarctic scientific community, my trip was considered extreme. Most researchersand all touristsvisit the region during the summer. Its hard to blame them: The Antarctic winter is hostile to humans, intensely cold, dark and stormy. But I was nonetheless eager to go.
The purpose of our expedition, led by the Antarctic Marine Living Resources program at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was to gather winter data to better understand how various factors, such as the changing climate and behavior of krill populations, are affecting this raw and foreboding ecosystem.
The Nathaniel B. Palmer sailing through pancake ice in the Bransfield Strait. Ryan Dolan
Antarctic krill, a tiny shrimplike crustacean, was our main focus. With their populations in decline, krill underpin the entire Antarctic and Southern Ocean food web and are the main source of nutrition for many species of penguins, seals and whales. Its remarkable that a minute creature plays such a critical a role in this massive, raw environment. As the Palmer advances into the Bransfield Strait, off the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, I see towering, rugged, snow-covered peaks rising from jagged blue glaciers. Antarctic snow petrels, one of only three bird species that breed exclusively in Antarctica, fill the skies above the iceberg-speckled sea, while fur seals bob playfully through the waves.
The strait is crucial habitat for Antarctic krill, which thrive under winter sea ice conditions. For hardy species such as crabeater seals and Adelie penguins that overwinter here, the ice forms a network of floating platforms, providing the animals a safe place to rest near their preferred and primary food source: krill.
But this remote, pristine environment is not immune to outside forces. The peninsula region is experiencing warming trends far above the global average, comparable only to some areas in the Arctic and the changing climate is compromising sea-ice coverage, with potentially widespread impacts. On average, the peninsula regions monthly ice concentrations have decreased by up to 25 percent since the late 1970s. With this diminished seasonal sea ice, experts think penguins and seals are going elsewhere to forage, to waters with potentially fewer krill to eat.
The peninsula region also supports the worlds largest commercial krill fishery, which is especially concentrated in coastal areas, making it harder for penguins and other predators to find food. Krill are used to make omega-3 supplements and feed for livestock and farmed fish, such as salmon.
More research is needed to understand how climate change and commercial fishing are affecting Antarctic krill populations and, ideally, to drive policies that might mitigate these impacts. To that end, my shipmates and I logged 12-hour shifts in often brutal conditions netting krill and other zooplankton for further research. We are hopeful that this work will help scientists better grasp the threats to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean to safeguard this regionone of the last pristine oceans left on Earth.
Research crew sailing near Elephant Island, Antarctica. Ryan Dolan
During the Our Ocean conference in Washington in September, hosted by U.S. Sec. of State John Kerry, some two dozen governments committed to ocean protections totaling nearly 4 million square kilometers. These commitments were the latest sign of a global movement to conserve more of the ocean; within weeks, that momentum swept to Antarctica.
On Oct. 28, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a body made up of 24 nations and the European Union that manages human activities in the Southern Ocean, made history by designating the worlds largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea. The 1.55 million-square-kilometer (600,000-square-mile) areanearly twice the size of Texassets aside a reserve where no commercial fishing is allowed. CCAMLR member governments also agreed to a five-year extension of a precautionary krill fishery management measure that sets fishing quotas in smaller areas, a key tactic to avoid over concentration of fishing in sensitive regions.
Ive been back on dry land for several weeks and continue to feel grateful for the opportunity I had to contribute to scientific work at the bottom of the world. I am even more grateful to CCAMLR for the critical action it took last month in protecting an extraordinary and globally important ecosystem.
Ryan Dolan is an officer for Pews penguin campaign.
Sundays earthquake that damaged dozens of buildings near an oil and gas pipeline hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, is further proof that fracking and wastewater injection are too dangerous to people and property to be allowed to continue, the Center for Biological Diversity said Monday. In May, the organization called on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to withdraw 11 proposed oil and gas leases in Oklahoma because of earthquake risks. The BLM has yet to respond to that request.
On Friday, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a supplemental letter to its April protest highlighting the increase in human-induced earthquake activity in the region and the BLMs ongoing refusal to analyze those potential impacts in its oil and gas lease approvals.
The 5.0 magnitude quake was the third temblor this year in Oklahoma to register greater than 5.0, including a magnitude 5.8 quake on Sept. 3 in Pawnee. More than two dozen earthquakes have shaken Oklahoma in the past week, the Associated Press reported. The increase in quakes has been linked to human activity, such as hydraulic fracturing and wastewater injection, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study.
We dont need a major earthquake that claims lives and costs millions in damage to tell us the rapid increase in fracking and wastewater injection in Oklahoma and neighboring states is the cause, said Taylor McKinnon with the Center for Biological Diversity. The USGS has already linked seismic activity to wastewater disposal associated with fracking and has raised the risk for damaging quakes in Oklahoma and Kansas. We renew our call on Interior Secretary Jewell to cancel public leases recently auctioned in the region before more serious harm occurs.
Sundays quake occurred in Cushing, the self-proclaimed Pipeline Crossroads of the World, where a confluence of pipelines and storage facilities is located. No infrastructure damage was reported to the pipelines or a nearby storage facility that recently held more than 58 million barrels of crude. Downtown Cushing was evacuated Sunday and schools were closed on Monday, reports said.
Its only a matter of time until these increasing quakes cause catastrophic damage, McKinnon said. Alongside the worsening climate crisis, earthquakes are yet another reason that President Obama should end the federal fossil fuel leasing programs now.
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that these dangerous wastewater-injection practices cause destructive quakes, the BLM, which reviews and auctions public lands for fracking, failed to consider these effects in its evaluation of its latest lease auction in April 2016. A new environmental review released last month for the agencys next lease auction in April 2017 also fails to consider these effects.
Military Times says ECSU in Top 20 of Best Bet for Vets colleges
Elizabeth City State University cares for military veterans so when the Military Times set out to rank the top 20 Best Bet for Vets schools, it should come as no surprise that ECSU was ranked 17th.
According to the Military Times, universities across the country were asked to fill out a rigorous survey that included 150 questions. The aim of those questions was to understand the nature of the institutions operations involving current and former service members, and their families.
Military Times evaluated the responses of 175 universities, factored in information from Veterans Affairs and the Defense Department, as well as information from the College Scorecard data and the Cohort Default Rate Database. Institutions were evaluated based on university culture, academic quality, student support, academic policies, and cost and financial aid.
ECSU stepped up to actively work with military veterans, and active service members and their families last year with the opening of the Veterans Center. According to center director Tim Freeman, the mission of the center is to serve the men and women who have served the nation.
We make sure that they have what they need when they come to ECSU, said Freeman.
The Veterans Center is located in Lester Hall, next to the G.R. Little Library. The center provides military veterans and active duty members with a variety of resources that extend beyond assistance with university matters. Freeman says that at the center, veterans are able to find resources to assist them with benefits that include medical aid, financial aid, and more.
We have a support staff, says Freeman.
ECSU recently signed a memorandum of agreement with the U.S. Coast Guard that brings the two organizations together to better educate future Coast Guard leaders. The purpose of the memorandum is to strengthen the relationship between ECSU and the Coast Guard, offering educational opportunities to service members.
One of those opportunities is the ability to continue receiving an education from ECSU online, an important factor in the life of a service member. Active duty students stationed in Elizabeth City can continue their ECSU education online once they are transferred to a new duty station.
Freeman says the top 20 ranking ECSU has received from the Military Times reflects those services. Many of the service members enrolled at ECSU, says Freeman, are taking courses online.
They get all the help they need to reach those goals, says Freeman of the services provided by ECSU.
ECSU has also been ranked for the third year in a row in the top 20 HBCUs in the nation by US News and World Report. ECSU has also been ranked No. 18 out of 50 of the top HBCUs in the country by CollegeChoice.net; ranked No. 1 for the fourth consecutive year on Washington Monthlys list of Best Baccalaureate Colleges.
Free U.S. Government poster that shows the steps to become president. The President must: Be a natural-born citizen of the United States; be at least 35 years old; have been a resident of the United States for 14 years.
Pope Francis, speaking just days before the U.S. presidential election, urged social justice activists from around the world not to give into the politics of fear by building walls but instead work to build bridges.
"Because fear - as well as being a good deal for the merchants of arms and death - weakens and destabilizes us, destroys our psychological and spiritual defenses, numbs us to the suffering of others," Francis said according to America Magazine.
"In the end," the Pope noted Nov. 5, "it makes us cruel."
The bitterly fought election by two candidates who do not appear to be greatly loved has been a no holds barred contest with each dogged by allegations about each other that have kept debate away from proposed policies.
Pope Francis did not mention the Nov. 8 U.S. election, but many of the themes he touched on have played out in debates between Republican Party candidate Donald J. Trump and the Democratic Party's Hillary Clinton in recent months.
The Pope reiterated pleas he had made for nations to respond more generously to the global refugee crisis, which he blamed on "an unjust socio-economic system and wars."
Francis cited the hundreds of thousands of people who have died in the Mediterranean Sea seeking entry into Europe in recent years and, he said, "no one should be forced to flee their homeland."
The United States accepted some 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016 fleeing the vicious civil war but Trump had said in his campaign speeches he wants to shut Muslims out of the United States for a time, as well as building a wall to keep illegal Mexicans out.
Trump also said he will ban migrants from countries experiencing terrorism from entering the United States.
Mindful of the fact that Trumps call could have been applied to Jews who like Muslims are a minority religious group in the United States, many Jews have recoiled at the prejudices dominating Trump's campaign.
The Jewish publication, The Forward, carried an article Nov. 7 headlined, "What If Donald Trump Had Called for Ban on Jews - Not Muslims?"
It referred an election ad on rotation in the swing state of Florida, which boasts a sizable Jewish population, which imagines presidential candidate Trump calling for a ban on Jews coming to the United States.
The advertisement, paid for by the anti-Trump group Truth PAC, includes an excerpt of an earlier speech by Trump in which he calls for the ban of Muslims to the United States - but the word "Muslim" has been edited out and replaced with "Jew."
"We changed one word," the text of the ad reads. "Don't let Donald Trump win. No one is safe unless everyone is safe."
(INSTAGRAM/Nick Viall)Reality Steve has revealed the location in Nick Viall's final rose ceremony for "The Bachelor" 2017
In less than two months, fans will finally have a close look at Nick Viall's "The Bachelor" season. And as early as now, spoilers for the show's 21st season have started rolling out.
Spoiler expert Reality Steve (Steve Carbone) has recently revealed where the final rose ceremony will be held, and it will be very different from the previous ceremonies which were mostly shot in sunny regions with beaches, swimming pools and beautiful women all around.
According to the reports that Carbone received, the final rose ceremony for "The Bachelor" 2017 will be held in Finland. While Carbone admitted that he is not sure how the weather is in that particular country since he hasn't been there, he can confirm that there will be no sun tan moments or bikini sightings in the area.
Carbone went on to clarify that he is not sure where exactly in Finland the cast and crew will be filming, but either way, there's reportedly no sun in Finland at this time of the year.
Meanwhile, fans continue to wonder who the final three ladies are, considering that Carbone has previously said filming for the hometown dates has wrapped up. It is unclear who these ladies will be but based on the spoiler guru's initial statements, the final four will include Rachel Lindsay and Raven Gates.
Lindsay is an African-American lawyer, who, according to Carbone, will be the recipient of the first impression rose. This is the first time a black woman has received such attention from a "Bachelor." Will Lindsay be the final rose recipient?
Gates, on the other hand, is a business owner and an Arkansas native who is believed to be someone who has a well-rounded background. Gates will be the person to receive the 1-on-1 date with Viall in the Bachelor's hometown, Waukesha, Wisconsin. Is she the right one for Nick?
For now, fans can only wait for further spoilers from Carbone and other people on social media as "The Bachelor" 2017 prepares for its big premiere scheduled for Jan. 2, 2017 on ABC.
In the heated presidential campaign that culminates with Tuesdays vote, the question of what to do about schools has been overshadowed by much larger and more dramatic discussions about immigration, terrorism, trade, and other topics.
A different dynamic has taken hold at the state level, with education issues getting a relatively large amount of attention in states such as California, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, where ballot measures and governors races have put the K-12 policy debate squarely in front of voters.
And among states overalleven in places where education has been overshadowed by other issuesthe results of Tuesdays vote could still have a major impact on approaches lawmakers take and just who makes the decisions on the Every Student Succeeds Act, which in December replaced the No Child Left Behind Act and which goes into full effect less than a year from now.
Differing Approaches
In the presidential race, a lack of focus on education has allowed Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, to largely sidestep the politically dicey area of K-12 policy and spend most of her time talking about early-childhood education and higher educationwhich are a lot less divisive in the party.
On early-childhood education, specifically, Clinton wants to expand preschool to every 4-year-old over a 10-year period and to double spending on the federal Early Head Start program.
Election Coverage Education Weeks government and politics team is tracking and analyzing election results. Find their latest coverage on edweek.org .
. Follow the team on Twitter @PoliticsK12 .
Shes also pitched new resources for school construction, including a five-year, $275 billion infrastructure program called Modernize Every School Bonds. And she wants to invest in and modernize the teaching profession, although she hasnt offered details.
Clinton was endorsed early on by both national teachers unions, even though some of their members were hoping leaders would give more consideration to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her rival in the Democratic primaries. Thats led many experts to speculate that a potential President Clinton would be much more beholden to the unions than her predecessor, President Barack Obama, who pushed through policies that many educators disliked, such as teacher evaluation through student-test scores.
Meanwhile, Republican nominee Donald Trump began his campaign without a significant track record when it comes to education. And with the exception of one plan to dramatically expand school choice, Trump has largely dealt with education only in sound bites that are often light on details.
Trumps position on the federal role in education has been difficult to discern clearly. On the one hand, hes called for a dramatically scaled-down U.S. Department of Education, or no department at all. On the other, hes called education one of the top three priorities for the federal government.
Related Video To understand where Clinton and Trump stand on school choice, unions, and other key education issues, check out our video explainer below:
And its not clear how his signature K-12 proposal, a $20 billion federal program to allow low-income students to attend private, magnet, and public schools of their choice, would work without a federal education department to oversee it. (That money would also leverage additional state investments in choice programs, under Trumps plan.)
Tapping into a key issue for many conservative voters in recent years, Trump has called the Common Core State Standards a disaster without saying why. He wants an end to gun-free school zones. And he has said that the United States spends far too much for poor scores on international exams.
Shaping States Policy
At the state level, 12 governor seats, 5,915 legislative seats, and five superintendent positions are up for election this year.
Those who take office will have a greater say, under ESSA, in shaping teacher evaluations and school accountability systems, two politically volatile issues. In the vast majority of states, candidates on the campaign trail have so far steered clear of those issues. But there are some exceptions.
In some deeply conservative states, such as Indiana and Oklahoma, teachers unions have fought hard in recent months to oust politicians that supported incorporating student-test scores into school accountability systems and teacher evaluations.
In Indiana, where a teacher shortage has left thousands of students being taught by uncertified teachers, Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg has campaigned to bring back the dignity of the teaching profession and replace the states decades-old standardized test. His Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Eric Holcomb, promised during an education-focused debate in September to continue some of the strict accountability measures that current Gov. Mike Pence instituted, including the states controversial letter-grade school accountability system. (Pence is running as Trumps vice presidential candidate.)
North Carolina gubernatorial candidates Pat McCrory, the incumbent Republican, and Roy Cooper, a Democrat, have sparred over which party has done more to boost that states teachers salaries and working conditions.
And in Oklahoma, after staging an electrifying rally in 2014 over teacher pay and other grievances, more than 40 teachers filed to run for office themselves.
Ballot Measures
Education activists in several other states have decided to skirt altogether the messy legislative process by taking initiatives directly to voters.
California voters will decide whether to lift the decades-old English-only mandate and to expand bilingual education programs to benefit its growing population of English-language learners.
Teachers unions in Oregon and Maine have backed tax the rich ballot measures that, if passed, could bring millions more dollars to the public school systems there. A ballot measure in Oklahoma would raise the sales tax by a penny to, among other things, provide teachers with a $5,000 raise.
And in one of the nations most hard-fought policy showdowns, Massachusetts voters will decide whether to lift a cap on the number of charter schools in their state. That race has attracted millions of dollars from teachers unions and charter proponents alike from across the country and sparked a very public debate over how money influences education policy.
China's pig meat imports more than double in Jan.-Sept.
China's imports of fresh/frozen pork increased a whopping 160% to 516,000 tonnes during the third quarter, compared with the same period in 2015. This takes import volumes in the first nine months to 1.28 million tonnes, well over double last year's figure.
At 873,000 tonnes, the EU was the dominant provider of imported pork to China during the first nine months, AHDB Pork reported.
"Chinese pork imports have escalated this year due to insufficient domestic production, following last year's rationalisation of the breeding herd and the imposition of stringent environmental barriers hindering expansion", the pork division of the UK's Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board explained.
EU pork exports to China represented 68% of the total market share, 5% lower than during the same period last year. Within the EU, Germany held the leading export position, with volumes up 91% year-on-year. Spain and Denmark were also key players, with shipments more than doubling during this period.
Non-EU imports grew ahead of EU shipments up to the end of September, with volumes from the US doubling and those from Canada almost quadrupling. Brazil was particularly successful following its securing of market access, shipping 61,000 tonnes to China during this period and gaining a 5% share in the Chinese import market.
Pig offal imports also grew strongly, rising 70% year-on-year to almost 1 million tonnes in January-September. While EU supplies rose by 39%, its market share fell from over 70% to less than 60%. AHDB said this was due to imports from both the US and Canada being more than 2.5 times greater than in the same period last year.
Vietnam pangasius group launches 2 websites
The Vietnam Pangasius Association recently launched a couple of websites to support trading of tra fish by producers and exporters, and trace locations of tra farms in the Mekong Delta region.
The website www.mekongfishmarket.com provides sellers with utilities to help promote their products, give price quotations and streamline the management of their sales staff.
A free membership registration provides seafood suppliers with quality certifications, as well as market information, and data about supply, demand and consumption trends in different regions.
The second site, www.pangasiusmap.com, maintains a database and map of 200 tra fish breeding areas of businesses and households in Can Tho City and the provinces of ong Thap, Vinh Long, An Giang and Ben Tre, besides Tien Giang that have 1,104 breeding ponds covering 1,230 hectares.
Users can easily find information about breeding areas, the number of tra fish businesses and households, and harvest forecasts on this map.
Post Office publishes Christmas post deadlines
The Isle of Man Post Office has published a list of the final dates for sending mail abroad in time for Christmas.
Each year there are deadlines to make sure parcels, cards and other post reaches its destination before Christmas Day.
Those sending mail to those serving in the armed forces don't have long, with November 25th the cut off for posting to operational British Forces Post Office's.
Items for Asia, South America and Africa need to be sent in the first week of December, while the last date for Irish addresses is December 16th.
The full list of dates for different countries and services can be found at iompost.com/Christmas.
Teenager from Isle of Man found dead in Scotland
Scott Diver
The family of a Manx teenager who was found dead after going missing in Scotland have thanked everybody who has offered their support since his disappearance.
Police in Scotland confirmed the body of 16-year-old Scott Diver was found last week, more than seven weeks after he disappeared from Clydebank.
The teenager moved to Scotland from the Island three years ago, but still had relatives locally.
Following confirmation that a body found in a wooded area last Thursday was that of the teenager, a campaign page set up by Scott's family on Facebook posted to thank those who tried to help find the missing teen.
It added that the page had been a big help to the family, but will now close to allow his relatives to grieve properly.
Officers in Scotland say the death isn't being treated as suspicious.
Opposite sex civil partnerships not recognised in UK
MP Caroline Dineage is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Early Years.
The British Government says opposite-sex couples entering into civil partnerships on the Isle of Man won't have their union recognised in the United Kingdom.
Manx legislation was brought in earlier this year, allowing all couples to enter a marriage or civil partnership.
In the UK, civil partnerships are still only offered to same-sex couples, resulting in some heterosexual couples travelling to the Island to take advantage of the new Manx laws.
However, UK Equalities Minister Caroline Dineage told the parliament there that only civil partnerships between same-sex couples will be recognised.
As it is known, a new Star Wars anthology is being produced at the moment. The Anthology will circulate around a young Han Solo.
According to Coming Soon the movie is to come out in 2018 around the end of May. The full cast has not been revealed yet but Donald Grover will be playing as Lando. Alden Ehenreich will be playing the young Han Solo instead of the beloved Harrison Ford.
The studios will be in collaboration between Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm. That being said, the movie right now seems quite amazing. However what is interesting are its directors.
Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the directors and they are famous in the movie industry for being directors who like to add their own flavors in every film. This could be either bad or good for the upcoming unnamed Han Solo film.
A recent story done by Cinema Blend involves an interview being covered in which George Lucas was asked a few questions regarding the directors and their behaviors. The answer was quite inspiring.
Lucas mentioned how he is not only fully aware of what they might do as they discussed it, he encourages it. He says that they asked him to come down and discuss how the movie will go out. Phil and Chris mentioned that they may even break a few Star Wars rules and guidelines to make the movie more interesting and unpredictable.
Lucas is on board with everything as he knows them from experience. He mentioned how he believes in them and like their touches added to their movies.
According to him, the worse that can possibly happen is that a bad movie will be made. He then relates to how some other Star Wars movies were were bad too and the industry did not suffer that much damage.
This risk taking could prove to be a very new and interesting thing for the fans.
In the upcoming episode of "Grey's Anatomy" a new case will hit close to home for some of the doctors in Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, particularly, Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) and Stephanie (Jerrika Hinton).
In the previous episode of "Grey's Anatomy" Season 13, Richard was facing some difficulties when it comes to his age and methods of teaching. A new doctor named Dr. Eliza Minnick (Marika Dominczyk) offered the hospital her new techniques which she can teach the residents of the hospital which is the opposite of how Richard does his work. It seems like the norms inside the hospital are being challenged with this upcoming major change.
In "Grey's Anatomy" Season 13 Episode 8, the challenges continues for Richard and the other doctors in the hospital. According to GameNGuide, Richard along with Stephanie, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Owen (Kevin McKidd) are going to work on a patient that will bring back memories for them.
Christian Today reported that Stephanie and Richard's past will be explored in the new episode. The story will introduce Gail Webber who may be Richard's mother or sister, while it will also show Stephanie's younger years when she was still battling her disease.
On the other hand, Richard is still worried that he will lose his position in the hospital with the new doctor joining them. In Episode 7, Bailey (Chandra Wilson) and Catherine (Debbie Allen) hired Eliza as an "educational consultant." However, she expressed that she always work alone and she wants to do things her way.
Eliza also told Bailey that she is used to being an "agent of change" and that she is looking forward to working in the hospital. Richard might realize in the upcoming episode that Eliza plans on replacing him so it would be interesting how he would handle the situation. It was also speculated that Eliza will be Arizona's (Jessica Capshaw) new love interest.
"Grey's Anatomy" Season 13 Episode 8 titled "The Room Where It Happens," will air on Nov 10 on ABC.
"Arrow" season 5 is focusing mostly on building up and strengthening the new team of vigilantes. However, fans are still on the lookout for a possible Olicity reunion. Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards tease the avid viewers about the real score between the exes.
"Arrow" season 5 has been working hard to bring back the old formula that made the CW series gripping. Training the new members of the vigilante group has been on the forefront of this season's plot. However, many Olicity shippers still miss the romance between Oliver and Felicity.
The Star City couple broke it off last season after Felicity found out Oliver kept his son a secret from her. In addition, Felicity has been showed moving on this season with her new detective boyfriend while a journalist is starting to flirt with Oliver.
The reunion for Olicity might be bleak but both Amell and Rickards, who play Oliver and Felicity, told fans to hope a little bit more. INQUISTR reported that Canadian actor commented on the future of Olicity.
"We have some arguments coming up," the actor divulged during the 100th episode screening of "Arrow" in Canada. "I think they both love each other very much and care about each other, but that doesn't always mean that people are together."
Meanwhile, the blonde actress also talked about the Oliver-Felicity relationship in the same event. Rickards was quoted saying that she believes the couple may get back together.
"I feel they still have a really deep connection and they just need to grow apart," the 25-year-old actress said.
Although Olicity are no longer romantically involved, Rickards thinks that Oliver and Felicity's relationship is much healthier. The two are more self-motivated and are much more fun being around each other compared to their rapport in the previous season.
For Rickards, this is a good thing. "You do grow apart, sometimes, before you can grow together."
Watch if Olicity are indeed getting back together in "Arrow" season 5. Watch it on the CW every Wednesday night.
Kate Middle is curious about Prince Harry's new girlfriend, American actress, Meghan Markle and is keen to meet her in one of the royal family engagements.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle started dating since May this year and the prince has already introduced her to Prince Charles and Princess Eugenie during Prince Harry's birthday on September. However, Prince Harry's prospect is yet to meet Middleton and Prince William.
In a report by Harper Bazaar, Middleton wants to know more about the 35-year old actress and what she is "all about."
Well, that desire to meet Markle may come true soon during Kate's next trip to London when they can finally meet. The trip will take place before the Royal family will go on a Caribbean tour at the end of this month, a date that coincides with one of Prince Harry's charity works.
As for the actress, she is currently busy filming the TV series Suits and would fly to London at the end of this month after the filming wraps up. Well, it is also possible that 35-year old actress' delayed flight to the UK is a clever way to avoid media attention in the heights of dating reports with the Royal family member, The Sun reports.
Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in the Royal family as Queen Elizabeth sides with Prince Andrew and thus giving his granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie a role in the clan.
In a report by The Inquisitr, the Queen needs more royals, in addition to her team of five including Prince Charles, his wife Camilla, Prince William and Kate Middleton and Prince Harry, to facilitate the duties of her 600 charities and special charities.
It can be remembered that the "blood princesses" used to enjoy the luxuries of the Royal family since birth but that stopped six years ago when the two were criticized for their "round-the-clock police protection" that costs a hefty sum 500,000 a year from taxpayers. Aside from that issue, the two were also advised to look for jobs to support their lives.
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Hello carbon tax friends, here's the truth about Tuesday:
Tomorrow polls will close at 8pm and initial results should be posted by 8:30pm [ed. note: 11:30pm EST]. We will post a statement at http://yeson732.org/news. If you're in Seattle please join our election night party from 6:30-9:30pm at Peddler Brewing Company (1514 NW Leary Way, Seattle WA, 98107). If you are on Facebook, you can find the event here and invite other supporters.
Just so you know, Peddler is all ages, they serve beer, cider and soda, we have a food truck showing up on site and the overflow space is a heated outdoor tent, so you may want to bring a jacket. Win, lose, or draw we hope you will join us for this historic night. If celebrating in Seattle is not an option, we are encouraging people to host local house parties around the state. Take photos and send them our way!
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The UKs withdrawal from the EU is a defining moment for the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) since Britain was not only one of the main contributors but also a key veto player in this policy area. Therefore, it is unsuprising that one of the first consequences of Brexit was the launch of new proposal to push forward CSDP cooperation. This is has been done on two levels: first, by revising the CSDP governance model; and second, by upgrading the level of ambition in line with the provisions of the EU Global Strategy. Recent CSDP initiatives seemingly mark unprecedented steps towards a stronger and more integrated common defence policy. However, EU member states must in the end agree on clear commitments beyond declarations, as the window of opportunity created by Brexit may soon close.
A new core for EU defence
Since the CSDP was born out of a Franco-British initiative at St Malo, Brexit requires a rethinking of the core EU member states committed to driving forward CSDP. The question is: What could replace the Franco-British engine at the core of EU security and defence integration? Post-Brexit initiatives show that some member states are attempting to fill this gap.
Shortly after the British referendum, Germany, France and Italy issued a joint declaration to reaffirm their commitment to the European project. This included developing European defence and making the necessary commitments for joint operations, military capacity and industry, acknowledging that the potential of a true Common Foreign, Security and Defence Policy has not been fully used. France and Germany then made a further concerted push for closer EU defence co-operation through a six-page position paper released ahead of the September 2016 Bratislava European Council, calling for a new military headquarters, shared military assets and other proposals to boost CSDP under the overall framework of permanent structured cooperation. The proposal was supported by Italy and Spain in a letter sent to EU defence ministers on 11 October.
Although the practical implications of these proposals are still unclear and measures for the implementation of the EU Global Strategy will be decided at the upcoming Council meeting in December 2016, these initiatives demonstrate the willingness by some EU member states to move CSDP towards deeper integration.
A strong Franco-Italian-German engine would appear to be the safest and most sustainable new model as it would possess the necessary assets (military capabilities, political weight) to convince other member states to follow. While France and Italy have traditionally been active in promoting CSDP, Germany is a newcomer. A more proactive German leadership in foreign and security matters has been championed by several policy and decision-makers in Berlin and Germany is evolving from being a civilian power to taking on greater responsibilities in international security. This includes participating in military operations, as set out in the new White Paper on German Security Policy released in July 2016. This paradigm shift could benefit from burden and risk sharing with other EU partners, particularly considering current limitations faced by Germany such as domestic opposition to the use of force. For these reasons, German foreign and security policy orientations have shifted towards a renewed assertiveness, moving from estrangement to engagement in CSDP integration.
A new level of ambition
Another consequence of Brexit is redefining and increasing the level of ambition of the EUs security and defence policy. This is closely linked to implementation of the new strategic doctrine, the EU Global Strategy, as presented by Federica Mogherini in June 2016; the security and defence implementation plan, announced at the September 2016 Bratislava European Council, to be presented at the December 2016 European Council meeting; and the new partnership framework between the EU and NATO,initiated by the Joint Declaration signed in July 2016 at the NATO Warsaw Summit.
Notwithstanding the political role setting up the CSDP at Saint Malo and some initial support (e.g. for the creation of the European Defence Agency in 2004), the UK gradually withdrew from supporting and investing in the CSDP, going as far as to oppose deeper integration. The formation of the Coalition government in 2010 led to a determined return to NATO and to bilateral partnerships, namely the 2010 Lancaster House Treaties with France which were reaffirmed in November 2015. As a result, the UK never fully committed to its 1998 Saint-Malo pledge and vetoed several initiatives aimed at boosting this policy area. For instance, it withheld the necessary budget to allow the European Defence Agency to operate and opposed moves towards military integration through Permanent Structured Cooperation. Brexit has therefore removed a CSDP veto player.
The absence of the UK from decision-making structures in Brussels now provides EU member states with a unique opportunity to make unprecedented bold steps towards a greater level of ambition for the CSDP on the basis of EU Global Strategys recommendations. The Global Strategy, released only a few days after the Brexit vote, made it clear that the EU needs to be strategically independent, yet modify its level of ambition in tackling external crises, promote resilience and take an integrated approach. However, turning these bold proposals into practical measures will not be easy. Proposals under elaboration by the security and defence implementation plan cover almost all aspects of cooperation, ranging from defence planning to capability generation. Examples include: the use of permanent structured cooperation, as introduced by the Lisbon Treaty; the creation of a permanent military and civilian headquarters in Brussels to autonomously conduct EU operations; strengthening EU Battlegroups and Eurocorps; a revamped capability plan; and new financing mechanisms.
Conclusion
The EU is close to making one of the biggest leaps forward in its security and defence cooperation since the St Malo Declaration. A new core of EU member states (France, Germany, Italy) have emerged and are willing and able to push integration forward, replacing the previous Franco-British engine. The EU Global Strategy has introduced a new level of ambition, paving the way for a bigger role for the EU in global security. Brexit has made it easier for EU member states to find a new consensus on policy reforms. However, the crucial test will be to agree clear political commitments and turn them into concrete measures for more united European defence. This must happen fast: external threats are intensifying, multiplying and diversifying; internal EU politics is becoming more vulnerable to populist forces and anti-European sentiments. The window of opportunity for the CSDP will not be open forever.
The opinions articulated above represent the views of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Leadership Network or any of its members. The ELNs aim is to encourage debates that will help develop Europes capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security challenges of our time.
As our international friends may be aware, the U.S. holds a somewhat contentious presidential election today. Seeking relief from controversy, one American biologist we know flew to London for the Royal Societys New Trends in Evolutionary Biology meeting. What could be more soporific?
Well actually, while less raucous than the 2016 election, the meeting so far is not without its dramatic elements. Our biologist friend writes of yesterdays session:
Some opposing views were aired in the morning sessions, with polite but pointed disagreement between Drs. Sonia Sultan and Russell Lande on the subject of phenotypic plasticity. It is clear that opinion is divided in the room. Some applause for bolder statements was quickly quashed, the audience having been warned at the beginning that boos and cheers were not acceptable.
Warning the audience not to cheer or boo, quashing outbursts in response to favored viewpoints? Thats exactly what moderators in our three presidential debates had to do, if memory serves. All this at a meeting about presumably arcane topics in biology. And they tell us theres no scientific controversy about evolution.
Im on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer.
A meeting at Londons Royal Society is not just any old scientific conference. The Royal Society is among the most venerable in the world, presided over by Isaac Newton for the 25 years before he died. His death mask is on display to remind visitors of this history.
Thus a RS conference on New Trends in Evolutionary Biology is of special note. Paul Nelson expects fireworks before its done. The meeting got going today and will conclude on Wednesday. No advocate of intelligent design will address the distinguished audience, though one Discovery Institute Senior Fellow made a surprise appearance from the speakers stage (see below). From reports were receiving via friendly scientists in attendance, the atmosphere is tense. In fact two comments use that very same word.
Says one:
To me it was surprising that there was quite some tension between the proponents of the Modern Synthesis and those of the extended evolutionary synthesis. Why? What is the problem even if some novel evolutionary mechanisms are discovered? Anyway, in my opinion it has not been demonstrated by the lectures presented today that the extended evolutionary synthesis provides the potential to create true novelties.
Another scientist shared photos and observations.
Q. Youre in London now, arent you? How is the meeting going? I would love to be able to give some first-hand impressions to readers at Evolution News.
Sure, it is quite interesting in several ways. There is some tangible tension between the proponents of the old Modern Synthesis and the newer Extended Synthesis. The Third Way of Evolution is not even mentioned. Today most talks addressed the phenomenon of phenotypic plasticity and of niche construction. Both processes may be relevant on a microevolutionary level, but none of the speakers even attempted to address the crucial problem of the origin of new complex structures and information. They presented examples of discontinuous change, but they were all either reductions or multiplications of pre-existing structures like fingers/phalanges. Also interesting was that nearly everyone uses the term neo-Darwinism, which refutes those ID critics who maintain that the word neo-Darwinism is not used by real scientists but only by creationists.
Our scientist friend offered a breakdown of the individual presentations:
The first talk was by Gerd Muller, who presented an overview and defense of the Extended Synthesis. He carefully avoided any fundamental criticism of the neo-Darwinian process. The second talk was by Douglas Futuyma, who basically said If you read my book that I wrote twenty years ago it already contained most ideas of the so-called Extended Synthesis. He insisted that only selection can account for improbable changes. The third talk was by Sonia Sultan and it was extremely interesting. She introduced evidence for inherited but non-genetic adaptations involved in developmental plasticity (eco-evo-devo). E.g., tadpoles of the same genotype grow larger in ponds with salamander predation. She laid out that even an elaborate genotype model cannot accommodate plasticity phenomena. In the Q&A she was asked if this is Lamarckism, and answered: Labels are trouble, but if you mean Lamarckian evolution in the sense of inheritance of acquired features, yes! It is definitely not supposed to happen. Fourth talk was by Russell Lande, also on phenotypic plasticity. He disagreed with Sultan and considers neo-Darwinian machinery as fully sufficient and adequate to explain the phenomenon. He also made the only derogatory comment toward ID: We all here agree on Darwin, except for some fundamentalist fanatics out there. Next talk was Tobias Uller who considers that evolutionary processes are self-referential (and recurrent). He proposes a relational view as opposed to an autonomous view of the three main processes (variability, heredity, selection). Next was John Dupre who argued in favor of a process ontology where species are individual processes and evolution is the change of these processes. He also said that species lack any characteristics that endure this change. He was asked in the Q&A how, given his statements, he can establish transtemporal identity of the process (same species at T1 and T2 undergoing change), because Whitehead was a Platonist who used the instantiation of non-material eternal objects for this purpose. He answered that he prefers to avoid the Whiteheadian baggage and basically appealed to a radical nominalism, in which we arbitrarily limit parts of a large mess into distinct individuals and processes. Note that in Dupres talk a Google Image search failed in this slide the image of Michael Ghiselin is actually Richard Weikart.
Q. Wait, are you serious about Weikart? Here it is. The second photo is a closeup:
Yes, thats Richard all right. Dr. Weikart is a historian, a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institutes Center for Science & Culture, and author of From Darwin to Hitler and other books. Did anyone realize the mistake (outside of Weikarts friends in the audience)?
No, but we had fun. Its definitely him.
Q. Go on.
Next was Paul Brakefield with a (to my taste) somewhat boring talk about the evolution of eyespots on butterfly wings. The final and very good talk was by Kevin Laland about niche construction as developmental bias and an important evolutionary process. But he also failed to establish any role for this process in macroevolution.
Q. Are you getting any sense of whether theyve left more provocative talks to the last two days?
Nope, they will stay very tame and avoid any impression that something is fundamentally wrong with neo-Darwinism. Its all about an extension of the Modern Synthesis or at best an extension of the Extended Synthesis. Theres a lot of talking past each other, a lot of quarreling about words, terminology, and definitions. Some alpha male behavior and denial of any necessity for an Extended Synthesis. And some interesting research on the level of small changes, that is, microevolution.
Q. What kind of alpha male behavior?
In the way of This is nothing new, we knew this for a long time, the phenomena exist but are irrelevant, appeal to authority, etc.
Q. Despite their trying to avoid giving an impression of something fundamentally wrong, would an informed observer read behind the talks and understand that something is indeed seriously wrong?
Maybe not. The closest would be Gerd Mullers talk, where he said that the Modern Synthesis has several explanatory deficits including the explanation of phenotypic complexity. But then none of his elements of the Extended Synthesis even addressed this issue.
Q. You mentioned a derisory allusion by Russell Lande to Darwin skeptics. Do they know were in the audience?
No, I think he was not aware of that. But good ol Larry Moran is here and of course recognized some familiar faces.
Q. Any incidental observations? Hows the food? Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True rarely fails to post photos of his meals when he travels. I wouldnt expect that of you.
Lunch at the Royal Society was surprisingly good (given the reputation of the British kitchen). Larry Moran complained about the quality of the presentations and said to [Evolution News contributor] Jonathan M. that You folks are so much better at giving talks. He also asked for a photo with him (for his trophy photo collection with us ID supporters). Here is a picture from this mornings walk to the Royal Society. Very distinguished building with old paintings of people like Newton and Robert Boyle. The Royal Society itself is not visible in the photo.
Q. Nice scene of street and traffic. Will we hear from you again?
My report from the second day will follow tomorrow.
Fantastic. Thank you! Well look forward to it.
Im on Twitter. Follow me @d_klinghoffer.
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San Antonio lawyer Todd Prins is accused of fabricating court documents complete with the forged signatures of various judges in an elaborate scheme to conceal from his clients the actual status of a lawsuit he filed in 2009.
My clients were completely bamboozled, Jason Davis, an attorney for William and Karen Ozer, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Gargotta at an emergency court hearing Monday. Its rare to put in a pleading unprecedented fraud and not have that perceived as some sort of hyperbole. In this case, it is unprecedented to forge federal judges signatures.
Gargotta later made note that forging a judges signature is a felony.
The allegations emerged Friday in a new lawsuit the Ozers filed against Prins and his law firm as part of Prins and his wife Paulas personal bankruptcy liquidation case. The Ozers allege Prins committed fraud and breached his fiduciary duty to them.
Attached to a court filing are copies of allegedly manufactured court rulings bearing the supposed signatures of various judges, from Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht to U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery to state District Judge Solomon J. Casseb III.
Also included are allegedly forged communications from U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger, among others.
Davis had filed court papers seeking an order to freeze any assets in the Prins Law Firms trust account that may belong to the Ozers, but whether any money actually exists is unclear.
Prins did not appear at the hearing because he was on vacation in an undisclosed country, according to the Prins bankruptcy lawyer, Martin Seidler. Gargotta ordered Prins to appear at a Nov. 21 preliminary injunction hearing.
Todd and Paula Prins filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 29. Ten days earlier, representing himself, Todd Prins filed for divorce after 14 years of marriage.
A cursory review of the docket in the 2009 Bexar County District Court case Prins represented the Ozers in failed to turn up some of the orders that Prins allegedly passed off as authentic.
Thats definitely not my signature, state District Judge Laura Salinas said when presented with a March 12, 2013, order that bears her name. The order was never filed with the case.
Included in the suit against Prins were two 2015 letters allegedly from Casseb to Biery urging federal court intervention in the Ozers state court case.
I believe that the teeth that you can bring to bear would be of significant assistance, both letters end.
I did not write those letters, Casseb said Monday. While acknowledging the signatures were his, Casseb said the letterhead did not match his courts. He also said he didnt sign court orders in the 2009 case because he always requires the lawyers to sign the orders, as well. No lawyer signatures were on the orders containing Cassebs name. Those orders dont appear in the court file, either.
Asked his reaction, Casseb replied, Im surprised. I dont know Todd well, but I know him. Id really like to know whats going on.
A State Bar of Texas spokeswoman said it is prohibited from confirming whether a disciplinary action against an attorney even exists.
Prins had represented William Ozer in a 2009 suit against San Antonio commercial real estate firm REOC Partners and others. The suit alleged the defendants breached their fiduciary duty to Ozer and other investors in the financial management of various investments. Ozer sought up to $500,000 in damages, according to the complaint. Karen Ozer, also represented by Prins, joined the case in 2010.
Prins and Gay Gueringer, the defendants lawyer, together filed a motion to abate the case on Aug. 16, 2013. That same day, state District Judge Barbara Nellermoe signed the order granting the motion.
Yet Prins led the Ozers to believe the case was still playing out, the lawsuit against Prins and his firm alleges. It further alleges that Prins represented that he received $1.6 million in settlement funds but claimed the money was frozen in the law firms trust account because of various court appeals.
Why Prins would allegedly say there were settlement funds when the case was abated could not be determined. On Oct. 14, two weeks after Prins and his wife filed for bankruptcy, Prins executed a $1.6 million promissory note to the Ozers.
Asked after the court hearing if he had a theory for Prins actions, Davis replied, Well find out when he takes the stand. Its always about money.
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Seidler, Prins bankruptcy lawyer, suggested in court theres probably a good reason why there are allegations of fabricated documents.
To my understanding, Mr. Ozer may have known and may have requested those documents, Seidler said in court.
Asked by Gargotta if he believed either one or both of the Ozers were complicit in the preparation of the documents, Seidler answered, Thats my belief, but youll have to hear evidence on that.
Davis said the allegation that his clients were somehow complicit in defrauding themselves was outrageous.
I dont know how you do that, but hell get a chance to your examine your clients, Gargotta responded to Davis.
Gargotta issued an order, agreed to by both sides, that blocks Prins from touching any money being held by the law firm for the Ozers and from destroying any of the Ozers files.
Among those attending Mondays hearing was Travis Parks, an associate with the Prins Law Firm. The firm specializes in business contracts and litigation.
Parks declined to comment on the court proceedings. The law firms clients are being attended to, he assured.
Our clients shouldnt worry about whether or not the phone is going to go unanswered, he said.
pdanner@express-news.net
Twitter: @AlamoPD
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Workforce Solutions Alamo fired CEO and Executive Director Gail Hathaway on Monday following a scathing report last month from a state agency that criticized the organizations contracting practices and cited a culture of fear, suspicion and retaliation among staff.
Board chairman Rudy Garza cited the report by the Texas Workforce Commission in explaining Hathaways termination at a special meeting Monday. The state agency, which supervises the local organization, found discrepancies in procurement procedures and allegations of a hostile workplace environment at Workforce Solutions, he said.
As a result of weaknesses and leadership concerns by the TWC report, I am recommending a change in leadership at WSA, Garza said before the vote was taken to dismiss Hathaway. While Gail has brought some good changes to WSA, I do not believe that she can continue as CEO of WSA and achieve the excellence that the board and our clients demand.
Hathaway, who became the employment agencys CEO two years ago, was combative in addressing the board before the directors went into closed session to discuss her fate.
If its your desire to have someone different, then so be it, Hathaway said at the meetings start. Im tired of working my tail off and then made out to be the bad guy and scapegoat. The changes at WSA were needed and are already making a difference. I hope you think long and hard about what you really want to do. Starting over every time is not always the best answer.
She declined to comment after the meeting.
Garza said Alan Miller, who was the agencys executive director from April 2001 to June 2007, has agreed to come out of retirement to serve as WSAs interim CEO and executive director until a permanent replacement is found. Miller, who currently lives in Joliet, Illinois, will be able to start within a week, Garza said.
WSA Deputy Executive Director Susan Ashmore will run the agency until Miller starts, Garza said.
Miller is a 35-year workforce executive and also has been executive director of the Workforce Solutions Capital Area agency in Austin. The Texas Workforce Commission in Austin oversees 28 regional workforce agencies across the state. Miller also is former division director at TWC.
More than 20 directors at the 25-position board attended the meeting. Three members abstained from the vote to dismiss Hathaway, whos a retired U.S. Navy captain.
Hathaway was placed on administrative leave by Garza on Wednesday. Hathaway said in an interview Sunday that she had not been given a reason for the leave.
Hathaway told the directors Monday she was still in the dark about the administrative leave, citing a recent meeting in Austin between Garza and WSA lawyer Frank Burney with TWC Executive Director Larry Temple.
Rudy has not shared with me what was talked about at TWC. Allegedly, TWC continues to receive hotline calls about fear, intimidation and retaliation, which have not been validated or investigated, Hathaway told the board. Nor has Rudy talked to me about them or initiated an internal investigation, which I requested. I will tell you that I categorically deny that I have even retaliated against anyone at WSA.
TWC audits agencies yearly. An Oct. 19 report to Garza was critical of WSA, stating that interviews with staff members alluded to a culture of fear, suspicion and retaliation.
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Garza said Workforce Solutions will reimburse TWC for a $28,750 invoice from an executive search firm that the state disputed and was not properly under contract with WSA.
Compliance with state and federal procurement guidelines are a core function of this agency, Garza added.
The invoice was paid to recruit Rusty Perry, a former Navy colleague of Hathaways, as deputy executive director in July 2015. He resigned in May of this year. Hathaway said Perry was one of four candidates for the job, that his hiring was proper and that she had been encouraged to use the services of an executive search firm.
The TWC monitoring report found that the solicitation of bids from other search firms were requested by the Alamo board after an invoice had been submitted by the hired executive search firm.
Hathaway said she was hired in 2014 with a two-year contract and two one-year optional extensions. She said her contract was extended in mid-October for one year. But Garza said Monday that Hathaway has continued in her employment on an at will employment basis.
The San Antonio agency serves 12 counties, including Bexar. The board and staff govern a network of service providers and contractors that match people with jobs.
The agency also provides child care, career counseling, job-search workshops, training, job fairs and labor market information services.
dhendricks@express-news.net
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A long line of San Antonio voters sang a song as they made their way to the ballot boxes Monday morning.
We are walking down the hall very quiet, we are walking down the hall in a line, they sang to the tune of the song If Youre Happy and You know It (Clap Your Hands).
The vocal voters were preschool students at the South Side center of Pre-K 4 SA, who made their way single file from their classroom to a lounge area converted into a polling location. After signing in and heading to a makeshift voting booth manned by teachers and parent volunteers, they cast their ballots on iPads for one of three local nonprofits: St. PJs, Any Baby Can or Childrens Rehabilitation Institute of TeletonUSA.
Across all four Pre-K 4 SA sites, thousands of students voted to choose the nonprofit that will be supported through fundraising and volunteer work by Pre-K 4 SA students, teachers and parent volunteers for the rest of the academic year.
Last year they raised close to $10,000 for San Antonio Pets Alive, said Adriana Becerra, assistant director of curriculum and accreditation for Pre-K 4 SA.
Were voting to help people, said Jayce Mujica, a 4-year-old in a bright red shirt waiting in line. He and his classmates clutched little pieces of paper with their nonprofit of choice in hand, to remind them of who they chose to vote for, said their teacher Kelly McManus.
Each year, the city preschool program holds its own election the day before general elections with the idea that it will also encourage the childrens parents to go and vote the following day.
Children at risk do not usually participate in their community. By engaging them in this type of thing, youre fostering civic engagement in their life and their parents life, said Becerra.
While there are only roughly 2,000 students total, almost 2,400 votes were cast because of parent and staff participation, something that Becerra said was very important to the preschools mission.
Jayce cast his ballot for Any Baby Can.
They have a lot of sick people and I just want them to be happy over again, he said, now sporting a red I voted sticker.
There were some children who said they were voting for an organization based on its logo, referring to Any Baby Can as the train one or CRIT U.S.A. as the heart one. Becerra said she found that the childrens reasoning for voting for a particular nonprofit really mirrors current presidential elections, with some voting based on marketing and others based on what they had learned about the candidates.
One of Pre-K 4 SAs main missions is to introduce the children to civic engagement. At the south center, theres a room designed like San Antonio, which includes representations of the Mi Tierra restaurant and the Alamo.
We want to instill a love for San Antonio so regardless of what they do when they grow up, they still feel committed to their city, Becerra said.
The center held a rally outside at 1:30 p.m. to announce the winning nonprofit. About 500 students were given small instruments and the teachers blasted music by popular artists, encouraging the children to dance. Jayce wiggled his hips and hit his head with blue drumsticks.
As the teachers began a countdown for the big reveal, students hit their knees in drumroll-fashion.
Are you ready to find out who were going to help? said Belinda Gonzalez, the South Education Center director.
The kids whooped and screamed in anticipation. The teachers unfurled a yellow poster covered in glitter glue and permanent marker with the words Any Baby Can, and the crowd of children cheered.
Any Baby Can won with 869 votes, a 93-point lead over St. PJs. Overall, 2,387 votes were cast.
But the lesson for the preschoolers wasnt over.
Tomorrow theres a big vote. Do any of you know whats going to happen tomorrow? Gonzalez asked, to an incoherent response. She went on to explain the election for the president of the United States and its significance to the children.
So today when you go home, I want all of you to take your sticker and tell your mommy and daddy: Look Mom, look Dad, I voted today. My voice is counting to other people. Tomorrow is your job to get out and vote. Can you promise me that? said Gonzalez. Because when you vote, you help people and you make a difference. So thank you for making a difference today.
sfosterfrau@express-news.net
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Bexar County elections officials are braced for an extraordinary turnout on Election Day as voters cast ballots in a historic presidential race and for dozens of local and state offices.
Even with the possibility of rain, officials predict that about 165,000 people will vote here, with an average of 400 to 800 voters at each of the countys 303 polling sites.
Twelve days of early voting exceeded expectations, with 436,731 votes cast. Combined with todays projected in-person voting, there potentially could be a record 60 percent turnout among the countys 1 million registered voters.
It couldnt be anything else but a record-breaker, Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said Monday, adding, this is way too important for people to sit out.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Those in queue at closing time evening lines are likely at many polls will be eligible to vote, Callanen said.
On Monday, many campaign volunteers were quietly gearing up for today by calling voters to encourage turnout and by offering rides or information. The days only high-profile campaign event was an appearance in San Antonio by Gov. Greg Abbott on behalf of several Republican candidates: U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Helotes and state Reps. John Lujan and Rick Galindo, both of San Antonio.
All these races, every single one of them, are going to be tight to the end. If theres anybody here whos taking it for granted, theyre crazy, because every last vote is going to be needed, Abbott said.
Hurds opponent in District 23, former U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, spent election eve campaigning in the 29-county district, said campaign spokeswoman Lyndsey Rodriguez.
He is encouraged and motivated by the record-breaking turnout we have seen throughout early voting, she added.
Federal, state and local offices and issues are on the general election ballot. Topping the list are the races for president and U.S. representative, followed by state races for Texas railroad commissioner, Texas Supreme Court, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and State Board of Education.
Moving down the ballot are races for Texas Senate and Texas House and numerous state district court judgeships. Choices for several county offices follow for one court-at-law bench, sheriff, tax assessor-collector, county commissioner, justice of the peace and constable.
Cities, school districts and other local entities holding elections include Alamo Heights, Bexar County Water Control and Improvement District No. 10, Converse, East Central Independent School District, Edgewood ISD, Green Valley Special Utility District, Leon Valley, San Antonio ISD, Sandy Oaks, Schertz, Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD, Somerset, South San ISD and Windcrest.
Voting devices had been delivered by Monday to all 303 polling sites, where teams of at least six poll workers will be on duty today.
At the Elections Department near downtown, workers Monday were counting the record-breaking 35,000 mail ballots returned so far, including about 8,000 from military voters. Around 7 tonight, the Elections Department will release the first vote totals from early and mail balloting only.
To avoid delays at the polls, voters were urged to verify their registration and poll location information, which is available at elections.bexar.org. Details about the states photo identification requirements, including options for those without photo ID, are available there and at the states election website, votetexas.gov.
Some voters who have moved and havent updated their registrations could be sent to their previous polling site, Callanen said.
There are still 135,000 voters that we know do not live at the address we have them registered at, she said.
If they go to the poll in their new neighborhoods, greeters will have to turn them back to their old location that we have on file, Callanen said. Once theyre at the old site, theyll be required to fill out a statement of residence card before voting, and their data will be updated for the next election, she said.
Though weather could dampen the turnout, heavy rains were not predicted. Todays forecast from the National Weather Service called for morning fog and a 50 percent chance of daytime showers and thunderstorms, with a high near 75.
McALLEN In a courtroom filled with men and women charged with trafficking weapons and people or with violating the nations immigration laws, Border Patrol agent Eduardo Bazan stood among them Monday as a man accused.
In shackles and surrounded by the sort of offenders he used to arrest, Bazan was arraigned before Magistrate Judge Peter E. Ormsby. He had surrendered to authorities Friday, charged with making false statements in connection with a federal investigation into a drug trafficking organization.
A bail hearing was scheduled for later this week.
The case is the latest in a troubling pattern of border agents and supervisors brought up on corruption charges in recent years, even as the embattled agency struggles to root out misconduct in its ranks.
Its always a challenge when you have an agency that grows very fast, said Alonso Pena, former deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sometimes you tend not to be as effective as you should be in screening people. You combine that with internal controls to address issues of corruption that werent as strong as they should have been, (and) you have the potential for problems.
Since taking over as U.S. customs commissioner in 2014, Gil Kerlikowske has moved to crack down on corruption and make the agency more transparent. Yet in just the past year, several South Texas-based agents in the nations largest law enforcement agency, pledged to defend against cross-border drug trafficking and human smuggling, now stand accused of casting their lot with criminals.
A year ago, Cameron County sheriffs investigators charged Border Patrol agent Joel Luna and four others, including two of his brothers, in connection with the beheading of a Honduran immigrant, a grisly murder they said had links to the Gulf Cartel.
Luna had been assigned to a checkpoint in Hebbronville. Investigators found 3 pounds of cocaine, half an ounce of methamphetamine, nearly $90,000 in cash, a ledger documenting the sale of narcotics and a vintage engraved pistol in a safe belonging to him. His trial is expected to begin early next year.
In another case, authorities in May indicted several Texas lawmen on drug trafficking charges, among them Border Patrol agent Daniel Polanco.
A federal investigation dubbed Operation Blue Shame linked Polanco to a far-reaching probe into a cocaine trafficking organization.
The corrosive and corruptive force of the drug trade knows no bounds, and unfortunately it affects just about every agency, said Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration and the author of Deal, about his time as an undercover agent. Youre always going to find a few bad apples, but that shouldnt taint the entire organization. That is why the drug trade is a security threat.
Bazans alleged transgression took place in February 2007, but authorities didnt learn of it until October 2013, when agents with Homeland Security Investigations in McAllen interviewed a confidential informant, according to a criminal complaint. The informant told of a drug trafficking organization in the Rio Grande Valley pilfering narcotics from other traffickers with the help of corrupt law enforcement officers. The officers would seize less valuable or fake loads of narcotics to allow traffickers to sell the real drugs without the need to pay suppliers, the document states.
The drug trafficking organization coordinated staged narcotic seizures of sham, or diluted, narcotics with the assistance of law enforcement officials, which enabled the organization to steal drug loads from unwitting narcotics sources of supply, the complaint says.
Investigators say one such cocaine seizure took place near the McAllen Border Patrol station with Bazans assistance. Federal agents searched the agency database for the report Bazan filed in 2007 detailing the incident.
When HSI agents recently interviewed Bazan, he recalled seizing the load, telling investigators that border agents had discovered bundles of cocaine in a Honda Civic, the criminal complaint says. At first, Bazan denied being tipped off to the location of the drug load and to having received payment for making the seizure.
But when HSI agents interviewed Bazan two days later, he admitted to lying, the document states. Bazan told them he had received information that led to the seizure of about 150 pounds of cocaine and that in return he was paid around $8,000. At first, Bazan claimed to have chased suspects from the drug-laden vehicle, but he later admitted there were no suspects, confessing it was a ruse to make the seizure appear legitimate to other agents, according to the criminal complaint.
Most agents honor their oath to uphold the Constitution, said Manuel Padilla Jr., the Rio Grande Valley sector chief for the Border Patrol.
Border Patrol agents who disregard that oath and instead choose to violate the trust of the citizens they swore to protect will be held accountable, Padilla said.
anelsen@express-news.net
Twitter: @amnelsen
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WASHINGTON A long, bitter presidential election ends today the long-awaited Election Day.
In the final, desperate hours Monday, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, supported by a cast of high-flying surrogates, crisscrossed the nation, barnstorming a half-dozen battleground states that could write the last chapter of an exhausting election that began March 23, 2015. That was when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas became the first of 17 hopefuls vying for the Republican nomination.
The dueling itineraries reflected the demographic crosscurrents that have undergirded the two candidates bases of support, with Trump trying to mobilize working-class Anglo men to overcome Clintons advantage with an increasingly diverse U.S. electorate.
Trumps schedule took him from Florida to Michigan, with stops in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, a journey that suggested a stretching of the electoral map into states where Democrats recently have been favored. He ended his campaign with a late-night rally in Grand Rapids.
Clinton, too, made stops in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, with a final rally on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, where she was joined by President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton. Rock stars Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi performed for the crowd.
For those who are still making up your minds or thinking maybe its not worth voting at all, let me just say the choice in this election could not be clearer, Hillary Clinton told a crowd at a University of Pittsburgh rally earlier. It really is between division or unity. Between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon.
Trumps closing argument Monday followed a more disciplined script, compared with the Twitter broadsides that defined his earlier campaign, though he kept his focus on the controversy over Clintons private email server and the FBI investigation that concluded Sunday without charges.
Hillary Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system, Trump said at a rally in Sarasota, Florida.
Democrats expressed relief at FBI Director James Comeys announcement Sunday that his agents had turned up no new evidence in the case, though the issue continued to push the spotlight away from popular criticism of Trumps raunchy comments and alleged transgressions involving women.
Late polls and early voting patterns gave hope to Democrats counting on a surge of women, young people and minorities, though some surveys showed Trump within striking distance in enough toss-up states to maintain suspense.
In Republican-leaning Texas, some 4.5 million people a growing percentage of them Latinos voted early in the states 15 most populous counties, including 436,731 in Bexar County.
Some analysts suggested that a staggeringly unpredictable race could come down to some combination of just two or three states with the margins close enough to leave open the possibility of one or more recounts.
With polls showing a virtual dead heat in Florida, a must-win state for Trump, his strategists also had him looking for an edge in Michigan, a Democratic stronghold that has shown some recent tightening.
Obama won Michigan by 9 points in 2012, but Clinton strategists said they were taking nothing for granted, dispatching the president to Ann Arbor on Monday to shore up black voters and working-class Anglos who benefited from the auto bailout. Obamas three-state tour also included New Hampshire, another must-win state for Trump.
Obama, riding a 52 percent popularity high, told Michigan voters that Trump is the antithesis of the working man. He also interjected a note of sentimentality.
This is going to be my last, probably my last day of campaigning for quite a while, he said.
Clinton also went to a get-out-the-vote rally in Michigan, checking a full-court press that included much of the Trump family. Ivanka and Tiffany Trump attended a community forum outside Grand Rapids, while their older brother, Donald Trump Jr., made several stops, including at a barbecue restaurant in Detroit.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trumps running mate, also converged in Michigan, in addition to stops in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Clintons running mate, focused his energies Monday on rallies in North Carolina, as well as his home state of Virginia, a traditionally Southern state that Trump has contested but which went to Obama in the past two elections.
The last days focus on Michigan, a state that has not figured prominently since the primaries, was seen as a possible sign of Trumps strength among non-college-educated Anglos who could help him flip a big industrial state, even one that Obama won in 2008 and 2012.
A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed that Trump leads among Anglo voters by 54 percent to 37 percent, mainly because of a 59 percent to 30 percent advantage among Anglo males. He leads by a much smaller margin of 49 percent to 44 percent among Anglo women. Meanwhile, Clinton has a 79 percent to 13 percent advantage among non-Anglo voters.
Even as Trump went on offense, many analysts said he still faces a tightrope walk today that requires picking off a Democratic-leaning state such as Michigan if not Wisconsin or Pennsylvania on top of a straight run of victories through the battleground states of New Hampshire, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida.
Democrats were buoyed over the weekend by polls showing that Clintons tiny overall lead was stabilizing after two weeks of bad news over her emails.
Nonetheless, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told CBS Face the Nation on Sunday that the race essentially is a dead heat.
Donald Trump is closing, and hes got the momentum going into Tuesday, he said.
Joining a group of conservative allies enlisted to aid a Trump comeback on the final day of the election was tea party heroine Sarah Palin, who swept across a series of small rallies in Ohio, where Trump enjoyed a narrow lead.
Trump has been willing to sacrifice a lot, Palin said at a bar and grill outside Cincinnati, because of the heart he has for America.
As the final electoral map came together Monday, Clinton, too, sought to end on a high note, contrasting her optimism to what she called Trumps gloomy portrait of America.
We have got to rise above all of this, she said. We dont have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America. Tomorrow, you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America.
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Inside a conference room at the Childrens Shelter of San Antonio, Eli Lequang holds his 1-year-old daughter Kayleen on his lap. Shes a friendly toddler with black, silky hair, a charming smile and a predilection for patty-cake.
Lequangs daughter was born the same day his wife died from complications of child birth in California. A former Marine, he suddenly found himself a single father, charged with raising a child while burdened with grief. When Lequang landed in San Antonio last summer, drawn here by a friend, he was flat broke and overwhelmed with the stress of caring for his daughter, struggling to provide for her most basic needs.
I was pretty much lost, he said.
But a new program at the shelter that provides support to active duty military and veteran families in Bexar County came to the rescue. Trained educators go into the homes of caregivers to provide guidance and help with parenting skills, as well as ladle on social services that reduce parental stress and benefit children.
Fueling the need for such a program is new data that shows the incidence of child abuse and neglect among military families is rising. Historically, the rate of child maltreatment in military families has been about half that of the civilian population around 7 confirmed cases versus 14 per 1,000 children. Since 2003, however, it has begun to outpace the nonmilitary statistics, a trend that coincides with the post-9/11 rise in overseas military operations, according to a study by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.
The reasons why military families might be at greater risk for child abuse and neglect are numerous, given the realities of modern service, the study found. They include long and/or multiple deployments, frequent moves, separation from family and support networks, lengthy absences of the deployed parent, increased demands on the at-home parent and potential tension around a deployed parents reintroduction into the home.
Complicating this picture are elevated rates of combat exposure, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental and physical injuries in modern-day deployments, coupled with a reluctance among some service men and women to seek help for mental health issues and a propensity to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol to dull the pain. All this increases the risk of child maltreatment, the study found.
We know that just with normal parenting, there are multiple stressors, said Yvette Sanchez, chief program officer with the shelter. With military families, that can be amplified because of the transience of the population and the instability that can come with deployment. We know this can put families in potential danger if they dont receive support.
There have been no allegations of abuse or neglect against Lequang; indeed, hes a loving father who is closely bonded with his daughter, said his case manager. But thats the point of the program to identify at-risk families and pour on the preventive services before tragedy can happen.
I didnt know where to turn
A native of Katy, Lequang served two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003. After leaving the military, he worked for a defense contractor in Afghanistan for a year. After that came an eight-month stint working as a heavy equipment operator for Schlumberger Oil Services in North Dakota, a job he lost in 2015 when oil prices tanked. He and his pregnant wife of 10 years, Maria, moved to California, where a friend lived.
Soon after they arrived there, Maria, 34, had to undergo an emergency C-section when her blood pressure spiked dangerously. As they wheeled her into surgery, Lequang told his wife hed be waiting for her after the operation.
That was the last time I saw her, he said. In a million years, I never thought (her death) would happen to me.
With a new baby daughter, Lequang was going to return to Katy but decided last August to move to San Antonio, where another friend lived. He was able to find an apartment through a veterans assistance program at Family Endeavors, a nonprofit that provides homelessness prevention to vets, as well as other services.
Lequang had a place to live, but he needed to find work and help with the task of raising a daughter on his own. A case manager at Family Endeavors told him about the new military family program, which began July 1, offered at the shelter. In August, he met for the first time with parent educator Michelle Alvarado.
I didnt know who to turn to until I met Michelle, Lequang said. She helped us so much with assistance, with so many resources. I had no idea such programs existed.
So far, Alvarado has helped Lequang mostly with the basics diapers, wipes, food stamps and the like and helped him negotiate the bureaucratic barriers that often attend accessing social services. And shes been there to listen and offer reassurance that hes doing a great job as a father.
Eli has so much insight, for all hes been through, Alvarado said. He regularly takes part in Family Fun Night, when clients in the military family program come together for festivities, board games and a way to connect socially with one another.
The program is made possible through a grant administered through the United Way, which received $4 million dispensed over five years to seven other nonprofits in San Antonio that provide services to military families. (The Childrens Shelter and Family Service Association are the only participating nonprofits providing home educators, said a shelter spokeswoman.)
The shelter receives almost $140,000 a year for the program and serves families with kids from birth to age 3. So far, 28 families have signed up. A separate $200,000 grant from the Texas Veterans Commission provides the same services to military families with children from birth to age 17.
People come to the program by word-of-mouth, referrals from groups like Family Endeavors; a small number of referrals come from Child Protective Services, Sanchez said. The program is strictly voluntary and free to all participants.
Were a huge military city, so having these resources is crucial, Sanchez said.
Caring for his daughter has given Lequang a new appreciation for the work mothers do, he said: Recently, he resorted to a google search to learn how to groom his daughters hair.
He hopes other service members who are struggling will reach out, and not keep their trouble to themselves.
You dont have to be in the dark, he said. Help is out there.
mstoeltje@express-news.net
An attorney for a fired San Antonio police officer who allegedly tried to feed dog excrement to a homeless person has said hes confident that in arbitration the former officer would win back his job.
That might happen. Fired officers who appeal to outside arbitrators often win back their jobs. In the past seven years in San Antonio, five of 13 rulings were reduced or overturned by arbitrators on appeal and all five were initially terminations.
But Matthew Luckhurst, the fired officer, bears another self-inflicted wound that should seal his fate as an ex-cop. Shortly after the dog-excrement incident, he pulled another sick, scatalogical prank, according to a police source.
In June, Luckhurst smeared tapioca pudding on a toilet in the womens restroom of the downtown bike-patrol office a gag that so disgusted a pregnant female officer she became ill, the source said.
Sgt. Jesse Salame, a police spokesman, would not confirm any additional allegations.
Everything is pending, Salame said. Theres nothing thats releasable until (Luckhurst) is served and has had an opportunity to meet with the chief (William McManus).
Luckhurst did not return a message seeking comment Monday. Ben Sifuentes, his attorney, would not comment on the tapioca allegation.
I havent seen any of that, Sifuentes told me.
Later, Sifuentes emailed further comments.
I respect the First Amendment and your right to have anonymous sources, he wrote. Having said that, I find it most unusual that you have access to this alleged information.
More unusual are the allegations against Luckhurst, a five-year SAPD veteran assigned to the departments bike-patrol unit.
In May, he allegedly sandwiched dog feces in bread and left it next to a homeless man. Luckhurst told other bike officers, who immediately told him to throw away the sandwich, according to the source.
Luckhurst later bragged about his antics to other officers, who reported them to the departments Internal Affairs division in July, prompting an investigation.
Firing this officer was the right thing to do, Mayor Ivy Taylor said in a statement to the San Antonio Express-News on Friday. His actions were a betrayal of every value we have in our community, and he is not representative of our great police force.
Sifuentes told Express-News Staff Writer Josh Baugh that the incident didnt happen.
Im confident that in arbitration, we will prevail, he said.
If you think no arbitrator would reinstate an officer accused of such depraved behavior, consider the troubling case of Michael Garza.
In 2012, while on duty, Garza was drinking alcohol and driving his girlfriend in a city-owned vehicle from a bar to her apartment when her ex-boyfriend, Alfredo Aragon, began shooting at them, according to an internal police investigation.
Garza chased Aragon to his Northwest Side home. As the father of four tried to run inside, the officer fatally shot him in the back.
McManus fired Garza from the force and personally filed murder charges against him. (A grand jury declined to indict.)
Relying on the police unions collective bargaining agreement with the city, Garza appealed his termination, triggering arbitration that proceeded like a trial. In June 2015, swayed by the unions arguments, an arbitrator reduced Garzas punishment to a 15-day suspension, returning him to the force.
A 2011 paper, Police Discipline: A Case for Change, described the problems with such arbitration.
The disciplinary appeal processes often weaken the purpose of discipline, stated the paper, published by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Police executives disciplinary decisions are frequently overturned or reduced by review boards and arbitrators, undermining the impact of the discipline.
The paper cited a study in Cincinnati that found that when fired officers appeal to an outside arbitrator, they get their jobs back every time.
With his alleged pudding prank, however, Luckhurst has only strengthened the citys argument that he should not be a cop.
bchasnoff@express-news.net
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Immigrant groups that landed in Texas in the 19th century had neither the money nor materials to replicate the ornate churches of Europe they knew and loved.
But what they had was paint, and they used it expertly to trick the eye, creating a grandeur that reminded them of the sacred spaces in their memories.
The Painted Churches of Texas, a photo exhibit that pays tribute to them, opens at the Institute of Texan Cultures on Nov. 19 and will be open through March 5.
It showcases what curator Sarah Gould calls the ingenious work of immigrants: Czech, German, Polish, Spanish and Mexican, among others. The new show also makes use of the genius of NASA technology to produce giant, panoramic images.
Each of the eight wall-size, high-resolution GigaPan images were stiched together from 144 smaller pictures in a technique developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Cornell University for the Mars Rover project. It created photographs brimming with detail.
Each church is representative of immigrant artistry, immigrant faith and the artistic skills they brought with them, Gould said.
The show brings with it an unusual provenance.
Industrial designer Jack Frassanito first approached Gould about the images taken by friend and colleague Jim Whitcomb, a commercial photographer who worked for the famed Zintgraff Studio in San Antonio.
Frassanito is known for creating the outside of inventions such as the first personal computer (the Datapoint 2000 made in San Antonio) and the ever-present Sani-Fresh soap dispenser.
He and Whitcomb had done projects with NASA, and Frassanito knew Whitcomb and his wife, Jane, had toured the painted churches of Texas with a GigaPan camera in hand.
Though the majority of painted churches are in the Schulenburg area, Gould said the Whitcombs expanded their tour to include churches such as the Immaculate Heart of Mary in downtown San Antonio.
One of the photos will be connected to an Xbox Kinect so viewers can maneuver around the image to specific details.
Gould said one of the best ways to see the churches, outside of Sunday services, is to visit them during annual festivals, when church communities celebrate their cultures. She noted especially St. Paul Lutheran Church in Serbin, which was founded by Wendish immigrants.
A number of the painted churches have another San Antonio connection: prolific architect Leo Dielmann, a devout Catholic who also designed Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on the West Side and the older structures at Our Lady of the Lake University.
eayala@express-news.net
Twitter: @ElaineAyala
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Two multimillion-dollar apartment complexes on the Northeast Side found new owners last week, adding to a recent flurry of multifamily transactions in San Antonio.
Turner Impact Capital, an investment firm from Santa Monica, California, bought the $19 million San Mateo Apartment Homes complex along Wurzbach Parkway on Oct. 31, property records show. The seller was a company affiliated with investment firm The Accend Companies of Chicago.
Also last week, GMC Properties of Jacksonville, Florida, bought the nearby Settlement apartment complex on Starcrest Drive from Presidium, a real estate firm that specializes in fixing up and selling apartment complexes.
Presidium, which has offices in Austin and Dallas, has been doing a lot of business in San Antonio lately. Last month, it bought the $30 million Windsor House apartment complex near the Interstate 10 corridor its first purchase of a class A complex. It sold the Niche apartment complex on the Northeast Side last summer to Hamilton Zanze, a real estate firm from San Francisco.
The purchase prices of San Mateo and Settlement were undisclosed. The Bexar Appraisal District assessed San Mateo at $19 million this year and Settlement at $6.7 million. GMC Properties borrowed about $8.3 million to buy the Settlement, records show.
A spokesperson for Turner Impact Capital declined to comment, and representatives of Accend, GMC Properties and Presidium didnt respond to requests for comment.
The partnership that bought San Mateo, TMIF San Mateo, appears to be related to the Turner Multifamily Impact Fund, a fund operated by Turner Impact Capital that has a goal of acquiring up to $1 billion of workforce rental housing in ethnically diverse areas of the country over the next several years.
Another partnership linked to the fund, TMIF Grove LP, bought the Grove apartment complex on the North Side in September from an affiliate of Roscoe Properties of Austin. The Grove was assessed at $14.3 million this year, according to the Bexar Appraisal District.
rwebner@express-news.net
@rwebner
Writing about the grain market is a challenge on the day the nation goes to the polls to vote for a new president. Reporting on recent price changes and about thoughts for the future does not seem important this morning compared to events of the day to come.
Today, we do something we have not done for eight years, and it feels momentous. The commentators all tell us this is the most crucial election in our lives. I seem to remember they told us that last time.
John Quincy Adams probably heard the same thing.
Maybe the momentous and critical nature is true this time. What is true is that we have never chosen from candidates so obviously flawed, although we have chosen before from candidates with comparable hidden flaws.
In a few years we may know how our choice did. We hope that our experiment as a representative democracy survives our political process.
Grain prices
With that cheerful backdrop we look at grain price movement. Harvest progress is an old story. The harvest has gone well.
Our pace is well ahead of normal for corn and soybeans. It is just not as good as last year. The corn crop is 93 percent harvested in the country, and 91 percent done in Ohio.
Last week, the country was at 65, the state at 75. Our average for the U.S. at this time is 85 percent, although Ohios is only 67 percent.
The soybeans are a similar situation. Ohio is at 95 percent harvested, up from 88 a week ago. The national stats are similar, at 93 for this week and 87 for last. The average for Ohio is 85, but we were at 98 last year.
The U.S. has a 91 percent average harvest at this date, and was at 94 last year.
Harvest order
Some parts of the country run the beans first, some parts do them late. Right now we are doing all the remainder at the same time. In Northeast Ohio and Northwest Pennsylvania, a Sunday drive revealed areas of complete harvest, areas of corn fields still standing, and areas with both.
In some cases the beans were not ready when most farmers were combining in good weather. Sometimes this was because of local showers, or planting date. In some cases it was the maturity.
Some food-grade beans are still standing in my neighborhood. An area north of Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania, has more than half of the crops standing.
Market enthusiasm
Last week I was enthusiastic that we were seeing good gains off early harvest lows During the last ten days; however, we have seen some setback. Prices for corn and soybeans got to levels not seen since the summer, then declined.
They have gained the last two sessions, however.
Look at the December corn futures. The recent low was $3.25 on Sept. 30. The recent high was $3.5914 on Oct. 20. The low was put in again at $3.4414 on Nov. 2, a drop of 14 cents. Then, we recovered a little to the current, on Nov. 8 morning, $3.47.
Look at the chart and it is mostly sideways right now. Look carefully and you see the changes.
Soybean charts are a little more dynamic. The November futures show a high on Oct. 27 at $10.31. By the 2nd of November, we had lost 48 cents, to a low of $9.83.
However, this morning we are trading at $10.06-34, which is up more than eight cents for the day so far.
Good exports
The soybeans have benefitted from good export news. This week we sold 132,000 tons of beans to China and 135,000 tons of meal to the Philippines.
We exported 2.6 million metric tons last week, the third best inspection number of the year. This was also the four week in a row of exports over 2.5 million metric tons.
This export pace has us ahead of last year and ahead of the five-year average. It has, however, been predicted in the export surge USDA has predicted for the year.
While the pace has helped current prices, exports need to continue to be fast in order to not become a negative on prices instead of the current positive.
SALEM, Ohio If you talk to farmers at the town coffee shop, the local feed mill, the livestock auction or about any other place youll find theyre a little pessimistic about where the ag economy is headed.
And now theres statistical evidence that shows their concern is more than talk.
The Ag Economy Barometer, a survey of 400 U.S. farmers by Purdue University, measures producer sentiment toward current and future expectations. The Nov. 3 release of data resulted in the second most pessimistic results since the survey began in October 2015.
Financial concerns
The number of farmers reporting that they expect bad times financially over the next 12 months rose to 79 percent in October, an increase of 11 percentage points from the September survey and 16 percentage points from October 2015.
Results from the survey were released during a webinar hosted by James Mintert, professor and director for Purdues Center for Commercial Agriculture, and Michael Langemeier, professor and associate director.
Crop futures
On the crop side, only a third of producers said they expect July corn futures to top $4 a bushel, with about the same percent believing theyll see corn prices below $3 a bushel. Some 30 percent predict soybeans will exceed $10 a bushel, and 25 percent expect soybeans at below $8 a bushel.
Yields this year were fairly strong across the nation, although some farmers suffered a regional drought. Meanwhile, commodity prices remain low, and most inputs are still high.
I can see why theres a little bit of pessimism when (farmers) start looking forward, Langemeier said.
Even the experts, or what the survey calls ag thought leaders, are concerned. About 100 thought leaders, including agribusiness executives, commodity leaders and academia, were also surveyed.
About 30 percent of thought leaders thought corn would exceed $4 a bushel, but a much lower percent of thought leaders (13 percent) compared to farmers saw corn going below $3 a bushel. Also, about 40 percent of thought leaders saw soybean prices topping $10 a bushel, also a higher trend than with farmers.
However, fewer thought leaders than producers expect higher commodity prices to improve producers financial conditions.
One-fourth of farmer respondents expect higher grain and livestock prices to improve financial conditions over the next 12 months, compared to just 8 percent of thought leaders.
Livestock industry
Its not just grain farmers who are hurting. Beef, swine and dairy producers are also under a lot of pressure to be profitable even with cheaper feed costs.
All of the industries that are represented by the people were surveying are seeing tougher times, Langemeier said. This probably going to stay this way for a while.
A couple years ago, livestock prices were at an all-time high and milk was also much higher. The strong demand brought about a rapid increase in supply and sent prices tumbling.
Expansion showed up more quickly than the industry was expecting, Mintert said. Weve really changed the situation pretty dramatically.
As farmers hope for better prices, theyre also making management decisions and cutting back. Nearly half of farmers said they will be reducing fertilizer rates for 2017, with about 20 percent planning a lower seeding rate, and about 35 percent planning to adjust seed hybrids, or their variety trait package.
Mintert said farmers are looking at almost everything, to find ways to reduce cost.
Theyre looking for ways to reduce cost in an expectation that theyre going to have to find ways to deal with this lower price environment, as opposed to just waiting for prices to recover.
HANOVERTON, Ohio The Columbiana Soil and Water Conservation District spotlighted the diversity of its programming and assistance during its annual meeting Nov. 3 at United Local High School.
Richard Berg, owner of Pancake Tree Farm in Middleton Township, was named Cooperator of the Year.
Berg has worked with the local SWCD ever since buying the property in 1993 to improve the woodland that SWCD Program Coordinator Pete Conkle called an inaccessible jungle because of its steep topography.
Because of his early collaboration with the district, he received its Outstanding Woodland Owner award in 1999, and Berg has continually worked to improve access roads in his now Certified Tree Farm, usually hand-off loading and loading gravel into an all-terrain vehicle to transport it. Hes also worked to improve drainage from those improved trails and roads, to minimize sediment runoff into the nearby North Fork of Middle Beaver Creek, which abuts his property.
In 2001, he created a conservation easement through the SWCD on a hillside portion adjacent to the creek.
Berg has completed timber stand improvement measures on the woodland, including plantings of American chestnut trees, crop tree release, and grapevine control measures on all 132 acres
If anybody ever deserves this conservation award, its Mr. Berg, Conkle said. Every day, he wants to make an improvement.
District work
Conkle, along with Watershed Coordinator Josh Emanuelson and Wildlife/Forestry Specialist Jason Reynolds, recapped the Columbiana SWCDs work over past 12 months.
The district works with landowners or other entities on a variety of natural resources conservation practices, and works closely with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service personnel Scott Kenreich, district conservationist, and Drue Kovick, civil engineering technician, on plan designs and cost-share programs.
Theyve worked with six landowners to attain Environmental Quality Incentives Program contracts, including four livestock practices, one forestry and one grazing practice. There are currently 15 active contracts in the county, establishing conservation practices.
The district has also worked to develop educational events with the Eastern Ohio Grazing Council, and the Crop Production Partnership with Mahoning County, and participated in the annual Highlandtown Outdoor Education Days. The district also reached more than 650 students in 17 educational programs.
Wildlife Specialist Jason Reynolds also works with landowners on nuisance wildlife damage control, as well as nuisance Canada geese control. These calls were up from last year, Reynolds said, and he worked with private pond and lake owners as well as a public park to rid locations where the geese population ranged from 100-150 head.
Emanuelson helped coordinate a cleanup of a dump site at Hellbender Bluff in Madison Township, which drew 40 volunteers who cleared nearly 2 ton of trash from a steep, streamside site, including 97 tires and a cut-up hot tub.
And speaking of hellbenders, Emanuelson said the annual survey found the first eastern hellbender, an endangered species in Ohio, in an artificially created habitat, and through the Ohio Hellbender Partnership, collected 51 eggs which will be raised in captivity at the Toledo Zoo and released back in the wild in southeastern Ohio. Emanuelson was also instrumental in writing five grants for $66,450 for watershed protection and education.
Supervisor election
The Columbiana SWCD is led by a five-member board of landowner supervisors. Brady Baker and Bryan Hays, both of Hanover Township, were re-elected to the board at the Nov. 3 meeting. Rounding out the supervisor board are Jeremy Kohler, Elton Lowmiller and Jack Moore.
Plans to digitise all tax-related accounting is due to be phased in from 2018 onwards, but rural businesses and farmers have criticised the plans.
Farmers have said the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) initiative to make tax digital will be difficult for businesses in the countryside without fast and reliable broadband.
They have also warned that poor digital connectivity in rural areas and no plan from HMRC to undertake comprehensive user testing of the new system could throw the rural economy into chaos.
The current rural broadband roll-out is 'not sufficient' to meet the needs of most farmers, according to a report from October.
Rural business owners have voiced concerns over government plans to force taxpayers to submit tax information online
The government has said it is committed to making the UK the best connected country in the world but farmers are already being held back by poor connections.
The report, published by the NFU, said it was vital for connections to be improved.
There are social, economic and environmental benefits' of connecting the final 5% of those without broadband, especially for the delivery of a sustainable and productive agricultural sector, the report states.
'Government must look at the whole picture'
The CLA, which represents farmers and rural businesses, said it is 'vitally important' to help everyone achieve tax compliance.
We support new technology which aims to make life simpler for businesses but the government must look at the whole picture before making tax digital," CLA President Ross Murray said.
Rollout of superfast rural broadband has been too slow and the governments Universal Service Obligation (USO) of 10Mbps by 2020 is not guaranteed to be met.
Current broadband technology in the UK means download speeds are faster than upload speeds, so the government must reassure businesses they will not be unfairly penalised as a result of poor connectivity when trying to complete and submit tax information online.
Mr Murray added that without the right broadband infrastructure in place or by ensuring the new digital system is fully tested in advance, rural businesses could suffer and HMRC could experience similar problems to the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) when it digitised the Basic Payment System for farmers.
He said: It is crucial in view of previous government digital systems failures such as the RPA that HMRC should reflect on the lessons learned from that project to avoid a serious breakdown in the system which would cause yet more chaos for the rural economy.
Mike Houghton has been selected to receive the inaugural Trehane Fellowship, a 15,000 award from Nuffield Farming Scholarship sponsors The Trehane Trust.
The challenge set for this first award is to identify, over the next nine months, a strategy for the UK dairy industry post-referendum and report back findings to the sector. Trehane Trust chairman Wynne Jones says Mr Houghton, a partner with farm business consultants Andersons Midlands, was selected from a number of high quality applicants to deliver on this brief.
This is the first of what will become a two-yearly award examining pressing strategic topics within the dairy supply chain, says Professor Jones.
Because the current state of the dairy industry persuaded us to launch sooner than anticipated, we were unsure how quickly people would respond. But we have been delighted with the interest we had over 20 excellent applicants in a very short period of time and it was extremely difficult to narrow the short list to five.
Professor Jones says Mr Houghton stood out in the interviews because of his clarity of thinking and approach to the topic. The dairy industry faces significant challenges and we want this Fellowship to yield worthwhile strategies that can be implemented.
Mr Houghton had the right credentials as his studies are likely to require analytical skills, political understanding and international industry connections to reach a conclusion. This will then be presented at the Trehane Trust annual dinner in 2017.
'Great opportunity'
Explaining why he applied for the Fellowship, Mr Houghton says he was primarily intrigued by the title. I believe the subject is much broader than just a post-referendum strategy because there are wider issues, particularly in respect of globalisation, he says.
I also believe I am well-placed to undertake the Fellowship having had over 25 years experience in the UK dairy sector combined with extensive travelling; I felt the Trehane Fellowship would be a great opportunity to stand back from the industry and try to make a positive impact.
Mr Houghton explains that while the milk price is finally increasing, the recent and deep recession has highlighted inherent weaknesses, such as volatility and supply imbalances.
So Im going to start by identifying the people I should talk to within the UK food chain and in key businesses in Europe; I will also use my contacts in Canada and the USA to find out more about their support systems, in particular Crop Insurance Schemes and Futures Markets.
I also hope to consult key people within the legal profession and the insurance industry to obtain a different perspective on the topic, he says.
AHDB is now looking for a new group of Monitor Farm hosts to take the programme forward, as the first projects draw to an end next summer.
Over the last three years, hundreds of farmers in England and Wales have directly benefitted from AHDBs Monitor Farm programme.
Monitor Farms bring together groups of like-minded farmers, who wish to develop or expand their enterprises, in an environment which encourages them to share critical performance information.
The new Monitor Farms will be appointed in spring 2017 and will hold meetings for three years from summer 2017 to 2020.
'Open-minded farmers looking to further their business are particularly well-suited to being a Monitor Farmer'
Tim Isaac, AHDB Cereals & Oilseeds Head of Knowledge Exchange, said: The timescale for these farms is really important. During this period we will see trade and policy negotiations taking place and should get a better idea of what the referendum will mean for farmers.
The Monitor Farms provide a unique opportunity for farmers to access independent expertise on both a business and agronomic level, and discuss potential solutions to shared challenges.
The underlying principle of the Monitor Farm programme is that it is farmer-led and farmer-driven, with farms being chosen which are representative of enterprises and conditions in their local area.
'Open-minded farmers'
On the type of farmers needed, Mr Isaac said: Open-minded farmers looking to further their business are particularly well-suited to being a Monitor Farmer. We find that the more the host and the rest of the group are willing to put into the project, the more everybody benefits.
AHDB is particularly looking for farmers who want to boost technical performance; profit and long-term sustainability, manage costs of production and benchmark against similar businesses; Share knowledge and influence best practice within their local area and forge relationships with the wider industry
Richard Meredith, AHDB Cereals & Oilseeds Knowledge Exchange Manager for the West and Wales, added: The Monitor Farm groups also have the opportunity to test new technologies and strategies on a real commercial farm and to measure the results first hand.
Farmers participating in the current Monitor Farms identified important changes made on farm as a direct result of being part of the programme. A survey found that 94% of the attendees valued the opportunity to share experience and openly discuss issues in a non-commercial environment and the majority reported an improvement in their business decision-making.
Brian Barker, who finishes his three year term as a Monitor Farmer in 2017, said: Being a Monitor Farmer has been really good for my business its inspired me to analyse key financial and agronomic issues and it has brought together a great group of local farmers that will continue to share problems and solutions even after the project here has ended. I cant imagine a better way of helping arable farms to progress.
An example of a Monitor Farm and what they do hit the news last week. A farm is running an glyphosate experiment to farm without for three years. Newark Monitor Farm host farmer John Miller will manage a 10ha field without using any glyphosate, at Manor Farm in Nottinghamshire.
Dairy farmers in Northern Ireland are considering whether to strike against the price of milk with farm groups urging processors to act as global markets improve.
A meeting on the issue is set for Monday, November 14 at the Glenavon Hotel, Cookstown at 8pm and has now received full support of Fair Price NI, Holstein UK and Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers Association (NIAPA).
John Martin from Holstein UK said the UK could learn from the approach taken around Europe, he said: "In France they are receiving 32c/l for October milk and Friesland Campina are paying dairy farmers 10c/l to reduce supply whilst in Northern Ireland it appears processors want an increase in supply.
"With the French story and other UK regions including southern Irelands dairy farmers receiving considerably more for their milk, the time has come for Holstein UK to participate in the Cookstown crisis meeting."
'Put up or shut up'
Ulster Farmers Union president, Barclay Bell, has challenged dairy processors to explain why they are not increasing prices to farmers, despite a new surge in global markets and the continuing weakness of sterling.
Mr Bell said farmers had every right to be angry about the situation
"What I am saying is a twist on the old adage to put up or shut up. In this case, if they continue not to put up, in terms of higher prices, there is no justification for shutting up. They need to explain to farmers, whether they are members of a cooperative or not, why they are refusing to increase prices to reflect the better returns they are receiving," he said.
The UFU says the case for an increase was put beyond question last week by the big increase in the Fonterra auction price in New Zealand.
It rose by over eleven per cent, with whole milk powder, a key product for Northern Ireland, leading the auction upwards.
"This is the best barometer of world trade and it is pointing upwards. So too is the Milk Market Observatory in Brussels. No arguments can be put forward by processors here against a substantial and immediate price increase. If they continue holding back farmers' only conclusion can be that processors are more interested in their own profits than in ensuring farmers have the prices and profitability they need to remain in business. And at the end of the day, without farmers willing to maintain supplies processors will not have a business," said the UFU president.
Mr Bell said farmers had every right to be angry about the situation, and that there would be serious consequences for the entire industry in they continued to lose faith in processors.
"If they are reluctant to tell farmers why they are not paying more, this suggests they do not have a credible explanation," he said.
'Nothing to lose'
Mr Bell added that some businesses here with ownership south of the border had increased prices there, despite the weakness of sterling having a negative impact in the eurozone.
"This is because they are responding to pressure from farmers for higher prices. They need to understand that farmers here have even better arguments for higher prices and can no longer be ignored," said Mr Bell.
William Taylor from Farmers' for Action said: "All Northern Ireland dairy farmers will be welcome and a vote will be taken after the debate to have a milk strike unless corporate food retailers, corporate food wholesalers and co-op milk processors put their contempt for NI dairy farmers behind them."
"Northern Irelands dairy farmers now have nothing to lose by striking as milk is in short supply, the EU reduction support is available and not forgetting that milk is worth approximately 10p/l as fertilizer.
"At long last this puts NI farmers in the driving seat where they now have the power to deliver fairness at the farm gate."
Winter cereal growers are being urged to remain vigilant against aphid vectors of barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) after the mild start to autumn, warn crop specialists
Farmers are urged to remain vigilant, especially when growing crops with a high yield potential, such as hybrid barley.
Aphids are soft-bodied insects with piercing-sucking mouthparts. They feed in the phloem which circulates carbohydrates throughout a plant. Aphids often excrete a sugary waste called honeydew, and usually feed in colonies on new, succulent shoot tips or young leaves. Heavy infestations delay plant development and impair plant healthcausing leaf curling, stunting, or wilting.
According to Syngenta field technical specialist, Max Newbert, yield losses from BYDV can be as high as 70-80% in winter barley and as high as 25-30% in winter wheat.
Barley yellow dwarf disease is transmitted by aphids
BYDV was particularly bad last season after a similarly mild autumn plus a mild winter allowed prolonged aphid activity, he says, so growers have to be vigilant against a similar thing happening again.
Last season, there were a lot of issues with BYDV because people only relied on a seed treatment without using a follow-up aphicide spray, says Mr Newbert.
Most growers will have used a seed treatment against BYDV again this season. But if they drilled early, that seed treatment could be running out of steam. Also, there are similarly high numbers of bird cherry aphids about one of the main vectors of BYDV as there were last year.
Farmers need to be sure to check crops regularly for the first sign of aphid activity, indicating when seed treatment protection may be running out.
The thing to remember about BYDV is that spraying against it is a relatively low input cost, but with these sort of yield losses at stake effective prevention can give a massive benefit especially if youre growing a high yielding crop, such as hybrid barley."
The initial symptoms of BYDV infection are normally seen as individual plants scattered through the crop with bright yellow upper leaves. Later, as infection spreads, larger areas of the crop become infected appearing as patches of bright yellow and severely stunted plants. BYDV is most damaging to plants infected in the early growth stages. The effects of BYDV may be exacerbated by other stress factors, including adverse weather conditions, soil acidity and other pests and diseases.
Wheat: Net sales of 234,900 metric tons for delivery in marketing year 2016/2017 were down 64 percent from the previous week and 54 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (141,700 MT, including decreases of 4,900 MT), the Philippines (77,900 MT, including 63,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 2,000 MT), Venezuela (30,000 MT), Colombia (12,600 MT), Honduras (11,500 MT), Morocco (10,100 MT, including 10,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), and Singapore (10,000 MT). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (67,200 MT), Algeria (2,500 MT), Costa Rica (1,200 MT), and Japan (700 MT). Exports of 327,100 MT were up 24 percent from the previous week, but down 28 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were the Philippines (169,900 MT), Algeria (52,500 MT), Japan (31,700 MT), Peru (16,500 MT), and Mexico (12,900 MT).
Exports for Own Account: The current exports for own account outstanding balance totals 24,900 MT, all Canada.
Corn: Net sales of 1,473,500 MT for 2016/2017 were up 84 percent from the previous week and 24 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were for Japan (219,400 MT, including 112,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 23,800 MT), Mexico (206,100 MT, including decreases of 16,100 MT), Cuba (204,300 MT), Colombia (196,100 MT, including 75,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 5,300 MT), and South Korea (188,800 MT, including 60,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 200 MT). Reductions were for El Salvador (13,600 MT), Costa Rica (5,300 MT), and Vietnam (700 MT). Exports of 868,700 MT were up 66 percent from the previous week, but down 13 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Mexico (163,800 MT), Japan (144,000 MT), Colombia (141,600 MT), South Korea (127,000 MT), Egypt (56,700 MT), Peru (41,400 MT), and Jordan (32,700 MT).
Optional Origin Sales: For 2016/2017, the current optional origin outstanding balance totals 345,000 MT, and is for unknown destinations (280,000 MT) and Taiwan (65,000 MT).
Barley: Net sales of 300 MT for 2016/2017 were reported for Taiwan (200 MT) and South Korea (100 MT). Exports of 700 MT were reported to Vietnam (500 MT) and Japan (200 MT).
Sorghum: Net sales of 404,000 MT for 2016/2017--a marketing-year high--were up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (316,000 MT), unknown destinations (50,000 MT), Mexico (33,000 MT), and Japan (5,000 MT). Exports of 39,100 MT were down 37 percent from the previous week, but up 5 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were China (33,000 MT) and Mexico (6,100 MT).
Rice: Net sales of 42,700 MT for 2016/2017 were down 46 percent from the previous week and 50 percent from prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (18,600 MT, including decreases of 1,300 MT), Guatemala (10,500 MT, including 2,700 MT switched from unknown destinations), Haiti (7,200 MT), Saudi Arabia (3,500 MT), and Canada (1,500 MT). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (2,700 MT). Exports of 92,200 MT were up noticeably from the previous week and up 27 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Venezuela (30,000 MT), Mexico (17,300 MT), Haiti (14,000 MT), Japan (13,500 MT), and Guatemala (8,000 MT).
Exports for Own Account: The current outstanding balance totals 200 MT, all Canada.
Soybeans: Net sales of 2,514,100 MT for 2016/2017--a marketing-year high--were up 28 percent from the previous week and 34 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (2,069,200 MT, including 613,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 29,900 MT), Germany (151,700 MT), Thailand (139,900 MT, including 128,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), Mexico (130,200 MT, including decreases of 9,100 MT), and Saudi Arabia (69,400 MT, switched from unknown destinations). Reductions were reported for unknown destinations (363,200 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 60,000 MT were reported for Spain. Exports of 2,932,600 MT--a marketing-year high--were up 7 percent from the previous week and 48 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were China (2,087,700 MT), Germany (151,700 MT), Thailand (142,000 MT), Mexico (113,700 MT), and Saudi Arabia (69,400 MT).
Optional Origin Sales: For 2016/2017, the current optional origin sales outstanding balance totals 235,000 MT, all China.
Exports for Own Account: New exports for own account totaling 29,900 MT were reported to Canada. Exports to Canada totaling 70,200 MT were applied to new or outstanding sales. The current exports for own account outstanding balance totals 900 MT, all Canada.
Export Adjustments: Accumulated exports to the Netherlands were adjusted down 75,873 MT for week ending October 13th and 75,840 MT for week ending October 20th. The correct destination is Germany and is included in this weeks report.
Soybean Cake and Meal: Net sales of 301,000 metric tons were reported for 2016/2017. Increases were for Colombia (84,200 MT, including 37,000 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 4,800 MT), the Philippines (45,700 MT), Vietnam (45,000 MT, switched from unknown destinations), Mexico (30,800 MT, including decreases of 500 MT), Guatemala (27,600 MT, including 6,900 MT switched from unknown destinations, 1,200 MT from El Salvador, 900 MT from Nicguara, and decreases of 3,300 MT), Cuba (24,600 MT), and Honduras (19,400 MT). Reductions were for unknown destinations (23,400 MT) and Ecuador (21,100 MT). For 2017/2018, net sales of 4,200 MT were reported for Mexico (4,100 MT) and Canada (100 MT). Exports of 150,300 MT were reported to Colombia (41,700 MT), Mexico (37,100 MT), Japan (15,100 MT), Panama (11,100 MT), Canada (10,800 MT), Guatemala (6,700 MT), and El Salvador (5,400 MT).
Soybean Oil: Net sales of 21,200 metric tons were reported for 2016/2017. Increases were reported for Colombia (15,000 MT), Mexico (2,700 MT), Nicaragua (2,500 MT), and Canada (600 MT). Exports of 13,300 MT were reported to Cuba (7,600 MT), Mexico (4,700 MT), Canada (800 MT), and Australia (100 MT).
Cotton: Net upland sales of 160,400 RB for 2016/2017 were up 24 percent from the previous week, but down 25 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (29,800 RB, including decreases of 200 RB), Indonesia (29,400 RB, including decreases of 100 RB), Vietnam (26,800 RB, including 200 RB switched from Japan and decreases of 300 RB), Taiwan (14,200 RB), and South Korea (13,100 RB, including decreases of 3,200 RB). Reductions were reported for Japan (3,000 RB). For 2017/2018, net sales of 6,000 RB were reported for Mexico (5,100 RB) and Indonesia (900 RB). Exports of 127,000 RB were unchanged from the previous week, but down 18 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Vietnam (28,900 RB), Indonesia (24,600 RB), Mexico (19,800 RB), Turkey (9,100 RB), and South Korea (6,600 RB). Net sales of Pima totaling 2,200 RB for 2016/2017--a marketing-year low-- were down 70 percent from the previous week and 82 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported primarily for Egypt (500 RB), China (400 RB), Peru (400 RB), Indonesia (300 RB), and Japan (300 RB). Exports of 7,600 RB were down 13 percent from the previous week, but up 5 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily China (4,900 RB), India (2,200 RB), Japan (200 RB), and Peru (100 RB).
Exports for Own Account: New exports for own account totaling 3,100 RB were reported to Vietnam (1,300 RB) and South Korea (1,800 RB). Exports to Indonesia (8,800 RB), South Korea (900 RB), Taiwan (800 RB), and Vietnam (400 RB), were applied to new or outstanding sales. Decreases were reported to Taiwan (900 RB), Indonesia (300 RB), Pakistan (100 RB), and Thailand (100 RB). The current outstanding balance of 30,500 RB is for Taiwan (7,800 RB), China (7,300 RB), Vietnam (7,300 RB), Indonesia (4,900 RB), India (1,400 RB), South Korea (900 RB), Pakistan (500 RB), and (Thailand 400 RB).
Hides and Skins: Net sales of 411,300 pieces, all whole cattle hides, reported for delivery in 2016 were down 25 percent from the previous week and 15 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (200,500 pieces, including decreases of 6,700 pieces), South Korea (134,600 pieces, including decreases of 1,700 pieces), Indonesia (27,900 pieces), Thailand (23,600 pieces, including decreases of 300 pieces), and Mexico (10,000 pieces, including decreases of 200 pieces). Exports of 409,800 pieces were up 12 percent from the previous week and 11 percent from the prior 4-week average. Whole cattle hide exports of 407,100 pieces were primarily to China (271,200 pieces), South Korea (91,000 pieces), Mexico (17,300 pieces), Thailand (8,100 pieces), and Taiwan (4,900 pieces).
Net sales of 265,100 wet blues for 2016 were up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (73,700 unsplit and 36,700 grain splits), Taiwan (56,200 unsplit), Vietnam (49,800 unsplit), and Mexico (16,000 unsplit and 9,400 grain splits). Reductions were reported for Japan (300 unsplit) and Brazil (100 unsplit). Exports of 117,600 wet blues were up 2 percent from the previous week, but down 3 percent from the prior 4-week average. Exports were primarily to China (32,400 unsplit and 10,700 grain splits), Italy (16,600 unsplit and 4,100 grain splits), Vietnam (19,900 unsplit), and Mexico (13,200 grain splits and 1,000 unsplit). Net sales of splits totaling 240,300 pounds for 2016 were reported for Hong Kong (205,500 pounds), Italy (27,400 pounds), and Vietnam (7,400 pounds). Exports of 290,700 pounds were down 50 percent from the previous week and 22 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were Vietnam (289,700 pounds) and South Korea (1,000 pounds).
Beef: Net sales of 7,300 MT for 2016 were down 12 percent from the previous week and 46 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for South Korea (2,800 MT, including decreases of 600 MT), Mexico (1,900 MT, including decreases of 100 MT), Hong Kong (700 MT, including decreases of 300 MT), Canada (600 MT, including decreases of 200 MT), and Japan (300 MT, including decreases of 2,100 MT). For 2017, net sales of 1,600 MT were primarily for South Korea (900 MT), Taiwan (500 MT), Hong Kong (100 MT), and Canada (100 MT). Exports of 10,000 MT were down 24 percent from the previous week and 27 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were South Korea (2,900 MT), Japan (2,600 MT), Hong Kong (1,700 MT), Mexico (1,100 MT), and Taiwan (600 MT).
Pork: Net sales of 17,400 MT for 2016 were down 40 percent from the previous week and 21 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (8,600 MT), Japan (2,800 MT), Hong Kong (1,200 MT), China (1,200 MT), and Canada (1,000 MT). For 2017, net sales of 1,400 MT were primarily for South Korea (800 MT), Australia (300 MT), Colombia (100 MT), and Chile (100 MT). Exports of 22,300 MT were up 16 percent from the previous week and 17 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Mexico (8,200 MT), Japan (4,200 MT), South Korea (3,000 MT), Canada (1,500 MT), and Hong Kong (1,200 MT).
Source : USDA
An Ashburn man will spend 10 years in prison for the shooting death of his ex-girlfriend with whom he was in the midst of a heated custody bat
Where can you get free diapers in Cumberland County?
The Partnership for Children of Cumberland County helps hundreds of families a month, according to the nonprofit's community engagement administrator.
The Agricultural Bank of China was penalized $215 million Friday after it silenced and severely curtailed the independence of its New York branchs chief compliance officer who tried to expose and stop suspicious transactions at the bank.
The CCO eventually resigned. A few months later, most of the compliance staff also resigned, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) said Friday.
The DFS investigation discovered intentional wrongdoing, the regulator said.
New York regulators told the bank in 2013 not to increase U.S. dollar clearing activity through foreign accounts until it strengthened its compliance program.
But in 2014 and 2015, the bank ramped up U.S. dollar clearing volumes. At the time, the bank couldnt satisfy even basic compliance requirements, the DFS said Friday.
The chief compliance officer discovered the bank was using coded messages through the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system to hide the true parties to transactions.
When the CCO brought the coded SWIFT messages to the attention of bank management in the Fall of 2014, the CCO was told to refrain from communicating with regulators and was effectively silenced, the New York regulator said.
The compliance chief resigned in May 2015.
The CCOs departure was followed by the resignation of much of the remaining compliance staff in August 2015, the DFS said.
While still at the bank, compliance personnel had found unusually large round dollar transfers between Chinese and Russian companies and from Yemen to companies in China.
There were potentially suspicious dollar-denominated payments from trading companies in the Middle East.
The compliance group found dollar transactions remitted by a Turkish Bank customer for an Afghan bank client known by the U.S. Treasury Department for its associations with a Hawala network having associations with narcotics traffickers and illicit cash flows.
Some invoices involving China and Russia appeared to be counterfeit or falsified.
Other documents suggested U.S. dollar trades made for the benefit of a sanctioned Iranian party. That information was omitted from the SWIFT wire messaging.
Financial Services Superintendent Maria T. Vullo said the banks conduct created a substantial risk that terrorist groups, parties from sanctioned nations, and other criminals could have used the bank to support their illicit activities.
Fridays enforcement action required the bank to install an independent monitor for two years and fix its compliance program.
The monitor will be selected by the DFS and will report directly to it.
The DFS said it will direct the monitor to do an 18-month look-back that could lead to additional enforcement actions against the bank.
* * *
The November 4, 2016 New York State Department of Financial Services order against Agricultural Bank of China and its New York branch is here (pdf).
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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
There are many striking similarities between navigating the daily chaos of urban traffic in Lagos, Nigeria and attempting to do business ethically in Nigeria. For one thing the objectives are generally the same to arrive alive, unharmed, and without any damage to your car or your reputation.
This objective would seem to be utterly impossible to any outsider looking in, except that millions of people manage to do both every single day without incident.
According to a 2016 Report by the U.S. Governments Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) on Transportation in Lagos:
Driving is a major safety concern throughout Nigeria. Although traffic laws exist, enforcement remains almost non-existent.. . . Accidents are frequent and often involve fatalities. . . . Vehicular accidents frequently draw large crowds that may become confrontational. The lack of medical response and adequate trauma facilities is also a concern.
Driving in Nigeria is indeed a major safety concern. Anyone who has battled through a four-hour drive from a meeting in Victoria Island to catch a flight at the Airport in Ikeja, Lagos (a distance of less than 29 kilometres or 17 miles) on a rainy Friday evening can attest to this.
The traffic jams are legendary. Vehicles stall and break down right in the middle of the road, with no effort made by their drivers or anyone else to move them to the side. The lane-demarcating lines are faded or non-existent. Even when theyre there in black and white, people cross them with little or no consequence. Drivers cut in front of one another sharply, very aggressively and without indicating. Indicating is for the timid and the naive, as everyone knows you will never be allowed to change lanes the minute you signal your intention to do so.
There are no traffic marshals anywhere to ease the pain, but important government officials do come by from time to time and bully their way through the chaos, facilitated by armed police escorts. Experienced motorists, alerted by the sound of approaching sirens, deftly join in their wake and enjoy much faster passage, leaving many behind to curse their luck and drivers for not taking similar advantage.
There is the ever-present risk of hitting or being hit by everyone else. A fender-bender is more likely to be resolved by the swift exchange of insults and blows, not insurance details. If youre the innocent victim in the sleek SUV, unfairly bashed by a reckless commercial bus driver with a load of impatient passengers, you immediately become the symbol of the corrupt, unforgiving and oppressive elite in society against whom the less fortunate must forever unite. You will receive no sympathy or assistance from anyone on the scene.
So think about all this for a moment. Given the documented state of play on Nigerian roads where traffic laws exist but enforcement remains nearly non-existent, authorities do not require safety inspection of vehicles, driving habits are unpredictable, accidents are frequent and often involve fatalities, and the lack of medical response and adequate trauma facilities is a serious concern, does any right-thinking person drive or allow himself to be driven anywhere in Nigeria?
The answer is a shocking Yes. Millions of perfectly sane people are actually driving all over the place in Nigeria right now believe it or not. Kids are being dropped off and picked up from school, appointments are being kept (the traffic notwithstanding) and the overwhelming majority of these people are arriving at their various destinations alive, unharmed and without any damage whatsoever to their cars.
Similarly, millions of people are going about their daily business ethically, without violating any laws either locally or internationally. Services are being rendered, goods are being supplied, contracts are being won, payments are being remitted and official permits are being granted without bribes being demanded or paid to anyone. People are doing business without suffering any damage whatsoever to their reputations.
How are they doing it, you ask?
I cannot speak for everybody, but I can share a few tips from my own personal experience: Start out as early as possible. Be extremely alert. Pay very close attention to everything going on around you. Drive defensively, keeping a safe distance from other vehicles and giving yourself room to maneuver.
Learn to read the language of others and anticipate lane-changes before they happen. You must have excellent brakes and the reflexes of a fighter pilot. Know when to insist on your right of way and when to concede with dignity. Always calculate your risks. Be kind and courteous to others, regardless of their own lack of courtesy or consideration. Learn to hold your tongue and your temper.
Finally, recognize that sometimes theres simply nothing you can do but wait patiently for however long it takes to move ahead again.
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Paul T. Oki is an experienced lawyer based in Lagos, Nigeria and the founder of a leading web-based Due Diligence Service that assists the international business community with due diligence enquiries about Nigerian companies. He can be reached at [email protected].
'Is This Love?' is about the different types and qualities of love.
Sue Moorcroft
Tamara Rix has never moved away from Middledip village out of love for her sister, Lyddie, who was involved in a hit-and-run accident when she was a teen and needs more care than most children. The story opens when Jed Cassius, who was Lyddie's teenage sweetheart, turns up to explain who was driving the car that hit her.
He's a bit of a mystery, is Jed, having dropped out of society for a while at sixteen. He's somehow managed to land a great job without having a qualification to his name. It's quite an unusual job, though.
As a ten-year-old, Tamara had harboured a secret crush on Jed - and those feelings come rushing back. But she can't make up her mind whether he's one of the good guys or not? If he's not, the consequences could be huge.
I had a lot of fun with this book. Tamara's a yoga instructor and my own yoga instructor, Gail, gave up her time to help me. But there's also an alpaca herd in the book, and millionaires, and funny money. I had to research how much half a million pounds in 50 notes weighs and whether a woman with a bad leg could carry it, when alpacas have their babies and how to look after them (happily, I have other friends, Sue and Adrian, who keep alpacas) and the life of a close protection officer (Jed's stepbrother, Manny, heads up security for the millionaires).
I also had to research what happens at a spa day. I had to do a day and a weekend, just to make sure I had it all covered ...
The less-fun research was into acquired head injury. My thoughts are often with all those who have suffered.
How did you become involved with Choc Lit?
Their very first book was a contender for the Romantic Novelists' Association's Joan Hessayon Award, so I saw it during a committee meeting of the RNA. I was impressed by its production values and the fact that it was also nominated for another award, the Melissa Nathan. I was at a stage in my career when I thought I wouldn't be able to write novels any more, after a bereavement, and was parting company with my agent. She had offered to give one of my books, then titled 'Fresh Sheets', a last try with another publisher and I had written a new synopsis for the purpose. The other publisher didn't take the book but when I saw that Choc Lit needed to see only a synopsis in the first instance, I sent it in. They asked for the full manuscript shortly afterwards and I managed to send them an old version! Maybe they were charmed by my cheek because they bought the book and it became Starting Over, which was a big paperback success for me .
You have published many short stories as well as novels so do you have a preference between the two?
I'm tempted to say that whichever I'm writing, I prefer the other one because when something is proving difficult to get right, starting something else looks quite attractive.
But, seriously, my novels are my focus. Everything else has to fit around them.
I still love writing short stories, though, and it's great to write something that doesn't take a year to complete.
How much does teaching creative writing aid your own work?
Quite a lot. When I have to read, analyse, report, and support my suggestions in detail, it makes me really think about technique and whether I do exactly what I'm advising someone else not to do.
You are the vice chairman of the Romantic Novelists Association so what does this role involve?
A lot of general committee work, ie meetings and discussions, as the Association is run by its committee, but, mainly, supporting the chair, Christina Courtenay (also a Choc Lit writer, as it happens). I call myself her wingman. Nice things happen, such as being invited to publisher parties, but there is a lot of work. Also, the Vice Chair usually (but not always) follows on to be chair, so I'm learning what would be expected of me in that case, too. I'm also the editor of the Association's short story anthologies, the latest of which, Truly, Madly, Deeply is due out in February 2014.
The Romantic Novelists' Association is a fantastic organisation that exists to raise the profile of romantic fiction. We number many bestsellers in our membership, which demonstrates the popularity of our genre.
You won the Best Romantic Read Award in 2011 so how did this make you feel?
I was really shocked. Dazed. And utterly euphoric and delighted. There was a bestselling author on the list who I was certain would win as she's an amazing storyteller. Her surname and my married name (I write under my maiden name) are the same, and I'd said to myself, 'When they say that name, it's not you. Stay where you are!' So when they said 'It's Sue Moorcroft for Love & Freedom!' the 'stay where you are' bit remained with me and I had to be shoved up to get my award.
My niece was at the event and she texted my brother, straight away. Apparently it was 23 minutes later before I texted anyone in the family. This isn't because I was in floods of grateful tears, it was because I was eating my dessert. I think I didn't dare let myself believe that I'd won, so I focused on the immediate job of eating chocolate cake before the waiters took it away. It was a joyful evening and the award itself sits on the windowsill close to my armchair.
With all of your commitments to writing how do you juggle these with your own?
Loosely, I work with students, do promo and appraisals in the morning, and write in the afternoon. I've tried alternating the days but I didn't get the same amount done. About half a day of each means I can work hard and not feel stale. I do work a lot of hours - probably 50 or 60 a week. There are days where I don't do either of these things because I'm out leading a workshop or speaking at a festival or something. And then there's the research - not just attending the odd spa day, but spending time talking to the people who do whatever it is I need my characters to do, or have what my characters have. I work in the evenings, sometimes, too, especially when I'm teaching/speaking/researching.
What made you want to explore the relationship between sisters in the book?
Good question. I've written about sisters before in All That Mullarkey and Dream a Little Dream. I don't have any sisters, so maybe I just like road testing the idea. In Is This Love? I definitely felt that sisters would empathise more with each other than a sister and a brother. Also, Tamara sometimes helps with the care of Lyddie - best to have two of the same gender for that. (I'd like to note that I have two brothers who I love hugely. They don't seem to mind having a sister.)
What is your writing process?
Um, messy.
I usually have some idea of theme, when I begin, and I have characters. I start writing, in longhand, about the characters, looking at them from many points of view. How does the heroine see the hero? In what way is that different to how he's seen by his mum? His friends? His co-workers? Somewhere in that process, I find I'm writing in the first person instead of the third, which makes me feel I'm taking on that character's persona, as an actor does. I like to know the characters' conflicts and quests - and if I can make the hero's quest conflict with the heroine's quest, so much the better. In Is This Love? I looked at which characters would put their loved ones first, because that is the theme, which is reflected by the title.
When I have enough plot points and conflicts to get through the first half of the book and I know roughly where I'm going to end up, the compulsion to start writing hits me. I liken this to being on the grid for a Formula 1 race: full of exciting possibilities and nothing's gone wrong, yet. This feeling usually stays with me for the first 10,000 words or so. Then the potential for going off course increases.
My first draft is very drafty indeed. I enjoy the editing process of working with this rough material and making it better.
What is next for you?
I'm almost at the end of the first (drafty) draft of a book scheduled to be out in November 2015. It may be called Never Own Up. It's set in Malta, where I spent nearly five years as a child, and I love deeply. Elle and Lucas used to be engaged but the relationship fell apart before they ever made it to the altar. Four years on, due to the meddling of Lucas's Uncle Simon, they end up sharing a boat moored in Ta 'Xbiex Marina.
It's a book for anyone who was ever young and foolish enough to make a mistake and not come clean about it.
by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk
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I was late learning to read and write. I was an army kid but my first school was civilian and oversubscribed so didn't take me until I was well over five years old. Then we moved to Malta where I caught up with my appropriate year group in an army school. The teacher took a while to realise that nobody had taught me literacy. I was completely at sea and constantly being ranted at. Once she realised the situation and did teach me it all began to click and I discovered the fantastic world of fiction, both to read and to write. All the army schools I attended were good but I wouldn't mind a quiet word with that teacher.
Sue Moorcroft
I'm a fanatic follower of Formula 1 and adore everything to do with it. Heaven, to me, is to watch all three practice sessions, qualifying and the race in silence. The exception is when I shriek at the TV during a race or disagree with the commentators. If I have to record a race because of some other call on my time I feel gloomy and twitchy until I've been able to sit down and watch so if you meet me in these circumstances please do not tell me the result!
I'm a Malta-phile. My father was posted to Malta twice in his army career so by the time we left when I was eight and a half I'd lived there for nearly five years. What we called 'home', the UK, was an alien place full of things like sleet, snow and frost. I return to Malta whenever I can. I love the weather, the architecture, the people, the sea and the pavement-cafe culture (to include Cisk beer and pastizzi).
I sold my first short story to a magazine twenty years ago. The long ached-for letter of acceptance arrived on April the 1st and I worried it could be an April Fool. (Could anybody be that cruel?) I spent the fee on a new computer chair. It had a slightly woolly covering and gave me a rash on my bum.
I love to travel, so long as it's safe and comfortable. I'm definitely not cut out for backpacking through war zones but I've been lucky enough to lead courses and retreats in Italy and France, attend conferences and lead workshops in America, and I'm looking forward to teaching at the Dubai Writers' Center and appearing at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature in 2017.
I love writers' conferences. I rarely miss the Romantic Novelists' Association annual conference and have made it to the RT Booklovers convention in America twice, attended FantasyCon for several years and have been to the Historical Novel Society conference - it doesn't matter to me whether conferences are appropriate to my genre. I've accepted modest teaching fees if it means I get a writers' holiday thrown in because when I'm with writers I feel as if I'm with my tribe. The other side of this lovely coin is to meet readers at literary festivals and other readers' events. I have a two- or three-book-a-week habit so I'm every bit as much a reader as I am a writer.
I was born in Germany but left when I was six weeks old. I can order beer in German - large beer, small beer, white beer, brown beer, lager beer and shandy, but that's about it so far as my skill with the language goes. I was really thrilled when The Christmas Promise went into German translation for Christmas 2016.
I've lived in my current home for more than twenty years and for most of it thought I could hear vehicles drawing up in the gravel drive when none had actually appeared. As I love cars I thought if I had a friendly ghost it was appropriate that he or she should arrive driving. Disappointingly, I've just found out the noise comes from my hot water system.
I love research. My most exciting research trip was for my May 2017 book, Just for the Holidays, when a pilot took me up in a helicopter and pretend-crashed. If a helicopter engine cuts mid-flight pilots instantly perform auto-rotation, the art of pitching the angle of descent so that the air keeps the rotors turning. You get down from 2000 feet very quickly, then at 10 feet the pilot 'flares' the helicopter to halt momentum and performs a dinky little run-on landing as if there was nothing wrong. You may have to take my word for this but it's awesome.
My favourite Christmas present ever was a bubble-gum-pink space hopper when I was seven. I adored it and bounced about on it much more than I rode my bike or roller skates.
My worst Christmas present ever was citrus body lotion when I was a teen. I decided that I was now grown up enough to shave my legs then I applied this citrus lotion scarlet burning skin swiftly followed! I think I threw the bottle in the bin.
Sue Moorcroft's new book, The Christmas Promise (Avon), is about hat-maker Ava Bliss, Christmas, revenge porn, illness, golden-boy Sam Jermyn, a WAG named Booby Ruby and a promise that Ava finds increasingly hard to keep.
www.suemoorcroft.com
David Walliams and his ex-wife Lara Stone are still locked in a bitter legal battle over their assets - a year after their divorce.
Lara Stone and David Walliams in 2014
The 'Britain's Got Talent' judge and the 32-year-old model saw their five-year marriage officially dissolve under the eyes of the law 14 months ago and, although they've both moved on with new people, they're still embroiled in a fight over their money.
High Court judge Mr Justice MacDonald began analysing the arguments and evidence on the division of assets at a private hearing in the family division of the court on Monday (07.11.16).
He said the media could name the former couple - who were both in court at the time - and report that a trial was taking place, but no details aired in the hearing could be published.
The 45-year-old comedian requested to end their marriage in September 2015, citing Lara's "unreasonable behaviour."
He was granted a decree nisi the next day, making the marriage null and void six weeks after the date of the initial filing.
The pair - who have an estimated combined wealth of almost 19 million - split six months prior to David filing for divorce.
Around the time their marriage began to break down, Lara - who married David in 2010 at Claridge's hotel in London - appeared half-naked in a risque photo shoot alongside Justin Bieber, 22.
Following their divorce, Lara - who has three-year-old son Alfred with David - was rumoured to be dating Jordan Barrett, 19, after they were spotted canoodling in Cannes earlier this year.
A source said at the time: "The pair of them couldn't seem to stop laughing as they left, and at the last minute Jordan grabbed Lara's hand and led her away.
"They seemed very comfortable in each other's company."
But Lara isn't the only one to move on from, as David is now thought to be romancing Playboy model Emily Agnes.
Prince Harry has "outrageous taste" in women.
Prince Harry
The 32-year-old royal is dating 'Suits' actress Meghan Markle and Made In Chelsea's Mark Francis-Vandelli - who is the son of a Russian aristocrat - thinks the Prince has always gone against convention with his choice of lovers.
Mark said: "He's always had bold choices, he's outrageous."
And the reality TV star believes 35-year-old Meghan will be forced to change her name if she marries Harry.
He told Heat magazine: "She'll have to change her name or use her middle name. I mean, Princess Meghan? She can't be Princess Meghan - it's just not the right name. She should call herself anything other than Meghan."
Meanwhile, news that the flame-haired royal is dating the American actress has caused much excitement among fans of the royal family.
The couple met in May while the Prince was in Toronto to promote is Invictus Games for disabled servicemen and it's thought they have been official for two months and Harry - who dated Chelsy Davy and was linked to Ellie Goulding in the past - is "happier" than he's been in years.
A source said: "Harry's happier than he's been for many years.
"He's in a very relaxed period of his life and Meghan has come along at the right time."
And Meghan is said to believe in finding her happy-ever-after and has a fairy-tale approach to love.
An insider previously said: "She's a diehard romantic. She loves romance."
IMI Europe that facilitates collaboration and learning for inkjet technology has added two new events - Winter Workshop and Inkjet Engineering Conference - to its existing line-up of conferences and course programmes. These events will be held in the first half of 2017 along with the Inkjet Ink Development Conference and Inkjet Summer School.
We are pleased to announce our event programme for the first half of 2017. With an excellent programme of technical course and conference content, we believe we are well-placed to continue our leading role in the on-going development of the inkjet digital printing community, which has been such an engine for growth over the last few years, said Dr Tim Phillips, managing director, IMI Europe.
The IMI Europe Inkjet Winter Workshop will take place from January 23 27 in Barcelona, Spain. It will comprise a series of three technical courses, each of 1.5 days duration, aimed at inkjet developers and presented by technical leaders in the field. The courses include Inkjet Drop Behaviour by Drs Emma Talbot, Steve Hoath and Cristina Rodriguez-Rivero of the University of Cambridge, and High Speed Inkjet System Design by Rob Rogers of Print3 Technologies.
IMI Europe that facilitates collaboration and learning for inkjet technology has added two new events - Winter Workshop and Inkjet Engineering Conference - to its existing line-up of conferences and course programmes. These events will be held in the first half of 2017 along with the Inkjet Ink Development Conference and Inkjet Summer School.#
IMI Europe has added a new one-day Inkjet Engineering Conference to its Inkjet Ink Development Conference, which will be held from March 14 16 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The two events are aimed at the inkjet development community, and will contain a fully curated programme of invited talks by leading experts from industry and academia.
The Inkjet Summer School by IMI Europe to be held in Ghent Belgium from June 12 16, features six technical courses, each of 1.5 days duration. It will allow developers to get an in-depth look at a particular area of technology with leading technical experts in each field. The line-up for 2017 will include the world-famous Inkjet Academy and other courses covering important aspects of inkjet technology.
The dates and location for the flagship Digital Print Europe event, as well as further events, will soon be announced by IMI Europe. (KD)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
A new textile factory will be set up in Ghana's Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) zone at a cost of $300 million. SADA and the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC) have signed a MoU in this regard. For cultivation and processing of cotton , the main raw material for the factory, CNTAC had already purchased 5,000 acres of land.
The MoU was signed by ambassador Kwesi Quartey, secretary to the Ghana president and CNTAC vice-president Xu Yingxin, Ghanaian media reported.
Yingxin said that the agreement would not only be beneficial to both parties, but would also lead to the strengthening of relationship between the two countries. Ghana government had established SADA to develop Savannah Ecological Zone. SADA was one of the flagship initiatives of the Ghana government aimed at fast-tracking the development of the northern, upper east and upper west regions of the Savannah Ecological Zone and the northern parts of the Brong Ahafo and Volta regions, said Quartey. He added that SADA is an initiative to facilitate the development of the Savannah Ecological Zone which is deprived to bridge the development gap between the area and the southern sector of the country. (RR)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk India
At a meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama has discussed ways to deepen bilateral ties between Fiji and Israel, particularly in advancing agricultural cooperation.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Bainimarama reaffirmed Fijis commitment to UN Peacekeeping efforts in the region and thanked the Israeli Government for assisting with rebuilding efforts on the island of Ovalau in the wake of category 5 Cyclone Winston.The meeting covered the proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Fiji and Israel on agriculture. Given the impact of Cyclone Winston, the two men explored the inclusion of more tailored approaches to crop production and farming practices that are better suited to the changing weather conditions caused by climate change.Prime Minister Bainimarama also extended an invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to visit Fiji.Prime Minister Bainimarama's meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu was a part of a three-day visit to Israel. He will go on to Lebanon where he will meet with his Lebanese counterpart and visit with Fijian UN Peacekeepers, prior to attending the 2016 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP22) in Marrakesh, Morocco.-ENDS-
Im very pleased to be in Israel and to have this opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister, the Honourable Benjamin Netanyahu.
This visit is part of a tour that I am making of Middle East capitals to discuss Fijis contribution to United Nations Peacekeeping operations in the region.For 38 years - since 1978 - we have proudly provided our servicemen and women to serve in UN operations on the Israel-Syrian border and in Lebanon and Egypt.We may be a small island nation in the Pacific but we have always been determined to play our part in the global community. And part of that is helping to keep the peace for ordinary men and women in troubled parts of the world.These people are far from our tranquil island homes but we pride ourselves on coming to do what we can to make their lives better. And today, I intend to promise the Israeli Prime Minister that our commitment will continue, just I will tell other leaders in the Middle East that they can always rely on Fiji.At the forefront of our discussions, of course, will be the safety of Fijian men and women in uniform as they carry out their duties on behalf of the UN. And that will also be the message I will take to Lebanon later in the week and to the UAE and other nations in the Middle East in the weeks and months ahead.As Fijians, we have always regarded the people of Israel as friends, just as we do the citizens of its neighbours. We are here to help. We are here to keep the peace. And that commitment will continue now and in the years ahead.I am also looking for Israels support on a range of issues including agriculture and especially our effort to draw global attention to the need for more decisive action on climate change.The rising sea levels and extreme weather events associated with climate change threaten our very existence in the Pacific. And we need the support of Israel and every nation as we take this fight to Morocco and COP-22 later in the month.In the meantime, I want to thank the Israeli Government for its warm welcome and I pass on the invitation for the Prime Minister and his family to come to Fiji and enjoy a holiday and the hospitality that only Fiji can give you.I look forward to my meeting with the Prime Minister.Vinaka vakalevu, Thank you.
Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, who has earlier directed Sanjay Dutt in Dus and Tathastu, says he is very fond of him.
Sinha told IANS: "I met Sanju (Sanjay) and we spoke about films. Even when he came back (from jail), he had called me and we had a chat. He was like, 'Let's make films when I come back'. I am very fond of him and he is very fond of me. There is a story I have in mind which I will write and that's something I will make with him."
Sanjay walked out a free man from the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune on February 25 after serving a 42-month prison term in a March 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. The actor was sentenced to undergo five years' rigorous imprisonment for illegal possession of arms.
Also Read: Iulia Vantur Fed Up With Salman Khan Because Of This Reason?
Sinha last directed Sanjay Dutt in the 2006 released film Tathastu. He says Shahrukh Khan and Sanjay are his favourite stars.
"Sanju and Shah Rukh are two of my most favourite people and actors. Every time I start writing something, I have to think of Sanju and Shahrukh. Then halfway through, I realize that sometime it's not big enough and not good enough, so it has not happened. They are two of my favourite stars," the Ra.One director added.
Sinha is currently busy promoting his film Tum Bin 2, which he has written and directed. Tum Bin 2 is the second instalment of Tum Bin, and is jointly produced by Sinha and Bhushan Kumar of T-Series music label.
Here's some good news for all Hrithik Roshan fans! If reports are to be believed then the hottie is all set to work with Jacqueline Fenandez for the first time!
Before you guys bombard us with questions, here're the details! We hear that the two actors are teaming up for something interesting and no, it's not for a film. Instead, the duo are coming together for a Dubai based home decor and will soon start shooting for the same in Mumbai.
Close friends say the two are quite excited to work with each other given they both admire each other's work. We hope that someone casts these two stunning people in a film someday as we think they will make up for a sizzling couple on screen! Don't you guys agree with that?
Talking about films, Hrithik's next movie Kaabil which has him essaying a blind man will be hitting the big screens on 26th January 2017. On the other hand, Jacqueline's next is Reloaded, opposite Sidharth Malhotra.
Bollywood star John Abraham, who often performs daredevil stunts in films, says the action standards in the country are not up to the mark. His comment came on Tuesday, a day after two actors drowned in a water reservoir after leaping off a helicopter while shooting a crucial climax scene for a Kannada film near Bengaluru. The news is "devastating", John said.
"I am absolutely devastated with the fact that those two Kannada actors lost their lives. I saw the clip. It is absolutely ridiculous and the film's producer should be put behind bars for this," John told IANS over phone from Mumbai.
The incident involved popular actor Duniya Vijay, who swam to safety and even had a life jacket, and two others -- identified as Anil and Uday -- who drowned after jumping off the helicopter.
Aditya Chopra's Shocking Revelations About Shahrukh Khan
John agrees that injuries happen despite complete safety and security, but it is a department which needs increased attention in the Indian film industry.
"It is sad this has happened and coincidentally, in my case, with all the precautions, I still hurt my knee. I've always gone about town saying that the action standards in the country are not up to the mark and you cannot blame the action director (for it)," added the 43-year-old actor and producer who had gone through a knee surgery during the shoot of his forthcoming film Force 2.
What's Going On? Hrithik's Ex-wife Sussanne Spotted With Shweta Bachchan!
John rued how "no stress is paid on action and safety gear". Is it the cost factor that keeps producers away from ensuring 100 per cent safety for the crew?
"Partly true. I think we need to take care and we need to make sure that all safety measures are in place because there in no false sense of bravado in getting hurt. It's finally our life that is on the line. So you have got be very smart and safe about it," he said.
Having said that, the Dishoom star, considers action an important part of his life and career. "For people like me, action is a very important part of our lives and it impacts our careers directly. So, we have to be very sure that we are safe. That is very important for us," he added.
SWEET, WE SAY! Here's What Aishwarya & Aaradhya Collectively Do For Abhishek!
The actor has been a part of Bollywood for over a decade and has performed action scenes in movies like Dhoom, Kaal, Force, Race 2, and Rocky Handsome.
He credits it all to stunt men, who he feels, are "the most ignored people" in showbiz.
"I'm totally in support of stunt men getting recognition and their due. I think they are the most ignored people. My solidarity is with them. Even when I am doing an action film, I have always gone and checked the stunt man and seen if he is well padded or protected before he does his stunt, because for me, they are responsible for where I am," said John.
"They make me who I am and if I don't look after or take care of them, I don't deserve to be here."
SLUT SHAMING! People Called Aaliyah Ebrahim PO*N READY
Along with his films, Sidharth Malhotra's on-off relationship with Alia Bhatt also seems to be a hot topic when it comes to rumours. However, the young lad says that while he has made peace with the way the film industry functions, especially with rumours and gossip surrounding actors' lives, his parents are yet to get familiar with his fame.
The actor was quoted saying to Hindustan Times, "My parents are used to seeing me in the papers, but my mother still gets excited on special occasions. My dad, too, will comment on whatever it is, be it a trailer, a story or a song. But when it comes to link-ups, they've let that be."
He further added, "My parents have never been that intrusive so in that aspect, I am lucky. Also, they know that they have no control over me since I live away. So now, my mother knows that 'beta haath se nikal gaya hai'. They'd rather be friends than being parents. I don't know if they're okay with it but then when I say that we are co-stars and we are working together, they do understand. They're also maturing as I am."
On the work front, Sid will be next seen opposite Jacqueline Fernandez in Reloaded.
WB Yeats said, "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has rightly placed their first full-fledged movie on the backdrop of magic with a new super hero in the lead, exactly when the world is patiently waiting for something out of the box to appear in Hollywood.
Benedict Cumberbatch, who featured Doctor Strange, has certainly raised the bar at MCU. The movie is an absolute blend of science and fantasy. Mostly a singular, hallucinatory experience with hints of paradoxes. If you are still not a Marvel Movie fan, well it's definitely the time.
But what about the things you probably skipped about this movie? Here we are to take you right into that.
1. This Is Not The First Doctor Strange Movie
Well, strange enough to know, that this is not at all the first movie on 'Doctor Strange' to have hit the screen. In the September of 1978, the CBS network had aired a 93-minute television movie on 'Doctor Strange' starring Peter Hooten.
2. Actor Joaquin Phoenix Was The First Choice To Play Doctor Strange
Yes, you heard me right. It was actor Joaquin Phoenix, who was supposed to play the character of 'Doctor Strange' and not Benedict Cumberbatch. The producers wanted Joaquin Phoenix as the protagonist in the movie, but ultimately failed to get him on board due to a financial dispute.
Later on actors like Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves and Jared Leto were approached for the role and it is only when they rejected, that Benedict Cumberbatch sealed the deal to become the Sorcerer Supreme.
3. The Character Was Supposed To Be Named as Mr. Strange
The Marvel Comics mastermind, 'Stan Lee', reveals that the character of 'Doctor Strange' was supposed to be named as Mr. Strange, but due to a clash of interest and titles in other comic stories, the Sorcerer Supreme was finally christened as Doctor Strange.
4. The concept of Magic in Doctor Strange has been derived from The Matrix (1999)
According to Marvel producer Kevin Feige, the concept of magic and the visual effects portrayed in the film has been inspired by Keanu Reaves starrer movie The Matrix (1999) and also the fantasy works of Hayao Miyazaki and Stanley Kubrick.
5. There Will Be No Origin Story
Marvel producer Kevin Feige discloses that they have no intention to bring any origin story to this movie Doctor Strange. It is most likely MCU is trying to pitch this magical movie in an uncharacteristic way. From the start of the film, the protagonist will be Doctor Strange.
Ron Clements, who is co-directing the movie Moana, feels that the actor Dwayne Johnson has been the right choice for lending voice to the character Maui in the Disney film.
Ron also stated that only Johnson could do justice to the character as he owns all the elements to fit the animated character in the movie.
"He is very connected to his Samoan roots. Maui is a charismatic character and Dwayne is nothing if not charismatic. He has great comedic timing, nails the action scenes and is so likable. And he can sing," Clements said.
The film Moana will also see Johnson making his singing debut besides lending his voice for the movie.
The movie Moana will be co-directed by John Musker and Clements. It is the story of an adventurous little girl who will set sail on a quest to save her people, along with the help of a demigod named Maui.
Clements is all praise for the character of Maui and said, "He has an all-encompassing drive to succeed that gets him into trouble, but facing the reason behind it isn't easy."
Johnson, on the other hand, is also pretty excited to be associated with the animated movie Moana, "To tell a story inspired by the South Pacific is a great honour," said Johnson.
English reality TV judge, and entrepreneur Simon Cowell might now own a record label and television production company, but once he had a miserable and toiling life as a broker and estate agent in London.
"After I left the music industry, I was an estate agent for eight months. And I can honestly say it was the most miserable eight months of my life," Cowell stated in an interview.
"I worked for this really snotty company in Mayfair who hated me and I hated them, and I was so upset that my mum actually said to me, 'I've never seen you so depressed'. And luckily I was offered a job back at the music publishing company. I'm glad I tried it because it was horrible," he said.
Cowell later on secured a job at the EMI, along with Ellis Rich, who is now a music publisher.
Recalling the moments Ellis Rich said "We decided it would be funny to take out a newspaper ad of a picture of Simon and I apparently naked."
"We booked and paid for it but forgot that the closing day was the Friday; on Thursday we got a call from the paper saying If we don't get that picture tonight, you're just going to have a big black box there". He continued.
"So Simon says 'There's a photo booth in Bond Street station, let's go there.' Now it is half past four, Thursday night, Bond Street station, very very busy," Cowell recalled.
"So we get to the booth, I go in, shut the curtain, strip off down to the waist, and at that moment Simon flings open the curtain and says 'Oh my god, there's a naked man in the photo booth!' I'm amazed I didn't get arrested. He was difficult to manage," Simon Cowell stated further.
10 Kalpanakal, the upcoming Malayalam movie, which marks the comeback of actress Meera Jasmine, after a brief break, is all set to hit the theatres soon.
Reportedly, the makers of the film have zeroed in a release date for the film. The movie would make it to the theatres on November 25, 2016. As of now, no other Malayalam movie has been scheduled for release on that date.
10 Kalpanakal is the directorial debut of Don Max, who made a mark in the industry as an editor. Don Max has been the first choice of prominent directors of Mollywood and Kollywood. The film has its script written by Sangeeth Jain, Sooraj and Neeraj.
The trailer of the film was released on November 5, 2016. In fact, it was actor Dulquer Salmaan, who officially launched the trailer of the film. The actor took to Facebook to wish Don Max and the entire team of 10 Kalpanakal all the very best.
From the trailer, it seems like 10 Kalpanakal is a film with lots of thrilling elements associated with it. Meera Jasmine would be seen in the role of a police officer for the first time through this movie. 10 Kalpanakal also features Anoop Menon, Joju George, Kaniha, Kavitha Nair, Prashanth Narayanan etc., in important roles.
Naina
The first episode begins at the airport, Naina leaves her mother in India and is all set to go to Innsbruck, where her brother resides. A lady blames her for leaving her ailing mother alone. Naina begins telling her story to the lady.
Naina's Story
The screens shift to the past wherein a 27-year-old Naina Batra, is revealed to be a College Lecturer. She is often mocked by students, for having remained single so far.
Naina's Past
It is revealed that Naina loved Amit, but they have parted ways. She bumps into him at the supermarket. She spots a lady along with him and assumes that, it is his wife and runs away.
Amit
Amit arrives home and proposes to her. The day of their engagement arrives and Naina is extremely happy. Naina's mother overhears Amit's conversation with his mother.
Engagement Called-Off
It is revealed that Amit has got a lucrative job offer abroad. His mother feels that, Naina will not relocate with him, leaving behind her ailing mother. After listening to this, Naina's mother suffers a heart attack.
Naina Is Optimistic
The screen comes back to present wherein Naina reveals that she is all set to meet Amit, even after their relationship has been called off. In spite of the heartbreak, she is still optimistic about love and feels that, fate has something good in store for her.
Arjun's Entry
Arjun's entry as Raghav will happen in today's episode. Raghav is a kind-hearted guy whose humour lightens up any situation. How will destiny bring Raghav and Naina together, on a foreign land?
Shabbir Ahluwalia
"America is counting votes , while india is counting notes . Glad to witness this in my lifetime, thank you sir @PMOIndia ."
Kanchi Kaul
BMW, Jaguar sales in Gurgaon, Ludhiana will hit the roof tonight. Last chance to use #BlackMoney for papa to give beta undeserved swag.
Ravi Dubey
Step aside Batman Superman I am a Modi Fan ....@narendramodi @PMOIndia ...I india finally has a true leader #ProudToBeAn Indian
Nikita Dutta & Namik Paul
Nikita Dutta wrote, "On a slightly lighter "note"
Namik Paul: Modi Ji laying down the law!!
Sanchit Sharma
@narendramodi @PMOIndia Right Decisions are always the hardst to make it,Nw we will b able to see White people #SurgicalStrikeonBlackMoney
Suyyash Rai
Okay so I was crossing this ATM,saw people literally hitting each other,that too for few 100 ke notes Such long long ques outside ATMs
Kandpal Sukirti
Now I know why Chameli (aiming at Chikni Chameli song) wanted some chutta I tell u don't doubt hot gals the next time around @jaferalimunshi nailed it #instagram #insatfun #chicklets
Nikitin Dheer
Wat a move by u PM @narendramodi sir,could end #BlackMoney & gv equal footing to all Indians.truly a Glorious & #SwachhBharat is upon us.
Kapil Sharma
Have never seen such long lines in front of ATM machines before.. we r very proud of u sir @narendramodi #saynotoblackmoney
Rannvijay Singha
This is going to be good for our country.. #noroomforblackmoney #500and1000rupeenotes #saynotoblackmoney
Kushal Tandon
Jumped red light, caught by police walah, gave him 1000 ka note. Police walah- Sir 100 hi de do...
Jay Bhanushali
Yeh 9/11 jabi atta hain duniya hila deta hain #BlackMoney #rs500 #1000rs #Gandhijisalaam #CurrencySwitch.
HONG KONG, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Leading offshore law firm Carey Olsen has opened in Hong Kong as part of the continued expansion of its network in Asia.
The Hong Kong practice has a dispute resolution and insolvency focus, with partner Michael Makridakis having recently relocated to Hong Kong from the firm's Cayman Islands office, where he established and led its dispute resolution and insolvency team.
The opening of the Hong Kong office in November 2016 follows the successful launch of the firm's Singapore office by lead Asia partner, Linda Lee, in October last year. Carey Olsen recently expanded its corporate legal practice in Singapore with the relocation of partner Anthony McKenzie from the firm's Cayman office.
The Hong Kong office will advise on the full spectrum of contentious, semi-contentious and offshore advisory work. This will include domestic and international restructuring and insolvency, corporate and commercial disputes, banking and financial services litigation, trusts litigation as well as fraud, asset tracing and regulatory disputes.
Michael Makridakis, who will continue to work alongside Carey Olsen's dispute resolution and insolvency practices in the British Virgin Islands and Cayman as well as Guernsey and Jersey, said:"The growth in demand for offshore legal services in Asia has created a parallel demand for offshore litigation services and we have an increasing number of clients requiring advice in relation to disputes and insolvency matters in the region.
"Our Hong Kong office provides clients and referrers with access to offshore dispute resolution and insolvency specialists who are in the same time zone and who have a thorough understanding of the Asian market."
Linda Lee, Carey Olsen's head of Asia, said: "The provision of offshore dispute resolution and insolvency services in Hong Kong complements our corporate, finance and investment funds offering in Singapore and begins the next chapter of Carey Olsen's Asia story."
Carey Olsen managing partner, Alex Ohlsson, said: "Our disputes and insolvency teams in BVI and Cayman have a long-standing record of advising Asian-based clients, making an office on the ground in Hong Kong a logical step.
"Hong Kong is a thriving business centre and we look forward to extending our footprint in Asia and to building on Carey Olsen's success in the region."
With 49 partners and 200 lawyers, Carey Olsen is one of the largest offshore law firms. It provides advice on British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Jersey law from a network of eight international offices covering all time zones and key financial markets.
The firm's notable recent dispute resolution and insolvency work in the region includes:
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Infortrend Technology, Inc. (TWSE: 2495) today unveils the premium flagship series "EonStor GS 4000" designed with 32 front-end ports, surpassing all its previous generation storage systems to benefit users with unprecedented advantages in flexibility.
The EonStor GS 4000 aims to provide tremendous flexibility while reducing costs and complexity for building up an IT environment by increasing the number of host ports and supporting multi-protocol data access just in one system. The 32 front-end channel ports enable connectivity for hybrid FC-SAN, IP-SAN, DAS and NAS environment with converged host boards supporting multiple and interchangeable protocols including 8Gb/s or 16Gb/s Fibre Channel, 10GbE iSCSI (SFP+) and FCoE. There is additional support for 1GbE iSCSI, 10GbE iSCSI (RJ45) and 12Gb/s SAS host ports.
As a cloud-integrated unified storage, the EonStor GS 4000 integrates file, block and object services in one system with complete native cloud gateway features. In order to bring users a great experience to boost their cloud applications, Infortrend is offering free cloud license with purchase of any EonStor GS 4000 system till the end of 2016. Click here for more information about the promotion offer.
"By consolidating extreme flexibility and high performance in a single unified storage system, Infortrend's EonStor GS 4000 dramatically simplifies the deployment and management of storage systems while providing future-proof features that meet customers' evolving demands," said Thomas Kao, Senior Director of Product Planning at Infortrend.
For more details about the EonStor GS 4000 series, please click here.
About Infortrend
Infortrend (TWSE: 2495) has been developing and manufacturing storage solutions since 1993. With a strong emphasis on in-house design, testing, and manufacturing, Infortrend storage delivers performance and scalability with the latest standards, user friendly data services, personal after-sales support, and unrivaled value. For more Information, please visit www.infortrend.com
Infortrend and EonStor are trademarks or registered trademarks of Infortrend Technology, Inc., other trademarks property of their respective owners.
Media Contact:
Infortrend Europe Ltd.
Agnieszka Wesolowska
Tel:+44-1256-305-220
E-mail: marketing.eu@infortrend.com
CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited acquires the remaining floors of CITIC Telecom Tower and helps its wholly-owned subsidiary CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited to seize the huge opportunities in the cloud-computing service and data centre market.
HONG KONG, Nov 8, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited ("CITIC Telecom CPC"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited ("CITIC Telecom" or "The Group"; HKEX: 1883), has today announced that it is pushing full-speed ahead in the expansion into the data centre market. The Group's acquisition of the remaining floors of CITIC Telecom Tower is the major driver in this thrust and the encouraging progress achieved is set to support CITIC Telecom CPC in its effort to capture the immense opportunities in the cloud computing service and data centre market.Data centre services indispensible to support the rising cloud computing trendAs a world-class communication hub, Hong Kong has been offering excellent ICT infrastructure to multinational enterprises based in Hong Kong and targeting the global market. The sweeping wave of cloud services in recent years has created more opportunities for enterprises. In 2016, Hong Kong has been named the most prepared APAC location in rolling out cloud computing. Compared to our APAC peers, Hong Kong ranks highest for international connectivity and the lowest in data center risk, reflecting that Hong Kong is the most suitable city for enterprises to develop their business.In view of Hong Kong's advantages and the rising demand of cloud computing services, wider application of big data, rapidly advancing Internet of Things (IOT) technology and the sharp increase in enterprise data traffic, enterprises have stronger requirements for highly secure hybrid and private cloud service as well as safe, reliable, stable and high-speed connected cloud data centres. This trend has generated huge market opportunities which CITIC Telecom CPC aims to capture.Expands coverage of the data centre in CITIC Telecom Tower to seize greater opportunitiesProviding innovative technologies, safe and high quality services is the key to success for ICT solution providers. As a most trusted one-stop ICT solution partner, CITIC Telecom CPC has not only launched a wide range of cloud computing services, but has also actively expanded the coverage of its cloud data centre and provided full support to enterprises informationization and digitalization for deploying business applications in the cloud service platform. CITIC Telecom CPC has realised rapid growth in its cloud computing services and cloud data centre businesses in the past few years. The approval of the resolution in relation to the acquisition of the remaining floors of CITIC Telecom Tower by The Group can strongly spur the development of the cloud computing business. It also enables The Group to meet market demand and align with its business development decision.Mr. Stephen Ho, CEO of CITIC Telecom CPC said: "The acquisition of the remaining floors of CITIC Telecom Tower will bolster the development of our cloud data centre business. We have been striving to strengthen our ICT solutions and our goal is to achieve expansion in network coverage, information security, diversification in cloud computing services and expansion of our cloud data centre. The scale of our cloud data centre in CITIC Telecom Tower will double after the completion of the first phase of the new data centre construction work. Together with our more than 100 global points-of-presence, 11 cloud service centres, 27 cloud data centres and the acquisition of the telecommunication business of Linx Telecommunications earlier this year with network coverage in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the 'One Belt One Road' countries, we are set to build a stronger leadership position in the global market.""Looking ahead, we will strengthen our capabilities in the innovative information and communications arena including big data analytics, IOT, network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software defined everything (SDX). We will also assist enterprise customers in broadening their global business presence through utilising our world-class network facilities, solutions and services."High-end data centres bring greater synergiesCITIC Telecom Tower located in Kwai Chung enjoys geographical advantages. It is also the second Hong Kong Internet eXchange (HKIX2) which interconnects with multiple Tier-1 carriers. Thus local and multinational enterprises alike can grow their businesses leveraging CITIC Telecom's seamless global telecommunications ecosystem.The completion of the acquisition of the remaining floors of CITIC Telecom Tower by CITIC Telecom will add 10 floors to the data centre coverage and increase the total number of racks to more than 4,000 within the over-340,000 sq.ft. building, thus creating greater opportunities for further business development. Construction of the expansion work of the first phase is set to commence immediately after the acquisition is completed with scheduled completion during 2018. The number of racks of CITIC Telecom CPC in CITIC Telecom Tower would then be doubled, which will complement the company's all-round business development.CITIC Telecom CPC's existing global portfolio of 27 Tier III+ cloud data centres covering the Asia Pacific region, the U.K. and the U.S. provides quality data and server hosting services to customers. The cloud data centres in Hong Kong are located in CITIC Telecom Tower in Kwai Chung in the New Territories and Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island respectively. As both places are self-owned properties by The Group, CITIC Telecom CPC can be freed from the potential disruption of relocating its cloud data centres due to lease contract issues. The cloud data centres of CITIC Telecom CPC boast high-speed and highly secure network connections. Besides, their wide coverage also enables it to provide backup and disaster recovery services within the city as well as across different regions and countries, making it a trustworthy partner for enterprises looking for data security and integrity.About CITIC Telecom CPCCITIC Telecom International CPC Limited ("CITIC Telecom CPC"), a wholly owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited (HKEX: 1883), is a trusted Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions provider with multiple branches across Asia Pacific, and a preferred partner by multinational corporations and business enterprises.CITIC Telecom CPC delivers a range of innovative services, including: TrueCONNECT - an advanced MPLS VPN service which employs state-of-the-art fully meshed network, TrustCSI - an integrated suite of information security solutions, DataHOUSE - converged cloud solution and global unified management datacenter solutions, and SmartCLOUD - smarter, better and high performance cloud computing solutions which complement the company's managed network, managed security, and managed cloud data center solutions.As further testament to its commitment in providing premium quality services in the Asia Pacific region, the company became the first VPN service provider in Hong Kong to achieve all four ICT related certifications in ISO 9001 - Quality Management System, ISO 27001 - Information Security Management System, ISO 20000 - Information Technology Service Management System, and ISO 14001 - Environmental Management System. Learn more at www.citictel-cpc.com.Media Contact:Micty WongCITIC Telecom International CPC Limited+852 2170 7511Email: micty.wong@citictel-cpc.comRowena LeungCITIC Telecom International CPC Limited+852 2170 7536Email: rowena.leung@citictel-cpc.comSource: CITIC Telecom International CPC LimitedCopyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Tuesday. The Australian dollar fell to 0.7689 against the U.S. dollar and 80.27 against the yen, from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.7728 and 80.71, respectively. Against the euro and the Canadian dollar, the aussie dropped to 1.4347 and 1.0296 from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.4284 and 1.0326, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 0.75 against the greenback, 78.00 against the yen, 1.46 against the euro and 1.00 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Cabinet office is set to release preliminary Japan leading economic indicators index data for September at 12:00 am ET Tuesday. The leading index is expected to show a score of 100.4, down from 100.9 in August. Ahead of the data, the yen held steady against its major rivals. As of 11:55 pm ET in the Asian deals, the yen was trading at 115.29 against the euro, 129.39 against the pound, 107.14 the Swiss franc and 104.44 against the U.S. dollar. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Compared to the third quarter of 2015, earnings improved significantly, mainly driven by high activity levels in the quarter and to a lesser extent higher average project margins. Free cash flow was at the same level as in the third quarter of 2015. While order intake was satisfactory, the backlog decreased due to the higher activity levels. Outlook for 2016 upgraded.Aarhus, Denmark, 2016-11-08 08:27 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --Summary: In the third quarter of 2016, Vestas generated revenue of EUR 2,903m - an increase of 37 percent compared to the year-earlier period. EBIT before special items increased by EUR 201m to EUR 433m. The EBIT margin before special items was 14.9 percent compared to 10.9 percent in the third quarter of 2015 and the free cash flow amounted to EUR 155m compared to EUR 158m in the third quarter of 2015.The intake of firm and unconditional wind turbine orders amounted to 1,769 MW in the third quarter of 2016. The value of the wind turbine order backlog amounted to EUR 7.2bn at 30 September 2016. In addition to the wind turbine order backlog, Vestas had service agreements with expected contractual future revenue of EUR 9.9bn at the end of September 2016. Thus, the value of the combined backlog of wind turbine orders and service agreements stood at EUR 17.1bn - an increase of EUR 0.7bn compared to the year-earlier period.Vestas upgrades the 2016 guidance on revenue from minimum EUR 9.5bn to EUR 10-10.5bn, EBIT margin before special items from minimum 12.5 percent to 13-14 percent, and free cash flow from minimum EUR 800m to minimum EUR 1,000m. The upgrades are based mainly on improved delivery visibility for the remainder of the year. Vestas also adjusts 2016 guidance on total investments from approx EUR 500m to approx EUR 600m.Group President & CEO Anders Runevad said: "I am very pleased with Vestas' solid third quarter performance. Revenue and earnings are up strongly, as are deliveries across all regions. Order intake is up 17 percent, while combined turbine and service order backlog declined this quarter, largely due to high turbine delivery activity. With better visibility toward the end of the year, we are also upgrading the full-year guidance."Key highlightsHigh activity levels Deliveries up by 44 percent in third quarter of 2016 - driven by all regions.Strong earnings EBIT margin before special items of 14.9 percent - up by 4.0 percentage points compared to third quarter of 2015.Solid free cash flow Free cash flow amounted to EUR 155m in third quarter of 2016 - on a par with the third quarter of 2015.Combined order backlog remains high Combined order backlog at EUR 17.1bn. Wind turbine order backlog impacted by high activity levels in third quarter of 2016.Outlook 2016 2016 has proven to be an extraordinary year and based mainly on better visibility for the remainder of the year, guidance for 2016 is increased on all parameters.Information meeting (audiocast) Today, Tuesday 8 November 2016 at 10 a.m. CET (9 a.m. GMT), Vestas will host an information meeting via an audiocast. The audiocast will be accessible via vestas.com/investor.The meeting will be held in English and questions may be asked through a conference call. The telephone numbers for the conference call are:Europe: +44 203 008 9814 USA: +1 646 502 5118 Denmark: +45 3544 5575Presentation material for the information meeting will be available approx one hour before the meeting at vestas.com/investor.Contact details Vestas Wind Systems A/S, Denmark Hans Martin Smith, Senior Vice President, Group Treasury and Investor Relations Tel: +45 9730 8209Attachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=603386
TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Toyota Motor Corp (TYT.L, TM) reported that its net income decreased to 946.1 billion yen for the six-month period ended September 30, 2016 from 1.26 trillion yen, last year. Operating income decreased to 1.12 trillion yen, from 1.58 trillion yen. TMC Executive Vice President Takahiko Ijichi said: 'Despite the positive factors such as cost reduction and marketing efforts, operating income was down 466.5 billion yen compared to the first half of the last fiscal year, due to the significant impact of Yen appreciation. Nevertheless, operating income excluding the overall impact of foreign exchange rates, as well as swap valuation gains and losses was up 200 billion yen.' Consolidated vehicle sales totaled 4,363,537 units, an increase of 85,530 units compared to the same period last fiscal year. On a consolidated basis, net revenues for the period totaled 13.07 trillion yen, a decrease of 7.2 percent. TMC revised its consolidated financial forecasts for the fiscal year. TMC now forecasts consolidated net revenue of 26.0 trillion yen, operating income of 1.7 trillion yen, income before income taxes of 1.90 trillion yen and net income of 1.55 trillion yen. For the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, TMC revised its consolidated vehicle sales forecast from 8.90 million units to 8.85 million units, in consideration of the latest sales trends worldwide. TMC's Board resolved to pay 100 yen per share as the interim dividend on common shares, and have also resolved to buy back up to 200 billion yen, or 40 million shares, of the company's common stock. 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.
ZUG, Switzerland, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Lexinta is pleased to announce, with immediate effect, the appointment of Finn Tsai, who joins the company as Associate Director. Finn's primary role will be to develop a customer centric investment advisory strategy across all channels within the company, delivering a tangible value added difference for its clients.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160909/405942LOGO )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161104/436359 )
Finn brings to Lexinta 9 years of private banking and asset management experience. Her professional knowledge has been achieved in Switzerland working for UBS AG, Credit Agricole Suisse SA and most recently Credit Suisse AG. Finn is a proven relationship manager and investment advisor, working with both private and institutional clients alike.
Finn is a Business Administration graduate from the Cheng-Kung University of Taiwan and has a MBA in Global Finance & Banking from the SBS Swiss Business School of Zurich, Switzerland. She also speaks English, Chinese and German.
Bismark Badilla, Lexinta Group President said, "Finn's arrival to the Lexinta family will greatly assist our customer centric expansion as we strengthen our status as an independent global asset management group."
About Lexinta
Lexinta is a privately owned independent global asset management group. Lexinta is the registered trademark of Lexinta AG a public limited company incorporated in Zug, Switzerland, with commercial register number CH-170.3.035.396-3. Lexinta AG is licensed as an asset management company and financial intermediary under Swiss law. Lexinta AG is a member of the FINMA recognised Self-Regulatory Organisation's (SRO's) PolyReg (http://www.polyreg.ch) and PolyAsset (http://www.polyasset.ch).
For further information on Lexinta please visit: http://www.lexinta.com
Media Contact:
Nadia Hunziker
Lexinta AG Zurich Branch
+41-41-544-83-89
public-relations@lexinta.com
FAIRFIELD (dpa-AFX) - BBA Aviation plc (BBA.L), in its trading statement for the period from 1 January to 31 October 2016, said that trading and cash flow remains in-line with expectations, with revenue up 27% year-on-year, reflecting the contribution from the Landmark acquisition completed in February and good organic growth at Signature.
Simon Pryce, Group Chief Executive of BBA Aviation, said: 'In a year of great transformation, the Group is on track to deliver good further progress in 2016.'
In Flight Support, the enlarged Signature revenues grew 56% and 4.1% on a like-for-like basis constant currency, adjusting for lower fuel prices and before acquisitions.
Ontic, BBA Aviation's legacy support business, has reached agreement to acquire a portfolio of legacy avionics products or the Business from GE Aviation, for a cash consideration of $61.5 million on a cash and debt free basis, paid from existing financial resources.
The Business employs around 90 employees at its principal location adjacent to Ontic's existing site in Cheltenham, UK, and has two further sites in Florida, US and Brisbane, Australia. The relevant work will relocate from the latter sites to Ontic's locations in Chatsworth, US and Singapore respectively.
The transaction is expected to complete early in the New Year, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions.
In its first full year of ownership, the Business is expected to contribute approximately $7.5 million of operating profit after expected year one transition costs of approximately $1.6 million, and will exceed the Group's ROIC hurdle. In addition to the $61.5 million capital needed to acquire the Business, the company anticipates approximately a further $5 million of capital expenditure in the first year.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Retailer Marks & Spencer Group Plc (MAKSY.PK, MAKSF.PK, MKS.L) reported Tuesday that its first-half profit before tax plunged 88.4 percent to 25.1 million pounds from 216.0 million pounds last year. Basic earnings per share fell to 1.0 pence from 10.5 pence a year ago. Underlying profit before tax was 231.3 million pounds, compared to 284.0 million pounds a year ago. Underlying basic earnings per share were 11.5 pence, compared to 14.1 pence last year. The company noted that underlying profits were down in the half due to lower Clothing & Home sales. Non-underlying items include significant charge relating to pension changes. Group revenue edged up 0.9 percent to 4.994 billion pounds from 4.951 billion pounds a year ago. Further, the company maintained its interim dividend. The company also announced its decision not to make an additional return of cash to shareholders in the second half given costs of strategic change and uncertain market conditions. Looking ahead, the company noted that over the next five years, it will transform UK estate with about 60 fewer Clothing & Home stores. The company also announced proposal to close 53 stores as it exits 10 loss-making owned markets. The company is starting consultation with about 2,100 employees about these proposals. The company will continue to operate owned businesses in the Republic of Ireland, Hong Kong and Czech Republic. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LONDON, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
End Youth Homelessness, the UK's national movement to end homelessness for young people, has teamed up with advertising agency Leo Burnett and media agency Jack Agency to raise awareness of the issue. The campaign brings to light the dilemma faced by young people who find themselves trapped in dire circumstances, both at home and on the streets.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161107/436949 )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161107/436950 )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161107/436951 )
The campaign called "Get them to a Safe Place", features an online film and a poster campaign created by Leo Burnett and disseminated via Jack Agency's poster sites across the UK. https://youtu.be/ZhmOVlUs3gs
An animated figure manoeuvers across spray painted words on the outside of buildings - the division between home and the street - highlighting the precarious position in which 80,000* vulnerable young people find themselves each year, and pressing need to Get them to a Safe Place.
The campaign also highlights the challenging decisions young people are forced to make. One illustration shows a young person walking a tightrope formed out of words that speak one young person's dilemma: "living at home with addict parents or living on the street with addicts."
The poster campaign is targeted in London, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow.
Khaly Nguyen, Marketing Manager of Jack Agency said: "Every young person deserves a safe place to sleep. For that reason, we are delighted to be partnering with End Youth Homelessness to raise awareness about such an important issue."This partnership means that we can give something back to some of the most vulnerable young people in the country, using our sites on the street as a platform to spread the word about youth homelessness."
FX Goby, Director of the film, said: "Leo Burnett asked us to create a film to raise awareness of EYH along the lines of their successful poster campaign. I wanted it to be as simple and minimalist as possible. This is a film about youth living on the streets; we needed to stay modest but with a strong visual to get our message across. The street sound atmosphere adds to the discomfort and the unrest, highlighting what a naturally hostile place it is."
Nick Connolly, Director of End Youth Homelessness said: "This campaign depicts just some of the appalling dilemmas homeless young people face. There are more than 80,000 young people experiencing homelessness in the UK today and with support from Leo Burnett and Jack Agency, we can help those young people to escape homelessness for good, by bringing the issue to the fore."
Notes to Editor
- Centrepoint commissioned this research with the University of York in 2011 - https://www.york.ac.uk/media/chp/documents/2011/EndingYouthHomelessness.pdf
- End Youth Homelessness (EYH) is a national movement to end youth homelessness in the UK.
- EYH brings together local charities to tackle youth homelessness on a national scale.
- Each EYH charity works in its own way to meet the needs of local young people; all sharing a belief in giving homeless young people the opportunity to turn their lives around; build high aspirations and move on to successful and independent lives.
- EYH works directly with 15,000 young people who are amongst the most deprived in the UK.
- History:
EYH was founded in 2010 by EYH charity Centrepoint, after its patron, HRH the Duke of Cambridge, challenged the charity to end youth homelessness.
- Members:
The charities supported through End Youth Homelessness are: Centrepoint (London, Bradford, Sunderland), St. Basils(West Midlands), Llamau (Wales), The Benjamin Foundation (Norfolk), 1625Independent People (Bristol), The Amber Foundation (Surrey, Wiltshire, Devon), Roundabout (Sheffield), The Young People's Support Foundation (Manchester), The Rock Trust (Edinburgh) and the Aberdeen Foyer (Aberdeen), Society of St James (Southampton).
For further information on End Youth Homelessness visit http://www.eyh.org.uk
For further information on Leo Burnett visit http://www.leoburnett.com
For further information on Jack Agency visit http://www.jackagency.co.uk
*Images available on request
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Newmarket Gold ("Newmarket" or the "Company") (TSX: NMI)(OTCQX: NMKTF) is pleased to announce further positive drill results and record monthly production at the Fosterville Gold Mine, State of Victoria, Australia. Underground resource definition drilling has continued to target down-plunge extensions to the Lower Phoenix and Harrier South gold systems to assess the potential of Mineral Reserve expansion. Recent drill results from nine underground holes totaling 3,637 meters (m) have demonstrated the continuity of exceptional high-grade visible gold mineralization on both the newly discovered west dipping Lower Phoenix Footwall and Eagle Structures in the Lower Phoenix gold system.
An additional drilling program consisting of seven holes totaling 2,893m in the Harrier South gold system has reaffirmed the Mineral Reserve conversion potential of this area, returning the highest Harrier gold grades ever recorded. The Company is also pleased to report a further three surfaced-based drill holes totaling 2,591m from growth drilling exploration programs targeting the Lower Phoenix gold system (Figure 1). Recent drill results continue to support the potential to expand Fosterville's Mineral Resources and Reserves and confirm continuity of mineralization up-plunge (north) and down-plunge (south) on the Lower Phoenix gold system and down plunge on the Harrier South gold system. Additionally, the Company is pleased to note that Fosterville achieved record production for the month of October, totaling 15,116 ounces of gold at a record mill grade of 8.18 g/t Au and record recovery of 92.3%.
Highlight Drill Intercepts from Underground Near Mine Drilling at Fosterville Gold Mine:
-- Drilling into the newly discovered west dipping Lower Phoenix Footwall Structure intersected significant high-grade gold mineralization including 550 g/t Au(1) over 3.75m (Estimated True Width "ETW" 3.5m) in hole UDH1278 (Including 4,592 g/t Au(1) over 0.4m (ETW 0.3m)) and 203 g/t Au(1) over 8.55m (ETW 2.4m) in hole UDH1740 (Including 1,521 g/t Au(1) over 1.0m (ETW 0.28m)). This structure has now been defined over a strike extent of 150m and vertical extent of 150m. -- Drilling on the Harrier Base Structure returned high-grade mineralization containing visible gold. Key intercepts include a record 129 g/t Au(1)over 6.95m (ETW 6.2m) in hole UDH1868 (Including 877 g/t Au(1) over 1m (ETW 0.9m)) and 14.57 g/t Au(1) over 6.8m (ETW 5.9m) in hole UDH1869. These exceptional results reaffirm an increasing grade profile with depth in the Harrier gold system. -- Eagle Fault underground definition drilling continues to return high- grade mineralization and has now been defined over a strike length of 730m and vertical extent of 350m with the return of key drill intercepts including 6.91 g/t Au over 5.2m (ETW 4.5m) in hole UDH1816 and 11.09 g/t Au over 1.4m (ETW 0.8m) in hole UDH1875B.
Highlight Drill Intercepts from Surface Based Growth Drilling at Fosterville Gold Mine:
-- Surface based diamond drilling on the Lower Phoenix North system (8050mN) targeted Lower Phoenix Structures approximately 350m north of Lower Phoenix Mineral Reserves and returned a significant intercept of 6.5 g/t Au over 27.8m (ETW 25.0m) in hole SPD618C. Surface-based diamond drilling programs continue to confirm the resource expansion potential of the Lower Phoenix gold system.
Record Monthly Operating Results at Fosterville Gold Mine:
The mining of high-grade, visible gold-bearing structures as further defined by drill results announced today has contributed to record monthly production results at Fosterville for October, 2016.
-- Record monthly production for October 2016 of 15,116 ounces of gold, exceeding the previous monthly record of 14,103 ounces produced in April 2016. -- Record monthly mill grade for October 2016 was achieved of 8.18 g/t Au surpassing previous monthly record of 8.09 g/t Au in May 2016. -- Record monthly mill recovery for October 2016 of 92.3% above the previous monthly record of 91.3% in June 2016. 1. Visible gold present in drill intercept, ETW - Estimated True Width, All drill results are presented in Table 1
Mr. Douglas Forster, President and Chief Executive Officer, Newmarket Gold commented: "We are very pleased to report continued positive results from our drilling programs on the Lower Phoenix and Harrier South gold systems and record monthly production at our flagship Fosterville Gold Mine. October 2016 proved to be a significant month for the Fosterville operation achieving a record production output of 15,116 ounces of gold with a record mill grade and recovery of 8.18 g/t Au and 92.3% respectively. The mining of high grade visible gold bearing structures in the Lower Phoenix gold system has largely contributed to the record monthly production results. The down-plunge drilling of these structures has returned exceptional results supporting our view that Fosterville will be a highly productive operation for years to come with demonstrated continuity of structure and grade down-plunge from existing Mineral Reserves."
"Record high grade, visible gold mineralization intercepted at the Harrier Base resource target confirms the potential for Harrier to provide a high-grade, independent mining front in addition to the current Lower Phoenix South mining area. The Lower Phoenix North resource target area also continues to return exceptional results and continues to grow the resource potential of this third potential mining front area towards the north and closer to surface. We continue to invest in Fosterville with a total of 91,980m of growth and definition drilling completed to date in 2016 using 9 drill rigs. Exploration success since the start of the year on the Phoenix, Lower Phoenix, and Harrier South gold systems targets continue to support our view to expand Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources through continued targeting of the plunge extensions of these high-grade structures."
2016 Underground Exploration Programs at Fosterville Gold Mine
Lower Phoenix Gold System Underground Resource Definition Drilling Program
Since the September 20, 2016 Newmarket News Release, drilling from four diamond drill rigs has continued to focus on resource definition and understanding of multiple gold targets including the Lower Phoenix Footwall (LPFW) and Eagle Faults. Reported drill results from nine holes (3,637m) are from intercepts through the Lower Phoenix Footwall and Eagle resource target areas outside of the December 31, 2015 Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources. Mining production continues on the upper-plunge areas of the Lower Phoenix gold system structures including the high-grade Eagle Fault, which have largely contributed to an October record gold mill grade of 8.18 g/t at Fosterville.
All drill assay intercepts are provided in Table 1 and drill collars in Table 2.
Lower Phoenix Footwall Structures
A total of six drill holes intercepted significant gold mineralization associated with Lower Phoenix Footwall Structures. The most significant mineralization contains visible gold and occurs in a newly discovered west dipping lode as reported on the September 20, 2016 Newmarket News Release, where new drilling results include 550 g/t Au(1) over 3.75m (ETW 3.5m) in hole UDH1278 (Including 4,592 g/t Au(1) over 0.4m (ETW 0.3m)), 203 g/t Au(1) over 8.55m (ETW 2.4m) in hole UDH1740 (Including 1,521 g/t Au(1) over 1.0m (ETW 0.28m)), 27.37 g/t Au(1) over 20.1m (ETW 2.8m) in hole UDH1818 (Including 66.8 g/t Au(1) over 6.3m (ETW 0.9m)) and 36.8 g/t Au(1) over 2.25m (ETW 2.25m) in hole UDH1727 (Figure 2).
These intercepts are located approximately 50 to 120m vertically below and 50 to 130m laterally along strike from current Mineral Reserves (Figure 2). The defined size of this high-grade mineralized structure is 150m in strike length and 150m in vertical extent. The mineralized zone appears to adjoin the high-grade Eagle structure at its lower edge and is untested down-plunge. Continued definition drilling from the hangingwall drill platforms for the remainder of 2016 will advance the understanding of size and scale of this attractive resource growth target.
Eagle Fault
The high-grade Eagle Fault system has now been defined over a strike length of 730m and vertical extent of 350m. Recent drilling continues to return significant high-grade gold intercepts and supports the view that the Eagle Fault system remains open for expansion down-plunge. Recent drill results into the Eagle Fault below the 4100mRL include 6.91 g/t Au over 5.2m (ETW 4.5m) in hole UDH1816 and 11.09 g/t Au over 1.4m (ETW 0.8m) in hole UDH1875B (Figure 3).These results continue to confirm the continuity and high-grade tenor of the Eagle Fault down plunge and clearly demonstrates the potential for Mineral Reserve growth on this structure.
As reported in the September 20, 2016 Newmarket Gold News Release, recent definition drilling into the east dipping Eagle Fault structure from the Central Decline has also defined a series of east dipping splay faults which host significant gold mineralization. Hole UDH1834 intercepted one of these splay structures returning a result of 5.52 g/t Au over 4.2m (ETW 2.5m) (Figure 3). The Eagle zone remains untested and open at depth below the 4000mRL and south of 6400mN and drilling is planned to target beyond this extent during the remainder of 2016.
Harrier South Gold System Underground Resource Definition Drilling Program
Since the September 14, 2016 Newmarket News Release, drilling from two diamond rigs have continued to focus on resource definition and understanding of multiple gold targets including the Harrier Base Fault in the Harrier South gold system. Reported drill results from seven holes (2,893m) are from intercepts though the Harrier Base resource target area and are outside of the December 31, 2015 Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources.
All drill assay intercepts are provided in Table 1 and drill collars in Table 2.
Harrier Base Structure
Drill results returned on the Harrier Base Structure contain record high-grade intercepts including 129 g/t Au(1) over 6.95m (ETW 6.2m) in hole UDH1868 (Including 877 g/t Au(1) over 1m (ETW 0.9m)), 14.57 g/t Au(1) over 6.8m (ETW 5.9m) in hole UDH1869 and 10.69 g/t Au over 8.0m (ETW 6.4m) in hole UDH1830 (Including 15.73 g/t Au over 5.05m (ETW 4.0m))(Figure 4).
Within a zone between 4750mN and 4900mN and 4280mRL to 4350mRL there is now a total of 11 drill hole intercepts into Harrier Base, with six of those intercepts containing visible gold and nine intercepts returning greater than 30 gram meters of gold mineralization. Recent high-grade results have been recorded at the deepest drilling completed to date and continue to support an increasing grade trend with depth down-plunge.
2016 Surface Based Growth Exploration Programs
Since the September 20, 2016 Newmarket News Release, the Company has advanced its surface-based exploration programs to test extensions of the Lower Phoenix gold system.
Surface based growth exploration programs at Fosterville are now completed on the Lower Phoenix North 8050mN section and all drill results have now been returned. The results of three holes from 2,591m of surface based drilling are provided in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 1.
Surface based drilling into the Lower Phoenix North has advanced northwards with the commencement of the Lower Phoenix 8300mN program on the back of drill success of the Lower Phoenix 7850mN, 7950mN and 8050mN sections.
All drill assay intercepts are provided in Table 1 and drill collars in Table 2.
Lower Phoenix North 8050mN Surface Drill Program
A surface exploration drill program on the Lower Phoenix North 8050mN gold system was undertaken following successful drill results returned from the Lower Phoenix North 7950mN and 7850mN surface drill programs previously completed. The Lower Phoenix North 8050mN program targets Lower Phoenix mineralization approximately 350m north of Mineral Reserves and consisted of one parent hole with three daughter holes and second hole collared from surface. New drill results returned from the Lower Phoenix North (8050mN) program include 6.5 g/t Au over 27.8m (ETW 25.0m) in hole SPD618C and 4.49 g/t Au over 4.50m (ETW 4.3m) in hole SPD618B (Figure 1).
Newmarket Gold is currently compiling and interpreting results of this program and is optimistic that Mineral Resources could potentially be extended beyond the current extent of 7750mN to the 8050mN. Newmarket has continued a surface based drill program on the Lower Phoenix North 8300mN with the intent to further expand the Lower Phoenix North Mineral Resource, which remains open to the north.
To view a PDF of the tables and figures as referenced in this press release please go to the following link:
http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Tables_1_2.pdf
http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Figures_1_4.pdf
Qualified Person
Troy Fuller, MAIG, Geology Manager, Fosterville Gold Mine, Newmarket Gold, is a "qualified person" as such term is defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information and data included in this News Release.
QAQC information is provided at the bottom of Table 1.
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD
Douglas Forster, M.Sc., P.Geo., President & Chief Executive Officer
About Newmarket Gold Inc.
Newmarket Gold is a Canadian listed gold producer with three 100% owned underground operating mines in Australia. The flagship operation, Fosterville Gold Mine, and the Stawell Gold Mine are located in the state of Victoria, and the Cosmo Gold Mine is located in the Northern Territory. In addition, Newmarket has a pipeline of growth projects within Australia, including The Maud Creek Gold Project in the Northern Territory and the Big Hill Gold Project in the state of Victoria. The Company is based on a strong foundation of quality gold production from its three Australian mines, producing over 220,000 ounces of gold annually. Newmarket Gold is dedicated to the development of its resources, targeted exploration, and prudent cost management practices, while continuing to generate free cash flow and maintaining a large resource base with reserve upside. Newmarket strives to enhance shareholder value through a disciplined approach to growth, focused on organic exploration success on near mine targets and accretive acquisition opportunities in stable mining jurisdictions.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Information
Certain information set forth in this news release contains "forward-looking statements", and "forward-looking information" under applicable securities laws. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include the Company's expectations about its business and operations, and are based on the Company's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Some of the forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "will", "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "projects", "plans", and similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance or outcomes and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that are included in this News Release or incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Contacts:
Newmarket Gold, Inc.
Ryan King,
Vice President, Investor Relations
604.559.8040
rking@newmarketgoldinc.com
www.newmarketgoldinc.com
Sberbank / Miscellaneous - Medium Priority Sberbank releases Financial Highlights for 10M 2016 (under RAS; non-consolidated) 08-Nov-2016 / 08:37 CET/CEST Dissemination of a Regulatory Announcement, transmitted by EquityStory.RS, LLC - a company of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. *Sberbank releases Financial Highlights for 10M 2016 (under RAS; non-consolidated) * _Please note that the numbers are calculated in accordance with Sberbank's internal methodology. _ *Key highlights for October, 2016:* - The Bank earned net profit of RUB53.1 bn - Total capital adequacy ratio increased by 0.2p.p. to 12.9% Deputy Chairman of Sberbank Alexander Morozov stated: _'The Bank continues to focus on increasing efficiency and profitability. After substituting state funding with clients' funds we kept working on improving the structure of clients' funding with cheaper sources.'_ *Comments for 10M 2016:* *Net interest income *came at RUB925.7 bn: _Interest income_ increased by 5.1%, mostly driven by the increase in volume of working assets; _Interest expense_ came down by 21.8% due to improving liabilities structure with cheaper funding and decrease in market rates compared to 10M 2015. *Fee and commission income* was up by 22.0% to RUB253.8 bn compared to 10M 2015 mainly driven by transactional business with bank cards and acquiring. Income from bank insurance and settlements also contributed to Fee and commission income. *Operating expense *increased by12.3%, which was significantly slower than pre-provision operating income growth (32.6%). Despite continuing wages indexation the increase in operating expenses was slow. The Bank continues to increase efficiency and implement cost-cutting program. Cost-to-Income ratio decreased from 39.0% for 10M 2015 to 33.1% for 10M 2016. *Total provision charge *amounted to RUB30.4 bn in September. Total provision charge for 10M 2016 amounted to RUB249 bn, or 74% of 10M 2015 figure. Significant impact on provisions during 10M 2016 was the strengthening of the Ruble against major foreign currencies. The Bank continues to form loan-loss provisions in-line with the requirements of the Central Bank of Russia. *Net profit before income tax *came at RUB545.0 bn. Net profit totaled RUB429.8 bn. *Total comprehensive income *which includes the income from revaluation of financial assets available-for-sale and held-to-maturity,amounted to RUB481.2 bn. *Total assets* in October decreased by 1.6% to RUB21.6 trln. The decrease in assets by 6.6% since the beginning of the year is explained by the reduction of excessive liquidity by means of forgoing more expensive sources of clients' funding. Additional factor was negative revaluation of the foreign currency denominated assets on the back of Ruble appreciation. The Bank lent over RUB820 bn to *corporate clients* in October. Corporate loan issues from the beginning of the year were over RUB7 trln, which was 1.4X more than for 10M 2015. The loan portfolio ending balance decrease in nominal terms was largely influenced by revaluation of earlier issued foreign currency denominated loans on the back of Ruble strengthening. The Ruble denominated corporate loan portfolio increased by RUB36 bn, or by 0.5%, in October. The Bank lent about RUB130 bn to *retail clients* in October, of which RUB60 bn were mortgage loans. Retail loan issues from the beginning of the year were RUB1.24 trln, which was 1.3X greater than for 10M 2015. Total retail loan portfolio increased by RUB14 bn in October to reach RUB4.3 trln as of November 1, 2016. The share of *overdue loans* of total loans was down to 2.9% in October from 3.3% in the beginning of the year, which is substantially lower than the banking sector's average (6.9% as of October 1, 2016). *Securities portfolio* was down by RUB127 bn in October due to redemptions of European Commercial Papers and sale of corporate bonds and OFZ bonds with duration over 10 years. The portfolio ending balance was RUB2.2 trln as of November 1, 2016. *Retail deposits and accounts* in October slightly decreased (by 0.2%) on Ruble appreciation and reduction of savings certificates ending balance. In real terms, though, there was an inflow of deposits both in Rubles, U.S. dollars and Euros. Retail deposits and accounts ending balance was RUB11.0 trln as of November 1, 2016. Corporate deposits and accountswere down by RUB286 bn, or by 5.0%, in October. The Bank manages the cost of corporate funding in order to optimize the funding structure and improve net interest income of the Bank. Corporate deposits and accounts ending balance was RUB5.5 trln as of November 1, 2016. *Core Tier 1* and *Tier 1 capital* (equal since Sberbank does not have instruments of additional capital) reached RUB2,050 bn as of November 1, 2016 under preliminary calculations. *Total capital* amounted to RUB2,978 bn as of November 1, 2016, up by RUB45 bn mainly due to earned net profit. Risk-weighted assets decreased by RUB93 bn in October mainly due to the decrease of the securities portfolio. Capital adequacy ratios as of November 1, 2016 under preliminary calculations were: - N1.1 - 8.9% (minimum adequacy level, required by the Central Bank of Russia at 4.5%) - N1.2 - 8.9% (minimum adequacy level, required by the Central Bank of Russia at 6.0%) - N1.0 - 12.9% (minimum adequacy level, required by the Central Bank of Russia at 8.0%). Sberbank 10M 2016 Financial Highlights (under RAS, non-consolidated) The EquityStory.RS, LLC Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at www.dgap.de/ukreg Language: English Company: Sberbank 19 Vavilova St. 117997 Moscow Russia Phone: +7-495-957-57-21 E-mail: media@sberbank.ru Internet: www.sberbank.ru ISIN: US80585Y3080, RU0009029540, RU0009029557, US80585Y4070 Listed: Open Market (Entry Standard) in Frankfurt; London, Moscow Category Code: MSCM TIDM: SBER Sequence Number: 3575 Time of Receipt: 08-Nov-2016 / 08:37 CET/CEST End of Announcement EquityStory.RS, LLC News Service 518281 08-Nov-2016
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 08, 2016 02:38 ET (07:38 GMT)
Regulatory News:
Gunnebo AB (STO:GUNN)
Christian Carlsson has been appointed SVP HR Sustainability for the Gunnebo Group as of December 1, 2016. He will replace Magnus Lundback, who has decided to leave the Group.
Christian holds a Master's degree in Human Resource Management from Bournemouth University. He has been working in leading HR positions at global companies such as the Volvo Car Corporation and AP Moller-Maersk for over 15 years. His most recent position was as Head of HR for the Papyrus Group.
Christian will be part of the Group Executive Team.
GUNNEBO AB (publ)
Group Communications
www.gunnebogroup.com
The Gunnebo Group is a global leader in security products, services and solutions with an offering covering cash management, safes and vaults, entrance security and electronic security for banks, retail, CIT, mass transit, public commercial buildings and industrial high-risk sites.
The Group has an annual turnover of 660 million, employs 5,500 people and has sales companies in 27 countries across Europe, Middle East Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas as well as Channel Partners on over 100 additional markets.
We make your world safer.
This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005416/en/
Contacts:
Gunnebo Group
Henrik Lange
President CEO
tel. +46 10 2095 057
or
Karin Wallstrom
Marketing Communication Director
tel. +46 10 2095 026
Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has opened the doors of a new Accenture Delivery Center for Technology in Budapest, Hungary, to deliver technology services to clients powered by the local pool of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) talent. Budapest is the seventh delivery center location for Accenture in Central and Eastern Europe.
Accenture is already one of the largest IT employers in the region with more than 6,000 professionals and plans to recruit more than 150 people to the delivery center over the next 12 months. Accenture serves clients across a range of industries through the Accenture Delivery Center for Technology with a focus on the Austria-Switzerland-Germany region and Central and Eastern Europe.
"Our investment in Hungary and plans for future expansion reflect our continued commitment to better serve our clients, locally and globally, with our innovation-led approach and helping them in their digital transformation journey," said Peter Skodny, managing director, Central and Eastern Europe, Accenture. "We are excited to recruit and grow top technology talent from Hungary and contribute to the economic growth and development of Hungary and the region."
"We are building teams with advanced skills in core and new technologies, and expertise in the most advanced delivery models, including agile delivery, continuous integration, DevOps and highly automated delivery processes, to help our clients rotate to New IT. Working closely with leading ecosystem alliance partners and using our scale, leading technology position and innovation, the delivery center in Budapest is another node of exceptionally talented people plugged into our unmatched global delivery network," said Tomas Volek, managing director, Accenture Global Delivery Network Central and Eastern Europe. "The Accenture Delivery Center in Budapest provides our clients with access to the right mix of local and global resources, using state-of-the-art technologies, intelligent tools, artificial intelligence, lightweight architectures and industry assets."
The Accenture Delivery Center for Technology in Hungary, Budapest is part of the Accenture Global Delivery Network. With 285,000 professionals in more than 50 centers, Accenture offices and client locations, the Accenture Global Delivery Network is the largest and most diversified group of strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations professionals in the world. Our work is supported by deep industry, technology and business acumen, and by an unmatched breadth of industrialized capabilities-including processes, methods, tools, architectures and metrics.
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions underpinned by the world's largest delivery network Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With more than 384,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at: www.accenture.com/technology - www.accenture.com/technologycareers-hu.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005001/en/
Contacts:
Accenture
Kitti Barna-Horvath, 36 1 327 3700
kitti.h.barna@accenture.com
MUNICH, GERMANY -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Atlanta-based electronics distributor, World Micro, Inc., announced today that it has signed a franchise distribution agreement with PIC GmbH. The agreement gives World Micro the ability to promote, distribute, and market PIC GmbH's line of reed switches and sensors.
For 40 years, PIC GmbH has been an established name in the global Reed Switch and Sensor market. Specializing in supplying superior quality reed products to price-sensitive markets, they offer customized solutions and on short notice, to give their customers the leading edge. PIC GmbH offers products and services for all aspects of application from the concept stage through volume production.
With production facilities in China and Turkey and technical sales offices throughout the world, PIC GmbH provides high quality mass production capability while keeping close relationships with customers, offering opportunities to develop specific solutions very quickly and efficiently.
In addition to an extensive range of Reed Switches, SMD Reed Switches, Reed Sensors, Level Sensors, and Magnets, PIC GmbH is also a major supplier of custom products, including PCB assemblies, modified and selected Reed Switches, and sensor variants with specially designed connector and cable assemblies. PIC GmbH's product application covers all aspects of reed switches and sensor technology for the domestic appliances, white goods, industrial, security, home automation and medical technology sectors.
Both companies will be exhibiting at electronica in Munich, Germany during November 2016.
Further information about PIC GmbH is available at http://www.pic-gmbh.com. Follow PIC GmbH at http://www.facebook.com/picgmbh.
About World Micro Components, Inc.: World Micro, Inc. is a global, aerospace, military, commercial, and medical electronic component and products distributor focused on quality systems. Since 1996, World Micro has helped its customers solve difficult supply chain issues through innovative research, design, sourcing, stocking, procurement, inventory, and management solutions. World Micro, Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, with its Asian distribution hub in Penang, Malaysia. The company's website is www.worldmicro.com and can be followed on Twitter at twitter.com/worldmicro.
About PIC GmbH: PIC Proximity Instrumentation Controls Kontaktbauelemente GmbH is a globally operating company based in the Nuremberg area. PIC GmbH has been one of the leading suppliers of Reed Sensor Technology for several years. Highly technical competencies, long-time experience and the ability to innovatively implement our customers' needs make us the ideal partner for the home appliances, automotive, medical, and measure-and-control industry.
World Micro Components, Inc.
Ph: 770.698.1900
E-mail: info@worldmicro.com
http://www.worldmicro.com/
VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - German shares are inching higher in cautious trade on Tuesday, as well-received earnings updates from the likes of Henkel and Deutsche Post as well as hopes for a Clinton victory in the U.S. presidential election helped investors shrug off disappointing industrial output data. Germany's industrial production declined at a faster-than-expected pace in September, after rebounding in the previous month, data from Destatis showed Tuesday. Industrial production fell a seasonally and working-day-adjusted 1.8 percent month-over-month in September, reversing a 3.0 percent climb in August, which was revised up from a 2.5 percent rise reported earlier. That was well above the 0.2 percent slight drop expected by economists. Another report showed that German exports and imports declined in September after recovering a month ago. Investors also took disappointing Chinese trade figures in their stride. The benchmark DAX is currently up 10 points or 0.10 percent at 10,467 in opening deals after climbing as much as 1.9 percent on Monday. Mail and logistics group Deutsche Post is rallying 2 percent on reporting a jump in Q3 profit and reaffirming its FY16 outlook. Consumer goods maker Henkel is rising half a percent after its third-quarter profit beat analyst estimates. Volkswagen shares are down over 1 percent after regulators in California found emissions-cheating software in some of the company's Audi models. 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.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Fintech startups have a new ally as they work to bring new, innovative solutions to market with Equifax Canada's (NYSE: EFX) announcement of their partnership with MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto-based innovation hub.
As a corporate partner for MaRS' Financial Technology (FinTech) Cluster, Equifax increases its participation in Canada's fast-growing ecosystem while acting as a mentor for fintech startups in the industry.
"As an innovator in financial technologies ourselves, Equifax is excited to explore co-development and co-innovation opportunities with up-and-coming enterprises as a corporate partner for MaRS," explained Chris Briggs, Chief Marketing Officer at Equifax Canada. "Fintech is an exciting field that is delivering fresh, new ideas to the financial sector. With our history and expertise in the industry, we bring immense value to organizations looking to grow their business in Canada and beyond." Briggs adds, "We look forward to enhancing our deep innovation pipeline with the unique perspective gained through this partnership."
"By working with Equifax we're connecting MaRS FinTech ventures with a leader in credit data and insights," said Dinaro Ly, Director of Financial Technology at MaRS. "This collaboration will expand the resources available to our fintech community, enabling our innovators to continue transforming financial services."
The MaRS Discovery District FinTech Cluster provides fintech ventures with access to advisory services, venture capital opportunities, and a national network of corporate partners, financial institutions and over 200 fintech ventures.
About Equifax
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 analyzes data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide, and its databases include employee data contributed from more than 5,000 employers.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., Equifax operates or has investments in 24 countries in North America, Central and South America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. It is a member of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Index, and its common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. Equifax employs approximately 9,400 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 www.equifax.com
About MaRS Discovery District
MaRS Discovery District (@MaRSDD) in Toronto is one of the world's largest urban innovation hubs. MaRS supports promising young ventures that are tackling key challenges in the health, cleantech, finance & commerce, as well as work & learning sectors. In addition to helping startups launch, grow and scale, the MaRS community is dedicated to cross-disciplinary collaboration, commercialization of discoveries and driving ideas to impact.
Contacts:
Andrew Findlater
SELECT Public Relations
afindlater@selectpr.ca
(416) 659-1197
Tom Carroll
Equifax Canada
MediaRelationsCanada@equifax.com
(416) 227-5290
WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - November 08, 2016) - AiNET's visionary founder and CEO Deepak Jain is featured in the November issue of Construction Global Magazine, discussing the early days of the business he started in his mother's basement at the age of 17. In the pre-internet era, a young Jain understood the potential of business opportunity better than most.
In the article, titled "Solving the Impossible" Jain speaks about AiNET's inception as a dial-up internet service provider (ISP), its growth into an international business, and its expansion into other areas, becoming one of the world's foremost data center service providers. In particular, Jain recalls providing service to Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner of Broadcast.com, "We engineered their solution and supported them with our servers right up to the (Yahoo) takeover."
As AiNET continued to grow, so did the challenge of supporting all of its initiatives. That's when AiNET's flexible approach to a scalable infrastructure-based business led to its portfolio of impressive patents, focusing on power, systems reliability, data center efficiency, and green energy. Today, AiNET offers over half a million square feet of raised floor data center and technical office space. In addition, the company owns 10,000 miles of private fiber optic network and directly supports over 25% of the world's data traffic.
Read the full Construction Global article here, and learn more about AiNET at www.ai.net
About AiNET
AiNET is a leader in the design, construction, operations, and support of Internet data centers, optical fiber networks, and critical solutions. Founded around a culture of innovation, AiNET has been driving technology forward for over 23 years.
AiNET's innovative approach combines the full stack of services within the Data Center, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. By bundling services within the data center, AiNET is able to offer unique, custom solutions that empower customers to solve their largest technology challenges.
AiNET is always expanding our data centers, and growing to connect buildings to our protected fiber communications networks for enhanced reliability and security. Customers that trust AiNET include the Department of Defense, the Department of Labor, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Level 3 Communications, Comcast, Cox and many others. AiNET has over 100 lit or "on-net" buildings.
Contact:
Brian Checco
AiNET
brian.checco@ai.net
(301) 931-6574 ext. 224
HONG KONG and ZUG, Switzerland, Feb. 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ally Bridge Group ("ABG"), a leading global cross-border healthcare investment group, announced that in recent months it has completed investments in two European biopharmaceutical companies -- Galenica AG (SIX:GALN) of Switzerland, and Nabriva (NASDAQ: NBRV) of Austria and the US. These two companies, both global leaders in their respective fields, represent the latest addition to ABG's global life science portfolio with flagships such as WuXi PharmaTech of China and Tesaro, Inc. of the US.
Galenica (http://www.galenica.com/en/), through its subsidiary Vifor Pharma, is not only the global leader in iron supplements, but also the world's most comprehensive provider of therapeutics treating chronic kidney disease (CKD), a prevalent and steadily growing indication worldwide. Galenica-Vifor is expanding its leading franchise further into nephrology, and new areas such as cardiology, women's health and gastroenterology, from Europe to the US.
Nabriva (http://www.nabriva.com/) is a leading clinical-stage company developing next-generation antibiotics against bacterial infections and, particularly, drug-resistant bacteria, an alarming global health threat.
"These new investments, together with our existing position in Adaptimmune of the UK, constitute ABG's core European life science portfolio, and are all representative of ABG's focus on leading European companies with strong aspirations and capabilities in the US. This Euro-US trans-Atlantic value-creation theme has driven ABG's continuing success with its European investments, which in the past included Pieris of Germany and the US, Cellectis of France and the US and Medtech SA (acquired by Zimmer Biomet), " saidFrank Yu, Founder, CEO and CIO of ABG. "The timing of these two new investments was particularly good -- with Nabriva being an instant winner and the Galenica investment completed shortly before the announcement of a US$30 billion acquisition of Swiss biotech company Actelion by global giant Johnson and Johnson."
Ponthieu Partners, a healthcare-dedicated boutique investment bank based in Zug, Switzerland advised ABG on the Galenica investment. Ponthieu Partners was founded by Mathieu Bigois, who has joined ABG as its European venture partner to help expand ABG's life science investments in Europe and emerging markets.
"We are very pleased to welcome Mathieu Bigois, a veteran healthcare banker, on board Ally Bridge's truly global life science investment platform and, as a result, establish ABG's physical presence in Europe. Mathieu played an important role in our recent investment in Galenica, which is of strategic nature," saidFrank Yu, Founder, CEO and CIO of ABG. "I am very excited to join Ally Bridge Group, having worked closely with ABG in recent months, and to have the opportunity to assist ABG in extending its reach in Europe and other territories. I firmly believe that ABG's truly global life science domain expertise, vision, network and impressive track record -- and its versatile multi-strategy investment approach -- make it a highly differentiated fund positioned as the investment partner of choice for many companies with global aspirations," added Mathieu Bigois, Founder and Managing Partner and of Ponthieu Partners and Venture Partner of ABG.
About Ally Bridge Group
Ally Bridge Group ("ABG") is a leading cross-border healthcare investment group, founded and led by Mr.Frank Yu(formerly a Managing Director of Goldman Sachs and Och-Ziff Capital), with a global multi-stage life science investment portfolio inChina,the US, andEurope and approximately US$1.5 billionin assets under management. In 2015, ABG initiated, led and completed thelandmark US$3.3bntake-private of WuXi PharmaTech, a leading global life science service provider. In 2016, ABG invested in Tesaro (TSRO) as part of an exclusive consortium through a private placement. ABG's portfolio company Medtech SA, a leading surgical robotics company based in France, was successfully acquired by global orthopedics giant Zimmer Biomet in 2016, several months after ABG's investment.
About Ponthieu Partners
Mathieu Bigois is the Managing Partner of Ponthieu Partners, a firm he founded in 2009 in Zug, Switzerland, focusing on healthcare investment banking advisory as well as principal investment activities. Mr. Bigois started his career in 1997 in London at Wasserstein Perella, then moved to the EMEA Healthcare banking groups of Credit Suisse and then Citigroup. He also worked as Chief Financial Officer of the US-/French-based specialty biotech Company DrugAbuse Sciences. Mr. Bigois maintains an extensive global network of relationships and routinely executes advisory assignments with developed world as well as select emerging markets players (primarily CIS, Turkey, MENA and Latin America). His client base covers both strategic and financial players in all segments of healthcare. Ponthieu Partners has advised major clients such as Elan Pharmaceuticals, Aspen Pharmacare, Biogen Idec, Sanofi, Ramsay Healthcare and Merck Serono, and a large number of emerging biotech companies. Mr. Bigois is a graduate of Ecole Centrale Paris (MSc. Engineering) and holds an MSc. in Finance and Economics of the London School of Economics (British Council Scholar).
Media contact:
Mattan Lurie
Vice President
Ally Bridge Group
+852 3121 9628
mattan.lurie@ally-bridge.com
KOLWEZI, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Robert Friedland, Executive Chairman of Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN), and Lars-Eric Johansson, Chief Executive Officer, today announced additional excellent metallurgical results from tests conducted on drill core from ongoing exploration at the Kakula Discovery, in a southerly portion of the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Project.
The bench-scale metallurgical flotation test work carried out at XPS Consulting and Testwork Services laboratories in Falconbridge, Canada, achieved copper recoveries of 87.8% and produced a concentrate with an extremely high grade of 56% copper using the flowsheet developed during the Kamoa pre-feasibility study (PFS). The material tested was a composite of recent, chalcocite-rich Kakula drill core, assaying 8.1% copper.
"These new Kakula metallurgical test results are highly positive as they indicate that, by employing a conventional milling and flotation process, Kakula should produce an extremely high-grade and clean copper concentrate that would be highly coveted by copper smelters around the world," said Vongani Nkuna, Kamoa's Senior Process Engineer. "The XPS metallurgical results further demonstrate the high quality of the Kakula Discovery."
The Kamoa-Kakula Copper Project, located approximately 25 kilometres west of the town of Kolwezi, is a joint venture between Ivanhoe Mines and Zijin Mining Group Co., Ltd. The 60-square-kilometre Kakula Discovery zone is on the Kamoa mining licence, approximately 10 kilometres southwest of the project's planned initial mining area at Kansoko Sud.
XPS's metallurgical results build upon initial test results from Zijin's laboratory in China
The XPS bench-scale test work findings will be used in the ongoing preliminary economic assessment now underway for Kakula. The XPS results corroborate the results from testing of a Kakula drill core composite sample that was conducted at Zijin's laboratory in China in July 2016.
The July 2016 initial metallurgical test results achieved copper recoveries of 86% and produced a copper concentrate with a grade of 53% copper. The results also indicated that material from Kamoa's Kakula and Kansoko zones could be processed through the same concentrator plant, which could yield significant operational and economic efficiencies.
Zijin's tests of the Kakula sample also used the flowsheet developed during the Kamoa PFS. The material tested was a composite of drill holes assaying 4.1% copper. As a comparison, testing of a previous development composite sample from the planned, initial mining deposit at Kamoa's Kansoko Sud zone and the adjacent Kansoko Centrale zone, assaying 3.61% copper, achieved an 85% recovery and a concentrate grade of 37% copper.
Kamoa concentrates contain extremely low arsenic levels, by world standards
Additional, earlier metallurgical testwork indicated that the Kamoa concentrates contain extremely low arsenic levels, by world standards - approximately 0.02%. Given this critical competitive marketing advantage, Kamoa's concentrates are expected to attract a significant premium from copper-concentrate traders for use in blending with concentrates from other mines. The Kamoa concentrates will help to enable the other concentrates to meet the limit of 0.5% arsenic imposed by Chinese smelters to meet China's new environmental restrictions.
Kamoa-Kakula now ranks among the world's 10 largest copper deposits and remains open for significant expansion
On October 12, 2016, Ivanhoe Mines released the initial Resource estimate for its Kakula Discovery at the Kamoa-Kakula Project. Highlights of the initial Kakula Mineral Resource estimate, prepared by Ivanhoe under the direction of Amec Foster Wheeler E&C Services Inc., of Reno, USA, in accordance with the 2014 CIM Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves are:
- Indicated Resources total 192 million tonnes at a grade of 3.45% copper, containing 14.6 billion pounds of copper at a 1% copper cut- off. At a 2% copper cut-off, Indicated Resources total 115 million tonnes at a 4.80% copper grade, containing 12.1 billion pounds of copper. At a higher cut-off of 3% copper, Indicated Resources total 66 million tonnes at a grade of 6.59% copper, containing 9.6 billion pounds of copper. - Inferred Resources total 101 million tonnes at a grade of 2.74% copper, containing 6.1 billion pounds of copper at a 1% copper cut-off. At a 2% copper cut-off, Inferred Resources total 51 million tonnes at a 3.92% copper grade, containing 4.4 billion pounds of copper. At a higher cut- off of 3% copper, Inferred Resources total 27 million tonnes at a grade of 5.26% copper, containing 3.2 billion pounds of copper. - The average true thickness of the selective mineralized zone (SMZ) at a 1% cut-off is 14.27 metres in the Indicated Resources area and 10.33 metres in the Inferred Resources area. At a higher 3% cut-off, the average true thickness of the SMZ is 5.91 metres in the Indicated Resources area and 5.15 metres in the Inferred Resources area.
The initial Kakula Mineral Resource was defined by drilling covering a total area of 8.7 square kilometres within the larger 60-square-kilometre Kakula Exploration Area. The Kakula high-grade mineralization remains open for significant expansion along trend to the northwest and the southeast, while the remainder of the Kakula Exploration Area remains untested. The Kakula Mineral Resource estimate was based on the results from approximately 24,000 metres of drilling in 65 holes.
With the significance of the Kakula Discovery now firmly established, the Kakula exploration program has been significantly expanded by a further 60,000 metres. The expanded program is planned to run through to the end of the second quarter of 2017 and will consist of infill drilling, resource expansion and exploration.
With the addition of Kakula's Mineral Resources, research by Wood Mackenzie - a prominent, international industry research and consulting group, based in the U.K. - has independently demonstrated that the Kamoa-Kakula Project is the largest copper discovery in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making it the largest copper discovery ever made in the history of mining on the African continent. In addition, research by Wood Mackenzie also shows that Kamoa-Kakula already ranks among the 10 largest copper deposits in the world.
The combined Kamoa-Kakula Indicated Mineral Resources now total 944 million tonnes grading 2.83% copper, containing 58.9 billion pounds of copper at a 1.0% copper cut-off grade and a minimum true thickness of three metres.
Kamoa-Kakula now also has Inferred Mineral Resources of 286 million tonnes grading 2.31% copper and containing 14.6 billion pounds of copper, also at a 1.0% copper cut-off grade and a minimum true thickness of three metres.
The Kakula Mineral Resource estimate was prepared by Ivanhoe Mines under the direction of Dr. Harry Parker and Gordon Seibel, both RM SME, of Amec Foster Wheeler. Dr. Parker and Mr. Seibel are the Qualified Persons for the estimate, which has an effective date of October 9, 2016. A technical report will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days of the issuance of the October 12, 2016 news release.
Kamoa-Kakula studies
With the initial Kakula Mineral Resource estimate completed, Kamoa Copper SA, holder of the Kamoa mining licence, has retained OreWin Pty. Ltd., of Adelaide, Australia, to prepare a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the development of the Kakula deposit. The PEA, which is expected to be completed before the end of 2016, will concentrate on establishing the economic parameters of potential mining operations at Kakula, including capital and operating costs for an underground mine.
The PEA also will analyze process facilities, mining planning and scheduling, including capital costs and operating costs for both mining and concentrator operations. The PEA will draw on recommendations from the Kamoa 2016 PFS, including the potential to increase production up to four million tonnes per year from the proposed initial mining area.
Kakula mineralization is characteristically bottom-loaded. The Kakula Mineral Resource estimate demonstrates that opportunities exist to mine Kakula at much higher lateral and vertical cut-offs than at Kamoa's Kansoko Sud. The clear zonation and grades in the central high-grade core should provide sequencing opportunities to mine at significantly elevated grades.
To help advance the mine-planning work at Kakula, the Kamoa technical team is rapidly proceeding with the engineering of a box cut at Kakula to accommodate decline ramps that will provide underground access to the deposit.
Qualified person
Scientific and technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Stephen Torr, P.Geo., Ivanhoe Mines' Vice President, Project Geology and Evaluation, a Qualified Person under the terms of National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Torr has verified the technical data disclosed in this news release.
About Ivanhoe Mines
Ivanhoe Mines is advancing its three principal projects in Sub-Saharan Africa: Mine development at the Platreef platinum-palladium-gold-nickel-copper discovery on the Northern Limb of South Africa's Bushveld Complex; mine development and exploration at the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Project on the Central African Copperbelt in the DRC; and upgrading at the historic, high-grade Kipushi zinc-copper-lead-germanium mine, also on the DRC's Copperbelt. For details, visit www.ivanhoemines.com.
Cautionary statement on forward-looking information
Certain statements in this release constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including without limitation: (i) statements regarding the expectation that material from Kamoa's Kakula and Kansoko zones can be successfully processed through the same concentrator plant; (ii) statements regarding that by employing a conventional milling and flotation process, Kakula should produce an extremely high-grade and clean copper concentrate that would be highly coveted by copper smelters around the world; (iii) statements that given the expected extremely low arsenic levels, Kamoa's concentrates are expected to attract a significant premium from copper-concentrate traders for use in blending with concentrates from other mines, (iv) statements regarding Kamoa concentrates will help to enable the other concentrates to meet the limit of 0.5% arsenic imposed by Chinese smelters to meet China's new environmental restrictions; (v) statements regarding the completion of 60,000 metres of drilling at Kakula in the second quarter of 2017; and (v) statements regarding that the preliminary economic assessment for the development of the Kakula deposit is expected to be completed before the end of 2016.
Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indicators of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the factors discussed here, as well as unexpected changes in laws, rules or regulations, or their enforcement by applicable authorities; the failure of parties to contracts with the company to perform as agreed; social, political or labour unrest; changes in commodity prices (and copper in particular); limitations and availability of capital; and the failure of exploration programs or studies to deliver anticipated results (including the actual results of drilling and exploration activities), or results that would justify and support continued exploration, studies, development or operations.
This news release also contains references to estimates of Mineral Resources. The estimation of Mineral Resources is inherently uncertain and involves subjective judgments about many relevant factors. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The accuracy of any such estimates is a function of the quantity and quality of available data, and of the assumptions made and judgments used in engineering and geological interpretation, which may prove to be unreliable and depend, to a certain extent, upon the analysis of drilling results and statistical inferences that may ultimately prove to be inaccurate. Mineral Resource estimates may have to be re-estimated based on, among other things: (i) fluctuations in copper prices or other mineral prices; (ii) results of drilling; (iii) results of metallurgical testing and other studies; (iv) changes to proposed mining operations, including dilution; (v) the evaluation of mine plans subsequent to the date of any estimates; and (vi) the possible failure to receive required permits, approvals and licences, or changes to any such permits, approvals or licences.
Although the forward-looking statements contained in this release are based upon what management of the company believes are reasonable assumptions, the company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this release and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Subject to applicable securities laws, the company does not assume any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this release. The company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of the factors set forth in the "Risk Factors" section and elsewhere in the company's most recent Management's Discussion and Analysis report and Annual Information Form, available at www.sedar.com.
Contacts:
Ivanhoe Mines - Investors:
Bill Trenaman
+1.604.331.9834
Ivanhoe Mines - Media
North America:
Bob Williamson
+1.604.512.4856
South Africa:
Jeremy Michaels
+27.82.939.4812
www.ivanhoemines.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Metals Creek Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: MEK) ("Metals Creek") is pleased to announce that the company has entered into an option agreement, (the "Jackson's Arm Agreement") with Anaconda Mining Inc. (TSX VENTURE: ANX) ("Anaconda"), whereas Anaconda has the right to acquire a 100% undivided interest in Metals Creek's "Jackson's Arm Property".
Metals Creek has also entered into a second option agreement, (the "Tilt Cove Agreement") with Anaconda Mining Inc. whereas Anaconda has the right to acquire a 100% undivided interest in Metals Creek's "Tilt Cove Property" located 60 kilometres east of the Company's Point Rousse Project within the BaieVerte Mining District.
Details of both agreements are as follows:
The Jackson's Arm Agreement: To earn a 100% interest in the Jackson's Arm Property, Anaconda is required to make aggregate payments to Metals Creek of $200,000 in cash ($20,000 two (2) days after TSX approval), and 500,000 common shares of Anaconda (50,000 two (2) days after TSX approval) over a three-year period. The Jackson's Arm Agreement provides for a two percent (2%) net smelter returns royalty ("NSR") to MEK on the sale of gold bearing mineral products from the Jackson's Arm Property. The NSR is capped at $1,500,000, after which, the NSR will be reduced to one percent (1%). Anaconda is required to spend a total of $750,000 in qualified exploration expenditures on the Jackson's Arm Property during the option period.
The Tilt Cove Agreement: To earn a 100% interest in the Tilt Cove Property, Anaconda is required to make aggregate payments to Metals Creek of $200,000 in cash ($20,000 two (2) days after TSX approval), and 500,000 common shares of Anaconda (50,000 two (2) days after TSX approval) over a three-year period. The Tilt Cove Agreement provides for a one percent (1%) NSR to MEK on the sale of goldbearing mineral products from the Tilt Cove Property. Anaconda is also assuming an existing two percent (2%) NSR (the "Existing NSR") on one of the two licenses that comprises the Tilt Cove Property. One percent (1%) of the Existing NSR is purchasable for $1,250,000. Anaconda is required to spend a total of $750,000 in qualified exploration expenditures on the Tilt Cove Property during the option period.
Key exploration highlights:
-- Both projects are located along regional splays of the Long Range Fault system - a fertile gold bearing structure. -- A similar fault system, the Red Indian Line (and associated structures), was the focus of a recent staking rush for gold and, like the Long Range Fault, it is host to significant gold deposits. -- Both projects are located proximal to Anaconda's existing infrastructure at the Pine Cove Mine, accessible by road and have significant upside for discovery and resource growth.
The Jackson Arm Property is now part of Anaconda's Great Northern Project and boasts several gold prospects and showings including the Stocker, Shrik, Boot N' Hammer, and 954 Prospects. Surface grab samples assaying up to 20.2 g/t gold and 1232.0 g/t silver at the Boot N' Hammer Prospect; up to 56.7 g/t gold and 2.75 oz Silver at the Stocker Prospect; up to 7.2 g/t gold at the Shrik prospect; and 13.6 g/t gold at the 954 Prospect.
Great Northern Project Overview
The Great Northern Project is located near the community of Jackson's Arm, NL and is centered along the Doucer's Valley Fault, a regional splay off the Long Range Fault. The Doucer's Valley Fault is a significant geological control on and host to several gold deposits including Anaconda's Thor deposit (83,000 ounces Indicated and 31,000 Inferred resources)(i) and the Rattling Brook deposit (435,000 Inferred)(ii).
Tilt Cove Property Overview
Tilt Cove is located within the Baie Verte Mining District, near the community of La Scie, NL, approximately 60 km by road from the Company's Pine Cove mill. Tilt Cove is characterized by the same geological environment as Point Rousse, specifically the Nugget Pond horizon, an iron formation that hosted the historical high-grade-gold Nugget Pond mine, which produced 166,000 ounces of gold with an average grade of approximately 11 g/t. The Tilt Cove property has several occurrences with high grade gold grab samples from historical and recent prospecting including 69.38 g/t gold from the Scarp zone, 13.47 g/t gold from the Shaft zone and 6.02 g/t gold from the Road showing.
The area is also host to several historical (1864-1967) open pit and underground copper mines. Gold is typically associated with copper mineralization and several of the historic copper deposits require follow-up testing for gold potential. A stockpile of gold bearing ore from historical mining, estimated at 30,000 tonnes is located on the Tilt Cove Property.
Near term exploration plans
Anaconda is planning a field program on the Great Northern Project that will begin this fall and include geological mapping of existing prospects and surrounding areas and the development of drill targets. Immediate work on Tilt Cove will begin with a thorough review and compilation of all historical data and field investigations to determine the highest priority drill targets and metallurgical test work on the stockpile.
(i)Resource taken from the NI43-101 report for the Viking project entitled "NI 43-101 Technical Report and Mineral Resource Estimate on the Thor Deposit, Viking Project, White Bay Area, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada" with an effective date of August 29, 2016" and using a cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t.
(ii)Resource taken from the NI43-101 report for the Jackson's Arm Project entitled "TECHNICAL REPORT ON MINERAL RESOURCE ESTIMATE FOR JACKSON'S ARM GOLD PROJECT WHITE BAY AREA NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR, Latitude 49o 53' 2.65"North, Longitude 56 o 50' 7.09" West", with an effective date of April 20th, 2009. Prepared For: Kermode Resources Ltd. by Mercator Geological Services Limited.
Wayne Reid (PGeo) is a director of the company and is responsible for the preparation of this News Release.
About Metals Creek Resources Corp.
Metals Creek Resources Corp. is a junior exploration company incorporated under the laws of the Province of Ontario, is a reporting issuer in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, and has its common shares listed for trading on the Exchange under the symbol "MEK". Metals Creek has earned a 50% interest in the Ogden Gold Property, including the former Naybob Gold mine, located 6 km south of Timmins, Ontario and has a 8 km strike length of the prolific Porcupine-Destor Fault (P-DF) that stretches between Timmins, Ontario and Val d'Or, Quebec. Metals Creek has also recently made a new gold/silver discovery in the "White Gold District" on the Squid East project in the Yukon and is also engaged in the identification, acquisition, exploration and development of other mineral resource properties, and presently has mining interests in Ontario, Yukon and Newfoundland and Labrador. Additional information concerning the Corporation is contained in documents filed by the Corporation with securities regulators, available under its profile at www.sedar.com.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
Metals Creek Resources Corp.
Alexander Stares
President and CEO
(709)-256-6060
(709)-256-6061 (FAX)
astares@metalscreek.com
www.MetalsCreek.com
www.Twitter.com/MetalsCreekRes
www.Facebook.com/MetalsCreek
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- WSP Global Inc. (TSX: WSP) ("WSP" or the "Corporation") today announced its financial and operating results for the third quarter of fiscal 2016 ended September 24, 2016.
THIRD QUARTER FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
Solid financial performance for the quarter. Consolidated organic growth in net revenues of 1.7% and adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.4%.
-- Revenues and net revenues of $1,552.5 million and $1,189.8 million, up 3.3% and 5.8%, respectively, compared to Q3 2015, mainly due to acquisition growth. Consolidated organic growth in net revenues for the period stood at 1.7%, and was flat year-over-year, in line with expectations. -- Adjusted EBITDA of $147.2 million, up $21.0 million or 16.6%, compared to Q3 2015. -- Adjusted EBITDA margin at 12.4%, compared to 11.2% in Q3 2015. -- Net earnings attributable to shareholders of $63.3 million, or $0.63 per share, compared to $50.4 million or $0.55 per share in Q3 2015. -- Adjusted net earnings excluding amortization of intangible assets relating to acquisitions of $77.2 million, or $0.77 per share, compared to $74.0 million, or $0.81 per share in Q3 2015. -- Backlog at $5,371.2 million, representing 10.3 months of revenues, down $296.2 million or 5.2% compared to Q2 2016, mainly due to timing of contract awards, and up $479.6 million or 9.8% compared to Q3 2015. -- DSO stood at 87 days, compared to 82 days in Q2 2016, and was stable when compared to Q3 2015. -- Quarterly dividend declared of $0.375 per share, with a 56.8% Dividend Reinvestment Plan ("DRIP") participation. -- Net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio at 1.9x; incorporating full 12-month adjusted EBITDA for all acquisitions, the ratio stands at 1.8x, in line with our target range. -- Full year 2016 outlook updated as follows: net revenues and adjusted EBITDA ranges narrowed to $4,700.0-$4,900.0 million and $485.0-$505.0 million, respectively; capital expenditures and acquisition & integration costs slightly increased.
Commenting on the performance for the quarter, Alexandre L'Heureux, President and CEO of WSP said: "I am pleased with our performance in the third quarter as we achieved overall positive organic growth and continued to increase our adjusted EBITDA margin, which stands at 12.4% for the quarter and 10.2% for the first nine months of the year. This performance once again demonstrates the strength of our business model based on geographical and sector diversification, and was accomplished despite the challenges in the Canadian region. On the M&A front, we will aim to continue to expand our global presence and deepen our technical expertise, in the same way as we have successfully achieved this year, with the addition of 2,500 employees across the globe. The recent acquisition of Mouchel Consulting is consistent with this objective and we are pleased to welcome our new colleagues to the team."
DIVIDEND
The Board of WSP declared a dividend of $0.375 per share. This dividend will be payable on or about January 15, 2017, to shareholders of record at the close of business on December 31, 2016.
FINANCIAL REPORT
This release includes, by reference, the 2016 third quarter financial reports, including the unaudited interim consolidated financial statements and the Management's Discussion & Analysis ("MD&A") of the Corporation.
For a copy of our full financial results for the third quarter of 2016, including the MD&A and the unaudited interim consolidated financial statements, please visit our Website at www.wsp-pb.com.
CONFERENCE CALL
WSP will hold a conference call at 4 p.m. (Eastern Time) on November 8, 2016, to discuss these results. The telephone numbers to access the conference call are 1-647-788-4922 or 1-877-223-4471 (toll-free).
A presentation of the third quarter of 2016 highlights and results will be available on the same day at www.wsp-pb.com in the Investors section, under Presentations & Events.
A replay of the call will be available until November 18, 2016. The telephone numbers to access the replay of the call are 1-416-621-4642 or 1-800-585-8367 (toll-free), access code 77044178. The replay of the conference call will also be available in the Investor section of the WSP website under Presentations & Events, in the days following the event.
RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
Q3 YTD -------------------------------------------------------- 2016 2015 2016 2015 -------------------------------------------------------- (in millions of For the For the For the For the dollars, except period from period from period from period from number of shares June 26 to June 28 to January 1 to January 1 to and per share data) September 24 September 26 September 24 September 26 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revenues $1,552.5 $1,503.0 $4,581.2 $4,403.9 Less: Subconsultants and direct costs $362.7 $378.1 $1,013.8 $1,165.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net revenues(i) $1,189.8 $1,124.9 $3,567.4 $3,238.6 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personnel costs $884.5 $839.7 $2,717.0 $2,484.4 Occupancy costs $56.9 $54.0 $170.9 $158.1 Other operational costs(1) $101.5 $105.1 $318.0 $283.4 Share of earnings of associates $(0.3) $(0.1) $(2.2) $(4.8) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adjusted EBITDA(i) $147.2 $126.2 $363.7 $317.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acquisition and integration costs(i) $5.3 $16.1 $17.8 $(26.4) Amortization of intangible assets $20.5 $17.9 $60.7 $54.4 Depreciation of property, plant and equipment $18.5 $16.1 $54.7 $44.6 Financial expenses $10.1 $7.9 $29.2 $32.8 Share of depreciation of associates $0.3 $0.1 $1.1 $1.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Earnings before income taxes $92.5 $68.1 $200.2 $211.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Income-tax expense $29.6 $17.4 $57.1 $35.8 Share of tax of associates $- $- $0.4 $1.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net earnings $62.9 $50.7 $142.7 $174.2 Attributable to: - Shareholders $63.3 $50.4 $143.1 $174.1 - Non-controlling interests $(0.4) $0.3 ($0.4) $0.1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic net earnings per share $0.63 $0.55 $1.43 $1.94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Diluted net earnings per share $0.63 $0.55 $1.43 $1.94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic weighted average number of shares 100,715,048 90,951,158 100,192,698 89,697,238 Diluted weighted average number of shares 100,751,886 91,010,663 100,222,875 89,733,790 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i) Non-IFRS measures are described in the 'Glossary' section (1) Other operational costs include operation exchange loss or gain and interest income
NON-IFRS MEASURES
The Corporation reports its financial results in accordance with IFRS. However, in this press release, the following non-IFRS measures are used by the Corporation: net revenues; adjusted EBITDA; adjusted EBITDA margin; adjusted EBITDA before Global Corporate costs; adjusted EBITDA margin before Global Corporate costs; adjusted net earnings (loss); adjusted net earnings (loss) per share; adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions; adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions per share; acquisition and integration costs; backlog; funds from operations; funds from operations per share; free cash flow; free cash flow per share; days sales outstanding (or DSO) and net debt to adjusted EBITDA. These measures are defined below.
Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the Corporation's financial condition and results of operations as they provide key metrics of its performance. These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and may differ from similar computations as reported by other issuers, and accordingly may not be comparable. These measures should not be viewed as a substitute for the related financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS.
Net revenues
Net revenues are defined as revenues less direct costs for subconsultants and other direct expenses that are recoverable directly from the clients. Net revenues are not an IFRS measure and do not have a standardized definition within IFRS. Therefore, net revenues may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. Investors are advised that net revenues should not be construed as an alternative to revenues for the period (as determined in accordance with IFRS) as an indicator of the Corporation's performance.
Adjusted EBITDA
Adjusted EBITDA is defined as earnings before financial expenses, income tax expenses, depreciation and amortization and acquisition and integration costs. Adjusted EBITDA is not an IFRS measure and does not have a standardized definition within IFRS. Investors are cautioned that adjusted EBITDA should not be considered an alternative to net earnings for the period (as determined in accordance with IFRS) as an indicator of the Corporation's performance, or an alternative to cash flows from operating, financing and investing activities as a measure of the liquidity and cash flows. The Corporation's method of calculating adjusted EBITDA may differ from the methods used by other issuers and, accordingly, the Corporation's adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similar measures used by other issuers.
Adjusted EBITDA margin
Adjusted EBITDA margin is defined as adjusted EBITDA expressed as a percentage of net revenues. Adjusted EBITDA margin is not an IFRS measure.
Adjusted EBITDA before Global Corporate costs
Adjusted EBITDA before Global Corporate costs is defined as adjusted EBITDA excluding Global Corporate costs. Global Corporate costs are expenses and salaries related to centralized functions, such as global finance, human resources and technology teams, which are not allocated to operating segments. This measure is not an IFRS measure. It provides Management with comparability from one region to the other.
Adjusted EBITDA margin before Global Corporate costs
Adjusted EBITDA margin before Global Corporate costs is defined as adjusted EBITDA before Global Corporate costs expressed as a percentage of net revenues. Adjusted EBITDA margin before Global Corporate costs is not an IFRS measure. It provides Management with comparability from one region to the other.
Adjusted net earnings (loss) and adjusted net earnings (loss) per share
Adjusted net earnings (loss) is defined as net earnings (loss) attributable to shareholders excluding acquisition and integration costs and the income tax effects related to these costs. Adjusted net earnings (loss) is not an IFRS measure. It provides a comparative measure of the Corporation's performance in a context of significant business combinations in which the Corporation may incur significant acquisition and integration costs, which the Corporation believes should be excluded in understanding the underlying operational financial performance achieved by the Corporation.
Adjusted net earnings (loss) per share is calculated using the basic weighted average number of shares.
Adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions and adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions per share
Adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions (net of income taxes) is defined as adjusted net earnings (loss) attributable to shareholders excluding the amortization of backlogs, customer relationships, non-competition agreements and trade names accounted for in business combinations and the income tax effects related to this amortization. Adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions (net of income taxes) is not an IFRS measure. It provides a comparative measure of Corporation performance in a context of significant business combinations.
Adjusted net earnings (loss) excluding amortization of intangible assets related to acquisitions (net of income taxes) per share is calculated using the basic weighted average number of shares.
Acquisition and integration costs
Acquisition and integration costs pertain to transaction and integration costs related to business acquisitions (up to 24 months from the date of acquisition) as well as any gains or losses made on disposals of non-core assets. In 2015, acquisition and integration costs included gains made on the disposal of equity investments in associates. Acquisition and integration costs is not an IFRS measure. Acquisition and integration costs are items of financial performance which the Corporation believes should be excluded in understanding the underlying operational financial performance achieved by the Corporation.
Backlog
Backlog is not an IFRS measure. It represents future revenues stemming from existing signed contracts to be completed. The Corporation's method of calculating backlog may differ from the methods used by other issuers and, accordingly, may not be comparable to similar measures used by other issuers.
Funds from operations and funds from operations per share
Funds from operations is not an IFRS measure. It provides Management and investors with a proxy for the amount of cash generated from (used in) operating activities before changes in non-cash working capital items.
Funds from operations per share is calculated using the basic weighted average number of shares.
Free cash flow and free cash flow per share
Free cash flow is not an IFRS measure. It provides a consistent and comparable measurement of discretionary cash generated by and available to the Corporation. Free cash flow is defined as cash flows from operating activities as reported in accordance with IFRS, plus discretionary cash generated by the Corporation from other activities (if any), less net capital expenditures.
Free cash flow per share is calculated using the basic weighted average number of shares.
Days Sales Outstanding ("DSO")
DSO is not an IFRS measure. It represents the average number of days to convert our trade receivables and costs and anticipated profits in excess of billings into cash, net of sales taxes. The Corporation's method of calculating DSO may differ from the methods used by other issuers and, accordingly, may not be comparable to similar measures used by other issuers.
Net Debt to adjusted EBITDA
Net Debt to adjusted EBITDA is not an IFRS measure. It is a measure of our level of financial leverage net of our cash and is calculated on our trailing twelve month adjusted EBITDA.
ABOUT WSP
As one of the world's leading professional services firms, WSP provides technical expertise and strategic advice to clients in the Property & Buildings, Transportation & Infrastructure, Environment, Industry, Resources (including Mining and Oil & Gas) and Power & Energy sectors. WSP also offers highly specialised services in project delivery and strategic consulting. Its experts include engineers, advisors, technicians, scientists, architects, planners, surveyors and environmental specialists, as well as other design, program and construction management professionals. With approximately 36,500 people in 500 offices across 40 countries, WSP is well positioned to deliver successful and sustainable projects under its WSP and WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff brands. www.wsp-pb.com.
Forward-looking statements
Certain information regarding WSP contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may include estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, guidance or other statements that are not statements of fact. Although WSP believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and may be based on assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. WSP's forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The complete version of the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements as well as a description of the relevant assumptions and risk factors likely to affect WSP's actual or projected results are included in the Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2015 and the third quarter ended September 24, 2016, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and WSP does not assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless expressly required by applicable securities laws.
Contacts:
Alexandre L'Heureux
President and Chief Executive Officer
WSP Global Inc.
514-340-0046, ext. 5310
alexandre.lheureux@wspgroup.com
Isabelle Adjahi
Vice President, Investor Relations
and Corporate Communications
WSP Global Inc.
514-340-0046, ext. 5648
isabelle.adjahi@wspgroup.com
Incyte Biosciences International Sarl, a European subsidiary of Incyte Corporation, and GENESIS Pharma S.A., a leading Greek pharmaceutical company, today announced that Incyte has granted GENESIS Pharma exclusive rights to commercialize Iclusig (ponatinib) in Greece. Under the terms of the agreement, GENESIS Pharma will be responsible for sales and marketing, medical affairs, and regulatory and reimbursement support for Iclusig in Greece.
"The agreement with GENESIS Pharma will expand the availability of Iclusig to patients in geographies beyond our current European footprint," said Jonathan Dickinson, Incyte's General Manager, Europe. "We look forward to collaborating with GENESIS Pharma, whose oncology and hematology experience makes them an ideal partner to enable patient and physician access to Iclusig in Greece."
In Europe and other select ex-U.S. countries, Iclusig is approved for the treatment of adult patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) or Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL) who are resistant or intolerant to specific second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKIs); or who have the T315I mutation.
"We are very happy to announce our partnership with Incyte. For us, it is another step forward to delivering our mission to provide innovative hematology treatments to patients in Greece," said Constantinos Evripides, Chief Executive Officer of GENESIS Pharma. "Once available, Iclusig will add to the broad portfolio of treatments for patients with rare and difficult to treat hematological diseases that GENESIS Pharma commercializes in Greece. We are very pleased to have another leading international pharmaceutical company, like Incyte, recognize our expertise and high quality standards, and place its trust in us."
According to the European Medicines Agency's orphan drug designation1 and the HAEMACARE project2, there are approximately 1,000 CML and Ph+ ALL patients in Greece.
GENESIS Pharma has submitted a pricing application for Iclusig in Greece; the application is currently under review by the Greek Ministry of Health. Pending their approval, the commercial launch of Iclusig is expected to occur in the first half of 2017.
About Iclusig (ponatinib) tablets
Iclusig targets not only native BCR-ABL but also its isoforms that carry mutations that confer resistance to treatment, including the T315I mutation, which has been associated with resistance to other approved TKIs.
In the EU, Iclusig is approved for the treatment of adult patients with chronic phase, accelerated phase or blast phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) who are resistant to dasatinib or nilotinib; who are intolerant to dasatinib or nilotinib and for whom subsequent treatment with imatinib is not clinically appropriate; or who have the T315I mutation, or for the treatment of adult patients with Philadelphia-chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Ph+ ALL) who are resistant to dasatinib; who are intolerant to dasatinib and for whom subsequent treatment with imatinib is not clinically appropriate; or who have the T315I mutation.
Incyte has an exclusive license from ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop and commercialize Iclusig in the European Union and 28 other countries, including Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Turkey, Israel and Russia.
Iclusig is a registered trademark of ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
About Incyte
Incyte Corporation is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of proprietary therapeutics. Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, Incyte also has offices in Switzerland and nine other European countries. For additional information on Incyte, please visit the Company's website at www.incyte.com.
Follow @Incyte on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Incyte.
About GENESIS Pharma
GENESIS Pharma was among the first pharmaceutical companies in Europe specialized in biopharmaceutical products and is currently the largest among Greek companies specializing in branded innovative medicines, mainly in the therapeutic areas of Oncology, Hematology, CNS, Gastroenterology and Nephrology. The company has created a strong product portfolio that includes high-tech pharmaceutical products for severe and rare diseases, through long standing strategic alliances for the broader region of Southeast Europe with some of the leading multinational pharmaceutical companies committed to cutting edge R&D.
For further information please visit www.genesispharma.com.
Incyte Forward-Looking Statements
Except for the historical information set forth herein, the matters set forth in this press release contain predictions, estimates and other forward-looking statements, including without limitation statements regarding: whether the collaboration with GENESIS Pharma will be successful in expanding access for patients in Greece to Iclusig; whether the Greek Ministry of Health will approve the pricing application for Iclusig; and the expected timing of the commercial launch of Iclusig in Greece. These forward-looking statements are based on the Incyte's current expectations and subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially, including risks detailed from time to time in the Incyte's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2016. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
1 Public summary of opinion on orphan designation, Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products, European Medicines Agency, 2 March 2010, http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Orphan_designation/2010/03/WC500075158.pdf
2 Sant et al. Incidence of hematologic malignancies in Europe by morphologic subtype: results of the HAEMACARE project. Blood 2010 116:3724-3734
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005603/en/
Contacts:
Incyte Contacts
Media
Catalina Loveman
+1 302-498-6171
cloveman@incyte.com
or
Investors
Michael Booth, DPhil
+1 302-498-5914
mbooth@incyte.com
or
GENESIS Pharma Contact
Vicky Karra
Corporate Affairs Manager
+30 210 87 71 500
vkarra@genesispharma.com
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Editors Note: There is an image associated with this press release.
The Corporate Learning Improvement Process (CLIP) is a unique accreditation run by EFMD that focuses on identifying the key factors that determine quality in the design and functioning of corporate universities and learning organisations.
EFMD is delighted to announce that Sberbank Corporate University from Russia, has recently been awarded CLIP accreditation and joins the community of accredited organisations which also include: Akademie Deutscher Genossenschaften ADG, Alcatel-Lucent, Allianz SE, ArcelorMittal, BBVA - Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Capgemini University, Credit Suisse AG, EDF Group, EDP - Energy of Portugal, Gas Natural Fenosa, GDF SUEZ University, Grupo Santander, Mazars University, MLP Finanzdienstleistungen AG, Novartis International AG, OCP Corporate Training Institute, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Repsol, Siemens AG, Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd. and UniCredit Group.
"The team of Sberbank Corporate University was very honored to receive CLIP accreditation for our institution. We believe that going through rigorous processes of self-assessment and peer review against CLIP quality standards was critical for better understanding our existing strengths and development priorities for the coming years. This prestigious international professional recognition is especially important given the short history of Sberbank CU, the scale and scope of our learning agenda for 35 000 Sberbank managers, and our high ambitions of becoming a driver of strategic changes at Sberbank. Our prime goal now is to keep the learning momentum while constantly reinventing ourselves to ensure that we effectively support Sberbank's transformation towards 'a technology-driven company with a banking license' as its response to the challenges of the global competition in the digital age," said Valery Katkalo, Dean of Sberbank Corporate University.
Martin Moehrle, Associate Director, Corporate Services, who leads the CLIP process at EFMD, commented on the Sberbank Corporate University's accreditation: "The EFMD team has been particularly impressed by the extraordinary sponsorship of Sberbank Corporate University from the top, by the strong momentum it has created within the organisation, its high visibility outside the company, its excellence in program design and delivery at scale, its strong collaboration with the business, its discipline in following set principles for learning and its role in deploying Sberbank values. We congratulate SCU, under the leadership of Valery Katkalo, for building such an impactful and mature platform in record time and for achieving CLIP accreditation, and we look forward to their contribution to the CLIP community."
The CLIP assessment process covers all the essential dimensions of the corporate university's deployment within the company: the alignment of its mission and operational objectives with corporate strategy, the effectiveness of its governance and internal management systems, its ability to address key issues of concern to the business units, the programme design process, the overall coherence of the programme portfolio, the quality of delivery and the impact of the corporate university's activities upon individual and organisational learning.
For more information on the CLIP process, visit - www.efmd.org/clip
About EFMD
EFMD is a leading international network of business schools and companies at the forefront or raising the standards of management education and development globally. More information about EFMD is available via efmd.org.
To view the image associated with this press release, visit the following link: http://www.marketwire.com/library/20161108-EFMD-Bild.jpg
Contacts:
EFMD
Magdalena Wanot
+32 2 629 08 38
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.
SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- CFN Media Group, the leading creative agency and digital media network dedicated to legal cannabis, announces the publication of an article covering Invictus MD Strategies Corp. (OTC PINK: IVITF) (CSE: IMH) and its already proven acquisition strategy.
Invictus acquires a stake in successful private companies and lets the existing management continue to grow their own business through their existing strengths. Invictus acts as a financial consultant, examining the books and the market, identifying opportunities to streamline the organization and maximize the profitability of the acquired company.
The acquired company gains access to financing vehicles through the association with Invictus as a public company. Invictus' experience helps to guide the company's decisions and allows the managers to focus on the things they do best.
Invictus' first acquisition was an 82.5% stake in Future Harvest, a 20 year old company servicing the hydroponic and indoor growing industries. Invictus initially assumed a 20% stake in Future Harvest in March 2015 and has grown its ownership share since.
The other thing that has grown over that time is Future Harvest's revenue. In October, Invictus announced a 50% increase in year over year revenue for the most recent quarter. The company has been so successful that Invictus plans to spin it off into a newly formed public company in 2017. Invictus shareholders will receive one share of the new company for every share held in Invictus MD at the time of the transaction, pending approval.
That alone sounds compelling, but a really interesting thing happened along the way. In February of 2016, Future Harvest sold its lighting division to Sunblaster Holdings for about $4.8 million in cash. This represented a 350 percent return on investment in only 11 months. Proceeds from the sale have allowed Future Harvest to more aggressively grow its fertilizer division, and revenues are increasing in step with this plan. In addition, the company used the proceeds from sale to acquire new bottling equipment as well as return $1 million back to shareholders.
For Invictus shareholders of record as of November 21, 2016, the company is offering a $1 million dividend as a result of the profitable sale. Based on the shares issued and outstanding, this works out to about $.10 per share. As of this writing, shares are trading at about $.80/share (Canadian), which would reflect a 12.5% return. Dividends from cannabis stocks are rare, if not unprecedented, and the rate of return in this particular case is very high for the stock market in general.
Click here to read the full article: http://www.cannabisfn.com/invictus-md-strategies-offers-dividend-and-growth-in-cannabis-sector/
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About CFN Media
CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed.
Disclaimer:
Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns CFN Media and CannabisFN.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/.
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ATLANTA, GA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Dominovas Energy Corporation (OTCQB: DNRG) announces today that its Chief Operating Officer and President of Fuel Cell Division Michael Watkins was dispatched last week, as ordered directly by Chairman and CEO Neal Allen to meet with a natural gas supplier in South Africa for the sole purpose of securing a natural gas supply, as will be required for the operation of the Company's RUBICON Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) System both for the 50kW demonstration unit as well as for other commercial deployments that are in the pipeline. The Company recently announced its successful presentation on the analysis of its Energy Solutions Survey to the Central Technical Services Department of the University of Johannesburg in late October, 2016. These next meetings marked an integral step as the company begins the final phase of planning as it begins the implementation process that will allow for the installation of the 50kW demonstration SOFC system at the University of Johannesburg and subsequent commercial sized baseload RUBICON units throughout Johannesburg and, in time, the overall region.
The Company's initial solution of utilizing Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) from the region was found to be problematic because of inconsistencies in the quality of the LPG, as well as the overall lack of logistics to support the delivering of LPG in South Africa. Once a natural gas supplier is secured and engaged, Dominovas Energy will set a foundation for additional natural gas usage, growth, and access throughout Johannesburg and the region that was, heretofore, believed to not be profitable.
When asked about the results of the meetings, Watkins was quoted as saying, "My meetings were attended by key decision makers that highlighted their interest not only in expanding their distribution and sales of their product, but they also exhibited a true knowledge of and interest in the RUBICON's ability to further expand consumer's choices for electricity delivery. The possible interaction between our companies would allow for an expanded market for them, as well as a profitable and sustainable market for the RUBICON. The talks were productive and sincere and I believe strongly that both parties came away from the meetings understanding that the potential for mutual benefit is almost unlimited. I do feel quite positive about securing a definitive agreement and I am hopeful that resolution will be in short order."
During the week, Watkins also took time to visit Dr. T.C. Jen on the campus of the University of Johannesburg to discuss the progress of the development of the Research Institute for the study of fuel cell systems as well as to update Dr. Jen on the status of the ongoing natural gas supply discussions, as the supply natural gas is a precursor to the deployment of the 50kW RUBICON demonstration unit.
About Dominovas Energy Corporation (OTCQB: DNRG)
Founded in 2005, Dominovas Energy Corporation (DEC) is a publicly traded company, based in Nevada. With its operating headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Dominovas Energy Corporation is a leading power solutions provider to emerging markets around the world. DEC seeks to deploy its proprietary RUBICON Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology and proprietary ORCAS hydro systems for deployment in multi-megawatt power generation units worldwide. The worldwide pursuit of clean and efficient production of electricity via Solid Oxide Fuel Cell technology and hydro technology inspired its founders to create an "energy solutions" company. Recognizing that Emerging markets offer immense potential for growth, Dominovas Energy is aggressively moving to allocate its intellectual and financial capital forthwith, in order to, strategically address energy solutions that are reliable, efficient, and sustainable baseload solutions, measurably cleaner than GenSets and CCGT. By deploying these solutions throughout of the world, Dominovas Energy is committed to creating shareholder value by not only generating guaranteed revenue streams, but also by increasing the value of "human and community capital." Devoted to core values by operating under the utmost of honesty and integrity in all its business transactions, Dominovas Energy is additionally dedicated to respecting the rights of all individuals, while acknowledging and respecting all cultures necessary to support the growth and development of the communities and countries in which it operates. The Company strongly believes that the impact of advanced technologies will make on the world is undeniable and the Company is resolute in its mission to provide electricity where and when economically viable.
For more information, visit www.dominovasenergy.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release, as well as other statements made by Dominovas Energy Corporation (the "Company"), contain forward-looking statements that reflect, when made, the Company's current views with respect to current events and financial performance. Such forward-looking statements are subject to many risks, uncertainties and factors relating to the Company's operations and business environment, which may cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from any future results. All statements that address future operating, financial or business performance or the Company's strategies or expectations are forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements as is applicable would be discussed under captions as follows: "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in the Company's filings as would be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as required. New risks and uncertainties arise from time to time, and it is impossible for us to predict these events or how they may affect the Company. It should be remembered that the price of the ordinary shares and any income from them can go down as well as up. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events and/or otherwise, except as may be required by law.
Media and Investor Contact:
QualityStocks
Scottsdale, Arizona
www.QualityStocks.com
480.374.1336 Office
Email Contact
Investor Questions:
Email Contact
OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - After the release of Canada housing starts for October at 8:15 am ET Tuesday, the loonie changed little against its major counterparts. The loonie was trading at 1.3366 against the greenback, 78.38 against the yen, 1.0296 against the aussie and 1.4752 against the euro around 8:17 am ET. At 8:30 am ET, Statistics Canada releases building permits for September. 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.
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Jimmy Lee announced today that he has disposed of ownership and control of 2,900,000 common shares ("Shares") of Galway Metals Inc. (the "Issuer") by way of gift (the "Disposition"), representing approximately 5.0% of the issued and outstanding Shares of the Issuer. Immediately prior to the Disposition, Mr. Lee had ownership and control of 8,497,500 Shares of the Issuer, representing approximately 14.7% of the issued and outstanding Shares. As a result of the Disposition, Mr. Lee has ownership and control of 5,597,500 Shares of the Issuer, representing approximately 9.7% of the issued and outstanding Shares of the Issuer.
The Issuer's head office is located at 200 - 82 Richmond Street East Toronto, Ontario M5C 1P1.
The disposition of Shares described herein was for the purpose of a gift. Mr. Lee will review his investment on an ongoing basis and, depending upon such factors that Mr. Lee may, from time to time, deem relevant, Mr. Lee may, among other things: (i) acquire additional securities of the Issuer; (ii) dispose of some or all of the existing or additional securities of the Issuer he holds or will hold; (iii) engage in discussions with representatives of the Issuer concerning, among other things, the Issuer's business plans, and/or the composition of its board of directors and/or management; (iv) seek to appoint nominees to the board of directors of the Issuer or otherwise influence the composition of the board of directors and/or management of the Issuer; (v) pursue an acquisition, merger or similar transaction involving the Issuer; and/or (vi) take such other actions with respect to the Issuer as Mr. Lee may, from time to time, determine appropriate
All percentages disclosed herein relating to Mr. Lee's proportionate ownership and control of the issued and outstanding Shares of the Issuer are based on the number of issued and outstanding Shares of the Issuer disclosed in the Issuer's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three and six months ended June 30, 2016, being 57,995,248 common shares.
This press release is issued pursuant to Multilateral Instrument 62-104 - Take-Over Bids and Issuer Bids and National Instrument 62-103 - The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues. A copy of an early warning report filed by Mr. Lee in connection with such requirements will be available under the Issuer's profile at www.sedar.com. Please refer to such report for further information regarding the transaction described in this press release.
Contacts:
Jimmy Lee
PO Box 213889
P-93 Emirates Hills
Dubai, UAE
SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- In response to its continued growth and improvement over the past 56 years, Scottsdale Smile Center has announced the addition of Dr. Brandon Ryff -- an experienced dentist whose expertise spans from general and preventative dentistry to advanced cosmetic, implant, and restorative care. Joining Dr. Don Chiappetti and Dr. Jonathan Coombs, Dr. Ryff brings a high level of skill and expertise that serves to further enhance the top quality of service provided at this state-of-the-art dental practice, a historic mark in the Paradise Valley community since 1960.
After graduating cum laude from the University of Arizona, Dr. Ryff attended the esteemed University of Michigan - School of Dentistry to earn his Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS). Once in practice, he obtained a Professional Graduate Certificate in Strategic Management from Harvard University that taught him key leadership and team-building strategies necessary for creating a practice environment that benefits both the clinical team and patients alike.
Dr. Ryff is dedicated to regularly expanding his knowledge of dental care through continuing education, and he maintains active membership in the Spear Study Club, Paradise Valley Study Club, Arizona Dental Association, Academy of General Dentistry, and various other prestigious organizations.
On a day-to-day basis at Scottsdale Smile Center, Dr. Ryff will provide all forms of general and advanced dental treatments, including porcelain veneers, Invisalign, root canal therapy, implant dentistry, complete smile makeovers, and full mouth rehabilitations. Dr. Chiappetti will continue to serve patients full-time, and Dr. Coombs will now be seeing patients on a part-time basis.
Ultimately, the Scottsdale Smile Center team is thrilled with the addition of Dr. Ryff, and they look forward to the positive impact he will make. "Dr. Ryff's clinical skills, leadership style, and personality will benefit our practice tremendously," states Dr. Chiappetti. "His credentials are impeccable, and his philosophy and vision are aligned with ours. We are confident that he will prove to be a valuable asset to our practice."
About Scottsdale Smile Center
Scottsdale Smile Center is a comprehensive dental practice devoted to providing the highest quality of oral care available. From routine cleanings and teeth whitening to dental implants and Invisalign, the team of experienced dentists and skilled hygienists is committed to improving both the health and appearance of every patient's smile in a relaxing and comfortable environment. Above all else, Scottsdale Smile Center holds quality, patient experience, and efficiency in the highest regard, enabling them to deliver exceptional results and top-notch service.
For more information, visit scottsdalesmile.com and facebook.com/ScottsdaleSmileCenter.
To view the original source of this press release, click here:
http://www.scottsdalesmile.com/latest-news/dr-brandon-ryff-joins-team-of-dentists-at-scottsdale-smile-center
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Scottsdale Smile Center
Lincoln Plaza Medical Center
7125 E. Lincoln Drive, Suite 106
Scottsdale, AZ 85253
480-991-2180
Rosemont Media
(858) 200-0044
www.rosemontmedia.com
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd (the "Company" or "Osisko") (TSX: OR)(NYSE: OR) announces today the retirement of Mr. Andre Gaumond from his position of Senior Vice President of Northern Development. An industry leader for over 30 years, Mr. Gaumond joined Osisko following Osisko's friendly acquisition of Virginia Mines Inc. in 2015, the company he founded and ran with remarkable success for over 22 years. Among many achievements over the course of these 22 years, the prolific Virginia became Quebec's pre-eminent and most active exploration company, culminating with the grass-roots discovery of the world-class Eleonore gold deposit in Quebec's James Bay region. The successful exploration work by Mr. Gaumond and his Virginia team led to the eventual acquisition of the deposit by Goldcorp in a deal valued at approximately $500 million in 2006. With an investment of approximately $2 billion, Eleonore has gone on to become one of Quebec's largest gold producers, and has created over 800 permanent high paying jobs for years to come. The development has also attracted a number of Cree Nation Members as employees and stimulated the development of Cree enterprises.
Following the successful sale of Eleonore, Mr. Gaumond continued his prior success with a number of other significant discoveries in the James Bay region, including the discovery of the Coulon base metal deposit.
Mr. Gaumond's entrepreneurial, business and discovery talents have been recognized nationally and internationally with numerous awards over the course of his dynamic career. A two-time winner of The Association de l'exploration miniere du Quebec (AEMQ) "Prospector of the Year" Award, Mr. Gaumond has also been awarded the Bill Dennis "Prospector of the Year" Award by the Prospector and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), has been named "Mining Man of the Year" by the Northern Miner, and won a number of other awards for leading the efforts to establish Fonds Restor-Action Nunavik, which cleaned up abandoned historical exploration sites in Quebec's Northern regions. Andre was also the recipient of the "Prix Merite 2015" of the Association of Graduates of Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, awarded to a graduate of this prestigious Quebec institution who has reached a superior level of excellence in his professional and community activities.
Mr. Gaumond has been and continues to be, an active contributor along with various stakeholders and representatives to the development of Quebec's "Plan Nord". The Plan Nord philosophy is to develop the vast and untapped northern region of Quebec in a sustainable and responsible manner, a philosophy that mirrors Andre's own sentiments about the current and future development of Northern Quebec.
Following his retirement, Mr. Gaumond will continue to serve on the Board of Directors of Osisko, as well as acting from time to time, as a technical advisor to Osisko and its associates.
Sean Roosen, Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of Osisko noted: "The entire Osisko team would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Andre Gaumond on his tremendously successful 30 year career in the mining business. He is truly one of a rare breed of entrepreneurial explorers, having started as a geologist and going on to create his own highly successful company. More importantly, Andre has managed to make a difference not only through new discoveries but also through his conscious policy of socially responsible development of our country's natural resources. We are so very happy that Andre will be continuing with us in his capacity as a Director on our Board, and again we congratulate him on his proud career."
Mr. Gaumond commented: "During my career, I have been privileged to partner with many great individuals and institutions to create wealth and make our society better. I would like to express my deep gratitude to my dedicated team of professionals, the countless investors, as well as partners that supported the pursuit of my vision of Northern resource development."
About Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd
Osisko Gold Royalties is an intermediate precious metal royalty company focused on the Americas that commenced activities in June 2014. Osisko holds over 50 royalties, including a 5% NSR royalty on the Canadian Malartic Mine (Canada) and a 2.0-3.5% NSR royalty on the Eleonore Mine (Canada). It maintains a strong financial position with cash resources of $425 million at June 30, 2016 and has distributed dividends to its shareholders during the past eight consecutive quarters.
Osisko's head office is located at 1100 Avenue des Canadiens-de-Montreal, Suite 300, Montreal, Quebec, H3B 2S2.
Contacts:
Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd.
Joseph de la Plante
Vice President, Corporate Development
Tel. (514) 940-0670
jdelaplante@osiskogr.com
TORINO, ITALY -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- In the coming days, Panini S.p.A., a global payments technology leader, will be present at the first edition of "Payvolution - Il Salone dei Pagamenti" Payments Conference, a new initiative of ABI (Italian Banking Association) and ABIServizi, as well as the first Italian conference & expo event dedicated entirely to payment innovation and to the increasingly popular theme of no-cash transactions.
Panini will take part in a round table called Cheques: a matter of image, moderated by Barbara Pelliccione from the ABI Payment Systems and Services Department, and will be present with its own booth to present its Remote Deposit Capture related solution offering.
"With the imminent implementation of legislation on image-based cheque clearing in Italy, we consider the Conference to be a unique opportunity for informing as broad an audience as possible on the benefits of the new process," said Laura Regalia, Panini International Sales Manager. "We look forward to discuss the needs for greater efficiency and savings with banks and their business clients, and to explain how Panini can respond by helping them to radically modernize the management of a payment instrument whose relevance and volumes are still important."
Panini is seizing the opportunity of the Check Image Truncation (CIT) project -- which starting in early 2017 will allow the check's scanned image to legally replace the paper document -- to offer banks the opportunity to outsource their corporate customers' deposit operations by using Remote Deposit Capture. This service, as demonstrated by over a decade of international experience in the United States and elsewhere, offers tangible benefits to both parties as well as to the environment, by eliminating a trip to the bank branch that way too often takes place solely to deposit checks, given that the vast majority of transactions have been available via online banking for quite some time.
On this occasion, Panini will present their complete I:RDC (hardware and software) solution in their booth. I:RDC is primarily a software module which can be integrated into new or existing online corporate banking platforms, which are extended to processing the physical document from the customer's premises in total security. Thanks to I:RDC, checks may be deposited on their bank account online, by using a specialized scanner, and later monitored by larger and smaller companies all the way to completion -- similar to what they do with an online wire transfer or a tax form payment.
The check scanner offered by Panini with the service takes care of all the security elements introduced by the new ABI standard check format (Datamatrix 2D barcode, CMC7 magnetic codeline, micro-perforated data string), using an exclusive patented ultrasound-based system (Italian Patent and Trademarks Office - UIBM TO2013A001058), alongside with the advanced acquisition and decoding technology that have made Panini products successful worldwide.
The Payvolution Payment Conference will be held from 9 to 11 November 2016 at MiCo Milano Congressi, Gate 14. Panini's booth is no. S24.
About Panini
Founded in Turin, Italy, Panini has enabled clients to capitalize on shifts in the global payments processing market for over seventy years. Panini has a rich history of technology innovation, leveraging the company's expertise in research & development. Panini offers check capture solutions that enable customers to fully realize the advantages and efficiencies available with the digital transformation of the paper check, resulting in the world's largest deployed base of check capture systems, now exceeding one million devices. Panini's scalable solutions address the complete range of distributed check processing opportunities including teller capture, back-counter capture, remote deposit capture and remittance processing.
The company provides solutions on a global basis, and has direct subsidiary operations in the United States covering North America and in Brazil covering Latin American markets.
For more information visit: www.panini.com.
On 7 November 2016 AB Klaipedos nafta (hereinafter - the Company) received a notification from the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency regarding Grant Agreement for the Action "Blue Baltics - LNG infrastructure facility deployment in the Baltic Sea region" (hereinafter - Action), which was signed on 26 October 2016. According to this agreement the Company together with the Action partners acquires the right to use the financial support of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF, part of the EU financing program). Under this Action the Company received EUR 4 million for the LNG reloading station, small scale LNG equipment for LNG Terminal and LNG jetty equipment.
Information regarding confirmation of EU preliminary financial support was announced in the Company's notification on material event on 12 July 2016.
Information on the approval of the general meeting of shareholders of the Company to implement investment project of LNG distribution station was announced in the Company's notification on material event issued on the 25 August 2015 and 8 March 2016.
The construction of the Company's LNG reloading station is on-going and the foreseen start of operations of LNG reloading station is second half of 2017.
AB Klaipedos Nafta previously has received the EU support for the LNG reloading station construction, FEED and other preparation works.
Marius Pulkauninkas, Director of Finance and Administration Department, +370 46 391 763.
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ST-GEORGES, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Komutel Inc. today announced that it has acquired C.V.D.S. Inc., a trusted provider of recording and communication solutions to Public Safety Agencies, Governments, Education and Health Care Institutions throughout North America for more than 20 years.
"I see a great fit with our strategy to develop the international market, specifically the United States,", says Richard Poulin, CEO of Komutel.
"I am excited about the synergy between the two companies", says Yves Laliberte, President of Komutel. "This acquisition will complement our Next Generation 9-1-1 recording and workflow management solution portfolio and bolster our North American activities."
Existing and new customers of the combined company will continue to receive the same level of quality service and have access to an increased portfolio of integrated products and solutions. In addition, customers and channel partners can look forward to a compelling product roadmap and migration options.
About Komutel, Inc.
Komutel is a leading systems integrator of communication solutions, which easily integrate with existing infrastructure (IT, VoIP, TDM, UC, Centrex, VM, mobiles, radio). Komutel solutions are designed to save you money and help you solve the everyday and extraordinary challenges you face.
Founded in 2001, Komutel is a private company serving over 2,000 clients in public safety, health care, finance, insurance and the private sector.
About CVDS
CVDS (formerly Canadian Voice Data Switching) is a privately held company that has been designing and manufacturing state-of-the-art communication equipment since 1973. Since 1995, CVDS has been supplying ComLog recording systems to all levels of public safety including police departments, fire and rescue departments, sheriff and county communication centres, state and provincial police, public health departments, campus security and many others.
Contacts:
Josiane Fortin
Marketing Manager
Komutel Inc.
(877) 225-9988
josiane.fortin@komutel.com
www.komutel.com
DUBLIN, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Facial Wipes Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.
The global facial wipes market to grow at a CAGR of 9% during the period 2016-2020.
Global Facial Wipes Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global facial wipes market. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the retail sales of different types of facial wipes to individual consumers.
One trend gaining popularity in the market is Increased focus on eco-friendly wipes. Currently, rising consumer expectations and pollution figures have necessitated manufacturers of facial wipes to consider the post-consumer life of their products. Therefore, global brands are phasing out microbeads, and many cleansing wipe products are being formulated without plastic bits such as synthetic polymers (polyester) or with sustainable alternatives. In addition, consumers have become aware of the environmental issues and prefer products that are eco-friendly.
According to the report, Smaller packs and multipurpose facial wipes will be driving growth in the market. Convenience and portability are the two major factors considered by consumers when they buy facial wipes. To specifically target the varying needs of consumers, manufacturers of skincare products are introducing smaller or travel-sized packs of facial wipes. These smaller packs are portable and are available at low costs. Such advantages offered by smaller packs create a value proposition for consumers who lead a hectic lifestyle and who travel frequently. Developed markets such as the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, and Australia have a relatively high penetration of smaller packs of facial wipes.
Further, the report states that managing inventory is always a crucial strategy concern for the global beauty products industry. The stocking game rules and perspectives evolve along with changing shopping patterns of consumers. Consumers' preferences change faster, which require faster inventory turnover requirements. Skincare products suppliers or manufacturers then must adjust to smaller orders placed by wholesalers and retailers, and improve inventory turnaround times. This predominantly puts pressure on the manufacturers' raw material, quality control, transportation, and labor costs.
Key vendors
Beiersdorf
Estee Lauder
Johnson & Johnson
Kimberly-Clark
P&G
Unilever
Other prominent vendors
Amway
Avon Products
Chanel
Kao
L'Oreal
LVMH
Mary Kay
O Boticario
Revlon
Shiseido
Key Topics Covered:
Part 01: Executive summary
Part 02: Scope of the report
Part 03: Market research methodology
Part 04: Introduction
Part 05: Market landscape
Part 06: Market segmentation by product category
Part 07: Retail format segmentation
Part 08: Geographical segmentation
Part 09: Key leading countries
Part 10: Market drivers
Part 11: Impact of drivers
Part 12: Market challenges
Part 13: Impact of drivers and challenges
Part 14: Market trends
Part 15: Vendor landscape
Part 16: Appendix
For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/srrwbm/global_facial
Media Contact:
Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com
For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
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SES-Luxembourg public-private partnership will support operational phase of NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS)
SES (Euronext Paris:SESG) (LuxX:SESG) announced today that its Luxembourgish 50% affiliate GovSat has secured a long term commercial satellite communications contract to support the operational phase of NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS). The contract is for an end-to-end service and includes the delivery of satellite capacity in commercial Ku-band largely coming from the SES fleet as well as associated capacity management services. These services support the command control and sensor data communications required by NATO Global Hawk vehicles over the AGS operational area.
This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005729/en/
SES: NATO Ground Surveillance Contract Awarded to GovSat (Photo: Business Wire)
GovSat is a public-private partnership between the Luxembourg Government and SES. It offers capacity leases and related 24/7 secure operations from facilities with EU and NATO clearances to governments and institutions. Its first satellite, GovSat-1, is currently under construction and scheduled for launch in 2017.
The AGS system consists of air, ground and support elements performing all-weather, persistent wide-area terrestrial and maritime surveillance in near real-time. AGS will be able to contribute to a range of missions such as protection of ground troops and civilian populations, border control and maritime safety, the fight against terrorism, crisis management and humanitarian assistance in areas affected by natural disasters.
"The award of this contract confirms the unique capability of GovSat to address the secure communication requirements of a NATO defence program, including the handling of sensitive and classified material," said Patrick Biewer, CEO of GovSat. "GovSat is now de-facto operational, well ahead of the GovSat-1 satellite launch which is foreseen for next year."
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About SES
SES (Euronext Paris:SESG) (LuxX:SESG) is the world-leading satellite operator, with more than 50 geostationary satellites (GEO) and, through its subsidiary O3b Networks, 12 medium Earth orbit satellites (MEO). Focusing on value-added, end-to-end solutions in four key market verticals (Video, Enterprise, Mobility and Government), SES provides satellite communications services to broadcasters, content and internet service providers, and mobile and fixed network operators, as well as business and governmental organisations worldwide. SES's fleet includes the ASTRA satellite system, which has the largest Direct-to-Home (DTH) reach in Europe. Through its ownership of O3b Networks, SES significantly enhances existing data capabilities, and is the first satellite provider to deliver a differentiated and scalable GEO-MEO offering worldwide. Another SES subsidiary, MX1, is a leading media service provider and offers a full suite of innovative digital video and media services. Further information available at: www.ses.com
About GovSat
GovSat is a brand operated by LuxGovSat S.A., a public-private joint venture company between the Luxembourg Government and SES, the world leading satellite operator. Our mission is to provide secure, reliable, and accessible governmental satellite communication services to address the demand resulting from defence and civilian security applications. The company's first satellite GovSat-1 is scheduled to be operational in the 4th Quarter of 2017. GovSat-1 will be a multi-mission satellite which will use X-band and military Ka-band frequencies on high-power and fully steerable mission beams to support multiple operations. Further information under: www.govsat.lu
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005729/en/
Contacts:
SES
Markus Payer
Corporate Communications
Tel. +352 710 725 500
Markus.Payer@ses.com
WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- As this year's presidential race enters the final stretch, The Mayflower Hotel, Autograph Collection announces a unique opportunity for visitors to experience the upcoming 2017 inauguration. Located in the heart of the nation's capital, The Mayflower Hotel, nicknamed by Harry Truman as 'Washington's Second Best Address,' has had the pleasure of hosting the Inaugural Ball for Presidents Coolidge through Reagan. Favored by presidents for over 90 years, The Mayflower is the perfect setting to celebrate our great nation and the next president of the United States.
Spend the night in the beautifully stunning Presidential Suite as part of The Mayflower Hotel's exclusive "Inauguration Celebration" package. All proceeds from this booking will be donated directly to the Children's National Health System, the leading kids' health system in the local Washington, D.C. community.
The Children's National Health System organization, which has been serving the nation's youth since 1870, honors a mission that dates back more than a century and embodies a vision that goes forward just as far: to bring health and well-being to all children.
Reservations made for January 18 - 22, 2017 as part of the "Inauguration Celebration" package will include:
A four-night stay in the newly renovated Presidential Suite
Special in-suite amenities, nightly
Two tickets to the coveted Presidential Inauguration on Friday, January 20, 2017
This "Inauguration Celebration" package can be booked for $45,000 (tax included) and is pre-paid, non-refundable. In addition to this exclusive package, The Mayflower is welcoming guests for a four-night stay (minimum) that spans over the course of the presidential inauguration at a rate of $999 per night. To book, please visit www.TheMayflowerHotel.com or call 202.347.3000.
Stay up-to-date on other exclusive offers and hotel updates by visiting The Mayflower Hotel on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
About The Mayflower Hotel, Autograph Collection
Effortlessly blending historic tradition and modern luxury in the heart of the nation's capital, The Mayflower Hotel inspires with timeless style and grandeur. The hotel's luxury suites delight with a sophisticated blend of historic elegance, contemporary accents and a prime Washington, D.C. location. From its commanding post on Connecticut Avenue, The Mayflower Hotel places guests in the heart of the capital, surrounded by The National Mall, DuPont Circle, Foggy Bottom, the U Street Corridor and Georgetown. For more information on The Mayflower Hotel, please call 877.255.6036 or visit www.TheMayflowerHotel.com.
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Media Contacts:
Ashley MontBlanc Day / Lisa Glover
Laura Davidson Public Relations
212-696-0660
Email Contact / Email Contact
-Leadership position based on market share figures published by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan
- Atento is the clear leader in Latin America with 18.3% market share, a 9-point advantage over its closest competitor
- Atento increases leadership position in key markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru
NEW YORK, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Atento S.A. (NYSE: ATTO) the leading provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing services (CRM/BPO) in Latin America, and one of the three top providers worldwide, announced that Frost & Sullivan, the global consulting company specializing in growth strategies, published its annual report, "Analysis of the Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market" where it identified Atento, once again, as the clear leader in contact center outsourcing services in Latin America.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150506/214260LOGO
In addition to leading the market at the regional level, Atento expanded market share and strengthen its leadership position in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru. In Brazil, the largest market in Latin America, which accounts for nearly half of the regional contact center outsourcing services revenues, Atento increased its market share to reach 25.6% of the total market. Widening the gap with other market players and strengthening its leadership position in the region's most important market.
Alejandro Reynal, Atento's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Atento's sustained leadership position in the Latin American contact center outsourcing services market is a direct result of our Company's long-lasting client relationships, deep vertical expertise, differentiated customer experience solutions and highly motivated employees. Every day we contribute to this leadership position by developing innovative and high-added value solutions for our clients that generate customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. I would like to thank all of our clients and employees for their ongoing support which has helped us maintain the top position in this regional market and its key geographies over the years."
Atento is the leader by market share in Latin America, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Chile according to Frost & Sullivan1
Latin America Latin
America- Domestic2 Latin
America-Shore3 Brazil Mexico Argentina Peru Chile 18.3%
(#1) 24%
(#1) 19.4%
(#1) 25.6%
(#1) 16.9%
[29%]2
(#1) 19.7%
(#1) 34.7%
(#1) 25.2%
(#1) 1Market share figures as stated in the "Analysis of the Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market" annual study by Frost & Sullivan. The base year is 2015 and the forecast period is from 2016 to 2021 2The Latin America-Domestic business revenues accounted for $7.24 billion or 72.1% of the total market in 2015. Atento's Latin America-Domestic business market share figures are not part of Frost & Sullivan analysis and they have been calculated according to our company estimations. According to these estimations, Atento's share of the domestic business market in Latin America was ~ 24% in 2015, while in Mexico Atento's share in the domestic market reached ~ 29% in the same year 3 Latin America-Shore business market share refers to revenue generated by serving Latin American consumers from delivery centers located in a different Latin American country, e.g., service provider "X" serving Argentinean consumers from its delivery site in Peru
The "Analysis of the Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market" annual study by Frost & Sullivan examines the trends in the Latin American contact center outsourcing services market and forecasts the market size. The study provides extensive coverage of services delivered in each local market and those provided from Latin American countries to others overseas. The study shows data for outsourcing services alone, excluding operations performed in-house and in shared services centers. Contact center outsourcing is considered by the report as a subset of the broader business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Key takeaways of the Frost & Sullivan report include:
The contact center outsourcing services market in Latin America attained $10.05 billion in revenue in 2015 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.8% through 2021
attained in revenue in 2015 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.8% through 2021 Brazil and Mexico represent 41.1% and 14.3% respectively of the total Latin American market in terms of revenue. Atento is a clear market leader in both countries with 25.6% and 16.9% of share respectively
and represent 41.1% and 14.3% respectively of the total Latin American market in terms of revenue. Atento is a clear market leader in both countries with 25.6% and 16.9% of share respectively By vertical markets, the Telecom & Media and the Banking & Financial Services (BFS) verticals represent over 70% of the market's demand in Latin America in 2015
in 2015 Traditional customer service accounts for over half of the market's revenue (54.1%) while back office, tech support, and other BPO services such as logistics, finance and accounting, and consulting are expected to grow the fastest among all services
Voice channel still represents 87.6% of the revenue in the region by 2015 and it will remain the largest channel for the foreseeable future. Alternative channels, such as chat & web collaboration, social media, email, SMS (Short Message Services), and face-to-face, are expected to account for 15.5% of the market in 2021
The offshoring business in Latin America grew at a YOY rate of 10.5% in 2015, reaching $2.80 billion revenue, driven by the US market (nearshore revenue generated by serving US consumers from delivery centers located in Latin America ) and the Latin American shore services
grew at a YOY rate of 10.5% in 2015, reaching revenue, driven by the US market (nearshore revenue generated by serving US consumers from delivery centers located in ) and the Latin American shore services From a competitive standpoint, Latin America is the most concentrated market worldwide, with 3 major market participants accounting for 34.6% of the total market revenue. In other regions, such as North America , Europe and Asia-Pacific , this figure does not surpass 20%
is the most concentrated market worldwide, with 3 major market participants accounting for 34.6% of the total market revenue. In other regions, such as , and , this figure does not surpass 20% Major market participants are looking to become digital transformation partners for their clients, providing increasingly complex services, including logistics, finance and accounting, human resources, software development, document management, consulting and other BPO solutions
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "intends," "continue" or similar terminology. These statements reflect only Atento's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance or results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, competition in Atento's highly competitive industries; increases in the cost of voice and data services or significant interruptions in these services; Atento's ability to keep pace with its clients' needs for rapid technological change and systems availability; the continued deployment and adoption of emerging technologies; the loss, financial difficulties or bankruptcy of any key clients; the effects of global economic trends on the businesses of Atento's clients; the non-exclusive nature of Atento's client contracts and the absence of revenue commitments; security and privacy breaches of the systems Atento uses to protect personal data; the cost of pending and future litigation; the cost of defending Atento against intellectual property infringement claims; extensive regulation affecting many of Atento's businesses; Atento's ability to protect its proprietary information or technology; service interruptions to Atento's data and operation centers; Atento's ability to retain key personnel and attract a sufficient number of qualified employees; increases in labor costs and turnover rates; the political, economic and other conditions in the countries where Atento operates; changes in foreign exchange rates; Atento's ability to complete future acquisitions and integrate or achieve the objectives of its recent and future acquisitions; future impairments of our substantial goodwill, intangible assets, or other long-lived assets; and Atento's ability to recover consumer receivables on behalf of its clients. In addition, Atento is subject to risks related to its level of indebtedness. Such risks include Atento's ability to generate sufficient cash to service its indebtedness and fund its other liquidity needs; Atento's ability to comply with covenants contained in its debt instruments; the ability to obtain additional financing; the incurrence of significant additional indebtedness by Atento and its subsidiaries; and the ability of Atento's lenders to fulfill their lending commitments. Atento is also subject to other risk factors described in documents filed by the company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which the statements were made. Atento undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the global growth consulting company, has been helping customers develop innovative strategies for more than 50 years. Frost & Sullivan caters to a high number of customers, including some that are ranked within the Top 1000 global companies, start-ups and investors. The company comprehensively covers all industries from a unique and global perspective and combines permanent market and technological analysis with econometric and demographic data. Is your organization prepared for the next wave of profound convergence within the industry, cutting-edge technologies, the increase in competitive intensity, new megatrends, the best innovative practices, the changing dynamics of customers and emerging economies? For further information, visit www.frost.com
About Atento
Atento is the largest provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing (CRM BPO) services in Latin America, and among the top three providers globally, based on revenues. Atento is also a leading provider of nearshoring CRM/BPO services to companies that carry out their activities in the United States. Since 1999, the company has developed its business model in 14 countries where it employs more than 150,000 people. Atento has over 400 clients to whom it offers a wide range of CRM/BPO services through multiple channels. Atento's clients are mostly leading multinational corporations in sectors such as telecommunications, banking and financial services, health, retail and public administrations, among others. Atento's shares trade under the symbol ATTO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In 2016, Atento was named one of the World's 25 Best Multinational Workplaces by Great Place to Work for a fourth consecutive year. For more information visit www.atento.com
DANBURY, CT -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Crown World Mobility -- the world-renowned provider of domestic and international end-to-end workforce mobility solutions -- announced the expansion of its executive board and executive management group in a strategic move to further develop the business.
Jennifer Harvey, regional managing director of North America, and Barry Koolen, regional managing director of the UK, Ireland and Northern Europe, join founder and chairman, Jim Thompson; CEO for Asia-Pacific and CFO for the Crown Worldwide Group, Ken Madrid; and CEO Europe Middle East and Africa, David Muir to form the new Crown Worldwide Group executive board.
Harvey's role as regional managing director of North America will remain unchanged and her appointment to the executive board is in addition to her current responsibilities.
With Koolen's appointment to the executive board, and continued responsibility of chairing the executive management group, he will relinquish his role as regional managing director of the UK, Ireland and Northern Europe. This role will be filled on an interim basis by Steve Hardie effective November 1.
Crown also added two new members to its executive management group: Magali Delafosse, group vice president, human resources; and Fred Weijgertse, managing director, fine art. Delafosse and Weijgertse join the following members of the executive management group (in alphabetical order):
Philip Britton, group vice president, Crown Records Management
Norah Franchetti, group vice president, marketing
Jennifer Harvey, regional managing director, North America
Shen Kong, chief financial officer Asia Pacific, group financial controller
Barry Koolen, executive management group chair and executive board member
Sherry Liu, regional general manager, Greater China, Crown Relocations
Pat Welch, group vice president, Crown World Mobility
Jurgen Zyderveld, regional managing director, Central, Southern and Eastern Europe
The executive management group is a team of on-the-ground leaders from across the organization whose role is to provide valuable insight and direction to the executive board.
This structural realignment coincides with the rollout of Crown's 2020 Global Vision and Strategy which is currently being cascaded through a series of global meetings.
"Our vision and strategy are part of the roadmap that will shape and define the future of Crown," says David Muir. "These recent appointments demonstrate our commitment at the executive level to successfully drive the business forward. This enables us to fully support senior leadership throughout the organization and creates an innovative environment delivering exceptional results."
Visit Crown at www.crownworldmobility.com.
Crown World Mobility: Crown World Mobility (www.crownworldmobility.com) is a division of the Crown Worldwide Group, established in 1965 and headquartered in Hong Kong. Crown World Mobility helps corporations manage global talent and talented individuals perform on the global stage. In a world that seems to be constantly shrinking, managing a globally mobile workforce creates challenges for any organization. These challenges are human in scale -- global assignments involve the everyday lives of transferees and their families. But there are policies to navigate, formalities to coordinate and legalities to adhere to -- at the same time as concentrating on a new assignment and getting a job done. Crown's approach is to work with all stakeholders to find the right solution, implementing a global mobility program that is successful for the whole organization. This often means finding a unique solution, which Crown has the experience and capability to deliver.
AMERICAS:
Sheryl Cherry
Crown Relocations
5252 Argosy Drive
Huntington Beach, CA 92649
USA
+ 1 714 898 0961
scherry@crownww.com
ASIA-PACIFIC:
Susanne Osterholm
Crown Worldwide Holdings Ltd.
Suite 2001, MassMutual Tower
38 Gloucester Road, Wanchai
Hong Kong
+ 852 2528 6111
sosterholm@crownww.com
EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA:
Marco Dilenge
Crown Worldwide GmbH
Am Prime Parc 6
65479 Raunheim, Germany
+49 6142 8342 0
mdilenge@crownww.com
UK/IRELAND/NORTHERN EUROPE:
Emma Loveday
Crown Worldwide
345 Southbury Road
Enfield
EN1 1TW
England
+44 208 443 6016
eloveday@crownww.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - House Democrats still expect to pick up several seats in today's elections, but party leaders warned that the FBI's decision to temporarily reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe could dash their hopes of retaking control of the chamber. In a conference call with rank-and-file members Monday night, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was critical of FBI Director James Comey's handling of the investigation. Late last month, Comey sent a letter to lawmakers revealing that the FBI reopened its investigation of Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State after learning of the existence of new emails. Comey sent another letter on Sunday revealing that the FBI once again cleared Clinton of criminal charges, but Pelosi suggested that the damage has already been done. 'We would be in a better place [without the letter] and in the manner he did it,' Pelosi said. 'It was out of line.' Pelosi argued that Clinton's campaign had momentum before the release of the letter and noted that the subsequent narrowing in nationwide polls has an impact on down-ballot races. Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn, R-S.C., said Comey's letter had a 'tremendous adverse impact with our standing with independents.' A senior Democratic aide told CNN the focus on the letter could have put as many as a dozen Republican seats thought to be competitive out of reach for the party. Democrats still expect to pick up between twelve and sixteen seats but would need to win at least 30 seats to retake the House. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Highlights:
-- Standby Mine Trend: -- Historic drill hole SM87-3A, 10.29 g/t Au over 3.05 m, 1400 m laterally and 1600 m down plunge(i) (i)(distances measured from historic Standby Mine surface workings, along surface and also down the structural plunge of the iron formation) -- Historic drill hole BLG-UG3, 4.61 g/t Au over 12.19 m, 130 m laterally and 250 m down plunge -- Historic drill hole SM86-1, 2.02 g/t Au over 14.0 m, 600 m laterally and 780 m down plunge
Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. ("Mineral Mountain" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: MMV) reports that the proprietary Standby Mine database announced in a news release dated October 3, 2016, combined with the Company's comprehensive database for the 3 km long Cochrane Trend, both point toward large-scale ledge-type high grade gold targets with estimated extensive down plunge lengths of up to 3.0 kilometers. The Company has engaged the services of FMG Engineering based in Rapid City, South Dakota, to initiate the permitting process to drill 20,000 meters of core drilling to test both targets.
Standby Target Trend
In October, 2016 the Company purchased a proprietary digital database, generated from core diamond drilling conducted by Homestake Mining Company between 1967 and 1988 and, never released to the public, consisting of 71 diamond drill holes totaling 22,394 meters, of which 17 holes totaling 14,723 meters targeted a Homestake-style, 9-Ledge scale Proterozoic iron formation synclinoral fold structure at the Standby Gold Mine Property (see September 12, 2016 release). A longitudinal section of the Standby Target Trend was generated by Homestake Mining Company and is posted on the Company's website www.mineralmtn.com, This major synclinoral fold structure was considered by Homestake to be large enough to host a district scale gold resource similar to the Homestake District and the Homestake Mine. At the Homestake Mine, eleven ore "ledges", a local term for gold-mineralized plunging iron formation fold structures, accounted for the 40 million troy ounces of gold produced, with 9-Ledge alone having produced 9.5 million ounces.
Between 1986 and 1988, Homestake drilled three separate "widely spaced step out" fences comprising trunk holes and numerous splays, along cross sections down plunge from the Standby Mine shaft. The "step out" cross sections were designed to intersect the major gold bearing iron formation fold structure at 750-meter intervals down plunge. Remarkably, in 1987, Homestake SM87-3A, located 1400 meters laterally (560 meters vertical depth from surface) and 1600m down plunge from the historic Standby Mine Gold Deposit intersected a broad interval of gold mineralization within a thick, tightly folded unit of iron formation, including a high grade interval grading 10.29 grams per tonne over 3.05 meters. Near the Standby Mine workings, an underground drill hole, designed to test the down plunge extension of the gold mineralization extracted from the mine, intersected 4.61 grams per tonne over 12.19 meters in iron formation within the major fold structure. This intersection cut the Standby Target 130 m laterally and 260 meters down plunge from the surface workings of the Standby mine. The earliest deep fence of drill holes completed by Homestake in 1986, designed to intersect iron formation 780 meters down plunge from the Standby Mine, intersected six significant gold intersections with a broad mineralized system. The widest gold intersection was recorded in SM86-1 which cut 2.02 grams per tonne over 14.0 meters. The Company is planning to drill 10,000 meters specifically to target the 1500 meter long plunge potential between the high grade gold intersection in SM87- 3A up-plunge toward the Standby Mine mineralization, and also to follow-up the high grade intersection in SM87-3A toward the interpreted deeper underlying synclinoral axis.
Cochrane South Trend
-- Drill hole NM-96-7, 10.05 g/t Au over 5.03 m and 10.25 g/t Au over 2.44 m, (2 parallel gold Au zones), 175 m down plunge from historic Cochrane Mine -- NM-96-5, 9.86 g/t Au over 2.74 m -- Trench 1, 9.94 g/t Au over 7.62 m and 4.04 g/t Au over 6.01 m (2 parallel Au zones) -- CR88-2, 7.99 g/t Au over 10.67 m, 6.96 g/t Au over 13.72 m (2 parallel Au zone)(ii) -- CR88-7, 8.26 g/t Au over 7.16 m(ii) -- CR89-25, 6.24 g/t Au over 7.74 m -- (ii)(approximately 50m-100m vertical depth, north side of historic Cochrane Mine)
The Cochrane Deposit and the adjoining Cochrane South Property occur within a 3 km long major structural corridor that hosts near surface Homestake-style ledge gold mineralization. The most advanced gold zone along this trend is the Cochrane Deposit which is estimated to host, based on drilling by Noranda, Getty, Newmont and Naneco Resources an in-house non- compliant NI43-101 resource estimate of 68,000 ounces of gold in the indicated category and 200,000 ounces of gold, in the inferred category, grading a combined 6.34 g/t Au to a depth of 165 meters. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the above historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves, and Mineral Mountain is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. The Ledge-style gold mineralization in Cochrane Deposit is open at depth and, based on a number of high grade intersections within a 30 m wide, structurally thickened unit of altered iron formation drilled 100 meters from the common boundary between the Cochrane patents and the Company's Cochrane South Property, the gold-bearing structural corridor that hosts the near surface deposit plunges onto the Company's property.
Two drill holes completed by Naneco, between 1996 and 1997, intersected the down plunge extension of the Cochrane Deposit between the lower limits of the non-compliant near surface resource and within 100 meters from the South Cochrane Property boundary. Drill hole NM96-5 intersected 9.86 g/t Au over 2.74 m and two separate high grade mineralized intervals were cut NM96-7 grading 10.04 g/t Au over 5.03 m and 10.25 g/t Au over 2.44 m. The latter drill hole NM-96-7 is only 150 m from the Cochrane Project/Cochrane South common boundary. Near surface within the Cochrane Deposit, two trenches exposed two parallel zones grading 9.94 g/t Au over 7.62 m and 4.04 g/t Au over 6.01 m. Directly below these trenches, drill hole, CR88-2 intersected two separate and parallel gold zones grading 7.99 g/t Au over 10.67 m and 6.97 g/t Au over 13.72 m. Drill holes CR88-7 and CR89-25 intersected 8.26 g/t Au over 7.16 m and 6.24 g/t Au over 7.74 m respectively in the eastern most parallel zone.
Mineral Mountain's technical team has interpreted the shallow, near surface Cochrane Deposit mineralization to be comparable to an "upper tail" position in typical gold-ore ledges at the Homestake Mine. The goal is to trace the mineralization down plunge to discover a potential high grade, multi-million ounce ledge-type ore centroid. A 10,000 m drill program has been planned for this prospective target.
The Rochford Gold District is centered approximately 26 kilometers south of the world's largest iron formation hosted gold deposit, the Homestake Mine, which produced over 40,000,000 ounces of gold from 152 M tonnes of ore averaging approximately 8.4 g/t Au (0.245 opt) over the life of the mine from 1876 to 2001.
The geology of the Rochford District is remarkably similar to that at the Homestake Mine with gold hosted in multiply deformed Proterozoic carbonate facies and locally sulfide-facies iron formation that has typically been metamorphosed to cummingtonite/grunerite phyllites/schists and chlorite schists. There are numerous, relatively shallow, high-grade past producing gold mines and prospects in the district that were developed in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Mineral Mountain's property package covers the approximately 9 km long by 5 km wide core of the district, with multiple trends of locally structurally thickened and sheared auriferous iron formation considered to have many geological and mineralogical aspects in common with the Homestake Mine, 26 km to the northwest.
The Rochford Gold Belt covers more than 78 square kilometers and has been explored intermittently, but never comprehensively nor systematically to depth, by a number of major companies including Getty, Cominco, Newmont, Noranda, Western Mining and Homestake Mining in the 20th century. Despite gold prices hitting $1,900 US per ounce in 2011, the last serious exploration in for the Rochford District was completed in 1997.
Qualified Persons
The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed and approved by Nelson W. Baker, P.Eng., the President and CEO of Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. and a Qualified Person for this project. All exploration activities at the Rochford Project are carried out under the supervision of Kevin Leonard, P.Geo., also a Qualified Person for this project.
About Mineral Mountain Resources and the Rochford Gold Project
Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd., through its wholly owned subsidiary Mineral Mountain Resources (SD) Inc., is focused on the exploration and, if warranted, development of its 100%- owned Rochford Gold Project situated along the highly prospective Homestake Gold Belt in the Black Hills of South Dakota, U.S.A. The Rochford Project covers approximately 7,500 acres and straddles three major trends of structurally thickened auriferous iron formation that host ledge-type gold mineralization.
Since 2013, the Company has continued to expand its land position in the Rochford gold district by professional claim staking and also by purchasing strategically located private properties that fall along two of the major sub-parallel structural trends that host Ledge-type gold mineralization. The Company now owns the largest land position in the Rochford greenstone belt and now possesses by far the largest and most comprehensive database for the district in modern day exploration history! The Rochford Project is vastly under-explored and has the potential to host several district scale gold discoveries.
On Behalf of the Board of Directors
MINERAL MOUNTAIN RESOURCES LTD.
Nelson W. Baker, President and CEO
Forward looking information
This release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation ("Forward-looking information"). Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, including such things as future business strategy, competitive strengths, goals, expansion, growth of the Company's businesses, operations, plans and with respect to exploration results, the timing and success of exploration activities generally, permitting time lines, government regulation of exploration and mining operations, environmental risks, title disputes or claims, limitations on insurance coverage, timing and possible outcome of any pending litigation and timing and results of future resource estimates or future economic studies.
Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "planning", "planned", "expects" or "looking forward", "does not expect", "continues", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "potential", "anticipates", "does not anticipate" or "belief" or describes a "goal" or variation 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 based on a number of material factors and assumptions, including, the result of drilling and exploration activities, that contracted parties provide goods and/or services on the agreed timeframes, that equipment necessary for exploration is available as scheduled and does not incur unforeseen break downs, that no labour shortages or delays are incurred, that plant and equipment function as specified, that no unusual geological or technical problems occur, and that laboratory and other related services are available and perform as contracted. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, future events, conditions, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, prediction, projection, forecast, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others, the interpretation and actual results of current exploration activities; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of gold; possible variations in grade or recovery rates; failure of equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; the failure of contracted parties to perform; labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing or in the completion of exploration, as well as those factors disclosed in the company's publicly filed documents. 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 information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.
Contacts:
Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd.
Brad Baker
Vice-President Corporate Development & Director
(778) 383-3975
bbaker@mineralmtn.com
www.mineralmtn.com
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Canadian Metals Inc. (The "Corporation") (CSE: CME)(CSE: CME.CN) is pleased to announce that it has selected the Municipality of Baie-Comeau in the Northern region of Quebec to conduct its pre-feasibility study for its Hybrid Flex plant. The Company also confirms that it has entered into an agreement with Innovation and Development Manicouagan (IDM) for the financial contribution in the amount of $340,000 via its business and development fund. The non-reimbursable financial contribution from IDM is conditional upon the Company making a minimum financial commitment of $390,000 towards the advancement of their project.
The total investment of $730,000 will thus allow the Company to complete the pre-feasibility study on the development of its Hybrid Flex project in the industrial port zone of Baie-Comeau. This important first step will lead the Company towards the feasibility stage of the project and may conceivably open the door for an investment of over $300 million in the Baie-Comeau area that would directly employ over 200 people once the plant is constructed and in operation. In addition, the extraction of the Langis quarry, located in St. Vianney, which would supply the required raw material to the future Baie-Comeau plant, would create another 20 or more jobs.
During the pre-feasibility phase of the project, the Company will conduct a series of activities as recommended by the engineering firm CIMA+. These activities include drilling, 3-D modeling of the deposit, resource estimation, metallurgical analysis and testing. This will allow the Company to evaluate the Hybrid Flex option with the base case 100% silicon metal.
The attractiveness of the environment for business, a strategic location in the Plan Nord, the maritime accessibility, low cost connection to the available electrical, a presence of high quality suppliers combined with a skilled workforce and access to vast industrial land package well located offering,integrated transport networks as well as accesses to an efficient seaport for exportation platform to external markets - largely tipped the scales in favor of Baie-Comeau.
"We believe that Baie-Comeau has all the advantages to build a more competitive silicon plant not only in North America but in the world," mentioned President Stephane Leblanc. "This is a market that will be very important in America and Europe but especially in North America by 2020. It is essential for the Company to position itself favorably in this promising and demanding market," emphasizes Mr. Leblanc.
Eventually, the company hopes to produce 50,000 of silicon metal per year in Baie-Comeau, primarily for the US market. Silicon metal is used in the production of alloys for the automotive industry, in the manufacturing of silicone, in the development of high performance concrete, and in both the solar panel and lithium-ion battery industries.
About Innovation and Development Manicouagan
Economic development agency, Innovation and Development Manicouagan (CLD) support entrepreneurship through advisory services and financing (loans and grants) to businesses and community organizations. The organization is industrial development and socioeconomic development of the Manicouagan in order to maximize the benefits for the region and facilitate networking of different partners.
About Canadian Metals
Canadian Metals Inc. is focused exclusively on the development of its Langis Project, a high-purity silica deposit located in the province of Quebec. The Company is rapidly positioning itself to eventually become a North American silicon metal and ferrosilicon producer.
Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information
This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All information other than historical fact is forward-looking information. Forward-looking information relates to future events or future performance and is based on CME current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "expect", "project", "proposed", "intend", "seek", "anticipate", "budget", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "forecast", "may", "will", "predict", "potential", "targeting", "could", "might", "should", "believe" and similar expressions. Although management considers the assumptions and estimates, reflected in forward-looking information, to be reasonable, based on information currently available, there can be no assurance that such information will prove to be correct. As a consequence, actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.
Undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking information which is inherently uncertain, and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties (both general and specific) and other factors that contribute to the possibility that the future events or circumstances contemplated by the forward looking information will not occur or that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. These risks include, but are not limited to risks associated with general economic conditions, the actual results of current exploration activities, conclusions of economic evaluations, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, future metal prices, financial risks and substantial capital requirements. Further information regarding certain of these risks (as well as risks relating generally to the Company's business) may be found under the headings "Risks and Uncertainties", "Forward-Looking Information" and "Financial risk factors" in the latest Company's Management's Discussion & Analysis on www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and CME does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable law. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.
Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
Stephane Leblanc
President and CEO
sleblanc@canadianmetalsinc.com
www.canadianmetalsinc.com
DUBLIN, Feb 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Wearable Electronics Market Analysis & Trends - Industry Forecast to 2025" report to their offering.
The Global Wearable Electronics Market is poised to grow at a CAGR of around 28.3% over the next decade to reach approximately $81.6 billion by 2025.
This industry report analyzes the market estimates and forecasts for all the given segments on global as well as regional levels presented in the research scope. The study provides historical market data for 2013, 2014 revenue estimations are presented for 2015 and forecasts from 2016 till 2025. The study focuses on market trends, leading players, supply chain trends, technological innovations, key developments, and future strategies.
Some of the prominent trends that the market is witnessing include increasing demand for smart textiles and wearable devices, wearable electronics are becoming subset for internet of things these days, protecting wearable devices from cyber attacks is challenging the market, recent technological developments of wearable electronics and growth opportunities/investment opportunities.
Current Trends
Increasing Demand For Smart Textiles and Wearable Devices
Wearable Electronics are Becoming Subset for Internet Of Things These Days
Protecting Wearable Devices from Cyber Attacks is Challenging The Market
Recent Technological Developments of Wearable Electronics
Growth Opportunities/Investment Opportunities
Scope of the Report
Based on product wearable electronics market is segmented into Eye Wear, Body Wear, Wrist Wear, Foot Wear, Neck Wear and Other Wearable Electronics.
Eye Wear is further divided into Contact Lenses and Others, and Smart Glasses and Goggles.
Body Wear sub divided into Fashion & Apparel, Arm & Leg Wear and Clothing and Inner Wear.
Wrist Wear is further segmented into Wrist Wear Computers and Watches and Wrist Bands.
Foot Wear is sub segmented into Special Application Foot Wear and Casual Foot Wear.
Neck Wear is again divided into Fashion and Jewelry and Ties and Collars.
Other Wearable Electronics is sub divided into Head Bands, Smart Headsets and Ring Scanners. By application the market is segmented into entertainment applications, healthcare, defense, consumer electronics, enterprise & industrial and other applications.
Healthcare is further divided into non-clinical and clinical. Consumer electronics sub segmented into multi-function applications, fitness/sports applications and other consumer electronics.
Enterprise & industrial is sub divided into logistics, packaging, & warehouse applications and other enterprise & industrial. Depending upon technology the market is categorised into display technologies and computing technologies.
Display technologies are further segmented into sensor technologies, networking technologies, speech recognition and positioning technologies.
Based component the market is segmented into positioning and networking, sensing, power supply, display, PCBs, control, camera, memory, audio, interface, battery and other components.
Leading Companies
Apple, Inc.
Google, Inc.
Sony Corp
Nike, Inc.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.
Fitbit, Inc.
Qualcomm, Inc.
Texas Instruments, Inc.
Adidas Ag
Jawbone
Garmin Ltd.
Epson America , Inc.
, Inc. Imprint Energy Inc
AT & T Inc.
Glassup SRL
weartech S.L
Shimmer Research Inc.
For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3zpm8g/global_wearable
Media Contact:
Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com
For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
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ASHFORD, England, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
CXK, the Kent based charity supporting disadvantaged young people, has appointed Pauline Smith as its new Chief Executive. She will take over from Interim Chief Executive, Matthew Roberts, at the beginning of February 2017.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161108/437153 )
Pauline is currently Director of Services for Norwood, one of the largest Jewish charities providing a wide range of information, support and innovative services for vulnerable children, young people, adults and families. She has a strong background in this sector having previously worked for Kent County Council in a number of leading education, skills, training, development and employment roles for over 20 years. Over the same period, she has devoted one month of her personal time each year to visit India to support two orphanages, a women's refuge, two learning disability charities and an HIV centre.
Commenting on her appointment CXK Chairman, David Philpott, said: "We had a strong response to this job opportunity and Pauline is our preferred applicant following an extensive and rigorous interview process. She demonstrated her deep-rooted passion, energy and commitment to work with us on our mission to empower individuals and communities to break the cycles of disadvantage and live the lives they choose.
"It is a challenging time for all in our sector with funding streams under severe pressure and we are confident that Pauline will give CXK, our supporters and beneficiaries the leadership it requires to build on our solid foundations of innovation, delivery and success."
Pauline Smith said: "I am very excited and delighted that the trustees have chosen me to lead CXK through the next stage of its development. Making a difference in this world is what motivates, inspires and drives me. I intend to champion the charity and its staff who provide vital high quality services and support to so many people, especially young people who need help to make the most of their life and career opportunities. It is a big challenge but one I relish. I am really looking forward to getting my feet under the table and getting on with the job in hand."
Notes to Editors
CXK is a charitable organisation delivering a range of services across the South East to support young people. In particular we provide them withadvice, guidance, skills and the confidence that will help them to progress into education, employment and training.
http://www.cxk.org
For further information on CXK, please contact David Ing at CFA on:
Telephone: +44(0)1622-754295
Email: David.Ing@cfa-group.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter early Tuesday to dispute former President Bill Clinton's story about a post-election phone call. Trump rejected Clinton's claim that he called the former president following his surprise victory, asserting that it was the other way around. 'Bill Clinton stated that I called him after the election. Wrong, he called me (with a very nice congratulations),' Trump tweeted. The tweet from the president-elect came after the media picked up on an interview Clinton held with a local newspaper earlier this month in which the former president said Trump called him. Clinton told the Bedford and Pound Ridge Record-Review the call was strangely cordial, with Trump behaving 'like it was 15 years ago' when the Clintons and Trumps used to socialize. In his posts to Twitter, Trump also criticized the campaign of Clinton's wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, arguing that they focused on the wrong states. 'He 'doesn't know much,' Trump said of Clinton, 'especially how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states (and more). They focused on wrong states.' The president-elect was borrowing the former president's language from the Record-Review interview in which Clinton said Trump 'doesn't know much' but does know 'how to get angry, white men to vote for him.' (Photo: Michael Vadon) 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) - Despite rumblings of discontent from some corners of the House Republican caucus, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he is 'not worried' about retaining his leadership position in the next Congress. 'I feel very good where I am,' Ryan told reporters Monday outside a local Republican Party office in Racine, Wisconsin, according to Politico. 'I've gotten such a great outpouring of support from members,' he added. 'They know I took the job as a sense of duty, that duty is not done, and I plan on continuing doing that duty.' Ryan also said he's recently spoken to just about every House Republican running a tough race and expressed confidence the GOP will retain control of the chamber. 'They're running good campaigns. And we have really good candidates,' Ryan said. 'So, I feel pretty darn good about where we are with our majority.' Politico noted House Republicans are set to hold internal leadership elections right after they return to Washington next week. Ryan has received some criticism for his tepid support for Donald Trump, as the Speaker has distanced himself from the Republican presidential nominee but maintained his official endorsement. 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.
Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recentglobal air-cushion vehicle marketreport. This research report also lists 7 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.
Air-cushion vehicles are used for military operations as well as for commercial purposes. The market is expected to experience growth in the military applications over the next five years due to the increase in deployment of these vehicles. Various upgrade initiatives undertaken by defense ministries in regions such as the Middle East and APAC will also contribute to the market growth.
In February 2015, Iran unveiled two homemade air-cushion vehicles that will be deployed in Northern territorial waters in the Caspian Sea. Moreover, in August 2015, Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST) designed and manufactured single- and double-seated air-cushion vehicles that can be used for rescue missions over rivers and flood-stricken areas. These new developments are expected to support the growth of the air-cushion vehicle market.
Competitive vendor landscape
The global air-cushion vehicle market is highly competitive with the presence of numerous vendors that are competing based on cost, quality, reliability, and aftermarket service. To survive and succeed in such an intensely competitive environment, it is crucial for the vendors to provide cost-effective and high-quality services.
"Vendors have to focus on global footprint network, product offerings, investment in R&D, and a strong client base to gain an edge over their peers. The global economic recovery, R&D, and investments by vendors have opened the room for opportunity for defense industry players to compete and grow," says Moutushi Saha, a lead defense analyst from Technavio.
The market is characterized by the presence of well-diversified international and small- and medium-sized vendors. The competitive environment is likely to increase with the growth in product extensions, technological innovations, and increased number of mergers and acquisitions.
Request a sample report: http://www.technavio.com/request-a-sample?report=54214
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.
Top five air-cushion vehicle market vendors
Aerohod
Aerohod is engaged in the design and manufacture of amphibious air-cushion vehicles. The company has delivered over 800 units of the air-cushion vehicles to customers ranging from government agencies like Russian Ministry of Defence, the Federal Security Service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Emergency Situations to oil and gas companies like Gazprom and Rosneft.
AirLift Hovercraft
AirLift Hovercraft is engaged in the design and manufacturing of small- to medium-sized air-cushion vehicles. The company offers a wide range of services including business planning to aftersales service of air-cushion vehicles. Also, it offers consultancy services such as on-site evaluation and feasibility study, recommendations on route planning, assistance with training of crew, recommendations for operational safety procedures, and others.
ALMAZ Shipbuilding Company
The company offers air-cushion ships and boats including the Murena air-cushion landing craft, which has a capacity to transport a medium-sized tank or two combat infantry carriers or armored troop carriers. The company also offers the amphibious Irbis for daily transport of 28-32 passengers and the multipurpose amphibious boat Rys for patrol and search and rescue operations. Its most recent addition is the Zubr, an air cushion landing ship, which can reach speeds of 69.59 miles per hour and transport up to 500 passengers.
Griffon Hoverwork
Griffon Hoverwork operates with the support from partner offices worldwide. The company has a worldwide client base and is supporting more than 200 landing crafts in over 41 countries. Its customers include military and rescue organizations like the Royal Marines, the Swedish Coast Guard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the Pakistan Navy, the Polish Border Guard, the Korean Coast Guard, the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service, the Estonian Border Guard, and the Colombian Navy.
Textron Systems
Textron Systems through its Marine and Land Systems segment designs, manufactures, and also provides support to light armored combat vehicles and advanced marine craft. It supplies products to the US Navy, the US Coast Guard, and other international customers. It is a subsidiary of Textron Systems. In FY2015, the company reported USD 1.52 billion revenue.
The other prominent vendors are:
Garden Reach Shipbuilders Engineers
Hovertechnics
Hovertrans Solutions
Neoteric Hovercraft
Feodosia Shipbuilding Company
The British Hovercraft Company
Universal Hovercraft
All product names, brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Browse Related Reports:
Global Amphibious Landing Craft Market 2016-2020
Global Naval Combat Systems Market 2016-2020
Global Military Land Vehicles Market 2015-2019
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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.
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Technavio Research
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UK: +44 208 123 1770
www.technavio.com
MACAU, Nov 9, 2016 - (ACN Newswire) - APT Satellite Company Ltd ("APTSTAR") and Chinese International Communication Co. Ltd (CICC) today announced a major breakthrough in their cooperation. After a 2-month test run with the APSTAR-6 satellite at 134E and APSTAR-L satellite at 128E, CICC has officially commited to APT Satellite to promote the Great Wall TV Platform, a mix of 25 TV channels from China with Chinese, English or French voice-over, to new viewers in ASEAN countries."The Great Wall TV is the only platform, with exclusive right, to export TV contents from China to the world. This new expansion is a strategic move to attract a new audience. Though APT Satellite has proved to be our reliable partner since we first launched the Great Wall TV platform on APSTAR-5 satellite nearly one decade ago, we are very excited to find new synergy between our two companies. APT Satellite has over-20-years experience and an extensive network in this area. We can make best use of these resources, and quickly tap into new markets," said LYU Chunguang, General Manager of CICC."APT Satellite plays two roles in this cooperation, providing satellite capacity and promoting Chinese TV content landing in ASEAN countries. We are pleased of being awarded the capacity supply contract by CICC for its new endeavor in ASEAN countries. And we are especially proud of being given the opportunity to team up with CICC, explore into the content distribution business arena. APT Satellite is willing to step out of its comfort zone, care for the need of the customers, share our experience with them, and most importantly grow together with them," said Huang Baozhong, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Sales of APT Satellite.Great Wall Asia platform is available throughout Asia Pacific region by its operation on three APSTAR satellites, namely APSTAR-5 at 138E, APSTAR-6 at 134E and APSTAR-L at 128.5E. The whole package or any channels inside can be contributed to cable TV, satellite DTH, or OTT operators based on authorization.About China International Communication Co. Ltd.China International Communications Co., Ltd (CICC) is a sub company wholly owned and operated by China International Television Corporation (CITVC) of China Central Television (CCTV). The major business of CICC is to integrate the Great Wall TV Package (GWTV) with qualified TV channels from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and some other overseas regions, and distribute it to different parts of the world, providing the overseas Chinese and main stream audience worldwide with high quality content. CICC distributes GWTV to its target areas with the most advanced transmission technologies including digital satellite and fiber optical transportation services. With different local service providers from the satellite direct-to-home (DTH), cable network as well as IPTV operators, GWTV has been providing its service to the global potential audience and making efforts to maximize the number of its subscribers. This fulfills its target to enlarge and enhance its penetration into the world media market. CICC's other business includes the overseas distribution of CCTV's international channels, and render services to foreign TV crew who intend to make programs of China.About APT SatelliteBased in Hong Kong, APT Satellite Company Ltd ("APT Satellite" or "APSTAR")is a leading satellite operator in the Asia Pacific region, operating a fleet of five satellites: the APSTAR-5, APSTAR-6, APSTAR-7, APSTAR-7B and APSTAR-9. APSTAR-5C and APSTAR-6C are currently under construction, they will replace APSTAR-5 and APSTAR-6 respectively in 2018. The footprints of the fleet cover Asia, Middle East, Oceania, and most part of Europe and Africa, extending services to over 75% of the world's population. Currently distributing 600+ TV channels around the world including HBO, Disney, Sony Pictures, NBCU, RTL-CBS, EBU, GMA, TVBI, TVn, Celestial Tiger etc, APT Satellite is also supplying transponder capacity to a variety of DTH platforms, as well as to media networks for video contributions across the world.APT Satellite is one of the fastest growing satellite operators in the world. We continue expanding and enhancing the scope of services and capabilities of the APSTAR Satellite Fleet to ensure we are able to meet the customer's ever-growing demand and keep up with the evolution of technology. APT Satellite Company Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of APT Satellite Holdings Ltd, a listed company on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HK:1045). For more information, please visit www.apstar.com.Source: APT Satellite Company LtdCopyright 2016 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Veresen Inc. ("Veresen") (TSX: VSN) expects to release its 2017 guidance on Monday, December 5, 2016 before the open of North American markets. The company will also host a conference call and webcast to discuss its outlook for 2017.
Conference Call & Webcast Details
A conference call and webcast presentation will be held to discuss the 2017 guidance release at 7:00am Mountain Time (9:00am Eastern Time) on Monday, December 5, 2016.
To listen to the conference call, please dial 647-788-4919 or 1-877-291-4570 (toll-free). This call will also be broadcast live on the Internet and may be accessed directly at the following URL:
http://www.gowebcasting.com/8254
A presentation will accompany the conference call and will be available via the webcast. Alternatively, the presentation will be made available immediately prior to the conference call start time of 7:00am Mountain Time on Veresen's website at www.vereseninc.com/invest/events-presentations.
A digital recording will be available for replay two hours after the call's completion, and will remain available until December 23, 2016 21:59 Mountain Time (23:59 Eastern Time). To listen to the replay, please dial 416-621-4642 or 1-800-585-8367 (toll-free) and enter Conference ID 17289029. A digital recording will also be available for replay on the company's website.
About Veresen Inc.
Veresen is a publicly-traded dividend paying corporation based in Calgary, Alberta that owns and operates energy infrastructure assets across North America. Veresen is engaged in three principal businesses: a pipeline transportation business comprised of interests in the Alliance Pipeline, the Ruby Pipeline and the Alberta Ethane Gathering System; a midstream business which includes a partnership interest in Veresen Midstream Limited Partnership which owns assets in western Canada, and an ownership interest in Aux Sable which owns a world-class natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction facility near Chicago and other natural gas and NGL processing infrastructure; and a power business comprised of a portfolio of assets in Canada. Veresen is also working to advance Jordan Cove LNG, a six million tonne per annum natural gas liquefaction facility proposed to be constructed in Coos Bay, Oregon, and the associated Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline. In the normal course of business, Veresen regularly evaluates and pursues acquisition and development opportunities.
Veresen's Common Shares, Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares, Series A, Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares, Series C, and Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares, Series E trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "VSN", "VSN.PR.A", "VSN.PR.C" and "VSN.PR.E", respectively. For further information, please visit www.vereseninc.com.
Contacts:
Veresen Inc.
Mark Chyc-Cies
Director, Corporate Planning & Investor Relations
(403) 213-3633
investor-relations@vereseninc.com
www.vereseninc.com
TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - November 08, 2016) - Titan Medical Inc. (TSX: TMD) (OTCQX: TITXF), a medical device company focused on the design and development of a robotic surgical system for application in minimally invasive surgery (MIS), today announced financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016. All financial results are reported in US dollars, unless otherwise stated. The unaudited condensed interim financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the period ended September 30, 2016 may be viewed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
"The third quarter was a very eventful period. We conducted a successful raise in the capital markets that closed September 20, 2016 which has enabled Titan to re-engage with our principal development suppliers. Our team is now focused on getting them back to their full development modes. We remain committed to accomplishing our next major milestones towards achieving submission of our 510(k) application to the FDA," commented John Barker, Interim Chief Executive Officer.
"I have been operating as Interim CEO for the past four weeks while Martin Bernholtz assumed the position of permanent Chair of the Board of Directors. My main focus is to find and recommend to the Board of Directors a new CEO as soon as is practically possible. The Board is also actively seeking new board members with successful business track records especially in the healthcare field," added Mr. Barker.
Third Quarter Operational Highlights
On August 8, 2016, the Company announced that it exhibited its SPORT' Surgical System at the World Robotics Gynecology Congress in New York, August 5 th and 6 th .
and 6 . On August 24, 2016 Titan announced that it had extended the rights granted to Longtai Medical Inc. to negotiate an exclusive distribution agreement. The parties have agreed to modify their previous three-month extension to monthly progress reviews.
On September 6, 2016 Titan announced that Dr. Rafael Sanchez-Salas presented an over view of the SPORT' Surgical System, at the 13 th meeting of the European Association of Urology Robotic Urology Section in Milan Italy on September 14 -16.
Financial Highlights
Cash and cash equivalents at September 30, 2016 totaled $7,399,331, compared to $11,197,573 at December 31, 2015.
Net and comprehensive loss for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $1,659,863 and $21,315,131, which included a gain on change in fair market value of warrants of $3,277,044 and $4,623,658, respectively compared to a net and comprehensive loss of $10,899,586 and $28,276,677 for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2015.
The Company's research and development expenses for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016 were $3,429,550, and $21,527,968, respectively, compared to $10,694,838 and $25,110,409 for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2015.
The decrease in research and development costs and net and comprehensive loss for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2016 compared to September 30, 2015 was possible due to the most recent equity financings completed in the first quarter of 2016 as well as the fourth quarter of 2015.
On September 20, 2016 Titan announced that it closed its previously announced public offering pursuant to an agency agreement dated September 13, 2016 between the Company and Bloom Burton & Co. Limited and Echelon Wealth Partners Inc. The Company sold 17,083,333 units at a price of CDN $0.60 per unit for gross proceeds of CDN $10,250,000 (US $ 7,749,000).
On October 27, 2016 the Company announced that the over-allotment option to the Company's September 20, 2016 offering was had been partially exercised and the Company sold an additional 2,030,000 units at the offering price for additional gross proceeds of CDN $ 1,218,000 (US $ 913,500).
About Titan Medical Inc.
Titan Medical Inc. is a Canadian public company focused on the design and development of a robotic surgical system for application in minimally invasive surgery ("MIS"). The Company's SPORT' Surgical System, currently under development, includes a surgeon-controlled robotic platform that incorporates a 3D high-definition vision system and multi-articulating instruments for performing MIS procedures through a single incision. The surgical system also includes a surgeon workstation that provides a surgeon with an advanced ergonomic interface to the robotic platform for controlling the instruments and provides a 3D high-definition endoscopic view of inside a patient's body. The SPORT' Surgical System is designed to enable surgeons to perform a broad set of surgical procedures for general abdominal, gynecologic, and urologic indications. For more information, visit the Company's website at www.titanmedicalinc.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains "forward-looking statements" which reflect the current expectations of management of the Company's future growth, results of operations, performance and business prospects and opportunities. Wherever possible, words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "potential for" and similar expressions have been used to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current beliefs with respect to future events and are based on information currently available to management. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those listed in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Information Form dated March 30, 2016 (which may be viewed at www.sedar.com). Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward looking statements prove incorrect, actual results, performance or achievements may vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. These factors should be considered carefully, and prospective investors should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Although the forward-looking statements contained in the news release are based upon what management currently believes to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure prospective investors that actual results, performance or achievements will be consistent with these forward-looking statements.
Titan Medical Inc.
John Barker
Interim Chief Executive Officer
(416) 548-7522 (ext. 151)
john.barker@titanmedicalinc.com
www.titanmedicalinc.com
EVC Group, Inc.
Amanda Prior
Aprior@evcgroup.com
(646) 445-4800
Michael Polyviou
mpolyviou@evcgroup.com
(646) 445-4800
The global anesthesia gas monitoring devices marketis expected grow at a CAGR of above 11% during the forecast period, according to Technavio's latest report.
In this report, Technavio covers the market outlook and growth prospects of the globalanesthesia gas monitoring devicesmarketfor 2016-2020. The market is further categorized into two product segments, including integrated anesthesia gas monitoring devices and stand-alone anesthesia gas monitoring devices, of which the integrated anesthesia gas monitoring devices segment dominated the market with almost 89% of the overall market share in 2015.
"It is estimated that the sales of anesthesia gas monitoring devices will increase significantly during the forecast period. This is due to the rise in the number of surgeries across various therapeutics including oncology, cardiovascular, respiratory, orthopedic, and neurology," says Srinivas Sashidhar, a lead orthopedics and medical devicesresearch expert from Technavio.
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Technavio's research study segments the global anesthesia gas monitoring devices market into the following regions:
Americas
APAC
EMEA
In 2015, with a market share of over 43%, the Americas dominated the global anesthesia gas monitoring devices market, followed by EMEA with over 32% and the APAC with above 24%.
Americas: largest market for anesthesia gas monitoring devices
The anesthesia gas monitoring devices market in the Americas is growing due to increasing number of surgical procedures and hospital admissions. The US accounted for the majority share of the market in this region. Government awareness programs for medical safety have played a huge role in the market. Government advisories such as Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory in the US provide awareness about individual safety measures, a few of which are related to anesthesia.
The anesthesia gas monitoring devices market in the Americas is growing due to increasing number of surgical procedures and hospital admissions. The US accounted for the majority share of the market in this region. Government awareness programs for medical safety have played a huge role in the market. Government advisories such as Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory in the US provide awareness about individual safety measures, a few of which are related to anesthesia.
High adoption of integrated anesthesia gas monitors fueling the faucet market in EMEA
The Tier 1 and Tier 2 vendors such as GE Healthcare and Penlon have a wide distribution networks in Europe. These vendors offer a broad range of anesthesia gas monitoring devices for use during surgeries. Growing number of clinical symposiums will help to train the physicians about the integrated anesthesia gas monitoring devices such as MRI-compatible anesthesia gas monitors and stand-alone monitors, which can be integrated with other devices for patient benefit.
"In May 2016, experts of GE Healthcare presented about application of anesthesia devices in neonatal and pediatric ventilation in a clinical symposium held in the Netherlands," adds Srinivas.
The anesthesia gas monitors market in EMEA is expected to grow at a steady pace during the forecast period. The market is fueled by an increase in the geriatric population as well as technological advancements in this region. These are also the primary reasons for the high adoption of integrated anesthesia gas monitors, which led to increased sales. The increasing number of surgical procedures and the presence of many vendors in EMEA have also played a significant role in increasing the demand for these monitors in the market.
APAC to post a CAGR of over 12% during the period 2016-2020
The anesthesia gas monitoring devices market in APAC is expected to witness rapid growth during the forecast period. The increasing number of surgical procedures in emerging countries is expected to contribute to the growth of the market. A rise in older population, improvements in healthcare infrastructure, and growing demand for more affordable medical treatment are the significant growth drivers of the market. Global vendors in APAC are facing a threat from local manufacturers such as Beijing Siriusmed Medical Device that offer low-cost products.
In developing countries, such as China, India, and Thailand, the market is witnessing rapid growth in the anesthesia gas monitoring devices market. The healthcare infrastructure, government policies, and funding for specialty hospitals led the market growth in these countries. To increase the market share, the manufacturers are focusing on distributors in this region.
The top vendors in the global anesthesia gas monitoring devices market highlighted in the report are:
Dragerwerk
GE Healthcare
Penlon
Philips Healthcare
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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is encouraged by the federal government National Oceans Protection Plan announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on November 7 in Vancouver.
"We are very pleased with Prime Minister Trudeau's announcement of a national coastal strategy that will help establish Canada as a world leader in marine safety," said Duncan Wilson, vice president, corporate social responsibility at Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. "The focus on environmental sustainability and responsible commercial use is truly commendable."
The port authority is particularly supportive of the federal government's plans to fully resource the Canadian Coast Guard, which is critical to effectively responding to spills on our coasts.
"The port authority and others in the shipping community have long called for increased funding for the Canadian Coast Guard, recognizing we must protect our coasts for generations to come," said Wilson. "Minister Garneau and his team at Transport Canada have clearly listened to stakeholders, including Indigenous groups and others who rely on the coasts for their livelihood."
The Oceans Protection Plan has four main priority areas:
-- Creating a world-leading marine safety system that improves responsible shipping and protects Canada's waters, including new preventive and response measures. -- Restoring and protecting the marine ecosystems and habitats, using new tools and research, as well as taking measures to address abandoned boats and wrecks. -- Strengthening partnerships and launching co-management practices with Indigenous communities, including building local emergency response capacity. -- Investing in oil spill cleanup research and methods to ensure that decisions taken in emergencies are evidence based.
Vancouver Fraser Port Authority will continue to collaborate with Transport Canada and all levels of government on progressive actions to ensure the Port of Vancouver remains competitive, safe and sustainable.
About Vancouver Fraser Port Authority
Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is responsible for the stewardship of the federal port lands in and around Vancouver, British Columbia. It is accountable to the federal minister of transport and operates pursuant to the Canada Marine Act. The port authority manages the Port of Vancouver, which is Canada's largest port and the third largest tonnage port in North America, responsible for Canada's trade with more than 170 world economies. Located in a naturally beautiful setting on Canada's west coast, the Port of Vancouver is responsible for the efficient and reliable movement of goods and passengers, and integrates environmental, social and economic sustainability initiatives into all areas of port operations. Enabling the trade of approximately $200 billion in goods in 2015, the port sustains an estimated 100,000 supply-chain jobs, $6.1 billion in wages, and $9.7 billion in GDP across Canada.
Contacts:
Media contact:
Danielle Jang
Media Relations Advisor
604-665-9267
Danielle.Jang@portvancouver.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- All amounts in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated
Onex Corporation ("Onex") (TSX: ONEX) announced today that Onex Credit Partners, LLC ("Onex Credit") priced a refinancing of its second collateralized loan obligation ("CLO") and re-established the reinvestment period for an additional two years. This transaction effectively extends the life of the CLO and approximately $400 million of AUM.
Onex Credit focuses on non-investment grade credit investing and manages approximately $7.5 billion.
The securities offered in this CLO have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration under that Act. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any such securities.
About Onex
Onex is one of the oldest and most successful private equity firms. Through its Onex Partners and ONCAP private equity funds, Onex acquires and builds high-quality businesses in partnership with talented management teams. At Onex Credit, Onex manages and invests in leveraged loans, collateralized loan obligations and other credit securities. The Company has approximately $23 billion of assets under management, including $6 billion of Onex proprietary capital, in private equity and credit securities. With offices in Toronto, New York, New Jersey and London, Onex invests alongside its fund investors and is the largest limited partner in each of its private equity funds.
Onex' businesses have assets of $36 billion, generate annual revenues of $23 billion and employ approximately 145,000 people worldwide. Onex shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the stock symbol ONEX. For more information on Onex, visit its website at www.onex.com. The Company's security filings can also be accessed at www.sedar.com.
This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations and are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated or implied by such forward-looking statements. Onex is under no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained herein should material facts change due to new information, future events or otherwise.
Contacts:
Onex Corporation
Emilie Blouin
Director, Investor Relations
416.362.7711
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Hanwei Energy Services Corp. (TSX: HE) ("Hanwei" or the "Company"), today reported its financial results for the six months ended September 30, 2016. All amounts are in Canadian Dollars unless otherwise noted.
The Company has two reportable segments for its continuing operations: its FRP pipe manufacturing and its oil and gas production. The pipe segment produces and sells fiberglass reinforced plastic ("FRP") pipe for the oil and gas industry and other infrastructure applications. The oil and gas segment is engaged in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas in Western Canada.
For the six months ended September 30, 2016:
-- Total Company revenues for the six months ended September 30, 2016 totalled some $3.2 million as compared to $3.0 million for same period of the prior year. -- FRP pipe sales totalled $2.4 million as compared to $1.9 million in the same period of the prior year. -- For the Company's Canada market, sales were $1.6 million as compared to $47,000 for the same period of the prior year. -- For the Company's Chinese market, sales were $0.6 million as compared to $1.7 million for the same period of the prior year. -- For the Company's Kazakhstan market, sales were $69,000 as compared to $106,000 for the same period of the prior year. The Company does not expect this market to rebound to historical levels nor significantly contribute to sales going forward. -- Oil and gas production revenues net of royalties amounted to $0.8 million as compared to $1.2 million for the same period of the prior year. The decrease in revenues from the oil and gas business was driven by lower commodity prices. -- EBITDA from continuing operations was $0.8 million as compared to negative EBITDA from continuing operations of $1.6 million for the same period of the prior year. The increase in EBITDA was driven by growth in pipe sales and a one time $1.7 million refund of certain prepayments relating to the FRP pipe business expensed in previous periods. -- The Company had a loss from continuing operations of $0.9 million as compared to a loss from continuing operations of $2.5 million for the same period of the prior year. -- The Company received $2.2 million due from a wind farm customer from its discontinued wind power business. This amount was previously allowed for as at March 31, 2010. As of the date of this MD&A, a balance of $3.9 million remains outstanding from this customer. -- The Company negotiated improved commercial terms with its materials suppliers resulting in prepayments of some $1.4 million (RMB 6.8 million) being refunded. -- As of September 30, 2016 the Company had: -- A cash balance (inclusive of short term investments) of $4 million -- A Net Asset Value per share for its continuing operations of $0.16 (on total shares outstanding of approximately 194.2 million) -- During the period ended September 30, 2016, the Company partially repaid one of its bank loans in the amount of $1.9 million with proceeds from the collection of outstanding accounts receivable. A total principal amount of all bank loans of $4.8 million representing a 24% debt to equity ratio. A short-term loan of $2.9 million owed by Harvest (the Company's wholly owned subsidiary in China) to a Chinese bank is currently due and paying interest of 7.9% per annum. The Company is discussing the renewal or extension of the loan with the lender. -- Subsequent to the six months ended September 30, 2016 -- The Company confirmed a new order to a Canadian customer of some $1.4 million, which will be produced in three batches and is expected to fully ship within this current fiscal year. -- During the quarter ended September 30, 2016, the Company won a legal action with one of its wind power customers for the payment of an outstanding accounts receivable in the amount of $3.6 million (RMB18.3 million). Subsequent to the period end, the Company has received a first payment of $2.5 million (RMB12.8 million) that includes a carrying amount of $2.1 million (RMB10.8 million), cumulated interest and reimbursement of court fees. The remaining carrying amount of $1.5 million (RMB7.4 million) is expected to be paid pending the Company issuing additional valued added tax invoices to the customer. As at the date of this news release, the Company has fulfilled this obligation and expects to recover the remaining amount fully.
Update on Oil and Gas Activities in Canada
-- For the six months ended September 30, 2016, the Company produced approximately 157 boe/d for a total of 28,498 boe, including 83 bbl/d of oil for a total of 15,103 barrels, 309 mcf/d of gas per day for a total of 56,589 mcf, and 22 boe/d of liquids for a total of 3,964 boe. This production generated revenues net of royalties of $1.2 million and net back of $0.5 million and equivalent to gross revenue of $36.42 per boe with a netback of $15.89 per boe. The majority of the Company's oil production was from its 13-33-49-26W4 and 13-4-49-26W4 Nisku horizontal wells. -- At its Entice Lands the Company spud its new 14-01-023-28W4 vertical well in November 2015 with subsequent flow tests, and spud its new 15- 12-023-28W4 horizontal well in June 2016. Test production results from the 15-12-023-28W4 horizontal well were 87% water cut, 13% oil production on total fluid volume of 380 bbld. Both wells are currently shut in as an adjacent gas handling plant accommodating gas production from these wells is currently closed for maintenance. It is not yet known when such gas handling facility shall re-open. The Company is conducting ongoing study of its Entice Lands and Leduc Lands development opportunities.
Hanwei will host a conference call to discuss its operational and financial results for the second quarter ended September 30, 2016. Graham Kwan, Executive Vice President and Rick Huang, Chief Financial Officer of Hanwei will host the call. Management invites analysts and investors to participate on the conference call:
-- Date: Wednesday, November 9, 2016 -- Time: 11:30 a.m., Eastern Time (8:30 am Pacific Time) -- Dial in number: 1-888-264-8952 or 1-913-312-1466
A replay of the conference call will be available on the Company's website www.hanweienergy.com.
About Hanwei Energy Services Corp.
Hanwei Energy Services Corp.'s principal business operations are in two complementary key segments of the oil and gas industry as both an equipment supplier to the industry (as a leading manufacturer of high pressure, fiberglass reinforced plastic ("FRP") pipe products and associated technologies serving major energy customers in the global energy market) and as an operator of its producing oil and gas mineral rights at its Leduc and Entice Lands in Alberta.
www.hanweienergy.com
Neither the TSX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION AND NON-GAAP MEASURES
Certain information in this press release is forward-looking within the meaning of certain securities laws, and is subject to important risks, uncertainties and assumptions a description of which is set out in the risk factors section of the Company's Annual Information Form dated June 22, 2016 and Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended March 31, 2016 both of which are filed with Canadian securities regulators and available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information in this press release describes the Company's expectations as of the date of this press release.
THE FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE PRESENTS THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE COMPANY AS OF THE DATE OF THIS PRESS RELEASE AND, ACCORDINGLY, IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AFTER SUCH DATE. READERS SHOULD NOT PLACE UNDUE IMPORTANCE ON FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION AND SHOULD NOT RELY UPON THIS INFORMATION AS OF ANY OTHER DATE. WHILE THE COMPANY MAY ELECT TO, THE COMPANY DOES NOT UNDERTAKE TO UPDATE THIS INFORMATION AT ANY PARTICULAR TIME, EXCEPT AS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE SECURITIES LEGISLATION.
Contacts:
Graham Kwan
Executive VP, Strategic Development and Corporate Affairs
604-685-2239
gkwan@hanweienergy.com
Yucai (Rick) Huang
Chief Financial Officer
604-685-2239
yhuang@hanweienergy.com
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/08/16 -- Immunovaccine Inc. ("Immunovaccine" or the "Company") (TSX: IMV)(OTCQX: IMMVF), a clinical-stage vaccine and immunotherapy company, today announced financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2016 and provided a corporate update.
"Our achievements during the third quarter of 2016 reinforced the strong progress that Immunovaccine has established across all three pillars that support the long-term success and value proposition for our DepoVax-based pipeline," said Frederic Ors, Immunovaccine's Chief Executive Officer. "In immuno-oncology, we continued to demonstrate growth and our commitment to developing new treatments for ovarian cancer. We advanced partnerships and showed steady clinical progress in this disease area, which is one of the most unmet medical needs in today's oncology landscape."
Third quarter highlights included:
-- Announcing positive Phase 1/1b topline results for DPX-Survivac in ovarian cancer -- Dosing the first patient in the ongoing Phase 1b trial in collaboration with Incyte Corporation, which the Company believes to be one of the first clinical trials to assess triple combination therapies in ovarian cancer -- Terminating the licensing agreement with Immunotope Inc. as a means to reallocate resources from the DPX-0907 candidate to accommodate planned growth for other immuno-oncology programs -- Publication of preclinical research on the effects of combining DepoVax-based vaccines and anti-PD-1 therapies in The Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer -- Announcing positive Phase 1 results for its DPX-RSV candidate, which also marked the first infectious disease clinical demonstration of safety and immunogenicity for a DepoVax-based compound -- Presentations at several prestigious scientific conferences, showcasing the depth and breadth of the DepoVax-based pipeline in applications that span from malaria and RSV to immuno-oncology checkpoint inhibitor combinations
"We achieved a major milestone in our ongoing collaboration with Incyte Corporation, dosing the first patient in our Phase 1b trial evaluating the safety and immunogenicity of what we believe to be the first triple combination therapy in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, which includes DPX-Survivac, Incyte's IDO1 enzyme inhibitor epacadostat, and low-dose cyclophosphamide. We are currently planning to have the first data readout from this study in Q1 2017."
In the third quarter, Immunovaccine also announced positive topline data in its Phase 1/1b trial evaluating DPX-Survivac in combination with cyclophosphamide in ovarian cancer. The expanded data set reinforced earlier results that indicated that DPX-Survivac was well tolerated, with no unexpected treatment-related serious adverse events (SAEs) and that it could generate a relevant, sustained immune response. Although the trial was not specifically designed to assess progression-free survival (PFS), trial data indicated that there may be a correlation between the immune response and PFS. In addition, researchers determined an optimal dosing schedule to be used in future trials evaluating DPX-Survivac in this indication.
Mr. Ors stated, "These findings are quite significant for DPX-Survivac because we believe that they reinforce the utility and inherent value in its novel mechanisms of action. These data add to the growing body of research indicating the positive effects that DepoVax-based agents have on increasing circulating T cells and tumor susceptibility to additional immune therapies, including checkpoint inhibitors. The clinical data thus far, we believe, advantageously position DPX-Survivac as an optimal component of future combination therapies."
Findings related to combination therapies were reinforced in a preclinical data presentation this September at the 2016 CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference. Researchers presented data on the effects of a DepoVax-based agent in combination with cyclophosphamide on tumor progression and the tumor microenvironment (TME). Researchers concluded that vaccine immunotherapy could enhance anti-PD-1 therapy by promoting the activity of antigen-specific T cells within the TME. These findings were published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer in October 2016.
"We believe that these findings provide further support for advancing clinical development based upon effective T cell activation therapies in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, and we are in active discussions with collaborators in this space," said Mr. Ors.
"With an eye towards focusing our immuno-oncology programs on those best-positioned to maximize the advantages of our DepoVax-based system and the needs of our current and future collaborators, we terminated our agreement with Professor Marianna Nuti, Ph.D., Department of Experimental Medicine at the University of Rome for an investigator-lead planned trial for DPX-Survivac in patients with glioblastoma. We also began the process of terminating the licensing agreement with Immunotope Inc. for the use of certain patented antigens. These antigens had been used specifically for our DPX-0907 program, which we have opted to discontinue" noted Mr. Ors.
"The second pillar of our business strategy focuses on leveraging our DepoVax-based technology in the infectious disease arena," said Mr. Ors. "RSV continues to be a large unmet medical need, particularly among vulnerable populations like the elderly, very young and immuno-compromised. Recent industry setbacks in developing a vaccine to address this infection are indicative of the challenges facing clinicians who are working to address its debilitating effects."
In July, Immunovaccine announced positive interim data, which was followed up shortly after the quarter ended with topline data, from its Phase 1 trial in RSV evaluating the safety and immunogenicity of the DPX-RSV vaccine candidate.
"These results yielded three significant points that highlight the value of our DPX-RSV program," stated Mr. Ors.
1. "Achieving a key safety milestone-namely demonstration of a tolerable safety profile with no significant adverse events; 2. Demonstrating relevant, antigen-specific immune responses at least six months after the last vaccination in both low-dose (8/8 participants) and high-dose (7/8 participants) cohorts; and, 3. Highlighting the advantages of our proprietary mechanism of action and targeting the SH antigen of RSV, which are unlike other approaches that may not provide enough protection against RSV and its complications."
Currently, there is no marketed vaccine to prevent RSV.
"To the best of our knowledge," said Mr. Ors, "Immunovaccine has the only program targeting the SH antigen to address RSV, and we hold exclusive worldwide licenses on applications that target the SH ectodomain antigen in RSV. This puts us in a position, potentially, to both bring much-needed benefit to address an unmet public health need, and drive value for our investors and potential future collaborators via a novel, proprietary methodology to combat RSV."
In addition, the Company's infectious disease-related development programs yielded data presentations at several industry conferences. Researchers detailed findings of the novel DPX-RSV program at the International Respiratory Syncytial Virus Symposium (RSV16), the World Vaccine Congress, and IDWeek. In addition, shortly after the quarter ended, Immunovaccine collaborators at the University of Edinburgh announced positive preclinical data on DepoVax-based malaria vaccine research at the World Vaccine Congress. While there are multiple pathogens and forms of malaria, this study focused specifically on the type of infection most likely to result in death, in which infected red blood cells stick together with uninfected red cells, forming clumps within small blood vessels that block blood flow. This process, known as rosetting, can result in hypoxia, organ damage, and, in some cases, death.
Researchers found that novel targets, when formulated in the DepoVax targeting platform, generated strong, sustained, antibody responses that could prevent, after a single injection, the 'rosetting' process.
"Severe malaria continues to present a significant worldwide health concern, and we believe that a vaccine that can address its most virulent forms could positively impact global malaria-related mortality rates," said Mr. Ors. "For Immunovaccine, this further supports the value proposition that DepoVax is emerging as an ideal enabling agent for novel treatments being developed to address some of the world's most challenging infectious diseases.
"On the corporate front-the third pillar of Immunovaccine's value proposition-we started off this quarter with a strong financial position, coming off of an $8M equity financing that occurred just before the quarter started. We also continued to expand the audience of potential investors for Immunovaccine, participating in the BIO Investor and Rodman & Renshaw conferences."
Shortly after the quarter ended, Immunovaccine announced the departure of its chief financial officer, Kimberly Stephens. The Company is currently working with the Board on the process of identifying a new CFO, and Ms. Stephens will continue to work with Immunovaccine through December 2016 while her successor is fully transitioned into the position.
"In addition," said Mr. Ors, "we are very proud to have recently named our first-ever chief medical officer (CMO) as Dr. Gabriela Rosu joins our leadership team. Dr. Rosu brings to Immunovaccine more than 15 years of broad clinical and pharmaceutical industry experience that spans the entire value chain of pharmaceutical development, from early phase discovery to post-marketing commercialization. The clinical and commercial experience that Gabriela brings to our team will be instrumental in preparing for our expansion and validates the potential of our platform and product candidates. We are thrilled to welcome her to our team, and believe that the depth and breadth of her medical knowledge, as well as her industry track record, are tremendous assets to our organization."
Looking forward, Mr. Ors noted, "While cancer and infectious disease may present as very different illnesses, they share the process of continually evolving, often outpacing even the newest treatment options that our industry can bring to market. This third quarter, while our clinical programs continued to progress, we were also able to expand our research and development activities, including research in malaria and neoepitope immunotherapies, ensuring that our DepoVax-based platform is well positioned to be a long-term force in immuno-oncology and infectious diseases. We expect continued progress along these fronts for the balance of 2016 and into 2017. We are also looking forward to advancing the programs with our current collaborators, and to announcing new partnerships that will drive value to our investor base, and support our goal of bringing novel medicines to market quickly and safely."
Q3 2016 Financial Results
The Company prepares its unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements in accordance with Canadian generally accepted accounting principles as set out in the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada - Accounting Part I ("CPA Canada Handbook"), which incorporates International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board ("IASB").
The net loss and comprehensive loss of $1,899,000 for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 ("Q3 Fiscal 2016") was $105,000 lower than the net loss and comprehensive loss for the three months ended September 30, 2015 ("Q3 Fiscal 2015"). This relates mainly to a $361,000 decrease in research and development costs, a $97,000 decrease in business development costs, offset by a $61,000 increase in general and administrative expenditures, a decrease in revenue of $65,000, a $32,000 increase in accreted interest, and an impairment loss of $195,000.
For Q3 Fiscal 2016, the Company reported total R&D expenses of $763,000, net of government loans and assistance of $49,000 and investment tax credits of $61,000. This represented a $361,000 decrease of net research and development expenses over Q3 Fiscal 2015. General and administrative expenses of $686,000 were reported for Q3 Fiscal 2016 compared to $625,000 for Q3 Fiscal 2015. Total business development expenses of $118,000 in Q3 Fiscal 2016 represented a decrease of $97,000 compared Q3 Fiscal 2015.The impairment loss of $195,000 relates entirely to the termination of Immunovaccine's exclusive world-wide license with Immunotope for the use of patented antigens in its therapeutic cancer vaccine candidate, DPX-0907.
At September 30, 2016, Immunovaccine had cash and cash equivalents of $7,908,000 million and working capital of $7,652,000 million as compared to $3,842,000 million in cash and $3,283,000 million in working capital at December 31, 2015.
As of September 30, 2016, the number of issued and outstanding common shares was 106,911,508. On September 30, 2016, the number of stock options outstanding was 6,456,487 and the number of outstanding warrants was 8,146,908.
Immunovaccine's unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements for September 30, 2016, filed in accordance with IFRS, and the management discussion and analysis (MD&A), will be available at www.sedar.com.
About Immunovaccine
Immunovaccine Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to making immunotherapy more effective, more broadly applicable, and more widely available to people facing cancer and infectious diseases. Immunovaccine develops cancer immunotherapies and infectious disease vaccines based on the Company's DepoVax platform, a patented delivery agent that provides controlled and prolonged exposure of antigens and adjuvant to the immune system. Immunovaccine has advanced two T cell activation therapies for cancer through Phase 1 human clinical trials and is currently conducting a Phase 1/1b study with Incyte Corporation assessing lead cancer therapy, DPX-Survivac, as part of a triple combination therapy in ovarian cancer, as well as a Phase 2 study in recurrent lymphoma. The Company is also advancing an infectious disease pipeline, including innovative vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and currently has clinical projects ongoing to assess the potential of DepoVax to address malaria and the Zika virus. Connect at www.imvaccine.com.
Immunovaccine Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking information under applicable securities law. All information that addresses activities or developments that we expect to occur in the future is forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are based on the estimates and opinions of management of the Company on the date the statements are made. However, they should not be regarded as a representation that any of the plans will be achieved. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in this press release due to risks affecting the Company, including access to capital, the results and successful completion of clinical trials and receipt of all regulatory approvals. Immunovaccine Inc. assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements in this press release except as required by applicable law.
Contacts:
MEDIA
Mike Beyer
Sam Brown Inc.
(312) 961-2502
mikebeyer@sambrown.com
INVESTOR RELATIONS
Frederic Ors
Chief Executive Officer
(902) 492-1819
info@imvaccine.com
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - February 22, 2017) - Further to Roscan Minerals Corporation's (TSXV: ROS.H) ("Roscan" or the "Company") announcement of November 8, 2016, the Company is pleased to announce that certain payments due pursuant to the option and joint venture agreement (the "Option"), dated November 7, 2016, with Pelangio Exploration Inc. have been extended and are now as follows:
(a) fund an aggregate of $2,000,000 in exploration expenditures, as follows:
Amount Due Date $150,000 By March 5, 2017; $150,000 By May 4, 2017; $700,000 By December 5, 2017; and, $1,000,000 By December 5, 2018.
(b) pay to Pelangio an aggregate of $160,000, as follows:
Amount Due Date $10,000 On November 7, 2016 (paid) $50,000 On December 5, 2017; and, $100,000 On December 5, 2018
In addition, the previously announced private placement has been changed to a non-brokered private placement of up to 5,000,000 units (each, a "Unit") of the Company, at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of up to $250,000. Each Unit will consist of one common share (the "Common Share") and one Common Share purchase warrant (the "Warrant") entitling the holder thereof to purchase one additional Common Share at an exercise price of $0.08 for twelve (12) months from the date of issuance. The Company reserves the right to accelerate the expiration of the Warrants, if at any time, which is more than four months and one day following the closing date of the private placement, the closing price of the Company's Common Shares is $0.15 or more for at least twenty (20) consecutive trading days. The Common Shares and Warrants comprising the Units will be subject to resale restriction for four months plus one day from the date of issuance. The Company may pay finder's fees with respect to proceeds raised.
The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to fund its initial exploration payment under the Option, for working capital purposes and otherwise in a manner consistent with the accomplishment of the Company's business objectives.
For further information, please contact:
Mark McMurdie, Chief Financial Officer
Roscan Minerals Corporation
Tel: (416) 293-8437
Fax: (416) 293-3957
Email: info@roscan.ca
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.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information
This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the option to earn an interest in the Dormaa Project, the Company's proposed financing activities and its ability to satisfy its project financing and working capital needs, planned use of any proceeds or available funds, objectives, goals or future exploration plans at the Dormaa Project, the business and operations of the Company. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: failure of Pelangio to obtain the authorizations for the assignment to it of the Prospecting License; the Company's inability to obtain financing to satisfy the payments necessary for it to earn an interest in the Dormaa Project when due; political and economic risks related to Ghana, title risks, liquidity risks related to the Company and Pelangio, general business, economic and social uncertainties; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; delay or failure to receive board or regulatory approvals; those additional risks set out in the Company's public documents filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com; and other matters discussed in this news release. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. Except where required by law, the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
JSC Halyk Bank / Miscellaneous - Medium Priority JSC Halyk Bank: Consolidated financial results for the nine months ended 30 September 2016 18-Nov-2016 / 08:08 CET/CEST Dissemination of a Regulatory Announcement, transmitted by EquityStory.RS, LLC - a company of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. 18 November 2016 *Joint Stock Company 'Halyk Savings Bank of Kazakhstan'* *Consolidated financial results * *for the nine months ended 30 September 2016* Joint Stock Company 'Halyk Savings Bank of Kazakhstan' and its subsidiaries (together 'the Bank') (LSE: HSBK) releases its condensed interim consolidated financial information for the nine months ended 30 September 2016. *9m 2016 financial highlights* *3Q 2016 financial highlights* Net income is up by 2.2% YoY to Net income is up by 0.5% YoY to KZT 94.0bn; KZT 36.9bn; Net interest income before Net interest income before impairment charge is up by impairment charge is up by 17.0%; 28.6%; Impairment charge is up by 2.2 Impairment charge is up by times; 20.2%; Net interest income is up by Net interest income is up by 8.5%; 30.4%; Fees and commission income is Fees and commission income is up by 11.8%; up by 13.3%; Net interest margin is down to Net interest margin is down to 5.6% p.a. vs. 6.5% p.a. for 9M 5.6% p.a. vs. 6.3% p.a. for 3Q 2015; 2015; Cost-to-income ratio is flat Cost-to-income ratio is up to 27.7% vs. 27.7% for 9M 2015; 25.3% vs. 23.8% for 3Q 2015; RoAE is down to 22.0% p.a. vs. RoAE is down to 24.1% p.a. vs. 25.5% p.a. for 9M 2015; 29.8% p.a. for 3Q 2015; RoAA is down to 2.8% p.a. vs. RoAA is down to 3.1% p.a. vs. 4.1% p.a. for 9M 2015; 4.5% p.a. for 3Q 2015; Total assets are up by 5.6%, Total assets are down by 3.9%, YTD; q-o-q; Net loans to customers are up Net loans to customers are up by 1.3%; by 2.0%; Total equity is up by 19.3%; Total equity is up by 7.6%; NPLs 90-day+ ratio is up to NPLs 90-day+ ratio is down to 11.5% vs. 10.3% as at 31 11.5% vs. 12.0% as at 30 June December 2015; 2016; Cost of risk[1] is up to 1.0% Cost of risk1 is up to 1.4% p.a. vs. 0.4% p.a. for 9M 2015; p.a. vs. 1.2% p.a. for 3Q 2015; Provisioning level is down to Provisioning level is almost 12.1% vs. 12.3% as at 31 flat at 12.1% vs. 12.2% as at December 2015. 30 June 2016. *Statement of profit or loss review* Compared with 9m 2015, *interest income* grew by 43.4%. This was due to 37.8% increase in average balances of interest-earning assets and a rise of average interest rates on those to 10.8% p.a. from 10.4% p.a., mainly on the back of NBK Notes purchased to the Bank's portfolio during 2Q and 3Q 2016. *Interest expense* grew by 88.4% compared with 9m 2015. This was due to increase in average balances of interest-bearing liabilities and a rise in interest rates on KZT-denominated amounts due to customers and amounts due to credit institutions. The increase in average balances of interest-bearing liabilities was a result of KZT depreciation in autumn 2015 (after free-float KZT exchange rate policy adopted by the NBK in August 2015); the rise in interest rates was a result of limited KZT funding on the market and, consequently, higher interest rates offered to the Bank's clients in 1Q 2016. As a result, *net interest income before impairment charge *increased by 17.0% to KZT 133.8bn compared to 9m 2015. *Impairment charge* increased to KZT 19.0bn for 9M 2016 vs. KZT 8.5bn for 9? 2015. Lower impairment charges in 9M 2015 were due to the transfer of several problem loans to the Bank's SPV Halyk-Project LLP and repayment of a large-ticket impaired corporate loan, which resulted in provision recoveries. In 9M 2016, the *cost of risk *was back to a more normalised level of 1.0% p.a. vs. 0.4% p.a. in 9M 2015. *Fee and commission income* rose by 11.8% for 9m 2016 vs. 9m 2015, as a result of growing volumes of transactional banking, mainly in payment card maintenance, bank transfers - settlements and cash operations. *Other non-interest income* (excluding insurance) decreased to KZT 12.0bn for 9m 2016 vs. KZT 24.7bn 9m 2015. This decline was mainly attributable to KZT 10.0bn net loss from financial assets and liabilities at fair value through profit or loss mainly as a result of loss on derivative operations of one of the Bank's subsidiaries and, to a lesser extent, due to revaluation loss on trading and derivative operations (USD/KZT swaps, off-balance sheet) on the back of KZT appreciation. The decrease was partially offset by net foreign exchange gain, mainly as a result of positive revaluation of short USD position on balance sheet due to KZT appreciation in 3Q 2016. *Operating expenses *grew by 6.4% compared to 9M 2015 mainly due to increase in salaries of some categories of the Bank's employees and incentive bonus scheme introduced starting from 1 January 2016 instead of salary indexation. The Bank's cost-to-income ratio remained flat at 27.7% compared to 9M 2015. At the same time the Bank's operating income increased by 6.2% for 9M 16 vs. 9M 15 on the back of higher interest income and fee and commission income. The Bank's cost-to-income ratio increased to 25.3% for 3Q 2016 compared with 23.8% for 3Q 2015, as a result of higher operating income in 3Q 2015 due to one-off unrealised gain on derivative operations. *Statement of financial position review* In 9M 2016, *total assets *grew by 5.6% vs. YE 2015, as a result of increase in the Bank's client deposit base. Compared with YE 2015, *loans to customers* increased by 1.0% on a gross basis and 1.3% on a net basis, mainly on the back of consumer loans (+ 7.2% on a gross basis). Compared with 30 June 2016, loans to customers increased by 1.8% on a gross basis and 2.0% on a net basis, on the back of corporate loans (+2.2% on a gross basis) and consumer loans (+4.7% on a gross basis). *90-day NPL ratio *decreased to 11.5% as at 30 September 2016 compared to 12.0% as at 30 June 2016, mainly due to write-off of fully provisioned non-performing loans for KZT 5.7bn, as well as restructuring and repayment of non-performing indebtedness by the Bank's corporate clients and overall loan portfolio increase. *Allowances for loan impairment* decreased by 0.9% vs. YE 2015, mainly as a result of loan write-off and repayments of impaired indebtedness by the Bank's borrowers. Allowances for loan impairment increased by 0.6% vs. 30 June 2016 as a result of additional provisions on impaired loans recognised during 3Q 2016. *Provisioning level* was at 12.1% compared with 12.2% as at 30 June 2016 and 12.3% as at 31 December 2015. *Deposits of legal entities and individuals *increased by3.3% and 5.2%, respectively, compared to YE 2015 as a result of new KZT and FX deposits placed with the Bank by its corporate clients and retail customers during 9M 2016. As at 30 September 2016,the share of corporate KZT deposits in total corporate depositswas 37.6% compared to 37.9% as at 30 June 2016 and 24.2% as at YE 2015, whereas the share of retail KZT deposits in total retail depositswas 28.1% compared to 29.0%as at 30 June 2016 and 23.3% as at YE 2015. *Amounts due to credit institutions * increased by 6.3% vs. YE 2015 mainly due to increase in balances on correspondent accounts as at the reporting date. As of 30 September 2016, over one half of the Bank's obligations to financial institutions was represented by loans from KazAgro national management holding, DAMU development fund and Development Bank of Kazakhstan drawn in FY2014 and FY2015 within the framework of government programmes supporting certain sectors of economy. *Debt securities issued *decreased by 1.1% vs. YE 2015 mainly due to scheduled repayment of 10-year KZT 4bn local subordinated bond on 25 April 2016, bearing a coupon rate of 15% minus inflation. On 9 November 2016, the Bank made another voluntary prepayment of KZT 5bn subordinated bonds bearing a coupon rate of 13% p.a. with original maturity in November 2018. Therefore, as at the date of this press-release, the Bank's debt securities consisted of: - two outstanding Eurobond issues for USD 638mln and USD 500mln, maturing in May 2017 and January 2021, respectively, each bearing a coupon rate of 7.25% p.a.; - local bonds of KZT 131.7bn placed with the Single Accumulated Pension Fund in 2015 at a coupon rate of 7.5% p.a. and maturing in February 2025; - local bonds of KZT 100bn placed with the Single Accumulated Pension Fund in 2014 at a coupon rate of 7.5% p.a. and maturing in November 2024. Compared with YE 2015 *total equity *increased by 19.3% due to net profit earned during 9M 2016. The Bank's capital adequacy ratios were as follows: *01.10.2016* *01.07.2016* *01.04.2016* *01.01.2016* _Capital adequacy ratios, unconsolidated:_ K1-1 19.0% 19.9% 18.5% 17.3% K1-2 19.0% 19.9% 18.5% 17.3% K2 19.0% 19.9% 18.5% 17.5% _Capital adequacy ratios, consolidated:_ CET 19.1% 19.7% 18.8% 17.3% Tier 1 19.1% 18.8% 17.3% capital 19.7% Tier 2 19.2% 18.9% 17.5% capital 19.8% The increase in capital adequacy ratios compared to YE 2015 was mainly due to net profit earned by the Bank during 9m 2016. The decrease in capital adequacy ratios compared to 2Q 2016 was mainly due to increase in risk-weighted assets during 3Q 2016 on the back of increase in interbank deposits and consumer loans. The condensed interim consolidated financial information for the nine months ended 30 September 2016, including notes attached thereto, are available on Halyk Bank's website
(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires
November 18, 2016 02:09 ET (07:09 GMT)
The European Commission and EIF have launched a new venture capital fund of funds program.
The fund of funds will invest into a portfolio of venture capital funds across the continent.
The European Commission will commit up to 400m in funding as a cornerstone investor to secure at least three times that amount of investment from other sources.
The funds will then back a range of tech startups and entrepreneurs across Europe, providing funding and active management to fulfil their potential.
Over 1,300 European startups and SMEs could receive investment.
The Commission, which is calling for independent investors to manage the funds under the new program, is willing to provide up to 300m of capital to a single fund. The investment will be capped at 25% of the vehicles total investor commitments.
The aim of the vehicle is to attract major global investors, such as pension funds and insurers, into the market.
FinSMEs
08/11/2016
Fillr, a Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, CA-based creator of secure autofill technology, raised AUS$5m in Series A funding.
Backers included SoftBank China Capital, Southern Cross Venture Partners and Reinventure as well as current investors Constant Innovation, the early stage venture fund launched by the founders of carsales.com, including Chairman Wal Pisciotta and CEO Greg Roebuck.
The company intends to use the funds to expand its global presence in North American, European and Asian markets and further advance its tech/AI.
Led by Chris Koch, CEO, and Chad Stephens, Chief Product Officer, Fillr has created cloud-based artificial intelligence that uses advanced machine-learning to power a data exchange platform that can be used for any payment, checkout or data transaction on the internet.
Currently, the company has partnered with more than 20 different browsers, handset OEMs and mobile software providers that represent a collective reach of more than 150 million MAUs with more than two thirds of its transactions emanating from North America and the United Kingdom.
FinSMEs
08/11/2016
Freespee, a real time conversation cloud company, secured 9.25m in Series B funding.
The round was led by Ventech with participation from growth debt provider Silicon Valley Bank, and existing investors Sunstone Capital and Inventure. In conjunction with the funding, Ventechs Tero Mennander joined Freespees board.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate product development.
Founded by Carl Holmquist, CEO, and other Swedish software engineers at the end of 2009, Freespee provides marketers with tools to monitor, manage and personalize the experience of every customer conversation taking place through desktop web, mobile web and mobile apps.
The company, which is based in Uppsala, Sweden, Paris, France, Barcelona, Spain, and London, UK, currently serves global brands such as Allianz, Lloyds, eBay, Bupa, Marriott Hotels and Peugeot, managing millions of conversations every month across 20 countries.
FinSMEs
08/11/2016
MobiChord Inc., a Salt Lake City, Utah-based global provider of telecom service management software and related services, secured seed funding from ServiceNow Ventures.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Led by Herbert Uhl, CEO and co-founder, MobiChord provides customers with solutions, built natively on ServiceNow, to apply a structured, automated approach to managing telecom services, mobile devices, expenses, contracts and usage by aggregating wireless carrier information and enterprise mobility data to create a single system of record. Organizations can request, order, and assign corporate owned devices or enroll employee devices in a BYOD program.
The company offers a portfolio of software and services to address every aspect of telecommunications including:
Mobility Management
Wired-Line Management
Telecom Asset Management
Internet of Things Management
Software as a Service Management.
FinSMEs
08/11/2016
ReferWell, a NYC-based online platform for medical generalist-to-specialist patient referrals, completed a private equity financing round of undisclosed amount.
The round was led by Health Catalyst Capital Management.
The company intends to use the funds to ramp up sales activity and to expand the feature set of the ReferWell platform.
Led by Vytas Kisielius, CEO, ReferWell provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), HIPAA and HITECH-compliant platform which enables doctors or administrative staff in primary care physicians offices to schedule patients with specialist-care providers that participate in the patients insurance and perform the needed procedure.
The company, which is already servicing thousands of medical offices in New York City to send and receive referrals, is rolling out its platform to clinics, independent physician practices, urgent care providers, hospitals, and other health service providers on a subscription basis.
FinSMEs
08/11/2016
This could be an interesting casting coup.
After multiple reports of how Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh's daughter Sara Ali Khan was making her debut with Student of the Year 2 and/or with Shahid Kapoor's younger brother Ishan Khattar, a fresh set of rumours have surfaced.
According to this Spotboye report, Sara may be making her debut with Ranveer Singh in Zoya Akhtar's next film Gully Boy, which is a coming-of-age story of local rappers from Mumbai, Divine and Naezy. It is reported that the films producers, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, along with Zoya, have been in touch with Sara to finalise her involvement.
Firstpost had earlier reported that Zoya Akhtar was definitely going to make this film, and that it would start rolling sometime this year. "Yes, my next film is inspired by real life street rappers. I watched these kids on the net and they just blew my mind. I didnt know that this kind of music was coming out of the lanes and by-lanes of Mumbai. People are so consumed with listening to just film music that nobody pays attention to some serious talent on the streets. That is how it all started," she said.
If Sara and Ranveer are cast together in the film, it will indeed be an unconventional but pleasing-on-the-eyes choice.
Speculation is rife that Ranveer Singh will play an underdog who rises from the slums of Mumbai to become a rapper addressing Dalit oppression, street life, economic inequality and homosexuality and even corrupt politicians. Interestingly, Ranveer himself is a very good rapper in real life; he used to rap and create radio jingles before he became an actor.
Watch this space for updates.
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has left New Delhi to escape the pollution that has paralysed the normal life in the capital city, according to a report in The Economic Times.
He left on Sunday with family for Mumbai and plans to stay put there until the air clears in Delhi, says the report.
I couldnt have waited till Monday. Air is really bad in Delhi and Im allergic to dust, he has been quoted as saying in the report.
In an indication that the pollution may be impacting the businesses, Sharma has also reportedly cancelled a slew of meetings that was scheduled to take place in the Noida office. He has even asked his staff to work from home if required.
As pollution levels worsened in Delhi, the government had two days back announced a raft of "emergency" measures, including shutting schools until Wednesday, banning construction and demolition activities for five days and temporary closure of Badarpur Power Plant.
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal also appealed to people to stay indoors and if possible work from home considering the situation, adding that strict action will be taken against those found burning garbage.
According to the ET report, Sharma had earlier too considered shifting the base to Bengaluru due to pollution issues. However, he decided to continue in Delhi due to the better global connectivity the city offers.
By R Vaidyanathan
The white paper on black money produced by the ministry of Finance and presented to parliament during the last session has evoked a mixed response (See here).
One of the major criticisms it has faced is that it has mixed up domestic black money and illicit money kept in tax havens abroad by Indians. These two need to be dealt with in different ways. Some part of the domestic black money is used in productive activities like real estate, trade, construction, mining, transport, restaurants and other businesses. The illicit money kept in tax havens abroad is, by and large, not used for domestic purposes unless it is round-tripped through share markets or foreign direct investment (FDI) to domestic operations.
Domestic black money is a no-confidence motion on the government of India while illicit money kept abroad is a no-confidence vote on India itself - its stability and its people.
Domestic black money is primarily dependent on the cash economy and tries to avoid formal transactions through banks due to fear of being captured by electronic systems and the tax authorities. So the holding of black money is usually in the form of cash and transactions undertaken in cash. This implies that substantial portions have to be kept in high denominational currency, since storing or carrying huge quantities of cash in small denominations is relatively difficult.
In India, if we take only currency notes (and coins), we have the lowest denomination at Re 1 (of course, the Rs 1 currency note has been replaced with coins) and the highest at Rs 1,000 - which implies that the differential is 1,000 times between lowest and highest pieces if currency. In the US, the most popular highest denomination is $100 - and the differential is 100 only.
Not only that, we find from Table 1 below that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) seems to favour printing higher denominations currency even though the mass of poor people may transact only in lower denominations. We find that in 2005-06, around 57 percent of the total amount of Rs 43 lakh crore of coins and notes introduced in circulation comprised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. But by 2010-11, the share of the higher notes had become 79 percent of the total value of Rs 95 lakh crore.
This implies that more and more of the denominations in circulation are skewed to higher value notes when the mass of people may need lower value denominations. The very high denominations also facilitate transactions in black money.
If the government wants to reduce domestic black money, it should withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from circulation, and replace them with lower denominations such as Rs 100 and Rs 50. This can be undertaken in an orderly fashion over a period of say three to four months and all those who possess the higher denominations can exchange it with banking channels for lower denominations. It will automatically bring a huge amount of the funds kept in these denominations into the banking channels.
When this happens, the government can decide the nature of penalties to be levied if the amount has not been declared earlier for tax purposes. For instance, for the year 2010-11, nearly Rs 75 lakh crore would be converted from Rs 500-1,000 notes to new Rs 100s, etc. Of course, an adequate number of new Rs 50-100 notes should be made available from the operational point of view for this conversion.
Another issue about holding cash in our context is this. The black money report says: "As of now there are no legal restrictions to keeping very large amounts of cash with oneself or transporting it from one place to another. One is neither required to report it nor provide any explanation for it. There have been suggestions that the government may consider amending existing laws, including the Coinage Act, 2011, the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, FEMA, and the Indian Penal Code, or enacting an entirely new statute aimed at regulating the possession and transportation of cash above a particular threshold limit. This may include creating a limitation on cash holdings for private use, as well as provisions for confiscation of cash held beyond such prescribed limits. However, such laws need a broader political consensus to emerge for their acceptance in Parliament."
We find that political parties do disburse cash to voters prior to elections and for which a huge amount of cash is held and transported from one location to another. For instance, one report suggests that in the recent Andhra Pradesh byelections cash valued at as high as Rs 32 crore was seized prior to the polls. These were presumably meant for distribution to voters.
An earlier report pertaining to last year's elections in Tamil Nadu suggested that Rs 24 crore in cash was seized by election officials.
There are many other reports which give us a clue that cash is held and transported in huge quantities not only for bribery at elections, but for other black money transactions. It is important that we bring in the necessary changes in the Coinage Act, 2011, and other relevant acts to make holding of cash above a threshold level, say Rs 10 lakh, punishable. This threshold can be arrived at by the Reserve Bank after taking into account the requirements for genuine cash transactions in the economy like marriage and religious ceremonies, wage disbursals in construction activities, etc. This limit should not be applicable to obviously banking institutions and corporates having construction/project activities where substantial amounts of cash disbursals take place.
In developed economies like the US, there are no restrictions per se in terms of holding or transporting cash domestically, unless it is suspected to be drug money. Even there, transactions beyond $10,000 in cash are expected to be notified to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by shops and establishments. Of course, there are restrictions on the amount of dollars one can transport during immigration/emigration. But since the US is a well developed economy, most of the transactions are conducted through plastic cards or banking channels.
In our country, cash transactions are more to avoid taxes and generate black money. The higher the denomination, the easier it is to transact and transport. Taking into account our situation, we should evolve laws to prohibit the holding of cash beyond a threshold level and this will go a long way in preventing disbursals for black transactions.
These two steps - demonetising Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes and creating a threshold limit for cash holdings - will facilitate a reduction in domestic black money transactions. These decisions will not eliminate domestic black money, but will help reduce it to some extent. Probity in public life comes in an incremental fashion since we have reached the nadir. Are our parliamentarians and other opinion makers ready for at least incremental steps to reduce domestic black money?
R Vaidyanathan is professor of finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. These views are personal
Following the government's decision and PM Modi's announcement that the currencies in the denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 will be invalid post 8 November, there is a sudden surge of people visiting shops and markets to confirm the validity of the aforementioned notes.
Many of these people spoke to Firstpost in Delhi and shared their apprehensions regarding their immediate move concerning the currency. While they are concerned about the government's ban, they laud Modis decision as a major blow on those who have stacked black money in their homes.
It is a very smart move by Prime Minister Modi. No one had any clue of this. I feel this is meant to stop the corruption and strike on black money that this step has been taken. Though people might face problems for some days but its longer term implications will be very good. People are no doubt having trouble buying grocery and other things or taking an auto rickshaw but I think this is just a short term problem, said Anant an IT professional living near Akshardham.
He added, If you look at the bright side this will be good for us only. I am just amused that people who have hoarded black money will have heart attack tonight."
Prem Kumar, an auto rickshaw driver said, We poor people are very happy. Why should we be concerned? We earn every day and spend every day. It is politicians and big officer who earn so much 'kala dhan' who need to worry. I think they have to burn that black money as fuel this winter.
Phalguni, a student who is facing problem since she withdrew some 500 rupee notes only this evening, feels that the long term implications of this decision will be good.
I would say it is a good move but it will be good for majority of us. Black money is a serious issue this move is major blow to it. It will bring out the black money hidden in quilts and sofas of many people. I think such decisive moves are required to curb corruption, said Rakesh, an elderly citizen.
While most people laud this move, some express their apprehension and discomfort since the available currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 isn't being accepted by shopkeepers.
Kirti, a resident of Mayur Vihar extension said, I have to buy medicines but the chemist is not accepting the cash I have. Government should have given us time before taking this extreme step."
People are lining up outside ATMs and are seen withdrawing cash in figures like Rs 400 so that they can get 100 rupee notes.
The move to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes was announced in a sudden address at 8 pm that was televised across all news channels. The demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes is a major assault on black money hoarders, fake currency and corruption.
All notes in lower denomination of Rs 100, Rs 50, Rs 20, Rs 10, Rs 5, Rs 2 and Re 1 and all coins will continue to be valid. Government also announced that new notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 will be introduced.
By Scott DiSavino
| NEW YORK
NEW YORK Oil prices were little changed on Tuesday, paring earlier gains in line with U.S. stock markets as voters head to the polls to elect the next president of the United States.In a swell of investor risk appetite, U.S. stocks racked up their biggest one-day gain since March on Monday, but this boost, which lifted oil, copper and European equities earlier on Tuesday faded. [.N]The most recent polls have put Democrat Hillary Clinton ahead of Republican rival Donald Trump in Tuesday's election. Clinton is seen by investors as offering greater certainty and stability.Brent futures edged up 8 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $46.07 a barrel at 11:27 a.m. EST (1627 GMT). U.S. crude rose a penny to $44.90 per barrel."We expect markets to take a pause today across the financial spectrum as election results are awaited," Jim Ritterbusch, president of Chicago-based energy advisory Ritterbusch & Associates, said in a note.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast demand for its oil will rise in the next three years, suggesting its 2014 decision to let prices fall to curb costlier rival supplies is delivering higher market share. [OPEC/M]The group meets on Nov. 30 and has pledged to reach a deal on cutting output to try to erode a two-year-old global surplus.
But a series of member states asking to be exempt from any deal, along with questions over the likelihood of non-OPEC rival Russia joining in, have created doubt over OPEC's ability to deliver a meaningful cut.Mohammed Barkindo, secretary-general of OPEC, warned on Tuesday that failure to implement the agreement reached in Algiers in September to cut output would bring negative consequences to an already fragile oil industry."The fact that Barkindo feels a need to make such public statements suggests the membership remains divided on at least the details of an agreement," Citi Futures energy futures specialist Tim Evans said in a note.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) will release its data on U.S. oil inventories for the week ended Nov. 4 at 4:30 p.m. EST on Tuesday. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release its weekly petroleum status report at 10:30 a.m. EST on Wednesday.Analysts said they expect crude stocks to rise 1.1 million barrels, according to a Reuters poll. [EIA/S] (Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Dale Hudson)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Scott DiSavino
| NEW YORK
NEW YORK Oil prices ended little changed on Tuesday as the market waited to find out who voters elected to be the next president of the United States.The most recent polls have put Democrat Hillary Clinton ahead of Republican rival Donald Trump in Tuesday's election. Most investors believe a Clinton victory would result in greater certainty and stability in financial markets.Brent LCOc1 futures lost 11 cents, or 0.2 percent, to settle at $46.04 a barrel, while U.S. crude CLc1 rose 9 cents, or 0.2 percent, to settle at $44.98 per barrel.Brent crude's premium to U.S. futures WTCLc1-LCOc1 declined to its lowest level in almost five months on Tuesday as the global benchmark weakened relative to the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) contract due in part to projections of record OPEC output."Everyone is on hold to see what happens in the election. There was too much uncertainty for the market to develop a clear direction in price," said James Williams, president of energy consultant WTRG Economics in Arkansas, noting the market was also waiting for a couple of inventory reports.
At 4:30 p.m. EST (2130GMT) on Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute (API) will release its data on U.S. oil inventories for the week ended Nov. 4. On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will release its weekly petroleum status report at 10:30 a.m. EST.Analysts said they expected crude stocks to rise 1.3 million barrels, according to a Reuters poll. [EIA/S]"Both the election and the inventory numbers should be much clearer Wednesday," Williams at WTRG said.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast demand for its oil will rise in the next three years, suggesting its 2014 decision to let prices fall to curb costlier rival supplies is delivering higher market share. [OPEC/M]The group meets on Nov. 30 and has pledged to reach a deal on cutting output to try to reduce a two-year-old global surplus.
But several member states have asked to be exempt from any deal. Along with questions over the likelihood of non-OPEC rival Russia joining in, this has created doubt about OPEC's ability to deliver a meaningful cut.Mohammed Barkindo, secretary-general of OPEC, warned that failure to implement the agreement reached in Algiers in September to cut output would bring negative consequences to an already fragile oil industry.In the United States, Colonial Pipeline's plan to restore its original gasoline line to service after a leak in September does not yet have federal approval. (Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Chris Reese)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BERLIN/PARIS (Reuters) - Germany's Angela Merkel criticised France's economic performance on Friday in a war of words with its new Socialist president, Francois Hollande, over how to tackle Europe's deepening debt crisis ahead of a pivotal election in Greece.
Describing her own country as Europe's "stabilising anchor and growth engine", the centre-right chancellor told German business leaders that Europe should talk about the growing gap between the bloc's two biggest economies.
The unusual rhetoric came after Hollande met German centre-left opposition leaders this week and also unveiled economic reforms, including a partial lowering of the pension age, that Berlin fears will only deepen France's economic problems.
The rift between the two powers that traditionally drive European Union policy coul hardly come at a worse time. If a radical left party wins Sunday's vote in Greece, the euro zone could find itself scrambling to avert a humiliating break-up.
Merkel said in her speech that only a decade ago Germany trailed or was at best even with France by traditional measures of competitiveness, such as unit labour costs.
Now, she said, Germany had opened up a "growing" lead, saying this was an issue "that must be discussed in Europe, naturally".
Tensions have risen so much that French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault felt moved to deny that his country was trying to form a united front with Italy and Spain against Merkel and her drive for austerity in the single currency zone.
But France later sought to cool tempers, saying relations with Germany were intact after Hollande and Merkel found common ground on G20 issues during a video-conference with other EU leaders.
"There is a free exchange of views, which is not the same as aggressiveness. We don't perceive it that way at all," said a French presidential source.
Still, the spat bore out fears voiced after Hollande's election last month that the Franco-German partnership may not be as close as under his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, whom Merkel backed during the campaign, refusing to meet Hollande.
Sarkozy's conservative UMP, now in opposition, accused Hollande's Socialists of feeling "obliged to sabotage" the Paris-Berlin dialogue because they disagreed with Merkel.
UMP national secretary Camille Bedin criticised Ayrault for advising Merkel to "take things seriously and courageously" and Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg for saying Merkel's "ideological blindness" was to blame for having "driven seven countries out of the euro zone's 17 into recession".
In addition to the pensions move, Hollande's government has announced plans to increase the cost of laying off workers.
FRANCO-GERMAN POKER
Merkel reiterated her view that issuing new debt to finance growth was not sustainable and again ruled out mutualising euro zone debt or issuing joint bonds to tackle the crisis - a stance diametrically opposed to Hollande's.
Rebuffing international pressure on Germany to underwrite the debts or bank deposits of weaker euro zone economies, Merkel said this week that "Germany's strength is not infinite".
Hollande says Europe must do more to revive growth to offset its German-inspired focus on tackling deficits and public debt.
His positions are shared by Germany's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens, who have been emboldened by his victory to step up their opposition to Merkel ahead of next year's federal elections, where she will seek a third term.
SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel said after meeting Hollande and Ayrault in Paris on Wednesday there was "no crucial point" on which his party and the French government disagreed, including the need for a tax on financial transactions in Europe.
The meeting at the Elysee Palace with the SPD's three main leaders was in itself a breach of protocol as a new president would normally play host to the German chancellor before there was any question of meeting the opposition.
Hollande could have been paying Merkel back for her refusal to meet him when he was running against Sarkozy, but it was also seen as emphasising his rejection of the policy ideas of the "Merkozy" power couple that dominated the euro zone.
"It's all part of the big poker game taking place between France and Germany at the moment," said political analyst Jacques Reland of the London-based Global Policy Institute.
France's first Socialist president in 17 years is on track to secure a clear parliamentary majority on Sunday, adding the lower house to its control of the Senate, which would give the left more power than it has ever held in France.
At an EU summit on June 28-29, Hollande is seeking German agreement to implement growth- and job-creating measures to accompany the fiscal pact, which both the French and German parliaments have yet to ratify.
Merkel has accepted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, four measures pushed by Hollande that were already on the agenda before his election: more capital for the European Investment Bank, reallocation of EU regional aid funds, project bonds to fund infrastructure, and the transaction tax.
(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and Nicholas Vinocur; Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Noah Barkin, Janet McBride and Kevin Liffey)
The view that there should be complete synergy between the stakeholders of democracy is dangerous. On the contrary, the character of a robust democracy is defined by the friction between its four pillars executive, legislature, judiciary and a free media. An existence of tension between these forces is a good thing and ultimately works to strengthen the institutions.
But this tension is a force of good as long as it is not allowed to degenerate into an ugly free-for-all, the kind of which we witnessed over the weekend since the government first proposed and then put on hold a move to take NDTV India off the air for a day on 9 November. None of the dramatis personae the government, media or the opposition emerge from this macabre play without sullying their credibility.
The Narendra Modi government's image has taken yet another heavy beating, and this time it has only itself to blame. Its actions lacked conviction, its communication strategy was in a shambles, and it moved with all the deftness of a bull in a china shop. An interplay between democracy's stakeholders must follow a clearly defined set of guiding principles rather than ad hocism. The Centre erred in slapping even a token "ban" howsoever grave the channel's error might have been and then botched it up further in an attempt to sound magnanimous.
The government believes that NDTV India jeopardised national security while covering the Pathankot terror attack and that it violated the newly introduced clause 6(1)p to the Programme Code of the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994, that restricts live coverage of terrorist attacks in the interest of national security. The amended rules prohibit any telecasting of strategically important information during a counter-terrorist operation and restrict the channels to periodic official briefings.
There are two important points to be made here. One, it is undeniable that terrorists and its handlers can exploit real-time dissemination of information from electronic medium to plan their strategy and there have been cases noticeably during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks where these have been used to devastating effect.
The Supreme Court in 2012 had lambasted the "reckless" coverage of Mumbai terror attacks and found that "by covering live the terrorist attack on Mumbai in the way it was done, Indian TV channels were not serving any national interest or social cause. On the contrary, they were acting in their own commercial interest, putting national security in jeopardy." As Times of India had reported, "the court found from the transcripts of conversations between terrorists holed up in Taj Hotel, Oberoi Hotel and Nariman House and their handlers in Pakistan that the terror masterminds were watching the live telecast and got important inputs about the positioning of security forces."
However, and now we come to the second point, as terrorists bring their violence close to us and into our living rooms, media is also trying to keep up with evolution. Mainstream media around the world are increasingly putting self-regulation in place while covering these "live" situations and Indian channels are also following suit. It is instructive to remember that even while ripping apart media's handling of the 26/11 attacks, the Supreme Court did not advise press freedom to be subjected to government scrutiny.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. NDTV India may or may not have erred in airing information that the government says was "sensitive", but which according to the channel was anyway available in public domain. But the moment the government took it upon itself to scrutinise and then penalise the channel even if it was a token penalty it embarked on the slippery slope of media censorship. While evaluating the role of one pillar of democracy a free media it vested too much power on bureaucracy and opened itself to criticism that the bar may be lowered in the future.
It wasn't as if there were no options before the government to send a message across that media must behave more responsibly when it comes to matters of national security. The ministry could have, as The Hindu points out in its editorial, approached the News Broadcasting Standards Authority which was set up by the News Broadcasters Association in the light of the 2008 Mumbai attacks recognising the need for a more restrained and responsible coverage. It could have also set up a quasi-judicial body or formed an independent panel to scrutinise NDTV India's coverage. Instead, in its actions, the government came across as a heavy-handed bully and not nearly as a power guided by "liberal, democratic ethos", as Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu has claimed.
The media, on the other hand, has emerged from the incident as a shrill, hyperbolic force that instead of reason, relies on rhetoric to get a point across to the detriment of its credibility. The abundant equivalences comparing the I&B ministry's decision to the 1975 Emergency were amusing and worrying in equal measure. Amusing because, the plethora of articles in every medium print, electronic or digital accusing Modi government of declaring "undeclared Emergency" are the greatest proof that such accusations were ridiculous. While they were right to criticise the government for its ham-handed ways, such rhetorical gymnastics devalue the real horrors of Emergency.
During the 21-month period starting June 1975, the Indira Gandhi government, recalls a recent Indian Express article, muzzled the press by censoring or banning most mainstream dailies. "The Indian Express and The Statesman left the lead editorial space blank as a mark of protest. Correspondents of The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and The Los Angeles Times were expelled. Reporters of The Economist and The Guardian left after receiving threats. The BBC withdrew its correspondent. The home ministry told Parliament in May 1976 that 7,000 persons had been held for circulating clandestine literature opposing the Emergency. Kishore Kumar was banned by All India Radio after he refused to support the Youth Congress."
By equating the Modi government's decision with Emergency, the media has shown itself to be not worthy of the responsibility that is vested upon it. It risks devaluing itself to a political force instead of the being the neutral watchdog.
The most disgraced lot to have emerged from this fiasco are the political parties who tried to claim the moral high ground by going along with the media's assumptions that an Emergency has been promulgated In India. The Congress appeared to be burning in righteous indignation led by its vice-president whose knowledge of history is matched only by his leadership abilities. Rahul Gandhi may have forgotten that the UPA had banned 21 channels during its tenure due to various reasons and that his grandmother subjected Indian citizens to the sole instance of Emergency.
AAP supremo, and Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal exhorted all TV channels to go off the air on 9 November to show solidarity with NDTV. "I hope the whole media goes off (the) air for a day in solidarity with NDTV," Kejriwal had tweeted.
For someone who is such a staunch believer in press freedom, it was odd that Kejriwal would threaten to send media persons to jail for allegedly promoting Narendra Modi. As Times of India reported in 2014, a video of Kejriwal's diatribe against the media at a fundraiser in Nagpur saw him promise an inquiry against media persons if AAP came to power. "If our government comes to power then we will set an inquiry into this. And along with media people, all will be sent to jail," he was heard saying in the clip.
Another of Modi's virulent critics, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has an even "greater record" when it comes to tolerating criticism. Apart from the well-publicised instance of a Jadavpur University professor who was sent to jail for sharing a cartoon, there have been reports of a youth in Malda getting arrested for making a derogatory remark against the TMC chief on Facebook.
As mentioned before, friction between pillars of democracy is welcome. But all stakeholders must act with equal responsibility to ensure that it doesn't become a free-for-all.
The Kerala governments U-turn in the Supreme Court on the issue of womens entry to Sabarimala brings an old debate back to the table: How the law should deal with what is essentially a matter of faith.
The obvious and easy-to-accept argument would be that faith should be questioned from time-to-time by the law and the people, as a society progresses and turns more liberal. They would cite examples of how we stopped Sati, child marriage and untouchability in Indian society, when society dared to question centuries old social evils. Their argument is very valid.
But, the Sabarimala issue is slightly different and shouldnt be seen in the same context. To understand this, lets take a look at what has happened here. All women, regardless of their age, should be allowed to enter Kerala's Sabarimala temple, the LDF government told the Supreme Court on Monday. That's a reversal from the stand of the previous Congress-led UDF government on the issue, but not from the Lefts own view on this mattter.
The Left's stand on this issue has been consistent since 2007.
The then LDF government had said that all women should be allowed to enter Sabarimala. The state government's stance changed when the UDF came to power, which argued otherwise. The LDF has yet again returned to its old stance now.The basic question in the ongoing Sabrimala controversy is this: Should the judiciary or the government be indulging in a matter that has to do with faith and tradition?
They shouldn't.
The reason: Sabarimala is not a case of caste or colour-based oppression or ostracisation of any particular community from the mainstream. It is also not an institution that has upheld any social evil like Sati or child marriage. The reason why for centuries, the temple has not encouraged women in the age group of 10-50, to enter within its walls is an age-old faith that has been the cornerstone of the very existence of temple.
Faith says that the deity of the temple, Lord Ayyappa, is a brahmachari (a celibate God) and he is averse to the presence of women of the menstruating age group. Women outside this age group can enter the temple and that has been always so.
There is another female deity in the temple called Malikappuram Devi'. As per the centuries-old belief, Lord Ayyappa will marry Malikappuram Devi' the year in which there are no kanni' ayyappans (first-time visitors to the temple). But, such a scenario doesn't occur in reality since every year there are thousands of new devotees thronging Sabarimala.
Although the story of Lord Ayyappan and the associated faith may sound silly to the proponents of gender equality and social reform, the fact is that the very existence of the hill-temple and its relevance is based on this. Sabarimala wasn't created by an Act of the Kerala state Assembly, Parliament or by an order of court, but on the grounds of faith. If faith is not respected, there isn't Sabarimala as we see it today.
There is no end to this debate. But, in the case of Sabarimala, it is better to leave matter of faith to the people who have faith.
The Supreme Court can, of course, pass an order based on the state government's recommendation and let the Sabarimala temple open to all women, but that would ridicule the very faith of people for whom the centre of worship matters. Of course, the world will not end if women enter Sabarimala. But, Sabarimala will then become another tourist-pilgrim centre like many other places, where faith may not have much importance.
In fact, Sabarimala has been one of the most liberal institutions of worship in the country. It doesn't differentiate between people of various religions. Any man (or women outside the 15-50 age group) can enter the temple. There is also no differentiation between people belonging to upper and lower castes. Even the restriction on women has not been necessarily seen as an act of oppression but the willingness of female devotees to respect a faith.
There is no end to the debate around what extent the government and judiciary should intervene in matters of faith, unless there is an angle involving social injustice, oppression or denial or natural justice. Some time ago, a Bihar court had heard a case against Lord Rama on the alleged cruelty towards his wife Sita. The petitioner wondered how in the world a man, a king, known to be just and merciful could be unjust to his own wife that too based on hearsay. (There wasn't any proof for Sita's alleged infidelity when she was sent on 'vanvas'). But, finally when the judge heard the case, the case was dismissed on account of the absence of eyewitnesses and confusion about who should be punished even if Rama was found guilty.
This is precisely what happens when judiciary bids to weigh an issue of faith using tools of modern day justice. This incident is narrated here only as a context to the Sabarimala case. If the SC lets women enter Sabarimala that'll be celebrated a victory by feminists and equal-right activists after Shani Shingnapur and Haji Ali. But what's next? There is no end to things one can ask for in all religions if faith is ignored and law steers the act of devotion.
The Pope can no longer insist then that women can't be Roman Catholic priests like he said a few days ago or the Muslim community cannot insist that women cannot enter mosques. The next will be entry of non-Hindus to temples. As of now, a majority of Kerala temples don't allow non-Hindus to enter again a matter of faith.
All these acts of faith can be and will be challenged one by one. But, what social reform will we achieve out of all this by breaking a set of rules set and practiced by the devotees?
This will take us back to the very basic question of what is the purpose of religion and centres of worship in religions. These are just mere facilitators to follow certain practices and discipline in those groups cemented by the idea of faith. Till the time these practices arent anti-social activities or a form of social evil (like Sati), the law shouldnt have a problem with these.
The fact is that besides hurting those people who keep a certain faith and respect their age old practices, judiciary's encroachment into matters of faith won't do any help to raise the status of women in the society. In the case of Keralas LDF-government, there is a good chance that its move on the Sabarimala issue in the Supreme Court will backfire, even among the non-Hindus in the state.
It is better to leave faith to the devout.
Will it be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Irrespective of who becomes the next US president, the 2016 US presidential election has generated a lot of interest globally, Facebook data shows.
The social media company, which started tracking conversations and interactions related to the 2016 US Presidential Election from 23 March 2015 the date when Republican Ted Cruz became the first candidate to announce his candidacy recently revealed that the 2016 presidential race was the most talked about topic in 2015 on Facebook.
That's not all. Between 23 March 2015 to 1 November 2016, two hundred and eighty-nine million people around the world were involved in the conversation. Together, they generated over 10 billion posts, shares and likes on the social networking platform.
Most of the engagement was obviously from the United States itself as data shows that 127 million people contributed to 8,785 million interactions. A post, share, or reaction is considered as an interaction.
In Canada, 8.4 million people participated in 162 million interactions, which goes to show that Canadians had a lot to say about the elections.
From India, 9.3 million people participated, which is more than the number of people who participated in the conversation from Canada. However, these 9.3 million people generated a relatively tame 40 million interactions.
Facebook has also released a list of the top ten moments in the campaign. These were events which generated the most interactions on the platform. The biggest moments till 1 September related to the 2016 US presidential election are:
1. The second presidential debate on 9 October.
2. The release of the Access Hollywood tape.
3. The first presidential debate on 26 September.
4. The third presidential debate on 19 October.
5. The Democratic Convention.
6. FBI Director Comey reopens the investigation into Clinton emails.
7. The Republican Convention.
8. The vice presidential debate on 4 October.
9. Trump criticises the Khan family after the Democratic Convention.
10. Super Tuesday on 1 March.
The top moments' list shows consistent involvement over a year in the election. The debates and conventions triggered discussions around issues and information on Facebook. Facebook users even engaged directly with the politicians vying for candidacy.
Facebook revealed the posts related to the 2016 US presidential election that generated the most reactions. For the Republican candidate Donald Trump, the top Facebook content was a live video meant as a fundraising effort. The post had 77,000 shares with over 1.2 million comments.
For the Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, the post that generated the most reactions on Facebook was an image macro that simply showed Clinton smiling with the words Im with her floating over her head. That post had 189,000 shares with more than 38 thousand comments.
Other important conversations from 2015 included the 13 November Paris Attacks, the Syrian Civil War and associated Refugee Crisis, the Nepal Earthquake, and the Greek Debt Crisis.
By Julia Edwards
| WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON FBI Director James Comey was under attack from some of his own agents and members of Congress on Monday over his handling of an inquiry into Hillary Clinton's emails, but the White House was remaining supportive, for now.In stunning fashion, Comey has injected the Federal Bureau of Investigation, meant to be politically neutral, into the thick of the 2016 U.S. presidential race, making a series of announcements on the inquiry.The latest was on Sunday, when he said the FBI stood by a July decision not to recommend criminal charges against the Democratic presidential candidate. Sunday's announcement came days after Comey disclosed the FBI was examining a trove of newly discovered emails.With the election coming on Tuesday, Comey's statements and the FBI's overall handling of the emails controversy has drawn fire from congressional Democrats, who criticized the agency for clouding Clinton's campaign so close to the election, while Republicans questioned why the new inquiry ended so quickly. FBI "field agents have felt the derivative impact of the criticism fired at Director Comey as a result of the Clinton email scandal," said Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation, which represents more than 3,500 FBI agents.He said some agents disapprove of Comey's handling of the investigation and think he should resign, while others support him, but do not appreciate being in a political crossfire.A spokesman for the FBI Agents Association said the more than 13,000 active and former special agents it represents have become the victims of unwarranted attacks on their integrity.
"Implications that agents do not respect the confidentiality of those investigations is simply false," said the associations president Thomas OConnor.Comey has so far kept the support of President Barack Obama, who has the power to fire the FBI director. "The president views Director Comey as a man of integrity, a man of principle," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in a briefing on Monday. "The president's views of him have not changed ... he continues to have confidence in his ability to run the FBI."The White House has said it will not criticize or defend Comey over his handling of the Clinton email investigation.Charles Schumer, a close Clinton ally and expected Senate majority leader should Democrats regain control of the chamber, said on Oct. 30 that he was appalled at what Director Comey did and owes an explanation to Clinton and the American people.
FBI directors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve 10 years unless they are fired or resign.Only one FBI director in recent history has been fired. William Sessions was fired by President Bill Clinton in 1993 after a report emerged about Sessions using an FBI airplane for personal travel and other unethical practices. FBI Director Louis Freeh resigned in 2001, two years short of the end of his term, amid a scandal over Robert Hanssen, a senior FBI official charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia undetected for 15 years.If Clinton wins the election, as polls suggest, she would also be in the position to fire Comey, but might not do so to avoid being portrayed as seeking political retaliation.
"I dont know what her view will be, but ... you just cannot have an FBI director in place who believes he is accountable to neither the rules nor the attorney general, said Matthew Miller, former chief spokesman for the Obama Justice Department.Under the federal Hatch Act, Justice Department employees may not engage in partisan political activity while on duty.On Sunday, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff said Comey's "original letter" telling Congress that Clinton's emails were once again under investigation "should never have been sent so close to an election."Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley called on the Justice Department's inspector general on Nov. 2 to examine the FBI's investigation. (Reporting by Julia Edwards, additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Mark Hosenball and Julia Harte; editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Tom Brown)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BERLIN German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday rejected an accusation by his Turkish counterpart that Germany backs the Kurdish militant group PKK, saying such organisations were banned in Germany.Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Berlin on Tuesday of allowing the PKK and far-leftist DHKP-C, both of which have carried out armed attacks in Turkey, to operate on German soil with impunity."The PKK and other extremist parties are banned as terrorist groups here. They are criminally prosecuted," Steinmeier said. "That is why I cannot understand the comments made about Germany today in Turkey. Repeating the claims does not make them right."Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said last week that Germany had become "an important haven for terrorists" such as the PKK and DHKP-C, and would be "judged by history" for failing to extradite supporters of a U.S.-based cleric blamed by Ankara for the failed July 15 military coup.The comments reflect ongoing German-Turkish tensions over numerous issues, including Turkey's post-coup crackdown on dissent and the German parliament's vote in June labelling the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide.In its annual report, Germany's domestic intelligence agency said it was actively monitoring the activities of an estimated 14,000 PKK supporters in Germany, 650 people associated with the DHKP-C, and more than 2,000 people associated with other leftist or communist groups that are also banned.
A spokeswoman for the German Interior Ministry said the Yekineyen Parastina Gel (YPG), the Syrian Kurdish militia, was covered by the German ban on the PKK.She said German security agencies estimated that over 100 people had left Germany to participate in fighting against Islamic State militants near the Syrian-Iraqi border, but it was unclear whether these people were fighting for the YPG or PKK.
The German daily Die Welt, citing security sources, said a total of about 130 militants of German nationality including were known to have fought with the YPG in northern Syria.But it said German federal prosecutors were not actively investigating YPG backers who had returned from Syria and had not asked the German Justice Ministry for permission to do so.However, German state prosecutors were looking into filing possible charges related to war crimes or murder against two YPG members. No further details were given.
Die Welt quoted judicial sources as saying that it had been seen as politically inopportune to investigate YPG backers since the Kurdish group is a close ally of the United States and other Western nations in its fight against Islamic State.No comment was immediately available from the Justice Ministry or federal prosecutors' office. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Mark Heinrich)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Ahmed Rasheed
| BAGHDAD
BAGHDAD A coalition of mainly Shi'ite Iraqi militias advancing on the Islamic State-held town of Tal Afar plans to seize a nearby military air base from the jihadists, the first time the Iran-backed forces have targeted such a base, militia officials said on Tuesday.The Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary forces are deployed in the arid region west of Mosul as part of a wider military campaign to retake the largest city under Islamic State control in Iraq or neighbouring Syria. The town of Tal Afar, and its air base, are located on the highway west of Mosul. Capturing them would help cut Islamic State supply lines between Mosul and its Syrian territories, and offer a base for the Hashid's stated plan ultimately to take their battle with Islamic State into Syria.But the advance by the mainly Shi'ite force towards Tal Afar, which had a mixed population of mainly Shi'ite and Sunni Turkmen before Islamic State captured it in 2014, has raised fears of sectarian strife and alarmed neighbouring Turkey.President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was reinforcing its troops on the border with Iraq and would respond if the Shi'ite militias "cause terror" in Tal Afar. Capturing an air base would also point to the growing muscle of the Hashid forces, which officially report to the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi but are also backed by Tehran and often fly the banners of Iran's Supreme Leader."Now we are 25 km (15 miles) from the Tal Afar air base," said Kareem Alewi, a commander of one of Hashid Shaabi brigades and a member of the Badr Organisation, the most powerful force within the paramilitary alliance."Tal Afar air base has strategic importance for us considering that it's on the Iraq-Syrian border, so it will be a general base for all factions of the Hashid Shaabi and it will be the launch pad for these forces to protect the Syrian-Iraqi borders," he told Reuters.He said it would be the first military base controlled by the Hashid, who could take their fight across the frontier once Mosul is taken. "If Iraq is liberated, no doubt our second goal will be to pursue Daesh (Islamic State) inside Syria," he said.A spokesman for another Shi'ite force in the Hashid Shaabi, the Kata'ib Hezbollah, confirmed that control of the air base at Tal Afar was a "one of our basic aims".
Jafaar al-Hussaini suggested the base could then be handed over to Iraqi security forces rather than retained by the Hashid force. "The issue may be decided later, and we have many options," he said.RESHAPING IRAQ
Two years after Islamic State jihadists swept through north Iraq, the U.S.-backed campaign to retake Mosul has the potential to reshape the country, with Kurds from the northeast and Shi'ite forces mainly from the south expanding their influence. Abadi has sought to calm fears that the operation to recapture Tal Afar would ignite sectarian tension, or escalate problems with Turkey, saying the attacking force will force will reflect the town's religious and ethnic make-up.
Hussaini said there was no final agreement for the Hashid Shaabi to go into Tal Afar, but it had two brigades made up of Turkmens - both Shi'ites and Sunnis - originally from the town who could take part "to overcome the sensitivities over the liberation of Tal Afar"."They could carry out this operation, as part of the Hashid Shaabi," he said. "The two brigades could participate with the security forces entering Tal Afar."Zuhair al-Jabouri, spokesman for a newly formed Sunni force known as the Nineveh guards, said the government "should be aware of the sensitivity of Tal Afar" and assign the upper hand to the army in the operation to recapture it.If the Hashid forces entered the town there would be "revenge atrocities against Sunni residents who are seen by the Shi'ite militias, including the Shi'ite Turkmen Hashid groups, as pro-Daesh (Islamic State)".That would give Turkey a pretext to intervene on behalf of Sunni Turkmen. "This will convert Nineveh into an arena of conflict between regional powers and push Iraq into a dark tunnel," he told Reuters.
Amnesty International says that in previous campaigns the Shi'ite militias have committed serious human rights violations, including war crimes against civilians fleeing Islamic State territory. The U.N. said in July it had a list of more than 640 Sunni men and boys reportedly abducted by a Shi'ite militia in Falluja and about 50 others summarily executed or tortured to death.The government and the Hashid Shaabi say a limited number of violations occurred and were investigated, but they deny abuses were widespread.Jabouri and Sunni parliamentarian Abdul Rahman al-Lwezi, from Mosul, both said Abadi had told Tal Afar tribal leaders at a meeting last Thursday that only Turkmen members of the Hashid force would be allowed to enter the town. Alewi, the Badr commander, said Hashid forces cut the road west from Tal Afar to Syria early on Tuesday and were now focusing on the air base and the town.Tal Afar has a large concentration of Islamic State fighters and is believed to be heavily fortified, but Alewi said it could be taken with relative ease."The Hashid Shaabi force is a conquering force, a major force which has brigades, weapons, lethal rockets ... and has the ability to advance quickly," he said. (For map showing Tal Afar, click tmsnrt.rs/2cMNG3q) (Writing by Dominic Evans; editing by Giles Elgood)
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By Maayan Lubell
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an unprecedented vilification of the Israeli media on Monday, accusing a leading television journalist of being part of a plot to bring down his right-wing government.After declining to be interviewed by Channel Two anchorwoman Ilana Dayan for a piece investigating the workings of his administration and the role his wife plays in appointing officials, Netanyahu's office sent a written statement.Dayan read it in its entirety on air, taking six minutes to deliver the tirade against her as she stood in front of the prime minister's office."It is time to peel the mask off the face of Ilana Dayan, who has shown once more that she has no professional integrity," the statement said."Ilana Dayan is one of the leaders of an orchestrated attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intended to topple the right-wing government and bring about the establishment of a left-wing government."The statement referred to popular disaffection with the media -- a survey last year found two-thirds of Israelis believe the media is left-leaning -- and reiterated the need for an overhaul of national broadcasting.It said the public had lost trust in the main media organisations, which it said had abandoned all restraint in their propaganda against Netanyahu and his Likud government."Dayan's show...demonstrates perfectly why the media industry needs reform. The prime minister is determined to open the market up to competition that will add a greater variety of opinions, as well as an efficient national broadcaster."The onslaught astonished commentators. While Netanyahu is known for his fractious relationship with the media, few expected such an angry and personalised assault.It comes at a time when he and his close associates in the Likud party face criticism for their haphazard efforts to shut down the existing state broadcaster and set up a successor.There has also been widespread coverage of allegations by housekeepers and other employees against Netanyahu's wife, who is often portrayed as a demanding figure.That has compounded a feud between Netanyahu and leading newspaper group Yedioth Ahronoth, which campaigned against him ahead of his reelection last year.
Netanyahu has made no secret of his dislike for Yedioth and its publisher, Noni Mozes, and has largely avoided on the record interviews with the Israeli press, prefering to distribute statements and videos by YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.Critics now fear he is going after broadcast outlets. "What we see is an across the board attempt by Mr Netanyahu and his government to control all forms of media," said Elad Man, legal adviser of media watchdog the Seventh Eye."I don't think we should even try to imagine what will happen to Israel as a society and a democracy if those attempts succeed."MEDIA MESS
In 2014, Netanyahu agreed to create a new public broadcast network, which says it will be ready to go on air in January. It has already hired 500 staff with plans to take on 150 more.But now Netanyahu wants to pull the plug on the operation. He has not said why, but allies have talked about the soaring costs while the chairman of his coalition, David Bitan, said in October it was because of its bias against Netanyahu."The corporation has been hijacked by people whose agenda is leftist and anti-government," Bitan told Channel Two, one of Israel's leading commercial channels.He later said he had checked the Facebook pages of some journalists working at the new broadcaster and found them critical of the government.Netanyahu's office did not respond to requests for comment for this story.His volte-face over the network is now causing problems in his coalition. His finance minister says shutting down the broadcaster will cost far more than keeping it going and has threatened to withdraw his support.
He and Netanyahu agreed to set up a committee to tackle the issue, comprising officials from the finance ministry, the communications ministry and the prime minister's office.Netanyahu showed up to the first meeting. One source said he told them he "could not put up" with the new broadcaster, and another quoted him as saying: "I am willing to call an election over this."Netanyahu's culture minister, close ally Miri Regev, was quoted in newspapers as telling a cabinet meeting: "What is the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation worth if we are not in control of it?"The row has raised concerns about declining media freedom in Israel. The country's most widely read newspaper is a free sheet called Israel Today, owned by U.S. casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, that is relentlessly pro-Netanyahu. The prime minister also serves as communications minister, giving him regulatory powers over the sector.Freedom House, an international media freedom group, this year downgraded Israel's ranking to "partly free". Some commentators have compared Israel unfavourably to Turkey and warned of a wider clampdown.That seems unlikely given how outspoken much of the press remains. But President Reuven Rivlin saw fit to comment last week, telling parliament in remarks seen as critical of Netanyahu: "Anyone in favour of public broadcasting cannot turn it into a mouthpiece for commissars."To Yossi Verter, a political analyst for the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, the moves by Netanyahu and his point-man Bitan have dangerous echoes."Netanyahu's emissary is on a death mission to destroy what's left of Israeli media," he wrote last week, describing Bitan's conduct as akin to the 1950s hearings by U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy against Communists and "subversives". (Additional reporting by Lianne Back and Rami Amichay; editing by Luke Baker and Angus MacSwan)
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New York: Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi has said that Islamabasd firmly opposes the creation of new permanent seats at Security Council, it was reported on Tuesday.
Lodhi was addressing the General Assembly session on Security Council Reforms on Monday. She termed the creation of new permanent seats "the antithesis of principles enshrined in the UN Charter," Dawn online reported.
She, however, said that "Pakistan supports expansion of non-permanent seats in the Security Council to make it more democratic, accountable, transparent and effective".
The Pakistan's envoy went on to say that the current long deadlock in Security Council reform process was due to a handful of states seeking to "promote a self arrogated right to an unequal status".
She conveyed Pakistan's stance that, "adding more permanent seats to Security Council will only serve to satisfy the hunger for power and privilege of a few and not address issue of representation."
Earlier in June, Pakistan had questioned how adding new permanent seats to the 15-member body could enhance its representativeness and effectiveness.
Speaking in the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform, Maleeha Lodhi said no cogent answer has ever been given to how the move would make the Security Council more representative.
Adding new permanent members would in fact have the opposite effect, the Pakistani envoy had said.
She has repeatedly said that "the Council needed to be expanded in the category of elected seats, i.e., the non-permanent seats".
BEIRUT The Syrian army said it had taken a strategic district of Aleppo on Tuesday, in what would be the most important advance in the divided city by Damascus and its allies in weeks, but rebels said the battle was not over.The 1070 Apartments district is located on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo and lies alongside the government's corridor into the parts of the city that it controls. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war, said government forces and their allies had seized full control of the district, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since September.A Syrian military source said the army and allied forces were in complete control of the area and surrounding hills. They have made repeated efforts to oust rebels from the 1070 Apartments area since the summer. A military media unit run by the Damascus-allied Hezbollah carried a similar report. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group, is fighting in support of Damascus.
But officials in two rebel groups fighting in Aleppo said the battle was still raging. Yasser Alyousef from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki group said rebels had recovered positions they had lost on Monday."There is still a battle and the result has absolutely not been decided," added the second official, Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of the Fastaqim rebel group.Syrian government forces backed by allied militias and Russian air power launched a major assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in September, after besieging the area that the United Nations says is home to 275,000 people.
Insurgents launched a counter attack aimed at breaking the siege on Oct. 29, targeting government-held western districts of Aleppo in an offensive that included jihadist groups and insurgents fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.But their progress slowed after early gains.
Russia says its air force has been observing a moratorium on air strikes on the rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo since Oct. 18. The Observatory and emergency workers in eastern Aleppo said heavy air strikes had killed hundreds of people, and hit hospitals and other civilian facilities prior to that.Insurgent shelling of government-held western Aleppo has meanwhile killed dozens of people, the United Nations said last week in an update on the humanitarian situation in the city. (Reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
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BEIRUT The Syrian army said it had taken a strategic district of Aleppo on Tuesday in what would mark the most important advance in the divided city by Damascus and its allies in weeks, but rebels said the battle was not over. The 1070 Apartments district is located on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo and lies alongside the government's corridor into the parts of the city that it controls. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war, said government forces and their allies had seized full control of 1070 Apartments, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since September.A Syrian military source said the army and allied forces were in complete control of the area and surrounding hills. They have made repeated efforts to oust rebels from the 1070 Apartments area since the summer. A military media unit run by the Damascus-allied Hezbollah carried a similar report. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group, is fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's war, now well in its sixth year.But officials in two rebel groups fighting in Aleppo - Syria's largest city and commercial hub before the war - said insurgent forces were still trying to fight back. "The clashes around 1070 Apartments are still going on," Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of the Fastaqim rebel group, said, while confirming that the army had taken the district.
Yasser Alyousef from the political office of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki rebel group said rebels had recovered positions they had lost on Monday.Syrian government forces backed by allied militias and Russian air power launched a major assault on rebel-held eastern Aleppo in September after besieging the area, which the United Nations says is home to 275,000 people.On Oct. 29, rebels counter-attacked in a bid to break the siege, targeting government-held western districts of Aleppo in an offensive that included Islamist militants and rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.But their progress slowed after early gains.
There were conflicting accounts of fighting on Tuesday in the village of Minian, also on the western edge of Aleppo. Syrian state media said the army had advanced in Minian, which was taken by rebels at the start of their campaign. The Observatory said the army and its allies had fully recaptured Minian, after heavy air strikes. The fall of Minian to the government would reverse some of the gains rebels have made during their offensive.
But Malahifji, of the Fastaqim rebel group, denied that there were any clashes inside the village. "Minian is still with the rebels," he said. Russia says its air force has been observing a moratorium on air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo since Oct. 18. The Observatory and emergency workers in eastern Aleppo said heavy air strikes had killed hundreds of people, and hit hospitals and other civilian facilities prior to that. Russia is preparing to resume air strikes around Aleppo "in coming hours", the Interfax news agency quoted a source in the Russian Defence Ministry as saying on Tuesday. Rebel shelling of government-held western Aleppo has meanwhile killed dozens of people, the United Nations said last week in an update on the humanitarian situation in the city. (Reporting by Tom Perry and Ellen Francis in Beirut, Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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WASHINGTON The United States is prepared to carry out more air strikes against Islamic State militants in Sirte if requested by Libya's U.N.-backed government, even though the militant group no longer controls much territory there, the Pentagon said on Monday.Since August the United States has carried out more than 350 air strikes against Islamic State at the request of the Government of National Accord (GNA). However, none have been carried out since Oct. 31, officials said."If additional air strikes are needed, we will be prepared to deliver those air strikes," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said at a news conference.
Islamic State took full control of Sirte, a city of some 80,000 inhabitants, in early 2015. Its loss would leave the jihadist group without any territorial control in Libya.
Libyan forces have the remaining militants in Sirte surrounded in part of the Ghiza Bahriya neighbourhood. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, estimated that only a few blocks of the city were controlled by a few dozen Islamic State fighters.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by James Dalgleish)
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The 2016 US election has been a roller coaster ride not just for the two polarising presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump but also for the American citizens and the rest of the world, with the drama unfolding rather like a caustic Shakespearean play. After months of mudslinging and rhetorical attacks, the highly-charged election season might not even culminate on 8 November, especially if Donald Trump refuses to concede as hinted previously.
Although the latest polls put Hillary Clinton in the lead, there was never a time in the campaign period where a clear winner emerged. If Trump's putting 'American first' motto resonated among the blue collar workers, his logistically impossible and politically-disastrous proposal to build a border wall to stop immigration managed to alienate the huge Hispanic population. His lack of grip on policy matters and misogynist rants sent him sliding down the polls.
With a blustering opponent like Trump, it is natural to assume that Clinton's race to the White House would be smoother, but that was hardly the case. Back in July, despite FBI stating that there was no evidence suggesting that Clinton "intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information," a section of the American electorate found her 'untrustworthy'. Her campaign got an unprecedented push after Trump's infamous 'nasty woman' comment, but a fresh email scandal was waiting for her.
Just a day before Election Day, FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI's review of new emails did not uncover any wrongdoing by Clinton and the bureau has not changed its July recommendation not to charge her. Will it impact the outcome? We will find out in just a few hours. Immigration, gun control, abortion, foreign policy, economy does anyone remember what Trump and Clinton's respective stands are on these issues? Probably not. This election has largely been a personality contest. Although the Trump camp was never guided by policy-framing, in the last leg even the Democrats abandoned talk on policy and concentrated on launching an aggressive attack on the Republican candidate.
The second and third presidential debate was a train wreck for Trump where his incoherent defence of the tape bragging about sexual assault and distasteful "grab them by the p****" comment tipped the election in Clinton's favour. Days after the third debate, the Democrats launched a scathing ad against Trump using his misogynist comments and sent a powerful message to the American voters: 'Anyone who does what he does is unfit to be president.'
The CNN called this election "rhetorical warfare" with none of the presidential candidates specifying what they will do if they are elected president. While Clinton has been unable to engage Trump to discuss policy, her camp upped the ante against her opponent with some of the star campaigners, including the outgoing President Barack Obama, rallying by her side.
Addressing students at Florida International University in Miami, Obama urged to voters to get serious about the election. "This isn't a joke. This isn't Survivor. This isn't The Bachelorette," he said, taunting the former reality TV star (Trump), reported AP.
Just when Clinton was enjoying a lead over Trump, Comey's announcement of the recent discovery of fresh cache of emails sent panic waves among the Democratic ranks after which the party trained its gun on the FBI director. On Comey's letter to Congress, Clinton had said at a rally, Its pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election. In fact, its not just strange; its unprecedented and it is deeply troubling.
Howard Gleckman writes for Forbes that though polls showed that economy is one of the concerning issues this election, none of the candidates have dwelled much on it, they have rather focused on trying to prove why their opponent is "unfit" to be the President. He writes: "And in an historically nasty race, both Clinton and Trump attack each other daily for being unfit to serve. Not for being wrong on the issues, but for being unworthy of the oval office."
A poll conducted by the New York Times/CBS suggested that a majority of the voters are "disgusted" with the politicking and doubt that either of the two major candidates will be able to "united the country".
Support for Clinton are coming of the African-Americans, Hispanics, women and young voters - the demographics which sent Obama to the White House, however, Clinton camp also released a blitzkrieg of ads to target Trump, especially keeping in mind the voters in the swing states. Take for example the ad that features Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer, who questions whether Trump can be trusted with nuclear weapons.
According to The New Yorker, the concept of negative ads is not new in American politics. In his piece for The New Yorker, John Cassidy argues that focusing on Trump's negatives, Clinton has been able to drive attention to her positive campaign. "In a polarised political environment, where compromise is a non-starter to begin with, engaging in all-out political warfare is the logical option to pursue," he writes.
Today, America might be electing the 'lesser of the evils' once the battle of rhetoric is over, the newly-elected President of the United States will have to talk policy and leave the bickering to the rest.
(With inputs from agencies)
Most elections are about candidates with the 'X-factor'. So it is this American President election. You need to have that something extra to win toughly contested primaries to then battle it out for the White House residency for the next four years.
But as Americans get set to vote in the 2016 election on 8 November, you realise that this contest is more about the 'XX factor'. This is not just because of the women vote which is 53 per cent of America's population it will most likely decide by itself whether President Barack Obama will hand over the baton to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. They are fighting over issues that women voters largely care about in America, distinct from male voters which makes it important for either candidate to mind the gap.
If Hillary wins the election, America would get its first woman president. If Trump wins the election, America would get its first President of 'locker room chatter' fame.
That has been the big contrast. Even though most agree that the US could not have got a worse choice of candidates, the fact remains that Trump with his misogynist and highly inappropriate remarks about women in general has repulsed a lot of women voters. Allegations by women about his behaviour have also cast a long shadow in Trump's prospects at the ballot box. Polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of the 'XX vote' would go into the Clinton kitty, helped also by the aggressive campaign the Obamas are doing for Hillary.
Which is why I think this election is more between Trump and Obama, especially when it comes to the woman vote. The divide between the two could not have been more stark.
The importance of the woman vote for Obama was evident right through the 2012 campaign, when the President was running for a second term. I was covering the election as part of an exclusive group of 25 journalists from 25 countries, selected by the US State Department. We had travelled through different battleground states covering the election campaign. At an election rally at the Ohio State University in Columbus, a lady from the audience shouted to Obama "I love you".
"I love you too but I need you voting," replied Obama, turning on the charm.
The role of women in his successful presidential campaign was emphasised by Obama soon after his triumph. At the McCormick Place in Chicago, we were about 30-odd feet from Obama that victorious 6 November evening as he responded to the cheering from his supporters.
In his acceptance speech, he said, "I wouldn't be the man I am today without the woman who agreed to marry me 20 years ago. Let me say this publicly. Michelle, I have never loved you more. I have never been prouder to watch the rest of American fall in love with you too as our nation's First Lady."
The emphasis on love, affection, family values, respect, could not have been overstated by Obama. And that is the contrast that has played out in the American electoral theatre with Trump not coming across as someone who respects women. Hillary may have a thousand other faults including the lack of a squeaky clean image but put her against Trump, and she ends up looking better.
Even in 2008, that Obama won, 10 million more women than men voted, making women power the critical factor in the 8 November election, especially in battleground states. In most states, more women are registered than men. That coupled with a higher female voter turnout, can swing the election decisively.
Dr Wendy Smooth who is an expert on Gender and Sexuality studies at the Ohio State University in Columbus told me that women voters usually like candidates who are 'easy on the eye'. Obama fit that analysis, Trump does not.
Empathy is another huge factor. Trump has come across as brusque, almost bordering on being boorish, with no respect for the woman or her body. His lewdness came through with comments like "If you are a star, they let you do it."
I would contrast that with the image of the 2012 election in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that hit the east coast of America just a week before polling day. Obama hugged and comforted an elderly lady in New Jersey on 1 November and the picture that went viral had tremendous impact. It reinforced the image of a leader with compassion and kindness.
Not just that. Women voters have always been concerned about issues such as health care and abortion. In 2012, Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate lost out because the party was not seen as reflecting the women's views on abortion as well as the Democrats. With a Trump as its face this time, the support for the Republicans on such issues is likely to go down further among women.
In less than 24 hours, the world would know who will be the next most powerful person. And if Trump loses the election, he will know it was an unequal battle. Trump versus Clinton + Barack Obama + Michelle Obama was always going to be an uphill task. And Americans, Trump would realise, did not exactly vote for a President. They merely chose who would be a comparatively better successor to Barack Obama.
London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday defended the website's decision to publish emails from Hillary Clinton's election campaign team and denied a link with Russia, as Americans went to the polls.
The anti-secrecy website was behind the damaging leak of tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic Party and Clinton's campaign last month, in the final weeks of the race for the White House.
Assange said WikiLeaks had no desire to influence the election, only to make public the material it had. After earlier publishing Clinton's diplomatic cables and indexing her emails, "we are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us," Assange said in a statement.
"We cannot publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump's campaign," he said, referring to Clinton's Republican rival.
"The Clinton campaign, when they were not spreading obvious untruths, pointed to unnamed sources or to speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia. The campaign was unable to invoke evidence about our publications because none exists. Wikileaks remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it."
On 7 October, WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of emails hacked from the Gmail account of Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta.
Clinton's team has not denied the authenticity of the messages but accused Russia of directing the hacking in an effort to tilt the election in favour of Trump.
The emails did contain any explosive revelations, but some put Clinton on the defensive.
Assange, a 45-year-old Australian former computer hacker, has been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces longstanding allegations of rape. He fears he would subsequently be extradited to the United States over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Assange will be finally questioned over the rape allegations next week by an Ecuadoran prosecutor in the
embassy, Sweden's public prosecutor's office said.
By Philip Pullella
| VATICAN CITY
VATICAN CITY The Vatican on Monday sent an apparent warning to Catholics in China who are loyal to the pope not to take things into their own hands if they oppose a rapprochement between the communist government and the Holy See.In a highly unusual statement, the Vatican referred to reports about unauthorised ordinations of bishops in the "unofficial Catholic community", a reference to Catholics who owe allegiance only to the pope.Catholics in China are divided between that group, which is also known as the "underground Church", and the official Church, approved by Beijing's communist government."The Holy See has not authorised any ordination, nor has it been officially informed of such events. Should such episcopal ordinations have occurred, they would constitute a grave violation of canonical norms," the statement said.The statement came amid growing expectation that the Vatican and the Chinese government are close to an agreement on the ordination of bishops, the stickiest point in talks between the two sides.
But media reports about the impending deal have sparked strong criticism from some Catholics in China and around the world who believe it would be an offence to Catholic bishops, priests and lay people who have suffered persecution for refusing to join the official, state Church.According to AsiaNews, a Rome-based Catholic news agency that specialises in China, the statement was prompted at least in part by the action of Father Dong Guanhua, a priest in the underground Church who ordained himself a bishop without a papal mandate.Dong has threatened to ordain more priests as bishops, which could effectively spark a schism in the Chinese Catholic Church that recognises the pope and disrupt the talks between Beijing and the Vatican.
The statement was unusual in that in the past the Vatican has often condemned the official, government-backed Church for ordaining bishops without papal permission but had never before issued a similar warning to the faction loyal to the pope."We wanted to send a signal to our own in order to show that the rules apply to both sides," a senior Vatican bishop said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
In what appeared to be a reference to Catholics opposed to any deal with the government, the Vatican statement said the ordination of bishops needed papal permission and could not be based on "particular personal beliefs".For more than six decades, China's ruling Communist Party has strongly opposed the Vatican's right to ordain Chinese bishops, in a bitter contest for authority over as many as 10 million Catholics on the mainland.According to Church sources in Rome and China, representatives from the Vatican and China are expected to meet before the end of the year in Rome in an effort to finalise a deal on the ordination of bishops. (Additional reporting by Lisa Jucca in Hong Kong; editing by Ralph Boulton)
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By Enrique Pretel and Alexandra Alper
| MANAGUA
MANAGUA After clinching a third straight term by a landslide, Nicaragua's president faces headwinds from an economic crisis in financial ally Venezuela and increasingly rocky relations with top trading partner the United States. Boosted by a robust economy, former Marxist guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega won over 72 percent of the vote in a final count, buoyed by robust growth and a sharp decline in poverty on his watch, neutralizing critics who allege he is setting up a family dynasty. That bonanza for the second poorest nation in the Americas was in part the result of a thaw in ties with Cold War foe the United States that allowed trade and investment to blossom, and billions of dollars that have flowed from socialist fellow traveller Venezuela. Now both pillars of support are on shaky ground. Washington harshly criticized Ortega's "flawed" victory on Monday, and a law under discussion in the U.S. Senate seeks to sanction Nicaragua unless it improves its record on human rights and democracy.The outcome of Tuesday's U.S. election is likely to further affect ties and trade. While Republican candidate Donald Trump is arguably the bigger threat to Nicaragua, with policies seen as isolationist and anti-Latino, Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is cooler on trade pacts than her predecessors. In Venezuela, economic and political turmoil is jeopardizing millions of dollars in annual loans.Venezuelan financial support to Nicaragua plunged 37 percent in the first half of the year following a cut of almost 40 percent to $300 million in 2015, central bank figures show."It's a perfect storm, because it affects growth and economic stability, two open flanks," said economist Nestor Avendano of the troubles with Nicaragua's leading partners. "President Ortega will need to seek political consensus." Thanks to close ties with late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, an ideological ally, Ortega has negotiated more than $3.7 billion in cheap loans from Caracas since 2007, according to Nicaraguan central bank figures.
A deeper financial crunch in oil-rich Venezuela could drain more assistance, leaving Ortega on the hook for popular social programs and oil imports that have been backed by petrodollars. Nicaragua has a "moderate risk of external debt distress," the IMF said in a report this year, warning that "continued uncertainty around the Venezuela oil collaboration poses important downside risks to public finances."'CLOUD ON THE HORIZON'
Ortega, whose wife Rosario Murillo ran as his vice presidential candidate, kept a comfortable majority in Congress, results showed. His mandate runs through 2021. Emerging as a leader of the Sandinista movement that toppled Anastasio Somoza in 1979, Ortega has undergone a dramatic shift from revolutionary Marxism to careful pragmatism, keeping relatively cordial relations with U.S. President Barack Obama. Solid growth and falling poverty have helped Ortega weather attacks by opponents over alleged electoral fraud, constitutional changes that ended presidential term limits and the posting of family members in key government jobs.But there are signs patience is wearing thin, at least in Washington. State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Monday said the election was not free and fair. Meanwhile, a bill, known as the Nica Act, which conditions financial aid to Nicaragua on improvements in democracy, human rights, and battling anti-corruption, passed the U.S. House of Representatives in September. It still needs to pass the Senate.
"We just flagged this as sort of a cloud on the horizon, but it's not a storm. It is not raining," said Joydeep Mukherji, a Standard & Poor's analyst, noting that passage was uncertain and that it was unclear how it would be implemented. Perhaps most worrying for Ortega is the protectionist rhetoric that has dominated the U.S. election campaign. Despite his leftist roots, Ortega has embraced free trade and annual commerce with the United States has grown to $4.4 billion. Apparel, gold, coffee and appliances are top exports.Working with entrepreneurs, Ortega won plaudits from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for sound fiscal policies. Growth was buttressed by high prices for meat, coffee and gold exports, as well as remittances and foreign investment.But Nicaragua faces a tough trading environment in the future. Trump has threatened to totally rewrite U.S. trade ties, and Clinton, who is favoured to win, has taken a harder stance on free trade deals than Obama.Clinton voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which has helped Nicaraguan exports to the U.S. jump by 170 percent from 2005, U.S. data show. She and Trump both oppose the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Ortega has expressed interest in joining."Any country that has important trade links to the U.S. could be impacted by a surge in protectionist policies regardless of who is in the administration," said Moody's analyst Ariane Ortiz-Bollin. (Reporting By Alexandra Alper; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Mary Milliken)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Wileyfox, a smartphone brand based in the UK introduced Swift 2 and Swift 2 Plus, its latest budget smartphones in the new Swift series running on the Cyanogen OS 13 based on Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) last week. These have a 5-inch 720p screen with 2.5d Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, are powered by an Octa-Core Snapdragon 430 SoC, pack a 8-megapixel front camera, have a Aviation-grade aluminium metal back and come with hybrid dual SIM support along with 4G LTE connectivity.
These also have a fingerprint sensor on the back, have a USB Type-C port and pack a 2700mAh battery with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0.
Wileyfox Swift 2
5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display with 2.5d Corning Gorilla Glass protection
Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 ( 4 x 1.2 GHz Cortex A53 + 4 x 1.5 GHz Cortex A53) 64-bit processor with Adreno 505 GPU
2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, expandable memory up to 64GB with microSD
Cyanogen OS 13.1 based on Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow)
Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano / microSD)
13MP rear camera with Dual LED Flash, PDAF, Samsung 3L8 sensor,
1080p video recording
1080p video recording 8MP front-facing camera
Dimensions: 143.771.98.6mm; Weight: 158g
Fingerprint sensor
4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, USB Type-C
2700mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
Wileyfox Swift 2 Plus
5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display with 2.5d Corning Gorilla Glass protection
Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 ( 4 x 1.2 GHz Cortex A53 + 4 x 1.5 GHz Cortex A53) 64-bit processor with Adreno 505 GPU
3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, expandable memory up to 64GB with microSD
Cyanogen OS 13.1 based on Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow)
Hybrid Dual SIM (micro + nano / microSD)
16MP rear camera with Dual LED Flash, Samsung 3L8 ISOCELL sensor, f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, 1080p video recording
8MP front-facing camera
Dimensions: 143.771.98.6mm; Weight: 155g
Fingerprint sensor
4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, USB Type-C
2700mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
The Wileyfox Swift 2 and Swift 2 Plus come in Gold, Midnight and Rose colors and are priced at 159 (US$ 197 / Rs. 13,140 approx.) and 189 (US$ 234 / Rs. 15,620 approx.), respectively.
Android 7.0 Nougat beta testing will begin on Galaxy S7 and S7 edge to from November 9. Last year Samsung had offered a similar beta program for Marshamallow on Galaxy S6 and S6 edge.
The Android Nougat testing will continue till mid December. Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge models in the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, and China will be permitted to enroll in the Galaxy Beta Program. In order to enroll to the program, users need to install the Galaxy Beta Program app from the Galaxy Apps store and sign-up for the test. Users will be able to test the new major update and provide Samsung with feedback about its performance, stability and usability.
It must be noted that not everyone who enrolls for the beta program will be able to test it as Samsung will select only a fixed number of users. Those users who get selected for the beta program, will be able to download beta Nougat builds from the Software Update section in your phones settings.
via
2020 may have been a generally lousy year, but we still ate well. Part 1 and Part 2 of The Best Things I Ate in 2020 are already up; here&...
Iced Vanilla Cookies (Valentine's Day)
Medium
Preheat your oven to 180C Place your butter, sugar and vanilla seeds into your mixing bowl and beat until they are combined on slow or with your spoon. Mix in the egg until combined. Tip all the flour in and beat on slow until dough is formed
What's being voted on
Today is a big day for the marijuana industry, with residents in five states voting on whether or not to legalize recreational cannabis. One of those states is Maine, with voters deciding on Question 1, or the Maine Marijuana Legalization Measure as it's officially known.
Question 1 would legalize recreational marijuana for adults ages 21 and up, place limits on the number of retail licenses that would be issued, and institute a 10% tax at the retail level on consumers. If approved, the Maine Office of Fiscal and Program Review has suggested that 98% of tax revenue generated would wind up in the state's General Fund, with the remaining 2% being distributed to cities and towns. Initially, approving Question 1 should add $2.8 million in marijuana tax revenue in fiscal 2017-2018, with an increase expected to $10.7 million in annual tax revenue collection in subsequent years.
What the polling suggests
Based on the recent polling data, Maine has a pretty good chance of passing its recreational marijuana initiative. In October, a poll conducted by The Survey Center of the University of New Hampshire found that 50% favored approving Question 1, 41% opposed it, and 9% were undecided. The results of this poll were somewhat tighter than the September survey from the Portland Herald Press/Maine Sunday Telegram, where 53% favored the measure and 38% opposed it.
If Mainers were to approve Question 1, the transition to an environment where recreational marijuana is legal should be smooth because medical cannabis has been legal in the state since 2013.
What's at stake
Maine's projection of $10.7 million in tax revenue from recreational marijuana is minuscule next to the $1 billion in potential tax revenue that could be generated from California's vote on Prop 64. Nonetheless, a passage of Question 1 would be a nice win for the pot industry, which is being forced to expand solely at the state level. If recreational marijuana wins approval in the five states that are voting on it today, it would more than double the number of states that have legalized recreational pot.
An approval in Maine would also provide another example for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to determine whether or not the "marijuana experiment" is working. Thus far, Colorado and Washington have been examples of success stories, but more approvals are needed to demonstrate to lawmakers that cannabis can be successfully regulated.
Of course, even if Maine were to join a handful of other states in the green column, it doesn't mean that investors will be participating in the fun. Despite the pot industry's exceptionally fast growth rate, most marijuana investment opportunities are penny stocks that trade on over-the-counter exchanges.
Though listing standards have improved over the years, getting accurate financial data on OTC penny stocks is difficult, at best. In addition, most publicly traded marijuana companies are currently losing money. With the deck still stacked against the pot industry minimal access to banks and no ability to take normalized business deductions investors would be better off monitoring the industry from the sidelines.
General Motors (GM 0.26%) said that its sales in China rose 5.7% to 345,733 vehicles in October, its best-ever result for the month. Year to date through October, GM's sales in China are up 8.6% from the same period in 2015.
GM China sales: The raw numbers
Brand Oct. 2016 Sales Change vs. Oct. 2015 Cadillac 12,502 117.6% Buick 105,071 3.4% Chevrolet 52,195 2% Baojun 67,189 30.2% Wuling 108,760 (6.9)% GM Total 345,733 5.7%
What worked for GM in China last month
The good news was quite good: Sales of some of GM's most profitable products were very strong last month.
Cadillac sales more than doubled, giving the luxury brand its fourth month in a row in which its sales in China increased by more than 50%. The star of the show has been the new XT5 crossover, with over 4,700 sold in China last month. (That may not sound like a lot, but for comparison, GM sold 4,989 XT5s here in the U.S. last month.)
The XT5 isn't the only Cadillac doing well in China: GM said that combined sales of the ATS-L and XTS sedans were up more than 70% year over year. The ATS-L is a China-only version of the compact ATS sedan with a lengthened wheelbase for extra rear-seat legroom. It has been a strong seller since its debut.
Buick's Envision SUV has been a bona fide hit for GM in China since its debut last year. Its success continued in October as sales grew 28% to 22,061 units.
GM's Baojun brand also had another strong month. Baojun is a low-cost brand created to compete with domestic Chinese automakers. Its products include the 560 crossover SUV, the 730 minivan, and a new hatchback called the 310. The 560 has been a big seller since its debut last year.
What isn't working: GM's commercial vans are suffering
GM's Wuling brand builds small, inexpensive commercial vans. It has had a tough time over the last year as China's building boom has tapered off. While rival Ford (F 0.22%) is enjoying strong sales of its Transit commercial vans in China, Wuling plays at a lower-cost point in the market where sales have been particularly weak.
Analysis: GM continues to offset pricing pressure with a profitable product mix
GM's equity income from its joint ventures in China was roughly flat from a year ago at $459 million in the third quarter, despite the fact that GM's sales in China were up 17.4% over the same period. The problem: GM's pricing is under pressure from low-cost domestic Chinese competitors. That squeezed GM's profit margin in the region, which was down to 8.7% last quarter from 9.8% a year ago.
It could have been worse. CFO Chuck Stevens said that strong sales of Cadillacs and the Baojun 560 and Buick Envision crossover SUVs, all strongly profitable products, helped GM offset those pricing pressures to some extent last quarter. All of those products posted strong sales gains again in October, suggesting that GM is on track for another solid quarter in China.
What's being voted on
This is the day the marijuana industry has been eagerly anticipating: Election Day. Residents in nine states are headed to the polls right now to determine the fate of cannabis in their state. One of those states is Arkansas, where residents will determine whether or not medical marijuana should be legal.
The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2016, or Issue 6 as it's more commonly known, would allow Arkansas to join the 25 other states, and Washington, D.C., which have already legalized medical cannabis. State and local taxes generated from the sale of medical marijuana would be used to cover the costs of regulating the industry, and would also be used for various other purposes, including vocational and technical training and workforce training programs.
This is the second go-around for Arkansans, who voted against a similar medical cannabis measure in 2012.
What the polling suggests
Despite there being overwhelming support for medical marijuana in the U.S. as a whole, voting in Arkansas, based on the latest polls, could be very much a toss-up.
A recently released University of Arkansas poll found that 51% of voters are in favor of Issue 6, which, given the survey's margin of error, doesn't guarantee that a majority of those polled are in favor of the measure.
Another somewhat recent poll from Talk Business & Politics/Hendrix College found that 49% favored the measure compared to 43% who opposed it. A full 8% remained undecided. Again, taking the margin of error into context, Issue 6 could simply be too close to call at this point.
What's at stake
What makes an Arkansas cannabis vote so intriguing is that it's being held in a state that traditionally leans toward the Republican Party. While there are no precise lines in the sand, Republican voters tend to have a less favorable view of pot -- either recreationally or medically -- than do Democratic voters. Thus, an approval of medical cannabis in Arkansas would be an impressive hurdle for the pot industry to clear.
Passage of Issue 6 would also mean that more states would have now legalized medical cannabis than have not. While this would merely be a psychological victory for the industry, it does give an added boost of confidence that lawmakers on Capitol Hill may have an added incentive to revisit marijuana's scheduling at some point in the future.
However, regardless of how Arkansans vote, prospective investors are probably going to want to stick to the sidelines. Even if we do witness a record number of states approving marijuana today, there will be too many obstacles standing in the way for investors to succeed.
In general, the pot industry is still highly fragmented and run by numerous mom-and-pop-type dispensaries. In order for investors to really take part in cannabis's growth potential, we'd need to see a consolidation in the space. A lack of access to basic banking services, and higher corporate income tax rates due to a lack of normalized business deductions, act as icing on the cake as to why investors are better off monitoring today's votes from the sidelines.
What's being voted on
Most eyes may be on the presidential election around the country, but the marijuana industry is very eager to see what happens with voters going to polls in nine states to decide the fate of cannabis. Montana is among four states whose residents are voting on a medical cannabis initiative today.
What makes this vote unique is that Montanans already legalized medical marijuana back in 2004. In 2011, Montana's legislature amended the previously passed law in Senate Bill 423 to include the banning of medical marijuana advertisements, limiting dispensaries to just three users, and requiring a state review of doctors who prescribed marijuana to more than 25 patients per year. In other words, Montana's legislature effectively neutered the previous bill.
The Montana Medical Marijuana Act, or Initiative 182 as it's more commonly known, is looking to roll back those aforementioned changes. It would allow physicians to determine if certain ailments qualify as a "debilitating medical condition," and it would repeal both the dispensary patient limit and reviews required for medical professionals on an annual basis. Additionally, I-182 removes the language that allows law enforcement to conduct unannounced inspections of medical marijuana facilities.
What the polling suggests
Considering that Montanans already passed medical marijuana in 2004, it would seem plausible that they'd do it again in 2016. However, the latest poll suggests just the opposite.
Based on an October poll from the Billings Gazette, just 44% approved of I-182 compared to the 51% who suggested they'd vote against it. With 5% still undecided and a margin of error of 3.2%, it's still plausible that this is too close to call one way or the other. These results are a bit shocking considering that Montana legalized medical marijuana 12 years ago, and that national support as of 2015 for medical pot stood at 84%, according to CBS News.
What's at stake
Though you'd probably need a microscope to see what sort of impact medical marijuana would have on state and local government revenue within Montana, an approval -- and thus repeal of Senate Bill 423's amendments -- would be a major win for the cannabis industry. It would essentially signal that the will of the people can overcome a potentially conservative legislature to ensure medical marijuana is an option for select patients.
Furthermore, having restrictions on Montana's medical cannabis law, coupled with the likelihood of at least one of the three other medical marijuana states approving its measure, would mean that more than half of all U.S. states legalized medical pot.
Yet, despite the undeniable momentum behind the marijuana industry, investors are likely going to want to rein in their excitement. Regardless of what happens during this election cycle, cannabis is expected to remain as a schedule 1 drug for many years to come. With marijuana as a schedule 1 substance, the companies that sell it are exposed to higher taxes and have difficulty securing even the most basic financial services like a checking account or line of credit. Even with some pundits calling for lofty legal marijuana sales figures in the coming years, there are no guarantees that John and Jane Q. Investor will be able to participate in its growth.
What's being voted on
Among the many critical issues being voted on today in North Dakota, none stands out as more intriguing than North Dakota Measure 5, which is officially known as the North Dakota Compassionate Use Act.
Measure 5 will decided whether or not the people of North Dakota want to allow medical marijuana to be legalized for certain ailments, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, glaucoma, and post-traumatic stress disorders, to name a few. If approved, the North Dakota Department of Health would be responsible for providing identification cards for eligible patients and would also be tasked with governing and regulating the state's cannabis industry.
In a rather odd twist, because North Dakota's population is considerably smaller than other states that have legalized recreational or medical marijuana, the costs for implementing and governing medical cannabis would actually outweigh the revenue generated from the sales tax on medical pot. Based on an analysis run through June 30, 2019, expenditures are expected to total $9.8 million, whereas associated revenue is expected to total just $6 million.
What the polling suggests
The big question, of course, is whether medical marijuana would pass in North Dakota. The answer might be one of the biggest mysteries of this election cycle because it's been quite a while since any firm conducted a cannabis poll within the state.
Sadly, the most recent poll comes from Oct. 2014 from Forum Communications Co. and the University of North Dakota College of Business and Public Administration. Though 47% of the survey takers approved the idea of legalizing medical cannabis compared to 41% who did not, those who "strongly opposed" the idea outnumbered those who "strongly support" medical marijuana by a slim margin. Since it's been two years, it's tough to tell where the public's opinion may lie.
However, a 2015 national poll from CBS News found that more than six in seven people across the country want to see medical pot legalized, which may bode well for Measure 5.
What's at stake
On one hand, North Dakota is a complete afterthought among the states voting on marijuana today because of its relatively small population and the projected $6 million in revenue generated over the next two-and-a-half years. By comparison, most eyes are on California, which could legalize recreational marijuana and generate $1 billion in added annual tax revenue.
Nonetheless, an approval in North Dakota would further encourage Congress to consider its federal stance on cannabis, at least from a medical perspective. With North Dakota and three other states voting on medical cannabis today, we could wake up tomorrow with more than half of all states having legalized pot for medical purposes.
Despite what looks to be an intriguing day for the pot industry, I'd encourage investors not to get too carried away by any of the outcomes. Even if marijuana were to sweep in all nine states, the industry would still be facing an uphill battle, especially with the Drug Enforcement Agency only recently denying two petitions to reschedule marijuana.
Lawmakers continue to insist that time and example are the best ways to determine if there's a path forward for federal legalization. In the meantime, losses are likely for most publicly traded marijuana companies. It's simply not a suitable or safe area to invest in right now.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's being voted on
Today is a big day for the marijuana industry, with residents in five states voting on whether or not to legalize recreational cannabis. One of those states is Maine, with voters deciding on Question 1, or the Maine Marijuana Legalization Measure as it's officially known.
Question 1 would legalize recreational marijuana for adults ages 21 and up, place limits on the number of retail licenses that would be issued, and institute a 10% tax at the retail level on consumers. If approved, the Maine Office of Fiscal and Program Review has suggested that 98% of tax revenue generated would wind up in the state's General Fund, with the remaining 2% being distributed to cities and towns. Initially, approving Question 1 should add $2.8 million in marijuana tax revenue in fiscal 2017-2018, with an increase expected to $10.7 million in annual tax revenue collection in subsequent years.
What the polling suggests
Based on the recent polling data, Maine has a pretty good chance of passing its recreational marijuana initiative. In October, a poll conducted by The Survey Center of the University of New Hampshire found that 50% favored approving Question 1, 41% opposed it, and 9% were undecided. The results of this poll were somewhat tighter than the September survey from the Portland Herald Press/Maine Sunday Telegram, where 53% favored the measure and 38% opposed it.
If Mainers were to approve Question 1, the transition to an environment where recreational marijuana is legal should be smooth because medical cannabis has been legal in the state since 2013.
Image source: Pixabay.
What's at stake
Maine's projection of $10.7 million in tax revenue from recreational marijuana is minuscule next to the $1 billion in potential tax revenue that could be generated from California's vote on Prop 64. Nonetheless, a passage of Question 1 would be a nice win for the pot industry, which is being forced to expand solely at the state level. If recreational marijuana wins approval in the five states that are voting on it today, it would more than double the number of states that have legalized recreational pot.
An approval in Maine would also provide another example for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to determine whether or not the "marijuana experiment" is working. Thus far, Colorado and Washington have been examples of success stories, but more approvals are needed to demonstrate to lawmakers that cannabis can be successfully regulated.
Of course, even if Maine were to join a handful of other states in the green column, it doesn't mean that investors will be participating in the fun. Despite the pot industry's exceptionally fast growth rate, most marijuana investment opportunities are penny stocks that trade on over-the-counter exchanges.
Though listing standards have improved over the years, getting accurate financial data on OTC penny stocks is difficult, at best. In addition, most publicly traded marijuana companies are currently losing money. With the deck still stacked against the pot industry minimal access to banks and no ability to take normalized business deductions investors would be better off monitoring the industry from the sidelines.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.
The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's being voted on
Most eyes may be on the presidential election around the country, but the marijuana industry is very eager to see what happens with voters going to polls in nine states to decide the fate of cannabis. Montana is among four states whose residents are voting on a medical cannabis initiative today.
What makes this vote unique is that Montanans already legalized medical marijuana back in 2004. In 2011, Montana's legislature amended the previously passed law in Senate Bill 423 to include the banning of medical marijuana advertisements, limiting dispensaries to just three users, and requiring a state review of doctors who prescribed marijuana to more than 25 patients per year. In other words, Montana's legislature effectively neutered the previous bill.
The Montana Medical Marijuana Act, or Initiative 182 as it's more commonly known, is looking to roll back those aforementioned changes. It would allow physicians to determine if certain ailments qualify as a "debilitating medical condition," and it would repeal both the dispensary patient limit and reviews required for medical professionals on an annual basis. Additionally, I-182 removes the language that allows law enforcement to conduct unannounced inspections of medical marijuana facilities.
What the polling suggests
Considering that Montanans already passed medical marijuana in 2004, it would seem plausible that they'd do it again in 2016. However, the latest poll suggests just the opposite.
Based on an October poll from the Billings Gazette, just 44% approved of I-182 compared to the 51% who suggested they'd vote against it. With 5% still undecided and a margin of error of 3.2%, it's still plausible that this is too close to call one way or the other. These results are a bit shocking considering that Montana legalized medical marijuana 12 years ago, and that national support as of 2015 for medical pot stood at 84%, according to CBS News.
Image source: Pixabay.
What's at stake
Though you'd probably need a microscope to see what sort of impact medical marijuana would have on state and local government revenue within Montana, an approval -- and thus repeal of Senate Bill 423's amendments -- would be a major win for the cannabis industry. It would essentially signal that the will of the people can overcome a potentially conservative legislature to ensure medical marijuana is an option for select patients.
Furthermore, having restrictions on Montana's medical cannabis law, coupled with the likelihood of at least one of the three other medical marijuana states approving its measure, would mean that more than half of all U.S. states legalized medical pot.
Yet, despite the undeniable momentum behind the marijuana industry, investors are likely going to want to rein in their excitement. Regardless of what happens during this election cycle, cannabis is expected to remain as a schedule 1 drug for many years to come. With marijuana as a schedule 1 substance, the companies that sell it are exposed to higher taxes and have difficulty securing even the most basic financial services like a checking account or line of credit. Even with some pundits calling for lofty legal marijuana sales figures in the coming years, there are no guarantees that John and Jane Q. Investor will be able to participate in its growth.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.
The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's being voted on
This is the day the marijuana industry has been eagerly anticipating: Election Day. Residents in nine states are headed to the polls right now to determine the fate of cannabis in their state. One of those states is Arkansas, where residents will determine whether or not medical marijuana should be legal.
The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2016, or Issue 6 as it's more commonly known, would allow Arkansas to join the 25 other states, and Washington, D.C., which have already legalized medical cannabis. State and local taxes generated from the sale of medical marijuana would be used to cover the costs of regulating the industry, and would also be used for various other purposes, including vocational and technical training and workforce training programs.
This is the second go-around for Arkansans, who voted against a similar medical cannabis measure in 2012.
What the polling suggests
Despite there being overwhelming support for medical marijuana in the U.S. as a whole, voting in Arkansas, based on the latest polls, could be very much a toss-up.
A recently released University of Arkansas poll found that 51% of voters are in favor of Issue 6, which, given the survey's margin of error, doesn't guarantee that a majority of those polled are in favor of the measure.
Another somewhat recent poll from Talk Business & Politics/Hendrix College found that 49% favored the measure compared to 43% who opposed it. A full 8% remained undecided. Again, taking the margin of error into context, Issue 6 could simply be too close to call at this point.
Image source: Pixabay.
What's at stake
What makes an Arkansas cannabis vote so intriguing is that it's being held in a state that traditionally leans toward the Republican Party. While there are no precise lines in the sand, Republican voters tend to have a less favorable view of pot -- either recreationally or medically -- than do Democratic voters. Thus, an approval of medical cannabis in Arkansas would be an impressive hurdle for the pot industry to clear.
Passage of Issue 6 would also mean that more states would have now legalized medical cannabis than have not. While this would merely be a psychological victory for the industry, it does give an added boost of confidence that lawmakers on Capitol Hill may have an added incentive to revisit marijuana's scheduling at some point in the future.
However, regardless of how Arkansans vote, prospective investors are probably going to want to stick to the sidelines. Even if we do witness a record number of states approving marijuana today, there will be too many obstacles standing in the way for investors to succeed.
In general, the pot industry is still highly fragmented and run by numerous mom-and-pop-type dispensaries. In order for investors to really take part in cannabis's growth potential, we'd need to see a consolidation in the space. A lack of access to basic banking services, and higher corporate income tax rates due to a lack of normalized business deductions, act as icing on the cake as to why investors are better off monitoring today's votes from the sidelines.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.
The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's being voted on
The big day is here: Residents of nine states are headed to the polls to decide the fate of marijuana provisions. One of the most closely watched of these nine decisions should be Florida Amendment 2, which will determine if medical marijuana is in Florida's future.
Florida Amendment 2, which is officially known as the "Use of Marijuana for Debilitating Medical Conditions," could allow Florida to become the 26th state to legalize medical marijuana. Unlike the other states deciding cannabis's fate, Florida's proposal requires an amendment to the state's constitution. Therefore, it will require a 60% "yes" vote in order to pass.
It's also worth noting that this is the second go-around for Floridians voting on medical marijuana, with a similar measure failing to garner enough support in 2014 (58% "yes" votes). Florida Amendment 2 offers a more specific list of the qualifying ailments compared to the previous medical-marijuana amendment voted on in 2014, and parental consent requirements are more clearly defined this time around.
Regulators have determined that the sales tax applied to medical marijuana would increase local and state revenue, but no rough dollar impact is listed.
What the polling suggests
If the most recent polling data is any indication of what might happen in Florida, medical marijuana looks well on its way to being legalized. A late October poll from The Polling Institute Saint Leo University found that 71% favored the state's medical marijuana amendment compared to only 22% who opposed it. Even with the margin of error and undecided voters factored in, this would lead to the amendment passing.
In fact, since 2015, there have been close to a dozen polls conducted on Floridians' opinions of medical cannabis. In every instance, the surveys have found at least 60% support.
According to an NBC News poll from 2015, 84% of people nationally favor the legalization of medical cannabis.
Image source: Pixabay.
What's at stake
A victory in Florida would be important for two key reasons. First, seniors traditionally dislike pot, and Florida has one of the highest concentrations of seniors within the United States. If medical marijuana can gain approval here, it can presumably gain approval in just about any state.
Secondly, an approval in Florida would tip the scales to more states having legalized pot for medical purposes than those that have kept it illegal. That's a psychological milestone that could push Congress to eventually reconsider marijuana's scheduling.
Of course, even if medical marijuana becomes legal in Florida, it does little to help investors. Despite marijuana's enormous growth potential -- Cowen & Co. has estimated that the legal pot market could hit $50 billion by 2026 from $6 billion today -- the fact that the federal government has kept its stance firm on the drug as schedule 1 means there are inherent disadvantages that'll likely keep investors from partaking in this growth. Plus, recreational marijuana is by far the larger growth opportunity for businesses.
Though this could be a game-changing day for certain Floridians, it's probably a non-event for investors.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.
The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
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The global shipping industry was in turmoil during the third quarter after South Korean shipping giant Hanjin filed for bankruptcy protection. That filing had a significant impact on Textainer Group Holdings' (NYSE: TGH) financial results because it had leased 6.4% of its container fleet to the capsized shipper. Because of that, Textainer recorded a deep loss during the quarter, which forced it to eliminate its quarterly dividend.
Textainer Group Holdings results: The raw numbers
Metric Q3 2016 Actuals Q3 2015 Actuals Growth (YOY) Revenue $121.2 million $136.5 million (11.2%) Adjusted net income ($52.3 million) $18.3 million N/M Adjusted EPS ($0.92) $0.32 N/M
YOY = year over year. Data source: Textainer Group Holdings Limited.
What happened with Textainer Group Holdings this quarter?
The Hanjin bankruptcy hurt results:
Textainer's lease rental income sank 14.8% to $110.9 million due in part to the Hanjin bankruptcy. If adjusted for that impact, lease rental income would have declined 10.5% due to a decrease in average rental rates and lower utilization, which slipped 1% to 95.4%.
Revenue from management fees plunged 20.6% to $3.1 million due to the currently weak container leasing market. Meanwhile, revenue from container sale proceeds jumped 81.5% to $4.1 million while the net gains on the sale of containers surged 177.6% to $3 million due to improving container pricing.
In addition to the decrease in lease rental revenue, the company noted that the financial impact of the Hanjin bankruptcy during the quarter was $44 million, or $0.78 per share, due to container impairments and a bad debt provision.
Furthermore, it took two additional charges during the quarter. It recorded a $15 million, or $0.26 per share, additional depreciation expense due to the decrease in estimated future residual values and a $16.5 million, or $0.29 per share, container impairment writedown.
What management had to say
As CEO Phillip Brewer said about the results:
The company noted that it had recovered 41% of the 114,000 containers it leased to Hanjin and it is actively negotiating the release of another 26% of those containers. That said, at this time, it only expects to recover 70% to 90% of them. While it does have $80 million of insurance to cover the unrecoverable containers, lost revenue, and other associated costs, it expects its losses to exceed that insurance coverage.
On a more positive note, it pointed out that new container prices rose about $400 from the bottom. Also, Brewer stated that "rental rates on new and depot container lease-outs have increased significantly to levels not seen for several years." One of the drivers is the fact that there's expected to be minimal new container growth in 2017 due to the lowest production level since 2009.
Looking forward
Despite an underlying improvement in market conditions, Brewer expects the costs of recovering its Hanjin containers and other factors to "depress our earnings for at least the next two to three quarters." Because of that, the company has chosen to eliminate its quarterly dividend for now. Brewer also warned that if large quantities of Hanjin containers get unloaded onto the market, it could reverse the recent spike in container prices. In other words, troubling times still could be ahead.
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North Dakota regulators are proposing a fine of at least $15,000 against the company building the four-state Dakota Access pipeline.
The Public Service Commission said Monday in a complaint that a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners didn't get regulators' approval to proceed with construction after artifacts, including stone cairns, were found last month.
The company diverted construction so the artifacts weren't disturbed, a plan that the State Historic Preservation Office concurred with. But the PSC says the company also should have gotten clearance from regulators.
Energy Transfer Partners didn't immediately comment. It has about three weeks to respond to the PSC complaint and either agree to a fine or request a hearing.
The $3.8 billion pipeline will carry North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to Illinois.
It's been eight years since India's Tata Motors (NYSE: TTM) bought Britain's Jaguar and Land Rover car brands (collectively known as JLR) from American automaker Ford (NYSE: F), nearly doubling its car business in an instant. Since then, Tata Motors' stock has roughly doubled in value, suggesting the company made a good investment back then.
But is Tata Motors a good investment today?
This morning, analysts at Credit Suisse answered the question with a resounding "yes," announcing they are upgrading Tata Motors stock from neutral to outperform, and assigning a 720 Indian rupee ("Rs720") price target to Tata Motors stock. That works out to $10.81 per share, which -- according to Credit Suisse -- represents about "40% upside" from the stock's price today.
Here are three things you need to know about this rating.
Luxury car brands -- from India. Image source: Jaguar Land Rover.
1. India is not America, and a "share" is not an ADR
Tata Motors stock trades on the NYSE as an American Depositary Receipt, which is an instrument that bundles local Indian shares and sells them as a group to American investors. Specifically, every one Tata Motors ADR bundles five shares of Tata Motors common stock for investment -- so buy an ADR, and you will own five shares.
That being the case, when Credit Suisse says it thinks Tata Motors stock is worth the equivalent of $10.81, what it's really saying is that the Tata Motors ADRs listed by your discount broker are worth $54.05 -- or about 38% more than what those ADRs cost today. And voila, there's Credit Suisse's promised "40% upside."
2. Tata evolves
Why does Credit Suisse think Tata Motors stock -- best known as a maker of Indigo sedans and even tinier Nano hatchbacks -- worth such a luxurious price tag? Primarily because of its luxury brands, Jaguar and Land Rover.
After all, according to Forbes magazine, those two luxury car brands account for "just under 90%" of Tata Motors' market capitalization. And as Credit Suisse explains in a write-up on StreetInsider.com, those two car brands -- which are still produced at plants in Great Britain -- are going to benefit from depreciation in the British pound sterling, which "will drive multi-year outperformance for TTMT (JLR) in a way similar to what happened with the JPY for the Japanese stocks." Simply put, as the pound gets cheaper relative to, to example, the U.S. dollar, Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles begin to look cheaper than competing luxury cars -- and car shoppers buy more of them.
3. How big of a deal is this for Tata?
Data from S&P Global Market Intelligence bolster Credit Suisse's point. In 2008, prior to buying JLR, Tata Motors was an automaker doing perhaps $8 billion in annual business. Adding JLR to the mix roughly doubled the company's sales to $14 billion in 2009. By the close of the last fiscal year, Tata had grown its car business nearly three times in size, to $41.6 billion -- with JLR accounting for more than 80% of those sales, and 87% of the company's profits.
Credit Suisse believes that the falling value of the British pound has the potential to boost those profits even more -- in fact, by as much as 50% per car sold. Even with flat sales, therefore, this company that earned just under $3 billion in operating profit last year could earn as much as $4.5 billion if things play out as Credit Suisse expects them to.
The most important thing: Valuation
Does all of this make Tata Motors a buy? Well, let's consider: $3 billion was Tata's operating profit last year, but on the bottom line, the company's net earnings have amounted to just $1.2 billion over the past year. On a $26 billion market capitalization, that works out to a 21.7 price-to-earnings ratio, which seems pretty pricey for an automaker. (Ford, the company that Tata bought JLR from eight years ago, costs only 6.3 times earnings, for example.)
Furthermore, according to S&P Global estimates, most analysts expect Tata Motors' profits to grow at 21% annually over the next five years. That sounds good -- paying 21.7 times earnings for 21% profits growth, with the potential for even more growth if Credit Suisse's predictions pan out. It's a fair price to pay.
But once you notice that these same analysts are looking for 15% annualized profits growth at Ford, I have to say that paying 6.3 times earnings for 15% growth is even more attractive. Long story short, I agree with Credit Suisse that Tata Motors has potential, but I still think Ford stock is a better deal.
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.
Fool contributorRich Smithdoes not own shares of, nor is he short, any company named above. You can find him onMotley Fool CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handleTMFDitty, where he currently ranks No. 336 out of more than 75,000 rated members.
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American Water Works Co.(NYSE: AWK)reported its third-quarter 2016resultson Nov. 2. The largest publicly traded water and wastewater utility in the United States posted revenue growth of 3.8%, while adjusted earnings per share jumped 9.4%.
Earnings releases usually don't provide much color about a company's performance or future prospects. However, a wealth of information is shared in the analyst conference calls following these releases. Here are three key things that you should know from American Water's Q3 call.(Transcript viaThomson Reuters.)
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Slight positive summer weather impact on financials
CFO Linda Sullivan addressed the effects of this year's summer weather on the company's quarterly financials:
The positive summer weather impact on American Water's revenue in the quarter was minimal -- $6 million is only about 0.6% of its total revenue of $930 million. However, thistopic illustrates two related key points important in water utility stock investing. First, up to a point, weather that's warmer and drier than usual typically benefits utilities because people drink more, water their lawns more, and so on. However, in more extreme cases -- like droughts -- such weather usually has negative effects on the finances of utilities (at least over the near term, until potential rate increases to at least partially compensate for these impacts are approved.) During such weather conditions, utilities often incur additional operating costs, and their revenue drops if mandatory water-use restrictions are enacted.
The second key point is that American Water's industry-leading geographic diversity makes it less vulnerable to region-specific weather conditions. The company operates in 47 U.S. states and one Canadian province and operates as a regulated utility in 16 of these states. Its two largest competitors that do business in this country, Aqua America andAmerican States Water (NYSE: AWR), operate in eight and seven states, respectively, though the bulk of American States' business is in California, where it operates its only regulated business.
Largely because all of its regulated eggs are in one heavily drought-stricken basket -- California is in its fifth year of an epic drought -- American StatesWater's financial and stock-price performances have been suffering.
Image source: Getty Images.
2. The California desalination project is moving along
From Chief Operating Officer Walter Lynch's remarks:
Investors and potential investors should know that American Water's subsidiary, California American Water, has a $322 million desalination project in the works in Monterey, Calif. The plant will have the capacity to remove salt from 6.4 million gallons per day of Pacific Ocean seawater to convert it into drinking water.This is a decent capacity, but much less than the highest-capacity desal plant in the U.S. -- the facility in Carlsbad, Calif., which began operating in late 2015, has a processing capacity of 50 million gallons per day.
As Lynch noted, the construction of the 10-mile pipeline that will deliver the desalinated water to the Monterey Peninsula will begin next month. Final plant approvals are slated for 2017 and early 2018, with construction scheduled to begin in the spring or summer of 2018. The plant is slated to begin operating in late 2019 or early 2020.
This is American Water's first desalination plant in California. The company does operate under a joint venture -- but does not own -- a desal plant in Tampa, Fla. This facility, which can process 25 million gallons of water per day, reigned as the highest-capacity desal plan in the U.S. until the Carlsbad plant began operating.
3. How American Water is improving efficiency
Lynch provided some examples of how the company is improvingits efficiency as it drives toward achieving an operation and maintenance (O&M) efficiency ratio (a non-GAAP metric) of 34% by 2020. This metric improved to 34.9% for the 12-month period ending with the third quarter.
The importance of improving efficiency is driven home by the fact that for every dollar American Water saves in O&M costs, it can invest $7 in capital with no impact to its customers' bills, according to Lynch. So in the first example, that more than $1 million in annual savings means the company has essentially freed up $7 million that it can use for acquisitions or other investments in its business.
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.
Beth McKenna has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
What happened
Embraer (NYSE: ERJ) shareholders have had a very rough time in the past two years. Indeed, Embraer stock lost more than half of its value between Aug. 2014 and Aug. 2016 as the company suffered from defense spending cuts in Brazil and a weak market for business jets.
However, shares of the world's third-largest aircraft manufacturer got back on track in October, climbing 23.9%, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Embraer stock performance. Data source:YCharts.
So what
Three major pieces of news powered Embraer's stock gains last month. First, the company reported in mid-October that it had delivered 29 commercial jets during Q3, up from just 21 a year earlier. Additionally, while executive jet deliveries fell, the mix improved. Embraer delivered 12 large executive jets last quarter, compared to nine in Q3 2015.
Second, Embraer resolved a long-running corruption probe by U.S. and Brazilian officials. The company admitted that it had paid bribes in several countries in order to win various contracts. It will pay a total of $205.5 million to avoid prosecution for the violations and has implemented better compliance procedures. Settling this case removes a big cloud that has been hanging over Embraer for years.
Third, on the last day of October, Embraer reported better-than-expected Q3 earnings. Revenue jumped 17.9% due to the uptick in commercial airplane deliveries and gross margin improved by 1.3 percentage points. Embraer also revealed that its ongoing cost-cutting program will take out $200 million of costs on an annualized basis by the end of 2016.
Now what
Embraer stock has been unfairly punished in the past year or two, but most of its problems seem to be temporary.
Development of Embraer's E2-series jets is running ahead of schedule. Image source: Embraer.
Embraer has done an admirable job of bringing in enough orders for its first-generation E-Jet to bridge the gap until production of its next-generation commercial jets ramps up in 2018 and beyond. The KC-390 military tanker/cargo plane is also on track to begin deliveries in 2018. That will stimulate growth on the defense side of Embraer's business.
The struggling executive jet division could take longer to recover. But Embraer has now taken appropriate measures to reduce costs and is focused on maximizing profitability, even if it means selling fewer planes. All in all, the company seems well positioned for a rebound in earnings over the next few years. That could get Embraer stock moving in the right direction, too.
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.
Adam Levine-Weinberg owns shares of Embraer-Empresa Brasileira. The Motley Fool recommends Embraer-Empresa Brasileira. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's being voted on
Among the many critical issues being voted on today in North Dakota, none stands out as more intriguing than North Dakota Measure 5, which is officially known as the North Dakota Compassionate Use Act.
Measure 5 will decided whether or not the people of North Dakota want to allow medical marijuana to be legalized for certain ailments, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, glaucoma, and post-traumatic stress disorders, to name a few. If approved, the North Dakota Department of Health would be responsible for providing identification cards for eligible patients and would also be tasked with governing and regulating the state's cannabis industry.
In a rather odd twist, because North Dakota's population is considerably smaller than other states that have legalized recreational or medical marijuana, the costs for implementing and governing medical cannabis would actually outweigh the revenue generated from the sales tax on medical pot. Based on an analysis run through June 30, 2019, expenditures are expected to total $9.8 million, whereas associated revenue is expected to total just $6 million.
What the polling suggests
The big question, of course, is whether medical marijuana would pass in North Dakota. The answer might be one of the biggest mysteries of this election cycle because it's been quite a while since any firm conducted a cannabis poll within the state.
Sadly, the most recent poll comes from Oct. 2014 from Forum Communications Co. and the University of North Dakota College of Business and Public Administration. Though 47% of the survey takers approved the idea of legalizing medical cannabis compared to 41% who did not, those who "strongly opposed" the idea outnumbered those who "strongly support" medical marijuana by a slim margin. Since it's been two years, it's tough to tell where the public's opinion may lie.
However, a 2015 national poll from CBS News found that more than six in seven people across the country want to see medical pot legalized, which may bode well for Measure 5.
Image source: Pixabay.
What's at stake
On one hand, North Dakota is a complete afterthought among the states voting on marijuana today because of its relatively small population and the projected $6 million in revenue generated over the next two-and-a-half years. By comparison, most eyes are on California, which could legalize recreational marijuana and generate $1 billion in added annual tax revenue.
Nonetheless, an approval in North Dakota would further encourage Congress to consider its federal stance on cannabis, at least from a medical perspective. With North Dakota and three other states voting on medical cannabis today, we could wake up tomorrow with more than half of all states having legalized pot for medical purposes.
Despite what looks to be an intriguing day for the pot industry, I'd encourage investors not to get too carried away by any of the outcomes. Even if marijuana were to sweep in all nine states, the industry would still be facing an uphill battle, especially with the Drug Enforcement Agency only recently denying two petitions to reschedule marijuana.
Lawmakers continue to insist that time and example are the best ways to determine if there's a path forward for federal legalization. In the meantime, losses are likely for most publicly traded marijuana companies. It's simply not a suitable or safe area to invest in right now.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.
The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.
What's being voted on
All eyes might be on Prop 64 in California, but the residents of Nevada also have a very important decision to make with Question 2 -- officially known as the Nevada Marijuana Legalization Initiative. If approved, Question 2 would legalize recreational marijuana for adults ages 21 and up, and it would impose a 15% excise tax at the retail level on consumers. Like most marijuana measures on state ballots this year, the revenue generated from legal marijuana sales would be used to enforce the measure, and as added funding for schools.
Nevada was actually the first state to get a recreational marijuana initiative on its ballot for Election Day. Nevada approved the use of medical cannabis in 2000, meaning it already has certain regulations and infrastructure in place.
What the polling suggests
Recently conducted polls suggest that supporters of Question 2 have a slight edge in Nevada, but it's no guarantee. Last month, the Las Vegas Review Journal polled likely voters and found that 47% favored the approval of recreational marijuana compared to 43% who opposed it. With a margin of error of 3.5% and 10% of voters undecided, this makes the vote almost too close to call.
However, in mid-September a poll from KTNV and Rasmussen Reports placed support at 53% compared to just 39% for the opposition. It's tough to get a good read on where support lies from such a small polling base, but the data is leaning toward approval rather than rejection.
Image source: Pixabay.
What's at stake
It's unlikely that an approval of recreational marijuana in Nevada is going to generate as much buzz as in California, but it would nonetheless be another feather in the cap of the cannabis industry. President Obama has previously suggested that the best way to get the attention of Congress is to continue approving marijuana legislation at the state level, and this would certainly be another means to that end.
Furthermore, it could be argued that the transition to legal recreational marijuana would be pretty seamless. Considering that there's been an established medical cannabis industry in place for well over a decade, regulators have a good idea of what it takes to oversee the industry.
On the other hand, regardless of what happens in Nevada, it's probably going to be a smart move for investors to remain on the sidelines. Even if a few additional states approve their individual marijuana ballot measures, it could be years before the federal government considers another rescheduling of marijuana. For those who may not recall, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency declined to reschedule pot this past August.
As long as cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, it'll be very difficult for businesses to gain traction and grow their profits. Thus, even with double-digit growth potential, it could be nearly impossible, or downright risky, for investors to take part.
A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.
Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.
The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
Update (11:55 p.m. ET): Residents of California voted Tuesday to approve a proposal to legal and regulate recreational pot use in the state, in a decision experts say could sway the overall debate on whether to legalize marijuana on a federal level.
Adults aged 21 and older are now permitted to legally posses up to one ounce of marijuana and grow up to six plants for personal use. Voters in Massachusetts approved a similar recreational pot measure. Arizona, Maine and Nevada are also considering legalization.
California's approval, coupled with previous legalization in Washington state and Oregon, means the entire West Coast has now approved the legal use of recreational pot. As America's most populous state and the world's sixth-largest economy, California holds considerable sway over the nation's marijuana debate and opens the legal pot market to millions of new customers.
Original story: The number of states that allow legal use of recreational marijuana could more than double on Tuesday, as voters consider measures that will define the national narrative for the legal pot industry.
Voters in Massachusetts, California, Nevada, Arizona and Maine will decide whether to legalize recreational pot use for adults. Early opinion polls showed support for approval in all five states, including comfortable majorities in California and Massachusetts, according to Reuters. Additionally, four other states North Dakota, Arkansas, Florida and Montana will vote on whether to legalize medical marijuana.
Proponents of legalization argue that taxation and regulation of the pot industry on the federal or state level would be a massive source of income for the government. A vote in favor of legalization in California would broaden the legal market for the states 39 million residents and set the tone in the overall push to destigmatize pot.
Potentially increasing adult use from four to nine states in one day provides a strong indication of where the American public is on this issue, Robert Hunt, president of Florida-based biopharmaceutical company Teewinot Life Sciences, told FOXBusiness.com. With that in mind, California is certainly the state that is being monitored most closely due to the fact that it represents 12% of the American population.
The combined market for legal recreational and medical marijuana is projected to reach $6.7 billion in 2016 and reach $21.8 billion by 2020, according to a report by the ArcView Group and New Frontier. A separate December 2015 report by Bank of Americas Merrill Lynch valued the medical marijuana industry alone at $2.9 billion.
A joint poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California showed 58% of voters in favor of the legalization initiative, which would allow the state government to regulate and tax marijuana sales. Support is also strong in Massachusetts and Maine, while the votes in Arizona and Nevada are expected to be tighter.
A pro-vote in California would pave the way for a reconsideration of marijuana's status at the federal level, according to Sam Mendez, executive director of the University of Washington's Cannabis Law and Policy Project.
California is also known for being a policy-pioneer statethe rest of the country often follows its lead, Mendez said. If California should pass Proposition 64, you can expect some form of federal reform within the next two or three years. I don't think the whole country is going to legalize, but I don't think cannabis will keep the same illegal status that it has had for decades.
Entering Tuesdays votes, recreational pot use is already legal is Washington state, Colorado, Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia. Twenty-five states allow the legal use of medical marijuana.
Colorado, the first state to legalize recreational pot use, raised nearly $70 million in tax revenue from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015, according to the states department of revenue.
Further legalization would be a major boon to pharmaceutical companies invested in medical marijuana.
This space will have the acceptance of both the FDA and the DEA and physicians will prescribe, rather than recommend, specific medicines that insurance companies will allow to go through co-pay, Hunt said. In the next five years, this industry could top $50 billion a year in top line even if federal legalization of the plant never happens. This is the sector that investors should be most closely watching.
Its beginning to look a lot like Brexit, according to former U.K. Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage. During an interview on the FOX Business Networks Varney & Co., Farage said, all the smart money is on Hillary Clinton winning the presidency.
It feels just like Brexit day to me. All the smart money, all the commentators, all the foreign exchange dealers, the bookmakers, they all think that Hillary is going to do it. And yet even those opinion polls conducted by conventional companies who find it very difficult to reach non-voters who are entering the process, even they show it as being so close, as to be within the margin of error. We did it on Brexit day because a lot of people who dont normally vote were motivated to get down to those polling stations and to do their stuff, he said.
However, Farage said Donald Trump shouldnt be counted out.
Trumps got it all to do, hes got to win these swing states. Hes got to win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida -- I get that. And yet I have a feeling that the world can be in for a very big shock tomorrow morning, he said.
Like Brexit, Farage said the election will be determined by voter turnout.
What was amazing about the Sunderland result wasnt just the margin of victory for leave, it was the turnout. It was the fact that we were up near 80% turnout, something like 20% higher than weve been in the general election in the year before, he said.
Farage added: Brexit has not had a negative effect on the U.K. economy and anyone that thinks that Trump is going to be bad for America and bad for business clearly isnt lookingI think after a few weeks, after a Trump victory, there will be a lot of commentators on Wall Street looking pretty stupid.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sued the registrar of voters in Clark County, Nevada over a polling place in Las Vegas that had been allowed to remain open late last week to accommodate people who were lined up to vote.
Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton are in a close contest to win Nevada in Tuesday's election after a long and contentious campaign. Nevada is one of several states that permits early voting and Las Vegas is viewed as a base of support for Clinton, a former U.S. Senator from New York and former secretary of state.
Nevada state law says voters who are in line at 8 p.m., when the polls close, must be allowed to cast their ballots.
The lawsuit, filed in a Nevada state court on Monday, said election officials violated state law because they allowed people to join the line after 8 p.m. at a polling location at a Latino market.
Representatives for Clark County could not immediately be reached for comment. Representatives for the Clinton campaign also could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit Trump, a New York businessman and reality TV personality who has never previously run for political office, asked that the ballots from that polling place be kept separate from other votes, pending any future legal challenges to the results in the state.
David Bossie, Trump's deputy campaign manager, said on MSNBC that the lawsuit was not aimed at suppressing the Hispanic vote.
Angelina Jolie's team is claiming she and estranged husband have reached a custody agreement. But rumors are swirling that Brad Pitt's camp isn't on the same page.
A representative for Jolie told the Associated Press Monday the actress will continue to have sole custody of her six children with Pitt.
The voluntary agreement calls for the former couple's six children, who range in ages from 8 to 15, to continue to have "therapeutic visits" with Pitt for the time being. It is unclear what therapeutic visits entail, and Jolie's representatives said they could not provide additional details.
Chelsea Handler calls Angelina Jolie a 'lunatic'
Monday's statement that the agreement was reached more than a week ago conflicts Pitt's Friday request in court seeking joint custody. A source told E! News that the pair did not "settle" on a custody agreement.
A representative for Pitt declined to comment.
Pitt and Jolie reached a temporary custody agreement in late September that included at least some of the same terms visitation with his children and both sides agreeing to meetings with therapists.
Pitt's filing did not include any new details about the couple's breakup. Pitt cited irreconcilable differences and makes no mention of a prenuptial agreement that will govern how the pair divides their assets. He also cites Sept. 15 as the day of their separation, one day after the alleged plane altercation between Pitt and his 15-year-old son, Maddox.
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Pitt was accused of being abusive toward the teenager, sources told The Associated Press, but authorities were not notified when the plane landed in Minnesota. The FBI said in September it was investigating the alleged incident.
Jolie and Pitt were married for two years and together for 12 years after becoming close while filming 2005's "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Big Bang Theory fans may be getting a whole lot more of Sheldon in the future.
According to multiple media reports, a spinoff series based on Sheldons childhood is in the early stages of development. Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon, reportedly has a behind-the-scenes role in the show.
CBS declined FOX411s request for comment, but according to The Hollywood Reporter the network is said to have picked up the series.
Variety reports the spinoff is the product of Big Bang Executive Producer Chuck Lorre and Showrunner Steve Molaro. The site reports Big Bang co-creator Bill Prady is likely to sign on for the spinoff as well.
A rep for Lorre told FOX411, "We are not commenting at this time."
Currently, CBS hit show The Big Bang Theory is in its 10th season, and an 11th season has yet to be confirmed.
Whether or not the network takes on more seasons of the show is a pricey decision. Stars Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki and Parson each reportedly earn $1 million per episode.
Last month, Cuoco hinted to Jimmy Kimmel that cost was holding up plans for future seasons of the series.
Its a very expensive question for a lot of people, Cuoco said on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
In August, at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, CBS boss Glenn Geller said he was confident the show would go on past season 10s 24 episodes.
We are very confident that everyone involved wants more Big Bang past year 10, Gellar said, according to The Wrap. I know [show producer] Warner Bros. will make those deals.
Reps Warner Bros. did not immediately return FOX411s request for comment.
MORE: The smartest guest stars on 'The Big Bang Theory'
Angelina Jolie Pitt will continue to have sole custody of her six children with Brad Pitt in a joint agreement reached by the actors, a representative for the actress said Monday.
The voluntary agreement calls for the former couple's six children, who range in ages from 8 to 15, to continue to have "therapeutic visits" with Pitt for the time being. It is unclear what therapeutic visits entailed, and Jolie Pitt's representatives said they could not provide additional details.
A representative for Pitt declined comment.
Monday's statement said the agreement was reached more than a week ago, although Pitt told a court on Friday that he is seeking joint custody.
Jolie Pitt filed for divorce in September, days after Pitt was involved in a disturbance during a private flight with his family. She cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for the breakup, and an attorney said at the time she filed for divorce "for the health of the family."
The statement makes no mention of an investigation by child welfare workers into the plane incident.
The agreement has not been filed in the couple's divorce, and may not be the final custody arrangement governing the actors' children.
Pitt and Jolie Pitt reached a temporary custody agreement in late September that included at least some of the same terms visitation with his children and both sides agreeing to meetings with therapists.
"We believe that all sides are committed to healing the family and ask for your consideration during this difficult time," Monday's statement said.
The actor filed a legal response to the divorce on Friday and sought joint custody of the children. Formal custody arrangements are included a couple's divorce judgment, although they are rarely made public in celebrity divorce cases.
Pitt's filing did not include any new details about the couple's breakup. Pitt cited irreconcilable differences and makes no mention of a prenuptial agreement that will govern how the pair divides their assets. He also cites Sept. 15 as the day of their separation, one day after the alleged plane altercation between Pitt and his 15-year-old son, Maddox.
Pitt was accused of being abusive toward the teenager, sources told The Associated Press, but authorities were not notified when the plane landed in Minnesota. Several sources said the incident was being investigated by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, but the agency said it could not confirm whether it was involved.
The actors were married for two years and together for 12 years after becoming close while filming 2005's "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."
Melissa Joan Hart admitted she often feels guilty when her career gets in the way of spending time with her children.
Hart, who has three sons with husband Mark Wilkerson, often struggles with balancing her busy life.
"I have mom guilt that I'm here right now and I didn't put my kids on the school bus," Hart told Us Magazine.
Melissa Joan Hart: I won't shy away from my faith and values
She added, "You really have this guilt every single day, and it eats away at you that youre not a good person and you cant do it right."
The former child star also admitted she's adopted a why bother philopshy when it comes to tidying up after her kids.
Then/Now: Former child stars
"I have a sign in my house that says 'please pardon the mess, my children are making memories,'" she shared. "I think that's important to remember. They're only little once, and there'll be some day where I'm not picking up Legos and Silly Putty isn't stuck to my couch and I can actually have a clean house. But those are the days that I'll miss my kids."
The 2016 Presidential race has perhaps been one of most bizarre in America's history, and celebrities have been more vocal this election cycle than ever before. Many Hollywood celebrities have thrown their support behind Hillary Clinton, with some threatening to leave the country if Donald Trump is elected. Meanwhile, other celebs have campaigned for Trump and rallied against Clinton.
Here are some of the most outrageous, over-the-top and expletive-filled things stars have said about this election:
--In October, Rosie ODonnell went wild on social media, calling Trump everything from a demented human being to a stupid rich a--wipe. She also said vulgar things about Trump and Vladimir Putin and called the GOP nominee a sexual predator and abuser. Trump and Rosie have publicly feuded for years, so her reaction to his candidacy comes as no surprise.
--Cher recently took things to another level when said she would have to leave the planet if Trump gets elected.
--Late-night host Samantha Bee went as far as to compare Trump to the likes of Bill Cosby and Roman Polanksi during a TV rant.
--Will Smith said the election was bringing him to tears. "For a man to be able to publicly refer to a woman as a fat pig, that makes me teary," he said in an interview.
--Robert DeNiro appeared in a viral video in which he said he wanted to "punch Donald Trump in the face." His inflamatory words got lots of attention.
--Jon Voight attacked his Hollywood peers and expressed his support for Donald Trump when he spoke with Neil Cavuto. In a passionate rant he slammed Clinton for Benghazi, saying, "Donald Trump has no blood on his hands as does Hillary."
--J.K. Rowling took to Twitter during one of the debates to call Trump a "a giant orange Twitter egg."
--Scott Baio had a harsh warning for Clinton voters in an impassioned Facebook video he shared in October. He warned Clinton voters that should she be elected, "You own the demise of the United States of America."
--This election caused a famous family feud. Stephen Baldwin slammed Alec Baldwin's "Saturday Night Live" Trump impressions, and Billy Baldwin attacked Stephen. Billy referenced the brothers' dead father writing, "If our father were alive today he'd smack you in the side of the head for supporting Donald Trump." Stephen later tweeted that he wouldn't likely be having Thanksgiving with his brothers this year.
For many of us, the end of the presidential race cant come soon enough. The bitter exchange between the two major candidates is causing a ripple effect, with many heading to psychologists, saying the stress of this election is getting to them.
Theres a lot of fear thats involved in this political process and its been going on for the better part of the last two years, Dr. Joe Taravella, a licensed clinical psychologist at New York University Langone Medical Centers Rusk Rehabilitation, told FoxNews.com. This process is invoking a lot of fear, a lot of resentment, a lot of irritability, thats masking a lot of anxiety and powerlessness.
Psychologists have coined the term Election Stress Disorder. While this type of fatigue is hardly new and not even uniquely American it can cause trouble if you let it.
The polarizing figures that we are dealing with will affect the stress centers of our brain, specifically the limbic system, which is the emotional center. That really affects chemistry [and] physiology, Dr. Pete Sulack, a chiropractor in Knoxville, Tennessee, and founder of StressRx.com, told FoxNews.com.
According to a study, one in four Americans feel less productive at work because of the political discussions happening in the workplace, Taravella said.
A recent American Psychological Association survey found that 52 percent of adults are stressing over the election, regardless of their party affiliation.
Anxiety is running high, emotions are very intense, and everyone is going to be looking to see what happens in this election, Taravella said. Some of us are not gonna be happy with the choice, and some may. But regardless, we need to have faith in the political process and be able to move forward together.
Before you get in a bitter battle over who to vote for today, you may want to try to keep your calm by putting some distance between you and the political discussion.
Get away from some of that social media and the media thats bombarding our emotions and causing us to be stressed out, Sulack said. Provide some time for yourself got take a break, get a massage go have a good laugh.
Remember, after your vote is cast, there is a reason why our electoral process has lasted so long.
"[The] democratic political process has been going on forever. It will come and it will go. You might not like the outcome, but over time, you need to feel that we are making gains and we are moving forward collectively as a country, Taravella said.
Experts say if you feel youre getting too heated over a political discussion, try taking a good look at why the campaign has been angering you, which may lead to a personal breakthrough in how you manage conflicts.
A U.S. unit of British drug company BTG Plc pleaded guilty on Monday to improperly marketing its embolic device LC Bead, and will pay about $36 million to resolve its criminal and civil liability, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Biocompatibles Inc admitted to a misdemeanor charge of introducing a misbranded medical device into interstate commerce, according to papers filed with the federal court in Washington, D.C.
The West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based unit will pay an $8.75 million criminal fine and a $2.25 million criminal forfeiture, plus $25 million to resolve civil claims under the federal False Claims Act, the Justice Department said.
LC Bead is used to treat liver cancer, and had in 2002 won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to be placed in blood vessels to block or reduce blood flow to hypervascular tumors and certain malformations.
But in signed court papers, Biocompatibles admitted to having from May 2006 to December 2010 marketed LC Bead as a drug delivery device, after having told the FDA in November 2004 that "under no circumstance" would it do so.
The civil accord also resolved charges that Biocompatibles' distributor promoted LC Bead as providing "better" or "superior" therapy for certain types of cancer despite a lack of medical evidence, and resulted in doctors submitting false claims to Medicare and other federal health care programs.
Ryan Bliss, a whistleblower who oversaw the marketing of Biocompatibles' medical products in North America, will receive about $5.1 million form the civil settlement, his lawyers and the government said.
A lawyer for Biocompatibles did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last year, a group of 200 women in 40 states filed a class action lawsuit alleging the cleansing conditioner from Wen by Chaz Dean caused scary side effects, from scalp irritation to hair loss.
On Oct. 31, a federal judge in Los Angeles gave preliminary approval to a $26.3 million settlement for the suit against celebrity stylist Chaz Dean and Wen distributor Guthy-Renker. If approved by a United States district judge, customers who had adverse reactions could receive up to $20,000.
Wen is a leader in the no-shampoo movement. Many women believe that conditioner washing or "co-washing"using only cleansing conditioner (and no shampoo)makes their hair feel healthier, softer, and easier to manage.
But the women represented in the lawsuit say they've had the opposite experience: They claim Wen's cleansing condition caused "severe and possibly permanent damage to hair, including significant hair loss to the point of visible bald spots, hair breakage, scalp irritation, and rash."
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"From what we understand about the product and how it causes hair loss is it contains virtually no cleanser," attorney Amy Davis told CBS. "Its like using lotion to wash your hair. So instead of removing the product when you rinse it off, it just becomes impacted in your hair follicle."
The hair-care brand is standing by its products. "Wen by Chaz Dean is safe and we continue to provide our hundreds of thousands of customers with the Wen by Chaz Dean products that they know and love," the company said in a statement. "Since the process of litigation is time consuming and costly, we made a business decision to pursue a settlement and put this behind us so that we can focus on delivering quality products."
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So, should you hesitate to use a cleansing conditioner like Wen's?
This question is a tricky one, in part because experts haven't been able to figure out what, exactly, caused the concerning side effects. When we asked two dermatologists about the lawyer's description of the Wen product becoming "impacted" in the hair follicle, they both agreed it didn't make much sense.
"I'm certainly not a legal expert," says Debra Jaliman, MD, a dermatologist in New York City. "But since hair grows from the hair folliclewhich is under the skinand not from the surface, I couldn't really make sense of this lawsuit." What's more, she says, if a product doesn't contain any cleanser, the result would be oily hair: "I can't see how it would cause hair loss."
Mary Gail Mercurio, MD, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, says the worst side effect she'd expect from a cleansing conditioner would be oily, matted hair that feels weighed-down. "I'd think it might have a negative effect on appearance, but it shouldn't cause breakage," she says.
Both doctors felt the lotion analogy Davis used was puzzling, since washing your hair with lotion shouldn't cause your hair to fall out either. "Dermatologists often prescribe medicines of varying viscosity for the scalp without seeing this phenomenon," says Dr. Mercurio.
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But could the Wen formula contain some kind of depilatory that's causing the women to lose their hair? Unlikely, according to Dr. Mercurio. "If there were a specific depilatory ingredient in these products, it would affect more women," she points out. "There are many causes of hair loss. It's possible that some of these women are sustaining hair loss from a separate issue."
What about the no-shampoo movement itself, we wonderedis there any risk to skipping shampoo?
There's no "right" frequency for washing your hair, the experts say. "It's a very individual thing," explains Dr. Mercurio. "It really depends on scalp's oil production, which differs from person to person."
In other words, it's up to you to find what works best for your hair. While some people don't like the feeling of unwashed hair, others swear by the no poo approach. In fact, Health executive deputy editor Jeannie Kim experimented with only co-washing her hair for one month last summer. She loved the results so much, she hasn't used shampoo since.
"Im now at 15 months and counting of using only cleansing conditioner, even after pool swimming and major sweaty workouts," she says. "I do make sure to massage my scalp really well, both with the product and after rinsing to make sure Ive gotten it all out."
For now, it seems the best advice is to experiment with co-washing, but cautiously. As with any hair- or skin-care product, watch for unusual symptoms and discontinue use if you experience a negative reaction.
This article originally appeared on Health.com.
A Colorado couple who were preparing for the arrival of their first baby didnt let early labor pains stop them from casting their votes on Friday, as they made a quick pit stop to drop off their ballots before continuing on to the hospital.
Sosa Adelstein and Max Brandel, who were expecting their baby girl to arrive on Election Day, packed their bags and headed to the Boulder County Clerk and Recorders Office where they dropped off their ballots and posed for a quick photo, The Daily Camera reported.
We rushed over and voted, and now we are at the hospital, Brandel told the news outlet on Friday. She is doing good, Im really proud of her. She is doing great so far.
Mircalla Wozniak, Boulder County spokeswoman, confirmed the couple did stop while Adelstein battled through labor pains and took a photo at the offices selfie station.
We always encourage voting by any means and certainly encourage your ballot in as soon as possible, Wozniak told The Daily Camera. This is a great reason to vote early if you are in labor.
Adelstein was expected to give birth later Friday or early Saturday.
Editor's note: The following column originally appeared in The Hill newspaper and on TheHill.com.
We jumped the shark on this campaign a long time ago.
First, there was the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by a candidate with no qualifications to be president, given to shaming women about their looks, insulting Mexicans, and even demeaning a former prisoner of war, himself a former GOP presidential nominee, for getting captured.
Then the American press played stupid.
They equated one candidates reckless use of a private email server with the other candidates litany of disrepute his reported failure to pay taxes; his insults of a Gold Star family; charges that he regularly groped women; as well as federal charges of racial bias against black people trying to rent apartments. Oh, and dont forget charges of fraud at Trump University and the stories never convincingly rebutted of his corrupt use of money intended for charity.
Along this twisted road to elect a president, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia is trying to influence the election by attacking one candidate. And when days before the election the FBI director took a shot at the same candidate, the 2016 campaign totally went off the rails.
By that, I mean it went past all bounds of my prior experience with hardball political campaigns over the last 40 years.
The smart money is still on a Hillary Clinton victory. The bettors in Las Vegas and the polling/statistical analytics crowd have her as the favorite to seal the deal.
But her lead in the polls both nationally and in the battleground states has dwindled in the last week.
The nation is still shaking its collective head over FBI director James Comeys letter to Congress stirring new suspicion about Clinton, without charges of misconduct or any evidence. The FBIs credibility has been damaged. That damage has not been repaired by Comey's statement on Sunday, stating that the new emails had not changed his earlier conclusion that Clinton's deeds did not rise to the level of prosecutable offenses.
The actual election wont end the craziness. This years campaign is just the latest chapter in years of polarized, dysfunctional national politics.
So as you watch Fox News for election coverage on Tuesday night, here is a viewers guide.
As we begin the contest, Clinton dominates the map. States that would be safe for any Democratic nominee give her just under 200 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Then there are four states very likely to add to her total Virginia and the Midwestern trio of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
If she can add Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania and New Hampshire 20 from the former and four from the latter she is on the brink of victory. Either Colorado or Nevada would carry her over the finish line.
Any sign that Donald Trump might grab one of those states threatens Clintons path to early victory.
Pay particular attention to Virginia. An early call that Clinton has won the state is a good sign for her in states with lots of college-educated whites and strong racial diversity read that as auguring well for her chances in Colorado too.
Also keep an eye on Georgia, where the polls close at 7 p.m. The state has voted Republican in every presidential election for the last two decades. But Trumps toxicity with racial minorities has given Democrats reason to believe they can do well. Trump holds the lead in polls. A close race here is bad news for him while a quick call for him will cheer his backers.
Staying in the south, there will be much attention paid to Florida and North Carolina.
Florida is critical with 29 electoral votes but it is never an early call because part of the state is on central time. The Tar Heel state, however, is likely to be an early bellwether. Polls close there at 7:30 p.m. As of Sunday, the RealClearPolitics polling average in the state showed a small advantage for Trump.
Texas is on my list for fun. The state has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But Trumps racist rhetoric about Latinos has given Democrats new hope in the state with the second largest share of Hispanics in the nation: 39 percent. Polls show Trump leading but home-state Sen. Ted Cruz beat him in the states GOP primary by 17 points.
Stay up late to keep an eye on Utah. Trump cant afford to lose a solid GOP state. But some recent polls show that independent candidate Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer and a Mormon, is competitive with Trump and Clinton. If McMullin wins, he will be the first third party candidate to claim electoral votes since George Wallace in 1968.
Arizona is worth watching too, because the Democrats see the state as their best hope for an election night shocker. Since September, Clinton has spent over $1 million on ads in the state, where 31 percent of the population is Hispanic. One indication that Clinton has a chance: she nabbed the endorsement of the states largest newspaper, the Arizona Republic, which has never endorsed a Democrat for president since it began publishing in 1890.
Get out the popcorn, start Tweeting and watch the returns come in. This is politics as soap opera or World Wrestling Federation entertaining but at the end disheartening.
When all is said and done, 2016 remains the year that American politics jumped the shark.
Lets make a list. The advantages of anxiety. We have so many opportunities to practice. Just look at the front page of any newspaper. Its voting day, for goodness sake. Within a few short hours a new leader of the free world will be chosen. This is a perfect day to be anxious, right? This is a perfect opportunity for us to rehearse the many wonders of worry.
Heres the first entry: Worry helps our health. Lose sleep and youll live longer. A nervous stomach is a happy stomach, isnt it? Actually, no. Worry has been cited for a swarm of sicknesses: heart trouble, high blood pressure, rheumatism, ulcers, colds, thyroid malfunction, arthritis, migraine headaches, blindness, and a host of stomach disorders. Worry, it seems, hurts our health. But, at least worry makes us feel better.
Worry brings joy. Entangle yourself in Election Day dread and youll be the happiest person on the block, right? Worry puts the blue in the sky, the spring in the step, and gives the song to the bird. A dose of fret spices up the day, does it not? We know better. Worry is to joy what a Hoover vacuum cleaner is to dirt: might as well attach your heart to a happiness-sucker and flip the switch.
Lets keep thinking. Surely anxiety has some value. Even if it takes health and steals joy, doesnt worry usher some blessing?
Worry is to joy what a Hoover vacuum cleaner is to dirt: might as well attach your heart to a happiness-sucker and flip the switch.
How about this one: Worry solves our problems. Treat your troubles to a good dose of fret and watch them evaporate. Correct? Hardly. Worrying about problems creates a new set of problems.
Then why do we worry so?
Simple, anxiety is the default reaction to the appearance of trouble. When a politician says: The nation is in trouble! it requires no action to believe him or her. Fear is highly contagious. There has been a lot of fear-peddling over the last few months.
Its time to trust. Its time for us to believe the motto on our coinage. In God we trust.
Lets face it. Anxiety has no advantages. It ruins health, robs joy, and changes nothing. The Greek word the Bible uses for worry, merimnao, stems from the verb merizo (divide) and nous (mind). Worry cleavers the mind, splitting thoughts between today and tomorrow. Whats more, worry divides people. Fear causes citizens to rage against citizens, Americans to spew anger toward Americans.
Isnt it time to trust?
The Bible calls God the blessed controller of all things. Does all things include a presidential election? If your candidate wins, is God in control? If your candidate loses, is God in control? And, if God is in control, can we not trust Him?
Its time to vote, to pray and, most of all, its time to trust.
This has been an election campaign like no other. But amid so many surprises and so much controversy, some critical policy debates have been mostly overlooked. In the case of energy policy, millions of American workers may not realize their jobs are under threat, and they deserve to know why.
The threat comes from keep it in the ground groups totally opposed to fossil fuels, and the influence they are exerting over some political candidates this year. Groups like 350.org and Food & Water Watch want to ban hydraulic fracturing, often called fracking, an essential technology for producing domestic oil and natural gas. And the candidates have taken notice.
By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said during the Democratic primary. Im going to pledge to stop fossil fuels, she said at another time.
During the primary, Clinton was competing with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for the support of keep it in the ground activists. Let me make it as clear as I can be we are going to ban fracking in 50 states of this country, Sanders said.
While Sanders eventually lost the primary to Clinton, he ensured that Bill McKibben founder of 350.org and the leader of the keep it in the ground campaign was appointed to the Democratic Partys platform committee. McKibben has called for a full-scale war on global warming and pins the label of climate denier on anyone of proposes a single new oil and gas well.
The pressure coming from the environmental left should concern us all, because banning fracking would be extraordinarily costly. According to a new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation would lose 14.8 million jobs nationally by 2022, and not just in energy. The drastic reduction in domestic oil and gas supplies would drive up prices and return us to dependence on foreign energy imports, sending shockwaves through the economy and hurting other sectors like manufacturing.
A ban on hydraulic fracturing would result in Ohio losing 400,000 jobs, with union jobs comprising a significant portion of this total, the report from the Chambers Institute for 21st Century Energy states. Our modeling indicates that $33 billion in state GDP in Ohio would be lost, with the majority of those losses attributed to the higher costs for energy that Ohio businesses would be forced to pay.
These costs would also hit family budgets very hard. According to the report, living expenses for the average American household would jump by almost $3,500 per year. In Ohio, it would be worse, to the tune of $4,000 a year.
True, this has been an unorthodox year in American politics. But its stunning that any candidate on the left or right would play along with the idea of a national fracking ban when the economic impacts are so drastic. People not competing for votes from the radical left know better. Even President Obama has rushed to take credit for the lower energy prices made possible by fracking. Gas is $2 a gallon, he boasted in a recent speech. Thanks, Obama!
Its tempting to shrug off the things candidates say on the campaign trail. So-called political experts will dismiss these remarks and even full-fledged policy proposals as unrealistic promises the candidates know they cant keep.
But in the case of energy policy, we shouldnt let the candidates off the hook, not when the stakes are so high. We should take them at their word, unless and until they are willing to retract those troubling statements.
And we should all ask ourselves why these candidates caved under pressure from keep it in the ground groups in the first place. Because if it happened once, it could happen again.
Will Donald Trump's immigration message make him vulnerable in the traditionally red state of Arizona? Hillary Clinton's campaign has been fighting for the western prize despite a Trump lead in the polls.
The America's Election Headquarters 2016 Scorecard rates Arizona as leaning Republican and eleven Electoral votes at stake. The Real Clear Politics average in Arizona shows Trump 46% and Clinton 42%.
Clinton has a strong ground game advantage that started early, including more than 30 offices in the state.
The campaign has sent big hitter surrogates like First Lady Michelle Obama, Chelsea Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders to the Grand Canyon state, in addition to running mate Senator Tim Kaine.
Yet, only one Democrat, Bill Clinton, has carried the state since Harry Truman did in 1948.
Throughout the race, Trump has made immigration a cornerstone, hot button issue.
Border state Arizona has the fifth-highest number of eligible Hispanic voters in all of the states and it's estimated the Latino vote could top 20 percent for the first time.
Chuck Coughlin, political analyst and president of HighGround Public Affairs Consultants in Phoenix, says, "The very simplistic rhetoric that you hear from the Trump campaign about build the wall, ship 'em home, it just doesn't resonate with Arizona voters by and large. It resonates with about 30 percent of the Republican base."
Republicans have an advantage in voter registration but had been under-performing by 2 to 3 percent, according to a recent post by HighGround . The GOP appears to be making up for it after a week of solid returns and turnout effort.
HighGround also says turnout among independents and unaffiliated voters has been slightly lower, adding, "There are a few explanations that might fit: perhaps it is because they tend to vote later or maybe it is that no one has a concentrated turnout drive just focused on independents."
If the election results are mixed on the East Coast and all eyes turn to this Western battleground, how secure is the vote? This past summer the state was a target of what's believed to be a foreign entity that tried unsuccessfully to hack the state's voter database.
Secretary of State of the State of Arizona Michele Reagan told Fox News, "It'd be very, very hard to rig the vote itself and we'd be able to back it up with those paper audit trails." For example, voting machines and results do not transmit over the internet.
The secretary, who just recently met with federal counterterrorism officials said, "False information and fake information, is just as dangerous as hacking election systems and so we're really on guard for that and we're really watching our systems as well. That's probably my biggest fear, much bigger than the vote itself being hacked."
Americans braved long lines and a tense Election Day climate to deliver the final verdict Tuesday in the raucous race for the White House between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, as the campaigns made last-minute bids to drive out turnout in what could be a close contest.
Go out and vote, Trump urged on Fox News, as he talked up his chances in key battlegrounds.
As Clinton cast a vote for herself in Chappaqua, N.Y., she was met by cheering crowds and told reporters the experience was humbling.
I know how much responsibility goes with this and so many people are counting on the outcome of this election," she said, as she aims to make history and become the first woman elected U.S. president.
The historic day started off neck-and-neck in three early-voting New Hampshire precincts.
Polls opened and shut quickly in the tiny hamlets of Dixville Notch, Harts Location and Millsfield just after midnight Tuesday. Under New Hampshire state law, communities with fewer than 100 voters can get permission to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots.
Clinton won more votes in Dixville Notch and Harts Location, but Trump was the overwhelming favorite in Millsfield, with a 16-4 advantage.
The traditional early vote in New Hampshire kicked off what promises to be a busy election day, after Trump and Clinton visited key battleground states late Monday into early Tuesday to make one last plea to American voters.
Speaking in Grand Rapids, Mich., Trump urged voters to ask themselves before they entered the voting booth: Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want America to be ruled by the people?
Today is our independence day, today the American working class is going to strike, he added.
Clinton visited North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., for a midnight rally. Clinton was led in by performances from Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga and then by her husband Bill and daughter Chelsea.
Tomorrow night this election will end but I want you to understand that our work together will be just beginning. We have to bridge the divides in this country.
Clinton also made her final plea to middle class voters.
Clintons speech in Raleigh echoed her entire trip Monday as she made her final campaign stops in key states. Clinton vowed to unite a divided nation.
Anger is not a plan, the Democratic presidential nominee said in Pittsburgh, Pa.
As Clinton spent the day blasting what she called her opponents divisive vision for America, Trump blamed her and her husbands policies for manufacturing job losses and vowed a change if hes elected.
We are going to bring back jobs that have been stolen from you. Were going to bring back wealth taken from this country, Trump, the Republican nominee, said in battleground state North Carolina, the second of his five stops Monday.
He pulled out all the stops at the second to last rally of his campaign in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Trump appeared with his running mate Mike Pence and many members of his family at the SNHU Arena, the same arena where he held his final rally before the New Hampshire primary. His win in that race paved his way to the party's nomination.
"It all began for me in New Hampshire," Trump said after taking the stage.
The race remains tight in the final hours. The latest Fox News Electoral Scorecard shows Trumps prospects improving in four key states -- Arizona, Iowa, Utah and North Carolina though Clinton still has the advantage on the electoral map.
Clinton made her final campaign swing Monday, less than 24 hours after the FBI concluded a revived probe into her personal email use as secretary of state, lifting a cloud off her campaign in the final hours as she seeks to become the first woman elected president in U.S. history.
Before embarking on her three-state campaign swing, Clinton told reporters that she has "some work to do to bring the country together" and that she wants to be president for those who vote for her and those who don't.
Trump on Monday resumed his breakneck race through the country to make a final appeal to voters to help him "drain the swamp" in Washington. In the wake of the FBI announcement, he urged voters to "deliver justice at the ballot box."
She wants to fight ISIS? Trump said Monday in North Carolina about Clinton, who has essentially led for the entire 2016 election cycle. She wants to fight nobody. Shes got no chance.
Trump is aiming for an upset victory Tuesday, which is still possible if he is able to win key toss-up states and pick off one or more strategic states considered Democratic territory.
The former reality TV star shocked the countrys political class this spring when he defeated 16 major candidates in the Republican primaries, among them several senators and governors.
While seeking victories in the so-called battleground states, which have a mix of voters who could go for either major party candidate, Pennsylvania is considered critical for Trump.
The state has not elected a GOP presidential nominee since 1988 in the candidates race to get 270 Electoral College votes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
So the November surprise is that the October surprise didnt count.
Thats not quite true, but captures the dizzying end to the 2016 campaign, which saw James Comey again announce that Hillary Clinton is under criminal investigation nine days before the election, and then exonerate her less than 48 hours before the voting begins.
Which raises the question of whether he should have gone public in the first place, given that the new evidencenot reviewed at the timeturned out to be mostly duplicate and personal emails.
Its not much of a bumper sticker, but I guess Clinton can claim to be the only candidate cleared twice by the FBI.
Comeys move undercuts Donald Trumps claim that Clintons election could spark a constitutional crisis, but not his overall rhetoric about a culture of corruption. Yet the damage has been done, fueling arguments by Comeys critics that he unfairly politicized the last stretch of the campaign.
Comeys Oct. 28 letter to Capitol Hill transformed the campaign, put Clinton on the defensive, energized Trump and had some impact on the polls, which were already tightening. I said at the time that we just didnt know whether the new cache of emailswhich weirdly wound up on Anthony Weiners computer, via Huma Abedinwould be incriminating or a nothing-burger.
Theres even a school of thought that Comeys second letter late Sunday doesnt help Clinton because it brings the focus back to the email scandal just when shes trying to make a closing argument.
The Clinton camp is obviously relieved. And once again, we have partisan reactions on both sides.
Trump had been ripping Comeys July decision not to seek an indictment against Clinton as evidence of a rigged system. When the FBI chief made the new inquiry public, Trump praised him for guts. Now he is questioning how the bureau could have reviewed 650,000 emails in such a short period of time.
Newt Gingrich, a major Trump ally, says the FBI boss caved: Comey must be under enormous political pressure to cave like this and announce something he can't possibly know.
On the other side, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman rips into Comey:
The election was rigged by James Comey, the director of the F.B.I. His job is to police crime but instead he used his position to spread innuendo and influence the election. Was he deliberately putting a thumb on the electoral scales, or was he simply bullied by Republican operatives? It doesnt matter: He abused his office, shamefully.
Washington Post editorial writer Stephen Stromberg is also critical:
If you have ever watched a procedural crime drama, you probably recognize the words, the jury will disregard. It is the instruction judges give jurors to ignore inadmissible testimony after it has already been offered in open court. Of course the jury, composed of human beings, cannot forget what it has already heard even if they try. The integrity of the proceedings have already been damaged.
Theres also chatter about the awkward relationship that Clinton would have with Comey, who serves a fixed 10-year term and can only be removed for cause, if she wins.
For now, as the candidates wrap up their mad dash to far-flung rallies, Comeys open-and-shut pronouncements are baked into the cake. That is, along with a separate inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, Access Hollywood, the sexual misconduct allegations by a dozen women, basket of deplorables, and charges by each nominee that the other is unfit for the White House and would lead us into war.
An incredible melodrama, with the presidency at stake. Oh, and control of the Senate as well. The curtain is finally coming down on this one.
Until Wednesday, when the media will be consumed by sound and fury over the outcome of the election and the prospects for the 45th presidentwhoever he or she may be.
A former Marine running for state office in Pennsylvania was declared a deserter, despite touting his service throughout his campaign, according to a federal military document.
The document, obtained by The Scranton Times-Tribune, shows that former state Rep. Kevin Haggerty was absent without leave for two months from the Marines and ruled a deserter.
Haggerty, 44, a Democrat, is seeking election to the 112th state House district in Tuesdays election against Republican Ernest Lemoncelli.
The newspaper obtained the document Thursday from the National Personal Records Center after filing two federal Freedom of Information Act requests. The document is reportedly a "chronological record" of Haggerty's Marine service.
A spokesman for Haggerty's campaign, meanwhile, told the paper that Haggerty "has not had a chance to review this document and is unable to comment."
Haggerty has made his military service a centerpiece of his campaign, using a photo of himself in Marine uniform in campaign literature, according to the paper.
On his official campaign website, Haggerty lists his service in the Marines from 1996 to 1998, and notes the "character of service" as "honorable."
Click for more from The Times-Tribune
Two Florida election clerks were fired Tuesday and police were called to the scene after a dispute over alleged voter intimidation.
The Pompano Beach clerks were not named. One was a Democrat and the other a Republican, NBC Miami reported.
Election officials told Local 10 the clerks were fired because they didnt adhere to procedure and policy.
FLORIDA MAN DIES WITHOUT SEEING VOTE COUNTED
The incident began when the election workers could not agree over where volunteers could stand, WSVN reported. At some point, police were called to the Herb Skolnick Community Center; however, no arrests were made.
Dr. Brenda Snipes, the supervisor of elections, fired both workers and ordered them to leave the polling stations, NBC Miami reported.
Other poll workers stepped in as replacements.
Pompano Beach is a city in Broward County.
Viewers around the world tuning in to Fox News Channel for tonights election coverage will be seeing a stunning new set that Bill Hemmer calls the most beautiful television studio hes ever walked into.
Fox News Election Headquarters opens for business at 6 p.m. ET, bringing viewers the latest news as Americans register their votes for Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic standard bearer Hillary Clinton. Top Fox News Channel personalities and pundits will helm the desks of Studio F, illuminated in red, white and blue and visible from New York Citys Avenue of the Americas.
This race has captured the imagination of the entire country, Hemmer, anchor of Americas Newsroom, said. For us, we have been on the story every day for 15 months. Its finally here, and we have given it -- what we believe -- an appropriate new home.
Under a 29-foot ceiling, Studio F is home to 46 monitors, each pumping out more than 100 million pixels to bring the night to life for the viewers at home.
We have so many different screens to display information on and so many different ways to give the producers opportunities to tell the story, Fox News Senior Vice President of Technology & Operations Warren Vandeveer said. This isnt technology just for technologys sake -- these screens are all real estate to put information in.
Months of planning and coordination went in to installing the sleek new studio in space at the base of the News Corp building.
What we built here is a very dynamic environment, so the way we are able to present the election results is going to be very clear, Fox News Vice President of Broadcast Technology Peter Blangiforti said. Im proud of the accomplishment.
Tonight, under the 528-square-foot video chandelier, viewers will see Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly leading the coverage, with Martha MacCallum presenting the latest exit poll data from the massive media wall, standing 9 feet tall and 30 feet wide. Just off camera lies the nerve center -- a state-of-the-art control room where Fox News producers employ the latest technology to bring information and stunning graphics into living rooms around the nation.
Just up the tempered-glass stairs is the Fox News Data Deck, where Hemmer will manage his video billboard, joined by top analysts who will break down the numbers as polls close and returns come in. Shannon Bream will join Hemmer on the balcony, keeping an eye on what people are posting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Weve seen this studio grow from infancy to the big unveiling tonight, Fox News Election Headquarters Line Producer Valeria Riccioli told FoxNews.com. Our biggest task has been to make sure we dont get lost in the technology and make sure it functions editorially. The possibilities in this studio are endless.
Fox News Senior Executive Producer Alan Komissaroff said the studio must live up to a dramatic and tumultuous election, between two candidates who captivated the public and generated unprecedented controversy.
Either you have Donald Trump, this guy who no one even thought would be the nominee -- much less this close to the presidency -- going to the White House, Komissaroff said. Or, you have Hillary Clinton, the first female president, the wife of such a storied president in Bill Clinton. Either way, its a big story.
It was one of Thomas Korinko's dying wishes to cast his presidential vote in the battleground state of Florida.
But Korinko -- whose family's struggle to get local officials to accept his ballot signature was highlighted in local media last week -- died Friday from cancer, his son told FoxNews.com.
He did not get to see his early vote for Donald Trump counted.
Korinko's mail-in ballot -- postmarked Oct. 25 -- had been discounted when officials ruled his frail signature did not match that on his voter registration, according to his family. His family challenged the decision, to no avail.
"This was a man who knew he was going to die. There were a lot of things for him to think about. And one of the things at the top of the list was that he voted," his son, Jeff Korinko, told FoxNews.com Tuesday.
He argued that the dispute with the state goes beyond his father's wishes, arguing that the signature-matching requirement discounts thousands of votes.
"Thats an injustice," he said. "These are all elderly people people dont walk the same, they dont talk the same when theyre older. And they dont write the same."
Thomas Korinko was diagnosed with liver cancer seven months ago and died Friday in a hospice in Tavares.
In Florida, the signature on every mail-in ballot is compared to the voter registration signature on file to prevent fraud. Florida officials did send Korinko a subsequent affidavit to sign on Oct. 31, according to his son, but Korinko was unable to sign the document because his health had rapidly deteriorated.
"They sent the form, but by the time he got it, he was sleeping all the time and too ill," Jeff Korinko said.
A spokeswoman for the Lake County Supervisor of Elections was not immediately available when contacted Tuesday.
For Korinko, who knew he was dying, the chance to vote one last time was critical, his son said. Korinko lived in a key battleground state and wanted his vote to count for those he'd leave behind -- like his three sons and grandchildren.
"He wanted to make sure that he voted," Jeff Korinko said, noting the balance of power in the Supreme Court was among the most important issues for his father.
"What he felt strongly about was the ideals set forth by the Republicans. He just felt the Republicans were a more honest party," he said of his father, a former truck driver who grew up in Chicago with parents who were Democrats.
"He was sick of Washington. Donald Trump was very refreshing. He wanted to vote for him and in the end they didnt let him," he said.
A possible case of voter fraud in Los Angeles has critics questioning whether the man who heads the nations largest voting district is fit to ensure fairness, given his track record in another jurisdiction.
Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan, whose district includes more than 4.8 million voters, had a controversial stint in the same role in a key Washington district. At least one case of irregularities more than 80 ballots for Tuesdays election filled out with names and the same address has been brought to his attention. But if history repeats itself, Logan may not get to the bottom of the situation.
Mr. Logan in 2004 presided over one of the great meltdowns of U.S. elections during his previous tenure as elections chief of King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, said John Fund, a journalist and co-author with Hans von Spakovsky of the book, Whos Counting: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.
The 2004 governor's race in Washington entered the ranks of electoral infamy, Fund said, when Democrat Christine Gregoire beat Republican Dino Rossi by 132 votes out of 2.7 million cast after three recounts.
The mess in those recounts made the Florida 2000 [presidential] battle look orderly, Fund said, noting in King County alone, there were more than 3,500 unaccounted-for ballots, with some precincts finding more executed ballots than voters, and others more voters than ballots.
The Seattle Times documented 129 felons illegally voting in that election; National Review reported nearly 350 provisional ballots were counted without being verified; and The Wall Street Journal noted some 55,000 optical-scan ballots were "enhanced" so the voters' supposed intent could be determined.
[The] 2004 [race] was a real mess in Washington when Dean Logan was in charge of the election, said Bob Williams, then with the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia. They kept finding ballots and losing ballots. They let dozens of felons vote illegally. He did a terrible job.
Logan, who, before accepting the registrars position in Los Angeles in 2008, served as the director of records, elections and licensing services for King County, Washington, as state elections director for the Washington secretary of state; and as the elected county clerk and chief deputy county auditor in Kitsap County, Wash. He has more than 25 years experience in elections administration.
But when Logan ran the 2012 elections in Los Angeles, the attorney general race between Democrat Kamala Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, and Republican Steve Cooley, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, was contentious. Processing 9 million votes led to a full-fledged food fight between the candidates, Fund said, with Harris claiming Cooley officials crowded election workers and aggressively attempted to have ballots disqualified," while Cooley aides countered election workers in Los Angeles were sloppy or negligent in comparing signatures on provisional ballots.
In the current election, an 89-year-old woman in San Pedro, Calif., received 83 unused absentee ballots in the mail on Oct. 29, all addressed to different names supposedly living in her two-bedroom apartment. Additional blank ballots were delivered throughout the following week.
Her neighbor, Jerry Mosna, found two stacks of bundled blank ballots on top of their joint mailbox, and he returned them to the U.S. Postal Service after being turned away by the Los Angeles Police Department. He and his wife, Madalena Mosna, suspect voter fraud.
Eighty people cant fit in that apartment, Madalena said.
A spokesperson for Logan told FoxNews.com that an initial assessment showed it is an isolated situation related to a system error that occurred, causing duplicate ballots to be issued to an address entered for a single voter.
Logans office did not return calls Tuesday requesting comment on the status of any ongoing investigation or about previous controversies involving Logan.
The LA Times reported Monday that Los Angeles resident Todd Karr, who signed up to vote by absentee ballot, encountered a similar issue as the woman in San Pedro. His absentee ballot had his home address, but another voters name and voter identification number.
After 15 calls to four different agencies the registrar, the secretary of state, the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and an election-protection group Karr was told the ballot could not be corrected, the LA Times reported, noting his only option was to drive to Norwalk, stand in line and vote in person.
Von Spakovsky, a former FEC commissioner and counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Justice Department, said California is of particular concern because of the rising number of noncitizens illegally registering and voting in elections, as well as the terrible shape the voter registration rolls are in.
Charles Bell, an attorney in California who studies voter fraud issues, said he believes election officials in California conduct fair elections at the polls on Election Day, but he has concerns about fraud because of deadwood voters on registration rolls.
All of these conditions create opportunities for those who want to commit fraud to do so, Bell said. While it might not impact the presidential election, it may change the outcome of a close election at the local level.
Sporadic complaints of equipment failures and long lines greeted voters across the country Tuesday as they headed to their polling centers to cast their vote though the largely routine glitches didnt stop some from claiming the system was rigged.
Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has repeatedly claimed the election process is fixed, filed a lawsuit in Nevada alleging that last week, a Clark County polling station was illegally left open late, potentially boosting Democratic voter turnout. He also tweeted Tuesday evening about voting issues in Utah.
Those issues aside, much of the country experienced a relatively smooth Election Day.
At the New Life United Methodist Church in Virginia, people waited outside for a machine to be fixed early Tuesday morning but by midday, operations were running smoothly.
The Virginia Department of Elections reported only two late openings in more than 2,400 polling places. A dozen places had routine equipment issues and there were a couple of issues with scanning machines, a statement said.
Some people were forced to switch to paper ballots which would be counted once a replacement scanner went out, the DOE said, adding there had been a few touchscreen issues.
By midafternoon in Alexandria, Virginia, there were more poll workers than voters at McArthur Elementary School, though earlier in the day, the lines were long.
In and around the countrys capital, lines snaked around many polling places in the morning but had evened out throughout the day, though election officials told FoxNews.com that they expected a rush later.
It was largely the same up north. In New Jersey, one voter reported waiting three hours because there were too few voting machines at her polling place in Jersey City, while in Brooklyn, New York, one voter spent an hour in line to cast her vote.
The well-prepared voter told FoxNews.com she was expecting a bit of a wait so I brought a book.
In Texas, a computer used by election clerks malfunctioned at a polling place inside a high school in suburban Houston, forcing officials to briefly divert voters to another polling place more than two miles away. Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham said the malfunctioning console was later replaced with a backup and voting resumed.
Andrea Patience, a 50-year-old pharmacy technician, was among those standing in line when the computer malfunctioned. She said she waited an hour for it to be fixed. Patience said as many as 100 people were standing in line at the time, and about half of them left.
"There were a lot of upset people," Patience said. "I don't know if they will come back later or decide not to vote."
In Michigan, Fox 2 reported receiving dozens of phone calls and emails from voters claiming the machines at their polling places werent working correctly. The station reported that an overwhelming number of voters from several cities report their machine wasn't able to accept the ballot so they have had to leave them with election officials. Some in Detroit, Sterling Heights, Novi, Holly and Roseville said the machines have malfunctioned altogether or complained of them jamming.
Election officials in Utah said voting machine problems in the southern part of the state forced poll workers early in the day to use paper ballots. A computer problem in Durham County, North Carolina -- a Democratic stronghold in a state that has been a key battleground in the presidential race -- triggered long lines when election officials had to rely on a paper check-in process.
There were also sporadic reports of people in North Carolina who said they were not put on the voter rolls despite registering to vote through the Division of Motor Vehicles.
The question this year was whether problems would be widespread and indicate a pattern of fraud or voter intimidation.
Trump had suggested that Philadelphia was among those places ripe for voter fraud. The city's district attorney, Seth Williams, said in mid-afternoon that his office had investigated 68 complaints about voter intimidation, broken machines or other problems, a number consistent with the past three presidential elections. He said all had proven unfounded.
In the last week alone, Democrats went to court in seven states seeking to halt what they claim were efforts by Republicans and the Trump campaign to deploy a network of poll watchers hunting for voter fraud. Republicans have disputed claims they are planning to intimidate voters, and judges largely found no evidence of efforts to suppress voters.
While there were concerns that the heated rhetoric of the campaign would lead to confrontations at the polls, only a few minor skirmishes were reported.
This is the first presidential election in which a key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act was not in place. A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down a portion of the law that had required certain states and jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to receive pre-approval from the U.S. Department of Justice for any election law change. This allowed a number of states, most led by Republican legislatures and governors, to enact strict voter ID laws and reduce early voting.
Legal challenges to some of those voter ID laws have led to a multitude of court rulings in recent months that blocked or struck down some provisions while upholding or reinstating others. That triggered concerns of misinformation among voters, election officials and poll workers.
The Supreme Court ruling also prompted the Justice Department to send fewer trained election observers to polling places around the country than in previous years, with the reduction likely to diminish the department's ability to detect voter intimidation and other potential problems.
Meanwhile, state election officials were guarding against any attempt to breach their systems. Previously, some 33 states accepted an offer from the federal government to check their voter databases and reporting systems for vulnerabilities after hackers attempted to access systems in two states over the summer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Maine Gov. Paul LePage is being accused of intimidating college students by saying students who vote in Tuesdays election will be investigated to make sure they follow state law.
The Republican governors comment comes after officials at a private liberal arts college in Lewiston said fliers distributed on campus with incorrect information about residency and fees are a "deliberate attempt at voter suppression."
The orange fliers were found at numerous dorms at Bates College as well. Its unclear who was responsible for the fliers.
The leaflets say to register to vote in the city, students must pay to change their driver's licenses to a Lewiston address "within 30 days." They also say students must pay "hundreds of dollars" to re-register vehicles and do not give a timeframe.
Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap said the information is false and said enrolled students living in the community can vote. State law doesn't require a Maine driver's license to vote, and establishing residency for voting doesn't mean you have to pay any fees or taxes.
"You don't pay for a right," Dunlap said. Any individual who declares Maine residency must follow rules like vehicle registration, but that process is completely separate from voter registration.
Dunlap said LePage's comments "inflame an atmosphere of doubt and fear among the voters."
Democratic Attorney General Janet Mills reinforced Dunlaps comments, saying there are no financial penalties for exercising the right to vote. College President Clayton Spencer called the fliers disturbing and said the school is working to ensure students have clear information about how to register and vote.
LePage said that after the election, "we will do everything" allowed under state and federal law to verify college students who voted are following Maine law. LePage's office didn't respond to a request for comment and provided no further details about what that means.
Zachary Heiden, legal director at the ACLU of Maine, called on the Department of Justice to investigate the intent behind LePage's statement. Heiden said LePage's words appear "designed to make college students afraid to vote.
College students who live in Maine have the right to vote in Maine, and they are not subject to different laws than anyone else. Many of these young people are voting for the first time in a presidential election. The governor should be encouraging that civic participation, not doing everything in his power to undermine it.
LePage also claimed Maine Democrats have encouraged out-of-state college students to vote "even though there is no way to determine whether students also voted in their home states."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Nevada judge on Tuesday denied a Donald Trump campaign motion for an immediate order in a lawsuit filed after a polling station was kept open late last week.
Judge Gloria Sturman said Trump's lawyers were asking for the preservation of evidence that Clark County already had a public obligation to preserve, therefore making the suit irrelevant. Sturman refused to issue an order in the case, saying that act could make the names of poll workers discoverable and open election workers up to harassment.
Trump campaign petition asks to preserve early voting records," Clark County spokesperson Dan Kulin said in a statement. "This is required by state law & so it is something we are already doing.
Trump's campaign on Monday had sued the registrar of voters in Clark County, alleging the polling station's late hours violated state law. The lawsuit asked that the county's ballots be kept separate pending any future legal challenges.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, asserted the later hours were granted in order to boost Democratic early-voting turnout.
Charles Munoz, the Trump campaign's Nevada State Director, alleged that Clark County employees were facilitating "illegal activity."
The incidents that occurred on Friday night should be troubling to anyone who is interested in free and fair elections," Munoz said in a statement. "Voters who showed up after the scheduled closing times at selected locations were allowed to vote, while those who were not able to make it to other early voting sites by the posted closing times were denied the right to cast their ballots."
Trump made a last-minute visit on Monday to the battleground state, drawing thousands of supporters to a rally at a Reno convention center.
The billionaire businessman sounded confident about his chances in the state, despite a surge in early-voting by Democrats and Latinos that has Democrats feeling optimistic.
"They didn't get the kind of vote that they needed to stop us on Tuesday," Trump said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The outcome of Tuesdays grueling White House battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could determine how the history books remember President Obama, with his legacy on the line as one candidate vows to dismantle the outgoing presidents signature policies and the other pledges to protect his agenda.
From ObamaCare to his court-challenged directives helping illegal immigrants to his controversial environmental regulations, the presidents initiatives and the enduring impact of his historic presidency depend in large part on the next administration and Congress.
Trump and fellow Republicans have sought since the primaries to put Obama on the ballot as much as Clinton, and returned to that theme in the final days of the race.
Obamas legacy is on the ballot Tuesday and the people are going to choose whether we want another four years of the same, Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state who is on the board of numerous conservative organizations, told FoxNews.com.
Trump lately has been laser-focused on bringing down the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. Rallying supporters in Grand Rapids, Mich., overnight, Trump said real change begins with repealing and replacing the law.
That message ramped up at the start of this months open enrollment, as Trump and running mate Mike Pence railed against the programs rising premiums costs. Trump on Monday even claimed credit for getting the government to publish data on ObamaCare premium hikes.
In an election year marked by intra-party tensions, the health care law has been one area where the Republican Party has united, in opposition. During a radio interview Monday in Milwaukee, House Speaker Paul Ryan reiterated that if Clinton becomes president, the likelihood of wiping ObamaCare off the books becomes an afterthought.
We actually have a plan to replace ObamaCare, he said. All of us have basically gotten a consensus on what our plan is, but we have to win an election to put it in place.
Clinton countered Trumps message Monday in Pennsylvania by touting her push to defend the legacy of President Obama. Clinton, if elected, may seek changes in the law to address bipartisan concern about rising premiums but has vowed to defend it as a whole.
The legacy on the line entails far more than ObamaCare. Trump has also vowed to cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by Obama. This presumably is aimed largely at immigration measures. The Supreme Court already deadlocked on a case about Obamas actions giving a deportation reprieve to millions of illegal immigrants, leaving a lower order in place that blocks it but Trumps immigration approach would likely signal a far tougher approach to enforcement and deportation on many fronts than Obamas. Trump has called for cancelling all federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities and removing more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants while also suspending immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur, a drastic change from current policy.
Another key decision on the line is the choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Unless the U.S. Senate changes course and confirms Obama's nominee, appellate court judge Merrick Garland, to fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court, whoever wins Tuesday would be responsible for selecting a justice who could cast the deciding vote in cases involving everything from climate change to transgender rights to the Second Amendment. This process, too, is a critical factor in whether Obamas policies remain.
Trump already has a list ready of conservative choices to fill the seat of conservative icon Antonin Scalia.
If Donald Trump wins and has a Republican Senate, they will cement a conservative lock on the Supreme Court for at least a generation, Gary Nordlinger, a professor in the graduate school of political management at George Washington University, told FoxNews.com. If Hillary wins with a Democratic Senate, it could be different.
On Friday, the Supreme Court announced it would decide whether the Obama administration can legally require public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms just one hot-button issue on the docket.
In another transgender rights case, several states challenged the Obama administrations May guidance to public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice. Many conservatives have accused the Obama administration of overreach and claim it created dangerous conditions for students.
Another one of Obamas legacy deals that faces strong criticism from both sides of the aisle is the Trans Pacific Partnership.
The giant and semi-secretive 12-member free-trade agreement advocated by the outgoing administration aims to deepen economic ties among the 12 nations, cutting taxes and fostering trade to boost economic growth in the process.
Trump has knocked Clinton multiple times on the campaign trail for supporting the TPP while in Obamas Cabinet even though she now is withholding her support. On Monday, Trump argued Clinton only got on board after she saw how many voters enthusiastically were against it.
The Republican nominee recently said in Ohio that he believes Clinton, if in a position of power, would try to pass the TPP.
During a trip to Australia in 2012, Clinton said the TTP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. After she left the Obama administration, Clintons rhetoric has shifted, but its unclear whether her opposition would stand if certain adjustments are made to the pact.
While key agenda items are at stake, Nordlinger argued Obamas legacy is cemented in some regards. He credited the 44th president with stabilizing the countrys economy which was teetering on a true economic meltdown, and helping improve the reputation of the United States globally.
While some people accuse him of being weak in international affairs, he hasnt done anything truly stupid, Nordlinger said. They arent going to take Lincoln out of the Lincoln memorial to put him in there, but all in all, hes been pretty darn successful.
If you want to know what people are thinking, go where they are eating.
Fox News Channel's morning show, "Fox & Friends" is staking out four of the best diners in key battleground states on Tuesday, when Americans go to the polls to choose between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Over bacon, eggs and coffee, everyday folks will tell Fox who should get the job - and who should be toast.
"In what has been a historic election, "Fox & Friends" feels there is no better way to cover election day than to have breakfast and talk with the folks responsible for putting the next president in the White House, the American people," said Lauren Petterson, vice president of morning programming for Fox News.
- Abby Huntsman will be in Florida, staking out Mels Diner in Fort Myers as the electoral vote-rich Sunshine State once again expects to play a pivotal role in the election.
- Clayton Morris will be at Macs Route 8 Cafe, in Butler, Penn. The Keystone State has not voted Republican since 1988, but Trump is hoping to flip it in his favor and polls show it could happen.
- Heather Nauert will be in Wisconsin, enjoying breakfast with new pals at George Webb Restaurant, in Wauwatosa.
- Pete Hegseth will be found at Fitzys Old Fashioned Diner in Dublin, Ohio. Buckeye State voters always find themselves in a critical position on Election Day, and this year appears to be no different.
Tune in at 5 a.m. ET to find Americans talking politics over breakfast, and keep it on Fox News Channel all day for up-to-the-minute Election Day coverage.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton started off neck-and-neck in the 2016 presidential election, as Trump won over the voters of three New Hampshire precincts early Tuesday morning, 32-25.
Polls opened and shut quickly in the tiny hamlets of Dixville Notch, Harts Location and Millsfield just after midnight Tuesday. Under New Hampshire state law, communities with fewer than 100 voters can get permission to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots.
Clinton won more votes in Dixville Notch and Harts Location, but Trump was the overwhelming favorite in Millsfield, with a 16-4 advantage. Libertarian Gary Johnson picked up three votes. Bernie Sanders, John Kasich and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney got write-ins.
The traditional early vote in New Hampshire kicked off what promises to be a busy election day, after Trump and Clinton visited key battleground states late Monday into early Tuesday to make one last plea to American voters.
Speaking in Grand Rapids, Mich., Trump urged voters to ask themselves before they entered the voting booth: Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want America to be ruled by the people?
Today is our independence day, today the American working class is going to strike, he added.
Clinton visited North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. for a midnight rally. Clinton was led in by performances from Jon Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga and then by her husband Bill and daughter Chelsea.
Tomorrow night this election will end but I want you to understand that our work together will be just beginning. We have to bridge the divides in this country.
Clinton also made her final plea to middle class voters.
Tomorrow we face the test of our time, its the kind of country we want, every issue so if you believe America thrives when middle class thrives then you have to vote, if you believe, she added.
Clintons speech in Raleigh echoed her entire trip Monday as she made her final campaign stops in key states. Clinton vowed to unite a divided nation.
Anger is not a plan, the Democratic presidential nominee said in Pittsburgh, Pa.
As Clinton spent the day blasting what she called her opponents divisive vision for America, Trump blamed her and her husbands policies for manufacturing job losses and vowed a change if hes elected.
We are going to bring back jobs that have been stolen from you. Were going to bring back wealth taken from this country, Trump, the Republican nominee, said in battleground state North Carolina, the second of his five stops Monday.
Trump began his day in Florida before heading to North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan.
He pulled out all the stops at the second to last rally of his campaign in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Trump appeared with his running mate Mike Pence and many members of his family at the SNHU Arena, the same arena where he held his final rally before the New Hampshire primary. His win in that race paved his way to the party's nomination.
"It all began for me in New Hampshire," Trump said after taking the stage.
The race remains tight hours before voting gets underway. The latest Fox News Electoral Scorecard shows Trumps prospects improving in four key states -- Arizona, Iowa, Utah and North Carolina though Clinton still has the advantage on the electoral map.
Clinton returned to the campaign trail Monday, less than 24 hours after the FBI concluded a revived probe into her personal email use as secretary of state, lifting a cloud off her campaign in the final hours as she seeks to become the first woman elected president in U.S. history.
Tomorrow we face the test of our time, Clinton said at her first rally, in Pittsburgh. Will we come together as a nation or split further apart? We dont have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America. Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive big-hearted America.
Before embarking on her three-state campaign swing, Clinton told reporters that she has "some work to do to bring the country together" and that she wants to be president for those who vote for her and those who don't.
Clinton after Pennsylvania went to battleground state Michigan before planning to return for an event in Philadelphia, then a midnight rally in Raleigh, N.C.
Trump on Monday resumed his breakneck race through the country to make a final appeal to voters to help him "drain the swamp" in Washington. In the wake of the FBI announcement, he urged voters to "deliver justice at the ballot box."
On Sunday, Trump and running mate Mike Pence held events in seven states, with the last starting after midnight in Virginia.
She wants to fight ISIS? Trump said Monday in North Carolina about Clinton, who has essentially led for the entire 2016 election cycle. She wants to fight nobody. Shes got no chance.
Trump is aiming for an upset victory Tuesday, which is still possible if he is able to win key toss-up states and pick off one or more strategic states considered Democratic territory.
The former reality TV star shocked the countrys political class this spring when he defeated 16 major candidates in the Republican primaries, among them several senators and governors.
While seeking victories in the so-called battleground states, which have a mix of voters who could go for either major party candidate, Pennsylvania is considered critical for Trump.
The state has not elected a GOP presidential nominee since 1988 in the candidates race to get 270 Electoral College votes.
Early voting in other battleground states suggests Clinton is leading among Hispanics, a key voting bloc. However, the African-American vote does not appear as strong for her as it was in 2008 and 2012 when black voters helped elect and re-elect Barack Obama.
The Justice Department said Monday that it will send more than 500 staffers to 28 states on Election Day to monitor the polls. That's a 35 percent reduction from the number four years ago, amid Trumps persistent warning about potential voter fraud at polling stations.
Department officials say personnel will be sent to 67 jurisdictions to watch for potential civil rights violations. The announcement also came amid rising concerns about voter intimidation, particularly aimed at minorities.
The Department has said its poll-watching presence has been curtailed by a 2013 Supreme Court opinion that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
Fox News Christopher Snyder and Tamara Gitt and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Three members of Donald Trumps family made their final pitch to voters Monday night on Hannity hours before Election Day, saying that they believe their father can get the country back on track.
Seventy percent of this country believes this country is heading in the wrong direction and he knows what to do to get the country back on track, Ivanka Trump told Fox News Sean Hannity with Donald Trump Jr. and Tiffany Trump sitting next to her. And the excitement and belief in the potential of Trump leadership is amazing to him. Hes so encouraged by it. Hell never let Americans down.
Trump Jr. said the campaign had been greeted with an outpouring of warmth from disaffected Americans who havent had a voice in generations. He said their reactions had changed his family.
They see that look of hope in my father and watching them react to his message and even our message. Its really special and has changed us a lot.
Tiffany Trump added that the support of the American people had fueled him to go out there and that he was becoming more inspired each and every day.
Donald Trump, in his final pledge to voters, vowed to make America safe and prosperous again, while Hillary Clinton vowed to unite a divided nation.
In Trump Jrs final plea to voters, he illustrated that Clinton had fought for special interests and every elite class you can get. He told Hannity that America needs an outsider to break up the system.
This is a rare and unique chance to bring an outsider to Washington D.C. someone who is willing, able and ready to take on the DC cartel and break it up. Both sides have failed us. This is really about insider vs outsider and we need an outsider to break up this system.
The latest Fox News Electoral Scorecard shows Trumps prospects improving in four key states -- Arizona, Iowa, Utah and North Carolina though Clinton still has the advantage on the electoral map.
An incumbent United States senator usually doesnt have a difficult time winning re-election -- when his party's presidential nominee is leading his state by an overwhelming margin.
But that's not the case in Missouri where Republican Sen. Roy Blunt finds himself barely ahead of Democrat Jason Kander despite GOP presidential nominee Donald Trumps lead reaching almost double digits in the state. The race is one of a handful that could decide which party controls the Senate next year.
"Folks in Missouri know we need to change Washington, Kander said at an election eve rally in St. Louis. We know we need a new change in leadership to get it done.
That outsider message has cracked the door open for Missouris secretary of state and hurt Blunt, 66, who has spent the last 20 years in Washington, 14 in the House and six in the Senate.
Both Kander, 35, and Trump have promised to rebuild the middle class. They also rail against millionaires, billionaires and special interests who they believe control politicians.
When asked by Fox News about his outsider message and its similarity to Trumps, Kander replied, I don't happen to think that Donald Trump is qualified to be president, but I understand why people want to shake up that conversation."
The Afghanistan War veteran burst into the national spotlight earlier this year when he aired an ad defending his position supporting background checks for gun buyers by assembling an AR-15 rifle blindfolded.
Hes also separated himself from some Democrats and the White House by opposing the Iran nuclear deal, supporting keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and supporting a federal balanced-budget amendment.
Kander has hit Blunt hard, painting the senator as a Washington insider with a family full of lobbyists. Blunts wife and three of his children are lobbyists.
Blunts responded to the attacks by aligning Kander with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Republican Conference vice chairman is pitching himself as a crucial check on her power if Clinton wins, while also stressing the importance of keeping the Senate in Republican hands for two more years.
Every legislation in the Senate is determined by the majority, Blunt told volunteers at a campaign office outside of St. Louis on Monday.
He continued to warn that conservatives risk losing the Supreme Court for a generation if Republicans lose the White House and control of the Senate. Blunt pointed to crucial decisions on abortion and immigration that could be affected by the court.
When asked about his lower poll numbers in the state compared with Trump, the Missouri senator stated he always thought the race would be tough.
We have two statewide public officials that are Republican out of eight so I always assume that this is going to be a tough thing, Blunt said.
Republicans were always playing defense this cycle to keep control of Congress upper chamber, which they won two years ago, but were not expecting the Missouri race to be this competitive.
When it became clear it would be a close race, money began pouring in from outside sources.
Outside groups have spent about $45 million on the race so far. Thats more than the almost $26 million raised by both campaigns combined.
The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee so far has spent more than $4 million on the race. Its Democratic counterparts have spent almost $7 million.
Privately, some Republicans are frustrated they have had to spend so much money attempting to defend the seat in the first place, amid concerns Blunt waited too long to take Kander seriously. One Republican said if the party does lose the control of the Senate, Blunt has blood all over his hands.
The race for Senate control is expected to be close. It may just hinge on a seat or two either way.
Here is a primer on phenomena to track as the Senate returns roll in.
Republicans hold a 54-46 seat edge in the Senate now. Two independents, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Angus King, I-Maine, caucus with the Democrats.
Approximately a third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years. 2010 was a big year for Senate Republicans even though they fell short of control. As a result, Republicans are defending 24 of the 34 seats in play this cycle. 2010 was not only a Republican year in Senate contests but a midterm year. Those two factors work directly against the GOP this year as freshman, Republican senators who won in 2010 now find themselves on the ballot in battleground states in a presidential election year.
Consider the competitive races facing Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis. All are in states that are barnburners at the presidential level. This factor alone is one of the reasons the GOP majority is at risk. The electorate is a lot different in the presidential atmosphere of 2016 compared with the Tea Party-infused playing field of the 2010 midterm.
The other issue is that Republicans only have one seat they may be able to seize from Democrats. That seats in Nevada as Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., runs against Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is quitting. Otherwise, Republicans play defense across the board.
At first blush, many expected freshman Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to struggle as they campaigned in swing states. But Portman appears to be up in the Buckeye State against former Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. Rubio has a slightly more competitive contest against Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Fla. But polls show Rubio leading.
After finishing his presidential bid, Rubio planned to retire from the Senate after a solitary term. But GOP leaders coaxed Rubio to run again and the senator reversed course. With the Senate so close, the draft Rubio maneuver alone could be enough for GOPers to hold the Senate. One could also make the argument that Portmans strong performance against the apparently ineffective Strickland effort could serve as a GOP firewall against a possible Democratic takeover.
By the same token, Rep. Todd Young, R-Ind., was expected to coast to victory to succeed retiring Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind. That was until Democrats mustered a recruitment coup of their own by persuading former Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., to run. Bayh replaced former Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., as the prospective Democratic nominee. Bayh is as good a nominee as the Democrats can get to run against Young. But that doesnt mean its been easy. Bayhs faced criticism about why he left the Senate in the first place and just how much time he spends in the Hoosier State.
Presidential turnout will certainly influence Senate races in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Democrats had been fretting about how a Philadelphia transit strike could disproportionately impact urban, Democratic voters, but the strike has ended just in time. Pennsylvania is a must-win state for both presidential campaigns. Philadelphia is a Democratic stronghold. Diminished turnout in Philadelphia could boost Toomey in his race against challenger Democrat Katie McGinty.
In the Badger State, Johnson has earned traction in recent days in a rematch against the man he defeated in 2010, former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., barnstormed the state with Johnson to campaign. Johnsons seen his numbers climb in the past few weeks.
Some Republicans criticized Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., for purportedly starting his race late against Democrat Deborah Ross. Watch to see how the Tar Heel state votes for president. Since the direct election of senators began more than 100 years ago, North Carolina voters almost always align their votes for Senate and President.
The ticket-splitting exception came in 1968 when North Carolina voted for President Richard Nixon and reelected Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C. Ironically, it was Ervin who would go on to chair the panel which probed Nixon and Watergate.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is locked in a tight contest against Democrat Jason Kander. Missouri is a Republican state. But people would have given you a quizzical look a year ago if you predicted Blunt would be in worse shape at this stage of the cycle than Rob Portman.
Kander is a moderate Democrat. Some voters view Blunt as being too much of a D.C. insider. Moreover, theres precedent for Blunt losing contests he should win. In 2006, Blunt served as the House majority whip and was poised to succeed former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who faced legal trouble. Former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, then defeated Blunt for DeLays post in an upset. Blunt later gave up the whip post and ran for the Senate in 2010.
There are at least two Senate seats where we may not get the result Tuesday night: Louisiana and Georgia. Both require runoffs if no candidate secures 50.1 percent. The Louisiana runoff is scheduled for Dec. 10. The Georgia runoff comes Jan. 10. The latter could pose a problem as the 115th Congress starts Jan. 3. Thus, its entirely possible the Senate could start with one party in charge, and either move to a tie or flip depending on Georgias January outcome.
There is one non-election night issue that also demands attention. With Harry Reid retiring, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is poised to step in to succeed the Nevada Democrat as Democratic leader. The only question is whether Schumer will be the majority leader or minority leader. Schumer long ago wrapped up the votes to take over for Reid when the Nevada Democrat announced he was stepping aside early last year.
Secondly, there could be a leadership contest between Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., for the number two job. Murray currently holds a lower-tier Senate Democratic leadership post.
Senate Democrats plan to hold their leadership elections on Nov. 16.
Donald Trump on Tuesday castigated Hillary Clinton in the wake of additional WikiLeaks revelations showing the Democratic presidential nominee's campaign got even more questions in advance of CNN primary town halls -- and was tipped off to the networks polling.
Emails hacked from the Gmail account of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta and posted to WikiLeaks previously showed future Democratic National Committee Interim Chairwoman and then-CNN contributor Donna Brazile slipping a pair of debate questions to top Clinton aides.
Brazile denied the allegations, however, an email released Monday showed Brazile forwarded at least two other questions to Clintons team.
She got a lot of questions at the debate, said Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, on Fox & Friends. I mean, if you were at West Point and you got questions like that, they would throw you out of the school if you didnt report yourself. She didnt report it. ... She took the questions. She got the answers.
I mean she wouldve been thrown out of West Point or the Air Force Academy and here we have her running for president.
DNC BOSS GAVE CLINTON CAMP DEBATE QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE
In an email titled, From time to time I get the questions in advance, Brazile on March 12 sent Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri a question about the death penalty prior to a CNN town hall, as previously reported.
Brazile wrote that she would send a few more. Newly released emails show a few hours later, Brazile gave Palmieri and other Clinton aides questions on unions and income inequality. The questions appear to have been nearly finalized versions, with each one beginning by addressing either Clinton or her primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (though the income inequality question was not ultimately asked).
Another WikiLeaks email showed Brazile describing a question that would be posed by an audience member before a March 6 CNN debate in Flint, Mich.
Braziles role as a CNN contributor was suspended when she took over as interim DNC head in July, but on Oct. 14, after the initial tipping emails were released, CNN accepted her full resignation. Brazile has denied helping Clinton, saying in an Oct. 11 statement: As it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did.
Clintons campaign also was apparently given advance notice about at least one poll coming from CNN. That heads up was sent by Tom Nides, a former deputy secretary of state and current Morgan Stanley executive who is married to CNN Vice President Virginia Moseley.
Good cnn poll coming, Nides wrote to Podesta on Sept. 20, 2015.
Podesta replied: Ill look forward to how that is spun.
A separate batch of emails from DNC staffers that was posted to WikiLeaks also revealed several message chains in which DNC aides brainstormed and wrote questions for upcoming CNN interviews of Republican presidential candidates.
"Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed. Please send me thoughts by 10:30 AM tomorrow," DNC research director Lauren Dillon wrote on April 24.
CNN appeared to have been in direct contact with Dillon, who later wrote an update to the team.
"CNN said the interview was cancelled as of now but will keep the questions for the next one :(," she wrote.
On April 28, Dillon again tasked her team with writing questions for CNN, this time in advance of an interview with Sen. Ted Cruz.
"CNN is looking for questions. Please sent some topical/interesting ones. Maybe a couple on Fiorina," she wrote.
It's a scary scenario: an asteroid headed for Earth, just four years away from slamming into our home planet. It may be too short a span to plan an asteroid-deflection mission, but it's long enough to present very different challenges from those of a more typical crisis, like a hurricane or earthquake.
NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came together Oct. 25 to plan a response to such a hypothetical event. In a "tabletop exercise," a kind of ongoing simulation, the two agencies tested how they would work together to evaluate the threat, prevent panic and protect as many people as possible from the deadly collision.
"It's not a matter of if, but when, we will deal with such a situation," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Science Mission Directorate's new associate administrator, said in a statement. "But unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation." [In Images: Potentially Dangerous Near-Earth Asteroids]
The exercise, held in El Segundo, California, brought together representatives from NASA, FEMA, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Department of Energy's national laboratories, the Air Force and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, JPL officials said in the statement.
It was the third such exercise; previous ones had allowed for a deflection mission, but in this simulation, there was too little time for that type of response.
"It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said in the statement. "By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event."
The asteroid in this test scenario appeared to be between 300 and 800 feet long in the first simulated measurements the participants were given. At first, the probability of a 2020 impact was only 2 percent, but as the group continued to simulate tracking it over time and the fictional months went by, the impact probability rose to 65 percent and then 100 percent, in May 2017. By November of that year, in the scenario, they found that it would hit across Southern California or nearby in the Pacific Ocean.
The research laboratories' scientists calculated the impact's footprint, the population that would be displaced, the effect on infrastructure and other data that would slowly become clear over such an asteroid's approach. That gave the participants the information they needed to plan for an evacuation process, and decide how to convey necessary information to the public in the most effective way over the course of the asteroid's approach (plus debunk dangerous misinformation and rumors).
"The high degree of initial uncertainty, coupled with the relatively long impact warning time, made this scenario unique and especially challenging for emergency managers," Leviticus A. Lewis, chief of FEMA's National Response Coordination Branch, said in the statement. "It's quite different from preparing for an event with a much shorter timeline, such as a hurricane."
NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, established in January, supervises NASA's efforts to track asteroids and other approaching near-Earth objects (NEOs) and coordinates its interactions with the other U.S. agencies that would deal with a potential impact and decide whether to try a deflection mission or coordinate an emergency response, as in this exercise. Europe has a similar NEO Coordination Centre in Italy.
"These exercises are invaluable for those of us in the asteroid science community responsible for engaging with FEMA on this natural hazard," NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said in the statement. "We receive valuable feedback from emergency managers at these exercises about what information is critical for their decision making, and we take that into account when we exercise how we would provide information to FEMA about a predicted impact."
Although deflection wasn't an option for this training scenario, there is research into that area. For example, NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, which recently finished its first planning stages, is largely a sample-collection mission, to pull a boulder off an asteroid's side but it is also slated to test out pulling the asteroid's orbit slightly off course using the spacecraft and sample's gravitational pull.
Philip Lubin, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara whose laser propulsion system has been incorporated into the Breakthrough Starshot program to send a probe to neighbor star system Alpha Centauri, originally intended the system to zap and deflect incoming asteroids.
The latest stop in the mission to Mars is none other than the Aloha State.
Earlier this week, scientists working with NASAs Biologic Analog Science Associated with Lava Terrains (BASALT) mission descended upon Mauna Ulu, a volcano located in Hawaiis Volcanoes National Park to study how to canvas for life on the Red Planet.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that the project is being administered through the University of Hawaii, and researchers will stay at the location for two weeks. Teams of geologists and biologists are collectively seeking ways to prevent contamination of living organisms living on the volcanos rocks.
VOTING IN ORBIT: NASA ASTRONAUT CASTS BALLOT FROM INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
Geologists and biologists will work in tandem, searching for new ways to prevent the contamination of rocks that might host living bacteria. Because contamination can potentially lead to false or missed positives, NASA introduced a Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument, a device that uses light to detect bio-signals.
NASA chose Hawaii for the mission because it bears similarities to Mars. The state's volcanic ridges are similar to the Martain landscape. "High elevation stunts plant growth, and volcanic rock is mostly basalt the same mineral that makes up most of the surface of Mars, wrote the Christian Science Monitor.
Project BASALT also announced that from Nov. 1 to 18, a team will set up simulated mission control operations at nearby Kilauea Military Camp. Teams in the volcano and military camp will conduct communication exercises with delays of up to 20 minutes, similar to what would occur on the actual Mars mission.
Volcanoes National Park is also the site of NASAs HI-SEAS project. Nearby Mauna Loa, another volcano, has played host to a group of astronauts undergoing year-long isolation missions in efforts to test astronauts psychological limits.
15 MONTHS LATER, NASA'S PLUTO PROBE SENDS BACK LAST BIT OF DATA
The whole reason of going to Mars is to see if theres life there, said John Hamilton, an astronomy faculty member at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, to the Hawaii Tribune Herald. Theres a lot of great geology. But are we alone?"
Astronaut Shane Kimbrough, the only American off the planet, has voted in the presidential election from the International Space Station.
NASA told FoxNews.com Monday that Kimbrough, who arrived at the station in mid-October, has filed his ballot from orbit.
It is through an electronic and secure ballot that is uplinked to the crewmember through our means from the local county clerks office, explained a NASA spokesman, in an email to FoxNews.com. The crewmember fills out the ballot and returns it electronically. All secure. All private.
INCOMING! HOW NASA AND FEMA WOULD RESPOND TO AN ASTEROID THREAT
NASA said that Kimbrough had voted sometime over the past few days.
Kimbroughs participation in the election continues NASAs motto of Vote while you float. For NASA astronauts, home is Houston when they're not circling the globe.
We first employed this system in 1997 for former astronaut David Wolf when he was flying a long duration mission over Election Day aboard the old Russian space station Mir, explained the NASA spokesman.
CURIOSITY ROVER FINDS WEIRD 'EGG ROCK' METEORITE ON MARS
Before launching on a four-month mission, Kimbrough said it was going to be special, being able to say "I voted from space."
By the time he's back on Earth in February, America will have a new commander in chief. Astronauts are "pretty much apolitical," he told reporters last month. "And I'll be glad to welcome the new president, whoever that is."
Kimbrough, a former U.S. Army officer, is sharing the space station with two Russians. The crew will double in size at the end of next week, adding another American, a Russian and a Frenchman.
NASA also confirmed that astronaut Kate Rubins, who left the orbiting lab last month, voted from space prior to her landing and return to earth Oct. 30.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
A quick-fingered Rubiks cube solver broke a world record over the weekend for completing the iconic puzzle and it was all caught on video.
Mats Valk, competing at the Jawa Timur Open in Indonesia, broke the 2015 record of 4.90 seconds on Sunday. Maryland high school student Lucas Etter had set the record last year, UPI reported.
MATHMETICIAN SOLVES PUZZLE OF PARKING LOTS
The video made it clear how the Dutch competitor had talent and plenty of practice but he was also working with a souped-up cube. He called it the Valk 3m.
The toy came embedded with four dozen tiny magnets for smoother feedback, Gizmodo reported.
An earlier custom-made model, the Valk 3, reportedly didnt have magnets but was still less clunky than the Rubiks cubes available in stores.
A high school inventing club in Maryland has received an $8,000 grant from an MIT-administered program to create a device that promises to help people with blindness identify and sort paper currency.
The project raises an issue that people who have unimpaired vision are unlikely to consider that paper bills in the United States are indistinguishable from each other solely by touch. A $100 feels no different from a $1. That stands in contrast to coins, which do feel different.
John Stansbury, a former software engineer turned math and computer science teacher at Poolesville High School in Maryland, is leading the effort; his team represents just one of the projects that has scored funding through the Lemelson-MIT program that gives high schools grant money towards inventions that solve real-world problems.
What we wanted to do was build a wallet billfold device about that size, were hoping that you would take the bill, and feed it into it, like a printer feeding paper in, and it would read [the denomination], Stansbury told FoxNews.com. The device would let the user know what denomination had been inserted, and also would keep each bill type sorted and accessible.
Theres no real good solutions right now, Stansbury added, saying that the goal of the device was to help boost independence for the blind.
WEARABLE TRANSLATION DEVICE PROMISES A SCIENCE-FICTION FUTURE, ALMOST
Current and less-than-perfect solutions involve a person who is blind folding different denominations of money in unique ways, using a currency-identification smartphone app like MoneyReader that identifies each bill using the phones camera and then speaks its value out loud, and a device called iBill, which identifies one note at a time. (Stansbury said their device will work with more than one bill at the same time.)
But advocates for the blind expressed deep frustration that such solutions are even necessary. In fact, a 2008 court case brought by the American Council of the Blind (ACB) successfully sued the Secretary of the Treasury on the issue. The results of that victory were that the federal court ruled that the U.S. government was violating a law called the Rehabilitation Act with its inaccessible currency, and that they had to provide meaningful access for the blind as each denomination received a significant redesign, according to Jeffrey Lovitky, the attorney who represented the ACB.
That was over eight years ago.
Were very much frustrated today with the fact that there still is not a single denomination thats accessible, eight years after the court order, Eric Bridges, the executive director of the American Council of the Blind, told FoxNews.com.
Still today, as with eight years ago, there is the ability to get it wrong, he said. Blind people today fold their bills, like a game of origami at times.
APPLE REVAMPS MACBOOK PROS WITH NEW KEYBOARD TECH
Mark Richert, the director of public policy at the American Foundation for the Blind, shares Bridges frustration. Really the solution needs to be built into the currency itself, because thats the most efficient way of communicating the information, he told FoxNews.com.
But the Department of Treasury maintains that they are already ensuring meaningful access for the blind.
The U.S. government has implemented a variety of means for ensuring that the visually impaired community has meaningful access to the U.S. currency, a Treasury spokesperson told FoxNews.com in an email. He listed free currency readers (like the iBill device), smartphone apps, and the continuing addition of large, high-contrast numerals and different colors to each note that Congress permits the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to alter.
END OF PERMANENT TATTOOS? STARTUP DEVELOPS NEW HIGH-TECH INK
The spokesperson also added that the Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, said in June of 2015 that the new $10 would have tactile elements on it.
For now, advocates for the blind said that the current solutions fall short of real meaningful access that would make each bill identifiable without any kind of outside device.
Lovitky, the attorney from the 2008 case, said in an email to FoxNews.com that the fact that government thinks that currency readers are a form of meaningful access towards money for the blind reflects the insensitivity of those agencies to the real world needs of the visually disabled.
I suggest that the Secretary of the Treasury spend an afternoon with eye blinds on going from store to store using a currency reader to figure how much money he has and how much money he has received as change, Lovitky added. I guarantee you that if he tried it, he would come away convinced of our position.
Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger
Samsung took out full-page ads in three major US newspapers on Monday to apologize for the Note 7 debacle.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post each included a letter to "our valued customers," signed by President and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America, Gregory Lee.
"An important tenet of our mission is to offer best-in-class safety and quality. Recently, we fell short on this promise. For this we are truly sorry," the ad said. "For those directly affected, we appreciate your patience throughout the exchange process. We know you expect more from Samsung, and that your loyalty is earned, not given.
"We are taking proactive steps to identify and address what went wrong and how we need to improve our operations," Lee continued. "Samsung will revisit every step of engineering, manufacturing, and quality control processes so we can meet the highest standards for excellence moving forward."
The ad also touches on a recent voluntary recall of the company's top-loading washing machines, due to safety issues. Samsung promised free in-home repairs and rebates to affected customers.
"Most importantly, safety remains our top priority. We will listen to you, learn from this and act in a way that allows us to earn back your trust," Lee said. "We are grateful for your ongoing support and again, we are truly sorry."
But just as Samsung extinguished the flames of one smartphone fire, another handset lit up over the weekend. A woman in France, Lamya Bouyirdane, said she bought a Galaxy J5 on the Internet in June. It didn't overheat "when we were on [vacation] in Morocco where it was very hot," she told French daily newspaper La Rep des Pyrenees. But on Sunday, Bouyirdane noticed the phone's frame had expanded and smoke was pouring out; she threw it on the floor, where the gadget caught fire and the back panel blew off.
She plans to sue Samsung, according to the Associated Press.
Aimed at millennial users, the 5-inch Galaxy J5 (pictured) boasts a front-facing LED flash and 5-megapixel wide-angle selfie camera and self-timer, as well as 13-megapixel rear camera. The handset went on sale in China in 2015, sporting a 1,280-by-720 display, 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor, 1.5GB of RAM, and 16GB of expandable storage.
It also features a 2,600mAh batterysmaller than the 3,500mAh battery in the Galaxy Note 7.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
Via STAT: How Cuba is defeating the feared Zika virus. Excerpt:
HAVANA The retired accountant went to her neighborhood health clinic one Friday last month for a scheduled blood pressure check. Doctors noticed 74-year-old Elsa Perez Garcias red eyes and skin rash and immediately suspected Zika virus.
The week before, her neighbor, Rosalina Coffigny Acosta, 52, had noticed a similar rash as well as joint pain, fatigue, and swelling in her cheeks. She walked two blocks to the same clinic run, like all health services in Cuba, by the government.
Tests determined that Perez Garcia had Zika and that Coffigny Acosta, along with her husband and 20-year-old son, had dengue, another mosquito-borne condition. Doctors hospitalized all of them for eight days in beds surrounded by nets to keep mosquitos from biting them and spreading their illness. Meanwhile, fumigation squads sprayed their homes and their neighbors.
It smelled like gasoline when we came back, Acosta said. I had a big cleaning job to do.
In Cuba, the fight against mosquito-borne diseases is hyper-organized, intrusive, and remarkably effective. On disease trackers epidemic maps, Cuba is an island in a sea of Zika: Virtually the entire Caribbean has experienced widespread transmission of the virus, but global health officers say there has been only sporadic spread in Cuba.
The Obama administrations top health official praised Cubas efforts to prevent transmission of Zika and other mosquito-borne viruses during a scientific meeting here last month. What it takes is local communities doing very strong vector control, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said at a press conference at the recently opened US Embassy. I think it is what theyve been successful with.
Other countries could learn from Cubas response to Zika, public health experts said. The great difference between Cuba and the rest of Latin America as well as the US is that Cuba tried to anticipate the arrival of the virus to mitigate the impact, said Carlos Espinal Tejada, a tropical disease specialist who directs the Global Health Consortium at Florida International University in Miami.
In Miami and in places in Latin America, they waited until they had cases and then mobilized, Espinal Tejada said. In Cuba, its the opposite. When they see a virus about to arrive, they mobilize.
Cuba began building a system to aggressively track and prevent mosquito-borne diseases after a 1981 outbreak of dengue fever killed 158 people, said Carilda Pena Garcia, director of vector control for the Cuban health ministry. The Cuban people dont forget that, she said.
Cubas success in limiting Zikas spread is due largely to prevention efforts coordinated from local health clinics. In addition to doctors and nurses, these clinics deploy 15,000 workers in a country of 11 million people who visit every house in Cuba to look for mosquitoes and kill them, said Pena Garcia.
The Paris Museum of Eroticism is closing soon but fans of explicit art and erotic objects were able to get their hands on some prized possessions at auction Sunday.
The sales, executed by Parisian auctioneers La Maison Cornette de Saint Cyr. brought in almost three times the pre-sale estimate auctioneers expected with around half a million euros (over $550,000), according to a report in The Telegraph.
Over 500 people attended the event in the auction hall with with just as many digital art fans checking in online. Around 2,000 objects were auctioned off.
Sex on the high seas: Cruise companies lure travelers with tempting trips
Some of the more notable items sold included "Mona Lisas breasts," a printed work on plastic showcasing da Vinci's most famous subject-- in a partially exposed provocative positive; a Salvador Dali work entitled "Young virgin sodomized by the horns of her own chastity" (which sold for over $22,700) and several works from artist Georges Wolinski, one of the French cartoonists tragically killed in 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, who was a big supporter of the museum.
Sex sells: Paris erotic museums closing sale a big hit https://t.co/Jsc3i3688q pic.twitter.com/tJb9dSrM1i Euforia Online (@EuforiaDaily) November 7, 2016
Other items up for grabs included a forest of phalluses and miscellaneous photographs and objects from the French capital's state-controlled brothels, which closed shortly after World War II.
The museum, located on Boulevard de Clichy, near the Moulin Rouge in Pigalle, had been a local favorite due to its extensive collection of racy objects.
Christian groups outraged over proposed sex theme park
But the museum's founders, Jo Khalifa and Alian Plumey, a former adult movie star, were not able to renew their lease on the seven-floor space, however, following recent gentrification of the neighborhood and subsequent rising rents. That, combined with falling tourist numbers to Paris, led them to close their doors after nearly 20 years in business.
We never got any support from either the state or the city of Paris, Khalifa told AFP. Although it has to be said, I could never imagine politicians supporting us.
Investigators discovered a third body on the property of a South Carolina man who is now linked to seven deaths and the kidnapping of a woman who was found chained inside a storage container, authorities said Monday.
Todd Kohlhepp, 45, became a suspect after the woman was found Thursday chained by her neck and ankle in a metal storage container on his 95-acre property near rural Woodruff.
The body of her boyfriend was found a day later. The couple had been missing for about two months.
The other remains were found near one another Sunday and Monday, and authorities are not sure who they are. Investigators were expected back at the property on Tuesday, but Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger said he didn't think there were any more bodies.
"As the coroner, that's all I have been advised of. That was the total number of bodies I was told was on the property. If I am told there are more, I will be back," he said.
Following Kohlhepp's arrest, he confessed to a 2003 quadruple slaying at a motorcycle shop in the small town of Chesnee, said Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright. He was denied bond Sunday on four murder charges for gunning down the motorcycle shop's owner, service manager, mechanic and bookkeeper.
Wright has said Kohlhepp gave details only the killer would know. His confession came a day before the 13th anniversary of the crime, which many feared would never be solved.
Before his confession, authorities granted him three requests, WSPA-TV reported (http://bit.ly/2fwxkwb). One was to transfer money to a girl Kohlhepp says he's helping raise, to help pay for college. The second was to give his mother a photograph, and the third was to let him talk to his mother.
Kohlhepp is charged with kidnapping the woman, and more criminal counts are expected. He has chosen to represent himself and not hire an attorney, Wright told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal (http://bit.ly/2fyeVOe).
Wright, who was first elected about a year after the Superbike Motorsports killings, is now investigating what appears to be a crime spree stretching over more than a decade.
As a teen, Kohlhepp was sentenced to 14 years in prison in Arizona for binding and raping a 14-year-old neighbor at gunpoint. Released in 2001, he managed to obtain a real estate license in South Carolina in 2006. The search for human remains has now expanded to other properties he owns or used to own, including places outside of South Carolina, Wright said Sunday. He declined to elaborate.
Kohlhepp showed investigators Saturday where he says he buried two other victims on the property he bought two years ago.
"We're not even close" to identifying the remains or cause of death, Wright said. "We can't tell anything."
Kohlhepp did not tell investigators who was buried there. Removing the remains to "preserve every bit of evidence" is a meticulous, time-consuming process, the coroner said.
The gravesites Kohlhepp pointed to are in addition to the body found Friday in a shallow grave at the site. Authorities identified that victim as the boyfriend of the woman found Thursday. Clevenger said he died of multiple gunshot wounds.
The Associated Press is not naming the woman because the suspect is a sex offender, though authorities have not said whether she was sexually assaulted.
A gunman who killed a federal transportation security officer and wounded three other people during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport was sentenced to life plus 60 years in prison Monday for the attack that crippled the nation's second-busiest airport and disrupted travel nationwide.
Paul Ciancia, 26, had faced the mandatory life sentence for murdering a federal officer, but prosecutors also sought the additional 60-year term because he showed no remorse and still clings to the beliefs that led to the violence in 2013.
Addressing the court about what led up to the attack, Ciancia said that in 2012 he was sick of life and decided to kill himself.
At the time the 2012 presidential race was underway, he was watching a lot of cable news and there was a great deal of talk about gun control, he said.
"I told myself that day I need to get a gun," he said, adding that not long after that he was harassed by Los Angeles police. He did not give details of that but continued his account.
"I knew exactly how I wanted to die. I was going to take up arms against my own government," he said.
Ciancia said the Transportation Security Administration was not in his first or second plan but while doing research he found that it was the most hated agency in America.
"I was going to make a statement," he said.
Ciancia noted that at the outset he had decided to spend his savings of $26,000 and that on Nov. 1, 2013 the day of the attack he was unable to pay his rent.
"My retirement was over," he said.
He apologized for shooting airline passenger Brian Ludmer but he did not apologize for shooting the TSA agents.
Ludmer also addressed the court, referring to Ciancia's "bizarre sense of remorse" and saying that the defendant should apologize to the TSA agents and the two children he left fatherless.
"If you can't see that, if you can't feel that, your sense of remorse is just as deranged as your actions," Ludmer said.
Ciancia "plotted to commit mass murder at one of the nation's foremost transportation hubs, murdered a beloved public servant in cold blood, seriously injured two other federal officers whom he shot and was attempting to kill, shot and injured a passenger who was traveling to attend a wedding, and terrified hundreds of other passengers and employees," Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wrote in sentencing papers.
Fitzgerald also asked that the court not recommend that Ciancia, who has a combination of mental disorders and has been suicidal in the past, be sent to a federal medical facility instead of prison.
The probation office made that recommendation in a sealed presentencing report the prosecutor referenced, but Fitzgerald said it would be inappropriate given Ciancia's crimes and the threat he poses to federal employees. That determination should be made by the federal Bureau of Prisons, he said.
Fitzgerald said the bureau needs to protect its "personnel from a prisoner who killed a federal official, attempted to kill many more, has shown no remorse over his conduct, and continues to harbor the same beliefs that led him to commit his crimes."
Ciancia, an unemployed motorcycle mechanic from New Jersey, pleaded guilty two months ago to murdering Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez and to 10 other charges for the attack driven by his anger over airport security measures.
Ciancia shot and wounded TSA officers Tony Grigsby and James Speer as they ran from a screening checkpoint, and he struck Ludmer, who had been in the screening area, in the calf.
Ludmer, a high school theater technical director at the time, wrote a letter to the court saying he could no longer walk without pain or work in the same way, and his outlook on life has been altered. He's lost his sense of security, is anxious in crowds and feels "utterly vulnerable in the world around me."
Ludmer noted the crimes were another example where warning signs of a killer's mental illness went unheeded and didn't prevent him from buying an assault rifle.
"I'm mad at the system that failed him. That is failing all of us," Ludmer wrote. "If cases like his are passing by without any red flags, if guns and ammunition can be sold to people without even checking for any such flags, then of course someone like him would do something like this."
The pale, thin Ciancia had expected to die in the attack and left behind a note venting about unconstitutional searches. He wrote that the TSA treated Americans as terrorists, and he intended to strike fear in their hearts.
"I want it to always be in the back of your head just how easy it is to take a weapon to the beginning of your Nazi checkpoints," he wrote in the note signed with his name and "Pissed-off Patriot." ''If you want to play that game where you pretend that every American is a terrorist, you're going to learn what a self-fulfilling prophecy is."
Ciancia apparently still thinks he may one day be released.
In a court filing, one of his lawyers noted: "Ciancia believes he will get out of prison when the revolution begins."
Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed on one thing Monday in final arguments to a Georgia jury: When Justin Ross Harris arrived at work more than two years ago and locked his car, his toddler son was left behind in the back seat and suffered a slow and agonizing death.
Now jurors must decide why that happened. Harris' defense attorney argued Monday that his client was "clueless" and forgetful. But a prosecutor called Harris a murderer with a "malignant heart" who killed his child to escape his family commitments as he sank deeper into a double life of sexual flirting and affairs with women he met online.
"It's not a case of an adult hating his child," prosecutor Chuck Boring told jurors. "It's just that he loved himself and his other obsessions more than that little boy."
Harris left his 22-month-old son, Cooper, strapped into his car seat in the back of his SUV on June 18, 2014. The boy was dead when his father pulled him from the vehicle more than seven hours later. He told police he took Cooper to breakfast that morning and then drove straight to work, forgetting to take the child to day care.
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore told jurors that police rushed to judgment in concluding a crime had been committed and then used evidence of Harris' affairs outside his marriage "to essentially bury him in a mountain of his own sexual sins." He insisted the child's death was unrelated.
"If it's an accident, it's not a crime," Kilgore said. "He is responsible. Only him. Nobody else. And he has acknowledged that from day one. But responsible is not the same thing as criminal."
The jurors heard nearly five hours of closing arguments altogether. After giving them legal instructions, the judge sent jurors home Monday evening. They were to begin deliberations Tuesday morning.
The arguments capped more than a month of courtroom testimony in coastal Brunswick, where Harris' trial was moved from the Atlanta suburb of Cobb County because of pretrial publicity. A native of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Harris moved to Georgia in 2012.
Boring told the jury it's impossible to believe Harris forgot about his son. The drive from the Chick-fil-A restaurant where they ate breakfast to the Home Depot office where Harris worked as a web developer was less than a mile. Cooper's car seat faced backward, but was secured in the middle of the SUV's back seats just a few inches from where Harris sat.
Evidence showed Harris returned to his car after lunch to toss a bag of lightbulbs inside. He closed the door within seconds and walked away. And five days before Cooper's death, Harris had watched an online video in which a veterinarian swelters inside a hot car to show the danger to animals.
"As much as we may not want to believe people are capable for this kind of evil, that's what the facts show in this case," Boring said.
Kilgore said police and prosecutors ignored evidence that Cooper's death was a terrible accident and Harris had been planning for a future with his wife and son. Gene Brewer, an Arizona State University psychology professor who specializes in memory and attention, testified it would have been possible for Harris to forget about Cooper in a matter of seconds.
Emails and trial testimony showed Harris had been talking with a real estate agent about finding a home in a good school district. And he had taken initial steps to plan a cruise with his wife and Cooper along with the family of Harris' brother.
Leanna Taylor, who divorced Harris in March after a decade of marriage, testified that despite their marital problems, Harris was always a loving and enthusiastic father. Text messages showed Harris even bragged about Cooper to the women he was messaging outside his marriage.
The jury doesn't have to choose one side's version or their other. While Harris is charged with malice murder, which requires prosecutors to prove he intended to kill his son, he's also charged with felony murder. To convict Harris of that, the jury only must find that Harris caused his son cruel suffering by an act of criminal negligence.
Prosecutors also charged Harris with sending sexual text messages and photos to a teenage girl, including during the hours Cooper sat dying in the car. Kilgore said nothing Monday to dispute those charges.
Instead, he argued Harris never let fatherhood prevent him from carrying out his secret sexual escapades, which ranged from flirting online to meeting a prostitute for sex.
"Ross was already doing whatever he wanted to do," Kilgore said. "Ross had nothing to gain by killing his son."
A man charged in a Pittsburgh-area mall shooting that wounded three people has been acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of other charges.
A judge convicted 18-year-old Tarod Thornhill of aggravated assault, reckless endangering and firearms crimes Monday in Allegheny County.
Defense attorney Chris Urbano acknowledges Thornhill shot his 20-year-old target and wounded two shopping bystanders in February 2015 in Macy's at the Monroeville Mall. But he says Thornhill was mentally ill and didn't know his actions were illegal or was unable to control them.
Prosecutors say Thornhill was recorded on a jail phone call being told by a woman to fake insanity.
The defense calls the judge's decision fair and says it's glad Thornhill will get mental health treatment.
A 22-year-old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been arrested in the shooting deaths of a Long Beach mother and her 4-year-old daughter as they returned home from grocery shopping, authorities said Monday.
Brandon Colbert was arrested Sunday after being matched to DNA submitted by detectives, Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said. Investigators believe Colbert boarded a Greyhound bus from Tulsa to Los Angeles three days before the shooting on Aug. 6. He had recently been arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department for allegedly stealing a vehicle.
No motive has been established, and Luna said the investigation remains active.
"We haven't ruled out the possibility that others may be involved in this horrific crime," Luna said.
Detectives urged anyone who had had contact with Colbert to contact authorities. A $40,000 reward previously offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction is still available, Luna said.
Carina Mancera, 26, and her daughter, Jennabel Anaya, had just parked their car and were walking back to their apartment with the child's father at about 10:20 p.m. when they were shot, police said. Mancera was pronounced dead the scene. Anaya was transported in critical condition to a hospital and died early the next morning. Mancera's boyfriend was also shot but not killed.
The girl's father told investigators he did not recognize the shooter.
Detectives reviewed countless hours of surveillance video while forensic crime scene evidence was being processed, Luna said. In September, authorities announced they had identified a person of interest on a surveillance video from a local business. In early October, detectives upgraded that individual to a suspect in the case and said they were able to track him to the scene.
Police asked the public to help identify the man and followed up on every tip, but none led to a match, Luna said.
Then, on Oct. 31, the county crime lab notified detectives that the DNA recovered was positively linked to Colbert.
"An investigation of this magnitude that began with no leads is very difficult to work," Luna said. "Sometimes a case like this can take years to solve. So I'm extremely proud of our police department."
Colbert has been booked into jail. Police plan to present their case to Los Angeles County prosecutors on Tuesday.
Two brothers who attacked their parents inside the family's suburban Atlanta home have each been given 20-year prison sentences.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (http://on-ajc.com/2filjK2 ) that the sentences were handed down Monday after Cameron Ervin and Christopher Ervin both pleaded guilty to several charges, including kidnapping and aggravated assault.
Yvonne Ervin told a 911 dispatcher her sons were trying to kill her and had also attacked her husband. She said they put Xanax in their parents' drinks before the September 2015 attack. Cameron Ervin was 17-year-old at the time, Christopher Ervin was 22-years-old.
Officers said they found a bloody scene inside the home, and their father Zachary Ervin emerged from the garage covered in blood. Both parents recovered.
Prosecutors said the brothers also turned on the gas to the fireplace and lit a candle in a failed attempt to blow up the house.
A woman who deliberately ran over three pedestrians, including her estranged husband, outside a family court on Monday jumped to her death from a bridge in the San Francisco Bay Area a short time later, according to police.
Martinez Police Cmdr. Eric Ghislett told the East Bay Times that several people saw the woman speed up and hit three people outside the courthouse in Martinez.
After driving into the three victims, the woman then stopped her car and reversed into one of the three before speeding away, police said.
About 20 minutes later, police received a report that a woman had jumped from the bridge, about 2.5 miles away, and investigators told KTVU they believe she was the same woman who drove into the three pedestrians.
Police told KTVU the suspect's husband had just left a hearing at the county's family law courthouse, and was accompanied by two female friends when they were hit.
All three were taken to a hospital with moderate injuries, according to police.
Police found the body in the water under the bridge, and the vehicle matching the description of the one used to hit the pedestrians was also found on the bridge near where the woman jumped.
Authorities did not immediately identify her, pending notification of family.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click for more from KTVU.
A Virginia man who pleaded guilty to killing his parents and his sister at their home last year has been sentenced to 90 years.
Local news agencies report 29-year-old Carl V. Hughes IV was sentenced to 150 years in prison with 60 years suspended after pleading guilty Monday to three counts of first-degree murder.
Police discovered Hughes' father, 71-year-old Carl V. Hughes Jr.; his mother, 54-year-old Angela Hughes; and his sister, 22-year-old Bianca Hughes stabbed to death in the family's home on Sept. 23, 2015.
Attorney John Rockecharlie says his client was not in his right mind while on a three-to-four-day crack binge and had convinced himself that he had to kill his family members.
Rockecharlie says Hughes has expressed remorse for his actions.
A Northern California couple was charged Monday in the gruesome murder of a 21-year-old volunteer sheriff.
Oakland prosecutors believe Laura Rodgers and her boyfriend Curtys Taylor planned for days the murder of Karla Ramirez-Segoviano, who was found stabbed and burned almost beyond recognition. The SF Gate reported that Rodgers and Taylor were charged with murder and ordered held without bail at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
The Alameda County district attorneys office said Rodgers lured Ramirez-Segoviano to a creek bed in Arroyo Viejo Park where she was killed. Police said the two women were friends.
Authorities found Ramirez-Segovianos badly burned body on Thursday and the coroners office had a hard time getting a fingerprint off of it. Rodgers admitted to the murder and was arrested later that day and Taylor was arrested the next morning, police said.
Ramirez-Segoviano was a sheriffs department volunteer Explorer. She was reported missing by her family a day after she didnt come home from dropping off an acquaintance in San Leandro, Oakland police Lt. Roland Holmgren said. Police were still looking for a motive behind the murder.
According to court documents, Rodgers had Ramirez-Segoviano pick her up and drive her to the park where Taylor was waiting with a gas can. Ramirez is accused of stabbing the victim to death as Taylor poured gasoline on her. The suspects then dropped a match and lit the woman on fire.
Authorities said Rodgers and Taylor gathered the evidence and took off. The alleged murder weapon and the gas can were found inside a trash bind at a nearby Days Inn, police said.
Click for more from SF Gate.
The Anoka County Sheriffs Office asking the public to help locate Nelson Soto-Lopez, 24, who is suspected of killing a 21-month-old Blaine, Minnesota, boy and taking a five-year-old girl.
On Tuesday at approximately 7:07 a.m., Blaine police officers were called to the Blaine Medical Center on a report of an unresponsive child. The officers and medical staff were unable to revive the child and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Soto-Lopez is being sought in connection with the death of the toddler. He was last seen at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday walking away from a residence in Arden Hills. He was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans.
Soto-Lopez is believed to have five-year-old Cristal Aguilar with him, whom he is neither the father nor relative of. Aguilar was last seen wearing a brown and black jacket with purple pants and brown shoes.
Authorities are concerned for Aguilars safety. They have information that suggests Soto-Lopez may be attempting to leave the Twin Cities metro area.
Click for more from Fox 9.
Officials arrested an Ohio man accused of trying to join the Islamic State group Monday morning after he was attempting to fly to Libya.
Aaron Daniels was taken into custody at John Glenn Columbus International Airport after a months long investigation.
U.S. Attorney Benjamin Glassman said Daniels wired money to an ISIS group operative back in January.
The FBI told The Columbus Dispatch that Daniels admitted to wiring money to ISIS and that he was planning on heading to Libya in order to join the terror group.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that Adrienne Daniels said her son planned to go to the Middle East in hopes of studying Islam, saying Daniels became interested in the religion years ago.
The newspaper also reported that he attended a mosque nearby.
A criminal complaint alleges the 20-year-old Daniels told an undercover informant about his interest in traveling overseas to commit jihad.
Daniels made an initial court appearance in federal court wearing ankle and wrist chains. He was read his rights but wasn't required to enter a plea.
A bond hearing is scheduled for Thursday morning.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click here for more from The Columbus Dispatch.
Authorities have charged a 57-year-old Georgia man with killing a sheriff's deputy and critically wounding another.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge J.T. Ricketson said Monday that Ralph Stanley Elrod faces a murder charge and four counts of aggravated assault on a police officer following the Sunday afternoon attack on 41-year-old Sgt. Patrick Sondron, who was killed, and Deputy Daryl Smallwood near Byron, about 16 miles southwest of Macon.
The deputies were shot upon approaching Elrod's home while responding to a report that Elrod used a rifle to threaten two young men who were riding a motorcycle and a four-wheeler near his property.
Smallwood remained in critical condition Monday.
Investigators say Elrod is the father of a deputy in Jones County, northeast of Macon. It's unclear whether Elrod has an attorney.
High school is no walk in the park for a lot of kids, but one South Carolina student took it upon himself to brighten his classmate's day after learning he'd been having a rough time.
Greenwood High School senior Tae Moore said fellow student Taylor Bates had been mistreated on campus and he wanted to do something about it.
VETS UPSET OVER HS CHEERLEADERS TAKING KNEE DURING NATIONAL ANTHEM
"He's just a cool nice kid who wants to be a rapper," said Moore. "I've heard he's been getting bullied around school and stuff so I wanted to do something for him."
Bothered after hearing about students teasing Bates for the way he dressed and looked, Moore seized an opportunity to help out in his own way.
OKLAHOMA HS TEACHER TELLS CLASS: 'TO BE WHITE IS TO BE RACIST'
Taylor Bates, who also raps and goes by the name 'Eazy T,' told FOX that he had only met Moore the previous day when he presented him with a special gift at school.
"Me and Tae met yesterday at school when he asked me what size shoe I wear," said Bates.
The next day, Bates was shocked when he met back up with Tae Moore and was given a brand new pair of shoes.
"He gave me a pair of retro Jordans because he said that he dont like it that people picking on me at school," said Bates.
In a video that's now gone viral, Moore posted the whole exchange with the following message on his Facebook page:
"It's this kid go to our school name Eazy T he likes to rap and etc he said he wants to be a rapper just trying to chase his dream but kids at school likes to bully him and pick on him and talk about him the way he dress and look so I went and bought him some Jordan's he was shocked."
Taylor Bates also posted an account of what went down.
Click for more from Fox Carolina.
A hunter in Oregon was impaled by an elk had had just killed after his ATV crashed over the weekend, sending him backward into the animals antlers, KATU reported.
Gary Heeter, 69, suffered the injury while trying to drive up steep terrain in the Maury Mountains on Saturday.
His hunting buddies called for help and administered first aid. They applied bandages to the wound to slow the bleeding.
When the first Crook County deputy arrived at the scene, Heeter was conscious, but he was fading and may have been going into shock.
Heeter was eventually flown by medical helicopter to a nearby hospital where he was listed in fair condition.
Click for more from KATU.
The deaths of two Marine Corps recruits at Parris Island in South Carolina during the past eight months have renewed calls for congressional scrutiny into the service's tough training regimen.
"The loss of a second recruit raises serious questions," Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, said in a statement issued in Michigan. "I am committed to getting to the root of this issue."
Dingell had pressed the Marine Corps for months to look into the March 18 death of one of her constituents, Raheel Siddiqui, 20, of Taylor, Michigan.
Following Siddiqui's death, the Marine Corps announced it conducted three investigations that uncovered widespread hazing and abuse, with possible punishments in store for up to 20 Marine leaders on the installation.
On Tuesday, Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Gregory Carroll identified the second recruit to die as 18-year-old Zachary Boland of Madison, Alabama, who passed away Nov. 4.
Carroll said Boland was found unconscious in his barracks bed around 8 p.m.
Carroll said emergency responders were called to the scene and they transferred Boland to Beaufort Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead 90 minutes later.
In its September announcement, the Marine Corps said Siddiqui committed suicide. But the service also said they had uncovered widespread hazing and maltreatment of recruits and young drill instructors that had occurred back to 2015.
Siddiqui's family in Michigan contends he was hazed prior to his death.
Marine Corps officials insisted at the time that the hazing had been found only in Siddiqui's training group, the 3rd Recruit Training Battalion, which is one of four training battalions at the site.
The Marine Corps also said it had identified up to 20 officers, drill instructors and other leaders who face administrative or potential criminal charges for taking part in the misconduct or turning a blind eye to it.
So far, the Marine Corps has not announced any formal follow-up to those investigations.
Boland was a member of the 2nd Recruit Training Battalion.
Meanwhile, Carroll said another recruit remains in critical condition after falling from a building Oct. 28. The recruit has not been identified, according to his family's wishes, the spokesman said.
"The recruit arrived at Parris Island on Oct. 24 and was undergoing initial processing prior to beginning recruit training," Carrol said. He fell from the second story of the recruit training center, the spokesman said.
Dingell said she wants to see complete investigations into all the incidents.
"The men and women who sign up to serve our country should not be dying in boot camp, and this third incident in eight months must be investigated thoroughly and expeditiously," the congresswoman said.
Ed Buice, a spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said it is conducting separate investigations into Boland's death and the Oct. 28 fall.
"There are no signs of foul play in either incident," Buice said.
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Follow Susanne M. Schafer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/susannemarieap
About 1,500 law enforcement officers joined more than 1,000 other mourners Monday at a funeral for a one of two Iowa police officers who were fatally shot just minutes apart last week.
Troves of uniformed officers slowly filed into a West Des Moines church to remember Sgt. Anthony Beminio, the 38-year-old sergeant who was killed early Wednesday while sitting in his patrol car. His death came minutes after Officer Justin Martin was fatally shot in nearby Urbandale. An Urbandale man has been charged in both killings.
Des Moines Police Chief Dana Wingert told mourners about Beminio's commitment to his job, other officers and the community. In all his interactions with co-workers and citizens, Wingert said Beminio was authentic and enthusiastic.
"Everything Tony did, he did from the heart," Wingert said.
After reading a Bible verse about accepting a special mission, Wingert added, "God sent Anthony Beminio and we're all better for it."
Struggling to control his emotions, Wingert concluded, "I'm absolutely heartbroken. God bless Tony Beminio."
It has been a difficult year for the Des Moines Police Department, which in March mourned two officers who died in a fiery car crash when a drunken driver traveling the wrong direction plowed into their squad car. A prisoner that the officers were transporting also was killed.
People waited along the processional route near the Des Moines cemetery where Beminio was to be buried.
"They need all the support that they can get," said Randy James, of West Des Moines. "The city is hurting right now."
A funeral for Martin will be held Tuesday in his hometown of Rockwell City.
Utah police said Monday they are investigating whether three juveniles in a stolen car intentionally hit an officer killed during a car chase.
The car had veered toward other officers shortly before it fatally struck Officer Cody Brotherson, 25, in a Salt Lake City suburb on Sunday, authorities said.
CALIFORNIA COUPLE CHARGED IN MURDER OF SHERIFF'S VOLUNTEER
Brotherson had gotten out of his car in the pre-dawn darkness Sunday when he was hit, apparently to lay down a set of spike strips designed to stop the car by puncturing its tires.
He had removed the equipment from his car and moved some distance away from the vehicle, but officers are investigating exactly what he was doing when he was hit, West Valley City Police Chief Lee Russo said. Officers are trained get behind some kind of barrier for protection when they deploy spike strips, but it's not clear whether Brotherson had time to do that before he was struck, Russo told The Associated Press.
OFFICER SUES BLACK LIVES MATTER ACTIVIST OVER PROTEST INJURY
After hitting the officer, the stolen car careened down an embankment and slammed into a fence. The three males got out and ran, but they were caught and taken into custody.
Investigators are looking for whether footage from Brotherson's body camera made it through the collision intact or if other officers' cameras recorded what happened.
Brotherson grew up in West Valley City and had long dreamed of becoming an officer, his mother Jenny Peterson told reporters. "That dream was realized three years ago but was cut short," she said.
Her son was a jokester who protected his family and would do anything for those he loved, she said. He leaves two brothers and a fiancee.
His patrol car was adorned with a blue sash and black roses and placed in a West Valley City park as a place for people to leave condolences, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. His funeral was set for Nov. 14.
Brotherson started in December 2013 as the department recovered from a rocky period. Public confidence in the department hit a low after the high-profile shooting of an unarmed woman during a drug investigation. The narcotics unit was disbanded after a subsequent probe found officers kept souvenirs from drug busts and mishandled evidence. It was re-stablished last year.
Brotherson was the first West Valley City officer to die since the department was formed in 1980 and the second officer to die on the job in Utah this year.
He was preceded by Doug Barney, an officer with Salt Lake County's Unified Police Department who was the first officer death in the country in 2016. Barney was working overtime to pay off his cancer treatments when he was shot and killed by a parolee while investigating a traffic accident.
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Testimony in the trial of a white former South Carolina police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black motorist is raising the questions about how much force is justified.
Michael Slager faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted of murder in the April 2015 shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott, who was shot and killed fleeing a traffic stop.
The prosecution's case enters a fourth day in Charleston on Tuesday.
Scott was shot in the back in a shooting captured on a cellphone video that stunned the nation. He ran after being pulled over for a broken taillight on his car.
On Monday, police officers testified there are various levels of force officers can use to get suspects to comply. The lowest level being just their presence wearing a uniform which can be followed by voice commands, use of force and eventually deadly force.
North Charleston police Sgt. James Gann, who responded to the scene following the shooting, testified shooting someone in the back is not part of any officer's training. He said the video of Scott running away from Slager indicated to him that Scott was trying to ease the level of confrontation.
"Through the video I would agree that he would be deescalating," a situation in which an officer would have been taught then to use less force, Gann testified.
Responding to questions from Slager's attorney Andy Savage, he agreed Slager had no way to know if Scott was armed and was running to get behind a tree and fire back.
He also testified Scott showed no sign he was surrendering and that there was no way Slager, in a few split seconds, could know Scott's intentions.
Gann also testified Slager was no hothead and had "always been even keeled."
Meanwhile, law enforcement officials are investigating nine suspicious letters mentioning racial violence sent to hotels, a church and a park in Charleston amid the Slager trial and another across the street in federal court with racial overtones.
Charleston city officials say local police and the FBI are investigating letters sent last month from outside the United States. They were received by hotels, Emanuel AME Church and a local park where a popular holiday light display opens this week.
Jury selection resumes Wednesday in federal court in the trial of Dylann Roof who is charged with hate crimes, obstruction of religion and other counts in the shootings of nine black parishioners at Emanuel in June of 2015.
An elementary school in Georgia is thanking U.S. service members ahead of Veterans Day with a patriotic display bigger than ever before: 10,000 American flags blanketing the front lawn.
The idea started with a Van Wert Elementary School staff member whose husband died soon after serving overseas, Fox 5 reported. Paraprofessional Christina Garrett said, "It is a way for my kids to understand that putting out a small flag, even ten thousand flags, doesnt compare to what just one veteran has done for us."
WWII VET OVERPAID FOR YEARS WILL NOT HAVE TO REPAY MONEY
She recruited her children and friends to help plant all those flags outside the school in Rockmart. It took them nearly 20 hours over two days to set them up in perfect rows.
"It reminds me of my dad and all the veterans who have served and I'm very thankful," Garrett's daughter, Hope, reacted. She was just 11 months old when her father, 1st Sgt. William Garrett, died. He'd reportedly contracted an illness while serving abroad.
FAMILY CALLS FALLEN SPECIAL FORCES SOLDIER WITTY, MAGNETIC
Christina Garrett said she wasn't sure her school could top its flag count from last year: 7,500. Friends and supporters donated on a GoFundMe page to cover the cost of the flags, Northwest Georgia News reported.
"I thought it was going to be difficult because when I looked at how many flags we were going to put up I thought it would be really, really hard," fifth-grader Emma Scott told WXIA. But she said everyone worked together to get the job done.
Staff members say they just want vets to remember how much their country appreciates them. "I just want to respect them and say thank you while they're still here. Tomorrow's not promised," Garrett said.
Veterans Day is Friday. Rockmart is an hour's drive northwest of Atlanta.
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The second deputy shot in Peach County, Georgia, while responding to a report of a dispute among neighbors Sunday evening has died.
Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returned to Ralph Stanley Elrods home for a second day trying to get answers. Their focus Tuesday, according to one special agent: the trajectory of rounds Elrod allegedly fired at the deputies who responded to his home on November 6.
Sgt. Patrick Sondron, 41, was killed and Deputy Daryl Smallwood was rushed to a Macon hospital where he spent the past two days in the ICU before passing away Tuesday.
Late Monday night, GBI agents charged 57-year-old Elrod with murder and four counts of aggravated assault on law enforcement officers. They confirm he is the father of a Jones County deputy, which is one of the many agencies that responded to Elrod's home the night he allegedly opened fire.
According to the GBI, Elrod was shot once in the stomach by a Byron police officer who hid behind his protective shield while firing engaging in a gun battle with Elrod. More charges are expected to be filed Wednesday.
The shooting of two deputies has everyone is the small town of Byron, Georgia posing the same question: Why?
Click for more from Fox 5.
The suspect in a Halloween party shooting that left two young women dead and five other people wounded is being held in Virginia pending extradition to upstate New York.
The city of Newburgh Police Department announced on Friday that 17-year-old Nija Johnson had been taken into custody out of state. Police revealed Monday that Johnson had been arrested Friday afternoon at a home in Richmond, Virginia.
Johnson is facing murder charges in Newburgh after a 20-year-old woman and an 18-year-old recent high school graduate were fatally shot early on the morning of Oct. 30 during a Halloween party held in an apartment building. Five other people wounded by gunfire are expected to recover.
Police say efforts are underway to arrange Johnson's return to Newburgh. Officials say an exact date for his return hasn't been determined.
A Northern California woman jumped to hear death Monday after plowing into her estranged husband and two of his friends as they crossed an intersection outside a courthouse.
According to KTVU, the woman had been in family court with her estranged husband in Martinez. Surveillance cameras show that she left the building moved her car and put it into a position to hit the man and his friends when they crossed the street.
The driver collided with two men and a woman and police said the driver made an effort to hit the woman twice. According to CBS San Francisco, bystanders tried to break the cars windows in an attempt to stop the woman from leaving the scene.
The driver then sped off and about 20 minutes later the car was stopped on the Benica-Martinez Bridge, about three miles from the site of the hit-and-run.
Martinez police said the 60-year-old woman plunged more than 100 feet to her death. Authorities believe she might have tried to drive her car off the bridge before parking and eventually jumping to her death.
"I heard a big noise and right away I ran over," construction worker Sergio Margarito told the station. He captured some of the action on cellphone video.
A bailiff in the court room told the station that there were no outbursts in the courtroom and there were no indications that it wouldve turned violent once all parties stepped outside.
The driver has yet to be identified. CBS San Francisco reported that the name is being withheld until the coroners office can positively identify the body.
The other three victims escaped with moderate injuries.
Click for more from KTVU.
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German prosecutors say that authorities have arrested five men on allegations they aided the Islamic State group in Germany, recruiting members and providing financial and logistical help.
The federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Tuesday that the men were arrested by officers of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The statement says the suspects were focused on recruiting young Muslims in Germany, and raising funds to send them to Syria to join IS. They're also accused of providing logistical support for the trips.
Justice Minister Heiko Maas called the arrests an "important blow to the extremist scene in Germany."
Nigerian officials say armed bandits have killed 36 gold miners in northwest Zamfara state.
Survivor Isa Muhammad said many people are wounded and about 20 are missing. He said more than 50 gunmen invaded the informal mining site at Gidan Ardo Monday afternoon and seized people's belongings.
He said no security forces had arrived by Tuesday morning and residents fear another attack.
Police deputy superintendent Shehu Muhammad said soldiers and an anti-terrorism squad are on their way.
Zamfara state Gov. Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar promised to hunt down the perpetrators of the "act of terrorism."
Nigeria is suffering an Islamic uprising in the northeast, militants attacking oil installations in the south, deadly conflict between nomadic herders and farmers in the center, cattle rustling, kidnappings and banditry.
Hundreds of Chinese business executives are attending an investment forum in Angola, a major supplier of oil to China.
Lusa, the Portuguese news agency, reports that Chinese entrepreneurs are looking at new business opportunities in agriculture, fisheries, construction and other areas. The forum in Luanda, Angola's capital, ends Tuesday.
Lusa says China purchases almost half of Angola's oil production and that China surpassed Portugal, Angola's former colonial ruler, as the Angolan economy's leading supplier in 2015.
Francisco Viana, a Luanda business leader, said there are opportunities and dangers in doing business with China. He said, for example, that he is concerned about the destruction of natural resources such as timber, which is exported to China.
Angola's economy has struggled because of the global fall in commodity prices.
An Egyptian court has upheld a ruling by a lower tribunal that annulled President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi's decision to transfer two strategic islands to Saudis.
The government had appealed the lower court's decision from June before three separate courts. Tuesday's ruling came from one of the three, the Administrative Court of the State Council. The other two have yet to rule in the case.
The verdict comes amid tension between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, traditional allies who are now at odds over regional conflicts.
The government has defended the deal saying the islands of Tiran and Sanafir always belonged to the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia, which poured billions of dollars in aid to Egypt since el-Sissi rose to power, this week indefinitely halted previously agreed fuel shipments to Egypt.
North Korea could make its own voice heard as Americans head to the polls on Election Day, as the rogue nation reportedly plans a new mid-range missile launch serving as a warning sign to whoever succeeds President Obama.
The Musudan missile, with an estimated range of 3,500 miles, reportedly could reach the strategic U.S. territory of Guam, which provides support to South Korea, a U.S. ally. South Korean military officials are watching the situation closely, The Sun reported.
We are closely watching every move by the North Korean military at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site and other possible missile-launching sites The military is fully prepared to respond to any provocative acts by the North, an official from Seouls Joint Chief of Staff said.
NORTH KOREA PREPARING FOR ANOTHER BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCH
State-run media in the secretive, isolated country have made the governments choice for U.S. president clear. The propaganda newspaper DPRK Today claimed Republican nominee Donald Trump is actually a wise politician and a prescient presidential candidate.
North Korea is not the only global foe to weigh in on the presidential race. Leaders from Russia, Iran, and even Syria have all lashed out in their own ways, and so have some U.S. allies.
RUSSIA
President Vladimir Putin has focused much of his anger on claims that he was trying to rig the election for Trump. Does anyone really think that Russia could influence the American peoples choice in any way? Is America a banana republic or what? America is a great power. Please correct me if Im wrong.
Putin previously called Trump talented and at one point the absolute leader of the presidential race.
WAS DONALD TRUMP RIGHT ABOUT VLADIMIR PUTIN?
IRAN
Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in no uncertain terms hes not a fan of either candidate.
Khamenei claimed Clinton and Trump's comments in presidential debates "are sufficient for the annihilation of the reputation of the United States."
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani in October described the two candidates as "bad and worse," without specifying which was which.
RUSSIA STOPS USING IRAN BASE FOR SYRIAN AIRSTRIKES
SYRIA
Embattled dictator Bashar Al-Assad has not tipped his hand either way but has shown more disappointment in U.S. leadership as a whole, saying he knew the U.S. would not support him no matter who won the election.
"Their mainstream politics are at [an] all-time low, that's how we see it ... We always hope that next [U.S.] president will be much wiser than previous one, less pyromaniac as I said, less militaristic, adventurous president. That's what we hope. But we never saw. The difference is very marginal. So we keep hoping, but we don't bet on that hope."
CHINA
Analysts have suggested the Chinese government may favor Trump but not because hed necessarily be friendly to Beijing.
He wants to just bring the whole house down and start over. And I think there is an element [of that] that is quite tantalizing to China, Orville Schell of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at New Yorks Asia Society told The Guardian. He said Chinas political leaders were close followers of Mao Zedong, whose key principle was to make disorder under heaven.
MEXICO
Of course, many of Mexicos citizens and political leaders have reeled at Trumps promise to build a wall. Still, President Enrique Pena Nieto hasnt stated out loud who he supports. He met with Trump in August and they spoke about the wall but didnt publicly agree over who would pay for it.
CANADA
Regardless of how the election goes, the U.S. ally is laying out the welcome mat for Americans whove vowed to leave the country if their chosen candidate doesnt win.
The fact is, Cape Breton is lovely all times of the year and if people do want to make choices that perhaps suit their lifestyles better, Canada is always welcoming and opening, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Gay rights advocates have welcomed Australia's Senate voting down a government plan to hold a nonbinding public vote on recognizing gay marriage and called on Parliament to legislate for marriage equality soon.
The Senate voted 33-29 late Monday against holding the plebiscite on same-sex marriage that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's conservative government had planned for Feb. 11.
Marriage equality opponents had supported the plan, while most gay marriage advocates had opposed it, warning it would spark a divisive debate.
Ivan Hinton-Teoh, a spokesman for the gay rights group just.equal, said on Tuesday the Parliament should decide the issue during the current three-year term.
Shelley Argent, spokeswoman for PFLAG Australia which represents parents of gay children, said the plebiscite had been designed to fail.
A German court sentenced a far-right politician to eight months in prison on Monday for displaying a Nazi-style tattoo, siding with prosecutors and stiffening the suspended term he originally received.
The case against Marcel Zech centered on a tattoo that appeared to combine an image of the Auschwitz death camp with the slogan from the Buchenwald concentration camp's gate, "Jedem das Seine" -- "to each his own."
The 28-year-old admitted displaying the tattoo while visiting a swimming pool. Prosecutors appealed after a district court in Oranienburg gave him a six-month suspended sentence in December.
Zech, a member of the far-right National Democratic Party, also had appealed that verdict and sought an acquittal.
On Monday, a state court in Neuruppin, north of Berlin, upheld the defendant's conviction for incitement and imposed the new sentence, news agency dpa reported.
Presiding judge Joern Kalbow said as he announced the ruling that the public might view a suspended sentence as "the state retreating in the face of right-wing radicalism." Kalbow noted that Germany has been seeing increasing numbers of xenophobic crimes.
Defense lawyer Wolfram Nahrath said he would appeal again to a higher court.
During the hearing, Nahrath told judges that Zech had since altered the offending tattoo as a result of the "exceptional denunciation" of him resulting from the case and because he wanted to be able to keep going to the swimming pool with his children.
Prosecutor Torsten Lowitsch said the image of Auschwitz has been replaced by Max and Moritz, figures from a well-known German children's tale. However, Lowitsch said the tattoo still includes the slogan "to each his own."
The impact of Carlisles proposed non-discrimination ordinance could stretch beyond the borough limits, a Dickinson College official says.
The college has approximately 2,356 full-time students representing 40 of the nations states and territories, as well as students from 43 foreign countries, according to the schools website. But Dickinsons interim president believes that if the ordinance is not passed, it can damage the college, likely greatly reducing the number of students enrolled or interested in enrolling at Dickinson.
During Octobers Employee Relations and Citizen Participation Committee at Carlisle Borough Hall, Neil Weissman, interim president of the college, said he believes future applicants will Google Carlisle and, undoubtedly, this conversation and its outcome will be one of the primary things they see, and will send a message about the community.
Dickinson recruits employees and students nationally and internationally, Weissman told The Sentinel in an email after the meeting. Job candidates, prospective students and their parents increasingly look for a diverse environment. We need a community that supports inclusion and is prepared to act against discrimination.
Carlisles proposed non-discrimination ordinance would create a Human Relations Committee and protect the rights of those in the LGBTQ community.
Jonathan Bowser, CEO of the Cumberland Area Economic Development Corp., said that while CAEDC hasnt conducted any studies on Dickinsons economic impact to Carlisle, student, visitor and faculty spending is important to the region.
He also added that theres a significant impact on the housing market due to rentals from students and faculty.
Weissman said hes proud of the many students who have spoken out in favor of the ordinance and showed up at the various meetings since June when the ordinance was initially proposed taking action in the community theyre calling home either permanently or temporarily.
The interim president said that if the ordinance were not approved, it would create obstacles to recruitment, especially of students, impact the financial health of the college and decrease our ability to spend in the Carlisle community.
Recruitment difficulties could also reduce the size of the student body and employee pool residing and spending in Carlisle, he added.
A Niger government spokesman says gunmen have attacked a town in the west near the border with Mali.
Assamana Malam Issa said the attack targeting Banibangou began early Tuesday morning. He said the government is not yet able to provide details on casualties or the identity of the assailants. It was not clear whether the fighting was over.
Landlocked Niger faces threats of extremist violence from al-Qaida-linked Islamic militants in Mali to the west as well as Nigeria's Boko Haram insurgents to the south and jihadists in Libya to the north.
Last month, gunmen killed 22 soldiers guarding a camp in western Niger housing Malian refugees. In a separate incident later in the month, gunmen abducted an American aid worker in Niger and fled with him toward Mali.
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Iran's top diplomat is calling for a political solution to the conflicts in Yemen and Syria, saying that the continuation of violence will only lead to more bloodshed and no one will win the war.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says regional powers should help the Yemenis and the Syrians to reach an immediate cease-fire that would be followed by the start of a dialogue to end the catastrophes underway in both countries.
Zarif spoke on Tuesday, the second day of his visit to Lebanon.
Iran is a strong backer of Yemen's Shiite rebels known as Houthis and also Syrian President Bashar Assad. Saudi Arabia Iran's main regional rival backs the Yemeni government fighting the Houthis and insurgents trying to remove Assad from power.
Iraqi investigators were probing a mass grave on Tuesday discovered by troops advancing on the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, where soldiers have captured a sliver of land but later halted their advance.
It appeared to be the latest of several mass graves found in territory retaken from IS, which massacred hundreds of people as it swept across northern and central Iraq in 2014 and is believed to have waged a brutal crackdown since the start of the Mosul offensive.
AMERICAN VOLUNTEER MEDICS TREAT CASUALTIES OF MOSUL FIGHT
Associated Press footage from the site shows bones and decomposed bodies among scraps of clothing and plastic bags dug out of the ground by a bulldozer after Iraqi troops noticed the strong smell while advancing into the town of Hamam al-Alil on Monday.
"Investigators flew in this morning and are on their way to the grave to conduct examinations and determine the cause of death," said Haider Majeed, a Cabinet official in charge of mass grave investigations.
FIVE ISIS SUSPECTS ARRESTED IN GERMANY
The first officials at the site said the grave, behind an earthen embankment near an agricultural college, likely holds about 100 bodies, many of them decapitated. The town lies some 19 miles from Mosul.
It was unclear who the victims were, but a soldier at the site pulled a child's stuffed animal from the scraps of clothing and rotting flesh, swarming with flies.
In Geneva, the U.N. human rights office said it was investigating whether the discovery at Hamam al-Alil was connected to reports about the alleged killing of police officers in the same area.
"We had reports that 50 former Iraqi police officers had been killed in a building outside Mosul," spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. "This building was actually the same agricultural facility, agricultural college, that has been cited right now as the site of these mass graves."
She said the U.N. had received reports alleging that IS last week abducted at least 295 former security forces personnel from villages around the northwestern town of Tal Afar, as well as the western Mawaly village area. The men's fate is currently unknown.
Some 30 sheikhs were also reportedly taken from the Sinjar district, with one report saying that over half of them were killed. IS allegedly forcibly moved about 1,500 families to Mosul airport from Hamam al-Alil, she added.
The campaign to drive IS fighters from Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the extremists' last major urban stronghold in the country, began on Oct. 17.
Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga forces are now converging on Mosul, although the deepest advance into an eastern sliver of the city has stalled after militants counterattacked from built-up, populated areas.
To the northeast, some 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the city, the peshmerga continued their push on the town of Bashiqa, believed to be largely deserted except for dozens of IS fighters.
Mortar fire, automatic weapons, and explosions rang out through the morning, as a thick plume of smoke hung over parts of the town, obscuring the view of aircraft.
The United Nations says over 34,000 people have been displaced from Mosul, with about three quarters settled in camps and the rest in host communities.
In a report issued overnight, the U.N. human rights office said food, water and medicine have been distributed to more than 41,000 displaced people and vulnerable residents fleeing the fighting.
Since the battle for Mosul reached the city itself on Nov. 4, some 11,000 people have fled eastwards, while some electricity and water supplies have been cut in eastern neighborhoods.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, small-scale bombings killed at least eight people and wounded 28 others, according to police and medical officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to brief reporters.
The capital has seen near-daily bombings since the Mosul operation began, but no large-scale attacks. The bombings are believed to have been carried out by IS, which has frequently targeted Iraq's security forces and Shiite majority.
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The Latest on the influx of migrants into Europe (all times local):
4:25 p.m.
Central European countries have asked Balkan nations to be partners with them on how to handle the continent's migration crisis.
The defense ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Bosnia met in Sarajevo and discussed ways to include their militaries into plans for decreasing the influx of migrants through the Balkans.
As this is not just an EU problem, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro should be included into future plans on how to protect the continent's borders, according to Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil.
Czech Defense Minister Martin Stropnicky said that their contribution in keeping the region stable won't be forgotten when their efforts to join the European Union and NATO will be judged.
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11:15 a.m.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has inaugurated a new migrant reception center, which she hopes will prevent migrants from camping in squalid places in the city and ease tensions in affected neighborhoods.
The center in a northern district can hold 400 people. City officials said the first group of migrants was expected to arrive later this week.
More than 18,000 migrants have been removed from Paris streets and parks and given shelter since June 2015.
Earlier this month, French authorities cleared a makeshift camp near the Stalingrad metro station where more than 3,000 people camped in tents. The operation followed the relocation of nearly 7,000 people from a camp in Calais on the French side of the English Channel which was called "the jungle" by migrants.
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10:30 a.m.
Hungary's prime minister has failed in his attempt to push through constitutional amendments to oppose any future plan by the European Union to resettle asylum seekers among members of the bloc.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party failed to secure any opposition support and fell two votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary in Tuesday's vote.
Orban proposed the changes after an Oct. 2 referendum in which over 98 percent of voters supported the government's anti-migrant position. However, the plebiscite was invalid due to low voter turnout.
Analyst Zoltan Cegledi said Orban's failure was a "defeat of power politics ... which puts Orban in the difficult position of having to explain why he isn't capable of achieving anything."
More valleys, fewer chocolate peaks: The maker of Toblerone Swiss chocolate says it's widened the spaces in its iconic, triangle-array bars for some discount shops in Britain to keep prices down.
Mondelez International says the move aims to meet pricing targets by customer Poundland and other discount retailers, and has nothing to do with Britain's vote to leave the European Union.
British food retailers, however, are facing rising prices for imported goods as the pound weakened since the June vote.
Mondelez spokeswoman Heide Hauer said the only-in-Britain shift involves shrinking a 170-gram chocolate sold by the British discounters to 150 grams. The signature 100-gram Toblerone bar and other vendors are not affected.
Swiss daily 20 Minuten first reported Monday on the changes, which have drawn consumer complaints in social media.
A Syrian refugee in Turkey was convicted of sexual assault, but not before getting a different kind of justice when a gang spotted him and beat him up on the street.
Syrian migrant sex attacker is kicked to the ground and beaten by furious mob https://t.co/kIMoOSZ8eT pic.twitter.com/EVw2aksrcw Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 8, 2016
Omar Monda, reportedly 29, was said to have touched the 25-year-old woman inappropriately when walking by her. After she shouted, two bystanders came to her aide and attacked Monda, the UK Express reported.
Word spread throughout town. A businessman reportedly tried to help, giving Monda water, but more people reportedly joined the group exacting revenge.
GERMAN CREWS BUILD BARRIER HIGHER THAN BERLIN WALL TO SEPARATE TOWN FROM REFUGEE WAVE
Turkish media first reported the incident last week.
Images from the scene showed Monda kicked and beaten on the ground before police arrived and finally arrested him.
He was later convicted of sexual assault. The court has not yet ruled on his sentence.
Mersin, 185 miles from the Syrian border, has seen a dramatic surge in refugees. Official stats place the number at 167,000, with locals saying it could actually be more than 300,000.
This is not the first incident involving Syrian refugees and sex crimes in their host countries. Just this past New Years, Germany faced a wave of sexual assaults, many of which were perpetrated by men of North African and Middle-Eastern descent.
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Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu has lashed out at a leading Israeli investigative journalist who broadcast a report critical of the prime minister.
Netanyahu says the TV journalist, Ilana Dayan, is helping lead an effort to topple his government.
Dayan, host of Channel 2 TV's investigative show "Fact," interviewed Netanyahu's former advisers and others who claimed he sacked or didn't promote officials perceived as not being loyal or who were disliked by his wife.
On Monday, Dayan read a response that she said was from Netanyahu's office, calling her an "extreme leftist" and saying the Israeli public has "lost any trust in the central media organizations, which have unleashed their propaganda against the prime minister and the Likud government."
Israeli opposition figures criticized Netanyahu for the statement. Netanyahu's office had no comment.
A German couple who spent four decades sailing the world has apparently been abducted by pirates for a second time, with what appears to be a fatal result.
Jurgen Kantner and Sabine Merzwho were held by Somali pirates for 52 days in 2008, until a six-figure ransom was reportedly paidwere seized by Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines on Saturday, the New York Times reports.
Merz fired at the militants, and "our men shot back and killed her," an Abu Sayyaf spokesman told the Philippine Daily Inquirer over the phone. A man who identified himself as Kantner then came on the line claiming, "pirates took our boat and they took us."
Abu Sayyaf militants also killed two Canadians earlier this year.
The German Foreign Ministry says it's investigating the reports but hasn't confirmed the abduction or Merz's death. However, the Philippine military released a photo of the attacked boat, recovered on Sunday, which shows it to be the same 30-foot yacht, dubbed the Rockall, that was seized by pirates in 2008.
Click for more from Newser.
Prince Harry condemned the media for subjecting girlfriend Meghan Markle to "a wave of abuse and harassment," issuing a highly unusual statement Tuesday that confirmed his relationship with the American actress and expressed concern for her safety.
Harry's office said that while the 32-year-old prince understood that there was significant curiosity about his private life, a line had been crossed in terms of media intrusion. Harry said the statement was issued in hopes that media driving the story will "pause."
PRINCE HARRY WORKS TO HELP ELEPHANTS IN MALAWI
"Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her," said the statement from Kensington Palace. "It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subjected to such a storm."
The 35-year-old Markle is best known for playing paralegal Rachel Zane in the TV legal drama "Suits." She has also worked with the United Nations on gender equality and is a global ambassador for the charity World Vision Canada, traveling to Rwanda earlier this year to campaign for clean water.
Tabloids in Britain and beyond have jumped on the story and speculated about the relationship for weeks, with many commenting on her mixed-race heritage and contrasting her background with the prince's. The palace said the harassment has "been very public -- the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments."
'HARRY POTTER' STAR DEVON MURRAY REVEALS STRUGGLE WITH DEPRESSION
One Daily Mail headline called her a "saucy divorcee." Another described her ancestors as "a tailor, a teacher and a cleaner in racially-divided Jim Crow South -- while his were ruling the British Empire." One Daily Mirror article linked Markle with an online pornography site, saying clips of her from "Suits" featured on an adult site.
Harry said the commentators will say this is "the price she has to pay" and that "this is all part of the game."
The palace said that Harry "strongly disagrees."
"This is not a game -- it is her life and his," the statement said.
The scrutiny of the relationship drew immediate parallels to the media scrutiny of Harry's mother, the late Princess Diana, who died in a 1997 car accident while being pursued by paparazzi. It also invited comparisons to the early revelations that Kate Middleton was dating Prince William. That relationship was also the subject of relentless media attention.
But choosing to tackle the issue directly is unusual for the palace, which initially declined comment to reports in the Sunday Express newspaper on the relationship, as per its usual policy of refraining from discussions on the personal lives of the royal family.
"It's a very unusual step, I can't think of a precedent for it in recent years," said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine. "Some would regard this is something he should put up with, but that's not in his nature."
Harry has been linked to a number of women in the past, including another actress, Cressida Bonas. Media intrusion was also seen as having hurt that relationship.
In 2012, Harry spoke of the difficulties of finding a partner willing to take on the responsibilities of being a royal.
The palace said some of the harassment hasn't been apparent to the public. It said Markle's mother has struggled to get past photographers to gain entry to her front door, reporters and photographers have tried to gain illegal entry to her home, her ex-boyfriend has been offered bribes while friends and co-workers have been bombarded for data.
"But the past week has seen a line crossed," the palace said. "His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment."
Harry said the statement was issued in hopes that the media "can pause and reflect before any further damage is done."
In a 2015 article for Elle magazine, Markle wrote candidly about how she came to terms being a "biracial woman." She said her mother is African- American while her father is white.
"While my mixed heritage may have created a gray area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that," she wrote. "To say who I am, to share where I'm from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman."
Royal Bank of Scotland has set aside 400 million pounds ($497 million) to compensate small and medium-size businesses that say they were mistreated by the lender after the 2008 financial crisis.
RBS says it will set up an independent process to review complaints from businesses that believe they were mistreated and that it will automatically refund "complex fees."
CEO Ross McEwan said Tuesday that RBS believes "now is the right time to deal with the areas where we accept some customers were let down in the past."
RBS's Global Restructuring Group has been accused of squeezing distressed businesses then buying their assets cheaply. While the Financial Conduct Authority says there were cases of inappropriate treatment and misleading communication, RBS didn't "artificially engineer" transfers of client business to the restructuring unit.
Voter turnout for presidential elections generally surpasses that of any other year and the rhetoric surrounding this years election has been more bombastic than most.
With upwards of more than 100,000 people heading to the polls today, officials in Cumberland County are preparing for anything that may happen. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close by 8 p.m. across the county.
We have been in the practice, for many years, of contingency planning for situations that could occur at a polling place, Cumberland County spokeswoman Megan Silverstrim said. We have plans in place that we dont advertise for security reasons, but we have backup plans in place.
Silverstrim said those plans range from what to do in case of a security issue to how to keep the voting machines up and running in the event of a power outage.
She noted that during the May primary election a vehicle struck a utility pole causing a power outage at a polling place. The county deployed a portable generator and operation was able to continue at the polling place.
Its an election that a lot of people are paying attention to, but its kind of similar to emergency management planning, Silverstrim said. When you plan and prepare every year, even the big years, you dont scramble to plan because youve already been through the plan and you know what your ideas are ... how things are going to work if something happens.
Contingency plans
Silverstrim said the contingency plans can involve moving voting machines to another location if needed.
While police are not allowed to stage at polling places, Silverstrim said there will be constables providing a presence. Police and other emergency services are also able to respond in the event of an emergency, Silverstrim said.
Firearms are not permitted at some polling places, according to Silverstrim. She said the ability to carry a firearm at the polling place is based on the building or property where that polling place is located. For example, if a polling place is inside a school, firearms are not allowed because there are laws banning carrying any weapon on school grounds.
More than 100,000 people showed up to vote in Cumberland County for the general election in 2012, according to Cumberland County Bureau of Elections.
Silverstrim noted that voter registration has increased since then.
We feel prepared for this election regardless the amount of attention its getting, Silverstrim said. ... I think there is an expectation of the polling places being very busy, but do we have an expectation that something is going to happen? I dont think so.
Candidates vote
The presidential nominees, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, are expected to vote the old-fashioned way, trooping to their polling places in New York and undoubtedly trailed by cameras.
Their running mates, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Mike Pence of Indiana, are likely to vote at home, later heading for New York to team up with their principals after spending much of the last three months promoting their respective tickets.
Its a curtain-closer on one doozy of a presidential election and on House and Senate races that will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years.
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Turkey's foreign minister says the United States has promised Ankara that U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces will only be involved in a siege of the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa but would not enter the city itself.
Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday he hopes the U.S. would keep that promise. However, he says Washington had also pledged earlier that Syrian Kurdish fighters would withdraw from the town of Manbij, which has not happened.
He says Turkey prefers that "local" Arab forces enter Raqqa, backed by U.S.-led coalition and possibly including Turkish ground troops.
The remarks reflect Ankara's concerns over the expanding ground Kurdish fighters have gained in Syria as they battle IS militants. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish militia be a terror organization, saying it's an extension of Turkey's outlawed Kurdish rebels.
Ukraine's president has suggested former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili is stepping down as governor of Odessa region to boost his own political career.
Petro Poroshenko said in Slovenia Tuesday the government could formally confirm Saakashvili's resignation on Wednesday.
"I hope tomorrow the government will remove him from the position of the regional administration and give him an opportunity to provide political activity," he said.
Saakashvili said Monday he is resigning in frustration at what he characterized as obstruction in efforts to root out corruption.
Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili as governor of the corruption-riddled Black Sea region in May 2015. But in his resignation announcement, Saakashvili accused Poroshenko of supporting the criminal clans in Odessa.
Saakashvili said in a video posted on his Facebook page that he felt "cheated and tired."
Several newly-elected mayors on Tuesday boycotted the swearing-in of a convicted war criminal as new mayor of the western Bosnian town of Velika Kladusa.
Fikret Abdic was released in 2012 after serving his 15-year sentence in Croatia.
The 76-year-old Abdic was called up first during a ceremony in Sarajevo at which the mayors chosen during Oct. 2 local elections were certified. Mayors of towns around Velika Kladusa walked in to receive their certificates only after Abdic received his.
During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Abdic formed the province of Western Bosnia which fought against fellow Muslim Bosniaks loyal to Sarajevo. For war crimes committed back then, he was tried and served in neighboring Croatia.
Asked after the ceremony how he thinks he will be cooperating with mayors of neighboring towns who chose to ignore him, Abdic told reporters that all his life he was successful in every job he did.
"Now I can promise that I can be even better," he said.
Among others sworn in is Mladen Grujicic, the mayor of Srebrenica and the first ethnic Serb elected in this Bosnian town whose name is synonymous with a slaughter carried out by Serbs.
His election is a source of anxiety and anger to the town's Muslim Bosniaks, because Grujicic doesn't acknowledge that what happened in Srebrenica was "genocide," as international courts have defined it.
Grujicic said he will work for the benefit of all citizens of Srebrenica and form a multiethnic team in his municipality.
"By forming such a team, we intend to improve the life of all in Srebrenica," he said. "I think this is the essence of the work in Srebrenica, that both Bosniaks and Serbs unite together," Grujicic said.
Bar Louie Salutes Veterans and Active Military with Free Entree on Veterans Day and Offers 'Give Back' Donation to Operation Homefront
One free entree, no strings attached, on Veterans Day - just show a valid military ID!
ADDISON, Texas - Nov. 8, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Bar Louie plans to honor active and retired members of the U.S. military with a free entree on Veterans Day Friday, November 11, 2016 at all its locations nationwide (110+ locations). Offers are dine-in only. Veterans and active military must show a valid military identification card or similar proof of service.
In addition to the exclusive offer, Bar Louie will offer a "give back" for anyone who orders an item from the restaurant's 'Limited Addition' menu. Every time an item is ordered, 10 percent of the sales, up to $25,000, will be donated to Operation Homefront to support their Emergency Assistance Program and immediately impact the lives of men and women who serve our country. The offer is valid from the time the restaurant opens its doors on Veterans Day until 11:59pm on Sunday, November 13, 2016.
"Bar Louie is excited to help the people in our country who dedicate their lives to serving and protecting us," said John Neitzel, CEO of Bar Louie. "These individuals have given so much of themselves. We must continue to recognize our servicemen and women as often as possible. It is our privilege to make a small difference and we thank them for what they do for all of us."
Operation Homefront assists military families during difficult times by providing food assistance, auto and home repair, vision care, travel and transportation, moving assistance, essential home items, and rent-free transitional housing for wounded veterans and their families. The organization also helps military families gain long-term stability by awarding mortgage-free homes, while focusing on providing support for every military family member.
"Bar Louie's commitment to military families will go a long way, and we are grateful to have them as a partner," said Jill Eskin-Smith, senior director of corporate & foundation partnerships for Operation Homefront. "This is a wonderful opportunity for Bar Louie and their customers to show the appreciation we all share for our veterans and military personnel."
For locations and/or more information, visit Bar Louie's website.
About Bar Louie
Founded in downtown Chicago in 1990, Bar Louie is an award-winning collection of neighborhood bars with a lively, social atmosphere. With more than 115 locations across the United States, Bar Louie is growing through both franchise and corporate openings. Known for its signature handcrafted martinis and cocktails, Bar Louie also features a scratch menu of shareable plates, burgers, and sandwiches served every day until close. For more information on Bar Louie, visit www.barlouie.com. To learn about franchising opportunities with Bar Louie, go to www.barlouie.com/franchise.
About Operation Homefront
A national nonprofit, Operation Homefront builds strong, stable, and secure military families so that they can thrive in the communities they have worked so hard to protect. With more than 3,200 volunteers nationwide, Operation Homefront has provided assistance to tens of thousands of military families since its inception shortly after 9/11. Recognized for superior performance by leading independent charity oversight groups, 92 percent of Operation Homefront's expenditures go directly to programs that provide support to our military families. For more information, go to www.OperationHomefront.net.
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Link @ http://www.barlouie.com/vets
SOURCE Bar Louie
Media Contact:
Aaron Blank
The Fearey Group for Bar Louie
(206) 343-1543
aaronblank@feareygroup.com
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IHG Recognised in Singapore's "Best Companies to Work For" List for Second Consecutive Year
November 08, 2016 // Franchising.com // InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), one of the worlds leading global hotel companies, has been named Singapores third best company to work for by Great Place to Work.
This is the second consecutive year IHG is ranked amongst the countrys top employers after the Best Companies to Work For list was launched by Great Place to Work Institute Singapore last year. To gain a position on the coveted list, organisations must show commitment to creating a great work environment where employees trust the people they work for, take pride in the work they do, and enjoy working with the people around them.
IHG is the only hotel company placed amongst the top three. The rankings are derived from insights gathered from Great Place to Work's extensive Trust Index Survey, which measures employee perception of the workplace environment, and a Culture Audit, completed by the organisations management team and evaluated by an independent Great Place to Work team.
Jan Smits, Chief Executive Officer, Asia, Middle East and Africa, IHG, said:At IHG we believe that creating an environment of empowerment, accountability and performance is critical to our continued success. We understand that whats really behind a great culture is the right behaviours and mindset in our people, and that can only come from an environment that cultivates strong relationships and trust.
Over the years weve invested tirelessly in providing opportunities for our people to grow both personally and professionally; taking time to celebrate their hard work and recognise their performance, and striving to create an environment which allows our colleagues to build great trusting relationships with each other. And were still on our journey. It is truly heartening to once again be recognised as one of the best companies to work for in Singapore. Its a testament that were on the right path and this award is great recognition for all our employees and our leaders who give so much to IHG.
IHG places a strong emphasis on growing, developing, and retaining its people. Industry-leading programmes the company has launched in recent years, such as IHG Future Leaders, where young individuals with leadership potential are trained to lead a function in the hotel within two years; and GM Express, which focuses on accelerating the development of high-potential talent to be the General Manager of a hotel under the companys select service brand, Holiday Inn Express, within 18 months; are testament to how the company invests behind helping its employees grow in their roles and develop themselves personally and professionally.
The company also celebrates the great work its employees do through initiatives such as its annual IHG Celebrate Service week where employees are recognised for their commitment and dedication to delivering great guest experiences throughout the hotels every single day.
In 2015, IHG was ranked third in Singapores inaugural Great Place to Works Best Company to Work For list. This year, the company also came in fourth in the Saudi Arabia awards, and moved up the ranks to take 16th place in the India awards held by the Great Place to Work Institute.
Joni Ong, Managing Director, Great Place to Work Institute Singapore, said:One organisation, 1,400 employees across eight hotels, five hotel brands and one corporate office. If you speak to any employee from any of IHG's hotels or the corporate office, they will most likely tell you with great pride that the place they work in is a great one. IHG has endeavoured to ensure that every employee feels as though they are a part of something special and something successful. By putting their people at the centre of everything it does, IHG is deserving of being named one of Singapores Best Companies to Work For.
Singapore is the regional headquarters for IHGs business in Asia, Middle East and Africa where more than 1,400 employees work across the corporate office and eight hotels in the country. This includes new roles created when IHG opened two hotels this year Holiday Inn Express Singapore Katong and Hotel Indigo Singapore Katong, and the company will be looking to attract even more talent in 2017 with the opening of the second InterContinental Hotel in Singapore InterContinental Singapore Robertson Quay.
About IHGAbout IHG
IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is a global organisation with a broad portfolio of hotel brands, including InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, HUALUXE Hotels and Resorts, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo, EVEN Hotels, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites.
IHG franchises, leases, manages or owns nearly 5,100 hotels and more than 750,000 guest rooms in almost 100 countries, with nearly 1,500 hotels in its development pipeline. IHG also manages IHG Rewards Club, the worlds first and largest hotel loyalty programme, with nearly 99 million members worldwide.
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is the Groups holding company and is incorporated in Great Britain and registered in England and Wales. More than 350,000 people work across IHGs hotels and corporate offices globally.
Visit www.ihg.com for hotel information and reservations and www.ihgrewardsclub.com for more on IHG Rewards Club. For our latest news, visit: www.ihg.com/media and follow us on social media at: www.twitter.com/ihg, www.facebook.com/ihg and www.youtube.com/ihgplc.
SOURCE IHGAbout IHG
Contact:
Cheryl Chan
cheryl.chan@ihg.com
+65 6395 6256
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The Latest on the general election in Pennsylvania (all times local):
1:37 a.m.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) The Associated Press has called Republican Donald Trump winning Pennsylvania, topping Hillary Clinton in critical battleground state.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were neck-and-neck in battleground Pennsylvania on Tuesday, each seeking an important electoral prize after a hard-fought race that saw voters get plenty of face time with the candidates. The fiercely contested presidential race was reflected in close contests up and down the Pennsylvania ballot, with Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey narrowly winning re-election and Democrats sweeping all three statewide row offices.
12:25 a.m.
State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is being returned to the job to serve four more years as Pennsylvania's fiscal watchdog.
The Democratic incumbent bested three challengers Tuesday to head an office with more than 400 employees and a budget of more than $50 million.
The agency keeps tabs on state spending and recommends changes to how government agencies operate.
Auditor general has been a political launching pad in recent years. The last three people elected to hold the position all later ran for higher office.
12:25 a.m.
Pennsylvania's next attorney general will be county Commissioner Josh Shapiro, who'll take over an office wracked by turmoil over the arrest and conviction of a predecessor.
Voters on Tuesday chose the Democrat from the Philadelphia suburb of Montgomery County over Republican state Sen. John Rafferty.
He'll be the agency's fourth leader since August, when Democrat Kathleen Kane stepped down after being convicted of leaking secret grand jury material and lying about it.
Kane has been sentenced to 10 to 23 months in prison.
The attorney general is Pennsylvania's top-ranking law enforcement official. The agency has more than 800 employees.
10:50
Nearly three hours after polls closed in Pennsylvania, the races for president and U.S. Senate are too close to call.
Polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday, but people already in line were allowed to cast their ballots.
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are hoping to capture the battleground state critical to their White House hopes
In the night's other marquee matchup, GOP U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey battled Democratic challenger Katie McGinty, with the outcome of history's most expensive Senate race potentially deciding control of the chamber.
Clinton has a built-in voter registration advantage over Trump. Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania has backed the Democrat in six straight presidential elections.
8:15 p.m.
Polls are closed in Pennsylvania but voters who are still in line are allowed to cast their ballots.
The Department of State is gathering information on whether there are long lines at some polling places after Tuesday's 8 p.m. closing time.
The agency says it is hearing scattered reports of people waiting in line, but nothing widespread.
The state Democratic Party put out an alert to voters that if they were in line by 8 p.m. to stay there until they vote.
After enduring months of campaign ads, fliers and rallies, Pennsylvanians are helping decide the winner in a long, hard-fought presidential campaign and control of the U.S. Senate next year.
Democrat Hillary Clinton has a built-in voter registration advantage over Republican Donald Trump in Tuesday's presidential election. Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania has backed the Democrat in six straight presidential elections.
7 p.m.
Republican U.S. Pat Toomey says he has voted for GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, revealing his choice after saying for months that he hadn't been persuaded.
Toomey said after voting Tuesday night near his Allentown-area home that it was a tough call for him.
McGinty had tried to make Toomey's indecision in the presidential stakes a high-profile campaign issue, characterizing Toomey as unable to stand up to Trump. Toomey had been highly critical of Trump, and hadn't campaigned with him or talked about him during stump speeches.
Toomey is a fierce critic of Hillary Clinton's, and had refused to vote for her. But he had not ruled out voting for Trump, saying he was undecided and that Trump as president would sign productive legislation, like repealing President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law and imposing more sanctions on Iran.
6:30 p.m.
Voters in Pennsylvania say the economy is their biggest concern as they cast their ballots.
About half the voters surveyed in an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks ranked it as their top concern.
Terrorism was a distant second, slightly ahead of foreign policy and immigration.
Polls are open until 8 p.m. in Pennsylvania, which is considered a swing state in the presidential election between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
The preliminary exit poll of 1,947 Pennsylvania voters was conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Research in a random sample of 50 precincts statewide. Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points; it is higher for subgroups.
5:45 p.m.
Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman Rob Gleason says he doesn't see anything "nefarious" in scattered complaints Tuesday about apparent vote switching on older machines.
Several Pennsylvania counties are reporting a handful of complaints about vote switching on the touchscreen machines. They say the machines are quickly being re-calibrated to fix the problem.
Butler County elections director Shari Brewer says older machines can get out of alignment during transfer. She says poll workers can cancel the vote when the wrong button lights up and move the voter to another booth.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says the GOP reported problems with about 25 out of nearly 24,000 machines statewide. He says in all cases votes ended up being recorded correctly.
4:15 p.m.
Heavy turnout was reported Tuesday in Pennsylvania as many voters said they were relieved Election Day had arrived and they were finally able to cast ballots. No major problems were reported at the polls by mid-afternoon.
After months in the campaign spotlight, Pennsylvanians were helping decide the winner in a long, hard-fought presidential campaign and control of the U.S. Senate. They were also choosing a new attorney general, members of the U.S. House and the state Legislature, and deciding whether to raise the retirement age for judges.
In closely watched Philadelphia, graduate student Gabby Formica, 24, a registered Democrat, said she was enthusiastically backing Hillary Clinton despite her flaws.
"Both candidates have flaws, as they always do. But the flaws that Hillary has, Trump shares. The flaws he has, she doesn't necessarily share," she said.
In Pittsburgh, another registered Democrat, Air Force veteran Bob Ruff, 58, said he voted for Republican Donald Turmp "just because of the way the country's going." He had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but skipped the 2012 election.
Dan Kieta cast his ballot in Cleveland before flying into Philadelphia. A registered Republican, the 43-year-old information technology professional didn't want to say who he was voting for but would say: "I'm glad it's over."
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes said he believed turnout could top 80 percent.
Said Philadelphia election commissioner Lisa Deeley: "We should be this busy every election. It's wonderful."
Election watchdog groups were reporting some complaints by voters about having to show identification, the result of a lack of knowledge about Pennsylvania law. A first-time voter in an election district must show some form of either photo or non-photo ID.
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said no serious Election Day problems had emerged by midafternoon, and complaints about voter intimidation and fraud proved unfounded. Trump had suggested ahead of the election that Philadelphia was a city to watch for voter fraud. Williams said the volume of complaints was on par with past presidential elections.
Clinton had a built-in voter registration advantage over Trump in Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania, a state that has backed the Democrat nominee in six straight presidential elections.
Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes are a key building block in the path to winning the 270 necessary to win the Electoral College. No Democrat has gotten to the White House without winning Pennsylvania since Harry Truman in 1948. George H.W. Bush was the last Republican to win Pennsylvania, where Democrats hold a 4-to-3 registration advantage over Republicans.
Just below Clinton and Trump on the ballot was the hotly contested U.S. Senate race between Democratic challenger Katie McGinty and Republican incumbent Pat Toomey. Toomey was among the most vulnerable Senate Republicans as the GOP struggles to hang on to their 54-46 Senate majority.
The Senate campaign dominated TV screens, becoming the nation's most expensive race ever with spending on it passing $160 million.
Voters were also deciding whether to change the Pennsylvania Constitution to allow more than 1,000 appellate, county and district judges to remain in their jobs until the age of 75. The current mandatory retirement age is 70.
Also on the ballot were three statewide races for attorney general, treasurer and auditor general.
Democrat Josh Shapiro and Republican John Rafferty competed for the right to succeed Kathleen Kane as the state's top law enforcement officer. Kane won a landslide in 2012 to become the first woman and first Democrat ever elected to be attorney general, but she resigned in August after being convicted of abusing the office's powers by leaking secret investigative information and lying about in a scheme to smear a rival prosecutor.
For treasurer, Democrat Joe Torsella and Republican Otto Voit were seeking to fill an office that's also been marred by corruption, since Democrat Rob McCord resigned last year and pleaded guilty to federal extortion charges related to his unsuccessful 2014 gubernatorial campaign.
In the race for auditor general, Democrat Eugene DePasquale sought a second term against Republican John Brown.
Two races for seats in the U.S. House were notable.
Democrat Dwight Evans was seeking to become the new member of Congress from the heavily Democratic 2nd District, replacing the resigned and convicted Chaka Fattah. Evans was also seeking a two-year term in the office starting in January. His Republican opponent is James Jones.
The 8th District race was a tossup, between Democrat Steve Santarsiero and Republican Brian Fitzpatrick, who was running to replace his retiring brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, in the seat.
Voters were also deciding 228 seats in the Pennsylvania Legislature, although Republicans are expected to maintain their large majorities in both chambers.
11 a.m.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty greeted cheering supporters before casting her ballot alongside her husband and three daughters on Tuesday morning at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
McGinty has spent the general election seeking to tie Republican incumbent Sen. Pat Toomey to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. She struck the same note on election day, suggesting that Toomey's plan to vote late in the day was another attempt to dodge questions about whether he planned to vote for Trump.
"Come on, Senator Toomey, let us know: Are you standing with Donald Trump or not?" McGinty said to reporters. "It's long, long past due for (him) to have stood up for what's right... and denounced Donald Trump. It's really, actually, too late."
McGinty and Toomey have been locked in a close battle for months. She received a boost from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in the campaign's final weeks and said she felt good going into Election Day.
"Today's the day we turn it around so that working people get a fair shot again," McGinty said.
8:30 a.m.
Pennsylvania's secretary of state says he wouldn't be surprised if voter turnout topped 80 percent.
Secretary Pedro Cortes has served from 2003 to 2010 under former Gov. Ed Rendell and since last year under Gov. Tom Wolf, both Democrats.
Cortes says the highest voter turnout since 1980 was in 1992 when 83 percent of Pennsylvania voters cast ballots in an election headlined by Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican President George Bush.
Tuesday's general election pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the 19th overseen by Cortes, counting primary elections and non-presidential elections.
Cortes also downplays concerns over voter fraud saying, "I will never claim that elections in Pennsylvania or anywhere else are perfect, but they're legitimate."
Cortes expects about 7 million of Pennsylvania's 8.7 million registered voters to participate.
1 a.m.
After enduring months of campaign ads, fliers and rallies, Pennsylvanians will help decide the winner in a long, hard-fought presidential campaign and control of the U.S. Senate next year.
Democrat Hillary Clinton has a built-in voter registration advantage over Republican Donald Trump in Tuesday's presidential election. Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania has backed the Democrat in six straight presidential elections.
Just below on the ballot is the hotly contested U.S. Senate race between Democrat Katie McGinty and Republican incumbent Pat Toomey. Toomey is among the nation's most vulnerable Senate incumbents as the GOP struggles to hang on to its Senate majority.
Voters also will decide whether to allow more than 1,000 appellate, county and district judges to remain in their jobs until the age of 75.
The current mandatory retirement age is 70.
COP7 of WHO FCTC begins in Noida
Published: November 8, 2016
The 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) started in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
It is for the first time India is hosting COP meeting of FCTC. It is the worlds biggest convention on tobacco control policy in which 180 countries are participating.
It was inaugurated by the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare J.P Nadda and was attended by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.
What is WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC)?
The FCTC is the worlds first public health treaty under the World Health Organisation (WHO).
It provides a new legal dimension for international cooperation in healthcare in combating the tobacco epidemic.
It has successfully helped to co-ordinate and energize the global struggle against tobacco. It is considered as one of the most widely embraced treaties in the history of WHO and UN.
It is an evidence-based treaty that reaffirms the right of all people to the highest standard of health and was developed in response to globalization of tobacco epidemic.
Under it, the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products was adopted to address the increasing illegal trade in tobacco products in November 2012. Currently, it has 13 Parties and shall come in force 90 days after 40 Parties ratify it.
What is Conference of the Parties (COP)?
The COP is the FCTCs governing body and is comprised of all 180 Parties. The regular sessions of COP are held at two yearly intervals.
It regularly reviews the implementation of the Convention and takes action to promote its effectiveness.
Indias challenges
Tobacco use kills around 6 million people a year globally and the cost to treat tobacco-related diseases is whopping $22 billion.
In case of India, there are nearly 275 million tobacco users and close to one million deaths every year due to its direct or indirect use.
Preventive steps taken
India is pushing for stricter control on smokeless tobacco. In India, implementation of 85% pictorial warnings on cigarette packets has been mandatory.
The new Juvenile Justice Act makes sale of tobacco products to minors punishable offence with 7 years of rigorous imprisonment.
Month: Current Affairs - November, 2016
Topics: COP7 Events FCTC International National Noida Public health Tobacco WHO
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Union Government puts ban on NDTV India on hold
Published: November 8, 2016
The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has put hold its order imposing a oneday ban on Hindi channel NDTV India.
Earlier, the ministry had imposed oneday ban (on November 9) on NDTV India over its live coverage of the Pathankot terror attack, violating Programme/Advertising Code.
Opposition parties and media bodies have criticised arbitary punitive decision of the Union Government saying this was tantamount to an assault on media freedom.
What is the issue?
An Inter-ministerial Committee (IMC) had found that NDTV India channel had violated the provisions of the programme code, specifically, clause (rule) 6 (1) (p) of the code, in its live coverage of the Pathankot terrorist attack on 4 January 2016.
The live coverage by the channel may have given away sensitive information and could have helped the terrorists.
The IMC comprised of joint secretaries Home, Defence, I&B, External Affairs, Law and Justice, Health and Family Welfare, Consumer Affairs, Women and Child Development and representative of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).
What is Programme Code?
The Programme/Advertising Code of the Cable Television Network Rules, 1994 has been incorporated in the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.
The code gives the Union Government the power to block the transmission and re-transmission of any channel in the country. It is binding on all cable networks.
It has been taken from Content code governing All India Radio (AIR) which has been framed around restrictions to free speech under 19 (2) of the Constitution.
For the violation of this code, 30 channels have been ordered to be banned for periods ranging from 1 day to 2 months between 2005 and November 2016.
Note: There are no content-specific laws or binding rules for the print media and nor they require licence to publish a newspaper.
What is clause 6 (1) (p) of the Programme Code?
The clause 6(1)(p) was introduced by an amendment to The Cable Television Network Rules in 2014 by the Union Government and it came into force in March 2015.
It prohibits live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation by security forces. In these cases, media coverage will be restricted to periodic briefing by an officer designated by the appropriate Government till such operation concludes.
Comment
There are no specific laws protecting the freedom of the media in India. But journalists and journalism thrive on broader freedom of expression guaranteed under Article 19 of Constitution.
Article 19 gives all citizens the right to freedom of speech and expression. However, the first constitutional amendment in 1951 put reasonable restrictions on use of Article 19.
on use of Article 19. The reasonable restrictions can be imposed on issues related to sovereignty and integrity of India, security of state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.
Month: Current Affairs - November, 2016
Topics: Media National National security NDTV India
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By the time the poll at Walker-Grant Middle School opened at 6 a.m. today, the one person whod arrived at 4:45 a.m. was heading a line that went out the door.
The cardboard voting booths normally set up in the Fredericksburg city schools home economics room on election days are in the more spacious auditorium for todays voting.
Dion Herbert, one of nine election officers at this poll, said he was worried that theyd run out of I voted in the City of Fredericksburg stickers before the poll closes at 7 p.m.
Among the voters this morning was Ariel Paulk, a University of Mary Washington senior who was voting in her first presidential election.
I felt it was my duty to put my opinion out there, she said.
Paulk said that she read up on the issues and was particularly interested in freedom, equal opportunity, unification of the country and the economy.
She declined to say who she voted for, but another voter, Deborah Minor, was eager to declare herself a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter.
She has the knowledge. She has the capability. Shes breaking some glass ceilings. Im excited about that, she said with a hearty laugh.
Shes for all people from different walks of life. Its about embracing our differences and doing whats right for the country, Minor added.
John Hayman, who retired from the Maricopa County, Ariz., police department and moved to Fredericksburg recently, said that his most pressing concern was illegal immigration. He said that he was glad that Donald Trump had made it such a big issue in his campaign, and cast his vote for the Republican candidate.
I dont think the wall is going to get built, he said. You just gotta bring it up. Maybe then theyre going to do something.
Hayman said that its not uncommon for 150 to 200 illegal immigrants to be brought in to the U.S. Border Patrol offices in downtown Phoenix, only to be let go.
I was in law enforcement for 21 years, Hayman said. I just think weve got to control the border.
In Culpeper, voters came early and in great numbers.
The first voter showed up at the Hazel River (Jefferson District) precinct at 5:15 a.m., 45 minutes before the polls opened. By 5:30, there were 20 people waiting to get into the polling place.
By 11 a.m., more than one-fourth of the registered voters at the Cardova precinct (Catalpa District) had cast ballots and by 1 p.m., one-third of registered voters at the Culpeper County Library (East Fairfax) had earned I Voted stickers.
Few problems were reported. At the Culpeper United Methodist Church (West Fairfax), one woman complained that a campaign worker was handing out literature too close to the door, but that situation was quickly resolved.
Perhaps the biggest problem was what one precinct officer called the confusing language of the first initiative on the ballot, the one that dealt with the states right-to-work law.
It was taking some people three and four minutes at the voting machines on this particular issue, said precinct officer Gene Brady at Hazel River. To speed things up, we started handing out sample ballots so voters could study that issue before they got to the voting screen.
As always, several people were confused about where they should go to vote, but each precinct had enough officers on hand to deal with such matters.
The election was so important that Peyton Brock brought his disabled mother and stepfather to East Fairfax, where a poll worker assisted them in voting from their vehicle.
Tuesday was an especially exciting Election Day for 63-year-old Rocky Powell, who cast his first vote ever.
Powell, who had never voted in his youth, was convicted of a felony 30 years ago and recently had his rights restored by Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
I appreciate the governor giving me my rights back, said Powell, adding that by keeping his life clean for three decades, he had earned the restoration.
Concerning his first vote, Powell said, It was easier than I thought. Im tickled to death. It is good to be an American.
Powell did not hesitate when asked if he wanted to disclose for whom he cast his ballot.
I voted for Trump, he replied.
Perhaps the most intriguing take on this controversial presidential election came from a man who could not vote. Steven MacDonald lives in Ireland, was on holiday visiting family in Culpeper and wanted to observe an American election. He said he was impressed.
Concerning the outcome, MacDonald said that most of Europe wants Hillary Clinton elected because of her experience.
He added that Ireland thinks very highly of Bill Clinton, who helped restore peace to his home country.
If a woman and a former first lady is elected president, it would very historic, MacDonald concluded.
The Hilary Clinton email controversy weighed heavily on several local residents lining up bright and early to vote this morning at Eagles Lodge on Cool Springs Road.
Susan George, a former secretary for Naval Sea Systems Command, understands the importance of security clearances in protecting sensitive information. She worries that Clinton could be setting a bad precedent and affecting the morale of those who do follow security clearance procedures.
It scares me that someone could be so lax, George said. It makes you wonder: Is this the culture now? The example has been set.
George, a local small business owner, said issues impacting small businesses, such as tax relief and healthcare, also informed her vote. She is optimistic that the enthusiasm behind the Trump campaign will lead to a Republican victory.
Angela Justice said her decision to vote for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stemmed mainly from her concerns over the FBIs probe into Clintons emails. Justice is concerned Clinton has lost respect here in the United States and on the world stage.
I feel Trump will do a better job leading this country, Justice said. What others countries think about us matters, and Americans want to be respected by other countries.
Uttarakhand High Court bans construction near glaciers in Uttarakhand
Published: November 8, 2016
The Uttarakhand High Court has banned near glaciers in Uttarakhand and directed the state government to preserve the rapidly melting glaciers, a source of major rivers.
The High Court issued an order, taking notice of the degradation in the Himalayan ecology and environment based on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition filed on encroachment and illegal construction around various water bodies including the Nainital lake.
What is the issue?
The Himalayan state of Uttarakhand alone has 968 glaciers spread across an area of 2,857 sq km. These glaciers are a source of major rivers including the Ganga and the Yamuna. In recent times these glaciers are facing severe problem of rapid reduction in snow cover due to climate change and the melting of ice.
High Court order
No new permanent constructions must come up within a 25 kilometre radius from the edges of all the glaciers across the state.
Restriction on burning of fossil fuels within a 10 kilometre radius of the edges of glaciers. Complete ban on the use of plastic, in all forms, within a 20 kilometre radius of glaciers
State Government must provide the LPG and Kerosene Oil in abundance to the people living in these areas by involving Oil Companies to mitigate their hardships.
The entry of persons visiting the glaciers must be regulated and Chief Secretary of state must be the authority to issue limited passes for these visiting persons.
The State government can also impose a cess in the form of Glacier Tax on persons visiting places in the vicinity of the glaciers.
State administration must put up stations 20 kilometres from each glacier to ensure the enforcement of the Court directions.
Army and paramilitary forces are permitted to set up infrastructures but they too must consider the environment of the area before undertaking constructions of any kind.
Month: Current Affairs - November, 2016
Topics: Environment Glaciers National States Uttarakhand
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Welderworld.net Create A Guide To Help Welders Choose The Right Equipment For Their Jobs
A detailed guide for buying welding equipment has just been released by Welderworld.net
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Welderworld.net have just released an updated guide for selecting the best welding equipment in 2016. The guide covers TIG welders, MIG welders, welding helmets, as well as other welding equipment. The update has been done to ensure users can pick the right equipment for their needs according to changing user reviews and testimonials from this year. It also aims to establish the site as a 'go to place' for obtaining information on the best welding equipment.
The demand for high end welding equipment has been drastically increasing over the past few years. This is a result of growing complexity in industrial projects. In the wake of technological advancement, welding equipment and accessories have also become more sophisticated, offering multiple features and functionalities.
Numerous aspects have to be considered when selecting ideal welding equipment for a particular project. Because of that Welderworld.net has published an updated guide for selecting appropriate welding equipment. Size of the project, nature of work, time and mobility are some of the main aspects which the guide covers in depth. The website also offers a comprehensive list of the latest and high end welding equipment along with their reviews and specifications. Thanks to it welders can get a chance to evaluate real life performance and functionality of different equipment and accessories before they make a purchase.
The website shows a list of different welding equipment along with their detailed specifications like input capacity, power capacity, amperage capacity, duty cycle and the portability. It offers a chance for new welders to quickly understand the usefulness and functionality of different welding equipment for specific projects.
Welderworld.net also covers the industry's latest trends and developments. The guidelines and details shared on their website also provide comprehensive information for professionals interested in TIG and MIG welding techniques.
About the Welderworld.net: This website is maintained by Jason, who has 15 years of experience in the field of welding. It aims to provide newbie as well as professional welders with the latest information on high end welding equipment and accessories. It also includes specifications of different welding equipment for helping welders with finding and choosing appropriate welding equipment. People interested in welding equipment can find detailed reviews recent developments in the TIG and MIG welding world, and tips on maintaining their welding equipment.
For more information, please visit http://www.welderworld.net/
Contact Info:
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Organization: Welderworld.net
Phone: 483-762-9130
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Deadly Carfentanil Easily Accessible Online, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab Comments
( November 08, 2016 ) West Palm Beach, FL -- CBSNews reports that a new dangerous drug that contributed to the opioid overdose epidemic in the U.S. is easily accessible via the internet. The drug Carfentanil is one hundred times more powerful than Fentanyl, which was largely responsible for the uprise in heroin-related deaths in recent years. Carfentanil is easily accessible online via Chinese vendors which has contributed to its availability throughout Canada and the U.S.
As a provider of heroin rehab in West Palm Beach, supplies of lethal drugs like Carfentanil are important to track and rectify. Because of this West Palm Beach Drug Rehab warns the public to know the dangers of Carfentanil, especially when combined with illicit drugs such as heroin.
A representative of West Palm Beach Drug Rehab comments,
"Carfentanil is one hundred times more powerful than Fentanyl and up to 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. It's intended use is for tranquilizing large mammals, not human consumption. It's important that we know these things because naivety and miseducation leads to far too many preventable deaths in our country. Do not allow addiction to control your life and lead you down a dangerous path."
About West Palm Beach Drug Rehab 58698:
West Palm Beach Drug Rehab serves citizens from all 50 states in efforts to combat the substance abuse epidemic. Accepting over 80 insurances and offering alternative payment options, West Palm Beach Drug Rehab works to keep the focus on healing, not cost. Clients of the facility are provided personalized treatment programs which utilize both traditional and holistic means to promote rejuvenation of the mind, body and spirit. Upon completion of rehabilitation, clients also have access to resources for continued care provided by West Palm Beach Drug Rehab.
For more information about West Palm Beach Drug Rehab visit http://westpalmbeachdrugrehab.org/ or call (561)513-5749.
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Jacob Frydman - Donates to Feed the Underprivileged Families During Passover
Jacob Frydman's philanthropy reflects his commitment to the Jewish community and the faith's ancient traditions.
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Property investor whose career spans 30 years in value-added real estate investments, Jacob Frydman has joined the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE) in their efforts to offer hundreds of underprivileged families in the New York metro area to take part in Passover Seder. Frydman believes that the centuries-old practice of giving to "the wheat fund," or Ma'ot Chitim, which exists to provide low-income families with matzah and other gifts during Passover, is an important responsibility for those who are able to help the less fortunate and feels honored to be able to participate in this special Mitzvah.
NCFJE is dedicated to providing fast, discreet, and dignified services to all sectors of the Jewish community. Since 1940, its many programs have been offering protection, food, and education to thousands around the nation. Chabad-Lubavitch, the Hasidic movement known for outreach to the community in the spirit of brotherly love, is the principal on which NCFJE was founded. Among the variety of educational and social services offered by the NCFJE, there are programs built around the holidays, including Passover, aimed at ensuring that the financially struggling Jewish families in the community are able to properly enjoy the essential holiday traditions and festivities.
The major Jewish spring festival of Passover is a time for spiritual reflection among families. The ritual meal is a centerpiece of the holiday, while a new garment for each year's holiday is the long-lived tradition. During this year's festival, through the generous giving of other donors like Jacob Frydman, the NCFJE is pleased to be able to deliver over 3000 pounds of shmurah matzah, 100 cases of wine, and 100 Macy's gift cards to the underserved families of the NYC community. While by partnering with local children's clothing stores, they were able to obtain clothing vouchers to include in the holiday packages. The organization has already helped over 600, mostly Russian, families around the New York City area by providing them with the special Passover packages of shmurah matzah, wine, grape juice, and clothing vouchers. Over the next few days, another 600 families will be gifted, while 30 families have already received their Macy's cards.
Frydman's philanthropy reflects his commitment to the Jewish community and the faith's ancient traditions. In addition to contributing to the NCFJE's Ma'ot Chitim Fund, he has also donated to the Toys for Hospitalized Children program and worked alongside the Released Time program, which allows Jewish children to leave school early one day a week to study Jewish traditions. These programs work together to strengthen the Jewish community now and for future generations.
Over his 30-year career in the property investment industry, Jacob Frydman made a positive and lasting impression along the East Coast. Through his various acquisitions and housing development projects, he has renovated over 5 million square feet of American property by building urban retail outlets, medical office buildings, financial center offices, and assisted living facilities. He often speaks at Columbia University and in the Master's Lecturer series at New York Law School, discussing the business and ethical elements of real estate managers to aspiring students. Frydman is an avid philanthropist, often donating much time and capital to organizations that require financial and emotional assistance. He cares greatly for his Jewish community within New York, and is a supporter of many other charitable committees, including The Chabad of Dutchess County and The Brem Foundation.
Jacob Frydman - Blog - JacobFrydmanNews.com: http://jacobfrydmannews.com
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For more information, please visit http://www.JacobFrydmanNews.com
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Lighting as a Service Market worth $638.7 Million by 2021,with a CAGR of 46.3%
his growth is attributed to increasing demand for energy efficient lighting systems, zero capital cost requirement and growing convergence of Internet of Things (IoT) in lighting systems to reduce energy consumption across the globe.
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The report "Lighting as a Service Market by End-User (Commercial, Municipal, and Industrial), Installation (Indoor, and Outdoor), Component (Luminaires, Software & Communication Systems, and Maintenance Services), and Region - Global Forecast to 2021", The lighting as a service market is expected to grow from an estimated USD 95.3 Million in 2016 to USD 638.68 Million by 2021, registering a CAGR of 46.3% from 2016 to 2021.
Browse 70 market data Tables and 50 Figures spread through 146 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Lighting as a Service Market - Global Forecast to 2021"
Download Free PDF Brochure: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=117526361
The global market is witnessing significant growth on account of the increase in demand for energy efficient lighting systems, and government policies supporting adoption of energy efficient lighting systems over traditional lighting. Increasing convergence of Internet of Things (IoT) with lighting is also expected to drive the demand for the lighting as a service market across the globe.
The indoor segment is expected to hold the largest share in the lighting as a service market, by installation, during the forecast period
The indoor segment led the overall lighting as a service market in 2015, owing to the increasing electricity demand from the commercial sector. However, the outdoor segment is expected to register the higher growth rate during the forecast period. Increasing convergence of IoT for street lighting design and efficient utilization is the main driver behind the growth of the outdoor installation segment in the lighting as a service market. Outdoor installation covers street lighting, park and recreational areas, and parking garages, among others.
Commercial segment is expected to be the dominant end-user in the global lighting as a service market
The commercial segment is expected to dominate the global lighting as a service market during the forecast period, whereas the municipal segment is expected to constitute the fastest growing segment, by end-user. Energy savings and cost reductions promised by lighting as a service constitute an attractive offer for commercial end users in view of the increasing corporate focus on sustainability and energy efficiency.
North America: The leading market for lighting as a service
North America is expected to dominate the global lighting as a service market, and is driven by demand from commercial establishments keen to leverage the cost saving potential of efficient lighting systems and government policy support to phase out traditional lighting systems to reduce energy consumption in the region. It is closely followed by Europe.
To enable an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes profiles of some of the leading players in the lighting as a service market. These players include Koninklijke Philips N.V (Netherlands), General Electric Lighting (U.S.), Zumtobel Group AG (Austria), SIB Lighting (U.S.), Lunera Lighting (U.S.), Igor Inc. (U.S.) and Cree Inc. (U.S.). Leading players are trying to penetrate developing economies and are adopting various strategies to increase their market share.
Target Audience:
The report's target audience includes:
Lighting manufacturers
Lighting as a Service providers
Research institutes and organizations
Lighting control manufacturers
Lighting industry associations
Technology standards organizations, alliances, and associations
Government bodies, and private Equity firms
Institutional investors
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With the given market data, MarketsandMarkets offers customizations as per the client's specific needs. The following customization options are available for this report:
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MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.
M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.
We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.
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FinancialSpreads Offers Overnight Trading on the US Election FinancialSpreads is offering overnight trading on the US stock markets and forex markets so that investors can trade throughout the US election. View as PDF Print View November 8, 2016 (FPRC) -- FinancialSpreads, the UK based spread trading, CFD and forex trading company, will be trading key markets throughout the night as America votes for its 45th President.
Key markets that are likely to move due to the US election result will be open for trading. These include:
- Forex: EUR/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, USD/CAD and GBP/USD
- Commodities: Gold
- Stock market indices: Wall Street 30, SPX 500 and the US Tech 100
- - - Reduced Leverage and the US Election - - -
FinancialSpreads offers leveraged trading which is a high risk form of trading.
According to Adam Jepsen, the Founder of https://www.financialspreads.com, due to higher than normal market volatility, the company has reduced the amount of leverage that clients can use.
"We have already warned clients about the likelihood of high volatility and also reduced the margin (leverage) that clients can use.
"Having said that, inline with much of the trading industry, clients can still trade with 'x50' leverage, trading remains high risk."
- - - Trading Trend Warning - - -
The company has also issued a warning on the FinancialSpreads.com website about trading false trends as voting gets underway.
The VIX (volatility index) has been hitting its highest levels since the UK referendum and Adam Jepsen thinks that investors should think twice before trading.
"In the aftermath of the UK referendum the VIX hit 26.7. Prior to the US election, the VIX has already hit the 23 mark.
"Given the unknowns surrounding the election, and high market volatility, anyone trading the markets should think twice. Using small trade sizes in volatile markets can be prudent. Not trading until after the election, and when the markets have calmed down, is another viable option.
"Investors should also be wary of any market trends going into the election. Financial markets can get carried away with themselves.
"For example, on the day of the UK referendum there was constant buying of the FTSE 100 until the voting showed that Brexit was likely. Then there was some very quick selling."
- - - FinancialSpreads Urges Caution - - -
The London-based firm has also been urging caution due to the possibility of rapid market movements.
"If Donald Trump wins, it's easy to imagine traders hitting the sell button. It's possible that the US stock market will see a quick 3-5% fall. The US dollar could also weaken by a similar amount.
"Short-term volatility could also remain high as traders try to guess what a Trump Presidency would mean for the financial markets.
"If Hillary Clinton wins then the moves are likely to be less dramatic but very short-term volatility could remain high. Investors should still be careful", concluded Jepsen.
Spread trading and CFD trading carry a high level of risk to your capital and can result in losses that exceed your initial deposit. They may not be suitable for everyone, so please ensure that you fully understand the risks involved.
- - - About FinancialSpreads - - -
Investors can trade more than 1,000 markets via www.FinancialSpreads.com and the FinancialSpreads mobile apps. Markets include the key forex and commodities markets as well as US, UK and European stock markets.
Trading on a number of popular markets is available overnight, from Sunday evening through to Friday evening.
The company produces a range of trading guides including the FinancialSpreads.com stock market guide.
FinancialSpreads is a trading name of Clear Investor Ltd. which is an appointed representative of FINSA Europe Ltd., company no: 07073413. FINSA Europe Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, registered number 525164.
Registered Address: Office 701, Tower Bridge Business Centre, 46-48 East Smithfield, London E1W 1AW, UK.
Send an email to Adam Jepsen of r
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Venice Most Impressive Sights Things To Do Budget Doge's Palace Report Launched
A new report has been launched by Travelsharp, the travel report company, offering guidance on the best things to do for free while in Venice. There is a video showcasing some of the best attractions.
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Travel report site Travelsharp, which offers tips and tricks for traveling around the world, has launched a new report on the best free things to do in Venice, Italy. It boasts a video detailing some of the best things people can do in the city, including boat rides along the water, and some of the best buildings to visit while in the area.
More information can be found on the company website at: http://travelsharp.co.uk/free-things-venice-italy.
Travelsharp features a wide range of articles on travel, including the things to do in Stockholm and other destinations around the world, along with pieces focusing on cuisine from around the world. One such piece focuses on the best omelette in the world and where readers can discover it.
The latest report focuses on Venice, one of the most popular and beautiful cities in the world. It opens with a quote from Mary Shelley, discussing how there is something so different about Venice compared to other places in the world.
The report emphasises that visitors getting to spend a few days in Venice will discover that it is unlike any other city in the world, being somewhat small, but full of history. Every ancient brick has an interesting piece of history or story behind it.
Travelsharp advises that the city is at its busiest throughout the day, but can quieten down in the evening when the big cruise ships leave, and can be especially quiet at night or early in the morning, when visitors will feel as though they have the enchanting area to themselves.
It goes on to underscore that there are a few key areas in the city that visitors should aim to see at all costs, including San Marco square, where the world famous Basilica can be found. Another landmark to check out is the Doge's Palace, which is next to the cathedral.
Visitors with more time on their hands are also advised to visit the little island of Burano, famous for its small painted houses. Full details are provided in the YouTube video created by Travelsharp at: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0XtQyjq8JT8.
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Global Diabetes Pen Market 2016 Sales & Revenues Have Rapidly Increased Worldwide Due To Gigantic Demands From All Corners Of The Globe
The report introduced medical suction device market SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, market share analysis and competitive landscape, company profiles by analyzing the major players
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The report firstly introduced Global Diabetes Pen Market including classification, application and industry chain overview; Then we deeply analyzed global growth forecast indicators by the as well as the regional market conditions that including the product price, profit, utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc.
The Major Key Players
o Novo Nordisk A/S
o Ypsomed Holding Ag
o Owen Mumford, Ltd.
o Sanofi
o Eli Lilly
o Merck Animal Health
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In the end, the report introduced medical suction device market SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, market share analysis and competitive landscape, company profiles by analyzing the major players. It is a depth research study on Global Diabetes Pen Market.
Study Objectives of Global Diabetes Pen Market
o To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 6 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Diabetes Pen Market
o provide insights about factors affecting the market growth
o To Analyze the Global Diabetes Pen Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc.
o To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW)
o To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective
o To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by Form, by End-users, and by Application.
o To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market
o To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Diabetes Pen Market
Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 100 market data tables and
figures spread in 125 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on "Global Diabetes Pen Market ( North America, Europe, Asia, Rest of the World)- Forecast to 2021"
We are thankful for the support and assistance from Global Diabetes Pen Market. Industry chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Definition
1.2 Scope of the study
1.2.1 Research Objectives
1.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations
1.3 Market Structure
2 Research Methodology
2.1 Research Process
2.2 Primary Research
2.3 Secondary Research
2.4 Forecast Model
3 Report Excerpt
4 Forecast Indicators
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Growth Drivers
4.2.1 Increasing Incidences of Diabetes
4.2.2 Government Initiatives
4.2.3 Rising Awareness
4.2.4 Technological Advancements
4.2.5 Favorable Reimbursement Environment In North America & Europe
4.3 Growth Barriers
4.3.1 Poor Reimbursement Structure In Developing Countries
4.5 Macroecnomical Indicators
5 Market Analysis
5.1 Porter's Five Force
5.2 Supply Chain Analysis
6 Global Diabetes Pen Market, by Type
6.1 Disposable Insulin Pen
6.2 Reusable Insulin Pen
7 Global Diabetes Pen Market, by Therapy
7.1 Insulin
7.2 Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 (Glp-1)
7.3 Growth Hormones
8 Global Diabetes Pen Market, by Region
8.1 North America
8.1.1 USA
8.1.2 Canada
8.2 Europe
8.2.1 Germany
8.2.2 France
8.2.3 U.K.
8.2.4 Rest of Europe
8.3 Asia
8.3.1 India
8.3.2 China
8.3.3 Japan
8.3.4 Rest of Asia
8.4 Rest of the World
9 Competitive Landscape
9.1 Market Share Analysis
9.2 Competitive/Strategic Scenario
9.2.1 Mergers Acquisitions
9.2.2 Collaborations
9.2.3 Expansion
9.2.4 New Product Launches
10 Company Profiles
10.1 Becton, Dickinson And Company
10.2 Novo Nordisk A/S
10.3 Ypsomed Holding Ag
10.4 Owen Mumford, Ltd.
10.5 Sanofi
10.6 Eli Lilly
10.7 Merck Animal Health
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The report for Global Diabetes Pen Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.
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https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/apac-infectious-disease-diagnosis-treatment-market-research-report-forecast-to-2027
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NLP Healthcare Market is Expected to Reach 2.65 Billion USD by 2021
Healthcare and life sciences NLP market categories the global market by component as technology and services, by type as rule-based, statistical and hybrid, by application, by deployment mode and by region.
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The report "Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Healthcare and Life Sciences Market by Component (Technology and Services), Type (Rule-based, Statistical and Hybrid), Application, Deployment Mode (Cloud and On Premise) and Region - Global Forecast to 2021", Natural Language Processing (NLP) in healthcare and life sciences market to grow from USD 1.03 Billion in 2016 to USD 2.65 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 20.8%. The NLP in healthcare and life sciences market is growing rapidly because of the huge surge in clinical data, increase in the use of connected devices, and evolving consumer needs.
Browse 66 market data tables and 46 figures spread through 132 pages and in-depth TOC on "Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Healthcare and Life Sciences Market"
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"Report generation application to grow at the highest CAGR"
The report segments the global market on the basis of applications that include machine translation, automated information extraction, report generation, predictive risk analytics, and others including question answering, dialogue systems, email filtering, spelling correction, and search engine. Report generation is expected to witness the highest growth rate. The report generation application is used to extract required specific information from database, XML, or spreadsheets, and use that information to generate the document as per the requirement of users. Health care organizations and clinics are in constant need for high quality clinical data and this can be achieved by using NLP technology. With the help of distinct automated semantic algorithm, report generation application reorganizes the document as per the human needs.
"Statistical NLP expected to have the largest market share in 2016"
The report segments the global market by type into rule-based NLP, statistical NLP, and hybrid NLP. Among these, hybrid NLP is expected to dominate the market in term of the market share. The statistical based NLP approach is one of the better approaches to generate results when large amount of data is involved. Due to huge volume availability of text and speech corpora, the statistical-NLP has shown remarkable success in the past few decades.
"North America to be the largest revenue generator"
The report has been segmented by region into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. North America is expected to continue being the largest revenue generator region for NLP in healthcare and life sciences vendors for the next five years, followed by Europe. Major initiatives taken for NLP technologies have their origin in this region. Increase in adoption and usage of smartphones and big data are a few of the major drivers of NLP solutions in North America. The market growth in developing regions can be attributed to the enhancements in technology.
Major vendors that offer NLP in healthcare and life sciences solutions are 3M (Minnesota), Cerner Corporation (Missouri), IBM Corporation (New York), Microsoft Corporation (Washington), Nuance Communications (Massachusetts), M*Modal (Tennessee), Health Fidelity (California), Dolbey Systems (Ohio), Linguamatics (Cambridge), and Apixio (San Mateo). These vendors have adopted different types of organic and inorganic growth strategies such as new product launches, partnerships & collaborations, and mergers & acquisitions to expand their offerings in the NLP in healthcare and life sciences market.
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Tracy Fisher, office manager for Bates Insurance, has been named, for the second quarter in a row, the Park Hills - Leadington Chamber of Commerces Third Quarter Acclaimed Ambassador for 2016.
The announcement was made during the chambers monthly investor meeting on Oct. 18 so that Fisher could be honored with special recognition and awarded a certificate and huge bag of goodies compliments of ambassador program sponsors.
This is the second quarter in a row that Tracy has gone above and beyond her duties as a chamber investor to help us out at the chamber office and in all that we do, said Tammi Coleman, the chambers executive director. Her outgoing personality and desire to help in any way possible make her a very valuable asset to the chamber board and staff.
Chamber ambassadors are recruited annually to help promote and assist the chamber in the community and at chamber events and meetings. Ambassadors earn points for attending events and meetings, recruiting and mentoring new investors and providing the chamber board and directors with assistance in other duties as needed.
Thank you, Tracy, for your incredible dedication and never ending enthusiasm for helping our chamber, Coleman said. Your efforts help to make our job a little easier. We're proud to have you as one of the faces of the Chamber!
The mission of the Park Hills-Leadington Chamber of Commerce Ambassador Program is to promote member commitment and retention by raising awareness of chamber activities and benefits; to inform and encourage involvement of new members to promote a strong chamber; to encourage meaningful and beneficial participation in the chambers programs; and to serve as a liaison for the chamber and its membership.
If anyone is interested in being an ambassador its a great way to get your face and name out to the public, said Rita Martin, chairperson of the chambers ambassador program. Its a great networking opportunity.
Coleman also wanted to give special thanks to the chambers ambassador sponsors for supporting the program and providing our much deserving champions with some incredible gifts.
Continental Title Company, Culligan Soft Water, C.Z. Boyer & Son Funeral Homes, First Bank - Park Hills Branch, Habitat for Humanity, Hefner Furniture & Appliance, Isagenix, Parkland Health Center, Pharmax Pharmacy - Leadington, The Coffee Grill and The Printing Company all serve as chamber ambassador sponsors.
This is a highly sought after award because the ambassadors work hard to promote the chamber, said Martin. Were very excited to be able to have something cool for them to win for all the points theyve been working for.
To find out more about the ambassador program or the Park Hills-Leadington Chamber of Commerce, visit their website at www.phlcoc.net.
British Sugar is looking to increase sugar output next year after the end of European Union quotas and following two low-yielding beet harvests.
The beet processor said it is working with growers to boost the area grown for harvest 2017 after two national crops that fell below 1m tonnes of sugar.
The group said the beet harvest in 2015 produced just short of 1m tonnes of sugar and it expects a reduction for harvest 2016 compared with a record crop of 1.44m tonnes in 2014.
The end of the EU sugar regime in October 2017 represents an opportunity for British Sugar to increase sugar production, the group said.
See also: British Sugar seeks new beet growers
The processor, with factories at Wissington, Newark, Cantley and Bury St Edmunds, said it is working with growers to restore beet supplies to a more normal level with an increase in price for the 2017 crop and a campaign to recruit new growers to its existing 3,600 beet farmers.
Beet growers will see an 8.4% price rise up to 22/t for the crop they drill next spring, after a number of years of falling prices, and may also gain a bonus if EU sugar prices are high.
The details about raising output came as the groups parent company, Associated British Foods, reported its annual results, which show its global sugar operations increased profits, due largely to a rise in world sugar prices.
Overall, AB Foods reported a 5% rise in group underlying pre-tax profits for its year ending September 17 to 1.07 billion with annual sales also up 5%.
Believe it or not, this election season may actually be on the brink of ending -- though that's certainly a somewhat optimistic prediction. Regardless, this is an election that demands something different going forward. Most of us, it's probably fair to say, are voting against rather than for someone -- even voting against two someones. So let's do something good for America and think about getting better.
During the fall in Washington, D.C., I led a few conversations on virtue sponsored by the National Review Institute, the Catholic Information Center and the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at my alma mater, the Catholic University of America. An election discussion just a week before voting day included counsel for voters to move beyond themselves. Humility became the takeaway word.
In a book on the virtues, Fr. John Wickham writes about how the "joyful freedom of Christian humility liberates us to do our very best in the limited situations of now and the months ahead." Part of being humble includes seeing life -- all lives -- as a gift. It involves a self-forgetfulness that puts others' needs before our own, a healthy counter to the hyper-individualism that keeps us, among other things, with eyes locked to our phones.
In terms of the present moment and the days ahead, that could mean calling a friend you may have vowed to "unfriend" or avoid because of his or her strident political opinions, apologizing and proposing an activity that could raise spirits or help people in your community or elsewhere.
The conversation on civility and renewal at Catholic University a week before Election Day happened just yards away from where Pope Francis celebrated Mass last September. At the time, Pope Francis said, among other things, that people have become "anesthetized." As an antidote to this numbness, the pope cited the example of Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the California missions who, he said, was the "embodiment of a Church which goes forth, a Church which sets out to bring everywhere the reconciling tenderness of God."
He also cited Serra's motto: "Keep moving forward!" Pope Francis explained: "For him, this was the way to continue experiencing the joy of the Gospel, to keep his heart from growing numb, from being anesthetized. He kept moving forward, because the Lord was waiting. He kept going, because his brothers and sisters were waiting. He kept going forward to the end of his life. Today, like him, may we be able to say: Forward! Let's keep moving forward!"
During that visit, the pope also visited some women down the block, the Little Sisters of the Poor, who care for the poverty-stricken people on the margins of society, people too often dismissed, avoided and forgotten.
It was a boost for a community of women who found themselves having to go to the Supreme Court to fight the Obamacare health insurance mandate, which the group, like many religious organizations, sees as a violation of its principles. But perhaps what is most important to know about the Little Sisters is their love. Fr. Wickham writes about this particular virtue: "love between human persons anywhere ... will call for forgiveness and reconciliation. What we need more than anything else right now is compassion and empathy, and this cannot be exercised except among people who speak truthfully to one another their own weakness and sinfulness. The love taught by Jesus Christ is always very humble in its daily exercise, very patient and kind, willing to share one another's burden's to the very end."
As the burden of this election nears an end, humility and love can help bridge differences, even celebrate them. We could revel in our common identity as created beings called to joyful service. It's a start at beginning again -- while avoiding a repeat or worse of our current political situation. It's a way to keep moving forward.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com
Dairy farmers in Northern Ireland are considering strike action unless processors and retailers agree to pay them a sustainable milk price.
Global dairy markets have rebounded in recent weeks, but dairy farmers say prices at the farm gate are not rising fast enough.
Dairy lobby group, Farmers For Action (FFA) NI, has accused the main processors of failing to pass on improved market returns to farmers.
See also: Grant scheme offers NI farmers chance to invest
In France, dairy farmers are receiving 32c/litre (28.4p/litre) for October milk and Friesland Campina are paying dairy farmers 10c/litre (8.9p/litre) to reduce supply.
However, most dairy farmers in Northern Ireland received a milk price of 19-20p/litre. This is despite southern Ireland dairy farmers receiving 25c/litre (22.25p/litre) to date and prices heading towards 24-25p/litre in England.
However, NI dairy farmers dont know what they will be paid for their October milk. Many will be sent their milk cheques between 15 to 20 November.
FFA NI has organised a meeting to discuss the issue at 8pm at the Glenavon Hotel, Cookstown, on Monday 14 November.
Vote on strike action
The Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers Association (NIAPA), Fair Price NI and Holstein UK have confirmed they will send representatives to the meeting.
Dairy leaders will discuss the following points:
The current true cost of milk production how it can be achieved and maintained
The pros and cons of strike action over milk prices
A vote at the end of the meeting to decide whether to strike
William Taylor, FFA NI spokesman, said the meeting would be open to all dairy farmers.
He added: Northern Irelands milk processors can no longer justify their current stance on their base price for NI milk, which is literally driving dairy farmers out of business.
John Martin, from the NI branch of Holstein UK, said the organisation would not be supporting strike action because hard-pressed dairy farmers could not afford to let tens of thousands of litres of milk go down the drain.
Farmers need processors and processors need farmers. But we feel there is an unfair balance in that partnership, he added.
Dairy cows sell-off
Mr Martin said three years of low prices were preventing dairy farmers from investing in their businesses. And 700 dairy cows were being sold off at livestock auctioneers Taafe, based in County Louth a sign that dairy farmers were walking away from the industry, if they are in a position to do so.
Mr Martin also called on the NI Assembly to match fund the 4.8m dairy farmers in Northern Ireland will receive from the EU fund set up to address the oversupply crisis.
Ulster Farmers Union president, Barclay Bell, has challenged dairy processors to explain why they are not increasing prices to farmers, despite a new surge in global markets and the continuing weakness of sterling.
They need to explain to farmers, whether they are members of a cooperative or not, why they are refusing to increase prices to reflect the better returns they are receiving.
Indianapolis is a sports town, but we were there for the music
It just so happened that my gal Vicki and I were in Indianapolis recently. We learned quickly that Indianapolis is a sports town. The NFL football team, the Colts, play...
'Stranger Things' Season 2 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Eleven Is Back! What We Know So Far!
"Stranger Things" Season 2 is all set and has confirmed for Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) to be back in the series. It has recently been hinted that the whole cast and crew of the show has already began production. Most of the original cast members are included in the upcoming season.
In a report from The Huffington Post, Finn Wolfhard already posted a picture of the cast in production and it includes eleven on it. Finn plays Mike Wheeler in "Stranger Things" Season 2. He has been the one who made the first kiss for eleven in the show.
"Stranger Things" Season 2 comes back in the small town of Indiana right after Eleven sacrificed her life for her friends in the first season. According to a report in The Telegraph, there are new characters added to the series.
It also is reported that Eleven may be a series regular and is reprising her character in "Stranger Things" Season 2. Meanwhile, there have been rumors on Noah Schnapp's sexuality. Noah plays the kid Will Byers in the series. He too is confirmed to be a series regular for this show.
Schnapp shares an interesting response to all the rumors about him in the same report. He stated that "Strangers Things" Season 2 is about these unique individuals coming together and are friends who share the same adventure. The question on sexuality is beside the point.
There are events in Season 1 of "Stanger Things" that will be answered in Season 2 according to a report in Screen Rant. Barb's death will be explored more in the upcoming season. Additional characters in the show are Max who is portrayed by Sadie Sink and Dacre Montgomery plays the role of newcomer Billy. These two who will be introduced in the upcoming season are siblings.
"Stranger Things" Season 2 comes back with the same 1980's theme and most of the original characters are part of the show. This popular Netflix original series is coming back in 2017.
iOS 10 Jailbreak Latest News & Update: Working Jailbreak Tool Finally Arrives; New Hacker Team Challenges Apple Security! More New Details Revealed
The seemingly fortified security of the iOS 10 has now been penetrated as there have been reports of a working jailbreak tool. This will then work with iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices and will come with great features and benefits.
Unlock-Jailbreak, New Hacker in Town
Fans would definitely be filled with delight as it is finally confirmed that a working jailbreak tool for iOS 10 is already developed. This comes after weeks of waiting for a tool from Pangu to arrive. However, it has been reported that the Chinese hacking team Pangu is not behind the working jailbreak, but instead comes from the Unlock-Jailbreak team.
While users would still enjoy the usual benefits of the iOS 10 jailbreak, there are additional perks this time around. Aside from the access to Cydia, users will now be able to use SIM cards from any network providers in their supposedly locked devices. There are also updates for lifetime periods and money-back guarantees.
Additionally, there has been assurance from the Unlock-Jailbreak team itself that the users of the new iOS 10 jailbreak tool will not be putting any harm to the software and hardware features of their Apple devices. However, it is still advisable to take precautionary steps despite all the safety and security assurance. This entails the backing up of the iPhone, iPod, and iPad, before downloading the jailbreak tool and initiating the process.
Pangu and TaiG Out of the Picture?
Notorious hacking entities Pangu and TaiG have remained silent with their progress in jailbreaking the iOS 10. This led many to conclude that the two, who were notorious for their hacking skills back in the day, had given up to the beefed-up security features of the iOS 10.
Apple had just released the iOS 10.0.2 software update for improvements on performance and several bug fixes. The new system update also improves the stability of the iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices. Due to their fast-paced updates and amped up security, Apple has essentially left Pangu and TaiG guessing for the next move. Stay tuned to GamenGuide for more iOS 10 news and updates!
Reborn of a Nightmare: Galaxy Note 8; Samsung's Upgrade Program, Release Date and New Features
Samsung faced one of their biggest challenges with the release of its predecessor Samsung Galaxy Note 7 due to its explosion controversy. It may have caused severe damage to the company's reputation but the loyal Samsung Note fans are still excitedly waiting for the release of its successor - Note 8.
To date, Samsung has not yet announced the official release date of the anticipated smartphone. However, many tech experts have predicted that it may be launched early of 2017.
Based on the report of Reuters, Samsung is proposing an "Upgrade Program" to wit, those customers who trade in their Note 7 smartphones with its electronic TVs can trade up for a Galaxy S8 or Note 8 this 2017 on half of the price discount.
La causa por la que explotan los Samsung Galaxy Note 7 es todavia un misterio, Note 8 a la https://t.co/zJHYp85AL6 pic.twitter.com/w0vJCCpJil seleccionWSL (@seleccionWSL) October 29, 2016
With the company's effort to recall the Samsung's Note 7 series due to its flame issue, its sales stopped and caused huge lost profits. Thus, the intensified ad campaigns and promotions of Samsung's Marketing team to recover their losses.
In next year's release of Samsung Galaxy Note 8, everyone believes that the battery exploding issue will already be resolved and a lot of new features will be installed. According to ValueWalk, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is predicted to have a 4K resolution technology to wit the first mobile device from Samsung who will offer such feature; an upgrade to its camera, specifically in its existing optical zoom feature; it may also have an artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities; and improvement in storage.
Microsoft Surface Book 2 Release Date, News & Update: High-end Laptop Predecessor Already Launched As Surface i7? Specs, Features, Launch Dates Revealed
It's been a while since tech fans have last heard of the rumored Microsoft Surface Book 2, which has been overshadowed by the Microsoft Surface i7 lately. Indeed, the newly launched Microsoft 2-in-1 laptop has been the subject of admiration, given its incomparable power and performance specs. This led several skeptics to believe that the Microsoft Surface Book 2 was actually the Microsoft Surface i7. Should fans then scrap hopes for a Surface Pro successor?
What we know so far
The new Microsoft Surface i7 recently launched during the Microsoft October event, to the delight of several laptop fans. The main highlight of the device was a dual-core Intel Core i7-6600U chip, sporting a custom NVidia GeForce GPU and a 1GB GDDR5 memory, according to PCWorld. It's touted as the "best of the best" by no less than Microsoft and Intel themselves, which led many people to believe that it could be the Microsoft Surface Book 2 they've all been waiting for.
Before all this, the Microsoft Surface Book 2 was widely believed to sport the upcoming Intel Kaby Lake processors and the Intel HD Graphics 520 GPU. It's also supposed to include support for 4K video and architecture, according to TechRadar.
Major changes, upgrades
But what Microsoft lovers really wanted to see on the Microsoft Surface Book 2 was longer battery life, as the laptop supposedly drained after only 4 hours of use. In contrast, the Microsoft Surface i7 reportedly has a 16-hour battery life.
Another wishlist for the Microsoft Surface Book 2 was an improvement on its salient feature: the hinge, as it was prone to accumulated dirt and receptacles. Fans wished for a detachable screen, or, at the very least, a functional hinge.
Release date
Of course, to expect the Microsoft Surface Book 2 to release this year would be reaching. Hopefully, however, it would release next year, alongside the equally anticipated Microsoft Surface Pro 5.
'Huawei Mate 9' Latest News & Update : Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9 Variation Exposed!
One of Huawei's pined for phablet cell phone, Mate 9, was released online with its specs showing an effective 6GB RAM for 256GB Internal Storage models. What's more, Huawei has joined forces with the German automaker, Porsche, to deliver a constrained release Porsche Design Mate 9 phablet.
Specs-wise, Huawei Mate 9 is required to come in 6GB of RAM from the underlying 4GB for the 256GB models. More variations recommend a standard 4GB of RAM conveying 64GB or 128GB, and the highest point of-the-line unit with 6GB of RAM and 256GB inward stockpiling.
According to reports, Huawei Mate 9 gloats a 5.9-creep QHD screen with a determination of 1440 X 2560, which ought to augment its potential for Daydream VR.
According to its inner skeleton, the standard Mate 9 will be controlled by a HiSilicon Kirin 960 octa-center SoC with four Cortex-A73 centers timed at 2.4GHz, and four Cortex-A53 centers timed at 1.8GHz. The SoC highlights the as of late disclosed ARM Mali-G71 GPU, combined with 4GB of RAM.
Under the cameras is a unique finger impression scanner that will open the cell phone and ought to work with portable installment frameworks.
In its optics division, the Huawei Mate 9 ought to highlight the second-era Leica double focal point camera. As the primary organization or company to get the Leica double back camera setup, the gadgets will convey a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and a 12-megapixel RGB sensor, both with f/2.2 gaps. The blend advances enhanced shading precision, profundity discernment, and differentiation.
As indicated by iPost, the Porsche Design Mate 9 will have a 5.5-inch full HD bent display with AMOLED capacitive multi-touch touchscreen and a 1440 x 2560 pixel determination. The standard Mate 9 will have a 5.9-inch show with a 1920 x 1080p resolution.
The #HuaweiMate9 combines a 4000mAh battery with Huawei #SuperCharge technology, so you're always powered-up. pic.twitter.com/TQLwLspZc0 Huawei Smartphones (@HuaweiPhones) November 3, 2016
The Porsche Design Huawei Mate 9, which may be transported in a Graphite Black shading variation, will be accessible in the European Porsche Design Stores beginning in late December at a sticker price of mce_markernbsp;1,533,while the standard Mate 9 is fixed at $776.
Country
Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Canada Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cuba, Republic of Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Dominican Republic Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Haiti, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Jamaica Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Mexico, United Mexican States Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu US Virgin Islands Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
A second route, which will service downtown to Alamitos Beach, will launch on Nov. 10.
Oregon State University enrollment is up 2.9 percent over last year, but only a fraction of that growth is in Corvallis.
OSUs total fall enrollment is 31,303, up 852 students from the start of the 2015 school year and making it the states largest university for the third year in a row, school officials announced on Monday.
Of the overall number, 24,672 students are taking classes at the main campus in Corvallis, an addition of 205 or 0.8 percent from last year. The universitys online enrollment jumped 11.2 percent from fall 2015, adding 573 students for a total of 5,682. OSU-Cascades in Bend added 106 students for a total of 1,122, a 10.4 percent increase.
(Those numbers add up to more than the announced totals because some students are dual-enrolled at the Corvallis and Bend campuses, according to OSU officials.)
Most of Oregons seven public universities have seen enrollment begin to decline in the last few years as the states economy recovered from the Great Recession, but OSU has continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate.
Over last three years, I think its been less than 1 percent (annually), said Steve Clark, OSUs vice president for university relations and marketing.
In response to livability complaints from local residents, university officials have pledged to keep headcount at the Corvallis campus below a target ceiling of 28,000 by 2025. To do that, the university has tried to focus growth in its online Ecampus program and its two satellite campuses, with 2025 enrollment targets of 3,000-5,000 in Bend and 400-500 at the new marine studies campus in Newport. OSU has also expanded its dual-enrollment programs with the states community colleges.
All of those things together have contributed to our ability to manage the growth of student enrollment in Corvallis, Clark said. We have not had to resort to wait-listing.
While OSU officials are working to keep overall enrollment numbers in Corvallis down, they have also been pushing to increase the number of ethnic minorities and foreign students on campus. Both are up again this year.
The fall 2016 enrollment of students representing U.S. minorities totals 7,204, up 450 or 6.7 percent from last year. Altogether, 23.7 percent of students attending OSU in Corvallis or via Ecampus identify themselves as members of a U.S. minority, up 14.5 percent from 2,806 in the fall of 2006, university officials announced on Monday. (The ratio of minorities on the Corvallis campus is even higher, 24.4 percent, when the Ecampus numbers are factored out).
Minority representation at OSU has been a sensitive subject in recent years, with students of color complaining about a lack of inclusivity on campus, a problem the administration has pledged to address. Also on Monday OSU announced it had launched an international search for a new vice president and chief diversity officer.
International student enrollment, meanwhile, is up by 201 to 3,529, or 11.6 percent of overall enrollment. Thats up from 897 students, or 4.6 percent, a decade ago.
The box itself is fairly unassuming, affixed to a wall in a busy hallway on the first floor of Oregon State University's Valley Library.
But on Monday, the box was a center of attention, as people walked up to it, produced envelopes from their bags and drop them off.
Then, most of them grabbed a sticker saying "I Voted" and continued on their days.
This scene, and others like it at the 15 other ballot drop boxes in Benton County, played out numerous times on Monday, the last day of an election season that started more than 18 months ago. The Pew Research Center found nearly six out of 10 Americans were tired of the presidential election, and that was back in July.
So no wonder that among the voters dropping off their ballots at the Valley Library there was apprehension about the contest, but also some optimism.
Savannah Correll, a 21-year-old OSU junior who's studying pharmacy, was voting for the first time. She called the election season stressful.
Were still not in the clear. We dont know what will happen yet, she said.
She recalled that President Barack Obama was elected the first time on her 13th birthday, and she was excited that her first time voting might coincide with another first:
Being a female, Im excited to potentially have a female president, she said, adding that she had voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Correll said many of her friends are voting, and they've been encouraging each other to vote.
A lot of people think it doesnt matter and it just gets lost in a sea of votes, but its important for your voice to be heard, she said.
Griffin Johnston, a 22-year-old senior in marketing who's voting in his second presidential election, was concerned about the outcome of the race but excited at the potential for reforming the electoral process that gave the country two historically unpopular presidential candidates.
Lets do it better next time, he said.
Johnston said he didnt want Trump to win the presidency, and he was glad the election is almost over because he thinks it will spark a lot of conversations.
Voting is just the start, said Johnston.
Eli Glenzel, an 18-year-old freshman in mechanical engineering who was voting for the first time, said the election was scary.
It kind of feels like judgment day almost, but its nice to think about what will come for our country.
Glenzel said he was voting because he wanted to find someone for president that would build on the last eight years under Obama (he voted for Clinton).
He added that voting for the first time was exciting.
Its definitely a cool experience, he said.
Oregon voters who have not yet turned in their ballots must do so by 8 p.m. tonight at an official ballot drop box. (See the related story for a list of ballot drop sites, see the related story.)
As of Monday afternoon, more than 60 percent of Benton Countys 58,464 eligible voters had returned their ballots. This turnout is nearly identical to the level the county elections office reported in the morning on the day before the 2008 election, when Benton County turnout ended up at around 90 percent. Turnout in 2012 was around 86 percent.
Brian Sidlauskas unscrews the lid of a clear plastic container about the size of a pickle jar, then uses a pair of giant tweezers to extract his prize: a dead fish.
But this isnt just any old fish. This is Bathylychnops exilis.
Its a deep-sea fish with a really bizarre visual adaptation. Its got four eyes in two sockets, Sidlauskas explains with a delight that borders on the indecent. The retina will form two different images so it can see things coming from above it or below it.
This particular example, dredged up in 1980 by a trawlers net in 400 meters of water off the Oregon coast, is just one of more than 300,000 specimens in the Oregon State Ichthyology Collection. Housed in the basement of Nash Hall on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis, it is the largest collection of preserved fish specimens in Oregon and one of the largest on the West Coast, and the ponytailed Sidlauskas is its enthusiastic curator.
This is the worlds best collection of fishes from Oregon and one of the worlds best collections of fishes from the North Pacific, he said.
Altogether the collection has samples of more than 2,400 fish species, including every known freshwater species found in Oregon as well as specimens from such far-flung locales as the jungles of West Africa, Russias Lake Baikal and the rivers of Iran.
The fish are collected under government-issued permits and typically are euthanized using an anesthetic compound called MS-222. New specimens are photographed, and tissue samples are removed and frozen for later DNA analysis. The fish are then soaked in formaldehyde for several weeks before being transferred to individual containers filled with isopropyl alcohol for long-term storage.
The smallest specimens, tiny larval fish, are kept in inch-long vials, while the largest are housed in casket-sized stainless-steel tanks built to hold human cadavers. The biggest fish in the collection is a full-grown thresher shark that had to be cut into pieces for storage (in life, the animal probably weighed several tons and measured around 12 feet long; its tail alone stretches close to six feet long).
OSUs freshwater fish collection began in the 1930s and grew steadily under a succession of curators in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. In 1991 it expanded substantially when it absorbed the Oceanography Departments collection of saltwater specimens.
Not long after arriving at OSU in 2009, Sidlauskas embarked on a major modernization program for the collection. Two years later, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the university, the collection was moved into new quarters designed to modern fire and earthquake safety standards and equipped with compact shelving to provide better organization and room for expansion. Catalog information was put into a computerized database, allowing the collection to be searched on multiple digital platforms.
While online research is useful, Sidlauskas said, theres still no substitute for collections of physical specimens such as OSUs. Researchers can come to the basement of Nash Hall and examine the holdings in person or request to have specimens sent to them on loan. OSU researchers have similar privileges with other collections.
In fact, with its rows of cataloged and categorized fish specimens, Sidlauskas sees the collection as a sort of branch library for ichthyologists.
We are one node in a global library of fish diversity, he said.
The seemingly endless diversity of fish species is on full display at the Oregon State Ichthyology Collection, and Sidlauskas is eager to show it off.
A quick sampling includes Oregonichthys crameri or Oregon chub, a silvery minnow found only in the Willamette Basin that recently became the first fish ever taken off the endangered species list following a successful recovery; a set of headstanding tetras from Peru, which disguise themselves in clumps of freshwater plants by floating head-down among the stems; and an Abyssobrotula specimen collected from a depth of 4,300 meters that is one of the worlds deepest-dwelling life forms.
One of Sidlauskas personal favorites is Cryptopsaras couesi, a type of anglerfish found off the Oregon coast. It has a long dorsal spine with a luminescent growth on the end that it dangles in front of its needle-toothed mouth, luring smaller fish close enough to gobble.
Even weirder than the animals hunting methods, however, are its mating habits. The male, which is much smaller than the female, tracks the object of its desire by following its scent signature through the ocean depths.
The male is basically just a nose attached to a set of gonads, Sidlauskas said.
Once it finds her, it bites her in the abdomen and never lets her go literally. The males circulatory system fuses with the females and the two become a single organism, with the males atrophied body hanging off like an extra fin.
Its all a little hard to believe until you see the pickled pair in the OSU collection.
This is actually a very notable specimen, Sidlauskas said, holding it up for inspection. As far as I know, this specimen is the largest known pair.
In addition to his responsibilities as curator of the Oregon State Ichthyology Collection, Sidlauskas is an assistant professor of fisheries at OSU. He also gets the opportunity to conduct fieldwork, averaging about one substantial expedition a year. In 2014, for instance, he joined an international team of researchers conducting a biological assessment of the Ogooue River in the West African nation of Gabon.
The team collected nine fishes that may have been previously unknown to science, including some that came home to Oregon with Sidlauskas.
He plucks one Gabonese specimen out of its alcohol bath and cradles it in the palm of his hand. Its about an inch long, a dull silver in color.
This little tiny thing is probably a new species. We havent described it yet, he said. In life, it was beautifully iridescent.
This is the kind of thing that attracted Sidlauskas to ichthyology in the first place and that continues to hold his interest.
One of the things I like best is that there are always new discoveries to be made, he said.
One never knows what one is going to find, either in a jar or on an expedition. Its the constant discovery that is the raw fuel of science.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) A campaign in Oregon is being bitterly fought, with vast sums spent by both sides on TV and other ads, even more money than for the governor's race.
The titanic tussle is over a proposed tax that is aimed at the companies making the most sales in the state, but opponents including major corporations say every Oregonian will be affected.
Both sides have arrayed armies of experts who say the tax on companies' sales of more than $25 million will trigger a rise in prices, or that such a scenario is bogus. The conclusions of the assessments, broadcast on TV and blanketing social media, depend on whether the well-heeled campaigns are for or against Measure 97.
While it might be impossible to predict if companies will raise prices if the measure passes, this much is certain: Oregonians abhor sales taxes. Oregon is one of only five states in America that doesn't have them. Oregonians have rejected sales tax proposals nine times in nearly 90 years.
"Backers claim the $6 billion from Measure 97 will all come from big, out-of-state corporations. Don't let them fool you. Measure 97 is a hidden sales tax," winery owners Rob and Jolee Wallace wrote in opposition. They stressed that their company doesn't have even close to $25 million in sales, but they asserted that the tax "impacts all small businesses and takes more money out of the pockets of every Oregon family."
Consumers would not be directly taxed by the measure, which is expected to increase state revenue by $3 billion per year, not $6 billion. Many businesses that have narrow profit margins feel threatened because sales would be taxed, not profits. The minimum tax for companies with more than $25 million in sales in Oregon would be 2.5 percent of the excess over $25 million, plus $30,001.
The Legislative Revenue Office says the tax would wind up costing each Oregonian at least $600 a year.
Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said she supports the measure because the state budget is facing a $1.3 billion deficit, and the money is needed to help fund education, health care and senior services.
"It's time corporations pay their fair share," Brown said in a debate last month. Republican challenger Bud Pierce said the measure would increase the cost of living for every Oregonian and that instead state government should learn to live within its means.
Even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders weighed in on it, saying in a statement Wednesday that "at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it is time for large profitable corporations to start paying their fair share of taxes. That is why I am supporting Oregon 97."
Otto Schell, legislative director for the Oregon PTA and spokesman for the Yes On 97 campaign, on Thursday cited a state Department of Education report that said Oregon's class sizes are among the largest in the nation. "Without revenue to hire more teachers, we will continue to slip lower in nearly every marker for our kids and schools," he said.
However, the money might not necessarily go solely for education, health and senior services because it would land in the general fund, which the legislature can spend as it sees fit.
The amount spent on local TV ads both for and against Measure 97 dwarfs the gubernatorial race ads, surpassing $7.6 million, according to The Center for Public Integrity. In contrast, roughly $1.9 million has been spent on local TV ads in the gubernatorial race. The Center for Public Integrity analyzed data about political advertising on broadcast television from Kantar Media/CMAG, a tracking firm that monitors 211 media markets around the country.
The campaign for Measure 97 has received $10.8 million in contributions, while opponents have contributed $18.3 million, according to Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkins' office.
Funding for the campaign against the measure comes from mostly out-of-state corporations, said Ben Morris, a spokesman for the Vote Yes On 97 campaign.
"Our largest donor is the Oregon Education Association," Morris said. The OEA is a union that represents about 45,000 educators working in pre-kindergarten through grade 12 public schools and community colleges.
Among the biggest contributors to the Defeat The Tax On Oregon Sales campaign are Costco with $900,000, Kroger/Fred Meyer with $900,000, and Comcast with $465,000. Comcast refused to air pro-Measure 97 ads that claimed the broadcasting and cable TV company was avoiding paying taxes in Oregon unless spoken and illustrated references to Comcast were removed from the ads.
___
Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/andrewselsky
American grad student leads Democrats Abroad in Bonn : Far from Pennsylvania on election day
Candice Kerestan, Precinct Captain of Democrats Abroad in Bonn. Foto: Jasmin Fischer
Bonn A 23-year-old American university student leads the Bonn chapter of Democrats Abroad. She is hoping to see Hillary Clinton become the first female president of the U.S.
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Its probably safe to say that most Americans just want the U.S. Presidential Election of 2016 to be over. Watching the race from overseas has been especially trying and expats will be happy to put it behind them. Its difficult to be put in the position of trying to explain what is happening back home. But there is a small benefit to being on this side of the Atlantic. University student Candice Kerestan sums it up, Its nice because we dont get all of those ads on TV.
At just 23-years-old, Ms. Kerestan leads the Democrats Abroad chapter in Bonn. Originally from Pennsylvania, she is responsible for informing U.S. citizens in Bonn about how they can vote from overseas. At one event her chapter organized, they registered 100 voters - many of them from California (Clinton country) and many from Texas (Trump land). Being here in Germany, she believes one can have a skewed perspective and get the idea that everyone supports Hillary Clinton. She doesnt know anyone here personally who is voting for Donald Trump but says at home this would be different.
Across North Rhine Westphalia, Kerestan says there are eight chapters of Democrats Abroad, including ones in Cologne and Bonn. A check of the Republicans Overseas website didnt show any current activity or events, and there was not a contact phone number or e-mail to get more information. There was a volunteer sign-up form, however.
From Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton
Ms. Kerestan is studying at the University of Bonn for a Masters degree in Political Science. Her courses are all in German. She says its very different to the U.S. system because there is no attendance requirement and the whole grade is based on one final paper. When she first arrived at the University, she missed being politically active as she had been a member of College Democrats back home. A quick google search and I found out there were others here, she smiled. And then she bravely took on a leadership role as well. She is articulate and well-informed, and after only 3 years in Germany (two of them in Bonn), her German language skills are strong. Before coming to Bonn, she had completed an internship with the environmental organization, Germanwatch in Marburg.
Watching the evening news at home with her family while growing up in Pennsylvania helped spark her interest in public affairs and politics. Today, social media transports the world of politics to many young people, and this also keeps her interested. She is hoping that Hillary Clinton will become president and help unite all citizens of the country, regardless of ethnic or religious background.
Its not that lots of American university students abroad were Clinton fans right from the start. Like herself, 69 percent of Democrats abroad voted for Bernie Sanders. To her, his attraction was partly that he was against the establishment and offered an outsiders perspective. Still, the majority of those initial Sanders supporters have now warmed up to Hillary Clinton, she says. For Ms. Kerestan, it was the first presidential debate that helped her make up her mind to vote for Hillary Clinton. She felt Mr. Trump behaved quite childishly. There would be no vote for Green party candidate Jill Stein as she had initially contemplated. Her vote had to help ensure that Donald Trump did not get elected.
When night turns to day
There are estimates of around six to seven million Americans living outside the U.S. Ms. Kerestan believes that every single vote will count, recalling that the 2000 election was extremely close. But what does a young American think about an election with two candidates at or pushing 70-years-old? With their age, they have a lot of experience and wisdom a younger person doesnt have but the world has also gone through many technological developments - and maybe at 70 or 80 youre not quite at the latest standard. She adds quickly that Hillary Clinton is sufficiently up to date.
Winter weather : First snow in the Eifel
It seems the fall foliage was just at its peak. But in higher elevations not far from Bonn, snow is already at the doorstep.
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Signs of winter in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland Pfalz: On the Hohe Acht (High eight) in the Eifel, snowplows have already been on the job clearing the streets. The Hohe Acht is the highest mountain of the Eifel mountains with an elevation of 747 meters. Its not too far from Bonn, between Ahrweiler and Mayen-Koblenz in the neighboring state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
In the winter time, many Bonn families head out to the Eifel in search of sledding opportunities for the kids. But snow showers are also coming down on the naked tree branches throughout the Saarland.
It may not officially be winter but it sure looks like it. Time to get the snow tires on the car if it hasnt already been done - unless those all season radials are already in service.
Life took hold on land at least as early as 3.2 billion years ago, suggests a study by scientists from Berlin, Potsdam and Jena (Germany). The team led by Sami Nabhan of the Freie Universitat Berlin studied ancient rock formations from South Africas Barberton greenstone belt.
These rocks are some of the oldest known on Earth, with their formation dating back to 3.5 billion years. In a layer that has been dated at 3.22 billion years old, tiny grains of the iron sulfide mineral pyrite were discovered that show telltale signs of microbial activity.
These signs are recorded both in trace element distributions as well as in the ratio between the sulfur isotopes 34S and 32S in the pyrite.
Using instrumentation installed in Potsdam in 2013, the scientists showed that the fraction of 34S in the core of some crystals differ characteristically from that of the same crystals rim, indicating that the exterior of the grain involved a processing of sulfur by microbes, so-called biogenic fractionation. The determination of the 34S/32S ratio, using sample masses less than one billionth of a gram, was carried out at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences by Michael Wiedenbeck of the GFZs secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) lab.
The composition of the rock, the shape of the crystals, and the layering visible in the field all indicate that the studied rock sequence was derived from an ancient soil profile; this so-called paleosol developed on a river flood plain 3.22 billion years ago.
Field data collected during this study imply that a braided river system transported the sediment containing the iron sulfide crystals. It is interpreted that microbes living in the soil, at a level that was continually shifting between wet and dry conditions, subsequently produced the rim overgrowths on the pyrite crystals.
Based on this evidence, the scientists conclude in their publication in the journal Geology that they found evidence for biological activity on land at this very early date. Their research pushes back the date for the oldest evidence of life on land to some 300 million years earlier than previously documented.
Reference:
Sami Nabhan et al, Biogenic overgrowth on detrital pyrite in ca. 3.2 Ga Archean paleosols, Geology (2016). DOI: 10.1130/G38090.1
Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
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Protecting the worlds oceans an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy
The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
5 New Features Coming to LG G5 with Android 7.0 Nougat Update Features oi -Rohit LG G5 is all set to get the Android 7.0 Nougat Update and heres all the new features your smartphone is supposed to get.
LG has started rolling out Android 7.0 Nougat update for its 2016 flagship smartphone- LG G5. The new update is first rolled out to LG G5 owners in its home country- South Korea, followed by other parts of the world in the coming weeks.
LG has become quite aggressive in offering software updates and does not want its consumers to compromise on the latest Google features.
SEE ALSO: Now Click a Perfect Selfie With the Microsoft Selfie App on Your Android Phone
It is the first company to roll Android 7.0 Nougat update to an existing Marshmallow handset and the company's latest flagship handset- LG V20 is also the first smartphone to launch with Nougat out-of-the box.
SEE ALSO: How to Hack WhatsApp to Get Access to Your Friend's Messages, Photos, and Videos
Coming on to the LG G5, here's 5 new features coming to the handset with Android 7,0 Nougat update.
Multi-Window support Android 7.0 Nougat will add Multi-Window support' to your LG G5. This will allow you to watch YouTube videos while texting your friend simultaneously. You can place the two windows either side-by-side or one-above-the-other. Google Daydream support LG G5 is already a futuristic device and with Android 7.0 Nougat, you will also get support for Google's Daydream, the company's own virtual reality tech. You are going to like the brilliant QHD display on LG G5 even more as it's one of the best screen in town to offer an immersive virtual reality experience. Redesigned Notifications with Quick Reply feature The Android 7.0 Nougat also brings support for smart interactive notifications. These notifications now offer more information and less waste space. Moreover, you can quickly reply texts from the notifications itself without having to open the app. The notifications tray will also get custom quick settings option to tweak the panel as per your requirement. New Data Saver mode Your LG G5 will also get a new data saver mode, which helps restrict 3G or 4G data usage by the apps running in background thereby, saving a considerate amount of mobile data. The feature also allows you to configure the device to update apps and software only when it is connected to a Wi-Fi network. Doze Mode The Android 7.0 Nougat update also adds a Doze Mode to your LG G5. This feature helps save battery power even when you're on the move. Doze mode puts your smartphone into low power usage while you carry it in your pocket or purse. Besides the above mentioned features, your LG G5 will also get File-based Encryption, Direct boot, etc. Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals
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Android Nougat On Board
This was the most interesting rumor. If the leaks turned out to be true, the upcoming Nokia smartphone will be powered by the latest Android Nougat.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC
Earlier leaks and the GeekBench listing revealed that the Nokia D1C will be powered by the Qualcomm's latest entry-level Snapdragon 430 chipset, which is an octa-core chip.
3GB of RAM
Along with the entry-level Snapdragon 430 chipset, the smartphone will be given 3GB of RAM for system operations, which will be more than enough if the smartphone comes with Android Nougat.
A 5-inch or 5.5-inch FHD Display
Going by the today's posted images, the Nokia D1C might boast of a 5-inch or 5.5-inch screen.Also, the Snapdragon 430 chipset doesn't handle display more than Full HD. So, we might see a Full HD or 720p display in the Nokia D1C.
Early 2017 Release or MWC 2017 Release
All the leaks earlier suggested that the Nokia D1C will be launched sometime by the end of this year. But, the year is almost done now, so, we might expect the smartphones to launch in early 2017 or at the MWC 2017.
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After the Galaxy Note 7 Explosion, Galaxy J5 Explodes in France! Does it Mark the End of Samsung? News oi -Chakri Kudikala Samsung still hasnt recovered from the Galaxy Note 7 debacle. The South Korean giant recently recalled nearly 3 million washing machines due to explosions and now a Galaxy J5 exploded in France.
Samsung is still reeling from the debacle caused by the Galaxy Note 7. It is worth noticing that the Note 7 issue was a huge disaster for the company not only financially, but also in terms of reputation and brand value.
Having said that, the Note 7 event in now a past and Samsung has already recalled all the Note 7s over the world. However, recently, the South Korean giant has hit with another major blow as their washing machines started exploding in several parts of the world.
SEE ALSO: Asus Zenfone 3 Max First Impressions: Big Battery, Neat Design, And Comfortable Footprint
And, as a result, the company recalled something around 3 billion washing machines, which is another disaster.
On Sunday, a user of Samsung Galaxy J5 from France reportedly complained that her phone was exploded after being heated up.
Explaining the situation to The Associated Press, Lamya Bouyirdane claimed that her phone was red hot while her four-year-old son was using it. She immediately asked her son to pass the device and noticed that the phone started emitting smoke from the rear side and she threw away the phone.
SEE ALSO: How to Hack WhatsApp to Get Access to Your Friend's Messages, Photos, and Videos
After throwing the phone away, the Galaxy J5 caught fire and exploded in an unconventional manner, which made the user very panicked.
Users over the world are already scared to purchase a Samsung smartphone and this incident eventually puts Samsung under more pressure. Well, as of now, there is no official word regarding this information from Samsung. We will update you again if there is any news regarding this latest explosion.
VIA: NDTV Gadgets
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Coalition airstrike demonstrates synergy among nations
By Staff Sgt. Charles Rivezzo, U.S. Air Forces Central Command Public Affairs / Published November 07, 2016
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AFNS) -- The U.S.-led Coalition tasked with degrading and defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant successfully executed a large scale, multinational strike on a weapons facility in Al Haditha, Iraq, Oct. 31.
The strike package achieved the functional destruction of a Desert Storm-era weapons facility that ISIL forces actively used to store artillery and ammunition as well as manufacture improvised explosive devices and vehicle-borne IEDs.
The mission served as a capstone demonstration of the interoperability, synergy and multinational partnership boasted by the coalition. The U.S., United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Australia, Belgium and Jordan each contributed assets and aircraft in the strike package.
"The efforts to degrade and defeat (ISIL) are not confined to the responsibility of a single nation," said Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the U.S. Air Forces Central Command commander. "The fight to defeat this organization is a coalition effort and it takes a coalition force to achieve that end state. This strike showcased the cumulative efforts of a diverse coalition dedicated toward a singular objective."
The package included a B-52 Stratofortress, Royal Air Force Tornado GR4s, French Air Force Dassault Rafales, Royal Danish Air Force F-16s, Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18 Hornets, Belgian Air Force F-16s and Royal Jordanian Air Force F-16s.
In total, 20 strike and bomber aircraft effectively destroyed 38 specified targets with a combination of air-launched cruise missiles and precision guided munitions.
The air tasking order coordination chief and lead planning officer for the weapons facility strike, Capt. Jarred Thorley, said that the planning phase for a multinational strike package is critical.
"Every nation brings their own specific tactics, techniques and procedures to the table and we have to meld those together to create a successful strike package," Thorley said. "We have to ensure everyone is looking at the same picture."
De-conflicting a compressed and congested airspace and communicating across multi-national aircraft platforms also served as a crucial component of the pre-planning process.
"The way I like to think about it is like ballet," Thorley said. "Every piece has to be in the right place at the right time. We have to get it right at ground level in order for our operators to execute their mission safely."
The flexibility of coordinating and directing a massive air operation from a singular location between several nations is a testament to the capabilities employed by the coalition, said a U.K. liaison officer involved in the planning of the airstrike package.
"Directing a large scale strike like this from one centralized location with a range of aircraft from throughout the region is impressive," he said. "It says something that we are able to combine all these different nations with different equipment, training and perspectives and execute a mission like this not in a controlled exercise but in a real world operation."
This strike showcased a real deterrence for our adversaries, Thorley added.
"This shows (ISIL) that they cannot win going forward," Thorley said. "The force dedicated to their defeat is too large and united. We have tremendous partners and we leverage the coalition capability every day."
The strike was conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria and the wider international community.
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Military Strikes Continue Against ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq
From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release
SOUTHWEST ASIA, Nov. 7, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 18 strikes in Syria:
-- Near Kamal, a strike damaged an ISIL supply route.
-- Near Ayn Isa, 16 strikes engaged 12 ISIL tactical units and destroyed six fighting positions, five vehicles, two vehicle bombs and a communications node.
-- Near Mara, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle and a heavy machine gun.
Strikes in Iraq
Attack, bomber, fighter, remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 12 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:
-- Near Mosul, seven strikes engaged four ISIL tactical units and three staging areas; destroyed 16 vehicles, seven mortar systems, three weapons caches, two ISIL-held buildings, an ISIL headquarters building and a training facility; damaged two ISIL supply routes; degraded three ISIL tunnels; and suppressed two ISIL tactical units.
-- Near Rawah, three strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed 11 storage containers, a vehicle and a weapons cache.
-- Near Sinjar, a strike engaged an ISIL headquarters building.
-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed nine ISIL vehicles.
Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.
Part of Operation Inherent Resolve
The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.
Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.
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Joint press point with NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller and the Foreign Minister of Romania, Lazar Comanescu
NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
07 Nov. 2016
(As prepared)
Thank you, Foreign Minister Comanescu.
It is great to be in Bucharest.
Romania makes important contributions to our shared security. Including in Afghanistan where you are one of the main troop contributors for our training mission.
Romania is also playing a key part in making countries in our neighbourhood more stable. In Moldova, Georgia and in Ukraine.
You make a substantial contribution to our Trust Fund on Cyber Defence for Ukraine. Helping Ukraine become more resilient.
And I warmly welcome that Romania has committed to increase defence spending to 2% of GDP.
A good example for other Allies.
We just had a very constructive discussion on the security situation in the Black Sea region. Where Russia's military build-up is a cause for concern. The security environment has changed and NATO is responding with resolve. Including right here in Romania.
Your country now hosts a small NATO headquarters, here in Bucharest. You have activated the Multinational Division South-East Headquarters. And we are strengthening NATO presence in the Black Sea region. With a Romanian-led multinational framework brigade on land.
We are also working on measures in the air and at sea. Two weeks ago, several Allies indicated they will contribute to this presence a strong sign of solidarity. And while NATO is increasing our presence in the region, we are keeping channels of dialogue with Russia open. When tensions run high, transparency and predictability are even more important.
Romania also makes an important contribution when dealing with other challenges.
Including by hosting Aegis Ashore at Deveselu, as a contribution to NATO's Missile Defence system. As the name suggests, Missile Defence is defensive. It is not directed against Russia, or any other country. It helps protect our nations against missile threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area.
Foreign Minister Comanescu, let me thank you again for Romania's steadfast contribution to the Alliance.
NATO is committed unconditionally to Romania's security.
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USS San Diego Completes NASA Orion Mission
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS161107-02
Release Date: 11/7/2016 8:06:00 AM
By Petty Officer 1st Class Joseph M. Buliavac, USS San Diego (LPD 22) Public Affairs
PACIFIC OCEAN (NNS) -- Amphibious transport dock USS San Diego (LPD 22) successfully completed recovery operations of the NASA Orion crew module Nov. 1.
The Underway Recovery Test-5 (URT-5) is part of a U.S. government interagency effort to safely retrieve the Orion crew module which is capable of carrying humans into deep space.
This marks the second time a URT has taken place aboard San Diego. Lessons learned from previous recovery tests and Exploration Flight Test-1 are being used to improve the recovery process and ensure the combined NASA and Navy team will be able to safely and successfully recover the Orion capsule following its flight for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) in 2018.
"For me it was a lot of fun being part of the testing because I was onboard this ship when we did the first URT and took the test capsule out to sea in February 2014," said San Diego Commanding Officer Capt. Carl W. Meuser. "On that trip, these smart folks from NASA were able to collect data and understand the environment much better, and they designed systems accordingly. So it's been fun for me to see the progression of NASA's project from the first time we went to sea together, to this very successful testing that we just finished."
With their main role of conducting amphibious operations, San Antonio-class ships have many unique capabilities that make them an ideal partner to support NASA. The most important capability was the ability to recover the test capsule using the ship's well deck, which was originally designed to launch and recover amphibious craft. San Diego also has the ability to carry and deploy multiple small boats which aid in the recovery process and contains an advanced medical facility for the returning astronauts.
URT-5 testing consisted of launching the test capsule from the well deck, then carefully maneuvering the ship alongside the capsule at slow speed. Then, divers attached lines from the small boats to steady and guide the capsule toward San Diego, where a NASA-designed winch hauled the capsule into the well deck.
"It's very challenging; what seems like a basic recovery is anything but," said Chief Petty Officer Beau Lontine, a Navy diver assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 3. "It's a very high-risk evolution, especially when the capsule is being towed behind the ship, and that's where our inputs to the equipment that they've designed for this come into play. That's what we do; we work with rigging and hardware and we do build-up and training to get to the point of recovering the capsule."
The test allowed NASA and the Navy to continue to demonstrate and evaluate the recovery processes, procedures, hardware and personnel in real, open ocean environment before conducting actual recovery operations for EM-1 and with additional coordination, subsequent exploration missions.
"This was a proof-of-concept URT, which means we were testing hypotheses that we had developed over the last year, along with some prototype hardware," said NASA's Landing and Recovery Director, Melissa Jones. "I'm happy to say that it was very successful and we have a lot of data going forward to figure out what our next test will be."
According to Jones, the next test will take place aboard another seasoned NASA recovery ship, USS Anchorage (LPD 23). Future tests will eventually get NASA and the Navy to arrive at a safe and more efficient way to recover the capsule for the 2021 mission involving a flying crew.
The Orion spacecraft is designed to meet the evolving needs of our nation's deep space exploration program for decades to come. It will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
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USS Decatur and USS Spruance Visit Pearl Harbor
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS161107-11
Release Date: 11/7/2016 9:16:00 AM
From Commander, U.S. Third Fleet Public Affairs
HONOLULU (NNS) -- Guided missile destroyers USS Spruance (DDG 111) and USS Decatur (DDG 73), along with embarked Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 49 and staff from Destroyer Squadron (CDS) 31, arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, Nov. 3, for the final port visit in their Pacific Surface Action Group (PAC SAG) Western Pacific deployment.
Decatur and Spruance, operating under CDS 31, were most recently underway conducting routine patrols in the South China Sea prior to pulling into port.
Capt. Charles Johnson, commander, CDS 31, said the staff, which is homeported in Pearl Harbor, looks forward to sharing the culture and scenery of Oahu with Decatur and Spruance crews. The time in Hawaii will allow for some much needed relaxation before the ships continue their journey to their homeport of San Diego.
"The Sailors have worked hard during this deployment, and they greatly deserve this rest and relaxation here in paradise," said Johnson.
While in Hawaii, the ships will also embark riders for a tiger cruise. Tiger cruises provide family members and friends of the crew the opportunity to stay aboard the ship to see the daily operations of a surface naval vessel up close.
Decatur, Spruance and the embarked HSM 49 "Devil Fish" are part of the U.S. 3rd Fleet PAC SAG. USS Momsen (DDG 92) and the embarked helicopter detachment "Warbirds" of HSM 49 are also members of the PAC SAG.
Under the operational control of 3rd Fleet, the PAC SAG conducted routine patrols, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation activities with allies and partners to enhance regional security and stability throughout their deployment. Since departing in April, the PAC SAG conducted several multilateral exercises with Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Republic of Korea, Australia and France and also conducted joint exercises with U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps assets.
Momsen and Spruance spent part of the deployment participating in the Oceania Maritime Security Initiative (OMSI). OMSI is a Secretary of Defense program utilizing Department of Defense assets transiting the region to increase the Coast Guard's maritime domain awareness, ultimately supporting its maritime law enforcement operations in Oceania.
Later this month, Decatur and Spruance are scheduled to return to their homeport of San Diego, and Momsen will return to its homeport of Everett, Washington.
U.S. 3rd Fleet leads naval forces in the Pacific and provides the realistic, relevant training necessary for an effective global Navy. U.S. 3rd Fleet works constantly with U.S. 7th Fleet. The forces of both fleets complement one another across the spectrum of military operations in the Pacific.
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Republic of Korea Minister of National Defense Tours Directed Energy Facilities at US Navy Base
Navy News Service
Story Number: NNS161107-04
Release Date: 11/7/2016 8:15:00 AM
By John Joyce, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division Corporate Communications
DAHLGREN, Va. (NNS) -- U.S. Navy scientists and engineers briefed a delegation of defense officials from the Republic of Korea (ROK) on directed energy technologies at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD), the Department of Defense announced Nov. 4.
The ROK delegation, led by Minister of National Defense Han Min-koo, saw new and emerging technologies from the electromagnetic railgun to laser weapons under development at NSWCDD.
"Minister Han's visit to NSWC Dahlgren Division was an important opportunity to showcase several next-generation systems and technologies that could bolster the capabilities of the U.S.-ROK alliance," said Abraham Denmark, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia.
The South Korean delegation watched and listened intently as NSWCDD scientists and engineers explained the Laser Weapon System they developed and installed aboard afloat forward staging base (interim) USS Ponce (AFSB[I] 15) to operate seamlessly with its ship defense system two years ago.
Ponce Sailors, trained by the Dahlgren team on the Laser Weapon System's operation, reported the weapon performed flawlessly during testing in the Arabian Gulf -- including tests conducted in adverse weather conditions of high winds, heat, and humidity.
The briefings on directed energy programs, included the electromagnetic railgun -- a long-range naval weapon that fires projectiles using electricity instead of traditional gun propellants such as explosive chemicals.
"The electromagnetic railgun took center stage as the focal point of the visit," said Capt. Brian Durant, NSWCDD commanding officer, adding the meetings were held Oct. 19 to support the United States' defense relationship with the Republic of Korea.
The electromagnetic railgun uses magnetic fields created by high electrical currents to accelerate a sliding metal conductor, or armature, between two rails to launch projectiles at 4,500-5,600 mph.
"While here, the South Korean delegation learned about directed energy weapons covering high-power radio frequency and high-energy lasers, hypervelocity projectiles, and our USS Dahlgren testing, including unmanned systems integration," said Durant.
The hypervelocity projectile is a next-generation, guided projectile capable of completing multiple missions for gun systems such as the Navy 5-inch, 155 mm, and future railguns.
USS Dahlgren is a cybernetic test bed which enables emerging technologies such as electromagnetic railgun, solid-state lasers, or similar cutting-edge weapon systems to be evaluated side-by-side with fielded naval systems.
"Working together with our allies during the science and technology, as well as RDT&E (research, development, test and evaluation) phases can lead to many benefits such as program improvements, cost and time savings, plus enhanced interoperability," said Jed Ryan, NSWCDD International Partnering Office lead.
In addition to the ship-based Laser Weapon System, Han and his delegation saw a ground-based, directed energy system designed for use on light tactical vehicles such as the Humvee and Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
This Ground-Based, Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move program, commonly referred to as GBAD, aims to provide an affordable alternative to traditional firepower to keep enemy unmanned aerial vehicles from tracking and targeting Marines on the ground. The Office of Naval Research is working with NSWCDD and industry partners on the development of GBAD's components and subsystems, including the laser itself, beam director, batteries, radar, advanced cooling, and communications and command and control.
Navy leaders have made directed-energy weapons a top priority to counter asymmetric threats, including unmanned and light aircraft and small attack boats that could be used to deny U.S. forces access to certain areas. High-energy lasers offer an affordable and safe way to target these threats at the speed of light with extreme precision and an unlimited magazine.
Han and his delegation's tour of Naval Support Facility Dahlgren also included Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) headquarters and the Aegis Training and Readiness Center (ATRC), where they visited with ROK sailors temporarily assigned to the center as students.
Aegis BMD is the naval component of the Missile Defense Agency's Ballistic Missile Defense System. ATRC courses focus on the operation and maintenance of the Aegis Combat System and the Ship Self-Defense System aboard surface warships.
NSWCDD is a premier research and development center which serves as a specialty site for weapon system integration. The command's unique ability to rapidly introduce new technology into complex warfighting systems is based on its longstanding competencies in science and technology, research and development, and test and evaluation.
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China, Pakistan hold joint anti-terrorism drills
People's Daily Online
(CRI Online) 20:03, November 07, 2016
Chinese and Pakistani special forces have held a joint military exercise in a bid to strengthen their cooperation in fighting terrorism.
The exercise was carried out in a border region between the two sides, and involved elite commandos from the two countries' special forces.
Training programs during the drill included armored vehicle charging, door-to-door searches, street battles, and besieging terrorists in a simulated raid on terrorist forces.
Zhang Baoming, a senior officer with the Chinese special forces, says the troops from the two sides also held in-depth discussions on a joint counter-terrorism command system.
"The Chinese and Pakistani forces have conducted in-depth and detailed communication regarding the subjects of construction of a counter-terrorism command system and use of tactics. The exercise helps strengthening the abilities for the two forces to fight terrorists through coordinated command systems, and further cemented the friendship and the counter-terrorism cooperation mechanism between the two forces." said Zhang Baoming.
The officer said the Chinese special forces tested tactics and gained experience with their Pakistani counterparts, which has undergone years of warfare with the extremist groups in the country's volatile regions.
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Cross-border firing by Indian troops kill three in Kashmir: Pakistani officials
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 4:54PM
Pakistan's officials say Indian troops have opened fire and killed three people, including a policeman, across the two countries' de facto border in the disputed region of Kashmir.
Local official Zeeshan Nisar said on Monday that the latest cross-border firing, which occurred along the Line of Control (LoC), also wounded four civilians.
"A policeman, a man and a woman were killed when Indian troops opened fire across the border in Nakyal sector," media outlets quoted Nisar as saying.
Separately, three people were also wounded in firing by Indian troops in the Neelum Valley of Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
In another incident, six people including two women were wounded in overnight cross-border firing in the Madarpur sector. According to Chaudhry Altaf, a local government official, the firing also damaged more than two dozen houses and three vehicles in the area.
Meanwhile, sources say thousands of people have fled their homes due to the ongoing firing in Nakyal sector.
Authorities have also closed more than 70 schools in Nakyal and Goi sectors on the Pakistani side of the LoC.
Last week, authorities on both sides closed hundreds of schools along frontier areas when cross-border firing killed 14 residents.
Indian and Pakistani forces have been engaged in clashes in the disputed region over the past months. Each side accuses the other of provocation.
Relations between India and Pakistan have been strained in the recent months, with New Delhi blaming Islamabad for a raid on an army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir in September, which killed 19 soldiers.
The Indian army blamed Pakistan-based militants for the assault. Islamabad denies any role in the deadly assault.
Diplomatic tensions generated between the two sides in late October, when India ordered one employee of the Pakistani High Commission out of the country, saying he was a suspected spy. Islamabad expelled an Indian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move.
In addition to that, Pakistan has recently accused eight Indian diplomats of conducting acts of "espionage and terrorism" against Islamabad.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan, but claimed in full by both, since the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947.
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Philippine leader cancels assault rifle deal with US
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 10:47AM
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the cancellation of the country's purchase of police rifles from the United States, saying Manila would look for a cheaper supplier.
"We will just have to look for another source that is cheaper and maybe as durable," Duterte said in a televised speech on Monday.
Last month, US Senate aides told Reuters that Washington had halted the planned sale of some 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines' national police after Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opposed it because of what he referred to as Manila's human rights violations.
The relations between the US and the Philippines, a long-time ally, have been complicated lately by Duterte's angry reaction to criticism from Washington of his violent battle to rid the country of illegal drugs.
Last month, in his strongest tirade so far against Washington, Duterte told US President Barack Obama to "go to hell," adding that he may eventually decide to "break up with America."
He said Washington had refused to sell some weapons to his country, but he did not care because Russia and China were willing sources.
The Philippine president has tried to reach out to China and Russia amid an uneasy relationship with Washington.
Also in October, Duterte announced a military and economic "separation" from the US, calling on American military personnel to leave the Philippines.
His call drew attention to the rotating force of 600 US troops who had been deployed to the southern Philippines between 2002 and 2014. At its peak, the US had 1,200 troops there.
The Filipino president said Washington had to quit treating Manila like a "dog with a leash."
An open break with Manila could create problems for Washington in a region where China's influence has grown.
More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations in connection with the anti-narcotics campaign since Duterte took office in late June.
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Fighting between rival forces kill 29 in central Somali city
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 10:27AM
Nearly 30 people have been killed in fierce clashes between regional forces in the central Somali city of Galkayo, which is divided between two semi-autonomous regions.
Local officials from the regions of Puntland and Galmudug confirmed the clashes on Monday and said 50 others were also wounded.
Officials from Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland and the neighboring region of Galmudug confirmed the clashes on Monday and said 50 others were also wounded.
Colonel Mohamed Aden, a military officer in Puntland, said 16 soldiers serving in the region's armed forces had been killed and 30 been wounded since the outbreak of violence on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Hirsi Yusuf Barre, mayor of southern Galkayo, said 13 forces died and 20 others were wounded in the region of Galmudug.
The clans in the two Somali regions have a history of disputes over land and water resources.
The latest clashes erupted after a dispute over buildings planned to be built in Galkayo.
Despite efforts by the central government to resolve tribal disputes and militancy, parts of the country still remain under the control of clans and militias.
The African country has also been the scene of deadly clashes between government forces and al-Shabab militants since 2006.
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been pushed out of Mogadishu, and other major cities by government and African Union troops, but they continue to carry out incursions in the capital city.
The country has not seen a powerful central government since the former dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, was toppled by warlords in 1991.
Clashes between rival factions as well as famine and disease have claimed the lives of over one million people in the past two decades.
Some 1.4 million people are internally displaced in Somalia, over 300,000 of whom are staying in the capital.
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Serbian military hosts drills with Russian, Belarusian forces
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 6:39AM
Serbia is hosting joint military drills with Russian and Belarusian armed forces with the aim of broadening cooperation in anti-terror missions across borders.
Some 450 Serbian soldiers, 212 Russian troops and 56 Belorussian military servicemen are taking part in the tactical drills, named "Slavic Brotherhood 2016," in the Belgrade region, according to media reports.
The maneuvers kicked off on Thursday and will reportedly come to a close on November 9, but the Russian military will remain in Serbia until November 15 for analysis.
Three Il-76MD aircraft, armored personnel carriers, all-terrain AM-1 vehicles and the Tahion unmanned aerial vehicle are among the hardware brought by the Russian servicemen to the drills.
"The aim of the drills is to improve operational capabilities for resolving tactical and fire tasks when carrying out anti-terrorist operations in a multinational environment," the Serbian Defense Ministry said.
"Slavic Brotherhood 2015" was held last year in Russia's Novorossiysk region.
The drills come as NATO forces on Friday ended a parallel five-day military drill in Montenegro involving hundreds of soldiers from seven member countries and 10 partner states.
Both Serbia and Montenegro are socialist republics and traditional Russian Christian Orthodox allies, but the two Balkan neighbors seem to be pursuing different strategic directions in ties with Moscow.
Serbia has remained close to Russia, while Montenegro has adopted a pro-Western stance, which has been awarded by NATO with an offer to join the Western military alliance.
The NATO invitation to Montenegro has been met with strong opposition from Russia, which has repeatedly criticized NATO military build-up near its borders.
Experts say the parallel military drills are a display of growing tensions between Russia and the West. The two sides are at loggerheads over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.
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UN censures loss of civilian lives during US operations in Afghanistan
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 2:40AM
The United Nations has launched an investigation into a recent incident in which over 30 civilians were killed in a US airstrike in northern Afghanistan.
According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) on Sunday, at least 32 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed and 19 others injured in the US airstrike on Buz Kandahari near Kunduz on Thursday.
UNAMA added that in the last week alone around 100 civilians have been killed and 111 more injured in the country.
"The loss of civilian life is unacceptable and undermines efforts toward building peace and stability in Afghanistan," said the secretary-general's special representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, Tadamichi Yamamoto.
"When conducting aerial operations, international military forces should take all feasible measures to minimize civilian harm, including full analysis of the context for aerial strikes," he added.
On Saturday, Washington accepted that the civilians had most probably been killed in a US strike called by a special forces team engaged in a raid on suspected Taliban militants, and vowed to launch an investigation into the incident.
Three Taliban leaders were supposed to be targeted in the raid, but the forces met "significant enemy fire from multiple locations" and called for help from a US aircraft, said General John Nicholson.
The Taliban militants were removed from power following the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, but they have stepped up their activities in recent months, attempting to overrun several provinces.
Afghan forces have been engaged in fierce clashes with Taliban to contain the ongoing insurgency across various parts of the violence-wrecked country.
The rising violence in Afghanistan comes despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops in the country.
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Pro-Russian General Wins First Round Of Bulgarian Presidential Vote
November 07, 2016
Partial results from Bulgaria's presidential election show that a pro-Russian candidate who is backed by the Socialist Party has won the first-round ballot that was held on November 6.
But support for Rumen Radev, a reservist military general and former commander of the Bulgarian Air Force, fell short of the 50 percent majority needed to win the presidency outright in the first round.
With 95 percent of the first-round votes counted, results on November 7 showed the 53-year-old Radev had about 25.7 percent of the vote.
Center-right candidate Tsetska Tsacheva, who had been expected to narrowly win the first round, had support from about 22 percent of voters.
Radev ran as an independent candidate but was considered the de facto candidate of the Bulgarian Socialist Party -- the successor of the Bulgarian Communist Party.
Radev has called for an end to European Union sanctions against Russia and for Bulgaria to revive its economic and political ties with Moscow, its former ally.
Bulgaria is now a member of the EU and NATO. Bulgaria's presidency is a largely ceremonial post but can influence policy decisions.
The second-round runoff vote between Radev and Tsacheva is to be on November 13.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/bulgaria-presidential-vote- pro-russia-rumen-radev/28101946.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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Montenegrin Opposition Calls Charges Of Plot To Kill Djukanovic 'Fabricated'
Charles Recknagel, RFE/RL's Balkan Service November 07, 2016
Montenegro's pro-Russian opposition parties have rejected charges by the country's chief prosecutor that Russian nationalists organized an alleged October coup attempt aimed at assassinating pro-Western leader Milo Djukanovic over his efforts to join NATO.
"It is obvious that the special prosecutor has become a servant of the [ruling] Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS)," Milutin Dukanovic, leader of the opposition Democratic Front, told RFE/RL's Balkan Service on November 7.
He called the charges that two unidentified Russian citizens organized an allegedly foiled coup attempt on the eve of the country's parliamentary elections on October 16 "part of the contrived and fabricated...coup d'etat affair."
The Democratic Front is one of the leading pro-Russian opposition parties in Montenegro, all of whom have refused to participate in the parliament since the October 16 national election. The vote gave Djukanovic's ruling DPS a large majority but not enough seats to govern on its own.
The pro-Russian parties say the government's announcement of the arrests of 20 alleged coup plotters the night before the October 16 election unfairly influenced voter behavior by suggesting that opposition parties sought to overthrow the government.
Chief prosecutor Milivoje Katnic said on November 6 that the aim of the alleged coup was to assassinate the prime minister during the election to help an opposition party take over the state. He did not name the party in question.
He also said two unidentified nationalists from Russia were the organizers and sought a professional sharpshooter to carry out the assassination. He added that there was no evidence of Russian government involvement.
Moscow has said it had no official role in the alleged coup attempt.
"We, obviously, categorically deny a possibility of official involvement into arranging any illegal actions," Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters on November 7.
The lack of details about the alleged plot have added to the murkiness of an affair that leaves many observers asking whether Montenegro narrowly averted a foreign-organized coup attempt or whether, instead, the government is conducting an investigation whose main purpose is to discredit the country's pro-Russian opposition.
"There is a certain plausibility to claiming that [Russian nationalists] are behind this," says James Ker-Lindsay, a Balkan expert at the London School of Economics. "We know that Russia has been trying to extend its soft-power influence in the Western Balkans...so all of this lends credence to the idea that this is another attempt by Russia to get involved."
But he says that the timing of the announcement of the allegedly foiled plot lends equal plausibility to opposition charges of a political ploy.
"The other argument, of course, is that the timing came right at the moment when Montenegro was going to elections," says Ker-Lindsay. "These were the first elections in decades where there was a real chance the ruling party might be defeated...and suddenly the day the elections come up there is a conspiracy, Russia is trying to overthrow the government."
Many experts say that to provide a convincing case for a foiled coup, the government will have to present additional evidence.
"It is very hard to really judge whether this is a serious investigation," says Bodo Weber, a Balkans expert at the Democratization Policy Council in Berlin. "There has been no hard evidence presented by the chief prosecutor, including with his statement about the involvement of two Russian citizens, of Serbian and Montenegrin citizens, and allegations of the involvement of individuals from within the opposition ranks without [naming] either those individuals or their party affiliations."
Since the October arrest of 20 Serbian and Montenegrin suspects, six have been released. Three are under investigation for terrorism and have been named. The other 11 still in detention are under investigation for establishing a criminal organization but have not been named.
Montenegrin politics have been in turmoil since pro-Russian parties began mounting a strong campaign last year to try to keep the country out of NATO. Pro-Russian protesters took to the streets of Podgorica to demand Djukanovic's resignation in the run-up to NATO's announcement in December that it would start accession talks with Podgorica.
Since falling short of a majority in the October legislative poll, Djukanovic has sought to build a ruling coalition with the small Social Democracy party and a handful of tiny parties representing Bosniak, Croat, and Albanian ethnic minorities. But that would still give it only a slender majority.
As the alleged investigation goes forward, some analysts say its main impact may be to encourage some of the more moderate pro-Russian opposition parties to distance themselves from the more radical ones and make a deal with Djukanovic.
"The [ruling] majority, even with the ethnic minority parties, will still have a very thin majority so [it] might want to break up the opposition bloc currently boycotting the parliament and try to win over at least one of those parties," says Weber.
The most radical pro-Russia opposition parties oppose NATO membership because many members are ethnic Serbs angry over NATO's bombing of Serbia in 1999. The bombardment forced the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at the time, Slobodan Milosevic, to stop operations by security forces that were driving hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, which was still part of rump Yugoslavia.
Less radical pro-Russia parties emphasize economic losses they say will come from redirecting Montenegro westward after decades of Russian trade and investment based on strong historical ties between Serbs and Russians.
NATO's deputy secretary-general, Rose Gottemoeller, who visited Montenegro on November 3, said she expects the country to become a member next spring after all 28 NATO member states ratify the agreement in their respective parliaments.
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/montenegro-russia- denies-role-plot-to-kill-pm/28101516.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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With an Eye on the East, New US Army Stryker Ready for Europe Deployment in 2018
Sputnik News
22:31 07.11.2016(updated 01:04 08.11.2016)
Three years ahead of its deployment to Europe, the US Army Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle arrived last month, complete with a new 30mm cannon. The upgraded weapons system comes in response to a request from Vilseck, Germany's, 2nd Cavalry Regiment for more firepower.
The "Dragoon" Stryker, named for the 2nd Cavalry, is scheduled to touch down in Germany in May 2018.
In October, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel B. Allyn said the tank was completed in "near-record time from concept to delivery," according to the Army News Service. He added, "This is an example of what is possible when government, military and industry leaders unite as one team."
The Army claims that the new system can use ammunition from several different sources as well as strike targets with more precision, up to 2,000 meters (a little over a mile) away, according to Stripes.com.
Earlier concerns by the US Army revealed a fear that Moscow was outpacing the capabilities of Washington's battle vehicles. Allyn said that the use of an older weapon, a mounted 12.7 mm machine gun the Stryker used previously, proved an "unacceptable risk" for American forces. A decision was made in 2015 to add the 30mm cannon, considered a "high-priority need" by the service.
The placement of the Dragoons among NATO's eastern border is part of the US European Command's move to increase a US military presence in the region. Several hundred of the regiment's troops are set to deploy to Poland in 2017, along with multinational units stationed in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The 2nd Cavalry is one of two permanent US Army installations in Europe.
Sputnik
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Slavic Brotherhood: Russian, Belarusian, Serbian Forces Seize Airport in Drills
Sputnik News
18:18 07.11.2016(updated 18:19 07.11.2016)
Russian, Belarusian and Serbian special units successfully carried out an exercise the objective of which was to retake control of a seized airport as part of the Slavic Brotherhood-2016 joint drills, head of the Russian contingent participating in the drills Maj. Gen. Oleg Polguev said.
BELGRADE (Sputnik) The first Slavic Brotherhood joint exercises took place in Russia in 2015 while in 2014, the Serbian Special Brigade special operations unit and Russian troops took part in the SREM-2014 drills. The drills are set to run through November 15 with an active phase expected to be completed on Wednesday.
"Today, the active phase of the exercises began. Russian, Belarusian and Serbian special units, under the command of the Serbian party, are fulfilling tasks on destroying illegal armed formations. The first stage of the active phase implied seizing an airport for ensuring redeployment of military units," Polguev said.
He noted that a Russian unit of 32 soldiers was air dropped from the Il-76MD jets near the airport of Kovin, covertly approached to positions of the maneuver terrorists and destroyed a guard unit with noiseless weapons.
"Following the Russian Airborne Troops, Serbian and Belarusian special troops air landed from MI-8/17 helicopters and seized the airport with fire support from the Russian colleagues," Polguev said.
After that, three BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicles, over 40 Russian paratroopers and about 20 of their Belarusian colleagues landed at the site and headed to a nearby range to block and destroy the imitated enemy's formations, according to Polguev.
Sputnik
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Nordic States Agree to Ease Military Access Within Its Territories
Sputnik News
17:49 07.11.2016
The Nordic countries will enable easy military access to each other's territories in peacetime within the framework of the Nordic Defense Cooperation organization (NORDEFCO), the Danish Defense Ministry said on Monday.
STOCKHOLM (Sputnik) The defense ministers of the NORDEFCO countries will sign an agreement on easy military access on each other's territories, including through airspace and maritime area, in Copenhagen on Wednesday, the defense ministry said in a statement, adding that the ministers are also expected to discuss security issues in the Baltic Sea region.
The five Nordic states Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden created NORDEFCO in 2009 in order to boost cooperation in defense area.
The main aim and purpose of NORDEFCO is to strengthen the participating nations national defense, explore common synergies and facilitate efficient common solutions, according to the organization's website.
Sputnik
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French DCNS Company Interested in Constructing Three Submarines in Poland
Sputnik News
15:37 07.11.2016(updated 15:40 07.11.2016)
Direction des Constructions Navales Services (DCNS), a French defense company, is interested in constructing three submarines, equipped with guided naval cruise missiles (NCMs) in Poland, local media reported Monday.
WARSAW (Sputnik) According to the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, the DCNS company remains a favorite in a struggle for a tender for the submarines' construction, which would cost 10 billion zlotys (over $2.5 billion), as it proposes to equip the submarines with anti-ship NCMs with a range of 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).
Two other competing companies are the German Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems corporation and Sweden's Saab.
"We are determined to order offensive weapons with real combat value, namely, guided missiles with a range of about 1,000 kilometers," Poland's Deputy Defense Minister Bartosz Kownacki was quoted as saying by Rzeczpospolita.
The DCNS representative in Poland said the company had been conducting talks with the Polish government on the construction of submarines for many years.
He also noted that the choice of DCNS submarines would guarantee creation of hundreds of jobs, as half of the work would be carried out by local contractors.
Sputnik
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Philippine President Duterte Orders to Cancel Arms Deal With US
Sputnik News
12:24 07.11.2016(updated 14:38 07.11.2016)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered to cancel an arms deal with the United States on Monday.
Duterte cancelled the deal on the purchase of police rifles from the US amid tensions with Washington over US' accusations of human rights violations in the Philippines.
"We will not insist on buying expensive arms from the United States. We can always get them somewhere else. I am ordering the police to cancel it. We don't need them," Duterte said in a televised speech as quoted by Reuters.
Duterte added that the Philippines will look for another supplier of rifles that would be cheaper and as "maybe as durable and as good as those made in the place we are ordering them."
Earlier this month, the US State Department halted the sale of 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines amid growing human rights concerns over Manila's crackdown on the country's illegal drug trade.
The incident is the latest in a series of events that have increased tensions between Washington and Manila.
Duterte reacted angrily to US' criticism of his hardline anti-drugs policy, telling US President Barack Obama to "go to hell" and threatening to break ties between the longstanding allies.
During a visit to China last month, Duterte announced that he wanted a "separation" from the US, calling for all US troops to leave the Philippines within the next two years.
The tensions also come as the Philippines improves its relations with China, leading to speculation that Manila may be set for a foreign policy shift away from Washington and toward Beijing.
Sputnik
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NATO Chief Promises Massive Defense Reinforcement Amid Tensions With Russia
Sputnik News
12:22 07.11.2016(updated 14:31 07.11.2016)
NATO is placing hundreds of thousands of troops on higher alert amid growing tensions with Russia, alliance's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) The NATO chief did not state any precise numbers, while UK Permanent Representative to NATO Adam Thomson told the newspaper that some 300,000 troops would be impacted by the measures, with the aim of shortening response times from half a year to two months.
"We have seen Russia being much more active in many different ways We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among NATO allies and that is exactly the reason why NATO is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defence since the end of the Cold War," Stoltenberg said in an interview with The Times, published on Monday.
The troops will reportedly act in support of current NATO fast response troops that have recently been boosted and have a response time of several days.
After July's NATO summit, Stoltenberg said that NATO resolved to strengthen its military presence in Eastern Europe on a rotational basis with four battalions in Poland and in the Baltic nations.
Since 2014, NATO has been building up its military presence in Europe, especially in Eastern European countries neighboring Russia, using Moscow's alleged interference in the Ukrainian conflict as a pretext. Moscow has repeatedly denied the claims and warned NATO that the military buildup on Russia's borders is provocative and threatens the existing strategic balance of power.
Sputnik
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Over-generalized approach could expose peace operations to greater risk, warns UN deputy chief
7 November 2016 Amid increased attacks from violent extremist and terrorist groups, the United Nations peace operations must be better prepared to face such asymmetric threats by ensuring the safety and security of UN personnel and adapting to varying situations on the ground, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told the Security Council today.
"It is a sad fact that our peacekeepers are now being specifically targeted by violent extremists and terrorists," Mr. Eliasson said during a day-long open debate, which explored better ways to take into account threats such as armed groups and/or terrorist operations, among other non-State actors, in the planning, concept definition and operational methods of UN peace missions.
Alongside the UN deputy chief, Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Jean-Paul Laborde, the Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, Michaelle Jean, the Secretary-General of the International Organization of La Francophonie and Authur Boutellis, the Director of the Brian Urquhart Center for Peace Operations, also briefed the Council.
According to a concept note released ahead of the debate, 34 peacekeepers were killed and 190 injured between January 2015 and November 2016.
Yesterday again, peacekeepers in Mali came under attack, with one of them killed and seven others wounded, he said.
Recalling that the High-Level Panel on Peace Operations emphasized that "UN troops should not undertake military counter-terrorism operations," Mr. Eliasson said that a conclusion would be that peacekeeping operations should not be mandated to militarily defeat violent extremist and terrorist groups.
"However, terrorism and violent extremism are a reality in many contemporary conflicts, a reality which has to be dealt with," he said.
These destructive and dangerous forces make conflicts even more intractable, he said, explaining that they thrive on impunity and governance failures and exploit deep-rooted grievances.
In response, UN action and the Organization's footprint on the ground have to be more nimble and comprehensive, and need more flexible support arrangements, including more sophisticated and predictable uniformed capabilities to strengthen mobility, responsiveness, and a deeper understanding of the operating environment as well as the development of intelligence and analysis capacities.
The UN will also need to adjust how it conducts its core tasks, including 'good offices,' capacity-building, community engagement and stabilization measures, he said. Further, the political objectives of UN peacekeeping operations need to be clearly defined and communicated.
The UN must find new and creative ways of achieving political goals in situations where some parties are not speaking partners or willing participants, and must devise strategies to build coalitions of support around political objectives at local, national and regional levels, he added.
The Deputy Secretary-General highlighted three priorities for preparing UN peace operations to face asymmetric threats.
First is to ensure the safety and security of its personnel by introducing greater situational awareness, analysis and force protection measures while utilizing new technologies and deploying uniformed units with built-in robust self-protection tools, he said.
Second, he stated, an over-generalized approach can be counter-productive, possibly exposing the UN to more risk. Supporting peaceful resolution to conflict should be grounded in a clear and nuanced understanding of who the different parties are, how they are resourced, and who their allies are. This varies from case to case.
There is also a need to think beyond a security-focused approach, and consider the entirety of the tools at the UN's disposal, including sanctions regimes, normative instruments, capacity-building, stabilization and development aid.
Third, "we must fully take into account how and when the United Nations can support national and regional efforts to prevent violent extremism and terrorism," he said.
The Secretary-General's Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism cites the need to integrate prevention of violent extremism in peace operations, both in terms of mandates, and of relevant activities of UN country teams.
When requested, the United Nations is ready to support the efforts of Member States in implementing the recommendations set out in the Plan. The UN is providing technical assistance in areas such as criminal justice, border controls, kidnapping for ransom, dealing with foreign terrorist fighters, and the financing of terrorism. The UN is also supporting youth engagement and skills development.
Mr. Eliasson also underscored the importance of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as global challenges are interdependent, while stressing the full potential of the identical resolutions in the General Assembly and the Security Council on peacebuilding and sustaining peace.
These texts focus on a conceptual shift from peacebuilding to sustaining peace as transformative and forward-looking as it means that peacebuilding is no longer confined to post-conflict situations but applies to all phases before, during and after the conflict.
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Prospect of solution 'within reach,' Ban says, as Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders open talks
7 November 2016 United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his "full support" to the talks between the Greek Cypriot leader and the Turkish Cypriot leader, concentrated on the chapter of territory, as well as other outstanding issues interdependently, kicked off today in Switzerland.
"The two leaders have reached a critical juncture in their talks. I encourage them to make the most of the moment and the momentum," Mr. Ban told the press in Mont Pelerin, where the negotiations are being held.
"I call on all interested parties especially the guarantor powers Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom as well as the wider international community, to support the leaders in their efforts to finally overcome the division of their island," he added.
Hailing the significant progress made in the leader-led process over the past 18 months, Mr. Ban highlighted the hope expressed by the two leaders that this meeting will pave the way for the last phase of the talks in line with their shared commitment to do their utmost in order to reach a settlement within 2016.
"At the same time, a number of sensitive and difficult issues still remain. I know the two leaders are here with a strong commitment and determination to work towards solving all these issues," noted the Secretary-General.
Mr. Ban further said that Cyprus offered "tremendous" hope to people around the world that long-standing conflicts can be resolved peacefully through negotiations, and assured the two leaders Turkish Cypriot leader, Mustafa Akinci, and Greek Cypriot leader, Nicos Anastasiades of UN's commitment to assist them "in whatever way" to reach their shared goal, while respecting that the future of Cyprus will be determined by Cypriots, for all Cypriots.
"I commend the leaders for their vision, courage and leadership for advancing their talks further than ever before. The prospect of a solution in Cyprus is within their reach," said the UN chief, adding: "Expectations in both communities are high."
The talks, hosted by the Swiss Government, are being conducted under the auspices of the UN Special Adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide.
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Status Quo in South China Sea Could be Best Option for Now
By Ha Nguyen November 07, 2016
While a resolution to the South China Sea disputes is unlikely in the near future, improving ties between Beijing and Manila could bode well for maritime peace in the region.
When Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte visited China in October, some worried he was pivoting away from the United States. But Tran Truong Thuy, executive director of the Foundation for East Sea Studies in Hanoi, thinks this is good news for the South China Sea.
At The Economist magazine's recent Vietnam Summit in Ho Chi Minh City, he said that if China is getting friendlier with the Philippines, then it is unlikely to threaten that progress, for example, by reclaiming islands near the Philippines.
"For China now to conduct reclamation, it would turn back normalization in relations between China and the Philippines," said Thuy, whose institute takes the Vietnamese name of the South China Sea. "And I think in the near future, in the short, near future, I don't think China will conduct this kind of activity."
The rapprochement between Manila and Beijing is all the more unexpected because the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in July that China's island-building encroaches on Philippine waters. Manila used to be the most vociferous opponent of Chinese territorial claims in the region, but that all changed when a new president took over this summer.
"The Duterte administration has chosen to downplay the ruling. They acknowledge that it exists, but they haven't pushed it in China," said Ian Storey, a panelist at the summit and senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies' Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
Storey said Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan probably perused the court case, which was filed by the Philippines, in case their South China Sea disagreements ever end in blows. But he saw that as a last resort, as the smaller claimants are unlikely to poke China.
"Because the Philippines has decided not to push it, I don't think any other Southeast Asian country is going to step in and do that," Storey said.
For its part China, doesn't seem to be pushing for conflict lately according to Bill Hayton, author of the book South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia. He argued that although Beijing balked at the Hague's determination, its actions since the summer have been consistent with the ruling.
"It is actually complying. It's just allowed Vietnamese or, Philippine fishermen to go back to Scarborough Shoal," he said.
Hayton added that Beijing's non-aggression is further evidenced by interactions with Hanoi. Armed clashes seemed a possibility two years ago, when China explored for oil in a part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam.
"Ever since the 2014 oil rig incident, in which it lost so badly -- Vietnam played a very good game back in 2014 -- China has not drilled for oil in the wrong places," Hayton said.
There appeared to be a consensus on the panel that overlapping claims to the South China Sea are here to stay, along with what could become a permanent Band-Aid: accepting the status quo to keep the waters calm.
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Israel Opposes French-Sponsored Peace Conference With Palestinians
By VOA News November 07, 2016
Israel has reiterated its firm opposition to a French-sponsored international conference before the end of the year to revive long-stalled peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken out against "international diktats" and repeatedly called for direct negotiations with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu's emissaries made clear to French Envoy Pierre Vimont, who is in the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials, that Israel will not participate in any international conference convened contrary to that position.
According to a statement from Netanyahu's office, the Israeli officials called for "direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority" and said "any other initiative only pushes the region further away from this process."
The statement added that "promoting such a conference will make the possibility of advancing the peace process much less likely" since it will allow Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority "to continue avoiding the decision to enter into direct negotiations without preconditions."
Netanyahu has repeatedly called on Abbas to meet for talks, but Abbas has refused unless Israel ends settlement construction and conducts a prisoner release that Netanyahu canceled.
The Palestinians strongly support France's international approach, saying years of negotiations with the Israelis have not ended the occupation.
The United States mediated peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed in 2014.
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China tells foreign countries not to intervene in Hong Kong affairs
People's Daily Online
(Xinhua) 19:54, November 07, 2016
China said on Monday foreign countries should not intervene in Hong Kong affairs as foreign media voiced concerns following Chinese top legislature's interpretation of the Basic Law of Hong Kong.
The move came in the wake of a handful of legislators-elect publicly advocating "Hong Kong independence" and insulting the Chinese nation at the swearing-in ceremony for the sixth Legislative Council of Hong Kong last month.
"We hope the international community can recognize the true colors of the pro-independence forces, and fully understand the necessity and legitimacy of the interpretation by the top legislature," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a regular news briefing.
"Hong Kong is a special administrative region under the Chinese central government, and its affairs fall within China's domestic domain and should be free from foreign intervention," Lu said.
The pro-independence forces' attempt to separate Hong Kong from China is against the law and the people's will, and damages China's sovereignty and security and the interests of Hong Kong and foreign countries, the spokesperson said.
Lu called on the international community to support the Chinese central government and Hong Kong government to safeguard national sovereignty, security and unity, and preserve the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.
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Chinese parliament ratifies law on internet security
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 4:25PM
Chinese authorities have ratified a law allowing state agencies to impose more restrictions on internet users.
China's parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), passed the cyber security bill on Monday, saying the law was an "objective need" of China as a major internet power.
The NPC's Standing Committee has also approved the new law which is expected to take effect in June 2017.
The NPC and its Standing Committee jointly exercise the power to enact laws in China.
Officials said the law enables the government to protect China's networks and private user information. Under the law, internet users are prohibited from publishing anything that damages "national honor", "disturbs economic or social order" or is aimed at "overthrowing the socialist system."
A provision of the law says companies providing online service must verify the identity of their users, which effectively makes it illegal to go online anonymously. The companies are also required to provide "technical support and help" to public security organs investigating "crimes."
Rights groups and foreign business organizations have criticized the new law, saying it heavily restricts free speech and free flow of information. They also say the wording and language of the law remain vague, enabling overreaching security entities to take actions against lots of users for publishing simple comments and posts.
Britain-based Amnesty International criticized the law, saying the measure is a violation of rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang has said the legislation is not different from similar laws adopted in other countries, saying it was even "more transparent" than many others.
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Hong Kong leader says will implement China ruling on rebel MPs
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 7:14AM
Hong Kong's leader says he would "fully implement" a ruling by the Chinese parliament, which effectively bars two newly-elected pro-independence lawmakers from the city's local legislature after they deliberately misread their oaths of office.
During a swearing-in ceremony last month, the young lawmakers Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus "Baggio" Leung challenged China's claim of sovereignty over the territory by pledging allegiance to what they described as the "Hong Kong nation."
In a ruling on Monday, the National People's Congress in Beijing adopted an interpretation of an article in Hong Kong's mini-constitution on oath-taking, saying that the pair's oaths are "invalid," and that they must swear allegiance to Hong Kong as a Chinese city.
Following the ruling, Hong Kong's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said he and the city government would implement the interpretation in full.
"Any words or deeds that deliberately contravene (the interpretation's) requirements, defy the prescribed oath-taking procedures, or even use the opportunity to insult the country and the Chinese people and advocate cessation, must be stopped in accordance with the law," Leung said.
In its pronouncement earlier Monday, the Chinese legislature said that those wishing to hold public office must "sincerely and solemnly" declare allegiance to China.
It said talk of independence for Hong Kong is intended to "divide the country" and severely harms the country's unity, territorial sovereignty and national security.
The ruling came a day after hundreds of separatist demonstrators clashed with police near China's representative office in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong.
Police used pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators as they attempted to approach the building.
Protesters chanted slogan against China, saying they will continue the fight for the independence of Hong Kong from Beijing.
China's move to bar the two lawmakers is likely to spark further turmoil in the southern Chinese city.
The two lawmakers are members of the so-called Umbrella Movement that emerged after the 2014 Occupy protests failed to secure greater autonomy from the Chinese government.
The protests erupted after the Chinese government introduced an election law, under which the people of Hong Kong will have to elect their next leader from a list of Beijing-vetted candidates in 2017.
Hong Kong, a former British colony and a major global financial hub in Eastern Asia, was handed over to China in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula. Under the Basic Law, the territory has since enjoyed wide-ranging autonomy, including judicial freedom.
Pro-independence activists are highly opposed to China's interpretation of Hong Kong's constitution, something that Beijing has done four times over the past years. They have warned that a fifth interpretation would deal a "lethal blow" to the city.
The interpretation says that those who advocate for independence for Hong Kong are not only disqualified from election and from assuming posts as lawmakers but should also be investigated for their legal obligations.
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China Orders Barring of Hong Kong Lawmakers Over Oath Controversy
By William Ide November 07, 2016
China has declared that democratically elected pro-independence lawmakers in Hong Kong should not be allowed to take up their seats in the legislature, weighing in on a dispute over the way their oaths were taken during a swearing-in ceremony last month.
Two pro-independence politicians, Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung, draped themselves in banners that declared "Hong Kong is not China" and pledged allegiance to the "Hong Kong" nation.
It was not immediately clear how many lawmakers would be affected by the order, but Beijing's conclusion that some are unfit for office because of the way they took their oaths has already triggered an uproar.
It is also likely to deepen divisions even further between residents of Hong Kong and Beijing, with some warning that the ruling has rocked the very foundations of the "one country, two systems" model that was set up for the port city when Britain returned the former colony to communist-ruled China in 1997.
One Country, One System
The model was set up to guarantee that Hong Kong would continue to maintain its freedoms, but increasingly China has been criticized for its heavy handed approach there and for eroding the rule of law.
A court in Hong Kong is reviewing the oath taking controversy, but China's rubber-stamp National People's Congress (NPC) issued an interpretation Monday of the basic law. The basic law is Hong Kong's mini-constitution.
At a press conference in Beijing, Li Fei, chairman of the NPC's Basic Law Committee, said the courts in Hong Kong have no choice but to carry out Beijing's interpretation of the basic law. When asked about the threat the ruling might pose to Hong Kong's judicial independence, he argued that it was the NPC, through the basic law, that has granted the city its judicial independence.
Li said that while the NPC's standing committee has always supported the independence of Hong Kong's judiciary, "there can be no judicial independence that goes against or is above the basic law."
Lock-step response
In near lock-step response, Hong Kong officials said they would fully implement the interpretation given by the NPC, which also urged authorities to fill legal loopholes, a reference to Beijing's apparent frustration with the fact that those advocating independence were even allowed to be elected to office.
Local residents, even those who disagreed with the way the lawmakers took their oaths, were quick to voice their opposition to the ruling and what they felt was Beijing's interference in Hong Kong affairs. Hundreds rallied outside China's liaison office in Hong Kong Sunday night and early into the morning on Monday, with clashes turning violent. In response, authorities deployed 2,000 police around the clock to handle "possible chaos," according to the South China Morning Post.
"We can't keep silence and do nothing because they are trying to suppress our basic rights," Joshua Wong of Demosisto, the party that organized Sunday night's protest, told VOA. "Yesterday was Tibet, today is Hong Kong, and tomorrow will be Taiwan."
As the main leader of Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella movement, Wong says his party still considering whether to mount sustained protests like ones that paralyzed the city two years ago.
"Interpretation of the basic law by NPC Standing Committee is just trying to manipulate the constitution in Hong Kong," he said, echoing pro-democracy lawmakers who call the damage done by the ruling "unprecedented."
"This interpretation of the Basic Law will not just mean the two legislators, Yau and Leung lose their positions, but it will also keep people wondering whether other legislators who have taken similar oaths, will be able to keep their seats," said Civic Party Leader Alvin Yeung.
Former Hong Kong lawmaker Emily Lau said Beijing's approach and decision to barge in and issue an interpretation before the legal system could have its say is counterproductive.
"[The decision] will aggravate many people, especially young people," she said. "You may eject two or three members from the legislative council, but you just encourage more people to support independence."
Politically Risky
Independence has long been a taboo topic in Hong Kong, but China has been stoking growing resentment in the former colony through its interpretations and efforts to tighten the screws on free expression there.
Some are concerned that the interpretations, Beijing's fifth since the handover, but second since President Xi Jinping stepped into office, could become more commonplace.
Such steps by China will allow it to exert more control over Hong Kong, but its heavy handed approach is not without its risks, said Dixon Sing, a social science associate professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"Beijing is also taking a political risk by alerting the Hong Kong people more to the authoritarian and oppressive nature of the regime," Sing said. But "whether the political opposition forces in Hong Kong can translate that more widespread public awareness into a stronger, united, sustained democracy movement that will be a big project."
Yeshi Dorje of VOA's Tibetan Service contributed reporting.
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India's Acquisition Body Clears Deal on Purchase of Russian T-90 Tanks - Source
Sputnik News
19:54 07.11.2016
India's Defense Acquisition Council (DAC) gave the go-ahead to the deal on 464 Russian T-90 tanks under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative, a source in the Indian Defense Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) The 'Make in India' program of the Indian government aims to attract multinational and national companies' investments in the country's manufacturing.
"The Defense Acquisition Council has also approved a 464 Russian T-90 tanks deal under the Make in India initiative," the source said.
With the DAC approval, the Defense Ministry can proceed to the negotiations with the suppliers.
According to local media, if the deal is successfully finalized, the Indian Army will receive the advanced models of the T-90 combat tank, which will bring the number of T-90 tanks in its possession to 1,300.
In 2001, New Delhi reportedly bought 310 T-90 tanks from Russia, some of which were assembled in India from prepared kits. Each T-90 deal after that has served to move the production to India. At this point, India can do a large percentage of the assemblies domestically but still needs to have some details imported.
Sputnik
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India to Contract for More Russian Tanks, Plans Domestic Assembling
Sputnik News
17:45 07.11.2016(updated 17:47 07.11.2016)
If Russia approves India's 'Acceptance of Necessity' for 464 T-90 tanks, this will be the second major defense deal with Russia under PM Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative. The first `Make in India' deal in the defence sector is to produce Kamov helicopters. Thus, Russia scores two out of two in Make in India category for defence sector.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) In a major push to provide more teeth to its armed forces, India has decided to procure 464 T-90 tanks from Russia at cost of approximately $2.1 billion. Sources said the Defense Acquisition Council (DAC) headed by India's Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar has cleared the proposal for latest version of T-90 tanks.
The approved version of T-90 tanks will be equipped with thermal imaging night vision cameras and some additional countermeasures to significantly reduce the chances of being hit by enemy anti-tank semi-automatic guided weapons.
"It is an undeniable fact that some of the T-72 tanks issued to the units about 25 years back are to be replaced by newer tanks. The T-90 tank has many features which the T-72 did not possess. The option to go for an entirely new design would take more time. Besides, some machines for manufacture of the T-90 tank and the workforce are already available. All these factors recommend manufacture of T-90 tank domestically. In any case it is a good tank," said Brigadier Rumel Dahiya, a defense expert.
Sources added that the tanks will be manufactured by the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board. The T-90 is already being assembled at Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF), Avadi, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
"Where to employ the new tanks is an operational decision. Suffice is to say that the tank is fit to be deployed anywhere," says Brig. Dahiya on the issue of importance of deployment along western border.
Currently, India has about 13 regiments of T-90 that could go up to 21 regiments by 2020. One regiment consists of 62 tanks. India began ordering T-90 tanks from Russia from 2006 onwards and some of them were assembled at an Ordnance Factory Board unit. Renamed 'Bhishma', a legendary warrior, the Indian T-90s are fitted with the Shtora self-protection system as well as Catherine thermal images from Thales of France and Peleng of Belarus.
Sputnik
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Iran Navy fleet heading for Atlantic Ocean for first time
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 4:30PM
Iran's Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says an Iranian naval fleet is planning to head for the Atlantic Ocean for the first time after a port call in South Africa.
The 44th flotilla of the Iranian Navy, consisting of the Alvand destroyer and the Bushehr logistic vessel, embarked on a voyage for the high seas on October 5 to safeguard maritime routes used by the country's vessels and oil tankers against pirates.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Sayyari said the flotilla first crossed the Gulf of Aden and then docked at Tanzanian port city of Dar es Salaam on October 29 and remained there for three days.
The Iranian Navy commander added that the fleet is currently close to Mozambique's maritime border and plans to head for South Africa's territorial waters to call at a South African port if conditions of the sea allow it.
"The dispatched fleet of the Iranian Navy will continue to sail toward the Atlantic Ocean after South Africa if the conditions are suitable," the commander said.
He emphasized that the presence of the 44th flotilla on the high seas displays the might and strength of the Iranian Navy.
"When a fleet establishes its presence in an ocean and the high seas, it shows the capabilities of the Iranian Army's naval forces, which can hoist Iran's flag on the high seas," Sayyari said.
This can strengthen Iran's ties with regional countries, prevent Iranophobia and convey Iran's message of peace and friendship to other countries, he added.
The commander said Iranian naval fleets conduct a very important mission on the high seas and the Gulf of Aden by maintaining maritime security.
The 44th Navy flotilla also has a mission to ensure security for Iranian ships in the Indian Ocean, Sayyari added.
The flotilla successfully saved two Iranian ships from three pirate attacks on October 17 in the Gulf of Aden.
Gulf of Aden pirates, who mainly come from Somali coasts, attacked an Iranian merchant ship in a bid to highjack it but they were forced to flee after a heavy exchange of fire by the Iranian fleet.
The pirates also conducted two attacks on another Iranian merchant ship. They initially attacked the vessel with eight speedboats 46 miles south of the Yemeni city of Aden and later with 13 well-equipped boats 55 miles south of the port city.
However, the two attacks were repelled by the Iranian naval forces and the pirates were forced to retreat when they came under heavy fire.
In recent years, Iran's Navy has increased its presence in international waters to protect naval routes and provide security for merchant vessels and tankers.
In line with international efforts against piracy, the Iranian Navy has been conducting patrols in the Gulf of Aden since November 2008, safeguarding merchant containers and oil tankers owned or leased by Iran or other countries.
Iran's Navy has managed to foil several attacks on both Iranian and foreign tankers during its missions in international waters.
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Next US administration bound by JCPOA: Iran
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 11:25AM
Iran has warned that upcoming changes in the United States administration must not affect Washington's commitment to a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
"Washington has certain commitments. We believe whatever government comes to power will have to even if it does not want to live up to the commitments made by the previous government," said Bahram Qassemi, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, during his weekly press conference on Monday.
Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, namely the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany, signed the nuclear deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in July 2015. The agreement went into effect on January 16, resolving a long-running dispute over the Iranian nuclear program.
Ever since the deal was struck, its opponents in the US Congress have been threatening that a future US administration opposed to the agreement would scrap it.
The US will be holding a presidential election on Tuesday, and the administration of US President Barack Obama, who negotiated the deal with Iran, will be ending its tenure.
Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has threatened he would discard the JCPOA or try to renegotiate its terms if he is elected president.
Such threats came even as the deal has been endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, which effectively turned it into international law.
The implementation of the accord currently faces certain problems as some European banks balk at the resumption of transactions with Iran lest they prompt US penalties, which were routine occurrences before the deal was struck.
In his Monday remarks, Qassemi said Washington had to help fully remove such obstacles.
"Ultimately, we will consider the US administration liable for not rigorously living up to the commitments. And we ask them to, instead of talking, act more capably and honestly so European enterprises and banks can have economic and technical cooperation with Iran without concern," Qassemi asserted.
EU ties
Concerning Iran's relations with the European Union (EU), Qassemi said the Islamic Republic and Europe's relations go back several decades, even to before the EU's formation.
He also reminded that an Iranian delegation was to hold talks with EU officials in Brussels on Wednesday, calling the negotiations a "positive move."
Earlier in the month, the European Parliament voted on a roadmap for relations with Iran, charting out the "EU strategy towards Iran after the nuclear agreement."
Referring to the document, Qassemi said, though non-binding, "the European Parliament's resolution was... a unique and unprecedented one, given the background of the European Union."
"On the whole, it was a combination of positive and negative points. It was somehow comprehensive. It had been approved by an overwhelming majority of the European Parliament Members," the Iranian official said.
Iran and Europe's relations could use a new framework as their base, given the Islamic Republic's points of strength, including its constructive anti-terrorism role in the region and its role in maintaining regional stability, he concluded.
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Iraqi Peshmerga forces enter town of Bashiqa near Mosul
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 9:23AM
Iraqi Kurdish fighters have entered the center of the Daesh-held town of Bashiqa, which is located east of the city of Mosul, from four axes.
Ghiath el-Srouji, a security official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said the Peshmerga fighters entered the center of Bashiqa on Monday morning.
He told Iraq's al-Sumaria news website that the Peshmerga forces are currently engaged in clashes with the Daesh terrorists in the town, saying a number of terrorists have been killed so far.
Srouji said Bashiqa will be liberated from the Takfiri terrorists in the coming hours.
Earlier on Monday, a source with the Peshmerga said the fighters had launched an operation to retake the town, which had been surrounded by the Kurdish forces for days.
Kurdish forces had launched heavy artillery and mortar attacks against the terrorists in the town on Sunday, before starting to advance into the town. More artillery and aerial strikes hit the town early Monday.
The operation comes as part of a larger-scale offensive to retake Mosul, which Daesh has declared as its so-called headquarters in Iraq.
On October 17, Iraqi army soldiers, backed by volunteer fighters and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, launched an operation to retake Mosul, a strategic city in northern Iraq, from Daesh terrorists.
The Iraqi troops managed to enter Mosul's limits last week for the first time since June 2014, when the city fell to Daesh amid its terrorist campaign in northern and western Iraq.
So far, a large number of the villages and districts surrounding the city have been purged of the terrorists.
Earlier, on Sunday, the Iraqi forces completely retook control of the town of Hammam al-Alil, to the south of Mosul.
Also on Sunday, Najim Abdullah al-Jubouri, the commander of Nineveh operations, said a senior Daesh commander had been killed in the operation to liberate Hammam al-Alil.
According to Jubouri, at least 2,000 Daesh terrorists, including senior commanders, have been killed since the beginning of the operation to retake Mosul.
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Peshmerga Fighters Seize Key Town From IS To Northeast Of Mosul
November 07, 2016
Iraqi Kurdish forces have recaptured a town to the northeast of Mosul that had been held by Islamic State (IS) militants for two years.
Around 2,000 Peshmerga fighters entered the town of Bashiqa shortly after dawn on November 7.
Bashiqa, which is about 13 kilometers northeast of Mosul, has been on the front line between Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and IS militants since 2014.
The battle to recapture the city has been a key strategic goal of Peshmerga fighters taking part part in a wider campaign to liberate the IS-held city of Mosul.
Lieutenant Colonel Safeen Rasoul told Reuters there were about 100 militants still left in Bashiqa early on November 7.
IS fighters were confronting the Peshmerga's advance into Bashiqa with suicide car bomb attacks.
Iraqi government troops, meanwhile, were continuing an urban battle against IS fighters in eastern Mosul and were advancing on the north and south sides of the city on November 7, while Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia battled against IS fighters to the west of Mosul.
Meanwhile, Iraq's military says troops found have about 100 decapitated bodies in a mass grave to the south of city.
Iraqi Brigadier General Yahya Rasool said the bodies were discovered on November 7 near an agricultural college in the town of Hamam al-Alil.
He said most of the bodies were reduced to skeletons and that decomposition of their clothes and bodies made it difficult to determine if they were soldiers or civilians.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/iraq-kurds-mosul- advance-on-bashiqa/28100939.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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'We Don't Need US Air Support' in Mosul - Iraqi Militia Commander
Sputnik News
17:36 07.11.2016
Iraq's state-sponsored People's Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as al-Hashd al-Sha'abi, do not need the United States to conduct airstrikes on Daesh targets during the operation aimed at freeing Mosul, Ahmet Arslan, a Turkmen commander with the PMF, told Sputnik.
"We do not want the United States meddling in Iraq. We told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as much. Al-Hashd al-Sha'abi does not need America's aerial support in the operation to free Mosul from Daesh, which the US created," he said.
The Mosul campaign, dubbed Operation "We Are Coming, Nineveh," was launched on October 16 to liberate the second largest city in the country and the capital of the Nineveh province. The city, home to approximately 1.5 million people, has served as Daesh's key stronghold in Iraq since the militants seized it in a blitz offensive on June 10, 2014.
Ahmet Arslan mentioned that the People's Mobilization Forces, also known as the Popular Mobilization Units, have carried out successful missions to the south of Mosul. Many villages and settlements close to the city have been freed, he said. The commander did not provide the exact figure.
Daesh fighters "have been losing their forces each day," he said.
"Truth be told, Daesh's power has been greatly exaggerated by the media in the US," the commander suggested. "Meanwhile, weapons which Daesh fighters use and even water that they drink have come from the US. This is why we believe that Washington's stance with regard to Daesh has been hypocritical."
The Mosul operation has seen Iraqi security forces, the US-led coalition, Peshmerga fighters and the PMF advance towards the city. Last Friday, Baghdad-led forces entered Mosul. As fighting has largely tuned into urban combat, the death toll has drastically increased. The exact figures remain unknown since the Iraqi military has not provided official information on the issue.
Sputnik
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Iraqi Kurds Foreign Relations Chief Requests Russian Military, Humanitarian Aid
Sputnik News
15:18 07.11.2016(updated 15:21 07.11.2016)
Iraqi Kurdistan's Foreign Relations chief Falah Mustafa Bakir said on Monday that he had asked Moscow to provide military assistance in fight against terrorists as well as humanitarian aid to refugees during a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Bogdanov and Bakir met in Moscow on November 1 to discuss the fight against terrorism and the operation to liberate the city of Mosul.
"Yes, we asked for this kind of support since the issue of combating terrorism is crucial," Bakir told the Izvestia newspaper answering if he had requested the Russian military assistance.
"We asked for humanitarian aid for refugees, who came to Iraqi Kurdistan from other parts of the country, and also from Syria," Bakir added.
According to Bakir, the Russian side said it would examine the request and would try to help.
On October 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced the start of a military operation to retake Mosul from IS, a jihadist group outlawed in Russia. According to local media, about 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and 4,000 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are taking part in the operation, backed by airstrikes carried out by the US-led international coalition.
Sputnik
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Background Briefing on Humanitarian Response and Preparation for Post-Operational Mosul
Special Briefing
Senior Administration Officials
Via Teleconference
November 7, 2016
MODERATOR: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's call on preparation for managing the humanitarian aspects of post-operation Mosul. As a reminder, today's briefing and discussion is on background, and it will be attributable to senior Administration officials.
Today we have joining us [Senior Administration Official One]. From here forward, [Senior Administration Official One] will be known as Senior Administration Official One. We also have [Senior Administration Official Two]. From here forward, [Senior Administration Official Two] will be known as Senior Administration Official Two. Also joining us is [Senior Administration Official Three]. From here forward, [Senior Administration Official Three] will be known as Senior Administration Official Three.
I will go ahead and open up our call with brief remarks from Senior Officials One and Two, and then turn it over to answer a few questions from you all. With that, please do go ahead, Senior Administration Official One.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Thank you. Thank you all for joining. The Mosul post-liberation operation is prepared and well-coordinated, but it is war, and so it's unpredictable and uncertain. Let me give you a snapshot of where we are right now. So far we have just over 33,000 people that have been displaced by the Mosul operation. That is lower than initially expected, so we're happy about that. But it's important to keep in mind that the Iraqi and Kurdish forces have not yet reached the most populous areas of Mosul city. And with all these variables in play, we're still planning for a worst-case scenario of up to 700,000 people displaced, which accords with the UN's plan. And it's also important to know that displacement alone does not equal need, because there's been a lot of messaging that people should shelter in place for as long as they feel safe, particularly during the military operation. And so these variables toggle back and forth as we're trying to minimize the risk, the humanitarian risk that the most vulnerable will face.
Let me put this in some broader context for just a second. So ISIL, as you all know, has been absolutely murderous and horrific. And there's been about 3.2 million people displaced from their homes since 2014, and 10 million people in need of assistance. That equates to somewhere around one-third of the Iraqi total population. And the United States has been there supporting the Iraqi people with more than $1.1 billion in humanitarian aid since 2014. Over the summer, we helped the international community secure pledges for $2 billion as it relates to the Mosul operation.
So what have we been doing? We've been actively working with our partners on the ground that's the UN and the international NGOs to stand ready to provide emergency shelter, food, water, sanitation, and hygiene services as well as health support. We're trying to stay ahead of the crisis, which we've been able to do. This is unique in the sense that a lot of times our bureau faces crises that are unpredicted and unprepared, and so those are fast onset crises. But in this instance, we've known for weeks and months that this is coming, and so we've been able to pre-position stocks and supplies and food in advance.
Right now we have food relief for about 1.25 million people so one and a quarter million people that's been pre-positioned. And that's those are MREs and then kind of broader ready-to-eat meals, meals ready to eat, MREs. And then more broadly, we have food for 2.3 million people ready.
So lots of issues still shelter, water sanitation, health, protection but we've been positioning in advance of this.
So I think with that, I'll just turn it over to my colleagues.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Okay, thanks very much. This is Senior Official Two. I'd like to follow on to what my colleague just said, by underlining that because we had the advantage of forewarning in this case, this situation may be one of the best prepared responses to a humanitarian emergency that is expected that we have seen, certainly in a long time. The elements of the preparation, which my colleague has already gone through, I think, very importantly, include very significant mobilization of resources in advance, both financial and material, to be pre-positioned in place, as [Senior Administration Official One] has already laid out.
One of the most important elements of the story, I think, is the fact that there has been coordination in the humanitarian response, led by Iraqis, coordinated by the United Nations, and supported by the United States and other international actors. Also I think in a fairly unprecedented step, we've seen levels of coordination between the government of our of Iraq, and the Kurdish Regional Government, which have been very impressive and extremely helpful in all of our preparations.
So I will stop there but be prepared to answer questions on any of the specifics you folks are interested in.
MODERATOR: Okay. We'll go ahead and turn it over and take questions now.
OPERATOR: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, you may press * then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone indicating that you have been placed in the question queue. If you are using a speakerphone, we do suggest picking up your handset before pressing the numbers. And once again, you may press * and then 1 at this time. Give me one moment, please, for our first question.
Our first question today comes from the line of Lesley Wroughton with Reuters. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yes, good afternoon, could or good morning. Could you please give us a rundown on the financial commitment what has been committed, what you've received? Because you were talking about moving these financial commitments quite early. And then where do you see the most immediate impact well, let's put it this way: Have you already started putting deploying some of that humanitarian response as areas have been freed up? And then what do you see as the most immediate area where you'd pump that money into?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Okay. Let me just walk through these. So we've put in $1.1 billion since 2014. That included commitments this summer. We've been prepositioning food, shelter, and relief supplies. Right now, even and for weeks before this, we've been running 50 trucks a day in to get those food and other supplies positioned.
So I think as my colleague Number Two stated, we are prepared and we are in advance and we're positioned to respond and we're prepared for the worst-case scenario. I will only just caution that we are in the early days of this operation, though.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: This is Number Two speaking. I'd just like to add to add a little further clarification. We had the unusual situation of having a flash appeal issued by the United Nations in preparation for Mosul. That was a request for $284 million in funding. Now things don't match up one for one as we look at funding appeals and what funding has actually been mobilized, but I would say that in addition to the overall number of $1.1 billion in humanitarian assistance pledged and offered by the United States since 2014, this year alone, in Fiscal Year '16, the United States pledged 513 million contributed $513 million to this effort.
Your question asked about what needs to be prioritized in the mobilization of this assistance and what else has already come through. One of the things I would say is that actually, in terms of resources, we're not in a bad position right now in terms of getting resources that permitted us to pre-position the materials that are actually needed. But undoubtedly, while all of this coordination goes on and the unexpected evolution of this situation develops, we're going to be reassessing the needs and probably determining what other kinds of resources we have to mobilize.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Karen DeYoung with The Washington Post.
QUESTION: Hello, thank you. Can you hear me? Hello?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Yes, we can hear you.
QUESTION: Oh, okay. I had two questions. One is: There have been some reports that while food and medical supplies are pre-positioned, that the number of housing units, however they're configured, is far less than 100,000 at this point. And I wondered if you feel like you have enough places for people to be in addition to feeding them.
And secondly, I wanted to ask about vetting. Who is doing the vetting? How quickly is it being done? We've already had stories again about families kept out of facilities by Kurdish forces who are insisting on doing vetting. Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Okay. So let's see, the first question was on shelter. So in these kind of emergency complex situations, many people don't go to camps. Many people go to friends or families or they're able to get shelter independently and on their own. What we're seeing right now is about 50 percent of the people are able to get their own shelter and 50 percent need to be provided shelter. So we are we understand that this is a dilemma. We're working with our humanitarian partners to get these shelters in place.
This emergency shelter also includes additional spaces or kind of expanding and existing camps or existing kind of communities. We also are looking at and working with our partners to support the construction and management of new existing camps. So we think and again, early days we think that there will be more than enough shelter in place to meet the needs for a million people by mid-November, but that includes those that won't require actual tents, so to speak.
Your second question was about vetting. We and I actually was recently in Erbil and I went through a lot of these issues not only with the UN and the NGOs, but with the government officials as well. So the Government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government are we understand that vetting is a big deal and that if we don't get it right, if they don't get it right, it actually could exacerbate the problem. So we are working closely with them to make sure that their screening is appropriate, that it's done by government officials, that it's at planned sites, that it's standardized, that it's opening it's open to international monitoring, that it's transparent and humane.
We've also deployed mobile protection and legal aid teams and are establishing protection service centers, so particularly in those areas where we know families are most likely to flee. And then we have another array of support for families and vulnerable people that would kind of relate to the screening of people that are fleeing but is it's in addition to. So that's psychosocial support, issues that relate to gender-based violence, et cetera. So the bottom line is we're trying and we're working with the Iraqis and the Kurds to make sure that the screening process is appropriate, reasonable, and standardized.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: This is official two. Let me add that we believe that today there are formal camps that can accommodate 80,000 people, and we expect that by mid-December there will certainly be, through UNHCR's preparations, formal camps for 250,000 people. However, that's not all, because other partners are continuing to build more facilities, including International Organization for Migration, which is building two camps right now emergency sites right now with a view to building a total of six or perhaps ten.
I'd like to add to what my colleague has said that we really need to remember that there will be different levels of facilities for IDPs. There will be formal camps that are well prepared and that meet all of the international humanitarian standards. Also, in a fast-developing situation, there will be emergency sites that will provide shelter but will not meet all of the international standards immediately. And then there also will be out-of-camp situations where shelter materials are provided to people under different sets of circumstances, perhaps in areas where there are buildings that need to be sealed off or areas where some shelter can be provided on a temporary basis. Thanks.
OPERATOR: Thank you. We'll go now to the line of Elise Labott with CNN.
QUESTION: Thanks for taking the call. We've talked a lot about the humanitarian situation. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about the kind of initial plans for post-governance and stabilization. Particularly, what are you doing what are your discussions with Iraqi Government in terms of setting up a kind of interim administration that could then move towards a more longer-term elections and such?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I think experience has taught us that getting the governance structure right is paramount. And generally, this is, if I may, the software of how local governments interact and connect with their people. So we are and again, this will be led by the Iraqi Government, but we are prepared to assist in helping to stand up some basic services, to create livelihood operations or opportunities, and to --
QUESTION: Do you mean jobs?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I mean jobs in a nutshell, yes, okay. But, I mean, it's a little bit more than jobs, because these are not simply like private sector jobs that you envision. But these are programs that are designed to displace designed to support displaced people as they are kind of working through the crisis in their community. And so the immediate kind of post-liberation challenge is one of governance, and we're going to continue to help with them, but the bottom line is we've got to restore basic services, get the trash picked up, get the water turned on, get the schools open, and create some emergency livelihood or jobs opportunities.
QUESTION: Thank you.
OPERATOR: Once again, if you would like to ask a question today, you may press * then 1 on your telephone keypad. Next we'll go to the line of Howard LaFranchi with Christian Science Monitor. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yeah, hi. Thanks for doing this. I wanted to go back I think it was official number one who said originally that a displacement does not equate with need, and I wanted to get a better idea of what that means, if that means that, well, people can go to families or something.
And then also you spoke about encouraging people to stay in place if possible. So if that happens, how do you get services what's the planning? How do you get services, whether it's food or whatever but people who stay in place but may not have everything they need how's that going to be carried out?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Okay, so first of all, it's the government and the Kurds that are describing the stay-in-place option. But just walking through this logically, in a fast-moving environment, if where you are is safe and secure and where you're going is uncertain and unpredictable, it would be better to stay in place. And obviously, that can change and that can evolve it can evolve. But the point is that depending on the circumstances, you might staying in place might be the right thing to do. And this is part of the unpredictability about the nature of the war that we're engaged in. So if it turns out to be very, very messy, protracted, and complicated, that's going to be one thing. If it ends earlier or if it the dynamics change, that's going to be another.
In terms of getting assistance in, primarily we need security. And so if there are pockets of Mosul that are safe and secure and stable, then we can provide assistance there in concert with our partners and the Iraqi Government. But maintaining and getting that level of stability is going to be the most critical. If people need to leave because it's not safe, then they and as they flee, we've been kind of charting out different paths in which they may take, and then we're prepared to accept them in again, in partnership with the UN and our NGOs.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Could I add official number two that right now roughly 50 percent of the internally displaced fleeing from Mosul have made their way to formal shelter arrangements. That's actually a very unusually high number. Overall, inside Iraq, a very large number of displaced only about 15 percent are in those kinds of formal shelter circumstances. So as my colleague said, I think that we have to prepared to be very flexible. We have to be prepared to react to circumstances on the ground.
I would also note that, assuming that a lot of people stay put inside Mosul, that indeed there is going to be a need for massive assistance in the city. And I note that my colleague mentioned that there are 50 trucks a day on the move right now delivering food supplies, and so I'm sure we would be ramping up from that. Over.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Ben Kesling with The Wall Street Journal.
QUESTION: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it. The question I have is: How in how are you working with the Iraqi and Kurdish governments to ensure that once families and people are displaced from where they're living, they'll be able to return to their homes and that there won't be any kind of a especially in, like, Arab areas a de-Arabization of those areas with Kurdish the Kurdish government possibly pushing people out of those areas and not letting them back in? Is there any conversation taking place on what to do to ensure that certain populations aren't targeted unnecessarily and unfairly and that there will be no recourse and, for lack of a better word, payback for perceived and real slights that have happened in the past?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: So I think [Senior Administration Official Three], number colleague number three, might be best positioned to answer this.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL THREE: Gladly. I mean, we're already engaged with the both the KRG and the GOI and the various governors as well to ensure that it's understood at the highest levels that returning home is what this is all about. Prime Minister Abadi has assured us on many occasions about the he takes seriously the need for future reconciliation, and the first step towards that is being able to get people back into their homes. And so this isn't something that we've waited to talk to him about for the future, this is something that we've been talking at all levels right now. They're going on these type of conversations.
OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Steve Herman with the Voice of America.
QUESTION: Hi. Good morning. This was partly answered in a previous response, but I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more specifically about what are the triggers to when you can actually move into the city. You've mentioned about security. But specifically what level of security determines that it's safe for supplies or personnel to be able to go into the city to reach these people?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: This will be decided on the ground by the UN and the Iraqi military. I mean, clearly what we need to do is have enough space and security that we can move in supplies and we can help people and families. But it's very hard to say from Washington when those conditions will be met. But I will say that we have very impressive teams both at the UN and with their NGOs. Plus, actually we have a disaster assistance response team a DART team that's in Iraq, and they will make those determinations as to how and when and what way people can best get in to help.
OPERATOR: Thank you. We'll go to the line of Rosalind Jordan with Al Jazeera.
QUESTION: Hi, thanks for holding the call. My first question was partially answered about dealing with booby traps and how quickly relief work can get underway. But my other question is about the role of Turkey. There's been so much made about Turkish desire to be involved in trying to route ISIL both in Syria and in Iraq. What conversations have other members of the coalition had with Turkey about stabilization once Mosul is retaken? Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL NUMBER ONE: I think that's best for official three.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL NUMBER THREE: Yes. This is official three. I can't speak to what other members of the coalition have discussed with Turkey. Obviously, we take the Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity seriously. And any member of our coalition is there with the permission of the Iraqi Government, and it's coordinated the movements are coordinated through the Iraqi Government, and that's kind of the ground basis for our relationship there. So but yeah, as far as other coalition members, how they've contacted Turkish or Iraqi Government on this issue, I can't speak to.
MODERATOR: Okay. I think we have time for maybe one more question.
OPERATOR: Thank you. And that comes from the line of Elizabeth Dickinson with Devex. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, thanks so much. Good morning. I had one follow-up question from the previous discussion about the screening process. So you spoke a bit about sort of the planning process and the conversations that have been had with the government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government. I'm interested in your assessment so far of sort of how that's going. I mean, do you see the process so far as it's happened with these initial thirty-something thousand displaced as going to plan? Are you satisfied with sort of the standardization and the appropriateness of what's happening?
And secondly, I'm hoping you might be able to speak about whether there are any contingency plans in place or any discussions about sort of possible unknowns from ISIL's response to the operations (inaudible) discussion about their use of chemical agents or other humanitarian atrocities that certainly they've threatened to commit in other situations and (inaudible) what the humanitarian response would look like in that situation.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL NUMBER ONE: Okay, I'll let me I think one and two are going to share these, and I'm number One. So again, just in terms of on the transparency and the protection issues. I mean, we are working very hard to make sure that the those who are fleeing are treated with care, with dignity, with standard procedures, that that process is run by state actors, that it's open to international monitoring. Again, we have a team that has been deployed that will protect that will look at protection and legal aid issues for these families as they're deploying. And so there's a lot of emphasis on getting this right.
In terms of the second question, the unknown unknowns, so to speak, that's why we're prepared. And, of course, you can envision this as almost an accordion, from a worst-case to a best-case scenario. But for instance, we have water, sanitation, and hygiene that are on the ground, because one of the first things to go in a very, very chaotic situation or unknowable situation would be water. So we have 900 water tankers in place. We have water systems for 50,000 households. We have portable showers that would be available to help stave off illness, disease. And we have health kits that we are we have available and are able to give to people. We've also stockpiled medicine and medical equipment for 300,000 people, and we have 100 ambulances at the ready. So we have no idea what the unknown unknowns could be, but we have we think that we've prepared and we've postured our supplies positioned our supplies sufficiently so that we'd be able to hand a reasonable scope of worst-case scenarios.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: This is official number two. Let me say about the question of screening: This is an area where I do think we've been able to learn from the past and where our preparation, I hope, will pay off in a better outcome for all the folks who are involved in this. Our approach really involves three big elements: One is to develop standard operating procedures for how screening would actually take place and that has been done, and the information on how to do that has been distributed to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. Pardon me. Number two has been to promote the highest level of transparency possible in the screening process. And we've received commitments from the Government of Iraq and from the Kurdish Regional Government as well to permit that, although the situation is evolving and it's not necessarily so easy to know exactly where the forward screening points will be at in order to ensure that international observers actually can be on the scene and watch. But that's something that we have commitments to permit. And the third piece is to try to, as much as possible, conduct the screening in a way that's respectful of different sectarian issues, which we are also trying to do.
As regards to the question that was raised on chemical weapons, again, I would say that we are taking very prudent, preventive measures. The first is that the U.S. and coalition forces have placed a high priority on targeting ISIL's chemical weapons and capabilities to produce or use chemical weapons. So we've tried to destroy as much as we could in advance. The second is that U.S. and coalition forces and other partners actually maintain capabilities to protect themselves from chemical weapons attacks if such a thing should occur. So force protection measures are already in place.
So I think those are the two elements of the response to the potential threat from chemical weapons. Thank you.
MODERATOR: Okay. I just want to thank our speakers, our senior Administration officials, for taking time out to do this call today, and thank you guys for calling in and joining us. This will conclude today's call. I just want to add another note: If you do have follow-up questions, you can email them to the State Department Press Office at PAPressDuty@state.gov. Again, that's PAPressDuty@state.gov.
Thanks, and everyone have a great afternoon.
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Myanmar paper banned from reporting on soldiers' violence against Rohingyas
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 1:53PM
A leading English-language newspaper in Myanmar has suspended its reporting on the western Rakhine state, home to many Rohingya Muslims.
The Myanmar Times, the country's oldest English-language daily, stopped covering the situation of Rohingyas after one of its senior staff was fired over an article citing multiple gang rapes of Rohingya women by soldiers.
Sources inside the newspaper said that one editor has already resigned in protest and several other staff members were considering leaving.
"The paper withstood the pre-publication censorship of the junta era," AFP quoted an unnamed source as saying, adding, "There are major concerns about backsliding in the commendable gains made on press freedom in recent years."
The developments have prompted staff to post a notice in Tuesday's print edition saying the paper's "editorial policies are in the process of being clarified by management," adding, "Until then you may notice some gaps in our coverage."
According to an internal memo seen by AFP, management ordered editors "not to analyze, comment, report or have opinion pieces on the following subjects until further notice: Rakhine State; Rohingya; and military actions in Rakhine state."
This comes as pressure is mounting on media to curtail critical coverage of army operations in the area. Foreign journalists have been banned from the area.
While there is more freedom under Myanmar's civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, monitors say many outlets still exercise self-censorship.
In recent weeks, allegations have emerged of troops killing Rohingya civilians, raping women and torching villages.
The diplomats, including those from the European Union and the United Nations and the US have recently called on Myanmar's government to launch a transparent inquiry into human rights violations in Rakhine state.
The state was again in the spotlight on October 9, when gunmen attacked three police outposts in the town of Maungdaw near the Bangladeshi border, reportedly leaving nine police officers dead.
Myanmar's government blamed the incident on a Rohingya group, adding that the assailants made off with dozens of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Suu Kyi said her government will not place blame for violence in Rakhine before investigators have gathered all the evidence.
According to the UN, Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. The government denies full citizenship to the community and imposes severe restrictions on their movement, branding them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even as many trace their lineage in Myanmar back generations.
Many of the Muslims have been killed while tens of thousands have been forced to flee as a result of attacks by Buddhists.
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Rebel Tensions Rise With Myanmar Army's Offensive
By Paul Vrieze November 07, 2016
Under the scorching midday sun, a drill sergeant for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) shouts commands at around 100 young soldiers, some barely out of their teens.
The rebels, mostly male, struggle to keep formation. They're exhausted when they return to their barracks at a training school near Laiza, a town in a mountain valley near the border with China that's also the KIA's main stronghold.
The cadets, many of whom came from government areas to volunteer with the KIA, are about to finish four months of training, and their confidence is high.
"We're not scared, we're ready to fight," one says with a defiant grin as the cadets enter their barracks.
They soon could find themselves on a volatile frontline post.
Fighting in Kachin state has escalated since mid-August, when the Myanmar military launched its heaviest dry-season offensive in two years. It's trying to capture a strategic mountaintop called Gidon, some 30 kilometers north of Laiza, according to the KIA.
"Gidon is the security post protecting our Laizin headquarters and the Laiza area" from the north, said Lieutenant Colonel Naw Bu, a KIA spokesman interviewed at his office in late October. "Now the Burmese army is sending more troops and weapons to this area, including heavy artillery, so the fighting is likely to become worse."
Threat to peace process
The Gidon post recently has taken daily fire from mortars, three different artillery positions and fighter jets and helicopter gunships, Naw Bu said. The rebels, dug into the mountains and armed with basic weaponry, so far have managed to fend off several ground attacks.
The rising violence threatens to undermine efforts by Aung San Suu Kyi's young National League for Democracy (NLD) government to resume Myanmar's peace process and establish a democratic, federal union, bringing an end to decades of ethnic conflict.
At Lawa Yang Post, located in the mountains a few miles south of Laiza, government forces operate within visual range of KIA troops. The area has not seen clashes for a long time, but soldiers are on alert and staff a network of deep trenches half hidden by the jungle canopy.
"I'm ready to fight as my officers command," said soldier Maru Tang Gun. "I'm just worried about the safety of the civilians, not about myself."
Hopes fade
Many civilians and Kachin rebels in Laiza expressed disappointment that the army, also known as the Tatmadaw, launched an offensive while publicly participating in the NLD government's efforts to reach a nationwide cease-fire and begin talks to reform Myanmar's political structure.
"The KIO, Kachin public and other ethnic groups are trying to work with the NLD for peace, but the Tatmadaw don't want to allow a political dialogue," said Lieutenant Colonel Zhau Hpan, who commands Lawa Yang Post. The army wants to keep fighting to postpone amendments to the 2008 constitution, he said.
After assuming office in early April, State Councilor and de facto government leader Aung San Suu Kyi quickly tried to restart the peace process of the previous quasi-civilian administration. It had signed a so-called nationwide cease-fire with eight rebel groups last year, but another 12 groups including the KIA opted out.
The NLD held its first peace conference in late August. The highly inclusive but largely ceremonial gathering involved the powerful army chief Min Aung Hlaing, top government officials and 17 ethnic rebel groups. But since then, the military has stepped up operations in Kachin as well as Shan and Karen states. It fought a rebel splinter group in Karen.
The government has little authority over the military operations, as the constitution guarantees the military direct control over the ministries of defense, home affairs and border affairs. The charter also centralizes power over Myanmar's states and regions with the government in Naypyitaw, a situation the country's numerous ethnic groups have long resented.
Aid blocked
The Kachin living in rebel areas increasingly have come to distrust the army since its renewed offensive, as well as its decision to delay or block aid convoys from crossing the front line to reach isolated KIA areas. Half of the roughly 100,000 displaced civilians are sheltering in camps.
The army blames security issues for preventing aid deliveries, which already had been reduced because of declining donations to the United Nations.
Nine local aid NGOs working in Kachin recently alleged the military was politicizing aid deliveries through its interference.
"The Tatmadaw consistently hinders food transportation to the most in need areas in Kachin state," the NGOs said in a joint statement released last month. It called the action "an outright violation against the rights" of internally displaced people and said it breached international humanitarian law.
Naw Lu, an elder in the Pa Kawthang IDP camp near Mai Ja Yang, another KIA-controlled town located some 80 kilometers south of Laiza, said aid supplies recently had been limited to irregular deliveries of rice, salt and oil. He said IDPs were losing hope that they could return to their villages in the near future.
"We don't expect there will be peace soon," the 68-year-old said. "Aung San Suu Kyi is discussing peace, but Min Aung Hlaing is still fighting. We don't trust the Burmese. They're changing their position all the time, just like they're adjusting their longyis," the sarong-like cloths worn around the waist.
NLD quiet
The NLD government has stayed quiet about the clashes and is trying to push ahead with more meetings involving the army, the KIA and other rebel groups.
"In the current situation, it's very complicated to get to the bottom of why there is fighting," said Zaw Htay, speaking for the Presidential Office. "So we need to reduce tensions first, then we have [cease-fire] talks and then we can hold a political dialogue."
Army operations are seriously undermining the peace talks, said Sai Kyaw Nyunt, a peace process committee member and representative of the major ethnic party Shan National League for Democracy.
"If there is still fighting, how will the KIA participate in the peace process? It's very difficult for them," he said, adding that the operations cast doubt on the army's willingness to eventually reform the constitution, as both the NLD and ethnic groups desire.
"The Tatmadaw seems to be considering whether they are with this government or not, and it seems they don't quite agree," he said.
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UK military shocked by Russia's Armata 'revolutionary' tank
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 7:20AM
The British military intelligence has issued an internal warning about Russia's advanced new main battle tank (MBTs), criticizing London's inability to offer a competing solution, according to a new report.
The UK ministry of defense calls the T-14 Armata a "revolutionary step" in terms of design and technology and slams the government for having no plans to come up with a response in the next 20 years, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.
"Without hyperbole, Armata represents the most revolutionary step change in tank design in the last half century," notes the document, which was issued after a prototype of the tank was put on display in May last year.
"Unsurprisingly, the tank has caused a sensation," the paper said of Armata, while going on to conclude that it was "the most revolutionary tank in a generation."
Apparently, the senior British Army officer who wrote the document was amazed with the tank's "fully automated, digitized, unmanned turret" and sophisticated radar systems that it was going to get.
The paper then turns to London's military strategy, suggesting that the British government has been so busy with the threat from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that it has forgotten the danger posed by tanks.
"Are we on the cusp of a new technological arms race? Has an understandable focus on defeating the single threat of IEDs distracted Western military vehicle designers?" it asked.
The British officer then voices concern over Russia's superior arsenal of 2,500 active tanks, which is backed by a reserve force of 12,500 more. Moscow plans to produce 120 Armatas annually from 2018, according to the paper.
UK Army Brigadier Ben Barry, who specialized in land warfare before resigning in 2010, said the tank would easily overmatch NATO's MBTs. It would also pose a real challenge to the US-led military alliance's infantry forces, Barry noted, referring to the tank's armor and its unmanned turret.
This was not the first time that British military commanders were warning against a rising military threat from Russia.
Over the past few months, London has been constantly calling on the EU to unite and repel the "Russian aggression" by deploying more military forces in Eastern Europe.
The anti-Russian rhetoric has angered the Kremlin, with Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov dismissing the allegations as "Russophobic hysteria."
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Russia Says Military Cooperation With Turkey Resuming
November 07, 2016
Officials in Moscow say Russia and Turkey are resuming military cooperation and plan to hold a meeting of an intergovernmental commission before the end of 2016.
Aleksandr Fomin, the head of Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said on November 7 that the dates and venue of the meeting are under negotiation.
He said the issue of sending Russian-built antiaircraft systems to NATO-member Turkey also could be discussed by the commission.
Fomin's remarks follow a visit to Moscow on November 1 by the head of the Turkish armed forces' General Staff, General Hulusi Akar.
Turkey says Akar and his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, discussed potential military cooperation in Syria against Islamic State militants, as well as in other areas.
Relations between Ankara and Moscow deteriorated after a Turkish warplane in October 2015 shot down a Russian fighter plane near Turkey's border with Syria.
But ties have improved since an attempted coup in July by Turkey's military against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Meanwhile, Ankara's relations with its NATO allies have been tested by criticism from NATO states about Erdogan's crackdown against his political opponents since the failed coup.
Based on reporting by Interfax, TASS, Reuters, and RIA
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-turkey-military- cooperation/28102105.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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Former NATO Chief Expects Russia's Assertive Behavior To Continue For Decades
RFE/RL November 07, 2016
BRUSSELS -- Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says Russia's assertive behavior toward NATO may last for decades.
In an interview with RFE/RL on November 7, Rasmussen said Russians felt "humiliated and betrayed during the 1990s and that is the reason why there is a strong Russian desire to restore Russian greatness in the former Soviet Union territory."
Rasmussen said he is "concerned that this may last as long as the Cold War."
Relations between NATO and Moscow have deteriorated since Russia seized and illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
NATO suspended all military and political cooperation with the Kremlin, even though political and military channels of communication remain open.
In response to Russia's activities in Ukraine, NATO agreed earlier in 2016 to create four battle groups in the Baltic states and Poland with a total of 4,000 troops that should be ready in early 2017.
Rasmussen, who stepped down as NATO secretary-general 2014, thinks the deployment "might raise tension."
But he said that in the longer term, "a stronger NATO deterrence will also contribute to a calmer situation."
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/nato-russia- behavior-anders-fogh-rasmussen/28101992.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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Syria seizes US, Israeli arms from militants
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 10:55AM
Syria has released footage of American- and Israeli-made weapons seized by the Syrian army from Takfiri militants in the capital, Damascus.
Syria's official news agency said Sunday that the Syrian army units had confiscated the weapons in the town of Khan al-Shih in the countryside of Damascus.
The Syrian government says the Tel Aviv regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding the Takfiri militant groups fighting against Damascus.
On April 28, Syrian officials and locals confiscated a vehicle loaded with Israeli-manufactured weapons bound for the Takfiri Daesh terrorists in the Arab country's southern province of Suwayda.
The vehicle, which was coming from eastern Dara'a Province, was heading to the eastern Badiya desert.
Anti-personnel landmines, RPG launcher and rounds, B9 shells, 120-mm, 80-mm, and 60-mm mortars, grenades and 23-mm machine-gun rounds were among the weapons confiscated back then.
Earlier in April, popular defense groups in Suwayda also seized a car packed with RPG rounds and other shells on their way to the Badiya desert.
Israel has also been treating the wounded militants from Syria in its medical centers and hospitals. Syrian sources have frequently reported that, after receiving treatment at the Israeli hospitals, the militants return to Syria to continue their acts of sabotage and terror.
Israel has spent millions of dollars for the treatment of the militants injured in fighting with Syrian government forces, documents from Israeli hospitals show.
Russia denies role in attack on Syria school
Meanwhile, Russia has once again rejected claims that its warplanes have had any role in fatal airstrikes on a school filled with students in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib last month.
The Russian army said on Monday that there was no proof whatsoever of Moscow's involvement in the airstrikes on the school.
Initial reports on the attack on the school in the village of Hass in Idlib province, where some 28 civilians are said to have been killed, came from the so-called London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is close to Syrian opposition.
According to an RT report, the Russian Defense Ministry dispatched a drone to analyze the site of the alleged bombing on the same day and found no evidence of airstrikes.
"The Ministry of Defense already published comprehensive and absolute drone-filmed photographic facts on October 27, which showed the absence of any traces of bombing at the school complex in Hass," the statement from the ministry noted.
The UN children's agency, UNICEF, says 22 students and six teachers were killed in Hass village on October 26.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for a thorough investigation into the attack, warning that the attack on the school could amount to a war crime.
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US Welcomes Extension of Humanitarian Pause in Aleppo - State Department
Sputnik News
23:38 07.11.2016
The United States welcomes the extension of the humanitarian pause in Aleppo announced by Russia, US Department of State deputy spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters on Monday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) Russia has recently backed a number of humanitarian pauses in Aleppo, with the latest one entering into force on Friday.
"What we are seeing, you've obviously seen the news reports as well, that Russia actually extended self-proclaimed ceasefire in Aleppo," Toner said. "Of course, we welcome any pause in the fighting there, and any end of the violence even temporary, but I've seen no indications that there is any intent to make some kind of drive for Aleppo."
However, the Russian Defense Ministry said that a humanitarian corridor around the western part of the Castello road in Aleppo was shelled by militants on Friday, causing injuries to two Russian servicemen.
A local television broadcaster reported also on Friday that militants were preventing civilians from leaving the besieged areas of Aleppo.
Aleppo has been the scene of fierce battles between Syria's army and militants holding the city's eastern districts, while international aid groups have expressed concern about residents trapped in their homes.
Russia introduced an earlier humanitarian pause in October to ensure safe evacuation of civilians and unarmed militants from eastern Aleppo through designated corridors.
That pause collapsed when the jihadist group Jabhat Fatah al Sham, previously known as the Nusra Front, prevented civilians from fleeing Aleppo and attacked them, prompting the government to take offensive action.
Sputnik
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Syrian Democratic Forces Make Progress With Coalition Aid in Raqqa Operation
Sputnik News
23:03 07.11.2016(updated 23:10 07.11.2016)
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have already made progress in the three days since they launched the operation to recapture the Syrian city of Raqqa from Daesh, US Department of Defense spokesman Peter Cook said in a press briefing on Monday.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) On Sunday, the Kurdish-led SDF announced in a press conference in Ayn Isa the launch of the operation Wrath of Euphrates to retake the Daesh's de facto capital of Raqqa.
On Monday, SDF commander Rojda Felat said the offensive advanced more than six miles south from Ayn Isa and nearly seven miles from the town of Saluq in the northeast.
"We are confident that, with the help of the coalition they will be successful," Cook told reporters. "In fact, SDF forces have already made progress since they began their move against Raqqa on Saturday."
The US-led coalition said it carried out 16 airstrikes on Daesh positions near Ayn Isa on Sunday, hitting the group's tactical units and several car bombs.
At the same time, Syrian media have reported taht the operation is no more than a part of the US information campaign aimed at diverting attention from scandals around the US elections.
"The battle for liberation of Raqqa from IS declared yesterday is just an information campaign. SDF cannot fight against IS even if fully supported by Washington and Paris," the Al-Watan newspaper has cited a diplomatic source in Paris as saying."They need such achievements several hours before the start of presidential elections amid scandals around Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama."
The source added that "SDF will hardly advance to more than several symbolic kilometers toward Raqqa in coming hours during the elections."
The Wrath of Euphrates force includes a reported 30,000 fighters, including Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians. According to media reports, US special forces are backing the advance.
Sputnik
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US-Led Coalition Should Stop Turkey's Advancement Toward Raqqa - SDF
Sputnik News
21:44 07.11.2016
The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Fighters (SDF) are ready to respond to any Turkish advancement toward Raqqa and the international coalition is responsible for making Turkey withdraw from the region, senior member of the Syrian Democratic Council, SDF's political wing, Rizan Hado said on Monday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced last month that the Turkish Air Forces would target Raqqa and Manbij after liberating the town of al-Bab. Erdogan said on Sunday that the Turkish troops were approaching al-Bab.
"Any attempt by Turkey to make an aggression against Manbij will certainly impede liberation of Raqqa and we will not remain silent. Our priority is confronting Turkey's aggression against Manbij. The ball is now in the coalition's court and its seriousness will be shown in forcing the Turks to withdraw from the region," Hado was quoted as saying by Fars News Agency.
Hado added that he welcomed any advancement by the Syrian army toward al-Bab and expressed hopes that the battle to liberate Raqqa, which is under Daesh control, would be carried out in coordination with the Syrian troops.
The Syrian Kurds have been fighting against Daesh militant group, a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries, for years and have the control of several areas of Syria, including Manbij.
On August 24, the Turkish army with the support of US-led coalition aircraft launched the Euphrates Shield operation to clear the northern Syrian town of Jarabulus and the surrounding area of Daesh, outlawed in Russia and many other countries. The operation has been widely criticized both by the Syrian Kurds and Damascus, accusing Ankara of violating Syria's territorial integrity.
Sputnik
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Syrian Troops Repel Daesh Attack Near Deir ez-Zor Military Airport
Sputnik News
18:36 07.11.2016(updated 18:37 07.11.2016)
The Syrian Armed Forces (SAF) repelled a Daesh terrorists' attack aimed at seizing Tall Rifaat heights not far from the Deir ez-Zor military airport, located to the north of Aleppo.
DAMASCUS (Sputnik) According to the Lebanese al-Manar TV channel, Daesh terrorists used heavy machine guns and artillery during the offensive. As a result of the clashes, Daesh militants were defeated and driven from the airfield.
Deir ez-Zor is the seventh largest city in Syria located to the northeast from the country's capital of Damascus, which had repeatedly became a place to armed clashes between Syrian forces and terrorist militias.
US warplanes hit Syrian government troops near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor on September 17, leaving over 80 people killed. The Pentagon said initially that the airstrike was a mistake and targeted Daesh militants, while a number of Syrian officials stated that the attack was intentional.
Following the strike, Daesh terrorists launched a massive offensive in the area, however, the Syrian army managed to repell the attack.
Deir ez-Zor, which is still held by Syrian government forces, has been under siege of Daesh since July 2014.
Sputnik
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Putin Considers Suspension of Russian Aerial Operation in Syria Feasible
Sputnik News
13:48 07.11.2016(updated 16:04 07.11.2016)
The suspension of the Russian Aerospace Forces' operation in Syria continues, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin considers it possible to continue maintaining the regime in eastern Aleppo.
"The humanitarian pause [in Aleppo] had specific timeframes, but the regime of halting the operation of Russia's Aerospace Forces continues," Peskov said.
"The decision was made in accordance with President Putin's stance that backed the extension of non-resumption of the Russian Aerospace Forces' military operations," he told journalists when asked about Russia's further actions in Syria after the humanitarian pause.
Peskov added that if militants in Aleppo don't launch any large-scale offensive, such a regime will continue.
Russia has recently backed a number of humanitarian pauses in Aleppo, with the latest entering into force on Friday.
However, according to the Russian Defense Ministry a humanitarian corridor around the western part of the Castello road in Aleppo was shelled by militants on Friday, injuring two Russian servicemen, while a local television broadcaster reported on the same day that militants were preventing civilians from leaving the besieged areas of Aleppo.
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Operation Euphrates Rage: What is Known So Far About Raqqa Offensive
Sputnik News
10:31 07.11.2016(updated 10:32 07.11.2016)
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have launched a large-scale operation to isolate and eventually free Raqqa, the so-called capital of Daesh's caliphate, on Sunday, with US and Turkish defense officials reaching an agreement on "a long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing" the embattled city.
Here is what you need to know about the ongoing operation.
Operation Euphrates Rage
The offensive, formally known as Operation Euphrates Rage (or Wrath), was launched on November 6 by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with France, the United Kingdom and the United States expected to provide air support. The SDF is a multi-ethnic alliance of Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Turkmen and Circassian fighters, with the People's Protection Units playing the leading role in the force.
SDF commanders made the announcement in the Ein Issa, located some 30 miles north of Raqqa. A total of 30,000 fighters are said to be taking part in the operation.
The Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Arab Army are not taking part in this campaign.
Why Raqqa
The Syrian city of Raqqa, home to approximately 200,000 people, has been under Daesh control since January 2014. It has been viewed as the capital of the terrorist group's caliphate spanning across large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Some of Daesh's senior leaders as well as about 5,000 militants are believed to be currently staying in Raqqa. The city's liberation has been viewed as key to degrading and eventually destroying the brutal group.
Number 1 goal
Contrary to what one might think, Raqqa's liberation is not the first order of business.
The Syrian Democratic Forces' key goal at this stage involves isolating and encircling Raqqa. The Pentagon ostensibly wants to prevent Daesh fighters in Raqqa from helping the militants fighting in Mosul and vice versa. In addition, US defense officials want to reduce the terrorist group's capabilities to carry out operations beyond Syria, particularly in Europe, Turkey and the US.
The operation aimed at encircling Raqqa is not expected to happen in an instant. The SDF "are moving south to isolate the enemy that's in the vicinity of Raqqa and in Raqqa," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said on Sunday. "We always advertised that the isolation phase is going to take months."
Turkey's role
Turkey has repeatedly expressed its wish to take part in the operation aimed at liberating Raqqa, also saying that the Kurds, the Pentagon's primary allies on the ground, should not lead the offensive. On Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed that US and Turkish defense officials finally reached an agreement on the issue that has caused tensions between the two NATO allies for weeks.
The US-led "coalition and Turkey will work together on the long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing Raqqa," Dunford said.
In other words, Washington has taken Turkey's concerns into account and decided that the SDF will not be the force to free Raqqa. In fact, according to Dunford, policymakers in the US have always known that the SDF wasn't "the solution for holding and governing Raqqa."
Turkish leadership has not commented on Operation Euphrates Rage so far.
Who will free Raqqa
The US-led coalition and Turkey are currently working on determining the exact composition of the force that will be tasked with pushing Daesh out of the city.
"[The operation needs] a predominantly Arab and Sunni Arab force," Dunford detailed. "And there are forces like that. There is the moderate Syrian opposition, the vetted Syrian forces and the Free Syrian Army forces, and there is some initial outreach to forces in Raqqa proper."
Many have questioned whether so-called moderate Syrian rebels exist, taking into account that they often carry out joint operations with radical organizations like al-Nusra Front and the like.
Keep in mind that the Pentagon and SDF leadership do not appear to be on the same page as to who will eventually push Daesh out of Raqqa. "We want to liberate the surrounding countryside, then encircle the city, then we will assault and liberate it," SDF spokesman Talal Sillo said on Sunday.
US reaction
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter welcomed the SDF announcement, saying that "the effort to isolate, and ultimately liberate, Raqqa marks the next step in our coalition campaign plan." He also pledged that the US-led coalition would make every effort to "enable local forces in both Iraq and Syria to deliver ISIL the lasting defeat it deserves."
Overlapping campaigns
Although Raqqa is smaller than Mosul, the campaign aimed at liberating the Syrian city will not be an easy one, like all counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Syria in the past. Why are then two high-stake anti-Daesh operations conducted at the same time?
Two weeks ago, Carter unveiled that the operation for Raqqa would start in several weeks, adding that the Pentagon had enough resources and capabilities to sustain both.
"That has long been our plan and we will be capable of resourcing both," he said.
Sputnik
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Syrian Ex-Opposition Head Calls Quarrel With Russia Mistake of Anti-Gov't Groups
Sputnik News
01:14 07.11.2016
The former National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces leader said that alienating Russia was a mistake made by some Syrian opposition groups.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) Alienating Russia was a mistake made by some Syrian opposition groups, Ahmed Moaz Khatib, the former National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces leader said.
" part of the opposition stood up against Russia, not understanding the big impact Russia has on the region. This was, in my opinion, a political blunder," Khatib said in an exclusive interview to Rudaw news outlet, released on Sunday.
He added that a few opposition groups, including the one he represented, attempted to strike a close relationship with Moscow, but had not seen much "positive response" from the Russian side.
Syria's civil war between government forces and a wide range of insurgents, including opposition groups and terrorists, such as Daesh and Jabhat Fatah al Sham, outlawed in many countries including Russia, has been raging for more than five years and has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Sputnik
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Syrian Kurds Face Heavy Fighting in Battle to Retake Raqqa
By VOA News November 07, 2016
Kurdish-led Syrian forces, backed by U.S. air power and military advisers, captured a number of Islamic State positions amid heavy fighting Monday north of the IS stronghold of Raqqa.
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says there has been "no real progress" so far in the offensive.
"We do not underestimate the hard work ahead," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Monday, contending that Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been making progress in the early days of the advance, supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.
The Pentagon also tried to again downplay concerns about any apparent rush to move on Raqqa from the ground, despite some opposition from allies like Turkey, which had said any move on Islamic State's Syrian capital should wait until after operations to retake the terror group's last Iraqi stronghold of Mosul had wrapped up.
"This is about applying pressure on multiple fronts, and we have been doing that from the air for some time," Cook told reporters.
"This is something that we have built toward, something we have planned for," he added. "This is where the campaign plan was supposed to be at this moment in time and this is not a surprise to us. This is exactly how it was sketched out."
A commander of the SDF had announced the start of the offensive on Sunday to gain control of Raqqa, the northern Syrian city overrun by Islamic State extremists in 2014 and self-designated as the center of extremist rule.
Britain, France provide air support
Britain and France said Sunday they would also provide air support for the offensive by the Kurdish-led SDF, which also includes Arab fighters.
"We're supporting Iraqi-led forces defeating Daesh in Mosul and the RAF [Britain's Royal Air Force] will support the Raqqa operation as it develops," British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Monday, using an alternate name for the armed extremist group. "Our strikes are making a difference in Mosul now, and our sophisticated surveillance effort is helping give the coalition a vital edge in Syria."
The U.S.-led coalition is relying on the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is comprised of mostly Kurdish fighters, to isolate Raqqa, but the question remains as to whom will fight for the city and hold it once IS has been pushed out.
Turkish concerns
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, met in the Turkish capital Sunday with his Turkish counterparts, including Gen. Hulusi Akar, chief of the Turkish general staff, for talks on the new offensive.
Dunford said Sunday the U.S. and its coalition allies are still working "to find the right mix of forces" for taking and governing the city.
Dunford's discussions in Turkey appear aimed at easing Turkish concerns about the makeup and objectives of the SDF, which Washington considers the most potent anti-IS fighting coalition in territory near the Turkish border.
For its part, the Ankara government views the main SDF component the Syrian Kurdish fighting force known as the People's Protection Units as a terrorist organization with links to another Kurdish force fighting government forces in southeast Turkey for regional autonomy.
Turkish officials went so far last week as to suggest that Turkish-backed forces take the lead in the push to free Raqqa rather than the Kurdish-led SDF.
A Pentagon statement late Sunday said the two generals agreed to "consult closely" on the coalition plan to seize and hold Raqqa, and to work collaboratively to disrupt IS operations in Syria and in Iraq.
U.S. Defense Secretary Carter Ash, speaking Sunday, said the international coalition will continue to "do what [it] can to enable local forces in both Iraq and Syria to deliver [Islamic State] the lasting defeat it deserves."
VOA's Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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Turkey criticizes EU 'double standards' vis-a-vis PKK militants
Iran Press TV
Mon Nov 7, 2016 3:41PM
A high-ranking Turkish official has directed strident criticism at the European Union over what he described as the bloc's double standards towards members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Turkish Minister of European Union Affairs Omer Celik told reporters after meeting EU ambassadors in the capital, Ankara, on Monday that dual policies within EU institutions over the PKK militant group was condemnable.
"We are going through an extremely fragile period in Turkish-EU relations. The European Union must regulate the double standards within EU institutions on PKK," Celik said.
He further denounced the recent decision by a Belgian court to refuse to recognize PKK activities as terrorism.
"The ruling by a Belgian court not to recognize PKK as a terrorist organization is a direct attack on the European Convention of Human Rights. This is no longer about Turkey. Turkey reacts every time there is a matter regarding PKK. They present this as if this is a problem of Turkey," he said.
"Let me say this clearly, a court ruling rejecting PKK as a terrorist organization and saying PKK could not be defined as a terrorist organization during clashes, considers Turkey, a member of the United Nations, as equal to a terrorist organization," the Turkish minister pointed out.
On Thursday, a lower court in Brussels refuted charges brought against 36 suspected PKK members. The defendants were accused of recruiting teenagers in Belgium and other "Western countries" and sending them for training in PKK camps in northern Iraq. The PKK suspects were also accused of forging documents and extortion.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and the US.
Celik also criticized as "racist" calls by some Western powers to suspend Turkey's accession negotiations with the EU over the massive crackdown on journalists and political rivals of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
European officials have been increasingly critical of Turkey's crackdown on people suspected of affiliation to US-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the Ankara government accuses of having masterminded the July 15 coup attempt.
Gulen has, however, censured the coup attempt and roundly rejected any involvement.
Turkish nationwide television news channel NTV, citing Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, reported on October 23 that security forces had arrested more than 35,000 people over alleged links to Gulen. He added that another 3,907 individuals were going to be arrested.
The minister said some 82,000 people had been investigated in connection with the failed coup, and that tens of thousands of them had been suspended, dismissed or jailed.
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Turkish Army Destroys 58 Daesh Targets in Northern Syria General Staff
Sputnik News
10:13 07.11.2016
The Turkish forces destroyed a total of 58 targets of the Daesh jihadist group and one position of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the past 24 hours as part of the Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria, Turkey's General Staff said in a statement on Monday.
ANKARA (Sputnik) Ankara considers PYD, and its military wing YPG (People's Protection Units) operating in Syria, an affiliate of PKK, which is outlawed in Turkey.
"Our armed forces destroyed 58 IS [Daesh] targets and one target of PYD-Kurdistan Workers' Party [PKK]. The Free Syrian Army [of Syrian opposition, FSA] liberated three settlements in the area of the city of Mari," the statement read.
The total area under FSA's control in the north of Syria amounts to 1,390 square kilometers [some 537 square miles], the General Staff added.
The Turkish military launched an operation to clear the Syrian border town of Jarabulus and the surrounding area of the Daesh, outlawed in Russia and multiple other countries, on August 24 prompting accusations of invasion from Damascus and Syrian Kurds.
Sputnik
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UK chosen as a global F-35 repair hub
7 November 2016
The F-35 maintenance programme will generate millions of pounds and support thousands of jobs in North Wales.
The Ministry of Defence is pleased to announce that the UK has been chosen by the F-35 Program Office to be a global repair hub providing maintenance, repair, overhaul and upgrade services for F-35 avionic and aircraft components. Over the lifetime of the programme, components for hundreds of European-based F-35 aircraft will be serviced and maintained in North Wales.
This work will generate hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue for the UK defence industry, with the potential to unlock more than 2Bn of future F-35 support revenue over the lifetime of the programme. This will help sustain thousands of high tech jobs and skills. The work will involve maintenance and repair of systems for the F-35 aircraft including electronic and electrical components, fuel, mechanical and hydraulic systems, and ejection seats.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:
"This establishes Britain as a hub for all European F35s and is hugely positive news for our high-tech and innovative defence industry. It is an endorsement of the skills and capabilities the UK offers; will help create hundreds of high-end jobs, safeguard thousands more and be a substantial boost to UK exports."
"Building on the strong foundations of Britain's pre-eminent and enduring defence partnership with the US, this decision supports British jobs and helps keep Britain safer and more secure."
The winning UK solution will be based on an innovative partnership enterprise between Defence Electronics & Components Agency (DECA), BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman, supported by key F-35 Original Equipment Manufacturers. The work will be centred at the UK Government-owned, Defence Electronics & Components Agency (DECA), based at MOD Sealand, in North East Wales.
Alun Cairns, Secretary of State for Wales, said:
"Today's announcement makes Wales an essential component repair hub for supporting the F-35 aircraft and confirms our status as a leader in aviation technology."
"I'm delighted that the expertise that exists in Wales, along with a skilled workforce, has been recognised by the award of this major contract. It will lead to the investment of millions of pounds into the economy of North Wales."
"The North Wales maintenance site already supports around 400 jobs with thousands more in the wider supply chain - these will be sustained and grown over the coming years as a result of today's news. MOD Sealand is a perfect location for maintenance work on this scale and I'm confident we will see further investment locally for the aerospace industry in Wales."
The new global avionic and aircraft component repair service is expected to be operational from early 2018.
Tony Douglas, Chief Executive Officer of the MOD's Defence Equipment and Support organisation said:
"The UK's winning proposal, which will provide best value for money for the F-35 enterprise, is testament to the strength of both UK Government and our industry knowledge and expertise."
Geraint Spearing, Chief Executive of the Defence Electronics & Components Agency added:
"Securing this global repair hub at DECA in our 100th year at the Sealand site is a fitting way to celebrate our Centenary. Our involvement in the global support solution for F-35 will continue to develop DECA's cutting-edge capabilities, allowing targeted investment and growth in our infrastructure and people. This will continue our proud heritage of providing pivotal support to our Armed Forces for many years to come."
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Saakashvili Lashes Out At Poroshenko, Quits As Odesa Governor
Christopher Miller November 07, 2016
KYIV -- The boisterous former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has resigned as governor of Ukraine's turbulent Odesa region, accusing the Ukrainian president of dishonesty and the central government of sabotaging crucial reforms.
"This is going on quite openly," Saakashvili told an outdoor press conference streamed live on Facebook from the port of Odesa.
Then, in an apparent allusion to the continuing war pitting Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine against the central government in Kyiv, he added that the "Odesa region is being handed over not only to corrupt people, but also to enemies of Ukraine."
Saakashvili, a firebrand reformer who was Georgian president from 2004-13, was appointed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to govern the Black Sea coastal region in May 2015.
He has repeatedly clashed with Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov, who is a former ally of ousted pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych.
Saakashvili relinquished his Georgian citizenship to assume official responsibilities in Odesa.
He had expressed increasing frustration with Poroshenko in recent months over reported efforts to root out corrupt officials and said in his resignation speech on November 7 that he was tired of broken presidential promises.
Looking straight at news cameras, Saakashvili directed a question at the president: "How much can you lie and cheat?"
Poroshenko's press office did not respond to Saakashvili's accusations, saying in an e-mailed statement to RFE/RL only that "the cabinet will submit Saakashvili's resignation to the president, [and] he will accept this resignation."
"The issue of why Mr. Saakashvili filed his resignation will be reviewed in an appropriate manner," the president's office added.
A presidential aide who spoke with RFE/RL on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to comment before an official statement was released said he was surprised by the timing of Saakashvili's announcement but not by the accusations leveled at Poroshenko, given other recent critical remarks.
Saakashvili said that "the last straw that broke my patience" was Ukrainian officials' income declarations made public last week. The data exposed vast gaps between the fortunes of politicians and those they represent at a time when Ukraine is pleading with the West for financial assistance.
The declarations placed Poroshenko and several lawmakers from his political party -- the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Solidarity -- on a list of the richest individuals in Ukraine, with millions of dollars' worth of assets in cash and property.
News of Saakashvili's resignation came as little surprise to Ukraine's reformist politicians and former cabinet members, some of whom said they viewed it as more evidence that the reform drive inspired by the Euromaidan unrest in 2013-14 was dying off.
Aivaras Abromavicius, the Lithuanian-born Ukrainian who served as the minister of economy in the technocratic government formed after the Euromaidan revolution, told RFE/RL that those pushing for change "have met a lot of obstruction."
"Ukraine's leadership and management style is not suitable for the type of challenges the country is facing and the time we're living in," said Abromavicius, who resigned along with his team at the ministry in February, complaining of corruption. "There needs to be more encouragement and empowerment of people who came to power after revolution. Those people have not been given real chances."
For the notoriously corrupt Black Sea region, Saakashvili's resignation "is not going to improve matters on that front in Odesa," Abromavicius continued. "A lot of young, energetic reformers rallied around him in Odesa. But clearly, as has always been the case, that there's not been enough support from the central government.
"There's so much more that all of us could have done with the right type of support," Abromavicius added.
Poroshenko allies have defended the president, saying Abromavicius and other critics have sought to lay the blame for their own failures on the ruling party.
Saakashvili vowed to reporters on November 7 to "start a new stage of the struggle" in Ukraine, although he did not provide details.
"I will do everything it takes until we win a complete victory to free Ukraine from this scum, from this corrupt dirt that capitalizes on the blood of our soldiers and victims of the [Euromaidan], who betrayed the idea of the Ukrainian revolution and whose only motivation is to line their own pockets!" he said.
The Euromaidan unrest cost many entrenched Ukrainian officials their jobs -- including West-wary President Yanukovych -- but it also ushered in instability that neighboring Russia seized on by sending troops to seize Crimea early in 2014. Moscow denies arming and supporting separatists who control parts of eastern Ukraine, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.
Saakashvili, who attended university in Ukraine, won over some Ukrainians early on with lofty talk of reform and fierce criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces he took on unsuccessfully as Georgia's president in a lightning war in 2008 in the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
One of Saakashvili's most widely acknowledged achievements as president of Georgia was a widespread crackdown on corruption and police reforms, although detractors there have accused him of going too far. He faces criminal charges in Georgia that he says are politically motivated.
Days before parliamentary elections last month in Georgia, he told a crowd of his former party's supporters via video that he would return to his home country to set the record straight after their election victory. Instead, his former party was dealt a crushing defeat.
Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-saakashvili- resigns-governor-odesa/28101338.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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Gulf Bridge International (GBI) has updated the North Route of its subsea cable through Iraq, improving route diversification and enhancing the resilience of internet connectivity to and from the region.
Dallas, Nov. 08, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Selery Fulfillment, a global logistics and fulfillment company, has announced the relocation of its corporate headquarters to a new, state of the art facility located at 13592 North Stemmons Freeway, Dallas, TX 75234.
The new headquarters covers 32,000 square feet with 5,000 square feet of climate controlled warehousing and office space. The facility is strategically located on Interstate 35, a key trucking and shipping route connecting manufacturing and distribution centers in Mexico with markets in the United States and Canada. Selery Fulfillment will also be able to leverage DFW Airport, the International Inland Port of Dallas, and other air, rail, and trucking hubs.
Additional competitive advantages inherent to the Dallas area include low cost of operations, access to a large and diverse workforce, world-class infrastructure, and the ability to ship products quickly and affordably anywhere in the US and abroad. Over 20 Fortune 500 and over 40 Fortune 1000 companies are headquartered in the Dallas metro area, and Texas ranks #2 in the country for Fortune 500 corporate headquarters.
Our new facility will allow us to provide much needed capacity and a complete turnkey, full service 3PL solution to our current and future customers, said Justin White, CEO of Selery Fulfillment. Our services include FBA prep, cross-docking, selling excess inventory, customized boxes and marketing materials, customer service, insurance, freight, and other services. Unlike many other fulfillment companies, we enjoy working with small and medium sized businesses. We offer custom, personalized solutions to help them strengthen their brand and to better serve their customers.
Selery Fulfillments customers include Fave4, HAWK + Sloane, The Imagination Agency, Diaper Sports, FallonTaylor.com, Koar, and over 60 other companies.
Selery Fulfillment also plans to accommodate larger international customers, such as companies located in China and India that would benefit from a US-based fulfillment center. Selery will be able to manage all fulfillment needs to include inventory management, customer service, and same day shipping.
Selerys process of identifying the requirements of the new facility and the timely execution of the relocation reflects an effective management team that works closely with its customers and stakeholders to deliver the best possible outcome, said Joe Jaramillo, Managing Partner of TIG Investments. Selerys new facility represents an inflection point for the company that will allow them to better serve their customers and aggressively grow the business. TIG invested in Selerys seed round after meeting Justin White at the Tech Wildcatters Pitch Day, the largest pitch event in the US.
Selery Fulfillment is a graduate of the Tech Wildcatters Gauntlet Accelerator Program and closed an oversubscribed seed round. The company recently announced the appointments of Stephen Hays and Robert Brevelle to its Board of Directors, and the company is hiring to fill key positions. Employment and customer inquiries should be sent to support@seleryfulfillment.com.
About Selery Fulfillment
Selery Fulfillment is a logistics company offering turnkey business-to-business and business-to-consumer solutions dedicated to helping eCommerce customers strengthen their brands, grow their online sales, and improve their customer engagement, service, and loyalty. Selery Fulfillment offers innovative personalized services, packaging, and technology to standout in the crowded eCommerce market. For more information, visit the Selery Fulfillment website at http://www.seleryfulfillment.com.
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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 7, 2016) - Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. (TSX: AVL) (OTCQX: AVLNF) ("Avalon" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed a non-brokered private placement today consisting of 4,545,454 flow-through shares at a price of $0.22 per share for gross proceeds of $1,000,000.
In conjunction with this private placement Avalon paid finder's fees of $60,000 and issued 272,727 non-transferrable finder's warrants, with each finder's warrant being exercisable to acquire one common share of the Company at a price of $0.25 for a period of 24 months from today. Pursuant to Canadian securities laws, the securities issuable under this private placement are subject to a hold period which expires on March 8, 2017. The proceeds from this offering will be used primarily to advance exploration work, including drilling, on the Company's Separation Rapids Lithium Project.
This press release is not an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "US Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to US persons (as defined in Regulation S under the US Securities Act) absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration.
About Avalon Advanced Materials Inc.
Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. (formerly Avalon Rare Metals Inc.) is a Canadian mineral development company specializing in niche market metals and minerals with growing demand in new technology. The Company has three advanced stage projects, all 100%-owned, providing investors with exposure to lithium, tin and indium, as well as rare earth elements, tantalum, niobium, and zirconium. Avalon is currently focusing on its Separation Rapids Lithium Project, Kenora, ON and its East Kemptville Tin-Indium Project, Yarmouth, NS. Social responsibility and environmental stewardship are corporate cornerstones.
For questions and feedback, please e-mail the Company at ir@AvalonAM.com, or phone Don Bubar, President & CEO at 416-364-4938.
This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to how the Company plans to use the net proceeds from the Private Placement, and that proceeds from this offering will be used primarily to advance exploration work, including drilling, on the Company's Separation Rapids Lithium Project. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "potential", "scheduled", "anticipates", "continues", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "scheduled", "targeted", "planned", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be" or "will not be" taken, reached or result, "will occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Avalon to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable at the time such statements are made. Although Avalon has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expected results described in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to market conditions, and the possibility of cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses as well as those risk factors set out in the Company's current Annual Information Form, Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure documents available under the Company's profile at www.SEDAR.com. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Such forward-looking statements have been provided for the purpose of assisting investors in understanding the Company's plans and objectives and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Avalon does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are contained herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
Strong portfolio performance leads to increase in guidance. $100 million agreement to acquire oil & gas royalties.
TORONTO , Nov. 7, 2016 /CNW/ - Franco-Nevada's CEO, David Harquail, commented: "Our overall portfolio is performing very well. We now expect to exceed the high end of our previous guidance range for both Gold Equivalent Ounces1 ("GEOs") and oil & gas revenues. In addition, we are benefiting from higher commodity prices. Even with our ongoing Cobre Panama contributions and industry leading dividend, Franco-Nevada is growing its cash balances and has no debt. We are also seeing investment opportunities across a range of commodities. Franco-Nevada has just agreed to acquire for $100 million oil & gas royalty assets in the U.S."
Financial results for Q3/2016 are reported in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. The highlights include:
123,065 GEOs a new record
$172.0 million in revenue a new record
$142.2 million of Adjusted EBITDA 2 or $0.80 per share a new record
or $0.80 per share a new record $54.4 million of Net Income or $0.31 per share
$53.5 million of Adjusted Net Income 3 or $0.30 per share
or $0.30 per share $277.6 million in cash and cash equivalents at quarter end and no debt
Revenues and GEOs by Asset Categories
Q3/2016 Q3/2015
Revenue
GEOs
Revenue
GEOs
(in millions)
#
(in millions)
#
Precious Metals
Gold
$ 113.4
85,127
$ 81.9
72,908
Silver
36.2
27,337
4.0
3,522
PGM
12.1
9,098
7.0
6,506
Precious Metals - Total
$ 161.7
121,562
$ 92.9
82,936
Other Minerals
2.0
1,503
3.0
2,701
Oil & Gas
8.3
7.8
$ 172.0
123,065
$ 103.7
85,637
For Q3/2016, revenue was sourced 94% from precious metals (66% gold, 21% silver and 7% PGM) and 83% from the Americas (15% U.S., 19% Canada and 49% Latin America). Costs and expenses increased year-over-year due to higher depletion and cost of sales, reflecting deliveries from the Antamina and Antapaccay stream acquisitions which were completed in October 2015 and February 2016, respectively. Oil & gas production levels and prices were stable year-over-year. Cash provided by operating activities was $121.6 million, an increase of 67% compared to Q3/2015.
Portfolio Updates
Precious Metals U.S.: GEOs from U.S. precious metals assets increased by 8% year-over-year with decreases from Goldstrike being more than offset by increased production at Marigold and the start of deliveries from the South Arturo mine. GEOs received from the U.S. precious metal assets were 18,920 GEOs. South Arturo (4-9% royalty) This project, operated by Barrick and Premier Gold, poured its first gold in August. Initial royalty payments were net of $3.1 million in advance minimum royalties previously paid. Q4/2016 payments are expected to be stronger as advance minimum royalties will no longer be netted from future payments. Marigold (0.5-5% royalty) Silver Standard provided new 5-year guidance that projects higher production averaging 220,000 ounces per year. Bald Mountain (0.875-5% royalty) Kinross reported that it has received a Record of Decision that will allow for increased exploration activity and a potential expansion. Hollister (3-5% royalty) Klondex Mines, Franco-Nevada's partner at Fire Creek/Midas, acquired the Hollister project during the quarter. Klondex has since reported high grade intersections at the Hatter Graben zone which is on the 5% royalty ground. Mesquite (0.5-2% royalty) New Gold announced that Mesquite's full-year gold production is expected to be approximately 15,000 ounces below the guidance range of 130,000 to 140,000 ounces. Q3/2016 production focused on waste stripping with a stronger Q4/2016 expected. Fire Creek/Midas (Fixed gold deliveries / 2.5% royalty) Klondex reported increased mineral reserves and resources for its Fire Creek and Midas operations. Stillwater (5% royalty) Stillwater now anticipates that the Blitz project will add between 270,000 and 330,000 PGM ounces of incremental production annually when fully ramped up by 2021-2022. This is an increase from the 150,000 to 200,000 PGM ounces that Stillwater previously expected. Castle Mountain (2.65% royalty) During the quarter, NewCastle Gold reported additional promising drill results and raised additional funding for this project in California. Stibnite Gold (1.7% royalty) Midas Gold filed its Plan of Restoration & Operations to start the environmental assessment for this historic mine in Idaho.
Precious Metals Canada: GEOs from Canadian precious metals assets increased by approximately 34% to 17,749 GEOs compared with Q3/2015. The main contributor to the increase was the Sudbury operation which benefited from stronger production. Detour (2% royalty) Detour Gold has revised production guidance slightly lower as a result of heavy rains during the summer. Detour also provided a preliminary 2017 outlook, which estimates production between 540,000 to 590,000 ounces versus the life-of-mine plan for 2017 of 614,000 ounces. Brucejack (1.2% royalty) Pretium Resources expects to begin commissioning of the underground mine in mid-2017. Eagle (1.5-2% royalty) Victoria Gold provided an updated feasibility study for this project in the Yukon which is part of the larger Dublin Gulch claim block. Musselwhite (5% profit royalty) Goldcorp has announced approval for a materials handling project which it expects will increase production by 20% over 2016-2018. Kirkland Lake (2.5% royalty reducing to 1.5%) In October 2016, Kirkland Lake exercised its option to buyback 1% of an overlying 2.5% NSR for an aggregate cash consideration of approximately $30.5 million ($36.0 million less royalty proceeds attributable to the buyback portion of the NSR paid to Franco-Nevada prior to the date of the buyback). The NSR, which covers all of Kirkland Lake's properties (including the Macassa mine), was acquired in October 2013 for $50.0 million.
Precious Metals Latin America: GEOs from Latin American precious metals assets represented the largest year-over-year increase due to the addition of the Antamina and Antapaccay streams. Precious metal GEOs delivered from Latin America were 63,921 GEOs, an increase of 88% year-over-year. Antamina (22.5% silver stream) Antamina delivered 19,975 GEOs during the quarter and 49,654 GEOs year-to-date. GEOs received year-to-date are higher than Franco-Nevada's original full-year 2016 guidance of 40,000 GEOs. Antapaccay (gold and silver stream) Antapaccay delivered 22,186 GEOs in Q3/2016. Candelaria (gold and silver stream) Candelaria delivered 16,807 GEOs, compared to 19,081 GEOs in the prior year quarter, as expected according to its mine plan. Lundin Mining reported increases in mineral reserves and resources despite depletion. Lundin also reported that all critical tailings dam construction permits have been received for the Los Diques tailings management facility and that early works are substantially complete. Guadalupe (50% gold stream) Early in the quarter, the 400,000 minimum ounce Palmarejo obligation was paid and fully met by Coeur Mining. That results in the original Palmarejo gold stream being terminated and the new Guadalupe stream commencing. Under the new agreement, deliveries are based on 50% of the gold produced from the Palmarejo property (including the new Guadalupe mine and the western portion of the Independencia mine) with ongoing payments equal to the lesser of $800 per ounce and the then prevailing spot price for gold. During the quarter, Coeur reported high grade intercepts in Guadalupe's Block C. Cobre Panama (gold and silver stream) During the quarter, Franco-Nevada contributed $40 million of its share of construction capital for the Cobre Panama project. Franco-Nevada at quarter end has contributed $416 million of its total $1 billion commitment for the construction of Cobre Panama. First Quantum increased its planned 2016 capital expenditure to $450 million from $390 million due to expedited stripping of the pit. The development remains on track for a phased commissioning in 2018 and continued ramp-up in 2019. Cerro Moro (2% royalty) Yamana reported that the Cerro Moro project in Argentina is expected to achieve production in early 2018.
Precious Metals Rest of World: GEOs from Rest of World precious metals assets increased year-over-year by 16% mainly due to deliveries from the Karma fixed ounce obligation. Precious metal GEOs from the Rest of World were 20,972 GEOs during the quarter. Cooke 4 (7% gold stream) On October 27 th , Sibanye Gold announced it has ceased production at the Cooke 4 underground operation. Franco-Nevada has an approximate $69 million carrying value for this stream. Once further information is obtained, an impairment analysis will be carried out and recorded in Q4/2016 as appropriate. Karma (fixed gold deliveries and stream) An additional 1,250 GEOs were sold in the quarter due to the timing of sales being carried over from the previous quarter, for a total of 5,000 GEOs sold in Q3/2016. Ity (1.5% capped royalty) Endeavour Mining previously reported an increase in reserves at Ity. It has now reported on two new discoveries, Bakatouo and Colline Sud, that are both on the royalty property and are in close proximity to the current mine. Sissingue (0.5% royalty) Also in Cote d'Ivoire, Perseus Mining stated it has started construction of Sissingue and expects to pour its first gold in the fourth quarter of 2017. Sabodala (fixed gold deliveries and stream) Teranga Gold announced that the mill optimization was commissioned early in August. It expects throughput to increase by 15%. Duketon (2% royalty) Regis Resources has announced reserve increases at its Duketon belt projects. Matilda (3-5% royalty) Blackham Resources began production at the Matilda Gold Project in July 2016. The company expects to produce 100,000 ounces per year over an 8 year mine life. A large land package and large sulphide resource offers longer-term potential. Butcher Well (1% royalty after 50,000 ounces produced) AngloGold Ashanti has entered into an exploration partnership with Saracen whereby AngloGold can earn up to 70% of the Butcher Well and Lake Carey tenements after spending A$25 million over 6 years. The exploration partnership excludes the Red October operation on which Franco-Nevada has a 1.75% royalty. Tasiast (2% royalty) Kinross continues to advance development of the Tasiast Phase One expansion. Normal operations resumed after a work stoppage in August and the company has signed a new 3-year collective labour agreement with unionized employees. Subika (2% royalty) Newmont Mining is expected to make a decision in the next quarter regarding an Ahafo mill expansion and the underground development of Subika.
Oil & Gas: Revenue from oil & gas assets increased to $8.3 million in Q3/2016 compared to $7.8 million in Q3/2015. Production remains relatively stable. Subsequent to quarter end, Franco-Nevada agreed to purchase for $100 million, from a private party, royalty rights in the STACK shale play in Oklahoma's Anadarko basin. The STACK has been gaining momentum over the past couple of years due to its status as one of the most economic shale plays in North America. The lands consist of 16,865 acres of GORR and mineral title rights that with pooling provides an estimated gross acreage of 74,880 acres with an estimated average 1.61% royalty rate. The top two operators of the lands are Newfield Exploration and Devon Energy. Both companies have made the STACK a major focus of their capital spending, a portion of which will be on the royalty lands. Full-field development is expected to begin in 2017. Cash flow from the royalty acreage as of September represents an annualized rate of $3 million per year and this is expected to grow substantially as full-field development is rolled out.
Guidance
Franco-Nevada realized record growth from its mineral assets for the first nine months of 2016. Mineral assets contributed 342,473 GEOs, while Franco-Nevada's Oil & Gas assets contributed $19.7 million in revenue in the nine months ended September 30, 2016. As a result, Franco-Nevada is pleased to raise its guidance for 2016 as follows:
Previously announced
Revised guidance
Mineral assets - GEO production1
(oz)
425,000 - 445,000 GEOs
445,000 - 455,000 GEOs
Oil & Gas assets - Revenue2
($)
$15.0 million - $25.0 million
$25.0 million - $30.0 million
1 In forecasting GEOs for the remainder of 2016, gold, silver, platinum and palladium metals have been converted to GEOs using commodity prices of $1,300/oz Au, $18.00/oz Ag, $950/oz Pt and $650/oz Pd. 2 In forecasting revenue from Oil & Gas assets for the remainder of 2016, the WTI oil price is assumed to average $50 per barrel with a $3.50 per barrel price differential for Canadian oil.
Of the 445,000 to 455,000 GEOs, Franco-Nevada expects to receive 315,000 to 325,000 GEOs under its various stream agreements. For the first nine months of 2016, 243,896 GEOs have been received from stream agreements, while 222,670 GEOs were received for full year 2015.
Dividend Declaration
Franco-Nevada is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.22 per share. The dividend will be paid on December 22, 2016 to shareholders of record on December 8, 2016. The Canadian dollar equivalent is determined based on the noon rate posted by the Bank of Canada on November 4, 2016. Under Canadian tax legislation, Canadian resident individuals who receive "eligible dividends" are entitled to an enhanced gross-up and dividend tax credit on such dividends.
The Company has a Dividend Reinvestment Plan ("DRIP"). Participation in the DRIP is optional. The Company will issue additional common shares through treasury at a 3% discount to the Average Market Price, as defined in the DRIP. However, the Company may, from time to time, in its discretion, change or eliminate the discount applicable to treasury acquisitions or direct that such common shares be purchased in market acquisitions at the prevailing market price, any of which would be publicly announced. The DRIP and enrollment forms are available on the Company's website at www.franco-nevada.com. Registered shareholders may also enroll in the DRIP online through the plan agent's self-service web portal at www.investorcentre.com/franco-nevada. Beneficial shareholders should contact their financial intermediary to arrange enrollment.
This press release is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer of securities. A registration statement relating to the DRIP has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and may be obtained under the Company's profile on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov.
Shareholder Information
The complete Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis can be found today on Franco-Nevada's website at www.franco-nevada.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov.
Management will host a conference call tomorrow, Tuesday, November 8, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time to review Franco-Nevada's Q3/2016 results. Interested investors are invited to participate as follows:
Via Conference Call: Toll-Free: (888) 231-8191; International: (647) 427-7450
Conference Call Replay until November 15: Toll-Free (855) 859-2056; Toronto (416) 849-0833; Pass code 96664262
Webcast: A live audio webcast will be accessible at www.franco-nevada.com
Corporate Summary
Franco-Nevada Corp. is the leading gold-focused royalty and stream company with the largest and most diversified portfolio of cash-flow producing assets. Its business model provides investors with gold price and exploration optionality while limiting exposure to many of the risks of operating companies. Franco-Nevada is debt free and uses its free cash flow to expand its portfolio and pay dividends. It trades under the symbol FNV on both the Toronto and New York stock exchanges. Franco-Nevada is the gold investment that works.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward looking information" and "forward looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, respectively, which may include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future events or future performance, management's expectations regarding Franco-Nevada's growth, results of operations, estimated future revenues, carrying value of assets, future dividends and requirements for additional capital, mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates, production estimates, production costs and revenue, future demand for and prices of commodities, expected mining sequences, business prospects and opportunities. In addition, statements (including data in tables) relating to reserves and resources and gold equivalent ounces ("GEOs") are forward looking statements, as they involve implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions, and no assurance can be given that the estimates and assumptions are accurate and that such reserves and resources and GEOs will be realized. Such forward looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budgets", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "projects", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to the effect that certain actions "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Franco-Nevada to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. A number of factors could cause actual events or results to differ materially from any forward looking statement, including, without limitation: fluctuations in the prices of the primary commodities that drive royalty and stream revenue (gold, platinum group metals, copper, nickel, uranium, silver, iron-ore and oil and gas); fluctuations in the value of the Canadian and Australian dollar, Mexican peso, and any other currency in which revenue is generated, relative to the U.S. dollar; changes in national and local government legislation, including permitting and licensing regimes and taxation policies and the enforcement thereof; regulatory, political or economic developments in any of the countries where properties in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest are located or through which they are held; risks related to the operators of the properties in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest, including changes in the ownership and control of such operators; influence of macroeconomic developments; business opportunities that become available to, or are pursued by Franco-Nevada; reduced access to debt and equity capital; litigation; title, permit or license disputes related to interests on any of the properties in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest; whether or not the Corporation is determined to have "passive foreign investment company" ("PFIC") status as defined in Section 1297 of the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended; potential changes in Canadian tax treatment of offshore streams; excessive cost escalation as well as development, permitting, infrastructure, operating or technical difficulties on any of the properties in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest; actual mineral content may differ from the reserves and resources contained in technical reports; rate and timing of production differences from resource estimates, other technical reports and mine plans; risks and hazards associated with the business of development and mining on any of the properties in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest, including, but not limited to unusual or unexpected geological and metallurgical conditions, slope failures or cave-ins, flooding and other natural disasters, terrorism, civil unrest or an outbreak of contagious diseases; and the integration of acquired assets. The forward looking statements contained in this press release are based upon assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including, without limitation: the ongoing operation of the properties in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest by the owners or operators of such properties in a manner consistent with past practice; the accuracy of public statements and disclosures made by the owners or operators of such underlying properties; no material adverse change in the market price of the commodities that underlie the asset portfolio; the Corporation's ongoing income and assets relating to determination of its PFIC status; no material changes to existing tax treatment; no adverse development in respect of any significant property in which Franco-Nevada holds a royalty, stream or other interest; the accuracy of publicly disclosed expectations for the development of underlying properties that are not yet in production; integration of acquired assets; and the absence of any other factors that could cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. However, 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. Investors are cautioned that forward looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Franco-Nevada cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward looking statements and investors should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein. For additional information with respect to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, please refer to the "Risk Factors" section of Franco-Nevada's most recent Annual Information Form filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities on www.sedar.com and Franco-Nevada's most recent Annual Report filed on Form 40-F filed with the SEC on www.sec.gov. The forward looking statements herein are made as of the date of this press release only and Franco-Nevada does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new information, estimates or opinions, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.
NON-IFRS MEASURES: Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EBITDA are intended to provide additional information only and do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. These measures are not necessarily indicative of operating profit or cash flow from operations as determined under IFRS. Other companies may calculate these measures differently. For a reconciliation of these measures to various IFRS measures, please see below or the Company's current MD&A disclosure found on the Company's website, on SEDAR and on EDGAR. Comparative information has been recalculated to conform to current presentation.
1 GEOs include our gold, silver, platinum, palladium and other mineral assets. GEOs are estimated on a gross basis for NSR royalties and, in the case of stream ounces, before the payment of the per ounce contractual price paid by the Company. For NPI royalties, GEOs are calculated taking into account the NPI economics. Platinum, palladium, silver and other minerals were converted to GEOs by dividing associated revenue, which includes settlement adjustments, by the average gold price for the period. For Q3 2016, the average commodity prices were as follows: $1,335 gold (2015 - $1,124), $19.62 silver (2015 - $14.91), $1,084 platinum (2015 - $988) and $676 palladium (2015 - $615).
2 Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA per share are non-IFRS financial measures, which exclude the following from net income and EPS: income tax expense/recovery; finance expenses; finance income; depletion and depreciation; non-cash costs of sales; impairment charges related to royalty, stream and working interests and investments; gains/losses on the sale of investments; and foreign exchange gains/losses and other income/expenses.
3 Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted Net Income per share are non-IFRS financial measures, which exclude the following from net income and earnings per share ("EPS"): foreign exchange gains/losses and other income/expenses; gains/losses on the sale of investments; impairment charges related to royalty, stream and working interests and investments; unusual non-recurring items; and the impact of income taxes on these items.
Reconciliation to IFRS measures:
Three months ended September 30,
(expressed in millions, except per share amounts)
2016
2015
Net Income (Loss)
$ 54.4
$ 15.2
Income tax expense (recovery)
12.9
8.5
Finance expenses
0.7
0.6
Finance income
(0.5)
(1.3)
Depletion and depreciation
72.9
49.7
Non-cash costs of sales
1.8
1.7
Impairment of investments
1.9
Foreign exchange (gains)/losses and other (income)/expenses
1.2
Adjusted EBITDA
$ 142.2
$ 77.5
Basic Weighted Average Shares Outstanding
178.1
156.9
Adjusted EBITDA per share
$ 0.80
$ 0.49
Three months ended September 30,
(expressed in millions, except per share amounts)
2016
2015
Net Income (Loss)
$ 54.4
$ 15.2
Foreign exchange (gains)/losses
0.2
1.3
(Gain) on sale of investments
(0.2)
Impairment of investments
1.9
Tax effect of adjustments
0.3
1.0
Other tax related adjustments:
Valuation allowance
(1.2)
Adjusted Net Income
$ 53.5
$ 19.4
Basic Weighted Average Shares Outstanding
178.1
156.9
Adjusted Net Income per share
$ 0.30
$ 0.12
FRANCO-NEVADA CORPORATION
CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION
(unaudited, in millions of U.S. dollars)
September 30, 2016
December 31, 2015
ASSETS
Cash and cash equivalents (Note 4)
$ 277.6
$ 149.2
Short-term investments (Notes 5 & 8)
18.8
Receivables (Note 8)
72.4
65.1
Prepaid expenses and other (Notes 6 & 13)
34.8
41.6
Current assets
384.8
274.7
Royalty, stream and working interests, net
3,684.7
3,257.5
Investments (Notes 5 & 8)
131.7
94.8
Deferred income tax assets
23.3
16.1
Other assets (Notes 7 and 13)
26.5
31.2
Total assets
$ 4,251.0
$ 3,674.3
LIABILITIES
Accounts payable and accrued liabilities
$ 19.5
$ 18.0
Current income tax liabilities
7.7
2.8
Current liabilities
27.2
20.8
Debt (Note 13)
457.3
Deferred income tax liabilities
35.7
33.2
Total liabilities
62.9
511.3
SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY (Note 14)
Common shares
4,654.0
3,709.0
Contributed surplus
43.2
44.3
Deficit
(292.6)
(302.2)
Accumulated other comprehensive loss
(216.5)
(288.1)
Total shareholders' equity
4,188.1
3,163.0
Total liabilities and shareholders' equity
$ 4,251.0
$ 3,674.3
Subsequent events (Note 17)
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements and can
be found in our Q3 2016 Report available on our website
FRANCO-NEVADA CORPORATION
CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME AND COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS)
(unaudited, in millions of U.S. dollars, except per share amounts)
For the three months ended
For the nine months ended
September 30,
September 30,
2016
2015
2016
2015
Revenue (Note 9)
$ 172.0
$ 103.7
$ 454.9
$ 322.3
Costs and expenses
Costs of sales (Note 10)
28.0
22.4
80.1
68.8
Depletion and depreciation
72.9
49.7
206.6
150.5
(Gain) loss on sale of gold bullion (Note 16(a))
(0.7)
0.5
(2.8)
0.5
Impairment charges
0.1
Corporate administration (Notes 11 & 14(c))
3.8
4.0
14.9
12.2
Business development
0.5
1.0
1.1
2.8
104.5
77.6
299.9
234.9
Operating income
67.5
26.1
155.0
87.4
Foreign exchange gain (loss) and other income (expenses) (Notes 5 & 16(a))
(1.2)
4.2
(2.4)
Impairment of investments
(1.9)
(1.9)
Income before finance items and income taxes
67.5
23.0
159.2
83.1
Finance items
Finance income
0.5
1.3
2.6
3.2
Finance expenses (Note 13)
(0.7)
(0.6)
(2.8)
(1.5)
Net income before income taxes
67.3
$ 23.7
159.0
84.8
Income tax expense (Note 12)
12.9
8.5
32.3
28.8
Net income
$ 54.4
$ 15.2
$ 126.7
$ 56.0
Other comprehensive income (loss):
Items that may be reclassified subsequently to profit and loss:
Unrealized gain (loss) in the market value of available-for-sale
investments, net of income tax expense of $1.2 (2015 - income tax
expense of $0.3), income tax expense of $1.7 (2015 - income tax
recovery of $1.0) (Note 5)
8.1
0.1
34.7
(4.3)
Realized change in market value of available-for-sale investments
(0.2)
(1.9)
(4.5)
(2.8)
Currency translation adjustment
(4.1)
(67.3)
41.4
(141.8)
Other comprehensive income (loss)
3.8
(69.1)
71.6
(148.9)
Total comprehensive income (loss)
$ 58.2
$ (53.9)
$ 198.3
$ (92.9)
Basic earnings per share (Note 15)
$ 0.31
$ 0.10
$ 0.72
$ 0.36
Diluted earnings per share (Note 15)
$ 0.30
$ 0.10
$ 0.72
$ 0.36
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements and can be found in our
Q3 2016 Report available on our website
FRANCO-NEVADA CORPORATION
CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS
(unaudited, in millions of U.S. dollars)
For the nine months ended September 30,
2016
2015
Cash flows from operating activities
Net income
$ 126.7
$ 56.0
Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities:
Depletion and depreciation
206.6
150.5
Proceeds from sale of gold bullion (Note 16(b))
59.4
36.6
Acquisition of gold bullion (Note 16(b))
(47.8)
(50.9)
Impairment charges
0.1
Impairment of investments
1.9
Other non-cash items
(0.8)
0.3
Gain on sale of investments (Note 5)
(4.5)
(0.9)
Non-cash costs of sales (Note 10)
5.3
5.0
Deferred income tax expense (Note 12)
2.6
8.0
Share-based payments (Note 14(c))
3.7
4.1
Unrealized foreign exchange loss
0.3
3.0
Mark-to-market on warrants (Note 5)
0.3
Operating cash flows before changes in non-cash working capital
351.5
214.0
Changes in non-cash working capital:
(Increase) decrease in receivables
(7.3)
22.1
Increase in prepaid expenses and other
(1.4)
(6.8)
Increase in current liabilities
6.3
0.1
Net cash provided by operating activities
349.1
229.4
Cash flows from investing activities
Proceeds from sale of investments
24.0
24.7
Acquisition of investments
(1.6)
(96.6)
Acquisition of royalty, stream and working interests
(597.1)
(44.2)
Acquisition of oil & gas well equipment
(1.7)
(2.3)
Acquisition of property and equipment
(0.1)
Net cash used in investing activities
(576.5)
(118.4)
Cash flows from financing activities
Net proceeds from issuance of common shares (Note 14(a))
883.5
Repayment of Credit Facility (Note 13)
(460.0)
Credit facility amendment costs
(1.2)
Payment of dividends (Note 14(b))
(87.4)
(70.4)
Proceeds from exercise of stock options (Note 14(a))
16.1
0.5
Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities
352.2
(71.1)
Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents
3.6
(27.0)
Net change in cash and cash equivalents
128.4
12.9
Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period
149.2
592.5
Cash and cash equivalents at end of period
277.6
$ 605.4
Supplemental cash flow information:
Cash paid for interest expense and loan standby fees
$ 2.4
$ 1.2
Income taxes paid
$ 27.1
$ 24.2
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these condensed consolidated financial statements and can
be found in our Q3 2016 Report available on our website
SOURCE Franco-Nevada Corp.
/THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NOT TO BE DISTRIBUTED TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR TO BE DISSEMINATED IN THE UNITED STATES. ANY FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS RESTRICTION MAY CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF U.S. SECURITIES LAWS./
VANCOUVER, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Brazil Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "Brazil Resources") (TSX-V: BRI; OTCQX: BRIZF) is pleased to announce that, further to its press releases dated October 28 and October 31, 2016, it has further increased the size of its previously announced private placement (the "Private Placement") from aggregate gross proceeds of $6.0 million to $9.0 million, or 3,600,000 units (the "Units") at a price of $2.50 per Unit, as a result of strong interest received from existing and new investors.
The Company is also pleased to announce that it has completed the initial tranche of the Private Placement and has issued 2,580,732 Units for gross proceeds of $6,451,830 (the "Initial Tranche").
As previously disclosed, each Unit consists of one common share of the Company and one half of a common share purchase warrant, each such warrant entitling the holder thereof to acquire one common share of the Company at an exercise price of $3.50 up to three years after the issuance thereof.
The Company intends to use proceeds from the Private Placement to bolster its ongoing acquisition strategy and for general working capital needs.
Closing of the balance of the Private Placement is subject to receipt of all necessary approvals, including approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV") and receipt of definitive subscriptions. The securities issued under the Private Placement will be subject to a four month hold period from the date of issuance, in the case of the Initial Tranche, expiring March 9, 2017, in addition to any other restrictions under applicable law.
The Company also wishes to correct its press release dated October 31, 2016, which incorrectly stated that the term of the warrants is two years. The correct term is three years from the date of closing of the Private Placement, as previously disclosed in the Company's press release dated October 28, 2016 and as disclosed herein.
The Units, common shares and warrants, including common shares issuable upon valid exercise of the warrants, have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any U.S. state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States, absent registration or an available exemption from the registration requirement of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws.
THIS PRESS RELEASE SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY, NOR SHALL THERE BE ANY SALE OF THE UNITS, COMMON SHARES OR WARRANTS, IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL.
About Brazil Resources Inc.
Brazil Resources Inc. is a public mineral exploration company with a focus on the acquisition, exploration and development of projects in Brazil, United States, Canada and other regions of the Americas. Brazil Resources is advancing its Titiribi Gold Copper Project, located in Colombia, Whistler Gold-Copper Project, located in Alaska, United States, Cachoeira and Sao Jorge Gold Projects, located in the State of Para, northeastern Brazil and Rea Uranium Project, located in the western Athabasca Basin in northeast Alberta, Canada.
Forward Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of the Company with respect to its performance, business and future events, including statements regarding the Company's long-term growth strategy and expectations regarding completion of the balance of the Private Placement. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which the Company operates, including that: the Company will receive subscriptions from subscribers and any required regulatory approvals in order to complete the Private Placement; the current price of and demand for minerals being targeted by the Company will be sustained or will improve; the Company's current exploration programs and objectives can be achieved; the Company will be able to obtain required exploration licences and other permits; general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner; financing will be available if and when needed on reasonable terms; the Company will not experience any material accident; the Company will be able to identify and acquire additional mineral interests on reasonable terms or at all; and the Company will be able to carry out its acquisition strategy. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: that the Company will not receive subscriptions from subscribers or all required regulatory approvals in order to complete the Private Placement; that the Company has a limited operating history; that resource exploration and development is a speculative business; that the Company may lose or abandon its property interests or may fail to receive necessary licenses and permits; that the Company's properties are in the exploration stage and are without known bodies of commercial ore; that the Company may not be able to obtain all necessary permits and approvals on any of its properties; that environmental laws and regulations may become more onerous; that the Company may not be able to raise additional funds when necessary; potential defects in title to the Company's properties; fluctuations in currency exchange rates; fluctuating prices of commodities; operating hazards and risks; competition; potential inability to find suitable acquisition opportunities and/or complete the same; that the Company will not be able to carry out its acquisition strategy; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the Company's public filings. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.
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.
SOURCE Brazil Resources Inc.
Vancouver, November 8, 2016 - Adamera Minerals Corp. (TSX-V: ADZ) announces the identification of geophysical targets on recently acquired state leased land in Washington State, part of the Company's Cooke Mountain project. The four targets are Stargate II geophysical anomalies (see below for system commentary) and are located 5 to 8 km from the Kettle River Gold Mill.One target is assigned a high priority given its location adjacent to the Lamefoot Mine, formerly a high-grade gold deposit developed by Echo Bay Mines. Three similar targets along trend are currently under follow up exploration.Detailed mapping on the targets has demonstrated the structural controls, alteration and favourable stratigraphy that are common to the Lamefoot, Key East, Key West and Overlook mines. Significantly, mineralization has been identified during surface mapping near one of the targets.
Mark Kolebaba President and CEO of Adamera states "The new Stargate II targets either flank past producing deposits, or are located along a mineralizing trend recently recognized by Adamera. With the presence of these anomalies combined with favourable geological features recently identified by Adamera, I strongly believe the prospectivity of these state leases has been significantly enhanced. These targets are now covered by soil sampling to better delineate drill targets."
Results of soil samples and other survey data will be used to determine drill targets. On the Cooke Mountain project, drilling can be conducted all year-round.
The Stargate II geophysical survey system is an airborne audio magnetotelluric (AMT) technology developed and deployed by Earth Science Services Corporation of Oshawa, Ontario. As reported by Adamera on June 9, 2016, the survey was conducted over Adamera's Oversight property and surrounding area.
A total of six geophysical anomalies have been identified by Mr. Glenn Galata of Earth Science Services. The survey identified an AMT target coincident with the known Overlook gold deposit and a second target approximately 100 metres from the deposit. That target is in part coincident with a significant gold, arsenic and copper soil geochemical anomaly developed by Adamera.
The Stargate II, system is in the developmental (pre-commercial) stage and as such the effectiveness of this technique is not fully known to the Company. Nevertheless the fact that one anomaly is coincident with the Overlook gold deposit and that others are near the Overlook and Lamefoot deposits is highly encouraging. Incidentally, Adamera did not provide Earth Science Services any geological or geochemical location data prior to the survey.
Adamera Minerals Corp. is exploring for high-grade gold deposits within hauling distance of the operating Kettle River Mill in Northeastern Washington State. The company's strategy is to fast-track the discovery to production process by exploring close to an existing mill in need of ore. Adamera is exploring several projects and is the dominant exploration company in the area.
C. Johnson, P.Geol a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 has reviewed the geological data in this release with the exception of data from the Stargate II geophysical system.
On behalf of the Board of Directors,
Mark Kolebaba
President & CEO
For additional information please contact:
Adamera Minerals Corp.
Tel: (604) 689-2010
Fax: (604) 484-7143
Email: info@Adamera.com
Website: www.Adamera.com
The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy
of this release. Statements in this press release, other than purely historical information, including statements relating to the Company's future plans and objectives or expected results, may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in resource exploration and development. As a result, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
SUDBURY, ON, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Transition Metals Corp. (XTM TSX.V) ("Transition" or "the Company"), is pleased to announce that it has executed an Option and Joint Venture Agreement with Aldershot Resources Ltd. (ALZ.H TMX NEX) ("Aldershot") and has initiated exploration work on the Haultain Gold Discovery. Under the agreement, Aldershot can earn an initial 51% interest and up to a 75% interest in the Company's Gowganda Gold project (the Property) area located 75 kilometres southwest of Kirkland Lake. The project hosts the Haultain Gold discovery, a zone of widespread alteration and gold mineralization associated with a suite of syenitic intrusions and major faulting discovered by Transition in 2010. Under the partnership with Aldershot, the Company has initiated programs of exploration work that will include 2,000 metres of diamond drilling to further evaluate gold targets identified on the property.
Company CEO and president, Scott McLean commented, "We view the Haultain Gold zone as an important discovery and we are looking forward to aggressively advancing this project with Aldershot as partner. "
To earn a 51% interest in the Property, Aldershot has committed to funding $400,000 worth of exploration on property in year one and must incur cumulative work expenditures totaling $2.0 million by the third anniversary of the agreement. In addition, Aldershot must issue 1,500,000 common shares to Transition on signing, and provide an additional $450,000 worth of Aldershot shares to Transition by the second anniversary date, subject to exchange approvals to earn its initial interest. During the course of the initial stage of the Option, Transition has agreed to serve as program operator, dedicating its team and expertise to overseeing work programs funded by Aldershot. Upon earning an initial 51% interest, Aldershot may opt to acquire an additional 24% interest in the Claims (for a total of 75%) by committing to completing a feasibility study. Upon Aldershot earning its 51% or 75% interest in the Property as the case may be, a Joint Venture would be formed, with each party obliged to fund work programs on the property to maintain its respective interest.
About the Gowganda Gold Project
The project consists of mining claims totaling approximately 3,520 hectares centrally located about Hwy 560 adjacent to the unorganized municipality of Gowganda Ontario in Nicol, Haultain, Milner, and Van Hise Townships, Larder Lake Mining Division. The project is focused on Archean greenstone overlain by Proterozoic sediments of the Cobalt Embayment located south of the Round-Lake Batholith in the south-western part of the prolific Abitibi greenstone belt. A short animated video that introduced Aldershot and the Haultain project may be viewed at: http://iresourcemedia.com/companies/aldershot/
Transition discovered the Haultain gold zone in 2010 and has since completed Induced Polarization (IP) geophysics, soil surveying, mapping, 10 mechanically stripped and channel sampled trenches and completed 21 drill holes totaling 2,258m. The property hosts widespread visible gold mineralization hosted by stockwork veining in altered syenite with assays ranging from nil to 3.5 g/t over significant widths in channel samples and drilling as well as up to 97 g/t Au over 0.4 metres within quartz veins. Reported drill intercepts include 2.37 g/t over 7.06 metres and up to 82.5 g/t Au over 0.4 metres. In 2015, Transition completed additional soil sampling and detailed mapping to assist drill targeting.
In conjunction with the transaction, Aldershot has prepared an updated 43-101 technical report for the project which shall be filed on their behalf on Sedar in the coming days.
Transition further discloses that it has entered into two separate Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") agreements with local First Nation communities. The MOUs define working relationships and establish protocols for engagement with each community. In conjunction with one MOU, Transition has agreed to issue 50,000 units to each consisting of a Transition common share and a common share purchase warrant exercisable for 3 years following the earlier of the date of issue or upon termination of the MOU at a price reflecting the 20 day volume weighted average trading price (VWAP) at the time of issue plus 25%. As part of the Option and Joint Venture Agreement, Aldershot has agreed to abide by the terms of the MOU and will reimburse cash to Transition for the issuance of units to the First Nation.
Qualified Person
The technical elements of this press release have been approved by Mr. Greg Collins, P.Geo. (APGO), a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101
About Transition Metals Corp
Transition Metals Corp. (XTM -TSX.V) is a Canadian-based, multi-commodity project generator that specializes in converting new exploration ideas into Canadian discoveries. The award-winning team of geoscientists has extensive exploration experience in established, emerging and historic mining camps and actively develops and tests new ideas for discovering mineralization in places that others have not looked, which often allows the company to acquire properties inexpensively. The team is rigorous in its fieldwork and combines traditional techniques with newer ones to help unearth compelling prospects and drill targets. Transition uses the project generator business model to acquire and advance multiple exploration projects simultaneously, thereby maximizing shareholder exposure to discovery and capital gain. Joint venture partners earn an interest in the projects by funding a portion of higher-risk drilling and exploration, allowing Transition to conserve capital and minimize shareholder's equity dilution. The Company has an expanding portfolio that currently includes more than 25 gold, copper, nickel and platinum projects primarily in Ontario, Nunavut, British Columbia, Minnesota and Saskatchewan.
Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Information
Except for statements of historical fact contained herein, the information in this news release constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities law. Such forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "plans", "proposes", "estimates", "intends", "expects", "believes", "may", "will" and include without limitation, statements regarding estimated capital and operating costs, expected production timeline, benefits of updated development plans, foreign exchange assumptions and regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, among others, metal prices, competition, risks inherent in the mining industry, and regulatory risks. Most of these factors are outside the control of the Company. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as otherwise required by applicable securities statutes or regulation, the Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE Transition Metals Corp.
Hole_ID Mineralized Intersection DH46 20.5m @ 7.5% Zn, 9.9% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 74.6g/t Ag from 415.3m DH06 21.3m @ 11% Zn, 4.8% Pb, 0.06% Cu, 94.4g/t Ag from 441.9m DH50 11.8m @ 9.8% Zn, 5.7% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 178.2g/t Ag from 484.6m DH43 9.4m @ 4.1% Zn, 12% Pb, 0.52% Cu, 242.8g/t Ag from 442.1m DH04 10.0m @ 13.8% Zn, 5.5% Pb, 0.08% Cu, 62.8g/t Ag from 448.1m DH52 19.3m @ 7.2% Zn, 1.2% Pb, 0.18% Cu, 64.6g/t Ag from 425.7m DH44 17.2m @ 2.9% Zn, 4.4% Pb, 0.11% Cu, 83.5g/t Ag from 447.9m DH167 4.5m @ 0.8% Zn, 2.6% Pb, 18.91% Cu, 867.6g/t Ag from 616.5m DH161 10.4m @ 8.4% Zn, 3.9% Pb, 0.09% Cu, 26.5g/t Ag from 607m DH206 10.0m @ 0.9% Zn, 8.7% Pb, 0.16% Cu, 90.7g/t Ag from 619m DH111 4.1m @ 21.5% Zn, 5.7% Pb, 0.1% Cu, 95.4g/t Ag from 447.6m
The initial discovery area, the Zinc Zone, has been drilled within an area of 950 metres by 400 metres, between 360-440 metres vertically below surface. Significant drill results in this zone include DH46: 20.5m @ 7.5% Zn, 9.9% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 74.6g/t Ag from 415.3m and DH06: 21.3m @ 11% Zn, 4.8% Pb, 0.06% Cu, 94.4g/t Ag from 441.9m.
The Copper Zone was found later in the Lundin program and is drilled within an area of 400 metres by 200 metres, between 520-670 metres vertically below surface. Significant drill results in the Copper Zone includes DH167: 4.5m @ 0.8% Zn, 2.6% Pb, 18.91% Cu, 867.6g/t Ag from 616.
Explore along the immediate extensions from the drilled high grade mineralization at Kilbricken, and;
Search for new discoveries and extensions of known mineralization in the well-endowed 25,282 hectare regional block.
VANCOUVER, Nov. 8, 2016 - Mitchell Resources Ltd. ("Mitchell" or the "Company") (TSXV: MI) is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement (the "Agreement") with the shareholders of Hannan Metals Ltd. ("Hannan Canada"), a private British Columbia company, to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Hannan Canada (the "Proposed Acquisition") and, consequently, a 100% interest in Hannan Canada's rights, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Hannan Metals Ireland Ltd. ("Hannan Ireland"), to the Clare prospecting licences in County Clare, Ireland (collectively, the "PLs"). Mitchell also wishes to announce a concurrent "part and parcel" financing of common shares (the "Shares") at $0.075 per common share to raise aggregate gross proceeds of up to approximately $786,000 (the "Financing"). Proceeds from the Financing will be used to fund the Proposed Acquisition, complete initial exploration on the PLS, and for corporate and general working capital.The Clare zinc-silver-lead-copper property (the "Clare Property") consists of 7 PLs for 25,282 hectares located in County Clare, Ireland, the western extent of which lies 1.5 km from the town of Ennis. PLs 3509, 3640, 3643, 3679, 3787, 3788 and 3789, issued by the Exploration and Mining Division ("EMD") of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment are 100% owned by Hannan Ireland.The Irish base metal ore field is one of the world's best mineralized zinc provinces and is considered highly prospective for new zinc discoveries. In 2015 Ireland was the world's 10th largest zinc producing nation with 230,000 tonnes produced.The Clare Property is underlain by an open syncline comprised of Upper Devonian (sandstones) to Lower Carboniferous (sandstones and limestones) rocks. The Lower Carboniferous sequence includes the Waulsortian Limestone, which hosts most of Ireland's important zinc-lead sulphide deposits, such as the Lisheen and Galmoy deposits.The Clare Property has a rich history of small scale 19century mining (Figure 1). Modern exploration efforts from the mid-1960's, by Irish Base Metals, Rio-Finex, Central Mining Finance, Billiton and Belmore Resources Ltd followed up some of these earlier historic mines. There are two known Waulsortian-hosted zinc-lead deposits on the property, the flagship Kilbricken prospect (see below) and the smaller Milltown prospect, where Belmore Resources Ltd ("Belmore") intersected 13.3m @ 5.8% Pb and 10.5% Zn from 45.4 metres in drill hole 3788/19 in 1994. The lowest part of the sequence is also prospective for copper-silver mineralization and contains numerous copper showings, most notable at Ballyvergin where Irish Base Metals drilled hole BV11 which intersected 31.5m @ 1.0% Cu from 51.7 metres in the 1960s.In 2008, Belmore, a private Irish company, drill tested the base of the Waulsortian Limestone beneath near-surface sulphidic and calcite veined shelf carbonates at the historic Kilbricken lead mine. The discovery drillhole at Kilbricken, DH04, intersected 10m @ 13.8% Zn, 5.5% Pb, 0.08% Cu, 62.8g/t Ag from 448.1 metres at the target base of Waulsortian Limestone.After this initial discovery, Lundin Mining Exploration Limited ("Lundin"), a subsidiary of Lundin Mining Corp. (TSX:LUN), joint ventured Kilbricken and wider tenure package from Belmore. In 2011, Lundin purchased 100% of Belmore. Drilling by Lundin from 2009 to 2012 continued to intersect sulphide mineralization in the hanging wall of a the Main Kilbricken fault. Significant intersections from Lundin's drilling programs are shown in Table 1.Table 1: Kilbricken better mineralized drill intersectionsThe main Kilbricken mineralization (Figures 2 and 3) has been drilled within an area of 1,500 metres by 800 metres in plan view and remains open in most directions. Mineralization, defined as ? 4.0m @ ?4.00% Zn Eq or 16m% Zneq where Zn Eq = Zn% +(Pb% x 1.15) + (Ag ppm x 0.037917), ranges in thickness from 2 metres to 31 metres thick and averages 7.5 metres thickness. Two main mineralized zones have been discovered to date:Lundin completed significant work on the property. A total of 216 drill holes for 116,230 metres were drilled by Lundin in the Kilbricken area. Lundin also undertook regional exploration in the remainder of the Clare Property, largely focussed on other Waulsortian-hosted zinc-lead prospects. Lundin carried out 616 metres of drilling at the Ballyvergin prospect with the objective of discovering additional zones of copper-silver mineralization. Lundin drilled a total of 2,370 metres on the Kilmurry Project, located within the Clare project area 26 kilometres along strike from Kilbricken. In addition, significant surface geochemical and multiple geophysical surveys have been undertaken by Lundin and previous operators on the Clare project area. Of particular note are a 3D seismic survey over the main Kilbricken mineralization in 2011, and 2D seismic survey conducted in 2012 that consisted of 8 traverses (3-3.5 km long) over a total 10 kilometre strike length, spaced between 1-2 kilometre across the regional Kilbricken extensions.Massive sulphide mineralization at Kilbricken most commonly consists of early massive-textured, fine-grained pyrite, galena and sphalerite cross-cut by coarse-grained sphalerite and galena, resembling sulphides found in the overlying veins. It differs from most other Irish zinc/lead prospects in that it is rich in silver, most commonly associated with galena-rich zones.The Kilbricken Project is considered by Hannan Ireland to be highly prospective for the discovery and potential development of zinc-lead-silver suphide deposits. The Kilbricken deposit is open along strike and down-dip.The two-fold aim to explore the Clare Property is:A detailed 3D compilation of geological and seismic datasets to create a basinal to local scale structural and stratigraphic model is now underway, with concurrent re-interpretation of 2D and 3D seismic data. Hannan Ireland then plans to outline the first resource model on the property. An initial budget of CDN$200,000 is planned, with follow up drilling when further capital has been raised.The Company has entered into the Agreement with the principals of Hannan Canada, Michael Hudson and Mark Saxon, to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Hannan Canada at cost, being nominal consideration, as a means to acquire a 100% interest in Hannan Ireland's rights to the PLs. The Company will assume all obligations of Hannan Ireland.The PLs were assigned to Hannan Ireland, and were acquired, effective September 21, 2016, pursuant to an Assignment Agreement (the "AA") between the Irish Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Hannan Ireland and Lundin. Under a separate Asset Purchase Agreement (the "APA"), dated June 3, 2016, Hannan Ireland purchased all exploration data associated with the PLs from Lundin for a cash payment of US$150,000. Hannan Ireland must make two additional cash payments to Lundin Mining of US$425,000 each on September 21, 2017 and March 21, 2018. Lundin retained a 2% net smelter return royalty on all sales of mineral products extracted from the area of land subject to the PLs, subject to a 0.5% buy back right of Hannan Ireland for US$5,000,000, which must be exercised within one year from the date of commercial production. Hannan Ireland is required to pay Lundin a one-time bonus payment of US$5,000,000 within the earlier of (i) Hannan Ireland's decision to proceed with mine construction or (ii) within 90 days of the establishment of a commercial financing to finance capital costs for mine construction. Additionally, Hannan Ireland will be required to pay a one-time cash fee of US$2,000,000 less cash payments already made to Lundin, if it transfers its rights to the PLs to an arm's length party (which excludes Mitchell) for US$10,000,000 or greater within 18 months of the execution of the APA.On the closing of the Proposed Acquisition, it is expected that Michael Hudson will be appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Company and will join existing directors Nick DeMare, Harvey Lim, David Henstridge and Michael Iannacone on the Company's board of directors.Mr. Michael Hudson, B.Sc. (Hons 1) is an explorationist and entrepreneur. During the last 25 years he has developed and financed mineral exploration properties. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1990 with a B.Sc. (Hons 1st) in Geology and more recently received the Tolhurst Noall Prize for "Mining Investment Analysis" in Victoria, Australia for the FINSIA Graduate Diploma. Starting his career underground for 3 years in Broken Hill in 1990 with Pasm Inco Ltd. , he has managed and developed exploration to pre-feasibility projects in Pakistan, Australia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Ireland for major and junior mining companies. He was an integral team member for the discovery of the Portia gold deposit in the Olary district of South Australia, the Duddar Pb-Zn mine in Pakistan, the Norra Karr REE deposit in Sweden and the Rompas-Rajapalot gold property in Finland. Since 2004 has headed Mawson Resources Ltd. (TSX:MAW) as founding Chairman, CEO and Director. He is also a founder and Chairman of Leading Edge Materials (TSXV:LEM) a critical metals company in Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and Member of both the Society for Economic Geologists and Australian Institute of Geoscientists.The Company also proposes to change its name to "Hannan Metals Ltd." on the closing of the Proposed Acquisition.Completion of the Proposed Acquisition is subject to a number of standard conditions precedent, including, without limitation, the completion of satisfactory due diligence on the PLs by the Company, the completion of the Financing and the receipt of all regulatory approvals, including the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). In order to obtain requisite acceptance from the Exchange with respect to the Acquisition, the Company will have to satisfy the Exchange requirements, which include delivery of an independent technical report in respect of the PLs prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").This press release is not an offer or a solicitation of an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to U.S. Persons absent registration under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements.Mr. David Henstridge, a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining Metallurgy the Company's qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the contents of this press release.On behalf of the Board,"Nick DeMare"Nick DeMare, President & CEOForward Looking Statements: Certain information set forth in this news release contains "forward-looking statements", and "forward- looking information" under applicable securities laws. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include the Company's expectations about the completion of the Proposed Acquisition and the concurrent Financing, future performance based on current results, expected cash costs and are based on the Company's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Some of the forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "will", "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "projects", "plans", and similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which, may cause the Company's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projects of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statement. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: liabilities inherent in mine development and production, geological, the financial markets generally, the results of the due diligence investigations to be conducted by the Company as against the PLs, the satisfaction of the conditions precedent to complete the Proposed Acquisition, the ability of the Company to obtain a technical report with respect to the PLs, to complete the concurrent Financing or obtain Exchange acceptance of the Proposed Acquisition, the ability of the Company to raise additional capital to fund its planned operations. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news releaseNOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATESFigure 1: (see above)Figure 2: Kilbricken Plan ViewFigure 3: Typical Stylized Cross Section Through the Kilbricken ProspectCompany Contact: Nick DeMare+1 (604) 685 93161305-1090 West Georgia StreetVancouver, BC V6E 3V7
VAL-D'OR, QC, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. (TSX: OGD) ("Orbit Garant" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the signing of an important partnership agreement (the "Partnership") with the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi (the "CFNW") in the province of Quebec. Through the Partnership, Orbit Garant will provide mineral drilling training and job opportunities for the CFNW, access a skilled local work force and enhance its position as a preferred partner for drilling contracts on the CFNW traditional lands.
"We are delighted to be partnering with the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi. We look forward to supporting Waswanipi skilled labor development by sharing our industry-leading drilling expertise," said Eric Alexandre, President and CEO of Orbit Garant. "Mining and exploration activities are increasing in the Eeyou Istchee/James Bay territory and we believe the underexplored CFNW traditional lands will become an important mining region in the years ahead. We are confident this partnership will be mutually beneficial."
Chief Marcel Happyjack of the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi stated: "Our community and Council have increased collaboration with the mineral exploration and mining industry in recent years. Orbit Garant's training facility, rigid environmental standards, and reporting obligations, combined with a strong industry track record were key selection factors. The signing of this agreement ensures that there will be meaningful opportunities and benefits for our community members without sacrificing sustainability."
About Cree First Nation of Waswanipi
As the southernmost Cree community, the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi is the gateway to Eeyou Istchee (Northern Quebec). While the development of the region has had an impact on our lands and community, we are committed to the sustainable management of our resources. Our hard work and dedication with the model forest networks is an example to what can be achieved through proper consultation and research on development with our respective traditional territory. We welcome visitors and guests with open arms ready to explore new cultures and to experience a unique and distinct way of life.
About Orbit Garant
Headquartered in Val-d'Or, Quebec, Orbit Garant is one of the largest Canadian-based mineral drilling companies, providing both underground and surface drilling services in Canada and internationally through its 226 drill rigs and more than 900 employees. Orbit Garant provides services to major, intermediate and junior mining companies, through each stage of mining exploration, development and production. The Company also provides geotechnical drilling services to mining or mineral exploration companies, engineering and environmental consultant firms, and government agencies. For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.orbitgarant.com.
Forward-looking information
This news release may contain forward-looking statements (within the meaning of applicable securities laws) relating to business of Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. (the "Company") and the environment in which it operates. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as "believe", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "plan", "will", "may" and other similar expressions. These statements are based on the Company's expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections. They are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's regulatory filings available at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Readers, therefore, should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Further, a forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any such statement or to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances.
SOURCE Orbit Garant Drilling Inc.
Small businesses are the backbone of urban economies: They play a critical role in creating jobs for local residents. Yet too often city leaders and economic developers are not prioritizing small businesses when allocating resources to drive growth, focusing their strategies instead on the attraction and retention of large businesses. A new report by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City may make public officials consider shifting these priorities. The report provides compelling evidence that small businesses rival, and often exceed, the impact of large businesses when it comes to job creation.The research, conducted with the support of JPMorgan Chase, was released on the heels of the bank's announcement that it was committing an additional $75 million to its Small Business Forward initiative, recognizing the contribution of small businesses to economic opportunity and reducing unemployment, especially for women, minorities and veterans.ICIC's report measures the current state of small business jobs in five cities: Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., and identifies key findings regarding small businesses and urban job growth.In all five cities, the distribution of small businesses and large businesses is similar, with small businesses -- those with 250 employees or fewer -- representing at least 99 percent of all businesses in the city. Despite this parallel, small-business job creation varies across the cities ICIC studied, ranging from 48 percent in Dallas to 74 percent in Los Angeles.58 percent in Chicago, 53 percent in Detroit, 74 percent in Los Angeles and 62 percent in D.C. In Dallas, small businesses provide slightly less than half of all jobs. Although "micro" businesses (those with one to five employees) make up the largest share of businesses in the cities ICIC studied, medium-sized businesses (those with five to 249 employees) are driving job creation.In four of the five cities, small businesses create a greater share of jobs in distressed inner-city neighborhoods than in the city overall: 70 percent in Chicago, 64 percent in Detroit, 77 percent in Los Angeles and 74 percent in D.C. Dallas is distinct in that large businesses employ more inner-city residents than small businesses, which only account for 38 percent of jobs.In these five cities, a modest increase in small-business jobs could create enough employment opportunities forunemployed inner-city residents. In four of the five cities, this growth translates to only about one additional employee per small business. Of course, this is not to suggest this growth will come easily for these small businesses, many of which have fewer than five employees. With relatively higher unemployment, Detroit would also require more aggressive small-business growth, just over three jobs per small business.Despite the big impact small businesses can have on job creation, small-business support in most cities is an uncoordinated set of programs that focus only on the business owner's education rather than on the larger business environment. City leaders will need to leverage new tools to maximize small-business job creation in their cities. ICIC offers five critical strategies: Create a comprehensive small business plan connected to regional and city economic assets. Expand contracting opportunities for small businesses so that they can compete on procurement contracts with government and anchor institutions. Design workforce programs for small businesses, since many do not have the resources or capacity to recruit and train new employees (especially those with barriers to employment). Coordinate resources and ease burdensome regulations by mapping and making more accessible the resources that already exist. Upgrade the inner-city business environment by improving infrastructure and neighborhood amenities to support small-business growth.Big tax-revenue gains and economy of scale continue to shape how many economic-development professionals think about job creation. Yet ICIC's report makes a strong case for city leaders to support the growth of small businesses with the same resources and intentionality as they do with their efforts to attract and retain large businesses.
Federal judges in North Carolina and Pennsylvania have turned down Democratic Party requests for orders barring their Republican counterparts from harassing voters at the polls.In their rulings Monday, both judges said there was insufficient evidence to justify the injunctions Democrats sought against state GOP officials, Donald Trump's campaign, Trump backer Roger Stone and his group Stop the Steal."While the statements of the defendant Roger Stone, the defendants presidential nominee, and the nominees surrogates, taken in context, may be susceptible to the interpretation that Mr. Stone and the Trump campaign are encouraging their supporters to intimidate voters, there is little evidence that supporters are acting on these indirect suggestions," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles, who sits in Greensboro, N.C. "There have been only a handful of hearsay reports that purported supporters of the defendants presidential nominee may have threatened or intimidated voters in North Carolina during several weeks of early voting."Philadelphia-based U.S. District Court Judge Paul Diamond said the Democrats failed to produce any real evidence that pro-Trump groups were planning to intimidate those intent on exercising their right to vote.
In January, Lucia Guzman hopes to do what she's done each of the last three times she's been elected to the Colorado Senate.She'll fly to Houston. She'll drive a bit west to the Katy Magnolia Cemetery. She'll walk to the two graves beneath the scrub oak tree where her parents are buried and will fill them in on the upcoming legislative session. She'll be clutching a small trowel.But this trip, the daughter of Mexican immigrants hopes to tell them one more thing: She hopes to tell them she made history.If the Democrats win big in Colorado on Tuesday, they could take control of both state legislative chambers. If that happens, the state would become the first in history to have its legislature led by two Latinas -- Guzman as the Senate president and Crisanta Duran as the House speaker.Guzman, 70, said the thought of what that moment might feel like made her cry."It is a long line dating back many years when my grandparents crossed the border from Mexico to Texas and brought my father over as an infant," Guzman said. Her success, she said, would give "such a sense of pride and do justice for many of those Latinos in Colorado who came from similar backgrounds."The Colorado Senate is currently controlled by Republicans by a one-seat majority, while Democrats hold a three-seat edge in the House. Nothing is guaranteed, but Democrats appear to have a good chance of holding the House while flipping the Senate.Guzman is Senate minority leader and Duran is the House majority leader.The early voting trend gives a slight advantage to the Democrats. As of Thursday, Democrats had cast about 14,000 more ballots than had Republicans.And like many swing states in a presidential election cycle, the Latino vote here is seen as crucial to victory. GOP candidate Donald Trump alienated that demographic with anti-immigrant rhetoric that included calling Mexicans coming across the border rapists and talking about building a wall along the border.Eric Sondermann, a Denver-based political analyst, said Trump "seems to have done all he can not to win the state" with a campaign that has also put down-ticket Republicans at risk and given Democrats a shot at big wins in Colorado."The Democrats are hoping -- despite current polling showing the presidential race narrowing -- this becomes a wave year in Colorado," Sondermann said.Colorado has the country's eighth largest Latino population -- about 1.1 million -- and there are 555,000 eligible Latino voters in the state, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.That's a long way from 1974, when Polly Baca was the state's first Latina to be elected to the Colorado House and the state's Latino population was under 340,000.It was unforgettable to her for two reasons."I didn't know I was pregnant when I got elected in November. I found out in December," Baca said. "So I was ... not only the first Hispanic-American woman in the state House, but the first pregnant woman to be in the Colorado Legislature. It was rather hectic."The '80s brought more gains for Latinos in Colorado. Denver became one of the first major cities to elect a Latino mayor when Federico Pena won his race against long-time incumbent William McNichols Jr.Pena said the state has a rich tradition of electing minorities and it's not surprising Colorado could have two Latinas heading up the Legislature."I still think it could be a close election," Pena said. "But I think Trump may be having the same effect on Colorado that Pete Wilson did on California."Wilson, as governor of California in the '90s, backed Prop. 187, which sought to strip public benefits from immigrants here illegally and sowed seeds of mistrust toward the Republican Party. The GOP in California has never recovered.Duran said she never imagined seven years ago when she was first elected to her seat that she'd be poised to be House speaker.The 36-year-old said her parents were the first in their families to go to college and instilled in her a desire to work in public service, but it's her grandmother she'll be thinking about on election day."My grandmother only had a third-grade education," Duran said. "She had such great pride and honor in being a wonderful mother and phenomenal grandmother, but at times I think she was embarrassed she didn't know how to read or drive."Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said seeing two Latinas be the first to simultaneously head two state legislative chambers, along with a number of other possible firsts -- most prominently, Hillary Clinton as the first female president -- shows how much the political landscape is shifting."It's been a process. It didn't just all happen this year," Walsh said. "This is all part of a continuum and it's part of seeing our democracy evolve and expand to become more inclusive."Cesar Blanco, interim director of the Latino Victory Fund, said that while Colorado's possible history-making moment is something to be applauded, "we still have a lot of work to do." There are 7,383 state legislators nationwide and fewer than 5% are Latino, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.When the Colorado General Assembly convenes in January, each of the elected lawmakers will get a pin to wear to commemorate the 70th regular session. Most will put it on a lapel or on a blouse -- a point of pride and a piece of history -- that will identify them in the Capitol as they start the work of passing a budget, crafting bills and making laws.Guzman, however, will not be wearing that pin. She will take it back with her to Texas and leave it where she believes it belongs.She'll take the small trowel in her hand and dig a little hole in the fresh earth near where her previous three general assembly pins are buried. Guzman will then place the new pin carefully in the freshly-dug hole to be with her parents. To be a part of her history.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says a federal jury's conviction Friday of two former aides in a political payback scheme involving the George Washington Bridge does not reflect poorly on him and confirms what he thought when the scandal erupted in January 2014."I've had 25 people serve on my senior staff over seven years," Christie said in an interview with Charlie Rose, part of which was broadcast Monday on "CBS This Morning.""And I had one person who didn't get it," Christie said, referring to former deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly. "One out of 25. So I don't think it says anything about me. I think it says everything about that person."He did not mention _ and was not asked about _ testimony that other high-ranking officials in the Christie administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey knew about the bridge plot or helped cover it up with a bogus story of a traffic study.Christie said that contrary to news reports, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump never asked him to be his running mate.Prosecutors accused Kelly and Bill Baroni, Christie's former top executive appointee at the Port Authority, of conspiring with former agency official David Wildstein to cause major traffic jams at the bridge in 2013 to punish a local mayor for his refusal to endorse the Republican governor's re-election bid that year.Wildstein, who pleaded guilty in the case last year and was the government's star witness, testified that at a 9/11 memorial service, Baroni bragged to Christie about "tremendous" traffic problems in Fort Lee, Bergen County, and that the Port Authority was not returning the mayor's phone calls.Baroni also told Christie that Wildstein was "monitoring the traffic" and "watching over everything," according to Wildstein."Well, I'm sure Mr. Edge would not be involved in anything that's political," Christie responded sarcastically, then laughed, Wildstein testified.From 2000 to 2010, Wildstein ran a political blog under the pseudonym Wally Edge, a riff on Walter Edge, a former New Jersey governor. Baroni disputed Wildstein's testimony.In Monday's interview, Christie reiterated his long-held position that he had "absolutely no recollection" of the conversation."If they would've told me 'Hey, we're creating traffic at the George Washington Bridge in order to punish the mayor for not endorsing you,' I would have remembered that," Christie said. "And they never said that."Christie added, inaccurately: "In the whole trial, no one _ not even Bridget Kelly, Bill Baroni, or David Wildstein _ ever testified that anyone ever said to me that this was an act of political retribution."Kelly testified that on Sept. 12, 2013, the fourth day of the lane closures, she told Christie that Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich had called a staffer in the governor's office complaining "about government retribution, or something like that."Kelly told jurors that Christie replied: "It's a Port Authority project. Let Wildstein handle it."Christie told Rose that the "jury confirmed what I thought on January 9th, 2014," the day after emails surfaced that appeared to link Wildstein and Kelly to the lane closures."Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," Kelly wrote in a now-infamous August 2013 email to Wildstein, a month before the lane closures. "Got it," he replied."I thought there were three people responsible: David Wildstein, Bill Baroni, and Bridget Kelly," Christie told Rose.He said the jury had reached the same conclusion. One juror has said Christie should have been charged in the case, and another told Bloomberg News that based on the evidence, she concluded that the governor was "a master puppeteer and was aware of everything that went on" in his administration.Christie fired Kelly on Jan. 9 and distanced himself from Wildstein. During a nearly two-hour news conference that day, Christie told reporters he was severing ties with Bill Stepien, his campaign manager and close adviser whose name had surfaced in the Jan. 8 email disclosure.But he did not condemn Baroni, who, along with Wildstein, had already resigned from the Port Authority in December.In the interview broadcast Monday, Rose also asked Christie about the presidential race.Asked whether he thought the bridge scandal had any impact on his vice presidential fortunes, Christie said he was unsure."I can't measure it. You'd have to ask Donald Trump. But Donald Trump didn't call me and say, 'You're not going to be vice president because of Bridgegate,'" Christie said.Trump ultimately chose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate.Asked whether he planned to run for office again, Christie said, "We'll see. Right now I don't. But you never say never in this life, Charlie."
Description
GIS 08 November 2016: The necessity for a fresh approach to education, where excellence and quality become the central pillars of the system, and where the ingenuity, skills and varied abilities needed to face the challenges and capture the opportunities of the international environment are developed, was highlighted this morning by the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, at the University of Technology, Mauritius (UTM) in Pointe aux Sables.
The Minister was addressing the first cohort of 23 graduates being conferred the Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology under the Graduate Training for Employment Scheme (GTES). The GTES is a project of the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research implemented by the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) in collaboration with the private sector, geared to enhancing the employability prospects of unemployed graduates.
With regard the objective of Government to develop Mauritius into a knowledge, innovation and technology based nation, Mrs Dookun-Luchoomun stressed that education being the driver of change and innovation, it is only natural that all reforms that are ongoing or that will be envisaged for the future will have to serve towards maintaining the countrys competitiveness in a challenging international economic environment. She added that learning institutions have to facilitate the acquisition of soft skills, the out-of-the-box thinking that employers see as most contributory to their success.
The Minister underscored the need to support learning institutions in the venture of providing skills that are in tune with the requirements of the evolving industry, adding that the support and collaboration of industry, industry associations and employers can in no way be minimized. In fact, such active and enabling collaboration along with the backing of training providers like the UTM is essential for the viability and sustainability of the GTES scheme, she pointed out.
The Minister commended the industry partners for having successfully collaborated towards making the GTES programme a reality, and expressed her appreciation to the UTM and the HRDC for their dedication towards the success of the project. She also called on the graduates to prepare and equip themselves with skills that may be required for new jobs in the future. You have to continue to remain alive and relevant to the realities that this 21st century is unfolding by constantly upgrading, even acquiring new skills and competencies, she stated.
The School of Innovative Technologies and Engineering of UTM has developed the Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology jointly with five main actors of the ICT industry namely The Ceridian Mauritius Ltd, Accenture, Agileum, Orange Business Services and the Enterprise Information Solutions from the Rogers Group. The Postgraduate Diploma, launched in February 2016, is a six-month tailor-made crash course in ICT aiming at bridging the gap between academic knowledge and professional industry focused requirements. It comprises a two-month placement at the five ICT companies.
PALO ALTO, Calif. The smart devices we carry with us and cling to represent treasure troves of personal data; they could be the linchpin a prosecutor needs to prove a person's location when a crime occurred, which is why agencies are more active than ever in going after them.Together, our personal technology's value and the related privacy issues has become a new sort of frontier for law enforcement and our courts. And the parameters around law enforcement's access and whether access is even given must be dealt with.For U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith, who began his term as a magistrate judge in Houston, Texas, in 2004, computer and device searches present an interesting challenge. When he started the federal judgeship, he said the rules of around technology were still solidifying and opinions were difficult to come by.Back in 2004, there wasnt anything out there as far as giving us guidance as to how to interpret this bizarre complex statute called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and that was very frustrating, he said during a panel discussion at Stanford University Nov. 2. There werent any published opinions, much less Court of Appeals opinions, and Supreme Court opinions were nowhere to be seen.In the 12 years that have followed, precedent has been set in a variety of cases, but the lack of strong technical knowledge by many judges leaves something to be desired.Smith described his role as being on the firing line of new surveillance and digital recovery methods. While he is quick to point out that his duty is protecting the Constitution above all else, he admits the technical nature of some of the requests require outside help and a willingness to seek deeper understandings of the techniques.Im still clinging very strongly to my flip phone; believe it or not, I dont have a smartphone If somebody like me has to chart their own course, thats a disturbing thing, he joked.Generally speaking, when applying for a warrant, a law enforcement agent would file an affidavit citing the validity of the request and work with a U.S. attorney to file an application for the warrant with the magistrate judge.Because much of the warrant process is done on the front end of an investigation, Smith said he and his colleagues must act as the backstop against unnecessary searches and carefully weigh what is at risk.We need to take time to get it right," he said. "We take an oath to uphold the Constitution, just like the Supreme Court justices. And so if we are presented with something that violates the Fourth Amendment, we cant sign it. We shouldnt sign it."The secrecy of the process to protect the integrity of the investigation and the lack of defense counsel means magistrate judges must question the scope and validity of each application that crosses their desks.Where computer searches are requested, Smith said an extra measure of caution is required. Because more and more information is available on personal computers, each application must be carefully weighed to ensure fishing expeditions are not permitted on the part of law enforcement.Where I struggle, more commonly than other areas, is when they are asking to search computers because there will be a crime, theyll probably have enough probable cause to justify a search of the computer, but I worry that these days, well, everything is on computer, he explained. I struggle with that, I really do.Though the federal judge said he considers these issues carefully with each application, a general technical understanding and workload can become an issue as judges negotiate the barrage of applications that come their way. On an average day, Smith said he sees between 10 and 12 warrant applications.Part of the problem is that many judges, who are less attuned to these issues than I am, dont exactly know what they are being presented with, he explained. You can get a very anodyne term like network investigative technique or NIT. What the heck does that mean?"And that's something that easily can be glossed over, he added, especially if a judge is busy that day.Im not sure that I or even most magistrate judges have enough technical background to push back, Smith said. We need to understand that we are not authorizing these massive general warrant searches that could potentially infect hundreds if not thousands of innocent computers.Moving forward, Smith said his hopes are two-fold: He wants to see tech-knowledgeable lawyers percolating up to the bench, and he hopes transparency within the process will become the norm. He openly admits the secrecy of the federal warrant process is a necessity for many of the investigations, but he also said the public has a right to know how the courts and government agencies are operating around pervasive technologies.One thing that bothered me starting the job was the lack of information given to the public about what we do with these applications," he said. "For all they know, we are just sitting there with rubber stamps granting all these things, and I dont think thats the case.In his jurisdiction, Smith said modernization would be required to take the process from where it stands now in an analog log to a digital and transparent process.We need to make our warrant docket just as publicly accessible as the civil and criminal docket is. Obviously you cant immediately disclose the warrant applications or the tracking device applications because youre going to blow the investigation, he explained. So some limited degree of sealing is necessary, but it doesnt need to be sealed forever. It seems to me that there is some information about that application that ought to be available to the public immediately.
Why drive hundreds of miles or jump on an expensive flight if you have some of the nation's most frequented destinations right in your backyard? And if they offer discounts to state or local residents, that's an even better reason to stay put.
Check out these 10 impressive travel deals that are for locals only.
Walt Disney World (Orlando, FL)
Can't get enough of all the magic that Disney World has to offer? If you're a Florida resident, you get a free month on the house when you purchase an annual pass. Even better, the Walt Disney World annual pass can be used at any of the four theme parks. But don't wait too long to take advantage of this special offer, as it ends on January 3, 2017.
Universal Orlando Resort (Orlando, FL)
Are you among the tons of Florida residents who are completely over Mickey Mouse Land? No worries! Not only does Universal offer Florida dwellers a generous discount of up to $50 off annual and seasonal passes, but you can also save up to $50 on admission to Universal Studios or Islands of Adventure, or on the multi-park pass.
SEE ALSO: Your Trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Might Cost More Than You Thought
Old Town Trolley Tours (7 Locations)
Old Town Trolley Tours extends buy one, get one deals to local residents for sightseeing tours in Boston, Key West, Nashville, Savannah, San Diego, St. Augustine, and Washington, D.C. Hop aboard to get an up close and personal tour of the famous landmarks in your city. And don't forget to bring along a friend for free!
National Aquarium (Baltimore, MD)
The National Aquarium is home to 14 experiences and exhibits, such as Shark Alley and Jellies Invasion. And from now through February 28, 2017, Maryland residents who visit the aquarium between Sunday and Friday before noon will receive $10 and $5 off adult and children's tickets, respectively.
Water World (Denver, CO)
Looking to have a little water-soaked fun in the sun? Residents of Hyland Hills Park and Recreation District or the City of Westminster can save over $20 on admission to Water World. Even better, senior residents are eligible for free admission. Tickets include free parking and unlimited access to Water World's 49 attractions.
SEE ALSO: The Complete Guide to Senior Discounts
Big Bus Las Vegas (Las Vegas, NV)
Big Bus offers hop-on, hop-off bus tours of the famous landmarks located directly on the strip and in the heart of downtown Las Vegas. And if you happen to call Sin City home, you can take advantage of a 50% discount available through Vegas4Locals by printing out this coupon and presenting it to the bus driver. Alternatively, call Big Bus Las Vegas at 702-685-6578 and mention promo code "V4L".
StarLite Cruises (St. Petersburg and Clearwater, FL)
After a trip to the theme park with the little ones, what's better than a date night with your significant other? If you're a resident of the Sunshine State, StarLite Cruises offers a 25% discount on admission for select Dining Yacht cruises. All you have to do is enter the promo code "FRO" at checkout.
SEE ALSO: Planning a Cruise? When to Book and When to Sail
Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY)
The Corning Museum of Glass boasts impressive collections of glass from around the world. And if you live in or near Corning, New York, and your ZIP code begins with 148, 149, or 169, you'll receive 50% off admission for yourself and two guests.
San Francisco Zoo (San Francisco, CA)
The San Francisco Zoo hosts Free Days for local residents throughout the year. It's home to over 20 exhibits and 1,000 exotic, endangered, or rescued animals, all of which are accessible on free admission days. However, you must arrive by 4 pm local time to take advantage of this special offer.
Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, IL)
MSI also offers free admission to Illinois residents on certain days throughout the year with proof of residency. Visitors can find exhibits for all ages, along with guided tours and Omnimax shows. (A fee applies for guided tours and Omnimax features on free admission days.)
Readers, have you taken advantage of any of these deals? What locals-only deals do attractions in your area offer? Let us know in the comments below!
And if you're planning a vacation outside of your neighborhood, check out the discounts on sightseeing and activities in DealNews' travel deals.
(TNS) -- Cherokee Nation Technologies has a unique partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA to support hurricane forecasting and damage assessment.The collaborative effort has been using the unmanned aircraft Global Hawk to fly above hurricanes Gaston, Hermine, Karl and Matthew and in front of Hurricane Nicole. The unmanned aircraft deploy sondes, probes that automatically transmit information about surroundings. Forecasters use data collected by the high-flying unmanned aircraft to assist in predicting the intensity and path of current and future hurricanes.Cherokee Nation Technologies provides NOAA services in science, technology and operations, including program management, systems engineering, data management, testing and evaluation.JC Coffey, a retired naval aviator and now executive director of unmanned systems for Cherokee Nation Technologies, said in a phone interview the missions performed by NOAAs UAS Programs Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology Team, also known as SHOUT, provide forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami with real-time, vertical meteorological observations, which are being used to get better forecasts on pending hazardous weather events and to increase the continuity of satellite data.The unmanned aircraft teams also work closely with the manned C-130 Hurricane Hunters, Coffey said. The Hurricane Hunters are aircrews that fly into both Atlantic and Pacific storms to gather weather data. Currently, the U.S. units that fly these missions are the U.S. Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron and NOAA's Hurricane Hunters.A summer of SHOUT Hurricane Rapid Response missions shows 12 unmanned flights were conducted in total, with nine specifically called "science flights." Some 656 sondes were deployed over the course of 239.2 flight hours from July 28 to Oct. 10. During Hurricane Matthew, the teams flew three consecutive flights and deployed 168 sondes over the course of 73.2 hours, a record 90 of those sondes being deployed in one flight, the mission report states.Observation platformThe Global Hawks capability to scan large areas of the ocean has also proven to be beneficial as an observing platform for environmental assessment and forecasting.This important work is making it possible to learn more about severe weather without risking a life in uncertain environments, Steven Bilby, president of Cherokee Nations diversified businesses, said in a news release. Its also assessing and alerting emergency personnel to damage left in the immediate wake of hazardous storms.A smaller unmanned aircraft system also recently used aerial imagery to access post-storm damage in Georgia after Hermine passed through the area. The images were immediately provided to the local Emergency Management Agency and National Weather Service.Last summer, the Global Hawk flew over Tropical Storm Erika, resulting in the first time its real-time weather data was implemented into hurricane models around the world to assist in forecasting a tropical storm.For more information about Global Hawk and the SHOUT mission, go to uas.noaa.gov/shout Coffey has worked in the Department of Defense as an acquisition professional. He joined CNT in 2014 specifically to expand and advance the companys capabilities in unmanned systems.Since 2009, Cherokee Nation Technologies has been serving government clients on software and application services, network services and business process services. The company is headquartered in Tulsa, with a regional office in Fort Collins, Colo. Client locations are nationwide.
Innocence 101
Ugly history
'Impressive' initiative
(TNS) -- They could almost be taken for a class of undergraduates, sitting in the dark hush of a university amphitheater, sipping from water bottles and scribbling notes while a lecturer guides them through a PowerPoint presentation.Except that these students were only taking a quick break from their day jobs. They are the New Orleans Police Department detectives who investigate rapes, murders and robberies.And on one recent weekday they found themselves taking part in an unprecedented experiment.Under heavy pressure from the federal government to reform, a police force with an alarming record of putting innocent people behind bars has called in an unlikely pair of teachers two attorneys from the Innocence Project New Orleans, a group best known for freeing the wrongfully convicted.Perhaps no other place needs this education like New Orleans.Louisiana has the second-highest rate of exonerations of people who were wrongly convicted of any state, according to the National Registry on Exonerations. And Orleans Parish has the highest exoneration rate of any major county or parish in the country.We are like an airline that has historically had the most crashes, said Emily Maw, director of the Innocence Project. It would be really weird of us not to want to look at what led to those crashes.Nationally, more than 1,900 people have been exonerated since 1989, thanks in part to DNA technology and psychological research on false confessions. In Orleans Parish, 18 people have been freed, along with 11 from Jefferson Parish.Some of that record is the result of the work of Maw's group, a local offshoot of the national Innocence Project that has repeatedly secured freedom for inmates by unmasking egregious missteps by police and prosecutors like a crucial report on a murder case that was mysteriously misplaced for years as well as innocent slips such as false witness identifications.Given the often adversarial role the Innocence Project has taken against prosecutors and police, it was probably no surprise that a class run by the group's attorneys began with assurances that they were only there to help the assembled cops.They are here to make your job better, said Chris Goodly, the commander of the NOPD Training Academy.Maw and a colleague then walked through the whole litany of mistakes that can lead to a wrongful conviction. To illustrate a point about the unreliability of witness identification, they played a quick, shaky video of a dodgy-looking man setting a bomb. Minutes later, the detectives were asked to pick the bomber out of a lineup.The results weren't good, even for this group of seasoned investigators. Only three of 39 got the answer right.But then Maw, in her characteristically excited English accent, explained what went wrong. The bomber was not in the lineup at all. The correct answer was none of the above.Its a well-established fact in psychological research on lineups that the power of inadvertent suggestion will foil nearly everyone who runs through a similar exercise.In fact, thanks to its post-2012 court-ordered reforms, the NOPD requires detectives to instruct witnesses that the perpetrator of a crime might not be in a lineup. One of the detectives who got the answer right was quick to remind her colleagues about that. In the new NOPD, detectives also must videotape formal interviews.At the same time, the Innocence Project instructors were at pains to avoid laying all blame for poor police work at the feet of overworked officers.The room grumbled in agreement as Maw told the detectives that wrongful convictions are more likely to come from overstretched prosecutors and cops than from malicious ones.The NOPD has lost hundreds of officers over the past five years, leading to skyrocketing caseloads for those who remain. Homicide detectives now handle roughly twice the nationally recommended number of cases.An hour into the class, phones across the room lit up with an announcement. Just across the street from police headquarters, another man had been shot to death.With nearly half the homicide squad out of service for the training, one detective made the obvious joke: Who was left to handle this one?The NOPD's partnership with the Innocence Project follows a string of developments in old cases that showed just how fallible police work can be. Reginald Adams was freed from prison in 2014 after the district attorney acknowledged that two former homicide detectives had lied on the stand in order to convict him of killing a cop's wife in New Orleans East in 1979. He has since sued the district attorney and the city over his decades behind bars.In September, U.S District Judge Sarah Vance ruled in favor of John Floyd , a convicted double murderer who claimed that a homicide detective had liquored him up at a French Quarter tavern before extracting a confession from him in 1980.And Jerome Morgan has long maintained that police pressured two witnesses to identify him as the killer of a 16-year-old boy at a 1993 birthday party in Gentilly. His conviction was vacated in 2014, and the district attorney has dropped an effort to bring him to trial again I wouldnt have guessed that (the NOPD) would have been the first one to invite an Innocence Project in, said Richard Leo, a professor at the University of San Francisco and an expert on false confessions. Theyve had, as you know, a long history of racism and corruption and misconduct and shady things.Indeed, a previous attempt at detente between the Innocence Project and law enforcement fizzled. In 2014, the group announced a partnership with Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office based on the notion that everyone in the system wanted to free the truly innocent. The partnership collapsed a year later, having sprung a single convict.But Maw insisted that current detectives have no reason to feel offended by revelations of wrongful Orleans Parish convictions from decades ago. Also, many sprang from errors by prosecutors, not police.Over two hours of the training, no detectives raised objections to Maw's points.We have been really impressed with how interested and open the detectives have been, she said. They want to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. That is the healthiest approach any organization can have.The Police Departments collaboration with the Innocence Project is still in its infancy. But it already has won praise from the federal monitors overseeing a 2012 consent decree mandating NOPD reforms that was prompted in part by notorious cases of police misconduct in the chaos following Hurricane Katrina.The monitors dont often dish out praise for police academy classes, but in their most recent report to a federal judge they spoke of the wrongful conviction training in glowing terms. The topic was important, the instruction was impressive, and the exercises were instructive, they wrote.Maw said that in eight sessions, roughly 200 detectives have already taken the three-hour course, and she hopes to train more in the future.As with many of the initiatives under the federal consent decree, the question of whether the training will improve the Police Departments record in the long run remains unanswered.The average exonerated person in Louisiana has spent 20 years in prison before being freed, according to the National Registry on Exonerations, so the answer may lie decades in the future.Mike Glasser, the president of the Police Association of New Orleans, is doubtful training will help avoid wrongful convictions."Its an ethical issue. Its not really a professional one," he said. "We remain confident that we're ethical and we do the best job possible."But James Trainum, a former Washington, D.C., homicide detective who took part in the U.S. Justice Department's review of the NOPD in 2010, said he wishes he had had the benefit of such training before he investigated his first homicide in 1994.Trainum has written a book about that case, in which he extracted a false confession from a woman accused of murder . The woman was eventually freed because a homeless shelters sign-in logs proved she could not have committed the crime.When Trainum went back and watched the videotape of his interview, he realized that he had inadvertently fed the woman details of the killing.Those are some lucky detectives to be getting that training, he said. Theyre being taught how to avoid the mistakes that weve learned through experience.
The Valencia GP round will be a special occasion for Aprilia Racing. For the last race of the 2016 season, the entire team will dress in red and the Aprilia RS-GP bikes will be on the track in a special livery, bathed in the same colour, where only the (RED) logo will appear.
Aprilia is doing this to celebrate the association that has distinguished itself over the years with its efforts in policies of the fight against diseases that represent one of the biggest problems of our times. This unprecedented initiative makes Aprilia Racing and the entire Piaggio Group proud to be promoters and protagonists of it.
Coinciding with the Valencia race, the hashtag #iRideRED will arrive, to be shared full throttle and to participate in the most important race, the one against the HIV virus and other terrible diseases.
Founded in 2006 by Bono and Bobby Shriver, (RED) has contributed $360 million to the Global Fund in the battle against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. These funds have arrived in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia. 100% of the resources have been invested in Africa to finance programmes intended to fight HIV/AIDS. (RED)'s support for the Global Fund has had an impact on more than 70 million people with prevention, treatment and consulting operations, as well as HIV tests and assistance services.
Aprilia Racing and the Piaggio Group wish to thank all the partners, the sponsors and the riders who, with great sensitivity and maturity, have collaborated to make such an important, high social profile project successful, agreeing to the creation of the RS-GP in the livery entirely dedicated to (RED).
Fulcrum and Air BP, the aviation division of BP, have also agreed to terms on a 500-million gallon jet fuel offtake agreement that will provide Air BP with 50 million gallons per year of low-carbon, drop-in jet fuel. Air BP will also have the opportunity to provide fuel supply chain services for the blending, certification and delivery of Fulcrums jet fuel to commercial and military aviation customers.
Fulcrum BioEnergy and BP signed a major strategic partnership that includes a $30-million equity investment in Fulcrum by BP. With Fulcrums first plant under construction, this partnership accelerates the construction schedule for Fulcrums next renewable jet fuel plants.
This transaction represents Fulcrums fourth major corporate investment and partnership following similar deals with United Airlines, Waste Management and Cathay Pacific.
Entering into this strategic relationship with a global oil and gas company enhances the value of Fulcrums waste to fuel platform. This allows us to accelerate development of our second and third plants. With BPs expertise in refining and fuel services, their partnership provides value beyond the investment, fuel offtake and logistic services. E. James Macias, Fulcrums President and CEO
The Fulcrum process begins with the gasification of organic material in the waste feedstock to a synthesis gas (syngas)primarily carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. This syngas is purified and processed through the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) process to produce a syncrude product which is then upgraded to jet fuel or diesel.
During the gasification process, the prepared MSW feedstock rapidly heats up upon entry into the steam-reforming gasifier and almost immediately converts to syngas. A venturi scrubber captures and removes any entrained particulate, and the syngas is further cooled in a packed gas cooler scrubber. The cleaned syngas is them processed through an amine system to capture and remove sulfur and carbon dioxide. The syngas then enters the secondary gas clean-up section that contains compression to increase syngas to the pressure required by the FT process. The end syngas product is very clean with zero sulfur content.
The FT portion of Fulcrums process is an adaptation of the well-established Fischer-Tropsch process which has been in commercial operations for decades. In the FT process, the purified syngas is processed through a fixed-bed tubular reactor where it reacts with a proprietary catalyst to form three intermediate FT products, a Heavy Fraction FT Liquids (HFTL) product; a Medium Fraction FT Liquids (MFTL) product; and a Light Fraction FT Liquids (LFTL) product, commonly called Naphtha. The Naphtha is recycled to the partial oxidation unit with remaining tail gas to be reformed to hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
In the last step, hydrotreating, hydrocracking and hydroisomerization upgrading steps are used to upgrade the combined HFTL and MFTL products into jet fuel.
In building strong strategic partnerships with industry leaders such as Waste Management, Waste Connections, Cathay Pacific, United Airlines, Tesoro and now BP, Fulcrum has entered into long-term agreements for feedstock, fuel offtake and fuel logistic services to advance its development platform. The company has also entered into alliances with the US Air Force, US Navy and the US Department of Agriculture that further support the growth of Fulcrums business enterprise.
With the support of BP and its other strategic partners, Fulcrum is accelerating the development of additional, larger-scale projects across North America that will have the capacity to produce more than 300 million gallons annually of renewable transportation fuels. Jet fuel produced from Fulcrums plants will be cost competitive with fossil jet fuel, providing airlines with an attractive, low-carbon alternative. Fulcrums jet fuel will also provide significant environmental and sustainability benefits, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% compared to fossil jet fuel.
However, Roskill also projects that, driven by rapidly increasing demand for neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets (used in traction motors among other applications), neodymium will fall into deficit in 2016, although demand will initially be met by the drawdown of stocks. Roskill forecasts that the deficit will increase to 2021, making continued growth of NdFeB magnets unsustainable, despite efforts by rare earth producers to increase neodymium supply.
In its new rare earths market report with forecasts out to 2026, Roskill, a leader in international metals and minerals research, observes that the permanent magnet and catalyst sectors will continue to provide the largest markets for rare earths in the next ten years to 2026. Catalysts will continue to drive growth in the light rare earth elements lanthanum and cerium, while permanent magnets will lead growth in neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium.
The neodymium price will rise towards the point of inflection, above which magnet consumers will begin to replace NdFeB magnet technologies with substitutes, Roskill says.
The green energy sector is the most vulnerable to price rises because of the large size of magnets used. Technologies already in use in this industry as an alternative to permanent magnet motors include induction motors in NEVs and induction/synchronous generators in wind turbines.
Roskill expects that by 2021 the high price of neodymium and concerns over supply availability will make projected growth rates of NdFeB demand unsustainable. Demand for NdFeB magnets will fall rapidly from 2022, before stabilizing at a much lower growth rate. Overall, NdFeB magnet growth between 2021 and 2026 is forecast to be flat, possibly falling by up to -1%/year.
In the short-term to 2021, Roskill forecasts neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet demand to grow strongly. The traditional consumer electronics and automotive sectors account for the majority of NdFeB demand, but these magnets will experience strong growth from the emerging green technologies of wind turbines and new energy vehicles (NEVs).
Between 2016 and 2021, global NdFeB magnet production is forecast to grow by 4-5%/year. Global NEV production could rise by 3.5-4.0 million vehicles, while global wind power installations could increase by 0.4M MW according to Roskills new rare earth report.
Chinese NEV consumption will see high growth rates as these vehicles are exempt from city number plate lotteries. The Chinese government is also offering a range of tax cuts and purchasing incentives to encourage the uptake of NEVs.
Demand for dysprosium will also grow from the use of magnets in high temperature applications (including NEVs) but manufacturers are actively trying to reduce dysprosium-containing magnet consumption wherever possible and to develop new ways to reduce intensity of dysprosium use. Little to zero dysprosium is consumed in wind turbines; maximizing airflow allows for a lower operating temperature in this application.
The price of neodymium (and, to a lesser extent praseodymium and dysprosium) will rise with increasing NdFeB magnet demand to 2026. The price for most other rare earth elements, however, will decline over this period, according to the forecast.
Lanthanum and cerium prices will be limited by surplus supply. Prices for europium and terbium will fall considerably as demand from the phosphors industry continues to decline rapidly. These two elements were previously perceived to be critical because of their high use and low availability. The recent shift in the lighting industry, from fluorescent to LED lamps, however, has reduced demand for rare earth phosphors by around two thirds since 2011.
China dominates global rare earth supply, accounting for an estimated 88% in 2016. Chinas position weakened slightly in the 2010s as ROW (rest of world) production increased with the start of mining by Lynas in Australia and by Molycorp in the USA. Molycorp has since declared bankruptcy and closed its operations in 2015.
Low prices for most rare earths to 2026 will discourage investment in new projects and the rare earth industry in the ROW is not expected to see a significant injection of new capacity. Current producers may expand where possible to serve increasing neodymium demand.
Illegal mining remains one of the main threats to rare earth prices going forward, Roskill notes. The Chinese government has committed to reduce illegally sourced material by introducing a raw material tracing system and granting great powers to raid and prosecute illegal miners, separators and distributors. Mining from unofficial sources accounts for 25-30% of global rare earth supply in 2016 and is mainly carried out in the south of China where a large number of companies extract small quantities of heavy rare earths.
The Chinese system of export quotas and taxes was scrapped in 2015 after China lost an appeal with the WTO. Chinese exports of rare earth compounds, metals and alloys are expected to rise by 17,100t in 2016 but are unlikely to see a significant increase in future years as the vast majority of consumption takes place in China. The Chinese government continues to encourage downstream processing and the export of manufactured goods over raw materials. Some of the increase in 2016 may be a result of China filling the void left by Molycorps closure.
A Nevada judge today denied a Trump campaign request to isolate early voting ballots that Republicans say were cast after polls should have closed.
I won't try to dig into the details of that dispute, but I do wonder how late people actually will be voting in North Carolina tonight.
Polls are supposed to close at 7:30, but people who are waiting at that time are allowed to proceed.
If large numbers wait until after work to go vote, lines in some areas could be long.
One factor, which may catch some voters by surprise, is the elimination of straight-party voting.
For the first time in virtually every North Carolinian's voting lifetime, that option is not available.
It was eliminated by the Republican legislature and by Gov. Pat McCrory because, the governor told us recently, it's just better for citizens to consider each race separately.
Big Brother just wants what's best for us.
I think the idea is to discourage Democratic voters with long voting lines. Democrats traditionally have cast more straight-party ballots than have Republicans. The practice was especially popular among black voters.
So we'll have some large urban precincts where most voters are African Americans who intend to vote for Democrats all the way down the ballot.
It will take them considerably longer to do so without the convenience of the straight-party vote. This could produce long lines by 7:30. If those voters choose to wait, voting could continue for an hour, two hours or even longer past 7:30 in a few places. We'll see.
I voted this morning and worked carefully down the ballot. It's important to be deliberate so as not to skip any race or make a mistake. With the touch-screen ballots, it's too easy to mark the wrong candidate. Before locking in your vote, you should review your ballot closely. The process will take a few minutes.
I never cast a straight-party vote and would not have done so today. But voters who were in the habit 2.5 million in North Carolina in 2012 should have been prepared to take all the time necessary to mark their ballot exactly as they intended.
And everyone who's in line by 7:30 should be patient enough to stay in line for as long as it takes to vote, defying the schemes of those who hope they'll get tired and go home without voting.
Addendum: Because of voting problems in Durham, Democrats are asking for an extension of voting hours. Republicans oppose the request.
The N.C. Republican Party chairman is yelling foul over an independent TV ad currently airing in the state. The ad criticizes N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds for his decision upholding the way the state legislature used race in legislative districting.
Federal courts have now upheld challenges to 28 of the legislatures state House and Senate districts and to two congressional districts because the courts found the legislatures gerrymandered use of race violated the 14th Amendments guarantee of equal protection of the laws. These are the same districts that Justice Edmunds approved in his opinion for the North Carolina high court.
As summarized by The News & Observer, the ad says Edmunds, a Republican, wrote the decision upholding his partys discrimination. Notably, a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision also struck down changes in voting laws in North Carolina, changes that the judges found were surgically targeted to disadvantage black voters.
Republican leaders responded to that federal decision with an attack on the federal judges. The response to the anti-Edmunds ad takes a different route: This racially charged and explosive ad has no place in our state, N.C. GOP Chairman Robin Hayes said in a news release.
In light of Hayes' outrage, it is worth looking at the facts.
After their 2010 victories in North Carolina, Republican legislators enacted a breathtaking gerrymander, one designed to protect and enhance their new legislative and congressional majorities for the foreseeable future.
The gerrymander was starkly racial. Republican leaders in the state House and Senate announced and enforced two racial quotas (my term, not the legislatures) for redistricting the states legislative seats. They said they would consider changes to their plan, but none to their two racial quotas (or targets).
The legislatures districting czars mandated creating as many as possible black-majority, voting-age population legislative districts (quota 1) and for the state Senate and House, having black representatives in the state legislature in proportion to the states black voting-age population (quota 2). The effect of the quotas was to pack extra black voters into new majority-black districts (wasting black votes) and, as needed, to expel whites.
The defense by Republicans in the legislature was that these racial quotas were justified by the Voting Rights Act or to protect the state against a Voting Rights Act lawsuit. If valid, the Voting Rights Act defense also let the legislature overcome, for state legislative districts, the anti-gerrymander whole county provision of our state constitution.
For their reconstructive surgery, Republican legislators revised legislative districts in areas where, thanks to a multi-racial coalition, candidates preferred by black voters already had been winning by large margins, even though blacks were not a majority of the voting-age population of the district. Then they applied quota 1 to these districts. The hyper-racial districting wasted black votes and helped disrupt multi-racial coalitions.
A later decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in a case from Alabama strongly indicated that racial districting must be viewed district by district and that rigid numerical targets had to be shown to be needed to protect the equal opportunity of black voters to elect candidates of their choice in that district.
This should be so only if, in the newly constructed district, racially polarized voting was shown to frustrate an equal opportunity of blacks to elect candidates of their choice. Since in the prior districts in these areas candidates preferred by black voters were typically winning by large margins, that was a stretch.
The first racial quota (50 percent-plus black voting-age population districts) also relocated blacks who mostly vote Democratic from other districts where they had helped to elect their white Democratic allies. The result was a few more blacks in the legislature, and many fewer white Democrats and even whiter Republican districts. Racial gerrymandering left blacks and the few surviving white Democrats a long-term impotent minority in the legislature.
The second racial quota required that the number of blacks in the state legislature be proportional to the black voting-age population of the state. Pursuing its second racial proportional-representation quota, the Republican majority drew white state Sen. Linda Garrou (D-Forsyth) out of her prior district, although she had been the preferred candidate of black voters. Sen. Robert Rucho (R-Mecklenburg), the Senate redistricting czar, admitted that Garrou would not have been removed from her district if she had been a black incumbent.
From the perspective of the racial quota, Garrou though preferred by most black voters in her district was a Democrat of the wrong color. The proportional racial quota required a black, not a white, Democrat.
The N.C. Supreme Court, by a divided vote, has (twice) upheld the gerrymander by racial quotas (a word the court avoids) the second time after a remand from the U.S. Supreme Court that cited the case from Alabama.
The N.C. Supreme Court majority treated the U.S. Supreme Courts Alabama decision as of little importance.
The Voting Rights Act, an act on which the legislature and North Carolina court relied, rejects a requirement of proportionality. The quotas (upheld by the North Carolina court) have now been held in violation of the equal protection of the laws by the federal court.
The legislature and the N.C. Supreme Court majority could not easily defend the systematic destruction of multiple, multi-racial coalition districts on the grounds that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires that black voters have an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. Thats because in the areas of these new racially designed districts, black voters had already been electing their preferred candidates by large majorities in the multi-racial, coalition districts the legislature systematically destroyed. Of course, population shifts required some adjustment of district lines.
So the legislature and the North Carolina high court defended the rigid racial quotas by a different approach having destroyed the old apparently Voting Rights Act-compliant districts, the legislature claimed and a slim majority of our North Carolina high court found, that the legislature might need the two numerical quotas to protect against a possibly successful Voting Rights Act lawsuit defending by establishing its newly created quota districts.
Sometimes, defenders of racial packing and sorting and voting rules that depress the votes of blacks and poor voters, claim that these methods are OK since they are motivated by permissible political motives, not racial ones. The quotas operate to disrupt a white-black political coalition. But, as the argument goes, black voters are not packed and gerrymandered because they are black, but because they mostly vote Democratic. To target and disadvantage voters of a certain race because of how they vote should still be seen as impermissible discrimination.
At one time, U.S. Supreme Court precedent seemed to see bans on interracial marriage as permissible because, while blacks could not marry whites, whites also could not marry blacks. Finally, the high court saw the discrimination for what it was discrimination against interracial marriage and in favor of single-race couples. Systematic attacks on multi-racial political coalitions should fare no better.
Racial quotas and devices (by whatever name), when not justified by any compelling need, are deeply troubling, especially when their obvious effect is to isolate blacks, to diminish their political influence, and systematically to disrupt multi-racial political coalitions.
Michael Kent Curtis teaches constitutional law and constitutional history at Wake Forest University School of Law. He has written two law review articles and several essays on North Carolinas racial districting. The views expressed are his own.
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GREENWICH
8:25 a.m.
John Blankley, a Democratic candidate for State Senate, who was monitoring the polls at the Glenville School said turn-out was very heavy. Blankley had been at the school since 6 a.m.
The senate candidate offered an opinion that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would be trounced.
The question is whether well get the (U.S.) Senate, Blankley continued.
8:45 a.m.
Senator Richard Blumenthal arrived at the polls at the Glenville School with his wife, Cynthia.
Im hoping that we have the first woman president and that the voters of Connecticut re-elect me, said Blumenthal, a Democrat.
As to a Democratic take-over of the Senate, Blumenthal said things seem to be moving in the right direction. He said he was optimistic that the passions generated by the election would abate. Im hoping people can come together after this divisive and difficult election, he said.
9:40 a.m.
A young man wearing a Gary Johnson sweatshirt arrived at the polls at the Riverside School. Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, is predicted to win about five percent of the popular vote.
9:45 a.m.
At the Riverside School, a bake sale was drawing plenty of customers, and a large turnout was also observed by poll watchers.
Arjun Ahuja, 18, a Greenwich High School senior who is a supporter of Dita Bhargava, a candidate for state representative, said he was impressed to see democracy in action.
Ive been following this campaign since its inception, and its exciting to see everyone coming out here, exercising their right to vote, he said, However you express your opinion, thats the beauty of America, using the process, exercising that right.
1 p.m.
First Selectman Peter Tesei stopped by Central Middle School, making the rounds. Turn-out is great, he said. There have been no problems with the balloting that he has heard of. Tesei was going to vote at Town Hall in the afternoon.
1:10 p.m.
At the Republican booth in front of Central Middle School, Jill Curran says she has never seen a turn-out this big before.
I had to wait on line for the first time, ever, she said, when she cast a ballot at the Julian Curtiss School. She was told that long lines were evident at the school in the early morning hours.
This campaign has been very vocal, even shocking, she said, and it appeared that voters were highly motivated on both sides of the political spectrum.
Curran said she was particularly enthusiastic about the Republican candidates running for statewide office. I love them all. Such good people, Greenwich people, and they all want the best for the town, she said.
1:30 p.m.
1,509 votes were cast at the Greenwich High School polling place by 1:23 p.m., in what is unusually high turnout for this time on election day.
Its much more than when Obama ran four and then eight years ago, said GHS Voting Moderator Nick Edwards, who has been facilitating voting at Greenwich High for ten years. Its been busy.
Edwards said by 6 a.m. on Tuesday, there was a line of 100 people waiting outside to cast their votes.
We got absolutely crushed, he said.
For the next hour and half, the polls were packed with what Edwards described as a deluge of people. By midday, lines had subsided but Edwards said he expects voting to pick up around 4 p.m. and continue steadily until polls close at 8 p.m.
At midday, several local candidates greeted voters outside of GHS.
Republican State Senator Scott Frantz appeared at the school around 12:45 p.m., after showing face at the Riverside School polling place early Tuesday morning.
I think there is a lot of voter enthusiasm but I also think there is a lot of voter anxiety, he said. That I think is driving a lot of the turnout.
Frantz will appear at four polling places in Stamford and two in New Canaan Tuesday afternoon.
Republican State Representative for the 151st district Fred Camillo also shook hands outside the high school.
Camillo, who was at North Mianus School earlier Tuesday, said he has had a very positive experience at the polls today.
Its like sports, he said. You go into every contest, whether its a baseball game, basketball game, boxing, youre not scared. You have a fear of losing but the fear of losing makes you work that much harder.
Camillos challenger, Greenwich Democrat Dita Bhargava, stood just down the sidewalk from him welcoming voters to the polls.
Im very glad that voter turnout is so high, that people feel that theyre engaged, she said. The reception was really good, so I am cautiously optimistic.
Bhargava began her morning at 6 a.m. with chilled voters gathering at Central Middle School.
It was 32 degrees, she said. My fingers were numb by the end of it.
She will appear at Riverside, Old Greenwich, North Street and Central Middle Schools later Tuesday.
1:45 p.m.
Turnout was high at the New Lebanon School voting station, said moderator Bill Curtis. By about 1 p.m. over half of those registered to vote at the station had already come, Curtis said.
The turnout is very high and there are a lot of new registrants, Curtis said.
Voters were spared from politican signs and canvassers once they got within 75 feet of the entrance to the school, but the hallway to the ballot boxes were lined with bake sales and children raising money for various causes.
One man, Pablo Reggio, was voting for the first time since immigrating from Argentina and recently obtaining citizenship.
I really wanted to come, I appreciate the opportunity this country has given me, Reggio said.
Reggio said this election was important, but he didnt think either candidate would ruin the country as much as some have said.
It is a very robust country, and we live in a bubble here in Greenwich, Reggio said. This is a big country, it is going to take more than one election to sink it down.
2 p.m.
The tide of voters was ebbing and flowing through the afternoon, said Moderator Valerie Pisano of the voting station at Glenville School.
There had been no outstanding issues up to that point, she said.
Since this was her first time moderating a presidential election she wasnt sure how turnout compared to years past, but said they had been busy through the day.
Lynn Hagerbrant, who said she voted for Hillary Clinton, said she knew Greenwich had a lot of Republicans but was surprised when she arrived at the school that not a single Hillary sign stood with the others.
Im glad to see this tumultuous season come to an end and get a president on board so we can start working together, said Lynn Hagerbrant, a retired nurse who said she has lived in Greenwich for 25 years.
3:20 p.m.
The Old Greenwich School was a great place to sell Girl Scout cookies. It was also a busy spot for voters and poll workers.
Its exceptional, said Voting Moderator Abner Katzman, When the doors opened this morning, there was a line going down to the curb. Very busy.
5:45 p.m.
Turnout in Greenwich continues to be high. As of 5:40 p.m., the town was reporting turnout of 73.74 percent leading Republican Registrar of Voters Fred DeCaro III to predict Greenwich would exceed its typical presidential race turnout of 80 percent.
Were seeing a lot of turnout, DeCaro said. I tend to think its the presidential race driving this.
DeCaro said the town ordered 105 percent of the ballots that would cover the amount of registered voters. But since the time that order was placed, there were thousands of people added to the rolls.
We may have to start firing up the photocopier so we have some extras in place should there be an issue, DeCaro said.
The registrars office checks in with all 12 of the polling locations in town and no problems with lack of ballots had been reported by 5:30 p.m.
As of Nov. 1, there were 37,065 registered voters, which is an increase from the 36,353 who were registered for the presidential election in 2012. And that number went up on Tuesday as Connecticut allows for same day registration, making it possible for people to register to vote on the day of the election.
At 4 p.m., Joseph Huley, who was overseeing the same day registration and voting at the one town location at Town Hall, said there had been a steady stream of people coming in throughout the day. He said only 70 people made use of same day registration in 2015s municipal elections and at 4 those numbers were already up to 300.
Concerns had existed that same day registration, which requires people bringing proof of current address and name and a picture ID, would cause long lines but Huley said things had been running well all day.
Liz Keegan, who brought her kids with her, had discovered that day that she was still registered to vote in Vermont when she had thought she had switched it to Connecticut. A trip to Town Hall was able to rectify the issue quickly though and she cast her ballot, while also getting future voter stickers for kids Louisa, Tess and Wyatt.
It was so quick and easy, she said. They were able to take care of it right away.
DeCaro said there had not been any major problems with peoples registrations and credited it to the offices strong urging to make sure people checked before the Nov. 1 deadline. He reported a steady stream of people coming in with questions but not a huge number.
At Town Hall, where District 2 votes, a Greenwich police officer was on hand to make sure traffic flowed smoothly through the parking lot, which was far more crowded than it typically was on a weekday afternoon.
Poll worker Lou Caravella, a longtime election day volunteer in District 2, said he could never remember it being that busy before. He reported a line of voters had formed pushing out the door of Town Hall before polls even opened at 6 a.m.
The heavy turnout has been a boon, not just to the candidates but to various student organizations and school PTAs who are sponsoring bake sales at the polling places. At Town Hall, students held a bake sale on behalf of the Greenwich High School orchestra and they reported excellent sales throughout Tuesday.
Business has been pretty darn good, Alexandra Buss, a GHS senior said. It seems like weve always had someone waiting to buy something.
Buss and her fellow students were raising money for the orchestra to use for its trips. In recent years it has gone to both Disneyworld and Disneyland and the money raised helps pay the fees for transport to the airport. There are also funds needed for master classes for the orchestra before western regional auditions.
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DANBURY - A likely 2018 Connecticut gubernatorial candidate who has expressed unease about his partys nomination of Donald Trump took to Instagram Tuesday morning to say that hed written in the name of his dog, Ellie Mae, for president.
Make the Dog Pound Great Again, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton wrote, in parody of Trumps campaign slogan alongside a picture of the dog, which he adopted from a shelter in South Carolina a year ago.
Boughton was critical of Trump during the Republican primary, but in May expressed support for him.
I was a Kasich guy, but we're all Trump people now, he told the Hartford Courant at the time. It was a very bruising primary cycle, but I still think Trump can pull it together.
But that was before a video surfaced of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, and numerous other controversies surrounding the Republican presidential nominee.
Its hard to tell, though, when the social media-savvy mayor is being serious on his popular Twitter account and other social media feeds.
Or perhaps Make the Dog Pound Great Again was a reference to a local issue on the Danbury ballot Tuesday. Voters in the city are considering a $10 million bond issue that would fund sidewalk, bridge and road repairs in addition to improvements to the citys dog pound and the partial demolition of Danburys historic Hearthstone Castle.
Ellie Mae has her own Instagram account, and her image appears on a special line of dog treats at Stew Leonards. But she did not actively campaign for president or the bond issue. She is not among the 20 people registered with the Secretary of the States office as official write-in candidates for president in Connecticut.
Boughton took to Twitter Tuesday evening to say that his write-in vote for Ellie Mae was a joke.
Boughton recently aired an ad supporting Republican legislative candidates that many have described as a precursor to the launch of a 2018 run for governor. Boughton was the Republican Partys 2010 lieutentant governor nominee on a losing ticket with Tom Foley, then lost the Republican nomination to Foley in 2014. Both of those races were won by Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy, who is not expected to seek re-election in 2018.
While most people focus on the Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton presidential election, Nov. 8 also promises to have broad and long-ranging implications for the legal marijuana movement.
Voters in nine states will consider proposals to allow legal medical and recreational marijuana to be sold in their states. They include two of the nations biggest states, California and Florida. For those who want to pay attention to these important ballot measures, here is a rundown of where voters will decide on legal marijuana on Election Day.
Recreational Use
The outcome of these votes could mean a sea change in the marijuana industry. Voters in five states will consider allowing the sale of marijuana for recreational use. If all are approved, the number of states allowing recreational use of marijuana would more than double, from four to nine. States where voters already legalized recreational marijuana are Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Voters in the District of Columbia also have approved a similar measure.
California: If there is one state everyone is focusing on, its California. Voters there already have approved the medicinal use of marijuana. Passing Proposition 64 The Adult Use of Marijuana Act would mean every state on the West Coast has approved recreational use of marijuana. Passage here -- coupled with passage in heavily-populated Massachusetts -- could represent a step toward eventual changes in federal law.
If were successful, its the beginning of the end of the war on marijuana, Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California and a former mayor of San Francisco, told The New York Times.
Arizona: Voters will consider a new law allowing Arizona residents to carry an ounce of marijuana and grow up to six marijuana plants. The initiative faced legal action to keep it off the ballot, but the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a lower courts ruling to allow voters to consider the measure Nov. 8.
Massachusetts: Massachusetts looks to become the first state east of the Mississippi River to approve recreational marijuana (along with Maine). The ballot initiative also faced a legal challenge, but courts eventually ruled against opponents. The Massachusetts law would allow residents to keep up to 10 ounces of cannabis at home, as well as grow six plants.
Maine: Another court battle, another win for marijuana supporters. The issue on the ballot is similar to the one in Massachusetts, including a provision giving the right to local municipalities to limit the number of retail marijuana stores within their area or even ban them altogether.
Nevada: There have been no legal battles over this ballot proposal as in other states, although ironically polls show the Nevada measure has just a narrow margin of support. Similar to Arizona, the Nevada law would allow a person to carry one ounce of marijuana and grow six plants. It also would limit retail marijuana outlets based on population.
Medical Marijuana
The use of marijuana for medicinal purposes already has been approved by voters in 23 states. However, four more look to join the trend. Florida, with its large population, could have the biggest impact in terms of sales and industry growth. The four states:
Florida: In the Sunshine State, 60 percent of voters must approve an amendment. This measure fell short by two percent in 2014. If approved, it would allow a number of people access to marijuana, including those suffering from HIV, multiple sclerosis, post-traumatic stress syndrome, epilepsy and Crohns disease.
Arkansas: The proposed amendment would set up a commission that could allow 40 dispensaries in the state and eight marijuana-growing operations.
Montana: This measure would expand access to legal medical marijuana to include those with chronic pain and Crohns disease, among other conditions. It also would eliminate unannounced inspections of marijuana operations and some aspects of the current reviews doctors must undergo to prescribe marijuana.
North Dakota: This law change would allow those with certain conditions to possess up to three ounces of medical marijuana and also allow qualified patients the right to grow up to eight plants at their home if they live more than 40 miles from a dispensary.
Clearly, the 2016 November ballot will prove a big moment in the marijuana industry. Not only would passage of these ballot measures expand the use of legal marijuana significantly, but also could prove the next step in a trend that could result in changes in federal law.
Related:
San Diego Company Bids to Become First Marijuana Business on NYSE
Decision Time: Legal Marijuana Faces Big Moment On Election Night
9 Business Ideas for People Looking to Cash in on the Marijuana Boom
Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Singapore's Changi Prison
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for 2 Pakistani men accused of murdering their compatriot and dismembering his body in a gruesome case in 2014.
Muhammad Noor's torso was found in a suitcase dripping with blood along Syed Alwi Road on Jun 11, 2014. His legs, which had been sawn off at the thigh, were found in another suitcase at Jalan Kubor Muslim cemetery the next day.
Muhammad's roommate Rasheed Muhammad, 45, and his friend Ramzan Rizwan, 27, were arrested on Jun 12 at a lodging house at 6 Rowell Road, where the men lived - and where Muhammad, 59, died.
At the opening of Rasheed and Ramzan's trial on Tuesday (Nov 8), Deputy Public Prosecutor Ong Luan Tze said the men decided to murder Muhammad to recover monies they had lost to him while gambling.
At midnight on Jun 11, Rasheed and Ramzan crept into Room 44 where Muhammad slept. Ramzan covered Muhammad's face with a shirt, smothering him, while Rasheed wrapped a string made with cloth around his neck and pulled, DPP Ong said.
When Muhammad was dead, the men pocketed S$6,000 in cash they found in the room.
In the morning, Rasheed and Ramzan made 2 trips to Mustafa Centre at about 9am and again at 11.45am, where they bought 2 suitcases, an electric saw, a bow saw and trash bags, DPP Ong said.
It is the prosecution's case that back in Room 44, the pair sawed off Muhammad's legs and wrapped them in trash bags. They then packed the torso in 1 suitcase and the legs in the other, before cleaning the room with soap powder.
At about 12.25pm, Ramzan left the black suitcase containing Muhammad's legs at Jalan Kubor Muslim cemetery. He went back to help Rasheed, who was struggling with a grey suitcase containing Muhammad's torso.
They decided to abandon the bag along Syed Alwi Road en route to the cemetery, after 1 of its wheels broke and blood began to seep out of the bag, DPP Ong said.
An 81-year-old man found the suitcase hours later. Assisted by several passers-by, he tried to push the suitcase to the police station, but when they made the gruesome discovery of a dead body in the bag, they immediately called the police.
The trial continues.
If found guilty of murder, both men will face the death penalty.
| Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com
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Source: channelnewsasia.com, November 8, 2016
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Careful now. Photo: St. Eriks
Flame Grilled Steak Pringles these are not: Swedish craft brewery St. Eriks has created what it claims are the most exclusive potato chips in the world, as thats the only food ostensibly worth pairing with its first-class India pale ale. The website created for the stunt explains these arent just any potato chips, but rather potato chips made with some of the most exclusive ingredients available in the Nordics prepared by the talented chefs of the Swedish National Culinary Team.
The six ingredients include matsutake mushrooms picked by a person wearing cotton gloves, crown dill from Swedens Bjare peninsula, potatoes plucked from a south-facing hillside in Ammarnas too steep to be accessed by machines, freeze-dried wort from the brewerys IPA, a very specific variety of Swedish onion always planted on the eighteenth of May, and a seaweed that tastes like truffles and is only found in cold tidal waters off the Faroe Islands. Also, these uniformly sized chips were all handmade, the snacks creator, chef Pi Le, tells Adweek. That may or may not justify their $55 price tag for a five-pack, which comes in a fancy gold-lettered black box, but thats what youll be paying regardless.
If this sounds like a way to one-up friends who snagged the worlds hottest chip before it sold out instantly last month, the very limited edition of 100 boxes that St. Eriks just released has already sold out as well. On the other hand, you may now have the winning recipe for next years Lays Do Us a Flavor contest.
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Xiaomi Mi Mix and Mi Note 2 sell out again in less than a minute
Good news - Xiaomi Mi Mix stock lasted three times longer than last time. Bad news - that still means it sold out in 30 seconds. Its bezel-having sibling, the Xiaomi Mi Note 2, lasted a full minute before fans picked up every last unit available.
Of course, its not clear how much stock Xiaomi had to begin with so we shouldnt take this as a sign of huge demand. Still, demand definitely outstrips supply and if you want one youll have to be quick.
Your next chance will be on 11.11 (that is November 11), which something of a Black Friday in China with big sales events. Heres hoping the factories would have cranked out more units by then.
Here are the prices for reference (China only for now, though we long for the Mi Mix to launch worldwide):
Phone RAM/storage Price Xiaomi Mi Note 2 4GB, 32GB CNY 2,800 6GB, 128GB CNY 3,300 Xiaomi Mi Mix 4GB, 128GB CNY 3,500 6GB, 256GB CNY 4,000
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Oct. 25, 1927 Oct. 29, 2016
Bernice Hams, 89, died Saturday, Oct. 29, 2016, in Lebanon due to vascular dementia disease.
Born Oct. 25, 1927, in Roseau, Minnesota, to Martin and Margret Brenhaug, she grew up in Roseau and attended Spruce School. She later met and married Gene Edward Hams on Aug. 28, 1949. Gene and Bernice were married for 65 years. They started a family and a small mink farm. After time they soon moved to Albany in 1968. She worked for Eves Buffet in Albany. Then later, she opened a floral business with her husband at their home called the Busy B.
Bernice enjoyed crafting and cooking Norwegian food like lefse and flat bread. She loved her family gatherings, friends and playing chicken foot.
Bernice was the glue that brought family and friends together for good times.
Survivors include her sister, Selma Matzye of Sweet Home; daughters Deborah and Lou Long of Albany, and Cindy Grange and Jim Jay of Springfield; son Mark and Nancie Hams of Albany; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren who she loved deeply.
A service for Bernice will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, at Faith Lutheran Church, 930 Queen Ave. S.W., Albany. Relatives and friends are welcome.
Haiti - News : Zapping politics...
Privert promises to CEP
Friday at the National Palace at a balance sheet press conference, the de facto President Jocelerme Privert has guaranteed that all damaged voting centers will be operational by November 13. Moreover he declared "
"Almost all roads damaged by the hurricane have been restored and opened to traffic. It remains true that 169 localities are still inaccessible. The Ministry of Public Works has mobilized its entire fleet of equipments to make these localities accessible 13 November at the latest (deadline set by the CEP https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19099-haiti-flash-the-election-date-becomes-uncertain.html ), 7 days before the elections."
Floods, words of Jude Celestin
"Once again nature has raging against us and struck the north. I extend my sympathies to all the families who were affected by the floods Saturday night in Cap Haitien. It is time that people stop being vulnerable to disaster," declared Jude Celestin, candidate for the presidency under the banner of "Alternative League for Progress and the Haitian Emancipation" (LAPEH) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19150-haiti-flash-new-floods-10-victims-4-departments-affected.html
School Reopening ?
Friday was held a working meeting with partners around the post-Matthew actions for the resumption of school activities. The Director of Cabinet Eliccel Paul urges all stakeholders to activate the rehabilitation of schools, especially in the Grand'Anse, according to the instructions of the Minister Dorsonne. The goal is to restart with school activities, even very limited in Grand'Anse at the latest Monday November 7 without neglecting the continuation of work in all affected departments...
See also :
https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19157-icihaiti-education-unnoh-criticizes-the-progressive-return-to-school.html
Jovenel Moise flies over flooded areas
Sunday Jovenel Moise, the presidential candidate of PHTK, overflew in helicopter, of flooded areas of North and Northeast departments https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19150-haiti-flash-new-floods-10-victims-4-departments-affected.html to inquire personally of the extent of damage in order to contribute to the extent of its resources, to affected families. He said after its flyover "It is with great sadness that I see the situation experienced by my brothers and sisters to Caracol, every time the rain falls in the area..."
Where are they, what do they do ?
Saturday, Maryse Narcisse presidential candidate under the banner of the Fanmi Lavalas has continued her proximity campaign to the market of Petion Ville and to the Salomon market.
Saturday Jovenel Moise presidential candidate under the banner of PHTK, accompanied by his wife Martine and Senate candidate of the West department, Fednel Monchery, went to the commune of Anse a Galets, La Gonave, Leogane, Gressier...
Special thought of Laurent Lamothe
"I have a special thought for the population of Cap-Haitien that was victim of floods following torrential rains of November 5," declared the former Prime Minister of Haiti, Laurent Lamothe.
HL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - Training : Internship Opportunities for Students
ACTIVEH a nonprofit organization founded in 2011 launched the third year of its project aiming at seek opportunities of practical experience (internships) for students and providing qualified professionals available to public institutions, profit or not, throughout Haiti.
"A practical experience is essential for the transition from student life to professional life," says Ronel Lefranc, Executive Director of ACTIVEH "Neglecting this aspect of working life of young academics would only contribute to increasing the leak rate of these potential outside the country. This project aims to create a bridge between the labor market and students while motivating them to get involved in initiatives that promote community development." Efforts in this project will be concentrated over a period of two years, on placement of 100 students in internships in companies in Haiti.
Training workshops on personal leadership, the development of professional and interpersonal skills and community service will be organized for members of the organization and the student community in general. Internship opportunities and volunteering, with public and private institutions of the place will be offered to young academics to enable them to better prepare for the job market.
"This project will allow students to apply the theories learned at university, to learn new skills, develop interpersonal skills and also their confidence," said Ronel. "They will be more competitive in the labor market and will have the necessary background to thrive professionally and contribute to the development of their communities."
The project received a grant of US $ 50,000 from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation based in Battle Creek, Michigan, covering the period March 2016 to February 2017.
Learn more about ACTIVEH :
ACTIVEH is a nonprofit organization, founded in November 2011, led by young people to mobilize the passion and potential of students as a force of change for Haiti and develop professional internships and volunteer opportunities for community development programs in Haiti. The organization is located at #9 of the Debussy street Turgeau.
Each year ACTIVEH contact more than 50 institutions from different sectors in Haiti to seek internship opportunities for its members. Since 2014, ACTIVEH has partnered with twenty institution and has already placed more than 120 students in internship and employment with institutions at 7 departments of country.
For more information : +509 47 47 89 41 or by e-mail : info@activehaiti.org
Visit the website of ACTIVEH: www.activehaiti.org
HL/ HaitiLibre
By Vasia Orion | Published on 2016/11/08
Are you tired of romantic shows which hold the kiss hostage until the end? Getting sick of last minute forced drama? Have you had enough of slow burn love? Then "Dr. Romantic" is here to save the day! We get forced kisses, forced drama, forced trucks of doom and other manner of over the top goodness right off the bat. What? This is not a romantic soap opera, you say? Oh... Well then we need to have a talk.
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Before I get to the train wreck, or rather car accident that the second half of this episode is, let me talk about the few things that work. In concept, the series is promising. We have two inexperienced doctors with a clearly painful past who use their personal issues to justify their medical bias. The episode introduces a doctor's dilemma over prioritizing treatment and the motivation behind it. This opens up a tough subject worth exploring.
The music and directing are quite headache-inducing with the medical situations, but they also make the scenes suspenseful. I appreciate the dedication of the series to being graphic with its medical content, sex toy cautionary tale aside. Medicine is not neat and pretty, which is something all creators taking a swing at the genre should understand. If there is one thing to correct here, it would be the actors' performances, which are a bit too dramatic for characters who deal with such emergencies daily.
Coming to the downfall of this episode now, I am not sure at exactly which point the writer was replaced with a romantic zombie, but this is the most sloppy raising of a romantic lead on a pedestal I have seen in a while. Where do I even begin with the lighting speed at which the series introduces the shared attraction of its two current main characters? How does one even explain the waving of the leading lady as a swooning plot device?
All I can say is that I am glad her now-past boyfriend is dead, because he would have ended up an abusive North Korean spy who regularly sacrifices babies to Satan in order for the writer to elevate his romantic rival enough. The love line's pacing is too fast, showing panic on behalf of the creators. As usual, Dramaland is governed by its romantic pairings to a damaging degree. This is a shame, because the medical part has such potential.
As for the titular character, I cannot comment on anything past Han Suk-kyu's heavily featured face at this point. I am not sure if the secrecy is to make him feel like a medical fairy godfather or to keep him out of the way for the Operating Room True Pairing, but I hope he can help keep the doctors focused and maybe control the raging malpractice going on.
"Dr. Romantic" is directed by Yoo In-sik, written by Kang Eun-kyeong and features Han Suk-kyu, Yoo Yeon-seok, Seo Hyun-jin and Kim Hong-pa.
Written by: Orion from 'Orion's Ramblings'
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Note: Due to licensing, videos may not be available in your country
By Lily Lee | Published on 2016/11/08 | Source
Welcome to the private party of Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik!
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Elle Korea magazine shoot a photoshot with a theme of private party for these two protagonists. Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik have been selected to lead the role in the new drama "Strong Woman Do Bong-soon" airing in the beginning of 2017.
This is the very first time this two stars come together in a drama and they are already bursting with chemistry between the two! I think both Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik have the "cute" image with the characters they have had in the past and their general personality in real life, so I'm excited to see how they will portray their new characters in this drama. Park Bo-young will be acting as a strong woman, who is almost like the Hulk. According to her description, the character gets stronger when she is upset or angry. Park Hyung-sik's character will be more of an odd ball rich guy - and the love story between the two! Ha, I can't imagine how their encounter will be like but I'm excited to see it for sure!
With the casting update, rising star Ji Soo will also be joining the crew, so we are in for a big treat!
By Lily Lee
Finally, Real Condo Law Enforcement?
by Marcia Kimura
The notion of condominium self-government presupposes that owners will accept as absolute and final, the rulings of Boards of Directors and association management companies. As such, it is a structure doomed to failure, not only as a result of patently expedient regulations by and for management, but also as a system in which many disputes inevitably end in costly litigation in our courts, when the constitutionality of condo policies is challenged. Owners who experience widespread abuse by management and attorneys, of assessments against them resulting from fraudulent violations, and who have lost their homes as a consequence of such actions can attest to this par for the course nature of condo home ownership.
Currently, one of the dispute settlement options Hawaii condo regimes offers is evaluative mediation in which mediators assigned to hearings are supposedly trained and knowledgeable in condominium governance. Settlements based on suggested solutions by a mediator are entirely the mutual decisions of both parties. Records which may include the evaluative type of mediation, for the period July 2015, the inception month, to September 2016, indicate that of the 43 total cases submitted, only 17 were mediated to agreement, - hardly the resounding success the condo management industry and its attorneys credit this method with. (1)
Another resolution method has been binding or nonbinding arbitration, in which decisions are established by arbitrators after hearing and considering the arguments for both parties; judges or field-experienced attorneys commonly serve as the arbitrators. One of the risks with this is the possibility that the party the decision is against can be assessed the legal expenses of the other party; another is the possibility of dissatisfaction with the rulings.
Widespread criticisms of both mediation and arbitration are that:
association managers or Boards often have exclusive access to the selection process of mediators and arbitrators, with the implication that condo owners are at a decided disadvantage in pressing their claims;
the equitable quest for accuracy and solutions based on hard facts, are sacrificed in favor of compromise, which in most cases neither party is satisfied with;
in the absence of thorough investigative procedures in place before the hearings, careful deliberation of the evidence and sentiments of both sides is impossible; the presiding official is often limited to simply reading aloud the carefully prepared cases of each side; and
association Boards and management have the unfair advantage of covering any or all of their legal expenses for disputes through use of association funds or direct immediate demands for reimbursement of these costs by condo owners.
For both resolution processes, costs average three hundred dollars per hour, exclusive of fees paid attorneys for their consultation.
Obviously, litigation, the third route for settlement efforts, involving exorbitant legal expenses and possible protracted time requirements, places this option well beyond the financial access of many owners.
A dramatically promising alternative to these flawed options is inspired by and modeled after Nevadas seven-member governor appointed commission and ombudsmans office, which has an established record of successfully bringing to justice, including penalizing, violators of Nevadas condominium laws.(2) The proposed Hawaii bill for the 2017 legislative session would institute our own governor-appointed commission and ombudsmans office and provide for:
1. A two-tiered structure of dispute resolution beginning with the ombudsman who possesses legal credentials and broad condominium-based experience, and culminate with the powerful enforcement actions of a seven-member commission, if no resolution is reached with the ombudsman. 2. Cost free filing procedures. 3. Thorough investigative procedures by the ombudsman or commissioners before hearings are held, instead of momentary, cursory reviews of evidence at hearings. 4. Swift punitive action by the commission towards determined violators; this would include fines, penalties, removal from current positions of management in associations when warranted, and 5. Suspension of disputed fines, assessments (for non common element dues) and legal charges imposed on owners, until the work of the ombudsman or commission in each case is completed.
If you as a condominium owner are disheartened with current exploitation of condo laws by management and its attorneys, disappointing dispute resolutions methods, and the absence of tough enforcement action against violators of your rights, doesnt it behoove you to demonstrate to our legislators that they cannot ignore this swelling tide of discontent? You are encouraged to respond in favor of the following petition proposal.
* * * * *
Petition In Favor of the Establishment of Hawaiis Office of the Condominium Ombudsman and Seven-Member Commission
As a Hawaii condominium owner, I am in favor of the adoption and passage of the bill to establish Hawaiis Office of the Condominium Ombudsman and seven-member Commission, as presented in the accompanying article, and allowing for additional subprovisions as developed, to enhance these measures. I believe that this would provide effective grievance, resolution and enforcement procedures for my issues.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Please follow all of these exact directions to support the petition:
1. Respond only if you are in favor of the petition proposal. Please do not send any against responses at all.
2. Send your email support to Marcia Kimura at ombudcommission@gmail.com.
3. Use the subject line only and enter:
a. Your first and last name b. The name of the condominium you are an owner in.
Sample: John (or Mary) Doe, ABC Towers
4. DO NOT type any comments, or attach any files in the message area. The entries will not be opened, and all of them will be viewed and printed from the inbox list view only. Any entry not conforming to the instructions in 3a and b will be deleted.
5. Click Send.
Note: The purpose of the petition is mainly to collect diverse, quantitative results. Your entries will be shared confidentially with legislators only. No attempts will be made to contact you.
Thank you for your consideration and support of this petition.
_________________________________
FOOTNOTES:
1 Hawaii Condominium Bulletin, Mediation Case Summaries:
Vol. 21, No. 2, September 2015, p. 7
Vol. 21, No. 3, December 2015, p. 6
Vol. 21, No. 4, March 2016, p. 6
Vol. 22, No. 1, June 2016, p. 6
Vol. 22, No. 2, September 2016, p. 8
2 Tim Stebbins (2016), Corruption on H.O.A. Boards Will No Longer Be Tolerated. Anthem Highlands President Removed. Must Personally Pay Hearing Costs and Legal Fees. Nevada -- Commission for Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels Nevada RED -- CICCH COMMISSION INFO
2016 Marcia Kimura All rights reserved Published with Permission
2016 HB1802: LINK
Feb, 2016: Legislation needed to rein in abusive condo associations
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ALBANY POLICE
Identity theft arrest 6:50 p.m. Saturday, Linn County Jail. Yosief Tesfamariam, 24, of Shoreline, Washington, was arrested on charges of identity theft, first-degree forgery, first-degree possession of a forged instrument, controlled substances fraud, and attempt to commit a C felony. His initial bail was set at $24,000.
Car prowl 7:14 a.m. Sunday, 1000 block Chicago Street S.E. Tool boxes full of tools, and not secured, were stolen out of a pickup bed sometime during the previous night.
Burglary 10:44 a.m. Sunday, Seattle-Tacoma Box Company, 1526 Industrial Way S.W. The business was broken into sometime during the previous night and petty cash was stolen. A window was broken to gain access to the facility.
Vehicle theft 6:19 a.m. Monday, 1000 block Broadway Street S.W. A blue Ford Focus was reported stolen sometime during the previous night.
LINN COUNTY SHERIFF
Felon with a firearm cite 4:30 a.m. Sunday, Linn County Jail. Donald Lee Miller, 33, of Salem, was booked, cited and released on charges of felon in possession of a firearm and driving under the influence of intoxicants. He was scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 11.
Diesel theft 9:26 a.m. Sunday, Camp Tadmor, 43943 McDowell Creek Road, near Lebanon. The camps diesel was taken out of its storage tank. The theft happened sometime after 6 p.m. on Saturday.
Stolen car 11:32 a.m. Sunday, 100 block A Street, Halsey. A blue 1991 Ford Escort was reported stolen.
OREGON STATE POLICE
Elude arrest 7:06 a.m. Friday, Interstate 5 northbound near the Oak Grove rest area. Police received a driving complaint about an SUV traveling at more than 100 mph and passing vehicles on the left median shoulder. A trooper attempted to pull over the vehicle for a traffic violation near Albany and the incident turned into a police chase. The pursuit ended at the Jefferson off ramp. Justine Renee Kirklen, 34, of Bull Head City, Arizona, was arrested on charges of felony attempt to elude, driving under the influence of intoxicants (controlled substance), second-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and reckless endangering.
Spotlight hunting 7:30 p.m. Friday, near Sweet Home. A pickup truck driver used the vehicles headlights to illuminate a buck deer decoy and shot approximately 10 times at the decoy with a .22 caliber rifle. Victor Joseph Derose was cited for hunting with the aid of an artificial light.
SWEET HOME POLICE
Weapon arrest 2:49 a.m. Friday, Linn County Drive. Levi Kyle Johnson, 28, of Corvallis, was arrested on charges of unlawful use of a weapon, fourth-degree assault (domestic violence) and menacing. He also had two failure to appear warrants.
the use of technology becomes more prevalent in places of work around the world, Tesla CEO and iconic Silicon Valley futurist Elon Musk thinks governments wont have a choice but to start subsidising peoples basic needs.There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," he told CNBC."Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen."The concept of a universal basic income has actually been floating around for years within the tech community, with the idea that citizens would receive a regular stipend from the government to cover basic needs such as food and housing.Switzerland was the first country to try to introduce a universal basic income program when it sought to create legislation this past summer of giving 2,500 Swiss francs (US$2573) per adult, no matter how much they work, and 625 Swiss francs (US$640) per child under 18.Voters rejected the plan but supporters of the bill continue to fight for it, saying it would promote human dignity and public service.Despite this setback, Musk said that at some point in the future, governments might no longer have an option but to enforce a universal basic income as more and more jobs are replaced by technology [and] people have less work to do.He also sees people having more leisure time as an added benefit of automation."People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," he said.
all employees at your office practice healthy hygiene?If the latest research is anything to go by, theres a good chance they dont.Initial Hygiene has found that less than half of Australian office workers (49%) are washing their hands after using the bathroom.Why is this such a big deal?Poor hand hygiene is the leading cause of office sick days, costing the Australian economy up to $5bn per year. Moreover, according to the World Health Organisation, hand hygiene is "the most important measure to avoid the transmission of harmful germs.Dr Lisa Ackerley, a hygiene expert, said employees should be particularly mindful to not get their smartphones out while using the toilet.Bringing your phone into the bathroom may seem like a good distraction from work, but when workers wipe and then simply pick up their phone before washing their hands, their phone becomes a reservoir for germs and bacteria that can actually recontaminate washed hands, said Dr Ackerley.A smartphone which is brought into a bathroom will invariably end up with invisible traces of faeces and urine on it. These traces will then transfer to the owners hands.Initial Hygiene offers the following five tips to create a healthier workplace:Findings from the study found that 40% of Australian office workers browse the internet while in the bathroom. For those office workers using their smartphones in the toilet, 55% used Facebook, 43% sent messages on WhatsApp, and 22% used the time to play internet games, with 1 in 10 admitting to playing Pokemon Go while on the toilet.The time-poor, distracted and overworked office environments that are still all too common, are likely in part responsible for behaviour like 49% of staff not washing their hands after using the bathroom.Slowing down, taking care of oneself through adequate sleep, nutrition, taking breaks away from desks etc. will help staff to start taking more care, rather than rushing through their day and skipping over this vital habit.Feeling overworked can also mean staff are less likely to take sick days when sick, spreading germs like wildfire. Enforcing lunch breaks and providing resources for guided meditations are a couple of measures that can help, but ultimately managers should lead by example and set the tone for a healthy office.Providing your staff with a healthy option in place of sugary treats will help to remove the temptation and set the tone for a healthier workplace. When catering for meetings or events, look at healthy options.To combat poor hand hygiene in offices and improve office workers overall health and wellbeing, Initial Hygiene has launched HygieneConnect, the first fully-integrated monitoring, display and recording system that tracks the handwashing habits of an office, and allows workers to see handwashing compliance levels within their own workplace.Through the use of HygieneConnect in Europe, the handwashing habits of office workers were improved by up to 50% due to a well-established psychological phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect, in which participants in behavioural studies change their behaviour upon discovering that they are being observed.When office workers saw how many people in their office were actually washing their hands after using the bathroom, handwashing compliance improved by at least 30%. This is a significant increase and shows that if we all take responsibility for our hand hygiene at work, everyone can reap the benefits.Even fake laughter has been found to improve health and happiness Dont forget to take time out of your day to laugh and have fun.
For the sixth consecutive year the High Country Turkey Trot 5K will take place Thanksgiving morning on the Boone Greenway Trail at the Clawson-Burnley Park entrance. Big Kahuna Timing will be assisting with the event, utilizing fully automatic chip timing for the 5K Race.
The race will kick off at 9:00am with the Fun Run, for casual runners, joggers and walkers following shortly thereafter. Hearts of Hospitality House, the ladies ambassador group for Hospitality House, is helping to organize the event with 100% of proceeds going to provide food, shelter and life-changing services to individuals and families in need.
Last year, Our State magazine named it one of the Top Ten Holiday 5K races in North Carolina and over 900 participants from 26 different States and 55 unique North Carolina towns and cities participated in the annual event.
Since our first event six years ago, it has been exciting to watch the Turkey Trot grow in participation and recognition each year, states Hospitality House director of development Todd Carter. It is most gratifying when a family tells us that we helped them start a new holiday tradition or when a runner opines that the Greenway Trail is the most beautiful 5K that theyve ever run.
Since 2011, the High Country Turkey Trot has raised over $120,000 and 4,200 pounds of food to support the mission of Hospitality House, a regional nonprofit Transitional Living Facility and Crisis Assistance Resource Center serving seven rural North Carolina counties.
Presented by ECRS Retail Automation Solutions, Stallings & Company Interior Design and Moltox Molecular Toxicologists, this years High Country Turkey Trot features the Leigh Cooper Wallace winners chute, dedicated in 2013, a costume contest, hot apple cider, hot chocolate, healthy snacks provided by Be Natural Market, outdoor fire pits and heat blowers. Stick Boy pumpkin pie prizes will be awarded to the first, second and third place overall finishes for men and women. Race results will be provided in overall and age division formats with first-place finishers in each age division receiving a certificate.
Supporting Sponsors for this years event include Wrens Nest Landscape Design, Pet Prairie Dog Retreat, Yadkin Bank, OP Smiles, LifeStore Banking and Insurance, Ortho Carolina and St. Elizabeth of the Hill Country.
Everyone is welcome to participate, including families with children, strollers and pets on a leash. All participants are asked to bring non-perishable food items canned goods, boxed goods, dry goods for donation to the Hospitality House Bread of Life Hunger Relief programs which served over 147,500 meals last year in the Community Kitchen and Food Pantry.
Pre-registration, available online at HCTurkeyTrot.org, is $30 for adults & teens and $10 for kids 12 and under. Adult & teen registration includes a commemorative long sleeve t-shirt while kids registration includes a Turkey Trot sticker. Kids 12 & under wishing to receive a commemorative t-shirt, need to register as an adult/teen and choose t-shirt size small.
Back by popular demand is the Sleep-In Option. Perfect for someone whos not a morning person, is stuck at home cooking the Turkey or just loves to watch the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, this option allows folks to participate and still receive a commemorative long-sleeve T-Shirt!
Pre-registration mail-in forms can be picked up in Ashe County at HQ Salon, Littles Health & Fitness, Rose Mountain Butcher Shoppe, Skyline/Skybest, Bobby Ds, Harvest Cafe, Ashe County Library and Bald Mountain Baptist Church. In Watauga, they can be found at Welcome Home Thriftique, Parks and Rec, Broyhill Wellness Center, CoBo Bistro, The Local, Vidalia, Higher Grounds, Boone Bike, Pet Place, Dos Amigos, FIT 24, Woodlands BBQ, AMB, Watauga County Library, Lost Province and all Boone Drug locations. In Avery they are located at My Best Friends Barkery and Best Western Mountain Lodge, in Sparta at the Alleghany Wellness Center and in Wilkes County at Talia Espresso and Cooks Sporting Goods.
For sponsorship information and questions email Carter at [email protected] or call 828.264.1237 x107.
To learn more about the mission of Hospitality House please visit www.HospHouse.org, like them on Facebook www.Facebook.com/HospHouse and follow them on Twitter @HospHouseBoone.
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By Jesse Wood
After a week of early voting, more than 5,500 people have voted early in the primary election so far, according to figures provided by the Watauga County Board of Elections.
Of the total amount of votes cast, about 83 percent of the voters marked their ballots at the Watauga County Administration Building in downtown Boone or on the polling site inside the Plemmons Student Union on the campus of Appalachian State University, which is currently on spring break.
See the early voting totals below, per early voting site:
Watauga County Administration Building= 1,791
ASU= 2,760
Blowing Rock= 334
Deep Gap= 214
Meat Camp= 177
Sugar Grove= 225
Total = 5,501
This compares to Avery County, which as seen 842 early voters and has a considerably smaller electorate, according to Avery County Board of Elections Director Sheila Ollis
Early voting ends on Saturday at 1 p.m.
See more coverage of the 2016 primary here.
See more details, such as sample ballots, voting locations and hours and more below:
Although the voter registration deadline prior to early voting has passed, same-day registration is available at any of the one-stop voting locations.
Voters should be ready to show their acceptable photo IDs, Watauga County Board of Elections Director Matt Snyder said.
A list of acceptable IDs and other voter information is available at the state sponsored, http://voterid.nc.gov. 2016 marks the first year of North Carolinas controversial Voter ID law. Student IDs are not an acceptable form of identification.
The last day to request an absentee ballot for the 2016 primary is Tuesday, March 8.
Another thing to note, especially in a county like Watauga, where unaffiliated voters outrank Republicans and Democrats on a one-on-one basis, is that if you are an unaffiliated voter, you must request a specific ballot or else precinct workers will automatically give you a non-partisan ballot, according to Snyder.
The non-partisan ballot only features the Connect NC Bond, while the partisan ballots feature races from within the Republican, Democrat or Libertarian ballots.
For more information, contact the Watauga County Board of Elections office at 828-265-8061 or the Avery County Board of Elections office at 828-733-8282.
To figure out your Election Day polling place, click here.
Early Voting Sites, Hours
AVERY COUNTY
Avery County Board of Elections Office in Courthouse, 200 Montezuma St. #307, Newland
March 11 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Early Voting Sites, Hours
WATAUGA COUNTY
Watauga County Administration Building, 814 West King St. Boone
March 11 from 9 a.m. 5 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. 1 p.m.
ASU Plemmons Student Union, Blue Ridge Ballroom, 263 Locust Street, Boone
March 11 from 10 a.m. 6 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. 1 p.m.
Blowing Rock Town Hall, 1036 Main Street, Blowing Rock
March 11 from 10 a.m. 6 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. 1 p.m.
Deep Gap Fire Department, 6583 Old U.S. 421 South, Deep Gap
March 11 from 10 a.m. 6 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. 1 p.m.
Meat Camp Fire Department 4797 N.C. 194 North, Boone
March 11 from 10 a.m. 6 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. 1 p.m.
Western Watauga Community Center 1081 Old U.S. 421, Sugar Grove
March 11 from 10 a.m. 6 p.m.
March 12 from 8 a.m. 1 p.m.
See sample ballots for Avery and Watauga counties below:
Avery County Ballots
Note that young adults that are not yet 18 years old but will be by the November election wont be allowed to vote on the bond referendum. So 17-year-old voters will see similar ballots minus the bond referendum selection.
Republican Primary Ballot
Democratic Primary Ballot
Watauga County Ballots
Republican Ballot
Democratic Ballot
See language for Connect NC Bond referendum, which will be on all ballots for those 18 years and older as of March 15.
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By Jesse Wood
With several wildfires burning in Western North Carolina and the persistent dry conditions, firefighters across Western North Carolina dont have time to wonder whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton is going to win the presidential election tonight.
Around lunchtime on Tuesday afternoon, Watauga County Forest Ranger Stuart Scott was responding to a one-acre fire, which Deep Gap and Champion fire departments extinguished, in the Deep Gap area.
We are hoping that [no other fires occur today] and we are just chasing some smoke reports, Scott said. Anything we can do to let people know that conditions are ripe for ignition and there should be no burning under any circumstances.
En route to another fire call in Caldwell County near Cone Orchard, Stuart referred High Country Press to Assistant District Forester Justin Query of N.C. Forest District 2, which covers an eight-county territory in Western North Carolina, including the High Country.
Yesterday, the N.C. Forest Service cancelled burning permits and issued a burn ban for 25 mountain counties, including Avery, Caldwell and Watauga, because of the ongoing drought. The ban prohibits all open burning, which includes burning leaves, branches and other plant material. See more about the ban here, which if violated carries a $100 fine plus court costs of $180.
Yesterday, more than 200 people attended a town hall meeting to discuss the Boteler Fire and other Nantahala district fires, which include Dicks Creek, Knob, Tellico, Ferebee, Cliffside, Whitewater, May Branch and Buck Creek fires and the monitoring and patrolling of several other areas.
In the High Country, smoke has been prevalent in the air, leading to the Boone Police Department tweeting: Drift smoke around the High Country is from the wildfires over western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.
Asked about the drift smoke, Query mentioned other fires, including, a fire being cleaned up at Sawmills and two fires in the South Mountains State Park, where there is a 150-acre fire near the park office and another five-acre fire on the other end of the park, closer toward residences. See list of fires here.
And looking at the weather forecast doesnt offer much hope.
Theres a chance of rain in the forecast tonight, but its pretty slim at 20 to 40 percent. On the flipside of that, with that chance of rain, were also getting a wind event, Query said. Its not looking good for tomorrow if this rain doesnt amount to anything.
Just as Scott noted, Query stressed that folks adhere to the burn ban.
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Third Thursday Movie: East of Eden Nov. 17
Audience: Adults (18+)
Location: Watauga County Public Library Meeting Room
The Watauga County Public Librarys movie group invites you to join us for a viewing of East of Eden on November 17th from 6:30 pm 8:30 pm.
Director Elia Kazans 1955 film adaptation of John Steinbecks novel, East of Eden, tells the story of Cal Trask, the son of a California farmer, who feels that his father cares only about his brother, Aron. When Cal embarks on a business venture to gain the favor of his dad, he finds himself dealing with his estranged mother, now the owner of a brothel, and tensions in the family rise even further.
This film has an MPAA rating of PG and an approximate run-time of 115 minutes.
For more information please call (828) 264-8784 ext. 2
High Country Lifelong Learners Movie: Steve Jobs Nov. 14
Audience: Adults (18+)
Location: Watauga County Public Library Meeting Room
High Country Lifelong Learners in association with the Watauga County Public Library invite you to join us for a movie viewing of Steve Jobs on November 14th from 2:00 pm 5:30 pm.
Director Danny Boyles 2015 film, Steve Jobs, takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution, to paint a portrait of the man at its epicenter. The story unfolds backstage at three iconic product launches, ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac.
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen
This film has an MPAA rating of R and an approximate run-time of 122 minutes.
For more information please email: [email protected] m, Attention: Deb Gooch.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Robert Olen Butler to Appear at ASU on Nov. 10
By Ken Keuffel
BOONERobert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has written 16 novels and six volumes of short fiction. He describes Perfume River, his latest novel, as the best book Ive ever written. There are likely many reasons.
Butler provided an intriguing reason recently during a break in a 40-city tour to promote Perfume River, from which hell read Thursday, Nov. 10, during his appearance in the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series at Appalachian State University.
It has encompassed more strata of that compost heap than ever before, he said.
To explain what that meant, Butler invoked a philosophy of Graham Greene (1904-1991), the famed British novelist.
All good novelists have bad memories, Butler said, paraphrasing Greene. What you remember comes out as journalism. What you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.
In Perfume River, Butler returns to compost that has proved particularly fertile for him in the past: the effects of the Vietnam War. He knows that conflict intimately, having served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1971. His fluency in Vietnamese won him posts as a counter-intelligence special agent and as a translator.
What he remembers today is falling madly in love with the culture, place and people of Vietnam. What he has forgotten transformed into compost imaginative enough to yield Vietnam War-related stories told from different points of view. For example, in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993, Butler explores different aspects of the Vietnam War and other issues through several stories, each narrated by a different Vietnamese settler in Louisiana.
Perfume River, by contrast, illuminates the effects of the Vietnam War on several generations of an American family from New Orleans. It takes place in 2015, about 40 years after the Vietnam War ended. Robert Quinlan, 70, a history teacher at Florida State University (where Butler teaches), is estranged from his brother, Jimmy, who is 68. Thats because Robert fought in Vietnam to please his father, William, enlisting in 1967, while Jimmy fled to Canada because he couldnt abide his father or the conflict.
Close to 50 years later, in 2015, William is on his death bed and the estrangements in the family are tested, Michael Upchurch wrote in a New York Times review. Can Jimmy, who has stayed incommunicado all these years, really keep away? Are there any filial connections left to work with?
Dr. Sarah-Beth Hopton, an assistant professor of technical and professional writing in Appalachians Department of English, recommended Butler for the series.
What I love about (Perfume River) is that it spans a half-century and demonstrates how the past is always with us, but can also be transcended, and how mortality shapes the decisions we make. We then spend the rest of our lives learning to live with those decisions, she said.
Upchurch observed that Perfume River ranges widely in time and setting to trace the effects of war.
Butlers Faulknerian shuttling back and forth across the decades has less to do with literary pyrotechnics than with cutting to the chase, he wrote, adding that the book hits its marks with a high-stakes intensity.
Hopton echoed this view.
As a reader who believes in the civilizing value of literature, I appreciate that Robert Olen Butler has seen the story of the Vietnam veteran and his family through to its bitter end, she said. There are many stories about the Vietnam veteran, but rather few of them give equal time to the warrior and his family.
War doesnt just happen to the warrior. War is carried home and the experiences of war stretch and spread, ensnare, and sometimes strangle the lifeblood of a family, however you define family or tribe.
Remaining Series Details
On Nov. 10, Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer Robert Olen Butler will make his series presentations. From 2 to 3:15 p.m., he will offer a craft talk titled What is Art and How Do You Write It? in Room 201B (Table Rock Room) of the Plemmons Student Union. He will read from Perfume River the same evening at 7:30 in the same location. Book sales and signing will follow each event.
All series events are free and open to the public.
About the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series
The Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series is named in honor of Hughlene Bostian Frank 68, a 2013 Appalachian Alumni Association Outstanding Service award recipient, past member of Appalachians Board of Trustees, current board member of the Appalachian State University Foundation, and generous supporter of Appalachian State University.
The Fall 2016 Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series is supported by the Appalachian State University Foundation Inc., Appalachians Office of Academic Affairs, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English, Office of Multicultural Student Development, University Bookstore, Belk Library and Information Commons, and the Appalachian Journal.
Business sponsors are The Gideon Ridge Inn, The Red Onion Restaurant and The New Public House & Hotel. Community sponsors include John and the late Margie Idol, Paul and Judy Tobin, Alice Naylor and Thomas McLaughlin.
For additional information about the series, visit http://visitingwriters.appstate.edu.
About Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University, in North Carolinas Blue Ridge Mountains, prepares students to lead purposeful lives as global citizens who understand and engage their responsibilities in creating a sustainable future for all. The transformational Appalachian experience promotes a spirit of inclusion that brings people together in inspiring ways to acquire and create knowledge, to grow holistically, to act with passion and determination, and embrace diversity and difference. As one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina system, Appalachian enrolls about 18,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate majors.
Registration Open for Watauga Leadership Challenge
REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR 2017 WATAUGA LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE Presented by Allen Wealth Management & Johnson Price Sprinkle, PA The Boone Area Chamber of Commerce is now accepting registration for the 2017 Watauga Leadership Challenge. This program provides a comprehensive overview of the community and introduces participants to leaders in the fields of government, education, health care and business and industry. Longtime Chamber members Allen Wealth Management and Johnson Price Sprinkle, PA, have partnered to co-sponsor the series. This commitment showcases their continued interest in preparing the next group of leaders that will benefit and serve our local community. Topics include: Tourism & Cultural Resources, Economy & Leadership, Environment & Sustainability, Education, Government & Public Safety, Health Care & Human Services and Lessons in Leadership. The 2017 Leadership class is limited to 26 participants with preference given to Watauga County residents. Tuition is $595, which includes all program materials, lunches, refreshments and graduation celebration. For more information or to receive a registration form for enrollment, contact the Chamber at 264-2225. The deadline to apply is Wednesday, January 4, 2017 . Click here to REGISTER. Click here for a MASTER SCHEDULE.
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By University Communications
Appalachian State University will host a gathering and commemoration of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 anti-Jewish pogroms in Nazi Germany, Nov. 10 from 4-5 p.m. at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts. The event will feature Klaus Becker, the Federal Republic of Germanys Honorary Consul to North Carolina. The public is invited.
Beckers remarks will shed light on the Federal Republics coming to terms with the Nazi past, Jewish life in Germany today, and the present state of German-American relations. He will be joined by Appalachians Provost Dr. Darrell Krueger; Dr. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, director of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies; and Ira Abrams, co-president of the Temple of the High Country.
Becker is a native of the university town of Marburg in Hesse. He grew up in the Ruhr Valley, site of Germanys main steel producing companies, where his father worked as a technician. He has lived in Germany, Italy, Brazil and the U.S. His international steel trading company, Nirosteel, is based in Charlotte. He has served as president of the N.C. Chapter of the German-American Chamber of Commerce for years. In 2013, he accepted the appointment as the Federal Republic of Germanys Honorary Consul to North Carolina.
Kristallnacht (or the Night of Broken Glass) refers to the nationwide pogroms instigated by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in coordination with Adolf Hitler that began during the night of Nov. 9, 1938. Mainly carried out by SA and SS units, the pogroms lasted throughout Nov. 10 and, at many places, through Nov. 12 and longer. In the process, the Nazis and other Germans and Austrians broke much more than the glass of synagogues and stores. They killed close to a hundred German and Austrian Jews. Many more were driven to commit suicide. Some 26,000 Jewish men were deported to concentration camps in the Reich. The SA, SS and their helpers plundered and destroyed thousands of Jewish stores and homes as well as hundreds of synagogues. Unlike Imperial Russia, modern Germany had not been the site of a pogrom in modern times and this mass crime marked a key shift in the Nazi regimes anti-Jewish policies that culminated in a systematic genocide during the subsequent war.
The gathering is organized by Appalachians Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies and co-sponsored by the Temple of the High Country. The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts is located on 423 West King St. in Boone. For more information, email[email protected] or call 828-262-2311.
About the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies
Appalachian State Universitys Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies was founded in 2002 to develop new educational opportunities for students, teachers and the community. Located administratively within the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center seeks to strengthen tolerance, understanding and remembrance by increasing the knowledge of Jewish culture and history, teaching the history and meaning of the Holocaust, and utilizing these experiences to explore peaceful avenues for human improvement and the prevention of further genocides.
The Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies is an associate institutional member of the Association of Jewish Studies, a member of the Association of Holocaust Organizations and a member of the North Carolina Consortium of Jewish Studies.
About Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University, in North Carolinas Blue Ridge Mountains, prepares students to lead purposeful lives as global citizens who understand and engage their responsibilities in creating a sustainable future for all. The transformational Appalachian experience promotes a spirit of inclusion that brings people together in inspiring ways to acquire and create knowledge, to grow holistically, to act with passion and determination, and embrace diversity and difference. As one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina system, Appalachian enrolls about 18,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and graduate majors.
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By Alex Paul
Albany Democrat-Herald
A 4,000-pound portable sawmill stolen shortly after midnight Sunday morning from outside an Albany workshop has been found, according to Dan McMinds, father of owner Justin McMinds.
McMinds said the family was notified Tuesday that the sawmill could be picked up in a rural area northeast of Lebanon.
Someone had spray painted the words, not stolen on it, McMinds said. They had also scratched off part of our logo.
The sawmill is valued at $21,000 and had been sitting outside the familys workshop at 4025 Commercial Way.
McMinds had been at the workshop Saturday afternoon and the sawmill was there. When he returned on Sunday, it was missing.
He called his son to see if he might have taken the sawmill on a job, which he said would be unusual since he usually helps him with projects.
A neighboring business owner had captured a video of a hefty man pulling up to the workshop shortly after midnight, pulling the sawmill to the truck and attaching it to a hitch.
We want to thank everybody for all of the publicity and help getting this back, McMinds said. It all turned out well.
Justin McMinds is a 2005 SouthAlbanyHigh School graduate.
In addition to milling lumber from trees for a living through his business, WoodMinds Inc., he works with students from both Albany high schools to turn downed trees into lumber that can be used in their shop programs.
Because the sawmill was uninsured, the theft jeopardized that partnership, as well as McMinds livelihood.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
ContactLinnCounty reporter Alex Paul at 541-812-6114.
There are those who believe now if ever is the time for Finland to join Nato, and then there are those who believe the time to join is neither now nor ever, he stated at the opening ceremony of the Defence Course on Monday .
Two relatively small extremes with opposing views are the loudest contributors to the ongoing security policy debate in Finland, says President Sauli Niinisto.
Niinisto estimated that despite claims of the contrary the ongoing debate is open.
The Finnish Government, he highlighted, has unequivocally condemned the actions of Russia in both Syria and Ukraine. It is quite difficult to come up with something that has been left unsaid. Some invention is required to be heroic in the competition for who will come up with the harshest comment about Russia, he said.
Niinisto revealed that he is more concerned about another security-related phenomenon: the de-dramatisation of evil. If you are waging war on paper every day, it will creep closer to you, enter your thoughts, he warned.
Another sensitive issue seems to be military co-operation with the West, namely, with Sweden, the United States and Nato. Niinisto pointed out that some are of the opinion that the co-operation endangers the non-aligned status of Finland, whereas others are of the opinion that the co-operation should be developed further.
Finland, he said, will continue the co-operation in its current ever-broader scope but do so based solely on its own needs and standpoints.
Finland must develop its military capability and readiness to co-operate not only to become a hurdle for intruders but also to become an attractive partner in the event that the worst comes to the worst, stressed Niinisto.
He reminded that it is not in the best interests of the country to exacerbate the current divisions but rather to follow its long-term dialogue and diplomacy-based foreign and security policy.
Niinisto also estimated that the recent crises have moulded our deep-rooted conceptions of warfare. We have witnessed systematic activities that take advantage of the weaknesses of the targeted country. The means available to pose such hybrid threats are vast: information operations, economy and technology-based pressure, unmarked troops, and cyber influence, he listed.
The ability to respond to such threats is dependent on three variables, believes Niinisto: a real-time operational picture, the appropriate operational authority and the necessary capabilities. Finland has room for improvement in all of these, he said.
Aleksi Teivainen HT
Photo: Markku Ulander Lehtikuva
Source: Uusi Suomi
County employee honored as top public health nurse
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A Henderson County public health nurse was honored as the outstanding public health nurse in North Carolina.
The Board of Commissioners on Monday recognized Betsy Alexander, who has been a public health nurse for the past 18 years.
Betsy presents a tireless effort to advance the cause and importance of public health nursing, Public Health Director Steve Smith said in nominating Alexander for the award.
She was the second Henderson County public health nurse to win the award in the past 10 years, said Commissioner Bill Lapsley, who also serves on the Board of Health. Barbara Stanley previously won the honor.
Former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm has been granted a one-day relaxation in his bail conditions tomorrow.
Mr Drumm appeared before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday when prosecution barrister Sinead McGrath said an extended jury panel will be required for his trial in April.
The trial is expected to last three months.
Offences
Mr Drumm (49), with an address in Skerries, Co Dublin, has been charged with 33 counts under two separate bills concerning alleged offences committed at the now-defunct bank. He has yet to enter a plea.
He is facing two trials: the first has been set down for April 24 next year and the second for January 2018.
The court heard that the prosecution was willing to allow Mr Drumm's bail conditions to be relaxed for one day tomorrow when he will not be required to sign on at a garda station.
Mr Drumm is currently required to sign on daily at Balbriggan Garda Station.
He lost a bid last September to have this reduced to a weekly basis after the prosecution alleged he posed a serious flight risk.
However, Ms McGrath said the prosecution was willing to make an exception on a "one-off basis in exceptional circumstances" tomorrow.
A reason was not given in court for the relaxation, which Judge Melanie Greally granted.
In relation to the April trial, Mr Drumm is facing two charges of conspiring to defraud depositors and investors at Anglo Irish Bank by "dishonestly" creating the impression that deposits in 2008 were 7.2bn more than they were.
He faces one additional charge in relation to the EU transparency directive.
Falsify
Mr Drumm also faces 16 counts of offering unlawful financial assistance to the family of businessman Sean Quinn and 10 other individuals, and 14 charges of falsifying documents.
These charges will be dealt with at the trial set down for January 2018. The trial is expected to last two months.
Judge Greally adjourned the matter to December 14, when a pre-trial hearing date is expected to be set.
A grieving pensioner whose 42,000 inheritance was stolen by her carer after her sons were shot dead has told a judge of the pain she suffered following the deception.
Marie McNally (67) jumped to her feet during the sentence hearing of her carer, Laura Pennick, at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday and asked Judge Melanie Greally for permission to speak, saying she was "bursting" to say something.
"She took advantage of me when my sons were shot," Ms McNally told the court. "She robbed me of every penny I had. She took that money from me when I was sick. She's a liar."
Ms McNally's son, Alan, was shot dead in the Cappagh Nua pub in Finglas, North Dublin,in 2012, three years after his older brother, Graham, was killed.
Gardai believe both were murdered by the same Finglas criminals.
Drug dealer Alan was murdered because the gang responsible for his brother's death feared he would attack them in revenge,
Alan, who had connections to local dissident republicans and a major gang from the Coolock area, became a "sitting duck" after spending more than 12 hours drinking in the Finglas pub.
Scream
As he was shot dead, a gangster kept watch outside the pub, wearing a white, elongated Scream mask
His brother, Graham, was 34 when he was shot dead in January 2009 by the same gang, who were closely linked to slain crime lord Eamon 'The Don' Dunne's crew.
Pennick (30) of Bride Street, Dublin 8, pleaded guilty to thefts totalling 41,935 from Marie McNally between January 2010 and December 2012.
The court previously heard that Pennick, a single mother-of-two, befriended Ms McNally when she was a neighbour in Finglas. Ms McNally's two sons had both been killed and she was in ill health.
Pennick became Ms McNally's "unofficial carer" and started collecting her pension and paying her bills.
She had access to Ms McNally's ATM cards and two bank accounts, including one that contained Ms McNally's inheritance from the sale of her late mother's house.
Garda Colin Rourke said Pennick made a number of withdrawals from "very small amounts up to 600".
She spent the money on "home improvements, fashion purchases, home furnishings, home appliances and holidays.
When questioned by gardai, Pennick said she had financial worries of her own and needed to do it.
Damien Colgan, defending, said Pennick owed money at the time to "individuals" who made "real threats" against her.
Sentence
She has 29 previous convictions including five theft convictions. One of these involved the theft of 1,000 from her previous employer, JD Sports.
Judge Greally agreed to adjourn the matter for one year on the condition that Pennick hand over 1,100 to Ms McNally in 14 days and save 100 a week for her victim.
The judge said she was not ruling out a custodial sentence. "I think in the circumstances Ms McNally is entitled to get as much of her money back as possible," she said, adding it would still only represent a "small portion" of Ms McNally's loss.
The case will return to court on December 4 next year.
Freddie has been charged with David Douglas murder
Freddie Thompson, who has been charged with the murder of David 'Daithi' Douglas, must apply to the High Court for bail.
The 35-year-old was being held in C wing of Mountjoy Prison last night.
Earlier in the day, defence solicitor John Quinn made an application in Dublin District Court for free legal aid and furnished Judge David Waters with a statement of his client's means.
The judge acceded to the request and said he would assign Mr Quinn.
Power
Due to the nature of the charge, the court does not have the power to grant bail, so Mr Thompson must apply for it in the High Court at a later date.
Father-of-one Mr Douglas (55), from Killala Road, in Cabra, was shot dead outside his wife's shop in Bridgefoot Street, Dublin 8, on July 1 by a two-man hit team.
An investigation carried out by Kevin Street Garda Station and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) led to sufficient evidence being gathered to bring a charge on the direction of the DPP.
Mr Thompson was driven to the Criminal Courts of Justice, of which the district court is a part, in a four-vehicle convoy at 9.30am yesterday. He was transported in a garda van escorted by two patrol cars and an unmarked car carrying armed gardai.
He appeared in the dock of Court No 4 wearing a dark- blue hooded jacket and black tracksuit bottoms.
Det Insp Paul Cleary said he re-arrested Mr Thompson at Kilmainham Garda Station on Saturday evening.
Defence solicitor John Quinn said there was no objection to his client's next appearance being held via video-link.
Judge Waters remanded Mr Thompson, of Loreto Road, Maryland, Dublin 8, in custody pending his next hearing at Cloverhill District Court.
A book of evidence has yet to be completed and served on Mr Thompson, who has not yet entered a plea to the charge.
The drugs found by gardai at the house in Tallaght
A man was arrested after drugs worth 200,000 were discovered at a house in south Dublin.
Cocaine with an estimated street value of 150,000 and heroin worth 50,000 were seized by gardai during the raid.
In addition, more than 80,000 in cash was seized when gardai swooped on the property in the Glenshane area of Tallaght at 10pm on Sunday.
Targeting
A man in his early 40s was arrested and was being held last night at Tallaght Garda Station.
The raid was carried out by gardai from the Tallaght Drugs Unit, the Detective Unit and the DMR South Task Force.
It was part of a planned oper- ation targeting the sale and supply of controlled drugs.
The raid follows another seizure of drugs worth 320,000 in west Dublin over the weekend.
Gardai carried out a search of a private dwelling in the Ballyfermot area.
During the course of the search, offices recovered 2.5kg of cocaine and 7kg of cannabis herb with a combined street value of 320,000.
No arrests were made but enquiries are continuing.
The discovery was made as part of a joint Intelligence- led operation conducted by gardai attached to the Special Crime Task Force and the Ballyfermot District Drugs Unit.
Gardai at the scene of his murder in 2012
Two Dublin men connected to the Kinahan crime cartel have been arrested by gardai investigating the murder of a man shot in front of his children.
The pair, aged 21 and 34, were detained by officers probing the gun murder of Gerard Eglington (27) in Portarlington, Co Laois, in 2012.
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Investigators suspect the two, both from the Kevin Street area of Dublin, have key information on the planning and execution of the gangland hit.
Feud
They are suspected of being "peripheral figures" in the murder, which was part of the bloody Crumlin-Drimnagh feud that raged across the capital.
That infamous southside feud has claimed 16 lives to date, and significant garda resources have been spent on several investigations.
Nobody has ever been charged with Eglington's murder, which happened on September 24, 2012.
He was aligned to the Brian Rattigan faction and was a cousin of gang member Anthony Cannon, who was shot dead in Ballyfermot in July 2009.
Rattigan is serving a life sentence for the knife murder of Declan Gavin (21) in Crumlin Shopping Centre on August 25, 2001.
The Eglington murder was carried out by rivals of the Rattigan outfit.
He was shot repeatedly in front of the 11-year-old daughter of his partner Kristle Nolan.
Eglington's three-year-old son was also in the house with the girl, who was getting ready for school.
Eglington was shot twice in the back and at least twice again as he tried to flee the gunman who had burst into the house.
The killer and his accomplice made their getaway from the scene at The Glen, beside the Kilnacourt Woods estate, in a dark blue Mazda6.
The car was found burnt-out on the Lee Road, outside Portarlington.
Eglington was found in a critical condition by a neighbour who had heard the children's screams. He was rushed by ambulance to Tullamore General Hospital but was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
Botched
He was aware he was regarded as a "marked man" and had survived an attempt on his life in a pub shooting.
Another plot to kill him at the Passport Office in Dublin was also botched. He moved to the Midlands to escape the constant attacks.
As a 15-year-old, Eglington was detained in a juvenile detention centre for four years for being a passenger in a stolen car which was deliberately driven into a garda vehicle, killing gardai Tony Tighe and Michael Padden, on the Stillorgan dual carriageway in April 2002.
Who were the top Washington County football performers in Week 9?
Big plays and turnovers were plenty as the winners overwhelmed the losers in the final week of Washington County's regular season.
NEWTON- The Catawba County Board of Elections met Monday for the last time before Election Day, discussing early voting and absentee numbers and an alleged voter intimidation incident.
Board of Elections Director Amanda Duncan, as well as Board Secretary Barry Cheney and board member Stephen Palmer were present.
Board Chairman David Hood particiapted in the meeting by phone.
Duncan reported 48,767 total votes had been cast at the countys five one-stop early voting sites.
Duncan also updated the absentee vote numbers.
Weve got another, civilians, we have another 564 to add to the group weve already counted, which was 1,619 so far, Duncan said.
In addition, the board also received 16 more absentee ballots from overseas and 13 absentee ballots from service members.
Duncan raised the issue of an incident of reported voter intimidation from Thursday.
Elizabeth Glynn, a Democratic poll volunteer, reported Ron Jones, a candidate for Catawba County Board of Education, had behaved in a way that intimidated a voter and a volunteer escorting the voter into the Highland Recreation Center polling place.
Jones had photographed and taken video of the voter and volunteer, saying he would report them to the state.
Jones said he was only trying to protect voter integrity by documenting what he saw as a potential irregularity.
Most of the board members expressed the belief Jones' actions came out of a misunderstanding of the law. The law does allow a volunteer to escort a voter into a polling place.
On the day of the incident, Hood had spoken with Jones.
And I think, from talking to the guy, he just really did not understand what the law was, I believe, Hood said.
Duncan said Catawba County Democratic Party Chair Marcus Williams had requested Jones be barred from polling sites for the remainder of the election.
While Hood said he understands the reasoning behind Williams request, Hood didn't think there was sufficient basis to keep Jones away from the polling places.
But I think barring a candidate from the polls is just too much," Hood said. "Based on this incident alone, I just cant see doing it."
Based on his conversation with Jones, Hood said he believed Jones now understands the law.
The board members agreed it would take no action in the case, provided that no further incidents involving Jones occur.
The board will hold another meeting on Tuesday at 5 p.m.
Transcription
1 THE INTRODUCTION OF A VIRTUAL CLASSROOM INSTRUMENT AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY OF THE NETHERLANDS Kathleen Schlusmans, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands Wil Giesbertz, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands Ellen Rusman Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands Howard Spoelstra, Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands Summary In 2006 the Open University of the Netherlands started running trials with the so called virtual class. A virtual classroom is a set of tools for delivering classroom-like sessions, live over the Internet. The virtual class was used to replace face-to-face tutorials in the study centres. Since 2006 more than 20 pilots have been carried out involving more than 25 tutors and more than 200 students. The aim of those trials was to find out if the virtual classroom would be a suitable alternative for f2f-meetings and if so what would be the best way and the best didactical approach to set up a virtual classroom. In this paper we present the findings of the pilots, the selection process of the virtual classroom product and we give recommendations on using the virtual classroom in distance teaching. how it affects our pedagogical model and how we can get more students and tutors to use it. Introduction In 2006, the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) started running trials with a so called virtual classroom. A virtual classroom is a combined set of tools for conducting classroom-like sessions live over the Internet. Since 2006, more than 20 pilot projects have been carried out, involving more than 25 tutors and over 200 students. We intended to use the virtual classroom as a replacement for face-to-face (f2f) tutoring sessions, which are normally organised in our study centres located across the country. The questions we asked ourselves were: Is the virtual classroom a suitable alternative for f2f meetings and, if so, what is the best pedagogical approach to use and the best way to organise it s use? All pilots were organised in a project that was positioned directly under the OUNL central board, and in which most faculties participated. We investigated several virtual classroom instruments in order to come to a first selection of promising candidates. In the end, two instruments were closely investigated in our trails: first LearnLinc from Ilinc and later on Eluminate Live! Academic version from Elluminate. All pilots were
2 evaluated extensively. Our findings indicate that the virtual classroom is a valuable addition to our educational offerings. In this paper we will describe what a virtual classroom is, why we choose to implement it and how we came to our selection of an instrument. We will also report on our findings from pilot projects and our recommendations on how to use a virtual classroom instrument in distance education settings. What is a virtual classroom? A virtual classroom is an instrument for conducting live classroom-like sessions over the internet. In it, students and tutor(s) can communicate using voice, video, chat and whiteboard tools. They also have facilities like application sharing, polling, breakout sessions and quizzes. It allows the tutor and students to participate in real time lessons and discussions. Students can ask questions, draw on the whiteboard, and participate in breakout sessions. (Almost) everything that can be done in a real classroom, can be done in a virtual classroom. Moreover, the whole classroom session can be recorded and made available for review afterwards. In Figure 1 we present a screen shot of the virtual classroom instrument Elluminate Live!. Give feedback/vote Raise hand Participants Whiteboard (+controls) Send chat message Chat Start/stop microphone Figure 1: screenshot of an empty virtual classroom in Elluminate Live! (student view), indicating some interaction functions. Why we considered using a virtual classroom? The main pedagogical model of the Open University of the Netherlands aims at supporting self-directed learning. OUNL students study independently, in their own time and at their own place and pace, using course materials specifically developed to
3 support self-directed learning. Contacts with tutors are limited and in most cases take place through or in discussion groups. OUNL organises f2f meetings in study centres for most introductory courses, but to a far lesser extent for regular courses. These f2f meetings offer the students a sense of connectedness: they get to know each other and their tutor and get immediate feedback on questions and problems. The attendance at f2f meetings has always been a problem within the OUNL, as their nature collides with the model of supported self-directed learning. Students can start and complete their courses at any time and are not part of a defined cohort of students. So f2f meetings usually do not match with the individual pacing of the student. Furthermore, special need students or students who live or work abroad can t join these meetings. F2f meetings often are not very efficient as student numbers are too small to cost effectively organize the sessions in more then a very limited set of study centres. This means that most students have to travel quite far in order to attend a meeting. In an effort to retain the advantages of f2f meetings but at the same time come to terms with their disadvantages, it was decided to investigate the opportunities a virtual classroom could offer. Pilot projects with the virtual classroom instrument In 2006, a first experiment with a virtual classroom took place in a course on Chemistry (Corvers, 2006). This experiment was considered successful and subsequently it was decided to start pilot projects to extended the number of courses that used the virtual classroom in order to establish whether it would be fruitful to implement the virtual classroom for University-wide use. The aim of the piloting phase was to answer the following questions: - Is the virtual classroom an alternative for the f2f-meetings in the study centres? And if so, under which conditions? - How do we go about implementing a virtual classroom solution for Universitywide use? o Which software should we use? o Which pedagogical model(s) should we adopt? o How many students can be involved in virtual classroom sessions? - How do we support students and staff in virtual classroom use? During 2007 and 2008 more than 20 pilots took place throughout all six faculties of the OUNL. The tutors all took part on a voluntary basis. In most pilots small groups of students participated, varying from 4 tot 15 persons. The virtual meetings were not compulsory, so students could choose whether they wanted to participate or not. In half the cases meetings took place through the virtual classroom, while in the other half also parallel f2f meetings were organised. The pedagogical approach in the meetings was roughly the same as in the f2f meetings: short presentations, asking questions and discussing issues. In the 2007 pilots we used the software from ILinc, but in the 2008 pilots we used Elluminate Live!. Most of the time we did not use the video facilities. We found it s use too cumbersome and besides that, the audio signal became more difficult to hear when video was used simultaneously. We evaluated all pilots using questionnaires and interviews. Results of the pilots Overall, the students were very positive about their experiences. They thought the virtual classroom an efficient alternative for the f2f-meetings, as they did not have to
4 travel to the study centres and as the sessions were more frequent and not as long as the regular tutoring sessions. They felt that their involvement was comparable to regular sessions, some even said they felt more involved as they got more opportunities to actively participate. They also liked the opportunity to view session recordings after the meeting. When asked if they would prefer online meetings to real live meetings, the students were still a bit hesitant. Most of them would prefer a mixture of both, specially in situations that require much interaction and discussion. The tutors were very enthusiastic about the experience of online tutoring. None of them has stopped using the virtual classroom since. But at the same time they were a bit disappointed by the number of students that attended the online sessions. Students and tutors alike reported that they thought of the virtual classroom as a suitable alternative to f2f-meeting. For both, the meetings were much easier to organise and available at a much shorter notice than f2f-meetings. It also emerged that the possibility of organising shorter but more frequent meetings worked much better than one long f2f meeting in one or two study centres (mainly because of the reduced travelling time). The virtual classroom is not more effective than f2f teaching but it is certainly more efficient. Certainty within the smaller groups of students during the pilots, there was enough opportunity for interaction. Students experienced the same amount of involvement and they did not feel it was more difficult to stay attentive. All tutors who participated in the pilots decided to go on using the virtual classroom after the pilot period ended. But students and tutors all still felt that the virtual classroom should be a supplement to f2f meetings and not a total replacement. They missed the direct communication, the meeting over coffee and the general chitchat which makes learning fun. In the beginning tutors felt very insecure when using the virtual classroom and they certainly felt exhausted afterwards. But after some sessions they got used to the specific requirements on communicating and keeping track of interactions in the virtual classroom. Selection of the virtual class instrument In order to select a virtual classroom instrument we developed a list of specifications based on the needs of tutors, students and educational experts: we scored potential candidates on educational use, user friendliness, features and administration. For educational use we looked at the way different teaching activities were supported, such as discussion, workshops, group work, assessments etc. User friendliness was assessed by examining the installation procedures, the features of the integration into our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and the availability of training materials for students and teachers. For features we looked at the availability of Voice over Internet (VoIP), presentation tools, whiteboard tools, application sharing, public and private chat, feedback tools, document sharing, polling and quizzes. We also looked at how the system should be installed/administered, the way students and tutors were authorised for use and the licence fees. We initially looked into a whole range of virtual classroom instruments and assessed them using the list of requirements. After the first round in our elimination process, two commercial products were tested extensively in the pilots. Finally we decided to choose for Elluminate Live!, mainly based on quality of audio, extensive feature set, support for multiple platforms, automatic reconnection features and low bandwidth requirements, Recommendations on how to organise and use the virtual classroom instrument When to use a virtual classroom?
5 We have experimented with the virtual classroom for more than two years now and we can confidently say that the virtual classroom is a powerful tool to use as a replacement for traditional teaching sessions such as workshops and structured discussion. We even had some experience with structured role play and this also worked very well. Supporting group work and free discussion is a bit more difficult, as it requires more student/tutor experience and feeling-at-ease in using the virtual classroom. We expect that all involved will become more comfortable in using the tools and as a result it will become much easier to use them in a less directive and restricted way. The virtual classroom is technically well suited for lectures, but teachers have to be aware of the fact that boring lectures become even more boring when you listen to them on the computer. When bored, the temptation to grab a quick cup of coffee or to check your becomes hard to resist. As Niall Sclater (2008) says on his weblog: Online synchronous teaching is not about lecturing at people - it s about involving your class continuously in a whole host of different ways. Group size should not be to big, certainly not in the beginning when tutors and students are not used to the tool. We worked with groups of 8 to 15 students and that seems a manageable size. A virtual class session should also be fairly short. One and a half hour is an absolute maximum, otherwise attendance is too exhausting for both the tutor and the students. Preparations to make The first teaching session in a virtual classroom feels the same as first-time teaching in a real classroom. Tutors feel insecure and therefore it is important that they are well acquainted with the software and are well trained. It is important that the tutor has had some hands-on experience before facing the students. It really helps to use two pc s, one showing the student perspective and the other the tutor s perspective or to work with one or two colleagues. Specially for the first session we recommend having an experienced colleague around who can point out things or take over when you forget something. A virtual classroom session requires good preparation. Tutors should have a scenario of their lesson available and upload all the required materials to the classroom before the students enter the session. It is a bit more complicated to improvise during a virtual classroom session than it is in a real classroom, especially for the inexperienced tutor. One should also be aware that everything proceeds at a bit slower pace then in a normal classroom setting. Furthermore, the students who participate in the virtual classroom should be well prepared and instructed. Not only technical preparation is important, students should also be aware of the basic etiquette to adhere to in a virtual classroom. They should know how to ask a question, how to let the tutor know you have left for a minute to go to the bathroom, how to avoid interruptions from family members who enter their study or from their telephones. And what policy is used for students coming in late. We recommend new groups to first organise an informal session to discuss rules and regulations. For example, students have to be made aware that individual technical problems will not be addressed during the session but that they will be helped as soon as possible afterwards. If part of the lesson is interrupted due to individual problems, the students who have can attend normally will perceive the whole interruption as a waste of time. Training and support for tutors and students Several training sessions for tutors were organised. Each tutor who contemplates using a virtual classroom is offered to participate in an introductory virtual workshop. After
6 s/he decides to set up a real virtual class a f2f tutorial is organized in which the tutors learn how to set up the classroom and how to use it in their role of session moderator. However, even after the training some tutors still feel insecure about conducting a virtual class all by themselves, so for help and support during the first few sessions we always provide backup from someone from the Online support project. Pilot use also shows that in the first sessions tutors preferably choose a very simple session plan and only afterwards start using more advanced functionalities. That is when they prefer additional support. All the participating students receive an instruction on how to prepare their pc s. Each student is offered an individual 30 minute test session, during which the audio communication facility is tested and a short instruction is provided. Students and tutors alike appreciate the training and support. What s more: every new OUNL lecturer or tutor is obliged to attend the extensive virtual classroom training as part of the OUNL teaching qualification program. Interactions It is advisable to encourage interaction in the virtual classroom and to consider how you will interact with your students. There is a whole range of tools available in the classroom but it is important to decide in advance which tools you are going to use. We felt that using polls and quizzes and then presenting the results to the whole group were a very powerful way of interacting with the students and to keep their attention. Evaluation results verified this notion. Although chatting might be distracting in the beginning, it gives the tutor a very effective insight into the class mood even if you only glance at the chat from time to time. You can always decide to do act on it or not. A tutor should also be aware that students find it hard to concentrate after about 30/40 minutes of attendance. You won t see them yawning, but they will. So have regular coffee breaks and let students use those breaks to chat among themselves. Recordings Students appreciate the fact that the virtual class can be recorded and made available via the VLE for later use. Students use it for revision or to make up for a class they missed. Just make sure that, in accordance to privacy laws, students agree from the onset of the session that the class will be recorded. The Open University of the Netherlands and the virtual classroom The Open University has decided to make the virtual classroom available in all courses and all faculties. We have chosen to implement the tool Elluminate Live! and are now in the process of making it available in our central VLE. All tutors and lecturers will be trained in its use. We are also investigating possibilities of using the virtual classroom as a conference tool for other business processes such as staff meetings or board meetings or international collaborations. Moreover we are developing a policy on the use of the virtual classroom and on the combination of the virtual classroom with f2f tutoring. Now in the final phase of the project, we are also setting up some experiments with larger groups and with new pedagogical approaches. Literature - Giesbertz, Wil, Rusman, Ellen, Spoelstra, Howard en Wigman, Marcel (2008). Verder met de virtuele klas. Heerlen: Open Universiteit Nederland IPO.
7 - Rayson, Steve and Aberdour, Mark (2009). Virtual classrooms: an overview. Retrieved 4th March Overview_v1.0.pdf - Rusman, Ellen en Giesbertz, Wil (2008). Gebruikerservaringen met een virtuele klas. Heerlen: Open Universiteit Nederland IPO. - Ruis, Alex, Rusman, Ellen en Giesbertz, Wil (2008). Gebruikerservaringen met een virtuele klas 2. Heerlen: Open Universiteit Heerlen IPO. - Schlusmans, Kathleen, Giesbertz, Wil en Rusman, Ellen (2008). Ervaringen met de virtuele klas. OnderwijsInnovatie 4, pp Sclater, Neill (2008). Synchronous Online means teaching and not lecturing. Virtual Learning. Retrieved 2 nd February 2009.
RALEIGH Republican Donald Trump rallied thousands of supporters Monday afternoon at the N.C. State Fairgrounds, making a final pitch to battleground North Carolina one day before the election.
Trump repeated his attacks on Democrat Hillary Clintons handling of emails as secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the office of president of the United States, Trump told the crowd amid chants of lock her up.
Shes being protected by a totally rigged system.
Trump voiced skepticism in FBI director James Comeys announcement Sunday that investigators have finished reviewing new emails related to Clintons use of a private email server. Comey said Clinton will not face charges.
They went through 650,000 emails in eight days yeah right, Trump said. So sad whats going on.
Trump ridiculed Clintons use of high-profile musicians like Beyonce and Jay Z to draw crowds to her rallies.
I get bigger crowds than they do, he said. I dont have a guitar, and I dont have a piano. All we have is great concepts for our country.
Trump said that if he used what he views as inappropriate language in Beyonce and Jay Zs music, he would face execution though reinstitution of the electric chair.
Clinton was due to be in Raleigh late Monday to close out her presidential campaign with a midnight rally down the street at N.C. State Universitys Reynolds Coliseum. Shell be joined by musicians Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi as well as former President Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea.
The two Raleigh rallies highlight North Carolinas role as a crucial battleground state and a state thats too close to call on the eve of the election.
A New York Times/Siena poll conducted over the weekend found the candidates tied at 44 percent support. The RealClearPolitics average of N.C. polls gave Trump a 1.4 percentage point lead, while the latest Quinnipiac poll gave Clinton a 2 percentage point lead.
Megan Chasnis, 36, of Morrisville attended the Trump rally and said shes hopeful and confident that the Republican will win the election she views as a good versus evil choice.
Its time to get the corruption out of Washington, she said, adding that Trump supporters have been unfairly caricatured this year. Im not a white-trash older man like Hillary says all Trump supporters are.
Trump said Monday hes confident hell win the state and the election, which he said will be Brexit plus plus plus, a reference to the United Kingdoms surprising vote to leave the European Union.
But he said the movement hes created likely wont return in the next election if he loses.
They may say good things about our movement, but it wont mean a damn thing, folks, he said. If we dont win, I will consider this the single greatest waste of time, energy wow do you need energy for this and money.
Trump promised to bring back jobs if he wins, pointing to manufacturing work in North Carolina that has moved overseas.
The economic policies of Bill and Hillary Clinton have destroyed manufacturing in your state and throughout the entire country, he said. The theft of North Carolina jobs will end. Youve taken it harder than most states.
He said hell bring back the miners by promoting clean coal, although the coal industry is largely absent from North Carolina.
Trump repeated his campaign pledges to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a law that will bring such great health care for much less money. He said hell stop Syrian refugees from entering the country in order to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country.
He said he sees tremendous potential to improve life in the crime-ridden inner cities.
You cant walk to the store and get a loaf of bread often you get shot, he said, noting that the neighborhoods are home to African-Americans and Hispanics. Im going to fix it. What the hell do you have to lose?
Before Trump took the stage, the crowd heard from two other N.C. Republican candidates Gov. Pat McCrory and state Sen. Buck Newton, whos running for attorney general.
As my good friend said the other day, were not going to be calling her President Clinton, were going to be calling her by her other name: Inmate Clinton, Newton said.
McCrory also called on Republicans to vote Tuesday. We will not be intimidated by the radical left; we will no longer be the silent majority, the incumbent governor said.
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The young Black driver of my Uber said he was taking the day off on Tuesday to ferry friends and supporters to polling stations in Philadelphia. It is the most critical election of our time, he said. Gun control and social security are the two things that can protect Blacks. if Donald Trump wins he will reverse both. Do you know that the Ku Klux Klan has endorsed him? Black lives will not matter.
I understood his anxiety as I drove past boarded factories, office buildings on sale and dilapidated houses to the Hillary Clinton campaign office on Frankford Avenue in the inner city of Philadelphia. Unemployment, militarised policing, homelessness, the cost of health care and access to college education were issues that every Black family was thinking of.
My spirit lifted to see the vigour and energy of young Black and Latino youth lined up to help Hillary. My rally campaign, Misha Battiste, a young Black woman, welcomed me with a smile and gave me a packet of information before sending me off for canvas training. Our trainer told us to be very polite if we came across Trump supporters and leave quickly as they sometime got aggressive.
Armed with names of voters, I knocked on doors to make sure voters had the right information about voting times, place to vote, IDs to carry and transportation to get there. For the undecided we tried to give more information to help make up their minds.
Liar, liar, liar! shouted a Russian woman, as she followed me down the road from her door. I had left when she said she was voting for Donald Trump. But now I turned around and asked, Is Trump not a bigger liar?
No, he will do business with Russia, she (Hillary) will make war with Russia, she replied.
Her neighbour, another Russian immigrant, who had voted Democrat in the past agreed. I tried to explain that Hillary had never once said that she would make war with Russia. But the ladys argument was that Bush Junior had completed the wars that his father Bush senior had started, and that similarly Hillary Clinton would complete what Bill Clinton had started.
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But Bill Clinton did not start any war, I said. In fact, Bill Clinton had improved the economy, created more jobs and raised wages. And that Hillary Clinton had clearly stated that she would reduce gun violence, raise minimum wages, ensure affordable health care, make college accessible, protect social security and medicare, rebuild infrastructure, increase jobs, invest in clean energy, advocate for equal pay for women and the right to take medical decisions over their own bodies. Did the lady not want all this as an American citizen?
I dont believe her. She is a liar, she replied.
That is when I realised that this election was not based on facts but on perceptions. The Russian immigrants only heard Donald Trump screaming the words Putin and liar when they switched on their TV. They did not hear Hilllary Clinton asking them to check her website for facts.
Other Trump supporters I met, one holding a sign saying Hillary4Prison called her a bitch, a drunk man from a bar who followed me to my car, called her a monster and a slut. That is when I began to grasp fully what Hillary was up against-a deep seated misogyny. These men feared female authority more than they feared Russia or China.
And the Russian women believed Trump more easily than Hillary because he was a man. They had been conditioned to accept what a man said loudly more easily than what a woman said politely. What would be seen as strengths in a man was projected as a weakness in Hillary Clinton. At a Kate Perry concert to turn out the vote for Hillary, a woman standing in line to get in said she was a Bernie Sanders supporter who was likely to vote for Trump. The two had nothing in common except that they were both men.
Worried and anxious, I started knocking on more doors, talking to more people, and I was reassured. Philadelphia would vote for Hillary.
Women would wear pantsuits to the polling stations to show solidarity against the sexist comments made against Hillary for wearing pants, many had T-shirts saying Nasty Woman to reclaim the abuse that Trump had heaped on her, and at the Kate Perry concert, girl power had turned out in full force. Kate McGinty gave her senate election speech, Kate Perry sang, Madeline Albright reminded us that 20 years ago, in 1995 Hillary Clinton had said womens rights are human rights, and a young woman from college asked us to join her chant of Madam President.
I saw a father hold up his seven-year-old daughter to see Hillary on stage as we all chanted Madam President. In 36 hours this will become a reality. The conversation will change from bitch, slut and nasty woman to Madam President and smart woman.
I did not think that 20 years after I had heard Hillary, standing in the rain in Huairou near Beijing in China, I would be canvassing for her in Philadelphia but then Women Hold Up Half the Sky!
(Ruchira Gupta is a US-based journalist and activist. The views expressed are personal.)
I am sure some of our friends reading this might be surprised. But it is true and it is the law of the land. The deity in a temple is a legal entity who is a perpetual minor, according to Indian law, the Constitution and dozens of Supreme Court verdicts.
The deity has rights like you and me. This is the legal point many people are overlooking. I was there in the Supreme Court hearing on Monday and our organisation, Ayyappa Dharma Sena, joined the case.
Our counsel VK Biju pointed out to the Supreme Court about the rights of the deity and the court has consented to listen to the argument in detail.
Read: Let the doors of Sabarimala open to women of all ages
Sabarimala Ayyappa, Guruvayurappan and Tirupathi Venkateshwaran have the right to have bank accounts, do transactions and even have the right not to listen to a piece of music they dont like. A very interesting debate happened regarding this in court whether Sri Padmanabha Swamy could be woken up by the sloka of another temple, Venkateshwara Suprahatham. This is the great Indian diversity, our secular and pluralistic ethos. Everyone is free to celebrate any faith in the way they choose. Many will be surprised to know that there is an Islamic shrine inside Sabarimala and on the way Ayyappa devotees pray at the Arthunkal church and Erumeli mosque. Indian culture and the Constitution celebrate this pluralism.
On a less legal and technical point, millions of women enter Sabarimala, and the current regulation is an age-related one. In India there are different age regulations for many things. For e.g. a girl who is 18 can marry, but a boy of the same age cant. Is this discrimination?
Read: In a U-turn, Kerala now wants women to be allowed inside Sabarimala temple
There are sociological reasons for such regulations. Rather than seeing an issue in totality, it is very unfortunate that a section of the media is saying that Sabarimala has banned women. The age regulation is because the prathishta of the temple is called naishtik brahmacharya. Swami Vivekananda explains the concept in the book Raja Yoga (1896), which made him world-famous. This is one of the many paths and people who choose this path have a very difficult spiritual journey ahead. Vivekananda explains about the generation of Ojas in the brain, the practice of celibacy, etc. The Sabarimala temple system is designed to give devotees a glimpse of this Kundalini yoga practice and a peek into sanyas and super consciousness.
READ: Tradition, not law, decides womens entry at shrines
Now the most important point is you have every right not to believe in Sabarimala Ayyappa. You have every right not to come to Sabarimala. But do you have the right to impose your ideology on the temple? Article 25 and dozens of Supreme Court judgments protect the right to faith, temples and deities.
If you dont like Sabarimala, please choose another temple. If you think Sabarimala is governed by patriarchy, please go to Ladies Sabarimala, Attukal or Chakkulathukavu. One of the greatest democratic principles is to live and let live. Many believers and non-believers co-exist peacefully. That is the great Indian pluralism and diversity we cherish.
Rahul Easwar is a social activist and president, Ayyappa Dharma Sena
The views expressed are personal
Filmmakers are beginning to slowly realise the potential of UPs thus far untapped locales.
Their choice ranges from Mathuras Nandgaon where Akshay Kumar is currently shooting for his latest Toilet: Ek Prem Katha to Bareilly where Ayushman Khuranas Bareilly ki Barfi is likely to be filmed in addition to Lucknow where it is currently being shot.
In fact, whether its the Ashton Kutcher starrer Jobs, Akshay Kumars Jolly LLB 2, Bidita Bags T for Taj or Richa Chaddas Masaan, all have one thing in commonUttar Pradesh.
Arjun Kapoor shooting at Nandeswar Ghat in Varanasi. (Adarsh Gupta/HT Photo)
With approximately 125 plus film offers from Bollywood and the promise of some international projects too, the states latest film policy finally appears to be making some impact.
All top names of Bollywood have travelled to UP and shown interest in shooting in the state. Many of them have already begun shooting and many more are waiting to come here, says principal secretary of information, Navneet Sehgal who also heads Film Bandhu, a nodal agency to ensure speedy clearances to filmmakers.
The policy was re-worked in 2015 and boosted by a push from the chief ministers office .
Akshay Kumar shooting in Mathura for Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. (HT Photo)
Uttar Pradeshs re-worked film policy and the buzz it has generated has now inspired states like Haryana, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh (MP) too, says producer Anil Patil who shot Dasdev in UP.
Some of the films that have either been shot or about to be shot include Nawazuddin Siddiquis Babumoshai Bandookbaaz and Akshay Kumar starrer Jolly LLB 2 and Seema Kapoors film Kabari in Lucknow.
Another big ticket film with Sunny Deol and Manoj Bajpai in the lead is also likely to be shot in the state. A few of them like Nil Batey Sannata and Masaan shot in UP have already been screened and won critical acclaim.
A film promotion and facilitation committee at the district level has also been set up.
Arjun and Shraddha Kapoor shooting for Half Girlfriend in Varanasi. (Adarsh Gupta/HT Photo)
In May, many were surprised when the state government sent out a global Make your film in UP invite to filmmakers from Cannes.
For a state, which has been busy reworking its film policies since 1999 to attract Mumbais dream merchants, this was a first.
Imarti-making at 2:30am A photo posted by Kriti (@kritisanon) on Nov 5, 2016 at 3:10pm PDT
#BareillykiBarfi .. How about some Lucknow ki Imarti for now A video posted by Kriti (@kritisanon) on Nov 5, 2016 at 2:03pm PDT
A little before the UP delegation visited Cannes, Sehgal had attended the 63rd National Film Festival in Delhi where he had received on behalf of chief minister Akhilesh Yadav the Special Mention Certificate under the Most Film Friendly State Award from President Pranab Mukherjee.
Australian film maker Christopher Simon has shown interest to shoot a period film set around the 1950s in Lucknow and Kanpur. UK-based Shirali Le Mercier, Emilia Wilman and Canadas Mahi Kaur have expressed interest in shooting their films in Varanasi, said Gaurav Dwivedi, vice-chairman of the UP Film Development Council (UPFDC).
A very good morning from @psbhumi and me from the sets of Toilet - Ek Prem Katha! First day it is...need your best wishes pic.twitter.com/ouumNwfl1A Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) November 6, 2016
While international film projects are yet to materialise, top government officials agree that there has been a definite increase in films being shot in the state. Before Cannes, the UP government had sent a similar Make your film in UP invite to Mumbai filmmakers in 2015.
Vishal Kapoor, the UPFDC member who was part of the Mumbai and Cannes delegation, says that efforts are now on to promote lesser known locales in the state like those in Bundelkhand. The state is full of such beautiful locations which are now attracting filmmakers, says Kapoor who had recently travelled to picturesque Chitrakoot to probe potential locations for filmmakers.
Kapoor has already met Anupama Chopra, chairperson of the Mumbai Film Festival, to find out possibilities of having a similar festival in UP. Top filmmakers like Boney Kapoor have praised UP CMs proactive interest in helping filmmakers shoot in the state.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
Two stuntmen died while shooting for Kannada film Maastigudi in Ramanagara district near Bengaluru on Monday.
The accident was caught on camera. Stunt artists Anil and Uday jumped off a helicopter into the Tippagondanahalli lake from a height of about 50 feet and drowned in it.
Kannada actor Duniya Vijay also jumped after them and was rescued by a fisherman later while trying to swim ashore.
Mondays isnt the first incident where somebody died on the sets of a film.
Here we list some of the films where actors or stuntmen died or gravely injured during shooting.
Coolie (1983): None other than superstar Amitabh Bachchan met with a deadly accident on the sets of Coolie when Puneet Issar punched Bachchan and the actor collided with a table. Big B spent weeks in coma.
Kolilakkam (1980): Former naval officer and Malayalam film actor Jayan was killed during the shoot of Kolilakkam in Sholavaram near Chennai. Known for his daredevil stunts, Jayan was trying to board an airborne helicopter from a running motorbike.
The Expendables 2 (2012): Severe fire broke on the sets of The Expendables 2 when the team was shooting for its climax in Bulgaria. The fire became big within minutes and a stuntman got trapped in it. The stunt expert of the Chinese origin couldnt be rescued. None of the lead actors of the film, though, were injured.
Shootout At Wadala (2013): In a bizarre incident, Anil Kapoor accidentally fired a bullet which grazed past John Abrahams neck. The unit resumed shooting soon after.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
Transcription
1 :03PM P1 Kingdom of Cambodia Nation Religion King Unofficial translation ROYAL GOVERNMENT Council of Ministers No: 42 ANRK.BK Phnom Penh, 10 July, 2000 SUB-DECREE on Air Pollution Control and Noise Disturbance Has seen the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia (1993); Has seen the Royal Decree No. NS.RKT dated 30 November, 1998 on the Formation of the Royal Government of Cambodia of the Kingdom of Cambodia; Has seen Preah Reach Kram No. 02/NS/94 dated 20 July 1994, announcing to allow using the Law on the Establishment and Implementation of the Council of Ministers; Has seen Preah Reach Krom No. NS.RKM 0194/21 dated 24 January 1996, announcing to use the Law on the Establishment of the Ministry of Environment; Has seen Preah Reach Krom No. NS.RKM 1296/21 dated 24 December Announcing to use the Law on the Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Management; Has received an approval from meeting of the council ministers on June 09, Decision - 1 -
2 :03PM P2 CHAPTER I General Provisions Article 1: This sub-degree has a purpose to protect the environment quality and public health from air pollutions and noise pollution through monitoring, curb and mitigation activities. Article 2: This sub-decree applies to all movable sources and immovable sources of air and noise pollution. Article 3: Technical terms use in this sub-decree shall have the meaning ascribed there to: A- Source of pollution is divided into two terms: - Movable source refers to emission sources without permanent location such as aircraft, ship, vehicle port transportation service etc. - Immovable sources refers to emission sources with permanent location such as factory, enterprise, warehouse, construction site, incinerator etc. B- Pollutant refers to smoke, dust, ash particle substance, gas, vapour, fog, odour, radio-active substance etc. Flammable substance refers to fuel ail, cod, natural gas and might be caught flammable reaction. CHAPTER 2 Provisions on emission of air and noise pollution Article 4: Air quality standard shall be specified in the Annex-1 of the subdegree. The standard of maximum quality of hazardous substance allowing in the air shall be specified in the Annex-2 of this subdecree. Article 5: The standard of maximum into the atmosphere shall be specified in the Annex-3 of this sub-decree. This standard of smoke emission from movable source shall be specified in the Annex-4 of the sub-decree
3 :03PM P3 Article 6: In the necessary cases, the standards were stipulated in Article 4 and Article 5 of this sub-decree shall be recognized and changed every 5 years, based on the proposal of the Ministry of Environment. Article 7: The standard for noise emission from various resources like vehicle, manufacturing place and the standard for maximum noise emission for public and residential areas shall be specified in the Annex 5, Annex 6 and Annex 7 of this sub-degree. Article 8: The emission of pollutants into the atmosphere exceeds the standard which stipulated in the Annex 3 and Annex 4 of this sub-decree be strictly prohibited. Article 10: The importation and production of flammable substances containing S. Pb. C.H. Hydro-carbon shall be complied with the standard which stipulated in the Annex 8 of this sub-decree. Article 11: The importation utilization, vehicle and its spare-part production in Cambodia which emitted pollutants and noise exceeding the standard as stipulated in the Annex 4 and Annex 5 of this subdecree shall be strictly prohibited. Article 12: The discharge or leakage of various flammable substance, fueloil, radio-active or chemical substance into the atmosphere, water and oil shall be strictly prohibited. CHAPTER 3 Asking for permission Article 13: The emission of pollutants and noise from immovable source into the atmosphere shall be asked for a permission from the Ministry of Environment and shall be sent the application from copy to concerned ministries and agencies
4 :03PM P4 Article 14: The asking of an import permission of flammable substance shall be attached the analytical result which emphasized the quantity of importation or production. Article 15: The asking for discharge permission as stipulated in the Article 13 of the sub-decree shall be carried out for new project and ongoing Assessment s report. Article 16: The master or person who responsible for pollution source as stipulate in the Article 13 and Article 14 of this sub-decree shall be applied for permission from the Ministry of Environment: - 40 days before the project commencement in Phnom Penh - 60 days before the project commencement in town or province CHAPTER 4 Pollution Source Monitoring Article 17: The monitoring of flammable substance s quantity, air pollutant emission and noise causing from immovable source is the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment. Article 18: The monitoring of smoke and noise emission from movable source is the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment in collaboration with line ministries and institution. The monitoring procedure shall be determined by join declaration among line ministries. Article 19: Ministry of Environment shall be prepared technical guidelines on pollution source monitoring sampling point, air and noise analysis. Article 20: Ministry of Environment shall be taken sample at all emission points of pollution source. The master of person who responsible for pollution source shall collaborate the staff of environment who conduct a sampling to fulfil their technical duty. Article 21: During conducting Environment inspection or controlling in the sources of pollution the Ministry of Environment inspectors can - 4 -
5 :03PM P5 Analyses the source in place or can take them to the environmental laboratory for annualizing. Article 22: The owner or responsible person of pollution sources shall bear the cost of the cost of the analyses of his/her own sample following the tariff determined by the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Economic and finance. This income shall be include into the National budget in order to allocate to the Environmental Endowment Fund Account. Article 23: The owner or responsible person of the pollution sources may ask to have his/her pollution sample tested in other public or private laboratories which are recognized formally and such laboratories of Environment laboratory. Article 24: The owner or responsible person of pollution source shall: - Responsible for installing or equipping any equipment to purity toxic substances and to reduce noise and vibration in order to respond to Air pollution standard as stipulated in the Annexes: - Responsible for installing the equipment for measurement of amount of pollutant contained in his/her pollution sources and keep the result for record keeping. The result must send to the Ministry of Environment every 3 months. - Have at least an environmental compromising and prepare environmental protection plan in their institution. Environmentalist shall listed and recognized from the Ministry of Environment and have the capability as required by the Ministry of Environment. Article 25: Even if it is found out that the discharge of toxic substances and noise from any pollution source do not respond to the standard as stipulated in the Article 5 and 7 of this sub-degree, the Ministry of Environment shall: a- Issue a written order requiring the owner or responsible person of such pollution source to correct the violation activities immediately within a specifies time period. b- Issue are written order requiring the owner of responsible person of such pollution source to stop his/her activities temporarily until the violation is corrected if the violation - 5 -
6 :03PM P6 activities cause an adverse impact to human health and air quality. CHAPTER 5 Air Pollution Monitoring Article 26: The Ministry of Environment shall regularly control and monitor the situation of the air quality through out the Kingdom of Cambodia in order to take measure to prevent and reduce the pollution. Article 27: The Ministry of Environment shall manage data relating result of the air quality testing and to assess the status of the air quality and of the pollution of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Article 28: Even if it is found that any area is suffering of pollution which could threaten human life or environmental quality. The Ministry of Environment shall immediately notify the public about the danger and investigate to find out the sources of pollution and shall take measure to prevent air pollution and to restore the air quality. CHAPTER 6 Inspection Procedure Article 29: The Ministry of Environment s inspectors, while conducting environmental inspection shall complied with the following procedures: a- To present his/her identity card and mission letter while entering into the premise or any site of pollution for conducting inspection or tasking sample or for checking record; b- Primary record and report of the inspection or sample taking shall be done at the site of inspection with participating from any witness if necessary; - 6 -
7 :03PM P7 c-the inspectors may ask question and require the owner or responsible person of the source of pollution to provide the information and other relevant documents which are used for report making and for evidence; d- One copy of record or report shall be given to the owner or the responsible person of the source of pollution and one copy to the representatives of concerned ministries (who collaborate with) and other one copy shall be kept at the Ministry of Environment. Article 30: Where if there is complaint or report that any source of pollution discharges contaminant into human health or public property. The Ministry of Environment in collaboration with concerned ministries, may enter the site of this source of pollution and conduct inspection and take sample for testing. Article 31: In the case of serious accident or imminent danger resulting from air pollution at public water area, the Ministry of Environment shall make urgent inspection on the above problem and shall inform the concerned ministries and local authority. Article 32: In the case of clear offense that cause air pollution, the inspector of the Ministry of Environment shall: a- Take statement, collect and detain evidence of such offense and make an administrative fine, if the offense has not contaminates seriously or effect human health, public properties and environmental quality. b- Collect and detain evidence of such offense for making statement and forward the case file to the competent agency, if this offense causes serious pollution or affect to human health of public properties and environmental quality
8 :03PM P8 CHAPTER 7 Penalty Article 33: Violations of this sub-degree shall be fined and punished according to the articles 20, 21, 22, 23 and the article 25 of the chapter 9 of the Law on Environmental Protection and Natural Resource Management. Article 34: The Ministry of Environment s official is responsible for making a report of prosecution for any person who violate any article of this sub-decree. The Ministry of Environment shall take legal action against any offense of this sub-decree. Article 35: Any environmental inspection official or agent who is negligent, fails to pay attention to fails to comply with the Ministry s regulations or conspires with a violator or facilitates the commission of a violation shall be subject to administrative sanction or face prosecution before the court. CHAPTER 8 Final provisions Article 36: Any provision contrary to this sub-degree shall be annulled. Article 37: The minister in charge of the cabinet of the council of Ministers, Ministers and concerned institutions shall co-operate with Ministry of Environment and to implement and to implement this sub-decree according to their duty. Article 38: This sub-decree shall be in force from the date of its signature
9 :03PM P9 ANNEX 5 Vehicle of noise in public and residential Area maximum permitted noise level N 0 Category of vehicle Maximum noise level permitted (db(a)) 1 Motorcycle, cylinder capacity (CC) of the engine does not exceed 125cm Motorcycles, CC of the engine exceeds 125cm 90 3 Motorize tricycles 90 4 Cars, taxi, passenger vehicle for the carriage of 80 5 Passenger vehicle constructed for carriage of more than 12 passengers 85 6 Truck permitted maximum weight does not exceed 3.5 tones 85 7 Truck permitted maximum weight does not exceed 3.5 tones 88 8 Truck engine is more than 150 KW 89 9 Tractor or any other truck not elsewhere classified of described in this column of the table 91 Remark: This standard is applied to control of noise emission standard for all kind of vehicle when operating on the public road
10 :03PM P10 ANNEX 6 Maximum Permitted noise level in public and residential area (db(a)) Period of time N 0 Area From 6h AM From 18h to From 22h to 18h 22h to 6hAM 1 Quiet areas - Hospitals - Libraries School - Kindergarten 2 Residential area: - Hotels Administration offices - House 3 Commercial and service areas and mix 4 Small industrial industries intermingling in residential areas Remark: This standard is applied to control of noise level of any source of activity that emitted noise into the public and residential areas
11 :03PM P11 ANNEX 7 Noise control standard in workshop Factory industry of location Noise Level (db(a)) Maximum period of time (Hour) Level Support ear prevention equipment to worker in place has 80 (db(a)) over noise Remark: This standard applied to control of noise level in location of workshop, industries, factories
Actor Sidharth Malhotra has made peace with the way the film industry functions, especially with rumours and gossip surrounding actors lives. But the 31-year-old says his parents are yet to get familiar with his fame.
My parents are used to seeing me in the papers, but my mother still gets excited on special occasions. My dad, too, will comment on whatever it is, be it a trailer, a story or a song. But when it comes to link-ups, theyve let that be, says Sid, who often makes headlines for his romance with rumoured girlfriend, actor Alia Bhatt.
My parents have never been that intrusive so in that aspect, I am lucky. Also, they know that they have no control over me since I live away. So now, my mother knows that beta haath se nikal gaya hai. Theyd rather be friends than being parents. I dont know if theyre okay with it but then when I say that we are co-stars and we are working together, they do understand. Theyre also maturing as I am, he adds.
Actor Alia Bhatt, too, recently moved into her new apartment with sister, Shaheen Bhatt.
The Delhi boy, who has been living in rented accommodations since he moved to Mumbai in 2007, says hes ready to buy his own house. Sid has finalised a property. The negotiations are on, but its very difficult to close the deal and get all the paperwork done. I have stayed everywhere from Malad to Bandra (in Mumbai). Im looking (for a house) in and around Bandra, he says.
Alia Bhatt, too, recently moved into her new apartment with sister, Shaheen Bhatt.
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While some actors may find it difficult to handle fame, John Abraham feels there are more pros (to stardom) than cons.
The actor says he enjoys the appreciation he has received for his performances in films. However, he adds that one should also be prepared for the brickbats.
Being a star is also a mindset. Its all in your head. I dont think I am a big star. I live like a middle-class guy. If I have to have tea at a stall, I go ahead and do it. I dont need bodyguards around me. Thats probably because I am good enough to handle 20 people, he says, laughing.
Watch: Trailer of Force 2
The actor, who has carved a niche for himself in the action genre with movies such as Force (2011) and Rocky Handsome, feels that Bollywood action films do not match up to action movies in the West.
Watch: Action sequences in Hollywood films
Hollywood has the budget. However, for a scene in one of my films, I had to break open many doors. I dont know if this was due to [a small] budget or [the lack of] preparation. I am not sure if film-makers in the West would allow their actors to do something like this, says John.
When we say "blood and sweat" goes into making a film... we mean it! In the hospital on my way to 3 knee surgeries while shooting for Force2 #pain #comeoutstronger @force2thefilm A video posted by John Abraham (@thejohnabraham) on Nov 6, 2016 at 11:43pm PST
The Dishoom actor adds that India needs to buck up when it comes to action movies. We have the best action directors working for Hollywood films. Action is not about performing backflips or saving a girl. It is about having the attitude of an action star. To do action, you need to have guts. If you dont like this genre, you dont get there (achieve success). Very few of us get the chance to become action heroes. Im fortunate to be in this space. Theres a huge vacuum here and I enjoy this space, he says.
Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, who has played a soldier on the silver screen, once again expressed his gratitude to the countless security personnel who guard the borders and keep us safe.
Taking some time off from his busy schedule, the 49-year-old actor made an impromptu visit to the Border Security Force Jammu Frontier headquarters in Jammu to pay his respects to the soldiers who were killed in recent ceasefire violations and attacks by Pakistan.
We are safe because of you and the nation is safe because of you I am a reel hero and all of you are the real heroes. I play with fake guns and you play with real guns. You should have been here (on the dais) and these cameras (media) should have been at you, the Baby actor told a euphoric crowd of BSF troopers and their families.
Peace is imp as many lives are lost; I think peace is only way out: Akshay Kumar when asked if peace needs to be restored btw India-Pak pic.twitter.com/mIrEdCsHAB ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
This is not the first time Akshay has shown his respect for Indian soldiers. In October, the actor released a video to pay his tribute to those who died in the September Uri attack in which 19 soldiers were killed by militants.
He also shared a video on his Facebook page to express his gratitude to Indian soldiers by sending them Diwali greetings.
The best way to celebrate a festival is with your loved ones and the good luck of spending festivals with our families is because of you (soldiers). Without even knowing us, you love us and keep us safe, he said in the video.
He was also among the few Bollywood A-listers who spoke on the controversy around banning Pakistani artistes in India and said people should think of the Indian Army and not the ban on artists.
App for soldiers help
The actor, who gave Rs 9 lakh to the family of BSF constable Gurnam Singh, who died in a recent sniper attack by Pakistan in Bobiya area of Kathua district, said that he didnt do any favour by offering his help.
There are so many ppl in our country who want to help our armed forces, why not make an app for it?- Akshay Kumar at BSF base camp in Jammu pic.twitter.com/gykWuPgcYZ ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
I knew someone in the BSF and was able to contact the family but there are several others families (of slain soldiers), who need help. Why cant we have a mobile application with all the details (including account numbers) of our soldiers, who die for the nation. I am a practical man When someone dies, his family needs money, he said.
He added that the app will smoothen the process for anyone who wants to help the families of soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the nation.
Known for his philanthropy, Akshay, however, brushed aside any political motives behind his visit to the BSF headquarters, saying he had come to show his love for the BSF men.
Here our BSF men are giving their lives on the border. We are not discussing fights, we are discussing love but peace is the most important thing, which is required, he said when asked whether he had any message for Pakistan.
#WATCH: Akshay Kumar pays tribute to soldiers (who lost their lives in ceasefire violations/encounter) at BSF base camp in Jammu pic.twitter.com/IxGoxCFHrD ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Disappointed children
Constantly chased by a frenzied media and die-hard fans among the BSF, small children of the BSF School, including those who had prepared dance performances, could not get a glimpse of their favourite star.
Akshay also wanted to mingle with the children and twice made announcements on the microphone requesting media persons to allow him to meet them but all in vain.
Fortunate that I got opportunity to come and meet you. I have always said I'm 'reel hero',you are 'real hero': Akshay Kumar at BSF base camp pic.twitter.com/CoPLNdZLXJ ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
We had prepared dance performances on songs of Akshays movies but everything was messed up. We are really very disappointed, Amita said.
Another little girl Sakshi could not control her tears.
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Celebrated author Paulo Coelho, who is a known advocate of pirated books, feels piracy is like a medal to any writer, whose biggest reward is being read.
In a Twitter post, the Brazilian author of several best-selling novels including The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes, Adultery and The Zahir, tweeted, Some call this piracy. I call it a medal to any writer who understands that there are no better reward than to be read.
He posted the tweet along with a picture of a boy selling books Adultery, When Only Love Remains (Durjoy Datta), Your Dreams are Mine Now (Ravinder Singh), Half Girlfriend (Chetan Bhagat) and I Am Malala on a roadside.
Some call this "piracy". I call it a medal to any writer who understands that there are no better reward than to be read pic.twitter.com/GRCc76QtFl Paulo Coelho (@paulocoelho) November 7, 2016
For years, Coelho has been advocating that free content is not a threat to the book business.
The more people pirate a book, the better, he had said a few years ago. He had also used file-sharing networks to promote his books.
Piracy is a huge problem faced by Indias publishing industry.
The Nielsen India Book Market Report 2015: Understanding the India Book Market, conducted in association with Association of Publishers in India and the Federation of Indian Publishers, had listed piracy as one the challenges facing the industry.
Piracy is widespread, with virtually every street in the country home to stalls selling pirated texts, it said.
British writer Jeffrey Archer is among the writers who want the Indian government to act against piracy.
While Im aware of the tremendous support I receive in India for my books, the government still needs to do something about pirating, the 75-year-old author, who was once asked by a young boy in Mumbai selling pirated books if he wanted the latest Archer novel, had said.
Last year, Archer had expressed his anger over some Bollywood producers stealing his work without making any compensation. According to him, his novel Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less was made into the rom-com Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl (2011) and Kane and Abel into Khudgarz (1987) without his permission.
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The centres move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes in circulation on Tuesday at such short notice may have come as a surprise, but its not the first time the government has demonetized banknotes.
Withdrawal of high-denomination notes is a radical measure the government normally resorts to in an attempt to counter forgery.
It has been done at least twice in Indias history. This time, the attempt is to crack down on black money.
In January 1946, Rs 1,000 and Rs 10,000 banknotes were withdrawn. In 1954, Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 notes were reintroduced and were again demonetized in January 1978.
Read full story here
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 rupee banknotes would be withdrawn from circulation at midnight to crack down on rampant corruption and counterfeit currency.
Heres what you need to know and do in the next few days:
Where can I exchange/ deposit my Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes?
From November 10 till December 30 you can deposit the old notes at your nearest bank or post office accounts without any limit. But withdrawals from banks are capped at Rs 10,000 per day and Rs 20,000 per week. This limit will be increased in the coming days.
You can also exchange Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes for lower denomination at banks, head post offices and sub-post offices. However, the exchange limit has been capped at Rs 4,000, and you can exchange till November 24. One must produce a valid government identity cards like PAN, Aadhaar and Election Card.
Banks will remain closed on November 9 allowing them time to cope with the new directive.
There is no restriction of any kind on non-cash payments by cheques, DDs, debit or credit cards and electronic fund transfer.
What are the restrictions on ATM withdrawals?
ATMs will not work on November 9 and in some places on November 10. But from November 11, you can withdraw money and ATMs will stop dispensing the existing Rs 500 and 1000 notes. For the first few days, these withdrawals are being restricted to Rs 2,000 per card per day, and will later be increased to Rs 4,000 per card per day.
Where can I still use my Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes?
Till November 11, the following government-authorised places and institutions will continue to accept Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes for payment:
-- hospitals
--Railway, airline, bus ticket booking counters
--Petrol, diesel and gas stations authorised by public sector oil companies
--Consumer co-operative stores
--Milk booths
--Crematoriums and burial grounds
Where can I get the new currency notes?
RBI will issue new currency notes of Rs 500 and 2000 from November 10 onwards. These notes will have new design.
With Tata Sons thinking of seeking shareholder support for removing Cyrus Mistry from the chairmans position, it seems the company will end up washing its dirty linen in public.
The process will have to be discussed in a general meeting for which a special notice will need to be issued that gives the reasons for the move. It will also give the director concerned a chance to respond.
The meeting will bring the management decisions taken at Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Indian Hotels, Tata Power under more scrutiny. Ousted chairman Cyrus Mistry has already stated his views on transactions at these companies.
The move can also result in further erosion of shareholder wealth. Tatas decided to seek shareholder support after Mistry refused to resign from the boards of various companies and independent directors of Indian Hotels backed him.
It can be a long process that will reveal the real reasons for the replacement of Mistry ... which is why it should be the last option, said Ramesh Vaidyanathan, managing partner, Advaya Legal.
A Tata group official said, From the beginning, it has been said that one of the reasons (for Mistrys dismissal) has been his variance with Tata culture and values. Key shareholders felt that the group, under the new shareholders, was turning away from the Tata code of business which is non-negotiable. How do you explain all that?
On his part, Mistry has been very professional and has levelled charges that have been purely business, listing out reasons why the decisions failed and the extent of losses.
Though some of Mistrys decisions were questionable, the process can open a can of worms.
But there are possibilities that some investors will file lawsuits, alleging that they should have been informed about sensitive issues.
Apart from the invalidity and illegality of the business that was conducted, I have to say that the board of directors has not covered itself with glory, Mistry said in the five-page letter after his removal on Oct. 24.
As is public knowledge, the foreign acquisition strategy, with the exceptions of JLR and Tetley, had left a large debt overhang. The European steel business faced potential impairments in excess of $10 billion, only some of which has been taken as of date.
Many foreign properties of IHCL and holdings in Orient Hotels have been sold at a loss. The onerous terms of the lease for Pierre in New York are such that it would make it a challenge to exit. Tata Chemicals still needs tough decisions about its UK and Kenya operations, Mistry said.
Mistry, people close to him say, wants to protect the Tatas (as in the group) from Tata (as in Ratan Tata and Tata Trusts), and also safeguard his familys 18.38% holding in Tata Sons.
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Japans Softbank has announced a $550 million (around Rs 3,700 crore) write down in its Indian investment, mainly in cab aggregator Ola (ANI Technologies) and ecommerce company Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech).
A write down is a reduction in the estimated value of an asset.
In its half year regulatory filing the Tokyo-based company said, Gain or loss arising from financial instruments at FVTPL (fair value through profit or loss) comprises mainly changes in fair value of preferred stock investment including embedded derivatives, such as ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd and Jasper Infotech Private Limited in India, designated as financial assets at FVTPL.
For the six month period ending September 2016, Sofbank wrote down 58.1 billion Japanese Yen (around $550 million) to enable a more fair reflection of its investment value or FVTPL in the Indian companies. Nearly half of this write down is attributed to appreciation of Japanese Yen against other currencies.
For Ola, the write down comes at a time when it is look for fresh funding to continue to maintain its market leadership against its rival Uber.
It was recently reported that Ola is looking raise fresh fund of $300-500 million from among others, its existing investor Softbank. Ola has so far raised $1.23 billion in eight rounds from 20 investors, including Softbank, Matrix Partners, Accel Partners and individual investors. The company is in talks with most of the venture capital firms that have invested in the company earlier. A Bloomberg report said Softbank will lead the new round as well.
Softbank made its maiden investment of $210 million in Ola and $627 million in Snapdeal in October 2014. In May this year Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son had said that his companys investment in India could cross $10 billion over the next 5-10 years from around $2 billion now.
Earlier this year, Flipkart saw its valuation fall from $15 billion to around $9 billion when five investors Morgan Stanley, T Rowe Price, Valic, Vanguard and Fidelity reported write downs their investments in the Bengaluru based company.
In a move to tackle black money in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced that the current Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will not be valid after midnight.
Modi said people holding notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 can deposit the same in their bank and post office accounts from November 10 till December 30.
PM Modi said newly designed notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 denominations will be circulated soon. He also said that the Reserve Bank of India has decided to limit the notes with higher value.
The RBI in a press conference on Tuesday unveiled the design for the new Rs 2000 and Rs 500 notes. This series of bank notes will be called Mahatma Gandhi bank notes.
Economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das said more denominations will be unveiled soon when asked whether new designs of Rs 1000 notes will also be introduced.
Take a look at the new notes...
In Pics: New Rs 500 note that will be issued pic.twitter.com/N51HDChDs3 ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
In Pics: New Rs 2000 Note that will be issued pic.twitter.com/4NXhNOpxxA ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
The ongoing Ratan Tata, Cyrus Mistry tussle is not likely to affect the upcoming final placements at countrys two most premier institutions Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).
Even as the fight intensifies at Tata Sons, Tata Group companies including Tata Motors, Tata Steel, TCS have already registered for final placements across the IITs and IIMs.
While a Tata Sons spokesperson said that it is an employer of choice at these premier institutes, mails to the individual Tata Group companies remain unanswered as we go to press.
Internal tussle has not had any translation on the campus placements, at least for our campus. TCS, Tata Motors and Tata Steel have already registered with us for our campus placements this year, said Bhavya Kapoor, placement officer, IIM Indore. It is too early to comment about this situations impact on campus placements and we feel it is not going to have any impact as such.
At IIT Madras too, Tata Motors has already registered for the placements and any impact is unlikely to be felt, said Professor Manu Santhanam, training and placement advisor.
TCS and Tata Motors have already registered at IIT Guwahati, confirmed Professor Kaustubha Mohanty, head, Centre for Career Development. At IIT Kharagpur, Tata Steel, TCS and Tata Motors have registered.
Explaining the situation, Professor Janat Shah, director, IIM Udaipur said: HR areas are fairly structured at matured organisations like Tata Group. The issue in the group raises corporate governance issues, which arent related to hiring.
The final placements at IITs and IIMs are set to start from December onwards. Tata Group companies are a prominent recruiter at these institutes.
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Transcription
1 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Office of the Secretary Record of Decision for Site Preparation Activities at the Missile Defense System (MDS) Test Bed at Fort Greely, Alaska AGENCY: Ballistic Missile Defense Organization ACTION: Record of Decision DECISION SUMMARY: The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization is issuing this Record of Decision (ROD) to conduct initial site preparation activities for the Fort Greely, Alaska portion of a Missile Defense System (MDS) Test Bed. Fort Greely is a potential deployment location in Alaska for Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) silos, Battle Management Command and Control (BMC2) facilities, and other support facilities for the Ground Based Midcourse Element (GBME), formerly called the National Missile Defense (NMD) system, of the MDS. This is a ROD to implement limited site preparation activities that could support construction of the MDS Test Bed facilities at Fort Greely. The Test Bed is a subset of the preferred alternative defined in the NMD Deployment Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The environmental impacts of the MDS Test Bed site preparation work will be of the same type, but reduced in scope, as the impacts of the preferred alternative in the NMD EIS. This decision is based on the determination of National Command Authorities that there is a ballistic missile threat to the United States, and that developing an effective Missile Defense System is dependent upon operationally realistic testing of the MDS elements. Although the decision on GBME deployment has not been made and construction of MDS test facilities is dependent on Congressional appropriations and also has not been made, the Department of Defense has determined that it is prudent to proceed with site preparation activities for MDS test bed facilities at Fort Greely to preserve the near term option to develop an MDS test bed. These site preparation activities would support proposed test bed facilities that would consist of a small number of the GBI silos, BMC2 and other support facilities that were analyzed in the EIS. Specifically, the site preparation work planned includes installing and developing two water wells; clearing trees and debris; preparing sites for test bed facilities including a single missile field; and installation of the Main Access Road. The site preparation includes cut, fill, grading and earthwork operations to the top Page 1
2 of sub-base for all vehicle traffic areas and top of finish grade for all other areas excluding the building footprints, which will be graded to drain. The test bed would allow BMDO to prove out the design and siting of a GBI field that would be required to fire in a salvo without having the GBIs interfere with each other, to test the communication between all component parts, and to test for fuels degradation in the arctic environment, as well as to develop and rehearse maintenance and upkeep processes and procedures. There is no present intent to test fire interceptor missiles from Fort Greely. Any potential future decision to test fire at Fort Greely would only occur after a thorough environmental and safety analysis was performed. In the event of a missile attack on the United States, the test bed at Fort Greely could potentially be used for ballistic missile defense. Initiation of the site preparation activities is dependent on obtaining required permits and implementation of the attached Mitigation Monitoring Plan. Site preparation activities are not of sufficient magnitude to limit any later selection of alternatives analyzed in the EIS. Other factors considered in reaching this decision include cost and technical maturity of the GBME of the MDS. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For further information on the NMD (now GBME) Deployment Final EIS or Record of Decision, contact Ms. Julia Hudson-Elliott, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Attn: SMDC-EN-V, P.O. Box 1500, Huntsville, Alabama , (256) Public reading copies of the Final EIS and the Record of Decision are available for review at the public libraries within the communities near proposed activities and at the BMDO Internet site at SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION: Background This Record of Decision has been prepared pursuant to the Council on Environmental Quality regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (40 CFR Parts ), Department of Defense (DoD) Instruction , and the applicable service environmental regulations that implement these laws and regulations. The U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and the Federal Aviation Administration participated as cooperating agencies in preparing the NMD Deployment EIS. The Proposed Action described in the EIS is to deploy a National Missile Defense System at several locations. The Fort Greely portion of the MDS Test Bed is essentially a down-scoped version Page 2
3 of the preferred alternative for GBI analyzed in the NMD EIS. Alternative site locations for identified GBME, formerly called NMD, components (i.e., GBI, BMC2, and X-Band Radar (XBR)) were considered. NEPA Process The Notice of Intent to prepare an EIS for the deployment of the NMD program was published in the Federal Register on November 17, 1998, initiating the public scoping process. Public scoping meetings were held in December 1998 in communities perceived to be affected by the NMD. Notice of the availability of the NMD Deployment Draft EIS was published in the Federal Register on October 1, This initiated a period of public review and comment on the Draft EIS. Seven public hearings were held from October 26 through November 9, 1999, in the same locations as the public scoping meetings. Subsequently, a supplement to the Draft EIS was prepared to evaluate the potential impacts of upgrading existing Early Warning Radars for use by the NMD. A public hearing was held in Bourne, Massachusetts, on the Supplement. Comments on the Draft EIS and Supplement to the Draft EIS were considered in the preparation of the Final EIS. The Notice of Availability for the Final EIS was published in the Federal Register on December 15, 2000, initiating an additional 30-day review period. Comments received on the Final EIS have been considered in the decision process, culminating in this Record of Decision. Alternatives Considered No-action Alternative As required by the CEQ regulations, the EIS evaluated a Noaction Alternative. Under this alternative, the NMD deployment decision would be deferred, while development of the NMD, technologies and architectures would continue. Non-NMD activities currently occurring or planned at potential deployment sites would continue. Proposed Action The proposed action analyzed in the EIS was to deploy a fixed, land-based, non-nuclear missile defense system with a land and space-based detection system capable of responding to limited strategic ballistic missile threats to the United States. The NMD system consisted of five elements: Battle Management, Command, Control, and Communications (BMC3), which Page 3
4 includes the BMC2, the communication lines, and the In-Flight Interceptor Communications System (IFICS) Data Terminals (IDTs) as subelements; GBI; XBR; Upgraded EWR (UEWR); and a space-based detection system. The initial space-based detection capability would be the existing Defense Support Program early-warning satellites to be replaced by Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites currently being developed by the Air Force. Since the NMD EIS was completed, the Ballistic Missile Defense architecture has evolved into a multi-layered approach that does not distinguish between national and theater threats. The GBME is the successor to the NMD system in the revised Ballistic Missile Defense architecture. The GBME consists of the same elements, at the same preferred locations, as the NMD system analyzed in the NMD EIS. The Fort Greely portion of the MDS Test Bed consists of a down-scoped version of the preferred alternative for GBI analyzed in the NMD EIS. By locating MDS Test Bed components at potential future GBME deployment locations, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization can conduct operationally realistic testing of the GBME components being developed. Decision The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization will proceed with initial site preparation activities at Fort Greely, Alaska that could support the construction of the MDS Test Bed (GBI silos, BMC2, and other support) facilities. Initial site preparation activities will include site layout, clearing of vegetation, initial earthwork related to site and road grading, and preparation for facility construction activities. Specific planned actions include installing and developing two water wells; site preparation work for test bed buildings, the main access road up to the Alaska Oil Pipeline crossing, and a single missile field. This decision does not include construction and operation of MDS Test Bed facilities at Fort Greely. Any decisions to construct and operate MDS Test Bed facilities will require preparation of a subsequent decision document or documents. Environmental Impacts of Alternatives The EIS analyzed the environment in terms of 15 resource areas: air quality, airspace, biological resources, cultural resources, geology and soils, hazardous materials and wastes, health and safety, land use and aesthetics, noise, socioeconomics, transportation, utilities, water resources, environmental justice, and subsistence. Each resource area with Page 4
5 a foreseeable impact at the respective alternative sites was addressed in the EIS. The analysis in the EIS was commensurate with the importance of the potential impacts. Where it was determined through initial evaluation that no impacts would occur to resources at certain sites, these resources were not analyzed in the EIS. The potential for cumulative impacts was also evaluated in the EIS. Since this ROD affects only the EIS preferred alternative for siting of the GBI, BMC2 and test support facilities at Fort Greely, only the environmental effects relating to Fort Greely are described for the no action alternative and initial site preparation activities. No-action Alternative - Environmental Impacts This section discusses the environmental effects that would result from a decision not to initiate initial site preparation activities. Under this No-action Alternative, only the locations and environmental resources discussed below were anticipated to have environmental impacts from continued ongoing operations. Fort Greely, Alaska. There would be impacts to geology and soils, socioeconomics, and water resources from continued activities at Fort Greely. These impacts could include some soil damage from vehicles, weapons, and fires. Some soil erosion with net soil loss and water quality impacts would occur near training activities. Localized long-term damage to permafrost could occur as a result of ground training and fire damage from training. The Army has developed mitigation measures to minimize these impacts. The loss of jobs associated with realignment of Fort Greely would likely result in a decline in local population and a commensurate fiscal loss for the community. Training maneuvers, if conducted repeatedly in the same area, could result in cumulative impacts to water resources. The Army has implemented measures to minimize impacts to water resources. Initial Site Preparation - Environmental Impacts This section discusses the potential environmental effects of the initial site preparation activities. Fort Greely, Alaska. This was the preferred alternative for the GBI element in the EIS and is the selected site for initial site preparation activities for GBME test bed Page 5
6 facilities. The site preparation activities would involve the same type of impacts as those assessed in the EIS, but at a reduced scope, due to the reduced size of the Test Bed as compared with the deployment site analyzed. It is anticipated that initial site preparation activities for GBME test bed facilities at Fort Greely could result in a minor short-term increase in erosion and sediment in surface water. Appropriate permits and storm water plans would be implemented to minimize impacts to soils and water resources. Initial site preparation activities would also provide an economic benefit to the surrounding regions, partially offsetting the loss of jobs at the base as a result of its realignment. Alternatives Not Selected - Environmental Impacts Several alternative locations in the NMD Deployment Final EIS are not selected at this time. A discussion of the environmental impacts at those locations would be included in a future Record of Decision related to MDS Test Bed construction or a GBME deployment decision. Mitigation Measures and Monitoring The mitigation measures specified for the site selected for initial site preparation activities at Fort Greely, Alaska as described above and contained in the attached Mitigation Monitoring Plan will be implemented and all the required permits will be obtained as part of this decision. The Mitigation Monitoring Plan has been developed to assist in tracking and implementing these mitigation measures. With the implementation of the mitigation measures, all practicable means have been adopted to avoid or minimize environmental harm for initial site preparation activities at Fort Greely. Environmentally Preferred Alternative The environmentally preferred alternative is the No-action Alternative (no site preparation activities). Continuation of current site operations at the location would result in few additional environmental impacts. Conclusion In accordance with NEPA, the Department Of Defense has considered the information contained within the NMD Deployment Final EIS in deciding to initiate site preparation activities at Fort Greely, Alaska. The site preparation activities are Page 6
7
New Delhi
Britain should not wait until it leaves the European Union to develop deeper trade ties with India, Prime Minister Theresa May said in New Delhi on Monday, promising to ease access for Indian business travellers but not for its students.
Making her first visit to India since taking office in July, May described the potential of the British-Indian relationship as limitless and announced a scheme to make it quicker and easier for Indian business travellers to clear passport control.
I will be discussing with Prime Minister Modi how we can increase the detail and depth of our trade and investment discussions, and identify what more we can do, now, to unleash our businesses, industries, exporters and investors, May told an India-UK Tech Summit in New Delhi at the start of a two-day trip that will take her on Tuesday to the tech hub of Bengaluru.
This does not need to wait for us to leave the EU.
May, who said she wants Britain to be a global leader in free trade, has said she plans to use the visit to try to reduce barriers to trade with India and pave the way for a post-Brexit free-trade deal.
But with the Indian government keen to secure more access to Britain for students and skilled workers, visa numbers are likely to be a sticking point in any talks.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was vital that India and Britain work together to define the knowledge economy of the 21st century, and invited UK partners to get involved in his signature policy initiatives such as his plan to develop 100 smart cities.
He also called for greater mobility and participation of young people in educational and research opportunities - an apparent reference to the sharp fall in the number of Indian nationals studying in Britain since 2010.
During that period, when May was interior minister, the number of Indian students in Britain fell to 11,864 in June 2015 from 68,238 five years earlier.
TRADE AND MOVEMENT
Some of Mays cabinet colleagues and business leaders in both countries have urged May to exclude foreign students from Britains statistics on net migration, which May has vowed to bring below 100,000 a year, from 336,000 in 2015.
May said it was crucial that those who do need to travel between UK and India for business can do so, but she indicated earlier that she saw no reason to change the UK visa regime.
Responding, the head of the Indian governments policy think tank said that, while India was opening up its manufacturing sector to foreign investors, its professionals faced restrictions on working in the UK and other Western countries.
There is no such thing as selective free trade, Amitabh Kant told the tech summit when asked about Mays emphasis on striking a free trade agreement with India.
En route to India, May said Britain already issued more work visas to Indian nationals than to those from China, Australia and the United States combined.
We have a visa system for countries outside the European Union which ensures the brightest and the best are able to come to the United Kingdom, she said. We have, I believe, a good system. We will be talking about trade here.
Britain will offer new services to improve business travel for Indian visitors, including faster clearance through UK border controls, but an aide to May said this was about speeding up the process rather than boosting numbers.
A select group of high-net-worth Indians, nominated by New Delhi, will also be offered access to a bespoke visa and immigration service by Britain, Mays office said.
New Delhi
Google has been feeding the Assistant its artificial intelligence (AI) software that can take voice commands with millions of voice, text, and image samples in local languages, especially Hindi, to make the internet more relevant for non-English speaking Indians.
The move is in line with what Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said during the launch of the Pixel smartphone: The Assistant will help Google design a personal Google for everyone.
A personal internet is perhaps more important in India than anywhere else in the world the countrys diversity is unique as requirements, culture, consumption and economic status changes from state to state.
As we go deeper into India, voice will become very important, said Rajan Anandan, head of Googles sales and operations in South East Asia and India.
Google wants the worlds information to be available to every individual at the click of a button. For that it has to go to heavily populated countries such as China and India.
But as Google penetrated deeper into the hinterland it faced a unique challenge people did not know English. Thats when it started developing capabilities to recognise local languages. It also allied with industry partners, the Indian Language Internet Alliance.
Google aims to give 500 million people access to the internet in India by 2017 (currently, there are about 350 million internet users). Since only 200 million of these users knew English, Google then introduced the Indic keyboard in Android.
But there was another challenge. Many people in the country cant type. So Google began feeding the internet its Assistant voice commands.
Everything is data the AI platform needs to be trained in local language.You have to train the machine, in every language and every dialect. Thats a big deal, said Anandan.
Search queries in local languages are growing 10 times faster than in English. Hindi content consumption is growing five times faster than that of English.
It has been training the platform through voice samples at its call centres since 2011-12. The result is seen in Googles recent advertisements. One of them shows a small-town woman reciting shayaari into the phone as she watches her husband being insulted by a group of younger guys. She completes the couplet as her husband watches her read out the head search results from the phone.
As the Assistant learns more, it will not only show up search results, but it will also talk in the local language.
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Early this year in Bundelkhand, I met villagers enduring the lethal assault of three recurring years of drought, mounted on the back of chronic agrarian distress. People were eating only one meal a day, and that too often a single coarse roti mixed with bitter wild leaves that killed hunger. Entire villages had emptied out, as there was no work, water or food. People fled with their children in search of any work on any terms to the cities. Back in the village, old people and cattle were left behind to fend for themselves.
The response of both the central and state governments to both drought and the agrarian crisis lacked urgency, compassion and administrative acumen. But it is remarkable how these failures are not issues for public discussions in rallies and speeches in the run-up to the elections in Uttar Pradesh.
The fact that UP is just ahead of Bihar among large states in its dismal record of human development does not find mention in the election priorities of the state. Large hoardings celebrating Indias display of military muscularity with surgical strikes are instead touted as the ruling partys crowning achievement.
Read | A divided party would divide them too: Muslims, Yadavs keep a tab on SP
Discussions on street-corners and TV screens assume that the UP voter will vote based on either age-old solidarities of caste and religious identity, or on surcharged hyper-sentiment nationalist or communal. A few discussions suggest that concerns of social justice might also weigh with segments of voters. But they all assume that voters will not evaluate competing parties based on what they will contribute to tangibly improve the lives of millions of impoverished people.
I am struck by how peripheral these questions of dignified survival of the poor, and of humane and just governance are in the UP election campaign. Maybe, the pundits are underestimating the political astuteness of the ordinary voter, in the way that they did fatally in the landmark elections in Bihar last winter.
It is evident that the BJP offers little to the voter beyond its divisive sentiment. This worked handsomely to its favour during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections; but will it once again forge alliances between high, middle and low-caste Hindus against the Muslims? The Muslim has been constructed in the political discourse of the BJP and RSS into the dangerous other. Sentiments are mobilised against them in the name of cow protection, reverence for Ram, charges of love jihad and sexual harassment by Muslim boys, and Muslim personal law.
Read | For BJP, Cong, Uttar Pradesh election a dress rehearsal for Lok Sabha polls
A climate of fear and dread has been fostered among Muslims across UP, as in much of India, with almost daily reports of local attacks on Muslims. The fate of Mohammed Ikhlaq and his family have come to symbolise for Muslims the insecurity and injustice of their lives.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for the first time since it was constituted issued an openly communal report that repeated the false rumours that had been raised by BJP MP Hukum Singh. These were about the exodus of Hindus from Kairana after people displaced by the communal killings of 2013 in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli settled in this Muslim-majority township. The report said that Muslim youth pass lewd/taunting remarks against Hindu women, although there is not even a single complaint in the police station, again echoing the RSS demonisation of Muslim men as sexual predators. This report is being quoted by the Union home minister Rajnath Singh in the trail of the UP parivatan trail.
In Living Apart: Communal Violence and Forced Displacement in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, a report by Akram Chaudhary, Zafar Eqbal and Rajanya Bose and this author, we document the travails of 50,000 Muslims, of who 30,000 are living in self-settled refugee colonies including Kairana. Significantly, the suffering of people displaced by communal violence was not a matter of any concern for the NHRC. Instead they are portrayed as the danger to the rest of us.
Read | Yadav family feud has affected governance in UP, says Rajnath
The just cause of ending the practice of triple talaq in the Muslim personal law is also stained by the timing and selectivity of the initiative. If the purpose was to promote gender justice, then the initiative would carry credibility only if the Centre addressed simultaneously personal laws that are unfair to women in other religious traditions.
In much of the communal targeting of Muslims, the Samajwadi Party-led state government is complicit. Whether this is deliberate, in order to benefit from the resulting communal polarisation, or is only the outcome of shocking ineptitude, is hard to confirm. But either of these makes the SP unfit for governance. Rahul Gandhi has tried to raise some issues relevant to farmers and Dalits in his rallies, but his efforts are not backed by credible evidence of sustained ground-level Congress engagement with issues of social and economic justice or reversing the agrarian distress.
That only leaves the Mayawati-led BSP. In her public addresses, she has called for the coming together of Dalits and Muslims. This would require her to win the trust of Muslim voters. How Dalits choose at the ballot will be the single-most critical factor for determining the outcome of the elections. Do they share the mounting anger of Dalits against the BJP-RSS combine in many other parts of India? Can Dalits and Muslims cement a new social alliance? The answers to these questions will decide if Mayawati can form the next government in Lucknow.
Harsh Mander is author, Looking Away: Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India
The views expressed are personal
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Almost everyone from a Sikh family has a story from 1984. On October 31, 1984, just after Indira Gandhi was assassinated in retaliation for the assault on the Golden Temple, we were in Pune. I was seven years old and my brother was five. We were with my father who was there on an army course. Everywhere the news was that Hindus were indiscriminately targeting Sikhs sometimes cutting off their hair and assaulting them, or even killing them in cold blood.
My father needed to get us back to Ambala, in Haryana, where we lived. He managed to book the first train back but that posed its own problems: Mobs were known to be storming trains to find Sikhs. Neither me nor my father had long hair or wear a turban, but my brother did. Even though I was in the army, I was still worried about them [the mobs], he told me. To avoid detection my brother was disguised as a girl, with his hair let loose. I couldnt sleep because I was worried someone would recognise us and kill us.
Read | Anti-Sikhism in Congress DNA: Sukhbir Badal
We managed to get back to Ambala safely. But for months afterwards my parents remained vigilant and we had to be very careful even when going to and coming back from school.
The incident is recalled to emphasise that the events of 1984 still loom large over Sikhs from all over the world. Even if they were not in India at the time, they know a family that was. And just because many Sikhs have moved on since then it doesnt mean their memories have vanished. We didnt suffer any close tragedy but there were thousands who did.
Also, the events of 1984 have become a flashpoint in Britain again. Two years ago, documents de-classified by the British government from 1984 showed that they had helped the Indian government plan Operation Blue Star the attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar. This revelation came as a shock and surprise to many British Sikhs and sparked anger. They felt betrayed. It wasnt fully clear how much help the British offered, and now many MPs have demanded an investigation.
Read | Opposition asks PM May to come clean on Britains role in Operation Blue Star
An inquiry was swiftly ordered by the prime minister, who promised that nothing would be hidden. A few months later the then foreign secretary told MPs that British involvement in Operation Blue Star amounted merely to a visit by a military officer in February 1984 (the attack took place in June). The inquiry said this help was merely a one-off.
But that claim is now in doubt. A few weeks ago, the British government suddenly withdrew some de-classified documents after it emerged that perhaps British involvement was more than previously admitted. British Sikhs are now demanding answers.
Its worth saying that Im not a Khalistani. I dont believe in the idea of a Sikh state, nor have I ever agitated for one. Any country created for the people of just one religion eventually becomes a dictatorship of fundamentalists. It would not allow democracy, pluralism and dissent because those principles would conflict with its ideal. Discrimination and segregation would become deeply embedded. The idea of a country for Sikhs, as one for Hindus or Muslims, is dangerous and wrong.
Read | Justice delayed is an incurable wound: Delhi HC on prolonged 1984 riots case
But you dont have to be a Khalistani to call for justice for the Sikh victims of 1984. Shining a light on the attack on the Golden Temple, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the planned anti-Sikh massacres that followed doesnt need to be a religious or political issue. It is a human rights issue.
Some say revisiting the past would help fundamentalists use it for political purposes. But the reverse is true. The conspiracy of silence and cover-up around 1984 has continued to help anger and radicalise Sikhs.
If it emerged that the British did play a significant role in Operation Blue Star, it would be seen as a betrayal. It would also mean they were not fully honest two years ago. Now some British MPs have again written to Theresa May demanding clarity.
Read | Its not just the British, but our govts also owe us a range of apologies
But more importantly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also needs to fulfil his promise to Indian Sikhs and work to deliver justice for the victims of 1984. Modi himself admitted what happened then was a genocide. There is an abundance of evidence showing that policemen turned a blind eye to attacks on Sikhs, and that senior Congress officials facilitated them. When will the victims get justice?
Sikhs need closure on the events of 1984. They need the truth to be heard so they can move on in dignity. It is time they were afforded that. To paraphrase Nelson Mandela: A country is never more truthful than when its people admit they have made mistakes.
Sunny Hundal is a writer and lecturer on digital journalism based in London
The views expressed are personal
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The excise department of the Delhi government arrested 36 people on Monday for drinking in public. Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said 10 teams were formed to enforce a ban on public drinking. The teams conducted raids at several places including Karol Bagh, Zamrudpur, Janakpuri District Centre, Vikaspuri, near Rajokri flyover, Kasturba Nagar and Pitampura.
I want to say our intension is not to arrest people in large numbers. We were getting complaints in this regard. We want to make women and children secure. Because of this drinking in open habit, people have stopped coming to several markets with their family, Sisodia said on Tuesday.
Last month, Sisodia announced that those consuming liquor in public places would be arrested from November 7. Those arrested will face criminal proceedings and have to pay a fine of Rs 5,000, Sisodia said.
Read: No more car-o-bar in Delhi: Drinking in public places can now land you in jail
Public drinking attracts a fine of Rs 5,000 and double the amount if anyone creates nuisance in public after drinking
Sisodia further stated the move would be intensified in coming days. We ran a week long awareness programme before starting the crackdown but people are not budging. We wanted to warn them who drink in open. The government will be keeping eye on them, he said.
Sisodia also informed he had written to the Delhi high court to arrange mobile magistrate so that offenders could be ticketed on spot. Violators were taken to the concerned police station in the evening. They will face trial. If we get mobile magistrate, on spot challan will be issued. On Monday, total 36, people arrested who were consuming liqour in open in the cars, under flyover, or near underpass. The arrests should be a warning for all those engaging such behaviour. The Delhi government is committed to ban drinking at public places. No one will be spared if found drinking publicly, he said.
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New Delhi
Controversial godman Omji Maharaj, a contestant in popular reality show Bigg Boss, has been told by a Delhi court to appear before it on November 21.
The summon could mean eviction for Omji from the show that locks away contestants in a house at an undeclared location without any contact with the outside world.
The appearance notice was issued on a plea by Omjis brother Pramod Jha.
Vinodanand Jha, known as Om ji Maharaj, was supposed to appear in the court on Tuesday but he stayed on in the show. The Saket court chief metropolitan magistrate also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on him for non-appearance.
The quantum of the fine was Rs 10,000 initially but when Omjis counsel requested to reduce the amount, the court asked, Bigg Boss is more important or court?
Pramods lawyer, Saroj Kumar Jha, said, The Saket court had issued a non-bailable warrant against him and asked him to appear on Tuesday. The court has now asked him to appear on November 21, failing which a fresh non-bailable warrant may be issued against him.
Read: Bigg Boss 10: In a big shocker, Swami Om gets eliminated
The case dates to November 2008 when Pramod had accused Omji of breaking the lock of his bicycle shop along with three men and stealing 11 bicycles, spare parts, sale deed of the house and some other documents.
The self-proclaimed godman was earlier booked under the Arms Act, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act too.
He was in the news after a woman astrologer slapped him on a television news show during a debate.
Delhis Patiala House courts too had issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against him earlier. He was accused of rampage during a protest. An FIR was lodged against him at the Chankayapuri police station.
Colors, the channel that broadcasts Bigg Boss, said they are not aware of the development. If the police contacts us, the channel will discuss the matter with its legal team and take action according to the law of the land, a channel official said.
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Sixty years ago in December, London was engulfed with a toxic mix of dense fog and sooty black smoke for four days. Today Delhi faces a similar environmental disaster.
The Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) for NCR on Monday submitted a report to the Supreme Court and said that pollution levels of Delhi have been worse than the great London smog of 1952.
Londons episode of polluted air is among the deadliest environmental disasters in recorded history.
The report said that levels of particulate matter and other gases on Saturday was at least 15 times more than the standard. On Saturday, the average PM2.5 levels touched 837.7 micrograms per cubic meters, as against the permissible levels of 60 micrograms per cubic meter.
This (what was recorded on Saturday) is a level of pollution, which is higher than what was recorded during the London smog incident and certainly higher than what has been seen in Delhi ever, the EPCA report read.
During the London smog, the levels of particulate matter with diameter less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5) consistently remained over the 500 mark. The level of sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxide (NO) also shot up and reached severe levels.
Delhi has been a cocktail of gases after Diwali. In the London smog, over 4,000 people died premature deaths. What we are facing now is also nothing less than an emergency situation, said Sunita Narain, director general of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and member EPCA.
She also said that the government must treat the situation as a public health emergency.
The report blamed Delhis high pollution levels on a combination of factors already high vehicle population, unchecked construction and road dust, garbage burning. This was made worse by the stubble burning in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana and Diwali crackers.
The matter has been listed before the apex court for Tuesday.
The report also listed immediate measures which the government needs to implement to control the situation. These measures include strict enforcement of the environment compensation cess (ECC) on trucks entering the city, complete ban on garbage burning and the check on closing of thermal power plants.
Delhi government has announced emergency actions but it is now time to ensure enforcement of these steps. If the pollution levels are not controlled in 48 hours then drastic steps, including odd-even without any exemptions and tighter restrictions on commercial vehicles, also needs to be implemented, the report read.
For more stories on pollution in Delhi, click here
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The National Green Tribunal pulled up the governments of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana over unprecedented levels of air pollution, enquiring about the steps taken to curb a thick blanket of smog that has enveloped the national capital.
The NGT asked the Aam Aadmi Party government if it held meetings in August and September to tackle pollution, given that Diwali and crop burning were known factors leading to the smog.
The NGT also asked the government if it had any data to show there was a reduction in the smog cover over Delhi.
Read: All you need to know about Delhi air pollution
The Delhi government has stepped up efforts of vacuum cleaning and washing city roads to curb pollution due to dust. The government has ordered schools to remain closed for three days and stopped all construction and demolition activities till Friday.
The coal-based thermal power plant at Badarpur in south Delhi, which generates fly ash, was ordered to be shut for 10 days.
The national capital continues to suffer from severe air quality, though the smog cover has seen some reduction.
Read: Delhi pollution watch: Wind speed clears smog, but air remains toxic
Why are you sprinkling water through cranes and not helicopters? the NGT asked the Delhi government on Tuesday.
The NGT also criticised the Punjab government over rising pollution and for not making any serious efforts to stop crop burning in the state. If you had provided even Rs 1,000 to the farmers, they would not have burnt the agriculture waste like this, the green tribunal to the Punjab government.
The tribunal said the Haryana government had done nothing to control the situation of smog and pollution.
Read: Delhi pollution: L-G Jung announces crackdown on old vehicles, entry of trucks
System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) showed levels of PM (particulate matter) 2.5 and PM 10 breaching the 500-mark in most locations on Tuesday afternoon.
Particulate Matter less than 10 micrometres in diameter (PM10) is so small that it can get into lungs and can cause severe health problems. Particulate Matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) is produced by burning fuels.
Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has issued a notice to the police commissioner seeking explanation for a cops alleged misbehaviour with a female JNU student during a protest over a missing student.
I have received a complaint from a girl regarding alleged groping and physical abuse by a police officer during a peaceful protest for missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed at India Gate. A picture which clearly shows a policeman groping her was displayed today in the newspaper, DCW chief Swati Maliwal said in the letter sent to Delhi Police commissioner Alok Verma.
JNU students and family member of Najeeb Ahmad, missing since October 15, were detained on Sunday when they tried to protest at India Gate over alleged inaction by police and university administration.
DCW said, as per the complainant, there were no female police personnel deputed at the spot. When the women objected to this, the policemen allegedly abused them, passed sexist comments and forcefully dragged them to a bus which did not have any policewomen either.
Read: Family of missing JNU student clings to news for hope
Maliwal has asked Verma to explain within three days about reasons for the use of force on protesting students, including the complainant and Najeebs mother.
The commission wants to know the reasons for non-deployment of female officers at the time of the incident with the girl complainant. What is the name and designation of the male officer visible in the newspaper clipping who is seen groping the female complainant, the notice said.
Police has also been asked to explain details of the action taken against the male officer for the said incident and steps proposed to ensure that such incidents are not repeated in future.
Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain said on Tuesday that the government might not bring back the odd-even traffic rationing scheme anytime soon since the weather in the national capital has improved.
Delhi reeled due to a thick cover of smog and haze for at least for seven days after Diwali, sparking concerns of health hazards among citizens. Faced with criticism, the city government announced a list of measures, including the closing down of schools and the reintroduction of the much-talked-about odd-even scheme.
Under the emergency measure first implemented in the city in January to limit the use of private cars, vehicles with odd-numbered plates could only be brought out on odd dates and those with an even number as the last digit on even days.
As we said, we would wait till Friday before deciding on the reintroduction of odd-even scheme. It was decided if the (pollution) situation did not improve, it will be enforced immediately. At present, the weather looks fine, we may not implement it, Jain said.
The minister said the government had already announced short-term measures to control pollution and soon it willd come up with long term plans.
Jain also said the government was working on a plan to install mist fountains, and they would be in place within six weeks.
Transcription
1 SOUTH DAKOTA BOARD OF NURSING o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o IN THE MATTER OF THE LICENSURE PROCEEDINGS RE SHANNA SHANNON, L.P.N. License No. P009176, Licensee. VOLUNTARY SURRENDER CONSENT ORDER o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o WHEREAS, Shanna Shannon, LPN ( Licensee ), is licensed to practice as a practical nurse in the State of South Dakota and holds License Number P009176; and WHEREAS, on or about August 7, 2007, the South Dakota Board of Nursing received a complaint from the South Dakota DCI that Licensee had confessed to diversion of the prescription narcotic, Oxycodone, from the Morningstar Assisted Living Center. Licensee, on August 22, 2007, contacted the South Dakota Board of Nursing staff and confessed to this diversion. Licensee was unable to schedule an Informal Meeting with the Board of Nursing staff at that time due to her admission to Keystone Rehabilitation Center in Canton, South Dakota. On August 27, 2007, the Board of Nursing received an investigative report from the South Dakota Attorney General s office containing Licensee s confession. Licensee was scheduled to have an Informal Meeting with the Board of Nursing staff on September 14, 2007, and did not appear. Licensee was contacted by phone at the scheduled time of the meeting and again admitted to diversion
2 Page 2 of narcotics for her own use by falsifying prescriptions; and license; and WHEREAS, Licensee has agreed that she will surrender her South Dakota nursing WHEREAS, the South Dakota Board of Nursing ( the Board ) has a statutory obligation to protect the public health, safety and welfare set forth in SDCL 36 9, including the protection of the public from unsafe nursing practices and practitioners; and WHEREAS, Licensee agrees that the matters under investigation would be of a nature that would constitute grounds for the discipline of her license to practice nursing in South Dakota under SDCL ; and WHEREAS, the Licensee agrees that she enters into this Voluntary Surrender Consent Order voluntarily and without duress or compulsion, in full understanding of the legal consequences of this document and her rights; therefore, IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED AS FOLLOWS 1. That the Board has jurisdiction over the person of the Licensee and the subject matter of this. 2. That on or about August 7, 2007, the South Dakota Board of Nursing received a complaint from the South Dakota DCI that Licensee had confessed to diversion of the prescription narcotic, Oxycodone, from the Morningstar Assisted Living Center. Licensee, on August 22, 2007, contacted the South Dakota Board of Nursing staff and confessed to this diversion. Licensee was unable to schedule an Informal Meeting with
3 Page 3 the Board of Nursing staff at that time due to her admission to Keystone Rehabilitation Center in Canton, South Dakota. On August 27, 2007, the Board of Nursing received an investigative report from the South Dakota Attorney General s office containing Licensee s confession. Licensee was scheduled to have an Informal Meeting with the Board of Nursing staff on September 14, 2007, and did not appear. Licensee was contacted by phone at the scheduled time of the meeting and again admitted to diversion of narcotics for her own use by falsifying prescriptions. 3. That the Licensee has been given an opportunity to discuss this Voluntary Surrender Consent Order with an attorney of Licensee s choice, and is aware of her right to a hearing in this matter, and of her rights under the United States and South Dakota Constitutions, laws, rules and/or regulations. Licensee hereby voluntarily waives all such rights to a hearing, notice, appearance, or any other rights under said Constitutions, laws, rules and/or regulations. Licensee also agrees that the Board s Executive Secretary or her designee may present this to the Board and disclose to the Board all items of her investigation, including, but not limited to, any communications with Licensee. 4. That the Licensee s license to practice nursing in South Dakota and her privilege to practice nursing pursuant to the Nurse Licensure Compact shall be surrendered and the Board shall suspend said license for an indefinite period from the date of this Order. Licensee may apply to have her license reinstated for good cause
4 Page 4 shown. 5. That nothing in this should imply that the Licensee shall be reinstated. Licensee recognizes that the reinstatement terms, as well as the requirements for reinstatement, are at the sole discretion of the Board. 6. That if the Licensee requests reinstatement, Licensee has the burden of presenting information showing that Licensee s license should be reinstated. 7. That it is further stipulated and agreed that this Voluntary Surrender Consent Order is being entered into voluntarily by the Licensee and without threats or coercion and is entered into after the Licensee has been given ample opportunity to consider these matters and to discuss this with an attorney of Licensee s choice and that the Licensee has a full understanding of the legal consequences of this and of the Licensee s rights to a formal hearing on these matters, which rights are hereby waived by the signing of this. 8. This action is reportable discipline and will be published in the Board s newsletter and posted on its website and reported into the HIPDB and NPDB data banks as required by law. Stipulation. 9. That the Board may enter an Order consistent with the terms of this
5 Page 5
The Supreme Court asked the central government on Tuesday to inform within 48 hours if it has a policy, or graded response, to check rising air pollution in Delhi.
The top court also asked the Centre, Delhi government and the civic agencies concerned to come up with a common minimum programme, or an action plan, to fight the menace.
It was hearing a plea filed by the Environment Pollution Control Authority, which has sought a proper monitoring of pollution levels. The matter will now be heard on November 10.
Delhi has been reeling due to a thick cover of smog and haze since Diwali. The toxic air and the citys worst smog in nearly 17 years have sparked concerns of health hazards among citizens.
The smog is making children wheeze, giving the healthy a chronic cough, and risking 18 million people to asthma, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.
Read: Odd-even might not be back soon as Delhi weather has improved: Minister
Faced with criticism, the city government has announced a list of measures, including the closing down of schools. The Centre too has taken stock, with Union environment minister Madhav Dave holding a meeting on the issue.
The courts direction comes a day after Delhis lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, for his part, announced that all 15-year-old diesel vehicles will be de-registered and a temporary ban on construction activities will be extended till November 14.
The high pollution has been blamed on a combination of factors: high vehicle population, unchecked construction, road dust and garbage burning, among others. This was made worse by the stubble burning in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana and Diwali crackers.
Read: NGT pulls up Delhi, Punjab and Haryana govts over air pollution, smog cover
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The US embassy has put in place a slew of measures for its staff besides taking steps aimed at mitigating the health hazards for its nationals as Delhi struggled amid citys worst pollution for nearly 17 years.
Authorities have sealed the embassy buildings envelopes, put supplementary air filtration units and constructed vestibules to provide clean air in a bid to battle the pollution.
We are very concerned by the continuing poor air quality in New Delhi and its impact on the health of our community and the larger public, US embassy spokesperson Joseph Kruzich told HT.
Delhis worst smog in 17 years, which has pushed pollution, is making children wheeze, giving the otherwise healthy a chronic cough, and risking 17 million people to asthma, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.
We are taking active steps to mitigate the health impact on our community, inform the American community and larger public on air quality levels and contribute to a constructive dialogue on the health impact of poor air quality, Kruzich said.
The mission is also planning various events through which international experiences on how best to reduce air pollution levels can be shared.
As for the wider problem, we have held ongoing discussions with the Delhi government on strategies to improve energy efficiency in government buildings, including sharing expertise on green buildings, he said.
In May 2016, the mission held a series of workshops in Delhi, as well as Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Lucknow in partnership with IIT Delhi and brought American experts in air quality to work with local officials.
Commuters journey along a main road in New Delhi as smog enveloped the capital. (AFP File Photo)
According to Kruzich, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are collaborating with the National Centre for Disease Control and Chest Research Foundation in Pune to conduct two workshops over the next week
One on Building the Bridge Between Air Quality, Weather and Health in India on November 7-8 and a joint
Indo-US Workshop to Explore Bilateral Research Opportunities to Address Air Quality and Health Issues on November 8-10, he said.
The Delhi government has already unveiled a raft of measures, including a temporary ban on construction and demolition work, shut all schools for three days and vacuum cleaning of roads.
But many experts fear the measures may be too little, too late.
On Monday, Hindustan Times air quality monitoring system showed the maximum severe warning across all but two spots in the Capital at 11am. Anand Vihar in east Delhi and Connaught Place were among the most polluted spots with levels of the most toxic PM 2.5 at 12 to 15 times above the safety limit.
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The Kerala government has overturned the opposition of its predecessor, the UDF, and is batting for allowing women of all ages to enter the famous Sabrimala temple. At present, there is a restriction on women from 10 to 50 (menstrual age) entering the temple. The reason offered for this is that the deity is celibate and would be offended by women in their reproductive years coming into his presence.
In reversing the earlier stand, the Kerala government will find itself in sync with the courts, which had earlier ruled that tradition cant take precedence over the Constitution and that discriminatory customs pose a danger to gender equality. Can a biological phenomenon be ground for discrimination? a bench headed by justice Dipak Misra had earlier asked the temple management that contended the ban on entry of women was because they cannot maintain purity for 41 days the duration of the pilgrimage.
Read | In a U-turn, Kerala now wants women to be allowed inside Sabarimala temple
Many may argue that the courts or governments have no right to interfere in religious matters but when women are being discriminated against on the basis of gender, the law has to weigh in on their side. The notions of purity, not allowing widows into temples, etc, are regressive. Most of these so-called traditions were devised at a time when women had no rights and did not demand them.
What needs to be examined is whether priests or fundamentalist forces have the authority to decide on what age, or whether at all, women should be allowed into places of worship. They are surely not above the constitutional rights given to citizens. Women themselves have protested against such restrictions. A secular polity like India has the duty to protect the rights of its citizens to practice any faith of their choice and the Sabrimala temples recent diktat that it will allow women to enter only if they are subject to a scan to prove that they are not menstruating is not only an attack on womens fundamental rights but also on their right to privacy.
Read | Women will be allowed to enter Haji Ali in a month: Shrine board tells SC
As seen in the case of Muslim women coming forward against the misuse of the triple talaq, many Hindu women too have come forward to question these patriarchal restrictions imposed on them. These are attempts to marginalise and exclude women from places of worship, much in the manner Dalits are sought to be kept out on the basis of so-called caste purity.
The courts have given women the legal heft to challenge these regressive notions and it is heartening that the State in the form of the Kerala government has thrown its weight behind this push for gender equality.
There are some wonderful idealistic films about American politics, warm with optimism and belief in Washingtons system.
None of them resemble this election season.
Yet for a presidential campaign that has felt more like Mad Max: Fury Road than Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, there are still plenty of films that suit the moment and may just offer a desperately needed break from television news in the final days before Tuesday.
There are a lot of ways one could program a pre-election movie night, some of them drawn along party lines. Supporters of Hillary Clinton, for instance, might enjoy screening Mike Judges prescient Idiocracy or, to see a less-than-presidential cameo from Donald Trump, Ben Stillers Zoolander. Voters for Trump, on the other hand, might want to, with tongues in cheek, turn on Youve Got Mail.
But before the real ballots are in, lets cast votes for 10 of the best political films, many of which shine all the brighter with relevance these days:
1. Weiner
In many ways the movie of the year is Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinbergs documentary about Anthony Weiner, the woebegone former New York congressman who has proven an unexpectedly central figure ahead of the election. Weiner chronicles his initially promising but ultimately doomed 2013 mayoral campaign, with his wife and top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, by his side. Beware: This is politics as horror film. Watch with your eyes half-covered.
2. A Face in the Crowd
Elia Kazans 1957 classic about a populist fraud has proven salient in more elections than one. In arguably his greatest performance, Andy Griffith stars as an Arkansas drifter, Larry Lonesome Rhodes, who rises from a small radio station to great heights of national television and power, only to be brought down by his womanizing and disgust for common people. Im not just an entertainer, he declares. Im an influence, a wielder of opinion, a force!
3. Election
An ambitious, uber-prepared blonde woman running for president is nearly thwarted by those who innately detest her. No, Reese Witherspoons high school president-to-be Tracy Flick isnt Clinton. But in Alexander Paynes darkly comic satire, there are some striking similarities between the two, and the extreme reactions they provoke.
4. All the Presidents Men
The keystrokes are sounded with the oomph of cannon blasts in Alan Pakulas Fourth Estate classic, with Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The excellent Spotlight drew deserved comparisons to this 1976 film, but All the Presidents Men reigns supreme as a procedural portrait of journalism and American democracy.
5. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Who should have their finger on the button? In Stanley Kubricks classic farce, not only were the fears of nuclear command and control satirically undressed, so was a war-crazy, sex-obsessed all-male government.
6. Bulworth
Warren Beatty is now returning with his first film as writer-director since this 1998 comedy. Still fresh today, its about a disillusioned California senator (Beatty) who, with plans to commit suicide, decides to tell the truth. The political system, as if coming in contact with a toxic foreign substance for the first time, recoils in disgust.
7. Advise and Consent
The title, pulled from the clause in the Constitution, refers to the nomination process of Supreme Court judges and other president-appointed positions. Otto Premingers dense and dark 1962 film set on Capitol Hill is about a Secretary of State nominee (Henry Fonda) with a hidden past. Of course, Congresss advising and consenting of such positions, like Supreme Court judges, has ever since gone absolutely smoothly and has had little bearing on the election. OK, maybe not.
8. In the Loop
Before there was Veep, there was In the Loop (and the equally sharp BBC series The Thick of It). No one has pulled back the curtain on politics quite like Armando Iannucci, whose foul-mouthed, aide-surrounded officials sway - comically, desperately - with the winds of daily news cycles.
9. Lincoln
The biopic-like title, in a way, distracts from the point of Steven Spielbergs 2012 drama. No other film has more fully captured the dirty, horse-trading business of the legislative process, in all its colourful and compromising sweep. To get anything done, a politician must say one thing to one set of people, and another to another set. Two-faced, that common slur of elected officials, is the nature of the business.
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Theres perhaps no greater political truth in all of movies than that famous line from John Fords 1962 film: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Fords film was a Western, the genre in which we work out what America is, plus horses. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a more complicated truth lies behind the rise of James Stewarts respected senator. The newspaper of the film might not print it, but Ford does.
Honourable mentions: Wag the Dog, The Manchurian Candidate, Milk, Charlie Wilsons War, The Great McGinty, No.
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Actor Mel Gibson says he regularly messes up as a parent but hopes he is doing a good job.
The 60-year-old star, who has eight children from two previous relationships, believes that there is nothing called a perfect parent because every parent gets angry at times on their kids, reported Femalefirst.
As a parent, everybody screws up. Theres no such thing as a perfect parent and its so easy to mess up. But hopefully Ive screwed up less than most, he said.
Gibsons troubled personal life led to him stepping out of the public eye, and he has been since working on himself by spending quality time with his kids, Hannah, 36, Christian and Edward, both 34, William, 31, Louis, 28, Milo, 26, and Thomas, 17, who he has with his first wife Robyn Moore. He also has a 6-year-old with Oksana Grigorieva.
He is expecting his ninth child with current partner Rosalind Ross.
Looking happy #melgibson #rosalindross A photo posted by Mel Gibson (@melgibson_fanpage) on Nov 7, 2016 at 3:38am PST
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Bringing the Karnal district, which topped the chart on stubble burning two weeks back, to the second position, Haryanas Fatehabad district has topped the chart with 1,963 fire-points (stubble burning cases) noticed so far by the Haryana Space Application Centre in the area.
The local administration of Fatehabad identified 186 farmers from the district and handed over the list to deputy commissioner (DC) NK Solanki. The survey was conducted by Balwant Saharan, district deputy director, agriculture department, Fatehabad.
Saharan said, The list has been handed over to the DC and action will soon be taken against those who burnt stubble.
However, the scientist of the HARSAC says that cases of stubble burning has subsided in other parts like Karnal, Kaithal and Kurukshtera, where harvesting is completed, but farmers of Fatehabad and Sirsa districts are still involved in burning stubble at night. The local administration is imposing fine on farmers and a total of 1,406 farmers have been imposed fine till November 6. Sources said, The farmers find burning of stubble a cheap way to get rid of the left over after reaping paddy. This results in smog in Haryana and National Capital Region.
While talking to HT, Raj Singh, head of agriculture and meteorological department of Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University (CCSHAU), said, Continuous burning of stubble and increase in humidity makes pollutants remain close to the ground, making the situation worse. The northwest winds will soon dissolve the smog, but the speed of it is very slow (3-4 km/ph). 8 to 10 km/ph wind speed is required to dissolve the smog. Light smog will continue for three to five days, Raj Singh added.
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Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Tuesday asked the partys three electoral rivals the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress to clarify their stand on the triple talaq issue.
Addressing a rally during the launch of the BJPs third Parivartan Yatra at the Sonbhadra railway ground, Shah said the party would contest the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls on the twin planks of womens rights and development. Several issues including triple talaq, womens dignity, and safety would be addressed in its quest for gender equality, he added.
The central government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, made its stand clear in its response to a question by the Supreme Court recently. However, our rivals remain tongue-tied on the matter, Shah said, demanding that the three parties file an affidavit on this regard in court.
Moving on to the one-rank one-pension (OROP) controversy, Shah told Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to refrain from playing politics with Army soldiers. He also asked the Amethi MP to explain why OROP wasnt implemented while his grandmother (Indira Gandhi), father (Rajiv Gandhi) and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance were heading the country. Shah said the Modi government had resolved the OROP issue by providing `5,500 crore to ex-servicemen.
As far as development was concerned, he claimed that the BJP if voted to power would draw investments from all parts of the world to Uttar Pradesh.
Hitting out at the SP, Shah said its silver jubilee event last week had culminated in a tussle between chacha (Shivpal Singh Yadav) and bhatija (chief minister Akhilesh Yadav). He went on to seek Akhileshs resignation because he had failed to prevent the partys merger with the Quami Ekta Dal despite his opposition to the same.
Shah also promised to free all the land occupied by SP goons within a month of the BJP coming to power.
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Around 200 kgs of explosive materials were seized and four persons arrested in raids at different locations on Monday night at Raghunathganj in Murshidabad district of West Bengal.
In a raid at Darbeshpara area on Monday, police arrested two and seized 94 kg of explosive materials stored in a godown in Suti village, SP Mukhesh said.
On Tuesday in a second raid in the same area, police arrested two more persons and seized around 100 kgs of explosive materials.
The materials were potassium nitrate and sulphur which the police said are used for making bombs.
On November 6, three Nepal nationals, including a woman, were arrested in Siliguri with a large consignment of explosives, includng 609 gelatin sticks, 200 detonators and 230 cartridge shellls.
Indian officials were trying Tuesday to restore the websites of seven Indian embassies in Europe and Africa that were hacked and had data dumped online.
The security of the websites of Indian embassies in Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Libya, Malawi, Mali and Romania was breached by hackers who identified themselves to the media as Kaputsky and Kasimierz L.
We are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters.
Attempts were being made to track the IP addresses of the hackers, who posted online the names, email addresses, phone numbers and passport numbers of some embassy staff members.
Read | Websites of 7 Indian missions hacked, data allegedly put online
In an interview with HT, the hackers claimed to be under the age of 18 and from the Netherlands. They called themselves grey hats and claimed their hacking was an attempt to inform administrators about vulnerabilities on their websites and they had no malicious intent.
All the actions we made were to force the administrators of the site to get better protection on their websites. Its very odd that multiple websites of embassies can be exploited with an SQL injection, one of the hackers who identified himself as Kasimierz told HT on Monday.
Several Indian websites have come under attack this year. Last month, Pakistan-based hackers targeted more than 7,000 Indian websites after India launched a series of attacks on terror camps in Pakistan. Also in October, the security of around 3.2 million debit cards in India was breached when hackers inserted malware through an ATM network.
With input from AP
Police in Chhattisgarhs Bastar division say they are getting ready to take strict action against Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar and several others booked for the murder of a tribal in the states insurgency-hit Sukma district last week.
Sham Nath Baghel of Nama village, about 450km from capital Raipur, was allegedly killed by armed Maoists on November 4 for spearheading an agitation against them since April.
The family of Sham Nath Baghel is in grief and hence we will take their statements in next few days. We have enough evidences and documents and we will produce them (Sundar and others) in court to ensure that strict action is taken against them, Shivram Kalluri, the controversial inspector general of police of Bastar, told HT on Tuesday.
Kalluri has been in the news for what rights activists describe as his high-handed style in tackling Maoists in the region. He has had several much-publicised run-ins with journalists and is said to have been instrumental in the detention of many of them.
Bastar IG SRP Kalluri (L) with his SP RN Dash. Kalluri has been praised and vilified in equal measure over his methods dealing with the Maoist threat in Bastar. ((Ejaz Kaiser/ HT Photo))
The detentions led to nationwide outrage, prompting the Chhattisgarh government to limit the powers of the police in arresting journalists.
Kalluri said Sundar, who visited the region in May, was booked with nine others on the complaint of Baghels wife. The others charged include professor Archana Prasad of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Vineet Tiwari from Delhis Joshi Adhikar Sansthan and Chhattisgarh CPI(M) state secretary Sanjay Parate.
Sundar, who heads the sociology department at Delhi University, has worked extensively on Maoist insurgency, especially in the Bastar region. Her recent book, The Burning Forest: Indias war in Bastar, takes a close look at the conflict and its consequences for the area and its people.
On Tuesday, Sundar dismissed the charges against her, saying: The FIR against us is absurd. We havent been there for months. This is a vendetta against all researchers, journalists, lawyers, activists who are willing to expose complete lawlessness of police.
Baghel and some villagers in May lodged a complaint against Sundar and others for allegedly inciting tribals against police.
Kalluri claimed that Sundar and the others charged were upset since the villagers were organising local resistance groups called Tangiya (axe) against the Maoists.
The Maoists sent a delegation in which Nandini Sundar and all came to Bastar in May. They also used false name. When Nandani Sundar was stopped by the police, she told us the fake name. They roamed freely in the jungle; they stayed in the hotels and rest houses with false names, Kalluri said.
We dont mind anyone supporting some ideology, but they should not incite innocent tribal to rebel against the state, the IG said. There is sufficient background, there is prelude, correspondence and evidences.
It was on Sundars petition that the Supreme Court in 2011 ordered the disbanding of Salwa Judum, a state-backed militia formed to take on the Maoists in Chhattisgarh. The court said it was illegal and unconstitutional to deploy tribal youths as special police officers in Salwa Judum.
When contacted, state Congress president Bhupesh Baghel alluded that Kalluri could be getting back at Sundar for standing up to the state machinery. I demand a court monitored investigation into the matter, he said.
The whole FIR is fabricated and police are doing this because she is fighting a case against the atrocities of the Bastar police in the Supreme Court, said Gautam Bandhopadhya, a Raipur-based social activist.
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1 The Ethiopian pasta is booming Macaroni and spaghetti are pushed by the increase of durum wheat production ADDIS ABABA by Tiberio Chiari Italian Coordinator of Agricultural Value Chains Project in Oromia (Avcpo) Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Istituto Agronomico per l Oltremare (Iao - Overseas Agronomic Institute) Florence, Italy It s perfectly normal that spaghetti and macaroni, with meat or tomato sauce, are offered to you by the waiter at any restaurant in Ethiopia. Indeed, pasta has a long history in this beautiful African country. It was introduced by Italians at the beginning of the last century. Being highly appreciated by Ethiopian people, a series of pasta-making industries have been established over time to satisfy the growing demand. Pasta makers At present, there are about 20 different companies producing pasta. Among them, Kaliti Foods Share Company and Dire Dawa Food Complex (Ddfc) are the bigger ones, both availing themselves of Italian technologies and equipments. The first company, located in Addis Ababa, has a productive capacity of 24 tons per hour, both for short and long pasta. Ddfc is located in Dire Dawa town, next to the border with Djibouti. Its capacity is about 40 and 33 tons per hour, for short and long pasta respectively. Future trends are extremely promising for pasta, considering that the population 20 Professional
2 production is huge (over 90 millions) and the presence of pasta on the table of families is considerably increasing. It is gradually replacing the traditional dish, injera. A yearly consumption of 5 kg per capita can be foreseen, especially in the growing urban areas where citizens are adopting new lifestyles, for which pasta is perfect, because it is fast, easy, cheap and enjoyable, thanks to the creative and multiple ways of cooking it offers. Professional 21
3 Perfect by nature
4 A lifetime dedicated to pasta, always ahead in everything.
5 Raw materials In the last decade, a major limiting factor for local pasta-makers has been the low supply of durum wheat in the country. Few production with inadequate quality. Therefore pasta makers had to buy huge and homogeneous amounts from abroad. This situation may seem quite paradoxical, because wheat is a very traditional crop in Ethiopia, with a sowing of over 1.6 million of hectares. The point is that the 3.5 million tons produced annually are nearly exclusively made of soft wheat, and not durum. Moreover, this production is provided by millions of small farmers through a complex net of intermediaries that aggregate the produce by volumes, and not by quality. As a consequence, industries have been forced to rely on import for durum wheat (see graph 1) and therefore they have been affected by the huge import costs and by the recurrent scarcity of hard currency in the Ethiopian bank system. But the internal demand of pasta is not yet fulfilled, so a huge importation of pasta is taking place (see graph 2). The Agricultural value chain project in Oromia A joint Ethio-Italian cooperation initiative, the Agricultural value chains project in Oromia (Avcpo), with funding from the Italian Development Cooperation GRAPH 1 Import of durum wheat in Ethiopia GRAPH 2 Import of pasta in Ethiopia and with the technical assistance of the Istituto Agronomico per l Oltremare (Iao - Overseas Agronomic Institute), is astonishingly changing the scene. In the pilot zone of Bale (where about 140,000 hectares are yearly sown with In Ethiopia there are about 20 companies producing pasta 24 Professional
6 marana.it Dal 1978 La Monferrina produce macchine professionali per la pasta, interamente made in Italy, ad uso di laboratori e industrie del settore. Progetti esclusivi, studiati e sviluppati internamente per realizzare pasta di ogni tipo nel nome della facilita d'utilizzo, della qualita e della genuinita del prodotto finale. P2 PLEASURE is much more than a combined machine and it can be described as a complete workshop for pasta professionals, tailor-made" for meeting all the production needs. P2 PLEASURE, in its basic version includes: single vat, automatic sheeter and ravioli unit. It can also be supplied with double vat, as well as with double vat with extruder suitable to produce all kinds of short and long shapes of extruded pasta, by simply changing the extruding die. The ravioli unit equipped with interchangeable moulds carries out the production of different shapes and dimensions of pre-cut ravioli. imperia & monferrina SOCIETA PER AZIONI Divisione La Monferrina S.S. n Via Statale 27/A - I Castell'Alfero AT Tel.:
7 The next 6 th and 7 th December 2014, Addis Ababa will host the International Conference Wheat, Flour & Pasta (Organization office: Avenue media - Bologna, Italy). Some of the objectives of the two-day meeting will be: 1. Address all the sectors (i.e. field production, post-harvest, processing, quality control, packaging, distribution, cooking) that are functionally linked by the quality silver thread. 2. Gather all private and public actors concerned (producers, agri-processors, researchers from Federal, Regional and International centers, Agriculture Departments of Universities and private labs, investors, central and local authorities). International Conference Wheat, Flour & Pasta 3. Involve specialized companies and dealers in the industrial sector (equipments for milling, pasta-making, packaging, storing, cooking) as well as in the field sector (chemicals, seeds, etc.), thus providing a full range of B2B opportunities for field-producers, agri-processors, distributors, restaurants and hotels. A strategic opportunity to take part in the development of a country showing great economic, industrial and social growth. How to participate Companies, entrepreneurs, buyers, traders and restaurateurs wishing to attend the meeting, can contact Avenue media (Bologna - Italy), that is in charge of the organization. For further information and updates, please visit Future trends of pasta are extremely promising soft wheat), the project successfully enabled 15 cooperatives and their second level associations (i.e. Unions) to produce durum, ensuring the quality and quantity required by local industries. An innovative contract (recognizing significant price increases according to verified quality parameters, in particular protein content) provides a winwin business environment for both farmers and industries. Consequently farmers are expanding their cultivation and applying the best improvements in farming practices. Right now, an exponential increment of high quality durum production can be seen: 500 tons in 2012; 2,000 in 2013; 5,000 in 2014 and at beginning of 2015, about 15,000 tons will be harvested (it means 30 times more in a four year period) (see graph 3). Similar durum wheat projects could be easily launched in other areas of Ethiopia, adapted to its good performance, as it is already happening in two neighboring zones. The pasta future success The massive availability of high quality durum wheat will foster the production of pasta and, at the same, the launch of new brands, thus satisfying the current demand for better food and innovative dishes by Ethiopian people. In this context, Italian restaurants are indeed spreading, and getting success all over the country. Only in Addis Pasta is increasing its presence on the tables of local families 26 Professional
8 A yearly consumption of 5 kg per capita of pasta can be foreseen GRAPH 3 Trend in durum wheat production in Bale area (Oromia Region, Ethiopia) Ababa town, good choices are surely Castelli, Gusto, Linda inside Juventus Club, Grani di Pepe, Belvedere, Arcobaleno, Top View, Mamma Mia and, at Sheraton Hotel, Stagioni. Their pasta s primi piatti (first courses), both traditional and innovative, are unfailing attractions for all clients, as they represent one of the main testimonials of the Italian Style of eating and drinking. The Embassy of Italy in Addis Ababa We are engaged in supporting pasta and agroindustrial growth in Ethiopia Today Ethiopia offers several economic opportunities, thanks to cheap labour and a remarkable political stability. The Embassy of Italy in Addis Ababa is engaged in raising awareness among Italian companies on trade and investment opportunities in Ethiopia, as well as among Ethiopian businessmen on the excellence of Italian products and industrial supply chains. Our mission is to promote contacts, mutual acquaintance and spread information about technologies and know-how, the Italian Ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr. Giuseppe Mistretta says. According to the Italian Ambassador, the success story of the Ethiopian economy tells us that time is ripe for considering some The Italian Ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr. Giuseppe Mistretta key African Countries as crucial players within the global economy. In this framework, the Conference Wheat, Flour & Pasta, scheduled in Addis Ababa on the 6 th and 7 th December 2014, gives an important sign of the Italian presence, he adds. Nutrition, food and in particular pasta are far from being just an economic item, but have also a cultural value. About wheat & pasta chains, targeted activities and relations can be built in favour of partner countries, among these Ethiopia, and also of the Italian production system, acting on the basis of a win-win game. (Delia Maria Sebelin) Professional 27
9 An event to push the pasta chain sector In order to support the on-going change of the pasta sector, a big meeting will take place in Addis Ababa. Wheat, Flour & Pasta (6 th -7 th December, 2014) will be bound to the three components of this food value chain, i.e. agriculture, agro-industry, and cooking-consumption (see box on page 26 and the preliminary program on page 30, editor s note). The event will be the first of a new type of Ethiopian Conference allowing the joint presence and experience sharing among the full range of public and private actors involved in this food value chain. It will be the perfect opportunity to debate the future of the pasta Ema is more than willing to contribute towards the success of pasta in Ethiopia Ema Vice-president, Ms. Abeba Tesfaye 28 Professional
10 For little pasta makers PAST O -DRYER kg/h O N LY O N E M A C HI N ERY D O U BLE T E C H N O L O G Y - Past eurizing - Pre-drying Ab l e t o t hermic t rea t men t s o f f resh pas t a t o b e pack e d in AT M. - Increasing markets and sales distribution - Minimal investiment - Minimal amount of space - Hight quality of the finish product - Easy to clean What you miss for your growth via Foggia 71/ Barlet ta Italy - tel fax
11 Quality, the way to the future WHEAT, FLOUR & PATRONAGES MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE - Ethiopia MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY - Ethiopia MINISTRY OF TRADE- Ethiopia MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION - Italy EMBASSY OF ITALY IN ADDIS ABABA - Italy OROMIA REGIONAL STATE - Ethiopia ORGANIZERS BOA - Bureau of Agriculture of Oromia Regional State - Ethiopia BOFED - Bureau of Finance and Economic Development of Oromia Regional State - Ethiopia ECCSA - Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association - Ethiopia EMA - Ethiopian Millers Association Food, Beverage, and Pharmaceutical Industry Development Institute - Ethiopia IAO - Istituto Agronomico per l Oltremare - Italy Embassy of Italy in Addis Ababa - Italy Italian Development Cooperation Office in Ethiopia - Italy OARI - Oromia Agricultural Research Institute - Ethiopia SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE ABEBE DIRIBA (Deputy-Head of BoA - Ethiopia) ALIYE HUSSEN (Director General of OARI - Ethiopia) BEKELE ABEYO (Director of CIMMYT Office in Addis Ababa - Ethiopia) MARIA GRAZIA D EGIDIO (Director of Cereal Quality Research Unit - CRA-QCE - Italy) ROBERTO RANIERI (CEO of OpenFields Srl - Italy) ROBERTO TUBEROSA (Professor at Dept of Agricultural Sciences (DipSA) - Bologna University - Italy) SHIMELIS ADMASU (D-Director General of Food, Beverage, Pharmac. Industry Develpt Institute - Ethiopia) TIBERIO CHIARI (Technical Director at IAO - Italy) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE TIBERIO CHIARI (Technical Director at IAO - Italy) GENENE GEZU (Regional Consultant of IAO - Ethiopia) TAFA JOBIE (Crop Research Director of OARI - Ethiopia) MELAKU NEGASH (Chairman of Kality Food S.C. - Ethiopia) MATTEO PIANCA (Head of Economical and Commercial Office at Embassy of Italy - Ethiopia) ABEBA TESFAYE (Vice-president of EMA - Ethiopia) CLAUDIO VERCELLONE (Ceo of Avenue media - Italy) PRELIMINARY PROGRAM 6/7 December Addis Ababa, Ethiopia The durum wheat in Ethiopia A Success Story and Its Future Saturday, December 6 th 2014 h Program Introduction Chairs: FABIO MELLONI Head of Italian Development Cooperation Office in Ethiopia SIRAJ KEDIR Head of Bureau of Finance and Economic Development of Oromia Welcome Addresses Representative of Ethiopian Government H.E. GIUSEPPE MISTRETTA Italian Ambassador to Ethiopia SESSION 1 DURUM WHEAT PROJECT: GOVERNANCE E TRENDS h Durum Wheat Project: results and prospects TIBERIO CHIARI - IAO - Italy h Smallholders & Cooperatives Unions as key players: functions and roles Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) OCPA - Oromia Cooperative Promotion Agency - Ethiopia h Quality of products & process innovations: the role played by public research and extension & training services OARI - Oromia Agricultural Research Institute h The scaling up of Value Chain in Bale and its expansion to other zones and commodities of Oromia BoA - Bureau of Agriculture of Oromia Region EIAR - Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research SESSION 2 TOOLS FOR FAST & SUSTAINABLE SCALING UP h New agricultural credit and insurance mechanisms Commercial Bank of Ethiopia Cooperative Bank of Oromia Nyala Insurance h Seed4Grain : the new Challenge of Ethiopian Wheat Value Chain SARC - Sinana Agricultural Research Center ICARDA/CIMMYT Offices - Ethiopia Representatives of Seed Companies h MEET THE EXPERT Crop management for new qualitative and quantitative targets Moderator: TAFA JOBIE - Crop Research Director - OARI Seed value chain ZEWDE BISHAW (ICARDA) KEDIR NEFO (OSE) The DW Standard Supply Contract: its rules and enforcement OTMDB - Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) Counteracting stem rust pandemic by DW tolerant varieties and eco friendly pesticides TESFAYE LETTA (SARC) AYELE BADEBO (CIMMYT) ZERIHUN AYELE (KARC) Field management practices (fertilizers, crop rotation) for increase in yeld and quality TAFA JOBIE (OARI) ASNAKE FIKRE (EIAR) Value Chain financing: Credit and Insurance schemes ANDREA GHIONE (Italian Development Cooperation) Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) 30 Professional
12 Italian restaurants are spreading all over the country h Working tables: your direct contact with the Expert TABLE 1 TABLE 2 TABLE 3 TABLE 4 TABLE 5 Seed value chain The DW Standard Supply Contract: its rules and enforcement Counteracting stem rust pandemic by DW tolerant varieties and eco friendly pesticides Field management practices (fertilizers, crop rotation) for increase in yield and quality Value Chain financing: Credit and Insurance schemes h GALA EVENING Gala Dinner & Cooking Show Chairs: Milling & Pasta Market Trends & New Tech Sunday, December 7 th 2014 Ethiopian Millers Association - Ema Presidency of Ethiopian Millers Association - Ema & TIBERIO CHIARI - Iao h The Ethiopian millers, key actors of the high quality wheat value chain Ema h Durum Wheat and Pasta Commodities: markets, prices & forecast in the main markets MAURO BRUNI, ENRICA GENTILE Arete - Italy h New tendencies in food habits of Ethiopian People SHIMELIS ADMASU - Food, Beverage, Pharmac. Industry Develpt Institute h Food safety measures for high-quality products Ethiopian Quality & Standards Authority h The most advanced technologies and equipment for wheat milling and derived products Coordinated by MAURIZIO MONTI Miller s Mastery - Italy Interventions by worldwide Plant and Technologies Companies h ROUND TABLE BEST FOOD FOR NEW GENERATION: Great Challenges on Wheat & Pasta in Ethiopia Chair: Economic journalist LECTURES Quality & Milling Characteristics of Durum Wheat Meher 2007 TESFAYE LETTA - Sarc Qualitative and nutritional aspects of pasta M.G. D EGIDIO - CRA/QCE - Italy Valuation and exigencies of utilizers and consumers INTERVENTION AND DISCUSSION BY Ethiopian Millers Association; Ethiopian Bakery Association High Quality Food Producers, for Bakery, Pastry and Pasta GIACOMO DEON President of Confartigianato Imprese Alimentazione - Italy Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Association Agro-processing Platform Main Ethiopian Pastra Industries Restaurant & Food Distribution representatives h EVENT OFFICIAL OPENING CERIMONY AND PRESS CONFERENCE Welcome Greetings by Ethiopian Authorities History of Pasta in Ethiopia Addis Ababa University - Ethiopia h COOKING THE TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN ETHIOPIAN & ITALIAN Pasta station Pizza station Ethio-Italian contest on Fresh pasta A competition between pasta artisans makers and injera makers For further information and updates, please visit sector and to establish relationships with specialized companies dealing with inputs and equipment for field production, agro-processing and cooking. Last, but not least, the tasting of pasta will be one of the key features of the event. Ethiopian Millers trust in the Wheat & Pasta Event The event is promoted by all the public and private institutions and organizations taking part in the Agricultural Value Chains in Oromia (Avcpo) project, and is supported by the Ethiopian Millers Association (Ema). On behalf of the Ethiopian Millers Associatinon (Ema) I would like to thank for the invitation to enter into the organizing committee of the Wheat & Pasta Event, declared Ema Vicepresident, Ms. Abeba Tesfaye. Ema is more than willing to contribute towards the success of the Event and to the sustainable development of pasta in Ethiopia as a whole. On this occasion, I would like to suggest that the cooperation between Ema and Iao (Istituto Agronomico per l Oltremare - Overseas Agronomic Institute, the Italian organization launching the event) should not be limited to the event alone, but build upon a strengthened relationship with your Institute and Italian millers. We hope this will help develop other opportunities where we may collaborate for our mutual benefit in projects such as the Avcpo. Tiberio Chiari Italian Coordinator of Agricultural Value Chains Project in Oromia (Avcpo) Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Istituto Agronomico per l Oltremare (Iao - Overseas Agronomic Institute) Florence, Italy Professional 31
A BJP worker was found murdered in a village in this district, an incident which comes close on the heels of the murder of an RSS worker in Bengaluru and the mysterious death of a BJP activist near Mysuru.
The deceased, Sunil Dongres body was found near an educational institution Monday morning, a senior police official told PTI here.
The body bore multiple stab injuries in the stomach and head, he said, adding the murder had taken place on November 6 in Sonala village in the district.
We are investigating the case and will soon ascertain the motive behind the murder, police said.
Dongre, 35, was an aide of Aurad MLA Prabhu Chavan and enjoyed clout, they added.
Dongre owned over 50 acres of agricultural land in Sonala and was financially sound, police said.
MLA Chavan visited the deceaseds house and consoled the family members.
Earlier on October 16, Rudresh (35), an RSS worker, was allegedly hacked to death by two motorcycle-borne men.
On November 4, BJP Yuva Morcha leader J Ravi (30) was found dead in mysterious circumstances near Magali in Mysuru district, with his family and the party alleging that it was a murder.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, on a day long visit to the city today, interacted with students of a government school near here and enjoyed the fly past by the Indian Air Force with them.
Shortly after she flew in here from New Delhi, May visited Stonehill Government Higher Primary School in Tarahunse Village, Bangalore North Taluk, about 25 km from here, where she interacted with students during the 30-minute visit that also took her to the computer lab and library.
She, along with the students, witnessed a fly past by IAFs three Pilatus trainer aircraft, one Tejas aircraft and one Advanced Attack Helicopter.
During the fly past, she interacted with the students bearing India, Kannada and UK flags who had surrounded her.
Im happy that British Prime Minister Theresa May visited our school. No one will get such a chance, Anusha, a Class 8 student said.
I spoke to her; I said thanks for visiting our school. In return she said welcome, Mukesh, also a class 8 student said.
The government higher primary school, started as a Primary school in 1942, has seen upgradation in the later years.
Stonehill International School, an education initiative by city-based Embassy Group, has been supporting the teaching staff, besides providing necessary grants from time to time.
The school, with first to eighth standards, has a total of 224 students, comprising 100 boys and 124 girls. From 6th to 8th, the medium of instruction is both in English and Kannada.
School Headmistress Shoba Devi who escorted May around the school, said the British Prime Minister expressed her happiness about meeting students here and she wants the relationship between both the countries to grow.
She said The reason why the PM choose to visit our school is because ours is among the better equipped government schools in the state. It is a proud moment for us as a foreign Prime Minister is visiting us. It is an opportunity for our students. Students from neighbouring five-six villages are getting educated in this school, she added.
As part of Mays visit, Wing Commander Andy D Green, a British Royal Air Force fighter pilot and World Land Speed Record holder, spoke to students about technology and engineering adventures with an intention to inspire them.
Green is also part of Bloodhound SSC, a unique, high technology project to design and build a car that will break the 1,000 mph barrier and set a new world land speed record.
With the Congress Working Committee (CWC) paving the way for transition of power in the grand old party, modalities are being worked out to anoint Rahul Gandhi to the top post.
The timing will be decided by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul, who currently holds the position of vice-president. The CWC will convey to the Congress president its unanimous and strong sentiments for Rahuls immediate elevation and seek her approval.
Sonia, 69, holds the record of being the president of the 130-year-old party for 18 consecutive years after taking over from Sitaram Kesri in 1998.
Read: Rahul Gandhi likely to take over as Congress chief after party leaders appeal
Once Sonia gives her approval, the CWC will again be called to formally hand over the reins of the party to her 46-year-old son. The move then has to be ratified by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) at a session within six months, according to the party constitution.
But the entire process could also happen in one day, with the CWC passing a resolution in the morning and the AICC ratifying the move soon after.|
In Sonias case, the formalities were completed in less than a month. The CWC appointed her the party chief through a unanimous resolution on March 14, 1998, and the AICC ratified the move on April 6, 1998.
During the past 18 years, Sonia had to contest only once. In a one-sided fight on November 9, 2000, she defeated Jitendra Prasada, a former Congress vice-president who had been a political advisor to former prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao, by a huge margin.
Currently, the tenure of the Congress president is five years but the CWC, in its meeting on September 8 last year, decided to reduce the period to three years. The amendment will be placed before the AICC for approval.
Congress sources said the leadership, while deciding about the timing of Rahuls anointment, is likely to keep in mind the upcoming assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.
A senior party functionary was of the view that the much-awaited organisational reshuffle, including the re-constitution of the CWC, could take place soon.
Rahul would first like to have his own team in place and then take over, the leader said.
The last elections to the CWC were held in 1997 when Kesri was the party chief. Since then, all appointments in the party have been made through nominations. Prior to that, organisational elections were held during Narasimha Raos tenure in 1992 after a gap of about two decades.
According to the Congress constitution, 12 of the 25-member CWC have to be elected by AICC members, while others are appointed by the party president.
Sonia has often listed difficulties she has faced in constituting the CWC. Nominating CWC is not an easy task. Somebody will complain that he has been left out and why the other was taken. Somewhere someone will be left out, she had said at the AICC session in Delhis Talkatora stadium on November 2, 2010.
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The defence ministry on Monday finally cleared its new blacklisting policy for suspending or banning arms contractors for wrongdoings and gave its go-ahead to proposals worth Rs 82,117 crore for buying fighter planes, tanks, helicopters and drones.
Sources did not disclose the details of the much-awaited blacklisting policy cleared by the defence acquisition council (DAC) but said it would be uploaded on the ministrys website in a few days. The policy has been cleared at a time when firms such as Finmeccanica, Embraer and Rolls-Royce are embroiled in controversial deals.
HT had reported on August 19 that the policy contained new penalties that would debar firms from conducting business with the government for a period ranging from one to 10 years to remove corruption in the defence sector. These provisions would be invoked in case criminality is proved or theres evidence of kickbacks being paid.
Sources said in case a defence firm is found guilty of paying bribes to bag an order, the duration of the investigation against it will be taken into account while prescribing the ban. However, if no criminality is found, the punishment will be less harsh. Firms guilty of procedural lapses, oversight or omission will be allowed to conduct business with the government if they agree to pay hefty fines.
Read | India needs more than Rafale to match China: Defence experts
The DAC, headed by defence minister Manohar Parrikar, has accorded acceptance of necessity (AoN) for buying 83 light combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force at a cost of Rs 50,025 crore, the sources said. The AoN is the first step towards buying a weapon or platform.
Sources said the council also set the ball rolling for buying 464 T-90 tanks for the army at a cost of Rs 13,488 crore, six additional regiments of Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launchers worth Rs 14,633 crore and 15 light combat helicopters for Rs 2,911 crore. The DAC also approved an army proposal to buy 598 mini unmanned aerial vehicles for Rs 1,100 crore.
Since coming to power in 2014, the NDA has focused on bringing out a blacklisting policy that strikes a balance between the need to punish defence contractors who may have violated the law and to keep the military battle-ready.
Read | From Russia with love: Deals worth over $8 billion to boost Indias defence
Tour operators and officials at the Union tourism ministry say tourist arrival in New Delhi is unlikely to be affected by the toxic air that has enveloped the city for the past seven days and are hopeful that the situation will improve soon.
Inbound tourist traffic has not witnessed a dip on account of the continuing smog. The tourism ministry has not issued any advisory (asking tourists not to visit Delhi), as this is a temporary phenomenon that will get blown off after the rains that are expected, a ministry official said.
Tour operators pointed out that other countries, including China, also face these challenges and said tourist traffic is unlikely to suffer even as the city continued to battle its worst smog in 17 years.
Currently, sight-seeing in Delhi is a problem but tourists have been coming. We have not received any cancellations or even enquiries about the pollution levels in Delhi from foreign tourists, Pranav Sarkar, president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), said.
The Delhi government on Monday issued a health advisory asking people to avoid highly- polluted areas and cautioned those with asthma and lung ailments to stay indoors.
The announcement came on a day when the administration put into effect a number of measures, including the halting of construction and demolition activities, starting the process of deregistering 15-year-old diesel vehicles and imposing a ban on the use of firecrackers.
Locals have expressed their concern over the dangerous smog on Twitter, with some announcing plans of moving out their families from Delhi due to concerns over their health.
Some tour operators, however, warned that if the situation does not improve tourists may stop coming to Delhi that boasts of monuments like the Red Fort, Humayuns Tomb and Qutub Minar.
Since flight bookings by domestic or foreign tourists are finalised much in advance, no decline in tourist arrivals has been witnessed. But, if the current situation persists and the social and mainstream media retains its aggressive pitch, it is likely that tourism will suffer, Subhash Goel of Stic Travels said.
The Border Security Force is banking on the forest department in Rajasthan to bridge a gap of 32 km along the border with Pakistan in Jaisalmer district with heavy plantation to prepare the ground for proper fencing.
The dense plantation would help in stabilizing shifting sands of the Thar desert and help the BSF in building a permanent fence along the border. Currently, shifting sand dunes often cover stretches of the fence completely along the Shahgarh Bulge area or leave some stretch hanging in the air as the wind blows away the sand.
BSF officials had observed that forest department with its Desert Development Programme had successfully sorted out the problem of shifting sand dunes by stabilizing sand with dense plantation in different areas.
The BSF discussed the issue of Shahgarh Bulge area with forest department officials and requested them for a solution.
Khyati Mathur, deputy conservativation officer in Jaisalmer said they have submitted a proposal to the BSF for dense plantation in that area.
We have prepared the project on pilot basis and at initial stage we are planning dense plantation in 25-hectares area, she said.
She said that according to the forest departments estimates, it would cost between Rs 3 cr to Rs 4 cr. The forest department is waiting for the BSFs reply.
Amit Lodha, BSFs deputy inspector general (North) in Jaisalmer said the forest departments proposal has been forwarded to forces headquarters. As soon as we get clearance from the headquarters, work will start, he added.
Lodha said that the BSF was very hopeful about this project.
Rajasthan has a 1037-km long border with Pakistan. In 1996 the government had sealed the border with barbed fencing but 32.5 km of the border in Shahgarh Bulge area ran into the problem of shifting sand dunes.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh during his visit to Jaisalmer recently said the government would seal the entire 3,323-km long Indo-Pak border by constructing a wall.
Delhi University professor and rights activist Nandini Sundar and 10 others, including a JNU teacher, have been booked for the murder of a tribal in the insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, police said Tuesday.
Armed Maoists killed Shamnath Baghel with sharp weapons late Friday at his home in Nama village in Tongpal area, around 450 kms from here, police said. Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading a protest against Maoist activities in their village since April.
On the complaint of Baghels wife, an FIR was lodged on Saturday against Sundar, JNU professor Archana Prasad, Vineet Tiwari, who is with Delhis Joshi Adhikar Sansthan, Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) secretary Sanjay Parate and Maoists, news agency PTI quoted inspector general of police (Bastar Range) SRP Kalluri as saying.
They were booked for murder, criminal conspiracy and rioting, Kalluri said, adding, strongest possible action will be taken against those guilty after the investigation.
Baghel and other villagers had in May lodged a complaint against Sundar and others for allegedly inciting tribals against police.
Sundar, who heads the sociology department at Delhi University, has worked extensively on Maoist insurgency, especially in the Bastar region. Her recent book, The Burning Forest: Indias war in Bastar, takes a close look at the conflict and its consequences for the area and its people.
It was on Sundars petition that the Supreme Court in 2011 ordered the disbanding of Salwa Judum, a state-backed militia formed to take on the Maoists in Chhattisgarh. The court said it was illegal and unconstitutional to deploy tribal youths as special police officers in Salwa Judum.
As per the complaint lodged by the victims wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May. Even armed ultras were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday, the IG said.
Nama and villagers in the neighbouring Kumakoleng banded together as Tangiya (axe) group to take on the insurgents. Following the development, according to villagers, Sundar and others went in the village to allegedly threaten them not to oppose the Maoists, the IG said.
Sundar had gone to the village using a fake name, Richa Keshav, he said. They wrote to vice chancellors of DU and JNU informing that Bastar police was conducting an inquiry against both the professors, the IG said.
(With agency inputs)
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A former inmate of the Bhopal jail from where eight SIMI activists reportedly escaped hours before being gunned down in an encounter late last month has contested police claims that the prisoners had unlocked the cell from inside with makeshift keys.
Mohammed Khalil, 40, is the nephew of Mohammed Aqeel Khilji, one of the eight SIMI activists killed on October 31. Khalil said he was imprisoned in the same barracks of the jail for five months between October 2013 and March 2014.
I was in B block, A sector where the SIMI activists were lodged before they reportedly escaped, he told HT.
Eight SIMI men killed in Bhopal encounter, but video clips raise doubts
The cells have nearly two feet thick walls and the lock holder is further one foot inside the wall in a socket. So the gates are installed in such a fashion that the lock and the holder are 2.5 feet away. So even if anyone is given the key, he will not be able to open the gate as his hand will not reach the lock, Khalil said.
He insisted he was speaking the truth and his claim was verifiable. You can visit the jail and check it yourself, he said.
Sanjay Choudhary, the director-general of jails, refused to react to Khalils claim. I cannot say anything on this because a judicial inquiry has already been instituted, and any comment from my side may create confusion in the inquiry process, he said.
But Khalils statement has deepened the mystery over the reported jail break and the subsequent encounter already mired in a controversy following the emergence of several video and audio clips that seem to cast doubts over the police narrative of the events.
The encounter killing in Bhopal needs a free and fair probe
While the videos purportedly showed the police shooting fugitives who lay on the ground, some officials were heard in the audio clips telling their colleagues to shoot them all.
The police said the inmates had made keys out of toothbrushes, used them to unlock the cell they were lodged in and then overpowered a guard before scaling the jail wall to escape. Ironically, several CCTV cameras installed in the area were not functional at the time of the jail break.
The police claimed the fugitives were tracked down in the outskirts of the city and then engaged in a firefight, resulting in their deaths.
However, lawyers of the SIMI activists and civil rights activists have questioned the police version. The criticism prompted the state government to order a judicial inquiry into the encounter.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement abolishing Rs 1000 and Rs 500 currency notes was hailed as a bold step by President Pranab Mukherjee and the BJP but some his rivals denounced it as a draconian decision that would trouble people.
The Congress reacted cautiously as it welcomed the crackdown on black money and corruption, but expressed concern over the inconvenience the move will cause to farmers and people in rural areas.
The Congress has always supported any step against black money and will continue to do so, the partys chief spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala, said on Tuesday.
But the party is not convinced with the Narendra Modi governments proposed move to issue Rs 2,000 notes.
Modiji has withdrawn Rs 1,000 notes on one hand, and introduced Rs 2,000 notes on the other. Does it not defeat his argument? Wont cancelling notes of bigger denominations and replacing them with even larger denominations enable black money hoarders to stash even more money? Surjewala asked.
While Modi ji withdraws Rs 1000 note, he introduces Rs 2000 note on the other side? Does it not defeat his own argument?: @rssurjewala INC India (@INCIndia) November 8, 2016
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee demanded immediate withdrawal of, what she described, a heartless and ill-conceived decision that could lead to financial chaos. She accused Modi of diverting attention away from the governments failure to bring back black money from abroad.
WITHDRAW THIS DRACONIAN DECISION Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 8, 2016
Read | How much will govts move to scrap Rs 1000 and 500 note cost?
Calling Modis announcement as complete jumlanomics, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that the move would mean harassment for millions not connected to the banking system.
In a series of tweets, Yechury said the governmens step is poorly planed and not thought through.
Today's announcement neither addresses the major sources of black money abroad nor those invested in property, gold and such instruments. Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) November 8, 2016
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) spokesman Ambeth Rajan refused comments.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav urged the Centre to ensure that the decision to ban RS 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes does not have an adverse impact on the poor, farmers and villagers.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) leader also urged the government to arrange for special camps in villages for exchanging currency notes as banks were not easily accessible in the rural areas, an official release issued in Lucknow stated.
The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), a one-time partner in the NDA, welcomed the move.
I welcome the bold step by the Prime Minister to freeze 500 and 1000 denomination rupees to weed out black money from circulation which is a parallel economy in our country. Next step is to keep a hawks eye on money transaction that may change hand, now. All the best to Narendra Modi, BJD parliamentary leader Bhartruhari Mahtab said.
Read | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes scrapped: All you need to know and do in next few days
Another BJP rival, the Janata Dal (United), too, welcomed the move. It said the governments move would break the back of terror funding and those who generate black money.
Also, the party demanded protection to farmers and small traders.
Farmers habitually save notes at home for occasions such as marriage of a daughter, instead of depositing money in banks. The rural economy must be kept insulated, party spokesman KC Tyagi said.
For its part, the BJP was obviously delighted.
On behalf of all BJP workers, I compliment the central government and PM for taking tough but timely and pathbreaking measures, party chief Amit Shah said.
He said the announcement will go a long way in bringing economic prosperity to the poor, middle class and neo-middle class.
We can no longer let corruption and black money slow down our development journey. We must create a prosperous India for future generations.
(With inputs from agencies)
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Fear has gripped tribal girl students and their parents in Buldhana district after the alleged rape of two fellow minor students of the Nimbaji Kokre Ashramshala (tribal boarding school) in Hiwarkheda.
Over 50 girl students, who live in Halkheda village in Jalgaon district, have refused to return to the boarding school after the alleged rapes, and have conveyed their feelings to the state tribal welfare department.
Some students have even reportedly threatened to kill themselves if their parents forced them to go back to the school.
Parents of the students said the girls have refused to rejoin the tribal boarding school out of fear over lack of safety and security. Officials of the state tribal welfare department are now visiting the houses of the affected students and asking them if they want to seek admission in other boarding schools nearby.
Ashramshalas of the region would reopen on November 15 after the Diwali vacation.
Nimbaji Kokre Ashramshala at Hiwarkheda was in the news recently after 15 persons, including teachers, were arrested for allegedly raping two minor tribal girl students. The accused include the president, secretary and joint secretary of the school.lured with food
Chairperson of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women (MSCW), who visited the tribal boarding school in Buldhana said the institution did not have the proper infrastructure.
Asha Mirge, a former member of MSCW, said one of the girls told her about the way the accused operated.
One of the girls, who taken in the police custody for questioning, told me that the main accused (sweeper) used to lure students with good food. He used to tell them that they will be given good food if he was allowed to do whatever he wanted, she said.
The Clintons help Trump celebrate his wedding to Melania. Will they laugh like this again? Of course, but not where you can see them, for a while at least.
1.
As the polls tighten, theres a lot of left-blaming and left-fretting among Clinton supporters. That fits with a long-standing psycho-political syndrome among liberals of attacking the lefta syndrome in which the left often plays its own not so healthy part.
But theres little basis for that syndrome in reality, at least in this election. Not that this particular reality has much impact on the self-styled reality-based community. But its important to register that reality nonetheless[.]
The problems Hillary Clinton is having do not have to do with the left, says Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, in an interview. There is not much of any evidence of a drop-off in support for her from the left-wing of the ideological spectrum..Like Jill Stein or not, the drag she has been on Clinton basically amounts to a rounding error.
2.
A story Jacob Levy reported on Facebook today leaves me with this embittered thought.
Liberals in the media, academia, political circles, and on social media who support Clinton act as if your one vote out of the more than 100 million cast determines the fate of the republic. If you vote for Stein (whether in a safe state or not), you are personally responsible for Trumps inauguration.
These voices are often the very same people who, when challenged about Clintons voting record in the Senate or Obamas policies, will say: Clinton was only one voice in a Senate, out ofa hundred voices. Obama was one lonely man arrayed againstthree veto points.
Somewhere in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith has a passage about how we identify with the trials and travails of a king, giving him all of our sympathy and understanding, yet are so repelled by the tribulations of the lowly that we can scarce understand what theyre going through.
The difficulties and challenges of the most elite sectors of the political class are acutely felt by liberal journalists and commentators. And the calculations and concerns of the lowly citizen? Fuhgettaboutit.
4.
...Ive been hearing this line of bullshit for years: once the Republicans start appealing to Latin@s, all will be well. People forget the ballyhoo around the fact that George W. Bush could say hello in Spanish. That was going to change everything forever....
There are two reasons Latin@s havent become a reliable part of the Republican coalition.
The first, of course, is the racism and revanchism of a considerable part of the GOP base. Just look how they took to Bushs compassionate conservatism. ...
The second reason, though, is this: what GOP fantasists imagine creating is a multicultural, identity-friendly party of capital. The problem is we already have such a party. Who needs two?
7.
I once asked Steve Skowronekwhos probably one of the four or five most fertile minds of the last quarter-centurys political sciencewhat kind of role opposition parties play in toppling partisan/presidential regimes. What role did the 1932 Democrats play in overthrowing the Gilded Age regime? What role did the 1980 Republicans playing in overthrowing the New Deal regime?
Not much, he said, rather bleakly.
Regimes tend to collapse of their own weight, driven to destruction by the long-term consequences of the actions of their own elites and activists. While they ultimately need an opposition to topple them, the only reason the opposition can do that is that these regimes are already tipping over on their own [emphasis mine].
The first symptom of a degraded aristocracy is a lack of capable candidates for the throne. After years of indulgence, ruling families become frail, inbred and isolated, with no one but mystics, impotents and children to put forward as kings. Think of Nikolai Romanov reading fortunes as his troops starved at the front. Weak princes lead to popular uprisings
1. After Clinton wins either Florida, North Carolina or Ohio, all Eastern time zone states, leaving Trump no path to victory?
2. Or after the polls close in Nevada, a Western time zone state, so as not to mess with what should be a heavy Democratic turnout and a possible tipping-point win in the race to control the Senate?
A couple of election notes from Corey Robin , plus a bonus note from me:This is something we all anticipate:Robin then quotes Matt Grossman (via the Vox link above):Will that stop them? Unlikely. Old dogs, old tricks and all.This next one is a variant of the first, but a little nastier:That kind of reprimand ("it's your fault if she loses") sounds way too close to "You're insufficiently loyal, soldier," but maybe that's just me.Robin continues to ponder the discrepancy between society's lack of forgiveness for us "littles" and its automatic forgiveness of the bigs:Those two paragraphs remind me of the horror people always feel when they consider the French Revolution in its bloody early days ... without once seeing the centuries of misery, blood and death, by thousands upon thousands of humans, generation after generation, in Paris and in France, endured by the class of people who eventually rose up and fought back against it.People, watching Marie Antoinette beheaded, call the Revolution a disgrace without once considering the nameless many who lived lives worse than hers, and died every day as a result the " unhonored dead " who "gave to misery" all they had, and died not forgotten, but never even known.Robin spends much of the piece pondering the Latin@vote. One of his points is this:That last paragraph (did you catch what he said?) sets the next part up nicely.A much more general point, even more general than Robin himself makes of it:There's a lot to consider here. I think Robin errs in applying this to Republicans only instead of to the whole regime. After all, we made the same point recently, echoing Matt Taibbi. Here's Taibbi's version of this idea (emphasis mine):And again, this point doesn't just apply to the Republican and their clown car of "impotents and children." This year we chose between of the two most unpopular candidates in modern history for president.Near the end of the Democratic primary, in a apparent attempt to finish off the Sanders campaign, the AP called the contest over even before the California primary was held before, in other words, all pledged delegates were decided. How early will the press call this contest decided?I know what Harry Reid would choose, but to wait three hours to be the first to name the new president ... that's a heavy ask. Torn between two lovers , what will the media do?the rest of Corey Robin's piece , especially points 9 and 10 about what the strong Latin@ vote means for the rest of us going forward, and how, via the Culinary Workers Union in a right to work state, they've gotten where they are.GP
Labels: 2016 presidential race, elites, Gaius Publius, Hillary Clinton, Latino Decisions, Matt Taibbi, media, Senate 2016, Trump
After holding separate protests against the Gujarat government over the demands of their respective communities, firebrand leaders Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor appear to be joining hands ahead of the 2017 state polls.
Their bonhomie was on full display on Sunday when Kshatriya Thakor Sena (KTS), led by Other Backward Class (OBC) leader Thakor, held an anti-liquor rally and demanded stricter prohibition laws in the state. Thakor was joined by Dalit leader Mevani, while Hardik, who is at the helm of the Patidar quota stir, also extended his full support to the drive.
Patels and the Patidar Ananmat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) support the KTS when it comes to a fight against evils like liquor addiction and the governments lack of will to implement prohibition strictly, Hardik said.
Read | Kejriwal, Hardik bonhomie on Twitter triggers speculation on possible alliance
The KTS also pressed for more employment opportunities for youth in local industries.
At the rally, Thakor felicitated several of his community leaders for their efforts in the upliftment of the members of the backward community. During the same ceremony, he also honoured Mevani even though he is a Dalit leader and not a part of the OBC stir.
Although their recent camaraderie has set political circles abuzz, none of the three leaders are willing to give their alliance a political colour.
The one who will support the communitys demand will be the next chief minister of Gujarat, Thakor said.
Read | Jai Patidar, Jai Sardar: Kejriwal sounds 2017 poll bugle at Gujarat rally
If Hardik, Mevani and Thakor do decide to form a political fold then the BJP could face difficulty in regaining power in 2017.
The Patels form 14% of Gujarats population and have traditionally backed the BJP. But the state governments refusal to grant the community an OBC status and Hardiks meteoric rise has distanced Patidars from the right-wing party. The OBCs, SCs and STs constitute nearly 40% of states population while the Dalits form 7% of Gujarats demography.
The BJP suffered heavy losses in 2015 local body elections that were held against the backdrop of the Patidar stir.
Also Read | Mission 2017 polls: AAP woos Hardik Patel as Kejriwal begins Gujarat tour
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The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court ordered on Monday the Dr MC Saxena Medical College in the city to pay Rs 25 lakh damage per student for wrongly admitting 150 of them in the MBBS 2015-16 course.
It directed the management of the college to deposit the entire amount in respect of all the 150 students with the director general of medical education, Uttar Pradesh within two months.
The director general, Medical Education will then distribute the money among the students after due verification.
The court though refused to grant relief as sought by the petitioner students and dismissed all the writ petitions filed by them in the matter.
The petitioners had sought a direction to allow them to appear in the first year MBBS examination for 2015-16.
The judgment was delivered by Justice Devendra Kumar Arora on six writ petitions moved by some students.
State counsel Sanjay Bhasin said the college had no affiliation or recognition of Medical Council of India (MCI) and 150 students were wrongly admitted without proper counselling, in a process which was neither transparent nor fair.
This court is constrained to observe that there has been a wilful disobedience by the respondent medical college of the orders passed by the apex court, which is nothing but an interference with the administration of justice. Disobedience of an order of a court, which is wilful, shakes the very foundation of the judicial system and can erode the faith and confidence reposed by the people in the judiciary, and undermines the rule of law, the court said.
It further observed that the medical college had shown scant respect to the order passed by the highest court of the country and proceeded, under haste, to impart medical education to the petitioners in the first year MBBS course, possibly to make an unlawful gain, adopting unhealthy practices.
On the outskirts of Gurugram, hidden by the glitzy-face of development imposing, glazed buildings and sprawling farmhouses along blacktop roads stands a weather-beaten board with the name Shri Gopal Goshala.
A pointer on this board coaxes you to enter what seems like an outback of the Aravalli range.
A few hundred metres into the wilderness, you are greeted by a pasture-like scene with mooing cows and lush greens. This is Shri Gopal Goshala, spread over eight acres of land and home to over 700 bovines in the suburb of Gurugram.
The Goshala (cow shelter), set up in 1996 by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the hardline affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is run entirely on donations.
But, the BJP-led Haryana governments recent decisions, such as setting aside a generous cash purse (estimates put it to Rs 20 crore) for the Cow Commission (Gau Seva Aayog) and providing ID cards to gau rakshaks (cow vigilantes) have imbued hope here that the administration is getting serious about Gau Seva (cow protection).
It takes us 32 people and Rs 1 lakh a month to run this shelter, but we are determined to keep going, otherwise these (bovines) will end up in slaughter houses, says Tilak Raj Baisala, a VHP functionary and general secretary of the goshala.
Read | Hindutva hotbed: RSS imprint on Khattar government runs deep in Haryana
He is not sure whether or when this goshala will benefit from the governments largesse, but is hopeful that the Cow Commission will set up hospitals for the bovine and sanction grazing land.
Cows-sheds run for philanthropy or religious reasons have existed for long, but the Haryana governments concerted moves to save the bovine is perceived to have several subtexts.
For one, it is being seen as a move to further the Hindutva agenda of the BJP government that draws its strength from its ideological mentor the RSS.
Even as the government counts the benefits of saving the cow from economic to ecological groups such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal preach reverence for the animal next only to gods and respect for the mother. Religious beliefs lie at the core of their cow protection agenda and their demand for an absolute ban on cow slaughter and import of meat is an offshoot of that.
People dont realise the benefits of cow protection; it is not just milk, the cow is central to organic farming, you can treat epilepsy and cancer using cow urine and dung. By burning ghee (clarified butter) you can generate enough oxygen to purify the environment, says Surendra Jain, international joint general secretary of the VHP dismissing that cow protection has a communal undertone.
There have been no studies to prove what he says but that doesnt stop him from making such stunning claims.
He is confident that measures such as ID cards for the gau rakshaks will separate criminal elements from the genuine sevaks. But the extreme vigilantism seen in Haryana often finds victims among communities who are dependent on bovines (mostly buffaloes) for their meat and hides.
Read | Supreme Court seeks reply from Centre, states on gau rakshaks in four weeks
In June this year Rizwan and Mukhtiar, two labourers transporting buffalo meat, were intercepted by one such vigilante group near Gurugram. After being accused of transporting beef illegally, they were thrashed mercilessly and forced to eat panchgavya (cow dung concoction). A video of the crime was shot too by the alleged perpetrators.
After the passage of the Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan (Cow Protection and Development) Bill 2015 in the assembly in March (it bans cow slaughter and the sale and import of beef in the state) the vigilantism has heightened. Law enforcement has gone up. There is a lot of pressure on the police, said an official requesting anonymity.
Consequently, ahead of the Eid in September, there was a crackdown on eateries selling biryani in the Muslim-dominated Mewat district, ostensibly to check for beef. It was a rumour that led to the crackdown but it effectively ended the livelihood of many.
Haryana agriculture minister OP Dhankar, however, has a one-word reply for the opposition to the state governments focus on the bovine. Mansikta (mentality), he says for the criticism being leveled against the governments decision from passing a law to ban and criminalise cow slaughter and beef consumption.
It is unfortunate that some people have a mentality to politicise everything. Dont we respect the laws in other countries? Beef is banned in Haryana and shouldnt the law and the sentiment of our people be respected,? the minister says.
The elaborate policies being shaped around the bovine are aimed at improving health, giving economy and agriculture a boost says Dhankar.
He cites government subsidy to those purchasing indigenous cow breeds as an example.
Countries like Australia, New Zealand and many others in Europe are discovering the benefits of the A2 milk found in desi-cows (beta-casein protein considered a healthier option) that does not cause disorders such as, obesity, diabetes and heart ailment like milk from foreign breed, he says.
The accent on swadeshi, another Sangh Parivaar pet theme, is hard to miss.
With the government concentrating on its 400 gaushalas with 3.5 lakh cows, keeping an eye out for more, those involved in meat trade or skinning of dead animals meanwhile are looking over their shoulders.
Read | 2 years of BJP rule in Haryana: RSS agenda overshadowed govt initiatives
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India has strongly criticised the Security Council for taking months to consider sanctioning leaders of groups it has designated as terror entities, in an obvious reference to the technical hold on Indias bid to get JeM chief Masood Azhar banned by the UN.
Asserting that the Security Council is stuck in its own time warp and politics, Indias permanent representative to the UN ambassador Syed Akbaruddin slammed on Monday the councils inability to sanction the leaders of terrorist organisations.
While our collective conscience is ravaged everyday by terrorists in some region or another, the Security Council gives itself 9 months to consider whether to sanction leaders of organisations it has itself designated as terrorist entities, Akbaruddin said at a session on equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council here.
Earlier this year, China had extended the technical hold on Indias move to get Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. The six-month validity of the technical hold lapsed in late September and China sought another three-month extension on Indias bid.
He lamented that the snail-paced and never-ending carousel of discussions on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reforms, saying it is time to break the impasse to urgently reform the body that is unresponsive to the current global situation.
The inability to respond to humanitarian situations, terrorist threats and peacekeeping vulnerabilities during this year itself are part of the price that is being paid for the international communitys lack of progress on the critical matter, he said.
Read | Making of a terrorist: Babri demolition triggered Masood Azhars jihad
On issues pivotal to international security such as Syria, there is inaction, and on other situations like dealing with the peacekeeping crisis in South Sudan we see fragmented action which is not implemented even months after being agreed upon, Akbaruddin said.
The Security Council, stuck in its own time warp and politics, can only be described as working randomly on the basis of a mix of ad-hocism, scrambling and political paralysis. Need one say more about the urgency of the need for reform of this relic which has long been unresponsive to the needs of our time, he said.
Akbaruddin said the never-ending carousel of discussions on UNSC reforms leaves many in the international community perplexed as the crucial reform of the Security Council has been delayed despite both its importance and its urgency.
He pointed out that the Councils global governance structure does not cease to surprise the international community with its persistent inability to even effectively engage with the tasks at hand.
Read| India slams UN for hold on declaring Jaish chief Masood Azhar global terrorist
India and the United Kingdom need to cooperate more on countering terrorism which is the biggest menace to world peace and tranquillity, President Pranab Mukherjee has said.
During a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May last evening, the President said India sees the UK as a key partner in its growth and economy.
India would encourage more companies from the UK to partner in its national programmes like Make in India, Skill India, Digital India etc, a Rashtrapati Bhawan statement quoted the President as saying on Tuesday.
Terrorism is the biggest menace to world peace and tranquillity. It is a scourge that knows no territorial or ideological boundaries.
India and UK need to cooperate more on counter -terrorism. The international community must show determination in fighting against terrorism, he said.
Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom called on #PresidentMukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan yesterday pic.twitter.com/GxnXrhVpVH President of India (@RashtrapatiBhvn) November 8, 2016
The President also stressed that there was an immense scope to further enhance trade exchanges both in goods and services between the two countries. Bilateral trade between India and the UK in goods stood at $14 billion in 2015-16.
Welcoming the UK Prime Minister, Mukherjee expressed happiness that she has chosen India for her first bilateral visit outside the European Union and said both the countries share common prospective on many international issues.
There is strong economic and financial engagement, growing defence and international security partnership and close people to people linkages. India appreciates the UKs support for its candidature for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, he said.
May warmly reciprocated the Presidents sentiments and said that her visit reflects the strength of the relationship as well as UKs keenness to build for the future.
There were many existing opportunities in terms of mutual investment and trade. The UK is looking to forge a key bilateral partnership with India which would be to the advantage of both sides, the spokesman said quoting the British Prime Minister.
A soldier was killed and two others injured in Rajouri districts Naushera sector as Pakistan continued pounding Indian posts and villages along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.
Confirming reports, defence spokesperson lieutenant colonel Manish Mehta told Hindustan Times that a soldier was killed, but his identity is yet to be ascertained.
The Indian army is retaliating in equal measure to the unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan army in Naushera sector. They are using 82 mm mortars and automatic weapons, the lieutenant colonel added.
The Pakistani army has been firing and shelling Indian positions in Krishna Ghati (KG) and Mankote sub-sectors in Poonch district.
According to an intelligence source, an army vehicle moving close to the LoC in Lam area was hit by Pakistani mortar shelling, killing the soldier and injuring the others two at around 1:30 pm on Tuesday.
Pakistani army is also using weapons locating radars, the source added.
A senior army officer said Pakistani troops had been firing and shelling targets along the LoC in Naushera sector since 8:45 am.
On Monday, Pakistani troops targeted Mankote and Balakote areas of Mendhar sector in Poonch district.
Tuesdays death follows that of two soldiers on November 6 after the Pakistani army opened heavy fire in an attempt to facilitate two infiltration bids along the LoC in Krishna Ghati and Poonch sectors. Five soldiers were also injured in the assault.
There has be an onslaught of ceasefire violations since India announced carrying out surgical strikes along the LoC on September 29. The strike was largely seen as Indias response to the militant attack on an army camp in Kashmirs Uri, in which 19 soldiers died. India blames Pakistan for sheltering the militants who carried out the attack.
There have been over 100 ceasefire violations since.
The worst-ever Pakistani shelling targeting civil population took place on November 1 when eight civilians, including two children and four women, were killed and 22 others were injured along the LoC across Jammu region.
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The current notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 will no longer be valid from November 8 midnight, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a televised address to the nation. Instead, notes of Rs 2000 and a newly designed Rs 500 are being introduced.
Here are highlights from his speech:
- From midnight, notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 will cease to be legal tender.
- Citizens will have 50 days -- between November 10 and December 30 -- to give in notes of Rs 1000 and 500 at post offices and banks.
- Those unable to submit all their old currency notes within the deadline, will be able to do so at the Reserve Bank of India up till March 31, 2017 by providing a declaration.
- ATMs will not function on November 9, and on November 10 in some places.
- For 72 hours, until the midnight of November 11, government hospitals, government-authorised consumer stores like milk booths and ticketing counters, will continue to accept the old Rs 1000 and 500 notes.
- RBIs proposal for new Rs 2000 note has been accepted.
- All banks will remain closed on November 9 for public work.
Read | Rs 1000 and 500 notes become history in Modis war on black money
Rs 500 And Rs 1000/- notes cease to be legal tender Here is what you can do... pic.twitter.com/dFVh3cQtHY M Venkaiah Naidu (@MVenkaiahNaidu) November 8, 2016
- This government is committed to the poor: PM Narendra Modi in address to the nation.
- In spite of two years of continuous drought, in the last two-and-half years, India has made its presence felt in the global economy.
- We are among the fastest-growing economies, but we also rank high in global corruption rankings
Read | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes scrapped: All you need to know and do in next few days
- Black money and corruption has taken roots in the country, these are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty.
- Indias common citizens live their lives honestly. But black money, corruption make the nation hollow from inside.
- In the last two-and-half years, at least Rs 1.25 lakh crore of black money has been recovered.
Read | Take a look at the new Rs 500, Rs 2000 notes to be circulated soon
About 1,000 mayors and municipal councillors from across the country will meet on Tuesday in Gujarats capital Gandhinagar to find sustainable solutions to rising air pollution and traffic congestion in urban areas.
Also on the agenda is making roads pedestrian-friendly and finding smart parking solutions with Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan as the focus states.
These issues will be deliberated at the four-day Urban Mobility India Conference and Expo that will be inaugurated later in the day by Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu in the presence Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani.
Aimed at enhancing the knowledge of state and city governments on various aspects of low carbon climate friendly urban transport, the other issues to be discussed during the conference are improving urban transport systems and road safety in the five focus states.
At least 2,500 delegates from India and 25 foreign countries will talk about various aspects of Planning Mobility for Citys Sustainability at the conference, which is being held outside Delhi for the first time since its inception in 2008.
Participation in the conference has increased from 500 in 2008 to 2,500 in the Gandhinagar meet.
Minister of state for planning (independent charge) and urban development and housing and urban poverty alleviation Rao Inderjit Singh will present awards for excellence in urban transport and urban mobility on the last day of the conference.
The mother of missing student of JNU Najeeb Ahmed on Tuesday met home minister Rajnath Singh, who assured her of his intervention to find out the youth who has been untraceable since October 15.
Fatima Nafees and other family members urged the home minister to trace Najeeb, a student of School of Biotechnology in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a native of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh.
The home minister gave a patient hearing to Najeebs mother and other family mothers and listened to all their grievances, official sources said.
Singh told them that Delhi Police has set up a special team to pursue the case and he was personally taking stock of the progress in the probe.
The home minister assured the family all kind of assistance, the sources said.
SP MP from Badaun Dharmendra Yadav, who accompanied Najeebs family, said the Home Minister has assured them that efforts are being made to trace him at the earliest.
If police are not able to trace him, we will approach court and raise the issue in Parliament, Yadav told reporters after the meeting.
Read more| Missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed was emotionally disturbed: Cops
Najeebs sister Sadaf rubbished allegations that he was mentally unstable and said efforts are being made to defame him instead of tracing him.
He had cracked university exams, he is a studious child. Do you think a person studying at such a prestigious institution can be mentally unstable? I request (all) that please dont defame him. He had sleeping problems that children who are studying often have due to pressure. He had no other problem, she said.
Najeeb (27) went missing on October 15 following an on-campus scuffle allegedly with some members of ABVP the night before.
His mother claimed that she had spoken to Najeeb on the night of brawl and that she was sure that he did not leave the campus on his own.
I spoke to him at 11 PM, he wasnt depressed. He was waiting for me, he had called me up. He did not go anywhere on his own he has been kidnapped...I am sure about it, Nafees said.
Najeebs mother was detained on Sunday by police while attempting to take out a protest march to India Gate.
New Delhi/Raipur
Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar, who has been booked along with Maoists on charges of murder of a tribal villager in insurgency-hit Sukma district, said on Tuesday the FIR against her was patently absurd.
Armed Maoists allegedly killed Shamnath Baghel with sharp weapons on Friday night at his residence in Nama village, around 450km away from Raipur. In her complaint, Baghels wife mentioned that he was getting threats from Maoists after he and other villagers complained against Sundar in May this year.
Read: Nandini Sundar used fake name in Chhattisgarh, faces strict action: Top cop
How can we be charged with murder and rioting when we are not even there? This is clearly part of IG (SRP) Kalluris attempt to intimidate and harass journalists, lawyers, researchers, political leaders and human rights activists who have exposed the reign of fake encounters, gang rapes etc, Sundar said.
Kalluri has been in the news for what rights activists describe as his high-handed style in tackling Maoists in the region. He has had several much-publicised run-ins with journalists and is said to have been instrumental in the detention of many of them.
Police in Chhattisgarhs Bastar have said they are getting ready to take strict action against Sundar and others booked in the case.
The family of Sham Nath Baghel is in grief and hence we will take their statements in next few days. We have enough evidences and documents and we will produce them (Sundar and others) in court to ensure that strict action is taken against them, Kalluri, the controversial inspector general of police of Bastar, told HT on Tuesday.
Kalluri said Sundar, who visited the region in May, was booked with nine others on the complaint of Baghels wife.
Sundar, who heads the sociology department at Delhi University, has worked extensively on Maoist insurgency, especially in the Bastar region. Her recent book, The Burning Forest: Indias war in Bastar, takes a close look at the conflict and its consequences for the area and its people.
this is a direct fall out of the CBI chargesheet of special police officers turned constables for arson in Tadmetla in 2011, an operation which Mr Kalluri directed. I condemn the killing of Shamnath Baghel and reiterate that it has nothing to do with us, Sundar said.
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Tell us a little about Beiruts alcohol tradition.
The most famous alcoholic beverage from Lebanon is arak, a grape spirit flavoured with anise that is found in every Lebanese house and goes well with the local food. It is uncommon to drink arak in bars as it is more suitable for lunch or dinner gatherings, especially on Sundays when everybody has barbecues and enjoys arak. In Lebanon people drink a lot of scotch whisky and vodka but not much rum, gin, or tequila, while in the cocktail bars it is quite different as people look for the whole combination to choose their drink rather than only the spirit.
How does Beiruts bar scene differ to other Middle Eastern cities?
Beirut is famous for its vibrant nightlife, having a lot of roof tops and open-air places during summer, as well as a wide variety of nightclubs. The cocktail bar scene started 10 years ago and is improving every year, especially having renowned competitions such as Bacardi Legacy and Diageo World Class, where more people from the international bar scene started to visit the country to do seminars, and local bartenders learned about the new trends in the global bar scene.
What are your favourite bars in Beirut?
I really like a bar called Ferdinand in the Hamra area. It has a good selection of cocktails, nice beers and a big selection of malt whiskies. I also like Dragonfly which is one of the oldest cocktail bars in Beirut located in the Gemmayze neighborhood. The Italian Project is a very good place to enjoy Italian food combined with great cocktails and, of course, the Central Station Boutique Bar.
Where does Beirut look to for inspiration? Do you see a Lebanese style of bartending emerging?
Beirut is a great city for inspiration as it has a lot of history and many influences from different populations that were here for a while, from French to Turkish, Phoenicians and Romans. The local food is very complex and rich and you can get a lot of ideas to build cocktails. Then there is the benefit of having amazing seasonal fruits, herbs and vegetables to play with in our cocktails.
At Central Station we always have Lebanese-influenced cocktails where we convert the flavours of local food into drinks such as a twist on a Mai Tai with roasted eggplants inspired by baba ganoush and served with eggplant chips and hummus dip.
What are the challenges for Beirut bartenders going forward? Is it hard to get all the products you need?
One of the problems of having a cocktail bar in Beirut is missing some special spirits, brands and equipment that is needed in a cocktail bar, thus we have to import them from Europe or the US. I think this issue will be solved soon because every year more bars are asking for the special items and the suppliers are becoming more interested to bring these items because the demand has increased.
It is not possible to direct the Election Commission to simultaneously conduct general elections and assembly polls across the country and neither is it feasible, Delhi High Court said today.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said this while dismissing a plea by a social worker to hold both Lok Sabha and state assemblies elections jointly at one go.
How is it possible to direct Election Commission of India (ECI) to conduct assembly elections (in states) along with the general election. Sorry, it is not a matter in which courts intervention is needed. May be your idea is good but it is not feasible, the court said.
The direction came on a PIL by Salek Chand Jain who had urged the court to direct the authorities concerned to conduct both Lok Sabha and state assemblies polls together in order to save crores of rupees of public money.
Jain, through his counsel Sugriva Dubey, told the court that till 1967, the general elections as well as state assembl polls were held together.
The plea had alleged that due to elections on different occasions, a huge amount of public money was spent.
It would be in the public interest that the elections are conducted throughout the country at one time, the plea said, adding that some national and state political parties have also consented for one-time election.
A man locked his 90-year-old mother in his house in Uttar Pradeshs Allahabad and left for Patna in the neighbouring state of Bihar with his wife and children to celebrate Chhath festival.
Residents in the Himmatganj locality said Vinay Kashyap purchased a house in the area about three months ago and moved in with his mother, wife Pushpa, and three children. Pushpa hails from Patna in Bihar.
Kashyaps neighbours found the house locked and assumed that his family might have gone to Bihar to celebrate the four-day Chhath festival during which devotees worship the Sun. They said the family hardly interacted with anyone in the locality.
On Monday, Virendra Sonkar, a relative of local corporator, noticed a woman waving her hand from the window on the first floor of the house. Sonkar raised an alarm after which neighbours informed the police control room.
Khuldabad Police reached the spot and climbed up the balcony of the house with the help of a ladder. They broke the locks and rescued the woman. She was not in a condition to give out her name.
Police found a few packets of biscuits and some food in the room but neighbours said she was too weak to eat on her own.
Inspector KK Yadav said the woman was getting her husbands pension.
It is an inhuman act and action will be taken against Vinay and his wife. Residents of the area are taking care of the woman and they have informed us that they had often heard Vinay and Pushpa abusing her, Yadav added.
India on Tuesday recalled three of its eight high commission officials in Islamabad whose identities were made public by the Pakistan foreign office during a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.
Amid deteriorating ties, Pakistan in the morning summoned Indian deputy high commissioner JP Singh to protest the killing of three civilians in cross-LoC firing, as the three Indian officials left Islamabad.
First secretary Anurag Singh, Vijay Kumar Verma and Madhavan Nanda Kumar left in an Emirates flight to return to Delhi via Dubai, sources said.
Five other officials Rajesh Kumar Agnihotri, Amerdeep Singh Bhatti, Dharmendra Sodhi, Balbir Singh and Jayabalan Senthil would leave for India via road through the Wagah border, they said.
The security of eight officials was compromised by Pakistan, said an official source, explaining the reasons for New Delhis decision to recall the staff.
Read | India condemns Paks action against official without justification
Briefing the press, a Pakistan foreign office spokesperson had last week named the eight officials, accusing them of working for Indian intelligence agencies and supporting terrorist activities in Balochistan and Sindh.
Islamabads move to release the name and photographs of the officials came within days of India ordering out a Delhi-based Pakistani diplomat for running a suspected spy ring.
The expulsion triggered a series of similar actions by both the countries.
India has refuted charges made against its officials. It is especially regrettable that Pakistani authorities have chosen to level these allegations after deciding to recall on their own six officials of the Pakistan high commission some of whom may have been named to Indian authorities by Mehmood Akhtar - Pakistan high commission official caught red handed, ministry of external affairs spokesman Vikas Swarup had said.
Read | Expelled diplomat Akhtar tried to exploit people with kin in Pakistan
The allegations against officials were an after-thought and a crude attempt to target them.
The government strongly protests the manner in which names and photos of the eight Indian officials - four of them holders of diplomatic passport - have been published. This is against basic norms of diplomatic practice and courtesy, he said.
It was not the first time that Islamabad went public with the details of diplomatic staff posted in Pakistan. Between 2010 and 2014, Pakistan outed three station chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency, forcing the US to call them back.
Read | Chauffeur to charge daffaires: List of India, Pak staffers expelled in the past
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Pakistani troops targeted Indian posts along the Line of Control in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district on Tuesday by opening fire and lobbing mortar shells.
Indian troops guarding the borderline retaliated, resulting in exchanges.
There has been firing by Pakistani troops along the LoC in Nowshera sector since 8:45am, a senior army officer said.
There has been no casualty or injury to any one in the firing by Pakistan, he said.
Pakistani troops had violated the ceasefire and targeted Mankote and Balakote areas of Mendhar sector in Poonch district on Monday.
On November 6, two army jawans were killed and five others were injured as Pakistani army opened fire in an attempt to facilitate two infiltration bids along the LoC in Krishna Ghati and Poonch sectors of Poonch district.
There have been over 100 ceasefire along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir after the surgical strike.
The worst-ever Pakistani shelling targeting civil population took place on November 1 when eight people, including two children and four women, were killed and 22 others injured along the IB and the LoC in five sectors of Jammu and Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the service chiefs on Tuesday afternoon and carried out a security review, even as border violations by Pakistan continue to fuel tensions along the Line of Control, the de-facto border with the neighbour country.
He was briefed about border situation and the preparedness of Indias armed forces, reports said after the meeting that came ahead of the PMs upcoming Japan visit.
Situation along the LoC and the International Border has remained volatile since September 29 when Indias special forces carried out surgical strikes against militant shelters in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The targeted operations were Indias first direct military response to the Uri terror strike in September that left 19 soldiers dead.
Government sources said Indian forces were at their highest alert level as the Pakistani army could try to up the ante ahead of General Raheel Sharifs retirement on November 29.
Modi is meeting the service chiefs at a time when cease-fire violations by the Pakistani army have increased in both numbers and intensity, forcing Indian forces to hit back hard.
Last month, India used artillery guns to destroy several Pakistani positions after an Indian soldier was beheaded in the Keran sector.
For thousands of people living in areas between Mau and Tarighat in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to bring what none of his predecessors, including Jawaharlal Nehru, could a railway bridge over the Ganga.
Talk about the politics of symbolism: Modi will lay the foundation stone of the bridge in Ghazipur on November 14 Nehrus birth anniversary.
People have been demanding this bridge for over half a century. Vishwanath Singh Gahmari, a member of the third Lok Sabha, first raised in 1962 the issue of backwardness of poorvanchal region, prompting then Nehru government to set up a fact-finding panel.
Among other things, the commission recommended this bridge to boost economic activities and regional connectivity. The cabinet committee on economic affairs, headed by Modi, cleared the project in June and tenders have been invited.
Development is our plank. This lone issue reflects out seriousness and commitment, a BJP leader said.
Aiming to win next years assembly poll in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is taking out parivartan yatras from the four corners of the state that will culminate in Lucknow on December 24. Poorna bahumat, sampoorna vikas; Bhajpa par hai vishwas (Clear majority, comprehensive development; we have faith on BJP) is the slogan for these yatras.
BJP chief Amit Shah flagged off one such yatra from Saharanpur on November 5, taking a dig at the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party for under development of the state. During the 50-day yatra, PM Modi will address rallies in Ghazipur, Kushinagar, Agra, Muradabad, Bareilly, Kanpur and Lucknow. Home minister Rajnath Singh, BJPs last chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, and BJP chief Amit Shah, too, will address public meetings during this period.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked a Bihar RJD legislator accused of raping a schoolgirl to surrender for two weeks to enable the rape victim to record her statement before a trial court.
Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA from Nawada, Raj Ballabh Yadav, was accused of raping the minor girl in February this year.
A bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice N.V. Ramana asked Yadav to surrender after senior counsel Dushyant Dave offered the bench that his client would go back to jail for two weeks to enable the alleged rape victim to record her statement.
The bench said that the accused should not make any effort to influence the minor victim or other prosecution witnesses.
The Court fixed November 23 as the next date of hearing.
The Bihar government had moved the apex court challenging the grant of bail to Raj Ballabh Yadav by the Patna High Court in September.
The apex court had on October 18 put on hold the deposition of the girl till October 24 as Yadav had sought more time to file his reply to the plea for cancellation of his bail.
Yadav was accused of raping the girl at his residence in Bihar Sharif. He was suspended from the party after the incident surfaced.
However, he continues to be an RJD lawmaker in the state assembly. Yadav, who was denied anticipatory bail by a local court in Bihar Sharif in February, was absconding but later surrendered in court in March.
He was granted bail by the High Court on September 30. Yadav was named one of the five accused in the chargesheet filed in April. Besides Yadav, the others named were Sulekha Devi and others who were accused of supplying girls to the RJD lawmaker.
The governments surprise move to scrap the countrys two high-value banknotes may cause a little inconvenience to the people, but could rewrite political fortunes.
Abolition of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, has given the BJP a talking point in next years assembly elections in five states. Also, the decision has the potential to blunt the oppositions barbs against Modi on black money.
The Congress and other opposition parties have been taking jibes at Modi, reminding him of his 2014 pre-poll promise to bring back black money stashed abroad and deposit Rs 15 lakh in every citizens bank account if he came to power.
The BJP leaders sought to defend Modi, saying it was just a political jumla (idiomatic expression) during the poll campaign. But opposition leaders pounced on it to snipe at Modi and his government.
The opposition also questioned the NDA governments commitment to eradicate corruption and black money, alleging that it was yet to show results.
Modis announcement on Tuesday might not silence the snipers. But it has given the BJP enough ammunition to counter them in the immediate future, at least. Delhi unit BJP chief Satish Upadhyay fired one already when he said the step may pose a little inconvenience, but if major steps are to be taken people will have to face some inconveniences.
The move, termed by BJP president Amit Shah as a surgical strike on corruption and black money, is expected to bolster the partys prospects in the assembly elections. The poll-bound states are registering a heated discourse on corruption already.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav recently sought to use the corruption issue by dropping some tainted ministers from his cabinet to endear himself to the people and outwit his family elders with whom he has been engaged in a turf war.
Allegations of corruption have been dogging the ruling dispensations in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur, and Goa where polls are due next year. Of these states, the BJP rules only Goa.
The governments latest move is expected to give a head start to the BJP, which already showcases the absence of scams or corruption scandals under Modis rule.
Shahs surgical strike metaphor has an underlying sub-text. Tuesdays decision coupled with the armys September 29 surgical strikes on militant launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir could be a potent electoral package for the BJP in the assembly polls.
The timing couldnt have been more appropriate for the BJP, which is facing a barrage of charges from Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders over issues such as the Centres alleged attempt to muzzle freedom of expression and the fake encounter of SIMI undertrial prisoners in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.
The opposition is preparing to corner the government on these issues when Parliament sits for the winter session from November 16. After Modis address to the nation, the ruling party seems better-placed to neutralise the opposition offensive in Parliament.
Modis crackdown on hoarders of illicit funds could also have a positive impact on prevalent electoral malpractices, which have continued despite the vigilance mechanism put in place by the Election Commission. The 2017 elections will demonstrate whether a curb on black money could check the practice of buying votes in an otherwise vibrant democracy.
Read more | Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes scrapped: All you need to know and do in next few days
Seat distribution has always been a herculean task for political parties, with thousands of applicants vying for each of them. The task only gets tougher when different parties form an alliance.
Now, all eyes are on Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is expected to sew together a deal with three other players the Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Lok Dal and the Congress to produce a winning alliance in the UP polls.
Everybody from chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to the SPs prospective partners expects Mulayam to work out a political miracle. While the risk involved in such an arrangement pertains to the sharing of 100-odd seats, it would help consolidate the states confused minority votes.
Mulayams dream of going national makes winning the UP polls described as a prelude to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections an absolute necessity. Others in the potential alliance also see the need to emerge victorious. It will be difficult to check the Modi juggernaut if secular forces fail to defeat the BJP in UP, says JD(U) leader KC Tyagi.
Insiders say that while the prospective partners are demanding 125 seats, the SP wants to go by the winner-runner up formula. According to this, the SP can spare about 100 seats for its partners. It had won 224 seats in 2012 and emerged as the runner up in another 77. Later, the party won some seats in the by-polls, taking its total strength to 229.
On the other hand, the RLD and the Congress who contested the 2012 elections together won 37 seats in all. Congress contested 355 seats, out of which it won 28. RLD tried its luck in 46 seats, winning barely nine. The Congress was the runner up in 31 seats and the RLD on nine.
Last year, Mulayam had walked out of the Bihar alliance because he was angry over a paltry five seats being offered to him. Now, the onus is on him to stitch together a united front, failing which the BJP is sure to emerge victorious.
Delhis headline-making smog has everyone worried, including West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. What is the solution to the problem of the Delhi pollution? We need to find one. We are all very concerned, she tweeted on Monday.
But, it is not just the Delhi air that has the Trinamool Congress chief worried. In the last few months following her impressive showing in the state election, the Bengal chief minister is watching the Capitals political weather closely.
She is one of the pivotal forces for any possible non-BJP alliance. She is keen to leverage the position, a party MP said.
She sent her trusted lieutenant Derek OBrien to Bhiwani in Haryana before Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal arrived for the funeral of Ram Kishan Grewal. A retired soldier, Grewal committed suicide allegedly over discrepancies in a military pension plan.
The Modi government came under fire from the opposition for allegedly being insensitive to former soldiers and failing to implement the one rank one pension scheme.
Banerjee has raised several such issues to take on the Modi government. We do not agree with the so-called encounter theory. Many unanswered questions arise in the minds of the people, she tweeted after the government announced it carried out surgical strikes across the line of control.
Banerjee has built a rapport with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, whose erstwhile mentor and social activist Anna Hazare failed to turn up at her rally in the Capital in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
It was with Banerjee that Kejriwal came to Parliament for the first time during the budget session.
She also keeps in touch with Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik. She has sidelined the Left from any possible non-BJP front and she wants to consolidate her position in the non-BJP political camp, a Banerjee confidant said.
Banerjee will be at play again when Parliament opens for winter session from November 16.
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Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson GVL Narsimha Rao on Tuesday lashed out at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for shedding crocodile tears for Indias armed forces, and cautioned him that the whole country was aware that he cannot be trusted.
After having deprived soldiers of one rank, one pension (OROP) for over four decades, for 10 years the Congress party was in power between 2004 and 2014, it was Rahul Gandhi who remote-controlled the Manmohan Singh government, Rao said. They made an election promise in 2004 in their manifesto, but they did not spend one penny on implementing OROP when they were in office, and today, for the Congress party to shed crocodile tears for soldiers, this is not going to impress anyone.
Read | Govt seeks to silence those who disagree with it: Rahul at Congress meet
The entire country has contempt for the Congress party and the whole country realises that Rahul Gandhi is not a leader that can be trusted, he is not a leader who understands politics, who can comment maturely. Rahul Gandhis desperate attempt to be taken seriously is falling on deaf ears; with every statement, he is proving to be a completely unsuitable leader for the Congress party, he added.
Raos comments came a day after Rahul chaired a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CEC) in the absence of party president Sonia Gandhi, and chose the occasion to describe Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an individual who was power-obsessed. He also called on the gathering to expose the Centres failures during the winter session of parliament beginning next week.
Read | Rahul Gandhi likely to take over as Congress chief after party leaders appeal
Rahul asserted that democracy under the present dispensation was going through one of its darkest hours and accused the government of silencing those disagreeing with it.
Hiding behind the cloak of national security, civil society is being intimidated for asking questions. Television channels are being punished and being asked to shut down. The opposition is being arrested for holding the government to account. All attempts by this government to suppress our fundamental freedoms by abusing state power will only strengthen our resolve to defeat such dangerous designs, he said.
Listing out a range of failures of the NDA Government, he emphasised that the Centre was hiding behind numbers that have been widely doubted and questioned.
Selectively chosen corporates are favoured, not the aam aadmi (common man). Youth, even those who have a good education, face the spectre of unemployment. Famers suicides and agrarian unrest have increased to astonishing levels, he claimed.
Also Read | Dont blame farmers for Delhis pollution: Rahul to Kejriwal, Modi
He said the Centre has swung from one extreme to another in dealing with Islamabad and issues concerning Jammu and Kashmir.
Pointing out that Indian soldiers have suffered the highest causalities in decades under the NDA dispensation, the Congress vice president maintained that the nations armed forces are being cruelly rewarded by a callous government.
With state elections due in the coming months, we can safely expect the Modi government to launch a campaign of disinformation and polarization. They will exploit caste and religious fault lines. We must anticipate and neutralise such devious strategies, he added.
The comprehensive failure of the Modi government must be highlighted, he said.
Sukhwant Singh, a farmer in Haryanas Kurukshetra, had most of his 12 acres of agricultural land under paddy. After harvesting his crop, he set the paddy stubble on fire, burning it to the ground within a few hours.
Singh and most other paddy growers in Punjab and Haryana, who are facing financial constraints due to falling productivity and dwindling returns, do not care about the ban on stubble burning put in place by the state governments in 2003-04.
District authorities issue notices and impose financial penalties to those who overlook the ban. In the current season, Haryana has issued notices to 1,472 offenders for a total penalty of Rs 15 lakh till Monday. Punjab issued notices to 736 farmers till October 27 but stopped since then.
The ban, however, was never seriously implemented as farmers are a huge political constituency.
The result: the stubble burning has increased in recent years. Officials with regional pollution control board say stubble burning in neighbouring states of Haryana and Punjab is one of the major contributing factors to the severe smog in Delhi and the national capital region.
Delhi is witnessing worst smog in 17 years, which has pushed pollution, is making children wheeze, giving the otherwise healthy a chronic cough, and risking 17 million people to asthma, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.
The city of 20 million people, which ranks among the worlds top cities with foul air on a World Health Organization list, has been struggling to clean its air that contains a toxic cocktail of dust, smoke and gases from vehicle, factory exhausts and coal-fired power stations.
Besides the cost factor, growing mechanisation of paddy harvest, non-availability of stubble management equipment and an increase in area under paddy cultivation have contributed to stubble burning. Between 2006 and 2016, paddy area in Punjab has increased by 20%, going up from 25 lakh hectares to 30 lakh hectares.
Due to mechanisation of paddy harvest, the crop residue that remains in the field is of larger quantity and when burnt causes larger smoke quantity, a Punjab State Farmers Commission consultant said.
As per the commission, the cost of removing stubble comes to roughly Rs 1,000 per acre.
Haryana Kisan Ayog secretary RS Dalal said the burning of crop residue is the least expensive option available to farmers.
The straw management equipment is costly and the process time consuming. Also, the cost of stubble management is not taken into account while determining the minimum support price (MSP). We want the farmers to spend money so that we get a clean environment, Dalal told Hindustan Times.
He said the stubble problem was not as severe when paddy was harvested manually because the farmers use to cut it as close to the ground as possible.
Another agriculture expert said that farmers burn their paddy stubble because they do have much time available between two crops.
Wheat sowing has to be completed by November-end. Delay in sowing means a decline in yield. This leaves them with very little time to clear the farm for sowing. Crop residue burning affects soil health, but they do ignore it, he said.
Last week, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) pulled up the states of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for not stopping the large-scale burning of crop stubble that has sent air pollution Delhi-NCR to a critical level.
The NGT directed the three states to comply with its earlier order of taking coercive and punitive action against those who burn agricultural waste and directed them to file affidavits detailing steps taken for the implementation of its order.
A day after the I-B ministry decided to put on hold the one-day ban on Hindi news channel NDTV India, the Supreme Court on Tuesday deferred a hearing on the case to December 5.
Challenging the gag order, the media group had moved the Supreme Court on Monday. But after it eked out the concession from the government, the apex court on Tuesday said there was no urgency for the hearing.
NDTV India was asked to go off the air on November 9 after the government said the channel revealed sensitive details during its coverage of a militant attack on the Pathankot airbase in January.
This crucial information could have been readily picked up by the militants handlers and jeopardised national security, the information and broadcasting ministry said.
This was the first time a channel was asked to stop broadcasting over concerns about national security.
Top media bodies on Monday expressed solidarity with NDTV and condemned the Centres move, saying it sends a dangerous signal to the entire press, the freedom of which is already under increasing threat in the country.
But the government has defended the action, saying many other channels were banned in the past and that free speech couldnt be absolute or override national security.
Concerned over the declining sex ratio in the country, the Supreme Court on Tuesday passed a raft of measures including fast-tracking legal proceedings for effective implementation of the law that bans pre-natal diagnostics.
The directions came on a public interest petition complaining that the sex ratio continued to fall despite the 22-year-old law enforced to prevent female foeticide.
It needs no special emphasis that a female child is entitled to enjoy equal right that a male child is allowed to have. The constitutional identity of a female child cannot be mortgaged to any kind of social or other concept that has developed or is thought of, the court said.
As per the verdict, all states and union territories shall maintain a centralised database of all registration units. The information shall be made available on the website. The data must contain birth information for each district, municipality and corporation or gram panchayat.
The authorities shall take steps for constitution of statutory bodies as the law mandates.
Courts, the top court said, should strictly adhere to the Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act that prescribes punishment up to three years of jail.
Direction has been issued to the state high courts to ensure that complaints against pre-natal diagnostics are fast-tracked.
Judicial officers, hearing such matters, shall be periodically imparted training and submit a quarterly report to the high courts on the status of the cases handled.
Chief justices of the HCs will constitute a committee of three judges to oversee the progress of PNDT cases.
When a female foetus is destroyed through artificial means, which is legally impermissible, the dignity of life of a woman to be born is extinguished. It corrodes the human values, the bench said.
The legislature has brought a complete code and it subserves the constitutional purpose, it said, noticing that the law had failed to achieve its objective.
The court also asked the government to undertake campaigns on radio and television.
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Two months after chief minister J Jayalalithaa announced enhancing maternity leave period for women government employees from six to nine months, the state government issued an order on Monday to implement it.
A Government Order (GO) of the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department recalled that Jayalalithaa had made an announcement in the Tamil Nadu Assembly in September, promising to increase the leave period from the existing six months or 180 days to nine months, i.e 270 days.
The women government servants who proceeded on maternity leave, prior to the date of issue of this order and continue to be on this leave as of now, are also eligible for availing maternity leave upto nine months (270 days) in total, it said.
Necessary amendments to the Fundamental Rules will be issued seperately, it added.
Woman employees with less than two surviving children, were eligible for the 9-month maternity leave with full pay, it added.
The period may be spread over from the pre-confinement rest to post-confinement recuperation, at the option of the woman government servant, it said.
On September 1, Jayalalithaa had said that maternity leave for women government employees will be increased from six to nine months, fulfilling her partys electoral promise.
She had earlier enhanced it from three to six months after assuming office in 2011.
Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said the people of Uttar Pradesh were suffering because the feud raging within the Samajwadi Party has made governance take a backseat affecting the states law-and-order situation.
Addressing a rally here as part of the BJPs Parivartan Yatra, Singh asked the states first family to either stop fighting or call for fresh elections. He said that if the BJP were to get the peoples mandate, it would turn UP into Indias most developed state in 10 years.
Read | Shah targets Yadav family feud, Mayawati to kick off BSPs UP poll campaign
If you dont want feuds and corruption, vote for a BJP government in UP. Has the ruling Samajwadi Party fulfilled its promises even partially? he asked the crowd.
Singh said people of the state had been deprived of the good life due to 14 years of misrule by SP and the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party. He also declared the BJP would end the practice of conducting interviews for recruiting police constables if it came to power. Such a step will check corruption in recruitment, Singh said, adding that no charges of graft had been levelled against the Modi government since it came to power at the Centre.
Singh claimed that the BJP nipped corruption in the bud every time it came to power.
Read | Akhilesh, Shivpal cross swords again at SP event, Lalu tries to play peacemaker
Projecting the central government as farmer-friendly, he said that it had increased the production of fertilisers while slashing its price. He also promised payment of dues to sugarcane farmers within six months of the BJP taking the reins of the state government. The economy of western UPs rich agricultural belt is mainly based on sugarcane, a major cash crop.
When a group of youngsters present at the rally held up banners alleging corruption in the Staff Selection Commission examination, Singh promised to look into the matter. The protesters were demanding an investigation into the issue.
Singh also observed that unemployment was a major issue in the state. We need to provide the youth with jobs if they are to have a better future, he said.
For the complete coverage of the ongoing Yadav family feud, click here.
As he touched down in Riyadh on May 15 this year in the hope of landing a job with an automobile service centre, little did Jayanta Biswas know what was coming.
His dreams soon lay shattered as the 23-year-old Naihati resident was sold as a slave to a Saudi national.
Conned by his agents with the promise of a lucrative job, the 23-year-old automobile engineer was a broken man with no help in sight.
Read: Underpaid, kept like slaves: Indian workers in Iraq share their plight
After learning of his plight, his distressed family members dialed External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and urged help for his return. However, several days have passed since and they are yet to get any word on when he could be back home.
Consigned to slaving for his Saudi master, or Kafeel, he was made to cut grass and feed his ostriches. He didnt get a penny for his trouble and was only given a measly meal in the evening.
If you thought he couldnt have had it worse, think again. His master, Naief Bookme, unleashed sexual abuse on him and even tried to lure him into a sexual intercourse.
Jayantas sister Ria told HT that her brother was promised a work visa after staying there for three months and then he could find a job at an automobile service centre. (HT Photo)
Abused, helpless and humiliated, he was left with no recourse but to flee his masters house. On the night of July 16, he made an escape bid, but it came to nought. He woke up next morning to find his master trying to push a needle through his veins. Sensing he was being drugged, he tried to resist but was beaten bloody. He had injuries all over his body.
With all avenues of escape seemingly closed, he arrived at the Indian embassy one morning and narrated his ordeal to Hifizul Rahman, second secretary (political information and culture) at the mission.
After recording his statement, the Indian Embassy opened a file (#2710) in his name and sent him to an NGO in the Saudi capital city.
Even as Jayanta set sights on a homecoming at a time all hopes seemed lost, his master lodged a complaint with the police claiming he stole 10,000 Riyals. He was promptly put behind bars on August 9. However, the youth did manage to get in touch with his kin in Naihati and briefed them on his plight.
His family members, in turn, rang up his agents in Delhi and Mumbai. My brother had approached Muneer Ahmed of Al-Hamd manpower Consultant Services in Delhi. He took Rs1 lakh from my brother and introduced him to H M Sadique, owner of Mumbai based Hafiz Manpower Consultants. He then sent him to Tabrez Alam of Alvi Manpower Services at Nagpada Junction of Mumbai, Ria Biswas, Jayantas cousin, told HT.
Alam later got him on a plane to Riyadh with a tourist visa.
My brother was told he would get a work visa after staying there for three months and find a job at an automobile service centre, his cousin told HT.
She said they got to know of his plight after the prison authorities allowed him to talk to his kin over phone. We urged Alam to help. He demanded Rs 35,000 for my brothers release. We paid the amount and he was released from prison on October 27, Ria said.
Though out of jail, his family members are clueless on his return. His father, Rabindranath Biswas, even wrote to the MEA (ministry of external affairs) and its minister Sushma Swaraj, saying, The Indian Embassy is not co-operating with us. He (Jayanta) needs a temporary travel document to return to India. However, we are not getting desired co-operation from there and (hes) still stuck in Riyadh. We are even ready to pay all the expenses for his return to India.
His family didnt move the police against the agents for fear that they could use their contacts in Riyadh to delay his release indefinitely.
Biswas took training in automobile engineering from a private institute in north Bengal.
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The incident of sexual harassment of a 10-year-old child studying at a tribal boarding school in Buldhana district of Maharashtra is shocking. Parents of some other girls, too, suspect their daughters were being sexually exploited at the school run by a private trust with funding from the state government. The police have formed a special investigation team under a woman IPS officer to investigate the entire case. One hopes the monsters who committed this heinous crime get the harshest punishment.
As Hindustan Times reported on Monday, the state government had already been cautioned about the possibility of sexual exploitation of children in tribal boarding schools in the state. A panel appointed to recommend measures to prevent deaths of tribal students in such schools had pointed out the possibility of sexual harassment of girls in these schools. After receiving the report, Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao had twice in October told the state government to monitor the boarding schools by way of periodical visits of teams of officials as a preventive measure. Even before the government could act on Raos directives, the unfortunate incident at Buldhana came to light.
This is the second incident involving tribals in Maharashtra within a span of less than two months. In September, the state was shocked following the reports of deaths of children in Palghar district due to malnutrition.
Although there were strong reactions from all quarters in both the incidents, there are chances that most people will forget these incidents after some time till something happens again. Is it just because tribals are not a majority community and cant form a strong pressure group and take out rallies to grab attention to the injustice against them? Wont it be right to say that we are treating tribals as second class citizens? For them, nothing much has changed in decades. Illiteracy, unemployment and poverty are still serious problems for states 9% tribal population. Infant mortality is high and periodically there are reports of children dying due to malnutrition. They live in remote areas, making it a standard excuse for poor state of infrastructure there. They have reservation in education and government jobs, but many of them are not even in a position to benefit from it. Some percentage of the tribal population has made progress, but a large number of them are still in bad shape.
Read | Buldhana rape case: Ashramshala shut down, 4 more held
By law, the government has to make a provision for a sub-plan (a budget within its annual budget) for welfare of tribals. This percentage of budget has to be in ratio of tribal population in the state. In Maharashtra, roughly 9% of the states budget has to be earmarked for tribal population. Activists like former legislator Vivek Pandit who work in tribal areas point out the entire amount of budget provided for welfare of tribals is never utilized. It is often around 6%.
On paper, successive governments have worked out several schemes for them -- supplying nutritious food for expectant mothers and children, subsidised food through public distribution system, school material and uniform for students, funds for building better houses and finance for starting self-employment among others. Year after year, hundreds of crores of taxpayers money is spent under these heads, but the outcome is there to see. There is no supervision or audit of the actual use of funds. Corridors of Mantralaya are full of tales of the contractor-administration-politician nexus that plays a role in this. There is rampant corruption. We often joke that the funds under tribal sub-plan are actually meant for the contractors, remarks Pandit.
If this is not enough, tribals living near major cities like Mumbai, Thane, Nashik and Pune have also lost their lands to the land sharks and greedy real estate developers. There have been many instances of land mafia and developers taking away their lands by fraudulent ways.
It doesnt matter which party is ruling in the state, the situation of tribal population doesnt change. For decades, the system has been treating tribals like second-class citizens and we dont know when will it change.
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The Shiv Sena on Tuesday slammed the opposition for criticising the Union governments proposed one-day ban on news channel NDTV, saying that some decisions are taken concerning national security and should not be politicised.
In an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana, the party said that this is not the first time that such a ban is being put in place. Between 2005 and 2014, the Congress regime had ordered bans on different news channels in 21 cases. There was even a 30-day ban on a news channel that had conducted a sting operation. Congress ministers should not talk about the newspapers or medias freedom, said the editorial.
The Congress should talk about the censorship imposed on the media under the guise of national emergency, when a number of editors were put behind bars and offices of media organisations were brought under lock and key, the Sena said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government decided to impose a one-day ban on NDTV on November 9 for allegedly revealing strategically sensitive information during a terror attack on an Indian Air Force base. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has currently put the ban on hold.
The Thane police found more details about the fake call centres after scrutinising the 27 emails of investor Jagdish Kanani, 33.
Kanani was arrested on October 16 by the Thane crime branch. He owned a call centre in Malad and in Borivli.
The police have seized the 5-GB data from Kananis phone and computers and have found names of vendors from whom they purchased the electronic materials.
A police source also told that, We have got vendors names and phone number from Mumbai, Thane and Gujarat. We will call them for questioning. We have got the 16-digit code of the account which was operated by the dealers.
The police have found that Kanani and the main accused Sagar Thakar alias Shaggy, 23, often chatted.
Kanani was in touch with Shaggy through phone and social networking sites, said a police officer from Thane crime branch.
Kanani was produced in Thane sessions court on Tuesday and he was given magistrate custody.
Assistant police inspector Mukund Hatote, who is investigating the case, told court: We have found 5GB data from the 27 emails of the account of Jagdish Kanani and that the data has vendors name and other crucial information. We have to verify them.
Another accused Akhilesh Singh, who is said to be a partner, was also produced in court has been remanded in police custody till November 10.
The team of Thane crime branch officers, who has gone to Gujarat more than five times, has found that Shaggy might have fled to places such as Bangkok, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.
A crime branch officer said, The absconding accused are in regular touch with others. We have questioned more than 40 to 50 people from Gujarat who know the accused.
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Ive been marking essays for the past week (two big advantages of Australian academia: November is a spring month, and second semester ends before Halloween), and a lot of my students were writing about the right to health and what it would take to realize it in a meaningful sense. That, naturally, led me to thinking about cholera.
Few diseases can kill as rapidly as cholera. That alone should make it a key issue for global health. What makes cholera particularly important and interesting, though, is how much it says about our larger global health system and the interconnectedness between health and other issues.
Cholera kills by dehydration. Spread by contaminated water or food, the Vibrio cholerae bacteria causes an acute watery diahhrea in as few as two hours. Even more problematically, only about a quarter of those infected with cholera express symptomsbut the bacteria can remain in an infected persons feces for up to two weeks. As a result, when cholera gets into a communityespecially communities without proper sanitation and drinking water sourcesit can spread incredibly quickly. In 2015 alone, WHO recorded more than 172,000 cases of cholera and 1304 deaths. This is a significant drop from 2011, when there were nearly 600,000 cases.
Fortunately, cholera is easily treatable with oral rehydration salts that restore fluids and electrolytes. With treatment, choleras fatality rate is less than 1 percent. There is also an oral cholera vaccine with a 65 percent efficacy rate when the two doses are given a week apart.
Cholera is also renowned within epidemiological circles thanks to John Snow (no, not that one). Snow mapped an outbreak of cholera in Londons Soho section in 1854 and showed a connection between those who got sick from the disease and those who used the Broad Street water pump. You can still see the pump today (even if that means dragging your friends through the streets of London on a nerdy pilgrimageor so Ive been told). Snows worked helped to disprove the miasma theory of disease and showed that cholera was spread by contaminated water.
If we know how cholera is spread and we have fairly easy, low-tech treatments for it, why are we still talking about cholera today? In a word, Haiti. Over the past 6 years, since an earthquake hit the country and killed more than 200,000, Haiti has experienced the worst cholera outbreak in recent history. More than 770,000 cases and nearly 10,000 deaths have been reported (and these numbers may substantially underestimate the real toll). That big spike in cholera infections in 2011? A lot of that is from this outbreak in Haiti. More recently, the effects of Hurricane Matthew in October have further exacerbated the problem, with at least 200 new cases popping up.
If we want to understand the cholera outbreak in Haiti, we need to think about it on three different levelsall of which tie into larger lessons about global health politics and the difficulties in addressing global health issues.
One, theres the issue of infrastructure. Its not a surprise that two massive natural disasters in six years would wreak havoc on these systems, but its also important that we consider the role that they play in any society. More than being urban improvements, though, sanitation systems and clean drinking water are fundamentally health interventions. If people have access to clean water and reliable systems to remove waste and treat water, they are less likely to die of cholera and other waterborne diseases. The second-largest cause of death for children under 5 in the world? Diarrheal diseasesthe vast majority of which can be treated or prevented with proper water infrastructure.
On the one hand, this seems like a cause for optimismits an easy intervention! On the other hand, building or rebuilding these sorts of systems is not cheap. Addressing the cholera requires a long-term commitment to rebuilding Haitis infrastructure and to building up the countrys medical responses. If Paul Farmers take on the situation is any guide (and hes a pretty smart guy), the international communitys history on implementing effective programs in Haiti isnt cause for optimism.
Two, Haiti isnt some basket-case when it comes to cholera. The country had been cholera-free for about a century when the first cases appeared in 2010. Heres the thing, though: cholera didnt appear because of the hurricane itself. It emerged because of United Nations peacekeepers. The outbreak began near a base housing Nepali peacekeepers when waste from the base leaked into a nearby river that was used for drinking and washing. Scientific testing has proved that the cholera strain in Haiti is the same as one that had been circulating in Nepal. This has two implications. First, the spread of cholera is associated with the movement of people. Much like the outbreak in Peru in the early 1990s has been linked to the discharge of bilge water from a Chinese freighter, the Haitian outbreak is associated with population movement. This is a perfect illustration of how globalization challenges our global health response systems.
Second, and perhaps even more importantly, the outbreak came from the very people who were supposed to helpand the United Nations refused to acknowledge the connection between the peacekeepers and the outbreak for nearly six years. Instead, the UN spent years arguing that public international law immunized the organization from claims of accountability and responsibility. The UN is now working on a $400 million plan to compensate victims, but it has not yet raised the funds and still claims immunity from paying any claims. Such an attitude does little to reassure Haitians that the international community cares for them or is willing to take responsibility for the outbreaks that it has caused. David Nabarro, the coordinator of the UNs fight against cholera (and current WHO Director-General candidate), acknowledges that the UN needs to regain public trust with Haitians, but it doesnt look like any states have contributed yet.
During a sangat darshan of Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal here, some local Akali leaders and Congress MLA of Fatehgarh Sahib Kuljit Singh Nagra alleged discrimination by constituency in-charge and state government, respectively.
Akali leaders including Baljit Singh Bhutta, chairman of district council, Harbhajan Singh, chairman, Matket Committee of Chanarthal and another leader Kulwant Kharora complained to Badal, on Monday, that the constituency in-charge Didar Singh Bhatti preferred people of his own choice for blue cards, electricity connections, tirath darshan yatra and other grants.
Bhutta said after they complained to the chief minister they were not allowed to enter the sangat darshan venue at Chanarthal Kalan by police. However, Badal asked deputy commissioner to look into the matter and make blue cards of needy people.
Cong MLA Jumps In
During the sangat darshan programme in Jakhwali, Nagra intervened in the programme and asked that why no bus stand has been made in Fatehgarh Sahib constituency, despite promises made by CM in the assembly. He also raised issues of shagun scheme, blue cards, roads renovation and grants to panchayats. He demanded `30 lakh for small villages and `50 lakh for big villages as grant.
As soon as Nagra raised the issue of mother child hospital being given to a private hospital on lease Badal intervened and asked him to stop. He, however, handed over a letter of demands and left a venue.
SYL issue
Earlier, Badal said Punjab demanded no favour on river waters issue.
All we want is justice and there is well laid and widely applied yardstick for deciding such cases. This is known as riparian principle which dictates that the water of a river belongs only to the state and country or states and countries through which the river in question flows. We have been demanding that this yardstick which had been applied while deciding all other river disputes in the country and even internationally must not be violated merely to loot Punjab and deprive its people of what nature gave them, said CM.
Kejriwal should resign
Lashing out on Delhi Chief Minister and National Convener of AAP Arvind Kejriwal, Badal said that he should resign on moral ground as he failed to keep up in Delhi. Badal was speaking with media on sidelines of a sangat darshan program in Jakhwali village of Fatehgarh Sahib.
Badal alleged that schools were being shut in Delhi, people could not go out of their houses because of pollution and traffic has gone out of control.
He failed in Delhi and making false promises with Punjabis. Badal said.
He failed to discharge his duties and has no moral right to remain in office, he added.
The CM addressed people at five locations Mulepur, Jakhwali, Charanal Kalan, Sangatpura Sodhian and Sanipur villages and distributed cheques of grants.
He will hold sangat darshan in Hansali, Badali Ala Singh, Mahadian and Sirhind on Tuesday.
Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday dismissed deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badals claim of having resolved issues related to farmers loans under an agricultural bill, saying it is a mere eyewash by his government.
He dismissed the governments claim of having resolved issues related to farmers loans from arhtiyas (commission agents) under the Punjab Settlement of Agricultural Indebtedness Bill, 2016, saying it was a mere eyewash by the Badal government.
He also ridiculed AAPs impassive efforts to copy the Congress campaign to reach out to the farmers of Punjab.
The pathetic response to the AAP protests against tardy procurement in mandis reflects the partys gross failure in realising its ambitions to seize control of the state in the upcoming elections, he said.
AAP, led by Arvind Kejriwal, has absolutely no connect with the farmers, not is it cognizant of their woes, said Amarinder, adding that the people have already rejected the party, as evident from the poor response to its mandi programmes.
Both the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are resorting to all kinds of gimmicks and false claims in a desperate bid to woo the farmers ahead of the Assembly elections in the state, said Amarinder.
The Bill, passed earlier this year in the State Assembly, would not bring any relief to the debt-ridden farmers of the state, said Amarinder, terming Badals claim as misleading and aimed at once again befooling the people of Punjab, particular debt-ridden farmers.
Reacting strongly to Badals statement, terming the Bill as a big step forward in resolving the problems of the debt-burdened farmers, Amarinder said it was a deceptive remark aimed at hoodwinking the farmers of Punjab.
Far from providing a framework for assessment and settlement of non-institutional agricultural debt, as claimed by Sukhbir, the Bill was only targeted at resolving disputes between farmers and money lenders and not, in any way, designed to provide relief to the farmers reeling under debt burden, he said.
Amarinder came down heavily on the Badal government for the distressing situation in which the farmers were living for the past 10 years, with no sign of any relief measures in sight.
You cannot delude the people any longer into believing your brazen falsehoods. They have seen through your nefarious designs, having suffered due to your governments blatantly anti-people policies, said Amarinder, charging Sukhbir with living in a delusional world, far removed from reality.
Amarinder reiterated his partys commitment to alleviating the woes of the aggrieved farmers of Punjab, with farm debts contributing Rs 35,000 crore to the total rural indebtedness in the state.
He also said that all debts of the farmers will be immediately waived off once his party is in power.
Congress MLA from Amritsar-West and vice-chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes Dr Raj Kumar Verka on Monday slammed the state government for not doing much for the families of freedom fighters and turning a blind eye to their needs.
The Punjab government did not address the issues of families of freedom fighters during the inauguration of Jang-eAzadi memorial at Kartarpur. According to family members, the government had promised to address their concerns during the function, he said.
A delegation led by Punjab state freedom fighters successors organisation Gyan Singh Saggu met Verka on Monday. We have been raising our demands with chief minister Parkash Singh Badal for the past few months. He promised us that they will make an announcement during the function, but nothing was done, he said.
Dr Verka said if voted in power, the Congress will look into the concerns, while advising the CM to form a panel to look into the demands.
Local MP Kirron Kher on Monday said all clearances have been taken from the railway ministry and the UT administration for construction of an underpass at the Manimajra level crossing.
The Rs 4.25 crore project, once completed, will provide relief to nearly 2 lakh commuters who pass through the level crossing and have to face huge traffic snarls on everyday basis.
It was a long-pending demand of area residents. The foundation stone will be laid once the code of conduct for the civic body elections is over in the last week of December. The project will be completed by September 2017, the MP said.
Another advantage of constructing the underbridge is that the commuters between Chandigarh and Panchkula can opt for an alternative route, she said.
Presently, the Madhya Marg connecting Chandigarh with Panchkula bears a large share of traffic, causing congestion. People dont prefer the road from Manimajra due to the level crossing.
Takes a jibe at Bansal
The MP taking a dig at her predecessor Pawan Kumar Bansal said he could not get the approval despite the fact that he was railway minister.
It seems that there was less traffic on the stretch during his tenure. People have been facing traffic snarls for years. I do not know why he was not able to get it (approval), she said.
When contacted, Bansal said, She is into habit of claiming that she has done everything. It will not be strange that one fine day she will say she has designed Chandigarh. As far as the underpass is concerned, I got all the approvals. But since the MC told us that service lanes under the crossing had to be shifted, work had to be stopped.
The SAD-BJP government in the state has failed to keep up the promises made under the much-hyped Mai Bhago Vidya scheme as most girl students in the district are still waiting for their bicycles, even as the academic session is nearing its end.
As per the information obtained from the district education department, only 1,800 students against the total 2,251 students of Class 11 have received bicycles so far.
Shockingly, not even a single girl student of Class 12 has received a bicycle in the last two academic sessions.
Under this scheme, girl students from senior school, belonging to a BPL family is eligible for the benefit.
The state government had introduced the scheme with an aim to decrease the school dropout rate among girls. Later, the government had also announced to provide free bicycles to Class 9 and 10 students, to motivate them to continue their higher education even if secondary schools are at distance from their homes.
However, only Class 11 students are being covered in this session.
Hardev Ram, a village panchayat member of Khukhrain village in Sultanpur Lodhi, said that both his daughtersPriya Rattu, studying in Class 9 and Nandika Rattu, studying in Class 11 have not received their cycles. Even school authorities are clueless about when they will receive the bicycles from the government.
Sources said that none of the girl students at Government Senior Secondary School, Khukhrain, have received bicycle this year. In the last session, only 6 out of 21 students of the school had received their bicycles.
A teacher, on request of anonymity, said that most students at government schools come from below poverty line families but still they did not get their bicycles which forced them to come on private vehicles or on their feet.
When approached, the district education officer (secondary) Gurbhajan Singh said the department will be distributed the cycles in a few days to all students. I am not aware if any student had not received her cycle in last academic session, he added.
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Recent directions by the deputy state project director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to ensure clean and hygeinic toilets in schools have put the school heads in a fix. In most of the government primary, middle, high and senior secondary schools in the district, the posts of sweepers are lying vacant, and in many schools there is no post at all.
The SSA deputy state project director has directed all the government school heads to ensure that the toilets in their respective schools are kept clean and also to make arrangements for water in the toilets. These directions have come as a repercussion to the reports sent to the Central government on Swachh Vidyalaya Campaign, which underline that in several schools, toilets are either found locked or in dilapidated condition, there is absence of water disposable mechanism and due to all these shortcomings, students are forced to relieve themselves in the open.
A government school principal requesting anonymity said, We have strength of 900 students, 20 teachers and there is only one post of sweeper, which has also been lying vacant for the past several years.
He said, We have hired a person who cleans the classrooms and toilets and we are paying her salary from the payable-through account (PTA) funds. But she has been on leave for the past 15 days as she is suffering from dengue. Today only, we have hired another person.
There is an urgent need that the government fills the vacant posts, as every time they issue directions, the school heads are left in a quandary, as how to follow these.
Another headmistress of a government middle school situated in peripheral area said, We have two toilets for the strength of 150 students and there is no post for the sweeper. Ours being a middle school, we cant charge any school fee from the students. We get only `4500 as school maintenance fund annually. A sweeper charges `2000 to `3000 per month and our teachers are paying from their pocket.
HT Correspondent visited several government schools to check the condition of toilets and found that a few schools have only two toilets for a larger strength of students. There are no separate toilets for teachers and no post of sweeper in such schools. The government primary schools in Moti Nagar (122 students), in Chet Singh Nagar (264 students) and in Chhawani Mohalla (132 students) have two toilets.
A foul smell was emanating from the toilets at Government Senior Secondary School, Gobind Nagar.
When contacted, the district education officer (secondary), Paramjit Kaur Chahal said, I agree posts of sweepers are lying vacant but schools have hired sweepers and are paying them from amalgamated funds.
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Despite the Aam Admi Party (AAP) having already announced its manifesto for the farmers in Punjab, it received a lukewarm response from the farming community during its protest against tardy paddy procurement in the region on Monday.
In Mansa, party volunteers led by MLA candidate Nazar Singh Manshahiya visited the grain market and held a protest against the state government for providing poor facilities to the farmers.
While the AAP leader roamed around the grain market, most farmers didnt join him. I am here for the last nine days and nobody from the market committee has contacted me, said Pragat Singh of Moosa village.
AAP volunteers said details of debt-ridden farmers are still being collected and a special counter has been set up in the mandis for the same.
In Bathinda, AAP volunteers failed to gather a crowd at the main grain market. The partys Bathinda parliamentary zone coordinator KC Bagga, along with a handful of volunteers, spoke with farmers and enquired about payments.
In Muktsar district, AAPs Malout candidate Baldev Sing Azad could manage to gather only a handful of volunteers at the grain market.
No protest was witnessed at the Faridkot mandi. In Moga, AAP workers outnumbered the farmers. They raised anti-government slogans in front of the Moga deputy commissioners office. However, no official from the deputy commissioners office entertained them to receive their memorandum. They finally handed it over to the district food and supplies controller.
LACKLUSTRE AFFAIR IN JALANDHAR
JALANDHAR: Only six prominent AAP leaders and 10 others turned up for the dharna organised by the party in the grain market to protest against Punjab governments alleged apathy towards farmers.
The gathering was addressed by party candidates, Gulshan Sharma from Jalandhar North, Darshan Bhagat from Jalandhar West. Party joint secretary Major Singh and partys observer for Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat Rajiv Chaudhary were also present.
WORKERS LAY SIEGE TO MANDIS IN AMRITSAR
AMRITSAR: Accusing the state government of looting and harassing farmers, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday staged protests at grain markets in Amritsar district. During the protests, AAP candidates and volunteers raised slogans against the Punjab government. They flayed the government for meagre and untimely payments to farmers during the procurement season.
As the farmers are not being paid their rightful dues for paddy procurement in mandis of Punjab, the AAP has staged these protests, said AAP Amritsar labour and kisan wing in-charge Jagjot Singh, who led the protest at Rajasansi grain market and Majitha.
Punjab is scaling up security after an Intelligence Bureau alert about Pakistani spy agency ISI activating terror sleeper cells in the state to launch attacks in retaliation against the governments crackdown on Sikh radicals ahead of a Sarbat Khalsa in Bhatinda district on November 10.
According to an input received from reliable channels, Pak ISI has directed Pak-based Sikh terrorists to activate their associates in India to carry out terrorist strikes in Punjab to take advantage of prevailing resentment over detention/arrest of radical entities involved in organising Sarbat Khalsa, says the IB alert dated November 7 of which Hindustan Times has a copy.
The IB has asked the state agencies to take appropriate preventive and precautionary measures.
We have fully mobilised and deployed the police force wherever required keeping in view the Sarbat Khalsa call and other inputs, HS Dhillon, director general of police (law and order) told Hindustan Times.
Meanwhile, Punjab has asked Centre to deploy 10 companies of paramilitary in the state to tackle the law and order situation in the poll-bound state.
The government has also pulled out all policemen under training and deployed them for law and order duty.
Another top cop said that gunmen on duty with private citizens as personal security officers have also been withdrawn.
Maximum mobilisation of the police force is underway, a top police officer said.
Apprehensive about pro-Khalistan forces attempting to take advantage of the Sarbat Khalsa, the ruling Akali Dal had refused permission for this gathering of Sikhs at Talwandi Sabo being spearheaded by radical leaders.
The Parkash Singh Badal government had ordered the crackdown to prevent radical elements from creating law and order problem and the anti-Akali forces becoming active again in the state.
About 2,000 Sikh hardliners, who were expected to attend the Sarbat Khalsa have been arrested across the state in the past three days. There is simmering anger against the government crackdown which the ISI is trying to capitalise on.
While a key radical leader Dhyan Singh Mand is under arrest, others such as Baljit Singh Daduwal and Amrik Singh Ajnala have gone into hiding. All three were appointed as head priests of three Sikh shrines in the last years Sarbat Khalsa.
Another hardliner, Mokham Singh, head of the United Akali Dal is also in hiding.
Last year, after two months of unrest in Punjab due to protests led mainly by Sikh radical organisations against incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib, hardliners had held Sarbat Khalsa on November 10 in Amritsar.
The overwhelming response of the crowd had rattled the ruling Akali Dal.
The Punjab government had then claimed that it had evidence about foreign agencies funding and sponsoring Sarbat Khalsa in Amritsar.
More than 2,000 persons, who were expected to take part in the Sarbat Khalsa (Sikh congregation) in Talwandi Sabo on November 10, were taken into preventive detention by police across the state in the past few days.
It was subsequent to the decision by the state government to ban the congregation.
Also, the radicals who were to lead the congregation, including Dhian Singh Mand, Baljit Singh Daduwal and Mohkam Singh, who were announced head priests in the last years Sarbat Khalsa and Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann have gone into hiding to avoid arrest.
Panj Pyaras and leaders of the Dal Khalsa, who decided to support the congregation till last month, have also left their homes to undisclosed places to avoid arrests.
I dont know where Mann Saab is? He is changing locations to avoid arrest, said Manns close aide. He said police was acting on behalf of the state government, which dont want us to raise our voice. He added that the Sarbat Khalsa was to discuss important issues concerning the Sikhs panth such as appointment of jathedars of Takhts and functioning of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). Whys government wary of us? he asked.
Daduwals aide apprehended that police might have arrested him, because his whereabouts were not known. Dal Khalsas Harpal Singh Cheema questioning the ban and said attempts were made by the government to create bogey of unrest to reap political dividends.
BADUNGAR PLAYS PACIFIER
Trying to pacify the hardliners, newly appointed president of the SGPC Kirpal Singh Badungar told HT that his motive was to bring uniformity in practices and principles of the Sikh panth.
HARDLINERS PLAN
O Stir the Akali set-up in the run-up to assembly polls
O Bring functioning of Akali Dal-controlled SGPC and its appointed jathedars in poor light
O Reach out to dormant radical elements in Punjab and abroad
GOVT STAND
O Fear that law and order situation may go out of hand
O Dont want to allow radical elements to expand wings as it may disturb panthic base of the Akalis
O Akalis apprehend any decision or announcement at the congregation could bring bad name to them
Though the organisers of Sarbat Khalsa are yet to get permission for holding the November 10 event in Talwandi Sabo, the government has deployed Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in the town as a precautionary measure.
Five companies of the CRPF have been deployed in the town. One company has already reached Talwandi Sabo while others will be arriving in the night, said superintendent of police (operations), Gurmeet Singh. One company consists of around 80 personnel. The administration has already turned the town into a fortress by deploying police force ahead of the congregation.
Bathinda district magistratecum-deputy commissioner Basant Garg has declined the organisers a permission to hold the congregation. He has said that in order to maintain law and order, permission sought by the organisers had been denied.
He said that as per the report submitted by Bathinda SSP Swapan Sharma, the permission was denied apprehending of breach of peace and to maintain law and order. Preventive arrests of trouble makers have been made today in order to subvert any plans to disturb peace and communal harmony.
Thousands of containers stranded in Vietnam after S.Korean shipping giant goes bust
About 4,000 containers have been left floating in Ho Chi Minh City's harbors.
South Korean shipping company Hanjin filed for bankruptcy in early September, leaving 4,122 containers anchored in Ho Chi Minh City's harbors, the Vietnam Maritime Administration said.
Of the figure, 4,072 are empty, but the remaining 50 still contain shipments.
South Koreas largest shipping line also owes Vietnamese enterprises $118,000 in pilotage charges.
Hanjin is the worlds seventh largest container carrier, operating approximately 60 regular lines worldwide.
The company used to be responsible for delivering about 5 percent of commodities to and from Vietnam. Each month, 11 container Hanjin vessels would dock in Ho Chi Minhs City harbors.
On September 2, Hanjin filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. to protect its vessels from being seized by creditors.
The bankruptcy has affected Vietnamese import-export companies, especially those working in the areas of footwear, seafood, wooden products and logistics.
Since the bankruptcy, the Vietnam Maritime Administration has been working with other authorities to instruct local companies to unload the goods or look for other shipping partners.
Saigon New Port Cooperation, one of Hanjins creditors, has allowed container carriers to dock without demanding payments for outstanding debts.
Related news:
> Ripple effects of Hanjin collapse hit Vietnamese exporters
> Vietnamese port offers amnesty to bankrupt S.Korean shipping giant
Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann on Tuesday withdrew the petition on issuing direction to Punjab government to allow Sarbat Khalsa (congregation of the Sikhs) from the Punjab and Haryana high court.
Not convinced with the contentions raised by Mann, the high court had deferred the hearing by a day on Monday.
The high court bench of justice RK Jain on Monday questioned Manns lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal whether directions to hold such an event were required when the petitioner was arguing that it was a fundamental right of a Sikh to hold such an event. The congregation was slated to be held by Mann and his supporters at Talwandi Sabo on November 10 to discuss issues concerning Sikhism. The high court bench also observed that petition was not clear and deferred the matter for Tuesday, asking Lakhanpal to get hold of material which could help in adjudication of the matter.
Radical Sikh leaders on Tuesday cancelled Sarbat Khalsa (congregation of the Sikhs) that was to be held in Talwandi Sabo on November 10.
The move came following the Punjab governments refusal to grant permission for holding the event and preventive detention of around 2,000 people across the state.
Baljit Singh Daduwal, who was appointed the parallel jathedar of Takht Sri Damdama Sahib duing the last years Sarbat Khalsa, made the announcement in the evening. He said the organisers will discuss their future course of action at Gurdwara Budha Johar Sahib in Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan, on November 10. He appealed to representatives of various Sikh organisations to reach the venue.
Daduwal said the decision to cancel the event was taken after discussions with Jagtar Singh Hawara and Dhian Singh Mand. While Hawara, a convict in former chief minister Beant Singhs assassination case, was appointed the parallel jathedar of the Akal Takht last year, Mand was appointed the acting jathedar.
Accusing the Akali government of committing a sin, Daduwal said it had banned Sarbat Khalsa to appease anti-Sikh forces. He said the congregation was being organised to discuss Sikh issues, including desecration incidents and police firing on protesters in Faridkot last year.
Bathinda deputy commissioner Basant Garg had on November 5 denied permission for holding the congregation in apprehension of breach of peace. The Punjab Police also took around 2,000 people in preventive custody ahead of the event, while many other organising leaders went underground.
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Punjabs deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Tuesday inaugurated the states largest solar power plant of 100 MW set up at Chugge Kalan village near Bathinda by Adani Group subsidiary Adani Green Energy Ltd at an investment of around Rs 640 crore.
Badal said the plant would prove to be a game changer not only for 232 farmers who have given their land on lease for the project but would also act as a catalyst for others to follow.
He said this is the countrys biggest horizontal single axis tracker plant at a single location and would be instrumental in changing the face of the state.
The deputy chief minister said the state is contemplating bringing approximately 25,000 acres under the solar power.
From left: Pranav Adani, chairman and managing director of Adani Wilmar, Punjab deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal, and the states renewable energy minister Bikram Singh Majithia on stage at the solar power plant inauguration near Chugge Kalan village, Bathinda, on Tuesday. (Sanjeev Kumar/HT Photo)
He said the state government has accomplished what it promised, as is clear from the allround progress the state has made.
Badal said in the next five years all 12,000 villages of the state will be provided with sewerage facilities, solar lights and concretised streets at a cost of Rs 35,000 crore.
He said the airport at Bathinda will be operationalised soon, providing a major relief to the people of the region.
Criticising the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress for being out of tune with the needs and aspirations of Punjab, he said no effort would be spared to ensure further progress of the state on all developmental parameters.
Statea new and renewable energy minister Bikram Singh Majithia said the times are changing fast and the solar power is fast emerging as the core sector with ample scope for the future.
He said the farmers who have given their lands for the plant will get Rs 55,000 per acre per year which will increase by five percent every year.
A view of 100 MW solar power plant near Chugge Kalan village at Bathinda on Tuesday. (Sanjeev Kumar/HT Photo)
The solar power sector has attracted most investment in Punjab and it is evident from the fact that in 2012 the investment was Rs 82 crore which has today risen to Rs 10,000 crore, Majithia said.
The minister said Mansa, Bathinda and Muktsar are emerging as a hub of solar power.
The Adani Group said the 100 MW solar plant project at Sardargarh and Chughe Kalan villages has been commissioned almost six months ahead of schedule.
We are moving closer to our aim of revolutionising the renewable energy sector in India, an official statement quoting Jayant Parimal, chief executive officer of Renewable Energy Business of the Adani Group, said.
Apart from the 100 MW Solar Power Plant in Bhatinda, the company also has a 40 MW solar plant at Bitta in Gujarat and has recently unveiled a 648 MW solar power project at Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu. It is the worlds largest solar power plant at a single location.
The company has also signed a JV with the Rajasthan government to develop the countrys largest solar park in the state with 10,000 MW capacity.
Member of parliament (MP) Kirron Kher has asked deputy commissioner (DC) Ajit Balaji Joshi to look into the growing problem of child begging in the city and send these children to school.
She said she was alarmed at the situation and it needed to be be dealt with on priority. Lots of suggestions were made, and it is also to look into if any of these children are among the many missing kids in India, she told HT adding that she had asked the DC to even get the DNA test done of these children and ensure they are sent to schools.
She touched upon the issue at the second District-Level Monitoring Committee meeting held on Monday morning.
Menace should have vanished last year
The administration had pledged to make Chandigarh free of child beggars by October 2, 2015, and even punish parents whose kids were found begging. However, child begging continues unabated.
DC Ajit Balaji Joshi said, We started work on making the city free of the menace four months ago. The administrator launched certain Standard Operating Procedures in this regard in May.
Kirron also reviewed the status of attendance of teachers and students, especially in periphery schools. She also said that the department must check the mushrooming of unrecognised institutes and transfer some students to government schools, if it was warranted. The issue of transfer of primary schools from the MC to the UT education department was taken up. Officers said there had been no proposal from the MC. Kher asked the DC to check with the MC.
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The last rites of sepoy Gursewak Singh, who died fighting intruders along the Line of Control (LOC), were performed with full state and military honours at his native village of Warana, 10 kms from here, on Monday.
In the ensuring gunfight, sepoy Gursewak Singh, 23, of the 22 Sikh Regiment suffered gunshot wounds and succumbed to his injuries on Saturday night in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir.
A pall of gloom descended on the entire village and neighbouring areas as Gursewaks body was brought there for the last rites on Monday morning.
As the soldier was given an emotional farewell, every person present there, including politicians and army officials, were seen in tears.
Deputy commissioner Balwinder Singh announced Rs 5 lakh and a residential plot worth `5 lakh to the martyrs family besides a government job to one of the kin. He said the administration will always stand by the bereaved family.
WAS TO GET MARRIED IN FEBRUARY
Gursewak, who is survived by his father Balwinder Singh, mother Baljit Kaur and elder brother Jasbir Singh, was to get married in February next year.
His fiancee Rajmit Kaur, who attended the funeral, said the news Gursewaks demise amid wedding preparations had left everyone in their families in shock.
I had never imagined he would leave me so soon. But I am proud that Gursewak fought the enemy with so much courage, she said.
COUNTRY CAN NEVER REPAY DEBT: KAIRON
The country can never repay the debt it owes to Gursewak and his family. We will never forget that we are alive today only because of sacrifices such as that made by him, said cabinet minister Adesh Partap Singh Kairon, who attended the martyrs cremation.
Kairon said Gursewak proved what unflinching courage and commitment can achieve even at an age that most would consider tender. In the process, Gursewak emerged as a glowing symbol of what all the gurus taught us about patriotic courage, he said.
The toxic air that has enveloped the Capital and some parts of the National Capital Region for the past seven days is expected to impact the real estate sector with likely losses running into Rs 100 crore per day.
This includes losses due to stoppage of construction work, labour costs and non-usage of construction material such as steel and cement but excludes the interest amount charged by banks on construction loans, says DS Rawat, secretary general, Assocham.
As construction work has stopped builders will not be able to meet their completion deadlines and homebuyers too will not get their houses on time, he says. Quality of life in Delhi-NCR will also be hit.
While it may be difficult to put a number to the economic loss since the exact period of dangerous levels of pollutants would depend on the weather conditions along with administrative measures, there is no doubt that several billions of dollars of fresh investment and GDP loss would occur, besides causing loss of confidence among the citizens, says Rawat.
Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Meerut, Panipat, Bhiwadi and Rohtak are all likely to be impacted across sectors such as real estate, tourism, transport, automobile and real estate, the Assocham paper said.
If urgent steps are not taken, the economic impact arising out of the health issues could be catastrophic for the NCR, one of the important pillars of the national economy. Besides, this is also a wake up call for other regions around Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata, says Rawat.
The maximum impact would be felt by the Delhi economy which had the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of Rs 55,8745 crore in 2015-16 at current prices. The GSDP of Delhi has been among the fastest growing in the country, but such a growth cannot be taken for granted, the paper cautioned.
The chamber has suggested both short and long-term measures to tackle pollution in the NCR. It should not be taken as a Delhi problem or a Noida problem; it must be handled at the top level in all neighbouring states of Haryana, UP, Punjab and Rajasthan along with active intervention of the Centre.
The challenge lies in changing the adversity of pollution into an opportunity for good health by sustainable development model, it added.
Asserting that a Donald Trump regime could put everything at risk, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said the future of America is at stake as this election is being contested between a strong leadership and a loose cannon.
The choice in this election could not be clearer. This election is basically between division and unity in our country. Its between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk, Clinton said at an election rally at Grand Rapids in Michigan on Monday.
It is between an economy that works for everyone or one that is even more stacked for those at the top. I want each and every one of you to be thinking through about all the issues that you care about.
Because although my name and my opponents name will be on the ballot, those issues, and those values, are on the ballot as well, she said.
Describing this election as a consequential one, Clinton asserted that she will exercise the greatest care and responsibility in all of the powers invested in the office of the presidency.
I often didnt recognise the country that Donald Trump was describing. Because from my perspective, looking back at our history, we have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us. You can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America that will set the stage for an even better future, she said.
She said the core values are being tested in this election but her faith in the countrys future has never been stronger.
Clinton said if elected, her administration will make the biggest investment in good paying jobs since World War II.
Jobs in infrastructure. Our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our ports, our airports, our water systems. These are jobs we need doing in American and these are jobs that cannot be exported. Theyve got to be done right here in Michigan and across our country, she said.
We are going to invest in new jobs in advanced manufacturing. I am not one of these folks who think, we just cant make it in America anymore. And Ill tell you why, because if we have a plan and we actually commit to fulfilling that plan, we can lead the world in precision machining, in 3-D printing. Were not competing for low-wage jobs, were competing with Germany for high manufacturing, high- skilled jobs, she added.
She said that America will have clean, renewable energy jobs as a way to fight the climate change.
The United States will on Tuesday vote to elect the next president, 435 members of the House of Representatives and 34 of the Senate, 12 state governors and lieutenant governors, 1,212 state senators and 2,711 state house legislators. Some election, phew!
Here are three main storylines to watch out for: Will the United States make history by electing its first woman president, joining countries such as India which elected Indira Gandhi as its first woman prime minister in 1966, or go with a real estate billionaire who has both captivated and scared the world?
Will the tiny but prosperous Indian-American community make history by winning more than one seat in US congress? Will it pick up its first Senate seat? There have never been as many desis at this stage of the race -- past primaries -- as this time.
And, finally, can Democrats wrest control of the Senate from Republicans, as is widely expected? And will Republicans hang on to the House of Representatives, which they are expected to but with and what kind of a majority?
Read| US presidential election: Clinton, Trump in frenzied final push for votes
Dixville Notch, in New Hampshire state, will kick off polling just past midnight on November 8 in a decades-long tradition, with a handful of voters -- actually all of them together -- showing up to cast their votes around the same time.
Most other areas will start around 7am and finish around 8pm, in their respective time zones there are six of them. It will be late Tuesday night (early Wednesday India time) when a winner will be called, ending one of the most unpredictable presidential elections in recent memory.
The two leading nominees, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are locked in a race that has swung wildly in recent days, with the Democratic nominee ahead by three points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls on election eve, on Monday.
The other candidates in the race are Libertarian Partys Gary Johnson, a two-time governor; Green Partys Jill Stein, a physician; and Independent Evan McMullin, a former CIA operative fielded by NeverTrump Republicans.
The big battle is between Clinton and Trump, who can barely stand each other they refused to acknowledge each other in the last two presidential debates, and who have focussed all their energies on portraying each other unfit for office.
There are real policy differences between them too, such as their vision for US as a world power and Russia, trade, taxes, healthcare, rights to bear arms, supreme court appointments, but they have tended to focus on fitness.
Their fates may already have been decided, by voters who cast their vote early, an estimated 50% of the 218 million Americans eligible to vote. The number of Americans who registered to vote is smaller -- 146 million -- but voters can register any time.
According to Statistic Brain, an independent body of number-crunchers, 69% of Americans have said they will definitely vote in the 2016 presidential election. But 76% of Americans had said they would definitely vote in 2012, only 57.5% did.
Read| Why a Trump presidency would be bad for the world economy
For full coverage on US presidential election, click here
With an anxious world watching, Americans began voting Tuesday on whether to send the first female president or a volatile populist tycoon to the White House.
The kickoff marks the end to a campaign like no other -- exhausting, often bitter -- as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump presented radically different visions of how to lead the worlds greatest power.
Polls opened at 6:00 am (1100 GMT) in nine states, mainly in the east. The name of the winner was not expected to be known before 0300 GMT.
Clinton has a slim lead in the polls but no one was ruling out a Trump win.
Democratic frontrunner Clinton and Republican maverick Trump campaigned into the early hours of election day, capping a grueling final day of wooing voters.
The 69-year-old former first lady, senator and secretary of state -- backed by A-list musical stars and incumbent President Barack Obama -- urged the country to unite and vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America.
Trump meanwhile pressed his message with voters who feel left behind by globalization and social change, wrapping up with a flourish on his protectionist slogan: America first.
Just imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one American flag, the 70-year-old billionaire reality television star told cheering supporters.
Some 40 million Americans have already cast ballots in states that allow early voting, and opinion polls suggest Clinton has a slight edge.
In their kick-off midnight vote, the residents of tiny Dixville Notch in New Hampshire cast their traditional first-in-nation ballots with a total of eight votes -- Clinton getting four and Trump, two.
The others went to a fringe candidate and Mitt Romney, the failed Republican hopeful in 2012.
A polling average by tracker site RealClearPolitics gave Clinton a 3.3-percentage point national lead, but Trump is closer or even has the advantage in several of the swing states that he must conquer to pull off an upset.
Corrupt elite
No results or exit polls will be available before polling stations begin to close on the US East Coast from 7:00 pm (0000 GMT Wednesday), and it may be three or more hours after that before the direction of the race becomes clear.
And even then, questions remain. Trump has repeatedly warned that a corrupt Washington and media elite is seeking to rig the race and he said last month that he may not concede defeat if he thinks voting is unfair.
He has also threatened to lodge lawsuits against up to a dozen women who have come forward during the race to accuse him of sexual assault or inappropriate behavior.
Clinton has pushed a more optimistic vision, despite a wobble in the final weeks of her campaign when the FBI reopened an investigation into whether she had put US secrets at risk by using a private email server -- only to close it again on Sunday.
In a radio interview on the last night of the race, she said the matter was behind her, and she courted voters at her final rallies in Philadelphia with Obama and rocker Bruce Springsteen, and in North Carolina with pop diva Lady Gaga.
Tomorrow, we face the test of our time, she declared in front of 40,000 people in Philadelphia, a record for her in a campaign where despite her opinion poll lead she has struggled to match her Republican opponents passionate and raucous crowds.
There is a clear choice in this election. A choice between division or unity, an economy that works for everyone, or only for those at the top; between strong, steady leadership, or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk.
At the same time, Trump, who hijacked his conservative party and turned it into a vehicle for populist bombast, concluded a last-gasp tour of swing states by painting his rival as doomed to defeat and the corrupt creature of a discredited elite.
I will fight for you
Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class, or do you want America to be ruled, again, by the people? he demanded at a rally in New Hampshire, a state won in 2012 by Obama that Trump hopes to flip into his column.
Promising to end years of betrayal, tear up free trade deals, seal the border, halt the drug trade and exclude all Syrian refugees, Trump told his supporters: I am with you and I will fight for you and we will win.
Trumps campaign spooked world markets seeking stability after the recent global slowdown.
Last week, US stocks as measured by the S&P 500 index fell for nine straight days for the first time since 1980, only to recover a little when the FBI confirmed Clinton would not face prosecution over her emails.
Asian markets were up slightly on Tuesday as the world remained on tenterhooks for the result.
Part of a wind farm in the Tuy Phong District of Binh Thuan Province. Photo courtesy of Nguoi Lao dong news site
The farms, one in the central region and the other in the south, will have a combined capacity of 940 MW.
Companies from Vietnam, Ireland and the U.S. on Monday signed cooperation agreements to build two wind farms in Vietnam worth $2.2 billion.
The pacts are part of various deals reached by Vietnam and Ireland during the visit to Vietnam by President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins from November 5-14.
Vietnams Phu Cuong Corporation will join hands with Irelands Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd. and the U.S. giant General Electric to set up an 800-megawatt wind farm in the southern province of Soc Trang. The project will need $2 billion.
In the second project, Vietnams Pacific Corporation will cooperate with Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd. to build another 140-MW wind farm in the central province of Binh Thuan, which is worth $200 million for construction.
The same day Vietnam and Ireland also signed other agreements on poverty reduction, education and training, information and communications.
Vietnam has recently revised down the target for electricity generation by coal-fired thermal power plants from 56.4 percent of the total electricity generation to 53.2 percent by 2030.
The country is more focused on renewable energy, particularly solar and wind energy, targeting a renewable energy ratio of 10.7 percent by 2030.
But that will require a lot of investment in the coming years. Wind and solar power capacity is estimated to account for only 0.8 percent and 0.5 percent of total electricity generation respectively by 2020.
With over 3,000 km of coastline and numerous islands, Vietnam has more wind power potential than most of other Southeast Asian nations with a total estimated capacity of 24,000 MW, the Vietnam News Agency has reported.
Related news:
> Vietnam approves $60 mln wind power project
> Fast-growing Vietnam to invest $40 billion in electricity projects by 2020
Americans went to polls on Tuesday to elect their next president after a deeply divisive campaign that ended just hours before on a contrasting note with Hillary Clinton stressing the need for unity and healing as Donald Trump stayed dark and gloomy.
Clinton was upbeat as she cast her vote, while most averages of polls such as by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight pegged her at a lead of 3 points or more.
It is the most humbling feeling, because I know how much responsibility goes with this, the Democratic nominee told reporters outside a polling station near her home in Chappaqua, New York, where she was overwhelmed by hugs and handshakes.
Hours earlier, she closed her campaign at an event attended by tens of thousands of supporters in Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state keenly contested by both campaigns till the end.
We choose to believe in a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America, Clinton said, sharing stage with her family former president Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, her top surrogates, and rock stars Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (centre) is joined on stage by her daughter Chelsea Clinton (centre right), husband and former president Bill Clinton (right), first lady Michelle Obama (left), and President Barack Obama (centre left) after speaking at a rally at Independence Mall in Philadelphia on Monday. (AP)
So, there you were Trump keeps saying Hillary doesnt get crowds, Anthony Faulk, an African American supporter of Clinton, said leaving the event, that was a big party, bigger than anything he has had. That venue can seat 33,000 people.
Read | At their last rally, Obamas cant wait to hand over charge to Clinton
Trump, always a numbers man, was boasting about his crowds earlier at an event attended by less than 12,000, according to reports, telling supporters Clinton cannot match it. She got almost three times more in Philadelphia.
Trumps preoccupation with filling up arenas seemed shadowed by worries of another set of numbers his polls which showed him trailing by a bit on polling eve, making the spectre of defeat a clear and present danger.
Trump brought it up at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, another battleground state. If we dont win, I will consider this the single greatest waste of time, energy... and money, he said. If we dont win, honestly, weve all wasted our time.
He did not go on to repeat his threat to not accept the outcome if he lost as he had said at the last presidential debate, which had dismayed both pundits, who continue to delude themselves Trump cant surprise them anymore, and his own party leaders.
And voters.
Read | US election Live: Trump and Clinton vote as America heads to the polls
Laura Kress, a Clinton supporter who came to the rally with her daughter and her friend, both millennials who says Hillary doesnt have their support said she worried about Trumps threat: Will there be violence if he loses?
Kress, like Clinton herself at times and many white educated white women appalled by Trump, repeatedly referred to the nominee only by the pronoun, He not Trump, or Donald Trump or Trump or The Donald. Any reason? Nah.
She will vote Tuesday, and her millennial daughter, for Clinton, a decision she made when it first became clear He would be the Republican nominee. She has never wavered since, despite the controversies that have continued to dog Clinton.
White, college-educated women are among the five pillars of a new voting block increasingly called the Clinton Coalition the other four are Hispanics/Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans and, the campaign insists, millennials.
Will they be sufficient for Clinton to make it to the White House, making her the first woman president in US history, a milestone crossed long ago by much younger nations such as India, Israel, Pakistan and Bangladesh?
Also read | Why 2016 could end up as the year when the elections lied
Author is a Congress spokesman and legislator who was recently invited by the US Government to study the presidential election process. Here is his account of what he saw and how India could learn from the American system...
Isnt it ironic that the process to choose the president of the US, arguably the most powerful man in the world starts from the very small northeastern state of New Hampshire?
Be they Democrat or Republican, anyone who wants to contest the presidential election has to first be elected as a candidate of the party, unless they are running as an independent.
This is unlike the process known to us in Indian political parties, where candidates are either selected by their partys parliamentary board or the super bosses of the party. The American process of primaries that starts from New Hampshire is an almost 75-year-old tradition.
In the very first week of this process, the festivities are clearly visible when all the Democrat and Republican candidates start pouring into New Hampshire. Some candidates, I was told, start their soft campaign in New Hampshire almost two years in advance. Those who succeed in the New Hampshire primaries mostly end up as serious players.
The story of the race begins in the New Hampshire State House - one of the most majestic pieces of architecture that Ive seen in my career as a professional architect. I was blown away on entering the building.
On entering the State House, one encounters a beautiful lobby with a flag of the US adorning one wall and a souvenir room with photos of several past presidents who came to file their nominations. One photo that drew my attention was that of Barack Obama, the then future president emerging from the local airport with a backpack and carrying his own suitcase in 2008, when he came to file his nomination.
The fourth estate is another formidable player in the New Hampshire primary process. The newspapers draw not only national attention but also the attention of all presidential aspirants.
In the US system, a newspaper need not be dispassionate and it can endorse a candidate right from the beginning. Many candidates lobby or try to woo these dailies. An interesting story narrated by Trent Spinner, the young editor of the local daily Union Leader was that Donald Trump invited the papers owner for lunch and sought his endorsement.
Surprisingly for Trump, things didnt work out as planned. Both men shook hands and came out of the restaurant but not before the editor paid his own bill.
Once the formalities in New Hampshire are over, the primaries move from state to state. The process that starts in New Hampshire in February ends in the District of Columbia in June. This is followed by the national conventions of both parties at which the candidates are formally announced. Though the Federal Election Commission (FEC) monitors the polls, it cannot directly interfere in a states functioning.
The FEC has a grand office in Washington DC, just across from the FBI building. The FEC has a staff of nearly 350 with an annual budget of $67.5 million. It comprises seven members, of whom three are nominated by the Democratic party and another three by the Republican party. The seventh member or the chief commissioner is appointed by the President though the selection has to be confirmed by the Senate.
One striking difference I found between India and the US is that in India, the election officers are mostly bureaucrats from the state cadres or the IAS. In the US, they are elected by the people. Another interesting aspect the FEC cannot disqualify a candidate for wrongdoing as in India but it can impose a severe fine.
The ballot papers for primaries are mailed to voters almost a month before the voting day. Voters have two options either they can walk in to the polling centre and vote on the machine or simply drive to centre, lower their car window and drop the ballot envelope in large boxes placed outside the building.
I was curious to see if there is a none of the above button on the machine like in India but it wasnt there. Many Americans I met told me how lucky Indians are to have the NOTA option as they would have loved to avail of it.
Cross voting is not allowed in the primaries. In the US, one registers as a voter while getting a driving license. At the time, the voter has to declare whether he or she is registering as a Democrat or a Republican. I wonder how one can have the maturity at 16 to decide such a thing. One cant change ones mind during the primaries but one can vote for anyone on Election Day on November 8.
The electronic voting and counting system in the US is totally different from the one in India. After the verification of a voters signature, the envelope containing the ballot is put into a counting machine. These machines process 40,000 ballots a minute. The data entry is done simultaneously.
There were very few permanent staff. When I first entered the computer hall of the election office in King county, I wondered whether I had entered a senior citizens home because most of the people on the computers seemed to be aged above 65. Retired people are temporarily employed and given remuneration for this work.
What we can adopt from the US are some of the election funding rules. In the US, a voter can legally donate up to $2700 to a candidate. The candidates too can request voters for funding through SMS. Voters can even opt for payments by installment. Government contractors cannot make donations to candidates.
Websites of candidates have to display donations received and money spent. I met officials of a few NGO watchdogs who are always there to hound candidates in case of non-disclosure. The last and unforgettable rule if there is unspent money from the election fund, then a candidate has to either give it to the government or donate it to social institutes. Imagine, adopting this in India. We would probably end up having more institutes than candidates!
An hour-long interaction in Washington with Jason Chung of the Republican National Committee, handing the social media for Trump, gave an insight into the use of mobiles by candidates. Party workers conduct analysis on a minute level as they have an app in their mobiles which displays not only details of every voter but even their spending habits and so on, further enabling party workers to judge whether a voter is a potential Democrat or Republican.
I was fortunate to have been given so much access, which allowed me to witness the election process at close quarters right from meeting top US election officials to interacting with many major players in the campaign of both parties and witnessing the Seattle primaries.
During my month-long tour from Washington DC to Washington state (east coast to west coast), I asked many people at diverse places such as malls, hotels and airports who would win. Not many were too enthusiastic about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
A loud Trump banking on conservative white votes on the one side and on the other side, Clinton on the African-Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups no one had a definite reply to whether Trump really has a credit card or Clinton has some Trump card.
The views expressed by the author are personal
Fake tweets generated mostly by pro-Donald Trump software robots are distorting the Republican candidates popularity and may impact the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election, according to a new study.
A surprisingly high percentage of the political discussion taking place on Twitter was created by pro-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton software robots, or social bots, researchers said.
Software robots masquerading as humans are influencing the political discourse on social media as never before and could threaten the very integrity of the 2016 US presidential election, said Emilio Ferrara, from the University of Southern Californias (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering in the US.
By leveraging state-of-the art bot detection algorithms, Ferrara and Alessandro Bessi, visiting research assistant at USC, analysed 20 million election-related tweets created between September 16 and October 21.
They found that robots, rather than people, produced 3.8 million tweets. Social bots accounted for 400,000 of the 2.8 million individual users, or nearly 15% of the population under study.
Researchers found that Trumps robot-produced tweets were almost uniformly positive, boosting the candidates popularity.
By contrast, only half of his Democratic rival Hillary Clintons bot tweets were positive, with the other half criticising the nominee.
Due to the social bots sophistication, it is often impossible to determine who creates them.
Political parties, local, national and foreign governments and even single individuals with adequate resources could obtain the operational capabilities and technical tools to deploy armies of social bots and affect the directions of online political conversation, researchers said.
The master puppeteers behind influence bots often create fake Twitter and Facebook profiles, they said.
They do so by stealing online pictures, giving them fictitious names, and cloning biographical information from existing accounts, they added.
These bots have become so sophisticated that they can tweet, retweet, share content, comment on posts, like candidates, grow their social influence by following legit human accounts and even engage in human-like conversations, researchers said.
At times it has seemed as though this presidential campaign was occurring in some alternate universe. Up is down, no means yes, day is night.
Donald Trumps tweets, speeches, interviews, debate statements, news conferences and off-the-cuff remarks that is, pretty much every utterance made during his waking hours have been a source of hyperbole at hyper-speed. His misstatements have been so ubiquitous that Hillary Clintons slippery words often slithered right on by unnoticed.
Trump made pernicious use of fictional numbers, concocted certain events and both contradicted and mispresented his earlier self.
Clinton took actual facts and went beyond them, promising more than she can deliver, cherry-picking numbers and otherwise standing for the lawyerly Washington tradition of paying partial heed to reality while bending it to her advantage. Cautious by nature, she was most inclined to stretch facts to their snapping point when on the defensive about her email practices, which was often. Clintons defensive position, in essence: The dog ate my homework.
With Election Day finally, nearly upon us, some lowlights from both candidates:
FOR TRUMP, DAY IS NIGHT
On Clintons approach to borders: She wants to let people just pour in. You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it. Thats what could happen.
THE FACTS: For this to happen, every other country in the Americas, from Mexico south to Chiles southern tip, and a chunk of Canada would have to empty its entire population into the US.
But wait, theres more.
Trump said that under Clinton, this could happen in one week.
This was no slip of the tongue at several events hes spoken of 600 million coming in under Clinton; at another, 650 million. This doesnt faintly resemble anything Clinton has proposed for the U.S. (population 325 million).
Trump is riffing off of a leaked Clinton speech to bankers in which she spoke of her dream of a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders. The remarks in context suggested an interest in free commerce, not necessarily the free movement of people. But no one is talking about packing whole populations from other Western Hemisphere countries into the U.S. like sardines.
Numbers are always pliable in the political arena; for Trump they are often whatever he wants them to be. He routinely overstates the US trade deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, no matter how many times hes called on it.
On the battle of Mosul, Iraq, and other operations against Islamic State militants: Whatever happened to the element of surprise?
THE FACTS: Many generals agree with Trump that it is folly to tell IS that it is about to be attacked. But those are armchair generals. Real ones tend to see the value in pre-announcing a major offensive.
In the case of Mosul, signaling an assault in advance was a way for Iraqi forces to warn civilians in the city and to encourage a resistance movement to weaken IS before the battle began. Moreover, any element of surprise had been long lost; preparations for the battle began more than a year ago, with the US part in it under close scrutiny by Congress.
More broadly, Trumps theory that secrecy should surround all such operations reflects a lack of understanding of how this battle against IS has developed over the past two years, as well as certain obligations to keep Congress informed. Basic decisions like when to assault Mosul are left to the Iraqi government, because it is the Iraqis who will have to govern the place when the fighting is done.
The US wants the Iraqis to own the Mosul problem both militarily and politically so they dont repeat the mistakes that allowed IS to capture the city in the first place.
Mosul was the obvious last major target of an Iraqi counteroffensive against IS, whose ability to defend the city had been undermined by months of U.S. airstrikes against its leaders and financial and military resources. Surprise was not an option.
When Clinton accused him of calling climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese: I did not. I did not.
When asked about telling people on Twitter to check out a sex tape: It wasnt check out a sex tape.
THE FACTS: On these and other occasions, Trump has blithely denied making statements he plainly made even though he was caught on tape making them.
In a 2012 tweet, he wrote: The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. He later claimed he was kidding, but hes also repeated the claim that climate change is a hoax, and one that benefits China. In 2014: Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!
During this campaign, he also tweeted check out sex tape and past of former 1996 Miss Universe Alicia Machado, whom Clinton discussed in a presidential debate as an example of Trumps derogatory comments about women.
Machado, a Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for body-shaming her by calling her Miss Piggy when she gained weight. Was there a sex tape? In a manner, yes. Machado was filmed in a 2005 Spanish-language reality show in bed with a man; no nudity is seen but she said they were having sex in the footage.
I was against the war in Iraq, because I said its gonna totally destabilize the Middle East. ... I was opposed to war from the beginning. ... I would not have had our troops in Iraq.
THE FACTS: Trump publicly supported the war before it started and praised its early progress. Hes insisted otherwise uncountable times, despite the record.
Its true he wasnt a cheerleader for the March 2003 invasion. For example, he said a few months before the war that the economy and North Korea were bigger problems. But thats hardly opposition. In September 2002, he told Howard Stern on the radio, when asked if he would back an invasion, Yeah, I guess so. Days after the invasion, he said it looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint.
Moreover, Trump offered support for a hypothetical invasion of Iraq in his 2000 book, suggesting he would favor a pre-emptive strike if Iraq were viewed as a threat to national security.
Trump did turn against the long-running war before many in Washington did. But that does not show the foresight he claimed when campaigning against Republican primary rivals who backed the invasion and when campaigning against Clinton, who voted in the Senate for the war. He was not against it when the decisions were being made about whether to start it.
TRUMP: I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. ... It was on television. I saw it.
THE FACTS: This early head-scratcher, from November 2015, helped set a pattern of tall tales that would continue through the campaign. It also fed into one of the signature insults of a campaign full of them when Trump appeared to mock the disabilities of a New York Times reporter whose recollections from New Jersey after the 9/11 attacks did not support his own.
No video or other proof of large-scale celebrations of the falling towers by Muslims in New Jersey ever emerged.
Serge Kovaleski of the Times, who was working for The Washington Post in 2001, reported in the week after 9/11 that authorities in New Jersey detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks.
Kovaleski has a congenital condition that restricts joint movement. In a speech, Trump went after the the poor guy, you oughta see this guy making jerking gestures and taking a mocking tone.
Trump later denied he was imitating Kovaleski and further claimed I have no idea who he is and didnt know of his condition. But Kovaleski said he had met Trump repeatedly, in face-to-face face interviews and at news conferences, and Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years.
On why he continued to raise questions about Barack Obamas country of birth even after the president produced his birth certificate in 2011: Nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it.
THE FACTS: Trump himself continued to press false theories about Obamas birthplace after they were debunked. His claim that the matter faded when the birth certificate came out belies his efforts to keep the myth alive.
Was it a birth certificate? he asked in a 2012 interview. He was perhaps born in Kenya. Very simple, OK? Trump said in 2014. Who knows about Obama? Trump asked in January 2016.
CLINTON: THE DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK
For those of you who are concerned about my using personal email, I understand. And as Ive said, Im not making excuses. Ive said it was a mistake and I regret it.
THE FACTS: She has made a variety of excuses on the way to a grudging acknowledgment that her use of a personal server and email for State Department business was wrong.
Shes said she used personal email because she wanted the simplicity of a single digital device, although it turned out she carried several devices. She said her email practices were approved when they were not they merely had not been expressly prohibited at the time for the secretary of state.
She said she didnt understand that material marked with a c that passed through her personal communications system meant it was confidential. She said other secretaries of state did it first. Thats partly true, but in a limited way and not with their own servers. She said she never passed on classified material in her system. The FBI found she passed on three email chains with information that had classified markings in the body of the emails; the State Department contended two of those chains held unclassified material.
On the Trans-Pacific Partnership: I did say I hoped it would be a good deal.
THE FACTS: Clinton heartily supported the Pacific trade deal in speeches around the world as secretary of state; she did not merely hope it would turn out well. Clinton declared in Australia in 2012, This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. Similar speeches elsewhere affirmed her belief that the deal, still under negotiation, was groundbreaking, exciting and embodied 21st century standards.
That position became awkward if not untenable in her Democratic primary race against Bernie Sanders, a foe of the deal, and she turned against it. Her less-than-detailed explanation: The deal as finally negotiated did not measure up to her standards for protecting U.S. wages, jobs and national security. Yet the final deal contains some of the strongest labor protections of any U.S. trade agreement.
The subject became Exhibit A in the case made by critics that she lets political currents, instead of personal conviction, guide her.
A hacked email from Clinton adviser Joel Benenson may have inadvertently lent weight to that suspicion. Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be? he asked. Sanders has simplicity and focus.
I dont add a penny to the national debt.
THE FACTS: Not true, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It estimates her increased spending in areas such as infrastructure, more financial aid for college and early childhood education would increase the national debt by $200 billion over 10 years. That is far less than their estimate for Trump, who they predict would add $5.3 trillion over 10 years. But its plenty more than a penny.
ONE FOR THE ROAD
TRUMP to Clinton: Youve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.
THE FACTS: The Islamic State group did not exist for almost all of Clintons adult life. Shes 69. IS is 4.
Read| Trump or Clinton: Poor choices for America in this presidential election
For full coverage on US presidential election, click here
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump battled for votes on a frenzied final day of campaigning on Monday, telling Americans the countrys fate rides on who they choose as the next US president.
Clinton, the front-running Democrat, aimed to nail down her narrow lead with stops in three battleground states, as President Barack Obama covered for her elsewhere before they join up at a star-studded grand finale in Philadelphia.
The choice in this election could not be clearer, Clinton said at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It really is between division or unity. Between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon.
"We dont have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America. Tomorrow, you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America." pic.twitter.com/oGJLM033Wi Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 7, 2016
Trump, the billionaire Republican nominee, set out from must-win Florida on a five state swing, the culmination of a dramatic run for the presidency as a right-wing nationalist vowing radical change in Americas relationship with the world.
I want the entire corrupt Washington establishment to hear the words we are all about to say: when we win tomorrow, we are going to drain the swamp, he told cheering supporters in Sarasota, Florida.
Chants of Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp rose from the crowd.
Despite his outward confidence, the 70-year-old mogul needs to break through a wall of Democratic support in industrial northern states like Michigan to win.
Thank you Michigan! This is a MOVEMENT that will never be seen again- it's our last chance to #DrainTheSwamp! Watch: https://t.co/jggCr7AZGm pic.twitter.com/Fd11eK876G Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2016
Trump, Clinton and Obama all focused precious final efforts campaigning there and other key states.
As she boarded her campaign plane in White Plains, New York for the days first rally in Pennsylvania, Clinton admitted that bringing the country together again after one of the bitterest US elections ever will require some work.
Read | Clinton crush to Trump bank shot: 5 possible results of the US election
I really do want to be the president for everybody -- people who vote for me, people who vote against me, she told reporters.
In a video message set to air during two prime-time television shows reaching millions of viewers, Clinton warns, Our core values are being tested in this election.
Is America dark and divisive, or hopeful and inclusive? she asks as a piano trills in the background.
(AFP)
Two to one
On the eve of the vote, Clinton held a widening but still close 3.2 percent lead over Trump in a four way race including two fringe candidates, according to a RealClearPolitics average of national polls.
US media predicted substantial to big wins for the 69-year-old Democrat when electoral votes are counted. Influential election forecaster FiveThirtyEight gave her a two to one chance of winning the 270 votes needed to claim the White House.
Read | Its election night in America tomorrow, heres all you need to know
Under the cloud of an FBI investigation, Clinton got good news Sunday when James Comey, the agencys director, cleared her again of criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
But the damage may already have been done.
Her popularity had dipped and opinion polls tightened after Comeys campaign bombshell decision eight days ago to reopen the investigation.
It gave Trump a windfall opportunity to recover ground lost while battling accusations of sexual assault.
President Barack Obama greets supporters after speaking at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (AP)
Battlegrounds
From Sarasota, Trump was headed to Raleigh, North Carolina; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Grand Rapids, Michigan for a flurry of back-to-back rallies.
Besides Obama and First Lady Michelle, Clinton will draw on the star power of rockers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi at their final big rally in Philadelphia Monday night.
I ask you to do for Hillary what you did for me, Obama said at a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first of three he is holding for Clinton on the eve of the vote.
Read | Trump or Clinton: Poor choices for America in this presidential election
You have the chance to reject a coarse, divisive, mean-spirited politics that would take us backwards, he said. The chance to elect our first female president.
Clinton herself was holding rallies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Grand Rapids, Michigan, before ending her day in the closely contested swing state of North Carolina.
Her final appearances had a note of optimism mixed with warnings of the threat posed by Trump.
We dont have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America, she told the crowd in Pittsburgh. Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America.
U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton boards her plane after a campaign rally in Pittsburgh on the final day of campaigning before the election. (REUTERS)
Brexit plus?
The world has looked on aghast as Trumps sensationalist reality television style became a driving force propelling him toward the most powerful political post in the world.
Asian and European exchanges, which had been rocked by news of the FBI probe, surged Monday morning and Wall Street rose as Clintons position strengthened.
But Trump is predicting a ballot upset, or Brexit plus, plus, plus as he put it Sunday, referring to the poll-defying British vote to exit the EU.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump looks at a mask of himself as he speaks during a campaign rally in Sarasota, Florida. (REUTERS)
If we win, the corrupt politicians and their donors lose. If they win, the American people lose big league, he told his followers in Sarasota.
This is it, folks. We will never have another opportunity. Not in four years, not in eight years. It will be over, he said.
Our failed political establishment has delivered nothing but poverty at home and disaster overseas. They get rich making America poor. Its time to reject a media and political elite thats bled our country dry.
Read | Political calculation: The maths behind the US presidential election
One of the terrific highlights of the upcoming Cairo International Film Festival is the section screening eight of the foreign language Oscar contenders from the world over. Admittedly, this may be a small number compared with the record submissions this year -- 85 and no less -- but bunching them together in a single festival is indeed significant.
Indias offering for the Academy Awards of Vetrimaraans excellent Tamil work on police brutality, Visaaranai or Interrogation, does not, though, find a berth among Cairos selections. The festival, however, has selected three Indian titles, one of them, The Narrow Path in Malayalam, for the prestigious international competition.
Among the eight works to be shown at the festival will be the German drama, Maren Ades Toni Erdmann -- a hilarious take on a fathers desperate efforts to get close to his daughter working in another country. He barges into her office, disguises himself as a bear and indulges in equally insane acts to grab a few moments of the girls attention.
German drama Toni Erdmann by Maren Ade is about father who wants to get close to his daughter in another country. (Cairo International Film Festival)
From Hungary, we would have Kills on Wheels by Attila Till -- a comic look at the adventures of three disabled people who use their wheelchairs in the most ingenious ways.
Kills on Wheels by Attila Till is Hungarys entry in the festival.
The Slovak entry, Marko Skops Eva Nova, is a movie about an actor fighting her alcoholism and trying to reconnect with her son.
Canadas Its only the End of the World by Xavier Dolan (whose first feature, I Killed My Mother, got a standing ovation at the 2009 Cannes Directors Fortnight) paints the pathetic picture of an author who returns home and to his family after being diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Ma Rosa, by the celebrated Filipino auteur, Brillante Mendoza, is a desperate tale of a mother trying to hold her family together by selling narcotic drugs. The lead actor, Jaclyn Jose, won the acting award at Cannes in May.
Ma Rosa by Brillante Mendoza won an acting award at Cannes this year. (Cairo International Film Festival )
Nepals Academy hopeful, Kalo Pothi or The Black Hen by Min Bahadur Bham describes the travails of two boys searching for their missing hen during the civil war in the country between 1996 and 2006. Kalo Pothi clinched the Best Film Award at the International Critics Weeks in Venice last September.
A scene from Kali Pothi of Nepal. (Cairo International Film Festival )
Saudi Arabias Oscar contribution, Barakh Meets Barakh by Mahmoud Sabbagh and shot in Jeddah, talks about the dilemma faced by boys and girls in the kingdom, who are discouraged from mingling with each other. Interestingly, it was only as recent as 2012 that a full-length feature was made in Saudi Arabia. Called Wadjda, the work enjoyed another first. It was helmed by a woman, Haifaa al-Mansour, who explores the struggle of a little girl wanting to ride a bicycle in a country which frowns upon women doing that. In fact, Haifaa, once told this writer that she had a tough time directing men, and she had to do it from a closed van, giving instructions with the help of a microphone! Saudi Arabia sent Wadjda for the Oscars, where it did not win a nomination. It did, however, garner one at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards.
Saudi Arabias Oscar contribution, Barakh Meets Barakh has been directed by Mahmoud Sabbagh and shot in Jeddah. (Cairo International Film Festival )
Finally, the host State, Egypt, will present its Oscar entry, Mohamed Diabs Clash. Most of the events here take place inside a police vehicle crammed with protestors from different parts of the nation, which has in recent times seen much unrest.
Mohamed Diabs Clash is Egypts entry. (Cairo International Film Festival)
(Gautaman Bhaskaran will cover the Cairo International Film Festival.)
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A bomb attack on UN peacekeepers in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo killed a child and wounded 32 Indian troops on Tuesday, the UN mission there, MONUSCO, said.
Provincial governor Julien Paluku told Reuters an eight-year-old girl and one peacekeeper had been killed in the blast.
An imam who witnessed the explosion told Reuters three peacekeepers had been killed, but the UN mission did not immediately confirm any deaths.
Ismael Salumu, an imam at a nearby mosque, told Reuters, We just heard the explosion and the cries. We then ran over to see.
The blast hit the peacekeepers while they were out on a morning run in the city of Goma.
MONUSCO explosives expert on the scene confirmed an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack against peacekeepers, the UN said, adding that five peacekeepers were in serious condition in hospital.
Attacks with explosive devices are extremely rare in Congo and it was not immediately clear who might have been responsible.
Paluku said Congolese and UN investigators were trying to determine the exact nature of the device.
About 18,000 uniformed UN personnel operate in Congo, where millions of people died in regional conflicts during 1996-2003 and dozens of armed groups continue to operate.
The UN Mission has troops and police personnel drawn from more than 50 countries, including regional nations, and was deployed in 1999. The peacekeepers protect civilians and disarm dozens of rebel and splinter groups after two decades of conflict in the east of the country.
The blast in the east threatens to compound existing tensions, with fears mounting that President Joseph Kabila plans to hold on to power after his second mandate expires in December.
After years of abuse and death threats, Duaa Abu-Sharkh had finally divorced her husband, agreeing even to give up custody of her four young children and family property to escape his violent grip. Then, one night in late September, as the 32-year-old mother was dropping off her kids after a rare visit, a masked gunman dragged her from her car and shot her in the head before their eyes.
Her killing is the latest in a string of murders of Israeli-Arab women believed to have been carried out by relatives. But after years of silence, the recent outburst has sparked soul searching in the community and unprecedented demonstrations against its mistreatment of women.
The killings have some similarities to the so-called honor killings elsewhere in the Muslim world, where women can be murdered by relatives for tarnishing the family name through perceived sexual indiscretions. But activists in Israel reject such comparisons, saying the vast majority of the killings are the result of rampant spousal abuse that has been ignored by police in a landscape rife with drugs, crime and poverty.
Traumatized by the recent death of Abu-Sharkh and other women in their communities, Arab citizens, who have long been suspicious of Israeli authorities, are now calling for more police and social services in their long-neglected neighborhoods.
Israeli Arab Majeda Abu Sharkh left, holds a picture of Duaa Abu Sharkh that was killed in Lod as she poses for a photograph with her niece Alaa Khalili, in Lod, central Israel. (AP Photo)
Though just a fifth of the population, Arabs represent half of the women killed in Israel each year.
And half of those women are killed in Arab neighborhoods of Ramle and Lod, cities just outside of Tel Aviv where several large clans involved in organized crime have made weapons easily accessible and allowed violence, particularly toward women, to go unchecked for years.
Women in Arab society have a lower status. So, when there is violence, who pays the price? Women, said Samah Salaime, a social worker who founded the Arab Women in the Center organization to aid victims in the Lod area. She said Israeli authorities treat the oppression of women as a value in Arab society. They deal with us as if the blood of the Arab woman is cheaper, she said.
But things are starting to change.
Abu-Sharkhs killing, and that of another divorced mother of four in Jaffa a month later, spurred a series of street protests that drew hundreds of women and men, both Arabs and Jews. A parliamentary committee heard testimony from Arab women and the national police chief said the level of violence was unacceptable, and vowed to battle it.
Israeli Arab women hold signs during a demonstration in Jaffa, Israel . (AP Photo)
Arabs hold full citizenship rights in Israel, but are generally poorer and less educated than Jews and suffer from discrimination and substandard public services. Some Israelis, including top politicians, have questioned their loyalty to the state, contributing to their sense of being treated as second-class citizens. Arabs often accuse the police of being indifferent to Arab crime, so long as Jews are not harmed.
Earlier this year, after a deadly shooting in downtown Tel Aviv and a subsequent weeklong manhunt for the Arab shooter, Israel launched a campaign to collect illegal arms in Arab towns. Later, it promoted an Arab police officer to deputy commissioner, making him the highest-ranking Muslim ever to serve in the force, and putting him in charge of the new law and order drive in Arab communities.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said families used to tamper with crime scenes and make it difficult for police to collect evidence and testimony in Arab areas. But he said attitudes have changed in recent years and cooperation is much better. The police force is currently recruiting an additional 1,500 Arab officers and holding outreach programs to strengthen its ties to the community, he said.
The days of the instant anti-police, anti-government and anti-establishment sentiment are over, he said. The main emphasis now is to be there and to connect with the Arab community.
Israeli Arab women hold signs during a demonstration in Jaffa, Israel. (AP Photo)
Arab lawmaker Aida Touma-Sliman, who heads the parliamentary committee on the status of women and gender equality, said that wasnt enough. She noted that 15 women have been killed in the Ramle-Lod area in the past year, but only three men have been charged.
What kind of message is given to the population and what kind of message is given to the perpetrators? she asked. You can kill and you will still go on free. And for the women it is a clear message from the police that nobody can protect you.
Touma-Sliman said police have been persuaded to stop automatically referring to the deaths of Arab women as honor killings, saying it was an offensive term developed by the patriarchal society in order to legitimize the murder itself.
In Abu-Sharkhs case, the writing was on the wall. Her ex-husband, who had links to local criminal gangs, would beat her regularly, once breaking her arm and nose, and strangle her until she turned blue, said her mother, Majeda Abu-Sharkh. When they complained to police, the ex-husband threatened to kill Abu-Sharkh and gunmen opened fire at her familys home.
Police briefly detained him after her killing but released him for lack of evidence.
If it was a Jewish woman, the police would have found her killer in two hours, Majeda said, clutching pictures of her dead daughter. Thank God, it is all over with now. She has gone to God and it is better for her there. She is resting.
Salaime, the social worker, said such tragedies would hopefully diminish as taboos are broken and the status of women slowly improves.
Men know that the Arab woman is now studying more, has more freedom and we have left a lot of men behind who still think that an Arab woman is worthless, that her body is a property that you can harm without being held accountable, she said. The path is very long. It is a very painful journey.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said on Tuesday the groups publication of material linked to Hillary Clinton was not based on any desire to influence the US election.
In recent months, WikiLeaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself, Assange said in a statement released by his legal adviser at the Web Summit, a tech conference in Lisbon.
This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election.
WikiLeaks has in the past few months published thousands of emails hacked from John Podesta, Democrat candidate Clintons campaign manager.
Assange said Wikileaks had obtained no inside information about Republican candidate Donald Trump.
We cannot publish what we do not have, he said.
We are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us, Assange said.
No-one disputes the public importance of these publications, he added.
It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election.
Assange said WikiLeaks would continue to publish sensitive information regardless of who wins the U.S. election.
The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers, he said.
Assange has been living in Ecuadors London embassy since mid-2012. A few weeks ago Ecuadors government acknowledged it had restricted his Internet access, arousing speculation it had been pressured by the United States because of the Clinton material.
You could hear Bruce Springsteen come, play and go and so did Jon Bon Jovi. People waiting in lines snaking around two blocks, or more in places, simply shrugged, looked disappointed, and went back to waiting. Soon word spread it was time for speeches, the reason for the Monday night rally.
Are the Obamas on? a white woman yelled out to no one specifically.
No, its Bill, said Todd Murdock, who had happily introduced himself as gay, looking at the event streaming live on his smartphone, with his husband David Smith peering over his shoulder. Murdock was referring to Bill Clinton, the former president.
Ask Bill to keep going, the same woman shouted back, he can speak forever. He can, its no secret, not especially to his supporters who have known him and his family for decades.
But the woman, and most others in the line, were most keen to listen to the Obamas, who were appearing in their last campaign event as president and first lady; specially Michelle Obama.
While President Obama has seen an uptick in his popularity as he nears the end of the second term of his historic presidency as a the first Africa American president, the First Lady has never been doing better. She is hugely popular, and has emerged as one of Hillary Clintons most powerful surrogates, giving her campaign a line that has become their best defence against Donald Trumps insults, When they go low, we go high.
Even Trump, who hasnt spared anyone, has seemed wary of taking her on, separately. He has attacked them for spending so much time on the campaign trail for Clinton, but not the first lady.
Bill Clinton did hear the woman in the line, it seems, as she made it inside the venue just as he had finished introducing Michelle Obama.
And she acknowledged right away that she was feeling emotional because, in many ways, speaking here tonight is perhaps the last and most important thing that I can do for my country as First Lady.
As the crowd erupted, Michelle Obama continued, And let me just take a moment to thank you, to thank the people of this country for giving our family the extraordinary honour of serving as your First Family.
Now, it was time now for her and her husband, she said, to ensure the country was handed over to a leader that we all can trust -- a leader who takes this job seriously, someone who is truly ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one.
The president, who spoke next, picked up on that theme, and called Clinton this fighter, this stateswoman, this mother, this grandmother, this patriot, who, he added, will finally shatter a glass ceiling, becoming the first woman president.
In 2008, when Clinton lost the race for the Democratic presidential ticket to Obama, she had said that while she failed to break that glass ceiling, she had left 18 million cracks in it, the number of votes she won in the primaries. And accepting the nomination in July 2016, Clinton had said we just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet.
Vinh Tan thermal plant in the southern coastal province of Binh Thuan. Photo from the provinces online portal.
Vietnam is grappling to deal with 15.7 million tons of coal ash a year.
Vietnam is in need of urgent measures to treat a large amount of waste from thermal power plants, which have become the major source of the countrys electricity, experts say.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the country has about 20 coal-fired power plants, discharging 15.7 million tons of coal ash each year.
By 2022 the country will raise the number to 43 plants and more than 29 million tons of ash will be discharged, as a result.
The huge amount of coal ash is now mainly buried around thermal power plants or transported to landfills, posing threats to the environment and causing respiratory diseases for local residents.
The problem may not go away anytime soon as Vietnam still relies on coal power as the main source of electricity.
Nguyen Manh Hien, former head of Vietnams Energy Institute said: Renewable energies are environmentally friendly but they require large investment and depend on natural conditions so we cant easily adjust production capacity to meet our demand.
Coal thermal power plant has the lowest investment cost but its production capacity can triple that of a wind power plant and quadruple a solar plant's, Hien said.
Last year, coal-fired plants accounted for 30.4 percent of Vietnams total electricity. The figure is expected to reach 53 percent by 2030, equivalent to 300 billion kWh.
The industry ministry estimated that Vietnam will need about 129 million tons of coal a year to meet its rising demand of energy, which will leave the country with at least 32 million tons of coal ash.
The waste can be used as raw materials for other industries rather than being viewed as toxic waste, according to Truong Duy Nghia, head of the Vietnam Thermal Science and Technology Association.
He said that coal ash can be used to produce cement and adobe bricks, which is the most efficient way to mitigate environmental impacts of coal-fired power plants.
This method, though already adopted by some companies, is facing barriers as no specific mechanism for the reproduction of coal ash has been introduced.
Nguyen Van Thanh from Vung Ang thermal power plant in the central province of Ha Tinh proposed the government introduce a mechanism and allow cement companies to buy coal ash for production again so that his plant can reduce the amount of this waste material.
His plant had been selling the waste to cement producers but recently stopped doing so, after learning that such a practice is still pending official approval from the government.
"If the problem prolongs, we may have to close the plant, Thanh said.
Related news:
> Facing donors, Vietnam urged to rethink coal-fueled growth
> Officials fail to act on polluting Vietnam coal plant
A British banker was jailed for life on Tuesday for the grisly murders of two Indonesian women whom he tortured and raped in his luxury Hong Kong apartment and confessed to killing.
Rurik Jutting, 31, a former Bank of America employee, had denied murdering Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26, in 2014 on grounds of diminished responsibility due to alcohol and drug abuse and sexual disorders.
He had pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in a case that gripped world media due to graphic video footage seen by the jury and the brutality of the killings.
The jury unanimously found him guilty of murder.
Cambridge-educated Jutting, wearing a blue shirt, looked down and showed no emotion when the verdict was read out in an open courtroom, packed with journalists.
It took the jury, made up of four women and five men, around six hours, including a lunch break, to reach its decision.
In a statement read by defence lawyer Tim Owen, Jutting, the grandson of a British policeman in Hong Kong and a local Chinese woman, expressed sorrow.
The evil can never be remedied by me, nevertheless...I am so sorry. I am sorry beyond words, Jutting said in the statement.
The defence team argued that Juttings cocaine and alcohol disorders as well as personality disorders of sexual sadism and narcissism had impaired his ability to control his behaviour.
The prosecution rejected this, stating Jutting was able to form judgments and exercise self-control before and after the killings, filming his torture of Ningsih on his iPhone as well as hours of footage in which he discussed the murders, binging on cocaine and his graphic sexual fantasies.
Gloria is a regular at Portugals most infamous prison, but it isnt crime that keeps her coming back. The golden Barbado da Terceira is just one of the canine guests at a most unusual dog kennel run by inmates.
Owner Rui Silva checked in his pet, a shaggy Portuguese breed, for a weekend stay in the maximum security jail in Lisbon.
It did not really phase me, the 48-year-old TV broadcast technician said about leaving his pet at the Monsanto prison, where Portugals most notorious criminals are housed.
I asked if they took good care of the animals, they said yes. Thats what matters.
The inmates welcome the pets at the so-called Dog House in a modest reception area adorned by photos of former four-legged guests.
They verify vaccination records and receive instructions from pet owners. During the stay, they oversee feeding and bathing, walk the dogs and administer medication.
Its a lot of responsibility, said Ricardo, an inmate serving a sentence for drug trafficking, as a pit bull licked his hand through the fence of its pen.
What I really like is having contact with the public, the 34-year-old former bar owner said.
Giving inmates the chance to reboot relational skills and gain job experience is the goal of this unique project in Portugal.
A picture taken from the rooftop of the high security Monsanto prison in Lisbon shows the kennel facilities outside the walls of the main building. (AFP)
Time goes by faster
The kennel, a white and yellow building, is located just outside the barbed-wire fence that surrounds the prison, a former military fort perched atop the highest point of Lisbon among pine and oak trees, with a panoramic view of the capital.
Its 68 dog pens usually fill up during peak vacation periods in summer and at Christmas, as well as over long weekends.
Two to five prisoners work at the kennel, depending on how busy it is. They receive a monthly stipend of around 80 euros ($90) for their work.
It is totally different than being inside, time goes by faster, said Ricardo, who was dressed in a red tracksuit and grey sweatshirt, as he pointed in the direction of the jail.
Married and with a young daughter on the outside, he said he was thinking of setting up his own kennel after he is released from jail at the end of the year.
The prison initially began the kennel for its staff but in 2000, it opened the facility to the general public.
The kennel charges 10 euros ($11) per day per dog, or just 9.50 euros if the owner brings the pets own food.
A prisoner at the high security Monsanto prison in Lisbon holds a dog at the jails kennel. (AFP)
Reduces aggression
Prison officials stress the kennel is not a business, but rather a tool to help rehabilitate prisoners and prepare them to return to society by giving them job skills.
Looking after animals develops emotional ties which the inmates then project onto other people and society in general, Monsanto prison director Ana Cristina Carrolo Pereira Teixeira said.
And many of its regular customers like Silva, who first left his Gloria at the kennel several years ago, support those goals. Its being part of a prison maybe makes me want to use it even more, to help out, he said.
But not all prisoners at Monsanto, used to house the nations most dangerous convicts, make the cut for kennel care.
Among the roughly 160 inmates currently held is an explosives expert with the Basque separatist group ETA who was arrested in Portugal in 2010, and the killer of two young policemen in a Lisbon suburb in 2005.
Those who can work at the kennel are selected from the approximately 20 prisoners who have been assigned to a less restrictive regime due to good behaviour.
We try to pick ideal people for this role and that like being here, the kennels veterinarian, Pedro Miguel Canavilhas de Melo, said.
Teixeira, the prison director, said she believes the inmates are better people when they leave here in the way they relate to others because of their relationship with the animals.
I think it calms inmates, their relationship with animals reduces aggression, she said.
Hungarys parliament on Tuesday narrowly rejected a plan by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to ban the resettlement of migrants in the country, a setback for the maverick leader that could weaken him in his fight against EU migration policies.
In a rare parliamentary defeat for Orban, his proposed constitutional amendment won only 131 votes in the 199-seat parliament, just short of the necessary two-thirds majority of 133.
The far-right Jobbik party sealed the bills rejection by boycotting the vote. But it held out a lifeline to Orban by saying it would throw its support behind the ban if he scrapped a separate scheme allowing foreigners to buy residency rights.
Orbans right-wing Fidesz party said its presidency would meet to discuss its next move. Backing down to Jobbik would be politically difficult, as Orbans chief of staff has previously described its demand as blackmail.
Orbans determination to keep out migrants and refugees, including by building razor-wire border fences, has angered his fellow European Union leaders and complicated their task as the EU struggles to cope with an influx of 1.4 million people since the start of 2015, many fleeing conflicts like the war in Syria.
Orban had said the amendment was needed to honour an October referendum in which more than 3 million Hungarians, an overwhelming majority of those who voted, rejected EU quotas stipulating how many migrants member states must accept.
He said that even though the referendum was not legally binding because of low turnout, it gave him a strong political mandate to stop Brussels imposing the measure.
This vote today is a temporary fiasco (for Orban), similarly to the referendum which was invalid, said Robert Laszlo, a political analyst at thinktank Political Capital.
Laszlo said at home, the failure of the amendment was unlikely to weaken Orban, whose party enjoys a strong lead in opinion polls ahead of 2018 elections.
In Brussels, he will not be able to sell this as a success, there his positions will weaken, he added.
Residency Bonds
Following the vote, Jobbik reiterated its demand that the government scrap a residency bond scheme under which foreigners can buy the right to live in Hungary for at least five years on payment of up to 300,000 euros ($331,000).
Almost 10,000 Chinese have taken advantage of the scheme to move to Hungary, as well as affluent investors from Russia and the Middle East. But Jobbik contends that some of the new arrivals pose a security threat.
The moment that Fidesz, the government scraps the bond programme, Jobbik is ready to back the amendment of the constitution within 24 hours, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona told reporters.
During the vote, Jobbik MPs held up a large banner that said: Those are the traitors who let in terrorists in exchange for money.
Members of the oppositional Jobbik party holding up the banner which reads: "The traitor is who lets terrorist in for money!" during the vote on the amendment of the Constitution during the plenary session of the parliament in Budapest, Hungary, on November 8, 2016. Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban has failed in his attempt to push through constitutional amendments to oppose any future plan by the European Union to resettle asylum seekers among members of the bloc. (AP)
In less than 12 hours, America will elect its next President.
In the build up to the elections, both candidates have used social media as an important campaigning tool, but also as a platform to indulge in good old political mud-slinging and name calling.
Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump has been openly criticised for tweeting quite liberally and, often, offensively.
Before America picks a president, heres a list of Donald Trumps most outrageous tweets:
1) That time when he wanted the Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in jail:
Hillary Clinton should have been prosecuted and should be in jail. Instead she is running for president in what looks like a rigged election Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 15, 2016
2) When he called Obama ignorant and the worst president America has seen:
"In politics, and in life, ignorance is not a virtue." This is a primary reason that President Obama is the worst president in U.S. history! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2016
3) When he dissed Senator Bernie Sanders for endorsing Hillary:
Bernie Sanders totally sold out to Crooked Hillary Clinton. All of that work, energy and money, and nothing to show for it! Waste of time. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2016
4) When he decided New York City was a disgrace:
N.Y.C. has the worst Mayor in the United States. I hate watching what is happening with the dirty streets, the homeless and crime! Disgrace Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
5) When he tweeted, If Hillary Clinton cant satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?, and later deleted it. But turns out, he forgot that the Internet is written in ink and nothing goes away when you have 13 million followers:
Hey @realDonaldTrump - In case you're looking for that tweet you deleted .. I got it right here. pic.twitter.com/a6F98q5xGU Lenny Jacobson (@Lennyjacobson) April 17, 2015
6) When he wrote the book on crass sexism in one tweet, attacking Arianna Huffington:
How much money is the extremely unattractive (both inside and out) Arianna Huffington paying her poor ex-hubby for the use of his name? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2015
7) When he launched a verbal offensive against Senator Rand Paul:
Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2015
8) When he declared how right he was about every thing:
It is amazing how often I am right, only to be criticized by the media. Illegal immigration, take the oil, build the wall, Muslims, NATO! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2016
9) When he told us how phony the other presidential candidates were:
I am in Iowa watching all of these phony T.V. ads by the other candidates. All bull, politicians are all talk and no action-it won't happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2016
10) When he wasnt sure what he really thought of his own party:
Other than a small group of people who have suffered massive and embarrassing losses, the party is VERY united. Great love in the arena! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2016
And since it is Trump, the list, of course, far exceeds ten outrageous tweets. Remember the time he started his own hashtag #draintheswamp against his opponents :
.@HillaryClinton loves to lie. America has had enough of the CLINTON'S! It is time to #DrainTheSwamp! Debates pic.twitter.com/3Mz4T7qTTR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2016
When he is done using Twitter as a ranting platform, he finds time to promote his campaign slogan to his followers.
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2016
There he is making America great again, one tweet a time!
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Islamic State fighters abducted 295 former Iraqi security forces members near the militant stronghold of Mosul and also forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from Hammam al Alil town, the United Nations human rights organisation said on Tuesday.
The abductions took place last week as Iraqi government forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shiite militias backed by US-led air strikes pushed an offensive to recapture Mosul from Islamic State.
People forcibly moved or abducted, it appears, are either intended to be used as human shields or - depending on their perceived affiliations - killed, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN high commissioner for human rights.
About 100 of the former ISF officers were taken at around midnight on November 3 from Mawaly village, which is about 20km west of Mosul. A further 195 were abducted between November 1 and November 4 from villages in Tal Afar district.
The abducted families were being taken from their town to Mosul airport, Shamdasani said.
The fate of these civilians is unknown for the moment, she told a UN briefing in Geneva.
Read | IS out of Mosul, but Caliphate leaves Iraqis in administrative limbo
Peshmerga forces carry weapons near the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq on Monday. (Reuters)
The United Nations also had information that at least 30 sheikhs were abducted in Sinjar district on November 2 or November 3 and taken to an unknown location. It was trying to verify a report that 18 of them had been killed on November 4 in Tal Afar district, Shamdasani said.
The operation against Islamic States Iraqi stronghold has entered its fourth week and Iraqi forces have so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.
The UN human rights office has sources on the ground but the information they are able to provide is patchy, Shamdasani said.
She could not confirm media reports of a mass grave being found but said it happened to be in the same agricultural college in Hammam al Alil where the UN reported the execution of 50 police officers last month.
BASHIQA
Kurdish peshmerga forces who stormed an Islamic State-held town in northern Iraq were confident they would take control quickly.
Then a jihadist sniper started shooting from a red building.
Every five minutes or so, he opened fire at the Kurdish forces and the American special forces accompanying them, holding up any advance by their convoy of 40 vehicles.
What unfolded for hours spoke volumes about the difficulties that Iraqi forces will face in the battle for the major city of Mosul, about 15 km (10 miles) to the southwest.
Senior Kurdish intelligence officials say that Islamic State, which sent waves of suicide car bombers to slow the armys advance on the city outskirts, will prove just as formidable in the tight urban alleyways where it has deployed a large number of snipers.
On the streets of Bashiqa on Monday the Kurdish fighters and their American support could call on an impressive collection of firepower. American MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles with computer-operated 50 calibre machine guns were lined up on the street near the sniper.
American special forces clutching sophisticated sniper rifles, with advanced technology at their disposal, carefully studied the situation as the bullets whizzed by and ricocheted off buildings.
Across the street from them was a peshmerga fighter, holding a machine gun, with 1,000 bullets strapped around his waist.
I have told my men to advance to get those dogs, peshmerga officer Rasheed Haji Rosta said. But no solution was in sight, despite the bravado.
Every 10 minutes or so the sniper fired several rounds of bullets in their direction. At one stage, an Islamic State fighter could be seen in the distance, running between houses carrying an AK-47 assault rifle.
The Americans hit back by firing bullets from their MRAP machine gun. The bullets could be seen hitting the balcony of the red building. The sniper hit back in return, each bullet bearing a message: You havent got me.
A red flash appeared from the muzzle of the snipers rifle every time he opened fire. At one point three U.S. special forces jumped out of the way as the bullets flew near them.
CAR BOMBS
Kurdish guerrillas had been planning the assault on Bashiqa for weeks. In that time, Islamic State militants carried out nighttime suicide bomb attacks against their makeshift base nearby.
Early on Monday, after days of clearing bombs from nearby areas, Kurdish peshmerga forces entered Bashiqa. One hour after they moved into the town, which stands on a plain at the foot of a mountain, two car bombs exploded near their convoy, sending up plumes of white smoke just 50 feet (15 metres) away.
No one was wounded by the bombs, but any sense of relief was soon eroded by the growing tension caused by the sniper.
Aside from the barrage of bullets from the MRAP vehicles, wire-guided missiles were also fired at the snipers building. Adjacent buildings were also targeted after gunfire was seen coming from them.
It was not clear whether the sniper had comrades with him nearby or was moving from one building to the other in underground tunnels that Kurdish officials say are used by the militants when they come under serious pressure.
Islamic State militants swept through northern Iraq in 2014, seizing Mosul and swallowing up towns and villages like Bashiqa, where their radical ideology was imposed through brute force.
Iraqi forces put up virtually no resistance at the time but have recently, along with the Kurds, recaptured dozens of villages from Islamic State.
A victory in Mosul would weaken the jihadists and give Iraqi forces much needed credibility. In order to do that, they will have to patiently eliminate a far greater number of Islamic State snipers than the ones that were deployed in Bashiqa.
Kurdish and Iraqi officials say the militants have brought in highly skilled snipers from conflict zones like Chechnya.
At one point it seemed as if the sniper had been silenced.
Then gunshots came from another direction, prompting one of the American special forces snipers to yell: Its coming from the green building. Nearby one of his comrades said: Tell Steve we need the missiles.
While the Americans showed a sense of urgency, crouching near buildings to try to find a direct line of fire to the sniper, two Kurdish fighters calmly sat on the street that had come under fire and ate rice and beans from a styrofoam plate.
Another Kurdish fighter nearby focused on his black tea kettle, oblivious to the explosions of artillery that were fired towards the sniper.
In the end, the peshmerga and American special forces seemed to lose patience with the cat and mouse game and the row of houses where the sniper was located was hit by three air strikes.
A new charge of 10 pounds per vehicle entering London and creating an ultra-low emission zone are among measures mayor Sadiq Khan wants to implement soon to combat Londons increasingly toxic air, which causes nearly 10,000 deaths a year.
The 10 emissions surcharge will be in addition to the 11.50 congestion charge already levied on vehicles entering central London. The government last week lost a case in which the court ruled that it had broken the law by failing to tackle illegal levels of air pollution.
Khan, who said tackling pollution in London was one of his first priorities, now wants the government to get a grip and stop passing the buck on killer toxic air. He wants the government to deliver on a national diesel scrappage scheme to tackle harmful emissions.
Proposing what is billed as the toughest crackdown on polluting vehicles by any major city in the world, Khan said: After years of failure we now need the government to get a grip and face up to their responsibilities rather than pass the buck to me and boroughs. Lets be clear, filthy air is causing 9,400 deaths every year in London alone. And that's before you look at all the other health problems caused to Londoners.
We need action now to protect Londoners and people all across the UK from breathing in toxic fumes. The government has been seriously complacent about this health emergency for the last six years and now is the time for them to stop gambling with our health and show real leadership.
In a letter to environment secretary Andrea Leadsom, Khan called for urgent action, including a 21st century Clean Air Act to provide a legally enforceable right to clean air and reforms to Vehicle Excise Duty that continues to make the purchase of diesel cars more attractive.
The mayors office believes the Theresa May government must now accept that a third runway at Heathrow is not compatible with the objective of achieving and sustaining legal compliance and reducing exposure to toxic air.
Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: We need further and faster action to improve air quality. Over 9,000 early deaths in London every year are attributable to air pollution.
"The mayor has made a good start in tackling the problem in London but we need central government to make this an urgent priority. The government must commit to a new Clean Air Act to restrict the most polluting vehicles and bring emissions down to safe levels.
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Come tomorrow, Hillary Clinton could make history by becoming the president of United States of America a position no woman has occupied before. Well, at least not in real life.
If reality plays catch-up with fiction, Clinton can look for predecessors in popular culture, which has already imagined several scenarios with a woman in the White House.
The 1953 movie Project Moonbase was one of the first to place a woman in the Oval Office. While science fiction embraced the idea of a woman POTUS early, it was used merely as a plot device, almost as if to say, hey, look how different the future will be, well have talking robots and women presidents!
In the following decades, the idea of a woman President was played for laughs. In Kisses for My President, a truly cringeworthy 1964 comedy, Polly Bergen essays the role of Leslie McCloud, the first woman to be elected as POTUS. But movie is hardly a feminist flag bearer it focuses on how McClouds presidency affects her husband, played by Fred McMurray, who finds it tough to romance a wife attending to matters of state. The film ends with McCloud resigning from her presidency after she gets pregnant because you cannot bring up a child and manage a country at the same time.
In ABCs failed 1985 sitcom Hail to the Chief, Patty Duke plays the first female POTUS, an extreme workaholic. And 1998s silly comedy Jane Austens Mafia, a parody of the Godfather, has Christina Applegate suddenly finding herself the leader of the American people.
So, have there been any serious female presidents on-screen?
The answer is yes, but only a handful. In Battlestar Galactica, Laura Roslin, portrayed by Mary McDonnell, is a major character and the President of the Twelve Colonies. State of Affairs, the 2014 espionage thriller, puts an African-American woman in the White House, played by the steely-eyed Alfre Woodard. And before these two, Cherry Jones won an Emmy for her role as the fair-and-square first female POTUS on the popular series, 24.
In 2005, the short-lived drama series Commander-in-Chief stars Geena Davis as the first female US president Mackenzie Allen, who becomes sitting president after her predecessors suffers a sudden cerebral aneurysm.
Clintons presidential bid seems to have encouraged more reel-life Madam Presidents. In this years epic alien invasion saga, Independence Day: Resurgence, Sela Ward plays the decisive, strong Elizabeth Lanford, the 45th President of the United States and the first woman in the countrys history to hold the Oval Office. The original 1996 film featured Bill Pullman as the Commander-in-Chief, who also stars in this film, but a woman at the helm is a nice touch.
2015s TV series Supergirl not only features a female superhero, but also puts a woman in charge of America. Lynda Carter, who modeled her performance on Hilary Clinton, makes a short appearance as President Oliva Marsdin in Season 2. Theres an additional touch of awesome: Carter played the role of Wonder Woman from 1975 to 1979, so the casting is kind of meta.
In fact, American cable television can boast of a female President on air right now, in the form of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as acting president Selina Meyer on the HBO comedy, Veep. Meyer starts out as the vice president, relegated to the sidelines, as she and her team try to navigate Washingtons Machiavellian day-to-day politics. But in Season 3, she finally ascends to the presidency after the incumbent steps down.
The show follows the unconventional Selina blundering through her presidency and making questionable decisions. And while Selina is no poster-child for a good President, let alone a feminist one, Veep is unusual in showing that a single mother can reach the Oval Office. In fact, Veep presents viewers with the possibility of two consecutive female presidencies -- in the latest season, when Selina ties with her opponent, the various political machinations leave the presidential seat vacant, which is then occupied by Latin American senator Laura Montez.
But the trope of a woman Veep becoming accidental president is used in other reel depictions as well a woman winning a fair-and-square election still seems far-fetched for the American imagination.
Whether its Commander-in-Chiefs Geena Davis or Patricia Wettig as the murderous VP-turned-President Caroline Reynolds in Prison Break or Kate Burton as the power-hungry, husband-murdering Sally Langston in Scandal, woman attain television presidenthood via the accidental route. Hopefully, a Hillary Clinton presidency may change that.
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FBI Director James Comey, already criticised over his handling of Hillary Clintons email investigation in the final days of the presidential campaign, was accepting a lifetime achievement award Monday night at a dinner organised by a law enforcement support group whose board includes three people with longtime ties to Donald Trump.
Comey was being honoured by the nonprofit Federal Drug Agents Foundation. It lists more than three dozen board directors on its website, and three of its members have extensive ties to Trump. Among them: the CEO of the company that publishes The National Enquirer, the developer of a Trump-branded tower in Toronto and a convicted felon whose company rates Trump businesses for luxury.
An FBI spokesman said the foundation provides disability, bereavement and personal crisis support to federal agents and educational and charitable grants. The FBI said the dinner was organized one year ago.
Foundation representatives did not immediately respond to phone and email messages from The Associated Press.
The foundation regularly hosts dinners and events honoring law enforcement officials. Past recipients of the lifetime achievement award include Attorney General Loretta Lynch, US Attorney Preet Bharara, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and US District Judge Richard Sullivan.
It was not clear whether Comey a former US attorney in Manhattan was aware of the board members ties to Trump, or whether he decided those connections were not consequential given the groups stature with New York law enforcement. But the award and ceremony came as the FBI has been accused by partisans on both the left and right of injecting itself unnecessarily into the presidential race through Comeys statements and updates about the FBIs now-concluded review of Hillary Clintons email practices. It was also not clear whether the three board members with ties to Trump were involved in selecting Comey for the award.
Among the Trump-connected board members is David Pecker, a friend of Trumps and the chief executive of American Media Inc., publisher of The National Enquirer.
During the course of the presidential primary campaign, the Enquirer was a regular source of attacks on Trump political rivals, including Jeb Bush, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. The Wall Street Journal reported last week the magazine paid $150,000 to a former Playboy playmate for her story about having an affair with Trump shortly after he married his third wife, Melania Trump, but never ran it.
As a founding member of the FDAF I have been a proud and loyal supporter for several years and am honored to be at tonights event, wrote Pecker, a former president of the group, in an email to the AP.
Another board member listed for the group is Alex Schnaider, a billionaire Ukrainian-born commodities trader who built a Trump-branded hotel and condo tower in Toronto which is now in receivership.
This is one of countless charities that he supports, said David Zucker, a lawyer in Toronto who represents Schnaider. He doesnt actively participate, and he had no idea there was any dinner tonight.
A third board member is Joseph Cinque, also known as Joey No Socks, a convicted felon whose American Academy of Hospitality Sciences has awarded more than a dozen Trump businesses with shiny plaques called Star Diamond awards. Cinque didnt immediately return a request for comment, but a secretary at his business said he was planning on attending the Monday evening ceremony. Trump told the AP in May he didnt know Cinque well and was unaware of his criminal history for art fencing.
The FBI director announced Sunday he would not recommend charging Clinton criminally after reviewing emails discovered on the computer of former congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
But Comeys Oct. 28 decision to advise Congress of the newly discovered emails in the first place, before their contents had been reviewed by agents, elicited criticism by former law enforcement officials and others who questioned his judgment to make public details of an ongoing probe in the midst of a presidential election.
The foundation, headquartered on Long Island, funds scholarships and grants to the families of federal agents who have been killed or injured in the line of duty and took in about $122,000 in revenue according to a 2014 tax filing.
A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment.
Nigerias army is planning attacks on Shiite processions scheduled Nov. 20, the Islamic Movement in Nigeria said on Tuesday as the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission asked Nigerias president to ensure their protection.
Nigerias military did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.
The Nigerian army gunned down and killed some 300 Shiites in December and buried them secretly in a mass grave, according to an independent government-appointed committee into the killings in northern Zaria city. One soldier was killed. The Shiites say more than 1,000 were killed. Dozens remain in illegal military detention including leader Ibraheem Zakzaky, who was shot seven times and lost one eye.
Nigerias army accused the Shiites of trying to assassinate the countrys army chief a claim human rights groups call unbelievable.
On Tuesday, Shiite spokesman Ibrahim Musa said Tuesdays appeal from the Islamic Human Rights Commission to President Muhammadu Buhari was based on reports from military intelligence officers privy to alleged plans to attack processions and burn members businesses and homes.
Shiites have antagonized other Nigerians by forcefully blocking main roads with processions that draw hundreds of thousands. Nigerias 170 million people are equally divided between Christians and mainly Sunni Muslims. Zakzaky is believed to have about 5 million followers.
The group has been attacked in the past. In 2014, soldiers opened fire on a procession, killing 34 people including three of Zakzakys sons.
Last month, the Shiite movement was outlawed in its home state of Kaduna, a move analysts warn could spark another Islamic uprising.
The Shiites insist they are peaceful and note that suicide bombers of Boko Haram Islamic extremist group attacked a procession last year, killing several people.
Boko Haram emerged as a much more radical and violent group after a military attack on its headquarters in northeast Maiduguri city in 2009 killed about 700 people.
Vietnam has become a smuggling hub for endangered animals destined for the Chinese market.
Police in the northern border province of Quang Ninh have arrested a truck driver suspected of trafficking wild animals.
While searching the truck, police found 149 pangolins, 105 turtles and 172 kilograms of pangolin scales stored in styrofoam containers.
Police said that the animals are alive but in poor health.
They are conducting further investigations.
Pangolins rescued by Quang Ninh police. Photo by H.Q
In Vietnam, pangolins are commonly consumed as specialty dishes at restaurants, soaked and served in wine or used in traditional medicine.
Education for Nature-Vietnam, one of Vietnam's few locally based conservation groups, said that the country is a transit point for pangolin trafficking networks from other neighboring countries like Laos and Cambodia to China.
Since the start of 2005, the group has detected more than 69 tons of frozen pangolins and live pangolins being transported illegally to the northern province of Hai Phong, from where they are shipped to China.
Related news:
> Don't catch them all, warn Pangolin protectionists
> 3 pangolins die from hellish trafficking journey in Vietnam; 58 others rescued
> Frozen tiger carcass found in central Vietnam
Pakistans Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Maleeha Lodhi has said that the creation of new permanent seats at Security Council is a move firmly opposed by Islamabad.
She termed the creation of new permanent seats the antithesis of principles enshrined in the UN Charter, while addressing the General Assembly session on Security Council Reforms.
Pakistan supports expansion of non-permanent seats in the Security Council to make it more democratic, accountable, transparent and effective, the Dawn quoted Lodhi as saying.
She further said that due to a handful of states seeking to promote a self arrogated right to an unequal status has created a stalemate in the Security Council reform process.
Conveying Pakistans stance Lodhi said that, Adding more permanent seats to Security Council will only serve to satisfy the hunger for power and privilege of a few and not address issue of representation.
Pakistan had earlier in June questioned that how could Security Council enhance its representativeness and effectiveness by adding new permanent seats to the 15-member body.
The Pakistan envoy asserted that no convincing answer has ever been given to how the move would make the Security Council more representative and added that the new permanent members would in fact have the opposite effect.
Pakistan has announced its decision to take part in an international anti-tobacco meet in India, putting an end to speculations that Islamabad may skip the global meet, media reports said.
Fozia Fayyaz, first Secretary in the Pakistan high commission in India, will represent Pakistan at the conference, the Express News quoted Asad Hafeez, director general in the ministry of national health services, regulation and coordination, as saying.
Indias health and family welfare ministry is organising the Seventh Session of the Conference of Parties (COP7) from November 7 to 12 in Noida, near New Delhi, this year.
The five-day conference that India is hosting for the first time has measures to tackle new tobacco-related threats and challenges, including electronic delivery of tobacco products, on its agenda this year.
Till last week, uncertainty prevailed over Pakistans participation because of the ongoing tension between the two neighbouring countries.
Later, there was confusion after a statement by Saira Afzal Tarar, Pakistan minister of state for national health services, regulation and coordination, in which she said the Pakistani health ministry officials had not secured visas to attend the conference.
The statement was later denied by Pakistan federal health ministry officials, which reflected a lack of coordination between the Minister and her subordinate staff.
The current tensions between the two countries got worse after a staff member of Pakistans High Commission in New Delhi was detained by Delhi Police for questioning over espionage charges.
The tension intensified after tit-for-tat naming of diplomatic staff by both sides for alleged espionage.
At least seven children and two pregnant women were killed in an air strike on Syrias rebel stronghold province of Idlib today, a monitor said.
The strike, which hit the town of Khan Sheikun, in the south of the province, appeared to have been carried out by Syrian government ally Russia, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
The Britain-based group, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
In Moscow, the defence ministry denied that Russian aircraft had been in the area today, and accused the Observatory of information provocations.
Russia began its air campaign in support of the government in September 2015, saying it was targeting terrorists.
The strike hit a street where children were playing. Three of the dead children were from one family and were visiting their grandfather, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
He said the dead children were four girls and three boys, but did not immediately have their ages.
Also in Idlib today, 11 civilians including three children were killed in air raids and regime bombardment of a village in the southwest of the province, the Observatory said.
Idlib province is mostly controlled by a rebel alliance known as the Army of Conquest, which groups Islamist factions with jihadists of the Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly Al-Qaedas Syrian affiliate.
Fateh al-Sham is blacklisted by the United Nations and the United States as a terrorist organisation and Russ1ia says its fighters are a legitimate target.
Elsewhere, Syrian state media said government forces had advanced southwest of divided second city Aleppo, seizing the 1070 district from rebel forces.
Abdel Rahman also reported the advance, saying it would allow government forces to protect areas already under their control on the southern outskirts of Aleppo.
Rebels have sought to penetrate regime territory on the southern outskirts of Aleppo to end the government siege of the opposition-held east of the city.
The Observatory said that regime forces today retook Minyan district in the west from rebels.
Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012, but in recent months regime troops have surrounded the east, laying siege to it.
No aid has reached rebel districts, where more then 250,000 people live, since July, and rebels have tried several times to break through government lines to relieve the crippling blockade.
Read more | Civilians flee in fear as forces advance on IS Syria bastion
South Koreas president said on Tuesday she will allow parliament to choose her prime minister, a major political concession to growing anger as she scrambles to defuse an escalating influence-peddling scandal.
The announcement by Park Geun-hye, who has faced tens of thousands of protesters and an investigation into whether a mysterious confidante manipulated government decisions, could severely curtail her ability to govern in the 15 months she has left in her term.
Parks decision, which came during a meeting on Tuesday with national assembly speaker Chung Sye-kyun, means that the liberal candidate for prime minister who she nominated last week as a way to settle growing anger will apparently be replaced. But opposition and ruling party lawmakers must first agree on someone else.
The political tug-of-war over the prime minister, who is typically chosen by the president as a No. 2, comes as opposition lawmakers demand that Park distance herself from domestic affairs because of the scandal involving Parks long-time confidante, Choi Soon-sil, who has no official government role.
Park giving up the presidential prerogative to choose a prime minister will further weaken her politically. She already faces terrible approval ratings and calls from the public to step down.
Earlier Tuesday, South Korean prosecutors raided the Seoul office of Samsung Electronics, the nations largest and most valuable company, in connection with the scandal.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office linked the Samsung raid to an investigation into the scandal but provided no other details. South Koreas Yonhap news agency said investigators were following a suspicion that Samsung gave Chois daughter illicit financial help.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Seoul over the weekend, demanding Parks removal from office.
Nam Jeong-su, spokesperson of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the more militant of South Koreas two large umbrella union groups, said he expects 150,000 unionists, plus supporters, to gather Saturday and march to the presidential Blue House.
Thailands military government will submit a constitution for royal endorsement on Tuesday, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said, a step that should pave the way for a general election in 2017.
Thailand has been ruled by the military since a May 2014 coup. The junta, formally known as the National Council for Peace and Order, has sought to reassure the country that the death of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died on October 13, would not upend plans for a return to democratic rule.
Prayuth, who is also junta chief, said he had signed the constitution, which Thais overwhelmingly approved in a referendum in August, and would send it to the palace on Tuesday.
The junta has said the constitution is aimed at ending a cycle of coups. But critics, including politicians from major political parties, oppose the charter and say it will enshrine the militarys influence in politics for years to come.
The juntas roadmap to democracy calls for the passing of an election law and political party laws that will guide the election process once the constitution obtains a royal endorsement, which is considered to be a formality.
Thailand is making preparations for Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn to ascend the throne on December 1.
Until that happens, Prem Tinsulanonda, the 96-year-old the head of Thailands royal advisory council, is acting as regent.
By law, the monarch or regent has 90 days to approve the constitution.
It will proceed according to the steps as determined by the palace and will follow the 90-day protocol, Prayuth told reporters.
Political risk consultant Eurasia Group said in a note the royal succession process will likely be smooth and swift.
Amorn Wanichwiwatana, a member of the Constitutional Drafting Committee, told Reuters the proposed new election and political party laws will be ready as soon as the constitution is approved.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned on November 14 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London over an allegation of rape, Swedens public prosecutors office has confirmed.
Assange, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, welcomed the news through his lawyer, saying he was looking forward to the chance to clear his name, the Guardian reported.
The Swedish authorities said one of the prosecutors on the case, Ingrid Isgren, as well as a Swedish police inspector, would also attend the questioning next week and report the findings to Sweden.
A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it, the prosecutors office said.
The whistleblower sought refuge in Ecuadors embassy in London in June 2012, fleeing allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden dating back to 2010. Assange, 45, denies the claims.
The Australian national claims he refused to travel to Sweden for questioning because he feared extradition to the US over WikiLeaks release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010, his lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said. Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name. We hope the investigation will be closed then.
WikiLeaks has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks with the damaging leak of tens of thousands of e-mails from the US Democratic party and presidential candidate Hillary Clintons campaign.
Just months into selling its VR product, HTC is on the move to enhance the Vive's headset. This is definitely a good sign for a highly-competitive group that is out to make a run at the tech ladder.
The company is looking at methods that will address gaming particulars in Taiwan and China. This new virtual reality accessory will come with form-associated updates.
Rikard Steiber, HTC's SVP of Virtual Reality, reveals that the arcade approach in those locations needs peripherals that will make the set-up truly compatible. He adds that Vive accessories will be improved in terms of design and efficiency to match gaming expectations.
Since its launching last April, the reception about the $799-priced HTC Vive has been generally favorable. Although the organization has been quite about its sales figures, it has been perceived that the marketing campaign exceeded target expectations. According to an executive, more than 140 thousand headsets have already been sold.
Although the scenario is promising to start with, the entries of the PlayStation VR and the Oculus Rift have not really created huge ripples that will warrant overwhelming excitement.
According to Steiber, an amount of innovation will still be felt considering that it is still the first year for VR releases.
With the Vive, which has been branded with the Oasis codename based on a leak by @LlabTooFeR, evolution will be a process that the product needs to undergo.
Considering the convenient approach needed by players to move around when engaged in game sessions, the upgrades are ones that practically ditched cable connections. HTC has allowed flexibility through wireless linkage.
In fact, reports are out that both Oculus and Google will be unveiling their respective versions of independent VR set-ups minus all the cables.
The HTC Oasis item has been revealed earlier when information attributed to a Bulgarian group surfaced in September.
A spokesperson for HTC has pointed out that Vive enhancements will promote distinctive or exceptional experiences for arcade systems.
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Earthlings produce methane burps as a waste gas, but how did such burps happen to float on Mars? Were they produced by bacteria? Or by angry green men?
It is not clear. But the NASA vehicle earlier found water too on Mars. All these seem to indicate that life exists on Mars.
Dr Paul Mahaffy of NASA says that the methane spikes are 'transient'. "We don't want to eliminate anything, and potentially it could indicate life or evidence of ancient methane trapped which could show ancient life ... But it's interesting to think about why it comes and goes. It seems to be suggestive of a localised source," he explains.
The Rover needs to test isotope levels in order to gauge whether the emissions were sent from a biological source or not. Curiosity's Tunable Laser Spectrometer used "intense light" to conduct chemical analysis and take fas samples.
The readings were taken over the 300-square-metre area over two months. It was increased 10 times, yet when the Rover travelled by one more kilometre, the higher methane levels disappeared.
Dr Chris Webster, an American scientist from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, conducted the study.
Another interesting space rock was also discovered on Oct 27 and it was composed of various "different materials" from the environment. The ChemCam laser helped NASA to collect information on the rock and its composition.
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While other celebrity marriages continue to bite the dust, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are on a different route. The Argo star does not want to lose his wife and is doing his best to woo her back into his life.
Affleck is working hard on saving his marriage and does not want to part ways with wife Jennifer Garner, reports International Business Times. He is determined to stay in the relationship and more so after he moved into the Pacific Palisades mansion along with their three children last month. The actor has already extended the olive branch to her and wants to reconcile the differences as well.
In fact, he has a strategy in mind to get her back into his life. According to a source, he is fully prepared and has taken the first step as well. To his delight, it wielded positive results and things look quite positive for them. Actually, Affleck convinced Garner to go out on a real date with him and it turned out to be a wonderful evening for the duo.
The source further revealed that Affleck and Garner are in a great place at present and they are communicating effectively. The actor is devoting a lot of time to the kids despite having a busy schedule. Notably, he was seen with Garner and their two children Seraphina and Samuel on the Sunday Mass, claims Parent Herald.
However, this is not all. Affleck is looking to rope in Garner in his movie-making and this is truly a master stroke on his side as the latter has always wanted to do this. He also intends to star along with her in a movie. Well, this is truly good news for the fans of the Hollywood couple as it would definitely break their hearts to see them divorced.
It is worth mentioning here that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner split in June 2015 after 10 years of marriage but they have not filed for divorce as yet. They have stayed close to each other in order to co-parent their children. The couple shares three children together- Violet (10), Seraphina (7) and Samuel (4).
@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Many inmates protest and demand to leave a drug rehab center in Dong Nai Province on Monday. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tuan
Since 2009 there've been four breakouts at the center, which has 1,500 inmates despite its capacity for only 800.
As tension at a drug rehab center in southern Vietnam appeared to cool down after a breakout and a protest that began on Sunday, a government official conceded that the facility was "heavily overloaded" and that its inmates were unhappy.
No one would be able to bear overcrowding, Dung said. They can absolutely feel angry and want to break out, said Dao Ngoc Dung, Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, who visited Xuan Phu center in Dong Nai Province on Monday.
Hours before the minister arrived, hundreds of inmates were still protesting after 166 of them escaped the previous day. Around 50 are still at large. Three inmates believed to lead the protest have been arrested by the police.
Dung said the center has been deteriorating and is badly strained.
The center, around 100 kilometers from HCMC, was opened in 2009 and meant to serve only 800 inmates. It now has nearly 1,500.
One inmate told Dung during the visit that they want proper investment into the centers facilities. We want better medical treatment, so we can go home early.
Vietnam has 132 rehab centers across the country. The three largest cities Da Nang, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have reported no escape. Hai Phong City and Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province each has reported one breakout.
There are around 220,000 drug users in the official records.
Since 2009, the center in Dong Nai has reported four breakouts. The biggest one happened on October 23, when more than 500 inmates escape.
The center of nearly five hectares (12.4 acres) has 110 staff members and 44 guards.
Dong Nai's government will spend VND18 billion ($806,000) building new rooms at the center. But the construction will take time, the provinces vice chairwoman Nguyen Hoa Hiep said.
Dung, the social affairs minister, suggested that the center does not have adequate and professional staff, and may have taken in drug users who do not need compulsory rehabilitation.
We should review all the inmates. Those who use drugs but don't have an addiction should be released. Addicts who have a family willing to help them should be sent home, he said.
Bui Si Loi, vice chairman of the Social Affairs Committee at the National Assembly, Vietnams top legislative body, said tension at the Dong Nai center should prompt the authorities to improve conditions at drug rehab facilities, so the inmates do not feel like they are being held in captive.
Loi said that drug rehabilitation programs will have to be more successful in the long term if there are more efforts from the inmates families and the inmates themselves.
He said families should be the first providers of help and support and a rehab center is only the final solution.
Related news:
> Tension erupts as protest at Vietnams drug rehab center enters second day
> Over 100 drug addicts escape rehab center in southern Vietnam, again
Reports have been surfacing regarding NASA being alarmed over SpaceX's fueling plan for the Falcon 9. This update came right after the rocket exploded during its launch just last Sep. 1.
It has been previously reported that Elon Musk and his team are still conducting investigations on SpaceX Falcon 9's explosion. The investigation is currently being set on the cryogenic helium system right inside SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket's secondary liquid oxygen tank.
Concerns regarding the fueling process
SpaceX has neither confirm nor denied the reports just yet. Elon Musk and his team are still waiting for the completion of the investigation along with the final conclusions right before announcing the details to the public.
According to recent reports, NASA is concerned over SpaceX's planned fueling process. The concern has been brought by the fact that it will be involving people on board the spacecraft.
Elon Musk and company doesn't want to listen
Last week has seen NASA's advisory committee issuing yet another warning to SpaceX. Apparently, Elon Musk and his team seem to ignore them and are fully focus on pursuing its fueling procedures.
It was has been noted that Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell suspected that the fueling process is one of the main reasons of the blast. The explosion occurred just within 93 milliseconds during the preparation of the spacecraft.
SpaceX's process is very dangerous
Experts are blaming the use of the same fueling process especially when it happened just 30 minutes before the launch. Supposedly around this time, the spacecraft's crew would already be required to strap to their seats. With that being said, a lot of experts are already considering SpaceX's fueling process a hazardous operation. As of now, NASA is closely monitoring SpaceX's actions and will make further action once anything goes wrong on their operations yet again.
@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Just when everyone thought that the Nexus product lines are dead, an intriguing development suddenly emerges. It has long been rumored that Google will discontinue its previous brand.
The release of the Pixel and the Pixel XL is supposed to be the final nail on the Nexus coffin. The hype is simply overwhelming. The search engine giant has reveled in the fact that the company has finally manufactured a device it can call its very own.
Although the launching of the Pixel series may have given the iPhone 7 a competitive run, it does not actually guarantee that the new flagships have propelled Google at the top of the heap. In fact, the Mountain View-based group can be seeking for key elements to boost further its market shares.
Continuing the Nexus brand can be a sales strategy for Google judging from the positive receptions the company received for its respective units in the past. The truth is, no one has seriously inquired about the future of the items because the globe has been too excited and too keen to unravel the potentials of the Pixel.
With the forthcoming entry of the Nexus 7P product, the smartphone market is abuzz with different reactions. Perhaps the best thing to emerge out of this situation is Google's cool demeanor. The tech giant is letting it all play.
Whether uncertainty or confusion gets a bit into the heads of its fans and users doesn't really matter. With the entire buzz, it is definitely a win-win approach for Google.
Specifications for the new Nexus flagships include the presence of the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. The devices will come in 5 and 5.5-inch frames. Basic storage will be 32GB. It is not yet known if there are models that are equipped with 64 and 128GB systems.
It is probable that Google will have HTC as the manufacturer of its upcoming smartphones. The new units have been codenamed Sailfish and Marlin.
On the other hand, Huawei will also have a joint venture with the search engine group as the Chinese company is slated to produce the next Nexus tablet.
@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Whether there are aliens on Mars has been an intriguing question for people from the scientific community located across the globe. A new set of photographs released by NASA's Curiosity Rover suggests that aliens on Mars may be much more technologically advanced than humans on Earth.
Aliens on Mars have hidden their technology among rocks on the surface of the red planet, according to Morning News USA. The photo of the extraterrestrial technology was captured by NASA's Curiosity Rover on Nov. 2, Wednesday.
A number of photographs captured by NASA's Curiosity Rover in the past have been hailed as the proof of existence of alien life on Mars. However, the recent photograph of technology has created a stir among conspiracy theorists, who believe that aliens are much more advanced and intelligent than human species.
The picture clicked by Martian rover shows some mechanical object sitting on top of flat rock formations. The object seems too symmetrical to be formed from just natural weathering of rock.
According to conspiracy theorists Scott C. Waring of UFO Sightings Daily, the photograph of the weird object on Mars is proof enough that a technological civilization does exist on Mars. Waring further claims that this fact is already known to NASA.
Waring has also accused NASA of releasing only low resolution images to the public that lack clarity. This is a step to prevent public from knowing facts about alien life and to keep them away from being able to discover anything extraterrestrial in the photographs.
However, people from the scientific community argue that there is a reason why only small files and small amount of data is transmitted from Curiosity Rover on Mars to Earth. Firstly, the distance prevents large data from being sent to Earth and secondly, the rover was designed with an objective to investigate the Martian land and not focus on just single, weird object.
But a majority of people around the world rely on images released by NASA to find clues to alien life. The story will remain the same until a manned mission is planned to the red planet.
@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
While many get downhearted when facing adversity in their lives, there are few who manage to focus their energies on something productive. After separation from his wife a couple of years ago, Salt Lake City, Utah resident Jordan Menzel sold his house and was looking for a place to live in with his young daughter.
He found a perfect living space in a vintage 1976 Airstream trailer that was listed on Craigslist. He managed to get it for $4,000 (one-third of the asking price), and immediately started working on it to make a full-time home for him and his young daughter.
1976 Airstream trailer a tiny home
Menzel took nearly three months to convert 29-foot-long Ambassador class Airstream into a cozy home. Firstly, he began renovation by first removing all the shag carpet that was lining the interior. He also removed the cabinetry and redone it using reclaimed pallet wood.
He has created an open-space interior thats spacious and cozy at the same time. Inside, you can see a long table in the living area. This table can be used as a kitchen counter or a work area. There is also a convertible sofa that turns into a comfy bed when needed. Even the dining table can be transformed into a bed to accommodate extra guests. For storage, there are ample cabinets and closets. Moreover, a full-sized fridge is present in the kitchen area for food storage.
There is also a well-sized bathroom thats comfortable to use. This tiny home on wheels has everything thats present in any conventional home. Menzel is definitely enjoying his new life in this cozy mobile home with his daughter, and hes certain on living in this tiny home for the rest of his life.
Its amazing to see how people nowadays are finding freedom in downsizing to a small home. Check out the video below to have a closer look at this tiny trailer home.
Via: Houzz
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The government has confirmed that fish sauce products in the country are safe. Photo by VnExpress
Vinastas's controversial study, which sparked a health scare last month, was flawed and illegally conducted, investigators have concluded.
The Vietnam Standards and Consumers Association, also known as Vinastas, deliberately misled the public with its study on fish sauce with inaccurate claims about dangerous levels of arsenic, the Ministry of Industry and Trade said in a new report.
The report, sent to the government on Monday, summed up findings from an investigation into how the study was conducted.
Released last month, Vinastas's study sparked a health scare across the country and prompted government agencies to take immediate action.
The study claimed that there are high, unsafe levels of arsenic concentrations in fish sauce. The government has several times dismissed such findings as misleading, saying organic arsenic in seafood is safe and must be distinguished from its inorganic form.
In its new report, the trade ministry once again tried to clear the cloud of fear and suspicion over fish sauce products.
The ministry noted that the study was sponsored by other organizations and lacked credibility and transparency. Vietnam does not allow sponsorship for scientific studies that can affect consumer rights.
Vinastas made a vague and misleading conclusion that 70 percent of 150 samples exceeded the Ministry of Health's maximum limit of one milligram of arsenic per liter, without making any distinction between organic and inorganic arsenic, according to the ministry.
The group violated the Law on Food Safety as it circulated false information about food safety, causing damage to production and businesses, the ministry concluded.
The survey was conducted mainly by Vinastass chairman and a number of individuals, under no approval and supervision of the associations authorities, it said.
Vinastas is a non-governmental organization focusing on standardization and consumer protection issues.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc order Vinastas retract all of its false claims and punish those responsible.
The Ministry of Health earlier released its own findings, showing that samples of both traditionally and industrially produced fish sauce have safe levels of organic arsenic. It also said that other metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium in the tested samples are all within the permitted levels.
Fish sauce manufacturing associations in Kien Giang, Binh Thuan and Hai Phong last month sent a formal request to the government asking it to punish whomever gave the industry a bad name.
Fish sauce is an essential element of Vietnamese cuisine. The country consumes around 200 million liters of fish sauce worth between VND7.2-7.5 trillion ($320-333 million), according to the General Statistics Office.
Related news:
> Vietnam probes consumer group for controversial fish sauce quality claims
> Vietnam debunks arsenic fish sauce scare
> Organic arsenic in fish sauce safe for humans: experts
ITB World Travel Trends Report 2016/17
Terror attacks and political unrest had no impact on the overall volume of worldwide outbound trips this year. The global travel industry remains on a growth path, and the number of outbound trips will probably increase by about 4 5 percent next year. These were the conclusions of Rolf Freitag, president of the tourism consultancy IPK International, today (Thursday) at the 24th World Travel Monitor Forum in Pisa, Italy.
24th World Travel Monitor Forum in Pisa: Biggest rise in outbound travel from China and South Korea Destination Asia has highest growth rates ITB Berlin exclusively publishes latest results from the World Travel Monitor in December
Terror attacks and political unrest had no impact on the overall volume of worldwide outbound trips this year. The global travel industry remains on a growth path, and the number of outbound trips will probably increase by about 4 5 percent next year. These were the conclusions of Rolf Freitag, president of the tourism consultancy IPK International, today (Thursday) at the 24th World Travel Monitor Forum in Pisa, Italy.
The number of worldwide outbound trips grew by 3.9 percent in the first eight months of this year, he said. China, with an increase of 18 percent in outbound trips and South Korea with an 11 percent rise, were among the key growth drivers. Results from IPKs trend evaluation show declines in outbound trips from Russia with a 20 percent drop and from Brazil with a 15 percent fall.
Asia, which can celebrate a 9 percent rise in visitors in 2016, counts among the winners this year along with South America, which welcomed about 6 percent more guests from abroad. North America and the Caribbean each attracted 4 percent more travellers, while Europe showed an increase of 2.9 percent.
Political unrest or terror attacks did not affect the overall volume of foreign trips but certainly the choice of destination. Destinations that were perceived as very dangerous lost millions of visitors, while countries with a positive safety image benefitted very heavily from this switch, declared Rolf Freitag during the conference.
In terms of purpose of trip, holidays remain by far the largest segment of outbound trips and grew by 4 percent during the first eight months of 2016. The market shares of business trips as well as of visits to friends and relatives (VFR trips) and other private trips remained about the same. However, they showed divergent growth rates. The number of business trips rose by about 1 percent while VFR and other private trips went up by 9 percent.
The outlook for travel in 2017 is very positive, according to IPK International. The consultancy forecasts an increase in worldwide outbound trips of between 4 and 5 percent. IPK International sees particularly strong growth for outbound trips from Asia, with a likely rise of 6 percent, along with increases of about 5 percent for outbound trips from North, Central and South America and of 4 percent from Europe. The forecasts are based on IPKs World Travel Confidence Index, which is compiled annually based on the views of the survey participants about their travel intentions for the coming 12 months.
At the annual World Travel Monitor Forum in Pisa, initiated at the invitation of consultancy IPK International and supported by ITB Berlin, around 50 tourism experts and academics from around the world present the latest figures and current trends in international tourism.
Alongside special evaluations from IPK Internationals World Travel Monitor, ITB Berlin will publish further key data from the World Travel Monitor as part of the ITB World Travel Trends Report 2016/17 (Link to last years ITB World Travel Trends Report 2015/2016 here: http://www.itb-berlin.de/media/itb/itb_dl_all/itb_presse_all/WTTR_ITB201...)
in early December. The ITB World Travel Trends Report is based on the latest results and presentations at the World Travel Monitor Forum, which is an exclusive meeting where current trends in the travel industry are discussed and predictions for tourism developments are made. The annual results of the World Travel Monitor, which is the largest worldwide study on global travel behaviour, will be presented by IPK International at the ITB Future Day at the ITB Berlin Convention.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), in partnership with Marriott International, ECPAT-USA, and the Polaris Project, this month will begin offering an online training program to help hotel employees identify and respond to human trafficking at hotel properties.
Human trafficking of children and adults continues to be a serious issue for the global hospitality industry, as traffickers sometimes use hotels to carry out their illegal operations. The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), in partnership with Marriott International, ECPAT-USA, and the Polaris Project, this month will begin offering an online training program to help hotel employees identify and respond to human trafficking at hotel properties.
Your Role in Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs,available through the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute(AHLEI), was developed in response to the growing demand from global hospitality brands for an expansion of the online course, The Role of Hospitality in Preventing and Reacting to Child Trafficking, released by AHLEI and ECPAT-USA in January 2014. The expanded training course provides an overview of the issues of human trafficking, suggested protocols for responding to suspicious activity, and signs of trafficking specific to different hospitality positions (in-room staff, restaurant, lobby, and security).
"Training employees in a variety of roles in hotels is critical, so they can be the eyes and ears of identifying potential survivors in one of the most frequently documented human trafficking venues, said Courtney Walsh, Advisory Services, Polaris.
Features of the expanded program include:
- Information on human trafficking of both children and adults for the purposes of both sex and labor
- Globalized information to make the program relevant at properties around the world, not just in the United Statescurrently available in English, the training will eventually be available in 14 additional languages
- Content that is compliant with many new city ordinances and state laws requiring hotels to train their employees on human trafficking.
We are so excited that the update not only broadens training to include both labor and sex trafficking but it is also now relevant on a global level, said Michelle Guelbart, Director of Private Sector Engagement for ECPAT-USA. The hospitality industry has made such headway in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking of children and we know that with this re-launch, we will see even more progress.
The new online training program is just one of the many resources available from AHLA to help its members educate their employees about human trafficking. The Combat Human Trafficking page in the members-only Best Practices Center of AHLAs new website includes links to:
- Human Trafficking Awareness Poster
- Human Trafficking Indicators card
- Department of Homeland Securitys Blue Campaign
- Child Trafficking Webinar for AHLA members
The page also includes links to human trafficking information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Alliance against Human Trafficking, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Your Role in Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs training is available to hotel properties through a license agreement for one year with unlimited users. It is not available for individual sale through AHLEIs online store. For more information, visit www.ahlei.org/humantrafficking or call 1.800.349.0299 or +1.407.999.8100.
A rare Air Jordan 9 is hitting retailers this weekend and it should appeal to every Kobe/Lakers fans, as well as those Randy Moss/Vikings fans.
The Kobe Air Jordan 9 is eerily similar to Kobe Bryants classic PE, which strongly resembled the Jordan PE cleats that Randy Moss laced up during his playing days for the Minnesota Vikings.
Just like Kobes pair, this rendition features purple patent leather and yellow accents, though these bad boys feature the #23 on the heel, as opposed to the #8 that was seen on the Black Mambas PE.
None of that shouldnt deter any Lakers fans from scooping up a pair when they release tomorrow, November 19th for $190.
Select Foot Locker locations will be implementing a Reservation system for the release so check out the Launch Locator to see how your local store is handling the Kobe Air Jordan 9 drop this weekend.
Per Foot Locker;
A new App Launch Reservation procedure is being PILOTED. This launch procedure will allow this release to be reserved through the app. App submissions open Monday 10am ET. Once the countdown clock expires, users who placed a submission will be notified via the app of their outcome. For full App Launch Reservation details see www.footlocker.com/launchreservation IMPORTANT: Once you enter your reservation submission your current VIP status will be locked.
Kobe Jordan 9
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TOKYO - Japanese authorities raided the country's top advertising agency, Dentsu, on Monday as they launched a criminal investigation into the suicide of a 24-year-old employee due to overwork on suspicion of systematic illegal overtime at the company.
Monday's investigation follows the government's recognition in late September that Matsuri Takahashi died of "karoshi," or death from overwork.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said investigators from the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry raided Dentsu's Tokyo headquarters and three branch offices on suspicion the company broke the law by forcing Takahashi to engage in chronic overwork.
Investigators suspect widespread illegal overtime at the company. In Japan, labor officials can conduct criminal investigations and hand over cases to prosecutors for possible indictments.
Karoshi causes hundreds of deaths and illnesses every year in Japan despite efforts to curb overwork.
Labor officials found Takahashi's overtime pushed past 100 hours a month, way over 80 hours, a threshold for karoshi. But she reportedly was asked to report overtime only below the company's own monthly limit, which was 70 hours at the time.
On top of the 40-hour workweek the labor standards law sets for most workers, as an exception that serves as a loophole companies can establish voluntary ceilings for overtime, making the law toothless.
At Dentsu and many other companies, much overtime routinely goes unreported, labor officials say.
Dentsu president Tadashi Ishii said the company will cooperate in the investigation. The company has acknowledged at least two other karoshi cases since the 1990s and says it is trying to prevent overwork, going so far as to turn off lights in its headquarters after 10 p.m.
Suga told reporters the government also will seek to reduce overtime. Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "womenomics" initiatives, the government is urging men to help out more at home, while encouraging businesses to create more job opportunities for women. The strategy, however, seems to be making little headway.
"Nobody should lose their precious lives from overwork," Suga said. "We plan to push for reforms from the workers' point of view."
James MacPherson/STF
SEATTLE - Prosecutors have dropped charges including burglary and sabotage against two filmmakers who recorded a protest at an oil pipeline in Washington state last month.
The filmmakers, Lindsey Grayzel of Portland, Ore., and Carl Davis of Orcas Island, Wash., say they were working on a documentary about climate activist Ken Ward on Oct. 11 when Ward broke through a fence and turned a safety valve along the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline near Burlington. Ward also livestreamed his actions.
The aviation administration wants to lift landing and takeoff fees by 15 percent.
Fares for domestic flights in Vietnam are likely to increase next year following a proposal by the civil aviation agency to raise costs for various airport services by up to 42 percent.
The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) has asked the Ministry of Transport to hike landing and takeoff fees for domestic flights at all airports by 15 percent from next year.
Aviation security and service fees for domestic passengers, which are included in ticket fares, would also go up 42 percent to VND100,000 ($4.50) per passenger at large international airports, such as Cam Ranh, Can Tho, Cat Bi, Da Nang, Noi Bai, Tan Son Nhat and Vinh.
Fees at smaller airports in central Vietnam, including Buon Ma Thuot, Chu Lai, Dong Hoi, Lien Khuong, Phu Bai, Phu Cat, Pleiku and Tho Xuan, as well as Phu Quoc International Airport on the southern resort island, would rise by 33 percent to VND80,000 ($3.60) per person, the CAAV said.
Lai Xuan Thanh, director of the unit, said it made the proposal based on the recommendation of the state-owned Airports Corporation of Vietnam, which said that the landing and takeoff fees for domestic flights at 22 airports nationwide have remained unchanged for the past five years and are just 32-72 percent of the average rate in Southeast Asia.
We think the recommendation is suitable because heated aviation growth has put a lot of pressure on infrastructure, Thanh said, as cited by the Vietnam News Agency.
Landing and takeoff fees for domestic flights in Vietnam currently range between VND1.35 and 3 million ($60-135).
The fees are too low. They fail to account for how much the government has to subsidize the airports, Thanh said.
Carriers said the fee hikes are bound to push ticket prices up, but that may not happen immediately as they do not want to lose customers.
Carriers said they will ask the CAAV to recalculate the hikes to reduce their impact on ticket prices.
Thanh said Vietnamese carriers offer tickets that cost less than the caps set by the government, so there is still room for them to increase.
Vietnams aviation market has been booming in recent years. The number of Vietnamese air passengers jumped by 29 percent on-year to nearly 19 million in the first six months, according to the CAAV.
However, more than 20,000 flights, or 15.8 percent of the total, were delayed, often due to overloaded facilities.
Related news:
> Saigon airport expands international terminal with a place to snooze
> $178-million expansion project takes off at crowded central Vietnam airport
> Vietnam to expand overburdened Tan Son Nhat Airport under new plan
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While most of the world is focused on the final hours of the U.S. soap opera known as Election 2016, the Chinese government made three major decisions that don't bode well for the future of Asia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration fired reform-minded Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei only three years into his five-year term. Lou was one of the architects behind the Chinese economy's transition from exporting cheap goods to producing quality goods for Chinese consumers.
Almost every economist agrees that China's economy must make this move to continue growing. But lending cheap money to export factories that flood the world with under-priced goods is the Communist's only party trick. Moving to a consumer based economy will likely trigger a recession as those bloated factories shut down and workers lose their jobs, something the government fears.
Lou said he could achieve this magic trick by slowing the economy's annual growth rate from 11 percent to 6 percent, still a big number. In recent months, the government has claimed that the Chinese economy is completing this maneuver perfectly, though outside observers are doubtful.
Lou's departure appears to confirm that his plan was not going so well.
Xi knows that political stability relies on economic prosperity, so he wants to boost short-term growth, even if it throws off China's long-range plans. If this is true, then the government will need to provide more cheap cash to more foundering Chinese factories and that increased debt will further increase the risk of a major recession in the world's second-largest economy.
The government's second announcement on Monday will make it more difficult for foreign corporations to maintain trade secrets. The new cybersecurity law requires foreign corporations to throw open their computer systems for the Communist government's inspectors, basically revealing everything.
This fits a pattern of Xi's government aggressively giving Chinese companies trade and intellectual property advantages over foreign-owned corporations. Some analysts see the new cybersecurity law as another effort to seize critical intelligence before driving out foreign competition.
Lastly, Xi's administration on Monday kicked two Hong Kong independence activists out of the city's legislature, a rare intervention in the former British colony's political affairs. Xi has slowly, but steadily eroded Hong Kong's autonomy, which the Communist government had pledged to respect when the British handed over power.
These kinds of decisions would normally generate headlines in major newspapers, but Xi's team is betting they go unnoticed as the U.S. presidential election holds most people's attention. But make no mistake, these steps are part of a long-range plan for Xi to consolidate power and compete with the U.S. for global influence.
Xi has stepped up military spending and more aggressively confronted U.S. forces in recent years while boosting nationalist rhetoric. I believe he's doing this to rally Chinese citizens around the flag as the economy falters, one of the oldest tricks in the dictator's handbook. But he's also trying to boost his popularity and move the Communist Party from a collective leadership model to a strong-man model.
Next year, five of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest government body, will retire and more than 60 percent of the 376-seat Central Committee will be replaced. Monday's announcements help clear the way for him to appoint his allies to those empty seats.
None of this bodes well for anybody. A militaristic China is a threat to its neighbors, creates a potential peer-competitor to the U.S. and sets back the hopes of Chinese citizens for a more liberalized economy and greater political freedoms.
Keep your eye on international news over the next few days, U.S. elections are a favorite time for repressive governments to make their moves.
Chris Shepherd just wanted to raise a lot of money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. So he invited some friends (who just happened to be some of the hottest chefs in the country) for a cookout on Sunday called Southern Smoke. And those friends not only served up some great food, they helped the event raise more than last year's inaugural Southern Smoke. A lot more, just as Shepherd had planned.
When the smoke cleared, a check for $281,000 about $100,000 more than 2015 was presented to the MS Society.
"Everyone came out. It was such a good show of what Houston can do," Shepherd said.
Southern Smoke, a rambling street fair that took over the Underbelly and the Hay Merchant campus, attracted about 1,200 for an afternoon of Southern fare, beer, wine, cocktails and live music. Foodies were no doubt attracted to the culinary star power of participating chefs using smoke and live fire to create a variety of dishes. Those chefs included Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin; pitmaster Rodney Scott of Scott's Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, S.C.; Ashley Christensen of Poole's Diner in Raleigh, N.C.; Ryan Prewitt of Peche Seafood Grill in New Orleans; Stephen Stryjewski of Cochon in New Orleans; and Tandy Wilson of City House in Nashville. They were joined by the HOUBBQ Collective, which included Shepherd, Terrence Gallivan and Seth-Siegel-Gardner of The Pass & Provisions, Justin Yu of Oxheart and Ryan Pera of Coltivare. There were seven James Beard Award winners among the chefs.
Southern Smoke guests came hungry. There were epic lines for Franklin's famous brisket and for Scott's whole hog. The Collective dazzled with numerous dishes that included uni pizza, fish tacos, and char siu banh mi.
For some of the chefs it was their first visit to Houston, including Christensen (who will collaborate with Pera on a dinner on Wednesday at Revival Market inspired by her new cookbook), and Wilson, both of whom were treated to a culinary tour of Houston led by Shepherd.
"I've eaten this city through Chris' eyes. Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian we had everything," Wilson said, adding that he didn't hesitate for a second to accept Shepherd's invitation to participate in Southern Smoke. "It's an extended expression of what we do as chefs taking care of our guests and taking care of our community."
Franklin, a second-timer at Southern Smoke, went through 32 whole briskets. He was out of food by 5:20 p.m., only about two hours into the event.
"It was just as awesome as last year," Franklin said after serving the last person the final shreds of meat he had to offer. "I'm just excited to be a part of it. It's so sweet."
This year's tally toppled last year's $184,000 primarily because of the silent auction, which brought in about $150,000 this year compared to $70,000 last year. Shepherd created Southern Smoke after his friend, sommelier Antonio Gianola, was diagnosed with MS.
As the first election results roll in, and the rest of the world sits glued to screens, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry will be in the air, en route to Antarctica.
But before you jump to any conclusions, his spokesman wants to assure you - it is the weather that necessitates the timing. It has nothing to do with the election.
Antarctica's summer is exceedingly brief and provides the only window for travel. The visit will also give Kerry a chance to get a firsthand look at climate change's intensifying effects on the southernmost continent before attending a major climate conference in Morocco later this month. He will be the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the land of ice, penguins and research outposts.
Kerry "will meet with scientists and researchers studying a wide range of subjects in the extreme south of the planet, including climate change," according to the State Department. "He will also see firsthand part of the recently established Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area," which came into existence last week, is the world's largest, and was pushed heavily by Kerry and the Obama administration.
Kerry voted early in his home state of Massachusetts. He has privately made comments about how this year's rancorous election has made his job as America's top diplomat much more difficult. Some jokingly took the news that Kerry would be not only in the air but on his way to the South Pole as evidence that those who could get as far away from the election's aftermath as they can were doing so.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, tweeted, "Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Antarctica today. He must know something."
But Kerry's stated goal is draw attention to the diminution of polar ice sheets and the perils of rising sea levels that ensue. He led the U.S. delegation in helping draft the historic Paris climate agreement last year, and he visited Greenland earlier this year for much the same reason that he is now going to the opposite end of the earth.
Oct. 28
At 8:26 am, an officer observed two male subjects to be behind a dumpster of a local business in the 5300 block of Kirby. Upon further investigation it was discovered that one of the individuals was in possession of a green leafy substance that the individuals advised that were going to smoke. Pending results on the substance a warrant will be filed at a later date for arrest.
At 3:16 pm, officers were dispatched to a report of suspicious activity where a vehicle was following another vehicle for an extended amount of time. The reportee called 911 and advised that a vehicle had been following her, the reportee pulled into the West University Place Police Department parking lot, where the suspicious vehicle was stopped by police. There were three male subjects inside the suspicious vehicle, and all three were subsequently arrested. The driver was arrested for driving without a driver's license, and multiple warrants with Houston Police Department, also has prior arrest history including Unlawful carry of weapon and forgery government financial institution. The passengers also had multiple Houston Police warrants, also has prior arrest history including Evading, Aggravated Assault with Deadly Weapon (2x), Unlawful carry of weapon and possession with intent. The third occupant was brought in for an investigative hold/ further questioning, this subject has a prior arrest history including Burglary of Habitation (4x), possession of controlled substance (2x), possession of marijuana and forgery government financial institution.
Oct. 29
At 9:29 am, an officer was dispatched to the 2600 block of Sunset in regard to a report of a suspicious vehicle that had been parked in front of a resident's home for about a week. Upon running the license plate, and VIN number attached to the vehicle it was discovered that the vehicle had been reported to be stolen. The vehicles owner was contacted, and the vehicle was recovered.
An officer was dispatched to a business located in the 5800 block of Kirby in regard to a minor accident/FSGI that had already occurred. Upon arrival, it was discovered that the vehicle had sustained damage to the passenger side rear door and passenger side rear quarter panel.
Oct. 30
At 9:38 am, an officer was dispatched to a residence in the 5300 block of Westchester in regard to a report of suspicious activity. Upon arrival it was discovered that an unknown male subject had walked up to the reportee's home and used a small device to take a picture of the front yard/ home. The reportee advised that he witnessed the individual take the picture as he was leaving the home.
At 10:52 PM, an officer observed a vehicle travelling northbound in the 6400 block of Buffalo Speedway with defective taillights. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the driver had many traffic violations. The driver was arrested for the offenses. This subject has prior arrest history including theft (2x)
Oct. 31
Officers were dispatched to an assault that had occurred in the 4000 block of Bellaire. The reportee advised that a male suspect tried to fight a store employee. The suspect left the store east bound on Bellaire. Officers searched the area but were unable to locate the suspect.
Nov. 1
An officer was dispatched to the West U PD lobby in reference to a Burglary of motor vehicle. The officer arrived and made contact with the complainant who stated that an unknown person(s) had entered her vehicle without her permission and removed a laptop.
An Officer was dispatched to the 6300 block of Mercer in regards to a complaint of a sharp item found inside of child's Halloween candy. During the investigation the officer found a piece of candy with a sewing needle protruding from it.
An Officer was dispatched to 5800 block of Lake in reference to a found bag in the roadway.
Nov. 3
At 10:26 am, officers were dispatched to a residence in the 4100 block of Lehigh in regard to a report of a verbal disturbance in progress.
An Officer observed a vehicle traveling westbound with no headlights on. The officer initiated a traffic stop and upon further investigation, it was discovered the driver was driving while license invalid. The driver was subsequently arrested for the offense of driving while license invalid. This subject has prior arrest history including burglary of motor vehicle.
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You've just landed in Beijing, Rio de Janeiro or Christchurch, New Zealand, and you're greeted at the airport by a clutch of adoring locals.
What is the polite way to greet them? Do you bow, or proffer your hand, or prepare to envelop the assembled strangers in an American-style embrace?
More important: To kiss or not to kiss?
The world may be increasingly globalized, but when it comes to greeting practices, local customs still prevail - and things can get awkward when, say, a hug-loving American businessman meets his Japanese counterpart for the first time. (Best just to bow.)
If you find yourself facing a group of native Maoris in New Zealand, you'll want to steel yourself for a traditional nose greeting, which involves touching snouts to one another's foreheads.
In Rio, local convention dictates three cheek kisses.
But a few hours' drive to the south in Sao Paulo, the single peck prevails.
In Beijing, the locals generally prefer a nod and a smile.
In the interests of international fellowship and peace, here is an incomplete guide to world greetings.
Air kisses come with their own set of rules
In much of Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, air kissing between strangers is common, but each nation, and in some cases each region within a country, may have its own habits.
Argentine men will cheek-kiss one another, but only if they are friends of friends. In most of the Arab world, a double air kiss is obligatory, though only between people of the same sex.
Things can get complicated in France.
Expect anywhere from four kisses (in Nantes) down to two (in Toulouse) or just a single peck (in Brest).
The general rule is that lips should never touch cheek, though a faint smooching sound is expected.
In most of Northern Europe, a firm handshake will usually suffice between strangers, and a single kiss is considered fine for friends.
"Firm" doesn't begin to describe the obligatory handshake between two unacquainted men in Russia, which often can feel like a test of strength with near bone-crushing results.
And there's a taboo about shaking hands across the threshold of a home: One should wait until you are both on the same side of the door.
When kisses are called for, where do you aim? In Portugal, the kissing usually progresses from left to right, but in Strasbourg, France, it's right to left.
Above all, please keep those hands to yourself
Kissing or touching strangers is frowned upon in Asia.
The customary greeting in Thailand involves a bow with the palms pressed together, as if in prayer; similar gestures are common from Cambodia to Indonesia.
In India, a limp handshake between men is fine, but don't try it with a member of the opposite sex.
The traditional way to greet an Indian elder is to bend down and touch his feet.
Tibetans have one of the most unusual traditional gestures for greeting others: They stick out their tongues - though always from a safe distance.
WASHINGTON - Hey, isn't that ... FBI Director James B. Comey digging into some Tex-Mex and a margarita after an especially tough day at the office on Sunday night?
We've all been there, sort of. After a brutal 9-to-5 the best medicine is usually a stiff drink.
On Sunday afternoon, Comey announced that the FBI's unprecedented "October surprise" - yet another cache of emails connected to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton - wasn't that surprising after all. Those "new" emails (many of them duplicates from an earlier probe into the Democratic presidential nominee's private server), which Comey said investigators had "worked around the clock" to comb through, wouldn't change the bureau's previous July decision not to seek charges against Clinton. The entire nine-day fiasco had folks on both sides of the aisle calling for the FBI chief's walking papers.
After a day like that, Comey was spotted grabbing dinner and a "giant" margarita at El Tio Tex Mex Grill in McLean, Virginia, on Sunday evening. Hey, the guy's gotta unwind somehow.
At around 6 p.m. our tipster clocked what looked like a Secret Service agent (black suit, earpiece, bulging muscles) casing the inside of the restaurant. Minutes later, Comey, his wife, one of his five children and two more security guys arrived. This being Washington (or at least its environs) other diners definitely recognized the embattled FBI director - but no one asked for a photo, we're told. According to the restaurant, which wasn't sure if the Comeys were regulars, it was a "casual" night, "nothing fancy."
"To think," said our source, "we went out to dinner for a break from all the election madness."
While much of the public discussion about what to bring to the polls has centered around photo identification in recent weeks, voters will have to remember to wear proper attire when they cast their ballots Tuesday.
Poll workers will be keeping an eye on voters' clothing as part of their efforts to prevent electioneering sartorial or otherwise at ballot locations.
In other words, leave the elephant and donkey T-shirts at home.
By state law, voters are not allowed to visibly show support for specific candidates or political parties. And electioneering at the polls, which is forbidden across the nation, can extend far beyond obvious partisan symbols such as the "Make America Great Again" hats or "I'm with her" shirts, according to the Texas Secretary of State's office.
"There was someone a couple years ago that had a shirt that said 'vote the bible,' so it wasn't endorsing a particular candidate or particular party, but nonetheless, it was interpreted as electioneering," said Texas Secretary of State Spokesperson Alicia Pierce. "Because we can't anticipate any scenario at a poll, election judges have broad discretion in determining what electioneering is."
Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, whose office is in charge of election operations in the county, agreed saying where the line exists is left up to election judges at every polling site.
Symbols from organizations or unions that are associated with a certain party can be barred, even if clothing or signs do not specifically cite a party or candidate. An election judge can make a call based on information they know about a group, if they believe attire represents a political party in any way or if a voter makes a complaint.
"We're here to take care of our voters," Stanart said. "We want everything to be non-partisan."
Under Texas law, electioneering is "posting, use, or distribution of political signs or literature" at a voting location or within a surrounding 100-foot perimeter.
Violation is a Class C misdemeanor, but people typically are given an opportunity to turn offending attire inside-out or cover it with a jacket before voting.
Stanart said election judges were given a handbook that describes the law, but were told to base their decisions on common sense and personal knowledge.
Pierce said the state did not give any added direction to counties regarding electioneering.
"We have not added any extra emphasis with this election," she said. "It's going to be consistent with what we've done."
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6 p.m. - Fairfield Church of Christ at 20302 Chappell Knoll
Nikesa Smith, an 18-year-old high school senior, proudly affixed the "I voted" sticker to her shirt as she left this west side polling place.
It was her first time to vote, and she was especially excited to help decide a presidential race .She voted the straight Democratic ticket.
Her mother, a naturalized U.S. Citizen from Tobago, voted last week but agreed to meet Nikeda and help her.
"It's real important to vote, especially in this election," Nikeda Smith said. "I know kids feel discouraged - they feel like they are picking the lesser of two evils - but I know you can't complain unless you lend your voice."
5:45 - Vietnamese Community Center
Houston's diversity was on display at this southwest polling place, the Vietnamese Community Center. Election clerk Francisco Rodriguez said the four poll workers can provide information in English, Spanish, Vietnamese or Chinese - the four most common languages spoken in Harris County.
Election judge Mary Champion Closner said the location had seen 341 ballots cast as of 5:15 p.m. In the corner of the community center, making a high-pitched squeak every few minutes, sat a parrot in a spacious cage.
5 p.m. - Baytown
Cars packed the small church parking lot as voters streamed in and out. Inside, a poll worker said one of the voting booths' earphones malfunctioned in the morning, but the issue was fixed and there had been no other problems.
Sebastian Herrera/Houston Chronicle
First-time voter Maria Guerra, an 82-year-old Mexican immigrant, said she came to vote because she just gained her citizenship a year ago, but also because she wanted to show that votes like hers matter.
"Trump says Mexicans are criminals, but we are not," she said. "I voted Clinton because she likes the Hispanics."
Voter Edgar Borunda, a 26-year-old Baytown resident whose parents are Mexican immigrants, said Trump's talk about immigration has been misinterpreted. He voted straight ticket Republican.
"It's time for change in the White House," he said. "I liked what Trump said in the debates. He's a business man, so he knows the bottom line."
City Council District 3 candidate Charles Johnson stood outside of Coady Baptist Church in Baytown as he greeted voters and handed them blue campaign flyers.
Feet away, volunteers for Johnson's campaign wore white and green T-shirts with Johnson's campaign slogan, "IT," or "Improving Together." Volunteers representing Spencer Carnes and Teclesha Blanchard, both also candidates for city council district 3, also stood nearby and handed campaign flyers.
Baytown voters have to vote individually for their city council election - a straight ticket vote won't do it. Hence the extra effort.
"I've gone to six voting locations so far today," Johnson said. "People have seen me out a lot before. This is just an extra time of seeing me."
5 p.m. -West Gray Recreation Center.
Julia Maldonado, a Democratic candidate for judge of the 507th Family District Court greeted voters at the West Gray Recreation Center at 5 p.m. She had spent the day going from polling to polling place reminding people not to forget to vote for judges - not just for president.
Maldonado supports Hillary Clinton and said she fears that "Trump has been so radical, so out there that he has revived the violent people."
She's anxious about tonight's results, but hopes Clinton as well as Democratic down ballot candidates will win in Harris County.
-Ileana Najarro
3 p.m. - A complaint at Millsap Elementary
Shan Burks, an African-American woman and military veteran, complained she wasn't treated nicely at this Cypress polling site.
Burks,44,who left the U.S.Marine Corps in 2013, said voting officials could not find her name on the list of registered voters even though she pointed it out to them. They then closely scrutinized her military identification card, which carries her photo.
"They weren't very nice, but they were nice to everybody else who came in after me, " Burks said."it wasn't very hospitable in there at all."
Ann Pavalock, presiding election judge at Pct. 481, said poll workers sometimes struggle to find names on the list of registered voters. She stressed that election workers treat everyone equally.
"That's not the case, " said Pavalock of Burks' complaint. "We're friendly to everybody. We try to do our best to make the voter feel welcome."
There was at least one African-American poll worker in the polling place.
3:30 p.m. - Relief reported to long lines and snafus at Birnham Woods Elementary in Montgomery County
A 90-minute line basically disappeared after Montgomery County officials fixed a malfunctioning check-in machine that had slowed voters with last names A-L. The fix came about 2 p.m. By 3:30, the busy Montgomery County polling place had seen 698 ballots cast.
-Andrew Kragie
3:30 p.m. - Quiet at River Oaks Recreation Center
There were more basketball players and children on the swing sets than voters by 3:30.
Ryan Crews, 24, stopped to vote for Gary Johnson because his views and those of the Libertarian party align. Both seek less government oversight. Crews said he's glad to see the election end and won't miss the vitriol he saw Democrats and Republicans exchange via social media.
3 p.m. - Record turnout at Clear Lake City Church of Christ
In the 15 years she's worked elections, 87-year-old Dee Carroll said this is the largest turnout she's ever seen. By 3 p.m., almost 400 people had voted at this suburban site.
One was 24-year-old Clear Lake resident Darian Guillory, a retail store worker who said he voted straight Democrat, but remains nervous about the country's future regardless of who becomes president.
"It was harder for me to vote this year because there's been bad stuff on both sides," he said. "This election is bad for the country either way."
Traffic was light in the afternoon. But Carroll said she and other poll workers were bracing for an expected evening rush.
-Sebastian Herrera
3 pm - Millsap Elementary - Voter hopes for an end to the vitriol
Jenna Rust, who has spent her career in the restaurant industry, said all the vitriol in this year's campaign did not deter her from voting Tuesday at this Cypress ISD school.
"This always ends up happening, but what I do is focus on what I want out of my presidential candidate," Rust said. "You can't help what they say about each other."
Rust, 34, backed Donald Trump because she said she believes he'll do better at handling immigration and changing Obamacare.
-James Pinkerton
2-2:30 - Voting at an international hostel in Houston
Mahmoud Ahmad, 27, a post grad medical student from Egypt, got a front row seat for the U.S. election when he learned the hostel where he was staying would double as a polling place Tuesday.
At The Morty Rich Hostel in Montrose, 324 votes had been cast by 1:30 p.m, according to notice posted outside.
Ahmad expected chaos, with vocal supporters yelling outside. Instead, he found locals calmly trickling through. "I was suprised," Ahmad said. "It's such a simple process for Americans. Just come in, vote and get out no problem."
James Lawson, 54, came to the hostel to vote with his husband, whom he legally married last year. Lawson voted for Clinton and when asked why he pointed to his forest green baseball hat with a stitched rainbow flag.
"We worked hard for [our marriage]," Lawson said, "We can't let someone take it away."
He said he hopes the rest of the country will reject open racism, misogyny and bigotry and vote for Clinton too.
-Ileana Najarro
2 p.m. in Humble - A departed father's voice still guides his son
As college student Danny Barrera Polomino prepared to cast his ballot at the pubic library, the first member of his family to participate in a U.S. election, he believed he could hear the voice of his deceased father: "If you want your voice to be heard, you have to vote."
Polomino, 19, who was voting before heading to class at Lone Star College, said he felt both the weight of responsibility and the guidance of his father, who arrived in America under the administration of Bill Clinton but never had the right to vote here.
"There is a lot of motivation to be here," he said as he waited to vote behind a dozen others. Polomino, who is studying marketing, said he felt that he was casting a vote both for the older generation of his family and for his younger sister, still in high school. He refused to name his choice.
"Whoever wins will be in office for at least the next four years," he said. "That is lot of policy, a lot of administration."
-Dane Schiller
12:45-2 p.m. - Things got odd at this Imperial Oaks polling site
It was a little after 1 p.m. when an anti-Democrat activist carrying a visible hand-gun and standing next to an insulting sign was questioned by police.
The man was detained for a few minutes in a squad car. But by 2 p.m., Chief Deputy Matthew Rodrigue with the Montgomery County Precinct 3 constable's office said the man would not be charged because the district attorney's office lacked evidence about whether the man, who did not give his name, had violated a Texas law banning firearms within 100 feet of a polling location.
Meanwhile, another man arrived dressed up in a Make America Great hat, a Trump mask and an old-school rocker outfit and danced around the polling place chanting "Build that wall!" and "Trump, Trump, Trump!" The man described himself as a small businessman, but declined to identify himself.
- Andrew Kragie
Andrew Kragie/Houston Chronicle
Noon sees many first-time voters at San Jacinto College
A steady handful of voters passed through doors into the college's library, a voting center on Tuesday.
"This election has dragged on forever," said first-time voter Bianca Smith, a 19-year-old San Jacinto College student and Pearland resident. "I'm voting for Hillary because she fits my needs in the woman area."
Voter Greg Rushing, a 30-year-old locksmith from La Porte, said he supported Donald Trump for president because Trump will bring job growth.
"Trump has his problems, but he's the better one out of the two," Rushing said. "Hillary is not trustworthy. I'm willing to look more past his issues than hers."
Meanwhile, another first-time voter Johan John, an 18-year-old University of Houston student and Indian immigrant, said he voted for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.
"I can't agree with Democrats based on their spending (of money), and with the Republican candidate, my beef is with Trump as a person," John said. "A lot of things he said are impossible. He doesn't represent the values that are ideal to this country."
Juan Garcia, a 19-year-old San Jacinto College student, said he didn't vote at all because none of the major party presidential candidates motivated him to do so.
"Hillary is crooked and Trump's actions are bad," he said.
- Sebastian Herrera
Noon - First-time voter's anguish at St. Peters United Methodist Church in Katy
Bailey Adams, 20, said she found her experience stressful and upsetting, after voting for the very first time Tuesday. "Half of my family is Democrat and half are Republican. It's my first presidential election. "
Adams, an education major at Lone Star College in the Cypress Fairbanks areas, was put off by the ejection of protesters at the various political rallies and conventions.
"It was just a lot of kicking people out, I noticed that," she said.
In the end, she chose Donald Trump and cited immigration as an issue that swayed her.
"He wants to build a wall and he wants to clean up the immigration system, " Adams said." In Texas, there are a lot of people coming in - his policies would make it easier to keep people from sneaking in"
-James Pinkerton
Noon - Confusion at Kashmere Multi-Service Center
On Tuesday morning, several voters expressed confusion about which polling location was responsible for their precinct.
"I feel like a lot of people would not have voted if weren't here to give them the right information," said Serena Ahmed, a worker with Election Protections, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to voter education based at the center.
Poll workers responsible for precincts 042, 406 and 373 said many voters were being redirected because they'd arrived at the wrong polling place. Poll workers also expressed some frustration because the list of precincts and polling locations they received in election kits was incomplete and they did not know where to send some confused voters.
Workers identified at least 10 precincts with no polling location listed. Poll workers said they were able to determine correction polling locations for at least one precinct, but it took hours before they could get a clear answer from the County Clerk's office on the others.
Count Clerk Stan Stanart said that all precincts have been assigned a polling location. He said some lists were created on Thursday that had not been updated, but that election judges and voters could go to Harrisvotes.org to determine where they should be casting ballots or call the County Clerk's office for that information.
"There is no reason that they can't find out," he said.
11:45- 12:15 - Delays reported at Birnham Woods Elementary School in Spring
Election Judge Jack Price confirmed this Montgomery County polling site had trouble all morning confirming registrations for voters with last names A-L via electronic databases. At 11:30 a.m. workers were still manually checking voters' registrations, slowing down the process and leading to a line of more than 50 people spilling out of the school gym into a hallway.
One voter, who gave his name as Hillary Clinton, walked away angrily. He grumbled about the line and said he would not wait because "idiots" could not make machines work.
A few minutes later another walked off, grumbling that he was too sick to stand in line.
Election clerk James Smith said poll workers had requested new machinery but did not know when it would arrive. He speculated that it might be a countywide issue with Montgomery County's registration system for voters with last names A-L.
Cynthia Ferguson, 67, said she timed her wait on her phone. The stopwatch showed 1 hour and 34 minutes. She said she saw four people leave the line during the time.
Andrew Kragie
A first-time voter, Jade Goodwin, said she waited two hours.
The recent Connecticut transplant said, "This was one of the scariest elections in all my years as an adult." She said her vote for president was a choice between two evils; she supported the GOP nominee because she thinks he will bring business efficiency to issues like healthcare and appoint the right people to government posts.
Voters with last names after L seem to be having a smooth process.
On his way into the polling location, 44-year-old Air Force veteran Carlos Martinez said he is a Republican focused on the military and veterans. But in this presidential election, he said he can't bring himself to support the GOP nominee.
Even in line, he said he was unsure for whom he'll vote, but he was heavily considering the Libertarian.
County voter registration officials did not immediately respond to phone calls about the problem. There were no problem at another near-by Imperial Oaks polling site, one voter who said she was A-L and got in and out in 20 minutes even during the lunch hour.
-Andrew Kragie
11:30 - noon Many students voting provisionally at University of Houston Student Center North
Rosa Tang, 27, a senior majoring in architecture at the University of Houston, voted for the first time today. She became a citizen at the end of last year after moving from England.
She voted for Hillary Clinton because she believes her to be the better candidate for the country--and for her own future. "Not initially being an American, I think I would have more job opportunities through her," Tang said.
When asked how she felt about the election, she nervously laughed. "It's not over yet. We have to see how the night goes," Tang said.
As the lunch hour drew closer, small groups of students gathered inside the building to vote. Many others milling about discussed homework and hung out with friends.
Some students left the polls disgruntled after being told if they wanted their ballot to be counted today, they would need to vote back home in some cases as far away as Cypress and Kingwood.
Ileana Najarro
Or they could cast a provisional ballot like Rebecca Kay, 18, from Longview, TX. She did so and was told her vote would be counted within 30 days. Unlike peers who decided to forego the hassle of a provisional ballot, Kay a freshman acting major, was excited as a first-time voter who cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton.
"I feel verified as a member of society," Kay said.
Ileana Najarro/Houston Chronicle
Billy Russom, 18 from Kingwood, was another student who voted provisionally because of a difference in his home address registration and the campus polling site. Russom said he voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein because he felt his vote for Hillary wouldn't count in a red state like Texas.
-Ileana Najarro
11:30 - Quiet at Pasadena Mission Center
Only a handful of people were present to vote as noon approached. Poll workers said there have been no issues and that lines had been short.
"There has been a lot of bashing and negativity on social media during this election," said 37-year-old voter Elva Aluniz, a Pasadena resident. "There's been a lot more involvement from people and a lot more opinions and people speaking out. I'm glad it will be over soon."
Aluniz also said she knows several people who didn't know where to go and vote and knew people who are giving others rides to the polls.
Two Ron Hickman supporters waved campaign signs as voters drove into the small worship center tucked into this Pasadena neighborhood. Several Hickman signs were planted in the grass near "Never Trump" signs.
-Sebastian Herrera
10:40 a.m. -Trump supporters among those voting at James Taylor High School in Katy
Damian Barletta, 24 said he voted for Donald Trump because he's looking for lower taxes.
"I'm a brand new employee in the workforce' said Barletta, 24, who graduated last May with a master's degree in business management. "I'm not in a position to pay one-third of my income in taxes."
Barletta said he's voted before and he didn't vote a straight GOP ticket this time, but supported Trump because he figures he'd be in the 29 percent tax bracket under a Democratic administration.
Patrick Cook, a 64-year-old retired oil and gas executive, voted the straight GOP ticket.
Sporting a ponytail of silver hair, Cook didn't look like a died-in -the-wool conservative. He said he's hoping that New York real estate promoter Donald Trump will return the Republican party to its core values and prevent Hillary Clinton from appointing a Supreme Court justice.
"I'll put it this way, in my mind this has been a year of transition, and hopefully the transition has been made," Cook said. "This has not been been a fun year-this is the first I voted against somebody and not for somebody.
Voting was fairly light at the Katy west side polling site, but election officials said turnout could still be record breaking. Election judge Chris Abel said 55 percent of the precinct's 4,600 registered voters voted early, meaning it would not take much to break the record of 82 percent who cast ballots in 2008.
"If we have a heavy day we'll blow by that," Abel said.
-James Pinkerton
10:35 a.m. - Denver Harbor Hispanic immigrants explain why they support Trump
As Bingo numbers were called one side of a Denver Harbor community center and election ballots were cast on other, it was anyone's guess who would be the big winners Tuesday.
Guadalupe Guajardo, 72, voted for the first time in her life, as she reflected on memories going back to picking onions in the fields of South Texas when she was a little girl. The native-Texan said she'd never been moved by a presidential election quite like this one and felt it was time to jump in, with a bit of a twist.
"We are with Trump all the way," she said in Spanish of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. "I don't trust that Hilary," she said of Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton.
As she left the city of Houston's Mult-Services Center, Guajardo said Trump might make some uncomfortable, but he speaks the truth and you know where he stands on the issues because he'll tell you while looking you in the eye.
"He doesn't back off what he says," chimed in her son, Jay, forklift operator who took his mother to the polls. "As ugly as it sounds, the truth hurts."
Both said they had no problem defying any notions that Hispanics were overwhelmingly opposed to Trump over his vow to build a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"We've never asked for help from nobody," she said, noting that despite bouts with poverty and her struggles that continue today she has refused food stamps and other such programs.
Her son, Jay Guajardo said he's seen too many people in the neighborhood as well as his own relatives, abuse Social Security, food stamps and other social support programs.
"I know it sounds like hatred, but it is reality," he said of he and his mother's frustrations and their decision to take a stand and vote for Trump.
"I understand that Trump might not help much, but I've never benefited from anything," said Jay, who started working when he was 15 at the aquarium in downtown Houston. "This is about our country, this is not about hating."
-Dane Schiller
Sebastian Herrera/Houston Chronicle
10:30 a.m. - No issues for voters at Primera Iglesia Bautista in Pasadena
A handful of people streamed in and out of the basketball gym where voting booths were set up inside this Pasadena church. Multiple campaign signs, mostly from down ballot Democrats, were anchored on the grass outside.
A poll worker who did not want to be identified said there have been no issues so far, and she has seen more voters come by today than she saw when she worked the same site in 2012.
Jose Guadalupe, a 58-year-old Mexican immigrant and Pasadena resident came out to support both his local and presidential picks.
"Thank God this will be over today," he said. "I want immigration reform and amnesty for immigrants - that's why I came here... I think Clinton will do that. I have seen more Hispanics be interested in this election."
But he's also supporting a Latino who's running for sheriff against the Republican incumbent. "I want Ed Gonzales because I have gotten robbed before outside of my apartment. We need more police presence."
-Sebastian Herrera
Ileana Najarro/Houston Chronicle
9:45 a.m. - Confusion awaited one long-time voter at Palm Center polling site, Houston
Tanuqe Smith, 45, rolled up to the polls in her motorized wheelchair, only to roll back out soon after, unable to cast her ballot.
"I am completely aggravated," Smith said. She lives around the corner and said she has voted at the same location for the last two presidential elections and even in local races. She added that she brought the same ID she's used before, but said poll workers told her she's not on the list. Instead, she was told to go to an elementary school.
"Not only is it an inconvenience but they're not taking into account my time and effort to come vote," Smith said.
Yet she remains undeterred. "Honestly, it's only made me more excited to go vote for Hillary Clinton, whatever it takes," she said with a smile.
Craig Wilson, a volunteer with the Texas Organizing Project said he's has several voters ask for his help in finding the right polling location after being turned away.
-Ileana Najarro
10 a.m. -Long wait at Mission Bend Elementary, Fort Bend County
Patty Nguyen waited about 45 minutes to vote at Mission Bend Elementary. She said the the wait was longer than in years past. There were reports that some voters who had experienced problems at George Bush High School had been re-routed there.
"It's what you do," she said, declining to say which candidate earned her vote. "You wait. You vote."
-Kim McGuire
9:30 -Machines break at George Bush High School in Fort Bend County
In sprawling Fort Bend County, voters were delayed from casting their ballots due to machine problems at this high school, the polling place for 3,715 registered voters.
A volunteer said only one machine was working at 7 a.m. By 8:20, the problem appeared to be fixed. "Some people just gave up," she said. "Others said they would try to come back after work."
The problem was reported to the Houston Chronicle via ProPublica's Electionland Project.
Fort Bend Democratic Party Chairwoman Cynthia Ginyard was at the school monitoring the situation. She could not confirm when the machines were fixed or how many voters left.
"That's always the underlying concern," she said of the possibility of voters who might not cast a ballot because of machine malfunctions.
Ginyard, wearing a button that said "Nasty Women Vote" was headed to Mission Bend Elementary where some people went after experiencing problems at George Bush High School.
-Kim McGuire
9 a.m. - Poorly marked polling site at portable in Helms Elementary School in the Heights
Voters wandered onto school grounds, looking for the poorly marked polling location inside a school portable. Claire Wilson walked through the school gate.
"Honestly I'm just trying to get through the presidential election," she said before walking up the portable steps. "I'd rather be at the dentist."
Wilson said she grew up conservative in West Texas and her family usually votes Republican. She said she'll be voting for Donald Trump, but only reluctantly. She figures he'll be more fiscally conservative and might lower taxes on her family's oil holdings.
Earlier in the day, another voter reported she got incorrect information when she asked about voting with alternative forms of ID. The complaint came to the Houston Chronicle from ProPublica's Electionland Project.
Election judge Linda Smith repeatedly and incorrectly said voters can only cast a provisional ballot and then must show proof of identity to county officials within a few days. She did not show any awareness of the alternate route to prove identity and cast a regular ballot. However, Smith also told a reporter that none of the 96 voters at her Helms Elementary polling location as of 9:30am had lacked a photo ID.
When told about the complaint and Smith's position, Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said he called Smith and discussed the requirements. "She has a perfect understanding of the rules ," Stanart said.
There are seven different IDs one can use if a voter does not have an acceptable photo ID and cannot obtain one due to a reasonable impediment:
a valid voter registration certificate, certified original birth certificate, a current utility bill, a bank statement, a government check, a paycheck or a government document with name and address.
A voter must then fill out a Reasonable Impediment Declaration.
"The provisional ballot is only for those who do not possess one of those seven forms of acceptable ID," Stanart added.
-Andrew Kragie and Matt Dempsey
8:30-45 a.m. -Voters ready for a long campaign to end at Sunnyside Park Community Center.
Under a muggy sky, mostly African American voters trickled into this community center.
Alize Pointer, 18, was beaming as she left the polling place, it was her first time voting. Her mother, Brandy Pointer, 33, barely cracked a smile.
"I didn't want to go vote," Brandy said. "Neither one of [the candidates] is going to be good."
"But you voted," Alize said as she playfully tapped her mother's shoulder, her smile never wavering.
Alize said she's been following the polls and felt it was important to cast her vote. She convinced her mother to cast her own ballot. Alize finds Hillary Clinton to have much more political experience than Donald Trump and is excited of the prospect of the first female president.
While her mother agrees Clinton has more experience, electing the first woman president doesn't appeal to her as strongly.
"I don't care if it's a man, woman, black, white or even a dog. So long as the president does right by us," Brandy said, referring the to the African American community.
Andre Moore, 50, has had enough of this year's presidential election.
"It's really been a headache," Moore said. "You've got these two candidates slinging mud at each other. We don't care about that, we care about what they're going to do for our country."
Yet relief has yet to come. Moore said he plans to watch the results at home tonight with his wife and children and is anxious about the outcome. He said voted for Hillary because he believes she is the better candidate. But he's not sure she'll win.
- Ileana Najarro
8 a.m. - Greater Lighthouse Church
South of the Loop, voters trickled into the Greater Lighthouse Church, where election clerk Elijah Rivers, carrying a placard with acceptable forms of ID, greeted them with a handshake and a gesture toward the entrance. About 30 or 40 came in the first hour, he said.
Rivers chuckled as he asked one voter if she's glad to have it over with. "Oh yes," said Wanda Loveless, who was voting before heading to work at Texas Children's Hospital. She declined to name her pick.
"Both of them have their faults," Loveless said of the presidential candidates. "I'm not happy with my choices."
-Andrew Kragie
7:45 a.m. - They arrived in taxis, pick-up trucks and vans to vote at Ripley Center
As voting got under way in Houston, a steady stream of voters filed in and out of a community center in Houston's East End, a predominantly Hispanic area that has seen a sharp increase in voter registration. They came in pick-up trucks, mini-vans and taxis. One had a metal Longhorn stuffed in the back of his truck.
Socorro Lopez, 52, pulled up in a beige mini-van with an American flag tucked in the AC vent. Lopez, who retired as a teacher in Mexico, now works at night as a shuttle bus driver but got up early and dressed up to head to the polls. It was her first time to vote in the US - after being in the here legally for six years. "Today I'm here as a new citizen. My voice counts. You feel part of this country that's given me so much. I came here legally when the doors were open. I'm proudly Mexican and I'm proud to be part of the Americans." She refused to say who was her choice for president...
A few minutes later, David Mata, 78, pulled up in a 1954 Chevy Pick-up with a large metal longhorn in the back. He stayed, playing Mexican music to give the polling place a bit of a party atmosphere. His aim: To motivate others to vote. And he brought his girlfriend along he joked - pointing to a mannequin.
A taxi driver arrived bringing a senior citizen. Caught up in the enthusiasm, the driver too attempted to cast a ballot, but then realized he wasn't sure where or whether he was registered.
-Dane Schiller
7:00 a.m. - Short lines for early birds at Alief Middle School
As the polls opened Tuesday morning, lines to vote were short or non-existent at two southwest Houston locations. At Alief Middle School, about a dozen people waited to vote. Outside, volunteers for District 49 House of Representatives candidate Bryan Chu greeted voters while other candidates' volunteers handed out copies of the Constitution. At Sutton Elementary, parents were dropping off their children but few were lining up to vote.
-Kim McGuire
7 a..m - polls open across Harris County
A record 977,000 voters cast ballots in Harris County prior to election day - and as polls open at 7 a.m. more will queue up to decide one of the nation's most contentious and hard-fought presidential races between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Populous Harris County has gone purple in presidential elections in this reliably red state - a majority voted for the Democrat, Barack Obama, in both 2008 and 2012, but chose Republican George W. Bush in 2004. But will voters here back the billionaire or the first woman president?
Hispanic voters are expected to play a larger role in county races than ever - with registration and turnout way, way up, according to analyses that rely heavily on last names. Applications for citizenship also surged.
Women are turning out too.
And all that change makes this election tougher to predict. Local early turnout analysis by the Houston Chronicle shows that 22 percent of voters here are new to Harris County - making even party affiliations difficult to determine.
Some of the most-watched local match-ups are between incumbent District Attorney Devon Anderson, a Republican, and opponent Kim Ogg and between Sheriff Ron Hickman, a Republican appointed by county commissioners to replace a Democrat, and former city councilman Ed Gonzalez.
Bookmark this space for updates from voters throughout the day.
Music lovers of all nationalities enjoyed three days of camping with costumes, jungle beats and raving.
An hour's drive from the bustling capital, Son Tinh is surrounded by water and backed by the forests of Ba Vi. The third Quest Festival welcomed thousands of local and foreign music lovers for a three-day escape last weekend.
Here's an overview of a magical place where musicians and spectators from diverse horizons enjoyed three days of partying, workshops, installation art and more.
Aside from the music, festival goers have access to many different workshops, including Zen coloring.
On Friday morning, before the official opening of the festival.
The main stage is ready to welcome visitors.
Ba-Vi's lakes, where the festival takes place, are located less than an hour's drive from Hanoi
A view of the main stage during the first night of the festival.
During the day, while waiting for the performances to start, spectators enjoy the sweet November weather.
A young woman enjoys the music on the second day of the festival.
Body marbling.
A man marvels at crochet work by Quest artists.
At nightfall, spectators start letting go in front of the main stage.
A Hanoian dance crew came up with some crazy freestyle dancing.
Their dance circle quickly drew the attention of party-goers.
With a large variety of bands, Dj's and performers, Quest is also a place where spectators move from moments of sweet collective history to moments of contemplation.
Letting loose: A weekend at Quest Festival 2016 Letting loose: A weekend at Quest Festival 2016 Photos by Xavier Bourgois, video by Quynh Trang
Related news:
> What's new at the fourth Hanoi International Film Festival?
> Legendary band Scorpions to rock Hanoi
Myra Draaven has yearned to be a police officer since she was a little kid.
She's been in the military and lived in Tennessee and Colorado, but when the 27-year-old was looking for a place to protect and serve, she chose Houston.
"What drove me here was the diversity," she said.
But that diversity can be fraught with problems for police, whose sometimes-tense relationship with minority communities nationwide has been tested recently after a series of high-profile, officer-involved shootings.
On Monday, Draaven joined the current class of 68 Houston police cadets through a daylong diversity tour across the city to learn about sometimes-marginalized communities they'll meet on the beat. Packed onto two buses, they made stops at the Islamic Society of Greater Houston center, the Sobering Center and a smattering of locations in neighborhoods that are predominantly black, Latino or Chinese.
"The academy keeps you very busy, but this allows me to see the city all at once," Draaven said. "This tour bus allows me to get to know the community on a personal level and get to know the religions and cultures in the city."
This week's group of bright-eyed cadets - set to graduate in about two months - was the eighth class to finish the diversity training since it started in 2015.
"We wanted to make sure we were covering an additional diversity piece for our cadets because many are from out of state," police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said.
The day started at the Sunnyside Multi-Service Center where the officers-to-be got a half-hour of instruction about community perceptions of police before boarding the buses for a whirlwind community tour.
After a talk at the Chinese Community Center and five-stop tour followed by lunch and a stop at the Islamic Society, cadets visited the Sobering Center, an alternative to arrest for public intoxication.
When they marched off the buses dressed in crisp white shirts with navy slacks and ties, the eager cadets peppered the center's staff with questions about daily operations.
Each of the cadets walked away from the day with something different. Connor Davidson, 23, grew up in Houston but said this was his first experience learning about the many cultures.
"I didn't really go into the Chinatown area before, so I didn't know that there were so many cultures and backgrounds in that area," he said.
Draaven gained a lot from the Islamic Society stop, she said.
"With the Islamic community, you might come to a call and the woman answers the door and runs away - but she might be running for her head cover," she said.
The last stop of the day was the Denver Harbor Multi-Service Center in the heart of one of Houston's Hispanic neighborhoods.
Immigration attorney Silvia Mintz offered cadets a history of the community and some words of wisdom.
"In our countries, there is a distrust of the police," she said.
That's a stumbling block with which Houston police might have to contend, but Mintz said local involvement might be the answer.
"I think that it's very important to become a member of the community," she told the cadets.
The stop was something of a homecoming for cadet Egla Flores. The 22-year-old grew up "across the tracks" on the East Side, and she knows how her childhood neighbors view police.
"They might think we are the bad people but at the end of day we are here to help them," she said.
But even as a lifelong Houstonian, she got plenty out of the day.
"It's an eye-opener," she said.
Draaven concurred.
"We want to do our duty in a respectful way with the community," she said. "It's very important in such a diverse city. This is the most diverse place I've seen."
It's awkward changing your name at 93 - and more so, no doubt, if you get sued over it.
So on Monday, after spending tens of thousands of dollars on rebranding and five months defending its new name in federal court, Houston's longstanding downtown law school announced it would revert to its original name with a slight twist: Houston College of Law, formerly South Texas College of Law, will henceforth be known as South Texas College of Law Houston.
The fresh name elicited snarky comments on social media but officials expressed confidence the moniker would help the institution distinguish itself as an urban law school and not a rural outpost in the Rio Grande Valley.
"We have a 93-year heritage of educating some of the nation's top litigators and transactional attorneys, and we confidently stand on our own award-winning reputation," said Donald J. Guter, president and dean of the law school. "Our name change stemmed from a desire to make certain that people knew we were in Houston and not South Texas."
The decision came on the heels of an October injunction by U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison barring the school from using "Houston College of Law" while a trademark suit brought by the University of Houston played out in court.
The school will stick with its traditional crimson and gold colors, but it has chosen a smoky teal-and-white scheme for the logo it debuted Monday.
J. Ken Johnson, chairman of the South Texas College of Law Houston board of directors, said the original name change was meant to acknowledge the school's long-established presence in the heart of downtown.
"Given that time was of the essence, by promptly changing our name to South Texas College of Law Houston, the board of directors made the only responsible and prudent decision for the law school," he said.
Lawsuit settled?
The South Texas lawyers told the judge previously that the rebranding effort would cost them about $422,000, though UH's attorneys disputed that figure. Those and other details likely will be hashed out at a hearing Thursday in federal court.
Dona Cornell, general counsel for UH, said Monday that the university welcomed the latest name.
As for the lawsuit, she said, "I totally anticipate it's going to be over in very short order."
By midday Monday, the private law school had dismantled social media sites associated with its summer rebranding. But some online commenters at the college's hours-old Facebook site panned the name as clunky and the board as shortsighted.
The private law school, which was founded in 1923, began considering a name change when a market study revealed that consumers were unclear about where the campus was and that they kept mixing it up with Texas Southern University.
After Texas Wesleyan University Law School became affiliated with Texas A&M and bypassed South Texas in the U.S. News rankings, South Texas decided to roll out a Houston-focused name.
Just five days later, in late June, the UH regents sued for trademark infringement. UH attorneys argued in court students had been confused about which school was which when viewing the new name at college fairs and online. Even the U.S. Postal Service confused the institutions, the lawyers said, offering as an exhibit in court an envelope that had been delivered to the wrong law school.
Attorneys for the embattled private college argued, in turn, that no institution had a sole claim on the word Houston.
In mid-October, Ellison found that UH had a strong likelihood of prevailing at trial on the grounds that the new law school name prominently featured the words Houston and Law. In addition, Ellison ruled that the private school's new red-and-white branding was likely to confuse consumers, violating the UH Cougars' well-established brand.
Avoiding confusion
At a subsequent hearing before Ellison, Houston College of Law's attorneys acquiesced and decided to forgo a trial, agreeing the college would remove billboards and banners advertising the new name and revise Internet and letterhead branding. The attorneys agreed to share its new name confidentially with lawyers for UH on Friday, and the parties complied with that agreement.
James M. Douglas, interim dean for the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, said he understood UH's concern that people might confuse the two schools, noting that prospective students at Texas Southern get confused.
"We get mail that's really intended for South Texas," Douglas said.
Douglas said he didn't think the broader community would notice the word Houston had been added to the original name. He also said he didn't think the blue-and-white color scheme would make much difference one way or the other.
Guter, the dean, emphasized that the heritage of the law school remains unsullied by this litigious episode.
"We have great pride in our law school and what we have accomplished as a unique educational institution," he said.
Tony Buzbee, a UH alumnus who offered his services at no charge to his alma mater, said he's glad the issue has been resolved.
"I wish none of this had happened," he said. "The University of Houston and the Law Center have no desire to be fighting with a law school in the same city. Many of the lawyers they produce are judges and colleagues. The University of Houston is in the business of education, not litigation."
Cornell, general counsel for UH, said she anticipated South Texas would use its good faith efforts to make the change as quickly as possible.
"The UH does not go out of its way to sue people," she said. "I'm sorry it had to transpire this way. It was the only way based on what we had to accomplish."
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One student is dead and another wounded after an apparent drive-by shooting on Monday near a southwest Houston school.
The gunfire broke out about 12:30 p.m. in the 9700 block of Bissonnet near Houston CAN Academy, according to the Houston Police Department.
Violence erupted after multiple suspects in a gray SUV got into a verbal altercation with two males in a white pickup truck in the school parking lot, HPD spokeswoman Jodi Silva said.
About four men jumped out of the SUV and one of the passengers in the SUV opened fire on the two people inside the pickup truck.
Silva said the truck's driver drove to 5900 Chimney Rock, where an urgent care is located. The passenger of the white pickup truck was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver was rushed to Ben Taub General Hospital. Silva said the driver was in stable condition Monday evening.
James Troutman, principal of the southwest campus of Houston CAN Academy, issued a statement shortly after the tragedy.
"It is our understanding that the person who committed this crime is not one of our students," Troutman said.
Troutman said that the shooting happened between the school morning session and afternoon session. Details about the students will be released after family members have been notified, Troutman said.
"It's scary to know what happened," Troutman told media near the site of the shooting on Monday.
Troutman said that when the shots were fired, school officials immediately went into emergency lockdown. Parents were notified of the shooting. Classes continued, and the school will be open on Tuesday.
Troutman said counselors will be on campus for students, parents and staff members.
There have been no arrests at this time. Anyone with information about the suspects can call Houston Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS or HPD homicide division at 713-308-3600.
Will Axford and Keri Blakinger contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES - Robert A. Durst, the multimillionaire whose bizarre life of privilege and mayhem was the subject of a 2015 documentary, was arraigned here Monday on charges of murdering a onetime confidante 16 years ago.
Durst is accused of having shot his friend Susan Berman to stop her from revealing any secrets behind his first wife's disappearance in 1982. Berman was shot once in the back of the head in her Benedict Canyon home shortly after Durst said she told him the authorities in New York wanted to talk to her about what happened to his wife.
Durst, 73, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a neck brace, appeared before Judge Mark Windham in Los Angeles County Superior Court and entered a plea of not guilty. He wore orange prison slippers.
In answer to a procedural question from the judge, Durst said in a hoarse, low voice: "I am not guilty. I did not kill Susan Berman."
Later, outside the courthouse, his lead defense lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said the same thing.
"Bob is not guilty," DeGuerin said. "He did not kill Susan Berman. He doesn't know who did."
Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said the state would not seek the death penalty against Durst. Both sides agreed to convene again Feb. 15 to set the date for a preliminary hearing.
Durst was arrested in New Orleans in March 2015 on a murder warrant issued in Los Angeles. He subsequently pleaded guilty to the illegal possession of a firearm. On Friday, he was transferred here from federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., to stand trial.
Suspicions have surrounded Durst since 1982, when his first wife, Kathleen Durst, disappeared from the couple's stone cottage in Westchester County, N.Y. His friends and relatives believed that Durst, a member of the wealthy real estate family that runs the Durst Organization, was involved.
He was never charged in connection with the case.
Fast friends with Berman
Durst met Berman during the late 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles, where they were students. Friends say there was an immediate bond. They came from wealthy families and had lost their mothers at a young age, possibly to suicide. Berman, the daughter of Davie Berman, a mobster who was a partner in Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, became a journalist and a screenwriter.
"We became fast friends," Durst said during courtroom testimony in Galveston. "We were never boyfriend and girlfriend."
Durst counted on Berman to shield him from the media when his wife's sudden disappearance generated tabloid headlines in New York. He walked her down the aisle when she married at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles in 1984.
He left the family business in 1994 after his father, Seymour Durst, appointed his younger brother Douglas to take control of the Durst Organization. He has been estranged from his family since then - Douglas is expected to testify for the prosecution in Los Angeles - and for years led a peripatetic life, moving among California, New York and Texas, even as he became a suspect in three murders.
But Durst's hubris brought his freewheeling ways to an end.
Beginning in 2010, he agreed to participate in the documentary - "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" - about his life and the murder allegations, which was broadcast on HBO in February and March 2015.
His friends and lawyers had advised him not to participate for fear of antagonizing prosecutors.
But Durst told the New York Times he thought there was "no reason I shouldn't say anything I want to anyone I want," because it was unlikely that any prosecutor would undertake a "budget-busting" investigation for a couple of cold cases.
In "The Jinx," Durst said Berman contacted him in October 2000 saying authorities wanted to talk to her about his first wife. In quick succession, he married his current wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, and fled New York, renting modest apartments in Galveston and New Orleans while posing as a mute woman.
Berman's body found
In December of that year, Berman's body was found in her Los Angeles home, the back door open and her dogs running loose.
Initially, the police focused not on Durst but on Berman's landlady and her agent.
But the authorities came to suspect that Durst was the author of a short anonymous note sent to the Beverly Hills police the same day Berman was found dead, saying there was a "cadaver" in her home.
Revealing documentary
The makers of "The Jinx" obtained a letter he wrote to her in which the lettering of the address on the envelope appears identical to that of the "cadaver" note, down to the misspelling of Beverly Hills as "Beverley."
In 2001, when Durst was living in Galveston, body parts of his elderly neighbor were found floating in Galveston Bay, and Durst was charged with his murder.
He was acquitted in 2003, despite his testimony of how he sat in a pool of blood while cutting up the body. Durst insisted the man's death was an accident and an act of self-defense.
Durst said during a 2015 interview that he did not have "the faintest idea" what happened to Berman, or to Kathleen Durst, although he conceded in "The Jinx" that he had lied to the police about his whereabouts when his wife disappeared - "Nobody tells the whole truth," he said - and that their relationship had descended into rounds of "fighting, slapping, pushing."
"The Jinx" ended with Durst's own words in an unguarded moment: "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
Just hours before the final episode of the documentary was broadcast, Durst was arrested in New Orleans. The police feared that he was about to flee the country.
There is little forensic evidence in either case and no apparent witnesses as to what happened to either woman.
Prosecutors will have to rely on the decades-old memories of the people who knew the two women and Durst.
In a surprise move with Election Day approaching, the FBI made unannounced home visits to members of a North Texas Muslim community group, the organization's director said.
In weekend posts on Facebook and Twitter, Alia Salem, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas, Dallas Fort Worth Chapter, said some members in Texas and other states received visits from the FBI.
On Monday, Salem told Chron.com that the organization's Dallas office had received reports of 14 requests for interviews with the FBI.
SHOTS FIRED: Muslim doctor shot near Houston mosque recuperating
She said the people who were visited were led to believe the reason for the interview requests concerned potential attacks tied to Election Day. The organization, however, found the timing suspicious and was concerned at the lack of warning.
"We are not in any way trying to inhibit legitimate investigation," Salem said. "Our primary goal is to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans and Muslims in particular."
Nationwide, Salem said, she was aware of "dozens" of reports to the organization's offices in 12 states, including California, Maryland, Kansas, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Indiana, as well as Washington, D.C.
MOSQUE FIRE: Man charged with setting Houston blaze says he was a devout attendee
The staff attorney for the organization's Houston office, Arsalan Safiullah, said he had received four calls about interview requests over the weekend, all from legal immigrants from Pakistan.
"All were rather surprised and concerned," Safiullah said, since they didn't have any information to report.
"This is not meant to alarm you but to inform you and help you understand your rights," Salem said in the video message.
BOMB THREAT: Islamic group calls on FBI, law enforcement to investigate
Salem's video message advised members who might get a visit from the FBI to ask for the agent's business card and to "politely decline the interview."
Acknowledging that the FBI serves an important purpose, Salem's message stated that respect for law enforcement must be done by "observing our rights and helping protect our families and communities from any unwarranted aggression, profiling and the like."
Requests for comment to FBI offices in Dallas and Houston were not immediately returned on Monday.
On Tuesday night, this historic election will come to a close. As the votes roll in, both of our websites - the free Chron.com and the subscriber site HoustonChronicle.com - will bring you in-depth coverage. (We'll lower the paywall on HoustonChronicle.com on Tuesday and Wednesday so everyone can see our work.)
Before you vote on Tuesday, check out both sites for the Editorial Board's endorsements for races from the White House to the school house and a PDF list that you can print and take to the polls.
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Both sites will offer up-to-the-minute local and state results, as well as the tally in the Electoral College. Track the balance of power in the House of Representatives and Senate and get the results of state-by-state ballot measures. On HoustonChronicle.com, draw your own result predictions in the 2016 presidential race with our interactive map.
Get live results from local, state and national races in charts and maps. Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com will be the only news sources in Houston with precinct-by-precinct-level results for the presidential race.
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On Wednesday morning, check Chron.com for complete results from around the area, state and country. On HoustonChronicle.com, we'll have in-depth analysis of the results.
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AUSTIN -- A Senate committee on Monday recommended spending $75.9 million for emergency pay hikes for front-line workers in the state's troubled child-protection programs, and to hire 100 additional investigators to catch up on a chronic backlog of initial abuse and neglect inquiries.
"Ensuring the safety and protection of our state's most vulnerable children is one of the Texas Legislature's most important responsibilities," said Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown. "We owe it to the children of Texas to get this right."
Schwertner heads a special work group of the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee that had been seeking a stop-gap solution to problems in the Department of Family and Protective Services amid demands that the state reduce its backlog of more than 2,800 children who had not been seen by officials -- some for months -- even though they had been reported as abused or neglected.
Senate Finance Chairman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said the recommendation would be immediately taken under advisement by the budget panel, which will have to find a funding source.
No source was specified in the announcement of the recommendations by officials, although Nelson said she intends to find the money quickly.
Monday's announcement came after two court-appointed experts in a federal court case where Texas' foster-care system has been declared unconstitutional recommended sweeping changes in the operations of that program, including the hiring of additional staff and initiatives to reduce skyrocketing staff turnover.
A spokesman said Abbott supports the additional funding and staff requested by DFPS Commissioner Henry "Hank" Whitman Jr.. "As the Governor said months ago, he has a primary goal: no more child deaths in Texas," said Press Secretary John Wittman. "We will continue working with the House and Senate to immediately secure additional resources to address the crisis facing our child welfare system and protect the children of Texas."
Schwertner said the pay increases were designed to help the child-protection agency reduce turnover, and the additional staff positions -- 100 investigators and 36 support staff -- would help ease a critical staff shortage in several offices, especially in Houston and Dallas.
"These additional front-line investigators will help ensure that children at the highest risk of abuse are contacted by CPS within hours or days, not weeks or months," Schwertner said.
The recommendations include a 20 percent annual salary increase for supervisors of front-line caseworkers, a 20 percent annual salary increase for special investigators, and a 10-15 percent salary increase for program directors, program administrators, and other supervisors.
The additional staffing and pay hikes had been requested by Whitman, a former Texas Ranger who was named last spring to turn around the embattled agency and fix various chronic problems that have plagued Texas' child-protection programs for more than two decades.
With a federal court now considering imposing the special masters' recommendations, perhaps early next year, sweeping changes for the troubled programs appear to be a certainty.
Of the $75.3 million, Schwertner said $67.6 million will come from state funding and the rest from federal funds.
Schwertner said that as a condition for the additional funding, the agency will have to provide weekly updates to the Senate on the number of high-priority children who are not being seen fast enough by state workers, a plan for the agency to see abused and neglected children much faster than they do now, and detailed reports on turnover rates among staff and reasons why employees are leaving.
In a statement, Watson said the recommendation "is just the start, and there is much more left to be done to examine the needs of children in the care of Child Protective Services as well as the hardworking state employees that work with those children every day.
"We can't stop there, he said. "We must look comprehensively at how we care for some of the most vulnerable children in Texas and ensure the state is creating a safe haven.
Nelson said the work group will conduct "a deep dive" into the Child Protective Services budget and the agency's appropriations request in preparation for the next legislative session.
Workgroup members include Schwertner and Sens. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury; Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham; John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Watson.
AUSTIN - A Senate committee on Monday recommended spending nearly $76 million for emergency pay hikes for front-line workers in the state's troubled child-protection programs, and to hire 100 additional investigators to catch up on a chronic backlog of abuse and neglect inquiries.
"Ensuring the safety and protection of our state's most vulnerable children is one of the Texas Legislature's most important responsibilities," said Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown. "We owe it to the children of Texas to get this right."
Schwertner heads a special work group of the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee that had been seeking a stop-gap solution to problems in the Department of Family and Protective Services amid demands that the state reduce its backlog of more than 2,800 children who had not been seen by officials - some for months - even though they had been reported as victims of abuse or neglect.
Senate Finance Chairman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said the recommendation immediately would be taken under advisement by the budget panel, which will have to find a funding source.
No source was specified in the announcement of the recommendations by officials, although Nelson said she intends to find the money quickly.
Monday's announcement came after two court-appointed experts in a federal court case in which a judge declared Texas' foster-care system unconstitutional recommended sweeping changes in the operations of that program, including the hiring of additional staff and initiatives to reduce skyrocketing staff turnover.
'No more child deaths'
A spokesman said Gov. Greg Abbott supports the additional funding and staff requested by DFPS Commissioner Henry "Hank" Whitman Jr.
"As the governor said months ago, he has a primary goal: No more child deaths in Texas," Press Secretary John Wittman said. "We will continue working with the House and Senate to immediately secure additional resources to address the crisis facing our child welfare system and protect the children of Texas."
Schwertner said the pay increases were designed to help the child-protection agency reduce turnover, and the additional staff positions - 100 investigators and 36 support staff - would help ease a critical staff shortage in several offices, especially in Houston and Dallas.
"These additional front-line investigators will help ensure that children at the highest risk of abuse are contacted by CPS within hours or days, not weeks or months," Schwertner said.
The recommendations include a 20 percent annual salary increase for supervisors of front-line caseworkers, a 20 percent annual salary increase for special investigators, and a 10 to 15 percent salary increase for program directors, administrators and other supervisors.
The additional staffing and pay hikes had been requested by Whitman, a former Texas Ranger who was named last spring to turn around the embattled agency and fix various chronic problems that have plagued Texas' child-protection programs for more than two decades.
With a federal court now considering imposing the special masters' recommendations, perhaps early next year, sweeping changes for the troubled programs appear to be a certainty.
Of the $75.3 million, Schwertner said $67.6 million will come from state funding and the rest from federal funds.
Schwertner said that as a condition for the additional funding, the agency will have to provide weekly updates to the Senate on the number of high-priority children who are not being seen fast enough by state workers, a plan for the agency to see abused and neglected children much faster than they do now, and detailed reports on turnover rates among staff and the reasons why employees are leaving.
'We can't stop there'
In a statement, state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said the recommendation "is just the start, and there is much more left to be done to examine the needs of children in the care of Child Protective Services, as well as the hardworking state employees that work with those children every day.
"We can't stop there," he said. "We must look comprehensively at how we care for some of the most vulnerable children in Texas and ensure the state is creating a safe haven."
Nelson said the work group will conduct "a deep dive" into the CPS budget and the agency's appropriations request in preparation for the next legislative session, which begins in January.
Work group members include Schwertner and Sens. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury; Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham; John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Watson.
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WASHINGTON - A long, bitter presidential election ends today - the long-awaited Election Day.
In the final, desperate hours Monday, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, supported by a cast of high-flying surrogates, crisscrossed the nation barnstorming a half-dozen battleground states that could write the last chapter of an exhausting election that began March 23, 2015, when Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz became the first of 17 candidates vying for the Republican nomination.
The dueling itineraries reflected the demographic crosscurrents that have undergirded the two candidates' bases of support, with Trump trying to mobilize white working class men to overcome Clinton's advantage with an increasingly diverse U.S. electorate.
Trump's schedule took him from Florida to Michigan, with stops in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, a five-state journey that suggested a stretching of the electoral map into states where Democrats recently have been favored. He ended his campaign with a late-night rally in Grand Rapids.
Clinton, too, made stops in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, with a final rally on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, where she was joined by President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton. Rock stars Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi performed for the crowd.
Springsteen says the choice between Clinton and Trump couldn't be any clearer" and told the rally that Trump's ideas and campaign are "going down."
Springsteen made his first appearance on the 2016 campaign trail on behalf of Clinton. He said her candidacy is based on "intelligence, experience, preparation" and a vision of America "where everyone counts."
The Boss performed a short acoustic set that included "Thunder Road," "Long Walk Home" and "Dancing in the Dark."
Trump's closing argument Monday followed a more disciplined script compared to the Twitter broadsides that defined his earlier campaign, though he kept his focus on the controversy over Clinton's private email server and the FBI probe that concluded Sunday without charges.
"Hillary Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system," Trump said at a rally Monday in Sarasota, Fla.
FBI email distraction
Democrats expressed relief at FBI Director James Comey's announcement that his agents had turned up no new evidence in the case, though the issue continued to push the spotlight away from popular criticism of Trump's raunchy comments and alleged transgressions involving women.
The email inquiry had sapped a surging Clinton momentum at a crucial moment in the race, though she still heads into Election Day with multiple paths to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the nation's first female president.
"I think I have some work to do to bring the country together," she acknowledged as she boarded her plane for her last battleground tour. "I really do want to be the president for everybody."
Looking beyond Election Day, Clinton said in a radio interview that she hopes Trump will play a "constructive role" in helping bring the country together if she defeats him.
Across the country, nearly 24 million early ballots were cast under the shadow of Comey's initial announcement of a new email review. That number represents about half of the nearly 45 million people who had cast votes by Monday, according to Associated Press data.
Late polls and early voting patterns gave hope to Democrats counting on a surge of women, young people and minorities, though some surveys showed Trump within striking distance in enough toss-up states to maintain suspense.
In Florida alone, Hispanic participation is up by more than 453,000 votes, nearly doubling the 2012 level. Black turnout is up compared to 2012, but that share of the total vote is lower due to bigger jumps among Latinos and whites, according to University of Florida professor Daniel Smith
In Nevada, where more than three-fourths of expected ballots have been cast, Democrats also lead, 42 percent to 36 percent.
Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie downplayed the impact of increased Hispanic participation, telling reporters on a conference call, "We feel that we're going to get a good share of those votes." However, he sidestepped two questions about the level of Hispanic vote Trump needs to win the presidency.
In Republican-leaning Texas, some 4.5 million people - a growing percentage of them Latinos - voted early in the state's 15 most populous counties, including nearly a million in Harris Country alone.
Some analysts suggested that a staggeringly unpredictable race could come down to some combination of just two or three states with the margins close enough leave open the possibility of one or more recounts.
With polls showing a virtual dead heat in Florida, a must-win state for the real estate and reality TV mogul, Trump strategists also had him looking for an edge in the industrial Midwestern state of Michigan, a Democratic stronghold that has shown some recent tightening.
Obama won Michigan by 9 nine points in 2012, but Clinton strategists say they were taking nothing for granted, dispatching the president to Ann Arbor Monday to shore up black voters and working-class whites who benefited from the auto bailout. Obama's three-state tour also included New Hampshire, another must-win state for Trump.
Obama's last campaign
Obama, riding a 52 percent popularity high, told Michigan voters that Trump is the antithesis of the working man. He also interjected a note of sentimentality. "This is going to be my last, probably my last day of campaigning for quite a while," he said.
Clinton also went to a get-out-the-vote rally in Michigan, checking a full-court press that included much of the Trump family. Ivanka and Tiffany Trump attended a community forum outside Grand Rapids, while their older brother, Donald Trump Jr., made several stops, including a barbecue restaurant in Detroit.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump's running mate, also converged in Michigan, in addition to stops in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton's running mate, focused his energies Monday on rallies in North Carolina, as well as his home state of Virginia, a traditionally Southern state that Trump has contested but which went to Obama in the last two elections.
The last day's focus on Michigan, a state that has not figured prominently since the primaries, was seen as a possible sign of Trump's strength among non-college educated whites who could help him flip a big industrial state, even one that Obama won in 2008 and 2012.
A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed that Trump leads among white voters by 54 percent to 37 percent, mainly due to a 59 percent to 30 percent advantage among white men. He leads by a much smaller margin of 49 percent to 44 percent among white women. Meanwhile, Clinton has a 79 percent to 13 percent advantage among non-white voters.
Even as Trump went on offense, many analysts said he still faces a tight-rope walk on Tuesday that requires picking off a Democratic-leaning state like Michigan - if not Wisconsin or Pennsylvania - on top of a straight run of victories through the battleground states of New Hampshire, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida.
Democrats were buoyed over the weekend by polls showing that Clinton's tiny overall lead was stabilizing after two weeks of bad news over her emails.
Nonetheless, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the race essentially is a dead heat. "Donald Trump is closing, and he's got the momentum going into Tuesday," he said.
Palin speaks of sacrifice
Joining a cadre of conservatives allies enlisted to aid a Trump comeback on the final day of the election was tea party heroine Sarah Palin, who swept across a series of small rallies in Ohio, where Trump enjoyed a narrow lead.
"Trump has been willing to sacrifice a lot," Palin said at a bar and grill outside Cincinnati, "because of the heart he has for America."
As the final electoral map came together Monday, Clinton, too, sought to end on a high note, contrasting her optimism to what she called Trump's gloomy portrait of America.
"We have got to rise above all of this," she said. "We don't have to accept a dark and divisive vision for America. Tomorrow, you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America."
Information from the Associated Press was included in this report.
Six years ago, I breathed a sigh of relief when my plane touched down on American soil. After 25 years of being a refugee, the end of my journey and arriving in the United States was the start of a new journey, one filled with hope and new beginnings.
Being granted refugee status enabled me to finally leave behind two decades of living in a Bhutanese refugee camp where my family and I did not have a house, bank account, job or access to better health or educational opportunities - all of which were things we had once had access to. We were originally from Bhutan and had established lives there, but were forced to leave in 1992 due to persecution from the government. Like countless others, we were targeted by the government; our entire community suffered religious persecution, discrimination and sometimes even physical torture. We were forced to leave our home and seek refuge in neighboring Nepal for the better part of 20 years, where we were denied basic human necessities.
Looking back, I feel a sense of profound gratitude to stand here as a citizen of my adopted country and cast my first vote. After becoming a U.S. citizen in August 2015, I feel that I can provide a better future for my community. Just as my profession as a Childcare Micro Enterprises Program Assistant at Somali-Bantu Community of Greater Houston has provided me with the opportunity to give back and help other refugees in Houston, casting my vote will ensure that a refugee's voice determines the direction this country will take. I believe that is crucial. Being a first-time voter for anyone is exciting, but for me it holds a far greater significance. It reminds me why I am a proud U.S. citizen: I have experienced first-hand the process, and the hardships, that refugees go through in order to make it to this great country, and how through the love and support of this country and our communities, they will achieve their biggest dreams.
When I arrived, I was met with overwhelming support and welcome by my new Houston community. Karen Fess, a volunteer teacher with Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston, and her husband, Will Ucer, encouraged me to continue my education. With their help and love, I learned English and got a job, which enabled me to become self-sufficient much faster than if I hadn't had that support system. Those who were strangers at first became new friends and my surrogate family. They helped me through heartaches, such as being separated from my family who at the beginning was still in Nepal, as well as through the highlights of learning a new language and culture. Without asking for anything in return, my new community and Ms. Fess' family embraced me as one of their own.
My work is therefore centered on giving back to the country and community that welcomed me with open arms. And that is why this year I will give back in the best way I know - through voting. By using my vote as my voice, I will be able to support those leaders who I believe will continue welcoming and supporting the generosity that I received for other refugee families who seek safety and the opportunity for a better future.
I have seen and experienced how elections impact our communities at every level, and now first-time refugee voters - such as me - have the opportunity to chose what candidate we want to lead this powerful country, and I cannot think of a better way to help and support my community. By casting my vote I can ensure that we have the resources we need to create a brighter future. It is through my community that I stand here today and feel proud to be an American, and that is why I will join millions of other Americans today to cast my first vote as a citizen of the United States of America - finally giving back to my community in full and working to create a better future for us all.
Kalikotay was able to come to the United States as a refugee in 2010. He became a U.S. citizen in 2015, and now works as a childcare assistant at the Somali-Bantu Association of Greater Houston.
Senator Hong Sok Hour of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) is escorted by police officers as he arrives at the Municipal Court of Phnom Penh. Photo by Reuters/Samrang Pring
'He created a fake border map and used it as an incitement to overthrow the government,' said Cambodian government spokesman.
Cambodia on Monday jailed an opposition senator for seven years over his Facebook posting of a fake government pledge to dissolve the border with Vietnam, a verdict opposition members say could fuel tension in the Southeast Asian nation.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Hong Sok Hour, 59, guilty of forging and publishing public documents, and of incitement to cause instability, when he posted a 1979 Cambodia-Vietnam treaty on social media site Facebook and said the two countries had agreed to dissolve their mutual border.
There was no immediate comment from Sok Hour, a member of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), who was not in court, or represented by lawyers, when the verdict was handed down.
Sok Hour, who is also a French citizen, was detained over the posting in August. Last year, he was arrested following an order from the long-serving Hun Sen after he posted a video clip on the Facebook page of CNRP president Sam Rainsy.
Tension between Cambodia's two main political parties has risen in recent months, with the opposition complaining of a crackdown by the ruling party in a bid to intimidate critics before a general election in 2018.
Hun Sen and his government have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
The court's decision would worsen Cambodia's political crisis, said Son Chhay, a senior CNRP member.
"There won't be any political solution any time soon," Chhay told reporters at the court following the verdict, adding that Sok Hour had admitted to mistakenly using the public documents but that he should not have been given a seven-year term.
International rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, had called for the charges against Sok Hour to be dropped.
Related news:
> Cambodian PM Hun Sen backs U.S. Republican candidate Trump
> Cambodian opposition leader convicted as political pressure rises
> Facebook criticisms of Cambodian PM are 'personal opinions': Vietnam's foreign ministry
It might start with an executive order delaying Tuesday's election, manufactured riots, or even a series of terrorist attacks designed to allow the president to invoke emergency powers.
What's likely to follow, according to the militia group known as the Oath Keepers, could be the most perilous period in U.S. history since the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The question posed on the group's YouTube channel isn't whether you're prepared to vote during this year's presidential election - it's whether you and your family are prepared to survive it.
"No doubt we're all concerned about this election," Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes said during a three-hour webinar devoted to the election.
The Army veteran, speaking with an eye patch over his left eye, added that it's "become a crazy roller-coaster ride of an election, and we're all concerned about the possibility of civil unrest or violence either on Election Day or shortly after."
The Oath Keepers, a group of former military and law enforcement officers who came together in 2009, have been gearing up for the election for months.
In October, the group urged its members to "blend in" with voters and do "incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting" at polling places across the country on Nov. 8. Members were instructed to report unseemly activities to police.
The national group presents itself as nonpartisan, "but their concerns clearly echo Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's warnings about a 'rigged' election and his calls for his supporters to monitor polling places for evidence of fraud by supporters of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton," The Washington Post's Kevin Sullivan reported last month.
In its latest webinar, the group told listeners that Donald Trump should emerge victorious - "unless large-scale fraud is perpetrated" using millions of ineligible ballots.
That fraud might also be perpetuated using violence, the group said, noting that voters may face the threat of improvised explosive devices and widespread danger at polls around the country.
"It's a serious threat," Rhodes said.
After detailing a list of possible threats that would allow Democrats to maintain their grip on federal power, an Oath Keeper who goes by the name "Navy Jack" offered a list of potential "Major Threat Groups" that he said are primed to create chaos.
The list included La Raza, which Navy Jack called "a Hispanic supremacist organization," the Revolutionary Communist Party and its affiliates, the New Black Panther Party, Black Lives Matter, ISIS and North Korea.
"We're going to be providing you with information on how to keep track of these people," Navy Jack said, noting that Oath Keepers should monitor everything from social media to police scanners and local news - with an important caveat.
"The first news report coming out of a local news station most likely wasn't influenced by Washington, it's kind of a nuance that we figured out over time," he said. "That very next news report most likely will be filtered by Washington."
Navy Jack also identified cities that he said are most likely to see voter intimidation, fraud and false news reports: Cleveland, Atlanta, Richmond, Phoenix and Philadelphia.
These cities, Navy Jack explained, "are in swing states that are in contention, where a riot could have a meaningful outcome on the election."
Last week, in a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr., D-Pa., warned that fringe nationalist groups had targeted Philadelphia polling places for surveillance and possible disruption. He urged the Department of Justice to support jurisdictions where "voter suppression efforts" might occur.
"In the absence of credible and substantial evidence to support the claim that elections in Philadelphia are subject to widespread fraud, these calls to action are little more than thinly veiled attempts to suppress and delegitimize the votes of predominately minority citizens, inflected with innuendo that recalls dark times in our country's civil rights struggle," Casey wrote. "These calls are more than wrong and irresponsible; if executed, they could be illegal."
In his call to form "incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting teams," Rhodes instructed Oath Keepers: "Dress to blend with the crowd. That may mean wearing a Bob Marley, pot leaf, tie-die peace symbol, or 'Che' Guevara T-shirt . . . or it may mean wearing working-man Carhartt pants and a plaid shirt."
"But please don't dress in cammo pants or shirt, like a wanna-be militia member," he added.
A Washington-based group, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said last week that it planned to ask the Justice Department to investigate the Oath Keepers' actions.
"What's particularly disturbing here is that they are encouraging their members to go out covertly and not disclose their identities," said Kristen Clarke, the group's president. "We want elections where there is transparency and openness. This kind of rallying call stands to intimidate voters and could have a chilling effect on Election Day."
John Karriman, a webinar participant who claimed to have provided security during protests in Ferguson, Mo., urged listeners to leave areas where violence may occur and be ready to fight back when faced with danger. His ominous, 10-minute talk invoked dramatic themes reminiscent of a Hollywood post-apocalyptic thriller.
"Cast your vote, gather up your family, your friends, your meds, your pets, your important documents and leave," he said. "If you can't afford to get a motel room outside of the area, go stay with family and friends somewhere where it's relatively safe.
"You wouldn't want to put yourself or your family through the horrors of having to fight for your lives," he added.
Be prepared to repel violence with violence "if you can't leave a city with arson, looting and murder," Karriman said.
"Once that happens, though, beware of what happens next," he said.
"If they had family and friends in that group, then you can count on them being back," he said, without specifying who "they" are. "They'll be back with a vengeance, they'll want payback, they'll be bitter, they'll be better prepared, they'll be more determined.
"It's a sad fact that at the end of the day all people understand is force or threat of force."
On their Web site, the Oath Keepers are described as a group focused on fulfilling "the oath all military and police take to 'defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'" The site notes that the organization is composed of members who have, or have previously had, some sort of connection to law enforcement or the military.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, however, describes the Oath Keepers as a "fiercely antigovernment, militaristic group."
"The core idea of the group is that its members vow to forever support the oaths they took on joining law enforcement or the military to defend the Constitution," reads the SPLC site. "But just as central is the group's list of 10 'Orders We Will Not Obey,' a compendium of much-feared but entirely imaginary threats from the government - orders, for instance, to force Americans into concentration camps, confiscate their guns, or cooperate with foreign troops in the United States."
During the group's pre-election webinar, speakers moved from discussing politicians manipulating elections to survivalist training.
Listeners learned about family preparedness, prepping for medical emergencies and useful supplies in a disaster scenario, such as a knifes, flashlights, comfortable walking shoes and "4 to 8 ounces of silver."
Listeners were also treated to lessons about creating a neighborhood contingency plan, reconnaissance and identifying explosive devices.
The only thing Americans can expect on Election Day, the speakers repeatedly emphasized, is the unexpected.
"We can speculate on what these options are," Navy Jack warned readers in a blog post last month about the manipulative plans of America's political leaders, "but I seriously doubt any of us are devious enough to even think of the methods that these demon infested parasites can come up with.
"What is important to remember is that they are animals; predators; wolves, intent on devouring the sheep and hunting down the sheepdogs," he added. "It is also important to remember that cornered animals are the most dangerous."
As voters head to the polls Tuesday, one outcome is already a near-certainty: A dysfunctional Congress is going to get even more unworkable, particularly if Hillary Clinton wins the White House.
Whichever party wins control of the Senate is likely to claim power by the slimmest of majorities, making the 60-vote margin needed to advance legislation more elusive. Republicans are expected to keep the House, but they too will have a smaller majority, giving more leverage to a group of ultra-conservatives who have pushed to shut down the government in the past.
The bitter partisan vitriol of the presidential campaign won't end with the election. Republicans are already gearing up to investigate -- and perhaps impeach -- Clinton if she wins. If Donald Trump prevails, he would enter the White House believing congressional leaders of his party sought to undermine his campaign, but that voters took his side.
"The prognosis for a more functional Washington is poor," says Wayne Lesperance, a political science professor at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.
Many Americans may find solace in having a deeply divided Congress that can't pass controversial laws, but lawmakers have a significant must-do list next year. At the top is the need to address the expiration of the nation's debt limit in March. Without action, the U.S. Treasury could face a unprecedented default as early as the summer. Congress will have to forge a new budget deal, or allow sharp spending cuts on defense and non-defense programs to come into force automatically in fiscal 2018.
The Senate will also have to address the next president's nominees, including any for the Supreme Court. While some senators in both parties talk hopefully of a rebirth of bipartisan action next year, bitterness remains from Republicans' blocking Merrick Garland's high court nomination and some senators suggesting they would take the unprecedented step of blocking any picks by Clinton.
Filling the court seat is likely to maximize raw partisan feelings on both sides no matter who wins.
In the past, narrow margins of control in Congress have forced members to compromise. But the vitriol of the campaign, along with the dwindling numbers of moderates, has meant that members often pay a price within their own party for breaking ranks.
Some of the concern about gridlock comes down to simple mechanics. In the Senate -- where one likely scenario includes a 50-50 split between the parties, with the vice president casting the deciding vote -- a slim majority means that one or two senators can hold their own leaders hostage over ideological demands. For Republicans, that gives someone like Ted Cruz of Texas more leverage. Democrats, meanwhile, have to accommodate both a liberal wing, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and moderate Democrats facing tough re-election races in 2018, such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
In the 435-member House, Republicans are going to lose seats, though Democrats have virtually no chance of making the net gain of 30 seats they would need to win control. Still, the Republican majority will be even more dominated by the right, which means additional leverage for a rump group of about 40 arch-conservatives to pressure Speaker Paul Ryan or block him from forging deals with Democrats.
"My advice to any member of congressional leadership is this: You are always better off governing, than not governing," says Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, co-chairman of a group of House moderates.
Dent says efforts to forge compromises on even the most basic functions of government are made all the more difficult by "unbending and overly polarized" members.
Ryan, who has been speaker for only a year, insists he wants to stay on in the job, although he could still face an internal challenge. The 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee has built a reputation as someone who is serious-minded on policy. But if he stays, Ryan will often face choices between placating the far right and blocking compromise, or reaching across party lines and risking retribution from his own party.
Throw into this mix that posturing for the 2018 Senate races will be under way even before the gavels drop in both chambers to begin the next two-year session. For one thing, even if Democrats win the Senate on Tuesday, Republicans are very likely to take it back in 2018, with a political map that greatly favors them.
Despite all these factors, former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott says there is some reason for optimism about Congress being able to function. Some of the recent Senate logjams, he said, are due in part to the increasingly strained ties between the two current Senate leaders, Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Harry Reid. Lott says there is some hope that after Reid retires in January, McConnell will have more success getting along with his successor, Chuck Schumer of New York.
Lott, who was Republican leader from 1996 to 2002, said "it's obvious" the relationship between Reid and McConnell "contributed to the gridlock in many ways."
Lott said the new president also may be able to help change the tone, but the success of that will revolve around whether Clinton or Trump pursue an agenda that includes at least some elements with appeal to both political parties.
There may, for example, be an opportunity for Clinton early on to find areas for compromise with Congress, such as on a corporate tax overhaul or changes to sentencing laws.
If Trump wins and has a Republican Congress, the scenario shifts a bit, because the party could employ a tactic, known as reconciliation, to push through spending and tax cuts and perhaps to repeal large parts of Obamacare. But it's unclear whether the priorities of congressional Republicans would match up closely enough with Trump's, particularly after the real-estate mogul's concerted attacks against GOP leaders like Ryan.
For whatever may get done in bipartisan fashion under either potential president, there is likely a small window for it to happen. By August, say senior legislative staffers from both parties, members will start to focus on the 2018 midterm elections.
Lott also notes that the Senate has changed in the last decade or so in ways that make it tougher for the next president to find opportunities for bipartisanship. The chamber lacks "old bulls" -- universally respected senior senators like Democrat Ted Kennedy or Republican Bob Dole who had the ability to rally others in the chamber around solutions, Lott said.
Senators don't spend as much time in Washington as they used to, which means there is less personal chemistry and trust between members of different parties, he said. This has led to a sometimes surprising lack of decorum, Lott said, pointing to a moment in 2015 when Cruz called McConnell a "liar" on the Senate floor.
"You need civility at the top and all up and down the line," Lott said.
Congress has long been a highly unpopular institution for its perceived inability to get things done.
The latest RealClearPolitics average of multiple polls shows an average of 76.1 percent of those surveyed disapprove of the job Congress is doing. This is despite some legislative accomplishments over the past two years, including a financial rescue plan for Puerto Rico and passage of some infrastructure-related bills.
---
Laura Litvan contributed.
Members of the Houston City Council on Monday rescinded one ordinance and indicated it would not pass another measure that recently had a first reading.
The council rolled back a measure involving Leads on Line, that linked pawn shops to an electronic database that could be reviewed by police during investigations. Implementation proved difficult because of unique individual property issues. One cited Monday was a coin book that included individual items: Do all require logging?
The measure had drawn some criticism. Appearing at recent meetings were George Sholtz and Gary Parish.
Another issue reworking the hangar leases at the Houston Memorial Airport had received a first reading earlier. That version is not expected to be considered further.
In other matters, members:
Heard a report of a recent work session of the Houston Planning and Zoning Commission that focused on growth of the city. (A detailed story about the commissions recommendations and the citys review of future growth is slated for next weeks Herald. Public input also will be sought by the council).
Learned that a review of the citys electrical rates for large commercial and industrial users has been completed. The survey shows rates are significantly less than other communities, said City Administrator Larry Sutton. Thirty-five customers in Houston fall in that category. At its Nov. 15 meeting, the council will consider a rate increase. Other than cost-of-living adjustments, there has not been a rate increase in eight years, Sutton reported.
Updated the citys employee manual.
With a presidential election and hotly contested gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races on the ballot, a big turnout is expected today as Texas County voters travel to precincts.
Three local contests are also on the ballot, and voters will decide several measures ranging from voter identification at the polls to two measures that will increase taxes on cigarettes. Polls opened at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. The Texas County clerks office was open Saturday for absentee balloting.
The Texas County clerks office reported 1,149 absentee ballots were received before the deadline Monday. (1,210 had been requested). Thats up slightly from four years ago.
By shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday, more than 550 votes had been cast at the Houston Storm Shelter.
The centerpiece for the election is a presidential contest that features Republican businessman Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, U.S. senator and First Lady.
In the governors race, Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, is opposed by Eric Greitens, a Republican. U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican, is opposed by Democrat Jason Kander, the secretary of state, in a race termed too close to call.
In other statewide races, Missouri Sen. Mike Parson, a Republican, and former U.S. Congressman Russ Carnahan, a Democrat, are seeking the lieutenant governors office. Robin Smith, a Democrat, is opposing John Jay Ashcroft for secretary of state. On the ballot for state treasurer are Republican Eric Schmitt and Democrat Judy Baker. The attorney generals race features Democrat Teresa Hensley and Republican Josh Hawley.
U.S. Congressman Jason Smith, a Salem Republican, is challenged by Democrat Dave Cowell and Jonathan Shell, a Libertarian. Rep. Robert Ross, a Republican from Yukon, is opposed by Bobby Johnston Jr. of Houston, a Democrat.
Locally, there are three races on the ballot: County Commissioner John Casey, a Republican, is opposed by Democrat Scott McKinney for the District 1 seat that is a four-year term. Both live at Houston.
County Clerk Kris Neal, a Democrat, is challenged by Laura Crowley, a Republican. Both are Houston residents.
County Coroner Thomas Whittaker of Cabool, a Democrat, is opposed by Marie Lasater of Licking, a Republican.
Incumbents running unopposed are: Mo. Sen. Mike Cunningham, Circuit Judge John Beger, Recorder of Deeds Lindsay Koch, Sheriff James Sigman, Assessor Debbie James, Collector-Treasurer Tammy Cantrell, Public Administrator Connie Thompson and Surveyor Charles Chuck Manier. All are Republicans except Cantrell. Set to fill the District 2 county commissioner seat is Republican Doyle Heiney of Summersville. He was unopposed in August and in next weeks balloting. He fills the seat of retiring commissioner Linda Garrett of Licking.
The only area issue on the ballot is a 4 percent lodging tax at Mountain Grove.
There are five constitutional issues on the ballot:
Amendment 1 Renews a one-tenth of 1 percent soil and parks tax.
Amendment 2 Would establish limits on campaign contributions.
Amendment 3 Increases taxes on cigarettes through 2020, when the total tax will be 60 cents for a pack of 20. Funds go to early childhood health and education.
Amendment 4 Would prohibit state or local taxes on services.
Amendment 6 Would require additional identification at polling precincts.
Another cigarette proposition also appears on the ballot It would increase taxes to a total of 23 cents per pack of 20 by 2021. Funds would go to transportation infrastructure.
Voters also will be asked whether to retain Richard B. Teitelman to the Missouri Supreme Court.
A sample ballot appears on Page M12 in todays Messenger.
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Long Description Onboarding and Employee Orientations are two of the most important aspects of the hiring process yet too often firms do not establish best practices associated with onboarding and employee orientation strategy. Learn the best practices associated with onboarding and employee orientation guaranteed to increase employee satisfaction and drive employee retention and employee referrals. Who Should Participate? Individuals responsible for talent acquisition Individuals responsible for staffing Individuals responsible for onboarding and employee orientations Line managers who hire a lot of people Extra Learning Materials All Registered HR.com members are also eligible for: A copy of the Power Points presented in this presentation. These are available before, after and during the presentation.
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eading figure in the field of diversity has said Kiwi employers should be doing more to connect with their older workforce after a recent study revealed more than 70 per cent have no specific strategy in place.The latest New Zealand Diversity Survey revealed that 73 per cent of New Zealand employers are perceived as treating older workers those aged over 55 the same as their younger counterparts.Bev Cassidy-Mackenzie CEO of Diversity Works NZ said it was gratifying to see the majority of local organisations arent discriminating due to age but warned that some older employees would like to see tailored initiatives.Many organisations feel that older workers dont need special treatment. But when we spoke to workers in this age group as part of an earlier research project, they told us they want to have input into their job design to ensure it takes into account their specific needs, she told HRM.According Cassidy-Mackenzie, this could mean anything from flexible working hours that fit around other commitment to ensuring tasks are compatible with their physical needs and preferences.They also want to be considered for training opportunities, rather being overlooked because of their age, and to be able to discuss their future options, whether thats working more hours, fewer hours or moving towards a gradual retirement, she said.Cassidy-Mackenzie, whos headed up the advisory firm since 2012, urged employers to ask more mature workers about what they want from their role and include them in decisions.Recognise their changing needs and provide communication thats clear and accessible for them, she said. Give them the opportunity to mentor younger employees, establish training and development opportunities for this age group and work with them to design an age-friendly workplace.
A Fort McMurray firefighter lost his fight with cancer Sunday, after a years-long battle against the disease.
Bo Cooper, known as Unbreakable Bo, inspired many Albertans with his courageous fight against acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
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"This is the worst heartbreak I have ever felt," his wife, Irish, shared in a Facebook post Sunday morning. "My mind is not clear right now, it's like I'm walking in a fog of emptiness."
"He was holding on for so long, but he suffered too much. I miss him more than anything in this world, but he is no longer in pain."
Cooper, a former mixed martial arts fighter, was first diagnosed with cancer in 2011, and battled the disease into remission twice.
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However, in the fall of 2015 he learned the cancer had returned.
Bo Cooper in his days as an MMA fighter. (Photo: Bo Cooper Leukemia Treatment Fund/Facebook)
Cooper, 27, was approved for experimental treatment last year, reports Global News.
The treatment was expensive, but, according to the Edmonton Journal, people from around the world helped his family raise more than the $880,000 needed to send him to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
By spring, it looked like the cancer was in remission. But by September Bo learned the treatment had failed.
"Even when he was down, he was always trying to help somebody else. And of course he was a firefighter that saved many lives," Wood Buffalo Coun. Keith McGrath told CBC News.
"I think his spirit is going to live on amongst his brothers and sisters in the firefighters association and he'll always be remembered."
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"I miss him more than anything in this world, but he is no longer in pain."
People across the country shared their condolences on Facebook Monday.
"I have never met you and your family, but I followed along, and believed. These past two years of updates and stories you shared with us have been such an inspiration to thousands. You have set the bar high to all wives out there and have set an example for everyone else," wrote one woman on a page dedicated to sharing Cooper's battle.
"You'll always be a hero in my eyes and many other people. You're gone but not forgotten. You'll be missed by many," wrote another.
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Investors in Toronto's Trump International Hotel and Tower are lining up to extract money from The Donald and others, should the building sell for less than the cost of its mortgage.
A group of people who bought hotel units in the building have filed a lawsuit against Trump, tower developer Talon International and other parties, claiming they were misled by an "investment scheme and conspiracy," The Toronto Star reported.
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The investors, who hoped to make money by renting out the units, claim they were deceived by marketing information and led to believe they'd be buying from Donald Trump directly even though the Trump Organization doesn't have a stake in the building.
The lawsuit also claims that it was up to Trump to make sure that Talon had both the integrity and the experience to "develop the Trump Hotel properly."
They now hope to obtain damages if the tower doesn't sell for more than $301 million the amount that Talon and other parties owe on the building, after defaulting on a loan last year.
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And it's entirely within the ability of the investors to sue Trump himself even though the Donald's only connection to the building is that it bears his name, and that his organization oversees services such as reservations and housekeeping.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled last month that Trump can be sued for damages that are based on "oppression, collusion or breach of fiduciary duties."
Great expectations
Trump appeared in Toronto numerous times in the lead-up to the tower's opening in 2012, at a time when his reality show "The Apprentice" was "really hot and Donald Trump had a ton of celebrity," Mitchell Wine, the investors' lawyer, said after the ruling.
People were then offered a chance to invest in the tower's units and pocket the revenue from renting them out.
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But Toronto's Trump Tower never lived up to expectations. Occupancy only hit around 50 per cent a year after it opened and investor-owners lost as much as $175 per day.
Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten told the Star that Donald never entered a contract with any buyers, nor did he sell them anything.
The lawsuit comes at the same time as a receiver has been appointed to sell the tower after Talon defaulted on its loan.
Lender JCF Capital ULC filed for receivership in the hope of recovering its money, though it will trade debt for ownership if a satisfactory offer can't be found.
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A Catholic priest has been condemned by many after he posted a video with an aborted fetus in support of Donald Trump even by those from his own faith.
Rev. Frank Pavone, a prominent pro-life activist, appeared in a Facebook Live video on Sunday behind an altar with the fetus lying on it in front of him.
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Today I am doing something rather extraordinary, he says.
Because here before me lies a baby, killed by abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy.
The reason for the stunt? To encourage Americans to vote for the Republican nominee, who has said he is pro-life.
Rev. Frank Pavone sits behind an altar with an aborted fetus (out of frame) lying on it in a video meant to drum up support for Donald Trump. (Photo: Father Frank Pavone/Facebook)
Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected, he wrote in the description for the video.
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Trump said in April that he thinks abortion should be outlawed except in situations of rape, incest or if the mothers life is in danger. He said during a debate last month that if elected president and allowed to appoint Supreme Court justices, he would pick those who would overturn a woman's right to abortion.
Clinton is pro-choice and has said wants to make sure abortions are safe and legal.
I am here to present to you the fact that we have a very simple choice: to elect those who are going to affirm the covenant we have with God, or those who reject it, says Pavone in the video.
He later apologized in another video on Tuesday to anyone he offended, but said he knew involving the aborted fetus would cause a stir. The video has since been removed.
I want to thank first of all all my friends, colleagues, supporters who have thanked me for exposing the truth about abortion, for exposing the truth about what the Democrats and Hillary Clinton stand for when it comes to abortion.
He has received both support and criticism on Facebook, but the most notable messages of disapproval came from Catholic leaders and writers.
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A priest of the Catholic Church publicly displayed on a sacred altar a dead baby who was the victim of a terrible crime as part of a propaganda video in favor of a political candidate, wrote Ed Mechmann, the director of public policy for the Archdiocese of New York, in a post on its website.
What Fr. Pavone did is the opposite of pro-life."
It is hard for me to express in calm, measured terms, the revulsion I feel about this.
Others said the priest violated the fetus dignity.
The Catholic Church is very strict that human bodies are to be treated reverently after a person dies, Rev. Thomas Petri, vice president and academic dean of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C, told the Catholic News Agency.
Blogger Scott Eric Alt said Pavone should have his ability to celebrate Mass suspended, saying what he did was a sacrilege.
More than that, what Fr. Pavone did is the opposite of pro-life."
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The federal Liberals struggle to land a free trade deal with the European Union isn't over, even after it signed an agreement.
Activists in the Netherlands said this past weekend that they have collected two-thirds of the signatures needed to force a referendum on CETA, the Canada-EU free trade pact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed in Brussels last month.
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The Netherlands have developed a reputation for scuttling EU initiatives through referenda. Voters there rejected an economic cooperation agreement with Ukraine this past spring.
According to the EU Observer, campaigners collected 190,000 signatures for a referendum on CETA and TTIP, the proposed (but currently floundering) U.S,-EU trade deal. The Canada-EU deal is widely seen as a test run for the much larger U.S. deal.
The campaign would need 300,000 signatures to force a referendum on the issue. If voters reject the trade deals in the vote, and the vote has more than 30 per cent turnout, the Dutch parliament would be forced to vote to override it, The Guardian reports.
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Even if campaigners collect all the signatures they need, the Dutch referendum would likely not go forward before elections are held in the Netherlands in March 2017.
All 28 EU member states, and a dozen or so regional parliaments, have to agree to the deal in order for it to be enacted in its entirety.
CETA appeared to be on the verge of death last month, when the Belgian region of Wallonias parliament refused to accept the deal. The deadlock prompted Canada's international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, to walk out of negotiations.
But talks continued without Freeland, and a last-minute agreement between Belgian regions and the EU brought Wallonia on board, though with a caveat: CETAs controversial tribunal system for corporations fighting governments will not go into effect until all countries have signed.
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The First World War gave way to some fairly unique baby names.
According to the U.K. National Archives, over 1,600 babies were given war-related names between 1914 and 1919 in England and Wales. Naturally, parents during this time were influenced by the Great War, which is why end-of-war names such as Poppy and war hero names such as Cavell (after British nurse Edith Cavell) began to rise.
While most would assume that hero baby names were the most popular at this time, this actually wasnt the case. In fact, only 12 per cent of babies who were given war-inspired monikers were named after heroes, while 75 per cent were named after battles.
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The data is fascinating and gives new insight into the battles that resonated with mothers on the Home Front, said Jessamy Carlson, archivist and First World War programme manager. It was a surprise to learn that the battles rather than the heroes or names relating to the end of the war were the most popular.
Out of all the battles, Verdun was the most popular among U.K. parents with 901 babies given this name. According to Carlson, this is also surprising considering Verdun was a French/German battle with no British Troops directly involved.
Other popular battle names included Ypres (71 babies), Mons (58) and Arras (42). These names were clearly a sign of the times, as they barely register on the popularity scale today.
For more unique war-inspired names from the National Archives, visit here.
Traditional names also remained high in popularity during World War I, with John and Mary topping the charts every year from 1914 to 1918, BabyCenter reports. This is likely thanks to the tradition of passing family names down from one generation to the next.
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To find out the 10 most popular baby names from World War I, flip through the slideshow below.
Since the rise of the Internet, the world has witnessed exponential levels of technological innovation. While this progress was quick to transform the American economy, Washington has struggled to keep pace. Business owners and consumers alike are frustrated with bureaucrats attempts to apply decades-old laws to regulate emerging technologies and new industries that could not be imagined when these laws were written.
Everyone recognizes that innovation is necessary for America to remain competitive in the 21st century global economy. In this interview, Representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) talks about barriers to entrepreneurship and how the government can work with innovators to amplifyrather than inhibittheir progress.
Jared Meyer: Despite booming technological advances over the past few decades, the rate of new businesses entering the U.S. economy has fallen to a 30-year low. Why is this happening?
Representative Ratcliffe: This trend has been heavily influenced by the countless rules and regulations churned out by the federal government. The idea that expanding governments role in the economy is necessary for economic growth does not fit with the core principles that must be employed to get ahead in the 21st century.
As Ronald Reagan famously said, the government must foster productivity, not stifle it. Right now, instead of opening the door of opportunity for innovators trying to create the next generation of American jobs, antiquated federal policies seal that door shut with thick layers of red tape. This is why I introduced legislation such as the All Economic Regulations are Transparent Act (H.R. 1759) and the Separation of Powers Restoration Act (H.R. 4768), which both passed in the House and would combat federal overreach and excessive regulations.
Jared Meyer: You mentioned principles that are necessary for entrepreneurship. What are these principles?
Representative Ratcliffe: They are free enterprise, limited government, and the right to self-determination. To see these principles in action, just look at the business models of sharing economy companies like Uber and Lyft. Because of technological innovation, people can now work for themselves and turn their underused assets and free time into earnings opportunities. Yet the heavy hand of government regulation continues to threaten independent works growth.
Additionally, the overtime rules pushed out by the Obama administration are about to go into effect. These rules will stifle opportunity for those who need it the most. Because of the Department of Labors push to make people punch time cards, younger Americans will have a harder time acquiring critical skills and start-ups that could become the next Microsoft or Google may find themselves unable to expand.
Pushing back against a changing economy contradicts the foundational principles of America. We should be rewarding those who take risks and start their own business. Then the rest of us can reap the benefits that come with entrepreneurship, such as new jobs and a heightened competitive edge on the international playing field. Simply put, if the United States doesnt make it competitive to innovate here, some other country will take our place. Im committed to making sure that doesnt happen.
Jared Meyer: In addition to your work to limit regulations, you introduced the Support for Rapid Innovation Act and the Leveraging Emerging Technologies Act, which both passed the House earlier this year. These bills would help form government partnerships with the private sector when it comes to cyber security. How do you view the governments and the private sectors roles in solving todays policy challenges?
Representative Ratcliffe: Protecting Americansand our businessesfrom the threats posed by cyber criminals and other bad actors is a critical national priority. With that said, one of my legislative philosophies has always been to remember that the government doesnt have all the solutions.
Right now, the private sector is leading the way with innovative cybersecurity technologies that defend our networks, safeguard Americans personal information, and protect our critical infrastructure. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committees cybersecurity subcommittee, Ive put an emphasis on empowering and facilitating private sector innovation, rather than stifling it with onerous and potentially ill-advised mandates.
While the bills Ive introduced focus specifically on collaborative cybersecurity efforts, theyre part of a broader plan my Republicans colleagues and I are supporting called the Innovation Initiative. The legislation included in this plan aims to allow the government to work alongside folks in the private sector as a partner rather than a regulator.
Jared Meyer: Your point about the value of innovation, not regulation being promoted as a cornerstone of the GOP reminds me of my testimony before the House Republican Policy Committee last year. I argued that the political party that can brand itself as the party of entrepreneurs, innovation, and economic growth is the party that will attract millennial voters . Do you see your emphasis on innovation as a way to win over potential constituenciessuch as millennialsthat do not traditionally lean Republican?
Representative Ratcliffe: I fully believe Republicans have the winning ideas our country needs. But Republicans have been out-messaged by our counterparts on the other side of the aisle. While some have advocated for watering down or moderating our principles to enhance the message, I firmly disagree with this approach. Republicans must remain unwavering in our strong support for the key principles that I mentioned earlierfree enterprise, limited government, and the right to self-determination. Though these ideas need to be discussed in ways that fully recognize the realities of the 21st century economy.
Republicans can accomplish this by clearly demonstrating how conservative solutions will provide real opportunities for Americans who need it the most. For example, just look at the opportunities that Uber has created despite government overreach. Just a few years ago, summoning a private car was a luxury reserved for a select few. Now, many Americans across all income levels have access to affordable on-demand transportation.
Millennials value entrepreneurship, as two-thirds of them want to work for themselves or start a business. If Republicans show that we are in tune with millennials concerns, millions of young people will be receptive to the benefits that free-market policies offer. By articulating just how much the Obama administrations rules and regulations have hurt entrepreneurs, we can shed light on why free-market principles are as important today as they ever have been. Innovation, not Regulation is more than an election cycle soundbiteits an enduring and forward-thinking priority that Republicans must continue to embrace.
Jared Meyer is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the author of Uber-Positive: Why Americans Love the Sharing Economy (Encounter Books, June 2016). Follow him on Twitter here.
This article originally appeared in Forbes.
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As implausible as octuplets.
Donald Trump becoming president of the United States may join the long list of jokes from The Simpsons that actually came true.
In the episode, Bart sees 30 years into the future and America has a President Trump. Lisa ends up being elected right after him and has to clean up his mess.
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"It was a warning to America," writer Dan Greaney told The Hollywood Reporter.
"What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that's why we had Trump be president before her," he said.
"It was a warning to America."
It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane."
The shows famous creator, Matt Groening, told the Guardian Trump was just the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time.
Watch the video above to see some examples of outrageous plots from the show that ended up coming true.
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Donald Trump's mouth on puffer fish See Gallery
VisionsofAmerica/Joe Sohm via Getty Images White puffy clouds over the Mayan Pyramid of Kukulkan (also known as El Castillo) and ruins at Chichen Itza, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico
Photo credit: Blok 70
Many travelers are overlooking one of North America's best travel destinations. Mexico is a culturally and naturally diverse nation, offering the key items most travelers seek -- postcard-worthy scenery, rich culture, hospitable people, delicious food, and affordability. These six reasons to visit Mexico will encourage you to forget about misleading media headlines and find your slice of heaven south of the border.
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You'll Get More Bang for Your Buck
Mexico can be an affordable destination if you do it right. Venture away from the lavish coastal resorts, and you'll find a long list of affordable inns, hotels, and rental villas, many of which will discount your nightly rate for a longer stay. Couple affordable nightly accommodations with budget-friendly meals (don't be afraid to eat street food) and cheap local libations (think: tequila), and you can experience an unforgettable warm-weather vacation without the inflated prices.
You Can Eat Your Fill
Much of the Mexican way of life revolves around food. Snack on affordable tacos, tamales, tortas and other authentic Mexican fare at local taquerias or grab a freshly fried fish taco (when in Baja) or elotes (grilled Mexican street corn) from stands lining the streets in most towns and cities. Whether you're into just-out-of-the-ocean seafood or rich moles, there's something for every palette in this food-driven country.
You Can Be Adventurous
Photo credit: Galeon Fotografia
When you travel to Mexico, you're not trapped on an island, forced to pay for overpriced activities like parasailing and windsurfing. Mexico's coastline offers some of the best waves in the world for surfers while many of the inland mountains and volcanoes are begging to be hiked and climbed. Avid trekkers know El Pico de Orizaba is the cream of the crop of Mexican volcanoes and stands as the tallest peak in the country, but you don't have to be an adrenaline junkie to experience the countless opportunities for higher altitude exploration.
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You Can Discover Rich Heritage
Mexico's charming small towns and long list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites take travelers back to a simpler time. Venture into the Historic Centre of Mexico City and Xochimilco (built in the 16th century) or the cobblestone streets of San Miguel de Allende, home to preserved Spanish mansions and strong colonial heritage. Even Mexico's most tourism-driven towns, like Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas, offer historic areas or "Old Town" regions for tourists to discover the country's colorful past.
You Can Explore Ruins
Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis
Mexico's archaeological sites take travelers even farther back in time than the "Old Towns" and historic centres. The great Maya civilization once inhabited Mexico and developed ground-breaking agricultural systems, remarkable temples, and infrastructures that were far ahead of their time. Visitors can explore the ruins of Chichen Itza, Tulum, Coba, Palenque, Uxmal, and numerous other spectacular sites to better understand the country's culture and thousands of years of history.
You'll Make Lasting Relationships
Hands down, the best part of visiting Mexico is mingling with the people. Mexicans are proud of their rich cultural heritage and are happy to show visitors what makes their country so special. Don't be surprised if your new-found friends are full of recommendations for sights you must see and authentic foods you have to taste. Courage and kindness are known as the two major hallmarks of a Mexican person, and you're guaranteed to notice hospitality, festive spirit, and a strong heart in nearly every person you meet.
Tetra Images via Getty Images USA, New Jersey, Jersey City, Couple with Christmas shopping
Holiday shopping doesn't have to be a drag. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when creating your list and checking it twice, but the experience of picking out all of those special gifts should be remembered not hated. These four cities across the United States offer holiday cheer, world-renowned shops, and plenty of attractions for when the shopping is done.
San Francisco, California
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Photo credit: Ken Lund
Not exactly seeking a winter wonderland this holiday season? Head to San Francisco for a destination that sees average temperatures between 45 and 55 degrees and a very slim chance of snow. Even better than not having to shovel is the huge selection of shops ranging from the most popular designer boutiques at Union Square to the quirky stores in the Mission District. Shop for upscale vintage items in the Upper Haight, big name brands at the Embarcadero, and budget-friendly exotic gifts in Chinatown. Shopping streets span the entire city of San Fran, making it easy to shop, see the sights, and dine at world-class restaurants in a single day.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Just 20 minutes south of Minneapolis is the largest mall in the country, the Mall of America. Avid shoppers will argue this is the best place in the U.S. to complete your shopping list and fill up on holiday cheer too. Every year, the mall is festively decked with a towering Christmas tree, garlands, thousands of holiday lights, and of course, Santa Claus. After exploring the extravagant mall, filled with 520 shops, thrill rides, and even the SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium, head back to the city to check out Macy's annual Santaland display, the beloved Holidazzle parade, and a long list of other holiday events.
Boston, Massachusetts
Photo credit: MassTravel
Historic Boston, Mass., is transformed into a winter wonderland, complete with citywide decorations, skating rinks, carolers, and cheerful window displays during the holiday season. It's one of the best cities in the country for embracing the spirit of the holidays and fulfilling your shopping list on foot.
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Peruse the decorated designer stores on Newbury Street, shop the big brands at the Prudential Center, or pick up trinkets and British snacks from the vendors at the historic Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Put down your shopping bags and fall back in love with the holidays at a Holiday Pops concert, a performance of The Nutcracker, or one of many other annual Boston Christmas events.
New York City, New York
You've probably seen New York City at Christmas time in the movies, but it's something that needs to be experienced in person to be truly understood. The holiday season in New York City is bound to make you feel like a kid again, with twinkling gold lights, miniature holiday villages, and the iconic annual window display at Macy's. Lord and Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York, and Bloomingdale's will also lure you in with unforgettable holiday window scenes.
But you'll want to stray from the big name stores to the European-style pop-up shops of the open-air holiday market in Bryant Park or the iconic Union Square Holiday Market. Don't forget to ice skate at Rockefeller Center, gaze up at the carefully decorated Empire State Building, stroll through snow-covered Central Park, and experience some of the Big Apple's most famous holiday activities before heading home.
Morsa Images via Getty Images Tensed father looking at ill son lying in bed at hospital ward
Even after the fall of the the Berlin Wall, it was possible to find apologists for communism who would insist that the political system responsible for immeasurable human suffering wasn't inherently flawed. There was nothing wrong with communism, you see, it was the implementation that had failed. Professor Colleen Flood's defence of Canada's creaking state health-care monopoly in the Huffington Post last week has a similar air of unreality.
Written with the sententiousness of a party tract, but none of the revolutionary elan, I don't expect many readers followed her plodding piece to its perfunctory end. Fortunately, you don't have to get that far to see the problems with her argument (to use the word loosely): each of the first three sentences contains a factual inaccuracy, and the blog goes downhill from there.
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The legal case that has agitated Professor Flood does not "challenge ... the publicly funded Canadian health system," nor does it "allege that medicare violates the Charter." The plaintiffs' constitutional challenge is straightforward: if the government does not provide timely medical treatment, then it cannot at the same time legally prohibit patients who are suffering on long wait lists from taking control of their own health care and arranging treatment privately.
The case targets two restrictions within B.C. law. The first prevents doctors who work in the state system from also working in the approximately 60 private clinics that already exist in B.C., even after they have performed their government-allocated quota of surgeries. The second prevents patients from using private insurance, including the disability insurance that almost 70 per cent of British Columbians have through their employers, to pay for medically-necessary procedures. Together, these legal restrictions act as a state limitation on the choices British Columbians can make about their own health. Importantly, neither is required by the federal Canada Health Act, which the plaintiffs are not challenging.
It's been ten years since provinces were put on notice by the Supreme Court that their wait lists were violating patients' Charter rights.
In the 2005 case of Chaoulli v. Quebec, the Supreme Court of Canada held that similar prohibitions violated the rights to life and security of the person, though for technical reasons that decision was limited to the province of Quebec. In Carter v. Canada, the 2015 case that found a right to physician-assisted death, the Court affirmed the "tenacious relevance in our legal system of the principle that competent individuals are -- and should be -- free to make decisions about their bodily integrity."
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This principle, first invoked in the Court's 1988 Morgentaler abortion decision, embodies "a notion of personal autonomy involving ... control over one's bodily integrity free from state interference and it is engaged by state interference ... that causes physical or serious psychological suffering."
To put it simply, the government must not arbitrarily limit the choices Canadians can make about their bodies -- especially when they are suffering acute physical pain, mental distress, and financial hardship on wait lists that can extend well over a year.
This principle of fundamental justice is brushed aside by Professor Flood, the state-funded defender of statist absolutism in health care. Her solution, if it's possible to tease one out of her op-ed is more of the status quo, but better implemented. Great. It's been ten years since provinces were put on notice by the Supreme Court that their wait lists were violating patients' Charter rights. And, despite efforts in all provinces to streamline service, to increase funding at choke points in the system, and to provide incentives for efficiency, the wait times are as long as ever. Now, as the Baby Boom generation enters the most healthcare intensive decades of their lives, our already strained system is threatening to collapse.
Professor Flood's only concrete suggestion is to appoint a "Patient Ombudsman in each province -- with real teeth." (Good thing about the real teeth, as dental care isn't covered under Canada's universal public health system). That's it? Another government official to monitor the current government officials? If that's the best idea that the Director of the University of Ottawa's Centre for Health Law, Policy, and Ethics can come up with, you can start to see why the plaintiffs in B.C. felt they couldn't wait for politically-driven change.
After mischaracterizing the patients' constitutional challenge and a half-hearted swipe at the greed of would-be health profiteers (what would a statist treatise be without one?), Professor Flood turns her foggy glasses to comparable national health-care systems.
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She doesn't dispute that Canada's health system falls short of international comparators -- nor could she while staying on the right side of the line between fatuity and fantasy. Even the federal Minister of Health accepts this. In a speech to the Canadian Medical Association last August, Minister Jane Philpott explained that "it's a myth that Canada has the best health care system in the world. ... We spend more per capita on health care than many other countries. What's worse is that, while we do this, we get poorer outcomes for our patients."
As evidence, Dr. Philpott cited a report by the independent Commonwealth Fund that "ranked us second from the last in a study that compared Canada to places like Australia, the UK, France, and Germany." (She was referring to a 2014 study, which ranked Canada tenth out of eleven other OECD countries, and dead last in the category of wait times.)
What Canadians used to be taught from the cradle to believe is a source of national pride has become an international embarrassment.
So, if almost every other developed country is doing better than Canada, while preserving a universally-accessible system for everyone who needs it, why wouldn't we welcome the chance to improve? Professor Flood doesn't exactly say, but she spends the second half her article explaining why it would be impossible to adopt either the U.K.'s two-tiered system (tops of the Commonwealth Fund's rankings) or the Netherlands' insurance-based model.
Airily claiming that "it is purposefully naive to suppose that Canada can easily go shopping among the health-care models of western Europe" to "magically give us a 'European' model," Professor Flood tells reformers to give up before they've even started trying. Sure other systems may work better than ours, her logic goes, but that's the U.K. and the Netherlands (and Australia, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland ... I could go on) and ... well, we're Canada. Not exactly Cartesian in its rigour.
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She also fails to explain how the even more radical change to our current system was somehow possible or recognize that transformational policy changes, from a new carbon tax to a new CPP benefit to a new child benefit (and all that in one year), hardly seem to daunt the current federal government.
Like a Soviet factory in the waning years of the Cold War, Canada's monopolistic health-care system is sustained only by propaganda, fudged statistics, and ever-higher spending. To the experts at think tanks like the Commonwealth Fund, who trade in evidence rather than myths, Canada's unique prohibition on private care looks increasingly like what it is: ideological adherence to an anachronism. What Canadians used to be taught from the cradle to believe is a source of national pride has become an international embarrassment.
Fortunately, a new generation used to choice and constant innovation in everything from how they communicate to how they hail a taxi, is in the ascendance. How long can our sclerotic state system of rationed healthcare survive in their world, where "evidence-based" is the lodestar of public policy and disruption the preferred method of change?
If Professor Flood's dogged recitation of the party line is the best that true believers can offer in defence of spiralling costs, Charter-violating waiting lists, and legal bans on patient choice, then maybe we won't have to wait too much longer. Until then, however, the five plaintiffs will continue their constitutional fight for patient choice in a B.C. courtroom. Because, when you are suffering, any wait is too long.
Howard Anglin is the Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is supporting the constitutional challenge in British Columbia. For more information, please see www.yourhealthcantwait.ca.
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Dennis Macdonald via Getty Images Pro-life anti-abortion activist protestors, Louisville, KY
"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue," goes the old saying. At Canadian public universities, hypocrisy threatens to destroy one of higher education's most cherished and long-standing virtues: the free exchange of ideas.
Since 2011, the annual Campus Freedom Index has been exposing the glaring differences between the lip service paid by universities to free expression and academic freedom, and the ongoing censorship of controversial speech on campus.
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For example, the University of Toronto has among the best policies in Canada: "Within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom and freedom of research." The U of T further declares that "these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself."
But the U of T ignores these words by condoning the alleged censorship of controversial discourse by the University of Toronto Mississauga Student Union (UTMSU). This student union allegedly denied registered club status to a pro-life group, because of its stance on abortion.
Rather than condemn the unlawful behaviour of this student union -- which students must join and pay fees to in order to study at the university -- the U of T is responding with deafening silence. This pro-life club had no reasonable alternative but to sue UTMSU in order to have its rights protected. Proactive intervention by the university could have prevented the need for these costly legal efforts.
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In similar fashion, Ryerson University says that it "embraces unequivocally" the free exchange of ideas on campus. Yet Ryerson has not spoken in defence of the Men's Issues Awareness Society, a Ryerson student group which seeks to discuss issues such as men's academic underperformance, and mens' higher rates of suicide and homelessness.
The Men's Issues Awareness Society was allegedly denied student group status by its student union, because its advocacy might make some women feel "uncomfortable," "unwelcome" and not "included." In an editorial penned by student union president Andrea Bartlett, she expresses that the group was denied club status because many of the proposed topics were already covered by other student groups, and group representatives "refused to acknowledge the reality of patriarchy and other systemic issues of privilege" which, according to her, runs counter to RSU's core equity values.
This men's society has had to take the student union to court to defend the club's free expression and free association rights; this is one of several court actions in Ontario against student unions.
The University of Alberta also exemplifies hypocrisy, defending in court its right to censor controversial and unpopular speech by pricing it out of existence. The university's policy states that "[no] student shall, by action, words, written material, or by any means whatsoever, obstruct university activities or university-related functions."
Yet the U of A knowingly condoned the illegal mob behaviour of those who physically blocked and obstructed a pro-life display on campus. This university took no action to prosecute students who forcibly disrupted and silenced speech they disagreed with. The U of A now refuses to allow students to put up a pro-life display unless the club pays "security fees" of $17,500.
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There is, perversely, something refreshing about the consistency of a few student unions which oppose free expression.
The University of Windsor claims to be "a place where freedom of expression is protected vigorously and uncompromisingly," but this same university rescinded its approval for a peaceful pro-life club display of small pink-and-blue flags on campus after the flags had already been placed.
Some students complained that the display was too visible, so university authorities obligingly ignored the vandalism and obstruction of the flag display. The university also failed to prosecute students who disrupted a lecture by a former Israeli diplomat and member of the Bedouin minority, organized by a Jewish student group on campus, despite its own rules which prohibit the "[intentional] obstruction or disruption of... authorized activities on university premises."
In light of such widespread hypocrisy at Canada's institutions of higher learning, there is, perversely, something refreshing about the consistency of a few student unions which oppose free expression through both their policies and their practices. The University of Toronto Mississauga Student Union, the University of Victoria Student Society and the Ryerson Students' Union have earned "F" grades for both their words and their actions. These three student unions are the worst in Canada, but at least they are honest about their intentions.
Michael Kennedy and John Carpay are co-authors of the 2016 Campus Freedom Index CampusFreedomIndex.ca, published by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF.ca), which also acts for student groups in the above-referenced court cases.
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alexskopje via Getty Images Close up of pencil on immigration form
The U.S. presidential election has been marked by controversial, divisive and occasionally downright ridiculous statements from the candidates, not least of which has been Trump's impossible idea to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and to somehow force the Mexican government to pay for it.
And now with the increased threats from American liberals that they would immigrate to Canada if Trump wins this week's election (such threats happen every four years, I might add), I imagine many Canadians wish they could build a wall between Canada and the U.S. and send the bill to the American government.
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But Canada doesn't need to build a wall to keep out those Americans willing to renounce their ties to the U.S. and trade their "freedom fries" for poutine. Because while Canada may have an admirable universal health care system, sensible gun laws and a ridiculously handsome prime minister, Canada's immigration system is broken.
Many Americans -- including celebrities like Chelsea Handler, Bryan Cranston, Barbara Streisand and Lena Dunham -- who have taken to Twitter to express their panic and outrage with this U.S. election and who have threatened to move to the Great White North should have applied to Canada years ago, like I did, if they really wished to immigrate. Because according to the CIC's own website, it now takes more than 26 months for Canada to process a visa for a foreign spouse of a Canadian citizen who is already living inside Canada.
INSERT QUOTE HERE
I have been waiting 27 months, and yet still have not received my residency visa. Meanwhile, I don't have access to Canada's coveted health-care system. I can't legally work or study in the country. I can't even open a bank account.
I met my Canadian husband in 2011 when he was living in New York City. He was working at the Quebec delegation in New York, helping to promote Quebec art and culture in the United States during a three-year posting abroad. I proposed to him in 2013, shortly after the landmark ruling in the United States that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which then paved the way for gay marriage to be recognized across the entire country.
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We had all the intention of remaining in the U.S. after our wedding, but when the PLQ regained power in Quebec in the 2014 provincial election, he was offered an amazing job within the Quebec government. It was a career-defining move, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him. Despite having a great job in New York that I enjoyed, it was a no-brainer decision for us as a couple to move to Canada.
We knew that moving to Canada wasn't going to be easy and that the immigration process would be a hurdle. We expected it might take about a year for the Canadian authorities to process my visa application, which is on average with most developed countries in the world. However, we were certainly not expecting a 2.5-year wait, during which time we would have to jump through some of the most ridiculous hoops to meet the requests of the demanding, yet unresponsive, immigration authorities.
Canada's immigration system is broken.
My first year in Canada was a year well spent learning one of the country's two official languages: French. But when my language studies were complete, and my visa was still not processed, I became depressed. I resented my husband's structured day and his ability to go work. And he resented all the time I had to myself and what he viewed as "freedom." But never before had I wanted to have a job so badly. My home felt more like a prison. And for a while, my marriage became strained and full of petty grievances.
This is how Canada treats its immigrants and its citizens who have dared to fall in love with a foreigner. Because while the details of my story may be different than other immigrants to Canada, the general premise of the story remains the same. We have all left our jobs, our friends, and our families in order to establish a new life with the one we love in their homeland. We came to Canada excited to start a new life with our partners, excited about living in a country with a sterling reputation on the international stage.
And yet, the Canadian immigration system has treated us no better than a piece of paper being pushed around in a bureaucratic and inefficient system. This negligence has taken a severe toll on our lives, on our marriages, our sense of worth, our self-esteem, our finances, and even on our mental and physical health.
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The Canadian immigration system has failed us and has failed our Canadian partners who have sponsored us to live here. Twenty-six months to process a spousal visa is way too long. It's as ridiculous as Trump's idea to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.
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Recently, CBC reported the criticism directed at the Alberta Teacher's Association "Professionals Respecting and supporting Individual Sexual and Gender Minorities" (PRISM) resource for secondary schools.
The resource is meant to help foster inclusivity for all students. However, the argument of accommodating gender and sexual minority students at the expense of isolating racial minority students is both dangerous and false.
Specifically, a Calgary immigration lawyer asserted that the resource could create challenges as "most immigrants and second-generation Canadians tend to be much more religious than native-born Canadians." He mentioned Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims specifically and stated:
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"You are going to have them deal with, perhaps an insinuation or unconscious, subconscious sort of assessment that their belief systems are primitive or they binary viewpoints of the universe are outmoded or outdated"
This criticism is unfounded. Immigrants are not necessarily more conservative and host nationals are not always more liberal. Moreover, such criticism ignores the existence of immigrant and refugee LGBTQ persons from Sikh, Hindu and Muslim backgrounds.
As an example, recent Syrian refugees find mosques in Germany too conservative for offering prayers. There have also been out gay Syrian refugees who now call Canada home.
There are many Muslim, Hindu and Sikh LGBTQ youth of colour who experience racism from xenophobes and hatred from homophobes. The recent news of a 21-year-old Sikh youth, who was abandoned by his own parents after coming out in Vancouver, is the latest of such harrowing stories.
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The last thing they need is for ethnic community leaders to create false binaries between religion and sexuality. To do so would be to give into Orientalist tropes that somehow non-Western religions are backwards.
According to University of Toronto Professor Christopher Cochrane, there is a substantial diversity in Muslim opinions on same-sex marriage and only a small percentage of Canadian-born Muslims oppose same-sex marriage.
Indeed, Islam and the dharmic (Indian) faiths have accommodated gender and sexual minorities. The Prophet's household was visited by the mukhannathun (gender variant persons) of Medina. Some who defied binary gender categories have guarded his tomb for centuries.
The recent fatwa (legal edict) affirming the marriages of khawaja saras (transgender persons) in Pakistan is another example of accommodating gender minorities. In India, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai have compiled writings on same-sex love that span over 2000 years of Indian literature.
In 2012, Nobel Laureates, Shirin Ebadi of Iran and Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh joined Desmond Tutu to affirm that their "cultural values" allow them to speak out against the discrimination of LGBTQ persons. Likewise, Asian, Hindu and Sikh parents have offered powerful videos, in languages including Punjabi, in support of their LGBTQ offspring.
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As such, the criticism leveled against the Alberta Teacher's Association PRISM resource on the basis of isolating racial minorities is moot. Ethnic community stakeholders can offer leadership by unreservedly supporting the resource and facilitating their own courageous and resilient LGBTQ youth.
In facilitating safe spaces for ethnic gender and sexual minority youth, the following LGBTQ leaders offer ethnic community leaders their unstinted support as allies.
Dr. Kristopher Wells
Rob Wells
Todd Herron
Mickey Wilson
Roz Zulla
Dr. Junaid Jahangir
Rev. Dr. Nancy Steeves
Rev. Mark Chiang
Sue Brewer
Dr. Alvin Schrader
Gil Charest
Frank Testin
Jay Smith
Steven Townsend
Murray Billet
Gary Simpson
Stephanie Keith / Reuters Horse riders from the Bigfoot Riders, Dakota 38 Riders, Spirit Riders and the Bigfoot Youth Riders arrive at the Oceti Sakowin camp during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation near Cannon Ball, North Dakota November 5, 2016. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a massive $3.8B project that would carry around 470,000 barrels every day of crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. It was originally supposed to pass by the state's capital of Bismarck. The plan was then changed to move it away from the city and through Native American land.
The pipeline is funded by the usual big business, big profit, big self-satisfied elite who can get away with this because indigenous people are historically considered poor and expendable. Not only is the pipeline been being built on lands it is not allowed to, and against court orders, but it has also brought in private security and militarized police.
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This move represents what is wrong and it validates what the indigenous people are saying. If the pipeline were safe, there would have been no issue running it through a heavily populated area. But instead of re-considering whether it should be built at all, it seems it is perfectly acceptable to transfer the risks, disruption and potential environmental disasters by running it through indigenous land.
And the militarized police have used their armored trucks and high-powered weaponry to carry out cowardly, callous attacks literally on behalf of private corporations instead of doing the job they were hired to do.
Hundreds of peaceful protesters have been arrested, assaulted and dehumanized. People, horses and journalists are being shot by rubber bullets and attacked by private security dogs for being completely peaceful. Protesters are reporting being arrested and held in dog cages and disturbingly, the police have not denied this.
The way some media are spinning things is by implying the protesters are aggressive and that use of force has been required by police to defend themselves. We have not seen one video, picture or credible report of this but we have seen a lot of police attacking unarmed people and even one armed "protester" who it turns out worked for the pipeline.
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For people not directly involved in the situation, there may not be much concern or empathy for the Sioux tribe of Standing Rock when they talk about the pipeline disturbing ancestral burial sites among other things on land that is rightfully theirs according to treaties.
But the situation has elements that are the big issues and it is but one of many situations that have happened, continued to happen and can also happen to non-indigenous people. So here are the lessons of the Dakota Access pipeline to date of why there should be broad outrage:
Poor people do not matter when big money and big business is at stake.
People get beaten down, literally and figuratively, when they dare to ask their government to honour treaties (and this could also be contracts, court orders and other legal requirements) or to think long term about the care and safety of water, which we all have a right to.
The impact on citizens of mobilized, militarized police to defend big business, particularly when big business is on the wrong side of law, treaties, etc, is frightening and reflects the incredible power imbalance.
This pipeline represents no real benefit to the American public. There is no need for it.
The pipeline is slated to cross the Missouri River which is a water source 17 million people rely on.
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I am usually of the position that a peaceful protest is rarely effective; it clearly hasn't worked for indigenous people for hundreds of years. The Dakota Access protest however gives the world, one more time, a view though that many will continue defend their beliefs and rights in this way.
President Obama said he would "let things play out" which in political talk means he is not going to do anything and that is extremely disappointing as the least he could do is ask for an environmental review.
The United Nations is investigating the treatment of the protesters. While I don't have a lot of faith in the UN or their effectiveness historically with Indigenous issues, at least they are paying attention.
But nothing will change until the governments of both the United States and Canada honour their constitutional, legal and ethical commitments to indigenous people, until governments work on behalf of the people of the countries rather than their own political ends and until people remove their money and business from the banks that are behind these projects.
And while I encourage outrage by all for the bigger issues represented here, there should be specific outrage that Indigenous communities continue to suffer the effects of abuse, cultural genocide, a suicide epidemic, impoverished communities, a housing crisis, and lack of access to food and healthcare.
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There can be nothing clearer that Indigenous people do not matter to those in power than the continued situation at the Dakota Access pipeline. Yet it's worth noting that it is the most underrepresented and the most excluded from power who are the ones with enough heart to stand up and say this is not right.
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PeopleImages via Getty Images Cropped shop of a handsome coffee shop owner showing a waitress the ropes
With everything you're juggling as a small business owner, keeping up with an increasingly digital world can feel overwhelming -- and making changes to embrace new technology can sometimes be last on your list. If you're in retail, however, this shift is simply no longer optional.
Even mom-and-pop businesses can't get away with having zero web presence (or having a weak one). Offering online shopping is quickly becoming table stakes and contactless payment options are expected in-store.
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This is especially true if you're looking to attract millennials. And you should be, since this demographic is only growing their spending power. There's a lot of talk about the elusive millennial. We read that they value experiences more than things. They're entitled, yet into giving back. They live online, yet crave unique, local-made goods.
There's no time like the present to give yourself a digital edge.
So, are they really that different from the rest of us? Well, yes and no. Based on research we recently fielded at Mastercard, millennials have at least one thing in common with their older counterparts -- they believe in supporting their local businesses. Consistent across generations, nine out of 10 Canadians said supporting small merchants in their community is close to their hearts.
Canadians of all ages love to shop local, but how and why millennials do it is a little different. They are less likely to shop frequently at local brick and mortar stores but more likely to order online from independent merchants. They're less likely than Canadians over 35 to shop local because of emotional ties to the community and more likely to do it because of the unique products on offer.
That all means there's no time like the present to give yourself a digital edge. I spend a lot of time with small business owners and I know that change can be scary. I know how easy it is to put it off until next year. I also know how vital your success is to fueling the economy. Here are some important steps you can take.
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Go online to grow
Offer eCommerce as soon as you can. Availability of online shopping from independent merchants is relatively new, but so far Canadians are embracing it. While it hasn't caught up to the popularity of in-store shopping, there's an important generational trend. Half of all millennials are shopping online from local merchants. You need to capture this market for future success. And you can bet this trend won't be reversing with Generation Z.
Recognize that your website is part of curb appeal
A third of retailers in Canada still don't have a website. Even if you can't offer eCommerce right now, make sure you have a website and that it looks sharp. Your online presence has a direct impact on your in-store sales as 85 per cent of buyers want to do research online before buying.
Make big data small
Since you can't rely on loyalty alone from younger shoppers, you need to sell what they want. Going with your gut on decisions has got you this far, but there are more tools available now. Using big data at the local level can tell you more about who lives in your neighbourhood and how your competitors are doing.
Don't go it alone
There are resources to help and you should seek these out in your local market. For example, in Toronto, Mastercard is partnering with the City on Digital Main Street, a first-of-its kind initiative, giving local businesses access to digital tools and education including access to an easy website builder and big data resources.
Jennifer M. Sloan is the Vice President of Public Policy for Mastercard in Canada, responsible for working with all levels of government and stakeholder groups to ensure enduring viability of Canada's payment ecosystem.
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Dennis McColeman via Getty Images Remembrance Day Poppies, with Canadian Flag Pins
By Shelly Whitman and Scott Maxwell
Today, Canada is participating in multiple operations in the Middle East, in Europe alongside NATO and across five United Nations missions. In the near future our deployments are set to expand as Canada prioritizes a re-engagement in broader peace and security operations from the United Nations to NATO.
As November 11th approaches we take time to reflect upon the cost and sacrifice of those who gave their life in the service of our nation. It is also an important opportunity to remember and understand, as a nation, the service and sacrifice made by our ill and injured Canadian Armed Forces members, veterans and their families -- living with the physical and mental scars of conflict and war.
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The costs of war are borne by all, from those on the front lines to the spouses, families and communities who serve on the home front. As such, it is critical that we focus not only on the short-term investment that a mission requires, but the life-cycle costs and resources requisite for any mission.
Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire recently released his memoir Waiting for First Light. In it he offers a harrowing and deeply personal account of the costs of war and how incredibly difficult it was to transition from the military life he adored to a civilian lifestyle that required new skills and new ways of operating to life outside of the uniform.
As a nation, we must become sensitized and understand the lived experiences of our soldiers. Moreover, we can further strengthen our nation and our world if we give a meaningful place and opportunity to those who have served once they step out of their uniform.
Dallaire found solace in his work for both children affected by armed conflict and in supporting the needs of veterans who had served Canada. As a result, he founded the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative and became the National Patron of Wounded Warriors Canada.
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The connections to his experience with children in armed conflict, combined with Wounded Warriors Canada's mission to improve the situation of ill and injured veterans and their families, has proven to be a great partnership.
Through a unique approach pioneered by the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, and funded by Wounded Warriors Canada, we have paired the skills that soldiers possess and the understanding of the moral injuries incurred through Canada's missions abroad to create the Veteran Trainers to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers (VTECS) Program. This program aims to address the moral dilemmas faced by soldiers in the field through creating a solution that capitalizes on the skills veterans possess.
"Skills transition", as part of the overall transition to civilian life spectrum, remains a critical gap for our veterans. While the need for mental, physical and financial supports are absolutely critical, it is often the skills that veterans have honed and forged on the battlefield that are not effectively translated to life as a civilian.
As many Canadian, and other soldiers, face children in armed conflict, they are faced with a set of the most horrific moral dilemmas in modern warfare. Such moral dilemmas often are credited with giving rise to increasing levels of post-traumatic stress disorder amongst soldiers. The key therefore is how do we reduce this possibility for both the children in armed conflict and our soldiers who are sent abroad?
While at first glance leading an armored convey in Kandahar and operating within a boardroom may not have much in common, they relate in many ways. You quickly realize both positions require and prize leadership, negotiating skills, and foresight to accomplish their respective missions.
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This Remembrance Day let's not only remember the battles fought abroad but the daily battles we should be bold enough to take on to protect children and assist veterans.
The skills accrued may not have been constructed in a traditional education and apprenticeship in business however they are no less valuable or needed. As a nation, we must become sensitized and understand the lived experiences of our soldiers. Moreover, we can further strengthen our nation and our world if we give a meaningful place and opportunity to those who have served once they step out of their uniform.
War has changed. And so should our approach to how we support those who have served. On this Remembrance Day let's not only remember the battles fought abroad but the daily battles we should be bold enough to take on to protect children and assist veterans.
Dr. Shelly Whitman is the Executive Director of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative and Scott Maxwell is the Executive Director of Wounded Warriors Canada
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LUHUANFENG via Getty Images Graphs with stethoscope and calculator
Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to be on "The Agenda with Steve Paikin." The topic of the debate was the failed Tentative Physician Services Agreement (tPSA) that was foisted on physicians in a surprise move this past summer. During the course of the debate, Dr. Richard Reznick mentioned (starting at the 10: 45 mark) that we spend 11 per cent of our gross domestic product on health care, far more than other countries.
I thought that was an interesting point to make, so I decided to look up some statistics, to see if that statement was true. The numbers, alas, are very disheartening.
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It's been reported that Canada spends the fourth most per capita on health care of all of the industrialized countries in the world, behind the United States (an odd country that when it comes to health care), Netherlands and Switzerland. Ontario spends about the national average, so we clearly do spend a lot on health care.
Yet, despite all that money being spent, Canada's health-care system currently ranks 30th in the world, according to the World Health Organization and last amongst all OECD countries in terms of wait times. Clearly, all Canadians, not just Ontario residents, should expect more from their health-care system.
But the real story of why our health system is in such disarray comes when you look at the expenses. Quite frankly, the expenditures show that the priorities are badly skewed against the provision of high quality health care.
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All of which, when put together, makes me ask on question. Where are our tax dollars going?!
On a per capita basis, we spend the fourth most of any country in the world. But we're certainly not spending money on doctors. We have fewer doctors per capita than Mongolia (no really, go look at the link).
We're not spending that money on nurses. We have fewer nurses per capita than Uzbekistan.
In Ontario, we're not spending that money on hospitals. We have fewer hospital beds per capita than Armenia.
So where are we spending it?
Well, this is where I would follow up on a point where I disagreed with one of the other panelists, Dr. Michael Gordon. I pointed out (starting at the 17:49 mark) that Ontario has three times as many health-care bureaucrats per capita as Sweden and four times as many as Australia. (I didn't get a chance to point out we have ten times as many health-care bureaucrats per capita as Germany).
Dr. Gordon argued immediately after that it's easy for physicians to denigrate administration, but that they did an important job. I think he's missed the point. I've met many bureaucrats who are all hardworking and dedicated to their jobs. The reality however, is that if the Ontario Ministry of Health has more employees (3,800) than Turkey's Ministry of Health (3,600), and Turkey has six times our population, well, frankly, you have too many employees, regardless of how hardworking they are.
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Sadly, this fact seems to be completely ignored by politicians and media. When federal Health Minister Jane Philpott recently expressed concern that Canadians were not getting the bang for their bucks in health-care spending, she suggested "innovation" was needed. But not once in her speech did she mention the obvious, that all of the better performing countries with respect to health care metrics have more physicians/nurses and hospital beds per capita than Canada does.
Similarly, the Toronto Star pointed out that Britain, Italy, Spain, Norway and more, better health outcomes than Canada in their op-ed pages. Did the fact that every single one of the countries listed have more physicians/nurses and hospital beds per capita dawn on them? Nope. Instead, the Star's solution was to add universal daycare, pharmacare and denticare. Yup, more government run programs, run with usual government efficiency.
In Ontario, Health Minister Eric Hoskins and Premier Kathleen Wynne have taken an incredibly haphazard approach to health-care funding. In the past year they have embarked on numerous targeted areas of funding. A little money here for hospital expansion, some there for addiction, more here for community health services. The goal seems to be to target politically favourable areas, hoping this will generate good will and votes.
The people of Ontario don't want, or need, new, opaque transformation plans for health care.
Their overall solution for health care however, is in the Orewllian Patients First Act, an act that, as my colleague Dr. Alam points out, will drastically increase the bureaucracy while diverting precious resources from front line care. Instead of actually hiring more PSWs/nurses and doctors, Hoskins wants to hire more administrators, and create 80 sub-LHINs instead of the 14 LHINs (Local Health Integration Networks) they have now.
Not only that, Hoskins invoked closure to cut off debate on Bill 41 early, and remarkably, even has limited Standing Committee time, so that he doesn't have to hear the justified criticism of the Bill. So much for respecting democracy.
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The people of Ontario don't want, or need, new, opaque transformation plans for health care. They don't even need targeted funding (no matter how justified). They just need their leaders to look at the evidence from other countries, and run their current health system more efficiently, and wisely. It's high time that Kathleen Wynne and Eric Hoskins realized that.
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Bloomberg via Getty Images William 'Bill' Morneau, Canada's finance minister, pauses while speaking at the Toronto Region Board of Trade in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Friday, Oct. 28, 2016. Morneau is defending his recent spate of mortgage rule changes designed to tighten the housing market, saying he's concerned about household debt levels. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), negotiated in secret, has been facing massive public opposition.
In opposing the TPP, some have incorrectly argued that the TPP will pit migrant workers against Canadian workers. In fact, this trade agreement will greatly harm migrant workers. It will do so in two key ways.
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First, TPP will result in lower protections, wages and working conditions for workers primarily in the poorer countries that are signatories to the TPP. This will force many of them to move from rural areas to urban areas, and then to migrate out of their countries for basic opportunities.
Second, when those low-waged and racialized migrant workers arrive in Canada, they will largely do so through the temporary foreign workers program, without permanent status, and be tied to their employers and excluded from basic protections. At the same time, they will face a miseducated public who has been incorrectly led to believe that migrant workers are taking Canadians jobs.
The TPP is an agreement between 12 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the USA and Vietnam. While touted as a free trade agreement, it is in fact the opposite.
"It's called free trade, but that's just a joke," according to MIT Linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky. "These are extreme, highly protectionist measures designed to undermine freedom of trade. In fact, much of what's leaked about the TPP indicates that it's not about trade at all, it's about investor rights."
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Only six of the 30 chapters of the TPP are about trade at all.
In fact, as many have argued, 97 per cent of Canada's exports to these 12 countries are already duty free, or tariff free, which is the key barrier trade agreements are supposed to remove. Only six of the 30 chapters of the TPP are about trade at all.
To understand what TPP may do, consider NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), signed between the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 1994. As a result of NAFTA, article 27 of the Mexican constitution was cancelled. This section of the constitution protected collectively owned Indigenous lands from being privatized. Once cancelled, Indigenous lands faced mass privatizations and hundreds of thousands of people were pushed out of their communities. For example, Indigenous people made up seven per cent of Mexican migrants in 1991 to 1993 in California, the years just before the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 2006 to 2008, they made up 29 per cent -- four times more. The TPP will do that at much greater scale
The TPP entrenches ISDS (investor state dispute settlement), which allows corporations to sue countries if environmental or other protections result in loss of corporate profit. Of the 77 known NAFTA investor-state claims, 35 have been against Canada, 22 have targeted Mexico and 20 have targeted the U.S. While Canada has been sued more, as a country with five times Mexico's GDP, the impacts in Canada are bad but proportionally lower than those felt in Mexico.
One of the reasons Mexico is sued less is because Mexican authorities have swiftly downgraded environmental policies before they can be sued. This has downgraded working conditions, wages and the ecology of large regions, forcing out-migration and the creation of migrant workers. The same can be expected from the TPP.
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The limited analysis of the TPP and migrant work available has focused on the labour chapter in the agreement itself, rather than analyzing the TPP in the context of the entire immigration system. The labour chapter of the TPP largely pertains to ease of access for short-term and high-waged workers coming or leaving from Canada.
These provisions are already in place, and under the Trudeau government are being expanded. Just last week, Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced plans to waive short-term work permits for high-waged workers who would be in Canada for less than 30 days and announced the creation of a fast-track system to waive Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs) for select companies.
This announcement came within days of Lululemon threatening to leave Canada if its demands weren't met. The TPP will not result in any massive access for high-waged foreign workers -- those pathways already exist.
Indefensibly, some in opposing the TPP have called for greater use of LMIAs. The LMIA process' stated purpose is to ensure that corporations have made efforts to find Canadian citizens or permanent residents before hiring non-citizen workers. This might seem appropriate in principle, but it goes against basic economics and fairness.
Tied permits debilitate migrant worker human rights causing immense suffering.
For LMIAs to work, workers must not be able to change jobs, in effect, be tied to their work and their employers. The idea of labour mobility -- or being able to switch jobs that make you sick, or make you feel unsafe, or make you unhappy -- is a basic right. Not allowing it to be so creates a system of indentured servitude that gives employers immense advantage and control to abuse workers without facing sanction.
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When coupled with limited or absent labour protections, lack of permanent residency and institutional racisms, tied permits debilitate migrant worker human rights causing immense suffering. Lack of labour mobility also skews the jobs market and reduces wages across the system.
If the opposition to migrant workers is that they are "foreign" and "not from here," then that's simply racism. But if the opposition is because it reduces work protections and wages, untying workers and giving them permanent residency rights will immediately correct for that as workers will leave bad jobs allowing the market to adjust.
Incorrectly suggesting that the TPP should be opposed because it will mean greater numbers of migrant workers is a form of dog-whistle politics that further entrenches the dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment that exists in Canada and continues to grow.
We should instead oppose the TPP because it will impoverish and displace some of the poorest in the world and take away their rights to decency and dignity. We should insist on solidarity amongst workers everywhere -- in Canada, or in the Global South or those from the Global South in Canada. Not only is this morally right, it is the only strategy at our disposal if we are to protect ourselves and the generations to come.
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Oliver Strewe via Getty Images Atlanta, Georgia, United States, North America
It started as a bit of joke, right?
When Donald Trump tossed his hat in the ring to run for President of the United States, many of my colleagues in talk radio and the media treated it that way.
Full disclosure: I did, too.
I said all along (and I still maintain) that the man doesn't really want to be President. He was just barking broad platitudes and sound bytes, feeding upon the fears of a angry, vocal portion of the populace for his own popularity. He wasn't serious about being President.
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So, how did we get here?
Some will say that Trump fed on those fears and lazy catchphrases and brilliantly manipulated them into a popular candidacy. Others will say (incorrectly) that he spoke to the "working class" in the Heartland; people who wanted to bring jobs back from overseas and felt abandoned by both Republicans and Democrats.
Well...not really.
The truth is, we got here because of an irresponsible, ratings-obsessed, and oftentimes lazy media. More specifically, we got here because of the for-profit cable news media who, desperate for a horse race -- and the viewers that brings -- abandoned any semblance of responsible journalism.
Good, decent reporters of days gone by are surely spinning in their graves watching the schlock that now masquerades as The Fourth Estate.
Just as Trump's rise wasn't overnight, the downfall of the American media has been a slow build. With Trump, it was obvious to anyone paying attention that there was a bitterness that was swelling. The fear of "others" was apparent even before President Obama took office. This was most apparent in the popularity of "Birtherism", something Trump cashed in on and something that a shocking number of Republicans still believe.
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Some would say the downfall of journalism began with the creation of The Fox News Channel, a network which has made no secret of its politics and popularity with conservatives.
But the network didn't come along until 1996, and things were already headed downhill before that. It likely all started falling apart at the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Before then, the news wasn't really about advertising dollars. It wasn't about getting ratings for 24 hours a day.
It was about the facts.
"The cold, hard truth is that facts are often very one-sided. Facts exist whether you want to believe them or not."
Somewhere in the past 20 years or so, Americans started repeating a false narrative. The myth was about there always being "two sides to every story" and that -- because of that belief -- the media was responsible for always showing both sides. But that's simply not the case.
The cold, hard truth is that facts are often very one-sided. Facts exist whether you want to believe them or not. Over the past decade, cable news stopped being a place to find facts and instead became a place to tell you that there were several different sides to every story.
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In doing so, cable news has become a place to find a lot of opinions. That's all well and good if that's what you're seeking from them. But when you're seeking the truth, it's irresponsible as hell. And it is their fault for not making it clear what is true and what is not.
The news used to be boring. People sitting behind a desk read you what was going on and you trusted them to tell you -- shocker -- the truth. The news was a major money-loser for networks, but those who did it well won both tons of awards and the respect of the people. Networks wanted to rack up trophies for their excellent reporting, not just cash for great ratings.
Then the news became big business. The most popular programs on the cable news channels aren't the anchors reading the news. They are the opinion programs, with a host and guests arguing back and forth, that bring in the big ratings and cash. These shows are exciting and entertaining (anything but boring), and usually go out of their way to depict "both sides of the story."
But they're usually just opinions, facts be damned. And those shows are on constantly. Every show seems to be two people arguing their opinions about whether or not to accept the facts that have just been read to them. But, as stated earlier, facts remain facts whether you believe them or not. Arguing over them is pointless.
By making mindless arguing over every single issue the norm, cable news has convinced a misinformed public that the facts are whatever is said by the person who screams the loudest.
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"There was a time when the media would have merely ignored the wild accusations of a politician trying to smear his opponent."
A majority of scientists believe in man-made climate change? Let's get two people who aren't scientists to argue about it on-air to the point that Americans will be convinced the person disagreeing with scientists is just as knowledgable as the actual scientists.
Donald Trump randomly accuses The Clinton Foundation of being corrupt? Rather than examine the facts and investigations already conducted about that charity by people in charge of such things, let's get every political hack in the country on TV to argue that the accusation is worth covering simply because Trump said it.
In reality, it's not. It never was.
There was a time when the media would have merely ignored the wild accusations of a politician trying to smear his opponent. But, if today's media had existed in 1800, there would have been endless debates about investigating John Adams accusation into Thomas Jefferson being an atheist.
This same media, while falling over backwards to debate every single accusation lazily tossed out by Donald Trump against literally anyone, couldn't be bothered to tell its viewers what Canadian newspapers later printed: That Trump is constantly lying.
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Even worse was when the debate would turn to the false equivalence of how Clinton was just as bad simply because she was the other candidate. It took, as always, foreign media to point out this was just not true.
But reporting that fact ruined the debate on TV, and made ratings slip. So cable news avoided it. They talked around it. And what happened? People were left believing opinions were facts. Why wouldn't they? It's not like the media was going to instruct them otherwise. The media used to be trusted to deliver the facts. Now they can't even be bothered to do so.
Every day, cable news programs argued and ranted rather than merely delivering the facts. Even when there was never evidence of any crime committed by Hilary Clinton in regards to her emails, the cable news talking heads paraded out political hacks on both sides to argue about it for weeks.
Even after she was cleared by the FBI, the talking continued.
When she was cleared a second time, the talking continued. Two sides, arguing something that was settled long ago. Facts be damned.
"Anything for a horse race. Anything for drama. And anything for ratings. Facts be damned."
Why shouldn't Donald Trump lie through his teeth? The media barely questioned it. Instead, they investigated the people he lied about. Why should he talk about actual policy when the media didn't even want to talk about it? They instead wanted to just turn the cameras on him and let him go, giving him more coverage than he'd had ever gotten had he paid for it through advertising dollars.
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Anything for a horse race. Anything for drama. And anything for ratings. Facts be damned.
This close to the end, the media continues. All over TV, pundits are screaming about this tight race they've supposedly never seen before, amazed at how close it is between these two candidates.
Meanwhile, they apparently have already forgotten that Bush only beat Kerry by less than three points. He didn't even win the popular vote in 2000.
In 2012, Obama beat Romney by 3.9 points.
Yet all over TV for the past several weeks, talking heads are beside themselves, aghast that one candidate is ahead of the other by a mere three points.
While focusing on the supposed absurdity of it all, TV media is completely avoiding the very real fact that the election is coming down to the usual states, the usual numbers, and the usual nail biting. For all the talk about how outlandish the candidates are, the voters are pretty much the same. And voting pretty much as they always do. And just as divided as ever.
And why wouldn't they be? Turn on cable news and it's always left versus right, not true versus false. In today's world of big money for big ratings, there are no actual facts anymore. Just bloggers and former politicians, tossing out opinions and sometimes outright lies.
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The media let everyone down this year. Here's hoping that, on Thursday, it gets its ethics back.
Unfortunately, it's far more likely there will just be two talking heads arguing about who will be running for POTUS in 2020, a whole new argument to have on TV for the next four years. Facts be damned.
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This month the government lost their bid to trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval. The government had said that it could use its prerogative powers - those powers held ultimately by the crown, but exercised by ministers - to bring the UK out of the EU. The courts held that Parliament needs to approve it. This was the right decision.
This case was not about the rights and wrongs of Brexit. It was not an attempt to block Britain leaving the EU. It is, rather, a recognition that whatever the outcome of the referendum, due democratic process must be followed.
For any democracy to work the rules have to be clear. They also have to be abided by. The support of a non-binding referendum is not enough to override the existing constitution. The supremacy of parliament is a time-honoured and hard fought for principle. It is a product of the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, and has protected our freedoms for centuries.
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The principle at stake here was whether the government could extend its own powers without consulting our representatives in Parliament. To allow ministers to activate Brexit without a Parliamentary vote would, in effect, allow the 1972 European Communities Act to be repealed without the consent of the Commons. If the government is allowed to do that, what other laws might they repeal without consulting parliament?
It is grand that the court have upheld the sovereignty of the British parliament. Those that voted to leave the EU wanted to restore the British parliament as the ultimate lawmaker in this country - and that is exactly what this court has endorsed. It would have been bizarre for Article 50 to be activated whilst by-passing the proper parliamentary mechanisms.
One of the reasons many people wanted out of the EU was because it was seen as undemocratic, authoritative, and opaque in its decision-making. In the UK we have a proud history of democratic debate and of laws being made through parliament. It is that history which the court has upheld today.
By no means does this mean Brexit is dead in the water. The court has not ruled on the referendum result, or what parliament should decide. It is for the government to find a way to steer this through Westminster, and for MPs to consider their own views in light of the decisive referendum result. This case was not a matter of politics, but one of due process, which the court has properly upheld.
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The matter, it seems, will be leap-frogged up to the Supreme Court, where our most senior judges will consider it again. In my view, it is unlikely they will disagree with this decision. For lawyers, these issues are more than constitutional technicalities; they are the lifeblood of what we do. Due process and a respect for the law cement the difference between right and wrong, between justice and injustice.
Parliamentary sovereignty is at the very heart of that, and can never be disregarded.
Match4Lara
Last December, I was in an office meeting when my phone buzzed with a text that said: "Lara's been diagnosed with leukemia." As plans for the staff Christmas party continued around me, I sat paralysed with shock. How could my cousin, the closest thing I have to a sister, have cancer at the age of 24?
That morning, life's priorities seemed to crash into a new order. Lara had been in Thailand doing research on social services for refugees. She had flown to Bangkok feeling unwell, but not seriously ill. But within a week of arrival she could barely walk. Little did we know that in the next two months, over 50,000 people around the world would join the stem cell registry in a search to save Lara's life.
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Families who have confronted serious illness all remember the agony and confusion that follows an unexpected diagnosis. From doctors we learned that blood cancers like leukemia can strike at any age. We learned that Lara needed to immediately start multiple rounds of grueling chemotherapy to kill the cancer in her body. And we learned that she would need a stem cell donation within 3 months to save her life.
The hardest news was that stem cells are bound by the shackles of genetics. Lara's donor would need to be a genetic match for her body to accept the donated cells, and a matching donor would likely be of a similar ethnic background. Lara has always celebrated being half Italian, half Thai. Currently, only 3% of people in the global donor registry identify as mixed race. When a doctor used the "needle in a haystack" analogy, my heart broke. But if more mixed race people joined the registry, the chances for Lara to find a match would increase.
The Match4Lara campaign was and is a movement to make that tiny chance grow by expanding and diversifying the global registry. Lara agreed to the campaign with one condition - that we recruit donors of all ethnicities and mixes, not just potential matches for her. While Lara's match would most likely be half Asian, there are thousands of patients of all ethnicities desperate for a match. So it was for Lara and all blood cancer patients that we filmed and posted our first Match4Lara video:
The first Match4Lara video, an appeal for Lara
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That video, a simple plea to join the registry filmed in Lara's bedroom, flew across the internet in days. As Lara began chemotherapy, friends, colleagues and complete strangers around the world asked how they could help. Reporters called to write about Lara. Other cancer patients reached out promising to spread the word. We laughed in disbelief when JK Rowling tweeted for Lara, and cried when a man made an 8-hour bus trip through Thailand to register in Bangkok.
Jed left a message for Lara after 8 hours in a bus to join the registry
Joining the registry takes a simple cheek swab or spit sample, and the UK registry website crashed from the number of new registration requests. Because of the woman in Colombia who messaged me daily asking after Lara's health, and the university that ran our flyer on every campus fitness machine, I allowed myself the smallest hope.
The news of Lara's match was like the first burst of a firework show in a very long and dark night. Sitting in a coffee shop, I stared into my latte as tears streamed down. Lara had just won the lottery of genetics.
October marked 6 months since Lara received her donor's cells. Her immune system is growing stronger each day and she recently was able to volunteer at a drive herself for the first time. She smiles knowing that many more matches will come for other patients from people who registered with Match4Lara. Since March, we have already seen multiple friends go on to donate after matching with other patients.
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Volunteers came in all shapes, sizes and species
After joining the registry, Georgia matched and donated this October. ^
This month we also celebrate the thousands of people who were the heart of Match4Lara. It was through normal people who learned, registered and spread the word that we reached and passed 50,000 new registrants. From friends holding drives, to strangers just sharing a post, we learned that big change starts with small acts.
In an age where our news feeds seem to be bleeding with hatred and violence, from the US presidential election to the conflict in Syria, Lara's story reminds us that people can come together instead of be torn apart, and the potential to save a life can for once receive more attention than the news of ending one. Lara is alive today because of a stranger who recognised that our genetics can unite rather than divide us.
The mission of Match4Lara continues even as Lara recovers. There are thousands of patients still waiting for stem cell donations and the more we expand the registry, the more patients will find a donor. So join us, and join the global registry. You may one day be the match to save a life.
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Lara and me, three months post transplant.
When British gymnast Louis Smith was seen mocking Islam in a video, he was sent death threats by those who took offence at his behaviour. When he made amends for his error by visiting two London mosques, certain others criticised him taking this step. "We should all defend the untrammelled right to poke fun at religion and anything else we might consider nonsense," one Independent columnist recently wrote. This attitude, one of rampant individualism, is perceived by some as being the hallmark of a free and open society, and the meaning of the liberating concept of 'Freedom of Speech' which we all support.
What is true essence of freedom of speech, however? Does it entail the right to offend, ridicule or slander whomsoever we please, or do we have a responsibility to curb our freedoms for the good of the society at large? Many national media outlets, both at home and abroad, have taken the former perspective, and through the divisive rhetoric which we are so frequently fed, cultures of intolerance have taken root.
In condoning hate speech against Muslims and condemning attempts to build bridges of harmony and understanding, and in accusing Islam of being an inherently violent religion without having studied it, we create the exact climate which allows mentalities like those of Trump to thrive. We cannot complain about the ideology of Trump taking hold when we ourselves prefer to build walls of division in our minds rather than seek to respect and love those who are different from us.
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Ironically, Islam's true perspective on freedom of speech is one which the whole world, Muslims and non-Muslims, would do well to take heed of. If offended, Muslims are commanded not to retaliate with threats or violence, but simply to physically move away from the source of offence. The Qur'an advocates its followers to 'speak nicely to people,' and forbids them from hurling abuse at any other religion or group. If the world followed these two principles alone - treating others with kindness and responding to abuse with peace - the social cohesion and mutual understanding would be unparalleled.
We wrongly perceive Islam to be an intolerant, misogynistic and barbaric religion, and yet during our years of anti-Muslim thoughts, we have created a man, the potential next leader of the free world, who acts and behaves in exactly that way. Through our votes and our support, we have allowed the leaders of our societies to become the epitome of those exact principles which we despise. Trumpism is a natural consequence of the years of anti-immigrant rhetoric which we have accepted and allowed to take shape in our minds. If we point the finger of blame at Trump supporters in isolation then we miss the point entirely, that we are not separate or distinct from them, nor are we entirely devoid from responsibility.
Our collective inaction and apathy when faced with injustices both at home and abroad has come back to haunt us. We have failed to stop the powerful from destroying entire countries in the Eastern world. We have failed to stop the ruling classes from enacting extreme mass surveillance laws. We have failed to stop the cultural divisions in our societies from growing, to the point that we now view one another with suspicion rather than compassion. It is not all our fault, of course. We live in a world in which economic inequality is at shocking levels. For many, the struggles to simply survive and create opportunities for their children is daunting enough, let alone attempting to change the deteriorating trajectory of the world. Robert Kennedy addressed this issue beautifully in a 1966 speech:
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"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Today, 50 years on, the walls of oppression are as great as they have ever been, and it is only by standing up as individuals and following the unifying words of Kennedy rather than the current divisive rhetoric of Trump, that can lead to the shattering of the metaphorical walls of hatred. We must use the freedoms that we have to improve the lives of others rather than to impinge upon the freedoms of others through condoning hatred and oppression, either explicitly or silently.
Now that digital taxi app Uber is planning to dig further into our lives, apparently by accessing our mobile device calendars, perhaps we should dig further back?
Politicians need to take the so-called 'gig economy' which Uber represents to task and make them far more responsible for those they employ.
The recent landmark employment tribunal ruling giving rights to London Uber drivers was a start, and not just for the firm's 40,000 employees, as we might now be allowed to call them. But there is much further to go given suggestions that between 20 and 30 per cent of workers in Europe are now working 'independently', but under the auspices of a branded digital platform with barely a human guiding hand in sight.
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We should start by recognising the job opportunities and consumer benefits from disruptive technologies, and its permanence within the economy. The gig economy is also helping to disperse and encourage entrepreneurship, which is no bad thing given how concentrated wealth has become in recent decades.
Companies such as Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb deserve their success. They have given people income streams and unheard of work-life flexibility; and all whilst challenging comfortable cartels to up their game, or at least lower their prices.
But success brings responsibilities. No company exists within a bubble. The grey area Uber and similar other companies have created between employment and self-employment raises fundamental questions about obligations in the Twenty-First Century.
At a basic level, employed people oblige their firms in the UK to pay National Insurance, which funds the wider workings of society, and enjoy the benefits of paid holidays and pension contributions. This is part of the social contract: work in return for pay and benefits, and also the wider investment society makes in things such as health, roads and telecoms infrastructure without which the business cannot succeed.
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What the gig economy model does is largely ignore that contract, reducing it to a raw economic husk of self-advantage. It requires no particular employer commitments and offers no sick and holiday pay. All of which, of course, means no employer National Insurance contributions to the Treasury. If every UK business went that way, the UK really would be in a financial black hole.
The Conservative former digital minister Ed Vaizey has suggested a minimum wage for people caught in this twilight realm between full and self-employment. He has a point. It cannot be right that vast corporate fortunes are being made apart from the employment obligations painstakingly and painfully won over many decades. Society is about rather more than a smartly delivered pizza.
It is tempting to think the rise in self-employment and the gig economy represent some sort of return to the genuine market economy of the Eighteenth Century, a time when people traded with each other to survive as the industrial revolution gave them the tools with which to do so.
This feels different. It seems more like the Nineteenth Century, when a handful of companies tried to develop monopolies that, in the end, required legislation to bust. The only difference is that instead of revolving around coal, steel and raw materials, the gig economy's titans are trying to secure intellectual property - ours - in return for some conveniences.
We should tread warily. The independence enjoyed by, say, Uber drivers seems illusory, given that it is the proprietary technology that gives them work and sets prices. Airbnb helps its hosts be better, but largely to protect its own brand value.
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Last week, I completed six years as a trustee and board member of navca - the National Association for Voluntary Community Action.
During this time I have had the privilege to meet some fantastic people, and to see and learn about some incredible examples of social action. I have come to understand the power of a movement for social change that is the English community and voluntary sector. Across history much social change (and much economic change) has been achieved as a result of social action.
At its best, the energy, innovation, resilience and determination of this movement is unmatchable. It is in fact quite awesome and humbling!
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Of course, it is not always at its best, and parts of it will have their better periods as well as their less impressive ones. This is because social movement is about people - 'people acting for and on behalf of other people'. And it is a movement that is subject to significant external influences, some of which are outside of its control.
I have come to understand that this is a fluid movement; one that must continuously evolve and reshape itself, whilst holding true to its values, principles and mission.
Likewise if the movement and players within it seek to put institutions and/or personal egos before mission, it will fail its beneficiaries.
Navca, its members and their members are not alone in the shared pursuit of progressive goals. There has to be greater collaboration with sister organisation. Networks for social change and progress have to be nurtured.
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Social action can be a force for progress, for social justice and fairness, for equality and for strong democratic communities. And today, a strong movement of social action is needed more than ever as austerity, Brexit and neo-liberalism take an even more harsh control of public policy, the shaping of social and economic outcomes and influencing of social behaviour.
As the role of the state is both challenged and being eroded, and when business should be looking to be more socially responsible, the role of the movement has never been more significant.
This role is not just about mitigating the impact of unwelcome policies and unacceptable behaviours, but to campaign for systematic change. Inevitably then, this has to be a movement of agitation, advocacy, campaigning, practical interventions and service delivery. It has to offer voice and facilitate communities to express their own voices and enable them to take control.
So, this is about being pro-active as well as re-active, and acting at the neighbourhood sub-regional, national and even global levels. And it must and should enthuse optimism, even in this period of bleakness and unfairness.
Above all the movement has to practice what its values at all times and be focused on outcomes that enhance well-being and rights.
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I heard this loud and clearly from delegates at the navca annual conference, which was held in Birmingham last Thursday. The event was hosted by Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVCS), which itself exemplifies the importance of an effective local infrastructure body to facilitate social action across a city or any other place.
Delegates argued that the movement should argue, campaign and organise for a new social, political and economic settlement for the twenty first century; one that is based on fairness, equality, empowerment and social justice; one that is underpinned by a strong state prepared to redistribute, regulate and fund public services; one that promotes and encourages responsible businesses, effective social, voluntary and community networks and active citizens; and drives collaboration between all of these.
It would have been too easy for delegates at the navca conference to have been pre-occupied with their undoubted financial and other challenges. Encouragingly, they weren't!
The conference was principally attended by leaders of local voluntary and community sector infrastructure organisations from across the country. Their organisations sit amidst a network of hundreds of thousands of community groups and other organisations - the fullness of the movement demonstrating an incredible national mass and reach.
These local infrastructure bodies add value by supporting local VCS groups and organisations, offering them a voice and access to local government and other public and business sector bodies. They are of their members and accountable to them. They are independent, and prepared to act as necessary and speak out with an unfettered voice. This is their innate strength.
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In turn local infrastructure benefits from national infrastructure bodies offering advice, curating and analysing intelligence, sharing ideas and practice, and influencing government and other national bodies. This is the role that navca has fulfilled for many years and plans to continue to do so for many more - but in a very different way than before.
Like its local counterparts, navca has to change or it will cease to relevant. This has been recognised by the Board, senior staff and its members as articulated at the conference. They also rightly recognise that the movement is more than any organisation or individual.
Of course, whatever changes are introduced, no single organisation can or should do everything itself - and navca, for example, simply does not have the resources (especially finance), capacity, skills or expertise to solve all of the contemporary challenges or undertake every required action. Collaboration and mutualism will have to be at the heart of the movement, with peer advice, support and solidarity increasingly critical to success - in other words, a true movement based on solidarity, with members galvanised to act together. This is how navca and the movement are evolving.
And at times, this may feel and need to be more revolutionary than evolutionary because fast and significant change is necessary!
Some change has been implemented but much remains to be done if the ambition and mission of the movement is to be realised; and indeed if the movement is to survive and flourish.
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Davis McCardle via Getty Images
"If the Lords was obstructive we would just have to create 1,000 peers."
So said Jacob Rees-Mogg MP on Thursday, following the High Court's ruling that MPs will have a vote on the triggering of Article 50 - the process for withdrawing from the EU.
It's a terrifying thought. But it's an attitude that we've heard too often over the years - that is if the House of Lords is too scrutinising, the solution is to stuff it with loyalists, party donors and special advisers to be trusted with the job of just waving everything through.
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1,000 Peers. Let's think about that. Each peer costs roughly 26,000 per year in expenses and allowances - without counting the increased infrastructure costs (office space, food, publications, stationary and a million other things). It's also impossible - there's no room for the current 800+ as it is.
That works out to 26m per year. A single year. Presumably they'll stick around for a while, so that's hundreds of millions of pounds just to get a policy through.
Now, Rees-Mogg was of course (we hope) being slightly facetious. But it is suggestive of a broader mentality in that our unelected Lords are seen: bluntly, as lobby-fodder to do the government's bidding. The incentive, of course, is to always stuff the Lords with as many cronies as possible. And why wouldn't they? There are no limits.
This isn't an isolated suggestion. It has happened in practice time and time again under governments of all stripes. The size of the Lords under Labour, despite some limited reform, jumped significantly not long before the 2010 General Election, funnily enough...
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And in July 2015, the PM at the time, David Cameron, wanted to be sure he could get his policies on Europe and welfare through without much trouble: there were rumours of him appointing over 100 Peers even then.
And then he left Theresa May a gift upon his resignation this year - dozens of Conservative Peers for his 'resignation honours' list, making the Tories the biggest group in the Lords.
And it makes sense, in a way - the Conservatives have the most support. But the public had no say over the numbers or the individuals, meaning it looked like a cynical plot to pack the upper house.
Now, wouldn't it be better to have a revising chamber where that not only wasn't possible - i.e. to stuff it full of lobby-fodder - but where people elected it, proportionally, perhaps regionally, and with the clear remit of improving legislation.
At the moment we have the worst of both worlds - it lacks democratic legitimacy, lessening its authority, but when it threatens to undermine a government's plans we see threats - often eventually fulfilled - to overwhelm it with Peers from the governing party.
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So, whether the suggestion was fully serious or not, Jacob Rees-Mogg has raised a point. The government could stick 1,000 Tory Peers in the Lords if they wanted to. But it's no recipe for good governance or how a modern democracy should function.
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Reading the Trussell Trust press release, I was not in the least bit surprised to see foodbank use had grown yet again , indicating a further record high.
Between April and September 2016, Trussell Trust foodbanks across the UK distributed 519,342 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis compared to 506,369 during the same period last year. 188,584 of these went to children. Neither does it surprise me that the government continue to deny any link between their welfare reform agenda and foodbank use.
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Foodbank use is complex, they retort in response to evidence showing sanctions are pushing people towards foodbanks - as if this somehow justifies their existence and continual rise, year in, year out. Placing these issues firmly in the public consciousness, Ken Loach's award-winning filmI, Daniel Blake, has brought these issues to the attention of a wider audience, and documents the cruel inefficiency of state bureaucracy with remarkable clarity. The film sees carpenter Daniel recovering from a heart attack, attempting to navigate the labyrinth-like benefits system for the first time. Yet Daniel Blake is not the only one in this desperate situation.
During the research for my new book 'Hunger Pains: life inside foodbank Britain', I trained as a Trussell Trust volunteer in Stockton-on-Tees to get a full picture of how a foodbank works, who uses it, and why.
My research shows how it was common for people to have experienced significant problems with benefit sanctions and delays, which led to lengthy periods without income for themselves and their families. Now, after spending three years as a volunteer, I've met hundreds of people seeking help from the foodbank. There is no doubt that the reasons people need to use them in the first place are messy, complicated and multiple. Ill health, bereavement, relationship breakdown, substantial caring responsibilities, precarious jobs, and redundancy were significant factors.
These were often combined with harshly administered sanctions, leading to a situation where deepening struggles with mental ill-health inhibited other coping mechanisms or exacerbated wider crises, leading to a worsening of often already poor health.
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I met Janice, 46, who was receiving Jobseekers Allowance after being found fit for work, despite recently being diagnosed with depression, anxiety and arthritis. She was waiting for her Employment and Support Allowance appeal, and came to the foodbank because she'd been sanctioned. Janice explained how she was currently doing a Health and Social Care course at college. She had been sanctioned for missing her Jobcentre appointment because she was at college, on a course the Jobcentre had actually sent her on. Her 11-year-old granddaughter wanted to know why she hadn't been able to stay over for the last three weeks.
Janice told me: 'I haven't got enough food to feed myself, let alone feed her as well - how can you explain that to an 11-year-old?' Janice hadn't told her daughters how bad things had got as she didn't want them to worry. She had debts, including priority debts such as Council Tax, which meant the bailiffs were always ringing up, or coming round banging on her front door. As we sat finishing off our cups of tea, her phone rang. She looked at the number flashing up on the screen and sighed "See? I told you they always ring me up," cancelling the call, as it was the bailiffs ringing her, yet again.
Yes, foodbank use is complex, but that doesn't mean the government should dismiss evidence linking sanctions and their use. Denial only sends further people heading towards foodbank doors, and does nothing to address the serious structural problems of poverty and inequality that are becoming increasingly embedded within the social security system.
As we entered November, the people of the Western world were thinking of Hilary Clinton's emails, Donald Trump's surge in the polls and possibly even Christmas presents. Meanwhile, the people of Hodeida, Yemen were drinking seawater and eating grass to stay alive.
In our modern, 21st Century world of IPads, virtual reality, and fibre optic broadband, it is almost unthinkable that 14 million people risk dying of hunger in this war torn country.
Along with the United Kingdom, the United States is a key player in this conflict. It was US Secretary of State John Kerry, with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and their counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who forged a 72 hour ceasefire to the conflict only two weeks ago. In the same month, Houthi rebels fired on the USS Mason, and the US warship fired back into Yemen for the first time.
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Whether or not the President-elect will be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump on Wednesday morning, Yemen will be on the agenda.
It is fitting therefore that in New York last week, the UN Security Council met to discuss Yemen for the first time in six months. I watched as its Members were told that Yemen is in the midst of a crisis, which is already a catastrophe, and on the brink of becoming a tragedy.
Just like that, a terrible countdown to save the people of Yemen began.
The Roadmap
On Monday 31st October, the Security Council heard from the UN Special Envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed and the Under Secretary General for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Stephen O'Brien, before all Members gave their views on the crisis.
The mood was tense.
The UN officials wove a tapestry of despair in their contributions. A brief ceasefire ended disastrously a week before the meeting. The fighting is continually escalating, the economy is days from collapse, aid is not reaching vital areas and Al Qaeda are making gains across the country.
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Their message was clear. A ceasefire is needed now. Humanitarian access is needed now. Clear support from the Security Council is needed now.
As the 'pen holder' - the country leading on Yemen at the Security Council - Britain has a vital role to play. The UK's excellent Representative, Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, clearly and clinically laid out what needs to happen next:
1.The need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
2.A return to negotiations based on the UN Special Envoy's Roadmap.
3.Greater accountability for any violations of International Humanitarian Law.
4.Commitments by all sides to immediately and drastically improve humanitarian access.
It is encouraging that many other countries presented a similar set of proposals, including the US Representative, Ambassador Samantha Power.
Prior to the recent, failed, ceasefire, the UK had distributed a draft Resolution to Council Members based on the above steps. This needs to be tabled immediately.
A show of unity from the Council, passing a clear message to the belligerents, will make an unrivalled diplomatic, political and moral difference to this conflict.
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The Obstacles
However, as with any crisis where the stakes are so high, the way forward is full of obstacles.
Russia and a number of other countries used their statements at the Security Council to attack the UK and USA for what are perceived to be 'double standards' in arms sales and support for the ongoing airstrikes. Russia has already blocked a public statement from the Council condemning the bombing of a funeral in September, where 140 people were killed.
This politicking will not save the people of Yemen. In fact, it may cost more lives if the Security Council is frozen by petty bickering.
It is difficult to take Russia's fabricated outrage too seriously when you see the appalling bombings and warfare it is waging in Aleppo, but this should give further incentive to the UK and US - a failure to act on the right side of history will leave both nations open to growing criticism and shrinking credibility.
Counting Down to Tragedy
As the Clinton and Trump camps wait anxiously for the results in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, the whole world is watching. The leadership of the United States is central to so many crises, and Yemen is chief amongst them.
When four fifths of a population require urgent humanitarian assistance and 3 million are suffering from acute malnutrition, any solution is a race against time. We need global leadership to get peace in Yemen, or it may become one of the great failures of Western diplomacy.
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The path forward is clear. The UK's four point plan is sensible, practical and would pass a strong message that the fighting must stop. As we count down to a humanitarian tragedy, it may fall on the new President to stop the clock, end the violence, and save the people of Yemen.
It appeared to be done and dusted two weeks before the election. Hillary had a secure national lead and all the discussions were about expanding the Electoral College map and whether or not recently Republican states like Arizona, Georgia and even Texas might be flipped into her column.
It looked like the October Surprise was limited to Trump's 'locker room talk' but the FBI changed all that. As Harold Wilson once said, "a week is a long time in politics."
With just 24 hours to go it is worth reviewing what the results could actually mean.
Even with Hillary's significant slide, she is still ahead in the majority of polls favoured by the poll-aggregators such as New York Times, fivethirtyeight.com, realclearpolitics.com and Washington Post. However, the numbers are now a lot closer than they were and that means that the results in individual states could make a significant difference to how the Electoral College plays out.
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It is worth remembering again, that winning the popular vote doesn't always translate into winning the Presidency, as 2000 proved. One nightmare scenario for Hillary is that she wins the popular vote but in such a way that doesn't translate into an Electoral College win. In 48 states and Washington DC, you only have to win a state by one vote to get all its Electoral College votes (Maine and Nebraska have a different system which actually could matter if it's close this year).
There are essentially three categories of states for the purpose of winning the Presidency for Hillary and she might be doing too well in two and not well enough in the one that matters. If she piles up a huge majority in Democrat strongholds like California or New York, the extra votes don't matter, she gets nothing extra from them. If she does well in traditionally Republican states but not well enough to win them, then those extra votes are also "wasted." Both of these things seem to be happening and essentially they don't help her. However, what is far more uncertain is how she is doing in the ten or so "swing states" where the election is won or lost. Hillary seems to be doing poorly in Ohio and Iowa, which the Democrats won under Obama. Whilst not as bad, Florida is also a big worry for her. In the last week, states like Pennsylvania and Colorado have started to look somewhat wobbly too. Hillary now has to hope that she has stopped the slide and can reverse the damage of the past 10 days.
Trump has a more difficult challenge because he has fewer guaranteed Republican states based on the previous two elections. He has to win all the states that Romney won and then add a significant group of ones that Obama won to get to the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes to win. Two weeks ago even some of the "Romney States" looked vulnerable, but he can be more optimistic now. Trump knows that whilst having come back in the polls, his path to winning the Electoral College relies on almost everything going right for him in the swing states, whereas he also knows that Hillary has more room to manoeuver.
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One of the quirks of the Electoral College is that as a clear majority develops in the popular vote for one candidate, the system tends to exaggerate the result and the win appears more substantial. In 2012, Obama won the popular vote by only 3.9%, 51.1% to 47.2%, but won the Electoral College emphatically 332 to 206.
Looking at the potential outcomes it seems highly unlikely that Trump will have a large win, but it is possible that he'll win by a slim margin in the Electoral College and he may or may not win the popular vote. If he is elected, given the low expectations of him and his campaign, this will be seen as a major achievement and he will no doubt declare that he has been given a mandate on which to base his Presidency. A win for Trump will almost certainly mean the Republicans holding both the House of Representatives and the Senate with slightly smaller majorities. With all three parts aligned under the Republicans Trump will, in theory, be able to deliver everything he has stated in his campaign. If we look back to 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote; had a hugely contested win in the Electoral College; the Republicans had lost four seats in the Senate and only retained control by the casting vote of Vice President Cheney. However, that didn't prevent Bush from leading on an overtly Republican agenda.
Hillary faces a very different set of scenarios. If she has a slim win, then that will cause her significant problems in terms of enacting her agenda. Even with a substantial win she could still be seen as not having a strong mandate. Let's be honest, both candidates are deeply unpopular with the electorate so even if Hillary does win it can be argued that she won simply because the other guy was marginally less popular than she was. At this point, all talk of the Democrats winning the House seems to have ceased. In the Senate, whilst there is likelihood of some Democrat gains, it is uncertain whether they will be able to get from present 46 seats to the all important 50 with the new Vice President Tim Kaine having the casting vote. Even if Hillary gets a slim majority in the Senate, it is almost certain not to last, as the 2018 mid-term elections are likely to be very problematic for her. The party of the President almost always does badly in the mid-terms and the field is unusually skewed against the Democrats in 2018 who will have 25 of their seats up for re-election compared to only 8 Republican seats. Hillary's ability to get legislation through and, equally importantly, nominations for her Cabinet and the Supreme Court, could be very difficult to achieve.
So why does fashion matter?
Some still claim that fashion is an elitist luxury reserved for the wealthy, or it's a subject that is merely frivolous and ephemeral.
Not so.
Fashion plays into our human need for change and difference. Fashion reflects our very human need to both stand out and fit in.
Clothes can outrage and alienate. They can provoke the political - think hoodie or burkini - and they can represent liberation and democracy - think trousers for women.
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I believe that it is this very quality of change and adjustment, embodied within the landscape of fashion and identity, that expresses our humanity.
And now, more than ever, we have a responsibility to ensure that future generations of fashion design, business and communication talent are nurtured. For the sake of our economy, our industry, our society, our political future and our ability to build robust communities, where individuals are recognised and appreciated.
That's why we started Fashion Matters three years ago.
Our Fashion Matters gala is the College's annual fundraiser for scholarships and bursaries, providing invaluable support to our most in need students. And the money also supports the work we do with community groups, shoring up our commitment to working with young and vulnerable people where issues around, identity, working with others, developing choices and securing sustainable futures are tackled as part of our Better Lives programme. Be it working with female offenders to set up sustainable social enterprises or with individuals formerly involved in knife crime, we introduce designing and making skills to foster life changing opportunity.
To date Fashion Matters has raised over 600k, and our mission continues this year on November 10th where our special guest will be non-other than fashion legend and super model, Carmen Dell'Orefice.
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Born in America in 1931 Carmen grew up during the great depression. And it seems those uncertain times are not unlike the uncertainty the world currently faces.
Carmen was first discovered in New York at the age of 13 and by 15 she had already graced the cover of Vogue. Her early and meteoric success led her to work with some of the most famous fashion photographers of the era including Irving Penn, Norman Parkinson and Cecil Beaton.
The daughter of a Hungarian mother and Italian father, Carmen grew up a resourceful and determined young woman. Carmen once told me - "Women didn't have much choice in those days for a career - a lot of women didn't go to college."
So it was this necessity to survive and her own personal experience of poverty that has led her to a commitment to ensure that fashion education is available to all, regardless of background or privilege.
And I'm on that same mission. You could say I'm a fashion activist who wants to use fashion and clothing to change the world. This belief is a product of my own childhood, which encouraged reflection and contemplation about our responsibilities to others, and it's a product of early insights as an adult into how other people who haven't had the same education and chances have had the possibilities of their lives reduced.
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I strongly believe that talent and creativity know no social or cultural boundaries and that education, and creative education in particular, provide the means to transform not only ourselves but also the society and world we are a part of.
Last year's winner of the Fashion Matters Placement Bursary, Cordwainer's Footwear student Amber Capewell, has told us how the money she received meant she could totally focus on her education without financial worry. Amber, who is the first of her family to go into Higher Education and has worked part time throughout her degree, is aiming to get a First when she graduates next year.
Likewise, Lara Jensen (MA in Costume Design for Performance) who won a full Fashion Matters Scholarship to study her MA at LCF, says the money meant she could buy materials that she could never have dreamed of working with. Lara reflects how the financial support gave her creative freedom to expand into her designs and since graduating Lara has worked with iconic performers such as Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and has been commissioned by Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.
Globally, the industry is valued at 3 trillion dollars. In the UK it's worth 26 billion pounds to the economy. It's the second biggest worldwide economic activity for intensity of trade - employing over 57 million workers, in developing countries, 80 per cent of whom are women.
If we ensure our students and staff are aware of the issues, they can use the great power of fashion to draw us in and to bring about change.
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And already there are changes.
Fashion is collaborating with science, engineering and technology to create a new future. One where it has a positive influence on the environment, society and our health.
And whilst the developments of technology and fashion are undoubtedly very exciting - for example the bra with the ability to detect tumors before both breast exams and mammograms or the photo catalyst which can be used on textiles to break down air-borne pollution into harmless chemicals - it's also important to remember that fashion is relevant to us all.
So don't we all have a duty to foster its continuation and the type of innovation it can lead to?
Next time you're shopping online or thinking about what to wear, I urge you to think about this.
And that's why fashion really does matter.
The Fashion Matters auction website is now live, with a fantastic range of auction prizes. Bidding closes at midday on Wednesday 9th November. Visit the auction website here.
Image via Shutterstock
Let's just say in 2016, when you work with startups; you hear the term AI / Artificial Intelligence thrown around a lot. It's this season's hottest buzzword. Got a cool new App? Yes, it's got AI inside. Regardless of the level of sophistication, AI or more broadly the idea of combined data analytics and machine learning has become a necessity when it comes to the development of new software applications. Much like other areas of Internet technology, security has also been quickly evolving to integrate new forms of AI into itself. Like any new technology, there are both opportunity and challenges to the use of AI in security.
Let's begin with the describing what AI is the most simple terms possible. It's the ability to create software that is capable of intelligent behaviour. This behaviour isn't like a person, nor should it be. In many ways, it's the very opposite. Most AI today does nothing more than look for trends and correlations within large data sets. It attempts to provide value based on insights it discovers augmenting those companies and people who choose to use it. AI can do in a few minutes or seconds what would take a person a lifetime. This ability is both the power and challenge facing AI. The very same technology that allows you to have the perfect playlist or suggested search result instantly can also be used to identify those most likely to be taken advantage of or worst yet, automatically exploited. From banking to social engineering, a new breed of attackers are using increasingly advanced forms of AI to cause havoc.
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As newer and faster forms of AI start to take hold, the ability for humans to keep up is quickly fading. The next generation of security platform needs to establish a symbiotic relationship between people, tools and infrastructure. When problems occur it will be a bot or form of AI, that alerts you to the problem. When you need to solve a problem, it will be a bot that goes and provides the patch, secures the network or changes policy. A kind of artificially intelligent assistant will allow us to respond more quickly as well as focus on the higher level aspects of securing and preventing problems within data center infrastructure. Fixing a problem might be as simple as saying, "Hey Bot, go Patch server 124."
An AI arms race is only beginning to emerge as these forms of advanced systems become more self-sufficient. As this transition takes hold, so will the systems set up to combat them. A war will rage, one that may have little to no actual human involvement. A terrifying prospect for many in the industry who have built their careers around being the smartest and most knowledgeable in the room. It's pretty hard to compete with the system that has all the data in the world at its disposal and can understand what it all means.
Some people will point out that AI is the most dangerous form of technology humanity has ever created. They lead with potential issues of an alien style invasion and global domination; they forget that AI doesn't need the same things we do. It survives on money, data, information and computing power. The danger isn't in adding to AI by building more intelligent systems; the danger lies in doing nothing while the bad guys focus on using it to further their ends. For that reason, we have no choice but to embrace this kind of technology.
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Recently Google attempted to provide a kind of Isaac Asimov style Laws of Robotics. In doing this, Google has come along with its set of guidelines on how robots should act. In the paper called "Concrete Problems in AI Safety," Google Brain--Google's deep learning AI division--lays out five problems that need to be solved if robots are going to be a day-to-day help to humanity, and gives suggestions on how to address them. And it does so all through the lens of an imaginary cleaning robot.
These laws are relatively mundane like it shouldn't make things worse, shouldn't cheat, should only be used where it's safe, and should know their stupid. The problem is these very laws, or guidelines are the exact opposite of what the most malicious attackers are doing.
So, for this reason, we need to assume they don't care if things get worse; they will certainly cheat, and they won't care if it's safe.
Cybersecurity companies are increasingly looking to artificial intelligence tech to improve defense systems and create the next generation of cyber protection. CBinsights recently dug a little deeper into the trend looking at the things driving this rush to AI in security.
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In the chart above, which analyses millions of media articles to track technology trends, CBinsights illustrates that 2016 is the year that cybersecurity went all in on AI. They note that AI and machine learning all became prominent terms this year. They also point out that, these terms are not new. "As early as 2012-2014, we see that press mentions of the three technologies were beginning to go up, and at nearly the same rate. As more technologies were deployed in each area and became more well-known in the business world and to the larger public, the terms began appearing in far more news articles, with mentions increasing dramatically late in 2016."
All this interest in AI and a growing volume of high profile hacks are creating a gold rush of sorts for security companies focusing on the intersection of these technologies. According to CBinsights, the top 13 startups in the space have collectively raised more than half a billion dollars.
Over the next few years, we will see an explosion in the use of AI in enterprise technology. From health care to law to setting up calendar appoints, we are entering an age of Artificially Intelligent things. Shortly, being an expert in security will mean relying on other more intelligent forms of computing and relying less on the people who built them, and for me, that's both fascinating and terrifying.
Brexit has aroused strong passions. There are two opposing sides with apparently little common ground who seem inclined to put resolution of this issue above all else. This is very dangerous territory. It means that people are willing to put aside important values in order to achieve their primary objective at any cost, to resort to language that stirs up hatred, and to vilify perceived opponents even if this undermines other important pillars of our democracy and society.
In this case, two areas of freedom and democracy seem pitted against each other - and experience across the world has shown that both are critical in the fight against corruption. There is the freedom of the press. We may be repelled by hate-inducing headlines from the tabloids: but far better to endure them under a free press than to have the kind of tyranny we see today in Russia or Turkey. And then there is the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. These are fundamental democratic values - which should be defended robustly, even when the media don't like the rulings judges give.
Why is this of concern to Transparency International? It is simple. We are constantly on the watch for a decline in standards which opens the door for corruption to thrive. It is worthwhile remembering what countries become when they have weak institutions - and that those institutions are often undermined by individuals who have an enormous self-interest in the outcome. Strong political figures gradually gather more power, subverting democracy while at the same time citing 'the people' as their authority; shadowy figures behind them provide funds as they anticipate benefitting from the new set-up; and there is a gradual suppression of contrary voices, including the opposition, the media and civil society.
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Usually, economic decline follows which is disguised by cooking the books and turning on groups as 'the enemy' who are cowed into silence and unable to defend themselves due to repressive new laws, a corrupt legal system or because popular militias, stirred up by the politicians and state media, are unleashed on them. Ironically, since the cry of the demagogue is that the old establishment is corrupt, a new establishment rapidly supplants it - which is very genuinely and deeply corrupt. This should not just concern Transparency International. It should concern every citizen of the UK.
Once corruption takes root, it is very hard to get rid of. As we saw with the misleading - and at times mendacious - claim and counter-claim during the referendum campaign, UK society has no independent referee for when our democracy or fundamental values are threatened. Here are four aspects of the "Enemies of the People' story that should sound the alarm:
1. British institutions were supposed to be elevated by Brexit, not denigrated. Brexit was sold to the nation in part on the basis that it would be bringing back sovereignty to our Parliament, and giving power back to our own judges and not a bunch of foreign judges who don't understand the British way of life. It is inevitable that our Parliament and Judges will make decisions in future that one side or other disagrees with. That is why we have a long-established process set up with checks and balances. If, in the anger this stirs up, the authority of those institutions is consistently undermined, then we will have failed in the very thing that Brexit was hoping to achieve.
2. Some of the values we have long taken for granted - like the importance of an independent judiciary - may now be under threat. In the single-minded pursuit of a single objective, it will be easy to throw away things we value, and only realise later how important they were to our society and economy. The rule of law is one such thing. We should protect it at all costs.
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3. The force of anger, so strongly expressed by one side of the argument, could lead to some very poor decisions. The cheerleaders for Brexit seem faster to get angry when they face a setback, and quick to follow the path that anger leads towards: hatred, vilifying opponents, a departure from rational problem-solving. Those originally in favour of remaining have had much lower-key responses, which has created the political and media space for the language of hatred and the denigration of things that everyone, on both sides, ultimately relies on.
4. What happened to British values? There was much talk of this during the campaign, and they were typically cited as tolerance, calm authority in the face of adversity, strong institutions and looking outwards not inwards. They were seen as important not only for their own sake, but as reasons why we would be successful in the future - for example, a stable society based on the rule of law being two conditions for economic success and attracting inward investment. If those values are indeed as important as was claimed, now should be the time to reinforce them not to throw them away. Whichever type of Brexit happens, the UK needs it to be economically successful.
What should be the response to that call? Here are two suggestions:
1. Political leadership. One might have expected senior politicians to condemn, instantly, the attack on the rule of law. By contrast, we had the astonishing spectacle of a government cabinet minister joining in the attack and later, a surprisingly half-hearted response from the Lord Chancellor. That is not good enough. The message needs to come from the very top, from the Prime Minister, about the values that are fundamental to our national identity and future success. Of course, all politicians are wary of getting on the wrong side of the Daily Mail: but just as the newspapers have their job to do, so do politicians. And standing up for basic values is one of them.
2. Acknowledge the dangers and set out a strategy for dealing with them. The government should be in no doubt that our democratic institutions are under assault and should act quickly to protect them. There is some good news here. In the next few weeks, the Government will be publishing the UK's first-ever anti-corruption strategy. It should contain strong commitments, and a high-level plan, for making sure that the UK is resilient to corruption risks at home and maintains the authority and credibility to speak out about corruption on the world stage.
October 25 marked the 99th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Well, actually, that's not strictly true. The shift from the Julian to Gregorian calendar that the Bolsheviks made in February 1918 means that the October Revolution's real anniversary falls in November. The 'Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution', the highlight of the Soviet calendar, was in fact celebrated each year on today's date, November 7, not October 25. But what did the engineers of the 'ten days that shook the world' care for piffling absurdities like that?
For Russophiles there'll be a lot to take in next year. The Royal Academy of Arts is hosting a star-studded exhibition, Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932, while the British Library will be mining its extensive East European collections to curate a series of centenary-inspired events. Star historians - Steve Smith, Laura Engelstein, and Mark Steinberg - will publish scholarly retakes on the momentous events of 1917. Not to mention the slew of stocktaking conferences, workshops, and lectures, including our own 'Revolution' series at the Centre for Russian Soviet Central and East European Studies in St Andrews.
The real question on everyone's lips, though, is how the centenary will be celebrated in Russia. Revolution, since the Maidan Revolution in Kiev two years ago, has become something of a dirty word. Following the Bolotnaya Square protests of 2012 the government has worked hard to pimp its image as an Olympics-wielding, Crimea-grabbing, hard man of the international scene. But with presidential elections just two years away, and talk of another Putin Medvedev-style 'castling' scenario on the cards, this hulking anniversary must surely be causing unease.
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So what can we expect to happen in Russia in November 2017? Well, what definitely won't be happening is the orgy of revolutionary zeal exhibited in the 'mass spectacles' of 1918-21. These huge open-air performances were - according to their planners - spontaneous recreations of 'revolutionary dramas'. They involved students, soldiers, ballerinas and circus performers, recruited by avant-garde artists to stage the revolution for a mass audience. In post-Pussy Riot Russia, where politically inspired spontaneity is frowned upon in the extreme, the chances of a flash mob recreating the events of 1917 are slim to trifling. Still, it'll be worth keeping an eye on Palace Square next November in case of some real revolutionary happenings.
There's likewise little chance of the puffed up military parades that characterised celebrations of November 7 during the Cold War. Up until 1991 Soviet leaders would appear on top of Lenin's mausoleum nodding gravely at the columns of tanks, cavalry, and riflemen as they paraded across Red Square. That's not to say Putin's Russia is averse to such pomp: the technicolour patriotism of the Victory Day Parades is proof enough that Soviet traditions - often with a post-modern twist - are alive and well in Russia today. But honouring political revolution with a parade of tanks and missiles? A little unwise in the current climate, perhaps.
Official memory of 1917 may well be contained to a few low-profile exhibitions and wreath-laying activities. Whether regional memory of the events will coincide with the official line is another matter, however. One could well imagine the people of Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), commemorating the gruesome murders of the last Romanovs in the town with a candlelight vigil, for example. Or, for that matter, the opening of a monument to Nicholas II in provincial Pskov, where the tsar signed the declaration of his abdication in 1917. Not to mention what may happen in the 'crucible of revolution' itself - St Petersburg. Will the battleship Aurora, which sounded the revolution's opening salvo, really not fire its guns? Will Finland Station, the backdrop to Lenin's rousing and iconic speech, really not draw a crowd? Only time (and social media) will tell.
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From July through September, the United States, through the USAID Agro Horizon project, sponsored a series of business growth events to connect Kyrgyzstani agricultural producers with local and international buyers.
Food processors from Batken, Jalal-Abad, Naryn and Osh oblasts met with potential buyers during three large forums in Almaty, Bishkek, and Osh and through over 100 smaller meetings. These forums and meetings resulted in contracts and agreements that created new economic opportunities for the Kyrgyz Republic worth $5.4 million.
The events attracted 16 suppliers and 27 buyers from the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and other neighboring countries. The parties signed contracts and memoranda of understanding to provide both processed and fresh products, including vegetables, fruits, juice, tomato paste, pickles and sauces, vegetable salads, puree jam, meat and dairy products.
"The USAID Agro Horizon project was a great boost to our companys growth. We were able to sign contracts that we previously had not thought to be possible, and now were even preparing our product for export, said Askar Okenov, Director of Concept Master LLC, a producer of tomato paste based in Jalal-Abad oblast.
These business growth events are a part of USAIDs broader efforts to grow smallholder farmers and agricultural producers incomes by increasing their productivity, improving product quality and expanding markets for agricultural goods. Thanks to U.S. support, USAID Agro Horizon participants have doubled or even tripled yields, and have improved their marketing and pricing practices.
The U.S. is proud to work with its partner Kyrgyzstan to strengthen its agricultural sector, grow its economy and improve the lives of the people of Kyrgyzstan and the South and Central Asia regions.
There is a desperation from the government and vocal Eurosceptics to rush the process to leave the EU. It is as though they think the public has been duped and they want to push things along before more people are fully alert to the dangers of hard Brexit.
This haste is incredibly irresponsible. The future of the United Kingdom and our relationship with the rest of the world is dependent on good, clear-headed decisions. We are not choosing a new jumper that we can just take back to the shop if we change our minds.
The High Court ruled last week that Theresa May does not have the power to trigger Article 50 alone and it needs to go through a Parliamentary vote. It is quite astonishing that the government defended the case, as it should be obvious to even May that she is not the Queen of Sheba. She is, at best, the Queen of Omnishambles.
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It is even more astonishing and outrageous that the government is wasting public money appealing a very clear decision by the High Court, as taking this power from Parliament undermines a key principle of our democracy.
There is so much the government SHOULD be doing at the moment, like fixing the broken and dangerous prison system and ensuring the NHS has the resources it needs to keep citizens alive as we go into the precarious winter months. Trying to smother fundamental legal principles is not a good look for Theresa May, who already has a conviction for contempt of court.
In a Commons debate on Monday, David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, was still recoiling from the High Court's ruling, and showed all the grace of a stroppy teenager made to clean his bedroom. Unfortunately for him, the mess the Tories have made of Brexit already is as daunting as a billion boys' bedrooms brimming with smelly socks.
He told the Commons: "The only means of leaving is through the procedures set out in Article 50, and triggering Article 50 is properly a matter for the government using its prerogative powers. As a result, we will appeal the High Court's judgement at the Supreme Court."
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He added: "The core of our argument will remain that we believe it is proper and lawful for the government to trigger Article 50 by the use of prerogative powers."
The royal prerogative Davis refers to dates from the 13th century, when monarchs were all-powerful. A prime minister using this to shape how the UK functions in the third millennium would make our democracy a laughing stock of the world. It would also jeopardise Brexit as could subsequently be deemed illegal and void.
Responding to Davis, Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union Keir Starmer said: "The High Court ruled that the prime minister is acting unlawfully in seeking to use prerogative powers to invoke Article 50. The court had to remind her that only Parliament can make and repeal laws.
"The government has approached its task in the wrong way, and its approach is now unravelling. I'm afraid to say it is unravelling in the most divisive and ugly way. In the aftermath of the High Court judgement we saw a series of appalling personal attacks on the judges, including the suggestion that they were enemies of the people."
Alluding to the need for MPs and the wider public to know the government's general aspirations for a Brexit deal, the former Director of Public Prosecutions Mr Starmer also said: "The future relationship of the UK with our EU partners is at stake. The future relationship of the UK with the world is at stake. The prime minister simply cannot keep all of this to herself. The government needs to act in the national interest, to build a consensus."
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Absent from the Commons debate but interviewed in India, Theresa May did not rule out calling an early general election to allow her to push through Article 50. However, the reality is, if this were to happen each party's manifesto would have to outline what THEY would seek in Brexit negotiations. This would be at odds with the current line of the government, that it is critical to keep its cards close to its chest.
Recently (while browsing for some good prayers that new parents might like before having their first baby) I found a hilarious viral meme...
... which (after endless months of blue/red arguments over social media, rap battles, phonebanking, texting and door-to-door "getting out the vote"), I totally agree! No one should be president, except perhaps the Earth itself!
But seriously, can you believe what happens when humans focus on personalities rather than issues? Is it for this reason that we allow a type of insane spiritual blackout that Dr. Cornel West so eloquently describes? Is it for this reason that we allow corporate media to avoid everything important to the lives of civilians? Ie. healthcare, climate change, poverty, trade, guns, infrastructure, deficits, etc.?
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Take for a moment, some honest facts about our modern world:
It is estimated that 5.3 billion people, two-thirds of the world's population, will suffer from water shortages by 2025! #waterislife
The Institute of Medicine in 2002 scientifically documented widespread racial disparities in health care and suggested they stemmed at least partly from physician bias. In one generation, between 1940 and 1999, more than 4 million African Americans died prematurely relative to whites! #blacklivesmatter
Women-owned business' generate 61% less revenue than their male counterparts! #genderequality
1.1 billion gallons of pesticides are used every year! #sustainableagriculture
There are 403 parts per billion of carbon are in the atmosphere! #changeclimatechange
Are governments performing some "morality play" for the amusement of their own ego? Why are the rich and powerful so obsessed with nation states, armies and an unnecessary colonial conquest for what they already own? How is humanity collectively writing such a terrible story for ourselves more interested in destructive villains than regenerative heroes? Could environmental chaos, nationalism, bigotry, racism and patriarchy all be the results of a self-created crisis?
If we want to continue as a species, we "earth peoples" must unite to remember our common heritage. We have no other choice. Life-sustaining and social-justice oriented solutions must overcome every industry and sector of human life. From land stewardship to human rights, we must lift up regenerative practices of living in harmony with local and global ecosystems. And because regeneration and change-making is not only in the White House or at Standing Rock, not only in the Syrian refugee camps or through the halls of United Nations. Perhaps we might all wake up tomorrow morning - election day or the next - with a new question for our days:
"What does positive change feel like in my life?"
A city businessman using a mobile device to check stocks and market data. Close up shot.
My boyfriend wears a Fitbit so regularly that once, scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, I mistook a friend for him--all I had seen, with half the picture cut off, was an arm and the grey, Flex-model Fitbit on the wrist.
I view the thing as half object of intrigue, half handcuff: while the data it collects (on everything from steps walked to sleep patterns) is interesting, it seems like such a lot of work to scroll through it all.
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I admit that I'm a hypocrite in saying this, though. My phone's built-in Samsung Health app counts the steps I've walked and can measure my heart rate. With various other tracker apps, you can note menstrual cycles, food consumption, the number of liters of water you drink in a day...it goes on. It would seem that if it exists, it can be measured.
On a larger scale, this love affair with data--what Berkeley geography graduate students Camilla Hawthorne and Brittany Meche termed "fetishized numeration" in their Space & Society article--is visible in corporate, academic, and policy circles. At UC Berkeley, Chancellor Dirks wrote in March that "Across all of higher education, faculty and administrators are increasingly recognizing the need to treat data literacy as a core competency for liberal education." In an older article, a campus Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor was more blunt: "There has been massive growth in job opportunities in data-science-related areas...and a shortage of people prepared to fill them, according to Culler." Dirks' language of data as a "core competency for liberal education" disguises the perhaps more pressing motive that Culler's statement illuminates: market demand for data exists, and the university needs to fill it.
William Deresiewicz has written a lovely article entitled "The Neoliberal Arts" about how "college sold its soul to the market," but that's actually not my argument here (Deresiewicz does it better).
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My concern is, instead, what we we lose when we treat quantitative data as our preeminent means of knowing things about the world.
I worry about this because people seem to gush a lot about things with the words "data-driven" placed in front of them, whether decision-making or teaching or journalism or policy. We talk about "data" as though it possesses magical qualities of complete rationality and objectivity. After all, how could numbers be wrong?
NYTimes profiled Kate Crawford, a visiting MIT professor and researcher at Microsoft Research; she criticized "Big Data fundamentalism--the idea with larger data sets, we get closer to objective truth." In one example she provided, even something like analyzing the millions of tweets following Hurricane Sandy could provide biased data (since Twitter users tend to be younger and more affluent than the general population affected). Further, she added that "Big Data is neither color blind nor gender blind...Facebook timelines, stripped of data like names, can still be used to determine a person's ethnicity with 95 percent accuracy." (Indeed, ProPublica recently published a piece about Facebook using their "Ethnic Affinity" data to give advertisers the option to restrict who viewed their ads--a potential violation of the Fair Housing Act.)
"Ethnic Affinity" is only a recent inheritor of a long history of politically charged data. The late scholar of South Asia Bernard Cohn did extensive work on the first Census conducted by the British in India, pointing out that their Census had a mercantile, extractive goal--after all, counting the subjects of a state is a prerequisite for taxing them. If the British Census in India, Kate Crawford's example of analyzing tweets, or the use of Facebook's Ethnic Affinity by advertisers, all serve as any indicator, data is rarely objective: neither in its motives, collection, nor analysis.
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But what if we lived in a happy utopia--one of both objective data and objective data analysts? There's still a problem with privileging one form of knowledge production because of its perceived objectivity and rationality: it denigrates other academic fields. And the fields that my CS major friends might describe as "hand-wavey" are, incidentally, also fields that are heavily populated by women. The ranks of your average Anthropology or English class are very different from those of your average CS or Mathematics class. In 2014, when Berkeley offered its inaugural online data science master's program, 78% of the course's students were male (Daily Cal). Certainly people like my data science class's professor and others at Berkeley are making admirable efforts resulting in tangible change (a little over than half of my intro to data science class is female).
But even if the arbiters of data are increasingly members of underrepresented groups, the issue of discrimination against certain forms of knowledge remains.
There's a clear bifurcation of disciplines into those we think of, implicitly or explicitly, as "feminine" or "masculine." It's something that you can witness every time you turn on the evening news, with its lineup of "hard news"--the talk of war and death, money and politics. But take a look at women's magazines and websites, and it's often a different set of stories. XOJane has an entire section called "It Happened To Me": personal narratives. New York Magazine's The Cut: a weekly feature called Sex Diaries, in which people (men and women alike) submit anonymized documentation of a week's worth of sexual exploits.
Increasingly, however, there's cross-over--magazines like Cosmopolitan, once better known for aspirational sex positions, are covering "hard news" (documented in this Vox article, "Don't Underestimate Cosmo: Women's Magazines Are Taking On Trump"). And papers like the New York Times, with its stiff "All the News That's Fit to Print," now feature columns like Modern Love and Campus Lives that put personal narratives, not coldly outlined facts and figures, front and center.
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I see this as progress. Plenty of feminist writers like Jessica Valenti use their personal experiences to illuminate global problems, but the language of memory and the personal as a language of knowledge production is not reserved for women alone. Personal narratives should not be considered the stuff of "women's issues" any more than the 2016 election should be considered not a "women's issue." Consider PostSecret (which collects postcards from around the world with secrets depicted on them, posting them weekly), Story Corps (a non-profit project aiming to record stories from Americans of all backgrounds), Moth Radio Hour (a weekly series featuring true stories told live on-stage). One of my favorite Medium articles, a haunting piece with the title "You're 16. You're a Pedophile. You Don't Want to Hurt Anyone. What Do You Do Now?" came from an amazing series called Matter. Matter articles talk about big issues, like "The Racism Beat: What it's like to write about hate over and over and over," or "Living and Dying on Airbnb: My dad died in an Airbnb rental, and he's not the only one. What can the company do to improve safety?"
Notice anything?
These articles all provide knowledge that is grounded in the personal--in story, in life, in memory.
Not numbers, tables, and scatterplots.
I'm not saying that we don't need quantitative data. We do. But putting it on a pedestal, ignoring and belittling personal narratives or ethnographies or literary analyses, ignores everything that can't be quantified.
Take Colorado State University anthropologist Jeffrey Snodgrass's article "A Tale of Goddesses, Money, and Other Terribly Wonderful Things: Spirit Possession, Commodity Fetishism, and the Narrative of Capitalism in Rajasthan, India" as an example. It told the story of a young mother named Bedami and her husband Ramu. The story started with Bedami's possession by a goddess (with this being her community's understanding of her condition). That story unfolded in parallel to an exploration of Ramu's rejection of the community's traditional livelihood and norms; he had chosen to take a salaried job, open a bank account, and ordered Bedami to undergo sterilization because of the worry of the expense of too many children. But this parsimonious behavior meant that peers viewed him as insufferably stingy and a traitor to his community. The community concluded that her possession had occurred at least in part due to his miserliness and rejection of tradition.
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Most of this narrative would go unseen if not for the qualitative information of Snodgrass's laborious ethnography. The job, bank account, and sterilization might become faceless numbers swimming about in some massive pool, but the real impact of the rocky incursion of modernity in Bedami's community, and on individuals' lived experiences, would be rendered invisible.
If you're a policy-maker trying to get more Indians to sign up for bank accounts (a real priority of the current government, which in August 2014 launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana scheme to increase bank account penetration) you need to see people like Bedami and Ramu, not just the numbers of the latest World Bank report, to make effective policy.
The information that comes from documents like personal narratives and ethnographies is often our only window into worlds that are too fraught to speak of in terms of big data. Where do you get statistics on things like pedophilia or goddess possession? Who answers the polls, or tweets, or picks up the phone, to talk about those topics?
Not everything can be quantified, and that's a good thing.
I said at the beginning that this was an article about quantitative data, but really, this is a plea for humility. The idea that any one discipline has a monopoly on the truth is highly dangerous. Worshipping at the feet of gods we build out of numbers and code is no better than worshipping at the feet of the gods we imagine. (I'm reminded of that classic Dumbledore line: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?")
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Scientists and engineers who believe that their fields lend them omniscience make bad things happen: just Google "scientific racism," "Guatemala syphilis experiment," or take a look at the current news about Standing Rock, where engineers seem willfully ignorant of Native American history in their aptness to dismiss the protestors' cause. These all should serve as reminders that our world is much, much better off when scientists and engineers learn from, and believe in the value of, fields like the humanities and social sciences.
And right now, that equality has to start with revising how we look at numbers.
By Andre Bryan, M.D., M.B.A.
A recent publication by the Association of American Medical Colleges reports that only 4 percent of physicians in the U.S. are black, and that there were fewer black men enrolled in medical school in 2014 than in 1978. This striking and disheartening shortage holds serious consequences for all of society. Studies show that less diversity amongst physicians has major implications for healthcare disparities, and negatively affects the balance of the standard of care for people across different cultures and backgrounds. If we do not remodel our efforts of recruitment and support for students in underserved populations, the percentage of black physicians will continue to decline.
Encouraging Black Males to Become Doctors
These students have aspirations of careers in healthcare or science but often are deterred from these ambitions once faced with the reality of meager systemic social support. One organization that is combating this problem head-on is the Einstein Enrichment Program (EEP), a Science and Technology Entry Program that serves students in grades 7-12 who demonstrate high academic school performance, who are economically disadvantaged or who have been historically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Being a former EEP student and current resident at Montefiore Medical Center I understand both the social disparity of becoming a doctor and the value of pipeline programs.
It is a peculiar experience to realize that aspects of your existence, whether tangible such as gender and ethnicity or intangible such as socioeconomic status, mandate certain career trajectories, each with its own identity-specific preset roadmaps. Growing up in the Bronx, I first wanted to become a doctor during early adolescence, but at that time I thought "black male doctors don't come from here. They don't exist." In high school, my guidance counselor at Mount St. Michael Academy--also in the Bronx--introduced us to EEP, a program that gave underrepresented teens a chance to become doctors. As he shared this prospect he also impressed upon us that this was not a common opportunity for boys in our community.
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What a Doctor Looks Like
After learning about EEP I applied and was accepted into it along with several other talented high school students from throughout New York City. That summer I shadowed Dr. Christopher Phang, a mixed-race pediatrician at Jacobi Medical Center, who was well respected by his patients and his peers. Working with Dr. Phang, and hearing similar stories of inspiration from other EEP students about mentors who look like them and have shared experiences, encouraged my decision to become a doctor. As Nilda Soto, the assistant dean for the office of diversity enhancement at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and program director of EEP, stated, "Some of these young people just don't have those opportunities; they just don't have the role models."
EEP helped me make a mental shift when thinking about my aspirations. It allowed me to change, in my mind, "maybe" I could become a doctor to I "will" become one. This is a perspective that would shape my journey and allow me to accept the challenges of becoming a physician "while black." The reality is that black professionals are, as Yale law professor Stephen Carter says, "measured by a different yardstick: first black, only black, best black." The length of this yardstick is truncated by imposed ethnic stereotypes and social constructs that place both external and internal limits on their potential, impacting professional trajectories and personal ambitions. Programs such as EEP encourage minority students to denounce the null hypothesis or assumption that their professional capacity is dictated by their physical traits. That summer, I made the decision to be great, and I enrolled at New York University as a premedical student.
Culture Shock
There, I entered a world where many of my new peers were accustomed to an abundance of resources and endless support for the pursuit of their goals. I was now competing in a new environment. I was not immune to the intangible hardships of this process. It was a miracle that I passed general chemistry with a textbook that I was able to borrow from the library only for a few hours at a time.
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Throughout this experience I often reflected on the absence of diversity within medicine, which led me to understand that despite stemming from a range of complex causes, the reason is notably simple. Many people are not becoming doctors because they don't have the resources or support. This is largely due to the lack of diversity itself, not only in student bodies but also at the administrative level of universities where cultural knowledge of distinct student populations is not apparent.
Laying Foundations
Having goals is important, but having systems that support those goals is vital to achieving them. The purpose of pipeline programs such as EEP is to encourage the dreams of minority students not only to become doctors but also to go into other professions such as veterinary care, nursing and non-STEM careers. The impact of these programs is palpable throughout different career stages. This is demonstrated by organizations such as the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program and National Medical Fellowships, which provide support at the college and graduate medical levels respectively.
Nowadays, subtle yet deep-seated institutional racism is often eclipsed by conspicuously newsworthy individual bias. In order to increase the percentage of minority physicians we must continue to treat foundational prejudice by bolstering pipeline programs. Unless we identify and fix the instances where the system falls short, gifted students will continue to be deprived of opportunities.
Dr. Bryan is currently a resident physician at Montefiore Medical Center specializing in anesthesiology. He received his M.D./M.B.A. from New York University in 2016.
***
This post was originally featured on The Doctor's Tablet, the blog of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Yoga is quickly spreading across America, and the whole world for that matter, as an alternative method for dealing with stress, tension, and pressurizing environment. This ancient technique of mindful movements is quickly becoming the newest trend in self-help, self-motivation, and general fostering of joy and happiness in one's life.
Although yoga has been around for centuries, it is only in the last decade that the Western world is beginning to "rediscover" this ancient practice of healing yourself through mindful movements known as Asanas. Yoga can play a big part in helping people heal themselves from difficult to manage emotions, day to day stresses and other challenges that life throws your way. Sometimes all it takes is a single yoga class to get a taste of what the fuss is all about.
As a beginner, you have several options to choose from if you'd like to try yoga for yourself. First, and likely the best, method is to head over to your local yoga studio, or gym that provides yoga classes, and try out a beginner's class there. The emphasis is on beginner's. There are different levels of yoga classes that one can attend, and anyone going for an intermediate class as their first yoga experience might quickly regret it, even abandon the idea of doing yoga altogether.
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The second option, which is still super beneficial, is to try yoga at home. This can be done through attending online classes, whether through YouTube, or other yoga platforms that share free classes online. After practicing yoga myself for quite some time now, and attending different varieties of classes, I put together an informative infographic with my best tips for yoga beginners.
These are things you may want to remind yourself of whenever you feel that the class is getting difficult, they may also dispel any assumptions you have about yoga.
This collection of tips is an excerpt from my full-fledged infographic on how yoga helps to relieve stress.
Mariam has lived in America for 43 years, and yesterday, was the first time she ever cast a ballot.
A better life, a good education, and the American dream is why most immigrants leave everyone they know and everything they have to cross oceans and come to this great nation.
For Mariam, it was no different. In the early seventies, she left her family, home and the security of her job as a teacher, in Syria, and took a risk with her husband and new born daughter. They landed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, and had hotdogs for their first American dinner.
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"When I asked what we were eating and was told hot dogs, I spit it out, because I knew what hot and dog meant," says Mariam. Luckily a friend who had picked them up at the airport explained that the food contained no dog meat.
Before immigrating to the U.S., she thought that coming to America and living the dream would be like "picking dollars off a tree."
"We thought succeeding in the U.S. would be easy. We were told the roads were paved with gold, like in the movies," says Mariam. However, as she and her husband discovered shortly after immigrating, surviving in America was hard work and there was no family around to help.
They both took on jobs. Anything they could do to support their growing family.
Slowly but surely they started to build their own unique American dream. With hard work and perseverance they bought a home in a good suburb with a good school district. Over the years they welcomed three more children, and experienced the ups and downs that came with being an immigrant American family: losing a job, raising children that don't share the same culture as their parents, having an accent and discrimination.
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Mariam and her husband have never been interested in politics. Some immigrants who come from countries with dictatorships or oppressive regimes shy away from being politically active. They are fearful that any kind of dissent will be met with persecution, which often happens in the countries they originate from.
For Mariam it wasn't much different. She has been in the U.S. for 43 years and a citizen for almost 3 decades, but she's never voted. This year something changed.
Before both candidates secured their nomination, Mariam liked the idea of a woman being in office, so she wanted Clinton to win. But after Donald Trump was nominated, she felt a need for Clinton to win because of the rhetoric being spread by Trump about immigrants coming from her birth country and who shared her religion.
She worries about her grandchildren's future. "We came to this country because of the promise of a better life, and now it looks like things may get worse," she says.
At the age of 70, this petite grandmother told her daughter to take her to vote. She needed to vote. Unsure if she was registered, her daughter checked her mother's registration status online, and to their delight she was registered. Mariam remembers being asked something about voting at the DMV a few years ago.
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As she left her home, she met the opposition of her 80 year old husband at the door, but she was determined to continue.
Walking into her township's city hall a day before the national election, Mariam seemed nervous and excited standing firmly in line with her driver's license clutched between her hands, waiting for her turn to fill out her absentee ballot with her daughter. They fill the air with chitchat about who in line looked like they'd be voting for which candidate.
"Next," the clerk's office employee proclaims. Her daughter began to speak for her mother, as she often does when it came to forms or governmental red tape, but Mariam spoke up for herself and said, "I want to vote."
Receiving her ballot, she sat down at a small table in the hallway, and filled out the straight democratic oval. Trying to understand that one single mark was sufficient for the entire ballot, she was hesitant to leave the Hillary oval empty. Her daughter explained that the democratic oval was a vote for Hillary, but Mariam still insisted on filling in the Hillary oval, "just in case."
She gathered the 4 or 5 pens lying in her voting booth and along with her ballot returned them to the clerk's office employee. They turned and walked away.
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Marijuana and a gavel together for many legal concepts on the drug.
Perhaps no other group has been more impacted by the U.S. war on drugs and the prohibition of marijuana than Latinos. From Colombia to El Salvador, Mexico to Los Angeles, it is impossible to ignore the legacy of death, destruction and destabilization that the drug war has had in Latin America and in U.S. Latino communities. For this reason, California's Proposition 64, which decriminalizes marijuana and reinvests in the communities most impacted by racist drug policies, is arguably one of the most significant criminal justice policy shifts in a generation for Latinos.
What began in the 1970s with President Nixon's declared war on drugs, was expanded under President Reagan at an unprecedented rate. Thanks in large part to mandatory sentencing laws and zero tolerance policies, in less than 20 years from 1980 to 1997 the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offences in the U.S. increased from 50,000 to over 400,000. Tough on crime policies -- the seemingly race-silent strategy to criminalize poor, inner city Black and Latino communities -- swept a nation dealing with economic inequality, racial tensions, and the proliferation of new variations of drugs.
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California was no different throughout much of the '90s and up until recently. In California alone, nearly 500,000 people were arrested for marijuana offenses from 2006 to 2015, the vast majority of which were Blacks and Latinos. Latinos and Blacks continue to be arrested and incarcerated at higher rates than their white counterparts despite similar rates of marijuana use. And while the criminalization of Latinos in California has not reached the level felt by the African American community, data shows that the disproportionate rate of marijuana arrest rates among Latinos is growing at an alarming rate.
For more than two decades, Latinos have been increasingly used as political scapegoats and targeted by hateful rhetoric focused on not only demonizing the immigrant community but on elevating false narratives that characterize Latinos as drug dealers and criminals. This deliberate and xenophobic effort to create a false narrative intermixing undocumented immigration with criminality and the drug trade has, unfortunately, succeeded. The result has been the proliferation of a mix of immigration, sentencing and drug policies that have legitimized unprecedented levels of deportations that devastated the immigrant community with millions of families torn apart, most for doing nothing more that struggling to realize the American Dream.
Latinos urgently need common sense drug policies that adequately regulate and generate revenue to reinvest in our communities. And Latinos must see themselves as champions in the movement to end the drug war once and for all. California's Proposition 64 makes important progress in turning the tide from an unjust system that preys on Latinos and Blacks to one that prioritizes our youth and communities while investing in their future. This policy alone does not solve the systemic problem, however Proposition 64 is a major step in the right direction towards dismantling the harmful and largely failed policy framework dubbed as the war on drugs.
Building off sentencing reform measures passed in 2014 in California that are already having a significant impact in the Latino community, Proposition 64 will regulate and generate desperately needed revenue to reinvest in our communities. Specifically, the tax revenue generated from this measure will go towards local governments, medical marijuana research, youth programming and targeted mental health, job placement and substance use treatment in communities "disproportionately affected by past federal and state drug policies." While tax revenues will also go towards public safety and enforcement, the implementation of this law provides an opportunity to shift racist narratives that support over-policing and enforcement to a focus on the real needs of our community: investment in youth, community health, and economic opportunity.
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The law itself would not only make it legal for adults 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, butand here's perhaps the most important point -- the new law would also create a system for sentences to be retroactively reduced and for past marijuana convictions to be expunged. In addition, young people under 18 convicted of use or possession of marijuana would no longer face jail time, rather they would receive drug education, counseling and required community service.
For the immigrants who have been detained or face the threat of deportation because of a marijuana offense, for the young student who loses his financial aid and prospects of higher education, for those barred from housing or job opportunities, and for those who see and understand the basic unfairness and injustice of our criminal justice system -- Proposition 64 should matter to you.
Election Day is finally here, and for the past few months I've been proudly wearing a bright yellow button that says NO on 2. As a veteran educator who spent 11 years teaching in both district schools and charter schools and almost 30 years working with young people, I know that Question 2 on lifting the charter school cap is a bad idea.
I join the community of advocates that stand against the continual funding cuts that are eliminating teachers, librarians, nurses, and critical support services from our public schools and diverting spending to charter schools that are not held to an equal level of accountability. I am committed to educating the children that charter schools are not equipped to serve in high numbers, such as Students with Disabilities (SWD), English Language Learners (ELL), and disproportionately black and brown boys. Although charters do serve small numbers of high need students they do not have the capacity or the infrastructure that the Boston Public Schools has to serve 29% ELL and 20% SWD students. If Question 2 passes, what would ultimately result would be a two-tier system where students with the greatest academic needs are left in a school district that has lost critical funding to charters.
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The greatest need is in traditional public schools, where 97% of students in Massachusetts are educated, and as concerned citizens our commitment to them must coincide with outcomes of any law we pass, which is not the case with this ballot measure. Here in Boston, charter schools will siphon off roughly $135 million from Boston Public Schools this year, which exacerbates the continual budget cuts that schools are forced to endure.
On October 15, 2016, members of the national NAACP Board ratified a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion until the following conditions in existing charter schools are met:
Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate and Cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspiration may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious
The Boston NAACP and other advocacy and civil rights groups like Black Educators of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Advocates for Children, and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights all stand strongly opposed to Question 2. Rather than lifting the charter school cap, law makers and donors should be focused on providing equitable funding for measures that would truly improve education for ALL students, such as universal pre-kindergarten, extended learning time, and wraparound services for students needing more support.
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My grandfather, M. Phillip Freed, was arrested in Philadelphia in 1950 on a complaint that he had been "interfering with orderly voting" and for inciting a riot of about 500 people outside of a polling place. Seven years later, he would be elected to the bench as the first magistrate in Philadelphia to hold a law degree. But at the time of his arrest, he was the Democratic Chief of the 20th Ward. The main complainant was his GOP counterpart, who my grandfather had accused of voting irregularities in past elections.
Sound familiar? It's hard to say whether we've reached a new low in political campaigns, but it sure feels like it. In particular, the polls in Philadelphia have been singled out by the GOP candidate as the number one place to guard against "voter fraud," but efforts to send poll watchers have been rejected.
It brings to mind the cynical phrase, "Vote early and vote often," which is attributed to three different Chicagoans (all notorious for their manipulation of the democratic process)--Al Capone and mayors Richard J. Daley (1955-1976) and William Hale Thompson (1915-1923 and 1931-1935).
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My grandfather was known for getting into skirmishes with then police chief, Frank Rizzo (later mayor of Philadelphia), and a young brash Assistant D.A. named Arlen Specter (later Senator of PA). That Election Day, when he was brought before a judge, he explained that the reason he felt compelled to make his presence known at the polling place was because earlier that day a Republican judge of elections had been charged with "giving illegal assistance and unlawfully interfering with a voter." At another site in the same division, a retired bricklayer said that on three different occasions while he was waiting to vote, he saw a man slip into the voting booth with other people who were voting. A woman clerk of the election division board reported on intimidation tactics saying that Republican workers actually walked into booths despite objections of the voters and helped them to vote. My grandfather asked that all the votes in that division be thrown out. An investigation was ordered, which revealed that 100 more votes were recorded than persons who voted. The court later discharged him.
This campaign season there's been a lot of talk about what makes America great. Let's start with the opportunity for our voices to be heard through the act of voting and supporting a fair and respectful election process.
This November 8, as I make my way out of the mire of negative campaigning, cynicism and allegations of corruption, which are as old as democracy itself, I plan to vote early... but not often.
"I don't want to let my Halloween fans down, or myself," said Klum of the costume, which she said took several months to make.
The latest report by an independent investigative panel of experts confirms that the Assad regime is responsible for a third chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people.
In its October 2016 report, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism, or JIM, concluded the Syrian Arab Armed Forces used weaponized chlorine in the town of Qmenas in 2015. This latest finding followed an August 2016 report where the JIM concluded that Syrian Arab Armed Forces used helicopters to drop barrel bombs filled with chlorine gas on the civilian population of Sarmin in 2015, and had attacked the town of Talmenes in a similar way in 2014. That report additionally found that Daesh used mustard gas in an attack in 2015 in Marea. The Leadership Panel of the JIM reaffirmed its belief that it is absolutely critical to hold those who use or intend to use chemicals as weapons accountable for their acts.
State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner noted that the JIMs investigation corroborated what we have known for years: the Assad regime has systematically and repeatedly used chemical weapons against its own people.
In a statement, U.S. National Security Council Spokesperson Ned Price condemned in the strongest possible terms the Assad regimes defiance of the longstanding global norm against chemical weapons use.
The United States, he said, continues to work with our international partners to enforce accountability through appropriate diplomatic mechanisms, including through the United Nations Security Council and the OPCW (the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons).
On October 31st, the U.N. Security Council unanimously extended, through resolution 2314, the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism until November 18, 2016 in order to allow additional time for the Security Council to reach agreement on a year-long renewal of the JIM. This renewal would allow the JIM to continue to probe into the documented use of chemical weapons in Syria. U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Michele Sison welcomed the Security Councils adoption of resolution 2314, noting that the Security Council must condemn and hold responsible whoever is involved in these chemical weapons attacks. And the JIM is a key tool to help us do that.
National Security Council Spokesperson Price said, We must send a strong signal that the use of weapons of mass destructions will not be tolerated by the international community.
One of the most commonly overlooked types of phone scams is the jury duty scam. Recently, there have been a number of cases in Tennessee of this phone scam threatening residents. This problem isn't just happening in Tennessee though, as reports of these types of calls demanding Americans pay fines or face jail time affect millions.
Recent victims of this scam report being contacted by local Tennessee phone numbers and the caller claimed to be from the sheriff's office. Using caller ID spoofing these scammers are able to make their threats believable by spoofing the number of the victim's local police or sheriff's department (or the county clerk's office). Here's how to avoid being the next victim.
Although these calls may seem believable at first, don't trust them. Whenever you get a call from someone saying that you missed jury duty and that you need to pay a fine, keep these three things in mind:
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The courts (district, state, and federal) will never request personal information from you over the phone. Once you report for jury duty you may need to fill out a questionnaire or some paperwork, but this will never be asked of you over the phone. If any unsolicited caller asks for your social security number, place of work, home address, or birthdate, hang up immediately. Notice of jury duty will always be delivered by U.S. mail. If you're called to serve on a jury you'll receive notice via U.S. mail with instructions on when and where you must report for duty. If you feel that there may be a chance that you have lost your jury duty information then you should contact your local federal district court directly. If you fail to respond to a jury summons or show up to jury duty you could be fined or face jail time, but you will be sent an official summons from court if this happens. It is against the law to miss jury duty without having a valid reason, and you could have to pay a fine or even go to jail if you are found to be in civil contempt of the court by a judge. Before this ever happens you will first be given a hearing date in court, and a judge will decide if you are guilty. You will never, under any circumstances, be called and demanded to pay a fine without prior notice.
The best ways to protect yourself from the jury duty phone scam are to keep these three things in mind, pay attention to local news reports regarding scams in your community, and hang up if anyone says they're calling from the local or federal court about failure to report for jury duty. If you do receive a jury summons in the mail, don't ignore it.
Jury duty can be postponed if there is a schedule conflict, a financial hardship, or if you are unable to serve for any other reason. Most courts will excuse you from jury duty if you have a valid reason. By doing this you'll save yourself from the doubt, which has made the jury duty scam successful in the past.
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Our country is more divided than it's been in a very long time, quite possibly since the Civil War. This great rift has been growing for many years. While significant political differences have always existed, a larger, more troubling gap began to develop when income inequality started accelerating in the late 1970s. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1978 to 2015 the average corporate CEO's salary grew 997 percent while the average salary of a private sector, non-supervisory worker increased just 10.9 percent.
Additionally, as I noted in Breaking Big Money's Grip on America, between 2009 and 2012, the first years of the economic recovery after the Great Recession, 95 percent of the total gain in income went to the families in the top one percent. Consequently, more and more Americans were feeling left behind as our nation dug itself out of the 2008 Recession.
While the Establishment in both political parties was addressing the needs and desires of the donor class, they were doing little for the rest of their constituents. During the last days of the George W. Bush administration, Congress passed TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Though TARP funds were primarily to be used to save the nation's biggest banks from collapsing, the government could have used some of it to prevent the foreclosure of average citizens' home mortgages. But President Obama refused to require foreclosure relief from these banks as a condition for their receiving a massive bailout of hundreds of billions of dollars2 paid for by American taxpayers.
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Even Obama's singular achievement, the Affordable Care Act, was drafted more in line with the wishes of corporate America than those of the general public. As a result, the Act failed to include a 'public option,' which would have helped limit the cost of people's health insurance, while it contained the insurance companies' requirement that all citizens obtain health insurance.
Meanwhile, since the Great Recession, Congress has refused to pass a substantial jobs bill, mostly due to Republican obstruction, which would have assisted millions of Americans in getting back on their feet. And, if that weren't enough, Obama continues to lobby for the passage of the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty, that would further hurt American workers while it boosts Big Business.
How many times can we expect working class Americans to take it on the chin before they start fighting back? Can we really blame them for being mad as hell and supporting Donald Trump? Yes, Trump is a charlatan. But, when people are drowning, they will grab onto any apparent lifesaver within reach. In fact, the rise of Trump's presidential campaign is in large part the result of our nation's failure to respond to the needs of his followers.
The truth is that the Establishment, Republican and Democratic alike, has been more focused on protecting and furthering its own self interest than it has been in building a nation where we all have an equal opportunity to enjoy healthy and prosperous lives. But, this is the way it has always been. The status quo does not change unless people organize and demand it. Just look at how it took millions of Americans coming together in the LGBT, Civil Rights and Environmental movements to overcome the opposition of the status quo and achieve their successes.
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Now that this bitter presidential campaign is finally over, it's time we turned our attention to the causes that made it so acrimonious. In particular, we must examine an economic/political system that provides so much to so few and so little to so many. Then, we must organize a broad-based, non-partisan Democracy Movement to redevelop that system into a fairer, more equitable one for all Americans. For how we can do this together, visit breakingbigmoneysgrip.com.
1 See http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-has-grown-90-times-faster-than-typical-worker-pay-since-1978/.
The United States Supreme Court should recognize the standing of citizens to challenge the constitutionality of presidential wars. It is our last best hope to regain the Republic. Over the past century, we have become dictatress of the world through a toxic combination of presidential usurpations and congressional derelictions. Our glory is no longer liberty, but domination and force.
In addressing war, the Constitution's makers painted in prime colors, not pastels or chiaroscuro. Every participant in the drafting, debating, and ratifying of the document understood that under Article I, section 8, clause 11, only Congress was empowered to cross the Rubicon from a state of peace to war. The sole exception was presidential power to "repel sudden attacks." Presidential wars were anathema for reasons James Madison, father of the Constitution, related to Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence:
"The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature."
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Even Alexander Hamilton, the most ardent proponent of a muscular presidency, in Federalist 69 applauded the Constitution's exclusive entrustment of the war power to Congress.
Despite the constitutional clarity, Congress has yielded or surrendered its war power to the President. It began with the Korean War in 1950. The surrender has not divided the major parties. Both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate recoil from the responsibility for deciding on war or peace in the manner of a dog retreating to its kennel when danger appears. The Members are highly risk-averse professional politicians. They calculate that the safest political posture is to pass the buck to the President, but carp at the commander in chief if the war goes south--irresponsibility more to be marveled at than imitated.
At present, presidential wars are ongoing in seven countries: Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There are additional presidential wars against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda everywhere on the planet.
Congressman Walter Jones (R-N.C.), on behalf of himself and as many as three dozen other House Members, has written at least five (5) letters to the House Speaker asking for debate and votes on these presidential wars. Each and every letter has been completely ignored. Congressional leadership does not want a vote. Neither does the majority of the rank and file.
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In 2013, Congress balked at President Barack Obama's request for a vote to commence war against Syria over suspected use of chemical weapons. But in September 2014, President Obama unilaterally began bombing Syria anyway ostensibly to degrade and destroy ISIS in a war with no discernable endpoint. Congress did nothing about the presidential usurpation.
In 1999, Congress voted down a declaration of war and an authorization for the use of military force in Kosovo. President William Jefferson Clinton, nevertheless, conducted a 79-day bombing and cruise missile campaign. Congress did nothing to defend its war prerogative.
The eagerness of Congress to surrender its war power to the President does not cure the flagrant violation of the Constitution's separation of powers. It constitutes a structural Bill of Rights to protect the American people from tyranny. The Supreme Court said as much in Boumediene v. Bush (2008). Justice Robert Jackson, chief Nuremburg prosecutor, also elaborated in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952) that, "[T]he Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty."
Since Congress is in pari delicto with the President, however, the best strategy for enforcing the Constitution's prohibition of presidential wars is citizen suits against the President in federal courts. According to the Declaration of Independence, citizens have both a right and duty to throw off despotic governments. A citizen's right to challenge the tyranny of presidential wars in federal court seems a lesser included right.
The life of the law, however, has been power rather than justice. Legal theories bend to accommodate the establishment--the power elite. Federal courts have generally denied citizens standing to challenge the constitutionality of presidential wars to avoid upsetting the multi-trillion dollar military-industrial-counterterrorism complex. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes lectured that, "The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully." It matters not that the war is more ill-conceived than Athens self-ruinous attack on Syracuse in 415 B.C.
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But the precedents against citizen standing are unconvincing.
The United States Supreme Court declared in Flast v. Cohen (1968) that the gist of the question of standing is whether the party seeking relief has alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.
Citizen-Plaintiffs clearly have deep personal stakes in escaping the calamities of presidential wars not in self-defense.
War impoverishes and oppresses the citizenry. Abraham Lincoln elaborated: "The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
The presidential wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone have squandered a staggering $6 trillion in exchange for more upheaval and international terrorism--the worst investment ever made in the history of mankind. The lives of Americans would have been much improved if that sum had been dedicated to building or upgrading schools, roads, bridges, airports, water treatment facilities, or other infrastructure.
War aggrandizes executive power and crushes individual liberty. A nation is free to the extent the executive is removed from the war power. James Madison explained:
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"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
Hence it has grown into an axiom that the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence."
Alexander Hamilton added in Federalist 8:
"Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."
And Alexis de Tocqueville echoed in Democracy in America:
"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it."
Thus, presidential wars against which Madison warned have crippled liberty. The President plays prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet the Commander in Chief decrees is an imminent danger to national security based on secret, unsubstantiated evidence. On his say-so alone, the President spies on the entire population to gather foreign intelligence. Military commissions supersede Article III civilian courts in the prosecution crimes that are not international war crimes. Persons are detained indefinitely without accusation or trial. Secrecy displaces transparency in the conduct of public affairs. The President invokes state secrets to frustrate judicial redress for the constitutional wrongs of government, including assassinations, torture, and kidnappings.
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Cicero was right. "In time of war, the law falls silent." Perpetual presidential wars signal the end of the rule of law and the reduction of citizens to serfs.
War further endangers citizens by risking lethal blowback. The 9/11 international terrorist murders can be traced to President George H.W. Bush's war in 1991 war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. The President's ulterior motive was to protect Saudi Arabia and its oil from the clutches of Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Thus, our troops remained in Saudi Arabia after Saddam had surrendered.
Osama bin Laden's two fatwas before 9/11--in 1996 and 1998--threatened the United States with jihad because we were occupying Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, the two holiest places of Islam, and we were strangling Iraq. The fatwas said nothing about hating the freedoms American citizens enjoy.
The Orlando Pulse nightclub murderer suggested at several points in communicating with the police that his motivation was to stop the United States from killing Muslim women and children in Syria and Iraq.
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The most convincing evidence of blowback fueled by our multiple presidential wars in the Middle East and South Asia derives from exchanges between United States District Judge Miriam Cederbaum and convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American.
Judge Cedarbaum asked whether Mr. Shahzad intended the bombs to explode. Oh yes, Shahzad told her. He explained that he chose Times Square on a Saturday night so he could maximize the mayhem: "Yes. Damage to the building and to injure or kill people. But again, I would point out one thing in connection to the attack, that one has to understand where I'm coming from, because this is... I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier. The US and the NATO forces, along with 40, 50 countries, has attacked the Muslim lands. We..."
Cedarbaum interrupted: "But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who 'they' were?"
Shahzad: "Well, the people select the government. We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit..."
Cederbaum: "Including the children?"
Shahzad: "Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims."
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Cederbaum: "Now we're not talking about them; we're talking about you."
Shahzad: "Well, I am part of that. I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations. I'm avenging the attacks because the Americans only care about their people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."
Recognizing citizen standing to challenge presidential wars and entering a declaratory judgment against one or more presidential wars would end the Supreme Court's role in holding the President accountable for the usurpations. If voluntary compliance with the Court's decree was not forthcoming, the responsibility would lie with Congress to impeach and convict the President of the high crime and misdemeanor of defying the ruling, and remove the President from office.
Entrepreneur Donald Trump, host of the NBC television reality series "The Apprentice", says his catch line from the show as he arrives at a casting call for the sixth season of the show at Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles March 10, 2006. REUTERS/Fred Prouser/File Photo FROM THE FILES PACKAGE "THE CANDIDATES" - SEARCH CANDIDATES FILES FOR ALL 90 IMAGES
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me."
--Pastor Martin Niemoller
The irony of Melania Trump's anti-cyberbullying speech is not limited to the likelihood that her husband would become Patient Zero in any 12-step program she might devise as First Lady.
More significantly, and however inadvertently, she just might have planted the seeds of a deeper and contextual discourse on the sex allegations against candidate Donald Trump and why that issue could affect people across the country--if not the entire planet.
There is a narrative frame here that so far has not been picked up by the media or even the Hillary Clinton campaign. It is one with far reaching consequences and implications for us all--irrespective of gender.
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As with the media, the Clinton narrative out on the stump in the last week of the campaign focused on one aspect of the scandalous sex story: the offense felt among women voters over allegations of sexual abuse by Trump. This set against the backdrop of Trump's open mic "Access Hollywood" confessional about engaging in just the kind of conduct alleged by 12 women.
As a tactical matter, the gendered frame might work up Clinton's base of women supporters. Certainly, broadcast and cable news outlets relish in the conflict coverage. Conflict draws viewers. But all of this taken together winds up framing the story narrowly. As a women's issue.
The horserace updates on campaign polling that indicate Trump's diminishing support from women sets it all up. We are told that women are withdrawing their support for Trump in significant percentages because of the sex abuse allegations. Questions posed by TV reporters at political rallies (How do you feel about the sex abuse allegations against Trump? Can you support Trump after the "Access Hollywood" groping video? What does this say about Trump's attitude toward women?), only serve to reinforce the narrative.
That is an unfortunate outcome.
Without question, sex harassment and sexual abuse are serious problems with enduring consequences for the immediate victims. When women are sexualized in the workplace or in any closed environment, the message to them is that they have no value, that they are objects, who are not to be taken seriously in any substantive way. Research shows this can lead to depression in the victims, stress, feelings of worthlessness, diminished motivation, eating disorders, limited freedom of movement, even suicidal tendencies.
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What's more, the high level of self-doubt and culturally inspired self-blame can lead to lower reporting rates of sex harassment and sexual abuse. There is a feeling that no one will believe the woman, who, in effect, will be victimized twice as a result. We have seen this consequence play out on the national stage in recent weeks, as the most degrading questions are being raised about Trump's accusers.
The sexist backlash set up by the gendered narrative theme here only adds to the degradation. There is the "he-said-she-said" discrediting of Trump's accusers. There is the "get-over-it-get-another-job" dismissal coming from people like Donald Jr. There is the "who cares?" reaction among supporters who believe sex harassment by a man who would be president does not rise to the level of national security concerns (unless, of course, the president is Bill Clinton). And there is the "boys-will-be-boys" "locker-room" rationalization advanced by Trump's "Stepford" surrogates that does destructive double-duty: invalidating the legitimate grievances of victims, and creating a whole new generation of victimizers. Boys who will be boys, enabled in their oppressive behavior.
Then there is the push among Trump's low-information voters--however unrealistically cynical and laughable it might be--to repeal the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote.
This is the key, in my view, to opening the door to a narrative that neither the Clinton campaign, nor the media have entered.
What has been missing from the saturation coverage of the allegations is some sense of the true nature of sexual abuse. It is not about sexual lust. It is about power.
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Once we accept this reality, we then must see the allegations against Trump in a new light. The consideration moves from sexual abuse to abuse of power. So, the question the media should help us consider is whether a person who is inclined to abuse power with women as a businessman is likely to abuse power against so many others as president.
The evidence here, as well as the range of potential abuse--again, from the candidate himself--is quite unsettling.
There is Trump's cavalier reference to use of nuclear power. There is his threat against constitutionally protected freedom of the press. There is the threat to suspend rights on religious grounds and to intimidate ethnic groups and to marginalize racial groups. Of course, there is that boast that he could get away with shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, that threat to jail a political opponent and that expressed admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flirtations with authoritarianism. Punctuated by Trump's periodic Mussolini pose.
So, while excerpts of Melania's richly ironic cyberbullying speech are blowing up on social media, there is an extension of the irony with grave implications the news media should help the public understand. After all, bullying--the kind Donald Trump is accused of doing even with his Twitter account--is yet another example of abuse of power. An issue to ponder in the final days before the national election is how far that abuse might be taken by a U.S. president acting without restraint. And so far, discipline has not appeared to be Donald Trump's strong suit.
The late German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller recognized too late in the last century the dangers of political apathy and a failure to appreciate our commonality. If we make the same mistake and fail to speak up when others are abused--women, as well as immigrants, LGBT community members, and religious and racial groups--then there just might be no one left to speak up for us when the tables turn. As they will, inevitably.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attends a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S. November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Welcome to the final Electoral Math column of the 2016 election season. After a very quick rundown of the past week's polling activity, I'm going to dispense with my usual hedging and just go ahead and call every state for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
As with all my political prognostication columns, I always admit my own record up front, so you can see my past performance. While my record for picking primary winners is only fair-to-middling, my record at picking states in presidential elections is a lot better. In 2008, I only called two states wrong, as I was so overly optimistic that Barack Obama was heading for a historic landslide that I rashly predicted he'd win Georgia and Missouri. Missouri did wind up being incredibly close, but John McCain won Georgia by a full five points. I also failed to predict that Nebraska would split its Electoral College vote, with one out of their five votes going to Obama. Counting Washington D.C. as a state, my 2008 record was 48.8 for 51 contests. In 2012, however, I correctly predicted every state, for a perfect score of 51 for 51. Now, I seriously doubt I'm going to do that well this year, because it's been such a wild and wacky race all around. Meaning there are sure to be surprises at the very end, as well.
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But we'll get to all of that in a minute. First, let's take a final look at the graphs where we've been charting both candidates' performance over time. I'm going to keep the commentary on the graphs to a minimum for this final column, as I'm really just providing them for completeness' sake. After a quick run-through of the final charts, I'll get to naming my picks for each candidate and my final map of the 2016 election.
Here is the overall total count of Electoral Votes (EV) for both candidates.
[Click on any of theses images to see larger-scale versions.]
If all the polls are all accurate, Hillary Clinton will win 317 EV, or 59 percent of the total. Donald Trump will win only 221, or 41 percent. Here are the final breakdowns of both candidates' detailed charts, beginning with Trump.
[Definition of terms: "Strong" means 10 percent or better in the polls,
"Weak" means five percent or better, and "Barely" is under five percent.]
Here's how Hillary Clinton stands in the polls, as she heads into Election Day.
There was a lot of last-minute movement in the polling, and it was almost all in Trump's direction. Two states (Georgia, Virginia) wobbled but then wobbled back to where they started. But Trump got good news in a whopping ten states in the final week, and bad news in only one.
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Mississippi and Texas both firmed up, moving from Barely Trump to Weak Trump. Four other states (Indiana, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah) moved from Weak Trump to Strong Trump. Trump only saw one state slip in the final week, as what is possibly an outlier poll showed Tennessee weakening from Strong to Weak Trump. But the best news for Trump was flipping two states that had previously been tied (Iowa and Ohio), and flipping two other states all the way from Clinton's column (Nevada, Alaska). That Alaska poll last week which showed a Clinton lead was obviously just an outlier poll to be taken with a grain of salt, but the movement in Nevada is less clear. The state started at Barely Clinton, moved briefly to Barely Trump, then was tied for two days before moving back to Barely Trump today. A mixed picture, at best.
Hillary Clinton not only lost two states to Trump this week, she also saw her standing weaken in three others. New Hampshire went from Weak Clinton to Barely Clinton, and Maine fell from Strong to Weak Clinton. New Mexico wobbled from Weak Clinton to Strong Clinton, then back to Weak before ending at only Barely Clinton. Clinton's one silver lining this week was Oregon, which moved up from Weak to Strong Clinton.
Just for those of you who have been regular readers of this column, here are the final "Strong Plus Weak" charts for both candidates.
Donald Trump saw a surge in strength in the final week, and his Strong Plus Weak number winds up right between where John McCain was in 2008 (with 132 EV) and where Mitt Romney was in 2012 (at 191 EV). Donald Trump heads into Election Day with 161 EV comfortably in his pocket. This is an enormous improvement over the 108 EV he had last Monday, it should be noted.
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Hillary Clinton saw her Strong Plus Weak number fall last week, from 264 EV down to 239 EV. However, she too is right between where the race stood in 2008 and 2012 for Obama. Obama entered Election Day in 2008 with 278 EV (more than necessary to win the race), but he only had 217 EV corralled in 2012. Obviously, Obama went on to win both races. Clinton's standing is better than Obama's last time around, so the chances for her doing the same are actually pretty good.
My Picks
The 2016 campaign season has been the wildest ride I think any of us has ever seen. In the final two weeks, James Comey's letter about the F.B.I.'s investigation into Clinton's emails threw a major-league monkey wrench into the contest. Comey was obviously under a lot of pressure to follow up on his vague announcement, and yesterday afternoon sent a second letter to Congress, which really should have just quoted the immortal Emily Litella: "Never mind."
So we have all kinds of last-minute trends to ponder. After the first bombshell letter, Clinton slipped in the polls, both nationally and at the state level. She was already beginning to show signs of recovering from this by the time the second letter hit, but any event two days before an election is probably going to have only a limited effect on people's actual votes. It may be too little, too late, in other words.
Late-breaking trends can swing whole elections. Wise pollsters pay very close attention to what happens in the final week, but this time around it's hard to know what to think. Will the trend towards Trump truly tip a bunch of battleground states? Or will the trend reverse on the news that Clinton has been cleared by the F.B.I. once again? If so, that will be the final trendline for the campaign, but again the news may have broken too late.
Team Clinton has a clear and dominant advantage over the Trump campaign when it comes to ground game (otherwise known as "GOTV" for "get out the vote"). Clinton knows how to build and effectively operate a political machine, while Trump barely could be bothered putting together any effort at all. This could swing many states as far as three percent, on Election Day -- which could be the margin of victory in almost a dozen states, right now. Or, at least, that's the conventional wisdom. But this race has been anything but conventional, so it remains to be seen how much of an effect the Clinton GOTV effort will have.
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Many data wonks are currently obsessing over the early voter returns. This is kind of silly, although understandable. We've all been operating on nothing but public opinion polls, and all of a sudden there are actual numbers of voters to pay attention to! But it's misleading, for a number of reasons. Firstly, nobody has counted these votes yet. So nobody knows if a bunch of registered Democrats are voting for Trump or a bunch of registered Republicans are voting for Hillary -- or maybe both. Also, millions of unaffiliated votes have already been cast, but they are never discussed when the wonks slice and dice "what the early voting returns mean." Since it's impossible to tell who an unaffiliated voter voted for, this mountain of votes is just ignored by the pundits. So you'll forgive me if I am not paying a whole lot of attention to early return data, because I consider it either misleading or irrelevant.
OK, having said all of that, let's just plow right in and start picking states for both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Seatbelts buckled? Then here we go!
Safe Clinton States -- 16 States -- 195 Electoral Votes
California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12), Washington D.C. (3)
Safe Trump States -- 18 States -- 111 Electoral Votes
Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), West Virginia (5), Wyoming (3)
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I set the bar pretty high for what I consider "safe," at this point. But I doubt any of the above states will even be close tomorrow night, for both candidates. Donald Trump is deluding himself if he thinks Minnesota is in play, and last week's bizarre poll from Alaska just isn't going to reflect reality, as Trump will score an easy win there.
This leaves us with a rather long list of seventeen states which can be considered (or were considered, at one time) to be close or even "battleground" states. I don't agree with all of these designations, but because others have moved some of these into the close column, I thought I'd share my thoughts on all of them. They are roughly in order of how confident my prediction is, from most confident down to least confident. At the end is the map of all of my predictions, and my final Electoral College tally.
Close States
Colorado (9)
Colorado is supposed to be tightening, but somehow I just don't buy it. Hillary Clinton has led pretty consistently in the polls, and I just don't think there will be enough movement at the end toward Trump to flip the state. I think Clinton wins easily here.
New Mexico (5)
I'm even more skeptical of any movement towards Trump in New Mexico. I think Clinton won't have any problems winning New Mexico tomorrow.
Virginia (13)
Virginia was supposed to be on everyone's battleground list, but it broke early for Clinton -- so much so that her campaign pulled advertising out of the state very early in the race. A few recent polls put the race closer, but I think Virginia is well on its way to becoming a reliably blue state, and I think favorite son Tim Kaine on the ticket sealed the deal for a Clinton win.
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South Carolina (9)
South Carolina has been polling surprisingly close -- surprising because it is usually so deep red a state. But even if it's closer than expected, I think Trump will easily win South Carolina.
Texas (38)
Texas is a similar story. Clinton had a few very good polls here, but Trump has been leading in virtually all of them. The dream of turning Texas blue animates Democrats every four years, but it will once again be a dream denied as Texas lands solidly in Trump's column.
Utah (6)
Utah is a strange race because it may be the best showing of any state for a third-party candidate -- a candidate most people aren't even aware of. Not Gary Johnson, not Jill Stein, but Evan McMullin may actually come in second place here tomorrow night. But no matter whether McMullin beats Clinton or not, Trump is going to win the state overall.
Michigan (16)
Michigan seems to be on everyone's mind these days, as Trump is showing late-breaking strength here. Michigan was also an upset win for Bernie Sanders in the primary, if you'll remember. But I'm betting Trump's last-minute rise will fall short, and Michigan will remain reliably blue. If Clinton loses Michigan, she may very well be on her way to losing the whole race, but I just don't see that actually happening.
Wisconsin (10)
Wisconsin is also showing a late surge towards Trump, and Democrats have certainly been disappointed in Wisconsin voting in past elections (the recall, notably). Still, I doubt Wisconsin will flip to Trump this time around, and I think Clinton will win Wisconsin with roughly the same margin as Michigan.
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Georgia (16)
Georgia, like Texas, is high on the wish list for Democrats. Barack Obama made a play for Georgia in 2008, but was ultimately disappointed. Hillary Clinton never really attempted to flip Georgia in any big way, and I think she was smart to focus her resources elsewhere. It might be close, but Trump will win Georgia tomorrow night.
Iowa (6)
Iowa was previously pretty reliable a state for Democrats in presidential contests, but Trump has been holding a slim lead in the polls for a very long time. Clinton all but gave up on the state, and I think it'll comfortably go for Trump.
Nevada (6)
Polling in Nevada has been tight all along, and it has flipped back and forth between the two candidates. Trump saw a lead in a few recent polls here, but this is one state where get out the vote organization is going to carry the day. Harry Reid has built an impressive GOTV machine here, and when you add in the Clinton effort and a very high turnout of Latino voters, I think Clinton will actually win the state pretty easily.
New Hampshire (4)
From here on out, we get to the true coin-toss states. Any of the rest of these could go either way, really. New Hampshire had some very close polls in the last few days of the campaign, but I think Clinton will take it in the end. I'm mostly going on gut feeling on this, I have to admit.
Arizona (11)
Arizona would have been very nice to see turn blue, but I think Clinton will wind up falling short here. Maybe Democrats will get the consolation prize of seeing Joe Arpaio voted out of office, but I think the state as a whole will go for Trump.
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Ohio (18)
Ohio truly has been neck-and-neck for weeks. Some in the Clinton camp are quietly confident their GOTV efforts here will carry the day with the extra two or three points Clinton needs, but I think Ohio's going to be the biggest disappointment for Clinton tomorrow night, as I think Trump will carry the state with a very small margin. This is the state I would most love to be wrong about, but I think Trump will wind up winning it.
Pennsylvania (20)
It wouldn't have surprised me if either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton changed their registration and actually voted as Pennsylvania residents. I say this because they've both spent so much time here over the past few weeks. Trump has always tried to chart his path to victory based on flipping Pennsylvania, and he has fought hard to make that a reality. Clinton has lavished attention on the state in defense, and I think she'll actually have a pretty comfortable victory here -- much better than the polls might indicate. Clinton will dominate in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and build up such an edge there that the rest of the state's Trump voters won't be able to catch up. In fact, I bet Pennsylvania is called fairly early tomorrow night, much to Trump's dismay.
Maine's second district (1)
This one is an absolute guess, because there's just not that much polling data available. There are two districts that might go counter to the rest of their state (the other one is in Nebraska), but I'm just going to go ahead and say both of them conform with the rest of their states' votes. Maine will be solid blue tomorrow night, and Nebraska will be solid red.
Florida (29)
Finally, we come to the big two. Both of these are absolute guesses, because the vote could really go either way. I'm going to go ahead and believe the indications from Florida that for the first time the Latino vote breaks Democratic in a big way. Normally, Cuban-Americans lean heavily Republican, but the younger generation seems to be breaking with their parents. Even more significant is the addition of thousands of Puerto Ricans to the state, who are already American citizens and can thus easily register to vote. Hillary Clinton has been holding a thin lead in the polls in Florida for the past few weeks, and my guess is that she's going to win the state. Her ground game will be far superior to the Republicans' efforts, the Latino vote will set records, and the Puerto Rican demographic will put Clinton over the top.
North Carolina (15)
Finally, we get to the state I am least sure about. North Carolina could go either way, and neither result would surprise me (to put it another way). Clinton has had an edge in the polls, but it's been a very small edge. Early voting showed disappointing returns among African-American voters, though. Will Trump surge here and snatch North Carolina from Hillary? Or will her ground game turn out a larger-than-expected showing at the polls tomorrow? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm going to go ahead -- very cautiously, and with much trepidation -- and put North Carolina in Clinton's column.
My Electoral College Prediction
When you add all those states up, here's what you get:
Hillary Clinton -- 323 Electoral Votes Donald Trump -- 215 Electoral Votes
Here are all my state picks mapped out, using only one shade of blue and red for how I think tomorrow night's actual map is going to look:
Disagree with any of my picks? Let me know about it in the comments. I've thrown my darts at the map, and these are my final picks for the 2016 election -- the most bizarre presidential election in my lifetime. Will the results be fairly normal, or just as bizarre as the rest of the race? Well, we'll all find out one way or another tomorrow night. And we'll see you all back here in three and a half years, for our next crack at predicting presidential elections.
Don't forget to get out and vote tomorrow!
Chris Weigant blogs at:
By Christopher Zoukis
The Clemency Project 2014 -- a group of lawyers and advocates working to provide pro bono assistance to prisoners petitioning President Obama for clemency pursuant to his clemency initiative -- continues to secure results. Led by groups such as the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union, Clemency Project attorneys are working quickly to get through the backlog of applications for assistance with clemency petitions.
Clemency Project 2014 was launched after Deputy Attorney General James Cole asked the legal profession for pro bono assistance for prisoners filing clemency petitions for consideration by President Obama. The Clemency Project provides free legal assistance to prisoners who meet the following criteria set by the Justice Department:
Are serving a federal sentence that likely would have been substantially lower under today's law for the same offense;
Were convicted of a non-violent, low-level offense without ties to large-scale criminal organizations;
Have served at least 10 years of their sentence;
Have no significant criminal history;
Have demonstrated good conduct in prison;
Have no history of violence before or during their current term of imprisonment.
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President Obama granted 98 more commutations on Oct. 27 and another 72 commutations on Nov. 4, bringing his total number of clemency approvals to 944.
"Earlier this month, President Obama granted commutations to 102 federal inmates," said White House Counsel Neil Eggleston in a blog posted on the White House website Oct. 27, 2016. "Today, he granted another 98 commutations, underscoring his commitment to using his clemency authority through the remainder of his time in office. With today's grant, the president has now commuted the sentences of 872 individuals. In this year alone, the president has commuted the sentences of 688 deserving individuals --more than the previous 11 presidents combined -- and the most ever by a president in a single year."
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) advised its members that there are still several thousand prisoner applications to be reviewed for Clemency Project 2014 assistance. Moreover, as of October 2016, reports indicate that there are 11,253 clemency petitions pending for action by the president. With less than 80 days left in Obama's presidency, it remains to be seen whether the backlog will be cleared in time.
Eggleston underscored the need for congressional action on criminal justice reform to supplement President Obama's actions.
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"The president's clemency authority is a powerful tool being used to powerful effect, but the individualized nature of the relief granted today also highlights the urgent need for bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation. Only Congress can achieve the broader reforms needed to ensure our federal sentencing system operates more fairly and effectively in the service of the public safety."
By Christopher Zoukis
More than six million citizens will be handcuffed from casting a vote this November.
After updating a study it did four years ago, The Sentencing Project released the estimated number of Americans that won't be permitted to vote in this year's elections due to their criminal records. Using new Census data on the voting age population, and adjusting for recent changes in state disenfranchisement laws, the study placed the number of disenfranchised ex-felons at 6.1 million.
The number of disenfranchised persons has climbed alongside the growth in incarceration totals. Forty years ago, an estimated 1.1 million people had lost their voting rights due to criminal convictions. Twenty years later, the total had risen to 3.3 million. In 2000, the number reached 4.7 million, rose to 5.4 million by 2004, and to 5.9 million by 2010, according to a study released in 2012 by some of the same authors of the most recent study.
Many will find it surprising that less than a quarter of these people -- roughly 23 percent of those unable to vote due to criminal records -- are currently incarcerated. The study indicated that 77 percent of the disenfranchised live among us in our nation's communities. Those who have completed their sentences number nearly three million and make up 51 percent of the disenfranchised. Citizens on probation for felonies account for over 1.1 million -- about 18 percent of the total. Over half a million, comprising about eight percent of the total, are parolees.
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State disenfranchisement rates for this year's elections will vary substantially, largely due to differences in how broadly the state's provisions apply. Fourteen states disenfranchise only those currently in prison, while four states also include those released on parole. Disenfranchisement laws in 18 more states also cover former inmates out on probation, and 12 states include former inmates who have completed their sentences, including parole or probation. Only Maine and Vermont currently let inmates vote in their elections, and thus have no disenfranchised voters.
Seven states disenfranchise less than half a percentage of their population, while the rates in the rates in six southern states hit over seven percent. The new study notes that felony disenfranchisement laws "vary tremendously across racial and ethnic groups," with more Hispanics and African-Americans affected. In some states -- Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia -- disenfranchisement rates for African Americans make up more than 20 percent of the voting age population, and that rate is 5 percent or higher in 23 states.
Despite the large and growing numbers of current or former inmates unable to vote, the trend in recent years has been to eliminate or reduce barriers to former prisoners' voting. The best-known recent instance is Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe's issuance of an executive order earlier this year, attempting to restore voting rights for all Virginians who had completed their sentences. However, after a court found that exceeded his legal powers, he issued separate orders restoring voting rights to nearly 13,000 individuals in August.
A number of states have begun processes to return voting rights to those with criminal records. In Alabama, legislators simplified the voting rights restoration process for those who had completed sentences for crimes not involving moral turpitude. California restored voting rights for convicted felons residing in jails (but not in prisons). Maryland lifted disenfranchisement for those on parole or probation. And Wyoming restored voting rights after five years for those who completed sentences for first-time, non-violent felonies.
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On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, President Barack Obama delivered the final campaign speech of his political career.
It was one for the ages.
When it comes to political speeches, Obama is The Master. He is the finest political orator of our time. And in his final stump speech, he brought his A-game. He is relaxed, uplifting, intelligent, and inspiring, and he is thoroughly enjoying his final moments at his last campaign podium.
Obama's speech was in support of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. But he also reflected upon his own political rise and his accomplishments as president.
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Later that evening, Obama went on to give another speech in introducing Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia for her grand finale speech on the night before the election. But the speech in this video earlier that day was Obama's final solo speech, and it is a wonderful showcase of his extraordinary ability.
There's been a seismic shift in investing from actively managed funds to "passive" (index-based) funds.
The shift to passive
Consider these facts from a recent blog post by Anne Tergesen and Jason Zweig:
For the three years ended August 21, 2016, $1.3 trillion was added to passive funds and exchange-traded funds.
During the same period, there was an outflow of more than $250 billion from actively managed funds.
Hedge funds reported three consecutive quarters of withdrawals for the first time since 2009.
401(k) plans now have 25 percent of their assets in index funds.
Public pension plans have 60 percent of their U.S. stock allocations in index funds.
Endowments and foundations now have 63 percent of their assets in index funds.
Philip Bullen, a former chief investment officer at Fidelity observed: "The case for passive is being made so well and so clearly. It has become common wisdom."
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The disconnect with the financial media
This "common wisdom" has not penetrated the financial media. The vast majority of its programming features fund managers, analysts, investment "pros" and other pundits discussing the direction of the market, their stock picks or why their actively managed fund is a candidate for outperformance.
These blog posts, on CNBC's website, under the column "Latest Pro", are typical:
Weiss: Your hedge fund investing setup for the week ahead.
Top international fund manager on how to invest globally, his top small-cap growth picks.
Bank of America cuts Whole Foods to sell on shrinking margins, slashes forecast to $25
HSBC downgrades Teva on uncertainty surrounding DOJ's reported generic drug investigation.
Responsible investors should pay no attention to any "hedge fund set-up." The stock picks of a "top international fund manager" are no more likely to be accurate than a coin toss. Forecasts and downgrades by the Bank of America, HSBC and others are not reliable.
The financial media continues to disseminate discredited advice because its advertisers -- the securities industry -- pay it to do so.
It's time for a change
When I started writing books and blog posts about index-based investing in 2002, it was much like pushing a snowball uphill. Index investors were derided by "pros" as not being intelligent enough to do research on stocks and willing to settle for "average" returns. Another common critique was how my colleagues and I could write blog posts every week extolling the virtues of a simple theme: Buy index funds.
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How the times have changed! The Internet has played a meaningful role in educating investors about the "emperors with no clothes" who purport to have the ability to pick stocks, time the market and select the next "hot" fund managers. So have excellent financial journalists and authors like John C. Bogle, Burton Malkiel, Jason Zweig, Jonathan Clements, Larry Swedroe, William Bernstein, Ron Lieber, Allan Roth, Carl Richards, Tim Maurer, Manisha Thakor, Rick Ferri, Mark Hebner and many others.
In the aggregate, despite receiving limited media coverage, they generated many fine books and thousands of blogs, accessed by millions of investors. They turned the tide. Investors were the beneficiaries.
Responsible programming
It's time for the next phase. A program on network or cable television, or an independent channel, called "Index TV." Instead of the nonsensical musings of Cramer or tips from "technicians", this channel would feature sound, academically based, investing advice. It would showcase stories you won't see in the financial media like why brokerage firms who have admitted engaging in unethical and criminal conduct are still permitted to provide investment advice to gullible investors. It would discuss the data on active management, the lack of evidence supporting technical and fundamental analysis and the importance of low fees and costs.
It would expose the conflicts of interest that are rife in the securities industry. It would discuss the flaws in our retirement plan system that serve to enrich the securities industry at the expense of plan participants.
Best of all, Index TV would be a resource that would actually benefit investors instead of exploiting them.
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Potential advertisers
The beneficiaries of the shift to passive investing would be likely supporters of Index TV. Blackrock has more than $4.6 trillion under management. Vanguard has over $3 trillion. Dimensional Fund Advisors manages over $445 billion. I assume Blackrock and Vanguard have huge advertising budgets. Dimensional has never advertised. Maybe Index TV would cause it to change its policy and increase the name recognition of its excellent passively managed funds (available only through authorized advisors) to investors.
There are many other fund families and advisory firms that put the interest of their clients first and recommend only passively managed funds. These firms are other sources of support for Index TV.
Investors deserve better than the steady drumbeat of misinformation currently on financial media.
It's time for Index TV!
On Tuesday morning I was surprised, to put it mildly, when I woke up to find messages that TRUMP WON all over the Internet, from YouTube to Facebook.
The winner of a debate is determined by primarily objective measures and by some subjective measures. Among those measures are:
Factual accuracy; e.g., reason
Solid argumentation vs. unfounded assertions; e.g., logic
Answering questions
Answering opponent's arguments
Reasonableness
Doing all of this within allotted time
By objective measures, Donald Trump lost the debate by a wide margin.
While Hillary Clinton has been effectively branded as a serial liar and nothing will ever change that, it's baffling that no one has been able to effectively use this brand on Trump. Even to his followers who may not believe anything reported through the media, issued by the government, or written in any textbook, they should not be able to deny or overlook the reality that Donald Trump's words consistently undermine and overwrite Donald Trump's own words. This makes Trump an unreliable reporter and, to not mince words, a compulsive liar.
Trump's falsehoods are thoroughly documented elsewhere, and so I will skip that. The point here is that even if Trump is going to construct his own reality with his own fictional, self-authored "facts," to be believable, he would need to repeat the same facts consistently. It's a rule of fiction: You set rules for a story, and then you abide by those rules or else your readers will lose faith in the world you've created. Even Adolf Hitler famously said that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes truth. Donald Trump tells countless conflicting lies constantly and whatever he is saying at any given time somehow enraptures and bewitches his fans into believing him. Despite his apparent magical abilities of influence, Trump failed the first measure of debating: factual accuracy.
The second measure is argumentation--rhetorical logic--versus unfounded assertion. Donald Trump is a chaos candidate, and his chaotic scrambling of the English language reveals his chaotic thought. To those of us who believe he poses a serious danger to the United States and potentially the world, it is precisely because of this chaos that rules him. His words are revealing:
As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said. We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't think anybody knows that it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia--I don't, maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?
"The cyber" is unclear, and Trump's use of this word (typically a prefix), if I may be so bold as to make my own assertion, it suggests that he really doesn't know what he is talking about. "We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not" is an assertion unsubstantiated by any kind of fact, and the addition of "perhaps" is a safeguard that reveals even Trump is not confident in his assertion. Are we or are we not? He doesn't tell us, and he gives no evidence to support what he suggests here. "
The question asked by Lester Holt that elicited this response was, "Who's behind [the Democratic National Committee email hack]? And how do we fight it?"
Trump answered the first question, frankly, as well as anyone probably could at this point: "...it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people." He could do this, I'd argue, because here his opinion just happens to coincidentally dovetail with actual reality. Trump, we know, wants to redirect attention from accusations that he is in cahoots with the Russian government, and that makes sense because such accusations thus far have not been proven, and they should, if ever proven, be damning to his political career--because of the very real national security threat that situation would pose.
Trump did not answer Holt's question, "And how do we fight it?" It took Trump several paragraphs' worth of rambling to even steer his rhetoric in the direction of the question. His immediate response was to state that he has been endorsed by about 200 military officials (not mentioning, as one in his position would not in a debate and as Hillary Clinton should have, that past Republican candidates typically had 600 to 800 such endorsements), as well as the union of immigration officers, and then he said this:
So when Secretary Clinton talks about this, I mean, I'll take the admirals and I'll take the generals any day over the political hacks that I see that have led our country so brilliantly over the last 10 years with their knowledge. OK? Because look at the mess that we're in. Look at the mess that we're in.
...which is typical of his rhetoric: babbling, bumbling, unclear, barely tangentially relating to the question, and difficult to follow. Who is behind the email hacks, and what are we going to do about the situation, the moderator asked. Look at that answer.
Donald Trump is an expert at making assertions and accusations, but that's not a skill. It's a personality trait and it displays boldness and a certain kind of courage--but not moral courage, and not the kind of courage that should come with the territory. For example, I can imagine that when Vladimir Putin makes characteristically bold accusations, he might be prepared for challenging consequences. Donald Trump is not: when he makes unfounded, freeform accusations and he is challenged, he in equal measure amps up the attack and plays the victim--attacking people and seeking sympathy for what he feels are attacks on him in the same breath:
You know, Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials.
Here, Trump wants our sympathy. Clinton, he laments, is picking on him! And seconds later:
Rosie O'Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.
For no reason aside from his bizarre personal fixation on her (likely rooted in narcissistic personality disorder, but that's a tangent), at the very moment Donald Trump was claiming to be a victim, he chose to once again bully Rosie O'Donnell during a debate that would decide the President of the United States of America.
And this totally irrelevant, time-wasting nonsense was in answer to moderator Lester Holt's questioning of Trump's having said that Hillary Clinton "doesn't have the look" to be president. Holt touched a nerve, called Trump on his misogyny, and it triggered both his feelings of victimization, and his urgent, irrepressible need to attack various women for having the nerve to be overweight, older, or just women. (Who can forget his comment about Megyn Kelly "bleeding from her wherever"?)
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Many people wonder why Hillary Clinton doesn't answer Trump's viciousness in part by doing what Trump would do. He is admired by so many, it is said often, because he gives voice to what other people are thinking but wouldn't dare say. Why doesn't Hillary Clinton point out on the stage that Donald Trump is as old as she is, and...far from conventionally attractive? Why doesn't she point out when he calls average-sized women "fat" that records show he may be morbidly obese and at the very least is visibly and undeniably overweight himself? Maybe Clinton regards her position as a presidential candidate and public office holder to be a professional position that requires a professional demeanor. Maybe she just won't say these things because she is participating in a debate, and the moderator did not ask her what she thinks of Donald Trump's appearance, and even if he did, she may feel the question is irrelevant to the presidential position. Who knows? She doesn't go there, and by not doing so, she sticks closer to the questions and upholds her upper hand in the debate.
In other words, Hillary Clinton answers the questions asked by the moderator, while Donald Trump babbles and follows any shiny object that comes across his path. He has no self-control, and his performance should leave viewers and listeners wondering whether he has any of the knowledge necessary to answer the questions--because he answers few.
It's difficult to say how well Hillary Clinton performed at the objective debating measure of answering her opponent's arguments--because Donald Trump makes so few coherent or fact-based arguments. He specializes in assertions and accusations, and by barking them in super-simplistic language over and over, he verbally hammers these assertions into the debate conversation like nails, and the moderator and the opponent are tasked with digging those nails out with the claw of his hammer, one at a time. This can be an effective smokescreen for someone in the audience, but this is the reason debates are formal activities with moderators and which can usually be said to have a clear winner and a clear loser.
By all objective measures, Donald Trump lost the first debate.
Michael Moore caused something of a stir by announcing that Trump won in what I believe to have been an ill-conceived attempt at mass reverse psychology. We need to play it straight here and call reality reality, because reality is getting far too muddled.
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Reality is muddled in part because of old-fashioned propaganda. The Trump campaign was primed at the immediate conclusion of the debate to saturate the Internet with proclamations that "TRUMP WON," when Trump clearly did not win. It doesn't matter to those who want him to have won: They regarded those advertisements and the on-air propaganda campaign that Trump's handlers waged on Tuesday proclaiming him to be the winner--against all real-world measures--to be reality.
By Wednesday night, CNN reported that Trump's advisers briefed Trump that Monday's debate "didn't go well." Trump's campaign certainly will deny this, even as reasonable people who listened to and tried to follow Trump's words understand that, no, it did not go well for him.
A commenter on Michael Moore's Facebook page wrote that "Trump won the debate in the rust belt" and that urban dwellers aren't there and so we wouldn't know that. The winner of a debate is not so subjective that the name of the winner varies geographically: Trump lost the debate, universally, because Trump made few coherent arguments, undermined his own assertions with his own contradictory assertions, and by just about every other objective measure.
Even by subjective measures by which I would normally concede it could be argued he "won" in the opinions of some--his bombast, his overconfidence, his bold bullying personality--he came up short in this debate.
He sipped water constantly, which under normal circumstances wouldn't matter at all, but it wasn't long ago that Trump argued that Marco Rubio was a laughing stock and physically weak because he once...drank lots of water during a public appearance. Here was Trump drinking lots of water during his most high-profile public appearance ever.
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He sniffled like an eight-year-old undone by ragweed. It wasn't long ago--actually, just a couple of weeks ago--that he and his campaign and his followers were claiming that Hillary Clinton's coughing, ultimately revealed to be due to pneumonia, suggests she has congestive heart failure or some other terminal illness because of a cough. Unlike the Rubio incident, which was long ago enough to have been largely forgotten, the Clinton accusations were recent and highlight Donald Trump's undeniable hypocrisy. And Trump, stupidly, went for the same jugular during this very debate during which he revealed his own human vulnerabilities, by questioning Clinton's stamina. Clinton's retort was perhaps her best ever, citing her world travels and her resiliency during an 11-hour interrogation, and that's to her debating credit.
It must be said, too, aside from the debate, that Trump's history of mocking other politicians for sipping water and suffering from infections, by his own weird logic, makes it reasonable to question Trump's fitness for the office of the presidency: He is overweight and bordering on morbid obesity--a major health risk at any age, but especially for a man of 70 years of age. Why was he drinking so much water? Why was he sniffling? Perhaps he has lung cancer from years of living in New York city and breathing smog. I'm not saying that he does, but he might. He might have lung cancer, and the sniffles and the water and the fatness might be symptoms. I haven't seen his medical records, but it could be. I am just saying that it's possible.
That's giving Trump a taste of his own medicine, which on a human level he deserves, but which is irrelevant to any reasonable debate, and so it's a relief that Hillary Clinton doesn't take that bait. If she did, the people who follow her would lose faith in her because she would be behaving unlike any president of the United States of America ever should act. And yet Trump gets away with it.
Hillary Clinton won the debate by objective measures. No convincing argument can be made to the contrary.
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Donald Trump may be viewed as the winner by some people, but those people are not considering the debate itself, the words that were spoken. This happens, but public opinion is not the same as fact.
In the end, though, this isn't the end. The first debate is the first battle; the presidential election is the proverbial war. And for someone who not so much supports Hillary Clinton as opposes Donald Trump on the grounds that I oppose the ever-more-real concept of an authoritarian America, I'm disconcerted by Clinton's and her campaign's cockiness on Tuesday.
Anyone with eyes and ears can understand Clinton's self-satisfaction following the debate. Not only did she exploit all of Donald Trump's characteristic weaknesses, and particularly his Palinesque detachment from current events, facts, and reality, but she also performed arguably better than ever in her entire career. Yet she's battling an irrational, chaotic, and extremist enemy here, and his followers are not looking for sound judgment; they're looking for a win at any cost, and they're looking for any vulnerability to exploit in Clinton. Acting as if she has already won the war can only work against her, and the stakes frankly are too high at this time to get lost in a debate of whether that is because she is a woman or not. (That debate can happen later.) Many of Clinton's supporters support her for the reasons I do: She is not Donald Trump, and despite some evidence of duplicity and a great deal more unfounded assumption that she is entirely untrustworthy and corrupt, she at the very least lives in the same plane of reality that I do, not sketching and coloring her own fantastical world as she bulldozes her way through the real world as Donald Trump does.
I did double take on Tuesday morning, and then I did them again every time I saw the TRUMP WON message, until I noticed the tiny print that read ADVERTISEMENT and SPONSORED and PAID FOR BY DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT, INC. The message was like looking into a terrifying crystal ball: These words could be on the cover of the New York Times if this country acts against itself and buys into messages that are, literally, being sold to us. Not only that, but at this point it doesn't seem inconceivable that the New York Times itself may one day proudly bear the words "PAID FOR DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT, INC." I live in Washington, D.C., and seeing the TRUMP bold name branded on the beautiful, historic Old Post Office Pavilion is like looking up at the Moon and seeing the golden arches of McDonald's beaming back. How close is Donald J. Trump to buying the White House?
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I don't want to see her fall prey to the temptation of asserting her dominance and superiority before she has won the presidency. If she does, her pride will have dragged her into the same snare that she lured Trump into during this week's debate. That pride is Trump's mode of operation, and it's the reason many of us can't bear the idea of him as our national leader.
When it comes to humanitarian aid, of the great achievements of the past quarter century is the fact that since the early 1990s, the number of undernourished people who live in the developing world has dropped by just short of half, from 23.3 percent to 12.9 percent.
But the improvement, though impressive, has been uneven, with great regional differences. In fact, some areas, many of them suffering from overpopulation, conflict or and deeply inequitable economic growth have actually gotten worse.
So, in developing the Office of Food for Peaces Food Assistance and Food Security Strategy for the next decade, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, incorporated the lessons it has learned from the successes and even failures of the past 25 years.
One of the more successful ways food assistance programs can tackle chronic hunger and poverty is by looking beyond food, wrote Dina Esposito, Director of USAIDs Office of Food for Peace in a recent blog post. This means looking at food security from all angles and asking the right questions, such as how did families earn incomes to put food on the table? How much food did families produce on their land -- only enough to feed their families, or were they able to sell crops too? What were the causes of malnutrition in the communities?
The primary goal of the 2016-2025 plan is to improve and sustain food and nutrition security in vulnerable populations. USAIDs Office of Food for Peace is working to achieve that goal through a two-pronged approach. One works to meet immediate needs and strengthen capacities that protect and enhance lives and livelihoods. The other works to strengthen local systems for longer-term sustainability in key areas impacting food security.
There is unprecedented consensus that building the resilience of vulnerable communities, including their food and nutrition security, is key to our larger goals of ending extreme poverty, enhancing stability and spurring economic growth, wrote Director Esposito. Through [the development of the new strategy, we reaffirm] our shared vision of a world free of hunger and poverty, where all people live in dignity, peace and security and together set out an ambitious goal for the next decadeto improve and sustain the food and nutrition security of vulnerable populations.
Among tragic failures of the 2016 presidential campaign is the fact that, amidst talk lately of sabotaged emails, sex banter, Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest and empty Trump philanthropic gestures, serious discussion of foreign-policy issues facing the United States is trivialized if raised at all. No wonder. Too many voters see foreign affairs as a remote reality from their daily lives.
Sure, we've heard passing mention of some international issues -- say, whether Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump means what he says (which his supporters say he always does) when he says that he might not rally the United States to help save an imperiled NATO ally if the latter isn't paid up on its defense commitments. And there's the issue of whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left four Americans to die in Benghazi, as her critics claim (though thus far no bipartisan report has confirmed this).
We Americans only become riveted on foreign policy when it blows up in our faces: the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, which ended the United States' penchant for isolationism, even as the Battle of Britain raged while we looked the other way; the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which suddenly made us aware of the stupefying complexities of the Middle East; the barbaric ISIS atrocities, which arose when Americans and our leaders weren't looking; and, more recently, Russia's test-firing of three ballistic missiles in one day.
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While the 2016 presidential election has proven more divisive than ever, foreign policy takes back seat in American voters' minds. It's been noted, with some accuracy, that we seem to have more hatred toward fellow Americans of different political parties than we do our real enemies abroad. With the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East, tensions in the South China Sea and Russia's increasingly assertive policy in the Mideast, I wonder if voters grasp the steep challenges awaiting our next president.
Consider the latest tensions between Russia and the United States. These reflect outright danger. One presidential nominee's fondness for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin only complicates these matters. On the heels of Russia's abrupt abandonment of a nuclear-security pact with the United States, Putin has decided to move nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to the edge of NATO territory in Europe. Is this a matter of military tactics? Preparation for forthcoming military confrontation with the West?
While Russia's movement of its sophisticated arsenal to Syria, including the advanced S400 missile system, raises serious questions, I also find alarming Putin's desire to reopen Russia's military installation in Cuba and Russian forces relocating to an arctic base near Finland. Also disturbing: ongoing talks with Egypt and Vietnam about reopening old Soviet military installations. Ironically, Vietnam seeks better relations with the United States as the shadow of China looms across the Pacific.
All this suggests that, despite its shattered economy, Russia is pressing ahead with its military strategy of not only challenging the United States but making it clear that it has a seat at the global-affairs table. No wonder Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union, argues: "I think the world has reached a dangerous point."
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Yet do we, as voters, have any grasp of what's in store for U.S. foreign policy? Are we voting for a candidate who possesses a systematic understanding of complicated international affairs? Or do we very mistakenly believe such matters are simply addressed through strong talk? One is understandably troubled by Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson's failure to grasp the role of Aleppo and inability to cite even one world leader worthy of respect.
The global landscape has changed dramatically following the collapse of communism. A young dictator in Pyongyang, North Korea, could well launch the world into nuclear catastrophe. A barrage of terrorism attacks in Europe is breeding more radicalism, both homegrown and foreign-born. And such terrorism is awakening sleeper cells in the United States to follow suit.
Foreign policy is just as important an issue for the American home front as the domestic economy, education, health care, the tax code, VA benefits, entitlements, infrastructure and energy security. So when foreign policy debates are limited during the presidential election season, we're left to wonder what will happen after one candidate prevails and some international crisis explodes. Events have a way of turning presidential candidates' views upside-down.
Recall when George W. Bush ran for office in 2000 and argued vehemently against nation-building? All this changed in a flash once he made the decision to invade Iraq. We're still paying the price for that today. Similarly, recall President Obama's speech in Cairo in 2009 in which he argued for the need to redefine America's relations with the Muslim world? Whoever advised him obviously failed miserably to consider the fragility of the Middle East's political prism.
I don't mean to criticize past and current presidents but rather to emphasize the challenges presidents face when it comes to what they want to pursue versus what the political reality on the ground is. Let's hope our next president inaugurates the White House with meaningful considerations and effective strategies to save the day. We could all pay the consequences for failure.
As I finally went to bed last night, at midnight, I found myself shaken by feelings that I dismissed as silly. I let them wash over me for only a moment, and then picked up my book, in the hopes of distracting my weary brain. I spent all of Monday making phone calls to undecided voters in swing states: predominantly Florida and North Carolina. I made nearly 200 calls in the course of the day, most of them wrong numbers, but many of them brief conversations. My brain needed distracting.
But at 5:30 this morning, there it was again. I woke from a disturbing dream and instead of thinking it through, or trying to make sense of it, I found myself giddy again. Not the excitement that my 53-year-old self feels about seeing my grandson, traveling somewhere new, or finding a great pair of boots; this was unmistakably childish in its giddiness. For the shortest of moments, I pushed it aside again and tried to get back to sleep, but it kept me awake. The girl in me -- the one who still remembers first love, summers on the beach with her friends, dancing with a crush, riding her bike for miles, playing with Barbies -- the girl in me felt the thrill of possibility. After today, all girls may finally know that they too can grow up and be President of the United States.
And right there, I've labeled myself. You may have stopped reading, based on this personal moment I've shared. The cynic in me gets that. As I said, I pushed that feeling down two times; dismissed it as silly and dramatic. But there's no denying that it kept me awake, when my internal clock knows I need several more hours of sleep. It pushed me out of bed, and left me needing to put these thoughts down. For months and months, I've read other women express this hope. I've seen the memes, the op-eds, the blog posts and reports; a woman is running for President. I've also seen the mud slinging and ugliness all around, and like so many, I've mostly felt stressed... simply wishing this was over.
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But the second thought that woke me up this morning was this: regardless of its outcome, today is history making. This election has been more divisive than any election I remember, in the thirty-five years that I've been voting. The first time I cast a ballot was my senior year of high school: Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. It felt historical to me, because I was voting for the first time-- the polling place being my high school, center of my then universe. I have never missed a vote, since that first year I was able; it's a right and a privilege I take very seriously. And while that election felt important for personal reasons, this morning I woke up and felt an overwhelming sense of history. I woke up and felt an undeniable excitement in knowing that this election will be remembered for many years to come, as historical, for reasons that are both simple and complex, at the same time.
Strangely, these two emotions, as I woke in our still dark room, were bigger than the increasing anxiety and stress I've felt, as both sides have amped up their ads, the news has reported 24/7 the same few stories, and the nation has been unmistakably divided. Putting aside all of that, what woke me was the sense that today we are watching something that will be discussed for a long time, regardless of the outcome. Whether it's history or herstory, it's changed everything. Like him or not, Trump is different from any candidate I've ever seen run for President of the United States, and Clinton is the first female candidate of a major party, nominated for that office. The girl in me woke giddy with the potential of that; the adult woke in reverence for the historical import of it all, and the weight of this outcome.
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Again, it's not hard to guess what side I'm voting on this ballot, from the things I've shared here, but having spent weeks discussing it, and an entire day calling folks to encourage, I woke today free from those thoughts, free from the need to convince or cajole, argue or discuss-- for these few, quiet moments before I go to the polls, turn on the news, or face my neighbors and friends. I woke thinking of my niece and two nephews, who will be voting in their first election. I remembered the heady sense of importance I felt in 1980, when I faced the first election where my opinion counted. I woke thinking of finality of Election Day, when votes are finally counted. I woke with reverence for the process. Even in an election that has left so many of us shaken and disgusted, I woke knowing that my vote does count, and the process is important.
I woke thinking of the incredible people I talked to yesterday -- every one of them living very different lives from me, as demonstrated in the conversations we had and the details we shared. I woke thinking about "Samuel," my first call of the day, who was so kind and such an old school gentleman, that I knew I could make the rest of my calls with confidence, though I started outside my comfort zone and nervous. In his 70s, he spoke with such passion about his right to vote, and his community-- who worries about "stolen ballots" and "doesn't trust the system." I spoke to two girls, both twenty, who weren't planning to vote, because they'd always heard "it didn't really matter," and and incredibly polite young man, also twenty, who said "yes mam, I've been waiting a long time to finally get my chance to vote." I looked at my signed and sealed ballot, waiting on the counter to be taken to our local polling place, and felt gratitude for all I have, and honored that many of the people I called, took the time to kindly take my call, and tell me their thoughts. Plenty hung up; only one swore at me.
I woke with the sober realization that I have unconsciously raised my daughter, now a mother herself, with the belief that she could not actually be anything she wants. Because for all of my words to the contrary, it was only this morning that I knew that I never really believed them myself. It was only this morning, as these big emotions washed over me, that I realized that I never thought a woman might truly do this. I could not go back to sleep, for the reality of what I have kept from my own daughter, and what I have kept from myself. I couldn't go back to sleep for the six-year-old-Christmas-morning-anticipatory sense of possibility, that I finally allowed myself to feel... at 5:30 morning. Just before I started to cry.
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It doesn't matter what side you're on, now. The unstoppable wheels are spinning. It's three hours later in the city where I grew up. Votes are cast, and will be for another twelve hours here on the west coast. We probably won't know the outcome of this election for days to come, and given Mr. Trump's promise of keeping us "in suspense," it may be weeks. But for better or worse, and in my humble opinion: much of it has been worse, this election is history making already. The wheels are spinning, the debates rage on, but I woke up giddy... and for these few minutes, I'm savoring that.
Are you planning to vote? Share your thoughts in the comment section; I'm listening. But let's all take a moment to be thoughtful. We each have the right to vote for whoever we want; we don't need to sling any more mud. Share/Like on FB; simple things make me happy! Become a "fan," with the icon next to my name, at the top. If you'd like to read more of my writing, check out my blog Tales From the Motherland, and Follow me on Twitter
"El Aquellare," by Francisco Goya.
"Yet evil is an essential adjective, an absolutely necessary category of human thought. Human consciousness cannot function qua human without utilizing this category of thought. But as a category of thought, evil is not a product of nature, psychical or physical or metaphysical; it is a product of consciousness. In a sense, evil comes into being only when someone makes the judgment that some act or thought is evil. Until that point, there exists only the 'raw fact' and the pre-ethical perception of it." Murray Stein, Introduction to "Jung on Evil"
"The world sees Europe as the continent on whose soul the shame of the concentration camps grew, just as Europe singles out Germany as the land and the people that are enveloped in a cloud of guilt; for the horror happened in Germany and its perpetrators were Germans. No German can deny this, any more than a European or a Christian can deny that the most monstrous crime of all ages was committed in his house. The Christian Church should put ashes on her head and rend her garments on account of the guilt of her children."Carl G. Jung, "Nach der Katastrophe"
"Good can imagine Evil but Evil cannot imagine Good."W. H. Auden, "A Certain World"
A woman I know (let's call her Cora) put down her animal companion this past week, a blind, deaf Great Dane (let's call him Wotan), acquired from a shelter here in Florida. Wotan was, perhaps, the love of Cora's life.
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The dog bonded with Cora, who rescued him, fed him, and attended to his special needs, but never with the other members of his and Cora's little "tribe," her husband, children, and small grandchildren. To these others, Wotan became a clear and present danger. Eventually, no "other of her tribe" was permitted to approach Cora without Wotan's threatening her or him with physical harm, and he was a very large dog.
Cora's husband, finally, put his foot down, and the woman who had rescued Wotan as a terribly handicapped puppy, and whom the dog trusted, alone in the world, chose to end his life.
The moral ramifications of this brief story are deep and many, at least to my mind. So many of the initial decisions, on the part of the original breeder, the shelter, Cora, and Cora's family, would not have been my own decisions (though, given slightly different circumstances, I can see that I could have made, will always be capable of making, similar decisions).
But, as it happened, circumstances tangled and then were tangled again by human hands and minds: Wotan became, like the Frankenstein monster, a dangerous innocent, a creature without the burdens and benefits of more rarefied consciousness . . . and, in the process, Cora's shadow self. Wotan loved only Cora, and would not, could not permit anyone else to approach her, even those of her human family clearly marked, for Wotan's intelligent nose, as "Cora's."
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On every level I can imagine, Wotan's is a sad story.
"Perro semihundido," by Francisco Goya.
Had the breeder of Wotan and his siblings not spared him, deaf and blind, at birth, and deposited him at the animal shelter, where others fed and cared for him, he would not have come to live with Cora. He would not have known human love nor, perhaps, experienced fierce canine love for an other; nor would Cora's family have come to know terror in his presence.
Cora, of course unconscious on many levels, herself (are we not all?), admits only, and simply, that she has now "lost the love of her life." She has, certainly, put down one of her fiercest shadows (in the Jungian sense), having (briefly) embraced him fully.
How "responsible" is Cora for committing an evil act? For unleashing a demon in the midst of her human family? For bringing "Wotan," Carl G. Jung's shorthand for the demonic, repressed shadow side of the Nazis, into the midst of unsuspecting innocents?
How to parse and weigh, in any (as a result of any) of our human acts, evil?
Carl G. Jung writes: "When, for instance, belief in the God Wotan vanished and nobody thought of him anymore, the phenomenon originally called Wotan remained; nothing changed but his name, as National Socialism has demonstrated on a grand scale. A collective movement consists of millions of individuals, each of whom shows the symptoms of Wotanism and proves thereby that Wotan in reality never died, but has retained his original vitality and autonomy.
"Our consciousness only imagines that it has lost its Gods; in reality they are still there and it only needs a certain general condition in order to bring them back in full force. This condition is a situation in which a new orientation and adaptation is needed. If this question is not clearly understood and no proper answer is given, the archetype, which expresses this situation, steps in and brings back the reaction, which has always characterized such times, in this case Wotan.'"
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Wotan may, on occasion, be "put down." However, in Carl Jung's estimation, he never disappears, but remains, in such cultures as the German, and the American, evergreen, simply in temporary suspension: "It was not in Wotan's nature to linger on and show signs of old age. He simply disappeared when the times turned against him, and remained invisible for more than a thousand years, working anonymously and indirectly.
"Archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any time. An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed. The life of the individual as a member of society and particularly as a part of the state may be regulated like a canal, but the life of nations is a great rushing river which is utterly beyond human control, in the hands of One who has always been stronger than men. [...]
"Political events move from one impasse to the next, like a torrent caught in gullies, creeks and marshes. All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught in a mass movement. Then, the archetypes begin to function, as happens, also, in the lives of individuals when they are confronted with situations that cannot be dealt with in any of the familiar ways. But what a so-called Fuhrer does with a mass movement can plainly be seen if we turn our eyes to the north or south of our country." (C G Jung, "Wotan," Neue Schweizer Rundschau, Zurich, March, 1936).
And I would add, to the north, south, east, and west of my own country, America, in the first quarter of the 21st Century, where Wotan has, once again, been summoned forth by the mob, out of our rich and mercurial and amoral collective unconscious.
"Saturno devorando a un hijo," by Francisco Goya.
This past year, and over the entire course of the U.S. presidential campaign, we have all borne witness, whether conscious, less conscious, or unconscious, to yet another dangerous dance with Wotan, with the archetypal other that I believe sleeps just beneath the skin of every Homo sapiens; and, the less "sapiens," the more lightly Wotan, or Trumpism, sleeps.
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My reading, my study of evil, is neither long nor deep, I admit. Half a century is not long to be conscious, though I read The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich at age eleven, and wrote one of my first long school essays on Hitler, and the rise of Nazism in Germany, in Middle School. (My childhood, in post-war southern Europe was not the stuff of musical comedy.)
My family--Western, college-educated, two generations not touched directly by the violence of war--has had the luxury of both consciousness, leisure, and freedom from devastating want, and so, briefly, has been able to contemplate the question of evil.
So, to an extent conscious, and to an extent sentient--for the blink of an eye--here I am contemplating with you Jung, Cora and Wotan, Goya, and Trump, before Global Warming throws my species, all species, under the bus that is unconsciousness (Global Warming which, I hasten to add, is the final "unconscious creation" of Homo sapiens).
In this realm of such weak light and such vast darkness, does it matter that (if, and when) we unleash Wotan on our children; that we, however few of us and for however brief a time, unshackle Trump, and his racist, misogynist, incestuous, bigoted, poisonous energy on our neighbors?
What I have to say, in this very small essay is just this: yes, it does matter. We must, those of us who are able, struggle to remain largely conscious, and struggle to see, to identify, to name our demons in order to disarm them and transform them, for as long as we can, wherever we can, whenever we can.
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At the shelter, Cora must struggle to see Wotan for what he truly is, even as a helpless puppy: potential havoc-to-come, an embryonic demon, in her very small and humble human home.
And, in 2016, in America, we must call Trump what he truly is, our frightful shadow, and we must acknowledge and "illuminate" him as such, and warn our children of his perpetual existence--in many, many guises--throughout human history, past, present, and future (such as it is).
By any name--Wotan, Hitler, Pol Pot, Trump--he is alive and well in the House of Mankind, and we must "put him down," as we can, according to our lights, again and again and again, while we have the ability to do so.
We must, at the very least, point to him, call him by his name, and exclaim, till we are hoarse: "Evil. Incarnate. Again."
Notes
1) Much of my thinking above is influenced by: "Jung on Evil," Selected and Introduced by Murray Stein, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1995: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5811.html
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Just when you thought that this political season could not get anymore bizarre, it sure did. The past several days has had much of the political establishment outraged, appalled, frustrated or disgusted by the latest behavior of GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Well, the fact is that the comments were not all that recent. They were made in 2005 when then television celebrity host Trump was promoting his then hit NBC reality show program The Apprentice by making a cameo appearance on the network soap opera Days of Our Lives. Trump along with then Hollywood Access reporter Billy Bush riding on the show's bus and apparently not realizing their microphones were recording discussed in crude, vulgar and sexist terms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuHPRYkMEwITrump kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women he was attracted to.
All segments of the media seemed aghast at what was admittedly shocking language that was being spewed by both men. The fact is that Bush's indefensible defense of Ryan Lotche's behavior during the summer Rio Olympic games should have given many rational thinking Americans cause for pause.
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As if that weren't enough, Mr. Donald Trump, billionaire businessman, TV host, father of two daughters, married man Trump and 2016 Republican Party presidential nominee, held a "news conference" Sunday night with three women who have claimed Bill Clinton either sexually assaulted or harassed them and a fourth woman whose rapist Hillary Clinton was appointed to defend in 1975. Trump did this just prior to his second presidential debate against Hillary Clinton and he had the women actually seated for the debate. This against the backdrop of more interviewshttp://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-unearthed-footage-trump-says-of-10-year-old-i-am-going-to-be-dating-her-in-10-years/ and allegations of Trump admitting to groping women and engaging in other tawdry behavior being surfaced in the media.
The fact is that very few people are surprised that Donald Trump has behaved in less than respectful behavior to women. Hell, he has admitted this fact himself. But the level of arrogance that Trump has demonstrated rivals that of even the most crude, virulent pimp. This is a man who has blatantly admitted to sexually assaulting women and has dismissed his actions "locker room banter" and attempting to deflect attention to Bill Clinton arguing that the former president's behavior was considerably worse. Talk about failing to take responsibility for your own actions!
There are men who are indeed sexist, condescending and misogynistic in their behavior toward women and their attitudes need to be called out. That being said, Donald Trump takes misogyny to an entire new level. The sort of behavior that Trump and Billy Bush exhibited is a classic form of closet sexism. As is the case with closet racism, Trump, Bush and other men of their ilk exhibit a downright chivalrous attitude toward women in their direct presence yet have no qualms with making deplorably crude comments in private about them.
In fact, all one has to do is review some of the comments on various blogs defending the behavior of both men (Trump and Bush) and the virulent sexist comments that accompany such sentiment. It is clear that these men do not see women as people who are fully and equally human, but rather as mere objects solely for the purpose of sexual objectification and pleasure. Racists behave in a similarly sinister manner.
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Speaking of race, the fact is that Donald Trump is a classic example of White privilege, specifically White male privilege. The fact is that it has been his level of wealth, pedigree, connections and, to a degree, gender that have assisted him in many of his antics, giving him advantages and granting him privileges that would have been denied of others who do not fall into this category.
For example, does anyone honestly believe that a Black or non-White Hispanic man who had been married multiple times, admitted to cheating on his wives, publically picked fights with certain women (and men), called his opponents disrespectful names, insulted people of other races, questioned the citizenship and legitimacy of a White president would have been able to secure the GOP nomination as president? Let me answer that question for you. Hell no! In fact, he would have not have made it to the kids table debate. This is White privilege in action.
As of this moment, prominent Republicans such as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 2008 GOP presidential nominee and Arizona Senator John McCain, along with senators Kelly Ayotte and Rob Portman and Gov. Gary Herbert have withdrawn their support for Trump and have suggested that he step aside. Trump in his ever defiant manner has made it clear that he has no intentions of doing so.
His behavior during Sunday night's debate made it clear with his non-apology. That was vintage Trump arrogant, narcissistic and callous. It appears that the GOP has allowed a crude, rude, racist, sexist, vile and monstrous figure to flourish in a manner that may very likely cost them the keys to the White House the senate and possibly many local and state races as well.
Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS.org) is receiving inquiries about how K-12 schools should address Donald Trump's recent statements on sexual assault.
At a time when we're acknowledging an epidemic of sexual harassment and violence that includes K-12 schools, Trump's remarks provide an unprecedented learning opportunity for schools, parents, and youth-serving organizations to discuss sexual harassment, students' civil rights, and how families can create safe schools with full gender equity.
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To maximize this education opportunity,"The discussion shouldn't be politicized. There are thoughtful questions to be raised and insights to be gleaned; partisanship only gets in the way," says Dr. Joel Levin, Director of Programs for SSAIS.
"I suggest teachers ask students to think about where the attitude towards women expressed by Trump and Bush come from. How do they become normalized--i.e. accepted as just 'what guys say when women aren't around,' or 'locker room banter?' How are students exposed to these messages? Ask male and female students if they've heard this type of talk and how they felt about it. What needs to change so that the attitudes exemplified by Trump's remarks aren't dismissed as just normal guy talk?"
Next, discuss sexual objectification. Teachers can ask students a simple series of questions: "How does the way we talk about women lead to sexual objectification?" "How does sexual objectification lead to sexual harassment and assault?" Then bring it home. Ask: "How are students negatively impacted by sexual harassment and assault?" "What can we do about it?" "What should our school do about it?"
Occidental College Professor and Activist Caroline Heldman provides a succinct explanation in the forthcoming SSAIS educational video Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School! "When people see women only as sex objects that exist for others, then women are not regarded as full human beings; dehumanizing a group is the first step in justifying violence against that group." Until the free video education is released next month, students can watch her TEDx talk The Sexy Lie to understand these issues. It's also the perfect time to introduce students to the 2011 film Miss Representation, readily available online.
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In addition,"Teachers should ask students to think about how gender stereotypes narrow full human expression in males and females. Point out that gender equality is not just a female issue; men too are victims of gender roles that limit and confine their behavior to stereotypes of masculinity. Mention that many men felt offended by generalizations that, like all men, they subscribe to the same attitudes expressed by Trump," Dr. Levin recommends.
In this connection, teachers should ask students to react to Professor Marc Grimmett's statement in Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School!: "Men and boys need to explore the freedom to be full human beings by moving beyond rigid gender roles and expectations of domination, control, and violence."
SSAIS recommends that we ask students if gender stereotypes are a driving force behind discrimination against LGBTQ individuals. Emphasize that everyone benefits when people are accepted for themselves and not how they measure up against gendered expectations. "This is also a great entree into a discussion of how historically women and minorities have been denied opportunities and how our society becomes enriched when everyone can contribute their ideas, talents, and abilities as equals. Ask at what age should students begin to reflect on and discuss gender stereotypes," Dr. Levin suggests.
We can use Trump's remarks to educate students about their rights. "Sexual harassment and sexual violence are civil rights issues, and as a student, you have the right to an education without sexual harassment or violence," Professor Heldman tells students in Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School! Teachers can talk about Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination (including sexual harassment) in all education programs receiving federal funds. Teachers (and parents) can also discuss how language--and even sexual gestures--are forms of sexual harassment. Teachers should direct students to their recourses when they encounter sexual harassment at school.
Two people running for president, ages 68 and 70. One has been acutely ill. The other is on anti-cholesterol medication. Both are out of shape.
As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump wage a divisive and stressful campaign in front of a highly polarized electorate, it's entirely possible that health may yet be a considerable factor in the outcome. Look at how Trump closed some of Clinton's lead in the polls in key swing states while Clinton was knocked out by pneumonia last month. Or the attention given to concerns about Trump's sniffs and Clinton's stamina in the first debate.
The latest is that the Trump campaign launched a new ad on Tuesday attacking Clinton over her health and stamina.
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It's a regular theme of Trump's campaign; on a recent weekend he strayed from the teleprompter at an event in Pennsylvania, even staggering on stage to imitate how Clinton had wobbled to her car when she was sick back in September.
"She's supposed to fight all of these different things and she can't make it 15 feet to her car? Give me a break. Give me a break," Trump said to a crowd on Saturday evening. "Give me a break! She's home resting right now. She's getting ready for her next speech which is going to be about 2 or 3 minutes."
Trump's messaging has been somewhat contradictory. During the most recent debate he said that he admired that Clinton is "a fighter," who "doesn't give up."
Some probing into the health of our presidential candidates is not unusual. In fact, 69 percent of voters consider the release of "detailed personal health records" to be very or somewhat important, according to a recent survey; and understandably so. Their health is vital to the future of our country. Otherwise, we'd better really love these vice presidents.
So how do we determine if these candidates do have the stamina for the job?
Both candidates have disclosed some information about their health; and I'd like to believe both have solid, albeit conventional, physicians. But we are negligent to believe such generic, superficial metrics give us a real understanding of our presidential candidates' true health picture. Moreover, both Clinton and Trump are undermining themselves if they're not demanding more precise data and analysis to optimize their long-term health trajectories. After all, what is stamina if not the ability to perform optimally for the long haul?
And how ironic that these two candidates are only providing surface, snapshot data, given the $215 million pumped into the Precision Medicine Initiative under President Obama -- Washington's attempt to revolutionize and personalize health care by integrating and interpreting thousands of data points about individuals' genetic and phenotypic makeup. There is no indication that this revolutionary, forward-leaning health model is in place for either candidate in this high-stakes election cycle.
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As the candidates provide detail for their plans for healthcare in America, we see that they are taking a similar, conventional tack to healthcare as a system. Trump's plan, updated this week, is to replace Obamacare with health savings accounts. Although Clinton's plan does try to tie mental health and community support with traditional medical care, neither candidate is seemingly moving us away from our current, disease-centric view of "healthcare."
And that is the lens through which we see the candidates as well.
Clinton's doctor was not very specific when she spoke about her pneumonia-challenged patient. She noted Clinton's medications, such as a blood thinner and medications for her low thyroid hormone levels. She disclosed allergy flare-ups, her basic vital signs, coronary calcium score and mammogram and breast ultrasound results. She referred to recent sinusitis and an ear infection.
Most of these are measures of already-expressed symptoms and reflect the minimal routine screening tests recommended for women, in general.
And while an acute disease like pneumonia is nothing to sneeze at - no pun intended -- we cannot look merely at flagrant, symptomatic disease to truly assess, at a deeply cellular level, the health trajectory of an individual.
Nor can we look at superficial metrics like a basic total cholesterol reading or an individual's weight. We learned via the Dr. Oz show, that Trump wants to lose 15 or 20 pounds, had a CT heart scan, and takes a statin to keep his cholesterol within "normal" ranges. Were lipid particle size and density assessed? Or inflammatory markers? What about genetic markers associated with cardiovascular risk? Perhaps specific genetic markers were not ordered (despite being broadly available). So what, then, about Trump's family history - which would help discern potential risk factors to monitor and even modify. It's not unusual for a deep-dive lipid panel analysis to reveal life-threatening metrics, despite otherwise "normal" surface readings.
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And as for statins: They're no silver bullet. Pharmacogenomics research shows only one in 20 individuals benefits from a prescription top-grossing lipid-lowering medication.
Weight reports are also misleading. Body weight tells you little about an individual's body composition: The proportion of lean muscle mass to visceral fat -- metrics that can be life threatening if not optimized. Visceral fat wraps around the vital organs; while lean muscle is health protective, and we lose it with age.
The question of the moment is: Who is our healthier candidate, and who truly has stamina?
If you've never been criticized, you probably haven't done very much. That goes doubly for businesses.
Being told that something you created isn't good enough is a hard pill to swallow, but responding to it gracefully is even harder. Most have the initial instinct to either lash out, or not respond at all; while the latter is often the best option, it isn't always. This is especially true for consumer-facing companies, especially when that service takes place in person, such as restaurants, bars, repair services, installation crews, performers and housekeepers.
Whether it's a rant on a popular social media site such as Yelp or Facebook, or a scathing review from a professional critic, in order to survive as a company, you and your team must learn the art of response. The best way to learn? Observe others who have dealt with the same.
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In the case of Founding Farmers, a Washington D.C. restaurant group that prides itself in being farmer owned and sustainable, they were dealt a considerable blow by the well-respected Washington Post, whose food critic, Tom Sietsema, awarded the busy restaurant a zero star.
However, owner Dan Simons handled it beautifully - and you can learn from his tactics and apply them to your own business.
Don't Respond to Your Critic, Respond to Your Customers
The first move Simons made was to choose to respond to his customers - he never responded to Sietsema directly.
While the initial urge when faced with harsh criticism - and Sietsema pulled no punches - is to fight back against your attacker. However, business is not a war. It wouldn't matter if he had been able to put the reviewer "in his place," lower his credibility, or even beg forgiveness and invite him back.
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The real goal of the response is to assure your customers that the negative review in questions is simply one opinion of many, and that your business will continue to offer the utmost in quality and service, as it always has.
Focus On Your Core Message
Simons' post focused on reiterating their core differentiator - being farmer owned - as well as what that means; namely, that they aren't 100% farm-to-table, and that's okay. The post is coupled with a great video of Simons explaining the business in a personable, genuine presentation.
By tying the restaurant to a larger, noble goal above simply providing an enjoyable dining experience, Simons ties his company back into the community. This shifts the narrative from "a reviewer attacked a restaurant" to "a reviewer attacked part of our community."
Acknowledge The Valid Points In The Criticism
At the end of the post, Simons did not neglect to respond to the valid points of criticism in the Washington Post piece, doing so indirectly and gracefully:
"We're transparent about who we are and what we do. When we make a mistake, I want to know about it, take responsibility for it, and correct it. I acknowledge that with the wide range of difficult things our team tries to accomplish every day, and in our refusal to use chain-restaurant methodology to simplify and dumb things down, that we'll fall short sometimes. I'm proud of our people who do the detailed, complex work that it takes to serve our guests every day."
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The statement serves as yet another rally point - essentially saying that everyone makes mistakes, and that they're working to fix the problems that were highlighted.
It's Okay to Say It Hurt, If You Include How It's Being Remedied
In an interview with Washington Business Journal, Simons was upfront about how the review was handled within the restaurant group itself, including that while staff felt insulted, they responded by working even harder to make the dining experience and food even more enjoyable.
By responding directly to the review only when questioned by a reporter, and never insulting the reviewer or dismissing his experience, Simons bolstered the dignity of his company. By going on to explain the secure state of company leadership and morale, but also the grim mood that followed the review, Simons was successfully able to inject humanity into the experience - instead of appearing as a single entity to customers, he prompted readers to empathize with his and his team's struggle to better themselves.
The 2016 presidential race, as satirist John Oliver said recently, has not only hit rock bottom, but has gone "through the core of the earth, and we've come bursting out the other side."
A search for nuggets of good news in this election will leave you feeling like a forensic detective looking for signs of hope after Armageddon.
But there is good news to be found -- if you know where to look. It's in the conviction and courage of everyday people stepping up to move our country to higher ground. The actions these people have taken are silver linings in an election that has tested our belief in America and, at times, humanity.
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As you go to the polls today, here are eight reasons to keep the faith.
1. True Patriotism in the Face of Hate
Political conventions are usually predictable affairs. But a speech by Khizar Khan at the Democratic National Convention offered a poignant moment that Americans will not soon forget. More than any speech given at either convention, Khan's questioning of Republican candidate Donald Trump's patriotism and sacrifice transcended the partisan divide and struck a moral chord with Americans. In ways big and small, incredible numbers of people have said Trump's hate and division have no home here. Some did so by challenging Trump directly at his rallies, most famously the student-led shutdown of Trump's planned visit to the University of Illinois at Chicago. More recently, women quickly organized to confront sexual assault, harassment and sexism following the release of a tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault. These brave people and the thousands of others who have stood up to Trump showed what love for America really looks like.
2. The Strongest Ever Democratic Platform for Racial Justice
Activists from the Movement for Black Lives challenged Democratic presidential hopefuls to take explicit positions on policing, incarceration, and race. Black activists and organizers have shifted the political conversation, moving race and racism from a too-often-ignored backdrop to a central focus of our political life. Rarely, if ever, in American history have presidential candidates been pushed so directly to clarify where they stand on the issue of racial justice.
3. More Women Running for the Highest Offices in the Land
Whatever you think of Hillary Clinton, her election would represent a historic and long-overdue breakthrough for women in American politics. Plus, down-the-ballot women candidates are poised to become the next progressive champions. Led by congressional candidates including Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, Pramila Jayapal in Washington and Zephyr Teachout in New York, powerful progressive women are on the verge of reshaping American politics.
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4. Small-Dollar Fundraising Kept Pace with Big Money Donors
The millions of people that donated to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign showed us what democracy looks like. The Sanders campaign raised over $200 million, with the majority coming from small donors. Almost 2.5 million people contributed to his campaign, including hundreds of thousands who had never before contributed to a political candidate, with the average contribution in the ballpark of $27. In the Citizens United era, that's something to smile about.
5. Organizing to Retire the Country's Worst Sheriff
Donald Trump has nothing on Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who terrorizes the immigrant community in Phoenix and humiliates inmates in his custody. After more than 23 years, many are sure that he's politically invincible. But the groups working under the banner of "Bazta Arpaio" (from the Spanish "basta," meaning "enough") are working tirelessly to bring him down and change the face of politics in Arizona. And they're doing it by mobilizing tens of thousands of new people, largely Latinos, to vote for the first time.
6. Native People Leading The Fight for the Planet
To find the true moral center of this land, start with the people that were here first. Hundreds of Native American tribes have united with the Standing Rock Sioux in a historic struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Often described as an act of protest, tribal elders see the encampment as an act of protection: protection of sacred sites, protection of the land, protection of the water, and ultimately protection from a changing climate. This silver lining will shine brighter when pipelines are not only rerouted, but replaced by wind and solar.
7. Change Coming From the Bottom Up
In communities across the country, ordinary people are turning righteous protest into real power. Here's one example: After 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot by a Chicago police officer, and a video of the shooting was hidden for more than a year, community groups throughout Cook County helped Kim Foxx unseat Anita Alvarez as district attorney. On November 9, in partnership with those who elected her, she will begin turning the tide on police violence and incarceration. Foxx, who grew up in Cabrini Green as the daughter of a single mother, is just one of the many inspiring first-time candidates running for office this year.
8. States and Localities Raising the Minimum Wage
Once considered outrageous and unattainable, cities like Seattle have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. In the last 12 months, 17 states and the District of Columbia have raised the minimum wage. On Tuesday, four states, including Washington, Arizona, Colorado, and Maine will vote on ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage statewide. None of this would have been possible without the countless workers who have fearlessly fought for $15 an hour and a union. All this sets the stage for the next president (and, ahem, Congress) to raise the wage nationwide.
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This Instagrammer Gets Totally Real About the Struggle to Love Yourself As Is
This Instagrammer Gets Totally Real About the Struggle to Love Yourself As Is
The final stretch is here, in what has felt like the longest, and certainly the scrappiest election in US history. The candidates have left a trail of polarization across America, dividing voters and testing partisan loyalty. While Americans hit the voting booths, crossing their fingers for the result they've been hoping for, and others sit out this election, we spoke to international millennials living in the US to get their first-hand experience of the race to the White House.
Laura Suarez del Toro Garcia, originally from Spain, summarized the cycle pretty aptly, 'Well it's a really complicated election, I think everybody knows that.'
'When I was in Europe,' she went on, 'I was thinking that Trump supporters were a specific kind of people. But when you get here you get to understand more how Trump got into the minds of a much wider population than expected.'
She also thought the bipartisan structure of the debates was detrimental to generating meaningful conversations on policy.
'It was just you did this, and you're worse because of this' during the three presidential debates, and she compared the squabbling to what she believes politics in her country has now moved on from.
Tara Coumbe, from Gibraltar, outlined a similar dissatisfaction with the hyped up debates, saying 'I think it's been quite petty and I haven't learnt anything from any of the debates so far.'
Many of those interviewed also recognised the huge role the media has been playing in this election, perhaps more so than ever before with the increased engagement through social media.
Tara continued to denounce the at times seemingly propagandist messages being relayed by different television stations she described as overtly 'biased' in their coverage. Enrique Sanchez, from Spain, also weighed in on the media's role in the election; 'The mainstream media always helps one candidate... here they are obviously defending the establishment.'
'I like the fact that Trump has been getting so much negative reports and negative attacks from the media,' he continued, 'But he's still standing, so that really says a lot about how Americans are thinking about the media, and how they are trusting less and less of what is being said in the newspapers.'
This observation holds some weight, as only 32% of people have at least 'a fair amount of trust' in the mass media, a historic all-time low, with this figure dropping to just 14% for Republicans. This distrust extends to the candidates as well as the media, as polls have shown that that Trump and Clinton poll as the most unfavourable candidates in election history.
'I feel like all Americans kind of don't like either candidate,' Anisa Atalova, from Kyrgyzstan said.
'I wonder how it got to the point where there are only two candidates which people don't really like.'
Thomas Jenny noted similar thoughts, saying neither candidates appealed to the majority of Americans he's met in DC. Most said they 'would either not vote, or vote for a third party candidate' as a result.
When it came to how they thought the election would affect them personally, Mexican, Alejandro Gomez, felt his country had a special stake in this election.
'If Trump wins, like I'm Mexican and with all the policies he wants to do against the Mexicans, and with the NAFTA it's going to affect us.'
Anisa similarly felt that a potential Trump presidency would have a big effect on her own home country but in a contrasting way; 'I'm from Kyrgyzstan. Now my country is very affected by Russian politics.'
'I think if Trump gets elected it might be better for my country because Trump would, supposedly, have better relationships with Russia, which would affect our relationships too.'
The US election takes place this Tuesday 8 November, and the polls currently show Clinton edging the victory.
This is perhaps the most crucial presidential election in post -- WWII US and global history. We stand on the threshold of mass revolt in the US mainly for failures of globalization from above. Donald Trump has fanned the fire of discontent by adding a volatile mix of jingoism, anti-immigrant and other varieties of racism, old fashioned sexism and pure and simple bigotry. It may indeed be true that he has not read or understood the US constitution, as Hillary Clinton claimed. It seems that other than the rights of the uncaring irresponsible rich and gun wielders, there are precious few rights of the people that he has much sympathy for. His economic policy platform such as it is, will be more disastrous than the globalization he seems to oppose in an opportunistically self-contradictory manner leaving his own overseas dealings impervious to his own criticisms.
More than four hundred economists -- myself included -- have signed a letter that exposes the flaws of the mainly self-serving and largely incoherent proposals of Trump. The list of professional economists critical of Trump's policy proposals include many Nobel laureates.
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But the main danger if Trump is elected will be an irresponsible foreign policy. Hillary Clinton is certainly not above criticism here. In fact, to progressives like me that is her real problem. But a fascist-leaning Trump could possibly launch our country and the entire world into a massive conflagaration. Here is a man whose fantasy life can not distinguish between a 21st century military reality with nuclear war making capabilities in the hands of the major powers, and a freewheeling gun toting bully-dominated one. The latter would be bad enough, indeed savage, given the destructive power of our conventional weapons. But the scenario of nuclear disaster under President Trump is a possibility that is nightmarish. Here even a critic of Hillary in foreign policy like me has to agree with her assessment of Trump during the debates.
But what of Hillary Clinton, her foreign policy record and the future under her as the President?
It is only fair and honest to admit that a President Hillary Clinton will likely be far more hawkish than President Obama. Perhaps she will be more prone to support military intervention abroad. She may even downplay our genuine concerns with human rights. It may even be that she might ignore international law more often than President Obama has done. Her hawkish stance during the election may be partly for public consumption but given her past record on Iraq war, Libya and Ukraine, it is doubtful that all of it is just that.
But we should not assume that her first response to any real or perceived foreign policy crisis will be military intervention. Given her commitment to domestic economic well-being of citizens---helped by a push from below during the primaries concretized in the Sanders campaign--we should allow for the possibility that she is much more capable of learning from her own and other people's mistakes than her opponent.
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Even if she is purely opportunistic, as some claim her to be, a push from below for a policy of peace abroad and prosperity at home will force her to choose. As Prof. Stephen Zunes points out in Tikkun:
She supported the Iraq War because, at the time of the October 2002 vote, the forces pushing for war were more powerful. She has defended Likud policies in Israel for the same reason. The answer, then, is not to refuse to vote for her on Tuesday and risk the election of the far more dangerous Republican nominee, but to challenge her hawkish proclivities after her election.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin U.S. November 1, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
Voters face many important choices Tuesday. The choice between the first woman president and the 45th man. Between a voice of the "establishment" and an outsider who will "shake things up." Between maintaining democratic principles based on civil debate and political compromise, or electing a "strongman" to fix our problems by the force of his will.
This election also represents a choice about the present and future of white American masculinity.
How so? If the vast majority of polling proves predictive, Donald Trump is going to lose badly among women, including white women, and overwhelmingly among people of color. In order to be elected president, he will need to win by a yuuge margin with white men. In fact, white men are the only group that currently supports him by a majority, and a large majority at that.
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The gender gap is at historic highs in this election, and more women vote than men. The only way Trump has any chance of winning is if he runs the table with white men.
So in a sense this election has already told us a lot about white men, especially middle-aged and older white men, who are Trump's strongest demographic. For those of us who had hoped our society was making significant progress toward racial and gender equality, much of the news hasn't been especially encouraging.
In recent weeks, especially after the release of the Access Hollywood video in which Trump is overheard making graphically crude comments about sexually assaulting women, many white men - including many of his fellow Republicans -- have denounced his misogyny in very public fashion. This is a hopeful development in a season of despair.
But the millions of white men who plan to vote for Trump are doing more than throwing their support to a fellow white man with whom they happen to agree on issues. This election is different from previous ones, and not just because there is a woman on the presidential ballot.
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Although large majorities of white men have been voting Republican since the 1970s, Donald Trump has managed to build a much more passionate following than other conservative GOP candidates have received in recent decades. This is in part due to his populist rhetoric in an anti-establishment year, and also because, as many horrified conservatives want us to believe, he's not really a conservative.
But it is mostly because for a variety of reasons, Trump has become the vehicle for a certain kind of white male identity politics. His bullying, bluster, and rhetorical aggression have captured a mood and a feeling among many white men who have long resented many of the changes underway in American society.
Or is it merely a coincidence that Trump's political fortunes rose precipitously in the wake of the two-term success of America's first Black president, in a year that might very well end with the election of the first woman as the nation's chief executive and commander-in-chief?
Voting for Trump is a way for angry white men to vent about these insults to their historic dominance, and "give the finger" to "political correctness" and the political establishment they think has neglected and even discriminated against them. It is also their way to say that in an era of rapid and disorienting social transformation, they still matter.
Of course many people, men and women, would deny that their support for Trump implies any such things. They would maintain they like him not because of his (deeply flawed) character, but because he will "protect our borders," "restore law and order," "defeat ISIS," and "bring back jobs." Only a small percentage tell pollsters they actually approve of the way he talks about and treats women.
Nonetheless by voting for him, Trump's legions are endorsing for president of the United States a man who embodies a toxic and discredited form of masculinity and the value system that accompanies it. In so doing, they are making a statement about their own values - and presumably the values they intend to pass down to their children.
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Voting for Trump is a way for angry white men to vent about insults to their historic dominance and give the finger to political correctness..
In this election, it is fair to conclude that these values include placing more importance on the need to install a "tough guy" in the position of ultimate political power and control -- no matter how narcissistic or temperamentally unfit for national leadership that particular man happens to be - than on the need to send the message that racial and ethnic bigotry, as well as sexism and the degradation of women, are no longer acceptable character or behavioral traits in white men or anyone else.
Although Trump's racism and misogyny are hardly new, the events of the past month have raised the stakes. With at least 15 women coming forward to report that the Republican nominee groped them or otherwise willfully violated their physical and sexual boundaries, this election has become about much more than simply a choice between competing ideologies, or even a historic choice between a woman and a man.
It has become a referendum on whether we move backward by endorsing the kind of throwback misogyny and toxic masculinity represented by Donald Trump, or we move forward by electing a woman whose entire career has been dedicated to advancing - however imperfectly -- the causes of social justice and gender equality.
The conservative infotainment complex and the Trump campaign have painted a false and frankly insulting equivalence between Trump's character and behavior and that of Hillary Clinton, in large measure to deflect attention away from Trump's blindingly glaring shortcomings as a political leader.
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The FBI abetted this shameful false equivalence narrative when Director James Comey stunned the nation by announcing two weeks before the election that the discovery of new emails might affect an ongoing investigation into Clinton's actions as Secretary of State. Was he trying to get out in front of leaks promoted by a group of conservative white male agents hostile to Clinton?
If journalistic inquiries after the election substantiate that rumor, it will bolster the perception among many women that a significant number of white men simply can't abide the ascension of a woman to the highest office in the land.
Comey's statement two days before the election that Clinton has been cleared of wrongdoing in the case of her emails might help refocus voters' attention on the substantive matters on the ballot in this historic election.
Because in the end the choice facing white male voters isn't really about Hillary Clinton's ethics, or even Donald Trump's fitness for office. It's about who they are and want to be. If white men truly want to make America great, in this election there really is only one way forward.
Jackson Katz is the author of Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity
women hand casting a vote
They say pictures are worth one thousand words, but voting literally can be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to you.
When California voters like me voted on a highly-contested insurance reform ballot measure in 1988, we could not have foreseen how much it would have saved us 28 years later.
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Just yesterday, for example, California's elected insurance commissioner, an office created by the reform Proposition 103, announced another $100 million plus savings for State Farm policyholders with homeowners insurance.
Over 1.7 million State Farm homeowners, condo owners and renters will collectively receive more than $100 million in refunds and save $156 million per year in premiums under an order issued yesterday by Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones pursuant to insurance reform Proposition 103.
Before the 1988 landmark reform, insurance companies could charge whatever they wanted with no limit.
The total savings from the measure for drivers alone on their auto insurance topped $100 billion in 2014, according to a report by the Consumer Federation of America. That doesn't count other lines of insurance, like homeowners.
After listening to Bernie Sanders at a rally for drug price relief Prop 61 in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, I'm struck by the parallel.
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Sanders said the reason drug companies are spending $130 million against Prop 61's drug price relief is, "What they are scared to death of is that for the first time a state is going to go on record and say you cannot raise your prices to any level you want. Prop 61 is a moral issue. It is an issue of whether people in our country should die or get sicker than they should be because they cannot afford a pill that costs pennies to manufacture."
The moral issue in 1988 was whether low-income drivers had to choose between food and overpriced auto insurance after mandatory auto insurance laws took effect. The voters rendered their verdict by a 51 percent vote.
The drug companies' scare tactics against Prop 61 are reminiscent of the insurance industry's against Prop 103, which also ended ZIP-code based auto insurance, the first and only state to do so. (The drug companies set a record with their campaign against Prop 61, the previous record holder the insurers' campaign against Prop 103: $80 million worth of failed effort in 1988 dollars.)
Insurance companies said they would leave the state, in the same way drug companies are saying they will muck around with pricing laws if Prop 61 passes. State Farm left for a day, and came back after all the other insurance companies remained to sell insurance to the biggest driving state in America.
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Now the state of California is forcing State Farm to issue refunds, currently valued at over $100 million, for the excess insurance premiums State Farm had collected from its customers since July 15, 2015.
State Farm will also have to decrease homeowners, condo owners, and renters insurance rates by an average of 7.0 percent, or about $78.6 million per year.
Since State Farm had requested rate increases of about $77.4 million per year, policyholders were protected from a total of $156 million per year in overcharges. Thanks to a challenge brought by Consumer Watchdog, the consumer group I head, and the Consumer Federation of California under Prop 103 and yesterday's order by Insurance Commissioner Jones.
Swiss artists Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs work together as a collaborative duo. They travel, discover and interpret what they see. Their diverse understanding of the architectural environment and wastelands, and the power of their archive of research explore visual culture and bring landscapes of new forms in surprising ways.
Zaha, 2013 / Silver Gelatine Print
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
Joana Lazarova: Let's start from your last big work Eurasia.
Taiyo Onorato: Eurasia is an undergoing project and we are currently working on a book with Patrick Frey. It all started with our work in America - The Great Unreal. We travelled in the US and worked with the country's iconography. Because of America's diverse history, we've found a huge collective imagery to be recreated. Later, we worked in Europe for few years and decided to make a counterpart - a very long journey in the other direction. Central Asia was sort of a blank spot on the map for us. Our idea was to go and discover these places. So, three years ago, we drove from Switzerland to Mongolia by car and later we went back again. Actually, Nico just travelled back from there. So this project is not finished yet, we are still working on it.
JL: When crossing physical borders, social and political differences remain, it's fascinating how your work seems to break them.
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TO: Central Asia is a very complex place, politically and socially, and we are not feeling so comfortable in making statements. Our work is different in each place. In Berlin we are much more free to approach social and economic issues, but in some places we enter a sensitive space. Travelling and photography is not really easy, because you always kind of scratch the surface of things, you pass from place to place - it's an instant, superficial way of working. A lot of working is in the editing.
Wedding Palace, 2013 / Silver Gelatine Print
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
JL: They say travelling is the best way to learn about the world and yourself. What is the place you remember most obsessively?
TO: I am always happy when I see places untouched by humans, unpolluted places, where nature is at its best. We found such places in Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan. It's incredible.
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Ruin, 2013 / Silver Gelatine Print
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
JL: Certain places seem to exist only because someone has written about them or remade them in an image. Through your narratives you shape places, render them, create sort of new cartography. Could you tell me more about this approach?
TO: The interesting thing about photography is that this is not the final stage. You can always change the form in a way, and this is what interest us. It's challenging to invent new landscapes ad situations. Same when working with space, we try to use the media to recreate the space.
Well, 2013 / C-Print
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
JL: Like in your work Sea Division?
TO: Sea Division was shot on a journey from Ukraine to Georgia. We were traveling for three days on a ferry and suddenly there was this line in the water. And I captured this image. For us photography is more about raising questions than finding answers.
Sea Division, 2013 / Silver Gelatine Print
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
JL: Can you tell me about the process that you developed working with film?
TO: Photography is not a final stage, you can always change the form. When working with film, we always try to learn and practice new things. We work with 16mm film - there are not many cuts and it's an exciting camera that gives you another way of concentration and feeling. You are challenged and have to be inventive to create something special.
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Filmstill from Lelo, 2015, 16mm Film
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
JL: The film 'Lelo' - what's going on there?
TO: Lelo is an ancient traditional game in Georgia. Some say it's the father of rugby. Every Easter people gather and the two parts of the village play against each other, trying to keep the leather ball in their creek. It takes couple of hours of fighting and struggle, and party. It's a celebration of the dead.
JL: Your artwork Faces is very powerful. Looking at portraits of ordinary people can teach us a lot about the world and ourselves. Why are such human 'traces' important to you?
TO: We filmed people in different cities. It's always very difficult to make portraits. In photography you select a glimpse of a second in which you capture a person when making a portrait. With film, even within few seconds, one can see so much more information. In film a 'portrait' is much more alive than an image, constantly changing and adapting to light. This artwork was not about fashion or a specific place, it's about human beings. The faces, the eyes, they speak for themselves.
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JL: How did the idea of Distance to destination, referred to in the title of your work, come to mind?
TO: The whole idea came from travelling. It's a very seductive idea when starting a project. Driving through itself was much more interesting than reaching the destination and we based our work on this idea.
One Ear Donkey, 2013 / Silver Gelatine Print
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs / Courtesy RaebervonStenglin and Sies+Hoeke
"As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid."-- Former Presidential Advisor Bertram Gross
A citizenry can only hold its government accountable if it knows when the government oversteps its bounds.
Unfortunately, the American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer towards a pervasive authoritarianism precisely because Americans are clueless about their rights--because Americans have been brainwashed into believing that their only duty as citizens is to vote--because the citizenry has failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the Constitution--and because young people are no longer being taught the fundamentals of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, resulting in citizens who don't even know they have rights.
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This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past fifty years regardless of their political affiliation.
Big government has grown bigger and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.
However, there are certain principles--principles that every American should know--which undergird the American system of government and form the basis for the freedoms our forefathers fought and died for.
The following seven principles are a good starting point for understanding what free government is really all about.
First, the maxim that power corrupts is an absolute truth. Those who drafted the Constitution held one principle sacrosanct: a distrust of all who hold governmental power. As Thomas Jefferson warned, "Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
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The second principle is that governments primarily exist to secure rights, an idea that is central to constitutionalism. The purpose of constitutionalism is to limit governmental power and ensure that the government performs its basic function: to preserve and protect our rights, especially our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the government today has discarded this principle and now sees itself as our master, not our servant.
The third principle revolves around the belief that no one is above the law, not even those who make the law. This is termed rule of law. If all people possess equal rights, the people who live under the laws must be allowed to participate in making those laws. By that same token, those who make the laws must live under the laws they make.
Fourth, separation of powers ensures that no single authority is entrusted with all the powers of government. It is for this reason that the government is divided into three co-equal branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Placing all three powers in the same branch of government was considered the very definition of tyranny by the Framers.
Fifth, a system of checks and balances, essential if a constitutional government is to succeed, strengthens the separation of powers and prevents legislative despotism. The Framers feared that Congress could abuse its powers and potentially emerge as the tyrannous branch because it had the power to tax. But they did not anticipate the emergence of presidential powers as they have come to dominate modern government or the inordinate influence of corporate powers on governmental decision-making.
Sixth, representation allows the people to have a voice in government by sending elected representatives to do their bidding while avoiding the need of each and every citizen to vote on every issue considered by government. If the people don't agree with how their representatives are conducting themselves, they can and should vote them out.
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Finally, federalism is yet another constitutional device to limit the power of government by dividing power and, thus, preventing tyranny. Because local and particular interests differ from place to place, such interests are better handled at a more intimate level by local governments, not a bureaucratic national government. Unfortunately, we are now governed by top-heavy government emanating from Washington DC that has no respect for local institutions or traditions.
These seven vital principles have been largely forgotten in recent years, obscured by the haze of a centralized government, a citizenry that no longer thinks analytically, and schools that don't adequately teach our young people about their history and their rights.
Yet here's the rub: while Americans wander about in their brainwashed states, their "government of the people, by the people and for the people" has largely been taken away from them.
The answer: get un-brainwashed.
Learn your rights.
Stand up for the founding principles.
Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.
Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.
Most of all, do these things today.
If we wait until the votes have all been counted or hang our hopes on our particular candidate to win and fix what's wrong with the country, "we the people" will continue to lose.
Whether we ever realize it not, the enemy is not across party lines, as they would have us believe. It has us surrounded on all sides.
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Even so, we're not yet defeated.
We could still overcome our oppressors if we cared enough to join forces and launch a militant nonviolent revolution--a people's revolution that starts locally and trickles upwards--but that will take some doing.
It will mean turning our backs on the political jousting contests taking place at all levels of government and rejecting their appointed jesters as false prophets. It will mean not allowing ourselves to be corralled like cattle and branded with political labels that have no meaning anymore. It will mean recognizing that all the evils that surround us today--endless wars, drone strikes, invasive surveillance, militarized police, poverty, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, etc.--are not of our making but came about as a way to control and profit from us.
It will mean "voting with our feet" through sustained, mass civil disobedience.
As journalist Chris Hedges points out, "There were once radicals in America, people who held fast to moral imperatives. They fought for the oppressed because it was right, not because it was easy or practical. They were willing to accept the state persecution that comes with open defiance. They had the courage of their convictions. They were not afraid."
We're on a tour called "Looking For America," playing shows in 50 cities across this fine nation. Today, before sound check I went for a run through a small farm town in Missouri. And as I ran through the fields and suburbs of our nation, I listened to Dr. Rev. MLK speak on "The Other America." He was speaking on issues of poverty, race, justice, and equality. And as I listened to these incredible words from our not so distant past, I happened to run past a correctional facility. I chose a road that led along the outside of the barbed wire fence and kept running.
And as I ran past the prison, I saw an inmate looking out. He was a black man about my age. I saw him and he saw me. His eyes watching from the inside, and me running by on the outside- and I began to think about the many stories that had brought us here: his stories and mine. His America. And mine.
So with MLK ringing in my ears, I began to think of the privileges that I had grown up with as a white kid in the suburbs of America: the education, the job opportunities, the community resources, and the rest. These are privileges that the average black kid in the city doesn't have access to. It's uncomfortable and unpopular to talk about, but racial reconciliation is a subject that cannot be ignored any longer. I want to hear your voice, and I want to be heard. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I feel like dialogue is the only way forward. I want to find a better future together.
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It's Personal
Ours is the story of an America where caucasians make more money than folks with darker skin. An America where the black population accounts for more than 60% of the prison system. An America where black kids are three times more likely to live in poverty than white kids. It's the story where the poor are more likely to get incarcerated in our American prisons than they are to get the best education from our schools. Yes, "this land is your land this land is my land," but white fathers and black fathers have different conversations with their sons about law enforcement.
My mind drifted back to the incarcerated man. I wondered what crime had he been charged with? And if guilty, what desperation drives a man to break the law? What tragedy? Every crime has a context, and our histories interweave. Underneath this one man's story is a larger story: the story of "The Other America."
I'm sure, we've all got a different perspective on Ferguson, or Charlotte, or Kaepernick. But instead of digging into our disagreements, let's start the conversation with something we can all agree about: these racially charged events are indicative of deep, honest feelings of fear, anger, rage, and frustration. Race is a four letter word attached to years of slavery and legal segregation. To see a better future, we must acknowledge our past: the white man chose to come to America, seeking a new world with new opportunities; the black man came here in chains, as an imported good, to be exploited and sold for labor. Many of America's white founding architects of freedom also had black humans as slaves. A white man with a badge and a gun killing an unarmed black man should be deeply troubling to all of us- like an archetypal reminder of our troubled past, and a reminder that our national creed of equality is far from reality.
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I have an enormous respect for my friends and family in law enforcement community. And I fear for the safety of my friends sometimes, as their very occupation puts them at risk of violence in American streets. But I also fear for my black friends, suffering violence at the hands of American law enforcement.
I do not believe that violence is the answer, for any of us. But I also want to acknowledge the injustice and inequality that fuels the frustration within the black community. These incidents of civil unrest are symptoms of an ever growing tear in the fabric of this nation. Or maybe the fabric placed over our atrocities is being cut open by those who feel placed underneath? Like volcanoes bubbling up- these moments are indicative of the unfathomable magma suppressed beneath the surface. Rather than argue about these events in an overly simplistic, binary fashion, let's look at each of these incidents as symptoms pointing to the wounds that run deep in the American body. Yes, each of us is responsible for our actions. But let's also acknowledge the thread that runs through all of our individual narratives. What do we do with our fears? Do we attempt to destroy narratives that frighten us. Or will we begin to look for the deeper story?
America who are you?
Fascism wants to silence any perspective other than it's own. But freedom is dialogue where every voice is welcome. I want to listen. I want the conversation. How else can we learn? How else can we grow, if we will not listen to one another? l believe in this grand experiment of liberty, free speech, and governance by the people for the people. And I believe that this dialogue is ours to pass along to the next generation. I believe that at its best, the American dream is one of friendship - Living life together in a community of service, love, and generosity.
We the people. We hold these truths to be self evident that all humanity is created equal, with certain unalienable liberties. All of us with our specific stories, knit together in a landscape of community. All of our individual perspectives joined together.
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Red and yellow, black and white- we are a nation of immigrants, a melting pot, a stew.
After all, what is a good-old fashioned American family? The fact is, there isn't one. America, has far too many beautiful, unique faces! You cannot find the future in one story alone. The fact is that there are millions of different versions of the American family- all radically different from each other. In this great patchwork quilt of liberty they are all equally American: free to worship what they choose to worship, free to speak their perspective, free to be themselves. Specifically themselves. Above our fears, let's begin to hear the stories and songs of this diverse nation.
Friday Night Movie Night
Every Friday my friends and I celebrate one of my favorite traditions: Friday Night Movie Night. At the end of the work week, friends and families gather together at their house with a prayer and a simple meal. It's a beautiful chaos with kids of all ages chasing chickens, and dogs, and each other around the yard. It's a celebration of years of friendship, decades of a life that we've shared together.
When I think about the children in that yard on Friday night, so many joyful pictures come flooding to mind. The laughter, the smiles, the bright eyes. These beautiful children beautifully representing the future of America. Each one of these kids has their own story to tell. With skinned knees and wide-eyed curiosity these young souls are still learning about their own strengths and weaknesses.
On Friday night, so many colors shine so bright: blond hair and afros; blue eyes and dark. On Friday night, we celebrate our differences --tan skin, white skin, and beautiful dark brown-skinned faces- all laughing, eating, even arguing. A cop, a construction worker, a pastor, a marine, a musician, a hula dancer - all are welcome.
But no one talks like that here. These beautiful children are not identified by their differences. And neither are their parents. On Friday night, all of us are simply identified as friends. Friends who have stood by each other's side for decades. Friends who have been there time and time again for each other.
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And that is the America I believe in: an America of friends, united by our common desire to see a better future together. A collection of unique individuals bound by our commitment to each other in spite of our differences.
Looking for America
Yes, America is going to mean millions of different things to each of us. And yet, the landscape of problems that we face as a nation are often painted with a binary brush. Black or white. True or False. Trump or Hillary. Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter. This or that/ Either or. And though this may be the most expedient way for the media to tell the story, the full story about America is never binary. It's nuanced with the millions of personal stories that make up our land.
America is at the crossroads. We are facing more than just another election: we are facing an identity crisis. America is a social experiment, built on the constructs of equality and freedom. But beneath the rhetoric, America is it's people. America is you. And me. And 300 million other human souls- each with different dreams and fears, different outlooks and childhoods.
It's personal. Just as we are persons. If you can't find a job, that unemployment statistic means something more than just a number. You and I, we fall into categories, but none of us fit that stereotype completely. We come from these disparate backgrounds, you and I. And yet, our stories intersect in so many ways. We need each other. We are brothers in the human race. We are family, bound together. We will never be rid of the evil of racism, fighting for one side or another. "Liberty and justice for all." That's the America I believe in- it's not either/or.
"Love is the final fight."
At the end of my run, Martin Luther King's words were still ringing in my ears. And time begs the question, is "The Other America" still in existence today? An America fighting for equality, fighting for civil justice, hoping for a better future? Absolutely. In fact, I would say there are more than just one "other America." There are countless versions of the American dream, stories as diverse as this immigrant nation.
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Fear gives birth to fear. Hatred gives birth to hatred. Violence gives birth to violence. "Love is the final fight." I sing these words every night. They were inspired by a hero of mine named Dr. John M Perkins, a man who refuses to respond to hatred with hatred. A man who understands that the fight for freedom is larger than just one story. It's a small, fearful mind that refuses to hear any narrative other than their own.
But love ends that cycle. Love chooses to allow someone else into your story. Love listens to a stranger's story, and allows that story to mix and dance with your own. Dr. Perkins chose to show love knowing he might receive nothing in return. It's a dangerous, costly response to hatred and violence. But love alone can end that cycle of hatred, violence, and retaliation. Our stories are different, you and I. And we will disagree. But love chooses to listen. Chooses to care. Chooses to acknowledge that your story has the same weight and value as my own.
Oh America, will you rise to the occasion or sink under the weight of the task at hand? Are we willing to accept that we share this nation, that your burden is my burden? United we stand. Divided we fall. I'm not interested in blind faith or nationalism - I'm well aware that the real America has a troubled a past. We've had moments where we've represented our national creed, and moments when we've desecrated the very ideals we say that we stand for.
All the same, I believe in the ideals that my grandparents fought for: freedom, equality, justice, the right to self-governance. And I believe in America. Yours and mine. There are a millions of American stories other than our own. Can we listen? Will our children inherit an America large enough to to fit all of our stories? Or will we try to silence the voices that don't agree with our perspective... Who decides? We the people.
My fellow Americans, I implore you: do not let your fears speak louder than your hopes. Do not shout out the voices that speak differently than your own. Our diversity is a blessing, not a threat, not a liability. We can't find the future in one story alone. Let's begin to listen to each other. Let's open ourselves up to the possibilities of different perspectives. It's uncomfortable, unsettling, even terrifying at times. But it's time to hear the truth about many faces of America. Time to begin to move forward together- many stories, many shades of skin, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
Recently, Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post argued that our conversation about immigration is misguided: we spend all our energy focused on the approximately 11 million undocumented people in the United States when we should really focus on the estimated 31 million immigrants who are here legally and the roughly 1 million who gain legal entry every year.
In large part, I think the fact that we don't talk about these immigrants very much is a testament to America's singular ability to assimilate those who are foreign-born into the fabric of the country. It's something we should be proud of but that we take for granted.
And we do pay attention to legal immigrants. As just one example, Samuelson ignores the myriad efforts across the Midwest to harness the energy of documented foreign-born individuals. In my own city of St. Louis, a host of organizations ranging from the Mosaic Project to the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools to the St. Louis International Institute (whose CEO was lauded in a report from the White House) deliver services that focus on helping these New Americans to become rooted in the community.
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Now, there is definitely an upside to building immigration policy on the standard Samuelson advocates, namely the high prioritization of skilled workers. Samuelson suggests that this focus:
"...would promote assimilation (because skilled workers have an easier time integrating into the workforce and society), increase economic growth (because skilled workers have higher "value added" than unskilled labor) and reduce poverty (because many unskilled immigrants have incomes below the government's poverty line)."
But there is a reason the Statue of Liberty doesn't ask that she be sent highly skilled people yearning to be PhDs.
We have known more success in every sphere than any nation in history, and a large component of that success comes from the way we have opened our arms to anyone - anyone - who wanted to make a better life for themselves and their children. From Alexander Hamilton, a foreigner who arrived in the U.S. only through the charity of others, to Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, who came illegally and destitute to America from Mexico and is now one of the most renowned brain surgeons in the world, our history is bursting with examples of immigrants whom no one would have called a good bet. And yet they have prospered and contributed enormously to the United States.
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A more prosaic but nevertheless driving reason to allow family preferences and factors other than skills for immigrating legally to the United States is population growth. Our population is rapidly aging. Combined with a below-replacement birth rate, you have the makings of a Japan-style black hole for economic activity. We need people who will work, pay taxes, and fund entitlements that aging Americans will need to stay out of poverty. Given this reality, our immigration policy cannot afford to be so selective.
And then there's the fact that immigration has made us more prosperous. As Samuelson himself notes, by one estimate, immigrants (including their entrepreneurial activity) have increased the size of the U.S. economy by 11 percent, or about $2 trillion. That's a lot of money to leave on the table.
Activities around the island nation on May 20, 2016 in Timor Leste.
Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reached a historical landmark agreement in Paris on 12 December 2015, charting a fundamentally new course for global climate efforts.
The Paris Agreement (PA) came into force on 4 November 2016, creating a history in multilateral diplomacy, as no other convention came into force so quickly. This reflects global political commitment and desire for a zero-carbon, climate-resilient future.
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Now we need to adopt procedures for operationalizing the new framework, institutions and processes established under the Agreement, starting from the COP22 at Marrakech.
Timor-Leste is a small island state and has recently made the transition from conflict toward sustainable development. Climate change poses immense pressure to economic growth and development.
Intensified climatic events are posing major threats to lives and livelihoods of Timorese population, notable in remote areas with large portions of the population below the poverty line. The 2015/16 El-Nino event seriously affected 120,000 people (approximately 10% of the overall population).
Similar climate-induced development challenges are increasingly evident in many other parts of the world, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). We, being the lowest emitters of GHGs, are the hardest hit from climate effects mostly caused by others.
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Still, we strongly echo the key essence of the Paris Agreement of sharing responsibilities for meeting the global emission-reduction goals.
This is demonstrated through finalization of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) by most of the parties representing SIDS, LDCs and developing countries, including Timor-Leste.
First and foremost, it is critical to implement the pre-2020 commitments under the Convention, both in terms of mitigation ambition and climate finance. The COP 22 needs to generate momentum for quick implementation following the decision of the Warsaw COP 2013.
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) emerged as the centerpiece of global emission-reduction targets as outlined in the Paris Agreement. Adoption of the NDCs has ended the strict differentiation between developed and developing countries and created the common framework based on "common but differentiated responsibilities and respected capabilities."
However, emission-reduction commitments pledged to date are inadequate to meet the 2-degree Celsius goals.
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Timor-Leste being one of the lowest emitters of global GHG (only 0.003%) has already finalized its INDC. Our commitment toward GHG-emission reduction following the Article 4.6 of the Paris Agreement outlines an economy-wide approach of developing policies and strategies targeting low-emission, resilient growth.
Creating the legal framework and promotion of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies, possible substitution of fossil fuels, building climate-resilient infrastructures, sustainable ecosystem management and enhancing institutional capacity is at the heart of Timor-Leste's INDC.
While we are committed to doing our bit, we expect major emitters, both old and new, to enhance their emission reduction aspirations for reaching the global-temperature goals, preferably to 1.5-degree C.
Developing countries, particularly LDCs and SIDS, must be supported with dedicated financial and technical resources to achieve emission-reduction aspirations, while meeting economic and poverty-reduction targets.
Climate finance stands at the core of the concerns for the most vulnerable countries, including Timor-Leste, which being very minor emitters are already suffering the most from other's emissions. Climate finance also needs to be based on fundamental economic principles, like the polluter-pays-principle (PPP).
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Today many governments are applying PPP domestically, solid-waste management being a classic example. So why can not the same principle be used for GHG emission as argued by many scientists, including Nobel Laureate economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman?
The agreed principles of climate finance, such as new and additional, adequate and predictable funding, needs to be realized in order to avoid double counting of ODA as climate finance.
Notable gaps in existing climate-finance mechanisms, including Adaptation Fund (AF) and Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), coupled with slow disbursement of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), poses major challenges for the most vulnerable countries like Timor-Leste to address massive impacts of climate change.
The United Nations should accelerate its effort to strengthen capacities and facilitate climate finance access to turn the Paris Agreement aspirations into actions as well as to support the poorest and most vulnerable who are often the innocent victims, and it needs financing to this end.
The Paris Agreement rightly linked adaptation and climate finance to the level of mitigation and temperature rise. Ambitious mitigation targets will bring in the most adaptation benefits in the avoided form of loss and damage (L&D).
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Timor-Leste, being one of the leads in L&D discussions, supports concrete outcomes on risk transfer, insurance and climate-induced displacement at COP22.
The Paris Agreement was adopted in tandem with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and efforts toward them need to be integrated and mutually reinforcing.
Building resilient societies that are better equipped to withstand climate and disaster risks, and protect people and planet, must be an integral component of development.
Global solidarity and a spirit of responsibility for global common goods will be key to translate the Paris Agreement into tangible reality and to keep the historic momentum created at Paris.
A few weeks ago, there seemed to be quite a number of people doing their level-headed best to stand for our collective humanity. Let's start With Michelle Obama's speech, skillfully channeling her profound hurt and anger, her words redolent of truth, denouncing Trump without naming him and de-normalizing his hate toward women? Then there was conservative Marybeth Glenn forsaking Trump because of his misogyny and sharply challenging her fellow conservatives to join her. And Robert De Niro's unusual (for him) public proclamation and take-down of Trump? Let's not forget the release of "13th," Ava DuVernay's scorching, painful, brilliant documentary that connects the historical dots of endemic racial injustice, inequality, and violence in our country. And Women's Boat to Gaza, 13 activists bringing world attention and supplies to the isolated and suffocating occupied territory, spearheaded by a retired U.S. Army colonel and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient? Then there are the widening non-violent actions against oil pipelines in the American West by Native and non-Native peoples.
One thread that runs through it all is channeling our outrage. That we hurt demonstrates we are human. That we react emotionally also conveys our common instincts. But to be hurt and not react blindly, to let the traumatic impacts settle and sink deeply into our roots of peace, that takes doing. I still hear Sister Chan Khong, lifetime collaborator of Thich Nhat Hanh, at Deep Streams Zen Institute's recent community program, "Being Peace In Divisive Times." She focused on anger, and conveyed how to face it without suppressing, ignoring, or pretending it is not there. In word, song, and presence, she showed us how to stop -- resisting the urge to react impulsively. Coming home, grounding ourselves in focused, kindly attentiveness: Being peace. Responses then emerge as skillful action, compassionate expression.
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Many of us are looking for ways to create "safe zones," as much inside ourselves as with others, so that we stay "fit for duty" as agents of transformation. A few years ago I had the good fortune to meet a group of social workers visiting from Gaza. We compared notes about working with trauma survivors; long-term residents of occupied territories (them) and veterans of war (me). I felt connected with these therapists, especially one, Hassan El-Zeyada.
During the military operation launched in Gaza by Israel on July 8, 2014, I saw my friend's name in newspaper reports. Attacked while sheltering in the basement, he had been seriously injured and had lost his family in an Israeli bombing: three brothers, his mother, his niece, and his sister-in-law. At the point of greatest shock, injury, and loss he suddenly became the parent of many of his nieces and nephews. His experience echoed others' and went to the heart of the trauma:
"I am so afraid in this building. They may hit it at any time. There is no safe place. Psychologically, that is the problem." He noted that his young daughters had already experienced three wars. "Can you imagine what this means to the new generation? Scared parents cannot assure or secure scared children."
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Back in the U.S., Pamela Benge, the mother of Alfred Alongo, killed in El Cajon, CA, said, "We came from a war zone, Uganda. We wanted protection. That's why we're here. I wanted the children not to be running around, being in fear every night, sleeping in the bush. Being a refugee, I know there are millions of refugees here, seeking a better place, a safe place. That's all -- safety. We just wanted to be safe. But now, I ask: Where should we go? I don't know."
Even in our celebrity culture, stars are not immune from threat, terror, and real danger. LeBron James said he was scared these days. Despite having told his kids to comply and be respectful to the police, he was not confident that, if his son got pulled over, he would actually return home.
Nine-year-old Zianna Oliphant, from Charlotte, N.C., spoke at a City Council meeting after another fatal officer-involved shooting: "I feel that we are treated differently than other people," she said, pausing tearfully. "It is a shame that our fathers and mothers are killed and we can't even see them anymore. It's a shame that we have to go to the graveyard and bury them."
An aunt whose nephew was killed by police struggled with how to best respond, "I believe that not 'everyone' is bad. It is just the ones that are ignorant, afraid, uneducated, and insensitive that are affecting millions and millions of lives." She signed off her Facebook post with the words, "I Won't Be Silent."
At the moment of most extreme strain, when reactivity and outrage is at its highest, when it feels like there is no safe place and despair and hopelessness prevail, we can turn to our deep resources -- inside us and with and for our communities -- to create a safe place to think, feel, and be. We can come home to our collective humanity and respond in accord.
"Qu'il est beau!" exclaimed the chambermaid at the small hotel on the left bank of Paris. How handsome he is!
"N'est-ce pas?" I said. It was 2004. We were looking at the photograph on the dust jacket of My Life, Bill Clinton's autobiography just out in the U.S. and already for sale at The Village Voice, a small Anglo-American bookstore on the rue de Princesse, where I'd bought the last copy.
A beautiful man, we agreed. She and I were generations apart, cultures apart (she, French North-African, in her 20s; me, New Yorker by way of Central Europe, already past 60) but we each felt the attraction, saw the humor playing on his features, responded to the startle of intimacy that made it seem we knew each other in a way having nothing at all to do with his wild celebrity.
A few months later back home, walking east along 53rd Street after my hairdresser appointment, I noticed a small crowd outside Chase Manhattan on Park Avenue and asked the closest bystander what was happening. "Bill Clinton's in there," he said. "A meeting. They say he's coming out soon."
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I had the time, nothing much on for that balmy Fall afternoon and even as I moved to join the throng, people started drifting away, their lunch hour over, the siren call of work thrumming in their ears. Within a few minutes I was in the front row behind a white barrier and a moment later, he came out. smiling, striding towards me. We shook hands. In his astonishingly blue eyes the heavens opened. I blushed, he held my gaze for another beat and then he was reaching past me to the right, toward the outstretched arm of the man behind me. My abandoned hand brushed against the sleeve of his jacket, a soft wool sleeve that I found myself stroking as I whispered to him, "Take me with you... take me with you..."
Of course he didn't, and of course I wouldn't have... (?) In any case, it was over in seconds, he somehow dematerialized and I tripped home, still on air when I came into the lobby of our building and told everyone there that I had met, and actually touched the hand of Bill.
A slide captured in memory, a bit of fluff, a few seconds of flirting. Of course his fame added to it, but the nut of the encounter was that split second of recognition, true or imagined, when my heart went out to him taking the rest of me with it. The spice of life, the playfulness of desire, the lightness of being (thank you, Milan Kundera) that provide pleasure, optimism, energy. In other words, sex. Not mating, not dating, certainly not procreating. Flirting is the added accessory, a gift of the gods to make us forget we are mortals and will die, forget how old we are or sick or lonely or how many bills we have to pay. Simply a frivolous bit of excitement or arousal, with no past and no future, just a crowing NOW of pleasure.
I bring this up because in the spate of stories about sexual assault, campus rape, date rape, rape by politicians, child molestation and the terrifying rest of it (mostly brought on by a torrent of violence from the man in the orange dishrag who seems to equate sex with the violent appropriation of anything he wants, with "thing" expanded to mean humans, especially female), and since he is followed by hordes of angry citizens who also feel dispossessed and entitled to pillage anything they see, sex has become, in this election campaign and particularly in the last weeks, something that I fear young people may never again know as the loveliest thing on earth, along with babies, sunsets and chocolate souffle.
Friends much younger than I am tell me about their co-workers, employees and children who complain if they get whistled at ("It scared me") or if road workers throw compliments at their feet as they pass. This is without any contact at all, the kind of bouquet I used to relish as a young woman (and even more as I grew older), or a kind of dance, a form of play in a world too regulated and predictable, the sudden compliment that tells you someone thinks you're pretty, or cute, or simply nice, and that there's laughter on the breeze, sex is in the air and in the mind, and you move on to your meeting or your difficult times with a family member with a sense of leavening, legerity, lightness.
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Flirting was, and still is, part of the grand scheme of sex, which includes but is not limited to, love and friendship and desire. Sex that has nothing whatever to do with issues of feminism or "women's rights" (which is and should be recognized as a redundancy since women are humans and more humans are women than anything else) or with all the just causes (that should have been resolved a long time ago) like equal pay for equal work, which is so obvious I can't understand how anyone could argue it. You pay for the product or service and not according to the type of genitalia the producer or service person may or may not possess.
And of course I am not talking about criminal sexual behavior. The violation of one person by another is against every moral precept in the world. And the orange dishrag and his mob of thugs should never be mentioned again in print, ether, air, or any other element; and trauma specialists around the world should be working day and night on a way to erase him & his violators from the minds and memories of anyone who has ever had to think about him and them for even a minute.
***
Years ago I spent a summer month writing a novel in an Austrian farmhouse near a glacial lake where I took breaks on a small deck owned by a family I knew. There was always a medley of generations on those gray wooden planks, lowering themselves into the icy waters and then scrambling back for more sunning, more tanning lotion and the small barbecued fish on skewers brought around by local fishermen. A boy of maybe twelve or thirteen bantered with a woman who could have been his grandmother. They laughed and teased each other, obviously enjoying themselves, the boy perhaps feeling what it was like to be a man, the woman happy to be regarded not only as a person, a grown up, but also as the woman she was. I was about 23 then, raised in America, and it took me several minutes to puzzle out what was going on. Finally I realized that what they were doing was flirting: amusing themselves a while along the journey through the human comedy of life. Everyone did it here, age no factor in that little country of snow-capped mountains and pastries heaped with whipped cream.
The French did it too, always have. The Parisian or Lyonnais bus conductor reaches out his arm to give a pretty women a lift up onto the bus and is not thinking of grabbing her purse (double-entendre intended). The woman smiles. She likes knowing that people find her pretty. It's all part of the culture, of enjoying each moment. And it is no more related to sexual assault than a glass of Burgundy at dinner is to the sort of binges that regularly kill high school and college kids, or to the all-day drinking nurtured in gormless suburbs by desperate housewives hoping to kill the hours before night comes to blanket memory.
Sex is within us and part of us and makes up a strong portion of our interconnectedness. We notice if our friends are good-looking and respond to that, and just as we depend on the exchange of ideas with others in order to more clearly define our own and be stimulated to new thoughts, so too we need the interchange (or call it intercourse) of appreciation, of being seen anew, becoming (if only for a moment) the object of someone else's interest and desire, all of which is part of flirting and can lift us out of despair or impatience or the rut we're stuck in. A light touch, compliments, the evocation of laughter -- all these are a part of it too, of feeling that you are a surprising and delightful person after all. When men whistle at women, it doesn't mean they want to hurt them or take them by force (except when those men are pathologically unable to think of anything in the world except as an object to be possessed), and I hope that for this new generation of women, if whistles or compliments are thrown in their direction, that what they hear in those sounds are angelic trumpets announcing that Beauty is passing by.
The orange menace threatens, and has already wrought, hatred, fear, suspiciousness, violence and every form of racist and misogynistic bigotry ever known. He has taken away our innocence and beliefs and joy, as well as our personhood, whoever we are, of whatever sex or inclination. Whatever happens in the election and its aftermath, we must apply ourselves to regaining our health individually and as a nation. And before we can return to respect, morality, sexuality, kindness, humor and appreciation of each other, we must rid ourselves of the man and the movement that have made destruction prevail, turned spontaneity into violence and twisted self-love into shame.
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
CARSON CITY Nevada parents who receive child support payments through a Chase Visa debit card will soon be issued a new card, through Bank of America, N.A.
The new cards will be mailed to current child support debit cardholders between Dec. 12-23. Information regarding the transition is being mailed to current cardholders this week, according to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.
Effective January 1, 2017, child support payments will be deposited to the new Bank of America Visa cards. Parents should activate the card immediately upon receipt to prevent delays in receiving child support payments. Parents will not have access to the funds deposited to the new card without activating the card first.
After receiving the new Bank of America card, parents should continue to use their existing Chase card until the balance is zero. Cardholders may choose to withdraw all funds on their Chase Visa debit card by going to any Visa-affiliated bank or credit union and asking the teller to withdraw all funds from the card. Fees may apply subject to the cardholders Chase Visa debit card user agreement.
The change is due to the previous card issuer, JPMorgan Chase, exiting the government prepaid card field.
With the departure of JPMorgan Chase from the debit card market, we look forward to our new partnership with Bank of America, said Nova Murray, Deputy Administrator of the Division of Welfare and Supportive Services.
Keep informed about the Nevada Child Support Program debit card changeover by visiting https://dwss.nv.gov.
As I filled in the box for Hillary, then watched the paper go into the machine, my eyes filled with tears. I had taken my 13-year-old, American-born daughter with me to vote. I woke her up at 6:00 a.m. this morning to come with me.
"Wake up honey, today, you will become part of history." She wasn't too happy about waking up so early, and standing in the long line in the cold. As we waited in line, she got more excited...I was quiet -- and I'm rarely that. I could feel the emotions welling up inside of me. Today, for the first time, my voice would count. This February, I became a U.S. citizen, after living in this country for 27 years, spending thousands of dollars in immigration fees, and more than 140 hours waiting in lines to file paperwork to keep me in America. My daughter was by my side when I got my citizenship, as she was today. I wanted her to see that not only were we making history by voting, but by standing at my side while I voted, she and I were becoming a part of our family's history and our country's future. As I walked out of the immigration office, then, overcome with tears - she asked me then as she asked me today, "Why are you crying Mommy?" Here is why.
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Because I am America. In 1989, I fled to the United States after a coup d'etat in Liberia at 15 years old, leaving my family behind. As my father drove me to the airport, I remember him telling me that once I got to America, I'd be safe. I believed him because, as a little girl, I often read about this place -- a land of equality, of freedom, a land of respect for human rights, a place where women and men of all races were welcome. America was a melting pot, a place where people - oppressed, poor and tired, arrived -- for opportunity, knowing that if they worked for it, anything was possible. After arriving in the United States, like the more than 59 million Americans who have arrived on these shores, I knew that if I worked hard, went to school, and contributed to society, I could make a difference. So, I worked several jobs beginning at 16 years old, sleeping on the couch for years, because there were so many people in the house and not enough beds, helped my family, went to church and gave to charity. While many people my age partied, I worked through college. Everything I have has been earned -- nothing was handed to me. No job was beneath me. These are the values of the immigrants that make up this country.
Today, for the first time, my voice would count.
The portrait Donald Trump paints of immigrants does not accurately portray what America stands for. It does not reflect the contributions that I, like many other immigrants have made for thousands of years - contributions of our brainpower, values and hard work, laying the foundation for immigrants coming to our doorsteps in the future. Trump forgets that the very immigrants he speaks of in derisive terms are same one's whose blood, sweat, exhaustion and tears, created our healthcare, technology and economic systems. These immigrants, like me, come to America, not to terrorize or take from this country, but to contribute in meaningful ways, and to build a better life for our children. I, a 27-year immigrant in America, represent these American values - hard work and family. I like many immigrants, represent innovation. I, like millions of other immigrants, represent entrepreneurship, and I want these same values for my child and her children; and today, for the first time, I get to exercise my right to ensuring that I get to be a part of the change I want to see.
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Because I have the privilege and right to participate in an act that will change the course of our nation and history. I've heard many people debating about whether or not to vote. Spoiler alert -- by voting or not voting, you're affecting the outcome. Voting is one of the greatest acts of participation in our future and that of our children. Whatever your political affiliation or candidate preference is, you're not just voting for him or her, you're voting for better schools, clean air and water, healthcare and immigration reform. In this election especially, you're voting for women's rights, rights for people with disabilities, kindness and decency. Every American holds such power in their hands - and I'm aghast at the freedoms that so many take for granted. The ability to vote is a right and a privilege. As an immigrant, I see things with different eyes than those born here, who were born with the right to free speech, the right to worship, the right to fair trial, the right to pursue happiness, and the right to vote. In many countries, whether mandated by law or not, people are denied these rights; and in certain parts of the world, using one's voice result in having your home or business burned down, losing a body part or losing one's life. Choosing to stand idly by is akin to apathy. It's saying that you don't care about life, the blood, pain and struggle that so many have gone through; and it's giving up your right to criticize the outcome.
The world needs people who not only speak up, but stand by what they believe in -- and that means showing up.
Because I'm doing this for her. I tell my daughter all the time that your rights mean nothing if you don't exercise them; that exercising our rights is our responsibility to our country. And, by exercising our rights, we teach our children the importance of not living their life on the sidelines. There are too many political pundits, too many talking heads, too many giving opinions and not doing anything about it. The world needs people who not only speak up, but stand by what they believe in -- and that means showing up. Justice, freedom and peace require work. They require action. They require sacrifice. They require that each generation carry forth the work that and legacy that others fought for -- the legacy that could be lost if we get wrapped up in complacency and so focused on what "they" are doing wrong, that we forget to do what we feel is "right". In my daughter's lifetime, at 13 years old, we have seen things come to pass that seemed impossible dreams 40 years ago - a Black President was elected to two terms and we will have the first female President. What this shows my daughter is that despite the Donald Trumps of the world, all is not lost -- hope is alive, dreams do come true, that little girls should not have to worry about being led by a President who would desire to grope them by the "p---y", that we have to fight for the ideals we believe in, and yes, we can. We did for eight years and we'll do it again. I told her that someday, she could be the first Black female President.
Ingrid Vaca, originally of Bolivia who now lives in Arlington, Va., rallies for immigration reform after marching from Arlington, Va. to the White House in Washington, Friday, Nov. 20, 2015, on the one-year anniversary of President Obama's announcement concerning Deferred Action for ChildhoodA Arrivals (DAPA). (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Marielena Hincapie, Executive Director, National Immigration Law Center and Nan Aron, President, Alliance for Justice
Immigration is baked into our country's DNA. The way we welcome newcomers speaks volumes about who we are and the values we hold dear as a nation. And when families seek refuge and opportunity in America, the Supreme Court has a big say in how they are treated and how children are protected. But this issue has sadly been used to score cheap political points and stoke fears about changing demographics and economic uncertainty.
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In the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia's death last February, and with three more justices who will be in their eighties in the next president's first term, we could soon see up to four new justices who could determine what the Constitution and federal law mean for the rest of our lives.
Because the Supreme Court is shorthanded now and evenly divided philosophically on key issues including the legalities of issues affecting the basic rights of immigrants, not only the court - but the lives of millions of aspiring Americans -- hang in the balance.
A future Supreme Court could halt any further progress toward fair and reasonable immigration policies. It could prevent aspiring citizens from contributing to the country they love.
Unfortunately, today's court is sometimes part of the Washington gridlock. In June, it cleaved four-to-four in the case United States v. Texas, leaving millions of immigrant families and their U.S. citizen children stuck in legal limbo, not knowing for certain whether immigrant loved ones would come home at the end of the day.
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Here's what happened: An appeals court blocked President Obama's executive actions to temporarily spare undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children -- as well as those with green cards -- from deportation, which also would have allowed them to seek permission to work lawfully in the United States. When the Obama administration appealed, the Supreme Court's eight justices deadlocked.
The court has a duty to ensure nationwide uniformity and consistency on important questions of federal law, including the meaning of constitutional rights. In this case, the court punted.
There's more: The Obama administration asked for a reset. It went back to the Court to ask for a rehearing. It said matters of such great consequence ought to be decided by a full nine-member court, which "should be the final arbiter of these matters through a definitive ruling." Request denied.
When the Supreme Court deadlocks, constitutional law is thrown into disarray. Sometimes a deadlock can mean that individuals have different constitutional rights depending on where they live. At other times, it can mean one extremely conservative judge in the Southern District of Texas can decide immigration policy for the entire nation. That is what happened here.
When the Supreme Court deadlocks, there is no settled law for the nation as a result. The underlying issues in United States v. Texas should come back before the Supreme Court in a later round of litigation; will the Court give a final answer then, or duck?
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Because Senate Republicans have waged an unprecedented seven-month blockade of Chief Judge Merrick Garland's nomination, it's no exaggeration to say the Court has actually been consigned to a state of dysfunction. In the immigration case and some others, the supposedly final arbiter of the law has been paralyzed.
Just take a look at other ways the court affects immigrants' lives. A court majority made clear in 2012 that immigration policy is properly a matter for the federal government to decide, not the states. It struck down major facets of a restrictive Arizona law designed to make life unbearable for immigrants and those who interact with them.
More than 30 years ago, the court held that the Constitution guarantees all children, regardless of immigration status, equal access to a basic public education in grades K-12.
This year, the Court already has agreed to consider appeals involving the use of deadly force by a Border Patrol agent at the Mexico-Texas border and another involving the ability of detained immigrants to get bail hearings.
Presidents occupy the White House for four-year terms. Supreme Court justices, on the other hand, serve for life. Will our next court respect the constitutional values of liberty, equality, and justice for all? Or will it be a court that can't deliver justice at all? The future of the court matters supremely, and it offers a monumental reason for Americans to make their voices heard.
This combination of photos taken at late-night campaign rallies shortly after midnight on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, shows Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Raleigh, N.C., and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Grand Rapids, Mich. A polarized America went to the polls Tuesday to pick its 45th president. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, Paul Sancya)
Many tens of millions of voters need to wake up tomorrow and actually vote, but if they do in the numbers we expect, Hillary Clinton will win the presidency. She holds a clear and consistent national lead in SurveyMonkey's Election Tracking polling, and she appears poised for a decisive victory based on exclusive polling in all 50 states.
Our final snapshot of the national popular vote gives Hillary Clinton a six percentage point lead over Donald Trump, 47 to 41 percent, with 6 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson and 3 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
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Clinton's lead has been remarkably steady during the Fall campaign. As reported by our partners at NBC News, "Clinton has not only maintained a lead over the Republican nominee since the end of July, but the margin of her lead has been between 4 to 6 percentage points since the second week of September."
That six point lead in the popular vote translates into a lopsided Clinton advantage in the all-important Electoral College. Our final snapshot of voter preferences in all 50 states plus DC, based on more than 74,186 interviews conducted during the final week of the campaign, gives Clinton a lead of three percentage points or better in 21 states. That's a total of 257 electoral votes, which is thirteen shy of the 270 needed to win. Although Trump leads by three percentage points or better in 23 states, they earn him just 188 electoral votes.
While the race is closer in seven states -- classified as "toss-ups" colored in grey on our map -- SurveyMonkey's tracking has given Clinton modest but consistent numerical leads in five states, two of which alone (Florida and Michigan) would assure an Electoral College victory. Clinton would pick up a total of 45 more electoral votes if she were to win both.
Three more states -- Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, representing another 33 electoral votes -- have been genuine toss-ups in our tracking, with very narrow margins that have not consistently favored either candidate.
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Should Clinton prevail in all of the states in which she has a numerical advantage, she will win the presidency with 334 Electoral College votes, putting the final tally between President Obama's victories in 2008 (365 Electoral College votes) and 2012 (332). Trump has clear numerical advantages in 23 states, which total 188 Electoral College votes. One state, Georgia, is a tie in our final pre-election estimate.
Across a range of possible scenarios given by SurveyMonkey's 50-state results, the average outcome is 321 Electoral votes for Clinton to 217 for Trump. The chances of a Clinton win are 96 percent.
SurveyMonkey has also tracked voter preferences in contests for the U.S. Senate in 34 states, and the data show Democrats poised to pick up enough seats to gain a majority.
The Senate currently consists of 54 Republicans, 44 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. If four Senate seats flip from red to blue, and Clinton wins the presidency, Democrats would control the Senate based on the Vice President's tie-breaking vote. If Trump wins, Democrats would need to win five seats to gain a Senate majority, which they are poised to do.
SurveyMonkey's final poll snapshot shows the Democratic candidates leading by margins of three percentage points or better in five states, exactly the number they need to assure a Senate Majority: Illinois, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina. In addition, we show a true toss-up in the nearly deadlocked Florida contest between incumbent Republican Marco Rubio and challenger Patrick Murphy.
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The Nevada Senate seat currently held by retiring Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid is relatively close, but Democratic candidate Catherine Cortez Masto currently leads Republican Joe Heck by a three percentage point margin.
Finally, SurveyMonkey has been tracking races for Governor in a dozen states, with relatively close races coming down to the wire in Indiana, Missouri, Montana and Vermont.
A passage from psychologist Ken Corbett's recently published book, A Murder Over A Girl: Justice, Gender, Junior High, could describe the mindset of Donald Trump and many of his supporters in the run-up to the presidential election --
"Paranoia, the best of guard dogs, exquisitely splits good and bad. Guards look out in order to find the bad, they do not look in. The world shrinks as the bad is pinpointed on the horizon. Unwanted badness, vulnerability, guilt, and injury are pushed out and into others."
Corbett is actually writing about Brandon McInerney, who in 2008, at the age of 14, shot and killed his classmate, 15 year-old Larry King, at school in Oxnard, California. But the excerpt above also describes the kind of victim-blaming groupthink that took place at McInerney's 2011 trial for first-degree murder, as well as the ways any of us might think in our most destabilized states -- when we feel threatened by the unfamiliar or the unknown.
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It is this broad insight that raises Corbett's book beyond thoughtful reportage on a devastating crime and trial, and into a must-read psychological diagnosis of our current political and cultural climate.
As Corbett observes in his book, Larry was biracial and had begun to identify as transgender, while Brandon is white, masculine, and identifies as heterosexual. Larry flirted with Brandon at school. These facts were enough for the (what appeared to be) mostly white jury - as well as the all-white, tightly-knit community of witnesses who spoke on Brandon's behalf - to cast Larry (or "Leticia," as she named herself) as the perpetrator and, accordingly, to blame for her own gruesome murder. In contrast, although he was sentenced to 21 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter, Brandon was largely thought to be just a boy being a boy.
(The parallels between this story and the current presidential campaign are legion - Trump reframing his boasts about sexual assault as mere "locker room talk," or a Congressman condoning one of Trump's many outbursts at Hillary Clinton by saying, "I think sometimes a lady needs to be told when she's being nasty"-- but perhaps most disturbing of all is Trump's own statement, "I could...shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.")
Like the media's election coverage, reading A Murder Over A Girl is by turns similarly mind-boggling and infuriating. Hateful biases reveal themselves in plain sight, and are relentlessly justified. But Corbett not only rouses his readers to take action against injustice; his poetic writing also moves us to look inward, and to mourn the life that was stolen from Larry/Leticia -- both in the classroom where s/he was killed, and in the courtroom where her true identity and sense of self were never fully understood, contemplated, or even really named.
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Corbett effectively uses "Larry" and "Leticia" interchangeably throughout the book, as a way to illustrate multiple realities coexisting at the same time -- e.g., a court record, the community's perception of the victim, and Leticia's own underappreciated and subjective sense of self. Corbett also poignantly evokes Leticia's palpable absence from the storytelling that followed her murder, by describing all the ways in which the major players in the tragedy veil themselves both from full recognition of her, as well as from the horrific, dumbfounding, way s/he was torn from existence.
Corbett describes how each of the witnesses at trial sought to reconstruct "logical" narratives of the inexplicable event, sometimes with embellishments as if to justify, or at least explain, what took place in a more normative, palatable way than the complex truth. A dress that Leticia wore to school - and which she was reportedly wearing while flirting with Brandon - is far more shimmering, bustling, and provocative in the witness accounts, than the "sad" "little girl's party dress" that is exhibited in court. Corbett also keenly observes the substances some of the witnesses he interviewed consume as they talk with him, perhaps to numb themselves from the complexities and trauma of the events. (Larry's parents chain-smoke in anger; the white-supremacy expert witness sucks down coffee after coffee as he attempts to explain the unexplainable.)
In all of the varying accounts of what happened between these two adolescents, the reader notices a conspicuous absence: the full recognition of a human life that was not allowed authentic expression. Corbett explains that one of the particular reasons that Larry/Leticia failed to be recognized -- in both the classroom and the courtroom -- was due to a lack of education and experience about how to think through the concept of gender variance.
"Living gender, especially as it blooms in adolescence, brings forth a host of emotions and counteremotions or defenses. When a group of people, such as schoolteachers, cannot consider those emotions, cannot discuss what is being felt and thought about gender, cannot learn together, then gender variance can be felt as too much, and reactive discipline short-circuits any building of community."
With Corbett's careful guidance, the reader appreciates that without such recognition of a life, we cannot grieve the loss of it. And without such grief, we cannot move through tragedies like the murder of Larry/Leticia King and evolve as a people. We are instead left to hold tight to paranoid and divisive ideas about who belongs and who does not -- an all too familiar approach in an election season that has seen the vilification of Mexican, Muslim, and persons with disabilities, to name only a few.
Corbett offers possible ways to move through such fear, trauma, and divisiveness by showing us with imagery, rather than simply telling us with psychological theory. He shares his own vivid nightmares, daydreams, and self-reflections throughout the course of the trial, and in so doing he models how each of us might become acquainted with our own minds -- especially in moments of crisis, ignorance, and/or isolation.
He suggests that we face our fears of the unknown, as well as the whole gamut of feelings like guilt, grief, or loss that make us vulnerable. Corbett's writing asks that we share these feelings and fears with other people, and allow their life experiences to enter our consciousness in turn, so that we may navigate our way through tragedies and struggles together, despite our differences.
He illustrates this concept movingly in his final interview with Brandon's mother, a year after the trial. By this point she is in remission from a major drug addiction, as if waking from a dream. She says to him, "My life is a blur, until recently." With a clear head she is able to experience the raw grief of the tremendous, unthinkable losses that have taken place -- Leticia's lost life, the King family's lost child, Brandon's lost freedom, and the years of her own life that she can never get back. She is also able to put that grief into words and to share it. She can now imagine herself living a life connected to other people -- however different from her they may be -- without substances, without denial, and without the need to push her unwanted feelings into those around her.
Indeed, this resonating final message of Corbett's book can be summed up in the two current presidential campaign taglines. "I Alone Can Make America Great Again," implies that some of us must be destroyed to save the "greater good"; while "Stronger Together," grants each of us a shot at a meaningful life.
In July, I traveled to Washington DC on the Edward J. Meade Policy Fellowship through Harvard University and the Institute for Educational Leadership. As a classroom teacher (and even now as an educational researcher), I had always felt a bit distanced from and disenfranchised by educational policy. My goals for the fellowship were therefore to demystify policy for myself and to learn more about the intersection of research, practice, and policy, specifically in the domain of students' postsecondary success.
As with everything in education, however, context matters. The week before I left for DC, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five Dallas police officers were shot and killed. My social media feed was awash with former students angrily railing about their own experiences with police, while other former students who are now police officers re-posted memes and articles denigrating or mocking Black Lives Matter and similar protesters. Pervading everything was a strong either/or mentality: Either you're with us, or you're against us, so state your allegiance now.
This juxtaposition of students who formerly sat side by side in my classroom was difficult to witness, especially because the grief and pain were so raw on both sides. I wondered what they would say to each other if they were to sit down together now. I wondered what I had done to prepare them for this aspect of their "postsecondary" lives, and what I could and should have done differently. Suddenly, my fellowship questions--the opportunity itself, even--seemed trivial.
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Instead, I found myself thinking a lot about a study on political canvassing that has been published in Science magazine and featured on This American Life (twice in both cases, after a brief side trip through Research Ethics 101). In short, the randomized trial finds that people who interacted one-on-one with a political canvasser changed their beliefs about transgender issues, and that the effects endured three months later. I considered sharing these links with my students but held back; I worried that doing so might seem to downplay major systemic and historical injustices by implying that everything could be fixed if we would just talk to each other. In what has become such a toxic election season, clinging to these study findings seems almost hopelessly naive.
Yet I personally do believe that the genuine one-on-one talking and, especially, the listening at the heart of that canvassing study is both harder than it sounds and truly a path for progress. Part of what had always appealed to me about teaching was the opportunity to have those one-on-one conversations with students. It is also part of what had always seemed alienating to me about policy: the unit of analysis shifted from the individual to organizations and systems, making everything feel (to me) depersonalized and intractable.
Surprisingly, though, my fellowship week both reaffirmed and expanded my belief in the importance of genuine dialogue. The organizational representatives with whom I met were not Orwellian automatons of some disembodied System; they were individuals who were generous with me, dedicated to their work, and aware that in education--and in life--we cannot take an either/or approach to systems vs. individuals, it must be both/and. Direct interpersonal interaction is vital, but so is building a surrounding context that supports and sustains those interactions.
For example, individual teachers may do outstanding work with individual students in their classes, but those teachers need a comprehensive, multi-layered support system--in schools, in teacher preparation programs, in the policy environment writ large--to sustain that work. But interpersonal relationships are at the core of each of those organizations; even in the sprawling system of educational policy, the scale of the work requires partnerships formed by organizational leaders around shared goals but also across differences: in philosophies, approaches, preferred levers for change. In a strange way, the system is individuals, talking and listening to each other, within and across organizations, and, ideally, with an awareness of the structures they are simultaneously operating in and trying to change from the inside out.
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NEW YORK CITY: Goodyear Satire Co.--
Republican Challenger Donald Trump cast his ballot today at P.S. 59 in Manhattan.
Asked how he voted, Trump said, "The woman who handed me the ballot was a 6, a bit too hefty for my taste, but the girl who showed me which booth to go in was a 7 plus," the candidate explained. "But I downgraded her to a three because she wouldn't get in the booth with me."
There was one embarrassing moment. Trump accidentally rated Melania a 9. "I didn't recognize her from behind," the candidate mansplained. Melania patiently asked for a write-in ballot and voted for Bernie Sanders.
Trump and his wife arrived at the polling station after two topless women had staged a mini-protest at his polling station. They chanted "Our of our polls Trump, out of our polls Trump," according to NBC New York.
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Trump's late arrival may be a bad omen for his success. Based on Huffington Post polling data, America's voters are expected to rate Trump a number 2.
Photo credits:
Donald Trump arrives at polling station, screen grab from Live Satellite News via youtube.
Topless protest, screen grab from Media 24 via youtube.
Early voting is nearly over. More people have voted early in the 2016 election, 46.26 million than in the 2012 election in its entirely, which saw 46.22 million. There are several states with incomplete or no reporting, so the raw number will only continue to climb.
What does this mean for overall turnout? Some of voters are clearly changing when they voted, opting to vote early instead of Election Day. However, the high level of early voting may also be a sign of increased overall turnout. Most likely a combination of the two are at play.
With many states reporting their near-final early vote numbers, here is my prognostication based on the early voting. You may disagree given the polls, and I very well may be wrong. There are several close calls and the lightly shaded states could go either way. I'm trying my best to remain true to what can be learned from the early vote.
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I'm only concentrating on the battlegrounds that have early voting and have data that enable an analysis. I've reverted other states to their 2012 performance. There is not enough information about the early vote in Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin to make a prediction. Trump will likely need one of these states to win. (The map below was generated at 270 to Win)
Colorado: Clinton
I might as well start with a state where the Trump campaign and I agree. The campaign sent a "memo" to supporters identifying Colorado as in the Clinton column. Colorado looks good for Clinton in the early vote data.
Colorado is a mail ballot state. All registered voters are sent a mail ballot which they can return via mail or in special drop boxes provided by election officials. In addition, in-person early voting sites are available where voters can do Same Day registration. This new system was adopted following the 2012 election, so 2016 is the first presidential election it has been in effect.
We don't have a good baseline presidential election, so let's look at the 2014 midterm election. In the 2014 midterm election, registration Republicans held a 7.3 point advantage in the ballots returned before Election Day, and the Governor and U.S. Senate elections were split by candidate of the two parties. (In 2012, Reps had a 1.8 point lead and Obama won by 5.4 points, which actually also yields a 7.2 point Rep lead to make the state competitive.)
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It thus seems reasonable to me that Republicans need at least a 7 point registration advantage to be competitive. More Democrats will vote on Election Day and in this state, and many others, voters unaffiliated with a party tend to break towards the Democrats.
Registered Republicans hold a 0.7 percentage point lead over Democrats the day before the election, with nearly 2 million votes cast. The Republican lead is not enough, not even matching 2012. Like the Trump campaign says, Clinton is likely to win Colorado.
Nevada: Clinton
Nevada has concluded in-person early voting, with some mail ballots yet to be returned to election officials. We thus have a clear picture of early voting in a state where nearly 70% of the vote was cast early in 2012, and that number or higher appears likely for 2016 since early voting has already surpassed the 2012 total by 9.2%.
Registered Democrats lead Republicans by 45,657 or 5.9 percentage points among early voters. In 2012, Democrats led by 48,277 or 6.8 points. Obama won Nevada by 67,806 votes or 6.7 percentage points. Nevada may well be closer than 2012, but this appears to be a safe Clinton state.
Nevada will be an interesting case study of the predictive power of poll averages versus that of the early vote. CNN released a poll with Trump leading by six points, dragging the poll averages towards Trump. One of the more astounding things about the CNN poll is that it estimates Trump has a one point lead in Clark County (Las Vegas), where registered Democrats have a 13.9 point advantage in the early vote. For the CNN poll to be true, there must be massive Democratic defections not present in Nevada polls (or elsewhere). More likely, CNN will learn what many pollsters have learned before: it is difficult to poll in Nevada.
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Maine CD-2: Clinton
Maine splits its Electoral College votes, awarding one to the winner of each congressional district and one statewide. At the beginning of the early voting period, Democrats were off their 2012 levels, but they moved ahead following the first debate. Now, Democrats lead Republicans in the early vote by 7.8 points, whereas in 2012 they led by 6.4 points. Obama won Maine's Second Congressional district by 8.6 points. Clinton well-poised to win this Electoral College vote.
Virginia: Clinton
Virginia is not an early voting state, but its excuses are fairly permissive. In 2012, 11.6 percent of the Commonwealth's voters cast a ballot prior to Election Day. In 2016, 541,534 have done so - with some outstanding mail ballots - which is an increase of 20.9% over 2012. According to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project, much of the increase is coming from Northern Virginia, a Democratic stronghold, which is up 36.7% over 2012. This is the largest increase of any region of the state. There is thus nothing in the early vote to contradict the polling showing a Clinton lead in Virginia.
Iowa: Leans Clinton
Iowa is one of the few places in America where early voting levels are down from 2012. As of Monday, 42,584 fewer Iowans have voted early than 2012, a decrease of 6.3% from the same day in 2012. The decrease is primarily being driven by registered Democrats not showing up at the same levels of 2012. There are 21,744 fewer Democrats who have voted early in 2016 compared to 2012, while there are 2,765 more Republicans. More Democrats have voted early, but the Democrats' lead has shrunk from 9.9 percentage points in 2012 to 6.7 points in 2016. This is a 3.2 point shift towards the Republicans, or a raw vote narrowing of the Democratic margin by 24,509 votes.
As bad as Iowa has been for the Democrats, Clinton stands a reasonable chance of winning the state. Obama won Iowa in 2012 by 5.8 percentage points, or 91,927 votes. This gives the Democrats some cushion to give up relative to 2012. Shifting Obama's 2012 margin down by 3.2 points, yields a 2.4 point Clinton lead. Subtracting the Democrats' narrowed early vote margin yields a 67,418 vote margin left to give up on Election Day.
Iowa will likely come down to Election Day. Unlike some other early voting states, a majority of Iowans will vote on Election Day. In 2012, only 43.7% of Iowans voted prior to Election Day. The polls have not been favorable to Clinton, but some recent polls have a tie or a narrow Clinton lead. This will be a close state, and there could be a higher level of Democratic crossover votes here, but according to the early vote Iowa leans Clinton.
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Florida: too-close-to-call
Florida ended its in-person early voting with a souls-to-polls Sunday. So far, 6.4 million Floridians have voted early, up 1.6 million or 34.1% from the 2012 4.8 million total, with still more mail ballots to be received by election officials. This increase is due to two factors: the state restored the first week of early voting chopped off in 2012 and the state now makes a mail ballot request good for up to two years, with some localities providing a request renewal on their ballot return envelopes.
Registered Democrats have an 88,012 lead (+1.4 points) over Republicans in the early vote. This lead may expand slightly, perhaps a few tenths of a point, in the last pre-election update on Tuesday because 74,248 more Democrats have yet to return mail ballots. In 2012, Democrats had a 3.8 point lead in the early vote and Obama won the state by 0.9 percentage points.
Simple math would indicate a 2.4 shift in the early vote towards the Republicans would result in a 1.5 point win for Trump. However, there are good reasons to doubt the accuracy of that forecast. First, there is no way that turnout in Florida will increase by 1.6 million over 2012. This means that some Election Day voters, which leaned Republican in the past, have converted to early voters as the laws made it easier to vote early.
Second, diving down into the demographics available in Florida from my University of Florida colleague Dan Smith (@electionsmith), Hispanic early voting turnout is up an astounding 435,800 votes over 2012 (+86.9%). Since Hispanics tend not to register with a party, the increase among Hispanics is likely fueling the increase among early voters unaffiliated with a political party, which is up an amazing 184.3% over 2012 (yes, an 802,146 vote increase in 2016 over 2012's 434,249 unaffiliated vote). It is further noteworthy that a good portion of the increase of Hispanic early voters are coming from Central Florida, where a sizable Puerto Rican community is located.
My take on Florida is that there is too much uncertainty to make a call. If pressed, I believe the Hispanic early voting increase suggests Clinton has a very narrow edge.
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Ohio: Leans Trump
In Ohio, jusy shy of 1.8 million have voted, which is below the slightly more than 1.8 million who voted in 2012. More mail ballot have yet to be returned, so it is possible Ohio will equal or exceed its 2012 early voting levels when all is said and done.
Ohio does not have party registration in the same way other states do, so the best that can be done is to compare early voting by counties. Democrats have been in the doldrums in Ohio, with Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus) well off their 2012 levels by twenty percent or more. But in the last week Democrats turned it around. Relative to the same day in 2012, Cuyahoga ends the in-person early voting period the day before Election Day surprisingly up 1,051 (+0.4%) from 2012 and Franklin is up 22,522 (+10.2%). Unfortunately, I do not have complete 2012 data for the remainder of the state. For 47 other counties, early voting is up 89,040 (+13.3%) over 2012. I wish I knew more about who these voters are, but again, there is not a lot of information about them.
My read is that Ohio likely leans slightly towards Trump, but the state will be closer that it might have looked a week ago.
North Carolina: Leans Trump
North Carolina concluded in-person early voting on Saturday. Election officials have yet to receive some mail ballots, but with 3.1 million votes cast the character of the early electorate will not change.
North Carolina appears to be a state that Trump is positioned to win. The overall early vote turnout in increased 304,250 (or 10.9%) from the same relative 2012 day. Yet, registered Democrats declined 30,561 (-2.3%) while Republicans increased 104,889 (+11.9%) and voters unaffiliated with a political party increased 226,517 (+38.9%). As a result, the 2012 Democratic lead in the early vote of 15.8% has shrunk to 9.8%. Mitt Romney won North Carolina by 2.0 points.
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Here are the wildcards that increase the uncertainty of what these party registration numbers tell us.
The decline in Democratic voting come primarily from African-Americans, of whom 64,460 (-8.6%) fewer voted early compared to 2012. This decline among African-Americans is not present elsewhere in the South, so this may be more related to early voting barriers erected in African-American communities than actual depressed interest in voting. It could also be that African-American communities were disproportionately affected by Hurricane Matthew. We will have to see if there is a rebound on Election Day. Furthermore, early vote turnout for other persons of color is up 36,926 (+44.2%). Some of the losses among African-Americans may be taken up by other minority groups.
Another group that may offset African-American losses is among women. Women early vote turnout is up 187,184 (+12.2%) over 2012 while men are up 133,338 (+11.3%), for a net increase of 53,846 women. It is likely these women predominantly support Clinton.
Finally, there is the large increase in unaffiliated voters over 2012. I suspect that these voters lean Democratic. However, they are not as strongly reliable as a person who registers with a party, so at best the Democrats can only make up some ground among these voters.
In sum, the early vote partisan numbers favor Trump. There is some uncertainty buried beneath the partisan numbers that could tilt North Carolina to Clinton, so not a done deal. I think North Carolina will be close, but I give the edge to Trump.
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Arizona: Who Knows?
In Arizona, 1.6 million people have voted, which exceeds the 2012 number of early voters by 134,463 or 8.9%. In 2012, 65.9% of the vote was cast early.
There is no public 2012 baseline available for Arizona's party registration, so I don't know what to expect. In 2016, registered Republicans currently have a 6.3 percentage point lead in the early vote. Maybe that is enough for Clinton if the voters unaffiliated with a party - who make up a little less than one-fourth (24.8%) of early voters - break towards Clinton. Maybe Arizona is like Colorado, in that a seven point lead for Republicans in the early vote yields a competitive election. Given the past history of the state, I'd give Trump the advantage, but there is not a lot to go on here.
Summary
The map I've outlined is not favorable to Trump. If Clinton wins Colorado and Nevada, Trump must win every battleground state and pick up a blue state. That's a tall order. Not impossible, but very difficult. Given that some of the key opportunities for Trump to win a blue state are excuse-required states with low levels of early voting - Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia - after all the early voting is done, the election will still come down to Election Day.
Working as a police officer was an experience like no other. My first job was in a town filled with honest hard-working people, with a small handful of others who made it hard for the rest who lived there. It was this "handful" that kept me busy on the job.
One of the worse things I saw was the crack epidemic. You can read about it in the news and watch it on movies like New Jack City (still one of my top 10 favorites), but seeing it first-hand changes your outlook on life.
The moment I realized how real it was happened when I was called in to do perimeter duty on a homicide that took place in the City of Benton Harbor. A local victim of the drug was given money to purchase crack for people visiting from Chicago. She wound up buying and using $20 worth of the drug before returning to the people who had given her the money to make the purchase.
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Upset that she had smoked their $20 worth, the two suspects shot and killed the victim before rolling her up in a carpet and setting her on fire in a BBQ grille. This was the biggest wake-up call of my career and it happened only six months after I graduated the police academy. It was clear to me from that point on that drugs were the root of many of society's problems.
Meth Comes on the Scene
Lucky for me, I left law enforcement prior to the explosion of the meth epidemic.
Crystal methamphetamine, a drug that has been around for decades, had largely been replaced by crack-cocaine in the 1980s-90s. Most of the production took place in the United States and Mexico but was not having as much of an impact on society as crack was at the time.
So while meth had always been there, it wasn't something that really took off until the 1990s when new ways to make the drug became prominent to users.
Close-up of methamphetamine in its crystal form. The clarity of the crystal varies depending on the purity of the drug and chemicals used. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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One person familiar with the rise in the use of meth is Neama Rahmani. He worked in the United States Attorney's Office and prosecuted numerous meth cases. Before becoming the Director of Enforcement of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, he prosecuted a case against a fugitive murderer and drug kingpin who was featured on America's Most Wanted.
"Meth is cheap to manufacture," Rahmani told me in a telephone interview. "Unlike other hard narcotics (like cocaine that requires coca leaves and heroin that requires poppy flowers), it is entirely synthetic, which makes it easier to produce. Mexican cartels do not need to rely on organized crime in Columbia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, so they can keep all the profits. In addition, meth is highly addictive and the dosage is low (tenths of a gram), so the cartels make a huge profit on the drug."
This makes sense as reports now show that most of the meth in the United States is controlled by major drug cartels from Mexico.
Meth gets into the hands of users in many ways. A recent article in the Business Insider documented someone trying to smuggle the drug inside hollowed out tortilla shells. While the ingenuity shocked me, Rahmani didn't seem fazed.
"I've never seen it in tortillas, but I've seen meth smuggled in and transported through every possible means: body cavities, car compartments, toys, tunnels, drones, speed boats, and submarines. Nothing surprises me anymore."
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Methamphetamine hidden inside tortilla shells, recovered by Customs and Border Patrol officers in Arizona in October 2016. Image courtesy of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
After doing some more research, tortillas no longer surprise me either as meth can wind up anywhere. I even found a story about a user who deposited her meth at an ATM instead of the cash she intended to bank.
The drug has become so prominent in society there was a television series based on the manufacturing of the product.
Is Meth Here to Stay or Can It Be Stopped?
Wishful thinking I guess, but I still had to ask. With a drug as addictive as meth, stopping it is vital. Unfortunately, I do not see it being curbed anytime soon. History has shown us that the war on drugs has not been a successful one.
"The war on drugs will never be won," says Rahmani, confirming my sentiment. "Even on our best days, I'd estimate that we catch less than 10% of the drugs flowing into the United States."
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One of the dangers of methamphetamine is the mess it leaves behind. The chemicals used are hazardous and can cause death if inhaled. There have been many reports of houses blown up due to meth lab explosions. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Even though it seems like a losing battle, it is still one that many are willing to fight. In 2005, the United States enacted the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act (CMEA) which sought to regulate the purchase of ephedrine, a common ingredient in meth. This is the reason why you can no longer purchase certain over-the-counter medicines, such as Claritin-D, without showing your identification.
Statistics have not shown one way or another that CMEA has made a significant impact on the meth trade, but many believe it has.
"I think it's been very effective in reducing methamphetamine cooking in the United States," Rahmani says about the law. "You don't see labs in the desert like you used to find 10 years ago. Unfortunately, most of that activity has moved to super labs in Mexico, just a few miles south of the border."
The smuggling of the drug into the United States has also been a tough one to prosecute.
"The hardest cases to prosecute are supposed "blind mules,'" recalls Rahmani, of his time with the Justice Department. "They are low level individuals in the drug trade and they believe they are smuggling something else into the United States, and are caught with meth. They can be sympathetic defendants because they may be young, unsophisticated, and know very little about how the drug trafficking organizations operate. Sadly, they also take the biggest risk and get caught the most often."
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Final Thoughts
So can we make a dent in the meth epidemic in the United States? Hell, who am I to tell you. I'm just a writer. I gave up my life as a cop years ago. I will say that it is evident there is a problem and we as a society need to find a way to decrease drug use as a whole.
Rahmani has left the drug prosecution trade as well, currently working as a trial attorney for West Coast Trial Lawyers here in Los Angeles. But, while he spends his time in private practice taking on celebrities, others are still taking up the fight.
Before I leave you, I want to make sure you noticed how I used the term "victim of the drug" earlier in this story. After seeing what I have seen, there is no room for anyone to judge someone addicted to a dangerous drug. Unless you have been in their shoes (and I pray you never are), lean towards empathy and not criticism.
Running any business is hard. But running a seasonal business marked by sharp peaks and troughs at certain times of the year is not for the faint-hearted. Whether you run a beachside cafe in the summer months, or a festive business in the holidays; check out these 5 tips for making it a success.
1. Have Stellar Planning Skills
Running a successful seasonal business that can generate enough profit to last you through the year is all about careful planning. You'll need to know how much income to save for the quiet or non operational months. Analyze your potential sales volume and see how it compares with the cost of keeping your business open. That will help you decide whether to shut up shop or stay open during the quiet months, and if it's possible to hire full time employees.
For Rita's Water Ice, it doesn't make economic sense to keep their locations staffed during the winter when there is low demand for water ice. But, for your company, the numbers might allow you to stay open year-round. Most seasonal businesses scale up their employees and operations during the busy months, so you'll need to consider hiring workers on a contract basis. Make use of the extra time in the quiet season to plan ahead for when you're too busy to think clearly.
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2. Develop Alternative Sources of Income
You shouldn't allow any additional streams of revenue to interrupt or take focus from your core business. But, if you need to make ends meet throughout the rest of the year, making sure you have additional cash flow will ease the tension.
Think about selling products that are necessary during other seasons, if you have the means. For example, popular Chicago restaurant, Soupbox, rebrands itself as "Icebox" during the summer and sells frozen fruit juices and slushies. If that's not a possibility for you, then try to find additional part time work that doesn't take up too much of your time.
3. Be the Best at What You Do
If you're going to run a business that only operates several months of the year, you'll need to be the best at what you do. That's what Morgan and Dan Sevigny of Christmas Tree Brooklyn decided with their Christmas tree delivery service. You don't get much more seasonal than that.
They searched for ways to provide the best and cheapest services possible by running a streamlined operation. Dan explains, "the money we save on rent and staff we pass on to our customers. Delivery is free because it should be. You've already paid for the tree, why should you pay twice?"
4. Manage Your Employee Expectations
Every entrepreneur knows that hiring the right talent is the surest way of achieving success. But when you're running a seasonal business, sometimes it simply isn't possible to keep people on payroll twelve months of the year. So, be sure to manage your employees' expectations, making it very clear that it's a seasonal job.
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Keep on top of regulations for temporary workers and consider paying more than just the minimum wage. If you treat your employees well, they'll be more likely to come back next season, which reduces the employee learning curve. If you're able to keep a fixed team, make sure they have flexible skills that can transfer to planning, preparation, and tasks that are different in the down season.
5. Keep in Touch with Your Customers
Even if your business only operates for a few months a year, find a way of keeping in touch with your customers year-round. If your business opens in the summer, send a newsletter showing customers what the town looks like during the winter months.
By Janet Hernandez, Senior Civic Engagement Project Manager
Anthony Joel Chavez II woke up early on Election Day to go to the polls with his grandmother, Virginia. Anthony is a 19-year-old student at our Affiliate, East Austin College Prep, and a participant in our inaugural NCLR High School Democracy Project.
"I can't wait to vote," he said as we spoke to him about his first time voting. "I can't wait to make my voice heard."
Anthony learned about the importance of voting through the High School Democracy Project. The curriculum seeks to increase Latino youth participation in the electoral process. It is currently being implemented in 16 states across the country with 53 partners, which include community-based organization and schools.
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"My teachers explained to us the importance of voting. Before then, no one had talked to me about how important it is to make my voice heard," said Anthony.
As part of the curriculum, East Austin College Prep carried out a panel discussion with representatives from the Republican, Green, Democrat, and Libertarian parties in which they presented their political platforms to more than 100 youth. During the panel, Anthony asked the panelists for their position on free college education, and he felt like the Democrats and Republicans didn't adequately answer his question. He preferred the responses from the Libertarian and Green party representatives.
"I learned that when it comes to voting, you can't trust what you hear, you have to do your research and learn more about what the candidates are saying, so you can make a decision when you go to the polls," said Anthony. "You have to think for yourself. If people disagree, it doesn't matter, you have to make your own choice; that's how our democracy works."
Anthony said that he is looking for a president who is going to welcome immigrants and give them a chance to stay. "Immigrants know America is already great; that's why they come here, for a better life. If America welcomes immigrants, that makes us an even better country than we are," he said.
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The first-time voter has experienced immigration through his family and friends. His grandfather is an immigrant, as are many of his classmates at school. He reflected on the many conversations he's had this election season with his grandparents over the important issues of the day.
"My grandmother and I watch the news together in English and discuss what the politicians are proposing. When my grandfather joins the conversation we switch to Spanish, but the issues are the same," he said. "If we welcome immigrants, we would be twice as better and twice as strong."
ELKO Nevada voters head to the polls from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today or longer, if lines warrant to vote in the 2016 General Election.
Fifty-one percent of active voters in Elko County have already voted, according to the Nevada Secretary of States office. A total of 12,138 ballots were cast in early voting and absentee or mail-in ballots.
The early turnout in Elko County included 2,136 Democrats, 7,438 Republicans, and 2,564 other voters.
All Elko precincts vote today at the Elko Convention Center, along with Ryndon voters, according to the Elko County Clerk. Spring Creek residents vote at the Spring Creek Middle Schools multipurpose building.
Along with choosing a new president and senator, local voters will be selecting a justice of the peace and Elko City Council members. Five ballot questions also will be decided today.
The Elko Daily Free Press will begin posting results at elkodaily.com as soon as they are made available by the Nevada Secretary of State.
All products and services, everything we buy and use, have but one job--to modulate our mood. The fundamental reason we use technology of all sorts, from stone tools to the latest iPhone, is to make us feel better. To prove the point, consider how perception of relief is tantamount to actual relief. Consider the so-called placebo button.
Take, for example, the lowly crosswalk button. When we find ourselves at an intersection, waiting for a light to change, we tap the button, sometimes more than once. Most people believe these buttons are connected to some master control box that will signal the light to change so we can cross the street. In truth, these buttons often do nothing.
The crosswalk button is a relic of the age before computer-controlled traffic signals. In New York City, for instance, "the city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago," a New York Times article reported in 2004. Of the 3,250 walk buttons in the city at the time, some 2,500 were not functional. And yet, the Times noted, when faced with the buttons, "an unwitting public continued to push."
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Then there are elevator buttons. Have you ever noticed someone pushing the call button on an elevator when it's already lit? I must admit I've done it myself. Particularly when I'm in a rush, I want to make sure the button has been pressed correctly--as if there were a way to press it incorrectly. It's a wholly irrational response, yet in the moment, I can't help myself. When I push the button, I feel better.
Why? Because discomfort is often alleviated by action--by our doing something that makes us feel in control, even if, in reality, we have no control whatsoever.
Once inside the elevator, you may notice a hurried passenger pressing the close door button repeatedly, in hopes of speeding things along. But the button is another example of what's known as a "mechanical placebo." According to a 2008 article in the New Yorker, the close door buttons included in most elevators since the 1990s do not actually work the way passengers think. The buttons are installed for emergency personnel, not for the general public. Firefighters use the buttons to open and close doors between flights, but they can do so only with a key or other special instructions.
So why do we keep pushing the darned buttons? Of course, not all the buttons we encounter in our daily life are nonfunctional all the time. But how are we to know the difference? The crosswalk eventually flashes WALK, and the elevator door eventually closes. But rarely do we question whether a causal relationship exists.
In an essay on this topic in 2010, the author David McRaney observed: "If you happen to find yourself pressing a nonfunctional close-door button, and later the doors close, you'll probably never notice because a little spurt of happiness will cascade through your brain once you see what you believe is a response to your action. Your behavior was just reinforced. You will keep pushing the button in the future."
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Other controls are put in place for explicitly psychological reasons. If you work in an office building, there is a good chance your attempts to regulate the temperature in your office are just as futile as pushing a crosswalk button. With the advent of building-wide control systems, individual office thermostats often do little more than decorate the walls.
Giving workers the ability to regulate their own climates is expensive and often incites temperature wars, in which employees continually adjust the thermostat, wasting energy and inflaming tempers. However, building managers and air-conditioning specialists have found ways to placate workers. Greg Perakes, a climate control professional in Tennessee, told an industry publication, "We had an employee that always complained of being hot." Instead of giving the woman her own air-conditioning setup, Perakes decided to give her something else: the illusion of control.
Perakes provided the worker with a dummy thermostat connected to a small air pump. The pump drew air from the main climate control system through a rubber tube. Though the system did not actually change the temperature of her office, the pump made just enough noise for the employee to hear. "When she heard the hissing air coming ... she felt in control. We never heard another word about the situation from her again. Case solved."
Perakes is not alone in this slightly shady practice. A 2003 web survey appearing in the industry publication Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News revealed that 72 percent of industry professionals admitted to installing dummy thermostats. Many climate control veterans subscribed to the words of HVAC engineer Joe Olivieri, quoted as saying "Thermal comfort is 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical."
By connecting the actions we take with what appears to be a result, we form associations between behavior and outcome, even if there is no relationship between the two. We feel stress, we push a button, we experience some relief; something occurs after we push the button, and even if there's no way to know whether it's a direct response to our actions, we continue to feel relief.
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Though it's easy to feel deceived when confronted with a reality that challenges our perceptions, the technology doesn't actually lie to us--after all, these buttons are inanimate objects. More accurate would be to say that the technology helps us comfort ourselves. And the number of products that enable this self-comfort is far greater than you probably realize.
Much of the technology we fiddle with daily--our phones, our games, our apps--we use not only because of what they do, but because of how they make us feel. By giving us a sense of control, products can alter our mood and provide relief--even when it's all in our heads.
Nir's Note: The New York Times published a piece on a similar topic today. I've been working on this post (in spurts) for years. Seeing their post pushed me to stop delaying and finally hit publish on this essay. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please share it.
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In this Aug. 28, 1963 photo, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, gestures during his "I Have a Dream" speech as he addresses thousands of civil rights supporters gathered in Washington, D.C. onths before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous aI Have a Dreama speech to hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington in 1963, he fine-tuned his civil rights message before a much smaller audience in North Carolina. Reporters had covered Kingas 55-minute speech at a high school gymnasium in Rocky Mount on Nov. 27, 1962, but a recording wasnat known to exist until English professor Jason Miller found an aging reel-to-reel tape in the townas public library. (AP Photo)
"I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity .... This is the way I'm going. If it means suffering a little bit, I'm going that way. If it means sacrificing, I'm going that way. If it means dying for them, I'm going that way, because I heard a voice saying, 'Do something for others.'"
--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "The Good Samaritan," 1966
I have come to greatly admire, even to cherish the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. His courage, his selflessness, his love for humanity, his willingness to stand against anything that threatened the common good - these are among the aspects of King's character that deeply inspire me, as they do so many others. Today our common good is threatened, too; threatened by the ascendance of a selfish political demagogue who has made it his stock-in-trade to divide and deceive the people of this nation on a scale not seen for many decades. Those of us who cherish what Martin Luther King stood for must choose to stand as he chose to stand, and use our every resource to defeat this looming threat to the peace and wellbeing of our nation.
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Throughout his public life Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made it a point to neither publicly endorse nor publicly oppose any politician or political party. In the tradition of the biblical prophets who so influenced him, he conscientiously avoided political partisanship, instead maintaining an uncompromising stance of principled nonalignment that would allow him to speak truth to power with complete integrity. To this he made just one exception: the 1964 Republican presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. Because he saw the right-wing policies of Goldwater as dangerous both to the fabric of American society and to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, King set aside his principled stance of noninvolvement in electoral politics and vigorously campaigned against Goldwater, declaring with great chagrin that it was "disastrous that the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater as its candidate for President of the United States." He later explained, "The prospect of Senator Goldwater being President of the United States so threatened the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that I could not in good conscience fail to take a stand against what he represented."
King denounced the implicit racism in certain of Goldwater's proposals:
"The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding ... of the KKK with the radical right. ... While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand." A New Yorker magazine report from the 1964 campaign concurred: "Barry Goldwater had made it possible for great numbers of unapologetic white supremacists to hold great carnivals of white supremacy."
King also denounced Goldwater's approach to foreign policy, calling it, "a narrow nationalism, a crippling isolationism, and a trigger-happy attitude that could plunge the whole world into the dark abyss of annihilation." Most of the American electorate shared King's fear; Goldwater lost to incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson in one of the greatest landslides in electoral history.
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And with regard to the economic inequality and alleviation of poverty that weighed so heavily upon his heart, King was especially adamant: "On social and economic issues.... Mr. Goldwater had neither the concern nor the comprehension necessary to grapple with this problem of poverty in the fashion that the historical moment dictated."
King concluded: "[B]ecause of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every ... person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy."
It is quite striking that half a century after King's rebuke of Goldwater the same troubling rebuke can be leveled against the current Republican nominee, Donald Trump, virtually word for word, albeit now with a far greater sense of outrage and alarm. For Trump's political views are even more extreme - and much less coherent -- than the ideas of Goldwater that King considered much too dangerous to go unchallenged. Yet, there is one of King's observations of Goldwater that cannot be applied to Trump: there is no way that King could truthfully say that Donald Trump is not a racist. One cannot read Trump's mind, it is true, but his despicable race-baiting that has been on loud and ugly display for the many years he has been in the public eye speaks for itself.
In Goldwater's case, King did not believe that his social policies were especially based upon race; indeed, Goldwater was a founder of the Arizona NAACP. Although Goldwater's apparent lack of personal racism did not make his policies less repugnant to King, nonetheless he understood that Goldwater's unfortunate ideas were a function of his long held libertarian principles concerning the size and the role of government. In Trump's case, however, there is little to no evidence of him ever having publicly taken a principled position on any issue of significance. In fact, Donald Trump has made patently unprincipled dog-whistle racism and race-baiting foundational to his candidacy.
At virtually every campaign venue Trump's racist dog-whistle rants against Mexicans, Muslims, "the blacks" and others attract, in the words of the New Yorker account, "great numbers of unapologetic white supremacists" who, emboldened by Trump's rhetoric, quite gleefully turn his campaign stops into "great carnivals of white supremacy," replete with Confederate flags and insignia, proudly cheering members of the Ku Klux Klan (whom Trump initially refused to disavow) and various other white supremacist miscreants, many of them shouting venomous racial insults and assaulting any blacks within punching distance who dared to challenge Trump's uncivil spewings. And all this with the tacit support - if not the outright blessing ("I will pay for your court costs!") - of candidate Trump.
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If King, the uncompromising anti-war activist, feared what he called Goldwater's "trigger happy attitude," he would be horrified at the bellicose, trigger happy public statements made by Trump (and never disavowed by him), among them, "I love war" and "I would bomb the s**t out of them!" Surely as frightening for King would be Trump's self-willed ignorance of even the rudiments of foreign policy and diplomacy. This is reflected, for example, in his cavalier statement that he would turn over nuclear weapons to other countries because, "it's not like, gee whiz, nobody has them." Scores of high level diplomats, military and intelligence officials, even members of his own party, have publicly expressed fear for the nation's wellbeing if Trump is handed the keys to the Oval Office, convinced as they are that Trump's reckless and ill-informed approach to foreign policy would be disastrous. Martin Luther King would surely concur. As he wrote in Strength to Love, "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
The man who uttered, "I choose to identify with the poor ... if it means dying for them, I'm going that way," calls us to oppose Trump's economic plan because it treats the plight of poor and struggling Americans as an afterthought, yet benefits, in vast disproportion, the wealthiest Americans, including Trump himself. The plan proposes a deep cut to income taxes, elimination of both the inheritance tax and a tax on certain investments held by the very wealthy, all of which almost exclusively benefit those at the very pinnacle of the income ladder, yet it grants precious little of its largesse to those struggling on its lower rungs.
From all that we know of Martin Luther King, these political and economic considerations would be reason enough for him to exhort our nation to reject the candidacy of Donald Trump. They are more than enough reason for us to stand against Trump's toxic politics. However, in the spirit of King, there are reasons beyond political and economic considerations that compel us to labor for Trump's defeat. Those reasons reside in Trump's character.
Dishonesty. King said, "The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die." Donald Trump incessantly savages the truth to serve his own ends. Independent, nonpartisan fact-checkers attest that routinely 70-80 percent of Donald Trump's claims are completely or mostly untrue. That means that he has never given a speech to the American people that was not laced with lies, as any studious listener can well attest. Some of his lies are foolish and easily debunked. Others have been quite vicious, like his malicious claim that he witnessed "thousands of Muslims" cheering the destruction of 9/11, or his claim to have heard the young people of the Black Lives Matter movement advocate killing police. An above-the-fold headline in one of the nation's largest newspapers says it all: "Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate." Dishonesty has long been a feature of his much touted business dealings as well. By numerous accounts, he has cheated hundreds of venders by refusing to pay for goods or services rendered, or paying far less than was legitimately owed. As a result of Trump's sleazy, unethical cheating, a number of those businesses were forced into bankruptcy and shut their doors forever.
Lack of empathy for others. King has insisted, "An individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity....Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'" Donald Trump does not hesitate to hurt, insult or humiliate anyone when he feels the urge, regardless of the impact upon them. He sneeringly advocates torture of political prisoners and has even advocated wreaking vengeance against foreign terrorists by murdering their entire families, including their children. Glenn Beck, no bastion of compassion himself, said of Trump: "Have you seen him during the last year and a half truly feel for someone that couldn't help him? Truly connect on a human level, and say '.... I am deeply sorry for what I have said?' A sociopath is somebody who doesn't really see the human experience in anyone else .... I haven't seen him deeply affected by the human condition in an individual. Frightening." Trump is too stunted, too self-involved, too devoid of empathy and compassion to lead this nation. It truly is frightening, because a leader without compassion and empathy is just a step or two from becoming a despot and an agent of repression.
Lack of respect for democracy. King spoke admiringly of America's "great wells of democracy" in his first address to the Montgomery Improvement Association at the outset of its iconic bus boycott. He fought tirelessly for our nation to fulfill the promise of democracy until his dying breath. Trump, on the other hand, has shown little respect for the demands and accepted protocols of democracy, and less respect for the United States Constitution. He has repeatedly indicated his desire to abridge the rights and privileges, and to violate the privacy of certain Americans solely on the basis of their chosen religion. The autocratic tenor of Trump's pronouncements, the dictatorial tone with which he speaks to supporters at his rallies ("get 'em outta here," "throw them out!", "don't give them their coats") suggest that he views the presidency not as an opportunity to serve our nation, but as a coveted chance to rule it. He has spoken of his admiration for the authoritarian regimes of strongman dictators and nominally elected presidents like Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Russia's Vladimir Putin. His pledge to limit the freedom of the press in whatever ways that suit him; his strident advocacy of torture; his preposterous vow to deport America's eleven million undocumented workers; and his oft-voiced plan for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," would directly violate the first, eighth and fourteenth amendments of the US Constitution, respectively.
Lack of love for others. In the final analysis, it is the perception of a lack of love for all of humanity, regardless of their nationalities or religious origins, that compelled King to actively oppose the presidential bid of Barry Goldwater. Trump's hair-trigger eruptions of insult and meanness, his disdain for the Gold-star Khan family's loss of their decorated US soldier son, his cavalier attitude toward the torture of other human beings, his willingness to continually lie and cheat small-time and vulnerable vendors, particularly his propensity to lie and mislead millions of trusting Americans aspiring to a better way of life, all point to a manifest lack of love for humanity that King could not countenance. And we who cherish King must not countenance it either.
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With the full measure of our courage and our convictions, in this fraught and dangerous time we must echo the principled pronouncement of Martin Luther King and declare to every listening ear: "The prospect of Donald Trump being President of the United States so threatens the health, morality, and survival of our nation, that we cannot in good conscience fail to take a stand against who he is and what he represents."
A voter leaves the polling booth during the U.S. presidential election in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller
Alfred Olango. Terence Crutcher. Tyre King. Sandra Bland. Tamir Rice. Korryn Gaines. Philando Castile. The list is painful, and many of us are wondering if we will be next.
The headlines of police killing Black Americans and Latinos appear to be unending. Immigrant families are being torn apart by a prison industry that profits from detaining Black and Brown bodies. Flint residents still don't have clean water or answers. Workers are fired for demanding better pay, and sacred native land is threatened by gas companies.
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Our lives and our families matter. This election, we can't stay home, nor can we vote solely for the top of the ticket. We must go to the polls, vote all the way down ballot, including local races. We must vote like our lives depend on it.
While all eyes are trained on the high-stakes presidential election, we should be careful not to overlook the crucial races that could make the difference between whether our families stay together; between surviving and thriving; between life and death.
Across the country elected prosecutors, police chiefs, city councils, mayors and judges are making the policy decisions that unjustly send people to jail and that bury people under fines when they cannot pay for something as simple as a parking ticket. They are the ones who refuse to prosecute when a police officer shoots and kills an unarmed individual.
The two years since the killing of Michael Brown have confirmed what we already suspected: the same injustices led people out to those streets of Ferguson are happening on a regular basis across the country. Marion County, Indiana may seem far from Ferguson, Missouri, but in reality, local policies aren't all that different.
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Blacks are over three times more likely to be in jail than the white residents in Marion County, Indiana, which received an 'D' from PICO National Network as a part of their deep-dive into mass incarceration and policing policies in counties across the country. PICO found that extraordinarily high rates of incarceration are concentrated in areas with high Black and Latino populations.
In the nearly 30 years between 1985 and 2014, the jail population per capita in the county doubled. The number of jailed women in that time period increased by 145 percent. More than forty-four percent of people who spent time behind bars in Marion County were found innocent or had their charges dismissed after spending more than 30 days in jail. More than 5 percent of those individuals spend more than six months in jail.
Like many cities and counties across the country, Marion County's prosecutor, mayor and police chief are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of all people in the county. But collectively they have pursued policies that effectively and intentionally criminalize Black and Latino communities.
We know that showing up to the polls can make a difference in these races and that your vote will make a difference.
In Chicago, voters stood up and defeated Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, who refused to act for over a year in the death of Laquan McDonald at the hands of the police. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was gunned down, voters helped Michael O'Malley unseat Timothy McGinty, who didn't bring charges against the police officer in the case.
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Fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia. The prefix 'coulro' comes from the ancient Greek word for 'one who goes on stilts.'
Early in the appallingly long campaign for the U.S. presidency, Carly Fiorina's ex-husband said of her and of the Republican side of the race: "In the clown car that is the Republican Party, she's the ultimate clown." Almost.
The full array of individuals seeking the Republican nomination was unrelievedly bad: clowns all but each with his or her uniquely unpleasant and insulting variation. In many ways the ultimate nominee was the appropriate distillation of their meanness and vitriol, a man who reliably offered up "BS on stilts." Generally, when someone repeatedly and loudly insists on everyone believing how smart he is and how rich he is, he is likely to be neither. He is fundamentally impoverished.
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I do not fear these clowns so much as the culture they represent, their deeply flawed view of America and the democratic experiment. It is commonly assumed that the ultimate nominee hijacked the Republican Party. Actually it's the other way back: the Party hijacked the nominee.
The nominee's insatiable quest for adoration and sycophancy made him an easy mark for the tea party-ists, the alt-rightest, the racist, the bullies, the xenophobes, the misogynists, the unrepentant Confederates, the gullible, the wise (sic) users, the KKKlaners, the Birchers, the Koch-heads, the McCarthy-ites, the nuke-em-'til-they-glowers, the birthers, the rapacious, the climate change deniers ... and the deeply cynical. The more absurd his statements, the louder they cheered. The more they cheered, the more absurd he became until he emerged under their direction and with their support probably the most deformed and reprehensible clown ever to strut on the American political stage.
Donald Trump has always been a parody. His constituents, with fulsome media connivance, led him speech by speech, rally by rally, primary by primary to full out public self-parody. The important lesson we have learned is not that the ultimate nominee is a loathsome clown. That was apparent without the unendurable agony of the primary season. The important lesson is that the ultimate nominee is a creation of the Republican "base." He is the avatar, the distillation, the decoction, the voice, the representative, the essence, the apotheosis of the pitiful remains of what was once the GOP, the Grand Old Party, the Party of Abraham Lincoln.
The spectacle of Republican Party officials and Paul Ryan and John McCain and all the other local, state and national candidates trying to ride the beast of their creation while denying his existence would beggar belief had the media not profited from normalizing the circus. That spectacle is the manifest reduction to absurdity of an American political party which no longer believes in democracy ("I'll accept the results if I win"), a party that is contemptuous of the citizenry (tax the poor and middle classes for the benefit of the rich and of transnational corporations), a party that is in full revolt against reality, a party that routinely threatens violence against them who are not us.
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Presidential Candidate Donald Trump / Photo Credit ABC News
A last minute wave of early voters have come to the polls against Donald Trump in sudden support for Hillary Clinton before election day that may block the incendiary GOP's candidate's hopes of attaining the Presidential office.
A surge of Hispanic, African American and women voters have cast their ballots early. A democratic push just in Clarke County, Nevada, had more than 57,000 voters organized from culinary union local 226, casting their ballots on their final day, to make a new record. Hispanic voter turnout in Florida is up 103% from last year which has helped tip the early voting ballots for that entire state in the favor of Democrats. A recent national poll of African American voters showed 90% of women stated they were coming out to vote compared to 82% of the men. And in Ohio early voting shows Hillary at 48%, Trump at 41%. With early voting Women at 57%, and at Men 43%.
The question is does this last minute swell of early voters in minority demographics indicate the pulse of the nation tomorrow on election day? Statisticians already have the vote projection tipping in the battleground states of Nevada and Florida, as well as North Carolina for Hillary Clinton. And the Democratic candidate leads in varying national polls from 3 to 7 percent.
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Trump, the provocative and inflammatory candidate, notorious for abusive and shocking rhetoric on the campaign trail, has already gone down in history as a polarizing figure breaking new ground in normalizing hate speech as well as making threats and accusations embedded in campaign promises.
"I'm building a wall," became a famous catch phrase for the candidate who promised to build a 2000 mile wall twenty feet high (though sometimes he's said as high as 55 feet) along the southern border of the United States to stop illegal immigration (though he has re-adjusted that to 1000 miles due to natural land barriers), "Mexico will pay for it," became his famous tag line to his pledge. He promised to keep out the worst that Mexico had to send us on the day he announced his candidacy, "When Mexico sends their people they're not sending their best...they're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists..." This even though statistically illegal immigration is down even as Trump claimed it was up.
Though no actual wall building plan has ever been presented by the Trump campaign on the cost, materials required or labor force organized, housed and maintained for the process of building such a structure that would equal 33 empire state buildings or 51 Hoover Dams, economists and engineers have roughly estimated the cost between $10 Billion and $25 Billion. (N.A.S.A.'s yearly operating budget is $17 Billion, to give you a sense of scope).
When meeting with Mexican President Pena Nieto in August, Trump famously avoided the topic of the wall in conversations with the press afterwards saying 'we didn't discuss it," disputing the Mexican President's comments and Tweets that they did discuss it and Nieto made it very clear "Mexico will not pay for the wall."
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Calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S. became another Trump catch phrase and campaign promise, along with the deporting of 11 million illegal immigrants in America.
Promising a "kind hearted deportation policy," as well as a deportation force to enforce it, this familiar formula of Trump's 'tough talk' is always entangled in how much he admires/likes an item as he is also crucifying it. "He was a war hero because he was captured, I like people who weren't captured," Trump said of Senator John McCain.
Examples of his blaming, bullying, humiliating style was recorded by the New York Times, 282 People Places and Things Donald Trump has Insulted on Twitter, and which are too many to list here. And while it has shocked the nation it has inspired his core supporters.
Twenty four hours before election day finds an electorate exhausted by the media onslaught over the past 18 months promoting Trump with endless free air time and phone-ins on every cable news network, sometimes daily. The candidate rose to power with a blaming and revengeful style that crossed new lines in civil behavior during public presentations. Supporters who felt this 'authentic' talk proved Trump wasn't owned by corporate interests helped him rise in popularity and become the GOP nominee.
At the Republican convention in July seemingly against the wishes of many within his own party, a movement called "NeverTrump, hoping to derail his nomination process, was neutered on the convention floor. Top Republican officials like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Congressman Jason Chaffetz R-UT, have still not endorsed the Republican candidate and refuse to campaign with him. Other elected Republican officials like Marco Rubio R-FLA and Senator Jeff Sessions R-AL are solidly behind him and actively campaigning for him.
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In twenty four hours the Republican candidate will discover if his divisive message has unified a coalition of Americans behind him that can sweep him to the highest office of the most powerful country on Earth, or if his firebrand messages of enmity, hostility and protectionism have divided not just the country, but his own party which shows the wear and tear of deep in-fighting, shock and a numbed despair (Congressman Jason Chaffetz:" "I'm out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine.").
The hate groups empowered to come out of the shadows during the rise of Donald Trump's campaign are linked to his failure to repudiate the KKK and White Nationalists who supported his candidacy along the way. The 'mainstreaming' of American hatred may be Trump's lasting legacy after his campaign is over as these groups wrap themselves in support of Trump for legitimacy, while still espousing purity of race ideology, rejection of the Holocaust as fabrication and the inferiority of non-whites as reasons for hostile discourse towards minorities.
As Trump climbed to the top of the political spectrum with his time worn techniques of brash pugilism that have served him well in his confrontational business style, critics feel the fall out from his campaign's toxic oratory has maligned ethnicities and their support is irreparably fading now at the end of his campaign.
The October surprise of Trump on video tape revealing sex crimes he had committed in his own words to Billy Bush on the now famous Access Hollywood video tape that was leaked with Trump on an open microphone saying: "...just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything....grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." Many critics felt this pivotal moment lost Trump a major block of his support on his own side where women were supporting him by a majority to men.
It has recently been reported that his own campaign has taken away access to his own Twitter account, hoping to avoid a new self inflicted headline against himself, like his 3am tweets attacking Alicia Machado, a former beauty queen in his own pageant that Hillary Clinton mentioned as a victim of his abuse in their third and last debate.
"Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an "angel" without checking her past, which is terrible!" was just one of his 2AM tweets.
Upon review her past wasn't terrible at all and in fact Mr. Trump was revealed as cruel to her during her Beauty Queen year and he taunted her relentlessly, calling her "Miss Piggy" and "Miss House Cleaning" behind the scenes as owner of the pageant.
To those who know how level headed one has to be to be trusted with the nuclear codes, not trusting the candidate with his own Twitter account seems like a low bar to hurdle, and as he seems unable to do so does raise eyebrows from his critics.
The number of Illinoisans who voted early, before Election Day, has reached record levels.
As of Monday morning -- the last day of early voting -- 1.267 million voters had cast their ballots statewide. When vote by mail and grace period ballots are included, that figure is about 1.6 million, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections website.
Between VBM, EV and grace we've had 1.6m votes already cast, if you assume total statewide will be 5.2 - 5.5m then ~ 30% have voted already. IL Election Data (@ILElectionData) November 7, 2016
In Chicago, the in-person early voting tally topped 286,000, easily breaking the previous record set in the 2008 presidential election when early votes in President Barack Obama's hometown totaled a little more than 260,000.
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Early voting, which began on Sept. 29, also reached a new high in suburban Cook County, where more than 320,000 people had cast their ballots, compared to 228,695 in the 2012 presidential election and 226,084 in 2008.
The record number of Illinoisans casting ballots ahead of Election Day has been attributed in large part to an extended voting period, longer polling hours and heightened interest in the presidential contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
Scott Kennedy, who runs the website Illinois Elections Data, said in an email "convenience, availability and the opportunity to put the election behind you all combine to increase the appeal of early voting."
While there is some consensus early voting is favoring Democrats on the ballot, Kennedy said he isn't certain one party is benefitting over the other considering an estimated 30 percent of vote came early.
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"Beyond just the raw totals of how many early voters there are it's important to know who is voting early, the campaigns have this information in their voter files but us laypeople don't have that granular detail so it's hard to say for sure," Kennedy said.
"I think the increase in participation has more to do with convenience than necessarily an indication of high voter enthusiasm and it's inconclusive whether either party is the beneficiary, but the areas of the state with the greatest population density tend to have the most early voting locations and those areas typically favor Democrats," he added.
Kevin Lampe, executive vice president of Kurth Lampe, a Democratic public affairs firm, said he wasn't impressed with the GOP's ground game in the Chicago suburbs, and believes Democrats have done a much better job at targeting and motivating voters.
Lampe also thinks people are underestimating women voters, noting the ballot is dominated by female candidates.
"Female voters are flexing their political muscle and rightfully so," Lampe said. "The era of the white male is over."
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But early voting isn't the only thing seeing historic numbers in Illinois.
As of Monday, total voter registration stood at 8.028 million, and that figure likely will increase as residents can register to vote through Election Day under the state's new same-day voter registration law.
Dear Victor,
I am writing to share my voice about what is happening in the US currently. The issues surrounding this election have affected many globally, especially those who believe in human rights, diversity and what the US First Lady once termed as "basic human decency." I know that some people may ask why I care about the US elections when I am not a US citizen. But probably that is because some don't know me fully and how I value every human being on earth. The US is considered a point of reference for many of us around the world. Sometimes people may think that because the US is a super power, it doesn't need to be prayed for. But to me this is not right. The US needs our prayers now not only because of its global influence, but because of how interconnected we are as humans. When the world prayed for the kidnapped Chibok girls in Nigeria, we acted because our human nature is one of inter-connectedness as people of many different religious backgrounds, spiritual expressions and Indigenous traditions. A peaceful election and post-election healing are much needed in the US for our brothers and sisters, colleagues, friends and relatives alike, and for people around the world. As the world struggles with so many situations of division, hate, conflict, discrimination and human rights abuses, we need to use our spirituality for cultivating the good within ourselves and beyond our borders. May peace prevail in the US. May peace prevail everywhere on earth.
Blessings from here and thank you, Despina Namwembe
On October 31, 2016, United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Samantha Power called on Saudi Arabia to end its airstrikes against Iran-allied Houthi rebels in Yemen. Although Saudi Arabia has rhetorically expressed willingness to consider a peace settlement, Riyadh has continued its relentless air campaign and has shown few signs of kowtowing to international pressure.
Since the start of the Saudi military intervention in Yemen in March 2015, many analysts have framed Saudi Arabia's actions in Yemen in strategic terms by highlighting the kingdom's rivalry with Iran for hegemony in the Middle East. In recent months, the ambiguous linkage between Iran and Yemen's Houthi forces, and the steep financial costs of Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen have caused some regional analysts to challenge these assumptions.
Growing skepticism of strategic arguments and official justifications for Saudi Arabia's conduct in Yemen is justified. Based on my research at Oxford on the foreign policy conduct of authoritarian regimes, there is compelling evidence that Saudi Arabia's seemingly endless war in Yemen is motivated largely by domestic political considerations. Several factors stand out as particularly striking and I will delve into these rationales in greater depth below:
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1) King Salman is Using the War in Yemen to Rally Anti-Iranian Nationalism Around the Saudi Monarchy
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Saudi Arabia's foreign policy has been defined by Riyadh's overarching desire to undercut Iranian geopolitical influence in the Middle East. In recent years, however, Saudi Arabia has been increasingly willing to use military force to counter Iranian involvement in Middle East crises. Saudi Arabia's 2011 repression of Shiite demonstrators in Bahrain, extensive arms provisions to Sunni Syrian rebels and bombings in Yemen have spiraled Riyadh-Tehran tensions to new heights.
Despite the growing coherence of Riyadh's anti-Iranian foreign policy, there is clear evidence that much of the anti-Iranian rhetoric surrounding Saudi Arabia's intervention in Yemen is based on hyperbolic assessments of Tehran's geopolitical role. Even though Iran's Fars News Agency has admitted to supplying missiles and providing military training for Yemen's Houthi rebels, the scope of Iranian support for Houthi forces in Yemen is unclear.
In a May 2016 Chatham House Report, Thomas Juneau argued that the Saudi monarchy has mischaracterized the Houthis as Iranian proxies. According to Juneau, Iran has used its alliance with the Houthis to gain leverage in Yemen but lacks the capabilities or the will to provide enough resources to drastically shift the balance of power in the Houthis' favor.
Saudi Arabia's exaggeration of Iran's destabilization role in Yemen bears striking parallels to King Abdullah's conduct during the Arab Spring. At the height of the protests in 2011, Saudi media outlets frequently insinuated that Bahrain's Arab Spring demonstrations were not genuine demonstrations of discontent, but were instead instigated by the Iranian government.
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Concerns about a potential Iranian coup in Bahrain allowed Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to intervene in Bahrain with little backlash and helped prevent large-scale Arab Spring protests in other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. Fears of Iranian interference also allowed the Saudi monarchy to repress the 2011 Shiite demonstrations in the Eastern Province with impunity.
During a period of low oil prices and economic turmoil, King Salman has used its air campaign in Yemen to rally the Saudi public around a common Shiite enemy. The Yemen war, combined with escalated repression at home (execution rates are at their highest level since 1995), has entrenched the Saudi monarchy's stability and has durably increased the importance of foreign policy as a guarantor of regime legitimacy.
2) Saudi Arabia has Rallied Public Support Around the Idea that its War in Yemen is a Defensive Mission
Even though the hardening of anti-Iranian sectarian sentiments in Saudi Arabia has made military aggression easier for the kingdom to justify, Saudi policymakers have been careful to frame Riyadh's air campaign in Yemen as a defensive mission. The origins of Saudi Arabia's defensive war against the Houthis date back to November 2009, when Houthi forces killed 2 Saudi border guards and occupied the strategically important Saudi territory of Mount al-Doud. Saudi Arabia retaliated by launching military operations against Houthi forces, which successfully countered the threat posed by the Shiite insurgency.
Even though Saudi Arabia justified its 2009-2010 military operations in Yemen on national security grounds, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that Saudi Arabia was primarily interested in destabilizing Yemen rather than protecting its borders. Nevertheless, Saudi policymakers have continued to downplay the strategic dimensions of the Yemen conflict to the public, insisting that Houthi rocket firings on Saudi soil demonstrate that Iranian belligerence in Yemen poses an imminent threat to Saudi Arabia's security.
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Periodic Houthi retaliations and concerns about Iran's growing military capabilities have allowed Saudi Arabia to extend the length of its campaign in Yemen with little risk of domestic war fatigue or public backlash. To prove that its ambitions in Yemen are largely defensive, Saudi policymakers have also denied allegations of war crimes leveled against King Salman.
On November 3, Saudi Major General Ahmed Asseri vehemently denied Riyadh's use of cluster bombs in Yemen, and accused international media outlets of smearing Saudi Arabia's reputation. Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Abdullah Al-Saud repeated Asseri's denials, by bizarrely asking the journalist who questioned him to stop beating his wife. Saudi policymakers' clever deflections from the humanitarian costs of the Yemen war have prevented the Saudi public from viewing King Salman's Yemen campaign as an act of unbridled aggression, and bolstered confidence in the Saudi monarchy during a critical period.
3) Saudi Arabia's Yemen War Bolsters Domestic Perceptions of Riyadh's Regional Influence
In addition to the security concerns associated with instability in Yemen, King Salman has been able to rally the Saudi public around the Yemen war by highlighting its positive impact on Saudi Arabia's international status. The expansion of Saudi Arabia's perceived international influence has been palpable both in the Middle Eastern context and with respect to Riyadh's relationship with the United States.
Saudi Arabia has been able to assert itself as a country powerful enough to lead a GCC military coalition in Yemen. This is a historic achievement for Saudi Arabia, as Riyadh has been able to demonstrate its regional influence outside the umbrella of US leadership. The unilateralism inherent in Saudi Arabia's military actions differs markedly from past successful campaigns like the 1991 Gulf War. During the Gulf War, Riyadh was one of the leading financiers of the campaign to expel Iraq from Kuwait but was undeniably a secondary military power to the United States.
Other GCC countries have been willing to participate in the Saudi-led coalition, because intervening in Yemen is a relatively low-cost endeavor. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, and the limited ability of Yemeni rebels to retaliate against Saudi Arabia or its allies have encouraged the creation of a durable military coalition. Public perceptions of Saudi hegemony in the Middle East give considerable credit to the increasingly beleaguered Al Saud monarchy.
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In addition, Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen has demonstrated its indispensability to Western powers and the limits of any US thaw in relations with Iran. The decision of US officials to arm Saudi Arabia, in spite of growing tensions between the two countries is a major symbolic victory for Riyadh.
As Gulf security expert Theodore Karasik noted last summer, Saudi Arabia's war with Yemen has increased public consciousness of the country's international status and fuelled nationalist sentiments. The perception that Saudi Arabia, by staying in Yemen, is on the cusp of a major strategic victory over Iran that will give it international respect, has justified Grand Mufti Abdel Aziz Al Sheikh's increasingly vocal calls for national support and self-sacrifice.
Even though Western analysts have frequently described Saudi Arabia as an archetypical strategic, realist actor in the Middle East, Riyadh's conduct in Yemen reveals that the Saudi monarchy is greatly concerned about national identity and regime consolidation. In order to implement a durable resolution to the Yemen war, Western policymakers must recognize the importance of international status and nationalism to the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy. Only then will the US will be able to propose a deal that King Salman views an honorable enough peace to end the harrowing violence in Yemen once and for all.
Taiwan has a reputation as the most gay-friendly country in all of Asia -- over Halloween weekend, over 80,000 people attended Taiwan Pride -- but even there, same-sex marriage is illegal. But thankfully, that's likely to change by the end of the year.
Taipei Pride Parade By Carrie Kellenberger
Not just that, but for the first time, Taiwan has a president who's an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights. It's not just the president -- 71 percent of Taiwanese citizens want marriage equality, too. In fact, there are Taiwanese jurisdictions where same-sex couples are allowed to register as partners.
But as we saw in the United States prior to the historic 2015 Supreme Court ruling, half measures aren't the same as true marriage. In Kaohsiung, if you register your partner, it only applies to civil documents, but not health care.
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This injustice recently came to light in Taiwan after the suspected suicide of Jacques Picoux. Picoux was a gay professor living in Taipei; last year, his partner of 35 years died of cancer. Unfortunately, because the laws didn't reflect society accurately, Picoux was banned from making end-of-life decisions for his partner. Not just that, but when his partner died, Picoux had no legal claim to any of their shared property.
Jacques Picoux. Source: Museum of Modern Art, Taipei.
Thankfully, Picoux's death will not be in vain. After the uproar about the injustice Picoux faced in life, politicians drafted a bill to add LGBTQ protections to family law.
Marriage equality was also a frequent topic of the Mr. Gay Taiwan contest. In an interview with Unicorn Booty, Touya Xiao, this year's winner said: "Some traditional people consider that the LGBTQ people are a kind of disaster or even a punishment from God. They think we need to recover. They deprive us our right to get married to someone we love. In fact, we just love in a different way from others."
It's up to everyone to make sure that marriage equality happens in Taiwan and ultimately the whole world. That's why, in addition to sponsoring Mr. Gay Taiwan, Hornet made its first donation Taiwan Pride. We all should be committed to making sure stories like Jacques Picoux's become history.
If elected, Raja Krishnamoorthi will only be the second Indian American in Congress, even though the South Asian community is one of the fastest growing and economically strong communities in the United States. For years being invisible and faceless -- and often stereotyped as the model minority -- historically, South Asians have not been politically assertive in the U.S.
This may be changing. Krishnamoorthi, who is running from the 8th Congressional District in Illinois, asserts that even as a Democratic candidate, he has received bi-partisan support on what he calls the "samosa circuit." He coined the term, he says, to acknowledge the South Asians who have come out to support him not just in Illinois's eighth district from where he is running, but Indian Americans around the country who have hosted fundraisers or supported his campaign whole heartedly. Along with chai and samosas, a typical Indian high tea menu, he notes that the support has been very gratifying.
As of 2010 census, India was the country of origin of the second-largest group of immigrants to the Midwest -- second only to Mexico. An overarching idea of a common South Asian background is implied when they are referenced as "Desi."
Raja says he likes the term "Desi," as it is an inclusive one and shuns differences that are religious geographical or cultural. And "Desi" might just be that unifying term that reflects the mosaic of the South Asian community even as Latino also sums up a complex set of identities.
He refers to his being comfortable with his own background as the son of Indian immigrant parents and feels unabashed pride in associating himself with his heritage, including his not easy to pronounce name. He has been called "Raja Pepper" by the Hispanic community and "Roger Christian Murphy" by the Irish Italian in his district.
Jeremy Gevinson, who assists in his campaign office points out that at Indian American galas when Krishnamoorthi talks to the community, he says, "When I go to Congress, it won't just be me there, it will be all of us there. Everyone will have a voice at the table." He stresses how Krishnamoorthi is a voice for everyone, not like Bobby Jindal, former Governor of Louisiana, uncomfortably trying to distance himself from the South Asian community."
Photo credit: Dr Veerpal Singh (on the candidate's left), the candidate Raja Krishnamoorthi (center) and Krishna Mushyam, (on the candidates's right)
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The candidate flanked by a couple of Indian Americans from South Barrington, Illinois, at a fundraiser held for him by Dr Veerpal Singh in his home.
"He is our face for tomorrow and motivation for our kids," says Veerpal Singh, a physician who hosted a fundraiser for Krishnamoorthi in his South Barrington home. Veerpal clarifies that he is not into politics, and not even a registered Democrat, but he feels that Krishnamoorthi is "one of us" and "understands the working class as well as our society, culture and community." Krishnamoorthi frequently talks about his childhood with hardworking immigrant parents and embraces his cultural heritage and identity with pride.
According to the 2010 census, there are over 92,000 Asian Americans in the 8th Congressional District, and over 43,000 of them are South Asian, but civic engagement has been a challenge for this community in the past. Raja knows this first hand -- he lost by a margin of less than 300 votes in another run for public office in this district.
The sizable Indian population in this district can be seen at the flagship Indian grocery chain - Patel Brothers in Schaumburg. The signage in front of the store besides the name reads : Celebrating our foods... Our culture. "This cultural belonging needs to translate into a sense of civic belonging and participation as well," says Kapur, of SAAPRI.
The Patel Brothers flagship store in Schaumburg, where fresh chappatis are an attraction.
Whether showcasing the iconic three-wheeler auto-rickshaw at the store entrance a few months ago, or the automated chappati-maker -- that churns out fresh Indian wheat breads in an assembly line everyday -- the store offers a complete "Desi" experience replete with Indian vegetables and spices. However as South Asians in this area have almost doubled, spawning the rise of such ethnic retail establishments, will that translate to a more cohesive identity and more civic engagement?
"I voted for him in the primary and he won the election this time." says Vithalbhai Patel, who immigrated to the Chicago area after living in Africa for 40 years. This April in the primary he voted for the first time, after becoming a citizen. As he shopped in the packed aisles of Patel Brothers, the candidate he referred to was Raja Krishnamoorthi.
The lack of voter engagement has flown under the radar in how it has impacted Krishnamoorthi's earlier runs for public office. In an earlier attempt at public office in 2010, he ran for State Comptroller and lost the race by less than 1%. This startlingly slim margin of defeat becomes important when we bear in mind the low voter engagement within the South Asian community. Krishnamoorthi says that given a different level of voter engagement, "it is very possible that that race could have had a different outcome."
"According to analysis by Asian Americans Advancing Justice -- Chicago, fewer than 300 votes decided the 2010 general election in this district," says Reema Kapur, of SAAPRI, South Asian American Policy & Research Institute, a non-partisan, organization, "Our community members know that if they show up in November, they can decide the winner." Even so do most members of the community know that an Indian American is running for Congress?
Krishnamoorthi is grateful for the support he has from the South Asian community and hopes that it translates into votes come November. He says that sometimes even dispelling simple myths may promote civic participation. He mentioned some misperceptions he encountered from within the community like -- if they voted then the chances of them being selected for jury duty may go up. Also if they understood they had options like early voting or mailing in their ballots then they may not worry so much about taking time off from work and family. "Voting on the day of the elections is not their only choice."
Whether it is his volunteer base, his campaign donors or supporters who display signs and tell their friends and neighbors, he says that everyday he is energized by the young Indian Americans who volunteer at his Schaumburg office.
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Sorry, but Ive seen this movie before and I know how it ends. There will never be a criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton for two basic reasons: First, shes a cautious, intelligent politician who doesnt take reckless chances. How many failed investigations before Republicans get that?
Second, bogus charges against prominent individuals with first-rate attorneys endanger the prosecution more than the defense. You think the formerly eminent Kenneth Starr fled to Waco, Texas because he was insufficiently partisan? His ace prosecutors lost every Whitewater trial except the one where they convicted his own star witness, poor, sick Jim McDougal.
But lets go back to the starting place, October 1992, because what happened then has a direct bearing on todays headlines.
Based upon some inept, not particularly honest articles in the New York Times, an unqualified partisan in the Treasury Department she later admitted selling Presidential Bitch coffee mugs from her government office cobbled together criminal referrals naming just about every prominent Democrat in Arkansas as a suspect in McDougals financial shenanigans.
They included Bill and Hillary Clinton, who the evidence would show and Kenneth Starrs prosecutors eventually argued in open court had been swindled and lied to in McDougals vain attempt to keep his foundering savings and loan, Madison Guaranty, from going under.
As the 1992 presidential election grew closer, the partisan L. Jean Lewis began to pressure the Little Rock FBI office and U.S. Attorney Charles Chuck Banks to investigate the Clintons. Banks was a lifelong Republican whod been nominated to a federal judgeship by President Bush. Unless the president was re-elected, Banks would lose two good jobs.
Having previously prosecuted McDougal, Banks and his staff found Lewis work both factually deficient and politically motivated. Soon, pressure began to come from FBI headquarters in Washington. Bush administration Attorney General William Barr demanded action.
So the Republican prosecutor wrote a letter to the Department of Justice dated Oct. 16, 1992. Here is what it said:
(T)he insistence of urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election. You and I know in investigations of this type, the first steps such as issuance of grand jury subpoenas for records will lead to media and public inquiries about matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions ... all too often publicly purport to legitimize what cant be proven.
For me personally to participate in (such an) investigation ... amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy. I cannot be a party to such actions.
He promised to direct any press inquiries to the attorney general, which would have been politically devastating in that innocent era before the United States current flirtation with fascism.
Banks understood that whoever won the 1992 election, his political career was over. He preferred to keep his honor.
History records that he was also right on the merits.
Legitimize what cant be proven. Remember that phrase as you watch cable TV hucksters hyperventilate about FBI Director James Comeys ill-advised and arguably illegal October surprise.
Meanwhile, dont tell me what a terrific lawyer and standup guy Comey used to be. That guy no longer exists. What we have instead is a spineless partisan who planted an IED in the middle of the 2016 presidential election apparently because he feared criticism from GOP congressmen who drink from Presidential Bitch coffee mugs.
And who tried to explain away his original weasel-worded letter to Congress with an even more craven apology to his FBI colleagues.
Given that we dont know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, Comey whined, I dont want to create a misleading impression.
Oh no, anything but that!
He also admitted, There is significant risk of being misunderstood.
Well Im sorry, but Theres just no chance that a Washington insider as experienced and ambitious as Comey could possibly not anticipate the feverish speculation his letter was certain to set off.
My goodness, does the man not own a TV set? Has he never seen Wolf Blitzer in action? Breaking News! Bombshell!
Has Comey been unaware of Donald J. Trump barnstorming around the country promising to put Crooked Hillary in prison while his supporters chant Lock her up?Psychologists call it projection: The only way to rationalize supporting a moral cripple like Trump is to convince yourself his opponent is worse.
Such antics risk a descent into the kind of society where the only real police are the Secret Police, and the judiciary exists to rationalize brutality. A society like Vladimir Putins Russia, for example, where the bureaucracy is filled with useful drones who have bartered their honor for comfortable positions.
Comey could undo some of the terrible harm hes done to American democracy if hed simply admit error and resign.
Alas, I just dont think its in him.
This is not a political statement. Look across the aisle or on you screen, and you will hear a conversation about blacks that is grounded in a perspective that centers on weakness and 'lack.'
Changing the Dialogue
Fear and emotions can often make us miss what's happening as a normal part of evolution. Often missing from the dialogue around blacks and money is that income growth rates of black households in the United States are outpacing those of whites at every annual income level above $60,000.
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In fact, the largest increase for African American households occurred in the number of households earning over $200,000, with an increase of 138%, compared with a total population increase of 74%.
None of this undermines the reality, however, that there are a whole host of factors including racism, lack of access to capital, and lack of opportunities to build knowledge and experience when it comes to money, that have been real barriers for the black community.
When you take a look at the financial history of blacks in the United States, however, the fact that we have become such an economic force is one of the greatest examples of resilience in modern history.
Major Money Moments in Black History
It is imperative that we understand the financial history of blacks in order to help reframe the conversation around the group. For example, on March 3, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln tried to improve the financial circumstances of blacks by creating the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, commonly known as the Freedman's Bank.
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Within 10 years, those newly freed slaves amassed $57 million. They built communities, schools, hospitals, and really created their own economy. Due to corruption, and reckless spending, however, the institution failed in 1874. The depositors were never reimbursed, despite efforts by Frederick Douglass to secure a promise from Congress to reimburse 65% to the depositors who had money in the institution. The deposits were never reimbursed. That money would have been trillions of dollars in the community today.
Turn the clock forward, and between 1880 and 1930, millions of blacks moved north as farming and sharecropping became less lucrative, and new jobs in industry were being created in the north, according to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund. Land ownership among blacks peaked at 15 million acres in 1910, of which 218,000 black farmers were full or part owners. A steady decline of landownership begins after that. Among households whose wealth grew during this time, the number of years owning a home accounted for nearly 30% of the difference in the relative growth of wealth between white and black families.
Look only a few years back, and you can see how the predatory lending practices that led to the housing market bust, wreaked havoc on the black community. Not only did 240,000 blacks lose their homes, but by 2031, a typical Black household's wealth is forecast to be nearly 40% lower than it would have been without the Great Recession. As a result, the overall wealth disparity between White and Black homeowners, which had been forecast to drop to 4.0 by 2031, will instead grow to 4.5 according to the ACLU.
Rising Above
In spite of these and other tremendous setbacks that have left lasting emotional, psychological, and financial tolls, Blacks have emerged as a major economic power, and clearly there is a lot that all groups can learn from their experience. The black community has many insights to share, and should be discussed as such.
Policymakers, lawmakers, and educators should consider opportunities for the black community that empowers us with the knowledge, education, and confidence that is needed to transcend these costly challenges, and allow us to step into our economic power.
I am excited to collaborate with Rainworks Omnimedia on the development of Eye on Money: Black Finance 360, a traveling museum exhibit, designed to give a 360 looks at Black finance in America, so that we can understand the past as it relates to the present and future. We will use this story of resilience to empower the black community with financial management skills, so that it can lift itself up and claim all of the wealth that it has created in every way.
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For financial professionals: Click here to link to information that will help you and those you serve understand the complexities of the relationship blacks have to money.
"I'll take Hillary Clinton's past over any future with Donald Trump."
-- Swami Beyondananda
In 2016, Hillary Clinton is our standard-bearer.
I fully expect some of you to not agree with me, and if so, so be it. We'll "talk" next Wednesday.
If you're a conservative who has already decided to vote for Donald Trump, I respect your decision. If you see through Trump to what he really represents, thank you for voting for Gary Johnson and Bill Weld, whom I have long admired. Or for Hillary.
If you're a disheartened, disillusioned, angry Bernie supporter thinking about casting a vote for Jill Stein or staying home, I am talking to you. If you are one of those Millennials who embraced the Bernie campaign and then lost heart when he lost the primaries, this message is for YOU especially.
Yes, the cards were stacked against Bernie in the primaries ... and yet, he won 22 states. This indicates that a progressive wave has been awakened in this country. In order to keep momentum going, we must now elect Hillary Clinton, and do so with heart and enthusiasm. Hillary is our standard bearer for now, and it is up to we the progressives to "raise her standard" and hold her accountable. This ONLY works if we elect her first.
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I am well aware of all of Hillary's flaws. As a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Bernie supporter, I've been critical of neoliberalism and her heavy-handed tactics to win the primaries. At the same time, I respect the price she has paid for being a woman on the front lines. And this year, she is the only thing that stands between us, and a Donald Trump presidency.
More importantly at this moment in history, Hillary represents the open door to the future we all know is possible. Ultimately, the oligarchs fear Bernie more than Hillary. And, they want to defeat Hillary so that the progressive movement in this country will have to dig itself out of the rubble. Please remember the disheartenment only serves the oligarchs and those controllers who have stood in the way of economic and environmental justice since the Reagan years.
So ... take heart!
With Hillary as President, we will be freer to build the movement that is already transforming the Democratic Party. Instead of having to battle Trumpism, we can turn our attention to the TPP and issues of environmental and economic justice. With the election over, progressives can engage with those Trump voters who oppose the TPP and want to see Main Street and not Wall Street bailed out. This is - especially among young voters who are practical and non-ideological - the foundation of a movement that will ultimately be transpartisan.
It is noteworthy, how many high-profile Bernie supporters - Bill McKibben, Michael Moore, Sarah Silverman, and even Miley Cyrus - have come out in favor of Clinton. Mark Ash of Reader Supported News, one of Hillary's most consistent critics, recently wrote a column supporting her in the election.
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Why? Perhaps as people in the public eye, they have a more realistic view of what any progressive or for that matter anyone with progressive leanings might be up against. Armchair radicals in deep blue enclaves could imagine that Bernie could become president, snap his fingers, and just like that the TPP or fracking or even GMOs would go away. Bernie understands that the changes we seek require millions and millions of people on the ground and aligned so that a politician who attempts even to reform corporatism (let alone transform it) has the necessary "cover" to deal with the pushback.
While some Bernie supporters have fallen in with the "crooked Hillary" meme, most are hard-pressed to come up with specific examples. The entire anti-Hillary campaign has involved slinging spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. Remember Hillary's health crisis? Probably not. As soon as she stood up to and showed up Donald in the first debate, that was the end of that conversation. Period.
On the other hand, Donald's transgressions are legion and well documented. Here is an article from New York Magazine comparing the two. Please check it out. It will restore perspective.
On Tuesday, I was on a conference call with Michael Moore that transformed my view, and fired up my missionary zeal. As you may know, Michael recently filmed a live performance in Clinton County (but Trump country), Ohio called Michael Moore in Trump Land where he simultaneously spoofs and honors Trump supporters. He acknowledges that the neoliberal Democrats - with Hillary as their poster child - essentially ignored the white working class voters, who now have landed in the Trump camp by default. He has written about this extensively this year and long ago warned that Trump was on his way to victory because the Democratic Party was so out of touch with these people.
In the call, Michael Moore made several key points:
Conservative voters were falling into line behind Trump, despite their misgivings
Progressive voters were disheartened by the primaries and their support for Hillary is lukewarm if they support her at all
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Because of this enthusiasm gap, Trump was poised to win ... UNLESS ...
Progressive voters recognize that we, and our values are in the majority, and we can use Hillary's presidency to firmly establish Bernie's program and solidify a campaign that will grow over the next 2-4 years
Because of the strength of Bernie's candidacy, Hillary has had to adapt and adopt a more progressive platform -- and she is now accountable to the Bernie voters who are reluctantly supporting her this year
A Trump presidency would mean stopping progress toward social and economic justice, equal rights, the environment, etc., etc. -- all things the majority of us support
Instead of trying to "convert" voters, it's more important to activate and energize those who are already Democrats but who are apathetic about voting this time around
This most significantly included the Millennials who came out strong for Bernie, but feel discouraged because he lost the primaries ... to this group he said, "You have the power in your hands!"
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Most importantly, go out and volunteer. Make calls. Call your friends to make sure they plan to vote, and have them call others. Drive those who otherwise couldn't make it to the polls. On November 9th, whatever the outcome, you want to be able to say, "I did all that I could to stand up for my values, and our future."
Finally, the stick and the carrot. The "stick" is, consider that a Trump Presidency will bring Republicans to power in the White House, two houses of Congress, and consequently the Supreme Court. That means:
Citizens United and pay to play government is empowered for another generation
Voting rights for the poorest among us are at risk
Gay marriage will likely be overturned, and probably Roe vs. Wade
Despite the libertarians backing Trump, we will see more private prisons and militarized local police
We can expect the war on drugs to be re-started, and legalization efforts locally to be overturned
Climate change goes back into the closet, and Millennials looking at their future might not have one
And the carrot? There is a burgeoning progressive Berniecrat movement that only grows as (according to Michael Moore) 3 million new voters are added each year. Instead of being outsiders, Berniecrats are inside the party, growing and making the Democratic Party our new first party. This means:
Progressives can hold Hillary to her promise to repeal Citizens United
There will be a real and congruent movement to insure and preserve voting rights
The will of the vast majority of people will be sustained, and LGBT and reproductive rights will be upheld
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The move will continue to end private prisons, and reduce the epidemic of incarcerations
The war on hemp and cannabis will end, and we will have the energy and political will to confront big pharma
Most importantly in terms of our long-term survival and thrival, the Bernie faction will press Hillary to keep the platform pledge to create a climate summit within the first 100 days of her administration
The progressive left will be able to enroll Trump supporters in ending the TPP and other unfavorable trade agreements
With the election out of the way, awakening citizens on all sides can unite to end corruption and hold our governance accountable
Oh, and we won't have a President governing with the full support of the Ku Klux Klan
These benefits are only possible if we activate ourselves to make this simple choice for our future next Tuesday, and then stay active -- and join and support Bernie's movement. Let's behave like the majority we really are, vote strategically and celebrate OUR victory next week.
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If you felt the Bern, now is the time to feel the warmth returning to your heart as perspective returns to your mind. Contact friends and family and make sure they are voting. I'm going to be fully active between now and then, and here are some resources for you to use as well.
Check out Democracy for America working with Michael Moore, and contact voters on their behalf.
Contact MoveOn to volunteer to contact prospective voters in swing states.
Go to Next Gen Climate Change to sign up to call Millennial voters.
https://nextgenclimate.org/
https://nextgenclimate.org/activist/
Speaking of Millennials, this is the group who were the most turned on by Bernie, and
the most turned off to what they perceive as "lesser evil voting". The important distinction to share here is that voting for Hillary and creating a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress is the necessary NEXT STEP in creating the lasting change Bernie has inspired.
May love and sanity prevail, and may the best (wo)man win on our behalf.
Ioan Grillo is a journalist and writer based in Mexico City, Mexico.
This interview has been edited lightly.
Your book "Gangster Warlords" was published earlier this year. Would you tell us a little bit about it?
"Gangster Warlords" is about the rise of drug cartels and hyperviolent gangs across Latin America and the Caribbean. It is about the move from the Cold War that gripped the continent in the twentieth century to the crime wars of today, that are both between these cartels and with the security forces fighting them. It is based on interviews with members of these crime groups, from gunmen to cell leaders to some who command more than a thousand people. It is a search for solutions to this dense problem that has made Latin America one of the most violent regions on the planet.
In terms of the feedback you've gotten, are there any particular comments or reviews that stand out?
I am very happy with the reviews from press in the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil and other places. I was particularly happy for the book to be reviewed in The New York Times, by Misha Glenny.
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How long did it take to write? Do you have a writing routine?
"Gangster Warlords" took about three years to report, write and edit. It also drew on material I had gathered reporting on Latin America since 2001. I like to report as much as possible before writing and then work about 2,000 words per day. However, I have written both my books while I have also continued doing journalism, which can be a tough juggling act.
Do you have any literary influences?
In terms of nonfiction writers, I think the British author Jon Ronson, who wrote "The Psychopath Test" among others, is one of the best out there. I like the way he writes simply and effectively and grips the reader. For a more mellow and perhaps deeper style, I also love the American writer Adam Hochschild, author of "King Leopold's Ghost."
What advice would you give to aspiring authors?
I came to writing books through doing journalism, which is a good route for nonfiction, as it gets you writing and publishing all the time. In terms of journalism, I would advise getting out in the field as much as possible and not relying too much on what you find online.
Are you an avid reader? What do you read for fun?
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on tour by Grand Imam Ali Mustafa Yaqub at the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta in 2010. Adek Berry/Reuters
When Barack Obama was first elected in 2008, many Indonesians were swept away in the euphoria. Someone who had spent four years in their country as a boy had become president of the United States.
Enny Nuraheni/Reuters
Public opinion of the US improved dramatically. And, as Obama was about to accept his Nobel Peace prize in 2009, a group of locals commissioned a statue of the child Obama, and erected it in a Jakarta park.
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One religiously conservative minister even found himself in a hot water due to his enthusiasm, after he shook hands with First Lady Michelle Obama despite having previously said he didn't touch women who weren't related to him.
The US president's next visit in November 2011 was not as well received. But even as the afterglow of Obama's election began to fade, he remained quite popular in Indonesia and in the Southeast Asia as a whole.
Some Indonesians were disillusioned with Obama's policies in the Middle East, and this was reflected in slight decrease in his popularity. But it rebounded after his reelection, as memories of the Arab Spring faded and the conflict in Syria had dragged on.
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By the 2014 Indonesian parliamentary election, a couple of candidates clearly believed that they would attract voter attention by putting images or photos with Obama in their campaign posters.
http://www.kaskus.co.id/thread/555405bbd89b09472d8b4567/kumpulan-poster-failed-kampanye-caleg/
One such poster even brought together Obama and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, with the candidate as the peacemaker in the middle.
http://www.kaskus.co.id/thread/555405bbd89b09472d8b4567/kumpulan-poster-failed-kampanye-caleg/
But expectations that the Obama administration was going to be favourable to Indonesia's interests were not met. While Obama recalled the childhood years spent in the country fondly, Indonesians soon realised that they wouldn't receive as much attention as they'd expected.
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Losing the initiative
Under Obama, the United States embraced a "pivot to Asia" policy, which entailed a military and diplomatic rebalancing. It sought to move more US naval assets to the region by 2020, to deal with China's growing threat. But this policy wasn't entirely new. Even under the George W Bush administration, the United States had realised the importance of East Asia, and engaged these regions while it fought a war in Iraq.
But Obama benefited from the fact that he was not Bush, who was widely seen as a unilateralist and a warmonger. Instead, he was seen a fresh face who stressed the limits of US unilateralism, embraced multilateralism, and brought in hope and change.
In 2011, he pulled the last US troops out of Iraq, and less burdened with the war there, he could focus more on East Asia. Thus, Obama was able to strengthen US ties to India, Japan, Myanmar, and Vietnam, by taking advantage the region's unease about China's growing assertiveness.
Still, Obama was a domestic-oriented president, very conscious of the limits of the US tendency to try to influence - or rather, intervene - in world politics. Based on his experience as a child in Indonesia, he observed the resentment in countries where the US had interfered, and, in an interview in The Atlantic magazine, noted, "you can't fix everything."
He has, as a result, been very hesitant to take foreign policy initiatives without support from other countries. This led to one of his advisers to state Obama's approach to Libya was "leading from behind". Obama himself remarked that his foreign policy could be summed up as "don't do stupid shit," even though during the same interview, he argued that the US still had to set the international agenda.
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But other countries, especially China, did take such initiatives. A case in point is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which well illustrates China's growing influence in its region. Despite US opposition, China managed to attract virtually every single US ally in the region, except Japan, to join the bank.
In the meantime, the 12-nation free trade agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership, which was supposed to be the linchpin of Obama's pivot, is wobbling due to domestic politics. It has been condemned - to differing degrees - by both candidates for the 2016 US presidential election, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
China has also been growing more assertive in the South China Sea, projecting power in the region by building military bases on disputed islands. While the United States, launched freedom of navigation operations in the sea in reaction, it's clear that, for some countries in the region, the US has lost the initiative.
With its growing military presence and economic diplomacy under the "One Belt One Road" policy, China's answer to Obama's pivot seems to be the future.
Thus, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte could well feel justified in declaring that "America has lost", regardless of his personal dislike of the United States. Granted that his officials tried to backtrack from that remark later, and the fact that the US remains wildly popular in the Philippines, it's doubtful whether Duterte could pushed the envelope as far as he has done had the United States been on the front foot in the region.
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Not surprisingly, other ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, in the end simply hedged their bets. They're afraid of China but, at the same time, they are open to economic benefits stemming from one of the world's largest economies. They know that, while the US will always try to contain China militarily, it moves too slowly to challenge Chinese economic initiatives.
Stanford University professor emeritus Donald Emmerson has neatly captured this attitude, with the rhetorical question:
Why not prolong the happy combination of American ships for deterrence and Chinese markets for profit?
What lies ahead
The next president of the United States will inherit a huge burden. After a series of campaign messages that managed to offend many people, Trump doesn't have much goodwill in the region. His anti-Muslim rhetoric alienates many moderates in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population (more than the entire Middle East combined).
But Indonesians are very pragmatic. As long as Trump manages to offer some good deals, they will ignore his past trespasses. Still, if he becomes president, he shouldn't expect a smooth ride in the region.
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Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, will most likely continue Obama's policies to prop up, strengthen and expand the liberal order in Asia. Like Obama, expectations of her are high, and meeting them will be difficult. People will expect her to keep or to "improve" the Trans Pacific Partnership, for instance, despite of her opposition to it during the campaign. Should she be unable to deliver, she will have much bumpier road ahead.
The author would like to thank Bradley Nelson, adjunct instructor of political science at Saint Xavier University, for his suggestions during the writing of this article.
Yohanes Sulaiman, Visting Lecturer in International Relations and Political Science at Indonesian Defense University & Lecturer, Universitas Jendral Achmad Yani
Rio's new mayor, a former evangelical bishop, has called homosexuality a sin, but Rio is proud of its tolerance and diversity. Sergio Moraes/Reuters
"Rio is universal. It's about: gay people, Carnaval, women, diversity, umbanda, black people, Christ, tolerance. And now it's yours, Crivella."
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So read the online cover of Brazil's Extra newspaper, the day after the Brazilian metropolis of six million elected as its new mayor a conservative evangelical named Marcelo Crivella.
Rio has always considered itself to be tolerant and open to the modern and the new. But 59-year-old Crivella, a former bishop from the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God) and nephew of the Church's founder, is well known for a 1999 book in which he refers to Catholicism and Afro-Brazilian religions as "demoniac doctrines" and homosexuality "a terrible evil".
Although Crivella apologised for those statements during the 2016 mayoral campaign, in his acceptance speech Crivella affirmed his "anti" stance, saying, "the people said out loud: no to the legalisation of abortion, no to the liberation of drugs. No, no, no and no"!
In fact, a mayor in Brazil - which has a federal system such as Mexico or the United States - has no power over such policies. But that hasn't calmed the nerves of the 65% of people who didn't vote for Crivella, and who fear that the incoming mayor will impose conservative religious values in famously freewheeling Rio de Janeiro.
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Separation of church and state?
Across Brazil, candidates from the religious right, which has been making political inroads for decades, are rising to new heights of power. This follows several decades of rapid expansion of evangelical and neo-Pentacostal churches in Brazil, which went from being 95% Catholic in 1970 to 25% evangelical in 2015.
Crivella's Universal Church, which was founded in 1977, is a powerful presence in Brazil. A neo-pentecostal evangelical church, it has 8 million followers in 105 countries including the United States, and some 1.8 million adherents in Brazil alone, according to the 2010 census. In Brazil, church leaders also control various media outlets, from TV channels to dozens of radio stations, newspapers, magazines and publishing companies.
In Congress, Universal Church-affiliated members form part of the Frente Parlamentar Evangelica (Evangelical Caucus). Today, 199 members of Brazil's 513 lower house and four Senate members are affiliated with the group. Together with two other large interest groups in congress, they are known as the "BBB Caucus" - that is, the bull, the bible and the bullet - meaning they are legislators and lobbyists for agrobusiness, evangelical churches and gun manufacturers.
In the past several years, the Evangelical Caucus has pushed for increasingly harsh legislation. Some major, but thus far failed, attempts included: reducing the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16 years of age, which would allow minors to be sentenced as adults; amending the Disarmament Statute, a gun control measure that has helped reduce gun violence in the country; increasing the criminal status of abortion (from a common crime to a "heinous crime"); reinterpretations of recognised Indian territories; and criminalising "heterophobia". The Evangelical Caucus has promised it will continue promote these initiatives.
The group also maintains a 24-hour-a-day presence in the Brazilian congress to block any possibility of changes in legislation that may further progressive initiatives. According to a recent doctoral thesis by Bruna Suruagy, the Evangelical Caucus has a battalion of parliamentary assistants that "follow projects daily in an attempt to map all the projects considered 'antichristian'".
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With the election of Crivella, who is both an evangelical bishop and a BBB senator, as mayor of the second largest city in the country, many feel that foundations are being laid for a right-wing religious path to Brasilia and the presidency.
What's at stake in Rio
Crivella's election is also concerning researchers and advocates who, like us, study crime and policing in the city.
In Rio de Janeiro, where the much-publicised "police pacification units" were launched in 2008 with the aim of bringing crime under control, violence - including homicide and police killings - is on the rise. From January to August 2016 there were 1,203 murders in Rio, a 13% increase over the same period in 2015. Public trust in Rio's police, which killed 227 people between January and August 2015 and 283 people over the same period this year (during the lead up to the Olympics), is declining.
Now, the incoming mayor has promised changes to the city's municipal guards, which unlike the state-controlled military and civil police forces, have never carried guns or so-called "less lethal" weapons. Starting January 1, they will be expected to use pepper spray, tear gas and tasers. Brazil's Guarda Municipal is tasked with protecting public spaces, including city buildings, monitoring mass transit and helping tourists, so the idea of arming them is dismaying.
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There have been accusations that the elected mayor was supported by vigilante groups linked to a number of illegal activities, such as black market gas sales, control of alternative transportation, and illegal cable connections. These militias "patrol" poor areas of the city and exert control over large portions of the poor neighbourhoods that voted heavily for Crivella.
We cannot yet confirm these suspicions. But there is no doubt that the Universal Church, like other neo-Pentecostal denominations, is deeply embedded in Rio's poor areas. And the tradition of clientelism, which is still strong in Latin America, turns community favours provided by powerful groups, including "security" in the form of vigilante groups, into votes.
A lesson to non-voters
Complicating this worrying scenario is the fact that Crivella was elected by only 35% of the voters, or 1.7 million votes. His opponent, Marcelo Freixo, from the left-leaning Socialism and Liberty Party, secured 24% with a campaign centred on participatory decision making, respect for racial, sexual and religious diversity, education and health reforms and a focus on transportation policy.
The close polls show how Rio, like Brazil at large, which recently underwent the highly contested impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, is extremely polarised.
A full 41% of Rio's electorate voted null - that is, they voted "blank" or abstained from voting entirely. Across Brazil, a record number of angry voters refused to participate in last weekend's second round of municipal elections. Considering that in Brazil, as in other post-dictatorship countries of Latin America, voting is obligatory, not optional, this result is meaningful.
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Crivella's mandate promises to be challenged by numerous groups advocating for the rights that this former religious leader has demonised. That will do little to decrease polarisation, but perhaps it will do something to keep Rio the tolerant, diverse and secular city we all call home.
By Al Olsen
The ugliest, nastiest, most divisive election season in modern times is coming to an inglorious thud in a matter of days. For most Americans, Election Day can't come soon enough.
Most of the electoral focus has been laser-focused on the presidential fight -- and rightly so. But when the dust settles and the votes are tallied across the nation on Tuesday night, 34 states (plus Washington D.C.) could have some form of legal marijuana.
Nine states have marijuana measures on this year's ballot. Five -- including the Big Enchilada, California -- will vote on legalizing adult recreational use. Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada also will be voting for full legalization.
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Three others -- Florida, Arkansas, and North Dakota -- will vote on medical marijuana programs. Montanans will decide whether or not to ease restrictions on an existing medical marijuana law.
A recent Gallup poll revealed that 60 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana, but state-by-state polling on specific ballot initiatives tell a slightly different story. Our partners at the Law Street Journal have broken it down the ballot measures:
Of the states voting on cannabis reform, none is more important than California. More money and political muscle has been spent in The Golden State than all other states combined. Indeed, if California passes Proposition 64 -- The Adult Use of Marijuana Act -- it would be a watershed moment in the decades-long march toward national legalization.
"In addition to California's population size and enormous economic and cultural significance, legalizing marijuana there will be hugely politically impactful," said Tom Angell, chairman of
, a drug reform advocacy group.
This is not the first time Californians have had marijuana on the ballot. Twenty years ago, the state's voters passed Prop. 215, becoming the first state in the nation to allowing the use of medical cannabis. But in 2010, California rejected Prop. 19, which would have legalized it recreationally. Two years later, Colorado and Washington became the first states to allow for legal recreational use.
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In the failed 2010 vote, only 11 of the state's 58 counties supported the initiative. Voters in the Emerald Triangle -- Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties, where the majority of the cannabis farms are located -- rejected the plan. Many longtime growers will likely vote against Prop. 64 this year.
"California's looking good, so is medical marijuana in Florida, and I'm confident we'll prevail in other states as well," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "We're fast approaching the day when Americans will look back on the marijuana wars of recent decades the same way we now look back on alcohol Prohibition - as a costly, foolish and deadly mistake."
Nicholas Bagley, J.D.
From the University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor.
Yet another bruising fight has erupted over health care reform. On September 9, 2016, the Obama administration offered to open settlement negotiations with health insurers that have sued the United States to recover billions of dollars that they claim they are owed. Congressional Republicans are incensed, believing that any settlement would illegally squander taxpayer dollars in a last-gasp effort to save the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
As with many disputes over health care reform, the partisan squabbling has elevated an obscure legal question to public attention. The unfortunate result, however, is that careful legal analysis can get lost in the din. Are insurers in fact entitled to the risk-corridor money that they believe they are owed? If so, does the administration have the legal authority to pay them? As it happens, the law offers reasonably clear answers to both questions.
When Congress enacted the ACA, it feared that insurers might be reluctant to participate in the health insurance exchanges. The markets were new and untested; actuarial models that worked well in the prior era of medical underwriting would be useless.
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To coax insurers onto the exchanges, Congress created a temporary risk-corridor program. For 3 years -- from 2014 through 2016 -- the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would cover some of the losses for insurers whose plans performed worse than they expected. Insurers that were especially profitable, for their part, would have to return to HHS some of the money they earned on the exchanges.
The risk-corridor program thus aimed to protect insurers from large losses. The concept was not novel; the program was modeled on a similar one in Medicare Part D, which also used risk corridors to encourage reluctant private insurers to participate in a newly formed insurance market. As with Part D, more participation would mean more competition, which would drive down premiums and make health insurance more affordable.
When insurers signed up to sell health plans on the exchanges, they did so with the expectation that the risk-corridor program would limit their downside losses. But there was an unanticipated hitch: the ACA did not appropriate any money to make risk-corridor payments. For 2014, HHS could rely on existing authority to makethese payments out of the money it received from profitable health plans. But for 2015 and 2016, Congress tightened the screws. In omnibus appropriations bills covering both years, it refused to appropriate the money to fully fund the program. That meant that the risk-corridor program would have to be budget neutral: payments out could not exceed payments in.
That requirement proved to be bad news for health insurers. In late 2015, HHS announced that insurers were owed $2.87 billion in risk-corridor money for 2014 -- about $400 per exchange enrollee. Payments into the program, however, amounted to just $362 million. As a result, HHS could pay insurers just 12.6% of what they were owed.
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The inability to make full risk-corridor payments devastated some insurers. Hit particularly hard were the new cooperative health plans, which were established with the support of generous ACA loans. By the end of summer 2016, just 7 of 23 co-ops were still in business. As the co-ops collapsed, almost a million people were forced to look elsewhere for coverage.
The loss of the co-ops, together with the withdrawal of several large insurers from a number of states, has led to a sharp reduction in competition on the exchanges. The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that in 2017 only 62% of exchange customers will be able to choose from among three or more insurers, down from 85% the year before. [1] Nearly one in five customers will have just one choice. The lack of vibrant competition will compromise efforts to hold down costs: premium increases in 2017 are expected to be considerably larger than in previous years.
Health insurers struck back. In February 2016, a failed Oregon co-op filed a class-action lawsuit to recover what it was owed under the risk-corridor program. At least seven other lawsuits seeking reimbursement have since been filed. The insurers' claims are straightforward. In enacting the ACA, Congress promised to make risk-corridor payments to health plans that performed poorly on the exchanges. That financial promise created a legal entitlement. And that entitlement is enforceable in court.
For now, the Justice Department is fighting the lawsuits. But the insurers' legal arguments have considerable force. Indeed, HHS has openly acknowledged that risk-corridor payments are "obligation[s] of the United States for which full payment is required." [2] The administration may recognize that it is playing a losing hand -- which is why, in September, it announced that it was "open to discussing resolution" of the risk-corridor claims.
House Republicans immediately cried foul. "The Administration's explicit offer to settle these lawsuits," wrote the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, "appears to be a direct circumvention of clear congressional intent to prohibit the expenditure of federal dollars on this program." [3]
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Congressional Republicans believe that settling these cases would be unlawful for two reasons. First, they insist that they changed the terms of the risk-corridor deal when they passed appropriations statutes that made the program budget neutral. Insurers' entitlement to full risk-corridor payments ends, they argue, when funding for the program is exhausted.
On this question, the Republicans are mistaken. As the Government Accountability Office has explained, "the mere failure to appropriate sufficient funds is not enough" to change the scope of an entitlement. [4] And that's all the appropriations statutes are: "mere failure[s] to appropriate sufficient funds." They do not purport to change what health plans are entitled to. So the promise that the ACA made has not been undone.
Second, congressional Republicans maintain that the administration cannot settle the cases because Congress hasn't appropriated the money to pay court judgments. Without an appropriation, they argue, the United States can't make a payment even if a court orders that the money be paid. In other words, Congress is always free to refuse to honor its debts -- and it has refused to honor these particular debts.
The Republicans acknowledge that an existing, permanent appropriation known as the Judgment Fund normally allows the executive branch to settle lawsuits against the United States. By its terms, however, the Judgment Fund is available only when payment is "not otherwise provided for." Drawing support from a memo compiled by the Congressional Research Service, they believe that they "otherwise provided for" risk-corridor payments when they partially funded the program.
But in fact the Judgment Fund is not unavailable whenever Congress chooses to partially fund a program. It is unavailable only when Congress has designated an alternative source of funds to pay money judgments arising from a failure to fulfill the United States' financial obligations. [5] Because Congress has made no such designation here, the Judgment Fund appears to be available to settle the risk-corridor lawsuits.
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Health insurers thus appear to have a strong claim to several billion dollars from U.S. coffers. Which is not to say that insurers are sure to be paid. Under the next president, for example, Congress could amend the Judgment Fund to prohibit payment. And lawyers continue to wrangle over the complexities of appropriations law, creating some uncertainty about the litigation.
Crossposted from UN Women.
The annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 22), is convening in Marrakech, Morocco from 7 18 November, as the historic Paris Agreement, signed by 197 Parties, enters into force. The Agreement commits to promote gender equality obligations when addressing climate change. COP22 will pave the way forward for action and implementation on this agenda and strengthen collaboration between all partners, to achieve sustainable development.
Within the COP 22 framework, UN Women reviews our support to urban and rural women who, through our programmes, are also fighting climate change.
For Kimiyaa Umar, a 35-year-old mother of six, from the district of Meta in central Ethiopia, lack of money and knowledge on how to run a viable business restrained her from bettering life for herself and her family.
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That was the case until a year ago, when Umar received a 3,000 Birr (140USD) interest-free loan, along with entrepreneurship training through the UN Women-Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Womens Empowerment, which has benefited over 19,500 women throughout Ethiopia.
We were selected to benefit from the programme for being the neediest. We had no capital or the knowledge on how to deal with business. Today, we are models in our village and many women have started to organize themselves by self-initiation, said Umar, who leads a group of 13 women under the programme.
Kimiyaa Umar showing her energy-saving cooking stove that her group assembles and sells. Photo: UN Women/Fikerte Abebe
The joint programme was launched in Ethiopia in 2011 and brings together six UN Agencies, UNDP, ILO, UN Women, UNESCO, UNICEF and UNFPA to support the Government of Ethiopia in its efforts to improve the lives of women and girls. Aligned with the Governments Growth and Transformation Plan, and grounded in the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for Ethiopia, it targets women in all 11 regions, aiming to increase rural and urban womens income to improve food security, nutrition and livelihoods; rural and urban womens opportunities for education; enhance the capacity of federal and local level institutions and communities to promote and protect the rights of women and girls; promote leadership and decision-making, among other benefits. The joint programme is made possible with the financial contributions of the Governments of Sweden and Norway.
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With the support of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UN Women, one of the applied activities under the programme is to provide interest-free loans to women with poor incomes, while also fostering the development of basic business skills. When women return the loan, it is used as a revolving fund to economically empower more women.
The programme has helped Umar and the other women save and invest in energy-saving cooking stove technology cooperative targeting women in their village and beyond.
Before receiving the loan we were given training on how to start and manage a business, including how to save and the benefits of saving. Using the skills gained, all of us started different businesses and now each one of us has finished paying back the 3,000 Birr loan, and saved enough to invest in a different cooperative business of labour, time and energy-saving cooking stove technology, she said.
Group members were able to buy goats and sheep with the income-generating 3,000 Birr loan that they each received. Photo: UN Women/Fikerte Abebe
Umar further explained that each group member relies on this stove technology in their home. Group members also sell the stoves throughout different villages in order to benefit more women. Currently, the stove technology cooperative, which began a year ago, has 60 members with a total capital of 40,000 Birr (2,000 USD).
A year ago, Kimiyaa wasnt even able to provide her children with school supplies.
Her children could not study in the evenings since their only source of light came from a small locally-made Kerosene lamp. Through her business, Kimiyaa was able to purchase a solar-powered lamp.
The loan also helped her buy a goat and expand her profits. When I first got the 3,000 Birr loan, I purchased two female goats and one male goat. I fattened the male goat, which I bought for 600 Birr and sold it for 1,500 Birr. Each of the two female goats gave birth to two. I sold the three goats and paid back the 3,000 Birr loan, Umar said.
Kimiyaa emphasized that the programme has helped them make a difference at the community level in a short amount of time, and has motivated them to keep working harder.
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Eight years to the day (November 4, 2008), 92% White and 3% Black Iowans gave Kenyan-American Barack Hussein Obama 38% of the votes in the 2008 Iowa Caucus thereby sending the man derisively called the "junior senator from Illinois" on his way to an extremely hard-fought and character-building victory over the New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary R. Clinton in the Democratic Party Primary.
Barack Obama's victory over Hillary Clinton set the stage for what should have been an equally hard fight against the Republican Party nominee and decorated war hero John McCain.
That never happened.
Vividly illustrating the inability to "walk and chew gum at the same time", John McCain stumbled from selecting the hitherto unknown Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to "suspending his campaign" even as he declared that the then-free falling US economy was "fundamentally sound". In one fell swoop, the "maverick" captain of the "Straight-talk Express" became an answer to the trivial pursuit question:
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Which presidential candidate lost to America's first African American President?
Then in his successful 2012 re-election bid, Obama's ground game and "Straight outta Silicon Valley" analytics ran roughshod over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
America is now poised to elect Barack Obama's successor and if there was one moment that captures the Obama Presidency, I would offer as Exhibit A, the video that compared President Obama's reaction to a pro-Trump protestor AND Donald Trump's characterization of the president's reaction to said protestor.
To put it bluntly: Donald Trump's characterization of Barack Obama's reaction to the protestor was an outright lie.
Even more disturbing is that a section of the American population believed/s Donald Trump's version of the events in Fayetteville, North Carolina despite the video evidence.
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The foregoing is the sad yet accurate metaphor of Obama's two-term presidency.
From Mitch McConnell's promise to "make him a one-term president" to Joe Wilson's "You Lie" yell in front of a global audience not to mention the R-Rated invectives hurled at the First Family, Barack Obama's response has epitomized tolerance and control.
From Donald Trump's "otherization" of America's first non-white male president to the GOP-controlled Congress's abrogation of the adage "politics ends at the waterfront", very few can question Mr. Obama's near-preternatural reaction and response to his rivals' refusal to accept his (American) citizenry even as they sided with a foreign leader who had policy differences with Mr. Obama!
It is this otherworldly grace and equipoise combined with an economy that's back from the brink of collapse and a country not fighting a war that has enabled Barack to finish his presidency riding a 50%+ job approval rating even as hyper-partisan still insist that his presidency has been a "failure".
Full Disclosure: I AM partial to the man whose father Barack Obama Sr. hailed from my Luo tribe in Nyanza.
I am a father to a 13-year old teenager who came of age knowing as his first president, someone who looks like him and is of the same (tribal) lineage. My son, like President Obama is of Kenyan Luo-American heritage (his mother is a bi-racial American). Nearly all his peers and their friends across the socio-political, racial and religious divide have nothing but immense admiration for a POTUS they alternately describe as "cool", "coolest", "totally swagged out Dad" and/or "a good man"; an ominous sign for the Republicans as the "browning of America" picks up pace and these tweens become voters.
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With my then-5year old son at my side, I cried when on November 4, 2008 at 8PM PST, CNN's Wolf Blitzer called California for Barack Obama thus giving him an unassailable Electoral College total well beyond the requisite 270.
I reassured him that those were tears of joy; at being able to share a moment not many thought was possible, with him and as hyperbolic as it may sound, I knew that America, indeed the world would never be the same in the wake of Obama's first victory.
People have made compelling cases against some of President Obama policies, myself included. The fiasco in Libya and Syria come to mind. His hands-off approach to the continent especially during his first term in office is another. There is palpable (and valid) fear among those in the "Rust Bowl" who believe they have been left behind by the changing global economy. Finally, racial tensions have heightened during the last 2-3 years of his second term AND by the rhetoric of Donald Trump's candidacy.
To be clear, the in-coming American president will inherit the foregoing listing of unfinished Obama business; all valid conversations Americans will need to have going forward.
However, the dichotomous views on President Obama's intentions and actions of the last eight years as -- illustrated by the narrative that came out of Fayetteville -- stifled any constructive discussions and decisions on (these) matters of national import.
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This acrimony and deliberate obstructionism has been the bane of the Obama Presidency.
Despite the foregoing, President Obama has stayed above the fray. In the process, he has offered Americans a benchmark and contrast against which to measure and compare future candidates vying for the "world's most powerful office" -- regardless of race, gender or religion.
As counter-intuitive as it seems, when their mostly right wing detractors "went low", The Obamas -- Barack, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and Michelle's Mom Ms. Marian Robinson -- "went high". In so doing, America's first black First Family gave America AND the world a daily reminder of the very ideals and values most of these same detractors and critics only speechify about.
So, Mr. President, for the ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance displayed in the pressure cooker that is the American Presidency, let me join David Brooks in declaring that I miss you - already.
I may be a woman from rural southern Appalachia and though I am not African American or Muslim, nor do I belong to any minority group in America, I am a human being who believes it is our duty to try to understand our neighbors; no matter how different they are. We owe it to ourselves to get to know these people and their diverse stories, while cultivating communities of tolerance and peace.
From Tennessee to Egypt, both are "home"
My professional and academic career has been split between Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for more than seven years. During my first time in Egypt in 2010, I saw that some Cairenes lived better lives in Egypt than my family did in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, though I saw unfathomable poverty unlike anything I had ever witnessed in America.
I can relate to the "poor white man's plight", a supposed underlying theme of why many people are pro-Trump. Growing up, we lived off of the land and I had never heard the word "Muslim" or "Gay" until an embarrassing age, which is one reason why I often think about returning to my Appalachian roots to help the community grow and flourish.
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On the other hand, I also know what it's like to live in both secular and Islamist dictatorships; as was my experience in Egypt throughout the Mubarak and Morsi regimes. I know what it's like to be an American, living and working in a MENA country, while trying to figure out how to apologize for our military carrying out unnecessary casualties and my country's general misunderstanding of the MENA region.
I know what Donald Trump is capable of, because he possesses so many terrifying characteristics which are similar to those of other authoritarian rulers in the MENA and throughout history; not to mention he has shown blatant admiration for dictators such as Gaddafi.
Muslims would face international persecution under Trump
Due to my experiences under such conditions, I fear for the lives of my Muslim friends in the U.S. They come from Iran, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and elsewhere in the MENA region. I am also concerned for the well-being and livelihood of my Muslim friends in the MENA, because America's relationship with the region will likely grow more strained under a Trump presidency, due to his lack of foreign policy knowledge and the way he would want to carry out our diplomatic missions abroad.
It's no secret that throughout American history, instead of peace talks, we've often relied on targeted killing, drones, and boots on the ground; boots which often know nothing of the kindness and goodness of the Middle Eastern culture, ultimately perpetuating Islamophobia upon their return home.
Donald Trump must be stopped, otherwise he will only fuel anti-Islam rhetoric and Islamophobic tendencies among U.S. citizens, which will hinder the safety of all minorities and women. His outlandish and reckless anti-Islam agenda, which claims it will ban millions of Muslims from the country, has likely aided ISIL in previous months. Some top U.S. counter-terrorism experts have said, "Trump's polarizing rhetoric on this issue may be the best thing the Islamic State has going for it."
Furthermore, he has not sincerely apologized for touching women without their consent, nor has he corrected his sexist and misogynistic behavior toward the female population as a whole. Trump does not condemn violent actions carried out against Muslims or African Americans in his rallies, and many analysts and experts are sure that he would not work to prevent these attacks as president.
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The candidate with most knowledge on U.S.-MENA relations
I can not stand by and watch idly as innocent lives attempt to go about their daily business in fear of walking down the street because of their skin color, religious talismans they are wearing, or the headscarf that so gracefully adorns their head. This year I sent in my absentee ballot from Germany to the electoral commission in my home town. I filled in the box beside of the name, "Hillary Clinton."
I am making the biggest difference I can at this point in time, by voting for a candidate who will work to protect the religious and racial minorities in my home country; because I have personally seen the horrendous violence condoned by Egypt's dictators, and supporters of the Mubarak and Morsi regimes, against Coptic Christians, women and the LGBT community. This type of persecution is already happening in America due to Trump's rhetoric and it will become much worse if he is president.
By Dan Ouellette, Senior Editor ZEALnyc, November 8, 2016
"It's special playing with Chick," said Los Angeles-based musical polyglot Herbie Hancock in New York last week to take in a performance of Hamilton. "After all these years, it's always great. It's fun and challenging. He's always thoroughly prepared but loose."
While the Blue Note is wall-to-wall Chick Corea to celebrate his 75th birthday, the one-night concert of piano duos with fellow superstar Hancock (November 19) promises to be the gem of the batch. (A word of caution: This show will undoubtedly sell out.)
"I've had a timeless friendship musically with Herbie since we first met in the '60s," Corea told me last year after the pair had triumphed for its duo show at Carnegie Hall. "Years may go by, but we're always in touch and aware of each other. Herbie was in New York several years before me, so he was always an inspiration. We both love this kind of adventure to freely improvise. In recent years, every time we had seen each other, we were both busy with personal projects. So when it came to this, it was a personal success."
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"We're connected in a lot of real ways," says Hancock reflecting on their paths as young musicians. "Chick replaced me with Miles Davis [in his '60s band], and I replaced him in [Latin percussionist] Mongo Santamaria's band in 1963. Those were key points in our lives."
But they had never played together until 1977. Both had launched seminal electric jazz bands in the early '70s fusion era--respectively, the jazz-rock group Return to Forever and the funked-up jazz ensemble Headhunters. And they were recording for Columbia Jazz during its '70s heydays. As president of the label, Bruce Lundvall suggested that the two pianists should get together and see what happens.
Initially Hancock was reluctant as he writes in his autobiography, Possibilities. "We decided to see if there was magic," he wrote about the first meeting they had at Corea's house where he had two pianos set up and ready to go. They immediately clicked in an improvisational session that Hancock said was "very open." So both the pianists--eschewing electric keys for acoustic pianos--hit the road, traveling through seven countries and garnering five encores when they played at Montreux. Their brilliant collaboration was documented on the top-notch 1978 double-LP album, An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea: In Concert. That was released on Columbia under Hancock's name, while another live album from that same tour, CoreaHancock, was issued in 1979 under Corea's name for Polydor.
Since those early dates, the two friends jetted into supersonic motion with their own stellar--and busy--careers, only rarely getting the opportunity to play duos. Last year, Chick and Herbie revisited the magic for a worldwide tour that included an April stopover at Carnegie Hall.
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Just walking on the stage together, the two garnered a standing ovation. Neither of them had touched their pianos yet, but it was a jazz fan's dream to see them together after each had done so much to contribute to jazz history, surging ahead in their vibrant solo careers as Grammy Award-winning leaders. The Carnegie concert took place a few days shy of Hancock's 75th birthday and two months prior to Corea's 74th. But age, as Corea expressed, is not a factor when it comes to artists who are not only banking on the past but are also creatively--and often innovatively--diving into the future with an ebullient vision.
With two grand pianos on stage facing each other, they made their concert a regal recital. But first, they engaged the audience by excitedly reflecting on being in New York where their significant careers started.
Then Corea said, "I'll bet the audience doesn't know what we're going to play."
Hancock added: "But they know that we don't know what we're going to do." He paused and said, "You thought we were joking?"
After which they manned their 88s and like kids on a playground began to riff off each other in a torrent of improvised passages--no charts in sight at the moment (some found their way to the pianos later). They looked at each other; they listened to each other. They played dainty and mysterious, then pounced and scurried and rushed. Hancock would stop and Corea would fly and vice versa. But the best moments came when they countered, at times doing call-and-response runs, looking at each other, smiling and marveling. It was journey music with conversations along the way--sometimes getting lost and then finding their ways, with the only question being where--and how--the trip would conclude. Nonetheless they magically landed safely.
While they played a new piece written by Corea specifically for their duo performance, they veered into more familiar territory (read: crowd favorites) for the remainder of the show, beginning with a sumptuous rendering of Miles Davis's "All Blues" from his classic 1959 album Kind of Blue. Again the two played off each other, one plunking out the bass lines while the other showered notes. Each dove into mad dashes across the keyboard, embellishing the piece with startling harmonies and tumbling fleet-fingered rolls.
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After huddling to discuss what to play next, the pair launched into a remarkable doubleheader of Hancock's early '60s tunes recorded on Blue Note Records, "Cantaloupe Island" and "Maiden Voyage." Gentle lyricism buoyed into charged dynamics with pockets of chilling beauty and ripples of speed--again in a spirit of conversation rather than competition, evidenced at the conclusion of the 80-minute show with hugs and handshakes.
After another standing ovation, Hancock and Corea returned for the requisite encore, with the latter inviting the audience to "sit in" with them in Carnegie Hall as a vocal choir for his standard piece "Spain." Each pianist played a series of reflective and rolling sections and used the "choir" (two sections of male voices on each side of the auditorium and three sections of female voices) as a pause point before dancing together again. It was almost like a little game as the participation parts would circle back. Again, the accent was on fun and play, as it had been the entire evening.
Expect this same thing at the Blue Note--in an intimate and predictably tight space. Corea gives a clue as to what to expect: "I like communication. That's my way of giving--my version of the Golden Rule. I want the audience to be able to receive new ideas, not just ideas that are familiar. For me, it's like saying, come on an adventure. Feel comfortable and relaxed and not feel threatened. In some of our improvisations, we don't even know where we're going. But that's the adventure."
Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock; photo courtesy of artists
As for the songlist, Hancock says: "Chick might want to do some of the same things we played on our last tour last summer, but maybe he'll bring something new. He plays all the time, which I don't do. He practices a lot because he does a lot of classical music. So his chops are always up, he writes all the time--and he writes great stuff."
Will Hancock contribute anything new? "Me? I don't have the time," he says with a laugh. "I wish I could be more than one person. One person: no, I can't do it because I'm working on my next record, and then I send in the clone." After another hearty laugh, he says, "But I can't. He's a buddy of mine. We're close. We don't even have to contact each other all the time. It's just there. That's the best."
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Cover: Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea (late 1970s); courtesy of artists
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Dan Ouellette's "Editor's picks" for upcoming live performances in NYC:
Hutchinson council kills idea for Woodie Seat underpass at Avenue B
Design consultants advised a vehicle underpass would cost at least $2.5 million and create liability for the city. Loitering concerns kills walking path
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St. Stan's pupils held a vigil and mock election on Monday. We think a few prayers couldn't hurt after this election season. PreviousNext
St. Stan's Students Pray for Nation as Election Looms
Pupils make out ballots at St. Stan's School on Monday.
ADAMS, Mass. With only hours remaining before Election Day, students and staff at St. Stanislaus Kostka School gathered to pray for the country. And for students to cast their own ballots for president - Hillary Clinton won with 47 percent of the vote.
As the eighth-graders presented intercessions for every category of people, from our future leaders to the marginalized, a candle was lit to represent continued vigilance and prayers for all the needs in America.
"Though this campaign season seems to have gone on forever, anticipation of the election day outcome was on everyone's mind on Monday," according to eighth-grader Kaeli Dean.
Throughout the day, on Monday, each grade visited the fourth-grade classroom to participate in a mock election exercise. According to Tammy Barosso, fourth-grade teacher, her students prepared for this day for weeks.
Berkshire County Heads to the Polls for Election 2016
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. It's election day in Massachusetts, unless you're one of the one million voters who have already cast ballots.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.; find your polling station here. It's suggested you bring an ID if you're voting for the first time, your registration has been inactive, there may be some question to your status or you have to complete a provisional ballot.
Berkshire County voters will only find a couple of local issues on the ballot this year. They'll be determining the replacement for state Sen. Benjamin B. Downing, D-Pittsfield, who is departing after 10 years representing the far western part of the state, and a number of ballot issues.
Pittsfield will be making two decisions on who will be their state representative and on adopting the state's Community Preservaion Act to put away funds for local projects.
For state Senate, Democrat Adam Hinds of Pittsfield and Republican Christine Canning-Wilson of Lanesborough are vying for a two-year term representing the 52 communities in the Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden District. Neither has held elected office.
Hinds beat out two primary opponents for a spot on the general election ballot. The first out of the gate following Downing's announcement early this year, the former United Nations negotiator and Buckland native has posed himself as progressive in the same mold as Downing. He's racked up numerous endorsements from local and state Democratic leaders.
He returned to the area after more than a decade to work with the newly developed Pittsfield Partnership Program and became executive director of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition just over a year ago. He's been on leave for the last several months. Hinds is running on economic development through infrastructure and education, lowering energy costs and tackling the heroin epidemic through a comprehensive effort at the local level.
In contrast to Hinds, Canning-Wilson has portrayed herself as the underdog not a stretch for a conservative in blue Berkshires and as a can-do candidate. The longtime educator and administrator has her own international experience from teaching oversees and is also a small-business owner.
Much of her conservative leanings are toward protecting 2nd Amendment rights, rooting out fraud to make government more cost-effective and lowering or eliminating taxes that burden businesses and individuals. However, she also supports unions and is limited pro-choice and, not surprisingly, is a strong advocate for education, and would like to see more equity in education funding. She doesn't support her party's presidential candidate.
In Pittsfield, Tricia Farley-Bouvier is defending her 3rd Berkshire seat against challenger Chris Connell, a sitting city councilor. Farley-Bouvier, a Democrat, is seeking a third two-year term after easily defeating a primary challenger. Connell is an independent who says he will also continue to represent Ward 4 on the City Council.
Connell's running on a platform of performance, saying his experience in managing housing and, prior to that, a cluster of convenience stores combined with his municipal office positions him to be an effective legislator. He believes he will be able to bring back more state funding for infrastructure and education, and make more effective progress for the city than his rival has in her five years.
Ballot Questions
A yes vote on Question 1 would allow the licensing of one more slots parlor in the state. Its criteria includes being within 1,500 feet of a horse racing track and seems related to a development proposed near Suffolk Downs.
Question 2 on lifting the cap on charter school by 12 has been one of the most contentious on the ballot with millions of dollars coming from out of state in support. Local leaders and teachers unions have rallied against the measure, saying the charter school funding formula has a damaging effect on traditional public schools. There already is one charter school in the county.
Passage of Question 3 would prohibit confining farm animals to cages or pens that prevent them from moving around or laying down and any sales of products from such animals. These including breeding pigs, calves raised for veal and egg laying hens. This question is not expected to adversely affect Massachusetts farms but will have an impact on imported products.
Yes on Question 4 would legalize the use and sale of marijuana and products made from the illegal plant for those age 21 and older. Massachusetts is one of five states voting on this issue Tuesday; it approved medical marijuana several years ago.
The biggest showdown is at the head to the ballot, with Democrat Hillary Clinton facing off against Republican Donald Trump. The deep blue Bay State is expected to fall into the Democratic column since Clinton has nearly a 30-point lead over her rival. Also on the ballot are Jill Stein of Lexington, a Harvard-educated doctor running on the Green Party ticket, and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate whose running mate is former Gov. William Weld.
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During a recent mission to the Republic of the Congo, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu, underscored international air connectivitys role as a critical catalyst for national economic development and encouraged the countrys leadership to make aviation a priority within its national economic strategy a message she is stressing globally.
Invited by the Government of the Republic of Congo to address the Sixth Meeting of Directors General of Civil Aviation of the Africa-Indian Ocean (AFI) Region, Dr. Liu took the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings with the Prime Minister, Mr. Clement Muamba, the Minister of Transport, Civil Aviation and Merchant Navy, Mr. Gilbert Mokoki, and the Director General of Civil Aviation, Mr. Serge Dzota.
She highlighted on these occasions the support and cooperation ICAO offers Member States to make their air transport sectors more ICAO-compliant and therefore globally connected, and in particular the assistance and capacity building made available through ICAOs Regional Offices in Africa under the Organizations No Country Left Behind initiative.
At the national level, the Secretary General noted that ICAOs Western and Central African (WACAF) Regional Office could be of particular help regarding the identification of the Republic of the Congos specific aviation needs, and the development of a master plan for satisfying these in coordination with bilateral and international partners. She stressed the plan could include human resources capacity building, strengthening oversight functions in the areas of Aerodromes and Air Operator Certification, Air Navigation Services, and Aviation Security and Facilitation.
Dr. Liu was accompanied on her Congo mission by the Representative of Congo on the ICAO Council, Mr. Ondzotto Maixent Raul, the Director of ICAOs Air Transport Bureau, Mr. Boubacar Djibo, the ICAO Regional Director for Western and Central Africa, Mr. Mam Sait Jallow, the ICAO Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, Mr. Barry Kashambo, and Deputy Director of ICAOs Air Navigation Bureau, Mr. Henry Gourdji.
Her visit also included an inspection of the new Regional Air Navigation Centre for the Brazzaville Flight Information Region, where she was received by the Director General of lAgence pour la Securite de la Navigation Aerienne en Afrique et a Madagascar (ASECNA), Mr. Amadou Ousmane Guitteye.
The mission to Brazzaville took place from 1 to 2 November 2016.
A Chinese massage parlor in Barcelona. Joan Sanchez
Mimis room smells of baby oil and is infused with a pink glow. Theres an industrial-sized roll of paper on the shelf that she uses to cover the bed and a couple of towels that do for all the clients usually around five a day.
The 15 fee for the massage goes direct to the boss; Mimi makes do with the tip for the follow-up service, which comes in at between 10 and 20 depending on what she is asked to do. Shes terrified of catching something, she explains in sketchy Spanish as she hurries along the corridor in a black dress.
Estefania took a month to cross Asia and Europe by car for a job in a sweatshop in Badalona
Mimi works in one of Barcelonas many Chinese massage parlors where, according to the Catalan police, massage is synonymous with sex. Now numbering over 100, they are fast becoming an additional tourist attraction for the city.
Mimis parlor is close to the busy Sants neighborhood and doubles as a hair and nail salon whose services are advertised in the window. Mimis not happy but she has a contract and set hours. And it has been a long, arduous road to get this far.
Like the other four women interviewed for this report, Mimi arrived in Barcelona three years ago thanks to a snakehead, an individual who specializes in smuggling in immigrants from China.
She knew she would be running up garments in a sweatshop, but she wasnt worried about the hard work after all, she was used to it. Besides, she would earn more money than she had at home.
The inside of a sweatshop in Mataro that was shut down in 2009. Gianluca Battista
What she wasnt expecting was to find herself practically imprisoned for two years in premises in the Fondo neighborhood of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where there is a large Chinese community. In fact, this is where many of the 47,973 Chinese immigrants registered in Catalonia begin their new lives in Spain. The workshop offers many of them access to the job market here, says a police spokesperson.
Mimi worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. She ate nothing but rice and noodles and slept alongside 30 others in a makeshift dorm. In return, she earned between 800 and 1,000 a month. She used the money to repay the cost of her trip from China and saved the rest.
Its a familiar career path for many female Chinese immigrants. In 2009, the Catalan police raided 40 illegal garment factories in the Mataro area, arresting 77 people and freeing 450 Chinese immigrants, most of whom were women working in conditions of semi-slavery that included violence.
Known as Operation Wei, the raid exposed how many of the clothes put together by these illegal and exploited workers were destined for high street stores such as Zara, El Corte Ingles, Desigual and Cortefiel. Cheaper than having the clothes made in China or Thailand, the garments were irresistible to the chain stores who claimed they knew nothing about how they were being made.
Mimi went from working at a garment factory to one of Barcelonas 100 or more massage parlors
But despite the initial success of the operation, it was almost impossible to get anyone to come forward with evidence against the ringleaders of the organization. Nobody admitted to feeling exploited. On the contrary, most were angry at having been left without work and staged a protest to get their jobs back.
Its because of the work ethic in China, says a source who participated in that operation. The hierarchy is not fixed in these organizations. Whoever is being exploited today could be doing the exploiting tomorrow. The girl doing the massages could end up managing the center if she plays her cards right. They can prosper within the structure, so its hard to get them to make a charge against anyone. In the end, the operation secured no more than three convictions for exploitation.
Estefania her Spanish pseudonym is one example of how these Chinese women move through the ranks in this parallel universe. Twelve years ago, she traveled from Beijing across Asia and Europe to Spain. It took a month, with vehicle changes each time they arrived in a new country. She claims to have made the trip with some friends, though the Catalan police maintain that in every country there is a snakehead helping them on their way.
As soon as Estefania arrived in Spain, she was put to work in a sweatshop in Badalona where members of her family were already waiting for her. Like the other women interviewed here, she sewed for 16 hours a day and slept and ate on the premises. She doesnt recall there being anything odd about it, it was just a lot of work.
Estefania now has her own massage business with three employees in the Eixample neighborhood of Barcelona. Because of her status, she mans the reception desk but when there are no girls available, she doesnt hesitate to step in. In China, when theres work, you work, she says.
A police officer talks to a Chinese woman during the 2009 raid in Mataro. Gianluca Battista
According to Antonio Rodriguez, Area Chief for the Catalan polices organized crime unit, Estafania got her papers and paid off her trip and is now able to work for herself, drawing on resources from the community, such as cheap labor and a new loan the Chinese community avoids asking banks for credit just as they avoid seeking police help in emergencies.
So far, no one has been able to prove that there is a mafia or criminal group behind all this activity, though clearly they are not part of the Spanish system. Everyone goes from being exploited to doing the exploiting, says Rodriguez. Many women have removed themselves from sex work by becoming the mamis the ones who run the establishments. And for them, thats what it means to do well. Its a recognized model of success.
The larger Chinese community does, however, believe that things have changed considerably in the last few years, and dismisses the suggestion that this wheel of exploitation is a general trend.
Lam Chuen Ping, president of the Catalan Union of Chinese Associations, insists that nowadays the picture is very different and that sweatshops are becoming a thing of the past. A businessman who has spent more than 40 years in Barcelona and who acted as spokesman for the workers who lost their jobs in the Wei Operation in 2009, Ping adds that the raid was absurd and had disastrous economic consequences for Mataro.
Now, given the current state of Spains economy,Chinese immigration has fallen off sharply, says Ping, and those that do come have done so to invest. As for the second generation of Chinese in Spain, they are not involved in sweatshops. We have lawyers, doctors, architects he says.
Theres no doubt that second-generation Chinese are fully integrated into the workplace. But according to the Catalan police, sweatshops are still thriving, with staff drawn mainly from the Chinese provinces of Fujia and Zhejiang.
Everyone feeds off the same system, going from being exploited to doing the exploiting
Antonio Rodriguez, Mossos dEsquadra organized crime unit
The person in charge of recruitment in China doesnt have to do much; people know that there is a system that works parallel to the legal one, says Rodriguez. Its like a travel agency. The recruiter has a source of cheap labor, and depending on the area of demand, he organizes the supply; it could be phone centers, bazars, warehouses, workshops or sex work where there is always an element of deception.
After the recruitment comes the journey, which could cost between 10,000 and 15,000 depending on how it is made and what forged documents are required.
Though most of Barcelonas sweatshops were shut down in 2009, it is true that recent demand has triggered a fresh batch of them. And its not a world where unions are welcome.
Its a very closed and secretive community, says Carlos Chicano, head of the labor union CCOOs textile division in Catalonia. They come here in precarious circumstances and the result is they are exploited. But they themselves dont feel exploited because they are actually better off here than they were back home.
But two of the repercussions of these sweatshops for the rest of society are the normalization of unacceptable working conditions and the decimation of any local competition.
Every time there has been a police raid on the garment factories, there is a reshuffle and employees are moved to other industries. Those who have the looks are sent to work in the massage parlors, explains one police officer who has been involved in various busts. If the girl is cute, they make more money out of her doing that than if shes making shirts.
This was certainly the case for Ana, who came to Spain by plane with a fake passport four years ago. She has spent the last two years working in a parlor in Eixample. The premises are neat and, like many others, give onto the street. Her first two years were spent in a garment factory in Badalona. As she had no papers, she used a friends passport during that time for ID. The Spanish, she says, cant tell the difference between us.
Forging documents is another field of opportunity. In 2011, during Operation Turandot, the Catalan police raided a Chinese passport factory in Santa Coloma de Gramenet in Barcelona. The quality of the passports was so perfect that the FBI took some of them back to the US to study.
The water marks were of high quality and the microfibers were excellent, says Rodriguez. In fact, the documents were all but authentic.
English version by Heather Galloway.
Text in which the author defends ideas and reaches conclusions based on his / her interpretation of facts and data
Matryoshka dolls painted with the faces of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and other European leaders. SERGEI KARPUKHIN (REUTERS)
More information Telefono rojo, Trump llama a Moscu
With a bit of luck, there are just a few hours left for us to imagine what a Donald Trump presidency might have looked like. Lets not allow the opportunity to pass us by.
The day before Trump is sworn in, a freezing January day in Washington and Moscow, Vladimir Putins phone rings.
Putin: Donald! I recognized your number on my cellphone. How are you? And congratulations once again!
Trump: Thanks, Vlad! Appreciate it! Yeah, the witch is in jail and in a few days well be sending her to the bonfire.
P. Good job Donald. She deserves it. Buthow can I help you, comrade?
T. Well look, my dear Vlad, Im a little embarrassed to admit it butI dont have anyone on my team who knows a damn thing about foreign policy. I need your help.
For Cuba, dear Donald, my advice is give us the go-ahead to install Russian nuclear missiles on the island
P. Anything you need, man! What are friends for?
T. Would you act as my adviser? Could I hire you as, say, a kind of national security adviser in the shadows?
P. Of course you can! Id be happy to do that for you, and whats more I wouldnt charge you a rouble! Although perhaps you could build a Trump Tower in Moscow and give me 50% of the shares...
T. Dont mention it Vlad. Its a done deal. So, right, lets get down to it. First, Cuba. They tell me that the goddamn black guy has started normalizing relations with the island. We gotta stop that!
P. Thats easy Donald. Hand Cuba over to me. It can be a Russian colony again.
T. Oh Vlad, would you really do that?
P. Yes, of course. You wouldnt mind, I suppose, if along the way we took back Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Estonia
T. Of course not! Theyre all yours!
P. NATO wouldnt make things difficult for us?
T. From tomorrow on, my dear Vlad, NATO will no longer exist. That was one of the electoral promises you suggested I made, as Im sure youll remember. But, speaking of electoral promises, I have another problem. The 3,000-kilometer wall I said Id build along the Mexican border. Its going to cost more than I thought
P. Ive got the answer to that. Look, the wall will be paid for by the tens of millions of Americans that have sought political asylum in Mexico since you won the election. But, in the meantime, I suggest we finally do what Kennedy stopped us from doing in 1962.
T. Kennedy? You mean the actor who played the priest in that fabulous Chuck Norris movie, Delta Force?
P. No, the president who was assassinated.
T. Ah, that sounds familiar. But dont frighten me Vlad, goddammit, you know that I have enemies all over the place!
P. Dont worry Donald. If you want to, fire all the secret service bodyguards who worked for the black guy and Ill send you a crack KGB team in their place.
T. Oh you have no idea how grateful Id be if you could!
P. Then its a deal. But, getting back to Cuba, my suggestion as your foreign policy adviser would be that you give us the go-ahead for the installation of Russian nuclear missiles on the island. We would not point them at the United States, of course, but at Mexico. And we would make it very, very clear to the Mexican government that if a single drug dealer or rapist crosses the border to your country, Mexico City will cease to exist.
T. I knew you were my guy Vlad! Youre a genius!
P. And as for Syria
T. Ah yes, that sounds familiar too. Syria borders with Russia, right?
P. Right. So, look, I suggest you pull out your military from the region, forget all about that mess, and let my air force pulverize Aleppo and wipe out all the inhabitants of the territories where the terrorists are.
T. But Vlad! That was my secret plan to finish off ISIS!
My dear Vlad, I dont have anyone on my team who knows a damn thing about foreign policy
P. OK, OK. Well wipe them out together. But afterwards, youll have no problem, I suppose, if I set up a puppet government there under Assad.
T. Assad? Another goddamn Muslim I suppose?
P. Another goddamn Muslim, Donald, but my goddamn Muslim.
T. Done. Ill give it to ya. Thanks so much for everything, Vlad. Ill get back to you later for more advice.
P. You are more than welcome Donald. It is my pleasure. Until the next time.
T. Goodbye, Vlad. I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
English version by Simon Hunter.
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!
A week after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was sworn into office, ending a 10-month political paralysis, the Popular Party (PP) government is promising that Spain will meet European Union deficit targets.
Speaking in Brussels on Monday, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos announced a new budgetary adjustment in the coming weeks.
We have discussed whether the recovery in Spain is due to the fact that there was no government
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Eurogroup president
The government wants to have a new budget ready by the end of the year that will include measures to meet the 2017 deficit target of 3.1% of GDP, said De Guindos.
But he also expressed hopes that Spain will not have to slash 5.5 billion of spending, as Brussels expects it to do, if the pace of economic growth is better than the forecast of 2.3% of GDP in 2017.
The Spanish government is forecasting growth of 2.9% for this year. The IMF and Spanish lender BBVA have set that figure at 3.1%.
On Monday, EU officials acknowledged that the Spanish economy is doing better than expected.
We have discussed whether the recovery in Spain is due to the fact that there was no government, joked Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the Eurogroup, at the end of a meeting of economy and finance ministers.
Promises, promises
Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem (wearing glasses) with the finance ministers of Malta, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg. EMMANUEL DUNAND (AFP)
Spain made a similar promise to meet deficit targets in 2015, but ultimately overshot its goal by 10 billion. The EU wants the Spanish deficit to drop to 4.6% of GDP by the end of 2016.
De Guindos asserted that Spain can meet that goal comfortably, based on the measures that have already been adopted [raising corporate tax].
In August, the EU decided to cancel a fine against Spain and Portugal for failing to correct their excessive deficits, and gave them extra time to bring this figure below 3% of GDP.
Spain was told to bring its deficit down to 4.6% of GDP in 2016, to 3.1% of GDP in 2017 and to 2.2% of GDP in 2018.
But Brussels noted that Spains new budget should include structural cuts of some 5.5 billion, equivalent to 0.5% of GDP.
However, Madrid figures that as long as the targets are met year on year, Brussels will not mind whether it is the result of structural cuts or of a stronger economy.
The government wants to have a new budget ready by the end of the year, but will face opposition in Congress
De Guindos has already suggested that Spains economy will grow more than expected. For the state, a growing economy means higher tax revenues and lower expenditure on unemployment checks. Madrid is hoping that this will be enough to improve the states finances, thereby reducing the need for cuts.
Convincing Congress
Meanwhile, back in Madrid, Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro told a group of journalists that the government will review economic forecasts to reflect the economys improved performance, with a view to convincing Brussels that it will not be necessary to cut 5.5 billion from the budget.
Montoro said that if the economy grows above 2.3% of GDP in 2017, the increased state revenues will make it unnecessary to make those harsh structural cuts.
He added that he wants to negotiate the budget with the main opposition parties to ensure a smooth passage through parliament. But the PP is heading a minority government and faces a mostly hostile Congress that has pledged to fight any further social cuts.
In theory, Brussels wants cuts to the structural deficit not the cyclical one that depends on higher or lower growth and could demand more reforms.
But the political winds are blowing in Spains favor: with the EUs popularity at a low following a wave of populism and the Brexit vote in Britain and several national elections coming up Brussels is opting for a flexible attitude towards countries that have already made efforts to reform and which continue to support EU membership.
English version by Susana Urra.
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Paramount is playing the long game with its promotion of Ghost in the Shell, preferring to build as much a sense of mystery as possible around the manga adaptation.
Having already released a series of five ten-second snippets from the film, a brand new teaser has finally revealed star Scarlett Johansson in action as The Major; showing off her cybernetic full-body prosthesis for the first time, as she turns invisible to kick some ass.
io9 made the astute observation that the scene actually harks straight back to the 1995 film adaptation, where the character also turns invisible to beat up her enemy in a strikingly similar setting; is this a hint that the film will be attempting a pretty straight adaptation of the anime?
The teaser also announced a date and location - 13 November, Tokyo - presuming that a full trailer for the film will finally be unveiled at a fan event in the city.
The studio's low-key approach to the film's promotion so far is certainly interesting, though it's tempting to ascribe it as an attempt to ride out the controversy surrounding its casting decisions; fans had already expressed their dismay at the news Johansson would be cast in the lead role of (the clearly Japanese) Motoko Kusanagi, and the first image of the actor in the role seemed only to solidify the dissonance of her casting.
A defining voice in the backlash was Ming Na-Wen, the voice of Disney's Mulan and current star of Marvel television series Agents of Shield; with comic writer Jon Tsuei explaining Ghost in the Shell actually ties into something deeply rooted within Japanese identity and to whitewash its story is to strip it of its weight, power, and relevance.
Hollywood whitewashing controversies Show all 11 1 /11 Hollywood whitewashing controversies Hollywood whitewashing controversies Scarlett Johansson cast as Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell Blonde, white US actress Scarlett Johansson was announced to be playing the clearly Japanese character Motoko Kusanagi in Hollywood's Ghost in the Shell remake, much to the dismay of Asian film fans Hollywood whitewashing controversies Tilda Swinton cast as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange Marvel sparked outrage when Anglo-Scottish actress Tilda Swinton was cast as Tibetan mystic The Ancient One alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange Hollywood whitewashing controversies Zoe Saldana was criticised for 'blacking up' to play the considerably darker-skinned soul singer Nina Simone in Nina AP Hollywood whitewashing controversies Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Prince of Persia The half Jewish, quarter Swedish actor was cast to play a Middle Eastern Prince in Disney's 2010 film Hollywood whitewashing controversies Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in forthcoming film Pan Mara was been cast in the role of American Indian Tiger Lily, sparking an online protest from angry film fans Warner Bros Hollywood whitewashing controversies Christian Bale plays Moses in Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings Ridley Scott claimed he would never cast 'Mohammed so-and-so from such-and-such a country' in a lead role in his Biblical epic, and went on to cast an entirely white cast instead Hollywood whitewashing controversies Jim Caveziel plays Jesus in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ Catholic star Mel Gibson chose to cast a Caucasian American actor in the role of Jesus for his controversial film AP Hollywood whitewashing controversies Micky Rooney plays a Japanese neighbour in Breakfast at Tiffany's Who better to play Holly Golightly's Japanese neighbour IY Yunoishi than American actor Mick Rooney. At least Hollywood has come some way since 1961 YouTube Hollywood whitewashing controversies Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in Argo Ben Affleck became the subject of a few editorials in Latin American newspapers for casting himself (an American with English, Irish, Scottish and Swiss ancestry) as a Mexican CIA operative Hollywood whitewashing controversies Jennifer Connelly plays Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind Alicia Lopez-Harrison de Larde was a naturalised US citizen from El Salvador, but was played by an actress of Jewish, Irish and Norwegian descent YouTube Hollywood whitewashing controversies Chinese actresses cast in Memoirs of a Geisha What better way to alienate Japanese cinemagoers than to cast three Chinese actresses in the lead roles in a film about Japanese culture REUTERS
Producer Steven Paul has defended the decision by stating that fans are "going to end up being really happy with it" and that the film isn't distinctly Japanese, but takes place in "an international world"; though Kaori Momoi has recently revealed she'll be - confusingly - playing Johansson's mother in the film, leaving the film in a particularly perilous position when it comes to navigating the cultural issues brought up by this approach to adaptation.
Ghost in the Shell hits UK cinemas 31 March 2017.
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Robert Kirkman - creator of The Walking Dead - has locked his sights on a new project; a remake of cult 1981 horror An American Werewolf in London.
Interestingly, Deadline reports that the project is set to be written and directed by Max Landis who is the son of John Landis - the filmmaker behind the original.
An American Werewolf in London is considered to be one of the decade's pioneering horror films largely due to the groundbreaking visuals from Rick Baker who earned the first ever Oscar for outstanding makeup.
Starring David Naughton and Griffin Dunne, it follows two Americans backpacking in the English countryside, one of whom begins to manifest into a werewolf after being attacked by a creature. Jenny Agutter also stars.
Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead fan theory is surprisingly plausible
The project is not too much of a departure for Kirkman whose TV series The Walking Dead features an impressive range of old-fashioned prosthetic thanks to executive producer Greg Nicotero who was schooled by veterans George A. Romero and Tom Savini. Aside from the AMC drama, Kirkman's other credits include a television version of his comic book Outcast.
Landis Jr's previous credits include Chronicle and Victor Frankenstein; he has also written Netflix film Bright which will see Will Smith reunite with Suicide Squad director David Ayer.
His father's other credits include The Blues Brothers and Coming to America.
You can read our review of the latest Walking Dead episode here.
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Kimi Maxwell from Perth Australia was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 while pregnant with her second child.
After having a double mastectomy while still expecting she decided to pose for a commemorative photoshoot to celebrate beating cancer.
The brave mother posed with her biceps flexed and the words I survived written on her chest while an arrow pointed down towards her pregnant belly reading, So did I.
Kimi shared the raw and intimate photos of herself in the hopes of bringing awareness to the impact of breast cancer, specifically during pregnany.
'You had me almost naked and feeling safe'
The images were taken by photographer Nikki Fisher Holmes, who decided to post the pictures on Facebook via Australian mummy blogger Constance Halls page in a bid to share Kimis story.
She wrote, I think Kimi is your kind of queen and deserves the recognitionI took this photo of Kimi when she was pregnant and had been battling breast cancer...she wanted to bare all to raise awareness.'
Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Show all 6 1 /6 Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Art helped Ms Black to cope with her treatment. She is pictured here with an Alice in Wonderland 'Drinke Me' bottle painted on her head, symbolising the drugs she took but didn't understand. Lillyan Ling Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Nikki as she waits to be tattooed Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Comedian Nikki Black before being tattooed Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Nikki being tattooed at The Gilded Lily Design Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Ms Black mid-way through her tattoo Breast cancer survivor gets double-mastectomy tattoos Nikki Black after being tattooed
After seeing the post, Kimi who has almost finished reconstructive surgery and is in remission commented saying, You had me almost naked and feeling safe, respected and beautifully captured my message. The ultimate in professional photography I feel. Anything you do from your gorgeous heart is a masterpiece.'
Speaking to the Mail, the photographer spoke of Kimis feisty attitude when they met.
'She faced her battle head on and I never heard her whinge and she just showed so much strength which showed through in the photos. Kimi's goal was to raise awareness and she certainly succeeded in that with the photos being shared around the world, I was really proud of her and honored to play a part in that,' she said.
Now running a business etching memorial portraits, Nikki is donating $10 from every sale to Breast Cancer Research.
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The dad bod, it seems, is in vogue. And now a new book claims that gaining weight after fatherhood makes men healthier, more attractive and more likely to live longer than their skinny counterparts.
The author, Richard Bribiescas, professor of anthropology and deputy provost at Yale University, claims that this is likely due in part to the decreasing testosterone levels seen in older men. He writes:
"[One] effect of lower testosterone levels is loss of muscle mass and increases in fat mass. This change in body composition not only causes men to shop for more comfortable trousers but also facilitates increased survivorship and, hypothetically, a hormonal milieu that would more effectively promote and support paternal investment."
But is there actually any solid science behind the idea that lower levels of testosterone and a bit of a tummy can make men healthier?
There exists a complex relationship between our body composition, the relative amounts of fat and muscle that we have, and how we age. While accurately measuring biological ageing is actually quite difficult, studies have nevertheless shown that having too much body fat can prematurely age us and that maintaining our levels of muscle mass could have the opposite effect. It is certainly true that frailty, a syndrome in which older adults carry an increased risk of poor health outcomes is increased in people who carry too much body fat.
Testosterone and ageing
But what about testosterone? Testosterone is a steroid hormone that in men is produced by the testes. Alongside governing male sexual characteristics, it also controls body composition, with lower levels which naturally occur as we age being associated with less muscle and more fat. It is this very change in body composition that these new claims of vitality are based upon.
Beyond this, there is actually some evidence that testosterone is involved in the ageing process. The most profound evidence that testosterone can affect how we age comes from studies of people who have none: eunuchs or castrati. These men, who have had their testicles removed, outlive their non-castrated counterparts by as much as 20 years, suggesting that the levels of this hormone may have a profound effect on the ageing process.
The worst jobs for your health Show all 10 1 /10 The worst jobs for your health The worst jobs for your health 10. Surgical and medical assistants, technologists, and technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 57.3 What they do: Assist in operations, under the supervision of surgeons, registered nurses, or other surgical personnel and perform medical laboratory tests. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 69 The worst jobs for your health 9. Stationary engineers and boiler operators Overall unhealthiness score: 57.7 What they do: Operate or maintain stationary engines, boilers, or other mechanical equipment to provide utilities for buildings or industrial processes. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 99 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 89 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 84 The worst jobs for your health 8. Water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators Overall unhealthiness score: 58.2 What they do: Operate or control an entire process or system of machines, often through the use of control boards, to transfer or treat water or wastewater. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 97 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 80 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 74 The worst jobs for your health 7. Histotechnologists and histologic technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 59.0 What they do: Prepare histologic slides from tissue sections for microscopic examination and diagnosis by pathologists. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 76 3. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 The worst jobs for your health 6. Immigration and customs inspectors Overall unhealthiness score: 59.3 What they do: Investigate and inspect people, common carriers, goods, and merchandise, arriving in or departing from the US or between states to detect violations of immigration and customs laws and regulations. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 78 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 63 3. Exposure to radiation: 62 The worst jobs for your health 5. Podiatrists Overall unhealthiness score: 60.2 What they do: Diagnose and treat diseases and deformities of the human foot. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 87 2. Exposure to radiation: 69 3. Exposure to contaminants: 67 The worst jobs for your health 4. Veterinarians, veterinary assistants, and laboratory animal caretakers and veterinary technologists and technicians What they do: Diagnose, treat, or research diseases and injuries of animals and perform medical tests in a laboratory environment for use in the treatment and diagnosis of diseases in animals. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 81 2. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 75 3. Exposure to contaminants: 74 The worst jobs for your health 3. Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and anesthesiologist assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 62.3 What they do: Administer anesthetics or sedatives during medical procedures, and help patients in recovering from anesthesia. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 94 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to radiation: 74 The worst jobs for your health 2. Flight attendants What they do: Provide personal services to ensure the safety, security, and comfort of airline passengers during flight. Greet passengers, verify tickets, explain use of safety equipment, and serve food or beverages. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 88 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 77 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 69 The worst jobs for your health 1. Dentists, dental surgeons, and dental assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 65.4 What they do: Examine, diagnose, and treat diseases, injuries, and malformations of teeth and gums. May treat diseases of nerve, pulp, and other dental tissues affecting oral hygiene and retention of teeth. May fit dental appliances or provide preventive care. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 84 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 3. Time spent sitting: 67
The precise reasons for this impressive effect are not very clear, but suggested mechanisms have included an increased ability to fight off infection and a reduced risk of developing prostate cancer, although the latter is a controversial link. It is unlikely the effect is related to cardiovascular health as low testosterone levels are also associated with cardiovascular risk factors and testosterone replacement therapy (TrT) has been shown to improve angina pectoris
How low can you go?
While having low testosterone levels might aid eunuchs in living longer, in the rest of the male population low testosterone is associated with a range of symptoms including poor cognitive function, decreased mobility, reduced sexual function, and lower energy levels, not a list of qualities that many potential partners would find attractive.
But can replacing testosterone levels that have diminished with age improve these issues? Certainly, TrT has been shown to have beneficial effects on bone health, body composition and memory and testosterone has even been called the best anti-ageing drug. Taken collectively, this evidence suggests that although an absence of testosterone over the lifespan may be beneficial, the reduced levels seen in middle-aged and older men might not be such a great thing.
Body mass index (BMI) and longevity
One area of interest that this new book has highlighted is the observation that being overweight might be good for you, at least in terms of how long you live. Traditional opinion is that those of us who are overweight that is, have a BMI of 25 - 29.9 are unhealthy. But recent evidence suggests that people in this category might actually live longer than people who have a healthy, underweight or obese BMI, although conflicting evidence does exist.
This controversial finding suggests that there may be a benefit in being slightly overweight. So while this might not support the books claim that middle-aged men with dad bods are more attractive, it is possible that pudgy dads might live a little bit longer than their more slender counterparts. Just dont give up on that healthy lifestyle.
This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com). James Brown is a lecturer in biology and biomedical science, at Aston University
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Anders Behring Breivik is serving a long sentence for a terrible crime. On 22 July 2011, the 32-year-old Norwegian bombed government buildings in Oslo and then went on a shooting spree on the island of Utoya, killing 77 people. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison the following year. Why did Breivik kill?
It is not as simple as saying that he was a terrorist supporting an idealised religion, or dismissing him as insane. He himself has claimed that his actions were to save Europe from radical Islam and that he was motivated by goodness not evil. But after studying detailed assessments of the far-right terrorist, as well as Breiviks own self-published manifesto, we have found that a condition known as narcissistic decompensation may have been behind his belief that he was waging a personal and political war.
A narcissistic decompensation occurs when someone with a narcissistic personal disorder a condition with which Breivik has been diagnosed suffers from a major injury to their self-esteem. An injury can take many forms including rejection by ones peer groups. What happens next is that they begin to isolate themselves from collective thinking, and move into a paranoid disorder. We would not like to speculate as to what it was that caused Breiviks decompensation here: to do so would require a new psychiatric assessment of the shooter.
Breivik arrives at a makeshift court in Skien prison in March for his lawsuit against the Norwegian state, which he accused of violating his human rights (Getty)
In Breiviks case, it has been strongly suggested that in addition to his proven narcissistic disorder, he also had Aspergers syndrome though the latter was not formally diagnosed. The two conditions together may form a particularly dangerous combination, making someone much more at risk of taking part in extreme violent behaviour. Similar to previous studies, our research found that there could be a link between narcissistic personality disorder and violence. However, in Breiviks case, we think that the narcissistic decompensation, which may have occurred at a time when he was relying on an Aspergers coping mechanism following a specific routine to help himself through a social situation, for example could have been the final push that sent him along a violent path.
Although little is known of the warning signs for what makes a mass shooter, the route itself has been well defined in the aftermath. Essentially, the path towards intended violence starts with harboured grievances, continuing with the development of an idea that, for example in Breiviks case, Europe must be saved from terrorism. The person then comes to the conclusion that violence is the only way to remedy a situation. This is followed by research and planning and preparing for the violent actions. After this there is an act of breaching security Breivik used GPS to scout paths across Utoya island, for example and finally the attack itself. Narcissistic traits or narcissism have already been put forward as a potential risk factor for school shootings. In a study of seven such incidents in German schools, researchers found that three of the four shooters who had received treatment for psychiatric disorders prior to killings exhibited detached symptoms of narcissism. The authors also found narcissistic traits were exhibited in two of the other three offenders. And in one of these two cases, a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder would have been met given the symptoms the shooter displayed.
What this indicates is that the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder in school shooters is higher than in the general population. So narcissism certainly could be a risk factor in these mass shootings. Further studies in the US have found that narcissism has been exhibited in one-fifth to one-seventh of school shooters. It is important to caution here that narcissistic traits are not a necessary condition for motivating a shooting. Likewise, simply having a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder combined with narcissistic personality disorder will not by itself necessarily propel an individual on the path to intended violence. There are other factors at play.
The Norwegian flag at half-mast outside a hotel in Sundvolden where survivors of the attack were reunited with their families two days after the shootings (Getty)
There are significant gaps in our understanding of how mass shooters develop. In the case of Breivik, there were several other things that could have contributed to his violent acts. He had a difficult relationship with his mother and his father was absent. Breivik wanted to be a millionaire and seemed not to care whether this was by legitimate or criminal means. He had his sexual identity questioned, had difficulties dating and had apparently abandoned his pursuit of the ideal woman. He was rejected by his peers in elite gaming circles, as well as the political elite who he saw as not sharing his views despite his plight to save Europe. His life experiences up until the day of the shooting can be summed up as a litany of failed attempts to gain positions of status and power, acceptance and admiration from others.
Floral tributes laid near Utoya island in the wake of the attack (Getty)
The pathway to violence and the factors that drive some to become mass shooters require urgent, detailed investigation. If we can identify early patterns of behaviour that can be recognised and flagged up, we could potentially predict those individuals which are at an increased risk of committing extremely violent acts. Given the higher prevalence of narcissistic traits and autism spectrum disorder (including Aspergers) found in mass shooters, the overlap between these two requires further analysis across a wider pool of subjects. It could very well be that the co-occurrence of both autism and narcissism is a particularly explosive combination. In the aftermath of mass shootings, the question is always asked could it have been prevented? Psychological analysis is just one way we can recognise the warning signs, and stop these atrocities before they ever begin.
This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com). Clare Allely is a lecturer in psychology at the University of Salford
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Aberdeen has slipped down the rankings of the best UK cities in which to live and work as a result of the downturn in oil and gas, according to a new report.
The city has dropped from fifth place to 10th in the 2016 Good Growth for Cities index, which measures the performance of 42 UK cities against 10 categories selected to measure economic success and personal and family wellbeing.
These include jobs, health, income, skills, work-life balance, house affordability, commuting times, income equality and pollution.
Aberdeen was found to have below average scores for income distribution, house prices to earnings and work-life balance.
Edinburgh maintained its position as the third highest placed city, despite a below average ranking for transport, while Glasgow fell from 24th to 29th place.
The city still outperformed Newcastle, Birmingham and Sheffield but had below average scores for health and owner-occupation.
While Inverness was not included in the main index and therefore not ranked, it was found to have performed particularly well, with above average results in measures including jobs, transport, skills, income distribution and environment.
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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. 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City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. 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The report, produced by PwC and think-tank Demos, found that Scottish cities overall scored particularly well on elements including skills, jobs and income, but were mostly around or below average in terms of health, owner occupation and new businesses.
Paul Brewer, PwC government and infrastructure partner for Scotland, said: "It was only a few years ago that Aberdeen was ranked second in the report but has now slipped to 10th place as the impact of the reorganisation of the North Sea oil and gas industry takes effect.
"As our recent Sea Change report highlighted, there is still opportunity in the oil basin but the city also needs to continue to explore other options to future-proof itself. Aberdeen does demonstrate its resilience as the only Scottish city to perform above average in terms of new businesses per head."
Press Association
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Deliveroo couriers have demanded union recognition and employment rights and are set to take legal action if the company rejects their request.
The news comes after a landmark ruling in October stated Uber drivers are employees, not self-employed as the company had claimed. The judgment could entitle thousands of gig economy workers to holiday pay and a guaranteed minimum wage.
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) has demanded recognition from Deliveroo so that the union can bargain for pay and conditions on workers behalf. The deal will initially cover Camden in north London and will be rolled out nationwide if successful.
Recommended Read more Uber ordered to pay drivers minimum wage in landmark case
If half of drivers in the area sign up, Deliveroo will be forced to recognise the union. It will be the first collective bargaining agreement in the gig economy, setting a precedent for others to demand further rights.
Deliveroo has 10 business days to respond, after which an application will be submitted to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) asking it to force Deliveroo into collective bargaining.
IWGB general secretary Jason Moyer-Lee said: Of course, for the CAC to entertain our request they will need to decide that Deliveroo drivers are workers and not the independent contractors you have bogusly deemed them to be, Moyer-Lee said.
Deliveroo drivers work for Deliveroo and as such they should be entitled to paid holiday, minimum wage, trade union rights, and all the other rights associated with worker status.
Experts said the case could be hugely significant. Aaron Hayward, employment specialist at DJM Solicitors said it was no surprise the drivers were taking action after the Uber case.The explosion of the gig economy means many thousands of workers across the UK are now engaged in temporary, casual work that doesnt entitle them to paid holiday, minimum wage and other rights, because they are officially classified as contractors, he said.
If the drivers are successful, Deliveroo will be the first app-based employer to recognise a union in the UK. First they must succeed in convincing a tribunal that drivers should be reclassified as employees as opposed to contractors as collective bargaining laws only apply to employees.
This is an employment case that employers, workers and lawyers alike will be watching with interest. As we move more towards a gig economy based on short-term, software-driven casual work, this issue isnt going to away anytime soon.
Deliveroo delivers food from thousands of restaurants which do not have their own delivery service such as Pizza Express, Byron and Gourmet Burger Kitchen.
Drivers receive 3.75 per delivery under a new pilot scheme, but some have allege they wait up to an hour for a delivery, meaning their take-home pay is less than minimum wage. This is legal if the workers are self-employed, but many say it amounts to exploitation.
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Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. 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After MPs waded into the dispute in August, Deliveroo offered concessions, including the chance to opt out of the pilot scheme and stick to current terms of 7 per hour and 1 per delivery.
It said it would also guarantee at least 7.50 an hour and petrol for those who continue to participate, following protests by hundreds of riders in London.
A Deliveroo spokeswoman said: As Deliveroo continues to grow, we are committed to providing great opportunities for UK riders, with the flexible work riders value, and a payment model which is fair, rewarding and better matches riders time with our customers orders.
We have been in close and regular contact with our riders throughout the trial and as you would expect we will be writing directly to our riders to inform them of the next steps as the trial comes to an end.
The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive and we welcome the opportunity to further engage with riders, policymakers and the unions as the sharing economy in Britain continues to grow.
The IWGB is holding a meeting for campaign supporters in King's Cross at 7pm on Tuesday.
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Marks & Spencer has announced it will close about 60 clothing and home stores over the next five years, in an effort to turn around its struggling business.
Chief executive Steve Rowe, who began his M&S career as a Saturday worker in the Croydon store in the 1980s, earlier warned that he would have to take tough decisions to restore the retailer to its former glory.
The changes mean 30 stores will shut completely in the UK and 45 full line stores will be "downsized or replaced" as Simply Food stores, as M&S tries to capitalise on the success of its food and drink products.
Details of the restructure came as M&S reported an 88 per cent fall in pre tax profit to 25m in the six months to the end of September, as sales of clothing and food declined.
Mr Rowe also outlined plans to shut 53 stores across 10 international markets, including 10 in China and seven in France, while pulling out of Belgium, Estonia, Hungary and Lithuania, putting around 2,100 jobs at risk
Mr Rowe, who found that M&S had become too complex and inefficient in a review of the business after his appointment this year, said: In May, we laid out a number of questions which we would answer as part of our strategic review."
"We committed to creating a simpler business with customers at its heart, and taking action to start to recover our Clothing & Home business and continue to grow in Food. These are tough decisions, but vital to building a future M&S that is simpler, more relevant, multi-channel and focused on delivering sustainable returns."
Shares in M&S plunged in early trading, as investors weighed up the implication of the retailers announcement to cut store numbers both at home and abroad.
The retailer started the morning near the top of the FTSE 100, with shares up as much as 2 per cent before plunging by 3.51 per cent at 9 am. Shares were still down 4.21 per cent in afternoon trading.
John Ibbotson, director of the retail consultancy Retail Vision, said the decision to withdraw from 10 overseas markets was a humiliating moment for the brand.
He said: "When in July it [M&S] posted its worst results for a decade, many thought things couldnt get any worse. But they just have."
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"Today's younger shoppers simply dont have an emotional bond with M&S clothing, and older people are losing it. As a result, they're shopping elsewhere, whether at Next, New Look, Primark and other affordable luxury brands."
Earlier in September, Rowe announced plans to cut more than 500 jobs at its London head office in Paddington.
M&S revealed its worst first quarter in clothing and homeware sales for almost a decade in July.
A recent protest in Buenos Aires against the murder of women. EFE
More information Seis asesinatos por violencia machista en Argentina en menos de 48 horas
The murder of six people, five of them women, in Argentina over the space of 48 hours has once again spotlighted the problem of gender-related violence in the South American country, following a high-profile case last month involving the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl.
On Saturday evening, a naval NCO named as Orlando Oreja in the eastern province of Entre Rios shot dead two former partners. He has since been arrested.
Violence against women continues to increase in Argentina
On Monday, a man named as Juan Pablo Ledesma broke into the home of his former partner, named as Johanna Carranza, and stabbed her to death, along with her two daughters, aged five and seven, as well as the womans partner. Ledesma then reportedly tried to commit suicide.
Carranza had reported Ledesma to the police and he had been issued with a restraining order. Neighbors alerted the authorities when they heard screaming and shouting around 3 am.
Ojeda had also been reported by one of his former partners, named as Lidia Milessi, with whom he had three daughters.
Speaking in the wake of the killings, Argentinean Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said in a radio interview that women in her country faced very high levels of violence. She added that security measures to protect women would be increased. She that women who reported former partners to the police would be given a special telephone, while their aggressors would have to wear an electronic tag that would send a signal to the police if they came within a certain distance of their victim.
Bullrich called on women to report the first act of aggression to the authorities. That said, the latest data in the National Register of Femicides, set up two years ago, shows that 20% of the 235 women killed last year had reported their aggressor to the authorities. The report shows that 27% of women murdered had not reported their problems to the police. In 53% of cases there was no information.
The country is still in shock over the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl last month
The Security Minister also criticized courts for failing to hand down tougher sentences to men who beat their partners or former partners. She also called for long-term measures to change the attitudes of boys and young men toward women.
Over the last two years, womens organizations in Argentina have held huge nationwide marches to protest gender-based violence under the slogan, Ni una menos (Not one less). But violence against women continues to increase. The National Register of Femicides shows that 225 women were murdered in Argentina in 2014, and 235 in 2015. This year looks set to match those figures.
On October 8, Lucia Perez was reportedly picked up outside her school in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, some 300 kilometers south of the capital of Buenos Aires. She was then drugged, gang raped and allegedly penetrated with a wooden pole. Her killers then washed her, changed her clothes and took her to a medical center, alleging she had suffered an overdose. She died in hospital. Three men have been arrested.
English version by Nick Lyne.
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The cyber attack on Tesco Bank that saw money stolen from 20,000 accounts is unprecedented and serious, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority has said.
Tesco Bank has taken the drastic measure of temporarily halting all online transactions on Monday after 40,000 customers saw suspicions transactions on their savings accounts over the weekend. Half of the customers have seen hundreds of pounds taken from their accounts.
Andrew Bailey was facing questions from the Treasury Select Committee on Tuesday, where he acknowledged there was a shortage of talented tech staff within the banking sector.
He said: There are elements of this that look unprecedented and it is serious, clearly."
Millions of customers remain unnecessarily exposed to the risks of IT failures, including delays in paying bills and an inability to access their own money ... We can't carry on like this.
Tesco Bank chief executive Benny Higgins said the bank was working with the authorities to identify those responsible.
The National Crime agency (NCA) is now leading the investigation into the case, which could be one of the most serious cyber attacks in the history of British banking.
Peter Roe, from IT analyst firm TechMarketView, said: This looks like the most serious, and certainly the most visible, of the various difficulties suffered by the UK banking sector in recent times. The number of accounts affected suggests that this is a systemic failure of security around Tescos core database.
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Tesco Bank has pledged to reimburse all customers who lost out money by Tuesday night.
Jay Floyd, head of fraud strategy and solutions at ACI Worldwide (EMEA), said banks should be better prepared to deal with cyber threats:
An attack like this needs to kickstart a complete review of the banks internal fraud prevention strategy. Examining the timing of the fraud will also be key; the fact that the attack happened over the weekend when fraud departments can be thin on the ground, is an important factor which needs to be looked at.
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While many performers mark the end of the show with an after show party, after playing a gig on election eve Chance the Rapper decided to lead his fans to the polls.
The 23-year-old rapper led a procession of fans through his hometown of Chicago at about 6pm on Monday night to an early voting super centre, reports ABC 7. He could be seen walking amid the crowds, which he says reached into the thousands.
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
He was also filmed going in to cast his vote and was met with screaming and cheering fans when he emerged.
Chance had been playing a free concert called Parade to the Polls in the city marking his second bit of high-profile political campaigning in recent days.
A vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, he joined Beyonce and Jay Z in Ohio to perform at a rally for the Democrat candidate on Friday. He has previously denounced Donald Trump on Twitter admitting is so damn scared of the Republican candidate.
Earlier this year, Chance teamed up with the NAACP to encourage people of colour to stay woke and vote. This included giving fans opportunities to register to vote during the many stops of his world tour.
Last month, Chance was invited to the White House for this years State Dinner by Barack Obama, who earlier this year named him his favourite rapper along with Kendrick Lamar.
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Meghan Markle has complained about press intrusion into her private life in a letter addressed to a British media regulator.
Representatives of the 35-year-old actress, who is the girlfriend of Prince Harry, said Markle has been subject to harassment from journalists abroad and is worried about articles being published about her in the UK media.
It comes after Prince Harry condemned the paparazzi for subjecting Markle to a wave of abuse and harassment via an extraordinary statement released by Kensington Palace.
The Palace attacked the racial undertones of media coverage of Markle, best known for her role in Suits, and said the 32-year-old Prince feared for her safety. The actress, whose father is white and mother is African American, has described herself as biracial and half black and half white on her website.
The statement said the Prince rarely undertook formal action over fictional stories but the past week had seen a line crossed.
People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. 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He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. 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Some of this has been very public, the statement said. The smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.
Some of it has been hidden from the public - the nightly legal battles to keep defamatory stories out of papers; her mother having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door; the attempts of reporters and photographers to gain illegal entry to her home and the calls to police that followed; the substantial bribes offered by papers to her ex-boyfriend; the bombardment of nearly every friend, co-worker, and loved one in her life.
The statement confirmed for the first time that Markle, who lives in Toronto, and Prince Harry are in a relationship. The Palace also said Prince Harry was profoundly "disappointed" he had not been able to protect her from press intrusion.
It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms Markle should be subjected to such a storm, it said.
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A British banker has been found guilty of murdering two Indonesian women after promising to pay them for sex in his upmarket Hong Kong apartment.
Rurik Jutting denied the two charges on grounds of diminished responsibility but was convicted by a jury in Hong Kong on Tuesday.
The 10-day trial heard, in gruesome detail, how the 31-year-old Cambridge graduate slashed the throats of Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26.
The former securities trader was accused of holding Ms Ningsih captive for three days before beheading her and stuffing her dead body in a suitcase. He stored it on his 31st-floor balcony close to the notorious Wan Chai red-light district until calling police.
The jury, who had to sit through his own smartphone footage of the former Bank of America Merrill Lynch employee torturing Ms Ningsih, took around four hours to find the expressionless Jutting guilty.
The two victims' families released statements calling for severe punishment as well as compensation over the women's deaths because they were the main breadwinners.
The family of Ms Mujiasih, a bar worker and former maid, said they were devastated and hoped Jutting could be executed if possible, the BBC reported.
The family have also reportedly called on the Indonesian government to provide a scholarship for her seven-year-old son.
In a letter read out to the court by defence counsel Tim Owen after the verdicts, Jutting said: My actions regarding the deaths of Ningsih and Mujiasih my actions preceding their deaths were horrific even by the standard of homicide trials.
Seneng Mujiasih, also known as Jesse Lorena, was found dead in Rurik Jutting's luxury flat (Rex)
Jutting said he was haunted by what he had done and was aware of the acute pain I've caused to their loved ones.
The evil that I've inflicted cannot be remedied by me, the letter said.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry beyond words.
The former history and law student, who lived in a flat boasting a rooftop pool after moving to Hong Kong in 2013, debated for his college Peterhouse and was secretary of the history society.
He has been described by friends as bright but aloof and socially awkward.
An Indonesian migrant worker at a vigil for Seneng Mujiasih and Sumarti Ningsih in Hong Kong's Victoria Park on the eve of Rurik Jutting's trial (AFP/Getty)
The graphic trial painted a picture of a friendless loner living off takeaway food, drinking, binging on cocaine and amassing huge debts.
He told police interviewers: She was unlucky to be the person in my flat when I realised that physically hurting someone under cocaine was something I gained satisfaction from.
It awoke a part of me that I never knew existed.
Jutting, who was taking cocaine in the run-up to the murders, said he spent more than 820,000 on the drug over two years and consumed as much as 10g and four bottles of wine in one day.
In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong Show all 12 1 /12 In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong harbour-2.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong tram.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong street.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong fisheye.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong canoe.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong dragon.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong chow.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong Beach.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong harbour.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong Peak-Tram.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong Lantau-Island---Buddha.jpg In pictures: The beauty of Hong Kong Star-Ferry.jpg
His defence counsel referred to this, and an alleged sexual assault he was subjected to as a 16-year-old at Winchester College, in an attempt to explain his actions.
Forensic psychiatrist Richard Latham said Rurik Jutting suffered from narcissistic personality disorder and sexual sadism disorder.
He has been automatically sentenced to a mandatory life in prison.
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The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has apologised and admitted failings after an inquiry found a string of errors in the force's botched investigation into an alleged VIP paedophile ring.
Retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques analysed the Met's handling of eight historical sex crime investigations, including Operation Midland, Operation Yewtree and Operation Vincente.
The 2.5m Operation Midland probe, surrounding claims that boys were sexually abused by highly placed public figures more than 30 years ago, closed in March of this year.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe admitted today that Operation Midland should have tested the credibility of the complainant more rigorously and talked of his professional and personal dismay.
Recommended Read more Investigation into claims of Westminster VIP paedophile ring closes
Northumbria Police has said it is investigating the sole complainant, Nick, for perverting the course of justice.
Speaking more frankly on the subject than previously, the retiring 59-year-old said on Tuesday: I accept, on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, accountability for these failures as I accept accountability for failures in any of our operations and investigations.
It is a matter of professional and personal dismay that the suspects in the investigation were pursued for so long when it could have been concluded much earlier.
I am today issuing a public apology to Lord Bramall, Lady Brittan and Harvey Proctor for the intrusion into their homes and the impact of Operation Midland on their lives.The public identification of suspects compounded the harm of our investigative failures.
They have all suffered as a result of the investigation and our description of the allegations as credible and true. We should not have said this, and we should have tested the credibility of the complainant more rigorously before conducting the searches."
The high-profile Operation Midland investigation surrounded accusations made by a single alleged victim known as Nick, claiming the "savage" abuse led to the deaths of three boys.
The late prime minister Sir Edward Heath, who took Britain into the European Union in 1973, was investigated Stephen Hird/PA Wire (PA)
Nick said he witnessed a group of powerful men in the 1970s and 80s abusing young boys in central London locations including a Dolphin Square flat near Westminster Palace.
The accused included former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor who called for Met officer resignations former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, former head of the armed forces Lord Bramall, late Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, and the former heads of MI5 and MI6.
Doubts gradually grew over the investigation into former Home Secretary Leon Brittan Getty (Getty)
The Henriques Report, which took eight months to put together, pinpointed 43 errors in the Operation Midland investigation and contained 25 recommendations for lawmakers and policing nationally.
The errors included: believing complainant Nick was a credible person for too long; saying publicly that the allegations were credible and true; obtaining search warrants with flawed and incomplete information; and not closing the inquiry sooner.
It also said the failings of a few officers should not undermine the Met Police's reputation, and it reserved praise for Operation Yewtree the investigation into and stemming from Jimmy Savile's abuse.
Sir Hogan-Howe concluded his statement by trying to explain the doomed Operation Midland investigation, citing media pressures, public profile of suspects and an alleged government cover-up.
Deputy Labour Party leader Tom Watson has repeatedly refused to apologise for his role in the VIP sex abuse inquiry, after he initially lobbied police to investigate, saying: When anyone is accused of multiple sexual crimes by numerous, completely unrelated sources, the police have a duty to investigate, no matter who it is.
A Northumbria Police spokesman said: We can confirm we are carrying out an investigation at the request of the Metropolitan Police into allegations of perverting the course of justice.
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The UKs leading food bank charity distributed more than half a million emergency food parcels over a six-month period this year.
Between April and September 2016, The Trussell Trust gave out 519,342 packages containing three days worth of supplies to families and individuals in crisis.
This is a 2.5 per cent increase from the same period the year before. The Trust said around 188,584 of these packages went to children.
The charity said it is on course to distribute a record number of parcels again this financial year in what it described as a worrying trend after giving out more than 1,100,000 parcels overall in 2015-16.
Adrian Curtis, The Trussell Trusts food bank network director, told The Independent many families were under financial pressure and had to make difficult choices as a result.
Last year was our busiest year ever recorded. Its a worrying trend that more families and individuals across the UK are still struggling to juggle paying bills and putting food on the table, he said.
Our busiest time of year is around Christmas, because of the extra expense, but also because they have to make the choice between putting the heating on or buying food.
There are more than 400 food banks run by the Trussell Trust (Press Association) (PA)
The Wiltshire-based charity blamed benefit delays and changes, such as from reassessments or sanctions, as the biggest reasons for foodbank use accounting for 44% of referrals to its network.
Low income driven by problems such as low pay, insecure work or rising costs accounted for nearly 25% of all referrals to the Trust's foodbanks.
In response, the charity is calling for a hotline to each foodbank's nearest Job Centre Plus, which it says would help people out of a crisis.
The charity said that anecdotal evidence from its network suggests foodbank managers, volunteers and welfare advisers spend a significant amount of time on hold to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) phone lines on behalf of people in crisis.
If were able to talk to staff at a local job centre, many of these issues can be resolved relatively quickly, said Mr Curtis.
Around 64,000 households are expected to be affected by a tough new benefit cap which came into force today.
The annual limit on welfare payments to unemployed households has dropped from 26,000 to 23,000 in London and 20,000 outside the capital.
Reasons for food bank use are complex so its misleading to link them to any one issue and the vast majority of benefits are processed on time, said a DWP spokesperson.
We know that work is the best route out of poverty and employment is at a record high.
But for those who need extra support, we provide a strong safety net through the welfare system, including hardship payments, benefit advances and budgeting loans.
Hungry Britain: welfare cuts leave more than 500,000 people forced to use food banks, warns Oxfam Show all 2 1 /2 Hungry Britain: welfare cuts leave more than 500,000 people forced to use food banks, warns Oxfam Hungry Britain: welfare cuts leave more than 500,000 people forced to use food banks, warns Oxfam web-foodbanks-1-getty.jpg Almost 350,000 people are believed to have received at least three days emergency food last year Getty Images Hungry Britain: welfare cuts leave more than 500,000 people forced to use food banks, warns Oxfam web-foodbanks-2-getty.jpg A volunteer at a Trussell Trust food bank sorts donations to the charity in Salisbury, Wiltshire Getty Images
The Trust has analysed its data and suggests that, on average, people require two food bank referrals in one year so it estimates that 260,000 people have been users in the first six months of this financial year.
People are referred to one of the more than 424 of the Trust's food banks by frontline professionals such as doctors and social workers.
The food in the emergency packages is donated by the public and the food banks are staffed by volunteers.
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Conservative peer and composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber has claimed he is fed up up with the fact he keeps being asked to vote in the House of Lords.
Mr Webber, who has written 13 musicals and is worth an estimated 650 million, also revealed he almost left the Tory party after voting for George Osbornes controversial cuts to tax credits while he was Chancellor.
The Phantom of the Opera creator, who has voted 30 times in his 19 years as a peer, told the London Evening Standard: I was put in as an honour, not as a working peer. Not as lobby fodder. Im fed-up with the fact that I keep being asked now to go in and vote for things about which I dont have knowledge.
Twenty years ago, the 68-year-old added, the Lords was apolitical in the main. Peers tended to vote with their conscience. I remember saying when I was offered it that, although deeply honoured, I have an active career and couldnt be a part of a House that is about legislation.
"I would only take the title on the understanding that I would come in on issues to which I could contribute. And they said, We havent enough voices with practical experience of theatre, the arts or music, and we would like you to be there. Since that time its become full of people who are superannuated politicians, frankly.
The composer, who was made Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton in 1997, came under heavy criticism after returning from New York to vote against a Lords amendment that was attempting to delay the cuts to tax credits.
But in the interview with the Evening Standard Mr Webber said he did not make the trip specifically to vote and said he believed the former Chancellors policy was wrong.
I have an email in which I said, Im deeply worried if I come in but we were asked to vote and were given off-the-record assurances that the Chancellor was going to rescind this [policy].
He added: Quite honestly, if I resign from the Conservative Party it would make people start
Its a slightly damned if you do, damned if you dont situation. I would like to be an independent. I would like to be a cross-bencher if I could, but doing that is quite a rigmarole and there are more important things in my life.
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Bill Clinton branded Labours Jeremy Corbyn the "maddest person in the room" in a speech he gave explaining the resurgence of left-wing politics in Europe and America.
Documents released by Wikileaks show the former President joked that when Mr Corbyn won his leadership contest, it appeared Labour had just "got a guy off the street" to run the party.
He compared Mr Corbyns rise to the success of Alexis Tsipras in Greece and Bernie Sanders in US primaries.
In one section of the speech, Mr Clinton said Labour had disposed of one potentially successful leader, David Miliband, because they were "mad at him for being part of Tony Blairs government in the Iraq War".
He went on: "They moved to the left and put his brother in as leader because the British labor movement wanted it.
"When David Cameron thumped him in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadnt moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labor Party [sic]."
Mr Clinton added: "But what that is reflective of the same thing happened in the Greek election when people feel theyve been shafted and they dont expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them."
Labour declined to comment on the speech.
Text in which the author defends ideas and reaches conclusions based on his / her interpretation of facts and data
Will Trump become president? CHIP SOMODEVILLA (AFP)
Devoted fans of Donald Trump may not be aware of it, but today, American voters have an opportunity to turn their country into a TV sitcom of guaranteed global success. It will be dark comedy, of course. Or perhaps a tragicomedy of alarmingly unpredictable consequences for the entire planet.
Existing movie models that come to mind include Stanley Kubricks Dr Strangelove, in which a series of errors triggered by a manifestly mad military man leads the world to a nuclear apocalypse.
The alternative to all this is business as usual an insipid version of business as usual
And of course there is Being There, in which a childish character played by Peter Sellers, best known for his hilarious Inspector Clouseau roles, ends up being nominated for the US presidency.
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, the jokes have already started. On November 5, The New York Times ran a story about how the Iranian regime no longer feels the need to encourage its followers to burn effigies of Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty.
That is because The Great Satan is already ridiculing itself plenty. The ayatollahs even greenlighted the broadcast of the live debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton on state television.
The New York Times cited an Iranian analyst who said that there was no better way to illustrate how idiotic, corrupt and hideous the superpowers political system truly is.
The residents of most countries in the world, whether these be run by religious or secular governments, left-wing or right-wing administrations, despotic or democratic leaders, have very likely reached the same conclusions.
Leaders like Trump have sometimes reached power through coups, but never through free choice, at least not in modern times, and much less so in a country thats supposed to be developed. It would be inconceivable in todays Europe to have such a buffoon become a serious candidate to lead his nation.
The US press has tried to find solace in a comparison of Trump and Silvio Berlusconi. But they have nothing in common
The US press has tried to find solace in a comparison of Trump and Silvio Berlusconi. But they have nothing in common. Compared with Trump, Berlusconi possesses all the solemnity of Charles de Gaulle, the astuteness of Winston Churchill, the sagacity of Nelson Mandela and the tact of the Queen of England. It is true that Berlusconi has acted like a clown, but (pardon my saying so) he was only the prime minister of friendly Italy, not the man with access to the button that could destroy the planet.
If the US has proven anything at all, its that it is truly a land of opportunity. Perhaps what motivates the political ignoramuses who will vote for Trump today is the notion that if he can make it into the White House, so could any of them.
If he manages it, we are guaranteed a good show. Envision Cantinflas, the Mexican comedian, playing the role of Caligula in the modern version of the decline and fall of the empire.
The alternative to all this is business as usual an insipid version of business as usual. Hillary Clinton is neither a comic character nor a blockbuster star. But if she is declared the winner a few hours from now, we will all sleep better for it, even if we end up falling asleep in front of the television news.
English version by Susana Urra.
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Theresa May has been given permission by the Supreme Court to appeal against a legal ruling forcing her to give Parliament a vote on the plans for Brexit.
The Government has been allowed to appeal against the High Court ruling delivered last week that the Prime Minister must seek MPs' approval to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, launching official Brexit talks.
The challenge will start on 5 December and is expected to last four days.
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
At the completion of legal submissions, the judges will reserve their decision to a date probably in the New Year.
It is the first time that all 11 justices will sit to hear a case.
The appeal move follows a ruling last Thursday by three High Court judges that the Prime Minister does not have power to use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 herself and start the two-year process of negotiating Brexit without the prior authority of Parliament.
Government lawyers had argued that prerogative powers were a legitimate way to give effect to the will of the people who voted by a clear majority to leave the European Union in the June referendum.
But Lord Thomas declared: The Government does not have power under the Crown's prerogative to give notice pursuant to Article 50 for the UK to withdraw from the European Union.
The Lord Chief Justice sitting with the Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, and Lord Justice Sales emphasised that the issue was a pure question of law.
The court is not concerned with and does not express any view about the merits of leaving the European Union: that is a political issue, he added.
News that the Government will be allowed to appeal this ruling comes as Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon launched a legal ambush on the UK Government and ordered the nations most senior law officer, the Lord Advocate, to lodge a formal application at the Supreme Court to intervene in the case.
Ms Sturgeon said it "simply cannot be right" that rights linked to membership of the European Union "can be removed by the UK Government on the say-so of a Prime Minister without parliamentary debate, scrutiny or consent".
The First Minister said she would not go into the detail of what the Lord Advocate would argue, something which will ultimately be down to the legal officer to determine. But she made it clear that she personally believes the UK Government should seek approval for triggering Article 50 through parliamentary consent, not only in Westminster, but also at Holyrood.
Ms May announced at the Conservative Party conference that she intends to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017. That decision saw "concerned citizens" drawn from all walks of life take the Government to the High Court, with the lead challenge brought by investment fund manager and philanthropist Gina Miller.
In Tuesday's statement, the Supreme Court said it had "now received formal notification of the Government's intention to appeal the High Court's decision" of 3 November.
It added that "permission to appeal has been granted" by a panel of three justices Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger, Lord Mance and Lord Kerr "and the case can now proceed to a full hearing".
The Supreme Court has set aside four days, 5 to 8 December, for the hearing. The statement said: "The exact number of days and timings will depend on further submissions received from the parties on the precise legal arguments to be considered, the number of interveners and whether any other related cases are joined to this one.
"However, at this stage, we expect the hearing may well last all four days from Monday 5 December.
"The court can also confirm that all 11 justices will sit on the panel considering this appeal, which will be chaired by Lord Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court.
"The Supreme Court will sit in its largest courtroom and make available a live video feed in the other two courtrooms in the building to enable as many members of the public as possible to observe proceedings.
"It should be added that, as with all Supreme Court proceedings, this appeal will be live streamed on our website, so it is not necessary for people to attend the building in person to watch the hearing.
"Judgment will be reserved at the conclusion of that hearing and follow at a later date, probably in the New Year."
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Nicola Sturgeon has launched a legal ambush on the UK Government as it seeks to overturn a court ruling which forces it to let MPs vote on Theresa Mays Brexit plans.
The Scottish First Minister has ordered the nations most senior law officer, the Lord Advocate, to lodge a formal application at the Supreme Court to intervene in the case.
Ms Sturgeon said it "simply cannot be right" that rights linked to membership of the European Union "can be removed by the UK Government on the say-so of a Prime Minister without parliamentary debate, scrutiny or consent".
It comes after the High Court ruled that Ms May could not use royal prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, launching official Brexit talks. Ministers will appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court.
The Independent understands that with the UK Government's appeal application officially lodged, the Lord Advocate will now make a written submission to the Supreme Court which could be considered by judges in coming to their final decision.
The First Minister said she would not go into the detail of what the Lord Advocate will argue, something which will ultimately be down to the legal officer to determine.
But she made it clear that she personally believes the UK Government should seek approval for triggering Article 50 through a legislative consent, not only in Westminster, but also at Holyrood.
Theresa May might use fast-track process to sidestep full scrutiny of Brexit plans, minister signals
She said: "When you read the High Court judgment last week and all the rights that are affected by the triggering of Article 50, then it doesn't take much to see the rights that are then affected in Scotland. It strikes in many ways right at the heart of the devolution settlement.
"So I believe that as a matter of politics and as a matter of fairness and respect to the devolution settlement, before we even get into matters of law which are not for me to determine, then it is inconceivable that the UK Government would try to ignore or not seek the approval of the Scottish Government."
Ms Sturgeon dismissed any suggestion that the move would be seen by Leave voters as the Scottish Government "interfering" in the process which began after the UK's referendum.
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
She said: "This is not an attempt to frustrate the will of people in England and Wales but it is part of our overall attempt to protect the will of the Scottish people.
"It's not a question of interfering, this is a decision that affects all of us and it affects the people of Scotland here just as much as it affects people right across the UK."
Following the revelation that several SNP MSPs voted for Brexit, she said it was up to her party's parliamentarians whether they wanted to reveal their vote or not.
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Nigel Farage has said he would accept a job from Donald Trump were the US Republican candidate to be elected as president.
The former Ukip leader has campaigned for Mr Trump in the United States, giving a stump speech at at a rally on stage with the billionaire.
Mr Farage, who remains leader of Ukips group of MEPs despite stepping down as party chief after the EU referendum, said he would like to serve as Mr Trumps ambassador to the European Union.
He was evasive when questioned whether he already had discussions with Mr Trump about working for his administration were he to be elected.
The Brexit campaigner likened the US elections to the EU referendum and suggested Mr Trump would bring about change. Mr Trump has made similar parallels between the two votes, dubbing himself Mr Brexit.
I dont know whats going to happen, all I can say is this election is very simple: its rather like Brexit. Do you want a change, or do you want to stay exactly as you are? Thats what its all about, Mr Farage told ITV1s The Agenda programme.
If he did offer me a job I would quite like to be his ambassador to the European Union. I think I would do that job very well.
Americans go to the polls on Tuesday evening to vote for their next president, with the two frontrunners Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party and Mr Trump.
Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY
Mr Trump, who is standing on a far-right platform, has previously said he would ban all Muslims from entering the United States and has committed to a policy of mass deportations of undocumented migrants were he elected.
Polls suggest a closer than expected rate, with Ms Clinton perhaps slightly ahead according to most surveys. Results are expected in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday, UK time.
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Six High Court judges are launching an unprecedented legal action against Justice Secretary Liz Truss.
The case marking a new low in relations between the Government and the judiciary will see the group accusing Ms Truss of unlawfully discriminating against them on grounds of their age.
Members of the group will also claim they have been discriminated against on grounds of sex and ethnic origin in the case, relating to a new judicial pension scheme.
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It comes after Ms Truss faced heavy criticism for failing to defend three other High Court judges against attacks, following their decision to rule against the Government in a critical Brexit court case.
Under reforms introduced last year -- before Ms Truss became Lord Chancellor -- some serving judges are allowed to retain membership of an existing pension scheme, whereas others under a certain age, including the six bringing the case, were enrolled in a new scheme.
The claimants will argue they are being treated less favourably due to their age, while two members of the group will also say female judges and those from ethnic minorities are under-represented among those able to retain the more preferential pension terms.
Shah Qureshi, head of employment at Bindmans LLP, said: We can confirm that we act for a small group of judges in relation to age, race and sex discrimination issues arising out of the new judicial pension scheme.
As this matter is currently awaiting judicial determination we are unable to comment further.
Remembering when Liz Truss gave one of the weirdest speeches ever
A two-week hearing, starting next week, has been arranged before a tribunal judge who is not affected by the new pension arrangements. There could then be further hearings before appeal judges.
The Independent contacted the Ministry of Justice which said it could not comment on ongoing litigation.
Last week the High Court ruled that Theresa May could not trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, launching Brexit talks, without seeking Parliaments approval. It lead to the three judges involved being attacked and branded enemies of the people in one newspaper.
Lord Chancellor Ms Truss was criticised for hesitating to leap to the judges defence, and then failing to address attacks strongly enough when she eventually issued a statement.
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The Ministry of Defence has been forced to ask for 438 million from emergency reserves to pay for a compensation service to members of the armed forces, following an administrative blunder by the Treasury.
The slip-up by Treasury officials emerged after Mark Lancaster, the parliamentary under-secretary in the Ministry of Defence, submitted a written statement to the Commons on Tuesday describing an inadvertent publishing error.
According to Mr Lancaster there was a shortfall of 438,193,000 to the Armed Forces Compensation scheme a service available to serving and former personnel who are injured as a result of their service in the military.
The deficit in the net cash requirement arose due to the error by the Treasury, which appeared in the Central Government Main Supply Estimates published in July.
It means the Ministry of Justice has now asked the Treasury to match the sum from its contingency funds, which are used to finance payments for urgent services and to provide funds required by government departments to meet temporary cash deficiencies.
A Treasury spokesperson refused to identify the individual responsible for the blunder, simply adding the wrong figure was added by mistake. It is understood, however, that no one will be underpaid or given a late payment - it is "just rectifying the error" added another official.
Nia Griffith, the shadow Defence Secretary told The Independent: I am deeply concerned that this Government appears to have underfunded the Armed Forces Pension and Compensation schemes by over 438 million.
She added: These important schemes exist to support our veterans in retirement and to compensate those who have been injured in service. Our veterans and service members need urgent reassurance that the Governments accounting blunder wont leave them out of pocket.
The written statement added: This will be corrected at the Supplementary Estimate stage, however, a Contingencies Fund advance has been sought in the interim, which will be repaid once the Supplementary Estimate is approved by Parliament and Royal Assent of the accompanying Supply and Appropriation Bill has been obtained.
Parliamentary approval for additional cash of 438,193,000 will be sought in the Supplementary Estimate for the Armed Forces Pension and Compensation Schemes. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at 438,193,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.
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Ministers have been accused of abandoning flagship pledges to electrify major rail lines, as the troubled schemes descended into further chaos.
The upgrades of key routes to Bristol, Oxford and Berkshire have been deferred after spending spiralled out of control prompting speculation they will never happen.
Separately, the rail minister refused to commit to meeting the 2023 target already delayed by three years to electrify the Midland Mainline which connects Sheffield to London.
A further planned electrification, across the Pennines, is also under possible threat, with no confirmation that it will go ahead until the end of 2017 at the earliest.
The announcement that the upgrades of four lines on the Great Western route have been put back indefinitely was made by rail minister Paul Maynard, in a written parliamentary statement.
The main project to electrify the rail from Cardiff to London will go-ahead, although the bill has soared from 873million to 2.8billion and there is no completion date.
But electrification between Oxford and Didcot Parkway, Bath Spa to Bristol Temple Meads, Bristol Parkway to Bristol Temple Meads and of Thames Valley lines to Henley and Windsor are on hold.
Tom Watson, Labours deputy leader, tweeted: The government has just abandoned an election pledge on rail electrification. Very bad news for South West England.
And, in the Commons, a frustrated Conservative backbencher, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said: It may well be that the third runway at Heathrow is built before the Great Western mainline is fully electrified.
But Mr Maynard insisted deferring the electrification of some routes would free up between 146m and 165m, for other improvements.
He said: We can bring in the benefits expected by passengers newer trains with more capacity without requiring costly and disruptive electrification works.
Taxpayers may face a higher bill because those new electric trains will have to be modified if they are used on the four lines that are not being electrified.
Last year, it was revealed that the Department for Transport (Dft) was faced with paying 400,000-a-day in compensation to manufacturer Hitachi, until the trains could be re-worked.
Both Network Rail and the DfT have been sharply criticised by a committee of MPs for failing to provide a schedule of when work on the Great Western line will be finished.
Meanwhile, appearing before the Commons transport committee, Mr Maynard refused to stand by last years timetable to electrify the Midland Mainline by 2023.
Instead, he said: We are electrifying the line from St Pancras to Corby and Kettering to enable faster journeys for commuters on that route.
Then we are continuing the development work as planned to ensure that we continue to improve services to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, as we laid out.
Sheffield Labour MP Paul Blomfield said Mr Maynard had backtracked on the 2023 pledges, saying: It is a complete betrayal. We cannot accept any delays.
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The Governments welfare reforms and austerity policies have led to grave and systematic violations of disabled peoples rights, an inquiry by the United Nations found.
The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities dispatched investigators to London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast in October last year.
They found that a string of legislation introduced since 2010 as part of welfare reforms and austerity policies had had a negative impact, including the Welfare Reform Act 2012, Care Act 2014, and Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016.
UK disability charities, which have long warned against the Governments approach to disability, said the UN findings confirmed that Tory policies are making life harder for disabled people. However, the Conservative minister in charge of the welfare system branded the committees approach as patronising and offensive.
The UN report warned that cuts and changes to disability support under the Conservative-led government had hindered disabled peoples right to live independently and be included in the community.
Disabled people were also routinely portrayed as being dependent or making a living out of benefits, committing fraud as benefit claimants, being lazy or putting a burden on taxpayers, the report found.
Other policies such as the bedroom tax and benefit sanctions had also disproportionately affected the disabled, while work schemes had no visible impact in helping disabled people find work and were sometimes counterproductive.
Damian Green dismissed the report as offensive (Getty)
The report comes as former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith called on the Government to look at ending its freeze on working age benefits and more funding for Universal Credit.
Dan Scorer, head of policy at Mencap, a learning disability charity, warned that more policies in the pipeline would have similar effects.
This report is further acknowledgement that cutting disabled peoples benefits will only make life harder and isolate people further from inclusion in employment and wider society, he said.
7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Show all 7 1 /7 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Closing Remploy factories The Work and Pensions Secretary called time on Britains system of Remploy factories, which provided subsidised and sheltered employment to disabled people. People employed at the factories protested against their closure and said they provided gainful work. Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee? Mr Duncan Smith said at the time, defending the decision. I promise you this is better. The Remploy organisation was privatised and sold to American workfare provider Maximus, with the majority of the organisations factories closed. The future of the remaining sites is unclear 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Scrapping the Independent Living Fund The 320m Independent Living Fund was established in 1988 to give financial support to people with disabilities. It was scrapped on July 1 2015, with 18,000 often severely disabled people losing out by an average of 300 a week. The money was generally used to help pay for carers so people could live in communities rather than institutions. Councils will get a boost in funding to compensate but it will not cover the whole cost of the fund. This new cash also doesnt have to be spent on the disabled 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut payments for the disabled Access To Work scheme Iain Duncan Smith is bringing forward a policy that will reduce payments to some disabled people from a scheme designed to help them into work. The 108m scheme, which helps 35,540 people, will be capped on a per-used basis, potentially hitting those with the more serious disabilities who currently receive the most help. The single biggest users of the fund are people who have difficulty seeing and hearing. The cut will come in from October 2015. The charity Disability UK says the scheme actually makes the Government money because the people who gain access to work tend pay tax that more than covers its cost. The DWP does not describe the reduction as a cut and says it will be able to spread the money more thinly and cover more people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut Employment and Support Allowance The latest Budget included a 30 a week cut in disability benefits for some new claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The Government says it is equalising the rate of disability benefits with Jobseekers Allowance because giving disabled people more help is a perverse incentive. The people affected by this cut are those assessed as having a limited capability for work but as being capable of some work-related activity. A group of prominent Catholics wrote to Mr Duncan Smith to say there was no justification for this cut. Mental health charity Mind, said the cut was insulting and misguided 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Risk homelessness with a sharp increase disability benefit sanctions Official figures in the first quarter of 2014 found a huge increase in sanctions against people reliant on ESA sickness benefit. The 15,955 sanctions were handed out in that period compared to 3,574 in the same period the year before, 2013 a 4.5 times increase. The homelessness charity Crisis warned at the time that the sharp rise in temporary benefit cuts was cruel and can leave people utterly destitute without money even for food and at severe risk of homelessness. It is difficult to see how they are meant to help people prepare for work, Matt Downie, director of policy at the charity added 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Sending sick people to work because of broken fitness to work tests In 2012 a government advisor appointed to review the Governments Work Capability Assessment said the tests causing suffering by sending sick people back to work inappropriately. There are certainly areas where it's still not working and I am sorry there are people going through a system which I think still needs improvement, Professor Malcolm Harrington concluded. The tests are said to have improved since then, but as recently as this summer they are still coming in for criticism. In June the British Psychological Society said there was now significant body of evidence that the WCA is failing to assess peoples fitness for work accurately and appropriately. It called for a full overhaul of the way the tests are carried out. The WCA appeals system has also been fraught with controversy with a very high rate of overturns and delays lasting months and blamed for hardship 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people The bedroom tax The Governments benefit cut for people who it says are under-occupying their homes disproportionately affects disabled people. Statistics released last year show that around two-thirds of those affected by the under-occupancy penalty, widely known as the bedroom tax, are disabled. There have been a number of high profile cases of disabled people being moved out of specially adapted homes by the policy. In one case publicised by the Sunday People last week, a 48 year old man with cerebral palsy was forced to bathe in a paddling pool after the tax moved him out of his home with a walk-in shower. The Government says it has provided councils with a discretionary fund to help reduce the policys impact on disabled people, but cases continue to arise
People with a learning disability face massive exclusion from the labour market, and have seen their benefits and funding for vital social care services reduced. With further cuts to Employment and Support Allowance being introduced in April, we urge the Government to use next weeks backbench debate in Parliament as an opportunity to reconsider this cut.
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Multiple Sclerosis Society, said the report was yet more evidence to support changes to the way the Government dealt with disabled people.
Labours shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Debbie Abraham said her party would take a different approach and that the report was reliable evidence that shows this Tory government is responsible for grave violations of the rights of disabled people under its failing austerity plan.
However, Damian Green, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said cuts to support for disabled people did not necessarily mean worse outcomes.
The UN measures success as the amount of money poured into the system, rather than the work and health outcomes for disabled people, he said.
The UK is a recognised world leader in disabled rights and equality. Not only do we spend about 50bn a year to support sick and disabled people, but we also offer a wide range of tailored and effective support, which this report fails to recognise.
Our work and health green paper marks a turning point in our action to confront the attitudes, prejudices and misunderstandings within the minds of employers and across wider society.
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With polls suggesting that British people overwhelmingly back Hillary Clinton, UK politicians have tended to lean the same way.
During the US primaries MPs even got together to debate whether to ban Donald Trump from Britain.
Some of Britains brave (or foolish) political souls have ventured to back the far-right Republican candidate, however.
Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage (Getty)
The former Ukip leader campaign alongside Donald Trump in August. He took to the stage alongside the Republican candidate for a stump speech, telling the Mississippi audience he wouldnt vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me. He defended Mr Trump over sexism, saying the candidate was not running to be Pope.
Philip Davies
Philip Davies (Rex Features)
The hard right Tory MP for Shipley said he would vote for Donald Trump in a hearteat and said he wouldnt vote for Hillary Clinton because she kept going on about the fact that she is a woman. It takes real guts to say unpopular and controversial things and sometimes they really need to be said Mr Davies wrote.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Getty)
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told the BBC in September that he would almost certainly vote for Donald Trump in September. Id always vote for the Tory candidate in the United Kingdom and Id probably be a Republican if I was an American, he said. Following further controversy over Mr Trump Mr Rees-Mogg later said in October that he would abstain.
Arron Banks
Arron Banks (PA)
The Ukip-backing millionaire Arron Banks decided to go public with his defence of Mr Trumps groping comments in October. I think its obviously the case when men get together, men will say these things, he said, adding that he did not condone the comments. Men talk big. Men say all sorts of things, he said.
Michael Fabricant
Michael Fabricant (Getty) (Chris Jackson - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Blonde-haired Tory MP Michael Fabricant said in May that he thought Donald Trump could be a great president. He added however that he did not necessarily agree with much of what Mr Trump had said. I think as soon as he were to become president he would be very pragmatic, he would have different advisers around him, he said.
Steve Hilton
Steve Hilton (Getty)
Former David Cameron advisor has backed Donald Trump, arguing that Hillary Clinton represents rich coastal elites. You dont have to agree with everything Donald Trump says or does to conclude that he would make the most positive, practical difference in the real lives of real people, Mr Hilton wrote in an article for Fox News.
Iain Duncan Smith
Iain Duncan Smith (Getty)
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said in June that he believed reports that Donald Trump was a very decent man. He said he would definitely not vote for Hillary Clinton thats for sure. His office has however in recent weeks clarified that he has not formally endorsed Mr Trump.
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A professor at the University of Toronto has been heavily criticised after he refused to use gender-neutral pronouns.
Jordan Peterson came under fire when he spoke out against Canadian human rights legislation that prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender identity.
In a video lecture released in September, the psychology professor criticised the usage of alternative pronouns such as they ze and zir to address people who identify as trans or nonbinary in their gender identity.
However, since its publication, Dr Peterson has had his office door glued shut and received complaints from students calling his comments unacceptable, emotionally disturbing and painful.
Protests also erupted at a free speech rally in October where he reiterated his views.
The University of Toronto said it supported Dr Peterson's right to academic freedom and free speech, however it warned he could be in breach of the Ontario Human Rights code and urged him to stop repeating the controversial views.
"If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I'll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing, Dr Peterson told the BBC.
"I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory. There's no way I'm going to use words made up by people who are doing that - not a chance."
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
In 2015, the University of Tennessee switched its official gender pronouns from he and she to "xe" and "ze" to encourage a culture of inclusion.
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Spartanburg County Sheriffs Office said Monday that it is looking into disturbing product reviews left on Amazon.com by an account that may be associated with Todd Kohlhepp, a South Carolina real estate agent suspected in the deaths of at least seven people, officials said.
Kohlhepp, 45, has been in custody since last Thursday, when police found a woman chained inside a metal storage container on his property in rural Woodruff, South Carolina.
Since then, Spartanburg County sheriffs deputies have made several more shocking discoveries on the 95-acre parcel owned by Kohlhepp, including the body of the chained womans boyfriend and the possible gravesites of two other unidentified victims.
Police say Kohlhepp also confessed to being responsible for the Superbike murders, a 2003 quadruple homicide at a motorcycle repair shop in Chesnee, South Carolina, that became one of the states most notorious cold cases.
Now, an Amazon account that may belong to Kohlhepp is under scrutiny for several unnerving product reviews. The user identified only as me but whose account is linked to a wish list for Todd Kohlhepp reviewed dozens of items on the online retail site starting in May of 2014.
In a Sept. 13, 2014 review for a padlock, the user wrote: solid locks.. have 5 on a shipping container.. wont stop them.. but sure will slow them down til they are too old to care.
In another review on the same day for a saw chain, the user rated the product five stars and simply wrote: backup chain.
Local media outlets captured other unsettling reviews that appear to have since been removed.
In one review no longer visible, the Amazon user wrote on a product page for a knife: havnet stabbed anyone yet yet. but I am keeping the dream alive and when I do, it will be with a quality tool like this according to an image taken by WSPA News.
The news station also posted an image of the users review for a foldable shovel: keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies and you left the full size shovel at home. does not come with a midget, which would have been nice.
An Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to inquiries about the authenticity of the reviews Monday morning or why some of them might have been taken down. (Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The majority of the reviewed products were tactical gear, gun accessories, tools, SD cards and books on war and fighting.
The user in question also left reviews for dog toys, a Nine West handbag (girlfriend loves it), two seasons of The Walking Dead, various music CDs and a six-piece chocolate fondue set.
About half of the users reviews were left between mid-May and early October of 2014, around the time Kohlhepp acquired his 95-acre property in Woodruff. Spartanburg County assessors records show that Kohlhepp closed on the parcel on May 29, 2014.
The users most recent batch of reviews were for tactical gear on Aug. 24, about a week before Kala Brown, 30, and her boyfriend, Charles David Carver, 32, were reported missing. The Anderson, South Carolina, couple did not show up to a planned dinner on August 31, triggering an agonizing search by their family members and friends. Cellphone and social media records led authorities to Kohlhepps property in Woodruff.
There, police found Brown with a chain around her neck inside a metal storage container on Kohlhepps land. She told authorities that she had been kept there for two months.
US sexual assault statistics Show all 8 1 /8 US sexual assault statistics US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq US sexual assault statistics Graphiq
It was pretty emotional, to say the least, when she was found especially when she was chained like a dog, Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright said, according to WYFF. She had a chain around her neck.
An obviously traumatized Brown had screamed for help when sheriffs deputies knocked on the side of the container, about 30 feet long, 15 feet wide and 10 to 12 feet high, Wright said.
Investigators on Monday were continuing to search the property, as well as others connected to Kohlhepp, authorities said.
Officials now say they believe Kohlhepp is responsible for at least seven deaths, in addition to kidnapping Brown. Wright told reporters Sunday that the investigation was not being limited to South Carolina but did not want to reveal further details.
The gruesome revelations are a stark contrast to Kohlhepps professional image. On the surface, Kohlhepp portrayed himself as a dedicated and tech-savvy Realtor who ran his own South Carolina real estate firm upstate.
At least one of the Amazon product reviews from the user being investigated referred to working with agents. In a review for a CD from metal band Godsmack posted in May 0f 2014, the user wrote: pisses off the neighbors, works well at family get togethers or company meetings where agents are crying like a little bh..
In another review, for a tactical vest, the user wrote: wear this to the next company meeting, put on a few more pouches.. gun holster and I dont care how boring your speech for the company is. those lazy vermin will stay awake in that meeting.. worth every penny.. also not wearing pants while wearing this is a great motivation for them to get to the point and back to their desks.
Kohlhepp so far has been charged with one count of kidnapping and four counts of murder, according to court records. His next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 19, 2017.
The Washington Post
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Donald Trump appears to have channelled a Hollywood character at his final election rally before Americans take to the polls, declaring 8 November as the countrys Independence Day.
Today is our Independence Day, the Republican candidate told crowds in Michigan on Monday night. Today the American working class is going to strike back.
While many of Trumps supporters on Twitter have reiterated his sentiment that 8 November should henceforth be considered Independence Day, many have pointed to the candidates apparent channelling of fictional president President Thomas J Whitmore played by actor Bill Pullman in the film Independence Day.
Today is our Independence Day - Trump. (Am I bleary or is that a direct quote from Independence Day?) NBC News Katy Tur tweeted, while actor Zach Braff tweeted, Trump just quoted Bill Pullman in Independence Day, with a picture of the gif of the actor playing President Whitmore.
In the film, President Whitmore delivers a rousing speech to fighter pilots who are about to take on the aliens trying to take over the Earth.
Perhaps its fate that today is the fourth of July and you will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression or persecution, but from annihilation. Were fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day, the fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight, were going to live on, were going to survive.
Today we celebrate our Independence Day, the president says in the film.
TV writer David Slack responded to the candidates speech by tweeting: Mr Trump, I know Independence Day. I have seen Independence Day, and you, sir, are Randy Quaid at best, referencing the actor who played hero character Russell Casse in the film. The character memorably shouted Hello boys, Im baa-aack! before flying his jet into the alien spaceship, killing himself and blowing up the attackers at the same time. Mr Quaid became infamous in recent years for claiming that he and his wife Evi are on a Hollywood death list and for being wanted in the state of California after squatting in a property that formerly belonged to them. The pair claimed to still own the property.
Mr Trump had been expected to hold his final rally in New Hampshire, but the extra event was added at the last minute as his campaign attempted to push into traditionally Democratic states ahead of the polls opening.
The Republican candidate said he does not need to use the support of superstars like Beyonce, Jay Z or Lady GaGa to draw crowds as Hilary Clinton has done at her rallies, instead saying that All we need is great ideas to make America great again.
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She certainly was an unusual TV guest: Nora Illi, the representative for women of a Swiss Muslim group.
But to many viewers of a popular German Sunday evening talk show, the 32-year-old convert wearing a face veil was also a provocation. It was not because she chose to cover much of her face at a time when a ban on full-face veils in public has been proposed. But rather it was her comments that caused an immediate public backlash.
Speaking on the show, Illi made arguments that some non-Muslims would probably disagree with: In Islam, women have many rights and possibilities. We don't have to balance family and career as much as other women do. We can evolve in our role.
More controversially, though, Illi appears to think that it is understandable and even praiseworthy that some European youths might think of Syria as the promised land and fight there for militant groups, according to social media posts she wrote and that were read out on the talk show.
Referring to those young people, Illi had written in a Facebook post: Muslims are faced with repressions all over the world. It is no wonder that the temptation to break out of that misery is gigantic.
One must highly praise such a determination as civil courage, given that context.
Women who feel that they have been shut out by society and want to break away could view Syria as the promised land, as the only way out, she also has been quoted as arguing.
Her comments were criticised by journalists and talk show panel participants. German media outlets said her TV appearance was being perceived by many viewers as a call for jihad. Illi has rejected such claims.
World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty
Illi's comments come at a sensitive time. After the influx of more than 1 million refugees into the country over the past two years, relations between Muslims and other communities have become a major focus of Germany's public debate. Anti-Islam groups, such as Pegida, continue to attract thousands of supporters at their weekly marches.
Meanwhile, Syrian refugees complain about German mosques being too conservative for them, indicating divergent opinions within Muslim communities in the country.
Such debates are unlikely to disappear over the next months.
The possible prohibition of burqas and a revamped anti-radicalisation strategy may feature in the run-up to next year's general elections.
The Washington Post
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A hunter who shot and killed an elk while on a trip near Oregons Maury Mountains has been impaled by the animals antlers as he attempted to drag it back to his camp.
Gary Heeter, 69, from Bend, Oregon, was hunting with a group on Saturday morning when he killed the elk.
Mr Heeter attached the elk to his four-wheeler and began driving back to the camp. But when he encountered a steep hillside his vehicle flipped upwards and the hunter was sent backwards onto the animal, becoming impaled in the back, The Oregonian reported.
The group Mr Heeter had been hunting with performed first aid on him to control the bleeding, while first responders from the Crook County Fire and Medical department also attended the man.
"When the deputy arrived at the crash scene [] he found Heeter was conscious and communicative, but appeared to be going into shock, a spokesperson from the Crook County Sheriffs office said.
A Life Flight helicopter was sent to area but was unable to find somewhere to land safely straightaway due to the rocky clearings and wooded areas, Sergeant Ryan Seaney of the office said, according to KVAL.com.
Mr Heeter was eventually flown to St Charles hospital in Bend where he is said to be in a fair condition.
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Hundreds of Americans have flocked to the New York cemetery where suffragist Susan B. Anthony was buried to place I voted stickers on her gravestone as a tribute to her fight for female suffrage.
A long queue formed at Mount Hope Cemetery during the early hours of polling day as people arrived to pay respects to Ms Anthony, feminist activist during the 1930s, ahead of the presidential result that could see Hillary Clinton elected as America's first female president.
Tributes expanded onto social media as people celebrated Ms Anthony for being one of the figures who fought for womens rights. One woman wrote: I voted today. Thank you, Susan B. Anthony and the rest of the hard fought women that made it possible for I, a WOMAN, to vote.
But the gesture provoked distaste from others, who asserted Ms Anthony was only a feminist for white women, urging that black women weren't included in her fight for the female vote.
One wrote: I dislike history revisionists. Stop referring to Susan B. Anthony as some advocate for women's rights. When Black women weren't included.
Another said: Susan B. Anthony is what a lot of liberals are today: they want to see people of color do well but never better than them.
As the suffragette movement progressed in the US during the 1930s, Ms Anthony is reported to have made clear her disregard for black rights.
In one instance Ms Anthony is quoted to have said: I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.
Mount Hope Cemetery has reportedly extended its visiting hours to 9pm to allow for more Election Day visitors.
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She was born at the family home in Lonaconing, a mining town in the mountains of Western Maryland, and delivered by the midwife who delivered all the Lonaconing babies around that time, which was August 261920. Her mother named her Gladys Elaine Beeman. Her father was on his way to Detroit, where he hoped he could find work in a car factory. Her president was Woodrow Wilson, whose secretary of state was Bainbridge Colby, a somber-looking man with little political experience whose appointment the newspapers had described as bizarre.
On that day, Colby sat at his home in Washington, D.C., and waited for a train to arrive from Tennessee. It carried some papers, and when they came, he signed them. Tennessee had just become the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment; now that the ratification nationwide had reached the required majority, Colbys signature would make it the law of the land. That night, Gladyss relatives came to Lonaconing to meet the baby girl whose country had just granted women the right to vote.
Gladys grew up, and Gladys grew old, and over 96 years it was the story of America and the women who lived there: hemlines rising and falling, ideas coming and going - and things that were done certain ways, and then all of a sudden done in different ways, which made some people feel liberated and some of them feel uncomfortable. In one of the first elections after the amendment was ratified, Gladyss grandfather put on the swallowtailed coat and top hat he wore for special occasions and walked down to the polling station to cast his ballot, for the Democrat. Later that day, her grandmother put on her own Sunday best, voted Republican, and returned to triumphantly tell her husband, I boxed you out.
Lonaconing was in moonshine country and two-room schoolhouse country, with a population of 2,054. Gladyss teacher was called Miss B, and Gladys wanted to be like her, which was a reasonable dream: A woman could have a career, as long as she never married, and as long as the career was one of three things: a nurse, a secretary, a teacher. That made sense to Gladys, the way it made sense that the girls did the dishes and the boys brought in the coal, the way she accepted that shed never study at a university even though teachers had told her she had the brains for it. It was the way things were.
Gladys Ament (third row, fifth from left) with her classmates at Gilmore, the two-room schoolhouse in Lonaconing, Maryland that she attended while growing up in the 1920s and 1930s (Ament Family Photo)
The Depression came, and there was no money in Lonaconing. She knew two girls who were going to Baltimore to try to make it there. Gladys was 20, it was 1940, and she took the fourth seat in a car driven by one of the girls older brothers to arrive at a boardinghouse in a neighborhood called Pigtown.
One night a friend arranged a double-date where it wasnt clear who was supposed to match up with whom. If you go on a date, you must make sure its two couples, her mother had always told her, because that was what nice girls did. When the car pulled up, she got in the front seat to claim the boy who owned his own transportation. His name was Robert Ament. He was smart and reliable and a good pinochle player, so they eloped, and her relatives never stopped calling him that man of Gladyss, because he wasnt from the mountains and so could never truly fit in.
The war came, and there were no men in Baltimore. Bobs job installing vital telephone lines kept him home for a while, but at the end of 1943 he was drafted, too, and he sent her letters from Europe: To my one and only, with hand-drawn cartoons of Cupid.
And then the world at home seemed to open up a little. Gladys saw posters of Rosie the Riveter, that strong-looking woman in a kerchief. There were posters of women holding drill bits: Do the job he left behind, they said, so she called up the telephone company where Bob had worked and tried to get a job there.
Your husband is serving our country, the boss told her sternly. And we are going to hold that job for him, and any men who want jobs when they come home.
That made sense to Gladys, she supposed, because everyone hoped the war was almost over and everyone wanted the soldiers to return. She kept a job at a Montgomery Ward instead, filling catalogue orders, searching for shoes that had been ordered by people tracing their feet on paper. The workers were mostly women, and the bosses were all men. Sometimes if she was assigned a task, she was told to ask a man for help, even if she already knew how to do it. Even if shed been there longer.
She bought her first pair of pants, and sent Bob a picture of herself in them, strolling on a beach. He wrote her back and said, You mean you go outside with those pants on? She sent him a picture of herself in a bathing suit, and he wrote back, Youre wearing too little!
Gladys poses wearing one of her first pairs of trousers and with her husband, Robert Bob Ament, after his return from the war in 1946 (Ament Family Photos)
The president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The first lady was traveling all over the country for him, making speeches, meeting with unions, visiting factories and malaria patients. She visited the mountain country where Gladys had grown up. She wrote a newspaper column called My Day, where she talked about who she had seen and what she had learned.
It is said that gossip is the vice of women, she wrote in September 1944. Yet I have lived nearly sixty years, during which I have spent a good part of my time with men, and I have not found that they are any less quick to repeat things about which they know little and which they have not verified.
Two months later, in November 1944, the first election in which Gladys was old enough to cast a ballot, she went to her Baltimore polling place and voted for FDR. If she were being honest with herself, she was really voting for Eleanor.
She voted for Harry Truman, who ended the war. He was her favorite president, because of his plain way of speaking and the fact that he sometimes cussed.
She voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower twice.
She voted for Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy, but then regretted it later, because Kennedy seemed so smart and died so young.
By then, Bob had come home and they had a daughter, Mary, and a son, Robert Jr. They built a house out in Baltimore County, and had a third child, Marshall. Gladyss job was to stay home and raise them, which she did, while trying to navigate a world that kept changing. When she heard her daughters grade school would be integrating black students, she worried about the best way to explain to Mary what was happening and why some people might be mad about it.
You be nice to everybody, she ended up saying, simply, because her daughter was barely 10. You be nice to everybody.
It was the 1960s. Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, and wrote, Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night - she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question - Is this all?
Gladys didnt have much time to notice the feminist revolution. She was a wife, and a mother, and she loved those roles. But the kids got older, and she did start to want things. She wanted to go to work. Other women were; other women had kept their jobs after the war and built careers.
Bob didnt tell her not to, but she could tell he didnt like the idea, just like she could tell he didnt like the idea of her going back to school for a college degree. The kids were young. It would disrupt the family rhythms too much. She got a job anyway, but she made sure it was a part-time one - a teachers aide at a school for special-needs children - so that she could still get home in time to make dinner, still be around on weekends for family car trips. Nurse, secretary, teacher.
Gladys Ament with her three children (left to right: Marshall, Robert Jr. and Mary) and her mother on a family vacation to Washington, D.C., in the 1950s (Ament Family Photo)
When she and Bob disagreed on something, usually they talked things through, but in the end he was the head of the household and was responsible for the decisions. Her daughter, Mary, later wondered how her mom felt about that. She wondered whether Gladys disagreed with his decisions about curfews, about clothing, about who could drive the car where and when.
But often this way made sense to Gladys, and she was glad for him to be the leader of the family. Sometimes it didnt make sense to her, though. But it was still the way it was. When they fought, she would throw her dishrag on the counter and storm outside to walk laps around the yard until she cooled off. There she goes again, the neighbours would say.
The Equal Rights Amendment. Title IX. Eleven women in the U.S. House of Representatives, then 15, then 19. No women in the Senate.
She voted for Lyndon Baines Johnson
She voted for Hubert Humphrey.
She voted for George McGovern, and then Carter, twice, even though she hadnt thought he was that great the first time around.
She voted in every election, national and local. On election days, Bob would come home from work and say, Well, who am I voting for today, Gladys? because he knew that she had researched and thought about political things more than he had.
Later, much later, she would hear about some female engineers who had worked with Bob at the telephone company back in the days when he hadnt wanted his own wife to get a job. She learned that he had always been supportive of them and always treated them with respect in the workplace. People were complicated; they could hold many different beliefs at once.
When the kids got near college age, money was tight, but Bob said he thought they could save enough money for their two sons to go on to a university. Gladys asked, What about Mary?
I can spend it on my sons, he said, but he told Gladys he wasnt sure it made sense to spend it on his daughter.
Gladys said, If the boys get to go, then Mary gets to go, too.
Gladys on a trip to New York shortly after her marriage in 1943 and pictured today with her daughter, Mary Ament Streb (Ament Family Photo and Doug Kapustin/The Washington Post)
She voted for Walter Mondale.
She voted for George H.W. Bush.
Bill Clinton ran for office and she liked him. She couldnt help it, with his folksy drawl. His wife reminded her of Eleanor Roosevelt, the last time that she could remember a first lady being so involved in White House life.
When Clintons philandering past came out, she wondered whether that should be such a big deal. She had lived through philandering presidents before. She had lived through a time when a mans cheating was something to be tolerated and expected. The same grandfather who had once put on his swallowtailed coat to go and vote also put on his swallowtailed coat for other reasons. Going up to see Mrs. Jones, are you? her grandmother would ask, sharply, and it was only later that Gladys realised what it meant.
She voted for Bill again, and by then she was one of many because women were voting at higher rates than men.
Her daughter Marys life was different than hers. She did go to college. She studied education because the tuition was cheaper than her dream major of architecture. She became a teacher. But then she went on to become an administrator, the boss, with men and women alike working for her.
Bob retired. Gladys thought about continuing to work, because shed discovered how much she loved it. She loved the self-worth that came with it, and she was naturally patient with the children. Eventually, though, he persuaded her to retire too, and she was glad he had, because they spent happy years traveling through the United States and Europe before her husband of more than 50 years died at the age of 76.
Gladys voted for Al Gore.
Her son had a daughter, which meant that Gladys had a granddaughter and she could see yet another generation of young women growing up, with even more opportunities than shed ever imagined for herself. Her granddaughter never questioned whether she would be allowed to go to college. She just went, and while in school she worked part time in a job that nobody told her would be reserved for men.
Gladys voted for John F. Kerry.
She voted for Barack Obama, in 2008 and in 2012.
She sold the house theyd built in Baltimore County and moved to a retirement community in Southern Maryland. Her health started to waver; she moved to the retirement homes assisted-living wing, where she maneuvered around her small apartment by making sure to grasp on to railings or the backs of chairs.
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'.
She followed politics, as she always had. She watched as the 2016 election came, and as the former first lady, the one who had reminded her of Eleanor Roosevelt, was blamed for her husbands infidelity. She watched as the womans fitness for office was questioned. She thought about the 18 presidential elections she had voted in, over the course of 70 years, and the 17 men she had watched take the office in her lifetime. Some of them had been good leaders, and some less so. She knew what made sense to her now.
In the middle of October, Mary drove to Gladyss retirement home with the absentee ballot that her mother had requested weeks before, unsure of whether shed be well enough to get to a polling center. Gladys had recently celebrated her 96th birthday, which was also the birthday of the amendment that now allowed her to do what she had always wondered if she would live long enough to do. She filled in an oval bubble with a pencil, and she voted for Hillary Clinton.
The Washington Post
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Ahead of Tuesdays presidential election, the Rev. Frank Pavone took an aborted foetus, laid it upon an altar Sunday and posted a live video on Facebook. Pavone, a Catholic priest who heads New York-based Priests for Life, said the foetus was entrusted to him by a pathologist for burial.
During an already heated and divisive campaign season, Pavones video has raised questions for some about what is appropriate antiabortion and political activism in the church. As of Monday afternoon, the video, which is 44 minutes long, had 236,000 views. In it, he holds up a poster of graphics of abortion procedures.
In Pavones Facebook appeal, he wrote, we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected.
A call placed to the spokesman for the Diocese of Amarillo in Texas, which is Pavones diocese, was not immediately returned Monday. The receptionist, however, said her phone has been ringing off the hook.
(Sarah Pulliam Bailey/The Washington Post (Sarah Pulliam Bailey/The Washington Post)
In a blog post for Patheos, Scott Eric Alt argued that what Pavone did was sacrilege, a violation of Catholic Church canon law, which states that the altar is reserved for divine worship alone, to the exclusion of any secular usage.
Being pro-life is about respecting the dignity of the human person, Alt wrote. It is the antithesis of respect for the dignity of the human person to use a dead child as a political prop to lobby for your presidential candidate the day before an election.
Pavone is a high-profile antiabortion activist who has clashed with leadership within the Catholic Church. In 2014, Cardinal Timothy Dolan cut ties with the priest after Dolan suggested that Pavone had stonewalled financial reform within his organisation, which is based out of Staten Island. A spokesman for Dolan, who is also chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said the archdiocese does not have a relationship with Pavone and has no comment on the video.
In a blog post for the Archdiocese of New York, Ed Mechmann wrote about the revulsion he felt about the video.
A human being has been sacrificed and the altar of God has been desecrated, all for politics, he wrote. Everyone who respects the dignity of every human person should reject and disavow this atrocity.
Trump has been a divisive candidate for antiabortion activists, who have tried to keep women at the forefront. Earlier this year, the GOP candidate suggested that women who have abortions should be punished, a position he later reversed.
If anything, Pavones actions are a signal that the older antiabortion groups are on their way out, said Charles Camosy, a bioethics professor at Fordham University and a board member of Democrats for Life of America. The use of graphic images has been a divisive issue in the antiabortion movement, and Camosy said Monday that nearly everyone he knows, including conservatives, have condemned Pavones video.
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'.
This plays into the narrative so many people have of us, that this is a bunch of wild extremists who will put an aborted foetus on Facebook Live. Come on! said Camosy, who noted that Priests for Life was one of the earliest organisations to support Trump. This is the death rattle for the culture-war-focused pro-life movement.
Pavone has had a rocky history under Catholic leadership. After Patrick Zurek was installed as bishop in Pavones diocese of Amarillo in 2008, Zurek wanted a full accounting of Pavones $10 million annual budget, which was one of the largest among antiabortion groups in the country, according to Religion News Service (RNS). In 2011, Zurek suspended his ministry, and RNS reports that Priests for Life had been badly mismanaged, running a $1.4 million deficit and failing to make certain tax filings.
Pavones video comes after a group of Catholics inserted fliers into parish bulletins in San Diego claiming that a vote for a Democrat is a mortal sin. San Diegos Bishop Robert McElroy criticised the flier.
And on Saturday, Pope Francis condemned the political use of fear and the building of walls, describing the refugee crisis as a problem of the world and urging political leaders to do more.
Catholics are very divided this election season, especially along racial lines. A recent Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll found that 48 percent of Catholics were polling for Hillary Clinton while 44 percent favoured Trump.
The Washington Post
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State leaders, voting experts and advocates say they are preparing for an unusual level of confusion and chaos Tuesday as voters cast their ballots in a historically bitter presidential race.
Early voters in some states have faced hours-long lines the past several days. Democrats have filed a flurry of last-minute lawsuits alleging voter intimidation by Donald Trump supporters. And there have been some heated polling site confrontations between Trump voters and Hillary Clinton backers.
Election monitors are especially worried this year about the specter of voter intimidation after calls by the Republican candidate for his supporters to stake out polling places and watch for fraud.
Election officials in Pennsylvania and Arizona have become so concerned in recent days about potential intimidation that they issued advisories spelling out what types of threatening behavior are banned and the exact dimensions of buffer zones surrounding polling places.
Individuals who conspire to interfere with a persons right to vote can face up to 10 years in prison, read a notice issued by Pennsylvanias secretary of state after Trump singled out Philadelphia as a place for his supporters to scrutinize.
The concerns have led to extensive contingency plans and a heavy workload for state officials, lawyers and election experts, who are trying to monitor voting problems and troubleshoot them in real time.
The number and tenor of calls weve received about problems, the amount of litigation you already see, it all reflects the moment were in, said Kristen Clarke, president of the nonpartisan Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
On Tuesday, Clarkes group will be running the nations largest independent effort to field voter complaints, questions and problems. The nonpartisan umbrella organisation called Election Protection will have 4,500 legal volunteers answering calls to its 866-OUR-VOTE hotline, and 2,500 volunteers stationed at polling sites around the country.
Clarkes group has set up a war room at its headquarters in Washington - a cavernous space where hundreds of pro-bono lawyers are stationed at computers as they answer voters calls.
But the intensity of this years election, Clarke said, has exhausted many of her lawyers and volunteers before Election Day has arrived. These attorneys have fought attempts to purge residents from voter rolls in New York, Georgia and North Carolina. Theyve investigated reports such as one last week during early voting in Cleveland that a security guard was turning away voters because a parking lot with available spaces was supposedly full.
Among Clarkes biggest concerns for Tuesday are long lines.
On Sunday, the line at the sole early voting station in Cincinnati stretched at least a quarter-mile, with estimates of those waiting in the thousands. Food trucks at one point handed out free tacos and cupcakes as encouragement. Early voters also faced long lines in California, Arizona and Nevada.
In addition to those states, election experts say, extensive waits are a particular concern in Florida and Ohio, given the states election history. In 2012, some precincts in Miami were so clogged that some voters were still casting ballots at 1am as President Obama was making his victory speech.
In the most hotly contested states, many lawyers have been deployed by both parties as well as independent voting rights groups. The lawyers will be stationed inside polling places to help resolve disputes.
The Justice Department will send more than 500 workers to 28 states to monitor polls on Election Day. The deployment is significantly smaller - by at least 280 from 2012 - because of a Supreme Court decision that Justice officials say limits the federal governments role at polling places.
With just five lawyers on its voting rights team, the ACLU had to draft its Election Day strategy more judiciously - deciding to send them to Philadelphia, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Miami and one last location, most likely North Carolina.
The state laws vary so much that you have to prepare for it. And the states where its close, thats where the temptation will be greatest for voter intimidation tactics, said Dale Ho, the ACLUs voting rights director.
His lawyers are landing with restraining orders and injunctions already drafted and ready to be filed, he said. Its like those fire tools behind the glass: Break in case of emergency.
It remains unclear how widespread the much feared threat of voter intimidation will be, or whether it will materialise.
A group called Stop the Steal - run by longtime Republican operative and outside Trump adviser Roger Stone - has been recruiting vote protectors to stand outside polling stations. As of Monday, the group had signed up 3,191 people pledging to do so.
This is our best chance to stop the Democrats from stealing the election from Donald Trump. Help us fight a rigged system, the group said on its website.
Democrats have filed several lawsuits against the Republicans, and Stones group is accusing them of planning voter intimidation. In an email last week, Stone called the lawsuit bogus and said that Stop the Steal is conducting a neutral, scientifically based exit poll that would only involve interviews after people cast ballots.
The cases have only added to this years unusually heavy flood of last-minute legal battles over issues such as voters being purged from rolls, registration deadlines and election access.
US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US Presidential election: key moments in pictures US Presidential election: key moments in pictures The 2005 Access Hollywood video which showed Mr Trump bragging to Billy Bush Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump suggests gun-supporters could kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from picking the supreme court justices Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Melania Trump plagiarises Michelle Obamas speech Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump said that judge Gonzalo Curiel would not be able to rule fairly, as he was of Mexican heritage United States Federal Court/AP US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump anxious over securing black vote Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and concerns about securing black vote Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump's Christianity Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and his relentless remarks against Mexican people Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and the sexual assault allegations Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures FBI director announced that there would be no charges for Hillary Clinton amid email scandal Getty
During early voting in Florida, Trump supporters were videotaped using bullhorns to shout at Clinton supporters and voters outside a polling site in West Palm Beach. Video posted online showed a Trump supporter yelling, How many Syrian refugees, Muslim refugees, are you taking into your home?
Voting advocates complained to authorities, who then ordered the individuals to move farther away from the polling site.
Election officials in several states said the potential for clashes has caused them to step up coordination with police ahead of Tuesdays vote. And many state authorities are already on alert after federal officials warned of a vague possible threat of a pre-election attack by al-Qaeda as well as the possibility of Russian hackers trying to sow disinformation.
Some worry that more mundane problems could wreak havoc. New voting restrictions - including some laws requiring photo ID - will be in place for the first time in more than a dozen states, sowing potential for confusion.
And legal fights over the laws have complicated the matter further. In Texas, for example, after a federal court ruled that the states voter ID law discriminated against minorities, fliers remained up at some polling places, warning voters that photo ID was required.
With all there is to worry about on Tuesday, voting advocates have one more concern to add to the pile: that some voters will be discouraged enough to stay home.
Im worried about the worrying, said Wendy Weiser, an election expert at the nonpartisan Brennan Center. Theres so much anxiety across the country. You have many people worried for the first time about the integrity of our election system, which is actually pretty good. You have people talking about needing to watch other people as they watch voters. Its crazy.
The Washington Post
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Donald Trump has seen a late surge of support in spread betting markets, with punters backing the controversial Republican to beat the odds and turn in a better than expected showing in the electoral college that picks the US president.
Sporting Index said that after a wave of support for Democrat Hilary Clinton yesterday, Trump has been back on the march with its punters. Its forecast for the electoral college has slumped from a Clinton high water mark of 330 yesterday to 311, with the spread at the time of writing at 305-315.
Each candidate needs 270 votes to win, with most states allocating their delegates to candidates on a winner takes all basis. Trump needs to sweep battleground states Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire to stand any chance of reaching that number. He also needs to spring a surpise in Nevada or in one of the states that polling suggests are more or less comfortably in Clinton's camp.
Despite Trump's latest betting surge, Sporting Index's forecast would still see Clinton installed in the White House, with room to spare. However, with the Brexit effect weighing heavily on punters minds, it still promises to be a nervous night for the financial markets, which are desperate for a Clinton victory to steady nerves in the wake of the Brexit shock.
Ed Fulton, political trading spokesman for Sporting Index, said: Punters backing Trump had been quiet over the past few days but this morning weve seen a surge of support for the Donald.
The polls may have been moving against Trump in the final few days, but weve seen a number of elections across the world defy conventional wisdom in the past 18 months.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analys at IG, a financial spread betting firm, said investors and traders were hunkering down for a long night.
Trading today has been conducted with a nervous eye on the US election, and while anecdotal evidence has peppered the day, investors will just have to be patient for a few more hours, he said.
President Donald Trump life in pictures Show all 16 1 /16 President Donald Trump life in pictures President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump poses in a rocking chair once used by President John F. Kennedy at his New York City residence Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Developer Donald Trump with his new bride Marla Maples after their wedding at the Plaza hotel in New York Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Celina Midelfart watch the match between Conchita Martinez and Amanda Coetzer during U.S. Open. She was the date whom Donald Trump was with when he met his current wife Melania at a party in 1996 Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas serving as the grand marshal for the Daytona 500, speaks to Donald Trump and Melania Knauss on the starting grid at the Daytona International Speedwa Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Developer Donald Trump talks with his former wife Ivana Trump during the men's final at the U.S. Open Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and his friend Melania Knauss pose for photographers as they arrive at the New York premiere of Star Wars Episode : 'The Phantom Menace,' Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump talks with host Larry King. Trump told King that he was moving toward a possible bid for the United States presidency with the formation of a presidential exploratory committee Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump answers questions as Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura looks on in Brooklyn Park. Trump said on Friday he 'very well might' make a run for president under the Reform Party banner but had not made a final decision Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire Donald Trump makes a face at a friend as he sits next to Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso before the start of the 2003 Miss Universe pageant in Panama City Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Entrepreneur Donald Trump is greeted by a Marilyn Monroe character look-a-alike, as he arrives at Universal Studios Hollywood to attend the an open casting call for his NBC television network reality series 'The Apprentice.' Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Simon Cowell present an Emmy during the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump and Megan Mullally perform at the 57th annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump, poses with his children, son Donald Trump, Jr., and daughters Tiffany and Ivanka Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Billionaire Donald Trump told Miss USA 2006 Tara Conner on Tuesday she would be given a second chance after reported misbehavior Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures Donald Trump holds a replica of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as his wife Melania holds their son Barron in Los Angeles Reuters President Donald Trump life in pictures U.S. property mogul Donald Trump stands next to a bagpiper during a media event on the sand dunes of the Menie estate, the site for Trump's proposed golf resort, near Aberdeen, north east Scotland Reuters
Ladbrokes reported that the vast majority of bets continued to be for Trump although its odds on the Republican had drifted to 7-2 from 3-1 at the time of writing. The big money from high rolling punters has all gone for Clinton including one 40,000 plus bet.
Trump's odds range from 3-1 to 4-1 while Clinton can be backed at between 1-4 and 1-5. The most recent prediction by FiveThirtyEight, the US forecasting site, is that Clinton has a 71.8 per cent chance of winning based on polling and other data. That's an improvement on yesterday.
Some 40m Americans have already voted with a further 90m expected to turn up to the polls today.
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Crowds of protesters patiently awaited Donald Trumps arrival outside his Midtown Manhattan polling place, only to let out a barrage of boos while he arrived.
Mr Trump cast his ballot late Tuesday morning at a public school near Trump Tower. He arrived with his wife, Melania, daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to the welcome of some supporters. Still, the jeers of the protesters dominated cheers.
Follow our live coverage of US Election Day here
New York comedian Harrison Greenbaum posted video to Twitter that showed the booing as the Republican nominee entered PS 56. The booing only grew stronger as the candidate left the polling station minutes later.
The polling station was already met with boisterous protesters earlier in the morning. Secret Service escorted two topless female protestors from the premises as they chanted Grab your balls, off my boobs to the befuddlement of bystanders.
Protesters have staged demonstrations outside of Trump Tower on a regular basis as Election Day inched closer. Now that it is here, Mr Trumps security has built a wall of garbage trucks around the skyscraper.
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The odds on Donald Trump winning the US election are the exact same as those for the successful Brexit vote, according to bookmakers.
Ladbrokes has revealed its final odds on the morning of the election day. And it has offering 3/1 on a Trump win exactly the same price that was being offered for Leave on the morning of June 23, when Britain voted to leave the European Union.
As any vote for Mr Trump would, the British vote to leave the EU stunned the establishment and came as a shock to those who had been following official polling, which consistently showed a slight lead for Remain. Polling has also shown a win for Hillary Clinton is likely.
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'.
Mr Trump and his advisors have repeatedly said that his election will be similar to the vote to leave in the British referendum, in that its support was being underestimated and was likely to come as a shock to the establishment. As with Brexit, momentum is likely to pick up as the votes close, Mr Trump has claimed.
During his final speeches, Mr Trump has made repeated reference to Brexit. "We are going to have one of the great victories of all time," he said, comparing it to the vote by the UK to leave the European Union "times 50".
Mr Trump has also been support by Nigel Farage, who has appeared onstage with Mr Trump at rallies.
Ladbrokes odds arent in line with the probabilities suggested by most estimates, which have the likelihood of a win by Ms Clinton around 80-90 per cent.
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Donald Trump will concede defeat if he loses only if he thinks the election was legit and fair, his son has said.
The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly refused to confirm that he will accept the results of the election, if he doesnt win. That has led to fears that he will continue to challenge it presumably claiming that the process was unfair or rigged, as he has suggested in the past.
Now Mr Trumps son, Donald Trump Jr, has said that his father might only accept if he believes the election to be fairly run.
US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US Presidential election: key moments in pictures US Presidential election: key moments in pictures The 2005 Access Hollywood video which showed Mr Trump bragging to Billy Bush Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump suggests gun-supporters could kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from picking the supreme court justices Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Melania Trump plagiarises Michelle Obamas speech Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump said that judge Gonzalo Curiel would not be able to rule fairly, as he was of Mexican heritage United States Federal Court/AP US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump anxious over securing black vote Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and concerns about securing black vote Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump's Christianity Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and his relentless remarks against Mexican people Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and the sexual assault allegations Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures FBI director announced that there would be no charges for Hillary Clinton amid email scandal Getty
He told MSNBC: "All we've wanted is a fair fight.
"If he loses and it's legit and fair, and there's not obvious stuff out there without question, yes."
If Mr Trump loses and refuses to concede it could be the beginning of weeks of legal arguments, which could go as high up as the Supreme Court.
There have already been suggestions that Mr Trump will oppose the results of the election, if they go against him. As election day began his campaign filed a lawsuit asking for thousands of votes to be thrown out.
The suit claimed that polling places had been left open two hours longer than they should have been. Those people who tried to cast their ballot who had turned up to early voting but were kept from doing so in normal time because of the queues did so after the normal close because of the long queues.
The suit asked that the votes cast after the poll time had closed should be thrown out. But a judge dismissed the case, arguing that it was disturbing and shouldnt be allowed.
Close Donald Trump's victory speech after winning US election
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Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States in the biggest shock in the country's electoral history. Here are the things you need to know:
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Donald Trump has been named the shock victor of the US presidential election, pledging to be a "President for all Americans".
In a victory speech in New York, the Republican candidate, vowed to unite the country following a divisive campaign littered with controversies.
Now its time for America to bind the wounds of divisionI say it is time for us to come together as one united people, he said, as supporters chanted USA! USA! USA!.
Amid widespread concern over international tensions following Mr Trumps comments on countries including China and Russia, he insisted he expected great relationships with foreign nations.
America will no longer settle for anything less than best, - we must reclaim our countrys destiny, he added. I want to tell the world community that while we will always put Americas interests first, we will always deal fairly with everyone all people and all other nations.
We will seek common ground, not hostility. Partnership, not conflict.
Hillary Clinton phoned Mr Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning to concede defeat but made no immediate public comment.
As her loss looked ever more certain, she tweeted: "Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything."
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A shock election victory for political outsider Donald Trump means people worldwide are wondering how it came to happen.
Here is a run-down of the US Electoral College voting system and why it matters so much.
How does the Electoral College system work?
The US president is not directly chosen by voters, but by electors that people in a state vote for.
The more people in a state, the more electors an area has. For example, Texas has a population of 25 million and is afforded 38 Electoral College votes, while Delaware has a population of 936,000 and has only three votes.
There are 538 electors in total, corresponding to 435 members of Congress, 100 Senators and three additional electors for the District of Columbia. They will meet in their respective states on 19 December to ultimately elect the President.
Almost every state chooses to allocate all its Electoral College votes to whoever comes in first place statewide, regardless of their margin of victory.
Whoever gets to 270 electoral votes first the majority of the 578 total votes wins the election. And this time it was Mr Trump.
US Election: Presidential results by state - 05:00
Why is the Electoral College in place?
The system was established to ensure regional balance it makes it mathematically impossible for a candidate with large amounts of support in just one region to overwhelm the vote.
What are the criticisms of the Electoral College?
It renders safe states almost irrelevant to the result of the election: for example it did not matter if Ms Clinton had won a state by five or 40 per cent, she would still have got the same number of Electoral College votes.
The US election result always hinges on a handful of states that are politically divided, which some say is undemocratic.
The swing states have a lot of power because most of them choose to elect whoever is the state-wide winner, regardless of the margin they won by.
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Analysts also say the system favours smaller and more rural states, since the minimum number of electors a state can have is three so states with very small populations are over-represented.
And the system technically allows the electors to hijack the result, since it is not certain the electors will vote the way their state does.
Although around 30 of the 50 states have passed laws that mean their electors must vote according to the popular vote in their state the punishment for not doing so is can merely be a fine. This means they could potentially defy the electorate's choice.
Can a candidate who gets fewer voters than their opponent still become president?
In 1800, 1824, 1976 and most recently in 2000, the Electoral College System has elected a different president to the popular vote.
Al Gore won the nationwide vote by half a million votes in 2000 but was four Electoral College votes short of the presidency.
George W Bush won in Florida by just 537 votes, meaning he had more Electoral College votes and seized the White House.
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On Election Day, five statesCalifornia, Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevadawill vote on making marijuana a legal recreational drug. In three othersFlorida, Arkansas, and North Dakotavoters will decide if they want to legalize medical marijuana. In Montana, voters will decide whether or not to ease restrictions on their medical marijuana system.
Voters in California will decide on Proposition 64, a measure that would allow folks 21 ages and up use the drug recreationally. The prop would regulate a 15 percent sales tax and the drugs cultivation would also be taxed. Most of the profits would go to researching the drug and enforcing regulations.
In Arizona, Proposition 205, would enact laws similar to other states, and residents would be permitted to possess up to 1 ounce and grow up to six plants on their property.
Voters in Maine can legalize the drug for recreational use with Question 1 and place a 10 percent sales tax on the drug. Residents would be required to use marijuana in non-public places. However, Maines governor isnt down with legalizing weed and has even called it deadly.
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In Massachusetts, Question 4 would legalize marijuana and allow the commonwealth to regulate use and place taxes on the drug. Residents 21 years and up would be able to use and grow the drug. They would be permitted to keep less than 10 ounces in their homes and less than 1 ounce in public.
Voters in Nevada will decide on Question 2, a proposal that would allow people over 21 years old to possess and grow marijuana. The measure would also authorize marijuana retail stores and testing facilities to open up shop. Forty-seven percent of residents support the measure, according to a recent poll by Bendixen & Amandi International.
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From squabbles over who funds terrorists, to spats over rigging elections and stealing private documents, it is fair to say Hillary Clintons decades-long career has had some rough diplomatic patches.
Now, if she becomes US president, she is going to have to make amends. Here are just a few of the world powers Clinton would need to ease tensions with.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia
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A tranche of emails released by WikiLeaks revealed the former Secretary of State accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of giving money and logistical help to Isis, an accusation the countries staunchly deny.
In a 2014 email to her campaign chairman John Podesta she said: We need to ... bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isil [Isis] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.
And in another recent release, which included an excerpt from a private 2013 speech, she said: The Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.
Yet relations between Ms Clinton and the Gulf states are apparently not so sour that the Clinton foundation could refuse a $10m donation from the Saudi kingdom. Qatar has also donated between one million and five million to the organisation.
Nonetheless, when it comes to trade, geopolitical alliances and the ongoing Syrian crisis, Clinton will need the support of her Gulf allies like never before if she becomes president.
Russia
Animosity between Ms Clinton and the Russian leader Vladimir Putin was evident throughout the presidential campaign.
She has blamed Mr Putin directly for carrying out the hack against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that led to the leak of a cache of emails that nearly derailed her presidential bid. This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly, from Putin himself, in an effort ... to influence our election, she said.
During the third and final presidential debate, she accused Donald Trump of acting as a puppet for Moscow.
And it seems the feelings of distain are mutual.
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Mr Putin has blamed the democratic nominee for inciting mass-scale protests against him following the Russian election in 2011.
He said at the time: The first thing that the Secretary of State did was say that they were not honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the material from the observers.
She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal. They heard the signal and with the support of the US State Department began active work.
Ms Clintons claims that Russias election was rigged signalled a breakdown in the US strategy of the time, to reset relations with Moscow.
One Russian source has since said Mr Putin was personally offended by the comments, inferring the hack against the DNC was payback.
Trump v Clinton: US Election forecast - November 8
Iran
There are two key sources of tension between Ms Clinton and Iran. Firstly, as Secretary of State under President Obama, Ms Clinton helped set up international sanctions against Tehran whilst also pursuing a policy of actively isolating the country over its nuclear programme.
Secondly, her vocal support for Israel has been a source of consternation among the fierce enemies of Americas staunchest ally in the region.
Indeed, during a campaign speech in June this year, Ms Clinton vowed she would take military action against Iran over its weapons programme if necessary.
We brought Iran to the table. We began talks. And eventually, we reached an agreement that should block every path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, she said.
Now we must enforce that deal vigorously. And as Ive said many times before, our approach must be distrust and verify. The world must understand that the United States will act decisively if necessary, including with military action, to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. In particular, Israels security is non-negotiable. Theyre our closest ally in the region, and we have a moral obligation to defend them.
For his part, President Hassan Rouhani was dismissive of Ms Clinton in the run-up to her election.
Should I prefer bad over worse or worse over bad? he said, mockingly comparing her to Donald Trump.
America claims it has more than 200 years of democracy, and they have had 50 presidential elections, but there is no morality in that country. You saw the presidential debates, how they talk ... how they accuse and mock.
The nuclear detente between the US and Iran is holding, but the relationship remains as complex as ever, with Iran working with Russia in recent months to support President Assad to help him secure control of his country in defiance of the US.
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Russia is watching the US election closely, the Kremlin has said, and any possible improvement in relations between the two countries will depend on Washington.
Vladimir Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Moscow was willing to work on the two nations deteriorating ties once the presidential vote was over, RIA Novosti reported.
He told journalists that relations could be restored as far as our partners in Washington are willing - whoever that might be after Tuesdays vote.
Follow The Independent's coverage of US Election Day live here
Asked how Mr Putin would congratulate the victor in the race for the White House, Mr Peskov said the Russian president usually did so via telegram. He said he did not know if that would be the case this year.
In his briefing on Monday, Mr Peskov had said Moscow had no intention of interfering with Tuesdays vote.
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"We have neither the right nor the intention of interfering in the U.S. election process," he said, according to a report in the Moscow Times, adding: "There are many problems even without our interference.
Mr Peskov described as absurd the suggestion that Russia has conducted an information campaign in favour of either candidate, amid Americans accusations that Moscow has been actively trying to undermine the election.
In recent weeks, according to the Times, Russian TV broadcasts have repeatedly questioned the validity of the US ballot, describing the election as rigged. Similar language has been used on the campaign trail by Donald Trump, who has refused to say whether he will accept the result if he loses.
US-Russia ties are at their lowest point for a generation amid a row over Moscow's support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Russia's role in bombing the war-torn country.
According to marine traffic observers, a Russian fleet led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier reached the eastern Mediterranean as polls opened and voting got underway in the US.
The fleet is the latest show of muscle from Russia, which has moved nuclear-capable missiles into Kaliningrad and ordered widescale military training exercises in recent weeks.
If its 15 on-board aircraft engage in fighting to support Assad in Syria, the Admiral Kuznetsov will be involved in its first live fighting since it was launched three decades ago as a last-gasp show of force by the then-Soviet Union.
An unnamed Russian military source has previously been quoted by the Tass news agency as saying the fleet will hug the Syrian coastline while its fighters perform bombing runs, returning to the Kuznetsov to refuel.
Russia says its air force continues to observe a moratorium on air strikes on the rebel-held districts of the besieged city of Aleppo, in place since 18 October. The Syrian Observatory and emergency workers in eastern Aleppo say heavy air strikes continue to kill hundreds of people, and have previously hit hospitals and other civilian facilities, though their source remains unclear.
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The US Government have called for "all hands to the deck" to fight off any potential cyber attack during the election.
Cyber defence departments at the FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security are all working overtime to prevent any interference in the election of the 45th President, reports NBC News.
Senior intelligence officials have said federal agencies are taking this unprecedented step after a number of high profile hacks during the election.
An official told NBC: It's all hands on deck. There is a whole-of-government effort in cyber around the election.
The US Government has accused Russia of using cyber techniques to affect the election including the hacking of Democratic Party email accounts, leaking information to embarrass Hillary Clinton.
Former Nato commander Admiral James Stavridis said he held serious concerns hackers back by Putin's government could dump false documents in last minute attempt to smear candidates and even launch a cyber attack on the US electrical power grid.
He said: "There is maybe a one in three chance of this happening but it's not insignificant."
Clinton and Trump Clash Over Cyber-Attacks, ISIS
Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov publicly refuted any suggestion of underhand involvement in the US election
Mr Peskov said: "We have neither a right nor an intention to interfere in the US election process.
"There are a lot of problems even without our interference."
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Since The Independent was founded in 1986, weve covered eight US elections, four winning candidates and countless campaign scandals along the way.
In 1988, grainy black and white images of George H W Bush peered out of printed broadsheet pages. Twelve years later, his son George W Bush - would feature alongside Tony Blair and devastating images of the Iraq war, the world-changing conflict that would become his legacy.
With final aggregator polls point suggesting Hilary Clinton could feature as the next US president on a digital front page edition, we take a look back through some of the most iconic US election front pages over the years.
2012
President Barack Obama is re-elected to a second term, easily beating Mitt Romney, despite growing public dissatisfaction with the US economy.
His margin of victory decreases on his 2008 election win, but few polls predicted he would return with such a high lead winning by 3.9 percentage points. The Obama and Romney campaigns topped $1bn each, making 2012 the most expensive presidential race on record.
2008
Democratic Senator Barack Obama wins an historic election, becoming the first black president of the United States.
He defeats Republican Senator John McCain 53 per cent to 46 per cent. Speaking in Chicago following the result, he says: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
2004
Incumbent President George W. Bush keeps his position, defeating Democrat candidate John Kerry with 50.7 per cent of the vote and 286 seats.
Bushs first term as President will forever be associated with 9/11 and the Iraq War that followed topics of national security that dominated the election, whilst Bushs approval ratings continued to diminish as resistance to the conflict rose.
This didnt stop him gaining a second term, however, with an aptly timed video of Osama Bin Laden taunting Bush over 9/11 just four days before voting opened leading to a surge in popularity for the Republican.
2000
One of the closest contests in US Election history. Republican George W. Bush is announced the winner after a recount and legal battle gives him Florida, a state that becomes vital to the outcome when the result until that point was too close to call.
While this means Bush won the majority of the electoral vote, by just 50.37 per cent to Al Gores 49.44 per cent, the Democrat candidate actually won the more popular vote, at 48.48 per cent. Questions of legality and mandate followed for a while after Bush followed in his fathers footsteps.
1996
Bill Clinton elected to a second term, defeating Republican Bob Dole, a former US senator from Kansas.
Two years later, the Democrats lose their majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since the 1950s; public support had dwindled as a result of some of Clintons choices over healthcare, and his proposal for allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military.
1992
Bill Clinton wins his first term against Republican George Bush with only 43 per cent of the vote, as independent candidate Ross Perot secures nearly 19 per cent the highest for any third-party candidate in a US presidential election in 80 years.
Bush had faced stiff challenges after backtracking on his promises to resist tax increases, making him public enemy number one.
1988
Republican George W H Bush defeats Democrat Michael Dukakis despite Dukakis coming out of the Democratic Convention with a 17-point lead.
Prior to that, the 1988 campaign had been seen as an open contest on both sides and several Democratic contenders entered the race, earning themselves the nickname of The Seven Dwarfs.
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Nate Silver, the renowned pollster who has seriously talked up the chances of Donald Trump winning today's election, has released his final forecast.
And it is good news for Hillary Clinton, with Silver's model now giving her a 71.4 per cent chance of victory compared to Mr Trump's 28.6 per cent.
Silver's FiveThirtyEight project had come in for some criticism in the last week after it gave Mr Trump a chunky 35 per cent chance of becoming president.
Follow our live coverage as Election Day unfolds right here
With Ms Clinton only a 65 per cent favourite, that was seen as an outlier compared to other models.
HuffPost Pollster was giving Ms Clinton a 98 per cent chance of winning, while The New York Times model at The Upshot had her at 85 per cent.
Releasing his final forecast, Silver noted that there was a gap between the Electoral College and the national vote, with Ms Clinton 81 per cent likely to get the overall majority of votes in the latter.
Silver has justified giving Mr Trump such high chances in the past on the basis that, with the polls all pretty tight, many different scenarios remain possible.
But he tweeted as his final forecast came out that "show Clinton winning pretty much the same states as everyone else".
Significantly, Silver said the key swing states of Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Maine (2) had "flipped narrowly to her in the past 48 hours".
"However, we continue to believe that other forecasts overstate [certainty]," he added.
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Donald Trump supporters have been filmed heckling a foreign journalist after seemingly failing to understand that New Zealand is a country and not a broadcast network.
Footage released by the New Zealand radio station Newshub shows their reporter, Patrick Gower, attempting to speak to a group of Trump supporters at a rally in Miami, Florida.
Mr Gower approaches the group with a microphone but a man holding a Make America Great Again sign begins shouting: Im not talking to the Clinton media. You guys are a sell-out."
The reporter attempts to defend himself, saying, Im from New Zealand though. Im not part of the Clinton media."
This prompts the Trump supporter to pause for several seconds, seemingly lost for words.
He then continues: What's Zealand? Youre not part of the Clinton network, are you? Youre not part of the lying media are you?
Again the journalist tries to placate the man. There is no Clinton network, though, he points out.
Mr Gower asks: Were from New Zealand. What have we done?
But the Trump voter remains undeterred, demanding the journalists move along and saying youre all disgusting."
"Youre saying theres no Clinton network. Of course there is a Clinton network, he adds.
There is no known television station named the Clinton Network.
Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the media during the course of the presidential campaign. He has slammed the corrupt corporate media and suggested the press is composed of thieves and crooks.
Americans are casting their votes today, with polls suggesting the presidential race remains too close to call.
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The main focus of US and world media has been on the brutal race for the White House between the Republican nominee Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
However, the importance of the US House and Senate races cannot be underestimated. Historically, Presidents have always struggled to pass their agenda while contending with an opposition-run House and Senate.
Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton failed to achieve all their first term goals thanks to an organised Republican Party machine.
Where Bill and Hillary Clinton's healthcare reform fell victim to Newt Gingrich-inspired opposition - Obamacare narrowly made it into law albeit with heavy compromises and sacrificing much of the 44th President's political capital.
Both Presidencies were also rocked by government shutdowns over fights with the House Republicans obstensibly over the Federal budget.
With the divisive nature of both Clinton and Trump - an opposition Congress could deny any potential goodwill towards their policies before they have even be sworn into office.
The Democrats are hoping to wrest control of both the House and Senate from the Republicans. Currently the minority party in the House, Democrats need to win an extra 30 House seats to claim back the majority in 435-seat lower house they last enjoyed in 2010.
Trump v Clinton: US Election forecast - November 7
A Senior Democratic aide has told Reuters, the party could only end up claiming a net gain of 12-16 on their opposition, leaving them short of an outright majority.
To win control of the 100-seat Senate outright, the Democrats would have to hold onto their 44 seats and gain five extra seats.
The outcome in the Senate has added importance given one of the first points on its agenda after the election will be the replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court.
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A number of close Senate races between incumbent Republicans and strong Democratic challengers have garnered great interest including that of veteran Arizona Senator and former Republican presidential nominee, John McCain.
Some observers have suggested the possibility of a hung Senate providing the Vice President, either Republican Mike Pence or Democrat Tim Kaine, with the deciding vote.
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An elderly man who fell ill while casting his US election vote insisted on finishing the voting process before receiving medical help.
The African-American man, believed to be aged 71, had been in the process of casting his vote with his wife in Chesterfield County, Virginia, when he began experiencing chest pains and having trouble breathing.
According to eye witnesses, the man was "bent over" and visibly struggling to breath, but continued with feeding his cast vote through the scanner before accepting medical help.
Heidi Page, a lawyer from Chesterfield County who described the incident on Twitter while she was on the scene, later told The Independent: I only noticed when I saw an election worker bring a chair for him. His ballot had already been completed and was enclosed in a privacy folder.
"He had just fed his ballot through the scanner when he sat. He was bent over, obviously having trouble breathing. His wife was there and she and an election official were on the phone with emergency services.
"At that point, I scanned my ballot and left. I felt it rude to stand there and gawk. But as I was leaving, EMS pulled up as their station is quite close to the polling place.
"He was an African American gentleman and I overheard his wife say he was 71."
After casting his vote the man was taken to the local hospital by Chesterfield Fire and EMS, according local news channel CBS 6.
Several Twitter users expressed admiration and respect for the elderly man for "making his voice heard" despite the circumstances. One Twitter user wrote: If HE can do it, everyone can do it.
Another wrote: "God bless this patriot for making his voice heard, even if it's the last thing he does. I hope he voted my way, but if he didn't as a veteran I still applaud his resolve."
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A leading newspaper has allegedly been ordered to close for linking the Saudi governments latest visa price rises to its economic problems.
The Brunei Times, based in the tiny country, which borders Malaysia, unexpectedly announced its closure of all operations from Tuesday in a front-page editorial.
It followed an article published on 26 October, which reportedly suggested that economic problems in Saudi were the reason for a hike in the price of visas for the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages to Mecca.
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According to a journalist claiming to be an ex-Brunei Times reporter, it quoted an anonymous official from the Saudi embassy who was said to have been unauthorised to speak to the press.
The daily paper apologised for the article on its website on Friday but refused to comment on claims surrounding its mysterious shut-down.
The statement read: The Brunei Times is ceasing media and publication operations with effect from 8 November, 2016.
The Brunei Times thanked its staff for their 'zeal' and 'enthusiasm' The Brunei Times (The Brunei Times)
This is due to business issues, reporting and journalistic standards that should meet the mark set, and also issues relating to business sustainability, especially in the face of considerable challenges from the alternative media.
It also thanked the Brunei government for bearing with us and extending the licence despite issues surrounding the paper.
The board of directors also thanked editorial, management and operational staffs dedication, zeal, enthusiasm and tremendous effort they have put into their work at all levels over the years.
The 10-year-old paper has also shut its Twitter and Facebook accounts.
A spokesman for the publication, which said 110 people were employed there, referred a Reuters reporter to its statement when asked about the reason for its closure.
Brunei, which has a population of around 420,000, is home to predominantly Sunnis Muslims. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's regime banned Christmas last year.
Hundreds crushed at Mecca
The Saudi government recently increased visa charges for anyone completing the Hajj to approximately 410, up from around 75.
Muslims are expected to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lifetime.
Economic troubles in Saudi Arabia have been well documented with oil prices falling as low as 21 a barrel in February.
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
A critical New York Times article, about Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his '452m yacht', was published last month.
The Independent has contacted the House of Saud, Saudi Arabias London embassy and the British High Commission for Brunei for comment.
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Theresa Mays visit to India will decrease her lifespan by several hours due to the heavy air pollution in the city's capital, experts have said.
The Prime Ministers three-day trade mission to Delhi will have exposed her to air that is 36 times more toxic than London, according to an analysis commissioned by Greenpeace's Energydesk.
The Indian capital has been experiencing one of the worst air pollution episodes in its history in recent weeks, after Diwali celebrations enveloped the city in a deep smog made up of smoke, ash and other pollutants.
Cambridge University statistician David Spiegelhalter told Energydesk the Prime Minister's exposure to the such air pollution levels could knock hours off her life.
Data downloaded by Greenpeace India from the Central Pollution Control Board shows the average measurements for the particulate PM 2.5 in Delhi over the three days of Ms May's visit was 552 g/m3 - compared to an average reading of 15 g/m3 in London.
In light of the findings, Greenpeace urged that while air pollution in India was a pertinent issue, Ms May must take action to tackle the illegal levels of air pollution in the UK.
Anna Jones, Greenpeace Air Pollution campaigner, said: Theresa May, like all the citizens of Delhi, is experiencing a very extreme example of air pollution right now. But back home in the UK, people are also experiencing illegal levels of air pollution that is having a huge impact on our health.
The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Show all 10 1 /10 The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Ukraine The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Bulgaria Rex Features The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Belarus The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Russia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Armenia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Bosnia and Herzegovina REUTERS The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Georgia The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Hungary DigitalGlobe The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths China The worst countries in the world for air pollution deaths Moldova
It's more invisible and the numbers may be lower but the levels are by no means safe. When she gets home, May must act to phase out diesel vehicles in order to give us all the right to breathe clean air.
It comes less than a week after Theresa May promised new air pollution policies following a High Court ruling that the her government was not doing enough to tackle the problem in the UK.
The Prime Minister's promise followed heavy criticism after the ruling, with environmental legal group ClientEarth condemning it as a damning indictment of ministers inaction on killer air pollution.
The Indian government declared an emergency in Delhi on Sunday, meaning a million school children were forced to stay at home while thousands of employees stayed off work.
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Women across France left their offices at 4.34pm on Monday 7 November the time at which they stopped being paid for 2016 in comparison to men.
The mass walkout saw workers from all sectors take part in a new movement that is fighting to close the gender pay gap in the country.
The average French woman was paid 15.1 per cent less than a man in 2010, which means women effectively work 38.2 more days each year than men for the same salary.
Rebecca Amsellem, founder of Les Glorieuses group, who spearheaded the campaign, said it was crucial to raise awareness of the ongoing disparity between the sexes in 2016.
We wanted to raise an awareness of inequality in the workplace so that everyone involved, whether its women or men, can propose their own solutions to this problem nothing about this problem is normal, she told The Independent.
Everyone was able to participate in this campaign in their own way. We were not insisting all women walk out at 4.34pm, but perhaps that they take a break at this time, or write a post on social media or speak about it with their colleagues. Our main goal was to start a conversation.
Ms Amsellem was inspired after reading about the movement in Iceland to put an end to the gender pay gap.
For the last 11 years, Icelands female workforce has walked out on 24 October at 2.38pm, the time they could leave every day if they were paid the same as their male colleagues.
A campaign leaflet reads: 'If you like to work for free, clap your hands' (Les Glorieuses)
Ms Amsellem believes much more needs to be done to address the social causes contributing to economic inequality.
200 to 300 people of all ages, incuding men, gathered at Paris' Place de la Republique on November 7 to say no to wage inequality (Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images)
We are not a union, we are not calling for women to strike, however, there is a tendency to blame women for this reality, for working part-time or on zero-hours contracts, and we hope increasing awareness of the reality will help put this misconception into perspective, she said.
We often see women suffering from star pupil syndrome they work hard, they do their jobs well but they dont necessarily seek out a raise or a promotion. More also needs to be done to encourage women to enter scientific fields and better-paying sectors.
The campaign attracted global attention on social media under the hashtag #7novembre16h34, and received backing from Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Education Secretary Najat Belkacem.
Mr Valls wrote: "Equality between women and men must be at the heart of the Republic. At all times."
However, Ms Amsellem said she wanted to see the Government turning its words into action.
What were looking for beyond this support is that they take the campaign further and that they propose real solutions to this problem, she said.
This has the potential to go much much further.
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A German court has sentenced a far-right politician to eight months in prison for displaying a Nazi tattoo.
Marcel Zech was found guilty of "public incitement to hatred" and given a harsher sentence on appeal than the six-month suspended sentence he originally received last December.
The 28-year-old was photographed at a swimming pool displaying the tattoo, which appeared to combine a depiction of Auschwitz concentration camp with a slogan from the Buchenwald concentration camp's gate, Jedem das Seine, which means to each his own.
Zech, a local council member of the far-right National Democratic Party, admitted to displaying the tattoo.
Prosecutors appealed after a district court in Oranienburg in the eastern state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, gave him a six-month suspended sentence in December, saying the punishment was too lenient. Zech also appealed the verdict, seeking to be acquitted.
On Monday, a state court in Neuruppin, north of Berlin, upheld the defendant's conviction for incitement, but imposed a new harsher sentence, the DPA news agency reported.
Explaining his decision, judge Jorn Kalbow said a lesser sentence could have been interpreted as the state backing down in the face of right-wing radicalism.
Mr Kalbow noted that Germany had seen an increase in xenophobic hate crime.
Zech's lawyer, Wolfram Nahrath, said he would appeal again to a higher court.
The councillor's back tattoo was originally photographed when he took his shirt off at a public swimming pool last November in Oranienburg.
During the hearing, Mr Nahrath told judges that Zech had since altered the tattoo as a result of the exceptional denunciation of him resulting from the case, and because he wanted to be able to keep going to the swimming pool with his children.
Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Show all 15 1 /15 Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Jennifer Lawrence The Hunger Games actress said she got this 'H2O' tattoo while on holiday with the Hemsworths, although she wishes she'd got the '2' in the correct position Getty Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Amanda Seyfried Amanda Seyfried got rhe word 'minge' tattoed on her foot after being inspired by Colin Firth's overuse of the word while on the set of Mama Mia Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to David Dimbleby The Question Time Host, aged 75, said he was inspired by his star sign, Scorpio, and isn't even bothered that his ink is missing two legs BBC Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Ed Sheeran Ed has probably got more tattoos than a normal person has had hot meals. They include a lego man, a Heinz label and a few random scribbles. Cool Getty Images Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Cara Delevingne Proof you should never consider a tattoo while hungry, model Cara got the word 'bacon' inked on the sole of her foot Getty Images Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Drake Drake's 'prayer hands emoji' tattoo is very 2015 but surely it's going to date a bit? Just ask the guy with a Bebo tattoo if he has any regrets Getty Images Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Celebrities and their questionable tattoos Instagram/Katy Perry Questionable tattoos and to who they belong to Katy Perry Katy has been, erm, spontaneous with a lot of her tattoo choices, but this one is really bizarre Getty
Prosecutor Torsten Lowitsch said the image of Auschwitz has been replaced by Max and Moritz, figures from a well-known German children's tale.
However, Mr Lowitsch said the tattoo still included the slogan to each his own".
Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector
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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders
PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces
There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan
Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia
Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair
Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan
I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General
I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox
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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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The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022
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This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan
Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments
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Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh
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Hungary's parliament has narrowly rejected Prime Minister Viktor Orbans plan to ban the resettlement of refugees in the country.
The decision is a blow to the leader, who has railed against European Union migration schemes and spouted anti-refugee rhetoric.
Yet the policy could still be adopted as the radical nationalist party Jobbik which suprisingly voted against the ban announced they could support the law in future.
Mr Orban's proposals were only two seats short of the required two-thirds majority he needed receiving 131 votes out of the 199-seat parliament.
After the vote, Jobbik said it would back Mr Orbans ban on resettling migrants if the government agreed to abolish a residency bond programme for foreigners.
Jobbik said ahead of the vote that it would not back the amendment to the constitution unless Mr Orban abolished the scheme, which was introduced three years ago.
Mr Orban had said the amendment was needed to honour an October referendum, in which more than three million Hungarians, an overwhelming majority of those who voted, rejected migrant quotas the EU sought to agree in order to fairly distribute refugees arriving in Europe among member states.
He said that even though the referendum was not legally binding because of a low turnout, it gave him a strong political mandate to reject quotas stipulating how many migrants Hungary must accept.
Mr Orban's determination to keep out migrants has angered his fellow EU leaders and complicated their task as the 28-nation bloc struggles to cope with an influx of about 1.4 million people since the start of 2015, many fleeing conflicts like the war in Syria.
How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Refugees protest as Hungarian riot police fires tear gas and water cannon on the Serbian side of the border, near Roszke How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border A refugee throws a bottle of water towards Hungarian riot police after they used water cannon to push back refugees at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Refugees protest as Hungarian riot police fires tear gas and water cannon at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Hungarian armoured personnel carriers are deployed at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Hungarian riot policemen are deployed at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Hungarian police spray water cannon on migrants at the "Horgos 2" border crossing into Hungary, Serbia How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border A refugee reacts after Hungarian riot police use water cannon to push back refugees at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border A refugee gestures as Hungarian riot police use water cannon to push back refugees at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border A refugee throws a stone towards Hungarian riot police after they used water cannon and pepper spray to push back refugees at the Hungarian border with Serbia near the town of Horgos How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Refugees protest as Hungarian riot police fires tear gas and water cannon on the Serbian side of the border, near Roszke How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Migrants shout slogans as they stand in front of a barrier at the border with Hungary near the village of Horgos, Serbia How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Hungarian riot policemen run as they are deployed at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke Reuters How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Hungarian riot policemen are deployed at the border crossing with Serbia in Roszke Reuters How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Refugees stand in front of a barrier at the border with Hungary near the village of Horgos, Serbia Reuters How Hungary welcomes its refugees - in pictures Serbia-Hungary border Refugees wait at the Horgos 2 border crossing EPA
Last year Hungary was a key entry point into the EU's border-free Schengen zone until Mr Orban erected a razor wire fence along its southern borders with Croatia to stem the flow.
Robert Laszlo, a political analyst at think-tank Political Capital, told Reuters: This vote today is a temporary fiasco (for Orban), similarly to the referendum which was invalid."
Mr Laszlo said the failure of the amendment was unlikely to weaken Mr Orban, whose Fidesz party has a strong lead in opinion polls ahead of elections due in 2018.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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A group of suspected Isis supporters accused of radicalising people and sending them to fight in Syria have been arrested in Germany.
The German federal prosecutors office said the five men were part of a national Salafist-jihadi network suspected of supporting Isis.
The groups alleged leader is a preacher known as Abu Walaa, who is the head of a group promoting an authentic understanding of Islam through online speeches, videos and texts.
Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A, known as Abu Walaa, openly professes his support for the so-called Islamic State [Isis] and has appeared at numerous Salafist events in the past, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors said.
Terror suspect Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A, known as Abu Walaa, in an online sermon (YouTube)
The aim of the network he headed was to send people to join Isis in Syria.
Officials said two of the arrested men, Hasan C, a 50-year-old Turkish citizen, and Boban S, a Serbian-German national aged 36, were tasked with teaching followers and would-be militants Arabic and radical Islam.
The classes served to create the ideological and linguistic foundations for future activity with Isis, particularly for taking part in combat, prosecutors said.
Abu Walaa allegedly approved and organised the journeys to Syria, delegating the work to fellow suspects Mahmoud O, a 27-year-old German, and Ahmed FY, a 26-year-old Cameroonian national.
The network is known to have transported at least one man and his family to fight for Isis in Syria.
Abu Walaa preaches at the German-speaking Islamic Circle of Hildesheim mosque in the city of Hildesheim, where he was arrested on Tuesday as police launched coordinated raids in the states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.
The mosque was previously raided by counter-terror police in July, but no arrests were made.
Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Show all 9 1 /9 Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Policemen outside Rouen's cathedral during the funeral of Jacques Hamel, the priest who was killed in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy on 26 July during a hostage-taking claimed by Islamic State group Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two jihadists, both 19, slit Hamel's throat while he was celebrating mass in an attack that shocked France as well as the Catholic Church Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Muslims place flowers and hold a minute of silence in front of the church if Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, western France, where French priest Jacques Hamel was killed on 26 July Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Two people hold each other by the new makeshift memorial in Nice, in tribute to the victims of the deadly Bastille Day attack at the Promenade des Anglais Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the truck attack that killed 84 people in Nice on France's national holiday. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, 31, smashed a 19-tonne truck into a packed crowd of people in the Riviera city celebrating Bastille Day Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police work at a site where a Syrian migrant set off an explosive device in Ansbach, southern Germany, on 25 July, killing himself and wounding a dozen others Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis A Syrian migrant set off an explosion at a bar in southern Germany that killed himself and wounded a dozen others in the third attack to hit Bavaria in a week. The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had intended to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket Friebe/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis Police officers walk along train tracks in Wuerzburg southern Germany on 19 July, a day after a man attacked train passengers with an axe. German authorities said they had found a hand-painted IS flag among the belongings of the man, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, who seriously injured four members of a family of tourists from Hong Kong in his rampage Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images Terrorism in 2016: Terror attacks in Europe claimed by Isis German police killed a teenage assailant after he attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg, southerg Germany with an axe and a knife on 18 July, seriously wounding three people Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images
Abu Walaa is known for his online sermons and is also prominent on Facebook, with more than 25,000 followers on a page offering his religious teachings.
Just a day before his arrest on Tuesday, a post from the 32-year-old Iraqi national condemned acting.
Acting is nothing but lying in front of a camera, it reads. Many neglect religion because of a series or film.
Abu Walaas official Facebook page also contains tacit references to jihadi violence. The Arabs fight us with their religion and they call it terrorism, says one post, with an altered picture of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other American politicians.
Another includes photos of air strikes in Syria and Iraq saying the preachers heart bleeds, while one orders Muslim couples not to argue while the nation needs their help.
The post says: The Ummah [nation] is bleeding and crying out for help, and Muslims are fighting about whether the socks have been washed or not.
A post on Abu Walaas Facebook page telling followers that celebrating Halloween is forbidden (Facebook)
None of Abu Walaa's pages, websites or videos had been taken down at time of writing.
The suspects will be brought before a judge later on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the prosecutors office said.
Germanys justice minister, Heiko Maas, called the arrests an important blow to the extremist scene in Germany.
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Thomas de Maiziere, the countrys interior minister, said it was critical to prevent people from becoming so radicalised that they are in danger of becoming terrorists.
We dont want terrorism to take place in Germany, he added. We dont want terrorism to be exported from Germany.
Ralf Jaeger, the state interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, said the group was preying on vulnerable targets for recruitment in a pattern frequently seen in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Hes young, male, hes experienced failure, and has the problem of not feeling accepted by society and feeling excluded, Mr Jaeger said.
The prosecutors office said the suspects had no known links to Jaber al-Bakr, a suspected Isis supporter who killed himself in prison in October two days after being arrested on suspicion of plotting to attack a Berlin airport with homemade explosives.
Also on Tuesday, a court in Frankfurt sentenced a 30-year-old German man to eight years in prison for war crimes and membership of Isis.
The court said the man, identified only as Abdelkarim E, fought for Isis in Syria in 2013 and 2014.
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McDonald's has filed a lawsuit against the Italian city of Florence after the fast-food chain was denied a license for a new restaurant in the historic central square.
The US company is seeking damages of almost $20m (about 16m) because city authorities rejected its application to open a branch in the Piazza del Duomo, one of the most visited sites in Europe and home to the 800-year-old Duomo cathedral.
The application was turned down under new regulations that aim to protect the citys historic centre from a proliferation of fast food restaurants. The laws state that restaurants in the area must use typical products from the city or the surrounding region of Tuscany.
This, apparently, does not include cheeseburgers or chicken nuggets.
The Mayor of Florence, Dario Nardello, turned down McDonalds application in June and the decision was confirmed last month by a committee responsible for protecting the citys ancient heart.
Mr Nardello told the city council: McDonalds has the right to submit an application because this is permitted under the law, but we also have the right to say no.
He said he wanted to support traditional business in the area.
We dont have any prejudice against McDonalds, Mr Nardello added, noting the company had opened restaurants elsewhere in the city.
McDonalds is said to furious at the decision because it had promised to make major changes to the way it operates in order to meet Florences regulations. It has now filed a law suit with the administrative court, which arbitrates in governance disputes in Italy.
The Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square) is a world-famous tourist destination that is home to an array of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. Its buildings include the domed Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral, the Giotto bell tower and the St John Baptistery.
There are already four McDonalds branches within a five-minute walk of the square.
Food and drink news Show all 35 1 /35 Food and drink news Food and drink news Healthy living makes us more inclined to binge, research suggests Gluten-free breads, dairy-free milks and other plant-based products have been some of the most favoured foods in British supermarkets this year. However, while were busy filling our shopping trolleys with gluten-free goodness, were also jamming it with junk food and alcohol, new research suggests Getty/iStock Food and drink news Growing list of Vegan celebs Making the switch to veganism is a major lifestyle choice, one that many claim can improve energy levels, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and clear up any skin issues. Beyonce, Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain are among the growing list of Hollywood stars who have eschewed animal products from their diets in recent years. Theres also been an increasing number of professional athletes who have gone vegan, such as boxing champions Mike Tyson and David Haye, thus debunking the myth that following a plant-based diet will leave you feeling weak and malnourished. AFP/Getty/NARAS/iHeartMedia Food and drink news McDonald's has announced the launch of a new vegan burger on its menu in Germany This will mark the first time the German franchise of the fast food chain has offered a vegan burger to its customers. The Big Vegan TS burger consists of a patty made from soy and wheat. It is served in a classic sesame seed bun, and contains salad, tomato, pickles and red onion. McDonald's Germany Food and drink news Drinking too many protein shakes could lead to an increased risk of obesity and a reduced lifespan, a new study has claimed Researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre carried out an investigation to determine the impact excessive consumption of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) has on the body. BCAA supplements are often consumed in the form of powder, which is then added to water to make a shake. Published in journal Nature Metabolism, the study found that while BCAAs help to build muscle, they can also negatively impact an individual's temperament, cause weight gain and lead to a shortened lifespan Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Britain consumes more chocolate than any other country Most people love chocolate but it turns out no one does more than the Brits with the average Brit found to have consumed 8.4 kg of chocolate in 2017, according to new data. Chocolate consumption around the world is on the rise, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), which found that in the past year alone, Easter chocolate production has risen by 23 per cent Food and drink news 'Easter eggs should be banned for children under four' Dr Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Streets Private Therapy Clinic, is calling for Easter eggs to be banned for consumption for children under the age of four, claiming that giving them the opportunity to binge on chocolate so young will give them an unhealthy relationship with food later on. "This is a nightmare situation for parents of this generation as they have no idea how to teach their children to delay their response to cravings, she said, explaining that too many young kids binge on these chocolates because their parents dont know how to stop them. "Once a child starts overeating behaviour at a young age its very hard to turn things around for them in terms of food and their eating habits moving forward, leading to obesity from at very young age," she added PA Food and drink news Pineapple overtakes avocado as the UK's fastest-selling fruit According to Tesco, pineapple has overtaken avocado as the UKs fastest-selling fruit, with sales increasing by 15 per cent in 2017. In comparison, avocado sales rose by just under 10 per cent last year. The popular supermarket says the surge in popularity comes as shoppers buying the versatile fruit are beginning to use it as a main ingredient in everything from curries and barbecues, to juices and cocktails Getty Food and drink news Marks & Spencers launches stoneless avocados Rather than the result of genetic modification, the avocados are formed by an unpollinated avocado blossom. The fruit develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth, creating a small, seedless fruit. Whats more, the skin is actually edible, unlike a regular avocado. The flesh is much like that of a normal avocado - smooth and creamy, pale in colour and rich in flavour M&S Food and drink news Office teabags contain 17 times more germs than a toilet seat, reveals study The average bacterial reading of an office teabag was 3,785, in comparison to only 220 for a toilet seat. Other pieces of kitchen equipment also stacked up highly in their findings, with the bacterial readings averaging at 2,483 on kettle handles, 1,746 on the rim of a used mug and 1,592 on a fridge door handle Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New study shows drinking more coffee leads to a longer life There is good news and a final hope for coffee addicts and lovers. You will now be able to drink coffee for longer as new study shows its can lead to a prolonged life. Scientists showed that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day had 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. PA Food and drink news Coke Zero is replaced with Coke Zero Sugar Coca-Cola is pulling the plug on its Coke Zero. The much loved drink will be replaced with a new improved taste. The move, backed with a 10 million campaign, is said to come from Coca-Cola supporting people to reduce their sugar intake. Coca-Cola want people make this move while not sacrificing sugary taste of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Food and drink news Starbucks introduce new avocado spread The avocado craze has grown from hipster brunch restaurants to Starbucks. Starbucks have introduced their new avocado spread earlier this year and it has the internet in debate. Some argue that it not a spread but guacamole while others question if there is any avocado in there at all. When buying the new spread you can also buy an optional toasted bagel. It is a must try for all avocado connoisseurs. Starbucks Food and drink news New Mars chocolate bar The iconic British chocolate bar is about to get its partner in crime. The new bar, named Goodness Knows, will replace the gooey caramel goodness of the mars bar with oats. It is said to be more like a Florentine biscuit with a thin dark chocolate bottom. While being moderately healthy Mars says that is has good intentions. One pack has 154 calories and will sell for about 90p. Mars Food and drink news Wine prices could increase because of Brexit Wine lovers across the UK might soon have to shell out close to a quarter more for their favourite tipple after Brexit, as a weaker pound and sluggish economy takes its toll, a new study shows Rex Food and drink news Chocolate may be good for the heart A new study, published in the British Medical Journal: Heart, found that moderate chocolate intake can be positively associated with lessening the risk of the heart arrhythmia condition Atrial Fibrillation Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Brits throw away 1.4 million bananas each year British families are throwing away 1.4 million bananas that are perfectly good to eat every day at cost of 80m a year, new figures have shown PA/Armin Weigel Food and drink news Rosemary sales spike over exam time There has been a surge a surge in sales of the herb rosemary after a recent study found it helps improve memory. According to high street health food chain Holland & Barrett, sales of the herb have increased by 187 per cent compared to the same time last year Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Gluten-free diets 'not recommended' for people without coeliac disease Avoiding wheat, barley and rye in the belief that a gluten-free diet brings health benefits may do more harm than good, according to a team of US nutrition and medicine experts Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Starbucks launches two new coffee-based drinks Starbucks is launching two new coffee-based drinks in the UK, as it strives to tap into consumers growing appetite for healthy beverages. The Cold Brew Vanilla sweet cream and the Cappuccino Freddo, will both be available in stores throughout the UK from the start of May Twitter/@SbuxCountyHall Food and drink news Cadburys Dairy Milk Tiffin is making a permanent comeback after 80 years The Cadbury Dairy Milk Tiffin, first produced in 1937, is making a permanent comeback to the UK. The raisin and biscuit-filled chocolate bar is being launched after a successful trial last summer saw 3 million chocolate treats at the cost of 1.49 for each 95g bar- purchased by nostalgic customers Cadburys Food and drink news Pizza restaurant makes worlds cheesiest 'Scottie's Pizza Parlor' in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Facebook/Scottie's Pizza Parlor Food and drink news A pizza joint in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Why not eating before a workout could be better for your health A study published in the American Journal of Physiology by researchers at the University of Bath found you might be likely to burn more fat if you have not eaten first Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New York restaurant named best in the world A New York restaurant where an average meal for two will cost $700 has been named the best in the world. Eleven Madison Park won the accolade for the first time after debuting on the list at number 50 in 2010. The restaurant was praised for a fun sense of fine-dining, blurring the line between the kitchen and the dining room Getty Images Food and drink news Why you crave bad food when youre tired Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago recently presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption. Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had specifically enhanced brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good nights sleep Shutterstock Food and drink news Drinking wine engages more of your brain than solving maths problems Drinking wine is the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other human behaviour, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, said sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news British dessert eating surges after people ditch healthy eating in February : In heartening news for anyone feeling guilty about quitting their New Year diet, it seems lots of us have given in to our sweet tooths once again. New data from nationwide food-delivery service Deliveroo reveals there was a surge in Brits ordering desserts in February compared to the first month of 2017 Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news US congress debates definition of milk alternatives A new bill has been created that seeks to ban dairy alternatives from using the term milk. Titled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, the name is a tenuous acronym for defending against imitations and replacements of yogurt, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. It argues that the dairy industry is struggling as a result of all the dairy-free alternatives on the market and the public are being duped too Getty Images Food and drink news Cadburys launches two new chocolate bars UK confectionary giant Cadbury has launched two new chocolate bars, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and perhaps help combat some of the challenges it faces from rising commodity prices and a post-Brexit slump in the value of the pound.The companys new products will be peanut butter and mint flavoured. They will be available in most major super markets as 120g bars, priced at 1.49, according to the company Cadburys Food and drink news You can now get a job as a professional chocolate eater The company responsible for some of your favourite chocolate brands think Cadbury, Milks, Prince and Oreo have officially announced an opening to join their team as a professional chocolate taster. The successful candidate will help them to test, perfect and launch new products all over the world. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news MSG additive used in Chinese food is actually good for you, scientist claims For years, weve been told MSG (the sodium salt of glutamic acid) - often associated with cheap Chinese takeaways - is awful for our health and to be avoided at all costs. But one scientist argues it should be used as a supersalt and encourages adding it to food. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Lettuce prices are rising Not only are lettuces becoming an increasingly rare commodity in supermarkets, but prices for the leafy vegetables seem to be rising too. According to the weekly report from the Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a pair of Little Gem lettuces had an average market price of 0.86 in the week that ended on Friday, up from an average of 0.56 in the previous week thats an almost 54 per cent increase. Getty Images Food and drink news Do-It-Yourself restaurant To encourage more people to cook and eat together, IKEA has launched The Dining Club in Shoreditch a fully immersive Do-It-Yourself restaurant . Members of the public can book to host a brunch, lunch or dinner party for up to 20 friends and family. Supported by their very own sous chef and maitre de, the host and their guests will orchestrate an intimate dining experience where cooking together is celebrated and eating together is inspirational Mikael Buck / IKEA Food and drink news Ping Pong menu with a twist Gatwick Airport has teamed up with London dim sum restaurant Ping Pong to create a limited edition menu with a distinctly British twist; including a Full English Bao and Beef Wellington Puff, to celebrate the launch of the airports new route to Hong Kong Food and drink news Zizzi unveil the Maamgharita Unique pizza art has been created by Zizzi in celebration of the Queens 90th birthday. The pizza features the queen in an iconic pose illustrated with fresh and tasty Italian ingredients on a backdrop of the Union Jack Food and drink news Blue potatoes make a comeback Blue potatoes, once a staple part of British potato crops, are back on the menu thanks to a Cambridge scientist turned-organic farmer and Farmdrop, an online marketplace that lets people buy direct from local farms. Cambridge PhD graduate-turned farmer, Adrian Izzard has used traditional growing techniques at Wild Country Organics to produce the colourful spuds, packed with healthy cell-protecting anthocyanin, which had previously disappeared from UK plates when post-war farmers were pushed towards higher-yielding varieties
It is not the first time McDonalds plans to open a branch in a historic location has angered local people.
Last month Catholic cardinals raised objections to the chains proposals to open a restaurant next to Saint Peters Square in the Vatican.
One cardinal, Elio Sgreccia, told La Republicca: Its a controversial, perverse decision to say the least.
[It is] by no means respectful of the architectural traditions of one of the most characteristic squares which look onto the colonnade of Saint Peters.
The Independent has contacted McDonald's for comment.
Additional reporting by agencies.
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French investigators have identified the Isis member believed to have coordinated the Paris and Brussels attacks from Syria.
Oussama Atar, a 32-year-old extremist, was already a suspect in the bombings that killed more than 30 people at Brussels Airport and a Metro station, but has now been linked to last Novembers atrocities in France.
Hes the only coordinator from Syria to have been identified during the investigations, a French security source told the AFP news agency.
Brussels Arrests: Sixth person arrested in second day of raids
Atar, who holds dual Belgian and Moroccan nationality, also goes by the name Abu or Abou Ahmad and was picked out of a photo line-up by one of the terrorists sent to Europe.
Belgian reports suggested he could be the mastermind of the Brussels attacks in August but he is now believed to have coordinated both operations from Syria.
Atar hired the two Iraqi suicide bombers who blew themselves up near the Stade de France, Le Monde reported, and is believed to have received plans for the Brussels attacks from a linked terror cell before they were launched on 22 March.
He is also related to Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, who detonated a suitcase bomb at Zaventem Airport, and his younger brother Khalid who detonated his device at Maalbeek Metro station.
Atar is the mentor and cousin of the El Bakraoui brothers. He radicalised them through the internet, a Belgian law enforcement official told Politico.
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 extremist is reported to have travelled to the Middle East in 2002, claiming to work for a charity, but was arrested in the Iraqi city of Ramadi for illegally crossing the border from Syria in 2005.
His 25-year prison sentence was reduced to 10 on appeal, with Atar held in notorious jails including Abu Ghraib prison and Camp Bucca, where he reportedly met Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, now the self-appointed caliph of Isis.
Following a campaign by his relatives and humanitarian groups, the Belgian government intervened to have Atar released and repatriated from Iraq.
He returned in 2012 and was arrested while trying to flee to Tunisia the following year, disappearing after his release.
An alert was sent to French intelligence agencies in June reporting he intended to travel to France via Albania upon his return from Syria.
But Atar remains at large, having been unsuccessfully targeted by terror raids including searches in March and August.
His younger brother, Yassine, was arrested in March on suspicion of terror offences, when with explosive residue found on his body.
European authorities are still attempting to uncover a network of Isis supporters linked to the Paris and Brussels attacks, as well as prevent new terror plots.
Several suspects remain in custody, including Paris facilitator Salah Abdeslam and Mohamed Abrini, who evaded capture after the November attack and later failed to detonate his bomb at Brussels Airport, where he became known as the man in the hat after being caught on CCTV.
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A Russian frigate capable of firing cruise missiles at targets up to 370 miles (600km) away has docked in the Syrian port of Latakia, ahead of what intelligence sources and rebels say is a new attack on Aleppo timed for when the worlds attention is focused on the American national election.
The Admiral Grigorovich joins the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier Russias only one and the Pyotr Velikiy (Peter the Great) nuclear-powered battle cruiser, both of which arrived at the Russian naval base in the regime stronghold of Latakia on the Mediterranean last week.
Russias Black Sea fleet, including the Kuznetsov, seven other war ships and three submarines, began its journey from Murmansk in the biggest Russian military deployment since the Cold War last month. While British officials dismissed the show of strength as posturing, the fleet poses a serious threat to rebels fighting the Russian-backed regime in Syrias bloody civil war.
The Grigorovich uses formidable Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles, which have been deployed a handful of times since Russia began military intervention in Syria in September 2015.
The mass movement of ships and submarines to Syrias coastline is part of what Nato intelligence expects to be an assault timed for when Washington DC is distracted by the general election on 8 November, although Russian Foreign Ministry official Andrei Kelin last week dismissed fears that the vessels will be used in a renewed attack on Aleppo as absurd.
Any such attack would come after the 18 October Russian-announced temporary moratorium on air strikes on rebel neighbourhoods, and amnesty for fighters and civilians wishing to leave the area, expired last Friday.
Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Show all 16 1 /16 Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo A girl who fled areas of conflict rides a vehicle in Dahiyet al-Assad, west Aleppo city, Syria REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigade have a tea in a building under construction Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo A rebel fighters' armoured vehicle in Dahiyet al-Assad Reuters Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigades sit on a tank Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Abandoned magazine of shells after rebel fighters took control of Dahiyet al-Assad Reuters Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Rebel fighters ride a pick-up truck with civilians who fled areas of conflict in Dahiyet al-Assad, west Aleppo city, Syria Reuters Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo A rebel fighter gestures with a girl who fled areas of conflict while they ride a pick-up truck in Dahiyet al-Assad Reuters Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Smoke rises near a damaged road in Dahiyet al-Assad, west Aleppo city, Syria Reuters Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Syrians carry their belongings as they leave the southwestern frontline neighbourhood of Dahiyet al-,Assad Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo A view shows a damaged minaret of a mosque after rebel fighters took control of Dahiyet al-Assad, Syria Reuters Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Rebel groups have pledged to push from newly captured positions in the Dahiyet al-Assad district towards Hamdaniyeh. Rebels and allied jihadists launched a major offensive on October 28, 2016 to break through government lines and reach the 250,000 people living in the city's east Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Rebel groups have pledged to push from newly captured positions in the Dahiyet al-Assad district towards Hamdaniyeh Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or Army of Conquest) brigades hold a position at an entrance to Aleppo, in the southwestern frontline neighbourhood of Dahiyet al-Assad Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Smoke billows from the frontline district of Dahiyet al-Assad following an attack by rebels on Syrian regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo Syrians carry their belongings as they leave the southwestern frontline neighbourhood of Dahiyet al-Assad Getty Dahiyet al-Assad - Aleppo People who fled areas of conflict ride a pick-up truck in Dahiyet al-Assad, west Aleppo city, Syria Reuters
East Aleppo has been subjected to heavy aerial bombardment and a renewed ground assault by President Bashar al-Assads troops and foreign militias since September which has killed more than 500 people.
The UN has said both sides may be guilty of war crimes in targeting civilian infrastructure during the fighting, some of the bloodiest in Syrias almost-six-year-long civil war.
While the regime said that humanitarian corridors had been set up for civilians to leave the siege barricades, both sides accused the other of targeting checkpoints with mortar and sniper fire. Few people were reported to have left east Aleppo by Tuesday.
Aleppo offensive
The estimated 8,000 fighters left in rebel neighbourhoods among them al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters have been assisted since 29 October by a counter attack launched by allies on regime held parts of the city designed to break the siege.
Syrian government forces said on Tuesday they had managed to regain control of the strategically important 1070 Apartments district, which would put an end to the rebels momentum.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the Syrian militarys claim, calling it the most significant gain by the government in Aleppo since Septembers campaign was launched.
Rebel officials have said that fighting is still ongoing.
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US-backed Kurdish and Arab forces have captured several villages in the outskirts of Raqqa in the first days of their offensive, but they anticipate that the ground ahead of them and what lies beneath it will be harder to seize.
The battle to rid Isis fighters from their de facto capital and heartland will not be easy.
Similar Isis strongholds have revealed secret networks of tunnels invisible to the American warplanes soaring overhead that militants use to keep stores, to hide in, and launch to attacks from.
Isis's rule has been marked by repeated atrocities including mass beheadings and other executions that it has documented in photos and videos lauding the violence that its supporters share online.
In Mosul, where the group is also under pressure, Iraqi police forces said they found a mass grave yesterday.
Here are some of the secret underground passages that may lie in wait for the intruding forces.
Mosul, Iraq
Upon gaining access to the previous Isis stronghold, forces found that beneath the city lay a honeycomb of tunnels which had allowed Islamist fighters to position themselves behind the front line.
Underneath the village of Mufti, near Mosul, the tunnels stretched across a quarter of a mile.
Discovered only after a US bomber hit one of the houses masking the maze, some of the tunnels were ten feet below the surface.
Kurdish peshmerga also captured a village called Small Bafana in the outskirts of Mosul in October and discovered a network of tunnels used to hide snipers.
Militants had to prevent the passages from caving in using sticks yet they had everything in the tunnels to remain almost entirely self-sufficient including stores of chickpeas, eggs, honey and an electricity supply.
One house above a subterranean passage was filled with mounds of soil, likely so that US planes overhead would not know about the tunnels.
Behind them they left booby tracks, including a Quaran lodged in the tunnel wall connected to and IED.
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
Sinjar, Iraq
In November 2015, hundreds of metres of underground tunnels used were discovered below the Iraqi city of Sinjar.
Fortified with sandbags to protect against air-strikes, the tunnels had multiple exits and provided safe passage around the city.
Books, ammunition, painkillers, prescription druigs and basic living essentials were all discovered alongside apparent tools for making bombs.
They were equipped with mattresses, blankets, fans and curtains to provide privacy.
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The devil himself would be astounded by [Isis] methods of torture. It is beyond the imagination, Ahmed, a former English teacher from a town south of Mosul said.
He recalled listening to the cries of agony coming from a detention centre formerly an agricultural college across the street from his home in Hammam al-Alil as Isis fighters dragged civilians outside to be executed in the middle of the night.
Horrific stories such as Ahmeds have leaked out of Isis-controlled territory over the past two years. But in the face of the US-backed Iraqi coalitions Operation Inherent Resolve which is now pushing into the suburbs of the Isis stronghold of Mosul the jihadis, desperate to retain control, have become more brutal, arbitrarily executing anyone suspected of trying to rebel, or even relatives of former police or security forces members.
As residents are freed, their first-hand accounts shed more light on the atrocities they have suffered since Isis captured a third of Iraq in a blitz across the country in the summer of 2014.
Late on Monday, the Iraqi military said it had discovered the decapitated corpses of at least 100 civilians at the newly recovered complex near Ahmeds house.
Isis had used the town's agricultural college as a killing field for hundreds of people in the days before the Iraqi government advance, Ahmed said. At least six people in his street alone had been killed, he said, including his father and a family next door.
They would torture them inside and then take them out of the neighbourhood and either shoot them or slit their throats, he told Reuters.
Local security officials and the UN have reported scores more civilians in villages and towns around Mosul who tried to flee fighting were executed by gunfire and their bodies thrown in the Tigris River.
Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Show all 10 1 /10 Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis An Iraqi Christian prepares for the first Sunday Mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi priests hold the first Sunday mass Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christian soldiers attend the first Sunday mass at the Grand Immaculate Church since it was recaptured from Islamic State in Qaraqosh Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis An Iraqi Christian soldier holds his weapon during the first Sunday mass Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis An Iraqi Christian soldier lights a candle Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi priests hold the first Sunday mass at the Grand Immaculate Church since it was recaptured from Islamic State Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi priests hold the first Sunday mass Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Reuters Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Iraqi Christians celebrate liberation from Isis Reuters
The military says its forces discovered the decapitated corpses of at least 100 civilians at the Hammam al-Alil complex. Hundreds more afraid of the violence hid in their homes with the curtains drawn for the last seven days, trying to make as little noise as possible to avoid detection, or being forcibly transported elsewhere by Isis to be used as human shields in more strategic locations.
Ahmed and his family were lucky that Iraqi troops arrived before they ran out of food or Isis found them.
More than 34,000 people are now estimated to have arrived at displacement camps, the International Organisation for Migration has said. Although aid organisations expect to be overwhelmed by between 200,000 to 700,000 people as fighting goes on, they are the lucky ones: thousands more people have been forced onto minibuses and trucks and taken deeper into Isis territory.
One source told the UN that a group of women and children who had not walked fast enough because one of their number was physically disabled had been shot at the roadside for delaying the rest of the convoy.
Isis 'teaching children how to kill and make bombs'
Isis has also reportedly been tricking civilians by wearing Iraqi army fatigues and pretending to be the liberating forces: when residents go out to greet them, Tariq, an engineering student from Hammam al-Alil said, they were shot.
Even a one-year-old baby, they put a bullet in his head, he said.
Approximately 1.5 million people are estimated to still be trapped in Mosul as the operation to drive Isis out of the city enters its fourth week.
The Iraqi army has repeatedly cautioned civilians to stay in their homes to avoid being caught in crossfire. But as the battle is expected to last weeks or even months, humanitarian agencies have repeatedly called on the security forces to set up promised safe corridors for civilians to be able to leave.
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Hundreds of Arab families living in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk have been driven out in what appears to be a retaliatory move by the Kurdish administrators in the aftermath of a fierce Isis attack on the city last month, Amnesty International has said.
The surprise pre-dawn Isis raid on October 21 was launched to distract from the huge US-backed coalitions current operation to oust the militants from Mosul 60 miles (110 kilometres) away, lasting three days and leaving approximately 100 security forces personnel and civilians dead. Around 80 Isis fighters were killed in fighting, Governor Najmeddin Karim said.
Officials said at the time that Isis fighters were able to infiltrate the city by posing as Arab villagers displaced by fighting and seeking refuge in the Kurdish town.
As a result, on the 25 October Kirkuks administrators took the step of demolishing the homes of around 250 recently arrived Sunni Arab families and ordering them to leave for government camps, Amnesty claims. Another 190 families were said to have been removed from neighbouring villages by Kurdish Peshmerga and Asayesh forces.
Those removed were suspected of helping to shelter Isis fighters or providing intelligence for Isis to coordinate the attack.
Destroying homes without necessity amounted to a war crime, Amnestys deputy director for research in Lebanon Lynn Maalouf said.
The authorities in Kirkuk are undeniably facing a serious security threat, but that cannot justify bulldozing peoples homes and forcibly displacing hundreds of Arab residents. Many of those affected are people who have already been forced to leave their homes because of the violence engulfing the country, she said.
Kirkuk city officials have denied the reports as an absolute lie.
Isis militants attack Kurdish forces near Kirkuk
First of all, we didnt demolish them. I think people took it upon themselves, but we stopped it. Because we want to make sure that these people have a place to go to, we transferred them to the camps, he told Al-Monitor.
Governor Karim added that the city could not continue to host internally displaced people (IDPs) forever.
There are a lot of places that have been liberated [from Isis]... in Diyala province, in Salahuddin province, in Anbar. So these people need to go back their places. Saddam Hussein tried to wipe out Kurds from this city, and we are not going to have it done in the name of IDPs.
Sectarian differences have long been used as a pretext for violence in modern Iraq.
How the complex and competing interests of the Kurdish peshmerga, Sunni tribal fighters, Shiite militias and Iraqi army troops currently battling for control of Mosul will play out when fighters manage to dislodge Isis from the Sunni-majority city is being widely viewed as a litmus test for the cohesiveness of the Iraqi state as a whole.
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The Turkish president has reiterated his opposition to US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces taking a lead role in the battle to drive Isis from their de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria, even as the US tries to assuage Ankaras fears of growing Kurdish influence in the region.
Speaking to reporters, Recip Tayyip Erdogan did not directly refer to the new Operation Euphrates Wrath to encircle Isis fighters in Raqqa, announced over the weekend by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish led coalition of Kurdish and Arab militias, but did say no one in the world will buy this naive attitude [attacking Isis] with another terror organisation.
The SDF is made up of units from the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey views as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting an insurgency war against the Turkish state since the 1980s.
Nato member Turkeys recent military intervention in northern Syria has been as much about about preventing the self-declared autonomous Kurdish administration in Rojava from expanding its territory as it has been about ousting Isis from the border region.
Erdogan spoke at almost exactly the same time that the US Defence Department released a statement saying that hastily arranged meetings between Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Mar Gen Joseph Dunford and his Turkish counterpart Army Gen Hulusi Akar had been successful in agreeing on how to recapture the Sunni-majority city once Isis has been defeated.
The coalition and Turkey will work together on the long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing Raqqa, Gen. Dunford said after the Sunday talks.
We always knew the SDF wasn't the solution for holding and governing Raqqa, Dunford said.
What we are working on right now is to find the right mix of forces for the operation.
In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Show all 11 1 /11 In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Women and children celebrating after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A man cuts the beard of a civilian who was freed from Isis by the SDF in Manbij on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Women carry newborn babies while running after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman freed from Isis hugs an SDF fighter in Manbij on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman adding her veil to a pile of niqabs burning in Manbij, Syria, after being freed from Isis on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Children celebrating on top of a lorry after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A man and child freed from Isis by the SDF in Manbij on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman carrying her children walks towards SDF fighters after being freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij A woman and child freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij An SDF fighter kisses a crying man who was freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters In pictures: Civilians freed from Isis in Manbij Hundreds of civilians freed from Isis in Manbij, Syria, on 12 August Reuters
Other sources quoted by Reuters said that a sufficient number of Arab fighters have not yet been recruited or are still in training for the Raqqa offensive.
There is no available force capable of taking Raqqa in the near future, one US official said on Monday the condition of anonymity.
On Tuesday Turkish diplomats reiterated that Washington has promised that the SDF itself - the only consistently successful ground force in driving back Isis and a major US ally - will not enter the city limits during fighting, pointing out that similar protestations were made before the assault to free the town of Manbij in August.
Before such plans can be executed, however, troops face what is likely to be a long and bloody battle to take back the city of approximately 220,000 people.
Both Kurdish and US officials have warned that fighting on the ground - backed by US, UK and French air strikes - is likely to be slow going, and the offensive could take months.
Women secretly capture life inside Raqqa
Small advances to the north of the city have been reported since Sunday, in the face of Isis car bombs and missile fire. Activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said that militants had blown up several bridges in an attempt to slow the coalition forces and had prevented the villagers of Tweila'a from leaving during coalition strikes.
US Central Command said that 21 air strikes on Isis targets were carried out on Sunday and Monday.
US-backed forces are also currently engaged in a campaign to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul, the largest city under Isis control in its so-called caliphate.
Officials hope that the dovetailing of the two operations will prevent Isis from being able to regroup, ending their ability to operate as a land-holding force in the complex Syrian civil war.
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Russia is preparing to resume air strikes around the Syrian city of Aleppo "in coming hours", the Interfax news agency cited a source in the Russian Defence Ministry as saying.
It comes after the Kremlin said on Monday Russia's air force would maintain a suspension on strikes in Aleppo, unless militants launched an offensive.
A Russian frigate capable of firing cruise missiles at targets up to 370 miles (600km) docked in the Syrian port of Latakia on Tuesday morning, ahead of what intelligence sources and rebels say is a new attack on Aleppo timed for when the worlds attention is focused on the US election.
The Russian warships entered the English Channel several weeks ago, shadowed by the Royal Navy. At the time the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed claims the ships could be used to target civilians in the besieged city of Aleppo as "absurd".
At least seven children and two pregnant women were killed in an air strike on Syria's rebel stronghold province of Idlib today (8 November), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor monitor said.
The monitor said the strike, which hit the town of Khan Sheikun in the south of the province, appeared to have been carried out by Russian forces.
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Students and book lovers in Riyadh have expressed their dismay that a popular artistic spot in the city has been shut down and all its books removed pending an investigation by the Saudi authorities.
Rawi Cafe located on the campus of South Imam University posted pictures of its previously dark, wooden, library-like interior stripped of all its books to social media last week, alerting customers that the business had been shut down by the Ministry for Culture and Information.
Rawi had previously been popular with students, researchers, and others in Riyadhs intellectual community.
In a statement given to local media a Ministry spokesperson said that they had previously warned the cafes owner that it needed a licence to display books on its shelves, which had not been checked by the Kingdoms religious authorities.
The Ministry of Culture and Information confirms that it is keen to support the dissemination of culture and intellectuals, and all projects and cultural initiatives, provided it complies with the rules and regulations, and that is done through regular procedures and frameworks, he added.
Owner Khaled Qadimi has queried the Ministrys decision, saying that as a coffee and teahouse, where books are not borrowed in a library setting or sold, he does not need such a licence, adding that all of the books available to read at Rawi had been purchased legally at book fairs in Riyadh.
The cafe said it was in talks with the authorities to keep the cafe open, but the prospect of reopening soon is slim. If it does get the go ahead, Mr Qadimi hopes to expand, creating a family and women-friendly space as well.
Under the Kingdoms strict gender segregation laws, women are not allowed to spend large amounts of time with men to whom they are not related. Most public spaces and buildings have separate entrances and seating plans to avoid unlawful mixing which can draw criminal charges which are typically much harsher for women.
Academics and cultural commentators have condemned Rawis closure as censorship, pointing out that even if the authorities are worried about the content of the cafes books for religious reasons, such material is freely purchased or downloaded online, rendering the decision outdated.
It boggles the mind that representatives of the Ministry, when it comes to censoring reading material that may not be appropriate for Saudi society, apply 1986 rules in 2016... It makes the cutting out of pages and crudely covering images of women with a magic marker in magazines an anachronism. Its a silly waste of time, assistant professor Sabria Jawhar at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University wrote.
The Independent has contacted both Rawi Cafe and the Ministry for Culture and Information for comment.
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A Saudi Arabian court has ordered four men to receive as many as 2,500 lashes and sentenced them to jail terms of up to 17 years after they raped a foreign national in front of her husband and daughter.
The men, three from Saudi and one from Sudan, were sentenced by a court in Jeddah, which did not reveal the nationality of the victim.
One of the men, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was jailed for 17 years and will receive 2,500 lashes in 50 separate sessions, according to the Saudi daily newspaper Al Riyadh.
Two of the men were sentenced to 15 years each and 1,500 lashes while the last defendant received five years in prison and 1,500 lashes.
The court heard how the gang broke into the victims house in Jeddah, restrained her husband with electric wire and raped her in front of him and their young daughter.
The men then made off with 10,000 Saudi riyals (about 2,100) and eight mobile phones before returning to the house and raping the woman again at knifepoint.
The four men confessed to their crimes after they were arrested by police. There were calls for them to be executed.
Last month, Saudi Arabia executed a member of its royal family for an alleged murder.
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Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir was sentenced to death for allegedly shooting dead Adel al-Mahemid after an argument erupted at a desert camp on the edge of Riyadh three years ago.
The House of Saud rarely sees executions of its own members, who number in the thousands.
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.
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The UK could see two million fewer visitors by 2020 if the government opts for a hard Brexit, an expert has warned.
Speaking at a debate at World Travel Market in London, Caroline Bremner, Euromonitors head of travel, said that the best option would be for the UK to keep open skies and access to the single market.
Other experts on the panel forecast that a disorderly Brexit would also mean fewer UK citizens visiting other countries.
Andrew Swaffield, chief executive at Monarch Airlines, called for clarity on freedom of movement. If we get that, we can keep visa-free travel and liberal air traffic, he said.
Although the falling pound means the UK is about 15 per cent cheaper for overseas visitors, there are fears over the long-term effects of Brexit on UK tourism.
Chris Mottershead, managing director of Thomas Cook UK & Ireland, urged the government to lower Air Passenger Duty, which makes travel from the UK much more costly.
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Ryanair is inviting applications for what it describes as the worst job in Ireland.
The lucky candidate will manage a wide range of issues, from general drudgery to MOL-ly coddling, as assistant to CEO Michael OLeary.
As well as being a qualified accountant, the successful applicant will have an aversion to bolloxology and their own collection of nursery rhymes/bedtime stories, according to the job ad on the Ryanair website.
The ability to operate without sleep or contact with the outside world is also crucial.
The ad sounds like it could have been written by Mr OLeary himself; the outspoken Irish businessman is no stranger to controversy, having sounded off about everyone from travel agents to celebrities in the past.
He is responsible for quotes such as Germans will crawl bollock-naked over broken glass to get low fares and All flights are fuelled with Leprechaun wee and my bullshit.
The payscale of the Dublin-based role has not yet been disclosed, but the ads closing note warns: Dubs fans, Man U supporters and cyclists will not only be automatically excluded from the process, but will be tracked down, tortured and shot.
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Eight years ago, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. Today, Americans will choose their next President a woman, or a so-called woman hater. Americas fate hangs in the balance, and during this stressful time, it would be pertinent to look back on Obamas presidency.
Since President Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination back in 2008, beating his then rival Hillary Clinton at the National Convention, I have proudly watched him and his family ooze positive images of black family life. Not only as Americas first family for all the people; black, white, gay and straight, but as the highest profile black family on the planet. The thousands of pictures and videos beamed around the world are of a solid and stable unit, in contrast to the many negative and stereotypical images were used to seeing of the broken and fatherless black families.
Barack is a black husband and father, surrounded by his family. Michelle has such elegance and grace, that many wonder why she isnt running for President. Despite the horrid racism that exists in America, and around the world, Barack has managed to rise to the top of his profession, to become the leader of the worlds foremost democracy. Many in America who had never been able to relate or look up to the White House for guidance finally found a figure in which their own attributes were embodied. He gave the community hope and inspired them, by breaking the barrier in American politics.
There are people, including black Americans, who say the President hasnt done anything for them. But he is a president who has received unprecedented opposition and disrespect, the first president asked to show his birth certificate and have his Supreme Court nominee blocked. He has failed to get gun violence under control, primarily due to various blockages in the system from Republicans, and the racism that pervades America is still clear to see.
Obama ridicules Trump for having his Twitter taken away from him
Lets consider Chicago, his home city black on black violence is still rife. An insightful documentary by Reggie Yates last month depicted the torment that the black community lives in. 20 year olds being shot on the street, purely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Morgues packed with bodies riddled with bullets this horrific issue is still happening, eight years after his presidency began. Many cannot forgive this, but Obama has also pushed forward much change in the US.
Prior to his inauguration in 2009, many people around the world hated America, its dominance and foreign policy with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama has calmed things down, with a new focus. Under his watch, he has steadied the US ship. He has concentrated on domestic issues such as Obamacare. As a gay man, I acknowledge same-sex progress, especially with LGBT reform and equal marriage. Some argue Obama hasnt been an effective leader, at home or abroad, because hes a pacifist. But this is the same man who has authorised air strikes, rightly or wrongly, and Osama Bin Laden was killed under his presidency. As a president he has stayed grounded and kept his cool just what America needed after the Bush years.
The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 Show all 10 1 /10 The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 21: U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama thank supporters during the Commander in Chief Inaugural Ball at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on January 21, 2013 in Washington, DC. President Obama was sworn in for his second term earlier in the day. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for the Inaugural Ball at the Walter Washington Convention Center January 21, 2013 in Washington, DC. President Obama started his second term by taking the Oath of Office earlier in the day during a ceremony on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for the Inaugural Ball at the Walter Washington Convention Center January 21, 2013 in Washington, DC. President Obama started his second term by taking the Oath of Office earlier in the day during a ceremony on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 U.S. President Barack Obama dances with first lady Michelle Obama during the Inaugural Ball January 21, 2013 at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term as President of the United States. Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama ride in a golf cart an Inaugural ball 1/20/09 Official White House Photo by Pete Souza Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dance during the Youth Inaugural Ball at the Hilton Washington in Washington, DC, January 20, 2009. Obama was sworn in as the 44th US president earlier in the day. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 (L-R) US President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and president-elect Barack Obama stand outside the Diplomatic entrance of the White House on November 10, 2008 in Washington. Obama is visiting the White House at the invitation of Bush ahead of his January 20, 2009 inauguration as the next president. AFP PHOTO/Tim SLOAN (Photo credit should read TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images) Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 (L-R) US President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and president-elect Barack Obama stand outside the Diplomatic entrance of the White House on November 10, 2008 in Washington. Obama is visiting the White House at the invitation of Bush ahead of his January 20, 2009 inauguration as the next president. AFP PHOTO/Tim SLOAN (Photo credit should read TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 US President George W. Bush and president-elect Barack Obama make their way through the Colonnade on November 10, 208 to a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Obama is visiting the White House at the invitation of Bush ahead of his January 20, 2009 inauguration as the next president. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images The Obamas celebrate the Inauguration in 2009 and 2013 performs during MTV & ServiceNation: Live From The Youth Inaugural Ball at the Hilton Washington on January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC. President Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States today, becoming the first African-American to be elected President of the US. Getty Images
As a black Briton, Im fully aware that Obama never promised anything beyond the limits of his office, and definitely didnt set himself up as a saint. He wasnt meant to be the messiah. He offered hope and change, not salvation, and has delivered on these. Many now live in a stronger and more prosperous America, but Im not naive as to those who dont and are still struggling. Just because theres been a black man in the White House doesnt necessarily mean theres more opportunities for black people in America.
I note the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality was born under his presidency. But I think it would be disingenuous of us to say progress hasnt been made. Regardless of your views on him, as a black man he is a history-making president. By becoming the US Commander-in-chief, he has sent out a powerful message to other black boys and girls around the world that they too can achieve their goals.
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Every time I hear him speak, I am reminded of all that is good about him. He is a natural orator. A burger-bar-eating president, adored by a youthful generation. A man who has shown different dimensions to his personality, in a very public and symbolic way. Under his leadership, there has not been a White House scandal. How many other leaders can say that?
History will judge Barack well, and he will be remembered as one of the finest presidents America has had a man of character. His wife, Michelle, has been an inspirational first lady. About her husband she has said, Being president doesnt change who you are, it reveals who you are. About his wife, Barack has called her incredible, and that America has been blessed to have her.
Whoever is elected tomorrow, the world will miss the Obamas.
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Every big idea in politics is baloney. If you think, to take one example, that youve given away a portion of your liberty in return for the greater liberty of living under the law, then try getting it back again, you will quickly find yourself at liberty to ruminate on the matter from the comfort of your prison cell.
Human life is organised by ruthless people taking what they can get. The weakling philosophers only ever turn up afterwards to offer some retroactive justification for the way things are. To take another example, neither in 1651, nor before nor since, did the people act on Thomas Hobbes advice that they should preserve their life and liberty by submitting virtually without condition to a Leviathan ruler. They were already living under one, Oliver Cromwell, who had, as Hobbes was very much aware, just chopped off the sovereigns head.
Equip a person with a brain and a vested interest, even if that interest is merely to save their own life, and they will find a justification for anything. The spurious reasons Republican politicians have given for willing a Neanderthal bear into the Oval Office would fill a volume even larger than the reasons offered by men of the home counties as to why they support Manchester United. (He may be a car wreck but at least his car is pointed in the right direction, claimed Mike Huckabee, who had he spent his childhood in Basingstoke would doubtless have had a dentist from Salford who once gave him a sticker of Denis Law.)
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Of these various fictions, none is so pervasive, nor so fictitious, as the one that is currently doing the rounds with such passionate intensity the will of the people.
Theresa May, we know, is going to get on with the job of implementing the will of the British people, which last month we learned via her conference speech is to condemn with phoney inverted snobbishness the 48 per cent of the country whose side she was on for as long as it was politically expedient for her to be so.
Last week Boris Johnson told the German foreign minister how the will of the British people was expressed very clearly.
Sajid Javid has accused the three judges of the High Court, including the Lord Chief Justice, of attempting to thwart the will of the British people.
Cicero, contrary to reports, never actually said the phrase, not even in his preferred Latin. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to whom it is most commonly attributed, never wrote it. He did use the term the general will however, but so adamant was he that this general will should reflect the broad mass of views of the full voting population, that citizens could be forced, quite literally at gunpoint, to contribute to it.
Labour, too, has no problem with this view of the will of the British people. Tom Watson loves the phrase. So does Hilary Benn. They do so because the referendum result bisects political parties as perfectly as it has done families, friendship groups and the population as a whole. When the opposition partys safest seats are the most Brexity in the country, dont imagine anything that looks like actual opposition to last for very long.
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
But nothing suppresses the will of the people as surely as the entire political class batting on, to save their political skins, with an idea they dont agree with, and which makes increasingly real the kind of serious economic ruin with which most peoples imaginations have not yet even started to try to come to terms.
Nigel Farage, that humble servant to the will of the British people, was agitating for a second referendum two days before the first. A few minutes before midnight on the night itself, he was blaming what he imagined to be his imminent defeat on government corruption and swearing that win or lose this battle tonight, we will win this war.
Britain, in all likelihood, will leave the European Union in March 2019. But if the Prime Minister wants this decision to be representative of the will of the people, it can only be so if those who are convinced of its monumental folly are louder, not quieter, than ever before. That 51.9 per cent of voters have propriety over the will of the people to the extent that the rest should be silenced, denigrated or generally ignored is only the latest bit of baloney, and dont think for a moment that you have to swallow it.
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As if anyone, either in America or around the world was ever in any doubt, the US elections prove once again that the greatest democracy on earth is also one of the most bitterly divided.
We know that voting in these elections, perhaps more than any over recent decades, was determined quite starkly on the grounds of race, education and economic prosperity. If you happen to be a well-educated woman of colour, or if you happen to be a white unemployed ex-coal miner, your vote is more predictable than for a long time.
Reaching out is what American politicians tend to speak of, but the truth is that they have to reach out to only a few. The number of swing states and, within them, swing districts and counties is smaller than ever it was.
The election of 2000, in which Al Gore won the popular vote but so narrowly lost the White House on the way votes turned in a few square miles of Florida, was an omen of closer elections to come. For Americans who live in that state, in North Carolina, in Michigan, in Arizona, in Iowa and in a few more places and the more marginal polling districts within those states the Democrats and the Republicans can barely leave you alone. If you dont happen to live in a marginal toss-up state, say if you are in Wyoming (Republican) or Washington DC (Democrat), then no one will pay you very much attention.
This polarisation is reflected elsewhere in the American body politic. In the Senate, just a few seats can make the difference between an active administration that can get things done at home and abroad, and one that cannot.
Recommended Read more The Independent view on the US presidential election
Such is the modern day partisanship evident in both houses. The old arrangements across the aisle that could see federal budgets and international treaties passed, albeit with an element of the pork barrel about them, are unlikely to reassert themselves (although the Aprils agreement on climate change was a welcome exception). It means that America a land that the world still looks to as to a beacon on a hill is gripped by stasis rather than being a dynamic engine of reform and change.
Dominated by ideological obsession overlaying traditional sectional and geographical interests, Congress looks less fit for purpose than ever. Even the Supreme Court, by dint of overly partisan appointments by successive presidents, rests on a knife edge between liberalism and literalism.
The language and events of the 2016 contest give little cause for hope for those who wish to see America come together to sort out its issues. Sometimes, and rightly, held up as an example of how to engage sometimes apathetic voters in the democratic process, the most recent exercise gave us two candidates who were astonishingly unpopular, even among many of their respective parties traditional loyalists, let alone the political establishment. When so many voters wished that Hillary and Donald could both lose, something is wrong with the system.
US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US Presidential election: key moments in pictures US Presidential election: key moments in pictures The 2005 Access Hollywood video which showed Mr Trump bragging to Billy Bush Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump suggests gun-supporters could kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from picking the supreme court justices Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Melania Trump plagiarises Michelle Obamas speech Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump said that judge Gonzalo Curiel would not be able to rule fairly, as he was of Mexican heritage United States Federal Court/AP US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump anxious over securing black vote Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and concerns about securing black vote Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump's Christianity Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and his relentless remarks against Mexican people Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and the sexual assault allegations Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures FBI director announced that there would be no charges for Hillary Clinton amid email scandal Getty
The Republican Party in particular has ceased to look or sound very much like the nation it purports to lead. The role of money, too, has distorted the democratic choice, though less grotesquely this time round.
The health of American democracy matters to the rest of the world, not least because it was American democracy that, on more than one occasion, has secured democracy elsewhere in the world. Americans may tire of foreigners lecturing them about their foreign policy and suggesting how they should vote in their own elections, yet what America does, which battles it chooses to fight and how it fights them, affects everyone else in the world.
The US dollar, as the worlds major reserve currency, in a sense belongs to everyone, though only the Fed and the US Treasury control its supply. Americans acknowledge the interest and concern that has been demonstrated around the globe in the recent political contest. The rest of the world must be reassured, a little, that so many Americans also recognise the gravity of the problems their nation faces.
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President Obama is right to call for an alternative route for the Dakota access pipeline away from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. But this has not received the immediate attention it deserves. The Army Corps of Engineers needs to respond to President Obamas call and move quickly to deescalate the mounting tensions between the Native Indians, their supporters and law enforcement.
The situation is rapidly spiralling out of control with flash bang grenades, sound cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and attack dogs. The images out of Cannon Ball North Dakota resemble scenes from a war zone. To make matters worse, police forcibly evacuated a camp established on land that belonged to the Sioux tribe, affirmed in an 1851 treaty.
For months, the water protectors have endured violent repression in response to their peaceful protests to block the Dakota Access Pipeline which would endanger the water supply from the Missouri River, their sacred lands and way of life.
An environmental impact report routed the pipeline away from its original path to protect the 92 per cent of predominantly white residents of Bismarck of a possible oil spill. Now the Standing Rock Sioux is facing a similar threat. No environmental impact report has been filed to ensure the safety of the current pipeline.
This would be a wonderful opportunity to honour the Native Indians who have endured centuries of broken treaties and genocide of their people.
Tejinder Uberoi
Los Altos
Jimmy Young
Thanks for your very good article on Jimmy Young, but Radio Luxembourg was never a pirate station. It was owned and run by the independent broadcaster RTL, based in Luxembourg from where it broadcast nightly to the UK. As the sole broadcaster of contemporary pop and rock music for many years, it was respected and much loved by my generation and got me through my O-levels.
Terence Carr
Prestatyn
The will of the people
Tom Peck is spot on in lamenting the vacuous phrase the will of the people, bandied about by politicians of all persuasions. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out there was no collective will and a vote tomorrow could easily produce a different result. The only thing thats clear is the bitter division this vote has sown in a once-united Kingdom.
Stefan Wickham
Oxted
I share Tom Peck's irritation with triumphalist references to the will of the people. Brexit was actually the will of a barely more than a third of eligible UK voters on that day. Hardly an overwhelming mandate, when another third of us wanted the opposite and more than a quarter didn't even have the will to vote.
Andy Knott
Bath
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Theresa May is visiting India this week cup in hand, to ask for a favourable post-Brexit trade deal. Theres arrogance in Mays return to Britains former colony, expectant that India will come up with the goods, but ultimately, the move shows how much the tables have turned.
Many people, particularly in my grandparents generation, still view British imperialism and empire with a dewy-eyed longing. The reality is, of course, that British rule in India caused the deaths of millions of people through administrative failure and imperialist cruelty. Numerous famines, outbreaks of cholera, the arbitrary and rushed drawing of the border between India and the newly-created Pakistan, mass-displacement, and the destruction of Indias cottage industries left the country impoverished and unstable.
Imperialism set India up as both Britains workhouse and convenient marketplace, and when India finally gained independence, it was reduced to one of the worlds poorest economies. For Britain to come begging now that weve made such a mess of things with our yet-undefined Brexit, opposed by 48.1 per cent of the electorate, is laughable.
Theresa May urges deeper ties with India as UK prepares to leave the EU
Although a number of the more vehemently right-wing newspapers chose to focus on Mays hardball stance on immigration during her visit, they didnt pick up on the incongruity of the Prime Minister haggling over Indians with no right to remain in the UK whilst hankering after a lucrative trade deal.
At a tech summit in Delhi, May was pressured by business leaders including Sir James Dyson and Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer, to welcome more skilled Indian workers and students to Britain. The Governments current position seems to involve the hope that India will still sign a cushy deal with us, while we crack down on Indians in Britain whove outstayed their frosty welcome.
The political conversation in Britain has, despite the influence of Corbyn, shifted perceptibly to the right. May knows that to keep the would-be-Ukippers and Brexit-devotees onside, she must act tough on those foreign people despite surely recognising that she cannot turn back the clock on globalization.
The isolationist, shut-the-door sentiments that brought us Brexit are not going to serve Britain well when it comes to making international trade agreements, and to belief otherwise is a self-important indulgence that we can no longer afford. We live, for better or worse, in an interconnected world, and the issue of migration cannot be wiped off the table during trade discussions.
India wants access to the UK labour market for skilled workers, and the UK government wants to pander to the narrative that immigrants are an unnecessary scourge on our increasingly less green and pleasant land. On the basis of this impasse, a free trade agreement seems like a childish fantasy.
I wouldnt blame India for putting up two fingers to Theresa May and Britain.
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In the red corner we have The Donald a xenophobic, misogynist demagogue. In the blue corner we have Hillary Clinton the Washington establishment candidate.
The Trump movement represents a populist backlash against globalisation framed in the discourse of anti-immigration. It is a grave mistake to complacently assume that he cannot triumph today. If a significant proportion of the 90 million Americans who do not normally vote turn out then a Trump victory is very plausible.
It is no surprise that Trump is drawing parallels with Brexit. Across Europe, we can see the same nativism. Poland has an anti-immigration government. Hungary is now in the grip of the authoritarian Orban. The Czech government is nationalist. The tide is spreading. The re-run of the Austrian general election could see the first far-right leader elected in Western Europe since World War II. The French and German elections are next year. A Le Pen victory for the National Front is not inconceivable.
US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US Presidential election: key moments in pictures US Presidential election: key moments in pictures The 2005 Access Hollywood video which showed Mr Trump bragging to Billy Bush Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump suggests gun-supporters could kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from picking the supreme court justices Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Melania Trump plagiarises Michelle Obamas speech Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump said that judge Gonzalo Curiel would not be able to rule fairly, as he was of Mexican heritage United States Federal Court/AP US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump anxious over securing black vote Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and concerns about securing black vote Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump's Christianity Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and his relentless remarks against Mexican people Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and the sexual assault allegations Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures FBI director announced that there would be no charges for Hillary Clinton amid email scandal Getty
Trump is rightly denounced by moderates, and there has been all manner of apparent soul-searching from within the Republican party. But it is worth unmasking the hypocrisy at play here. It was the folksy Bush presidency which prosecuted the war on terror, responsible for up to 1.3 million deaths according to Physicians for Social Responsibility. The Bush presidency legitimised a climate of Islamophobia. The Obama presidency extended the Bush national security doctrine. Obama is a Nobel Peace laureate who has bombed seven countries. The right wing media, including Fox News and shock jocks, have whipped up intolerance in the US.
Are we really expected to believe that this same establishment has suddenly grown a conscience?
The Trump phenomenon is the product of a dysfunctional system. He is the logical extrapolation of this process. The difference is that Trump is explicit with his rhetoric and invective.
The decay of democracy has set the United States on a dangerous road. There has been hysteria around the prospect of the Donald having his finger on the nuclear button, yet when British Prime Minister Theresa May was asked if she would authorise a nuclear launch killing 100,000 innocents, she replied (without missing a beat) yes. The difference between the UK Conservative Governments rhetoric on migration and Trump is merely one of tone and tenor. Trump is uncensored, unfiltered.
So what would a Trump presidency mean? Economic policy would entail protectionism. He is anti-free-trade agreements and in favour of putting up tariffs to trade and barriers to immigration. Clearly, the corporate and financial elite are not in favour of such measures. This would likely mean that the EU-US trade agreement (or TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are dead in the water.
On foreign policy, he appears to favour a more conciliatory approach towards Russia. However, Trump is also dangerously dismissive of climate change and in favour of lowering corporation taxes. Such neoliberal trickle-down economics will not improve the lives of his supporter base.
US Election: Hillary Clinton in profile
Should Clinton win, there will be many metropolitan liberals breathing a sigh of relief. Yet the idea that a Clinton presidency would somehow be a godsend is misguided.
Clinton is a foreign policy hawk on Russia. The current escalation towards confrontation with Russia is alarming. Both sides are playing massive war games, which increasingly look like they are building up to the real thing. Only last week, British defence secretary Michael Fallon stated that the UK would be ready for war with Russia in two years.
Clinton overrode the Pentagon over the Nato bombing of Libya. The Pentagon correctly predicted that a bombing campaign with the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead to anarchic chaos. She would be similarly hawkish on Syria and more likely to authorise a full-scale war. Clintons proximity to the US elite and global network of clients is demonstrated by the astronomical fees paid for speeches and for access through the Clinton Foundation. She is viewed by many Americans as captured by Wall Street.
Trump v Clinton: US Election forecast - November 7
Unsurprisingly, both candidates have very high negative ratings with much of the US electorate not particular keen on either prospective leader. Whoever wins will preside over a divided nation unprepared to accept the legitimacy of the winner.
The power of the executive will also be contained by the gridlock of Congress. The US president is further constrained by powerful interest groups. Wall Street and other corporations influence policy on the home front. On foreign policy, the intelligence agencies and defence corporations are formidable lobbies.
It would certainly be progressive step to witness the first black and first female US presidents take office back-to-back. However, the notion that a female president will simply make the world better is wishful thinking. Identity politics cannot address these deep-seated, structural and systemic problems.
The hope invested in the Obama presidency has evaporated curdling into despair. What America really needs is a progressive candidate supported by a mass movement. This prospect now seems a long way off.
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Anyone who has closely watched a campaign that has captivated and besmirched its followers in equal measure could name several contenders for Most Lastingly Significant Quote. With Americans trooping sullenly off to vote for their least worst option, we wont know for hours whether basket of deplorables has the edge over grab them by the pussy and such a nasty woman. So, during this unnervingly calm hiatus, Id like to nominate a more obscure quote which strikes me as hugely instructive.It came not from either candidate, but Alec Baldwins astute impression of Donald Trump in his final satirical confrontation with Kate McKinnons immaculate Hillary Clinton on the eve-of-election edition of Saturday Night Live.
Why are you defending her, Erin? Baldwins Donald asks the network interviewer in the sketch. Are you a lez with her? Because Ive heard from a lot of people that youre lezzing her? That doesnt even make sense. It doesnt matter, Erin, because I said it. And now half the country believes it.
And there, beautifully crystallised, is the most blood-chilling lesson from a campaign hardly short on icy tutorials. The truth has become so devalued that what was once the gold standard of political debate is a worthless currency.
A few days ago, at Barack Obama rally for Hillary, the crowd turned on a Trump fan in their midst. Obama being Obama, he asked them to hush. Youve got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate. Hes not doing nothing, said the Prez, the only possible criticism of that being the use of a double negative. That apart, he was entirely positive about the mans perfect right to support Trump. We live in a country that respects free speech we got to respect our elders. Don't boo. Vote. Dont boo. Vote.
Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY
All of this was filmed, of course. The truth of the incident was instantly available for anyone with internet access.
Later that day, however, Trump wove his bespoke take on it into the rich tapestry that was his stump speech. You have to go and see what happened, he told a rally in Pennsylvania. [Obama] spent so much time screaming at a protester, and frankly it was a disgrace." If not the Baldwin versions half of America, many millions of Americans will have actively decided to believe this idiotic invention. It fits perfectly, after all, into the insane, Obama the Tyrant narrative that is such a central building block of the Breitbart alternative reality.
We see the same phenomenon here. We saw it during the referendum campaign, mostly though far from solely from Brexiteers. And again last week when the High Court judgment that Parliament must be consulted before the activation of Article 50 was wilfully misrepresented by right wing papers as an attempted judicial coup against the popular will.
A few weeks ago, when a friend repeated the old canard about Hillary being terminally ill, I prissily pointed out that this was simply not objectively true. I dont give toss about objective truth, he said with what might serve as the heraldic motto for the age. Everyones free to choose their own truth.
How did we come to a mass state of altered consciousness, as foreseen by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four (though it took massive blasts of electricity to persuade Winston Smith he was seeing six fingers on OBriens hand)? And how did we come to it so quickly?
In 2005, Stephen Colbert coined truthiness as the noun for lies which feel right in the gut. Just over a decade later, Donald Trump has hothoused the seed, as planted by George W Bush over Iraq, by jettisoning the need for his lies to feel even vaguely credible.
No one sharing the same postal code as their right mind could imagine Obama berating anyone in the way that Trump, that grandmaster of projection, has bullied protesters at his rallies. Yet although the lie was blatant and silly and instantly exposable as such there was no risk to him in telling it. Inhabitants of internet-created bubbles, where algorithms feed their prejudices and misconceptions with cosseting confirmations of whatever they have selected fir their besoke truth, are axiomatically beyond the reach of fact. The vertical descent into a fantasy land a Venn diagram intersect where doublethink and deliberate self-delusion meet will not be corrected if Trump loses today.
Michelle Obama's inspiring speech at Clinton rally
In that event, the relief ought to be as transient as it will be intense. The conditions for a more plausible semi-fascist than him to capitalise on the relegation of objective truth to a quaint but irrelevant electoral artefact will survive him.
If this bullet is dodged, dont imagine that it is time to take off the bullet-proof vest. The source of this danger was never a tangerine grifter. Trump is not the originator of a frantic desire to flee reality. He is its manifestation.
How this even begins to be reversed, how internet-reared and internet-addled generations can be taught to venerate provable fact over the lies which reinforce whichever truth they have chosen, I have no idea. Perhaps the second President Clinton would care to start working on that if fate smiles on her and the planet today.
The action by the ASTI comes a day after a row over substitution and supervision pay forced almost two-thirds of secondary schools to close
The Taoiseach has expressed disappointment that more than 500 secondary schools have closed because of strikes by teachers.
However, Enda Kenny told TDs he was hopeful disputes over equal pay and conditions could be resolved.
The Fine Gael leader said: "I am disappointed that this strike has continued. It is not anybody's intention or the intention that the system should penalise ASTI members."
The action by the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) comes a day after a separate row over substitution and supervision pay forced almost two-thirds of secondary schools to close.
That dispute centres on the refusal of ASTI members to cover break times, absent colleagues and free periods amid claims that the Government reneged on a deal to resume paying them for the additional duty.
If not resolved it could force schools to close indefinitely for health and safety reasons if trained and vetted replacement staff cannot be secured.
Responding to questions in the Dail, Mr Kenny also rejected claims that the Government and Department of Education had been "lax" in their response.
He said a deal on offer to the ASTI would see pay increases of between 15% and 22% for new entrants to the teaching profession.
"The people who suffer the most now are the 220,000 students, particularly those Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate classes who do not have the opportunity to avail of the teachers teaching them these days.
"I would hope that the talks that are taking place will continue and that conclusion can be reached pretty quickly where the schools can reopen, where you will have substitution and supervision (and) where the payments on the table can be paid to the teachers.
"I hope that the discussions that have taken place and successfully concluded in respect of new entrants' pay with new teachers with TUI and INTO could also follow suit with the ASTI."
On the first day of the stoppages over equal pay for newly qualified staff, on the Thursday before the Halloween mid-term, 507 schools out of 735 closed.
The walkouts are planned to run on five other days this month before culminating in a two-day shutdown on December 6 and 7.
Talks with the Department of Education over the mid-term break failed to identify a resolution.
The ASTI union refused to sign up to the Lansdowne Road Agreement public sector pay deal, prompting the complicated, protracted and increasingly divisive disputes over pay rates for recent graduates and for duties outside normal teaching.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said "hoping" would not solve the difficulties.
He also claimed a Government announcement on a pathway to equal pay could "go a long way" to resolving the dispute, adding: "A t the moment there is complete uncertainty."
Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams said the contentious issue must be dealt with soon.
He said: "It is obvious that the provision of pay equality needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Putting it on the long finger is not going to solve the issue."
Independent TD Seamus Healy accused the Government of "locking out" teachers.
He said: "You are using students as pawns in order to bully the ASTI into an agreement."
Earlier, Michael Moriarty, general secretary of Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI), urged union and Government officials to engage in talks.
"ETBI is concerned about the effect that an ongoing campaign of industrial action will have on students in particular, but also on parents, teachers and management, not merely in our sector, but across the education sector at post-primary level," he said.
"Continuing dialogue is necessary to seek to facilitate a timely resolution."
The study showed many were too embarrassed to ask their doctors questions
First-time mothers are suffering through a litany of undiagnosed, under-reported and untreated health issues in every aspect of their lives, a major research project has revealed.
The study found high and very high levels of hidden problems in women's mental, physical and sexual health but extremely low levels of inquiries by medics who were treating them.
The research by Trinity College Dublin's school of nursing and midwifery for the Maternal Health and Maternal Morbidity in Ireland (Mammi) study showed that three months after giving birth 28% of mothers experienced some anxiety and 18% experienced depression.
But the study showed half of GPs did not ask the woman directly about the problem or condition.
Dr Deirdre Daly, assistant professor in midwifery in Trinity, said embarrassment is often a reason a new mother will not volunteer information to a medic.
"This lack of conversation about these health issues means that women's health problems remain hidden, women suffer in silence and put up with health problems that are treatable and curable and, if treated early, could prevent some of these problems from persisting into later life," she said.
Other key findings from the study included that a third of women suffered pelvic girdle pain three months after the birth, but almost two thirds of GPs did not ask them about this.
Three quarters of GPs did not ask about incontinence.
Dr Daly said a lot of women taking part in the survey said they were learning from it. She said it was difficult to accept that the academic research was informing women about key life-altering health issues simply because they got the opportunity to take part.
"This means that thousands of the women birthing in Ireland are missing out on vital information that could have a positive impact on their health and well-being," she said.
Some of the detailed findings included:
:: Almost two thirds of women were not asked about pelvic pain by their GP in the first three months after giving birth and half were not asked by their midwife or public health nurse.
:: One in five women reported experiencing pain during sex a year after giving birth.
:: More than eight out of ten women were not asked about their sexual health by their GP in the first three months after birth and a lmost nine out of ten were not asked about relationship problems.
:: Half the women were not asked about depression by their GP and one in three were not asked about it by their public health nurse in the first three months after giving birth.
Dr Daly called for healthcare professionals to find time for women and ask them questions and to get the necessary information out.
She also said there is urgent need for information on women's postpartum health at national level.
"The potential impact of gathering this type of information is enormous; it will inform healthcare professionals and women about the extent of the health problems women experience after birth, and by having this information, policy makers will know where to target services," she said.
The Mammi study is funded by the Health Research Board, the Health Service Executive, Trinity, Friends of the Coombe, Science Without Borders Brazil, and Friends of the Rotunda.
Its sample r epresents almost 10% of all first-time mothers giving birth in Ireland in a given year, one of the largest prospective maternal health studies globally.
Thomas 'Slab' Murphy was found guilty of nine charges at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin earlier this year
Alleged former IRA leader Thomas "Slab" Murphy was unfairly jailed for tax evasion by the Irish courts, his lawyer has told an appeal.
Senior counsel John Kearney said all the tax due was paid by members of the 67-year-old's family.
He said the trial judges failed to properly consider the facts of the case and overlooked reasonable doubts.
The bachelor farmer and self-confessed republican was found guilty of nine charges at the high-security Special Criminal Court in Dublin earlier this year and imprisoned for 18 months.
His barrister said: "It is an incomplete and unfair analysis of this critical platform for the defendant's case."
Murphy's appeal was heard by the Appeal Court on Tuesday.
Mr Kearney said part of the judgment was simply a "rehearsal" of the prosecution case.
He alleged there were multiple errors and claimed reasonable doubt had not been properly considered.
Murphy, from Ballybinaby, Hackballscross, Co Louth, on the border with Northern Ireland, was found to owe the Irish exchequer taxes, penalties and interest of almost 190,000 euro for tax dodging from 1996 to 2004.
Mr Kearney said: "All the tax was paid, the tax was paid in this case."
He said Frank Murphy, Rosemary Murphy and Patrick Murphy paid the sums owed.
"It looks as if the tax was paid because Patrick Murphy paid. It look as if, in fact, he paid tax in excess of that estimate, as did Rosemary Murphy."
There were 48 grounds of appeal.
The lawyer challenged the court's finding on cheques in the case, some of which had been pre-signed while blank.
"We say the court got it wrong."
He said the court disregarded a large body of circumstantial, exculpatory evidence which "we suggest totally undermines the validity of the verdict".
"There is literally a shed-load of documents in this case of an exculpatory nature, all of the documents in Patrick Murphy's shed, many written by Patrick Murphy."
He added: "The absence of any proper determinative fact find in respect of all of these matters really undermines this verdict. All of the disregarded evidence was exculpatory and was set aside."
Murphy was charged with five counts under the Republic's Taxes Consolidation Act and four under the Finance Act that he knowingly and wilfully failed to make tax returns and did so without reasonable excuses.
The trial court found he did not furnish Ireland's Revenue authorities with a return of income, profits or gains or the sources of them over the period but received 100,000 euro in farm grants and paid out 300,000 euro to rent land.
In 1998, Murphy lost a 1 million libel action against the Sunday Times which described him as a senior IRA figure.
On one of only two other occasions when he has spoken publicly, he claimed he had to sell a home to pay for some of the costs of the failed lawsuit.
Irish citizens are expected to have their special status in the UK protected post-Brexit, according to British Brexit Secretary David Davis.
Mr Davis told MPs he believes there will be no change to what is enshrined in law in the Ireland Act 1949.
This legislation established the special status in which the Republic of Ireland is regarded "not a foreign country" for the purpose of UK laws.
Speaking in the Commons, SNP MP Martin Docherty-Hughes told Mr Davis: "My constituents share a concern about the relationship with our closest neighbour and with our border with the sovereign nation of Ireland, in which the Ireland Act 1949... they talk about the common travel area but there's no answer to this question yet.
"Would you, here on the floor of the House, say here and now that there will be no change to the rights of Irish citizens as dictated by the Ireland Act, amended in 1949?"
Mr Davis replied: "It's a very specific question and forgive me if I did not answer it before because I intend to.
"I will write to you in detail but I think the answer is there will be no change.
"The aim, as I said to you before, is that the common travel area rights - including the rights to vote, the rights to work and so on, both ways - will continue but I will come back to you about the detail."
Catastrophic
Meanwhile, a study that has found some 12bn could be wiped from the Irish economy because of Brexit is "a concern", but "not catastrophic", Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said.
Mr Noonan said the paper by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Finance Department was "a very important piece of work" but that the Government would handle the fallout of Britain leaving the EU.
The study found a 'hard' Brexit would leave Irish economic output around 3.5pc below what it otherwise would have been.
But the report doesn't consider the impact of measures to mitigate the effect of Brexit.
Mr Noonan said: "While it's a matter of concern - you never like losing potential growth and potential jobs in an economy -it's not catastrophic when you look at the assumptions.
"While it indicates that Brexit is bad news for Ireland, it's the kind of bad news that we can allow for," Mr Noonan told reporters in Brussels.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that the ESRI report looked at EU arrangements in place for Norway and Switzerland as well as a "drastic" scenario where Britain leaves without negotiating access to the single market.
"Britain will want a British solution. It may not be a Norwegian one.
"It may not be the Swiss one. It may be something entirely different," he said.
It is incumbent for co-op members to know their duties and responsibilities John McStay told the ICOS conference on Better Governance
The partner at McStay Luby Chartered Accountants said that it was imperative that co-ops operate in an open and transparent manner and that "secret sessions" should not take place and members should put their co-op first not their own personal interests.
He also said that members should support their own co-op even if it's not always the cheapest option. "It may be cheaper to buy your feed from a private company today, but it may not be tomorrow if you don't support the co-op."
Co-op directors were advised of their key responsibilities in an intensely competitive, volatile and globalised environment at the 40th ICOS conference.
Martin Keane, President of ICOS, the sector must continue to promote a strategic vision and clear leadership in the interests of co-operative members.
Strategy formulation underpinned by strong corporate governance, compliance and communications are key functions and responsibilities which co-operative Board members need to promote as the leaders of their industry.
Irish co-operatives are working in an intensely competitive, volatile and globalised marketplace. While they have been well served by elected farmer directors to date, the increasing complexity of operations including the competitive environment and regulation necessitates a continual focus on skills development to ensure that Boards can meet all of their responsibilities.
Both McStay and Keane said that while farmer directors cant be expected to be experts across the regulatory framework on the day they are elected or assume the role, they do become responsible. Keane said that ICOS must ensure they are familiar with and can discharge those responsibilities.
"This is essential to enable their co-ops to compete effectively with public and private companies who populate their boards with professional independent directors."
Its a little known fact but it is due to farmers that the US election takes place on a Tuesday.
In 1845, it was decided by US lawmakers that a common day for voting for president should be settled on across the US.
At that time America had largely a farming based economy and the logistics of allowing farmers and rural people vote was key in the decision-making process.
Farmers would have to travel to the nearest major town by horse and cart to cast their ballot. It was a trip that could take a whole day in some places.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday were considered days of worship, while Wednesday was traditionally market day.
Folks would leave the farm on a Monday and travel through the day, arriving in time to cast their ballot on Tuesday before heading back to sell their fruit and vegetables on Wednesday.
But do the presidential candidates of today care as as much about the farming community and has either the support of farmers?
Its fair to say that for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agriculture and farming are certainly not top priorities if both candidates' campaigns are anything to go by.
US farmers have generally been left frustrated at the two campaigns that have only briefly touched on farming issues.
Although Clintons platform includes a detailed plan for a vibrant rural America, she rarely mentioned farming or food during the campaign.
Her plan includes build[ing] a strong local and regional food system by doubling funding for the Farmers Market Promotion Program and the Local Food Promotion Program to expand food hubs, farmers marketsand to encourage direct sales to local schools, hospitals, retailers and wholesalers.
Further, current US Department of Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack is Clintons top agriculture advisor and, according to most commentators in the US, this would signal the likely continuation of much of the current administrations agriculture policies.
Meanwhile Trumps platform does not specifically mention food, agriculture, or rural communities at all and he hasnt mentioned it much during the campaign.
However he recently released a list of agriculture advisors that paints a picture of the sort of policies to expect under a President Trump - one that supports large feedlots over smaller producers and farmers' marketse.
Key issue for US farmers
However, immigration is the key issue for US agriculture at present and lobby group the American Farm Bureau estimates that between 50 and 75pc of farm labourers are illegal workers, who are at constant risk of deportation.
Tensions between the Charolais Society and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) have been strained to breaking point following the exclusion of linear scores for many of the bulls entered into the breed's annual December sale.
A change in the way that ICBF processes the data for the genetic evaluations resulted in breeders that got their animals' linear-scored after early July were too late to have the data included in the August evaluations, which are the basis of the breeding information included in the catalogue for the December sale.
The Charolais society claim that breeding bulls will lose out in the sales ring due to the absence of the data.
"My phone is hopping morning, noon and night with breeders getting hit right, left and centre with the way ICBF is carrying on," said the Charolais society president, Kevin Maguire.
"Breeders paid ICBF in good faith to score their animals because the linear score generally helps the animals' rating. There's about 30 breeders affected, and we have to get this sorted, but we're only getting lip service from the ICBF," said Mr Maguire.
In response, ICBF CEO Sean Coughlan said that he had already looked for a meeting with the Charolais society to try to sort out a range of issues.
"The timelines for generating the genetic evaluations changed when we included the genomic data, which is a major step forward, because the accuracy of all the data has improved by up to 20pc," said Mr Coughlan.
Process
"So we don't have any wriggle room on how this process works, and maybe we could have done more to let individual breeders know that we were changing how the system operates.
"But the fact is that we are still getting the data out there a lot faster than other countries, and even without the linear scores, the data included in the catalogue is more accurate than before," he said.
However, the ICBF boss also cautioned buyers to use common sense when buying bulls.
"The star ratings are just a tool - your eyes are another - you should use both when buying an animal.
"So even if the animal has a super rating, if they look terrible, you should factor that into what you are prepared to pay."
Mr Maguire said that his society would stop cooperating with ICBF if a solution isn't found.
"Unless this issue is addressed immediately then the continued 'cooperation' between ICBF and the society is at risk of being discontinued. The Charolais council must and will do everything in its power to protect its members."
Proposals to commission a pilot deer fencing project in Wicklow to reduce the incidence of TB in the county have been welcomed by Macra na Feirme.
Department of Agriculture secretary general Aidan O'Driscoll told a Joint Oireachtas for Agriculture hearing that a fencing was being considered as a possible solution.
Macra welcomed the Department's move. The idea of using fencing as a viable means of controlling the deer population in the county was put forward by Macra in the recent submission to the Department's National Farmed Animal Health Strategy.
"Farmers in Wicklow are finding themselves in a constant battle with TB. The Department is showing commitment to tackling the problem and is taking a step in the right direction through the proposed deer-fencing pilot project," said Macra president Sean Finan.
Macra's submission to the National Farmed Animal Health Strategy recommended the inclusion of wildlife fencing to TAMS, as an effective means of excluding the animals.
If the pilot project proves successful in decreasing TB in the Wicklow area, Macra has pledged to campaign to have wildlife fencing included under TAMS in areas with similar problems.
The young farmers organisation has also called for TAMS funding to be made available to all farmers for bio security measures, such as isolation boxes.
"It is hoped the higher rate of funding for infrastructure like this will benefit the sector as whole by increasing the uptake of these structures on farm and decreasing the spread of disease from farm to farm," Mr Finan said. "While farmers unquestionably have responsibility for their animal's health, under certain circumstances animal health can be out of the control of the farmer.
"In these circumstances, it is crucial the Department of Agriculture step in and support farmers,"added Mr Finan.
The Irish tillage sector is in crisis.
Growers are facing into a fourth year of dismal prices and escalating production costs and both Teagasc and leading cereal growers are warning of a mass exodus from the sector if urgent action is not taken.
The tillage industry's statistics are certainly impressive. There are close to 280,000ha under crops and output from the 2m tonnes of grain produced is worth around 270m to the 9,000 or so growers.
But the big figures mean little if the bills can't be paid - and many of the bills will not be paid this autumn.
Already there has been talk of growers defaulting on or deferring land rental payments; and the current trickle could become a flood.
The cash-flow pressures are rumoured to have migrated upstream, with merchants dealing with the country's growers reporting a noticeable downturn in business.
The problems come down to profit margins on crops - and these were non-existent this year. Surveys carried out through the harvest found that losses on winter barley grown on rented land exceeded 150/ha in some cases, while those on spring barley or spring wheat came to 70-80/ha.
The cause of these losses have been well documented but what is the outlook for the future.
Shay Phelan of Teagasc believes only a major weather event in the major exporting countries such as Russia, Ukraine and the US will be required to bring a degree of profit normality back to the sector.
But Mr Phelan is not optimistic that this is likely to happen in 2017.
A similar view is taken by Colm Fingleton, a leading tillage farmer from Ratheniska Co Laois. He believes the Government has no plan to deal with the crisis within the sector.
Both say that it is only a matter of time before the smaller tillage farmers drift out of the sector simply because they can't make ends meet.
"Cheap grain imports are keeping prices down and until the Government addresses this issue with the merchants prices will remain flat. At the moment most tillage farmers are not breaking even and there is only so much they can take. The margins are not there," Fingleton told the Farming Independent this week.
In plain money terms he says the tillage farmers are getting 120/t for their product when they require 200/t plus to be viable.
Mr Fingleton says the Government has to take action on the cheap American and Russian imports which the grain merchants are buying to maintain low market prices.
"Irish tillage farmers are 'up to their eyes' in regulations and quality assurance demands from the authorities but these standards do not apply to the imports," Wilkinson says.
"We can't compete with cheap imports which have no strict quality standards," he says.
Added to the imports disadvantage are the increasing costs of inputs such as seeds and fertilizers and day-to-day machinery or contracting costs. The weather over the past few years - especially for tillage farmers in the west of Ireland - is also critical in deepening the current crisis, said Mr Fingleton.
He is particularly critical of the booming Irish craft beers and distilling industries, many of which are using imported grain.
"Surely if they are producing Irish made beers and liquors the Government can insist that they are made from Irish barley and not cheap and sometimes GM originated grains from abroad," he points out.
"The cost of production and the prices available on the market are getting further and further and further apart and all we are doing is creating talking shops like the recently convened tillage forum. They have been talking about addressing the crisis in tillage for the past few years but all the talk will stop once the harvest is over and won't begin again until the next harvest," he adds.
Shay Phelan says things will not improve until the glut of feeds on the international market comes back to normality and that will depend on a weather event in the large exporting countries. He says the glut looks certain to continue into next year.
On a related issue Mr Phelan does not expect British tillage farmers to take the GM route post Brexit which could add to the current market problems.
He believes British tillage farmers will continue with best farm practice even when the anti GM rules of the EU are lifted once the Brexit negotiations are completed.
Meanwhile the IFA's tillage chairman, Liam Dunne put some context on the cost of the bad weather on this Irish growing season at a meeting with the Agricultural Commission last Friday. He outlined that some 400 tillage farmers in the worst affected areas of the West of Ireland stood to lose up to an aggregate of 3m because of the spring and autumn downpours in the region.
Mexico's government has defended the exclusion of Declan Ganley's Rivada from a massive 7bn telecoms tender process.
The Galway-based businessman and political campaigner criticised the process on Friday night, after Mexican authorities disqualified a consortium he backs from the running to build and run a national wholesale mobile network, dubbed Red Compartida.
That decision left just one bid in the race. Yesterday, Mexico's Ministry of Telecoms and Transportation said that bid, from local consortium Altan, had met all technical specifications - clearing the way for the contract to be awarded on November 17.
Altan is made up of Axtel, Megacable and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Mexico said the joint bid from Rivada Networks and Spectrum Frontier was disqualified for failing to meet financial terms set down for the process. On Friday, Mr Ganley insisted his firm had demonstrated it had the required 50m security to underpin its submission, posted as letters of credit from a large Mexican bank.
However, yesterday, the head of the tendering authority at Mexico's Ministry for Communications and Transportation (SCT), Ezequiel Gil Huerta, said the bond "should have been included within the technical proposal" submitted by Rivada, but was missing.
The technical disqualification of Rivada means its economic proposal will not be evaluated, he said.
Mr Ganley used Twitter to complain about the process on Friday.
"Frankly, process in Mexico stinks ... it is now being pared down for just one individual bidder, there will be no competition," he said.
He insisted the Rivada bid was fully funded.
"Rivada is immediately suing to assert our rights to fair competition and rights of the people of Mexico to have a #RedCompartida competition," Mr Ganley said.
He also said his firm's bid had been hampered when raiders hijacked document boxes in a daylight raid in the Mexican capital, last month.
Authorities in Mexico however defended their tender process, saying it met the highest possible standards.
"The tender of Red Compartida has followed the best international transparency practices.
"The process included three public consultations prior to the publishing of the tender rules, and two rounds of questions and answers were held.
"In addition, Transparencia Mexicana, social witness of the tender, has participated throughout the process.
"Red Compartida is the first Public Private Partnership project worldwide that has been conducted in accordance to the Open Data Contracting Standard promoted by the World Bank.
"This standard gives total transparency to a tender process since its inception and until the end of its implementation."
Rivada said it plans to contest the decision in the courts, and that it had met every requirement set by the Mexican government.
The huge project is a centre piece of Mexican telecoms policy, likely to involve the construction and management of 12,000 mobile phone towers and delivering coverage to 85pc of Mexico's far flung population in five years.
Ryanair may apply for a British operating licence to retain post-Brexit untrammelled access to its biggest market.
The Irish airline said yesterday that it is on course to carry 200 million passengers by 2024, after lifting its growth forecast by 10pc.
Ryanair said it's growing as other airlines are being sidelined by bruising competition in the sector, cutting routes and existing bases. That's given Ryanair access to main airports in cities including Frankfurt, Brussels and Milan. By the end of this year Ryanair will fly to more primary than secondary airports for the first time.
"We have EU incumbents retrenching, restructuring... creating more and more opportunities for Ryanair, particularly in primary airports," chief executive Michael O'Leary said in a video presentation.
The carrier also announced that it would return an additional 550m to shareholders by February in a share buyback, a move that helped lift its shares by 6pc yesterday.
Ryanair cut its profit forecast last month by 5pc for the year to March due to sterling weakness and lower average fares, but it still expects to outperform most rivals by increasing profits by 7pc in the year to the end of March.
Having campaigned against Brexit, Mr O'Leary said yesterday that his airline may need to create a new subsidiary to obtain a UK airline operating certificate (AOC) to ensure continued access to the market there post-Brexit.
"The second half of the year will be difficult in a weaker pricing environment, but we expect that with a huge cost advantage over every other carrier in Europe, Ryanair is well positioned to continue to grow strongly."
Ryanair said it plans to grow capacity by 13pc this winter compared to an industry average increase of around 9pc - the highest level of capacity growth in the industry in a decade.
Already Europe's largest carrier by passenger numbers, Ryanair said it hopes to lift its share of the European short-haul market from 15pc to over 20pc by 2024. It will defer retirement of around 40 planes to boost capacity to 585 Boeing 737 airliners by 2024.
Ryanair reported a 7pc increase in first-half profits to 1.168bn yesterday morning, on the back of 12pc traffic growth to 65 million customers in the six-month period.
Pressure in the sector is now intense - average fares fell 10pc to 50 in the first half, and three weeks ago Ryanair cut its profit forecast for the year by 5pc due to sterling weakness and competition.
Rival EasyJet warned in October that its annual profit had fallen by more than a quarter and hinted that trading would remain tough. (Additional reporting Reuters)
Irish banks should not be subject to tough new capital rules, and there should be a public debate on how standards for lenders are set, Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes said yesterday.
He made the comments as the Basel Committee of bank supervisors from nearly 30 countries is due to produce the new "Basel IV" rules, setting standards for how much all lenders must set aside to cope with losses.
The rules aim to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis of 2007-09, when taxpayers had to bail out under-capitalised lenders. But they face resistance in Europe where many lenders carry high levels of bad loans.
"The European Parliament's ECON Committee is currently fast-tracking a resolution through the parliament stating that new Basel Rules should not lead to a significant increase in capital requirements," Mr Hayes said. "The Government must be firm in defying new capital rules for Irish banks when this issue comes to the EU negotiations. Whatever the European Commission proposes, the Government must stick to this line. The new Basel rules must not lead to more banking paralysis," he said.
Yesterday, the German banking association called for an extension to the timetable to decide on new international banking regulation.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan expressed scepticism about EU plans to harmonise taxes.
The draft rules for a common consolidated corporate tax base are a revival and update of a 2011 proposal that foundered in technical talks and was eventually withdrawn.
"On the first issue - a common tax base - it has moved very little since the proposals were published in 2011," Mr Hayes said.
New player Pepper Money says its confident it will eventually lend up to 400m a year into the Irish mortgage markets, as it started offering home loans directly to consumers.
The Australian-owned non-bank lender entered the market earlier this year, initially offering mortgages through brokers. It has now begun marketing mortgages directly to Irish customers and has launched retail consumer brand, Pepper Money.
Pepper doesn't have a national branch network, but borrowers will be able to apply through the Pepper Money website or by phone. It will fund the expansion into the Irish market by using home loans made here to borrow on the financial markets. Chief executive officer at Pepper Ireland, Paul Doddrell, said he is confident Pepper Money will eventually be lending 300m to 400m a year here.
Pepper is targeting first-time buyers, switchers and those taking out buy-to-let mortgages, but its particular focus is on borrowers who are underserved by the main banks.
Self-employed
That includes some categories of self-employed people and contract workers, who don't tick the permanent employment box favoured by other lenders.
Pepper also offers mortgages to those who previously got into repayment arrears but have since returned to full payments.
Like other lenders, Pepper is regulated by the Central Bank, and subject to the same rules as the banks, including the caps on mortgage lending that restrict most borrowers to a loan of 20pc of the value of their property.
Pepper initially entered the Irish market when it bought loans made by GE Money here.
It also manages loans on behalf of Danske Bank and the funds like Goldman Sachs and Lone Star.
THE Government has been accused of discriminating against people who save through an investment policy issued by an insurance company.
The tax on savings in banks and credit unions is coming down, but not the exit tax on savings policies bought through an investment or insurance firm.
Deposit interest retention tax (Dirt) on interest earned on savings is 41pc, but is due to fall to 38pc next year, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said in the Budget. The Dirt rate on interest earned on savings will then fall by two percentage points each year over the next four, until it falls to 22pc by 2020. But the exit tax on life insurance investments or funds sold by life insurance and investment firms remains at 41pc.
These policies are also subject to a 1pc levy on each contribution made into them.
Insurance Ireland chief executive Kevin Thompson said savings and investment policies sold by life companies were a key element of long-term financial planning for middle-income individuals and families.
Now investment group Standard Life has called on Mr Noonan to level the playing field for investment products and cut exit tax in line with the reduction in Dirt on savings.
"The Minister and his government cannot want to unfairly penalise people prudently saving for a home, their children's education, a rainy day or other life necessities," said head of Standard Life Ireland Jennifer Richards.
She said this was especially the case when the Government's stated policy is to "encourage saving and improve the return to the small saver".
Fianna Fail finance spokesman Michael McGrath said people saving though life assurance policies were being discriminated against compared with those saving in a bank or credit union. "The effect of what is being done is essentially to discriminate between different forms of savings for no good policy reason," he said.
In a Dail reply to Mr McGrath, the minister said he decided not to cut the exit tax rate on life policies in a bid to save money.
Mr Noonan said: "I am aware that in the past the rates payable on a series of other taxes, including exit tax on life assurance policies, have tended to move in line with Dirt. However, on this occasion I took a decision that those other rates would not be reduced."
He added that the Revenue Commissioners estimated that it would cost 14m a year to match the exit tax rate cut with the Dirt one, and about 56m a year by 2020. "It was, therefore, too costly to the Exchequer to reduce the rates applying to these taxes in the same manner as the reduction in Dirt."
The exit tax paid on life assurance policies has spiralled from 43m in 2012 to 247m last year.
Mr McGrath said: "The Government needs to have a clear policy in respect of such policies and a tax treatment that is fair and consistent."
There is no levy applied to investments sold by stockbrokers and wealth managers, even though it applies to funds sold by insurance and investment companies. Insurance Ireland has called for the levy to be removed to help middle-income families invest for the college education of their children.
The Department of Finance recently acknowledged the levy does not apply to wealthy investors.
THE EU Commissioner in charge of Research, Science and Innovation say he "can't answer" on whether large sums of funding granted until 2020 to Northern Irish and British researchers will continue. ________________________________
"I can't answer that question, Carlos Moedas told Independent.ie at the Web Summit in Lisbon. "There is still uncertainty over the negotiations."
The EU has an 80bn budget for research and innovation funding running until 2020.
Last month, Belfast firm secured 317,000 in funding from the Horizon 2020 fund to further its research into global warming.
Depending on how British negotiations go with EU chiefs, grants to qualifying institutions and companies may be cut off.
"I don't know at this point, we will have to see how the negotiations go," said Mr Moedas.
Mr Moedas was speaking on the second day of the Web Summit, which is being held outside Dublin for the first time. The event, which has 53,000 registered attendees, suffered a technical malfunction when founder Paddy Cosgrave opened proceedings on Monday night.
Speakers include Tinder founder Sean Rad and Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Portugal's success in getting the organisers of the Web Summit to move to Lisbon from Dublin, beating contenders like Amsterdam and Paris, may have been the easy part. Now, it wants to convince participants to move some operations there.
The government is wooing the 50,000 tech leaders and their followers who have descended upon Lisbon this week for a gathering described as the "Davos for Geeks", hoping they will bolster investment and create much-needed jobs in the southern European country.
There are signs it may be already happening. Farfetch, a London-based startup which has half its staff in Portugal, is looking to add more.
"Ever since we won the Web Summit, companies have been telling me they want to move here," said Joao Vasconcelos, the secretary of state for industry and himself a former director of incubator Startup Lisboa. "We're pitching to the entrepreneurs, the startup founders and their teams to move here."
Hosting the event is regarded as a big victory for Portugal, which is still picking up the pieces after the sovereign debt crisis and ensuing recession left its youth unemployment rate at close to 30pc.
"The gathering will generate as much as 200m for Lisbon's economy through hotel bookings, restaurants and taxi rides, according to the Lisbon Tourism Association. It may also help bolster the reputation of the city, whose red suspension bridge, cable cars and nearby surfing locations often draw comparisons to San Francisco.
"The Web Summit is key to consolidate Lisbon and Portugal as a credible tech hub," said Stephan Morais, an executive board member at Caixa Capital, a Lisbon-based 500m venture capital and private equity firm that's part of state-owned bank Caixa Geral de Depositos. (Bloomberg)
Actor Sean Penn sporting wild hair and a ragged beard on the set of his new movie " The Professor and the Madman". PHOTOS- JOHN DARDIS
Actor Sean Penn sporting wild hair and a ragged beard on the set of his new movie " The Professor and the Madman". PHOTOS- JOHN DARDIS
Sean Penn looked unrecognisable as he stepped into character to shoot scenes for The Professor and the Madmen in Dublin on Monday.
The Oscar-winning actor Penn is playing the part of Dr William Chester Minor in the movie which tells the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
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The 56-year-old sported a face dressed with plasters, an unkempt beard and shaggy hair as he got into character for his role of Dr Chester, who submitted more than 10,000 entries to the dictionary while he was an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.
The movie is directed by Mel Gibson, who just finished a six-week stay in Ireland as he scouted locations for the project. The Braveheart star stayed in the 5,000-per-night Princess Grace Suite in the Shelbourne Hotel with his pregnant girlfriend Rosalind Ross, during his time in Dublin.
Glen Hansard has thanked the Irish public for getting behind Home Sweet Home and the Apollo House movement. Photo: Steve Humphreys
Oscar-winner Glen Hansard will be presented with the inaugural DIT Brendan Behan Award at a ceremony in Dublin tonight.
Frames frontman and Once star Hansard will be honoured for his outstanding contribution to the arts at the event in the Gleeson Theatre, Kevin Street.
The award was established by the students of DIT soci- eties in memory of the author to acknowledge those who have demonstrated excell- ence in the arts, culture and the media. Behan attended DIT in the 1930s before he became an author and playwright.
"Behan paved the way for Irish talent abroad. We can't think of a better Irishman to be the first recipient of the Brendan Behan Award - Glen Hansard, an Irish treasure," said Tara Kelleher, chair of DIT Student Media and Arts Committee.
Hansard paid a special visit to Focus Ireland's coffee shop in Temple Bar yesterday to meet people and hear some of the stories behind the homeless crisis.
The remains of Tom and Kitty Fitzgerald are carried from the church in Irishtown, Co Mayo. Photo: Damien Eagers
The son of a couple who died in a tragic murder-suicide incident is now in a stable condition in hospital, the family's priest has said.
Fr Martin O'Connor was speaking at the double funeral of Tom Fitzgerald (75) and his wife Kitty (72) at the Church of the Holy Family and St Oliver in Irishtown, Co Mayo. The couple's son Paul (37) is being treated for his injuries at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital.
All three were found at their rural cottage outside Irishtown last Tuesday.
Gardai investigating the murder-suicide incident joined around 500 mourners at yesterday's funeral, with many standing outside the chapel.
Detectives believe Tom Fitzgerald killed his wife and injured his son before taking his own life.
Fr O'Connor said Tom and Kitty were "cherished members" of the parish community.
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"Their deaths have left our whole community stunned and at a loss to understand why," said the priest.
"However we also gather to remember the kindness, the goodness and the influence of their lives on all of us. We pray too for Paul's recovery and he is now very stable."
The priest, a friend of the couple, said a silence had fallen across the parish when news of the deaths emerged last Tuesday.
"On hearing the news, everything changed. Nothing, I expect, will ever be quite the same again. Many felt a knot in their stomach, including myself, as we tried to digest the sad news our friends Kitty and Tom were dead and Paul critically injured," he said.
"It was one of those moments in life when we remember exactly where we were when we heard it. So the news left us speechless and empty like orphans looking for a hand to hold or a voice to tell us all will be well."
Fr O'Connor, accompanied by eight other priests, all friends of the couple, said the tragic nature of their deaths "might lead us to forget the gift they were to you, their family, and to us, their friends - the goodness of their lives and the contribution they made to our parish community".
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He added: "We all have special memories of Kitty and Tom, these memories are the bridge between Earth and heaven, memories that will continue to connect us to them into the future.
Read More: Mayo father suspected of killing wife, attacking son - then taking own life
"Memories of their love, generosity and whole-someness. It is these memories we need to turn to so that you, their family, and we, their community, can pick up the shattered pieces of this past week and make something good and holy out of them."
Pictures of the couple sat on top of the coffins during the Mass, with prayers read by relatives from the USA and England.
The couple were laid to rest side by side in the village cemetery, a few hundred metres from the church where Kitty had sung in the choir.
A grieving pensioner whose inheritance of 42,000 was stolen by her carer after her sons were shot dead has told a judge of the pain she suffered in the wake of the deception.
Marie McNally (67) jumped to her feet during the sentence hearing of her carer Laura Pennick at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday and asked Judge Melanie Greally for permission to speak, saying she was "bursting to say something".
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"She took advantage of me when my sons were shot," Ms McNally told the court.
"She robbed me of every penny I had. She's a liar."
Ms McNally's son Alan was shot dead in the Cappagh Nua pub in Finglas, North Dublin, in 2012, three years after his older brother Graham was killed.
Pennick (30), of Bride Street, Dublin 8, pleaded guilty to thefts totalling 41,935 from Marie McNally between January 2010 and December 2012.
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The court previously heard that Pennick, a single mother-of-two, befriended Ms McNally when she was living two doors away from her in Finglas. Pennick became Ms McNally's "unofficial carer" and started collecting her pension and paying her bills. She had access to Ms McNally's ATM cards and two bank accounts, including one which contained the inheritance from the sale of her late mother's house.
Garda Colin Rourke said Pennick made a number of withdrawals ranging from "very small amounts up to 600".
She spent the money on "home improvements, fashion purchases, home furnishings and holidays", he said.
When questioned by gardai following Ms McNally's discovery of the loss, Pennick said she had financial worries of her own. Damien Colgan SC, defending, said Pennick owed money at the time to "individuals" who made "real threats" against her. She had 29 previous convictions, five for theft.
Mr Colgan said Pennick had saved 1,100 for her victim and was willing to save 100 a week over the next year.
Judge Greally agreed to adjourn the matter to December 4 next year.
In reply to the judge, counsel said there was no difficulty establishing the mothers identity but there could be a difficulty establishing paternity (Stock photo)
A hearing to decide the fate of a child born through surrogacy, who was later discovered to have no genetic link to the man believed to be its father, has been adjourned at the High Court.
The child remains a ward of court, and in the interim, under the guardianship of the couple who entered a surrogacy arrangement with a woman in a foreign country.
This is pending the outcome of the litigation to come before the court in January.
The absence of a genetic link between the child and couple was first learned of when they sought to bring the child into Ireland.
When the case came before the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, yesterday, he was told by Gerard Durcan, for the State, it needs more time to get additional information concerning DNA testing before it can finalise its affidavits in the case.
In reply to the judge, counsel said there was no difficulty establishing the mother's identity but there could be a difficulty establishing paternity.
Issue of policy will have to be addressed and the concern was to identify what was in the best interests of the child, counsel also said.
The judge said the parents of the child would have to be notified of any application here concerning the child's welfare.
He was told a lawyer had confirmed in writing the surrogate mother and her husband had been notified of the proceedings and had agreed to the child being made a ward of court.
Sarah McKechnie, for the Child and Family Agency, said it had been asked to arrange for an assessment of the child, had done so and there were no concerns regarding the child's protection or welfare.
When the case first came before the court last September, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty described it as "unique" and imposed strict reporting restrictions preventing identification of specified details of the couple, their child (including its gender) or the identity of the country where the surrogacy arrangements were reached. Those restrictions remain.
In order to apply for the necessary travel documents to bring the child into the State, the couple needed to prove the child had a genetic connection to one of its Irish parents.
It was then discovered there was no genetic link but the child was allowed into the country on a humanitarian basis.
In cases of surrogacy, parents usually apply for guardianship and a declaration of parentage but the couple was told, due to the absence of evidence of a genetic link, they would have to apply to have the child made a ward of court.
A judge has dismissed a man's challenge over a will executed by his civil partner, a former diplomat, hours before his death.
The medical evidence, and evidence of other witnesses including family members of the late Brian Earls, showed beyond doubt he had the necessary capacity to make the disputed will of July 4, 2013, Ms Justice Margaret Heneghan ruled.
The High Court challenge by Said Laaser to that will was the first of its kind taken after enactment of civil partnership laws here.
A pharmacist and native of Morocco who is now a naturalised Irish citizen, Mr Laaser claimed he did "much better" in an earlier will and brought proceedings against Maurice Earls and William Early, brother and brother-in-law respectively of Brian Earls, as executors of the deceaseds estate.
Mr Laaser previously lost in the High Court which found the disputed will was properly executed and there was "no attempt" to deprive Ms Laaser of his interest in the estate.
The Court of Appeal, after finding issues concerning the testamentary capacity of Mr Earls when making the July 2013 will had not been satisfied arising from the absence of medical evidence in that regard, directed a full rehearing in the High Court.
Mr Laaser attended only the first two days of the rehearing before Ms Justice Heneghan after which, the judge noted, he emailed the court registrar saying he was consenting to it proceeding in his absence.
He wrote he had formed the view his evidence and cross-examination would not be needed any more, trusted in the "conscience" of the court and would not be appealing if it ruled the July 4, 2013, will "is the true and last will of my deceased partner".
"I apologise for any inconvenience caused by my actions and accept all the responsibility of the same," he added.
The hearing proceeded and Ms Justice Heneghan dismissed the challenge on all grounds.
Given the history of this matter, she said she would also direct the defendants' costs be paid out of Mr Laaser's share of the estate.
She found the will was properly executed and Brian Earls was of adequate sufficient and proper testamentary capacity at the time it was made and knew and approved of its contents.
In that will, made hours before Mr Earls died of cancer in a Dublin hospital, Mr Laaser was left 50 per cent of Mr Earls' assets in accordance with his statutory entitlements under civil partnership law.
Mr Laaser, the court heard, formed a romantic relationship with Brian Earls more than ten years ago and they lived together for about two years at Ovoca Road, South Circular Road, Dublin. Mr Earls was a diplomat who had postings in Moscow, Warsaw and Ankara.
He made a will in March 2013 leaving the Ovoca Road property to Mr Laaser and 35,000 to his sister Catherine.
Maurice Earls was left his collection of books, papers and documents, plus 40,000 towards running costs of the Dublin Review of Books.
The will also provided for paintings, carpets and objets dart to be divided equally between his three siblings and Mr Laaser, plus the contents of the Ovoca Road property, and left 50,000 to an Armenian friend.
Mr Earls' family was told on July 2, 2013, he had secondary forms of cancer and he died at 4am on July 5, 2013.
The previous afternoon, he made a different will in which the most significant change was to leave 50 per cent of Ovoca Road to Mr Laaser with the rest divided equally between his siblings.
Maurice Earls told the court his brother had told him he wished to write a new will dividing his assets between Mr Laaser and his siblings.
That will was executed and witnessed by three members of the deceased's family hours before his death.
A former Boots employee who was fired for breaching company policy said today she is not looking for compensation and is simply looking to have her name cleared.
Ive been working since I was 16, and never in my life have I been treated like this, Carol Casey told the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT). I bent over backwards for Boots but I was happy to do it because I loved the job and I loved my colleagues."
An EAT hearing in Dublin heard that Boots Retail (Ireland) Ltd dismissed Carol Casey, who worked as a health care advisor at the Naas branch, on a number of grounds in 2015.
These grounds included that she processed her own transaction without the most senior member of staff present and that she gave herself a cash refund, which was against store policy when a receipt is unavailable.
The company also claimed that Ms Casey refunded herself a greater amount, 109, than the item was originally bought for, as it was sold for a lower price as part of a Christmas sale. The company further claimed that she served her daughter on a separate occasion, when it is against company policy to serve family members.
Aisling McDevitt, industrial relations executive for IBEC, which was representing Boots, told the hearing that these breaches were deemed significant enough to warrant dismissal. Ms Casey, who worked for the company for five years, disagreed.
Ms Casey explained to the hearing that her husband had given her an Instyler hair product for Christmas, but that she had wanted to return it.
She said she brought it into work and asked one of her colleagues to conduct the refund, but her colleague felt uncomfortable doing so as she did not know the correct procedure.
Ms Casey then said she would do it in the presence of this colleague, as she herself knew the correct procedure. She said she did not know the item was purchased at a sale price.
She added that she served her daughter on one occasion because her daughter was collecting a prescription, and there were no one else to serve her, as the shop was short-staffed.
I dont believe I deserved that treatment, Ms Casey added. I didnt do anything wrong I may have done something in haste but I didnt do anything wrong.
The chair of the hearing committee, Dermot MacCarthy, told Ms Casey, who was representing herself, that it was often customary for someone to bring a representative to advise and support them.
Im bringing the truth here today, Ms Casey replied.
When Mr MacCarthy asked Ms Casey what she was hoping to get from the company, she replied: I want my name cleared. Thats all I just want my name cleared.
When it became clear that this was all Ms Casey was seeking, the hearing was adjourned for a brief period.
Following the break, the parties announced that they had come to an agreement, and Ms Casey confirmed that she was withdrawing her claim.
Mr MacCarthy said this seemed to be the best and most sensible approach and commended both parties for their wise decision.
Unions have warned the Government to open up fresh pay talks or face a free-for-all from public sector workers.
In the wake of the 50m Garda buy-off to stop an unprecedented strike, unions are now demanding a new deal to speed up pay rises.
Public Spending Minister Paschal Donohoe was bluntly told yesterday the Lansdowne Road Agreement is no longer sustainable following the Garda offer. And Social Welfare Minister Leo Varadkar admitted the "context has changed" after the Garda offer worth 3,600 each.
Secondary schools will be closed again today as the ASTI embark on their second strike.
Mr Bruton said he was 'very disappointed' that ASTI has decided to proceed with its action. Photo: Tom Burke
Striking secondary teachers expressed anger today on picket lines outside secondary schools.
At the rain-lashed entrance of O'Connell School in Richmond Street North today, placard-carrying Ed Webster from Lucan said the Government had failed to keep its agreements with teachers.
He said teachers were promised payments under the Haddington Road Agreement which the Government failed to deliver in September.
"If the Government won't stick to their agreements with their employees, what does that tell other employers about the way they can treat their own employees," said Mr Webster (40).
"It's also unacceptable that the highest paid members of the civil service, such as principal officers, are the first to get pay restoration," he said.
The history teacher said he was on strike today be because he cared about fairness and the treatment of younger teachers being given lower pay.
"I stand to gain nothing from standing outside these school gates today but I am standing in solidarity with lower paid colleagues who are doing the same job as me," he said.
"I'm suffering a loss of earnings by doing this," he said.
"Also, the Minister for Education Richard Bruton should not be allowed to skip over questions when he is asked if he supports equal pay for equal work. He is not being questioned closely enough on this issue," he said.
Applicants with "saint-like patience", an "aversion to bolloxology" and "thick skin" have been invited to send in an application for "the worst job in Ireland" - an assistant to Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary.
No Dubs, no cyclists and no Manchester United fans need apply, according to the advertisement posted on the airline's website.
The company has urged talented accountants to apply for the role to work directly with Ryanair's "misunderstood but beloved" CEO, who yesterday announced that he expects fares to drop by up to 15pc this winter.
Mr O'Leary cited continuing uncertainty over Brexit negotiations and intense competition.
Financial results yesterday showed Ryanair had cut fares by 10pc on average in the first half of the year, bringing the price of an average flight with the airline to 50. The airline said profits were up 7pc in the first half of the year, boosted by more people travelling.
While pressure on prices is bad news for the airline, Mr O'Leary said it was "good news for customers, not so good news for shareholders".
Ryanair's strategy of having as many customers flying as possible to use its growing capacity means when markets are tough it cuts prices to stimulate demand.
"For passengers what is inevitable is in the next 12 to 18 months you benefit by having lower fares," he said.
For the UK, though, one knock-on effect of Brexit will be fewer flights there.
O'Leary, who campaigned for Remain in the referendum, described the politicians negotiating Brexit as "puddings".
"It looks like these puddings are heading for a hard Brexit simply because of their own incompetence," he said.
SURGERIES at Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin have been postponed today following a power cut.
A fault in the hospital's electrical system at around 9.30am caused the outage with the hospital's power system.
As a safety measure all scheduled surgeries which included 14 day cases and three in-patients cases were postponed this morning.
Emergency surgeries will go ahead this afternoon. Four elective MRIs also had to be postponed this morning.
In a statement released this afternoon the hospital said: "Temple Street Childrens University Hospital experienced an isolated fault in a sub-area of the hospitals electrical system at 9.30am which has essentially been rectified but is still affecting one area within the Emergency Department where there is a problem with phone lines and lighting. Hence the hospital is currently off-call for ambulances."
All other current in-patients in the hospital are stable and being cared for within existing resources.
A jockey at the centre of a gang-rape allegation has denied the accusations and wants to get his horse-racing career "back on track".
Irish jockeys Brendan Powell Jr (21) and Richard Condon (20) were arrested along with one other man following an alleged rape of a teenage girl (18) after a party in Swindon in the UK last Thursday night.
Powell Jr was arrested by police on Friday and has since been bailed.
His father, Brendan Powell Sr, an ex-jockey and a well-known trainer, has defended his son and said he had "brought my children up well".
"All I can say is that I like to think I brought my children up well," Mr Powell Sr told the Irish Independent.
"He denies doing any wrong and I think when he gets proved innocent he just wants to get his career back on track again.
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"I don't think there is a lot more to be said about it at the moment."
Last night, both Brendan Powell and Richard Condon released a statement via their legal representative Paul Morris, from BCL Solicitors, in which they "denied any allegation of criminal wrongdoing".
In the statement issued to the media, Paul Morris said: "My clients, Brendan Powell and Richard Condon, are subject to a police investigation with which they are co-operating fully.
"Both categorically deny any allegation of criminal wrongdoing and are confident that, in due course, their innocence will become clear to everyone.
"It is not appropriate at this stage to make any further comment."
The Powell family are well known in horse racing circles.
Brendan Sr famously won the 1998 Grand National on Rhyme and Reason.
He was renowned for surviving tough falls and since retiring in 2000 he has gone on to become an established trainer, with 500 winners under his belt.
His son has been making his name as a jockey in recent years and has been riding professionally since he was 16.
In an interview in 2012 he talked about his plans to follow his father's footsteps.
"It's in my blood - bred into me," he said at the time.
"Racing was always the route I was going to take - I didn't look at other options. Long-term, one day I'd like to be champion jockey."
Mr Powell Jr was arrested by Wiltshire Police alongside two other men on Saturday following an allegation of rape of an 18-year-old girl that occurred on November 3 at a residential address in Chiseldon, Swindon.
It is reported the young woman presented with injuries when she made a statement to police.
All three were arrested and police said the trio has been bailed to return on a date in late December.
Mick Wallace has claimed the vulture fund which applied to have him adjudicated a bankrupt is "settling a score" after he raised concerns about the purchase of Nama's Northern loan portfolio, Project Eagle.
The Independent TD is considering a legal challenge to the High Court application made by a subsidiary of giant US fund Cerberus.
Cerberus bought Project Eagle for 1.6bn in April 2014, a transaction which has been mired in controversy ever since Mr Wallace alleged stg7m linked to the deal had been "reportedly earmarked for a Northern Ireland politician or party".
His comments helped spark investigations by the UK's National Crime Agency and the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Two months after the Dail allegations, Mr Wallace revealed the vulture fund had bought a distressed loan his construction firm M&J Wallace had with Ulster Bank. It had been purchased in December 2014 when Cerberus acquired the banks Project Aran portfolio.
Cerberus subsidiary Promontoria (Aran) Ltd subsequently secured a 2m judgment against the Wexford politician last January and made an application for him to be adjudicated a bankrupt yesterday.
The case has been adjourned until December 5 to allow Mr Wallace to engage with a personal insolvency practitioner.
Speaking after the hearing, Mr Wallace said he believed he was being pursued by Cerberus because of the concerns he had raised.
"You wouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this is settling a score for me exposing the payment of fixers' fees to get Project Eagle across the line," he told the Irish Independent.
Mr Wallace said Cerberus had nothing to gain from making him bankrupt as his construction firm had been liquidated and his assets "commandeered" by four different banks.
A spokesman for Cerberus said it had no comment to make in relation to Mr Wallace's "settling a score" claim. The fund has consistently denied any wrongdoing and says no improper or illegal fees were paid by it or on its behalf.
Mr Wallace said he now had a couple of weeks to assess his options before the case returns to the High Court, but declined to go into specifics.
A well-placed source said the Independents4Change TD was considering three possible courses of action, including a legal challenge to the application.
The other options being considered are negotiating with Cerberus or examining whether an arrangement can be drawn up by a personal insolvency practitioner.
However, any arrangement could prove difficult to negotiate as Mr Wallace's debts are so large other creditors would also have to agree to any deal.
The TD also owes 19.1m to ACC and reached a 2.1m settlement with the Revenue Commissioners in 2012 after M&J Wallace was found to have under-declared VAT.
The application for an adjudication of bankruptcy was made to Ms Justice Caroline Costello by barrister Eddie Farrelly on behalf of Promontoria (Aran) Ltd. The proceedings were adjourned following a request by Mr Wallace's barrister Keith Farry.
Mr Wallace was present in court for the application. Wearing blue jeans and a dark blue shirt, he stood at the back of the courtroom and did not speak during the brief hearing.
He has been a vociferous critic of the Project Eagle deal, consistently questioned the sale price and raising concerns about alleged kickback payments.
Even if he is adjudicated a bankrupt, Mr Wallace will be able to hold onto his Dail seat. A change in the law two years ago removed the prohibition on bankrupts being members of the Dail.
Earlier this year, the TD set up a website called Namaleaks.com, seeking to uncover "possible injustice and poor practice related to Nama and financial institutions in Ireland".
He said last week that the website had received further information relevant to Project Eagle.
Junior Minister John Halligan at the launch of Science Week 2016 with Sue and Christopher Duffy Photo: Chris Bellew/Fennell Photography
Independent minister John Halligan is set to miss an awkward Dail vote on a proposal to hold a referendum that would guarantee public ownership of water.
The proposal is contained in a Bill that Mr Halligan backed when he was in opposition. However, he will miss the vote on the matter later this week, as he will be on a trip to the Middle East.
Independent TD Joan Collins announced the Bill calling for a referendum on the public ownership of water, saying there is "deep concern" at the prospect of privatisation.
The Cabinet is likely to discuss its position today. An Independent Alliance spokesman said Mr Halligan's trip has been arranged for some time but that if he was here, he would vote with the Government.
A Fianna Fail spokesman said the party secured agreement that water would be kept in public ownership in its deal to facilitate the Fine Gael-led minority Government.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the US presidential election has been "one of the most fractious and divisive contests in recent memory".
Referring to the bitter contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump - as well as the Brexit vote in the UK - Mr Kenny said that populism "in its most nasty manifestations" is on the rise.
Warning of uncertain economic times ahead, Mr Kenny said that Brexit has "sent ripples across the world".
"Tomorrow, the people of the United States will go to the polls after one of the most fractious and divisive contests in living memory," he said.
"Both these decisions have global implications for all people. Growth in many emerging markets has slowed and, in many places, populism, including in its most nasty manifestations, is on the rise.
"Against this backdrop, expectations of economic growth at global level remain subdued."
He said that "as a small open trading economy", this is a "particularly challenging set of circumstances for us here" and said that Ireland must maintain its competitiveness and work to increase the resilience of business.
Mr Kenny did not express a preference for either US candidate in a speech at a conference in Dublin.
Previously, he told the Dail that he considered comments by Mr Trump during the campaign as "racist and dangerous".
Last month Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin backed Ms Clinton as his choice, arguing that Mr Trump "has a frightening amount in common" with the "extreme right" in Europe.
"In contrast, Hillary Clinton has been a resolute voice for decency and democratic values," Mr Martin said.
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) is distributing thousands of Chats for Change packs to Irish universities this week as part of a campaign to get students talking about mental health.
In partnership with St Patrick's Mental Health Services, Sea Changes Please Talk campaign, Twitter and Roberts Tea, the campaign is trying to get students to talk about mental health and learn to support those in need.
The campaign is also providing one-to-one consultations from St Patricks Mental Health Services.
In a statement to Independent.ie, Annie Hoey, USI President, said: USI is working hard to ensure that provision for vital mental health services in Ireland is improved. But supportive gestures from fellow students - such as reaching out for a quick chat over a cup of tea - will always be a necessary part of a supportive environment.
We find that students are really eager to engage, Ms Hoey told independent.ie.
Students want to know how to support someone how to make sure their friend is supported if they are in need.
Please Talk coordinator Treasa Hanniffy said: The campaign hopes to remind students that having a cup of tea and asking someone if they are OK can have such a positive impact on a person's mental health and well-being. We want students to understand that talking is a strength not a weakness.
The packs have been sent to all USI universities, but USI are also visiting certain universities as part of the Chats for Change tour.
USI were in GMIT on Monday and the Limerick School of Art and Design yesterday and they will visit Maynooth University tomorrow and IT Blanchardstown on Thursday.
A couple who dramatically saved a baby as her family drowned after their SUV was submerged off the pier in Buncrana, Co Donegal last spring were among 47 rescuers honoured for their bravery this evening.
Davitt Walsh, (30), from Kerrykeel, Co Donegal and his girlfriend Stephanie Knox, (24 ) from Derry, were each presented with Rescue Appreciation awards by Housing Minister Simon Coveney as part of Irish Water Safety's annual national awards ceremony at Dublin Castle this evening.
Mr Walsh, whose selfless bravery has earned him the moniker, ' Buncrana Tragedy Hero' was unable to attend the event but his friend James King from Donegal accepted the "Seiko Just in Time Rescue Award' on his behalf.
However, Ms Knox, (24) said her partner is honoured with the award as both he and she try to get on with their lives that changed forever on Sunday March 20 last year when they stopped at the pier to take in the view and were horrified to see an SUV sinking into the frigid water of Lough Swilly off a slip road.
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Mr Walsh stripped down and swam out to the sinking SUV in an attempt to rescue a family that was trapped inside as the vehicle plunged deeper into the sea.
In a tragedy that reverberated around the world, Sean McGrotty, (49) from Derry city,thrust his infant daughter Riognach Anne McGrotty, into Mr Walsh's arms though the car window and begged him to save her as his family, including sons Evan, (8), Mark (12), his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels (57) and her daughter Jodie Lee Daniels, (14) perished in the horrific accident.
Speaking to Independent.ie last night, Ms Knox, who had the presence of mind to take off the baby's wet clothes and wrap her in her coat to prevent her from dying from hypothermia, said she is still having nightmares over the tragedy.
But she said the trauma counselling that both she and Davitt have undergone to cope with the horror has helped.
They couple are also still in contact with Louise McGrotty, the baby's mother, when the unspeakable horror of losing her family unfolded as she returned from a trip to the UK.
However, Stephanie said they are giving her some space to come to terms with the tragedy, although they are in touch with the family and delighted to see Riognach Anne's progress as she nears her first birthday.
Celebrity chef Kevin Dundon and restaurateur Martin Shanahan are among the renowned foodies who will lend their expertise to the culinarily challenged
Afraid you will torch the turkey this Christmas or make a hames of the ham?
If so, rest easy as the perfect seasonal cooking school for you is taking place later this month - but places are limited.
Together with the Ray D'Arcy show on RTE Radio 1, SuperValu are searching for 20 novice chefs who want to learn how to cook a delicious Christmas dinner for their family and friends.
Celebrity chef Kevin Dundon and restaurateur Martin Shanahan are among the renowned foodies who will lend their expertise to the culinarily challenged at the event at Cooks Academy on Dublin's South William Street open on November 23.
Mr Dundon, owner of the Dunbrody Country House Hotel and cookery school in Co Wexford, and Mr Shanahan, the chef and owner of Kinsale's famed Fishy Fishy restaurant, will lead a one-day Yuletide dinner boot camp for those who have never cooked a Christmas dinner or are too afraid to try.
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The "school day" will cover the basics of preparing a traditional Christmas dinner, from starters, to mains and dessert and make all participants the favourite of their home on Christmas night after all bellies are filled.
"The thought of cooking Christmas dinner can be terrifying for people who have never done it before, even though it's really no more difficult than roasting a chicken," Mr Dundon said.
"Christmas dinner isn't difficult, but it's the external pressure that people find stressful.
"It's all about being organised," he added.
Listeners to the Ray D'Arcy show on RTE Radio One will be invited to enter a draw over the coming weeks.
The Internet provides unprecedented opportunities for children to communicate, create, learn and develop new skills. Of course we want our children to benefit from all that technology can offer, but this must be accomplished without putting themselves or others at risk. As parents, we also need to be aware of dark side of the internet which can include loss of privacy, exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, and at the extreme end of the scale, online grooming and extortion.
Protecting your child in this digital age may seem like an insurmountable challenge but try to keep it in perspective: would you let your five-year-old walk to school alone? In reality, you'll probably walk alongside them for years, have multiple conversations about stranger danger and the rules of the road before eventually letting them loose, with clear instructions on the route to take (and probably still under your watchful eye).
Not sure where to begin when it comes to safeguarding your children? Here are 15 steps that will go a long way towards stronger, smarter and safer kids online.
1 Start the Conversation Now
The single most important thing that you can do is to make it normal to talk about what they're seeing and doing online: what YouTubers they like, mean comments or behaviour that they have seen and how they would cope with it. Just as in the 'real' world, talk to them about what is okay and not okay to do online. Encourage them to look after their friends. Check out our website at www.cybersafeireland.org for more suggestions for conversation starters.
2 Do your Research
As with any other aspect of parenting, you need to understand the environment in which your child is operating, and any associated risks. If your child wants to set up a social media account or to play a specific game, check out websites such as www.webwise.ie, www.childnet.com or www.commonsensemedia.org for guidance on risks, minimum age, privacy settings etc.
While PEGI (age) ratings on games and apps are a useful indication of whether a game is age appropriate, be aware that some games with a PEGI rating of 3 may still contain chatrooms where your child could be conversing with complete strangers. Ideally, try apps and games yourself, or check them out on YouTube.
3 Set Clear Boundaries
If you agree that your child can use a particular app or game, make sure that you are involved in the process. Download and set it up together with maximum privacy settings. Discuss any concerns that you may have about that game or app and agree the ground rules. For example, that they can't accept friend requests from people they don't know in real life.
4 Supervise your Child's Online Activity
A study by the National Anti-Bullying Centre in 2015 found that less than 20pc of parents are supervising their child's online activity. Children may not have the maturity to make smart decisions or the resilience to deal with online nastiness or harmful content. If they are using devices, it should be under your watchful eye. Agree how you will monitor what they are doing and saying online, eg. checking their messages every night, or reviewing their friends list on a weekly basis. Continue to have the conversations with them so that as they get older, you can find the right balance between keeping them safe and respecting their privacy.
5 Look out for Signs of Cyberbullying
One advantage of having those constant conversations with your child, and supervising their online activity, is that it makes it much easier to spot any changes in their behaviour. These changes may indicate other issues, but if they suddenly seem nervous around their device or are angry or depressed after being online, cyberbullying could be the reason.
6 Watch out for Signs that they are Cyberbullying
Quickly switching screens when you are around, avoiding discussions about what they are doing online or using multiple accounts or different names on internet profiles may indicate a problem. Whatever you suspect is going on, wait for a good moment to discuss calmly and without pre-judgement
7 Use Privacy and Safety Settings on Apps and Games
Most apps and games have settings to control who can see your content or who can contact you. These are rarely set by default when you first install a social media app. If you allow your child to use an app or game, ensure that you research the privacy settings. Download the app or game with your child and get them to show you how smart they are by working out together how to turn on privacy settings.
8 Know who has Access to Your Child
We often hear about the dangers of strangers having contact with children on social media, but consider also who can access your child when they're gaming online. Make it a rule to review your child's friend lists on a regular basis. Not sure how to do this? Ask your child to show you and go through it together. Be suspicious of anyone they say is a "friend of a friend" if they haven't met that person in real life.
9 Don't Share Location unnecessarily
The location of where you have taken a photo is often stored by smartphones or tablets. Do a search on how to turn off geolocation settings for the camera on your child's device (and your own). Social media and messaging apps also love to share your location. Look at your device or app privacy settings to turn this off. Most new phones will have this setting turned on as the default position. You'll need to leave on for apps like 'Find my iPhone' and, of course, Pokemon Go!
10 Look into Parental Controls on Devices
Check the 'Restrictions' in the iPad and iPhone Settings App to enforce age ratings on downloads, switch off apps etc. You can do something similar on Android tablets by setting up a restricted profile. There are parental-control options for PCs and laptops running the Windows operating system and it's also worth checking out any safety features that are available from your broadband or phone provider.
11 Explore App Restrictions
Did you know that you can filter out (reported) adult content on Google searches using Google Safesearch? You can do the same on YouTube by enabling 'Restricted Mode'. There is also a separate app called YouTube Kids which allows you much greater control over what younger kids watch, including a timer to limit time spent on the app.
12 Where Possible, Create Device Free Zones and Times
Back in the day, you could keep the PC in the kitchen/living area. This is harder to do in the age of portable devices. It's still a good idea to ban technology from the bedroom, especially at night. Ensure that online gaming is under your watchful eye as well as within earshot. Extra vigilance is required when children are using headsets. Keeping devices away from the dinner table and out of the car can be challenging, but is worth it just for the conversations that you will have when your children eventually accept that this rule is here to stay.
13 Model the Behaviour Yourself
Do as I do, not just as I say. Modelling behaviour is always more effective. That means that you think about what you're posting before it goes online, and that you don't even consider bringing your devices to the table.
14 Let them know you are Always There for Them
Children tell us that they won't talk to their parents when something goes wrong online in case they get into trouble for something they have said or done. Their greatest fear is that a parent will take the technology away. Actually removing devices or apps is often a bad idea for parents to do, as this could drive online activity underground. It would also like result in them never coming to you again when something goes wrong. Talk them as often as possible about what to do when things go wrong, and make it clear that no matter what, you are there for them.
15 Don't Panic
Being a parent is never easy but you don't need to be an expert to do this. Start the conversation now, explore what apps and games they are using and get stuck in yourself. You'll soon realise why kids love the internet so much.
* Alex Cooney and Cliona Curley are founders of cybersafe Ireland. For more advice and tips please visit cybersafeireland.org
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Colette Browne Opinion Every effort must be made to retrieve oral histories of mother and baby home survivors
With three days to go until the Mother and Baby Homes Commission ceases to exist as a legal entity, we are being told that audio recordings of hundreds of witnesses which were deleted may not actually be gone forever. It is another usual twist in a most emotional saga. For decades, survivors of mother and baby homes have been denied a voice and denied autonomy. When they fell pregnant, many through rape and abuse, they were marched to the doors of religious institutions.
The MAMMI study (Maternal health And Maternal Morbidity in Ireland) was inspired by one woman, back in 2010, who told a midwife - now one of the MAMMI research team - that she leaked urine, could not control when she passed wind, and leaked faeces.
This had been happening to her since she gave birth to her first child two years earlier. Telling her story wasn't easy, and it didn't happen the first time she met this midwife, who was a complete stranger to her. It took a second and third visit, and importantly, time - time for the woman to develop trust in the midwife, and time during the visit for the woman to tell her story. The extent of this woman's misery was plain to see and painful to listen to as she sobbed her heart out, spilling out the misery she had endured in silence for the previous two years.
Every part of this woman's life had been made miserable by these health problems. At work she was afraid she would 'get caught out' or 'caught short', and at home she found her relationship with her partner was changing for the worse due to her fear of telling him or having an accident during intimate times.
She had tried to talk to a health professional once but didn't try again because she was told that 'these things happen'. She was worn down and out by it, physically and mentally, and found herself withdrawing from her partner, friends and social life. There was nothing extraordinary about this midwife - she just happened to be working in a midwife-led service that could offer women a 20-minute visit, and that was all the time this woman needed.
That was six years ago, and that one woman was the inspiration behind the MAMMI study which has shown us that she was far from being alone and sadly that nothing has changed for thousands of new mothers since. Three-quarters of women birthing in Ireland are not being asked about their own health issues after becoming mothers, and the lack of information and lack of discussion about these issues means women stay quiet, because they feel embarrassed and believe they are alone in experiencing these problems. Most women change their lives to fit in with the health limitation rather than seeking help to fix the problem. For example, many women stop exercising or do less exercise because they are afraid they will leak urine.
After women become mothers, it seems as if maternity services have no time for them and no time to listen to women. Perhaps this is because the health problems women experience after the birth are, generally, non-life threatening and are thus viewed as being of less importance than more serious health conditions. But these problems, acute and temporary initially, go on in some instances to become chronic, debilitating conditions that weigh women down, affecting their lives and the lives of their children and partners.
All postnatal health problems are treatable and curable, often with conservative and non-invasive treatments, but not asking women about them compounds the silence, and makes it too hard for women to divulge their difficulties.
The take-home message for women is: health problems such as leaking urine, faeces, having pain in the pelvic area, being anxious, down or depressed, are not normal, and can be treated. The message for healthcare professionals is - take time to listen to women. If time is short, find ways of making sure women are told about postnatal problems and are given time to tell their story.
The message for policy makers is: stopping maternity care at six weeks post-partum is far too early and is unrealistic. Women have barely had a chance to settle into motherhood, have spent the weeks since the birth trying to mother their baby as best they can with little sleep, and have had no time to think about themselves.
Follow-up visits, three months after becoming a mother, should be an essential part of our maternity services and have been recommended in the National Maternity Strategy 2016. Data should be recorded electronically so, as a nation, we know about women's health problems, and can link these back to her maternity care. The maternity services is the ideal place to introduce the individual health identifier that was legislated for in 2014.
And one final plea, as services undergo the much-needed redesign, change the title of the community postnatal services from being 'Child health surveillance services' to 'Woman, child and family services'. In other words, put women first, foremost and central. If women are well, babies and families will be well.
Dr Deirdre Daly, Assistant Professor in Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, was co-author of this article
Grace Mongey is currently sharing snapshots of her labour from the Coombe Hospital in Dublin 8.
Grace Mongey shared these before and after photos on Facebook
Grace Mongey shared these before and after photos on Facebook
Grace Mongey at Alex and Ani's launch of their Chain Station range at Arnotts in Dublin
Irish beauty blogger Grace Mongey is earning a whole new legion of mummy fans.
The 28-year-old, who is better known as Faces by Grace on her social media channels, recently welcomed her first child - a daughter Sienna - in September and hit headlines with her decision to live Snapchat the birth.
Sienna has already become something of a social media star in her own right as the excited new mum set up an Instagram account in the newborn's name (which already has nearly 10,000 followers).
She described meeting the new arrival as "love at first sight" in a touching blog post.
I wish I was as stylish as Sienna!!! Her outfit is @nextofficial | hat is @hm | ugg boots are @dunnesstoresofficial A photo posted by Sienna Harper (@siennaharpergernon) on Oct 28, 2016 at 8:24am PDT
"It was the most unbelievable moment when I first met her. It was love at first sight. I didn't have an easy labour but it was so worth it. She is so perfect and the last three weeks have been pure bliss. She is doing so well and is so good," she wrote last month.
Now, she's keeping up with honest approach to parenthood by sharing a before and after photo since giving birth six weeks ago.
Grace revealed she gained six and a half stone during her pregnancy and has already shed three stone.
"If these pics won't motivate me nothing will haha," she captioned the post. "Today is day one of the healthy eating and fitness! On the left is the night I went into labour and the right was last night! I gained 6 and a half stone during my pregnancy.
"I've already lost 3 stone so I've 3 and a half to lose to get back to my normal weight. As I am only 6 weeks postpartum I will be taking it easy but I'm excited for the challenge! Watch this space!"
Mongey has more than 80,000 followers on Instagram and over 52,000 likes on Facebook and she's currently signed to Andrea Roche's Influencers division, having made a name for herself in the early days of the industry.
Actors Angelina Jolie (L) and Brad Pitt attend the World Premiere of Disney's "Maleficent" at the El Capitan Theatre on May 28, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Jolie with her children Shiloh (left), Pax (second from left), Maddox (front right) and Zahara (back right) at New Tokyo International Airport. Photo: Reuters
US actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, pose on the red carpet before the screening of "The Tree of Life" presented in competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival
US actors Brad Pitt (R) and Angelina Jolie wave on the red carpet before the screening of "The Tree of Life" presented in competition at the 64th Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2011
Actress Angelina Jolie (L) and actor Brad Pitt arrive at VH1's 14th Annual Critics' Choice Awards held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on January 8, 2009 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for VH1)
Actor Brad Pitt with three of the six children he has with estranged wife Angelina Jolie (left to right) Pax Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, and Maddox Jolie-Pitt on the red carpet in Hollywood in December 2014. Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Actor Brad Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie arrive at the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium on January 25, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Actress Angelina Jolie and actor Brad Pitt attend the 'World War Z' Japan Premiere at Roppongi Hills on July 29, 2013 in Tokyo, Japan. The film will open on August 10 in Japan. (Photo by Ken Ishii/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)
Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie attend the Inglourious Basterds Premiere held at the Palais Des Festivals during the 62nd International Cannes Film Festival on May 20th, 2009 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie arrive at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 11, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
Actress Angelina Jolie and actor Brad Pitt arrive at VH1's 14th Annual Critics' Choice Awards held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on January 8, 2009 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for VH1)
Actor Brad Pitt (L) and actress Angelina Jolie arrive at the premiere of Sony Pictures' 'Salt' at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on July 19, 2010 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
2015 Entertainment Innovator Angelina Jolie Pitt (R) and Brad Pitt attend the WSJ. Magazine 2015 Innovator Awards at the Museum of Modern Art on November 4, 2015 in New York
Angelina Jolie and estranged husband Brad Pitt have reached a custody arrangement for their six children, the actress' representative has confirmed.
The former couple have been in negotiations about who will maintain primary care of their brood, aged from eight to 15, after Jolie first filed for divorce from her spouse on 19 September. The actress sought sole custody of the children in her legal papers, but Pitt then filed his response to her suit last week, asking for joint custody.
However, a statement released by Jolie's team on Monday revealed that the children will remain in the actress' care, while continuing "therapeutic visits" with Pitt.
"Childcare professionals have encouraged a legal agreement accepted and signed by both sides over a week ago," the statement read.
Expand Close Actors Angelina Jolie (L) and Brad Pitt attend the World Premiere of Disney's "Maleficent" at the El Capitan Theatre on May 28, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) / Facebook
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Whatsapp Actors Angelina Jolie (L) and Brad Pitt attend the World Premiere of Disney's "Maleficent" at the El Capitan Theatre on May 28, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
"In accordance with this agreement, the six children will stay in their mother's custody, and the children will continue therapeutic visits with their father. This has been determined by childcare professionals to be in the childrens best interest.
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It is unclear at this time whether or not the agreement is permanent or temporary. But Jolie's spokesperson continued the statement by saying: "We are not in a position to discuss the details.
"We hope, now that it is clear that the events which led to the dissolution filing involved minor children and their wellbeing, there will be understanding of the sensitivity of the family situation. We believe that all sides are committed to healing the family and ask for your consideration during this difficult time."
The couple reportedly split following an alleged altercation between Pitt and his adopted son Maddox, 15, on board a private plane in September (16).
Expand Close Actor Brad Pitt with three of the six children he has with estranged wife Angelina Jolie (left to right) Pax Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, and Maddox Jolie-Pitt on the red carpet in Hollywood in December 2014. Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP / Facebook
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Whatsapp Actor Brad Pitt with three of the six children he has with estranged wife Angelina Jolie (left to right) Pax Jolie-Pitt, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, and Maddox Jolie-Pitt on the red carpet in Hollywood in December 2014. Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Meanwhile, despite reports that Pitt has pulled out of all promotional activities for his upcoming war movie Allied, a source has revealed that the actor is planning to attend the premiere of the film in Westwood, California, on Wednesday.
Paramount studio confirmed he would be attending the premiere, according to the New York Post's gossip column Page Six, marking the first time he has been seen since the divorce drama began.
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Carol Vorderman, attending The Pride of Britain Awards 2016, will be in the celebrity jungle
The line-up for this year's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! has been confirmed, with hotly-tipped stars Carol Vorderman, Ola Jordan and Larry Lamb on the list.
Olympian Sam Quek, former England defender Wayne Bridge, Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt, presenter and model Lisa Snowdon and actor Adam Thomas are also heading Down Under for the jungle show.
The ten-strong camp will be completed by comedian Joel Dommett and Diversity dancer Jordan Banjo, when the series returns to ITV on Sunday.
Former Countdown star Vorderman, 55, has been linked to the series for some time.
She said of signing up: "I know people will ask, 'Why does Carol need to do this?'
"But I have never ever paid attention to what others think. I make my own decisions. I like the show and want to do it.
"I have been watching the show for years and have laughed so much. It is so funny."
Other names that had been bandied around include radio presenter Danny Baker, Homes Under The Hammer host Martin Roberts and even Nigel Farage, but they are not among the final line-up.
The programme, hosted by Ant and Dec, sees the campers living in an Australian jungle camp in basic conditions for up to three weeks.
They have to compete in various stomach-churning challenges and Bushtucker Trials to win food and treats.
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And show bosses have promised there will be "a whole host of brand new nasty surprises created just for them".
While any main changes to the upcoming series are under wraps, it is known that the ITV2 spin-off show has been renamed and will have new presenters and a new format.
I'm A Celebrity: Extra Camp will follow the main ITV programme and will be hosted by former winners Joe Swash, Stacey Solomon and Vicky Pattison as well as comedian Chris Ramsey.
The new show will replace I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here Now, which was hosted by Swash, Laura Whitmore and David Morgan.
It will feature unseen clips, interviews and Bushtucker Trials.
The hosts will also compete in live studio games and will be joined in Australia by celebrity guests, including Ant and Dec, as well as other stars weighing in on the show from the UK.
Viewers will also be invited to join the debates via social media and the app as well as putting their questions directly to campmates in the studio once they have left the jungle.
:: I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! returns at 9pm on Sunday, November 13.
Nicola Hughes and Made in Chelsea's Tiffany Watson at a shoot in Dublin today to promote the new InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush. Picture: Brian McEvoy
Nicola Hughes at a shoot in Dublin today to promote the new InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush. Picture: Brian McEvoy
Nicola Hughes has said that it is 'nice' to have her 'freedom' back since leaving Made in Chelsea as her time on the show was on ex-boyfriend Alex Mytton's terms.
The Irish model featured on the reality show with Mytton since 2015, but the pair shockingly split over the summer with Mytton ending the relationship by text message.
However, the former pageant queen said that not going on the show to speak about the breakup was her choice and that she is happy to have her freedom back since leaving the show.
"Its nice to have my freedom back," she said while promoting the launch of the InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush.
Expand Close Nicola Hughes at a shoot in Dublin today to promote the new InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush. Picture: Brian McEvoy / Facebook
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Whatsapp Nicola Hughes at a shoot in Dublin today to promote the new InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush. Picture: Brian McEvoy
"You dont really have much of a life, youre theirs. Its nice to have a break from it."
The Sandyford native revealed that she chose not to fly to France to film the breakup while the show was recording, and that it was the first time a decision was on her terms.
"I didnt want to fly to France and film the breakup. I didnt see the point."
"I joined that show more or less for Alex. Obviously it was an amazing opportunity and Im so happy I did it but it was all on his terms and for the first time, it was my terms," said the 26-year-old, who is currently based in London.
Expand Close Nicola Hughes and Alex Mytton in Morocco. Picture: Instagram / Facebook
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Whatsapp Nicola Hughes and Alex Mytton in Morocco. Picture: Instagram
"They asked me to fly out there and film in London as well but why would I want to do that? Why would I want to talk about a really horrible time for me?"
Nicola confirmed that she won't be returning to the show since splitting from Alex, unless it is on her terms.
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"I would only ever return if it was on my terms and I dont think that would be the case. He has the priority," she said.
Nicola has returned to the dating scene since the breakup, but said she isn't seeing Cheryl's ex-husband, Jean Bernard Fernandez Versini, following the pair being photographed together in June.
Expand Close Nicola Hughes and Made in Chelsea's Tiffany Watson at a shoot in Dublin today to promote the new InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush. Picture: Brian McEvoy / Facebook
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Whatsapp Nicola Hughes and Made in Chelsea's Tiffany Watson at a shoot in Dublin today to promote the new InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush. Picture: Brian McEvoy
"Im not dating him or anything of the sort. We met randomly and weve talked since. He's not really my type."
"I dont think Id date anyone anytime soon in the public eye. I kind of want to take a break from all that drama and everyone knowing your business."
She denied that her time on the hit show left a bad taste in her mouth, but admitted that her relationship with Alex has.
"Its my ex thats left a nasty taste in my mouth. Were fine and when we see each other were civil to each other, but were not exactly friends."
As for the future, Nicola is currently focusing on presenting work and establishing a clothing range, although she wouldn't rule out more reality tv appearances.
"I'd do the jungle, yeah," she said. "I'd love to do a dancing show!"
The InStyler Straight Up Straightening Brush is available from instyler.ie for 69.99.
Protesters outside the High Court in Hong Kong, where Briton Rurik Jutting has been found guilty of murdering two Indonesian women (AP)
A British banker has been convicted of murder for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub.
The nine-person jury returned unanimous verdicts against Rurik Jutting after a two-week trial in the High Court. The killings in 2014 and disclosures as the case developed highlighted Hong Kong's significant inequality as well as the decadent lifestyles of some members of the former British colony's expatriate elite.
Jutting bowed his head briefly as the verdicts were read out to a packed courtroom but otherwise showed little reaction. He was given an automatic mandatory life sentence.
While he has the right to an appeal, his defence lawyer indicated ahead of the verdict that Jutting would request a transfer to a British prison to serve out his sentence there.
In a statement his lawyer asked to be read into the court record, Jutting said he was sorry and accepted the verdicts as "just and appropriate punishment". He also said he was haunted by his actions and the pain he had caused to the women's loved ones.
Jutting, a Cambridge University graduate who worked for Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, was convicted of killing 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih and then killing 26-year-old Seneng Mujiasih days later. The two originally came to Hong Kong as foreign maids but ended up as sex workers.
As statements from their families were read out by the prosecutor, Jutting stared at the floor.
Jurors were shown graphic smartphone video clips taken by Jutting of his apparent torture of Sumarti, which the judge deemed too graphic for the public to view. He slit her throat and then nearly decapitated her when she did not die immediately, according to facts agreed upon by both the prosecution and defence. He then stuffed her body inside a suitcase that he left on the balcony of his upscale apartment near Hong Kong's famous Wan Chai red-light district.
Jutting had planned to torture Mujiasih with about 725 worth of tools and sex toys he had bought hours before. But he killed her when she spotted a gag in his apartment and would not stop screaming, according to the two sides.
After the verdict, Judge Michael Stuart-Moore called the case "one of the most horrifying murder cases to come to the courts in Hong Kong".
"There are insufficient superlatives to describe the cruelty" that Jutting inflicted on Ningsih and planned for Mujiasih, he said, adding that the defendant had not shown "one shred of remorse" and rejected his apology.
He called Jutting an "archetypal sexual predator" and cited evidence from an expert psychiatric witness who said Jutting would be prone to committing sexual violence again.
The judge said his sentencing remarks were aimed at notifying authorities in Britain, who must hold their own sentencing hearing if his transfer is granted, of the "immense danger" Jutting poses if he is allowed out of prison.
Ningsih's brother, Suyit Khaliman, said the family welcomed the verdict and was grateful that Jutting was given the maximum penalty under Hong Kong law.
"Justice finally has been upheld after two years," Mr Khaliman said. "The sentence is still incomparable to the pain that is felt by us who lost Ningsih in such a terrible way."
Mr Khaliman said the family, from Central Java province, has suffered financially and emotionally since the death of Ningsih, who has a son, now aged seven.
AP
President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton acknowledge the crowd during a campaign event in Philadelphia (AP)
Voters fill out their forms at a polling station in the Brooklyn borough of New York (AP)
America's ugly and unpredictable presidential election entered its final hours on Tuesday, with voters flocking to polls to choose between Democrat Hillary Clinton, hoping to become the first woman to serve as commander in chief, and Republican Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman who tapped into a searing strain of economic populism.
Mrs Clinton appeared to have multiple paths to triumph, while Mr Trump needed to prevail in most of the battleground states to secure an upset. Control of the Senate was also at stake, with Democrats needing to net four seats if Mrs Clinton wins the White House.
The 45th president will inherit an anxious nation, deeply divided by economic and educational opportunities, race and culture. The economy has rebounded from the depths of recession, though many Americans have yet to benefit. New terror threats from home and abroad have raised security fears.
Mrs Clinton asked voters to keep the White House in Democratic hands for a third straight term. She cast herself as heir to President Barack Obama's legacy and pledged to make good on his unfinished agenda, including passing immigration legislation, tightening restrictions on guns and tweaking his signature health care law.
"I know how much responsibility goes with this," Mrs Clinton said after voting on Tuesday at her local polling station in Chappaqua, New York, with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side.
"So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country, and I will do the very best I can if I'm fortunate enough to win today."
Mr Trump, the New York real estate developer who lives in a gold-plated Manhattan penthouse, forged a striking connection with white, working-class Americans who feel left behind in the changing economy and diversifying country. He cast immigration, both from Latin America and the Middle East, as the root of many problems plaguing the nation.
"I see so many hopes and so many dreams out there that didn't happen, that could have happened, with leadership, with proper leadership," he said by telephone on Fox News before casting his own ballot in Manhattan. "And people are hurt so badly."
Mr Trump's campaign filed a lawsuit in Nevada on Tuesday alleging polling place "anomalies" during early voting in the Las Vegas area. The suit asks that records from four polling places that stayed open past closing time on Friday be impounded and preserved. Long queues at a Mexican market and several shopping centres prompted the extended hours.
Mrs Clinton's campaign dismissed the case as "a frivolous lawsuit".
Mr Trump set both parties on edge when he refused to say in the third and final debate whether he would accept the election's results, citing with no evidence the possibility of a rigged outcome. His statement threatened to undermine a fundamental pillar of American democracy and raised the prospect that his fervent supporters would not view Mrs Clinton as a legitimate president if she won.
Asked in a separate Fox interview on Tuesday if he would accept the election results, Mr Trump continued to demur, saying: "We're going to see how things play out."
Most problems at polling places appeared to be routine - the kinds of snags that come every four years, including long lines, machines not working properly and issues with ballots or voter rolls.
Even before Tuesday, almost 45 million people had cast ballots for president. Many expressed relief the end was in sight after an election season in which personal attacks often drowned out the issues.
"I'm tired of the mudslinging," said Laura Schmitt, a 54-year-old Republican from Woodbury, Minnesota, who was voting for Mr Trump. Emetric Whittington, a 51-year-old Democratic mother of three on Chicago's violence-plagued South Side, agreed: "I can't wait for this night to be over."
Mrs Clinton has denounced Mr Trump for calling Mexican immigrants "rapists" and promoting a ban on Muslims entering the US, and for his long line of remarks about women that culminated in an audio in which he bragged about grabbing their genitals. Mr Trump called his opponent "Crooked Hillary" for her use of a private email server as secretary of state and her complicated ties to the family's Clinton Foundation.
"I can't vote for somebody who's so morally reprehensible," said Lisa Moore, a 48-year-old Republican from Glen Rock, New Jersey, who picked Mrs Clinton. Democrat Charles Ikner of Cross Lanes, West Virginia, opted for Mr Trump, saying it was time for "fresh blood" in the White House.
In the final days, Mrs Clinton was buoyed by FBI director James Comey's weekend declaration that he would not recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. Mr Comey announced the inquiry late last month, sapping Mrs Clinton's surging momentum and threatening Democrats in down-ballot races.
AP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been warned he will only have himself to blame if the EU does not grant visa-free travel in Europe to Turkish citizens. (AP)
A top European Union official has warned Turkey that its crackdown on political opponents and the media go against EU values and give the impression that it no longer wants to join the bloc.
"I note with bitterness, I who am a friend of Turkey, that Turkey is distancing itself from Europe every day," the president of the EU's executive Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said.
Mr Juncker's comments follow a week that saw 10 MPs from Turkey's pro-Kurdish party and nine senior staff members of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper arrested on alleged links to terror groups.
Access to social media websites and applications were also restricted, a move seen as a bid by the government to prevent protests from being organised.
Mr Juncker called on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to immediately say "whether Turkey really wants to be - yes or no - a member of the European Union."
He also said Mr Erdogan would only have himself to blame if the EU does not grant visa-free travel in Europe to Turkish citizens soon.
The visa waiver is part of a package of incentives, including fast-tracked membership talks and billions of euro for Syrian refugees in Turkey, promised to Ankara if it helps prevent mass migration to the continent.
"Mr Erdogan will have to explain to the Turkish people why they will not be able to freely travel like all other Europeans throughout Europe, because it will be he who has not fulfilled the conditions agreed in advance," Mr Juncker said.
His criticism comes just as the EU is set to release its latest progress report on Turkey's membership negotiations, on Wednesday.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry branded the EU criticism as "unacceptable". In a statement, the ministry accused European nations of "insistently refusing to understand Turkey's sensitivities concerning terrorism".
One of the conditions for the waiving of visas is that Turkey must change its definition of "terrorism" to prevent the arrests of journalists and political opponents.
The ministry also faulted the EU for failing to press the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, to lay down its arms.
Both Turkey and the EU consider the PKK a terror organis ation, yet alleged PKK militants were allowed to roam freely in EU countries and to engage in anti-Turkish propaganda inside the European Parliament building, according to the statement.
"The EU has lost its plausibility and credibility with the Turkish people on the issue of the struggle against terrorism," the statement said.
Turkey has been in talks to join the European Union since October 2005, but progress has been held up, often by political opposition and particularly due to resistance from Cyprus.
The Mediterranean island has been divided in two since 1974, when Turkish troops occupied its northern third.
But other EU countries are also opposed to the large, relatively poor and mainly Muslim country joining. Germany, notably, would prefer an alternate kind of "privileged partnership" for Turkey.
The tenuous state of Turkey's future in the EU was reflected in the remarks of a senior German official who pointed Turks who feel politically persecuted to the possibility of seeking asylum in Germany.
Deputy foreign minister Michael Roth expressed the government's solidarity with "all critical spirits in Turkey" in Tuesday's edition of daily newspaper Die Welt. He added that Germany "is in principle open to all politically persecuted people. They can apply for asylum in Germany".
However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the priority is ensuring that no one needs to do so. Mrs Merkel also stressed that asylum applications are considered by independent institutions, not her government.
"We are working politically for a situation in Turkey that doesn't make it necessary for people to seek asylum," she said.
Mrs Merkel added that "we have received alarming signals in recent days" and Germany would continue pushing for Turkey to respect fundamental freedoms.
Speaking in the European Parliament in Brussels, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentarian Ertugrul Kurkcu called for action, not just words of condemnation.
"We are at a critical moment," he warned, adding that "a very dark atmosphere of oppression" reigns over Turkey.
AP
Luxembourg's foreign minister said yesterday that the Turkish government's handling of dismissed civil servants reminded him of methods used by the Nazis, and that, sooner or later, the EU would have to respond with sanctions.
More than 110,000 public servants in Turkey - from soldiers and judges to teachers and journalists - have been detained, suspended or sacked since a failed military coup in July, in what President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's critics say is a crackdown on all forms of dissent.
Turkish officials say the measures are justified by the threat posed by the coup attempt, in which more than 240 people were killed as rogue soldiers commandeered fighter jets and tanks, bombing parliament and other buildings.
The names of those who are barred from public service are published in the official government gazette, potentially making it hard for them to find work elsewhere. In addition, their passports are cancelled.
Jean Asselborn said people were also being stripped of their university degrees, and that many were being left with no income. Some dismissed teachers who were sole breadwinners have complained of being unable to feed their families.
"To put it bluntly, these are methods that were used during the Nazi era and that's a really, really bad development ... that the European Union simply cannot accept," Mr Asselborn said.
He suggested imposing economic sanctions, pointing out that 50pc of Turkey's exports go to the EU and 60pc of investment in Turkey comes from the bloc: "At a certain point in time, we won't have any choice but to apply it (sanctions) to counteract the unbearable human rights situation."
Mr Erdogan and government ministers have repeatedly said it is up to Turkey to decide how to respond to the coup attempt, which they accuse US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating through a network of supporters. Mr Gulen has condemned the coup attempt and denied any involvement.
Turkey's EU Minister Omer Celik said Mr Asselborn lacked knowledge of history, and that Ankara's actions should be equated to efforts to "protect democracy during the fight against the Nazis".
"The Nazis are like apprentices when compared with Gulenist terror organisations," he said.
Israel yesterday formally rejected France's invitation to take part in a Middle East peace conference in Paris later this year, saying it was a distraction from the goal of direct negotiations with the Palestinians.
At a meeting in Jerusalem with Israel's acting national security adviser and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's diplomatic adviser, French envoy Pierre Vimont was informed that Israel wanted nothing to do with the effort to revive talks that last broke down in 2014.
"(They) told the French envoy in a clear and unequivocal manner that Israel's position to promote the peace process and reach an agreement will only come through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority," Mr Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from Mr Vimont but the French foreign ministry said it still planned to hold the conference before the end of the year.
France has repeatedly tried to breathe new life into the peace process this year, holding a preliminary conference in June where the United Nations, European Union, United States and major Arab countries gathered to discuss proposals without the Israelis or Palestinians present.
The plan was to hold a follow-up conference before the end of the year with the Israelis and Palestinians involved and see whether the two sides could be brought back to negotiations.
The last, US-backed talks ended in failure in April 2014.
The Palestinians have said they will attend the Paris conference if it goes ahead.
Israel, which regards the United States as the chief broker in the Middle East, has long maintained that only direct negotiations with the Palestinians can lead to peace and sees France's efforts as a diversion.
"Any other initiative, including this one, will only distance peace from the region," Mr Netanyahu's office said, adding that it expected France "not to promote a conference or a process that is contrary to (our) official position".
Israel says an international conference will also give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a platform on which to grandstand, rather than engaging directly with the Israelis.
The Palestinians say they cannot resume talks with Israel until it suspends the building of settlements on occupied land the Palestinians seek for an independent state and meets previous commitments, including the release of prisoners.
Controversial attorney general Janet Reno pictured with then US president Bill Clinton, with whom she served for two terms. Photo: Getty
Janet Reno, the first woman US attorney general, who served eight tumultuous years with President Bill Clinton, has died aged 78.
Reno's goddaughter said she succumbed to complications of Parkinson's disease early yesterday in Miami.
The blunt-spoken lawyer worked as the top US law enforcement official under Mr Clinton from 1993 to 2001, becoming the longest-serving attorney general of the 20th century.
Just 38 days into the job, she authorised the deadly 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound at Waco, Texas.
Ms Reno headed the justice department during the government's huge antitrust case against Microsoft.
She appeared with Mr Clinton after the 1995 truck bomb attack on the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 people, and vowed to seek the death penalty for the perpetrators.
In 2001, convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh become the first federal prisoner executed since 1963. McVeigh said he carried out the attack to punish the US government for the Waco cult raid and another raid in Idaho.
The former Miami prosecutor, picked by Mr Clinton after his first two choices for the job ran into trouble at the confirmation stage, exhibited an independent streak and a brusque manner that often upset the White House.
She was diagnosed in 1995 with Parkinson's disease.
"All it does is shake and you get used to it shaking after a while," she once said.
Ms Reno was attorney general throughout Mr Clinton's two terms and was in the job longer than anyone except William Wirt, who held it from November 1817 until March 1829.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, yesterday (Monday) hoped to exploit the same anti-establishment anger that led to the Brexit vote, as he made a last-ditch appeal to working class Americans.
In the final hours of one of the most tumultuous White House election campaigns in memory, Mr Trump depicted a country divided in which he was the "last chance" for radical change. "It's gonna be Brexit plus plus plus!" he shouted to his supporters.
With polls showing his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton edging ahead, Mr Trump embarked on a mad dash across America, holding six rallies in five states.
"I want the entire corrupt Washington establishment to hear the words we are all about to say: when we win tomorrow, we are going to drain the swamp," he told cheering supporters at his first event in Sarasota, Florida, before heading to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
"Our failed political establishment has delivered nothing but poverty at home and disaster overseas. They get rich making America poor. It's time to reject a media and political elite that's bled our country dry," he said.
With Hispanics and other minority communities helping Mrs Clinton solidify her grasp on traditional swing states such as Nevada and Colorado, Mr Trump's clearest path to victory runs though toss-ups like Florida, North Carolina and Ohio as well as at least one Democrat-leaning state, probably in the Midwest.
Mr Trump, Mrs Clinton and President Barack Obama all focused their campaigning efforts yesterday in Michigan, which has been a Democrat-leaning state since 1992. Even Mitt Romney's status as a native son did not protect him from losing the state to Mr Obama in 2012. Mr Trump hopes that his white working class appeal, fortified by his protectionist message on trade, will erode Mrs Clinton's five-point lead in this industrial state.
Robby Mook, Mrs Clinton's everoptimistic campaign manager, conceded that the race in Michigan had "tightened" considerably.
"In his 70 years on earth The Donald has never cared about working folk. He doesn't care about working people," Mr Obama said in Michigan, attempting to counter the Republican's message.
He added: "If your closest advisers don't trust you to tweet how can we trust you with the nuclear codes?", referring to reports that Mr Trump's campaign had "finally wrested away" control of his Twitter account, something denied by his campaign manager.
As she boarded her campaign plane in White Plains, New York, for the day's first rally in Pennsylvania, Mrs Clinton acknowledged the deep divisions in the country. "I really do want to be the president for everybody - people who vote for me, people who vote against me," she told reporters.
She aimed to nail down a narrow lead with stops in three battleground states, before joining the Obamas at a star-studded finale in Philadelphia.
Both CNN's poll of polls and the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll had Mrs Clinton four percentage points ahead yesterday. A RealClearPolitics average of polls had it closer at 2.6 points. The election monitoring website FiveThirtyEight, named after the total number of the electoral college votes, estimated she would take 295 votes, putting her well over the 270 margin for victory.
But analysts warned that Mr Trump's chances of staging an upset might well be higher than the data suggested. Both campaigns were predicting that a win in Florida could come down to as little as one per cent of the vote.
Moreover, some 13pc of Americans, even at this late stage, are uncertain of how to vote or have decided to choose a third party candidate.
In 2012 this figure was only three per cent. Analysts also estimate that there are some 100 million voting age Americans who tend not to vote in the electoral process, and that many of those are white working class. How Mr Trump performs will depend on how this untested demographic turn out to vote.
Former US President Bill Clinton (R) talks with his daughter Chelsea Clinton prior to the third and final 2016 presidential campaign debate. Photo: Reuters
Donald Trump may yet prove capable of one of the most astounding political upsets in American history. But the polls suggest we should today be imagining the Clinton presidency. What will it look like?
Crucially for someone unloved, distrusted and - until this weekend - being investigated by the FBI, it will be another Clinton presidency. Bill is an experienced guide into handling inquiries, congressional investigations, special prosecutors and scandals. He had a lot of practice as the only president since the 19th century to be impeached. The self-styled 'Comeback Kid' survived lying over the Lewinsky affair, leaving office more popular than when first elected. But there are other lessons too.
From the moment he took the oath of office in 1993 until he left the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton was a paradox in power.
He presided over the United States prosperous and at peace - but never at peace with itself. The Good Clinton legacy was one of economic growth and success.
The American century ended with an expanding economy, a booming housing market, the United States as the only credible superpower, Communism trounced, and American soft power triumphant worldwide.
Apple, Google, Starbucks, Hollywood movies, hip hop, great American literature and popular culture were celebrated worldwide.
But there was also the Bad Clinton legacy - a housing market bubble, what one Fed chairman called the "irrational exuberance" of an under-regulated market, armed militia groups, domestic terrorism, growing disparities between the rich and everyone else, profound and violent discontent.
In a book I wrote in the 1990s about the Clinton years, 'The United States of Anger', I summed up the Clinton paradox in the words of a Maryland police officer I interviewed in Annapolis.
"Bill Clinton says he has created 11 million new jobs since he became president," the cop told me.
"Sure he has. And I have four of them."
He worked shifts at the police department and then on days off he had three separate part-time jobs as a security guard. His wife also worked. They had young children but no family holidays, and few days off together.
They were frazzled by their attempts to live the American Dream, the promise of a secure middle-class life in which children do better than their parents.
For tens of millions that dream has now died, and in Donald Trump's words, "the system" is "rigged" against decent Americans. Many on the Left of US politics agree.
And that will be Hillary Clinton's key problem if she becomes president after this most bitter campaign. Job One will be to bring together under her leadership a country in which for more than 20 years she has been seen by many not as opposed to a "rigged" system but as a key player in it. For Trump supporters she will never be Commander in Chief as much as Rigger in Chief.
Here's the Clinton promise to deal with this profound sense of American anger: "We will reform our politics, so that in this land the voice of the people will always sound louder than that of narrow interests deserving the trust of all Americans."
Fine. But that's not Hillary. It's Bill at his Second Inauguration. Way back in 1997, he used words that Donald Trump uses now, railing against the distrusted "narrow interests", including Wall Street - the interests which, for Trump supporters, President Hillary will herself represent.
Things have accelerated since I worked in the United States during the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and 'Dubya' Bush presidencies. In the good old days, presidents often ended their term fighting a scandal. This year, whoever wins, the presidency will begin in scandal. Clinton will try to take a tough line with Russia and Assad, and seek to strengthen Nato. Trump may try to cut taxes and crack down on migration. But both face a Congress in which at least one House will likely be implacably hostile to their policies. Many there will loathe them personally.
As someone who loves the vitality of America and Americans, I hope the next president, in Abraham Lincoln's words, binds up the nation's wounds. But more likely it is the president himself (or herself) who will be "bound up", fettered by inquiries, scandal, or political deadlock.
Richard Nixon once feared the United States could become a "pitiful helpless giant" on the world stage. Now the Lilliputian presidency may be upon us, our indispensable ally in which the president, like Gulliver, is tied down and unable to act.
For comfort I talked recently with the great American satirist PJ O'Rourke, a staunch Republican, the self-described Republican Party Reptile. PJ told me he was voting - very reluctantly - for Hillary Clinton as "the second worst thing that could happen to America". And so, please welcome, the next President of the United States and his (or her) legal team. God Bless America.
Gavin Esler was Chief North America correspondent for the BBC in the 1990s
Supporters of Donald Trump cheer the GOP presidential nominee at a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: Getty
Republicans have retained their lock on the House of Representatives for two more years as candidates triumphed in a variety of districts Democrats had hoped to take in Florida, Virginia and elsewhere.
Donald Trump's divisive comments about women and Hispanics meant Democrats had envisioned big gains in suburban and ethnically diverse districts for the lower chamber of the US Congress.
Instead Democrats seemed on track for modest pick-ups as Republican contenders were buoyed by their presidential candidate's tight battle against Hillary Clinton.
While expectations were nearly zero that Democrats would win the 30 seats they needed to capture House control for next year, both sides had anticipated they would cut into the historic Republican majority by perhaps a dozen seats.
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"This could be a really good night for America," House speaker Paul Ryan, who won a 10th term in Wisconsin, told supporters in his home town of Janesville.
In Florida, Republican Carlos Curbelo won a race that suggested Mr Trump's damage to the party would be limited.
With around seven in 10 of the Miami-area district's voters being Hispanic, Democrats had targeted it and the race became one of the country's most expensive, with an 18 million dollar price tag, but Mr Curbelo distanced himself from his own party's nominee and held on.
Virginia representative Barbara Comstock kept her seat in the Washington DC suburbs despite Democrats' relentless attempts to tie her to Mr Trump. The two sides spent more than 20 million dollars on that contest in a district of highly educated, affluent voters that both sides had viewed as vulnerable to a Democratic takeover.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Republican president-elect Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Republican president-elect Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Republican president-elect Donald Trump delivers his acceptance speech during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) Reince Priebus (R) hugs Republican presidential elect Donald Trump during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York on November 9, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSONJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images People cheer as voting results for Florida come in at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown on November 8, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Republican presidential elect Donald Trump gestures while speaking during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York on November 9, 2016. Photo: Getty Republican presidential elect Donald Trump (L) gestures next to his family as he arrives to speak during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York Republican president-elect Donald Trump embraces his wife Melania Trump during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Republican president-elect Donald Trump embraces his wife Melania Trump during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, delivers a speech as Republican president-elect Donald Trump looks on during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, delivers a speech as Republican president-elect Donald Trump looks on during his election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Republican presidential elect Donald Trump (L) arrives with his family on stage to speak during election night at the New York Hilton Midtown in New York on November 9, 2016. Trump stunned America and the world Wednesday, riding a wave of populist resentment to defeat Hillary Clinton in the race to become the 45th president of the United States. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGANMANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 09: Republican president-elect Donald Trump gives greets people in the crowd after delivering his acceptance speech at the New York Hilton Midtown in the early morning hours of November 9, 2016 in New York City. Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to become the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Campaign chairman John Podesta speaks on stage at Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's election night event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center November 9, 2016 in New York City. Clinton is running against Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Hillary Clinton tweeted "Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything."/ Pic via @HillaryClinton A graphic depicting Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squaring off in a boxing ring sits in Times Square on November 8, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images) The Trump family and team watch the results (Photo: Twitter/Donald Trump) Jake Krupa colors in an electoral map as states projected for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump or Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at an election watching party in Coconut Grove, Florida. AFP PHOTO / RHONA WISERHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images The dollar tumbled against the yen and euro while the Mexican peso fell off a cliff as polling results in the knife-edge US presidential race pointed to a strong showing by Donald Trump. AFP PHOTO / BEHROUZ MEHRIBEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images Ivanka Trump tweets: "Such a surreal moment to vote for my father for President of the United States! Make your voice heard and vote! #Election2016" Pic via Twitter/ @IvankaTrump People watch voting results at Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's election night event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images) A woman reacts as she watches voting results at Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's election night event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) People cheer at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown on November 8, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) An employee of a foreign exchange trading company stands in front of a monitor displaying Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (L) and Republican presidential nominee (Photo by Yuya Shino/Getty Images) A police officer stands outside Trump Tower in New York City on election day November 8, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / DOMINICK REUTERDOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Images People vote on the US presidential election at Santa Monica City Hall on November 8, 2016 in Santa Monica, California / AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. BROWNFREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images Nicolette Janoski displays a sticker after voting on November 8, 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images) Voters cast ballots at a laundrette in Chicago, Illinois Picture: AFP/Getty People cheer as voting results for Iowa come in at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown on November 8, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Donald Trumps son Eric glances across at the ballot being filled by his wife Lara Yunasska while voting at the 53rd Street Library in New York. Photo: Bloomberg A man poses for a picture near the cardboard cutouts of U.S. presidential nominees Hillary Clinton (L) and Donald Trump, at an election event hosted at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Kathmandu, Nepal November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar Supporters of U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton react at her election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton A supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton bows her head at an election night rally in New York, U.S., November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up a Trump doll during an election night party at a hotel in downtown Phoenix, Arizona on November 8, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / Laura SegallLAURA SEGALL/AFP/Getty Images People watch elections results during election night at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York on November 9, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / DON EMMERTDON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images People gather around Times Square to view televised results of the US presidential election on November 9, 2016 in New York. / AFP PHOTO / EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZEDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/Getty Images Supporters of U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton react at her election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY A man leans out of a Hummer shouting words in support of U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump while driving through Times Square in New York, U.S., November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich / Facebook
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Democrats defeated two Florida Republican incumbents, but those results seemed due to local circumstances.
John Mica, a 73-year-old 12-term veteran from the Orlando area, was criticised by Republican strategists for a lacklustre campaign and lost to Democrat newcomer Stephanie Murphy.
Democratic challenger Charlie Crist, once the state's Republican governor, defeated David Jolly in a St Petersburg district that had been redrawn to favour Democrats.
Democrats spent 4 million dollars and beat Scott Garrett, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus from a northern New Jersey suburb of New York City, and they defeated Bob Dold, a Republican moderate from the Chicago suburbs where Democratic strength proved overpowering.
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Both parties' candidates and outside groups spent nearly 1.1 billion dollars combined on House campaigns, short of the 1.2 billion dollar record in 2012, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group.
Republicans had only a slight financial edge.
While Mr Trump hurt Republicans in some areas, his appeal to working-class white voters and their antipathy to Ms Clinton helped candidates in others.
That seemed to help Republicans limit an erosion of their House majority, which would have left hardline conservatives with added clout to frustrate party leaders.
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Even with the Ryan-led House advantage, work has stalled on spending bills after hitting objections from conservatives, including about 40 members of the Freedom Caucus. A major loss of moderate Republicans would have increased dissident Republicans' leverage next year.
'Nor should Trump be dismissed too readily as a foreign policy buffoon.' (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
This election cycle has been overcrowded with scandals, character assassinations and revelations about candidates past actions, with little room left for policy talk.
So where do the candidates stand on the big issues for the US and the world abroad?
These are the candidates positions on five big issues:
Gun control
The vast gap between the candidates opinions on gun control can be summed up by their National Rifle Association ratings: Hillary Clinton has an F, the lowest a candidate can get, and Donald Trump was endorsed by the gun owners advocacy group in May.
Hillary Clinton favours an expansion in federal restrictions on gun sales, including background checks, but Trump insists that the existing legislation should be fixed as opposed to adding new restrictions.
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Trump opposes restrictions on assault weapon sales, while Clinton wants to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which previously banned weapons that could fire more than 10 rounds per minute.
Abortion
Donald Trump made quite a U-turn on abortion in the last two years, moving from a publicly pro-choice position to a fervent pro-life stance. Trump has recently said that abortion should only be allowed in the cases of rape, incest and when the mothers life is at risk.
Trump is on record saying that women should receive some form of punishment for acquiring an abortion. He has also promised to appoint pro-life judges to the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn Roe Vs Wade and further restrict abortion.
Clinton, on the other hand, has vowed to protect abortion rights for women under Roe Vs Wade, and continue to fund Planned Parenthood.
At the third debate, when asked about late-term abortions, she said: I have met with women who have, toward the end of their pregnancy, get worst news one can get.
"That their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term. Or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.
Healthcare
Obamacare, a set of healthcare reforms which expanded free healthcare and gave 16 million Americans insurance cover, is the centrepiece of the healthcare debate this election cycle.
With Democrats lauding its successes and Republicans bemoaning its cost, this election could make or break Obamacare; particularly since Donald Trump has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Hillary Clinton has promised to expand the programme.
Donald Trump has promised to Work with Congress to create a patient-centered health care system that promotes choice, quality, and affordability.
His explanation for the plan is lacking, but he has emphasised that Obamacare's replacement should be cheaper for both patients and the taxpayer.
Hillary Clinton wants to expand the cover provided under Obamacare to more people by reforming the tax credit system that currently excludes some people or makes cover too expensive.
Immigration
Neither candidate supports opening borders further, but Donald Trumps position is far more restrictive, while Hillary Clintons focuses on integrating the immigrants already in the country.
Donald Trump has stayed steadfast in his promise to build a wall on the Mexican border and force Mexico to pay for it. He has also promised to fast-track deportations and has stated a number of times that he intends to impose a temporary ban on the entry of Muslims into the country.
Hillary Clinton has promised to protect Americas borders and focus on detaining immigrants who pose a threat to security, but has also promised to ensure refugees who seek asylum in the U.S. have a fair chance to tell their stories.
She wants to focus on providing a pathway to citizenship for those immigrants already in the US and to stop the raids, stop the round-ups, stop the deporting of people who are living here doing their lives, doing their jobs.
Foreign policy
Border walls notwithstanding, the candidates are much closer on foreign policy than domestic issues. Both have expressed concerns about TTIP and TPP, trade deals currently under negotiation between the US and their allies in Asia and Europe, partially in response to voters in both parties.
Both have pledged to ramp up military action against ISIS and develop tough strategies to combat international terrorism, but their approaches are very different: Hillary Clinton has pushed for a no-fly-zone in Syria which would put the US and Russia at loggerheads, and Trump has argued for more flexibility for Russia.
Hillary Clinton has publicly referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a bully while Trump has praised Putin as a "strong" leader.
Clinton has also shown herself to be much more pro-Europe, speaking out against Brexit, which Donald Trump praised, and praising the US's NATO allies, whom Donald Trump says need to do more to defend themselves.
Scrambling to defuse a massive scandal, South Korean President Park Geun-hye has conceded to politicians the power to name her new prime minister, a move which could seriously damage, or even destroy, her ability to govern.
Ms Park, who has faced tens of thousands of protesters and an investigation into whether a mysterious confidante manipulated government decisions, made the overture during a meeting with National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun.
Just being forced to work with a deputy named by politicians - previously a decision left up to the president - would weaken her ability to make basic decisions and influence power in the assembly.
But politicians, who must still settle on a prime minister nominee, are demanding even more. Some opposition members want the president to divorce herself from all domestic affairs and focus only on foreign matters, while others want her to stay out of government completely.
These scenarios would destroy Ms Park's authority as president during her last 15 months in office, forcing her to voluntarily yield large parts, or maybe even all, of her presidential powers to a prime minister named by an opposition-controlled legislature.
Nevertheless, it is still unclear what the splintered assembly will decide on, or when - or what Ms Park will agree to. Msd Park's ruling party is divided between those who support her and those who do not, and the opposition, while having more members than the ruling party, is also split into factions.
The prime minister is largely a ceremonial job, though by law he or she directs executive ministries under the order of the president and has other important rights. There have always been calls to give the office more power to balance the large role the president has.
Last week Ms Park nominated a new prime minister, but he is likely to withdraw from consideration after Ms Park allowed the legislature to pick a new nominee.
The current nominee, Kim Byong-joon, told reporters that he would be in charge of social and economic issues and fully exercise the rights as a prime minister if his nomination received parliamentary approval. Ms Park's office said on Tuesday that those conditions endorsed by Ms Park would still stand for a new nominee.
The political tug-of-war over the prime minister comes amid a scandal involving Ms Park's longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, who has no official government role. Investigators are looking into whether Ms Choi made major government decisions and used her relationship with Ms Park to force companies to donate money to two foundations controlled by Ms Choi.
Earlier on Tuesday, South Korean prosecutors raided the Seoul office of Samsung Electronics, the nation's largest and most valuable company, in connection with the scandal.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office provided no other details. The Yonhap news agency said investigators suspect Samsung gave Ms Choi's daughter illicit financial help.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Seoul over the weekend, demanding Ms Park's removal from office. Her approval ratings were, at one point, the worst of any president since South Korea gained democracy in the late 1980s.
Nam Jeong-su, spokesman of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the more militant of South Korea's two large umbrella union groups, said he expects 150,000 anti-Park unionists, plus supporters, to gather on Saturday and march to the presidential Blue House.
Ms Park's government, meanwhile, said on Tuesday that she would miss an Asia-Pacific leaders' meeting in Peru later this month. The announcement sparked media speculation that the scandal may have forced Ms Park to cancel her plans to attend the summit, though officials said the decision was made before the scandal exploded and is aimed at focusing on how to deal with North Korea's nuclear programme.
AP
Smoke rises during clashes between Peshmerga forces and Islamic State militants in the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
The Iraqi military says it has found some 100 decapitated bodies in a mass grave south of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul.
The spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, said the bodies were discovered on Monday near the agricultural college in the town of Hamam al-Alil. Most were reduced to skeletons.
A forensics team from Baghdad will investigate the site on Tuesday. The state of the bodies made it difficult to tell by their clothes if they were soldiers or civilians.
IS has carried out several massacres since it swept into northern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014, often documenting them with photos and videos circulated online.
Iraqi forces launched a massive operation last month to drive the extremists from Mosul and surrounding areas.
Iraqi Kurdish fighters exchanged heavy fire with militants earlier in the day as they advanced from two directions into a town held by the IS east of Mosul.
Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close A member of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces holds his weapon as forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) A man holds a child while Civilians leave their houses, as Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces fight against Islamic State militants, in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016.(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016.(AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) A newly displaced woman runs after she jumped over a back wall and rushed to grab humanitarian packages, as smoke rises from a burning oil refinery at a processing centre in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq October 25, 2016. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces collect villagers for preliminary investigation before taking them to displaced people camps in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) A member of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces in a military convoy flashes a victory sign as forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) Civilians leave their houses, as Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces fight against Islamic State militants, in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5.6 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) / Facebook
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Whatsapp A member of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces holds his weapon as forces advance toward Islamic State positions in the village of Tob Zawa, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) from Mosul, Iraq, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2016. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
The offensive to reclaim the town of Bashiqa is part of the broader push to drive IS out of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city and the militants' last major urban stronghold in the country.
Combat began at dawn with a Kurdish barrage of heavy artillery, Katyusha rockets and mortar rounds striking IS positions, providing cover for the advance of armoured vehicles.
Smoke rose from the town throughout the day, with large explosions sending dark clouds into the sky.
"We have the coordinates of their bases and tunnels, and we are targeting them from here in order to weaken them so that our forces can reach their targets more easily," said Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga commander Brigadier General Iskander Khalil Gardi.
Bashiqa, which is believed to be largely deserted except for dozens of IS fighters, is located about 8 miles north-east of the edge of Mosul and about 13 miles from the city centre.
Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, backed by a US-led coalition and joined by government-sanctioned militias, are fighting to drive IS out of those surrounding areas and open additional fronts to attack Mosul itself.
Bashiqa has been surrounded by Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, for weeks but Monday's push appears to be the most serious yet to drive IS from the town.
Kurdish forces launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery into the town on Sunday in advance of the offensive. More artillery and air strikes hit the town on Monday as the Kurdish forces' advance got under way.
Iraqi special forces entered Mosul last week and have made some progress in gaining a foothold on the city's eastern edges. But progress inside the city has been slowed as troops push into more densely populated areas.
The troops are suffering casualties as the militants have bogged them down with suicide car bombs, booby traps and close-quarters fighting along narrow streets. IS still holds territory to the north, south and west of Mosul.
As Iraqi forces struggle to solidify gains in neighbourhoods in eastern Mosul, more and more civilians are fleeing the city, according to special forces Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Aziz.
"Daesh is trying to draw a line," he said of the heavy fighting in Mosul's easternmost neighbourhoods, referring to IS under its Arabic acronym. "They have a lot of fighters there and they forced families to stay."
Civilians fleeing Mosul are screened at a small checkpoint on the edge of Gogjali, Mosul's easternmost neighbourhood, to catch any IS fighters who may be hiding among them. Since Iraqi forces first pushed into the eastern edge of the city last Tuesday, dozens of people have been arrested.
At the checkpoint, men were waiting for their names to be screened by a pair of informants from the area and multiple Iraqi government databases. Women and children waited further back from the road near an abandoned building.
Gayda, a 42-year-old woman from Mosul, said she fled the Samah neighbourhood in the city's east just hours earlier, after a car bomb exploded next to her home.
When they reached the checkpoint, her husband and son were separated from her and her daughter, and held for questioning a few yards away.
"How can he be from Daesh, he's so young," she said of the 18-year old son. "We are good people, we don't have any enemies."
An Iraqi soldier with a man suspected of being a member of Isil, outside Mosul. Photo: Reuters
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces stormed an Isil-held town northeast of Mosul yesterday, trying to clear a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the jihadists in its eastern neighbourhoods.
As the operation against Isil's Iraqi stronghold entered its fourth week, fighters across the border launched an offensive in the Syrian half of the jihadist group's self-declared caliphate, targeting its base in the city of Raqqa.
An alliance of US-backed Kurdish and Arab groups launched the campaign for Raqqa, where Isil has been dug in for nearly three years, with an assault on territory about 50km to the north, which they have dubbed 'Euphrates Anger'.
The battle for Raqqa will be every bit as challenging as the one for Mosul, with both cities carrying huge strategic and symbolic value to the jihadists and their self-declared caliphate.
The Iraqi operation, involving a 100,000-strong alliance of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militias, backed by US-led air strikes and a global consensus against the jihadis, has so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.
The Raqqa campaign, launched amid a complex civil war in Syria which has divided world powers, is not coordinated with President Bashar al-Assad or the Syrian army. The Kurdish element of SDF groups fighting towards Raqqa also makes them an unlikely force to recapture the Arab city.
"It is difficult to put a time frame on the operation at present. The battle will not be easy," a Syrian Kurdish source said.
In Bashiqa, some 15km from Mosul, the first waves of a 2,000-strong peshmerga force entered the town on foot and in armoured vehicles or Humvees.
Artillery earlier pounded the town, which lies on the Nineveh plains at the foot of a mountain.
"Our aim is to take control and clear out all the Daesh (Isil) militants," Lieutenant-Colonel Safeen Rasoul said. "Our estimates are there are about 100 still left and 10 suicide cars."
Isil fighters have sought to slow the offensive on Mosul with waves of suicide car bomb attacks. Iraqi commanders say there have been 100 on the eastern front and 140 in the south.
A top Kurdish official said the jihadists had also deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells filled with chlorine gas and mustard gas and trained snipers.
As a peshmerga column moved into Bashiqa yesterday, a loud explosion rocked the convoy, and two large plumes of white smoke could be seen just 15m away. A peshmerga officer said two suicide car bombs had tried to hit the advancing force.
CONCORD- Some hardworking Cabarrus County Schools employees will receive a $500 bonus in December.
During its work session on Monday, Nov. 7 the Cabarrus County Board of Education approved staffs recommendation of merit base bonuses for non-educators. No teachers are eligible.
Finance Officer Kelly Kluttz said merit pay is an approach to compensation that rewards the high-performing employees with additional pay or incentive pay. She said merit pay is the best way to reward the employees that go above and beyond.
Kluttz said during the budget process the North Carolina Board of Education allocated $376,725 to the Cabarrus County board to be used for these merit bonuses.
Each school board was tasked with coming up with their own plan to award the bonuses with the following restrictions:
- Shall not pay the bonus as an across the board bonus
- Only state-funded personnel are eligible for a bonus from the state funds
- Bonus is not subject to retirement
- Bonus is one-time and non recurring
This money was allocated for folks other than teaching staff, Kluttz said.
Employees eligible for the bonuses include teacher assistants, interpreters, therapists, parent liaisons, office support, technicians, administrative specialists, drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, skilled trades, managers, before and after school care staff, directors, supervisors, principals, assistant principals, deans, the chief financial officer, assistant superintendents, associate superintendents and the superintendent.
To make a decision on how to distribute the bonuses, the school district created a committee made up of administrators, staff members and Superintendent Dr. Chris Lowder.
After deliberating the committee decided that the employees 2015-16 evaluation and present performance will be considered in making the bonus decisions. The employee must not have any discipline letters, memos or action plans to be eligible.
You have to be an employee and cannot have retired, Assistant Superintendent Glenda Jones, said. And this does not apply to employees who have worked six months or less because they would still be considered temporary.
Employees that work less than 20 hours a week are also ineligible.
Kluttz then informed the board the bonus will be $500 for full-time, permanent employees and it will be prorated for employees that work between 20 and 40 hours a week.
The state allocated about $350 for each employee but if you approve this the board will allocate from our fund balance to make up the difference and get to $500, Kluttz said.
She said the bonuses would be paid on December 27 in order to minimize tax impacts for the employees.
All-in-all merit pay is the best way to reward the employees that go above and beyond, Kluttz said. Merit pay sends a powerful message about what you want to recognize and reward in employee efforts and contributions.
After Kluttzs presentation Board Member Jeff Phillips asked if staff had any idea how many non-certified staff members would be eligible.
She said there was really no way of knowing until all of the data was collected, but she said she is expecting around 1,500 people.
Then Vice Chair Carolyn Carpenter asked if this amount of money was something Kluttz felt comfortable with. Kluttz responded and said she would not have brought it to the board if she didnt feel comfortable with it and the fact that it was a one-time bonus impacted her decision.
I want to remind everyone that last year we did do an increase in teacher supplements. We do appreciate everyone, Carpenter said. We want to make sure we always remember our teachers. We arent forgetting anybody.
Lowder also reminded the board that since the state said teachers were ineligible for the bonus; staff had to come up with a plan that didnt involve them.
Im glad its for high-performing employees because I think competition is a good thing, Board Member David Harrison added. Im tickled pink.
However Board Member Rob Walter expressed concerns on using fund balance money to meet the difference and suggested the board go through more deliberations before making a decision.
In response to Walter, Board Member Tim Furr said, What better way to spend money than on employees?
Before there was any more discussion Carpenter made a motion to approve the bonuses with the extra money from the board to make them $500, and the board agreed.
This is an opportunity for us to do something. The state may have allocated money but by the time you take taxes out, you are probably looking at less, she said. If we are going to give them something, lets give them something worthwhile.
Now that the merit bonuses are approved, principals will begin pulling data and evaluations to determine which employees should be rewarded.
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A view of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Photo by biotour13
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump launched his fiery campaign in June 2015 with calls for a wall along the United States border with Mexico, vowing to make America's southern neighbor "pay" for it somehow
But as citizens of the Tohono Oodham Nation point out, the border was imposed on their territory without their consent. They travel back and forth between Arizona and Mexico for ceremonies and to visit relatives and friends and a wall is out of the question for them.
Over my dead body will anyone build a wall there. I will personally do whatever is necessary to make sure a wall is not built there," Vice Chairman Verlon Jose told The Huffington Post, relaying the tribe's position against the wall.
Tribal citizens already face problems when they cross the border due to concerns about drug smugglers, crime and terrorism. And some who who lack birth certificates aren't even considered American citizens even though they were born on the Arizona portion of the reservation, which runs about 75 miles along the U.S.-Mexico boundary.
Jose wasn't among a small group of tribal leaders who met with Trump in June of this year although he was invited to attend. The Republican nominee has since announced a Native American Coalition but has not offered any Indian policy specifics, including whether he would build the wall without the consent of the Tohono O'odham Nation.
Jose is not part of the Native American Coalition, which is short on prominent or respected figures in Indian Country.
Read More on the Story: Trumps Border Wall Will Have A 75-Mile-Wide Gap In It (The Huffington Post 11/6)
Also Today: After 'Pocahontas' Slurs, Trump May Tip Native American Voters Toward Clinton (Haaretz 11/7)
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A #NoDAPL water protection effort in North Dakota was met by another big law enforcement response on November 2, 2016. Photo by Red Warrior Camp
The prime issue along the current pipeline route is the one that energized the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native Americans many months ago a pattern of deep injustice. Its a pattern that extends back to the erosion of treaty rights starting in the 1860s through court fights following U.S. Army Corps of Engineers damming projects along the Missouri River, according to Peter Capossela, an attorney specializing in federal Indian law who has represented the Standing Rock tribe in the past. When you have time, listen to Capossela in an interview with TYT Politics Reporter Jordan Chariton. The Corps issuing the permits for Dakota Access is part of a long history of oppression against Standing Rock, Capossela told Chariton, adding: The war against the standing rock Sioux tribe is the longest war in American history, and this is a new front. Hopefully, theres enough logic and power in the basic justice issue, in which a pipeline route was redrawn to avoid mainly-white populations and property north of Bismarck, to carry the day once the election is over.
The battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline isn't just about oil or climate change. New York Times environmental writer Andrew C. Revkin has more on the long history of broken treaties and broken promises by the federal government:
Read More: Andrew C. Revkin: The Core Issue in the Dakota Pipeline Fight is Sioux Rights, Not Oil (The New York Times 11/7)
Another Opinion: Editorial: Protesting the Dakota pipeline is not cut and dried (The Washington Post 11/6)
Also Today: Environmentalists Target Bankers Behind Pipeline (The New York Times 11/8) Showdown over N. Dakota pipeline provides lesson in power and perils of protest (The Washington Post 11/7) Iowa landowners on pipeline work: 'They show no respect' (The Des Moines Register 11/5)
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Rick Weiland. Photo from Facebook
South Dakota: The hotbed of political reform
By Rick WeilandFor the Native Sun News Today
This November, South Dakota has an opportunity to lead the nation by passing three ballots measures that will dramatically reform our politics and send a message to Washington and the rest of the country.
In 1898, South Dakota became the first state in the Union to allow the voters to petition their government by using ballot measures to shape public policy. Now, 24 states have some form of an initiated measure process where the citizens can legislate when they feel their elected officials will not.
After years of inaction, both in Washington and in Pierre, the people of South Dakota overwhelming passed a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage $1.25, from $7.25 to $8.50, with a cost of living allowance end-running a state legislature too beholden to special interests and their lobbyists. Contrary to the propaganda at the time, the sky didnt fall, unemployment didnt escalate and businesses didnt close their doors. Unemployment in South Dakota remains among the lowest in the nation.
When our state consistently ranks in the top five of states most at risk of corruption; when scandals like EB-5 and Gear-Up destroy confidence in our elected leaders and government by squandering hundreds of millions of dollars; when sweetheart government contracts, suicides, murders, lawsuits and felony charges dominate our daily news and coffee talk, then it is time for reform.
Recently, in a New York Times article entitled, Can the States Save Democracy? South Dakota was singled out as the hotbed of political reform citing three ballot measure efforts on gerrymander reform, clean money and a proposed nonpartisan primary. Like 1898, South Dakota in 2016 can show the rest of the nation the way forward by passing a trifecta of reform and starting a political reform movement to take our country back from the big money special interests and the hyper-partisanship that is destroying it.
South Dakotas chance to lead and save our democracy starts by voting yes and passing Amendments T through V and Initiated Measure 22
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: South Dakota: The hotbed of political reform
(Rick Weiland is a small business owner, former United States Senate candidate and co-founder of TakeItBack.Org, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on reforming our political system)
Copyright permission Native Sun News
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1. Akshay Kumar visited the BSF base camp in Jammu on Tuesday to pay tribute to soldiers who have lost their lives in ceasefire violations.
YouTube Screengrab
Akshay said, "There are so many ppl in our country who want to help our armed forces, why not make an app for it?- Akshay Kumar at BSF base camp in Jammu."
2. Aditya Chopra spills the beans on Shah Rukh Khan's life and his career in a book that is going to release soon.
Pinterest
The book has a segment by Aditya Chopra, who definitely has a major role in shaping up Shah Rukh Khan's career. Aditya Chopra revealed how he and Yash Chopra didn't find SRK promising. Just like the character of Raj, my relationship with Shah Rukh has also evolved over the last two decades. An excerpt quotes Aditya saying, "When we cast him for Darr, to be honest, neither dad, nor I really liked him. Neither of us were very impressed but somehow, maybe because everyone kept rejecting the negative part, we ended up signing him."
3. After several rumors around Kareena and his baby, Saif Ali Khan released a statement that is beyond epic.
Pinterest
Saif's statement reads: "I want to let everyone know that we have not yet had our child and we still don't know the sex of the child. We will not be having our child in London and the name of the child will definitely not be called Saifeena."
4. A commercial starring Comedian Bharti Singh is winning the internet and for all the right reasons.
Screengrab
Bharti Singh's new ad points to the concept of body-shaming and the fact that no matter how much you weigh, you are beautiful. The ad is being liked by everyone.
5. Bipasha Basu royally rubbishes pregnancy rumors, slams media for false reports.
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In a media statement, Bipasha said, I wish people would respectfully leave these major life decisions to us. Absolutely untrue rumors.
Imagine you are at the airport waiting for your flight and then you see Bollywood's beloved Shah Rukh Khan sitting next to you? I mean for a crazy Shah Rukh Khan fan like me, it would be a dream come true! *Sigh*
Sushmita and Shah Rukh, who were seen together in Main Hoon Na sizzled on the big screen and they have shared a beautiful rapport ever since. Sush's daughters had their fangirl-moment with SRK when they bumped into him at the Dubai airport.
Both SRK and Sushmita were traveling back to Mumbai. Seeing Shah Rukh, Sush's daughters Renee and Alisah could not contain their excitement.
Red Chillies
Sushmita took to Instagram to post a picture and captioned it as, "Renee thrilled to be color coordinated with Shahrukh , I am thrilled to have Alisah finally stand still in one place. Finally, we have a well-behaved picture of the #happygang thank you @iamsrk for being YOU!!! Always loved and cherished!!! #friends #memories#astateofgrace #mmuuaahh."
In one of her photos, Sush wrote about 'gentleman' SRK who didn't even let her pick her bags. Here are the pictures that will give you a major Main Hoon Na nostalgia.
Time to watch Main Hoon Na once again!
Red Chillies
Jammat-ud-Dawah chief and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed has threatened India with a "surgical strike" by Kashmiri militants in Jammu and Kashmir that will long be remembered.
AFP
"(Prime Minister Narendra) Modi had done what he had to. Now it is the turn of Mujahideen to carry out a surgical strike in Kashmir," Saeed threatened while addressing a rally on Sunday in Mirpur, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
"The surgical strike Mujahideen are going to carry out will long be remembered. Such a strike will not be like that of India's one which is not even acknowledged by the world," Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, said in an aggressive tone amid chants of 'jihad...jihad' by his supporters.
AFP/representational image
Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba who carries a $10-million bounty on his head, last week criticised the Nawaz Sharif government for giving a "cool" response to India over alleged atrocities in Kashmir, saying people in the Valley need Pakistan's "full practical support".
AFP
Soon after India's surgical strikes Saeed had warned the Modi government to get ready to face a surgical strike from the Pakistan army.
He was criticised here for issuing the statement on behalf of the army.
While the Delhi'ites are reeling under poisonous pollution, and the authorities are scratching their heads to find out ways to curb pollution, there is a lot that has been lost. In the current scenario, it seems, politics has come before an honest public policy. Leaders in Delhi are eyeing the polls in Punjab, while leaving common men in the lurch.
AFP
All parties including Congress, BJP and Aam Admi Party, passed the buck on farmers for colossal levels of pollution in Delhi. But when same set of leaders went to Punjab, none talked about it because they feared of losing the farmer votes.
While Congress announced a loan waiver for the farmers along with several other promises, BJP and AAP to had long list of promises ready to garner votes.
NASA
Rest assured that you would not have to worry about any of your loans. With Rs 35,000 crore of the total rural indebtedness in the state contributed by farm debts, this is an issue of serious concern not only for the state but also the Central government, Cnngress leader Captain Amarinder Singh was quoted in Chandigarh Tribune.
wikipedia
Though SAD-BJP alliance is facing anti-incumbency conundrums, Badals too are leaving no stone unturned to woo voters and they neither want to talk about pollution nor they wanna effectively implement to orders to Punjab and Haryana High Court to ban crop burning.
Despite the court calling for ban, several fire spots have been noticed from satellite imaginary which show the massive crop burning is going on various districts of Punjab. In fact, Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) doesn't even make the data of ambient air quality public.
BCCL
Apart from talking about Punjabi Suba, which if happens would further divide Punjab for the third time after portion of 1947 and 1966 when Haryana was carved out of Punjab, Badals has made several other promises minus the promise to contain pollution.
Badals, while anticipate a possible end for their 10 year old rule have gone back to age rhetoric of not giving water to Haryana while making it a matter of Punjab's pride.
"Even if Haryana adopts any kind of a resolution, we will not allow a drop of our water to flow into other states. Punjabs economy is agri-based and it cannot afford to compromise on its waters which are the lifeline of agriculture, deputy CM, Sukhbir Badal was quoted in The Tribune.
BCCL
While Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal recently blamed farmers in Punjab and Haryana for turning Delhi into gas chambers, he didn't utter single word about pollution and straw burning when he camped in Punjab in the last leg of October.
Kejriwal, much like SAD and Congress, played on rhetoric and promises to woo voters. Apart from making Punjab drug free, Kejriwal promised a 10-year tax holiday for agro-based food processing industries in Punjab.
"A 10-year tax holiday for Agro-based food processing and other industries, interest-free loans for agro-units employing at least 80 per cent workforce from Punjab," AAP manifesto reads.
AFP
Crop still rampant in Haryana
According to the story Published in The Tribune, The Haryana Space Application Research (HARSAC), which has compiled the data for a month, stated that a total of 8,859 active fire locations had been detected through satellite from October 7 to November 7.
The highest number of fire locations had been recorded in Fatehabad district (2,536), followed by Kaithal (1,299), Karnal (1,272), Sirsa (1,056) and Kurukshetra (805). These districts are known as the paddy belt.
Till as late as November 7, satellite images spotted a total of 976 fire spots in paddy stubble spotted across the state. The districts like Fatehabad, Jind, Sirsa, and Hisar are major areas where farmers are burning paddy stubble.
Fatehabad has recorded a massive 2,536 fire locations in last one month.
Apart from the loss of life, the Chennai floods left a lasting impact on the city's many libraries. Five libraries of the city were completely destroyed by the flood. A city of bibliophiles, it wasn't long before the people began efforts to salvage what they could and seek out ways of restoring the honour of the Tamil bibliophiles.
Of all the libraries affected, the one at Ashok Nagar was the worst affected. The library had lost 1.5 lakh books! It is the largest District Central Library in the state and has 17,000 paid members. On an average 500 books were borrowed daily before the floods.
A Facebook page called Save Chennai Libraries has been mobilising efforts for the past year to encourage people to donate Tamil books to the libraries.
Save Chennai Libraries
Over the year, the effort has seen the participation of known and unknown people. Among the known names are parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor and among the unknown names are a lady named Vedavalli whose entire personal collection has come to the libraries. There is also Najma Basu, a resident of Kolkata and a widow of an English professor who has donated several lakhs worth of books to the libraries.
Sujai G Pillai coordinates for the #Save the Library Movement spoke to TOI, "Our biggest individual contribution though came from a Najma Basu in Kolkata, the widow of an English professor, who couriered more than several lakhs worth of books here." Basu still has 1,000 books left over from the 3800-book collection that belonged to her late husband. It was Shashi Tharoor who helped her connect with the Save the Library movement. "My husband's only desire before he passed away was to donate his books to a worthy cause. When I read about the Chennai floods, and then heard about the libraries that were destroyed I knew I had found the perfect resting place for his legacy," says Najma, who had approached Tharoor two years ago.
"He had promised me that my books would reach the right place. At least I know 2,000 of them have," she adds.
Save Chennai Libraries
In a post on Facebook, the organisers said, "3500 books. In 2 months. With just social media as a tool. Thank you all donors and volunteers. We have wound up our restocking effort of the Ashok Nagar Public library. The library is back on its feet. There are more institutional donors donating books. Library is buzzing with subscribers."
In another post, the organisers say, "This online drive had some unexpected pleasures. Some people who contacted us hardly knew Tamil but wanted to help a library get back to its feet. We had people across the world donating to buy books in a language that they could not read to a library they may never visit. In a way, it was to be expected.
Once a bibliophile, always a bibliophile."
Save Chennai Libraries
With PAVA shells not meeting the expectations of the security forces in tackling the violent mobs in Jammu and Kashmir, the agencies have prepared a new list of gadgets, to be procured to quell the protesters effectively such as bunker periscopes, ear-deafening acoustic devices and electromagnetic shock-delivering sticks.
AFP
Officials said the list has been prepared following a series of high-level meetings and approvals of various agencies such as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF), J&K Police, central security agencies and the Union home ministry.
The most powerful non-lethal device the forces desire to procure is the Long Range Acoustic Device. The device produces an irritating, terrible and deafening 140-decibel sound. keeping protesters away from its 'screaming' range.
AFP
What is Long Range Acoustic Device
A LARD immobilises the target immediately and the state of shock remains for some time, thereby providing an opportunity to the forces to nab it.
ALSO READ: Everything You Need To Know About The Chilli-Based PAVA Shell Which Will Replace Pellet Guns In Kashmir
AFP
Keeping in mind the situation in the Kashmir Valley where protesters hurl bricks and shrapnels from narrow lanes and by-lanes, the security agencies wish to procure a 'tactical periscope' which stealthily monitors the "activities of unruly mobs" by jutting out of a bunker or from behind a wall, without exposing the location of the forces.
What is shock shield stick
Shock shield stick delivers a "high-voltage, non-lethal but effective electrostatic shock conduction" to the target which, in this case, are protesting mobs.
The stick, when triggered, spews visible shock sparks (to act as an additional deterrent) and temporarily paralyses the target, but does not result in a permanent neuro-muscular incapacitation.
AFP
"The specifications have been finalised and circulated. The forces want to procure these items as soon as possible," a senior official said, quoting the qualitative requirements, which PTI has access to.
A set of 'disposable handcuffs', made of nylon, as compared to the regular ones made of iron, is also on the list of the security forces.
These devices have been finalised after studying the recommendations of a special committee, constituted by the Union home ministry, to suggest alternatives to pellet guns.
The Centre is mulling to reconfigure the PAVA shells, recently introduced in Kashmir for crowd control as an alternative to pellet guns, as these proved to be "less effective" due to a number of anomalies.
AFP
The security forces in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the CRPF, have come up with an on-ground assessment report, saying the 'chilli-based' shells were not able to "fully deter" the protesting mobs, sources had said.
PAVA was introduced following the recommendations of the panel constituted by the Union Home Ministry to find an alternative to pellet guns for crowd control, following an uproar in Kashmir after the usage of the latter led to fatalities. Until recently, The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were using 14 types of less lethal and nonlethal munitions include Oleoresin grenades, pepper balls, stun grenades and electronic shells, to control crowds during the ongoing protests in Kashmir.
Imagine working for 35 years and working hard too. Climbing ranks with slow but steady pace and finally reaching the pinnacle of your sector where you again put in a decade of hardwork. And after your retirement, you're forced to fight for your rightful pension for next 20 years!!!
Yes, that's what has happened to Gajanan Dahotre!
Slamming the Union government for denying a retired Bank of India (BOI) CMD pension because he was promoted early, the Bombay high court has directed that he be given all benefits with arrears and accrued interest starting from 1995.
TOI/Representational Image
Gajanan Dahotre, now above 80, who worked for 38 years in public sector banks, said he was promoted by the Union finance ministry "in the national interest" in 1986 to a "board level" post as a whole-time director after completing almost nine years in a "career level" post. He was 51, then.
But after he retired, the ministry in 1995 said new pension rules required him to have completed 10 years in a career level post and withheld his pension.
A 20-year struggle to get his dues ended when a high court bench headed by Justice Anoop Mohta on October 27 rap`ped the Union finance ministry for its "arbitrary'' action and "non-application of mind" to deny him a pension.
healthylife/Representational Image
Dahotre moved the court in 2014. His lawyer, Sanjay Kher, argued that a June 2014 order by BOI holding him ineligible for pension be set aside. The HC agreed. It said, " A person like him cannot be denied his pensionary benefits... the regulation, a technicality, is causing him great injustice."
Dahotre began his career as a probationary assistant with the State Bank of India in 1957. His rise was steady and two decades later he was the chief manager (merchant banking division) at BOI. In 1986, the finance ministry ordered him to assume higher responsibility as a whole time director at Dena Bank, despite being aware of the 10-year service eligibility requirement for payment of provident fund and gratuity, argued Kher.
He said BOI's gratuity rules treated such an employee as "deemed to have retired from his career-level post, upon such promotion".The ministry did condone his shortfall, then, and ordered BOI to pay him his PF and gratuity in June 1986.
ET/Representational Image
In 1988, the Union government appointed Dahotre as CMD of Dena Bank and in 1992 as CMD of BOI. He retired three years later. BOI in 1995, after his retirement, issued pension regulations, stipulating a 10-year service clause at the career-level post. His pension for his entire banking career was thus arbitrarily withheld, Kher pointed out. Several representations and requests under the RTI Act in 2010-11 elicited no reply . Finally, in 2012, BOI said the 10-year rule was an impediment, but recommended his case to the ministry , which still "failed and neglected to give any reply", the HC observed.
Later, in January 2014, BOI in a letter to Dahotre pointed to the ministry's requirement of adherence to the minimum 10-year service rule and regretted that it could do nothing to release his pension.
BOI/Representational Image
The HC, after hearing counsel for the Centre H V Mehta, held that Dahotre was "not in a position to change the timing of his promotion that resulted in denial of his pension, though he worked for 38 years". Looking at his "unblemished career", the court said, "The ministry ought to have accepted recommendations made by the bank earlier.The concept of public service cannot be considered so narrowly when Dahotre had risen to the call of duty for benefit of the government of India, by serving with another nationalized bank. Such public service needs to be recognized and not seen as a disadvantage in denying him pension."
A 25-year-old woman had to pay with her life, apparently because she wished to continue with her studies to become a schoolteacher.
Shipra Koley was found hanging at her in-laws' house at Jagadishpur in Liluah late on Sunday.
The next day, her husband, Raju Koley, was arrested after victim's father lodged a complaint, stating that her in-laws, who tortured her for wanting to study further, had killed her.
TOI
Sipra, a resident of Ranihati in Howrah, got married to Raju three years ago. Having completed her MA, Shipra wanted to pursue a BEd course so that she could apply for a schoolteacher's post.
But, according to her father Ashta Mandal, her in-laws, who ran a gold jewellery business in Kolkata, refused to let her study as "it was their family's tradition not to continue with education after marriage".
Her in-laws insisted that Shipra should be nothing else but a homemaker and would torture her mentally and physically over this matter, Mandal alleged.
It was around 8pm on Sunday that Shipra's body was reportedly found hanging from the ceiling, with several injuries all over her body . Her in-laws called up her parents, claiming she had committed suicide.The police arrived at the spot and the body was sent for post-mortem.
thehawk.in/Representational Image
But refusing to buy the suicide theory , Mandal lodged a complaint at the Liluah police station on Monday, alleging she would be mentally and physically tortured and that she had been murdered.
After the police rounded up Shipra's husband, he claimed innocence, stating that he had been away for work and had no clue why his wife ended her life.
Confirming Shipra's body bore several cuts and injuries, the police said it could be indicative of physical torture. The police are awaiting the autopsy report and will further interrogate Raju.
You can take an Indian out of India, but you can certainly never take India out of an Indian.
No kidding! Our chalta-hai attitude got a 39-year-old man in trouble when he tried to pull off a fake bomb scare at Geneva airport to avoid missing his flight.
A CHF50,000 or INR 34 lakhs fine awaits #Indian man responsible for bomb hoax at #Geneva airport https://t.co/42c34GGm3I Anand Chandrasekhar (@anand_csekhar) November 8, 2016
Indian who set off bomb scare at Geneva airport to avoid missing his flight fined 51200$. Hoax callers be aware. https://t.co/HKazZdhxqF Vijay Maroo (@vijaymaroo) November 8, 2016
Indian man fined $51K, jailed for bomb hoax at Geneva airport.. https://t.co/AGxwpfuKCt NewsBoss.in (@NewsBossIndia) November 7, 2016
The man, who's name has not been disclosed as yet, reportedly claimed to an Aeroflot employee at Genevas Cointrin airport that his Moscow-bound plane had a bomb.
He has now been jailed for six months and fined approximately INR 34 Lakh (50,000 Swiss francs) for his truly brilliant idea/act.
nirvanosh
The man, who lives in the Swiss town of Montreux, was arrested at the airport and sentenced to six months in prison, reports said. An officer on duty further clarified that his fine amount would be enough to pay 101 police officers and six public security agents, who rushed to the airport to respond to this situation.
As many as 116 passengers were asked to disembark the plane for a thorough check.
nationaljournal
Considering the times we are living in, we have to take maximum of security precautions, the officer explained.
Geneva police have made it absolutely clear that they won't tolerate such hoaxsters, and will levy on them heavy penalties.
Since the news of a murder case against Delhi University Professor Nandini Sundar came out, there has been debate over the action by the Chhattisgarh Police.
While the administration says that the case has been filed after the wife of the deceased villager approached police, activists believe that it is a part of a continuous witch-hunt carried out against the academics, lawyers, and journalists who are raising their voices for the Adivasis and reporting atrocities carried out by the state administration.
PTI
Prof Sundar, who is known for her ardent support of the rights of the Adivasis, has been working along with lawyers and journalists to give the voice to the unheard tribals.
The case registered against Prof Nandini Sundar and other academicians and activists who had visited Bastar in May 2016, of murder, conspiracy, arms act, etc is a pure act of vindictiveness by the Chhattisgarh police. The team members could not possibly have had any connection with this crime. It is a reaction to the CBI 's charge sheet indicting policemen of arson and atrocities. The CBI had carried out the enquiry on directions of the Apex Court in the case filed by Prof Sundar, said Advocate Sudha Bhardwaj, from Bilaspur High Court.
A Professor of sociology at the prestigious Delhi School of Economics, Sundar recently published a book named, The Burning Forest: Indias War In Bastar, in which she brought to the forth the hardship faced by the Adivasis.
She is credited to have conducted extensive research on the subject. She raised many eyebrows with her take on linkages between natural resources and militarisation, counter-insurgency and the state of democracy, and how middle-class dreams are responsible for the dehumanisation of Adivasis.
Besides Prof Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU Professor), Vineet Tiwari (from Delhi's Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate (Chhatsgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) have been booked along with other alleged Maoists in the area.
Lakhan Singh, president, Peoples Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) Chhatisgarh, believes that the case has been filed with an intention to deter activists, academics, Journalists and lawyers.
The authorities are hell bent to kill the voice of the people. All those who speak for people are dealt with in this way. Last month, policemen burnt the effigies of Nandani and Archana and others. Authorities hate them for their work. They want nothing should be reported from this part of India, Singh said.
HT
Nandani has worked in Bastar for almost two decades. People here know her pretty well. Its all a conspiracy against her.
Prof Sundar is known for her efforts in getting the Salwa Judum (earlier known as Jan Jagran Abhiyan), declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2011. She has consistently criticised the state for what she calls waging a war against its own people. She has previously published a book Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar (1854-2006) in 2006, where she has chronicled the story of Adivasis of Bastar reeling under state repression.
This is clearly a case of vendetta. Nandani has an impeccable record when it comes to working for human rights. The government has been singling out journalists, lawyers and activists who try to shed light the reality in those areas, says Mahtab Alam, a human rights activist.
In her defence, Prof Sundar has lashed out at the authorities saying that she is being targeted for her work.
TOI
"The FIR filed against us by the Bastar police is patently absurd. We condemn the killing of Shamnath Baghel. This is clearly part of IG Kalluri's attempt to intimidate and harass journalists, lawyers, researchers, political leaders and human rights activists who have exposed the reign of fake encounters, gang rapes etc. that are going on in Bastar. In particular, this is a direct fall out of the CBI chargesheet of special police officers turned constables for arson in Tadmetla in 2011, an operation which Mr. Kalluri directed. First our effigies were burnt by the police and now a false FIR is being filed against us," she posted on Facebook.
According to police they have been booked under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC on a complaint of the wife of a tribal who was killed on November 4 in Chhattisgarh.
Shamnath Baghel, a resident of Nama village under the Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area was killed with sharp weapons, allegedly by Maoists.
Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading the protest against Naxal activities in their village since April this year.
It is wrong to blame Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal alone for the mess the national capital has created itself when it comes to air pollution.
But being the chief minister he cannot also run away from the responsibility of taking steps to, if not bring it down, at least make sure that the levels don't worsen any further.
AFP
Unfortunately in 2015 and now in 2016 Kejriwal has failed to come up with any solid steps in this direction.
Last year the AAP government tried to bring the air pollution down by using traffic restrictions, namely #oddeven. The much hyped and yet controversial regulation couldn't make much of an impact as it was limited to just 15 days and made a mess of common commuters life as the national capital's public transport system was not ready for it.
One year down the line, the air pollution has again spiked to dangerous levels and once again Kejriwal has come up with an unconventional solution - artificial rains.
AFP
The AAP government on Monday suggested the Centre to consider engineering artificial rain over Delhi and the NCR region which are grappling with recordbreaking levels of air pollution. At a meeting between the Centre and NCR states, Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain said the Centre should consider (engineering) artificial rains.
What is artificial rain?
Technically called as cloud seeding, it is a method to artificially induce rain by creating an atmosphere for nucleation. Tiny particles of silver iodide are sprayed on a cloud from an aeroplane. Sometimes, solid carbon dioxide called dry ice is used, as it is cheaper. The particles attract water drops from the cloud. When they form a drop that is large enough, it starts raining.
Cloud seeding experiments
If approved, Delhi will be one of the few cities across the world to have done it. Beijing did it effectively in 2008 ahead of the Olympics, even though their reason was entirely different - to have clean skies during the mega sporting event. Others including Singapore and UAE have done the same, but to induce rain and had nothing to do with pollution control.
Cloud Seeding in India
Last year drought-hit states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh tried cloud seeding, but failed to provide any solid result.
Not a viable solution in India
Even though the Chinese have offered its cloud seeding technology to India, many have questioned the practicability here.
Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave said there is a need to examine its workability. We will have to examine technical aspects and its workability. The Aviation Ministry will also have to take a decision. The area involved will be vastmore than 50 kilometres. So, we will seek details from the Aviation Ministry. If it is possible, we will take the necessary steps, he said.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and Delhi is pretty desperate to catch its breath. As the city reels under the impact of the smoke layer and governments yet to put any plan into action to counter the situation, even after a week, Environment Baba will be making an appearance in the Capital to perform a special "yagya" to appease the pantheon of Hindu gods and bring an end to the pollution.
Environment Baba, or Mahamandaliya Sri Sri 1008 Anant Vibhushit Avdhoot Baba Arunagiri Maharaj, has already set off on a journey from Vaishno Devi to Kanyakumari.
HT
Environment Baba spoke to the media at Rishikesh to explain how the yagya will help. According to him, a careful selection of medicinal herbs from the Himalayan region of the country can help become the perfect counter to the toxic pollution in Delhi. And the yagya, of course, will serve to keep the gods happy.
"Through the 'Yagya', the 'Parmatma' gets his fill and keeps the environment clean. It keeps all the 33 crores gods happy. Other countries have also shown faith in this old practice: Japan had a 'Yagya' to control earthquake. It can also treat ailments like chikungunya. It has been proven scientifically that "jadi-bootis" sourced from the Himalayas can kill pollutants," he told News18.
News18
The yatra will touch various sections of the city soon and Environment Baba will be seen riding his "mobile-rath" through the streets. He hopes to reinstate the belief of people in our traditions.
Whatever works!
Even as India continues to push for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, Pakistan yesterday firmly opposed its expansion saying it will only "satisfy the hunger for power and privilege of a few (of) those who want it", Dawn reported.
AFP/representational image
"Adding more permanent seats to Security Council will only serve to satisfy the hunger for power and privilege of a few and not address issue of representation," said Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's Ambassador to the UN on Monday.
Lodhi was addressing a UN General Assembly session on Security Council Reforms.
India has been pushing for reforms of the UN Security Council. Along with other G4 countries - Brazil, Germany, Japan - India was hoping the reform process would be complete by the end of the 70th session of the General Assembly, which ended in September.
samaa.tv
Yesterday, Pakistan's UN envoy said the current lengthy deadlock in the Security Council reform process was because of a handful of states that are seeking to "promote a self arrogated right to an unequal status".
She added that creating new permanent seats would be "the antithesis of principles enshrined in the UN Charter".
However, Lodhi said that Pakistan supports expansion of non-permanent seats in the Security Council to make it "more democratic, accountable, transparent and effective".
Earlier this year, Brazil's envoy to the UN, Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, spoke on behalf of the G4 group.
"The longer we postpone a decision on the reform of the Security Council, the greater discredit brought upon the United Nations in its core function of promoting peace and security," he said adding that "We can no longer go around in circles on Security Council reform", PTI reported Patriota as saying in July.
At a G4 meeting in September this year, the four members said the world needs" a comprehensive reform of the Security Council which needs to take into account the geopolitical realities of the 21st century."
femepress
"With a view to the manifold conflicts and humanitarian crises, a more representative, legitimate and effective Council is needed more than ever to guarantee peace and security worldwide," a joint press statement from the G4 countries said.
In our history books, we have all seen the picture of a kid walking enthusiastically ahead of Mahatma Gandhi holding one end of his walking stick during the historic Dandi March.
While there were no mentions of his name in the history books, the boy was Kanu Ramdas Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma.
Kanu passed away in at a private hospital in Surat on Monday evening at the age of 87.
He has been hospitalised since October 22, after suffering a heart attack and brain haemorrhage which left his body paralysed. He lapsed into a coma, from which he never recovered.
Kanu who was educated in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after his education was sponsored by the then US Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith had worked with NASA and the US Defence Department as a scientist on wing structures of fighter aircraft.
After decades in the US along with his family had moved back to India in 2014 and has been living in various ashrams.
Upon return to India, they kept moving from one place to another as they have no place of their own here. They spent short spells in ashrams or inns, and at one point they were compelled to spend six months in New Delhis Guru Vishram Vruddha Ashram, a friend recalled.
After his plight was reported in the media recently PM Modi had offered to help him, but those close to him say it never arrived.
Yesterday, Delhi went on to become the most polluted city in the world after measuring a hazardous 999 on the Air Quality Index post Diwali celebrations. More like, Diwali failures.
AP
And Delhi's choking its neighbouring cities along with it. Noida, Gurgaon, Agra - you name it and each is suffering the brunt of the burned crackers that people burst (for the lack of a better alliteration). And the following photos prove exactly that. In fact, tourists who are visiting the Taj Mahal are unable to capture the mausoleum as it is blanketed in thick smog.
It's not a pretty sight.
After the longest travel day I've ever had, it was such an amazing experience to see this spectacular monument in the flesh. Unfortunately these photos don't quite do it justice but I promise it's somewhere in there behind all that fog! #tajmahal #getitindia #guessiforgottoputthefoglightson A photo posted by Mat Mason (@showstopper48) on Nov 6, 2016 at 1:13am PST
No matter how hard you try.
Mandatory A photo posted by Mat Mason (@showstopper48) on Nov 6, 2016 at 1:27am PST
The Taj Mahal has never looked this sinister; chiding us for grave suicidal tendencies.
For a skoa einhverja byggingu i okunni #TajMahal #Indland A photo posted by Eyrun Andresdottir (@eeyrun) on Nov 6, 2016 at 1:47am PST
As if the Taj didn't have its own share of pollution to deal with.
#tajmahal #princessdianabench #monumentoflove #dearfuturehusband #beforethecrowd #mistymorning #agra #india A photo posted by Stephanie (@stepheebs) on Nov 6, 2016 at 8:03pm PST
It's hard to miss the killer haze.
Qual a legenda que vcs esperam? Uhuuu! Essa e uma linda historia de amor....Taj mahaaaal, Taj Mahal...tcetchetchetcheretche #legendasurpresa #queoriginal #lindodemaisdaconta A photo posted by @mariaelisalika on Nov 2, 2016 at 10:24pm PDT
It's ruining honeymoons.
A bit of fog this morning in Agra. #tajmahal #india #honeymoon #trippyowl A photo posted by Ben (@monsieuralbert) on Nov 6, 2016 at 3:12am PST
What have we done?
A child was killed and 32 Indian peacekeepers were injured in an explosion in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma, the UN mission said.
AFP/ Representative Image
The blast hit the peacekeepers while they were out on a morning run in the western Goma neighbourhood of Keyshero on Tuesday.
According to the UN mission the peacekeepers were on their way to physical training when the blast happened.
About 18,000 uniformed UN personnel operate in Congo, where millions died in regional conflicts between 1996-2003 and dozens of armed groups continue to operate.
AFP
India is the biggest contributor of soldiers to UN peacekeeping missions. The country has so far taken part in 43 Peacekeeping missions with a total contribution exceeding 180,000 troops.
Is it a coincidence that the US presidential polls are taking place on a Tuesday? Would you trust, if you are told that the 21 century America has a 'religious belief' to do so? Well, here are the reasons why the US does so - holds presidential polls on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, every four years.
AFP
Why on Tuesday?
Tuesday as voting day is more religious than political reasons. The story dates back to 1845, when the US Congress passed a federal law requiring that electors must be appointed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
November was chosen with farmers in mind as election in spring and early summer would have interfered with planting season and early fall overlapped with the harvest.
As for Tuesday the day was chosen keeping in mind that the then voters who had to travel far didn't miss church on Sundays!
Since in the 1800s the US was still largely an agrarian rural community and the most popular means of travel was on horseback, for many of the voters it took the travel of well over a day to cast their vote.
NPR
At that time the farmers usually worked in their fields till Saturday and Sunday was considered a day for rest, and most of them would be spending the day at church, which effectively ruled out the weekends as voting days.
Monday wasn't chosen for the reason that for a majority it took the long travel and the day was meant to reach the voting center. So that is how Tuesday was chosen to elect the most powerful president in the world, and it still for some reasons continues till date.
Without even running for President, North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un may have planned to bomb at the US elections, literally.
According to reports, North Korea may launch a missile at America today. The US and South Korean military are on high alert in the Korean Peninsula after rumours that he may a test the Masudan or BM-35 rocket. Both can hit the US Pacific territory of Guam, Yonhap news agency reported. Guam hosts many US defence assets.
South Korea's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se had expressed fears of North Korea's reaching the 'final stage of nuclear weaponisation'.
South Korea "military is maintaining a posture of readiness and close monitoring, keeping in mind the possibility of tactical provocations at the Punggye-ri nuclear site and the Tongchang-ri [satellite launch station] area," a source told UPI.
This week, Kim has visited the North Korean special operation battalion on Friday.
He spoke to them to 'eliminate the human filth occupying the presidential Blue House, military and the puppet government, all who have committed crimes that cannot be forgiven for all of the eternity.'
And last month, North Korea conducted a powerful nuclear test, of a 'nuclear warhead that has been standardised to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets'. The nuke is expected to be between 10 - 20 kilotonnes, making it the North's 'strongest nuclear test ever'. In context - Hiroshima was 15 kilotonne, and it completely flattened five square miles of the city and killed a lakh people.
The USA Blacklists North Korea's Kim Jong Un For Violating Human Rights And Torturing His People
As the Americans go to poll on Tuesday, there are nerves involved in deciding who should be sent next to the White House - Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. In the run up to the elections, the outcome of the presidential debates remained quite close. For many Americans, however, both the candidates are not worth it.
Reuters/Shreya Kalra
Last night, both candidates made their final pleas for votes to undecided voters. According to the final Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation stats released, Clinton was given a 90 per cent chances of beating Trump to the seat of President of The United States of America. If polls prove right, then India will wake up tomorrow to Hillary Clinton as POTUS.
Reuters
This election has been one of the most bitter and ugly ones America has witnessed. Americas democracy has been made fun of by countries like China. Its Global Media wrote, "To them [Trump] is a good character to show the deficiencies of the democratic system, that such a person could become president. It is just unbelievable."
If theres one line to sum up the sentiment and rationale of most people going to vote tomorrow then it would be: Choosing better of two evils. Lest to say its been an ugly run, especially towards the end when all the skeletons (those that were found at least) were pushed out of the closet.
ALSO READ: ALSO READ: Trump Is Threatening The 'Very Idea Of America', Says First Lady Michelle Obama
With Trumps outright misogyny and sexist comments to him wanting a wall to keep out Mexicans to Hillarys emails fiasco to her corruption charges, America is stuck between a rock and a hard place. One website, 16sucks.com, totally gets the big election picture and is selling election paraphernalia with the slogan, Everybody Sucks *2016* The U.S. Is Doomed.
16sucks.com
Here are some Tweets that some up how Americans feel before the big and final election day tomorrow:
Just in case the elections end in a tie.
Here is American's President: Honald Clump #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/tKiBgUvnKF _ (@annoky) November 8, 2016
Trump or Clinton? #election2016
Hopefully neither. Sadly one. Glad I'm not American. Rich (@richjb1987) November 8, 2016
I have never been so worried about the outcome of an election. And I'm not even American! #Election2016 Enmalein (@enmalein) November 8, 2016
Most people, it seems, are leaning towards Hillary, who has also be endorsed by a number of celebrities including Robert DiNero who asked people to vote for Hillary "to prevent Tuesday from turning into a tragedy".
Russian band, Pussyriot even made a sardonic video titled, "Make America Great Again" about the chaos that will ensue if Trump wins.
To all of my American friends, please make the right choice! The rest of the world is depending on you #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/JSl5xmSvqN Laura - StyleBuzz UK (@Laura_StyleBuzz) November 8, 2016
Trump is right, the election is rigged - 'cause no matter who wins tomorrow, the American people lose #Election2016 Sarah Ryan (@Auseil) November 8, 2016
There is a certain sense of air of desolation as most Americans feel that there is choice but no choice.
if I were an American citizen, and someone tells me that I have to either vote or kill myself, I'd be dead right now #Election2016 Lia (@serotonone) November 8, 2016
Tomorrow, the American public will decide which candidate will end the experiment of human civilisation on planet Earth. #Election2016 Steven Williamson (@scarce_sense) November 7, 2016
The last time American citizens were faced with decisions like this, was in that movie SAW. #Election2016 Simon Lister (@Simon_Lister) November 7, 2016
I'm so scared for tomorrow. I can't even begin to imaging, what it must feel like for an American #Election2016 Susanne Pedersen (@Sooz07) November 7, 2016
The most insane election year in American history is down to its last day. #Election2016 #ElectionNight Andrew Johnson (@ReporterAndrewJ) November 7, 2016
"Who's winning this election?" Not the American people, that's for damn sure. #Election2016 ayla (@aylablah) November 7, 2016
It's like the American rug has had it's corner slowly lifted, showing the world the scum we've swept under for decades. #Election2016 Patrick Glenning (@Frostwh1sper) October 28, 2016
I don't see how people can vote for either major party candidate. This is a sad, disgusting time in American History. #Election2016 https://t.co/D9D0MUAA0u Jeff Jordan (@jjordan2006) October 28, 2016
Election 2016, almost like there's some sort of daily competition to see who can out-shock a formerly politically blase American public gilly youner (@gillyarcht) October 28, 2016
Says my colleague from NZ, here in the states since February, "Being an American is stressful." #Election2016 Jennifer Merritt (@MerrittJennifer) October 28, 2016
"Theres no way to look at Election 2016 as anything other than a sad moment in American history." https://t.co/6fj9fSzjxD Arne Vo (@HSVoss_) November 7, 2016
Brexit was a shocker to the world and we can only hope that tomorrow people around the globe won't be woken up with a shock. So grab the popcorn because it's going to be quite a show tonight!
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Ahead of Tuesdays judgment by the Supreme Court on the Bayelsa State governorship election, the Peoples Democratic Party has alleged that the All Progressives Congress is trying to manipulate the ruling.
The opposition party, therefore, advised the Supreme Court to stand firm against any manipulations.
The apex court will deliver a ruling on an appeal filed by Timipre Sylva, the APC flag bearer, against the election of Seriake Dickson of the PDP, as Bayelsa Governor.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Caretaker Committee of the PDP, Dayo Adeyeye, in a statement, said The Supreme Court of Nigeria will on November 8, 2016 deliver Judgment on the Appeals of Chief Timipre Sylva and the All Progressives Congress (APC) against the Judgments of the Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal, both of which upheld the Election of Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State.
This Judgment comes at a time when the Judiciary is facing an onslaught from the Ruling Party using the apparatus and instruments of State. This Judgment will be given in the face of allegations, by Justices of the Supreme Court no less, that senior members of APC and Ministers in this administration attempted to bribe judges to subvert the course of justice in similar suits relating to elections in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti and Rivers States.
We are aware that these people and other senior members of APC are again, putting pressure on Justices of the Supreme Court to pervert the course of justice by overturning the decisions of the Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal to nullify the Mandate freely given to Governor Seriake Dickson by the people of Bayelsa State.
We reiterate our belief that the Judiciary is the last hope of the common man and the bastion upon which our entire democracy rests. We believe that there are men and women of integrity, with proven track records in the dispensation of justice who ensure that justice is not only done but is also seen to be done. We urge the Justices of the Supreme Court to ignore this pressure and give judgment in line with the dictates of our Constitution, electoral laws and good conscience, the party said.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday in Benin, the Edo State capital, said the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, can do with the services of outgoing Governor Adams Oshiomhole in Abuja.
The president, who said it would be a waste of energy to allow the Edo governor to retire, promised a higher assignment for Mr. Oshiomhole.
The Edo governor will hand over to a successor this Saturday, November 12.
Buhari said this yesterday at the Palace of the new Oba of Benin, Omo NOba NEdo Nku Akpolokpolo Ewuare II, before he embarked on the commissioning of several projects in the state.
He said: It will be a pity to waste his energy by him retiring. I hope there will be a higher assignment for him to do more for the nation. I congratulate the governor for his hard work; Oshiomhole is a hard working governor. We will need his services in Abuja.
Thank you for inviting me, most especially during this time in the country. You have served two terms and you are about to leave. You deserve a place in history. I hope the APC will look for a place for you because your service for the country is far from over.
Buhari also congratulated the Oba for successfully ascending the throne of his ancestors and extended the support of the Federal Government to his Royal highness in his bid to improve the lives of Edo people.
The Oba of Benin had earlier expressed delight on the presidents visit, noting that it was the first since his recent coronation.
We believe this is a sign of better things to come. I appreciate your contribution to my coronation, the royal father said.
The Ewuare II, who commended Buhari for appointing Edo indigenes into positions in government, appealed for the establishment of an export and import processing zone for agro-allied industries in the state.
The Federal High Court sitting in Ado-Ekiti has fixed Monday, December 2, to give judgement on the freezing of Zenith Bank accounts belonging to Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose.
Recall that, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on the 20th of June frozen two accounts domiciled with the banks Ado-Ekiti branch belonging to Fayose.
However, following the adoption of written addresses and other evidence by parties involved in the suit, the presiding judge, Justice Taiwo Taiwo fixed the date for revisit of the case.
Fayoses lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, had approached the court for an order ordering the EFCC (first respondent) and Zenith Bank (second respondent) to immediately lift the freeze order on the accounts.
Ozekhome argued that EFCC acted illegally in the freezing of his clients personal accounts, the move he said was unconstitutional and an infringement on the Fundamental Rights of the applicant.
According to him, the anti-graft agencys move was contrary to Section 308 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as amended, which granted immunity to a sitting governor not to be prosecuted in either civil or criminal matters.
Ozekhome urged the court to grant all the prayers of the applicant while cost should also be awarded in favour of his client.
While adopting his written address and 10 paragraph-affidavit, counsel to EFCC, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, told the court that the commission acted within its statutory and constitutional power, citing Section 6(5)(b) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act, 2011.
He also argued that Sections 19, 34 of the EFCC Establishment Act empowers the commission to carry out every action or step taken against the applicant.
No fewer than 500 youths from Akamkpa and Akpabuyo Local Government Areas of Cross River State on Monday protested against alleged marginalization by Lafarge Holcim Cement Company in contract award and employment.
Youths from the communities hosting the cement company decried the companys inability to implement the 80 per cent local content agreement it entered with the host communities.
NAN reports that Lafarge Holcim is hosted by six communities under Akamkpa and Akpabuyo LGAs.
They were armed with placards of various inscriptions which read: Give us employment and contracts; We want the position of Human Resource Manager to come from the host communities.
Speaking on behalf of the aggrieved youths, Mr Bassey Effiong, Youth Leader from Akansoko Community, said that the companys marginalisation had rendered many youths in the area jobless.
Effiong said that they had written many letters to the company to consider them for employment and award of contracts, which he said, yielded no result.
We have graduates and technicians who are willing to do this job, but Lafarge prefers to bring people from outside to work in the company.
We want the office to be brought back to Calabar from Lagos, and they should stop giving us excuses that we dont have the technical know-how to work with them.
All we are saying is that we need employment and contracts for our youths.
The company should implement the 80 per cent local content agreement we entered with it, the youths spokesperson said.
Also, Mr Ojong Etta, Youth Leader from Mbobui Community in Akamkpa LGA, said that youths were only employed to do `labour jobs, while the executive positions were allotted to non-indigenes.
We want the Human Resource Manager of Lafarge Cement Company to be an indigene of the host communities.
We have been over marginalized in terms of employment and award of contracts. We need a change of things in the management of Lafarge Company, he said.
In his remarks, the traditional ruler of Akamkpa, Ntufam Clement Emayip, said that it was wrong to relocate the companys head office from Calabar to Lagos.
Emayip urged the company to consider youths from the host communities for employment and award of contracts.
Addressing newsmen after the protest, Mrs Folashade Ambrose, the Lafarge Director of Communication and Public Affairs, said that the company appreciated the existing relationship between the host communities and Lafarge.
I have heard all their complaints. I will take their messages back to the management of the company, and we will get back to the host communities soon, she said.
Source: NAN
Former Senior Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs to Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Waripamo-Owei Dudafa has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of illegally detaining him for his refusal to give incriminating statement against former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan.
Dudafa made the allegation in a November 4 petition to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), wherein he also accused the anti-graft agency of deliberately keeping him in custody, despite his fulfilling the bail conditions set by the Federal High Court, Lagos.
The former domestic aide to the ex-president was arraigned by the EFCC before Justice M.B Idris in June, this year, on a 23-count charge bordering on the laundering of over N1. 67 billion.
He was also arraigned, alongside two persons and four companies, before Justice Babs Kuewumi of the same federal court for money laundering to the tune of $15 million.
In the case before Mr. Idris, the judge granted Mr. Dudafa bail in the sum of N500 million with three sureties in like sum while Mr. Kuewumi admitted him to bail in the sum of N250 million with one surety.
He was also ordered by Justice Idris to deposit his international passport with the registry of the court.
But in the petition to the rights commission, Dudafa said despite meeting all the Herculean bail conditions as ordered by the two courts, the commission has failed to fulfil its part, by verifying all the title documents of my sureties.
He accused the anti-graft agency of punishing him for his loyalty to former President Jonathan and his family.
Various attempts by my lawyer to ensure that the commission deposits my international travel passport with the court since I was admitted to bail have proved abortive, irrespective of the fact that the two courts at various sittings compelled and ordered it to release the said passport.
The EFCC has also refused blatantly to verify all the title documents provided by my sureties at the Land Registry for over two months in relation to the bail conditions granted me by Justice Babs Kuewumi of a Lagos Federal High Court.
From the above, it has become obvious that the EFCC is desperate to keep me perpetually in prison with the ultimate aim of killing me in prison despite the fact that my deteriorating state of health has been made known to the EFCC through a medical report dated August 29, 2016, and issued by the Nigerian Prison Service, Ikoyi, Lagos, Dudafa said.
He, therefore, appealed to the commissions chairman to use his good offices to intervene speedily in my predicament in the hands of the EFCC, as it is clear case of arbitrary abuse of power, flagrant disregard to court order and breach of my fundamental rights as a citizen of Nigeria.
The Police in Abia on Monday confirmed that suspected herdsmen armed with firearms attacked a community in the state and left scores of the indigenes critically wounded.
The police spokesman, ACP Ogbonnaya Nta, who confirmed the incident to newsmen, said that the command had commenced investigation.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ndi Okereke Abam in Ovukwu Autonomous Community in Arochukwu LGA was invaded on Friday by suspected armed herdsmen.
Narrating the incident to newsmen in Umuahia, the President-General of the community, Chief Chukwuma Okubi, said that the incident took place in the afternoon.
He said that six persons sustained bullet and machete wounds and were rushed to a hospital in the area for medical treatment.
The president-general said the herdsmen invaded their farmlands and destroyed their crops.
Okubi, who described the act as provocative, said that the cattle feasted on bags of rice, harvested by one of the victims.
The plea by the farmer to the herdsmen to take the cattle away from the rice fell on deaf ears as they drew their machete and gave several cuts on the man.
The cattle used to graze on grass in the past but this time, they were led into the farms which are our main source of livelihood, he said.
Okubi said that it was the alarm raised by members of the mans family, who escaped from the scene that drew the attention of the community.
He said that when the information got to the town, the youths mobilised and headed for the farmlands to ascertain the level of destruction and casualty.
Unfortunately, as soon as the herdsmen saw the youths, they opened fire on them and inflicted machete cut on some of them, Okubi added.
He said that the timely intervention of the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Leye Oyebade, and the Chairman, Farmers/Herdsmen Committee set up by the police, saved the situation from degenerating.
A man was found raping a neighbours female goat on Friday night, Kenyan media reports.
Gabrielle Simiyu, 26, was nabbed in action by the goats owner Richard Wanyonyi while checking the animal shed after hearing noises.
I thought my animals were strangling each other so I tiptoed to the cow shed and flashed my torch. I was shocked when I found the man but he ran away very fast, said Wanyonyi.
Since it was at night I did not see him very well so I took the shoes he left behind and began a search in the morning.
Outraged residents claimed it wasnt the first time Simiyu had violated farm animals in their village.
They claimed the motorcycle operator had previously engaged in sex acts with a cow and chicken.
Wanyonyi said his randy neighbour admitted to having sex with the animal and pleaded for forgiveness.
The goat owner said Simiyu told him he committed bestiality after returning from a funeral dance as women there turned down his advances.
Simiyu denied claims by some residents that he had done so before with a cow and a chicken.
I have a serious problem and need help. Every time I approach a girl she refuses and it really pains me, he said.
I am appealing to well-wishers to take me to a doctor or a specialist so the problem I have can be identified.
Christopher Kundu, a resident of the Nangwe village, in Bungoma, said they were shocked by the incident and that they suspected the man was under the influence of drugs.
He said Simiyu could have left the funeral with any woman instead of embarrassing the community.
The offender was taken to a police station where officers said he will be charged for bestiality.
Adamu Jibril, the suspect arrested in connection with the killing of a serving NYSC member in Kaduna State, Lawal Auwal Kontagora, has confessed to the killing.
Jibril, 22, said he killed the late Kontagora to stop him from dating a girl his friend wanted to go out with.
The suspect, who lives in Malali, while speaking with newsmen in Kaduna, said his friend, Aminu Bahago, approached him to help him confront a man he suspected to be dating a girl he had interest in.
He said I should come and accompany him to the guy and I told him I wouldnt want us to waste time there because I dont want to be out for long in the night. He went in, carried a gun and a knife and gave me the knife.
When we got to the place he showed me the guy from a distance, as we approached the car he knocked on the door of the car as it was locked.
The guy then opened the car and Aminu sat in front with him and the guy asked us what we want from him before Aminu started reminding him that he is dating his girlfriend, then Aminu drew him out of the car and Aminu told me that I should stab the guy with the knife, I stabbed the guy at the back and after stabbing him, Aminu shot the guy with the gun on his leg.
The Kaduna Police Command on Saturday said it arrested a suspect in connection with the killing of the NYSC member.
The commands Public Relation Officer, ASP Aliyu Usman, said the police recovered six loaded cartridges, two knives, two cutlasses, a double barrel and one Samsung phone in Jibrils room.
Kontagora recently returned to Nigeria after completing his studies from a Malaysian university to do the compulsory one year NYSC programme before he was killed on October 17.
Two suspects earlier arrested for the crime, have already been charged to court.
Seven Nigerian soldiers who heroically gave their lives for the country in the battle against dreaded terror group, Boko Haram have been laid to rest in Abuja.
Lieutenant Colonel Muhammed Abu-Ali, Muazu Ibrahim, Hussain Jafaru, Bassey Okon, Chukwu Simon, Seaman Patrick Paul, and Salihu Lawal lost their lives in an ambush by Boko Haram as they attempted an advance on the insurgents.
Many Nigerians paid tribute to Lt.Col. Muhammed Abu-Ali for his exceptional bravery and acts of heroism.
Nigerias Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai was in attendance as the gallant soldiers were laid to rest in the presence of their family members and well-wishers. Although President Muhammadu Buhari did not attend the funeral, he sent a representative and reportedly called the families of the slain soldiers to express his condolences.
Legendary pop icon Madonna is showing her support for Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, prior to the US presidential elections through an impromptu concert she is holding in New York.
The 58-year-old held the concert on Monday night as she performed some of her greatest hits like Express Yourself, Dont Tell Me, Imagine, Like a Prayer and If I Had a Hammer.
The outdoor concert in Washington Square Park, Manhattan was attended by about 300 people who sang along to the pop stars tunes.
Madonna opened the 30-minute performance by urging the crowd to vote on Tuesday.
This is a concert that is about unifying us, and its about keeping America great, not making America great again, she said. Tomorrow were going to keep America great. Were going to elect a president that does not discriminate.
As she finished the concert, she again urged the growing crowd to go to the polls and vote for Clinton.
New York! Tomorrow is the big day. Are you listening? She said. Do we want Donald trump to be president?
No! the crowd roared back.
Do we need Hillary Clinton?
Yes! the crowd again roared.
Madonna hasnt hidden the fact that she is a supporter of Clinton.
In October, she offered a strange reward to anyone who votes for the Democratic candidate- a blow job.
Also at the end of September, she posted a naked selfie on Instagram, wearing nothing but jewelry while she pledged her support for Clinton.
The Police in Nepal, on Tuesday, arrested 144 ex-Maoist child soldiers following protests at the headquarters of their former party, a spokesman for Kathmandu police office, has said.
The spokesman, Pradhumna Karki said that about 144 former child soldiers took control of the hilltop office in Kathmandu after a two-day national assembly.
They were arrested and held in four different areas in Kathmandu.
Half of them are women and most of them have been arrested with their children but we do not know the exact number of children, Karki said.
About 300 young men and women who fought against state security forces during the countrys 10-year insurgency had padlocked the headquarters on Monday, demanding compensation for retired combatants.
Lenin Bista, president of Disqualified Former Fighters Central Struggle Committee, said they would continue to fight for equal treatment from the government.
We spent the whole night at the headquarters and protested against the Maoist party and the government.
Security forces were stationed outside the office, but today they entered into the office and arrested us, Bista told newsmen.
On Monday, about 300 ex-child soldiers including 70 women and 40 children had gathered at the four-storey building, which houses the ruling Maoist party.
In 2012, hundreds of former child soldiers camped outside the headquarters for two months.
The standoff ended only after a deal was reached with the government which pledged to pay them 200,000 Nepali rupees (1,873 dollars).
An estimated 4,000 child soldiers were disbanded from UN camps in 2009 after officials found them to be underage recruits.
Over 16,000 people were killed in the civil war which ended in 2006 after a peace accord.
Source: Punch
Nigerian newspaper headlines November 8, 2016.
Vanguard
The Head of Maritime Environment, Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Cross River State, Mr. Auta Nicodemus Walbe, has raised the alarm over incessant attempts by some powerful persons to eliminate him though hired assassins.
Premium Times
Eight year after he was first charged for money laundering, the trial of former governor of Oyo State, Rasheed Ladoja, can now properly take off.
Punch
A prosecution witness, Mr. Michael Wetkas, in the ongoing trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, said on Monday that the claim by Saraki that he bought a property in Lagos with proceeds of rice and sugar sale was false.
Leadership
Niger-Delta Avengers yesterday cautioned President Muhammadu Buhari against dealing with those it described as sycophants in the area.
Guardian
The crisis in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is taking a turn for the worse. It was learnt that a meeting scheduled for last week Tuesday to resolve the controversy trailing the September 3 governorship primaries in Ondo State won by the former President, Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu, did not hold.
Thisday
Amidst the unresolved intra-party crisis within its fold, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may have decided to chart a new course by setting in motion a process that would eventually lead to the formation of a new political alliance ahead of the 2019 general election.
The Sun
Two weeks after it denied similar moves, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday, said there are no plans to increase the pump price of petrol from N145 to N150 because the corporation is not empowered statutorily to tinker with the pricing template of petroleum products.
National Mirror
Osun State Coordinator of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, Mr Olaniran Olakunle, has warned Nigerians against consumption of cheap food items capable of causing them harm.
Daily Independent
Over 1500 employees of Erisco Foods limited are about losing their jobs as the company has begun the process of winding up its tomatoes paste factory in the country sequel to relocating to China.
The Nation
Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Mahmud Mohammed yesterday explained why the National Judicial Council (NJC) directed judges under probe for criminal allegations to stop sitting pending when their innocence is established.
A student has been confirmed dead as a result of hypertension, two hours before his mathematics examination at the Jomo Kenyatta High School.
The student, whose identity was revealed as Francis Gikonyo, was preparing to sit for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, KCSE, on Monday when he passed away.
The student was rushed to the district hospital in Nakuru after he was found critically ill, but on getting to the hospital, he collapsed and died.
Confirming the incident, the deceased students principal, Mr. John Mureithi, noted that Francis had been unstable at school for the better part of the year.
In a statement, the principal said: It is very unfortunate that we lost a young and brilliant boy who had a bright future, the student had a chat with medics before collapsing and dying, adding he died from hypertension.
Mr. Mureithi also confirmed that the students parents were informed of his death and counselors were invited to break the news to his classmates.
RFID blocking wallets, sleeves, and other products offer protection against RFID skimming. The problem isn't that these products don't work, it's that they're a solution to a problem that doesn't exist in the real world. RFID-related crime isn't only very unlikely, it's non-existent.
It happens every Christmas. My friends, knowing my long-time career in computer security, cant wait to show me how smart they were for buying RFID wallets, purses, and even jeans and jackets. What they dont know, unless they read this, is that its a complete waste of money.
What is RFID and how does it work?
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a short-distance electro-magnetic method for transmitting small bits of data. It was initially used primarily for inventory tracking, but morphed into all sorts of uses, including authentication, passports, identification cards and credit cards. Its the latter use that has driven a billion-dollar defense industry offering specially designed RFID-blocking accessories. You can even buy RFID-blocking totes, fanny packs, and backpacks.
Tricia Grimes The manufacturer's claims would be true, if not for the fact that there isn't any RFID crime to protect against.
At one time, JavaScript evolved slowly. But its pace of evolution has stepped up considerably, particularly with last year's ECMAScript 2015 specification. In the coming years, developers could see innovations like a type system and multithreading.
In a discussion on JavaScript at the QCon conference in San Francisco on Monday, Stefan Penner and Jafar Husain elaborated on what they see potentially happening with JavaScript. Penner and Husain are both insiders key to the ECMAScript specification process; ECMAScript is the official specification that underlies JavaScript, and Technical Committee 39 handles it.
Asked how TypeScript, Microsoft's typed superset of JavaScript, affects JavaScript development, Penner, of TC39 participant LinkedIn, said he was excited about it, but the committee is nervous about the magnitude of adding a type system to JavaScript itself. "It's very easy to get this wrong," he noted. The committee, though, does acknowledge the value of such an endeavor, and it could possibly happen.
Husain, a senior developer at TC39 participant Netflix, also expressed reservations, saying that "if you make mistakes in your type system, you've hobbled the web." The committee is being very cautious because of the complications involved, Husain pointed out.
They are considering multithreading as well, with a proposal afoot for a shared array buffer with low-level primitives to exist between multiple threads, Penner said. There's also a proposal to do parallelism with web workers, for web content to run scripts in background threads, but there are complications with this. Husain noted that while parallelism would increase performance by leveraging multicore processors, it's "a very complicated problem," like a type system.
Long-planned async capabilities are on the drawing board, too. Husain offered an estimated timeframe of 2018, but he wasn't certain when it might arrive. "You can just say, 'An asynchronous workflow, do this, do that, do this.' It's asynchronous, but you don't have to register a callback," he said. The code looks like synchronous code but actually runs asynchronously.
ES2015 was massive, Penner said. The upgrade focused on syntax and structural improvements, but "it left some people with the hashtag JavaScript fatigue" and feeling everything was changing too fast, he said. Features in the 2015 release started emerging as far back as 2010, but the committee doesn't want to simply put everything onto the JavaScript language. Thus, features for ECMAScript go through a multistage with process, with Stage 0 signifying an idea and Stage 5 meaning the feature is happening. A Stage 4 feature probably a very good bet to appear as well.
A political backlash is growing over a plan by the University of California, San Francisco, to shift IT jobs overseas. The school is hiring an India-based IT services contractor, and IT workers are expecting to train their foreign replacements.
Several lawmakers have written letters questioning the universitys plan, including Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration.
It is clear that the University is seeking to replace American workers with lower-cost foreign workers abroad and potentially also in the United States, wrote Grassley, in a letter to Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California system. The letter, which was sent in late September, has not been made public, but a copy was obtained by Computerworld.
[The full three-page letter is at the end of this story, in PDF format.]
The universitys San Francisco campus hired HCL, an IT outsourcing firm and user of H-1B visa workers, under a contract valued at $50 million over five years. The university is laying off, early next year, 49 permanent IT employees, along with 30 contractors. Labor condition application notices, which cite the salary and occupation of H-1B workers, have been posted at the worksite.
Grassley wrote that our visa programs were never intended to facilitate the replacement of qualified American workers with foreign workers, not did Congress envision that employers would retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when employers cut jobs.
U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), wrote to Napolitano on Friday, asking her to reconsider the decision to outsource the UCSF IT jobs using the H-1B program and refrain from taking similar measures elsewhere in the UC system.
Using this visa program to undercut and eliminate U.S. jobs runs directly counter to Congressional intent for this visa category and hurts the American workers that it seeks to protect, Eshoo wrote.
The Guardian, a student newspaper at the UC San Diego campus, reported that U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark DeSaulnier, both California Democrats, also asked the university to reconsider its plan.
This story, "Grassley criticizes university over its IT offshoring " was originally published by Computerworld .
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Afternoon Rally for Wheat Market Barchart - 16 minutes ago Wheats started the first trade day of the new month with weakness attempting a turnaround Tuesday. Afternoon strength pushed the board back into the black to extend the gains from Monday. CBT SRW ended... ZWZ22 : 902-4s (+2.30%) ZWH23 : 919-0s (+2.20%) ZWPAES.CM : 8.3311 (+2.22%) KEZ22 : 990-0s (+1.15%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.4786 (+1.17%) MWZ22 : 989-6s (+0.87%)
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Livestock Report Walsh Trading - 42 minutes ago Hogs consolidate
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Securities analysts shine light into the murk of corporate finances for investors benefit but the arithmetic of their own business is far from transparent.
Equity researchers collect some undisclosed portion of the fees their brokerage firms collect from asset managers. Fixed-income analysts make their living still more opaquely, out of the bid-ask spread their broker employers earn on bond transactions. In an age when clicks are counted on any news story or search-term advertisement, analysts still send their material scattershot to clients, with no hard feedback on who is reading which reports, or consigning them to the electronic trash. All that may soon change, at least in Europe, with potentially wrenching consequences for the research industry and its core users among active asset managers. The transformation agent is the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, which takes effect January 3, 2018. Among other voluminous requirements aimed at market clarity and efficiency, MiFID II demands that asset managers break out the costs of research from their own management fees and pay for them separately. Buy-side managers are expected to press the same requirement on their sell-side providers to clarify just what they are paying for, with the result that less research is spewed.
When investment banks want to drum up trade, they often sell research along with it, says Mick McAteer, a former board member of the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and now co-director of the Financial Inclusion Centre in London. But a lot of what is sold is not really worth paying for.
MiFID II has been developing in the corridors of the European Union since 2010 (the original MiFID went on the books in 2007) and gained European Commission approval in April of this year. However, it took consultation papers released in September by the FCA and French counterpart Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) to start focusing market minds on its daunting requirements.
Most practitioners read the FCA paper as a signal that the U.K. will enforce MiFID despite its looming departure from the EU, not least because authorities see regulatory uniformity as one key to the hoped-for passporting of U.K. financial services to its soon-to-be-former union partners.
The FCA is very concerned, says Leonard Ng, co-head of the EU Financial Services Regulatory group at law firm Sidley Austins London office. The time has come for the total unbundling of research from brokers commission.
That principle is far easier to dictate than put into practice, however. To start with, no one knows what share of current commissions research represents or, if they do, they are not telling. Estimates in the market vary between 25 and 50 percent. Is there any rule of thumb going in? The answer is no, says Jack Pollina, global head of commission management for New Yorkbased broker ITG.
The research component may be lower for funds that deal in familiar securities close to home and higher for emerging markets or small-cap investments. Much of the value added by research departments can come from arranging access to company managements, an intangible element devilishly hard to quantify, Pollina points out. Regulators look to be divided on whether technical market analysis counts as research: A hawkish FCA indicates that it does, while a milder AMF indicates little. And that is in the equity sphere, where managers and brokers were already edging toward pricing research and opening it to third parties through so-called commission-sharing agreements (CSAs). The cost of bond-market analysis is a thorough black hole.
While sell-side banks and brokerages hold the secrets on research costs, the burden of compliance with MiFID II falls squarely on buy-side asset managers. The directive essentially offers these firms two choices. The first is to establish a research payment account (RPA) for every client, with the amount set in advance annually. This RPA is subject to rigorous some might say onerous documentation and audit requirements aimed at presenting investors with an itemized, phone bill-style accounting of exactly where their research euros or pounds went. The client would have to approve any overruns.
Under the current system, if you budget $1 million for research and go to $1.5 million, its no big deal because its mixed in with so many other costs and charges, Pollina says. The French interpretation would allow managers to maintain their current CSAs, but subject to RPA-esque reporting and oversight.
Option two for asset managers is to forget all the new paperwork and pay for research themselves in so-called hard dollars. The biggest U.K. asset manager, Legal & General Investment Management, which controls 853 billion ($1.06 trillion), has announced it will do just that, raising fees on most of its funds by 10 to 15 basis points to compensate. Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford, with 148 billion under management, has also started absorbing research costs, without disclosure on any fee hikes.
A recent report from CRISIL, a Mumbai-based subsidiary of Standard & Poors, predicts other European fund managers will largely follow suit into hard-dollar research payments, at considerable cost. It predicts a 17 percent slide in operating profits for active managers, even assuming they can cut research costs by 20 percent. Others dispute that outlook, such as Elizabeth Corley, vice chair of Munich-based Allianz Global Investors, which manages 469 billion ($518 billion).
What we would not want [is to begin paying for research ourselves], and then find that our trading costs across the market have inflated by a magical factor, she told the Financial Times in May. We would be very upset about that.
A recent survey by consultants EY found that more than three-quarters of European asset managers have yet to decide how to cope with research unbundling. Its early days yet, advocate McAteer says.
One point inspiring wide agreement is that the current research regime is wasteful and outmoded. Sell-side analysts duplicate effort, choking clients inboxes with PDFs that may or may not address their needs. Unbundling research is an opportunity to explore some new alternatives, says one fund manager. If I were starting with a clean sheet of paper, I wouldnt start with the sell side. His firm will look to cut back on brokers input, reaching out instead to academics and industry experts in burgeoning fields like technology and health care. One group trying to drag securities research into a 21st-century, Amazon.com-style format is RSRCHXchange, a Londonbased online marketplace launched a year ago. While mainstream investment banks have been slow to get on board, the exchange currently posts research from more than 140 providers, says Vicky Sanders, a former Goldman Sachs equity saleswoman who is a co-founder. Fund managers can see ratings before they buy and track their own consumption in detail to satisfy the MiFID II requirements. The anticipated result is less research used much more effectively.
This is the equivalent of converting a library into a bookstore, Sanders says. It doesnt make much sense to have books in a store that nobody wants to buy.
Perhaps the biggest question hanging over Europes drive to unbundle research is whether it stops in Europe or will spread in time to the worlds biggest financial market: the U.S. Americas regulatory structure raises a significant obstacle to wholesale adoption of MiFID II mechanisms. The Securities and Exchange Commission allows only registered investment advisers to take direct payment for research, and bigger sell-side firms are reluctant to gain RIA status because that would preclude much of their trading activity.
Yet market logic indicates that unbundling will migrate across the Atlantic in ad hoc fashion, market players say, especially if it works as intended to lower investors costs and increase their sense of control over their own money. U.S.-based asset management giants will have to become MiFID II-compliant for European operations, and U.S. investment banks MiFID II-friendly to service the European buy side. Those standards could quickly be implemented globally if the ultimate clients in the investor community start to demand it.
Says ITGs Pollina: Global asset managers are going to implement one global policy as investors say, The other guys are doing it, why dont you?
This content is from: Corner Office
Some managers pay as much as 13 times more than peers for index services, according to Substantive Research.
An initiative which was set up to protect Pacific Island countries against tropical cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis has renewed for its fifth season and has now established its own captive insurer, says the World Bank.The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (PCRAFI) has secured Pacific Island countries (PICs) with coverage of $38.2 million from a range of reinsurance companies, including Swiss Re Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance, and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance.The program has now set up the PCRAFI Facility, which acts as a captive insurance company that will deliver the parametric insurance solutions to individual countries, the World Bank said.The PCRAFI Facility forms part of Phase II of the PCRAFI program, which aims to increase the fiscal resilience of Pacific Island countries and their capacity to meet post-disaster funding needs without compromising domestic budgets, said Michel Kerf, World Bank country director for Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands.The Facility also affords Pacific Island countries greater ownership of disaster and climate risk financing meaning more control and influence over the design of future disaster and climate risk solutions, Kerf said.The Facility was established in the Cook Islands in June 2016, and received its captive insurance licence on September 22, 2016. It will deliver insurance policies to individual member states of the PCRAFI, similar to that seen with the CCRIF SPC in the Caribbean, according to artemis.com.The World Bank said so far the PCRAFI Facility had issued its first insurance policies to the Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu.The program had made payouts following Cyclone Ian in 2014 and Cyclone Pam in 2015, the report said.With certain Pacific Islands experiencing some of the greatest exposure to natural catastrophe events in the world, the second phase of the program was aimed at giving PICs more fiscal resilience without compromising their domestic budgets.Cook Islands Minister of Finance and Economic Management, Hon Mark Brown, said: We look forward to the facility growing and developing additional products to help us better meet our post-disaster financial needs in the Pacific region.The World Bank said the second phase of the program focused only on disaster risk finance and was comprised of two pillars, (i) the PCRAFI Facility, and (ii) the PCRAFI Technical Assistance Program.Phase II of PCRAFI is a joint initiative of the World Bank, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, with financial support from Germany, Japan, the US and the UK, the World Bank said.
A federal court jury on Monday awarded $3 million in damages to a University of Virginia administrator that last week found was defamed by Rolling Stone magazines now-retracted story of a gang rape.
The 10-person U.S. District Court jury in Charlottesville, Virginia determined that the writer of the article, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, should pay $2 million in damages and the magazine $1 million to the administrator, Nicole Eramo.
Eramo, the former associate dean of students at the university, had sought at least $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages in the high-profile case.
Samuel Bayard, an attorney for Rolling Stone, declined to comment when reached by phone following the verdict on Monday night. The magazine apologized to Eramo after last weeks verdict.
Following a three-week trial the jurors on Friday found Rolling Stone, owner Wenner Media and Erdely liable for actual malice against Eramo in the magazines November 2014 story A Rape on Campus.
The magazine reported that a female student identified only as Jackie was raped at a university fraternity in 2012. The story sparked a national debate about sexual assault at U.S. colleges and resonated with many who saw it as a battle cry against sexual violence on campuses.
Rolling Stone admitted that it never sought comment from the seven men accused of the alleged rape and retracted the story in April 2015. An outside review found the magazine had failed to follow basic journalistic safeguards, in an embarrassing blow to the pop culture publication, founded by Jann Wenner in 1967.
Eramo accused the magazine of portraying her as the storys villain and as focused on hushing up sexual assault reports. She has claimed damages from the story include harm to her reputation, embarrassment, emotional distress and humiliation.
Eramo now works in an administrative role at the almost 200-year-old university, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson and has long ranked as one of the top public universities in the country.
Campus sexual assault remains a major concern, with some reports estimating that one in five female students will be a victim.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Dan Grebler and Lisa Shumaker)
Topics Education Universities
Delaware State Police say one person has been critically injured after an apparatus used to launch pumpkins into the air exploded.
The incident occurred Sunday at the Punkin Chunkin Contest in Bridgeville. The town is about 40 miles south of Dover.
Contestants launch pumpkins with a variety of homemade contraptions. The event had been cancelled for the past two years because of problems finding insurance.
In 2014, a Sussex County farmer had stopped making his property available for the contest because a volunteer who was injured in an ATV accident filed a lawsuit. But organizers for the 2016 contest said an insurance policy was in place to protect the landowner.
More than 100 teams had signed up to compete this year.
Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Recent cyber attacks harnessing everyday devices such as cameras, video recorders, printers, routers and speakers are a wake-up call to the hidden dangers of the Internet of Things.
The problem for the device makers, though, is that few are well equipped to tackle the unfamiliar task of foiling hackers.
For a sense of that challenge, take AV Tech Corp, a once proud giant among CCTV camera makers whose 1990s building in a Taipei suburb hints at the gap it must overcome between hardware factories of a decade ago and those of today.
AV Tech, which made the 2008 Forbes list of companies to watch, has seen competition from China shrink its profits to about a tenth of what they were then. Like its peers, AV Tech has moved its products online, connecting its cameras and the digital video recorders that store the footage on to the Internet so users can access them remotely.
But such companies are not well schooled in cyber security, leaving these devices wide open to hackers.
The harsh reality is that cyber security is not even on the radar of many manufacturers, said Trent Telford, CEO of Covata , an internet security firm. Security will eventually become more of a priority, but it may well be too late for this generation of IoT users.
Up to 30 billion devices are expected to be connected to the Internet by 2020 all potentially vulnerable.
The danger was highlighted when hundreds of thousands of consumer devices were harnessed recently into so-called botnets, launching attacks on target websites, including PayPal, Spotify and Twitter.
Cyber security experts say this is just the beginning.
They have since found new versions of the malware designed to find and infect poorly secured devices. Botnets could also be used in advertising fraud and blackmail, according to Daniel Miessler of IOActive, an internet security consultancy.
Flashpoint, a cyber security consultancy, said parts of the botnet used in last months mass attack were used this week to launch denial of service attacks on the campaign websites of both U.S. presidential candidates, though neither site appeared to have been knocked offline.
Vulnerable
While researchers have not found any AV Tech devices in a botnet, they have pointed to lapses that make them vulnerable.
In a blog post, confirmed by his company, Gergely Eberhardt of Hungarian security firm Search-Lab said he spent a year trying to alert AV Tech to 14 security holes in its products. He got no response, and last month released his findings.
That, and news of other botnet distributed denial of services attacks, was a wake-up call for the Taiwanese firm.
To be honest, in the past, hacking and discovering such matters was not an issue for AV Tech, said Dick Lee, special assistant in the company presidents office. This experience has significantly raised our alert level internally. This is something that those in the surveillance equipment business must face seriously.
Thats happening, but slowly and sometimes reluctantly.
Chinese camera maker Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology Co recalled thousands of its devices after researchers said they may have formed part of the botnet that took down Twitter and other websites, but it also threatened legal action against those defaming the company.
Security Focus
Chipmaker Qualcomm said it was looking into new technologies, including those based on machine intelligence, to make IoT devices safer.
We can build into the hardware certain fundamental things that will watch to see: is the device doing something it wasnt expected to do? Is it talking to somewhere it wasnt expected to talk to? Is it accessing memory differently? executive chairman Paul Jacobs told Reuters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei on Monday. Its very important for IoT to make sure you have a way of securing and updating devices.
AV Tech said it was talking to Search-Lab and other security firms about long-term cooperation, and also plans to release updated firmware software that upgrades the inner workings of its devices to make them more secure.
Its not just the more established consumer electronics firms which are battling this.
Lani Refiti, cyber security lead for Cisco Systems Inc., said he has been working with Australian hardware start-ups to make their devices more secure.
One firm making sensors to allow treadmill users to share their workouts, he said, faced a three-month delay if it rewrote software to properly encrypt data. The cheaper solution was to obscure the data, and make any hacker work harder to crack it.
A handful of industry groups are emerging to focus exclusively on security.
Refiti set up IoTSec Australia this year to work with entrepreneurs, while UK-based IoT Security Foundation has chipmaker ARM, Huawei and Philips among its members.
Its main goal, says founder John Moor, is to simplify guidance so engineers actually read it. The foundation is releasing its first best-practice manual, condensing a 300-400 page industry document to just 30 pages.
The challenge is more than the technical challenge for these companies, said Moor. You can put in security features, but do you have the right processes in place, are you doing the right things?
For AV Tech, improved security may prove to be a way to differentiate its products from Chinese competition.
This is a good opportunity. For these surveillance products, the demand on their security is the most important, said Lee, adding the inevitable higher cost is not expected to be huge.
(Reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff and J.R. Wu, with additional reporting by Sijia Jiang in Hong Kong; editing by Ian Geoghegan)
Topics Cyber InsurTech Tech China
This is a new world for insurers. The industry will need a whole new set of data tools to deal with this.
So says Michael Macauley, CEO of Quadrant Information Services, a supplier of pricing analytics to property/casualty insurance carriers. He is referring to the coming of autonomous vehicles.
Ford Motor Co. intends to start selling driverless cars to ride-hailing and taxi services by 20121 and to the public by about 2025. The vehicles will not have steering wheels, brake pedals or other controls for human occupants. The car maker wants to lower costs enough to make autonomous vehicles affordable to millions of people, CEO Mark Fields said in a recent speech.
Macauley notes that currently auto insurers base rates on what they know about the driver, the drivers residential area and the car. The combination of a teenage driver, a new Corvette Stingray and a high-crime neighborhood, for example, yields one rate. A middle-aged driver with a perfect record, a quiet home town and a five-year-old Honda yields quite another.
However, now the industry is confronting a situation where there may be no driver, in which case, the owners age and driving record would be largely irrelevant, according to the pricing expert. Coverage and rate decisions would be based on a wide range of variables, among them traffic patterns, prevailing climatic conditions (there is some question as to how well driverless cars manage in rain and snow) and, above all, the track record of the various technologies involved.
Identifying those responsible for specific technologies may not be easy.
These vehicles, Macauley said, will be the work not so much of a single manufacturer, but of a consortium. He noted that Fords announcement of its forthcoming driverless cars described partnerships with Velodyne (lidar sensors that capture high-resolution images of the area around the vehicles), SAIPS (an Israel-based computer vision and machine learning company which Ford acquired in August), Civil Maps (a California-based company that develops high-resolution 3D maps), and Nirenberg Neuroscience (a machine-vision company that specializes in object recognition and bringing human-like levels of intelligence to machine modules).
Prospective competitors are making similar arrangements. BMW, Mobileye and Intel, for example, recently announced that they are partnering on fully-autonomous vehicle technology to apply in a shared environment by 2021.
Macauley says there have been doubts raised about the safety of self-driving vehicles, particularly since a driver in a Tesla Model S in self-driving mode was killed when the car drove itself into the side of a semitrailer in Florida last May. In its statement about the incident, Tesla did not delineate the drivers level of engagement at the time of the crash, but it did note that neither the Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the semitrailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.
The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating that Tesla accident in part for its broader implications for safety of the new technologies.
But safety regulators generally favor the vehicles. More than 35,000 people were killed in U.S. auto accidents in 2015, with human error being the cause in 94 percent of them, according to NHTSA.
The NHTSA has issued federal guidelines for the testing and rollout of autonomous vehicles that largely leave manufacturers free to experiment, although the government also left open the door to a pre-approval system in which manufacturers would need to get the safety regulators approval of vehicles before selling them to the public.
According to Macauley, some manufacturersincluding Fordare pursuing a fully computer-managed, no-human-driver car because they feel that hybrid approaches that allow for some degree of human control, such as Teslas, contain an unacceptable level of built-in risk. Google, for example (which has its own driverless car program), decided on the no-wheel, no-pedals approach after allowing its employees to drive the companys test cars.
There was a brief period when people would be a little nervous and monitor the car very carefully, Google engineer Nathanial Fairfield told the Washsaid, and then they would start to relax and trust the system, and then they would over-trust the system and start to get distracted. After watching a driver rummaging around in his back seat in search of a phone-charging cord, Google engineers decided it would be too risky to create a system wherein a driver would be expected to take control of the car at a critical moment.
Insurance claims in such cases pose unique challenges in part because driver behavior is still a contributing factor. Tesla maintains that Autopilot is only an assist feature that drivers need to keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over at any time.
Fans of Teslas Autopilot bemoan that theres no database of lives saved or accidents avoided by the technology.
Obviously, Quadrants Macauley said, its not going to be up to the property and casualty insurance industry to determine when driverless cars take to the road, how they operate, and what kinds of technology they use. It is, however, going to be up to insurance carriers to understand the situation and evaluate the risks posed by different operatorsif thats even the right wordin different cars on different roads and in different weather, using a variety of technologies.
He says that to do this, insurers will need robust, cloud-based computing and powerful, high-speed data analytics, which his company happens to develop.
But the fact that people will be on roads at the mercy of technology means the importance of making sure drivers are properly insured is exponentially highas will be the demand for that insurance.
Topics Auto Tesla Manufacturing
As auto supplier Takata Corp. prepares for a possible U.S. bankruptcy filing, potential bidders are poring over a recent U.S. court ruling that could expose a buyer to liability for the companys defective air bags, sources have told Reuters.
Takata faces potentially billions of dollars in costs from the worlds largest automotive recall, stemming from millions of its air bags that were equipped with malfunctioning inflators.
The Japanese company has said it is seeking a financial backer. But interested bidders, if the parts maker goes up for sale, want Takata to put its U.S. business into bankruptcy first, the sources said.
Generally, U.S. bankruptcy law allows a bidder to buy assets free and clear of lawsuits and other liabilities, and the selling company uses the money to repay its creditors.
General Motors used the strategy when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009. The automaker quickly sold its best assets to a so-called new GM, scrubbed free of billions of dollars of debt, which enabled the company to withstand an economic crisis.
In July, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan held that General Motors Co., the new GM, could be sued over faulty ignition switches made by old GM.
The ruling set what some see as a troubling precedent.
What that says to me: buyer beware, said Henry Jaffe, a bankruptcy lawyer with Pepper Hamilton in Wilmington, Delaware who represents debtors and creditors. Jaffe said the ruling could undercut what bidders are willing to pay for Takata.
Takatas air bags use a chemical compound that can explode with excessive force after prolonged exposure to hot conditions and have been linked to at least 16 deaths globally, mainly in the United States. About 100 million Takata air bag inflators have been classified as defective, leading to continuing safety recalls.
Last month, the company received proposals from five bidders, all of whom have presented plans that require Takata to file for a GM-style bankruptcy protection.
Takatas creditors include automakers who want to be reimbursed for millions of dollars spent on recalls. They may also demand that any buyer of Takatas assets share in some of those costs.
The automakers could also try to use the tools of bankruptcy to protect themselves from lawsuits by car owners for the faulty air bags, according to bankruptcy attorneys.
The U.S. government is also likely to play a role. Takata is operating under a five-year, $200 million consent decree with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Given the uncertainties, bidders could propose using holdback, bankruptcy lawyers said. Some sale money would remain in escrow and be used to settle any unanticipated legal claims against the buyer. Over time, unused money would be released to the Takata bankruptcy estate.
Takata and its creditors would likely resist a holdback, lawyers said.
In Japan, Takata Chief Financial Officer Yoichiro Nomura told reporters on Friday that the company hoped to reach an agreement with its automaker customers on a restructuring by year end. He said the company preferred to avoid bankruptcy.
Takata has posted a net loss in three of the past four financial years, but it remains one of the auto industrys biggest suppliers of air bag systems. The company is also one of the worlds top seatbelt producers, and makes steering wheels, electronic control units and child safety seats.
GIVE A BUYER HEARTBURN
To get a sale approved quickly, a Takata buyer may have to assume some legal obligations, an approach used by new GM which took on 15 categories of liabilities.
That will give a buyer heartburn, said Bill Weintraub at Goodwin Procter in New York, who worked with ignition switch plaintiffs on the GM appeals court case.
GM has said it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the July ruling, which it said wrongly punishes it, the buyer, for mistakes made by old GM, the seller. The company and business groups have argued that the ruling, if allowed to stand, will depress the value of assets that are sold in bankruptcy.
Those who are close to GM and Takata are quick to point out the situations of the two companies differ in key ways.
Takatas air bags have been subject to headline-grabbing recalls for years. By contrast, GM knew its ignition switches were faulty when it introduced them in 2002 but concealed the problem until 2014, five years after its bankruptcy sale.
Because of the concealment, the court of appeals reasoned that GMs customers had been denied the opportunity to object or file a claim over the ignition switch defects as part of GMs bankruptcy and sale. To remedy the lack of notice, the court said car owners could pursue a class action against the buyer of GM rather than the bankruptcy estate.
Takatas notoriety could work to the advantage of bidders, ensuring potential claims have been identified.
You have a known problem, said bankruptcy lawyer Ed Weisfelner, who also represented some ignition switch plaintiffs in the GM appeal case.
The GM ruling only binds U.S. Bankruptcy Courts in one of 11 U.S. judicial circuits, and Takata may look to other courts.
In its appeals case, GM cited precedent in the 3rd U.S. Circuit, which it said is more protective of buyers in bankruptcy sales.
Takatas main U.S. subsidiary, Michigan-based TK Holdings Inc, is incorporated in Delaware, giving the company access to the states prominent bankruptcy court and 3rd U.S. Circuit precedent.
Any bankruptcy judge will be really nervous about this one, said John Pottow, a professor at University of Michigan Law School who specializes in bankruptcy.
(Reporting by Tom Hals; Additional reporting by Kevin Krolicki and David Shepardson in Washington, Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Naomi Tajitsu in Tokyo; Editing by Amy Stevens, Noeleen Walder and Tom Brown)
Topics Lawsuits USA
Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain is warning Louisiana residents that the states wildfire risk remains higher than normal because of dry conditions.
The state agriculture department says 19 parishes have enacted burn bans. And Strain says the increased wind and lower humidity expected to move through Louisiana is a recipe for potentially dangerous wildfires.
Strain urges people to avoid parking vehicles or equipment on dry grass, to put out cigarettes in an ashtray rather than on the ground and to refuel their machinery in areas without vegetation.
The agriculture department says parishes with outdoor burn bans include: Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Caldwell, Concordia, Franklin, Grant, Jefferson Davis, LaSalle, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Ouachita, Rapides, Richland, Sabine, Winn, Union and West Carroll.
Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Louisiana Wildfire Agribusiness
MarketScout has expanded its specialty high net worth practice in Tampa, Fla., with the addition of Craig Rice as the newest production broker for the Private Client Solutions division.
In his new role with MarketScout, Rice will focus on leading the growth initiatives for both admitted and non-admitted high net worth business in Tampa and the Florida panhandle.
Prior to joining MarketScout, Rice was a private risk advisor for Baldwin, Krystyn Sherman Partners, where he specialized in providing insurance for professional athletes, entertainers, wealthy families and individuals, and companies. Rice holds a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
According to Richard Kerr, CEO of MarketScout, the company plans to further expand the Tampa office with underwriters who can offer fast turnaround for agency partners.
MarketScout is an insurance distribution and underwriting company headquartered in Dallas with specialty expertise in many areas. The firm is a Lloyds Coverholder and MGA for U.S. insurers. MarketScout owns and operates the MarketScout Exchange as well as over 40 other online and traditional underwriting and distribution venues.
MarketScout is founder of the Council for Insuring Private Clients (CIPC) and the Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance (EIA). MarketScout has offices in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, D.C.
Topics Florida
The widow of a man killed in a trench collapse in Boise, Idaho has filed a precursor to a lawsuit against several government agencies.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that a lack of training by Hard Rock Construction was a factor in the deaths of 36-year-old Bert Smith of Caldwell and 26-year-old Ernesto Saucedo-Zapata of Nampa.
They died on May 3 while they put in a sewer line.
The Idaho Press-Tribune reported in a story that Misty Smith names the Idaho Public Works Contractors License Board, the Idaho Division of Building Safety, the Idaho Public Works Commission, the Boise Public Works Department and the city of Boise in the tort claim.
Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
What Is the FAFSA?
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, is the official form to apply for federal financial aid to pay for college. It is also used by many states, individual colleges, and universities in making their financial aid decisions.
Specifically, the FAFSA determines who will receive aid in the form of loans, scholarships, and grants based on the information collected from the application.
Key Takeaways The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is used by the federal government to determine a family's eligibility for grants, work-study, and loans to pay for college.
States, individual colleges and universities, and private scholarship programs also use information from the FAFSA to make financial aid decisions.
Applications for FAFSA open in October of the prior year to enrollment and close in June of the academic year.
Funding is often granted on a first-come, first-serve basis, with students applying in June typically eligible only for loans.
Each FAFSA application period is 19 months, starting October 1 of the year before the award year and ending June 30 of the award year. For example, FAFSA applications for the 202223 academic year could be submitted between October 1, 2021, and June 30, 2023. Filling it out as early as possible is a good idea because many states have financial aid deadlines considerably earlier than June 30, and their aid may be available only on a first-come, first-served basis.
The FAFSA lists some of those deadlines, and the office of Federal Student Aid publishes a more comprehensive list of state student aid deadlines.
How Does the FAFSA Work?
The office of Federal Student Aid, part of the U.S. Department of Education, annually provides more than $150 billion in federal aid to some 13 million students. That aid consists of grants, work-study, and loans.
Grants , sometimes referred to as scholarships, are meant for students with "exceptional financial need" and don't have to be repaid. Today's most common federal grants for education are known as Pell Grants.
, sometimes referred to as scholarships, are meant for students with "exceptional financial need" and don't have to be repaid. Today's most common federal grants for education are known as Pell Grants. Work-study programs provide paid part-time jobs for undergraduate and graduate students through participating colleges and universities.
programs provide paid part-time jobs for undergraduate and graduate students through participating colleges and universities. Loans, unlike grants or scholarships, must eventually be repaid. However, federal loans tend to have low interest rates compared with those available from private lenders, in addition to more favorable repayment terms. There are several types of federal loans for higher education, sometimes referred to as Stafford Loans. Direct subsidized loans have the best terms and are available only to families with financial need. Direct unsubsidized loans are available to families regardless of financial need. Direct PLUS loans, are available to parents and graduate or professional students, regardless of financial need, although borrowers must have an acceptable credit history.
The FAFSA, which is administered by the office of Federal Student Aid, is the doorway to all of these types of aid.
The questions on the FAFSA are intended to determine the students level of financial need and establish their Expected Family Contribution (EFC). That's the amount of money the student and parents are expected to be able to pay out of pocket each year for the students college costs, under federal rules. Overall, the federal government, state assistance programs, the colleges the student is applying to, and other scholarship sources all use that data to determine how much aidand what kinds of aidthe family is eligible for.
Beginning in July 2023, the term "student aid index" (SAI) will replace EFC on all FAFSA forms, thanks to the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act. The change attempts to clarify what this figure actually is: an eligibility index for student aid, not a reflection of what a family can or will pay for post-secondary expenses. Adjustments to how the SAI is calculated are also planned to take effect.
Students can expect to receive a financial aid offer around the time that students are accepted by a college. Financial assistance may consist of a package of grants, work-study, and loans. These offers can differ from college to college.
How to Fill Out the FAFSA
The FAFSA is widely known as being complex. It requires students to respond to a number of questions that may take some time to complete. Importantly, families need to submit a new FAFSA every year in order to maintain their financial aid or to try again if they didn't get any aid the first time they applied.
Questions range from basic identifying information for the student and their parents (name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, etc.) to a detailed examination of their finances.
In addition, students and parents will need to supply information on their income and assets, including bank accounts, investments, real estate (except for the family home), and any businesses they own (excluding family farms and small businesses). Both parents and students have a FAFSA account and each must complete FAFSA.
Much of this information will be available from the family's tax returns. The IRS Data Retrieval Tool (IRS DRT) makes it possible to download that data directly to the FAFSA in many cases.
To answer the other financial questions, it will be helpful to have bank, brokerage, and mutual fund statements at hand. For a preview of the FAFSA's questions, the office of Federal Student Aid makes a copy of the printed FAFSA form available online. (Note that while it's permissible to fill out and submit a paper FAFSA form, the online version can be faster and more efficient unless you don't have access to a computer or the internet.)
The FAFSA vs. the CSS Profile
While the FAFSA is the best known and most widely used financial aid application form, it is not the only one. Another is the CSS Profile, an online application administered by the College Board and used by several hundred colleges, universities, and private scholarship programs to determine the student's eligibility for need-based, non-federal financial aid.
Unlike FAFSA, signing up for the CSS Profile isn't always free. Families pay $25 for the first school their student applies to, then $16 for each additional school, although the fees are waived for families making less than $100,000 per year.
The CSS Profile asks many questions similar to those on the FAFSA, yet has some important differences. For example, the CSS Profile takes equity in the family home into account, while the FAFSA does not. The CSS Profile also wants to know about any balances in retirement plans, while the FAFSA ignores them.
Some colleges and universities require families to fill out both the FAFSA and the CSS Profile. A number of schools also have their own, individualized scholarship applicationsone more reason to get started as early as possible.
Who Qualifies for FAFSA? To be eligible for FAFSA, a student must have financial need, be enrolled in a college or university in either a diploma or certificate program, and be a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen. Federal eligibility requirements also include the following criteria: a valid Social Security number, continued satisfactory performance in school, and completing a high school diploma, among others.
What Is the Deadline for FAFSA? FAFSA is available October 1 of the year prior to enrollment, and may at times be administered based on a first-come, first-serve basis until June of the academic school year. For this reason, applying as early as possible can increase the likelihood of receiving financial assistance. For example, students who apply in June are often only eligible for loans.
What Is the Income Limit for FAFSA? In short, no income-limit is in place to qualify for FAFSA. Instead, factors including year of enrollment and family size are considered along with displaying financial need.
The Bottom Line
Filling out the FAFSA is the first step many families take when seeking financial aid for college. It helps establish eligibility for grants, work-study programs, and loans. Fill it out as early as possible! Many states have financial aid deadlines earlier than June 30, the end of the 19-month FAFSA application period, and their aid may be available only on a first-come, first-served basis.
What Is an IRA?
An individual retirement account (IRA) is a long-term savings account that individuals with earned income can use to save for the future and enjoy certain tax advantages. The IRA is designed primarily for self-employed people who do not have access to workplace retirement accounts such as a 401(k), which is available only through employers.
You can open an IRA through a bank, an investment company, an online brokerage, or a personal broker.
Key Takeaways Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) are retirement savings accounts with tax advantages.
Types of IRAs include traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRAs, and Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees (SIMPLE) IRAs.
Money held in an IRA usually cant be withdrawn before age 59 without incurring a hefty tax penalty of 10% of the amount withdrawn.
There are annual income limitations that apply to deducting contributions to traditional IRAs and contributing to Roth IRAs.
IRAs are meant to be long-term retirement savings accounts. If you take money out early, you defeat that purpose by diminishing your retirement assets.
1:55 Click Play to Learn About Individual Retirement Accounts
How Does an IRA Work?
Anyone with earned income can open and contribute to an IRA, including those who have a 401(k) account through an employer. The only limitation is on the total that you can contribute to your retirement accounts in a single year.
When you open an IRA, you can choose to invest in a wide range of financial products, including stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and mutual funds. There are even self-directed IRAs (SDIRAs) that permit investors to make all the investing decisions. SDIRAs offer access to a broader selection of investments, including real estate and commodities. Only the riskiest investments are off-limits.
There are several kinds of IRAs, including traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRAs, and Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees (SIMPLE) IRAs. Each has different rules regarding eligibility, taxation, and withdrawals.
Individual taxpayers can establish traditional and Roth IRAs, and small business owners and self-employed individuals can set up SEP and SIMPLE IRAs. An IRA must be opened with an institution that has received Internal Revenue Service (IRS) approval to offer these accounts. Choices include banks, brokerage companies, federally insured credit unions, and savings and loan associations.
Because IRAs are meant for retirement savings, there is usually an early withdrawal penalty of 10% if you take money out before age 59. However, there are some notable exceptionswithdrawals for educational expenses and first-time home purchases, among others. If your IRA is a traditional account rather than a Roth account, you will also owe income tax on an early withdrawal.
What Counts as Income? You can only contribute to an IRA if you have earned income that meets the IRS definition. Income from interest and dividends, Social Security benefits, or child support does not count.
What Are the Different Types of IRAs and Their Rules?
The following is a breakdown of the different types of IRAs and the rules regarding each one.
Traditional IRA
In most cases, contributions to traditional IRAs are tax deductible. So if you put $4,000 into an IRA, your taxable income for the year decreases by that amount. Then, when you withdraw the money in retirement, it is taxed at your ordinary income tax rate. Your money grows tax-deferred in a traditional IRA.
For 2022, the maximum annual individual contribution to traditional IRAs is $6,000. If you are age 50 or older, you can also contribute a catch-up contribution of $1,000 for a total of $7,000. For 2023, the maximum annual individual contribution is $6,500. The catch-up contribution continues to be $1,000 for those 50 and over.
If you dont have a retirement plan at work, your traditional IRA contributions are fully deductible. But if you (or your spouse, if you are married) have a retirement plan at work, such as a 401(k) or 403(b), your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) determines whether, and how much of, your traditional IRA contributions can be deducted.
If you have a retirement plan at work:
For 2022, if you are single or file as head of household and have a retirement plan at work, your traditional IRA contributions are fully deductible if your MAGI is below $68,000. For 2023, your MAGI must be below $73,000.
If you are married and filing jointly, for 2022, your traditional IRA contributions are fully deductible if your MAGI is below $109,000. For 2023, your MAGI must be below $116,000. From there, the deductibility of your contributions starts to phase out as your MAGI increases.
It is possible to have both a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, or several IRAs at different institutions. However, the total annual contribution to all of your IRAs cannot exceed $6,000 (or $7,000 for those age 50 or older) for 2022 and $6,500 (or $7,500 for those age 50 or older) for 2023.
For 2022, the income range that phases out the deductibility of traditional IRA contributions for married couples is $109,000 to $129,000. For 2023, it's $116,000 to $136,000.
For single taxpayers or heads of households, the phase out range is $68,000 to $78,000. For 2023, it's $73,000 to $83,000.
If you don't have a plan at work but your spouse does:
If you contribute to an IRA and aren't covered by a workplace plan but are married to someone who is, the income phaseout range in 2022 is $204,000 to $214,000. For 2023, it's $218,000 to $228,000.
Use this chart to see where you fit.
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The EU's highest court has thrown out a legal challenge against an Irish bank bailout.
The European Court of Justice has rejected an appeal from shareholders in Permanent tsb, who saw the value of their shares almost wiped out.
They had argued that the Government unfairly took a 99% stake in the bank in 2011, even after existing shareholders voted to block the plan at an EGM.
However, the court in Luxembourg has today said the case was justified "to prevent the failure" of Permanent TSB, and therefore to the financial stability of the EU itself.
Over 137,000 smuggled cigarettes have been seized in raids at Dublin Airport and Ferry Port.
28,700 Marlboro Gold were discovered at Dublin Port on Sunday morning during a routine examination of a refrigerated truck arriving from Lithuania.
Temple Street Hospital in Dublin is currently off-call for ambulances due to a power failure.
In a statement it says all scheduled surgeries were postponed this morning but emergency surgeries will go ahead this afternoon.
Parents are encouraged to attend their local GP if at all possible however if the matter is urgent, the emergency department is still operational.
A spokesperson says today's temporary power failure continues to demonstrate the need for a new children's hospital.
Twenty-two people are under investigation for suspected tax evasion following an examination of the Panama Papers by a UK Government taskforce, Philip Hammond has said.
The Chancellor also told MPs the taskforce has identified nine "potential professional enablers of economic crime" with links to known criminals, and found "a number of leads" relevant to a Financial Conduct Authority-led operation into insider trading.
Links to eight ongoing Serious Fraud Office investigations have been established, 43 wealthy people are under "special review" while their links to Panama are further investigated, and 64 firms have been contacted to determine their links with Mossack Fonseca, Mr Hammond added.
He said other matters identified by the taskforce include referring 26 offshore companies to the National Crime Agency (NCA) for "potentially suspicious" financial activity, with the firms having previously "concealed" beneficial ownership of UK property.
Mr Hammond said other people have also come forward to "settle their affairs in advance of taskforce partners taking action".
Further investigation into areas including links to organised crime will take place in the coming months, the Cabinet minister added.
The 10 million taskforce, led by HM Revenue and Customs and the NCA, was established by former prime minister David Cameron to investigate allegations of tax-dodging linked to the leak of millions of documents from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Mr Cameron's personal finances came under scrutiny and he later admitted he handled the row over his profits from an offshore fund badly.
But he added the way the fund was set up offshore by his father Ian Cameron amounted to "entirely standard practice" and was not to avoid tax.
MPs have voiced concerns about the taskforce being unable to get its hands on the relevant documents from journalists, with the Government previously noting it faced "logistical barriers".
In a written statement to MPs, Mr Hammond said: "In its short existence, the taskforce has added greatly to the UK's understanding of the ever more complex and contrived structures that are being developed to mask offshore tax evasion and economic crime.
"This intelligence will ensure that the UK remains uniquely placed to contribute to the international effort to uncover, and take action on, wrongdoing, regardless of how deeply hidden the arrangements are, as well as identify those jurisdictions where regulatory oversight requires improvement.
"We can today report that the taskforce has opened civil and criminal investigations into 22 individuals for suspected tax evasion."
Mr Hammond listed the further work, telling MPs: "The taskforce's respective partners will engage the relevant prosecuting authorities to bring any identified wrongdoing before the courts."
He added: "Taskforce members are present in Panama, using established relationships with the Panamanian authorities, and working with diplomatic colleagues, to offer support to analyse all the available data."
Shadow treasury minister Rebecca Long-Bailey said: "The fact that the Government has sneaked this out in a written statement just before recess probably says all you need to know about how seriously they are really taking the issue of tackling tax avoidance.
"And you can see why they are trying to hide this statement, when you consider that back in April they claimed they were looking into 700 leads but today they are saying they're only investigating 22 individuals - that is a 3% rate of following down these leads."
German authorities have arrested five men on allegations they aided the Islamic State group in Germany by recruiting members and providing financial and logistical help.
The federal prosecutor's office said the men were arrested on suspicion of supporting a terrorist organisation. The arrests were made in a series of raids in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the northern state of Lower Saxony.
"This is an important blow to the extremist scene in Germany," justice minister Heiko Maas said.
One of the raids was in the Lower Saxony city of Hildesheim, which is a known centre for ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafists and where a mosque was raided during the summer.
The prosecutor's office, which handles all terrorism cases, said the suspects were not known to have links to IS suspect Jaber Albakr, who killed himself in prison in October two days after being arrested on suspicion of plotting to attack a Berlin airport with homemade explosives.
The five men are suspected of recruiting young Muslims in Germany, and raising funds to send them to Syria to join IS, prosecutors said. They are also accused of providing logistical support for the trips.
One of the suspects, a 32-year-old Iraqi citizen identified as Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A, who also goes by the name of Abu Walaa, is accused of being the ringleader of the group. He openly supported the IS group, attended several extremist events as a speaker and approved the departure of those willing to go to Syria, prosecutors said.
His last name was not provided in line with German privacy laws.
Two other suspects, identified as 50-year-old Turkish citizen Hasan C and 36-year-old German-Serbian citizen Boban S, were in charge of teaching Arabic and "radical Islamic content" to recruits.
The other two suspects, 27-year-old German citizen Mahmoud O and a 26-year-old from Cameroon, identified as Ahmed FY, helped with the logistics of organising the recruits' departure to Syria.
"The network verifiably trafficked one young man and his family to the 'IS' in Syria," the statement says.
The accused will be brought before a judge later on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the prosecutor's office said.
Amryt, which effectively relaunched itself earlier this year via the reverse takeover of Dublin investment firm Fastnet Equity, yesterday announced the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in the US, has granted orphan drug designation to its AP102 compound, which has the potential to treat patients suffering from acromegaly a rare disorder resulting in abnormal body growth due to the body producing excessive growth hormone.
Acromegaly affects up to 13 in every 100,000 people in the US.
Beijing home sales volume plunged 41% year-on-year last month, while Shanghais slumped 18%, China Real Estate Information data show, after new purchase restrictions and tightened mortgage lending. Transactions fell 50% in smaller cities.
Now policymakers must balance deflating property prices with safeguarding the expansion.
Efforts to curb excessive gains could cut 0.6 percentage point from 2017 economic growth, and as much as 1 point with aggressive national tightening, according to Morgan Stanley.
Property construction will unlikely be a big support for the economy next year, as both sales and investment will decelerate, said Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Group in Hong Kong.
Sales will continue to slow and investment growth will remain moderate for the rest of this year, she said.
Market friction could complicate the situation. Developers and homeowners have been slow to reduce prices while potential buyers are holding off because of sticker shock or hope for discounts.
Economists expect the standoff will last through the end of this year before weak sales gradually drag down home prices and start to weigh on investment early next year.
Developers staying on the sidelines have led to supply and transaction shortfalls.
Total new property entering the market in October plunged 61% from a year earlier in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen as developers sharply slowed sales, according to CRIC.
Policymakers are afraid that if they push too hard, theyll prick the bubble and steer the economy into recession, said Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia.
By deflating it gradually, risks are lower.
Policymakers are encouraging different cities to tailor their actions then watch and wait instead of resorting to a broad national monetary tightening as in the past, Shen said.
Theyre trying to avoid repeating the chaos like last years stock rout.
We have until the weekend to close the budget, give or take some days, said finance minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen.
Prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussens Liberal Party needs the support of politicians from three smaller parties to push the budget through parliament.
However, disagreements over tax cuts, which the government proposed in August as part of a 2025 fiscal plan, have delayed the process.
The budget needs to be nailed down by the middle of November to get the legislation in place by the start of next year.
Completing it on time may still be feasible, but one potential sticking point is represented by demands by the Danish Peoples Party for tighter immigration rules.
Mr Rasmussen also needs to close a deal with the Liberal Alliance, which is demanding an agreement on future tax cuts by the end of the year.
The government was to meet its partners for another round of budget talks late yesterday after weekend negotiations failed to produce a breakthrough.
The risks of a government collapse and snap election being called in Denmark by late 2016 have risen significantly following a dispute over tax policy, BMI Research, which is owned by Fitch, wrote earlier this month.
Six Danish governments have fallen during the Christmas period due to major disagreements over fiscal policy since 1945.
Mr Rasmussen has been caught in the crossfire of his political allies since August, when he first proposed a 5% cut to topskat, a 15% supplementary income tax levied on about 450,000 residents whose annual incomes exceed 459,200 kroner (61,416).
Amid only limited public support, he stopped short of extending the cut to the approximately 50,000 taxpayers who earn more than one million kroner a year, angering the free-market, libertarian Liberal Alliance.
Its leader, Anders Samuelson, has said that he is prepared to bring down the government unless the tax cut is extended to the countrys top earners.
Mr Rasmussen is having to play a difficult balancing act as his biggest coalition partner, the anti-immigration Danish Peoples Party, is refusing to back the Liberal Alliances requests. Instead, it wants more welfare spending.
One way out of the impasse is to separate the tax talks from the budget negotiations, Danish Peoples Party leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl told reporters last week.
The cyber attack targeted 40,000 current account holders in the UK.
Tesco Banks customers in Ireland of which there are 27,000 in the Republic avail of credit card services only and were totally unaffected.
The banking arm of Britains biggest retailer was yesterday scrambling to deal with the online attack on 40,000 customers accounts, 20,000 of which had money removed.
The hack is the first on a British bank known to have resulted in customers losing money, adding to growing concerns about the UK financial sectors vulnerabilities to cyber attacks, which have jumped in frequency over the past two years.
Tesco Bank, which manages 136,000 current accounts, stopped all online transactions while it worked to resume normal service, although customers could still use their bank cards in shops and to withdraw money from cash machines.
Any financial loss that results from this fraudulent activity will be borne by the bank, said Tesco Bank chief executive Benny Higgins, adding that customers are not at financial risk.
We think it would be relatively small amounts that have come out but were still working on that, he said, adding that he expected the cost of refunding customers would be a big number but not a huge number.
The bank is a minnow in Britains retail banking market, with about 2% of current accounts, and represents only a small part of Tescos overall business.
It contributed 503m (565m) to the groups revenue of 24.4bn in the first half of its 2016-17 financial year. Tescos share price was down around 1% yesterday.
However, while the financial hit to the group may be limited, Tesco Bank risks serious reputational damage from an attack that affected 29% of its customer current accounts.
Other British banks have been targeted by cyber attacks in recent years, but the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which regulates the sector, said it was not aware of any previous incident in which customers had lost money.
Reported attacks on financial institutions in Britain have risen from just five in 2014 to over 75 so far this year, according to FCA data.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Ian Murrihy, aged 26, of OCallaghan Avenue, Kileely, had pleaded not guilty at Limerick Circuit Court to attempted robbery of Brendan Beacom on May 14, 2014.
After an hour and 40 minutes of deliberations, the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Judge John Hannan adjourned sentence to January and remanded Murrihy, who has 30 previous convictions, in custody.
Mr Beacom recalled that, following heart surgery, he went out for evening walks. After parking his car near St Michaels Boat Club at around 8pm on the night in question, he commenced walking at Cleeves Bank.
Two men approached and one stopped him and said: Give me what you have, before pulling a knife, the court heard.
He then struck Mr Beacom over the eye with the knife, cutting his forehead. Mr Beacom grappled with his attacker and they both fell to the ground. When he stood up, both men ran off. Mr Beacom got help and was taken to hospital.
Aaron Bourke, a half- brother of Murrihy, said they met an old man while going towards the city. Murrihy asked him what he had before hitting him and knocking him down. Mr Bourke said he told Murrihy to come on and they left.
John OSullivan, prosecuting, said Aaron Bourke had no motive to implicate his half brother.
Lawrence Gouchier, defending, said gardai did not organise any identity parade as part of the investigation.
In a submission to the councils committee of ministers, UCCs Child Law Clinic said it believes the committees assessment that the redress scheme set up after the European courts landmark 2014 ruling in the Louise OKeeffe case is legitimate and reasonable, is inaccurate as a matter of law.
It is essential that clarity be provided on the question of whether the redress scheme is sufficient to discharge the State obligations on foot of the Grand Chamber (court) decision in OKeeffe, its submission said.
This clarity can only be provided by the court. Rather than await repetitive applications from future litigants, the committee can provide a resolution to the matter at this point by exercising its discretion to refer the matter to the court for an interpretive ruling clarifying whether it is necessary to demonstrate the existence of a prior complaint which was not acted upon in order for a case to come within the terms of the OKeeffe decision. The Child Law Clinic respectfully urges the committee to pursue this option at the earliest opportunity.
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has also asked the Council of Europe to sanction a review of how the State is treating those who allege they were abused. Ms OKeeffe was eight was she was sexually abused in 1973 by Leo Hickey, the former principal at Dunderrow NS in Co Cork. When Hickey was jailed in 1998 on sample charges relating to 21 girls, Ms OKeeffe began legal proceedings against him, the Department of Education, and the State. But the High Court and Supreme Court, ruled against her, finding the State could not be held separately liable for the abuse as the school was not operated or managed directly by the State. Ms OKeeffe appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and won. After the ruling, the Government set up a redress scheme, through the State Claims Agency, to grant out-of-court settlements to certain claims of school child sex abuse. But the agency is only granting settlements to claimants who can show a prior complaint of sexual abuse had been made to a person in authority in a school.
In June, the committee of ministers found the terms of the scheme were legitimate and reasonable as long as the flexible and holistic approach of the State Claims Agency is maintained. But the Child Law Clinicsaid this assessment is inaccurate in law. It pointed out about 210 potential applicants who had previously instituted legal proceedings against the State, discontinued them under threat of costs, and contrary to what the Government said and the committee accepted, these applicants are unable to reinstitute proceedings.
added just seven offers of settlements have been made, even though at least 360 cases arise for consideration.
Anne Fox, a nurse from Hawthorn, Summerhill, Nenagh, Co Tipperary died at the Mater Hospital on February 28 2015.
The elected surgery to enlarge a small aorta in order to improve her quality of life was deemed high-risk, Dublin Coroners Court heard.
Mr Hossein Javadpour, Consutlant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the Mater Hospital explained that the woman, described by family members as petite, was having surgery for a congenital heart condition.
Ms Fox was undergoing an aortic valve replacement because she was at risk of sudden death due to heart failure.
We felt not having the operation was a higher risk. She had a 20% risk of sudden death, Mr Javadpour said.
The surgeon had to first enlarge the aorta in order to insert a prosthetic valve to allow for a greater flow of blood from the heart to the rest of the body.
During surgery, the womans heart began to bleed and Mr Javadpour was unable to identify the exact source.
When you stop the heart you dont necessarily see where the blood is coming from unless there is a big tear, he said. He found a tear and repaired it but was concerned that Ms Fox had lost too much blood at this point.
The woman was stabilised and placed in intensive care but died the following day, February 28 2015.
The cause of death was cardiogenic and hypovolemic shock due to a hemorrhage due to the surgical repair of a small aortic route and valve replacement.
Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane returned a verdict of death due to a complication of a surgical procedure.
Family members paid tribute to the woman whom they said was a wonderful nurse.
The Independent Alliance TD had been urged to support a bill due before the Dail this week which calls for a referendum to ensure the public ownership of water would be enshrined in the Constitution.
The minister of state for training, skills, and innovation was among 39 TDs who initially signed the bill and TDs yesterday called on Mr Halligan to back it.
Sinn Feins Eoin O Broin said: John Halligan was in opposition while this bill was being drafted, he signed it, he is one of the 39 that are there. If it was good enough to sign on the opposition benches, its clearly good enough for him to sign now that he is in Government and all of the political parties are on record as saying they are opposed to privatisation.
However, Mr Halligan will not have to vote on the issue as he is away on an official Government trip to Israel and Palestine this week.
The AAA-PBP grouping is also supporting the 35th Amendment to the Constitution (Water in Public Ownership Bill 2016) Bill which is being brought forward by Independents4Changes Joan Collins.
Richard Boyd Barrett of the AAA-PBP said: This is an acid test for democracy, for the political establishment in this country. Were they telling the truth about keeping our resources in public ownership or were they lying to the people? We will find out on Wednesday.
Calling on Fianna Fail to vote with the bill, Ms Collins said there had been indirect contact with the party.
A Fianna Fail spokesperson said: While the Fianna Fail parliamentary party has not yet discussed this motion, it is worth pointing out that public ownership of the water infrastructure was explicitly included as a condition of the confidence and supply agreement negotiated by our party after the general election.
Fianna Fail sought and secured in the agreement that Irish Water will be retained as a single national utility in public ownership responsible for the delivery of water and wastewater services.
Brendan Ogle of the Right2Water group said there had been countless international examples that showed the disastrous impact of water privatisation on communities.
In Detroit, Michigan, more than 70,000 people have had their water shut off, with similar processes occurring in Paris and Rome, he said.
Closer to home, more than one in five people in Britain now live in water poverty as fees are hiked up by private companies to prices families cant afford.
John Douglas of the Mandate trade union said a constitutional guarantee of public ownership would protect water not only from future governments but from the pressure of European and international institutions which have a track record of supporting privatisation.
The man, from Banteer, suffered serious injuries after he was assaulted by another man in the early hours of October 24.
He is understood to have been struck over the head before falling back and hitting his head off the pavement.
A number of ministers are livid that gardai received such a generous package, which staved off strike action last week, as they believe it may now lead to many other public sector groups demanding pay increases.
A senior Government source said ministers were angered that the Garda package would have a significant knock-on effect for everybody else and will be raising major concerns at todays cabinet meeting.
Members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland are already involved in industrial action over pay and conditions while doctors and nurses are said to be unhappy and could potentially ballot for similar action.
While public sector pay and the recent strikes are likely to dictate much of todays cabinet meeting, Mr Donohoe is also expected to bring forward proposals around guidelines on public consultations.
Meanwhile, ministers will also be updated on flood prevention measures already under way and an action plan for the future.
Sean Canney, minister of state for the OPW, is due to bring an inter-departmental report on flooding to Cabinet for approval. Mr Canney received the initial report over the summer but had asked officials to redraft it as he was unhappy with a lack of detail over future planning.
It is understood a relocation grant to cover the cost of buying or building a new home is among the proposals covered in the report.
The Independent Alliance TD previously suggested he would be in favour of such a measure. However, it is understood this would be a targeted grant and would be limited to people living in specific areas where it would not be cost effective to build flood defences. Details around emergency planning, flood relief measures and flood insurance are also contained in the report.
Transport Minister Shane Ross will also bring a detailed document which will call for significant rail funding increases in order to prevent the closure of rural lines. The report, by the National Transport Authority, will state that Irish Rail needs 600m over the next five years in order for existing services to survive.
If this does not happen rural lines may have to close, with a worst-case scenario potentially involving just the Dart, Dublin and Cork commuter lines, and inter-city lines between Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and Limerick surviving.
It is understood Mr Ross has made no decision, and is seeking Cabinet approval to put a number of options out for public consultation over the coming weeks on how to address the matter.
Separately, Housing Minister Simon Coveney yesterday published measure to speed up the planning process for housing developments.
The Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Bill 2016 will introduce temporary fast-track planning arrangements, to allow planning applications for large-scale housing developments of more than 100 units, and student accommodation developments to be made directly to An Bord Pleanala and determined within a specified time-frame.
The bill will come before the Seanad next week and is expected to be debated in the Dail in the first week of December. This bill aims to rapidly increase housing supply and also reinforces rental protections for both tenants and landlords.
The first round of talks between ICTU, the umbrella body for unions, and Mr Donohoe at Government buildings yesterday was described as very frank and difficult by sources.
In the wake of a special 40m pay deal for gardai, union chiefs are awaiting the Governments next move and whether the proposed Labour Court deal will be accepted by Cabinet as well as gardai.
Mr Donohoe and his officials were given two options by the public services committee of ICTU yesterday: A free for all from all the different unions or a collective wage agreement. A clear message was also given that the Lansdowne Road agreement is now considered finished and a new deal must be drawn up.
Sources at the meeting told the Irish Examiner: It was very frank, very direct. There were direct messages from both sides. You would expect it would be a difficult meeting given the circumstances.
Sources confirmed that Mr Donohoe was given the two options and clearly told the Lansdowne Road agreement needs to be replaced. The ultimatum will set the tone in any set of talks that will proceed in the wake of the proposed Garda deal.
The ministers office refused to discuss details of the meeting.
However, a spokeswoman said: Both parties agreed to support moving forward with a collective pay policy agreement. Further contact at ministerial and official level is expected across the coming period.
Trade unions await the Governments next move, including the outcome of todays Cabinet meeting.
The public services committee of ICTU represents some 19 trade unions. It is expected that a large-scale meeting of trade unions could be scheduled in the coming weeks to discuss the Garda deal and pay demands going forward.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny yesterday warned: We cannot go back to the boom and bust, the when I have it I spend it recklessness that brought the country to the brink.
Cllr Mick Finn (Ind) backed the calls from a leading city publican, but went further to demand that councillors be briefed on the timeline for the project, nine months after the Taoiseach turned the sod and almost two years after almost 20m in state aid was sanctioned.
Mr Finn said the citys elected public representatives, and the public in general, deserve to know whats going on, what is planned, and more importantly, when its planned, given the level of public funding being ploughed into it.
I know this project is complex, but there is 20m of our money, of public money, being invested in this, he said.
It is a big project for Cork, and the longer this drags on, the more doubt creeps in. The public should be informed.
He has tabled a series of questions on the issue for city council bosses at next Mondays council meeting.
He will also repeat his calls for a full briefing on the projects status and proposed timelines by the joint venture partners, BAM Construction and entertainment giants, Live Nation.
He first called for the briefing earlier this year and was told it was likely to happen before the summer. It did not happen.
Were now coming into the winter, and still no sign of a briefing. We deserve to be told whats going on, he said.
BAM and Live Nation won a competitive bid in December 2014 for 20m of state funding to build the 6,000-seat events centre on the former Beamish and Crawford brewery site on South Main St as part of its 150m Brewery Quarter regeneration of the entire site.
But despite a sod-turning by Taoiseach Enda Kenny last February, work on the events centres internal design is ongoing, final detailed costs have yet to be agreed, contracts have yet to be signed, and construction has yet to start.
Demolition started on a portion of the site four weeks ago, but archaeological investigations have yet to take place.
Mr Finn said it was encouraging to see the demolition start.
But things would want to start moving sooner rather than later, he said.
The councillor said he fully supports comments from Sean McCarthy, a co-owner of SoHo bar and restaurant who was a leading figure in the Support the Brewery Quarter campaign, who called over the weekend for a public statement on the projects proposed timeline.
We need a positive announcement or a timeline on the events centre. They should at least let the people of Cork know, said Mr McCarthy.
The events centre has the potential to do for Cork what the INEC has done for Killarney or the 3Arena has done for Dublin, he said.
Meanwhile, city officials engaged in the event centre process said they always expected the internal design process announced in late August to take at least two months.
However, it is understood that the work did not get underway until mid September.
A council spokesman said they will be seeking an update on the status of that process from the developers towards the end of the week.
BAM Construction was not available for comment yesterday.
The call came yesterday at a national conference in Cork organised by Young Knocknaheeny (YK) a pioneering childhood programme on the northside of Cork City funded by the Government and Atlantic Philanthropies.
Set up in early 2015, the community prevention and early intervention programme works on the development of babies, children, families, and the community to give all children the best possible start in life.
Children who grow up in disadvantage and experience adversity in their early years are at much greater risk than their peers of lifelong poor outcomes in their physical and mental health as well as their social, educational, and economic achievement.
YK works to improve the lives of all children in the area from pre-birth to age six and their families to enhance the skills of parents and others who come into the lives of the children.
It also identifies potential developmental concerns much earlier and sets out to tackle them.
Over the last two years, YK has engaged with 2,500 children, 450 parents, 310 practitioners, and worked in partnership with over 40 services.
YK brought experts, policy makers and practitioners together for a national conference yesterday to discuss how the State could do more to ensure that all children get the best possible start in life.
Professor Anthony Staines, the chair of health systems at Dublin City Universitys School of Nursing and Human Sciences, told the conference investment in early childhood programmes pays off in the long-term.
The dominant cost of child poverty is lost opportunities programmes like Young Knocknaheeny are superb investments that pay for themselves many times over, he said.
YK manager Katherine Harford said there is an acceptance of the need to shift resources from crisis management in social and health services to prevention and early intervention.
But she said in reality, the investments are piecemeal and the policy needs a more secure finance and strategic footing.
The three-day event begins on Thursday at the recently opened Ludgate Hub in Skibbereen, and will include contributions from Ronan Harris, VP of sales Google EMEA and head of Google Ireland; Fred and Geraldine Karlsson, co-founders of DoneDeal; Mark MacGann, senior board advisor at Uber; and Grainne McCarthy, senior news editor at the Wall Street Journal, among others.
The Ludgate Digital Hub officially opened last July and has already attracted a number of tech companies as well as growing interest from overseas, but the 450,000 Ludgate Seed Capital fund is also open to companies wishing to set up a base there.
Grainne Dwyer, the chief executive of the Ludgate Digital Hub and a member of the Ludgate investment team, said: Weve already received applications for the Ludgate Seed Capital Fund from some really interesting Irish and international companies. The whole Ludgate team are really looking forward to meeting potential fund recipients during National Digital Week.
We hope itll give us a better understanding of what entrepreneurs are hoping they can achieve if they win a share in the fund. Attending will also give fund applicants a chance to meet some really interesting people that may inspire and sharpen their business ideas.
The seed fund is joint-funded by three private investors, including Gain Line Capital Investments Ltd, the Sean and Rose ODriscoll Family Investment Fund, and an international private investor. Any interested parties can get more information by visiting ludgate.ie/seed-funding/ or by emailing investments@ludgate.ie by close of business on December 1.
With the Web Summit having decamped from Dublin to Lisbon, National Digital Week is keen to help fill the gap, with more than 80 speakers contributing across the three days and over 1,600 people expected to attend. Dedicated speaker sessions will focus on topics including agri-tech, female founders and leadership, and the sharing economy.
According to Grainne Dwyer, the Ludgate Hub is now averaging over 150 users every month, as well as playing host to regional meetings, off-site programmes for larger companies, and as a base for local and visiting businesses.
She also told website Silicon Republic that the venue has secured its first company from Silicon Valley to have relocated to Skibbereen.
Another third have less than optimal mental health, with just 34% displaying no evidence of mental ill health, according to the national study of hospital doctors.
The report, published by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, examined how 1,750 hospital doctors, including consultants, senior house officers, and junior doctors feel about their work.
It found a prevalence of psychological distress, and low levels of wellbeing, among medical staff, with 52% of all doctors reporting burnout or emotional exhaustion.
Consultants and trainees who reported negative experience of work have high levels of emotional exhaustion, over-commitment, and effort-reward imbalance.
They are also more likely to be physically inactive than more contented colleagues. Probable mental ill-health was highest among junior doctors, with over 42% displaying psychological stress.
The reports author, Dr Blanaid Hayes, a consultant occupational physician at Beaumont Hospital, said psychological stress levels among hospital doctors were nearly three times that of the general population.
The prevalence in trainee doctors is a cause for grave concern, said Dr Hayes, who is also dean-elect of the faculty of occupational medicine at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
The research also found that 7% were classified as having severe depression, 6% had severe anxiety, and one in 10 suffered severe stress.
The study, the first major one of the mental health and wellbeing of hospital doctors in Ireland, found t hospital doctors work on average 57 hours per week, ranging from just over 54 for consultants to 61 for senior house officers.
Three fifths of doctors surveyed say their work situation does not leave them enough time for their family or personal life. Only one fifth exercise sufficiently for it to be beneficial for their health, while a quarter are inactive.
One in 10 doctors admit to binge-drinking whenever they consume alcohol, while three in 10 engage in hazardous drinking patterns. One in 10 also smoke, although many are not daily smokers.
Although 41% of doctors report their overall quality of life as very good or excellent, 15% describe it as fair and 4% say it is poor.
Dr Hayes said the study found that senior doctors and trainee doctors were concerned about issues impacting on the quality of patient care, as well as the inadequacy of resources, and feel undervalued in the work they do.
She said a sense of duty among doctors meant they were reluctant to burden already busy colleagues by taking time off when they were ill.
The study also indicated some disillusionment among doctors with their chosen career, as the desire to practice medicine had declined for three out of five doctors since they graduated.
Nevertheless, 71% still had a strong desire to continue to work in the medical profession.
The Web Summit kicked off last night in Lisbon, but the wifi gremlins which dogged the technology conference in Dublin seem to have stowed away on the plane to Portugal.
Before the Web Summit controversially relocated to Lisbon for this years event there was much grumbling about the problems with connectivity in the RDS, where it was held in recent years.
WITH the The Young Pope up and running on Sky Atlantic, and being promoted with the line His religion is revolution, comparisons with Pope Francis or some previous popes are inevitable. It stars Jude Law as Cardinal Lenny Belardo, the first American pope and the youngest to occupy the chair of Peter. He is a chain-smoking, Coca Cola-drinking outsider who takes the name Pius XIII, which will of course misleadingly bring to mind Eugenio Pacelli who, as Pius XII, was pope from 1939 to 1958, and was an austere, autocratic figure.
Diane Keaton plays Sr Mary, who wears a T-shirt to bed thats emblazoned with the slogan, Im a virgin but this is an old shirt. She believes that Lenny, whom she raised in an orphanage, is destined for greatness.
On becoming pope, he brings her to Rome and, much to the chagrin of Cardinal Voiella, secretary of state, announces she is to be his personal assistant. Sr Mary becomes a papal confidant, which suggests real parallels with Sr Pascalina, the controversial German nun who developed a close relationship with Pius XII, becoming in effect his gatekeeper, controlling access and the flow of paper to the papal apartments.
Such was her influence and power that a 1983 biography of her was entitled La Popessa: The Most Powerful Woman in Vatican History. Sr Mary seems set for a similar role.
In his first address from the balcony of St Peters Basilica, Lenny, as Pius XIII, startles the huge crowd. What have we forgotten? he begins. We have forgotten how to play. How to masturbate. How to use contraceptives. How to get abortions. How to celebrate gay marriages. To allow priests to love each other, even to get married... Forgotten how to decide to die if we detest living; to divorce, to let nuns say Mass. We have forgotten how to play. We have forgotten happiness.
Three cardinals who are in attendance faint on the spot. Could this new pope be living up to his promise that his religion is revolution? Seconds later we discover of course that we have been witnessing a dream sequence.
The last pope to be described as revolutionary (with considerable justification) was Angelo Roncalli who, as John XXIII, succeeded Pius XII in 1958 and convened the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
The council, guided by John XXIIIs desire for a more open Church, one that would acknowledge and interact with the modern world, and also by his disregard for those whom he called prophets of doom, embarked on a revolutionary path.
What it was in essence reacting to and revolting against was a fortress mentality created by a 150-year history of negativity and rejection. This was best summarised by Francis Xavier Murphy in his book, The Papacy Today: In the course of the century and a half separating the death of Pius VI from the election of John XXIII, the Catholic Church under the aegis of the papacy fought a rearguard action against the evolutionary forces of Western civilisation.
In a series of retrograde pronouncements the popes rejected the fundamental drive for liberty, equality, and fraternity that had been the objectives of the French Revolution, despite the fact that all three of these objectives could be squared with the teaching of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
And instead of rejoicing in its liberation from the burdens of political rule first with the usurpation of the Papal States by the Napoleonic forces at the turn of the 19th century, then by their abolishment under the Risorgimento in 1870 the popes had reacted by asserting the Churchs right to exercise political sovereignty despite Christs denial of worldly kingship before Pilate, while rejecting a fundamental evangelical counsel Christs frequent exhortation to his disciples that they pay attention to the signs of the times.
Perhaps the three documents that best exemplified the growth of a fortress mentality at the highest echelons of the Church were the encyclical Quanta cura, with the Syllabus of Errors attached, issued by Pope Pius XI in December 1864. The syllabus denounced the principal errors of our times, including the view that the pope can or should reconcile himself to, or agree with, progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation.
It also rejected the concepts of freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. This was a huge blow to liberal Catholicism.
The other documents came from Pope Pius X in 1907. Having viewed the liberalising movement known as Modernism with alarm, the Pope published a decree, Lamentabili (July 3, 1907) which condemned 65 Modernist propositions, and in the encyclical Pascendi (September 8, 1907) an oath disavowing Modernism was imposed on all clergy. A widespread witchhunt followed, widening the breach between the Church and the intelligentsia.
The Second Vatican Council was an attempt to liberate the Church from this fortress mentality. The effect of the council, and of John XXIII, who convened it, has been well summarised by Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity at Cambridge University.
In his book Ten Popes Who Shook the World, he writes this at the end of the chapter of John XXIII: It is hard to speak without sentiment of the greatness of a simply good man. But to anyone who lived through Pope Johns quiet revolution, there can be no doubt about the nature or magnitude of his gift to the Church and to humanity. Catholicism before Papa Roncalli had many strengths, but it was overbearingly clerical, seeming both afraid and dismissive of the world around it, and though many of its people were warmly human, as an institution it existed in the deep freeze. In the hands of this good man, the ice began to melt.
The melting process didnt continue unabated. After the election of Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in October 1978, the freeze began again. Those of us who were in the Vatican press office on October 16, 1978, when white smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel, were for the most part wrong about the new pope, wrong in our eagerness to paint him in liberal colours.
During his long pontificate, repressive clericalism reasserted itself in the Church, and led to a gradual undermining of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, when John Paul II set out to prepare a 610-page Catechism of the Catholic Church (published in 1994), this was nothing less than an attempt to rewrite those documents.
So where does Pope Francis fit into the papal scheme of things? Are we to say that, like Lenny Belardo in The Young Pope, that his religion is revolution? Three-and-a-half years into his pontificate (Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected on March 13, 2013), the answer to that is clearly no. One of his biographers called his book The Great Reformer, and spoke of the making of a radical pope, but the evidence for this to date is unconvincing.
Early on in his pontificate, Francis was described as an enigma. Yes, there have been reforms of sorts. Francis has shed the monarchical trappings of the papacy, introduced an informality, and continues to live in a Vatican guesthouse rather than the opulence of the papal apartments. More importantly, in making mercy a central theme of his papacy, he has adopted a far more pastoral and approach than either John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and he has noticeably softened the tone of papal speeches and pronouncements, making it more inclusive.
Institutionally, there have also been changes. His appointments of a small groups of cardinals to act in an advisory capacity is a modest move towards collegiality, and he has resuscitated the Synod of Bishops by encouraging the participants to speak freely.
The synod had been eviscerated by John Paul II; his authoritarian stance was followed by Benedict XVI, who should never have been elected pope anyway. That said, the 189-page document Francis produced (Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love) after deliberations of the two Synods on the Family, pleased neither liberals nor conservatives.
Mind you, even modest changes he proposed (adopting a more flexible attitude on giving divorced and remarried Catholics access to communion) have met resistance from diehard conservative bishops, especially in the US.
At the beginning of this month, he travelled to Lund in Sweden where he signed a joint declaration with the head of the Lutheran World Federation at an ecumenical prayer service commemorating the Reformation, the greatest schism in western Christianity, stating that what unites the two traditions is greater than what divides them. The actual 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation isnt until October 2017, but the build-up has already started.
While in Lund, Francis came face to face with the head of the Church of Sweden, Archbishop Antje Jackelen a woman. This is a reminder of the gulf that still exists between the two Churches, with Francis early on in his pontificate reiterating that the ordination of women to the priesthood was a closed question for Catholics.
On the plane back to Rome, Francis went further, saying the Churchs ban on women priests was forever. This was in reply to a question from a female Swedish reporter who had noted that the head of the Lutheran Church in Sweden was a woman.
Yet a future council (Vatican III?) might well decide the way is open for the ordination of women. The present ban is based solely on tradition and, whats more, on one particular interpretation of that tradition.
In September, Francis met Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and others including Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in Assisi at the 30th anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for Peace. When this was first called for by John Paul II in 1986, the Dalai Lama was present. This time he was a notable absentee. Why?
The Tibetan spiritual leader was not invited due to pressure from the Chinese government. And the Vatican gave way because it is engaged in a long-term power struggle over who should have the right to appoint bishops.
The Catholic Church in China is tolerated largely because Beijing controls the choosing of bishops. The Vatican wants to change this, and thus the Dalai Lama (a thorn in Beijings side) was snubbed so as not to offend the Chinese. This display of realpolitik (at the expense of moral principle) by Rome was shameful and does no credit to Francis.
In this, and in other respects (such as his continuing support for Humanae Vitae, the discredited 1968 encyclical condemning contraception), Pope Francis is still very much a traditionalist. This much is certain Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not going to morph into Pope Pius XIII.
Business MTSH Trading Up After Share Split
A man looks at his watermelon field near the Thilawa economic zone outside Yangon October 2, 2012. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters
RANGOON Myanmar Thilawa SEZ Holdings (MTSH) stock shares have received increased interest from investors since the shares reopened for trading after a recent share split, a senior official from the Yangon Stock Exchange (YSX) told The Irrawaddy.
MTSH trading stopped on Oct. 31 for a preapproved share split. When trading reopened on Nov. 4, the share price was 5,300 kyats per share.
The company shares dropped by a value of tenmeaning that prior shareholders would hold 10 times as many shares as before the split, but that the value of their shares remained the same.
The company has increased the number of shares in order to boost trading, according to U Thet Htun Oo, of the YSX.
After the share split went through, 60,000 shares were traded on Nov. 4.
U Thet Htun Oo said that MTSH shares are expected to grow in popularity to Japanese investors, especially following State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis recent visit to the country.
During her trip, Japan pledged around US$8 billion in aid to Burma. Following the visit, dozens of Burmese and Japanese businessmen met at the Myanmar Investment Forum in Tokyo on Tuesday.
U Myat Thin Aung, chairman of the Hlaing Tharyar Industrial Zone, said Japanese investments in Burma have the potential to trump other countries, particularly in Burmas industrial zones.
Japanese investors waited for the United States to lift sanctions. Now that they have, Japanese investors are eyeing the auto industry, garment industry and manufacturing sector, he said.
He agreed that MTSH shares would see increased demand as the Thilawa SEZ is developed.
As of November 8, the MTSH split share price has fallen slightly to 4,900 kyats per share. There are currently three companies trading on the YSX including FMI (16,000 kyats per share) and Myanmar Citizen Bank (9,600 kyats per share).
Burma Analysis: Rushing the Peace Process
The UPDJC in session in Naypyidaw on October 28. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy
RANGOON Ethnic armed group leaders have questioned State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis silence two months into a Burma Army offensive in Kachin State and her push for all groups to sign the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA).
The State Counselor has put pressure on the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC)a coalition of seven ethnic armed organizationsto sign the NCA this month, but the UNFCs vice chairman has maintained that more time is required to achieve full inclusivity and meaningful peace.
Her wish is for us to sign it as soon as we can, the UNFCs Nai Hong Sar told The Irrawaddy. As for us, we dont want to buy time at this point, but there is no concrete solution. If we sign it, we know that there will be problems.
He added that, We have doubts as to why she is rushing the peace process.
At a meeting in October with the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC), Daw Aung San Suu Kyi reaffirmed that non-signatories should sign the NCA as soon as possible, and then participate in the second installment of the Union Peace Conference scheduled for February 2017.
Our country has strived for peace for decades. All should participate in the conference, and should not stay outside and buy more time, she said at the event.
Peace talks between the governments National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) and the UNFC have been ongoing. Out of eight discussion points, four were agreed upon in October, and four remain unresolved. The UNFC maintains that once all eight are addressed satisfactorily, the coalition will consider signing the NCA.
The issue of all-inclusivity is one that vice chairman Nai Hong Sar has continued to emphasize; with the eight current NCA signatories as the only participants in a political dialogue, he said that the peace process will have little value.
There will not be real peace if only some groups are allowed to join a ceasefire and others are being fought against, he said, referring to Burma Army offensives in the north of the country.
What Do They Want?
According to some ethnic armed group leaders, there is divergence between the approaches of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy and the Burma Army when it comes to the peace process.
This has been particularly apparent in the ongoing military offensive against the Kachin Independence Organization/Army (KIO/A).
On Oct. 25th, the 56th anniversary of the KIOs formation, Lanyaw Zawng Hra, the organizations chairman, spoke on the occasion, saying that it appeared that the Burma Army was trying to eliminate all ethnic armed opposition through the use of force.
Lanyaw Zawng Hras speech was also critical of the NLD, questioning the leading partys silence regarding the military offensive despite past promises to work with ethnic nationalities to build a federal system in Burma.
He said that the KIO wanted to solve political problems with political dialogue, and that had been why the organization had joined the 21st century Panglong peace conference at the end of August. But the Burma Army continued to launch attacks on KIA outposts while the government tried to implement the peace process.
If these attacks continue, the KIA may not sign the NCA, according to UNFC leaders; the issue was reportedly raised during peace talks in October in Rangoon.
If the KIA does not sign the NCA, then the other members of the UNFC will not sign it either. We will stand as an allied force and we need to protect each other, said Nai Hong Sar, who also pointed out that different views are apparent on the governments side, between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the Tatmadaw.
What do they want? Do they want to get the upper hand? Or are they worried that their army will have no value if there is no more fighting? the UNFC vice chairman asked, in reference to the Burma Army.
Without agreement from the military, Nai Hong Sar added, the State Counselor and her government will have difficulty working for the country. She cannot turn her back on the armys demands, either; we understand her circumstances, he said.
Burma Rangoon Authority to Release Air Quality Data
Downtown Rangoon / The Irrawaddy
RANGOON Information on Rangoons air quality will be released around next May, according to the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC).
The YCDC environmental conservation and sanitation department has been monitoring air quality in Burmas commercial capital since April last year and plans to continue monitoring until next April, according to deputy department head Dr. Aung Myint Maw.
The citys air quality index will be calculated according to the levels of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen peroxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, methane and particulate matter (PM) in the air in line with WHO guidelines.
We have measured [air quality] in 67 places across Rangoon, Dr. Aung Myint Maw told The Irrawaddy. On average, the levels of carbon dioxide, methane and carbon monoxide are slightly higher than [WHO] standards,
Levels of carbon dioxide and methane were particularly high in areas of garbage dumping, ditches, and trees while the carbon monoxide level was high at intersections prone to traffic congestion, he said.
Nitrogen peroxide and sulfur dioxide were also found in the air while the level of particulate matter (PM) was high near construction sites, he added.
YCDC has installed three air pollution monitorsone near Rangoon city hall, one on the Hledan overpass and the third outside the Mingaladon Township administration office. The fourth is a mobile unit deployed at various locations in the city, including industrial zones.
According to Rangoon-based general practitioner Dr. Zarni Maung, coarse dust particles are 2.5 to 10 micrometers in diameter, and fine particles are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller. The particles are so small that they can get into lungs, potentially causing health problems, especially chronic breathing problems.
The worst result of air pollution isif people are exposed to polluted air for a long timethat they suffer from breathing problems, which can result in premature death, he told The Irrawaddy.
Even if air pollution is not that serious, people can suffer from headaches, itchy eyes, sore throat and vomiting, he added.
Dr. Aung Myint Maw said that the data would cover every township in Rangoon as YCDC was measuring air pollution levels at one-mile intervals.
Upon release of the air quality index, YCDC will report to concerned government authorities and lawmakers so that further action can be taken, he said.
Tuesday, November 8th, 2016 (10:32 am) - Score 536
After a long delay Cityfibre has today confirmed that their contractors have started to build Phase One of a new Gigabit capable fibre optic broadband (FTTP) network in the centre of Glasgow (Scotland), which will be connected up to an existing 31km long network in the city and serve local businesses.
Phase One of the network, which will be built over a period of 12 months and seeks to cover nearly 7,000 local businesses (plus a number of public sector sites, such as 7 hospitals), was originally due to begin during early 2016. However Cityfibre recently informed ISPreview.co.uk that this had to be delayed while they prioritised the completion of our Edinburgh Gigabit City project that had grown significantly in scale.
The good news is that Cityfibres network in Edinburgh has now been largely completed and as a result the operator is switching their focus back to Glasgow, which is supported by local ISP partner HighNet. Apparently the work has already commenced on Ingram Street, Renfrew Street and Douglas Street.
James McClafferty, CityFibres Head of Regional Development in Scotland, said: It is great to see our Gigabit City network now reaching the heart of Glasgow. Pure fibre connectivity and ultra-fast internet services are already changing the way thousands of businesses operate nationwide and now Glasgows business community will benefit too. A Gigabit City network will help support the citys growing demand for data, boost competitiveness and create new opportunities for digital entrepreneurs. The rise of digital is really transforming the way we live and work, but to keep up with trends and maintain Glasgows profile on the world stage, we need the infrastructure to match.
George Redmond, Glasgow Councillor, added: This is a key development for Glasgow, with the greater network capacity and speeds that will come from this delivering great benefits for people and organisations all across the city. We have made great strides in smart systems in Glasgow in recent years, and this will help us maintain our competitive edge.
Eventually its hoped that the network may be able to expand its coverage to reach 15,000 local businesses, but for now theyre focused on the first phase of the roll-out. The first businesses are expected to go live on the new network from early 2017
CityFibre is currently in the process of completing Gigabit City projects in 19 cities around the United Kingdom, such as Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The operator aims to reach as many as 50 cities by 2020, which is only possible because of last years 90m deal to acquire KCOMs UK network assets (here).
10 Trends Making Enterprise App Stores Work
When Deloitte Global looked at what devices millennials prefer to use, its survey found that they spend most of their time on smartphones, but PCs are where they do their work; tablets only get occasional use (full survey here). When it comes to getting things done, they prefer a PC and browser over anything else. This is a far cry from the PC is Dead mantra weve been hearing for some time.
You can read the survey results yourself. For right now, lets talk about why Apples success with the iPod and iPhone didnt lead to another digital revolution with the iPad, which was the device that caused all this false uproar.
The iPod Success
What made the iPod a success over all of the other MP3 players was that Apple was the only vendor that really didnt care about DRM (digital rights management) and instead focused on ease of use. Sony, which had dominated with the Walkman, had acquired a lot of content and was so concerned about content theft that it locked up its MP3 player with DRM, making it impossible to rip music. Microsofts Play for Sure platform didnt play for sure and was too difficult to use reliably. So by focusing like a laser on what people were going to do anyway, rip CDs, and making it easy, the iPod fueled what was Apples impressive turnaround.
Microsoft had a strategy to displace the iPod by coming up with a product that was more robust and technology to easily migrate playlists and songs between the two devices. It didnt execute and exited the market. It was soooo close.
The iPhone Success
Realizing that in a smartphone, music could be a feature that could cannibalize the iPod, Steve Jobs moved aggressively to cannibalize it himself. The first iPhone was basically an iPod with phone capability and it caused the demise of the iPod, eventually, once he got it to work as a viable phone. The formula was to take something that was successful, add one key feature that defined an adjacent market, and then move to dominate that market. And given that the cell phone market was vastly larger than the MP3 market, by combining the two, Jobs drove the firm to even greater heights.
The iPad Mistake
The iPad was basically a larger iPod Touch, so it looked like the same kind of thing that Apple had done to smartphones, which is add a feature and then go after an adjacent market: in this case, PCs. But the problems were three-fold with this move. First, the iPod had been weakened by the iPhone, making it a far weaker launch platform; Apple didnt want to cannibalize its PCs so never allowed it to fully embrace what the MacOS did; and the product didnt do telephony so Apple couldnt cannibalize its smartphone position, which was far stronger. So rather than repeating the iPhone success, it effectively launched an additional product and once again showcased that people generally dont like to carry three devices. The iPad did make a nice consumption product but, given that most mobile games were on smartphones and games drove performance, after consumers bought one tablet, most tended to stop buying. Then smartphones started to grow to phablet sizes and instead of the iPad taking over for the smartphone, we got a reverse revolution: The smartphone started to displace the tablet, and PCs were pretty much left alone.
Microsoft Continuum
Microsoft did have a better idea with Continuum, which was to do what Apple should have done: embrace the PC with the smartphone. Several smartphones sort of provide this function today. However, because Intel was never able to be successful with smartphones, or get into a Microsoft phone, and Microsoft never was competitive with mobile apps, the result hasnt risen to its potential. The HP Elite X3 is the closest to this ideal in market but because it uses an ARM processor, its Windows capability is very limited and HP Inc. rightly targets this at a business market where it does have some potential. Rumors said a Dell product running an Intel processor was in the works but allegedly has been cancelled, but the issue would still be mobile apps and whether the phone could also embrace the Android marketplace (something that the Kindle does, but not perfectly, largely by forking Android). But emulators are possible, Android apps tend to be written to run on older phones, and Microsoft has allegedly been working on this since 2014.
The best strategy might be to wait until Google is hit by an anti-trust action out of the UK before launching this feature, and then use that as a lever to help assure not only that apps will initially work but that Google wont work to break compatibility once it is in place. Currently, Google, like Microsoft unsuccessfully did in the 1990s, is fighting the EU charges.
Wrapping Up: Microsoft Is So Close
The recipe for success that the iPhone showcased was to embrace and then cannibalize a market where Apple was both dominant and successful. The iPad needed to cannibalize the iPhone and the Mac, but it didnt do either, even though that was the initial promise. That promise did hurt the PC market but because of consumers unwillingness to carry three devices, particularly when, as smartphones increased in size, they could actually better cannibalize tablets, a reverse trend emerged. Now the bigger risk is that smartphones eventually cannibalize PCs. Microsoft has the best elements of a plan in place but it still needs to execute. The elements of success are Windows phones that can run a full selection of Windows and Android apps, and this may hinge on what the EU eventually does to Google.
For now, the PC isnt going anyplace, largely because it appears that no one, including Apple, is yet willing to put all of the elements together to dislodge it. But Microsoft is again soooo close.
Rob Enderle is President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, a forward-looking emerging technology advisory firm. With over 30 years experience in emerging technologies, he has provided regional and global companies with guidance in how to better target customer needs; create new business opportunities; anticipate technology changes; select vendors and products; and present their products in the best possible light. Rob covers the technology industry broadly. Before founding the Enderle Group, Rob was the Senior Research Fellow for Forrester Research and the Giga Information Group, and held senior positions at IBM and ROLM. Follow Rob on Twitter @enderle, on Facebook and on Google+
A new Surface phone that runs on Windows 10 Mobile is obviously missing during the Microsoft event last week. Microsoft had big dreams for its Windows 10 Mobile. In fact, it had an ambitious goal of reaching one billion active devices within three years.
However, it has been delayed this year after a dismal slow growth. Microsoft's Windows-based devices market share is also not doing well. Now, it seems that the tech giant may have another plan for the said operating system.
The Fate Of The Windows 10 Mobile
Amidst the absence of a new Surface phone, Windows 10 Mobile is still making its presence felt. HP's new Elite X3 and Alcatel Idol 4S are both running on Windows 10 Mobile operating system. Windows' Terry Myerson shared last week to ZDNet that there's a major reason why the Windows 10 Mobile is still out there.
It now serves more as an investment in technology. The once star of the show is now only an effort to build a commercially viable product.
Business Insider perfectly described that the seeming death of Windows 10 Mobile may be a blessing in disguise for Microsoft. Though Microsoft has failed in reaching that very ambitious goal, it can now focus on its strengths.
It should be noted that the goal of the Windows 10 Mobile should have attracted developers to the Windows Store. Then app makers would choose it over that of iPhone and Android. Likewise, people could have been convinced to buy Windows phones.
The issue is evident since other apps are still not available until now in the Windows Store.
Focus On Its Strength
Microsoft would have realized the use of Windows 10 Mobile. For now, the said OS does not seem to help the case of the company's smartphone market share. Whether the upcoming Surface phone will salvage it or not is yet to be seen.
Its Surface Pro tablet is thriving. Microsoft can also capitalize on its Windows-powered laptops and PCs. These are all decent devices that can appeal to consumers of even its competitions.
Pixar is one of the leading companies when it comes to animation and films. They were the one responsible for the release of stories like Toy Story, Wall-E and Inside; which became a huge success all over the world. Pixar was known for not just making animation but they became popular because of its strategic designs, brilliant concepts and relatable stories.
"Piper" Is The Recently Released Short Film Of Pixar And By Far The Cutest
According to India Times, the company is also well-known for producing short films like Lava and Sanjay's Super Team. In relation to this, Pixar has released yet again another short film; which is not just appealing to the eyes but attracting to the hearts as well. The film, which became viral in the online communit, is entitled 'Piper'. The best thing about this is that the film is now streaming on Vimeo for free. The film revolves around the story of a bird that discovers life and overcomes fear.
'Piper' Captured The Attention Of The Audience In Just Five Minutes
The Age stated that watching Piper would put a smile on every viewer's face. Actually, the film only runs for five minutes. Piper, a hungry sandpiper, is being taught to hunt for food by its mother. Upon his journey, Piper would meet large waves that would cause the lead character to get traumatized. But when Piper met a hermit crab, all became clear to the hungry hatchling. The crab would help Piper discover the world in new perspective.
Alan Barillaro, the creator of Piper, admitted that the story was just a test and was developed for three years. The director was inspired by sandpipers he encounters during his morning run.
Barillaro, in an interview, told:
"I'll never forget being in [Andrew Stanton's] office and him handing me the script for Wall-E,and reading act one and seeing there's no dialogue. Not that I'd compare this to Wall-E at all, but it gave me confidence to tackle something like Piper."
It was speculated that Piper is being brewed to be part of the short animation category in Oscars.
Marijuana is still illegal under federal law, but over the years, it has grown in popularity. According to a poll by Gallup, one in eight adult Americans say they smoke marijuana. Come November 8, five states will vote to decide whether marijuana can be used legally for recreation.
California, Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona and Nevada residents will decide about marijuana use on Election Day. It will also be decided if cannabis can be used for medical reasons in Montana, Florida and North Dakota. Currently, it is legal to use recreational marijuana in four states: Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, while states with medical marijuana are:
1. Alaska
2. Arizona
3. California
4. Colorado
5. Connecticut
6. Delaware
7. Hawaii
8. Illinois
9. Maine
10. Maryland
11. Massachusetts
12. Michigan
13. Minnesota
14. Montana
15. Nevada
16. New Hampshire
17. New Jersey
18. New Mexico
19. New York
20. Oregon
21. Pennsylvania
22. Rhode Island
23. Vermont
24. Washington
The approval of the law for recreational marijuana use in four states opened a lot of doors, but if California would also vote yes, it may lead to eventually legalize it federally. California has an economy size of a large industrial country. Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California and a former mayor of San Francisco said, "If we're successful, it's the beginning of the end of the war on marijuana. If California moves, it will put more pressure on Mexico and Latin America writ large to reignite a debate on legalization there."
Humans have used marijuana for at least 2,000 years but for much of the past century, its use has been questioned. Reefer Madness, a propaganda film in 1936 set the tone for suggesting that the use of cannabis lead to murder, suicide and other horrific acts.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has refused, for the second time, to downgrade cannabis from a Schedule I substance alongside heroin, LSD and MDMA (ecstasy) to a less dangerous Schedule II substance on the basis of patient safety and a "high potential for abuse."
Yes! Diabetes mellitus, or diabetes, is a condition that occurs when the body cannot use glucose, which is a type of sugar, normally. Glucose is the main source of energy for the bodys cells. Insulin, which is produced by the pancreas, is required for the transfer of glucose from the bloodstream to the cells. Just like human beings, a pet can have diabetes too. They can also show signs and symptoms if they are getting the illness.
November is National Pet Diabetes Month, a time for pet owners to educate themselves on the signs of diabetes and its risk factors. While the existence of diabetes in humans is well-known, not everyone knows that diabetes can affect our pets too. If a pet is lethargic, excessively thirsty or frequently urinating, take it to be examined by a veterinarian because these signs may mean the pet is diabetic. With early diagnosis and proper care, a pet with diabetes can live a happy, healthy and active life, according to PRWeb.
Diabetic animals require frequent monitoring, including blood tests, and insulin-dependent diabetics typically require injections every 12 hours, said former TVMA president Lori Teller, DVM, DABVP, CVJ, who practices at Meyerland Animal Clinic in Houston. It is much easier to prevent diabetes than it is to treat it, especially in cats, so maintain your pet at an appropriate weight and get regular veterinary exams. If your pet is displaying the signs of diabetes, have it examined very soon before it progresses to a life-threatening state.
A study shows that diabetes can't always be prevented that is why obesity has shown to be a contributing factor, especially in pet cats. Age, genetics, disorders such as chronic pancreatitis or hyperthyroidism and neutering in males are among the risk factors in cats. While age, genetics and intact females are the risk for pet dogs. The breeds that have a higher risk of developing diabetes are Cocker Spaniels, Pomeranians, Golden Retrievers and Dachshunds.
Veterinarians warned pet owners that there is no cure for diabetes, so effective management of the disease is crucial to a pets quality of life. Always visit a vet for anything about your pet and do not give them medicine if it is not prescribed.
According to a recent survey conducted by Macmillan Cancer Support, among 1,009 patients, all in work when diagnosed with cancer, shows that about 18 percent face discrimination in the workplace.
About 20,000 people a year diagnosed with cancer will face discrimination, with 35 percent of cancer patients said they feel guilty for taking time off for appointments and that they lose faith in their ability to do their job, while 14 percent give up work or are made redundant as a result.
Liz Egan, of Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "It's appalling that, during an already difficult, often stressful time, so many employers are not offering the right support to people with cancer, leaving little choice but to leave. If people are unaware of these rights, they are unable to ask their employers to make adjustments for them. Sometimes they don't even tell their employers that they have cancer."
Macmillan is calling on all employers to put policies in place and that their HR department, managers, and staff should have skills to support colleagues who have cancer.
The Equality Act 2010 - and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in Northern Ireland - protect workers diagnosed with cancer from being treated unfairly because of their diagnosis. In the United States, The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), prohibits all discrimination related to a disability, a perceived disability, and a history of disability. Some people are fortunate to work with understanding colleagues and bosses, however, other people are not very lucky.
"People living with cancer should know that they have the full support of their employer to return to work, if they want and are able to do so. Returning to work after cancer can also be an integral part of their recovery, so it's crucial that employers show support and understanding to make this a reality," Egan added.
Janet Wood Reno served as the Attorney General of the United States from 1993 until 2001. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11, 1993. Reno is 78 years and died Monday morning following a long battle with Parkinson's disease and its complications.
What Is Parkinson's Disease?
Parkinson's Disease is a progressive disease of the nervous system marked by tremor, muscular rigidity, and slow, imprecise movement, chiefly affecting middle-aged and elderly people. It is associated with degeneration of the basal ganglia of the brain and a deficiency of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Parkinson's disease can't be cured, but medications may markedly improve your symptoms.
"As Attorney General for all eight years of my Presidency, Janet worked tirelessly to make our communities safer, protect the vulnerable, and to strike the right balance between seeking justice and avoiding abuse of power," Clinton said in the statement, listing some of her top accomplishments.
The specific group of symptoms that an individual experience varies from person to person, as reported by Parkinson's Disease Foundation. Primary motor signs of the illness include the following:
a tremor of the hands, arms, legs, jaw and face bradykinesia or slowness of movement rigidity or stiffness of the limbs and trunk postural instability or impaired balance and coordination
According to CNN, former President Bill Clinton said that he and his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, were "deeply saddened" by the passing of Reno, calling her "an extraordinary public servant who dedicated her life to advancing justice, equality, and innovations in criminal justice that would save and lift lives."
As part of the administration of the former president Clinton, Reno oversaw the high-profile convictions of different bombers like the Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman World Trade Center bombing, and Timothy and Terry Nichols for Oklahoma City bombing.
She became embroiled in other scandals including Whitewater, Filegate, bungling at the FBI laboratory, Monica Lewinsky, alleged Chinese nuclear spying and questionable campaign financing in the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election.
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At a meeting on Monday, NASAs Space Station Advisory Committee member argued that fueling is a "hazardous operation" that shouldnt be performed anywhere near people. A panel of expert advisors to NASA have expressed their concern regarding the plan to fuel SpaceXs Falcon 9 rockets with astronauts on board. The committee said it has had these concerns before, but their anxieties have increased after one of SpaceXs Falcon 9 rockets exploded on the launchpad during routine fueling procedures.
According to The Verge, the most vocal about these propellant risks was Air Force Lt. General Thomas Stafford, who chairs the advisory committee. Its the second time Stafford has called into question SpaceXs fueling practices. In 2015, he sent a letter to NASA headquarters in which he argued that fueling a vehicle with people onboard goes against decades of human spaceflight procedures. Typically, people have boarded rockets after the vehicles have been fueled, in order to minimize accidents that may spring up during the loading process.
SpaceX maintained that it has "designed a reliable fueling and launch process that minimizes" the risk posed to people, according to a statement of SpaceX. NASA safety review board approved a report in June about the hazards of the plan on fueling Flacon 9.
But SpaceX also said that its fueling process is not exactly in stone either. In the update they released, the company said it still doesn't know the exact cause of the explosion last Sept. 1. However, they manage to create a to recreate a failure with the Falcon 9 during the fuel loading tests in Texas.
Nowadays, the company is working on improving its fueling processes as it tries to return to flight, and "corrective action" may be taken depending on what SpaceX learns from its investigation. "As needed, any additional controls will be put in place to ensure crew safety, from the moment the astronauts reach the pad, through fueling, launch, and spaceflight, and until they are brought safely home," the company said in a statement.
As a result, future missions which include crewed ones will have to be fueled immediately before launch in order to ensure that the rocket's fuel and lift capacity are not compromised. The Advisory Committee's recommendations could therefore have a significant impact on how SpaceX does business. However, there recommendations might be a bit premature as far as crewed missions go, as reported by Phys.Org.
The 2016 U.S. presidential elections have had some famous moments in the campaigns, the speeches and the press conferences, in which every single candidate have committed both great moments and bad ones. However, social media has been the place where everyone of them had their most epic moments, making the election an incredibly entertaining event. These are the top 3 moments.
Donald Trumps "Star of David"
Although the Republican nominee has been characterized for knowing how to take advantage of social media, this wasn't precisely one of his coolest moments, since he made a huge mistake in one of his post. Of course, it went viral, but whether it was popular or not is not the case here.
What Trump did was to tweet a photo slamming the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as the "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever". The surprise it wasn't this kind of statement, but the fact that the image shows the word "corrupt" inside a six pointed star. Naturally, this was seen as an anti-semitic issue.
Trumps campaign tried to solve the situation, but ended up failing miserably, by explaining that far from being something related to Jews, the "corrupt" verbiage was set inside a "Sheriffs Star". As might be expected, the poorly Photoshopped picture was later replaced with a circle overlay, and some days after the Tweet was finally deleted.
Hillary Clinton told Trump very seriously to delete his Twitter account
When someone talks in a serious manner its message is likely to be more powerful, whether it is a claiming, a joke, a sarcasm or an order. This is exactly what happened with one of the most famous tweets that Hillary Clinton wrote, in which she literally told Donald Trump to delete his Twitter account.
The story goes like this: President Obama endorsed Clinton and gave her his support in the elections, and then Trump tweeted "Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama- but nobody else does!". Far from ignoring the post, Clinton responded with a mic cropping tweet in which she told him "Delete your account," nothing more, nothing less.
This tweet ended up being so popular than Clinton backers used these simple three words to engage the Republican candidate and his supporters for some weeks. The significance of this situation was that Trump has always ruled social media in the elections, and this was a moment when Clinton actually beat him on this feature, becoming the most retweeted post ever, as reported by The Guardian.
Lindsay Grahams Cellphone On Youtube
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Grahm weren't precisely the most popular Republican candidate in the party primaries, but he had his few minutes of huge and hilarious fame because of a YouTube video in which he treated his cellphone as Negan treated Abraham Ford on :The Walking Dead." But lets go back to the beginning.
Everything started a year ago at the South Carolina rally, when Donald Trump decided to release Grahams personal phone. As might be expected this situation positioned Trump on the headlines, and forced Graham to change his number. However, he had a wonderful and violent idea: make something controversial about it and posted it on a famous social media.
Thats how he decided to record a video in which he went crazy on his cellphone and destroyed it in the most eccentric ways. Then he posted the video on YouTube, and he earned a delicate moment for his political aspirations. However, his poll numbers never rose above 1 percent.
Non-profit organization WikiLeaks reported through a Twitter post that it has suffered a cyber strike, less than 24 hours after publishing more than 8,000 emails Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, in which it was revealed how the Democrat National Convention (DNC) helped important medias as the Washington Post and CNN to prepare interviews and articles about Donald Trump.
A DDoS Cyber Strike
The Julian Assanges group explained that the cyber strike could have be made by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), which works by sending an overwhelming amount of web traffic towards a server in order to force it offline, according to the International Business Times.
Our email publication servers are under a targeted DoS attack since releasing #DNCLeak2 You can increase capacity: https://t.co/MsNZhrTzTL WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) 7 de noviembre de 2016
On the morning of November 7, the non-profit organization posted some updates to its followers, saying that: "WikiLeaks.org was down briefly. That's rare. We're investigating." Later, it added: "Our email publication servers are under a targeted DoS attack since releasing #DNCLeak2". As reported in a previous article, this kind of cyber strike was also suffered by major websites as Reddit, Spotify, Twitter and GitHub last month.
Assange Blames The DNC
The U.S. government that accused Russia of interfering with the 2016 presidential elections, explaining that they are the ones behind WikiLeaks releases. Apparently, the emails were hacked by two groups in the past years that have been related by the U.S. intelligence and private sector to major instances on Vladimir Putins government. However, both the transparency radical organization and the Kremlin have denied the claims.
By his part, Julian Assange blames the DNC for the cyber strike, claiming that this is a move from the Democrats in order to stop him from keep releasing documents that could harm Hillary Clintons image before the election.
One of the highly anticipated storyline for the upcoming "The Originals" season four is the alleged rekindling of Klaus' and Caroline's relationship. However, with Caroline getting married to Stefan already, how will they ever get together in the upcoming season?
Will Klaroline Get A Chance At A Love Story Now That Stefan And Caroline Are Getting Married?
It can be recalled that in the last season of "The Originals," Klaus's potential romantic interest Camille (Leah Pipes) had died. With reports saying that she will no longer be returning for the upcoming fourth season, this may give way for Caroline to crossover the series when "The Vampire Diaries" comes to an end. However, with Stefan proposing a marriage to Caroline and the latter accepting, will there be a chance for Caroline and Klaus at all?
Sybil To Sabotage Stefan And Caroline's Wedding; Giving Hope For Klaus aand Caroline To Get Together In "The Originals" Season 4
It seems that the answer to that is yes, Klaus and Caroline could still have a chance to rekindle their romance. Based on the how the storyline went with "The Vampire Diaries," it looks like Sybil is going to sabotage Stefan and Caroline's wedding by using Damon. She has sent the latter to murder Bonnie and it looks like this will be happening on the wedding day. Thus, this then prohibits Stefan from having any happy ending at all. According to the actor Paul Wesley, who plays Stefan, he also believes that his character is not meant to have that happy ending anyway.
Much to everyone's excitement, this then gives Caroline a chance to crossover "The Originals" in agony of having her wedding sabotaged. With Camille allegedly out of the picture, this could definitely support the theories that claim Klaus and Caroline will definitely be the end game of the series. It can be recalled that Klaus asked Caroline to be her last love, no matter how long it takes. After having gone years apart, this may be their chance after all.
A user of the Samsung Galaxy J5 in France says her smartphone exploded after catching fire.
Galaxy J5 Explodes
This is a different Samsung smartphone model from the Galaxy Note 7 that has recently embarrassed the South Korean brand and has been recalled worldwide. According to the website wjtv.com, Lamya Bouyirdane, who resides in the southwestern French city of Pau, said that on Sunday she asked her four-year-old son to pass the smartphone over and noticed that the gadget was very hot.
When she realized the phone had "swollen up" and smoke was coming out, she threw the phone away. Right after, the phone caught fire and the back of the device blew off. The woman was lucky to be helped by her partner, who quickly extinguished the fire.
Bouyirdane, the owner of the affected Galaxy J5, claimed to have purchased the device this past June, from an internet retail store. She also stated that she is very concerned because her son was holding the device moments before it exploded. For this reason, Bouyirdane is decided to sue Samsung, according to Popular Mechanics.
Samsung launched Galaxy J5 2016 as a handset positioned in the mid-range mobile devices market. Reviews of the device were mostly positive, highlighting the fact that the Galaxy J5 is one of the sturdiest Samsung smartphones in this price range.
The device provides a solid build quality, thanks to the aluminum frame around plastic body. The metal frame comes with strong edges and with an exchangeable back cover.
The Galaxy J5 has nothing fancy about its aesthetics, featuring the same design as other Samsung mid-range handsets. Apart from shifting audio jack to bottom edge, the device's every port is placed in the same locations as on earlier Samsung mid-range models.
Another Samsung Scandal?
It seems that Samsung's exploding smartphone problem is far from over. Because of an issue that caused the batteries to overheat and catch fire, the company recently recalled millions of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones. And now, this appears to be the beginning of another big smartphone fiasco for the giant tech Samsung.
According to CNET, in a string of explosions that have plagued the South Korean company for months, this is the first reported case of a Galaxy J5 self-combusting. After customers started to report that the handset's batteries are catching fire, Samsung was forced to completely stop sales of Galaxy Note 7 devices. Due to injury risk, the high-tech company had to deal even with recalling Samsung washing machines.
After so many issues with its products, Samsung has some serious work to do in order to reassure consumers about the safety of its brand. At the moment, it is still unknown whether the Galaxy J5 explosion is limited to a single incident or it is a widespread issue. It also remains to be determined whether the explosion is due to a battery issue like in case of the Galaxy Note 7.
Samsung declined to comment. A company spokesperson has declared that no comments could be made on this specific incident until the device is examined. But if more complains about exploding Galaxy J5 devices are coming in, it's most likely that this model is next in line for a global recall.
According to reports, those customers who commit to a 3-month subscription of DirecTV Now service will receive a free Apple TV while a 1-month commitment of subscription will get users the less-expensive Amazon Fire Stick.
AT&T will boost the launch of their DirecTV Now product by offering free Apple TV and Amazon Fire Stick streaming devices at sign-up. First time users will be very lucky to have not just the DirecTV Now, but including the freebie that AT&T will give.
According to Tech Insider, DirecTV Now is only $35 a month, which means AT&T is asking for just a $105 commitment for 3 months. And if you don't want to commit to three months long of DirecTV Now, you can sign up for one month for just $35 and get a free Amazon Fire TV Stick. Note that an Apple TV alone costs $150 and an Amazon Fire TV Stick cost about $40 at retail. This deal is really an amazing marketing strategy for a big company like AT&T.
AT&T says it will be able to make the economics work at that price in part by cutting out legacy equipment like satellite dishes. DirecTV Now will be delivered over the internet, eliminating the need for cable or satellite but, to watch it on a TV, requiring a streaming box (like an Apple TV) or a smart TV.
More Details On The AT&T DirecTV Now
There are still no exact details on which channels will be on the AT&T DirecTV Now. The company has already signed deals with HBO, Discovery Cahnnel, NBC Universal, Turner, Viacom, Disney Channel, AMC, Sripps, Starz and many more. With this, it seems as of all the TV fans will definitely signed up for launch.
However, as of now, the marketing documents may not be final and the promotional offers could be altered or canceled before the service hits the market on its launch.
Many of MacBook Pro fans have been disappointed by the fact that Apple's latest flagship MacBook Pro 2016 laptops are not really designed for professional use.
MacBook Pro 2016 Disappoints
According to Recode, the backlash against Apple's newly released MacBook Pro 2016 is stronger than for any MacBook announcement ever. And what is worse is the fact that all this is mostly coming from the power users: those who develop for Apple platforms and those who use heavy-duty apps such as Photoshop.
Professional users are smart with their money and their tools. According to The Verge, they are complaining that Apple's 2016 generation of MacBook Pros are less compatible and more expensive than ever before. They are supposed to be Apple's premium laptops, but the 2016 variants are not really tailored for the pros.
MacBook Pro 2016 Downsides
A blog post published by well-known tech expert Michael Tsai gathers together the broad negative consensus from among MacBook Pro's most disappointed users. Even on the 15-inch model, the Mac community finds the specs underwhelming. They are disappointed of the fact that the Apple uses the power-hungry AMD Radeon graphics instead of the Pascal chips from Nvidia.
The updated MacBook Pros 2016 from Apple come indeed with newer chips, but the problem is that those chips are not that much newer. Instead of using this year's Kaby Lake processors, the high-tech company is using last year's Intel Skylake CPUs. Another issue is that the new MacBook Pros are limited at maximum 16 GB of RAM. As web developer Baldur Bjarnason points out, for professional video or image editing or for a developer's work machine, this amount of RAM is the "uncomfortable minimum requirement."
Apple made the mistake of not recognizing just how committed and passionate is its professional audience. When it came of MacBook model names, "Pro" used to mean something. Video producers, photographers and developers used to rely on MacBook Pros as the right laptop for their professional applications. But by acting against their interests and whishes, Apple might lose its creative professionals customer base.
A Samsung Galaxy J5 user is planning to sue Samsung. This is after her phone caught fire and exploded this weekend. The incident is akin to what happened with the tech company's infamous Galaxy Note 7. Samsung's 2.8 million washing machines have also been recently recalled for being defective.
Should Samsung worry about the reported incident? Is it only an isolated case?
A Samsung Galaxy J5 Explodes
The Associated Press reported that a Galaxy J5 phone has caught fire and exploded in France this weekend. The smartphone owner Lamya Bouyirdane talked to AP and described the incident. She said that the phone got very hot when her son passed it over to her. Bouyirdane also noticed that the back of the phone had expanded.
She threw the phone when the smoke was already coming out of it. Eventually, the Galaxy J5 smartphone met its demised. Bouyirdane mentioned that the Samsung device was purchased off the internet back in June, according to a French website.
She is now planning to sue the tech company. She cited that his son could have lost his hand because of the explosion.
Samsung's Ongoing Battles
A spokesperson for Samsung has told CNET that the Korean-based company is yet to obtain and thoroughly examine the said device. They insisted that safety is still their highest priority. Samsung is willing to work with their customers who experience problems in the tech giant's products.
Such incidents should be investigated. Furthermore, their customers deserved assistance. However, Samsung reiterated that the issues with the Galaxy Note 7 are isolated to only that model.
Samsung initially suggested that the Galaxy Note 7 explosions were caused by the defective battery. This turned out to be wrong since the phones with replaced batteries still faced the same dilemma. Samsung recently put an end to the Galaxy Note 7. It will no longer manufacture the said model.
On the other hand, Samsung's washing machines have also been recalled.
The Effect Of The Recent Explosion Incident
The said incident in France is only the first reported explosion of Galaxy J5. Battery explosions are not far from usual. Smartphone users have already been advised to not let their batteries overheat. A short circuit can be prevented through different ways.
Samsung should worry if this gets bigger than the Galaxy Note 7. An explosion of one Galaxy J5 unit is not enough to end this certain model. Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are still keeping the company the king of the smartphone market.
The OnePlus 3T has been the subject of a number of rumors for quite some time now and it looks like the new phone will finally be revealed in a few days.
The Chinese company has yet to release a follow-up to the OnePlus X which came out in 2015 between the releases of the OnePlus 2 and OnePlus 3. Rumor has it that the company is not planning on releasing a new OnePlus X or even the OnePlus 4 but a supercharged 3 instead.
The rumor started when a OnePlus device with the model number A3010 passed through the China Compulsory Certification, similar to the United States' FCC. The rumor was further fuelled after a designer working for OnePlus posted on Weibo that a new device was indeed in the works. The post also mentioned the name of the device 3T. According to reports, the post suggested that the T stands for 'Turbo'.
OnePlus will hold an event in London on Monday, Nov. 14, and the buzz is that the company will finally make things official with the 3T.
Processor
Its predecessor, the OnePlus 3, was one of the fastest phones when it was launched early in 2016. Since then, the OnePlus 3 has been overtaken by new and faster smartphones including the iPhone 7. The OnePlus 3T is supposed to put the company back on top thanks to the Snapdragon 821 processor.
This was somewhat confirmed by a Tweet from Qualcomm which read, "Something new from @OnePlus is on the way... and it's powered by our #Snapdragon 821 processor. Stay tuned."
Display
According to rumors, the 3T's display will not veer far from its predecessor. It will still have the OLED screen with a 1080p resolution which is quite below the standards for high-end phones. But the QHD display somewhat makes up for it.
Memory
The OnePlus 3T will have two variants in terms of memory space - the 64GB and 128GB internal storage.
Camera
The 3T's supposed 16MP rear camera will have the Sony IMX 398 camera sensor. It will also have a dual-core autofocus system and possibly a dual-camera setup, as well.
Battery
It looks like the new device's battery will be 3,300mAh which is at least 10 percent better than the OnePlus 3.
Release date and price
Even if the rumored Nov. 14 announcement will push through, it is still not know when the OnePlus 3T will be released. The general consensus, however, is that the device will come out in time for the holidays.
The 3T is rumored to be worth $80 more than the OnePlus 3 which will be around $480.
Climate change is worldwide. As global warming continues, it affects many people in all parts of the globe. Some are more affected than others, though. A new study on ozone layer depletion says to blame it on pollution near the equator.
Air pollution has been increasing. With this increase, global warming continues and with it, climate change also. A study reveals that air pollution in the equator has been more severe than it is in other areas. More ozone is being made in regions that have more emissions. This is already in an area that has much heat and sunlight.
This has been the observation of Jason West, who is one of the authors of the study. West is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Together with him is lead author Yuqiang Zhang, who was a former graduate student of the University of North Carolina.
Their study aims to pinpoint where emissions should be controlled. These emissions cause to form ozone, which can be found in the troposphere. The ozone can cause such respiratory illnesses and heart disease.
The study shows that emission has risen in places such as China, according to Phys Org. Emission levels in China have been higher than in India and Southeast Asia. Despite that, India and Southeast Asia are said to have contributed more to the increase in ozone since they are much nearer to the equator.
Ozone forms when sunlight hits nitrogen oxide. Nitrogen oxide is one of the gases emitted from vehicles and factories. Heat and sunlight speed up the process of this formation, which depletes the ozone layer over time.
Zhang and West, as well as other colleagues, have created a model to demonstrate how this works as well as show how much ozone is in the troposphere, as CBC News reports. Their model has shown how much pollution has been made from 1980 until 2010. The model used data from ozone observations that have been made, and have confirmed that much of the emissions found come from Asia.
The challenge now is to decrease emission levels, especially in areas where they are causing more ozone. With the ozone layer depletion, the study says to blame it on pollution near the equator. As global warming continues, one effect might be the Arctic losing ice by 2050.
Facebook has been sued in violation of the Fair Housing Act and the Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The class action lawsuit that the tech company faces is regarding its discriminatory ad-targeting option tool called Ethnic Affinities.
Facebook Is Faced With A Class Action Lawsuit
Karen Savage of New York, Victor Onuoha and Suzanne-Juliette Mobley of Louisiana filed a suit that accuses Facebook of causing racial discrimination with housing and employment ads. The Fair Housing Act actually prohibits housing ads that discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Discrimination on disability and familial status were added in the 1988 amendment.
Pro Publica has recently discovered that Facebook's ad-target option tool lets advertisers control the people who can see their ads. This is done by clicking on the "Exclude People" button. Advertisers can choose to exclude their ads from being seen by any of the following 'Ethnic Affinity": African American, Asian American, Hispanic or Immigrant.
According to the USA Today, the suit noted that there's obviously no option to exclude people who are White or Caucasian Americans.
Facebook's Defense
The suit stated that it does not seek to end Facebook's advertising platform or completely get rid of the "Exclude People" function. The plaintiffs want to end the illegal proscribed uses of the said ad option tool.
According to Ars Technica, Facebook spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina said in a statement that the lawsuit is absolutely without merit. She added that multicultural marketing is a usual practice in the advertising industry. In fact, she pointed that it helps brands reach audiences with more relevant advertising.
Grdina also reiterated that they have policies that prohibit the use of their targeting options to discriminate.
This was previously mirrored by Facebook's Head of Multicultural Christian Martinez. He said in an official post that ad-targeting is beneficial to users. Martinez also mentioned that the tool should be a way to acknowledge and embrace diversity.
In Hot Waters
It has recently been reported that Facebook executives that include CEO Mark Zuckerberg are under investigation in Germany. The issue is Facebook's lack of action against online hate speech. It was prompted by a lawsuit filed a year ago by Can-jo Jun.
Last month, the company also blocked but ended up re-approving a breast cancer awareness ad. Facebook had admitted and apologized for the mistake.
After Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant, Samsung joins the artificial intelligence race with Bixby.
The yet-to-be released Samsung S8 will have its own A.I.-powered digital assistant named Bixby. This was announced on Sunday by the company itself.
The 'Bixby' name was trademarked by the company back in October. This was done in South Korea where Samsung was founded and is based. The trademark was for a "computer software for personal information management". The company further described the trademark as a "computer application software for smartphones, mobile telephones, portable computers and tablet computers" that will be "used to operate voice recognition system[s]." Bixby will also enable "hands-free use of a mobile phone through voice recognition."
Bloomberg reports that the troubled Korean tech giant recently purchased an artificial intelligence software company based in the United States called Viv Labs Inc which is led by Dag Kittlaus, Chris Brigham, and Adam Cheyer. The group is also responsible for Siri.
Samsung explained that its digital assistant is "significantly differentiated" from the other AI voice assistant in the market today. Among its functions are: performing tasks, dictating messages, and responding to questions or queries on demand.
For one thing, the 'gender' of the AI may be different. Speculations arose that Bixby will have a male voice because Bixby is mainly considered a man's name.
Samsung is hoping all these new features of the S8 will help people forget about the Galaxy Note 7 debacle wherein the recall of the device pushed Samsung's income back by $6 billion. The company also enhanced the S7 and S7 Edge to include some of the positive features of the Galaxy Note 7.
So far, Bixby is the only new feature confirmed for the flagship line. Its other specifications like the 5.1 and 5.5-inch Super AMOLED displays are still rumors so far. Another rumor is that the S8 will have either Qualcomm's Snapdragon 830processor or Samsung's Exynos 8895.
It looks like Brad Pitt will be joining the cast of "Sons of Anarchy" spin-off titled "Mayans MC". The spin-off is said to be centering on the life of Jax's father and who else will be better to do the role than Brad Pitt himself. Besides, Pitt's facial resemblance to Charlie Hunnam is undeniable making him a really good choice for the role.
There has been no confirmation yet whether Brad Pitt is the actor to play the role but fans are hopeful he does. Pitt has always been praised for his acting skills so having him portray a big role in the upcoming series of "Sons of Anarchy" certainly makes fans more excited about it. Even Hunnam looks like excited about the news as he shares about the possibility in one of his interviews. Again, showrunners have not confirmed nor denied the rumor and Hunnam's statement but until then fans are keeping their fingers crossed.
In other news, Hunnam is rumored again to be making a guest in the spin-off series. In one of the recent Instagram post of Kurt Sutter, he reveals that Jax may be coming back to play his role for one more time. No details yet have been given about Hunnam's return and on what episode can the fans anticipate his return.
"Sons of Anarchy" is a television series about a motorcycle club that treats each member like a family. However, Charlie Hunnam who plays the lead role named Jackson "Jax" Teller and just so happens to be the vice president of the club starts to question the integrity of the club. This is where all the twists and turns start to happen. The series' first aired in 2008 and went on up to 2014 with a total of seven seasons. Now getting ready for a spin-off series.
"South Park" season 20, episode 7 titled "The Very First Gentleman" will see PC Principal attempting to bridge between boys and girls whose divide continues to widen. In the meantime, "South Park" creators make a wild guess for episode 7 which suggests who will win in the U.S. presidential elections.
Bill Clinton Visits
With each passing day at South Park Elementary School, boys and girls cannot seem to come into terms of understanding each other. In episode 7 titled "The Very First Gentleman," PC Principal attempts to bridge between sexes that they might reconcile by introducing someone "who can finally bring an end to sexism." That someone is Bill Clinton. PC Principal talked about the "male locker-room mentality" which points to the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape scandal of Donald Trump and Billy Bush.
However, spoilers reveal that it is not yet the time for reconciliation. Meanwhile, Cartman and Heidi are expected to make their own little efforts as well to bring opposing parties into one. The couple already tried before for several times to make both sexes understand one another.
Gerald Meets Troll Hunter
On the other hand, Gerald, secretly known as Skankhunt42, will finally meet in person the Troll Hunter. However, it is unknown to the Troll Hunter that Gerald is Skankhunt42. How long could Gerald live with his alter ego behind the shades?
"South Park": No Sight Of Ending
In other news, season 20, episode 7 is the 277th of "South Park." Just like "The Simpsons" that recently aired its 600th episode, there is no sight of ending the show for now. According to a report from Den of Geek, the animated adult comedy series "should at least hit 300 episodes" as co-creators Trey Parker III and Matt Stone have already signed a contract until season 23 which will air in 2019.
"South Park" season 20, episode 7 airs Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 10:00 p.m. ET on Comedy Central.
"Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" is a couple more weeks away, but actress Liza Weil who plays Paris has given shocking teasers that might just excite the fans even more. In a recent interview, Weil hinted at a possible new installment for the show as she described the ending of the reboot as "open-ended." Furthermore, she revealed a major change coming to Rory when it comes to her love life.
In a recent interview with Marie Claire, Weil dropped some hints on the much anticipated reboot series. While she guarded some of the details, she surprisingly dropped big teasers which then led to speculations of a new season for the classic series. When asked if she would accept to do another installment for the show, she said she "certainly" would and said that the ending of the revival leaves some cliffhangers that may soon need to be resolved.
"If we would do more? Yeah, I think we would," Weil said. "Certainly, if Amy and Dan were at the helm of it, I think that's very appealing. And I think that you may find that the way it ends may feel open-ended. We'll see," she added. This then fueled the speculation of an eighth season that might come soon, which follows previous reports that opportunities for more episodes will be determined upon how the revival will perform.
The actress was also asked to give her thoughts about the unending debate among fans regarding the right man that Rory should end up with. With all the theories and conclusions that already came out about Rory's boyfriends, Weil openly discussed the possibility for a new romance for the character that may not involve her past lovers.
"Amy comes to it from the point of view that none of those previous boyfriends were the right person for Rory. They served a purpose for her during that time in her life, and she hasn't necessarily found 'the person' yet," Weil said in reference to Rory's past boyfriends.
An array of assumptions previously came out that seemed to confirm Jess to be Rory's happy ending. However, with Weil's recent statement, new theories have it that a new character might be introduced to the show to play the "new boyfriend" role; or worst, Rory might again end up single in the miniseries finale.
The actress' interview has also confirmed Scott Patterson's claim that the upcoming "Gilmore Girls" reboot will feature several changes. Actress Lauren Graham also recently hinted the same as she revealed a number of changes will come to her character, Lorelai, in the final episode.
This might also include a possible new romance for her character as she teased in an interview about Lorelai's interest in a new guy in Star Hallows which will be played by Noah James. "If we're talking about romance, Lorelai's head is turned by Guy Eating Salad in Stairwell," Graham told TVLine.
All of these will be confirmed as "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" comes to Netflix on Nov. 25.
There's nothing quite like an empty stomach to get the old creative juices flowing, as participants at last week's Babson College Rocket Pitch event explained during their 3-minute pitches before peers, investors and assorted people like myself.
(I captured a handful of the presentations via Facebook Live, as seen in the saved video at the bottom of this post, for your viewing enjoyment...)
Sporting a backwards ball cap and short-sleeved black T-shirt bearing the name of his Lula Technologies venture, Matthew Vega-Sanz (class of '18) launched into his story-behind-the-story. "A couple of months ago my brother and I were starving, it was late Friday night and we had just had Domino's for the last three weekends in a row. We wanted something different so we decided to order from our all-time favorite pizza chain, Papa John's..." The problem was that there wasn't a local outlet that would deliver to the car-less brothers, and "taking a $30 Uber to pick up an $8 pizza didn't make much sense," so they wound up ordering from Domino's again. But when Vega-Sanz went outside to meet the delivery person, he noticed a parking lot filled with cars and wondered aloud to his brother about the possibility some day of being able to rent one of those cars for a couple of bucks in the future to pick up a pizza from Papa John's.
Out of that was born the idea for Lula: An Airbnb for cars. The brothers and another partner have raised $200K from investors and are underway with app/web development.
MORE: Hottest enterprise networking & IT startups of 2016 | Top drone startups find venture capital flying their way
Bob Brown/NetworkWorld Lula's Matthew Vega-Sanz: He needs his Papa John's Pizza
A handful of the other entrepreneurs' visions, like that of Lula's Vega-Sanz, were also closely tied to their stomachs. Jessi Hong described Yum, a platform designed to bring international students together for meals that feature recipes and ingredients familiar from the old country. TableC's Alex Lim, the self-described "oldest undergrad in Boston" after taking a gap year that lasted 5, said he found himself eating alone too often after his re-entry to school and that sparked the notion for this hyperlocal mobile app designed to bring people together over meals around conversation topics of common interest. The team behind Skipper wants to cut the time you wait in line at grocery or other stores from 7 minutes to 7 seconds via its checkout app if it can get retailers to play along. And Central Spire/ForkOut is reaching out to restaurants that don't have the full-blown big data and analytics tools of a McDonald's to attract and interact with customers via a new mobile app.
Bob Brown/NetworkWorld Skipper's Michael Lee (left) and Kyle Kent are sick of waiting in grocery store lines
Another big source of inspiration for budding entrepreneurs is, unsurprisingly, social media. Something that can be done while eating.
A couple of presenters -- from Zapstream and CliqBit -- think they have better ways to do social networking and sharing. CliqBit Co-founder Olivia Joslin (Wellesley College '19) says members of Generation Z are on their phones for more hours than they sleep, but most aren't spending that time on Facebook or Twitter. The key is making social way more fun, and that's something one Zapstream team member said a Mark Zuckerberg in his early 30s just isn't going to appreciate...he's not going to want to put a dog filter on his photos.
Not to say that all the pitches were rooted in chowing down or getting yucks:
*Alibi wants to automate the time sheet process for overly busy professional services personnel.
*Convertrio aims to boost the effectiveness of websites by testing various versions of them.
*Runners Convoy will attempt to work with road race organizers seeking to differentiate their events by recording individual runners' performances and offering advice to the athletes on their runs.
*Carewell is an AI-infused web platform designed to support unpaid home caregivers by emphasizing the positive moments and enabling them to garner advice from others in similar situations.
*Mohit Juneja's (MBA '18) MeldTrend, borne from his experiences in sitting through many a meeting while working on Wall Street, is a mobile app that uses speech recognition and natural language processing to analyze and summarize meeting minutes.
Those seem like some pretty serious ideas worth discussing over a meal and on social media.
Facebook has agreed to stop using WhatsApp data to target users with advertising in the U.K. and has been warned could face legal action if it resumes the practice.
The agreement is an initial victory for Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who launched an inquiry into the data sharing earlier this year after expressing concern that user data was not being properly protected.
"I dont think users have been given enough information about what Facebook plans to do with their information, and I dont think WhatsApp has got valid consent from users to share the information," she said in a statement on Monday.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp for US$22 billion in 2014 and has been using information from the service to help target advertising on its main social network.
In response to the Information Commissioner's statement, Facebook said it believed its latest terms and conditions, updated in August, comply with the law and follow guidance from Denham's office.
Denham said she secured the agreement with Facebook after her team "set out the law clearly" to the social network.
WhatsApp users can disable data sharing with Facebook, but they either have to do it by either scrolling through the terms and conditions to find a check box or by switching off data sharing in account settings. The latter is only available during the first 30 days of use.
"I also believe users should be given ongoing control over how their information is used, not just a 30-day window," said Denham.
However, the "pause" could be temporary.
Denham wants Facebook and WhatsApp to agree to better explain data sharing to their customers and give them ongoing control over the sharing, but the two companies have not so far agreed.
"If Facebook starts using the data without valid consent, it may face enforcement action from my office," she said.
The social network indicated it plans to continue discussions with U.K. authorities.
"We hope to continue our detailed conversations with the ICO and other data protection officials, and we remain open to working collaboratively to address their questions," it said in a statement.
The agreement only covers the U.K. at present, but Denham said she will continue to pursue the issue with privacy commissioners across Europe.
Microsoft last week announced that it would support the Enterprise Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) through July 2018, a year-and-a-half extension for the anti-exploit utility.
At the same time, the Redmond, Wash. company dismissed EMET as a behind-the-times tool, and again urged customers to upgrade to Windows 10, arguing that the new operating system is much more secure than previous editions when supplemented by EMET.
"EMET hasn't kept pace," wrote Jeffrey Sutherland, a Microsoft principal program manager lead, in a post to a company blog Nov. 3. "Its effectiveness against modern exploit kits has not been demonstrated, especially in comparison to the many security innovations built into Windows 10."
EMET has served multiple masters since its 2009 debut.
Although it was originally designed for enterprises and advanced Windows users, Microsoft quickly began recommending EMET to other customers when ongoing attacks were discovered, but patches had not yet been issued.
Outsiders concurred. In 2014, Belgian security researcher Peter Van Eeckhoutte, who had reported a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 to Hewlett-Packard's Zero Day Initiative bug bounty program, said, "It should be clear by now that installing EMET has become an important layer of defense on your Windows endpoints. EMET won't stop every single exploit, but it does increase the cost (for an attacker) to pwn [pawn, or hack] a box. If you're serious about security, install it."
EMET was most valuable to Windows XP users during the last five years of its support lifecycle, and to the more secure -- but inevitably targeted -- Windows 7, which remains the most popular OS on the planet.
With Windows XP retired and Windows 7 facing the same in January 2020, Microsoft clearly saw EMET as superfluous: Sutherland highlighted the tool's shortcomings, rather than tout its effectiveness. "EMET has serious limits as well -- precisely because it is not an integrated part of the operating system," Sutherland wrote. "Not surprisingly, one can find well-publicized, often trivial bypasses, readily available online to circumvent EMET."
Those comments were harsher than anything Microsoft has said about EMET in the past. As recently as October 2015, for example, Microsoft posted a nine-item list of benefits, leading off with, "EMET helps protect against new and undiscovered threats even before they are formally addressed through security updates or anti-malware software."
Disparaging their older software -- even when they had previously sung praises of that software -- and trumpeting the newest is a common ploy by developers pushing customers to upgrade.
Microsoft will support EMET 5.5x -- the only version now supported -- until July 31, 2018, Sutherland said.
In Minnesota on Sunday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump added IBM to the list of companies he criticizes for moving jobs offshore or to Mexico. Trump's line was a one sentence throwaway at the Twin Cities rally, but it may have resonated with this rally crowd.
In Rochester, Minn., IBM created a massive operation. In 1956, it broke ground on what would become a 32-building, 3.5-million-square-foot complex that employed 8,100 workers at its peak in 1991. It made punch card systems and later became widely known for its AS/400 system development work.
IBM created a stable workforce, and by 1988 was able to point out that the average Rochester employee was 39.5 years old and a 14-year IBM veteran. Nearly 40% of those workers were engineers or programmers, according to IBM's official history.
It's unclear how many work in Rochester today. IBM stopped breaking out its per-country hiring about six years ago, although a news report in May by The Post Bulletin put IBM's Rochester-area employment at about 2,500. In 2013, IBM told employees that it would start assembling servers in Guadalajara, Mexico, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Trump has criticized firms such as Carrier and Ford for moving jobs out of the U.S., and at his Minnesota rally, offered up list of Minnesota firms that have shifted work out of the country, including IBM.
"IBM laid off 500 workers in Minneapolis and moved their jobs to India and various other countries," said Trump.
An IBM spokesperson called Trump's assertion incorrect, but didn't elaborate. Strictly speaking, Trump's remark -- which includes no time frame or any other details -- can't be pinned down. But that's not the point.
Trump wants to impose tariffs on goods manufactured offshore. The use of the H-1B visa has been raised by him as well in the context of these issues, but isn't related to his mention about IBM.
But what Trump hasn't discussed -- neither has Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, for that matter -- is an issue that Phil Fersht, the CEO and chief analyst at HFS Research, says is critical: automation.
"We've moved from shifting work overseas simply to eliminating it altogether," wrote Fersht, in a blog post Monday.
HFS estimates that automation will trim some 1.4 million global services jobs by 2021, which includes 770,000 low-skilled positions in the U.S.
"The bigger challenge facing both candidates is the impact of automation on U.S. jobs," he said.
Google Home was released to consumers earlier this month, but some journalists got a chance to test out Google's favorite personal assistant before it hit store shelves.
So what did they think?
Most agreed that Google Home was generally smarter than the Amazon Echo, in part because it's connected to Google's omniscient search engine. In addition, many liked Google Home's rather responsive microphone, though having to say "OK Google" every time you wanted to interact with the device could get tiresome.
Another plus: Google Home's generic design easily integrates into any home decor, much like an air freshener. But where Google Home needs work is connectivity, as it does not support nearly as many smart home platforms as Amazon Echo.
So what's the verdict? Google Home is good, but it could be better.
Nation of Islam follower selected to fill St. Pete Council vacancy By a 4-3 margin, the St. Petersburg City Council voted to fill a vacant council seat with the appointment of Brother John Muhammad, a member of the Nation of Islam which is headed by Louis Farrakhan. Prior to the deliberations, council members received calls and emails from the Jewish community...
Community Hanukkah party planned A communitywide Hanukkah celebration is planned for Sunday, Dec. 18, featuring a concert by Noah Aronson, a musician, recording artist, composer and self-described intentional mover. The Jewish Federation of Floridas Gulf Coast is hosting the party at the 600-seat Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center, 4951 78th Ave N, Pinellas Park,...
Israeli military officers to give Tampa briefing A change in the U.S.-Israel military relationship that took place last year and has brought Israeli military brass to Tampa is reaping benefits for Israelis defense, an official in Israels Embassy to the U.S. says. The change, which took effect on Sept. 1, 2021, was for Israels military to be...
Jewish Federation of Floridas Gulf Coast statement The Jewish Federation of Floridas Gulf Coast (Federation) and its Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) does not endorse candidates but does speak out on issues of concern for our community. We believe people of all faiths and no faiths should be treated with dignity and respect. We believe we have...
By Jackie Powder
Joel Breman came to represent the Pox Fightersthe public health army, 150,000 strong, who served at the frontlines of the epic war against smallpox.
Im here for all those Pox warriors who fought against the disease, said Breman, one of a host of speakers addressing an audience of more than 300 who gathered November 4 at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to pay tribute to D.A. Henderson, who led the international effort against smallpox that resulted in the only eradication of a human disease.
Breman, who directed the CDCs smallpox program in West and Central Africa, recounted the daunting obstacles that Henderson faced when he took control of the smallpox eradication campaign in 1966: ineffective vaccines, poor surveillance and paralyzing bureaucracy. He attributes the programs ultimate success to Hendersons skills in recruiting talent, a willingness to embrace new technologies and an unwavering focus on the mission.
Three words: Smallpox Target Zero, said Breman, senior scientist emeritus at National Institutes of Health. No matter what you did, you knew you were working to get rid of that horrific disease.
Celebrating the Life and Contributions of Dr. Donald Ainslie Henderson, brought together global public health leaders, family, friends, colleagues and admirers to share memories of D.A.personal and professionalwho died on August, 19, 2016, in Towson, Maryland.
In chronicling the defining phases of his lifeas a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Officer, head of the WHO Smallpox Eradication Campaign, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and biopreparedness expertspeakers recalled a supremely confident leader and an enemy of the status quo.
In a videotaped message, Bill Gates said that Hendersons leadership of the smallpox campaign laid the groundwork for future global immunization initiatives.
Big advances in global health happen when science, technology and leadership combine, and D.A. Henderson understood all of those things, Gates said. Im optimistic that in the coming years well see the eradication of polio and accelerating progress in ending malaria.
Speakers at the event, cohosted by the Bloomberg School and the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, included Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, Tom Inglesby, director of the UPMC Center for Health Security, and Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, who shared her remarks via video.
Health economist Karen Davis, who was recruited to what is now the Bloomberg School during Hendersons 1977 to 1990 deanship, became its first female department chair, leading a renamed and refocused Department of Health Policy and Management.
Davis, now director of the Bloomberg Schools Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care, described Henderson as an enthusiastic mobilizer.
He not only had ideas, he was not only a man of action who got things done. Davis says. He created a movement by inspiring all kinds of people to contribute toward improving public health.
One of the inspired was renowned epidemiologist Chen Chien-Jen who earned a doctor of science from the School in 1983. Now the vice president of Taiwan, he recalled in a videotaped message, that D.A.s lectures prepared him to be an effective public health practitioner. D.A. visited Taiwan on several occasions to advise public health officials, said Chen, meetings that ultimately led to critical improvements in the development of vaccines and evaluating health systems. In gratitude, the Taiwanese government awarded Henderson the Order of the Brilliant Star.
As a testament to his greatness as a teacher, Chen pledged, the many leaders he has cultivated in public health will carry on this legacy and we, the people of Taiwan, will always remember D.A.
After stepping down as dean, Henderson held top public health and science positions in the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson came to know D.A. in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, when he recruited him to run the new Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness at HHS.
Operating under his get-it-done philosophy, recalled Thompson, Henderson created a national smallpox vaccine reserve. It was an undertaking that he described as invigorating! Thompson said.
Among the accolades from colleagues, Hendersons daughter, Leigh Henderson, offered insights from the homefront. In Geneva, the family welcomed a steady stream of smallpox eradication workers from across the world.
At times, Leigh Henderson said, life could be quite strange. On occasion, she recalled, the refrigerator held containers of disease specimens that had to be kept cold. My mother stipulated that they not be put next to the milk, she said.
Despite the long separations, Henderson said that her father went out of his way to involve his family in his work. We knew what he was doing and how important it was, Leigh Henderson said. We all felt very much a part of this program.
NASA's advisory committee is questioning the fueling practices of Space X, which intends to fuel its rocket just before it launches, while the crew is on board the rocket. This fuel practice is concerning to the ISS advisory committee due to the safety risks it puts the crew on.
According to Extreme Tech, Space X uses liquid helium and liquid oxygen, which is kept at cryogenic temperatures, to fuel its rockets. The problem is it's hard to maintain cryogenic cooling for a long time, so Space X opt to load the fuel as close to launch as possible.
Because of this fueling practice, Space X said that once they start their crewed missions to the International Space Station, the crew will already be on board the rocket when they load the fuel. The ISS, understandably, is not crazy about the idea.
This isn't the first time that the ISS committee questioned Space X's fueling practices. Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford, the chairman of the ISS advisory committee, said in a letter to NASA on December 2015 that fueling the rocket while the crew is on board goes against decades of international space launch policies.
The professor emeritus of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, John Logsdon, echoes this sentiment. "I'm not aware that in any other U.S. human spaceflight launch, the booster is fueled after the crew is aboard," he said.
He adds that "it deviates from the norm." It is "bound to raise concerns."
The Australian reports that the ISS committee's warning could further complicate Space X's technical and financial assumptions from transporting crews to and from the space station. Flights are anticipated to begin later this decade.
Concerns of the crew's safety also put the responsibility on NASA leaders if they will authorize this kind of practice. A NASA official that was assigned to the meeting with the ISS advisory committee last Oct. 31 said the committee could expect a briefing in December.
NASA said that they are working through a "rigorous review process" with both companies and will continue to evaluate Space X's processes for fueling the Falcon 9 for commercial crew launches. The agency will also incorporate into their evaluation the result of the investigation on the September 1 explosion.
The good news is Space X said they could recreate the problem to be able to find a solution. The bad news is that the rocket's current fueling system can cause it to explode, which is an unwelcome risk if the rocket will be carrying space crew.
Xiaomi Redmi 4 phones has been launched on China on Friday.
Xiaomi launched Redmi 4 and Redmi 4 Prime which is the successor of Redmi 3 smartphones. It is an affordable smart phone that caters for the mid-range market.
The Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime It has 3GB ram and a 32GB storage that is expandable to 128 GB. It also has a 13MP rear camera with a dual-LED flash and a 5MP front shooter, Indiana Express reported
It has a 5-inch display with 1080 p resolution, it has a 2.5D curved glass. The phone runs on a 1.4 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor.
According to GSMArena, The Xiaomi Redmi 4 has an accent camera at the back and a 2.5 D glass front. It also has a 5-inch screen with 720p resolution.
It is powered by Snapdragon 430 chip and has an octa-core 1.4GHZ Coretex-453 processor. It also has 2GB Ram and an Adreno 505 GPU.
The Xiaomi phones has the same unibody design and as a hybrid dual-Sim slots. They have the same finger sensor found on the rear panel but they have difference on specifications like display resolution, memory, processor and built-in storage.
They both run on MIUI 8 that's based on Andrioid 6.0 Marshmallow. They are both available in Gold, Grey and Silver color, Gadgets 360 reported.
Indiana Express said that it is still uncertain if Redmi 4 will be brought to India. Xiaomi has launched a few of the phones on the country in the recent years.
They claimed that Redmi Note 3 was a huge success in the country, selling over 1.5 million on its products. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 was launched on January 2016.
It has an octa-core Snapdragon 616 chipset with Adreno 405 GPU. It also has a 2GB RAM and a 16GB Internal storage that can be expanded to 256GB. Xiaomi also launched in August the Redmi 3D Prime in the country.
Google doesn't consider Bhuvan its competitor, with a senior official of Google India even said that both apps are just "trying to solve the same problem." But this doesn't stop the company from updating Google Map's features in India.
According to Tech Firstpost, Google India's Maps Lead Sanket Gupta said that such a data sharing platform that actually helps boost the industry. "From our analysis, it's a great platform for sharing data," he said.
He said, though, that "there's still a long way to go. It is something like a great experience and generally great for the industry,"
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) created Bhuvan, a software application that allows users to explore the 2D or 3D representation of the Earth's surface. The new app is specially made to view India, providing content in four local languages and providing the users with the highest resolution in the region.
Though Google doesn't consider Bhuvan as competition, the search engine giant is looking to add more India relevant feature to Google Maps. The country is among the top five users of offline maps.
BGR reports that Gupta said Google is "aiming to develop more country-relevant features" in India. He said this is due to the country having more than 5,000 cities and six lakh villages.
Gupta adds that one of the features they want to add is the Street View, where users can explore world landmarks, discover the natural wonders and step inside museums, arena, parks and transport hubs. He said that neighboring countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Japan are already deploying it.
Gupta said that the problem is they haven't been able to get the permission. He said discussions are already ongoing, but they're having difficulty getting a decision on the policy side, as technically, they just need cameras and cars.
Bhuvan may not be considered a competitor to Google Maps, but they certainly caught Google's attention. Especially, in upgrading the map's features in the country.
HTC is already working on an updated model of its Vive virtual reality headset. The new model would probably be called "Oasis."
According to TechCrunch, the Senior Vice President of HTC's Virtual Reality Rikard Steiber said that the new virtual reality headsets are on their way. The new Vive virtual reality headsets will likely see form factor updates.
Steiber, in a discussion regarding HTC's future virtual reality plans, said that the new Vive headsets will have enhanced "design factor" and "performance." This is part of the company's plan when it comes to their VR arcade strategy in China and Taiwan.
Steiber said that many of the VR experiences they want to bring to China and Taiwan would require arcade-style peripherals. For example, the arcade-style peripherals would provide a better experience when it comes to steering wheels or weapons.
The HTC is not saying much with regards to the details of the kind of update that the Vive virtual reality headset will undergo. But he did say that device is "going to evolve."
Tech Times report that known HTC leaker @LlabTooFeR revealed on Twitter that HTC's new VR headset has an internal codename called Oasis. The name was inspired by the futuristic novel of Ernest Cline about VR.
HTC is working in refreshed Vive headset... Internal codename is Oasis... LlabTooFeR (@LlabTooFeR) November 2, 2016
The updated headset would also come without wires and cables that usually hamper the wearer's movements. The claims are based on reports that Google and Oculus are working on their own stand-alone or wireless VR headsets.
A Bulgarian company also leaked information back in September that they are working with HTC to develop an unidentified wireless device. With this leaks and claims, it is safe to expect that the "Oasis" box will come with lesser baggage.
No official word yet on when the new Vive will launch. But the grapevine is identifying a year-end launch or a CES2017 debut for HTC's new Vive virtual reality headset.
In light of the upcoming finale of the 2016 presidential race, government intelligence agencies are preparing to deal with potential threats that will spark mayhem in the midst of a very tense political atmosphere.
Rumors have already spread about another cyber attack that is aimed at destabilizing next week's US elections. The Department of Homeland Security, CIA, National Security Agency and other components of the US military are coordinating with the White House in preventing this nation-wide cyber threat.
The government is determined to address this issue, regardless of whether the threat is real or a product of mass hysteria. In recent times, the American public is quick to point their fingers at Russia (and for a number of understandable reasons).
"The former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, states that the Russians have been politically hostile to America and the latter is working on strategies to respond," NBC News reported.
In a related report by USA Today, it is implied that 'it only takes doubt' to actually undermine the US election process. Herb Lin, a senior research scholar for cyber policy at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University), affirms that apprehensions easily take root from generally perceived 'questionable' digital security.
Nonetheless, both separate accounts still consider Russia as a potential source of the theoretical cyber attack. It is important to take note that the Russian president Vladimir Putin openly expresses 'less than friendly' sentiments towards US and NATO in general.
In line with this antagonistic position, Putin was conveniently blamed for the waves of controversial email leakage of John Podesta's, the head of Clinton's presidential campaign. Much to the consternation of key public officials, this pessimistic outlook is being further proselytized by the public discourses of Republican nominee Donald Trump. He is completely convinced that the election process is 'rigged'.
Last Nov. 4, 2016, United States Consumer Product Safety Commission posted an announcement for Samsung recall of 2.8 Million Top-Load Washing Machine Units with 34 models in the US. The broadcast consists of information about the risk of impact injury, which already happened with 9 serious cases.
Moreover, Samsung Top-load Washing Machines risk comes with the detachment of its top from chassis during use. As stated by Fox News, injuries can include broken jaw and injured shoulders. Also, the impact can hit the user and cause a bigger hazard.
Samsung hadn't provided any statement yet, Senate Commerce Committee urged CPSC to pressure Samsung for a response. This is the second worldwide known glitch for the company, the government will not seat back for another pose of danger.
The recall was prompted more of the 733 reports of washing machines failure. According to CPSC, the Samsung Top-load Washing Machines were sold at Best Buy, The Home Depot, Lowes, Sears and others from March 2011 to November 2016.
In addition, the model codes are on CPSC page. Above all, On Independent Samsung management released already their reaction regarding the incident. "Our priority is to reduce any safety risks in the home and to provide our customers with easy and simple choices in response to the recall," said John Herrington, a Samsung senior vice president.
If faced with the situation, customers can call Samsung for remedy options such as refund, replace or repair. Samsung will give a free home repair with a one-year warranty, a rebate to buy a new appliance or a full refund for a more severe occasion.
The Wall Street Journal reports, CPSC Chairman Elliot Kaye told Samsung customers about the risk continuing with, "The best way to prevent injury is for everyone who might have a recalled washing machine to contact Samsung-immediately." Samsung contact information is at 866-264-5636, or they can be reached through www.Samsung.com.
The day is September 20, 2020. An asteroid having an estimated size between 300 to 800 feet is on a collision course with Earth. The projected path will likely take the asteroid across Southern California or just off the cost in the Pacific Ocean.
No need to panic. This is just a simulated high-consequence scenario discussed in the latest NASA-FEMA tabletop exercise held at El Segudo, California last October 25, 2016. The series of tabletop discussions are devised to improve the partnership and cooperation between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Both agencies are set to lead off the U.S. response should a large asteroid is discovered to be bound for Earth.
The previous two exercises were focused on developing ways to stop or deflect the hyphotical asteroid. However, this latest scenario is a bit different since the plans developed during the first two exercises will probably not be ready if an earthbound asteroid is discovered today due to the late discovery of the asteroid. The latest simulation provides a massive challenge to emergency managers who will be tasked with the evacuation of the Los Angeles residents. Aside from developing evacuation strategies, people at NASA and FEMA are charged with finding ways to manage hysteria, prevent panic, and deal with post-impact fallout.
"It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said in a statement released Friday. "By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event."
An asteroid the size of about 25 meters to 1 kilometer would cause severe damage to the impact area while an asteroid larger than 1 kilometer will leave in its wake damages in range of global exctinction-level. "These exercises are invaluable for those of us in the asteroid science community responsible for engaging with FEMA on this natural hazard," NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said in a statement.
According to Johnson, the information which are critical for the emergency manager's decision making are taken into account and will be relevant to the information they would provide to FEMA about a predicted impact. Representatives from NASA, FEMA, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy's National Laboratories, the U.S. Air Force, and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services were also in attendance during the tabletop discussions.
Huawei CEO Richard Yu in Partnership with Porsche announced its newest company flagship, Huawei Mate 9 Porsche. Meanwhile, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is gaining a top spot in the market today. And, a much-needed review is on the way to know which of these two delivers more punch according to specification and price.
According to Pocket-lint, the two phone can pass as twins, at first glance you will think that either of the two is the same. Huawei Porsche Design Mate 9 has the same qualities with Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, both of the phones are lookers.
But, What is the difference of the two?
Design & Display
While Samsung Galaxy S7 edge is a smaller handphone with 150.9 x 72.6 x 7.7mm, offers more stylish looks with its leaner size. Huawei Mate 9 Porsche, on the other hand, is bigger at 152 x 75 x 7.5mm body dimension.
Whereas S7 Edge got the look check for standard phones, Mate 9 grabbed it for the Porsche logo emblazoned on it. That is what the partnership of Porsche and Huawei, the hype for a branded smartphone.
Equally, the phones work with a curved-screen design, working with AMOLED Display in a 5.5-inch HD screen, aside from it, the two offer fingerprint sensors. But, Samsung can snatch the design award for an additional water dust-resistant feature model.
Cameras
Digital Trends reports, while Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is the best camera phone performer now, Porsche Mate 9 will be better with its dual-lens Leica camera. The first has the same number of lthe ens but has a lower generation system, Huawei's flagship has a 12-megapixel color lens and a 20-megapixel monochrome lens compared to Samsung's 12 MP dual camera.
Packed with more power, Huawei Porsche Design Mate 9 wins this round for the best upcoming dual-camera phone in the market soon. Leica software won the camera award for Mate 9 on the spot.
Hardware & Software
In hardware competition, Huawei Mate 9 Porsche works with Kirin 960 octa-core processor, Mali-G71 MP8 graphics, and 6GB of RAM. Internal storage measures with a whopping 256GB, though not supported by Micro SD anymore. Regardless it has a USB Type-C feature and 4000mah SuperCharge (50% in 30 minutes) working battery.
In contrast, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has Exynos 8990 octa-core processor or Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 quad-core chip, Mali-T880 MP12 graphics, and Adreno 530. The 4GB of RAM works with two versions, 32GB or 64GB. Micro SD is applicable for this smartphone. It comes with a 3600mah battery pack witha quick-charging feature.
In an article, Techradar said, "Huawei has made one of the best phones " and its wares speaks highly of that. Simply, Porsche Mate 9 will receive the Hardware & Software award this time for delivering a hard-rock performer smartphone.
Price
Correspondingly, customers looking for a new smartphone would always look for the price first before its specification and features. It's a big determining factor, the model can flop with the wrong price tag. Huawei Porsche Design Mate 9 is priced with an expensive, $1200-$1500 tag in opposite with, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge's $299-$600.
Obviously, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge secures the price check this time. The insane amount of Huawei Porsche Design Mate 9 defeats the quality of the phone.
So, What's the conclusion?
Trusted Reviews said about Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, "It's expensive, it's always going to be, but you're getting a lot of phone for your money". And, we can all agree on that after all. Sadly, it will not be the same with Huawei Mate 9 Porsche. Simply, Tech Radar concludes, "Huawei wasted its chance to make 2016's best phone".
With the presidential race nearing its conclusion in less than a week, incumbent US president Barack Obama is definitely filling a hectic schedule while campaigning for his Democrat ally Hillary Clinton. But in a highly favorable stroke of luck, comedian Bill Maher has finally granted his desire for an exclusive interview after months of waiting (begging).
Obama's and Maher's televised talk, billed as "the Real Time with Bill Maher", was broadcasted on HBO last Friday, November 5. During the talk show, the duo has covered a wide range of topics yet most of the conversation is centered on one particularly interesting issue - science.
With that in mind, the president expressed his concern regarding what seemed like an unethical use of media to distort what is real. In a report by Fortune, a particular focal point of the dialogue describes how the American public has been 'conditioned' to deem every topic as debatable and subjective - even in light of compelling empirical evidence.
Hence, real issues like climate change and GMO food production are being reduced as a 'bipartisan political discussion'. Further explanation on how Obama stressed the prevalence of anti-science and anti-fact phenomenon is reported by USA Today.
"The 'Balkanization' of media leaves the public with a difficulty sorting out what's true and what's not." He added, "If we don't have some common baseline facts, it is very hard to figure out how we move democracy forward."
It is important to take note that such an observation is still closely related to the social dynamics of the US elections. The GOP candidate Donald Trump has relentlessly condemned Obama and Clinton, especially in light of their seemingly 'unfair' political tandem.
Bill Maher is an outspoken atheist and an active critic of the right-wing religious perspective. Hosting Obama's first and last exclusive interview as US president proved to be a monumental press success.
Oscar-nominated director Morten Tyldum says the sci-fi love story "Passengers" is an emotional rollercoaster starring on screen "balanced pair" Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.
Tyldum, who helmed "The Imitation Game" in 2014, says the intimate film, featuring the 26-year-old Lawrence and 37-year-old Pratt, relied on the two A-Listers' chemistry.With reports from Deadline, the Norwegian director adds the film's epic quality was a balancing act, with the characters having to go through extreme choices.
Although Reese Witherspoon, Rachel McAdams, and Keanu Reeves were part of Passengers' development, Sony and Village Roadshow ended up with Pratt and Lawrence. The two didn't know each other before filming.
"I met them individually, and you have this gut feeling that they will allow themselves to connect and fall in love with each other at some level. The whole diva factor wasn't there at all," shares Tyldum.
"Passengers" is set on a spaceship transporting people in suspended animation to a distant colony. But Pratt's and Lawrence's characters are woken up 90 years too early and things take a deadly turn.
The ship collapses and Pratt and Lawrence learn why they were awakened, all the while falling in love with each other. The $100 million movie was handed to Tyldum after Sony won the bidding war for the Jon Spaihts script.
Pratt shot to stardom after playing Peter Quill / Starlord in Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" and starring in the fourth installment of the "Jurassic Park franchise", Jurassic World. He was previously known for television roles in "Everwood" and in the NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation".
Meanwhile, Lawrence previously starred in the "Hunger Games" and the "X-Men" franchise, making her the highest-paid actress in the world. Her films have grossed over $5 billion worldwide.
Lawrence is also the second youngest Best Actress Oscar winner for playing a depressed widow in the romantic drama "Silver Linings Playbook". She is the youngest actress to be nominated for four Oscars.
"Passengers" is expected to show on December 21.
John Kerry, US State Secretary, will be going to Antarctica for Climate Change.
He will be the first top US official to visit Antarctica, where the largest protected marine reserve is located. He will be visiting the McMurdo Station, Ross Island and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.
According to a previous report, there was a scientist who died in McMurdo Station a month ago. Gordon Hamilton is a climate scientist who died in a snowmobile accident while in the field.
He is known for his ice sheet studies in Antarctica and is part of the U.S. Antarctica Program, where he's studying ice shelves stability in the McMurdo Station. They were mapping the McMurdo shear zone when the accident happened. Hamilton was riding a snow machine when it hit a crevasse and fell 100 ft. into the ice.
Yahoo News reported that this visit comes after two weeks of the international agreement to create the world's largest marine protected area, in hopes to preserve the fauna and flora of the Ross Sea. This reserve will cover more than 598,000 square miles which is equivalent to 1.55 million square kilometers.
They explained that Kerry is a long time global warming advocate. He was a key force in the Paris global climate agreement that happened in 2015.
This will be the last tour of Kerry as the Secretary of State before Obama's presidency ends on January 20, 2017. Just recently, Kerry released a statement that Pres. Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum on Climate Change and National Security.
He explained that this establishes a framework for federal agencies that will ensure that impacts of climate-change will be considered on their national security doctrines, policies and plans. He said that the President is aware of he impacts of climate change and believes that climate change will present security challenges for the United States and other countries in the next 20 years.
"Naruto Shippuden" episode 483 will air on November 10 on TV Tokyo and it marks the end of the "Boyhood Arc." The previous episodes have dealt with the stories of Gaara and Shikamaru, while the upcoming episode 483 will feature the stories of Kakashi and Jiraiya. All of which building up to the final epic battle that Naruto will endure.
To recap "Naruto Shippuden" episode 482, the episode focused on Gaara's earlier years in his attempt to survive his battle against loneliness. Moreover, he had to live through several murder attempts against his life courtesy of his own father. Luckily for Gaara, he had his siblings Temari and Kankuro to help him out. However, his uncle Yashamaru was his much-needed father figure. It did not end well for Yashamaru, in the end, Gaara was coerced to end his uncle's life.
Furthermore, "Naruto Shippuden" episode 482 featured Shikamaru's thoughts as he recalled Naruto's act of chivalry towards Hinata. The shadow tactician believes that Naruto was wasting his time, but Choji disagreed with him on that aspect.
The upcoming "Naruto Shippuden" Episode 483 will feature a much younger Jiraiya during his Sannin days. Moreover, the episode will also tell of Kakashi's training days at the ninja academy. The masked Ninja seems to have shown great fighting potential since his childhood days. Unfortunately, he had multiple allegations against him that he had to deal with. One of which is him being labeled a pervert.
Kakashi's childhood was not a smooth ride, much like every important character in the series. His father passed while Kakashi was very young, he took his own life after failing a mission. Kakashi was the one who made the terrifying discovery of what his father has done. The sight of his father's lifeless corpse is definitely emotional which led to Kakashi's decision to keep his emotions out.
"Naruto Shippuden" Episode 483 will air on TV Tokyo on November 10.However, this is limited to the Japanese audience. The English dub of the episode will need a while to come out. Luckily, the English sub version should be out in a couple of days after the Japanese premiere.
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GREENSBORO A federal judge said Monday that she sees insufficient evidence that North Carolina Republicans and presidential candidate Donald Trump want supporters to intimidate minorities on Election Day, but she'll keep an eye on whether there's a coordinated effort to dissuade voters from casting ballots.
"These are difficult times," U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles said after an hour-long hearing into a lawsuit North Carolina's Democratic Party filed last week.
The lawsuit is similar to cases in five other crucial swing states that could decide whether Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton become the next president.
Federal courts have rejected similar complaints in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona. Nevada and Michigan cases remain pending. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid by Ohio Democrats to issue an order aimed at preventing Trump's supporters from harassing or intimidating voters on Election Day.
North Carolina Democrats asked the judge to block what they claim is a "coordinated campaign of vigilante voter intimidation" involving the state Republican Party; Donald Trump's presidential campaign; informal Trump adviser Roger Stone; and Stone's political organization, Stop the Steal, which plans to monitor polling places.
Stone has said Trump-supporting volunteers plan to watch polls in nine U.S. cities, including Charlotte and Fayetteville. Democrats contend that's aimed at intimidating voters of color.
Trump and Stone have used bogus claims of voter fraud to stir up supporters in an effort to keep black and Hispanic voters from voting, said Dawn Smalls, a lawyer for North Carolina Democrats. Though it's lawful for anyone to observe polling places and speak to voters coming and going, Trump and Stone have urged untrained volunteers to watch for signs they interpret to be voter fraud in cities with high minority populations, Smalls told Eagles.
But Eagles said she didn't see strong evidence that Trump's campaign or the others targeted by Democrats were involved in plans that warranted extraordinary legal measures.
While statements by Stone, Trump, and the GOP nominee's surrogates "may be susceptible to the interpretation that Mr. Stone and the Trump campaign are encouraging their supporters to intimidate voters, there is little evidence that supporters are acting on these indirect suggestions," Eagles wrote in her order hours after the hearing.
State GOP attorney Tom Stark noted it was a local Republican Party headquarters that was firebombed in an apparent case of political violence.
The Orange County GOP office was torched by a flammable device three weeks ago and someone spray-painted an anti-GOP slogan referring to "Nazi Republicans" on a nearby wall, authorities said. The case is unsolved. Last week, an obscenity directed at Trump was spray-painted on the side of the building housing the nearby Alamance County Republican Party headquarters
The Democrats' lawsuit is one of a number of voting-rights cases in North Carolina. A federal judge ruled last week that thousands of people should be allowed to cast ballots after they were initially purged from the roll of eligible voters in the past three months through a process disproportionately targeting blacks.
The director of the State Board of Elections said last week that the U.S. Justice Department will send monitors to four counties: Cumberland, Forsyth, Robeson and Wake.
Polls open today at 6:30 a.m. in Forsyth County and around the state, although getting vote totals from individual precincts will depend on how many people are still in line when the polls officially close at 7:30 p.m.
Election officials say 105,293 people cast ballots during early voting this year, but that still leaves more than 150,000 voters eligible to cast ballots in person at their precincts today.
We are as ready as we will ever be, Tim Tsujii, the director of elections in Forsyth County, said Monday night.
The county had only 17 sites in operation at the peak of early voting, but all 101 precincts will be open for voting today.
As with early voting, people who are in line when the polls close will be allowed to stay and cast a ballot. That could delay getting results in from any precincts that see heavy voting activity, which in turn could cause a delay in determining some of the winners.
When the results do come in, the first numbers available will be totals from early voting. Tsujii said that at 7:30 p.m. when the polls close, the totals from early voting will be released and available on the county board of elections web page.
The web page will be continually refreshed throughout the night as new numbers come in.
Tsujii said that the busiest times at the polls are likely to be early in the morning as people vote on the way to work and later in the evening when they are on the way home.
The main method of voting on Election Day will be by paper ballot, unlike the situation in early voting where most people voted using a computer touch screen. Tsujii said the Election Day ballots are of the type where voters fill in an oval indicating their choice. One computer terminal with touch-screen voting will be available at each precinct as well, for anyone who wants to vote that way.
A lot of eyes will be on the voting places this year, with observers from the parties on hand at many precincts.
As well, a team of six federal agents will be in the county on Election Day to observe voting. Agents will be in some other North Carolina counties as well. Tsujii said that the agents will not be enforcing any voting regulations but are here as observers only, and will be dispersed to different polling places at random.
One thing you cant do on Election Day is both register to vote and cast a ballot. Thats a feature of early voting, but people who are not registered to vote are out of luck on Election Day.
Closing out a wildly unpredictable White House race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump blitzed through battleground states Monday in a final bid to energize supporters. Clinton urged voters to embrace a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America, while Trump called for supporters to beat the corrupt system.
The candidates rallied voters late into the night, a frenzied end to a bitter election year that has laid bare the nations deep economic and cultural divides.
Republican Trump rallied thousands of supporters Monday afternoon at the N.C. State Fairgrounds, making a final pitch to battleground North Carolina one day before the election.
Clinton was due to be in Raleigh late Monday to close out her presidential campaign with a midnight rally down the street at N.C. State Universitys Reynolds Coliseum. She was to be joined by musicians Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi as well as former President Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea.
The two Raleigh rallies highlight North Carolinas role as a crucial battleground state and a state thats too close to call on the eve of the election.
A New York Times/Siena poll conducted over the weekend found the candidates tied at 44 percent support. The RealClearPolitics average of N.C. polls gave Trump a 1.4 percentage point lead, while the latest Quinnipiac poll gave Clinton a 2 percentage point lead.
In addition to the presidential contenders, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine was campaigning in Raleigh, Charlotte and Wilmington on Monday, and former President Bill Clinton made a final stop in Greensboro to implore residents to vote for Democrats. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, spoke to supporters Sunday in Hickory, and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump met with women in Mooresville.
Trump at times struck a nostalgic tone during his final round of rallies, recalling the rivals hed vanquished and how far hes come. As he surveyed the crowd in Scranton, Pa., he declared, Its been a long journey.
In Raleigh, though, he repeated his attacks on Clintons handling of emails as secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the office of president of the United States, Trump told the crowd amid chants of lock her up.
Shes being protected by a totally rigged system.
Trump voiced skepticism of FBI director James Comeys announcement Sunday that investigators have finished reviewing new emails related to Clintons use of a private email server. Comey said Clinton will not face charges.
They went through 650,000 emails in eight days yeah right, Trump said. So sad whats going on.
Trump ridiculed Clintons use of high-profile musicians like Beyonce and Jay Z to draw crowds to her rallies.
I get bigger crowds than they do, he said. I dont have a guitar, and I dont have a piano. All we have is great concepts for our country.
Trump said that if he used what he views as inappropriate language in Beyonce and Jay Zs music, he would face execution though reinstitution of the electric chair.
Trump said hes confident hell win the state and the election, which he said will be Brexit plus plus plus, a reference to the United Kingdoms surprising vote to leave the European Union.
Megan Chasnis, 36, of Morrisville attended the Trump rally and said shes hopeful and confident that the Republican will win the election she views as a good versus evil choice.
Its time to get the corruption out of Washington, she said, adding that Trump supporters have been unfairly caricatured this year. Im not a white-trash older man like Hillary says all Trump supporters are.
Clinton began the day in Pittsburgh and flew to Michigan before returning to Philadelphia for a rally with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
I think I have some work to do to bring the country together, she acknowledged as she boarded her plane for her last battleground tour. I really do want to be the president for everybody.
Looking beyond Election Day, Clinton said in a radio interview that she hopes Trump will play a constructive role in helping bring the country together if she defeats him.
She hammered home her campaign theme: Stronger together.
For those who are still making up your minds or thinking, Maybe, maybe its not worth voting at all, let me just say: the choice in this election could not be clearer, she said in Pittsburgh.
It really is between division or unity. Between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon. Between an economy that works for everyone and an economy that is set up and run for those at the top.
Bill Clinton carried the message to Greensboro.
North Carolina, youve got a lot on the line, Clinton said at a campaign rally at UNC Greensboro. Youve got a chance to send a message to America and to your fellow citizens that yes, we are stronger together, yes, love does trump hate, and yes, we are a state of empowerment, not resentment.
In some ways, Bill Clinton said, the election represents an internal struggle faced by millions of Americans each day.
Weve seen the stark differences between two candidates, two philosophies, two approaches to life that actually goes on inside most of us every day, he said. Theres hope over here, and fear over there we all live with it, and its manifest in this campaign in stark terms.
A couple hundred students attended the rally which was held on a swath of grass outside Kaplan Commons off West Walker Avenue. A handful of Black Lives Matter protesters sang and chanted briefly during Clintons remarks, but the former president continued speaking over them until security escorted the group out.
Many of the students present had already voted, including Jean Brannum, a sophomore who cast her ballot for Clinton last weekend.
Her grandparents met Bill Clinton in the halls of the hospital where his daughter, Chelsea, had her second baby, she said.
So I thought, well, Ill go down there, too, she said. Its just such an honor to see someone so influential and important.
Stokes County commissioners will allow a Georgia company to assume the permanent lease to its hospital facilities if the county is reimbursed for funding defaults by the previous operator.
Officials with the county and LifeBrite Hospital Group LLC, a for-profit organization recently formed in Lilburn, Ga., came to an agreement on a second lease amendment Nov. 1. LifeBrite has limited experience running hospitals.
Pioneer Health Services filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection March 31. It began managing Stokes-Reynolds Memorial Hospital in August 2011, which was renamed as Pioneer Community Hospital of Stokes County.
The county said in Friday's filing it advanced Pioneer $600,000 to help fund the hospital's payroll for employees and for other operational expenses between late May and early July. The county has reserved the right to pursue repayment separate of the lease agreement.
LifeBrite has run the Stokes facilities since July 9 three days before the Stokes commissioners said it would stop paying for the hospital's financial commitments. On July 20, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Mississippi approved LifeBrite's interim management contract for the Pioneer facilities in Stokes.
LifeBrite has agreed to make payment on at least $135,000 in performance defaults by Pioneer if the judge approves the lease transfer. According to a legal document, Lifebrite has agreed to pay $400,000 to Pioneer, as well as assume $1.3 million in Medicare obligations.
Pioneer established significant roots in Stokes, including Pioneer Medical Center of King, Pioneer Family Medical and Specialty of King, Pioneer Family Medical of Danbury, Pioneer Pediatric Clinic of Danbury, Pioneer Family Medical of King and Pioneer Family Medical of Rural Hall.
Altogether, the Pioneer medical facilities have more than 200 employees.
The county has accused Pioneer of failing "to provide the full scope of health care, emergency room and related services" under its lease, including not allowing new patients in the hospital from March 31 through April 29, and restricting who was admitted until the county began providing money to cover operating losses on June 1.
The proposed sale of the lease for Stokes County's hospital and other medical facilities faces several legal challenges, primarily from equipment suppliers and health insurers, each claiming Pioneer has fallen behind on payments.
The largest related to the Stokes facilities is by McKesson Technologies Inc., who said Pioneer owned it $908,151 in lease payments for equipment used through Aug. 8.
It seems like eons ago that the struggle of this historic election began.
Its been a particularly stressful season, marked by anger, accusation and misinformation unequaled in our recent history, especially in regard to the presidential race. There have also, no doubt, been moments and movements of inspiration, speeches and acts of courage that will live in our memories and be recorded in our history books to be passed to our children.
In July, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals firmly rejected the state legislatures 2013 voter restrictions, including limits to early voting, concluding that they targeted African Americans who generally vote Democratic with almost surgical precision. Were grateful that the court ruled to secure precious voting rights for all eligible voters , and still disturbed that anyone would try to limit them. Thats no way to win an election in America.
Its tempting to think that one vote, your vote, wont make a difference, but in this particularly surprising campaign, the most certain thing anyone can say is, You never know. The presidential race promises as much suspense as an Alfred Hitchcock film.
This is your ticket to fair representation as well as your right, beginning Wednesday, to complain when the winners fail to live up to their promises, or to cheer when they achieve their goals.
Heres a recap of the Journal editorial boards endorsements in contested races. Once again, were not telling you how to vote. These are just our considered opinions from studying the candidates.
For president, Gary Johnson.
For governor, Roy Cooper.
For U.S. Senate, Richard Burr.
For U.S. representative, 5th congressional district, Josh Brannon.
For council of state:
Attorney general, Josh Stein.
State auditor, Beth Wood.
State treasurer, Dale Folwell.
Commissioner of agriculture, Walter Smith.
Commissioner of insurance, Wayne Goodwin.
Commissioner of labor, Cherie Berry.
Secretary of state, Elaine Marshall.
Superintendent of public instruction, June Atkinson.
Lieutenant governor, no endorsement.
For the state legislature:
House district 74, Debra Conrad.
For Forsyth County races:
For three district B seats on the board of commissioners: Dave Plyler, Richard Linville and Gloria Whisenhunt.
Register of deeds, Lynne Johnson.
One seat on the soil and water conservation district board, Sam Solomon.
For Winston-Salem races:
Mayor, Allen Joines.
City council, South Ward: John Larson.
City council, Northwest Ward: Jeff MacIntosh
For judicial races:
For a District court judgeship, Aaron Berlin.
Superior court judgeship, Eric Morgan.
Court of appeals judge, Linda Stephens.
Court of appeals judge, Bob Hunter.
Court of appeals judge, Richard Dietz.
Court of appeals judge, Valerie Zachary.
Court of appeals judge, Margaret Eagles.
State Supreme Court, either Bob Edmonds or Mike Morgan.
Finally, we endorse the Forsyth bonds for schools, the community college and parks and recreation facilities.
Woori Bank has been operating transaction offices in Hanoi city (1997) and Ho Chi Minh city (2005). By introducing its subsidiary, Woori Bank will boost the retail business with an aim of becoming the top foreign credit bank in Vietnam market.
As planned, it will expand its sales network by establishing transaction offices in Bac Ninh province, Hai Phong city (North region) and Dong Nai, Binh Duong provinces (South region) within this year. Then, the Bank will add more 5 - 7 transaction offices each year to expand its network to 20 branches across the country.
Photos: ATP/Thanh Hai
It is also working with Woori Card to enter the Vietnamese credit card market in the first half of 2017. Furthermore, in order to expand the base of local customers, it plans to connect various deposit and loan products including mortgage, credit loan and bank assurance, which also offers comprehensive financial services to Vietnamese customers.
Speaking at the launching ceremony held in Hanoi, Mr. Lee Kwang Goo, CEO and President of Woori Bank said: Woori Bank Vietnam will take a closer step forward to our customers that they can trust and seek secured to use our services. Meanwhile, Woori will keep on developing with the motto of becoming the reliable bank for customers and will always accompany with the development of society. Furthermore, we will strongly promote the social activities to support the community development in Vietnam.
Founded in 1899 in Seoul capital, Woori Bank is one of the leading investment banks in Asia and the largest lender by assets in the Republic of Korea. It has been running businesses in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Finland, and Germany. Notably, it also expands New Asia Credit System which is focusing on Southeast Asia, thus aiming to become Asias top 10 and global top 50 financial institutions./.
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By Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah | (Inter Press Service) |
LONDON (IPS) Many US citizens may instinctively believe they still live in the land of the free, but a new global rights rating system shows the country is far less tolerant than they may think.
The worlds first systematic review of how well countries uphold fundamental civic freedoms to protest, organise and speak out reveals a significant deterioration in the protection of these constitutional rights in the US.
From the streets to the internet, civic space is being contested and restricted, threatened by a new era of state authoritarianism. People of colour and social movements such as Black Lives Matter routinely experience first-hand police harassment and violence. Mass arrests, the use of excessive force, laws requiring prior authorisation for peaceful gatherings and undercover police infiltration of peaceful protests were once the preserve of authoritarian regimes, but these confrontational and brutalising tactics are increasingly being used by the state to suppress its own citizens.
The battle over the freedom of the internet is raging, spearheaded by the National Security Agency, arguably the world leader in collecting data on peoples private electronic communications. How free can expression be when we are wired into a Big Brother complex with such fearfully oppressive potential?
The US is not alone of course and there are dozens of countries around the world in which governments are cracking down even harder on protest, shutting down organisations on flimsy pretexts, and brutally silencing dissent by intimidating and murdering human rights defenders, lawyers and investigative journalists.
From the streets to the internet, civic space is being contested and restricted, threatened by a new era of state authoritarianism.
Rights violations in countries like Bahrain, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia may be well known but the scale of the current global rights crisis is staggering.
The findings of the new CIVICUS Monitor conclude that over 3.2 billion people currently live in countries where civic space is repressed or closed. Most alarming is just how few countries are categorised as having open space only 9 out of the 104 for which there is verified data.
In many mature, respected democracies like the US, Australia and Hungary, civic space faces a new wave of threats. Just last week, a senior United Nations official expressed concerns about Australia where a raft of new laws, as well as the public vilification of human rights defenders by senior government officials, is having a chilling effect on civil society. From intensifying secrecy laws to a proliferation of anti-protest legislation, he cited a range of measures now combining to levy enormous pressure on Australian civil society.
Europe may well be home to all nine of the countries categorised as open, but all is not well there either. Hungary, once the beacon of post-Cold War democratic hope, is now rated as having obstructed civic space. Over the last year, the Hungarian government, finding their country at the centre of refugee flows into Europe from Syria and the north and horn of Africa, has installed a fence along Hungarys southern border and introduced a raft of restrictive immigration and border control policies. NGOs critical of the governments response have been threatened with de-registration and subjected to baseless legal and administrative investigations, while outspoken journalists have routinely faced criminal defamation charges brought by politicians.
If elite capture of politics is allowing for these abuses, it is the combination with deepening economic inequality that has driven citizen-led disruption right across the political spectrum. At one end, the radical mass movements of Occupy and the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring sought system change. At the other, anti-Establishment populism fuelled in different ways by the Trump insurgency and certain Brexit leavers, trails a rag bag alliance of right-wing nationalists peddling noxious, divisive narratives that seek to blame all of societys ills on the mass arrival of displaced peoples into Europe.
Technology is catalysing these shifts in beliefs and nudging our voting habits. The mobilising advantage that Obamas 2008 Presidential campaign created by building new tools to harness big data has become accessible to all, making mass organising easier than ever before. Yet despite all this data, pollsters are finding it harder to predict winners. In the recent UK and Colombian referendums, the polls got it wrong and even the day before America votes can anyone call the outcome of the Presidential race with certainty?
For some governments this messy, unpredictable democracy has triggered a seemingly irresistible authoritarian reflex. Fearful of their own people, many states are taking drastic measures to prevent their citizens from criticising authority or calling for their basic social and economic needs to met. From local campaigners to the big international NGOs, civil society actors are being vilified by governments accusing them of being the agents of foreign powers, intent on destabilising the very communities they are part of and whose rights they seek to protect.
We may at times mythologise freedom but it is a free, vibrant civil society that often holds back extremism, intolerance and exclusion. Restrictions stimulate the febrile conditions in which right-wing populism breeds and it is into this dangerous terrain that many of the worlds most mature democracies are heading.
Whoever becomes the next US President faces a critical choice between fully restoring the peoples civic freedoms or following a global trend that is undermining the legitimacy of our governments and damaging our democracies.
A healthy democracy is not just the absence of violations; it needs those in power to take proactive steps to safeguard citizen action, to tolerate dissent and to provide platforms for meaningful dialogue. Governments in the US and the world over need to stop fearing people power and instead nurture active citizenship.
Dr Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah is the Secretary-General of CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance.
Related video added by Juan Cole
RT America from last month: 141 arrested during Dakota Access Pipeline protest
Chinese delegates to the third Vietnam-China Youth Festival (Source: VNA)
Addressing the ceremony, Standing Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee (HCYUCC) Nguyen Manh Dung hailed the Vietnam-China friendship, which was nurtured by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong together with generations of revolutionaries, leaders and people of the two countries, as a shared valuable asset.
The bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership has overcome multiple challenges to gain achievements across fields, including youth collaboration, he said.
The cooperation and friendship between Vietnamese and Chinese young people have been deepened pragmatically, contributing to fostering the relationship between the two countries, Dung noted.
He added that the youth festival has contributed to enhancing mutual understanding and trust, becoming a friendship bridge in the two countries people-to-people diplomacy.
Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China Wang Hongyan stressed that the Chinese Party and Government attach importance to the friendship and cooperation between the two countries young people.
According to the official, Chinese delegates to the festival are outstanding representatives of different sectors like politics, economy, education, communications, science-technology and culture.
The festival will give the Chinese young people a chance to learn about Vietnams rich history and culture and witness the achievements of Vietnams 30-year renewal cause, she said.
The two sides will also learn about the history of the long-standing friendship between the two countries, thus contributing to developing the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership in the time ahead.
The festivals major activities will take place in the Vietnamese provinces of Lang Son, Quang Ninh, Bac Ninh, Ninh Binh, Phu Tho and Lao Cai with the focus on youths role in environmental protection, sustainable development, cultural protection, tourism development and socio-economic development. After participating in activities in other localities, the 1,000 Chinese delegates will join their peers in Hanoi capital city for a closing ceremony.
The first Vietnam-China Youth Festival was organised in Guangxi province, China, in August 2010, and the second took place in the Zhuang Autonomous Region in Guangxi province, in November 2013./.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |
Many of the anxieties that have roiled this years election have had an underlying theme, of the decline of white America. Now, as the word white is used in common American parlance, it is certainly true that that demographic is declining rapidly as a proportion of the general population. It is already a minority in California and New Mexico. It has fallen from 72% in 2012 to 69% nationally since the 2012 election (which has implications for this years race).
Ann Coulter, whom I once called the bearded lady of the carnival Right back before the carnival Right took over the whole GOP, exemplified that anxiety on Monday:
If only people with at least 4 grandparents born in America were voting, Trump would win in a 50-state landslide. Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 8, 2016
People pointed out that Trump couldnt even vote if that were his criterion, since his mother was an immigrant. Ivanka Trump and the other older Trump children would be doubly disenfranchised, since they have two grandparents from Czechia and one from Scotland. Theyre only 1/4 American according to Coulters nativism.
But actually, anxieties about white dominance are a perennial in American history. Benjamin Franklin was extremely worried about whites being overwhelmed. He said in Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc. (1751):
Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.
So get this. Some of the eighteenth century founding fathers only thought English and Danish people were white. Even Swedes and Germans were swarthy. French certainly were. So Franklin would not have considered me white, since my family is French and German. Were swarthy. We do have some Scottish, but if the Swedish are swarthy I suspect he thought the Scottish were, too. Since Coulter is in part Irish and German, Ben Franklin wouldnt have accepted her as white, either, and was worried about the German part of her family acting like barbarians and interfering in elections. You can only imagine what he would have thought of German grifters like Donald Trumps grandfather.
Franklin also worried about the swarthy non-white Germans swamping the white people in Pennsylvania, and meddling in elections even though they didnt understand liberty (Some of my family is Pennsylvania Dutch who settled in Chambersburg, so I cant sympathize).
I am perfectly of your mind, that measures of great Temper are necessary with the Germans: and am not without Apprehensions, that thro their indiscretion or Ours, or both, great disorders and inconveniences may one day arise among us; Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation, and as Ignorance is often attended with Credulity when Knavery would mislead it, and with Suspicion when Honesty would set it right; and as few of the English understand the German Language, and so cannot address them either from the Press or Pulpit, tis almost impossible to remove any prejudices they once entertain. Their own Clergy have very little influence over the people; who seem to take an uncommon pleasure in abusing and discharging the Minister on every trivial occasion. Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it; and as Kolben says of the young Hottentots, that they are not esteemed men till they have shewn their manhood by beating their mothers, so these seem to think themselves not free, till they can feel their liberty in abusing and insulting their Teachers . . . For I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties; Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany . . .
Some of the anxiety is about the percentage of recent immigrants, the foreign born, in the population. But the foreign-born make up a smaller percentage of the US population today than was the norm in 1860-1920a heroic age, the age of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Did they whine about all those foreigners coming in? No. That group declined as a percentage of the population artificially, and only because in 1924 the US put in Nazi-style immigration laws essentially based on racial hierarchies (all Asians were excluded, even though the US had a large Asian colony in the Philippines).
For those who maintain that the wave of immigration in 1860-1924 was white dont know anything about the history of whiteness. Most of them were not in fact considered white (see below).
And, really, it is crazy to use white as though it were a natural category. There are no natural categories. We should have learned from the excesses of Aryan racial theory (adopted by the Nazis but not only by them) that categorizing people by races is dangerous. Most people still have a 19th century romantic view of race, but it is just a fantasy. People are all mixed up. The Catholic working-class immigrants of the wave that came in 1880-1924 were not initially accepted as white by the propertied Protestants who got to decide these things. You should go back and look what they said about Slavic Poles or about the Irish.
Note that 3.5% of people who categorize themselves as white actually have some recent African ancestry. Thats 5% in the Deep South. By the stupid one drop rule of the South itself, theyre actually black. (1 in 8 white Louisianans actually has some recent African ancestry, 12.5%). So that national proportion is already actually 65.5%. But if six million people are wrong about their racial category, how reliable can the category be in the first place? (By the way, were all from Africa, however welcome that news might be to some white people.)
Take Italians, many of whom emigrated to Latin America. Those who immigrated straight to New York and Rhode Island are now considered white (and make up nearly 16% of that category). Those who went to Mexico first and then came to the US more recently are Latinos. So is what is being said is that the Italian-American families who came in 1895 are threatened by the ones who came from Latin America in the 1990s? Well, that is apparently part of what is being said.
Moreover, what in the world is the difference between Catalans in northeast Spain and Provencale people in southern France? Yet Catalans who went to Colombia and recently came to the US are Latinos. Provencales people who emigrated directly to New Jersey in the 19th century are white. Why?
American history is written from a Massachusetts point of view, with the English at the center of it. But the Portuguese preceded them in North Carolina (are they Latinos?) And what is now California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas etc. were originally Spain and then Mexico before the US snarfed them up, and they also preceded the English as settlements from the old world in the new. Tim Kaine has pointed out that Spanish was spoken in North America before English. So why not write American history starting with the Southwest and moving east? By the way, in New Mexico the old hidalgo landed class (who are still there) calls themselves Hispanics, doesnt like to be mixed up with recent Mexican immigrants, and views white immigrants to New Mexico as recent arrivals and perhaps not the most cultured, either. Hispanics are often viewed as immigrants by the ignorant. But they were there in New Mexico, and the Californios were in California, way before the Irish or Italians or most Germans came to North America. They didnt immigrate, the US kidnapped them and made them citizens. If the US wanted to be white and wanted to categorize Spanish-speakers as non-white (why?), then it shouldnt have stolen half of Mexico and added it to itself in the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo.
So, white people anxious about the fate of white people in America should relax. Franklin was wrong, and German-Americans did just fine (they are one of the the biggest ethnic groups in the country and I think we needed Ike Eisenhower during WW II). Americans expanded the groups that are white way beyond what Franklin allowed. But I think we should go back to his definition. That way only the English and the Danish would be white, and all the rest of us would be swarthy or tawny. In fact, we need those as census categories.
Sorry, Ann. Youre also in the swarthy category, according to old Ben.
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NABLUS (Maan) Palestinian farmers in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus reported on Monday that Israeli settlers stole the harvest of 400 olive trees planted on their private lands.
Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settlement activities in the northern West Bank told Maan that more than 30 Palestinian families from the Nablus-area village of Deir Sharaf entered their agricultural lands on Monday after being banned entrance since Friday by Israeli authorities.
According to Daghlas, the families were shocked to find out that Israeli settlers had picked the olives of 400 olive trees planted in their lands, near the illegal Israeli settlement of Shavi Shamron.
Israeli settlers stealing olive harvests is a crime against Palestinian farmers and their properties, Daghlas said, denouncing the Israeli governments knowledge (of settlers actions) and the complete silence of international society and human rights organizations.
Daghlas also demanded compensation for the Palestinian families who lost their olive harvest.
The olive harvest is an important economic and cultural event for Palestinians, with nearly half of all cultivated land in the occupied Palestinian territory planted with olive trees, according to the United Nations.
However, due to illegal settlement expansion, land confiscation, mobility restrictions due to Israels separation wall, and various permit laws, the accessibility of Palestinian farmers to their lands has increasingly dwindled in recent years.
This years olive harvest season, which began early last month, has seen several incidents of attacks by Israeli settlers and Israeli government restrictions on Palestinian farmers and their lands in the occupied territory.
The Palestinian government has no jurisdiction over Israelis in the West Bank, and violent acts carried out by Israeli settlers often occur in the presence of Israeli military forces, who rarely act to protect Palestinian residents.
[JURIST] The Chinese government on Monday approved a controversial cybersecurity law [translated materials] that the government hopes will protect Internet users and minimize fraud, however, human rights organizations and members of the cybersecurity field have come out against it. Calling the law draconian, many have expressed concern that the new law is abusive [HRW report], as it bolsters censorship laws and requires companies to monitor and report vague network security incidents and store personal information of users. On the business front, James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, stated [CNN report] called the law a step backwards. Many believe that it will make it harder for foreign business to operate within China as the law also requires that companies demonstrate that they can withstand hacks and are open to more government scrutiny.
The Chinese government has been criticized for passing national security laws that tighten its control of civil society. Earlier this year the Cyberspace Administration of China announced [JURIST report] that search companies must abide by new Internet regulations. The CAC stated that search companies must produce results in line with national interests and must clearly distinguish normal results from paid ads which may display illegal and misleading information. Search companies are also required to properly report illegal content which may threaten national security or negatively impact public judgment. In July 2015 China adopted [JURIST report] a new national security law that increased its cyber security powers, allowing authorities to broaden internet oversight and crack down harder against cyber attacks, thefts and the spread of harmful information. UN rights chief Zeid Raad Al Hussein subsequently deplored [JURIST report] the new law, criticizing its extraordinarily broad scope, vague language, and its threat to the freedom of expression.
Prosecutors for the EU have determined that a former judge for the EUs Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) [official website] did not solicit or accept bribes. Judge Francesco Florit had been accused of taking bribes [AP report] to arrange the release of criminals after suspicious communications were discovered in 2012. The UN opened Florit to investigation, but Florit denied the claims and thereafter resigned. At the same time Florit was cleared of the corruption allegations, three lawyers that were accused of attempting to bribe him were also cleared.
EULEX was established to aid Kosovo in the rule of law application when it comes to instances such as war crimes that may cause conflict with in the region. Last month the Special Prosecution of the Republic of Kosovo [official website] filed an indictment [JURIST report] charging politician Fatmir Limaj with war crimes. In September recently appointed Kosovo war crimes prosecutor David Schwendiman of the Special Investigative Task Force [official website] vowed to investigate [JURIST report] all war crime suspects fairly, vigorously and without fear. The Assembly of Kosovo [official website, in Albanian] voted in June to extend the EULEX mandate [JURIST report] for two years.
In a short order [order PDF] issued on Sunday, a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] ruled in favor of Donald J. Trump for President and the Ohio Republican Party by staying a lower court order that they refrain from any voter intimidation activity. The Democratic Party initiated the litigation in hopes of curbing [WSJ report] any aggressive polling-place tactics that could hinder or intimidate voters. On Friday a judge for the US District Court of the Northern District of Ohio [official website] initially granted the injunction, just two days prior to the appeals courts decision. Those in opposition to the district courts order were particularly upset with the orders broad language, which would have prevented the listed parties and other individuals or groups from gathering at polling places and informing individuals that voter fraud is a crime. The circuit court held the, [p]laintiff did not demonstrate before the district court a likelihood of success on the merits, and that all of the requisite factors weigh in favor of granting the stay. In a similar vein to the current court ruling, a federal judge in New Jersey declined to rule that the Republican National Committee had engaged in poll intimidation, in conjunction with Donald Trumps poll monitoring campaign. Democrats have filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court
Voter rights continue to plague this election cycle. Last month the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] struck down [JURIST report] a New Hampshire law that banned ballot selfies. Last week the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] denied an emergency motion [JURIST report] from North Carolina counties to extend the hours of early voting. Earlier this month a district court judge ruled [JURIST report] that Ohio must allow most unlawfully purged voters to vote in November. In September a district court judge granted [JURIST report] a motion blocking Illinois from allowing voter registration on election day in the states most populated counties. Also in September the US Supreme Court [official website] denied a motion to reinstate [JURIST report] North Carolinas recently overturned law that limited early voting to 10 days and required voters to present approved identification cards.
4:00 PM EST ~ The US Supreme Court has refused to intervene to reinstate the order.
Milivoje Katnic, Montenegros Chief Special Prosecutor for Organized Crime, on Sunday, accused [Balkaninsight report] a group Russian nationalists of attempting to stage a coup aimed at overthrowing the government on election day. On October 16, a group of 20 Serbian citizens were arrested in Montenegro and accused of the planning the coup. Among those arrested Bratislav Dikic, a former commander of the Serbian Gendarmerie. According to Katnic, evidence exists connecting the criminal group to a planned terrorist attack and the attempted overthrow of the elected government. While he explicitly stated [w]e dont have any evidence that the state of Russia is involved in any sense, Katnic did say there is evidence that two of the groups organizers were nationalists from Russia. The plan itself was to attack the police outside of Parliament, break into the Montenegro parliament, kill Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, and declare a pro-Russian coalition the party in power. Following the release of some other 17 suspects arrested in connection with the planned coup, opposition groups and anti-government media outlets have expressed their opinions that the attempted coup was actually planned by the ruling government in order to ensure Djukanovic remained in office.
In the months leading to the October election, Djukanovic had stated this vote represents Montenegros choice to join the West or become a Russian colony [BBC report]. Djukanovic expressed his belief that the thwarted, terrorist coup was intended to prevent further westernization from the Balkan country. While his party, the Democratic Party of Socialists, won the October election, Djukanovics party did not win achieve an overall majority which may prevent his plans of creating further Western ties. Since ceding from Serbia in 2006, Montenegro has developed ties with EU and NATO,with the country expected to become a NATO member country by 2017.
[JURIST] A North Carolina federal judge on Monday rejected [opinion, PDF] a motion for preliminary injunction filed by state Democrats accusing Donald J. Trumps [campaign website] presidential campaign of promoting voter intimidation on election day. According to the Democratic Party [party website], Trumps campaign had publicly encouraged supporters to monitor the polls for voter fraud, influence voters decisions and conduct exit polling. Judge Catherine Eagles stated, however, that the evidence presented did not satisfy the burden of proof required to justify injunction. Eagles found that the public statements referenced may be subject to multiple interpretations and have not resulted in actual voter intimidation besides isolated hearsay reports. Eagles supported the right of candidates and voters to monitor the polls, stating that such actions to not automatically amount to voter intimidation. The Democratic Party may renew the motion if voter intimidation becomes apparent on election day.
Voter rights continue to plague this election cycle. As of Monday state democrats have raised voter intimidation suits in six states [Politico report], yet only a federal Ohio granted the requested injunction before being rejected on appeal [JURIST report]. Last month the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] struck down [JURIST report] a New Hampshire law that banned ballot selfies. Last week the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] denied an emergency motion [JURIST report] from North Carolina counties to extend the hours of early voting. Earlier this month a district court judge ruled [JURIST report] that Ohio must allow most unlawfully purged voters to vote in November. In September a district court judge granted [JURIST report] a motion blocking Illinois from allowing voter registration on election day in the states most populated counties. Also in September the US Supreme Court [official website] denied a motion to reinstate [JURIST report] North Carolinas recently overturned law that limited early voting to 10 days and required voters to present approved identification cards.
[JURIST] The Philippines Supreme Court [official website] ruled Tuesday that former dictator Ferdinand Marcos may be placed in the nations Heroes Cemetery despite public uproar denouncing the burial. In August human rights victims filed a petition [JURIST report] against the burial, stating that it undermines the nations democratic victory over tyranny and violates the cemeterys regulations. Petitioners had pointed to a 1993 agreement stating that Marcos would be buried in his hometown in northern Ilocos Norte province. However, President Rodrigo Duterte had approved the controversial burial, recognizing Marcos as a commendable leader entitled to honor. The Supreme Court justices honored Dutertes approval by a vote of 9-5 [AP report] with one abstention, acknowledging that the controversial figure was nevertheless a former legislator, defense secretary and soldier deserving of merit. While the Marcos family and its supporters praised the ruling, activists have expressed their outrage and have asked the court to reconsider its decision.
The effects of Marcos regime have been felt in the Philippines. In 2013 JURIST guest columnist Lara Wharton, discussed [JURIST op-ed] human rights abuses in the Philippines. Also in that year, then-Philippines President Benigno Aquino III signed [JURIST report] legislation to compensate the victims of human rights abuses committed 27 years ago under the regime of former president Marcos. In January 2013 the Philippines House of Representatives and Senate ratified the legislation to compensate [JURIST reports] approximately 10,000 victims. In 2012 the Philippine president signed [JURIST report] legislation that criminalized enforced disappearances by agents of the state, an allegedly common practice under Marcos. In April 2011 Imelda Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos wife, was ordered [JURIST report] to return USD $280,000 in state funds stolen by the late dictator.
The Scottish government [official website] on Tuesday announced its intention to join the lawsuit [press release; press conference] challenging British Prime Minister Theresa Mays right to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty [text], which would officially start the UKs exit from the EU. The High Court of the UK ruled [JURIST report] last week that Article 50 can only be triggered by a vote of the British Parliament and that it is not covered by the Prime Ministers Royal Prerogative, effectively taking it out of the hands of the Prime Minister. The UK government immediately appealed the decision to the British Supreme Court [official website], which is set to have a hearing next month that the Scottish government now seeks to join. If the Supreme Court allows the Scottish government to join the lawsuit and upholds the decision of the High Court, it could mean that both the British Parliament and the Scottish Parliament would have to vote on whether to leave the EU.
After a majority of the British voters voted [JURIST report] to leave the EU in June 2016, a host of legal issues [JURIST op-ed] have arisen regarding the legal significance of the referendum. The referendum is not legally binding, but former Prime Minister David Cameron, had pledged to carry out the result of the referendum. Further complicating matters is the fact that both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU and have announced intentions to possibly leave the UK. Last month the High Court of Justice in Northern Ireland dismissed a challenge [JURIST report] to the Brexit referendum, alleging that it was not binding on Northern Ireland.
President Tran Dai Quang (R) and his Irish counterpart Michael D.Higgins (Photo: VNA)
The two Presidents told the press about what they have discussed and achieved during their talks in Hanoi on November 7th, which was held following a welcome ceremony at the Presidential Palace.
President Michael D.Higgins and his spouse Sabina Higgins are on a State visit to Vietnam from November 5th-14th.
At the press conference, President Quang said he and his Irish counterpart shared the view that Vietnam and Ireland hold great potential for cooperation in areas of mutual interest, like trade-investment, education-training, green technology, agriculture, health care and sustainable development.
Economically, both agreed to create favourable conditions and encourage the two countries businesses to set up their partnerships and transfer technologies to each other, particularly in renewable energies, agriculture and food processing, aviation, health care, information and communications, he said.
Education and training were agreed to be the key area of the two countries cooperation, he said, adding the leaders welcomed the signing of cooperation agreements by the education ministries and higher education institutions during the visit, helping facilitate the implementation of specific joint programmes and projects in the coming time.
President Quang thanked the Irish Government for considering Vietnam a priority partner in its development cooperation policy, its official development assistance to the country during the 2017-2020 period, and its support for Vietnam in realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals (MDGs).
Sharing the hope for enhanced solidarity, friendship and mutual understanding between their citizens, Vietnam and Ireland consented to effectively implement their collaboration in child adoption, increase cultural and art exchanges and promote the bridging role played by the Vietnamese in Ireland, contributing to strengthening the bilateral affiliation in other realms.
The Presidents reached consensus on the need to maintain peace and security, and boost cooperation and development in the world.
Vietnam and Ireland also agreed to continue their close coordination at international forums like the UN, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and within the framework of the ASEAN-EU cooperation in order to address global issues such as climate change and actualise the MDGS for a green, clean, peaceful and better world, President Quang said.
Regarding the East Sea issue, the host said he and his guest shared the view that the disputes should be handled by peaceful measures in line with international law, especially the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982 UNCLOS).
For his part, President Higgins said their talks touched upon a range of cooperation areas, both bilaterally and multilaterally.
They were also unanimous in how to reach their shared objectives, bilaterally and multilaterally, in order to fulfill their obligations to the international community.
Higgins said he and his Vietnamese counterpart talked about migration as well as well as its global impacts, the affiliation in multilateral institutions like the UN Arms Trade Treaty, and their mutual support as candidacies to non-permanent seats of the UN Security Council.
The Irish President stressed that the two sides exchanged information about each countrys economic situation, and discussed ways to make Ireland a bridge for Vietnam to access the EU and Vietnam as a springboard for Ireland to enter the nearly-600-million ASEAN market.
He appreciated contributions of the Vietnamese in Ireland and the Irish community in the Southeast Asian nation.
The leaders said they hope that the two countries young people will contribute to the worlds peace.
Higgins used the occasion to invite President Tran Dai Quang and his spouse to soon pay a visit to Ireland.
At the end of their talks, the Presidents witnessed the signing of several agreements in development cooperation and collaboration in education-training, wind power, information technology, telecommunications and medical equipment.
Vietnam and Ireland have made strides in cooperation since their diplomatic relationship was set up on April 5th, 1996. They have regularly exchanged high-ranking delegations and coordinated at international forums.
Bilateral trade reached USD402 million in 2015, up 28 percent from the previous year. It hit USD798 million in the first nine months of 2016, rising three-fold year on year, including USD82 million of Vietnamese exports.
Vietnam mainly ships timber and wood products, footwear and garments to Ireland while importing medicine materials, computers and electronic components.
Ireland currently has 17 investment projects with a combined capital of USD20.7 million in Vietnam, ranking 67th among 115 countries and territories investing here.
Vietnam is the only Asian nation among nine priority recipients of Irelands development assistance. Ireland gave USD150 million in non-refundable aid to Vietnam between 2007 and 2016, focusing on poverty reduction, support for vulnerable groups, and improving economic management./.
The UK has infringed upon the rights of disabled persons starting with welfare reforms in 2012 [BBC report], according to a report [text, DOC] issued Monday by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [official website]. The multi-year investigation included the gathering of more than 3,000 pages of information, interviews with 200 individuals, including elected officials from both houses of Parliament, disability rights organizers and academics, and visits to each of the constituent UK nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The committee chastised UK officials for failing to cooperate adequately with the investigation and noted violations of disabled persons rights to live independently, be included in the community, work and enjoy adequate standards of living and social protection. The report referred to the violations as serious and systematic. The British government strongly opposed the reports findings [text, DOC], stating the UK is a place where disabled peoples rights are respected, promoted and upheld.
The rights of persons with disabilities is a global issue. In September UN rights experts called for the creation of inclusive education programming [JURIST report] to include those living with disabilities as a central and crucial step in order to create peaceful and inclusive societies. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities released a statement in August that women with disabilities face discrimination and are often excluded from freely participating in society [JURIST report. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against the state of Georgia in August alleging that the state discriminates against students [JURIST report] with behavior-related disabilities. Last year Human Rights Watch (HRW) sent Moroccan officials a letter claiming that a draft framework law before the countrys parliament was in conflict with obligations [JURIST report] under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (R) and Irish President Michael D. Higgins (Photo: VNA)
National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan made the statement during her meeting with Irish President Michael D. Higgins in Hanoi on November 7th.
Irish-funded projects are being implemented effectively in Vietnam, she said, hoping that the ODA will be maintained, particularly in poverty alleviation, climate change adaptation and sustainable development.
Ngan hailed Irelands upcoming announcement of a national strategy on development cooperation with Vietnam for 2017-2020.
She requested the Irish President and parliament to support the acceleration of the EUs official signing and ratification of its free trade agreement with Vietnam.
For his part, Higgins said he is honoured to be the first Irish head of state to visit Vietnam, saying he is confident that the visit will give a boost to bilateral friendship and solidarity.
Noting his impression at Vietnams socio-economic achievements, Higgins lauded the role of the Vietnam National Assembly in boosting law enforcement, uniting people and meeting their expectations.
He spoke highly of Vietnams accomplishments in increasing the participation of women in law-making agencies, which he considered a similarity between the two countries.
Underscoring work toward gender equality, he said the Irish international cooperation agency lays great stress on projects on improving capacity for females and empowering them.
Informing his host about the outcomes of his talks with President Tran Dai Quang, Higgins said both sides agreed that education-training is a focus of bilateral cooperation. He and his Vietnam counterpart also concurred with a number of measures to help Vietnamese students easily obtain Irish visas.
According to the Irish leader, Vietnam has great potential to contribute to ASEAN cultural development, particularly in cinematography.
He hoped that the relations with Vietnam will support joint projects in the field between the two countries as well as between Ireland and ASEAN.
Agreeing with her guest, Ngan said both countries are active in joining multilateral institutions, including the UN. Vietnam is willing to connect Ireland to the 600 million-strong ASEAN Economic Community, she said, hoping Ireland will help Vietnam access the EU market, Ngan noted.
She expressed her wish that the Irish Government will create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese expatriates in the European country.
On the occasion, Ngan conveyed her invitation to Sean O Fearghail, Chairman of the Irish Lower House, to visit Vietnam in an appropriate time.
Later the same day, President Tran Dai Quang hosted a banquet in honour of the visiting Irish President./.
Two of the five inmates arrested for rape at the DC 1 in Rapides Parish back in August have now been indicted.
Spencer Echols and Kendarius King have been charged with two counts of first degree rape each.
Both are juveniles but are being charged as adults.
Echols has an arraignment date set for November 18 and King has a pretrial hearing set for February 14.
According to Assistant District Attorney Jermaine Harris, the other three suspects are still pending.
Those suspects are Richard Ambush, Keilon Norris and Akeeley Blade. Blade is one of the four suspects charged with first degree murder for the beating death of Michael Butler at the Motel 6 in Alexandria.
We will keep you posted on their indictments.
In the list compiled by writer Dan Saltzstein, Vietnam was placed in the 10th position.
The writer wrote that Vietnam is worth a visit for its rich cuisine, culture and natural beauty, while being light on the wallet.
In Vietnam, he recommended visiting the seaside town of Hoi An, the ancient imperial city of Hue, and a boat trip through Ha Long bay, a World Natural Heritage site in Quang Ninh province.
Besides Vietnam, Cuba is also included on the list at the fourth position./.
Photo for illustration. (Source: dantri.com.vn)
Specifically, total foreign arrivals to the country from the start of the year to October reached 8.077 million, a year-on-year rise of 25.4%. Meanwhile, 53.3 million domestic arrivals were also provided services, with 24.8 million arrivals staying overnight, grossing a turnover of VND331.5 trillion, up 19.1% against the same period of last year.
During the remaining months of this year, VNAT will organize various shows in nine cities in China and Spain to promote tourism, and participate in two tourism fairs in London and China, to further promote the countrys tourism.
In addition, the Administration will coordinate with localities, enterprises and associations to help central provinces recover tourism activities after marine environmental problems, organize two conferences to stimulate tourism demand in the central provinces and arrange two delegations to promote tourism in Thailand.
It also submitted overall schemes for tourism development in the Mekong Delta and schemes to develop national tourism areas for approval, summarize National Tourism Year 2016 and prepare for the event in 2017.
In an effort to attract more foreign tourists, Vietnam will also grant e-visas to foreigners, starting on January 1st, 2017. The new e-visas will be valid for 30 days. Tourists who apply for an e-visa will not need an invitation letter or a letter of guarantee from Vietnam.
VNAT will launch a new website to promote Vietnam tourism abroad during World Travel Market, which is being held in London from November 7th to 9th./.
Haas development driver Charles Leclerc will return to the wheel of the VF-16 in the opening free practice at this weekends Brazilian Grand Prix.
The Monegasque-born racer has already made three of his five scheduled FP1 outings this year, having tested in Silverstone, Hungary, and Germany. Leclerc, who leads this years GP3 Series, was initially set to run in Malaysia as well but a change of timetable meant he did not drive at Sepang.
With Abu Dhabi planned on the 18-year-old's programme from the onset, Interlagos was the only place left where Leclerc could also take part in free practice this year. The Ferrari Driver Academy member will once again deputise for Esteban Gutierrez.
Haas team principal Guenther Steiner has already ruled out Leclerc for a full-time F1 role with the US team in 2017, with a step to GP2 Series on the cards instead.
Charles has done a good job for the team, Steiner said. He always did his program and he performed what we asked of him. Its always difficult when a driver is only in for FP1, but hes very professional and has provided good feedback. Weve been very happy with his contributions.
Hes in GP3 at the moment and can win the title in Abu Dhabi. Hes got a season of GP2 coming up and we will see how far he can get. If he wins GP2 or is in the top-three in his first year of GP2, he will have a good future in front of him.
As a Maranello junior, Leclerc was also given the opportunity to sample the Scuderias SF16-H in the post-British Grand Prix test held at Silverstone.
As many Turkish artists fight for their existence under difficult circumstances, a growing number of people are flocking to theatre halls to breathe the freedom of art, against all odds.
I recently attended a screening of the London National Theatres Frankenstein at the Istanbul Culture and Arts Foundation (IKSV) Hall, which broadcasted a recording of the play along with many other cinema halls around the world. Of course, I would rather see Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch play Dr. Frankenstein and his monster live. But looking at the Turkeys recent cultural developments, I believe it will not be possible, in any case not in the near future.
As in the play, when the monster is hounding Dr. Frankenstein for acceptance, the artistic stage in Turkey now seems to be expanding at a faster pace under growing pressure.
Turkeys most famous culture house, AKM, the notable structure on Istanbuls Taksim Square has been under renovation since 2007. Recently, the minister of culture once again expressed his wish to demolish it. The highly contested plan to redesign the building now seems like a neglect-based long-term demolition plan.
Additionally, the government has made several attempts to limit the themes of plays in recent years, using two major arguments: public morality and political criticism. Certain newspapers report on the taboos and insults to the nation committed by artistic groups, which they continually target for immorality, and judicial and bureaucratic measures inevitably follow close behind. Since the popular protests in 2013, many actors and actresses have been participating in mass protests and some have even become the faces of protests. This has been used as one more reason to up the pressure on the theatre houses.
There are striking similarities to censorship attempts in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, when a board called the Star Chamber was founded to edit the parts out of narratives and plays which were considered harmful. The same period is now officially called the Despotism Era in the history books. These measures have intensified, with private theatre houses receiving a notification that in order to continue receiving subsidies, they must guarantee the staging of plays that comply with public morality standards.
Due to restrictive measures and intimidation, state-owned theatre houses have been suffering badly, while one of the biggest mechanisms keeping the private companies afloat the states cultural subsidies seems to be disappearing into tax fines for companies whose actors have participated in protests or spoken out openly. Yet, the plays that have been staged in the past half a century in Turkey have generally had political or social-gender themes, rattling the nerves of conservative and nationalist viewers while serving as a massive hub of progressive ideas and liberal notions.
Despite all the hardships, the Turkish stage after the resurrection of restrictive measures is now coming back to haunt the authorities, much like Frankensteins monster. As in the play, when the monster is hounding Dr. Frankenstein for acceptance and taking a more severe stand when deceived, the artistic stage in Turkey now seems to be expanding at a faster pace under growing pressure.
According to Turkeys National Statistical Board there are 719 theatres across Turkey that welcome some six million viewers annually. Although the same report also suggested that performance numbers are down 2% compared to the previous year, despite the 18% increase in the number of halls. Even though the government charges theatres with immorality, the counter-argument in defence of the stage is also a moral one. In response to all the things going wrong in Turkey at the moment (corruption, impunity, child brides, gender violence, etc.), the notable Turkish theatre and cinema actor Haluk Bilginer said, The more theatre houses there are, the less immorality exists in society.
What the stage in Turkey is currently experiencing reminds me of the storyline of the 1999 movie (and the fate of 1937 musical) The Cradle Will Rock, which deals with the state impositions on federal theatre in the US during the 1930s, when the target was the Reds and theatrical performances were deemed to be socialist propaganda that needed to be shut down. Unlike 1930s America, however, the restrictions in Turkey hit the mass media hardest, in a nation whose media tradition was already relatively weak.
However, humanity finds most use for fiction precisely during moments of despair. It is used to create hope and design a vision for a better future. It could be due to the growing pressure on media platforms (published and broadcast), that each year more people are taking up the habit of reading regularly and watching plays on stage.
Or perhaps it is merely a way of making a quick getaway from reality. In such times of crisis, urges Turkish political scientist Dr. Busra Ersanl, hang onto theatre, books, literature and invest in your artistic capacity. It might not be ideal at this time, but developments will come gradually.
Turkeys theatre might have a much brighter future than the monster in the play and, perhaps soon, we might get to enjoy Benedict Cumberbatchs acting live in Istanbul. Until then we must rely on London, Berlin, Paris and New York.
KEARNEY Rick S. Garvue, 66, of Amherst died Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016, at CHI Health Good Samaritan in Kearney.
Memorial services will be later.
Horner Lieske McBride & Kuhl Funeral and Cremation Services in Kearney is in charge of arrangements.
He died following a nine-month battle with pancreatic cancer.
Rick was born July 25, 1950, in Ypsilanti, Mich., to Robert Garvue and Margaret Choren Garvue. Rick and his five siblings grew up in Michigan and Indiana. In 1964, the family spent a year in Lahore, Pakistan, but were evacuated to Tehran during the Indo-Pakistani War.
After the family returned to the United States, they moved to Tallahassee, Fla., where Rick graduated from high school in 1969. In 1971, Rick entered the U.S. military service and was sent to Monterey Defense Language Institute where he learned Hungarian. He was then sent to Germany to monitor broadcasts from behind the Iron Curtain but ended up repairing Jeeps.
He received an honorable discharge in 1974 and attended the University of Colorado-Boulder where he met his wife, Carol Lilly, and graduated with a degree in German. Rick and Carol married in May 1983. He later attended Colorado School of Mines, which initiated his career in surveying. In 1992, Rick and Carol moved to Nebraska where Rick worked as a licensed land surveyor for Buffalo Surveying Corp.
He was incredibly charming and could make you smile even when he was insulting you. He taught his kids to question authority, to drive and to deliver quick one-liners. He never stopped amusing himself and surprising his family with new hobbies and was equally at home taking To-Shin Do classes with his son or making brownies on a lazy Sunday.
Rick was a talented artist and musician who played guitar and piano with flair and emotion in rock and bluegrass bands. Among his other favorite activities were listening to music, drinking fine beer, reading and taking online math and statistics classes.
Rick is survived by his wife, Carol Lilly of Amherst; daughter, Daniela Garvue of Seattle; son, Max Garvue of Lincoln; sisters, Joanne Susan and Dena Garvue; and brothers, Gary, Barry and Craig Garvue.
Rick was preceded in death by his parents.
Memorials are suggested to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Visit www.hlmkfuneral.com to leave a tribute or message of condolence.
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Valeant Pharmaceutical's head office is seen in Laval, Que., Tuesday, June 14, 2016. Valeant Pharmaceuticals warned Tuesday that its financial performance will continue to deteriorate next year as it posted a $1.22-billion loss in the third quarter, driving its shares down to a six-year low. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
In this photo taken Friday, Oct. 28, 2016. Israeli Arab women hold signs during a demonstration in Jaffa, Israel . A string of murders of Israeli-Arab women by suspected relatives has sparked soul searching in the community and unprecedented demonstrations against its treatment of women. After years of silence, Arab citizens are now calling for more police and social services in their long-neglected neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau looks on as Cuban President Fidel Castro gestures during a visit in Havana on Jan. 27, 1976. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will retrace some of his father's most historic footsteps next week when he travels to Cuba and quite possibly meets an old family friend, retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand
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If my father dies, youre going down with him.
The words pierced the air, and suddenly there was silence.
I hadnt noticed Franks son at first. Hed been pacing in the back of the family group gathered in our ICU waiting room. Now, up close, I could appreciate how large and intimidating he was. And Id just had the thankless job of telling him, along with the rest of his family, a shocking, completely unexpected truth: Frank wasnt dying, he was already dead.
My first instinct was to look for an ally someone to help me deal with this situation and reassure me that everything would be okay. I locked eyes with the hospital chaplain, the only one of my fellow health care team members who was present.
She looked startled. I was only a second-year resident, and it was our first time working together. Amid the sea of family members, she was a lifesaver. Still, we were both at a loss for words.
Luckily, Franks daughter Louise spoke instead.
Corey doesnt mean that; hes just hotheaded, she said. You have to understand, our father walked in here last night with a cough, and now youre saying hes dead? We just cant accept that. And you keep saying that you dont know why he got sick. Cant you understand why we would be mad?
Up to this point, all of my training and practice discussions had helped.
Before breaking the news, Id done my best to set the stage: As you know, your father came into the ICU last night, and hes been very sick. Is now a good time to talk? Would you like anyone else present?
Id invited the family to share their knowledge of the situation: Can you please tell me your understanding of whats been happening?
You name it, I did it (I think). But now we were in uncharted territory and I did understand their frustration. If this were my father, I would be furious too. Who screwed up? would be my first thought. Even if I were told there was no error and there had been none here Im not sure that I would believe it either.
I wished that I could say what I really felt: Im angry too. I showed up this morning and ran the code on your father. It was the first time Id ever seen him, and my first code blue ever. It lasted for more than an hour and we couldnt save him. And now Ive been tasked with telling you this because the ICU team has so many other patients to see.
I wanted to go deeper, to spill my angst and misgivings about residency: It feels terrible that my life as a resident is more about paperwork than it is about patient care. And the paperwork and documentation are one reason the rest of the team isnt here with me now.
I wanted to say, I know that I cant fully understand what it must feel like for you, as African-Americans, to hear this terrible news delivered by a white man, but I want you to know that your father was treated with respect and kindness by our hospital staff, who are very diverse, racially and ethnically. And I want you to know that the chaplain and I feel frightened by what you just said, because someone recently shot a doctor in Boston whom he blamed for his mothers death, so Im struggling over whether I should call hospital security.
Most of all, I wanted to break the promise my team had made to Frank, in response to his dying request: that we would not tell his family what his illness was, and how sick hed really been before he came into the hospital.
I felt horrible. Sick to my stomach. Id never even spoken directly to Frank but I had to keep his secret.
If only I could tell them, if I could give them some hint as to how hard this is, they might understand, I thought. Then maybe we wont have to call security, and I wont have to worry about walking home alone tonight.
Instead, I stuck to my training.
I am very sorry for your loss, I said. I know that you want to see him. We can go whenever youre ready.
Franks family filed into his bedside. They cried, they mourned, they supported each other. Our chaplain and nurses were incredible in helping them through the process. Later we talked again, and some thanked me for being there. Corey, clearly devastated, remained quiet throughout the rest of the afternoon. I realized that my imagined outburst, however truthful, would only have made things worse all around, and especially for him.
To this day, I think about Frank, about his secret illness, and about his family. I still feel for them for their loss, and for the pain of the questions that we just could not answer. I hope that, by now, theyve healed as best as they can.
At one of the most stressful points in my career, I chose to honor a dying mans wish at the expense of his living relatives. Ultimately, they requested an autopsy, and Franks potentially stigmatizing illness was revealed. It was a relief to know that theyd learned the truth, but also that I had stuck to what I believed was right.
Even now, I struggle with the ethical dilemma of honoring the deads wishes at the expense of the living. But as doctors, I believe, we are bound to protect our patients both before and after their passing.
There are things you cant learn in medical school, no matter how much you study. One is knowing when to say, I dont know. Another is knowing when not to say what you do know.
Gabriel Foster is a medical resident. This piece was originally published in Pulse voices from the heart of medicine.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Milly* was 82 years old and had been diagnosed with a recurrent ovarian stromal tumor one that is typically seen in much younger women. Surgery was ruled out, and a colleague from outside of Boston sent Milly to me for an opinion about medical treatment. I reviewed her case before I met her: no significant medical problems, apparently very active and still living independently. Still, I was worried about her age, knowing that chemotherapy could be a double-edged proposition meant to control her disease, but placing her at risk for significant toxicity.
I remember thinking to myself, Well, she is 82; shes lived a good life. Shes probably ready to die. I prepared to talk to her about supportive care, and letting nature take its course. In my mind, doing nothing was a kinder option than treatment.
Then we met. I discovered that despite her chronological age, she was in excellent condition and sharp as a tack. In fact, she looked several decades younger than her age. We talked about her life, her family and her home. She enjoyed walks on the beach, dancing and her independence. Her family came to visit often, and we laughed as she told stories of her life. I decided it would be inherently unethical to not present treatment options, so I brought up chemotherapy and other treatments we could try, including hormone therapies and even newer biologic agents. I still felt it important to talk about doing nothing, though, so I broached the idea of treating symptoms only, in order to avoid exposing her to risks from systemic therapy.
She looked at me with eyebrows furrowed. You cant expect me not to do anything, she replied. I have so much more to do. I am not ready to sit back and die.
With that, I gave her some ideas and asked her to discuss it further with her local doctor. I concluded treatment would be reasonable and in keeping with her goals and preferences. She had never received systemic therapy, and I agreed that we owed it to her to try.
Over the course of the next year, her doctor would regularly reach out to me for an update on how our mutual patient was doing. Unfortunately, Millys tumor had not responded to the first trial of therapy, nor to the second trial. A third trial of anti-estrogen treatment also had not worked, and she had embarked on a trial of bevacizumab. Through all treatments, she continued to do well, living independently and sustaining very few treatment toxicities except on bevacizumab.
Whether the disease progressed or the treatment was too much for her, she had started to decline. There were falls in her home and increased forgetfulness, both of which alarmed her family. There was also evidence of disease progression as her abdomen swelled due to the accumulation of fluid. An abdominal paracentesis for symptom relief also showed evidence of cancer within the fluid.
Given these changes, and in light of her familys concerns, her doctor reached out to me for my opinion. We talked and it really felt we had exhausted options and that continuing bevacizumab would be a bad idea. I agreed that hospice would be the best next step.
Soon after that, her son had reached out to me: Mom would like to see you as soon as you can. Her doctor recommended hospice, but she wants to know if there is anything else we can do.
Milly arrived at that appointment with her family. Although they were together, I could sense there was significant tension. Her daughter-in-law was the first to speak. Mom is here because she wants to know her options, but we need to be realistic. I want her to be comfortable, now that she is at the end of life.
We want what is best for her, they all said, making clear where the family stood.
As she spoke, I noticed that Milly had not met her daughter-in-laws eyes. Instead, she stared at me and then the wall. She didnt speak, she didnt argue. Instead, she crossed her arms and let her family talk about her as if she wasnt even there.
I stopped the family from speaking and directed questions to her. Milly, what do you think about all of this?
Well, I want to know if there is anything else we can try? I know I cannot be cured, but I feel well. I cant believe there are no other options.
I started to talk about other hormone treatments and clinical trials. I told her that none had any chance to cure her, that the likelihood of a response was very low, and the chances that one would hurt her was very real. Still, I persisted, and as we talked, Millys eyes lit up and she became more animated, even engaged, much to the chagrin of her family, who became increasingly uncomfortable that the conversation had turned from hospice as the only option to here are a few options still available.
At the end of our talk, I turned to her and tried to place our conversation in the big picture: Now, Milly, I need to be clear. This is not curable, and someday, it will likely take your life.
Yes, Milly responded. But, there is hope, right? Hope that I wont die of this?
I realized then what I was seeing: a family accepting that their mom was at the end of life and committed to making this time comfortable for her so she could live the rest of her life with dignity. But they had reached this point without Milly, who, despite her age, wanted desperately to live and who, in her heart, had not agreed to hospice care. She had not accepted the inevitability of her death. In fact, she needed to know that it was not a foregone conclusion.
For the next 30 minutes, I discussed this particular elephant in this particular room. Addressing Milly, I aimed to frame the familys perspective that she had declined, that treatments had been inactive, that she was facing terminal cancer, and that they wanted to do everything for her to preserve, if not improve, her quality of life. They saw hospice as a service to help them help her live, not to expedite her death. Her daughter-in-law started to cry, and then others did too. In their eyes I saw anguish and frustration give way to relief, that their feelings were being acknowledged, the situation brought out so starkly.
Then, addressing the family, I spoke as Millys advocate she was not ready to stop. Their insistence on comfort measures and hospice was a sign to Milly that they had given up on her. That they thought, because she was 85 years old, she should be ready to die. It was Millys turn then to cry. Its true I feel like youve all given up on me, she said. I dont want to die. I am not ready.
As they cried and talked, I realized that sometimes, this is the best we can do. We can help families like this one and patients like Milly recognize each others perspectives, especially when it comes to advanced illness. Doing so can help families navigate a very difficult time, and hopefully, forge a common way forward.
I realized that there is not an age when one is ready to die. As an oncologist, Ive spoken with women in their 40s, 50s and 60s who have met the end of life with grace and with relief relief from the suffering that often accompanies terminal cancer. But, Ive also met women like Milly, who are just not ready. To assume that as we get older we become more ready is a mistake. I also realized that as much as I wanted to give Milly a good option, there were none.
Ultimately, I dont want patients to die of their cancers. Like everyone who has been touched by cancer, I want cures, and short of that, I want to convert this illness from terminal to chronic. Fortunately, I think we are making progress in this, especially within gynecologic cancers. But for some, like Milly, this progress will not happen quickly enough.
* Name and identifying details changed for patient privacy.
Don S. Dizon is an oncologist who blogs at ASCO Connection.
Image credit: Shutterstock.com
An off-duty Border Patrol agent rescues a man in distress at a local ranch.
Border Patrol EMT and Borstar Division arrived on location to assist the man.
The man was found to be exhausted and dehydrated - and appeared to have a fracture above the right ankle.
It was later determined to be an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, who appeared to have been abandoned by smugglers.
The man was transferred to a local hospital for further medical evaluation.
Kingstree, SC (29556)
Today
Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable..
Tonight
Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable.
HANOI, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0115 GMT.
Nov 8 Nov 7 USD/VND mid-point 22,029 22,015
USD/VND interbank 22,330/22,340 22,334/22,337 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.90/36.32 36.00/36.42
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)
HANOI, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 0412 GMT.
Nov 8 Nov 7 USD/VND mid-point 22,029 22,015 USD/VND interbank 22,310/22,370 22,334/22,337 USD/VND unofficial 22,340/22,350 22,340/22,350 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.90/36.32 36.00/36.42
Interbank offered rates Overnight 0.7-1.4 0.5-1.1
1 week 0.7-1.4 0.5-1.2
1 month 1.5-2.0 1.5-1.9
3 months 3.5-4.3 3.5-4.2
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 offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources.
One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co.
For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on .
For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse expects EU antitrust regulators to set out details of their concerns over its merger with London Stock Exchange next month, two people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, a move indicating regulators want hefty concessions in return for clearing the deal.
The European Commission, which opened a full investigation into the 27 billion euro ($30 billion) merger in September citing preliminary worries, is likely to send a statement of objections in December, the people said.
Such documents usually lay out the case for the EU enforcer to block anti-competitive mergers unless companies can convince them otherwise with concessions.
The Commission, Deutsche Boerse and LSE declined to comment.
LSE has already said it is prepared to sell LCH SA, the French clearing subsidiary of the LSE's LCH.Clearnet group, but has not made a formal offer to the Commission.
Deutsche Boerse CEO Carsten Kengeter earlier on Tuesday defended the combined strength of the stock exchanges' clearing operations.
"Now more heat than light has been generated than elsewhere around the alleged potential threat to financial stability from merging two central counterparties, LCH and Eurex Clearing. Let me be very clear, close examination shows that these fears are entirely misplaced," Kengeter told a conference in Brussels.
"For a start, the two CCPs are to remain operationally entirely separate. Secondly, the fact that they will share a common corporate structure will in fact aid financial stability," he said.
The Commission is scheduled to decide by Feb. 13 on the deal, which can be extended once the companies offer concessions. ($1 = 0.9073 euros)
(Additional reporting by Huw Jones in London; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
* NSE, BSE indexes up 0.1 pct
* ICICI Bank gains after Q2 profit beat
* Varun Beverages slumps on debut
By Darshana Sankararaman
Nov 8 (Reuters) - Indian shares were marginally higher on Tuesday, ahead of the U.S. presidential election, as investors remained cautiously optimistic over improving prospects of a win by Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Investors have tended to see Clinton as a more status quo candidate than her Republican rival Donald Trump, and view her as offering greater certainty and stability for markets.
Most Asian stock markets rose, with MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gaining 0.4 percent. "Given the big event tomorrow, I don't think we are going to see much of an excitement in the market (today)," said Gaurang Shah, vice president, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.
The broader NSE index was up 0.15 percent at 8,510.20 by 0609 GMT, while the benchmark BSE index was 0.10 percent higher at 27,486.99.
Among the gainers, ICICI Bank Ltd rose as much as 3.14 percent, after the lender on Monday reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by gains from a stake sale in a life insurance arm and lower tax expenses. Tata Motors Ltd rose as much as 5.54 percent, on track to record its biggest single-day percentage gain in more than two months.
Credit Suisse upgraded Tata Motors to "outperform" from "neutral" saying depreciation in sterling will drive "multiyear outperformance" in its shares, while naming the auto maker as its top pick among Indian autos.
Among the losers, the Nifty Pharma index was down 1 percent, after rising as much as 3.26 percent in the previous session. Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Cipla Ltd were among the biggest losers on the index.
Varun Beverages Ltd fell as much as 6 percent on its market debut after the company's 11.5-billion-rupee initial public offering. Meanwhile, ITC Ltd fell 1.68 percent after a three-day winning streak, among the top percentage losers on the NSE.
(Reporting by Darshana Sankararaman in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair)
MELBOURNE, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Iran is looking beyond a long-held project in Guinea to secure bauxite supplies, including from Australia, as the country ramps up its aluminium production, a manager at a state-owned Iranian mining development company said on Tuesday.
"We need bauxite because we don't have enough in Iran. If we want to reach our goal, we should buy bauxite," said A. Asgharzadeh, an exploration manager at Iranian Mines & Mining Industries Development & Renovation (IMIDRO), a state-owned holding company active in the mining sector.
Iran has been investing into investigating its own mineral reserves, but is unlikely to find sufficient bauxite to meet its goal of expanding aluminium capacity to 1.5 million tonnes by 2025, from around 450,000 tonnes currently, he said.
"If we want to reach this capacity, we need more than 4 million tonnes of bauxite per year," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the IMARC mining conference in Melbourne.
Bauxite is a mineral ore that is processed to make alumina and aluminium is then refined out of the alumina.
IMIDRO is already a majority investor in Guinea's Societe des Bauxites de Dabola-Tougue (SBDT), with 51 percent.
SBDT, which owns permits over 5,684 square kilometres, expects to begin construction on a mine by the end of this year to tap its bauxite reserves. The project has remained largely dormant since the original agreement between Guinea and Iran was signed in 1992. However, the two nations renewed the 25-year agreement last year. Guinea holds the remaining 49 percent.
IMIDRO is now lending financial backing to the project, which is expected to cost around 505 million euros ($558 million).
"One strategy is to extract the bauxite from Guinea, and export it to Iran. Another way is to negotiate with different companies, for example in Australia, with a big mine in the north of Australia, Queensland, owned by Rio Tinto," he said.
"We want to negotiate to buy bauxite from this company or other companies."
Rio Tinto owns the Weipa bauxite mine on the western Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. The mine produces 26 million tonnes of bauxite a year.
Rio Tinto declined to comment.
"Another plan, we will try to find a new location for exploration and extraction of bauxite in other countries. And we'll continue our exploration in Iran, but Iran doesn't have good potential for bauxite."
For a fact box on Iran's mineral reserve production plans: ($1 = 0.9055 euros)
(Reporting by Melanie Burton and Sonali Paul; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
COLOMBO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Sri Lankan rupee edged up on Tuesday as dollar selling by exporters outpaced demand for the greenback from importers, dealers said.
Rupee forwards were active with one-week forwards trading at 148.15/25 per dollar at 0610 GMT, compared with Monday's close of 148.20/30.
"Overall, trading was dull. We expect the downward pressure on rupee to ease off with the budget and a pickup in remittances," a currency dealer said, asking not to be named.
The rupee has been under pressure by selling of government securities by foreign investors, dealers said.
Foreign investors have net sold 24.5 billion rupees ($165.6 million) worth of government securities in the three weeks ended Nov. 2, data from the central bank showed.
The Sri Lankan central bank governor said last week that he expected the rupee to stabilise when a stake sale worth $1 billion in the southern port of Hambantota to a Chinese investor is completed in four to five months. Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy said proceeds of the stake sale would be converted into rupees, easing the strain on the currency that has been weighed down since mid-September due to seasonal demand for the U.S. dollar from importers.
Sri Lankan shares were marginally lower, with the benchmark Colombo stock index down 0.11 percent at 6,438.19 as of 0624 GMT. Turnover stood at 59.4 million rupees ($402,166.55).
($1 = 147.7000 Sri Lankan rupees)
(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri)
(Updates with details, background)
By Toby Sterling
AMSTERDAM, Nov 8 (Reuters) - ABN Amro said on Tuesday it has chosen Kees van Dijkhuizen, the current Chief Financial Officer who helped the Dutch bank through its privatisation, as Chief Executive Officer to succeed Gerrit Zalm.
Van Dijkhuizen joined ABN in 2013 and helped in its initial public offering of shares last year.
Zalm, the former Dutch finance minister who took over ABN in 2009 after its nationalisation in the wake of the global financial crisis, announced in September his intention to step down. ABN was nationalised together with the Dutch parts of the now defunct Fortis bank in 2008 as it hurtled toward a bankruptcy that would have threatened the Dutch banking sector. Its nationalisation cost taxpayers billions of euros.
In a statement, ABN said Van Dijkhuizen's appointment would be effective on approval by regulators, which it expects by mid February 2017.
Van Dijkhuizen held various posts at the Finance Ministry, eventually rising to the position of Treasurer General, before moving to the private sector as CFO of NIBC Bank from 2005-2013.
ABN said in a statement that Van Dijkhuizen, 61, would focus the bank on catering better to its clients, growing sustainably, and being "sensitive to society".
Due to public anger over the bail-outs of ABN and other Dutch financial services companies, bonuses in the Dutch banking sector have been capped at 20 percent of base pay, far more restrictive than the 100 percent cap elsewhere in the European Union.
Voters were outraged when the ABN board attempted to raise base salaries for managers in the run-up to its stock market listing in 2016 to compensate, and the idea was eventually scrapped.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who personally signed off on Van Dijkhuizen's appointment, said he had "proved himself as an outstanding banker over the past 11 years, and a fine manager with a strong societal antenna."
"He will now lead the bank to a new phase, in which the state will continue cutting its stake."
The bank said Van Dijkhuizen will be expected to deliver on targets set at the time of its IPO, when it advertised itself as a reliable dividend payer, with a strong position on the Dutch market albeit with limited growth opportunities.
Van Dijkhuizen must also create the conditions for the state to sell down its remaining 77 percent stake, the bank said.
(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
(Adds quotes and background)
CAIRO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Egypt has secured the $6 billion in bilateral financing required to secure a three-year, $12 billion IMF lending programme, Finance Minister Amr El-Garhy said on Tuesday.
In August, the IMF agreed in principle to grant Egypt the loan to support a government reform programme aimed at reducing its budget deficit and balancing its currency market.
The IMF board is set to discuss final approval of the programme on Friday and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said she would recommend board approval.
An initial disbursement of $2.75 billion may come as early as next Tuesday, a finance ministry official told Reuters. Clinching the IMF deal would be a milestone in Egypt's efforts to revive an import-dependent economy that has struggled to attract foreign currency inflows since a 2011 uprising scared off tourists and foreign investors.
Facing a 12 percent budget deficit, plummeting foreign exchange reserves and a burgeoning black market for dollars, Egypt has embarked in recent years on a programme of painful economic reform and turned to the lender for support.
As part of the bilateral financing required ahead of the IMF loan, Egypt has reached final agreement on a $2.7 billion currency swap with China that requires "only administrative procedures" to complete, Garhy said in a phone interview with Egyptian television channel CBC.
The rest of the financing has come from the World Bank, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, he said.
"Yesterday the central bank governor and I sent the letter of intent. This was the document we still needed to send to complete the procedures," he said.
(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Hugh Lawson) Keywords: EGYPT IMF/
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By Kitsap Sun Staff
PORT ORCHARD A 28-year-old man accused of exposing himself and assaulting a female clerk Sunday morning at a Silverdale gas station was charged with attempted second-degree rape.
When Kitsap County sheriff's deputies arrived at about 6:30 a.m. they saw the suspect holding the clerk by the hair and trying to force her head down and slamming her head against the counter, according to court documents. The suspect continued to assault the woman until deputies stopped him, according to documents.
The deputies had been called for a report of a person who would not leave and, after the report, had begun to remove his clothes. The suspect also allegedly demanded money from the cash register and threatened the clerk.
After being taken to the hospital, a small baggie of meth was found in the suspect's sock, authorities said.
He was charged Monday in Kitsap District Court with attempted second-degree rape and possession of meth.
SHARE Daniel Sierman, holding his ballot, turns 18 on Election Day, making him one of the youngest voters in the state for this presidential election. Josh Farley / Kitsap Sun
By Josh Farley of the Kitsap Sun
BROWNSVILLE It was somewhere around July, as political signs began to dot the roads and highways of Kitsap County, that Daniel Sierman realized he'd soon be able to cast his first ballot.
He soon found out his birthday and Election Day were one and the same.
Had he been born one day later, Sierman would be waiting until 2020 to cast his first vote for president. Instead, he joins a rare group of young voters whose 18th birthday falls on Nov. 8.
"I think it's cool to be able to participate politically," said Sierman, a Central Kitsap High School senior with plans to study computer science at the University of Washington.
State law says that at 17, juveniles can register to vote as long as they'll be 18 by, or on, Election Day. Only one other person in Kitsap County shares the distinction with Sierman, according to Kitsap County Elections Manager Kyle Joyce. The Secretary of State's Office said there are 58 voters in Washington registered with a Nov. 8, 1998, birthday the youngest class of voters who will participate in this election.
When the Sierman household got three ballots instead of two for the first time, he admits he did not wait to tear it open. He's been studying democracy in his advanced placement government class.
"The more people that turn out, the better represented we are," he said. "That's very important to me."
Voting for some is a civic duty, a sacred obligation. Sierman joins those like Yvonne McAllister, a 94-year-old Poulsbo resident who has voted in every election since she was inspired in her youth by Franklin Roosevelt.
"Myself, I've always voted," McAllister said. "I look forward to it every year."
Sierman said he, too, plans to cast votes each time one is mailed to his house.
"I think I will always vote, as long as I am able," he said.
And how did he vote in his first presidential election? He prefers not to say ... as is his right.
As of Monday evening, the Kitsap County Auditor's Office had collected more than 90,000 ballots, more than 50 percent of all the county's registered voters. That number is expected to reach 80 to 82 percent, according to elections officials.
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By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun
BREMERTON "Korea, The Forgotten War" will be remembered during a Veterans Day celebration Saturday at Miller-Woodlawn Memorial Park.
American flags and military honors will be bestowed to families of Army and Navy veterans of the war who never received them. They'll be presented by honor guards from Joint Base Lewis-McChord and the USS Nimitz.
"I just like helping vets and their families receive the honors they have so rightfully earned, and this is part of it," said Ken Schlaudraff, family service counselor, Vietnam veteran and event coordinator.
Bill Cundiff, of Bremerton, a Marine who served in Korea, will speak. Niki Saulsberry will sing numbers from the era.
The facility has been playing host to big Memorial Day events for several years. This will be the second year for Veterans Day.
"We had not done a large Veterans Day event because of the weather being so icky in November, but we tried it last year," Schlaudraff said. "We put up a big tent so everyone was under cover, just in case."
About 75 people attended.
Another tent will be erected on the patio for those attending a barbecue after the 11 a.m. ceremony.
Other participants will be emcee Rep. Jesse Young, R-Gig Harbor; Washington State Youth Academy students, who will place flags throughout the park in the morning, raise the flag during the ceremony, place a wreath on the mast of the USS Bremerton and help read names of 17 people buried at Miller-Woodlawn who were killed in action; retired Marine Corps Band member Glenn Gray, who will play Taps; the Kitsap Chordsmen, who will sing patriotic songs; keyboardist Roberta Daniel; and the Suquamish Warriors, who will conduct a three-volley salute.
Other Veterans Day events include:
"Honoring All Who Served," a long-running event that draws thousands, will be Friday at the Fairgrounds' Kitsap Sun Pavilion. Cmdr. Jack James, a Bremerton native and Poulsbo resident who served more than 30 years as a Navy SEAL, will be the speaker.
Doors open at 9 a.m. for guests to view displays of antique military vehicles and vintage military uniforms and browse 24 booths.
The program will begin at 10:30 a.m. with bagpipe music, followed by the Bremerton High School band marching in to perform throughout the event. A ceremonial bell ringing, rifle salute and playing of Taps also will be part of the program.
Food will be provided by Crazy Eric's Drive-in and cake by Hudson Auto Center of Poulsbo and Bremerton.
Co-emcees will be Rear Adm. John Tammen Jr., commander of Submarine Group 9, and Guy Stitt, past president and ambassador with the Bremerton-Olympic Peninsula Navy League Council.
Port Orchard Eagles, 4001 Jackson Ave. SE, will provide a free spaghetti dinner for all veterans at 6 p.m. Thursday. The Elizabeth Ellington Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution will present pins and certificates to Vietnam era veterans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war. Joey Price, national president of the Navy Wives Club of America, will speak.
Washington Veterans Home at Retsil, 141 Beach Drive, will hold a Veterans Day event at 10 a.m. Friday in its lower activity room. Josie "Michalle" Miller, of Port Orchard, a Navy corpsman who retired in 2014, will be the speaker. She served in the Navy for 20 years, including deployments to Afghanistan and Kuwait. She finished as training records manager for Naval Hospital Bremerton. South Kitsap Navy Junior ROTC will present the colors, the governor's proclamation will be read, and music and Taps played.
Naval Facilities Engineering Command Northwest will honor a local hero Friday. Marvin Shields, the first and only Navy Seabee to receive a Medal of Honor, died from injuries sustained during the June 1965 battle of Dong Xoai, Vietnam. The Discovery Bay man is buried at the Gardiner Cemetery. A ceremony will be held at his gravesite at 11 a.m.
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As a former "Never Trump-er," I have been interested in others who have converted, however reluctantly, if not into Trump supporters, then pragmatic accepters of Trump against Hillary Clinton. Call us ever-Trump-ers.
Another such convert is Joel C. Rosenberg, the mystery writer who once worked for the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY) and former Secretary of Education William Bennett, conducted research for Rush Limbaugh, and now writes biblically-themed novels.
Writing on his blog, Rosenberg gives 10 reasons why he intends to vote for the Trump-Pence ticket. They are mostly about stopping Hillary Clinton and her secular-progressive agenda, which he believes would complete the moral, economic and political destruction of the country. In addition, he writes, "Hillary and her advisers may have committed federal crimes." A Hillary victory, he believes, guarantees nonstop investigations, possibly leading to indictments, though President Obama could and probably would pardon her of any and all acts committed while she was secretary of state should she win.
While Rosenberg writes he "continues to have deep reservations about Mr. Trump ... Hillary Clinton is the poster child for politics as usual at a time when we need change." Most of the rest of his arguments from federal judges, to rebuilding the American military, to protecting our borders are familiar. He also thinks Trump's running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, will soften some of Trump's sharper edges.
Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick is another person who has reluctantly come around, if not in open support of Trump, then in explaining why he has gained so much favor. She writes: "After eight years of Barack Obama's White House, America is in a different place than it was in 2008, when Obama ran on a platform of hope and change. Americans today are angry, scared, divided and cynical."
Glick correctly notes that Trump represents "the voters' rebellion against the American establishment not just the political establishment, but the full spectrum of the American elite. From Washington to Wall Street, from college campuses to the media, tens of millions of Americans believe that their establishment is rotten to the core. And they support Trump because he is running against the establishment."
The stakes in Tuesday's election could not be higher. They are about life for the unborn and elderly, the Constitution, growing the economy and the private-sector jobs that accompany growth, advancement or retreat of the LGBTQ agenda, the strength of our military, terrorism, immigration, a government-run health care system that will inevitably follow the crumbling of Obamacare, restoring respect for the United States abroad and so much more.
We Trump converts are not unaware of his many flaws, but none of his flaws come close to the alleged crimes committed by Hillary Clinton and her husband, including "pay for play" activities at the Clinton Foundation, which FBI investigators have been looking into for at least a year.
With a President Trump and especially Vice President Mike Pence, America has an opportunity to go in a different direction. Trump has been specific about his promises and if the Congress remains in Republican hands, members can hold him to them.
Maybe Trump is like the box of chocolates Forrest Gump referred to we won't know what we are getting until he becomes president. But we know what we would get with Hillary Clinton as president: more corruption, possible indictments, if not of her then of some of her closest aides, and a continuation of the Obama agenda, which, along with the Republican wing of the establishment, has been the cause of so much citizen angst and anger.
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By Dick Meyer
Scripps Washington Bureau (TNS)
Ive never voted in a presidential election where I was convinced one of the outcomes would be a true disaster for the country. Obviously I had preferences sometimes mild, sometimes strong. But I never believed that our political health, our values, our economy and our national security were so fragile and the presidency so powerful that one election could be catastrophic. Until now.
I think the odds are extremely high that a Donald Trump presidency would be catastrophic for this country in many ways. We would be walking into catastrophe eyes wide open.
I will forego the temptation to try to deliver the killer closing argument, however. I have to believe that undecided voters have heard every possible argument by now.
The Brits were in a similar situation a few months ago. After endless debate over the Brexit referendum, the percentage of undecided voters was high on the eve of the election. The polling was extremely close. The actual vote wasnt. Brexit won 52 percent to 48 percent.
Voter regret struck immediately. Within a few days, 4 million people signed a petition demanding a second referendum. A poll taken a week after the referendum found that 57 percent now wanted to remain in the EU. The Brexit vote already has cost the U.K. dearly in the value of the pound, the business climate and civic morale. The leaders of the Brexit movement largely have been vanquished.
Once upon a time, Italians thought it was a good idea to elect Silvio Berlusconi, Minnesotans got a kick out of electing wrestler Jesse Ventura governor and Californians thought they were clever to elect Arnold Schwarzenegger. You know how those stories ended.
I cant imagine the levels of voter regret not to mention panic that would follow a Trump victory. As it is now, whenever Trumps prospects blip up, the stock market seems to blip down. Voting for Trump may feel like a solid blow against a corrupt system, but chances are those emotions will fade fast in the light after battle.
So heres my last suggestion to those understandably depressed by both choices and considering voting for Trump, a third party or just staying home: Think about what your future self is likely to think about your decision in a couple of years. Youve heard all the arguments from other people, but try to reframe them as an argument with yourself: Use hindsight now.
Ask yourself if youd feel good voting for a man who bragged about groping women and has been accused of abuse many times. If Trump embarrasses the country in the White House, if he picks on the vulnerable in society, if economic inequality gets worse, youll remember how Trump has stirred up racial resentment, repeatedly insulted Mexicans, Muslims and immigrants, dodged taxes, and refused to release his records. If things go bad internationally, youll remember Trumps clumsy calls to ditch NATO, his contempt for our military leadership, his flirting with Vladimir Putin and his dazzling ignorance of foreign affairs. Think about the contempt and ignorance Trump already has displayed toward the Constitution and our democratic system.
Hindsight about the 2000 election showed me that my belief in the essential stability and wisdom of the American political ecosystem was grossly exaggerated and my capacity to imagine the worst outcomes was too narrow.
Before 2000, I had not voted in a presidential election since 1984, the year before I became a professional journalist. In 1985, I started covering politics and then Congress full time. I decided I would refrain from voting in presidential elections as a discipline, perhaps symbolic, to help maintain distance and impartiality.
I might have changed my mind if I had thought there was ever a credible candidate who was truly dangerous, but there wasnt. Bush the elder versus Michael Dukakis, then Bill Clinton; Clinton versus Bob Dole: These were decent if not glorious options, I felt. It wasnt hard to abstain.
In 2000, I felt pretty much the same way, though markedly less enthusiastic about the options. I had spent time around both Al Gore and George W. Bush and thought both were fundamentally honest, well-intentioned men. Obviously, I had views on their policies and priorities, but I didnt think either was a national risk.
And obviously, I was wrong. George Bush made what I believe was a terrible and unnecessary decision to invade Iraq that is still generating bloodshed, war and instability. I dont think Al Gore would have done that. I dont know what mistakes he would have made, but I dont believe they would have been on the same scale.
None of that was obvious in 2000, certainly not to me.
The mistakes Donald Trump is likely to make are obvious, predictable and likely. I believe that those Republicans that have supported or coddled Trump, whether he wins or loses, will be disgraced in history. And I dont think your future self wants to be part of that story.
Dick Meyer is Chief Washington Correspondent for the Scripps Washington Bureau and DecodeDC.
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In an op-ed published last month, President Barack Obama proposed a partnership between the government and the private sector in pursuit of this goal: "sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time."
Obama says that the space program "represents a central part of our character curiosity and exploration, innovation and ingenuity, pushing the boundaries of what's possible and doing it before anybody else."
Ordinarily, I'm a sucker for this sort of aspirational rhetoric. My childhood coincided with the early days of the "space race," a time when the original seven Mercury astronauts Glenn, Grissom, Shepard, Schirra, Carpenter, Cooper, Slayton were national heroes.
And I remember distinctly the night of July 20, 1969, when a significant portion of the world watched a grainy black-and-white broadcast of Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the surface of the moon: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
Is it time to begin working toward the next logical, long-deferred step, Mars?
The prospect of going to Mars is exciting, but the question of whether we should commit the energy and resources necessary to put humans on the Red Planet and bring them back is as much philosophical as it is technical and scientific.
Obama suggests that space exploration is an expression of "a central part of our character," but that's only a fancy way of saying that one of the fundamental paradigms of civilization is the possession, overpopulation, resource exhaustion and abandonment of territory and the subsequent conquest of new territory. This is a very human process, and throughout history we've done it repeatedly.
Ordinarily it involves considerable damage to the environment and considerable suffering if native populations happen to be in the way. And ordinarily it's driven by a strain of nationalism. Thus, during the so-called Age of Discovery, the English, French, Spanish and Portuguese battled each other viciously to stake out the choicest parts of the New World for themselves.
And thus President Obama can't resist couching America's proposed push toward Mars in competitive terms: "doing it before anybody else."
Don't get me wrong: it would be cool to go to Mars, and I would follow the effort with considerable interest. But I wonder if the paradigm occupy, exploit, abandon, conquer new territory is a purely terrestrial concept that doesn't transfer well to the vast reaches of outer space.
Humankind evolved in a specific ecological niche called Planet Earth. An outpost on Mars may be as implausible as a Siberian tiger transplanted into Manhattan.
Of course, if we'd always thought like this there would be no United States and, maybe, no progress. But just as the earth's resources have inevitable limits, so may the realm of humankind.
At the least, the fantasy of going to Mars has the dangerous potential to distract us from problems closer to home. We have befouled our nest here on earth. The climate is changing, the sea levels are rising, populations are being displaced and the stresses of resource depletion are already causing conflict.
Of course, I'm talking about Mars during a week when it's hard to think about much else besides the election. And, in fact, by the time you read this we may have chosen a new president. Everyone agrees that whoever wins will have a tough challenge to bring our badly fractured country back together again.
But nothing brings people together like a common goal. We could develop a unifying national project of going to Mars, just as President John F. Kennedy set a national goal to reach the moon before 1970. Or we could decide to save the planet by devoting our "curiosity and exploration, innovation and ingenuity" to finding ways to live within our ecological means.
I like the second goal better. In fact, maybe we need to devote our energies to figuring out how to live on earth before we think about moving on to Mars.
No Minister blogs on the four nominees for the National candidacy for Northland:
Darren Edwards, 45, Dargaville born, married and resident in Kerikeri. Darren is Maori with tribal affiliations to ReRoroa, Ngati whatu and Ngapuhi. He served 15 years in the Police reaching the rank of Sergeant, followed by 2 years with the Ministry of Fisheries as their Team Leader in Kaitaia and 9 years with the Ministry of Primary Industries as their Northland District Compliance Manager. Currently he is employed by the Far North District Council as the Compliance Manager. Darren is a graduate of the New Zealand Defence Force Command and Staff College and has a Masters of International Security from Massey University. He is a member of the Northland Conservation Board, member of Kerikeri Rotary and is involved with the Diabetes NZ Northland Branch where his wife is the treasurer.
Ronald (Matt) King, 49, born and resident in Okaihau, married. He initially qualified as a telecommunications technician but left soon after to join the Police where he later qualified as a Detective. In 2007 he left the Police to work as a farmer/contractor and fraud investigator and later established a successful business Mid North Honda. He has his own farm at Okaihau. Matt has a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in Physiology, from Auckland University and a Diploma in Policing. He is a Volunteer fire fighter with the Okaihau Fire Brigade, a senior rugby referee and a Board Member of Polocrosse New Zealand.
Dr Chris Reid, 48, born in the UK, married and resident in Russell. Chris is a General Practitioner in Kerikeri. He graduated MBBS from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne including an Elective in Trauma and Orthopedics at the University of Virginia. He served 10 years with the Royal Marines including 2 years as the Senior Medical Officer to the Special Boats Service. He is currently the Clinical Director at the Kerikeri Medical Centre, a member of the Health Advisory Group for Green Cross Health and a member of the National Advisory Council, Royal NZL Council of General Practitioners. He enjoys spear fishing and photography and has published Patient Portraits from a Doctors Surgery with all royalties donated to St John Ambulance.
Ken Rintoul, 54, born and resident in Okaihau, married, Ken has an extensive business and farming background given his involvement with Rintoul Civil Ltd (major contracting firm) and Kauri Brae Farms Ltd (both family businesses). He was involved with the Northland Transport Committee; Far North Holdings Ltd as a past director; interim Chairman, Northland College BOT August 2015-June 2016; a trustee with Top Energy Consumers Trust; Northern Rural Fire Board, Chairman; Northland Youth Development Trust, Chairman; Youth Development Trust, National Supporters Council, Northland Representative and a Member of Lions.
Politik reports:
Michael Cullen, by whose name the New Zealand Super Fund is better known and who until yesterday was the Chair of NZ Post thinks the fund should own all SOEs. But only on Sunday, Labours former Finance Minister and (until yesterday) Chair of NZ Post, the owners of Kiwibank, Sir Michael Cullen, floated the idea of putting all the SOEs into Super Fund ownership and also having them pay their dividends directly into the fund. Ive got a personal hobby horse about transferring what little is left of actual valuable commercial enterprises the Government owns and putting the shares into the super fund, he told a Fabian forum in Auckland. That would help protect the shareholding as well as actually assist in paying New Zealand super in the long term. Sitting alongside Sir Michael at the Forum was Labours State-owned enterprises spokesperson, David Parker, who appeared to agree with the former Finance Minister.
I think the Government should sell most SOEs, especially ones like TVNZ and NZ Post which are at risk of becoming worthless due to technological challenges.
But if they are to remain Government owned, there are advantages to doing in through the NZ Super Fund.
The first is it reduces the ability of Ministers to interfere in decisions of SOEs by having chat to directors (whom they appoint).
The second is that NZSF has many staff who are commercial experts in assessing performance of a company, and would be better positioned to monitor how an SOE is doing and whether or not there is a case for more capital.
The third is the NZSF would then appoint the directors, rather than Ministers.
So Im in favour.
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Coal stocks in the warehouses of thermal power plants (TPP) of Ukraine from October 30 until November 6, 2016 increased by 5.3%, from 1.625 million tonnes to 1.711 million tonnes, Ukrenergo has reported.
In particular, anthracite coal stocks rose by 4.2%, to 763,000 tonnes (including 108,000 tonnes at Luhansk TPP), while gas coal and long-flame coal stocks grew by 6.2%, to 948,000 tonnes (including 140,000 tonnes at Burshtyn TPP).
Ukrenergo said energy consumption in the morning of November 7 was 19.759 GW, while 28 coal power units and four turbine generators at the TPPs generated 5.357 GW. Nuclear power plants (NPPs) showed a capacity of 10.700 GW, hydroelectric power plants 1.544 GW, combined heat and power plants 1.794 MW and alternative energy units 364 MW.
Exports from the Burshtyn TPP energy island on November 6 stood at 384 MW. No exports to Poland, Belarus, Moldova and Russia were reported.
The prime ministers of the GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) Organization for Democracy and Economic Development are due to discuss transport corridors and a free trade zone, GUAM Secretary General Altai Efendiyev told Interfax.
"Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has initiated a meeting of GUAM prime ministers in Kyiv to focus on the implementation of a transport corridor and the completion of procedures, which will start up a free trade zone between our states," Efendiyev said.
A business forum will be held on the sidelines of the prime ministers' meeting, he said.
"The Kazakh head of government has also been invited to the meeting of the prime ministers, which means this meeting will be held in the GUAM+ format. We think this is necessary because the logical continuation of this route will make sense," Efendiyev said.
Ukrainian commodities should reach consumers in the East, while cargo traffic from the East, including Central Asia, should reach European markets, he said.
"We are actually setting the task to reanimate transport corridors through a major project incorporating the interests of practically all countries, including China and European nations. If we manage to make this project attractive and competitive through joint efforts, it can become a foundation of stable and safe economic cooperation in the highly unstable and unpredictable region," the GUAM secretary general said.
The project is highly important for the Visegrad Group and the Baltic countries, he said. "The Baltic Council has shown interest in the possibility to connect the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas. This idea has been discussed for a long time and it is very close to coming true," Efendiyev said.
In his words, GUAM has been closely interacting with Washington and Tokyo in the GUAM+ U.S. and GUAM+ Japan formats.
"We are eyeing Poland and the Czech Republic as partners in particular projects, and we are also interested in cooperation with the Visegrad Group," the GUAM secretary general said.
Back on January 15, 2016, the Ukrainian Infrastructure Ministry jointly with Ukrzaliznytsia organized the demonstration trip of a container train along the new Silk Road, from Ukraine to China through Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (via the Caspian and Black Seas). It took the train 16 days to reach China early in the morning of January 31.
A number of documents were signed in Ljubljana on November 8 in the presence of presidents of Ukraine and Slovenia, Petro Poroshenko and Borut Pahor, press secretary of the Ukrainian president Sviatoslav Tseholko has said.
"Ukraine and Slovenia have signed a memorandum of understanding in energy efficiency and alternative fuels," Tseholko wrote on Twitter.
In addition, the parties signed a memorandum of cooperation in the field of consumers' rights protection and an agreement on cooperation between the two countries' archive facilities.
HDC I'Park Mall CEO Yang Chang-hoon, left, shakes hands with CJ CGV CEO Seo Jung at CGV Yongsan in I'Park Mall, Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of HDC I'Park Mall
By Park Jae-hyuk
Hyundai Development Company (HDC) and CJ CGV will establish a hallyu town at I'Park Mall in the latest expansion since 2006, HDC said Tuesday.
The two companies vowed to make Yongsan, where I'Park Mall is located, the Hollywood of Korea, as CJ CGV headquarters will move to the mall along with its high-tech media facilities, including the world's largest IMAX Grand Theater Laser and 4DX theaters.
Visitors will be able to meet celebrities at the mall during a K-Movie Tour consisting of film festivals, showcases and fan meetings, the two companies said.
HDC expects I'Park Mall, which will be enlarged to 340,000 square meters, to attract over 1 million visitors a year.
"I'Park Mall will evolve into a third-generation shopping mall which includes department stores, duty free shops and cultural facilities," I'Park Mall CEO Yang Chang-hoon said. "We will create a new paradigm of shopping malls, actualizing the global amusement mall."
HDC said the extension work will be done by the end of 2017.
By Lee Hyo-sik
Samsung, Hyundai Motor, SK and other conglomerates are on alert over the prosecution's expanding investigation into the nature of their donations to two scandal-ridden foundations set up by Choi Soon-sil, a confidant of President Park Geun-hye.
The prosecution's raid of Samsung Group, Tuesday, which has been suspected of offering billions of won to Choi's daughter, signaled that other conglomerates will not be able to avoid the widening probe.
The prosecution told reporters that it will summon and question top officials from business groups, following the revelation that they met with President Park behind closed doors last year.
Park allegedly asked the business tycoons to provide tens of billions of won to the Mir and K-Sports foundations. It is also suspected that some chaebol heads may have demanded undue favors from the government in return.
The prosecution has reportedly secured testimony from former senior presidential secretary for policy coordination Ahn Jong-beom that the President held a meeting with the heads of the top eight business groups at Cheong Wae Dae in July last year.
Ahn has been detained by investigators on charges of abusing his position and exerting undue influence to force businesses to "make a contribution" to the Mir Foundation and the K-Sports Foundation.
Dongfeng Yueda Kia head Kim Gyeon, third from left, poses with other company officials during an unveiling ceremony for the all-new K2 compact sedan in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China, Tuesday. Dongfeng Yueda Kia is a joint Chinese venture between Kia Motors and China's Dongfeng Motor. / Courtesy of Kia Motors
By Jhoo Dong-chan
Kia Motors officially unveiled its all-new K2 compact sedan in China Tuesday.
The K2 sedan is a model specialized for China that has been fully refurbished in five years to meet various demands of young Chinese motorists in their 20s and 30s.
A total of 774,027 cars have been sold since its debut in 2011 in China. The figure dubbed it as the best selling model for Dongfeng Yueda Kia, a joint Chinese venture between Kia Motors and China's Dongfeng Motor, since it started sales operation in 2002.
"With the best quality in its segment, we are confident the new K2 will once again set new records in the Chinese market," Kim Gyeon, head of Dongfeng Yueda Kia, said during an introduction ceremony for the new K2 in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, Tuesday.
"The all-new K2 will spearhead our sales operation in the world's most competitive Chinese auto market next year."
The new K2 mounts two types of engine trims a 1.4-liter gasoline-powered Kappa engine that produces maximum 100 horsepower and a 1.6-liter gasoline-powered Kappa engine with a maximum of 123 horsepower. Both engines come with six-speed automatic and manual transmissions.
Kia Motors said in a press release that the model also features various convenience and infotainment systems compatible with Apple's CarPlay and Baidu's Carlife.
The model's front face applies signature Kia design with a sporty bumper while the rear end features a "bridge" connecting the tail lamps at the top end to suggest a distinctive look.
In a bid to meet Chinese consumers' demand for large interior space, the new K2 sedan has been extended 22 millimeters in length and 30 millimeters in wheelbase to have 4,400 millimeters in length, 1,740 millimeters in width, 1,460 millimeters in height and 2,600 millimeters in wheelbase.
The new K2 sedan also features the Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) for 41 percent of its entire body, 10 percent lighter but at least twice as strong as conventional steel to improve its drive performance and safety in the case of accidents.
By Yoon Ja-young
Most of the cargo on Hanjin Shipping container ships has been unloaded at ports, but some of the cargo still hasn't reached its final destination yet. The government is focusing on follow-up measures to end the disruption to maritime cargo transport.
The finance ministry and the maritime ministry held a joint briefing, Tuesday, regarding how the chaos over the troubled shipping line is being resolved.
The decision to put Hanjin Shipping under court receivership had caused major chaos in maritime cargo transport. Hanjin Shipping cargo customers were facing damage as some port authorities refused entry of Hanjin ships fearing that they wouldn't be getting fees from the troubled shipping company, on top of some creditors seizing the ships.
According to the government, 95.5 percent of the 396,000 TEU cargo on Hanjin's container ships has been unloaded. One TEU is equal to a 20-foot-long container. Among them, however, 35,000 TEU haven't reached customers yet. The rest, 4.5 percent, or 18,000 TEU, are also still being delivered or waiting for transfer. It means over 50,000 TEU cargo haven't reached their final destination yet.
"Basically, the issue should be resolved between the cargo owners and Hanjin Shipping. However, the government will support smooth delivery of the cargo," the government noted in a release to the media. It added that it will consult with port authorities overseas as well as logistic agencies for the delivery.
The ships seized by creditors are also problematic. Among 97 container ships of Hanjin Shipping, 94 completed unloading cargo. Among the remaining three, one will unload at a port overseas while two will unload in Korea. The two ships, Hanjin China and Hanjin Vienna, however, have been seized in China and Canada by creditors. A total of five ships have been seized including ships that completed unloading of cargo.
"The government will consider public auction of Hanjin Shipping-owned ships after consultation with the court," said Vice Maritime Minister Yoon Hak-bae.
The crew on vessels stranded at sea for months are also of concern. The government said that it is monitoring their condition on top of supplying daily necessities such as water and food.
The government also said that it provided 344.5 billion won financial support for Hanjin's suppliers as well as small cargo owners damaged by the disruption, such as extending maturity of their loans.
Regarding the future of Hanjin Shipping, Vice Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said a package sale of assets is likely.
"It's up to the court's decision, but the network of Hanjin Shipping should be maintained as much as possible."
While there has been a rumor that Hanjin Shipping entered court receivership as Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho angered President Park Geun-hye's longtime confidant Choi Soon-sil by donating "too little" money to the foundations allegedly controlled by Choi, the vice finance minister said it is totally groundless. Hanjin Group donated 1 billion won to the Mir Foundation, which is smaller than donations by chaebols of a similar size. There has also been a rumor that his sudden resignation as the chief organizer for the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics was due to pressure by Choi Soon-sil.
Participants at the 4th ASEAN Connectivity Forum hold hands during an event at the Federation of Korean Industries building on Yeouido, Seoul, Tuesday. Eighth from left is Minister for Transport and Communications of Myanmar U Thant Sin Maung; and to his left are ASEAN-Korea Centre Secretary General Kim Young-sun and ASEAN Connectivity Coordinating Committee Chairman Latsamy Keomany. / Courtesy of ASEAN-Korea Centre
By Nam Hyun-woo
A forum promoting infrastructure investments between Korea and ASEAN countries took place, Tuesday, seeking to assist domestic companies find business opportunities in Southeast Asia.
At the 4th ASEAN Connectivity Forum, jointly hosted by the ASEAN-Korea Centre and the Federation of Korean Industries, infrastructure projects in nine ASEAN countries were introduced alongside explanations about how companies can finance and participate in the projects.
"The forum focused on the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) 2025, as well as providing up-to-date information on ASEAN countries' infrastructure projects," said ASEAN-Korea Centre Secretary General Kim Young-sun. "The center will support ASEAN countries in having better physical connectivity with each other and help Korean companies find more opportunities in ASEAN infrastructure projects."
During the ASEAN Summit in Vientiane, Laos, in September, leaders of ASEAN member countries adopted MPAC 2025. This plan is aimed at enhancing the region's physical, institutional and people-to-people connectivity to cope with looming changes in the region and narrow the gap between each member.
According to AlphaBeta Director Fraser Thompson, who participated in the designing of MPAC 2025, the plan was adopted amid trends or changes that will be critical to ASEAN.
He said the consumer class in ASEAN is forecast to double to 163 million households by 2030 and an additional 90 million people are anticipated to move to cities in ASEAN by then.
In seeking connectivity, massive infrastructure development is expected to be necessary. Up to 2030, up to $3.3 trillion in investment will be required in transport, water, power and telecommunications in the ASEAN region.
He also noted that there are new funding vehicles emerging that could support infrastructure development, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or Partnership for Quality Infrastructure.
During the forum, officials from Asia Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of Korea and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency provided details and model cases on joining the projects.
"The MPAC 2025 gives a holistic perspective on where the region is going in its efforts to link together infrastructure, both hard and soft, strengthen institutional arrangements and create stronger bonds among ASEAN peoples," said ASEAN Connectivity Coordinating Committee Chair Latsamy Keomany. "We need to identify and develop specific initiatives and projects, and involve our partners, including Korea and other stakeholders."
The forum was also attended by Minister for Transport and Communications of Myanmar U Thant Sin Maung and some 200 businessmen from Korean companies.
Rep. Chung Jin-suk, the floor leader of the ruling Saenuri Party, continued to demand the party leadership step down Tuesday, amid public anger over the scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye's behind-the-scenes confidante.
"I appreciate Lee Jung-hyun's devotion to protect the president, even if the world condemns her," Chung said. "But it is not the right choice (for him to stay in his current position)."
On Monday, Lee said he will resign in the near future, but not immediately, adding he wished to have a chance to help Saenuri deal with the fallout caused by Choi Soon-sil, who is suspected of having meddled in state affairs, by capitalizing on her four-decade relationship with the president.
Chung claimed Lee can be viewed as the captain that sank the ship, adding his stubbornness will discourage members from striving to overcome the crisis.
Lawmakers of Saenuri categorized as the non-Park faction have been demanding a reshuffle of the leadership, adding the party needs a new leader. The non-Park faction had been marginalized in the managing of the party after the new leadership was elected three months ago.
On Monday, Rep. Kang Seok-ho, one of the top party leaders, said he will step down from his post. Kang was considered the only non-Park member included in the party leadership.
Rep. Na Kyung-won also stepped down from her post as the head of the recruitment committee urging a change in the party's leadership.
Local pollster Real Meter earlier said the main opposition Democratic Party garnered an approval rating of 33 percent last week, beating the ruling party's 21.4 percent for a second consecutive week. (Yonhap)
The "Tourist Complaint Center" website has been launched so foreigners can report any illegal, wrongful or unkind acts they see or experience during their trip to Korea. / Screen capture from the Tourist Complaint Center
By Lee Jin-a
Foreign tourists in Korea can now lodge complaints on a government website that was launched Monday.
The "Tourist Complaint Center," operated by the Korea Tourism Organization, allows foreigners to report any illegal, wrongful or unkind acts they experience or see while touring the country.
Until recently, foreigners were only able to report such cases via phone, email or postcards. But they can now submit complaints through the website and receive real-time notification of the progress of their cases.
The national tourism organization said the Tourist Complaint Center, which provides services in English, Chinese and Japanese, will offer services in Russian, Malay, Arabic, Indonesian and Thai by next year.
"Increasing the number of foreign tourists who make a return visit to Korea is as important as increasing the number of foreign tourists who make their first visits to Korea," an official at the Korea Tourist Organization said. "We will put more effort into promoting the website and improving the quality of our service."
The website is available at touristcomplaint.or.kr.
By Choi Ha-young
The nation's shamans are up in arms against Choi Soon-sil being called a shaman, saying it spreads negative perceptions about shamanism, one of Korea's oldest folk traditions.
Choi, a shady advisor for President Park Geun-hye, is often dubbed a shaman in media reports for her religious family background. Choi's father Choi Tae-min (1912-1994) founded his own church in the 1970s, borrowing from the beliefs and practices of older religions.
The shaman community has denounced the media for calling her a shaman.
"Calling Choi Soon-sil a shaman is a disgrace to shamans," said Lee Won-bok, head of Shaman Korea, an alliance of shamans here.
Yang Jong-sung, head of the Shamanism Museum in northwestern Seoul, said, "To be a shaman, that person should undergo training from a spiritual godmother and godfather. Neither Choi Soon-sil nor her father went through these steps. They just imitated some aspects of shamanism."
Observers have claimed that Choi is a shaman, or "mudang" in Korean, based on the colorful pockets she designed for Park's inauguration ceremony.
Yang, however, said that was not a shamanistic ritual. "Like babies wear colorful jeogori to cast out demons, it's just a part of Korean folk culture."
About the rumors the elder Choi entranced Park by claiming to communicate in dreams with her assassinated mother Yuk Young-soo, Lee said communication with spirits is not limited to shamanism.
"We are doing our best to filter out pseudo shamans," Lee said. "Please don't spoil folk culture with this political scandal."
The exact name of the church established by the late Choi Tae-min in the 1970s is unclear, but research shows it's more likely "Youngse-gyo" or Church of the Spirit World, rather than "Youngsaeng-gyo," another name used by the media.
An advert printed in the Daejeon Ilbo on May 13, 1973, called it "Youngse-gye." The ad invited people to Choi's temporary office in Daejeon, saying he could treat incurable diseases.
Cult expert Tark Ji-il, a professor at Busan Presbyterian University, said cultists oftentimes rely on political power to make up for their lack of legitimacy.
He said Choi's religion doesn't have believers. "I think he was a pseudo-exorcist," he told The Korea Times. "Based on my late father's research, Youngse-gyo's religious rituals were as simple as staring at a circle."
His father Tark Myoung-hwan was a cult expert killed by a cultist in 1994. The late Tark had met Choi multiple times, since the latter had claimed to be a shaman named Wonjakyung based in Daejeon.
President Park Geun-hye, center, who served as first lady for her father President Park Chung-hee, left, after her mother was assassinated, speaks to Choi Tae-min, her mentor and the father of Choi Soon-sil, at a hospital owned by Guguk (save-the-nation) missionary group, set up by the senior Choi, in 1976. / Korea Times file
Between exorcist and dictator
In 1975, Choi was ordained as a priest. However, he had never completed theology courses. He reportedly paid for the ordainment, which was prevalent then as one of the church's sources of income.
Choi is believed to have had spiritual abilities, according to people who used to communicate with him. Pastor Jeon Ki-young, 79, told the local Christian daily Kookmin Ilbo that Choi was expelled from the Christian community due to his heretical activities.
Jeon said Choi was more interested in political games, rather than learning Christian theory. Then-President Park Chung-hee, the father of President Park Geun-hye, selected Choi in an attempt to mobilize Christians to extend his authoritarian ruling. "Park Chung-hee kept his eyes on Christian organizations that led anti-government struggles. Choi accepted Park's directions and founded a pro-Park Christian organization," Jeon said.
That was the origin of the Guguk (Save the Nation) missionary group, established in 1975. Park Geun-hye, then acting as first lady after her mother's assassination, was honorary president of the group.
The missionary group's slogan was "anti-communism" and it carried out military training. It changed its name to the "Saemaeum" (new mindset) volunteer group one year later.
This is when Choi Soon-sil and Park Geun-hye started their relationship.
With the enormous funding power based on the Park Chung-hee regime, Choi attracted many famous Christian leaders. "Pastors were busy flattering Choi to build connections with the authoritarian regime," Jeon told Christian media CBS. KBS recently revealed a video of one of Choi's gatherings, in which Park made a speech.
Tark said Choi Soon-sil may have "spiritual or political" abilities, as Choi appointed his fifth daughter his successor. "Choi doesn't seem like a shaman or mudang," he said.
Local weekly magazine SisaIn reported that Choi and her daughter Chung Yoo-ra went to big churches regularly. Choi appears to have sought to make the most of the networking opportunities available at churches as head of the family business, seeking to accumulate personal wealth using Park's political influence.
Woo Byung-woo casually smiles with his arms crossed in an interrogation room while two investigators stand before him politely with narrow smiles on their faces. / Courtesy of Chosun Ilbo
By Park Si-soo
Sometimes, a photo speaks more than a thousand words. And this maxim became visible on Nov. 7 with the Chosun Ilbo daily's front-page photo that revealed a shameful reality, at least for now, at the prosecution: Injustice prevails over justice.
The photo, which caused surprise and fury, showed Woo Byung-woo, a corruption scandal-mired former senior presidential secretary, casually smiling with his arms crossed in an interrogation room while two investigators were standing before him politely with narrow smiles on their faces. It's not an exaggeration to say that those without any background information may find it difficult to distinguish between suspect and investigator in this photo.
Neither tension nor anxiety was seen on the face of Woo in the photo, reportedly taken at a building 330 meters from the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office, where Woo underwent what the prosecution claimed was 15 hours of "exhausting" questioning on Sunday over various corruption allegations raised against him.
Freelance photojournalist Ko Un-ho took the much-touted photo after a five-hour rooftop ambush. He said investigators were so friendly to Woo -- who left the position of controlling the prosecution last week -- throughout questioning that at one point he asked himself, "Is it right that he (Woo) came (to the prosecution office) to be questioned?."
The much-touted photo was taken at a building 330 meters from the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office after a five-hour rooftop ambush. / Captured from TV Chosun
Woo's duties at the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, included handling key affairs related to the prosecution and coordinating missions with the Prosecutor-General. His close ties to the prosecution have stirred concern that a fair and thorough investigation of him would be impossible. And the photo proved that such worries are well grounded.
The revelation has sparked a wave of parodies of the image on the internet, ridiculing the prosecution.
"I knew things would unfold like this," a netizen said. "Where is justice? What a shame!"
A parody of the photo. / Captured from the Internet
There was another case that brought the prosecution's sense of justice into question in recent days. It was Oct. 30, when Choi Soon-sil, a central figure in the explosive political scandal engulfing President Park Geun-hye, made a surprise return to Seoul from Europe to face investigation.
Choi has been a shadowy friend of President Park for nearly four decades and is believed to have abused her ties to the head of state allegedly to extort money from dozens of big Korean companies and meddle in state affairs.
Amid worries about a loose investigation, the prosecution vowed a "fair and thorough" probe to get to the bottom of the scandal. But law enforcement ended up breaking its own word.
Unlike previous high-profile scandals, in which the prosecution took immediate custody of key suspects arriving from overseas, it generously gave Choi a 31-hour rest before questioning, long enough for the suspect to destroy evidence or coordinate her story with others involved in the scandal. It was confirmed that during the free hours Choi met her lawyer at a luxury hotel in Seoul and discussed how to deal with the probe. She even withdrew money from her bank accounts.
These cases bring a question to mind: Who do prosecutors work for? For justice or for the powerful?
South Korea's oath for prosecutors defines their duty as being "brave to fight the darkness of injustice," "fair to pursue only truth" and "committed to serving the public and the nation."
With the way events are unfolding, there are still plenty of people who hope the oath will not resonate as an empty promise.
Ukraine, Slovenia agree to resume flights between Kyiv and Ljubljana
Ukraine and Slovenia have agreed to resume direct flights between Kyiv and Ljubljana, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.
"Discussing cooperation in the field of transport, we've agreed to resume direct flights between Kyiv and Ljubljana," he told reporters after talks with Slovenian President Borut Pahor.
The Ukrainian president said this will contribute to deepening cooperation and tourism and business potential that exists between the two countries.
By Kim Hyo-jin
The leadership of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is in a heated debate over whether to demand the resignation of President Park Geun-hye, a move pushed by hard-line party members, sources said Tuesday.
The party, led by Rep. Choo Mi-ae, has taken a cautious approach to demanding Park's resignation, although Choo said Park has already lost the ability to govern the nation.
After Park indicated that she will hand over control of the Cabinet to a prime minister recommended by the National Assembly, Tuesday, differences within the party over how to deal with Park and the Choi Soon-sil scandal are likely to deepen.
Some lawmakers and potential presidential candidates from the party are urging the leadership to shift to a hard-line stance, stressing the need to attune the party's voice with the worsened public sentiment.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Seongnam Mayor Lee Jae-myung pushed for such a move in a meeting with Choo earlier in the day. Choo met with the party's main presidential candidate hopefuls to discuss how to cope with the fallout from the scandal gripping the country.
"What the public wants is Park's immediate resignation and to start rebuilding the country," Mayor Park said. "The party should accept their urgent call."
Echoing his view, Lee noted, "Though we will respect the party's final decision, I suggest that we embark on the procedure of impeachment, our constitutional right, as a last resort."
On Monday, 47 DPK lawmakers urged the President to back away from state management and hand over her full authority to a new prime minister recommended by the National Assembly, virtually claiming her resignation.
Of them, 22 lawmakers held a rally in front of Cheong Wa Dae, criticizing Park for holding onto power amid growing public outcry. "Park should take seriously the significance of the massive rally last weekend and her record-low approval rating," they said in a statement. "She should not seek to evade responsibility with some stopgap measures."
However, the party leadership remained lukewarm on the call for her resignation. It instead actively called on the ruling party to cooperate in appointing an independent counsel and on Park to accept nomination of a new prime minister recommended by the Assembly and stay away from managing state affairs.
During the meeting, former party leader Moon jae-in, backed Choo, saying, "Though I respect public opinion, we still need to seek a political solution here."
Meanwhile, in an apparent effort to defuse tensions, Rep. Youn Kwan-suk, the party's chief spokesman, said, "The party has not entirely excluded the resignation card."
The intra-party clash is expected to be escalated following Park's withdrawal of Kim Byong-joon's nomination for prime minister, Tuesday.
Park said she will seek to nominate a new prime minister recommended by rival parties, effectively withdrawing her designation of Kim in a brief meeting with National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun.
Rep. Kim Boo-kyun, another potential presidential candidate, viewed the move positively, claiming the party should engage in negotiations with the ruling party to put forward a new figure as soon as possible.
However, Mayor Lee argued the party should demand the President's resignation regardless of the withdrawal of the prime minister-designate.
The party leadership only slammed the President for not fully clarifying the scope of authority to be given to a new prime minister.
"Park failed to mention if the new prime minister can form a Cabinet and if she will stay away from managing state affairs," DPK floor leader Rep. Woo Sang-ho told reporters.
Pundits say the main opposition faces a dilemma due to concerns about the aftermath of Park's resignation.
"If Park actually steps down, the presidential election should be held within 60 days according to the law. The opposition leadership is worried about the short amount of preparation time," said Shin Yul, a politics professor at Myongji University.
A woman at the right-bottom uses an interpretation kiosk system at Osan City Hall, which first launched the system in January. / Courtesy of Osan City Hall
By Hong Dam-young
Foreign visitors to Hwaseong Dongbu Police Station in Gyeonggi Province will be able to use a new interpreter service to report a crime or damage.
With more foreigners in Korea, Hwaseong city police launched the service on Monday. It is available in Chinese, Japanese, English, Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai, Mongolian and Russian.
The service, provided by Osan City Hall in the province, enables police to speak more easily with foreign visitors by connecting the visitors to interpreters through a computer. Police can then listen to the translation on headsets connected to the computer.
"Once a visitor selects an interpretation' button on a computer screen choosing his language, an interpreter receives an alarm from their smartphone app," Mun Chang-gwon, an official from the station's security division, told The Korea Times. "The computer connects the two, and we can immediately understand the words of the visitors in Korean."
"Before bringing in the system, foreign visitors had to wait until interpreters arrived at the station, which took 20 to 30 minutes," Mun said.
The system operates at the station's public service center, Osan patrol division and police stations in Gwol-dong district -- areas frequented by foreigners. There are 12 interpreters, with one or two for each language.
"But they don't have to wait anymore."
The system, after an evaluation, will be employed at other police stations in areas that have high numbers of foreign visitors.
This is the second in a series of stories about former winners of the Korea Multicultural Youth Awards hosted by The Korea Times. ED.
By Jung Min-ho
Lee Seung-jin
After winning the 2nd Korea Multicultural Youth Award in the high school division in 2013, Lee Seung-jin said his dream was to become a pilot.
Three years later, he found himself living out his dream. As a freshman at Sejong University's aerospace engineering program, Lee has been training to become an air force officer since March.
"The more I study aerospace, the more I realize that this is the one," he said in an interview. "Everything I learn here is so interesting."
Born to a Japanese mother and a Korean father, he started to develop an interest in aviation as he often visited his mother's family in Japan. His favorite activities have always been spending time at aviation museums and watching air shows.
As one of only two students with a multicultural background at Gangneung High School in Gangwon Province, his school life was a little different from that of others not just physically but also psychologically. In the course of finding his identity, having a clear goal was very important to him.
"When I won the award, my family, my teachers and friends congratulated me, which drove me to become a better student," he said. "I really appreciate the honor, which also helped me get into the college program I wanted."
Many people congratulated him on his achievement, among them his grandmother in Japan. "She was very glad, and so was I," Lee said.
Even then, Lee did not think his different ethnic background was an advantage in life. But now he strongly believes it is.
"In college, I am meeting people with so many different backgrounds, which changed my perception about myself," he said. "A better understanding about different languages and cultures is certainly a strong advantage for anyone."
Living in Seoul by himself, Lee believes he has grown into a more independent person. With his love of studying, overseas travel and a new girlfriend, he said his college life can't be better.
His plan is to serve in the Air Force and later have a career at a commercial airline company. For the time being, Lee wants to focus on polishing his English and developing his knowledge and skills as an aspiring pilot.
"The past three years in high school were such a blessing, having achieved many things," he said. "Hopefully, I will get closer to my dream in another three years."
Rep. Lee Jung-hyun, chairman of the ruling Saenuri Party, speaks to reporters in front of his office at the National Assembly, Tuesday. Lee, a staunch loyalist to President Park Geun-hye, has refused to step down despite growing calls from party members to do so. / Yonhap
By Kang Seung-woo, Kim Hyo-jin
Concerns about a split in the ruling Saenuri Party are looming large as a factional conflict over how to deal with the political scandal involving President Park Geun-hye's confidant is worsening.
The President's loyalists are locking horns with a rival faction over the resignation of the party leadership, composed of Park loyalists, due to its failure to monitor the presidential office over the scandal, in which Choi Soon-sil, Park's longtime friend with no official government job, greatly intervened in state affairs.
The scandal has sent the party's approval rating plummeting to 21.4 percent, Monday, compared with 33 percent for the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK).
As a result, the rival faction urges Chairman Lee Jung-hyun and other leaders to step down, taking responsibility for the political turmoil, only to be rejected repeatedly.
"Despite repeated calls for the resignation, the party leadership stands pat," said Rep. Kim Sung-tae in a radio interview, Tuesday. "If they continue to refuse to resign, we have no choice but to split."
Some non-mainstream lawmakers are pushing for a separate leadership within the party to oust the pro-Park faction from the party.
Also on Tuesday, floor leader Chung Jin-suk renewed his call for the leadership to quit.
"It is not the right choice that they continue refusing to resign," Chung said in a party meeting, adding that their resignation is the bare minimum response to public anger over the scandal.
"After their rejection on Monday, there are emerging whispers over a party split."
Former chairman Rep. Kim Moo-sung urged the party leaders to step down, Monday, while demanding that President Park give up her Saenuri membership, but Lee, instead, vowed to step down in the near future after managing the crisis, and help the President who is in crisis.
Amid the deepening feuds, rival lawmakers clashed head-on with Park loyalists over the scandal during a party meeting, Tuesday.
Rep. Ha Tae-keung, a member of the rival faction, criticized the pro-Park leadership, taking issue with its defensive stance over the scandals surrounding the Mir and K-Sports foundations during the previous National Assembly audit. The two non-profit foundations, controlled by Choi, collected some 80 billion won ($70.4 million) from the nation's major conglomerates, using her ties to the President.
He claimed the leadership ordered lawmakers to protest the opposition's move to call in key witnesses over the allegations.
In the face of Ha's accusations that the leadership worked in favor of the scandal-ridden figure, Park's defenders responded sensitively.
Rep. Kim Do-eup, deputy floor leader, stormed out of the meeting room, shouting, "No ordered you to protest against the opposition."
Amid the rising tensions within the party, some non-mainstream lawmakers have quit the party's official posts in a move to press the party leadership.
Rep. Na Kyung-won resigned from her post as chief of the recruitment committee, Tuesday, becoming the fourth Assembly member from the party to do so.
"My resignation means my clear disapproval of the current leadership," Na said.
Prosecutors to indict Choi on Nov. 19
By Kim Se-jeong
The prosecution will decide next week on how and when to question President Park Geun-hye over the corruption scandal involving her close confidant Choi Soon-sil.
Investigators at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said Tuesday that they will "draw up an overall picture" for questioning the President who has vowed to comply with the prosecution.
Prosecutors plan to indict Choi on Nov. 19 on charges of fraud, embezzlement and abuse of power. They are also looking to file additional charges.
Questioning Park will be inevitable as prosecutors have already secured sufficient evidence after her arrested aides and other figures involved gave unfavorable testimony about her.
Jeong Ho-seong, former presidential secretary for private presidential affairs who was arrested on suspicion of giving Choi classified presidential documents, testified he only did what President Park told him to do, the prosecution said.
According to prosecutors, Jeong said Park wanted to hear different opinions about her speech drafts and told him to send them to Choi. But he claimed although Choi read the drafts, she did not correct anything.
The prosecution confiscated Jeong's two cell phones during a raid on his house, and found several audio files containing conversations he had with Park and Choi. Jeong said he had recorded the conversations to confirm their commands.
An Chong-bum, former senior presidential secretary for policy coordination, also turned his back on Park. An, who was arrested on suspicion of forcing dozens of conglomerates to donate money to the Mir and K-Sports foundations set up by Choi, told the prosecution that the President ordered him to collect money from the conglomerates contrary to Park's earlier claim that the companies raised nearly 80 billion won "voluntarily for a good purpose."
Prosecutors also plan to question the heads of major conglomerates here about their fundraising for Choi's foundations.
The prosecution secured information related to private meetings between the President and the business leaders last year from An's mobile phone and a notebook.
Park had a luncheon with heads of 17 conglomerates at Cheong Wa Dae, July 24 last year, and urged them to invest more in Korean culture promotion.
After the luncheon, she had another meeting with seven CEOs, during which the prosecution suspects she pressured the companies to give money to the foundations.
"We'll investigate all of the companies that provided money," a prosecutor said. "We'll select who to question carefully, but if necessary, not only working-level officials but also chairmen and CEOs will be called in."
A vice president from Hyundai Motor was questioned, Tuesday.
If the fundraising was in return for business favors, those involved including the President may face bribery charges.
Choi may avoid charges of violation of presidential record management, because most of the documents handed over to her were drafts of speeches or state affairs before Cheong Wa Dae finalized them as official documents.
President Park Geun-hye shakes hands with National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun ahead of their talks at the latter's office, Tuesday. Park, facing her worst leadership crisis, indicated that she will hand over control of the Cabinet to a prime minister recommended by the National Assembly. / Korea Times photo by Ko Young-kwon
Opposition parties cautious about accepting proposal
By Kang Seung-woo
President Park Geun-hye said Tuesday that she will appoint a prime minister recommended by the National Assembly, dropping her previous nomination of Kim Byong-joon for the post.
In addition, she made it clear that the new prime minister will be empowered to lead the Cabinet, implying that she will share power with him or her in governing the nation.
She made these proposals during a meeting with Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun.
Designating a "neutral" prime minister is one of the key demands from the opposition parties, but they postponed a decision on whether to accept the President's offer. Some hard-line lawmakers claimed that Park was just trying to avoid responsibility for the Choi Soon-sil scandal.
Later in the day, Chung convened a meeting with floor leaders of the three major parties to discuss Park's proposal, but the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and the second-largest People's Party were cautious about accepting it, saying they would first gather opinions from their party members.
On Wednesday, the leaders of the three opposition parties, including the minor opposition Justice Party, will hold a meeting to discuss Park's proposal.
"In order to normalize state affairs as well as fulfill the duty of the President, I came to meet with you," Park told Chung during the 13-minute dialogue.
"If the National Assembly jointly proposes a new nominee, I will nominate the person for prime minister."
When entering and leaving the Assembly, Park had to encounter some opposition lawmakers who were calling for her resignation.
After Park's "unilateral" nomination of Kim, a former aide to the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration, last week to ease growing public anger over the influence-peddling scandal involving her confidant Choi, she faced a violent backlash from the opposition bloc claiming that the Assembly should have taken part in the decision-making process amid discussions about forming a bipartisan Cabinet. In addition, they decided to boycott the confirmation hearing for Kim, who needs Assembly approval before taking office.
The opposition also insists that Park, losing her grip on state affairs due to the scandal, distance herself from domestic affairs and transfer her presidential authority to a new prime minister, recommended by parliament and the President agreed to do so.
Park Seung-joo
By Lee Han-soo
Park Seung-joo, the nominee for minister of Public Safety and Security, allegedly plagiarized his doctorate dissertation, according to cable TV network YTN.
YTN reported that Park's doctorate dissertation from Dongguk University in 2004, included similarities from six other dissertations written by other scholars.
When they ran Park's dissertation through a program known as "Plagiarism checking program" they found that one of the pages included same components from a dissertation written by another scholar.
It even included the same spelling errors and graph as the original dissertation.
By Kim Bo-eun
The organization administering the American College Test (ACT) recently announced it would close the 26 testing sites in Korea and open a new site at a single venue as a measure to prevent cheating, which has troubled the administrators.
Korea is the only country to face the change in the testing site system, which shows that the test organizers are taking the leak scandal that happened here in June seriously enough so as to prevent a recurrence.
"ACT will shift all administration of the ACT test in South Korea to a single testing site directly monitored by ACT staff for the remainder of the 2016-2017 testing year," the administrator said in a statement posted on its website Friday.
The single test site principle will apply starting with the Dec. 10 test. The new testing site will be the Grand Hilton Seoul. Previously ACT tests were held at international schools and foreign language high schools across the country.
"The move is being made to combat repeated test material breaches in South Korea and to strengthen ACT's ongoing commitment to provide a fair testing environment for all students," the post said.
"Despite the employment of increased test security measures, ACT has continued to experience deliberate attempts by individuals in South Korea to fraudulently obtain ACT test materials for personal gain."
ACT cancelled the essay test scores in Asia for the Oct. 22 test, following an essay question leak in the region.
Only months earlier, ACT canceled the June test in Korea and Hong Kong, after another leak of test questions was confirmed. This was the first time the test was cancelled for an entire country.
"We can no longer continue to let the criminal actions of a few unscrupulous individuals undermine the efforts of hardworking, honest students," the post quoted ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe as saying.
The ACT recently started shipping test booklets and answer sheets in locked boxes instead of sealed paper boxes for certain countries including Korea, following cases of test paper leaks.
ACT is a representative standard test for high school achievement in the United States, along with the more widely taken Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for college admissions. Comprised of English, math, reading and science tests, it is taken in 130 countries.
In 2013, the SAT was cancelled in Korea, a first-time cancellation for an entire country, after allegations surfaced of widespread cheating.
By John Redmond
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Turkey in Seoul invite guests to the Turkic Culture Festival at the National Museum of Korea beginning Friday.
Themed "Turkey Day," the event will feature a performance by celebrated multi-instrumentalist Burhan Ocal and the Istanbul Oriental Ensemble at the Yang Theater from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday.
Turkish Ambassador Arslan Hakan Okcal will host "Turkish Literature from Korean Perspective" featuring Park Bum-shin and Lee Nana in the auditorium at 3:30 p.m.
There will also be the "Karagoz Shadow Play" for kids by Emin Seyer in the auditorium at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Another highlight is a screening of 2011 Turkish film "Love Likes Coincidences" directed by Omer Faruk Sorak in the auditorium at 2:50 p.m. Friday.
An ethnic dress and photography exhibition will be on display in the lobby of Theater Yang all week.
For ticket information and reservations, visit turkicfest.kr or call (02) 32216-1185.
By John Redmond
The Irish Association of Korea (IAK) will host "Half a World Away," an event that will outline the influence some Irish nationals have had on the Korean Peninsula, at the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon, Seoul, Saturday.
It will also remember the brave people who fought and lost their lives in the Korean War.
The event will be opened by Irish Ambassador to Korea Aingeal O'Donoghue and feature a brief presentation on the IAK by its chairman Andrew Kilbride. The day will begin with a breakfast in the hotel's third-floor Cosmos Hall at 10 a.m.
The first of two talks will follow, beginning with writer and scholar Dr. Kevin O'Rourke, who has been a resident of Korea since the 1960s.
O'Rourke, whose most recent book is "William George Aston in Korea," will speak on the first Irish in Korea and the history and contributions of Irish people over the ages. This is an account of the life and work of the first Irish person to live in Korea.
The second talk and presentation will feature James Durney, an Irish author who has written two books on the Irish in the Korean War.
A bus tour guided by authors Andrew Salmon and Durney, themed "Memorial of the Irish dead of the Korean War," will leave from the hotel. It will include a visit to some of the famous places where Irishmen fought and died in the Korean War.
The IAK is a nonprofit voluntary group that promotes Irish culture in Korea through events catering to Irish residents and also giving Koreans and others the opportunity to experience and learn more about Ireland and Irish culture.
There are about 1,000 Irish citizens living in Korea at any one time.
The buses will return to Seoul about 8 p.m. The cost of the event is 10,000 won.
A fundraiser music night for the IAK will be held at Rocky Mountain Tavern in Itaewon starting at 8 p.m.
For those who wish to attend just the night event, the entrance fee is 10,000 won.
The Hamilton Hotel is at 179 Itaewon-no, Yongsan-gu. Cosmos Hall is on the third floor.
Poroshenko: Ukraine did everything for visa-free regime with EU, it is for EU to make decision
Ukraine fulfilled all conditions for establishing visa-free regime with the European Union, and now the decision rests with the EU, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
"I firmly insist that Ukraine did everything it needed to do. It is not up to Ukraine anymore," he said in Ljubljana on Tuesday, replying to an Interfax question regarding the chances for the EU decision to grant visa-free regime to Ukrainians before November 24.
He said that Ukraine reached an agreement with the European side that prior to the summit on November 24 the EU should achieve a consensus on the issue of the European Parliament's adoption of this decision.
"The European Parliament president, its leaders and factions voiced a great support of Ukraine in this issue, and delay is related to the so-called mechanism of suspension of visa-free regimes," the Ukrainian president said.
Poroshenko expressed hope that this mechanism will be eventually agreed on and that introduction of the Ukrainian issue to the European Parliament and voting for visa-free regime will take place before the summit.
"I would like to ask particularly to support Ukraine in this process both inside and outside of the country," he said.
By Lee Ying-yuan
Global warming and the El Nino phenomenon have contributed to record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events around the world. In July this year, the global average temperatures taken over land and ocean surfaces were the highest for any month in 137 years of record-keeping. In June, the temperature in Taipei reached 38.7 degrees Celsius, the highest in a century. Another recent anomaly is a marked decline in the frequency of steady rainfall. Instead, we were hit with a series of torrential downpours that caused many flash floods, significantly damaging our infrastructure, ecosystem and crops. More and more evidence is showing that climate change is already happening. If we don't take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now, we will end up paying much more later on.
Unbounded economic growth and excessive emissions have led to climate change which threatens human survival. Governments around the world realize this, and that's why the landmark Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, bringing all nations together under a common cause that drives global mitigation actions with long-term goals. Climate change is arguably the single most important issue that puts the future of humanity at stake. As a member of the international community, Taiwan cannot be a mere spectator to this problem and must come up with feasible solutions to live up to the name of Formosa, "beautiful island."
We enacted the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act in July last year, setting our long-term target to reduce our emissions by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2050. Taiwan is among only a few countries in the world that have written into law a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, we've come to realize the need to further increase our energy efficiency and promote energy conservation, transform our industrial structure, as well as diversify our energy supply by tapping into renewable energies, such as solar, wind, biogas production using pig farm waste based on the concept of circular economy. We anticipate that by 2025, 20 percent of our energy will come from renewable energy. We have also established under the Executive Yuan the Office of Energy and Carbon Reduction whose main task is to plan overall national energy policy and promote conversion to newer forms of energy as well as GHG reduction. The office coordinates efforts among government agencies and also establishes partnerships between the central and local governments to reduce carbon and develop clean energy.
In her inaugural address in May, President Tsai Ing-wen made it clear that Taiwan will not be absent from the global efforts to mitigate climate change and that her government will regularly review goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. With this ambition, we enacted the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act, with periodic five-year regulatory goals that help enhance climate-change-response capacity building and promote efficient management in reducing greenhouse gas emissions across government agencies. This approach is in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement which encourages all countries to strengthen their determination to reduce emissions with the aim to achieve the long-term goal by the year 2050.
We only have one Earth and there is only one Taiwan. Therefore, we cannot take the issue of climate change lightly as we proactively respond to and support global initiatives. Climate change is a global issue that transcends national boundaries. The actions we take today could have profound impacts on the lives of future generations. Climate change requires not only national but global solutions. That is why governments cannot do this alone. I sincerely urge the international community to recognize and support Taiwan's determination to gain meaningful participation in the UNFCCC and become part of the global climate network. We are willing to share our environmental protection experiences and contribute to international efforts. Together with friendly nations, we will join hands to safeguard a sustainable earth.
The writer is the minister of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration.
Typhoon fighter jet
By Yi Whan-woo
The United Kingdom unveiled one of its key warplanes, the Typhoon, during a joint drill with South Korea and the United States at the U.S. air base in Osan, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday.
Four Typhoon fighter jets conducted flights here for the first time, in an aerial exercise titled "Invincible Shield" along with South Korea's F-15Ks and American F-16s over the air base.
The Typhoon is a twin-engine jet capable of multi-role combat, including air-to-air and air-to-ground strikes. It can carry the Taurus 350 radar-evading cruise missiles.
The plane has a maximum speed of mach 2.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) has been operating Typhoons in the Middle East in recent years, including in strike missions against ISIS.
The trilateral aerial drill began on Nov. 4. It will run until Thursday.
The RAF also deployed a Voyager tanker aircraft and C-17 Globemaster tactical transport aircraft.
"The three countries' air forces are especially focusing on countering incoming attacks from enemy planes and striking command posts and other key facilities of the foes through simulation," a South Korean air force major said. "We expect the drill will help enhance operation of aerial weaponry in a mutual manner."
Citing that the U.K. is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, the RAF said the country will put forward efforts to protect peace on the Korean Peninsula.
The RAF, however, said its participation at the joint exercise is not related to heightened tension on the peninsula due to North Korea's military provocations.
On Oct. 31, U.K. Ambassador to South Korea Charles Hay also said the exercise is not particularly aimed at countering North Korean attacks but rather a "part of our big-picture strategy" in the Asia-Pacific region.
After learning about the plan for the joint exercise, the North Korean foreign ministry asked the U.K. in September to call off such a plan. Pyongyang claimed that it would be "an invasive action."
The RAF will move the Typhoons and other aircraft to Japan in mid-November for a bilateral exercise with the Japanese air force, according to the military sources.
U.S. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton will intensify sanctions causing real pain to North Korea as she's determined not to allow Pyongyang to acquire a deliverable nuclear weapons capability, a top foreign policy adviser said.
"She believes that we simply cannot and will not allow North Korea to obtain a deliverable nuclear weapon, which would be a direct threat to the U.S.," said Laura Rosenberger, one of Clinton's closest foreign policy brains, in an interview with the Voice of America.
"She also believes that we need to work with our allies to increase the pressure on North Korea, so that it understands that its only choice is to give up its nuclear program. So far, they have been sanctioned, but not to a degree that has inflicted pain," she said.
Clinton will also work with China to impose significant additional pressure on the North, Rosenberger said.
"That means doing some things that China may not like ? taking a look at our defense posture and making sure we are doing everything we need to do to protect the U.S. and our allies from the threat North Korea poses," Rosenberger said, referring to measures like the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system.
Beijing has strongly protested the planned deployment, seeing the system, especially its powerful "X-band radar" as a threat to its security interests, despite repeated assurances from Washington and Seoul that the system is designed only to cope with North Korean threats.
"It is incumbent on China to make sure that the threat from North Korea is removed, so that China does not face that same kind of pressure from the U.S.," Rosenberger said.
Clinton's policy on the North boils down to imposing stronger sanctions while remaining open to diplomacy.
Former Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, who is considered the No. 1 candidate for defense secretary, also said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency last month that the U.S. should not reopen negotiations with North Korea as long as it shows no interest in denuclearization.
Flournoy also said that additional sanctions are the only way to make the North consider denuclearization.
Calling North Korea China's problem, Republican candidate Donald Trump has urged Beijing to use its influence to rein in the recalcitrant neighbor. Still, he has also expressed his willingness to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
"Trump is willing to negotiate from a position of strength with China to see if we can come to an agreement. He wants to say it is not in China's interests to have this reckless, rogue nuclear regime on its border, especially when it is showing signs of strain," Alexander Gray, a senior defense adviser to Trump, also told VOA.
"Trump is willing to look at the (U.S.-China) relationship holistically and see if Beijing can play a constructive role with Pyongyang," he was quoted as saying. (Yonhap)
By Yi Whan-woo
Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the next U.S. administration is likely to press North Korea harder and possibly be more open to military options in countering its threats, analysts said Tuesday.
Noting that the Kim Jong-un regime carried out four of its five nuclear tests during Obama's term from January 2009, the experts said Clinton will scrap his policy of "strategic patience" if she is elected.
They speculated that Clinton will adopt an Iran model of widening sanctions against North Korea despite risks over conflict with China.
In the case of Trump, who has been uttering crude remarks, he may threaten to attack North Korea although he is likely to practice an isolationist policy and try to intervene less in security issues on the Korean Peninsula, the experts said.
"Clinton will seek for a complete blockade of North Korea, just like the U.S. did to Iran before it decided to curb its nuclear program," said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong University. "She will continue to do so unless Pyongyang comes up with a prudent policy for denuclearization. It's too evident that her plan will require China to exercise more leverage on North Korea and may lead to a possible rift in Washington-Beijing relations, but she may push her goal regardless."
Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University, agreed with Park.
"Given its past activities, it's convincing to say that Pyongyang will keep defying U.N. Security Council sanctions and pursue advances in its nuclear and ballistic missile programs," he said. "A stick over a carrot will be Clinton's option for sure."
The analysts questioned the sincerity of Trump's comments during the campaign in June that he will invite the young North Korean dictator to the U.S. if he becomes the next U.S. president.
"Trump has been unpredictable in his words and behavior throughout the campaign and we can't buy every word he says," Park said.
Kim Yong-hyun said that Trump's remarks on a possible invitation of Kim Jong-un should be interpreted as a different way of "looking down on him."
"Trump is not dealing with Kim Jong-un seriously, which means he can threaten and also use other verbal attacks against him and North Korea at any time depending on the situation," the professor said. "Pyongyang is likely to get on a President Trump's nerves and he definitely will not go easy on the reclusive regime if that happens."
Meanwhile, the experts speculated that drawing further support from China on sanctions against North Korea will be "unrealistic." They said the U.S. may possibly propose a one-on-one dialogue with North Korea in the long term for its denuclearization.
Although the Obama administration downplayed the informal talks between former U.S. nuclear negotiators and North Korean diplomats, Park said "It indicates that Washington is interested in resuming dialogue with Pyongyang even if it refuses to give up its nuclear ambitions."
The Obama government has been insisting on Pyongyang's denuclearization as a precondition to any dialogue.
Min Byoung-chul, second from right in the second row, chairman of Sunfull Movement, poses with lawmakers who won awards for using polite language, as well as student members of the organization, at the National Assembly, southern Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of Sunfull Movement
By Choi Ha-young
Student members of Sunfull Movement, a non-profit organization promoting positive language culture, selected 31 lawmakers for using polite language in National Assembly meetings, Monday.
At the award ceremony, four lawmakers received grand prizes: Cho Kyung-tae from Saenuri Party, Pyo Chang-won from Democratic Party of Korea, Yoo Sung-yup from People's Party and Chung Sye-kyun, the speaker of the National Assembly.
The 134 students monitored Assembly meeting minutes from the beginning of the 20th Assembly at the end of May to October, and picked the 31 lawmakers.
They reviewed each lawmaker's speech, adding points for courteous words and subtracting points for coarse words. Lawmakers who often expressed compliments, encouragement and gratitude got high scores, according to Min Byoung-chul, chairman of the Sunfull Movement.
"We hope politicians discuss policy and vision, not exchange crude words," Min told The Korea Times. "If politicians step ahead to speak in polite language, it would encourage the youth to build an upstanding personality."
Min, a former Konkuk University professor and renowned English education expert, launched the Sunfull Movement in 2007. He coined the term Sunfull, which means "good reply." Through an online campaign to write positive comments, Min aims to counter cyberbullying and prevent school violence.
Seo Chang-seok, vice president at KT's network strategy division, unveils the company's fifth-generation (5G) vision, in a press conference at its headquarters in central Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of KT
By Lee Min-hyung
KT has unveiled a plan to commercialize its much-hyped fifth-generation (5G) services by 2019, pushing it one year ahead from its earlier schedule amid mobile carriers' toughening competition for the next key growth area.
This comes as the company announced Tuesday its 5G technical specifications after reaching a consensus with global network and mobile chipsets manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Intel and Qualcomm.
"We have been on an upward track to push for setting a global standard for the upcoming 5G era after we established the 5G-SIG in November last year," Seo Chang-seok, vice president at the firm's network strategy division, said in a press conference.
"The 5G specifications will serve as a backbone for our 5G demonstration plan at the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018," he added.
The nation's three mobile carriers SK Telecom and LG Uplus are are other two are in a cutthroat rivalry for leadership of the upcoming 5G era, with the existing long-term-evolution (LTE) network market reaching a saturation point.
In the third-quarter regulatory filing, LG Uplus said LTE users account for some 87 percent of its mobile customers, followed by 74.5 percent of KT. SK Telecom came in at the third place with 69.8 percent.
For this reason, the carriers are in a race to find new revenue sources by taking advantage of their technological expertise in network solutions. Those areas include the Internet of Things (IoT), smart homes and virtual reality (VR), all of which are expected to gain more momentum with the 5G network system.
The company previously said network speed is expected to grow ten times faster by 2020 than the current mobile era, amid growing needs for processing massive datasets in real-time.
As the 5G technology has yet to generate tangible outcomes, all the carriers are expanding their partnerships with global network solutions giants to create standards for the next-generation network.
"We hope all the local mobile carriers, network equipment manufacturers and research bodies join hands over our 5G standardization," he said.
A model promotes Dongbu Daewoo Electronics' new wall-mounted Mini washing machine equipped with energy and environmentally friendly features. / Courtesy of Dongbu Daewoo Electronics
By Lee Min-hyung
Dongbu Daewoo Electronics has launched a wall-mounted washing machine featuring improved energy efficiency and high-end design.
The Seoul-based firm said Tuesday the latest Mini washer lineup focuses on enhancing eco- and energy-friendly functions.
The Mini series has been the firm's key revenue source since its launch in 2012, gaining steady attention from customers here and abroad. The Mini is the world's first and only wall-mounted washer and is touted as one of the top 10 washing machines in the Chinese market, according to Beijing-based market researcher China Market Monitor.
The new model can reduce water consumption by 60 percent, saving users some 86 percent on electricity charges compared with other conventional drum washing machines, according to the company.
Dongbu Daewoo decided to launch the new version to meet rising demand from people living alone. In addition, the machine's sales rate also shows that more households have a tendency to buy a second washing machine, the company said.
The firm expressed optimism for the Mini's continued growth, as the device is equipped with other key functions such as a "speed-up" mode, allowing users to finish laundry in only 15 minutes.
The firm said the new model will help the company accumulate a sales record of some 130,000 units in 2016.
Dongbu Daewoo has sought to differentiate the product by adopting chrome-coated wide doors, giving it a more luxurious image.
"The wall-mounted drum washing machine, the Mini, has become a mega-hit by selling more than 100,000 in three years since its launch, without any marketing activities," a Dongbu Daewoo official said. "We are going to lead the global washer market by launching more and more space-efficient and economical products without compromising on its functions as a washing machine."
The company said it has a 12-year warranty program for the inverter motor used for the new Mini.
The model comes with a price tag of about 499,000 won ($439) here.
Good shoes take you good places but SHOOPEN shoes take you to Song Ji Hyo!
Debuted in Hong Dae about two years ago, Asia's first shoes 'SPA' brand, SHOOPEN recently spread its wings to penetrate the international market by bringing fast fashion to the global fashionistas. Upholding this international vision, they have recently opened it's first store in Malaysia.
Gracing the opening of the first SHOOPEN store in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, is none other than the 'Running Woman' of Korea, Miss Song Ji Hyo. This was only her second visit to Malaysia, first with her Running Man casts few years ago. She could not hide her excitement and happiness seeing thousands of fans flooded the shopping mall to welcome her. Ji Hyo thanked everyone for what she felt as the warmest welcome she had ever receieved.
During a short Q&A session, she shared with fans who already waited to catch a glimpse of her since early in the morning on her latest projects. She mentioned that she is currently in preparation of her new upcoming drama that will be aired in the month of November. She further wishes that the fans will continue to give their support and expect a very great acting from her.
She further shared some tips on keeping a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Yup, you are not reading this wrongly- it was good sleeping and good eating. Hmm...shall we try? Maybe we can magically transformed into the goddess-like Song Ji Hyo soon. When asked about her favourite Malaysian dishes, she stated that she loved to eat everything. Quoting her: 'Give me some recommendation, and I will try it', so fans...let's flood her with recommendations on good and amazing delicacies.
Before SHOOPEN invites shoppers to walk into the store and pick their favourite items, Ji Hyo bid her final goodbye by thanking the fans and visitors who have came to the grand opening of the store and guaranteed that SHOOPEN shoes will bring out the fashionista in you. Be a Ji Hyo fan....Be a SHOOPEN.
Kpopstarz would like to thank SHOOPEN Malaysia and Edelman for the media coverage invitation.
Written by: Amal. A | Photos credit: Shoopen Malaysia, Amal. A and Yatt.
Lee Jong Suk will be coming to Singapore to have his first fan meeting "VARIETY" in Singapore on 12 November 2016.
Lee Jong Suk is a South Korean actor and model. He debuted in 2005 as a runway model, and is well known to be the youngest male model ever from the Seoul Collection program for Seoul Fashion Week.
The first drama he participated in 2010 is called 'Princess Prosecutor'. Since he debuted, he had acted in 9 Drama Series and 6 movies. Lee Jong Suk has many popular dramas include 'Pinocchio', 'I Hear Your Voice' and 'School 2013'. From the drama 'School 2013', Lee Jong Suk got award 'Best New Actor' on 2012 KBS Drama Awards and last year he got 'Best Actor' Awards from the drama series called 'Pinocchio' on 2015(8th) Korea Drama Awards.
Lee Jong Suk was awarded a role in the highly acclaimed MBC drama 'W' recently. He was called 'Kang-Chul' in this drama. With this super successful drama 'W', he will be touring Asia. 2016 Lee Jong Suk Fan Meeting VARIETY will be touring Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore. According to the news of this Fan Meeting in Korea, all the 3,000 tickets were sold out within 5 minutes.
Lee Jong Suk will be having his first ever Fan Meeting in Singapore with all his Fans on 12 November 2016! Fans can anticipate an unforgettable and exciting evening as he will be performing a few songs and game!
2016 LEE JONG SUK FANMEETING "VARIETY"IN SINGAPORE
Event Information
Event: LEE JONG SUK FANMEETING "VARIETY"IN SINGAPORE
Date: 12 November 2016
Time: 7.00pm
Venue: MegaBox Convention Centre @ BigBox (Level 3)
Duration: 100 Minutes
Ticket Price: Cat.1 $238; Cat.2 $188; Cat.3 $128
Ticketing Website: www.megaboxtickets.com
Online Ticket Payment Method: Credit Card / Debit Card from Mastercard / Visa
2016 LEE JONG SUK FANMEETING "VARIETY"IN SINGAPORE is proudly brought to you by IME Productions Singapore.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and President of Slovenia Borut Pahor after the talks have adopted a joint declaration on cooperation between the countries, in which, in particular, defined common security issues, according to the official website of the Ukrainian president.
"The document defines prospects for further development of bilateral cooperation, particularly in trade and economic, scientific and technical and other fields. The parties decided on cooperation within international organizations, as well as defined the prospects of cooperation in the field of humanitarian demining. The document notes the importance of research of the events, which are common in the history of Ukraine and Slovenia in the context of the 100th anniversary of the World War I," a statement reads.
The declaration defines the priority areas of bilateral cooperation, which include, in particular, cooperation in the field of security to overcome and prevent new challenges and threats, combination of effort required for the termination of Russia's aggression in Donbas and the restoration of Ukraine's sovereignty in Crimea, the development of inter-parliamentary, sectoral and regional cooperation, the further deepening of ties between Ukraine and Slovenia in cultural and humanitarian areas.
As reported, Poroshenko is on an official visit in Slovenia.
KBS2 has prepared the drama Hwarang to air in December to replace "Sweet Stranger and Me" as Monday and Tuesday night drama. Hwarang tells the story of a group of five handsome warriors during era of the kingdom of Silla.
KBS has released the posters of characters in the new drama Hwarang that tells the story of five handsome warriors in the kingdom of Silla era. The posters, which were released last Friday, Nov. 4, depicted its five lead male characters with two female casts according to official release from the KBS.
The three main characters are played by actor Park Seo-Joon, actress Go Ara with Seo Ye-Ji who plays as princess Sook-Myung. The other cast are actor actor Do Ji-Han as well as members of three Korean idol groups Shinees Choi Min-Ho, BTS Kim Tae-Hyung and ZEAs Park Hyung-Sik
Since the KBS announced the Hwarang drama project in March, there have been a high expectations regarding the drama as reported by Dio Deo News . Its story is based on the actual group of elite young men in the Silla dynasty which ruled most part of the ancient Korea for almost 1,000 years since the 5 BC to 935 AD. The shooting itself took six months to complete since the end of March to early September.
Silla is one of the longest ruling kingdom in ancient Korea before Joseon kingdom was founded. Its long ruling was far beyond the Goryeo and Baekje, and mainly because of its success to establish an elite units of young men from aristorcrat and noble families known as Hwarang.
These young men were recruited to train in military arts along with various arts and cultural aspects. The historical records of Hwarang, which literally mean flowering knights was found in the chronicle of Korean three kingdoms (= Samguk Sagi).
The drama follows the story of group of five Hwarang and treated them as the origin of the flower boys.
Watch the behind the scene of the shooting as the five Hwarang engage in the interesting experience below:
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs Didier Reynders have discussed the prospect of introducing visa free regime between Ukraine and the European Union in Brussels.
"The sides discussed the introduction of visa free regime between Ukraine and the EU. Mr. Reynders confirmed that Ukraine has implemented absolutely all requirements of the visa liberalization action plan. Belgium is ready to support the positive decision for Ukraine. This will happen as soon as the three European institutions settle the mechanism for possible suspension of the visa free regime for third countries," the press service of the Ukrainian deputy prime minister said after the meeting.
The sides also welcomed stirring up political dialog between Ukraine and Belgium, including between parliaments, mutually beneficial cooperation of the two countries as part of international organizations, restoration of the upward pace in trade and economic relations and a large potential of cooperation in culture.
Klympush-Tsintsadze and Reynders paid attention to the situation on the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and the state of the implementation of Minsk agreements. The Ukrainian deputy prime minister expressed gratitude to Belgium for becoming the co-author of the UN resolution on violations of human rights in Crimea annexed by Russia.
Germany would provide a loan of up to EUR 32.5 million to Ukraine for the period of up to 30 years and the grace period of 10 years under the second phase of the project on increase of energy efficiency in power transmission (modernization of transformer substations) by the end of this year, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine reported on Tuesday.
"The project is intended to increase quality of power supply thanks to restoration of transformer substations and strengthening power lines," the ministry said.
The ministry said that the agreements were reached during a visit of a ministry's delegation to Berlin on November 3 and November 4 and negotiations with representatives of Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, KfW Bankengruppe and GIZ.
The total volume of the financial assistance from Germany to be provided by the end of 2016 would be EUR 72 million, the head of the Ukrainian delegation and Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maksym Nefyodov said.
Some EUR 16 million is provided for developing democracy, civil society, public administration, regional development and decentralization, EUR 36 million for energy efficiency and EUR 20 million to build and reconstruct houses for internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Along with this loan, up to EUR 24.5 of financial assistance million would be provided as grants for support of the implementation of projects aimed at strengthening Ukrainian local self-government, construction and reconstruction of houses for IDPs, and the rest of the funds is technical assistance for decentralization, public administration reforms and local energy efficiency projects.
The ministry said that since 2002, Germany has provided EUR 500 million of assistance to Ukraine.
Detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) jointly with prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) on Tuesday detained former deputy director general for strategy and marketing of state-run enterprise Electrotyazhmash.
"He is suspected of committing a crime described in Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 2 of Article 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (criminal offense committed by a group of persons and abuse of authority or office caused any grave consequences). The citizen was detained in Kharkiv. The court will select the pretrial detention measures, if any," NABU said.
In addition, a head of two commercial enterprises also involved in the embezzlement scheme was notified that he is suspected of committing a crime under Parr 5 of Article 27, Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 2 of Article 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
"His location is being established," NABU said.
During an investigation NABU revealed a scheme using which officials of Electrotyazhmash under collusion with heads of two shell companies in 2014-2015 sold a DC engine almost at the production cost (UAH 1.39 million) and then the engine was resold to Kazakhstan at over $3 million. The enterprise saw losses of UAH 37.2 million.
"The pretrial investigation is underway, measures to establish other possible companions in the crime are being taken," NABU said.
The press service of Electrotyazhmash told Interfax-Ukraine that they learnt about detention of former deputy director Roman Dovhy from media reports.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has started his first official visit to the Republic of Slovenia at the invitation of this country's president, Borut Pahor, the Ukrainian leader's press service reported.
The visit program includes Poroshenko's talks with Pahor, which are expected to result in the signing of several bilateral documents.
"Petro Poroshenko will hold meetings with Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia Miroslav Cerar and Chairman of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Brglez. The Ukrainian president and the first lady are also scheduled to meet with Mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Jankovic," the report says.
In addition, the Ukrainian president is scheduled to meet with heads of leading Slovenian companies, including those operating on the Ukrainian market.
"Poroshenko will also speak with the Ukrainian community and take part in the unveiling of a monument to Hryhoriy Skovoroda in Ljubljana," the presidential press service said.
Private media groups in Malawi have threatened to stop reporting news about President Peter Mutharika and his cabinet ministers if he continues to intimidate journalists.
They say they are fed up with the intimidation of journalists and insults from the president.
Mr Mutharika recently described the media as disgusting, saying it peddled nonsense and garbage.
Journalists have in the past complained about the slow progress through parliament of an Access to Information bill.
Follow Us on Facebook @LadunLiadi; Instagram @LadunLiadi; Twitter @LadunLiadi; Youtube @LadunLiadiTV for updates
Ukraine set to discuss release of prisoners at humanitarian subgroup meeting in Minsk on Nov 8-9
The humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas will converge in Minsk on November 8-9 to address the release of prisoners, Kyiv said.
"The release of hostages will be the focal point of the humanitarian subgroup, which will be working in Minsk for two days, on November 8 and 9," Ukrainian representative to the humanitarian subgroup, Verkhovna Rada First Deputy Speaker Iryna Gerashchenko said on Facebook.
She said she had been meeting with families of the Ukrainians held by Russia and the self-proclaimed Donbas republics for several days.
Gerashchenko said a few hours ago that she was going to Minsk.
In case of her election as U.S. president, Clinton to carry out pragmatic line towards Russia
United States Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton understands that there cannot be a war between Russia and the U.S. and is not interested in a confrontation with Moscow, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who is considered Clinton's close associate, said.
Commenting in an interview with Interfax on the statements of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump alleging that relations with Russia may drastically worsen if Clinton is elected, McFaul said: "I think the claim that the fear-mongering that Trump himself and Trump supports say to scare American voters that Secretary Clinton is going to start a war with Russia is completely absurd, completely has nothing to do with the reality. Only a total crazy person would start a war with Russia."
He said that Clinton understands that there will be no war between the U.S. and Russia, "she is not crazy."
"It is a much more simple fact that Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, except for maybe the U.S., and mutual assured destruction still exists," he said. McFaul recalled that this reality has existed for decades and guaranteed that there would never be a direct military conflict between the U.S. and Russia.
In addition to that, he said, "I personally don't think that Secretary Clinton supports a hard line against Russia."
"I think she takes a very pragmatic approach to defend America's national interests and security and economic interests of our allies," McFaul said.
McFaul is confident that a goal is of primary importance for Clinton when developing a policy, and only afterwards will she determine a strategy regarding a certain country, including Russia.
"She's not going to become president to say "it is my goal to improve relations with Russia". What is she's going to do instead is she is going to say that "it is my goal with Russia to accomplish policy items A, B and C." And then she is going to decide which strategy, which instrument of policy [will achieve that]. Sometimes it will be engagement and sometimes [it will] be containment," he said.
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary
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Andres Pico.
KCET's resident historian Nathan Masters was surprised to find that no one had written much about the first time Los Angeles voted for president, in 1852. So he went back to the primary sources and reconstructed the time. The election was between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, neither of whom had apparently ever been to Los Angeles, a village outpost of 2,000 people in the lightly populated, two-year-old American state of California.
The scene of actual voting is interesting for how different it was. In those days, the men allowed to vote cast ballots for electors pledged to the candidates. One of the electors for Pierce was one of my favorite early LA characters, Andres Pico, a Californio who at one time had controlled most of the San Fernando Valley as his rancho. He led an army of Californios against the United States during the war with Mexico, and most famously surrendered the province of Alta California to Col. John C. Fremont in an adobe house that stood where Lankershim Boulevard now passes through Universal City. The Capitulation of Cahuenga occurred on Jan. 13, 1847. Five years later, Pico was a presidential elector and a Democratic Party lawmaker, although he never did pick up English. His brother, Pio Pico, was the last Mexican governor of California and a noteworthy Los Angeles figure in his own right.
The election was on Tuesday, Nov. 2. Voters had to come to a polling location and be visually identified by officials. From Masters' post on the KCET website:
n Los Angeles itself, a crowd gathered that morning outside the adobe county courthouse at Spring Street and Franklin Alley. The contest between Pierce and Scott, fought over slavery and other sectional issues, might not have stirred much passion among Angelenos, but the races for state and local office certainly had. Just to reach the polling window, voters had to push through the throng of candidates and other campaigners huddled around the courthouse. Inside, behind the ballot box, the election officials inspector Alexander Bell and judges John G. Downey and Ignacio del Valle tried to manage the chaos.
Because California did not use voter rolls until 1866, these officials made a spot determination about each voters eligibility. Despite spirited arguments from the crowd about each voters citizenship and residency status, most white men who presented themselves before the officials were allowed to vote, as were most Mexican-Americans, made U.S. citizens by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Indians were not permitted, however, nor were African-Americans (though Afro-Mexicans like Pio Pico were). Women regardless of ethnicity could not vote, either; they would not win suffrage in California until 1911. The ballots themselves were usually pre-printed tickets supplied by local Democratic or Whig partisans. To vote a straight party ticket, a voter simply placed the slip of paper in the ballot box. To cross party lines in a race, the voter simply crossed out the pre-supplied name and wrote in his preferred candidate...
Pierce's slate of four electors won Los Angeles County with 571 to 574 votes, to 496-498 for Scotts slate.
Chief of the Main Department of the National Police of Ukraine in Odesa region Giorgi Lortkipanidze has resigned.
Lortkipanidze published relevant address on the website of the regional police branch.
"It was an honor to work as Odesa regional police chief. Everything in life has a logical beginning, continuation and an end. A year and a half since my appointment as head of Odesa police I decided to leave this post," the statement says.
Lortkipanidze explained his decision by complicated personnel situation in the Main Department of the National Police in Odesa region. According to him, after the reform, the regional police department is lacking 40% of personnel.
"To date, personnel shortage in the police is more than a thousand people. Meanwhile, the evaluation commission has ruled to sack another 400 police officers," Lortkipanidze said.
He added that there is a serious shortage of investigators. At present, one investigator has to deal with 200 to 400 cases.
Also, the former head of regional police acknowledged that the crime situation in the region has deteriorated in the past few years. However, the regional police team has been doing and will continue to do its best to curb crime in the region, and this work starts to produce results, he added.
At the end of his statement, Lortkipanidze said that as a citizen of Ukraine he remains in the service of the Ukrainian state and the country's supreme commander.
As reported, Former Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Giorgi Lortkipanidze, who received Ukrainian citizenship on June 11, 2016, took on the duties of police chief in Ukraine's Odesa region on June 15.
PRESS RELEASE
Hybrid Rice Can Increase Crop Yield, To Feed a Growing World
Nov. 7, 2016 (EIRNS)One of the important discussions that took place at a meeting on Saturday, Nov. 5 in Kunming, China, was held among agriculture ministers from the China-Central and Eastern Europe countries, (CCEE). Under consideration was the critical contribution to ending world hunger that can be made by hybrid rice. As reported in todays Global Times, Chinas "father of hybrid rice," Yuan Longping, stated that hybrid rice could help feed 70 million more people worldwide.
"Hybrid rice will play an important role in the new century," Yuan said, "in terms of food safety and the furtherance of world peace." Statistics reported in the article, from the United Nations Food Program, which most likely underestimate the problem, though still dramatic, show that about 795 million people do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life.
Yuan took on the argument by critics who say that the focus should be more on quality than quantity, to which he replied that both should be improved. The "green" argument was presented, that the hybrid rice should not be promoted because it requires fertilizer and pesticides, which harm the "environment." (Never mind the "environment" of starving people...)
Yuan reports that hybrid rice can increase crop yield by 20%.
"Rice is the staple food for more than half of the worlds population," he said. Rising population will require a 60% increase in rice production by 2030. Today, a one-hectare rice field can sustain 27 people. "That number has to reach 43 by 2050," he calculated. Today, about half of Chinas rice fields use hybrid rice species, producing 60% of the rice. Using Yuans hybrid rice, China has increased output from 5.69 billion tons in 1950, to 19.47 billion tons last year.
According to Yuan, more than 4,000 technicians and agricultural officials from more than 100 countries have had training at the China National Hybrid R&D Center in central Hunan Province. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent congratulations to the meeting, in which he said that China will align its development strategies with the CEE countries
PRESS RELEASE
NATO Chief Promises Mass Defense Reinforcement Amid Tensions with Russia
Nov. 7, 2016 (EIRNS)NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Times of London that NATO troops will be put on a higher state of alert.
"We have seen Russia being much more active in many different ways.... We have also seen Russia using propaganda in Europe among NATO allies, and that is exactly the reason why NATO is responding. We are responding with the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War,"
Stoltenberg said.
While he did not give precise numbers, U.K. Permanent Representative to NATO Adam Thomson told the newspaper that some 300,000 troops would be affected by the measures, with the aim of shortening response times from half a year to two months.
These troops will back up the current NATO fast-response troops that have a response time of several days.
PRESS RELEASE
Russia and China Sign Broad Array of Bilateral Cooperation Agreements
Nov. 7, 2016 (EIRNS)The many agreements signed today between Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang do reflect, as Medvedev put it, the depth of their strategic partnership, and their determination to positively affect the course of human development by linking the One Belt One Road Initiative with the Eureasian Economic Union.
Of interest was the agreement to increase the share of national currencies in settlements, given the yuans recognition as a reserve currency, as Medvedev pointed out. Li Keqiang emphasized that China intends to maintain the stability of the yuan exchange rate within a "reasonable range," as this is key for the development of bilateral cooperation. He firmly stated that, "the Chinese yuan is based on the economic power of China; in this sense, there is no ground for constant devaluation of the yuan." [emphasis added]
In this context, Russia is considering establishing a preferential trade regime with China, Medvedev said, although this will require hard work. "It requires agreements on a number of highly sensitive issues," he added. The Russian Prime Minister did say that the two countries will seek to increase bilateral trade to $200 billion over the next three to seven years.
Medvedev also said he feared a collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and criticized efforts to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, as a replacement for the WTO.
Below are some of the agreements signed:
With hundreds of prominent authors including George R.R. Martin, Cheryl Strayed, Maureen Johnson and Salman Rushdie planning to pull the lever Tuesday for Hillary Clinton, some authors are voicing their support for Donald Trump.
Most surprising, perhaps, is Slovenian writer Slavoj Zizek, the Marxist philosopher and provocateur. Zizek raised eyebrows recently when he explained that hed vote for Trump if he were an American citizen. (He is not.)
Trump endorsers whose names might be familiar to bookstore browsers include high-profile conservatives Dinesh DSouza (The End of Racism), Ann Coulter (In Trump We Trust), Roger L. Simon (The Big Fix) and Cal Thomas (What Works).
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A more traditional bloc of Trump supporters is the conservative group Scholars and Writers for America. In September, more than 130 authors authors and academics released a statement expressing their support for the Republican presidential nominee.
While many of the groups members have written books, dont expect to find a lot of poets or novelists in the mix. Many of the pro-Trump authors are academics who have written books with titles like The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Metaphysics: The Fundamentals and Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov.
Some names on the list are familiar ones, at least to political junkies, including former Education secretary Bill Bennett (The Book of Virtues), R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., (The Death of Liberalism) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Treason).
Another Trump supporter is Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip and author of several books. Adams didnt sign the Scholars and Writers for America list; he had previously endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton and Libertarian Gary Johnson before settling on Trump.
The Scholars and Writers for America group has released a statement of unity, which reads in part, A vote for Donald Trump is the only feasible method of defending the principles of freedom, justice and prosperity we hold in common against the most serious threat we have ever faced, a threat that begins to look like the final defeat of republican government, and the permanent decline of the country we love.
The Scholars and Writers for America list includes Conrad Black, the former newspaper publisher of the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times, and author of biographies of Richard Nixon and Franklin Roosevelt. But Black wont be voting for Trump: The Canadian-born British citizen was deported from the United States in 2012 after serving a prison sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.
Not all conservative writers have gotten behind this years Republican nominee, however. Science fiction novelist Orson Scott Card (Enders Game), who doesnt consider himself a Republican despite voting for GOP candidates in the past, had harsh words for the New York billionaire. In a blog post in May, Card wrote, When anybody blocks Trump, what does he do? He gets meaner and nastier.... What words or actions of Trump tell us that he does not have the instincts of a dictator?
And a group called Scholars and Writers Against Trump, made up of Republicans and conservative independents, released an open letter in October urging readers not to vote for the Republican nominee.
The letter was signed by more than 150 authors, including novelist Christopher Buckley (Thank You for Smoking), whose father was conservative thinker William F. Buckley; Thomas Mallon (Watergate); and P.J. ORourke (Parliament of Whores).
But the numbers are on Clintons side when it comes to endorsements from authors. Writers who have said theyre backing the Democrat include John Grisham (The Firm), Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) and Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist).
And in May, a group of authors penned An Open Letter to the American People, which laid out the reasons the writers found Trump to be unqualified to serve as president. More than 450 authors signed the letter including Francine Prose (Blue Angel), Peter Ho Davies (The Fortunes), Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) and Karen Russell (Swamplandia!).
Elon Musks Alien Dreadnought is bringing a German crew on board.
Tesla, the electric car company based in Palo Alto, announced Tuesday that it will buy Grohmann Engineering, based in Prum, Germany, to be renamed Tesla Grohmann Automation.
Grohmann, founded by Chief Executive Klaus Grohman, is a highly regarded supplier of factory automation systems in industries ranging from automobiles to microelectronics. It has outposts around the world, including offices in Charlotte, N.C. and Chandler, Ariz.
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The German company employs about 700 people. Tesla said it expects to add more than 1,000 advanced engineering and technician jobs in Germany over the next two years.
The purchase, for an undisclosed price, fuels Musks ambitions to set new standards in high-volume production and factory automation. Employing armies of robots and infusing his factories with the latest in artificial intelligence technologies, he aims to build the machine that builds the machine or, as hes been calling it lately, the Alien Dreadnought.
Drama aside, Tesla is on a major expansion-and-hiring spree. Grohmann will help Tesla engineer its factories and production lines and supply hard-to-find technical workers.
Geography also plays a role. The European market is important to Tesla, and the deal makes it an indigenous player in Germany, allowing it to form deeper relationships with European customers, suppliers, regulators and politicians.
Tesla said Grohmann will serve as the initial base for something its calling Tesla Advanced Automation Germany, with other locations to follow.
Tesla offered no further details, but could use Grohmann to expand into the broader industrial market with factory automation products and services.
Tesla plans to turn out 500,000 cars in 2018 at its Fremont, Calif., assembly plant, driven mostly by its new Model 3 mass-market sedan. Its building a $5-billion battery plant in Nevada. And, if shareholders approve the deal on Nov. 17, it will merge with SolarCity and get into the business of turning out solar-energy roofs for homes and businesses.
Karl Brauer, analyst at Kelley Blue Book, called the Grohmann deal a good step in addressing Teslas volume aspirations but added that Tesla will need to tackle problems from quality to sales to post-sale support to succeed with the Model 3.
russ.mitchell@latimes.com
Twitter: @russ1mitchell
The presidential campaign just ending may give credence to the notion that truth is stranger than fiction, but that probably wont put a dent in Hollywoods fascination with the political thriller.
The genre has been a staple of moviemaking at least since Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and is certain to remain a staple into the distant future the built-in drama of an electoral campaign is just too irresistible.
For the record: An earlier version of this article referred to actors Frederic March and Edmund OBrien. Their first names are Fredric and Edmond.
Yet thanks to the efforts of the people at Turner Classic Movies, we can state definitively that one era stands above all the rest in its contribution to the field. The 1960s gave us at least five enduring classics, a record that no other decade seems to be able to match. More interestingly, all five on this list were released within a period of three years, 1962 to 1964.
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Gentlemen, you cant fight in here! This is the War Room! Greatest movie line of all time, from Dr. Strangelove.
The five share a few characteristics. Remarkably, theyre all in black and white. That may represent that cinematography formats death rattle, as the spread of color television made Hollywood executives nervous about competing with TV. Or it may reflect the filmmakers sense that the starkness of the palette matched the starkness of the story.
Three of the five are entirely free of pyrotechnics theyre driven by personality and dialogue, not by exploding helicopters. Their narrative arcs are gripping nonetheless. This is expert storytelling by some of the best directors ever. (Two of the five were helmed by the same man, John Frankenheimer, an ace at action pictures but also at extracting dramatic tension from unlikely scenarios.)
Why were the 60s so rich? It may have had to do with the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race, the first since 1948 to seem like a cliffhanger. Kennedys historically razor-thin popular vote margin inspired lasting suspicion that votes had been stolen, especially in Illinois (by the Daley machine in Chicago), and Lyndon Johnsons home state of Texas; that underscored the feeling that democracy was a fragile thing in America. The intensifying Cold War contributed to an atmosphere of paranoia that becomes more pronounced in these pictures as the decade progresses, culminating with the most paranoid film of all time, which tops our list. And of course the period at hand arcs over the Kennedy assassination.
Here are the five listed in rough order of quality, last to first.
5. Advise & Consent, directed by Otto Preminger (1962)
Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning political procedural by Washington journalist Allan Drury, Advise & Consent covers the confirmation battle over a controversial nominee for secretary of State (Henry Fonda). The idea is to lay bare what happens inside the smoke-filled rooms of the Senate, while to outsiders, the whole affair appears to be a battle over ideals.
The movie is made by the performance of Charles Laughton as the obstreperous and underhanded Sen. Seabright Cooley of North Carolina, but good work is turned in by Walter Pidgeon as the Senate Majority Leader, George Grizzard as a very annoyingly ambitious young senator, and Franchot Tone as a president insisting on his prerogative to have his own nominee confirmed. Advise & Consent features several narrative lines that would become curiously familiar in the genre: a president whose death occurs at a dramatically opportune moment, a leading character with a secret past which in this genre in this period almost always involved a nervous breakdown or homosexuality or both. In this case, the movie gets bonus credit in the drama department for creating a gay Mormon character (Don Murray).
4. The Best Man, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (1964)
The script is by Gore Vidal, from his 1960 stage play about a deadlocked convention. The two contestants are Bill Russell, a ruminative idealist based on Adlai Stevenson (Henry Fonda, looking almost identical to his Advise & Consent character), and Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson), a slippery, unprincipled right-winger made of nearly equal parts Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy and John F. Kennedy (who Vidal disliked) here, hes the man with a secret homosexual past. Parts of the scenario have a ripped-from-the-headlines vitality, as when one character alludes to the crazy idea of a negro in the Cabinet a notion put forth in an unguarded moment by Nixons vice presidential running mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, and promptly disavowed.
The films best feature is the crackling dialogue by Vidal. (The nice thing about you, Joe, is you can sound like a liberal, but at heart youre an American.) The oddest feature is the depiction of a single party that can have both an Adlai Stevenson and a Joe McCarthy among its leaders. The worst feature is Fondas soppy performance, which makes Russell seem like a dithering pill. One suspects that Melvyn Douglas, who played Russell in the first Broadway production, better projected the impression that underneath Russells tiresome earnestness beat a heart of hungry ambition.
3. Seven Days in May, directed by John Frankenheimer (1964)
The paranoia is well on the wing in this one, a chronicle of an attempted military coup against a president (Fredric March) who has signed a disarmament pact with the Soviet Union.
First-rate performances by Burt Lancaster as the ringleader, a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a Messiah complex (did Lancaster ever give a bad performance in anything?); Kirk Douglas, as his Marine adjutant-turned-nemesis; Edmond OBrien as an alcoholic senator; and March. For a remarkable moment, look for the scene in which Lancasters Gen. James Mattoon Scott addresses a right-wing convention in New York, using rhetoric spookily similar to what has been heard from a certain political campaign over the last few months.
2. The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer (1962)
This title has entered the political lexicon. Based on an even-better novel by Richard Condon, whose great books seem almost forgotten today, this tells of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner brainwashed by the North Koreans and turned into a political assassin (Laurence Harvey, struggling to hide his English accent). Frank Sinatra is the Army friend who tries to talk him back to reality, but Angela Lansbury steals the picture as Harveys mother, the mother one wouldnt wish on ones worst enemy. Lansbury in fact was only three years older than Harvey. (Cary Grant and his mother Jessie Royce Landis in North by Northwest were born eight years apart).
Skip the remake with Denzel Washington, another in a long line of remakes that prompt the question: Who thought this was a good idea?
1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1964)
Kubricks deadpan black comedy brought home the true horror underlying the bloodless talk of mutually assured destruction and the survivability of nuclear war, just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The absurd jokes undoubtedly contributed by co-scriptwriter Terry Southern character names such as Russian Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper, Col. Bat Guano only heighten the bleakness of the scenario.
Dr. Strangelove comes close to the highest ratio of great moments to running time of any comedy ever made, not all of them deliberate. A few things to watch out for: Maj. King Kong (Slim Pickens), reading off the contents of his bomber crews emergency crash supplies lipstick, nylons, prophylactics remarks, Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. One can still see Pickens mouthing the original line, which named Dallas instead of Vegas but was changed in light of the Kennedy assassination a few months before the movies release. In one of the final scenes in the War Room, close attention to the face of Peter Bull, playing the Russian ambassador, will reveal him failing to stifle a laugh at the antics of Peter Sellers Dr. Strangelove.
And, of course, the single greatest one-liner in the history of movies: Gentlemen, you cant fight in here! This is the War Room!
Readers will have their own lists, extending beyond this time period. (We might ourselves add Costa-Gavras Z, which sneaks into the decade as a 1969 release.) Movies on our list from ensuing decades includeWag the Dog (1997), In the Loop (2009), The Contender (sort of an updated Advise & Consent from 2000), and Dick (a hilarious 1999 rethinking of Watergate). Feel free to contribute your own nominees via Twitter, Facebook, or email, at the addresses below.
Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.
Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.
To increase security on its cruise ships, Carnival Corp. said it will screen its passengers travel documents through Interpol, the international policing organization.
Interpols General Assembly voted Tuesday to allow Carnival to check the travel documents of its passengers through the organizations database of lost and stolen travel documents, which contains 69 million records from 175 countries.
The move makes Carnival the first cruise company to add such a security procedure.
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The motivation behind this proactive measure to add an additional layer of security was not driven by a particular incident, but instead by the ongoing goal to be a leader in security and do all we can to keep our passengers, crew and ships safe and secure, Carnival spokesman Roger Frizzell said.
The approval comes after Carnival, the worlds largest cruise company, with more than 100 ships and nearly 11 million passengers yearly, ran a three-month trial on four of its Princess Cruises ships. During the trial, 34,000 travel documents from Princess passengers were checked through the Interpol system.
Frizzell said the company now will begin to roll out the new screening process on all of its ships, but he did not have an estimate for how long the process could take. Once the system is in place, Carnival will be able to check the travel documents of a passenger against Interpols database almost instantaneously, he said.
The industry has been condemned in the past by critics who say cruise ship operators have done little to ensure that crimes that take place on international waters are reported to law enforcement agencies and that evidence is collected and preserved.
In response to such criticism, President Obama signed into law in 2010 tougher new rules for reporting crimes at sea, improving ship safety and training ship staff to collect assault evidence. The law mandates that cruise personnel contact the FBI and the Coast Guard as soon as passengers report such serious crimes as homicides, suspicious deaths, missing U.S. nationals, kidnappings or assaults, among other requirements.
hugo.martin@latimes.com
To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
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The housing collapse of 2008 nearly broke the city of Miami. Now, its leaders have embarked on a novel and aggressive legal strategy to recoup losses from the big banks they say created the crisis with discriminatory and predatory lending practices.
It is a high-stakes effort that is being encouraged by many cities, and the banks Tuesday will ask the Supreme Court to stop it before it takes root.
Miami sued Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which bars discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing. The law states its purpose as providing for fair housing throughout the United States.
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The city says that it can prove the lending institutions discriminated against Latino and African American residents by directing them into risky high-interest loans. The resulting defaults destabilized Miamis poorest neighborhoods, and the resulting loss of tax revenue sent the city to the brink of bankruptcy, they say.
It took us three years to really start recovering, said Miami City Commissioner Francis Suarez. We decided unanimously as a commission that we wanted to hold the banks responsible for their lending practices, which we learned were discriminatory in nature.
Banks have been sued by individuals and taken to task by the federal government for lending practices, but these new cases are the first in which cities are the plaintiffs and are demanding that banks be held accountable for harming their communities.
The banks counter that Congress never intended the Fair Housing Act to be used as the basis for such suits.
Municipal suits like this one were unheard of until recently, when enterprising contingency-fee counsel began pushing them, Bank of America told the court in its brief.
The banks warn of a trickle-down approach that would let anyone affected by a neighborhood in decline from the next-door neighbor to the corner dry cleaner to sue under the act.
There is little debate about the theory that foreclosure leads to vacancy, then blight and lower property values for the neighborhood and city. But the banks say economic and social conditions can have as much to do with that as the original loan.
The city says that it can prove if it gets the chance that discriminatory lending practices caused its problems, not the general economic downturn.
Using regression analysis, it alleges in court documents that African American and Latino borrowers were far more likely to receive unfavorable loan terms than similarly qualified whites. And when the borrowers got into trouble, they were less likely to be offered affordable refinancing packages.
Clearly, higher rates were causing a much higher rate of default, Suarez said. We think the banks were doing it knowingly, and as a part of the pattern and practice of their business model.
No one challenges the dire circumstances in which Miami found itself after the crash. It was the epicenter of the foreclosure problem. Suarez said that when he took office in 2009 the city had just $13 million in reserves, and if it had done nothing to curtail spending, its deficit would have reached $115 million.
Like most cities, its revenues are tied to property values, and real estate normally is relatively stable. This was a precipitous drop, Suarez said, and the city invoked an emergency law to slash the salaries of municipal workers and impose a hiring freeze.
Localities as diverse as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and suburban Montgomery County, Md., are supporting Miamis suit.
But just because there is a problem, it does not mean that Congress provided a solution in the Fair Housing Act, say the banks and interest groups that support them.
The purpose of the law is to protect minorities from housing discrimination, and to secure for all Americans the benefits of living in an integrated society, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a friend-of-the-court brief. No one would suggest that when Congress acted to secure fair housing in 1968, it also was concerned with protecting the tax bases and budgets of cities and towns.
Moreover, the likely result of a win by the cities would be that banks would cut back on loans in low-income neighborhoods, the Chamber says.
To go forward with the suit, Miami has to convince the Supreme Court of two things: that the acts language permitting an aggrieved person to sue includes municipalities, and that the alleged discriminatory practices by banks were the proximate cause of its decrease in property-tax revenue and increase in services because of property foreclosures.
While the banks argue that recent Supreme Court decisions in other civil rights cases have narrowed the definition of an aggrieved person, cities argue that they have a role at the heart of the Fair Housing Act.
Because it is difficult for those who have received the loans to sue, the coalition of cities supporting Miami told the court, it is up to municipalities to seek relief from the entities whose discriminatory practices have perpetuated the cycle of segregation and urban decay.
Even with a right to sue, the banks and their supporters say the cities cannot draw a line connecting the loans with the problems for which they seek redress. There are too many other factors, they say.
But Henry Hunnefeld, Miamis senior assistant city attorney, said it is possible to separate out the losses attributable to discriminatory loans.
All the citys asking for is to be put back in the same place it would have been if we didnt have discriminatory loans that resulted in foreclosures, which had all sorts of ramifications on the city, Hunnefeld said. Thats a question of proof at trial.
Southwest Airlines pilots overwhelmingly approved a new contract on Monday that included double-digit pay raises and increased retirement contributions.
More than 84% of the Dallas-based carriers pilots voted for the new four-year deal, which will become amendable in August 2020.
This has been an incredible year of pilot unity and resolve. We are now seeing the results, said Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Assn. Of the 8,400 pilots represented by the union, 96.3% cast ballots in the contract ratification vote.
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The agreement includes an immediate 15% pay increase followed by annual raises of 3% in the next four years of the contract. The pilots retirement plan will move from a 401(k) program to a defined contribution plan.
This forward-looking agreement delivers the operational flexibility needed to grow our network and ensures that Southwest will remain well-positioned for long-term success in our intensely competitive industry, said Alan Kasher, Southwests vice president of flight operations.
The pilots have been in contract negotiations with Southwest for more than four years and entered federal mediation in 2014. Last year, pilots rejected a proposed contract that included pay raises totaling 17.6% but would have created subsets for pilots who worked international flights and operated Boeing 737-MAX aircraft.
Last week, Southwests flight attendants approved a new two-year contract that included a 12.45% compounded wage increase and a 15.9% bonus.
Ahles writes for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram/McClatchy.
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A key hurdle to widespread gigabit-speed Internet is the high cost of getting fiber optic lines over the last mile from the fiber backbone in nearby streets to each house.
But increasingly, cellular operators, broadband providers including Google Fiber and several start-ups are exploring a new, less expensive way to bridge the last mile gap: wireless technology.
Google Fiber which named San Diego as a potential city for building an ultra-fast fiber optic Internet network said last month that it would pause future fiber optic rollouts in San Diego and seven other potential Google Fiber cities while it explored new approaches.
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Among those is wireless, including high frequency airwaves, which can deliver gigabit data rates over short, line of sight distances but also tend to bounce erratically off obstacles and degrade in rain or fog.
Millimeter wave is one of several different technologies [Google Fiber] is looking at, but it does seem to have the most promise, said Karl Bode of broadband watchdog DSL Reports.
There are line-of-sight issues here, and weather can impact signal, Bode said. As such, you need transmitters relatively close to the home, meaning you still have some notable deployment costs. Still, thats cheaper than digging up streets, which is why Google is interested.
Dont expect Google Fiber to incorporate wireless into fiber networks anytime soon. There are still many questions about how viable wireless can be, and what licenses would be required from federal regulators in various airwave bands.
But recent improvements in antenna technology and beam-forming techniques to more precisely steer these high frequency airwaves are fueling optimism about their ability to span the last mile. Certain high frequency airwaves have been earmarked to become part of the spectrum dedicated for upcoming gigabit class 5G cellular networks.
Last week, Verizon Communications Chief Executive Lowell McAdam spoke at the Intel Capital Global Summit in San Diego about the bandwidth capabilities of millimeter wave 5G technology, calling it wireless fiber, said Murthy Renduchintala, president of Intels mobile and Internet of things group.
Hes basically saying if I can get high-speed wireless fiber to the house, it would make deployments much more rapid and much more economically viable, Renduchintala said.
Verizon built its Fios fiber optic TV and Internet network in nine states but stopped expanding into new markets in 2010, in part because of high installation costs.
In October, San Diegos Qualcomm said it would deliver the first 5G mobile modem chip, called the Snapdragon X50, next year for testing. It expects to reach top-end download speeds of 5 gigabits per second when shows up in commercial devices in 2018.
Qualcomm is targeting the X50 for mobile handsets. But analysts think that fixed wireless markets such as boxes that link the fiber optic backbone in the street to individual homes also are potential uses of this technology.
With five gigabits of bandwidth, users could download an entire digital movie in less than a minute.
Skyriver, a San Diego start-up, recently completed field trials for millimeter wave point-to-multipoint technology to fuel gigabit broadband. The company said it has been acquiring spectrum rights in millimeter wave bands in several markets.
For Google, affordable bandwidth is the key to its Web businesses such as Google search and YouTube. In 2012, it got into the Internet service provider business with Google Fiber. Today, 12 cities nationwide either have Google Fiber up and running or are in development.
Google has worked with these cities to install fiber on existing power poles, among other things, to keep costs down. The companys entrance into the high speed Internet business has spurred cable and telecom competitors to ramp their fiber optic rollouts though most have limited expansion to new housing developments.
Google has been talking with eight additional cities Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Portland, Phoenix, Chicago, Jacksonville and Tampa as the next potential markets for Google Fiber expansion.
Last month, it put those plans on hold, raising concern that it had lost its enthusiasm for Google Fiber.
In its third quarter earnings conference call, Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Google parent company Alphabet, said the firm will continue to be an Internet service provider in the 12 cities where fiber is deployed or in the development pipeline.
Last year, Google purchased San Francisco-based Webpass, which uses point-to-point microwave to deliver high speed Internet to urban apartment buildings, condo complexes and businesses in San Diego and five other cities.
The company is licensed in the 70/80 gigahertz spectrum bands, according to a Google spokesperson. It installs large antennas on top of buildings to deliver point-to-point Internet. Its then distributes bandwidth to each apartment or office.
In San Diego, Google Fiber and Webpass will work together to extend and accelerate deployments via point-to-point wireless, a Google spokesperson said in an email. In addition as weve said, were actively expanding our road map to include innovative technologies like fixed wireless that expand access to more people, faster.
A key question is how far can a high bandwidth wireless signal travel to connect the fiber node to homes? Some companies have claimed the signals can travel a bit over a mile (about two kilometers) in tests. But industry analysts think its unlikely to be that far in actual deployments.
I dont think there will be any trouble going a couple hundred meters, but I think a lot of engineers are trying to figure this out, said Christopher Taylor, director of radio frequency/wireless components at industry research firm Strategy Analytics.
mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;
Twitter:@TechDiego
Freeman writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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Americans living or residing in Ukraine temporarily have already exercised their right to vote in the U.S. presidential election.
According to the U.S. Embassy's Consular Service, there are approximately 8,000 Americans residing permanently in Ukraine. In addition, there are American citizens in Ukraine on a temporary basis or travelling in Ukraine, bringing the number to 16,000. Those Americans, who decided to vote in Ukraine, have already voted by mail, as is usually done during American elections, the press service U.S. embassy told Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.
The U.S. diplomatic mission said voting booths are not opened at the embassy, but ballots are cast according to the procedure proscribed the voter's home state.
It depends on rules, which are established by the election commissions in individual voting districts of the United States. Some states set schedules, while in others the procedure is proscribed by voting districts, the U.S. embassy's press service said.
More valleys, fewer chocolate peaks: The maker of Toblerone Swiss chocolate has widened the spaces in some of its iconic, triangle-array bars, offering about 10% less chocolate for the same price. Many Toblerone fans are outraged.
The multinational says the move which affects products globally but mainly in Britain was necessary to cope with higher prices for ingredients. But many consumers were livid at the perceived sleight of hand and the change to the traditional look of the treat, first created in 1908 in Switzerland.
The shape of the bar may have looked like the Swiss Alps before, now its a bit more Holland, said British consumer Tony Mathews.
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For many, the Toblerone is linked to travel a gift purchased at the airport before boarding a plane home though it is increasingly available in supermarkets and shops.
The maker of Toblerone, Mondelez International in Deerfield, Ill., said that pricing targets by British discount customer Poundland prompted the change in Britain. It said the retailer, which sells goods for 1 pound ($1.22), resisted a price increase, leading to the solution of offering less chocolate instead.
Mondelez said Britains vote to leave the European Union was not to blame. But it comes as British food retailers have faced rising prices for imported goods due to the drop in the value of the pound since the June vote.
In a shift akin to widening a doughnuts hole, the tweak in Britain involves shrinking a 170-gram Toblerone sold by British discounters such as Poundland to 150 grams, said Mondelez spokeswoman Heide Hauer. The price remains the same.
Some British consumers likened the new shape to a toothless comb, others to the mouth of a crocodile. Some joked about how the issue was grabbing headlines on the same day as Americans were electing a new president.
The signature 100-gram Toblerone bar and other vendors are not affected, Hauer said. But Toblerone also has trimmed its super-sized 400-gram product often sold in airports to 360 grams globally, for the same recommended retail price, Hauer said.
Michael Payne, executive director of the International Assn. of Airport Duty Free Stores, noted that duty-free stores sell Toblerone in a variety of sizes, so hes not sure how the change would affect sales.
Hauer from Mondelez cited a multitude of factors including rising commodity prices, a regular review of pricing and the fallout from a weakening of the Swiss franc in early 2015 that caused a spike in production costs.
The switch in Britain, which began in September, was weeks in the making: Toblerones official Facebook page featured a post on Oct. 15 explaining that the company was facing higher costs for numerous ingredients.
We carry these costs for as long as possible, but to ensure Toblerone remains on-shelf, is affordable and retains the triangular shape, we have had to reduce the weight of just two of our bars in the U.K., from the wider range of available Toblerone products, it said.
Economist Pippa Malmgren, who has studied what she calls the corporate practice of shrinkflation, believes that the company was using the recent political situation in Britain to test to see if people would notice.
Whole divisions of major companies are devoted to shrinking a product while keeping the price stable, she noted. She estimated that about 10% of the Toblerone candy bar was dropped.
This is an art form, she said. This is not random.
Another analyst warned of a possible consumer backlash more broadly.
Robert Haigh, director at consultancy Brand Finance, said the move by Mondelez was quite risky and could be seen as deceptive.
They dont seem to have the reverence for traditional confectionery that the previous owner did, said Haigh, comparing the chocolate bars to a well-known British savory spread made from yeast extract. Like Marmite, Toblerone has an impact on the cultural consciousness that far outweighs its actual popularity.
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UPDATES:
8:45 a.m.: This article has been updated with additional details and reaction to the change.
This article was originally published at 7:10 a.m.
The phone industrys Robocall Strike Force vowed a couple of months ago to deploy its telecom commandos and end the scourge of robocalls once and for all. So hows that working out?
The strike force met with federal authorities the other day to report on its progress and action plan.
Turns out there hasnt been much progress. And they still dont have much of a plan.
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The head of the Federal Communications Commission, for one, wasnt satisfied.
We need solutions now, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told representatives of the 33 telecom and tech companies making up the strike force.
Consumer advocates were less charitable.
This latest plan is half a loaf, if that, said Maureen Mahoney, policy analyst for Consumers Union. The work of the strike force is incomplete.
If youre late to the party, Wheeler issued a call in July for phone companies to be more aggressive in blocking robocalls and telemarketers, which he said produced more consumer complaints than any other telecom issue.
In response, AT&Ts chief executive, Randall Stephenson, agreed to head what was dubbed the Robocall Strike Force, with the goal being to bring the industry together to protect consumers from unwanted communications and to rid our communications networks of these unwanted and pernicious calls.
And now they have a battle plan on the table.
It declares that the mission of the strike force is to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions to abate the proliferation of illegal and unwanted robocalls and to promote greater consumer control over the calls they wish to receive.
However, the strike forces progress report states that there is no silver bullet to solve the robocalling problem. It says robocallers are a wily bunch and are constantly changing their tactics, and thus our approach to unwanted and illegal robocall blocking needs to be constantly evolving and adapting.
The rest of the 45-page report is filled with a lot of technical gobbledygook but no rock-solid commitments to specific actions or a specific time frame.
Nor is there a pledge to develop and offer customers free tools similar to Nomorobo for blocking robocalls something the FCC specifically had sought when the strike force was established.
On the other hand, the report says that identification of robocalls will require investment in big data analytics and tools. As such, companies may need to consider how to recover the costs.
Ah, theres the telecom industry we know and love.
Phone companies implicitly acknowledge theyve done a lousy job addressing customers complaints about marketers illegal and occasionally fraudulent practices. So the companies plan to stick customers with the cost of cracking down.
Wheeler was having none of it.
Stopping unwanted calls is as much a business expense as marketing and billing, he said at the recent meeting. Providing a quality service is a cost of doing business.
Im not holding my breath. Most phone bills already include a cost recovery fee thats just a sneaky way for carriers to dump routine business expenses on customers.
It looks like the strike force wanted to test the commitment of regulators to getting tough on robocalls. Hopefully the companies will now return to the drawing board with, to put it politely, a renewed sense of purpose.
AT&Ts Stephenson acknowledged at the meeting that we still have a lot of work left to do. A company spokeswoman declined to elaborate on his remarks, but AT&Ts pending merger with Time Warner seems like a strong incentive for Stephenson to take this effort more seriously.
Along with AT&T, Verizon and other leading telecom firms, the strike force includes tech heavyweights such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the companies need to step up their game. There are no prizes for participation, she said.
Rosenworcel called on strike force members to work harder, faster, better.
Basically, these guys need to accomplish two things. First, they have to offer customers an effective way to block robocalls by improving caller ID technology.
As things currently stand, robocallers frequently disguise themselves by spoofing their phone numbers, making it appear the call is from a legitimate source, such as a hospital or police station. Whats needed is the phone equivalent of an email spam filter.
Second, the strike force has to zero in on the source of robocalls the callers themselves. This is difficult because these jokers are a slippery bunch. But its not impossible.
As I wrote when the strike force was first announced, telecom experts say phone companies can develop algorithms capable of scanning their networks and spotting flurries of short-duration calls a sign of a robocallers automated dialing system at work.
They also can develop means to track robocallers that try to elude detection by switching from one line to another, and to distinguish between nuisance calls and legitimate communications from schools, utilities and emergency services.
This will be expensive, experts say, running in the millions of dollars. Thats why phone companies already are making noises about passing along costs to customers.
So far, the FCC is being supportive of the industrys efforts. Wheeler went out of his way to express appreciation to Stephenson and other telecom bigwigs.
But the next time the Robocall Strike Force convenes for a progress report expected early next year officials will need to make clear that their patience has limits if the industry once again presents only half-baked proposals.
And the idea that customers should pay the tab for phone companies preventing misuse of their networks? I can think of a few choice words Wheeler might offer.
They include some of the ones the FCC wont let you say on TV.
David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.
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A Samsung phone user in France says her Galaxy J5 smartphone caught fire and exploded Sunday. The model is different from the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that has been recalled worldwide.
Lamya Bouyirdane said Monday that she noticed the phone was very hot after she asked her 4-year-old son to pass it over during a family gathering at her home. She said she threw the phone away when she realized that it had swollen up and smoke was coming out.
I panicked when I saw the smoke and I had the reflex to throw it away, said Bouyirdane, a mother of three in the southwestern French city of Pau.
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The phone then caught fire and the back blew off, she said. Her partner quickly extinguished it.
Bouyirdane said she bought the phone new in June on a website offering discounts.
The South Korean company recently recalled millions of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones globally because of a problem that caused the batteries to overheat and catch fire.
William Stofega, a mobile analyst for the market research firm IDC, said the incident in France was most likely an isolated one: The phone has been on the market for several months, and he said this is the first report of a battery fire that hes aware of.
These reports tend to cluster, he said.
Stofega added that problems involving lithium-ion batteries used in not just smartphones, but also laptop computers, have been around for years and theres no easy fix for them. Manufacturing defects or even a small amount of damage can cause a short circuit, resulting in an overheated battery and potentially a fire.
Samsung did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is on a tear. In just the last three weeks, he has expressed a desire to separate his country from the United States, declared his intention to kick U.S. military personnel out of the Philippines, and appeared ready to drop territorial sovereignty claims in the South China Sea in return for investment guarantees from Beijing.
Dutertes behavior might be considered brazen, boorish, even occasionally entertaining. But whats worth noting is what it tells us about the state of alliance politics in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. As China has grown in economic, geopolitical and military power, its neighbors have reacted almost uniformly negatively. The specter of Chinese domination in East and Southeast Asia unnerves and in some cases outright terrifies Chinas neighbors.
To balance this shift in power, Chinas neighbors can try to increase their own economic and military strength in two ways. First, they can increase their power internally, for example, by spending more on defense. In fact, there is evidence that Chinas neighbors have begun buying more weapons and building larger militaries.
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Second, countries can increase their power externally through alliances and partnerships. Almost every one of the smaller countries neighboring China has taken this approach, most of them seeking closer ties to the United States. Although the United States is more powerful than China along any number of measures, China represents the greater threat because of its proximity to the countries of East and Southeast Asia.
The re-establishment of relations between Myanmar and the United States, Vietnams growing closeness with Washington, Singapores agreement to host U.S. military forces, and even the Philippines 2014 agreement to readmit U.S. troops to military bases after 25 years are all efforts to balance externally. From a political science perspective, these represent completely normal responses to perceived threats.
So what do we make of Dutertes current willingness to throw his relationship with the United States under the bus? What appears to be happening is another phenomenon familiar to political scientists: bandwagoning. In this case, a threatened, less powerful country essentially capitulates perhaps because it cannot afford to build up its military, because there is no other external power with which to ally, or because the extent of domination makes resistance futile.
The classic example here is Finland during the Cold War. The extent of Soviet influence on Finlands foreign, economic and military policies was so great that today we refer to such a bandwagoning scenario as Finlandization. In these situations, weaker countries essentially become, at best, neutral vis-a-vis their more powerful neighbors or, at worst, de facto satellites.
In the case of the Philippines, Dutertes government seems on the verge of shifting its loyalty to Beijing essentially, Finlandization. During Dutertes visit to China late last month, he announced not simply his separation from the United States, but he also concluded that America has now lost, and as a result he was moving to become dependent on China. In exchange, the Philippines has evidently regained fishing access around the disputed Scarborough Shoal.
If the Philippines is realigning its foreign policy, theres not much the United States can do about it. Its foolhardy as well as impractical for Washington to entreat the Philippines to maintain an alliance it doesnt want.
The prudent course is for the U.S. to respect the wishes of Manila, scrupulously avoid any interference in Philippine politics and stay ready to re-engage. Meantime, the United States must also continue efforts unilaterally if necessary to ensure freedom of navigation in the international waters of the South China Sea.
There are plenty of reasons, though, to believe the Philippines is not engaged in a strategic realignment. Duterte has yet to renounce the 65-year-old mutual defense treaty between his country and the United States. More important, our two countries have deep economic, political, societal and cultural ties that form the bedrock of the security relationship. A single Philippine president is unlikely to succeed in cutting them overnight.
From a broader geopolitical perspective, Washington also probably has little to fear. Throughout its rise, China has proved it has two strategic left feet. For instance, it has often offended the sensibilities, and sometimes the sovereignty, of its neighbors and failed to grasp the security dilemmas it generates throughout the region. As a result, U.S. treaty allies in Asia have tightened their relations with Washington, while non-treaty partners such as Vietnam have forged new ties with the United States that seemed highly unlikely a generation ago. Although Dutertes anti-American rants may sound like music to the ears of Chinese leadership, his behavior doesnt make China less threatening to its neighbors.
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John R. Deni writes about alliances and international relations for the U.S. Army War Colleges Strategic Studies Institute. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
Until recent weeks, the rancor of this years contest between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the Republicans Donald Trump had left many pop artists relatively muted.
But in the final days of the campaign, a wave of acts have at long last found their voices many in favor of the Democrats candidate.
Bruce Springsteen, a liberal stalwart who performed at the inauguration for President Obama, sang this past weekend in support of Clinton. Pop heavyweights Beyonce and Jay Z joined Clinton in Cleveland, and on the eve of the election, artists such as Lady Gaga and Jon Bon Jovi had Monday evening rallies planned to support the Democratic nominee .
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Even some not known for being politically active have begun speaking out.
Last Thursday, for instance, Pharrell Williams took the stage in Raleigh, N.C., to express his support for Clinton.
Ive got to be honest with you guys, I feel a little odd because this is a political rally, its my first time doing something like this, Williams said. Im a musician, politics is not my field of expertise
Yet from Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone and Sam Cooke during the Civil Rights era through the jubilant gospel, R&B and hip-hop artists who greeted Obamas inauguration, music has played a pivotal role in setting the tone of presidential campaigns. Obamas Spotify playlists, which range from classic rock to contemporary soul, have even been huge hits among his fans.
See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour >>
But until recently, this year felt different.
Be it apathy or confusion or such a polarizing election, Hillary got caught in the crossfire, suggested Ben Harper, the musician and activist who has worked phone banks and made live appearances with the Clinton campaign.
Harper has long been active in issues around climate change and poverty. But in the last month, he said he saw the necessity of advocating more directly for Clinton.
I had a conversation with my mother about her and all of Trumps sexism and abuse of women, and I saw I personally wasnt doing enough. So I called them in September and said, Ill go wherever youll send me.
Compared with Obamas 2008 run, this years election had been relatively quiet on the music-activism front. Blame it on the often singularly depressing tone; blame it on the thwarted energy that many musicians Killer Mike, Vampire Weekend put into Bernie Sanders campaign. Many had been focused on particular issues like racialized police violence instead of a more general campaign message.
Artists have been consistently engaged on the issues at stake, from criminal justice and policing, to the environment and gender equality, said Jesse Moore, Rock the Votes vice president of civic engagement.
Beyonce, Moore added, has been speaking passionately on critically important issues from the stage and online, and as the election drew near, she added Rock the Votes voter engagement tool to her social channels to help her voters direct their energy in a positive and specific way.
Ted Nugent at a rally for Republican candidate Donald Trump on Sunday in Sterling Heights, Mich. (Jeff Kowalsky / KAFP/Getty Images )
On the right, the few usual Republican-friendly rockers like Kid Rock and Blake Shelton have been relatively laconic in their support (save for right-wing stalwart Ted Nugent, who performed at a Trump rally)
Trump did earn unexpected, if muted, approval from rapper Azealia Banks, Vegas lounge staple Wayne Newton and country veteran Loretta Lynn. But by and large, most Republican-leaning musicians have stayed away from the Trump campaign trail. George W. Bush, by contrast, attracted overt support from country stars like Brooks & Dunn and Ricky Skaggs.
Some major pop stars like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber have chosen to avoid the fray entirely (Bieber has the added excuse of being Canadian). In such a contentious election, speaking out for one side could be even more risky for artists.
Im an entertainer, and you have to wield that (position) cautiously, Harper said. You dont want to browbeat people.
However, in the last stretch of the election, nearly every corner of pop music has found something to say much of it pro-Clinton. Their sudden sprint toward advocacy might be a jolt of energy in the final push of the campaign. On Monday, Madonna announced a small Brooklyn concert to encourage Clinton supporters, adding in an Instagram post: If Trump were elected we would be at war in no time at all. Lady Gaga planned a similar show with Bill Clinton and Jon Bon Jovi in Raleigh.
The biggest election-themed concerts a mini-festival of events featuring Jay Z, Beyonce, Bon Jovi, Katy Perry, Steve Aoki and others hit Cleveland and Philadelphia in the homestretch. Titled Love Trumps Hate, the shows were unambiguous in their message. (Trump, for his part, seemed irked by the concerts, saying Isnt it amazing that when Jay Z and Beyonce use the filthy language they use in the songs using words that if I ever said those words, it would be the reinstitution of the electric chair, right?)
Perhaps the most pointed political song of this stretch came from Compton rapper YG, whose bass-rattling single FDT is an abbreviation expressing his extreme displeasure with Donald Trump. Across L.A., in clubs and bars and even at other concerts, the song has been an unsubtle way for music fans to express anti-Trump solidarity while still soundtracking a party. Eminem released his own anti-Trump song, Campaign Speech, last month.
That sentiment has been widespread across the genre. Last month, before his New York get-out-the-vote rally with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Blind Boys of Alabama, Win Butler of the Arcade Fire called Trump a complete nightmare and a joke.
Then theres the 30 Days, 30 Songs project, spearheaded by author Dave Eggers, focused on releasing new politically inspired music from anti-Trump (and pro-Clinton) artists like Death Cab for Cutie and R.E.M., all advocating for a Trump-free America.
Its different than in 2008 when there was a grand sweep of change and hope. We knew musicians wanted to get involved, but maybe they just didnt know the way in, said Jordan Kurland, the music manager and co-founder with Eggers of the 30 Days, 30 Songs project.
The fear was that this election was so crazy that it just turned people off. But this shows that musicians can have an impact, and our hope is that the people we get involved now will get in even earlier next time.
Chance the Rapper, in the run-up to a Chicago get-out-the-vote rally, said in a statement that This election is very important, a chance for new leaders and new opportunities to emerge. He promised to personally hit the pavement and lead young voters to the polls.
The rapper Pusha T made a cameo in a campaign video with Clintons vice presidential running-mate (and fellow Virginian) Tim Kaine. My biggest concern is the criminal justice system. Were definitely on the same page in regards to knowing that its flawed and needs to be fixed, the rapper said. Also in Virginia, Miley Cyrus hit the pavement at George Mason University to rally students for Clinton.
Even Adele who is English vouched for Hillary at a Miami concert, saying I am 100% for Hillary Clinton. I love her, shes amazing. Clinton was in the audience when the most powerful commercial force in pop music made her endorsement.
In the campaigns final hours, Springsteen performed at a Clinton rally in Philadelphia, in a moving and valedictory set that aimed to appeal to blue-collar rock fans.
But perhaps the most subtle, telling alliance came at this years Country Music Awards, which is about the most neutral territory for Trump supporters that the music business could offer.
There, after some gentle Trump and Clinton ribbing from hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood, Beyonce performed Daddy Lessons with the Dixie Chicks, a duet between the famously anti-war trio and Black Lives Matter-supporting pop titan. The twangy, acoustic-driven song, which appeared on Beyonces album Lemonade, evokes the African and African American roots behind much country music.
They stayed on-message in the performance, but the implication was clear. Across genre and across geography, in the waning days of the campaign, pop artists were generally aligned in their beliefs.
If music doesnt have the power to communicate and encourage social progress, then I should just put my guitar down, said Harper.
For breaking music news, follow @augustbrown on Twitter.
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TV Land has given a series order to the Alicia Silverstone-led dramedy inspired by the real-life upbringing of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards.
Hold the As if its totally true.
The series, titled American Woman, will consist of 12 episodes and is slated for a 2017 debut.
The 1970s-set series will feature Silverstone as an unconventional mother, Bonnie, struggling to raise her two daughters after leaving her husband. Mena Suvari (American Beauty, Chicago Fire) and Jennifer Bartels (Broken) also star as the best friends to Silverstones character.
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The three women, according to the shows description, will each discover their own brand of independence against the backdrop of the sexual revolution and the rise of second-wave feminism.
American Woman is written by 30 Rock alum John Riggi, who will also executive produce alongside TV veteran John Wells (ER, The West Wing, Shameless).
Long before garnering reality stardom from appearing on the popular Bravo reality franchise, Richards broke into Hollywood as a child actress, appearing in such series as Little House on the Prairie and Down to Earth. She also appeared as a nurse for multiple seasons on the TV series ER, which Wells executive produced. Richards will serve as a co-executive producer on American Woman.
We feel very lucky to be working with John Riggi and John Wells on this fantastic series that is not only beautifully written and directed, but has a stellar cast that portrays the themes of the 70s in a way that is still relevant today, Keith Cox, president of development and original programming for TV Land, said in a statement.
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yvonne.villarreal@latimes.com
Twitter: @villarrealy
On the eve of the election, late-night TV hosts Samantha Bee and James Corden both invited actors on their shows to do what they do best: read.
During a segment on Mondays episode of Full Frontal, Bee addressed the most recent developments around presidential candidate Hillary Clintons email investigation, which she referred to as James Comeys flaming bag of October surprise.
While the FBI has cleared Clinton after investigating the newly discovered emails, it seems Bee reached her limit on how much scrutiny and media attention these emails have received throughout the election season.
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You want to talk about emails instead of policy? asked Bee. Fine. Lets do it.
After addressing some of the hacked emails involving Clintons staff that have been released by WikiLeaks, Bee tackled Clintons own emails, including those shady emails showing Hillary doing special favors for people.
She then called on Full Frontals best new intern, Sarah Paulson, to read Clintons actual emails.
Watch the clip above to see Paulson tackle dramatic lines such as, Please print for me, and Could you help me with my iPad? Start before the three-minute mark if youd like to skip to Paulsons entrance. (Be forewarned: The full clip contains some adult language.)
See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour
Late Late Show host Corden, on the other hand, took a more whimsical approach to celebrity literacy by having Benedict Cumberbatch read him a bedtime story.
After turning down Peter Rabbit and Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Corden and Cumberbatch settled on The Story of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
The fairy tale follows a lady who wanted to rule the kingdom very much very, very much; some would say too much dressed all in beige on a journey to a beautiful White House. The ladys scary journey included getting lost in a forest full of computers, trolls and a bad news fox, as well as facing foes such as a big orange monster.
The story is complete with fantastic illustrations. Watch the video above to find out how it ends.
In related news, Bee also used her final pre-election show to unequivocally throw her support behind Clinton. Or, more specifically, Hillary Rodham. Considering Bee has routinely skewered the multiple layers of sexism prevalent in politics and mainstream media throughout the election, her support of Clinton is not at all surprising. But her final plea, which chronicled how Clinton has had to change because of public demands, is definitely targeted to a more left-leaning audience.
Watch the clip below, but beware of more adult language.
tracy.brown@latimes.com
Twitter: @tracycbrown
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Lucky Brand is weaving a new collaboration for spring with Pendleton Woolen Mills. On the heels of its fall tie-up with artist Nicolai Sclater, also known as Ornamental Conifer, the Los Angeles-based denim brand is offering pieces integrating the Native American-influenced wool fabric that is a signature of the 153-year-old textile firm.
The styles of Lucky Brands two partners couldnt be more different. While Ornamental Conifer paints bright letters by hand, Pendleton designs geometric patterns in soothing colors that evoke nature. Moreover, the Pendleton collection retails for between $89.50 and $199, in comparison to the leather jackets painted by Ornamental Conifer that went as high as $2,000.
Kin Ying Lee, Lucky Brands chief creative officer, said she and her team selected a single print from Pendletons vast archive to make their own. Patches of yellow, orange and red triangles on a teal base peek out from under shredded holes on mens denim and form the pockets on the back of womens skinny jeans. The pattern also inspired the embroidery scattered on high-waisted cutoff shorts and Western shirts.
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It shows up in many different ways, Lee said, pointing to 10 styles on display at SmogShoppe in Culver City, where the company set up a temporary showroom on Thursday that exuded a Boho vibe mixed with midcentury modernity via throw rugs, tan leather chairs and a shiny motorcycle.
Carlos Alberini, Lucky Brands chief executive officer, acknowledged that the company is picky when it comes to collaborators. The relationship with Pendleton originated many years before Alberini and Lee came on board. Now, Lucky Brands lifestyle concept store at The Point in El Segundo stocks blankets from the privately held company in Portland, Ore.
Everything has to start with heritage and that feel to know if its a match, he said.
Lucky Brand believes in the importance of deepening relationships and mining its roots. Emphasizing the pillars of music, moto and the California lifestyle, it turned the preview of the collection tilted The Great Escape into a party for Kate Bosworth and other guests. Samantha Ronson and her band, Ocean Park Standoff, rocked on the stage set up near the embroidery machine that stitched blue bandanas with guests names in red thread.
Even the guest list reflected Luckys DNA. In the case of Bosworth, Lee said, there is a side to the actress that resonates with Lucky Brand. She has a high-fashion side, Lee said, noting her regular appearances in fashion glossies and attendance at this years Met Gala. When shes casual, shes in denim, she added.
Lee simply cant forget Bosworths leading role in Blue Crush, which helped her break out in Hollywood. Shes a surfer think of the DNA of Lucky Brand.
The tensions are high on this election day 2016, but the fashion is good and if anything, its fairly consistent. After wearing looks from Gucci, Roksanda and Fendi at recent events, once again Melania Trump opted to wear a European designer (well, technically it was half Euro, with a Balmain jacket over a Michael Kors dress), and Hillary Clinton stuck with what could very well be her lucky charm, heading to vote Tuesday in a Ralph Lauren pantsuit.
The Democratic presidential nominee and self-proclaimed pantsuit aficionado kept things tonal, wearing a khaki-colored jacket with taupe insets on the lapels and pants for her trip to the voting booth at the Douglas G. Grafflin Elementary School in Chappaqua, N.Y., alongside Bill Clinton. Lauren is one of numerous New York designers who have extended their support for the former Secretary of State. Diane von Furstenberg, Tory Burch, Elie Tahari, Joseph Altuzzara and Prabal Gurung are among the others, as well as foreign-born non-eligible voters like Georgina Chapman and Rag & Bones Marcus Wainwright.
For Monday nights pre-election night rally in Philadelphia, she appeared to wear the same red Ralph Lauren pantsuit shed worn to debate Trump at Hofstra University earlier this fall. Clinton wore a Ralph Lauren Collection creme-colored wool crepe curved-front jacket with horn buttons and matching wool crepe pants for last months final debate.
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It should be noted, however, that at least once, Melania Trump took a cue from Clintons sartorial choices, heading to none other than Ralph Lauren for her final debate look. The Slovenian model looked sleek in a black jumpsuit by the American designer, drawing positive reviews. And while jumpsuits and pantsuits may seem miles away in fashion speak, perhaps Trumps jumpsuit choice was a peace offering of sorts. Compromise.
Moschino will hold its mens show for fall 2017 in Milan on Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. This is the first time creative director Jeremy Scott will present his mens collection for Moschino in the Italian city. He will also show his womens pre-fall line for the brand at the same time.
The designer has been experimenting with this format. In June, Scott held Moschinos mens spring 2017 collection along with its womens resort 2017 lineup on the same runway in Los Angeles. The brand animated the calendar of initiatives of Made LA, which included a range of runway shows, parties and events at Downtown Los Angeles L.A. Live event space.
Last January, Moschino unveiled its mens fall collection and womens pre-fall range in London.
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After presenting his first two mens collections for the Milanese brand in London, Scott made his mens wear debut in Italy in Florence in June 2015 as Moschino was named mens wear guest brand at Pitti Uomo that season.
Scott was named creative director of the brand founded by the late Franco Moschino and controlled by Italian fashion group Aeffe in October 2013. Aeffe also produces and distributes collections for Scotts namesake fashion line.
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko does not doubt that U.S. voters will make the responsible decision in the U.S. presidential election.
"I am counting on the responsible decision of the American people, who have many times already demonstrated their [ability to responsibly elect their leaders]. I have no doubt they will do so again," Poroshenko told journalists after talks with Slovenia's President Borut Pahor in Slovenia's capital Ljubljana on Tuesday, responding to a question from the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Poroshenko said Ukraine is satisfied with support from both sides of the American political spectrum concerning the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
"I am counting on activating our contacts with our American partners in the sphere of transatlantic cooperation and in the sphere of bilateral cooperation. In particular, I would like to note the necessity of reviving activities of the commission of strategic partnership," Ukraine's head of state said, noting the agreement signed by the foreign ministers of both countries.
In the words of Poroshenko, on Wednesday night the residents of many countries will be very interested in the result of the U.S. presidential elections.
Net-a-Porter is continuing to invest in streetwear for spring with Vetements among its top brands in terms of size of buy.
Streetwear came through last season, it continues to dominate as an influence, and we will be standing behind it in a big way. Its really going to drive our business, said Sarah Rutson, vice president of global buying at Net-a-Porter, during a presentation of the companys spring 2017 trends. You just cannot underestimate the power and reach of Vetements.
Rutson said cult pieces such as sweatshirts by Vetements and Off-White, and logo T-shirts by Gucci or Junya Watanabe are among the hero pieces in the retailers buy and Net plans to tap into the trend by focusing on individual pieces the customer can style in different ways to make their own.
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Logoed accessories are another key element of the street trend, including Vetements signature sock boots 500 of which were sold over a period of five days earlier this year and bags by Loewe, J.W. Anderson and Christopher Kane with gold embossed hardware. Rutson also pointed to the success of the see-now-buy-now bags by Off-White, which launched on the site after the brands show in Paris last September and immediately sold out.
Vetements influence reached beyond hooded sweatshirts and its signature boot styles, with the satin thigh-high boots done in collaboration with Manolo Blahnik sparking a satin trend in footwear, according to Rutson.
If winter was all about velvet, summer will be all about satin, said the buyer, highlighting satin mules by No. 21 and Miu Miu as key styles the retailer will be pushing for spring.
Y Project, the Paris-based label by Glenn Martens, which has recently introduced womens wear, will be among the new launches on Net-a-porter. That label taps into the streetwear aesthetic with its reworked denim pieces.
Another key trend for spring were the bold blocks of color and graphic prints seen on the runway, which Rutson described as a natural evolution of the maximalist trend set by Gucci in the last few seasons.
Nets buy has focused primarily on fluid dresses by the likes of Balenciaga, Haider Ackermann, Emilio Pucci and Missoni, a brand that has grown to attract a younger customer and perform particularly well on the site.
Sara Battaglias handbag and ready-to-wear ranges another new launch for the site also tap into the color trend as the Milanese designer is known for her extensive use of colorblocking and flair for bright, feel-good fashion.
Rutson said the trend is particularly relevant to an online retailer like Net-a-Porter, as bold colored pieces stand out on the screen and can catch the interest of customers, who have increasingly short attention spans.
The buyer also addressed the shifting retail landscape and said seasonality was becoming redundant. She said trends such as summer tailoring are becoming more important as they present a story that is constantly evolving. For spring, key pieces included heritage tweed blazers by Gucci and Prada, as well as a lighter, striped version of the suit by Lanvin and Tibi.
Gucci, Prada and Chloe are among the brands that Net regularly spends the most money on.
Another seasonless trend that the retailer is standing behind is that of mens wear-inspired crisp cotton shirts, which have been reworked into dramatic silhouettes with spliced shoulders and exaggerated cuffs by contemporary labels such as Jacquemus and Marques Almeida.
Finding labels that offer luxury at a great price point has been another focus for Rutson and her team, who will be launching up to 90 labels for the upcoming season, many of which are in the contemporary space.
Key launches include Rixo, a London-based label known for their printed dresses priced at an average of 270 pounds, or $336, and Ulla Johnson, which stands out for its relaxed, bohemian aesthetic and has long been in the wish list of Net-a-Porter customers. The brand was the third most searched-for label on the site following Gucci and Chloe.
Contemporary-priced accessories are another focus: Mansur Gavriel mini totes and wristlets by Simon Miller are among the styles the company has bought into in-depth.
Cooking Channels series Food: Fact or Fiction is a briskly edited infotainment show with a kitchen sink approach each episode whirls with talking heads, archival footage, animation, you name it to debunk and give context to food myths and fling out snippets of history. After watching an installment, consider yourself prepped for any pub quiz prone to subjects like Did women once dominate the beer brewing industry? and Did the Italians really invent pizza?
You might also think slightly differently of host Michael McKean, at various times in his career the pomaded Lenny Kosnowski of Laverne and Shirley, pontificating rhythm guitarist David Ivor St. Hubbins of This Is Spinal Tap and currently Chuck McGill, the electricity-fearing lawyer on Better Call Saul.
Off-camera, McKeans still the kind of wit youd follow on Twitter (How could we be out of tuna? Tuna is what you have when youre out of everything else, is a classic McKean food tweet). But on the series? McKean doesnt go the way of the frantic pitching favored by most razzle-dazzlers who preside over shows of this ilk (see: sister channel, Food Networks Unwrapped 2.0). Hes the intelligent, soft-spoken, pun-making adult in the room, turning down the noise in his kitchen TV set.
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Now in its second season, Food: Fact or Fiction airs on the Cooking Channel (Mondays at 10 p.m.). For those unacquainted with the series, the entire first season is available for streaming on cookingchanneltv. com.
Recently McKean got on the phone to talk about how he ended up on a food series, what hes learned about spicy cuisine, and reveal his Better Call Saul characters breakfast food of choice.
Youre an actor, writer, composer and musician. What appealed to you about adding host to your professional resume?
I read the prospectus and I knew that the production company, Revelations, was involved. Thats Morgan Freemans production company. And I said, That sounds really legit. He is, after all, the president and God.
How are topics chosen?
Is this is an interesting question. Theres a lot of Who cares? questions. Like, I dont really care who invented Pixy Stix. But there are things that we all think we know that are incorrect. For example, we all know that carrots are good for our eyes. Well, theyre not really. This was just something that was cooked up by the British.
According to your show, it was to prevent the Germans from finding out theyd designed radar to track enemy airplanes during World War II, so the Brits pretended it was all in their pilots keen eyesight.
Yes, they said, We make our night fighters eat a lot of carrots, so the RAF can see where [the Luftwaffe] are flying. Thats just one example. Theres tons of common knowledge that isnt correct, just things that you didnt know.
Like?
I knew nothing about the Donut Brigade, for example.
Youre speaking of the doughnut-frying female workers sent to the front lines in France?
Yes. The doughnut lassies who during World War I would go right to the front lines and cook up doughnuts to keep the boys going. They really, really came to be part of American life. I also didnt know that pretzels had religious significance at one time, that the [twists of baked dough] were symbolic of crossed arms.
As the host of a food show, is there now an expectation that you are a food adventurist?
Not necessarily. Im not really a gourmet. I like to try new things. But I have friends who are kind of epicureans. One of them said to me, You know what I tried the other night at a really fancy party? I had larks tongues. And I said, Who are you? Caligula? Thats insane. He said, They were really delicious.
It sounds like your friend was either pulling your leg or referencing a famous King Crimson album. Whats on your no-eat list?
Theres lots of things that people think are wonderful that I despise. Like truffles. Im not doing a truffle show any time soon. Same goes for shellfish. Im not a big oyster eater. But I know people who will sit at a raw bar and eat oyster for two hours. I dont pretend to be any kind of an expert. In fact, I think my Everyman status is what kind of gives the show a center. But I do like new flavors. I like spicy food.
Have you tried the 10++ Nashville hot chicken at Howlin Rays in Chinatown?
No, but we did a piece about the red hot chicken. Last season, we had the Chili Queens [of San Antonio]. We also talked about what to do when what youve eaten is too spicy. Do you drink water or eat a piece of bread? It turns out that a couple of sips of milk will do it. I wish Id known that 10 years ago when I was in a Mexican restaurant in Oxnard and I ate a jalapeno pepper that stayed with me literally for five days.
Do you get to eat the camera-ready dishes?
We did a segment about bundt cake and they had these specimens of bundt cake, which were all so gorgeous you didnt even want to cut into them. There was one that had an interesting, kind of modern art, kind of Frank Gehry shape to it while still essentially being a bundt cake. And I said, Well, thats just too pretty to eat. Is that a real thing? Or did you make it out of plaster? And they said, No, its real. Were not going to cut into it, though. So would you like to take it home? and I said, Yeah!
Talk about the bright, young food historians that your show has assembled.
Justin Jampol, for example, hes our wartime historian. A lot of things that took place during the wars and specifically related to the wars, is Justins field of expertise. Hes curator of a wonderful museum in Los Angeles, The Wende Museum, which has [the largest collection of Cold War artifacts outside of Europe]. Its an amazing thing hes done there. Hes a really interesting guy. He really knows a lot and I think he likes being on camera. But pizza expert? What does that mean? Well, its a guy who can talk about pizza, knows something about the history, and really loves pizza.
Describe your perfect meal.
My wife makes an amazing chili. I love it when someone says, Hey, lets get a steak. I dont eat steak often, maybe once a month. But when I do, it really hits the spot. When youre done with your steak and your mashed potatoes and your green beans, you really know youve had dinner.
Good New York diner food can really hit the spot. I also like fresh food, food that seems like it hasnt been monkeyed with too much. Im in New Mexico right now, where I shoot Better Call Saul. Theres this place here called Farm & Table that I like a lot. Im going to try and take the missus there tonight; shes got to head back to L.A.
Before we leave Better Call Saul, a question: What sort of food passes muster for your house-bound, and possibly mentally ill character, Chuck McGill?
[In flashback scenes] his wife is making risotto, so he used to know about good food. He wouldnt order a pizza.
Because outsiders like the delivery boys might not get that he suffers instant pain in the presence of any and all electronic equipment?
Yes. But [what he eats] is a really good question that I dont think has ever been addressed. I think Im going to have to get back to you on that, but I think he eats a lot of granola.
Lets get back to Food: Fact or Fiction? How is this season different from Season 1?
Its 13 episodes; we did six last season. I think theres a lot more history. There are a few more reenactments, but not the kind that take themselves seriously its not like a crime show. I think theres more silent movie comedy going on, along with the narration. Weve become better storytellers. During the first season, we found our sea legs. Now its a crisper show.
Its our aim to make it the fastest moving show on television, and it really does have that feel to it. When the show is over, weve learned a bunch of things and were hungry. So I think were doing the work of the angels.
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From Filipino food in Orange County to avocado toast at Neiman Marcus, heres whats happening in the world of food and drink:
Neiman Marcus goes vegan: One of the swankiest department stores in Los Angeles is about to open a vegan restaurant. Matthew Kenney NM, a new restaurant by Matthew Kenney (the chef behind Plant Food + Wine Venice), is scheduled to open at the Neiman Marcus Beverly Hills on Nov. 18. The restaurant, located on the third level of the store, has 24 seats and room for eight at the bar. Menu highlights include avocado toast (yes, this is still a thing); a mushroom and vegetable burger; taco salad with sunflower chorizo; and an avocado and Key lime tart. 9700 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 550-5900, www.neimanmarcus.com.
Worldly doner kebabs in Westwood: SpireWorks, a restaurant specializing in doner kebabs, will open in Westwood Village on Nov. 16. There are plans to open another location in Eagle Rock next year. The restaurant will serve beef doner kebab, inspired by the food that owner Bob Kaufman (former senior vice president for business development and franchises for Tower Records) ate during his many trips to Turkey. Kuniko Yagi (of the now-closed Comme Ca and Hinoki and the Bird) is a consulting chef. The restaurant has a build-your-own doner adventure model with your choice of beef, chicken or vegetarian kofte; a base of either the restaurants signature bread, greens or rice; then toppings. The Baja California-style toppings include tomatoes, tomatillo sauce and cotija cheese; while the Bangkok-style toppings are items such as tamarind chutney, yellow curry aioli and pickled red peppers. 1061 Broxton Ave. Los Angeles, (424) 220-6299, www.SpireWorks.com.
Your new Long Beach Beer Belly: Beer Belly, the K-town restaurant known for its stoner-friendly creations (bacon fat fries topped with bacon; Buffalo mac n cheese with fried chicken skins), is opening a location in Long Beach on Friday. The 2,000-square-foot space is at the corner of Long Beach Boulevard and East 3rd Street near the Long Beach Promenade. Chef Wes Lieberhers menu will feature new versions of some of the dishes from the Koreatown menu, along with items created specifically for Long Beach, including the BLVD burger made with candied bacon slaw, sharp cheddar and a sunny-side-up egg. The restaurant will have 24 beers on tap and a cocktail program by Karen Grill. There will be a back bar where diners can order experimental drinks Grill and her team are working on. 255 Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach, (562) 436-2337, www.beerbellyla.com.
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Filipino food in Santa Ana: The Filipino food movement continues in Orange County with a new restaurant called Mix Mix, opening in Santa Ana later this year. Chef Ross Pangilinan, formerly of Cafe Rouge, plans on using his traditional French and Italian training to pay homage to his Filipino heritage: seared foie gras with charred pineapple and al pastor spice; crispy duck leg with mushroom risotto and Szechuan pepper. There will be a six-seat, reservation-only chefs table. And in the bar, cocktails will feature house-made bitters, syrups and infusions. 300 N. Main St., Santa Ana, www.mixmixkitchenbar.com.
The Hamptons in the SFV: Hamptons 818, a new restaurant meant to evoke the style and feeling of the Hamptons, opened a little more than a week ago in Sherman Oaks. Its sort of nautical-themed with an impressive selection of omelets and pancakes. And yes, theres a lobster roll on the menu. 14919 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 501-2700, hamptons818.com.
Still hungry? Pink Taco has a new taco truck. Stephen Trujillo, who has worked at the French Laundry and Bouchon, has taken over as chef at the Churchill. West Hollywood restaurant Catch LA is now open for weekend brunch. Avec Nous at Viceroy LErmitage Beverly Hills and Cast at Viceroy Santa Monica are launching new after-work menus (Rush Hour menu at Cast; Cocktail Hour at Avec Nous).
Currently craving a cheeseburger with no onions. Follow me on Twitter & Instagram @Jenn_Harris_
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The start of the election was hours away, and 20 young people gathered around a table in a small classroom, their eyes full of cynicism, exhaustion, fear.
Maybe even a little hope.
They are the future of the not-very-United States of America, and many of the students in my Cal State L.A. communications class were about to vote for president for the first time in their lives.
Are any of you optimistic? I asked.
Or is it all gloom and doom?
We talked, they wrote, and the answers to my questions came from here and there and everywhere.
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Ignore the perspectives of these young folks at your own peril because not only will they be in charge one day, but the country is becoming more like them.
Of the 20 students, 19 are minorities predominantly Latino. The lone white student is gay.
The Republican Party, in its current splintered form, might not exist much longer because of them. Nor do millennials line up neatly with the Democratic Party, which has its own cracks.
Despite the presidential candidates many claims to the contrary, the students dont believe Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton have answers for the needs of middle-class and low-income people like themselves. And millennials, said Sebastian, are fed up with the B.S.
Hopefully, someone will come out of the shadows four years from now, said Selena. A candidate who wont feed [people] fear and desperation in the hopes that they fall in line with the desires of the corporate leaders.
One student said he wants to leave the United States after living through this carnival.
Ive been on my own since I was 14, said Alfredo. Ive never had a home physically and I have trouble calling this place home now.
He said he wasnt going to vote.
Im looking at how bigotry became much more public and normal, and it makes me question why I want to make a difference here when I dont feel welcome.
Others were equally horrified but not quite as jaded.
Aside from the fact that I think this election is complete garbage, I would like to remain optimistic, wrote Cazandra, a Bernie Sanders supporter who settled for Clinton.
Put to a classroom vote, Sanders won. Except that his name isnt on the real ballot.
Michelle Obama did pretty well, too, except that she isnt on the ballot, either.
What was that quote she said? Selena asked. When they go low, we go high. She is the embodiment of that quote. Theres something about her you just trust.
When they talk about Clinton or Trump, trust is not the first word out of the mouths of these students.
They are too old to have held onto their innocence, too young to have let go of their idealism.
So do I go for the woman who called black men predators? asked Jene, who is African American. Or Trump [despite] all the sexist, racist and pompous things he has said? I think I am with her not because she is the ideal candidate, but because she is not Donald Trump.
They live by social media, getting their news feeds through Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and yet they recognize that social media can perpetuate distortion and division. Trump himself sent out 282 offensive tweets, by a New York Times tally.
Politics has always been played dirty, wrote Sofia, and the mud flies faster on the wings of social media.
Marias take on Trumps treatment of women: He is always talking dirty and filthy, as if we were dogs.
A student named Arely was terrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Her parents, who worked for her to have a chance to do better than they, have no papers.
If he deports them, she said, that terrifies me more than anything else.
Whichever candidate prevails, a student named Jackson will lament the fact that so many Americans rabidly supported Trump, a candidate he finds so divisive.
If anything, this election has just pitted people against one another, said the unabashed Clinton supporter.
For Jackson, those divisions have been personal. He said he has been on his mothers naughty list since coming out to her as gay during Christmas break in 2014.
Last week, Jackson wrote, he checked his mothers Facebook page and saw a post shed written condemning Hillary Clinton, calling her a liar and a murderer while praising Trump for his ability to say whats on his mind.
It is at this moment that I realize I can not love myself and love my mom at the same time. Im not sad. Im not bitter. I accept the decision and rise to the challenge of loving me. All of me, and the political candidate who supports me, regardless of who doesnt.
To Luis, maybe theres a silver lining in Trumps having reminded us that racism and sexism are still pervasive.
Hes united our struggles, Luis wrote. Black, Latino, disabled, female, Muslim, overweight. Trump will continue to be the catalyst for change as he spews out his ridiculous opinions on social media. Thank you, Mr. Trump.
Our society is witnessing the system blowing up right in front of our eyes. Political parties are crumbling down piece by piece. Daisy, student
As Daisy wrote, Our society is witnessing the system blowing up right in front of our eyes. Political parties are crumbling down piece by piece.
Thats true, and we dont know what will follow. But as ossified institutions are forced to evolve, and answer to a more diverse electorate, we can dream, cant we, that good things are possible?
Another student, Santiago, wasnt predicting a Clinton win so much as hoping for one.
I believe electing a woman president for the first time in our nations history will be monumental, he wrote.
He had no illusions that if elected, Clinton would be able to bring the country together. But if she were to win, it would mean that one more barrier had been lifted, and to him, thats something to be excited about.
Santiago ended his report with this:
What a time to be alive.
Get more of Steve Lopezs work and follow him on Twitter @LATstevelopez
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As the presidential ballots are counted Tuesday, the state with the greatest bounty of electoral college votes is unlikely to be a stage of high drama.
California gave America three Republican presidents in the 20th century Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan but its citizens havent voted for a Republican presidential candidate since they narrowly picked George H.W. Bush in 1988.
This time around, the states 55 electoral votes are considered a given in Democrat Hillary Clintons tally.
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In California, even if I dont vote, it doesnt matter, said Dexter Jayawardhana, 70, of Silver Lake, a supporter of Republican nominee Donald Trump. Its like throwing your vote into the river.
Nevertheless, he plans to cast a ballot, as will millions of other Californians. Many are focused on the state, county and local offices that are up for grabs, as well as the fate of 17 statewide ballot measures.
Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said that the disconnect between the Republican Party and the majority of Californians has been growing for decades. Conservative strongholds persist, including pockets of San Diego and Orange counties.
But as Californians on the whole have drifted leftward on a variety of issues among them abortion rights, gun control, same-sex marriage and environmental protection the Republican Party has moved to the right, Schnur said.
Republicans are still running as if California were culturally, socially and demographically in the 1980s, Schnur said. Thats obviously not the case.
The last time a Republican presidential candidate took California by a strong margin was in 1984, when Ronald Reagan trounced Walter Mondale by about 16 percentage points. In 1988, Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis by about 3 points.
In California, even if I dont vote, it doesnt matter. Its like throwing your vote into the river. Dexter Jayawardhana, Silver Lake resident
1 / 41 Nellie Gillogly, left, of Santa Ana, and fellow Republicans erupt in celebration as Donald Trump wins Florida. OCGOP election party is at China Palace in Newport Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 41 The crowd reacts in despair as Donald Trump takes the lead in the Electoral College. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 41 Republicans Enrietta Lee, left, and Lydia Sanders react while watching election night results at the OCGOP election party in Newport Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 41 Hillary supporters Brooke Karzen, Annabelle Gustat - Karzan and Kit Karzan (L-R) react to the Presidential returns at the Kamala Harris rally in downtown Los Angeles. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 41 Republicans Enrietta Lee, left, prays, as Sarah McDowell, right, celebrates the announcement that Donald Trump has won the presidential race at the OCGOP election party in Newport Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 41 Claudia Goytia checks her smart phone for any good news regarding Hillary Clinton while attending a party for Measure M in downtown LA. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles TImes) 7 / 41 Brooke Saul, 31, of Echo Park, puts her arm around Amie Judd, 36, of Silverlake, as they react to Hillary Clinton conceding to Donald Trump at the Edison in downtown Los Angeles. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 41 Kamala Harris celebrates at her rally in downtown. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 41 L.A. County Supervisor candidate Janice Hahn celebrates her early lead in San Pedro. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 41 LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and his wife, Amy Wakeland embrace as they watch supporters of Proposition HHH celebrate an apparent victory for the measure aimed to combat homelessness. Left is LA City Councilman Herb Wesson and LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas, far left. ( (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 41 Republicans Sarah McDowell, center, of Westminster, reacts as a newscaster announces Donald Trump is pulling ahead of Hillary Clinton. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 41 Ashley Holloway, left, and Carol Uraneck, right, embrace as they solemnly watch Republican candidate for President Donald Trump jump ahead in the electoral college votes during the election night watch party at The Abbey in West Hollywood. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 41 A man checks the television to see the latest tally on the electoral votes, which show Donald Trump leading, during the election night party at The Abbey in West Hollywood. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 41 People gathered at the Abbey, in West Hollywood, hoping to watch history unfold after a divisive political year. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 41 The crowd reacts in disbelief as Republican candidate for President Donald Trump leads in the electoral college during the election night party at The Abbey in West Hollywood. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 41 A woman reacts in disbelief as Republican candidate for President Donald Trump takes a lead in the electoral college during the election night party at The Abbey in West Hollywood. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 41 The crowd reacts at the election night party at The Abbey as Donald Trump takes the lead in the Electoral College. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 41 Republicans from left: Nellie Gillogly, Sarah McDowell, and Enrietta Lee erupt in celebration as Donald Trump wins Florida. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 41 =Noramae Munster reacts to the announcement of new President Donald Trump at the Ports O Call restaurant in San Pedro. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 41 Sam Addeo, center, holds her breath before the poll results for the state of California is announced, at the Hillary Clinton Election Night Party in West Hollywood, (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 41 U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Orange), hugs supporters at her election night party. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 41 Staff hang signs at the election party for L.A. County Supervisor candidate Janice Hahn in San Pedro. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 41 People cast their votes at Los Angeles County Fire Department Lifeguard Operations in Venice. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 41 People cast their votes as a surfer heads to the water against a backdrop of the Venice Pier. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 41 Downtown resident Ruth Bowles cast her ballot at the Weingart Center for the Homeless on skid row. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 41 Tristy Patterson, left and her mom Sherah Rush, from Manhattan Beach, take a selfie outside the Manhattan Beach Library, where they just finished voting, Tuesday November 8, 2016. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 41 Shaquanda Oliverez, right, plays with her one-year-old daughter Olivia Camacho while their laundry dries, as Caine Crockett, left, votes at Super Suds laundromat in Long Beach. (Christina House / For The Times) 28 / 41 UCLA student Mikhail Khan, right, waits in line to cast his vote along with fellow students and residents at the Alpha Gamma Omega Fraternity House in Westwood. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 41 A pedestrian passes a polling place at the Weingart Center for the Homeless on Skid Row in Los Angeles. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 41 Dogs wait patiently as their owners vote at MADE in Long Beach. (Christina House / For The Times) 31 / 41 Orange resident Bethany Peralta holds her one-month old daughter Lucia while she waits in line to cast herr ballot at Orange High School. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 41 Voters cast ballots at a polling station at Watts Towers Arts Center in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 41 Jayna Randle shows off her voting sticker at the Watts Towers Arts Center in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 41 Camila Chavez, 3, plays as her grandmother Alexandrian Barrios votes at a polling station at the Watts Towers Arts Center. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 41 Matthew Jasinsky, 3, waits for mother Damaris Marti to vote at the Mexican Baptist Church in the East Los Angeles. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 41 Kent Barkouras, of Newport Beach, wears a patriotic costume while waiting to vote at the Lido Isle Clubhouse. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 41 California Attorney General Kamala Harris casts her vote along with her husband Douglas Emhoff at Kenter Canyon Elementary School in Los Angeles. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 41 UCLA student Lauren Fitzgibbon, 21, right, waits in line to cast his vote along with fellow students and residents at the Alpha Gamma Omega Fraternity House in Westwood. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 41 People line up to vote at a polling station at Watts Towers Arts Center in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 41 People wait to vote at a polling station at Watts Towers Arts Center in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 41 People line up early to cast their ballot at a polling station at Watts Towers Arts Center in Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Democrats won the state in the next six contests. Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and speechwriter for Pete Wilson when he was governor in the 1990s, said the states loss of aerospace jobs early in that decade, and a booming Latino population, fueled the shift from red to blue.
Presidential elections in California have become predictable mail-it-in affairs, Whalen said, adding: Lack of competition is never a good thing in a democracy.
President Obama has come to California repeatedly with the goal of raising money, he said, but not to tackle the states problems. And the state is left out of the barnstorming treatment candidates lavish on swing states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
If [Californias] 55 electoral votes were at stake, the next president would spend a lot more time on the ground here solving problems, not collecting checks, Whalen said.
Joanne Polite, 76, of Silver Lake, is a Clinton supporter and retired school administrator who voted by mail.
She is glad to live in a blue state, she said, but is nervous about the presidential outcome and didnt want to take any chances.
Just because its a Democratic state, it doesnt mean I dont have to vote, Polite said. I cant say Hillary is a shoo-in right now.
Along with the presidential race, she said she will be closely watching the results of Measure M, a transportation sales tax she supports.
As she walked up a hill on a residential block in Silver Lake, she said the city needs mass transportation akin to New York Citys. That shouldve started in the 40s and 50s, she said. Transportation will make a big difference. ...We need it very badly.
sarah.parvini@latimes.com
Twitter: @sarahparvini
christopher.goffard@latimes.com
Twitter: @LATchrisgoffard
Times staff writers Nina Agrawal, Makeda Easter and Anh Do contributed to this report.
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A cocaine-fueled gun fanatic armed himself with an assault rifle and launched a rampage Tuesday in his Azusa neighborhood, killing one man and critically wounding two women before he attempted to ambush responding police officers.
During a furious gun battle in the quiet San Gabriel Valley neighborhood, police shot him dead, and his body was found in a homes entryway.
The gunfire forced authorities to secure the neighborhood and shut down nearby polling places sending voters scrambling to find alternate locations as police confronted the assailant.
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The motive for the shooting remained under investigation, but Los Angeles County Sheriffs Lt. John Corina said the 45-year-old assailant was on a cocaine binge that had prompted his wife and two children to leave the familys home Monday evening.
He is kind of a gun fanatic, Corina said. He came out in the street and, according to people, he started shooting randomly at people.
Parents evacuate their children after Slauson Middle School was placed on lockdown during a shooting at the intersection of Orange Avenue and Fourth Street in Azusa. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )
About 2 p.m. Tuesday, the man who has not been publicly identified armed himself with handguns, a rifle and shotgun. Clad in black combat gear, he headed for the street.
He opened fire at a woman driving a van, causing her to crash into cars.
When a 77-year-old neighbor left his home to see the commotion, the assailant fatally shot him, Corina said.
A woman making her way down the street was also wounded in the rampage.
Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Ron Singleton said that the women, ages 65 and 59, were airlifted to a hospital. Corina said the women remained in critical condition and have not spoken with detectives.
Responding officers were tending to the victims when they were met with a hail of gunfire by a gunman armed with an assault rifle with a rapid-fire capability, acting Azusa Police Chief Steve Hunt said.
He was hiding when officers came up, Corina said, adding that police had seen the wounded victims in the neighborhood. When they went attend to those people, he opened up fire.
The shooter fired at least 20 rounds at police.
Officers took cover and returned shots at the assailant, who retreated into a home in the 500 block of Fourth Street. No officers were injured.
I heard this boom boom like a rifle or shotgun, and then I heard pop pop back, then boom boom again, said neighbor Hector Serrano, 21.
I came outside and [police] were throwing gas at the house.
Another neighbor saw the same man as he was walking away from the Memorial Park parking lot.
I just ran inside, Fabiola Morena, 47, said after the man stopped to reload his weapon and glanced her way. I secured the door, grabbed my granddaughter and ran into the bathroom, and we locked ourselves there.
Inside the home, she heard police sirens and more gunshots.
I dont know if he shot at the police or they shot at him, but it was several gunshots, said Morena, who spoke to The Times by phone while locked in the room. I was afraid a bullet would come through the walls of the house.
Liberata Collela said she saw a body lying near the front door of the house next door.
Sheriffs officials used a robot with a camera to confirm the gunman was dead.
Inside his home, investigators found hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and family members told authorities he would occasionally binge on cocaine, Corina said.
The man was employed at a public works division in an unidentified Orange County city and was previously in the U.S. military, Corina said.
He collected guns and had at least four weapons, including handguns, a shotgun and a rifle. He had lived in the Azusa home for about five months.
Officials said that an earlier report by authorities that the shooter was a woman was the result of misinformation as the events were unfolding.
The shooting unsettled Azusa a bedroom community of 50,000 that marks the entrance to the San Gabriel Canyon on the eve of a contentious election.
The Azusa Unified School District issued a lockdown for Slauson Middle and Mountain View Elementary schools about 2:15 p.m., officials said. A nearby daycare center and preschool were also locked down.
As helicopters droned above, residents attempted to navigate around sheriffs cruisers stationed in multiple intersections, cutting off traffic. Some approached officers outside the citys police headquarters, searching for a place to vote. Residents were told they could cast a provisional ballot anywhere in the county.
Rosa Valdovinos, 62, said she had raced to Memorial Park, where some children who attend nearby schools huddled on a bleacher, and was relieved to learn her grandson had already been picked up by a relative. Still, she was rattled by the violence.
We never have this happen before here in Azusa. Especially with the election? Its weird, Valdovinos said. There are so many crazy people, acting emotionally.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
Times staff writers Ruben Vives, Corina Knoll and Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.
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UPDATES:
11:20 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with details on what led to the shooting.
8:10 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details on the circumstances of the shooting and minor editing.
6:25 p.m.: This article was updated with new details that the gunman was found dead.
6:19 p.m.: This article was updated with another witness describing the standoff.
5:55 p.m.: This article was updated with details about a body being removed from a home.
5:30 p.m.: This article was updated with Los Angeles County Fire Department confirmed the deceased was a man in his 70s.
4:52 p.m.: This article was updated with new details by the Azusa Police Chief.
4:42 p.m.: This article was updated with a second witness account.
4:13 p.m.: The article was updated with sourcing from law enforcement.
4:06 p.m.: The article was updated with a witness account.
3:41 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details.
3:35 p.m.: This article was updated with Los Angeles County Fire Department confirming one person was dead on arrival.
3:25 p.m.: This article was updated with a Los Angeles County Sheriffs captain confirming four people were shot and a suspect was heavily armed.
3:10 p.m.: This article was updated with details about the location of the shooting and police urging residents to shelter in place.
This article was originally published at 3 p.m.
Good morning. It is Tuesday, Nov. 8. Keeping Hollywood celebrities safe sure isnt cheap. Heres what else is happening in the Golden State:
TOP STORIES
Wheres the suspense?
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California hasnt voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988 and thats unlikely to change today. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is expected to pick up the Golden States 55 electoral votes. In California, even if I dont vote, it doesnt matter, said Dexter Jayawardhana, a supporter of Republican nominee Donald Trump. Its like throwing your vote into the river. Los Angeles Times
The end is here
Lets talk about our feelings regarding the campaign on this election day. Los Angeles Times
Helping hand
In case you missed it: Heres our guide to the 17 propositions on Californias ballot. Los Angeles Times
Dont miss a moment of the Los Angeles Times coverage of the election. Sign up here for a week of free access.
L.A. AT LARGE
Set for trial: Eccentric New York real estate scion Robert Durst pleaded not guilty Monday to the killing of his good friend Susan Berman. He was arrested last year after the HBO documentary The Jinx re-examined his role or lack thereof in the disappearance of his first wife and the dismembering of a onetime neighbor. The murder trial is expected to begin a year from now. Los Angeles Times
Dangerous levels: Air quality officials are investigating metal-processing plants in Paramount after detecting a cancer-causing metal at 350 times normal levels. Hexavalent chromium is known to cause lung cancer. Were really focused on finding the precise source of these high levels, said Philip Fine, a deputy executive officer with the Air Quality Management District. Los Angeles Times
Big spender: The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit, spent $22 million to back two state ballot measures this election cycle and an additional $1 million on local measures. It is unusual for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to spend multiple millions of dollars, says Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause. LA Weekly
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
Fight over land: The developer behind the Banning Ranch project is suing the California Coastal Commission for voting down its plan to build hundreds of homes on an oilfield overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Newport Banning Ranch LLC is seeking $490 million. Los Angeles Times
A serious misstep: It was a nightmare commute for many in the Bay Area on Monday all because a womans shoe got caught in an escalator at the BART station at Embarcadero. SFist
Living debt free: What can California learn from Stocktons financial woes? The city had little cushion because it had borrowed aggressively in the previous decade to pay for various public buildings, an arena, housing projects, and marina and downtown improvements. Zocalo Public Square
Out of control: Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards famously satirized the Hollywood Hills party scene in the 1968 movie The Party, whose tagline was if youve ever been to a wilder party... youre under arrest. Now, some residents think arrests might actually be necessary to quell loud party houses. And theyre not joking. Los Angeles Times
CRIME AND COURTS
Fishy tale: A mother faces jail time for selling homemade ceviche after she was arrested in an undercover sting. Did authorities go too far? Los Angeles Times
Motive unknown: It was a case that puzzled investigators. Who would want to shoot a mother and her 4-year-old daughter just feet from their Long Beach home this summer? After weeks of mystery, police say they have a suspect but the motive is still unclear. Los Angeles Times
Life in prison: The man who killed a TSA agent and injured three people at LAX three years ago was sentenced to life in prison Monday. Paul Ciancia, 26, apologized to a teacher who was injured in the attack in Terminal 3 but otherwise appeared unapologetic about the violence. I knew exactly how I was going to die. I was going to take up arms against my own government, he said in court. Los Angeles Times
DROUGHT AND CLIMATE
Worth a thousand words: Dramatic photos show Californias water crisis. New York Times
Dead fish: Thousands of steelhead are dying on the coast north of Santa Cruz, prompting fears and action. Mercury News
Sick trees: The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service will provide financial assistance to private landowners with dead and dying conifer forest trees. The dry conditions posed by Californias ongoing drought have increased the potential for devastating wildfires and insect-related tree mortality,' said Carlos Suarez, NRCS California state conservationist. City News Service
CALIFORNIA CULTURE
Take a look inside: Marilyn Monroe lived in 43 homes during her 36 years on earth but owned only one a stunning mansion in Brentwood. Heres a rare look inside. House Beautiful
Can I get that on the side? Here are the off-menu dishes to order in Los Angeles and a few other cities in the U.S. Bloomberg
Babies not welcome: TEDWomen in San Francisco is a conference about the power of women and girls. So why were a nursing mother and her baby kicked out? Quartz
CALIFORNIA ALMANAC
Sacramento will be partly sunny with a high of 74 degrees. San Francisco will be partly sunny with a high of 72. Los Angeles will be sunny and 87. It will be sunny with a high of 92 in Riverside. San Diego will be 80 degrees and sunny.
AND FINALLY
Todays California Memory comes from Andy Garcia:
Over the weekend my Jewish wife, born in Milwaukee, and I, a Puerto Rican from New York City, ate out two times: first at a great old funky Mexican restaurant in Boyle Heights that serves the best huevos rancheros this side of the border. Then, at a great Lebanese restaurant in Long Beach for mouthwatering chicken tawook and baba ganoush. In East L.A., we sat next to the neighborhood folks and some Asian, black and Hispanic doctors and nurses down from county hospital. In Belmont Shore, there were people from our own neighborhood in Long Beach, including a number of people of Middle Eastern descent who were as distraught as we were over how this election has divided the country. We are proud to live in California, a melting pot that welcomes and appreciates diversity. I hope that at the end of this next four years we will still be so.
If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)
Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad.
Los Angeles voters who persevered to the end of a busy ballot Tuesday appear to have overwhelmingly approved a measure that will tax the citys property owners to provide housing for the homeless.
Proposition HHH, the 26th item on the ballot, authorizes $1.2 billion in borrowing to accelerate the pace at which mostly nonprofit developers build permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless people. The bonds will be repaid by a new property tax averaging just under $10 for each $100,000 in assessed valuation over 29 years.
The proposition was far ahead late Tuesday in the early vote tally.
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City officials who placed the measure on the ballot say it will help fund 1,000 apartment units a year for 10 years. Los Angeles County will provide the support services for the city housing.
Election 2016: Live updates
Supporters of the measure declared victory Tuesday long before the full results were in, based on the absentee vote and because exit polls showed the proposal doing well.
We earned our wings tonight. We completely lived up to the title City of Angels, said Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who backed the measure.
Following years of ineffective efforts to stem the spread of tent encampments that now dot the city, the bond measure was an ambitious approach to achieve a long-term solution. It will have little immediate effect, leaving the city and county struggling to gain traction with short-term efforts, including offering services to those living on the street and finding placements in existing housing.
In an election dominated by the presidential race, political analysts predicted that voter reaction in the acrimonious contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would prove the deciding factor for the homeless bond proposal.
While tax measures always face a difficult challenge getting above the two-thirds vote required for passage, a strong anti-Trump sentiment among Democrats and a corresponding Republican malaise in deep-blue California was expected to be important to a proposal likely to win or lose by a small margin, they said.
There is definitely a Trump effect in California. Sean Clegg, partner, SCN Strategies
There is definitely a Trump effect in California, said Sean Clegg, a partner in the political consulting firm SCN Strategies, which is not involved in the campaign.
That meant a favorable outlook for revenue initiatives and progressive measures throughout the state, Clegg said.
The measure had the backing of much of Los Angeles political leadership and civic groups. United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce coordinated the campaign.
Opponents, who argued that the city should use existing revenue to address homelessness, did not form a campaign committee or raise funds.
Though no polls specifically aimed at Proposition HHH were published, voters have consistently rated homelessness as one of the citys top issues.
The polling also suggests that voters see homelessness as a moral issue, said John Fairbank, a principal at Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates. Fairbanks firm is not working on HHH but includes homelessness in all its polls, he said.
Safety is a concern, but its to a lesser degree, Fairbank said. The basic responsibility of us as Angelenos to help people, whether mental illness or families with children, is one of the driving forces to deal directly with this issue.
After the positive polling, proponents focused their efforts on two fronts: motivating voters who were likely to vote yes and guiding them through the thicket of a ballot with 25 items before Proposition HHH.
The campaign included mailers sent to hundreds of thousands of households. In a personal touch emphasizing the moral aspect of the measure, volunteers wrote a hundred thousand postcards mailed last week.
doug.smith@latimes.com
Twitter: @LATDoug
ALSO
In predictable, deep-blue California, voters find their motivation
FBI chief James Comey faces a rocky relationship with his next boss, no matter who wins
Fight over Yorba Linda water rates culminates in recall vote
UPDATES:
11:55 p.m.: This article was updated with initial ballot results.
10 p.m.: This article was updated with a quote from Councilman Jose Huizar.
This article was originally published at 4 a.m.
She first met the two narcotics officers in July 2009 when they drove her to jail after she was caught buying methamphetamine in Hollywood.
If she gave them names of drug dealers, they said, they could get her out of jail. The woman didnt make any promises, she recounted, but took one cops phone number before she was booked.
Three days later, she was released. As she left a downtown Los Angeles courthouse that evening, she said, the officers were waiting outside in an unmarked police car. They rolled down a window of their Volkswagen Jetta and offered her a ride. She accepted.
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What followed, the woman testified during a preliminary hearing on Friday, was a series of dark run-ins with the two officers, including an encounter weeks later while she was walking her dog in Hollywood. That night, the officers ordered her into the back seat of the unmarked police car, she said, where one unzipped his pants, pulled them down and forced her to give him oral sex. The other, meanwhile, faced forward in the front passenger seat, holding her dog, she testified.
Shocked and scared, she said, she didnt fight back.
He tried to kiss me after that and say it wasnt that bad, the woman testified, weeping at times when recounting details of the assault.
The testimony came during a two-day hearing where she and two other women gave evidence against Officers Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols, accusing the pair of raping or sexually assaulting them. Prosecutors allege that the officers targeted four women between late 2008 and 2011, forcing victims into having sex or performing oral sex, sometimes in the back seat of their unmarked police car after driving to a secluded area. The Times generally does not name victims of sexual assault.
At the end of the hearing, Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin ruled there was enough evidence to require Valenzuela and Nichols, both 44, to stand trial on multiple felony charges alleging that they preyed on the women whom they had previously taken to jail or used as informants. Valenzuela is also charged with assaulting one woman with a handgun.
They have pleaded not guilty.
Outside the courtroom on Monday, their attorneys contended that the women all know each other and said their accounts were uncorroborated.
Theyre not random women passing in the night, said Robert Rico, an attorney representing Nichols.
We know the community of drug dealers and drug users is there, said Bill Seki, an attorney representing Valenzuela.
During the hearing, the two officers sat next to their attorneys in orange jail jumpsuits, their wrists shackled to chains around their waists. Valenzuela bowed his head during much of the testimony, while Nichols wrote in his legal pad or stared blankly.
Both officers, who were placed on unpaid leave more than two years ago, have been in jail since February, when they were arrested by detectives from their own department. They are each being held in lieu of more than $3.7-million bail.
The Times first reported the allegations against the officers in 2013 when LAPD detectives obtained a search warrant to seize the mens computers and phones.
The first woman to accuse Valenzuela and Nichols came forward three years earlier.
She testified Monday that the officers picked her up near her home one evening in December 2008. She expected the usual routine as an informant theyd send her out to buy drugs and shed get at least $40 in exchange, a deal she agreed to after she was arrested for drug possession.
But in the back seat of the car, Nichols exposed himself and asked the woman to touch him. She did, and eventually he pushed her head into his lap, she said.
Another accuser was arrested in December 2009 after she was caught selling heroin. That night, Valenzuela and Nichols drove her from a Hollywood police station to a Van Nuys jail, she testified. But before she was booked, she said, the officers took her to a secluded alley.
There was something she could do, Valenzuela told her, to avoid staying in jail, she testified. They had sex in the back seat of the car while Nichols stood outside.
I was in a dark alleyway with a guy with a gun, she said on the witness stand Monday afternoon. I didnt really feel like I had a choice.
She was later released without having to post bail.
Later that month, she said, she had sex with Nichols under similar circumstances in a Dennys parking lot near the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown L.A.
A fourth woman, who did not testify at the hearing, told an internal affairs investigator in 2012 that she had sex with both officers multiple times to earn points to get a pending drug charge dropped, according to Mondays testimony.
Once, Valenzuela texted her asking what she liked to drink, LAPD Sgt. Greg Bruce testified. The woman reported that when he showed up at her home with alcohol, they drank and had sex, Bruce told the court.
He told her if she had sex with him, it would count towards her working off her case, Bruce said.
With Nichols, the arrangement was the same, he said. The woman feared that if she didnt comply, the officers would send her back to jail, he said.
There is a pattern here, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ann Marie Wise argued in court. These officers placed these women in situations where they were extremely vulnerable.
All four women filed civil lawsuits against the city. Two cases settled, with the city agreeing to pay one woman $575,000 and another $750,000. In the two pending cases, the plaintiffs are each seeking more than $3 million in damages. A joint mediation session is set for December, according to Dennis Chang, an attorney representing two of the women, including one whose case settled.
alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter @AleneTchek
ALSO
Woman runs over husband, two others outside court, then jumps to her death
Undercover LAPD officers shoot and wound man near MacArthur Park; 2 arrested
Woman riding bicycle along Venice boardwalk wounded by gunfire after LAPD shoots agitated dog nearby
A half-cent sales tax increase that would fund the most ambitious transit expansion in Los Angeles County history appeared to be leading in early returns Tuesday night.
Measure M would generate an estimated $120 billion over four decades for Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus and rail operations, system maintenance and fare subsidies, as well as a dramatic expansion of the countys growing rail network.
The proposal has the potential to transform a traffic-choked region that began building a modern rail network decades after other U.S. cities. The tax revenue would fund the construction of nearly a dozen new rail lines, including twin rail tunnels through the Sepulveda Pass and new connections to Pacoima, Claremont, Artesia and Torrance.
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At a joint victory party Tuesday night for several local ballot measures, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti Measure Ms most visible advocate took the stage to applause.
There is nothing to be depressed about in Los Angeles when we wake up tomorrow, Garcetti said. Local races, he said, showed a county that is willing to take on the toughest challenges, including congestion, homelessness and funding for higher education.
As he spoke, Measure Ms returns continued to tick slowly upward, staying above the two-thirds threshold needed to pass.
Metros half-cent sales tax increase would fund more than two dozen highway and transit projects across the county over the first four decades. (Lorena Iniguez / Los Angeles Times )
Metro Chief Executive Officer Phil Washington said it was too early to say whether the measure would win, but added: We are ready to invest. We are ready to build.
Tax revenue would also fully or partly fund 10 highway projects, including several new tolled carpool lanes, an extension of State Route 71 and a new carpool-lane interchange between the 405 and 110 freeways.
Measure M would raise the countys base sales tax rate by a half-cent in 2017 and increase it to 1% in 2039 after another half-cent tax expires. The levy would continue until voters choose to end it.
Traffic always ranks among the top priorities for Los Angeles residents, often outstripping concerns about the economy, crime and retirement savings. But the two-thirds majority required to pass such a tax is always a high hurdle.
Measure M is listed alongside a host of other spending proposals, including a county parcel tax for parks and a community college bond measure. In the city of Los Angeles, voters will decide Proposition HHH, a $1.2-billion bond measure for homeless housing.
Washington has said he hopes to convert 20% to 25% of the countys population into regular transit riders, more than three times the current rate.
Measure M has faced opposition from mayors and council members in the South Bay and a swath of cities in the southeast county, who have said its project timeline favors the northern half of the county. Others have said voters may find it difficult to hold Metro accountable for cost overruns and schedule delays.
Metro would also face challenges beyond rail construction. Despite the popularity of the new Expo Line extension to Santa Monica, system ridership has faltered. Trips on the regions sprawling bus and rail network have fallen nearly 10% over a two-year period, with bus trips down by almost 13%.
Should Measure M fail, Metro will continue to receive more than $2.5 billion annually from three other dedicated half-cent taxes. But without a new, permanent source of revenue, officials say, they wont have the borrowing capacity to dramatically expand the rail network.
Garcetti has traveled across the county for news conferences, and appeared in a series of televisions ads funded by the Yes on M campaign.
In one advertisement, filmed as Garcetti is driving, he calls Measure M something that will help relieve traffic and literally change our lives.
The Yes on M campaign raised nearly $10 million in campaign contributions, with strong backing from developers, labor unions and construction firms, as well as several philanthropists, including Eli Broad and Jerry Perenchio.
laura.nelson@latimes.com
For more transportation news, follow @laura_nelson on Twitter.
ALSO
L.A. voters to decide on $1.2-billion bond for homeless housing
Twin tunnels under the Sepulveda Pass could tame L.A. traffic. But the plan comes with unknowns and a $6 billion price tag
L.A.'s traffic battle plan: More rail, but also Uber, bicycles, cars and a lot more dense development
UPDATES:
12:05 a.m. Nov. 9: This article was updated with details about early voting results.
This article was originally published at 6 a.m. Nov. 8.
Slovenia supports extension of sanctions against Russia until the Minsk Agreements are fully implemented, Slovenian President Borut Pahor said.
"The Republic of Slovenia will continue to take efforts to restore sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and support the European Union's sanctions policy against Russia until the Minsk Agreements are fully implemented," the Slovenian president told reporters following negotiations with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko.
He also condemned Russia's aggression in Ukraine's east and the annexation of Crimea and called on Russia to stop military, financial and other assistance to separatists.
An Oklahoma man was charged Tuesday in the slayings of a Long Beach mother and her 4-year-old daughter, who were gunned down in August after a trip to a grocery store.
Brandon Ivan Colbert Jr., 22, of Tulsa, Okla., faces two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, according to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office. The charges carry special circumstances alleging that Colbert was lying in wait and that he committed multiple murders.
If Colbert is convicted, he faces the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors will decide whether to seek the death penalty at a later date.
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On Monday, Long Beach police announced they had arrested Colbert in connection with the Aug. 6 killings.
Carina Mancera, 26, her daughter, Jennabel Anaya, and the girls father, Luis Anaya, were returning from grocery shopping around 10:20 p.m. when Colbert emerged at Locust Avenue and 9th Street, police said.
Armed with a shotgun, Colbert hid behind a sign and fired at the family, according to prosecutors.
Mancera was struck and died at the scene. Jennabel died at a hospital a short time later. The gunman fired one shot at Manceras boyfriend, Anaya. He was not wounded.
Police Chief Robert Luna said DNA from the gunman was retrieved at the scene of the killings, but he did not elaborate. Detectives submitted the DNA to an offender database but got no match at first.
Then Colbert was arrested on Aug. 27 by the Los Angeles Police Department on suspicion of driving a stolen car. Police took his DNA , which was added to offender databases.
On Oct. 31, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Departments crime lab confirmed a match, Luna said. Luna said he is hoping someone who knows Colbert or may have seen him comes forward to assist in the investigation. Police have released no motive for the killings.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
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A confrontation on Monday between undercover Los Angeles police officers and two men led to police opening fire and wounding one of the men in the arm, authorities said.
The shooting occurred just before 5 p.m. near 8th and Alvarado streets in the Westlake neighborhood, LAPD Officer Mike Lopez said.
The undercover officers in the LAPDs Vice Division had been in an unmarked car when they got out and spoke to the two men, Lopez said.
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Its unclear what led to the shooting, but at least one of the officers opened fire.
Police found a handgun at the scene, but authorities did not say whether the gun belonged to either man.
After the shooting, both men ran and LAPD officers from the Rampart Division canvassed the neighborhood to help track them down.
Both men were found, and police learned one of them was hit in the arm. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and was expected to survive.
The other man was not injured and was arrested. Neither mans identity was released.
No officers were injured during the incident, Lopez said.
Footage from KCAL-TV Channel 9 showed officers clustering near 8th and Alvarado streets, blocking traffic in the neighborhood just south of MacArthur Park.
This year, on-duty LAPD officers have shot 22 people, according to a Times analysis. Sixteen were killed.
On Friday, a woman riding a bicycle along the Venice boardwalk was wounded by police gunfire when an officer shot a dog nearby.
LAPD officials said the officer fired at the dog after the animal bit his arm and would not let go. The woman was wounded in the leg; the dog was killed.
Times staff writer Kate Mather contributed to this report.
matt.hamilton@latimes.com
Twitter: @MattHjourno.
UPDATES:
10 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details on the shooting and confirmation that a man was wounded in the shooting.
This article was originally published at 6:20 p.m.
For decades, Ernie Gutierrez has been at the vanguard of the high-priced market of bespoke pool cues.
Rivals have emulated his ornate, ivory-laden designs. Customers from around the world have flocked to his North Hollywood shop, Ginacue.
But on Monday, Gutierrez found himself before a federal judge in downtown Los Angeles, facing his fate for involvement in what prosecutors described as the illegal ivory trade.
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For unlawfully helping two customers export ivory to Taiwan, U.S. District Judge John F. Walter imposed a two-year probation term on Gutierrez, 75, including four months of home confinement.
The case against Gutierrez apparently began in April, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents found luggage with dozens of pool cues at Los Angeles International Airport, according to court papers.
Prosecutors said Gutierrez made 41 parts of pool cues with elephant ivory inlay and sold them to two Taiwanese customers for about $75,000 to $85,000.
The two Taiwanese customers, Huang Ching Liu and Wen Shou Wei Chen, were arrested April 22 at LAX and indicted, according to court papers.
During an interview, Liu told investigators that Gutierrez was the greatest living pool cue maker and that he purchased pool cues to sell in China, pocketing a 5-10% profit, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.
Liu also claimed that Gutierrez told him his ivory was legal. Prosecutors ultimately charged Gutierrez with aiding the attempted exportation of African elephant ivory without proper documentation under federal law, including the Endangered Species Act.
Liu and Chen have each pleaded guilty to attempted smuggling charges and their sentencing is pending in federal court.
In addition to probation, the judge ordered Gutierrez to pay a fine of $10,000. His defense attorney could not be reached for comment.
After the sentencing, U.S. Atty. Eileen M. Decker noted the devastating impact on African elephants from the illegal ivory trade.
Illegal trafficking of any part of a protected species creates a demand that can lead to the extinction of these vulnerable populations, Decker said in a statement.
The case is a blemish on a distinguished career for Gutierrez, who trained in woodworking while growing up in Colombia.
He moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1957, and previously told The Times that he liked to hang out in pool halls. His hobby of making pool cues earned him some money and his reputation spread.
Soon, he gained a loyal customer base, and word-of-mouth attracted an elite clientele. In 1968, he fashioned an 8-karat-gold cue for Dean Martin, which included four diamonds, an emerald, a sapphire and a ruby. He also made cues for Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.
In 1994, the American Cuemakers Assn. inducted Gutierrez into their hall of fame. He was the first living person to receive the honor.
Almost every cue maker in the world has at least one thing in their designs that originated with Ernie, James Buss, then-president of the American Cuemakers Assn., told The Times that year.
Theres a joke in the pool industry that Ernie invented ivory and he invented silver.
matt.hamilton@latimes.com
Twitter: @MattHjourno.
ALSO
Woman runs over husband, two others outside court, then jumps to her death
Undercover LAPD officers shoot and wound man near MacArthur Park; 2 arrested
Women testify that 2 LAPD officers sexually assaulted them
Earbuds with strands of hair were found at the site where a womans cellphone was discovered last week after she disappeared during a jog in Northern California, her sister said.
Detectives have been sorting through about 150 tips from the public regarding the hunt for Sherri Papini, a 34-year-old mother of two who vanished Wednesday north of Redding, according to Capt. John Hubbard of the Shasta County Sheriffs Office. Investigators also are reviewing surveillance videos gathered from homes and businesses in the area where she was last seen.
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Papini went for a jog and walk alone about 2 p.m. on Sunset Drive in Mountain Gate and had texted her husband, Keith Papini, that day, authorities said. He returned home from work to find his wife and their children were not inside.
He later discovered his wife hadnt picked up their two children from daycare as she usually did.
Keith Papini then went searching for his wife.
He pulled the Find my iPhone mobile app, which led him to Old Oregon Trail and Sunrise Drive. There, he found his wifes cellphone and earbuds with strands of hair attached to them, Sherri Papinis sister, Sheila Koester, said.
Keith Papini called authorities to help in the search for his missing wife. He told KRCR-TV he thinks his wife was abducted and pleaded for her safe return.
Bring her home, Keith Papini told the news station.
Its been nearly a week since Sherri Papini disappeared.
The womans family as well as townspeople have been desperately searching for her, her sister said. A $50,000 reward has been offered for her return.
Everyone in town is, Koester told The Times. If they are not handing out fliers, they are posting up fliers.
During the intense search, detectives have used police dogs and have contacted convicted sex offenders. As investigators work to track Papinis whereabouts, sheriffs officials said they also are using additional resources from the Redding Police Department and U.S. Department of Justice.
Anyone with details about the missing mother is urged to call the sheriffs office at (530) 245-6540 or the Major Crimes Unit (530) 245-6135. Tips also can be submitted at mcu@co.shasta.ca.us.
veronica.rocha@latimes.com
For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
ALSO
One suspect in marijuana dispensary robbery caught after pursuit
San Diego woman is accused of hiding 44 immigrants at her home
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A Newport Beach man said to be the leader of a drug ring that distributed more than $12 million worth of dangerous synthetic drugs, commonly referred to as spice or bath salts, pleaded guilty to drug, weapons and money laundering charges Monday afternoon, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Sean Libbert, 41, was the head of a ring that imported and manufactured chemicals used to create synthetic marijuana and other designer drugs that are meant to mimic the effects of weed, but have been known to cause seizures and hallucinations, according to a news release from the U.S. attorneys office.
Spice, also known as K2, is produced by spraying psychoactive substances on a non-marijuana plant. The drug was linked to a rash of overdoses earlier this year along skid row in downtown Los Angeles, where spice joints are sold for as cheap as $1 to the areas sprawling homeless population.
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Libberts group smuggled in the chemicals used to make the drugs from China, then sold their own brand of synthetic marijuana, dubbed Da Kine Blend, over the Internet, according to court documents.
The 41-year-old pleaded guilty to money laundering, weapons possession, smuggling controlled substances into the United States and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute drugs, according to the news release.
The investigation in this case revealed that this defendant controlled an organization that was one of the largest importers and distributors of dangerous, synthetic drugs in the nation, U.S. Atty. Eileen M. Decker said in a statement. Over the course of only 16 months, this organization smuggled well over 600 pounds of chemicals into the U.S., knowing that the drugs would be used to manufacture synthetic marijuana or spice.
Five other defendants have pleaded guilty in connection with Libberts drug ring, including a Chinese national accused of supplying him with the chemicals needed to manufacture the drugs.
Libbert has agreed to serve at least six years in prison under the terms of a plea deal. His sentencing is scheduled for March.
According to the plea agreement, Libbert admitted to distributing at least 4 kilograms of synthetic cannabinoids during a six-month span in 2011, which he knew would be used to make at least 100 kilograms of synthetic marijuana.
james.queally@latimes.com
Follow @JamesQueallyLAT on Twitter for crime and police news in California.
ALSO
San Diego woman is accused of hiding 44 immigrants at her home
Missing mothers earbuds, strands of hair found as desperate search in Northern California town continues
How the battle between Trump and Clinton could pave the way for L.A.'s $1.2 billion homeless housing measure
Police are investigating a fight between a bicyclist and a motorist in Van Nuys over the weekend that ended with the cyclist stealing the motorists vehicle and fatally crushing him with it before making his escape, authorities said.
The incident unfolded about 9:50 p.m. Sunday as the motorist, 37-year-old Andrew Patsukevich, and his wife were heading north in the 7400 block of Sepulveda Boulevard and the cyclist was going south, the LAPD said in a news release.
As the two passed each other in slow traffic, Patsukevich honked at the cyclist, who responded by slamming his fist into the cars windshield, sparking a physical confrontation, police said.
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The driver got out of the car, and the man on the bike punched him in the face before jumping into the car and hitting the accelerator, police said. Patsukevichs wife jumped out of the car, but her husband held on to his door as the vehicle sped forward, police said.
With Patsukevich still clinging to the door, the carjacker steered the vehicle into a row of parked cars, crushing the man, and then drove away, investigators said.
Paramedics rushed Patsukevich to a hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. His car, a green 2001 Lexus LS 430, was found Tuesday, said Det. Steve Castro.
Joseph.serna@latimes.com
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
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UPDATES:
2:05 p.m.: This article was updated with the identity of the victim and that his car was found.
This article was originally published at 7:55 a.m.
An acrimonious fight over a water-rate increase in Orange County will culminate Tuesday when voters decide whether to recall two of their local water districts board members and whether to reelect a third.
For more than a year, Yorba Linda Water District officials have traded barbs and wrangled in court with an outspoken group of residents irate over a $25-a-month rate hike that the residents consider excessive.
The multipronged battle has transformed the sleepy suburb into a cautionary case study for other California water suppliers coping with a decrease in water sales during drought.
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One board member has already chosen to retire rather than fight for reelection, so as many as four of the Yorba Linda Water Districts five board seats could change hands Tuesday.
This is a historical moment for the water district, said Ed Rakochy, a spokesman for the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn., the group of residents that sued the district and initiated the recall.
Were here to give the water district back to the ratepayers, he continued. It belongs to them.
Robert Kiley, one of the board members facing recall, said some organizers of the effort have mounted similar campaigns in the past that have proved unsuccessful. He warned that the majority of the water districts staff would quit if the taxpayer group prevailed.
Were here to give the water district back to the ratepayers. It belongs to them. Ed Rakochy, spokesman, Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn.
We cannot allow these people to take over a very important resource in this city, Kiley said. I think the people in Yorba Linda are smart enough to see this as another frivolous recall at great expense to taxpayers.
With Californias snowpack at historically low levels in 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a statewide 25% reduction in urban water use off 2013 levels. To achieve such savings, each of the states urban water districts were told to cut a specific amount; Yorba Linda Water District got a 36% target the toughest standard in California.
Water district officials claim that the high level of state-mandated conservation blew a multimillion-dollar hole through the budget, forcing them to increase the districts basic service charge from about $16 to $41.
In response, the taxpayer group submitted a referendum petition, demanding that the district repeal the new rates or put them up to a vote. But the water district rejected the referendum, saying it was not valid under state law.
By January, residents sued the district, asking a judge to order the water provider to honor the referendum. Two months later, the taxpayers association began a campaign to recall two of the water districts board members Kiley and colleague Gary Melton
Ric Collett, who has served as president of the board during the rate controversy, is also up for reelection Tuesday. In July, Michael Beverage announced that he would not seek another term on the board.
That month, an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled against the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn., finding that members of the group could not void the rate increases using a referendum. So Tuesdays recall now represents the groups best chance for change.
Voters are being asked to decide on recalling Kiley and Melton, and at the same time to choose a replacement if one or both is recalled.
There are two candidates each running for the seats now held by Kiley and Melton. One candidate for each seat is endorsed by the Yorba Linda Taxpayers Assn., Rakochy said. The other candidates are endorsed by Citizens to Protect Our Water, a group formed to fight recalls in Yorba Linda, Kiley said.
Kiley added that he and Melton have donated to Citizens to Protect Our Water.
Collett is one of four candidates running for two open seats his seat and the one vacated by Beverage.
matt.stevens@latimes.com
Twitter: @ByMattStevens
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YouTube star Calum McSwiggan, who claimed to have been brutally assaulted by three men in West Hollywood as part of an anti-gay hate crime, has pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car.
McSwiggan, 26, entered the guilty plea Monday to one felony count of vandalism causing more than $400 in damage. He received a sentence of three years felony probation, 52 sessions of anger-management counseling, and was ordered to pay $7,000 in restitution.
McSwiggan, known by thousands of fans for his YouTube channel about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, was accused of damaging a car mirror and bumper on Santa Monica Boulevard near Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood on June 27.
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McSwiggan, 26, had contended he was beaten by the vehicles driver and two other men during the incident. But prosecutors allege that he lied about the purported attack to sheriffs deputies.
McSwiggan, a resident of London who was visiting Southern California, was originally charged with vandalism and filing a false police report and could have received up to three years and six months in jail. Prosecutors dropped the false police report charge as part of a plea agreement.
The saga played out in dramatic fashion on McSwiggans social media accounts.
McSwiggan wrote in an Instagram post that after visiting a gay club this summer in West Hollywood, three men attacked him, injuring his forehead and breaking three of his teeth. He faulted authorities for not protecting him and for treating him like a second-class citizen.
Ive never felt so terrified to be a gay man in the public eye, he wrote in one post, which showed him in a hospital.
But McSwiggans allegations prompted a swift response from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, which took the rare step of issuing a public statement and releasing his booking photo to counter his claims.
The Sheriffs Department confirmed that deputies responded to a reported assault but that investigators were unable to substantiate the assault, according to a statement.
McSwiggan was arrested on suspicion of vandalizing the mens vehicle, authorities said.
Before being placed in his jail cell, McSwiggan took a booking photo, which appears to show no obvious injuries.
Sheriffs officials said McSwiggan was then seen injuring himself with a payphone inside his jail cell. He was later taken to a hospital for treatment.
After being released from custody, he recounted, in a Facebook post, being punched and kicked, but also acknowledged damaging a car.
richard.winton@latimes.com
Follow @lacrimes on Twitter.
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A woman was arrested Sunday and charged with harboring and concealing 44 immigrants in the country illegally some of whom said they were kept in a small backyard shed, the U.S. attorneys office said.
If convicted, Dania Olivero, 51, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000.
According to the federal complaint, residents in the City Heights neighborhood alerted police that people had been dropped off by two vehicles at the home on University Avenue and then hurried inside.
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When officers showed up, Olivera told them she had invited people over to drink beer, the U.S. attorneys office said. But some of her purported guests ran into the backyard when they saw the officers, prosecutors said.
Police suspected the people were immigrants in the U.S. illegally and summoned U.S. Border Patrol officers, who questioned the group.
Two identified themselves as Guatemalans, while the rest said they were Mexican. All admitted they were in the country illegally, officials said.
Some in group told authorities that dozens of them had been locked in a small backyard shed that lacked electricity, ventilation or a bathroom.
The group of 44 was arrested. Seven remain in custody as witnesses, and the rest were handed over to immigration officials.
david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com
Hernandez writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
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This tax hike would raise $120 billion to expand and fund rail network and highway projects in L.A.
In the final days before the presidential election, questions have been building about fairness at the polls.
Republicans have continued to warn of voting fraud by Democrats. Democrats have contended that minority voters are being intimidated by Republicans. Civil rights groups and supporters of the major candidates have launched poll-watching operations, while the federal government has sent its own voting observers and monitors across the nation.
Heres a recap of election issues, voting glitches, court rulings and related news as the country prepares to choose its next president:
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In the first presidential election since the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, many counties previously monitored by the Justice Department have reduced the number of polling places.
Passed in 1965, the Voting Rights Act gave the federal government the right to oversee changes to voting regulations across a wide swath of Southern states and several districts elsewhere in the country that had historically discriminated against minorities.
But in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that monitoring to be unconstitutional.
Several states responded by enacting new voting laws, including requirements that voters must show ID at the polls.
Courts have scrapped some of those laws, most notably a regulation in North Carolina that the Supreme Court this year said targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.
In some places that fell under the Voting Rights Act, state governments have eliminated polling places, forcing voters to travel farther to cast their ballots. Heavily black, rural precincts in Alabama are a prominent example but far from the only one. A new study by the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights group, looked at about half the counties that had been covered by the act and found that at least 868 polling places or 16% of the total had been closed.
The report said there are justifiable reasons to reduce polling places and consolidations can be executed equitably, but added that the weakening of the act means there is no process to ensure that reductions are disclosed to the public, are conducted with the input of impacted communities, and do not discriminate against voters of color.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets supporters. A Democrat-affiliated group called the Indiana Voter Registration Project is being investigated by state police, who say they have found evidence of fraud but have not provided details. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images )
The Justice Department will dispatch poll watchers to more states than it did in 2012, but there will be fewer total monitors and they will have less power. At the same time, international groups that have come to the U.S. to monitor elections have increased their staffing.
The Justice Department typically sends hundreds of poll watchers to local precincts to make sure the voting process is running legally. Among the issues they look for are racial discrimination and voter intimidation.
Observers have unfettered access inside polling areas, while monitors need permission from local officials to enter polling places.
The department announced Monday that it was sending 500 people 35% fewer than in the last election to 28 states up from 23 in 2012. Officials have said they have less authority to dispatch observers because of the weakened Voting Rights Act. This year, observers will be limited to jurisdictions where court orders are in place over voting, including several in Alabama, California, Louisiana and New York.
In most cases, voters on the ground will see very little practical difference between monitors and observers, the head of the departments Civil Rights Division, Vanita Gupta, said in a statement.
International groups have increased their presence. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe initially had plans to send 400 monitors across the U.S., a nearly tenfold increase from 2012 that it said was a response to the flurry of new state voting rules. The group later said it would scale down its operation because laws in several states ban international observers.
The Organization of American States has also sent 41 election monitors for the first time after an invitation from the State Department that officials described as a gesture to increase respect for American observers in foreign elections.
The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People is mounting a voter protection initiative, part of a large mobilization effort called #StayWokeAndVote.
White nationalists have announced their own voter monitoring.
Early voters line up in Raleigh, N.C. A fake advertisement spreading on social media encouraged voters to avoid the line and vote by texting. In response, Twitter released an official video along with its own tweet: Remember: You cannot vote via text or tweet. (Gerry Broome / Associated Press )
Legal fights over voting issues have continued in battleground states.
In several states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona, Democrats have filed lawsuits to stop what they say is Trumps support of voter intimidation.
The lawsuits stem from Trumps statements alleging voter fraud and encouraging his supporters to prevent it on election day by going to certain areas widely perceived by Democrats as a call for monitoring minority neighborhoods that lean Democratic.
In North Carolina, Democrats asked a federal judge to block a coordinated campaign of vigilante voter intimidation that includes the Trump campaign, the state Republican Party and Trump associate Roger Stone, whose group Stop the Steal has organized poll monitoring.
The judge said she didnt find enough evidence that Trump and Stone were trying to intimidate voters.
In Ohio last week, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order that said contempt of court charges would await anyone engaging in voter intimidation near or in polling sites. On Sunday, an appeals court blocked that order, siding with lawyers from the Trump campaign who argued that it violated the 1st Amendment. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate the order.
Voting glitches are turning up. So are scams.
Although widespread polling problems have not been an issue, small cases of potential fraud and glitches have been reported.
While voting fraud is rare, officials have announced ongoing investigations in several states. In Indiana, state police are looking into the Indiana Voter Registration Project, a Democrat-affiliated group that submitted 45,000 voter registrations this year, mostly from racial minorities. Police said they have found evidence of fraud but have not provided details.
Both major parties have used sophisticated software to boost turnout among their likely supporters. In Indiana, at least one those efforts went wrong. The Indiana Democratic Party said a technical glitch led to incorrect polling places being listed on get-out-the-vote text messages that were sent to about 2,000 Democratic voters.
Some problems cross state lines. A fake advertisement spreading on social media encouraged voters to avoid the line and vote by texting. In response, Twitter released an official video along with its own tweet: Remember: You cannot vote via text or tweet. Direct message @Gov to find your polling place and ballot info.
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President of Slovenia Borut Pahor has said the EU should clearly define its policies towards Ukraine, which is part of the European space.
"I stress that to solve all the problems in Ukraine, it is be important for the EU to more clearly outline how it sees the future of Ukraine's membership in the EU," he told reporters after the talks with Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday in Ljubljana.
Pahor said he was a member of the Group of Friends of Ukraine, which aims at deepening cooperation between Ukraine and the EU. At the same time, according to Borut Pahor, the EU which consists of 27 countries finds it difficult to reach a consensus, but they need to decide on how to help Ukraine overcome the crises.
"As for NATO, I am convinced that no one has the right to prohibit or command any state which vector, which security system it should choose. I understand that some neighbors have certain apprehensions, and they can be understood, we are talking about the proximity to the border, so I wish Ukraine to resolve all the issues in order to bring all the decisions to the needed level," he said.
Charges have been dropped against two filmmakers who were potentially facing decades in prison for recording an oil pipeline protest in Washington state, prosecutors said Monday.
Producer Lindsey Grayzel and cameraman Carl Davis were arrested Oct. 11 near Burlington, Wash., while filming climate activist Ken Ward attempting to shut down the Trans Mountain pipeline that runs from Canada to the U.S.
Though a sheriffs report noted the two were not on pipeline property, their film and equipment were confiscated and they were charged with second-degree burglary, criminal sabotage and assemblage of saboteurs all felonies.
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The arrests came the same day filmmaker Deia Schlosberg was taken into custody at a TransCanada oil pipeline protest in North Dakota, a project that activists contend will enable climate change. She was among at least five filmmakers and self-styled journalists arrested in connection with the protests, which spanned four states.
A pipeline protest sign in seen in a field near Bradshaw, Neb. (Nati Harnik / Associated Press )
Schlosberg spent 53 hours in jail for filming the protest and still faces charges that could send her to prison for a maximum of 45 years, prompting this Tweet from secrets leaker Edward Snowdon, accused of espionage:
This reporter is being prosecuted for covering the North Dakota oil protests. For reference, I face a mere 30 years.
Ward, the Burlington protester filmed by Grayzel and Davis, still faces charges of burglary, criminal trespass, sabotage and assemblages of saboteurs, for, as he described it in a statement, closing a safety valve on the Trans Mountain pipeline and blocking the flow of Canadian tar sands oil from Alberta to the Anacortes [Wash.] refineries.
There is no question about what I did I livestreamed it, he said.
He admitted to several other protest actions, saying, I did these things because I believe that it is the obligation of every thinking person to find a way to stave off climate cataclysm, and there is no effective, legal alternative to personal direct action.
In September, radio-TV journalist Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, was arrested on suspicion of trespassing while covering the Dakota Access pipeline protests, led by the Standing Rock Souix tribe. Activists contend that project will disrupt tribal lands and put their lone supply of drinking water at risk.
Prosecutors last month attempted to charge her with rioting, but a judge said they lacked evidence to do so. Prosecutors said they now are studying other possible charges against Goodman.
In Skagit County, Wash., where Grayzel and Davis had been charged, prosecutors said they may not yet be done, either.
We have dismissed the charges without prejudice to refilling in the future, said Rosemary Kaholokula, the chief criminal prosecutor in Skagit County. Law enforcement continues to investigate this matter .
According to copies of the court dismissal notices, probable cause was found to support both cases, but, a prosecutor wrote, at this point in time, the undersigned attorney believes that the state and law enforcement require more time to complete investigation.
Unfortunately, said Grayzel, a Portland documentary producer, in a statement, our arrests are not unique or isolated incidents. Recently, many members of independent media have been prosecuted for doing our jobs. I call on everyone who values an independent press to decry this disturbing trend and call for the immediate dismissal of criminal charges for members of the media.
Authorities have not yet returned the film they confiscated from Grayzel, said Dawn Smallman, a spokeswoman for the filmmaker.
The ongoing seizure of her camera footage continues to prevent her from editing and disseminating the video of the activists action to the public. she said.
The arrests, she said, have created a chilling effect for other filmmakers and reporters considering covering the important topics of climate change and political dissent.
It is a rare celestial crossing that has both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spending election night not only in the same city, but barely more than a mile apart in midtown Manhattan and it is creating unprecedented security headaches for New York City.
Not since they sparred with each other on the debate stage have the Clinton and Trump orbits overlapped in this way.
Election 2016: Live updates
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Clinton is planning a big bash in a symbolically significant glass-roofed atrium that is part of the Javits convention center. Trump will be ensconced in a Hilton a mere 15 blocks away.
Tomorrow, election day, brings with it a unique set of challenges. For the first time in modern memory, both major party candidates will monitor the results here in New York and will have election night parties in midtown Manhattan, New York Police Commissioner James ONeill said Monday.
More philosophical about the election was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat. It has been in many ways a challenging and painful year, he told reporters. It stained our democracy. Tomorrow is the day when we get to make it right, when democratic process comes alive and people choose.
The last time two presidential candidates were from New York was 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won his fourth term, prevailing over New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, but celebrations were subdued because of World War II. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, live in the suburb of Chappaqua, where they moved in 1999 so that she could run for U.S. Senate. The Queens-born Trump lives in a penthouse condominium atop the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.
The election night jitters come in the midst of a heightened terrorism alert. A bomb that exploded in the Chelsea neighborhood in mid-September injured 29 people. Federal officials have said they have received intelligence warnings of a terrorist threat from the Al Qaeda militant group. Islamic State has also called on its supporters to attack election targets.
Currently the credibility and the sourcing of that information is under investigation and ongoing with no new information since last week, said James Waters, head of the Police Departments counter-terrorism bureau.
Since last year, New York City has tripled the size of what it calls its Critical Response Command, a counter-terrorism unit that grew out of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. Police officials said they would have more than 5,000 police officers out on election night, uniformed and plain-clothed, as well as bomb-sniffing dogs, and what they called long gun trained special forces.
Up until now, the largest deployment of security in New York City was during Pope Francis visit last year, which coincided with the U.N. General Assembly, attended by President Obama and 170 other world leaders.
It is not just the threat of terrorism that is causing a headache. The polarizing presidential election has elicited strong, occasionally destructive passions. High-rise buildings in Manhattan bearing the Trump name have been pelted with eggs repeatedly. In Staten Island, the borough where Trump is most popular, a gigantic sign erected on the lawn of a supporter was set on fire in August.
You have two things going on at once, De Blasio said. Besides the competing election night parties, he said, this campaign has generated particular passion and concern. NYPD has taken into account the historic nature of this night and has really prepared with tremendous force levels at the right locations.
Huge crowds are expected at Times Square, where people often watch election results in much the same way that they gather on New Years Eve. Another key location is the 58-story Trump Tower, which has become the epicenter for protests for and against Trumps candidacy.
On Sunday, competing crowds tried to drown each other out under the gold marquee of the building as police struggled to keep the sidewalks clear. A man wearing nothing but bikini underwear with the word Trump written on it strummed a guitar. A Filipino American nurse yelled, God bless America. Vote for Trump, and a man walking by yelled back at the Trump supporters, You drank the Kool-Aid!
Clinton appears to be planning the larger, more lavish party at the sprawling Javits Center, which occupies a city block along the Hudson River and can accommodate as many as 85,000 people. Her campaign also received a permit for a fireworks display over the river, but the plan has been called off, according to a police official, who said he did not know the reason.
According to the New York Post, if Clinton wins there will be an after-party at the Peninsula Hotel, just one block away from Trump Tower.
Heavy security was already in place over the weekend at the Javits Center and television vans with satellite dishes were parked out front. On Sunday, the scene was quieter in front of the Hilton, where the only evidence of an impending election event was a sign that read No Parking on Tuesday.
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Highway 379 turns to gravel here, white and dusty, narrowing until it disappears into the craggy mountains off in the distance. Hang a right before the pavement ends and a skinny road veers toward the center of this tiny town.
Theyre used to remoteness here on the Duckwater Shoshone reservation in Nye County. Its residents recently got a laundromat with seven washing machines. They are still searching for a doctor, but they finally filled two vacant police positions. Theres no restaurants, banks or supermarkets, but there is a gas station four large tanks propped high on skinny metal legs with a naked nozzle padlocked to the side.
Election 2016: Live updates
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But there is another glaring need in Duckwater and at several other reservations: a reasonably close site for residents to cast ballots. So the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada sued in October and got two sites added to the states approximately 435 polling locations. They wrote a letter to the Nevada secretary of state shortly afterward to ask for more but were rejected.
Duckwater was one of those places that didnt get a site, even though its residents have the longest trek to cast ballots in Nevada about 270 miles round trip to vote on election day.
I would vote, but its such a long drive, about two hours each way, Alissa Thompson said. Id have to leave at 8 a.m.
Thompson, 61, has lived in Duckwater her whole life. She said its not simply a long drive, either. Its a sojourn on a two-lane highway fraught with peril. A collision with deer, elk or wild horses that wander onto the highway can destroy a car and injure or kill a driver, not to mention the animals.
Distance drives many of her decisions. If she was picked for jury duty a distinct possibility if shed registered as a voter she would have to make that drive for a trial. To her, it wasnt worth the risk, which is why she didnt register to vote by mail, either.
Virginia Sanchez, 62, had to vote by mail because of the nearly 270-mile drive to vote in person in Tonopah. She said she would like to cast a ballot in person, but shell never drive that far to do it. (David Montero / Los Angeles Times )
Which means, Thompson said, that Hillary Clinton will miss out on at least one vote here.
Bret Healy, a consultant for the Native American advocacy group Four Directions, was part of the lawsuit that sought to increase polling sites on tribal lands in rural areas. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du ruled in October that sites for in-person early voting had to be placed in Nixon and Schurz. Now for the first time, the Pyramid Lake Paiutes will have close access just a few miles from their homes to a place to vote on election day.
The Justice Department also announced Monday that the Nixon site would be a part of its 28-state poll monitoring effort to enforce voting rights laws.
Healy said participation in early voting at the Nixon site had already born fruit, with a 10% increase in turnout. He expects more on election day.
This is what happens when you remove hurdles, Healy said. You remove the distance in this case a 95-mile round trip you achieve participation.
Nevada Deputy Secretary of State Wayne Thorley said county clerks can designate an area as a vote-by-mail precinct if there arent more than 200 registered voters living there. Thats the case for the Duckwater Shoshone reservation.
He said a lack of nearby polling places is an issue for rural people across the state.
Nevada is a very large state geographically with many communities in rural locations, and it is simply not possible to have a polling location close to every community in the state. This is one of the reasons why Nevada is a no-excuse absentee state and why voters in some of the most remote areas are automatically sent an absentee/mail ballot, Thorley said in a statement. The secretary of states office is always open to discussing voting issues with any group, including Native American groups, in an effort to provide better information and access for future elections.
But Jerry Millett, an elder from Duckwater, said access wasnt the reason he wasnt casting a ballot this election. It will be the first election hes skipped; if he felt good about the choices, he said, hed even make the drive to Tonopah if he had to.
I dont really trust either of them, he said. The people we elect for president should be honest. Donald Trump says hell build a wall and make Mexico pay for it? Thats a lie.
Virginia Sanchez, 62, voted by mail and remembered there was a time a few decades ago when there was a polling site at the old school on the reservation. She said she missed the process of casting a ballot in person.
It was easy then, she said. But that was a long time ago.
david.montero@latimes.com
Twitter: @davemontero
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Im Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Today is election day, so get out and vote! Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss.
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Its Election Day ... Vote! Then, Seat Belts!
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After all the twists and turns of a seemingly interminable campaign season, it comes down to this. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made their final pleas to the American public; she closed with the Obamas, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, and he with daughter Ivanka, Mike Pence and lasers. Today, voters will set the course of history, not just in selecting a new president but also in determining who controls Congress and in deciding a multitude of state and local issues. Well be with you every step of the way, and to make things easy, were giving all readers free access to our election week coverage. Sign up here (and feel free to tell a friend too).
So Tell Us, How Do You Really Feel?
These are best two candidates out of 300 million people? A lot of things that have been buried and unspoken are getting talked about. I am deeply worried about the future. It makes me feel hopeful. How do you feel about the election? Readers are telling us in videos and written comments. Take a spin through them and give us your thoughts on camera.
In the California Election, Will Big Money Talk?
California voters will decide the fate of 17 propositions, the most in 16 years. All those ballot measures have drawn a record amount of campaign contributions: $473 million. Thats roughly twice what Trump reported raising for his campaign, based on a Times review of records. Heres where that money comes from.
More About the Election
-- The fight for Ohio pits a well-oiled Democratic machine against Republican enthusiasm.
-- New Yorks security headache: Trump and Clinton will be almost within shouting distance on election night.
-- Did Trumps staff really take away his Twitter privileges? Theres a clue.
-- Mexico is feeling jitters over the prospect of a Trump victory.
-- Graphics: The fight for control of the Senate and the House.
-- What to make of all of Californias 17 propositions on the ballot.
-- A complete list of endorsements by The Times editorial board.
-- Where to find your polling place in California.
Right Now, Everybody Hates Comey
James Comey is a Republican who served in President George W. Bushs Justice Department and was appointed to lead the FBI by President Obama. But after the latest Clinton email flap, members from both parties have called for his resignation. Would a Clinton or a Trump presidency be better for him at this point? Its awkward either way.
A Raw Deal Over a Dish of Ceviche?
Need a break from the election? Consider the tale of Mariza Ruelas, a Stockton mother of six who joined a Facebook group devoted to sharing recipes and occasionally swapping dishes for favors or other meals. When she offered to sell some leftover ceviche at the price of $12 for 32 ounces, an undercover investigator showed up at her door and she was charged with operating a food facility and a business without a license. Now, after refusing to sign a plea deal, its possible she could face more legal trouble.
CALIFORNIA
-- Air regulators found a cancer-causing metal at 350 times the normal level in Paramount. Now theyre looking for the source of it.
-- A Superior Court judge ruled there is enough evidence for two LAPD officers to stand trial on rape and sexual assault charges.
-- The gunman who killed a Transportation Security Administration officer and injured three other people at LAX in 2013 was sentenced to life in prison.
-- Real estate scion Robert Durst pleaded not guilty to murdering his friend Susan Berman.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS
-- CBS News preps for election night, and Bob Schieffer has selected some Simon & Garfunkel lyrics to quote.
-- Inside the Hollywood Film Awards, where the stars come to rehearse for other, more important awards shows.
-- The man who composed the theme for Disneylands Main Street Electrical Parade has died at age 87.
-- The first full Edgar Degas retrospective in nearly 30 years shows an artist who liked to be in control.
-- Rapper battle: T.I. says Lil Waynes comments about how he doesnt feel connected to Black Lives Matter are absolutely unacceptable.
NATION-WORLD
-- As Iraqi forces close in on Mosul, the whereabouts of Islamic States leader are unknown.
-- The Paris climate deal just became law. Now countries have to figure out how to make good on their pledges.
-- The killing of elephants for their ivory is continuing at a disturbing pace in Africa.
BUSINESS
-- Michael Hiltzik: Is the stock market predicting a Clinton win, or just hoping for it?
-- Heres a tip from David Lazarus: Dont hold your breath waiting for the Robocall Strike Force to eliminate nuisance calls any time soon.
SPORTS
-- Magic Johnson, 25 years after disclosing he was HIV positive: November 7, 1991 was a life-changing day that I never saw coming.
-- L.A.s chances of winning the 2024 Olympic bid could depend on the presidential election.
OPINION
-- The three things an election law expert worries about the most on election day.
-- Watch for these trends as California votes today.
WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING
-- I did a lot of freaking out about Barack Obama, Glenn Beck says. But Obama made me a better man. (The New Yorker)
-- How to vet 650,000 emails in eight days or less. (Wired)
-- The system is rigged in favor of morning people (and against night owls). (The Atlantic)
ONLY IN CALIFORNIA
When does the happiest place on Earth become the dapperest? On Dapper Day, a biannual event in which park-goers don tulle, waistcoats and chiffon. Theres no required look to participate, other than to dress sharp. Or as the founder says: Its the biggest cocktail party in the world without cocktails. Check out the video and the photos and if you do so in your PJs, dont worry. We wont judge.
Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
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Despite complaints from the school-reform movement in California and others, the State Board of Education appears intent on going ahead with an overly complicated, color-coded system for judging public-school performance and progress. Its vague and confusing, larded with too many factors. Using it to compare one school with another is pretty much impossible.
Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have tried to clean up the accountability reports by boiling them down to a single score. His move, after unanimous approval of the bill by both houses of the Legislature, was widely seen as a bow to the states teachers unions and as a sign that California was disinclined to measure school progress. Among other things, it makes it more difficult for the state to step in when schools fail to improve for years on end.
Meanwhile, parents considering school options for their children are left with the nearly impossible task of sorting out all the color codes to somehow try to compare performance at one school versus another.
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Or are they? What the governor and the state board dont seem to realize is that parents have options.
The state will still post the standardized test results for each school on its website, as it has done for years. And test scores are easily charted and compared. Real estate agents will almost certainly create easy-to-digest data for house hunters use. Charter schools will happily provide comparison numbers to parents in their neighborhoods when their scores outshine the local public schools, as they often do. And parent-choice organizations are already talking about collecting test scores in easy-to-digest form for parental reference.
Its a shame, really, that its come to this. The concept behind the states new color charts is a good one, long overdue. Schools should be judged and compared by more than their test scores, which are a limited measure of their achievements. Other factors, such as graduation rates and bringing limited-English students to fluency, also should be considered. Unfortunately, the state hasnt been willing to provide a coherent way to do that which threatens to bring California right back to the days when all anyone looked at were test scores.
Its not that everything necessarily has to be boiled down to a single number, but the school-measurement system should allow parents to assess quickly and easily how a school is doing and how it compares with others. And they shouldnt need an advanced degree in psychometrics to do so.
To read the article in Spanish, click here
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For months theres been a running gag on social media about Earth 2, where the 2016 campaign is a happy, normal thing. For instance, in mid-October, shortly after the release of the Access Hollywood video, I joked on Twitter that, On Earth 2 [the GOP] is 15 points ahead, looking to gain seats in senate. Dems October surprise on Rubios water bill falls flat.
Many of the quips are expressions of Oh what might been dismay from conservative Trump opponents about how horribly this election has gone. Understandably, Trump supporters tend not to find these jokes very funny.
But theres more to the gag than shoulda coulda wouldas; it captures the fact that this whole election has been otherworldly.
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Trump plays a major role in any conversation about how strange this election season has been. But I think historians will see him as a symptom.
There is a conservatism to politics. I dont mean ideologically. Its an art whose medium is human nature, which is largely permanent. And because of that, the practitioners tend to stick with what works. What is conservatism? Abraham Lincoln once asked. Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
When something works over and over, it becomes a rule, not necessarily of science or the universe, but as an axiom, a rule of thumb. And whether Trump wins or loses, our thumbs seem to have lost a good deal of their utility.
Here is just some of what conventional wisdom held on the eve of the GOP primaries:
Republicans dont nominate people without electoral experience unless they successfully invaded Europe. Conservatives are obsessed with character and/or ideological purity. Religious conservatives place an outsized emphasis on a candidates Christian bona fides. During hard times, voters look to successful governors to steer the party and the country. Republicans tend to pick the candidate next in line for the nomination, usually the runner-up in the last primary. The so-called media primary determines which candidates will be taken seriously by the voters.
None of these rules held. Not one.
The oddity of the GOP primaries may have been particularly intense, but the Democratic ones had their surprises too. For decades, Democrats took grave offense at being called socialists. But Bernie Sanders embraced the term and when Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the head of the Democratic Party, she bent over backward to blur the differences.
Our bizarro primaries, naturally enough, yielded a bizarro general campaign.
One of the oldest rules in politics is that voters prefer likable candidates. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump the two most disliked presidential candidate in the history of polling have made short work of that. Similarly, Im old enough to remember when gaffes mattered quite a lot. Those were good times.
For generations, pundits thought TV advertising could change voter attitudes; not anymore. According to the Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, in January, 40% of the electorate had a positive opinion of Clinton while only 29% had a positive opinion of Trump. In their latest poll, at the end of October, those numbers were unchanged.
It has been a hard rule of the political landscape for 30 years that Democrats have an easier path in the electoral college. But according to an analysis at 538.com, theres a better than 1 in 10 chance Clinton wins the popular vote and still loses the electoral college.
For obvious reasons, Trump plays a major role in any conversation about how strange this election season has been. But I think historians will see him as a symptom. Demographic, economic and technological changes will surely be part of any root causes analysis, while foreign policy wonks might say the story begins with the Iraq war and the political and psychological dislocations it caused.
Others might point to Barack Obama, who broke one of the oldest rules of thumb in politics simply by virtue of being the first black president. But his contributions extend beyond that. He will have left the country more polarized and distrustful of elites on both the left and the right than when he took office.
Regardless of where or why you think things have gotten weird, the salient point here is that the election is just an illustration of the deeper weirdness of American politics and that will not end when the votes are tallied. The next leader of the free world will not inhabit Earth 2.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
ALSO
A complete list of the L.A. Times 2016 endorsements
Fear and loathing and long lines on election day
To Donald Trump, from the undocumented immigrant who graduated alongside your daughter
Disgusted with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? Youre in good company. At last count, the percentage of Americans who viewed Clinton favorably hung around 41%. Trumps favorability rating was 38%.
The widespread distaste for Clinton and Trump is leading many people to decide not to vote this year. Here are a few of the dozens who have said it to me:
A #NeverTrump Republican who hates Clinton, and cant get there with her;
A socialist who doesnt believe that Clinton will represent the far-left coalition the Sen. Bernie Sanders animated;
A member of the military who wishes to, on principle, abstain from casting a vote against a candidate who may yet become his commander in chief; and
A feminist who believes that the Clintons policies on mass incarceration harmed black American irreparably, and who does not believe that Hillarys contrition is authentic.
I have a great deal of respect for each of these people, and for their thought processes. Theyve educated themselves on the election; they care deeply about our countrys future; they are kind and intelligent and perceptive.
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But no matter how much we may empathize with the impulse, the fact remains that the single most irresponsible thing you can do in this crucial election is to abstain from voting.
Any action shows more self-determination than sitting at home twiddling your thumbs during the most polarizing election since the mid-19th century.
You can patiently sift through your indifference or disgust and then vote for the major-party candidate whose values you find less threatening to life on Earth. You can fill in the circle for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. You can write in Sanders or Edward Snowden or Glenn Beck, or Beyonce. You can leave the presidential candidate column blank. Those arent all equal or productive choices, but any action shows more self-determination than sitting at home twiddling your thumbs during the most polarizing election since the mid-19th century. All of these options get you out of the house to vote on the races and initiatives further down the ballot.
The ballot in California is extensive; it has oodles of propositions and parcel taxes and local measures and judges up for voter review. The presidential race takes up one sheet; my ballot spanned six or seven sheets total. It took two newspaper endorsement guides, some handwritten notes and a couple of hours of study for me to navigate it. It was confusing. How the heck was I supposed to know whom to elect to our little citys rent board? It was important. Thankfully, I had a device in my hand with all of the worlds information on it, as 72% of American adults do. I figured it out.
Lefty historian Howard Zinn famously wrote, You cant be neutral on a moving train; its hard to imagine two trains moving faster away from each other than the ones Clinton and Trump are on. And as former Republican Treasury Secretary William E. Simon cautioned, Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who dont vote.
But why is the decision to refrain from voting damning rather than merely disappointing, an act of moral cowardice rather than of conscientious abstention?
An oft-cited point: There are many people who pushed and fought and died for the right to cast a ballot, and many who are still pushing. I said this to the Sanders supporter mentioned earlier, and he laughed at my apparent naivete. But this isnt historical hyperbole. Americans are fighting to vote right now.
If you dont feel connected to the thousands of women and allies who led the movement for the 19th Amendment and the thousands of black Americans and allies who fought tooth and nail to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act not to mention contemporary voter disenfranchisement, intimidation and suppression consider that you are the likely beneficiary of significant racial, gender, socioeconomic or other forms of privilege. Thats an observation, not a condemnation.
Privilege is problematic to the extent that you let it insulate you from empathizing with those who arent like you. Deciding not to vote because you dont connect to the deeply real anxieties of your countrymen and women, because youve decided that whatever way each and every one of these contests go, youre going to be fine thats one way to live, but its not a particularly defensible one.
Americans are fighting to vote right now, and many face significant hurdles. For instance, many counties dont have polling locations on or near reservations, which means that Native citizens have to travel long distances to vote in person, and they often dont have the resources required to do. Why not vote absentee then? In the 2012 election, a number of Navajo were placed on suspense lists and their voter registrations were revoked. Because they lived far from paved highways on the reservation, some of their addresses were listed as too obscure. They werent assigned to precincts.
These issues are incredibly widespread; by March of this year, Native tribes had already noted voting-related problems in 17 states. Did these tribes decide not to vote? No, they chose to fight for their rights using litigation or tribal negotiation with local officials.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of black Americans are showing up to vote in North Carolina, even though voter suppression efforts in the state have been well documented. Right now, local leaders with little socioeconomic and/or racial privilege are animating their communities to vote all across the country, using whatever resources are available to them.
For those who are privileged, voting is more than an option, its an obligation. Two different visions of the future are on the table in this election; one will be chosen. In choosing to sit it out, you would be making a statement that you find those visions equally palatable; that you are indifferent to each of the presidential candidates promises; that youre unmoved by the socioeconomic strategies that will be employed in your communities; that you dont care whos elected to represent you in Congress or the Legislature; that the state and local measures that have been entrusted to the voters arent that big of a deal; that whatever happens, you will be fine, fine, fine.
And heres a second statement you would be making: that whatever happens to everyone else the vulnerable, the underrepresented, those who are not beneficiaries of such privilege that they can afford to tune out this entire embarrassing event youll be fine with that too. If thats a perspective you cant defend, then get out there. Vote.
Melissa Batchelor Warnke is a contributing writer to Opinion. Follow her on Twitter @velvetmelvis.
Slovenia remains committed to non-recognition of the illegal annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation, which is a flagrant violation of the international law, according to a joint declaration on cooperation of the countries, adopted by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Slovenian President Borut Pahor on the results of the negotiations on Tuesday.
"We recognize that the sovereignty and inviolability of borders in Ukraine is a key and critical to the security of all European states. We reiterate that the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol by the Russian Federation is a flagrant violation of the international law," the declaration says published on the official website of the head of the Ukrainian state.
The document also condemns the act of aggression on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, and calls on the Russian Federation to immediately stop providing financial, military and other assistance to local separatists. Slovenia also intends to support sanctions against Russia until the complete fulfillment of the Minsk Agreement on the settlement of the situation in Donbas.
"We call on the international community to continue its efforts to fully implement the Minsk Agreements in order to restore international law and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. The Republic of Slovenia will continue its efforts to restore the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and support the policy of the EU sanctions against Russian Federation up to the full implementation of the Minsk agreements," the declaration says.
Slovenia also "in the spirit of support of NATOs open door policy" supports reforms that bring Ukraine closer to international standards of the alliance.
"We agreed on the further provision of assistance to Ukraine to mitigate the humanitarian consequences of the ongoing act of aggression on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east of Ukraine. We will make joint efforts to strengthen cooperation in the sector of humanitarian demining and disposal of hazardous explosive collision rests in the projects, which are implemented in Ukraine by ITF - International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victims Assistance," the document says.
The declaration also expresses strong support to the Special OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine in the implementation of its mandate, including its full and unhindered access to the entire territory of Ukraine and the Ukrainian-Russian state border, as well as highlights the urgency of strengthening cooperation within international and regional organizations, the further consolidation of comprehensive efforts to fight international terrorism and organized crime.
On Tuesday, Californians will vote on Proposition 60, a proposed law that will require all adult entertainers working in the state to wear a condom while filming explicit scenes. The measure is being pushed by AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein to stop the spread of HIV in the porn industry, even though there hasnt been an outbreak of the virus among adult entertainers in 12 years. Measure B, which was voted via ballot initiative in 2012, already mandates condom use among porn actors filming in L.A. County, but it isnt enforced. Proposition 60 would remedy that by conscripting consumers to act as whistle-blowers if they see the law being violated in an adult film.
Adult entertainers have warned that Proposition 60 amounts to a witch hunt one that effectively places a bounty on their heads. Youre incentivizing the viewer to sue us, actor Tommy Gunn argued in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
In truth, Proposition 60 is a reflection of the ways in which people living with HIV are stigmatized, persecuted and policed across the country. Currently, 33 states have laws on the books that make it a crime to expose a partner to the virus. In 28 states, its even a felony to do so. This might sound like a reasonable idea, one that advocates safer sex between individuals, but criminalizing HIV actually serves to force people further into the closet. How the U.S. legal and political system treats HIV is unsafe, unjust and overdue for reform, and the passage of Proposition 60 would only make the problem worse.
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David Horsey: Proposition 60 cartoon
Like a majority of people prosecuted under HIV-exposure laws, Leslie Flaggs didnt give the virus to her partner. In 2007, she was in a relationship with a man who frequently beat her. After neighbors called the police during a domestic dispute, he claimed that she didnt tell him she had HIV, even though that wasnt true. Flaggs claims she informed her partner shortly after the two began dating. She received a 25-year suspended sentence under Iowa law, as well as four years probation. Flaggs will spend the next decade on the sex offender registry.
Fellow Iowan Nick Rhoades was undetectable, meaning that his viral load was so low that transmitting HIV was virtually impossible, when he was arrested on a charge of criminal HIV exposure in 2008. He was also wearing a condom when he engaged in sex with 22-year-old Adam Plendl. Rhoades nonetheless would spend 18 months in prison for the encounter.
Our laws around HIV are the product of a time when the public knew very little about how people got the virus. In 1990, the Ryan White Care Act, which offered states HIV funding under the condition that they criminalized transmission, included penalties for spitting, biting or scratching. AIDS United estimates that a quarter of people prosecuted for HIV transmission are charged for exactly those reasons, even though we now know its extremely unlikely for the disease to be transmitted through saliva, bite marks or fingernails. Nonetheless, most of the laws enacted in the early 90s remain on the books today.
In 2008, 42-year-old Willie Campbell received a 35-year sentence for spitting on a police officer. The HIV-positive Texans saliva was described in court proceedings as a deadly weapon. David Plunkett had his conviction overturned by the New York Court of Appeals in 2012 after serving four years of a 10-year sentence for biting a police officer, but others wont be so lucky. Between the years of 2008 and 2015, at least 180 people were prosecuted for HIV exposure.
Although these laws are intended to stop the spread of HIV by putting the burden of responsibility on the person with the virus, they often serve to do the opposite. Because its not a crime to spread HIV if you do not know you are positive, many choose not to get tested, in fear they are putting a target on their back. Its estimated that 1.1 million U.S. residents are currently living with HIV, and a fifth of them arent aware of their status. In 2010, a White House task force on HIV/AIDS concluded that these laws force people with HIV into the dark, thus serving to undermine the public health goals of promoting HIV screening and treatment.
If the porn world can learn anything from the justice system, its that policing HIV simply doesnt work. HIV rates are continuing to rise in many communities, specifically among queer men of color. Creating additional legislation only furthers the stigma that keeps the disease alive at a time when it should be dying out, thereby encouraging a culture of silence and continued misinformation. What the porn industry should do is what many companies already mandate: safe, regular checkups to ensure a healthy workplace for their employees.
HIV isnt a crime, and treating it that way isnt the solution porn needs.
Nico Lang is the East Coast reporter for the Advocate. You can also read his work on Salon, Onion A.V. Club and the Guardian. Find him on Twitter @nico_lang.
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook.
To the editor: How sad that the residents of Boyle Heights dont welcome the Nicodim Gallery. And how absurd to call the Los Angeles Police Departments attempt to stop defacement of private property by local youth criminalizing youth and creating racial division in the community. (Boyle Heights activists protest art galleries, gentrification, Nov. 5)
Huh? Obscene reference to white art scrawled on a business? Who exactly is making racial slurs here? Where did young people learn that this is white art?
I have been a volunteer art docent at two local museums for many years, and it saddens me to see how some of the children who visit with their schools have never been to an art museum or any kind of museum before. Before their parents talk gentrification and colonialism, let them think about what a welcome addition art galleries would be.
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How about creating a grass-roots movement that will encourage local youth to connect with the art, make friends with gallery owners and be introduced to art on the local level? Wake up and look at the art!
Lisa Davis, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: This piece underlines the rift between not just economic classes but cultures and the understanding of what art is and where and how it should be displayed.
When I worked in Boyle Heights, art was everywhere in the form of graffiti and large, colorful murals on building sides and walls. I do recall one gallery that featured art from prison inmates, some of the items quite remarkable.
Residents in Boyle Heights fear being removed from their homes and for the culture they know and love. They must find a political champion to help them maintain what they can but also know they must assimilate or the very idea of America is a fraud. My belief applies to every corner of the country, not just Boyle Heights.
Carleton Cronin, West Hollywood
..
To the editor: Ironically, due to a perceived threat to their way of life, an established group of Boyle Heights residents (Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement) advocates vandalism, intimidation and expulsion of economic migrants (new white business owners) who have come to their community in search of opportunity.
It seems to me that the basket of deplorables contains more diversity than we thought.
Davin Gumm, Santa Ana
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
The 2016 campaign has consumed my life since the middle of 2015 and so I felt compelled to watch it bleed into the wee hours of election day as the two candidates for president delivered their post-midnight, final campaign speeches. Donald Trump was addressing a big rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., alone. Hillary Clinton was speaking to a big crowd in Raleigh, N.C., backed up by her husband, President Bill Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, with chanteuse Lady Gaga and rock icon Jon Bon Jovi standing beside them.
The final TV tableaus were fitting. Trump, a man at war with major factions of his own party, is a one-man show. For Hillary, it takes a village.
Trump has been bragging that he draws big crowds single-handedly, while Hillary needs superstar surrogates to fill a hall. That is actually not true Clinton has done as well as Trump when she flies solo but, on the last day of the campaign, she certainly packed the program with big names. At a massive gathering outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, she had not only Bill, Chelsea and Bon Jovi with her, but also Bruce Springsteen, President Barack Obama and the most popular woman in the country, First Lady Michelle Obama.
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Trump was stuck with alt-right rocker Ted Nugent who made news by grabbing his crotch and calling his private parts the blue states.
Being a celebrity himself, Trump doesnt need any backing. He has held the country spellbound at least since the first Republican primary debate when he got into a nasty exchange about sexism with moderator Megyn Kelly. The fascination with Trump developed despite the fact he had no idea how to give a proper speech. His oratory was an exercise in meandering, self-impressed stream of consciousness.
He has gotten better, though. Trumps Grand Rapids speech was an effective melding of his informal style with a reasonably coherent set of talking points. A few lines, in particular, stood out:
One core question for you to consider: Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class or do you want America to be ruled by the people?... Today is our independence day. Today the American working class is going to strike back.
In a year when so many voters are in rebellion against the status quo, that is a powerful message. But Trump could never stick with a serious theme for long. He tweeted his way into an endless string of personal controversies that made him look like an unstable, clownish bully. Clinton was beatable. If the final polls are not wildly mistaken, though, by tonight Trump will become the thing he most despises: a loser.
Hillary was not the worlds greatest orator either when the campaign began, but she got better. Her speech in Raleigh was an example of how she has learned to modulate her voice and speak from her heart as much as from her head. Given Trumps enormous deficits in knowledge, experience, discipline and common decency, one might ask why she had to campaign so hard right into the early hours of voting day. Still, as the ultimate insider running in a year when so many people are ready to smash the system and try something different, it is impressive that Clinton appears poised for a solid victory.
Despite those good prospects, Hillary did not seem to be taking anything for granted on the campaigns last night. She told the North Carolina crowd how Bon Jovi had enjoyed himself so much at the Philadelphia rally that he hitched a ride to Raleigh on the Clinton campaign plane. Then she drew from the lyrics of Bon Jovis most popular song to make it clear she knows the election will not be over until every vote is cast.
Between now and the time the polls close tomorrow, Hillary said, were gonna be livin on a prayer.
David.Horsey@latimes.com
Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
In the span of just 10 days, FBI Director James B. Comey managed to irk his current boss, upset two potential future ones, enrage congressional overseers in both political parties and spark a national debate about the bureaus politicization.
So its hardly surprising that Washingtons latest parlor game is speculating about the future of the 55-year-old former prosecutor, once praised for independence and integrity but now facing calls for his resignation.
On Sunday, Comey took the extraordinary step of reaffirming his agencys July conclusion that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted over her handling of classified material while serving as secretary of State. That was barely a week after he rocked the 2016 presidential race by announcing that the bureau would investigate newly discovered emails possibly related to the private email server she used.
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His actions, so close to Tuesdays vote, frustrated liberals and conservatives alike. Democrats said Comey should have gathered more facts about the new emails before making a public announcement; most of the emails on a computer used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin turned out to be duplicates or unrelated to the investigation. Republicans, who heralded Comey for launching the new inquiry, quickly changed course and accused him of buckling under pressure.
By alienating both sides, Comey may be able to neutralize some of the growing concerns about whether his agency is the latest Washington institution to fall victim to partisanship. But it also raises questions about what kind of relationship Comey will have with the next president, no matter who wins.
Just three years into his 10-year term, Comey, a Republican who served in President George W. Bushs Justice Department and was appointed to lead the FBI by President Obama, is believed to want to soldier on, finishing programs he put in motion to reshape the agency amid new and evolving threats.
But its unclear whether he will enjoy the trust or support of the next president, since both Clinton and Donald Trump have at times questioned his motives and judgment.
Relations with Clinton would be particularly fraught since she would enter office as Comeys boss after being in his investigative crosshairs over her handling of classified materials, which he derided as extremely careless though not worthy of prosecution.
Clinton, in turn, said Comeys vague Oct. 28 missive to Congress to announce the bureau would examine the new emails was unprecedented and deeply troubling.
Honestly, the difficulty will be the shadow and ghosts of the email investigation, and they are going to come into the room every time he meets with the president, said Ronald Hosko, who worked for Comey as one of his top deputies.
Current and former FBI and Justice Department officials say it is easier to imagine what would transpire if Clinton wins Tuesday because she is a more conventional politician. Shes also experienced at dealing with the law enforcement agency after numerous investigations targeted her and her husband over the years.
Trump, on the other hand, is more unpredictable. He has alternately praised and criticized Comey, most recently suggesting the FBI director is part of the rigged system. The business mogul has also shown little respect for the Washington establishment and even suggested he might fire some of the nations generals.
If we are dealing with a Trump victory, all bets are off, said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
Some former law enforcement officials predict Comey might conclude it is best to resign in order to save the bureau from more withering bipartisan criticism.
There is just too much bad blood, and he isnt going to risk putting the FBI in jeopardy by staying, said John Magaw, a former head of the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration.
The next president could also opt to fire the FBI director, as former President Bill Clinton did in 1993 when he dismissed William Sessions amid allegations of ethical improprieties.
But such a dramatic move usually carries significant political risk.
As a lawyer in Congress who in the 1970s helped investigate the Watergate scandal, Hillary Clinton is well-versed in what happened when President Nixon ordered the firing of a special prosecutor investigating his misdeeds. The fiasco later became known as the Saturday Night Massacre and helped doom Nixons presidency.
If she fired Comey or pressured him to resign, Clinton would probably be accused of trying to interfere with the bureaus work, since the email investigation is still winding down and the FBI is also believed to be looking at allegations related to the Clinton Foundation.
Trump might be vulnerable to similar allegations since the bureau has reportedly begun to look into the connections between some of his campaign advisors and foreign officials.
Firing an FBI chief also creates a new problem: finding a politically acceptable replacement who could maintain control of a bureau that has been grappling with internal divisions, including notably over how aggressively to pursue the allegations about the Clinton Foundation.
It was Comey, after all, who stood before television cameras and Congress this summer and proclaimed that no reasonable prosecutor would file charges over what Clinton and her aides had done. In her calculus, Clinton might be better off with the FBI director she knows than the one she doesnt.
There are legitimate criticisms of what he did, said Wittes, who describes himself as a friend of the director. At the end of the day, he is a grown-up and a serious public servant, and he did what he thought was right. If you are Hillary Clinton, at the end of the day, are you going to swallow that?
Comey has been struggling to get a better handle on the embarrassing friction between agents, supervisors and prosecutors over the potential investigation into the Clinton Foundation, a federal law enforcement official said.
Agents in New York have agitated to pursue an inquiry, but their bosses and prosecutors have declined to grant them the authority. The supervisors and career prosecutors felt the evidence thus far gathered by the agents was too weak to justify any intensification of the inquiry, according to two federal law enforcement officials familiar with the matter.
Such internal disputes are not uncommon, though usually remain private. The tension over the Clinton Foundation inquiry, however, erupted in public last week amid numerous leaks and a lengthy, detailed Wall Street Journal story.
U.S. law enforcement officials close to Comey say he failed to anticipate how his Oct. 28 letter would explode in the campaign. He ordered agents to conduct their review into the new emails as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
As recently as Friday, top FBI officials did not think they could complete the review before election day. But on Sunday, Comey informed lawmakers that the review had not changed his agencys conclusion that agents uncovered no evidence that Clinton intended to mishandle classified information over her private server.
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The most brutal and bizarre presidential campaign in modern memory careened to a close Monday with its two main protagonists, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, exhorting their supporters to help make history.
Eight years after the country elected its first black president, Clinton was bidding to shatter what she has called the highest and hardest glass ceiling by becoming the nations first woman president.
A victory, she said, would help bind the wounds opened by the scathing rhetoric and partisan animosities that have cut deeply throughout the contest.
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Tomorrow we face the test of our time, she told thousands of supporters on a sun-splashed autumn day in Pittsburgh. Will we be coming together as a nation or splitting further apart? Will we set goals that all of us can help meet or will we turn on each other and pit one group of Americans against each other?
Trump, who has defied expectations throughout his unconventional campaign, sought a victory that would rank among the greatest political upsets of all time.
As an outsider, he vowed to topple the governing establishment that has embittered so many Americans and turned them in fury against Washington and its leaders.
Its time to reject the political and media elite thats bled our country dry, Trump told several thousand backers at a rally on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
The election will decide whether we are ruled by a corrupt political class, Trump said. Im not a politician. My only special interest is you.
The election, coming after eight years of President Obama in the White House, represents a turning point for the country. Voters will not only choose a new president but also decide control of Congress and, with it, the tone and attitude facing the next administration.
A gain of four seats would flip control of the Senate from Republican to Democrat, if Clinton wins and her running mate, Tim Kaine, breaks a tie vote. The outcome appeared to hinge on fewer than a dozen races, including close contests in Pennsylvania, Missouri, North Carolina and New Hampshire.
Democrats needed a gain of 30 seats to take control of the House, which seemed a distant prospect given district lines that favor sitting lawmakers.
Eager to protect his legacy, Obama devoted a final day to the campaign trail, traveling to Michigan and New Hampshire to rally college students before joining Clinton along with First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton at an election-eve rally in Philadelphia.
Speaking outside Independence Hall to a crowd in the tens of thousands, Obama laced into Trump and lamented the vicious and crazy attacks leveled against the Democratic nominee.
For everybody still in need of a good job or a raise. For every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty. For every student who needs relief from student debt, every immigrant who wants to contribute to this country they love. For every American who has not yet felt the progress of these past eights years, she will work, Obama hollered into the crisp night air. She will deliver. She wont just tweet.
The choice for president is one that would have seemed improbable not terribly long ago.
Clinton a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State during Obamas first term was always a prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, though rival Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, proved a far tougher primary opponent than expected.
By contrast, few took the Manhattan businessman and reality TV star seriously when he launched what seemed a vanity campaign after years of talking up a White House bid. He powered through a field of 16 rivals, virtually all of them more politically experienced than he was, shattering many of the norms of presidential campaigning along the way.
He turned a series of debates into political burlesque. He insulted whole groups of the electorate women, Latinos, prisoners of war but managed to win the GOP nomination handily.
As the partys standard-bearer, he proved no more restrained. He waged Twitter wars against his adversaries and admitted going nearly 20 years without paying federal income taxes. He called for Clintons imprisonment if she is defeated and openly feuded with leaders of his own party, among them House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
Throughout, supporters delighted at what they considered a willingness to say what other more timorous and calculated politicians refused.
Trump staked a number of controversial positions, some of which he reiterated Monday: abrogating trade deals and defense pacts with U.S. allies, halting immigration from Muslim countries and, most famous, building a wall along the border with Mexican and forcing the Mexican government to pay for it.
His campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, struck both a hopeful and pugnacious tone.
Were going to bring back the jobs that have been stolen from you, he told cheering supporters in Raleigh, N.C. Were going to bring back the miners and the factory workers and the steelworkers. Were going to put them back to work.
But polls have consistently shown Trump with a cap of support well below 50%, and surveys suggest steep odds cobbling together the 270 electoral vote majority needed to win the White House.
Even so, Trump promised yet one more surprise.
Tomorrows going to be a very historic day.... I think its going to be Brexit plus plus plus, he said, referring to Britains summer vote to leave the European Union, which stunned many prognosticators. Itll be amazing.
The two had a number of substantive differences. Clinton favors limited and more targeted tax cuts, legislation that would allow people to stay in the country even if they arrived illegally, and using the Affordable Care Act as the foundation for expanding the availability of healthcare. Trump would seek to repeal Obamacare in its entirely.
Much of her campaign, however, focused on Trumps persona and her assertion he lacked the temperament and personal stability to serve as president. She campaigned alongside women he insulted and invoked workers and small-business owners who say Trump ripped them off.
On Monday, however, she sought to end on a somewhat higher note.
I really do want to be the president for everybody. People who vote for me. People who vote against me, she told reporters gathered outside her campaign plane in White Plains, N.Y., as she set out. Because I think that these splits, these divides that have been not only exposed but exacerbated by the campaign on the other side are ones that we really do have to bring the country together.
At ages 69 and 70, respectively, Clinton and Trump are two of the oldest candidates ever to seek the White House. But they showed no slackening in their final-day schedules, churning across a handful of states, including several that have been among the hardest fought in the country.
Clinton hit Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania twice. Trump stumped across Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both planned to finish sometime around midnight.
At times, one had barely left before the other showed up.
Not surprisingly, both sides publicly exuded confidence.
Speaking on MSNBC, the manager of Trumps campaign, Kellyanne Conway, suggested the Republican nominee was riding a wave of momentum and cited his stops in Democratic-leaning Minnesota on Sunday and Michigan on Monday.
Were going into her blue wall, Conway said, referring to states that have voted Democratic in each of the last six presidential campaigns.
Robby Mook, her counterpart in Clintons campaign, scoffed at the Trumps team reliance on crowd size and momentum to buoy their hopes. Those are subjective terms, he said on CBS. We think we have those on our side now. What I know we have as well is record turnout.
Times staff writers Michael Finnegan in Raleigh, Chris Megerian in Pittsburgh and Michael A. Memoli in Washington contributed to this report.
UPDATES:
7:35 p.m.: This article was updated with President Obamas comments in Philadelphia.
This article was first published at 6:10 p.m.
The ferocious fight for Ohio, a perennial presidential toss-up state, has come down to the machines: one well-practiced at maximizing votes, enthusiastic or not, and a second counting on ardent supporters to offset flaws in a less predictable operation.
Ohio in the closing days of the campaign presents one of the clearest tests nationally of a key difference between the Republican and Democratic efforts: Hillary Clinton has massed thousands of volunteers to move voters to the polls early and to get out the vote Tuesday. She has her enthusiastic fans here, to be sure, but has buttressed that with an organization built on President Obamas two statewide victories.
Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | Sign up for the newsletter
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Donald Trumps campaign, still suffering from its spats with the Republican governor and the state GOP party chief, is depending on a voter effort run by the Republican National Committee. It is trying to draw out voters for all of the states races, not just Trumps a circumstance that sometimes muddles the voter targeting that will be key to the outcome.
Complicating things further, each candidate is making a run at voters who would logically be the others. Clinton is hitting up suburban voters, mostly women, who usually side with Republicans and has aimed substantial advertising their way. Trump, in less visible fashion, is going after white, blue-collar voters who usually help propel Democratic candidates.
Those diametrically opposite appeals are playing out in a place in which the last four presidential contests have been decided by fewer than 5 percentage points each.
Were going to have a test of organization against enthusiasm, said John C. Green, a veteran Ohio election expert and political science professor at the University of Akron.
As election day neared, each side was trying to shore up deficiencies, real or feared.
Clinton campaigned in the state Friday night and Sunday, seeking to drive up voting among African American and young voters, particularly in Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located and where a massive number of Democratic votes usually offsets Republican gains elsewhere.
She brought in performers Beyonce and Jay Z and Cavaliers star LeBron James to exhort their fans to cast ballots. James on Sunday acknowledged the temptation not to vote, but added that it really does, it really, really does matter.
Trump appeared in southwestern Ohio on Friday, and on Monday sent in Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee and conservative favorite, to drive up Republican votes.
The schedule underscored a rarity here: the absence of the candidates on the final campaign day. Ohio looked on forlornly Monday as the candidates careened elsewhere, into North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Florida and New Hampshire.
Those states are not necessarily closer contests but represent more substantial choke-points, particularly for Clinton as she seeks to deny Trump several paths to the presidency. While no Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio, Clinton can afford to lose the state as long as she wins the battlegrounds in which she was spending time Monday.
In early voting, Republican and Democratic counties in Ohio both reported increases in turnout compared with 2012. But it was not completely clear how much each candidate was poised to benefit.
This year, Democratic boosts in some areas of the state could mean more Trump supporters; Republican supporters in others could deliver an advantage for Clinton. Both sides expressed confidence in their own campaign and candidate.
Clintons state campaign director, Chris Wyant, said that increases in the ranks of early voters were a reflection of both the organization weve built and the enthusiasm voters have for Hillary Clinton.
Even in areas like Cuyahoga County, the campaign ultimately will corral its voters, he said.
If they have yet to vote, theyll vote tomorrow, he said Monday. He noted that even in the Cleveland area, the rate of early voting increased in recent days.
Trump campaign officials in Ohio referred questions to the RNC, whose field director, Chris Young, expressed confidence in the outcome.
The infrastructure we put on the ground in Ohio is the strongest ground game weve ever put together in that state, Young said during a telephone conference with reporters.
But the Republican influx of hundreds of paid staff and trained volunteers has been offset by regular displays of party disunity.
The seeds were sown when Ohio Gov. John Kasich ran against Trump and proved to be one of the last two survivors in an unruly field. Unlike most of the defeated candidates, he refused to endorse Trump despite pressure from national Republicans.
Kasich did not appear at the summer convention, held in Cleveland a stinging slap at a party nominee by the home-state governor. He has regularly been critical of Trump, who he said in a recent statement has behaved in a manner that reflects so poorly on our country.
The governor has traveled the country this general election season raising money for other Republicans, in what is widely seen as an effort to create alliances for another presidential run in the future. A week ago, in a well-publicized gesture, he cast his 2016 ballot by writing in the name of Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Matt Borges, the state party chief who is allied with Kasich, has been openly critical of Trump in recent months, an effort that his colleagues say was intended to curb Trumps more outlandish behavior.
Although Borges ultimately said he would vote for the partys nominee, Trumps campaign took a shot at him, accusing him of duplicity in a letter to state party committee members that swiftly became public.
Trump does have one powerful Republican ally in the state, even if hes so far declined to campaign with the nominee: Sen. Rob Portman.
Republican Senate candidates across the country have been locked in tight races, but Portman is the exception, enjoying what appears to be a glide path to easy reelection against the Democratic nominee, former Gov. Ted Strickland.
One Republican official, who declined to be identified comparing the campaigns, said that Portmans well-organized operation has undoubtedly helped Donald Trumps effort in the state by drawing in voters the presidential candidates campaign cant otherwise reach.
But it invariably comes back to the presidential candidates and the odd division of voters between them this year.
The state lacks a substantial Latino population of the sort that has given Clinton a boost in some other states and has offset the early slump in African American votes. That has left the outcome uncertain as election day dawned.
The election is very close, but the alignment of voters in the polls and when votes are cast is different, Green said. We may see a scrambling of previous coalitions.
For more on politics
cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Twitter: @cathleendecker
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Updates on California politics
Live coverage from the campaign trail
Its election day! If youre headed to the polls, you might need a quick refresher on everything thats on the ballot.
The record 19.4 million people who are registered to vote in California have a host of races to choose from: the presidential contest, the Senate race, congressional districts, legislative candidates and 17 statewide ballot propositions, along with local initiatives and races.
Its a lot to get through. Fortunately the Los Angeles Times political team has you covered with a quick speed read.
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California is going blue, whats the point?
Sure, the states electoral college votes are in all likelihood going to Hillary Clinton. That leaves some voters feeling left out. But the state still matters. You cant win the presidency without California, and as our cool graphic going back to 1936 shows, it actually hasnt been a lock for the Democrats for very long. Well be watching closely to see if Orange County will go blue for the first time in 80 years.
Why are there two Democrats running for U.S. Senate?
Thats thanks to Californias top-two primary system, which this year sent two members of the same party to a statewide contest for the first time since voters implemented the system in 2012. Weve covered this race very closely, so check out all the links below.
Why are there so many ballot measures?
For the most part, its because turnout was so low in the last statewide election. Also, this was a prime year for people to get their issues in front of the voters, especially given the expected high turnout.
Condoms, really?
Really. In 2012, Los Angeles County voters opted to require adult film actors to wear condoms. Now, Californians statewide are faced with the same question. Proposition 60 has deep-pocketed donors and passionate opponents.
What do polls of California voters say?
Glad you asked. Along with our partners at USC Dornsife, The Times just took one. From the presidential race to the Senate contest to the hottest ballot measures, see how things are shaping up.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Find your polling place here. And catch up while you wait with some of our top election headlines.
Live coverage on election day | Sign up for the newsletter
Ballot measures
The Times complete guide to the 17 ballot propositions, with endorsements from the editorial board
Quick summary of the 17 propositions on Novembers statewide ballot
All about the $9-billion ballot measure that would fund school repairs
School bonds are popular, but polls show the big one on the ballot is struggling
This man is bankrolling a California ballot measure to force voter approval on big bonds. Would that kill projects like high-speed rail?
California voters are being asked to force transparency in the Legislature. Heres a Proposition 54 explainer.
If Proposition 55 passes, the state budget will rely even more on Californias highest earners
Why opponents of increasing the tobacco tax arent talking about tobacco
Why business groups arent fighting Californias tobacco and income tax hike initiatives
Vapers beware: E-cigarettes in line for a big tax increase if Proposition 56 passes
Tobacco companies claim proponents of cigarette tax will use the new revenue to enrich their top executives
The tobacco tax fight is different this time around, and the $100 million in funds raised is only part of it
Why Gov. Jerry Brown is staking so much on overhauling prison parole
Californias Citizens United ballot measure: Whos for it, whos against it and what it could really do
Most of Californias Congressional delegation already wants to get rid of Citizens United regardless of Proposition 59
What you need to know about Prop. 61, the spendy prescription drug measure on Novembers ballot
How MASH actor Mike Farrell became a leading voice against the death penalty in California
Why Silicon Valley is pouring money into efforts to repeal Californias death penalty
What happens if both death penalty measures are approved by voters on Nov. 8?
Will ending the death penalty save California more money than speeding up executions?
If California votes to speed up the death penalty, what does that mean for the states execution methods?
Bilingual education has been absent from California public schools for almost 20 years. But that may soon change
NRA not putting up much of a fight against California gun control ballot measure
What makes Prop. 63 different than the gun control laws passed over summer, and how thats split gun control supporters
We read it so you dont have to: 10 things you need to know about Proposition 64, which would legalize pot in California
Billionaire activists like Sean Parker and George Soros are fueling the campaign to legalize pot
Proposition 64 would legalize recreational use of marijuana though its illegal under federal law. How will that work?
The push to legalize pot for all has deeply divided the medical marijuana community
A proposition to legalize pot raises DUI concerns: We are going to start losing folks in astronomical numbers
No on Prop 66' campaign points to Texas case as warning against faster executions in California
Out of time? Here are the propositions explained with emojis.
U.S. Senate race
California Senate candidates Loretta Sanchez and Kamala Harris on policy, politics and the state of their race
Can a San Francisco liberal win in Central Valley?
Riding high in the U.S. Senate race, Kamala Harris pushes to help down-ballot Democrats
When running for U.S. Senate, its good to be the highly visible California attorney general
Obama stars in ad for Harris
Senate candidate Kamala Harris makes final pitch to voters
Kamala Harris wins endorsements from Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein in U.S. Senate race
Loretta Sanchez dabbed. Kamala Harris threw shade. What happened in the only Senate debate
Meet the men plotting strategy for Californias U.S. Senate candidates
$25-billion foreclosure settlement was a victory for Kamala Harris in California, but it wasnt perfect
If Kamala Harris wins the U.S. Senate race, the governor has a rare chance to pick a new attorney general
Californias U.S. Senate candidates are on their own as the national Democratic Party sits it out
Sanchez says she was in the room for tough talk with President Obama on immigration. Its not clear that she was.
Californias congressional Republicans may prefer Loretta Sanchez for Senate, but theyre staying out of it
Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris overwhelmingly wins state Democratic Party endorsement
Kamala Harris should take bolder action on police shootings, civil rights advocates say
Loretta Sanchez apologizes for Native American war cry
Democrat Loretta Sanchez may need an assist from GOP voters in Senate race
Join us at latimes.com for full election coverage of Californias measures and propositions.
Congressional races
Here are the 12 California congressional races were watching
This is how youll know California Republicans had a good election night
This is how youll know California Democrats had a good election night
Californias congressional candidates have spent $91.7 million on their campaigns already. Here are the cheapest and most expensive races
Gov. Brown endorses Democrats in six House races
Vulnerable California House members say they will not back Donald Trump
Voters in two different congressional districts get very similar letters from the wives of the GOP candidates
CD 7: Congressional candidates Ami Bera and Scott Jones spar over scandals in debate
CD 7: Allegations fly as ad wars begin in Sacramento congressional campaign
CA 10: This California congressional race may turn out to be a prime example of the GOPs worst fears
CA 10: Democrats airing three new ads connecting California Republican congressman to Trump
CD 17: November intraparty showdown could unseat longtime Silicon Valley congressman Mike Honda
CD 17: Mike Honda sues opponent Ro Khanna, alleging his campaign manager illegally accessed donor data
CD 17: Silicon Valley congressman gets three donations for legal defense fund, spends $0
CD 20: Sam Farr, Democratic congressman in Monterey County, retiring
CD 21: In this California congressional district, water is more important than Donald Trump
CA 21: Democratic group releases misleading ads tying Rep. David Valadao to Donald Trump
CA 21: Obama endorses Emilio Huerta in his Central Valley race against Rep. David Valadao
CD 21: Emilio Huerta, son of labor icon, jumps into Central Valley congressional race
CD 24: Celebrity donors pour money into this open California congressional seat
CD 24: How does a 28-year-old raise more than $1 million for a congressional bid
CD 25: Did Steve Knight say hell vote for Donald Trump? Not quite.
CD 25: Could Democrats win an Antelope Valley congressional seat they havent held since 1964?
CD 25: Why activists in these California swing districts are feuding with the national Democratic Party
CD 25: As Porter Ranch gas leak lingers, candidates smell a political opportunity
CD 29: Rep. Cardenas spends 40% of reelection fund on legal fees, but his lawyer denies federal probe
CD 29: With convictions overturned, Richard Alarcon says hell run against Rep. Tony Cardenas
CD 32: California congresswoman vows to stay in reelection race after mild stroke
CD 32: Judge orders West Covina assemblyman to stay away from wife following domestic violence allegations
CD 44: Race takes center stage as heated L.A. County congressional campaign approaches finish line
CD 44: Emilys List backs Nanette Barragan, signaling heated House race in L.A. area
CD 44: Video from a previous election used as ammunition in hot House race in South L.A.
CD 44: Race, oil and the environment all play into this L.A. congressional race
CD 44: Did Isadore Halls congressional campaign break federal election law?
CD 46: Why a group of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants are voting for a Latino instead of a Vietnamese refugee
CD 46: For the first time, some Orange County voters might be choosing between two Democrats for Congress
CA 49: Pelosi: Theres an excitement across the country about getting rid of Issa
Legislative races
Female politicians are losing ground in California
Why Donald Trump keeps popping up in local races he has nothing to do with
Heres why the Legislatures moderate Democrats see the Mod Squad growing on election day
Dont expect big changes if Democrats win a Sacramento supermajority on Nov. 8
In rare move, President Obama endorses three California Democrats for Assembly
Republican candidate faces sexual harassment allegations in heated Santa Clarita Assembly race
Without party support, this Democratic assemblywoman is out on a limb but isnt giving up on reelection
Two Democrats are on the ballot for Congress in this San Fernando Valley race but only one is running
Republican assemblyman cries foul over lawn signs that put Trumps name next to his
In legislative races, Democratic challengers try to pin Trump on their Republican opponents
Will these Southern California Republicans keep their Assembly seats despite Trump?
Assemblywoman: I dont feel respected by Democratic colleagues as some help her rival
In this Glendale Assembly district, Armenian Americans could be key
San Bernardino Assembly race could define what it means to be an Inland Empire Democrat
One expensive election
California ballot propositions rake in a record $473 million in campaign cash
Longer terms for Californias Legislature mean a flood of cash from interest groups trying to sway the balance their way
Independent expenditures 101: An introduction to outside spending in state races
Heres how Kamala Harris spent $600,000 on 19 consultants in a Senate race
For those with lots of time: Candidate profiles
How race helped shape the politics of Senate candidate Kamala Harris
Californias next senator could be a Latina. Will her past mistakes get in the way?
Thanks for all this. Do you have any other good reads I should check out?
We sure do.
Heres one about the time the politics team went to Disneyland to talk to people about the election.
And we identified the GOP dead zones in L.A. County, where you wont find any Republicans to vote for.
And did you know that Donald Trumps official Make America Great Again hats are made right here in California?
OK, Im sick of the election. Anything else?
Go follow our Facebook page. Our engagement team has some treats in store for readers needing a break. And when youre ready again, well have lots of analysis and news in our free Essential Politics newsletter, so sign up.
christina.bellantoni@latimes.com
@cbellantoni
ALSO
Your ballot box guide to Californias propositions
Coverage of California campaigns and ballot measures
Live results and analysis on election night
Sign up for the free daily newsletter
The polls are open on the East Coast. The campaign is over. Lets all breathe a little sigh of relief as we prepare for what might come next.
Im Christina Bellantoni. Welcome to our special election day edition of Essential Politics.
Youve read a lot over the course of this contest. From Ted Cruzs announcement as the first candidate to run on March 23, 2015 until the last person left Hillary Clintons Philadelphia rally last night, this campaign has been through many ups, many more downs, and a few twists and turns in between.
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I wont inundate you with stories from the final moments of the campaign. This probably answers all your questions.
The first polls close at 4 p.m. Pacific time. California polls close at 8 p.m. Well have everything you could ever want right here all day and night. But wait, theres more!
JOIN US
As you head to vote in California, you can look forward to our round-ups on everything we know about the important races, like this guide to Californias 17 ballot propositions.
Our reporters will be on the ground in swing states, talking to voters about how this contentious election has made them feel and where the country can go from here. Check out the project.
Well have reporters at Clintons headquarters and with Donald Trumps team each staging final events in New York City.
Mexico correspondent Kate Linthicum will be hanging out with Mexicans who are just as anxious as Americans to find out the presidential results, and Las Vegas-based correspondent David Montero will be at a party for long-shot candidate Evan McMullin in Utah.
Our reporters will report from swing states North Carolina, Ohio, Arizona and Florida, talking to voters about how this divisive election has made them feel and where the country can go from here.
As the results start to roll into our slick digital maps, youll find tips on how to be an armchair pundit from our own results analyst Mike Memoli.
Weve got handy guides to the states that matter most as the Democrats attempt to retake the Senate, and a close look at the most competitive congressional districts.
And heres something really special: If you register with us on latimes.com you can read and watch all of this for free all week long. Tell your friends to sign up too: latimes.com/freeweek.
Follow along with us on a special election day Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics for news by the tweet.
For now, watch this wrap-up of how we got here.
THE LAST PITCH
Cathleen Decker writes how the battle for swing-state Ohio has come down to the machines: a well-oiled Democratic presidential get-out-the-vote effort and a far more tenuous Republican one, at war with the governor and state party.
Clinton spent most of the final day before polls open courting voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan, reliably blue states that last supported a Republican in 1988. Trumps campaign says the Democratic nominees schedule proves shes on the defense.
Prime yourself for how the evening will go with an Electoral College map refresher.
YES, HOMELESS PEOPLE VOTE
What do Los Angeles homeless voters have to say about the presidential election? Colleen Shalby talked with five of them who shared their thoughts on what they hope the next president will accomplish.
CAMPAIGNING BY MAIL
It all ends today. Californias campaigns are letting go of their tight grip on mailboxes across the state. We have been collecting political mailers during the primary and general election, and later asked readers to send us photos of the ads they received. One reader, Aaron Levinson of Woodland Hills, said he received close to 10 pounds of political mail during the primary.
Another, Peggy Scholz of Pasadena, told The Times she was dismayed by most of the mailers she saw. The smear campaigns and the fancy flyers actually hurt the cause of the person sending them, she said in an email.
Take a look at some of the highlights from political mail sent in California this election cycle, brought to you by Allison Wisk and Christine Mai-Duc.
TODAYS ESSENTIALS
California ballot propositions have raked in a record $473 million in campaign cash. More than a third of the money has come from tobacco and pharmaceutical companies.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders held rallies in Los Angeles and Sacramento on Monday to urge voters to support Proposition 61, a ballot measure on prescription drug pricing. But some TMZ cameras captured Sanders getting heckled as a sellout, presumably from people disappointed he endorsed Clinton.
California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris spent Monday hopscotching to rallies from San Diego to L.A. to drum up support for her U.S. Senate campaign and down-ballot Democrats. She started the day at UC San Diego with Doug Applegate, who told supporters one reason he was doing well against Rep. Darrell Issa was because of the Republicans allegiance with Trump.
Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez called on several of her congressional colleagues to help make a last-minute pitch to voters that the states open U.S. Senate seat should go to a Latina from Southern California. Reps. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk), Scott Peters (D-San Diego), Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) and Linda Sanchez (D-Whittier), the candidates sister, made the regional and racial appeal.
We examined how deep-blue California gets little love in the presidential race.
Bet you didnt think the presidential race could have consequences for the 2024 Olympic games.
Matt Pearce reviews the evidence. Did Trumps staff really take away his Twitter access?
James Comey is facing some major backlash.
Clinton says she was unsurprised by the result of Comeys review but was befuddled by the most recent probe.
LOGISTICS
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Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
Among the record 19.4 million Californians registered to vote is a group that is rarely explicitly addressed the homeless.
In Los Angeles, where homelessness has continued to rise, downtown shelters have held registration drives, encouraging men and women to get out to vote. On election day, some are designated polling places for those whose addresses lean toward temporary.
Homeless Angelenos who are registered to vote will have the chance to cast their support for measure HHH, a plan to buy permanent supportive housing for the homeless. And like every other American, theyll have their say on the next president of the United States.
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For several of L.A.s homeless, the choice between presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump doesnt have as much to do with how a candidate will address homelessness. Instead, theyre focused on how that person will fix the problems that mired their lives before.
Im afraid that everything that was done for the LGBT community is going to go downhill and were going to have to start all over again.
Abigail Malecki, 46, came out as a transgender woman in 2011, after shed left New York and landed in Los Angeles. In 2014, her gender and name, inspired by Dear Abby and a character on NCIS, became legal. Still, she faces discrimination.
Ive had people tell me Im an abomination. Ive told them that they must be an abomination too. Hatred is a sin.
She became homeless in 2009 after losing her job. While she does not blame her job loss on being transgender, she does worry that employment opportunities claiming to be trans-friendly are not a reality.
Weve still got a long way to go before the hatred towards the trans community is gone, she said.
Malecki is voting for Clinton in the hopes that the Democrat will continue the progress that the Obama administration has made for the LGBT community.
I was the one pushing grocery carts, talking to myself, panhandling and looking for food.
Mental illness and alcohol and drug addiction led David Noriega, 50, to homelessness. He hopes that the next president will focus on those issues, among other problems that plague the war vets and domestically abused women and children who have shared his streets.
Originally a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Noriega has been on the fence between Trump and Clinton, and worries about the direction of the country.
We might fall apart. Im afraid of that, he said, noting the divisiveness of this years politicking.
Hell make his decision on election day.
Even if I did get a minimum wage job, the rent was totally unaffordable.
Jon Lewis was a bartender and a bar manager for 20 years. When he lost his job three years ago, he moved into his van and started applying for jobs online more than 100 times, he says.
Lewis is voting for Trump, despite being told hes crazy to do so. He believes the GOP nominee will be able to fix the issues that have led him to homelessness.
The unemployment rate is high. I think that would change, Lewis said. I think if our economy is doing better, that will address the homeless problem.
When I got out of the service, I was so paranoid that I wouldnt be able to make friends or talk to people. The only people I could talk to were my bartender and my drug dealer.
Ajay Williams, 26, served two tours in Afghanistan while in the U.S. Navy. It was on a tour to Somalia that he started using drugs to distract himself.
Now, after years of combating the issues he brought back with him, he wants a president who will prioritize the needs of Americans over the issues of other countries.
I knew skid row was a place, but I never knew it was third-world country in the United States, he says.
Once a supporter of Barack Obama, Williams is now voting for Trump, confident that he will address those concerns.
We went from motel to motel.
Pamela Walls lost her Section 8 housing in 2001. She spent time staying with family and couch-surfing with friends, living under bridges and on picnic tables before she landed at the Womens Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Thats what homeless people do. They try to sleep anywhere they can.
With that at the forefront of her mind, Walls wants one of the major focuses of the next president to be housing. She hopes the job will go to Clinton.
colleen.shalby@latimes.com
Twitter: @cshalby
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On the Streets: A 12-part video series about homelessness in Southern California
Los Angeles teens are giving health experts a fresh reason to fret about electronic cigarettes.
In a study of more than 3,000 students in L.A. County public schools, those who were into vaping at the beginning of their sophomore year were more likely to become traditional cigarette smokers over the next six months compared with their classmates who didnt vape. The vapers were also more likely to become daily smokers and to smoke more cigarettes.
The findings, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., suggest that public health officials have some justification for viewing e-cigarettes as a gateway to smoking for teens who would otherwise steer clear of tobacco products.
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Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been one of the most relentless proponents of this idea. Since at least 2013, he has warned that e-cigarettes despite their innocuous image have the potential to get teens hooked on nicotine. Once theyre addicted, theyre more susceptible to trying regular cigarettes.
The teen years are pivotal, because 90% of adult smokers picked up the habit in their teens, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. On top of that, the U.S. surgeon general warns that nicotine exposure during adolescence may have lasting adverse consequences for brain development.
Surveys and studies have validated Friedens fears. A report this summer in the journal Pediatrics found that high schoolers were six times more likely to start smoking cigarettes if they had a history of vaping than if they didnt. The link between vaping and later smoking was particularly strong in students who said they had no intention of smoking when they were first interviewed.
And on Monday, Pediatrics published a study blaming flavors like gummy bear and bubble gum for making e-cigarettes seem appealing and less dangerous to kids in middle school and high school across the country.
The study, led by researchers from USCs Keck School of Medicine, found that one-third of the 10th-graders surveyed had tried e-cigarettes at least once. Most of those students told interviewers they hadnt vaped in the last 30 days, while 4% said they vaped once or twice in the last month and 5% said they vaped more often than that.
Six months later, 20% of the frequent vapers had become frequent smokers and an additional 12% had become occasional smokers, according to the study.
For the sake of comparison, about 2% of the students who had never vaped went on to become either occasional or frequent cigarette smokers during the same period.
And among those who vaped once or twice a month when they started 10th grade, 9% were occasional cigarette smokers and 5% were frequent cigarette smokers six months later, the researchers found.
Frequent vapers were also most likely to be smoking two or more cigarettes a day by the spring of their sophomore year 12% of them did so, compared with 4% of the students who were occasional vapers at the beginning of the school year and 0.4% of those who didnt vape at all.
This trend held up when the researchers analyzed the results based on the students cigarette smoking history at the start of the school year. For instance, among the 96% of students who started out as nonsmokers, fewer than 1% of those who never vaped became frequent cigarette smokers over the next six months, compared with 10% of those who were frequent vapers.
Even for those who started out as occasional or frequent smokers, the researchers found that the more a student vaped at the start of the school year, the greater the odds that they would be frequent cigarette smokers six months later.
The Los Angeles-area students in this study may not be representative of students across the nation, the study authors noted, so its not clear whether these findings can be generalized to the country as a whole.
Still, the results show that although some teens who make the leap from e-cigarettes to traditional cigarettes are just experimenting, others are getting hooked. This may warrant particular attention in tobacco control policy, the researchers concluded.
karen.kaplan@latimes.com
Follow me on Twitter @LATkarenkaplan and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
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The Ukrainian army had no fatalities in the Donbas conflict over the past day, yet four servicemen suffered injuries, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman for military issues Oleksandr Motuzianyk said.
"None of Ukrainian servicemen was killed in the hostilities in the past 24 hours, yet four soldiers were wounded," he told a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.
The hostilities centered on Krymske in the Luhansk area where the hostiles twice used 120mm mortars, Motuzianyk said. Most shelling incidents were seen in the Popasna district, and the truce was also breached near Slovianoserbsk and Novotoshkivske in Stanytsia Luhanska district. In all, nine attacks, including two by use of heavy weapons, were observed in the Luhansk area in the past 24 hours, he said.
In the Donetsk sector, tensions persisted in Luhanske, the Zaitseve area, Mayorsk, Avdiyivka and near the Donetsk airport, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman said. In all, ten attacks happened in the Donetsk sector during the day, including four instances of use of heavy armaments.
Most attacks in the Mariupol sector occurred on the Pavlopil-Shyrokyne frontline, the spokesman said. The hostiles fired 82mm and 120mm mortars and 122mm cannons on Hnutove and two mortar attacks were seen in Krasnohorivka. As many as 31 hostile attacks, including ten employing heavy weapons, were observed in the Mariupol sector over the past day, he said.
A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for driving drunk around a Costa Mesa neighborhood while shooting out more than a dozen car windows with a BB gun.
An Orange County Superior Court judge handed down the sentence for Nicholas French of Costa Mesa on Thursday, the same day French pleaded guilty to felony vandalism and a misdemeanor count of driving with a blood-alcohol level of more than 0.08%, according to court records. A second misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence was dismissed.
Police said they arrested French on June 24 after a caller reported that the driver of a black Lincoln Town Car was shooting out car windows in a neighborhood near Costa Mesa High School along Mission and El Camino drives.
Investigators said at the time that French vandalized at least 17 vehicles.
Officers who stopped French determined he had been driving drunk, and they found a BB gun in his cars back seat, police said.
Authorities said French was on parole at the time of his arrest, though they declined to elaborate.
Court records show French pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree burglary, receiving stolen property and possession of a concealed weapon. He was sentenced to two years in state prison in that case.
When he was 18, Larry Miller enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnam War, thinking the experience would be exciting. Instead, he entered a world similar to a nightmare.
Of course, at 18, you feel pretty invincible until you make that first contact and find out this is not what you had envisioned, said Miller, now 69.
During his year in Vietnam, Miller saw comrades die and experienced illnesses as a result of the conditions there and the food the troops were eating.
He also had to inform service members families when someone was killed on the battlefield.
The Huntington Beach resident, who served in the Navy as a corpsman, or medic, for the Marine Corps from 1966 to 1970, has written a memoir about his experiences called They Called Me Doc.
The 258-page book, which was released in June and is available on Amazon.com, tells Millers war story as he honors those who fell.
I may be a narrator, but by no means is this a hero book about me, Miller said during an interview at his Huntington Harbour home. Its a book about me being around a bunch of heroes.
One of his most gut-wrenching duties is detailed toward the end of the book, as he accompanied another service member to the homes of those who had died to inform their families.
Especially with mothers, you really never had to go to the door, Miller said. No one ever answered the door and said, Can I help you? They knew. From the time the car pulled up, you could hear them screaming.
Miller said he decided to begin writing the book three years ago after he retired from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, where he worked for more than 30 years and ended his career as chief deputy.
Miller had an ancestor who his family believed had served in the Civil War as a bugler. It wasnt until Millers daughter, a high school history teacher, did some research that they found out the man was a soldier.
I always wondered what it was like, Miller said. What was the food like? Was he in battles? What were the battles really like?
Not wanting to leave his family and future generations with similar questions about the Vietnam War, Miller decided to tell his own story.
It seems like the perfect time since its only recently that Vietnam War veterans have been widely accepted by the public, he said.
Its taken 45 years to write because 45 years ago, no one cared about the Vietnam War, Miller said. We couldnt even wear our uniforms off-duty for fear of being attacked by draft-dodging deserters and the media.
More than 2 million U.S. troops served in Vietnam and about 270,000 saw combat, Miller said. About 58,000 died, according to the National Archives. Miller said 121 in his battalion were killed.
A Marine typically would see about 260 days of combat in one year, Miller said. He was in some combat zones tending to those who had been wounded, but he wasnt hurt himself.
I was blessed, he said. Many times I had just left and a bomb went off or a truck hit an explosive device and it only set off the primer and didnt set off the main charge. Had it actually exploded like it was supposed to, we would have all been dead.
Millers book gives insight into situations not typically covered in war memoirs. He recalls the smells of service members who hadnt had the opportunity to shower or wear clean clothes for weeks. He remembers the screams of those who had to take alcohol ice baths for their malaria. Miller also contracted malaria but said his condition wasnt as bad.
It was difficult, he said, to be a trained medic and not be able to help everybody who was suffering, including the enemy.
When you look into the eyes of these guys, theyre terrified also, he said. Some of them were Catholic, which would really make you think who was right here in the eyes of God. Thats why I wanted to be a corpsman and not a trained killer. I could feel the empathy.
Miller said rehashing the details of service was the opposite of therapeutic, but he felt it had to be done to keep his comrades stories alive.
They shouldnt be forgotten, he said.
brittany.woolsey@latimes.com
Twitter: @BrittanyWoolsey
Got a minute to think (and drink) about the next 10 millennia?
Since the 1970s, San Franciscos Fort Mason, between Fishermans Wharf and the Presidio, has been a haven for arts, education and cultural organizations. And in 2014 the Long Now Foundation opened the Interval, a 49-seat bar/cafe with a steampunk starship vibe.
Amid tall bookshelves; strange metal devices; music and art by Brian Eno; and a chalk-drawing robot named Otto, patrons are encouraged to think about the big picture and Long Now projects such as the 10,000-year clock under construction in West Texas. Sometimes there are speakers.
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Why is this a park tip? Because the Interval and the entire Fort Mason complex are part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Peruse the quirky drink, coffee and tea menu (cocktails mostly $11-$14), where Rube Goldberg Variation #3 (bourbon, mezcal, apricot liqueur) and the Mexican Firing Squad Special (tequila, lime, grenadine, Angostura and orange bitters) are joined by several concoctions for teetotalers.
10 adventures to pursue in San Franciscos Golden Gate National Recreation Area
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area, busiest unit in the National Park Service, includes attractions in San Francisco, Marin County and beyond.
In honor of this years National Park Service centennial, the Travel section is posting 100 park travel ideas and tips based on trips staff travel writer Christopher Reynolds has taken, along with photo-op advice from Times photographer Mark Boster. Well post one per day through Dec. 31.
Follow Reynolds on Twitter: @MrCSReynolds
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The Philippine Supreme Court on Tuesday approved the burial of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos at a heroes graveyard, in a case that has resurrected a traumatic period of the countrys history and could redefine the legacy of a brutal leader.
The decision is a significant win for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who pushed to transfer Marcos remains from his home province of Ilocos Norte, where they lie on display in a glass coffin.
Duterte argued the two-decade ruler deserved burial in the Heroes Cemetery not because he was a hero, but because he was a Filipino soldier.
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Marcos, whose government is believed to have killed thousands, tortured countless more and plundered up to $10 billion from state coffers, was ousted by a People Power uprising in 1986. Hes remained unburied since his death three years later.
The Supreme Court ruled 9-5 to dismiss petitions that opposed Dutertes attempt to move the remains, ending a debate that has torn the country for nearly three decades. The justices determined the president had acted within his legal rights in making the decision.
Hundreds crowded around the courthouse Tuesday, waving flags and banners as the decision stretched into the afternoon. Some wept when they heard the news; others screamed. Human rights activists who brought the petitions insisted they would ask the court to reconsider.
We are disappointed. We are heartbroken. We are outraged, said a coalition of groups opposed to the burial, in a joint response. The very definition of hero is now in question.
The presidential spokesmans office released a statement shortly after the ruling acknowledging the court as the final arbiter of all legal questions and expressing hope the matter would finally be laid to rest.
But vice president and human rights lawyer Leni Robredo, in her own statement, warned the burial decision would keep the wounds of the past unhealed.
Solicitor General Jose Calida, the governments lawyer in the case, has framed the burial as an opportunity for national healing. He told the Supreme Court that it would allow the country to exorcise the ghost of enmity and bitterness that prevent us from moving forward.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Marcos son and a former senator, echoed that sentiment Tuesday in comments that also praised Duterte and the court for a magnanimous act to uphold the rule of law.
The Marcos family has tried to transfer his remains to the military-owned graveyard since Marcos widow returned with them in 1993. Marcos died while in exile in Hawaii.
But Filipinos who suffered under his rule abhor the thought of Marcos commemorated at the Philippine equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery, which holds people worthy of emulation.
Marcos led a guerrilla unit against occupying Japanese troops, but the National Historical Commission has blasted his war record as one fraught with myths, factual inconsistencies and lies.
Some consider the ruling a sign of public complacency about the Marcos legacy, as generations age and memories fade.
His wife, Imelda Marcos, who famously left behind more than 1,000 pairs of shoes when her husband was ousted, is a congresswoman. His daughter is the governor of his home province and his son nearly won the vice presidency this year.
Were essentially entering a new meta-narrative where Marcos is treated like any other president. Richard Javad Heydarian, assistant professor of political science, De La Salle University
Were essentially entering a new meta-narrative where Marcos is treated like any other president, said Richard Javad Heydarian, assistant professor of political science at Manilas De La Salle University.
This shows the failure of previous of administrations to inculcate a proper understanding of Marcos, and a failure to deliver on promises they have made after Marcos on peace and prosperity, he said. To blame Duterte on this is quite unfair.
Others insist Duterte should take the full blame. They point to his ties with the Marcos family and question whether financial motivations influenced his decision to relocate the remains. Duterte has said he received a campaign contribution from Marcos daughter, although she denies it.
Duterte has shouldered some of the countrys most controversial issues since he took office four months ago. Hes picked a fight with the U.S., reached out to China and launched a bloody drug war. This issue is no exception.
But his deference to the Supreme Court on the matter, analysts contend, is crucial.
This was due process, not railroaded, said Eduardo Araral, vice dean of research and associate professor at the National University of Singapores Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
As a democratic country, the Philippines will have to accept the decision and move on.
Meyers is a special correspondent.
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UPDATES:
2:10 a.m., Nov. 8: This article was updated with reaction on the ruling.
This article was originally published Nov. 7 at 11:10 p.m.
All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.
The investment by a group of Venezuelan businessmen led by Oswaldo Cisneros comes as Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA looks to attract private investment to the country's struggling energy sector
Ebola Virus Mutation: Disease Deadlier Than Ever To Humans
staff@latinoshealth.com By Marnelle Joyce Nov 08, 2016 05:45 AM EST
The people are in a state of being alarmed with the new phase of Ebola virus. The virus is more hostile and threatening to human health. Patiens are vulnerable to death when infected by this virus.
An Ebola strain that caused the last 2013 epidemic in West Africa, undergone mutation. The scientists discovered that the deadliest in the virus' historical event got its transformation in the epidemics' preliminary stages.
To a great degree, it enables to prospect human hosts, the Science Magazine reported Thursday.
The recent virus infection displayed vast casualties. There were more than 11,000 deaths and got infected over 28,000 individuals. The mostly affected people are from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea during the 2013-2016 infection era.
The past outbreak certainly didn't reach over 600 infected individuals. There were two scientific squads who presented papers as an evidence. They introduced that the virus proceeded into a serious mutation which is deadlier than before.
As compared to its usual carrier, which is a type of a fruit bat, the mutated virus is more likely to infect humans. "The virus has never had this many human-to-human transmissions before, and there are a lot of mutations happening," Pardis Sabeti, associate professor at Harvard University and co-author of one of the papers, told Scientific Magazine.
The Sabeti's group led by University of Massachusetts's Dr. Jeremy Luban, created a significant finding in a specimen from March 31, 2014. They examined 1,489 genomes from infected patients in West Africa. For this instance, the group are able to depict the virus' evolution and progression.
The test yielded out GPA82V to be the mutated virus. This was the consequence of the alteration of an amino acid. It was known to be found within the surface protein cells of the virus.
At this point, it enables to infect the considerable hosts. With its sole modification, this indicates, that the virus had already upgraded to be matched with human as its host. The newborn strain is likely to have a greater deadly effect.
There is an identical finding by the second team, which totally autonomous from Sabeti's group. University of Nottingham Professor Jonathan Ball of the U.K. and Pasteur Institute researcher Etienne Simon-Loriere of France led their exclusive examination. They came up with a mutated virus that could be dispersed with in humans intensively.
The scientists sighted the West African Ebola virus outbreak started in late 2013. It originated when a contaminated fruit bat hit a young boy in Guinea.
Furthermore, poverty, over population, and insufficient access to medical facilities were also added in the range of infection outbreaks.
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Cardenas Market in east Las Vegas is like other Hispanic supermarkets throughout the country, if only because it evokes nostalgia Latinos have for their culture.
The bakery is stocked with baguette-like bolillos and the fluorescent cinnamon shells simply known as conchas. Their carniceria showcases tamales and seasoned carne asada ready for grilling. The adjacent warming station offers ready-to-eat slabs of chicharron, the highly-addicting, deep-fried pork rinds dense enough to chip a tooth.
Hovering above, pinatas loosely based on popular cartoon characters dangle from the ceiling. Even the neighborhood grocer's decor - murals of pueblos painted aside traditional balconies - carries a sort of patriotism American stores don't display.
It is a reminder of what life is like south of the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a place undocumented immigrants and naturalized citizens can express nationalism - and jingoism, to an extent - for their native country without compromising American values.
Year after year, Latinos are seen as the presidential election season's wild card. An estimated 27 million eligible to vote this year, yet many are lukewarm to the entire voting process, which makes it hard to gauge how Latinos will cast ballots and which way they lean.
This week, Cardenas Market came to symbolize the power of the Hispanic vote. Store hours were extended to 10 p.m. on Friday night to accommodate the hundreds of people waiting in line, two hours after polling was scheduled to end.
A crowd of 50 people waiting outside Cardenas Market. Cheering up the last people coming out from voting. Latino vote woke up #earlyvote pic.twitter.com/FuEQvB1rET Jose Macias (Goloso) (@josemacias8) November 5, 2016
This is insane line at Cardenas Market on the last night of Early Voting. #Election2016 #votemosjuntos pic.twitter.com/Z6HNLUcfAC Jose Macias (Goloso) (@josemacias8) November 5, 2016
Early vote has been extended at Cardenas Market (Bonanza and Lamb) until 10pm and @CatherineForNV is on her way! Come join us! pic.twitter.com/fhm2S8JXdz Mairead Lynn (@maireadlynn) November 5, 2016
If you're still in line at #CardenasMarket, #StayInLine! A few hours are a small sacrifice for the next four years! #ImWithHer https://t.co/ycBRphEqNc tiff's tweets (@tiffanyclay) November 5, 2016
Twitter users documented how lines snaked through the store and out the front door. Some used the #ImWithHer hashtag in support of Hillary Clinton while others highlighted Democratic candidates in local senate and assembly member races.
None openly supported Donald Trump.
A Late Push Into Clinton Territory
In less than a week, Trump's improbable presidential run will end, one way or another.
The real estate magnate spent last weekend hitting predominately blue states. FBI Director James Comey's flummoxing decision to investigate emails belonging to a Clinton aide not only broke with the agency's unwritten tradition of abstaining from commenting on cases before an election, it gave Trump an opening with wary independents and liberals.
Trump stumped in New Mexico and Nevada last Sunday. He campaigned in Michigan on Monday. After attending a Tuesday morning rally in Valley Forge, Penn. alongside running mate Mike Pence, Trump traveled to Eau Claire, Wisc. where he reached out to early-ballot voters that may suffer from buyer's remorse.
"A lot of stuff has come out since your vote," Trump said. "If you live here, or Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Minnesota, you change your vote to Donald Trump." Each state visited over the last three days voted Democrat in 2008 and 2012.
Faced with a narrow path to 270 electoral votes, Trump is capitalizing on the Clinton-made silver lining by splurging $25 million on television ads in battleground and swing states. Some will air in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico; states with ardent Latino voters. The southwest territories housed three million Latinos in 2014, when the median age for U.S.-born Hispanics was 22 years old.
A record 11.2 million Latinos voted in 2012, but the country has seen the number of eligible voters since, to the point that 12 percent of all eligible voters this election cycle come from a Hispanic background.
Trump's next ad targeting this, the country's fastest-growing minority population, will be the first. The Republican National Committee recently released a Spanish-language television ad on Wednesday, only it omits mentioning a specific candidate, including the GOP presidential nominee.
Trump's Latino Supporters Reach Out
On Oct. 19, Trump made his final televised appeal to voters at Las Vegas' Thomas and Mack Center, just a short Uber ride from Cardenas.
The third presidential debate briefly touched on immigration, which Fox News moderator Chris Wallace noted separates Clinton and Trump more than anything.
Trump proposed fortifying the U.S.-Mexico border wall to keep drug lords out. Clinton didn't offered a concrete strategy other than to say her immigration reform plan "of course includes border security."
The Republican candidate said he will increase the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials along the border, though he previously said ICE officials would be part of a deportation task force. The Democratic candidate is adamant about keeping families together and characterized Trump's method as "not keeping with who we are as a nation."
To an undefined portion of Latino voters, this falls in line with personal values. Not every Latino supports amnesty and open borders, just like women are free to hold pro-life beliefs.
This is the subset Trump hopes to reach in the last days of his campaign.
"One of the reasons you really want to start with border security is because you have to stop the flow of illegal immigration for multiple reasons," Helen Aguirre Ferre, Director of Hispanic Communication for the Republican National Committee, told Latin Post shortly after the debate. "He believes we need to make legal immigration easier and illegal immigration harder."
Ferre said Clinton has taken Latinos for granted and attributed this to Clinton's slide in national polls over the last month. She, like many voters, rebuke the former New York senator's scandals, and her perceived ties to Wall Street.
"Democrats think that Latinos are going to vote for them because they're Democrats and they do certain types of outreach. But the fact of the matter is that when you look at the policies, it really hasn't been a great benefit to the Latino community," Ferre said.
An NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll taken before the debate and after Trump defended his remarks about Miss Universe Alicia Machado - reportedly calling her "Miss Housekeeping" and "Miss Piggy" - found Clinton with a 50-point lead over Trump among Latino voters, 67-17. On Thursday, political research firm Latino Decisions released their projection for the Latino electorate: 79 percent for Clinton, 18 percent for Trump.
While not for everyone, National Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump member Rick Figueroa said Trump's "very unorthodox" and "not politically correct" demeanor will galvanize disenfranchised Latinos on Election Day.
"You look not at one issue, but an aggregate of issues to look at as a whole," Figueroa said. "I think they're scared. I think they're concerned. But I think they've been scared and concerned because the issue has been a hotbed and it just, basically, every four years they think '(Democrats) are going to come looking for our vote again."
"Mr. Trump in his own way, in his very unique way, brought that point to fruition," Figueroa added.
A Historic Turnout Expected
Over 30 million votes have already been cast across 38 early-voting states. Three of them - Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina - reported large numbers of Latinos returning early ballots.
CNN found the Hispanic turnout in the Sunshine State is already up 129 percent from 2008, when President Obama won 57 percent of support. It's up 144 percent from 2012 in Georgia, and 75 percent from the same period in North Carolina.
Friday at 9 p.m. was the last chance Nevadans could do as much before Tuesday's election. The local ABC affiliate reports more than 57,000 voted in Clark County alone, breaking the state's single-day record. Over 400,000 voted before the deadline.
If the tally comes down to a few percentage points, it's possible the deciding votes were cast at Cardenas Market, the Hispanic grocery store chain that brought thousands of American Latinos together.
Novinsky returns to Ukraine, will ask party faction to support PGO request to lift immunity from prosecution
Opposition bloc faction MP Vadym Novinsky says he will be in parliament when the draft law to holding him criminally accountable is floored in the session chamber. In addition, he says he will ask colleagues from the Opposition bloc to support him.
"On the day the bill is floored in the Verkhovna Rada I will be in the session hall. I can assure you of this. As I promised, I have returned. I have returned," Novinsky told journalists in the airport upon his arrival to Kyiv on Tuesday.
"I will appeal to members of my faction to support the measure. I seek truth and justice in this fabricated case against me," he said.
The deputy said that he has not formally been served with the representation of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) Head Yuriy Lutskenko to hold him criminally accountable.
"Rada leaders, turned to the parliament's rules committee when they received the PGO representation, but should have notified me officially, not via Facebook," he said.
As earlier reported, on November 3 PGO Head Yuriy Lutsenko posted on his Facebook page a photocopy of the PGO's representation to the Rada to hold Novinsky criminally liable.
According to the document, Novinsky is suspected of exceeding his official authority by unlawfully curtailing the freedom of Oleksandr (Drabynko) the assistant of the deceased former representative of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) Volodymyr (Sabodan), a violation of Part 2 of Article 146 and Part 1 of Article 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Novinsky says the case against him is politically motivated and that he does not fear the removal of his immunity from prosecution. He has also declared that he has no intention to flee the country, despite making a planned trip to Athos [a mountain and peninsula in northeastern Greece] on November 4.
The Ukrainian side insists on a ceasefire and security for civilians who cross checkpoints along the contact line, First Deputy Speaker, Ukraine's envoy to the humanitarian subgroup at Trilateral Contact Group talks in Minsk Iryna Gerashchenko has said.
"On Tuesday, November 8, only one humanitarian subgroup worked in Minsk. The issue of checkpoints was on the agenda. Ukraine insists on the unconditional observance of the ceasefire regime and creation of a safe environment for civilians who daily cross the checkpoint the contact line to receive pensions in Ukrainian-controlled territory," she said on her Facebook page on Tuesday after a meeting of the humanitarian subgroup.
She said that she supported the OSCE's proposal that a special mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) should be deployed near the checkpoint of Stanytsia Luhanska, which, in her opinion, will help maintain security near this checkpoint.
"The Ukrainian side in general backs the idea of placing standing posts of the ICRC and the OSCE near all the checkpoints. They should work there around the clock rather than visit for 15 minutes a day," Gerashchenko said.
She also said that the Ukrainian side supports the ICRC's participation in rebuilding a bridge over the Siversky Donets near Stanytsia Luhanska.
Representatives of separate areas of Luhansk region use a far-fetched pretext not to let the Zolote checkpoint in Luhansk region re-open, First Deputy Speaker, Ukraine's envoy to the humanitarian subgroup at Trilateral Contact Group talks in Minsk Iryna Gerashchenko has said.
"I have put point-blank the question of the opening of the checkpoint in Zolote whose work has been blocked since March 31 this year. Those in the separate areas use far-fetched reasons not to allow the re-launch of this checkpoint until now, rescheduling its opening for an indefinite date again and again. I have turned to the OSCE for facilitation of the re-opening of the checkpoint as soon as possible to share the workload of other checkpoints," she said on her Facebook page on Tuesday after a meeting of the humanitarian subgroup.
Gerashchenko said that the solution of problems related to the checkpoints would ease the life of people who have to cross the demarcation line in Donbas.
Special Representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup Viktor Medvedchuk and SBU officers who are engaged in the exchange of hostages will join the group on Wednesday, November 9, she said.
"On November 9, we will hear a report by OSCE coordinator Toni Frisch on his visit to the occupied territories and prisons where the hostages are kept. We will make every effort to release our guys," Gerashchenko said.
In addition, she said, the Russian side has been disregarding the Ukrainian side's requests at all levels for two years, giving no official information about how many Ukrainian citizens from Donbas live in the Russian Federation and their official status there.
On Thursday, November 10, at 12.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference 'Impact of Petroleum Products Taxation Reform on Price and Quality of Petroleum Products'. The participants will include Vice President of PJSC Galnaftogaz Concern Vasyl Danyliak, Director General of WOG network Serhiy Koretsky, co-owner of KLO network Viacheslav Steshenko, Deputy Director General of the AMIC Ukraine network Kasts Razgaitis, and a representative of SOCAR network (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation.
Success of medical institution is determined, first of all, by experience of the head. It was confirmed once again by organizers and participantsof the International Forum Healthcare Management that was held on October 18-20, 2016 in the Exhibition CenterKyivExpoPlaza. The event was attended by representatives of government, heads of public and private medical institutions, chief physicians and their assistants, owners and representatives of business, and also the international experts. The Forum was opened by scientific-practical conference with international participation Organization and Management of Healthcare. The first welcomed the delegates and read greetings from President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, Head of Department of Health and Social Policy of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Igor LURIN. According to the words of the President, during reformation process it is important to use international experience and to save the best domestic achievements, to combine purposeful work on fundamental scientific problems with applied aspects of researches, practical needs of the present. In his turn, the President of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine Vitalii TSYMBALYUK urged the medical community to consensus on how to implement healthcare reform and to prescribea real recipe by choosing one effective healthcare system following the example of European countries. Rector of the Shupyk National Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education Yurii VORONENKO in his speech drew attention to the fact that in many developed countries changes in the healthcare system depend on the medical community. In his opinion, the Forum of outstanding practitioners, economists, lawyers, specialists in consulting and insurance companies, with IT experts will help take a step forward in this direction. Summing up his speech, the famous scientist aptly remarked: When a politician, doctor and patient have a common understanding of where to go further - then we will have results!. Head of Department of Public Health of the National Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine Vasyl KNYAZEVICH emphasized: It is important today to lay the foundations of a new healthcare system of the future. According to the Chairman of the Public Council at the Ministry of Health of Ukraine Maksim IONOV, the reform process is possible only if it will involve all parties: the state, the medical community and patients. Conference delegates also discussed such important issues: improving the practice of providing medical care, hospitalsautonomization, introduction of new economic mechanisms of management, financing, future transition to insurance medicine, quality management in health care, personnel etc. During the international section of the conference Medicine and state regulation - international experience experts familiarized with examples of foreign healthcare systems, training programs and further education abroad. In the framework of the Forum also was held an open meeting of the Public Council under the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. On the second day of the discussion panel worked: III seminar State medicine: realities of practice in 2016, round tables Leadership training in the healthcare system at the stage of reform and Medical cooperation platform (Medical Cross-Enterprise Collaborative platform) as a part of healthcare reform. Private medicinesection was dedicated to development and protection of medical business and united business owners and top management of private medical institutions. With great success took a place the VII Conference Private medicine: realities of practice, participants of which had the opportunity to share experience, discuss the latest legislative initiatives to adopt productive ideas to promote medical services. Within the section Effective cooperation of private medical institutions and insurance companiesleading insurance companies, experts told how to establish partnership between them and medical institutions, acquainted with trends and prospects of development of health insurance. On seminar Requirements and compliance with license conditions of medical practice experts discussed the relevant regulations, got leading lawyers advice. One of the highlights of the Forum was scientific conference IT MED: IT-solutions for healthcare, existing products and needs of medical business. The event was dedicated to innovations and modern technologies in the IT field that are designed to optimize the performance of medical institutions and create a major competitive advantage in strive for patients. The intensive program of the Forum also included section Organization of laboratory service. The key event was scientific conference State standard EN ISO 15189: 2015 - a road map of quality laboratory research organized by Association of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. In addition, for the first time National Accreditation Agency of Ukraine held seminar Accreditation of medical laboratories in accordance with requirements of ISO EN ISO 15189: 2015. There were held such important events as General Meeting of the Association of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Congress of Ukrainian Society of Clinical Laboratory Medicine, a joint meeting of experts of NAMS of Ukraine on laboratory diagnostics of scientific secretaries and heads of research and diagnostic laboratories of NAMS of Ukraine. The program is also included 16 master classes of Ukrainian laboratory school, scientific-practical events organized by companies-participantsHema, Vector-Best Ukraine, Ukrbio, BCM Ukraine and others. Within the Organization of radiology servicesection was held a meeting of regional non-staff specialists of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine on specialties Roentgenology and Ultrasound Diagnostics. Professionals who plan to start a private practice, proved useful seminar Legal aspects of opening and activity of medical rooms with ultrasound and functional diagnostic equipment. In addition, there were held master classes of Ukrainian school of ultrasound and functional diagnostics. For owners and managers of pharmacies and pharmacy chains was held seminar Organization and Management in Pharmacy, dedicated to trends and prospects of pharmaceutical market, management and personnel policy. Full Hall of specialists brought together Chief nurse school. More than 300 chief nurses listened to reports of experts on current topics regarding disinfection, sterilization, infusion, medical waste disposal, safe working conditions etc. Within the exposition of the Forum experts familiarized with medical equipment, diagnostic, rehabilitation and physical therapy equipment, medical furniture, tools, supplies, clothing, pharmaceutical products, established business contacts with leading companies of the market. Among the companies - participants of the Forum:UMT+, ZDRAVO, Viola Medtechnika, MEDIGRAN, TehMedKontrakt, VKF-Medtehnika, Protech Solutions Ukraine, UTB Resource, Vector-Best Ukraine, NVL Granum, Intermedica, LABVITA, Labix, CHEMLABORRECTIV, Ukrbio, UKR DIAGNOSTIKA, Miele, DiaSys Diagnostic Systems, Biomed, BIO-RAD Laboratories, Sanimed International Impex S.R.L., NVF Simesta VAAL, Roche Ukraine, ALT Ukraine, Sente-Lab, Terra-Med, Service Lab, Reagent, Ramintek, PROMO-MED, Polix Group, MK Kvertimed-Ukraine, Medcoswiss, MedBioAliance, ERBA LAHEMA, Envircoorporation, EximCargoTrade, NVK DIAPROPH-MED, DIAMEB, Grupotest, Hemoplast, Best Diagnostik, Bio Test Med, Intersystem, IKF Service Plus, BCM Ukraine, VOLES, HLA Hospital Group, Biolane-Ukraine, Medical laboratory MedLab, NVE Standard, Snibe, Organization of medical business, VEGA-MEDICA, DNIPRO-MTO, YUVIS, TESPRO, Medstar Solutions, Selenium, AMPRI Ukraine, MedTechSnab, Katronic, LORAN, UkrBioMed, Profimed-Service, Konsafeti, Skyline Software (1c Entreprise), Bishofit Mg++ and many others. Organizers of the Forum: National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine, P.L. Shupyk National Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, All-Ukrainian Association of Chief Physicians, LMT Company. The event was held with support of the President of Ukraine, the VerkhovnaRada Committee of Ukraine on Healthcare, Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Kyiv City State Administration. Co-organizers and partners: Department of Public Administration of Healthcare of the National Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine, Ukrainian Institute of Strategic Studies of Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Ukrainian Centre for Scientific medical information and patent licensing work of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, the Practice of medical establishment management, magazine, Ukrainian association of medical care quality, State Medical Certification Center of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Association of Radiologists of Ukraine, Ukrainian Association of Specialists in Ultrasound Diagnostics, International Association of Physicians in Medical Tourism, , LC MedAdvokat, MEDCONSULTING, Ingo Medical Center, Pharma Personnel, MedMarketing, Chief nurse magazine, "Doctor GEO & Doctor SPA" magazine and many others. General Information Partner: Interfax-Ukraine IA. Facts and figures: 45 conferences, seminars and master classes; 170 speakers; 4028 specialists-visitors; 125 companies participated in the Exhibition; 2,523 m of exhibition space. We invite you to participate in the next International Forum Healthcare Management which will be held on October 17-19, 2017 in the Exhibition CenterKyivExpoPlaza (Kyiv, 2-B, Salyutnastr.) For additional information, please contact: (044) 206-10-15. www.hcm.in.ua
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The mother accused of throwing her baby off an Allentown bridge and into the Lehigh River is going to need more time to prepare for a possible trial.
In December 2015, defense attorneys for Johnesha Perry said they wouldn't be ready for trial for at least one year.
Perry, of the 200 block of North Hall Street in Allentown, is charged with homicide and child endangerment for death of her son, Zymeir Perry.
With a trial date set for next month, the two sides were in court on Monday for a status hearing in the capital case. Perry, who is being held in jail, did not appear in court for the hearing.
Perry's attorneys plan to focus on her mental state at the time of the incident. The defense has received a draft of a report from forensic psychologist Dr. Frank Dattilio, and his final report should be available for prosecutors by next week.
Chief of Prosecutions Matt Falk said he needs to review that report before deciding if prosecutors will need their own mental health expert to evaluate Perry.
A new status date is set for Nov. 21.
City police said Perry was pushing her son in a stroller the afternoon of May 3, 2015, and stopped on the Hamilton Street bridge.
Witnesses told police Perry put the boy on the railing, gave him a kiss and pushed him over the edge into the Lehigh River, before jumping in herself.
The boy was taken out of the river by officers, and both mother and son were taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in Salisbury Township for treatment.
Zymeir Perry died later that week from complications from blunt force trauma and drowning, according to the Lehigh County coroner.
Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against Perry, if she is convicted of first-degree murder.
Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A man accused of shooting a woman in the leg, following a fight over child custody, reached a plea deal with prosecutors on Friday.
Enrique Salvador pleaded no contest to reckless endangerment in the May shooting of Karina Roldan, and pleaded guilty to simple assault for hitting Roldan's younger sibling during the fracas in Allentown.
The 20-year-old Salvador was sentenced to 10 to 23 months in Lehigh County Jail, followed by 18 months of probation.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Diane Marakovits said no one else was charged in connection with the case.
A witness previously testified that Salvador visited his one-year-old child on May 17. The child's mother was in the hospital at the time, and the child was with her family.
Salvador only wanted to have the child for an hour, but child's grandfather wanted Salvador to take the child for the night.
The two men argued in an alley in the 200 block of North Cable Street, then started fighting, according to the witness, a teen girl. People were yelling, and at one point the girl's father had Salvador on the ground and was hitting him, the girl previously testified.
During the scuffle, police said Salvador punched a juvenile boy in the face, while swinging at the grandfather.
The fighting stopped, but Salvador and the girl's father were still arguing, she said. When Salvador got to the car, an unidentified man who came with him handed Salvador a gun, according to the girl.
Salvador got into the front passenger seat, hung halfway out the window and opened fire, the witness said.
Roldan was taken to the hospital and released after one day. She still has the bullet in her leg, and is awaiting a doctor's determination if it can be removed.
Brixius said police have the video from Roland's phone, as well as video of Salvador fleeing in the car from Lehigh Valley Hospital at 17th and Chew streets.
Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
ncc.jpeg
A former Northampton County College student is accused of selling marijuana on campus. (File photo | For lehighvalleylive)
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A Northampton Community College student arrested for selling marijuana on campus told officers he sold drugs to help offset tuition expenses, police said.
Charged is Zachary Claudio Santiago, 20, of the 400 block of West Wellens Avenue in Philadelphia.
Bethlehem Township officers were dispatched to the college at 4:27 p.m Friday after college staff searched Santiago's room and seized 45 grams of marijuana, according to police. Also allegedly found were plastic bags, vacuum-sealed bags, $700 in cash and a digital scale.
Staff seized the marijuana on the side of the room belonging to Santiago, according to police. Santiago then allegedly admitted to police he was selling marijuana on campus to offset college tuition expenses.
The college has since banned him from the property.
Santiago is charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia He was arraigned before District Judge Jacqueline Taschner, who set bail at 10 percent of $10,000.
In lieu of bail, Santiago was taken to Northampton County Prison. The judge ordered Santiago stay away from Northampton Community College or any property owned by the college.
Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Recognizing today's technology driven world, the Bethlehem Area School District is adding computer sciences as a high school graduation requirement.
If Bethlehem wants to graduate career and college ready students, computer science courses are a necessity, the district says. (AP file photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)
The administration proposes adding a half-credit computer sciences course as a grad requirement for all high school students starting with the incoming freshman class of 2021.
And the district is also working with Northampton Community College to create a high school math course aimed at ensuring district graduates don't need college remedial math courses.
The school board will vote on the new plan as part of the district's 2016-17 high school program of studies later this month.
"Our goals are career and college readiness for all students," said Jack Silva, district assistant superintendent.
The district has already developed a robust kindergarten through eighth-grade technology program and this builds upon that, Silva said. The course won't focus on spreadsheet and computer usage basics; kids have mastered that, he said.
It's about cultivating computer science skills, like problem-solving, creative thinking and the basics of computer tech.
"The requirement is a pretty big step," Silva said.
The district also plans to add the College Board's new Advanced Placement computer sciences principles class aimed at ninth- and tenth-grade students.
Silva is most excited about the Northampton Community College course since 30 percent of district graduates enroll there.
"We have to do better to smooth that transition at the community college," he said.
About 80 percent of NCC students that take the placement tests end up in remedial math courses that don't earn them college credits, said Maureen Leeson, Freedom High School dean of students.
"That is a lot, a lot of kids," she said.
The district is working with NCC to create a college mathematics course taken in high school, so students can start earning college credits when they start at NCC.
"We want to build the course together," Leeson said.
The course is being developed in concert with NCC staff, who will help co-teach and advise the course, Silva said.
Bethlehem also plans continuing the curriculum roll out of the Project Lead the Way engineering and biomedical programs.
Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A wanted Bethlehem man fled from city police Monday morning, leading to a high-speed chase through a neighborhood that ended with him crashing into the Hill-to-Hill Bridge, police said.
With his vehicle disabled, Gregory Lowman is accused of bolting from police. The chase was recorded by a witness and then posted to Facebook.
Posted by Jacob Weierbach on Monday, November 7, 2016
Bethlehem police said at about 10:10 a.m. Monday, an officer caught the Hyundai Elantra driven by Lowman traveling about 87 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 378.
An officer following Lowman on Route 378 put on his lights and sirens, and Lowman allegedly responded by speeding up and driving on the shoulder of the Eighth Avenue exit. Police learned Lowman had an active warrant from Northampton County.
Police said Lowman ran though a red traffic light at the end of the Eighth Avenue ramp, beginning a chase in the West Bethlehem neighborhood.
The 26-year-old Lowman ran through stops signs as he traveled on Goepp Street, West Union Boulevard, Seventh Avenue and then Broad Street, police said.
As Lowman was driving on Eighth Avenue, he sped up to 50 mph, and then ran three additional stop signs in the residential neighborhood, police said.
Police lost sight of the Elantra for a bit, then found Lowman again driving near Hanover and Spring streets, police said. Additional cars joined the chase, and Lowman lost control when he began braking near Spring and Conestoga streets, under the Hill-to-Hill Bridge, police said.
When Lowman's car came to a stop, an officer was opening his driver's side door when Lowman backed up and struck the cruiser, police said.
Lowman then kept driving, according to police. An officer was driving alongside Lowman's car on Conestoga Street, when police said Lowman turned into the cruiser, ramming it.
Lowman lost control of his car again, according to police, and drove up on the sidewalk and grass before crashing into an abutment for the Hill-to-Hill Bridge.
Lowman got out and ran, but was eventually caught by police near Fritch Fuel, police Detective Lt. Michelle Kott said.
He is facing 10 charges: reckless endangerment, fleeing police, accidents involving damage, disorderly conduct, and six summary traffic violations. Lowman was sent to Lehigh County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.
Court records show Lowman had bench warrants issued in January for a parole violations in a 2013 Bethlehem DUI case and a 2015 Freemansburg DUI case.
Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
One of the directions of work of the system of English and German schools " Greenwich " includes the tuition of the staff.Greenwich has been dealing with corporative education since 2005. During that period of time the school has had operation experience with more than 50 companies of various business areas, such as finances, media, building and construction, medicine, IT technologies, consulting, logistics, advertising etc. About 70% of companies have extended their contracts, and many of them are permanent partners of the school Greenwich. The school offers a convenient system of cooperation , which includes the meeting with a manager of corporate area and a methodologist of school, testing of the personnel and the first lesson for free. There is an opportunity to have an individual program according to the needs of the company regarding purposes and the domain of the company. The classes can be conducted in the customers office under the individual schedule. The school methodologists monitor the educational process and report about the advancement to responsible persons. The school Greenwich gives educational services, providing tuition of the English and German languages both individually and in groups, either with Ukrainian teachers or with native speakers. The school offers a flexible system of discounts for corporate clients. There can be discounts for daily classes or in the presence of three or more groups.
Southern Lehigh High School students have been subjected to classmates yelling gay slurs and the n-word in the halls, calling black students cotton pickers and using heil Hitler salutes.
Southern Lehigh High School in Upper Saucon Township is seen March 23, 2016. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)
That's according to students and a letter high school Principal Christine Siegfried sent home to families following a special assembly on Wednesday, where the principal urged the study body to treat classmates with respect.
District Superintendent Kathleen Evison emphasized Friday that only a small number of students used the "extremely inappropriate language" and they have been disciplined.
"Our student body is an extremely supportive and collaborative student body," Evison said. "This is very unusual for us to hear this kind of language and, obviously, very disturbing."
High school junior Jamie Kish said he hasn't been a target of any of the name calling or harassment, but there's been a sharp uptick in such behavior this school year.
"It is noticeable and I do think it is a problem," Kish said. "I do think it is good the administration is trying to do something about it."
Siegfried came on the morning announcements recently to speak to students about reports of racial slurs, Kish said. The principal urged students to reach out if they needed someone to talk to or help understanding other cultures.
Kish took Wednesday's assembly as a sign that things had worsened and Siegfried felt she had to take a harder line with students.
"One incident is one too many," Evison said Friday. "To make sure we got ahead of this, the high school principal pulled students together and held an assembly to talk about respect, how everyone is different and this behavior will not be tolerated."
The message was well received by the student body, Evison and Kish said.
Lehighvalleylive.com asked Siegried on Thursday to provide a copy of the letter she sent home. The request was forwarded to Evison, who promised to provide it later Friday evening. By Monday afternoon, Evison still had not produced the letter.
The message sent home to families outlines the racially charged incidents and asks parents for their support modeling that this behavior is unacceptable, Evison said Friday, declining to get into the details of the actual incidents.
They include swastikas being carved into bathroom stalls, written on homework, laptops and screensavers, according to Kish and a copy of the letter obtained by The Morning Call and posted on the newspaper's website.
Students have been yelling the n-word in hallways at lunch and in gym. Black students have also been called cotton picker and lesbians referenced as "dykes."
"Black students seem to be one of the largest targets," Kish said."Some students think it is funny to yell slurs. It baffles me how people think this is OK."
The superintendent said she is not sure why students seem to think this behavior is suddenly acceptable. There's been no major changes at the school and this has not been an issue in the past, Evison.
"We are not a community that tolerates that kind of language and behavior," she said. "It is extremely disturbing and it needs to cease immediately."
Kish says it is hard to pinpoint why name calling and casual racism is suddenly acceptable behavior for some of his classmates. But he has to wonder the role the contentious and divisive 2016 presidential election is playing.
"I think that might be one of the reasons why students are being so loud and open with their opinions," Kish said, adding it's clearly not the sole cause.
He notes that Southern Lehigh is a middle class and largely white community -- 87 percent white, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
"If you are a middle class, white teenager and you are growing up almost entirely around white, middle class teenagers, you won't get to experience how other people live," Kish said.
Siegfried's letter and speech during the assembly also touches on that idea. She reminded students they don't always know what a classmate is dealing with privately, some may not have enough to eat or a place to live or are dealing with struggles with friends.
"They need to be mindful of their words and their behaviors," Siegfried wrote. "Over the next several months we will be doing some school wide activities to continue to try and address some of these behaviors with our student body."
The district already builds awareness of diversity and cultural difference into its high school program, Evison said.
"We have many clubs that focus on that and this is an ongoing process," she said. "There are plans to have some more assemblies, guest speakers and continue to raise awareness."
Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Pat Toomey
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. (AP file photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)
(AP file photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)
It's a familiar scene on Election Day, and one that almost always seems to occur in daylight.
Well-dressed candidates for office, often joined by their family, stroll into their local polling places and cast a ballot. They wave to fellow voters, shake some hands and smile at the cameras before heading back out to the campaign trail for the final stretch.
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, the Lehigh Valley Republican in a tough race to retain his seat, is taking a different approach this year -- and his opponent is pouncing on him for it.
Toomey's campaign on Tuesday morning announced that the senator from Zionsville will not cast his own vote until 6:45 p.m., 75 minutes before the polls close in Pennsylvania.
He has a busy day ahead of him, to be sure, and anyone willing to give him the benefit of the doubt will chalk up the timing of his voting plans to a demanding schedule.
His Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty, however, isn't giving him the benefit of the doubt. Her campaign said it's simply an effort by Toomey to delay publicly disclosing who he's voting for in the presidential race.
The senator to date has been critical at times of Republican nominee Donald Trump, but has danced around whether he'll ultimately vote for his party's nominee. It's a delicate issue politically for Toomey given Pennsylvania's electorate.
Endorse Trump and risk scaring away moderate Republicans who generally support Toomey's positions. Refuse to support Trump and risk angering a large swath of the GOP's loyal base.
McGinty's campaign said in a statement that it speaks to Toomey's character that he has not taken a position.
"Let's be clear here: Pat Toomey is intentionally waiting until millions of his constituents have already voted today before making clear to them who he supports to be our next commander in chief," the statement says. "That is spineless and the exact opposite of leadership."
It later continued:"It is fitting now that Pat Toomey - who somehow brags about his 'backbone' and 'courage' in television ads - is reaffirming again to his constituents on Election Day that he is nothing more than a spineless, self-interested politician."
Efforts to reach Toomey's campaign for an explanation as to why he's voting at 6:45 p.m. were unsuccessful. The campaign didn't immediately respond to an inquiry from lehighvalleylive.com.
McGinty cast her vote at 9:30 a.m. at her local precinct in Wayne, Pa.
Polls close at 8 p.m. in Pennsylvania.
Nick Falsone may be reached at nfalsone@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickfalsone. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Haven't voted yet? Be prepared to wait.
Wait times at some polling places in the Lehigh Valley were longer than an hour, with the lines expected to grow as the day wears on and the after-work crowd hits the polls.
The critical time is 8 p.m. Tuesday.
County election workers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey say you'll be able to vote after 8 p.m. so long as you're in line by that time.
All across the region on Tuesday morning, the lines were the story of the day so far as voting got underway in the long-awaited battle for president between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
You can vote "as long as you're in line by 8 o'clock," said Northampton County Registrar Dee Rumsey. "We'll keep it going until they get to vote."
A clerk in the Lehigh County election office said an election official will go to the end of the line at 8 p.m. and everyone in front of that person will vote. It's possible that remaining voters will be brought into the polls and the doors locked behind, depending on the length of the line.
In New Jersey, when asked if there were any problems so far Tuesday, Warren County Election Administrator William Duffy said with a laugh: "Lines. ... We've got lines."
Duffy said he's regularly surprised by turnout in presidential election years, yet folks stay home when it comes to races where they actually can pick up the phone or speak to local candidates face to face.
"I wish we had this every election," he said of Tuesday's voting surge.
Snapshots at the polls
In Bethlehem, friends Samantha Fryzol and Angela DelGrosso, both 23, weren't taking any chances this Election Day.
They headed to the polls for the first time in their lives, they said, casting ballots for Hillary Clinton just before 9 a.m. in Bethlehem City Hall's rotunda. By then, voter turnout was already brisk with lines greeting early-morning voters. Polls opened at 7 a.m. in Pennsylvania.
A voter at East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem reported estimated waits of 70 minutes, with the usually empty voter parking overflowing.
At New Creation UCC Church in Palmer Township, folks waited about an hour in a line that wrapped around the building all morning. Polling place workers said voters had formed a line by the time they arrived at 6 a.m.
In Bethlehem, after snapping photos to commemorate the moment in Payrow Plaza, DelGrosso and Fryzol chatted about how this election season has challenged basic ideas instilled in them since they were girls.
The idea of this as a historic election, with a woman on the presidential ballot for the first time, was not lost on them
DelGrosso and Fryzol are of a generation that grew up being told they could be anything they dreamed, so they said it was momentous to be voting for Clinton. But they said it was also unsettling watching Trump denigrate women amid allegations of sexual assault.
"You have to vote for your own rights," DelGrosso said. "It's a very clear choice."
The divisive political slog that's been the 2016 election season has left them nervous and overwhelmed -- a sentiment shared by voters Tuesday regardless of affiliation.
"It felt good to vote and it feels even better for this to be over," said Steven Mankos, 27.
Folks on both sides of the aisle felt the stakes are high.
"I just hope everybody comes out and votes," said Bob Fuller, who supports Trump. "I think it's a pretty crucial election."
His 92-year-old wife summed up her feelings succinctly as she pushed her walker across Payrow Plaza: "I just hope we win," she said.
For registered Republican Samuel Mass, 19, he broke with his party in the first election he's ever voted in. He threw his support behind Clinton because he said he was disturbed by Trump's attitude toward immigrants and Syrian refugees disturbing.
"Trump is either someone you love or hate," Mass said. "I think he's racist."
Clinton supporters Karen and George White were headed to Clinton's local campaign office on Broad Street in Bethlehem. Besides the presidential race, the Whites said they were also interested in the battle for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, hoping for a Democratic victory by Katie McGinty over incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
"We need a Congress that will be able to legislate," White said.
Gene Hunter was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in the spring. But on Tuesday he said Clinton was the best choice for president.
"I've been most nervous about this election because of how hard and fast climate change is coming at us and there's the possibility we might not do enough in time," Hunter said.
Retiree and Clinton supporter Norman Girardot said he thinks America is exhausted from this election campaign season. He said he hopes starting Wednesday the country can find its way back to unity and positivity.
"This is an important historic moment and somehow that element tends to get lost in the dark side of the camp," Girardot said.
Six local luminaries will lace up their dancing shoes in the spring.
The leaders in Lehigh Valley education, broadcasting and utilities will be paired with professional dancers from the Utah Ball Room Dance Company for the 3rd annual "Dancing with the Lehigh Valley Stars."
The competition returns to the State Theatre in Easton on Saturday, April 27, to raise money for the Freddy Awards, a ceremony honoring the region's best high school musical theater.
Here's the 2017 lineup:
Michael Anthony,
Mark Erickson,
Bryon Grigsby,
Lauren Kusik,
Melinda Stumpf,
Stephanie Wells
The locals will rehearse with the experts as the festival approaches, hoping to win the approval of judges and audience alike. Crowd members at the event will get to vote for their favorites dancers to have a say in who wins the Mirror Ball top prize.
Judges will also be Lehigh Valley community members, but their names have not yet been released.
At the previous competition, Ashley Russo, president and executive producer of ASR Media Productions and host of The Peak TV, won with her professional ballroom dance partner, Joe William. In second place was Scott Kalamar, associate professor of culinary arts at Northampton Community College, and his partner, Trina Morago.
Tickets for the show are on sale now for $30 and $15 for students. To get yours, call 1-800-999-STATE or visit statetheatre.org.
Andrew Doerfler may be reached at adoerfler@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @adoerfler or on Facebook.
One Pennsylvania school teacher is getting more than 15 minutes of fame.
Richard Curtis, a Perkasie resident and Souderton Area High School teacher, returned to "Live with Kelly" Monday for his second appearance as a guest co-host with Kelly Ripa.
Curtis first ended up on the show in October after winning a social media contest to co-host. He immediately won over audiences with his enthusiasm and animated exchanges with Ripa, and was invited back for a second round.
Some fans are now rooting for him to fill the seat permanently. He'd be up against celebrities like Jerry O'Connell, who has co-hosted with Ripa more than a dozen times and is rumored to be the front-runner for the gig.
The call to return to "Live with Kelly" came while Curtis was in his classroom. He was so excited, he said on Monday's broadcast, he threw a chair into the air.
"My students were all looking at me like, 'Is he OK?'" he said.
"Live with Kelly" has seen a string of guest co-hosts as the talk show seeks a permanent replacement for Michael Strahan, who left for "Good Morning America" this year.
But his students were less interested in their teacher's star turn than what he got to eat backstage, Curtis said.
His 5-year-old daughter was similarly unfazed.
"I was sitting with my daughter, my mom was sitting right next to me," he told Ripa, "and she turned to my daughter and asked, 'How happy are you that daddy's on TV?'"
Her response?
'Well, it's not like it's Disney channel, gramma.'"
That didn't hamper Curtis' excitement about returning to "Live with Kelly."
"I'm somewhere between fantastic and 'Wake me up, Richard, you're dreaming,'" he said.
Andrew Doerfler may be reached at adoerfler@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @adoerfler or on Facebook.
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An independent school has been ordered to close by the Government for failing to prepare its pupils for life in "modern British society".
The move comes after Darul Uloom School, an all-boys Islamic school in Loughborough Road, Belgrave, Leicester, was slammed by Ofsted for a catalogue of problems.
They included giving pupils weak moral guidance and failing to challenge sexist views.
The school, which charges up to 2,700 annually per place, is believed to be one of several schools across the country that the Department for Education has ordered to close because of fears of extremism or pupil safety.
A spokesperson for the department said: "When we find schools promoting twisted ideologies or discrimination in classrooms, we will take action, including closing the school or working with the police as necessary."
Four of the schools, including Darul Uloom, have lodged an appeal with the courts, meaning they can continue running until a ruling is made.
Ofsted inspectors visited Darul Uloom in May this year and concluded its social, moral, spiritual and cultural education were weak, and that it did not "prepare pupils for life in modern British society".
Inspectors said pupils at the school, which has around 146 male pupils on roll aged from 11 years to 23, "held stereotypical views on the roles of men and women in the workplace", and that those views went unchallenged.
They said that in one year 10 pupil's religious studies book, he had written that "girls" are a reason for poverty in the United Kingdom - a comment which went unchallenged.
Inspectors also said teachers did not ensure pupils were exposed to a range of different views.
They found the school itself was "unsafe, shabby, and dirty", with poor hygiene.
Inspectors also said there were "serious weaknesses in safeguarding procedures", and that the premises were unsafe and in a bad state of repair. Examples given included electrical wiring for a shower not being cased in, a filthy kitchen area with food debris on the floor and in an open drain, dirty and peeling paintwork, missing door handles and portable heaters covered in clothes.
Conclusions following the May visit supported findings made by inspectors on their previous visit, in December 2015, when they found the school was inadequate in all areas.
The Leicester Mercury contacted Darul Uloom by phone and email and asked to speak to head teacher Haroon Makda, but was told he was unavailable.
Under the tougher Independent Schools Standards, all independent schools are required to prepare pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life in British society.
The other schools ordered to shut are in Nottingham, Birmingham and Sheffield.
A Tunisian national told the district court that 1,600 of cannabis found in his house was being held for another person in order to clear a drug debt.
Muhammad Chaari (38) Seabourne View, Charlesland, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, was charged before last weeks court with drug possession, and possession for sale or supply.
Detective Garda Derek Barnett gave evidence that he searched the accuseds house at Corrig Lodge, Portarlington, on March 3 this year, discovering a large quantity of cannabis herb along with deal bags and weighing scales. The total value of drugs was 1,600.
Det Barnett said the accused claimed he was holding the drugs for another person because of a drug debt.
The accused had five previous convictions, all for theft.
Defence, Mr Declan Breen said his client, a Tunisian national living in Ireland 12 years, had two children and was estranged from his wife.
Up to the time of the offence, the accused had a cannabis habit which led to him building up a drug debt, so he agreed to hold the drugs and the paraphernalia for a reduction of the debt.
He was impecunious at the time, said Mr Breen, adding that Chaari is the fulltime carer for his two children.
Mr Breen went on to say that his client had moved out of Portarlington and has now left drugs behind him. He is currently working as a kitchen porter.
Judge Catherine Staines told the accused: Dealing with a drug debt is not an excuse for drug dealing. You choose to buy the cannabis and then you rack up the debt.
The judge convicted and fined the accused 300.
Two men arrested on as part of the investigation into the murder of gang;land figure Gerard Eglington were last night (November 8) released without charge.
The arrests were made on Monday, November 7, as part of a garda investigation into the murder of Eglington (27), in the Kilnacourt Woods Housing Estate on the morning of the September 24, 2012.
The two men, aged 21 and 34, were detained in the Kevin Street area of south inner city Dublin.
Both were being held at Portlaoise Garda Station under the provisions of section 30 Offences Against the State Act 1039.
Eglington, a convicted criminal, lived in the house with his partner and children. From Crumlin, he retained gangland connections in Dublin. It was reported at the time that he was gunned down in front of his children.
Gardai believe he had been the subject of a number of failed murder attempts. Eglington had also been involved in a number of violent incidents in Portarlington.
Their posters are being reduced to pulp by the rain today, but hundreds of Laois ASTI teachers are resolutely picketing outside their schools again, to demand equal pay for their young colleagues.
At St Marys CBS in Portlaoise, teacher Cyril Mulligan said concerns were high for their exam students.
Our major concern is our leaving certs and junior certs and the time they are missing, but we are obviously concerned about our younger teachers, that they get equal pay. Theyre being asked to give the whole time, to do the supervision and substitution, to do the same as all their colleagues but are on a much lesser rate, he said.
Agreeing to strike was the last chance saloon.
Unfortunately whether its the most effective or not, its come to the last chance saloon, weve been trying everything to get our colleagues back up to speed. Most of them are finding it difficult to even get to work in the morning, its so expensive, to find accommodation in the Portlaoise area is expensive, and we feel we have to do something on their behalf. Weve tried everything, we negotiated, we waited, we were all promised this would be sorted out in 2014, unfortunately like the guards, you have to be seen to stand up and shout otherwise youre left at the back of the queue, Mr Mulligan said.
Marching beside them on the Borris road are Scoil Chriost Ri teachers.
Were hopeful that things will come to a conclusion soon, we obviously concerned that it is dragging on. Were equally concerned for the welfare of the students as well, but the teachers that we are concerned about are the ones who were students only a number of years ago, said teacher Freda Morcan, who hopes a compromise is reached before the end of the week, preferably, and we can get back to teaching.
Sandra Campion is vice principal.
We cant lose sight of why were here. Those younger teachers that do start on a lower payscale, its unfair that they carry out the same duties as their colleagues and theyre not paid equally for it, she said.
Almost 4,000 Laois students are shut out by the strikes, taking in Colaiste Iosagain in Portarlington, Knockbeg College, and the Community Schools in Heywood, Mountmellick and Mountrath.
Portlaoise College, St Fergals Rathdowney and Clonaslee College have TUI staff and are unaffected.
Laois county councillors will travel to Dublin this week to fight against any downgrade of Portlaoise hospital but there will be no Minister to meet them as they had hoped.
All 19 councillors are due travel together to Dublin, this Wednesday, November 9, to protest outside the gates the Dail over the removal of A&E, maternity, paediatrics and other services from Portlaoise.
However, there will not get a chance to put a case in person to the man who will make the final call on what happens to Portlaoise.
Minister for Health Simon Harris told Sean Fleming TD in the Dail that he would meet councillors and TDs from Laois but not until after a plan for the hospital is ready.
No decisions have been made in relation to Portlaoise hospital at this stage, but once the work I have outlined is completed I would be happy to meet with the Laois Oireachtas members and members of Laois County Councillors in the context of the consultation process, said Minister Harris in a written reply.
At their October meeting councillors in Laois agreed to travel to Dublin in the hope of making a case to the Minister. Cllr Willie Aird led the calls and he insists that councillors will still travel.
What we decided that the 19 councillors was to show solidarity in support and the only thing left open to us was to show solidarity. If we could have met Simon Harris or the Taoiseach they would have been all pluses. It was not said that if we dont meet them we dont go, said the Fine Gael Portlaoise councillor.
He said the councillors would mount a picket outside Leinster House. He added a meeting could still take place if the picket is seen.
Sean Fleming said any meeting with politicians and meetings with Laois GPs and consultants should take place before any decisions are made.
Any attempt to finalise the process in advance of these meetings would render the process fundamentally flawed and would be clearly open to challenge," he said.
The issue was also raised last week in the Dail last week by Laois Sinn Fein TD Brian Stanley. In reply, Offaly TD and Minister of State Marcella Corcoran Kennedy claimed that the Government was not a bystander in coming up with a plan for Portlaoise.
Deputy Stanley rejected that progress had been made toward coming up with a plan.
We have not moved one jot further forward, said the Laois Sinn Fein TD.
Laois county councillors have backed out of a trip to Dublin to protest at the downgrade of Portlaoise Hospital.
In a last minute behind the scenes move it was decided that the 19 public representatives would not go through with their trip to protest against the downgrade of Portlaoise hospital on Wednesday, November 9.
The Cathaoirleach of Laois County Council Tom Mulhall said a decision was reached with the chairs of the Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and technichal group because Laois TD and Minister Charlie Flanagan was not in the country and that the Minister for Health Simon Harris would not meet them.
"We thought it better to leave it for a few weeks," said Cllr Mulhall. "I don't think we were going to meet anyone. So what would that prove?"
The Fine Gael chairman said councillors were not "protestors" but "elected representatives" though he admitted that he had marched to keep Abbeyleix Community Hospital open in the past.
Cllr Mulhall did not agree that it would be too late to talk to the Minister after the plan is finalised. Minister Harris said clearly last week that he would be happy to meet the county councillors only after the plan is published.
Asked what the people of Laois would think about councillors who had cancelled the protest Cllr Mulhall said local politicians "are not going to let down the people".
He said the hospital would be kept open through negotiation and discussion with Ministers and not protests.
"One hour of walking up and down Dail Eireann is not going to swing it one way or another," he said.
Cllr Willie Aird said he was not happy with the cancellation. He said the trip to Dublin was never based on a meeting with the Minister but was designed as a "show of solidarity with the hospital".
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (L) shakes hands with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev at the 21st China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nov. 7, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)
Twenty-one agreements were signed between China and Russia on Monday to further promote cooperation in various fields, including on high-speed railways, during Premier Li Keqiang's visit to St. Petersburg.
Li and his Russian counterpart, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, witnessed the signing of the agreements which also included civil nuclear power technologies, energy projects and linking China's Belt and Road Initiative with the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union after the 21st China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting in St. Petersburg.
Premier Li arrived in St. Petersburg on Sunday, the fourth stop of an eight-day Eurasian trip that has also taken him to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Latvia. He was accompanied by Medvedev to visit the State Hermitage Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Economic cooperation between Russia and China is meeting expectations with more than $40 billion in trade this year, said Medvedev during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li in St. Petersburg, Russian English-language news channel RT reported.
Medvedev has expressed satisfaction about the current level of business cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, saying that the two countries plan to increase their bilateral trade volume to $200 billion within the next 3 to 7 years, RT reported.
Related:
Commentary: Stable bilateral trade helps China, Russia cushion regional, int'l headwinds
China, Russia vow to safeguard peaceful border
Chinese Premier arrives in St. Petersburg, Russia
Jesse Berney has written a corker of a piece in Rolling Stone magazine about Donald Trump, saying: By virtually any measure, he is unfit to lead a Cub Scout troop, let alone the nation with the worlds most powerful military. Its worth reading the article in full but here is its brilliant conclusion:
now is the moment for every last American to decide what it truly means to be a citizen. You can be reluctant about Hillary Clinton. You dont even have to vote for her (though I did, without doubt or hesitation).
What you cannot do is vote for Donald Trump and pretend that this is just another election, and he is just another candidate. It is your minimum duty as a citizen not to support a racist, sexist, unqualified, dishonest, corrupt manchild who celebrates everything thats ugly about America and not a single thing thats great about it.
No matter how left out or left behind you feel, voting for Trump is nothing short of a moral failure. Its a vicious act against the human beings, mostly women and people of color, who would suffer miserably under his presidency.
Its an act of violence against America itself, whose greatness has always been about progressing from more oppression to less slowly, sometimes haltingly, but forward.
The promise on those red hats is to turn back in the other direction. The greatness they sell is a lie.
Fancy a career change? This might not be for you! Ryanairs eccentric CEO is looking for an assistant in what has been described by the airline itself as the worst job in Ireland.
The airline is known for its low cost, no frills flights and its controversial CEO, Michael OLeary. Not known as a shrinking violet or one to hold his tongue, hes now looking for an assistant to carry out tasks including treasury & portfolio management, investment analysis and general drudgery.
The successful candidate will assist the misunderstood but beloved CEO and essential skills include: thick skin, Saint-like patience, ability to operate without sleep or contact with the outside world and (ego) massage qualifications. They should also possess their own collection of nursery rhymes/bedtime stories.
Thinking of applying for the role? Make sure you dont fall into any of the following categories before you do: Dubs fans, Man U supporters and cyclists. Why? Such applicants will not only be automatically excluded from the process, but will be tracked down, tortured and shot.
Ending on a positive note with the promise of opportunity to grow within the Ryanair team (if you last more than a week), the job based in Dublin is not for the faint hearted. Still interested? Check out the full job description here.
RESIDENTS suspect the burning down of a landmark property in Limerick city was caused by youths who regularly held 'anti social parties' in the vacant premises.
Kilmoyle Lodge on the North Circular Road was badly damaged by a fire last Thursday.
And metropolitan district mayor Michael Hourigan said: We are aware locally that there are some young people going in there a lot for recreational purposes.
"Many parishioners who would walk to church around there told me this too. We suspect it was youngsters going in and out of there. But we have no evidence of that.
Residents are saddened, he added, saying: Kilmoyle was an iconic building. The place benefited the whole community.
Gardai are continuing to investigate the exact cause of the fire.
The former Bishops Palace at the North Circular Road was badly damaged in the incident, which occurred on Thursday night last.
Four units of Limerick Fire and Rescue service attended the scene of the fire, the former residence of Bishop Donal Murray at the North Circular Road.
They remained on the scene for over four hours battling the blaze at the eight-bedroom, three-storey property.
As recently as 2014, the landmark property was bought by businessman Gerry McManus, a brother of philanthropist JP McManus for a cut price fee in the region of 1.1m.
He visited the scene of the fire on Friday morning, a landmark building which has not been occupied for years,
The property was for a time one of the most expensive in the country, with Aidan Brooks snapping it up for 26m. He sold it to Mr McManus in 2007.
It is understood the interior of the house has been extensively damaged, with the gardai sealing the premises off pending a technical examination.
No-one was injured, however.
Built around 1845, Kilmoyle House has 7,159 square feet of living space, and is listed as a building of important architectural heritage.
The property also comes with a 650 sq ft mews attached to its north side which was built around 1960.
It is believed Mr McManus was planning to carry out remedial works at the historic house.
In a post on Facebook, Limerick band Foxjaw said they were "seriously gutted to hear of the razing of the old Bishops Palace.
[It] is where we finished recording out first album, the Devil in Music and recorded our entire second album, Ghosts Parade. Even the music video to our song, That Old Chestnut was recorded in the house, the rock group said.
Mayorstone Gardai are investigating and can be contacted at 061-456980.
A JUDGE has warned a young man who led gardai on a high speed pursuit across parts of the city and county that all bets will be off if he gets so much as a parking ticket over the next twelve months.
Eddie Carey, aged 22, of Byrne Avenue, Prospect has pleaded guilty to multiple road traffic offences - including several for dangerous driving - relating to an incident in the early hours of April 18, 2015.
During a sentencing hearing, Detective Garda Denis Moriarty said a car being driven by the defendant failed to stop in the Hyde Road area of the city at around 3.30am.
A pursuit then followed which saw the Toyota Corolla, which had been stolen two days earlier, travel onto Childers Road, Ballinacurra Road, Dooradoyle Road and onto the M20 motorway.
Detective Garda Moriarty said the defendant reached speeds as high at 140kph before reaching the motorway where he continued to drive at high speed.
John OSullivan BL, prosecuting, said Carey turned off his lights while on the motorway and N18 as he proceeded in the direction of the Limerick tunnel.
Limerick Circuit Court was told the pursuit continued onto the N69 to the village of Clarina before the defendant drove along a narrow road into Patrickswell where he drove through the main street at 130kph.
Attempts to deploy a stinger device on the outskirts of the village failed and the pursuit continued into Crecora and Ballyclough where the stolen car clipped onto its roof before rolling into a ditch.
Detective Garda Denise Moriarty said the defendant, who was not injured, was arrested at the scene and that an analysis of a blood sample confirmed he had consumed alcohol and cocaine.
When interviewed by gardai Carey said he had taken drugs and drank a couple of bottles of vodka and that his only memory of what happened was waking up in an ambulance.
The 22-year-old, the court heard, has 70 previous convictions - more than half of which relate to stolen cars. His propensity (to steal cars) is one which cant be controlled, commented Mr OSullivan who added there was an element of the defendant being a danger to the public.
Pat Barriscale BL said his client accepted he could have killed someone and that he is lucky not to be before the courts facing more serious charges.
He added his partner is pregnant and that he has been attending Ceim ar Ceim and has turned his life around over the last twelve months.
His case worker said Carey has been doing fantastic work and is an exemplary role model for other participants in the programme.
Judge Tom ODonnell adjourned the matter for review in twelve months time.
FIANNA Fail TD Willie ODea has accused Irish Cement of an illegitimate and wrongful attempt to influence a planning decision.
It comes after company bosses indicated that it may not have a long term future in Mungret should its plans to switch to alternative fuels be blocked.
The 10m proposals which Irish Cement says will secure the future of the 80 staff at the plant will see fossil fuels gradually phased out over ten years and be replaced with the burning of tyres and waste which would go to landfill.
But the plans have proven unpopular, with more than 1,000 submissions received to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which would ultimately award Irish Cement the licence to operate and 80 objections to Limerick City and County Council, which would decide on the physical infrastructure.
The concerns mainly relate to health and safety issues, with fears burning the fuels will produce a number of toxic emissions including dioxins and furans.
The firms head of communications Brian Gilmore said: Without this move to improve the sustainability of the plant, the jobs would be significantly at risk.
The comments have sparked a backlash, with Mr ODea accusing the company of adopting a threatening tone, while Sinn Fein councillor Malachy McCreesh added: Using the threat of job losses at the plant is not the best way to communicate reassurance to the general public with regard to their genuine health and safety concerns.
Fine Gael councillor Daniel Butler found the remarks concerning.
The comments are a bit over the top. It is almost like in a law case, influencing the jury by commenting in the public press. I think the objections are very valid. I have spoken to a lot of people, and they are genuinely worried, Mr ODea said.
Cllr McCreesh reiterated calls for a public consultation meeting something Irish Cement have resisted, saying peoples concerns are better addressed by taking small groups around the plant to demonstrate what goes on.
Although Irish Cement state no toxic emissions will be emitted from the plant, using the alternate waste material and the existing filter control process will not have to deal with new types of emissions, the families of young children need to be presented with data that will confirm these assertions, he said.
An Irish Cement spokesperson has stressed that the new process does not involve incineration, as many objectors have stated.
Mr Gilmore said the firm remains fully committed to the Limerick operation, and the application is the next logical investment for the factory.
Securing the jobs at the factory has been a consistent message since this project was first announced to our neighbours and local councillors back in late 2015, he added.
GARDAI are investigating an incident which led to the significant damage of an historic 151-year-old crucifix at a Limerick city church this week.
On Monday evening, a man entered the Redemptorist Church, at Mount St Alphonsus, South Circular Road, and damaged the crucifix.
Rector Fr Seamus Enright told the Limerick Leader that the holy item has been in the church since 1865 and has been an important part of the spiritual and cultural patrimony of Mount St Alphonsus.
The crucifix has been removed to Randel Hodkinsons studio for restoration, and it is hoped that it will return to the Redemptorist Church in time for Christmas.
We are grateful to those who have been in contact with expressions of sympathy and offers of financial support. People can show their support by praying for all involved and, if they wish, by donating to the Redemptorist Christmas Hamper Appeal.
The Redemptorists regret that this incident has happened and are relieved that nobody was injured. The incident has been reported to An Garda Siochana, Fr Enright said in a statement this Tuesday morning.
As the UK struggles in the aftermath of its vote to leave the European Union, the former chancellor of the exchequer has urged a soft Brexit that would enable the UK to remain within the European single market and continue to be a jumping off point for Chinese companies wishing to access the EU market. [Photo: ccstock.cn]
As the UK struggles in the aftermath of its vote to leave the European Union, the former chancellor of the exchequer has urged a soft Brexit that would enable the UK to remain within the European single market and continue to be a jumping off point for Chinese companies wishing to access the EU market.
In a recent survey, 53 per cent of Chinese respondents said that they were less confident about investing in the UK because of the uncertainty. Given that $5.1 billion of the $18 billion invested by China in Europe in 2014 went to the UK, it is easy to see why Mr Osborne should be keen to retain the relationship with the EU.
We now need to do everything we can to avoid some of the dangers and difficulties that Brexit might offer up to our country. And one of those things is making sure it doesnt deter foreign investment, including from China, he said.
On Thursday last week, the High Court ruled that parliament must have a say in the deal that the UK does with Europe. Many have seen this as an opportunity for MPs to ensure that Britain and Europe remaining closely linked.
Financial markets welcomed the news as the pound jumped on foreign exchange markets after the judgment was announced.
Theresa May, the prime minister flew to New Delhi on Sunday with the stated aim of improving trade links with India, facing a quandary. Any countries with which the UK wishes to negotiate free trade agreements will inevitably also seek some freedom of movement for their people.
But concern over immigration was one of the biggest factors behind the 51.9 per cent majority for Leave in the referendum on June 23. And although Mrs May will want to sign new trade agreements to compensate for leaving the EU she must be wary of giving way to requests that would be unpopular in Britain.
Officials in India have already pointed out that the UK is clamping down on student visas, which has lead to a large reduction in the number of Indian students enrolled at British universities.
Mrs May has repeatedly said that Brexit means Brexit, but there is still little indication of what that really means - and Britains trade negotiators, keen to get some quick wins with non-EU countries, may find themselves under pressure on migration.
Chinese companies remain keen to invest in the UK but the details of exactly what trading relationship post-Brexit Britain will have with the EU will need to be crystalised soon if that investment is not to find a new focus.
Nissan, the Japanese car manufacturer, recently announced plans to build new models at its UK plant in Sunderland after receiving assurances from the UK government that it would not be disadvantaged by Brexit.
Other manufacturers and industries are looking for similar guarantees, and with the High Court ruling forcing a parliamentary debate on the terms of Brexit Mrs Mays government will find itself in an increasingly difficult position going into trade talks with all of its cards face-up on the table.
By Sarah Dickens for sino.uk
THERE is sadness in Limerick after a popular former president of Fairview Rangers passed away.
Frank Garrard died aged peacefully at University Hospital Limerick after a brief illness.
His funeral Mass takes place on Thursday at 11am in St Brigids Church.
Senator Maria Byrne said Frank was very much part of the fabric of the Bobby Byrnes business, starting work there on the same day the Pope visited in 1979.
He was also involved in sport, and well loved by so many people. It came as a great shock to all of us, and he will be sadly missed. The number of people who have made contact with our family just shows how well loved he was, Ms Byrne said.
In a statement, Bobby Byrnes pub said Frank was like a rock and a father figure to everyone in the business.
Mr Garrard was a stalwart of Fairview Rangers, where he served a term as president, and was a familiar face in recent years behind the counter of Bobby Byrnes shop in OConnell Avenue.
He was a former secretary of the James Reidy Branch of Fine Gael in Limerick.
He also ran bingo for older folk at Claughaun GAA Club.
Frank is survived by his sister Rita whom he lived with brother Michael, sister-in-law Breda, neices Doireann and Aoife, the Byrne family, other relatives and a large circle of friends.
THE Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) has condemned in the strongest terms the "gross overcrowding" at University Hospital Limerick as a 'scandal'.
UHL experienced one of the highest rates of overcrowding ever recorded in a single hospital on Tuesday, with 66 patients treated on trolleys in the A&E, and on additional trolleys, beds or chairs, according to the INMO.
Speaking to the Limerick Leader, INMO industrial relations officer, Mary Fogarty described the current overcrowding as a scandal.
In a further statement issued this Tuesday, the INMO said it "condemns the gross overcrowding and the compromised ability of nurses to provide acceptable and safe care to all patients within the hospital".
"There is no doubt that the level of overcrowding today with 66 patients on trolleys and on extra beds on wards is unprecedented and is a serious crisis," it said.
"Many initiatives have been put in place in other hospitals throughout the country where they have experienced gross overcrowding with some improvements," Ms Fogarty said in the statement.
"However, the last 6-12 months has seen a significant deterioration at University Hospital Limerick. Despite the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) proposals from February 2016 and, meeting locally with hospital management, the situation at the University Hospital Limerick has significantly deteriorated."
The spectre of industrial action is hovering as a result of the overcrowding.
We have completed a ballot," said Ms Fogarty. "We have notified the HSE that the outcome of the ballot [this summer] was in excess of 97% in favour of industrial action.
"They are well aware of the feelings of nurses. Industrial action is the tool of last resort, but something has to be done to make the management at that hospital manage the bed capacity. They cant keep, literally, stuffing patients into the hospital when there isnt room for them.
A spokesperson for the UL Hospitals Group said that it regrets that any patient had to face long waits in our emergency department during busy periods.
The spokesperson said that the 400 inpatient beds are not sufficient for the needs of the Mid-West region, and that a bid to build a 96-bed block at UHL has been submitted to the Department of Health and is awaiting approval for funding.
In order to relieve pressure at the A&E, the UL Hospitals Group is transferring suitable patients from UHL to Ennis, Nenagh, St Johns, and to Croom Orthopaedic; transferring patients to community care settings; working closely with community intervention teams; communicating with GPs; increasing ward rounds; and putting extra beds in the wards.
15 beds are currently closed at St Johns Hospital, while recruitment to fill vacant nursing posts is underway. Additional nursing and medical staff have been recruited to A&E to support this increased activity.
Following this overcrowding at UHL, operational hours at the medical assessment unit have been extended by three hours per day, exclusively for patients in the A&E.
The local injury unit in St Johns Hospital, Ennis and Nenagh are a safe alternative to the emergency department for minor injuries and conditions, including sprains, suspected broken bones and lacerations.
Fianna Fail Deputy Willie ODea said that this winter could be the worst for the emergency department at UHL.
A major issue with overcrowding in UHL is the size of our Emergency Department. Its just too small for the size of the population it serves. Every person in Limerick City and County, North Tipperary and most people in Clare are directed to UHLs ED if they are in a medical emergency.
Sinn Fein TD Maurice Quinlivan said: "I didn't think the situation at UHL could get any worse. The fact that I been proven wrong is a damning indictment of a detached government.
Nov 8, 2016, 9 AM
A master die proof of the Falkland Islands King Edward VII design for the high denominations, in bright blue, sold for $10,850 at Grosvenors September sale in London.
From a unique war tax double-overprinted sheet of 1-penny King George V stamps, prepared locally during World War I in the Falkland Islands; the top-right corner margin block of four was sold for $14,800 at the Grosvenor auction on Sept. 22.
By Matthew Healey, New York Correspondent
In London on Sept. 22, Grosvenor Philatelic Auctions sold the Bougainville collection of Falkland Islands, which traced the story of the South Atlantic colonys philately from its earliest postal history through major rarities of the 1920s and 1930s and its dependencies in the Antarctic region.
An impressive pair of bottom-margin imprint blocks from an early Queen Victoria issue told a poignant tale. New stamps were prepared for the Falklands in May 1891, but the entire print run was lost when the German liner Neko sank on July 21 on its way to the islands.
The stamps were reprinted, albeit in slightly different shades, and the proof sheets, one of each denomination, retained by printers Bradbury Wilkinson, are the only examples that remain of the stamps in their original shades.
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Imprint blocks of eight from these archival sheets of the 1891 -penny in deep blue green and the 2d in a sublime shade of very pale, chalky ultramarine were hammered down for 7,000, or about $10,500, including the 22.8 percent buyers premium added by Grosvenor to all lots. The issued stamps (Scott 9 and 15) are somewhat less blue and more blue, respectively.
Proofs of stamps made during the production process add a special dimension to any collection, and the Bougainville was no exception. A master die proof of the King Edward VII high denominations in a striking shade of bright blue, with the denomination yet to be added, sold for $10,850. Upon completion, this design was used for the 3-shilling gray green (Scott 28) and 5s dull red (29).
During World War I, British colonies issued postal tax stamps to raise funds for the war effort. These so-called war stamps were produced by simply overprinting those words onto existing definitives. To save time and money, this often was done locally.
In the case of the Falklands, current d, 1d and 1sh stamps of King George V were pressed into service this way. In error, one sheet of the 1d received a double overprint. The unique top-right corner margin block of four from this sheet crossed the auction block at Grosvenor for $14,800.
The ever closer trade bonds between China and Russia are a source of confidence at a time when the slow economic recovery worldwide casts doubt on the significance of continuing internal reforms and international cooperation.
Though skepticism persists about China's growth and Russia's energy-based economy, both countries have demonstrated strong resilience and sailed against economic headwinds with a stable volume and a rising value of mutual trade.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich in May expressed confidence that it is "challenging but realistic" to reach the bilateral trade target of 200 billion U.S. dollars by 2020, which was set by Chinese and Russian leaders in 2011.
Zhang Di, economic and commercial minister counselor at the Chinese embassy in Moscow, also said China-Russia trade should be assessed in a comprehensive way, not simply by a change in volume.
With a growing trade turnover that already reached 90 billion dollars this May, China-Russia economic cooperation is evolving towards greater breadth and depth.
Multilateral dialogues have concentrated on more specific topics, from energy cooperation, infrastructure construction to cooperation between small- and medium-sized companies.
A wide range of meetings attended by officials at various levels of the countries have been held to coordinate and better align strategies in implementing major projects.
Trade links are also intensified through platforms like the third China-Russia expo held in Russia's Yekaterinburg and the fifth China-Eurasian Expo held in China's northwestern city of Urumqi.
It is worth noting that China-Russia trade have expanded from oil and gas, industry equipment to agricultural products, finance, technology and more.
As Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui said in August, the prospects of bilateral cooperation lie in the multi-dimensions of their economies and markets, highly complementary production and effective interaction mechanisms.
The dovetailing of economic development policies, such as the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, has contributed to China-Russia trade, and also created a positive spillover effect to the whole region.
The trade prospects are to be undoubtedly enhanced after the China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting held in St. Petersburg on Monday.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed at the meeting that there are great potential in bilateral trade and investment cooperation, promising to deepen economic integration through building mutually beneficial economic partnership in Eurasia.
In a bigger picture, together with deep political mutual trust and strong humanitarian links, China and Russia will continue to help consolidate regional and international cooperation even at times of economic headwinds.
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A joint motion was passed in Jinan, Shandong province by the Ministry of Water Resources and the Shandong provincial government on Nov. 7, making Jinan the country's first "water civilization city," Thepaper.cn reported. The Ministry of Water Resources has also arranged for other cities to learn from Jinan, yielding 105 such water civilization pilot cities by 2020.
In October 2012, Jinan was chosen as the first pilot city for the project. After three years of work, Jinan's water was effectively improved. The revival of historic springs is the most direct reflection of the continuous improvement. For example, Baotu Spring, a culturally significant artesian spring in Jinan, has flowed for 13 years. In addition, statistics show that water withdrawal in Jinan has decreased from 1.68 billion cubic meters in 2012 to 1.522 billion cubic meters in 2015.
Although Jinan has a reputation as a famous "spring city," it gradually came to lack water resources just like many other cities. The water resources per capita in Jinan are less than one-seventh of the national average.
Since becoming a pilot city, Jinan has pushed for a full implementation of the most stringent water resources management system. Meanwhile, Jinan has carried out a project connecting city water systems in order to comprehensively manage surface water, ground water, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River and other water sources.
The Ministry of Water Resources stressed additional focus on the concept of water civilization, and recommended fully implementing the strictest water management system and water-saving guidelines.
As the 2016 U.S. presidential election draws near, it has become evident that no matter who wins history will deem this election the most dark, chaotic and negative one in the past two centuries. It certainly will not be viewed as a victory of democracy.
To begin with, the two main candidates have smeared each other in the most despicable and uncivilized ways during their many campaign speeches, causing some U.S. citizens to turn away in disgust. The campaign has undeniably revealed the dark side of so-called democracy in the U.S.
The Democratic Party eliminated Bernie Sanders during the nomination process to make sure Hillary Clinton won the candidacy. Then, in order to put pressure on Donald Trumps campaign, some Republican heavyweights called upon fellow Republicans to vote for Clinton, the candidate of the opposing party.
As a result, almost all mainstream media has chosen to stand with Clinton, leading Trump supporters to conclude that U.S. democracy is dead.
Indeed, the election has been chaotic since its start. During the presidential primaries, Sanders nearly caused a party upset when he threatened Clintons nomination. On the other side, the script for the Republican Party campaign gave television drama House of Cards a run for its money. Promising political stars like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were felled on the battlefield one after another, but Trump who was often deemed an unlikely candidate made his way through to the final round.
Once Clinton and Trump were the only major party candidates left standing, they began to attack each other with scandals, including Clintons private email server controversy and the charges of sexual harassment against Trump, turning the campaign into a true mess.
This is a bad election because it is tasteless. More importantly, the whole process has been dominated by extremist comments and personal attacks, so much so that the candidates eventually gave up on systematic explanations of their policy views. Finally, the whole campaign lost its meaning and was reduced to nothing more than a farce.
Such chaos and disorder tells the world that the U.S. is sick when it comes to the nations own economy, society and politics.
First of all, the U.S. economy is no longer in good shape. Though it is recovering, the public has not benefitted from that momentum, as economic growth is mainly being driven by quantitative easing and other monetary policies, leaving structural conflicts untouched. Even worse, the wealth gap is widening, the middle class is shrinking and the youngest generation is lost at sea.
In addition, social problems remain unsolved. In the eight years since Barack Obama took office, racial conflicts have not been eased, but have in fact escalated. Conflicts over race, gender, religion and class have stoked anger, anxiety and depression in addition to isolationism, protectionism and populism. It is only due to these uneasy sentiments that Trump has been able to last as long as he has.
At the same time, the current political system is riddled with problems. The U.S. used to take pride in its American-style democracy, represented by a separation of powers. However, even these checks and balances failed to rein in the confrontation between the two major parties.
Extremity and separation prevail in U.S. politics today. Partisan standoffs and interdepartmental confrontations are taking place all over the country, dragging down political efficiency and disappointing the public. Even many U.S. political scholars are concerned about the future of American democracy.
The etiology of the countrys illness lies in its postponement of systematic reform, which the country should have launched after the Cold War. As a result, structural conflicts accumulated day by day into a sort of chronic disease.
When Bill Clinton was in power, the U.S. was so obsessed with its Cold War victory and prosperity brought by the new economy that reform momentum was quite lacking. After George W. Bush took office, emergencies like the Sept. 11 attacks pulled the countrys focus to counter-terrorism and the Iraq War, leaving no time for reform.
It was not until Obama was inaugurated that the U.S. noticed the urgency of reform, and became determined to see that reform through. Yet Obama missed his best chances to accomplish this thanks to insufficient political support.
Obamas hands are tied now, and the two major parties have failed to reach a consensus on immigration, gun control, taxation, education and several other big issues that impede the social and economical development of the U.S. Though the U.S. economy was revitalized during the last eight years, the biggest beneficiaries have been Wall Street and Washington bigwigs, while the incomes of average citizens have still not returned to pre-economic crisis levels.
Due to political conflicts, Obama was powerless to resolve issues such as gun control and illegal immigration. The chaos that has emerged during the 2016 presidential election is in reality a way for the public to vent their anger about the current situation.
Therefore, no matter who wins this election, the next president-elect will face a true political conundrum. Meanwhile, the world will look on with concern, waiting to see whether the U.S. adopts a more cautious diplomatic policy or decides to make aggressive overtures. So what path will the U.S. choose? We shall wait and see.
(The author is vice president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.)
(Liu Jiawei/Thepaper.cn)
China is likely to create a formal institution to oversee the protection of wild birds, as more and more migratory birds are falling prey to poachers, Thepaper.cn reported. Sources explained that joint conferences between relevant authorities would be a regular fixture, intended to promote superior coordination.
A total of six supervision groups will be sent to inspect protection efforts. The groups are being formed by seven ministries and administrations including the State Forestry Administration, Ministry of Public Security, State Administration for Industry and Commerce, Ministry of Transportation and Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs
The group in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province has inspected 35 areas where migratory birds gather, seeking out places that are suspected to contain illegal nets and seizing two suspects as they hunted wild ducks.
A crackdown on migrant bird slaughtering was launched in the suburbs of Tianjin in north China on Oct. 12. A total of 1,245 birds were released, 2,507 frozen birds were confiscated and 300 bird cages were destroyed in the campaign. [Photo: Yue Yuewei/Xinhua News Agency]
Before the inspection work in Hangzhou, the group had been in eastern China's Shandong province and the city of Haining in Zhejiang province to urge local authorities to raise awareness about wild animal protection. The group warned that those found in violation of protection measures would be punished.
These visits followed a 40-day campaign across China to crack down on illegal hunting and the illegal sale of migratory birds, initiated by the forestry administration on Oct. 18. During the National Day holiday from Oct. 1 to 7, about 3,000 living birds were rescued and 5,000 dead birds found, thanks to efforts by local officials and volunteers. Clap nets stretching across over 10,000 meters in coastal areas of Tianjin Municipality and Tangshan, Hebei Province were also retrieved, Xinhua reported.
Officials said wildlife protection is not only a commitment made by China to the whole world, but also a part of China's national image.
Although the first day of government-provided central heating has been brought forward by two days to Nov. 13, many Beijing residents are still dealing with chilly homes in the meantime. Some elderly residents have therefore made their way to IKEA to luxuriate in the store's heated shopping areas and cafeteria.
In recent days, IKEAs cafeteria has been filled with elderly people reading, chatting and playing cards. A retired woman surnamed Li said that IKEA is the best place for elderly citizens in such cold weather. She always comes to IKEA together with her friends, as they can enjoy free water and coffee as well as the heating.
[File photo: customers in IKEA's cafeteria]
In the childrens zone, some grandparents look on as their grandchildren play. One grandmother explained that it is too cold for children to play outside. In IKEA, however, there is heating to prevent the children from catching colds. Meanwhile, there are facilities and equipment for kids to enjoy.
An IKEA employee confirmed that this scene has been common over the past two weeks, ever since the store began to provide heating. More and more people are coming to IKEA now, especially on weekdays.
The employee explained that they are accustomed to this phenomenon, as it also occurs each year during the summer, when residents descend on IKEA to enjoy the air conditioning. The employee said that since IKEA aims to offer comfortable living spaces, the store wont intervene unless the elderly heat-seekers start to negatively impact the shopping experience of real customers.
J-20 stealth fighter
The debut of the PLA's J-20 stealth fighter at the Zhuhai Air Show has attracted attention from Taiwan, among others. Feng Shih-kuan, head of Taiwan's local defense authority, said he is confident that Taiwan's F-16v fighter can rival the J-20.
In a program aired on CCTV on Nov. 4, senior colonel Fang Bing, a professor at National Defense University, said Feng's remarks "are a joke."
"Any improvement of the F-16 fighter is at most a 3.5-generation fighter, while the J-20 is a typical fourth-generation fighter. By American and Russian standards, it is a fifth-generation fighter, so there is a huge gap between them," Fang said, adding that in a duel with the J-20, the F-16v would have no chance.
According to Fang, the debut of the J-20 makes it the third type of fourth-generation fighter to enter active service, following the American F-22 and F-35.
Tens of thousands of people gather to say farewell to police officer Li Jingzhong, who was killed in an anti-drug operation, at Songkran Square in Jinghong City, Xishuangbanna, southwest China's Yunnan Province on November 7, 2016. 32-year-old Li Jingzhong, who was working for the Jinghong City Public Security Bureau, was shot dead during an anti-drug operation as he tried to make arrests on November 4. All the suspects have since been arrested and brought to justice. [Photo: Weibo account of CNTV]
On Tuesday (Nov. 8), the 2016 presidential election votes will be tallied and the winner announced barring any vote count snafus or an Electoral College tie.
As the election of 2000 proved, the Electoral College can make all the difference in the outcome of a presidential race. So how does it work?
When you cast your vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you're not actually picking one man or the other. You're voting for his electors, a group of people (usually selected by the political parties) who, in turn, cast their votes for their candidates. Each state gets one elector for each of its representatives in the House of Representatives, plus two for its Senators.
Because House representation is based on population, so is the Electoral College. With 55 electoral votes, California has the most of any state. The least-populated states, including Wyoming, Alaska and the Dakotas, get three electors each, as does the District of Columbia.
That makes for a total of 538 electors in the Electoral College. Candidates need 270 votes to win the presidency.
In most states, the winner of the popular vote takes all of the Electoral College votes in that state. But Maine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes proportionally, meaning their electoral votes can be split. [Election Day 2016: A Guide to the When, Why, What and How]
The history of the Electoral College
Barack Obama won the 2012 election against Mitt Romney with both the popular vote (51.1 percent) and Electoral College votes (332). But the result of the electoral system is that sometimes the winner of the popular vote does not end up winning the presidency. It happened in 2000, when Al Gore took the popular vote with 50,999,897 supporters to George W. Bush's 50,456,002. But Bush took the Electoral College with 271 votes (after a tough battle over vote counts in Florida), while Gore had 266.
In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden, but squeaked by in the Electoral College by one vote to win the presidency. Likewise, Benjamin Harrison had more than 90,000 fewer votes than Grover Cleveland in 1888, but he pulled far ahead in the Electoral College, gaining 233 votes to Cleveland's 168 (fewer Electoral College votes were available then).
In perhaps the most unusual electoral vote incident, John Quincy Adams lost both the popular vote and the electoral vote in 1824, yet still managed to become president. Neither Adams nor his opponent, Andrew Jackson, got a majority of electoral votes at that time, 131. So the decision went to the House of Representatives, who awarded the race to Adams. Adams quickly made the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, his Secretary of State, prompting Jackson to accuse the two of a "corrupt bargain."
This year's electoral race
Because of the largely "winner-takes-all" electoral system, candidates focus their energies on states that are likely to go either way swing states. You won't see many campaign stops in reliably Republican Texas in the last hours of the campaign, for example, but swing state Colorado could be crawling with candidates.
Several political analysts have said that while Clinton has several pathways in the Electoral College map to the White House, Trump has just one, and in this winning scenario North Carolina is key. "If Secretary Clinton wins North Carolina, there really is no path for Donald Trump to win the presidency," said Scott Falmlen, the former executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, as reported by Politico.
On Monday (Nov. 7), in addition to North Carolina, Clinton visited three other important states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to ABC News.
According to Politico, this year's swing states are: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. That's a lot of electoral votes that could swing one way or another.
Editor's Note: This article was first published on Nov. 5, 2012.
Original article on Live Science.
"Loopy" Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA and ESA)
What's in a name? When it comes to catchy monikers, most galaxies come up short.
But perhaps that isn't so surprising. With an estimated 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the known universe, it's no wonder that the majority of galaxies that have been identified thus far go by a catalog number: M51, GN-z11, and IOK-1, for example. Those arrangements of numbers and letters are loaded with meaning for astronomers, but they don't exactly inspire the imagination.
However, a handful of galaxies have fared a little better in the naming department usually the ones that are distinctively shaped, extremely close by and easy to observe, or just exceptionally photogenic. Here's a look at some of these galaxies with standout names.
Milky Way Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA, Acknowledgment --T. Do, A.Ghez (UCLA), V. Bajaj (STScI))
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, measures 100,000 light-years in diameter, and is thought to contain at least 100 billion stars and possibly as many as 400 billion or more. It is a barred spiral galaxy, with a central bar structure running across its core.
Though the Milky Way was long thought to have only two spiral arms, a 12-year study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2013 confirmed that the galaxy has four major arms. Our sun and solar system are located on a minor structure known as the Orion Arm, about 26,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.
Thousands of years ago, the Milky Way's bright sprawl of stars, dust and gas stretching across the night sky inspired the ancient Greeks to lend it a milky name, though historians are uncertain as to when it was first referred to as the Milky Way, according to Matthew Stanley, a professor of the history of science at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
Read more about the Milky Way and how it got its name
Tadpole Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (USCS/LO), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), and the ACS Science Team)
A close encounter with another galaxy disrupted the spiral galaxy Arp 188, commonly known as the Tadpole Galaxy. Like its aquatic eponym, the Tadpole has an oval "head" the main part of the spiral and a long, trailing "tail."
The sweeping appendage measures about 280,000 light-years in length and is studded with enormous and brilliant star clusters. It likely formed when another galaxy approached too close to the Tadpole and was swung around behind it by gravitational forces. That same attraction probably teased out the ribbon of stars and gas that now trails behind the Tadpole, according to a NASA description.
Black Eye Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI))
Messier 64 (M64) has a somewhat sinister common name: the Black Eye or Evil Eye Galaxy, inspired by the dark band of dust surrounding its bright core. This shadowy band likely formed after a collision with another galaxy.
In the 1990s, scientists discovered that gas in the Black Eye's outer regions was rotating counterclockwise the opposite direction from the gas and stars closer to the center. Astronomers suspected that this unusual region is the last remnant of a smaller galaxy that collided with the Black Eye over a billion years ago, and was gradually absorbed.
The Black Eye is located in the constellation Coma Berenices, approximately 17 million light-years from Earth, and was catalogued by French astronomer Charles Messier in the 18th century.
Sombrero Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
The Sombrero is a spiral galaxy, and its unusual hat-like shape is suggested by our perspective on its position in space, viewed edge-on from Earth. This creates the illusion of a hat's "brim" the outermost ring of stars and a "crown" where the luminous core bulges at the center, circled by darker lanes of dust.
Also known as Messier 104 (M104), the Sombrero is located about 28 million light-years from Earth and measures 50,000 light-years across. It is one of the most massive objects in the Virgo cluster as big as 800 billion suns, according to the Hubble Space Telescope website.
Whirlpool Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA))
Like our own Milky Way, the Whirlpool (Messier 51, or M51) is a spiral galaxy the most common galaxy type, representing about 77 percent of all galaxies in the universe with multiple arms curving outward and wrapping around a bright center. Its yellowish core is home to older stars, while younger and brighter stars are visible along its arms.
The arms of the Whirlpool as in all spiral galaxies are stellar nurseries, where infant stars are born. At only 25 million light-years from Earth and measuring 60,000 light-years across, the Whirlpool is highly visible to astronomers and has been called one of "astronomy's galactic darlings" by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
Stellar deaths have been detected in the Whirlpool, as well. Observers reported three supernovas a star's explosive demise occurring in the Whirlpool during the past 17 years: in 1994, 2005 and 2011.
Cigar Galaxy
(Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
Located in the Ursa Major constellation about 13 million light-years from Earth, the Cigar Galaxy was named for the long, elliptical shape of its disk, which is how it appears relative to our sight line.
Also called Messier 82 (M82), the Cigar is known as a starburst galaxy one with an exceptionally high star birth rate. In its central regions, stars are produced 10 times faster than in the Milky Way Galaxy, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
This six-image composite mosaic the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of the Cigar Galaxy was assembled from images taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, in March 2006.
Cartwheel Galaxy
(Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA)
Resembling an oversize wagon wheel, the Cartwheel Galaxy is estimated to measure 150,000 light-years across. It has a bright center with wispy "spokes" of dust and gas radiating outward to a surrounding ring of stars, which is about 1.5 times the size of the Milky Way, according to the Hubble Space Telescope website.
The Cartwheel's unusual shape was caused by a dramatic, head-on cosmic collision millions of years ago, according to a description on the Chandra X-Ray Observatory website. It was originally a large spiral galaxy, but a smaller galaxy perforated its center, disrupting stars much like a stone dropped in water causes outward-spreading ripples.
It is located 500 million light years from Earth, in the Sculptor constellation.
Sunflower Galaxy
(Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA)
Galaxy Messier 63 (M63), also known as the Sunflower Galaxy, was the 63rd entry in French astronomer Charles Messier's catalog of celestial objects, published in 1781, and was given its flowery name for the tight spiraling of its many arms, which was thought to be reminiscent of the pattern at a sunflower's center.
The Sunflower is about 27 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici "The Hunting Dogs" and is part of the M51 Group, a collection of galaxies that also appears in Messier's catalog and is named for Galaxy M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy.
The brilliant glow that illuminates the Sunflower's spirals is generated by newly formed blue-white giant stars, according to the Hubble Space Telescope website.
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
About 64 million years ago, a sea turtle with a triangular-shaped head swam along the arid coastline of what is now Angola. The creature likely crunched on hard-shelled animals, such as crabs and lobsters, with its extra-long palate the roof of its mouth.
The finding is remarkable, but even more breathtaking is its link to early sea turtles that lived before the asteroid hit Earth about 65.5 million years ago, the researchers of the new study said. That link indicates that this particular turtle group survived the mass extinction that killed the nonavian dinosaurs, the researchers said.
The study, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented Friday (Oct. 28) at the 2016 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting. [Read the Full Story on the Ancient Sea Turtle from Angola]
Skull unearthed
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
Researchers discovered the almost-complete turtle skull in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012. They also found a hyoid, a U-shaped neck bone that supports the tongue.
Here, Ricardo Araujo, a former doctoral student at Southern Methodist University in Texas, helps to excavate the skull in Angola.
Turtle skull
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
A view of the front of the ancient sea turtle's skull. Notice its two eye orbits and its naris, or nose.
Bird's-eye view
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
The top of the ancient sea turtle's skull. The turtle's body was likely the size of a small round table, about 3.2 feet (1 meter) long, said study first author Timothy Myers, a research assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University.
Find your beach
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
The beach at the town of Landana, located in the Angolan province of Cabinda. The turtle skull was found in the cliffs in the background. The site has housed other fossil specimens, including those of snakes, crocodiles, other turtles, bony fishes and sharks, Myers said.
Rocky cliffs
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
The outcrop where study senior author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University, discovered the sea turtle skull.
Mucky finding
(Image credit: Timothy Myers)
The skull was still covered with muck after researchers removed the rock surrounding the fossil. When the turtle was alive, about 64 million years ago, "the site was a sandy, shallow marine environment, not far from the coast," Myers said.
[Read the Full Story on the Ancient Sea Turtle from Angola]
What could possibly make this election season worse? If it didn't end on Election Day.
Although most people, regardless of their side of the aisle, are hoping that the presidential race will be over by Nov. 9, there is a rare chance that the election could drag on.
That could happen if the Electoral College votes result in a tie, or if no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes. There are nearly 100 different scenarios in which the Electoral College could be tied 269-269, according to 270towin.com.
"You can always get a 269 tie if you put together the pieces just right," said James Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine at Farmington. [Election Day 2016: A Guide to the When, Why, What and How]
Still, most political analysts aren't holding their breath for a tie.
"It's very unlikely," Sam Wang, a neuroscience professor at Princeton University who runs the Princeton Election Consortium website, told Live Science in an email.
Recent polling and election prediction sites such as fivethirtyeight.com put the odds of a tie at just 0.6 percent and the odds of electoral deadlock (when no one gets a majority because of third-party candidates) at just 1 percent.
Tiebreakers
In the event that neither candidate gets the majority of the vote, the House of Representatives would decide the president, said Lyle Scruggs, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut. However, congress is still bound by the electoral vote. [Election Day 2016: How Are the Votes Counted?]
According to Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, "[t]he Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse [sic] by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have [sic] a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse [sic] the President."
In other words, if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump each have 269 electoral votes, then the current House of Representatives must choose one of them. Because Republicans hold a majority in Congress, Trump would very likely be chosen, Scruggs said. If neither candidate gets a majority of votes, then third-party candidates come into play if they can earn electoral votes. (The 12th Amendment subsequently limited Congress to choosing among the top three candidates.)
Because of the winner-takes-all structure of most states' electoral votes, third-party candidates typically face an uphill battle in presidential elections. For instance, in 1992, Ross Perot won nearly one-fifth of the popular vote but earned 0 electoral votes, Scruggs said. The last third-party candidate to take a significant chunk of the electoral college was the segregationist George Wallace in 1968, who had a strong showing in the South, Melcher said. [7 Great Dramas in U.S. Congressional History]
This year, a third-party candidate's chance of disrupting the race is slim.
"There's only one person who has a chance, really, of getting any electoral votes besides Trump and Clinton," Scruggs told Live Science. "His name is Evan McMullin."
McMullin, a former CIA operative who hails from Utah, has a decent shot at taking electoral votes in his home state, a heavily Republican state that has recoiled from Trump's candidacy, Scruggs said.
"In three-person polls [in Utah], they're polling pretty closely together," Scruggs said. "Some have McMullin with 30 percent, Trump with 32 percent and Clinton with 28 percent."
If McMullin prevails in Utah, the House could, theoretically, choose him, though it's extremely unlikely that the Republicans would disregard the popular vote and choose a relatively unknown candidate, Scruggs said.
When the Constitution was originally written, the second-place finisher in the presidential race would become the vice president. The flaws in that setup became crystal clear in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson's enemy, Aaron Burr, tied him for electoral votes and the House picked Jefferson as president only after 35 votes. (This spurred the passage of the 12thAmendment, which separates the presidential and vice presidential races.) [The Nastiest, Strangest Political Elections in U.S. History]
Historical roots
Though the idea of Congress picking the president may seem odd, the framers of the Constitution actually envisioned the president being chosen by representatives similar to how Parliament chooses a prime minister in the United Kingdom, Scruggs said.
"Because there weren't political parties, they expected the House would typically choose their president," Scruggs said.
When the political system was designed, the Founding Fathers envisioned each state sending its electoral votes to a local or regional favorite. With several candidates vying for the top post, Congress would have the final say, Scruggs said.
"The idea was that the electors were going to use wise judgment," Melcher said.
However, that system quickly degenerated.
"The idea of electors being robots who are mostly going to vote predictably that kicks off in 1800," Melcher said.
Jefferson essentially created the notion of voting for an elector who will promise to vote a certain way, Melcher said.
By creating the seeds of political parties, Jefferson also ensured that third-party candidates would have a much tougher time gaining a foothold, Melcher said.
The last time Congress chose the president was in 1824, after a four-way race resulted in no one gaining a majority of electoral votes. After much wheeling and dealing, Congress chose John Quincy Adams as president, Melcher said.
Original article on Live Science.
Were Viking men so for want of marriage that they would raid and plunder?
For all their infamous raiding and plundering, the Vikings who attacked from Scandinavia might have been just a bunch of lonely-hearted bachelors, new research suggests.
During the Viking Age, which archaeological discoveries and written texts suggested lasted from about A.D. 750 to 1050, shipborne crews from Scandinavia went "viking" that is, they started raiding. However, the causes of these invasions remain uncertain.
Previous research suggested a wide range of potential triggers for the Viking Age. One scenario hinted that warm climates led to better harvests and thus larger populations, and that such big groups felt compelled to raid. Another cited innovations in sailing technology, such as the additions of keels and sails to Scandinavian longships. [Fierce Fighters: 7 Secrets of Viking Culture]
However, scientists have argued that such explanations are not especially convincing because they raised questions as to why Scandinavians did not respond in other ways to such triggers. For example, if the trigger for the raids was "innovations in sailing technology, why did Scandinavians elect to go raiding rather than focusing their efforts on peaceful trade?" said senior study author Mark Collard, a biological anthropologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Now, researchers suggest a new twist on an ancient explanation: Scandinavian practices that led powerful men to monopolize women also might have led to significant pools of unwed men. Many of these single men, looking for marriage, might have gone on raids to gain status, wealth and captives, and thus go on to secure brides and concubines of their own.
Looking for love
The idea that an excess of single young men led to Viking raiding is one of the oldest explanations for the Viking Age, put forward about 1,000 years ago by historian Dudo of St. Quentin in his tome "History of the Normans."
"We were able to reinvigorate an explanation for Viking raiding that has been around for nearly 1,000 years," Collard told Live Science.
The new model links this older idea with the customs of polygyny, or having multiple wives, and concubinage, or the keeping of concubines, that ancient texts such as the "Sagas of Icelanders," medieval German chronicles, and reports by travelers such as the 10th-century Arab envoy Ahmad Ibn Fadlan suggested that Scandinavians once practiced, the researchers said.
Polygyny and concubinage would have limited the number of women eligible for single men to marry. Evolutionary biology suggests that such an imbalance would have then boosted competition for mates among unmarried men. Indeed, prior work has suggested that, on average, men die in warfare more often in polygynous societies than in monogamous ones, the researchers said.
This resulted in volatile societies in Scandinavia in which men were moved to engage in risky behavior, such as raiding expeditions to gain wealth and status to attract brides and to secure female slaves. One consequence of this was a surge in raiding that is linked with the start of the Viking Age, the researchers suggested.
Viking bachelors
Archaeological Viking finds discoveries and historical records suggest that loot and captives were main targets of raiders, and that most Vikings were men, although there is evidence that some raiders may have been women. For instance, the Irish text "War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill" recorded that one fleet belonged to a woman dubbed the Inghen Ruaidh, or "Red Girl," in Ireland during the 10th century A.D., the researchers said. [Photos: 10th-Century Viking Tomb Unearthed in Denmark]
This model suggests that most Viking raiders would have been young men. Ancient mass graves and Icelandic sagas support this explanation, the researchers said. Other possibilities the model presents include that the Vikings were hypersensitive to insults, that they viewed risk taking positively and that there was intense competition among men. Icelandic sagas also revealed that these characteristics were common in Viking societies, the scientists added.
"I'd like people to keep in mind that the Vikings weren't particularly unusual in engaging in concubinage and polygyny or in going raiding," Collard said. "Plenty of societies in the past approved of polygynous relationships indeed, some still do in the present day. Similarly, raiding was not unusual in the past and remains fairly common today in certain places. So, while the Vikings can seem exotic, it's a mistake to view them that way. They weren't outliers when it comes to human behavior."
Men of low status might not have been the only members of Viking cultures seeking to go on raids. Powerful men would likely want to support, fund and lead raids to acquire plunder, in order to develop and keep their reputations and further their ambitions, the researchers said.
"We're not saying that every Viking went raiding," Collard said. "Many did; others didn't. Social life in the Viking Age would have been as complicated as social life in the present day."
It remains uncertain why Viking raids began when they did. The researchers suggested that one trigger of this raiding "might have been an influx of Abbasid coinage into eastern Scandinavia via Russian and Baltic trade routes in the last decades of the eighth century [A.D.]," Collard said. "That's plausible, because it likely would have increased the amount of inequality and, therefore, the level of competition among men. But I'm sure there are other potential proximate triggers that we haven't considered."
The scientists detailed their findings online Oct. 30 the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Original article on Live Science.
A combined topographic map of the Santorini volcanic field shows how the flow of volcanic material entered the sea via the northwest strait (orange box).
The historic eruption of the Greek volcano Thera in about 1650 B.C. triggered massive tsunamis and led to the end of the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean. Now, researchers say these destructive tsunamis may have been generated by the flow of volcanic material into the sea, challenging previous explanations, according to a new study.
Studies of the Bronze Age disaster led scientists to think the collapse of the volcanic crater (called the caldera) into the sea caused tsunamis after the eruption of Thera, on the island now known as Santorini. However, in the new study, scientists used volcanic and seismic data, along with detailed mapping of the seafloor, to disprove this theory and offer a new explanation.
Their research revealed that the caldera was not connected to the sea when it collapsed and, therefore, could not have caused the tsunamis. Instead, the researchers propose that large volumes of volcanic material flowing rapidly into the sea could have displaced enough water to create tsunamis. [The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History]
Pyroclastic flows are fast-moving currents of volcanic material (rock fragments; lava; and hot, expanding gases) that flow down a volcano after an eruption. These flows can reach scorching temperatures of more than 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) and move at speeds of up to 45 mph (70 km/h), the researchers said. As this material flows into the ocean, it solidifies and displaces massive amounts of water, they added.
"This violent entry of the pyroclastic flows into the sea triggered more than one tsunami," said study lead author Paraskevi Nomikou, a geologist and oceanographer at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.
Deposits of volcanic material up to 200 feet (60 meters) thick were found offshore Santorini, supporting the new theory, the researchers said.
Another famous volcano similarly triggered tsunamis: the eruption of Krakatoa, in Indonesia, in 1883. Tsunamis following the explosive Krakatoa eruption occurred when pyroclastic flows entered the sea, not because the caldera collapsed, Nomikou said. This well-recorded eruption caused more than 35,000 deaths and has been studied extensively by volcanologists. But the eruption of Thera may have been many times larger, and more destructive, according to the new study.
In fact, the eruption of Thera did more than blow a hole into the island and trigger tsunamis and flooding. The eruption also set off the decline of the Minoan culture, the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean at the time, the researchers said.
"The eruption was the beginning of the end of the Minoan civilization," Nomikou told Live Science. "The eruption occurred in 1650 B.C., and the end of the Minoan civilization was at 1450 [B.C.], so the civilization was destroyed completely, disappeared completely after 200 years."
To further understand just how violent and destructive the eruption of Thera was, Nomikou and her colleagues plan to continue their research on the pyroclastic flows.
"We know now that these flows caused so much damage in the area around Santorini like in Crete," Nomikou said. "So we need to better understand these flows and have the total volume of the eruption, because we believe that this was the most catastrophic event during the last 10,000 years."
The new research was detailed in a study published online today (Nov. 8) in the journal Nature (opens in new tab).
Original article on Live Science.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
Trend:
Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 16 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Nov. 8.
The Azerbaijani army positions located in the Bala Jafarli village and on nameless heights of Azerbaijans Gazakh district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located in the Vazashen village and on nameless heights of the Ijevan district of Armenia.
The Azerbaijani army positions also underwent fire from the Armenian positions located on the Armenian-occupied nameless heights of the Tartar, Goranboy, Fuzuli and Jabrayil districts.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Local News, Crime, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: November 08 2016
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman stood with LI victims of gun violence and local leaders to highlight the new report on illegal gun trafficking into NY and call for action.
Long Island, NY - November 3, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman stood today with Long Island victims of gun violence and local leaders to highlight the Attorney Generals new report on illegal gun trafficking into New York and call for federal and state action. The Attorney General was joined by Suffolk County Police Officer Mark Collins, who was shot while on patrol by a handgun originally purchased in Virginia a prime example of the impact of the flood of illegal guns that pour into New York State.
The gun violence epidemic has touched the lives of far too many Long Island families, said Attorney General Schneiderman. Police departments are doing amazing work to fight illegal guns, but we still find too many guns pouring into New York and into the hands of criminals. This new data makes clear: we need common sense action at both the state and federal levels to protect our communities.
The ground-breaking analysis shows that 74 percent of all crime guns recovered by law enforcement between 2010 and 2015 originated out-of-state, and nearly nine out of ten (86 percent) of recovered handguns come from out-of-state.
Of all crime guns recovered on Long Island, 73 percent came from out-of-state, the second highest rate in the state; 85 percent of handguns the weapon of choice for violence criminals recovered on Long Island came from out-of-state. In total, Long Island saw 4,844 crime guns recovered or just over 9% of all recoveries between 2010 and 2015. Long Island is also the second largest market in the state for crime handguns, with a total of 3,881 and the second largest percentage of handguns (80 percent).
The report released last week by the Attorney General, Target on Trafficking: Analysis of New York Crime Guns, and the new interactive tool examine the purchase history of the nearly 53,000 crime guns recovered by law enforcement in New York between 2010 and 2015. A crime gun is any gun connected to a crime that is recovered by law enforcement.
The Attorney General urged common sense federal and state action to stem the tide of illegal guns:
Congress should require universal background checks and close the gun show loophole.
Congress should make gun trafficking a federal crime; there is currently no comprehensive law that criminalizes each stage of illegal gun trafficking.
Congress should expand access to aggregate trace data so non-law enforcement actors can analyze crime gun data to make more informed decisions about gun laws and law enforcement strategies.
States should require licenses to own handguns.
New York should pass the Gun Kingpin Bill to punish traffickers so severely (up to 25 years to life in prison) that the business becomes too risky a proposition.
Gun violence continues to plague communities across our region and this problem has been further exacerbated by illegal gun trafficking, said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. I am grateful for Attorney General Schneidermans commitment. This first-of-its-kind Tracing Analytics Platform will significantly help our law enforcement personnel by analyzing and providing regionally-focused data to monitor gun trafficking trends.
Crime in Suffolk County is at a historic low, and the Suffolk County Police Department is committed to finding innovative ways to drive crime even lower. New tools that help us fight gun violence are essential to this goal, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy D. Sini said. With the support of Attorney General Schneiderman and the Gun Trafficking Report, our department now has an additional innovative and valuable tool to use to better track where these weapons are originating and to combat the problem.
I know first-hand the dangers of illegal guns in the hands of dangerous people, said Suffolk County Police Officer Mark Collins, who was shot in Huntington Station last year by a criminal who used an out-of-state gun. I feel that any effort to combat illegal guns is necessary to protect the citizens of Suffolk County. I am proud to represent the Suffolk County Police Department with this extremely worthwhile program.
The Attorney Generals office is the first statewide law enforcement agency to obtain and analyze such comprehensive crime gun data provided by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
The analysis showed sweeping and important trends in gun recoveries, particularly with regard to how out-of-state guns are flooding into New York from the Iron Pipeline -- states with lax guns laws along the I-95 corridor, namely Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida as well as from Ohio. These findings offer significant policy implications and context for state and national leaders striving to reduce gun trafficking and violence.
Attorney General Schneidermans new report makes it clear that we urgently need to make gun trafficking a federal crime, said U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). Gun trafficking is recognized all around, by both parties, as a major source of fuel for American gun violence, yet there is still no federal law that prevents someone from crossing state lines with a truckload of guns and selling them to criminals in a parking lot. As long as gun trafficking is not a federal crime, it will continue to be shamefully easy for criminals to get their hands on these weapons, and law enforcement wont have the tools they need to prosecute traffickers and remove these illegal guns from the black market. My gun trafficking bill is one of the only gun bills that has bipartisan support and this is despite the efforts of the gun industry and its powerful lobby to protect their own profits and stop us. The American people are demanding that Congress respond to the gun violence crisis, and my bipartisan gun trafficking bill is an important part of that response.
Each trace represents the life of a crime gun, and together these data tell a crucial story both about how guns make their way to criminals, and about how law enforcement can crack down on gun trafficking, said John Feinblatt, President, Everytown for Gun Safety. Communities across the state are devastated by handguns that come up the Iron Pipeline from states with weak laws. The Attorney Generals report shows the power of bringing data together, and we hope that law enforcement elsewhere take note.
This report provides an unprecedented look at the flow of illegal guns into New York and offers a stark illustration of the challenge faced by states like New York whose strong gun laws are undermined by a lax approach to this issue taken by other states, said Chelsea Parsons, Vice President of Guns & Crime Policy, Center for American Progress. This is the most comprehensive analysis of statewide crime gun trace data to date and provides invaluable information to law enforcement, policymakers, and community stakeholders seeking to prevent gun violence across the state. We are hopeful that other states will follow the example of this report and conduct a similar analysis to continue shining a light on the illegal trafficking networks currently operating in this country.
This important new report gives our lawmakers even more evidence that when enacted, smart, responsible gun laws work: they reduce crime and protect communities. As Attorney General Schneiderman has shown with this report, the Washington gun lobby's oft-repeated canard that gun laws are ineffective is just that. This report also shows the need for our lawmakers in Washington to do more to combat the illegal gun trade, and the consequences of making it easy for criminals to traffic firearms from a state with weak gun laws into one with stronger laws. Gabby and I applaud Attorney General Schneiderman for his continued leadership on preventing gun violence, said Navy combat veteran and retired NASA astronaut Captain Mark Kelly, the Co-Founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions.
As part of this report, Attorney General Schneiderman also released the Tracing Analytics Platform, a powerful and publicly available online tool that empowers members of the public to dive into the data themselves, analyzing gun trends by region, year, gun type, time-to-crime, and other factors. The tools interactive features also enable New York law enforcement, lawmakers, and residents to explore the gun trafficking patterns occurring in their individual communities.
The findings in the new report for Long Island include:
In Suffolk and Nassau Counties combined
4,844 Recovered Guns
73% Out-of-State Guns (Second Highest Rate in the State)
85% of Handguns Were From Out-of-State
97% Likely Trafficked Guns From Out-of-State
Suffolk County
2,176 Recovered Guns
76% Out-of-State Guns
87% of Handguns Were From Out-of-State
100% Likely Trafficked Guns From Out-of-State
Nassau County
2,668 Recovered Guns
70% Out-of-State Guns
83% of Handguns Came From Out-of-State
94% Likely Trafficked Guns From Out-of-State
Long Island shows a pattern similar to neighboring New York City for its 396 likely-trafficked guns. However, Florida tops the list of source states, with 16% of recoveries followed by Virginia (13%) and Georgia (12%). 92% of guns that were likely-trafficked to Long Island were handguns.
This report was prepared by Senior Advisor and Special Counsel Nicholas Suplina, Director of Research and Analytics Lacey Keller, and Data Scientist Meredith McCarron.
Special thanks to Deputy Attorney General Peri Kadanoff, Chief of the Organized Crime Task Force, the Executive Divisions Research and Analytics Department, and the OAG Web Team for their assistance preparing the report. Additional thanks to ATFs New York Field Office and National Tracing Center for their assistance in obtaining the data used in this report.
Local News, Crime, National & World News, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: November 08 2016
Special telephone numbers have been set up to receive complaints of possible violations of federal election laws relating to the upcoming primary elections in NYC and other counties.
The United States Attorneys said that their Offices will be available to receive complaints on Tuesday, November 8, 2016.
Washington, DC - November 4, 2016 - Robert L. Capers and Preet Bharara, the United States Attorneys for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, respectively, announced today that special telephone numbers have been set up to receive complaints of possible violations of federal election laws relating to the upcoming primary elections in New York City and other counties in their districts.
The United States Attorneys said that their Offices will be available to receive complaints at the following numbers on Tuesday, November 8, 2016:
(718) 254-6323: (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau and Suffolk counties)
(646) 369-4739: (Manhattan, Bronx, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties)
In addition, complaints of possible violations of federal election laws may be made directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at (212) 384-1000.
The Department of Justice has an important role in deterring election fraud and discrimination at the polls, and combating these violations whenever and wherever they occur. The Departments long-standing Election Day Program furthers these goals, and also seeks to ensure public confidence in the integrity of the election process by providing local points of contact within the Department for the public to report possible election fraud and voting rights violations while the polls are open on Election Day.
Federal law protects against such crimes as intimidating or bribing voters, buying and selling votes, impersonating voters, altering vote tallies, stuffing ballot boxes, and marking ballots for voters against their wishes or without their input. It also contains special protections for the rights of voters and provides that they can vote free from acts that intimidate or harass them. For example, actions of persons designed to interrupt or intimidate voters at polling places by questioning or challenging them, or by photographing or videotaping them, under the pretext that these are actions to uncover illegal voting, may violate federal voting rights law. Further, federal law protects the right of voters to mark their own ballot or to be assisted by a person of their choice.
The United States Attorneys also noted that the following additional telephone numbers are available on election day for citizens to call for routine inquiries, such as where to vote or how late the polls are open, or to register complaints that may concern violations of New York State election laws:
In New York City
City Board of Elections
Main Office: (866) 868-3692 / TTY #: 212-487-5496
Bronx (718) 299-9017
Brooklyn (718) 797-8800
Manhattan (212) 886-2100
Queens (718) 730-6730
Staten Island (718) 876-0079
In Counties Outside New York City
County Boards of Elections
Dutchess (845) 486-2473
Nassau (516) 571- 8683
Orange (845) 360-6500
Putnam (845) 808-1300
Rockland (845) 638-5172
Suffolk (631) 852-4500
Sullivan (845) 807-0400
Westchester (914) 995-5700
Assistant United States Attorney Catherine Mirabile is responsible for overseeing the handling of complaints of voting rights abuses and election fraud for the Eastern District of New York.
Assistant United States Attorney David J. Kennedy is responsible for overseeing the handling of complaints of voting rights abuses and election fraud for the Southern District of New York.
Nature & Weather, Local News, Health & Wellness, Home & Garden, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: November 08 2016
Start of work to connect homes with PFOS-contaminated private wells to the municipal water system in Westhampton Beach begins.
Westhampton Beach, NY - November 7, 2016 - New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Basil Seggos today announced the start of work to connect homes with PFOS-contaminated private wells to the municipal water system in Westhampton Beach. New York State will reimburse the Suffolk County Water Authority for costs associated with connecting 57 homes threatened by contamination from the nearby Gabreski Air National Guard Base, recently declared a New York State Superfund site, to the municipal supply system. In a separate agreement with the Suffolk County Water Authority, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has agreed to cover the cost of connecting nine homes with private well contamination that meets or exceeds current U.S. EPA health advisory levels for PFOS.
"DEC is working aggressively to protect the public and the environment whenever and wherever contamination is found and to hold polluters accountable for their actions. With the State Superfund declaration of the Air National Guard Base at Gabreski Airport, DEC, in consultation with DOH, will direct and oversee the Department of Defense as it conducts a full site investigation into the nature and extent of the PFOS contamination and develops necessary remedial action plans to mitigate human exposures to site-related contaminants," Commissioner Seggos said.
After New York designated Gabreski Air National Guard Base as a State Superfund Site in September, the DOD agreed to fund the connection of nine homes with private wells impacted by contamination from the Base to the municipal water supply operated by the Suffolk County Water Authority where perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) contamination meets or exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) threshold of 70 parts per trillion (ppt). Absent federal funds, New York State will use state Superfund resources to complete connections for approximately 57 residents with private wells that do not currently exceed the contamination threshold, but are threatened in the future in order to ensure residents have access to clean drinking water. The work is expected to be completed in December.
Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said "The remediation efforts now underway demonstrate the effectiveness of the state's Water Quality Rapid Response Team in managing these water quality issues that threaten the health of New Yorkers. DOH will continue to work with DEC to actively monitor the situation in Suffolk County and work to ensure that residents near the Gabreski Air Force base are protected from contaminants in the drinking water."
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo's Water Quality Rapid Response Team analyzed data from the U.S. EPA Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule program to identify potential areas of contamination statewide, which led to the discovery of the groundwater contamination near Gabreski Airport.
In July, DEC identified the Air National Guard Base, including the former fire training area at the airport, as a potential Superfund site due to historic use of firefighting foam containing PFOS. DEC immediately initiated an investigation and took groundwater and soil samples at the base, which confirmed that the site is a significant source of PFOS contamination in the area.
Also in late July, Suffolk County collected samples of 66 private drinking water wells from Westhampton Beach and found several were contaminated. Of the private drinking water wells sampled, the private wells of nine homes were found to have PFOS contamination that meets or exceeds EPA's threshold of 70 ppt. Samples from three wells detected levels of PFOS below the EPA threshold.
The State has, and continues to, work closely with Suffolk County and the Suffolk County Water Authority to ensure local residents are fully informed, have access to bottled water, and are quickly connected to the municipal water supply. In September 2016, DEC formally declared the Gabreski Air National Guard Base a Class 2 Superfund Site. With this designation, DEC identified the DOD, which oversees the site's operations, as the potentially responsible party for PFOS contamination detected in nearby groundwater supplies. DEC is using its full legal authority under the State Superfund law to ensure a thorough site clean-up.
DEC added PFOS to the state's list of hazardous substances in April in order to unlock State Superfund dollars to address PFOS contamination across the State. Both PFOS and PFOA remain unregulated by the U.S. EPA.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said, "Making sure that residents of the community near the Air National Guard Base have clean, safe, drinking water is our absolute top priority. Under Governor Cuomo's strong leadership, the State's Water Quality Rapid Response Team and DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos have addressed the need to connect homes to public water as quickly as possible. We are grateful to DEC for the important role it has played in this process."
"We look forward to connecting residents impacted by PFOS with public water from SCWA that is constantly tested and meets health standards," said SCWA Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey W. Szabo. "And we thank Governor Cuomo for making this a reality very quickly."
Senator Ken LaValle said, "I'm pleased to see the progress in securing safe, clean water for the homes identified as having contaminated wells. The connection to the municipal water system is a critical step in protecting the health of area residents. We need to remain diligent in monitoring the situation and assure that all issues are addressed expeditiously for the safety of the community."
NYS Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. said, "With today's announcement, I continue to be impressed with the urgency, speed, and transparency with which the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has acted and remained while addressing this environmental concern."
In late February 2016, Governor Cuomo established the Water Quality Rapid Response Team charged with swiftly identifying and addressing critical drinking water contamination concerns across the state. Co-chaired by DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos and DOH Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, the team has been working to rapidly respond to site-specific issues, and to develop and Action Plan that will include recommendations to strengthen the state's existing drinking water, groundwater, and surface water protection programs.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend:
A conference titled The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: main obstacles and prospects of the settlement. View from Armenia and Azerbaijan has kicked off in Baku.
The event was opened by President of the Azerbaijan National NGO Forum Rauf Zeyni.
He said that the conference plays a crucial role in the conflicts settlement and is held for the first time during the conflicts history.
Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated its commitment to the peace process, said Zeyni, and expressed confidence that the two peoples want to compromise for the sake of peace in the region.
This conference is the first step towards peace, he noted.
The event is attended by famous Armenian human rights activist Vage Avetyan, Azerbaijani professor Kamil Salimov, political scientist Rasim Aghayev, head of the Intra-national Liberation Movement Organization Vahan Martirosyan, who asked for political asylum in Azerbaijan.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Police Looking for Woman Who Stole Shrimp at Stop and Shop in Islandia
Crime, Press Releases
By Long Island News & PR Published: November 08 2016
LongIsland.com
Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Fourth Precinct Crime Section officers are seeking the publics help to identify and locate the pictured woman.
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Columnists Press Releases
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Anakhanum Hidayatova Trend:
The persons, who impudently hold the power in Armenia, who have committed genocide in Khojaly, are now committing genocide against the people of Armenia, said Vahan Martirosyan, head of the Armenian Intra-National Liberation Movement Organization.
They conceal from the Armenian people that the Armenian Church has been preserved intact in Baku, that 30,000 Armenians live here. I have had an opportunity to meet with them, said Martirosyan during a conference titled The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: main obstacles and prospects of the settlement. View from Armenia and Azerbaijan in Baku Nov. 8.
The situation is the opposite in Armenia mosques are destroyed, history is rewritten, he said, adding, Armenian media doesnt report about this event today.
He also noted that there is no Armenian who can heartily say that the war has brought them benefits, except for the ruling elite, the number of which doesnt reach 500 people.
They are making profit on this conflict, added Martirosyan.
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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Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva Trend:
Giving a high level of autonomy to Nagorno-Karabakh within the borders of Azerbaijans territorial integrity can help resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Armenian human rights activist Vage Avetyan told Trend in Baku.
He made the remarks Nov. 8 at the conference titled The Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: main obstacles and prospects of the settlement. View from Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The human rights activist said he came to Baku on his own initiative.
Avetyan believes in the effectiveness of his activities as a human rights defender in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's resolution.
I wouldn't have wasted a second of my time if I wasn't sure of the result, he said.
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 series of recent attacks targeting French, UN, and Malian forces throughout Mali has been claimed by the jihadist group Ansar Dine. The assaults ranged from the Kidal Region in the extreme north to the Timbuktu Region. Additional attacks blamed on Ansar Dine, but not yet claimed, have occurred as far south as just outside the capital, Bamako.
Starting on Oct. 29, Ansar Dine fired rockets into the main United Nations camp near the town of Kidal. No casualties were reported, but two Bangladeshi helicopters were damaged by the rockets. Two days later, the jihadist group claimed an IED blast targeting a French military vehicle near the town of Abeibara near the town of Aguelhok. On Nov. 4, IED blast struck two French military vehicles, which killed one French soldier. On the same day, a third French vehicle was hit by an IED near Kidal. All three were claimed by Ansar Dine.
Further south near Gourma in the Timbuktu Region, Ansar Dine claimed a complex assault on a national guard post near the city. Ansar Dines forces were reportedly able to temporarily take control over the outpost. Additionally, the group claimed to capture 5 vehicles, burned another 6, and captured at least one DShK machine gun. It also reported that one of its own fighters was killed in that attack.
Further south, two attacks that have yet to be claimed, but are widely suspected to have been the work of one of Ansar Dines branches in the southern half of the country. Yesterday, a UN convoy near the town of Douentza in the Mopti Region was subjected to an IED and then a subsequent ambush. One Togolese peacekeeper was killed and seven others from the contingent were wounded. Earlier today, Banamba, a town close to Bamako in the Koulikoro Region, was the scene of a large-scale assault.
A national guard outpost, a gendarme post, a bank, and a prison were all targeted in the multi-faceted assault. At the national guard post, three vehicles were taken by the suspected jihadists. While at the prison, at least 21 prisoners escaped during the assault.
These attacks, along with an unclaimed IED blast on a French vehicle near Aguelhok today, puts the total number of al Qaeda-linked attacks in Mali and the wider West African region in 2016 at 203. The majority of claimed attacks have been the work of Ansar Dine, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrebs largely Tuareg front group.
Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa.
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Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force, has returned to Iraq, according to Akram al Kabi, a cleric who is head of the Iranian-backed Harakat al Nujaba (HN). The Iraqi militia is a member of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella organization of Iraqi militias.
Soleimani was purportedly spotted near Mosul on Oct. 17, the day of the sieges launch, and was confirmed to be in the Kurdistan Regional Government territory on Oct. 23, before flying to Tehran on Oct. 28 to visit the families of Iranian soldiers killed in Syria. Confirmed photos of Soleimani in Iraq since his visit to Tehran have yet to emerge. Soleimani is banned from international travel under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses the Iran nuclear deal, until Oct. 2020.
Under Soleimanis supervision, Kabi formed HN in 2013 out of the Asaib Ahl al Haq militia, itself an offshoot of Muqtada al Sadrs Mahdi Army, for the purpose of fighting in Syria. Nujaba joined the PMF in 2014 when it was formed following the fatwa of Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Numbering 10,000, HN is currently sustaining operations in the Mosul and Aleppo combat theaters.
Designated by the US Treasury in 2008 for threatening Iraqs stability and planning attacks against US forces, Kabi is close to Iranian officials and openly declares loyalty to Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the velayat-e faghih (guardianship of the jurisprudence), the founding principle of the Islamic Republic. Last November, Kabi told Iraqi media he would overthrow the government in Baghdad if ordered by Khamenei. During a visit to Iran in late August and early September, Kabi was given a warm reception, unprecedented in the scale of Iranian media publicity surrounding a Shiite militia leaders visit.
Iranian advisers and commander Qassem Soleimani are on Iraqi soil, Kabi told Iraqs Al Sumaria media outlet on Nov. 6. Iran has assisted us since the beginning of Iraqs occupation and has not only placed its skill and weapons at our disposal, but Iranians have sacrificed their blood and given many martyrs.
In separate remarks to Al Alam two days ago, Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, the PMF operations commander and deputy to Soleimani, also thanked Tehran, without whom our successes would not be possible. Muhandis announced that the Popular Mobilization Forces enjoy direct and fundamental support from Iran, and this is per the request of the Iraqi government. During the past summer, senior Iraqi government officials called Soleimani an official military advisor to Iraq.
Kabi was photographed on Nov. 5 inspecting HN positions in the western Mosul axis. The images and statements of Kabi were reported by IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency.
The Mosul operation is the final stage of cleansing Iraq from the filth of terrorists, Kabi told his fighters, and we must then take cultural actions to destroy takfiri thought in this country. The militia leader claimed that America and terrorist mercenaries will continue their ominous conspiracies to destabilize this country.
The PMF, including HN, are moving to cut off the Islamic State in Mosul, capture the town of Tal Afar west of the city, and push unto the border with Syria. Senior PMF commanders and Kabi have openly discussed shifting into Syria following Mosul under the narrative of fighting the Islamic State.
Amir Toumaj is a independent analyst and contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
Trend:
Chairman of Azerbaijans Central Election Commission (CEC) Mazahir Panahov is on his visit to the US in order to observe presidential election in the country, the CEC told Trend Nov. 8.
Panahov, who visited the US at the invitation of William Sweeney, president and CEO of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), will participate in various events related to the election in the US, and will also meet the heads of supreme electoral structures of a number of countries and international organizations.
The CEC chairman will also observe the election process at polling stations on the election day.
Panahov will also attend the 7th Global Electoral Organization (GEO-7) Conference, which will take place on Nov. 9, at the invitation of the IFES president.
The US presidential elections will be held Nov. 8.
Main candidates are Hillary Clinton (Democratic Party) and Donald Trump (Republican Party).
Aaron Travis Daniels, also known as Harun Muhammad and Abu Yusef, was arrested at an airport in Columbus, Ohio yesterday before he could fly to Trinidad. Daniels final, intended destination was Libya, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). But instead of making his way to North Africa, Daniels was arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State.
Some of the DOJs allegations are noteworthy, especially those pointing to the Islamic States external attack network, which seeks to instigate and plot terrorism in both the US and Europe.
The DOJ does not allege that Daniels planned to commit an attack in Ohio or elsewhere inside the United States. Instead, the 20 year-old is charged with planning to join the Islamic State in Libya, after expressing his interest in violent jihad and traveling overseas via social media and in various communications. But he also communicated with at least one Islamic State external attack planner, according to the complaint.
The Islamic State has repeatedly told followers that they can migrate to any of the so-called caliphates lands to support jihad. In addition to Iraq and Syria, jihadi hotspots such as Libya are routinely advertised as acceptable destinations for serving the cause. This is consistent with the Islamic States establishment of provinces beginning in late 2014. The group tells believers that the caliphate is a truly global enterprise and that they need not make their way to the Levant or the Middle East to do their duty. In his latest audio message, for instance, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi heaped praise on his loyalists in Sirte, Libya, emphasizing that they were just like his soldiers elsewhere.
Daniels was allegedly in contact with an Islamic State operative known as Abu Isa Al Amriki, who acted as a recruiter and external attack planner. According to the DOJ, Daniels said at one point that it was al Amriki who suggested he go to Libya to support jihad.
Al Amriki and his wife, an Australian national known as Umm Isa Amriki, were killed in an airstrike near Al Bab, Syria on Apr. 22. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook announced their deaths in early May, saying that Abu Isa al Amriki was a Sudanese national also known as Abu Saad al Sudani. Al Amriki (Al Sudani) was involved in planning attacks against the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, Cook said at the time. Both al Sudani and his wife were active in recruiting foreign fighters in efforts to inspire attacks against Western interests.
The death of the couple removes influential ISIL [Islamic State] recruiters and extremists who actively sought to harm Western interests and further disrupts and degrades ISILs ability to plot external attacks, Cook said. Cook also described al Amriki as an external attack planner. Press reporting indicates that Umm Isa Amriki was both active on social media and worked to attract women to the jihadis cause.
Federal authorities claim that Daniels wired money to an intermediary for Abu Isa Al Amriki. The DOJs announcement specifically mentions a sum of $250 that Daniels sent to an Islamic State operative in January 2016.
Therefore, if the DOJs allegations are proven, then Daniels case provides an additional example of how the Islamic States external attack network has been able to engage would-be followers online throughout the US and Europe.
In March, another Ohio man, Munir Abdulkader, pleaded guilty to various terrorist charges. Abdulkader communicated with a key Islamic State recruiter, Junaid Hussein, who was killed in an American airstrike in Raqqa, Syria on Aug. 24, 2015. Hussein was also one of the Islamic States external attack planners. Through these communications, the DOJ announced in July, Hussein directed and encouraged Abdulkader to plan and execute a violent attack within the United States. Hussein may have been in contact with the two gunmen who opened fire at an event dedicated to drawing images of the Prophet Mohammed in Garland, Texas in May 2015. British officials also accused Hussein and his comrades of plotting attacks inside the UK. [See LWJ report, Ohio man conspired with Islamic State recruiter, Justice Department says.]
The Islamic States external operations arm has planned large-scale attacks such as the assault on Paris in Nov. 2015. But the groups online planners have also directed small-scale attacks in Europe. Officials have described these plots as being remote-controlled. [See LWJ report, Terror plots in Germany, France were remote-controlled by Islamic State operatives.]
The US-led military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has repeatedly targeted operatives involved in plotting against the West. US officials have stressed that the external operations arm is integrated with the rest of the organization. Baghdadis lieutenants are tasked with defending their turf over there, while also planning terror over here.
Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.
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Research Consult all the research projects undertaken at the Centre across our six thematic groups
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 9
Trend:
Today, Azerbaijan marks the National Flag Day. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed an order to declare Nov. 9 as National Flag Day on Nov. 17, 2009.
The Azerbaijani Democratic Republic, which existed until 1920, adopted the Azerbaijani tricolor as the national flag of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic on Nov. 9, 1918.
After gaining independence in 1991, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan Republic announced a tricolor flag with a star and a crescent as the national flag of Azerbaijan on Feb. 5, 1991.
The government made amendments to Article 105 of the Labor Code on State Flag Day in November 2009. Under the changes, Azerbaijan declared Nov. 9 as a legal holiday.
The law "On the State Flag of the Azerbaijan Republic" provides a detailed description. The state flag is a symbol of Azerbaijani national sovereignty.
The state flag of Azerbaijan represents a rectangular panel consisting of three equal horizontal bands colored blue, red, and green, with a white crescent and an eight-pointed star are centered in the red band. The ratio of the flag's width to its length is 1:2.
National Flag Square was also inaugurated with President Aliyev's participation in Baku on Sept. 1, 2010. Aliyev signed an order on the establishment of National Flag Square in Baku on Nov. 17, 2007.
The necessary infrastructure has been created over an area of 60 hectares.
The national flag with a 162 meter-high flagpole measures 70 meters high and 35 meters wide and weighs 350 kilograms. The total weight of the construction is 220 tons. The flag's total area is 2,450 square meters with a weight of about 350 kilograms.
The National Flag Museum was also established in the area upon President Aliyev's initiative.
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Culture / Art Republik
Nov 09, 2016 | By Staff Writer
The journey filmmaker K Rajagopal (Raja) has taken over the span of almost three decades reminds us that filmmaking does not always run on a steam engine and instead can be a more personal experience that takes time to mature and unfold. Raja first hit the local film scene by winning the Special Jury Prize at the Singapore International Film Festival Silver Screen Awards three years in a row with his short films I Cant Sleep Tonight (1995), The Glare (1996) and Absence (1997).
Over the years, while he was also engaged in theatre and television work, he would wander back into the film scene with new short films that would extend the exploration of issues like memories, identity and displacement. Collaborations like The Lucky Seven Project and 7 Letters, where he was one of several directors making an omnibus feature film, also brought Raja back into the thick of the filmmaking buzz that had hit Singapore over the past decade.
He finally completed his first feature film A Yellow Bird early this 2016. The film competed at this years Cannes Film Festival for the Camera dOr award for feature film debuts and was also screened at the same festivals La Semaine de la Critique segment (International Critics Week). The films story is simple a man released from prison after eight years tries to reconnect back with life and his family just the way Raja likes his filmmaking process to be. Raja relives this journey with Art Republik in an interview.
What does the Yellow Bird in the film title symbolise?
The idea came from my mother. She once said, if you see a yellow bird, it means you will meet someone nice or hear some good news. This came to my mind again when I was writing the script. I felt it represented the story I was telling.
How did the idea for the film come about?
I was reading The Stranger by Albert Camus about a man who is drawn into a murder and later sentenced to death. I felt I related to the questions about morality raised in the book, such as what is right and wrong, who is to say whether you are right or wrong or how you live your life. The Stranger itself is also influenced by other books like Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. So one book inspired the other and I felt there were a lot of interesting connections from one writer to the other, which I found compelling.
In light of what I read, I was looking at the context of Singapore and exploring the idea of alienation. As you know, my films have always been about alienation, displacement, the minority, so all these ideas came together in that way and thats how I started writing the script.
Whats your process in scriptwriting?
I started by writing the story, then I broke it down into different scenes and tried to connect them. I also worked with Jeremy Chua, who was my collaborator in developing the script. We would talk the scenes through and I would share with him what I see in each scene and what I think the different characters would say. Having decided on how the different scenes are set up, he would help write it out in words.
Did you have a full script at the point of time when you started production?
Yes, in fact I had 10 drafts. We needed a script because we were pitching for the grants. With my initial script, we were invited to a pitch at the LAtelier programme at Cinefondation with 15 other directors. I presented my script to many people and one of them who read it eventually became my co-producer from France. We also presented our script to Cinema Du Monde, the World Cinema Fund. So again it went through many pairs of eyes.
Your cast is quite a mixed bag, with the leads being a local actor and two very accomplished actresses in their own circles, Huang Lu and Seema Biswas. How did you find them?
For the role of Chen Chen, the prostitute Siva encounters in the film, I needed a professional actress who has acted in films of a more independent nature and I held many auditions. I came across Huang Lu having watched her in films like Blind Massage and Blind Mountain. She is in fact a prominent film actress whom many independent directors like to work with and has been appearing in numerous independent films over the last 10 years. So I just sent her my script and I remember Huang Lu coming back to tell me I am the Yellow Bird. That was her reply.
As for Seema Biswas, she has always been very selective with her film projects. Her biggest claim to fame was The Bandit Queen, directed by Shekhar Kapur in 1994. She has acted in a few Hollywood films and she is also a theatre actress as well. For Seema, she always decides with her heart, and she felt she identified with the story. So she came on board as well.
I heard you made Siva, the lead actor, sleep on the streets to condition him for his role. Could you share more about this little adventure?
Yes, I did put him out on the streets for two nights in which he was not allowed to go home. He basically camped at the HDB block where we filmed, sleeping on cardboard. I wanted him to feel comfortable in the role. If he went into the role cold, it would have been difficult.
Also, Siva had a different work process with me from the other cast members. I did not show him the script but only feed it to him in parts. I wanted him to slip into the role without having to plan or anticipate too much and this was also possible because dialogue was minimal in his role. I felt it was important for his characterisation to unfold organically because thats how life is we never know what will happen to us in the next hour.
The films trailer reveals a considerable portion of the story unfolding in a forest, could you share, without providing spoilers, the significance of this in the film?
For me, the forest space is a metaphor in the film. The first half of the film is rather claustrophobic as it is set in the city area with a highly dense living space. So compared to the first half where everything is concrete and defined, the second half takes place in a more loosely-defined space with water and trees. In the story, Siva is being asked to leave his house by his own mother, so there is a force pushing him away from his natural habitat to somewhere unknown. There is in fact also a scene in which someone from the National Environment Agency comes to shoot the birds out of the trees in a sort of visual parallel to what Siva is experiencing.
I would like to add that the decision to shoot in the forest actually arose out of constraints. It was not supposed to be, but in the end, I felt it turned out better for the film.
What kind of feedback have you received from audiences so far?
Actually, the film has just started to travel in the film festival circuit. After Cannes, it went to the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea and the Pacific Meridian International Film Festival in Vladivostok, Russia. We have also received invitations to several other film festivals around the world.
I would say I have seen a whole spectrum of reactions to my film. Speaking to people in Cannes, some really liked it while others found it too intense and dark. Some have commented that the film is relentless in a way that it grips you and does not let go.
One of the most unforgettable responses I had was from a Japanese lady in Cannes. She came up to me after watching the film and started weeping. She said she identified with Sivas character because she has also been on this journey trying to find connection with people and she feels very displaced, living in France. The film deals with the search for what is true to you and it spoke to her. I actually sat down with her, not to console her, but to hear her speak her heart out, even though some meaning got lost in her patchy English (she was more fluent in French) and I thought that was a really beautiful moment.
Huang Lu also shared that she cried watching the film because she identified with how her character was fleshed out in the final cut as well as the language of the film. Thankfully, she also commented that the Mandarin spoken in the film was rather authentic!
What do you think are the greatest challenges for filmmaking in Singapore?
For me, my personal challenge has always been in developing a full script. Before this, I have made several short films and directed for television. For television work, there is usually a certain standard style, even though sometimes we try to deliver something a little more out of the box. For my earlier short films, I did not have scripts. It was often a very instinctive process and I could do them relatively quickly.
It is different when it is a feature film, and a debut feature at that. It is certainly a bigger responsibility. The fact that its your first, I ended up getting into a bit of a knot for a while, perhaps out of a certain pressure I put on myself. Then I realised it didnt work for me. I needed time to think about the story. So in the end, it took me three years to hone the script. I wanted to be very sure that this was the story I was going to tell. While the challenges of producing, working with actors and technicalities are always there, this for me was the main challenge you must be sure about the story you want to tell.
Of course, there were also other challenges and the industry is not mature. But for me, I knew A Yellow Bird was meant to be a simple film and I did not intend it to be anything more. It was something very close to my heart and I didnt want to rush it and treat it like a project. For me filmmaking is always something very personal. I have to be in the right frame of mind and emotional space to do it.
What kind of doors have opened for you since the completion of A Yellow Bird?
One of the best things that arose from this journey has been knowing my collaborators and having the opportunity to work with them. I would say my meeting with Claire Lajoumard, my producer in France, through the LAtelier programme at Cinefondation has been the starting point of many other collaborations. For instance, she introduced me to the sound designer and colourist. When I first met them, I just knew they were the right people to work with. They were not just interested in the technicalities of making the film. They were really interested in the core of the story, the emotions and the characters. Even in post-production, I enjoyed the work process thoroughly as no one treated it like a job. I made so many good friends and I am still in touch with them.
In Singapore, I am also fortunate to have met some good collaborators. Upon completing the film, I have been invited by many people to take on more film projects here. So undeniably, I have felt a certain sense of acknowledgement, and I view every opportunity that has come by positively. I mean, you never know when they will come again.
Words by SK Sing
This article was published in Art Republik.
According to a decree by Elmar Gasimov, Rector of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS), about celebration of the State Flag Day of Azerbaijan at BHOS, first lessons in all BHOS classrooms and lecture halls were dedicated to the historical date. The State Flag Day is commemorated on November 9.
At the lessons, the professors and lecturers told students about every citizens honorable duty to treat the State Flag of Azerbaijan with respect, as it is one of the state symbols of the country. It was also emphasized that it is very important to hold the national flag high and always be ready to defend the honor of Azerbaijani state.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Vugar Imanov Trend:
YARAT Contemporary Art Space presents a major solo exhibition DIS PLACE by Colombian-born artist Oscar Murillo and N VAR, ODUR (IT IS WHAT IT IS) solo exhibition of Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed, Trend Life reports.
The Azerbaijani artists N VAR, ODUR (IT IS WHAT IT IS) solo exhibition presents six new monumental works exploring gender relations and social structures within traditional Azerbaijani communities.
Known for his textile works that build upon and transform the traditional Azerbaijani craft of carpet making, Ahmed started a new body of work drawn from his research into the social habitat of Azeri people living outside the capital Baku.
The title of the exhibition N VAR, ODUR is an old Azeri saying emphasizing a sense of imperturbability, an attitude of accepting things how they are and have been for many years in the past. It is a state of mind both content and reconciling with life how it is.
A series of interviews and conversations he made throughout his travels in Azerbaijan, comment on his new productions that play upon symbolic gestures, rituals and objects specific to traditional Azeri communities. His works urge towards an understanding of a disappearing cultural practice. They are stripped of any kind of melancholy and register traditions as Eastern Practices taking place on the border between Asia and Europe, between East and West. It results in a new body of sculptures, films, drawings and textile works investigating traditional relations with sexuality and death, addressing social taboos and individual trauma.
Oscar Murillos exhibition, which includes a newly commissioned series of works alongside textiles, paintings, sculptures and videos, continues the artist's engagement with materials as a means of exploring wider conceptual dialogues surrounding structures of production within a specific geographic context. Most of the elements which make up the exhibition are sourced in Azerbaijan as the result of the artist's encounters with individuals and communities in the lead up to the exhibition.
A core aspect of the show is the artist's collaboration with a community of skilled workers at a factory which manufactures silk textiles in Sheki, a historic town in Azerbaijan. Located at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, it was an important post on the ancient Silk Route.
Murillo collaborated with local artisans to create a series of large-scale works based on a medieval stained glass technique still practiced in the region and found in Sheki's famous Khan's Palace. The artist replaces the delicate material of glass with scraps of discarded metal from the factory yard, thereby playing with the original aesthetic and adding a political dimension to the poetic oriental design.
Murillo frequently explores issues of community and migration drawing upon his own cultural heritage and that of others. Through a meaningful collaboration with the Sheki silk factory and the town's community, these discourses manifest themselves through both the materials he chooses to use and a revival of the factory as a site of production.
Location: YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, National Flag Square, Bayil, AZ1003
Dates: 11 November - 29 January 2017
Exhibition open: Tuesday through Sunday, from 11:00 until 20:00. Admission is free
Faig Ahmed (Sumgayit, Azerbaijan, 1982) graduated from the Sculpture Department of Azerbaijan State Academy of Fine Art in 2004. He represented Azerbaijan at the nation's inaugural pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and participated in the show "Love Me, Love Me Not" in 2013.
Ahmed has exhibited his works worldwide including group and solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Dubai, Moscow and the UAE. In 2013, the artist was nominated for the Jameel Prize 3 at Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His works are in public collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Seattle Art Museum, Palm Springs Museum of Art and in private collections such as West Collection, Philadelphia, the collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York City, Galila's Collection, Brussels, Ranza collection, Rome, Jameel Foundation, London and H.H. Sh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, UAE. Just this year Ahmed's works have been exhibited in several museum group shows including Museum of Fine Art Boston, Bellevue Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Sydney) and Mona - Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart, Tasmania, Australia). Ahmed lives and works in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Born in 1986 in Colombia, Oscar Murillo received his B.F.A. in 2007 from the University of Westminster, London, followed by his M.F.A in 2012 from the Royal College of Art, London. His paintings, video works, and performances are tied to a notion of community stemming from the artist's cross-cultural ties to London and La Paila, Colombia, where he currently lives and works. Murillo has exhibited widely at prominent institutions worldwide. In 2015, solo presentations were held at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York (part of Performa 15); Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota; and Centro Cultural Daofz y Velarde, Madrid (part of ArcoColombia 2015). Earlier this year, Murillo's work was featured in the 2nd Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art 2016 in China and the 3rd Aichi Triennial. Homo Faber: A Rainbow Caravan in Japan. The artist is currently participating in the 5th Anyang Public Art Project (APAP) in Korea.
YARAT is an artist-founded, not-for-profit art organisation based in Baku, Azerbaijan, established by Aida Mahmudova in 2011. YARAT (which means 'create' in Azerbaijani) is dedicated to contemporary art with a long-term commitment to creating a hub for artistic practice, research, thinking and education in the Caucasus, Central Asia and surrounding region.
YARAT comprises the YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, ARTIM project space, YARAT Studios, YAY Gallery and an extended educational programme.
YARAT Art Centre, a 2000m2 converted Soviet-era naval building, opened in March 2015 and is the organisation's main exhibition space. The exhibition programme features new commissions by artists responding to the region. It supports and provides access to artists from the Caucasus, Central Asia and surrounding region, while engaging and introducing established, international artists. The Centre is also home to YARAT's collection, which is exhibited in the space once a year.
In October 2015, YARAT opened ARTIM, a central, accessible and dynamic space in Baku's Old City. ARTIM (meaning 'progress' in Azerbaijani) shows experimental practices and new work by emerging Azeri art professionals (selected through open call) and the international artists from the residency programme. It features 12 small-scale projects each year.
YAY Gallery is a commercial gallery that opened in 2012 in order to further support arts infrastructure in Azerbaijan. The gallery shows mid-career and established Azerbaijani artists both locally and abroad. Yay (meaning "share" in Azerbaijani) shares all proceeds from sales of work between the artists and YARAT.
In 2016 YARAT launched a renewed residency programme. Aimed at developing young Azerbaijani voices and emerging international artists, the focus is on new, innovative practices and artists with an interest in the region. The residency programme is based at YARAT Studios, which has 11 spaces for artists.
Last Wednesday, IP Inclusive launched Women in IP, a new network founded as part of efforts to improve equality, diversity and inclusivity in the IP community.
The event, which took place at Norton Rose Fulbrights office near London Bridge, featured an animated panel discussion about mentoring and networking and career development.
After the discussion, delegates moved upstairs for a drinks reception and an opportunity to exercise their networking skills, accompanied by stunning views of London landmarks by night.
The panel was led by Carol Arnold, former IP counsel at Shell and immediate past president of the IP Federation.
Arnold said that networking does not have to be an arduous task. Ultimately, it is about finding someone you connect with. This idea was echoed by the rest of the panel which featured representatives from IP law and regulation. They concluded that networking is meant to be useful and enjoyable.
In further discussions about networking, delegates heard that that while it is easy to overlook peers with a different IP background, networking with such practitioners could help you expand your breadth of IP knowledge.
Head of IP at ARM, Suzanne Oliver, encouraged delegates to take the initiative and ask someone to be a mentor. This was supported Arnold, who had recently retired and insisted that regardless of your level of expertise and experience, you can still benefit from a mentorship.
Starting conversations
On the topic of inclusivity, Parminder Lally, European patent attorney at Turnbull Lynch Intellectual Property, shared her approach to networking.
Describing herself as a shy person, Lally said that she learned to adapt to different situations. With time, she grew in confidence, finding a style of networking that catered to her personality.
The panel offered practical tips which included bringing a colleague or friend to event and looking out for those who seem excluded from conversation. In a gathering which appears to be full of several closed groups, the panel encouraged delegates to join in with the conversation and start their own vibrant conversation, if all else fails.
The launch event was complemented by a great level of engagement from audience members. One delegate raised the topic of unconscious and implicit bias towards women in the profession.
In response, Jean Hughes, director of law firms at CPA Global, warned delegates about the damaging effects of bias against women among women. Hughes said that it was important to her to avoid bias of any kind, be it for or against women.
Benefits of mentoring
It was said that mentoring and networking could lead to career opportunities and help you gain confidence as a professional.
All members of the panel claimed to have benefited from being a mentor or having a mentor during their careers. They spoke about the importance of having someone around who could offer impartial advice and constructive criticism, believing in your own abilities and promoting respect for yourself and others. It was noted that it would take the commitment of both women and men to promote these values in the IP community.
For more information about IP Inclusives Women in IP initiative, you can visit the website. You can also follow the Twitter account and activities at #WomeninIP. To join Managing IP and others and become a signatory of the IP Inclusive charter, click here.
You can also find out more about and join Managing IP's Women in IP Network.
Washington ; Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the White House race against her Republican rival Donald Trump, a top American pollster has said on the eve of what is being described as the most crucial election in decades.
"Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the election," said FiveThirtyEight websites Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the outcome of 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
This is up from a 65 per cent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton, 69, has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign, he said.
Clintons projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 per cent from 2.9 per cent, Silver said. In the 19 latest polls taken into account by the poll, Clinton is leading in 17 polls while Trump, 70, leads in just two polls. Clintons poll margin ranges from six per cent to two per cent, while Trumps ranges from two to five per cent.
"Seven of the 19 polls have Clinton leading by 4 points; another four have her ahead by 3 points, then we have a smattering of 1s, 2s and 6s,along with two pollsters, IBD/ TIPP and Los Angeles/USC Dornsife, who still have Trump ahead. "On average, Clinton leads by 2.9 points in the polls, although the highest-rated pollsters have her a bit higher at 3.8 points, on average. As is usually the case, the range of national polls closely matches the FiveThirtyEight popular- vote forecast," Silver said. On the eve of the elections, Clinton had a lead of 2.9 percentage points over Trump in the websites average of polls. PTI
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Elchin Mehdiyev Trend:
The tickets of the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games to be held in Azerbaijan will be sold in March-April 2017, Azad Rahimov, Azerbaijani minister of youth and sport, said.
Rahimov made the remarks at a press conference Nov. 8 following the fourth meeting of the Coordination Commission on preparations for the Islamic Solidarity Games.
He added that the tickets will be sold in the same way as during the first European Games.
Sale points will open in several places in Baku, including the shopping centers that are the event partners, the minister said. The tickets will also be sold online.
Rahimov said the ticket prices will not be higher than during the first European Games.
The minister also said the opening and closing ceremonies of the event will be organized at the highest level as during the first European Games and other projects.
He added that the ceremonies will be very colorful and interesting.
The opening and closing ceremonies will be held at the Baku Olympic Stadium, he added. We do not want to disclose the scenario of these ceremonies. I can only say that the history of the Islamic world, East will be demonstrated. I guarantee that the event will be very interesting.
Regardless of How America Votes, Americans Want a Different Foreign Policy
I have said throughout this presidential campaign that it doesn't matter much which candidate wins. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are authoritarians and neither can be expected to roll back the leviathan state that destroys our civil liberties at home while destroying our economy and security with endless wars overseas. Candidates do not matter all that much, despite what the media would have us believe. Ideas do matter, however. And regardless of which of these candidates is elected, the battle of ideas now becomes critical.
The day after the election is our time to really focus our efforts on making the case for a peaceful foreign policy and the prosperity it will bring. While we may not have much to cheer in Tuesday's successful candidate, we have learned a good deal about the state of the nation from the campaigns. From the surprising success of the insurgent Bernie Sanders to a Donald Trump campaign that broke all the mainstream Republican Party rules - and may have broken the Republican Party itself - what we now understand more clearly than ever is that the American people are fed up with politics as usual. And more importantly they are fed up with the same tired old policies.
Last month a fascinating poll was conducted by the Center for the National Interest and the Charles Koch Institute. A broad ranging 1,000 Americans were asked a series of questions about US foreign policy and the 15 year "war on terror." You might think that after a decade and a half, trillions of dollars, and thousands of lives lost, Americans might take a more positive view of this massive effort to "rid the world of evil-doers," as then-president George W. Bush promised. But the poll found that only 14 percent of Americans believe US foreign policy has made them more safe! More than 50 percent of those polled said the next US president should use less force overseas, and 80 percent said the president must get authorization from Congress before taking the country to war.
These results should make us very optimistic about our movement, as it shows that we are rapidly approaching the "critical mass" where new ideas will triumph over the armies of the status quo.
We know those in Washington with a vested interest in maintaining a US empire overseas will fight to the end to keep the financial gravy train flowing. The neocons and the liberal interventionists will continue to preach that we must run the world or everything will fall to ruin. But this election and many recent polls demonstrate that their time has passed. They may not know it yet, but their failures are too obvious and Americans are sick of paying for them.
What is to be done? We must continue to educate ourselves and others. We must resist those who are preaching "interventionism-lite" and calling it a real alternative. Claiming we must protect our "interests" overseas really means using the US military to benefit special interests. That is not what the military is for. We must stick to our non-interventionist guns. No more regime change. No more covert destabilization programs overseas. A solid defense budget, not an imperial military budget. US troops home now. End US military action in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and so on. Just come home.
Americans want change, no matter who wins. We need to be ready to provide that alternative.
Buy Ron Paul's latest book, Swords into Plowshares, here.
Dr. Ron Paul
Project Freedom
Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today. Dr. Paul is the leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He is known among both his colleagues in Congress and his constituents for his consistent voting record in the House of Representatives: Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the "one exception to the Gang of 535" on Capitol Hill.
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2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.
The Rise Of Eurasian Silk Road
Premier Lis Eurasian tour heralds the new future of Eurasia that will be based on regional economic integration.
Last Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang began a week-long trip in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Latvia seeking to promote Chinas relations with the four countries, and boosting regional development and cooperation.
Interestingly, it was one of those multinational visits that was left in the dark by the Western media. Yet, Premier Lis visits precipitate increasing economic, political and security cooperation in a world region that the leading US strategic thinkers have historically considered critical to American primacy; that is, US global hegemony.
U.S. security doctrines contend that no Eurasian challengers should emerge capable of dominating Eurasia. In reality, Eurasia wants peace and prosperity, not dominance and hegemony.
The rise of Eurasian Economy
During his tour, Premier Li also attended the 15th prime ministers meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, and the fifth leaders meeting of China and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in Riga. In the Latvian capital, he proposed four principles to guide 16+1 cooperation: mutual respect and assistance, win-win cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, and joint development.
From the Eurasian perspective, Premier Lis visit continues to pave the way to regional cooperation in Eurasia and economic integration within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). In January 2015, the EAEU was signed by Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, with further accession treaties by Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.
The five EAEU nations represent an integrated single market of more than 180 million people and a GDP of $1.5 trillion; the economic size of Canada or South Korea, respectively. While Russia dominates more than 85% of the total, the real importance of the Union is that through economic integration it will ensure peace and economic cooperation between the member countries.
From the Chinese perspective, the four countries - Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Latvia - are all located along the ancient Silk Road. Indeed, Lis tour sought to foster the joint implementation of Chinas One Road One Belt (OBOR) initiative.
It is the modern restoration of the trade, logistics and infrastructure network that will connect East, South and Southeast Asia with Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, through Central and Eastern Europe to Western Europe.
From SCO security to economic development
In the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit, Premier Li also backed the creation of a development bank and fund to boost financial cooperation. The proposal was signed by member countries of the five-country group: China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Li also proposed that China is open to the establishment of a free-trade zone among the SCO members.
The transition to a preferential trade regime within the SCO is a complicated matter, said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Free trade among the SCO members will not happen overnight, but it is something that could take the cooperation to a new level in the not-so-distant future.
The proposed development bank and fund, and the free-trade zone complement not only the OBOR Initiative, but the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS New Development Bank, and China-proposed free-trade initiatives, which rely on regional and trans-regional economic integration .
However, historically, an economically strong, politically coordinated and strategically united Eurasia has not been in Washingtons interest. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the veteran US security advisers, argued in The Grand Chessboard (1997), a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia and Americas global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.
In this view, the Eurasia is a grand chessboard, which has room for only one hegemon - the United States.
From destabilization to prosperity
Three years ago, when I first argued that the SCO is moving from security to economic development, the idea was welcomed with great skepticism in the West. After all, for half a century, US global primacy has been seen to depend on pre-eminence in Eurasia, according to Western security doctrines.
Eurasia is the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played, and that struggle involves geopolitical interests, Brzezinski argued in The Grand Chessboard. Only a year before the release of his treatise on Eurasian power, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan founded an Eurasian political, economic and military organization called the Shanghai Five. After the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, it became the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
In 2007, the SCO signed a collective security treaty agreement to broaden cooperation in security, crime and drug trafficking. At the same time, many nations have received observer status at the SCO summits (including Afghanistan, Belarus, India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan), while others have become dialogue partners, (including Belarus, Sri Lanka and Turkey, a member of NATO). Today, the SCOs six full members account for 60 percent of the land mass of Eurasia. It is home to a quarter of world population.
Brzezinski thought it was imperative that no Eurasian challenger should challenge America's global pre-eminence. Unlike NATO, the SCO does not seek hegemonic expansion through destabilization, but economic prosperity through stabilization. Thats the way to the future - the only way.
Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognised expert of the nascent multipolar world. He is the CEO of Difference Group and has served as Research Director at the India, China and America Institute (USA) and visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). For more, see www.differencegroup.net
2016 Copyright Dan Steinbock - 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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Anvar Mammadov Trend:
Serbia may use Azerbaijans transit potential, as well as joint the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), said Azerbaijans Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev.
Mustafayev, who is on an official visit to Serbia, made the remarks during his meeting with Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlovic.
The minister also noted the possibility of Azerbaijani companies participation in the privatization process, as well as in the implementation of infrastructure and public projects in Serbia.
Mustafayev also noted that the Serbia-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce already operates in Belgrade in order to develop trade and economic relations.
During the visit, the Azerbaijani minister also took part in the opening of a section of the Ljig-Prelina highway in Serbia. It should be noted that Azerbaijan allocated a loan worth 300 million euros to Serbia for the projects implementation. Total length of the highway is 40.3 kilometers. Sixty-six bridges and four tunnels have been built along the highway. Azerbaijans AzVirt LLC was the projects main contractor.
(Details added, first version posted on 10:35)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:
Shareholders of Azerbaijani insurance company Azerqarant have decided to liquidate the company, Rashad Mammadov, head of the companys management board, told Trend Nov. 8.
The company has already sent a relevant letter to Azerbaijans Financial Markets Supervisory Chamber, according to Mammadov.
Liquidation of the company is explained by the fact that part of the companys funds was placed as deposits in Nikoil Bank, Rabitabank and AtraBank, Mammadov said.
The majority of these funds were placed in Atrabank. But we started experiencing problems with the capital after the banks closure. So it was decided to liquidate the company since we cant increase the capital, he said.
"As of today, we are able to fulfill our obligations to the customers. I think we will not pass our portfolio for execution to another company. But we cannot completely exclude this option. There is no final decision on this issue yet," Mammadov added.
Azerqarant has been in the Azerbaijani insurance market since 1993. It received a perpetual license from the Azerbaijani Finance Ministry in 2008.
The official exchange rate on November 8 is 1.6686 AZN/USD.
MARTINSVILLE A law intended to prevent labor unions from bullying workers must become part of the state Constitution to help ensure it is permanent, the legislator behind a proposed amendment believes.
Along with choosing a new president and vice president and deciding some state and local races, area voters will join their counterparts across Virginia today in considering two proposed constitutional amendments.
Patrick County voters also will decide for a sixth time whether the county will impose a tax on prepared food and beverages.
Question 1 on the ballot states, Should Article 1 of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to prohibit any agreement or combination between an employer and a labor union or labor organization whereby (i) nonmembers of the union or organization are denied the right to work for the employer, (ii) membership to the union or organization is made a condition of employment or continuation of employment by such employer, or (iii) the union or organization acquires an employment monopoly in any such enterprise?
The state has had its right to work statute, containing much of the same language, since 1947.
But its not permanent enough, said Del. Richard Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, who sponsored legislation to put the constitutional amendment on the ballot.
The law could be repealed by a majority vote of the General Assembly. Bell said while no such effort has been made yet, there are indications that it could happen within the (state) political environment we live in and with our current attorney general.
Right to work has worked well for 70 years in Virginia, he said. Why do away with it?
Bell said that despite the law, he has heard people complain about union bullying.
People dont like it, he said of the harassment.
Under the amendment, unions dont lose any strength, Bell said they still could try and organize within companies.
However, it should be workers who decide what goes on in the workplace, not unions, he emphasized.
Question 2 on the ballot states, Shall the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to provide an option to the localities to exempt from taxation the real property of the surviving spouse of any law-enforcement officer, firefighter, search and rescue personnel, or emergency medical services personnel who was killed in the line of duty, where the surviving spouse occupies the real property as his or her principal place of residence and has not remarried?
Already, the Constitution allows property tax exemptions, including for joint real property of a married couple, when a military service veteran has a 100 percent service-connected, permanent and total disability specified by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Property of surviving spouses of eligible veterans also is included.
A similar exemption exists for property owned by spouses of United States armed forces members killed in combat.
Under the proposed amendment, the General Assembly could enact a law extending a tax exemption to spouses of emergency workers killed while on duty. Spouses would not have to live in Virginia at the time that their spouses die. But that exemption, like the others, would end when a surviving spouse remarries, the DOE website shows.
Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, sponsored legislation behind the proposed amendment. He could not be reached Monday for comment.
Voting booths will contain brochures explaining the amendments in detail.
Patrick County voters will be asked on their ballots, Shall there be imposed a tax in the amount of four percent upon food and beverages sold, for human consumption, by a restaurant as defined by state code.
Stuart already has a 5 percent meals tax. The proposed 4 percent tax, to be voted on by residents countywide, including in Stuart, would be charged by eateries outside the town.
The question on the ballot mentions that the proposed tax would not be levied on foods and drinks sold through vending machines as well as by:
@ Boarding houses that do not accommodate transients.
@ Cafeterias operated by industrial plants for employees only.
@ Restaurants serving meals to employees when the workers do not have to pay for their meals.
@ Volunteer fire departments and emergency medical services providers; nonprofit churches and other religious bodies; or educational, charitable, fraternal or benevolent organizations serving meals for fundraising purposes. Yet some limitations are imposed, based on gross receipts and how often meals are served.
@ Churches serving meals to members as part of religious observances.
@ Schools and higher education institutions serving meals to students and employees.
@ Hospitals, medical clinics, convalescent homes, nursing homes or other extended care facilities serving meals to patients or residents.
@ Day care centers.
@ Homes for older and/or disabled people, battered women and people addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, and
@ Age-restricted apartment complexes or homes with private restaurants and at which charges for food and beverages are included in rental fees.
The question also mentions that the tax will not be levied on foods and drinks:
@ Consumed and paid for by the government.
@ Provided by a public or private nonprofit organization or establishment to elderly, infirmed, blind, disabled or needy people in their homes or at central locations, or
@ Provided by private establishments contracting with state agencies to provide refreshments for such people.
Money generated from the tax would be used by the county toward providing emergency services.
County Registrar Susan Taylor said to her understanding that in placing the meals tax issue up for a vote again, the Patrick County Board of Supervisors is trying to generate more revenue without having to consider a real-estate tax increase amid tight county finances.
She referred further questions about the issue to County Administrator Tom Rose, who could not be reached for comment.
Voters can answer yes or no to either constitutional amendment, as well as the tax question.
Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. today.
Along with making their choices in the presidential/vice presidential race, Martinsville and Patrick County voters will elect a 9th District U.S. House of Representatives member. Henry County voters will choose either a 5th District or 9th District House member, depending on where they live in the county.
Martinsville voters will make their selections for City Council. Stuart voters will elect a mayor and Town Council members. There are no local races in Henry County.
Mickey Powell reports for the Martinsville Bulletin. He can be reached at mickey.powell@martinsvillebulletin.com.
SPRINGFIELD -- Bill Cosby's insurance company must defend him in federal court here against three civil defamation lawsuits brought by a total of six women who say they were sexually assaulted by the once-beloved entertainer.
The ruling issued Tuesday in Springfield by U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni leaves open the question as to whether the insurer, AIG Property and Casualty, must indemnify Cosby for any damages he would pay, should he lose the lawsuits.
Cosby received a similar, and for him favorable, ruling against his insurance company in California related to a suit filed by model Janice Dickinson. A third insurance case is pending in Pennsylvania where Cosby also faces civil litigation related to accusations of sexual abuse.
The insurers will not have to pay to defend Cosby against criminal sexual abuse charges now pending in Pennsylvania. Insurance, as a rule, doesn't cover the cost of criminal defense.
Cosby is charged criminally in Pennsylvania with a 2005 sexual assault of Andrea Constand.
The ruling means AIG is on the hook for what could be millions of dollars in legal fees. But the lawyers defending Cosby would have a duty to him and would not be controlled by the insurer.
Lawyer Francis D. Dibble Jr. of the Springfield law firm Bulkley Richardson & Gelinas represented Cosby.
"We are delighted with this excellent and correct decision by Judge Mastroianni," he said.
The insurance policies in question here, a homeowners and a excess liability or umbrella policy, were issued in Massachusetts.
Cosby, 79, owns a home in Shelburne with his wife Camille and claims residency in Massachusetts.
All told, around 50 women have gone public with allegations that Cosby subjected them to unwanted sexual activity starting in the 1960s as the comedian rose to fame in nightclubs and on "I Spy."
The six women with federal lawsuits pending here in Springfield say Cosby harmed their reputations by denying the abuse and calling them lairs for making their allegations public.
In court here in Springfield, AIG's lawyer, Rebecca R. Weinreich of the Los Angeles firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, said the defamation cases are linked to the allegations of sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct is not covered by the policies.
Everything connected with the case, from the allegations made by the women to Cosby's denials and the women's lawsuits, relates back to the allegations of sexual misconduct, she said during hearings here in July.
But Dibble argued that the lawsuits were for defamation which is covered by the policies.
Bill Cosby insurance ruling by Jim Kinney on Scribd
The International Bank of Azerbaijan and the Innovations Center at the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (ASAN service) signed a cooperation agreement. This agreement involves partnership in the field of service of the payment terminals ASAN.
The Innovations Center intends to expand the variety of services and number of the payment terminals in Azerbaijan. The International Bank of Azerbaijan in its turn will provide encashment services for terminals and cash-operations of the payments made with these terminals. Clients also will be available to use services of the IBA by means of these payment terminals, which are now installing in all Bank branches and sub-branches. This project is aimed to simplify the access to the banking services for the population of the country.
For more information on products and services of the IBA, please visit the official website www.ibar.az, any of 35 branches and 43 sub branches of the bank, or call the Information Center by number (012) 937 and *2265.
Trump says eSecond Amendment peoplei might be able to prevent Clinton from naming justices
Donald Trump points to a member of the audience as he makes remarks Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016 at the Trask Coliseum on the campus of University of North Carolina at Wilmington in Wilmington, N.C. (Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/TNS)
A Nevada judge denied a request to keep ballots cast early separate from others cast on Election Day.
Lawyers working on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump filed a request Monday to keep early ballots separate after alleging polling places in the state stayed open late last week.
Judge Gloria Sturman, of the District Court for Clark County Nevada, did not allow the request Tuesday, saying on the bench that County Registrar of Voters Joe P. Gloria "has other things to be doing."
The Trump campaign has accused polling locations in the greater Las Vegas area of staying open several hours beyond the scheduled closing time. The lawsuit targeted polling locations with large minority populations, CNN reports.
Dan Kulin, a spokesperson for Clark County Nevada, disputed the allegations.
LUDLOW - The Gove Law Office is proud to announce that Carolyne Pereira has joined the firm as a paralegal focused on real estate transactions and estate planning.
"Carolyne Pereira will provide experienced and active support to our attorneys working in the diverse practice areas which Gove Law offers our clients" said Michael Gove, founding partner of Gove Law Office.
Carolyne is a 2016 graduate of Western New England School of Law, and is scheduled to be sworn in as an attorney of the Massachusetts bar on November 18, 2016. She was born and raised in Springfield, and speaks Portuguese and Spanish. Her interests include studying different languages and cultures, watching and listening to music and movies of various genres, cooking, and volunteering in the community. She is a member of the Hampden County Bar Association, Massachusetts Bar Association, and Connecticut Real Estate Investors Association. Carolyne is currently running for Pastoral Council at Saint Elizabeth Parish in Ludlow, Massachusetts, and hopes to work closely with veterans and the elderly.
SPRINGFIELD -- Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., the parent company of the historic Springfield gunmaker, plans to change its corporate name to American Outdoor Brands Corp. to better fit in with its new, more diversified, growth strategy.
But the change won't be visible to consumers. Management said Tuesday in a Facebook post that the Smith & Wesson name will remain on the gun company and will still be the name brand for its firearms.
Smith & Wesson has 1,758 full-time employees, most of them at its factory and headquarters on Roosevelt Avenue.
The name Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. dates back to the early 2000s when an obscure Arizona gun parts maker called Saf-T-Hammer bought Smith & Wesson after it lost $17 million in one year to widespread boycotts. The former Smith & Wesson angered gun rights advocates by cooperating with safety initiatives put forth by the Bill Clinton administration.
Saf-T-Hammer mended its fences with the NRA and later changed its name to Smith & Wesson Holdings Corp. as it remains to this day.
Under the new structure, American Outdoor Brands Corporation will serve as the holding corporation for Smith & Wesson Corp., Battenfeld Technologies Inc. which sells firearm accessories and supplies for gunsmithing and shooting, and Crimson Trace Corporation which makes laser sights.
James Debney, president and CEO of Smith & Wesson, said in a news release this week:
"By executing on our strategy to be a leader in the shooting, hunting, and rugged outdoor enthusiast markets, we have successfully grown from a single operating division to four operating divisions that serve a large addressable market and represent more than 18 respected consumer brands. We believe the name 'American Outdoor Brands Corporation' will better reflect our family of brands, our broad range of product offerings, and our plan to continue building upon our portfolio of strong American brands. Looking forward, we intend to aggressively grow organically and through strategic acquisitions, focusing on brands and products that best meet the needs and lifestyle of our target consumers."
Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson founded the company in 1852. Over the following decades in Springfield, Smith & Wesson has become famous by making guns for a variety of customers, ranging from the Imperial Army of the Russian Tsar and the Allies in both world wars to Clint Eastwood, who brandished a Model 29 revolver in "Dirty Harry."
Today, the company makes a variety of firearms from black-powder muzzle loaders in its Thompson/Center line to revolvers and semiautomatic handguns and what it calls modern sporting rifles, a category of semiautomatic rifle often referred to as assault rifles.
Last year, Smith & Wesson told investors that it would like to diversify away from the boom-bust cycle of firearms manufacturing and sales.
Subsequently, Smith & Wesson purchased two companies this summer. It bought its knife-making partner Taylor Brands for $85 million and purchased Crimson Trace, a maker of laser gun sights and other accessories, for $95 million.
Also this week, Smith & Wesson announced that it has purchased Ultimate Survival Technologies Inc., known as UST Brands, for $32.3 million in cash.
UST sells survival and camping equipment. its products include LED lights, patented all-weather fire starters, unbreakable signal mirrors, outdoor cutting tools, first aid kits, signal whistles, survival kits, camp kitchen products.
Based in Jacksonville, Florida, UST Brands had been a family owned company. UST will fall under Battenfield in the new Smith & Wesson organisation.
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As you may have heard, Smith & Wesson announced yesterday that the Holding Corp. which was formed... Read more: https://t.co/rC52k6fRA7 pic.twitter.com/nl4xZiezfl Smith & Wesson Corp. (@SmithWessonCorp) November 8, 2016
Smith & Wesson's new would still need to be approved by the board and won't take effect until January. As of Tuesday,
a share, up 50 cents or 1.76 per ent under the symbol SWHC on the NASDQ
2016 Election Voting Massachusetts Boston
Pedestrians pass a sign promoting prayer and voting outside Old South Church in Boston, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
(Michael Dwyer)
BOSTON -- About 160,700 people have turned out to vote in Boston as of 3 p.m., according to numbers provided by Boston elections officials.
There are over 415,500 registered voters in Boston, meaning 38.7 percent of eligible voters have turned out to participate so far.
At around 12 p.m. today, 27.4 percent of Boston voters had turned out at the polls, according to Boston elections officials.
The turnout numbers include voters who participated in early voting, which began Oct. 24. This is the first year for early voting in Massachusetts, and according to Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, over 1 million people in the state cast early ballots.
We still don't really know what the total is. Early votes are being manually fed into machines on diff schedules. https://t.co/1gJmc44uN1 Steve Koczela (@skoczela) November 8, 2016
Over 22 percent of eligible voters statewide participated in early voting , Galvin said at a press conference yesterday. About 48,000 of Boston voters participated in early voting, or 11.5 percent of registered voters in Boston.
The polling numbers released by Boston elections officials today also include absentee ballots, of which over 140,000 have been sent in statewide.
Boston has 170 polling locations for 255 precincts.
#Boston is outpacing '12 turnout per 12pm count 26.65% in 2012 compared to 27.4% today; about 10k more so far #ElectionDay Bill Forry (@BillForry) November 8, 2016
This post was updated at 5:03 p.m. with corrected numbers from Boston elections officials. The Boston Elections Department sent out incorrect numbers earlier in the day.
acc.jpg
A bus depot once stood where cones are now in Amherst. A 55-year-old Northampton man was killed after being struck by a pickup truck.
(Diane Lederman/The Republican)
AMHERST - A 55-year-old Northampton man was killed in a crash Sunday night while waiting at a downtown bus stop outside of the U.S. Post Office on North Pleasant Street.
The Northwestern District Attorney's office has identified the victim as William E. Wanczyk, 55, of Northampton.
Police are looking for the operator of the pick-up truck that struck him and the bus depot. The driver allegedly fled the scene of the 9:38 p.m. crash.
Wanczyk was transported by Amherst Fire to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 10 p.m., according to Northwestern District Attorney spokeswoman Mary Carey.
A green truck was seen traveling downtown with no headlights on at a high rate of speed around 9:30 p.m., according to police.
The truck began to fishtail in front of 141 North Pleasant St., striking the covered bus stop and hitting Wanczyk.
The vehicle, which was abandoned north of the crash site, was heavily damaged. The operator fled and has not been located yet, Carey said.
The incident remains under investigation by Amherst police, Massachusetts State Police assigned to the Northwestern District Attorney's Office, MSP Crime Scene Services and MSP Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Section.
AMHERST - Steady was the word at some polls Tuesday morning, though not nearly as busy as it was four years ago when President Barack Obama made his bid for a second term against Republican Mitt Romney, said Precinct 10 Warden Janice Peterman.
Still there were a line of students waiting to sign in.
Also unofficially, 5,634 cast ballots during early voting which represents about 25 percent of the town's 22,228 registered voters, according to Assistant Town Clerk Sue Audette.
At Precinct 10, a large precinct of University of Massachusetts students, some students were casting votes for the first time.
"It was a cool experience," said 21-year-old David Sudyka, a building and construction technology major.
"I was doing my civic duty casting a vote." He said he voted by Republican candidate Donald J. Trump. "I want to see a change."
First time voter Ben Wadsworth also talked about "doing my civic duty."
The 21-year-old political science major also voted for Trump and sees his candidacy "as a repudiation of neo-liberal policies."
He also sees his bid as "a blow against the political establishment." He feels Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is "very corrupt."
Ballot questions 2 and 4 were also of interested. He opposes lifting the cap on charter schools to "keep money in public schools" and he supports legalizing the recreational use of marijuana in question 4.
Jamie Clement, a 22-year-old public health major, cast a ballot in her second presidential election.
"I want my voice to be heard. Everyone should participate" she said. She believes it was important as a student and as a woman to vote.
"If you don't vote, you can't complain." She is supporting Clinton.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Elena Kosolapova Trend:
Israel is interested in cooperation with Azerbaijan in agricultural, energy, pharmaceutical and other spheres, said Israeli Ambassador to Azerbaijan Dan Stav in his interview with Trend.
Azerbaijan has a huge potential for cooperation with Israel in economic sphere, said Stav.
The diplomat noted that, in particular, Israel can help Azerbaijan to increase the production of various agricultural crops.
"One of the most important things, if you want to increase agricultural sector, is to use wisely your water resources and all that is related to water management, very economic use of water, desalination if needed, purification of water, dealing with waste water," he noted. "Israel has a lot of experience and many companies that come with very ingenious ideas."
"This is an area where we can work very closely," added the envoy. "This is very promising sphere for cooperation."
He also noted that Azerbaijan has very rich agricultural soil and hardworking people.
The ambassador believes that Azerbaijan can generate employment by introducing modern agriculture.
"If people see that agriculture is really where you can earn money and have good standard of living, it will also help to develop periphery," added Stav.
Another important sector, where there is a huge potential for cooperation, is energy, according to him.
A new tender for exploration of gas will be opened on Nov. 15 in Israel, said the ambassador.
"It refers to about 24-69 blocks that we have in Israel and the potential of discovery of these fields stands at about 900-2,100 billion cubic meters," he added. "Azerbaijan has great knowledge about energy after producing oil since 19th century. You have companies that can have the financial strength and the ability to join us. We welcome Azerbaijani companies that will show interest to come and participate in the bidding."
Moreover, the diplomat thinks that cooperation is also possible between Azerbaijans State Oil and Industry University and SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) and certain colleges in Israel.
Another one is the cooperation between the two countries energy ministries, according to the ambassador.
"I think that cooperation in this sphere will be very beneficial for both sides," noted Stav.
In particular, the envoy said that Israel plans to open "gas to liquid" refinery that will take the gas and transform it into all kinds of liquid energy, which can be used in cars and other areas.
It is only at the preliminary stage, he added.
"We are looking for companies that will show interest in trying to explore whether it is feasible to establish the refinery," said the Israeli envoy.
The idea of this LGT [liquefied gas technology] is that the Israeli government wants to reduce the use of oil in the transportation sector to 60 percent till 2025, according to him.
Stav said also that Azerbaijan and Israel have started to cooperate in the field of medicine.
"There is an exchange between one of the leading Israeli universities Medical University and the Medical University in Baku," he noted. "We want to enhance it."
He added that cooperation in the pharmaceutical sector is also promising.
"The idea here is to try draw investments to Azerbaijan, build factories here and start production," said Stav adding that it is a very good opportunity for both sides.
Speaking about the cooperation in the sphere of education and culture, the Israeli ambassador recalled that a framework agreement had been signed between Azerbaijan and Israel before in the sphere of science, culture and youth and due to some unfortunate technical issues, it has been only ratified a few months ago.
Israel wants to enhance the cooperation in the field of education with Azerbaijan, according to him.
The envoy said also the Israel is interested in cooperation with Azerbaijan in the field of technology.
"We have very advanced academic institutions in Israel," noted Stav. "We have very interesting faculties for cyber, IT, and we want them to have ties with Azerbaijan in order to develop curriculum for the studies in technologies, IT, computer, cyber, because it is an area of the future," he said.
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Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:
Kazakhstan and Japan signed several documents on cooperation with the visit of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Japan, Kazakh presidential press-service reported.
Nazarbayev is on official visit to Japan on Nov. 6-9.
The parties signed a joint statement on special strategic partnership in the age of the prosperity of Asia, and exchanged notes on the exemption of visa requirements for holders of diplomatic and service passports since January 1, 2017.
Moreover Kazakh Investment and Development Ministry and Japanese Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding; and Kazakhstans International financial center Astana and Japanese Securities Dealers Association signed memorandum of cooperation.
Moreover Japan signed agreement on the participation in EXPO 2017 in Astana.
Within the visit to Japan, Nazarbayav held meetings with Japanese Emperor Akihito, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Japanese businesses.
Kazakh president underscored that Kazakhstan is interested in deepening the all-round partnership with Japan, having all the necessary potential.
In such a case, bilateral trade and economic cooperation is the driving force, he said at the talks with Japanese prime minister in expanded format.
The volume of mutual trade turnover amounted to $0.5 billion in 2015, according to Nazarbayev.
This is not the level that corresponds to our potential, and we will steadily expand the horizons of cooperation, including in the field of high technologies, agriculture, nuclear power, automotive and steel industry, Nazarbayev said.
Within the visit to the Japanese parliament, Nazarbayev noted that Kazakhstan is interested in building mutually beneficial cooperation in high technology areas and attracting Japanese advanced and know-how technologies. He also invited Japanese companies to take part in privatization program and invest in industrial projects in Kazakhstan.
Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
I make all my students learn biology as well as they learn statistics. And the biologists I work with, they have to take courses where theyre learning statistics. We have to have an integrated bridge between the two.
By Taylor Kubota
Full Story: http://news.stanford.edu/2016/11/07/susan-holmes-statistics-era-big-data/
***
Missoula native Dr. Leroy Hoods "Determined Optimism" and P4 Medicine is going to revolutionize healthcare beyond your wildest imagination Arivale.com http://www.matr.net/article-73979.html
Bozeman is a rapidly growing city with a high quality of life in part due to the easy access to the outdoors, burgeoning tech industry, and cultural experiences it offers.
LObservatoire de la Democratie (LODLD) a redige cette lettre a la suite des arrestations lors des manifestations citoyennes ; apres le bafouement dun ordre du judiciaire dans le cas de lexpulsion dun Slovaque, et apres la diffusion des videos demontrant des actes barbares de torture et dagression de la part de certains policiers.
Cette lettre a pour but, entre autres, de rappeler aux forces de lordre de:
Limportance de comprendre et de ne pas bafouer le premier des droits en Republique, c.-a.-d ce droit supra constitutionnel emanant de la liberte de la personne humaine : le droit de se mouvoir et de sexprimer, conformement a la Section 5 de notre Constitution.
LObservatoire de la Democratie fait mention egalement de la distinction entre lEtat et le Gouvernement, entre differents types de Regimes politiques et de la necessite pour la police dassimiler les preceptes dune culture republicaine etant donne que nous vivons dans une Republique.
LODLD rappelle aux policiers leur role, leurs responsabilites et leurs droits; notamment que les policiers ne sont pas des soldats et quils ont une obligation de respecter les gouvernements republicains dans un Etat republicain et non les regimes ANTI-republicains.
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Ledition du mois de septembre 2022 de la lettre dinformation mensuelle du Bureau du Directeur de Poursuites Publiques est disponible et met en avant a la liste de feu Elisabeth II dans le pays avec photo a lappui.
Attrayant, vous allez connaitre levolution du drot penal a Maurice sur trois pages et sur le Prosecutors Network Forum in Kenya qtu a eu lieu au Kenya du 29 aout jusquau 1er septembre 2022..
Il sera aussi question dInsanity dans un article et aussi dIndecent act in public et loo indique :
Any person who commits a grossly indecent act in public shall commit an offence under Section 248 of the Criminal Code Upon conviction by a court of law, such person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years and to a fine not exceeding Rs 10 000
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Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 8
By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:
Ashgabat is hosting a regional meeting, where the draft protocol on cooperation in the fight against poaching in the Caspian Sea is being discussed, the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan said in a message.
The authorized representatives of the Caspian-littoral states - Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran and Turkmenistan are taking part in the forum, according to the message.
The sides are exchanging views on the rules for conservation, rational use of marine biological resources and management of their joint reserves.
Noting the commitment to continue the search for mutually acceptable decisions on the provisions of the above mentioned project considering the proposals of all the Caspian-littoral states, the sides are discussing possibilities of joint actions to eliminate poaching in the Caspian Sea, the message said.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 8
By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:
Turkmenistan and Malaysia aim at enhancing of the mutually beneficial cooperation in trade, energy sector, as well as petrochemical, gas chemical, textile, food sectors, the Turkmen state news agency (TDH) reported.
Meanwhile, the Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is on an official visit to Malaysia Nov. 8-9. Meetings, as well as negotiations on topical issues of interstate cooperation to be held in Malaysias relevant ministries and government bodies.
By results of the upcoming high-level negotiations, Turkmenistan and Malaysia are expected to sign a substantial set of documents on the priority areas of cooperation for the coming years. The documents are designed to significantly expand the scope of the conventional mutually beneficial cooperation, TDH reported.
Also, the parties will exchange opinions on a wide range of regional and international issues.
A vivid example of a longstanding successful cooperation between the two countries is operation of the Malaysian company Petronas in Turkmenistan. The company is engaged in development of hydrocarbon fields in the Turkmen shelf of the Caspian Sea.
The company also assists in training of professional personnel for the oil and gas industry technical staff, as well as highly qualified engineers and executives.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 8
By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:
Commitment of Turkmenistan and Poland to expand economic cooperation was noted during a meeting with Polands Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Turkmenistan (with residence in Baku) Marek Calka in Ashgabat, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message Nov. 8.
Issues of holding the meeting of the Turkmen-Polish intergovernmental commission on economic issues were discussed during the meeting. Meanwhile, an exchange of views was held on opportunities to expand legal base of bilateral partnership, according to the message.
It should be noted that Poland has an advantageous geographical location in the centre of Europe that allows actively developing the transit routes for energy supplies from the Caspian region to Europe.
Currently, negotiations are continuing with the EU and Azerbaijan, which may become a participant as a transit state in the joint Trans-Caspian gas pipeline project.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 8
By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:
Bilateral documents were signed following the Turkmen-Malaysian high-level negotiations held Nov. 8 in the Malaysian city of Putrajaya, the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news service reported Nov. 8.
The report says that Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Malaysias Prime Minister Mohd Najib Bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak adopted a joint statement.
Meanwhile, a protocol was signed on making amendments to the agreement on economic, scientific and technical cooperation between the two governments.
The two sides expressed readiness to effectively use the existing potential for the development of relations between the two countries, according to the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary.
Malaysia is one of the most important and long-standing partners of Turkmenistan in trade, economic and investment spheres, according to the state new service.
A long-term partnership with Petronas, which is one of the first companies that started to work at Turkmenistans offshore field, is an example of effective use of the existing bilateral potential in this area.
High technologies, banking sphere, urban planning, agricultural processing and food industry, tourism are among priority directions for cooperation between Turkmenistan and Malaysia.
The potential of ties in the transport and transit field was also considered during the negotiations. Turkmenistan considers Malaysia as an important partner in the Asia-Pacific region.
Turkmenistan will welcome Malaysian companies' participation in major national projects in the fields of transportation, communications, infrastructure modernization on the coast of the Caspian Sea, according to the message.
Magic will fill the air on Saturday, Nov. 19, in a benefit show for the McDowell County Rescue Squad.
The internationally acclaimed, award-winning magic and illusion team of Mike Snyder & Donna will bring their unique show, back by popular demand, to Marion for the seventh year in a row and each year they feature some different effects and routines to keep the show fresh and different for those who have enjoyed the show previously, according to a news release.
This special, one-day-only show is sponsored by and will benefit McDowell County Rescue Squad. Founded in 1959, the Rescue Squad serves McDowell County and other surrounding counties.
The Rescue Squad works with various groups, organizations and individuals to provide training and experience in medical treatment, rescue and medical transportation. The Rescue Squad has come a long way since its early beginnings with a used and aging Navy ambulance to respond to calls.
The squad's inventory now includes a state-of-the-art crash truck, a rescue boat equipped with underwater cameras and sonar, two ambulances, a collection of four-wheelers and a seven-bay garage in which to house all the vehicles and equipment.
The Magic of Mike Snyder & Donna show will be held at East Middle School, which is located at 676 State St. in Marion and is a show that is fun and appropriate for all ages. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and show time is at 7 p.m. Tickets are $6 per person and are available by calling 828-559-0905 or at the door the day of the show.
The magical duo has entertained audiences in 33 states from Maine to southern Florida and from Hollywood, Calif. to the beach resorts and casinos along the Atlantic. Internationally, they have performed in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Mexico, Norway, Portugal and Puerto Rico. They have also appeared on international cruise ships, casinos, major corporations, theatres and amusement parks including Knoebels Amusement Resort in Elysburg, Pa. - Americas largest free admission amusement park, where they recently celebrated their 23rd consecutive year of performing at that park.
During the Magic of Mike Snyder & Donna show, people appear and disappear right before your very eyes. Mike and Donna also feature some rare illusions in their show including an illusion called Op Art, during which Donna is impossibly folded into a 12-inch cube before disappearing completely. Mike and Donna are one of just a handful of artists worldwide to perform this rare illusion. They will also feature some classic illusions and audience favorites like their version of Houdini's world famous Metamorphosis illusion, which has been called the worlds fastest illusion. Mike warns, Dont blink, or youll miss it! Audience members will even get the chance to participate in an illusion or two, according to the news release.
Aside from performing magic and illusions, Mike Snyder has also designed and created illusions and effects for other performers including master illusionist David Copperfield who is the highest paid illusionist in the industry. With his many years of expertise, he has become a sought after consultant for many other theatrical productions at various regional theatres and high schools that want to add magic or theatrical illusions to their own productions. In 1984, while still in high school, he appeared as an extra in the hit movie Witness starring Harrison Ford, which was filmed in and around Lancaster, Pa. His actual on-screen time is minimal, but during lunch breaks and major downtime on filming days, he could be found entertaining the stars and other cast members and crew of the movie.
Mike Snyder is also very active in the magic community and serves as the Pennsylvania state deputy for the Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), and is a grand council member, secretary-treasurer for The Professional Magicians Club (PMC) of Lancaster, Pa. He has also held several other elected offices in various magic organizations including:
President of The Magicians Alliance of Eastern States (2013 - 2014)
President of Society of American Magicians, Assembly No. 110 (2012 -2015)
President of International Brotherhood of Magicians, Ring No. 20 (2012 -2015)
And President of the Capital Area Professional Magicians in Harrisburg, PA (2012 -2015)
In all of these, he is still an active member and assists in various capacities.
When Mike Snyder is not on stage performing or promoting their show, he can often be found mentoring and helping other performers fine-tune their craft or promoting the art of magic and illusion in general through his involvement with the different magic organizations. He is a strong believer in following your dreams and pursuing your passion. One of his favorite sayings is, If you can find a way to get paid for doing what you love, you will be much happier in life.
Mike Snyder started performing magic at the age of 5after seeing magician Marshall Brodien perform on TV. By the age of 12, he was performing professionally in and around his hometown of Lancaster, Pa. and by the age of 18, he had expanded his performing area into other states as well. Donna and Mike met while they were students in high school. They started dating their senior year and Donna would come to almost every show to help out backstage and take care of the animals that were in the show at that time. Soon Donna was filling in for Mikes regular assistant and because of their real-life relationship, their onstage chemistry was evident and that made the show stronger. Donna officially joined the show as Mikes full-time on stage partner in 1984 and two years later, they were happily married. After they were married, they both studied and became graduates of the prestigious Chavez School of Magic and Manipulation, based in Los Angeles, Calif.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 7
By Farhad Daneshvar Trend:
An Iranian manufacturer has described Turkey as the main rival of his country in exporting agricultural and industrial machinery to the regional countries, including Azerbaijan.
The Head of Trade Union for Agricultural and Industrial Machinery Manufacturers of Tehran Ali Tavasoti told Trend Nov. 7 that groundwork has been paved for cooperation between Iran and regional countries, including Azerbaijan.
Over the past several years Iranian manufacturers have failed to claim a major share in Azerbaijans agricultural machinery market as Turkey had a better performance there.
Iranian manufacturers have even lagged behind Turkey in the Islamic Republic own market due to the proper infrastructure existing in the neighboring countrys production sphere.
The products of Iranian agricultural and industrial machinery manufacturers have been supplied to countries such as Venezuela, Africa, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 6
By Fatih Karimov Trend
A Chinese company has expressed readiness to invest in Irans petrochemical catalysts project, Majid-Reza Hariri, deputy head of Iran-China Joint Chamber, said.
The company has proposed a $400 million investment offer for production of petrochemical catalysts, Hariri said, SHANA news agency reported Nov. 6.
He also noted that China is the main and best market of the Iranian petrochemical products, adding that Chinese companies want to participate in various sectors of Irans petrochemical industry.
Based on a document signed between Iran and China, the bilateral trade turnover between the two countries is expected to reach $60 billion in the next 10 years, Hariri said.
Iran produced 46.4 million tons of petrochemicals during the last fiscal year (ended March 20), but for the current year, the figure is planned to reach 54.7 million tons.
The countrys actual petrochemical output capacity is around 63 million tons per year.
Iran hopes to bring the capacity to 120 million tons by 2020 and 160 million tons by 2025.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Fatih Karimov Trend
Irans Judiciary head, Sadeq Amoli Larijani accused President Hassan Rouhani of defamation of the Judiciary.
He said that Rouhani, in private, requests the judiciary to confront newspapers and media, but in public calls for freedom of the press, Tasnim news agency reported.
Larijanis comments came in response to Rouhanis statements at the 22nd International Press Exhibition on Nov. 5.
Rouhani criticizes press restrictions, and limitation against the social media during his speech.
We should not break pens with fake excuses and shut mouths based on false pretenses, he said.
Amoli Larijani in response said that these statements are defamation and insulting to the Judiciary.
He further said that his organization doesnt care about these statements and will continue to work within its legal framework.
On a recent regional tour of Northeast Indianas medtech industry, we stopped off at Nextremity Solutions, a company headquartered in Warsaw, IN, a town known as The Orthopedic Capital. Founded in 2008 by a couple surgeons from Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City, Nextremity has been dedicated from the beginning to introducing innovative new products for foot and ankle care.
This product focus was motivated by the fact that large ortho firms have been channeling the majority of their resources into hip and knee devices. Simpler, cheaper products that address the needs of a more limited population have been overlooked and left to smaller firms to develop. The two surgeons that founded the firm saw the discrepancy in progress of hip and knees products compared to foot and ankle devices, and realized an opportunity to be the ones to close the gap.
Originally based in New Jersey, the firm moved about three years ago to Warsaw. Though the original management team was in New Jersey, there was a clear understanding that theres a need to be close to the supply houses and synergies available in Indiana if the firm is to be able to roll out new products at a healthy rate. Factors, such as availability of qualified specialists to hire and personal access to engineers and executives of partner firms, played an important part in the decision making. Rod Mayer, the President and CEO of Nextremity, explaining the decision making the move to Indiana quoted Lee Iacoca, former head of Chrysler, that business, after all, is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships. As an example, he pointed to working with a nearby company that makes orthopedic models for Nextremity that are used in product development, marketing, and education. Its only four miles away from Nextremity, so when the company wants to make a small change, they can always just take a quick drive to their partners headquarters and talk in person how to make that happen. Since development of new products can take many months and even years, being able to speed up the process can provide a significant competitive advantage.
The actual process of product development at Nextremity starts with surgeons putting forth new ideas. Working off an idea, the company builds an appropriate design strategy and brings the proposal to another group of surgeons who are qualified to evaluate and comment on the new idea. Once the idea is confirmed as being beneficial for patients and surgeons, the engineering team takes over to actually produce a device that will have the benefits and characteristics that the surgeons intended.
Theres still a great deal of room for new innovations in the foot and ankle space, and because this market is growing at about 12% per year Nextremity plans to continue being dedicated to this ortho niche. As an example of the potential for growth, Rod Mayer, the CEO, mentioned that in 1977 the entire ortho market was less than $1 billion while now it is about $45 billion in size. Foot and ankle space being about $2.5 billion right now, considering a 12% annual growth rate points to some potential for companies in this space to make serious money.
Rod showed off some of Nextremitys products and noted that women, because they tend to like to show off their feet while often wearing shoes that ruin those very feet, are a very large part of the market. Forefoot procedures, such as bunyon and hammertoe treatments, are mostly performed on women. But because most women seem to not bring up these conditions with their doctors, many are not even aware that there are treatment options out there. This means that the potential customer base is considerably larger than it is now, and that a good deal of education will be required to familiarize people with hammertoes and similar conditions to what is possible in the way of treatment options.
All of Nextremitys products come packaged in sterile kits that include all the necessary tools to complete the procedure. Once done, the remaining components are simply chucked away so no time wasting on on-site sterilization is necessary. A lot of the designs of these products are patent protected, which means Nextremity has unique advantages over its competitors. Since it doesnt produce essentially existing me too products, all of what they make has a good deal of innovation baked right in. Wed love to explain how these products work, but Nextremity has a product page with videos that will do a better job showing both the implants and how theyre delivered.
Overall we were left quite fascinated by Nextremity Solutions, the speed of the firms growth, and how it innovates in what already seems like a pretty competitive marketplace. It found its niche and thanks to that focus is able to deliver products essentially overlooked by the bigger guys. We wish them the best and hope theyll continue offering new solutions for foot and ankle conditions, allowing more people to walk in comfort and show off their sexy feet.
Link: Nextremity Solutions homepage
Flashbacks: Northeast Indiana Shows Off Why Its The Worlds Center for Orthopedic Devices; A Tour of OrthoPediatrics: The Worlds Only Company Dedicated to Orthopedic Implants for Kids
by Tanya Gazdik , November 7, 2016
Park Hyatt hotels is partnering with The New York Times for a second year to create a digital content series aimed at global travelers.
Called TasteMasters, the collaboration brings together experts in art, architecture and culinary fields. A three-part video series will offer insight into their areas of expertise and highlight what luxury means to them on both an artistic and personal level.
The series was created in partnership with T Brand Studio, The New York Times brand marketing unit. Content can be viewed exclusively on NYTimes.com/TasteMasters.
The first video in the series debuted Nov. 1 and features a couple well known in the arts: Cecilia Alemani and Massimiliano Gioni, director of the public art program for the High Line and artistic director at the New Museum, respectively.
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Other TasteMasters that will be featured over the coming weeks include architect Paul Tange, president of Tange Associates and son of the late Kenzo Tange, and chocolatier Pierre Marcolini, founder and creative director of his namesake company.
In its first year, the collaboration includes three events around the world, bringing together cultural trendsetters with NYT journalists for wide-ranging conversations covering the worlds of fashion, art, and cuisine, among other subjects.
Park Hyatt guests are fueled by the desire for intelligent conversation and culturally relevant experiences, said Sandra Cordova Micek, senior vice president of global brands for Hyatt, in a release.
There are currently 38 of the high-end hotels at locations across the world including New York, Chicago, Washington, Dubai, Melbourne, Sydney, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo and Toronto.
by Gary Holmes , Op-Ed Contributor, November 7, 2016
Its been a looooong time coming, but Election Day is finally upon us, which means we can all settle down to watching the results roll in on television.
And I do mean on television, because for all the impact of the Internet, there is little doubt that the vast majority of voters will be following the returns via the TV networks.
That is not to say that the digital world wont have its impact. On previous election nights I have opened a news Web site or two on my laptop, and checked Twitter commentary on my smartphone. But this second- and third-screen engagement only supplements whats happening on TV. Over the years Ive found that none of the political sites have the results any faster than the networks, since everyones working off the same information feed.
This is not to say that I love watching TV on election night. Far from it. Political announcers are a lot like sports announcers: Theres a lot of unnecessary chatter, repetition, and self-regard. And you always feel as if theyre biased against your favorite team.
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I am also irked by the we-know-something-you-dont-know vibe that transcends the early hours of election night. All the networks have exit polls that pretty accurately predict which way most of the non-battleground states will land. We know they have this information, and they know we know it, yet they continue to operate as if its a big secret.
Because the exit polls cant be mentioned until a states voting has ended, theres usually some dramatic teaser at the end of the hour as the closing time for a new batch of states draws near. Im surprised they dont have a dru roll at the top of the hour as the anchors rush to call the deep-red and deep-blue states before theres even one vote in. And while I understand the rationale for not calling a state until the polls close, I could do without the anchors being so coy about it.
Every election night, I spend the evening flipping around for the least objectionable newscast. I am constantly in search of a channel that is both neutral and interesting. This means both Fox and MSNBC are non-starters, since they are advocates for their own political philosophies. Unfortunately, my tolerance for the breathlessness and pompousness of the broadcast networks is also limited. Consequently, I usually end up watching CNN, whose reporters mostly stick to just-the-facts reporting.
Im not sure about this year, however. I maintain a major grudge against CNN for the amount of free publicity they gave Donald Trump during the primaries, only to turn on him when he got nominated. Having said that, I do really like John Kings deep dives into the results at the county level, so I will probably start there and flip around when I need a break from the earnestness of Anderson Cooper.
Another gripe I have against CNN and all the other networks is their use of political consultants, lobbyists, former campaign managers and other hacks to analyze the results. Of course this year we will not be treated to Donna Braziles, opinions since she was fired for leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign twice!
To be honest, Im surprised that CNN got on its high horse about the Brazile revelations because I had always assumed that these talking heads, who are, after all, political guns for hire, were all dishing dirt to their buddies back at campaign HQ. The cynic in me suspects that Brazile was not ejected for passing along information, but for getting caught by WikiLeaks.
Meanwhile, I dont see the point of these insider panels anyway. Very little actual analysis is offered up during these sessions. Instead what we get is a regurgitation of campaign talking points that put the most favorable spin on the results that have come in so far.
But really, why are they spinning once the polls close? Its not like they can influence the outcome once the voting is done. Cant they just tell us what they really think? Its almost like theyre afraid to alienate the bases of their parties and jeopardize future campaign work.
The best example of pointless spinning was from the 2012, election when Fox analyst and former George W. Bush campaign manager Karl Rove pitched such a fit that the network was calling Ohio for Obama that Megyn Kelly had to march down to the office of the true nuts and bolts analysts and confirm that they had made the right call. Great TV, but you had to wonder why Rove was the guy on TV and not those geeks in the boiler room, who actually get paid to get it right.
So heres an idea: Lets get rid of the conflicts of interest and banish talking heads altogether. Almost anything would be better than listening to Jeffrey Lord or Van Jones. If we must have commentators, lets have actual entertainers comedians, in fact. There are plenty of comics that know a lot about politics. Get a couple of conservatives like Dennis Miller and Jon Lovitz and put them on a panel with a couple of liberals like Sarah Silverman and Louis CK and let them go at it. That would stop me from switching over to C-SPAN.
Head of the Strategic Research Center at the Expediency Council Ali-Akbar Velayati said on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic of Iran is to spare no efforts to help restore peace and stability in the region, IRNA reported.
Speaking to reporters after separate meetings with deputy foreign ministers of Sweden and Denmark, Velayati said those diplomats asked Iran to help restore peace in the region with regards to the country's significant power and facilities in the region.
There is on condition that the territorial integrity of these countries would be respected with their legal governments being supported, Velayati said.
Aliens should be pushed back from the region and foreign forces stationed without permission of the Syrian and Iraqi governments should be returned to their own countries, he said.
Relations between Iran and Scandinavian countries are very deeply rooted and always amicable, Velayati said.
Swedish prime minister is to pay an official visit to Iran in February, he said.
Volume of trade exchanges between Iran, Denmark and Sweden is on the rise to meet both sides' interests, he said.
In the meetings, 'we underlined that issues in Iraq and Yemen have no military solution and all these issues should be resolved through political means,' he said.
On expansion of economic cooperation with the west, he said the Europeans should mind their own interests and stay apart from tyrannical decisions made by the Americans, Velayati said.
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, November 8, 2016
Proving yet again that theres nothing free under the sun, Tesla announced yesterday that starting with vehicles ordered after Jan. 1 it would begin charging for use of its 4,625 Superchargers in 735 locations around the world after the first 400 kWh of power used annually. That would take you about 1,000 miles or so about the distance from Times Square to Tampa, Fla.
Since 2012, Tesla has invited its customers to plug into chargers that add 200 to 300 miles of range per hour, Wireds Jack Stewart explains to the uninitiated. Good enough to top up a depleted battery in about 30 minutes, while a driver has a bathroom break and a bite to eat. They approach the convenience of pumping gas into a conventional car, and theyre free for life.
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But some folks just dont know when to stop, Stewart intimates. Some Tesla owners have treated the free lunch more like an all- you-can-eat buffet. Its not unusual to see a queue of Model S and X cars waiting to get their electron fix at busy locations.
This despite the fact that the Supercharger Network is designed to accommodate travelers on road trips from the Arctic Circle to the south of Spain, and across all of the population centers in China and Japan not homebodies looking for a free ride.
Just as you would charge your cell phone, we believe the best way to charge your car is either at home or at work, during the hours youre not using it, the blog post making the announcement yesterday points out. What it doesn't say but is easy to infer: If you are jacked into a Tesla Powerwall 2 battery charged by a forthcoming Tesla-Solar City roof tile, all the better.
But drivers who have been sitting on the fence still have some time to get in on the current always-free system, points out Andrew Krok for CNETs Road Show since the fee change won't take effect for Model S and Model X vehicles ordered before the end of the year and delivered before April 1.
My bet? Expect to see Tesla's near-term delivery numbers spike as fence-sitters rush to take advantage, because if free Supercharger access is a must-have, then acting fast is a necessity, Krok concludes.
Writing for Seeking Alpha, in fact, Bill Maurer thinks this is all another gimmick to boost lagging sales. He doesnt own, or plan to own Tesla stock. Or a Tesla, one presumes.
BGRs Yoni Heisler has a different take. It was a nice program while it lasted but its certainly easy to sympathize with Teslas position here. With nearly 400,000 Tesla Model 3 reservations in the books, Tesla had no choice but to initiate some sort of economic adjustment to its Supercharger program to prevent outright chaos.
For its part, Tesla says the price of a charge will be less than filling up with a tank of gasoline. And it will use the revenue, it says, to reinvest in the network, accelerate its growth and bring all owners, current and future, the best Supercharging experience.
Kind of like the experience that Texaco guy in a cap and uniform the best friend your car has ever had! used to deliver?
In other news on the rapidly evolving automotive front, the Wall Street Journals Tim Higgins and Rolfe Winkler report that Zoox Inc., the secretive Silicon Valley startup working to build its own self-driving cars, has quietly raised another round of funding that puts its valuation at $1.55 billion, a big jump from just a few months prior and a sign of increased interest in automotive technology.
The company, based in Menlo Park, Calif., was founded in 2014.
Zoox aims to build a new car from the ground up that reimagines what automobile travel could entail if the vehicle can drive itself. The company has attracted engineers and professionals from Tesla Motors Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. to help in that effort, Higgins and Winkler report.
Speaking of the olden days, there was a time when the big secrets in the industry were what colors would be available for next years models from the Big Three.
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, November 8, 2016
Like every election since television became ubiquitous in most households, TV ads have been a staple of the election in 2016.
The three most-aired swing-state TV ads of the 2016 presidential cycle portray the divisiveness and negativity pervasive throughout the election. The Political TV Ad Archive and PolitiFact compiled a list of the most-aired presidential ads in the largest markets in the key swing states.
Of the top 10, only three were pro-Donald Trump ads -- a direct result of Trumps late arrival to TV advertising. They are:
1. The pro-Clinton super PAC ad Dante, run by Priorities USA, highlights Donald Trumps comments about a disabled New York Times reporter. Dante, a 17-year-old from Nevada, tells the story of his own battle with physical and medical ailments. He has a strong response to what Trump said and did. I dont want a president who makes fun of me, Dante says. I want a president who inspires me -- and thats not Donald Trump.
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Ads like this hit home. In an election with two of the most disliked candidates in living memory, many voters are choosing to vote against, rather than for, candidates.
Dante aired 15,156 times, mostly between mid-September and mid-October, with a few airings last week. The highest incidence of the ad was found to n Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Denver, and Cleveland, with a less robust presence in Boston, Raleigh, Tampa, Milwaukee, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and San Francisco.
2. While Donald Trump did not have a strong advertising presence on TV, compared to Hillary Clinton, his Do You Really Need To Ask? ad comes in at second on the list.
It starts with Clinton asking why she is not 50 points ahead of Trump in the polls. In response, the narrator, taking license to muddle truths responds: Maybe its because the director of the FBI said you lied about your email. Or maybe its because your policies have allowed ISIS and terrorism to spread. Or maybe its because you called Americans deplorables.
The ad successfully points to many of Clintons pressure points with voters -- her emails and that her time as Secretary of State coincided with the rise of the Islamic State. (ISIS actually began in 1999.) Again, Trumps top ad in battleground states focuses on his opponents shortcomings, adding to the acrimonious nature of the election.
Do You Really Need To Ask? aired 13,479 times, peaking in early October. The biggest markets for the ad were Boston, Denver, Las Vegas and Cedar Rapids. Smaller air totals were found in Tampa, San Francisco, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Raleigh, NC.
3. The Hillary Clinton campaign ad Silo reminds voters of Trumps erratic behavior and the utter lack of appropriate experience he has for the job of president.
I would bomb the shit out of them. I want to be unpredictable. I love war. All Trump quotes that are cut into the ad after Bruce Blair, a former launch officer, talks about the gravity of having usable nuclear weapons. The thought of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death. It should scare everyone, warns Blair.
Playing off the widely held view that Trump is unfit for office, particularly in light of the awesome military power he would possess, Silo aired heavily in swing states.
The ad aired 13,342 times, from early October through the most recently recorded day (Nov. 4), primarily in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Philadelphia. There were also heavy airings in Boston, Raleigh, NC, Cleveland and Cedar Rapids, with fewer showings in Woodbridge, VA, Milwaukee, Denver and San Francisco.
by Sara Guaglione , November 8, 2016
The Wall Street Journalsuffered a 21% loss in advertising revenue in its most recent quarter, parent company News Corp. reported Monday.
During a call with financial analysts, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson said the sobering numbers were a reflection of declines in financial and technology advertising, as well as "mayhem in the market."
The ad market is in upheaval, he said. Across our masthead, we saw a more challenging print marketplace as has already been articulated by other companies across the sector.
As third-quarter earnings reports trickled out in the past few weeks, the New York Times Co. reported a 19% decline in print ad revenue, USA Today owner Gannett Co. reported a 15% drop in print ad revs, while Tronc, owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, reported a 13% decline.
Last week, WSJ began offering buyouts, warned of layoffs and cut down its "Metro" section.
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The good news came from The Wall Street Journals digital business, which accounted for a record 55% of the paper's revenue in the quarter. The newspaper will retain its paywall for the presidential election.
The Wall Street Journals circulation revenue rose 6% in the quarter. Digital subscriptions rose 2% from the previous quarter to 967,000 at the end of September.
News Corp. also owns U.K. papers like The Sun, the book publisher HarperCollins and real-estate site Realtor.com.
News Corp.s overall ad revenue in its news division fell 11%. The company posted a loss of $15 million in its fiscal first quarter, which ended on Sept. 30.
In the same quarter last year, the company earned a $175 million profit.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, November 8, 2016
Google Maps on mobile devices has become the cornerstone for local advertising. Now an analyst firm estimates the revenue opportunity for Google from Maps at about $5 billion by 2020.
Senior Research Analyst at Baird Capital Colin Sebastian called Google Maps, a free-to-use consumer tool "one of the companys largest untapped revenue opportunities" in a research note.
"We estimate Maps will grow into a $5 billion incremental revenue business over the next 3-4 years, contributing as much as one-third of the companys advertising growth by 2020," he wrote in the research note. "We note that $5 billion would equate to roughly $3.50/year per Maps user, or significantly below the overall $40+ in annual Google Advertising revenue per user, despite the high value of local-targeted ads."
The analysis comes following a small business event Sebastian recently attended in which the company provided an overview of the next generation of Google Maps.
Sebastian also called Google Maps "one of the most successful applications geared specifically to handle local search, with more than one billion active users, and 92 countries fully mapped via street-view."
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He wrote that while 60% of Google search queries already incorporate some form of local intent, the location-related searches are growing 50% faster than mobile searches overall.
Today, Google supports a variety of new local advertising formats including search ads, as well as Click to Call and Click for Directions buttons in the mobile app. It also offers Promoted Pins featuring brand logos, promotions to drive store visits, ability to build custom business pages, and local inventory search. In the future that will evolve as the company builds out services with its "strong product and engineering skill-set."
Recognising the reasons people worry about a potential cancer diagnosis could help ease concern and encourage people with possible cancer symptoms to see their doctor earlier, according to research presented at the NCRI Cancer Conference.
Researchers based at University College London found that 62 per cent1 of people in the UK2 worry about their risk of getting cancer. But until now, little was known about what it is about cancer that worries them. So the researchers asked over 2,000 people how worried they were about various aspects of cancer.
Their findings show that about two thirds worry about the emotional impact of a cancer diagnosis and dying from cancer. This was closely followed by worries about cancer treatments, which were shared by 50 per cent of people. Worries about the social consequences of a cancer diagnosis were less pronounced, with only about 25 per cent of people in the UK worrying about what a diagnosis of cancer would mean for their important relationships.
The researchers also looked at which groups of the population were more worried. They found that women and younger people were more likely to worry about cancer in general, while ethnic minorities in the UK were more likely to specifically worry about the social consequences of a cancer diagnosis.
The team interviewed more than 2,000 adults aged between 18 and 70 and asked questions on 12 different potential areas of concern. These included worry about being diagnosed with cancer, dying from cancer, cancer treatments, financial problems and the effect the disease could have on relationships.
Charlotte Vrinten, lead author based at University College London, said: "We know that fear of cancer can put some people off seeking help for possible cancer symptoms. This study highlights the number of people who have concerns about cancer, and the variety of concerns they may have.
"Everyone reacts differently to worry. For some, it can encourage them to go to their doctor, but it puts other people off. We now need to find out why worry motivates people differently so that we can ease the fears of those who are put off seeing their doctor, because undue fear of cancer may cost people their lives. It's also important to remember that cancer treatments and survival are improving and a cancer diagnosis doesn't have to be dreaded like it used to be."
Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK's head nurse said: "We've all had times when we've wondered whether to see a GP, but getting unusual or persistent changes checked out is really important. Research that helps uncover why some people worry about cancer is vital because it helps us recognise those fears and understand how we can start to address them.
"Doctors are there to help spot cancer symptoms early when treatment is more likely to be successful. Delaying a visit could save up bigger problems for later. So if you've noticed anything that isn't normal for you, make an appointment to see your doctor. Or you can phone our cancer information nurses on 0808 800 4040 to discuss any concerns."
Dr Karen Kennedy, NCRI Director, said: "This work highlights the importance of research to understand people's concerns about cancer and the worries they experience. By working in collaboration and listening to the views of people affected by cancer, and who may be affected in future, we can find ways to break down the barriers that people face when thinking about seeking advice from their doctor or attending screening appointments."
Abstract: What is it about cancer that worries people? A population-based survey of adults in England, C.Vrinten et al., presented at the NCRI Cancer Conference.
The age at which cancer survivors were diagnosed for cancer may help determine their risk of death from heart disease, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation .
Heart disease has been known to be the leading cause of treatment-related, non-tumor deaths among survivors of childhood cancer, breast cancer and Hodgkin lymphoma. As of now, the risk of cardiac mortality has not been investigated comprehensively within a large population of teenage and young adult cancer survivors, researchers say.
The United Kingdom-based study consisted of more than 200,000 survivors diagnosed with cancer from ages 15 to 39 who survived at least five years after being diagnosed. Researchers examined data from these survivors and found:
Six percent of deaths were caused by heart disease.
Cancer survivors diagnosed at ages 15 to 19 had 4.2 times higher risk of death from heart disease compared to the general population of similar age and gender.
Survivors who were 35 to 39 years old at cancer diagnosis had 1.2 times higher risk of death from heart disease compared to the general population of similar age and gender.
"It is important for clinicians because it helps them focus the most intensive follow-up care on those most at risk," said Mike Hawkins, D.Phil., study senior author, epidemiology professor and director of the Centre for Childhood Cancer Survivor Studies at the University of Birmingham in England. "It is important for survivors because it empowers them by providing them with their long-term chances of a specific side effect of cancer treatment."
The significance of age at diagnosis was most apparent for survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma - cancer of the lymphatic system. 6.9 percent of survivors who were diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma at ages 15-19 had died of heart disease by age 55 years compared to two percent of those diagnosed at ages 35-39. Given their age and gender less than one percent of these survivors would have been expected to die from general population rates.
Survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma experienced 3.8 times the risk of death from heart disease than expected from members of the general population of similar age and gender. Among survivors of Hodgkin's lymphoma aged over 60 years, almost 28 percent of the total excess number of deaths observed were due to heart disease.
Survivors of other types of cancer also had a higher than expected risk of death from heart disease including: leukemia, genitourinary cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, and others.
This new research provides insight into the cardiotoxicity of cancer treatments given in the past to teenagers and young adults - a growing topic of focus in medical circles related to cancer treatment. However, researchers noted the study lacks detailed information on exposure to cancer treatments: radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
"Survivors of cancer diagnosed in teenage and young adulthood are internationally acknowledged to be an under studied population. With the advantage of long-standing cancer registration for the U.K. population, we were in a position to undertake the largest study to date, which has the advantage of being population-based and benefits from lengthy follow-up after diagnosis," Hawkins said.
Participants were part of The Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Survivor Study of 200,945 cancer survivors diagnosed in England and Wales from 1971 to 2006 and followed to 2014.
Co-authors are Katherine Henson, D.Phil; Raoul Reulen, Ph.D.; David Winter, H.N.C.; Chloe Bright, M.Sc.; Miranda Fidler, Ph.D.; Clare Frobisher, Ph.D.; Joyeeta Guha, Ph.D.; Kwok Wong, Ph.D.; Julie Kelly; Angela Edgar, M.D.; Martin McCabe, M.D., Ph.D.; Jeremy Whelan, M.D., F.R.C.P., M.B.B.S.; David Cutter, D.Phil; and Sarah Darby, Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
Cancer Research U.K., the National Institute for Health Research, Department of Health Policy Research Programme, Nuffield Department of Population Health, Clinical Trial Service Unit and British Heart Foundation Centre for Research Excellence funded the study.
An international research team led by the University of Leicester has made a breakthrough advance that could pave a new route for the development of anti-cancer drugs.
The advance is announced in an online publication in Nature Chemical Biology. The Leicester team members say they are delighted by their finding which could lead to new anti-cancer drugs thanks to "wonderful interdisciplinary collaboration involving biochemists and chemists from England, Scotland, France and USA."
Professor Ian Eperon and Dr Cyril Dominguez from the University of Leicester's Institute of Structural and Chemical Biology led the team that developed a new method to analyse the RNA step in expressing our genetic code.
Dr Dominguez, of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, said: "Our research aims at understanding how four-stranded RNA structures called G-quadruplexes affect cellular processes such as RNA splicing. In this research, we describe a novel method that, for the first time, allows us to show that G-quadruplexes form in long RNAs and in conditions where the splicing reaction can take place."
G-quadruplexes are specific structures formed when a piece of DNA or RNA folds into a four-stranded structure. DNA G-quadruplexes have been shown to be associated with diseases such as cancer and many small molecules called G-quadruplex binders have been developed as putative novel anti-cancer drugs, the best example being Quarfloxin that reached a phase II clinical trial. RNA G-quadruplexes are also believed to play important roles in cancers but to date there are no straightforward methods to prove that they exist in cells. If they form and do control RNA splicing, then the design of molecules that bind them would be a new route for the development of anti-cancer drugs.
During the process of gene expression, DNA is transcribed to RNA molecules that are in turn translated to produce proteins. RNA splicing is an essential step in producing the finished messenger RNA and the RNA copied from one gene can be spliced in different ways. This is how the 20,000 human genes can produce around 130,000 proteins.
This process is highly regulated and defects in its regulation are a common cause of many diseases, including spinal muscular atrophy and some cancers.
Professor Eperon said: "Our novel method, FOLDeR, will allow RNA scientists to investigate the existence of G-quadruplexes in physiological condition allowing a better understanding of their role in cellular processes. It is particularly interesting that the RNA we have been studying is one that plays an important role in some cancers. When the RNA is spliced using one set of sites, it produces a protein favouring cell survival. This is a problem for cancer treatments, many of which work by damaging growing cells in the hope that they will then die. However, when an alternative set of sites is used, the RNA produces a protein that encourages cell death. We have shown that G-quadruplexes form near the alternative sites, and our hope is that we can target these to shift splicing towards the pro-death pattern."
This is a major step forward in the G-quadruplex research field. In a follow-up paper, the team will report their work on drugs that exploit this structure.
Dr Dominguez added: "We are delighted that a prestigious journal such as Nature Chemical Biology recognize the importance of our work. This has been a wonderful interdisciplinary collaboration involving biochemists and chemists from England, Scotland, France and USA.
"This publication is crucial for us to obtain further funding and carry on with this topic. Our next step is to investigate the effect of G-quadruplex binders on RNA splicing and use this knowledge to design novel drugs with a high degree of specificity for cancer cells."
The work has been funded by an MRC Career Development Award to Cyril Dominguez that started in October 2010 and finished in September 2015, and a Sir Dudley Spurling Post Graduate Scholarship from the Bank of Butterfield Foundation in Bermuda to Carika Weldon. The work was also funded by CNRS and Lorraine University and the European Alternative Splicing Network of Excellence.
This work is the result of a very fruitful collaboration with the groups of Dr. Glenn Burley (University of Strathclyde), Drs Isabelle Behm-Ansmant and Christiane Branlant (CNRS, Nancy, France) and Prof. Laurence Hurley (University of Arizona).
Around one in six women (17 per cent) diagnosed with breast cancer go to their doctor with a symptom other than a lump - the most commonly reported breast cancer symptom - according to new research presented at the 2016 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer conference in Liverpool.
Breast symptoms, other than a breast lump, that may be a sign of cancer (termed 'non-lump' in the study) include nipple abnormalities, breast pain, skin abnormalities, ulceration, shape abnormalities and an infected or inflamed breast.
Researchers from UCL examined the data of more than 2,300 women diagnosed with breast cancer in England in 2009/10. They found that, although most women with breast cancer sought help quickly, those with 'non-lump' symptoms were more likely to delay going to their doctor compared with women with a breast lump alone.
Women with both a breast lump and 'non-lump' symptoms were also more likely to delay seeking help.
Women presenting with breast ulceration, nipple abnormalities, breast infection or inflammation, swollen arm or armpit, and pain in the armpit were more likely to wait longer than three months to seek help.
The research used data from 2009/10 National Audit of Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care.
There are more than 53,600 breast cancers diagnosed in the UK every year and 11,400 deaths from the disease annually.
Monica Koo, presenting author based at UCL, said: "Our research shows around one in six women diagnosed with breast cancer have symptoms other than a breast lump. These women are more likely to delay going to the doctor compared to women with breast lump alone."
"It's crucial that women are aware that a lump is not the only symptom of breast cancer. If they are worried about any breast symptoms, the best thing to do is to get it checked by a doctor as soon as possible. Diagnosing cancer earlier really is key in order to increase the chances of survival. Symptom awareness campaigns such as the Be Clear on Cancer campaign should continue to emphasise breast symptoms other than breast lump."
Dr Karen Kennedy, Director of the NCRI, said: "This research shows that, all too often, women are delaying going to their doctor with symptoms of breast cancer. This could be because people are simply unaware that breast cancer can present in many different ways, not just through the presence of a lump. With a disease like breast cancer, it's essential to be diagnosed as early as possible so that a treatment plan can be developed and started. Awareness campaigns need to raise awareness of all of the potential symptoms of breast cancer so that people know how to spot the signs and when to go to a doctor."
This work was supported by the Policy Research Unit in Cancer Awareness, Screening and Early Diagnosis. The Policy Research Unit in Cancer Awareness, Screening, and Early Diagnosis receives funding from the Department of Health Policy Research Programme. It is a collaboration between researchers from seven institutions (Queen Mary University of London, UCL, King's College London, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Hull York Medical School, Durham University and Peninsula Medical School); and a Cancer Research UK Clinician Advanced Scientist Fellowship A18180.
Article: Typical and atypical symptoms in women with breast cancer: Evidence of variation in diagnostic intervals from a national audit of cancer diagnosis.
A drug that reduces inflammation has the potential to prevent pre-term birth before symptoms even have a chance to appear.
Researchers from the University of Adelaide in South Australia have found a drug that blocks certain inflammation pathways prevented early birth entirely in pregnant mice.
Lead researcher Professor Sarah Robertson, the Director of the Robinson Research Institute, said that the drug (+)-naloxone could be used much earlier in a pregnancy than previous treatments, potentially before any symptoms had developed.
"Most people when they think of labour, they just think of contractions and then the baby's born," she said.
"We're targeting steps that happen much higher in that cascade of events, things that are occurring a lot earlier and a lot further upstream in that pathway.
"We'd be looking at which women were at risk in the second trimester of pregnancy and then commencing treatment soon thereafter."
While the trial focused on the use of (+)-naloxone as a drug for long-term use, Robertson said it would also be possible to use a higher dosage to delay a pregnancy in emergencies.
"There's also a second use for women who come into a clinic, if they're in sufficiently early stage labour, this drug will also have value as a kind of treatment.
Pre-term births occur due to inflammation responses in the mother's body, caused by the immune system recognising the fetus as foreign and rejecting the pregnancy.
The drug (+)-naloxone works by blocking a specific immunity receptor known as Toll-Like receptor 4 (TLR4) which, while important to the immune system, causes a range of inflammation issues during pregnancy.
The research, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, found a number of other birth issues including stillbirth, infant death and low weight could also be treated using (+)-naloxone.
"Often when we use those terms they sound like they're all different things, but they're actually more related than many people would guess," Robertson said.
"So if you can tackle inflammation and assist the immune system to withstand that stress it has benefits for all of those different problems."
Currently pre-term birth is the major cause of death for children under five, with more than 1.1 million deaths each year. Pre-term births make up 12% of all births globally.
Professor Robertson said that more research is still needed to determine if (+)-naloxone or similar drugs can safely be used for human pregnancies.
"It's still at least five years before anyone would consider testing it with pregnancy in humans.
"All of this relates to being able to develop good diagnostics to give us a good handle on predicting who's at risk early enough to get in there and use these interventions."
The Robinson Research Institute brings together internationally renowned researchers in human reproduction, pregnancy and child health.
The first polling stations closed in two US states of Indiana, and Kentucky at 6p.m. EST on Tuesday night, Sputnik reported.
The first voting results of the 58th Presidential election are expected to appear soon. The last polls will close in the state of Alaska at 1 a.m. EST on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the US citizens have gone to the polls to cast their votes for the 45th President of the United States.
Americans are choosing from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, as well as third party and independent presidential candidates, including Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, and Independent candidate Evan McMullin.
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artificial sweetener (150 1 mg aspartame [AS]), or
carbohydrate (15 g sucrose and 50 g sucrose ).
Artificially sweetened alcohol mixers are also a commonly reported weight-control strategy.The study investigated the impact of consuming alcohol with mixers containing various doses of carbohydrate or an artificial sweetener on breath alcohol concentration (BrAC), ratings of intoxication and impairment, and cognitive performance in females.To determine whether artificial sweeteners accelerate alcohol responses or sugar dampens its effect (or a combination of both), this recruited a group of young women.Twenty-six females with mean age of 25 years completed a crossover study involving 4 trials, each trial separated by at least two days.A dose of alcohol was consumed in each trial mixed withThe BrAC was sampled over a 3-hour period and analyzed for peak BrAC and other parameters using WinNonlin noncompartmental pharmacokinetic modelingResults showed thatGreater reductions were observed with the higher dose of sugar (37% lower with 50 g compared to 8% lower with 15 g of sugar).The authors speculated thatA reduction in BrAC may help reduce the risk of alcohol-related harm.Consuming alcohol with sugar-containing mixers attenuates peak BrAC and reduces total alcohol exposure in a dose-response manner compared to drinks containing artificial sweetener or no additives.The effect of adding sugars to alcoholic beverages may translate to reduced risk of alcohol-related harms.Source: Medindia
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"I think it's encouraging news for public health in Australia that there were reductions for this high-risk population in the areas that had higher uptake of the incentive," Trivedi said. "By whatever mechanism this occurred, it's good news that there were fewer hospitalizations for chronic conditions."A positive outcomeThe "Closing the Gap Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme" (PBS) was part of a suite of programs meant to improve upon the the stark 13-year average difference in lifespan between indigenous and non-indigenous people in Australia. With $1.6 billion, the government between 2008 and 2012 launched several measures, including PBS, to improve care for chronic conditions such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.Under the PBS, implemented in July 2010, indigenous people determined by a doctor to have, or to be at risk for, chronic conditions could have drug copays lowered to $5.40 from $33.30 per prescription. Those who were receiving subsidized copays of $5.40 before the program could now get medicines with no copay at all. The copay reductions applied to all drugs, not just ones for chronic conditions.To determine what impact the program might have had, Trivedi and four Australian collaborators analyzed data on regional participation in the program and hospitalizations by condition for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians both before and after the PBS. The data came from a larger study done by members of the study team and others.Overall the team found that among indigenous people years 15 and older, the rate of hospitalizations for chronic conditions dropped to 61.2 per 1,000 in 2011 from 82.3 per 1,000 in 2009. Virtually all of the benefit, however, accrued in the regions with higher than average uptake of the PBS benefit. There, the hospitalization reduction was to 60 per 1,000 from 103.4 per 1,000, or about 40 percent.Meanwhile, the team found that the precipitous drop in hospitalizations was mostly specific to indigenous people and to chronic conditions. Among non-indigenous people with chronic conditions, for example, the drop over the same timeframe was only 12.9 percent. And among indigenous people in the high-uptake regions, hospitalizations for acute conditions dropped 13.5 percent between 2009 and 2011.Trivedi said the magnitude of the hospitalization decline surprised him but prior studies on the effects of lowering copays have shown they help some people acquire and adhere to medications and reduce hospitalizations.Other studies have found that hospitalization for chronic conditions can cost less than subsidizing drug treatment. And there are many studies that have found other benefits to reducing hospital trips. Hospitalization is disruptive for patients and exposes them to potential problems such as hospital acquired infection.Trivedi hopes to continue the research. The next step, he said, would be to dig deeper into data, such as individual medication claims, to determine whether people who received subsidized copays were in fact more likely to take their medications.Source: Eurekalert
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"Treating chronic total occlusions can be challenging due to their long lengths and the presence of greater degrees of calcium. They often require long stents with high radial strength to maintain acute gain and to minimize late vessel recoil after percutaneous coronary intervention," said lead investigator, Koen Teeuwen, MD from St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands.Between February 2012 and June 2015, a total of 330 consecutive patients with successfully recanalized native total or chronic total coronary occlusions were randomized to the hybrid sirolimus-eluting stent or the everolimus-eluting stent in two Belgian and six Dutch high-volume PCI centers.Follow-up angiography was performed at nine months after the procedure. In addition, clinical follow-up was obtained during the hospital stay and at one, six, nine and 12 months.The primary non-inferiority end point was in-segment late lumen loss assessed at nine months by angiography. Secondary angiographic end points included: in-stent late lumen loss, minimal lumen diameter, in-stent and in-segment percentage of diameter stenosis, binary restenosis and reocclusions at nine months. Secondary individual and composite clinical end points were clinically indicated target lesion revascularization/target vessel revascularization, myocardial infarction, death (cardiac and non-cardiac), stent thrombosis, target vessel failure, and major adverse cardiac events.At nine months, angiography was available in 281 of 330 (85%) patients. The primary non-inferiority end point of in-segment late lumen loss was not met for SES compared with EES (0.130.63 mm vs. 0.020.47 mm; P=0.08, 2-sided; difference=0.11 mm; 95% confidence interval, -0.01 to 0.25; Pnon-inferiority=0.11, 1-sided). In-stent late lumen loss was comparable between SES and EES (0.120.59 versus 0.070.46 mm; P=0.52). The incidence of in-stent/in-segment binary restenosis was higher with SES compared to EES (8.0% vs. 2.1%; P=0.028) with comparable rates of reocclusions (2.2% vs. 1.4%; P=0.68). Clinically indicated target lesion and vessel revascularization (9.2% vs. 4.0%; P=0.08 and 9.2% vs. 6.0%; P=0.33), target vessel failure (9.9% vs. 6.6%; P=0.35) and definite or probable stent thrombosis (0.7% vs. 0.7%; P=1.0) were comparable in the SES and EES group.Clinical follow-up at 12 months was available in 99% of all subjects. Clinically indicated target lesion and vessel revascularization, target vessel failure and MACE were comparable between both groups. Two subjects in the SES group received non-clinical TLR with balloon angioplasty after observing severe stent strut malapposition with optical coherence tomography at nine months. There was only one probable or definite stent thrombosis in each stent group (0.7% vs. 0.7%; P=1.0)."The findings of the study show that the non-inferiority of in-segment late lumen loss was not met for SES against EES in successfully recanalized chronic total occlussions," said Dr. Teeuwen. "In addition, the rate of binary restenosis was significantly higher with SES. Future developments in stent technology should focus on the challenging characteristics of CTOs to improve device efficacy and clinical outcomes."Source: Eurekalert
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On October 25, Russian columnist Oleg Bondarenko published an article, titled "Poor Merkel," subtitled "How The Chancellor Of Germany Became A Hostage Of The Minsk Process And What Is In Store For Her" in the Moscow-based daily newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets. The article was published following the Normandy Group's October 19 meeting in Berlin, attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. According to Bondarenko, the future of the Minsk agreement depends on how long Merkel remains chancellor. "It is unlikely that a new German chancellor, precisely the French president, will voluntarily assume the unbearable burden of forcing Ukraine to fulfill anything." Bondarenko added.
Below are excerpts from Bondarenko's article:[1]
'The Main Obstacle On [Merkel's] path Is Not The Russian Leader... But The Ukrainian President'
"Aside from the understandable desire to minimize the risks of the escalating violence in Europe, the last week's Berlin meeting of the Normandy Four had other goals as well.[2] It's not fully acceptable to speak openly about this subject, because it slightly undermines the already shaken status of departing European leaders, who, decided that the American 'changing of the guards' is the proper time to reiterate their own [crucial] role.
"German chancellor Angela Merkel, the main 'activist' of the Minsk process, is no longer happy that she initiated it a year and half ago. For her ratings in her country and within her [Christian Democratic] party and, finally, her ability to become a German chancellor for the third time [3] - all depend on the successful realization of the Minsk agreement.[4] That's why today 'frau chancellor has a greater interest than anyone else in the effectiveness of the agreements reached by Ukraine and People Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. However, the major obstacle in her path is not the Russian leader [Vladimir Putin], as some seek to imply , but the Ukrainian president [Petro Poroshenko]. After having in fact admitted, that he agreed to the Minsk Protocol of February 12, 2015 because of the difficult military-political circumstances (the Debaltseve defeat of the Ukrainian Army), today Poroshenko attempts to postpone or to wreck the fulfillment of the agreements.[5] This is totally unacceptable to his guarantors, and first and foremost to Merkel.
"This is all fully clear to the current French leader [Francois Hollande] - a president with the lowest rating and level of trust in the entire history of the Fifth Republic, who cannot count on even reaching the second round of the Spring elections, as he unconditionally loses to two favorites - Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen. This makes him a'lame duck' in any negotiations.
"Vladimir Putin, who justly assumes that the agreements, reached after 16 hours of discussion in Minsk [on February 12, 2015], suit the interests of Russia and Donbas, prefers to fulfill them pedantically and to avoid replacing the original principles with the new ones - which Ukraine attempts to do every time. By and large, each day of delay in implementing the Minsk [agreements] only widens the abyss between Donbas and Kiev and actively transforms the People Republics into independent proto-states. The well-known expert opinion is: that for the establishment of new state [if it is effective] five years will suffice. This is the'point of no return,' after which any reintegration process is quite difficult to start. In the coming winter it will be three years. Vladimir Surkov, president [Putin's] assistant, was correct in calling the Minsk process the creeping sovereignty of Donbas.
"Poroshenko, for his part, is uninterested in the mutinous region's return to Ukraine and especially under special conditions, as its population is clearly anti-Kiev. The specter of inevitable federalization haunts Petro Alexeyevich [Poroshenko's patronym] everywhere. But it is hard to tell it to the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. She might misunderstand. Hence Angela Merkel remains alone as the engine of the Minsk process, its initiator and hostage.
Source: Twitter.com/sharzhipero, August 8, 2016.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel portrayed as a US' puppet.
On the bat: "Sanctions"
On the megaphone:"Blackmail"
'The Fate Of The [Minsk] Agreement Depends Directly On How Long Will Merkel Retains Her Present Office'
"Less than a year remains till the next German Bundestag elections, the results of which will usher in a new ruling coalition headed by a new chancellor. Presently, Merkel has a very narrow space to maneuver: she personifies last year's migration collapse under the aegis of'New European policy' on the one hand, and on the other - the anti-Russia sanctions, as Washington's main European ally. The role of the producer of the Minsk agreement hardly fits these directions, particularly because its (non )realization requires pressuring Poroshenko, not Moscow.
"Somehow, appearing as Putin's ally (even if involuntarily) does not enter the chancellor's plans. So she has to balance between the publicly anti-Russia rhetoric and the simultaneous necessity of'tough negotiations' with Poroshenko who, naturally, uses every opportunity for anti-Putin tirades and is therefore in no hurry to guarantee the Minsk process. Thus the agreement's fate directly depends on how long Merkel retains her present office. It is unlikely that a new German chancellor, precisely like the French president, will voluntarily assume the unbearable burden of forcing Ukraine to fulfill anything. The only exception would be the threat of war in Europe. In any other case the Minsk agreement might end when two of its four guarantors are replaced.
"The current Berlin agreements of the Normandy Four mean the reinforcement of the OSCE mission, more disengagement of forces zones, and designing the' road map' for implementing the Minsk [agreement] as the German foreign minister had stipulated (the temporary special status for Donbas on the local election day, the permanent status after recognition by the OSCE mission of those elections) - this is the essence of the declaration of intent, and then must attempt to reach further agreement. Will Kiev want to coordinate the Minsk 'road map' till the end of November, as it was declared in Berlin, moreover as it provides the coveted control over the borders only after the end of the hated political and constitutional changes? And will Poroshenko have the power for it? Alas [not].
"But maybe my skepticism is excessive. And at some moment Angela Merkel will glance at her uncontrollably falling ratings against the backdrop of the yeast-like growth of confidence in 'Putin's friends'" while the trust for Putin friends is on the constant rise - euro-skeptics from the Alternative for Germany [AfD] and anti-globalists of the Left party[6] - and will pick the phone and say with her exacting, school-like, voice:'Petro, stop this circus, pass the constitutional amendments and conduct the elections in Donbas, or else...'
"I'm afraid she will not call and say it. For otherwise she'll have to admit that the coup d'etat of February 2014, which she supported too, against the acting president of Ukraine (do you recall the name [former Ukrainian president Viktor] Yanukovich?), was a mistake. But it is too late to correct that mistake. And that cannot but affect the rating..."
Endnotes:
The Moscow-based English-language weekly Moscow Times published an article titled "Russia's State Media: Anti-Clinton, But Not Wedded to Trump," by Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev, describing the Russian state media's coverage of the U.S. presidential elections.[1] According to the author, Russian state media have been "largely sympathetic" toward Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. However, it would be "an oversimplification to say the state media went all out for Trump." Earlier, on October 24, the weekly published another article, titled "U.S. Elections According to Russian State TV," analyzing how the three Russian flagship shows - Voskresnoye Vremya (The Times on Sunday), Vesti Nedeli (Weekly News) and Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyev - covered the U.S. presidential campaign and their allegations that the elections will be rigged in favor of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.[2]
Below are excerpts of the two articles published by The Moscow Times:
'Russia's State Media: Anti-Clinton, But Not Wedded to Trump'[3] : 'Trump's Against-The-Odds Campaign Garnered More Attention Than Russia's Own Parliamentary Elections'
"From the word 'go,' Russian state media have been largely sympathetic toward Donald Trump. Even prior to the Republican primaries, they reported every minor bump and hiccup in his ratings. In September, Trump's against-the-odds campaign garnered more attention than Russia's own parliamentary elections. A week before Russians went to the polls to vote for the new Duma, Vesti Nedeli ('News of the Week'), a weekly news review show on state TV channel Rossiya, spent 8 minutes covering the upcoming Russian elections and another 9 discussing whether Donald Trump might be assassinated. Most national outlets devoted extensive coverage to even the most minuscule revelations from the leaked Democratic National Commission and Clinton staff emails.
See MEMRI TV Clip No. 5670, Senior Russian TV Host Dmitri Kisiliov: They May Kill Trump, September 11, 2016.
"But it is an oversimplification to say state media went all out for Trump. They were less for Trump, more staunchly against Clinton. And here they followed President Vladimir Putin's own lead: in 2011, he accused the then-secretary of state of fomenting protests in Russia. Unsurprisingly, his media have not wasted an opportunity to portray Clinton as a Russophobic warmonger.
"RIA Novosti, once Russia's largest and most respected news agency, has been the vanguard of the agitprop efforts. To its credit, the agency's DC bureau has provided mostly objective and balanced coverage of the election. But the most popular of RIA's election dispatches, which garnered almost 200,000 page views, went so far as to claim 'Clinton has problems with her head.' [The news agency referred to an e-mail sent by longtime Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, and leaked by WikiLeaks, in which she said: 'She's going to stick to notes a little closer this am, still not perfect in her head.' This sentence can arguably be interpreted and translated in different ways.]
"Few Russian media outlets endorsed Trump outright. Those that did are far from prominent. Parlamentskaya Gazeta, a dull newspaper of record to the Russian parliament's upper chamber, was one such publication. In a September 2015 op-ed, it declared 'Donald Trump a self-made man, a trait Americans love, like they love anyone who is the American Dream incarnated.' It claimed Trump would be a better leader than Obama, who was a "single issue president" (referring to Obamacare), or Clinton, who was "one of the worst secretaries of state in American history."
'The... Recent Shift In The Russian State Media Coverage Of The U.S. Elections Is The Effort To Frame Their Supposed Illegitimacy In Russian Terms'
"Open endorsements were largely absent from the more influential media. Indeed, RT, formerly Russia Today, was largely sympathetic to a Democratic contender, Bernie Sanders, and to third party candidates like Jill Stein. But when Sanders dropped out, RT threw its full weight behind discrediting Clinton.
As the election entered the final weeks, the Russian media focus switched to the supposed illegitimacy of the U.S. elections, implicitly backing Trump's claims about 'large scale voter fraud.'
"On Oct. 23, Vesti Nedeli did just that. In a long tirade, the program's host, Russian 'chief propagandist' Dmitry Kiselyov lamented 'the downfall of the American media,' criticizing outlets such as Politico for colluding with Clinton's campaign. Another news segment on Channel One called Donald Trump 'just as evil' as Clinton, a 'boorish adventurist,' and a 'swindler.'
"The most noticeable recent shift in the Russian state media coverage of the U.S. elections is the effort to frame their supposed illegitimacy in Russian terms. Fraud techniques at Russian elections are well-documented - from the so-called 'carousels' (repeated voting with absentee ballots at multiple stations) to coercion and the use of 'administrative resources' (support from the ruling party's political machine)...
"Russia's propagandists are stopping short of saying that the U.S. elections will be just as fraudulent as the Russian elections have been. After all, that would require an admission of epic state wrongdoing. Rather, they seem more concerned with sowing seeds of doubt among their domestic audience."
'U.S. Elections According to Russian State TV'[4] : 'Kiselyov Claimed That U.S. Elections Could Be Judged By The Same Formula That The U.S. Has Judged Other Nations' Elections'
"On [Russian TV Channel] Rossiya 24's 'Weekly News,' presenter Dmitry Kiselyov accused the American press of corrupting the presidential election by accepting favors from the Clinton campaign's staff. Kiselyov introduced the story by telling viewers that, in the final lap of the electoral race, one candidate had alleged that the election results may be falsified and suggested he might not recognize them. Kiselyov was referring to Donald Trump's comments presidential debate [on October 19], the last debate before the November election.
"Kiselyov then played a clip from the debate showing Trump lashing out at the 'dishonest media' without Russian dubbing or subtitles, leaving a large portion of Kiselyov's audience clueless as to what the candidate had said.
"Based on these comments, Kiselyov claimed that U.S. elections could be judged by the same formula that the U.S. has judged other nations' elections - not transparent, lacking competition, mass falsification, and carried out using the resources of the incumbent administration. 'They can't be called free and democratic,' Kiselyov told his viewers.
"Kiselyov explained that Trump's concerns were related to states which have early voting and lack voter I.D. laws. The audience was then shown a clip of Trump claiming that about 1.8 million dead people are allegedly still on voter rolls. Kiselyov then mentioned that the U.S. refused to allow international election observers, 'specifically from Russia.'
"What he failed to point out is that the U.S. is allowing election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the U.S. State Department invited Russian observers to join the OSCE election monitoring mission. The invitation was declined by Russia, however, which wanted to monitor the elections with their own mission.
'When It Comes To Coverage Of The U.S. Election, It Seems Rossiya 24 Came In With Guns Blazing'
"The same theme of electoral fraud flowed through Channel One's 'The Times on Sunday' news program with its famous classic Soviet-era intro music. The story began with a title taken from the lyrics of a famous Russian pop song: 'The carousel beckons, beckons, beckons.' Of course, 'carousel' is a reference to a common election rigging tactic in which paid voters cast their ballot more than once at different polling places. In case the viewer wasn't clear on who plans to rig the election, there was a photo of Hillary Clinton on the screen.
"The story began not in Washington D.C. or at the last presidential debate, but in the chicken yard of a farm far from the capital. The narrator explained how America's traditional Election Day - the first Tuesday in November - was chosen to fit the needs of farmers. Coincidentally, the farmer interviewed by Channel One's correspondent happened to be a Trump supporter.
"After this, 'The Times of Sunday' gave a textbook explanation of the most unique feature of U.S. presidential elections: the electoral college. The reporter then informed viewers about occasions when U.S. presidents won the election without winning the popular vote, most recently George W. Bush's victory in 2000. The same concerns have been voiced by many Americans. Thus far, however, there has not been any evidence that carousel voting could be employed in the American electoral system -- well, if you exclude the claims of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani[5] ... Next came a long lecture about corporate money and lobbying in U.S. politics. The broadcast recycled a Trump campaign talking point: the idea that a candidate with such massive personal wealth would not be beholden to money interests if elected.
"The highlight of this segment was the narrator's praise for Louis Thomas McFadden, a Republican congressman from the 1930s who, viewers were told, fought against the Federal Reserve system because it was 'set up by international bankers.' The segment failed to mention that McFadden was far more direct in his criticism of the Fed and claimed that it was a plot by Jewish bankers to overthrow the government. McFadden also expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler on numerous occasions and was also praised in the Nazi German publication 'Die Sturmer.' The narrator claimed that McFadden survived two assassination attempts before succumbing to the third one; in reality, McFadden died of natural causes.
"When it comes to coverage of the U.S. election, it seems Rossiya 24 came in with guns blazing, whereas the First Channel made a decent, almost rational start before putting on the tin-foil hat."
Endnotes:
On the eve of the U.S. presidential election, a number of editorials in the Arab press discussed whether the Arab world would prefer Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as president, and which of them would best serve the Arab issues and preserve good relations with Arab countries. Most of them concluded that since both candidates are hostile to Arabs and Muslims, and because in the U.S. the president formulates policy together with other governmental institutions, it will make little difference. Some argued that U.S. policy on some issues vital to the Arab world will remain unchanged no matter who is elected. In one article, in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Ghassan Charbel, noted that although some Arabs yearn for renewed U.S. influence in the region, it was likely not going to happen.
Following are excerpts from some of the editorials:
Image: Globalcitizen.org
Online Daily Raialyoum.com: Most Arabs Prefer Trump
The online daily Raialyoum.com, founded and edited by senior journalist 'Abd Al-Bari 'Atwan, stated in its November 2, 2016 editorial that the initial impression seems to be that the majority of Arabs prefer a Trump victory in the U. S. elections, in hope that he will lead the U.S. to destruction and disintegration. The editorial also expressed regret that the Arab world is in bad shape and lacks any influence on the U.S. elections, a situation that has turned the Arabs and Muslims into a punching bag for both candidates. The editorial stated:
"While no public opinion polls [have been conducted] in the Arab world regarding the U.S. presidential election, the responses of Arabs to the race give the initial impression that a large portion of them prefers a Trump victory. However, this is not due to their love of [Trump] or hatred of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Rather, it is because they have no sympathy for the U.S. and would like to see Obama replaced by a president who will lead it to collapse and disintegration, out of their belief that [the U.S.] is behind the bloody wars and chaos in the region.
"Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is portrayed as a racist populist, has based the agenda of his campaign on hostility towards Muslims and on the building of a wall on the Mexican border to stem the flow of immigrants. He [also] threatens to deport eight million illegal immigrants [from the U.S.] if elected...
"It seems that Miss Clinton is even more hostile to Arabs and Muslims than Trump, and many believe she will continue the policy adopted by President Obama during his two terms...
"As a result, the question prevailing in major Arab capitals is not which [candidate] is better or worse for the Arabs, but rather who is the least harmful. Herein lies the major problem that exposes the fragility of the Arabs' situation and their complete lack of influence on the elections in the U.S. or anywhere else. This is clearly reflected in the candidates' positions regarding our region and in the fact that their stances are similar, characterized mainly by hostility, extortion, and contempt [for the Arab world].
"The Jewish lobby staunchly backs Clinton, throws its full financial and political weight behind her, and utilizes its media outlets to support her out of the belief that she support its interests, namely Israel's military and political superiority - and the results and benefits [of such conduct by the Jewish lobby] are known in advance. It is sad that Arabs, who suffer the most from American policy, are completely out of the equation, and have become the 'punching bag' at which the presidential candidates direct the full force of their aggressive punches." [1]
Saudi Dailies Al-Riyadh And Al-Sharq: The Arab World Doesn't Care Who Is Elected; The U.S. President Does Not Make Decisions On His Own
The official Saudi press stated numerous times that the U.S. president cannot make unilateral policy decisions, that the U.S. Congress and other governmental bodies are also involved in them, and that it will therefore make no difference to the Arab world whether Trump or Clinton is president. In an editorial, the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh stated: "We in the Arab and Islamic countries are very interested in the ramifications of the election's outcome, because the U.S. is involved in all issues in the Arab region, which is far more volatile than other areas of the world. [Opinion] polls show that most of the Arabs believe that Hillary Clinton is better suited to handle pressing Arab matters, because she was recently secretary of state and because she is familiar with the situation in the region and with its political, economic, and geographic importance. Trump, on the other hand, has no Arab or Muslim support, especially after expressing his positions about them, which are very nearly racist.
"Clinton is likely to be more empathetic to our problems than Trump will be, but this does not necessarily mean that she is on our side any more [than he is]. This is because U.S. foreign policy is not based on a president's personal initiatives, but on complex long-term considerations that are implemented in stages without deviation from what was set out [in the beginning]. Therefore, the U.S. president has little room to maneuver, and he can make no decisions on his own.
"We hope that the 45th [U.S.] president will know how to handle our Arab problems - which are likely to be a major issue on his desk at the White House."[2]
Similarly, the Saudi daily Al-Sharq stated in its editorial: "The [U.S.] presidency is nothing but a position that complements the [country's other] constitutional institutions, which are responsible for the general administration of the U.S. The scope of the president's [authority] in both foreign and domestic matters is very limited, and he cannot pass any law or resolution without the consent of the Senate and the members of Congress...
"Therefore, whoever the next president [actually] is interests the Arab world less than how [U.S.] foreign policy will continue - and [the Arab world also wants this policy to] make firm decisions about the situation [in the region] which, during this Democratic era, represented by Obama, was shaky. In contrast, during the [recent] Republican era, represented by George [W.] Bush, there were the most wars. Only a few more hours remain until the map of [which party will] control the U.S. for the next era comes into focus. Then it will be clear whether [control] goes to the Democrats or the Republicans, to Hillary Clinton or to Donald John Trump."[3]
Editor Of Qatari Daily: Regarding Pressing Arab Issues, We Predict No Substantial Difference If Either Trump Or Clinton Are Elected
In the London-based daily Al-Arabi Al-Jadid , which is close to the Qatari regime, an op-ed by the newspaper's editor, Houssam Kanafani, argued that the apprehensions that a Trump victory will bring far-reaching change to U.S. foreign policy are exaggerated, because no U.S. president can do that: "There is much commentary and many warnings about what will happen if this candidate or that one becomes U.S. president. The commentary deals primarily with what will happen in the event of a surprise Donald Trump [win] - assuming that a Clinton [presidency] would be a direct continuation of U.S. President Obama's two terms, and that any change in U.S. attitudes towards the countries in the region, and in its foreign policy overall, would be a mere formality. But under Trump things will undoubtedly be different - or so the commentary is saying, especially [since he] does not hesitate to make racist proclamations. Furthermore, his scant political experience, especially in foreign policy, is driving the betting on what he might do, since he is the one who has threatened wars, conflicts, and policies that are not in line with American policies in general.
"But it is certain that things will not happen like this, because regardless of which resides in the White House, American policy is not subject to change on the whims of this or that person. Changing [U.S. policy] can be done only in accordance with a strategy planned long ago, and it is the presidency that implements it - it can tweak it, but not blow it up entirely. Is it conceivable that if Donald Trump enters the White House, he will be able to implement all the slogans he voiced during his election campaign...? Things are undoubtedly far more complex than that, even if the president has absolute authority as part of the U.S. presidential system - because [this authority] is connected to the U.S.'s status as a superpower that influences the global arena. One of the president's tasks is to preserve this status, and while he might be able to make course corrections [to U.S. policy], he cannot harm its essence, which is based on alliances and strategies that guide most American administrations.
"However, this does not mean that Trump's arrival at the White House would be the same as Clinton's. It is certain that the insanity of the Republican candidate will impact American presidential conduct, especially on the domestic level, and particularly with regard to the economy. This is because candidate [Trump's] background is that of a businessman who sees politics through the prism of profits, and this will shape what changes Trump can implement, especially in policies regarding social services, oil, and other things that could affect economic relations with [U.S.] allies, but not the alliances themselves. The same goes for Clinton, who will follow in Obama's footsteps on these matters.
"With regard to the Arab countries, especially those that are burning like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, no one expects a substantial change in American policy, whether Trump or Clinton [wins] - because the president does not determine regional trends, or whether the U.S. will clash directly with Russia or Iran at this stage. Such decisions are made behind closed doors, and in the decision-making centers that formulate American policy. These centers have so far shown no intention of changing [regional trends]. Based on this, and at least vis-a-vis issues concerning us [Arabs], there will be no major difference between Trump and Clinton."[4]
London-Based Saudi Daily: Arabs Yearn For A Renewed American Role In The Middle East
An op-ed in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat, by editor-in-chief Ghassan Charbel, noted that while some Arabs yearn for a renewed U.S. role in the Middle East because of the growing Iranian and Russian presence in the region, this would not happen: "It is difficult to assume that after the U.S. presidential election we will see a restored U.S. role in the Middle East - that is, as policeman, or as the [element] that either deters [threats] or guarantees [regional stability]... The absence of an American policeman figured strongly in the upsetting of the historic balances in the Middle East. Old dreams of empire have reawakened, especially on the part of countries that slumbered for a long time, believing that history was constricting their expansion... This context frames the Iranian aggression in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, as well as recent statements by [Turkish] President Erdogan regarding Aleppo, Mosul, and Tal Afar. International borders have lost their solidity, armies have combined with newly established militias, and the discourse about countries has taken a back seat to the discourse about entities.
"Once, Middle Eastern countries secretly complained that they were sick of the U.S. ambassador, whom [they perceived as] dictating his wishes and interfering with matters that the capitals considered none of his business. He would direct [attention to a particular issue], advise, warn, and write to his government. [But] following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia itself began to act all the time just like the U.S. ambassador... Today, Middle Eastern countries feel the absence of the role that the U.S. used to play - never mind that they complained about it at the time. The U.S. has withdrawn unprecedentedly from [from the Middle East]. Russia receives legitimacy for its military bases on Syrian soil, and attacks oppositionists before it attacks terrorists. The [Russian] warships gather, signs of [coming] wrath, and Emperor [Putin] bathes in the blood and warm waters [of the Mediterranean]...
"There is no sign that the American policeman is returning to the Middle East. If she wins, Hillary Clinton might slightly slow the withdrawal, but if Trump wins, there will be more of a global problem than a Middle East problem. The U.S. is the U.S., even if its halo and its greed to run the world are on the wane...
"Today, the Arabs feel that America is distant and that the region will be abandoned, until further notice, to regional battles, wars among the elements of society, and civil wars that spill over national borders. Some [Arabs] are betting that Emperor [Putin's] greed will remind the White House that America has withdrawn too far from [influencing] the fate of the Middle East."[5]
Endnotes:
The world is divided into Hilarists and Trumpsters. I came up with those two terms all by myself. And Election Day is as close as its ever going to get. Some of us are praying with all our hearts that Clinton gets the oval. Others are rooting for Trump as President. I, as an individual, shudder to even think what will happen if Trump becomes President. There are a lot of unanswered questions, unturned stones and vague responses that need more deciphering when it comes to Trump and his policies.
Will it be like Darth Vader taking control in Star Wars; only worse, because this one will be real, and not even half as cool as Star Wars? No Jedis to save us and no Yoda to impart wisdom.
Heres all the questions that are in my head now that Trump might just win the oval (I sure do hope not).
1. The Value of The Dollar
The value of the American dollar will fall, undoubtedly. No this isnt a prediction; this is just very basic. It fell when Obama came to power, too and it will fall when Trump comes to power, as well. The only difference will be the period of the fall in value and how will it spiral and determine the stock for the rest of the world.
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2. The Issue of Immigrants
To build an entire beautiful wall along the Mexican border will be a little too farfetched even for Trump. His cabinet wont let him or so Im hoping. But, nevertheless the refugee problem is something worth thinking over if Trump wins Oval. Will there be an uprising? Will there be internal conflict, or will the whole anti-immigrant sentiment be only just as pronounced?
3. The Anti-Islamic Sentiment
Trump has made it quite clear that for him, all things Muslim are against American interest. He seems to think that the ISIS issue is more of an issue with the entire community. This makes one thing very questionablethe sentiment towards Islam in America. Will it change and if so, then, to what extent and in what direction? Do we see a repeat of violence and atrocities against Muslims, just like we did post 9/11?
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4. The Terrorist Issue
Anti-Islamic sentiment will give rise to terrorist groups putting the US on the front burner, yet again. And while the American defense systems are high and almost impenetrable to a large extent, infiltration has never been a problem for the ISIS, or any other terrorist group for that matter. This can start a sort of chain reaction that will just swing between internal religious sentiments that might affect external terrorist reactions.
5. Planned Parenthood
Trump has been very vocal about his opinion on defunding the Planned Parenthood segment, even though he agrees that it is imperative to keep breast and cervical cancer checks in place. This means women will no longer have a say in whether or not they should keep their unborn child or not. This is a decision that should be left to the individuals involved in reproduction; not the government.
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6. Gun Control
America has a gun problem. Over the past few years, weve seen this problem magnify in potential. Will Trump curb that, or just not do anything about that at all?
7. The Extent of Freedoms
Trump signifies a break from a status quo government that idolizes an absolute government. The masses are looking for change. But what the masses are not thinking about is the extent to which freedoms may NOT be curtailed. How liberal will Trumps rule be and how extreme can it get?
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8. Foreign Affairs
What happens to Americas relationship with the rest of the world? What will happen to the trade relations with countries like India and China where a major chunk of employment comes in from American conglomerates outsourcing capital and labour?
9. The American Sense of Inclusion
Trumps rules and policies will highlight one very important area of Americathe sense of inclusion. I dont just mean in terms of religion, race or culture. I also talk about gender, sexual orientation and work privileges. Will he or wont he bring to the fore an absolute white supremacy that will be the deciding factor for any and everything?
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10. The Cabinet of Ministers
Who Trump chooses as his cabinet of ministers will also be a major deciding factor on how much America will change, remain the same, or turn over completely. Will they hold Trump on a tight leash, preventing him from making some of the drastic decisions he seems to want to make at press meets, or will they let him pass the bills and legislations he deems fit?
Its going to be like choosing between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. But how devilish will the Devil be and how deep will the blue sea be? And which one is the lesser of two evils?
Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Ahmet Ismukhan Trend:
Turkish officials criticism against the EU has intensified recently. Having analyzed the EU-Turkey relationships, it becomes obvious that relations between the parties significantly worsened starting from 2013 - the Taksim Square demonstrations. Following the Taksim events, the EU blamed Ankara for violation of the principles of democracy in relation to the demonstrators.
But this has not been the only problem in the relationships between the parties. Following the failed coup attempt of July 15, Ankara unofficially accused the western counties (including the US) of supporting the coupists, part of which are now hiding in the EU countries, while Fethullah Gulen is in the US.
Also, Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly said that the EU applies double standards to Turkey regarding the issue of the fight against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Earlier, President Erdogan appealed to the EU with the statements that Turkey has been held at the door of the full membership to the EU for 50 years. But amid the events taking place in neighboring Syria and Iraq, the Turkish president sharply criticized the EU November 7. President Erdogan said that the West has not done anything good for Turkey.
"What should Turkey expect from the West if the country has been made to wait for the full membership to the EU for 50 years? It is enough to deceive ourselves, the president said. We will ourselves solve our problems. Be sure of it.
During a meeting with ambassadors of European countries in Ankara November 8, Turkeys Minister for the EU Affairs Omer Celik also stressed that the Turkey-EU relations are going through hard times.
Celik said that the EU should reconsider its position and step aside from double standards in connection with the PKK terrorists. The decision of one of the Belgian judicial authorities not to recognize the PKK as a terrorist organization is a flagrant violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Words of President Erdogan and Minister for EU Affairs Omer Celik could be perceived as populist statements, if the opinion that the EU and US are fighting against Turkey in Syria and Iraq has not gained strength in the country.
Even Turkish politicians think that the US did everything in order to ensure that Turkey stands aside of military operations on the liberation of Iraqs Mosul from the Islamic state (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS, or Daesh) terrorist group.
The reason for this, according to a number of politicians, is closer relations with Russia, which scares so much NATO and other allies of Ankara.
Nowadays, Ankara's authorities are well aware of the fact that the West is no longer an important ally for Turkey. In addition, the Turkish political elite also understand that the country can never become a full member of the EU.
Thus, one can say that Turkeys entire Western-oriented policy is doomed to failure. However, Ankara still has a way out of this situation: closer cooperation with Russia in the economic and political spheres.
It is expected that in the coming months Ankara will change its policy towards the EU, and the year 2017 will become the beginning of the end of friendship between Turkey and the EU.
Last Sunday, the Aeromexico flight that was flying from Mexico City to Toronto had a very real Samuel L. Jackson moment when a deadly snake was found on the plane.
Yes, there was a goddamn snake on the goddamn plane!
Out of nowhere, a huge snake fell to the floor from the overhead compartment and wreaked havoc on the flight with passengers running scared. Believed to be a venomous green viper, the snakes presence is yet to be figured out by the authorities. But whoever said movies dont happen in real life clearly did not see Snakes on A Plane and did not fly the Aeromexico flight last Sunday!
Samuel L Jackson shoulda been there though!
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini's statements concerning Turkey were "unacceptable", Anadolu reported.
In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said the EU "had lost credibility among Turkish people" concerning the fight against terrorism.
The European Union issued a statement Tuesday, calling on Turkey to "safeguard its parliamentary democracy, including the respect for human rights, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms and the right of everyone to a fair trial, also in conformity with its commitments as a candidate country."
The statement issued by Mogherini said the recent events in Turkey were "extremely worrying".
Turkey "should pursue" the PKK as a terrorist group but the arrest of lawmakers from "a legal Kurdish party was polarizing society," the statement said.
"A return to a credible political process and to a genuine political dialogue is essential for the country's democracy and stability in the region," it added.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry, in its statement, responded: "The EU -- which did not give us the support we expected from them after the July 15 coup attempt and adopted a prejudiced attitude -- unfortunately insists on not understanding Turkey's sensitivities regarding the fight against terrorism."
The co-chairs and several other deputies of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) have been remanded in custody since Friday for failing to answer summons linked to a counter-terrorism investigation before public prosecutors.
The lawmakers face prosecution under anti-terrorism laws after their parliamentary immunity was lifted earlier this year.
Chinese-style of math teaching is superior than conventional methods. (Photo : Getty Images)
The Chinese-style math teaching is the highest form of teaching the subject, according to a study released by Oxford University.
The study indicated that students who were subjected to Chinese teaching methods did significantly better in mastery than students who learned under the conventional method.
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Findings focused on the Inspire Math program which is widely used in Singapore. Students from have shown to excel and international rankings that showed how 15-year-olds compared in math.
Among the students, Shanghai topped in ranking, Singapore second and the U.K. ranked 26th.
James Hall, a lead author of the Oxford study, said, "Overall, we found positive evidence that Inspire Maths benefited children's maths achievement and supported teachers' professional development."
This trend has prompted the U.K. to boost support for math learning and adopt the Inspire Math program. The government released 1 million pounds ($50.6 million) over four years to support 8,000 primary schools.
There will also be an exchange program where teachers from the U.K. will be learning from the experience of China, according to Schools Minister Nick Gibb.
"I was initially skeptical about a textbook scheme, but quickly I saw the conceptual understanding of the Singapore approach. Inspire Maths has really opened our eyes and as a result, we are now creating very confident mathematicians," said Scott Wellington, a teacher at Linden Primary School.
Jun Yang-Willams, a science teacher from the exchange program, said, It seems to me that British schools have almost dismissed the 'teacher-led' teaching style ... Although the 'teacher-led' pedagogy is seen as passive, it does not necessarily jeopardize learning outcomes. Students are in fact more proactive and more responsible for their learning."
The cast of 'The Young and the Restless' pose in the press room during The 42nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards at Warner Bros. Studios on April 26, 2015 in Burbank, California. (Photo : Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
A fan-favorite character from "The Young and the Restless" is set to make its comeback in the upcoming episodes from Nov. 7 to 11. Beth Mailand as Abbot sibling Traci will be returning to the show in this week's episodes, while Judith Chapman who portrays Gloria, Michael and Kevin's mother, will be showing up by December.
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Meanwhile, on Nov. 10, Kelly Frye will debut as Michelle as Travis' ex-girlfriend. The character is expected to shake up the Travis-Victoria romance and viewers are advised to watch out once this happens, Soap Hub reported.
On the other hand, "The Young and The Restless" is calling out males who could portray the role of a new character named Wes. He is around 15 to 16 years old, good-natured, sensitive and musically-inclined. Taping starts mid-November and character is set to appear a few weeks after, the report added.
The official synopsis for the week long character have already been released. According to We Love Soaps, the following are sneak peek of what will happen this week:
For the Nov. 7 episode, it is said the Victor will have a hard time keeping a secret while Cane will undergo a medical crisis. On the other hand, it will be featured that Sharon and Dylan are still committed to stay with Christian.
For the Nov. 8 episode, Chelsea will lose her trust in Chloe while Nick and Christian will start a new beginning. On Wednesday, Dylan will be confiding with Paul while Nikki will confront Sharon. In addition, Victor will be featured covering his tracks at Newman Enterprises.
The episode on Nov. 10 will highlight Ashley reconnecting with some from her past and Hilary getting a morale lifter. Sharon will get the supports she needs from Noah. For Friday's episode, Billy and Victoria will share a moment that would boost their relationship while Jack will be making ways to cut his ties with Phyllis.
"The Young and The Restless" airs at CBS weekly. For other spoilers for this week's episodes, check the video below.
Macedonia-Greece pipeline to enable gas supply via TAP
The interconnecting gas corridor between Macedonia and Greece will use the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) for supply of natural gas from Azerbaijan, CEO of Macedonian Energy Resources Skopje company Krste Miladinov told Trend.TAP project envisages transportation of gas from the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas and condensate field to the EU countries.The 870-kilometer pipeline will be connected to the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italy's south.On Oct.14, Macedonian Energy Resources (MER) and DESFA, the natural gas transmission system operator in Greece, signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of a 160-kilometer-long gas interconnecting pipeline."Ohe signing of the memorandum of understanding is primarily in line with the realization of the project for construction of interconnection for transmission of natural gas that should connect the national gas pipeline systems of Macedonia and Greece," said Miladinov.The construction of this gas interconnection will enable supply of additional quantities of natural gas, as well as possibility of using natural gas from many sources and global projects, for example natural gas from Russia and Azerbaijan, then the possibility for direct connection to the existing LNG Terminal Revithoussa in Greece and other sources that will be available through Greece, he added.Miladinov pointed out that this project is very significant for the EUs energy security, as it will enable transmission of additional quantities of natural gas which will be intended for the EU countries.As for the projects implementation process, he said that MER JSC Skopje and DESFA S.A. are in stage of preparation of the study for realization of the project."After the completion of the study, the realization of construction shall start. The realization is planned to begin in 2017 and finish in 2020 at the latest," he said.By connecting MER JSC Skopje and DESFA S.A., Macedonia will be able to use all natural gas sources that are available for Greece, thus providing greater security of the country in supply of this energy fuel and of course transit of additional quantities in the EU countries, added Miladinov.
'The Big Bang Theory' stars Mayim Bialik and Jim Parsons attend The Paley Center For Media's 33rd Annual PALEYFEST Los Angeles OThe Big Bang Theory' at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Matt Winkelmeyer)
The creators of "The Big Bang Theory" are currently working on a spinoff that will feature a young Sheldon Cooper.
According to Variety, a script deal is expected to be finalized by the creators of the hit TV series and the network. The spinoff will chronicle the life of a young Sheldon who grows up in Texas.
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In the current show, Jim Parsons plays the role of an adult Sheldon. But in the spinoff, he is not expected to make an appearance. Instead, Parsons will be involved with the project behind the cameras as an executive producer. He will also be teaming up with co-creators Chuck Lorre and Steve Molaro.
Meanwhile, TV Line is speculating on the possibility of Laurie Metcalf reprising her role as Sheldon's mom, Mary. In the series, Mary has already made tons of appearances. Since she's Sheldon's mom and the character grew up with her, it's possible that the actress will also be tapped for the role.
Unfortunately, the spinoff is still in its early stages and nothing has been finalized yet. What is only known is that CBS is willingly including the project into their roster. There are also rumors that the spinoff will replace "The Big Bang Theory." After all, an 11th season hasn't been confirmed, and some cast members' contracts haven't been renewed yet.
At present, Johnny Galecki, Parsons and Kaley Cuoco's contracts have yet to be amended. Luckily for the co-stars, everyone is willing to sign on in the show even without an increase in their pay. In the next few months, a renewal or cancellation for "The Big Bang Theory" will be announced by its creators and the network executives.
"The Big Bang Theory" Season 10 airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 15: (L-R) Actors Lauren German and Tom Ellis speak onstage during the 'Lucifer' panel discussion at the FOX portion of the 2015 Winter TCA Tour at the Langham Huntington Hotel on January 15, 2016 in Pasadena, California (Photo : Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
"Lucifer" Season 2, episode 7 will still air tonight on FOX despite the upcoming presidential elections.
In "My Little Monkey," Chloe Decker (Lauren German) will go in search for the person responsible for killing her father, LAPD cop John Decker. "Growing up, I was close with my father, and then he was killed. But there was never a legitimate justice for him. Everything was wonky and nothing quite added up. So when this case comes along... I'm on a mission, and it's fighting for someone you love. It's the first time I've had a case I'm so invested in," German told TV Line.
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Meanwhile, the episode will also send German's character to new heights. According to the actress, it almost felt like she was on a different show because she got to explore Chloe's emotions and grief. "The usual hijinks with Lucifer (Tom Ellis) are gone. I had the chance to play entirely new levels of emotions and grief... It's almost an episode on a different show, in a way," she explained.
To add to this, Chloe's new found desire to find her father's killer will also take her relationship with Lucifer to another level. "It kinds of adds a new layer to getting to know each other, him seeing what has hurt Chloe in the past. We both got to see each other in a new light," she concluded.
In other news, "My Little Monkey" will also see Lucifer struggling with his relationship with Dr. Linda Martin (Rachael Harris). In the previous episode, Dr. Linda urged Lucifer to tell her the truth about who he really is. Lucifer decided to show his transformation as the devil to the doctor. However, this shocked Dr. Linda tremendously and will leave damage in their budding friendship.
"Lucifer" Season 2, episode 7 will air tonight at 9 p.m. ET on FOX.
China's new Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter (Photo : Twitter)
When China officially unveiled the Chengdu J-20 combat and attack aircraft last week, military experts conceded that Beijing is fast catching up on air superiority enjoyed by the United States and the latter's Western allies. The J-20 and the Shenyang J-31 have been dismissed as clones of America's F-22 and F-35 fighter jets but in the event of a U.S,-China showdown, they will get the job done.
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The J-20 and J-31 may be rip offs of their U.S. counterparts but the revelation of the "imposing" jets generated fear and panic, Wired reported. For instance, the J-20 is evidently larger than the F-22 Raptor and that means the former boasts of higher fuel mileage and can pack more weapons in a single sortie. In other words, the new Chinese jet is a deadly machine and there is little doubt about it.
And the J-20 is a stealth jet fighter, further increasing the threat of China's capability to strike at the last minute. But Wired said experts are downplaying this lethal feature of the J-20. When compared to the F-22, China's aircraft will turn out as inferior in terms of avoiding radar detection.
Experts believe that the J-20 stealthy features are limited whereas both the F-22 and F-35 are designed and very much capable to eliminate or minimize "radar signature from all directions," Wired said. The J-20 is the product of the China-sponsored hacking that pilfered incomplete blueprints of the F-22 and F-35, which explains the short falls if the object is to come up with exact replicas or better versions of America's flagship combat planes.
However, it will be a mistake or even fatal to belittle what both the J-20 and J-31 can do. China is expected to accelerate the production of the aircrafts once they enter service and buyers from Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa are sure to line up in droves. In no time, experts warned that the Chinese combat planes will outpace that of the United States' in terms of production.
The main attraction for customers is the promise that any of the J-20 or J-31 can effectively strike behind enemy lines no matter their supposedly inferior stealthy features. "The jet's real threat is its ability to use what little stealth it does have to penetrate a conflict zone and attack aircraft supporting front-line combatants, like refueling tankers and AWACS surveillance airplanes, and other big targets," Wired reported specifically about the J-20.
And produced in great numbers, which China is definitely capable of, the J-20 and J-31 will simply swarm over the F-22 and F-35 combined and overwhelm the competition. As one expert explained: "They (China) don't have to innovate; they simply have to catch up."
The NVIDIA GTX 1080, not the GTX 1080 Ti, is running inside a gaming rig. (Photo : YouTube/HardwareCanucks)
NVIDIA is still silent about the GTX 1080 Ti Pascal-powered video card but many people are already expecting it to be revealed soon at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show 2017 in Las Vegas.
CES 2017 will be home to a lot of new tech releases for the upcoming year and it would not be surprising to see NVIDIA showing off the new video card that will bridge the gap between GTX 1080 and the overly expensive Pascal Titan X. However, there has been no confirmation yet from the company and they are known to surprise fans with their new releases.
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2016 is almost over and NVIDIA is close to releasing the GTX 1080 Ti as some reports also claim that it could come as early as holiday season, Gamenguide has learned. It would make sense considering that more people are inclined to buy during the holiday shopping season because of Christmas bonuses and such.
With the Pascal Titan X costing $1000 upwards, the GTX 1080 Ti is expected to cost even less at around $800 which is still more expensive than the original 1080. There have been some GTX 1080 cards already costing $800 because of price gougers that want to make more money.
In terms of performance, the GTX 1080 Ti is expected to have almost the same speed and power as the Titan X. Some are also pitting the AMD Radeon RX 490 and the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti together because of their expected release dates, The Bitbag reported.
AMD has not yet released a card to take on even the GTX 1070 or the GTX 1080. The Radeon RX 490 could simply be their first high-end card and could be less powerful than the GTX 1080 Ti considering that the latter is already close to the Titan X.
NVIDIA fans will have to wait for the company's official announcement if there will be a GTX 1080 Ti at CES 2017. The specs, price and release date could also be revealed if the company does show up in the said event.
UPPER THUMB USA Gleaner Arbor and the kids in the SuperHeroes in Training 4-H group will be meeting from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Christ the King Lutheran School, Unionville campus.
They will be making Busy Blankets, that will be donated to Vada Villa Adult Foster Care in Unionville. Busy Blankets help people with dementia exercise fine motor skills and repair memory. The kids will be designing the blankets and then volunteers will sew them.
Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump Holds Rally In New Hampshire On Eve Of Election (Photo : Getty Images)
It is not just the 12 women who accused Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of sexual assault whom he threatened to sue. There is a long list of other institutions and people whom Trump had filed lawsuits for a range of charges.
According to Mother Jones, which publishes a daily dose of strange but true stories about the GOP nominee, he has also filed lawsuits against the New York Times for publishing a story about the sexual assaults, Univision, a bike race in Colorado named Tour de Rump, an architecture critic who said Trump has bad taste and a mortgage company.
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As franchise holder of the Miss Universe pageant since 1996, Trump also filed lawsuits against 23 other beauty pageants whom the billionaire accused of infringing on the trademark of Miss USA which is owned by Miss Universe.
Most of these beauty contests had the terms Miss and USA, but he also filed a lawsuit against the Miss Multiverse in 2015, and the case is still pending in court. He won a lot of the lawsuits, but not the one against the Miss Nude Southern USA which he filed in 2003.
Trumps lawyers insisted the pageant organizers just inserted the words NUDE SOUTHERN between Miss and USA. However, the other pageant replied that The strong primary noun NUDE and SOUTHERN arranged between MISS and USA, prima facie contravert any allegation of confusing similarity. They reached a settlement eventually and Trump withdrew the lawsuit.
Despite many polls that say Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had widened her lead over Trump, he insisted he would beat Clinton on Tuesday. CNN reported that Clinton has a lot more options to secure the 270 electoral voted needed to bring her back to the White House.
However, Trump, in his closing appearance, claimed the political system and media were rigged against him.
Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama, in introducing Clinton, said, We now have the chance to elect a 45th president who will build on our progress who will finish the job ... who is smart, who is steady and who is tested. Obama added, "She will work, she will deliver. She won't just tweet.
Students of Our Savior Lutheran School recently spent an afternoon decorating cookies with residents of Marlette Regional Hospitals long-term care unit as an extension of their curriculum. Our Savior Lutheran School recently initiated the ARK program Art of Random Kindness which was designed to help guide students to give back to others as a means to help them become kind and responsible adults. Marlette Regional Hospital extends its thanks to these students for volunteering their time at the long-term care unit. (Submitted photo)
BAD AXE Saginaw Valley State University student tutors demonstrated dedication to support aspiring writers Oct. 28 during a creative writing workshop for 12 students from Bad Axe and Merrill high schools.
Two tutors from SVSUs Writing Center, Victoria Phelps, a literature major from Rochester Hills, and Brianna Rivet, a creative writing major from Bay City, facilitated the workshop.
Chris Giroux, SVSU associate professor of English, worked with the pair to submit a grant proposal, The Prose Project: A Service-Learning Opportunity Uniting Writing Center Tutors and Area High School Students, that was approved for funding by the SVSU Foundation.
In June, Giroux, Phelps and Rivet attended a week-long writers workshop at the Interlochen School for the Performing Arts, providing an opportunity to engage with and learn from creative writers who inspired them to create this workshop.
After months of studying and researching, Phelps and Rivet combined their creativity and determination to develop the day-long workshop, focused on the writing of fiction, specifically for rural high school students. They partnered with high school teachers Stephanie Anderson of Bad Axe and Allison Jordan of Merrill, both of whom are active participants in the National Writing Project.
The SVSU students plan to collect some of the high school students work in the next weeks to keep up with their progress. The materials and lesson plans created by Phelps and Rivet will also be shared with the tutors who staff the Saginaw Community Writing Center, located at Butman-Fish Library in Saginaw.
The following companies are subsidiares of Archer-Daniels-Midland: 3 Grain Elevators, ACT Exportacao Ltda., ADGENE LABORATOIRE, ADM (Dalian) Animal Health & Nutrition Co. Ltd., ADM (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., ADM (Thailand) Ltd., ADM AGRO S.R.L., ADM Ag Holding Limited, ADM Agri Services Greece MEPE, ADM Agri-Industries Company, ADM Agricultural Commodities Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., ADM Agriculture Limited, ADM Agro Iberica S.L.U., ADM Agro Industries India Private Limited, ADM Agro Industries Kota & Akola Private Limited, ADM Agro Industries Latur & Vizag Private Limited, ADM Agroinvestimentos Ltda., ADM Alliance Nutrition of Puerto Rico LLC, ADM Americas S. de R.L., ADM Andina Peru S.R.L., ADM Animal Health & Nutrition (Nanjing) Co. Ltd., ADM Animal Nutrition (Cambodia) Co. Ltd., ADM Animal Nutrition (Xiangtan) Co. Ltd., ADM Animal Nutrition (Zhangzhou) Co. Ltd., ADM Antwerp NV, ADM Arkady Ireland Limited, ADM Armazens Gerais Ltda., ADM Asia-Pacific Trading Pte. Ltd., ADM Australia Holdings I PTY Limited, ADM Australia Pty. Limited, ADM Bazancourt SASU, ADM Besin ve Tarim Anonim Sirketi, ADM Bio-Productos S.A. de C.V., ADM Bio-Science & Technology (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., ADM Bulgaria Trading EOOD, ADM CARIBBEAN INC., ADM Chile Comercial Limitada, ADM Clinton BioProcessing Inc., ADM Czernin S.A., ADM DO BRASIL LTDA., ADM Direct Polska Sp. z o.o., ADM Dominican Holdings Inc., ADM Dominicana S.A., ADM EMEA Corporate Services GmbH, ADM Edible Bean Specialties Inc., ADM Egypt LLC, ADM El Salvador Ltda. de C.V., ADM Europe Holdco S.L., ADM European Management Holding B.V. & Co. KG, ADM Expatriate Services Inc., ADM Export Co., ADM Food Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ADM Food Technology (Pinghu) Co. Ltd., ADM France, ADM Fuels Company, ADM German Holdings B.V., ADM Germany GmbH, ADM Grain Costa Rica S.R.L., ADM Grain River System Inc., ADM Grain de Venezuela C.A., ADM Guatemala Limitada, ADM Hamburg Aktiengesellschaft, ADM Holding (Thailand) Ltd., ADM Holdings LLC, ADM Honduras S.de R.L., ADM INGREDIENTS S.R.L., ADM Inca S.A.C., ADM Industries Centers Ltd, ADM International Holdings Inc., ADM International Sarl, ADM Investments Limited, ADM Investor Services Inc., ADM Investor Services International Limited, ADM Ireland Receivables Company Limited, ADM Israel, ADM Italia S.r.l., ADM Japan Ltd., ADM Latin America Inc., ADM Logistics Inc., ADM MANAGEMENT LTD., ADM MOROCCO S.A., ADM Mainz GMBH, ADM Malbork S.A., ADM Medsofts Sarl, ADM Mexico Inc., ADM Mexico S.A. de C.V., ADM Milling Co., ADM Milling Limited, ADM Myanmar Company Limited, ADM New Zealand Limited, ADM Nicaragua SA, ADM Nutrition Holding d.o.o. Beograd, ADM Olomouc S.R.O., ADM PORTUGAL SA, ADM Panama S. De R.L., ADM Paraguay S.R.L., ADM Participacoes Ltda., ADM Poland Sp. z o.o., ADM Protexin Inc., ADM Protexin Limited, ADM Pura Limited, ADM Razgrad EAD, ADM Receivables LLC, ADM Rice Inc., ADM Ringaskiddy Unlimited Company, ADM SERVICIOS S.A. DE C.V., ADM STF DMCC, ADM STF Pte. Ltd., ADM STF Switzerland Sarl, ADM Services B.V., ADM Slovakia s.r.o., ADM Specialty Ingredients (Europe) B.V., ADM Spyck GMBH, ADM Sweden AB, ADM Szamotuly Sp. z o.o., ADM Trading (UK) Limited, ADM Trading Australia Pty. Ltd., ADM Trading Company, ADM Trading Cote D'Ivoire, ADM Transportation Company, ADM Trucking Inc., ADM Unterstutzungskasse GmbH, ADM Uruguay SCA, ADM Ventures Investment Corp., ADM WILD Europe GmbH & Co. KG, ADM WILD Nauen GmbH, ADM WILD Netherlands B.V., ADM WILD SEE Kft, ADM WILD Valencia SAU, ADM Wild Gida Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, ADM Wild UK Limited, ADM Worldwide Holdings L.P., ADMEcuador CIA. Ltda., ADMIS Holding Company Inc., ADMIS Hong Kong Limited, ADMIS SINGAPORE PTE. LIMITED, AGRANIX, AIC Seguros SRL, AMT West LLC, AOR, AT Holdings II Company, Agri Port Services Brasil Ltda., Agri Port Services Investments Ltd., Agri Port Services LLC, Agricolas Madagascar SARLU, Agrinational Insurance Company, Agriserve, Agrograin Ltd., Agrograin Ltd. Sucursal Uruguay, Alfrebro LLC, Alfred C. Toepfer International Exportacao e Importacao Ltda., Alfred C. Toepfer International Netherlands B.V., Alimenta USA, Alimentos Texo SA de CV, American River Transportation Co. LLC, Ameriseed, Anco Animal Nutrition Competence GmbH, Archer Daniels Midland (UK) Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Asia-Pacific Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Company South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Archer Daniels Midland Erith Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Europe B.V., Archer Daniels Midland Europoort B.V., Archer Daniels Midland Korea LLC, Archer Daniels Midland Nederland B.V., Archer Daniels Midland Singapore Pte. Ltd., Archer Daniels Midland Vietnam Company Limited, Archer Daniels Midland Wild Nigeria Ltd., Archer Financial Services Inc., Archer-Daniels-Midland Philippines Inc., Arinos Unlimited, Aston Foods & Food Ingredients, BIOPOLIS S.L., BQ Railroad Company, BTECH Tecnologias Agropecuarias e Comercio Ltda., Balanceados Nova S.A. Balnova, Balto Holdco LLC, Barbados Mills Limited, Bela Vista Bio Etanol Participacoes Ltda., Belize Mills Limited, Belwood Company S.A., Benson-Quinn Commodities Inc., Bern Aqua, Bifodan Inc., Biopolis, CONTROLADORA ADM S.A. DE C.V., Campa Sued GmbH & Co KG, Caribbean Agro-Industries Limited, Casablancas sweetener plant, Cattleman's Choice Loomix LLC, Chamtor, Ci ADM Colombia Ltda., Columbia & Willamette Maritime Services Inc., Comhan, Compania ADM S.A. de C.V., Crosswind Petfoods Inc., DE Holdings LLC, DP Holdings LLC, Daavision B.V., Deerland Europe ApS, Deerland Holdings Inc., Deerland Ireland R&D Limited, Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes, Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes A/S, Deerland Probiotics & Enzymes Inc., Eaststarch, Eatem Corporation, Eatem Foods, Elstar Oils, Empresa de Transporte La Estrella S.R.L., English River Pellets Inc., Epicore BioNetworks Inc., Epicore Ecuador S.A., Epicore Networks (U.S.A.) Inc., Erich Ziegler GmbH, Evialis (Shandong) Co. Ltd., Evialis France, Evialis Galicia S.A., Evialis India Limited, FINANCIERE FRANCO MAGYAR POUR LA NUTRITION ANIMALE - FFMNA, FISA Andina S.A.S., FISA Aromas S.A.S., Fasco Mills Co., Federation Sahanala Vanille, Filozoo SRL, Flavor Infusion, Flavor Infusion International S.A., Florida Chemical, Florida Chemical Company LLC, Flotek Flavor & Fragrance LLC, GLOBAL COCOA HOLDINGS LTD., GP Blanching Inc., GPC Trucking Inc., GROUPE PILARDIERE, GUYOKRMA spol. s.r.o., Golden Farm Production & Commerce Company Limited, Golden Peanut Company, Golden Peanut Company LLC, Golden Peanut and Tree Nut Seed SA (Pty) Ltd., Golden Peanut and Tree Nuts S.A., Green Bison Soy Processing LLC, Group Lysac, Guyomarc'h - VCN Company Limited, Guyomarc'h Vietnam Co. Ltd., Guyovital PT, HFR Shipping Company Ltd., HI-NUTRIENTS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, HRA Shipping Company Ltd., HTI Shipping Company Ltd., Harvest Innovations, Hilltop Grain and Feed, Holding P & A Asia Company Limited, Hubei Meiweiyuan Biotechnology, Ilitchevskiy Maslo Extractionniy Zavod (IMEZ), Industries Centers EOD Trade 2005 Ltd., Invivo NSA Algerie, Invivo NSA Sanpo (Tianjin) Pet Products Co. Ltd, JDS Sarl, Jamaica Flour Mills Limited, Jamaica Rice Milling Company Limited, LANCENTER S.C.A., Liquid Feed Commodities, Logus Bar Ashdod Port Ltd., Malta Industries S.A. de C.V., Malta Texo De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Maniobras Y Servicios Del Interior S.A. de C.V., Master Mix of Trinidad Unlimited, Medsofts Company LLC, Medsofts for Import Co., Medsofts for Investment LLC, Medsofts for Trade LLC (Medsofts Trading), Mepla Comercio e Navegacao Ltda., Mezclas Biomix S.A.S., Monti Foods (Pty) Ltd., Mundo Logistics S.R.L., NEC Facilities LLC, National Enzyme Company LLC, Naviera Chaco S.R.L., Neovia, Neovia Algerie SPA, Neovia Nutricao e Saude Animal Ltda., Neovia Philippines Inc., North Star Shipping S.R.L., NutraDine, NutraDine LLC, NutriMix Feed Company Inc., Nutrilac, Olenex C.V., Olsen's Mill Inc. Four Grain Storage Elevators, P & A Marketing SA, PANCOSMA FRANCE S.A.S, PJSC ADM Illichivsk, PT ADM Indonesia Trading and Logistics, Pancosma & Associates Marketing (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Pancosma (Jiangsu) Feed Additive Co. Ltd., Pancosma (Shanghai) Feed Additives Co. Ltd., Pancosma Canada Inc., Pancosma Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pancosma North America Inc., Pancosma SA, Pedigree Ovens, Pedigree Ovens LLC, PetDine, PetDine LLC, Prairie Pride - Biodiesel Production Plant, Premiere Agri Technologies Asia Inc., Premiere Agri Technologies of Mexico Inc., Proservicios Potencial Humano S.A. de C.V., Provit Sp. z o.o., Pura Foods Limited, Rodelle Inc., SANICOOPA, SDJ Sarl, SORA Laboratories LLC, Sartco Ltda., Schokinag-Schokolade-Industrie Herrmann, Sermix, Servad S.R.L, Setna Nutricion S.A., Silo P. Kruse Betriebs-GmbH & Co. KG, Silo-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH, Societe Industrielle des Oleagineux-SIO, SojaProtein d.o.o. Becej, Sojaprotein, Southern Cellulose Products Inc., Soy Investors LLC, Specialty Commodities, Specialty Commodities LLC, Sul Mineira Alimentos Ltda., Syngenta - Dry Bean Business, Szabadegyhazai Szolgaltato es Vagyonkezeklo KFT, Terminal Stevedores Inc., Terminales De Cargas Especializadas S.A. De C.V., The Pound Bakery, The Pound Bakery LLC, Toepfer International, Toepfer International Trading (Shanghai) Co. LTD., UPSCIENCE ITALIA S.R.L., Upscience, VIA CHEM GROUP a.s. Oilseed Processing Plant, Vantage Corn Processors LLC, WILD Flavors, Wild Amazon Flavors Concentrados e Corantes para Bebidas Ltda., Wild Flavors (Canada) Inc., Wild Flavors Austria GmbH, Wild Flavors Inc., Wild Flavors International GmbH, Wild Flavors Kenya Limited, Wild Flavors Middle East FZE, Wild Flavors Polska Sp. z o.o., Wild Flavors S.A. de C.V., Wild Intermare GmbH, Wild Polska Sp. z o.o., Wild Russia LLC, Wild Tunesia Sarl, Wisium SA (Pty) Ltd., World's Finest Chocolate - New Cocoa Powder Line, and Yerbalatina Ltda..
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Actress Song Ji Hyo attends the Burberry Seoul Flagship Store Opening Event on October 15, 2015 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo : Getty Images/Han Myung-Gu)
Song Ji Hyo may have been partly successful in holding back her tears during Gary's final "Running Man" episode. However, the South Korea actress expressed her sadness and released her pent-up tears at the rapper's farewell party.
"Running Man" cast and crew members celebrated Gary's final appearance on the SBS variety program with a send-off party held at a local restaurant. The event was bittersweet as Gary's colleagues and long-time co-workers bid him farewell and wished him luck on his new endeavors.
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However, the SBS program's producing director Jung Cheol Min told the Korean news outlet OSEN that several emotional scenes happened at Gary's farewell party. It appears that the musician's Monday Couple partner Song was very upset during the event.
The "This Week, My Wife will have an Affair" actress "cried a lot" at the said party, while other "Running Man" cast members expressed sadness over Gary's departure. The rapper also tried to hold back his tears and even hesitated to read the letters that the SBS show's cast prepared for him, according to Jung.
Similar to Song, Gary was also determined not to shed tears while filming his last episode on the variety program. The series' producing director stated that the rapper wanted to "cry in private" given the "Running Man" cast and crew members' touching tribute.
Meanwhile, the now-six member cast recently filmed their first episode without Gary. SBS shared a photo still on its social networking services that showed the "Running Man" members together in what appears to be a park, All Kpop reported.
The said image showed the six celebrities waiting for the details of their mission. Following the previous episode's nostalgic theme, the team's first challenge without the rapper will be to go on a special Seoul-based trip dubbed the "shortage vacation."
"Running Man" airs every Sunday on SBS. Watch a snippet of Gary's final appearance on the program below:
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and Republican maverick Donald Trump campaigned into the wee hours of polling day as they fought to sell their starkly different visions for the future of the world's greatest power.
The 69-year old former first lady, senator and secretary of state -- backed by A-list musical stars and incumbent President Barack Obama -- urged the country to unite and vote for "a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America."
Trump meanwhile doubled down on his outreach to voters who feel left behind by globalization and social change, finishing with a flourish on his protectionist slogan: "America first." "Just imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one American flag," the 70-year-old billionaire reality television star told cheering supporters.
Some 40 million Americans have already cast ballots in states that allow early voting, and opinion polls suggest Clinton had a slight edge, as the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire opened Election Day balloting.
A polling average by tracker site RealClearPolitics gave Clinton a 3.3 percentage point national lead, but Trump is closer or even has the advantage in several of the swing states that he must conquer to pull off an upset.
No results or exit polls will be available before polling stations begin to close on the US East Coast from 7:00 pm (0000 GMT Wednesday), and it may be three or more hours after that before the direction of the race becomes clear.
And even then, questions remain. Trump has repeatedly warned that a "corrupt Washington and media elite" is seeking to rig the race and he said last month that he may not concede defeat if he thinks voting is unfair.
He has also threatened to lodge lawsuits against up to a dozen women who have come forward during the race to accuse him of sexual assault or inappropriate behavior. Clinton has pushed a more optimistic vision, despite a wobble in the final weeks of her campaign when the FBI reopened an investigation into whether she had put US secrets at risk by using a private email server -- only to close it again on Sunday.
In a radio interview on the last night of the race, she said the matter was behind her, and she courted voters at her final rallies in Philadelphia with Obama and rocker Bruce Springsteen, and in North Carolina with pop diva Lady Gaga.
"Tomorrow, we face the test of our time," she declared in front of 40,000 people in Philadelphia, a record for her in a campaign where despite her opinion poll lead she has struggled to match her Republican opponent's passionate and raucous crowds.
"There is a clear choice in this election. A choice between division or unity, an economy that works for everyone, or only for those at the top; between strong, steady leadership, or a loose cannon who could put everything at risk."
At the same time, Trump, who hijacked his conservative party and turned it into a vehicle for populist bombast, concluded a last-gasp tour of swing states by painting his rival as doomed to defeat and the corrupt creature of a discredited elite.
"Do you want America to be ruled by the corrupt political class, or do you want America to be ruled, again, by the people?" he demanded at a rally in New Hampshire, a state won in 2012 by Obama that Trump hopes to flip into his column.
Promising to end "years of betrayal," tear up free trade deals, seal the border, halt the drug trade and exclude all Syrian refugees, Trump told his supporters: "I am with you and I will fight for you and we will win."
Trump's campaign spooked world markets seeking stability after the recent global slowdown. Last week, US stocks as measured by the S&P 500 index fell for nine straight days for the first time since 1980, only to recover a little when the FBI confirmed Clinton would not face prosecution over her emails.
Asian markets were up slightly on Tuesday as the world remained on tenterhooks for the result.
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China Mobile Limited provides mobile telecommunications and related services in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The company offers local calls; domestic and international long distance calls and roaming services; and value-added services, such as caller identity display, call waiting, conference calls, and others. It also provides wireless Internet service, as well as digital applications comprising music, video, reading, gaming, and animation; wireline broadband services; and wireline voice services. In addition, it offers dedicated line and IDC services to corporate customers in a range of industry sectors; and basic corporate communication products comprising corporate VPMN and SMS, and tailor made solutions. Further, the company provides international telecommunications services, which includes IDD, roaming, Internet, MNC, and value added business services. Additionally, it offers telecommunications network planning, design, and consulting services; roaming clearance, IT system operation, and technology support services; value-added platform development and maintenance services; mobile data, and system integration and development services; network construction and maintenance, network planning and optimizing, and training services; electronic communication products design and sale of related products; and non-banking financial services. It also provides mobile cloud research and development services; call center services; e-payment, e-commerce, and Internet finance services; and mobile Internet digital content services, as well as operates a network and business coordination center. The company serves 950 million mobile customers and 187 million wireline broadband customers. The company was formerly known as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited and changed its name to China Mobile Limited in May 2006. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is based in Central, Hong Kong. China Mobile Limited is a subsidiary of China Mobile Hong Kong (BVI) Limited.
The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Limited, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AFD.TECH, AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, AIG Shared Services Business Processing Inc, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co. Ltd., Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) Pty Ltd, Accenture (UK) Limited, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Agencia Interativa Ltda, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture B.V., Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BPS Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A., Accenture Canada Holdings Inc, Accenture Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Limited, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co. Ltd, Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Pty Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SASU, Accenture Customer Services Ltd, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Delivery Poland S.p. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance II Limited, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services S.r.l., Accenture Financial Advanced Solution & Technology S.r.l., Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Global Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Global Engagements Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Limited, Accenture Global Services Limited, Accenture Global Solutions Limited, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc, Accenture Holding Brasil Ltda, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SASU, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services B.V., Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture International B.V., Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea B.V., Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Lithuania UAB, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Marketing Services LLC, Accenture Marketing Services Limited, Accenture Middle East B.V., Accenture Minority I B.V., Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi Pty Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations GmbH, Accenture Operations S.p. z o.o., Accenture Operations Services Private Limited, Accenture Operations Services Sdn Bhd, Accenture Outsourcing S.r.l., Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations B.V., Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru SRL, Accenture Post Trade Processing SASU, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture Qiyun Technology (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Alfa Consulting, Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. 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The Egyptian petroleum ministry had earlier denied reports of an official visit to negotiate new oil deals in Tehran
The Saudi national oil company Aramco has informed Egypt that it has suspended its oil shipments until further notice, Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla said on Monday.
Saudi Arabia agreed to provide Egypt with 700,000 tonnes of refined oil products per month for five years under a $23 billion deal between Saudi Aramco and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) signed earlier this year.
Egypt stopped receiving its allocations in October.
"They did not give us a reason. They only informed the authority about halting shipments of petroleum products until further notice," El-Molla was quoted by Reuters as saying during the International Energy Forum held in Abu-Dhabi.
Earlier on Monday, the Egyptian petroleum ministry denied reports of an official visit to negotiate new oil deals in Tehran, after Saudi Arabia suspended its oil agreement.
Last month, the petroleum minister said that the countrys deal with Aramco is still in effect, insisting that its decision to suspend oil supplies to Egypt in October has no political dimensions.
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While U.S. Defense Department officials have made clear it has no problem with requiring women to register for the draft, lawmakers in Congress appear poised to dodge the issue in the upcoming battle over the defense policy bill.
House and Senate negotiators plan to shelve the provision in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act in favor of ordering up a study of the issue, sources told Politico and the Washington Examiner.
"Neither majorities support it," a source told Politico. "There's bigger things to worry about" in the $602 billion defense bill proposed by the Pentagon and the White House.
A spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee declined to comment on whether the proposal to have women register for the draft would be scrapped but said a House and Senate conference committee would take up the legislation when Congress returns next week.
Congress passed a stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR, in September to avoid a government shutdown before they recessed to campaign for re-election The measure will expire in early December, and it was unclear whether they would be able to pass an NDAA in the lame-duck session or settle on another CR until the next president is inaugurated.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has backed having women register for the draft. "I do support that," she told the Huffington Post last June.
Republican candidate Donald Trump's position on the issue is less clear. His website on issues doesn't address the draft.
In a town hall meeting in Virginia last month, Trump was asked by a veteran about the "social engineering" in the military that the veteran claimed had opened up combat roles to women and the possibility that women would have to register for the draft. "Well, we're going to get away from political correctness, and we are going to have to do that," he said, according to The Washington Post. "We have a politically correct military, and it's getting more and more politically correct every day."
Last December, Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the combat exclusionary rule for women and opened up all military jobs to women in the military who qualify. The Senate Armed Services Committee then said that Carter's action had removed any justification for limiting draft registration to men.
"The fact is every single leader in this country, both men and women, members of the military leadership, believe that it's fair since we opened up all aspects of the military to women that they would also be registering for Selective Services," said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chairman of SASC.
The NDAA bill passed by the full Senate would require women turning 18 on or after Jan. 1, 2018 to register for Selective Service. Failure to register could result in the loss of various forms of federal aid, including Pell grants. Because the policy would not apply to women who turned 18 before 2018, it would not affect current aid arrangements.
Last February, shortly after Carter opened up combat roles to women, two House Republicans opposed to Carter's action introduced a bill titled the "Draft America's Daughters Act of 2016" that would require women to register with the Selective Service System.
The bill offered by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, and co-sponsored by Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, would "amend the Military Selective Service Act to extend the registration and conscription requirements of the Selective Service System, currently applicable only to men between the ages of 18 and 26, to women between those ages to reflect the opening of combat arms Military Occupational Specialties to women."
Hunter, a Major in the Marine reserves and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Zinke, a retired Navy SEAL Commander who served in Iraq, both said they were opposed to their own bill but argued that a debate in Congress was necessary on lifting the combat exclusion rule for women.
Carter, the service secretaries, and the service chiefs have made clear that requiring women to register for the draft was up to Congress, and they have yet to voice any opposition to such a move.
Last year at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, retired Adm. Eric Olson, the former commander of Special Operations Command and a legendary figure in the Special Ops community, offered up the same complaints about women in combat made by Hunter and Zinke and asked: "Are we willing to cause every 18-year-old girl to sign up for Selective Service?"
At a separate panel, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James shrugged off Olson's remarks and said "I see no reason why not to have that requirement (registration) for men and women."
-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
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A temporary moratorium on ocean water activities for troops within III Marine Expeditionary Force was lifted Nov. 5 after all Marines participated in discussions and training.
The water activities ban was instituted after three troops, two Marines and a Navy corpsman, died in three separate apparent drowning incidents in Okinawa in the space of a month. All three deaths are still under investigation.
The small-group discussions and refresher training focused on safe ways to enjoy the wide range of water-related activities in Okinawa, tactics to reduce risk while in the ocean, the importance of the Okinawa sea conditions, where to find up-to-date sea condition information, and the importance of working together to reduce preventable injuries and deaths in the water, Marine 2nd Lt. Jacky Chow, a spokeswoman for III Marine Logistics Group, told Military.com.
The ban was an uncommon step following the tragic rash of deaths, beginning with the Oct. 10 death of Petty Officer 1st Class Jorge Noriega Suarez in an apparent diving accident at Mermaids Grotto near Cape Manzamo, Okinawa, a popular diving and snorkeling spot among locals and tourists.
At the end of October, two Marines died within 24 hours of each other in apparent drownings at the same recreational spot: Maeda Point in Onna Village, within Okinawa's Kunigami district.
Sgt. Aubrey Williams, deployed to Okinawa as a UH-1 Huey helicopter crew chief for Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 469 out of Camp Pendleton, California died there in an Oct. 29 accident.
Lance Cpl. Sebastian Borja-Diaz died Oct. 30 in an apparent drowning, also at Maeda Point. He had been assigned to 3rd Transportation Support Battalion as a motor vehicle operator.
Its not uncommon for troops in Okinawa to be subjected to additional rules and scrutiny as Marine commanders work to accommodate an Okinawan civilian population critical of the Marines presence there.
In May, a temporary midnight curfew and a ban on off-base drinking were instated after a civilian base worker was arrested in connection with the death of a 20-year-old local woman.
Typically, however, these restrictions are aimed at misbehavior or public image, rather than concern for troops off-duty safety.
Its not clear how long the investigations into all three deaths are expected to take.
-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Joseph V. Micallef is a best-selling military history and world affairs author, and keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter @JosephVMicallef
The political constellation of the Middle East has been, until recently, relatively durable for the better part of three-quarters of a century. Except for the division of the British mandate of Palestine between Israel and Palestine and the border revisions precipitated by four subsequent wars, the rest of the region largely adhered to its World War II-era frontiers. True, there was no shortage of additional conflicts, some of which did result in minor border revisions, but their impact on the overall political geography was minor.
In June 2014, after successfully expelling Iraqi military forces and seizing control of large portions of Anbar, Nineveh, Kirkuk and Salah al-Din provinces, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the birth of Islamic State (IS) comprised of the regions in Syria and Iraq under his control. Al-Baghdadi also proclaimed himself caliph of IS, simultaneously declaring himself the supreme political, religious and military leader not only of the roughly six million inhabitants of the world's newest political state, but of the one and a half billion Sunni Muslims worldwide.
In making the announcement al-Baghdadi also famously announced the abrogation of the Sykes-Picot Treaty, highlighting an agreement long forgotten by everyone save for historians and the odd diplomat. He followed up his announcement by ordering the filling in of the moats that had previously marked the desert border between Syria and Iraq.
This symbolic erasure of the national frontiers -- and by extension of the nations that they defined -- that had resulted from the imposition of Sykes-Picot was a declaration that the contemporary nation states of the Middle East lacked legitimacy. There governments therefore were equally illegitimate. Per al-Baghdadi, it was the duty of every good Muslim to oppose those governments. Only the Islamic State and its restored caliphate was the true expression of the political and religious unity of the Muslim world.
Sykes-Picot had a rather convoluted history. Technically, it was called the Asia Minor Agreement. It was negotiated by a British diplomat named Mark Sykes and a French diplomat named Francois Georges-Picot, hence its name. Its roots lay in the entry of the Ottoman Empire into WW I.
On October 31, 1914, renegade elements within the Ottoman military, most likely with the compliance of German advisors, staged a raid on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. The raid was led by two former German ships, the heavy cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, which had recently been gifted to the Ottoman navy by the German government. The original German crew and officers had remained, now wearing Ottoman uniforms and ostensibly part of the Ottoman Navy.
The raid had occurred against the express wished of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V, who had insisted that the Ottoman Empire remain neutral in WWI. Following the raid, Mehmed V repudiated the attack calling the attackers renegades acting without the authority of his government and offering to pay reparations to the Russian government for any damage done.
Russia, looking for an excuse to attack the Ottoman Empire, rejected the offer and promptly declared war. Russia demanded that its British and French allies accept Russian control of Constantinople and large portions of the Black Sea coast and, most importantly, Russian control of the Turkish Straits and portions of the surrounding coastline. Reeling at the time from the German onslaught on the Western Front, (the First Battle of the Marne was barely a month old) Great Britain and France had little choice but to agree.
Subsequently, with the consent of the Russian government, Great Britain and France developed a plan for the partition of the rest of the Ottoman Empire. This was the genesis of what would become the Sykes-Picot treaty.
After the war ended, Lenin insisted that the allies honor the terms of their original agreement with Russia. The Allies refused claiming that the Bolsheviks had forfeited their territorial claims when they had signed a separate peace with the Central Powers at Brest Litovsk. Lenin, incensed, ordered Pravda to publish the text of the Sykes-Picot agreement (the Russians had been furnished a copy). That's how the world subsequently learned of how Britain and France were planning to carve up the Ottoman Empire.
Sykes-Picot was the first, but not the only treaty that would subsequently define the political topography of the Middle East. Two, in particular, concerns us today, because they appear to be the next WWI-era agreements about to be cast aside; the Treaties of Lausanne and Ankara that, among other things, defined the national frontiers of modern Turkey.
Shortly after the onset of WWI, Britain had landed troops in southern Mesopotamia and seized control of the Shatt al-Arab and the city of Basra. The attack was ostensibly to protect the flank of the oil fields recently discovered by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and the refinery at Abadan. That refinery was the Royal Navy's principal source of fuel oil.
Later, British forces were ordered to march on Baghdad, as a show of British military power to the Empire's Muslim subjects. Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Minister for War, had been trying to incite Muslims in the British and Russian empires to revolt and declare a jihad against their colonial masters.
British interest in Mesopotamia was also prompted by another consideration. Russian success against Ottoman troops in Eastern Anatolia had opened the prospect of Russia seizing control of Mosul. The region around Mosul was believed to hold significant oil deposits as evidenced by numerous petroleum seeps. Oil was subsequently discovered there in 1927.
The first march on Baghdad ended badly, with the British Army suffering, at the Siege of Kut, its worse humiliation in half a century. The subsequent campaign fared better and British forces steadily advanced northward, seizing Baghdad on March 11, 1917 and continuing to advance up the Tigris valley.
Hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies were supposed to end on October 31, 1918 when the terms of the Armistice of Mudros went into effect. Per the Armistice, both sides were to hold their positions as of October 31 pending a formal peace treaty that was to follow.
The War Office in London however, instructed the British Commander in Mesopotamia, General William Raine Marshall, "to make every effort to score as heavily on the Tigris before the whistle blew," so notwithstanding the terms of the Mudros armistice, British forces under General Alexander Cobb continued to advance northward till November 14.
The last battle fought between British and Ottoman forces had been at al-Shirqat, 65 miles south of Mosul, on October 25. Had London observed the terms of the Mudros armistice, that would today have been the northern frontier of Iraq. Kurdistan as well as Mosul and much of Nineveh and northern Salah al-Din province would have remained part of the Turkish Republic that would subsequently emerge post WW I.
Northern Iraq had never been part of historic Mesopotamia. Its traditional population had been predominantly Kurdish, Turkoman and Christian. Prompted by its suspected oil wealth however, Great Britain bolted the region to its mandate of Mesopotamia that would subsequently be organized under League of Nations auspices.
Ironically, in the Sykes Picot agreement, that portion of the Ottoman Empire had been slated to become part of the French mandate of Syria. Great Britain hung on to it however, and instead agreed that the French government could seize the 25% interest in the Turkish Petroleum Company owned by the German government in compensation.
Which brings us to the present day and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's insistence on a role for the Turkish military in the liberation of Mosul. On December 3, 2015, Ankara deployed a detachment of 150 Turkish soldiers and 25 tanks to the Iraqi town of Bashiqa, 10 miles north of Mosul. Ostensibly, they were there to train the Hashd al-Watani, the local Sunni militia and to assist Kurdish Peshmerga forces. The Turkish force was subsequently increased to battalion strength, now numbering about 600.
In addition, Iraqi sources claim that there are at least 1,500 more Turkish troops deployed in Northern Iraq conducting counterinsurgency operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The presence of Turkish troops in Iraq, a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, has precipitated strident protests from Baghdad and anti-Turkish demonstrations from various Shia militias.
On October 30, in response to the deployment of al-Hashd al-Shaabi Shite militias west of Mosul, Turkey moved an unspecified number of troops to Silopi along its border with Iraq and warned those militias to not attack the IS held town of Tal Afar or any of the surrounding villages. The area has a large Sunni Turkoman population which Erdogan has vowed to protect.
The Turkish government has stopped short of abrogating the treaties of Sevres and Ankara which defined Turkey's borders. On the other hand, in what amounts to a de facto abrogation, Erdogan has insisted that "Mosul is ours" and that "Mosul is Turkish." Erdogan has also resurrected the "National Covenant", a 1920 declaration by the last Parliament of the Ottoman Empire that reaffirmed that Northern Iraq was an integral part of Turkey and which identified a broad surrounding area from Cyprus to Aleppo to Batum as belonging to the Turkish state.
Erdogan has asserted that Ankara had a right to a Turkish sphere of influence over the region that once made up the Ottoman Empire, noting that "Turkey bears also responsibility towards the hundreds of millions of brothers in the geographical area to whom we are connected through our historical and cultural ties." He went on to add. "It is a duty, but also a right of Turkey to be interested in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Crimea and other sister areas"
What exactly are Ankara's objectives here? Does Erdogan harbor any fantasy that Mosul and its surrounding region is somehow going to be returned to Turkey? That's not going to happen short of a war between Turkey and Iraq.
Is Erdogan looking for a seat at the negotiating table and some chips with which to play? If so, to what end? A piece of Mosul's oil wealth, a Turkish sponsored and protected Sunni state from a sectarian division of Nineveh province or simply some role in the subsequent political organization of Northern Iraq? Is this an attempt at political grandstanding for supporters back home, a gambit to preclude safe havens for the PKK, or is Ankara serious about developing its own, anti-Iranian/anti-Shia arc of influence in the region of the historic Ottoman Empire?
Western media typically portrays the "Kurds" as a single entity. There are deep divisions within the Kurdish community however, not only among Iraqi Kurds but especially between the Kurdish government in Erbil and the PKK. Ankara has attempted to develop close ties with Iraqi Kurdistan while being vehemently opposed to the creation of a PKK sponsored Kurdish state in Syria.
Turkish air forces have been attacking the predominantly Kurdish, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria while at the same time Turkish artillery has been supporting the advance of Kurdish Peshmerga troops against IS controlled territory north of Mosul. Moreover, notwithstanding the bitter, historic rivalry between the PKK and Iraqi Kurds, Erbil, to Ankara's displeasure, has granted safe havens to the PKK.
There is a larger issue here however that goes beyond the Battle for Mosul. Turkey is increasingly behaving like a rogue actor in the Middle East; showing ambivalence about respecting the historic basis of the status quo and demonstrating a willingness to act unilaterally with military force to change that status quo or at the very least mold it more to its liking. That is a role that will bring Ankara into conflict with Washington and one that is incompatible with a large role for Turkey in the European Union.
Ironically, Erdogan's desire to develop a "Turkish sphere of influence" in the Middle East, to counter the "Iranian/Shia arc of influence" that now stretches from Tehran through Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Gaza could, under the right circumstances, be in America's interest. Erdogan's insistence of going it alone and on framing that policy in increasingly Islamist and anti-American terms, however, makes it problematic for the United States.
Turkey's role in the Syrian conflict is already at odds with NATO's objectives in the region. Ankara's air attacks against the SDF, the principal American proxy in the ground war against the Islamic State, is also incompatible with American interests in the area.
Even more disturbing, is that such attacks could not have occurred without Russian compliance. That means that for all practical purposes Ankara and Moscow are teaming up to attack an American proxy force in Syria. Strange behavior from a NATO ally; especially one that has received billions of dollars in American military assistance over the years.
That does not mean that Turkey will leave NATO or that the US will lose access to its Turkish facilities. It may well suit Erdogan to maintain that illusion of normalcy in its relations with the United States and Europe. It does mean however, that the appearance of cooperation is just that, an illusion, and that, it is likely, Turkey will move too continue to restrict what operations the US can conduct from Incirlik while continuing to pursue a "go it alone" regional policy that is fundamentally incompatible with American and NATO's objectives in the area.
The expression "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" has often been used to describe the Byzantine nature of Middle East politics. For the United States, however, it seems that in the Middle East even its friends act like its enemies. Time for a serious rethink of US policy in the region and how it is being conducted.
After years of debate on whether enlisted airmen should return to the cockpit -- manned or unmanned -- two master sergeants this month achieved the first solo flights since 1961.
The enlisted airmen, only identified by first names Mike and Alex, fulfilled the historic milestone on Nov. 3 after they flew in a DA-20 Katana two-seat, light aircraft over Colorado's Pueblo Memorial Airport as part of the Air Force's Initial Flight Training program, the Air Force said in a release.
The program is mandatory for all manned aircraft pilots, combat systems officers and remotely piloted aircraft pilots, the release said.
The Air Force announced last year it would begin training enlisted airmen to operate the unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft. Officials in September touted that the Enlisted Pilot Initial Class, or EPIC, would begin on Oct. 12 with four of 12 total students training alongside 20 recently commissioned officers. The training process spans a whole year, the release said.
The idea to use enlisted airmen as drone pilots has been years in the making.
In 2008, then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said he was open to the idea given the steadily increasing demand for RPA airmen.
"No options are off the table ... I don't dismiss that as a possibility," Schwartz said at the Air Force Association's annual convention in Washington, D.C.
Then, facing a much higher operational demand and a pilot shortage due to the last fifteen years in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other missions, the Air Force in September announced plans to open to all career fields the job of steering the Global Hawk. The high-altitude spy drone is made by Northrop, based in Falls Church, Virginia.
Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson, Air Education and Training Command commander, said at the time that in just a few class rotations, the service will also bring in airmen with little to no experience in RPAs so that we "get the full gambit."
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"Each enlisted pilot that comes in will replace what would have been an officer so it's not additive, it's replacement, but I think this is actually going to help with recruitment," Roberson said at the Air Force Association's annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
In recapping its own history, the Air Force said that in 1912, one of the first two pilots in the Army Air Corps was a corporal.
Thousands of enlisted pilots were trained and served in the military throughout World Wars I and II, which would one day include Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to exceed the speed of sound and retire as a brigadier general. The Air Force's Cadet Aviation Program, which oversaw enlisted airmen commissioning as officers to become pilots, ended in 1961.
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Now, Master Sgts. Mike and Alex have reignited new turning points.
"It's a great opportunity that we're getting enlisted pilots back into the full force," Master Sgt. Mike, the first EPIC student to fly solo, said in the release. He started his Air Force career in security forces, most recently served as a maintainer and is a 17-year veteran with flight experience.
"I was excited that I soloed, but I have to maintain focus. This is not over," Alex added. Unlike Mike, Alex does not have previous flight training, the announcement said.
"I've got to keep going and make sure that I get completely through the program," Alex said. "I'm the type of guy who, if someone doesn't like an idea and says, 'That's not going to work' and I think it's a good idea, I'm willing to be the guy who says, 'That's a challenge, let's go see if I can do this,'" he said.
--Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
Four people, including a 6 year old girl, were killed and 17 injured on Tuesday in a collision on Suez road between a school bus and a truck, Egyptian Health Ministry announced.
The school bus driver and two teachers on board were also killed in the accident. Most of those injured were students.
Deadly car accidents take place on a near-daily basis in Egypt, due to poor road safety conditions, badly maintained infrastructure and loosely enforced traffic regulations.
In 2015, Egypt saw 25,500 road fatalities, while the total number of car accidents was 14,500 according to the official statistics body.
According to a global status report on road safety in 2015 published by the World Health Organisation, Egypt's fatality rate ranked 16th among Arab countries and 109th globally out of 180 countries.
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Gerard Larcher arrived in Cairo on Sunday for a three-day visit to discuss recent developments in the Middle East
Egypt's Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry met on Monday with French senate president Gerard Larcherin in Cairo to discuss a number of regional and domestic issues, a ministry statement read.
During the meeting, Shoukry updated Larcher on the current situation in Egypt, touching on recent economic reforms taken by the country, including Thursday's floating of the Egyptian pound.
The foreign minister also discussed Egypt's views on recent events in the Middle East, including the ongoing crises in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen, as well as the Palestinian cause.
The duo also discussed challenges to combating illegal immigration and terrorism.
On his part, Larcher stressed that France would always be a partner to Egypt, both politically and economically.
Larcher arrived in the capital with a five-member delegation on Sunday for a three-day visit, during which he is scheduled to meet with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to discuss recent developments in the region.
The senator will also hold talks with a number of senior Egyptian officials including Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal and Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
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ALLENDALE, MI - "How would you like to go on a risky second date?" Karen Hanson asked Ryan Veltkamp on Monday, Nov. 7.
Hanson, of Grand Rapids, did not want to attend Hillary Clinton's rally at Grand Valley State University alone. She asked Veltkamp, who is undecided, to come along. It would be their second date.
And so it was on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, that the couple found themselves sitting on a curb outside of Grand Valley State University's field house, listening to an audio feed as Clinton rallied her supporters inside.
Karen Hanson, left, and Ryan Veltkamp attended the rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at Grand Valley State University in Allendale on Monday, Nov. 7, 2016.
After arriving on the campus at 2:30 p.m., they found themselves among hundreds who were unable to get inside the full fieldhouse for Clinton's 4 p.m. rally.
Veltkamp, a nuclear engineer, said he was still undecided after hearing Clinton's speech. "That's why I needed to come here," he said, admitting his time to decide was growing short.
Hanson, a health care worker, was less undecided. "I grew up Republican," said Hanson. She is supporting Clinton because of Republican Donald Trump's statements and positions on women's issues. "My sister and I are Democrats now," she said.
Things were less ambiguous for Thayne and Jennifer Dunahee, who drove in from Comstock Park with their three children. Their 7-year-old daughter, Minka, became a photo opportunity for many as she carried a sign declaring: "I'm a girl. What's your Superpower?"
"I think we're long overdue for a female president," said Jennifer Dunahee after the rally. "I think Hillary is so well-qualified, regardless of gender."
Lauren Parker, a GVSU freshman from Lansing, Ill., carried an "I will vote" placard out of the fieldhouse. "I thought it was inspiring," she said.
But Parker's friend, Alyssa Mitchell, a freshman from Portage, said she failed to register in time. "I didn't really agree with either one of them," she said.
Bob Erwin, a 73-year-old U.S. Navy veteran, drove up from Battle Creek to see Clinton. Erwin, who said he voted by absentee ballot three weeks ago, but still wanted to see Clinton in person.
"Once I support a woman, I support her all the way," said Erwin, who supported Clinton in her first run for the presidency in 2008.
Kevin McPoland, a seventh grader at Central Middle School, drove in from Ada with his sister to see Clinton. He's proud to say he's seen Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders during their campaigns.
If he could vote, McPoland said he would support Clinton. "Trump doesn't have the experience and he's mean to women," said McPoland, who said he was turned off by the negativity he saw at Trump's rally.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow fires up GVSU crowd of 4,600 for Clinton
EAST LANSING, MI -- East Lansing police were called to a polling location for a possible case of voter intimidation early Tuesday morning, but it's unlikely any further action will be taken.
Chief Jeff Murphy said the department is no longer looking into the incident because officers could not find evidence that intimidation occurred once they arrived on the scene at a polling location on Coolridge Road.
"There was no victim and no one knew anything about it," Murphy said.
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum confirmed that she received an email shortly before 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 8, from a man who claimed he saw another man approach two women wearing hijabs and redirect them to another polling location.
Byrum said the person who sent the email described leaving the polling location after voting when the man who approached the voters was being asked to leave the site, but refused.
However, police were unable to confirm any such incident occurred.
Still, Byrum said she takes reports of voter intimidation seriously and worked with the East Lansing City Clerk to make sure police were involved.
"I have zero tolerance for harassment and intimidation of my voters. As such I have been of the position that law enforcement will be contacted immediately," Byrum said.
ANN ARBOR, MI - While he wouldn't share who he voted for, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was one of the hundreds who cast their votes in Ann Arbor Tuesday morning.
Snyder, along with his wife Sue, arrived at his polling location at Community High School shortly after 10:30 a.m. and didn't have much of a wait to cast his ballot. While he couldn't remember what number is ballot was in his precinct, Snyder said it was higher than he anticipated, which is a good sign, he said.
"It looks like this precinct has had a lot of people turn out. I hope that happens throughout Michigan," Snyder said. "It's one of our basic democratic rights and it's great seeing people exercise that."
A lot of the focus over the last few days of the election season in Michigan has been focused on the battle between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. But for Snyder, he said he's been more focused on the local races throughout the state of Michigan.
"We had a lot of interest in the race, particularly the presidential race, but I spent most of my time on house races, the Supreme Court and the down ballot races which are also critically important," Snyder said.
Snyder went on to say that he was more interested in making sure the majority in the state House of Representatives stayed in favor of the Republicans.
"The priority I've had during this election is hopefully keeping a strong majority in the house," Snyder said. "We've been reinventing Michigan and I want to see that keep going for the next few years."
Still, Snyder said he was encouraged to see such interest from the presidential candidates in how Michigan votes.
"If you look at it from the presidential perspective, Michigan clearly became a battleground. We had both candidates here, we had surrogates here, it was exciting to see in many respects," Snyder said. "The part I hope everyone takes out of it is Michigan's comeback."
Although he is a Republican, Snyder has remained noticeably quiet on his feelings during the presidential race. When asked about how negative the presidential race turned, Snyder explained that was part of the reason why he was quiet.
"I think there was a lack of positive dialogue at the presidential level, that's one reason why I sort of stayed out of it," Snyder said.
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The Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office responded to the Moose Lodge, a polling place in Ypsilanti Township, for a report of a fight on Nov. 8. A man shoved a woman after two women got into a heated argument about the presidential candidates, police say.
(Lindsay Knake | MLive.com)
YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - A man shoved a woman at a Michigan polling location after voters got into an argument about presidential candidates, police said.
Just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 8, Washtenaw County Sheriff's deputies responded to the Moose Lodge, 5506 Stony Creek Road in Ypsilanti Township, for a report of an altercation. The lodge is serving as an election voting site.
Two women who had already voted got into a heated argument about the presidential candidates in the parking lot, said Derrick Jackson, sheriff's office director of community engagement.
A man interjected himself into the argument and shoved one of the women, Jackson said. Several other people got involved and were yelling and arguing.
No one was arrested and no one was injured, he said.
Police took names and statements about the incident, and the sheriff's office will send a report to the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office, Jackson said.
Cynthia Bedolla, an Ypsilanti Township resident, saw the incident begin. She said a Green Party supporter was standing behind the 100-feet line and encouraging people to vote for the Green Party candidates.
A couple got in her face, and they got into an argument between two vehicles. The Green Party supporter jumped out and said the other woman spat in her face, Bedolla said.
The couple attempted to leave, but the Green Party supporter stood behind her car so they couldn't, she said.
The situation escalated from there, and included shoving and racial slurs, Bedolla said. She called the police, and by the time she voted, the situation had calmed down.
David Irvin, an Ypsilanti Township resident, didn't see the physical altercation, but caught the aftermath on video.
He was volunteering in the parking lot and helping to direct traffic when he saw the commotion. A woman was angry and kept spitting on people, he said.
A video shows a group of five or six people arguing about blocking traffic, and one woman saying, "Get the police here."
A few people started chanting "black lives matter," Irvin said.
"It got out of hand," Irvin said. "I thought it was really rather embarrassing."
The Moose Lodge is the polling location for Ypsilanti Township's precincts 13 and 15.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Most voters are hitting the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 8, but election results are in already at Hebrew Day School of Ann Arbor.
Third and fourth graders in Laura Pasek's class spent this fall simulating the presidential election of 1800, and Friday, Nov. 4, was their election day. Students divided into two groups for the project, representing then-President John Adams and then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson.
The candidates ended their campaigns Friday, with family members and other students in attendance. Students showed their voter registration cards before casting their ballots in one room, and soon the results had been tallied.
Pasek announced that after a tight race, Jefferson was selected as the next president.
Students had prepared speeches for either outcome, and a representative for Adams spoke first. She congratulated Jefferson on the victory and asked that he incorporate some of Adams' policy ideas when possible.
Jefferson also was a gracious winner.
"To John Adams supporters, trust me that I am listening to you and I hear your ideas. I promise to make decisions that will be in America's best interest. This includes you," one student said in her inauguration speech.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, spoke to the students before the voting began. She encouraged them to remember to treat other people with respect even if they disagree on political issues, which prompted one student to teach her the Hebrew word for "community" - pronounced keh-hee-lah.
"I just think you're really lucky to have the teachers and parents you do who are instilling at this age the importance of how lucky we are to live in this country, how lucky we are to be able to vote for people, and that you'll always take voting very responsibly," Dingell said.
ANN ARBOR, MI -- Monday's visit to Ann Arbor by President Barack Obama marked the fourth time the president has visited the city since being elected in 2008.
So what is it about Ann Arbor that makes the president like coming here so often?
"What's there not to love about Ann Arbor?" asked U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell D-Dearborn.
Dingell was one of several speakers to take the stage prior to Obama's speech on Nov. 7 at Ray Fisher Stadium on the campus of the University of Michigan. For Dingell, what stands out about Ann Arbor is how diverse the city is.
"It reflects the demographics of the country. This was important that millennials vote," Dingell said. "People here represent all over Michigan and all over the country."
Miike Ellison of Detroit agreed with Dingell.
"The audience looks like America. This is America," Ellison said.
Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor echoed those sentiments but also offered a handful of other reasons why he thinks the president continued to visit the city.
"The president goes to a lot of amazing place around the world and I think when he comes to Ann Arbor he knows he's in a place where people share his values and his optimism.
"I think it's a place where he would feel at home."
Taylor went on to say that because Obama has been such a strong supporter of the benefits of higher education it also makes Ann Arbor appeal to him.
"I think President Obama is attracted to Ann Arbor because it expresses youth, values education, values excellence and exudes optimism," Taylor said.
"Ann Arbor is a very progressive city and it's home to one of the greatest universities on the planet," Ellison said. "There's really brilliant and inclusive people that I find here in Ann Arbor. And he can feel the love. He knows he's loved and appreciated here."
Having Obama in town to deliver a speech on the day before the election was significant to Taylor, who said he was proud to host the president.
"I'm so delighted that President Obama came to Ann Arbor today. He is such an outstanding public servant. He exemplifies so much of what is good about government and people working together for a common purpose."
Obama's message of encouraging people to get out and vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was important to Dingell because she feels the race in Michigan is even closer than polls would suggest.
And by reaching out to a younger audience like the one in Ann Arbor Monday, that could help swing the state in Clinton's favor.
"I have said from day one that I don't believe the polls. I think everybody needs to know that their vote matters," Dingell said. "We are competitive in the state of Michigan, and who goes out and who turns out to the polls is going to determine what happens in Michigan and determine that fate of this country."
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Tasha Patino and Ryan Helm
( )
BAY CITY, MI -- The week before their trials were to begin, a married couple accused of nearly two dozen burglaries and larcenies opted to accept plea offers.
The trials of Ryan M. Helm, 36, and Tasha M. Patino, 28, were to begin Tuesday, Nov. 8, before Bay County Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran. Between the two defendants, they faced 19 charges in 13 court files.
However, Patino on Nov. 2 pleaded no contest to single counts of illegal possession of a financial transaction device, second-degree home invasion, and receiving and concealing $1,000 to $20,000 in stolen property
The following day, Helm followed his wife's lead and pleaded guilty to the same three charges.
In exchange for their pleas, the prosecution agreed to dismiss the remaining identical counts faced by both defendants --two counts each of first-degree home invasion and illegal possession of a financial transaction device, as well as single counts of second-degree home invasion and illegal use of a financial transaction device. The prosecution also dismissed a charge of larceny between $1,000 and $20,000, faced only by Patino.
The couple's legal troubles began with an ATM fraud complaint placed on Feb. 2. Police at about noon responded to the Chemical Bank branch at 1513 Columbus Ave., where a teller supervisor told them Patino had fraudulently obtained some funds from the bank the previous day.
According to the supervisor, Patino on Jan. 22 opened an account with the bank. The evening of Feb. 1, she seemingly deposited $1,380 in the branch's ATM, then withdrew $100, then deposited another $250, court records show. When bank staff checked the ATM deposits the next morning, the envelopes Patino deposited did not contain cash, but each had a single piece of paper, court records show.
The supervisor told police that Patino visited the Washington Avenue Chemical Bank branch ATM that morning and withdrew an additional $1,409 from her account, even though the account did not have that much money. It was done before bank staff discovered the bogus ATM deposits, court records show.
The supervisor called Patino while a police officer was present and listening. Patino told the supervisor she made the false transactions, but did them because she had lost her job and needed to feed her two children, court record show. Patino offered to repay the debt with an expected income tax return, adding a friend told her how to get the cash without money in the account, but said she didn't know it was a crime to do so, court records show.
Police over the next few days attempted to reach Patino. On Feb. 5, they spoke over the phone with her husband, who said she was staying with her father in Detroit, court records show.
Also on Feb. 5, the Chemical Bank teller supervisor spoke with police and said they'd discovered another bogus transaction Patino attempted on Feb. 2. According to the teller, Patino deposited another empty envelope in the amount of $1,300 in the Washington Avenue ATM, but was unsuccessful getting cash, court records show.
The following month, Bay County sheriff's deputies and Michigan State Police troopers responded to approximately 20 complaints of home invasions and larcenies from parked vehicles in Monitor Township, Undersheriff Troy Cunningham said.
On March 17, a surveillance camera captured Patino and Helm reportedly trying to break into a garage in the Willow Creek subdivision. The same day, a gas station surveillance camera recorded the duo twice using credit cards reported stolen earlier that day, Cunningham said.
Police on March 21 executed a search warrant at the Delta Motel, 1000 S. Euclid Ave., and arrested Patino and Helm. Deputies found needles in the room, leading them to suspect heroin use, Cunningham said.
Deputies found stolen property with Helm and Patino -- cellphones, purses, wallets, credit cards, personal IDs, perfume, clothing and a textbook, court records show.
Judge Sheeran is scheduled to sentence Helm and Patino at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 12.
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A rendering of the new Animal Adoption and Education Center, designed by Neumann/Smith. (Courtesy)
DEARBORN - A different kind of train - one filled with whiskers, paws and claws - is pulling into the former Amtrak station on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn next year.
The pet welfare group Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit announced last week that construction of a new Animal Adoption and Education Center is set to commence at 16121 Michigan Avenue, behind the Dearborn Police Department, in summer 2017.
The new animal shelter, which will replace the group's shelter of more than 30 years at 2661 Greenfield Road.
Construction on the $5.7 million project is set to take place in two stages, the first of which will involve 10,000 square feet of space, including dog and cat housing, expanded adoption services and a storage area.
Phase two of construction deals with an additional 6,000 square feet of space that will house animal intake and evaluation space, medical facilities and administrative space, the group announced.
A fundraising campaign has raised $4.7 million for construction of the new shelter.
"With just about a million dollars left to raise for phase one, it is time to start building our new shelter," said MaryAnn Wright, Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit's board chair. "I am confident we will raise the rest of the money to complete our new facility with the continued support of the community."
The site of the former Amtrak station - which was replaced by the John D. Dingell Transit Center in December 2014 - was donated to FAMD by the city.
Neumann/Smith, a Michigan architectural firm, is designing the new Animal Adoption and Education Center, while Ghafari Associates is heading engineering and Taktix Solutions is managing the project.
More information at www.metrodetroitanimals.org.
DETROIT -- Victims of an imprisoned doctor who harmed hundreds of patients, at times prescribing harsh chemotherapy to patients who didn't need or couldn't be helped by the dangerous treatments, have one week left to file claims for restitution.
U.S. District Judge Paul Borman set a Monday, Nov. 14 deadline for filing a restitution claim in the case of U.S. v. Farid Fata.
Fata was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison in July 2015 after admitting to providing medically unnecessary chemotherapy treatments to patients.
The Michigan oncologist pleaded guilty in 2014 to 13 counts of health care fraud, two money laundering counts and one count of conspiracy to pay or receive kickbacks.
Fata admitted that mistreatment occurred in some form in 553 of his cases.
The government has seized Fata's assets - totaling approximately $11.9 million so far - in order to create a restitution fund for the benefit of his victims and is encouraging all qualified patients to postmark their claims on or before Nov. 14.
"While no amount of money can restore what has been taken away by the actions of Fata, we hope that all eligible patients and family members file claims for restitution so that we can return Fata's assets to his patients," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said in a Monday news release.
Any individual who was a patient of Fata between 2005 and 2013 and who incurred out-of-pocket expenses is eligible to file a claim for restitution funds.
Additionally, authorized representatives of deceased patients may file claims for the deceased patient's out-of-pocket expenses, including a portion of funeral expenses.
Further information and claim forms can be found at www.fataclaims.com.
An administrative court rejected on Tuesday the government's appeal against a June 2016 court ruling that voided an earlier agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia which put the two Red Sea Islands of Tiran and Sanafir off the coast of South Sinai under Saudi sovereignty.
In April, Egypt's government signed an agreement to place both islands under Saudi Arabian sovereignty, saying that they had always belonged to the oil-rich Arab country and that Egypt had been merely administering them on behalf of the kingdom since the 1950s.
A number of lawyers, including rights lawyer Khaled Ali, had filed a lawsuit with Egypt's Administrative Court at the State Council, receiving in June a ruling that nullified the maritime deal between Cairo and Riyadh.
On Tuesday, the court issued a verdict on two separate motions by the government and the defence. First, the judges rejected the government's request to suspend the execution of the June ruling, and fined it EGP 800. Second, the court accepted a request filed by Ali and defence lawyers to compel the state to execute the June verdict.
Today's ruling is not a final verdict on the status of the two islands, as the High Administrative Court and Supreme Constitutional Court, the country's highest court, are hearing various cases in the dispute.
The government, represented by the State Lawsuits Authority, appealed June's administrative court verdict before the High Administrative Court and Supreme Constitutional Court.
The High Administrative Court's next session to continue hearings into the government's appeals is scheduled for 5 December.
In late September, the Court for Urgent Matters accepted a government challenge to the jurisdiction of administrative courts over issues of sovereignty, and voided the June decision.
The decision to transfer the two strategic islands at the southern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba to Saudi Arabia sparked widespread public outcry in the country.
Dozens of people were arrested and put on trial for protesting the maritime deal, but many have been already released after paying hefty fines.
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Egypt's Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Magdi El-Agati told reporters Tuesday that a Cairo administrative court's rejection of a government appeal against a previous court ruling voiding Egypts agreement to give Saudi Arabia two Red Sea islands does not invalidate the deal.
This ruling does not mean that the deal with Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the two Red Sea islands Tiran and Sanafir has become invalidated or that this is the end of the road for this deal, said El-Agati.
El-Agati added that an appeal by the government before the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) is still being deliberated.
Today's ruling does not affect in any way the government's appeal before the Supreme Administrative Court, which is expected to be decided on 5 December," said El-Agati.
El-Agati explained that the administrative court's rejection of the appeal was based on technical matters.
Before he was appointed minister of parliamentary affairs, El-Agati was a judge with the State Council and administrative courts.
El-Agati has previously said that parliament has the final say on the Tiran and Sanafir agreement.
[Parliament] will not discuss the matter as long as it is being deliberated by the judiciary, said El-Agati.
In April, Egypt and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement that placed the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir into the territorial waters of Saudi Arabia. The agreement was reached during a visit by Saudi King Salman to Cairo on 8 April.
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Turkey's top diplomat said Tuesday that Washington has promised Ankara that U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces will only be involved in a siege of the Islamic State group's stronghold of Raqqa in Syria but would not enter the city itself, once it is freed of IS militants.
The remarks by Mevlut Cavusoglu reflect Turkey's concerns over the expanding ground that Kurdish fighters have gained in Syria as they battle IS group.
Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish militia to be a terror organization, saying it's an extension of Turkey's outlawed Kurdish rebels.
A U.S.-backed campaign is underway in Syria to take the city of Raqqa the Islamic State group's de facto capital from the militants.
The fight is taking place under the banner of the predominantly Kurdish alliance known as the Syria Democratic Forces.
On Monday, the Kurdish-led fighters made small advances in villages north of Raqqa.
The SDF enjoys the backing of several Western militaries and is recognized by the U.S. as the most effective force fighting against the extremists, but its differences with Turkey as well as other Syrian groups could complicate the campaign.
Speaking in Ankara, Cavusoglu told reporters that he hoped the U.S. would keep its promise, but noted that Washington had also pledged earlier that Syrian Kurdish fighters would withdraw from the town of Manbij, which has not happened so far.
Cavusoglu said that during U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunfords' last visit to Turkey, the Americans said the Syrian Kurdish fighters "will only have a role in encircling Raqqa and will absolutely not enter the city."
"We hope that this will be the case and we expect that our partners keep their promises," he said.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.
Cavusoglu also said that Turkey prefers that "local" Arab forces enter the city, backed by U.S.-led coalition and possibly including Turkish ground troops.
"We still have weeks to the Raqqa operation," Cavusoglu said. "Our advice is for the local forces to be supported by our special forces."
The residents of Raqqa would not welcome Kurdish forces, the Turkish minister also suggested.
If "terrorists enter into the city ... we should not force the people to choose between two evils."
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Islamic State militants abducted 295 former Iraqi Security Forces members near the militant stronghold of Mosul and also forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from Hammam al Alil town, the United Nations human rights organisation said on Tuesday.
The abductions took place last week as Iraqi government forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shia militias backed by U.S.-led air strikes pushed an offensive to recapture Mosul from Islamic State.
"People forcibly moved or abducted, it appears, are either intended to be used as human shields or - depending on their perceived affiliations - killed," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
About 100 of the former ISF officers were taken at around midnight on Nov. 3 from Mawaly village, which is about 20 km (12 miles) west of Mosul. A further 195 were abducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4 from villages in Tal Afar district.
The abducted families were being taken from their town to Mosul airport, Shamdasani said.
"The fate of these civilians is unknown for the moment," she told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
The United Nations also had information that at least 30 sheikhs were abducted in Sinjar district on Nov. 2 or Nov. 3 and taken to an unknown location. It was trying to verify a report that 18 of them had been killed on Nov. 4 in Tal Afar district, Shamdasani said.
The operation against Islamic State's Iraqi stronghold has entered its fourth week and Iraqi forces have so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.
The U.N. human rights office has sources on the ground but the information they are able to provide is "patchy", Shamdasani said.
She could not confirm media reports of a mass grave being found but said it happened to be in the same agricultural college in Hammam al Alil where the U.N. reported the execution of 50 police officers last month.
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Israel claimed victory Tuesday in blocking a Palestinian bid to join the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol).
The body's annual conference decided Tuesday to suspend the Palestinian bid, instead appointing an advisor to review the application and report back at the 2017 conference.
Membership bids from Kosovo and the Solomon Islands were also put on hold.
The Palestinians had been seeking to get their membership ratified at the annual meeting, which is being held on the Indonesian island of Bali.
"The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs together with the Israeli police... carried out an intensive global effort to thwart the Palestinian initiative," a foreign ministry statement said.
"This vote is an accomplishment and a triumph of Israeli diplomacy, reflecting the positive change in Israel's standing in the international arena," it added.
The Lyon-based Interpol currently has 190 member countries, enabling police across the globe to share information.
Palestine gained observer status at the United Nations in 2012 and since then has joined 54 international organisations and agreements, according to the Palestinian foreign ministry.
Among them are the International Criminal Court and the United Nations heritage body UNESCO.
Israel has opposed such moves, delaying payments of taxes to the Palestinians after their 2015 ICC application.
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[November 08, 2016] Thinfilm and Holoptica Integrate NFC Technology and Holograms to Deliver Powerful Authentication Solution for Government Documents
Thin Film Electronics ASA ("Thinfilm") (OSE:THIN.OL; OTCQX:TFECY) today announced that it is partnering with brand protection and document-security leader Holoptica in efforts to deliver a new printed nanotechnology anti-counterfeiting solution to a range of government markets. The solution, featuring a hybrid SpeedTap/hologram tag (News - Alert) supported by powerful cloud-based software, was designed to protect government-issued documents such as visas, passports and other identification-based credentials and will aid in efforts to combat widespread counterfeiting around the world. The SpeedTap/hologram tag provides a combination of high-security holography and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that delivers several layers of protection and authentication functionality. The end result is the ability to create documents that are not only unforgeable, but can be rendered completely invalid and unusable in the event of theft. The NFC chip in the SpeedTap tag essentially makes each physical document "smart", giving government officials and consumers the ability to instantly connect to its certified digital twin and verify authenticity with the simple tap of a smartphone. In addition, the slim profile of the chip allows for seamless document integration and eliminates noticeable bumps that affect performance and impede reliability. The counterfeiting of documents such as work permits, passports, and visas is a growing global concern, and the market for illicit documents sold on the black market is estimated to generate more than $10 billion annually. The mounting financial losses have prompted many governmentl bodies to take action and implement formal programs - many of which leverage innovative technologies - to mitigate fraudulent practices.
"Combining Thinfilm's SpeedTap tags with Holoptica's high-security COMPASS/holoQR/DNA SmartMark hologram creates a highly effective yet economical solution in the fight against counterfeiters," said George Perkous, Holoptica's CEO. "The broader counterfeiting market generates roughly $600 billion annually, and we're excited about the role these innovative tags can play in effectively addressing the document security needs of governments and related authorities around the globe." Thinfilm's SpeedTap tags are thin, flexible devices that can integrate with a document's or product's packaging and can be read with the tap of an NFC-enabled smartphone. Each tag is uniquely identifiable and is virtually impossible to clone. Once tapped, the tag wirelessly communicates with the cloud, enabling brands or regulatory groups to connect directly with end-users and instantly deliver authentication messaging, serial numbers, product information, and other relevant content.
"Document fraud costs governments and businesses billions of dollars each year and directly contributes to the growth of global terrorist activity," said Davor Sutija, CEO of Thinfilm. "We're pleased to work with Holoptica in delivering a comprehensive anti-counterfeiting solution that strengthens ID-based document programs and helps create safer environments worldwide." About Thin Film Electronics ASA Thinfilm is a leader in printed electronics and NFC smart packaging solutions. The first to commercialize printed, rewritable memory, the Company today creates printed tags, labels and systems that include memory, sensing, display, and wireless communication - all at a cost-per-function unmatched by conventional electronic technologies. Thinfilm's roadmap integrates technology from a strong and growing ecosystem of partners to bring intelligence to everyday items and effectively extend the traditional boundaries of the Internet of Things. Thin Film Electronics ASA ("Thinfilm") is a publicly listed Norwegian company with headquarters in Oslo, Norway; product development and production in Linkoping, Sweden; product development, production, and business development in San Jose, California, USA; and sales offices in the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore. For more information, visit www.thinfilm.no. About Holoptica Holoptica is a global provider of holograms, DNA markings and on-line mobile device verification and authentication systems specifically designed to combat counterfeiting and the illicit use of brands and documents. The firm's proprietary technologies provide companies and governments with innovative and cost effective programs against the fraudulent replication and distribution of products and documents. Established in 2011, Holoptica has offices in the US (Silicon Valley), the UK, and Australia. This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to 5-12 vphl (Norwegian Securities Trading Act). View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161108005241/en/
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[November 08, 2016] QSR Automations Increases Bump Bar Versatility with Introduction of Wireless Offering
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- QSR Automations, the leading provider of innovative automation technology for the hospitality industry, introduces its latest enhancements to bump bar technology with the KP-9000 Wireless Bump Bar. Available on December 5, the durable wireless device eliminates the need for routing cables, allowing for flexible placement in kitchens across the nation, while also capitalizing on current features from QSR's proven keypad innovations. "Today's restaurant kitchens are looking for hardware solutions that match their customized needs. Our wireless bump bar takes our well-established KP-7500 keypad and adds greater flexibility and convenience by eliminating cabling," says Lee Leet, founder and chief executive officer of QSR Automations. "With the removal of cabling, the device will provide for a cleaner and safer kitchen environment and a clutter-free aesthetically pleasing workspace, which is exactly what high-performing, open concept restaurant kitchens need." The footprint of the KP-9000 Wireless Bump Bar remains the same, ensuring the keypad can be easily mounted on a tabletop, wall, or shelf using QSR's standard bracketing options or existing third party brackets. It provides an added level of convenience for kitchens, as it can be placed up to 30 feet away from the controller. Each of the 20 keys is programmable, and users can easily create keypad overlays which are slid into place over the keys without the use of tools. The keypad membrane is metal reinforced for longer life and the keypad body is heat resistant and also sealed to ensure protection from grease and moisture. Other features include longer lasting battery life enabled by Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology which alleviates the ned to frequently switch out batteries in the kitchen. The wireless KP-9000 also offers an activity light that confirms keypresses, pairing, and serves as a low battery indicator. In addition, QSR's ConnectSmart ControlPoint hardware management tool can be used to remotely control, configure and operate the KP-9000 Wireless Bump Bar via a proprietary dongle.
"Having been in the restaurant industry for more than 20 years, we understand that one the most expensive costs of setting up a kitchen is the installation," says Leet. "The wireless bump bar will reduce those costs. It is the cost-effective solution for any restaurant looking for reliability and flexibility in a bump bar." The KP-9000 Wireless Bump Bar is rated for 30 million key presses and has an unmatched 3 year warranty. When used in conjunction with QSR's kitchen display software and hardware - including the xCeed and eXpert controllers - restaurant businesses can profitably automate their kitchen operations to enhance quality, control costs and meet productivity goals.
About QSR Automations: Established in 1996, QSR Automations is a hospitality industry leader in innovative in-store, online and mobile restaurant hardware and software solutions. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, QSR helps restaurants and businesses of all sizes and concepts around the world measurably increase efficiency, enhance productivity, improve quality and maximize guest delight. QSR's innovative software and hardware solutions focus on all activities around the guest to help create a positive and memorable guest experience each and every visit. For further information on QSR Automations, visit www.qsrautomations.com or contact QSR at 502-297-0221. MEDIA INQUIRIES CONTACT:
Chrisea Chosta
Public Relations & Communications
(502) 690-2034
[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161108/437052LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qsr-automations-increases-bump-bar-versatility-with-introduction-of-wireless-offering-300359149.html SOURCE QSR Automations
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[November 07, 2016] TPT Global Tech Acquires San Diego Media, an Enterprise eCommerce Solutions Company
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- TPT Global Tech (OTCBB: TPTW) announces it recently completed the acquisition of San Diego Media Inc. located in San Diego California. San Diego Media, Inc. (SDM) was founded in 1999 with a mission of developing custom integrated Enterprise eCommerce solutions from conception to launch. SDM provides ongoing operational support for brands, manufacturers, distributors and retailers. SDM supports clients on multiple Cloud SaaS eCommerce platforms and enterprise systems including MaxEXP, BigCommerce, Magento and MindTouch. SDM is focused on delivering consistently profitable solutions to its clients. Doing all of this without sacrificing the essential merchandising functionality, customizability, mobile first design, scalability, security and performance that is expected in today's hyper-competitive eCommerce environment. Through intelligent innovations San Diego Media creates integrated custom software solutions that reach well beyond what can be developed using most mainstream eCommerce software in the marketplace. SDM Clients have included CRKT, Moteng, SureFire, OliverMcMillan, Nalpak, DigPets, Beachgrid, Professional Plastics, HomeControls, Gourmet Settings, EspressoParts, and DSantis.
"By adding San Diego Media to TPT Global Tech's network of companies and existing infrastructure, this acquisition will enhance our ability to offer Cloud Services products in the United States and around the world. We are very excited that Brian Kent, a pioneer in the internet eCommerce space, will continue on as the CEO of San Diego Media and bring his many years of experience to TPT Global Tech," said Stephen Thomas, CEO TPT Global Tech Inc. "TPT Global Tech's CEO Stephen J. Thomas is willing to challenge conventional wisdom and excels at communicating the organization's vision. We are excited to be a part of TPT Global Tech. The synergy between each organization is extensive and we will all grow well beyond some of our individual entities as a result of our total commitment and mutual involvement," according to San Diego Media's CEO, Brian Kent.
About TPT Global Tech TPT Global Tech Inc. (OTC:TPTW) based in San Diego, California, is a Technology/Telecommunications Media Content Hub for domestic and International syndication and also provides Technology solutions to businesses domestically and worldwide. TPT Global offers Software as a Service (SaaS), Technology Platform as a Service (PAAS), Cloud-based Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) and carrier-grade performance and support for businesses over its private IP MPLS fiber and wireless network in the United States. TPT's cloud-based UCaaS services allow businesses of any size to enjoy all the latest voice, data, media and collaboration features in today's global technology markets. TPT's also operates as a Master Distributor for Nationwide Mobile Virtual network Operators (MVNO) and Independent Sales Organization (ISO) as a Master Distributor for Pre-Paid Cellphone services, Mobile phones, Cellphone Accessories and Global Roaming Cellphones. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tpt-global-tech-acquires-san-diego-media-an-enterprise-ecommerce-solutions-company-300358676.html SOURCE TPT Global Tech Inc.
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France's Total has signed a deal with Iran to further develop its part of the world's largest gas field, becoming the first western energy company to sign a major deal with Tehran since the lifting of international sanctions earlier this year.
Total confirmed on Tuesday it had signed a heads of agreement with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) for the Phase 11 development of South Pars in the Gulf, which extends into Qatari waters where it is known as the North field.
The SP11 project will progress in two stages, the first costing an estimated $2 billion, Total said. The produced gas will be fed into Iran's gas network.
The French company has already played a key role in Iran's energy industry, including the development of phases 2 and 3 of South Pars in the 2000s, before pulling out of the country after international sanctions were imposed in 2010.
Foreign companies keen to tap into Iran's vast oil and gas reserves have so far made little inroads into the country despite the lifting of many sanctions earlier this year following a landmark agreement on Iran's nuclear program.
Tehran has pledged to open up its oil industry but foreign companies, including BP and Italy's Eni recently said they still have little information about Iranian oil fields and contract terms, hindering investment decisions.
Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne, who has taken some major investment decisions in recent years despite one of the sector's longest downturns, said the agreement "resulted in an attractive commercial framework."
Total said it would operate the SP11 project and have a 50.1 percent stake in it. Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company, will have a 19.9 percent stake while state-China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) [CNPET.UL] will have a 30 percent stake.
The development will have a production capacity of 1.8 billion cubic feet per day, or 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent, with output to be fed into Iran's gas network.
"This project fits with the group's strategy of expanding its presence in the Middle East, where the origins of the group lie, and growing its gas portfolio by adding low unit cost, long plateau gas assets," Pouyanne said in a statement.
Total will develop the project in compliance with national and international laws and the investment will be undertaken without bank finance, he told reporters.
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Islamic State fighters forced thousands of civilians to retreat with them from Hamam al-Alil as Iraqi police were recapturing the town, and moved them towards Mosul airport, the UN said Tuesday.
Iraqi forces retook the key town from the jihadists on Monday, in a major win in its offensive to wrest back the nearby city of Mosul.
But the IS fighters did not leave the town alone: UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva the agency had received reports that the jihadists "forcibly moved about 1,500 families from Hamam al-Alil town to Mosul airport" on November 4.
The UN has for weeks warned that IS was forcing civilians living in districts around Mosul into Iraq's second city, hoping to use them as human shields in an upcoming battle.
Shamdasani also said the rights office had received information that the jihadists had "abducted at least 295 former Iraqi Security Forces personnel" from areas around Mosul.
"Between November 1-4, 195 former ISF personnel were reportedly abducted in several villages in Tel Afar, and at around midnight on November 3, at least 100 former ISF officers were abducted from Mawaly Village, about 20 kilometres west of Mosul," she said.
"The fate of all of these civilians is unknown for the moment," she said.
When the Iraqi forces recaptured Hamam al-Alil, they said they found a mass grave at an agricultural college, with the offensive's Joint Operations Command saying "100 bodies of citizens with their heads cut off" had been uncovered.
The UN could not immediately confirm the information, and Shamdasani said her office was still looking into reports last month that IS had killed 50 former Iraqi police officers at the same location.
Iraqi forces have been tightening the noose around Mosul since launching the offensive on October 17, with elite troops last week breaching city limits.
Upping pressure on the jihadists, the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance on Saturday launched its own offensive on IS's other main bastion, the Syrian city of Raqa.
Raqa and Mosul are the last major cities in Syria and Iraq under the jihadists' control and their capture would deal a knockout blow to the self-styled "caliphate" IS declared in mid-2014.
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business Clinton a favourite; Trump win may push mkts down 10%: Barclays In US, Hillary Clinton continues to be the favourite, said Keith Parker of Barclays. The Republicans will control the House, which reduces chances of aggressive change in policies like taxes and regulations.
business PNB chief says housing fin co's growth momentum will continue Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Usha Ananthasubramanian, MD & CEO, Punjab National Bank, said PNB Housing Finance's retail housing segment is getting more impetus.
business Aim to achieve 10% revenue growth in FY17: KEC International Rajeev Aggarwal, CFO, KEC International is confident of achieving the revenue growth guidance of 10 percent for FY17.
business Asahi Songwon looks to raise capacity utilisation target to 90% In conversation with CNBC-TV18, Gokul Jaykrishna, Joint MD, Asahi Songwon Colors, said topline growth is coming from increased volume and capacity utilisation.
Related Canada to lift travel visa for Mexicans
Mexicans on the U.S. border anxiously awaited the outcome of the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, plagued by fears of economic disaster if Republican Donald Trump wins and tries to choke local industry, isolate the country and deport millions.
Trump's campaign has been one of the most unpopular in living memory in Mexico, ranging from stinging verbal attacks on its migrants, threats against its trade agreements, to his repeated vows to seal off the country behind a huge border wall that he insists Mexico will pay for.
Nowhere has the bad-tempered contest been felt more acutely than in the Mexican cities straddling the U.S. border, which hundreds of thousands of people cross for work every day, and acts as a bridge for $500 billion in annual bilateral trade.
Trump launched his bid accusing Mexico of sending rapists and drug peddlers across the border, prompting the government to accuse him of stirring up hatred and fanning concerns on the border that racial prejudice is becoming more acceptable.
The tycoon says he could scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement that took effect in Mexico, the United States and Canada in 1994, and he has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 35 percent on Mexican-made goods to help U.S. industry.
"We're very worried. We know what Donald Trump is looking to do, which is limit the imports, he wants to manufacture everything in the States," said Marcello Hinojosa, president in the border city of Tijuana of industry group Canacintra.
"But this has been analyzed by both the United States and by Mexico and it's suicide for both countries."
Mexican business leaders say about 40 percent of the average Mexican factory export is made of U.S. content and argue the two manufacturing sectors are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to take steps against one without damaging the other.
Trump, who polls show trailing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a tight race, says Mexico is "killing" the United States on trade. However, commerce between the two has grown much faster than their respective economies since NAFTA, World Bank and U.S. data show.
Mexico sends more than 80 percent of its exports to the United States, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says roughly 6 million American jobs depend on trade with Mexico.
Trump has also blasted U.S. companies for investing in Mexico, which houses billions of dollars worth of manufacturing plants, especially around Mexico's northern border. Trump blames the Mexican factories for jobs losses in the United States.
If protectionist policies gain ground, prices for products and services would go up, and jobs would eventually be lost in Mexico, putting pressure on people to migrate - or exposing them to the lure of violent crime, Hinojosa said.
Rarely have Mexicans expressed such strong views about U.S. presidential candidates as during the current campaign.
Mexicans favor Clinton in the race by 10 to 1, according to a poll published in Mexico in late September. But the tightening of polls in the last two weeks has rattled their confidence she will win.
"Personally, though I think I speak for many Mexicans, I hope Trump loses," said Rodolfo Monroy, 85, a restaurant owner in the border city of Nogales, opposite Nogales, Arizona.
"Why? Because he's rude, because of what comes out of his mouth. He doesn't like us Mexicans," he said, with a flash of anger on his face. "We're going to be in real trouble (if he wins)."
Wadih Kuri, Chief Executive of ABC Aluminum Solutions, a local aluminum company, recalled being labeled "beaner" as a Mexican studying across the border, the sort of prejudice he said Trump's campaign was encouraging again.
Nor was it wise economic policy, he added.
"Having someone govern who feeds racism, hate, this sort of thing ... will also make a lot of Mexicans stop visiting (the United States) out of fear, out of a sense of pride, which will also hurt the U.S. economy," Galindo said.
Crossing into the United States from Tijuana, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the hemisphere, construction worker Alejandro Ortiz said "every aspect" of his life would be affected if Trump wins - which he fears will happen.
"This is going to affect me whenever I cross the border, they're going to investigate me more, just because of my color, because I speak Spanish," said Ortiz, 36, who was born in the United States but grew up in Mexico.
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Weve been talking about the Trump Trade for over a week now.
The trade is based on the premise that if The Donald wins the US election, this will send shock waves across the world.
The majority having bought into mainstream news polls will be in disbelief.
During the initial period of uncertainty gold classically a safe haven asset should surge, while stocks will probably sell off. But you need to ask yourself, what if The Donald doesnt win?
Although I still expect Trump to pull off an upset victory, its a possibility that you must consider. It would very likely change the outcome of your trade.
Ill take you through the details
Get ready for a rigged election?
Although the popular vote should be on Trumps side (check out the numbers attending his rallies compared to Hillarys), he could still lose the election.
Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be behind the hacking of the nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails, warns that the election will be rigged. The renowned hacker wrote on his blog on 4 November:
Id like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies. As Ive already said, their software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities.
Guccifer 2.0 isnt the only one voicing concerns. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, told the Russian Times on 4 November:
My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment. Banks, intelligence, arms companies, foreign money, etc. are all united behind Hillary Clinton. And the media as well. Media owners, and the journalists themselves.
The mainstream media including The New York Times, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and in Australia The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, are all convinced that Hillary Clinton will win. In my opinion, thats because most of these unbiased news outlets are bought and paid for by the political and banking elite.
You only have to tune into the evening news or open your morning paper to witness their artful brainwashing in actionrightly or wrongly attacking Trump, and forever defending the Democratic candidate. Make no mistake. This will sway many voters.
In addition, most of the political polls have swung Hillarys way for months. Heres the latest New York Times poll:
Source: The New York Times
Click to enlarge
With a 2.3% lead in their poll, The New York Times is giving Hillary an 84% chance to win the election. Youve got to wonder who came up with that numberand how?
And youve got to wonder just who responded to the poll. I doubt theres a poll in existence that accurately reflects the silent majority vote.
Remember, most polls also said that Britain would remain in the European Union. And we all know how that turned out.
That said, some people watching the polls may be discouraged to vote. Theyll think, whats the point in bothering to vote if Hillary is going to win anyway?
The bottom line: Hillary could easily win the election. Remember, the political elite and their powerful backers want to hang onto their power for as long as possible. And the best way for them to do that is to maintain the status quo by electing another Clinton.
Trading a Hilary Clinton victory
If the establishment candidate wins, I recommend reversing your Trump Trade. In that case, stocks should rally and gold should fall. That could be a great short term trade.
The Clinton campaign is financed by the major investment banks and hedge funds. Historically, the Clintons have served the bankers.
For example, the Clintons reversed Glass Steagall in 1999. The Glass-Steagall Act, also known as the Banking Act of 1933, was passed by Congress to stop commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. It was enacted as an emergency response to the failure of nearly 5,000 banks during the Great Depression of 192933.
The reversal of Glass Steagall led to a massive stock bull market, ending with the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/09. On the way, the investment banks reaped billions.
In my view, if Hilary Clinton becomes the next US president, we could witness the largest stock market rally in history.
Regards,
Jason Stevenson,
Resources Analyst, Money Morning
PS: Today we looked at the possible outcomes of a Clinton election victory. But if Trump wins, though, were likely to see a powerful move gold up and stocks down. For more details on how to trade the uncertainty, go here.
Ex-Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos can be given a hero's burial, the Supreme Court decided Tuesday in a hugely controversial ruling which critics said would whitewash his crimes and divide the nation.
The justices overwhelmingly endorsed President Rodrigo Duterte's decision to allow the burial at the "Cemetery of Heroes" in Manila, three decades after a famous "People Power" revolt forced Marcos into US exile and restored democracy.
"There is no law that prohibits the burial," court spokesman Theodore Te said as he read a summary of the judgement.
Hundreds of Marcos supporters outside the Supreme Court cheered. But opponents who had petitioned the court to reject the plan staged a rally nearby and voiced deep anger.
"It's really sad because the decision makes liars out of human rights victims," Neri Colmenares, who as a student leader was tortured by Marcos' security forces during martial law, told AFP outside the court.
"If the torturer is a hero, what does that make of the victims? What does that make of the millions who overthrew a dictator? It is a horrible and tragic ending to one of the most tragic chapters of our history. History was altered today."
Marcos ruled the Philippines for two decades until key military figures turned on him and millions took to the streets in the "People Power" uprising, a largely peaceful event that inspired democracy movements throughout Asia and around the world.
Marcos, his infamously flamboyant wife Imelda, and their cronies plundered up to $10 billion from state coffers during his rule, according to government investigators and historians.
The dictator also oversaw widespread human rights abuses to maintain his control of the country and enable his plundering, with thousands of people killed and tortured, previous Philippine governments said.
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International in 2004 named Marcos the second most corrupt leader of all time, behind Indonesian dictator Suharto.
The Philippines' foreign debt went from $2.67 billion in 1972, when Marcos declared martial law, to $28.2 billion in 1986, according to the World Bank.
After Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989, his family began a successful political comeback and tried repeatedly to have him buried at the heroes' cemetery, where other presidents and celebrated military figures are interred.
Imelda became a congresswoman and fended off all corruption charges against her.
Two of her children established themselves as influential politicians. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jnr, was the more successful, becoming a senator before almost winning the vice presidency this year.
However previous presidents had refused to allow the burial in the heroes' cemetery because of Marcos's crimes, so the family kept the preserved body in a glass casket at his home in the northern province of Ilocos Norte.
The family's fortunes changed with the election of Duterte, a longtime ally of the Marcos family, as president in May this year.
He said Marcos deserved to be buried at the heroes' cemetery based on the fact he had been a president and a veteran of World War II.
Duterte also said he owed loyalty to the family because his father served in the Marcos government and the family had helped fund his election campaign.
Immediately celebrating the verdict, Bongbong Marcos said the nation of 100 million people would now be able to put past controversies behind it.
"It is in our belief a very important step for the healing process in the political arena of our country," Marcos told CNN Philippines.
"I think this will be the beginning of bringing the country together and uniting the country."
He said there was no date yet for the burial but all the preparations had already been made. Opponents said they would ask the court to reconsider, a move unlikely to succeed but which could delay proceedings.
Marcos Jnr's expectations of unity were met with howls of protest from Marcos critics, some of whom held rallies on Tuesday night.
"The decision intends to effectively wipe the Marcos slate clean and negates the sacrifices of the thousands of brave souls who fought and suffered under the brutal Marcos dictatorship," Senator Risa Hontiveros said.
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November 08, 2016
Syria - Waiting For The Next Moves
We had expected a Syrian Army "Election Campaign", a large size attack on Al Bab or east-Aleppo. That did not happen despite the right "assets" being in place and I have heard no reason yet why it was delayed. The Russian aircraft carrier group, which was expected last Friday along the Syrian coast, will only arrive this evening. It must have intentionally slowed its travel. There has been no single Syrian or Russian airstrike on east-Aleppo in last 21 days. "Rebel" shelling of west-Aleppo has not stopped for a day and caused many casualties. That will now change. One Russia source claims the Russian fleet will engage immediately. NOTAMs, NOtices To Air Men, about imminent operations on Syria's west-coast have been released. The declared areas and times of operation correspond to a campaign, not a single strike.
After some 12 days of fighting, the second large al-Qaeda campaign to break the siege on east-Aleppo by attacking the south western side of west-Aleppo completely failed. While the first round nearly achieved a break through but was then contained the second attack was only a alibi attempt which never made any progress towards its claimed aim. The Syrian army has recaptured the housing project 1070 and will soon have cleaned all other areas that were shortly in the hands of the Jihadis. The loss in material and men for the Jihadis were immense. The Syrian army has finally learned how to defend against suicide vehicle bombs: have adequate weapons ready in the front line to kill them on their approaches. Of nearly 20 such bomb runs only 3 or 4 reached their targets and losses from those were less sever than from earlier bombs. The Jihadis and their "western" media and "expert" proxies seem to have given up on east-Aleppo. There is no sign that another break through attempt will be launched.
The Obama administration has announced a campaign to encircle Raqqa in center-east Syria. It bought help from the Kurdish YPG to achieve that and has thereby excluded a Turkish campaign. The taking of Raqqa is supposed to be left to some Arab troops in cooperation with the Kurds. But those Arab troops do not yet exist and hiring and training has not even begun. The whole announcement of the beginning of a Raqqa campaign was obviously not serious. The Kurds will take a few small towns and the U.S. will temporarily protect them from sever Turkish interference in their areas in Syria. Raqqa will not be attacked before next years spring.
The Turks are now miffed (though silently relieved) that they were not asked to take part in the Raqqa campaign. They have been promised that they may help to "develop a long-term plan for seizing, holding and governing Raqqa". That means exactly nothing. But the Turks never had a real chance to go and take Raqqa. It is too far from their borders and the imponderables are too big.
In the area around Damascus the Ghouta rebel hold out has been split and reduced to small kettles which will be eliminated within a few days. The Syrian capital is safe for now and its people can live a rather normal life without fear of being killed in the next minute by some random grenade. A significant number of troops will become available when all the small rebel areas around the capital are gone. Those can be used in future campaigns. The frontline strength of the Syrian army in critical areas will increase and its maneuver force will become more powerful and efficient.
The momentum in all of west Syria is on the side of the Syrian government. The Jihadists are more and more concentrated in Idleb governate and city. When the surrounded hold outs in its back are eliminated the Syrian army can launch an assault on them. The east is complicate. Deir Ezzor is still surrounded by ISIS and will likely be attacked again soon. Reinforcements for the defenders would be welcome.
The Kurds are playing games and change alliances every now and than. For the time they again bet on the U.S. - a hope that has already been disappointed several times. The U.S. will let them fall as soon as it is convenient. The Kurds will learn again that such a policy does not bear tasteful fruits. There is a common Turkish and Syrian interest in cutting them back to size. In a year from now we may see new surprise alliances in that area.
All the positive developments we have seen especially in west-Syria may be for naught if a new U.S. president decides to throw up the chess board and risk World War III by attacking Syrian and Russian positions. Its about the most stupid thing Washington could do and has thereby a good chance to happen. I hope that the Pentagon will lecture the politicians of the very real consequences such a move would have.
Posted by b on November 8, 2016 at 17:12 UTC | Permalink
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As the California High Speed Rail Authority finalizes its plans to bring the train through, around or above Morgan Hill, city officials have a list of questions about the project and how it will impact local residents and businesses.
City Hall is thus asking the community for input on this massive project before the City Council considers sending the HSRA a scoping letter on the locals preferred alignment later this month, according to city staff.
Regardless of the alignment that will ultimately be decided by the Authority, there are many questions that the city council and community must have answered prior to any decisions being made, reads a Nov. 7 press release from city staff.
The HSRAs staff and consultants are currently considering four alignment alternatives for the train that will zoom through Morgan Hill at speeds faster than 200 mph. The HSRA board will choose its preferred alignment option by spring of 2017, after which will follow an environmental review and public comment period.
The four alignment options are described as:
At grade, on a berm, along Monterey Road or adjacent (on the east side) of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks;
Elevated, in a viaduct, along Monterey Road or adjacent (on the east side) of the UPRR;
Elevated in a viaduct along the west side of U.S. 101;
Elevated in a viaduct along the east side of U.S. 101.
The viaducts in the elevated options would rise 30 to 60 feet above the ground.
While the City of Morgan Hill has no legal authority to determine the future of the project, the council hopes to work with the HSRA to influence the project so it minimizes impacts on the community while developing the best project through/around Morgan Hill, the citys press release states.
At the Nov. 16 meeting at council chambers on Peak Avenue, the council will discuss issues and questions that should be addressed in the final draft of its scoping letter to the HSRA.
City staff have posted a draft list of questions for the HSRA on the citys website. These include:
Will the HSR project have lighting for safety?
What is the main safety mechanism if the train is derailed?
How does noise change at different speeds?
Will the Morgan Hill segment begin construction independent of progress in San Jose or Gilroy?
Residents can view the full list of questions and submit their own by visiting the citys website, morganhill.ca.gov/1552/High-Speed-Rail.
When completed, HSR will take travelers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours, 40 minutes. The total budget of the statewide rail project is about $65 billion, which will be financed by a voter approved bond, federal stimulus grants and cap-and-trade funds, according to HSRA staff.
Construction is already underway on the HSRA section that goes from Fresno to Bakersfield. The San Jose-to-Merced sectionthe one that will pass through Morgan Hillis expected to be operational by 2025, planners said.
Stations are planned in San Jose and Gilroy, among other locations throughout the project.
The project will require the HSRA to acquire private residential and commercial properties that currently stand in the way of any alignment option.
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To submit questions you would like city officials to ask of High Speed Rail Authority representatives, and to view a current draft of questions the city plans to ask, visit morganhill.ca.gov/1552/High-Speed-Rail.
HICKORY A mobile home in Hickory was destroyed by fire on Monday afternoon.
Drowning Creek Volunteer Fire Department responded to 1363 Airport Rhodhiss Road in Hickory to a home that was completely engulfed.
Michael Pugh, who rents the home, was not home at the time of the fire, according to Melissa Tucker, public information officer and firefighter with Drowning Creek Volunteer Fire Department.
There were no occupants inside the home at the time of the fire, Tucker said.
It was engulfed, flames were up above and it was basically fully involved, Tucker said. They (firefighters) started to attack the fire through the windows because we were not sure if the floor inside would be steady enough to go in.
Firefighters eventually went into the dwelling after they were able to control the flames, Tucker said.
They were able to contain the fire in approximately 25 minutes, she said.
Chad Houston, fire inspector for Burke County, as of Monday evening said the cause of the fire was undetermined due to the fact he could not rule out electrical issues or improper clearance around a heater.
The cause of the fire still was under investigation at press time Monday, but Houston said the fire started on the right side of the mobile home.
The American Red Cross was notified to assist those living in the home.
Sometimes, our department will call and check in on them to make sure they are okay, Tucker said.
Other agencies responding to the scene were Icard and Rhodhiss fire departments.
Staff Writer Jonelle Bobak can be reached at jbobak@morganton.com or 828-432-8907.
Germany's foreign minister says the bitter U.S. election campaign will leave a "difficult legacy" for the next president because it has deepened the country's divisions.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says both Germans and many Americans "are glad that this special election campaign is coming to an end."
He says the campaign "has left a more or less divided country" and it will be difficult for the incoming president to bridge the differences.
Steinmeier has been sharply critical of Republican contender Donald Trump. He brushed aside suggestions that relations between Europe and the U.S. would also become more complicated under Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton saying that he knows Clinton and doesn't fear that.
He spoke in Berlin on Tuesday.
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As Americans make a historic choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for president, here are the voices of some of the voters AFP spoke to up and down the country on Election Day:
First Time Voter: "I was really excited. I got my sticker," said 19-year-old Katie Kope, who voted for the Republican Trump. "I was kind of torn between the two but I don't trust Hillary."
What if Clinton, the Democrat, wins? "I'm not afraid, but I don't love her. I think she's a little corrupt ... I don't expect much from either."
Split Family: Marina, 57, voted for Trump, but her son Andre, 30, favored Clinton. Have they argued? "Yeah, over the past few days," said Andre. "Discussions," clarified Marina, smiling.
Hispanic For Trump: "I voted for Trump because we need a change," said Aura Montoya, 60, a nanny and housekeeper of Colombian descent. "I don't like the way he speaks, but I think he'll change course."
Stars And Stripes: The choice was clear for Bangladeshi immigrant Lutfun Burham, 45. She wore a head scarf in the colors of the US flag as she voted. "I am a Muslim and obviously I vote for Hillary. I love her very much. She's straight with us."
Loud Mouth: "Hillary, she has a history, all Trump has is the bullying. But people are going with him cause he has the loudest mouth," said Charmaine Smith, 50, an African-American retail manager who voted in Harlem.
Reagan Returns: "Trump would be a great president," said voter R. Raju, 70. "Not good, great. He's like a Ronald Reagan." What about Hillary? "She should be in jail ... I'm from India. Third world countries act like the Clintons."
High Anxiety: "I have had election anxiety for the past two weeks now, if it were to go the other way, the Trump way, which is a terrifying potential reality," said voter Liz Anderson -- who nevertheless says she is "pretty confident" of a Clinton victory.
"Whoever wins, there is going to be just a huge group waiting to impeach the other," she said. "I think that after the election there is going to be a really big movement towards basically healing."
What Do I Know: "I voted for Donald Trump," said restaurant dishwasher Peter Fernandez, 21, born and raised in the Cuban-American Miami enclave of Hialeah.
"I don't really know much, I'm not very educated. But he speaks his mind, he's not afraid to say things that could irritate a couple of folks."
Who Wears The Pants: "I voted for Hillary because it's time for a woman to wear the pants in this country," said Leonor Perez, 74, also from Hialeah.
"Trump? That old guy is crazy, if I could I'd have him in a psych ward tied up with chains."
A Pox On Both Houses: "I believe both parties have failed over the many years that they have been in office," said contractor David Arntzen, 29, a self-described Democrat who voted for Trump.
Trump "wants to give the government back to the people. It resonates with me."
Slave Ships: "When he says he wants to make America great again, that scares me, because the only thing I can think of is slave ships and nooses," said Sandra Wynn, 58, a retired African-American auto industry worker.
She voted for Clinton.
No Contest: "No, no, no!" cried Mexican immigrant Guadalupe Cobian, 64, closing her eyes when she heard Trump's name. "He's a racist, we don't like him."
"That guy is a Nazi, my vote is for La Senora," or The Lady, said Margarito Salinas, 88, also originally from Mexico.
"I like her, I hate Trump," echoed Aurora Olivares, 22. "It's not only for what he said about Mexico, either way I would have voted for Hillary. He made me hate him."
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Tesco (TSCO) has returned to the top stock list, as chosen by Morningstar.co.uk readers no doubt due to its 35% share price gain year to date. The food retailer has not been on readers top stocks list since June.
Alongside Tesco, banking and financial services stocks continue to be popular among readers, with Lloyds Bank (LLOY) topping the list of the most clicked on stocks for the last 13 months in a row. Mining stocks hold interest for readers thanks to their share price rebound in the second half of the year.
Morningstar equity analysts are positive on the outlook for Tesco, saying the food retailer remains a strong omni-channel operator.
Tesco reported good first-half year results for the six months ending August 2016, showing further growth in its core UK market, Morningstar equity analyst Adam Kindreich said. He believes this confirms that the recovery program, under way for the past two years and far-reaching in scope, is now delivering results.
Even including further reductions in Tescos UK pricing relative to peers, the company should still be on track to meet this goal.
Tescos UK same-store sales growth has been positive for the past three consecutive quarters, for the first time in six years, and Kindreich believes the company was still able to generate positive free cash flow after capital spending.
However, in an attempt to remain competitive, the company may not pay a meaningful dividend for the foreseeable future, Kindreich added.
Richard Buxton, manager of the Old Mutual UK Alpha Fund agreed, telling Morningstar recently that he did not see Tesco being in a position to reinstate dividend anytime soon as the company still has a lot of debt on the balance sheet. However, Buxton believed the companys new Chief Executive Dave Lewis will be able to turn the business around and that will be rewarding for shareholders.
Lloyds Losses Fail to Put Off Investors
Despite Lloyds 23% losses year to date, investors continue to monitor the stock as Lloyds has been on top of the most click stock list on Morningstar.co.uk over the past 13 months.
Perhaps the banks dividend explains the reason behind investors support. Lloyds remains well capitalised, and it maintained its target of delivering 160 basis points of improvement in core equity Tier 1 before dividend payments, which seems feasible so far, Morningstar equity analysts Derya Guzel said.
Morningstar analysts expect to see a 2016 forward projected dividend yield of at 5.8% as a result. While Lloyds set aside provisions of 1 billion to cover the additional costs with regard to payment protection insurance scandal, analysts believes the PPI scandal is largely behind the bank.
Barclays (BARC) ranked ninth on the most clicked stocks list in October despite of its 16% losses on share price. The bank announced that it would cut its dividend in half through 2017 in order to help build up capital.
Job Curtis, manager of Gold Rated The City of London Investment Trust (CTY) recently told Morningstar that despite low interest rates not being good for banks, he currently invests in those he considers "good banks"; Barclays and Lloyds in the UK, and HSBC for international exposure.
The more internationally exposed bank HSBC (HSBA) is the only banking stock which has seen its shares rally year to date at 15%. While the bank remains well positioned as we face Brexit, Morningstar analysts think HSBCs near-term dividend growth is likely to be meagre. Analysts believe that a dividend cut could be in the cards if Chinas slowing economy continues to deteriorate.
Two other financial services stocks Legal & General (LGEN) and Aviva (AV.) are also on the list, with both stocks down year to date, 20.5% and 16.5% respectively.
Mining Stocks Rally
With the significant rises in oil prices seen this year, so too have shares of the oil and mining companies gained over the second half of the year. The depreciation of sterling following a Brexit vote also benefitted mining stocks, as many mining and oil producers have revenues earned in US dollar.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB) and BP (BP.) came forth and sixth on the most clicked stock list among Morningstar.co.uk readers in October. Shares of Shell gain 39% while BP is up 28% year to date.
Morningstar analysts believe that while Shell currently offers a scrip dividend a provisional certificate to be exchanged for future cash, they anticipate that the company can return to paying a full cash dividend by 2019 with an improvement in operations and a recovery in oil prices.
While BP will run a cash flow deficit through 2017, analysts forecast the company can cover a full cash dividend at $55 oil price per barrel in 2018, one of the lowest levels among European integrate.
Curtis holds BP and Shell in the portfolio but says that BPs 7% yield looks unsustainable.
The Australia-based miner 88 Energy (88E) is also on the most clicked stock list among readers on Morningstar.co.uk in October. This stock is listed on the Alternative Investment Market on the London Stock Exchange. Stocks in the AIM market must be owned for at least two years to qualify, but after this these stocks are inheritance tax free. Certain AIM stocks can also qualify for a reduced rate of capital gains tax. However stocks on the AIM market are much more volatile, as companies on AIM are at their early stages of development.
Last Thursday, Egypt floated its currency and increased the prices of subsidised fuel
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) board will meet on Friday to discuss Egypts request for financial assistance, IMF director Christine Lagarde said on Tuesday, adding that she will recommend that the loan be approved.
In mid-August, Egypt reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF on a $12 billion fund facility over three years, which is currently awaiting the fund's executive board approval.
I will recommend that the board approve Egypts request in support of this ambitious economic reform programme that will help restore macroeconomic stability and bring Egypts economy closer to its full potential, Lagarde said in a press statement after Egypt floated its currency last Thursday and increased the prices of subsidised fuel.
The IMF chief said that the new measures implemented by the Egyptian government would put the countrys economy on a sustainable path and achieve job-rich growth.
She added that the liberalisation of the exchange rate would improve Egypts external competitiveness, address shortages of foreign currency, support exports and tourism and help attract foreign investment.
Last week, the IMF welcomed Egypt's central bank decision to float the country's pound, saying that it would boost competitiveness and attract foreign investment.
The IMF has endorsed Egypt's fiscal reform programme, which the government embarked on in 2014 in an attempt to curb the growing state budget deficit, estimated at 11.5 percent of GDP in 2015/16.
The programme includes cutting subsidies and the introduction of new taxes, such as the newly ratified value-added tax.
Egypt relies heavily on imports, mostly food, and has been suffering from an acute foreign currency shortage since the 2011 revolution and the following unrest, which have spooked investors and tourists.
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The causeway leads to the tomb of the first Middle Kingdom provincial governor of Elephantine Island
During excavation work at Aswan's Qubbet El-Hawa necropolis, a British mission from Birmingham University and the Egypt Exploration Society uncovered a causeway leading to the tomb of Sarenput I, the first Middle Kingdom nomarch (provincial governor) of Aswan's Elephantine Island.
Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Ministry of Antiquities, told Ahram Online that the newly discovered causeway is considered the longest ever found on the western bank of the Nile in Aswan, stretching for 133 metres to connect the tomb of Sarenput I to the Nile bank.
Afifi explains that the causeway is decorated with engravings, the most important of which are found on the eastern part of the ramp's northern wall and depict a group of men pulling a bull and presenting it as an offering to Sarenput I after his death.
Hani Abul Azm, head of the central administration of Upper Egypt, told Ahram Online that the mission has also unearthed a collection of clay containers from a pit within the causeway, which archaeologists believe are canopic jars used in mummification.
Abul Azm said the containers will be studied, along with the organic materials found inside, in an attempt to better understand the mummification process.
The mission's field director Martin Bommas says he is very enthusiastic about the discovery, describing it as "a wonderful success that could change the original features of Qubbet El-Hawa area."
Bommas asserted that the mission will start a comprehensive study on the ramp in order to reveal more of its secrets, which may open up the opportunity to comprehensively explore the Qubbet El-Hawa area, which houses a collection of tombs of high officials from the Old Kingdom and nomarchs from the Middle Kingdom.
Sarenput I ruled Elephantine during the reign of King Senusert I of the 12th dynasty. He held several other titles such as the overseer of the priests of Satet and the overseer of foreign lands, among other positions. He was also the king's personal trading agent for goods from Nubia. His tomb is composed of three rooms connected by hallways.
The first two chambers hold colonnades, while the innermost chamber has a niche that once housed a statue of the owner. The outer reliefs depict Sarenput with some of his relatives and his dogs, while the surviving inner paintings depict a scene of the owner with the god Khnum.
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Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)
Today
Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 59F. Winds light and variable..
Tonight
Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 59F. Winds light and variable.
A South Carolina real estate agent whos accused of kidnapping a woman may harbor even darker secrets, according to a Washington Post report.
On Thursday, Spartanburg County sheriffs deputies found a missing woman, 30-year-old Kala Brown, chained like a dog on the wooded property of Todd Christopher Kohlhepp, according to the Post. Brown told authorities she had been held captive for two months. She and her boyfriend, Charles David Carver, had been missing since Aug. 31. Further investigation of Kohlhepps property led to the discovery of Carvers body buried in a shallow grave.
But Carver may be just one of Kohlhepps victims. Police now say the South Carolina real estate agent may be a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least seven people.
In addition to Carver, Kohlhepp showed authorities where he buried two other people so far unidentified on his 95-acre property, according to the Post. And he has reportedly confessed to killing four people in a motorcycle shop in Chesnee, S.C., in 2003.
It was a chilling contrast to the public face Kohlhepp showed the world. His official bio as a real estate agent touted his accomplishments and education bachelors degrees in both business administration and computer science, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society membership, a pilots license.
But that was only his public face. Privately, Kohlhepp had a much darker history. A registered sex offender, Kohlhepp had been convicted in the 1986 rape of a teenage girl in Arizona, according to the Post. When he was 15, Kohlhepp went to a neighbors house, held a gun to a 14-year-old girls head, and forced her to come back to his home, where he bound and sexually assaulted her.
He struck a bargain at trial, pleading guilty to only the kidnapping charge, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, according to the Post. He was released in 2001.
When applying for his South Carolina real estate in 2006, Kohlhepp explained his sex offender status by claiming it was the result of a heated argument with a girlfriend.
Its getting more difficult to find evidence on the internet of Kohlhepps life as a real estate agent. His website address now redirects to server error messages. Kohlhepps Zillow listing also appears to have been scrubbed. However, as of Monday his Zillow customer rating was still visible in Google search results. He got five stars.
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Bruno Hanson/Midland College Environmental Excellence Award
Pioneer Natural Resources
The Bruno Hanson/Midland College Environmental Excellence Award was presented to Pioneer Natural Resources for its work on water conservation.
The companys multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with the city of Odessa to take its treated wastewater for hydraulic fracturing a similar deal is pending with the city of Midland is being hailed as an excellent example of environmental stewardship.
Pioneer is also being praised for its leadership in promoting sustainable water practices.
Company Performance Award
EagleClaw Midstream
EagleClaw Midstream received the Company Performance Award. Though its initial plan was to grow through infrastructure additions, the industry downturn has opened the door to acquisition opportunities that let the company grow significantly.
In the last two years, the Delaware Basin-focused company has grown from five to 54 employees and from processing capacity of 15 million cubic feet to 320 million cubic feet by the end of this year.
As President and CEO Bob Milam put it, weve probably exceeded expectations.
Technology Award
Tenaris
The Technology Award was given to Tenaris for the PipeTracer component of its Rig Direct business model.
Amid the industry downturn, operators have focused on optimizing operations and gaining efficiencies, and Tenaris PipeTracer, which follows pipe from the companys mill to the well site, is improving optimization and efficiencies in the supply chain.
A shorter supply chain, better inventory management and availability of information on the pipe are all elements linked to cost control, Tenaris says.
Government Service
Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton
Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton, recipient of the Government Service Award, has a successful engineering company with his wife. But he ran for the statewide office because government service would let him help shape policies that will benefit future generations.
He brings his engineering experience to hearings and rule changes. A job well-done will benefit both the public and industry, he said.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Sam Gibbs
The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Sam Gibbs, a renowned expert on rod pumping.
Author of a textbook on the subject and creator of the worlds best-selling control device for rod-pumped wells, the SAM Well Manager, Gibbs has received numerous awards for his work.
He may claim to be retired, but he remains active in helping develop new technology.
Talk of a possible Ector County Independent School District bond was quiet for a while with the economic downturn, but Superintendent Tom Crowe is gearing up to talk to the community about the idea after the first of the year.
Although voters approved a $129.75 million bond in November 2012 that financed three new elementary campuses and additions to Odessa and Permian high schools, the high schools and middle schools and many elementary campuses are still crowded.
All the construction for the 2012 bond, except for a performing arts center at OHS, is complete. Chief Operations Officer David Finley said that project should be complete in January.
The district has more than 31,484 students and that is only expected to grow, according to the most recent figures from demographers Population & Survey Analysts (PASA) of College Station. By 2019, in low-growth predictions, the district would have an overall enrollment of 36,200.
Crowe said it takes three and a half years to build a high school and two and a half to build a middle school. Enrollment at west, east and north side elementary schools has been closed, he added.
Both of the high schools are at 4,000 students right now, he said. The last study showed Permian would have 5,000 students in three or four years, Crowe said.
He added that the focus of the upcoming bond will be on secondary, because the middle schools particularly on the west side are overcrowded, and elementary campuses. Its really going to be districtwide, Crowe said. He added that he has no estimate on what the bond would be at this time.
Community input and education will play a role in the bond process, as well as information from its demographer. The district needs to find out where the growth is going to be and Crowe said he wants to go to the community and find out what they want their schools to look like. He said he would also put in his recommendation because he has 43 years of experience in education.
There are several ways to go with a new high school. Crowe said it could be like Plano where there is a ninth and 10th grade campus and an 11th and 12th grade campus. He said this would not be his preference.
My main thing is for this community is we cant look at tomorrow, Crowe said. Weve got to look five and 10 years out. I know I wont be here, but if they only look at tomorrow weve cheated everybody. Weve got to look at the long-range plan of what happens.
The biggest challenge for ECISD, Crowe said, is taxes because the district is maxed out on its maintenance and operations tax rate, which is at $1.04 per $100 valuation, but it has room on its interest and sinking rate at 11 cents per $100. The total tax rate is $1.15 per $100 valuation.
Texas Education Spokeswoman Lauren Callahan said Lauren Callahan the maximum maintenance and operations rate is $1.17 per $100 valuation and the top interest and sinking rate is 50 cents per $100.
We have the capacity to build the schools, Crowe said. Our problem is the M&O. Our problem is electricity, water (and) hiring personnel for the schools. Were maxed out at $1.04. If we pass a bond issue, weve got to have a TRE (Tax Ratification Election) at the same time. If you pass a bond issue and you dont have the TRE, theres no need building the schools.
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SEATTLE -- Fourth-grade Seattle-area teacher Andrea O'Ferrall has tried to do all of the right things to be financially secure and get her son off to a good start in life.
She signed up for her employer's retirement plans, socked away some money for the teenager's college education and watched her day-to-day spending with proud frugality.
And yet, she had doubts.
O'Ferrall, a single mom, wondered whether she was saving enough for her son's college -- and for her own retirement.
"Isn't everyone worried about that?" she said.
O'Ferrall, 53, asked for some free financial advice. The Financial Planning Association of Puget Sound put her in touch with volunteer Angie Furubotten-LaRosee, a financial planner with The Advisor Benefits Group.
"She's made a really good start," said Furubotten-LaRosee. "I'm just not sure that it's enough."
O'Ferrall has a lot going her way.
She is a longtime teacher in her school district, earning about $72,000 a year. That's just under the median household income of $75,331 for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area in 2015, according to the Census Bureau.
She has two pensions through the school district with a current combined value of about $184,000.
She also signed up for a 457(b) deferred-compensation plan, a tax-deferred retirement savings plan available to employees of state and local governments, as well as tax-exempt organizations. Her 457(b) account now has about $40,000.
In addition, O'Ferrall has about $10,000 in an individual retirement account and about $18,000 in savings, which doubles as an emergency fund. Another retirement-savings plan, a 403(b), has about $33,300.
She doesnt have consumer debts and pays off her single credit card every month, avoiding finance charges. She buys clothes for herself and her son at Goodwill. Her son's father has never been in the picture, she says.
"I'm not wasting money," said O'Ferrall, who considers herself frugal but not a penny pincher. "I'm pretty much never going to go to the convenience store to buy something."
Although O'Ferrall is confident about managing her household spending, she feels out of her depth when it comes to financial projections and managing the investments in her retirement accounts.
Her only direct investment in company stock came years ago, when she paid about $8,000 from savings for shares in a then-promising telecommunications company called WorldCom. In 1999 she doubled her money by selling the shares to raise the down payment on her home.
In hindsight, she calls it her "one memorable financial moment."
She paid $164,950 for the house, which is now worth about $338,800, according to Zillow. Meanwhile, WorldCom was rocked by an accounting scandal and filed for bankruptcy in 2002.
All of O'Ferrall's debts are related to the house. About $42,000 remains on the mortgage. She also owes her mother about $12,000 on a $25,000 loan that paid for installing solar panels.
O'Ferrall recently weighed whether to build an addition to her home for about $50,000. But Furubotten-LaRosee ran a financial projection that showed the expense would reduce O'Ferrall's odds of having a secure retirement.
"That gave me pause," O'Ferrall said. She shelved the project.
The financial planner also urged O'Ferrall to delay her retirement until 67, when she will be eligible for full Social Security benefits. If O'Ferrall retires at 67, Social Security and her pensions will provide about 80 percent of the income she needs to support herself, Furubotten-LaRosee estimated.
Another challenge is saving enough money to pay for her 15-year-old son's college education. The cost of earning a bachelor's degree at a public university is typically a six-figure expense for students and their families.
O'Ferrall has work to do when it comes to building a college nest egg. She has two 529 college savings plans for her son. One has $18,000, and she doesn't know the balance in the second one.
Other family members may contribute to the college funds. Furubotten-LaRosee urged O'Ferrall to reduce the uncertainty by getting financial commitments from them. One option, for example, would be to contribute directly to the 529 savings plans.
O'Ferrall and her son are also talking about how to pay for his college degree. Both of them want him to graduate without debt.
They are comparing in-state with out-of-state tuition, as well as considering well-paying summer jobs for her son that could help pay for his degree. One promising job option is working on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska.
In May, the Gallup Organization reported that 55 percent of Americans don't have wills; as it turned out, O'Ferrall is among them.
Because she is a single parent with assets and a minor child, Furubotten-LaRosee urged her to hire an attorney and do some estate planning.
"Having a will is a pretty important thing," she said.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered this weeks Republican response.
Trump was Tuesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:
For the past seventeen months Ive traveled across this nation and met the amazing people of our country. Their hopes have become my hopes and their dreams have become my dreams.
This is not just a campaign, its a movement. Its a once in a lifetime chance to take our government back from the donors and the special interests, and return the power to you, the American people.
Fifteen days ago, I proposed my Contract with the American Votera 100 day action plan to bring real change to Washington. We need change so badly. If we win on November 8, and elect a Republican House and Senate, we can finally deliver the change the American people deserve.
My Contract includes a plan to create 25 million new jobs. We will cut taxes on the middle class Americans by 35 percent, and we will repeal and replace the total disaster known as ObamaCare it doesnt work.
We will also immediately fix our terrible trade deals and stop the jobs from leaving our country. My Contract includes a pledge to end illegal immigration, and end it rapidly, cancel federal funding for sanctuary cities, and suspend the admission of Syrian refugees into our country. Theyre coming in by the thousands, and Hillary Clinton wants to increase that by 600 percent.
We will rebuild our badly depleted military, and take care of our great, great veterans.
We will give every parent in America the right to send their kids to the school of their choice, including millions of low-income African American and Hispanic children who have been failed, so longfor generations in factby the Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton. They just havent been able to do the job. Theyve treated African Americans and Hispanics horribly in so many ways.
We will undertake a national effort to reduce crime and poverty, and bring jobs and safety to our inner citiesfinally, at last.
We will restore the Constitution and nominate Supreme Court Justices who will do the same.
At the center of my Contract is my plan to end government corruption. Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States, and if she were to win it would create a constitutional crisis like no other. Shes under multiple federal investigations, has committed many crimes, including perjury, and shes now facing the prospect of a federal indictment.
Its time to close the history books on the Clintons, and to open a bright new chapter focused on the great citizens of our country.
Im asking for your vote and your help in electing a Republican majority in Congress, so that we can finally change this broken system and Make America Great Again. And when I say great, I mean great for everyone. Thank you very much.
The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
Don Pedro Dollar General Proposal View Photos
Don Pedro, CA A plan seen as contentious by some, to build a Dollar General Store in the Lake Don Pedro community, will go before the Tuolumne County Planning Commission next week.
Anticipating a large crowd, the meeting will take place Wednesday, November 16, at 6pm, in the Don Pedro High School gymnasium at 3090 Merced Fals Road in La Grange. Foothill Land Development, LLC is hoping to construct the 9,100 sq. ft. commercial building at the intersection of Las Palmas Way and Highway 132.
Nearly a year ago, the Tuolumne County Planning Commission, and later the Board of Supervisors, denied approval of a Dollar General Store in Columbia after hearing an uproar from the local community. Opponents argued that the national chain store did not fit with the towns historic character and would negatively impact existing businesses. Tuolumne County has existing Dollar General Stores in Soulsbyville and Jamestown.
The county notes that four petitions, with a combined 700 signatures, have been submitted in opposition of the Don Pedro Dollar General Store. County documents indicate that the long operating Don Pedro Market is among the main opposition to the store. The owner stated in a written response that the small community, of around 3,000, would be unable to support two general grocery stores.
Whatever decision is made by the Planning Commissionit could eventually be appealed to the Board of Supervisors. The November 16 meeting is open to the public.
It's not every day that a 6-foot-long iguana darts through traffic along busy Brevard County roads.
Monday was one of those days, though.
"It was a pretty crazy scene," said James Dean, the wildlife trapper who caught the iguana. "Lots of people pulling over, getting out of their cars, taking pictures."
6-foot-long iguana darted through Melbourne traffic
Wildlife trapper James Dean said it was largest iguana he's seen
Dean said he's caught 8 iguanas in past 6 months
According to police, the iguana darted into oncoming traffic along Wickham Road and then climbed up into a palm tree.
Firefighters were called to the area and used a ladder to get the iguana down.
It took them about 30 minutes to capture the reptile.
"We had to maneuver the ladder several times before we were actually able to get him down," Dean said.
This wasn't the first iguana to cross through Brevard County, Dean said, adding that he's caught eight in the past six months. It's the largest one, though.
"He's the biggest one I've ever seen, and I've been doing this for 20 years," Dean said.
Dean said he will watch the iguana until the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is contacted and decides what to do with the reptile.
It's unclear whether the iguana is someone's pet, but if it is, Dean said he would try to find the owner.
Medical marijuana will expand in Florida after voters approved Amendment 2 Tuesday night.
Meanwhile Amendment 1, the controversial solar energy amendment, was defeated.
Amendment 3 and 5 also were approved Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, several local referendums won. We take a look at some of the biggest initiatives in Central Florida and Tampa Bay.
Florida Constitutional Amendments
REMINDER: Any amendment to the Florida Constitution must garner 60 percent of the vote in order to be successful.
AMENDMENT 1
A late attempt to pull this solar energy amendment from the ballot and nullify any votes already cast was rejected by the Florida Supreme Court.
It turns out that effort was not needed as Amendment 1 failed Tuesday night to reach 60 percent of the vote needed.
Amendment 1 supporters (backed strongly by utility companies) say the measure will guarantee the right of Floridians to have solar energy, while keeping government in control and making sure non-solar customers are not subsidizing solar users by paying for upkeep of the power grid.
Audio leaked from a summit earlier this year, however, includes a policy expert boasting that Amendment 1 was crafted to deceive the public into putting up barriers to solar energy growth in Florida.
AMENDMENT 2
Medical marijuana will be expanded in Florida with the passage of Amendment 2 Tuesday night.
The amendment makes medical marijuana available through doctor authorization to people suffering from a wide-array of ailments. They have to get a special statewide issued card to get the drug, and then buy from state-regulated treatment centers responsible for processing marijuana.
Attorney John Morgan, one of the biggest backers of the amendment, was effusive on Twitter:
WE did it. YOU did it!!
Compassion is HERE!!!!!!!!!!!#MedicalMarijuana Mission Accomplished
BELIEVE!!!!!!!!!! #YesOn2 John Morgan (@JohnMorganESQ) November 9, 2016
AMENDMENT 3
Currently widows of fallen law enforcement officers see some property tax relief. This amendment will allow law enforcement officers who are permanently disabled because of injuries or ailments suffered in the line of duty to get property tax relief.
AMENDMENT 5
This amendment updates an earlier amendment to the Florida Constitution regarding homestead exemptions. That amendment gave extra benefits to longtime Florida seniors on low income. This amendment makes it so that these seniors do not lose their homestead exemption once the value of their home goes over $250,000.
County and City Amendments
Central Florida ballot measures
There are dozens of local and county-level ballot measures throughout Central Florida. Here are some of the biggest. For a full list of ballot measures in your county, head to the Florida Decides Voting Guide.
BREVARD COUNTY
Brevard County voters approved a half cent sales tax Tuesday to restore the Indian River Lagoon.
Problems with pollution in the Indian River Lagoon led to a toxic algae bloom earlier this year and the deaths of thousands of fish and marine life.
The money will be used to improve water quality, removing muck and reducing pollution. The sales tax lasts for 10 years.
LAKE COUNTY
In Lake County, a special property tax helping the Lake County North Hospital District will remain.
The tax helps Florida Hospital Waterman and Leesburg Regional Medical Center with indigent care, along with funding five clinics.
The tax will last another 10 years.
ORANGE COUNTY
Orange County residents passed all three changes to the county charter.
The first amendment, which promised to provide clarity, accountability, and transparency, and ensure equal treatment of voters, was approved Tuesday night.
The amendment was meant to make it tougher for citizens to petition local government.
CORRECTION: Due to an inputting error, our results previously said that the charter amendment had failed. The charter amendment in fact passed. The article and results have been updated to reflect the correction.
Voters also approved two amendments that will make changes to several political offices, including the sheriff, tax collector, property appraiser, supervisor of elections, clerk of court and comptroller.
Currently, these positions are all political positions. This amendment makes them non-partisan elections. The amendment also sets term limits for these positions.
OSCEOLA COUNTY
Voters approved a half-cent sales tax for the school district Tuesday. The school district said the tax will generate $25 million a year for 20 years, allowing them to make upgrades to 30 schools and help pay the districts $500 million deficit.
SEMINOLE COUNTY: Oviedo
The city of Oviedo will get the funds needed for a new police station. Voters approved a measure to raise taxes to fund the project. The project would cost the average homeowner after $50 more a year.
SUMTER COUNTY: Bushnell
Residents in Bushnell approved a charter amendment that requires voter approval to sell, lease, trade or giveaway utilities systems and other public facilities.
This new amendment also requires the city disclose the sale price, major contract terms, and other major impacts.
VOLUSIA COUNTY
Volusia County voters rejected a change that would make the county council's at-large council member the vice-chair.
Right now the council members appoint the vice chair, and it can be any member of the council. That procedure will stay.
VOLUSIA COUNTY: Edgewater
Edgewater rejected an amendment to increase annual compensation for the mayor and for council members. has several amendments related to the citys council on the ballot for Edgewater residents.
Tampa area ballot measures
There are several local and county-level ballot measures throughout Tampa area. Here are some of the biggest. For a full list of ballot measures in your county, head to the Florida Decides Voting Guide.
MANATEE COUNTY
Manatee County residents approved two sales tax referendums Tuesday.
One levies a half-cent sales tax over the next 15 years. It helps pay for roadways, sidewalks, intersections, streetlights, infrastructure for law enforcement and other public facilities.
The other referendum extends a current half-cent sales tax for school construction and upkeep. The measure extends the tax for another 15 years, from Jan. 1, 2018 to Dec. 31, 2032. The measure is meant to renovate existing schools, build current schools, reduce overcrowding and purchase technology.
PINELLAS COUNTY
Among Pinellas countys charter amendments are three worth paying attention to:
One would actually make it easier for citizens to petition for changes to the county charter. But right now the amendment is too close to call.
The amendment, if approved, would lower the number of signed petitions necessary to propose a charter amendment from 10 percent of registered Pinellas County voters to 8 percent. It also will give groups more time to gather those petition signatures, extending the time period from 180 days to 240 days.
An amendment to create a new board to handle redrawing county commission districts was approved overwhelmingly.
A county redistricting board would be appointed by the commission every 10 years, once the Census results are released, and give recommendations on redrawing county commission districts. The amendment would include rules against favoring political parties or incumbents, not denying racial or language minorities equal opportunity for political participation, and considering unincorporated areas and municipal boundaries.
Voters also approved a referendum to extend the countys ad valorem tax to help the school district through June 30, 2021. The money is being used to recruit and retain teachers, preserve programs for reading, music and art, and update textbooks and technology.
POLK COUNTY
Polk County has a charter amendment on the ballot to continue its one-half cent sales tax for health care. The county currently has a sales tax which funds its Indigent HealthCare Division.
The program works with doctors and clinics to provide health care for those who need it, including the elderly and children. The amendment would extend the sales tax for another 25 years.
The sales tax enjoys wide support from area business groups, not to mention the Lakeland City Commission.
The biggest prize of all Tuesday night may be the presidency, but coming in a close second if not equally as important is the U.S. Congress.
On Tuesday voters chose to stick with Republicans in the U.S. House. Republicans are also likely to hold onto the Senate is they win Alaska and Louisiana, which is going to a runoff in December.
In Florida, Democrats picked up three House seats in Central Florida and Tampa. Meanwhile Republican Marco Rubio will hold onto his Senate seat in Florida.
It's easy to forget that although the president makes many important decisions, it's Congress that makes laws and holds the purse strings.
Congress has had consistently low rating in polls over the past decade. And yet, every two years, most of Congress is re-elected to office. In 2012, 90 percent of U.S. House members were re-elected. In 2014, 96.4 percent of lawmakers were re-elected.
Democrats pick up three seats in Central Florida, Tampa
Republicans will extend its 6-year hold on the U.S. House after victories Tuesday. The Democrats, however, made some small gains.
In Central Florida, newcomer Stephanie Murphy won House District 7 Tuesday night. The Democrat unseated longtime incumbent John Mica.
Mica served 12 terms in the U.S. House and was a senior member of the House Transportation Committee, steering federal dollars for several projects to Central Florida.
But his district was redesigned by court order, now including a small part of Orange County and all of Seminole County. That plus a late campaign start propelled a fresh face in Murphy into Congress.
The other big upset of the night was in the Tampa area, where former Gov. Charlie Crist, a Democrat, unseated Rep. David Jolly in House District 13. Jolly's district was redesigned, making it more favorable for Democrats.
Jolly had suspected he may not be able to hold the seat for Republicans, which was why he originally ran for U.S. Senate. He decided to run for re-election to the House when Rubio picked up the Senate race after losing his presidential bid.
The third pickup for Democrats is House District 10. This newly redrawn district included two newcomers -- Val Demings and Thuy Lowe. Demings won the district.
"I am so humbled and grateful that the people of Central Florida chose me to represent them in Washington," said Congresswoman-elect Val Demings. "As the daughter of a maid and a janitor, my parents taught me the importance of hard work and believing in myself. Without those values I wouldn't be standing here today."
The map below shows the wins for Democrats and for Republicans in Central Florida and Tampa Bay:
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With Republicans retaining power in the U.S. House, there's someone else to watch in the coming months: House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan was re-elected Tuesday, but he may face a coup from conservative representatives angry at Ryan for his tepid support and at times disavowal of Trump.
If Ryan is overthrown, it could change the dynamics of House Republican leadership. It also means we could see some changes for some local conservatives such as Ted Yoho in District 3, Ron DeSantis in District 6 and Dan Webster in District 11.
Rubio, Republicans keep the Senate
Republicans are expected to keep the U.S. Senate. Three races are outstanding, but the Republicans have 50 percent of the vote, following Pat Toomey's re-election in Pennsylvania.
If they hold onto Alaska and Louisiana, which goes to a runoff in December, this will be the case.
The most Democrats could win is 48 seats. There are two independent senators who tend to vote Democratic: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Angus King of Maine.
We won't know the results for one Senate seat until December.
According to the Cook Political Report, a well-respected election analysis newsletter, seven electoral seats are considered true toss-ups:
NEVADA: Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto has won the race to replace retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
INDIANA: Todd Young has won this seat.
MISSOURI: Incumbent Sen. Roy Blunt held on to win re-election.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte lost to New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan. Ayotte conceded Wednesday.
Ayotte conceded Wednesday. NORTH CAROLINA : Incumbent Richard Burr has won this seat.
: PENNSYLVANIA : Incumbent Pat Toomey won re-election Tuesday.
: WISCONSIN: Incumbent Ron Johnson won re-election in a shocking victory against former Senator Russ Feingold.
One Republican seat up for re-election went Democratic Tuesday night. Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a congresswoman and disabled veteran of the Iraq War, beat Republican Senator Mark Kirk.
Three Republican seats were leaning toward staying Republican going into Election Night. That's Arizona Sen. John McCain, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. All three won.
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LIVE UPDATES: David Jolly-Charlie Crist District 13 Congressional race
Thirty-six foster children and teens within the six counties served by the Plainview Herald are now awaiting adoption, reports the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
All told, there are 420 foster children and teens across the Texas Panhandle-South Plains Region needing their forever families.
November is National Adoption Awareness Month. In connection, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is hosting adoption events across the state to put the spotlight on the 6,000-plus Texas children and teens awaiting adoption.
Last year, 5,672 Texas children more than ever before were adopted into their own forever families. However, DFPS says more children enter foster care daily in Texas. Some wont be able to return home and will eventually need adoptive families to start new lives that are free from abuse or neglect, DFPS reports. Also, older children tend to stay in foster care longer.
Adoption by the Numbers 6,596 - The monthly average number of children in Texas Foster Care who were awaiting adoption last year. This was a 2 percent decline from the previous year. 6,388 - The number of children in DFPS care who were awaiting adoption as of September 2016 (latest data available). 5,672 - The number of children adopted from Texas foster care in fiscal year 2016. That is 3.2 percent increase from the previous year. 21 - The minimum age you must be to adopt a child in Texas. See More Collapse
As of September 2017, Child Protective Services reported that Hale County has 23 foster children awaiting adoption, Floyd County has six, Lamb County has four and Briscoe, Castro and Briscoe each has one. Lubbock County has 149, Potter 71 and Randall 44.
An adoption celebration event for the Amarillo area is set for 9 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 17 at the Randall County Courthouse, 2309 Russell Long Blvd., Canyon. Its open to the public with community stakeholders urged to attend. Participants are invited to join the Foster/Adopt unit to celebrate National Adoption Day with an Ohana theme, which means family and family means no one gets left behind or forgotten. The celebration comes complete with a luau and grass skirts. Contact Micah Smith at micah.smith@dfps.state.tx.us for more information.
Lubbock area community stakeholders along with the public are invited to visit the Lubbock County Courthouse, 904 Broadway, Lubbock at 9 a.m. Friday, Nov. 18. Participants can join the Foster/Adopt unit to celebrate National Adoption Day with a Wizard of Oz theme. Characters dressed as Wizard of Oz characters will greet children and families on that special day. For information, contact Kathleen.hudson@dfps.state.tx.us.
The average number of Texas children awaiting adoption increased by 31 percent over the last decade, but declined by almost 2 percent over the last year, DFPS reports. Meanwhile, the number of children adopted from state care in Texas increased 3.2 percent over the last year and 68 percent over the last decade.
The states Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating a complaint Oakland City Council incumbent Rebecca Kaplan filed, accusing her challenger, Peggy Moore, of violating campaign disclosure requirements and sending false information to voters.
Its the latest jolt in a testy race between two former allies, both of whom have accused each other of wrongdoing. Moore filed a complaint with the state commission in October, alleging that Kaplan broke campaign finance laws during her 2010 and 2014 runs for mayor, and her 2012 City Council bid. The commission dismissed those allegations on Nov. 4.
The current investigation stems from claims that Moore failed to say her campaign was behind two mass e-mails that went to Oakland voters on Aug. 26 and Sept. 8. The August email included a poll by the firm EMC Research, which falsely suggested that Moore was endorsed by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, and state Assemblyman Tony, D-Richmond. Lee later sent out a correction saying she had not backed anyone in the city council race, and Thurmond endorsed Kaplan in October.
In an interview Monday the day before Election Day Kaplan was resolute.
Its a cornerstone of election law that when you send out materials promoting yourself or criticizing someone else, youre required to say who theyre from, she said.
Although Kaplan, who has held the at-large seat since 2009, appears to have an edge over Moore in name recognition, Moore has clinched several high-profile endorsements including support from President Obama. She also has support from Mayor Libby Schaaf, for whom she served as a senior adviser before launching her bid to unseat Kaplan.
On Monday, Moores campaign downplayed the commissions probe.
What weve heard from talking to people over the last few days is how excited people are that Peggy is endorsed by Obama, said Erica Kwiatkowski, a campaign adviser. This (investigation) is not something were focused on.
A commission spokesman declined to comment since the investigation is still open.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Mind the gap
Brits are outraged by a change to Toblerones signature chocolate triangles. To save money, Mondelez International, the brands owner, reduced the candy bars weight by about 10 percent by making the triangles narrower and spacing them out more. A post on Facebook explaining the change drew 389 angry faces, 108 sad faces, 24 laughs, 15 wows, and only 5 hearts.
Tweet of the (election) day
Eric Trump apparently broke New York law by tweeting a photo showing that he voted for his father, the Verge reported. Trump subsequently deleted the tweet. The state forbids voters to show a ballot after it is prepared for voting, to any person so as to reveal the contents. Several states have such ballot selfie laws on the books. Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law legalizing ballot photos in California, but it doesnt kick in until 2017.
Theranos in bloody suit
Walgreens, which closed dozens of Theranos blood-testing clinics in Arizona and California drugstores after problems emerged with the Palo Alto startups technology and regulatory compliance, is now suing its former partner for $140 million. Walgreens said Theranos misled it about its technology and operations, the Wall Street Journal reported. Theranos said it was disappointed by the lawsuit and said Walgreens consistently failed to meet its commitments.
The Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techbriefing
A suspected serial killer who allegedly kept a woman chained inside a metal storage shed for two months may have written several chilling Amazon product reviews, according to Greenville (S.C.) Online.
An Amazon user named "me" whose wish list was linked to "Todd Kohlhepp" reviewed knives, gun accessories, targets, tactical gear, padlocks and other gear from 2014 to 2016.
Police say 45-year-old Todd Kohlhepp, who had a small real estate business, is suspected in as many as seven deaths. He was arrested and charged with kidnapping Thursday after investigators found 30-year-old Anderson resident Kala Brown "chained up like a dog" inside a metal storage container on his rural property. She had been there for weeks after being lured to Kohlhepp's home for a house-cleaning job.
A search of the property turned up the remains of Brown's boyfriend, Charlie Carver, in a shallow grave. Authorities said he had been shot multiple times.
The Amazon reviewer "me" wrote on Sept. 13, 2014: "haven't (sic) stabbed anyone yet ... yet ... but I am keeping the dream alive and when I do, it will be with a quality tool like this ..."
A review of a shovel with a folding handle included this recommendation: "keep in car for when you have to hide the bodies and you left the full size shovel at home ... does not come with a midget, which would have been nice."
In a positive review about a padlock, "me" posted, "solid locks ... have 5 on a shipping container ... won't stop them ... but sure will slow them down til they are too old to care (sic)."
Another padlock review, posted on Jan. 14, 2015, said, "now my locks have locks... place is hotel california now..."
The last line of The Eagles 1977 hit, "Hotel California," says, "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.'"
Authorities say Kohlhepp, a register sex offender, confessed late last week to killing four people in the previously unsolved 2003 "Superbike murders" case in Spartanburg County.
On Saturday, Kohlhepp led investigators to where he says two other bodies are buried on his property. One was subsequently found.
Kohlhepp served 14 years for kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl when he was 15.
TV dreamboat Jared Padalecki of San Antonio has said he considers his offscreen role dad his most important one.
In fact, the "Supernatural" star -- who will reprise the part of Dean, Rory's (Alexis Bledel) most devoted high school squeeze, in Netflix's upcoming "Gilmore Girls" revival -- just announced that real-life role is expanding.
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A young San Antonio actress said she's glad that this week's "Criminal Minds" shines a light on bullying.
Alamo City native Lizzie Poncio, 19, who has a background in local musical theater, plays Megan, one of a group of kids who has formed an "anti-terror squad" to help victims of bullying at a high school.
"I'm glad that this episode is airing," Poncio said in a phone chat. "What I love about it is it shows both sides of bullying -- that we all just need to treat each other like human beings."
The 2015 graduate of Northeast School of the Arts said she was lucky to have attended a "very nurturing" school, but she has witnessed kids being bullied, and is happy "Minds" is drawing attention to the hurtful practice.
CBS describes the episode, titled "The Anti-Terrorism Squad," this way: The Behavioral Analysis Unit investigates to see if bullying may be the link between two high school students who are the sole survivors after their families are killed.
Watch it at 8 p.m. Wednesday on CBS.
Poncio said it was fun to work with stars such as Paget Brewster and Joe Mantegna. She added that landing a TV opportunity from her first audition in Los Angeles felt "surreal."
The shoot in August was wonderful, so laid back, added the daughter of San Antonio's Tracey Maurer and Adam Poncio. It didn't feel like she was guest-starring on a serial killer drama, she said.
What's next for Poncio? She has joined a comedy sketch troupe called Just Giggle It and has been busy taking classes. Poncio suggested that anyone visiting L.A. who's passionate about acting should definitely take a class with "amazing" drama teacher Lesly Kahn.
jjakle@express-news.net
A taste of social media: #ElectionFinalThoughts: Were soooo close. Soon well finally have elected a new president, and thus begins our new normal. One can only hope it will be normal, at least compared to the seemingly endless months of utter political lunacy. So rather than tick off the many pro- or anti-candidate tweets, lets just revel in a few Twitter musings from the San Antonio area that best capture our collective exasperation.
#ElectionFinalThoughts civil war looming, ww3 looming Justin, @JustinMartinezF
I can take my four year sabbatical and hope that there will be civil discourse instead of name calling and insults #ElectionFinalThoughts Bernadette, @brande87
Final thoughts? I didn't have initial thoughts!! (face screaming in fear emoji) when is it? Did I miss it? #ElectionFinalThoughts BJG, @therealGrable
Just make sure to vote - #ElectionFinalThoughts @ndyM, @MusicWithAndy
Whataburger serves up a free new app: In case you missed it, Whataburger recently released a free new mobile app with a tasty rewards program for free food, plus mobile pay and more features.
You get rewards by scanning the apps Rewards barcode at the register or drive-thru. With five visits you can earn a free honey-butter chicken biscuit, any type of taquito with cheese, medium fries, cinnamon roll or 16-ounce shake. You can get rewards when paying with cash, card or mobile payment.
Speaking of mobile pay, the app lets you upload a credit/debit card, PayPal, Apple Pay or Whataburger gift card to your account in any amount, from $15 to $220. You also get Whataburgers full menu with nutrition and allergen information, as well as a restaurant locator. Mobile ordering should hit the app later next year.
Having technical difficulties? Hit the apps Help icon in the My Dashboard section, or tap More and then Help. You also can email Resolution@wbhq.com. For app tutorial videos, visit whataburger.com.
Merge Labs announces first universal motion controller for mobile virtual reality: Nothing like VR innovation with some very real ties to San Antonio. Merge Labs, the research and development arm of San Antonio-based Merge VR, has announced its developed the first universal motion controller for mobile virtual reality.
Dubbed Moonshot, the controller will work with Android and iOS devices as well as Oculus, Samsung Gear VR, Unity and Web VR. The controller looks a lot like a truncated version of the Wii Remote Plus, basically a handheld device that lets you engage in all sorts of VR fun with your mobile device nestled in those Merge VR Goggles or other VR headset.
No Moonshot price or release date was announced, though Merge said it should be available very soon for developers. Developers can sign up for the waiting list at dev.mergevr.com, which also features video of Moonshot in action.
UPS offers Spanish option for domestic My Choice and UPS.com customers: Rather UPS en espanol? The delivery company now gives customers full Spanish support for UPS My Choice service on ups.com and the UPS Mobile app in the United States. You can sign up for UPS My Choice service in Spanish at ups.com/mychoice. Just choose the drop-down menu option United States - Espanol.
My Choice lets customers track their shipments as well as manage delivery preferences, and receive text, email and mobile app push notifications when their packages will be delivered. My Choice members can even direct their UPS driver to leave their goods on the back porch or other specific spot at their home, or leave it with a neighbor or UPS Access Point location.
Rene A. Guzman
Albany
A civil jury in U.S. District Court must decide a multimillion dollar lawsuit alleging an Albany police sergeant rode his bike into a 12-year-old boy, placed the child in a chokehold and left him unconscious in 2013.
The jury on Monday heard two drastically different versions of events as attorneys on opposing sides delivered opening statements before Senior Judge Thomas McAvoy.
Lewis Oliver, the lawyer for the boy and his family, told the jury that Sgt. Kenneth Sesock, a member of the neighborhood engagement unit, approached the child as a "typical school fight" was unfolding about 3:30 p.m. on June 20, 2013 on Avondale Terrace.
Oliver said the 12-year-old and his sister, 14, were walking home from the last day of school at Stephen and Harriet Myers Middle School. He alleged Sesock rode his police bike into the 12-year-old's back with "240 pounds of force." He alleged the sergeant used a chokehold on the boy and, at one point, used a karate leg sweep to knock him to the ground.
Oliver said the boy was left unconscious and suffered a concussion. He said the boy's sister tried to assist her brother by trying to get Sesock's arm away and denied she ever punched the sergeant.
"We believe the evidence will show there was excessive force," Oliver told the jury. "It was totally unnecessary and uncalled for."
His client, Julie Ida Porter, the mother of the boy and his sister, is suing the city for excessive force.
Stephen Rehfuss, the attorney for the sergeant, told the jury the boy was not on his way home but to a fight. He said the sergeant was trying to break up the fight, in which the boy was matched up against a larger boy, and at no point struck him with the bike. He said Sesock never put the boy in a chokehold and that the boy was not unconscious.
Rehfuss said the sergeant was dealing with not a typical fight but what became "basically a riot" and that the boy kept fighting the other child.
Both attorneys said a cellphone video would be played for the jury.
The trial is expected to take five or six days.
rgavin@timesunion.com 518-434-2403 @RobertGavinTU
Albany
Democratic state Sen. Jesse Hamilton of Brooklyn has joined the chamber's Independent Democratic Conference, tossing yet another wrinkle into an already complex Election Day.
"The Independent Democratic Conference delivers for New Yorkers: the best paid family leave program in the nation, a $15 minimum wage, and the toughest gun laws in the country," Hamilton said in a statement Monday afternoon. "They get results."
Hamilton was first elected in 2014 and joined the mainline Democrats. According to Politico New York, the IDC spent nearly $70,000 on Hamilton's campaign that year.
The lawmaker's move bolsters the power of IDC leader Jeff Klein of the Bronx. The IDC's alliance with Senate Republicans kept the GOP in power after Democrats won a majority of seats in the chamber in 2012. Even when Republicans gained a bare 32-seat majority during the 2014 elections (aided by Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat who conferences with the GOP), the majority caucus remained intact.
Klein's ranks will grow to seven in January with the addition of Hamilton and the likely election on Tuesday of Marisol Alcantara of Manhattan.
Hamilton and Alcantara would become the first minority members of the IDC since 2013, when former Sen. Malcolm Smith was kicked out of the conference upon his arrest on corruption charges.
Publicly, Democrats have said lines of communication between the mainline Democrats and the IDC remain open, though there have been no public commitments to form a new coalition.
As Gov. Andrew Cuomo has campaigned for Senate Democratic candidates in recent weeks, he has publicly stayed out of any intraparty discussions.
"I don't believe the Republicans will have enough votes to be in the clear majority, and I believe Democrats in the Senate are going to have to be smart enough and flexible enough to form a partnership with the (IDC)," he said two weeks ago. "That is the probable scenario."
Senate Democratic spokesman Mike Murphy was vague in his response to Hamilton's move. "We are going to win the majority tomorrow and we look forward to working with all Democrats in the chamber to govern as the majority," Murphy said.
As of Monday evening, the Senate is comprised of 31 Republicans, 24 mainline Democrats, six members of the IDC, and Simcha Felder. (One seat, formerly held by Democrat Ruth Hassell-Thompson, is vacant.)
Felder has been open that he is willing to go to whichever side offers him the best opportunity to serve his constituents.
mhamilton@timesunion.com 518-454-5449 @Matt_Hamilton10
Capital Region
Nine Capital Region school districts received water test results over the past week showing elevated lead levels in their water fountains, sinks, showers and other places, according to notices published on district websites.
Results will continue to pour in this fall as schools across the state work to comply with a new state law requiring the testing. The Times Union is posting results daily on its Schools Blog
The new law requires all public schools in New York to test water for lead at any outlet that is currently or potentially used for drinking or cooking. If a source shows lead levels above 15 parts per billion, a district is required to shut it off, and develop and implement a remediation plan whether that be replacing pipes, faucets and other parts, or making bottled water available to students.
The latest districts to post results include Berne-Knox-Westerlo, Cohoes, Duanesburg, East Greenbush, Guilderland, Hoosic Valley, Stillwater, Waterford-Halfmoon and Wynantskill.
Most contaminated water came out of classroom and bathroom sinks meant for hand washing or lab experiments. Four districts, however, had contaminated drinking or cooking water. Those results are below:
Harmony Hill Elementary School, Cohoes: Room 104 bubbler water fountain (53 ppb)
Farnsworth Middle School, Guilderland
four sinks in Family and Consumer Sciences classrooms (15, 15, 20, 19 ppb)
one drinking fountain in corridor by gym (47 ppb)
two kitchen steam kettles (40, 105 ppb)
Hoosic Valley Elementary School: Room 65 classroom bubbler (198 ppb)
Waterford Halfmoon Elementary School: Water fountain in the elementary girls' locker room (17 ppb)
New York became the first state in the nation to require comprehensive water testing in schools when the law was passed on Sept. 6. Districts had until Sept. 30 to test elementary schools, and must post the results within 10 days of receiving them. They had until Oct. 31 to test all other schools.
Lead exposure is particularly harmful to young children, even at low levels. Prolonged exposure can result in lower IQ, behavioral problems and brain damage. The toxic material enters drinking water when pipes containing lead corrode, especially if the water running through them has high acidity or low mineral content. Human skin does not absorb lead in water, so sinks that are used for washing are not cause for worry.
bbump@timesunion.com 518-454-5387 @bethanybump
On this date in ...
1916: Eight large cars of the "900" type would be put on the Rensselaer line of the United Traction Co. as soon as the work of lowering the curb at the approach to the Greenbush bridge in Albany was completed. The cars, which had side door entrances and exits, would run on the Third Street line.
1966: A series of cat burglaries in Westmere had law enforcement officials on alert. State Police captured Stephen Gerlich, a 29-year-old Pennsylvania man, as he fled from the home of the latest victim. An intensive investigation had been under way for a week when police received complaints about a man who entered homes, stole jewelry and verbally threatened and attempted to molest women found asleep with their husbands. Gerlich was arraigned on burglary charges and confined to Albany County Jail to await grand jury action.
1991: Failing to find an operating trustee, the bankrupt Troytown Manufacturing closed its doors and terminated the jobs of nearly 50 workers who had fought for months to keep the plant open. The shirt manufacturer won a brief reprieve on Oct. 28 when a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Albany acceded to a last-minute plea by workers who defied their own union in trying to keep the plant in operation. Judge Justin J. Mahoney gave the company 15 days to find a trustee to operate the company and attempt to bring it back to financial health, but the effort failed.
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/
What are the odds?
A math professor from Monroe won $100,000 on a Powerball ticket after lecturing to his class about probability and odds.
Nicholas Kapoor was trying to help his Fairfield University statistics class understand the concept of chance and bought a Powerball ticket as a real-life example explaining the odds of winning.
Its funny how it all worked out, Kapoor said. We were doing computations on what the chances of getting a winning ticket were and it turned out I had a winning ticket.
Kapoor told lottery officials, The professor side of me sticks to the numbers but the winner in me says, its luck.
Kapoor said he will probably invest his winnings.
Im going to have to see how the market does after the election, he added.
Kapoors Quick Pick ticket matched four of the five numbers drawn, plus the Powerball number. Because his Powerball ticket was a Power Play, for an extra $1 at the time of purchase, the Monroe residents $50,000 prize was automatically doubled to $100,000.
When asked if his lecture will change now that he won Powerball, Kapoor chuckled. Irony certainly is a funny thing, he said.
The winning ticket was sold at Huntington Center Gulf, at 20 Huntington St. in Shelton.
The overall odds of winning a Powerball prize are 1 in 24.9. The odds of winning a Match 4 + Powerball prize are 1 in 913,129. Odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338, according to lottery officials.
A social media item posted on Sunday showing a Stewart's Shops worker closing a store to nurse her baby is getting attention on the internet.
The photo shows Katlyn Lemperle in her Stewart's uniform breast feeding her baby with a sign behind her: "Will reopen in 15 min. Need to close store due to being scheduled alone and needing to pump. Sorry."
A statement from Stewart's Shops said it was an isolated situation and a representative from Stewart's personnel department and the district manager met with the employee Monday and said, "In this case, the partner was filling a shift she was not regularly scheduled to work, and a breakdown in communication led to her working alone for longer than intended. This is an unfortunate situation that we do regret."
The employee's fiancee, Nicholas Rovazzini of Troy, said it was not isolated and the shift was scheduled. Lemperle has worked at Stewart's for three years and returned to work three weeks ago after giving birth to their son, Dominic. When 11-week-old Dominic needs to feed, Lemperle texts Rovazzini and he brings the child to the store at 127 Congress St. Rovazzini said the feedings have been delayed several times while waiting for another employee to arrive so Lemperle could take a break.
Rovazzini said he got fed up and posted the photo on Facebook and Instagram with the message: "When your fiancee is forced to shut down her @stewarts_shops because her manager didn't schedule a second person until 10am when she's been at work since 3:30am and needs to release her breast milk. She's told him time and time again that she needs a second person on by at least 8am so she can either pump or feed our son. Not to mention even if she was to pump, there's no place for her to do so privately in the store nor is there a place for her to store her milk. This leaves her with the choice of breastfeeding in her car or the lobby. This is way out of hand and I'm sick of seeing my fiancee go through hell because of @stewarts_shops."
More Information The full statement from Stewart's Shops At Stewart's Shops we are greatly aware of the needs of new mothers. Providing proper arrangement for nursing mothers is something we have dealt with frequently and effectively. We currently employee over 3,500 women throughout our shops, and provide a maternity leave program for those enrolled in our Employee Stock Ownership Plan, as well as discounted daycare programs. Our Personnel Department and District Manager acted swiftly to address this situation as soon as it was brought to our attention. In this case, the partner was filling a shift she was not regularly scheduled to work, and a breakdown in communication led to her working alone for longer than intended. This is an unfortunate situation that we do regret. We have since met with the partner involved; the conversation remained positive and we feel this will be resolved. It appears to be an isolated incident. See More Collapse
The post was shared more than 600 times on Facebook.
Federal law requires employers to give nursing mothers breaks to breast feed or pump as frequently as necessary for one year following the birth of a child. New York law goes further and requires accommodations for breastfeeding or pumping up to three years after birth.
Federal law also requires employers to provide a clean area for expressing milk that is not a bathroom.
Rovazzini said bathroom and back room of the Troy shop are dirty and the store has few private areas because of security cameras. During the Monday meeting with company officials, Lemperle agreed to use her car until the company could find an alternate place for her to breast feed or pump.
Stewart's Shops employs more than 3,500 women and "providing proper arrangement for nursing mothers is something we have dealt with frequently and effectively," a company statement said.
The company and the couple said they hope the situation will be resolved.
ccrowley@timesunion.com 518-454-5348 @cathleencrowley http://facebook.com/cathleenFcrowley
Being a Silicon Valley billionaire comes with its pitfalls, one being that everything you say will be scrutinized by the public.
Elon Musk doesnt seem to mind though. Despite his position as the CEO of Tesla and chairman of SolarCity, Musk has noted his lack of filter and marketing skills, and the results are sometimes, well, perfect.
Musk often takes to Twitter, most recently representing his Gigafactory in units of hamster. He also outwitted analysts this week after they asked him if the SolarCity merger was due to a conflict of interest. Fine Musk, you win.
To celebrate him and his lack of filter, here are 18 times Musk made us laugh:
Additional reporting by Nina Zipkin
1. He trolled the trolls.
While companies such as Google and Facebook grapple with how to weed out false news stories, Musk took to Twitter to weigh in on the work of a mysterious person named "Shepard Stewart," who has been publishing fake pieces about him and his companies. He included a South Park reference, naturally.
Can anyone uncover who is really writing these fake pieces? Can't be skankhunt42. His work is better than this. https://t.co/Qs69AFMGE5 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2016
2. Musk personally canceled a blogger's Tesla pre-order after receiving a "rude" letter.
Stewart Alsop, a California venture capitalist, learned that an open letter to Musk was a quick way to get his Tesla Model X order canceled.
The letter claimed that the reveal of the Tesla Motors Model X started late, was too crowded and focused too much on safety.
Musk personally responded to the blogger and canceled his order. He then went a step further to address the media.
Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2016
3. He denied his cousin a family discount at Tesla, or rather, offered a family discount to everyone.
Lyndon Rive, SolarCity CEO and Musks cousin, made the mistake of asking for a family discount on the new Tesla.
Musks response? Yeah absolutely. Go to TeslaMotor.com, buy the car online, and the price you see there is the family discount,' Rive told Tech Insider. Everyone gets a family discount.
Rive wasnt too offended. He has the Model S and his wife has the Model X. He also told Tech Insider that the response was totally fair.
Related: 4 Pop Culture Fixations of Elon Musk
4. He brought backseat reading lights back to the Model S because his son called it the stupidest car in the world.
One of Musks most important critics, his son, complained that he couldnt read in the back of his dads car.
The Model S originally had reading lights in the back, but Tesla took them out to increase headroom in the back seat. One of Musks five sons thought that idea was stupid.
Musk brought the backseat reading light back to the Model S, even offering to put the lights into cars that had already been delivered -- for free.
5. When Musk was asked about his personal life, his reaction was hilarious.
Musk has joked in the past about how marriage hasnt worked out for him, with his first marriage ending in divorce, and his second marriage also recently ending in divorce.
But when asked about his personal life, the billionaire definitely seems to know what hes doing.
"I think the time allocated to the businesses and the kids is going fine," Musk told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "I would like to allocate more time to dating, though. I need to find a girlfriend. How much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours?"
6. Apparently for Iron Man, getting wasted is in the job description.
Musk told Bloomberg that Robert Downey Jr., who plays Marvel's Iron Man, once showed up at the SpaceX office playing on the notion that Musk has been called the real Iron Man. Bloomberg's reporter noted that Musk didnt seem to have the bad-boy personality Tony Stark has.
Musk replied, Hey, I went to Haiti last Christmas and visited some pretty dangerous parts. I got wasted, too, on some drink they call the Zombie.
7. Musk got a little off track when introducing the bioweapon defense mode on the new Tesla Model X.
As you may have heard, the Tesla Model X comes with a bioweapon defense mode.
Originally designed to protect against pollution, Musk jokes that it could also protect against other hazards.
If theres ever sort of an apocalyptic scenario, of some kind, hypothetically, you just press the bioweapon defense mode button, Musk said, laughing. This is a real button.
8. Musk made a sexual joke on The Late Show and then laughed at it while everyone else was still processing it.
While on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Musk made a joke that even Colbert had to take a moment to think about.
After showing a video of a snake charger that automatically plugs into your car, Musk joked, For the prototype at least, I would recommend not dropping anything when youre near it.
9. And Musks response to warming up the planet sounds incredibly nonchalant, but warning, its not.
Musk frequently talks about Mars, which he refers to as a fixer upper planet. He has frequently been asked about the possibility of inhabiting the planet.
The answer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Maybe we can just drop nuclear bombs on the north and south poles, he says casually.
Related: 7 Takeaways in the Success of Elon Musk for Young Entrepreneurs
10. Musk doesnt recommended using the Model S as a boat, or does he?
Sure, the Model S can float, but its not recommended by Tesla or Musk.
After a man in Almaty, Kazakhstan, posted a video driving his Tesla through a flooded tunnel, Musk tweeted:
We *def* don't recommended this, but Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time. Thrust via wheel rotation. Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2016
Sounds a bit like a recommendation.
11. He most certainly doesnt lie about what it takes to run a business.
In an interview with Limitless Stars, Musk doesnt exactly suggest starting a business. Starting a company is like eating glass staring into the abyss of death. Um, if that sounds appealing, go ahead.
He sure makes it look easy though, simultaneously running two incredibly successful companies while taking care of five children.
Click here to see the video.
12. He defined his Gigafactory in units of hamster.
Elon Musk has been hard at work with his Gigafactory, dedicating more than $5 billion into the facility that will apparently be one of the largest buildings in the world. Musk made headlines in 2015 when he ramped up the construction schedule.
Despite the serious nature of the factory for Teslas future, Musk posted on Twitter the units of hamster that the Gigafactory would take up. Yes, units of hamster. Some were unsatisfied with the animal chosen, requesting it be in units of puppies.
Gigafactory in units of hamster pic.twitter.com/9BAchcBX73 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2016
13. He shut down analysts on Tesla's acquisition of SolarCity.
After Tesla and SolarCity made the announcement that the two would be merging, analysts started to question Musk, mostly because he owns around 20 percent of both companies. Isnt that a conflict of interest?
The conflicts of interest, Musk said to an analyst on Monday, are if we dont merge.
Well, when you put it like that.
14. He was painfully honest about his struggles.
When a Twitter user asked whether the ups and downs Musk has had make for a more enjoyable life, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX responded in a painfully honest way.
The reality is great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress. Don't think people want to hear about the last two. Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2017
I'm sure there are better answers than what I do, which is just take the pain and make sure you really care about what you're doing Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2017
Yeah Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2017
Maybe not medically tho. Dunno. Bad feelings correlate to bad events, so maybe real problem is getting carried away in what I sign up for. Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2017
If you buy a ticket to hell, it isn't fair to blame hell ... Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2017
15. He corrected the record after a news story about the world's "first crewless ship" published.
When The Verge tweeted a story explaining that the "worlds first crewless ship will launch next year," Musk had a one-word response.
Musk was referring to SpaceX's three existing autonomous ships that support sea landings of its Falcon 9 reusable rocket.
16. Even with a busy schedule, he provides customer service.
Even while running Tesla, SpaceX and his side companies, Musk makes time for customers. After a Tesla customer tweeted about a poor experience he had in one of the Tesla stores, Musk responded directly to the person letting him know he was taking care of the issue.
Def not ok. Just sent a reminder to Tesla stores that we just want people to look forward to their next visit. That's what really matters. Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 16, 2017
17. He trolls his competition.
In response to a USA Today story about Daimlers announcement that it would be investing $1 billion in electric vehicles, Musk tweeted that $1 billion wasnt enough to compete with Tesla. Daimler responded to Musk in agreement, saying that the figure was missing a zero and the company was actually spending $10 billion.
Good Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2017
People began speculating whether Musks tweet motivated Daimler to increase its investment, which turned out to be untrue, but Musk took the credit anyways.
Yes, I did :) Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2017
18. He groans at his competition.
After The Verge reported on Delphi Automotives $450 million acquisition of autonomous vehicle startup nuTonomy, Musk responded to the tweet with a groan literally.
Groan Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2017
19. He rips rival projects sarcastically.
When asked about Ubers flying car initiative as compared to the Boring Companys more underground pursuits, Musk made it clear, dripping in sarcasm, that he isnt the biggest fan of the idea.
If you love drones above your house, youll really love vast numbers of cars flying over your head that are 1000 times bigger and noisier and blow away anything that isnt nailed down when they land Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2018
But it turns out that his criticism wasnt lost on Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who had this to say about a potential way forward for the project.
Challenge accepted. Improved battery tech (thx 2 @elonmusk) and multiple smaller rotors will be much more efficient and avoid noise + environmental pollution. https://t.co/563U0RqDYF dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) February 22, 2018
Related:
19 Times Elon Musk Had the Best Response
Internet de alta velocidad, el nuevo reto de Elon Musk
25 Weird Things We've Learned About Elon Musk
Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com
The Baytown Police Department is searching for a 16-year-old girl believed to in immediate danger.
An Amber Alert was issued Tuesday for Kristen Nicole Fritch, who was last seen in Baytown with a suspect driving a cream-colored 2008 Chrysler PT Cruiser with the Texas license plate FPN 8281, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
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Near Bashiqa, Iraq
Iraqi Kurdish fighters exchanged heavy fire with militants on Monday as they entered a town held by the Islamic State group east of Mosul, while troops advancing south of the city discovered a mass grave containing 100 decapitated bodies.
The offensive to reclaim the town of Bashiqa is part of the broader push to drive IS out of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, relieving those living under its occupation from the type of brutality, such as mass killings, that the group has committed.
IS militants have carried out a series of massacres since seizing large swaths of southern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014, often documenting them with photos and videos circulated online. On Monday, Iraqi soldiers advancing into the town of Hamam al-Alil, south of Mosul, discovered a pit containing dozens of decapitated skeletal remains, the military's Joint Military Command said.
The offensive to retake Bashiqa began at dawn with a Kurdish barrage of heavy artillery, Katyusha rockets and mortar rounds slamming into IS positions, providing cover for the advance of armored columns.
Smoke rose from the town throughout the day, with large explosions sending dark clouds into the sky.
"We have the coordinates of their bases and tunnels, and we are targeting them from here in order to weaken them so that our forces can reach their targets more easily," said Iraqi Kurdish commander Brig. Gen. Iskander Khalil Gardi.
Bashiqa, which is believed to be largely deserted except for dozens of IS fighters, is located 8 miles northeast of Mosul's outskirts and 13 miles from the city center. Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition and joined by government-sanctioned militias, are fighting to drive IS out of those surrounding areas and open additional fronts to attack Mosul itself.
Bashiqa has been surrounded by Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, for weeks but Monday's push appeared to be the most serious yet to drive IS from the town.
Kurdish forces launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery into the town Sunday in advance of the offensive. More artillery and air strikes hit the town early Monday as the Kurdish forces' advance got underway.
On Mosul's southern front, meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers advancing into Hamam al-Alil, 12 miles from the city center, discovered a mass grave late Monday containing some 100 decapitated bodies near the town's agricultural college. Most were reduced to skeletons, said Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command.
He said a forensics team from Baghdad would investigate the site on Tuesday.
Earlier Monday, an army spokesman said Iraqi forces had retaken the town and images broadcast by the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen network showed images of soldiers hoisting the Iraqi flag on a rooftop in the town. Other reports, however, said fighting still continued and that IS fighters remained in several areas.
Iraqi special forces entered Mosul last week and have made some progress in gaining a foothold on the city's eastern edges.
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Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hopscotched from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Michigan on Monday in the final, frenzied hours of the presidential campaign, offering clashing closing arguments as the sprawling map of the United States was reduced to a string of must-win states.
Accompanied by rock stars, ex-presidents, old friends and their grown children, the Democratic and Republican nominees pleaded with voters to end a traumatic campaign with an emphatic endorsement of their visions for the country.
Clinton, whom polls show leading Trump, gave a sunny and optimistic summation of her candidacy for the White House as she embarked on a four-state tour Monday.
"Tomorrow, you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America," she told a crowd in Pittsburgh. "Our core values are being tested in this election."
Trump, who was campaigning in five states on Monday, took a darker approach, assailing the "crooked media," attacking a "corrupt Washington establishment" and mocking Clinton over and over.
"It's a rigged, rigged system," Trump declared in Raleigh, N.C. "And now it's up to the American people to deliver the justice that we deserve at the ballot box tomorrow."
As the campaign wound down, both candidates dispensed with ritual. Clinton, who relishes upbraiding her opponent, abandoned her usual assault on Trump's conduct and temperament.
And Trump, who normally seeks to convey confidence at all times, sounded uncharacteristically vulnerable.
"They say we'll get a tremendous amount of credit, win or lose," he said during a rally in Sarasota, Fla. "I said: 'No, no, no, no. I don't want any credit if we lose.'"
Despite the ugliness of the campaign, there were signs that Americans were seizing the opportunity to express themselves at the ballot box in large numbers.
Turnout in states that allow early voting was high, and in interviews, many voters said they were eager to bring an end to this unusual, exhausting and still suspenseful election.
"I'm totally ready for this election to be over," said Mary Hoch, 54, who attended Trump's rally in Sarasota with a "Make America Great Again" hat on her head and a "Deplorable Lives Matter" pin on her shirt.
Hoch predicted a Trump victory. "I think there are a lot of silent Trump voters," she said.
Daniel Saunders, 58, who attended a rally for Clinton in Charlotte, N.C., was just as exasperated by the race. "I'm embarrassed by it," he said.
But Saunders said he was convinced that Clinton would eke out a win. "I think it will be close, but I think she will pull it out," he said.
Both Trump and Clinton sent their running mates, families and allies across the country to maximize their reach in crucial swing states.
Trump relied on his three oldest children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. along with Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee.
Clinton deployed President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Joe Biden and the first lady, Michelle Obama, perhaps the most popular political figure in the country.
Clinton's running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, spent much of the day campaigning in North Carolina, which Obama carried in 2008 but lost four years later to Mitt Romney.
"It's great to see a finish line, isn't it?" Kaine said at an outdoor rally in Charlotte.
He expressed confidence in the ticket's chances on Tuesday, but warned supporters against complacency and implored voters to embrace the chance to elect the nation's first female president.
"Every election is important, but not every election will change history," he said. "If we do what we know how to do, this election will change history."
Trump's running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, started the day with a brisk jog across a windswept tarmac in an unlikely spot for a Republican: Duluth, Minn.
It was the Republican ticket's second stop in deep-blue Minnesota in two days, and although few signs point to a Republican upset there, a modest crowd near Pence's plane lapped up his attacks on Clinton.
"It's almost hard to keep up, all the headlines, all the scandals flowing out of just her years as secretary of state," Pence said. Even the weeks-old, well-rehearsed lines seemed to contain new energy.
"In one day, the American people can put an end to decades of Clinton corruption," Pence said. "You here in Minnesota can close the book on the Clintons once and for all."
Trump seemed sensitive to the fact that his final 48 hours on the campaign trail lacked the celebrity star power drawn to Clinton, who was accompanied by musicians like Jay Z and Beyonce and campaigned in Philadelphia on Monday night with the rock legend Bruce Springsteen. (Her surrogates have more than 80 Grammy Awards among them.)
"Beyonce and Jay Z," Trump said. "I like them." But, he added mischievously, "I get bigger crowds than they do."
He was not finished.
"Is there any place better to be than a Trump rally?" he asked his midafternoon audience in North Carolina. "We're having fun. And I don't have a guitar and I don't have a piano."
Today, voters in four states will decide on minimum-wage initiatives calling for an increase, by 2020, to either $12 (Arizona, Colorado and Maine) or $13.50 (Washington State).
And, contrary to popular perception, plenty of small-business leaders -- of household names like Ben & Jerry's and Wetzel's Pretzels, to Main Street mom-and-pops -- are backing those increases. They're saying that higher wages will be good for businesses, customers and the economy.
As CNN wrote last week, "The pendulum seems to be swinging in favor of higher wages nationally, where 29 states and Washington, D.C., now have minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour."
The CNN report in fact characterized these states as a counterpoint to the "stagnant" federal minimum wage that the Obama administration has been countering with the big changes it's put into place for overtime regulations: On December 1, salaried federal workers earning $23,660 to $47,476 a year will be eligible for overtime pay.
Both presidential contenders, moreover, want an increase in pay for Americans of modest means: Donald Trump supports $10 an hour, and Hillary Clinton, $12 or $15, depending on the economic feasibility of a hike in the city or municipality affected.
Along with these political moves, our own organization, Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, has been active on the minimum wage front from a business perspective. We're a national network of business owners, executives and business organizations that believe a fair minimum wage makes good business sense.
In this regard, we asked small business owners to weigh in. Here's some of what we heard back.
Gary Johnson, president and CEO of AFI Contractors in Toledo, Ohio: When the minimum wage is set too low, its bad for workers and their families who are under constant financial stress, its bad for customers; and its bad for businesses and our economy, which is fueled by consumer spending, said Johnson. By raising the minimum wage, we wouldnt just lift the floor under workers, we would lift the floor under our economy.
Bill Phelps, co-founder and CEO of Wetzels Pretzels, a national chain based in California: Weve experienced strong sales growth after minimum wage increases," Phelps said. "The increased cash circulating in the economy goes a long way in offsetting the higher hourly minimum. And businesses see other offsets as well, such as reduced employee turnover and increased productivity. Raising the minimum wage is good for our bottom line.
Edwin Zoe, owner of Zoe Ma Ma restaurants in Boulder and Denver: Ive been a fiscally conservative Republican since I was a young man, and thats why as a business owner, I support Amendment 70 to raise Colorados minimum wage to $12 by 2020, Zoe said. Amendment 70 will reward work, encourage self-reliance and strengthen the free market by expecting businesses to compete fairly and not count on taxpayers to subsidize them through public assistance for employees who are paid too little to live on. Raising the minimum wage is good business and good government.
Margo Walsh, owner of MaineWorks LLC in Portland, Maine (and Maines 2016 Small Business Person of the Year): The current minimum wage is keeping workers stuck and struggling in poverty, Walsh said. Raising the minimum wage to at least $12 is vital to making a living even possible. When employees are compensated fairly for their work, theyre more productive; and our businesses, our customer base, our tax base and our communities are healthier.
Michael Lastoria, co-founder and CEO of &pizza (which has a growing number of locations across Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Washington, D.C.): &pizza is a company that has been, and will continue to be, built on the shoulders of our tribe -- our employees," Lastoria said. "Fair pay is a vital ingredient in our companys success and culture and the well-being of our more-than-400 employees. That is why we chose to provide a starting wage that is significantly above the minimum. Its a simple, but critical concept: Take care of your people and they will take care of your customers.
Washington
The Supreme Court on Monday raised doubts about the temporary appointment of a former labor official in a case that could limit the president's power to fill top government posts.
The justices considered whether Lafe Solomon was allowed to serve as acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board while he was at the same time nominated to fill that role permanently.
The outcome of the case could affect the next administration if the new president and the Senate remain at odds over nominations to agencies at the center of partisan political fights.
It also raises questions about the validity of decisions made by a half-dozen other temporary officials who still have nominations pending.
President Barack Obama named Solomon acting general counsel in June 2010 and he held the office until Nov. 4, 2013. But he was never confirmed by the Senate, where Republicans saw him as too favorable to labor unions.
At issue is a 1998 law that seeks to prevent the president from using temporary appointments to bypass the Senate's advice-and-consent role. A federal appeals court ruled last year that Solomon's tenure was invalid under the complex requirements of the law.
Acting Solicitor General Ian Gershengorn told the justices that the lower court ruling upends a settled understanding of the law that has been used to nominate more than 100 people over nearly two decades.
He said Congress never objected to any of those officials.
"It is very much the dog that didn't bark," he said of Congress' silence.
But during the hourlong argument, it seemed that justices across the ideological divide were skeptical about the government's reading of the law.
Chief Justice John Roberts said congressional inaction over the practice does not mean lawmakers believed it complied with the law.
"That might not be a particular battle they want to fight at that time," he said.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she was not persuaded by interpretations of the law from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and the Government Accountability Office that sided with the administration.
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NEW CANAAN With the 2016 presidential election just days away, the New Canaan News has put together a guide to answer any questions you may have. If youre wondering where to vote, whats on the ballot, or how to check if youre registered, its all here.
Whos voting in New Canaan?
As of Oct. 31, there are 13,773 registered voters in town, already about 400 more than were registered in 2012s presidential election, and the number is rising. According to Registrar of Voters George Cody, his office has been registering people at a rate of roughly 40 to 50 a day in the lead up to Tuesday.
Of the towns registered voters, 6,578 are Republican, 2,946 are Democrat, 4,137 are unaffiliated and 112 are registered with another party.
Voters can continue to register until 8 p.m. on Election Day in person, though the online and mail deadlines were Nov. 1.
Town Clerk Claudia Weber has also been busy, though perhaps not as busy as in past presidential elections, issuing 1,605 absentee ballots. As of Monday, more than 900 had been returned.
According to town documents, in the 2012 election about 1,800 absentee ballots were returned and counted, just under 20 percent of the total votes submitted by New Canaan residents. Weber said she expects a much higher number than 921 will be returned, and consequently, shes expecting a busy few days leading up to the election.
Voters in New Canaan are broken into three districts, the largest of which is District 1, which covers more than half of the towns land and in which more than half of the towns voters 7,453 live.
Districts 2 and 3 cover smaller portions of land in the east and southeastern regions of the town. With 4,152 and 2,168 electors, respectively, the two districts share a state senator, currently Sen. Toni Boucher, R-26. Districts 1 and 2, however, are currently represented in the State House of Representatives by Republican Rep. Tom ODea, R-125. District 3 is currently represented by state Rep. Fred Wilms, R-142.
Whats on the ballot?
Besides the traditional candidates to choose from, New Canaan residents will need to weigh in on five questions regarding suggested amendments to the Town Charter as made by the Charter Revision Commission.
Despite that, the ballot item grabbing the lions share of attention is, of course, the race between White House-hopefuls, Democrat Hillary Clinton and her running mate Gov. Tim Kaine and Republican Donald Trump and his vice presidential running mate Gov. Mike Pence. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, of the Libertarian Party and Green Party, respectively, are also on the ballot.
The choice for U.S. senator will come down to incumbent Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Republican state Rep. Dan Carter, Libertarian Richard Lion and Green Party candidate Jeffery Russell. In Connecticuts fourth congressional district, Republican John Shaban will challenge Democratic incumbent Jim Himes.
George F. Cody is running uncontested for re-election as Democratic Registrar of Voters, though a write-in candidate, John Amarilios, has registered with Secretary of State Denise Merrill.
Concerning New Canaans representatives in Hartford, there are slight differences from district to district.
Voters in Districts 2 and 3 will decide between the Republican incumbent Boucher and her challenger, Democrat Carolanne Curry, whereas voters in District 1 will choose between the Republican incumbent Franz, Democrat John Blankley and Green Party candidate Edward G. Hefflin.
In the race to represent New Canaan in the State House of Representatives, District 1 and 2 voters will choose between the incumbent ODea and Green Party newcomer Hector Lopez. District 3 voters will choose between incumbent Wilms and Working Families Party candidate Anna Duleep.
Where to vote?
Voters in District 1 can cast their ballots at the New Canaan High School Gym, 11 Farm Road. Voters in Districts 2 and 3 should go to the Saxe Middle School Gym, 468 South Ave., to vote. Both polling locations will be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Additionally, unregistered voters can opt for Election-Day registration at the office of the Registrar of Voters in Town Hall. According to Cody, same day registration must be accepted by 8 p.m. in order to be eligible to vote, so he encourages voters not to turn up at 7:45 p.m. in case there is a line.
Absentee ballots are available in the Town Clerks office, also in Town Hall.
To check your Connecticut voter registration status, visit https://voterregistration.ct.gov/OLVR/welcome.do.
justin.papp@scni.com; @justinjpapp1
The 2016 presidential election is today. Did you vote? And, more important, did you know why you selected him/her?
Related: Facebook Employees to Undergo Political Bias Training
Maybe youve voted the same party slate all your life, or maybe you made up your mind months ago. But are you absolutely certain your political leanings havent been influenced by an external force? An external force like . . . Facebook?
Facebook, home to more than a billion active users across the globe, has more control over what you see, how you interact and even how you think and feel than you might imagine. Is it possible that the social media giant, now worth more than $350 billion, is, intentionally or unintentionally, influencing your vote?
The Power of an algorithm
According to a recent report from Pew research, 62 percent of Americans today get their news from social media. Millions of users log in to Facebook daily to find news stories, articles and posts from their friends and followers organized in a newsfeed where they get most of their information. Hypothetically, if these news stories are slanted one way or the other, that could eventually sway your decision in favor of one candidate.
Sure, its true that the number of voters who might truly be persuaded in this way is smaller than most people realize -- around 800,000 even in major swing states. But thats still enough to bear a significant impact on the results of this or any election.
If Facebook, say, automatically filtered out posts about one candidate, or artificially boosted slanted content that leaned one way or the other, the platform would have the power to influence, if not outright decide, the results of a particular election. But would Facebook do this? Could it?
The 'echo chamber' effect
On the surface, Facebooks newsfeed algorithm functions intuitively -- some would say brilliantly -- to provide you with the news you actually want to see. It gauges your likes, interests and history of interaction to hand-pick the stories that will appear atop your newsfeed.
However, theres a downside to this approach, leading to what some experts call an echo chamber. Partially in response to accusations of political bias (more on that in the next section), data scientists at Facebook researched anonymous data from 10.1 million user accounts to determine whether any political bias was at play.
The data scientists found that users did have a tendency to encounter stories that reinforced their own beliefs more than stories that opposed or challenged them; however, that occurred largely due to the fact that those users had (and have) a tendency to"like" and interact with those types of articles.
Related: Facebook's Zuckerberg to Meet Conservatives on Political Bias Scandal
In effect, users create their own echo chambers, and end up being fed with content biased toward whatever direction they're leaning to in the first place. This fact could have a major effect in solidifying and strengthening existing user beliefs.
Historical precedent
Facebook has been known to influence user behaviors before. In a May 2016 report from Gizmodo, former Facebook news curators suggested that they routinely suppressed pieces of conservative news, as instructed by managers. Facebook has repeatedly denied this same accusation; instead, the platform says that it strives for neutrality on all issues, and has even adjusted its newsfeed algorithm in response to such claims, in an effort to demonstrate and further improve that neutrality.
We do know for a fact that Facebook intentionally manipulated the emotions of nearly 700,000 users back in 2014, in an effort to determine the effects that its newsfeed could have. In the study, Facebook artificially filled newsfeeds with negative or positive posts, then measured the subjective emotional impact of each introduction.
The result was clear: The mere presence of more positive or negative posts in a newsfeed had a significant impact on the tone of future status updates those users posted. This information suggests that not only is it possible for Facebook to manipulate user viewpoints, but that the platform itself has had a hand in it in the past.
Zuckerberg and personal views
Earlier this year, Facebook employees asked Mark Zuckerberg directly: "What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017? Its not known how or if Zuckerberg responded, but the company reiterated its stance of neutrality when questioned by the media over the poll. Hypothetically, Facebook could deal a massive blow to the Trump campaign by hiding or suppressing Trump-related stories. So is Facebooks word enough to assure the world that it wouldnt step in?
Officials in Las Vegas are responding to a lawsuit from the Donald Trump campaign claiming polling places stayed open too late during early voting.
Trump campaign attorney Brian Hardy told the judge he wants to preserve records about late ballots on the last day of early voting at four locations in the Las Vegas area.
Long lines kept polls open past the 7 p.m. posted closing time last Friday at a Mexican market and several shopping centers, including one in southeast Las Vegas where officials say the last voter cast a ballot after 10 p.m.
The Donald Trump campaign says allowing early voting sites to stay open past closing time in the Las Vegas area was an "egregious violation of election law." The county says they were accommodating people already in line.
Nevada state campaign director Charles Munoz said in a statement the suit describes multiple incidents where election law was broken, including one where a county employee allowed people to vote even though the lines had been cleared and closure announcements had been made.
County officials have said there was no formal extension of closing time, but elections officials often keep sites open to accommodate all voters in line.
The Trump campaign is suing Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria and asking a judge to order the ballots impounded and segregated.
Clark County District Court Judge Gloria Sturman said Tuesday that making the names part of the court record could expose the workers to possible "public attention, ridicule and harassment."
She says the county registrar is already required to keep the records, and the Nevada Secretary of State is responsible for investigating the complaint.
State Republican party chief Michael McDonald has also criticized the process, but Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign calls the suit frivolous.
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DANBURY - In one of the most diverse cities in Connecticut and the nation on Tuesday, Latino residents were lining up to cast votes in a presidential election marked by harsh rhetoric about immigrants.
More than 200 people had registered to vote on Election Day by Tuesday morning in Danbury, including Laura Henriquez, a native of the Dominican Republican who became a citizen last year. She said that she became a citizen, in part, so that she could cast her vote in the presidential race.
Henriquez said she voted for Hillary Clinton for president because the country needs someone with experience in the office.
Both candidates are no good, but I voted for Clinton because she has more experience and would make a better president, she said.
Latino turnout surged in early voting across the country, and in Danbury, Latino leaders were enthusiastic.
Latino voters are turning out in very large numbers because we know there is a lot at stake during this election, said Carolina Bortolleto, an organizer of the event and founder of Connecticut Students for a DREAM. This election has shown how there is still a large anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States and our community it reacting to that. We want to stop the hate.
Christopher Kukk, a professor of political science at Western Connecticut State University University, said immigrants dont take their votes for granted. They have a voice for sometimes the first time.
Kukk added that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has pushed many Latinos out of the Republican Party.
Many of those voting, expressing the explosive and volatile nature of the election, declined to identify who they voted for when asked by a reporter from The News-Times.
There really isnt much of a choice, said Silvio Cardoso of Bethel, a Brazilian native who was voting for the first time Tuesday.
Immigrant families and first-time Latino voters were to gather Tuesday night at the Ecuadorian Civic Center in Danbury to watch the election results. A similar watch party for immigrant families was to be held at the University of Connecticut at the Storrs campus.
In Nevada, a key swing state, more than three-fourths of the likely vote had been cast in early voting prior to Tuesday, and Democrats lead, 42 percent to 36 percent. Latino and Asian-American turnout were up by double-digits.
And rising Latino participation was in a position to benefit Democrats in a few southern Republican-leaning states.
At least 4.5 million votes had been cast prior to Tuesday in Texas' top 15 counties, up 32 percent. The state does not provide party breakdowns, but voter modeling by Catalist found sharper rates of increases among Latinos.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
(Beijing) Airbnb Inc., the accommodation-sharing business leader, is gearing up for an expansion in China, one of the world's fastest-growing travel markets, even as it fights hostile regulators at home in the U.S.
The San Francisco-based company, which operates an online platform for linking homeowners with travelers for short-term rentals, announced major changes to its Chinese operations in late October. They included creation of a new business entity, Airbnb China, to handle China-based bookings and listings beginning Dec. 7.
By ramping up in China, Airbnb is diving into one of the fastest-growing sectors in the economy travel while taking on an increasingly competitive Chinese home-sharing industry, led by Tujia.com and Xiaozhu.com.
It is part of a broader trend of rapid expansion of the "sharing economy" in China, including ride-hailing services such as Didi Chuxing. Annual growth in China's sharing economy will be about 40% over the next five years, and the sector will account for 10% of gross domestic product by 2020, Airbnb said, citing the National Information Center and China Internet Association.
The Airbnb foray also spotlights the regulatory uncertainty facing the industry. In the U.S., the company is embroiled in a fight over a New York state law designed to curtail short-term rentals. In China, the sector is facing similar regulatory limbo.
Under Chinese laws and regulations, private residences are not allowed to be used for commercial purposes such as running a hotel. But whether a short-term rental is the same as hotel services is still being debated and is putting hosts and home-sharing platforms at risk, according to Zhao Zhanling, a legal adviser at the Internet Society of China, a non-governmental industry organization.
The imprecise definition of the sector also raises questions about whether short-term rentals provided by individual hosts should follow the same regulations as hotels, which are required to obtain various licenses and approvals from the government to make sure they meet security and sanitary requirements.
China has not issued any new rules on home-sharing and the short-rental market. But Caixin learned from several sources close to regulators that government departments overseeing the housing market have conducted surveys to study home-sharing.
Over the past month, Airbnb has formed cooperative agreements with local authorities in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, as well as the government-backed think tank China Tourism Academy, on data sharing, market research and other projects. City officials agreed to offer support to the home-sharing business.
Airbnb also promised to keep data and servers for its Chinese business within China in accordance with Chinese law. The moves are seen as Airbnb's push for regulatory compliance and government support in China.
In a statement published on its official blog, Airbnb said outbound travel from China grew 500% in 2015 alone, making the country one of the fastest-growing outbound markets for Airbnb. Chinese travelers have checked into more than 3.5 million Airbnb listings around the world, the company said.
Since it was established in 2007, Airbnb has moved slowly in China. While Airbnb launched a Chinese website in 2013, Airbnb's chief technology officer and co-founder, Nathan Blecharczyk, told Caixin that year in Beijing that the company had no plans to set up a China branch.
But late last month, Blecharczyk said that with 70,000 property listings in China, Airbnb now aims to become the top accommodations option for young Chinese travelers. CEO Brian Chesky said Airbnb is now fully engaged in the Chinese market.
Sources close to the company told Caixin that Airbnb already has a China team with dozens of employees, although the position of CEO for China operations is still open. To better adapt to the market, Airbnb has partnered with Alipay, the country's largest online payment service backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., to process payments.
Challenges ahead
But Airbnb's foray will face resistance from homegrown rivals. Inspired by Airbnb's success, several domestic home-sharing services have thrived since 2011.
Five-year-old Tujia.com has listings of 450,000 properties in more than 300 Chinese cities. Started as an Airbnb-style business to connect individual hosts with travelers, Tujia.com has moved a step beyond to cooperate with property developers in obtaining apartments for short-term rental. The company also operates a hotel management subsidiary to provide standardized services for some of its properties.
Since June, Tujia.com has made a series of acquisitions of smaller rivals. In its latest round of fundraising in August 2015, Tujia.com raked in $300 million from investors that include All-Stars Investment Ltd., Ascott Ltd. and Ctrip.com International. Investors valued Tujia.com at $1 billion in the fundraising.
Major rivals also include Xiaozhu.com, established in May 2012, which lists more than 100,000 properties across the country, and Zhubaijia.com, which targets China's outbound travelers looking for short-term rentals overseas. As of June, Zhubaijia.com listed 250,000 properties in 70 countries, according to the company's financial report.
Chen Chi, founder and CEO of Xiaozhu.com, said that after years of investment frenzy in China's property market, a large number of vacant apartments has emerged since 2010. But short-term rentals have remained scarce as the concept was new to most Chinese people. It was not until 2015 that home-sharing began to take off.
But the nascent industry may now face regulatory attention after so far going largely unsupervised. Airbnb is no stranger to that. The company has been fighting a 2010 measure in New York state that outlawed many kinds of short-term apartment rentals. On Oct. 21, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law designed to enforce the ban by imposing new fines on people who post rental advertisements on sites like Airbnb.
Chinese authorities have been groping for a way to regulate the booming sharing economy in general. Dozens of city governments last month issued draft rules on ride-hailing as supplements to a central government guideline issued in July. Most of the local rules are much tougher than the central government version, triggering an outcry that the regulations could choke the fledging industry.
Like the ride-hailing business, home-sharing will inevitably face regulation, said Zhao, the Internet Society legal adviser. Xiaozhu.com CEO Chen said he agreed that it may be only a matter of time.
"If the number of properties engaged in home-sharing reaches a certain level that may affect local home prices and the rental market, regulators will take action to manage it, like what happened to Airbnb in New York," Chen said. China's home-sharing market is still far too small to affect the housing market in most cities, he said.
Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
New York
More than 5,000 police officers will flood midtown Manhattan around the Election Day gatherings for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump and elsewhere in a show of force meant to keep the peace at the end of a contentious presidential campaign, city officials said Monday.
At a news conference in Times Square, Mayor Bill de Blasio and top New York Police Department commanders called it the largest security effort for an election ever seen in the city and equal to the ones for the annual New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square and for last year's visit by Pope Francis.
The deployment by the nation's largest police department will include heavily armed rapid-response teams on standby, bomb-sniffing dogs to combat terror threats and a larger uniformed and plainclothes police presence on the streets and subways. Other officers will be posted at each of the city's more than 1,200 polling places.
Many officers will focus on crowd control in case of street disturbances once the results come in.
"Whatever happens, here in Times Square, we might see protests in the evening or celebrations, whichever it might be," the mayor said.
The NYPD also plans to tightly restrict traffic around Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Similar traffic restrictions will apply to the New York Hilton, the venue for Trump's election night gathering, and the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, the scene of Clinton's festivities.
LOS ANGELES A Stockton woman charged with selling her homemade ceviche through a community Facebook group could face up to a year in jail after refusing a plea deal offered by prosecutors.
Mariza Ruelas is charged with misdemeanor counts of operating a food facility and a business without proper permits in San Joaquin County, which could lead to fines and up to a year in jail, online court records show.
In an interview with KTXL-TV, the single mother of six said that she and several others who are part of the 209 Food Spot, named for Stocktons area code, were targeted by an undercover San Joaquin County investigator.
The investigator posed as a customer and asked for a plate of Ruelas homemade ceviche, KTXL reported.
The sting led to Ruelas and several other group members being cited with misdemeanors.
But Ruelas contended that the group isnt so much an online business as much as it is community members sharing recipes, organizing potlucks and recovering some of their cooking expenses.
Somebody would be like, Oh, I dont have anything to trade you, but I would love to buy a plate, Ruelas told KTXL.
On a Facebook post last week, Ruelas said the other group members were offered a sentence of one years probation, 40 hours of community service and a $235 fine if they pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor. Ruelas said her offer was three years probation and 80 hours of community service along with the fine.
I gave the same food away that I fed to my family never would I bring them any harm, she wrote.
She said she researched state permits but most apply to baked goods and not to small community groups like the one shes in on Facebook.
Its a waste of time and resources and taxpayers money who honestly would prefer the groups food over the restaurant, she wrote.
I dont write the laws, I enforce them, and the Legislature has felt that this is a crime, Deputy District Attorney Kelly McDaniel told KTXL. Food prepared in a facility that has not been inspected creates a risk to the public.
Ruelas has started a GoFundMe page since her story gained traction in the media, she wrote on Facebook.
Never in a million years did I ever imagine that things would get this bad. It was a hobby my girls and I enjoyed doing together on a free weekend, she wrote. I will definitely be looking into opening a small restaurant after all this is done & over with especially with all the peoples encouragement. I will do my best to serve you my signature dishes!
(Beijing) The Communist Party's top anti-graft body has dispatched an official formerly in charge of supervising cadres at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to lead its unit at the central bank.
Wang Hongjin, who led one of the 12 inspection offices inside the Beijing headquarters of the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), has been appointed director of the People's Bank of China's discipline inspection team, which answers directly to the CCDI, according to the bank's website.
He is the second person to take the job, after Wang Huaqing. The central bank did not explain the personnel change or where the outgoing Wang is headed next.
Wang Hongjin, born in 1963, had worked in the National Audit Office for 15 years. He holds a master's degree in law and joined the CCDI in September 2015, working as head of an inspection office that supervises mainly SOEs.
His predecessor, Wang Huaqing, had been in charge of discipline inspection work at the central bank since May 2012. For most of the time since then, he was referred to as "the secretary," a term used for the leading graft fighter in most other government bodies and SOEs. His title changed in January, following a December policy that aimed to broaden and strengthen the CCDI's supervision over more than 140 central-level government apparatuses and affiliated institutions.
Instead of being known as "secretaries," Wang Huaqing and his counterparts in the three commissions for securities, banking and insurance were called directors of the discipline inspection team.
The adjustment was made along with changes to their work responsibilities for them to focus entirely on supervising fellow party members free from the distraction of administrative chores that they had often been burdened with as secretaries, according to experts.
Contact reporter Wang Yuqian (yuqianwang@caixin.com); editor Ken Howe (kennethhowe@caixin.com)
This article originally published Sept. 22, 2016.
Q: Election season has polarized my company. Several employees argue over politics, and work relationships are getting strained. How do I keep things civil?
A: You don't have to become a dictator to fix your office's cold political climate, but you will need to be a strong leader. And you're right to be concerned: Political commentary is often bad in the workplace, and colleagues who don't respect others' beliefs can create a hostile work environment for everyone. So it falls to you to define boundaries and help your employees get back to a place of tolerance and respect for each other -- no matter whom they're voting for.
First, have a meeting with the most partisan members of your work caucus. Tell them what you have been witnessing: a deteriorating environment, and political debates that get louder and louder. Ask what their take on the situation is and how they'd like to see disagreements handled in the office. Listen to and address concerns. Then say you need their help. Request that they clear the air with any colleague who may have been offended by past political exchanges. And come up with a plan -- with their input, but knowing that you have final say -- about how to move forward. Can politics still be talked about in the office, but in a toned-down way? Or does there need to be a total moratorium?
Maybe someone will accuse you of trampling their First Amendment rights. Incorrect. Don't forget, that protects people against government interference of free speech. You're the boss here, and you just want people of all political persuasions to work together peacefully. Everyone should vote for that.
Related: Four Ways to Foster Fairness in the Workplace
Q: I talk a lot about teamwork, but this quarter some employees really stepped up. I want to recognize them as individuals, but how do I remain fair to everyone?
A: Your recognition (and reward?) will mean a great deal to those employees, but it's true: You're entering tricky territory. You don't want the other employees to think your emphasis on teamwork was insincere. So here are your keys: openness and consistency. Everyone must understand your scorecard.
Before you do anything, think through the values and behaviors that help the team thrive, and what specific achievements merit an individual reward. (Also, make sure you're identifying true individual performance; you don't want to praise one person for their whole team's work.) Then make all that clear to your employees, and reinforce it regularly without bias. This can't be a one-time recognition; whenever someone reaches your goals, be generous with praise. Encourage your whole team to notice and acknowledge each other's contributions.
Related: 6 Key Tips for Leading by Example
And don't stop there. To truly encourage teamwork, reward it as well. Ask your employees what they'd like for superior teamwork. Perhaps an extra paid day off? With the right incentive, you can motivate individuals to rally together -- and make everyone's work better.
Related:
Heated Political Talk Won't End Today. How to Survive After the Results Are In.
The Ethics Coach: In Tough Conversations, Do This.
Leaders: Who's Shaping Your Company's Culture?
Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
The Texas Workforce Commission, in partnership with 28 local workforce development boards and the Texas Veterans Commission, will host 30 statewide veterans hiring fairs on Thursday, Nov. 10.
South Plains Workforce Solutions will host one of the hiring fairs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, 1501 Mac Davis Lane, Lubbock.
(Beijing) Some of the top priorities for China's new finance minister should be continuing his country's efforts to slash local debt, trim overcapacity and reform the tax system, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank M. Paulson told Caixin.
Xiao Jie, a former top tax administrator, was appointed minister of finance on Monday, replacing Lou Jiwei, an outspoken veteran reformer. Xiao, 59, had served in the Finance Ministry for over two decades from 1982 to 2005. He became China's youngest-ever vice minister of finance in 2001 at the age of 44. Later, Xiao went on to head the State Administration of Taxation from 2007 to 2013.
The leadership reshuffle comes as policymakers are looking for ways to prop up growth through various fiscal measures while reining in government debt. As the effects of monetary tools taper off, the Finance Ministry is expected to play a bigger role in sustaining growth rates.
"The new Minister of Finance, who brings with him a strong reputation and previous experience as a vice minister of finance, has a very important job ahead of him. He (Xiao) must continue to focus on deleveraging, including slowing the growth of subnational debt before it is too late, while fixing municipal finance and reforming the national tax system," Paulson said in an exclusive interview with Caixin. "He will also need to persist in tackling overcapacity, which will involve tough reforms in the state sector that could lead to some bankruptcies for inefficient and over-leveraged SOEs."
"And all these (tasks) need to be done amid uncertainties in a global economy where China's economic policies and performance will be scrutinized and require global cooperation, as they will have a major impact on global markets, so it is important that his international counterparts and the financial community get to know him," Paulson said. "In the face of these challenges, it is a job that will be crucial to the success of China's economic reforms," he said.
Xiao's predecessor, Lou, was known for pushing for a complete overhaul of the country's fiscal and tax systems.
During Lou's stint, the Finance Ministry tackled some of the biggest economic and fiscal issues facing China, shining a light on the high subnational debt, which was growing at an unsustainable level, and working to fix a flawed municipal finance system by promoting fiscal transparency, constraint and reform. He also initiated and advanced work on environmental taxes and a much-needed overhaul of China's national tax system, Paulson said. Lou was also a strong advocate of trimming overcapacity in steel and coal.
"Lou has made big strides in changing the culture of the Ministry of Finance, driving it to become a much more dynamic, proactive, reform-minded agency," the former U.S. Treasury secretary said. "I hope his country will make use of Lous great experience and formidable talents by giving him another important job.
Outspoken reformist
Lou graduated with a master's degree in economics from the Chinese Academy of Social Science in 1984 and joined a research team under the General Office of the State Council, which focused on the finance and banking sector. There, he advocated for policy changes and co-authored several articles promoting economic reforms with other well-known economists, including Zhou Xiaochuan, Wu Jinglian, Li Jiange and Guo Shuqing. Zhou later went on to become the governor of the central bank and Guo served as chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Their ideas influenced China's economic reform agenda over the following years, which saw the country open up to trade.
In 1992, Lou was appointed to head the macroeconomic policy department of a planning body that helped then-Premier Zhu Rongji transform the country's financial, taxation and foreign-exchange policies and make them more market-oriented.
Lou had also served as vice governor of Guizhou province, a vice finance minister, and chairman of China's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp.
After taking over the reins of the Finance Ministry in March 2013, Lou set in motion a series of changes to the budget management system, replacing China's business tax with a value-added tax, introducing resource and environmental tax regulations, and pushing for property taxes. He also advocated for public-private partnerships in massive infrastructure projects.
During his tenure, the Finance Ministry also enacted policies to clean up debt accrued by local governments after Beijing injected a stimulus of 4 trillion yuan ($590 billion) to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown. This included putting a cap on the amount local governments could borrow through financing vehicles and expanding programs to swap local government debt with bonds that carry lower interest and have a longer maturity period.
In August, the State Council, China's cabinet, issued guidelines aiming to better align local government spending responsibilities with their revenue sources by moving some of these spending items up to the provincial or central level. Experts said the move, pushed by Lou, was a long-overdue one to restructure government spending.
Lou was an ardent reformist, and his outspoken style sparked heated public debates on policy issues. In February, he criticized the 2008 Labor Contract Law, saying it was overprotective of employees' rights, and discouraged employers from creating jobs. His comments triggered a flood of comments on Chinese social media, with citizens pitching in to share their views.
In July, at a tax seminar in Chengdu, Lou said he regretted that reforms to the nation's income and property tax system were still languishing on the drawing board. "There are real barriers to income redistribution, but this must be carried out without hesitation," he said.
Lou's next career move is still uncertain. He will turn 66 next month, the retirement age for all ministerial-level officials. But a top economist said the changes he put in motion will continue to shape China's economy as it adjusts to a slower pace of growth.
"As an economist, Lou always adhered to market economic principles and as a finance minister, he deeply understood the relationship between governments and markets," economist Wu Jinglian said.
Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com); editor Poornima Weerasekara (poornima@caixin.com)
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WESTPORT Westport came out to vote on Election Day, exceeding the previous presidential election by a few points.
Out of 18,499 registered voters, 15,890 exercised their right to do so, or 85 percent. The turnout was 83 percent in 2012 and 86 percent in 2008.
The official results are still being generated due to an error in the Secretary of States system.
The reports in the Secretary of States Office are not pulling from the right place so the information that its pulling is not correct so we are on standby until we hear back from Hartford, said Marla Cowden, Democratic Registrar of Voters.
Either the system will correct itself or the town will manually submit official results to the Secretary of States Office.
Election Day was a hectic time for Town Hall employees, It has just been busy, busy, busy, Republican Registrar of Voters Kevin White said.
Deputy Town Clerk Ruth Cavayero said the influx of ballots from overseas, which she said have increased since the last presidential election, add to the already busy time because they must be hand-counted. She said the options are great because they allow more people to vote, but are quite labor intensive.
The process was more complex than it had been in the past in that we had more scenarios, including ex-pats not registered, but entitled to vote for federal elections only, registered voters and military that are registered but out of the country, Cavayero said.
The Westport Public Library, one of the busier polling locations in town, saw constant action from the time polls opened at 6 a.m.
Its a steady flow of people coming through. A few people have said that theyve had a little trouble finding parking. The library is still open so you have people coming to use the library (in addition to voting), Jennifer Johnson, a Representative Town Meeting member, said as she stood outside of the Westport Public Library.
Election Day Registration
2016 marked the first year in Connecticut where voters were able to vote and cast their ballot on the same day for President of the United States. Overall, 172 Westporters took advantage of this option.
Riatan Ufomaduh, 20, voted for the first time in a presidential race using same-day Election Day registration and said the process was seamless.
My experience doing this was pretty quick, pretty fast. It was straightforward, Ufomaduh said. He filled out the registration, handed it in, provided his identification and cast his ballot for Jill Stein.
He decided to vote for the Green Party candidate because he wanted to stay out of the Republican and Democratic hairs this election. He acknowledged that Stein had no chance to win, but maintained that his vote allows Stein to continue speaking her message.
Issues at the Polls
There was a fire shortly after 9 a.m. at the Greens Farms Elementary School polling location on the exterior of the building. The building was evacuated and damage was limited to a plastic fence and the surrounding area.
Voting was halted for around 15 minutes, said White, but continued after the building was reoccupied. White said that the only effect of the fire was a delay for voters.
It may have taken a few minutes longer than they wanted to, White said.
Shortly before the polls opened at Coleytown Middle School, one of the tabulators malfunctioned. Each polling location is equipped with two tabulatorsone for use and a backup. The backup was set up and was ready by 6 a.m.
Voter Reaction
Dennis Wong, who voted at the Westport Public Library, said he normally votes and emphasized the importance of voting.
We have to take more responsibility for what were doing and not necessarily just leave it to other people, Wong said.
Wong, a registered Democrat, pulled the lever for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton because he believes she is better qualified to take the country to the next step and supports Clintons message of bringing people together as opposed to appealing to just one segment or another (of voters).
Karen Sherman, a registered Democrat, immigration lawyer, and self-proclaimed staunch Hillary supporter, said Clintons stance on gun control is one of the most important to her. She said she loathes Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump because he is divisive a hater, misogynist and racist.
@chrismmarquette; cmarquette@bcnnew.com
In recent years, employee engagement programs have become part of business leaders efforts to improve morale in many organizations. The thought is that by paying for you to take part in training programs or join trade organizations, your boss assumed they could make you more engaged at work. Its all part of a movement toward finding new ways to motivate employees.
Unfortunately, these methods probably arent working for many employees. According to a study from EMPLOYEEapp, of the 71 percent of surveyed employers who have implemented employee engagement initiatives, only 37 percent believe their employees are actively engaged. Training courses are the most popular form of employee engagement, followed by open-door policies and reimbursements for memberships in industry groups.
Why they fail.
The EMPLOYEEapp research wasnt the first study on the effects of employee engagement programs on workforces. A previous study found no connection between your engagement and how well you performed. Its possible that companies are already so disconnected from their employees that making attempts to engage them can amount to little more than guesswork.
For employers to create programs that truly increase employee engagement, they need to first determine what employees want. Instead of forcing a new initiative on workers and expecting them to buy into it, employers should take steps to learn what employees are interested in, including any courses theyd like to take in order to help them reach their long-term career goals.
Related: The Secret to Employee Engagement
Training and development.
When employers hear they need to invest in training their employees, they often start signing up their teams to random courses. They assume a leadership or teamwork course for the entire staff will suffice. By not taking the time to individualize the experience to each employee, the entire team may feel as though theyre being sent to yet another mandatory training class that wastes their time.
The problem is, most employers feel that bringing in instructors to teach a class only one person can benefit from is a waste of money. Online training is an attractive option, with many sites offering a wide variety of courses that can appeal to various types of employees. In addition, employers who want to bring specialized trainers in can group employees by the types of training most beneficial to them and conduct in-house training sessions with those groups.
Related: Is Better Employee Engagement the Solution to Hiring Woes?
What employees can do.
If youve been at the other end of these failed initiatives, it may seem as though theres little you can do to change things. However, being fully engaged can help with your own career. Employee engagement has been connected to business success. If youre happier and more productive its generally going to boost the companys bottom line. If you positively contribute to the businesss growth, youre more likely to get promoted -- or even earn a helpful reference.
Instead of waiting for your bosses to offer learning opportunities, you should seek out your own career development options. You should take the time to consider where youd like to be in your career in five to 10 years and start building the resume that helps you achieve those goals. Even if you see no advancement potential in your current company, you should consider how certifications and experience might look on a resume.
Related: Employee Engagement Is More Important Than the Customer
Online courses to increase engagement.
Both employers and employees can benefit from finding a resource that offers courses on a wide variety of career development and job-specific topics. Dale Carnegie Training has a series of courses specifically geared toward employee growth. Your boss can subscribe to this series and invite you and your team to choose the courses that appeal to you.
Sites like Lynda.com and Udemy give you plenty of choices, as well as personal development options. For employers, granting access to these platforms and letting employees choose classes on their own can be a strong motivator. For employees, sometimes even a personal development course can break up the monotony of the workweek, helping increase productivity.
With the right approach, engagement programs can boost your morale and productivity. Explore these options with your supervisor, because achieving personal and career goals will not only make you happier at your job, but it may make your boss satisfied too. A happier employee is more likely to get the job done and do it well.
Related:
Why Employee Engagement Programs Backfire and What You Can Do About It
5 Things Smart Entrepreneurs Can Do to Engage Their Workforces
This Is How to Train Your Managers to Boost Engagement With Millennials
Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Social networking companies regularly mimic one anothers features to compete for users attention. But the 2016 election season has highlighted how, despite this convergence, people continue to engage on different platforms in different ways.
Epithets such as the Facebook election, the Twitter election and even the Snapchat election have circulated online and in the press, accompanied by arguments about whether these descriptions reflect reality. Some analysis about the ability of a given platform to dominate this election cycle revolves around targeted advertising and whether candidates can reach specific constituents.
Related: Breaking Down the Tactics and Tools the Presidential Candidates Are Using
This election season has taught us more than just which platforms are the best, well, platforms, for politicians. Its affirmed how prominent social networks facilitate conversation.
Snapchats number of daily users surpassed Twitters earlier this year, but the platform facilitates one-on-one communication and solitary information consumption. Pew found that just 2 percent of U.S. adults get news from Snapchat. Its a messaging service, not a forum for political discourse. Instagram is an ideal place to share photos of Hillz Yaaas street art and dogs wearing Make America Great Again hats, or even to follow the candidates. However, its minimalist comment threads are more conducive to emoji than they are to thoughtful political debates.
Twitter and Facebook are best suited for substantive discussion, but that discussion often takes on a different style and tone from platform to platform. Any social media strategist will tell you that what you post on Facebook should look different than what you post on Twitter, and what you post on Pinterest should look different still. To be sure, you might find the same articles, the same jokes and the same sentiments making the rounds on all. Overall though, when it comes to politics, Facebook promotes debate among family, friends and acquaintances, while 140-character tweets often take the form of kneejerk reactions to strangers.
The reason both Facebook and Twitter still exist after more than a decade -- and as each increasingly becomes a news outlet, whether its founders want to admit it or not -- is because each serves a distinct purpose.
Facebook, of course, has the larger user base -- 1.79 billion monthly active users to Twitters 313 million. Forty-four percent of U.S. adults read or watch news on Facebook, while merely 9 percent get news on Twitter, according to Pew Research Center.
From March 23, 2015, (when Ted Cruz became the first candidate to announce in the primary) through Nov. 1, 2016, 128 million people on Facebook in the U.S. generated 8.8 billion likes, posts, comments and shares related to the election, a Facebook spokesperson told Entrepreneur in an email.
The spokesperson said that Facebook does not have data to share comparing 2012 election activity to 2016 election activity, though the company found that in 2015, the most talked-about topic worldwide was the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Conversely, people in the U.S. sent 1 billion tweets about the election since the primary debates began in August of last year, according to a Twitter blog post. Twitter did not respond to Entrepreneurs request for additional election activity data prior to the publication of this article.
But the tech world and investors have turned against Twitter as the company has struggled to monetize. This election has also highlighted the network's least desirable aspect: vitriol. Twitters reputation as a free-for-all for trolls is one major reason the company was unsuccessful in getting acquired this year.
Twitter is an ideal platform for real-time conversation during events such as presidential debates. That conversation moves extremely fast, in the form of 140-character reactions. Only a select few tweets go viral -- most quickly get buried in the nonstop deluge as people try to outdo one anothers jokes, memes and hot takes. Political news plus pop culture reference equals Twitter gold. Twitters user base might be small, but its passionate about this type of expression. Youll find it on Facebook, too, but its more in line with Twitters rapid-fire culture.
On Facebook, if a user posts a status or comment about politics, that users friends likely will not see it immediately, which is why Twitter is a better second-screen debate companion. A Facebook post is unlikely to have reach beyond a persons circle of Facebook friends, though among those friends, it will have more staying power, especially as friends begin to like, comment and share. If a Facebook post gets a moderate amount of engagement, Facebooks algorithms will prioritize it to show up in more friends feeds, increasing the likelihood of further conversation and engagement. (Liking a tweet won't spread it to more eyeballs -- only retweets will.)
With some exceptions, these are generally the trajectories of posts on either platform.
Political conversation on social media isnt just a way to pass the time. It moves the needle for a significant proportion of Americans. Pew surveyed U.S. adults this summer and found that 20 percent of social media users say theyve modified their stance on a social or political issue because of material they saw on social media, and 17 percent say social media has helped to change their views about a specific political candidate.
Theres been some controversy around the ability of social networks, particularly Facebook, to squelch ideological debate. Suspicions of left-leaning political bias led Facebook to lay off its staff of Trending news curators, despite the companys claims that those accusations were unfounded. But users themselves play a role in limiting their worldviews via social media. Pew also found that nearly 40 percent of users have blocked or minimized the political content in their feeds.
Related: Uber and Lyft Want to Help You Get to Your Polling Place
And this type of self-selecting audience is perfect for the reactionary Donald Trump. He didnt need to filter his thoughts through a middleman such as a news publication or a campaign staffer. Whenever Trump unabashedly tweeted an insult, he drummed up attention for his campaign. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, leaned on the support of her staff to come up with tweets that, while often quippy or informative, were clearly mediated.
While some Americans might have found Trumps transparency refreshing -- Twitter enabled him to give an impromptu fireside chat of sorts at 2:30 a.m. -- its ironic that one of the last national headlines prior to election day was that Trump's staff reportedly took his tweeting privileges away.
Related:
Why the Election Proves There's Room for Both Facebook and Twitter
It's Election Day: Is Facebook Influencing Your Voting Decision?
6 Secrets to Getting a Social Influencer's Attention
Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Nov. 9, 1946: Amarillo resident Jack Fuller and Michelian Richignieux of Paris, France, will wed in Olton.
--Some 75 flying farmers and their guests gathered yesterday at the City Auditorium for the first District 2 Convention of the Texas Flying Farmers Association.
--Delegates to the Northwest Texas Methodist Conference have voted to hold the groups 1947 conference in Amarillo, rejecting invitations from Plainview and Abilene.
Nov. 9, 1966: Plainview Mayor M.B. Hood has issued a proclamation designating November as Community Development Month in Plainview. On hand for the occasion was Kenneth Gill, representing the Plainview Jaycees.
--A 17-year-old is the sixth youth to be arrested in connection with a series of burglaries in Plainview since early July. Police Detective Jerry Austin said the department is continuing its investigation in the crime wave and additional arrest are expected.
--A photograph showed Plainview businessman Shelby Stapleman placing an order for fruit cakes with Mrs. Bud Gibbons, outgoing sales chairman for the Womens Club of Plainview. That group has been selling holiday fruit cakes for the past 11 years.
Nov. 9, 1976: Among those modeling in the Beta Sigma Phi City Council Style Show at Plainview Country Club on Tuesday will be Terrance Washington, wearing denim, and Michael Dickey, wearing a classic vested suit.
--The Wayland Flying Queens will open their season next week against South Plains College during the 19th annual Queens Clinic.
--A student in the two-year fashion merchandising program at South Plains College, Mitzi Terrell of Lockney has been named SPCs fashion representative for 1976-77. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. B.J. Terrell.
Nov. 9, 1996: TCA Cable TV advertised the Tyson vs. Holyfield fight which will be shown live on pay-per-view tonight. Cost is $44.95.
--With the 1996 election completed, candidates are reminded that campaign signs should be removed by Nov. 15.
--A front-page photo shows Craig McFarlane, a blind athlete from Canada, visiting Don Book of Edward Jones Investments prior to his presentation at Thursdays Client Dinner program.
Throughout China, provincial Communist Party officials have been shaking up the ranks of their powerful party committees in preparation for next year's National Party Congress, which will elect the top party leadership and shape the country's political and economic direction in the next five years.
About half of the provincial party committees have changed standing committee members in October, while the party's central committee also held a key session to endorse President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, as the "core" leader.
Some senior officials may be elected to the new Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in the 19th CPC National Congress a once every five-year event to be held late 2017. Members of the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection, another powerful party organ, will also be elected during the national congress.
This year's reshuffle is of a higher order of magnitude as President Xi Jinping's sweeping anti-graft campaign has been picking up steam, leaving more vacancies to be filled.
More than 100 officials at or above vice minister and governor levels and as many as 1 million lower rank officials have been put under investigation during Xi's first five-year term as chief of the CPC Central Committee, which started in late 2012.
Provincial party congresses were held in October in Xinjiang, Henan, Anhui and Shanxi, electing members to the provincial party committees for the next five years. More provinces, including Hebei, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Tibet, are holding party congresses in November.
Out of the new provincial party committees, the provincial party congresses will also elect representatives who will attend the 19th National Congress in Beijing next year.
The National Congress is the CPC's most important gathering of top party members, and the congress has the right to elect members to the Central Committees or even make changes to the party constitution.
The party's 18th National Congress took place in Beijing in November 8, 2012, when more than 2,200 representatives from the provinces, the military, central government departments and universities elected the new panel of CPC Central Committee, which includes nearly 400 seats.
In October, more than 30 positions in the standing party committees in nearly half of the country's 31 provinces, regions and municipalities have new faces, including Hubei province party chief Jiang Chaoliang and Beijing's new acting mayor Cai Qi.
Presently, 13 of the provincial party chiefs, including Cai Qi and Wu Yingjie, who was assigned on Aug. 28 to be Tibet's party chief, are not CPC Central Committee members. As the provincial chief and deputy chief have been CPC Central Committee members in the past, many of them are likely to join the central party ranks at the 19th CPC National Congress.
Additionally, new deputy party secretaries were appointed in eight provinces (Shanxi, Jiangsu, Anhui, Xinjiang, Hebei, Shaanxi, Hunan and Jiangxi). The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection also replaced five provincial discipline commission secretaries, as well as four State Council department heads of discipline.
The CPC Central Committee held its sixth plenum last week, announcing the admission of Chinese Academy of Engineering vice president Zhao Xiangeng and Ningxia party secretary Xian Hui, to the central committee.
Beside these two, six people were chosen to fill out vacancies in the Central Committee during previous plenary sessions, including the fourth-plenum appointments of Academy of Governance executive vice-president Ma Jiantang, State Administration for Religious Affairs director Wang Zuoan, Shaanxi party committee Organization Department head Mao Wanchun, and Guizhou province vice-governor Liu Xiaokai, as well as the fifth-plenum appointments of former Hainan province vice governor Chen Zhirong and Jilin province vice-governor Jin Zhenji.
The plenum also endorsed earlier decisions to expel four senior officials for corruption, including former party chief of Liaoning province Wang Min, former Beijing deputy party chief Lu Xiwen, and former senior military officials Fan Changmi and Niu Zhizhong.
At least 24 Central Committee members have been investigated for graft since 2012. At the moment, seven people face jail terms ranging from 12 years to life imprisonment.
Contact reporter Wu Gang (gangwu@caixin.com); editor Kenneth Howe (kennethhowe@caixin.com)
LUBBOCK Two women from Lubbock, Crystal Ann Alaniz and Arleen Theres Keithley, appeared Monday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge D. Gordon Bryant Jr. and pleaded guilty to their roles in a methamphetamine distribution conspiracy, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.
Alaniz, 32, pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine and aiding and abetting; she faces a statutory sentence of not less than five years or more than 40 years in federal prison and a $5 million fine. Keithley, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and aiding and abetting; she faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine. Judge Bryant ordered a presentence investigation report for each defendant with sentencing dates to be set after the completion of those reports.
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Bruce Drury has a small window of opportunity to vote today.
He is balancing civic obligations - casting his own ballot and managing Jefferson County's mail-in ballot station, where workers tally votes for those who can not make it to the polls.
Drury, a retired political science professor at Lamar University, long ago determined which candidates he prefers.
Waiting till today has nothing to do with convenience or indecision over who should get his vote.
As for many other Election Day voters, this is a custom, Drury said.
"The people who will vote (on Election Day) are the people who see it as a ritual, who have a habit of voting on Election Day and feel good about that," said Drury, who has also spent time as a voting precinct clerk. "Voting at your local precinct used to be an opportunity to see neighbors you hadn't seen for a while. The people who work the precincts now probably miss some of that. They probably miss some of the camaraderie."
Traditional precinct voting on Election Day is becoming an endangered species, according to Chris Mann, a political science professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
The convenience of voting early, or simply picking which day to vote, appeals to a large majority of the electorate, Mann said.
Southeast Texas can be counted in that trend.
Early voting totals Jefferson County
Registered voters: 149,119
Early voters: 71,571 Orange County
Registered voters: 53,064
Early voters: 20,803 Hardin County
Registered voters: 38,169
Early voters: 13,882 Newton County
Registered voters: 9,549
Early voters: 2,545 Jasper County
Registered voters: 23,628
Early voters: 7,535 Tyler County
Registered voters: 13,520
Early voters: 4,401 Chambers County
Registered voters: 26,926
Early voters: 12,934 Liberty County
Registered voters: 43,734
Early voters: 16,549 (minus some absentee ballots) See More Collapse
Jefferson County had early record voting, with 71,571 ballots cast, almost half the county's registered voters.
In Orange County, almost 21,000 of Orange County's 53,000 registered voters went to the polls before today.
Hardin County had 13,882 early voters of the 38,169 registered.
Smaller Southeast Texas counties saw low to moderate early voter turnout.
Mann said smaller communities are more likely to wait until Election Day, while larger ones gravitate toward the convenience of earlier voting.
Once people try voting before Election Day, either in person or mail-in, they are likely to fall into the habit of it, said David W. Nickerson, a political science professor at Temple University.
"There are a few people who wait to Election Day because they like the pageantry and tradition of Election Day," Nickerson said. "However, most people vote on Election Day because it is the default day to vote and they don't think about switching unless nudged in that direction."
The early voter is firm on his or her choices, said Rice University political science professor Bob Stein.
Early voting exceeds Election Day voting in presidential elections, Stein said. The opposite occurs in mid-term elections, Stein said.
"In presidential elections the share of vote cast early goes up as voters anticipate, correctly, higher turnout and potentially longer lines to vote on election day," Stein said. "They anticipate long waits in presidential and not in mid-term and other elections. We observe the same voters often changing from early to election day between presidential and mid-term elections."
Mann separated Election Day voters into three groups: the ritualist like Drury; the sporadic voter who might be disengaged; and the undecided voter.
At some point, all of them could be looking back at Election Day voting as a memory.
If trend toward higher early voting continues, election officials could be looking at whether the traditional neighborhood precinct is worth the time and money.
"Texas has reached the tipping point where more people are voting before Election Day than on Election Day," Mann said. "So in the coming election cycles, does it reach the point where traditional precinct voting doesn't make any sense to voters because of the dwindling numbers on Election Day? It could be that Tuesday just doesn't work for you."
BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott
RIO GRANDE CITY Authorities in Starr County are working to track down leads in the shooting deaths of a man and his 3-year-old son who were gunned down Sunday.
The Starr County Sheriff's Office said Hector Garcia Jr., 41 and his son, Julian Garcia, were shot inside a Ford F-250 pickup found at an intersection in Rio Grande City. Garcia was pronounced dead at the scene, while his son was pronounced dead at an area hospital.
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Voters in Texas and across the country will head to the polls Tuesday amid a heightened terrorism alert that will mean increased law enforcement presence in public places, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The latest threat an Islamic State call for a lone-wolf-style attack on U.S. voters came over the weekend following a reported threat last week believed to be from al-Qaida that particularly targeted Texas, New York and Virginia.
Homeland Security is working with the FBI, as well as state and local agencies, to identify and disrupt any potential threat, a Homeland Security official said Monday.
We are aware of alleged threats in recent press reports, a Homeland Security official said Monday. While we do not comment on intelligence matters, we will say the counterterrorism and homeland security communities remain vigilant and well-postured to defend against attacks here in the United States.
Through its official communication channel on the Internet, the terrorist group known as ISIS has called on Muslims in the United States to refuse to participate in the election and take action by announcing that they have come to slaughter you and smash your ballot boxes, according to SITE Intelligence Group.
Rita Katz, director of SITE, is monitoring the situation.
What ISIS wants to do is disrupt the election and gain media attention, Katz said. People should go vote as they normally would, leave security services and agencies to worry about safety and not to make ISIS feel that they achieved what they wanted.
The ISIS threat comes on the heels of CBS News report that sources had confirmed that U.S. intelligence has alerted joint terrorism task forces that al-Qaida could be planning attacks in three states for the day before the election.
It is believed that New York, Texas and Virginia are all possible targets, though no specific locations are mentioned, CBS reported.
Texas officials declined to comment on specific security actions but pointed to a statement by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott late last week.
My office is working with law enforcement officials and we are continuing to monitor the situation in close coordination with the Texas Department of Public Safety, Abbott said in a written statement.
Texans should go about their daily lives as usual, but remain vigilant over the next several days and report any suspicious activity to state or local law enforcement, he continued. The State of Texas will continue to do everything it can to ensure the safety and security of its citizens.
Retired FBI agent Chuck Joyner said authorities are in a tough spot when it comes to physically safeguarding voting stations.
The whole idea is to provide easy access to these locations, which is contrary to what you are trying to do to prevent a terrorist attack, he said. You dont want to do anything that would inhibit the public from voting or intimidate the public from voting, but you have this obligation.
He urged voters to remain vigilant.
If you see something, say something, he said.
Katz, of SITE, said ISIS official statements come from one primary source, a private channel that can be joined via invitation.
This channel has dozens of supporting channels with thousands of followers, which begin spreading its releases across social media, in various languages seconds after they are released, she said.
SAN ANTONIO In Bexar County, 52 people were arrested last month on felony drunken driving charges, bringing the total number of apprehensions on such offenses in the first 10 months of the year to 495, records show.
Here are the number of arrests broken down by charge for October:
Intoxication manslaughter (second degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison): 2
Intoxication assault (third degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison): 7
Driving while intoxicated with child passenger under 15 years old (state jail felony punishable by up to two years in prison): 9
Driving while intoxicated third or more (third degree felony): 39
October's charges were bolstered by two men each arrested on more than one charge.
Justin Fey, 49, was charged with two counts of intoxication manslaughter, two counts of intoxication assault and oen count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon Oct. 22.
Fey, who headed the overnight Security Forces shift at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, news archives show, is accused of driving head-on into an SUV heading east in the 200 block of East Loop 1604 South, resulting in the deaths of Jose Angel Arias, 36, and his wife Rosa Maria Arias, 39.
RELATED: Records: 47 people arrested on felony DWI charges in Bexar County in September 2016
The couple's children were in the car and are expected to survive.
Fey was previously arrested in June 2013 on a public intoxication charge in New Braunfels, news archives show.
Here are the total number of felony drunken driving arrests in Bexar County by month in 2016:
Michael Shane Jasso, 42, was arrested Oct. 27 on three counts of intoxication assault, one of which was later raised to intoxication manslaughter, according to news archives and records.
Jasso, police said, was allegedly driving drunk when he crashed his Lexus into another vehicle, injuring two and killing one.
RELATED: Fort Sam police officer allegedly killed 2 in drunk driving crash in San Antonio
Maria Anita Reyes, 62, of Lytle, died at 5:43 p.m. Oct. 28 due to complications of a closed head injury in the accident, the medical examiner's office confirmed Nov. 4.
The crash occurred at about 12:32 a.m. Oct. 27 in the 8200 block of Marbach Road, police said.
The Lexus T-boned a Chevrolet HHR SUV, causing it to roll over and pin the passengers inside, police said at the scene.
RELATED: SAPD: Man faces new intox manslaughter charge after woman dies from drunken crash on West Side
Drunken driving arrests in October stayed fairly consistent with arrests made last year in 2015, the month saw 51 arrests made in the county, records show.
Here are the total number of felony drunken driving arrests in Bexar County by month in 2015:
Scroll through the slideshow to see booking photos for 52 felony drunken driving suspects nabbed by law enforcement officials in Bexar County during October.
Staff writers Sig Christenson and Tyler White contributed to this report.
kbradshaw@express-news.net
Twitter: @kbrad5
While overnight storms in San Antonio put a damper on Election Day, forecasters are saying the worst of the storm has passed the region.
NWS meteorologist Brett Williams said San Antonio received up to 2 inches of rain overnight, and a 50 percent chance of scattered showers remains throughout the day.
When a Seguin restaurant owner discovered a rare, new echinoid species, a kind of sand dollar, he looked no further than his favorite presidential candidate to find a name.
William Thompson, who is also a fossil hunter and author, told mySA.com he found five Tetragramma donaldtrumpi in the 110 million-year-old Glen Rose Formation, located just north of Canyon Lake, over the last two years.
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We're smack in the middle of 2016 election madness, and Texas Twitter is a mix of pride, anxiety and ongoing commentary as the nation waits for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to be named the next commander in chief.
RELATED: With fossil, Donald Trump becomes 'permanent part of the scientific record'
Americans woke up Tuesday morning to the climax of this election season's political social media conversations.
"I voted" sticker selfies, last-minute jabs at both presidential candidates and various election-centered hashtags were rampant across the country and online.
RELATED: Texas 'trend': Women go under the knife to look like Ivanka Trump
Texas Twitter has been pushing the conversation with #TexasVotes2016 and #GoVoteTexas, revealing Willie Nelson and Chuck Norris jests, cries to "#TurnTexasBlue" and live Tweets from the polls.
RELATED: The Latest developments in the US elections
See how Lone Star State residents are celebrating their civic duty and reacting to the election in the gallery above.
mmendoza@mysa.com
Twitter: @MaddySkye
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If a man accused of sexually assaulting his fellow firefighter with chorizo and a broomstick last January accepts a plea deal, his accused accomplices in the act could go free, according to media reports.
Keith Wisakowsky, 28, was indicted on charges of aggravated sexual assault and attempted aggravated assault in September 2015 in Ellis County, according to news archives.
Wisakowsky is accused of being part of a five-person group in North Texas that allegedly bent a male firefighter over a couch, pinned him down, and attempted to assault him with a broomstick, before later switching to a sausage, according to news archives.
RELATED: North Texas volunteer firefighters indicted in chorizo sausage sexual assault
On Friday, Nov. 4, Wisakowsky was offered a plea deal, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. If Wisakowsky accepts the deal, he would serve two years probation on a class A misdemeanor charge of assault, the newspaper reported.
An indictment obtained by the San Antonio Express-News also names Wisakowsky's 23-year-old girlfriend Brittany Parten, who is accused of filming the incident.
I have something better, Wisakowsky is reportedly heard saying in Partens recording, before grabbing a sausage.
The male victim then crawled to a bathroom where he threw up after the assault, according to news archives.
RELATED: Report: North Texas fire chief, assistant chief tried to cover up chorizo sexual assault
In September 2015, Casey Joe Stafford, Preston Thomas Peyrot, Alec Chase Miller and Blake Jerold Tucker were indicted on charges of aggravated sexual assault and attempted aggravated assault.
Fire Chief Gavin Satterfield, 33, and Assistant Fire Chief William Getzendaner, 36, were ousted from the fire department after being accused of covering up the incident, according to news archives. They were also arrested in the case.
RELATED: DPS: Texas volunteer firefighters sexually assaulted man with chorizo sausage in video
If Wisakowsky accepts the plea deal he was offered Friday, the charges against Stafford, Peyrot, Miller, Tucker, Parten, Satterfield and Getzendaner would be dropped, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Staff writer Joshua Fechter contributed to this report.
kbradshaw@express-news.net
Twitter: @kbrad5
SAN ANTONIO The medical examiners office publicly identified a 26-year-old man who was killed by an alleged drug dealer Monday morning during an attempted robbery on the Southwest Side.
Roy Alvarado died at 1:26 a.m. Monday of multiple blunt force injuries and possible asphyxia after he fell off a vehicle he was clinging onto as 21-year-old Michael Maldonado drove away from the crime scene, according to the medical examiners office and police.
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Election Day is here and, believe it or not, there is more than one race to watch as the votes are tallied Tuesday night.
Here's five races to watch Nov. 8:
1. Incumbent Will Hurd and Pete Gallego face off to represent the Congressional District 23
Hurd, a Republican supported by Gov. Greg Abbott, faces Democrat Pete Gallego, who was defeated as an incumbent in 2014, on Election Day. District 23 stretches from San Antonio to El Paso and this year's race is the most expensive congressional battle in Texas history, according to news archives.
2. Will incumbent Rick Galindo hold onto his Texas House District 117 seat?
Galindo will be challenged by former state Rep. Phil Cortez, who represented the district for one term before losing to Galindo in 2014, according to news archives.
MORE: What the world looked like the last time a Democrat won a presidential election in Texas
3. Incumbent Susan Pamerleau is fighting to stay Bexar County Sheriff against James Dorsey, Javier Salazar, and Larry Ricketts
Pamerleau has served as the county sheriff since 2012, according to news archives. Dorsey, Salazar and Ricketts have each experience in law enforcement Dorsey served in the military for 21 years, and as a sheriffs deputy for seven years, Salazar has worked for the San Antonio Police Department for 23 years and Ricketts served almost three decades as a sheriffs deputy after military service, according to news archives.
4. Will Republican John Lujan keep his Texas House District 118 seat?
Lujan is the first Republican to hold the 100-year-old seat after a special election in January. He faces Democrat Tomas Uresti, brother of state Sen. Carlos Uresti and Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector Albert Uresti, and 15-year Harlandale Independent School District trustee, according to news archives.
ELECTION NIGHT: Scattered showers, cooler temperatures in S.A. forecast after up 2 inches of rain drop overnight
5. Incumbent Bexar County Commissioner Kevin Wolff, District 3, is facing off against Brandon J. Johnson, a 19-year-old UTSA student
Wolff is challenged by a Johnson, a 19-year-old UTSA student, who moved to San Antonio for college in 2015. Wolff was arrested after being found in a Whataburger drive-thru line, with only his boxers on, according to news archives. Later, he was found to have alcohol and a mix of blood-pressure medicine and Ambien in his system, and was charged with driving while intoxicated. He has served on the commissioners court since 2008, according to news archives.
RELATED: Where the longest Election Day lines are expected in Bexar County
kbradshaw@express-news.net
Twitter: @kbrad5
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SAN ANTONIO Around 99,500 voters had cast ballots in Bexar County as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, bringing the total to more than a half-million people voting in this year's presidential election.
The number of voters coming to the polls had slowed, something Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen said was normal, and she expected the pace to pick up in the evening as people get their kids out of school and leave work.
Optimistic as the day began that she would see a record turnout of at least 165,000 people, and possibly more the best mark since 2008, when 153,000 voted in Barack Obama's first run for president Callanen began to hedge her bets.
"I want 160,000 but I'm starting to wobble just a little bit on that because here it is 4 o'clock and I'm only half the way," she laughed.
She was getting reports from 80 percent of the more than 300 polling sites in Bexar County.
RELATED: 5 races for Bexar County voters to watch other than Trump, Clinton
There were no major problems reported in the first party of the day, but there were a few issues, mainly from overzealous campaign workers. Callanen said that Bexar County sheriff's deputies were dispatched to a pair of polling sites, Southwest High School and Hopkins Elementary.
The officers were sent because of "just really animated, very, very strong emotions, and the election officials felt it was over the top and so they asked for the deputies," Callanen said. The issues were settled, "and we went back to normal."
Callanen did not know the origin of the arguments in either place, but said no arrests were made.
While some states reported issues with voting machines, there had been few problems reported here. Callenen said there had been some issues initially as the day began, and called that typical, but added that things were "nice and quiet" now.
Like early voting, provisional ballots were up as well. More than 3,000 were filed in early voting, but Callanen couldn't say how many had been received Tuesday.
Typically, election officials see about 300.
Bexar County will not be able to say how many provision ballots were received until Wednesday or Thursday, she said. Officials will have to check each ballot to determine if it is valid, Callanen said.
Weather was factoring into turnout as well, inhibiting it in some places, but a steady stream of voters showed up across the county as the morning ensued. The chance of rainfall Tuesday evening was put at 30 percent.
More than 50 temporary workers manned a phone bank Tuesday at the Elections Department, fielding questions from voters.
"They're asking a lot of questions about whether they're registered and where do they go to vote," said one of the workers, Sheila Huante. "That's really a lot of what's going on."
Huante said few voters have asked her about Texas' controversial voter ID law, which was challenged in federal court. Voters without photo identification can now bring other documents, such as a utility bill, and sign a declaration that they had a "reasonable impediment" to obtaining photo ID.
"There have been a few questions, as far as just, will their military ID work, that kind of thing," she said.
Voters waited about a half hour to cast their ballots at Southwest High School, causing frustration for some voters, while others saw no problem waiting.
"I know a lot of people who can't vote," said Clinton supporter Artemio Bustos as he left the polling site. "I feel like those who can, should."
The voters started turning out early, many already gathering at 6 a.m., an hour before the polls officially opened at more than a few voting sites.
One of those sited was Las Palmas Library on Castroville Road, which is predicted to be one of the busiest polling places in the county.
RELATED: Where the longest Election Day lines are expected in Bexar County
"I didn't know how busy the line was going to be," said Isaac Robledo, 37, who supports GOP candidate Donald Trump. "This is the biggest voting event of the year."
Standing nearby, Guadalupe Solis, 74, said she showed up early just in case there were any problems.
"I want to vote so bad," said Solis, who planned to cast her ballot for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. "I don't want to take any chances."
At the Laurel Heights United Methodist Church polling site in Monte Vista, there was a long line waiting when the doors opened at 7 a.m., but it moved quickly.
At another polling place at Huebner Elementary School on the city's North Side, some voters were turned away because they lived in Precinct 3078.
MORE: How to avoid common pitfalls on Election Day
Voters in that precinct usually cast ballots at the school. But for this election, their polling site was moved.
Election officials told voters to go to Woodlawn Baptist Church a half mile away to shorten the lines at the elementary school, which still had to handle voters from three other precincts.
"This is one of the busiest polling places," said presiding judge Bill Drane, who had a poll worker standing outside the school entrance to redirect voters from Precinct 3078.
MORE: Scattered showers, cooler temperatures in S.A. forecast after up 2 inches of rain drop overnight
As of 6 a.m., 46 power outages had affected nearly 1,300 customers, according to CPS Energy. However, that number dwindled to 31 outages involving less than 400 customers by 9 a.m. Callanen said no outages affected any polling sites.
Callanen's prediction for a busy Election Day is based on the unusually robust turnout in Bexar County during early voting, when 436,731 people cast ballots in person. At least 32,000 additional ballots were sent by mail.
Unlike early voting, where voters can cast their ballots at any polling site in Bexar County, voters on Election Day have to go to the specific polling site for their precinct.
Voters can call 210-335-VOTE or visit the Election Department's online precinct finder to find out where they're supposed to cast ballots. Callanen suggests checking before every election because sometimes polling sites are relocated.
"The voters must vote in their home precincts tomorrow," Callanen said.
Visit mySA.com or ExpressNews.com throughout the day for election updates, and in the evening for election results as they come in.
jtedesco@express-news.net
You can feel the tension. Strolling down the street, shopping at the corner market, stopping for a bite at the local tavern, friends and neighbors greet each other as usual but avoid the elephant sauntering around like he owns the place.
Its best not to talk politics this close to the election.
But when an impudent columnist asks the next fellow in the grocery line Have you voted yet? and his answer hints at a Trump ballot, neighboring eyes cast downward, while sparks sizzle in their human casings.
A brief frisson has transpired. Chuckling nervously, we plunge through the door into a cool, sunny breeze, thinking: Thank God this will be over soon.
Will it?
No one knows, but a sense of dread has attached to the Day After. This is because after 18 months of rabble-rousing and anger management (not in a good way), weve created a sort of Potemkin nightmare of partisan division and revolutionary strife. Never before has this country been so divided, goes the usual chorus of pundits and commentators.
Except, that is, for every other election year since voting began.
Our Founding Fathers, for all their cleverness, were hardly soft-spoken. The Civil War needs no editorial comment. The 1960s werent exactly a paddleboat cruise down the Mississippi.
In other words, our politics have always been thus, though with one significant difference. Whereas Paul Revere had to ride several hours on horseback to deliver the news that the British were coming, we never stop receiving news of everything, everywhere in real time that passes before we can stand athwart history and gasp, Oh, my God, no!
Through media in all its forms, we exhaust and are exhausted by the insignificant. To tune in is to believe that Western civilization is nearing collapse, regardless of who holsters up and swaggers into the White House next January. Which is precisely what youre supposed to think. Youre supposed to think everything is falling apart. Youre supposed to believe that life has never been worse.
Donald Trump was right when he said the system is rigged, but not in the way he meant. It isnt rigged against him. Hes part of the ecosystem of media, political consultants, producers, politicians and propagandists that are rigged against The People and its working just fine. Everyones in on the same game, which is essentially to ensure that The People gobble up what theyve been serving and what theyre serving is resentment, fear and anger.
Sure, people were upset about stuff. But what we feel now was mass-produced by a propaganda industry that profits most when people are worked up.
You want a good money tip? Invest in outrage.
As Nov. 9 dawns, Americans are sure to be mad as hell. Those happy with the victor will be re-angry soon enough when they realize they wont be getting what they were promised. This is the good news. Thanks to the brilliance of our tripartite government, nobody gets to be dictator. And despite what nearly everyone seems to believe, our broken government works pretty well most of the time.
If Trump wins, hell be held in check more or less by the House and Senate because thats the way our system of government is set up. Not even Republicans are eager to follow Trumps lead.
There wont be a wall. He wont impose any religion-based immigration restrictions because even Trump isnt that lame-brained. Hell dress up and behave at state dinners and be funny when called upon. Hell even invite the media to the White House holiday party. He wont nuke Iran for rude gestures, or assault women. He and Vladimir Putin will hate each other, respectfully.
If Hillary Clinton wins, shes not going to suddenly become a lunatic. As a senator, she worked across the aisle and earned the admiration of her colleagues. Shell manage the military because she, like Trump, honors the troops and they know it. Shell make sure her Supreme Court appointments will protect Roe v. Wade, but otherwise, the jurys always out. Former Justice David Souter and Chief Justice John Roberts both demonstrated the box-of-chocolates rule: You never know (exactly) what youll get.
The same, alas, can be said about both Clinton and Trump. Whatever theyve projected or promised wont be reflected in the reality of the presidency. It never is. Whatever they may wish to be, the president is only one-third of the equation granted, with an armed force.
On a happier note, either way cue Gloria Gaynor oh, yes, we will survive.
kathleenparker@washpost.com
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Two multimillion-dollar apartment complexes on the Northeast Side found new owners last week, adding to a recent flurry of multifamily property sales in San Antonio.
Turner Impact Capital, an investment firm from Santa Monica, California, bought the $19 million San Mateo Apartment Homes complex along Wurzbach Parkway on Oct. 31, property records show. The seller was a company affiliated The Accend Companies, a Chicago-based investment firm.
Ballot initiatives in three Bay Area cities and Boulder, Colorado, put the issue of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages before voters.
NEW YORK Today is election day in the United States, and some cities will try to make it more expensive for consumers to purchase sugary beverages, reports Bloomberg BNA.
Four cities have ballot initiatives that seek to tax sugary beverages: San Francisco; Oakland and Albany, California; and Boulder, Colorado. For Bay Area residents, thats an extra $1.44 for your average 12-pack of soda, pop, soft drink or whatever the local lexicon coins it, writes the news source.
Campaigns to combat sugary beverages, notes the news source, have brought in nearly $40 million in political spending to the Bay Area, and if successful, the campaign to tax soft drinks could spread to other areas of the United States.
It can take off very quickly, to the point that it spreads nationally, Michael Siegel, professor at Boston Universitys school of public health, told Bloomberg BNA.
Two cities to date have a soda tax on the books: Philadelphia and Berkeley, California. Siegel told the news source that recent research suggests a consumption tax could discourage consumers from purchasing higher calorie beverages, but these taxes also have a double whammy effect of raising revenue for other public health initiatives. He likens the move to sugar-sweetened beverages to the same way states singled out tobacco for additional revenue.
I think that public health [officials] and policymakers are starting to apply the lessons that weve learned from the tobacco movement, to apply those to the issue of obesity and soda consumption, Siegel told Bloomberg BNA.
Meanwhile, beverage companies have ramped up efforts to combat the tax initiatives on soft drinks.
We dont think the goal of beverage taxes is public health. We think they are taxes that unfairly hurt our customers, Susan Neely, president and CEO of the American Beverage Association (ABA), told Bloomberg BNA, adding that the soft drink industry supports calories in/calories out public health initiatives that encourage exercise and limit calorie intake.
Neely also says that soda taxes are an oversimplification of complex health issues, telling the news source: I think its a false framing to oversimplify a multifactorial problem like obesity and present a tax as a solution. ... First of all, obesity has many causes, and second, taxes have not been proven to change behavior.
The QSR is getting ready to launch mobile payment and ordering in the United States next year.
NEW YORK Business Insider reports that McDonalds is catching up to its fast-food competition through mobile, writing: McDonald's is finally gearing up to launch mobile order-and-pay technology, meaning customers will be able to order and pay for their food from their smartphones.
The news source notes that McDonalds mobile enhancements will begin rolling out next year in the United States and international markets such as Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom, according to Becca Hary, a spokesperson for the QSR. By 2018, mobile pay and ordering could be available in about 25,000 restaurants worldwide.
Business Insider notes that in July 2015, McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook talked about mobile ordering and the ability for customers to place orders for pick-up. Earlier this year the QSR began testing mobile ordering at 22 locations in Columbus, Georgia, and later ended the test, reported Ad Age.
While the mobile pay and order feature is new for McDonald's, some industry experts say the chain has missed a huge opportunity that chains such as Starbucks and Chick-fil-A have capitalized on.
"This isnt new technology, its something that should be fairly standard nowadays," Neil Saunders, CEO of retail consulting firm Conlumino, told the news source.
Starbucks launched its mobile order-and-pay program one year ago, and Business Insider notes that about 25% of Starbucks customers now use the company's app to pay for their orders, while 1 in 20 customers use it to order ahead.
Chick-fil-A's mobile order-and-pay app has seen similar success, even hitting the top three on Apples iTunes app when it first launched in June. The news source notes that more than 8 million people have downloaded the Chick-fil-A One app, which remembers customer orders and tailors rewards to their buying habits.
For McDonald's, reducing customer wait times and improving order accuracy is a main focus of the QSRs turnaround.
"This would be helpful to the company at a time when wage pressures are becoming a heavier burden on the cost line," Saunders told the news source. "It would also give McDonalds an opportunity to track consumer behavior and buying patterns and stimulate spending with offers and deals."
Semiconductor-free microelectronics are now possible, thanks to metamaterials (w/video) (Nanowerk News) Engineers at the University of California San Diego have fabricated the first semiconductor-free, optically-controlled microelectronic device. Using metamaterials, engineers were able to build a microscale device that shows a 1,000 percent increase in conductivity when activated by low voltage and a low power laser.
The discovery paves the way for microelectronic devices that are faster and capable of handling more power, and could also lead to more efficient solar panels. The work was published in Nature Communications ("Photoemission-based microelectronic devices").
The designed semiconductor-free microelectronic device. (Image: UC San Diego Applied Electromagnetics Group) (click on image to enlarge)
The capabilities of existing microelectronic devices, such as transistors, are ultimately limited by the properties of their constituent materials, such as their semiconductors, researchers said.
For example, semiconductors can impose limits on a device's conductivity, or electron flow. Semiconductors have what's called a band gap, meaning they require a boost of external energy to get electrons to flow through them. And electron velocity is limited, since electrons are constantly colliding with atoms as they flow through the semiconductor.
A team of researchers in the Applied Electromagnetics Group led by electrical engineering professor Dan Sievenpiper at UC San Diego sought to remove these roadblocks to conductivity by replacing semiconductors with free electrons in space. "And we wanted to do this at the microscale," said Ebrahim Forati, a former postdoctoral researcher in Sievenpiper's lab and first author of the study.
Scanning electron micrograph images of the semiconductor-free microelectronic device (top left) and the gold metasurface (top right, bottom). (Image: UC San Diego Applied Electromagnetics Group) (click on image to enlarge)
However, liberating electrons from materials is challenging. It either requires applying high voltages (at least 100 Volts), high power lasers or extremely high temperatures (more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit), which aren't practical in micro- and nanoscale electronic devices.
To address this challenge, Sievenpiper's team fabricated a microscale device that can release electrons from a material without such extreme requirements. The device consists of an engineered surface, called a metasurface, on top of a silicon wafer, with a layer of silicon dioxide in between. The metasurface consists of an array of gold mushroom-like nanostructures on an array of parallel gold strips.
The gold metasurface is designed such that when a low DC voltage (under 10 Volts) and a low power infrared laser are both applied, the metasurface generates "hot spots"--spots with a high intensity electric field--that provide enough energy to pull electrons out from the metal and liberate them into space.
Tests on the device showed a 1,000 percent change in conductivity. "That means more available electrons for manipulation," Ebrahim said.
"This certainly won't replace all semiconductor devices, but it may be the best approach for certain specialty applications, such as very high frequencies or high power devices," Sievenpiper said.
According to researchers, this particular metasurface was designed as a proof-of-concept. Different metasurfaces will need to be designed and optimized for different types of microelectronic devices.
The Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2016 shortlist features a strong Tipperary presence with three local authors receiving shortlist nominations across four different categories.
Clonmel's Roz Purcell, the popular model and food blogger, has been nominated for the Avonmore Cookbook of the Year for her first cookbook offering Natural Born Feeder.
Donal Ryan who hails from Nenagh, has been shortlisted for his book All We Shall Know in two different categories; the RTE Radio 1s The Ryan Tubridy Show Listeners Choice Award as well as the Easons Book Club Novel of the Year Award.
Another Tipperary author, Julian Gough, has been nominated for the Specsavers Childrens Book of the Year (Junior) category for his book Rabbit and Bear: Rabbits Bad Habits and
This years Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2016 shortlist includes a host of internationally renowned Irish authors including Emma Donoghue, Roddy Doyle, Cecelia Ahern and Marita Conlon-McKenna alongside a wide range of works from Irish cultural and sporting figures including Tim Carey, Paul OConnell, Alan Conway, Donal Lenihan and Michael D. Higgins.
This is the eleventh year of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards, which are dedicated to honouring Irish writers across the entire publishing spectrum. The full shortlist, which is outlined below, was selected from a panel of industry experts.
From October 25th, the public are being asked to cast their vote on the best books of the last year via the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards website www.bgeirishbookawards.ie. Votes can be cast until midnight 11th November 2016 and the winners will be announced at a gala event in The Double Tree by Hilton Hotel (formerly The Burlington) on Wednesday, 16th November. Following the gala event, voting will begin for the overall Book of the Year Award which will be announced in early December. To cast your vote for the overall Book of the Year visit www.irishbookawards.ie.
For the fifth year running, RTE Television will be broadcasting the highlights of the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards on RTE One on Saturday 19th November. This programme will showcase one of the biggest celebrations of Irish writing with many of Irelands most celebrated and loved authors in attendance.
(NaturalHealth365) As insurers flee Obamacare in escalating numbers, its clear that the Affordable Care Act is not sustainable as a practical healthcare solution. In fact, the cost of Obamacare has moved our countys healthcare system to the edge of total collapse.
Meanwhile, Democrats and the Obama administration keep calling the Affordable Care Act a great success. They point out that 20 million Americans who were previously uninsured now have insurance. However, they fail to mention that these results sacrifice the qualities required to make Obamacare sustainable going forward. (There is a better way keep reading)
The key components of Obamacare sustainability have evaporated
It was expected that since the healthcare plan was required, millions of the youngest and healthiest among us would rush to sign up, paying premiums that would result in an influx of cash into the system. This money would be used to cover the healthcare costs accrued by older enrollees more prone to becoming sick.
However, large numbers of these younger, healthier Americans simply ignored the Obamacare law. They instead opted to pay the initial $95 penalty on their tax return. Of course, that penalty cost is rising every year. Because of this, the majority of new enrollees in Obamacare are the sickest among us the people with the most healthcare bills.
Insurance premium costs set to rise at least 60 percent in many regions of the United States
As more insurance companies drop out, healthy competition between them also evaporates. Many state counties now have only a single provider. Competition among companies was among the components of sustainability touted by the Obama administration.
The insurance companies still standing have been forced to pare back their plans while raising rates. The following states are set to experience some of the highest healthcare premium cost increases in the coming months:
Minnesota: To avoid total collapse in the state, Obamacare health insurers in Minnesota will be raising rates by an average of 60 percent next year.
Tennessee: The state of Tennessee is looking at a 59 percent weighted rate increase for healthcare premiums from its three major insurers Blue Cross Blue Shield, CIGNA and Humana.
Illinois: Illinois residents can expect a 45 percent average spike in their health care premium costs in 2017.
Georgia: Georgias top three health care companies are set to raise rates by an average of 33 percent.
Iowa: Iowans can expect around a 30 percent insurance rate increase by its two largest health insurance providers.
These increases are on top of the numerous insurance premium price hikes that have already taken place since the launch of the Affordable Care Act. (Boy, that name really sounds ridiculous now, doesnt it?)
Editors note: Ive discovered a medical cost-sharing program that will save you money AND covers the cost of integrative medicine! Click here to discover the program I personally use and fully support.
Healthcare alternatives that offer a BETTER way to protect your health
Americans do have some recourse. Viable opt-out options include joining a medical cost-sharing system which is a charitable way for a community of people to pool financial resources together and share in medical expenses.
Other options include buying an alternative or emergency policy, maxing out the medical components of auto insurance policies, negotiating lower costs for medical bills or expensive procedures, and only using generic versions of prescription drugs. Of course, living a health-focused lifestyle is the most important step you can take, and we strive to support you in this with the information provided on NaturalHealth365.
The cost of Obamacare in its current state is grave, with fewer choices available along with skyrocketing premiums. A Hillary Clinton administration would seek to double down on Obamacare and move the entire healthcare system into the governments control.
Click here if you would like to save money on your healthcare which includes coverage for your integrative medical expenses. (This program is personally endorsed by Jonathan Landsman)
References:
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/03/obamacare-insurance-markets-on-verge-of-collapse
https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/11/obamacare-rates-are-slated-to-rise-by-at-least-30.aspx
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-30/near-collapse-minnesota-insurers-up-obamacare-rates-by-half
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2013/12/25/top-8-ways-to-opt-out-of-obamacare
You need to educate yourself because the media won't do it
It's okay to influence elections when Democrats do it
(NaturalNews) If anything, this presidential election cycle has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is a clear double standard when it comes to the media . How the so-called "establishment" media does and does not report depends on which party the candidate belongs to.And to that end, clearly the establishment media have done all they can to protect and defend the most criminally corrupt candidate vying for the nation's highest office in the history of our republic: Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.A letter to the editors of thesums this up.The writer, Roger Yates from Aurora, says that no one should cast a ballot for Clinton until they've read all of the leaked emails that have been published by WikiLeaks."Those voting for Hillary Clinton, defending Clinton and supporting Clinton without reading the information reported by WikiLeaks are intellectually no different than those who criticize climate science without ever having read the science. In short, if you defend Clinton and ignore WikiLeaks, you have something in common with Sarah Palin," Yates writes.Whether or not you agree with his references to climate change (which is a hoax ) or the former governor of Alaska and onetime vice presidential nominee, his premise is spot-on: You simply cannot make an informed decision without reading documents and email exchanges thatAnd the reason why you ought to go and read these documents for yourself, Yates points out, is because the establishment media which is supposed to serve as a watchdog on government, regardless of who is in power has done such a lousy job of informing the public about what's in them ... all because most of those outlets are in the tank for (insert Democratic presidential candidate's name here).This year, that name just happens to be "Hillary Clinton ."If all of this sounds too "James Bond" for you too unreal to contemplate then you have to ask yourself why, since WikiLeaks began dumping all of these emails and documents, their servers have been under constant denial-of-service attacks , which is preventing the release ofdamaging evidence against Clinton?Who stands to benefit from preventing the further release of damaging information? Which country is about to select its next president? Which current president has the most to lose if Trump wins?And finally, there is this: When the bad news hitsright before election day, corrupt party members and leaders complain that it's "not fair" and "designed to influence the election."But when bad news conveniently hits anominee right before election day, then it's a matter of "good" and "responsible" governance.Cases in point: We all just witnessed the outrage from the Democratic-aligned media and Democratic talking heads and political figures after FBI Director James Comey announced last week that his bureau was examining 650,000 more emails that may be related to the original investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server to (mis)handle classified information.One Democratic leader, retiring (now millionaire) Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, even wanted Comey charged with a crime But when Hillary Clinton's husband was running for president the first time, in 1992, Democrats cheered when, just days before the election, special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh announced he would indict Reagan-era Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger over allegations that he knew about a controversial arms-for-Iranian hostages deal during the Reagan presidency. Although the indictment was later thrown out, it was widely believed at the time that the announcement made the weekend before the election ruined President George H. W. Bush's bid for a second term.There's more. In 2000, suddenly, just four days before the election between GOP nominee George W. Bush and Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore, it was revealed that the former had pleaded guilty to a DUI(Bush had since given up alcohol altogether and had been sober for more than a decade).In each case the corrupt media dutifully reported, and top Democrats never once complained that the announcements were being made to "influence the election."
Pennsylvania lawmakers dig in heels to defend fracking
(NaturalNews) Pennsylvania is ground zero for natural gas "fracking," a controversial energy extraction method that involves blasting chemicals into the ground to break up shale rock and release gas resources. But the Pennsylvania Medical Society recently came out in opposition to the destructive practice, voting unanimously to propose an immediate moratorium on fracking until its environmental and public health consequences are fully determined.At the 16,000-member society's recent annual meeting, the 300 members of its House of Delegates resoundingly called on the state to disallow fracking, proposing the establishment of an independent health registry to begin tracking the long-term impacts of fracking , primarily as it pertains to public health. Increasing evidence shows that fracking is producing more damage than benefits, at least as far as people and the environment are concerned.The resolution's author and former American Public Health Association president, Dr. Walter Tsou, reiterated the dangers associated with fracking, noting that the technique is actually much more problematic than previously believed. He referred to fracking as causing "increasing deleterious effects" that outweigh "any economic benefit," and says a meeting is already set up to determine how to get the state legislature, the Department of Health and Governor Tom Wolf to advance a moratorium."We do support a moratorium at this point because of questions that have been raised," Charles Cutler, a doctor of internal medicine in Montgomery County, and newly elected president of the society, told the. "Those questions now point to the need for a registry and more science and research to give us a better understanding about whether fracking is safe and what the risk is."But the medical society is expected to meet considerable opposition next month, as Pennsylvania lawmakers have repeatedly indicated that they aren't too keen on halting what amounts to an economic cash cow for the state. Speaking on behalf of Gov. Wolf, spokesman Jeffrey Sheridan told the public that natural gas is essential to the state's interests, and defended its continued extraction as both safe for the public and protective of the environment."The governor understands the importance of the natural gas industry and he wants the industry to succeed while protecting the health of our residents and our environment," Sheridan said. "The governor will continue to find ways to support the industry while ensuring we are protecting the environment and the health of Pennsylvania residents."If this were true, though, then lawmakers would have no problem setting up a health registry to compile concrete data on how fracking is affecting the state. It's one thing to claim that fracking is all sunshine and rainbows, but it's another to actually prove it and thus far, those sitting in Pennsylvania's state government have offered nothing in the form of proof to back their claims.On the contrary, independent science shows that fracking is a societal menace . A recent study by the Yale School of Public Health found that numerous carcinogenic substances are used in the fracking process, and that these substances are getting into the air and water, increasing children's risk of developing serious cancers like leukemia.Proponents of fracking have quoted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which has indicated its belief that fracking has been a "game changer" in reducing the types of environmental pollution that are destroying water supplies, food crops and public health.However, as noted in a statement by the group, "Protect Pennsylvania," which stands in support of a ban , "Pennsylvania has invested heavily into shale gas drilling, but in-state health studies have demonstrated worsening asthma, premature births, neurological and mental symptoms, and other adverse effects."
Crush the lying media
Throw off the shackles of corrupt government controlling our lives and indoctrinating our children
Legalize HEMP across America
End gunpoint medicine and child-destroying vaccine mandates
We the People are fed up: We are taking America back, no matter what the cost
(NaturalNews) Today We the People arefrom the lawless, corrupt, incompetent criminals running Washington and the lying leftist media.We're going to start by rejecting Hillary Clinton and the entire corrupt political class, most of whom, not in high office.Next, we're going towho have been running American into the ground for the last eight years. This effort is going to begin by completely repealing the disastrous, unconstitutional, ill-conceived health care fiasco known as "Obamacare."Even while that's happening, we're going toand stop watching their state-run propaganda parading around as news. All the "fake news" organizations -- Associated Presstitutes, Reuters, CNN, MSNBC and the Huffington Post -- are going to find themselvesas informed people reject the deep media corruption that has been on raw display during the 2016 election.But all that is just the start of what We the People have in store for the corrupt political establishment. Things really get under way when we begin. Watch for the "chain gang of corrupt democrats" to include Clinton, Lynch, Mills, Abedin, Weiner, Podesta and even many fake "journalists" who have willfully taken part in the criminal collusion "theft of power" racketeering we've all witnessed (thank you, Wikileaks). George Stephanopoulos, notably, has already said he and his wife are going to flee the country if Trump wins the election. It can't happen quickly enough.That's no doubt a strategy to try to avoid arrest and prosecution. In fact, I expect to see a whole slew of corrupt fake "journalists" indicted for their complicity in the most egregious criminal enterprise of political racketeering and fraud this nation has ever witnessed.As all this is happening, We the People are going toby rejecting the truly idiotic "Common Core" agenda that was deliberately designed to dumb down our children and turn them into obedience statist robots. We will take a stand forand steadfastly reject the sickening vein of government malfeasance that now infests our public schools and universities.As we are throwing the corrupt federal government out of our schools and small businesses -- with lowered taxes that can finally allow small business owners to create millions of new jobs -- we're going toand rip the Republican establishment to shreds, replacing it with a new party rooted in liberty, limited government and the rule of law. All the old school traitors and back stabbers who tried to destroy Donald Trump and hand this election to crooked Hillary -- John McCain, Paul Ryan, etc. -- are going to be handed their walking papers and shown the nearest exit.We're not stopping yet! Through President Trump, we're going to push hard toso that America's hard working farmers can grow a highly profitable industrial crop that produces seeds, edible oils, strong fibers, proteins and medicine.It's time to end the ludicrous criminalization of hemp and cannabis in America, and Big Pharma is predictably going to declare war on any leader who attempts to accomplish that outcome. Since Big Pharma owns Hillary Clinton, she would endeavor to keep hemp criminalized. But Trump isn't beholden to pharmaceutical interests, so he represents the best opportunity for America to finallyand legalize hemp farming -- and cannabis medicine -- nationwide.This is how wethat's destroying millions of lives while enriching the pharmaceutical cartels.With President Trump in the Oval Office, we're also going to push for, nullifying the horrific vaccine mandate law in California that's right now harming and killing innocent children.Only in a medical police state are the citizens told, at gunpoint, to inject their children with brain damaging substances. But that's exactly what has happened under the rule of genocidal leftist lunatics like California Gov. Jerry Brown -- a failed human who is driving California into Third World status while destroying human rights for tens of millions. It will only get worse under a criminal Clinton regime... she'll push vaccine mandates nationwide,or face arrest and imprisonment. Yes, it's correct to seein the genocidal policies of medical police state tyrants like Brown and Clinton.Don't believe me? In California, this single mother is being threatened with YEARS in prison for selling a homemade ceviche dish. Yes, in America, while Hillary Clinton goes free while committing treason, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence and ordering the murder of her political enemies, moms in California go to jail for selling SOUP!This is the "nightmare America" that We the People are going to finally halt... and then dutifully reverse. We each have a moral and constitutional obligation toby ending its criminal reign, indicting its criminal leaders and replacing it with a new system rooted in respect for the People.We're fed up, we've reached our limit of suffering, and we are going tothat's typified by Hillary Clinton, a corrupt woman who has accepted millions of dollars from foreign countries that routinely murder gays and torture women (Saudi Arabia and more).We've had enough! We will not remain silent. We will not back down. We will not turn over our firearms to a criminal government regime, and we will not recognize any illegitimate, fraudulent election outcome that the fake news system tries to pawn off as authentic.That's why if Hillary Clinton manages to pull off enough black box voting fraud to steal this election, We the People will stand behind Donald Trump as heWe will march on Washington in peaceful mass protest. We will maintain possession of all our firearms for the nation's collective self-defense and preservation. We will demand the rule of law be followed and applied to all those in power, and we will not quietly go away and surrender to four more years of tyranny under the despotic rule of a lawless crook.We the People are taking America back... back from the corrupt politicians, back from the greedy corporations and banks, and back from the evil, demonic globalist terrorists like George Soros who have deliberately sought the total destruction of this land (by instigating race wars, mass shootings of police and other heinous acts of terror).. Vote for Donald Trump as a starting point. Then get ready to stand beside him as he takes a chainsaw to the Washington establishment, ripping it to shreds and sending the corrupt criminoids to rot behind bars.Keep your powder dry and stand by for further instructions...
Detailed features taken right from the Nazi wardrobe
Hillary Clinton's policies closely resemble Nazi genocide
Nazi propaganda: Kill the retarded negros!
If America elects Hillary Clinton, the nation becomes the Fourth Reich
(NaturalNews) Symbolism is everything in the world of occult, demonic control over the masses, and yesterday Hillary Clinton saluted Lady Gaga in a full Nazi uniform, complete with a red armband and a Swastika-inspired black and white symbol on her chest.The message is crystal clear: Hillary Clinton represents theof tyranny and genocide, and she's thrilled to partner with Lady Gaga, a demonic, Satan-inspired cultural destroyer who celebrates the partial birth abortions of living human children.It's all IN YOUR FACE now as the demonic globalists go all-out for total control over humanity.Can you imagine the outcry if Donald Trump joined hands with a Nazi uniform wearing celebrity to promote his own candidacy? The leftist media would go ballistic, accusing Trump of being a fascist Hitler fan and KKK supporter. But when a Hillary Clinton supporter wears a full Nazi uniform, it's fully embraced by the morally corrupt left, which sees nothing wrong whatsoever with Nazi symbolism as long as it's displayed in support of their chosen candidate.If you loved Adolf Hitler, vote for Hillary Clinton to experience even more hatred, bigotry, fascist government and mass genocide.The uniform, which bears some resemblance to a Michael Jackson outfit from the 1990s, is detailed to closely mimic Nazi uniforms, including high neck collars, a striking red armband and a symbolic chest plate that resembles the Nazi swastika, which was originally based on the "Flower of Life" symbol.In one photo, Hillary Clinton clasps the hand of "Nazi" Gaga, smiling in her cult wardrobe pantsuit next to Nazi Gaga, who displays an angry, domineering sneer of authority. The message is clear: "We are going to rule over you stupid moronic voters with an iron fist and a totalitarian, genocidal leader who will murder her opposition."Hillary smiles with glee...It's not mere coincidence that Hillary Clinton celebrates her appearance with Nazi Gaga: She's completely in favor of vaccine mandates thatThis echoes the Nazi policies of mandatory euthanasia that saw the state ordering the deaths of handicapped, mentally retarded or elderly citizens "for the good of society."The exact same anti-humanitarian argument is made by people like Hillary Clinton for pushing toxic vaccines, Monsanto's GMOs and deadly pharmaceuticals onto children and senior citizens across America.While the U.S. government has historically carried out numerous medical experiments on African Americans, the Nazi regime ran posters like this, which called for killing off the "retarded negros" of that era:Here's another poster which closely follows the "death panels" pillar of Hillary Clinton's socialized medicine scheme. Words in italics are translated from the poster:There's no other way to say it: If Americans are stupid enough to elect Hillary Clinton, they will be thrusting a genocidal serial murderer an anti-human demonic totalitarian into power. The end results will likely include nuclear war with Russia, a new civil war in America, massive economic destruction, the overrunning of America with illegal alien occupiers, the economic destruction of the nation, the collapse of the bankrupt medical system, the vanishing of pension funds, race wars in the streets and mass chaos, violence, looting and arson across America's cities.This is all well after the celebration of "victory," of course, which will see the stock market skyrocket and liberal cheers all around. After the faux celebration dies down, the real cost of electing a tyrant into power begins to emerge.Whatever you do today,. Vote to give America one last chance at liberty and freedom.
'You can vote just not on the machine'
One party the GOP has always been for strict voter ID requirements
(NaturalNews) The Democratic Party loves to ridicule anyone who suggests that voter fraud is real, and yet, especially during the current election cycle we've seen example after example of just how easy it is to commit.Thanks to Project Veritas, known for its bombshell undercover investigations, we've got another clear example of vote fraud in the deep blue Democratic stronghold of New York. A newly released video shows a Project Veritas journalist is offered Huma Abedin's ballot while dressed in full burka in New York City.Alan Schulkin, a Democratic Elections Commissioner in the Big Apple goes on to explain how voter fraud can be committed when people wear burkas inside polling locations on Election Day.The undercover journalist notes that anyone can dress up in Muslim dress, hide their face and pretend to be something they're not. And when she approached a polling official early in the video, he simply asked for her address which she gave and then he directed her where to go and vote.No identification check ofWhat's more, the undercover journalist was pretending to be Huma Abedin, the close advisor to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
During the video, the poll worker asked the undercover journalist her name, to which she responded "Abedin." The poll worker then searched for "Abedin" on the registered voter list but could not find it.Next, she is seen and heard asking the undercover journalist if she would sign an affidavit, then asks her if she will be voting Democrat or Republican. The journalist responds, "Huma Abedin is a registered Democrat."But then, the poll worker says this: "I don't have your name in the book,."The poll worker later explains that the paper ballot option is available but the machine option is not, because "Huma Abedin" is not in the registration book.In her conversation with Schulkin, the undercover journalist puts forth a number of scenarios involving women wearing burkas who could easily defraud the system all of which Schulkin agrees with. In fact, he himself makes the startling admission that because election officials cannot "discriminate" against voters by doing something crazy like requiring a voter ID voters don't have to prove that they are who they say are."Your vote isn't really counting because they can go in there with a burka on and you don't know if they are a [legitimate] voter," he told the undercover journalist. "Your vote gets discounted because they come in with a burka on and they can vote."He went on to say that while many people believe such lax standards are "a liberal thing to do," he nonetheless takes his vote and the legitimate votes of other New Yorkers "seriously." He said he didn't want to cast his ballot only to see 10 other people come in and negate it by voting for an opposing candidate when they're not even registered or otherwise allowed to vote (non-citizen).He said he believed that such lax standards were done with the best of intentions (NOT the case), but he nonetheless sees "a lot of bad results."The fact is, the Democratic Party is the party of voter fraud . They must obviously know that a majority of the country does not agree with their Marxist-socialist agenda, so they figure the only way they can attain and then keep power is by illicit means, and that includes making it very easy to commit vote fraud and then exploiting the weak voter identification process.The fact is this: States, not the federal government, have traditionally had the greatest responsibility in ensuring that onlycast ballots during federal elections. In addition, federal law requires that only citizens vote, under penalty of law.And the Republican Party has been the biggest political advocate for ensuring that voter ID laws are strong and followed.In order to prevent just the sort of vote fraud exposed by Project Veritas.
Multiple instances of vote fraud
Democrats practice soft bigotry in order to convince poor, minorities they are being hurt by voter ID laws
(NaturalNews) The same Democrats who gave you mandatory vaccination in California, oppose school choice, accept money from agribusiness giants like Monsanto and support GMOs are now wanting to make sure they steal every election possible from here on out.Which means, they don't really care about democracy or the future of our republic. The only future they want is one that sees them perpetually in power and never being challenged about policy, no matter how stupid or ridiculous or failed they are.While Republican lawmakers and the party itself certainly have their warts, at least the GOP has consistently been the party that seeks to protect the integrity of our voting system. In Republican-led state after Republican-led state, strong voter ID laws have passed in recent years, only to see them struck down by liberal federal judges in lawsuits brought by "progressive" Democrat-aligned groups that shop around for the right courts in which to file their suits.Using excuses like, "voter ID laws are racist," and "voter ID laws disenfranchise poor, minority voters," left-wing judges sitting on federal benches have consistently sided with Democrat-aligned groups to weaken our system and put elections at serious risk of being stolen, just like GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has charged.Is vote fraud real? You bet it is. As reported byrecently:-- In Colorado this year, there have been multiple instances of dead people attempting to vote. In one stunning instance, a woman named Sara Sosa, who died in 2009, somehow cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, officials discovered.-- In Virginia, voting authorities found that nearly 20 voter applications were turned in under the names of dead people.-- In Texas, authorities have been investigating criminals who are utilizing a technique called " vote harvesting" to illicitly garner votes for their preferred candidates (who just so happen to be Democrats). "Harvesting" is the practice of illegally obtaining signatures of real voters in order to vote in their name, and without their consent, for whomever candidate the criminal supports.There's more. In February 2012 the Pew Research Center published a report citing evidence that:-- More than 1.8 million deceased persons were still listed as voters;-- About 2.75 million people are registered to vote in more than one state;-- About 24 million one of every eight voter registrations throughout the country are no longer valid or incredibly inaccurate.Of about 146 million registered voters, that means that nearly 18 million invalid voter registrations enough to swing presidential elections in a number of states.So why do Democrats spend so much time, money and effort opposing voter ID laws? Quite simply,As J. Christian Adams explained at, one way they do this is by pretending that electing anyone other than Democrats will mean a return to Jim Crow-era laws and other legislation that promotes official racism as ridiculous as that sounds."This was made starkly clear to me when I learned that a 3rd grade teacher in a government-run school was telling her students that Republicans were trying to take away the right to vote for black people, so they better get their parents to vote against Republicans," Adams wrote.It's hard to believe that an educated person in America today actually believes such nonsense that a modern political party wants to deny African-Americans the right to vote! That's outrageous and what makes that worse is that this personBut there you have it.Adams also points out that the Democratic Party is run by soft bigots who believe that without their help, poor and minority voters are simply too stupid or incapable of voting on their own. Democrats believe that they must intervene and oppose voter ID laws in order to empower the poor, lowly minority. Adams said he learned of that attitude when a Department of Justice lawyer told him once that he believed blacks were more likely than whites to forget their voter ID because their lives were "more disorganized.". And low expectations.The fact is, it makes no sense whatsoever, if everything were equal (and on the up-and-up), for Democrats, or any political party, to oppose voter ID. After all, you need a legitimate photo identification to get into any federal building or courthouse (including state and local courts), to board a plane, to buy cigarettes and alcohol, to get onto a military base, and for other purposes. You can't even get into some major sporting events without one.But you shouldn't have to have oneand prove that you're a citizen? The Democratic Party doesn't think so. It's because they can't "win" on their ideals, so they have to conjure up phony issues in order to scare people into supporting them.That said, any election that does not require a legitimate photo identification so that voters canis not a legitimate election.
(NaturalNews) CBS News is now reporting that voting machines in Pennsylvania -- a hotly contested battleground state -- are immediately switching Donald Trump votes to Hillary Clinton.Via CBS Pittsburgh We are then told that the machines were resolved after being "recalibrated," which means that, apparently,Friends, this is total bulls##t. Machines don't have to be "calibrated" to accurately record a vote. They are being programmed to switch votes to Clinton in the states where the election is close. Why is this happening? Because the criminal democrats don't trust the voters, and they refuse to allow voters to determine the outcome of this election.This means, of course, that Donald Trump is going to have to overcome extreme fraud and vote theft in order to win this election. It's just one more reason to vote for Trump no matter what. Tell the establishment you REJECT their fraud and theft of power.If he loses,and call for an immediate investigation into the fraud.
this is what I was talking about, they fixed it but it was on some nut shit at first. pic.twitter.com/GO5Y9FCnYN
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Researchers discover just how widespread poaching still is as they found that most ivory in the black market come from elephants killed less than three years ago.
According to a report from Los Angeles Times, although the elephant population is in rapid decline, the demand for their tusks aren't ceasing. In fact, killing these majestic animals for ivory have been continuing with hardly any disturbance.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers studied 231 samples of ivory that were confiscated between 2002 and 2014. Specifically, they analyzed the carbon-14 in the pulp cavity, which would reveal the last two or three months of growth before the death of the animal.
They found that about 90 percent of the collected ivory came from elephants that died less than three years before the confiscation by the government. Only one out of the 231 samples had a lag time of over six years.
"That means all of the ivory that's being seized by customs is [from] very recently killed elephants," lead author Thure Cerling said in the Los Angeles Times report. "So indeed, the crisis is severe if we're going to preserve this species on our planet."
A report from Smithsonian Magazine pointed out that there was a recent spike in elephant deaths. The creatures' population in savannahs dipped by 30 percent in the last seven years, while the ones living in the forests saw their numbers drop by a devastating 62 percent in the decade between 2002 and 2013. The recent study strongly supports the link between the loss of elephant lives and the thriving ivory trade.
Elizabeth Bennett, vice president of species conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society, explained that it's important that countries around the world become more committed in shutting down ivory trade. She said, "If all domestic markets globally were illegal, it would be much more difficult to sell the newly poached ivory. And without a ready market, the incentives to poach and traffic are reduced or removed."
The Chinese government has recently passed a cybersecurity law that bans anonymity among many other online etiquette-based regulations.
The bill not only tightens restrictions on online freedom of speech but also raises more concerns that it could effectively lead to a country-wide internet censorship.
It could be remembered that the ruling Communist Party is already overseeing what is called the Great Firewall, which aggressively blocks websites and removes sensitive internet content. This includes Beijing's human rights record and criticisms against the government.
According to Phys.org, the new law bans users from publishing information that "damages national honor," "disturbs economic or social order," or is aimed at "overthrowing the socialist system."
The new law also requires companies to verify the identities of users that are using the Internet. This effectively makes it illegal to go online anonymously. The law also includes provisions to protect the country's networks and private user information.
Earlier drafts of the regulation already drew flak from rights groups and businesses, which objected to its "vague language."
Companies, in particular, expressed concern about language that would require them to cooperate with China to "protect national security." This appears to be too broad a phrase to be included in the final version of the law.
Patrick Poon, China researcher at overseas-based rights group Amnesty International, said this effectively forces Internet companies to be "agents of the state."
The government has long reserved the right to control and censor online content, but it was increased in 2013. Internet activists and internet "rumors" were tracked and "resolved." A lot of bloggers and journalists have even been detained, along with a larger campaign to control social media.
Under the new law, Chinese internet users can face three years in prison if they write defamatory messages that are reposted 500 times or more. Web users can even be jailed if their offensive posts are viewed more than 5,000 times.
Three days after the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change became official, nations gathered in Marrakech, Morocco on Monday, Nov. 7, for the first meeting under the pact.
According to the United Nations (UN), the conference will give UN member states and the world the opportunity to maintain momentum on climate action and continue strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change.
"Our challenge is to sustain the momentum that has propelled the Agreement into force," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement during a conference held at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The meeting, also called the 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22), aimed to iron out the implementation details needed to put the agreement into action - including financial requirements and how to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
"Now's the time to turn the promise of Paris into action and build on it," Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, who leads the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) delegation to COP22, said in a statement. "We can come out of COP 22 with a clear work plan that looks ahead to two years from now, in 2018."
In 2018, the parties of the Paris Agreement will meet again for a dialogue to reflect on their progress on the implementation of the agreement's measures.
The Paris Agreement seeks to combat the devastating effects of climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions to a level scientists believe could prevent global temperatures from rising above 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The global pact entered into force on Nov. 4 after countries representing 55 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions committed to join the agreement.
Financing the Change
One of the major concerns about the pact is how to finance the transition to a lower-carbon energy system. According to a report by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, reallocation requires $90 trillion worth of investments on renewable infrastructures.
Developed countries such as the U.S., the European Union and China will carry the heaviest load, including a pledge to jointly raise $100 billion by 2020 to help developing nations cope with climate change.
The Role of Developing Countries
The COPs also aim to clarify how developing nations could structure the limits of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Aljazeera reports. Conferences will aim to help developing nations assert their needs, which would allow energy heavyweights such as the U.S. and China determine the support they need to provide and allow them to maintain the goal while maximizing the efficiency of their resources.
Resolving 'Conflicts of Interest'
According to a report from The Guardian, the world's biggest fossil fuel companies will be represented by groups and will be granted backdoor access to UN climate talks. Global energy companies have an important role to play in the implementation of the rules set by the nations and will discuss with countries the necessary steps to curb carbon emissions.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is now working on the detailed definition of the proposed Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). If approved, AIM will be the first-ever spacecraft to probe a binary asteroid system.
ESA's AIM project will target the double asteroid system called Didymos in October 2020. According to the agency, the mission will be part of the first planetary defense method demonstration together with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor spacecraft. The mission will also demonstrate new technology that will allow the spacecraft to autonomously navigate the asteroid system.
Now, companies across Europe are teaming up to discuss the different aspects of the mission.
"We've started our detailed definition work with industry, while the decision on full implementation of the mission will be taken at ESA's Council of Ministers next month," Ian Carnelli, mission manager, said in a statement. "This is a very important step to maintain our pace and test new approaches enabling faster mission implementation by integrating ESA, industry and payload teams."
AIM is a mission with a sense of urgency because the asteroid Didymos continues to move for a close encounter with Earth on 2022. The agency aims to maintain the pace, as over 40 companies across 15 ESA Member States have been shaping a highly innovative and fast mission.
The mission is scheduled to arrive a few months ahead of DART's impact. Upon arrival, the AIM spacecraft, which is about the size of a desk, will transition into a heliocentric co-flying orbit and will conduct the initial characterization phase of Didymos. The spacecraft will then deploy two CubeSats for complementary observations and the Mascot-2 microlander to carry out a detailed characterization of the asteroid's deep interior.
"It is inspiring to see the progress on the AIM design as NASA continues this innovative collaboration with ESA in the joint Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment," Lindley Johnson, program executive of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, said in the same statement.
"Our joint concept has significant strategic benefit to both space agencies. While both missions would have substantial independent results, this collaborative endeavor will yield considerably greater benefits for international efforts on asteroid impact threat mitigation," Johnson added.
Two-headed sharks may seem to be a rare phenomenon, but they do exist.
To make matters even more surprising, a growing number of such sharks have been spotted in many years of late; however, scientists are perplexed for their springing up in huge numbers. Last month, scientists came across a shark whose uterus had a two-headed fetus in Spain. The only recognizable two-headed sharks in the past came from species that gave birth to babies straight away, as mentioned by the BBC.
Another fisherman found an embryo of a two-headed blue shark in the Indian Ocean in 2008, reports the National Geographic. A 2011 study found conjoined twins in blue sharks that were discovered in the Gulf of California. Blue sharks have produced the highest number of two-headed embryos since they can carry up to 50 babies at a time, says Felipe Galvan-Magana, leader of the study at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico.
In a new study published in the Journal of Fish Biology , researchers were able to recognize an Atlantic sawtail catshark's embryo with two heads. This embryo was not the commonly found two-headed beast and is the first specimen from a shark that lays eggs, also referred to as oviparous sharks. Scientists are now puzzled on figuring out the occurrence of two-headed sharks.
According to Nicolas Ehemann, a student at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico, the population of sharks is on a decline mode because of overfishing, increasing the dangers of defects during birth like polycephaly, a condition of having multiple heads. Other notable causes may include metabolic disorders, pollution, and viral infections, according to National Geographic. Another report from Popular Science indicates that this may be seen because more researchers have now started examining shark embryos, with a growing number of journals publishing their discoveries.
Magana has seen other strange sharks too like a "Cyclops" shark, which had a single eye at the front of its head. It was caught in 2011 off Mexico.
Chance the Rapper led a "parade to the polls" Monday evening after performing at a free concert in downtown Chicago.
The Chi-town native, whose real name is Chancellor Bennett, hosted and headlined a get-out-of-the-vote event at the Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park.
The concert, sponsored by Chance's non-profit organization Social Works, featured performances from a slew of local talent, including rapper and activist Malcolm London, rock outfit Twin Peaks and Chance's brother, rapper Taylor Bennett.
After the show, Chance led concertgoers through rush-hour traffic to an early-voting site, where there was already a long line of voters waiting to vote. Chance went inside and the polling place cast his ballot.
But this isn't the "Coloring Book" rapper's first dip in the politics pool. In September, he teamed with the NAACP for its #StayWokeAndVote campaign to register concertgoers to vote during stops of his Magnificent Coloring World Tour.
Chance is the son of Ken Bennett, who served as Mayor Rahm Emanuels first deputy chief of staff and director of the office of public engagement before taking a job with Chicagos tourism bureau earlier this year, Crains Chicago Business reported. Additionally, Bennett previously served under Mayor Harold Washington and President Barack Obama.
The threats against Cary Critess family started right after his brothers name flashed across television screens Saturday night for sparking a major security scare at a Trump rally in Nevada.
Cary, who lives in Alameda, California, shares the same last name as Austyn Crites, the 33-year-old self-described Republican from Reno who says he was attacked for holding a Republicans against Trump sign. Secret Service agents rushed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump off the stage when someone yelled out that Crites had a gun. No weapon was found, and Crites was eventually released, but not before he was placed in handcuffs by police and searched.
For someone like me, this particular event will in fact change the rest of my life, Crites, an Eagle Scout, told the Reno Gazette-Journal. Its not just Crites life that has changed forever. His parents, brother and sister-in-law have all been targeted by pro-Trump groups, and even received death threats.
People are doxing my family and releasing our address for attacks, said 33-year-old Jolene Hayes, who is married to Cary Crites.
In a message being passed around on pro-Trump sites with their address, one commenter says: By now either a) burnt to the ground, or b) riddled with bullet holes.
One message threatened that when Trump becomes president hes going to have us killed, Hayes said.
My husband has screenshots of the direct messages, Hayes said. Our parents had to disconnect their phone and change their email address because they were getting so many calls and emails. Luckily the address listed on these sites is an old address, so no one has showed up to their current residence. I feel bad for whoever lives in their old house.
Hayes said the harassment has not gotten worse over the weekend. It seems to have mellowed out to the family 24-hour news cycle and all that. Were still getting some weird comments. Its only been a day or two since this all happened. So it might be too early to really say if they will stay mellow. I think if Trump loses Nevada, we might catch it again.
Hayes is in touch with their brother-in-law, who had to take down his Facebook page because of all the threats and comments he was receiving, but is now back to being active on the social media platform, answering questions about why his name shows up on Wikileaks (He says its because of a years-old book purchase and newsletter subscription to a company called Stratfor, which provides geopolitical analysis and whose security was compromised, resulting in his information being released online.
Hayes and her husband have received an outpouring of support from friends, family, neighbors and even complete strangers on their Facebook page.
In a Facebook post Sunday, Hayes wrote: This whole thing has been intense. Although our family has been receiving many threats and insults, I want to point out that the most striking thing that we have experienced is the outpouring of love from our community. As my dad always says, Evil prevails when good men do nothing. It's nice to know there are more good than evil. <3 to you all. 2 days until this insanity is over! Please let us all live with the results in peace.
She continues to vociferously support her brother-in-law on Facebook, defending his actions: "We need to stand together and NEVER, ever let Trump become President. We all need to vocally condemn this behavior by candidates. And then vote against them and for candidates who embrace true American ideals: "Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, etc."
Hayes has not contacted Alameda police yet. A spokesperson for the police department said they have not been made aware of any reported incidents involving the Crites.
I kind of just want all this to go away. Hayes said.
Ocean waves as high as 20 feet are expected over the next two days across coastal areas from Point Reyes to the north down to Big Sur, according to the National Weather Service.
A high-surf advisory goes into effect Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday evening, with swells exceeding 20 feet, the weather service said. The advisory includes coastal areas in Sonoma, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.
Meteorologists and Coast Guard officials issued warnings about sneaker waves that can pull unsuspecting beach goers into the sea. People walking along the beach should not turn their backs to the sea and fishermen should avoid fishing from rocks or jetties, officials said.
Also strong rip currents could quickly exhaust swimmers, they said.
Aside from the high surf, Tuesday is expected to be mostly sunny with temperatures reaching into the low to mid 70s in most areas around the bay, according to forecasters.
First he boiled down the golden state's meaty propositions into 17-syllable phrases. Now, Democratic advocate and lover of words Damian Carroll is bidding farewell to election season with a comedic poetry contest.
The Southern California man posted his own five-line limerick on Facebook Tuesday morning and challenged the social media community to give it their best shot.
For those who don't recall their school-time poetry lesson, limericks are humorous poems with a distinct rhyming structure.
Almost all of the Facebook commenters happened to be pro-Hillary Clinton supporters and weren't afraid to pen some poetry attacking the opposition.
Britta Kumley praised Clinton for her perseverance and promise.
That woman did make them suspicious.
They said she was much too ambitious.
But she kept at her work,
Outfoxed the orange jerk,
And the future looked quite auspicious.
Mel Powell predicted a landslide result.
We've all seen the guy with the tower,
Who urgently wanted more power.
Then pantsuits came out,
It turned into a rout,
And the orange guy slunk away, sour.
As for the competition, Carroll joked that "three drunken Irishmen" will judge the entries and, once the 45th president of the United States is announced, hand a bottle of Jameson or Bushmills Irish whiskey to the winner.
Carrol is the national director of the charity Vision to Learn in Brentwood, Calif. and a self-identified Democratic activist. He was also political director for Bobby Shriver for Los Angeles County Supervisor and director of special projects for Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian. He ran for state Assembly in 2013 and was a one-time substitute teacher.
Among the many decisions San Mateo County voters will make on Election Day are one countywide and 14 city-specific ballot measures mandating everything from new taxes on your property bills to rent control measures in two cities on the Peninsula.
Learn a bit about each of them here:
SAN MATEO COUNTY SALES TAX: For San Mateo County voters, Measure K will ask you to decide on whether to extend the current half-cent sales tax rate.
The county states that the current tax rate contributes $85 million annually to the general budget and that it will allocate these funds to retaining and improving critical facilities and services such as affordable homes, public transit, combating human trafficking, addressing sea level rise, safety, educational programs, parks and low-income healthcare.
The initial tax increase was decided on in November of 2012, bringing San Mateo County to a similar tax rate as Alameda and Los Angeles counties.
At the time, it brought San Mateo County's sales tax to one of the highest in the state.
The current county tax rate is set to expire in 2023 and would continue until that year in the event of a no vote. In the event of a "yes" vote, the additional half-cent increase would continue until 2042.
SAN MATEO RENT CONTROL: For voters in San Mateo, Measure Q asks voters to decide on whether to limit the annual rent increase to between one percent and four percent, allowing compounded increases not to exceed eight percent in a single year.
Rent control measures have been one of the most highly debated local ballot measures in the county.
It is estimated that the measure would cost approximately $2 to 2.5 million per year for the city to administer and would be paid by a rental housing fee created by the city to charge landlords of some rental properties.
SAN MATEO FIRE SERVICES CONTRACTING AMENDMENT: For voters in San Mateo, Measure L asks voters to decide on whether to eliminate the city requirement to own a fire department, allowing it to contract with other agencies for those services.
Consolidation of fire and other services has been in the news frequently within San Mateo County cities.
An editorial in 2011 outlined the rare frequency in which peninsula cities were merging services in order to save costs.
However, it is not the only Bay Area county to do so.
Following budget restraints, Contra Costa also shut down four fire stations in 2012.
REDWOOD CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT PARCEL TAX: For Redwood City School District residents, Measure U asks voters to decide on whether to increase the parcel tax that charges $65 for each property unit to $85.
The county states that this tax would exclude seniors and contribute $1.4 million annually to local schools.
The current tax rate is set to expire in one year and would either increase in 2017 in the event of a yes vote or discontinue in the event of a no vote.
BAYSHORE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICT BONDS: For Bayshore Elementary School District residents, Measure S asks voters to decide on issuing up to $7 million in bonds to pay for finishing a new school, facility improvements and ADA accommodations.
The district estimates taxes needed for this bond are approximately $30 per $100,000 of assessed property value, so it estimates a $700,000 property holder would pay $210.00 annually if passed.
BURLINGAME SCHOOL DISTRICT BOND: For voters in Burlingames School District, Measure M asks voters to decide on issuing up to $56 million in bonds to pay for facility improvements and repairs, ADA accommodations and safety measures.
The district estimates taxes needed for this bond is approximately $22 per $100,000 of assessed property value, so it estimates a $700,000 property holder would pay $154 annually if passed.
PARCEL TAX FOR JEFFERSON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICT PARCEL: For voters in Jefferson Elementary School District, serving Daly City, Colma, Broadmoor and Pacifica, Measure T asks voters to decide on an annual parcel tax that would charge $68 for each property unit in the district.
The county states that this would exclude seniors and go to improve math, science, technology, reading and writing as well as securing high quality teachers in the district.
PACIFICA LIBRARY BOND: For voters in Pacifica, Measure N asks voters to decide on issuing up to $33.5 million in bonds to pay for a new library.
Estimates on the cost per household, are approximately $17.84 per $100,000 of assessed property value next year, so a $700,000 property holder would pay roughly $124.88 annually if passed.
BURLINGAME RENT CONTROL: For voters in Burlingame, Measure R asks voters to decide on repealing a previously adopted measure prohibiting regulation of rental prices and enacting a maximum increase of a units rent price to 4 percent as well as creating a commission to regulate fees required by the measure.
It would also require just cause eviction restrictions on some rental residential units.
Advocates and critics of rent control measures in Burlingame and San Mateo have been rallying support for months with the hope of swaying the results in their favor.
PACIFICA ROCKAWAY QUARRY RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT: For voters in Pacifica, Measure W asks voters to decide on whether to allow a residential development of up to 206 multi-family units at the Rockaway Quarry.
The measure states that 75 percent of the Quarry land be permanently protected open space and that public trails must provide public beach access from Rockaway Beach to Mori Point.
EAST PALO ALTO RENT CONTROL REVISIONS: For voters in East Palo Alto, Measure J asks voters to decide on whether to change language in a previous ordinance and state that the maximum rent increase be restricted to 10 percent per year.
EAST PALO ALTO SALES TAX: For those in East Palo Alto, Measure P asks voters to decide on a one-half cent tax on retail purchases.
The county states that the $1.8 million generated annually would go to police, streets, parks, infrastructure - and recreation services including youth and senior programs.
EAST PALO ALTO LANDLORD TAX: For those in East Palo Alto, Measure O asks voters to decide on whether to charge landlords (with exemptions on some properties) owning five or more residential rental units a 1.5 percent annual tax.
The county states that the $600,000 generated annually from this tax would go to affordable housing, displacement and homelessness protection services.
BELMONT SALES TAX: For voters in Belmont, Measure I asks voters to decide on whether to increase the current tax rate by 0.5 percent. The city currently receives 1 percent of the 9 percent retail sales in Belmont and would continue to do so in the event of a no vote.
The county states that the $1.3 million generated annually for 30 years would go to fixing potholes, repairing 69 miles of city streets, maintaining 911 emergency response, repairing deteriorating storm drains, reducing traffic congestion and improving public safety on neighborhood streets.
PARCEL TAX FOR DALY CITY: For voters in Daly City, Measure V asks voters to decide on whether to adopt a parcel tax that would charge $162 for each property unit for the next five years.
Daly City residents would pay the extra amount on their annual property tax bill.
The county states that the $3.8 million annual revenue it would generate would go to police and fire personnel and related operational costs.
Dont forget to vote. San Mateo County residents can check their voter information here or call 650-312-5222.
The Alameda County District Attorney's Office said Monday that it won't file criminal charges against any of the four people, including Berkeley City Council candidate Nanci Armstrong-Temple, who were arrested during a police enforcement action at a homeless encampment last Friday.
Prosecutors said their decision not to file charges was based "in the interest of justice" but didn't elaborate.
A city of Berkeley spokesman said the city began clearing out the encampment in front of the Berkeley Food & Housing Project, also known as the HUB, at 1901 Fairview St. at Adeline Street, near the Ashby BART station at 5 a.m. Friday after warning the people there several times to pack up and leave.
About 20 homeless activists had set up small tent cities at that location and several nearby sites during the past month to protest homeless services coordinated by the HUB.
Homeless activist Mike Zint, of First They Came for the Homeless, said homeless activists are upset with the city's new system for allocating aid to people who live on the street because they think the HUB is disorganized, makes it hard for people to get help and sends homeless people out of the area to get housing.
Armstrong-Temple's communications director, Debra Avery, said Armstrong-Temple, who is one of two candidates challenging three-term incumbent Darryl Moore in District 2 in West Berkeley, came to the encampment after Zint issued a call for community support.
Avery said Armstrong-Temple was injured while she was being arrested for offering assistance to 65-year-old disabled activist Barbara Brust, who Avery said provides support at the corner of Adeline and Fairview streets.
Avery said police officers told Armstrong-Temple that she might be charged with lynching, the term the state uses for removing someone from police custody.
Avery said Brust, who founded Consider the Homeless, was also injured while she was arrested for allegedly disturbing the peace.
Activists from the Anti Police-Terror Project and the Nanci For Berkeley Campaign demonstrated outside the Wiley Manuel Courthouse Monday morning in anticipation of the possibility that Armstrong-Temple would be charged and arraigned.
A day before the election, Bay Area politicos are training their eyes on District 16's contentious Assembly race between Republican incumbent Catharine Baker and Democratic challenger Cheryl Cook-Kallio.
In addition to being one of the most expensive state assembly battles this election, it is also one that signals a pivotal moment in local politics. Should Baker lose her district which stretches from Livermore in Alameda County to Orinda in central Contra Costa County the Bay Area will likely be without a Republican lawmaker in the Assembly, state Senate and Congress.
That potential outcome has given Democrats aiming for a super majority cause to celebrate, while sending Republican strategists bristling. Heres a rundown of the candidates' platforms, as well as potential weaknesses that may hurt their chances on Tuesday.
Issues and Endorsements:
Baker, who raised just under $2.3 million in campaign contributions by October, is fiscally conservative but socially moderate. She snagged the endorsement of The San Francisco Chronicle and the East Bay Times, as well as an exhaustive list of local politicians and organizations.
Her campaign has stressed the importance of bipartisanship and has a record of working across the aisle on legislation. Baker has a mixed record and is not afraid to go against party lines on some major issues, including some stances on gun control. You can see her voting history here.
Cook-Kallio, a former teacher and Pleasanton City Council member, raised just under $2.4 million in campaign contributions by October and is a pro-choice, pro-gun control Democrat.
She received the endorsement of President Barack Obama, Gov. Jerry Brown and Planned Parenthood, as well as the California Teachers Association. Having never run for a statewide office, she does not have a voting record to compare to Bakers.
Weaknesses: The Trump Effect on Baker
Nationwide, prominent GOP leaders and pundits have expressed concern for down-ballot politicians in the wake of Donald Trumps candidacy, fearing that the business mogul may squash turnout in critical districts. Baker is one of those down-ballot lawmakers who could suffer as a result.
Although the assemblywoman eked out a victory against Cook-Kallio in the primary race, turnout remains crucial in the Democratic-leaning district.
Matt Shupe, a republican strategist, said the presence of Trump has posed challenges.
"This roller-coaster of a campaign has made modeling voter turnout very difficult at times, he said. ...Baker has worked hard to get a lot of bi-partisan support, but despite that, turnout still has a significant role to play in every election.
Baker attempted to distance herself from the real-estate mogul and said she'll be writing in Condoleezza Rice for the presidency. Still, simply sharing a party with Trump has given plenty of fuel to the Cook-Kallio campaign, which has sought to capitalize on a link between the two conservatives.
Republicans Donald Trump and Catharine Baker oppose equal pay for equal work and oppose common-sense gun laws, read one Cook-Kallio mailer sent to residents.
In response, Baker told NBC Bay Area that the ad did not align with her voting record and called it desperate.
That was just hyperpartisan even desperate tactics on the part of my opponent to change the race from my record, which matches very well with this district and to other issues, she said.
Baker noted that it would be difficult to predict the impact of Trump on voter turnout, but said it hasnt affected her campaigns ground game.
Its hard to know how the Presidential race, and who the nominees are, will effect what really happens in California and in particular this district she said. But our campaign strategy is the same as its been all along, and that is to really get out the vote.
Negative Ads, Website Could Hurt Cook-Kallio:
While both campaigns have sent out a flurry of mailers and commercials attacking one another, those against Cook-Kallio have been especially pointed.
Perhaps the most damaging of the advertisements suggests that Cook-Kallio has made backroom deals with Sacramento special interests and lobbyists in exchange for cash. Another alleges that she ditched meetings while serving on Pleasantons city council.
Unfortunately for Cook-Kallio, both of those advertisements can be seen on the slyly-titled CherylCookKallio.net, a website that is operated by the Baker campaign but, due to name, could easily be confused with Democrats official site.
Will Hurd, the campaign manager for Cook-Kallio, called the ads a last-ditch effort to sidetrack voters from Bakers record.
Republican Catharine Baker and her conservative allies are trying to distract voters from (Baker's) dismal record on women and the environment," he said. "With Bakers failing grades from Planned Parenthood, League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, these attack ads are all they have.
Find out more information:
You can find out more information by checking out NBC Bay Areas voter guide here. You can also check campaign spending here, and find out which politicians support the causes you care about here.
Gillian Edevane covers Contra Costa County for NBC Bay Area. Contact her at Gillian.Edevane@NBCuni.com.
A contentious turf war between two South Bay cities has resulted in legal action.
Santa Clara is suing San Jose over a planned six-building development that would expand Santana Row, but the court move may be rooted in retaliation, according to the Mercury News.
If the 974,000 square-foot project gets off the ground, the Old Century 22 and 23 movie theaters located near Stevens Creek and Winchester Boulevards in San Jose would be demolished to make way for the shopping center's expansion, the Mercury News reported.
The city of Santa Clara utilized the California Environmental Quality Act to argue that the new development, which is coined Santana West, would lead to snarled traffic and not construct much-needed housing in the area, according to the Mercury News.
San Jose city leaders responded to the litigation and said that its neighbors to the west filed the suit in animosity, the Mercury News reported.
A planned development project near Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium has been stuck in the mud because of San Jose's legal efforts. City leaders representing the capital of Silicon Valley in July blocked Santa Clara's CityPlace office project, which would establish 25,000 jobs if approved, because they argued that there was not enough housing to accommodate the wave of new workers. Legislators also complained that traffic flows near the proposed office space would become even more congested for San Jose residents living nearby.
Both projects will remain in a holding pattern until litigation is settled, according to the Mercury News.
SAN FRANCISCO - A San Francisco surgeon was arrested last week on suspicion of 99 felony crimes in connection with prescribing opioid narcotics, but the District Attorney's Office declines to file charges, officials said Monday.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported 49-year-old Christopher Owens, a UCSF surgeon who works at the university-affiliated Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco, was arrested last Thursday.
He had remained in custody as recently as Monday afternoon, with initial bail set at $1.98 million, according to jail records.
However a spokesman for the District Attorney's Office said that while the case remains under investigation, prosecutors have declined to file charges at this time.
The arrest came after Owens was placed on "investigatory leave" in June and on unpaid leave in September, the Chronicle reported.
UCSF terminated Owens' physician privileges last week and fired him from the faculty.
Owens was booked on suspicion of charges including the illegal sale or transfer of narcotics. Details of the specific accusations against him were not immediately available.
Calls to UCSF for additional information were not returned Monday.
Like the rest of the country, Bay Area voters waited in extra long lines on Tuesday to mark their ballots for the commander in chief, as well as many 17 California initiatives and a myriad of local issues.
It's what some voters wore to the polling stations on Election Day that turned heads.
The entire Albin family dressed in white when they showed up at their Lafayette polling station to mark their support for Hillary Clinton, who just might be the first female president of the United States.
Uh, yeah! Summer Albin said, after proudly posting her all-white outfit on Facebook, along with daughter, Iyla, 5 and husband, Jereme, who added #Imwithher #Suffragette-white and #ivoted to his post.
Albin family
Ive been a suffragette junkie forever, Summer Albin said. Its been a thing. I watch Iron Jawed Angles every year. But this election made it more important. I was going to wear my Futures Female T-shirt, but its black.
She was referring to the 2004 historical drama about activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who fought for womens right to vote in the early 1900s. "These women fought for the rights I hold dear," Albin said.
White is the color the suffragists wore in the early 20th century as they struggled for the right to vote. Clinton herself has worn a trademark white pantsuit on many occasions.
It was much harder to find Donald Trump supporter, let alone anyone dressed like him, throughout the blue Bay Area on Tuesday. But it wasnt impossible. Trumps California communications manager Jon Cordova lives in Danville and surely cast a vote for his boss.
Also, Bay Area News Group reporter Thomas Peele dressed in a Trump cap and walked around Oakland as an experiment earlier this fall, just to see what kind of reaction hed get. Peele said got curious reactions, he wrote, and made sure to say that no one spat.
But Trump fans were far overshadowed in the Bay Area by those brandishing these hashtags: #WearWhiteToVote, #NastyWomen and #PantSuitNation. In fact, an entire Facebook group with more than 2 million followers called Pantsuit Nation called on Clinton supporters to suit up in pantsuits on Election Day.
Getty Images
As for actually marking the ballots, some Bay Area voters complained of epecially long lines at polling stations early Tuesday morning. Some waited at least an hour to vote, as it took voters that amount of time to slog through the seemingly endless ballot.
Still, Albin said the entire process made her feel happy.
It was beautiful, she said. I obviously live in a community with like-minded people. It was nice to see smiling neighbors.
Some voters are going from the polls to the cemetery in upstate New York in order to pay respect to women's suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony.
A reporter for The New York Times tweeted a photo of about 250 people waiting in line to pay their respects to Anthony, who died in 1906, 14 years before the 19th Amendment was enacted, giving women the right to vote.
Among the visitors was Nora Rubel, the director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute at the University of Rochester. She told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that she went to the polls and the grave with her two daughters in order to share the experience.
Some people were leaving yellow roses, which was a symbol of the women's suffrage movement, according to reports.
Anthony had been at the forefront of advocating for womens right to vote and was even arrested for illegally voting in the 1872 election. Voters have been leaving I Voted stickers on her tombstone for weeks now as homage to Anthony's advocacy.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BMjfqHNBnfg/
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said visiting the gravesite has become an Election Day rite of passage for many citizens. She also said it was appropriate to keep Mount Hope open as Hillary Clinton, the first women nominee for a major political party, is on the ballot for this election.
[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail
Special measures have been put in place to accommodate the crowds, including extended hours, guides and security on sight. The cemetery usually closes at 5 p.m., but has extended its visiting hours to 9 p.m. Tuesday to allow for more Election Day visitors.
The U.S. government is gearing up for an unprecedented effort to protect Tuesday's presidential election from cyber attack, U.S. officials told NBC News.
"There are a lot of eyes on this presidential election more than there normally would be," a senior Obama administration official said.
Cyber centers at the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI as well as the Pentagon, the CIA and other intelligence agencies will be on alert, with extra staff hunting for any possible threat, officials say.
"It's all hands on deck," a senior intelligence official said.
The domestic car market seems to have no hit model this year, which sells over 100,000 units a year.
The most popular model so far this year is Hyundai's Avante compact sedan, which sold 78,253 units in the first 10 months, according to industry data on Monday.
Hyundai's Porter truck placed second with 78,115 units sold, followed by the Sonata (69,039 units), which retained the top spot for two consecutive years in 2014 and 2015. Kia's Sorento SUV (67,060 units) and GM Korea's Spark (64,423 units) placed fourth and fifth, respectively.
Neither the Avante nor the Porter is likely to sell over 100,000 units by the end of the year, a Hyundai staffer said.
"They needs to sell 10,000 units a month [to be a hit model], but that is unlikely given their sales performances over the past months," he added.
Despite Donald Trump's continued skepticism that the election was on the up and up, few voters who went to the polls Tuesday encountered problems and even then, most issues involved the usual machine breakdowns and long lines.
The run-up to the vote was fraught, with unsupported claims by the Republican presidential candidate of a rigged election and fears that hackers might attack voting systems. He reiterated his claims on Election Day, after his campaign announced it was seeking an investigation in the battleground state of Nevada over reports that some early voting locations had allowed people to join lines to vote after polls were scheduled to close.
Asked on Fox News if he would accept Tuesday's results, Trump continued to demur.
"We're going to see how things play out," Trump said. "I want to see everything honest."
Concerns of voter intimidation and fraud led to a flurry of lawsuits in the run-up to Election Day, and new voter regulations in more than a dozen states also held the potential to sow confusion at polling places.
The question this year was whether problems would be widespread and indicate a pattern of fraud or voter intimidation.
A computer problem in Durham County, North Carolina a Democratic stronghold in a state that has been a key battleground in the presidential race triggered long lines when election officials had to rely on a paper check-in process. The incident prompted the North Carolina State Board of Elections to extend voting hours in eight Durham County precincts for up to one hour, and a single precinct in Columbus County for 30 minutes.
There were also sporadic reports of people in North Carolina who said they were not put on the voter rolls despite registering to vote through the Division of Motor Vehicles. Officials said in a statement that voters whose registrations are missing have the right to use a provisonal ballot and may not be turned away.
Trump had suggested that Philadelphia was among those places ripe for voter fraud. The city's district attorney, Seth Williams, said his office had investigated 68 complaints about voter intimidation, broken machines or other problems, a number consistent with the past three presidential elections. He said all had proven unfounded.
Some voters said they were were being asked for their ID even when they didn't need to show it. Ryan Kellermeyer, 39, of Philadelphia, said when he wanted to vote at Cayuga Elementary, the poll worker asked him for ID, NBC News reported. He told her it was not required but she insisted. He said she eventually allowed him to vote without showing ID.
There were scattered reports of voting machine glitches in Pennsylvania where some voters said they tried to vote the Republican ticket only to see the Democratic boxes checked on their touchscreen, NBC News reported.
Many voters apparently noticed the discrepancy and were able to retry and vote as they intended.
In Texas, a computer used by election clerks malfunctioned at a polling place inside a high school in suburban Houston, forcing officials to briefly divert voters to another polling place more than two miles away. Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham said the malfunctioning console was later replaced with a backup and voting resumed.
While there were concerns that the heated rhetoric of the campaign would lead to confrontations at the polls, only a few minor skirmishes were reported. In southeastern Michigan, authorities said an argument outside a polling place between a woman supporting presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and another backing Trump led a man to shove one of the women and spurred others to join in. No arrests were made.
Police responded to a polling location in Spring, Texas, where a man was sitting next to a sign that read, "f*****s vote Dem," according to a Houston Chronicle reporter who witnessed the scene. The man, who had a gun, was detained after moving closer to the polling site, the reporter said.
A man was also arrested in Richmond, Texas, for attempting to cast a second vote, according to the Fort Bend County Sheriff's office. The man claimed to work for Trump and told officials that he was "testing the system," the sheriff's office tweeted.
In Pompano Beach, South Florida, two clerks were fired after a dispute. Police were called to the Herb Skolknick Community Center after complaints of possible voter intimidation from the Democratic and Republican poll watchers at one precinct, NBC Miami reported. That led to a dispute between the clerks from precincts 23 and 24 - one a Democrat, the other a Republican. They were fired and ordered to leave the property immediately. Replacement clerks were brought in.
Meanwhile students at a Phoenix, Arizona, high school walked out their classrooms Tuesday to canvass for votes, MSNBC reported. Many chanted slogans against Trump and Joe Arpaio, the controversial sheriff of Maricopa County.
But at least in the early going, most of the problems were routine the kinds of snags that come every four years, like the lines, machines not working properly, and issues with ballots or voter rolls. One New Jersey voter reported waiting three hours because there were too few voting machines at her polling place in Jersey City.
By 11 a.m. ET, Election Protection, a national voter helpline, received 5,500 calls from voters who witnessed problems casting their votes.
Election Protection said voters called about long lines in several precincts around the country, including New York, due to too few poll workers and machine break down.
At PS 154 in Harlem, angry voters reported that only one ballot scanner was working, and that lines to vote were running about two hours long, according to NBC4 New York. Photos posted to social media showed voting rooms teeming with people.
NBC employee Julianna Garreffa waited for more than one hour at Hudson County Prep High School in Jersey City, New Jersey, to cast a ballot due to an issue with voting booths. The polling site also ran out out provisional ballots at 6:30 am. ET and about a dozen voters left before casting a ballot, she said. The problems had apparently been corrected by 8 a.m. ET, according to reports in local media.
Election officials in Utah said voting machine problems in the southern part of the state forced poll workers early in the day to use paper ballots.
The Colorado Secretary of State's voter registration system went down for nearly 30 minutes during midday voting Tuesday.
The failure forced in-person voters to cast provisional ballots, and some county clerks were unable to process mail ballots that needed to have the signature verified. Democrats went to court Tuesday evening to extend voting across the state by two hours, but a judge ruled against the request.
In Virginia, voters have been reporting machine problems in several precincts and lines forming as a result. Election Protection said "we had reports of poll workers turning voters away but that has now been resolved."
Frustrations ran high at a Los Angeles polling place as voters were left waiting two hours when ballot marking devices arrived late. Elections officials didn't say what caused the delay at Delano Recreation Center in Van Nuys.
"It's been a fiasco," said voter Bob Corbett, who arrived well before the 7 a.m. opening time.
California is not known for long lines on Election Day, but some observers said that this election is different.
At least 150 people were waiting to vote at the North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Library in Los Angeles before it opened. Long lines were reported at polling places across the city, as voters hoped to cast their ballots before heading to work.
In Northern California, a steady stream of cars pulled up to an absentee ballot drop-off station outside a courthouse in Oakland. And at a columbarium in San Francisco that served as a polling location, people filled out their ballots on steps next to urns and crypts after officials ran out of voting booths.
This is the first presidential election in which a key enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act was not in place. A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down a portion of the law that had required certain states and jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to receive pre-approval from the U.S. Department of Justice for any election law change. This allowed a number of states, most led by Republican legislatures and governors, to enact strict voter ID laws and reduce early voting.
Legal challenges to some of those voter ID laws have led to a multitude of court rulings in recent months that blocked or struck down some provisions while upholding or reinstating others. That triggered concerns of misinformation among voters, election officials and poll workers.
An example was early voting in Texas, where there were reports in at least seven counties of outdated voter-guide posters and poll workers incorrectly saying that photo IDs were required to cast a ballot. An earlier federal appeals court ruling had determined the state's new ID law was discriminatory against minorities and the poor and ordered the state to soften its rules.
But it's not just poll workers giving out wrong information about voter ID laws. On Monday, retailer Urban Outfitters tweeted an Election Day "handy guide for your reference" to its 1 million Twitter followers, offering a free I Voted button at stores while supplies last, according to ProPublica.
The guide said Americans going to the polls need a voters registration card as well as an ID, which is not correct. Voter ID laws vary from state to state but no state requires a voter registration card.
Urban Outfitters deleted its tweet and updated its guide, according to ProPublica.
The Supreme Court ruling also prompted the Justice Department to send fewer trained election observers to polling places around the country than in previous years, with the reduction likely to diminish the department's ability to detect voter intimidation and other potential problems.
Meanwhile, state election officials were guarding against any attempt to breach their systems. Previously, some 33 states accepted an offer from the federal government to check their voter databases and reporting systems for vulnerabilities after hackers attempted to access systems in two states over the summer.
Some key races in Illinois could have a substantial impact on the national political outlook Tuesday.
The U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Mark Kirk and his Democratic challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has been billed as one of the countrys most crucial Senate match-ups.
With a strong lead in the polls and a substantial fundraising edge, Duckworth is expected to flip Kirks seat. According to FiveThirtyEight, Duckworth has a 97 percent chance of winning the race. Real Clear Politics shows Duckworth holding an average lead of 13.3 percent in a contest the Wall Street Journal has labeled Likely Democrat."
A Duckworth victory would be key to Democrats taking control of the Senate. There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs Tuesday. 10 of those seats are Democratic, 24 are Republican. In order to take control of the Senate, Democrats need to flip at least five of those seats. 36 Democratic seats and 30 Republican seats are not up for grabs Tuesday.
FiveThirtyEight is forecasting an extremely tight battle, giving Republicans a 50.8 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.
Other key Senate races are being held in neighboring Indiana and Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania and Nevada. Incumbent Republican candidates are also facing tough competition in Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Florida, although they are expected to keep those seats.
Additionally, Illinois 10th congressional district race could carry serious implications for the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Incumbent Republican Bob Dold is facing tough competition from former Congressman Brad Schneider, who unseated Dold in 2012 after a single term. Dold ultimately retook the seat in a 2014 rematch.
Real Clear Politics and the Wall Street Journal both list the race as a tossup. However, political analyst Larry J. Sabato, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, is forecasting the race as leaning Democratic.
Republicans currently hold a strong majority in the House with 247 seats to the Democrats 188, although all 435 seats are up for grabs Tuesday. In order for the Democrats to take control of the House, they will need to flip 30 seats.
Real Clear Politics projects Republicans taking 224 seats and Democrats taking 190 with 21 toss ups. The Wall Street Journal shows 204 races as safely Republican and 182 races as safely Democratic. The projection also shows 15 races that are likely Republican and 9 races that lean Republican. Additionally, the paper lists 9 races as leaning Democratic and 16 tossups.
Sabato predicts that Democrats will gain 13 House seats, falling 17 short of their magic number.
James Doe's quest to collect the remainder of his $3.5 million hush-money from disgraced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert can continue in court, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Judge Robert Pilmer denied a motion from Hastert's lawyers to dismiss the breach-of-contract lawsuit. The next court hearing was set for January 18.
Attorneys for one of Hastert's victim's, known as James Doe, claimed Hastert was the first to reveal the existence of the alleged arrangement and said Hastert was trying to get out of paying the remainder of the deal "on a technicality."
Mr. Hastert has publically admitted he entered into this contract. He's never denied it. In fact, he public admitted it in open court," attorney Kristi Browne said. My client gave uphis right to sell his story, speak about it publicly, gave up his right to speak to anybody about what happened to him and that is substantial consideration for this motion.
Meanwhile, Hastert's attorney argued James Doe, also referred to as "Individual A," "breached that obligation when he disclosed not only the agreement but the subject matter of the agreement."
In his lawsuit, James Doe said that it was not his fault that a hush-money deal fell apart when Hasterts bank withdrawals caught the attention of the FBI.
Hastert did not deny the abuse, the mans attorney, Kristi Browne wrote in the motion, filed in Kendall County Court. Hastert admitted his wrongdoing and agreed to compensate Plaintiff.
The former Speaker and his now-adult victim had entered into a verbal pact where Hastert was to pay the man $3.5 million dollars. But the payments stopped after $1.7 million, when banking officials became alarmed at the frequency of the former Speakers withdrawals. Hastert pled guilty to a crime known as structuring, making withdrawals of less than $10,000 to avoid being detected by federal regulators.
The plaintiff requested that Hastert consult an attorney, to ensure their agreement could be legally executed, but Hastert declined, promising to pay every last dollar of their agreed monetary settlement, Browne wrote. The banking issue was brought to Hasterts attention, but to preclude further scrutiny, Hastert chose to make more overt violations of the banking laws he was warned about.
In a motion seeking dismissal of the case, Hasterts lawyer argued that the man has no further claim, because the statue of limitation had expired. But Doe, known previously in Hasterts criminal case as Individual A, rejected that argument, at one point comparing the case to a parent who must make good on paternity to an illegitimate child.
Hastert has an ongoing moral obligation to any child victim for any harm his conduct caused, the motion states. Was the confidentiality provision of the parties agreement worth $3.5 million? Hastert certainly thought so.
Hastert's attorney also argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because Doe violated the confidentiality agreement when he spoke to federal authorities, citing a breach-of-contract.
Hastert is serving a 15-month sentence at a Federal prison in Rochester, Minnesota.
With concerns about voter fraud and suppression mounting in the lead-up to Election Day, officials from the Indiana Democratic Party reportedly admitted to sending text messages directing roughly 2,000 voters to the wrong polling place.
According to the Indianapolis Star, officials from the Indiana Democratic Party and a nonpartisan voter advocacy organization acknowledged the error Monday, blaming a database problem that led to a glitch. The party reportedly sent more than 400,000 text messages to likely Democratic voters using phone numbers received through voter registration files.
Drew Anderson, a spokesman for the party, said the text messages with the wrong polling locations were sent to about 2,000 registered Indiana voters, according to the report. However, at least one Republican, City-County Councilman Jeff Miller, claimed he also received a text with incorrect polling place information despite always voting in Republican primaries.
In response, Anderson clarified that the text messages were sent to Hoosiers who were likely to support our candidates.
The Indiana Democratic Partys initial text messages informed voters that Election Day is Tuesday and offered the incorrect polling place information, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Make your plan NOW to vote, the message read. Polls are open from 6am-6pm on Tuesday Nov. 8. Your polling place is [POLLING LOCATION AND ADDRESS].
The partys subsequent message claimed the "election is TIED" and directed voters to find their polling place at www.indianavoters.com.
A nonpartisan voter advocacy organization, Vote.org, also sent out mass texts to remind voters of Tuesdays election. Some of those texts also included incorrect polling place information.
Concerns over voter fraud and suppression have been heightened during the current election cycle. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly stoked concerns about alleged large-scale voter fraud, speculating about a potentially rigged election.
Initial reports about Mondays text messages led election officials to contact law enforcement. The texts were ultimately forward to the Marion County prosecutors office, the Indianapolis Metrolitan Police Department and the U.S. attorneys office, according to the report.
We are aware of those text messages and would encourage all individuals to report those incidents to our offices or to local law enforcement agency or the State Police or the FBI, Tim Horty, a spokesman for the U.S. attorneys office, told the Indianapolis Star.
A similar case recently played out in Missouris Johnson County, KMIZ-TV reported. In that case, an unknown phone number gave the wrong polling location to a resident. As a result, county clerks across the state reminded voters to double-check their polling places.
This isn't the first case of alleged voter fraud coming out of Indiana. Last month, Indiana State Police raided the offices of a liberal voter registration group, alleging fraud in 56 counties. However, the voter registration group, Patriot Majority USA, accused State Police and the Indiana secretary of states office of trying to suppress the vote, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Presidential candidates made their final push before Election Day Tuesday as they neared the end of their campaign trials across the country.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began her last day push in Pennsylvania before Election Day.
I want to be the president for all Americansnot just some, Clinton Said.
She leads by four percent national in NBC News latest poll after FBI officials said she wont be prosecuted for emails she sent using a private server.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump lashed out at the announcement.
Hillary Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system! Trump said.
Key states Trump must win include Florida, New Hampshire, Michigan and North Carolina, where he and running mate Mike Pence planned stops Tuesday.
Make sure here in Michigan that the next president to make appointments to the supreme court is president Donald Trump, Pence encouraged the crowd at a campaign rally.
In Bucks County, outside Philadelphia, a swing county in a battleground state, voter Kim Kraft made her decision.
I kept saying I wasnt going to vote, but Ill probably end up voting for Hillary because shes the lesser of two evils, she said.
And Sheila Staub is staying with Trump.
Both of them are very flawed, but, to me, she is way more flawed than he is, Staub said.
Between events in Pennsylvania, Clinton goes to Michigan, a state Trump could winlike Florida where he started Monday.
Im not a politician, my only special interest is you, Trump told the crowd.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama went to Ann Arbor.
The good news, Michigan, is that you are uniquely qualified to make sure he does not get the job, the president said of Trump.
More Republicans early voted in Georgia and Arizona, while more Democrats early voted in critical Florida and Nevada.
But in Pennsylvania, where crews got read for Clintons closing rally Monday night, there has been almost no early voting.
Just days after protesters clashed at the scene of a fatal police-involved shooting that left a man in a funeral procession dead on Chicagos Far South Side, the two groups of activists are set to return but at different times.
Activists representing both Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter are set to gather in Chicagos Mount Greenwood neighborhood Tuesday following the death of 25-year-old Joshua Beal.
The Blue Lives Matter group is expected to protest at 4 p.m. in the area while Black Lives Matter will rally around 5:30 p.m. Its not clear if the two events will overlap.
On Sunday, protesters on both sides carried flags and signs as they marched to the firehouse where the shooting occurred. The street was temporarily closed to traffic as the crowd grew more agitated, with protesters shouting and even throwing water bottles at one another.
Protesters could be heard chanting "Don't shoot us" and "Lock them up," among several other heated exchanges.
No arrests were made during the protests, according to police, though both groups announced plans for further demonstrations.
On Tuesday, Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson spoke at a community meeting about the departments use of force policy, in wake of the shooting. Johnson declined to discuss the growing tensions in Mount Greenwood.
Jedidiah Brown, with Chicago Life, said the activist group plans to join Black Lives Matter at the Tuesday rally.
Still, blue ribbons can be found on nearly every lightpost in the neighborhood as members of Blue Lives Matter come it on force to support police officers.
The Saturday shooting took place in the 3100 block of West 111th Street after a car leaving funeral services was stopped in front of a firehouse, according to police.
An off-duty Chicago firefighter told the driver that the car was illegally blocking the fire lane, police said, at which point the occupants exited the vehicle and "a verbal and physical altercation ensued."
An off-duty Chicago police officer heard the commotion from inside a nearby business, according to police, and attempted to assist the firefighter. An additional Chicago police sergeant was driving to work when he also spotted the altercation and saw a man with a firearm, authorities said.
The sergeant stopped, exited his vehicle, displayed his weapon and announced his office, according to the release from police.
"As the incident continued to escalate and the offender failed to drop his weapon, shots were fired striking the individual multiple times," the release states.
The subject displayed a weapon, CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference, adding that the incident began as road rage. An off-duty CPD sergeant that was on his way to work in uniform observed the subject, at that time shots were fired and the subject was fatally struck.
The man, later identified as Beal, was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
Family members said Beal was a father of two young children who was in town from Indianapolis to be a pallbearer at his cousin's funeral.
According to Beals family, who gave a narrative that conflicted with the police account, the incident began when an off-duty officer in an unmarked vehicle cut off one of the cars in the funeral procession that had just left Mount Hope Cemetery.
This guy, who we later found out is a police officer, tried to run my 17-year-old sister off the road. We pulled him over to ask him what was he doing and he pushed my female cousin to the ground and pointed his gun in her face, said Beals sister Cordney Boxley.
At that point, Boxley said, several male family members ran over to find out what was happening. Boxley added that her brother, who she said had a concealed carry license, had returned to his car by the time shots rang out.
As the scene dispersed, we're trying to go back to our car and I guess the officer was going to his car, and he, for no reason, just got out of his vehicle and started shooting my brother, Boxley said. He then went from his driver's side to my brother's passenger side of his vehicle, opened up his car door, pulled my brother out just to continue to empty his entire clip on him."
Beals family insisted that no shots were fired at the officers, and that they did not identify themselves as law enforcement until after the shooting.
He let them know, I have a concealed carry license, and put his hands up, so at that point, is he posing any threat to you? asked Beals mother Tiffaney Boxley.
Several people involved, including the off-duty firefighter and off-duty police officer, sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to police, who also said that a weapon was recovered from the scene.
The incident remains under investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority, police said, and the officers involved will be placed on routine administrative duties for 30 days in accordance with standard department procedure in all police-involved shootings.
The day we met Richelle Byrdy was the same day Samsung recalled nearly 3 million top-loading washing machines. The danger they presented was not news to the Carpentersville woman, as she had been afraid to use her new machine since she got it. When she couldnt get answers from the appliance maker, she reached out to NBC 5 Responds for help several weeks ago.
"It was a little bit secretive. They didn't want to give you too much info," Byrdy said. Who knows if youre the next one or not?
Byrdy was referring to reports that the washer had been exploding in laundry rooms and garages across the country, sometimes violently, shooting glass and metal across the room. When she called Samsung for help, she only got this advice:
"They said you could use it on the delicate cycle. That was the only one not reported to have a problem," Byrdy said.
Byrdy called NBC 5 Responds because she did not want to join the ranks of homeowners who have already reported nerve-wracking incidents to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, where people likened the explosion to a car driving into our house, and glass breaking and a huge bang like a bomb went off. The chairman of the CPSC called the malfunctioning washers potentially life-threatening.
They're pretty violent. We've had reports on our public database of a woman getting hit in the back from the top blowing off and getting knocked and breaking her jaw, Chairman Elliot Faye warned. I'm concerned that someone is going to be near one of these machines when the top blows off and they're going to get killed by it.
The recalled machines made between 2011 and 2016 are already the focus of a proposed class action lawsuit which alleges the machines high-speed motor is too powerful, causing the tub to vibrate dramatically, resulting in a centrifugal explosion that destroys the machine and nearby property.
Samsung was embroiled in the Note 7 smartphone debacle when NBC 5 Responds first contacted them about Byrdys concerns. The company did not comment specifically, but did reach out to Byrdy, who told us Samsung agreed to refund her in full.
Two weeks later, the company announced the massive recall, saying that affected owners can opt for an in-home repair or a refund, and that safety is its highest priority.
An Illinois State trooper was injured in an altercation with an unknown offender at a toll plaza on Interstate 294 in the south suburbs, state police confirmed Monday evening.
The incident occurred at the Halsted Street Toll Plaza #47 in suburban Harvey, state police said, after a trooper observed a "suspicious person." When the trooper approached the suspect, police said the man pointed a gun at the trooper.
The trooper was injured in the neck, Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Jason Bradley said, but he was not injured by gunfire. The suspect's gun fired several times while he and the trooper struggled, police said.
A firearm was recovered at the scene, police said, but it is unclear if the suspect is armed.
The trooper is being treated for his injuries, which appear to be non-life-threatening, at a local hospital, police said.
The suspect was described as a black male wearing a construction vest and black jeans.
Anyone with information is asked to call the state police at 630-241-6800 at extension 5028.
The big day is finally here. After more than a year of political campaigning unlike anything this country has ever seen before, Election Day is upon us. Heres a look at everything you need to know:
How to find your polling place:
Before you head out the door, be sure you know where you're going. To find your polling place, click here to access Voter's Edge, a helpful nonpartisan tool that tells you your polling location as well as the hours that it's open. All you have to do is enter your zip code and address, which remains confidential.
Be sure to give yourself enough time to wait in line. Early voters in Chicago shattered turnout records set in 2008, with many waiting in hours-long lines. Most polls in Chicago will close at 7 p.m., but remember that even if you are still in line before then, you are legally allowed to stay and cast your vote.
See whos on your ballot:
Voter's Edge will also give you a preview of your personalized ballot. You can take a look at all candidates and initiatives you can vote for before you head to the polls by clicking here and entering your address. There you'll find in-depth info on each candidate, including campaign contributions, policy positions and more.
You can also keep track of your choices, then send your list to your email or printer, or copy the link to your phone to guide you while in the voting booth.
The biggest races in Illinois:
While every race and initiative on your ballot has the potential to impact your life in some way, there are a few that have stood out over the course of the campaign as the big-ticket races to which voters should pay close attention.
For a complete guide to the races making the most headlines, click here.
Whos supporting whom?
If you're unfamiliar with a candidate, it helps to know which newspapers, organizations and other elected officials are backing them. To help clarify all the endorsements flying around, we've compiled a complete guide of supporters in each of Illinois' most important races. Click here to see the full endorsement round-up.
What to do if you run into problems at the polls:
While millions of Americans will cast their ballots without any problems, some may be challenged on their voting eligibility, experience voter intimidation, or have trouble at their polling place.
First and foremost, you legally do not need any form of identification to cast your vote in Illinois. Should anyone ask you for a license or utility bill, if you run into any issues at all, or even have questions about the process, you are encouraged to call the Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (English only), 888-VE-Y-VOTA (English/Spanish) and 888-API-VOTE (English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Tagalog).
You do need an ID if you are registering to vote for the first time or changing your registration - in that case, bring two forms of identification including a piece of mail.
The hotline is run by the nations largest nonpartisan coalition of more than 100 organizations, led by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who are providing thousands of volunteers to answer questions from voters calling into the hotline.
For more information on the problems you might face, read our full guide to voter protections here.
Can I take a ballot selfie?
In Illinois, ballot selfies are prohibited by state election law that considers it a felony to mark your ballot so another person can see how you voted. That carries a prison sentence of one to three years, but state election officials said it was unlikely anyone would be prosecuted for a ballot selfie. Play it safe and take a picture of your "I Voted" sticker or pose next to the polling place sign instead.
How to get live results:
Live Election Day coverage will begin on NBC 5 at 6 p.m. and continue until all the results are in.
Viewers can track up-the-minute race results live in the NBC Chicago app and right here on NBCChicago.com.
First it was Justin Timberlake, and now it's Eric Trump: it appears the Republican presidential nominee's second son may have broken New York law by taking a photo while he was voting and sharing it online.
Trump tweeted a photo that showed his paper ballot with a bubble above his father's name filled in on Tuesday morning, along with the caption "It is an incredible honor to vote for my father! He will do such a great job for the U.S.A!"
But he deleted the tweet later Tuesday morning after ProPublica's Electionland blog retweeted the image and reminded voters taking photos of ballots is illegal in the Empire State.
A quick reminder to other New York voters: This is actually illegal. Please do not post a picture of your ballot (or a ballot selfie). https://t.co/zOlnCHwVB8 Electionland (@electionland) November 8, 2016
It comes less than a week after a federal judge refused to overturn a state ban on so-called "ballot selfies." Voters contended that they had the First Amendment right to post photos of their ballots, while lawyers for the state and New York City successfully argued that a century-old law barred people from showing their marked ballots to others.
New York isn't the only state to bar photography at polling places. New Jersey and a handful of other states bar voters from taking ballot selfies. Other states, including Connecticut, allow them.
The issue gained prominence last month when Timberlake posted a photo of himself inside a polling booth in Memphis, Tennessee, during early voting, violating a newly-passed state law prohibiting photography and video inside polling locations.
The U.S. Forces Korea recently conducted a drill to practice evacuating American civilians from South Korea to a military base in Japan in case of an attack from North Korea. The drills have been going on for years and are euphemistically dubbed "Courageous Channel."
Families of U.S. Forces Korea personnel board an aircraft on Nov. 1 as part of an evacuation drill at an airport in Gimhae. /Courtesy of the USFK Eighth Army
According to the Eighth U.S. Army website on Monday, the 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command in Daegu conducted the drill to practice evacuating American noncombatants, including military families with children, from Oct. 31 until Nov. 3. The exercise began by taking scores of military families from Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province to Daegu in two CH-47 Chinook helicopters. They spent the night at Camp Walker in Daegu before being taken to Gimhae, from where they flew to a U.S. military base in Japan on a C-130 transport aircraft.
Families of U.S. Forces Korea personnel sit aboard a CH-47 Chinook helicopter as part of an evacuation drill on Oct. 31. /Courtesy of the USFK Eighth Army
When the USFK conducted the exercise in 1994, some people took it as a sign that Washington was actually about to bomb North Korea's nuclear facility in Yongbyon, a plan that had been floating around the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Michael Rogers, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, recently made a top secret visit to Seoul, where he met with officials from the Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service.
Burlington resident Paul Kulikowski reached out to NBC Connecticut Responds after waiting almost a year for an eradication service he paid for in February.
Every year, Kulikowski hires Terminix to protect his home from wildlife. This year, for $957, the company patched up some holes and promised to replace part of the garage door. As the months passed without an update, Kulikowski began to worry.
"I kept consoling myself saying its a good company," said Kulikowski. "Theyre not going to rip me offI will just keep trying to contact them."
Kulikowski followed up with Terminix several times in the following months. He said they either didnt have the right parts or they ignored his calls completely.
"It was just annoying to think that with everything else going on in someones life, that you have mice coming in your garage and you paid $957 to get it fixed, and you dont have it fixed," said Kulikowski.
When the NBC Connecticut Responds consumer team reached out to Terminix, a spokesperson apologized and promised to make things right. Within an hour, a specialist called Kulikowski to schedule the service, and two weeks later, his garage was fixed and his mice problem, solved.
"But even more importantly, my peace of mind," said Kulikowski. "Getting the job done and knowing I wasnt going to get ripped off."
Used smartphones are 17 billion dollar market. Accounting firm Deloitte Global predicts 120 million devices will be bought and sold in the after-market this year. But if you're selling, the personal data that you leave behind could make that transaction a losing proposition.
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters wanted to know just how risky that sale can be. We logged on to Craigslist and found dozens of others for sale at a wide range of prices.
We bought an Android phone from a young father and another from Dariusz, a letter carrier on his route.
We also purchased an iPhone and an Android phone at Silas Deane Pawn in Vernon. Owner Denis Norton says when he agrees to buy a smartphone from someone who walks in off the street, they often do factory reset as a precaution.
"We do the best due diligence possible. If we don't see any red flags, more times than not we are willing to purchase the phone," says Norton.
We brought all four devices to the University of New Haven's Cyber Forensics Research Group to see how much information they could recover. The lab's founder, Abe Baggili says you take a deep dive into someone's life by looking at their phone, but they decided only utilized tools that are free and accessible to the general public.
"We just had to use a computer and the connectors that came with the phones and we were able to gain access to this specific data," says Baggili.
The iPhone 5 was secure because the user had downloaded the latest operating system upgrade, but the three Android devices were a fertile ground for personal data.
On each of the devices, the research team recovered the names and email addresses of the prior owner, plus dozens of deleted text messages and images. On one phone, the team discovered a physical address and Wi-Fi password.
"I know where the person lives, I know what they do, and now I have their Wi-Fi password. What other information can I extract about them? Or can I then use their internet for illegal activities, " says Baggili.
On another Android device, they found even more troubling information. GPS coordinates, URLs and a credit card number with the expiration date and CVV code.
"This is everything we'd need to start making purchases right now," says UNH researcher Devon Clark.
One digital image contained a gem for a would be identity thief: a photo of a college class schedule including a name, address and Social Security number.
"All the information that we would need to, in fact, take over your identity," says Baggili.
We went back to the Dariusz the letter carrier, who'd sold us his daughter's old device. He says he did uninstalled all the apps and did a factory reset. He's frustrated and vows he'll never go down this road again.
"It's not worth it. 50 bucks for the phone and somebody has so much information... It's really not worth it," he says.
Abe Baggili from UNH suggests you take one additional step: encrypt your phone before you do a factory reset. It can add an important layer of security.. whether you're trading in your device or selling it on the after-market.
The Secretary of the State is expecting high voter turnout today as residents across the state cast ballots for Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump to be the next president and several of those residents are voting for the first time today.
Chris Reynoso voted at New London High School.
"It was kind of quick, but for that moment I was bubbling, Reynoso said. I felt that my voice kind of mattered."
Nineteen-year-old Gavi King said it was kind of nerve-racking to have that much of a voice, but it was really exciting."
Konner Claywell, a 22-year-old college student, drove an hour and a half to Avon to fill out a ballot.
"The candidate I've voted for has a certain skill set in business and negotiations," Claywell said.
Martha Willey, 19, said being a female made the experience even more significant.
"Do you think 100 years ago I wouldn't of even been able to vote? And now I'm getting to vote for a woman president. It's amazing," she said.
These young voters said they did their homework before going to vote.
"This is the first time voting because this is definitely one of the craziest elections . I've ever witnessed in my entire life," Christopher Guiteras said.
The Office of the New London Registrar of Voters said that, as of 3 p.m., more than 5,300 people went to polls to vote. The same time in 2012, about 4,700 people voted.
Two years ago, long same day registration lines prevented nearly 100 would-be-voters from casting their ballots in New Haven.
The big thing is no voter should be turned away, Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill told NBC Connecticut Monday afternoon.
A majority of the would-be-voters from 2014 were college students who were still waiting in line when the time to register ran out.
If youre registered by 8 p.m. and youre in a line anywhere in the city, you can still vote, but if you are not registered you will not be able to vote, Mayor Toni Harp said.
Lines at polling places across the state are expected to be even longer because of the presidential race, Merrill said.
In this case because election day registration is new for a presidential election, we did send staff down to work with about 20 towns, not just New Haven, Merrill said. When we saw that we felt they werent fully staffed up enough to reflect what happened a couple of years ago, we decided to tell them they needed to follow more of the guidelines.
NBC Connecticut stopped by the New Haven Registrar of Voters office Monday morning.
We are preparing for more staffing as requested, Democratic Registrar Shannel Evans said.
Are you confident the message has gotten out that we wont have a repeat of what happened in 2014? NBC Connecticut asked Mayor Harp.
Well you know I am confident that we will be more prepared than we were in 2014, she replied.
Voters registering on Election Day should check the designated location in their town because it is not available at every polling place.
Students at Quinnipiac University say the schools logo isnt grammatically correct and they want the university to take action.
A meeting was scheduled for Monday night to discuss the issue but it didnt happen. While a petition to change the logo has significant support, the school said the new design is here to stay.
The issue in question is a lower-case letter u in the word university.
From an aesthetic point of view I am not the biggest fan but that is not my primary concern my primary concern is the standards of English grammar, said Quinnipiac senior Brett Segelman.
The school introduced the design over the summer. And since then, many students have signed a petition that Segelman started to have the u capitalized. The petition has over 1,100 signatures.
The response has been explosive we have close to 12 hundred signatures as of today and over 250 comments of outrage and concern, Segelman said.
He said he feels the new logo isnt in line with a place of higher education.
As a senior as a marketing major I care about first impressions, I care about image and I care about the message the school is sending to outsiders, he told NBC Connecticut.
Other students werent as concerned.
I prefer the old one but it's not really going to make a big impact on my academic education here so its fine either way for me, freshman Logan Reardon said.
But Segelman said hes not backing down.
Quinnipiac spokesman John Morgan released the following statement on the situation
"As with any change, the new brand identity system will have its detractors, but we also have witnessed overwhelming support for these changes. We have no intentions of looking back, only forward as we work to improve Quinnipiac's stature and visibility in the higher-education community."
The school also said this new brand strategy is a modern interpretation of the past university brand and a representation of who they are today.
A 23-year-old New York man was killed in a crash in Brookfield early Tuesday morning.
Police said the victim, Reed Latrowski of Rockville Centre, New York, was driving on Route 7 south around 3:51 p.m. Investigation suggests that Latrowski lost control of the car, went off the road and struck a tree. The vehicle then rolled over.
No other vehicles were involved.
When emergency crews around on scene they found Latrowski suffering serious trauma. He was pronounced dead on scene by Brookfield Volunteer Ambulance Paramedics.
Route 7 was closed for several hours but has since reopened.
The crash is under investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact Connecticut State Police Troop A at 203-267-2200.
Some voters had issues with their voter registration at the polls Tuesday morning.
There are moderators assigned to every polling location to handle registration questions and work out issues. The Secretary of the State's office also coordinated with the Connecticut Bar Association to make lawyers available to respond to voting related issues if necessary. There are 110 volunteer lawyers on call for Election Day.
At Maple Hill Elementary School in Naugatuck, some residents who thought they were registered to vote through AAA were turned away at the polls.
Registrar Matt Katra said they were aware of several of those reports and those residents were being directed to Town Hall for same-day registration. Katra also said they've heard from a few people who said they registered with the DMV who were not on the list.
Katra said all the registrations that made it to his office before the deadline were processed, but if AAA or the DMV miss the deadline, there isn't anything voters can do but register day of.
At Rawson Elementary School in Hartford several voters were told they were not on the list. The residents said they had been registered and voting at Rawson for years, but they weren't on the list. The moderator stepped in to try to work out the issue.
In Bristol, voters found their names werent listed in the online database of registered voters, and they had to be checked in manually, delaying the process. The Bristol Registrars office said the computer database is an auxiliary system and there must be a voter check list on paper according to state statute, and they have stopped using the computer check-in for the time being while they work out the discrepancies.
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters are responding to your concerns at the polls. If you have an issue, contact us at 860-521-3030 or fill out our online form.
Since the day Governor Dannel Malloy won reelection in November 2014, the question at the front of many political observers minds wasnt what he would do with a second term. The question in their minds was, How long will he stick around?"
At the time, Malloy was no longer a rising star within the Democratic Party, but a bona fide rock star. He was the Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. His progressive credentials were impressive: he pushed through a $10.10 minimum wage, proposed and signed into law some of the most strict gun purchasing and background check laws in the country in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre, and ushered in the era where Connecticut recognized same-sex marriage.
A lot has changed since then. He has been at the helm for some of the biggest fiscal troubles of any state in the country, General Electric announced it was leaving its Fairfield headquarters in January, and then a cloud of a federal investigation into his 2014 gubernatorial campaign became public with leaks from a Grand Jury proceeding.
With all of that, the circumstances have changed for his political future.
During an interview with NBC Connecticut back in April, Hillary Clinton was non-committal on whether she was considering or even vetting Malloy to be a member of her administration.
Oh my gosh, I don't want to talk about what could be a position in the future Clinton said. That's totally hypothetical but you know clearly I appreciate what he's trying to do and wish him well here in Connecticut.
Publicly, Gov. Malloy has always said he would complete his second term. Since Connecticut doesnt have term limits, there is no time limit on his service.
I dont think hell be a member of Hillarys cabinet if she wins, said a Democrat close to the Malloy Administration who agreed to speak candidly on the condition his identity remain anonymous.
Before the investigation became public, I would have said he would have been a perfect fit, especially in a modern Democratic administration. That investigation is baggage for him.
The State Democratic Party settled with the State Elections Enforcement Commission for more than $300,000 to end a case relating to the partys spending actions from state and federal accounts during the 2014 cycle. It was the largest settlement ever reached by the watchdog agency.
The target of the probe was always Malloy, and the agency told NBC Connecticut it has been cooperating with federal investigators with its separate examination.
Another high ranking legislative Democrat told NBC Connecticut he thinks Malloy was always middle of the list when it came to posts like Transportation Commissioner, Secretary of Homeland Security, or even Attorney General.
He certainly had the credentials for it, especially with his transportation and Second Chance initiatives, he said. But I dont think a president with the issues Hillary has picks a cabinet member with the issues Malloy has.
Malloy, when asked recently whether he would leave Connecticut for a post in Washington, he said he enjoys his gig in Hartford.
I plan on serving out my terms here in the state of Connecticut, and I look forward to the challenges. I like my job,
If Hillary Clinton wins, could that could change?
At an elementary school in Dallas, elections officials were busy Monday setting up voting booths and putting up signs to get ready for Tuesday, Election Day.
"I go a lot of prep work," said election judge Michele Valentino. "It thrills me because I just love to see everybody get out and vote."
Valentino was an election judge during early voting.
"I checked in 17,000 voters," she recalled.
Based on that, Valentino has a prediction for Election Day.
"I suspect that this will be for sure heavier than it normally is," she said.
"We are expecting a really good turnout tomorrow," said Dallas County Assistant Elections Administrator Robert Heard Sr. "There will be lines and there will be excitement to go along with those lines."
Heard said early voting in Dallas County had nearly 40-percent turnout. Election Day could push that voter turnout close to 70 percent.
Voters won't be the only ones at the polls. The U.S. Department of Justice is sending 500 election monitors across 28 states. Dallas County is among those being monitored. The DOJ did not state a specific reason, but its website explains that monitoring is routine and generally done in places where there are concerns about racial discrimination in the voting process.
Valentino said she was doing everything she could Monday night to make sure Tuesday's election goes off without a hitch.
"They know that every vote counts and they want their vote to count," Valentino said. "This is what democracy is about and I love it!"
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Find your polling place information here.
Dozens of parishioners gathered Monday at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Frisco to pray for peace before the country elects a president.
The Rev. Greg Methvin said the idea for a special service rose up through the congregation.
"Some people just said, 'Boy, really feeling stressed and strained by this whole deal,'" Methvin said. "Never has it been so heavy and angst-ridden in my memory."
So packing pews, they bowed their heads and prayed not for an outcome, just for the country.
"We're praying for our leaders, for our country, for our own sense of gratitude," Methvin said.
Gratitude that comes with living in the greatest country in the world, he added, is a truth that doesn't change with the results of Tuesday's election.
"We can rest in whatever the results are that come out of this deal tomorrow. This is a great place to live and we are going to be OK," Methvin said.
For churchgoer Sheryl Holton, the stressful season has served as a reminder love thy neighbor, no matter what.
"I think as folks have talked to each other, they've realized that maybe they're not as like-minded as their neighbors as they might have thought," Holton said.
The Korea Meteorological Administration issued a cold weather alert for Seoul, Incheon, and the northern part of Gyeonggi Province. The morning low fell to about 2 degrees.
Biting cold gripped Seoul and Gyeonggi Province early Tuesday as the mercury plunged more than 10 degrees Celsius.
The cold weather will likely peak on Wednesday, when temperatures will drop below zero in most of the Seoul metropolitan region, with morning lows under -2 degrees in Seoul, and the wind chill factor will make it feel even colder.
The highest daytime temperatures are expected to stay below 10 degrees. The KMA said the reason is a cold continental anticyclone moving south from Mongolia.
The weather will likely return to normal on Friday, with morning lows at 5 degrees in Seoul and 6 degrees in Incheon.
It's been a busy year for Lester Holt. The veteran journalist steers the helm at NBC Nightly News and moderated one of the recent presidential debates.
And he seems to constantly travel the world, leading coverage of some of the most important stories of our time.
Just one day after the ambush-style shooting that left five police officers dead in Dallas, Holt arrived to a sad and broken North Texas still reeling and in disbelief.
Holt injected his own brand of sincere compassion, as he worked to explain to his audience the violence that interrupted a Texas summer and put Dallas in the international spotlight.
"You get the feeling that no place is immune to this. That was a peaceful march and there was no reason for anything like that to happen or expect something like that to happen," Holt said.
"You feel the pain of that community because they take it very personally," he added. "It's not something happening around the world or in another city, it's your town."
Since taking over the anchor desk for NBC Nightly News in June 2015 Holt has been a frequent flyer, covering major news stories such as terrorist attacks and events like the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
More recently, he endured wind and rain to describe the ravages of Hurricane Matthew.
"It's been a really tough year. But it's part of the signature of this broadcast. If we get big stories, we go. We bring a big team with us and our intention is to really own the story," Holt said.
Holt, the first African-American solo anchor of a weekday network nightly newscast, transitioned into his role at a time when racially charged incidents are too frequent in national headlines.
"First of all it reminds you of our uneven history in terms of progress. You know, we think we move past things, and we haven't. And hopefully it's, over time, it's an upward trend. But I look at stories of race like I do any story," Holt said.
"I'm always the first person to step back from the emotions, step back from knee-jerk conclusions and perceptions and really try to ask the deeper questions, and sometimes it's hard when you're covering these stories, when they're filled with emotions to really stop and stand back for a minute," he said.
As a witness to world events, Holt wants to give viewers a sense of what he sees.
"Like when I go to Hungary and see people and migrants from Syria trying to find a better life, the connections are obvious. You realize you know we're not much different. There you are with your family and all your worldly belongings and you think, 'What if that was me? Would I actually take my children and put them on a rickety boat and sail in hopes of a better life?'" he said. "You think, 'Yeah, I probably would.'"
And for someone who sometimes says he fell into the job, he's having a great run.
"I was happily doing Dateline, Weekend Today and Weekend Nightly, and also being a reporter on big breaking stories, and I was quite happy," Holt said.
"So I was really in this whole mindset of, 'OK, it's time to start pumping the brakes on this. I've been on weekends for a dozen years, and then everything changed. So here I am," he said.
One of Holt's predecessors on the NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw, advised him to be proactive, jump on breaking news and energize the broadcast.
It looks like he's done that: This year NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt won a coveted Edward R. Murrow Award, and the National Association of Black Journalists named Holt its Journalist of the Year.
Seven schools in North Texas Tuesday achieved blue ribbon status.
They are winners of the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, a coveted award from the U.S. Department of Education that affirms their hard work in the classroom.
Here are the schools earning bragging rights Tuesday:
Cross Timbers Elementary School in the Azle ISD;
Rosemeade Elementary School in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD;
George Bannerman Dealy International Academy, George Bannerman Dealy Montessori Vanguard and the School of Health Professions at Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center in the Dallas ISD;
Young Women's Leadership Academy in the Fort Worth ISD;
and, Hillside Academy for Excellence in the Garland ISD.
The Blue Ribbon ceremony is this afternoon in Washington, D.C.
In all, 26 public schools in Texas will be recognized as exemplary high-performing schools.
The race for the White House is in the final stretch. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are trying to rally voters in key battleground states, while everyone else is trying to predict what's going to happen on Tuesday.
That includes a lot of talk about the significance of Hispanic voter turnout and what it could mean for the election. The Latino community has turned out in record numbers for early voting in several key states, and Democratic strategists believe that's giving Clinton a boost.
In North Texas both parties are reaching out to Latino voters. Inside the Tarrant County Republican Headquarters Monday, there were calls going out in Spanish as well as English.
The Tarrant County Republican Party chairman told NBC 5 this is a priority for the party, and it begins with drawing more Hispanic candidates to run on the Republican ticket. As that happens, he says, those candidates then appeal to, and connect with, the Latino community more.
The same is happening on the Democratic side, where phone banks were up and running all day Monday with bilingual volunteers urging the Hispanic community to vote.
Democratic organizers say their efforts, and some of the heated rhetoric Donald Trump has pointed at the Hispanic community, has more voters motivated.
In fact, in Tarrant County, more Latinos voted in the Democratic primary this year than turned out for the entire midterm general election of 2014.
"I just see a lot more people becoming involved. A lot of Hispanic people are becoming more involved, knowing their candidates," said Democratic volunteer Irwin Mendoza. "It's exciting, yes, knowing that my voice is going to be heard and it affects major elections."
The Tarrant County Elections Office doesn't track voter turnout based on race or ethnic group, and Tarrant County Republicans don't have any estimates on their side of the ballot yet.
But the Tarrant County Republican Party is looking ahead past this election, too. They've created an outreach committee for young voters and minorities, and starting in January, they'll be offering citizenship classes, at the party headquarters in Northeast Fort Worth.
Big congratulations are in order for Russell Brand and his fiancee, Laura Gallacher.
The actor, 41, and Gallacher, 27, have welcomed their first child into the world.
Brand made the announcement during a stand-up show at Nottingham Playhouse on Sunday night. An audience member revealed, "He said he had to get home quickly because his girlfriend just had a baby."
However, Brand did not announce any further details.
Others took to social media to congratulate the actor following the show.
Russell Brand and The Royal Family
Though rumors began swirling about Brand's baby news in June, he officially confirmed he was going to be a daddy when he took to Instagram to share a photo of himself reading The Expectant Dads Handbook.
"Right then. My Mum bought me this. Time to get ready! #trewlit #bookstagram #parenting," Brand posted a photo holding up Dean Beaumont's novel.
He later opened up in Britain's ES magazine and revealed that he was totally elated with the idea of becoming a father.
"I feel lit up by the idea I'm very excited about becoming a dad and I'm preparing myself," he told the publication. "I am just getting ready to be with a new little person and see what it is they want."
What should you do if a loved one dies, you keep getting bills and you can't get into their account?
You'd expect a lot of bigger companies to know how to handle this kind of situation. But months after his father's death, one man says Verizon just isn't on the same page.
After seven years battling cancer, Florentino Elicegui's father died in November. Elicegui started making calls to close his father's accounts. But he says Verizon didn't make it easy. Verizon asked for his father's security code in order to close the account.
"I'm like, 'I don't know it, he's dead,'" Elicegui recalls.
Then they asked for the answer to his father's security question, to which Elicegui replied, "I don't know it, he's dead. I can't ask him."
Then again, he says Verizon asked for the answer to another of his father's security questions. He was unable to close the account without that answer.
"You know, if he was alive or he was in the hospital I could ask him, but he's dead," Elicegui said.
Elicegui offered to send documentation of his father's death, but he says Verizon wouldn't budge.
"I just felt for a family that's still dealing with the grief, it shouldn't be so difficult," Elicegui said.
Rigo Reyes of the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs says most companies have simple processes when a customer dies. He says some ask for documentation to ensure someone else isn't tampering with the account.
"It seems to me that maybe the right person wasn't on the phone," Reyes said. "Canceling the account and making sure that they don't charge us an early termination, which would happen with a general account in this type of situation."
Verizon would not comment on this account. But after the I-Team got involved, they reached out to quickly close it.
"It was a trying time for us," Elicegui said. "I just wish they had showed some kind of compassion."
Here are a few things that will help you close an account if a loved one passes away:
Always make sure to have certificate of death. That is usually enough for the company to close the account.
You'll also want to have a Social Security number and a copy of the last bill ready, just in case additional confirmation is needed.
A 19-year-old Pomona man accused of stabbing his girlfriend several times, leaving her in critical condition, pleaded not guilty Monday to attempted murder and related counts.
Martin Gallegos is facing one felony count each of attempted murder, aggravated mayhem and assault with a deadly weapon and two felony counts of injuring a girlfriend.
The criminal complaint also includes knife and great bodily injury involving domestic violence allegations.
Gallegos is due back in court Dec. 19, when a date is expected to be set for a preliminary hearing to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial. He is being held on $2 million bail.
The 18-year-old victim, whose name was withheld, was found in the middle of the street by officers responding Sept. 17 to a radio call of a traffic crash in the area of 800 block of North Hill Street.
Gallegos was standing near the car -- crashed into a pole -- when they arrived and was arrested at the scene. He allegedly stabbed the victim while they were in the car.
Prosecutors said Gallegos had allegedly attacked his girlfriend at least once before, on July 28.
If convicted as charged, he faces up to 15 years to life in prison.
Two men were killed and two women were hurt in a shootout between a gunman and police in an Azusa neighborhood Tuesday, prompting the lockdown of two schools and two polling stations.
The incident was reported at 2:05 p.m. near Memorial Park on North Orange Avenue, officials said. The city is about 25 miles east of Los Angeles.
All four people were shot in the crossfire of the gun battle, police said. One of the dead men was the gunman. Officers found a rifle near his body in the doorway of a home, officials said. They do not believe the man killed himself.
A second man the gunman's neighbor died en route to a hospital. Two women were listed in critical condition, with one wounded in the face and one shot in the body, authorities said.
SWAT officers located the dead suspect nearly four hours later at a house in the 500 block of Fourth Street, officials said.
Police say the gunman, who formerly served in the miltiary, was on a "cocaine binge."
During the man's shooting rampage, he ambushed officers after killing his neighbor.
The police went to the home on a call of shots fired, but details about how the situation unfolded were murky.
Initially police said they believed it was a female suspect armed with an assault rifle with rapid-fire capability. But police later said there was no evidence that a female or anyone else was involved in the shooting. There were initially a lot of rumors about suspects, officials said.
When police responded to the home, the heavily armed gunman ambushed officers who returned fire.
"The cops are yelling to get down, get down, get down," witness Matthew Ortega said.
Elizabeth Hopkinson said she and her 9-month-old son were locked down at a polling place nearby. She said she was going to drop off her mail-in ballot when the shooting happened.
She heard, "pow, pows, then a rain of fire."
She said she was locked down with about 25 others in the gym.
Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan advised voters who use these closed polling stations to go to any other polling place in the area to vote.
The affected polling stations are at Dalton Elementary School and Memorial Park.
The shooting doesn't appear to have any direct connection to the election, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Adrian Arambulo, Hetty Chang and City News Service contributed to this report.
A single mother of six in California says she could go to jail for selling homemade ceviche through a Facebook group.
"Why don't they go get the people selling drugs on Facebook groups not food?" Mariza Ruelas said in a phone interview with NBC4.
Prosecutors say, however, that Stockton resident Mariza Ruelas did not have the proper business permits required of restaurants that protect people from eating food prepared in unsanitary kitchens.
Ruelas was cited with two misdemeanor counts after participating in the online forum called "209 Food Spot" a group for members to trade recipes and sell their specialty dishes.
Ruelas said she had been a member for two years when she received a letter that would change her life.
She had mostly traded food items -- her tortas, or most in-demand item, chicken stuffed fried avocados -- for any type of baked goods.
"I cannot bake a cupcake to save my life," Ruelas said. "There are some really talented bakers in there. I will no longer buy cookies or cupcakes from the store."
The problem came over an order of ceviche, a popular Latin American seafood dish make from fresh raw fish cured in citrus juices and served cold.
Ruelas unwittingly sold a $12 plate to an investigator in a sting operation, and that's when the complications began.
Other members in the group also received letters in the mail from the district attorney. Eventually after a few court dates, the others took a plea deal.
But Ruelas refused. She said her deal was more severe than the others. Her defender told her they were trying to "bully her."
The plea deal with prosecutors she refused to accept three years probation, 80 hours community service, a $235 fine and to plead guilty to one misdemeanor. She now plans to fight the case in trial.
"Stockton is really bad -- there are hundreds of unsolved murders," Ruelas said. "I feel like if they're conducting an investigation -- doing a sting that a better use would be park at the corner and catch the drug dealers selling to kids. Investigate the sex trafficking going on around here with minors. But they would waste their time, investing over a year on this."
Ruelas is raising money through the website GoFundMe.com, but it has since been suspended for unknown reasons. She said on the website that she never thought that a weekend hobby she enjoyed with her daughters would end badly.
San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Kelly McDaniel said that the home-based enterprise went well beyond a hobby. She added that thousands of people each year across the nation are sickened and die from food borne illnesses.
People like Ruelas also undercut restaurant owners who obtain the proper permits, the prosecutor said.
"It's not unreasonable to be enforcing this type of law," McDaniel told The Associated Press. "When it can cause death, it's our responsibility to enforce laws that protect the public."
The support Ruelas has received via social media has been overwhelmingly positive, with most people commenting in support of her.
Ruelas is not trying to think about the worst case scenario -- if she were to get sent to jail. She has the support of her brother, and mother, to help with her children. But she says her mother gets tired easily. Her oldest daughter, 17, is so distraught about the situation, she leaves the room if Ruelas has an interview.
"There's only so much my mom can do," Ruelas said. "That's a lot for any teen or my mom."
She said her next court appearance is Wednesday, and protesters are expected to gather in support.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Prosecutors filed capital murder charges Tuesday against a 22-year-old Oklahoma man in the shotgun slayings in Long Beach of a 26-year-old woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
Brandon Ivan Colbert Jr. was charged with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder as well as special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and multiple murders, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office news release.
He's accused of hiding behind a sign and firing a shotgun, killing Carina Mancera and her daughter, Jennabel Anaya, on Aug. 6 as they were returning home from shopping, authorities said. Colbert also allegedly fired at the girl's father, Luis Anaya, who was not wounded, prosecutors said.
Colbert could face the death penalty or life in state prison without the possibility of parole, officials said. The decision whether to seek capital punishment will be made at a later date.
Police said Colbert boarded a Greyhound bus from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Los Angeles on Aug. 3. He arrived in LA a day later.
Authorities said they'd like to speak with anybody who might have seen him on the bus. No motive has been determined.
California voters will decide Tuesday whether to approve a gun-and ammunition-control initiative, the provisions of which include prohibiting the possession of large-capacity magazines.
In addition to requiring the destruction or removal from the state of large-capacity ammunition magazines, Proposition 63 would also require most individuals to pass background checks and obtain Department of Justice authorization to purchase ammunition.
The measure also:
requires most ammunition sales be made through licensed ammunition vendors and reported to Department of Justice;
requires lost or stolen firearms and ammunition be reported to law enforcement;
prohibits people convicted of stealing a firearm from possessing firearms;
establishes procedures for enforcing laws prohibiting firearm possession by felons and violent criminals; and
requires the Department of Justice to provide information about prohibited people to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Passage of the initiative would result in increased state costs in the tens of millions of dollars annually related to regulating ammunition sales, likely offset by various regulatory fees authorized by the measure, according to an analysis conducted by the Legislative Analyst's Office and Department of Finance.
There would also be an increase in court and law enforcement costs, not likely to exceed the tens of millions of dollars annually, related to removing firearms from prohibited people as part of court sentencing proceedings. These costs could be offset to some extent by fees authorized by the measure, the analysis found.
There would also be a potential increase in state and local correctional costs, not likely to exceed the low millions of dollars annually, related to new and increased penalties, according to the analysis.
"The Safety for All initiative will save lives by making it much harder for dangerous people to get guns and ammunition in California," said its author, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a 2018 candidate for governor.
Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, said the initiative "seems designed to raise Newsom's public profile, because in reality it will do nothing to prevent mass shootings in this state nor will it have any positive effects on the safety of California residents."
"Since ammunition will still be legal to possess, albeit more difficult to acquire, the measure does nothing to stop criminals who commit murder, which, of course, is already illegal," Hanisee said. "It will only affect the law abiding citizens.
Budget carriers are feverishly launching new international routes as the domestic market has reached a saturation point.
Jeju Air on Monday said it will launch four new international routes next month. They will include flights between Incheon and Sanya, China from Dec. 5, and flights from Busan to Tokyo, Saipan and Phuket from Nov. 15. The airline will also increase the number of flights between Busan and Fukuoka from seven to 10 per week.
Korean Air's no-frills carrier Jin Air will launch three international routes next month. It is set to operate flights from Busan to Kitakyushu, Japan on Dec. 1 and flights from Incheon to Kitakyushu on Dec. 13. It also offers flights to Cairns, Australia during the period between mid-December to early February to attract more winter holidaymakers.
Asiana Airline's new budget spinoff, Air Seoul, which was launched in July, started operating international flights last month. Most of them were routes operated by Asiana Airlines, but it added more routes.
Eastar Jet, which launched a route between Incheon and Hanoi early this month, will offer flights from Busan to Kota Kinabalu next month.
Budget carriers are mostly targeting niche routes flagship carriers do not offer, and many of them depart from Busan instead of Incheon in a bid to draw travelers in the provinces by decreasing their inconvenience of coming up all the way to Incheon to go overseas.
In tandem with this trend, the number of international passengers using budget carriers is increasing significantly. Budget airliners' combined share of international flights grew from 2.2 percent in 2010 to 14.6 percent in 2015.
"Travelers used to take a long break when they traveled overseas, but these days many of them tend to travel often and take a short trip for a couple of days, leading to an increasing demand for budget carriers due to cheaper prices," a Jeju Air staffer said.
Southern Californians will head to the polls Tuesday to decide 17 state ballot propositions, county and city offices, local ballot measures and other races that will shape the future of the state and nation.
What to Know
When: Polls are open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters who are in line by 8 p.m. are still eligible to vote.
Where: Use the Voter's Edge tool below to find your polling place. Several companies are offering free and discounted rides today to polling stations.
How: Click here to make sure you're registered to vote in the Tuesday election.
Polling Place Problems: Most Americans will cast ballots without any problems, but here's what to know just in case there's an issue at your polling station.
Turnout: Long lines were reported early Tuesday, due in part to the time required to fill out the hefty California ballot. There are 35 contests listed on ballots in some precincts. An average time of between 10 minutes and 11 minutes was expected to fill out such ballots, which could result in long lines, the registrar's office warned earlier.
Results: Election results will be updated here as they become available.
Races to Watch
Election day comes after two weekends of long lines at early voting locations across Southern California, where a bulked up ballot includes a sweeping range of propositions. A gun and ammunition initiative, a measure that would legalize the recreational use of marijuna and two that deal with the state's death penalty all go before voters.
Recreational Marijuana Legalization: Five states are voting on whether to legalize recreational marijuana use, making California's Prop 64 a closely watched measure. The prop would make California the largest pot market in the world, legalizing the drug and establish packaging, labeling, advertising and marketing standards and restrictions for marijuana products, including prohibiting marketing and advertising marijuana to minors.
Death Penalty Decision: Voters will find two death penalty propositions on the ballot. Proposition 62 would end the death penalty and keep condemned inmates in prison for life. Proposition 66 would speed up appeals and let officials begin single-drug executions.
Expanding Gun Laws: Another hot-button issue is on the ballot in the form of a gun and ammunition measure, the provisions of which include prohibiting the possession of large-capacity magazines. Proposition 63 would also require most individuals to pass background checks and obtain Department of Justice authorization to purchase ammunition.
For a look at all 17 statewide propositions on the Tuesday ballot, click here.
Presidential Election: Polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead over Republican Donald Trump in California. The race for the White House will likely come down to what voters decide in a few battleground states.
The Senate After Boxer: Two Democrats are battling to replace longtime Sen. Barbara Boxer. California Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez are facing off in a high-profile contest under the state's election law, which calls for runoffs between the top two primary election vote-getters from any party.
Plastic Bags: Voters will weigh in on a referendum challenging a statewide ban on the bags and on a separate initiative redirecting money collected by stores from the sale of carry-out bags to a fund supporting environmental projects. Proposition 67 will allow voters to decide if grocery stores and other selected retail outlets should be banned from handing out single-use plastic bags, but permitted to sell recycled paper bags and reusable bags for a minimum of 10 cents. Proposition 65 would legislate the use of money raised by the statewide ban.
LA County Fourth District: Janice Hahn, a Democratic congresswoman from San Pedro and the daughter of former county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, will take on Republican Steve Napolitano, a former Manhattan Beach city councilman who has been Supervisor Don Knabe's senior deputy for 11 years. The area includes southeast Los Angeles County, Long Beach and South Bay communities. Knabe has termed out.
LA County Fifth Fifth District: Kathryn Barger, a Republican, has been Supervisor Michael Antonovich's chief deputy supervisor for 15 years. Darrell Park, a Democrat, is an author and clean energy entrepreneur who has worked in the White House Office of Management and Budget. The area includes the northern portion of Los Angeles County, including Pasadena, Lancaster, Palmdale and Santa Clarita. Antonovich has termed out.
#PowerToThePantSuit.
Thats what a Facebook-inspired group of friends is urging in the waning hours before the election: Suit up for group selfies and plaster them over the internet to give Hillary Clinton a big win on Tuesday.
But more than just taking a silly photo, the grassroots Facebook community that has grown to nearly two million people in two weeks by Monday, is striking a deeper chord. People, even in the red states, are posting deeply personal stories of why Clinton is their choice, and they're backing her symbolically by wearing her signature outfit on Election Day.
"Our small private Facebook group has quickly become a movement," wrote its founder, Maine resident Libby Chamberlain, in a fact sheet her friends were distributing to explain the pantsuit phenomenon. "We share stories about our grandparents, our children and our families. We support each other during this highly contentious election season and have created a refuge from the vitriol that is sweeping our nation. We encourage members to go high. We are a positive place, and the response has been astounding."
Duane Prokop/Getty Images
Many of the astounding responses have been bubbling up on the growing, albeit invite-only, Pantsuit Nation Facebook page. The fan base is coming from both the right and the left, with tales of Clinton support abounding from abortion to sexual assault.
Among the stories being shared:
One woman who lives in the Bible Belt openly discussed what having the option of having an abortion meant to her after her fetus was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.
Another woman described herself as a "white, Christian woman from the deep South, raised on Republicanism, guns and Sunday school" who couldn't be "prouder to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton."
And yet another woman wrote that she was assaulted in the 1970s in Boston by a security guard. Now, she is voting for Clinton to say: "We women are sick to death of being mistreated."
One of the original co-organizers, Jacky Hayward of Alameda, Calif., told NBC Bay Area by phone on Monday that the group now has 100 moderators looking at 150,000 posts a day to make sure they all remain positive.
"I've never seen a group go so viral," Hayward said.
Hayward went to high school with Chamberlain in Deerfield, Mass. The two along with several dozen other friends started the group after the third presidential debate, after remarking how they liked the white suit Clinton wore, which symbolizes the suffragist movement. They wanted to host a safe haven for others to share stories. They are pleased, but not surprised, that their forum is drawing all sorts of cheers from across the country.
"We live in California," Hayward said. "So many of these people can't talk about these things in the Bible Belt. There is such a need for this. We need this positivity to heal our nation."
Most visibly, the group's call to action has inspired working women, babies and even super stars to suit up and represent their political choices with pantsuits. Beyonce wore a black-and-white polka dot pantsuit at her Friday night Clinton rally in Cleveland.
And it's not just women who are joining the movement, either.
Seven men wearing pantsuits in a rainbow of colors stood in San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro neighborhood on Sunday night. They were voting for Clinton because they believe she will be the best candidate to support LGBTQ issues.
"More than pantsuits, we're a proactive community group," Hayward said.
Theres a reason why Donald Trumps stumping in New Hampshire Monday while Hillary Clinton holds a family affair in Philadelphia. Their many visits to Florida, North Carolina and Ohio are no coincidence, either.
Battleground states are going to determine who wins the 2016 election. As the voting returns come in on Tuesday, here are states to watch.
Arizona | Electoral College votes: 11
How its looking:
Arizona is fairly new to the swing-state club. The state hasnt gone for a Democrat since 1996, and that was an anomaly. But because of its large immigrant and Latino populations, Clintons chances are looking better than usual; shes galvanized more support from the Hispanic population than Obama, and it shows. As college-educated young people move to the south, the voter demography is getting more liberal, and NBC News' battleground map has the state in the tossup category. Still, it will be an upset if Clinton wins Arizona, according to elections forecasts by FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times.
Counties to watch:
Maricopa is the fourth most populous county in the United States. Its gone Republican since 1948.
Colorado | Electoral College votes: 9
How its looking:
The NBC News battleground map has Colorado leaning Democratic, bolstered by the suburban and Latino vote. The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight each predict a win for Clinton by several points.
Counties to watch:
While Jefferson County went with Obama in 2008 and 2012, it also gave Bush victories in 2000 and 2004. Arapahoe County, a traditionally Republican area, is turning purple following an influx of immigrants.
Florida | Electoral College votes: 29
How its looking:
Florida, of course, is pretty much the premier big state thats a swing state, said Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida professor who specializes in Sunshine State politics.
Tied with New York for the third most electoral college votes in the union, Florida is a prized battleground during the general election. A Republican hasnt won the state since 1992, and, on paper, MacManus says Hillary should nab the victory. But, she continued, This is hardly an on-paper election.
NBC News' battleground map has Florida listed as a tossup. FiveThirtyEight shows Trump has a bit of an edge, while The New York Times' forecast gives Clinton a small edge.
The last three elections, including the 2012 presidential, the victor has only won Florida by 1 percent or so, MacManus said. When you have 1-percent elections, it makes micro-targeting very important and essential, because if you ignore one group and they feel that, you could lose.
Trump finds support among Floridians who still feel as if theyre suffering from a bad economy and who are concerned for their familys safety in relation to perceived terror threats. Meanwhile, Clinton is trying to mobilize the Latino and millennial demographics. The Cuban community in Florida has a reputation for conservatism, but as the younger generations reach voting age, theyre showing a more liberal tendency.
Even if Floridas retirees are being replaced by millennials, that doesnt mean theyll make it to the voting booths.
The younger voters really arent that keen on the two-party system, MacManus said. Who knows whether theyre going to vote or not.
Counties to watch:
Hillsborough County, with its seat in Tampa, has correctly chosen the president in every election since 1960, except in 1992. Barack Obama won 53 percent to Mitt Romneys 46 percent in 2012.
Orange County in the Orlando area tended red until recent years, and Polk and Pasco are also contentious. Volusia, which used to be a Democratic stronghold, has shown some Republican tendencies lately.
Georgia | Electoral college votes: 16
How its looking:
NBC News moved Georgia from leaning GOP to tossup in its final battleground map, though FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times both predict a Trump win. Its significant that the state is in contention, which signals a demographic shift. Forty-three percent of the electorate is now college educated, and like North Carolina, liberal white voters have officially made Georgia a battleground.
Counties to watch:
Gwinnett County typically goes Republican, but the wealthy suburb northeast of Atlanta may not go Trump's way, NBC News reported. Clayton is an African American nucleus, and Clinton needs high turnout there to even have the potential of a victory in Georgia.
Iowa | Electoral college votes: 6
How its looking:
Iowa has gone blue in six out of the last seven elections. So why do The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight have it going red and NBC News leaning GOP this year?
According to Dennis Goldford, professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines, there are three reasons. One is that the Clintons never really established themselves here in Iowa. Another is that, while some Republicans have distanced themselves from this presidential election, Iowas state leadership has been openly supportive of the Trump-Pence ticket. The last is the appeal of Trumps Make America Great Again mantra for rural Iowa.
In some ways this election is a growing fight between the expanding, prospering urban segment of America and the declining rural segment, Goldford said.
The Hawkeye State also has a large white, working-class population, especially among the 45-and-up demographic.
You have an older electorate in Iowa, and theyre less likely to have a college education, which means they would be more likely to incline toward Donald Trump, Goldford said.
As a manufacturing state, Iowa was hard hit by the great recession.
If the country as a whole got a cold, manufacturing caught pneumonia, Goldford said. That could mean Trump is getting support from his perceived economic prowess and vow to bolster the American manufacturing industry.
Counties to watch:
Polk, Linn, Cedar, Scott, and Black Hawk are more urban counties. To win statewide, a Democrat needs to roll up big majorities, Goldford said. In 2012, Obama won both Scott and Polk counties by 56 percent.
Michigan | Electoral College votes: 16
How its looking:
Republicans like to call Michigan a battleground state because it can sometimes go red during off years, but a Republican presidential candidate hasnt won the state since 1988. NBC News reports that Michigan is leaning Democratic and, according to FiveThirtyEight's forecast, Clinton has a big advantage.
There really hasnt been a point in this campaign where shes been trailing, said Susan J. Demas, publisher and editor at Inside Michigan Politics.
While the Flint water crisis factored heavily in the Democratic primary, it has really gotten buried on the priority list for both candidates since July, Demas said.
Counties to watch:
Kalamazoo County tends to be a bellwether. Macomb County is fertile ground for Trump, while Clinton seems to be making headway in Oakland and western Michigan. According to Demas, if Clinton wins Oakland a wealthy Republican county by double digits, she will send shockwaves through the state.
Nevada | Electoral College votes: 6
How its looking:
Were a bellwether, said David F. Damore, professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Every time since 76, weve gone with the winner.
In Nevada, neither party has a stronghold. The Democratic organization is almost entirely devoted to longtime Sen. Harry Reid, Damore said, while the Republican base is weak. The state is also 20 percent immigrant and has the smallest native-born population in the United States. Most citizens originate from other states. NBC News' battleground map shows Nevada leaning Democratic. FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times have Clinton and Trump in a tight race, with the edge to Clinton.
We have demography that provides both parties with a likelihood of winning, Damore said.
Working-class whites make up the conservative support in Nevada. Thats kind of who the Republican party is here, Damore said. Trump has played the media well, but hes done nothing in terms of ground game at all, according to Damore.
Meanwhile, Clinton is targeting white suburban women alongside U.S. Rep. Dina Titus.
Counties to watch:
More than 70 perent of the state's population lives in Clark County. Its the most concentrated population in a state of this size, Damore said. Democrats will try to build a firewall around the urban area, which includes Las Vegas. However, Clark historically undervotes, while Nevadas rural Republican communities tend to comprise more of the vote than their percentage of the population. If things seem tight, Washoe, with its county seat in Reno, is where to look. The county has a slightly higher Republican registration, but it went for Barack Obama in 2012 and could go either way this year.
New Hampshire | Electoral College votes: 4
How its looking:
With only four electoral college votes, New Hampshire is seemingly inconsequential. But theres a reason why candidates have spent so much time and money there: if Al Gore had won the state, he would have been president in 2000. During tight elections, New Hampshire can determine who takes it all.
NBC News has it in the tossups, where it belongs, according to Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
Its neither red nor blue, said Levesque. Its a tossup. And when we do have a definitive race, its usually not that definitive.
Clinton has a higher chance of winning the state than Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times. On Monday, President Obama will play surrogate for Clinton in New Hampshire, while Trump will make a personal appearance.
Counties to watch:
Londonderry and Hillsborough tend to be bellwethers. Hillsborough is typically a close call. In 2012, Obama won the county by a 2-point margin.
Ohio | Electoral College votes: 18
How its looking:
Despite the cast of The West Wing campaigning for Clinton in Ohio, Trump has a better chance of winning here than Clinton in FiveThirtyEight's forecast. The New York Times sees a closer race and NBC News has Ohio marked as a tossup.
Counties to watch:
Stark County might split down the middle. In 2012, 49 percent of the vote went to each major candidate. Also look to Hamilton County. The Cincinnati area was a GOP stronghold that broke for Obama in the last two cycles, so Clinton will need to do well there, according to NBC News.
Pennsylvania | Electoral College votes: 20
How its looking:
After the Republican National Convention, Trumps campaign said it would focus on four battleground states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Were the most Democratic of the four targeted states, said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College.
Clinton had a nice lead in Pennsylvania, said Madonna, until the FBI probe went live two weeks ago. NBC's battleground map has the state leaning Democrat and The New York Times has her a strong favorite. But FiveThirtyEight shows the margin tightening. Recently, Trumps gained popularity in the suburbs, while Clintons target demographics are less than mobilized, Madonna said.
Democrats in Pennsylvania have focused efforts on the African American population, 50 percent of which comes from Philadelphia. When Obama was a candidate, 92 to 94 percent of the black vote went to the Democrats, but without his name on the ticket, party leaders are afraid that black voters wont turn out.
Millennials also make up 18 to 19 percent of Pennsylvanias voters, but theyre the least politically engaged age group. Clinton surrogates have been campaigning at universities around the state because theyre aware of the lack of enthusiasm, Madonna said.
Trumps voters are more enthusiastic in our state, he added.
Counties to watch:
Forty percent of votes in Pennsylvania come from six counties: Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, Philadelphia and Allegheny. The first four are suburbs of Philadelphia populated by primarily middle class, college educated whites. Many of them will vote either party depending on the cycle, depending on the candidates, depending on the issues, Madonna said. In 2009, Obama won Bucks by 1 percent; Romney claimed Chester by the same margin.
Utah | Electoral College votes: 6
How its looking:
Utah and Arizona are clearly new battlegrounds, ones that we dont usually include in that list, said Larry Sabato, editor-in-chief of the Crystal Ball website, which is run by the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Utah tends to vote Republican. In 2012, all six electoral college votes went to Romney. But because of the states Mormon faction, this election cycle is proving a different beast.
Utah I would call a special case, said Will Jordan, elections editor at YouGov. The Mormon population were very reluctant to support Trump in the primary, and thats followed through to the general election.
Clinton has a single digit possibility of winning Utahs electoral college votes, according to FiveThirtyEight's forecast, but Trump is finding unlikely competition from independent candidate Evan McMullin, a conservative Mormon.
NBC News moved Utah from tossup to lean Republican in its final battleground map.
Counties to watch:
Summit County is the only one that went blue in 2008. Romney swept Utah in 2012.
Virginia | Electoral College votes: 13
How its looking:
Virginias one of the less competitive battlegrounds this year, Sabato said of the state that NBC News reports "Leans Democrat."
According to FiveThirtyEights state predictions, Clinton has a comfortable advantage. Some of her popularity in Old Dominion can be attributed to her running mate, Tim Kaine, who is one of Virginias incumbent senators and served as governor from 2006 to 2010.
Counties to watch:
While northern Virginia is traditionally more liberal than the rest of the state, Prince William County, the second most populous in Virginia, may sway Republican because of its suburban base. Virginia Beach could also prove dicey for Democrats.
Wisconsin | Electoral College votes: 10
How its looking:
Despite a working class electorate, FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times forecast a Clinton victory, and NBC News has Wisconsin leaning Democratic.
Counties to watch:
Waukesha County, a suburb west of Milwaukee, is very white, and very Republican. As a liberal base, Dane County should help Clinton along, but careful: third party candidates could eat into her lead, according to NBC News.
It's a quiet day Wednesday for Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo -who defeated Democrat Joe Garcia in the District 26 race.
In one of the more politically centrist districts in South Florida (spanning most of Western Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys), Curbelo has portrayed himself as someone who has worked with both Democrats and Republicans during his time in Washington.
At a victory party in Southwest Miami-Dade, Curbelo addressed his supporters. "If we have learned anything from this election is that Americans all over this country are frustrated. They're angry and they're not satisfied with the answers they're getting from their elected leaders," said Curbelo.
"I pledge to continue working to change the culture in Washington so that Republicans, Democrats, Independents, anyone who cares, sits at the table and looks for solutions," Curbelo told supporters.
The 26th Congressional District covers Miami's western and southern suburbs, the Florida Keys and a large chunk of the Everglades.
Curbelo, a former school board member who defeated Garcia in 2014 to win the seat, never endorsed Trump. He once publicly speculated that Trump was a phantom candidate intended to help the Democrats.
What to Know Clinton, Trump battling for Florida's 29 electoral votes
Donald Trump was the apparent winner over Hillary Clinton in the key battleground state of Florida Tuesday, NBC News reported.
Democratic nominee Clinton, with over two decades in Washington D.C. in various capacities (including U.S. Senator and Secretary of State), has been spending the last four months locked in a battle with billionaire businessman and Republican nominee Trump.
As in past elections, Florida could prove to be the most important state in the election. Both candidates and their campaigns have spent plenty of time and money over the last weeks in the Sunshine State aiming for the 29 electoral votes. President Barack Obama won the state during both his campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
Campaign surrogates have also been stumping for their candidates in the weeks leading up to election day including Trump's VP nominee, Gov. Mike Pence. Clinton has had her party's two biggest names - President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden - to campaign for her in South Florida, along with VP nominee Tim Kaine.
Recent polls had shown a close race in Florida. Numbers released Monday showed nearly 6.42 million voters in the Sunshine State voted early or by mail.
While the nation is assured that the next Commander-in-Chief will come from the state of New York, their home state is about the only thing the two opponents have in common aside from not being able to shake controversies.
Trump came out of a field with 16 other candidates for the GOPs nomination. Throughout his run, Trump has not been shy with sharing his opinions and making controversial statements toward everyone from immigrants (including his continued promise to build a wall between the United States and Mexico) to the Muslim community across the world. Clinton and her supporters have repeatedly pounced on these comments as a sign Trump is not fit to be elected.
The former host of NBCs "The Apprentice" also had to defend himself from the release of a 2005 tape showing him making lewd comments with former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about touching and kissing woman without their permission.
(Access Hollywood is owned and distributed by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News, MSNBC and this station.)
Clinton, who spent most of the primary season unable to shake a strong challenge from Vermont Senator and progressive favorite Bernie Sanders, has been dealing with her own issues. She has continued to be dogged by Trump supporters for her role as Secretary of State in the Benghazi scandal from 2012, where four Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya.
She has also been dealing with the continuing issue of her use of a private email server while in the State Department. While the FBI initially ruled that Clinton should not face charges for the potential release of classified information, Director James Coney announced less than two weeks ago that the agency would look into the issue again after an investigation involving emails between former U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin (a high ranking member of Clintons campaign) potentially could have contained classified information from the candidate.
While most Americans cant wait for this election to be over, November 8th may not be the end of it. During the third debate between the candidates, Trump would not guarantee that he would concede the election part of a theme from both the candidate and his supporters that the election is rigged.
A Clinton win would make her the second member of her immediate family to hold the office joining husband Bill, who ran the country from 1993 until 2001 while Trump would become just the fifth person to never hold a political office before becoming President with a win (with the previous four all being former military generals, including George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower).
Voters in Miami-Dade County will see two familiar names on their ballots when it comes to the campaign for Mayor especially those living in the city of Miami.
Carlos Gimenez, who has served as Mayor of the county since winning a special election in 2011 and being re-elected the following year, looks to hold on to his seat against a challenge from Raquel Regalado, a former school board member for Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the daughter of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado.
Regalado, who spent time as a lawyer and working in communication before running for the school board in 2009, is running on a campaign of advocating change in how the county operates. She has been critical for Gimenezs handling of the county budget and how he has worked with both employees and the public as a whole.
Gimenez, who spent time as both the chief of the Miami Fire Department and a county commissioner before being elected mayor, has touted his record during the last five years including the largest tax cut in county history, more police officers being hired each year and increased commerce and travel into the county.
While the two candidates battle for votes, the race also has also seen time in a county courtroom. Just over a week ago, a case brought by Regalado, seeking to have Gimenez taken off the ballot was tossed out be a judge. Regalado said that Gimenez submitted a check with the wrong date to the Elections Department in Miami-Dade County, but was able to later submit one with the correct date - which was denied on Wednesday.
Two clerks from precincts in Pompano Beach were fired after a dispute that was a rare issue at polls in South Florida.
Deputies were called to the Herb Skolknick Community Center after complaints of possible voter intimidation from the Democratic and Republican poll watchers at one precinct. That led to a dispute between the clerks from precincts 23 and 24 - one a Democrat, the other a Republican.
Supervisor of Elections Dr. Brenda Snipes was notified and she fired both, ordering them to leave the property immediately.
David Booth, the Republican clerk of Precinct 23, tells NBC 6 he was one of the two clerks fired and told to leave the property. Replacement clerks were brought in.
"They brought in replacements for myself and the other woman who was the clerk at CO-23 and we were told to leave the premises," Booth told NBC 6. "It doesn't look good, it really doesn't look good, it looks like they're trying to do something dishonest."
Two poll watchers were also removed, according to a spokesperson for the supervisor of elections.
According to Booth, there were allegations poll watchers were overstepping their boundaries inside the polling location and involved in voter intimidation.
Broward sheriff deputies told NBC 6 they showed up upon request to keep the peace and investigate the situation.
Voting has continued without interruption.
With nearly half of the state having already voted in the last two weeks, no other major issues were reported from polling locations across Miami-Dade, Broward or Monroe counties. Officials expect moderate or light turnout on Tuesday after the large amount of early voters
Over 500 precincts are open in Broward County, while just under 600 are open in Miami-Dade. If you do have a issue at the polls, contact the NBC 6 Investigators with your problem.
The city of Orlando has announced plans to purchase the Pulse nightclub and eventually convert the site of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history into a memorial.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told the Orlando Sentinel on Monday that the city has reached a deal to buy the gay nightclub for $2.25 million.
Dyer says the site should probably remain as-is for the next 12 to 18 months, as it has become a gathering place for mourners.
He says the city will reach out to the community for advice on how plans for the memorial should proceed.
The purchase price is $600,000 more than its appraised value.
The June 12 attack left 49 people dead and 53 wounded. Gunman Omar Mateen was killed by SWAT team members.
A squirrel is dead after the bloodthirsty animal targeted an elderly woman at a central Florida senior community.
Initial reports indicate the attack happened Monday at the Sterling Court Gracious Retirement Living in Deltona.
One week ago, at least three seniors were attacked by a squirrel at the same complex.
The victim in the second attack suffered bites, scratches and a broken wrist after she fell while trying to defend herself from the squirrel, witnesses said.
A staff member shot and killed the squirrel with a BB gun.
Health officials are testing the animal for rabies.
Miami native Jenny Lorenzo has taken social media by storm with her abuela character. The Cuban American has a unique voice pounding out viral videos with Latino specific content on various platforms.
Donning her signature grey wig, the actress and producer is your abuela.
"The abuela character is based on my abuela and everyone else's abuela," Lorenzo explained.The online star, born and raised in Miami, is blowing up social media and YouTube with viral videos that stay true to her Latina roots.
"Im trying to represent Miami culture and Cuban culture as best as I can while also trying to cover as many Latin American countries as possible. Im trying to represent people like me, bilinguals, people that live in the hyphen of you know, Cuban-American, Puerto-Rican American."
Over cafecitos at Versailles, I had the pleasure of speaking with this fierce Latina about her inspiration for her unique comedy persona -- which first appeared in Pero Like on Buzzfeed and now We Are MITU.
"Especially now that my abuelita's gone, it's like I get to like keep her there and I get to keep other people's abuelita's there."
While I know a thing or two about having a Cuban grandmother, Jenny has this act down to a tee, nailing all the relatable nuances. She taught me a few of her favorite abuela dichos or phrases. Lorenzo also threw in a few other superstitious sayings.
"You can't take a bath after you eat or you'll die. You can't walk around barefoot. You can't walk around with your hair wet."
As we took a tour around Calle Ocho, Jenny also hopes her act can be a voice for Latinos.
"Its become more than just a funny character. I just want people to be proud of their culture and not be ashamed."
The self-proclaimed tiny geek and aguacate lover has clearly already broken a few barriers with over 16,000 YouTube subscribers relating to her proud display of Hispanic heritage and authenticity.
"I think it's about time we show real Miami like for what it is. I think they identify with me and my content because I just keep it real."
The actress lives in Los Angeles but she doesn't forget where she came from, especially her love of Miami Cuban food.
"I love arroz con frijoles negros, yuca, platanos fritos. I'm a big tostones fan."
With her Spanglish phrases and characters, this loud and proud Latina hoes to keep expanding to bigger platforms, showing the vastness and nuanced perspective of who Latinos truly are.
I get people from like young teenagers to like abuelas. I've had abuelas legit write me and they like it. They like the content. I'm like yay! I want to just keep fighting the good fight."
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Monday met with U.S. ambassadors to Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo on Monday.
The three envoys meet annually, but it is rare for them to sit down with the top diplomat of a host country. The meeting was apparently at the request of the U.S. government.
"The U.S. is keenly watching the latest North Korean developments," a diplomatic source said.
A Pennsylvania man has been charged in the cold-case killing of a 14-year-old Queens girl in 2008, according to the NYPD.
Rashon Venable, 24, was arrested in the death of Sabrina Matthews, a girl who was found dead at a home on 234th Street in Cambria Heights on Nov. 9, 2008. He faces second-degree murder charges in the case.
According to QNS, Venable was linked to the crime after his DNA matched genetic material at the crime scene.
The site reports that Matthews was found with a slash wound to her neck and arm. The news site reports that Venable was 16 at the time of the slaying and had lived near the crime scene.
Attorney information for the man wasnt immediately available.
Track the election results here
The Latest on Election Day in New Jersey (all times local):
12:10 a.m.
New Jersey voters said yes to a question asking whether every penny of the state's 37.5-cent per gallon gas tax should go exclusively to transportation costs.
The question of creating a so-called constitutional "lockbox" was viewed as a no-brainer by most lawmakers, but Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno came out opposed to the question recently.
She argues a yes vote amounts to a rubber stamp on $12 billion in state borrowing over eight years. The borrowing is part of a deal reached between Republican Gov. Chris Christie and the Democrat-led Legislature to raise the gas tax by 23 cents, cut other taxes and pay for transportation.
The ballot question did not mention the borrowing, which instead is contained in the legislation Christie signed into law.
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Midnight
Democrat Josh Gottheimer has defeated seven-term Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett in New Jersey's closest-watched race.
The former Microsoft executive and Bill Clinton speechwriter toppled Garrett in the perennially Republican 5th District in northern New Jersey.
The campaign became bitter, with Gottheimer calling Garrett a bigot and Garrett calling Gottheimer a liar.
Gottheimer had broad support from Democratic officials, including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker. His supporters had hoped to capitalize on reports that Garrett would not contribute to the House Republican campaign arm because it backed gay candidates. Garrett rejected the claims and denied being anti-gay.
Gottheimer had a fundraising edge with $2.6 million to Garrett's $2.1 million.
The district includes parts of Bergen, Passaic, Sussex and Warren counties.
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10:30 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. has won re-election in New Jersey's 9th District.
Pascrell beat Republican Hector Castillo, of Paterson, and is returning for an 11th term in Congress.
The district includes parts of Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties.
Pascrell is a former state lawmaker and Paterson mayor. He spent about $1 million during the campaign. Castillo is an ophthalmologist who spent about $39,000.
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10:15 p.m.
Republican U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance has won re-election in New Jersey's 7th District.
Lance defeated Democratic challenger Peter Jacob, of Union, in the sprawling district that stretches from the Delaware River in the west to Union County in the east.
He will be returning for a fifth term.
The contest did not look close, with Lance raising more cash and the district leaning Republican.
Lance spent about $1 million compared to Jacob's roughly $43,000.
During the contest, Jacob's campaign office was spray-painted with a swastika, which Lance condemned. Jacob blamed the vandalism on the "ever increasing atmosphere of accepted racism" in the country.
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10:15 p.m.
Voters are returning Republican U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo to Congress for a 12th term.
LoBiondo defeated Democratic software engineer Dave Cole, who hammered the incumbent over his history of receiving donations from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
LoBiondo represented Atlantic City at the height of Trump's casino empire there and got more donations from the businessman than any current member of Congress. Trump gave more in total cash to other lawmakers.
LoBiondo had said he wouldn't support Trump, but his spokesman said that he changed his mind and voted for him Tuesday.
The large district in southern New Jersey includes all or parts of Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Ocean and Salem counties.
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10:10 p.m.
Republican U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (FRAY'-ling-high-zen) has won re-election to the House in New Jersey's 11th District.
Frelinghuysen beat Democratic attorney Joe Wenzel, of West Orange, to win a 12th term in Congress.
A member of the Frelinghuysen family has intermittently represented New Jersey in Congress going back to 1793.
Rodney Frelinghuysen succeeded his father about two decades after Peter Hood Ballantine Frelinghuysen Jr. left Congress in 1974.
The district has more Republicans than Democrats, and Frelinghuysen had more cash than his opponent. The race did not look close, with Frelinghuysen spending about $1.4 million and Wenzel spending nothing.
The district includes parts of Essex, Morris, Passaic and Sussex counties.
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10:10 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman has won a second term representing New Jersey's 12th District.
Watson Coleman, the first black woman elected to Congress in state history, defeated Republican meat wholesaler Steven Uccio (YOU'-see-o), of East Windsor. Watson Coleman is the only female member of the state's 12-person delegation.
Federal Election Commission records show Watson Coleman spent about $630,000 in the race, while Uccio who had no cash in the bank
Watson Coleman, of Ewing, served in the state Assembly before winning election to Congress in 2014.
New Jersey has a culturally diverse congressional delegation, including black and Latino members. But it has lagged when it comes to women representing the state.
Before Watson Coleman, Republican Marge Roukema was the last of five women to represent the state in Congress.
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10 p.m.
New Jersey voters have rejected an attempt to allow casinos at two locations in northern New Jersey.
The defeat means casino gambling will remain legal only in Atlantic City, where voters approved it in 1976. The question cannot be placed on the ballot again for two years.
The defeat was expected after expansion backers ended a $10 million ad campaign believing that voters were opposed.
It also comes as Atlantic City's casino industry shrinks, thanks in part to the opening of casinos in neighboring states. Five of the city's 12 casinos closed since 2014. The Trump Taj Mahal closed last month.
The referendum didn't specify where the casinos would go. Proposals were floated for the Meadowlands Racetrack, in Jersey City, and Newark.
A group including New York casinos spent $11.3 million against expansion.
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10 p.m.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur has won a second term in Congress.
MacArthur beat Democrat Frederick John LaVergne in the district that includes Burlington and Ocean counties.
The former insurance executive first won election after former Philadelphia Eagles football player Jon Runyan retired in 2014.
LaVergne previously ran in the district in 2014 but finished in third place as a third-party candidate.
MacArthur has highlighted his work with Democrats in the politically mixed 3rd District and has been praised by Democratic U.S. Sens. Cory Booker and Bob Menendez.
He also had the bigger campaign war chest. Federal records show he spent more than $1 million, while LaVergne raised only $600 for his campaign.
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9:45 p.m.
Incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Robert Karabinchak has won a full term in the 18th District.
Karabinchak defeated Republican Camille Ferraro Clark. He was tapped to fill the seat after Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan was appointed to the state Senate when Peter Barnes assumed a judgeship.
Karabinchak is the president of Tri-Form Construction Inc.
The district contains a handful of towns in Middlesex County, including Edison and Metuchen.
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9:40 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Albio Sires (SEER-ees) has defeated Republican challenger Agha Khan in New Jersey's 8th District.
Sires, a former Assembly Speaker and mayor of West New York, will be returning to Congress for his seventh term.
The Hudson County-centered district has the second fewest number of Republicans of any of the state's 12 congressional districts.
The race was not expected to be close.
Federal Election Commission records show Sires spent nearly $400,000, while Khan spent nothing.
Khan, of Jersey City, has served as a Hudson County Republican Party official and works as a real estate developer.
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9:40 p.m.
Democratic state Sen. Patrick Diegnan has won his first full term in the 18th legislative district, which includes Edison and Metuchen.
Diegnan defeated Republican Roger Daley, of East Brunswick, on Tuesday.
Diegnan has served in the Senate since May when he was tapped to succeed Democrat Peter Barnes, who was named a judge.
Before going to the Senate, Diegnan represented the district in the Assembly since 2002.
The district contains a handful of towns in Middlesex County, including Edison and Metuchen.
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9:40 p.m.
Democratic Assemblywoman Blonnie Watson has won a full term in the Newark-based 29th District.
Watson defeated Republican Ronda Morrison.
Watson was tapped to fill the seat after incumbent Democrat Grace Spencer assumed a judgeship in July.
The district includes Newark and Belleville.
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9:30 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr. has won re-election to the U.S. House in New Jersey's 10th District.
Payne defeated Republican David Pinckney, of Irvington, and will return to Congress for his fourth term. Payne succeeded his father in 2012 after the elder Payne died at age 77. The senior Payne served 12 terms in the House.
The district includes parts of Essex, Hudson and Union counties and has the fewest number of Republicans among the state's 12 congressional districts.
Pinckney was a delegate for Donald Trump at the Republican convention from the 10th district and previously ran for and lost an Assembly seat.
Payne is a former Essex County freeholder and Newark City Council member.
Records show Payne spent about $387,000, while Pinckney spent nothing.
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9:15 p.m.
U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross has defeated Republican Bob Patterson in New Jersey's 1st District House race.
Norcross won in the heavily Democratic district that includes Camden as well as other parts of Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties.
He first won a special election to Congress in 2014 to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Robert Andrews.
An electrician, union representative and former state legislator, Norcross is also the brother of influential Democratic Party power broker and insurance executive George Norcross.
Norcross survived a primary challenge from Bernie Sanders supporter Alex Law in June, though the election ultimately was not close.
Patterson is a one-time aide to former Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett.
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9:05 p.m.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone has defeated Republican challenger Brent Sonnek-Schmelz in New Jersey's 6th District.
Pallone will return for his 16th term representing the district that includes Middlesex and Monmouth counties.
Sonnek-Schmelz is an Ivy League-educated attorney and sports retail executive from Atlantic Highlands.
Federal records show Pallone spent about $1.2 million in the campaign while his opponent spent about $46,000.
Pallone cites the Zadroga Act, which gave Sept. 11 first-responders medical coverage, as a top legislative achievement.
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9 p.m.
Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Smith has won his 19th term in Congress.
Smith has served in the House since 1981 and is the longest-tenured member of New Jersey's congressional delegation.
Smith defeated Democrat Lorna Phillipson. The Wall Street executive had served as CEO at Stewart Forbes Venture Capital.
The 4th District includes parts of Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties and has more Republicans than Democrats. But like most of the state, it has even more unaffiliated voters.
Smith has been popular in the district, and the contest did not look close. The congressman spent about $360,000 to Phillipson's $191,000 during the campaign.
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8 p.m.
New Jersey voters have given the state's 14 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton.
Voters in New Jersey chose the Democrat over Republican businessman Donald Trump.
Clinton was heavily favored to win the state despite Trump's former casino empire in the state and Republican Gov. Chris Christie's strong support.
Clinton came to Atlantic City during the campaign to highlight Trump's financial struggles, including multiple bankruptcies for his casino empire.
Trump did not campaign much in New Jersey, although he did headline a fundraiser for Christie to help pay off the debt from Christie's failed presidential campaign.
Democrats have won New Jersey in presidential elections since 1992.
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8 p.m.
Voting has ended across New Jersey, but voters who got into line by 8 p.m. can still cast a ballot.
Election results are being counted across New Jersey in the presidential contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
Results are also being tallied for the state's 12 congressional races and two ballot questions on casino expansion and using gas tax cash for transportation.
Voters lined up and waited for hours in parts of New Jersey with millions expected to vote, drawn by the presidential-year contest that normally produces a spike in turnout.
New Jersey is a reliably Democratic state having picked a Democrat in every presidential contest from 1992 onward. Data shows Democrats boosted their over Republicans in the state by 174,000 from January of this year to November.
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5:50 p.m.
Most New Jersey voters say they had their minds made up in the presidential election long before they cast their ballots.
About 3 in 4 voters surveyed by an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks said they made their decision between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump before September.
About 1 in 10 waited until the last few days to decide.
Polls are open in New Jersey until 8 p.m.
The preliminary exit poll of 1,037 voters was conducted for AP and the television networks by Edison Research in a random sample of 25 precincts statewide.
Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points; it is higher for subgroups.
5 p.m.
A civil liberties group says it has received a complaint that signs asking people to have identifications ready to vote were posted in at least one polling place in New Jersey.
The American Civil Liberties Union's New Jersey chapter told NJ.com (http://bit.ly/2fe6Lxx ) that it received a complaint about the Voter ID sign at a polling place in Metuchen.
Most voters in New Jersey are not required to show identification to vote.
Middlesex County elections officials say the issue was resolved as soon as they were told about the sign.
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said Tuesday that she was also asked for her ID by a worker who was looking up her information. Zimmer refused to show her ID.
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4 p.m.
A New Jersey congressman who withdrew his endorsement for Donald Trump last month and said he would write in Indiana Gov. Mike Pence has changed his mind.
A spokesman for Republican Rep. Frank LoBiondo said that he voted for Trump on Tuesday.
Jason Galanes says that LoBiondo decided on Monday to vote for Trump despite his disappointment and anger over Trump's comments about women. Galanes says LoBiondo believes Hillary Clinton is "100 percent unacceptable to be president."
LoBiondo said last month that he would "not vote for a candidate who boats of sexual assault" and that Trump was "unfit to be president."
Approached by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter to ask him about his vote , LoBiondo backed his SUV up, hitting a banister with his side view mirror.
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3:40 p.m.
New Jersey election officials say there have been no complaints lodged so far on Election Day.
Secretary of State spokesman Shawn Crisafulli said Tuesday that the state has not seen any red flags.
He added that there had been long lines in Jersey City, but officials brought in extra machines. He also said that mail-in ballots were being counted by hand in Burlington County.
Polls close at 8 p.m.
The attorney general has about 350 deputy attorneys general posted at voting stations across the state to consult officials regarding any problems that came.
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1:15 p.m.
Some people are waiting hours to vote at some polls in Jersey City.
Hudson County deputy superintendent of elections John Brzozowski says it's taking workers longer to process the high number of people going to the polls. He also says the ballot is longer and voters are taking their time once they are behind the curtain.
Brzozowski says the county started out with 500 voting machines for 450 districts. His office has added another 13 machines to try to offset the volume of voters.
He says the Jersey City districts with the longest waits are near high-rise apartment buildings.
Meanwhile, Burlington County election officials say that a printing error will force them to hand count most of the more than 19,000 mail-in ballots submitted. The error was discovered Tuesday morning and there is no guarantee that all the ballots will be counted by Tuesday night.
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1 p.m.
Election officials in Burlington County say that a printing error will force it to hand count most of the more than 19,000 mail-in ballots submitted.
Board of Election Chairman Joseph Dugan told the Burlington County Times (http://bit.ly/2fQ4EBK ) that dozens of workers are now performing a hand count of the mail-in ballots.
He says that the error was discovered Tuesday morning and that there is no guarantee that all the ballots will be counted by Tuesday night.
Officials say the more than 19,000 ballots returned as of Tuesday morning is a new record for the county. Ballots can be submitted until polls close at 8 p.m.
Voters in the county are choosing a sheriff, surrogate and freeholders. Republicans won freeholder seats by a margin of less than 2,000 votes last year.
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12:40 P.M.
All roads lead to New York City when it comes to the presidential election and that could pose troubles for motorists coming or going from New Jersey.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in Manhattan waiting for election results.
The Port Authority is urging motorists to avoid the Lincoln Tunnel on Tuesday afternoon and evening because of planned election events at Trump headquarters in Midtown and at Clinton headquarters on Manhattan's West Side.
The agency says significantly higher traffic volumes are expected and travelers are encouraged to seek alternate routes.
Polls in New Jersey close at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Heavy and steady voting is reported around the state.
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11 a.m.
New Jersey voters are casting ballots mostly without the gridlock seen in some other states.
It took more than an hour before people could vote in Ward F, District 6 at County Prep High School in Jersey City because someone brought the wrong keys for the voting machines. The line eased by 8 a.m.
Bergen County deputy elections superintendent Theresa O'Connor says it's busy, but the lines are moving in the state's most populated county.
The county is part of the 5th Congressional District House and the most closely watched race between incumbent Republican Scott Garrett and Democrat Josh Gottheimer. Gottheimer's wife and young children watched as he voted in Wyckoff. Garrett has not said when and where he's voting.
Atlantic County is reporting steady voting.
Republican Gov. Chris Christie voted soon after the polls opened. The Donald Trump surrogate did not answer questions from reporters and the event was not on his public schedule.
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7:50 a.m.
Gov. Chris Christie voted without any fanfare soon after polls opened in New Jersey.
The former Republican presidential candidate had nothing to say as he left his precinct in Mendham and did not list the event on his public schedule as he has during previous elections.
Christie dropped out of the presidential race and supported Donald Trump after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary. He has not been seen campaigning with Trump or acting as a surrogate after two former Christie aides were convicted for their roles in closing traffic lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge.
In addition to the presidential race, New Jersey voters have two public questions on statewide ballots. One would expand casino gambling to northern New Jersey and the other would dedicate the recent gas tax increase to transportation projects.
Polls close at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
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6 a.m.
Polls are open in New Jersey and voters have until 8 p.m. to decide whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton will become president.
Republican Gov. Chris Christie had hoped he'd be the choice for president. But Christie folded his campaign after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary and backed Trump.
There are two statewide ballot questions that will be settled Tuesday.
The first would amend the state constitution to allow two casinos to be built in northern New Jersey. The other would require revenue from the state's recent 23 cents-a-gallon gas tax increase be dedicated to transportation projects.
Voters will also decide who will serve their districts in the House of Representatives and who will serve in local and county offices.
___
12:50 a.m.
It's finally here.
New Jersey voters go to the polls Tuesday to pick between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump for president, along with the 12-member U.S. House delegation. They'll also decide whether to allow casinos in northern New Jersey and if every cent of the gas tax should be spent only on transportation.
Polls are open from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m.
Clinton is favored to win New Jersey despite Trump's former casino empire in the state and Republican Gov. Chris Christie's strong support.
The 5th District House race between incumbent Republican Scott Garrett and Democratic challenger Josh Gottheimer is the state's most closely watched contest.
A question mark also hangs over a ballot question asking voters whether all of the state's gas tax should be used for transportation.
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What to Know Americans vote for president and at the local level after months of election campaigning
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will cast their votes in New York State and both candidates will be in Manhattan on Tuesday night
The U.S. is preparing for the potential of a cyber-attack and ballot initiatives in several states could prove a turning point for marijuana
Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here.
America Votes for President
After more than a year of campaigning, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump planned to cast their votes, along with the rest of America, on Tuesday. The candidates blitzed through the battleground states on Monday, accompanied by their families, political allies and celebrities. Clinton was set to vote near her home in Chappaqua, New York, and Trump, in Manhattan. Among likely voters, Clinton continues to lead Trump in a four-way contest with 47 percent to Trump's 41 percent, shows the final NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll, conducted between Oct. 31 and Nov. 6. Heres a look back at pivotal moments in this presidential race.
U.S. Prepares for Cyber-Attack
The U.S. government is making an unprecedented effort to protect Tuesday's presidential election from cyber-attack. The concern is so high, intelligence officials told NBC, that for the first time, hundreds of military and intelligence cyber experts who work out of top secret facilities will be monitoring intelligence about a U.S. presidential election.
Election 2016 in the Tri-State
Tuesday will mark the first time in more than 70 years that both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees will be celebrating Election Day in New York City. That means stepped up security and road closures in Manhattan as voters head to the polls. In New York State, Democrats hope to cut into or possibly erase Republicans' 247-188 majority in the House in several elections. Democrats currently control the Assembly and hold the governor's office, and Republicans control the Senate. All 63 seats in the New York Senate and 150 seats in the Assembly are up for election this year. The outcome is likely to come down to a handful of competitive races on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley. Meanwhile, New York U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer faces Republican Wendy Long in his first serious challenge in nearly two decades. In New Jersey, voters will be electing U.S. House members and taking up decisions about gambling and the gas tax. In Connecticut, there are local races on the ballot and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal is running for reelection.
Where to Vote and Watch
Not sure where to vote? Find your polling place here. If you plan on sharing a voting booth selfie, remember that its illegal in New York and New Jersey but legal in Connecticut. Here's what to do if you have any problems at the polls, and heres where you can watch election coverage in New York City as the results come in Tuesday night.
Pivotal Election Comes to a Close
No matter who wins on Tuesday night, history will be made. Hillary Clinton could become the first woman elected president of the U.S. or Donald Trump could lead an unprecedented grassroots campaign into history. Heres a look back at this unforgettable election in photos.
Marijuanas Moment?
Voters in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada will consider legalizing recreational use of marijuana. Those ballot initiatives, along with medical marijuana measures in other states, could be the biggest advance yet toward pot legalization.
Puerto Rico heads to the polls on Tuesday, with a governor's race between a candidate who favors full statehood and another who prefers the island's current relationship with the United States.
Polls show the statehood supporter, Ricardo Rossello Nevares, leading the race.
Whoever wins will have to deal with the island's fiscal crisis. Rossello, 37 and the son of a former governor, has said he sees statehood as the best solution.
For more from Telemundo 47 (in Spanish), click here.
Police have arrested a 23-year-old man in connection with the fatal stabbing of an Ithaca College student from New York City during a brawl at Cornell University.
Ithaca police say Nagee Green, of Freeville, was arrested Monday on murder and assault charges in the death of Anthony Nazaire, a 19-year-old sophomore from Brooklyn.
Green pleaded not guilty at his arraignment and was remanded without bail.
Nazaire and his friend were stabbed Aug. 28 as several hundred people were leaving a fraternity-sponsored party at the Cornell student union. His friend was treated for injuries and released.
Police did not provide any details as to Green's connection to Nazaire or to what led to the stabbing.
A spokesman for the Nazaire family said they were grateful for the arrest.
For those who entered through the security zone at Fifth and Arch streets, Bruce Springsteen suddenly appeared 30 yards away, strumming something about going home.
His small stage faced north in front of the Independence Visitors Center. Behind him and to the south of Market Street stood 30,000 people.
They stuffed the block between Market and Chestnut streets and Fifth and Sixth streets. They arrived on trains and in cars hours earlier to see Hillary Clinton on the eve of the presidential election. Clinton, a former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, had promised the crowd some star power: and not just of the New Jersey rock-and-roll variety.
Springsteen finished a three-song set and up came the lights on a main stage a bit north of the Boss. Chelsea Clinton appeared, talking about the incredible campaigning during the last year. Then came her father, former President Clinton.
Next came Michelle Obama, describing herself as emotional and sounding it.
Wow, she began as loud cheers erupted. Well, thank you so much.
The location is an important one for the Obamas -- and all Democrats.
Eight years earlier, on March 18, 2008, her husband Barack Obama gave a speech on race a couple hundred yards from the stage.
That address at the Constitution Center, known now as A More Perfect Union, has been credited with rocketing him towards the Democratic nomination. His trip to Independence Mall had propelled him from a first-term, ambitious U.S. senator to a candidate able to unify the Democratic Party.
Now, Michelle Obama stood, she said, in the midst of perhaps the last and most important thing I can do as First Lady of my country.
We are one day away from again making history, she said. In just a few hours, we have the power to make her our next president.
She introduced President Obama, who before calling Hillary Clinton out to the stage described her as having more experience than me or Bill.
Im betting tomorrow that you will reject fear and choose hope, he said. And that is a bet I never lose.
When Clinton came out, she asked Philadelphia for help making another Democratic president.
Get out and vote tomorrow, Philadelphia, she said. Lets make history together.
A judge has acquitted a man of attempted murder in a Pittsburgh-area mall shooting that wounded three people but convicted him of other charges.
President Judge Jeffrey Manning convicted 18-year-old Tarod Thornhill of aggravated assault, reckless endangering and firearms crimes Monday in Allegheny County.
Defense attorney Chris Urbano acknowledged that his client shot his 20-year-old target and wounded two shopping bystanders in February 2015 in Macy's at the Monroeville Mall.
But he said Thornhill was mentally ill and didn't know his actions were illegal or was unable to control them. Prosecutors said he was recorded on a jail phone call being told by a woman to fake insanity.
Defense attorney Chris Urbano called the judge's decision fair and said he was glad that his client would get mental health treatment.
A family mourned the death of a 21-year-old woman after Pennsylvania State Police confirmed that her body was found in a Bucks County state park.
Lindsey Piccone went missing in Tyler State Park in Newtown in September.
On Tuesday, state police said dental records identified skeletal remains belonging to the 21-year-old Bensalem woman. Last week, a park staff found Piccone's body while clearing vegetation.
Piccone was reported missing on Sept. 6, said officials. Piccone did not have her cellphone with her and was last seen two days earlier, according to investigators.
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.
Piccone's obituary mentioned her love for the outdoors and her friends. She worked as a caregiver at Magic Cottage School.
Piccone's family planned a funeral at Tomlinson Funeral Home along Bristol Pike in Piccone's hometown, said her obituary. The family asked that donations in Piccone's name be made to the Women's Humane Society, 3839 Richlieu Road, Bensalem, PA 19020.
Jeong's story seems to conflict with the timeframe but also downplays the extent of Choi's involvement.
But Jeong claimed Choi only looked at them and offered comments but did not revise them. Park in a partial apology on Oct. 25 admitted letting Choi look at her speeches, "but after the secretarial staff at Cheong Wa Dae was fully established, I stopped," she claimed.
According to prosecutors on Monday, Jeong Ho-seong claims that Park felt it was necessary for several people to take a look at the rough drafts of her speeches and told him to deliver them to Choi and listen to her opinions.
A disgraced former presidential secretary has told prosecutors that President Park Geun-hye instructed him to deliver speeches to her friend Choi Soon-sil, who is at the heart of a scandal that has effectively shut down government.
But prosecutors confiscated two mobile phones used by Jeong, which contained audio recordings of conversations with Park and Choi.
Jeong initially claimed he did not know Choi. Asked why he recorded the phone calls, Jeong said he "did not want to miss any of the president's instructions."
Mobile phone records are proving explosive in the ongoing investigation. A special investigative team said they are looking into conversations that took place between Park and the heads of several big conglomerates following a July 24 luncheon with executives of 17 companies, whom she apparently prodded to donate money to Choi's dubious Mir and K-Sports foundations.
Prosecutors hit on the events by analyzing the phones of An Chong-bum, a close associate of Park's and former presidential secretary for policy coordination, as well as a diary he kept.
They have also belatedly slapped a travel ban on former presidential secretary Woo Byung-woo, who was in charge of auditing other Cheong Wa Dae officials.
Earlier, prosecutors seemed minded to let Woo off the hook for a number of shady dealings he allegedly committed while in office, and pictures published in the Chosun Ilbo suggested his questioning was a cozy affair. But now prosecutors say they are investigating him on charges of abusing his power in relation to the Choi scandal.
Park is suspected of giving Choi, a friend of 40 years with no official post, unheard-of access to government business and easing her friend's path to fabulous wealth by enlisting her entire office to drum up funds for her ventures.
A South Jersey dad who falsely claimed his young twin sons had lengthy hospital stays so he could collect more than $140,000 from his insurer is now headed to prison.
State officials say Steven Herder received a three-year sentence Monday and also must pay restitution to the insurance company.
The 41-year-old Lindenwold man had pleaded guilty last month to insurance fraud.
Authorities say Herder filed five false insurance claims between June 2012 and November 2014.
Four of the claims were paid, but the fifth was denied.
The claims sought payment for purported hospital stays ranging from 11 weeks to 26 weeks for one or the other of his sons.
Authorities say Herder forged three doctors' signatures on the fake hospital records he created on a computer.
Police shot and killed a suspect in a shooting in Philadelphia Monday night.
Investigators say an unidentified gunman shot a 44-year-old man in the back at 5:50 p.m. on the 700 block of W. Clearfield Street. The victim was taken to Temple University Hospital where he is currently in stable condition.
Responding police officers approached the alleged gunman on the 900 block of Clearfield and opened fire. The suspect was struck at least once and later died from his injuries. Police have not yet revealed his identity.
Delaware State Police have arrested a man who they say inappropriately touched a 9-year-old girl he helped on and off a horse for a pony ride.
The girl was at Fifer Orchards near Dover with her mother on Oct. 29, where John Blackburn, a high-risk sex offender was working with another group, Angels Gather Here Pony Rides, according to a statement by police.
Troopers say the child took a pony ride.
After the ride, another woman told the child's mother that the man who helped the girl on and off the pony had inappropriately touched the child, investigators said. Fifer Orchards called police after the child's mother contacted one of their represenatives as well as the pony ride company.
"The mother brought me a picture of him doing it," said Rod Crowson, who owns the pony ride business. Crowson said he confronted Blackburn with the picture and fired him on the spot.
Authorities arrested 33-year-old Blackburn of Houston, Delaware, who is a Tier III or high-risk sex offender, according to police. He was convicted in 2002 of unlawful sexual intercourse with a victim under the age of 12.
Crowson said he normally does background checks on workers before he hires them, but did not run a background check on Blackburn because he was recommended by a "very good friend, very reliable" at a time Crowson was short of help.
Blackburn worked for Angels Gather Here Pony Rides from Oct. 2 through Oct. 29, Crowson said, adding that he runs a legitimate business.
"Children come to ride who are special needs and we don't even charge them." The backlash from this incident has been awful for his family, Crowson said.
"People have threatened to shoot my grandkids."
Blackburn is charged with unlawful sexual contact with a child and failure to re-register as a sex offender.
As SEPTA services return to normal after the strike, the transportation company is launching a Credit Program for unused Weekly and Monthly TransPasses.
For all unused Weekly and Monthly TransPasses, SEPTA will offer a credit voucher that will be good towards the purchase of another SEPTA fare product.
Customers must turn in their unused passes to receive the voucher so do not throw away any unused passes.
The requests for fare credits for unused TransPasses will be honored through Jan. 31, 2017.
If a customer purchased a Weekly TransPass for Oct. 31 through Nov. 6, they will receive a $20 credit voucher which will be available Nov. 9.
For a Weekly TransPass valid Nov. 7 through Nov. 13, SEPTA is offering a $4 credit voucher available on Nov. 14.
For Monthly TransPasses valid through Nov. 1 through Nov. 30, the transportation company is offering a $21 credit voucher beginning Dec. 1.
SEPTA customers who receive TransPass products through ComPass, an Employer Program or a PreTax Benefit Program must send their unused pass by mail to SEPTA SIP REFUNDS at 1234 Market Street, 9th Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 for credit.
SEPTA Key Card customers with unused TransPasses on any of the dates listed above must contact the the SEPTA Key Customer Call Center at 855.567.3782 for information on how to receive credit.
Bridget Black and Emma MacDonald met over coffee Monday afternoon as they waited inside La Colombe next to Independence Mall.
Both women wore yellow cards that read The Night Before Volunteer, symbols they were set to help out during the huge Get Out the Vote rally for Hillary Clinton later in the evening.
I told them I would do anything and everything they needed. So here I am, Black said shortly after 1 p.m. The Washington D.C. native is a graduate student studying political science in Philadelphia.
MacDonald, a freelance dancer living in East Passyunk, decided to help out Clintons campaign after she's attended the Democratic presidential candidates post-DNC rally in September.
I always supported her campaign, but then I found out there was a campaign office in my neighborhood, she said of the Clinton office on Washington Avenue.
The streets around Independence Mall in Old City buzzed with blue shirts and loud banter as thousands began arriving in the early afternoon hours for the Clinton rally.
The candidate was expected to take the stage sometime after 8 p.m. with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and President Obama and First Lady Michelle. The powerhouse couples will be joined by two of New Jerseys most famous musicians, Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.
SEPTA Regional Rail trains bringing in Clinton supporters from the suburbs were packed throughout the late morning and early afternoon. One mother brought her four-year-old daughter.
When another rider asked the little girl what she was going to Philadelphia for, the girl said in a high-pitched voice, Hillary Clinton!
Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump were making dizzying amounts of stops on the last day of presidential campaign, with Trump and his running mate Mike Pence also appearing in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
Americans may not have agreed on much in this election, but they were united around one issue: marijuana legalization.
Eight states legalized marijuana in some form on Election Day. California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada showed up to support recreational marijuana, while Arkansas, Florida, and North Dakota passed ballot initiatives legalizing medical marijuana. Only in Arizona did voters reject cannabis in 2016.
Marijuana is now legal for medical or adult use in 28 states, accounting for more than 60 percent of the U.S. population, according to the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA), an advocacy group that lobbies for federal marijuana reform.
"Tuesday nights results send a simple message the tipping point has come," said NCIA executive director Aaron Smith.
But jubilation over marijuana's victory was tempered by the election of Republican Donald Trump and GOP majorities in both the Senate and House.
The prospect of Donald Trump as our next president concerns me deeply, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement. His most likely appointees to senior law enforcement positions Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie are no friends of marijuana reform, nor is his vice president.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law. Under President Barack Obama, federal authorities largely took a hands-off approach to state-level legalization efforts. But an incoming administration more skeptical of drug reform could easily reverse that approach.
Still, analysts and advocates alike say, the industry may be too big and valuable for a Trump administration to stop, especially after voters in California home to the world's 6th largest economy legalized the recreational use of marijuana.
"It's obviously a different ball game than what we anticipated under a [Hillary] Clinton administration," says Taylor West, NCIA deputy director. "But regardless of who the president is and who is controlling the Senate, this is still an issue that Congress is going to have to wrestle with."
The industry continues to face some unique challenges. Shut out of banks, businesses can't get loans and shops are stockpiling cash, creating a significant security threat.
CASH CROP
In August, the Drug Enforcement Administration reaffirmed marijuana's classification as a Schedule 1 drug, the same category as heroin, with no recognized medical use or value and without access to financial institutions. Subsequently, financial institutions have been prohibited from doing business with dispensaries, growers, distributors and other marijuana-related businesses that are operating legally under state laws, forcing them to run cash-only businesses.
The amount of money changing hands is substantial. By the end of 2016 the legal pot market is expected to reach $2.6 billion in sales, according to The ArcView Group, a cannabis-focused investment firm that gathers market research.
U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, of Colorado, who has pushed for reforming federal banking laws, calls it an issue of public safety.
As a result of being denied access to the banking system, there are millions of dollars in cash moving around the streets of Colorado, Perlmutter said. These businesses are forced to operate as cash-only enterprises, inviting crime such as robbery and tax evasion and adding to the burden of setting up a legitimate small business.
The owner of one Denver-based marijuana business, who asked not to be named for fear of being targeted, said because she is forced to operate in all cash, she has to factor the threat of robbery into every business decision.
"We only operate in daylight hours, we rotate pay schedules, and we have a buddy system where we walk employees to their cars to make sure they get there safely," she said, adding that her vendors, utility bills and landlord are all paid in cash. "I never travel alone."
FORT WORTH, TX NOVEMBER 03: James Buescher, driver of the #31 Exide Batteries Chevrolet, practices for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series WinStar World Casino 350 at Texas Motor Speedway on November 3, 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images)
In 2013, the Obama administration said it wouldnt prosecute financial service companies that choose to serve state-sanctioned marijuana businesses, as long as they can assure that their clients are in compliance with the guidelines set forth by the Justice and Treasury departments. The administration stopped short of offering blanket protection against enforcement.
National banks have remained wary of being implicated for money laundering and have avoided the industry for fear that if an account turns out to be a front for the illegal drug trade no matter how diligent the vetting process is it could put the institution at risk of losing its FDIC insurance, or its employees may face imprisonment.
Still, those guidelines have been enough to encourage a small number of community banks and credit unions to start offering basic services in states with thorough "seed-to-sale" enforcement programs, which track pot from cultivation to purchase.
Carmella Houston, vice president of business services at Salal Credit Union in Washington state, said they monitor accounts closely to makes sure clients are complying with the DOJ's Cole Memo priorities, which require states to prevent legally grown marijuana from crossing its borders, sales to minors and the use of legal sales as a cover for illegal activity.
"With seed-to-sale traceability, we can ensure federal compliance," Houston said.
Salal began serving state-licensed businesses in Washington in 2014. It is one of a handful of credit unions openly serving the industry, though, according to Houston, several others are doing it "not openly." Applicants go through a thorough review process to obtain an account with Salal.
"We not only review the business, but also the owners, develop an understanding of the types of products being sold, and where the initial start up funds came from to launch their companies," Houston said.
The enormous regulatory and compliance burdens don't come cheap. Salal charges clients fees based on the number and amount of transactions.
Between March 2014 and March 2016, the number of banks and credit unions across the country willing to handle pot money under Treasury Department guidelines jumped from 51 to 301, The Associated Press reported, citing federal data.
Merchants, however, say there are not nearly enough banks willing to take their cash. In the meantime, "potrepreneurs" are developing creative, non-cash payment options.
[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail
'POTREPRENEURS'
PayQwick has been dubbed the PayPal for pot.
Much like the online payment system, PayQwick allows customers to use its platform to pay for cannabis and marijuana-related services via loadable cards, a smartphone app and, soon, debit and credit cards.
Dispensary owners can use the online payment platform to pay vendors, landlords and employees. Customers can use the preloaded PayQwick card to make purchases and collect rewards.
The Calabasas-based company operates in Washington and Oregon, where state regulations enable PayQwick to comply with the Cole Memo guidelines, according to CEO Kenneth Berke. Berke hopes to expand to other states once a strict tracking system is in place.
The key to our platform is seed-to-sale traceability. Colorado is still a little bit of the wild, wild west because it doesnt have the traceability system, Berke said. We assure every dollar deposited into a PayQwick account comes from the legal sale of marijuana. Every dollar going through the PayQwick system can be tracked back to legitimate marijuana sales."
Applicants undergo a rigorous screening process and the company conducts its own compliance checks four times a year, Berke said. Clients who arent following the rules or refuse inspections are dropped from the system.
GUARDIANS OF GREEN
Even with some relief from cash stockpiles, security concerns still plague canna-businesses. Many continue to operate unbanked and their product is lucrative in the black market and across state lines, leaving them vulnerable to robberies.
The concern for safeguarding cannabis businesses has led to a boom in the security industry in states like Colorado and Oregon.
Derek Porter, a former special operations Marine who worked on an anti-terrorism security team before he founded Security Grade Protective Services in 2012, says there is a need for well-trained security teams that are used to handling important cargo. And many former veterans are finding employment on patrol at dispensaries and marijuana growers.
"Veterans are a much better fit because they have a great work ethic and are still in a heavy security mindset," said Porter who noted about 70 percent of his employees are vets. "For a lot of these guys, they're doing work they see as familiar to the patrols assigned to them in Iraq and Afghanistan."
In July 2016, Travis Mason, a former Marine, was shot and killed during a botched robbery at an Aurora, Colorado, dispensary where he worked as a security guard. Mason's killing alarmed the industry and security firms like Porter's saw an increase in requests for armed guards.
Transport is another complication. The cannabis has to move from the cultivators to the stores, and cash needs to move between businesses and to state authorities for tax payments.
"Cash is a pain, time consuming and costly for everyone," Porter said. "We need to pay guards to go pick up the cash. Its a risk for them to have a large amount of cash on hand. We count the money twice on our end, and then we have to take it to the bank and they have to count it."
TAXING FOR THE TAXMAN
Security isn't just a concern for those directly involved in the cannabis industry. The government is also reckoning with the risks and impracticality of bundles of cash.
In states where marijuana is legal for recreational and medicinal uses, businesses are subject to state sales taxes.
Oregon, for instance, has collected $6.84 million from the pot taxs first two months of 2016 exceeding expectations for the entire year and more than half of the states pot dealers paid that in cash, the AP reported. Of the $15 million-plus Washington collected from marijuana sales in February, nearly $4 million was cash carried through the lobby of the liquor boards headquarters in Olympia.
In California, 100 percent of the taxes collected on $662,956,249 of taxable medical cannabis sales, roughly $59 million, was paid in cash, according to the state Board of Equalization (BOE). And without any access to banks or credit unions, marijuana businesses in the state have also incurred a 10 percent penalty when taxes over $10,000 were paid in cash. The penalty will be waived starting Jan. 1, 2017.
"Security is a concern," NCIA's West said. "Aside from the financial problems, the safety is one of the biggest. Employees are at risk since people know where and when there will be large amounts of cash."
To curb the risk of robberies, the California BOE says it changes its marijuana tax day collection, also known as "cash day," monthly, avoiding routine habits that could place taxpayers and employees at risk.
Meanwhile, tax collection offices are doing what they can to manage the heaps of pungent cash pouring into their buildings. Offices in Oregon and Colorado have bolstered security, hiring more guards and investing in safety glass and security cameras.
Some investors say that European banks don't want such a risky undertaking as a Greek bailout.
HAZY FUTURE
The marijuana industry remains eager for a federal solution to their banking problem.
Now, theyre awaiting signals of how a Trump Justice Department will approach cannabis. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, didnt respond to a request seeking comment.
"Ive been urging my colleagues in both the House and Senate to quickly address this issue in the next Congress," congressman Perlmutter said. "We must allow legitimate marijuana businesses access to banking services and in order to keep our communities safe.
California's "Yes" vote could tip the scale for federal reform given the size of the state's economy and the economic impact of the marijuana industry there. Arcview estimates that legal annual California pot revenues could exceed $7 billion by 2020.
"This is the beginning of the end of the war on marijuana in the United States," said said California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who helped craft the state's ballot measure.
A recent Gallup poll found that a record 60 percent of Americans support making cannabis legal. West said that bills to amend marijuana laws have gotten bipartisan support, but they haven't moved out of committee because committee chairs don't want to talk about it.
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"They aren't feeling the pressure to take on the issue," West argues. "But when you have 101 members of the House and 18 senators representing millions of constituents in legal adult-use states, Congress won't be able to keep looking the other way and pretending it isn't happening."
Voters around Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware flocked to the polls Tuesday morning to decide whether Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump will become President of the United States.
Lines quickly formed at several polling locations in Philadelphia shortly after voting opened at 7 a.m. The line outside Ben Franklin High School in the city's Spring Garden neighborhood swelled in minutes of opening leading to a two hour long wait for some.
"It's a pretty awesome thing to see so many people out to make their votes count," Jennifer Sludden told NBC10.
At 10th and Locust streets in Center City, NBC10's Jim Rosenfield captured voters waiting inside for their turns. And, NBC10's Monique Braxton found long lines outside the Kingsessing Free Library. A poll worker said the line was longest of the past three elections.
Outside the city, voters found lines in West Chester, Pennsylvania and Rehoboth, Delaware.
In the Lehigh Valley, a line wrapped around the Zions Evan Lutheran Church in Zionsville where Sen. Pat Toomey will vote Tuesday evening as he looks to stop Democrat Katie McGinty. [[338107532, C]]
There were also anecdotally stories of voting rolls reaching into the hundreds already by mid-morning. At one Cherry Hill, New Jersey polling place more than 300 voters cast their votes in the first five hours or so.
And, voters at the University of Sciences in Philadelphia had the chance to spend a little more time at their polling place as flu shots were offered.
East Vincent Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania recently opened a new law enforcement only gun range. Neighbors aren't thrilled.
The gun range currently has officers and other personnel completing mandatory qualifications. It's located on Dairy Road behind the township's sewer plant and some residents in the Royersford section of Limerick Township complained about the noise.
Last week, Limerick Township Police Department administrators met with the East Vincent Township Police and discussed ways to reduce the noise.
East Vincent Township is working on sound reduction measures.
The gun range is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. But the police department said they'll try and limit the early morning and evening schedule.
There are also dates when the gun range will not be in use and as winter approaches, overall use may be reduced.
Royersford Borough Police Department also updated residents that they also met with the East Vincent Township Police Department.
Some residents are on the side of the East Vincent Township Police arguing they deal with train horns at all hours, fire sirens and horns, as well as gunshots from hunters -- and the gunshots from the range shouldn't affect anything, and that first responders need practice.
Police say a student charged with selling marijuana at his Pennsylvania community college campus told them he was using the money to pay his tuition.
The (Easton) Express-Times reports 20-year-old Zachary Santiago, of Philadelphia, was arrested after Bethlehem Township police searched his room at Northampton Community College on Friday and found more than one-and-a-half ounces of marijuana. Police say they also found $700 in cash, plastic bags and a scale.
Police say Santiago acknowledged selling the drugs to pay his school bill. He's since been banned from campus.
Online court records don't list an attorney for Santiago, who faces a preliminary hearing Nov. 18 on charges he sold and possessed marijuana as well as drug paraphernalia.
American College Testing, which administers standardized entrance exams around the world including Korea, will close 26 test venues in Korea due to rampant cheating.
ACT said on its website Monday that it will administer tests in Korea only in venues designated by the service and dispatch its own supervisors.
ACT vowed to crack down on the "criminal actions" of some test takers in Korea, who ruin the test for other students who prepare honestly for the exams.
Exams that used to be administered in 26 locations in Korea will be moved to one designated center. ACT sent out e-mails to Korean staff last Saturday informing them that a test scheduled on Dec. 10 will be administered in a hotel in Seoul. ACT said the aim was to stop "repeated leaks" of test materials in Korea.
Tests scheduled in February, April and June next year will also be administered in a single location. "It looks like back-to-back cheating prompted the tough response," a staffer said.
In San Diego County, two Bottlenose dolphins were found along the Silver Strand in October 2015.
The first, a male, NEB0075, weighed almost six hundred pounds. Two hours and forty minutes later, about a mile away, a female was found. Almost nine feet long, KXD0280 is how she was identified.
Finding two dead dolphins, stranded in the same general area, in the same general time frame is a rarity in the San Diego region, according to national data. On average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), each year, 3.3 dolphins are found stranded along the San Diego coast.
These two dolphins, found stranded within hours of each other, is an unusual event, according to federal investigators. The last time two dolphins were found dead, stranded along the coastline, was in 1963. Those deaths were never explained.
Nine days after these two dolphins were found, a third dolphin, identified as KXD020 was found. This one stranded near Naval Amphibious Base Coronado farther north along the Strand.
When sea mammals are found stranded, a stranding report is created to alert NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The report for the female dolphin, KXD0280, indicates she was not pregnant.
Click here to read the report on the male dolphin found. Click here to read the report on the female dolphin.
Southwest Fisheries Science Center, based in La Jolla, examined all three dolphins. The first two necropsies were completed in the Centers lab. KXD020 was found in moderate decomposition so his organs were removed at the beach and returned to the Center for review.
When first learning about the dolphin deaths in October 2015, NBC 7 Investigates submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to NOAA for copies of the stranding reports and any other documents pertaining to the investigation into the dolphins deaths.
It would take a year and a series of discussions between NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Service and NBC 7 Investigates before the preliminary report and documents were released.
Click here to read the complete report.
The documents list potential causes of death as a boat collision, shot fishery interaction or other human interaction. They also show the U.S. Navy was involved in a training exercise during the same time frame roughly in the same area, the dolphins were found stranded.
One of those documents, an email from Jaclyn Taylor of NOAA, confirms this. According to the email, a Navy Major Training Exercise was underway during the timeframe the dolphins stranded.
So, clearly they are operating out there, confirmed another email from the California Stranding Network Coordinator, Justin Viezbicke. In his email, he noted the Navy notification didnt contain the normal 72 hour pre-notification. Viezbicke was told by his Navy contact that travel delayed the email and the event started on Oct. 21.
Click here to read the emails.
The Navy agreed to notify NOAA as part of a long running legal battle over the use of sonar. Federal courts have said the least predictable adverse impact should be part of any Navy planning and training.
This mandate is part of a court enforced authorization from NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service which allows the Navy to use sonar in certain sensitive marine areas.
Click here to see maps of the where sonar is allowed and where there are restrictions.
The emails continue, describing how the Navy was investigating the issue. In one email, the Chief of Naval Operations, Washington , D.C., said, "the Navy has been collecting information" about a military exercise in the Hawaii-Southern California Testing and Training (HSTT) Study Area. According to the emails, there was "NO explosive use" in the exercise, "hull mounted MFA sonar was used within "72 hours and 80 nautical miles of the strandings.
In response to NBC 7 Investigates, the Navy answered questions via email but declined an on-camera interview. In the email response, a Navy spokesman said, "...the MTE in question was conducted without the use of sonar and explosives. When conducted without the use of sonar and explosives, the event does not produce any acoustic stressors which can affect marine mammals or their potential to strand...The Navy has been consistent in providing NMFS with required 72-hour pre-event notications during the HSTT training and testing activities covered under the current authorization, as well as under the previous authorization since 2009."
Attorney Joel Reynolds with the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, has been involved in lawsuits with the Navy over its use of sonar since the mid-1990s. He reviewed NOAAs report on the dolphin deaths.
The NOAA report suggests a lot of circumstances we have seen many times in the past in the wake of high intensity sonar testing and training, he said.
The sonar in question is called, MFA or mid-frequency active sonar with mid-frequency referring to the pitch of the sound waves. According to the report, MFA was used in the training session, one day for 35 minutes and another day for a total of 62 minutes.
According to the NOAA report, the dolphins "were all impacted by the same acute event" within a short time frame. The necropsy completed by Southwestern Fisheries ruled out algal bloom toxins, which have killed dolphins in the past. According to the documents, they found internal bleeding around the heart and in the abdomen, as well as head trauma.
"A specific cause of death has not been determined from the study," according to the investigative report but suspected causes of death noted in the report include the dolphins being trapped underwater by a net or a cage or mid frequency active sonar. The report also notes there was no commercial fishing in the area and "one would think the force of the struggle" would leave some abrasions or lacerations on the dolphin's body but there werent any.
The problem with the active sonar being named as the cause, according to the report, is "hemorrhage around the ears might be expected, but there wasnt any. "However it is important to note" continues the report, this happens with beaked whales and it could be different for bottlenose dolphins whose "behavior and habitat" differ from whales.
According to the conclusion of the report, "all three dolphins clearly suffered severe trauma" likely man made in nature, "although the exact cause is unknown."
According to the email from a Navy spokesperson, the Navy conducted its own analysis and is confident that these stranding events were not caused by the Navys use of MFA sonar.
The response continues, saying, there was no realistic probability that the stranding was caused by the Navys use of sonar. The closest Navy sonar-using ship was (about) 6 nautical miles (11,100 m) away from the stranding location...Based on the significant distance between the MFA sonar use and the dolphins habitat, as well as computer modeling of the likely propagation of the sonar within the area in question, the Navy is also confident that its use of MFA sonar could not have caused behavioral reactions that would lead the animals to strand.
Click here to read the Navys complete response.
Paul Watson, an environmentalist with Sea Shepherd, an international marine wildlife conservation organization, said this has happened before. According to him there can be unknowns when dolphins and sea mammals are found stranded.
A lot of the bodies simply arent found, he said. The best way to liken this (sonar injuring or killing sea mammals) is a human stands beside a 747 jet engine. Multiply that about five times, you will get the kind of impact it would have on a human being.
It causes internal bleeding, Reynolds said. The animals lose their bearings, frequently leading to stranding and them dying on the beaches.
According to the email sent by the Navy, the location these three dolphins were found stranded, located outside of the busy harbor of San Diego, they would likely already be sensitized to small boat and shipping noise, as well as naval activity, including the use of active sonar.
Referencing a 2000 incident in which 17 whales swam themselves aground in the Bahamas the NRDC said, a report published more than a year after the 2000 incident concluded mid-frequency sonar emitted by the Navy caused some sort of acoustic or impulse trauma that drove the whales to shore.
NOAA declined NBC 7 Investigates request for an on-camera interview. Instead the agency answered a series of from NBC 7 Investigates via email. Click here to see the Q&A.
The Navy depends on sonar to protect its ships at sea. It uses the sonar to bounce loud sound waves off of objects to detect enemy submarines.
Reynolds told NBC 7 Investigates he recognizes the importance of sonar in order for the Navy to protect the fleet and the homeland but when the animals are there in significant areas, feeding area and breeding areas, migratory paths; test someplace else.
Click here to see a documentary produced by NRDC on the use of sonar underwater.
While producing this story, NBC 7 Investigates learned of other sea mammal strandings in our area, according to NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Services. More information on those is below:
A San Diego woman has been charged with harboring and hiding 44 undocumented immigrants in her home, some of whom were locked in a small shed, the U.S. Attorney's office announced.
Authorities first discovered the stash house, located on the 4900 block of University Avenue in San Diego's City Heights neighborhood, when San Diego Police (SDPD) got multiple calls from neighbors, according to a complaint filed in Federal Court.
Neighbors expressed concern after they saw two cars dropping off multiple people at the home, who then nervously rushed inside the home, the complaint alleges.
City Heights resident Dania Olivero, 51, told police she invited the people to drink beer at her house, the complaint alleges.
Officers further investigated, and found the people with unopened beers in front of them in the home. Some of the people ran to the back yard when authorities arrived.
"The police officers observed the individuals seemed nervous and weren't actually drinking the beer that was in front of them," said Mark Conover, Assistant United States Attorney and Chief of Reactive Crime Section.
Border Patrol officers were called to the home when police suspected the people may be undocumented immigrants.
All but two identified themselves as Mexican nationals without legal status in the U.S. when questioned, according to the complaint. Two said they were citizens of Guatemala, but did not have legal standing to be in the U.S.
Some of those questioned reported they were locked in a small backyard shed without light, ventilation or a bathroom with dozens of others, according to the complaint.
"Many were placed in a backyard shed, a shed without lighting, ventilation. A small shed with approximately 30 other individuals," Conover said.
All 44 of the undocumented immigrants were taken into custody. Seven of them are still in custody as material witnesses, and the remainder are in the custody of immigration officials pending immigration proceedings.
Olivero is charged with harboring and concealing undocumented immigrants, which carries a maximum of ten years in prison and a maximum fine of $500,000 if she is convicted.
A man was injured after being hit by a car on his bicycle in City Hights Monday night, according to the San Diego Police Department (SDPD).
The incident happened around 8:49 p.m. on 47th Street and University Avenue.
SDPD said the bicyclist, a 27-year old man, had been riding southbound on 47th Street and was hit by a car driving eastbound on University Avenue.
Lt. Steve Behrendt with SPDD told NBC 7 that the man did not have lights on his bicycle and he had failed to stop at a stop sign. The car crashed into his bicycle after he began to cross University Avenue.
Behrendt says the man was thrown from his bike, over the vehicle.
He suffered a broken femur along with bumps and bruises but is expected to be okay.
Police say the driver of the vehicle, a woman, did stay on the scene. At this point, drugs or alcohol are not suspected to be a factor in the collision.
The bicyclist was transported to a Scripps Mercy Hospital for his injuries.
The driver of the vehicle was not injured.
No other information was immediately available.
Check back for updates on this breaking news story.
An Election Day polling place opened Tuesday next to a well-known Catholic church in Old Town San Diego embroiled in a controversy involving a bulletin that implied Hillary Clinton is Satanic.
The voting station at Father Junipero Serra Hall invited locals to cast their ballots next to the Immaculate Conception Church, where the pastor has taken a prominent stand on this election.
On Oct. 16, fliers featuring the writings of Father Richard Perozich were inserted into the churchs newsletter and warned that voting for Democrats would result in parishioners descending into Hell and implied that Clinton was working with the Devil. One leaflet stuffed into the newsletter and distributed to churchgoers stated: How to vote like a Catholic it is a mortal sin to vote Democrat!
The handout outlined several hot-button political issues, including abortion, and noted the churchs stance on the topic. Two weeks later, parishioners received a second bulletin titled, Voting Catholic, imploring parishioners to take a Catholic view when casting their ballots.
The bulletins grabbed the attention of many in San Diego. On Saturday, protesters stood outside the church with signs that read Separation of Church and State and other phrases.
Perozich argued it was his right to exercise Freedom of Speech in his writings.
However, on a statement posted online, Bishop Robert McElroy of the Immaculate Conception Church said the church violated its duty and went against Catholic teaching by implying that voting for either party would automatically condemn a person to Hell.
On Thursday, Kevin Eckery, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, told NBC 7 he doesn't know how the first insert got into church bulletins. He called the second bulletin unusual, noting the tone was different than how the church normally addresses parishioners.
The polling site near the church was busy Tuesday, but no protests had taken place as of 11 a.m. One officer with the San Diego Police Department had stopped by the site to make sure everything was alright.
Philippe Montgrain voted with his wife at the polling place near the Immaculate Conception Church. The couple came prepared, writing down their choices on a piece of paper and then marking them in the ballot booth.
The couples young children were in tow. Montgrain said they used Election Day as an opportunity to teach their kids about the importance of voting.
We've been very open the whole time with them about our responsibility to get out and vote, Montgrain told NBC 7. They were very curious about the process, so we decided to bring them along show them very early what it's like so when they're 18 they can come out and vote as soon as they can.
On the way out, one man joked that he had voted with the Devil at the polling place, referring to the controversial bulletin, saying he had cast his vote for Clinton.
California's lackluster U.S. Senate contest neared a historic end Monday and voters pondered a long list of ballot questions that could legalize marijuana, end the death penalty and slap cigarette smokers with a $2-a-pack tax increase.
It was a day that mixed drama, uncertainty and, in other races, a growing sense of inevitability. Candidates were out across the state making last-minute appeals for votes, including in close contests that could factor in control of the U.S. House.
In the presidential race, independent polling points to a commanding edge for Hillary Clinton in the strongly Democratic state, with Donald Trump on track for a historically poor showing for a Republican nominee.
Democrats have carried the state in six successive presidential contests dating to 1992, when Bill Clinton won his first term. The last Republican nominee to carry California was George H.W. Bush, in 1988.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Democrat, was in Los Angeles, urging support for Proposition 61 that supporters say would save the state money on prescription drug costs.
Polling suggests voters are leaning toward freeing pot smokers to light up, but San Francisco Bay Area physician Tom Sheridan said he was a strong opponent.
"I think it's a health care issue, not a we-can-all-get-high issue," said Sheridan, 62, after casting his ballot in the town of Lafayette.
"The young adult brain, we know scientifically is still developing until the age of 25, and I think there are long-term consequences with people thinking, `It's legal, so I can do it,"' he added.
In the Democrat-against-Democrat Senate race, state Attorney General Kamala Harris entered the last full day of campaigning as the favorite to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal icon who is stepping down after nearly a quarter century in the Senate.
Her rival for the seat, Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange County, planned to make a final appeal for votes in downtown Los Angeles and Anaheim. Harris had a handful of stops scheduled in Southern California, including a rally in San Diego.
Statewide turnout based on mail-in ballots appears to be running roughly equal to the 2012 presidential election, though large numbers of younger and Hispanic voters have yet to enter the mix, said Paul Mitchell of nonpartisan research firm Political Data Inc.
The state witnessed a surge of newly registered younger and Hispanic voters this year, but they tend to be among the most unreliable on Election Day. Latinos make up about a quarter of registered voters, but so far comprise only about 15 percent of the returned mail ballots, according to the research firm.
Over half of new voter registrations this year came from millennials -- younger people who tend to be more liberal than older Californians.
Across the state, there are more than 400 proposals on ballots to raise taxes or borrow money as governments struggle to keep up with costs for everything from road paving to skyrocketing pension obligations.
Voters are being asked to legalize the recreational use of medical marijuana 20 years after the state first allowed medicinal pot use. There are two proposals on the death penalty -- one would repeal capital punishment, the other would speed up appeals so convicted murderers are actually executed.
The Senate contest marks a generational and demographic shift in the state that is growing increasingly diverse in population and favorable for Democrats.
The Democrats-only race marks the first time since voters started electing senators a century ago that Republicans will be absent from California's general election ballot, reaffirming the GOP's diminished stature in the state.
Boxer, who is white and turns 76 this week, will be replaced by one of two Baby Boomers.
Harris, 52, could become the first Indian woman and the second black woman elected to the Senate. Harris' father is Jamaican and her mother is from India.
If 56-year-old Sanchez pulls off an upset, the daughter of Mexican immigrants could become one of the first Latinas to hold a U.S. Senate seat.
The matchup between Harris and Sanchez is seen as a harbinger of things to come in the nation's most populous state. Voters could increasingly find only two Democrats to pick from for top offices in November elections.
Despite its historic dimension, the contest was overshadowed by the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and ignored by many voters, especially Republicans who ended up without a candidate. And as two Democrats they largely agree on many issues, including the need to fight climate change and protect abortion rights.
The two Democrats emerged from a 34-candidate primary in June, in which only the top two vote-getters advanced to November. None of the Republicans managed to break out of single digits in voting.
Harris became the favorite of the Democratic establishment, winning endorsements from President Barack Obama, Gov. Jerry Brown, Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. With Harris the pick of the party establishment, Sanchez became an outsider who openly sought Republican votes and criticized Obama for backing her rival.
Their rivalry revolved around who was best suited for the job -- a career prosecutor with liberal credentials who touted her experience fighting big banks and environmental criminals, or a 10-term member of the House known as a moderate, with experience in national security and military affairs.
Sanchez struggled to raise money and was slowed by verbal flubs, at one point apologizing after a videotape surfaced showing her making a whooping cry in reference to Native Americans.
A local race is getting national attention, pitting two military veterans against each other: Republican incumbent Darrell Issa and Democratic challenger Doug Applegate.
It's hard to find a battle tighter than the one for Californias 49th Congressional District, which is also home to a U.S. Marine base.
For the first time, the Democratic party believes think the district could fall into blue territory, causing a frenzy to get out the vote.
Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for the Senate paid a visit to San Diego on the eve of Election Day with Doug Applegate.
We are on the verge of having the ability from California to send a Colonel and a General to Washington D.C.," she said, addressing a rally at the University of California, San Diego on Monday.
Look I'm no hero, but I stood next to heroes I've stood next to courage and what they were out there doing was fighting for those who couldn't, she told the crowd.
While Issa has attacked Applegate, questioning his temperament in campaign ads, the democratic party has also flooded $2 million to do the same.
Issa called it personal.
Because this race is basically President Obama's revenge race," he said. "He came here deliberately to try and talk about what he called chutzpah, trying to hold him accountable.
Issa is even calling his bus tour leading up the the election, the Darrell has Chutzpah Tour.
Although an endorsement of Issa by former Marine Corps Commandant James Amos has caused controversy, he is not the first former high ranking member of the military to give his opinion during this race.
Issa says he's proud of his support of the military.
Jim Ciancimino, a Marine veteran and a small business owner told NBC 7 that he like Applegates ads and feels that Issa will help him keep his small business viable.
I had a problem with the VA and I went to the Congressman Issa's office and I was treated extremely well, Ciancimino said.
While the 49th Congressional District is home to many veterans, it is also home to a growing number of Latino voters.
Many who say they are turned off by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, whom Issa has endorsed.
I'm not walking away from Donald Trump he's the nominee the party," Issa said.
Something that the Marine Veteran -- Applegate has hit Issa hard on, saying there is a lot at stake in this election, I think it's real clear everybody knows why it's because of the racism, bigotry, and misogyny of Donald Trump it's no secret we need to change course.
On Election Day, both Issa and Applegate planned to speak with voters in Oceanside Issa at his campaign office on Vista Way and Applegate at the Boys and Girls Club of Oceanside.
They both worked hard to connect with voters.
We got the word out of why, after 16 years of accomplishment, I have a lot left to do, said Issa on Election Day. Hopefully well get two more years to do it.
Ive got 30 years of experience in the Marine Corps reserve and active and we problem solve. We accomplish the mission; we seize and control the objective, and we fix things, Applegate said.
San Diego voters headed to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballots in a historic election: a day one 74-year-old woman said shes been waiting for all her life.
Ive been waiting for this to be able to cast this ballot again [for a woman] and I think we have a chance that shes going to be elected the first woman president, San Diego resident Nell Smith told NBC 7 outside the Registrar of Voters.
Smith who describes herself as an old-aging, feminist workhorse" said she has a lot of memories of presidential elections, including the 1948 race between Harry S. Truman and Thomas E. Dewey. Smith was in grade-school at the time and remembers going with her parents to the polls.
Smith also recalls her mother letting her skip school in 1952 when Dwight D. Eisenhower stopped into her town, and how she saw Eisenhower from afar, on the back end of a train.
In the early 1970s, when Smith reached voting age, she had a chance to vote for a female candidate: Shirley Chisholm.
Ive been a longtime feminist since I was a young woman, and I voted and very proudly cast my first ballot for a woman for Shirley Chisholm in the fall of 72 when she ran for the presidency and, really, essentially got nowhere with it, Smith recounted. Ive always voted across party lines for good people.
Had to get this pic. This WW2 Vet and his wife dressed up for #Elections2016 He said his first vote was for Truman @nbcsandiego pic.twitter.com/dMhXwaUOiK Chris Chan (@ChrisChanSD) November 8, 2016
She said voting for a female candidate once again many decades later feels very special to her, despite how "distressing" this election cycle has been.
Smith was joined at the Registrar of Voters by many other locals who lined up bright and early on Election Day to cast their ballots. The polls opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m.
Steady stream coming into #RegistrarofVoters. First numbers to be released at 3pm, will include 30% of mail-in ballots received. #NBC7 pic.twitter.com/rJgUPJBMPj Ashley Matthews (@ashleyNBC7) November 8, 2016
NBC 7 also spoke briefly with a WWII veteran and his wife who were decked out in patriotic gear on Election Day, also proud to cast their votes. The veteran said his first-ever polling experience was voting for Truman.
Paula Payton, a patient at Sharp Memorial Hospital, was able to vote through an absentee ballot, even while hospitalized.
It lifted my spirits, she said, of how important it was for her to vote. I was given the gift from my nurse letting me know that I was going to be able to vote even though I was in here.
Payton was one of many patients able to vote from the hospital through an absentee ballot, which the hospital staff helps to coordinate.
I was feeling very down that I was still going to be in the hospital for voting day because I had counted on it [voting] so much, she explained.
The hospital said giving patients this opportunity to vote is important since many patients arrive at Sharp hospitals unexpectedly. Patients who voted on Election Day had completed absentee ballot applications that were then taken to the San Diego Registrar of Voters by hospital staff and volunteers.
Completed ballots were picked up and delivered to the Registrar of Voters on Election Day from patients at Sharp Memorial Hospital, Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns and Sharp Mesa Hospital.
Philippe Montgrain voted with his wife at a polling place near the Immaculate Conception Church in Old Town San Diego. The couple came prepared, writing down their choices on a piece of paper and then marking them in the ballot booth.
The couples young children were in tow. Montgrain said they used Election Day as an opportunity to teach their kids about the importance of voting.
We've been very open the whole time with them about our responsibility to get out and vote, Montgrain told NBC 7. They were very curious about the process, so we decided to bring them along show them very early what it's like so when they're 18 they can come out and vote as soon as they can.
Some San Diegans took to social media after they voted, some saying they felt "victorious" and "emotional" after turning in their ballots.
Vote, then watch NBC 7s complete coverage of election night.
After Tuesday's election, the country will have to embark on a new journey to heal political wounds.
For many, the effects of this election run deep, says San Diego State University (SDSU) Political Science Professor Jean Twenge.
The big question now is whether things can go back to normal after the election or if this deep divide will become part of the country's new reality.
"Talking about politics is something people are avoiding all together," he said. "I've never seen anything like it."
This election seems to be about a lot more than politics, professors say. It's put a strain on relationships at home, the workplace, and everything in between.
SDSU Political Science Professor James Igram said the Republicans have shifted away from the moderate opinions on social issues, and Democrats have drifted from those more moderate Democrats on fiscal issues.
The result, he said, has prompted more of a strained political discourse.
"You can say, 'Please pass the potatoes', and then be contaminated by, 'how could you vote for that person?'" Ingram said of possible Thanksgiving Dinner discussions.
It's a topic Ingram said he has at times avoided in his personal life because of possible repercussions.
"Sometimes, even though I'm a political science professor, I have to avoid the topic of politics because you don't know what kind of a minefield you're stepping into," he said.
It's something that's not just affecting political experts. The election is also stressing average voters.
Recent polls show it is not just about Democrats versus Republicans, or insiders versus outsiders.
The divide has merged into young versus old, religious versus non religious, white versus non white, college educated versus non college educated.
With emotions running high, there's even reports about Americans discussing the election with their psychologists.
Most Americans are ready for the election to be over, but at least one Australian visitor hopes it could go on just a little longer.
"When it's over, we lose comedy hour every day, so if you can keep it going for as long as possible, that would be great," the tourist said.
An active military member called the Election Protection hotline in Washington, D.C., because a poll worker said he could not vote.
The service member, who is from Arizona but is stationed in Texas, was improperly told he couldn't cast an absentee ballot because hes out of state. Attorneys volunteering with the hotline explained to the poll worker that the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act grants the service member the right to fill out an absentee ballot in elections for federal offices.
The call was among hundreds fielded on Monday by volunteers at Election Protection, the nations largest nonpartisan coalition of more than 100 organizations, led by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Election Protection's goal to help ensure that voters are able to cast a ballot. The group is active year round, including for the primaries and early voting, but the bulk of calls come on Election Day.
The volume of call has been fairly intense, said Kristen Clarke, the Lawyers Committee president and executive director. She added that the Election Protection National Command Center and the 12 national and 11 local call centers across the U.S. were bracing for a huge number of calls on Election Day, higher than in 2012. That year, the Election Protection hotline answered 37,000 calls the day before Election Day and 90,000 calls on Election Day from voters in 50 states and D.C., according to the Lawyers Committee.
As of 8 a.m. on Tuesday, the main voting issues reported to Election Protection were registration problems, long lines, late poll openings in New York, and machine problems in Virginia.
On Monday, Election Protection received calls from people reporting voter intimidation in Broward County, Florida. Voters said a group was assembled near the Hollywood Branch Library and were acting aggressive toward voters going inside to cast their ballots. One woman said she was inside her car when a group approached and touched her vehicle. She told hotline volunteers she drove away because she felt she could not freely cast her ballot. Clarke said Election Protection contacted local election officials but it was not immediately clear who the group was. Clarke said every complaint of potential voter intimidation raises the possibility that it could impact the rights of many voters.
We want to ensure that voters are able to cast their ballot free from discrimination and harassment and we most especially want to ensure that some of the calls that have been made for law enforcement to mobilize and for untrained individuals to be on the lookout for problems on election day does not translate into widespread suppression and harassment of voters, Clarke said. We want to ensure that all voters are able to participate this election cycle.
Another issue reported in Florida Monday was voters receiving their absentee ballots late. Voters called the hotline concerned that their vote wont be counted, according to Clarke.
Over the weekend, voters in Lake County, Indiana, contacted Election Protection about long lines at polling places and officials trying to block people standing in line from voting after the polling site closed.
"Anyone standing in a long line should be allowed to vote if they are in that line at the time the polls close," Clarke explained.
She said Election Protection intervened successfully on Indiana voters behalf but long lines have been reported at other locations through the U.S., including in Georgia and North Carolina due to counties cutting down on polling sites.
Clarke added that this is the first presidential election in more than 40 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act with many states passing laws and undertaking other efforts to make voting more difficult.
In Texas, there have been reports of confusion over the states voter ID law. A federal appeals court loosened ID rules in July, allowing voters to present alternative documentation such as a voter registration certificate or a utility bill and sign a document affirming a reasonable difficulty in obtaining a photo ID. But voters reported to their early voting sites in Texas only to find outdated information.
Adam Laughton, an associate at Seyfarth Shaw law firm who serves as a call center captain in Houston, Texas, said incorrect printed instructions about the voter ID law were posted in polling places in San Antonio and the hotline has been fielding calls from confused voters and poll workers across the state.
"Poll workers just dont have the grasp on the final points of the law and how its changed or the workaround the court put in place," he said.
Election Protection has ramped up with 1,000 more volunteers this election cycle, while the federal government has cut back on its team of election monitors. As the early voting period came to a close the Election Protection Hotline received more than 75,000 calls during the 2016 election cycle.
The Justice Department announced Monday it will send more than 500 staffers to 28 states on Election Day to monitor the polls, a 35 percent reduction from the number four years ago.
The personnel will be dispatched to 67 jurisdictions to watch for potential civil rights violations, such as discrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender.
Election Protection is a resource for voters in places that may not be covered by DOJ or other monitors. Clarke said the Election Protection National Command Center handles the bulk of calls through the election, and national and local call centers pitch in the day before and on Election Day.
At one of six national call centers in New York City on Monday, attorney Sara Zablotney was fielding questions from voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who wanted to know what would satisfy voter identification requirements in their state and where their polling places are. Two hours into her morning shift, Zablotney was gearing up for what was expected to be a barrage of voters calls and concerns on Election Day.
She was among a group of 30 volunteers working in four shifts at the call center, which was managed by Kirkland & Ellis law firm inside a midtown Manhattan high rise. The call center will have 160 attorneys working in four shifts, beginning at 6:30 a.m. ET. The center is expected to answer thousands of calls by the time it closes at 9:30 p.m. ET.
Its a really important project. I think the privilege that we have to be able to vote is a very important thing, said Zablotney, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis who was volunteering with the hotline for the first time. So helping people understand when and how to vote is a great service that we can provide.
Election Protection can be reached at 866-OUR-VOTE (English only), 888-VE-Y-VOTA (English/Spanish) and 888-API-VOTE (English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu and Tagalog).
Harry Jaffe, a longtime chronicler of the people and politics of Washington, D.C., writes a column for NBC Washington's First Read DMV blog.
Guess who will not be elected to anything tomorrow with votes cast in the District of Columbia? Anyone from the Republican Party. Here in the nations capital we live under a one-party system.
Donald Trump has no chance in D.C., of course. Of the 19 D.C. delegates to the Republican National Convention, not one voted for Trump.
But at least the Republican presidential candidate will be on the ballot. Thanks to the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, we otherwise disenfranchised, taxpaying residents of the District can vote for president and have standing in the Electoral College.
But in local elections for mayor, Congress and council, the GOP does not count. On Election Day tomorrow voters can cast ballots for our one delegate to Congress, two at-large council members, four ward candidates. The D.C. GOP failed to field candidates in all but one race.
Carolina Celnik will be on the at-large ballot, but she has less of a chance to win as Hillary Clinton in Wyoming.
"It's a difficult time to run as a Republican in the District," said Patrick Mara, executive director on the local GOP. "Things will get easier."
"Difficult" is one term; "mathematically impossible" is another.
The Board of Election counts 29,862 registered Republicans compared to 363,642 Democrats, for more than a 10-1 advantage.
"We are still in the wilderness years," said Mara, who's run for council and briefly held a seat on the Board of Education.
The local GOP has been in the wilderness thanks to its own insularity. For years it lay in the lair of the white, wealthy set in Georgetown. In a city thats been predominantly African American for decades, that was not a prescription for success.
The Home Rule Charter says one of the four at-large members must not be a member of the dominant party. For decades the estimable Republican Carol Schwartz held that seat. Since she got knocked off in 2008, Democrats have changed their affiliation to Independent to satisfy the Home Rule Act.
The D.C. GOP has been vestigial and clubby at best. Now its close to inoperative, thanks to mismanagement and fraud.
Mara says former executive director Ron Phillips left the local party tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Earlier this year former executive director Robert Turner pleaded guilty to embezzling $7,631 from the partys coffers.
"Makes it hard for us to talk about corruption," Mara said.
So we are left to live in a Soviet-style political system, where one party controls every local elected office. The lack of a conservative voice social or fiscal might become more glaring with the current, progressive council.
The one-party dominance doesnt bother some on the academic side.
"It's true," writes George Washington University's Chris Klemek, "though the situation is hardly unique in American cities nor for that matter, in electoral districts generally."
True, but even in political districts gerrymandered to favor one party, the other party at least functions and fields candidates. Not in D.C.
"It's no more or less fair than Utah," says Jamie Raskin, American University Law School professor whos a Democrat running for Congress in largely Democratic Montgomery County. "Utah sends only Republicans to Congress."
Yes, but there is a viable Utah Democratic Party that fields candidates in every major election.
As a lifelong Democrat, I miss the bump and grind that might come from a robust local Republican Party. Democracy thrives on the clash of ideas and policies. D.C would be better off with a viable GOP.
I would even welcome a few Trump supporters. It would make the nations capital city more like the rest of the country.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is two weeks away, but the government is in such disarray over a crony scandal that it has yet to decide whom to send.
President Park Geun-hye would be an embarrassment, and the post of prime minister is held temporarily by Hwang Kyo-ahn, who already resigned to take the fall in the early stages of the scandal.
No replacement is in sight as Park tries to foist a candidate from across the aisle, Kim Byong-joon, on the nation without consulting lawmakers, who are almost certain to block him.
The APEC summit in Lima, Peru from Nov. 19-20 is the biggest international diplomatic gathering at the end of the year and will be attended by U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Many will also meet face-to-face on the sidelines to discuss burning issues, wheel and deal. But the government has yet to inform APEC officials whether it will send a representative at all, bringing home the stark reality of the power vacuum caused by the scandal.
A Korean president has attended every APEC Summit since the inaugural meeting in Seattle, Washington in 1993 but probably not this one. A government source said, "Staff are looking into hotel rooms to reserve, but it remains to be seen if Korea is able to attend."
The scandal is having considerable effects on other diplomatic business. The annual trilateral summit between Korea, China and Japan is being postponed. Presidential secretary Kim Kyu-hyun has said Park will attend if a date is set, but Japan's Asahi Shimbun said there are serious doubts over Park's attendance due to the scandal.
Park does plan to meet with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a widely shunned kleptocrat who visits Korea on Thursday and is perhaps likely to feel embarrassed.
New members will be elected into Congress this week, bringing hundreds of new staffers with them. And a News4 I-Team review finds Congress isnt following its own laws on ensuring diversity among its staff.
Thats despite laws passed by Congress that require nearly every other employer to track and report on its hiring of women and people of color an issue noted by several former congressional staffers who spoke to the I-Team.
There are individuals within that collective body that are leading by example, said attorney, lobbyist, and author Anita Estell. But as a collective body, Congress is not leading by example.
Estell, who served as a House committee staffer early in her career, said the argument for any lawmaker to maintain a diverse staff is simple.
We're a representative government, and so we want our government to be representative of the people who live in this nation," Estell said.
Congress requires diversity tracking in the workforce for everyone through the Civil Service Reform and Equal Employment Opportunity Acts, but lawmakers dont have to follow those laws.
When the I-Team looked for records and numbers on how well congressional staffers reflect the gender and racial makeup of the states their lawmakers represent, we discovered there arent any.
The I-Team obtained a report from the Office of Personnel Management on minority employees in the federal workforce, which Congress requires OPM to submit every year. Their latest numbers show slight overall increase from the previous year - 0.04 percent - in employees who identify as women and as Black, Latino, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native.
But the picture of how Congress is doing itself on hiring minorities is nowhere near as clear.
The I-Team sent the member offices representing the District, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia a list of questions asking them how many staffers and interns identify as men, women, LGBTQ, and every racial and ethnic breakdown on the most recent U.S. census reports.
Only seven offices answered the questions, and of those offices, minorities were actually over-represented compared to U.S. census figures. Women accounted for 52 percent of the staffers and interns in those offices, while people of color accounted for 43 percent of the workforce.
*Numbers only include seven of 29 member offices that responded to the News4 I-Team's survey, and no offices from West Virginia responded.
But thats only a small snapshot of the senators and representatives for our region. Six offices those of Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards, Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith, Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell and West Virginia Rep. David McKinley - refused to answer the I-Teams questions.
By way of explanation, Cardins office wrote the I-Team:
We have a policy against answering surveys. The sheer number makes it prohibitive. In this case, your inclusion of interns also would make it nearly impossible to get an accurate view of our office. The number and demographics of our interns changes from session to session."
Sixteen others never replied after repeated requests.
Democratic Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer's office is among the seven offices that responded and stressed diversity hiring isnt always about numbers or what a person looks like.
"We believe in a democracy that you need all points of view, Hoyer said, and that's what diversity is about."
He said he's proud of the work his party has done on increasing diversity, but acknowledged there's room for improvement.
"We have the most diverse caucus in our history, but we are still not necessarily representative of the American mix," Hoyer said.
And it's not for lack of trying, according to Brad Fitch, another former congressional staffer.
"Every chief of staff that I know wants a diverse workforce in their office," he said. It's very helpful for congressional staff to have walked a few miles in the shoes of their constituents if they come from that community.
Fitch now runs the Congressional Management Foundation, which helps Congress improve operations with better business practices, and he pointed to a lack of money as a big part of what might be hampering diversity outreach efforts.
"Congress cuts its own budget, and in essence is shooting itself in the foot, said Fitch. It's very hard for a congressional office to create a pipeline of diverse applicants if it has no resources to do it."
Telly Lovelace, urban media director for the Republican National Committee, also started his career on the Hill and said he didnt feel staff were always reflective of the country during his time there.
I didn't see the diversity I wanted to see, he said. And you know, in my case, being an African-American Republican, it's part of being a super small minority.
Hes now in charge of engaging African-American voters with the GOP and also sees the creation of diversity tracking for Congress as a key in the same way Congress requires other agencies to report.
There needs to be some method or a mechanism to keep track, Lovelace said. This will be a way to help encourage offices to make these efforts to really diversify their staff and, I mean, help both parties out at the end of the day."
Lovelace, Hoyer, Fitch and Estell also told the I-Team efforts to help Congress diversify its staff do exist and pointed to a number of caucuses, programs, and resources aimed at promoting minority interests and making jobs on Capitol Hill more accessible to all. Some are listed below check back, as this list will grow, and contact the News4 I-Team if you have additional resources to share.
Reported by Scott MacFarlane; produced by Ashley Brown and Rick Yarborough; and shot and edited by Jeff Piper, Steve Jones and Lance Ing.
An 18-year-old Virginia man pleaded guilty to first-degree murder last week for killing a distant relative in May.
Colins Rodriguez told the detective who investigated the case that he hit 14-year-old Luis Erick Coco Crespo four to five time with a hammer and tied his arms and legs with cord.
The victims sister found him dead in his bedroom in a Dale City townhome and called 911.
Police sources told News4's Northern Virginia Bureau Rodriguez attacked Coco Crespo because he told on him for offering him marijuana. Rodriguez waited to make his move until Coco Crespos grandfather died and his parents returned to Bolivia.
As local and federal officials work to determine the source of a dangerous bacteria in a neonatal intensive care unit in Maryland, one expert says he sees a larger problem.
"The first time was an accident. The second time was possibly gross incompetence," Lawrence F. Muscarella, the president of LFM Healthcare Solutions said. For decades, he has studied and written about infection control in hospitals.
The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Prince George's Hospital Center closed Wednesday after infants tested positive for the bacterium pseudomonas for the second time in three months. One of two infants who tested positive for the bacterium last week is struggling with symptoms, officials said in an update Friday.
Muscarella said he was concerned that the public is not being told the whole truth. A hospital spokesman said the water in the NICU was the source of the first contamination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working to pinpoint the cause of this second discovery.
Muscarella said he wonders if the first investigation was mishandled.
"When I heard the outbreak occurred again, I thought this may be a classic example of a flawed root cause analysis, where only one of several contributing factors were addressed and as a result of addressing that one, we've overlooked some other things," he said.
News4's Tracee Wilkins asked Muscarella if he believes other patients at the hospital should be concerned for their health.
"I think they should. I think that now that we've learned that the hospital said they fixed the problem, quote unquote, when it wasn't really fixed, I think that they should be concerned," he said.
Voters in the D.C. area contended with long lines at some polling places Tuesday as they selected the next president of the United States, choosing between Hillary Clinton as the nation's first female commander in chief or billionaire businessman Donald Trump.
Polls in Virginia closed at 7 p.m.; in Maryland and D.C., the polls closed at 8 p.m.
But whether they expressed frustration over a long and often bruising election season, or excitement over a new leader, many agreed the waits at their polling places were worth it to make sure their voices were heard.
"It's a really good feeling -- all of us doing something together, the nation coming together," said Dale Brown, a 62-year-old voting at the Hardy Recreation Center in Washington, D.C. "That is something I really appreciate."
"I think this election is really pivotal," said Parker Brill, who voted in Old Town Alexandria on Tuesday. "The country could go in two very different directions."
The head of Virginia's Department of Elections said complaints about problems at the polls had not been any greater than in previous years.
6am and the line is long at the Charles Beatley Jr Library in Alexandria. #nbc4dc @nbcwashington #Decision2016 pic.twitter.com/gKhWsgOCOA Carlos Martinez (@cmartinez400) November 8, 2016
Department of Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortes said at a news conference Tuesday evening that among the "isolated issues" were long lines in Prince William and Spotsylvania counties.
Cortes said several precincts in Fairfax County didn't properly load their electronic poll book data, so some people who likely were registered were not showing up. He said those people were given provisional ballots and the elections office will work quickly to process them.
He says the department also got complaints from some voters who had registered at Department of Motor Vehicle offices but weren't on the rolls. Cortes said that happens every election and an audit process is in place to confirm who registered and process their provisional ballots.
The relentless negative tenor of the campaign upset some voters. "I'm so glad it's over. I don't like it," said Brenda Jones, 66 and of Wheaton, Maryland, who was working as an election judge. "There was too much bashing. It was ugly."
Still, Jennifer Ibrahim, who voted at Friendship Baptist Church in D.C. on Tuesday morning, said it was important for her to get out and vote.
"I came out today because of the importance of this election and for our country what we're facing right now and the polarization of the nation right now..." she said. "People are acting ridiculously; I think it's a comedy show that's not that funny, because it's scary."
She said her voting experience was easy. She arrived after the lines had died down and was able to cast her ballot quickly.
In Virginia, where the polls opened at 6 a.m., voters were up early and lining up outside some polling places long before the sun was up. Chopper4 flew over Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church as a line of people waited to cast their votes. At Holmes Middle School in Fairfax County, voters were able to wait inside, out of the early-morning chill, with a line snaking up and down the school's main hallway.
Some voters in D.C. saw similar lines. Resident Paul Regino said everything went smoothly.
"The line was long, but they were very organized inside," Regino said. "They kind of had a system set up for you, and people were very generous in helping you out."
"It's been going pretty well," said poll worker Elaine Ayo at the Hardy Rec Center. "Really crowded in the morning, but pretty consistent throughout the day. Not like any super long lines."
Roger Munter of Southeast Washington said he had to wait more than an hour to cast his vote.
"It was a little chaotic this morning," Munter said. "This was actually one of the longer waits I've had in D.C. so there was a little confusion in there. But it was fine."
In Rockville, Maryland, "The process was very good. It just took me about 15 minutes," said Amanuel Habt, 59, of Silver Spring.
Philip Weeks praised the help he and his wife received at their polling place, Friendship Baptist Church. Weeks said his wife, who is undergoing medical treatment, was able to vote curbside Tuesday morning without having to get out of the car.
"Now that is what a country and a city needs to encourage people to vote," he said. "...That was the great experience of this day."
While crowds could be a problem at the polls, a record number of local residents took advantage of early voting. Over eight days, more than 800,000 voters cast ballots in Maryland -- far more than the 430,500 people who voted early in the 2012 presidential election.
Maryland is traditionally a blue state. Democrats have won Maryland in the last six presidential races. George Bush was the last Republican to win Maryland, 28 years ago in 1988.
Clinton has also held on to a lead in polls in Virginia, which is the home of her running mate Tim Kaine. Kaine represents Virginia in the U.S. Senate and previously served as mayor of Richmond and governor of Virginia.
"I exactly know who Im going to vote for," said Fairfax County voter Kala Desai. "Im really excited. Ive never been so excited."
Clinton is expected to easily win the District's three electoral votes. President Barack Obama received more than 90 percent of the District's vote in each of his campaigns.
But the third-party candidates on the ballot did capture the attention of some voters.
"I think the risk was a lot bigger on one side than the other," said Brill. "This was the first time I actually considered voting for a third-party candidate."
Voters in Maryland also will choose who will fill a rarely open Senate seat. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a seven-term Democrat, is running against Del. Kathy Szeliga, a Republican who is the minority whip in the Maryland House of Delegates. Van Hollen has run as an experienced lawmaker who is willing to reach across the political aisle to do important work. Szeliga has worked to use that experience against him, casting him as an insider of dysfunctional Washington.
Northern Virginia has one of the most closely watched races in the country -- Rep. Barbara Comstock's push to defend her seat against challenger LuAnn Bennett.
In the District, residents will get to vote on whether they want statehood -- lthough the vote won't necessarily get the District any closer to that far-fetched destination.
The statehood referendum provides the most intrigue to a sleepy general election in the nation's capital, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 12-to-1.
The polls are open in Virginia until 7 p.m. and in D.C. and Maryland until 8 p.m. Check NBC Washington's Election Day voting guide for help finding your polling place.
Teaganne Finn, Sara Wise, Natalie Hutchinson and Amaya Turner contributed to this report.
Despite paying for two plane tickets to Italy that he and a friend couldnt use, a local man was only granted a voucher for one ticket.
Tom Bower bought two roundtrip tickets to Rome for himself and a friend last year. They made the first leg of the trip flying from D.C. to New York, but when they boarded the plane from New York to Italy, Bowers friend became sick.
We figured, well, you know, it was something we ate, Bower said.
The men and the airline agreed it was best to catch a flight the next day, and Delta got a cab for Bower and his friend and put them up in a hotel.
They took care of me, Bower said. We were really gracious.
But Bowers friend was still sick the next day, so they canceled their trip to Italy and returned to D.C.
Delta issued each of them a voucher for $427.50 -- the amount left over from their short travel.
That was a voucher we could use within the year, Bower said.
Bower used his voucher toward his next trip, but his friend had no plans to travel. So Bower wanted to use the unused balance on his friends voucher.
I paid for it, theyre both on my credit card, Bower said. He doesnt want to fly anymore.
But Delta would not transfer the money to him.
Delta told NBC4 Responds Bower's voucher was nonrefundable and nontransferable, but the airline said it would make an exception based on the situation and credited him the money back to his credit card.
Delta said it is happy to work with passengers facing unusual circumstances.
Bower said he will definitely travel with Delta again.
Prince George's County police have identified the 75-year-old woman who was murdered in her Bladensburg, Maryland, apartment Sunday.
Delores Rivers of 58th Avenue was found dead in her apartment at noon Sunday. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be trauma to the upper body. The manner of death has been ruled a homicide, police say.
Detectives are currently working to identify a suspect in the homicide. A reward of $25,000 is available for information leading up to an arrest and indictment.
Anyone with information on this case is asked to call the Homicide Unit at 301-772-4925. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS (8477), text PGPD plus your message to CRIMES (274637) on your cell phone or go to www.pgcrimesolvers.com and submit a tip online.
The national spotlight was on the New Hampshire Senate race on Election Day Tuesday.
The race between incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte and her opponent, Democratic Governor Maggie Hassan has been one of the most expensive races. And the race was still deadlocked at 48 percent as of 1 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Hassan said early Wednesday that the race was still too close to call, but she has "a small, but sustainable lead."
Ayotte said she did not expect to know whether she won or lost the U.S. Senate race on Tuesday night. But she said she felt "really upbeat" about her chances.
Hassan cast her vote Tuesday in Newfields, while Ayotte met with voters at a rest area in Hooksett before heading to Nashua to vote with her family.
Monday, Hassan joined President Obama and other Democrats to speak at a Clinton rally in Durham.
Ayotte met with voters overnight at diners and police stations in her "24 towns in 24 hours" campaign blitz.
A Massachusetts man faced a judge this week on charges that he seriously injured 3-month-old daughter after shaking her.
Anthony Mansolilli, 30, of Lowell was ordered to be held on $25,000 cash bail during his arraignment on one count of assault and battery of a child causing substantial bodily injury.
Police say they started their investigation on Sunday evening after responding to a report of an unresponsive infant. Responding officers observed a pale and unresponsive 3-month-old girl being held by her grandmother, and said Mansolilli was also there.
The child was taken to Lowell General Hospital, where a CT scan showed she had subdural hemorrhaging. Another CT scan at Tufts Medical Center in Boston confirmed the results.
Investigators say they spoke with Mansolilli on Monday, when he allegedly confessed to shaking the baby after she wouldn't stop crying.
The baby remains hospitalized. Prosecutors say she had seizure activity, and that it will be hard to determine the full extent of injury to her brain until she reaches developmental milestones.
Mansolilli was also ordered to stay away from his daughter and other children under the age of 16.
His next court date is Dec. 7. It's unclear if he has an attorney.
The investigation is ongoing.
Massachusetts residents are driving to New Hampshire to help out last minute voters.
Jessica Kim pulled her kids out of school to canvas on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Jenny Cheung was in Nashua showing her support for Donald Trump. Mike Rowan even rented a minivan and offered rides to anyone who needed to get to the polls.
All three agree that Clinton is likely to win in Massachusetts, but the four electoral votes in the battleground state of New Hampshire are still up in the air. And with a close senate race between incumbent Kelly Ayotte and Governor Maggie Hassan that could decide who controls congress, these volunteers believe every vote counts.
Kim says her job isnt to persuade anyone towards one candidate or another, she just wants people to get out and vote.
A Massachusetts police officer was injured Monday night after being struck inside his cruiser while working detail on the Rowley-Georgetown line.
Police said work crews were starting to close the two left lanes on Interstate 95 northbound when the officer was struck from behind at 7:20 p.m.
The driver who struck the officer ended up in the median due to the impact.
Police said both the officer and driver were taken to an area hospital to be treated for minor injuries.
State Police are investigating the exact cause of the crash.
Eleven elephants from Thailand's ancient capital of Ayutthaya knelt in respect for the country's late king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, during a procession in Bangkok on Tuesday.
The elephants and about 200 handlers marched to the glittering Grand Palace before the animals crouched down for the observation of a minute of silence in memory of the king, who died last month, aged 88, after 70 years on the throne.
"This is the biggest event in my life," said Ayuthaya Elephant Palace owner Laithongrien Meephan, who led the procession.
During fall recruitment, Kristin Reeves says the Delta chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi found the perfect candidate for the sorority at Tufts University.
"I think she's super interesting, cool to hang out with," said Reeves.
But Reeves says that quickly changed after the sororitys national headquarters discovered the student identified as a transgender woman.
"Headquarters then told us that we were at risk of infringing upon the organization's Title 9 status as a single sex organization," Reeves said.
So the Tufts junior, along with 46 other members, quit the campus sorority last month in protest. Headquarters eventually said the transgender student could join, but by then, Reeves says the damage was already done.
"The reality is they threatened to sue us," she said. "They had to question whether or not they wanted to allow a transgender woman."
Alpha Omicron Pi is based in Tennessee and has 139 chapters in the U.S. and Canada. Courtney West says they do not specifically have a policy on transgender candidates, but they do not discriminate.
A statement from Alpha Omicron Pi Headquarters claims, "at no point has the chapter threatened disciplinary action and there is absolutely no scenario where these young women will be sued."
"We're hoping to move on from this event and that we will come with a very well-researched and organized policy in the future," said West.
The transgender student, who wants to remain anonymous, wrote an op-ed Monday in the Tufts Daily school newspaper outlining her experience and thanking the women for their unified stance.
"We are friends, we are allies, we are sisters," she wrote.
Tufts University does not set policy for fraternities or sororities. But a spokesperson says the school is in favor of allowing transgender students to be a part of the Greek system.
Election Day polls close across Vermont at 7:00 p.m., following what many town clerks described as a very busy day at polling locations.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, a former presidential candidate, made his vote count at his polling place in Burlington.
"I just came back from a 12-state swing for Secretary Clinton, and I hope today we defeat Donald Trump and we defeat him badly," Sanders told reporters after voting.
Sanders also hoped to influence the tight race for Vermont governor in this election cycle.
Sanders threw his support behind Democrat Sue Minter, who spent Election Day meeting voters.
"I think it's going to be a very close election," Minter said Tuesday afternoon. "I feel optimistic. I certainly feel well supported. I feel a lot of momentum, but I do expect it to be close."
But Minter's opponent, Republican Phil Scott, is familiar to Vermonters from six years as lieutenant governor. He has found support through his economy-focused message.
"We've run a great race, I'm very proud of my team, and regardless of the outcome, I'm OK," Scott said after voting at his polling place in Berlin.
Several voters told necn they are just eager to move on.
"I'm looking forward to no commercials for politics tomorrow," said Peter Belleville, a Winooski voter. "It's been crazy."
Another high-profile race on the Vermont ballot is the race for U.S. Senate.
Popular incumbent Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is looking to fend off a challenge from Republican businessman Scott Milne, who has made term limits a campaign issue.
While the race for the White House has dominated national headlines, control of the U.S. Senate also is at stake on Tuesday.
There are 54 Republicans and 44 Democrats now in the Senate, with two independents, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucus with Democrats.
On Election Day, 24 seats held by Republicans, and 10 held by Democrats, are on the ballot.
[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail
To take control of the Senate, Democrats need to gain four seats if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency (and VP Tim Kaine could cast a tie-breaking vote), or five if she loses.
Here are key Senate races to keep track of Tuesday night:
Illinois: Polls show Republican incumbent Mark Kirk trailing Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth. Kirk has held the seat since 2010. He's become the most vulnerable incumbent in the race, dealing with the effects of a 2012 stroke, and facing a strong opponent in Duckworth.
Duckworth, a veteran who lost both legs in Iraq, raised more money than Kirk.
Kirk has made waves more than once during this year's election.
Look up at the sky tonight. Every star you see plus hundreds of thousands, even millions more will come under the intense stare of NASA's newest planet hunter. Set to lift off early next week, the Tess spacecraft will prowl for planets around the closest, brightest stars. These newfound worlds eventually will become prime targets for future telescopes looking to tease out any signs of life. It will be the most extensive survey of its kind from orbit, with Tess, a galactic scout, combing the neighborhood as never before.
In June, he renounced his support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Last month, he sparked controversy when questioning the Duckworth family's military service during a debate after she said her family has served going back to the American Revolution.
"I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington," Kirk said.
Duckworth's mother is a Thai immigrant. Her father served in World War II and has lineage traced back to a family member who fought in the American Revolution.
Kirk later apologized.
Wisconsin: Russ Feingold, a former Democratic senator who lost his seat in 2010, has a small lead in the polls against Republican incumbent Ron Johnson.
If Feingold beats Johnson, it will be the first time since 1934 that a senator who was voted out came back six year later to defeat a former rival, NBC News reported.
Pennsylvania: A close race is unfolding as Republican incumbent Pat Toomey is up against Democrat Katie McGinty, a former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf. While Democrats portray Toomey as being too conservative, McGinty hasn't always connected well with voters.
Toomey hasn't endorsed or disavowed Trump. When pressed on the issue during a debate, Toomey said, "I don't think my constituents care that much how one person is going to vote."
Indiana: The race is shaping up to be tight as the state's Republican incumbent, Dan Coats, is retiring. Running for his seat are former Democratic senator Evan Bayh and Rep. Todd Young, a Republican.
Bayh, the son of longtime senator Birch Bayh, energized Democrats when he announced a run to reclaim the seat he gave up in 2010. However, his opponent and Young's allies have painted Bayh as an opportunist who cashed in on his Senate experience by working at a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm. A story from early October detailed the former senator's efforts to find a private sector job during his final year in the Senate.
Missouri: Republican incumbent Roy Blunt is facing Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat. According to Real Clear Politics' polling average, Blunt, who has held the seat since 2010, holds a narrow lead over Kander, a former military intelligence officer.
Nevada: With Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid retiring, polls show a close race shaping up between Rep. Joe Heck (R) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D), the state's former attorney general.
While the race is a chance for Republicans to pick up a seat held by Democrats, Trump's controversial comments combined with the state's high Hispanic population have given Democrats hope.
New Hampshire: The Senate race between Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) and Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) has been getting national attention as both presidential candidates and their surrogates have campaigned in New Hampshire. Ayotte found herself in a difficult position in early October, after saying that she would call Trump a role model for children. While she later said she "misspoke," Hassan's campaign seized the comment as an opportunity, calling it "a revealing moment that she [Ayotte] cannot take back." Polls show Ayotte with a slim lead against Hassan.
North Carolina: Democrats are hopeful that former state representative and American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Deborah Ross will defeat Republican senator Richard Burr. Republicans have been using Ross' record as a lawyer at the ACLU in an attempt to discredit her. Polls predict a close race.
Florida: Senator and former presidential candidate Marco Rubio (R) is fighting for his seat against Rep. Patrick Murphy (D). Rubio first said he would not seek re-election, but reversed that decision after dropping out of the presidential race, much to Republicans' delight. According to polls, Rubio has the edge.
While Rubio is known for his rocky relationship with Trump and frustration with the Senate, his opponent has had missteps. Murphy's been accused of touting pieces of his resume too much, and relying on his wealthy family for donations, NBC News reported.
Other Races to Watch and the Comey Effect:
Two other races that are important to watch, but are likely to remain in Republican hands, are in Arizona and Ohio.
Sen. John McCain (R) is working to hold off a challenge from Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D) in Arizona. McCain has held the seat since 1986 and is doing well, according to polls. Kirkpatrick has come down on McCain for his support of Trump. Though he originally endorsed Trump, McCain later renounced him.
In Ohio, polls show Sen. Rob Portman (R) leading his opponent, Ted Strickland, a former Democratic governor. Strickland has made some gaffes during the election, including saying that Justice Antonin Scalias death "happened at a good time."
If Democrats win the Senate and, in a longshot, the House, it will be the first time since 1952 that both chambers of Congress flipped during a presidential election year.
Another interesting possibility in this election: The number of women in the Senate will likely increase from 20, with females on the ballot in several states.
And while races are tight in multiple states, some Democrats are concerned about fallout from FBI Director James Comey's letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee announcing the FBI was reviewing a new set of emails in the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server. The emails were found in the federal investigation into former New York congressman Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal.
The FBI review ended nine days later with Comey telling lawmakers the review was over and had not changed his original determination. But Democrats are concerned about the damage to down-ballot candidates, from an emboldened GOP and possible dampened enthusiasm among Democrats.
Reports of long lines, broken machines even wrong ballots thats what were hearing from access advocates this voting day.
Some voters say it took them more than an hour to cast their ballot at Cathedral High School in Boston's South End this morning. It was one of several complaints taken by voter access advocates working together in Massachusetts. Excessive lines were also noted in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury. A spokesperson for the mayors office tells us they sent additional poll workers to Cathedral and are investigating issues at the other locations.
Advocates tell necn investigates theyve also received complaints of blocked entry for voters with disabilities at the Greenwood Academy in Hyde Park. They say election officials did come and fix the problem.
Broken voter machines were reported in Boston, Lynn, Chelsea, Haverhill, Lawrence, New Bedford and Springfield.
And the advocates took complaints from several voters that their voter registrations were not properly transferred from the states Registry of Motor Vehicles. They were reportedly forced to cast provisional ballots - and hope the issue can be sorted out later. Were waiting on a response from the RMV.
Secretary of State William Galvin tells necn, some voters in Haverhill also had ballot issues.
"Some legislative voters were given the wrong ballots - wrong district," he said. "Its a concern, but not a fatal one we dont think."
Pam Wilmot of Common Cause Massachusetts said, "What if they get the wrong ballot? Whatever races are incorrect, their vote does not count and that is a fatal error for those offices."
We did speak to the clerk in Haverhill. She said the problem was quickly identified and fixed, but some voters did cast improper ballots. The city says theyre investigating.
In both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, there have been issues with machines not working properly.
necn Investigates was told in one polling location at Northwest Elementary School in Manchester, New Hampshire, 2,500 voters registered today and the school snakes around the gym, into the hallway and out the door. Earlier in the day, absentee ballots were fed into the machine, causing it to jam. Officials told us the problem was due to the ballots being mailed back folded up. It is an issue officials are working on correcting.
Election officials in New Hampshire tell us there has been a heavy turnout of new registrations. They started off with 1,000 registration forms but have run out three times before 2 p.m. today. necn was told more registration forms had to brought in.
In Dover, polls were ordered to remain open until 8 p.m. instead of 7. A court document shows that the New Hampshire Democratic Party requested the extension after an email from the city incorrectly gave the closing time as 8 p.m. Rockingham County Superior Court granted the motion to change the closing time.
According to the Secretary of States office, there have been any reports of voter intimidation or any guns present at any of the polling sites.
However at Merrimack and Hudson polling sites, there have been some major traffic issues since many people are trying to vote at the same time.
If you have encountered a problem at the polls, email us at necninvestigates@www.necn.com, call 617-630-5025 or Tweet Ally at @AllyNECN.
We'll be carrying necn's election night coverage right here on www.necn.com starting at 7 p.m.
In addition to the hotly-contested presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, many important local races and ballot questions will be decided on Tuesday night.
In New Hampshire, there are close races for U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte and Maggie Hassan, and a tight governor's race between Republican Chris Sununu and Democrat Colin Van Ostern.
In Massachusetts, there are four ballot questions, including one that would expand the number of charter schools in the Bay State and another that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana for those over the age of 21.
You can track the results of the presidential election and local races on our live election results chart.
You can also follow county-level results in the presidential race below:
More election coverage:
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Following the massive DDoS attack that last month that targeted DNS provider Dyn and temporarily knocked Twitter, Netflix and other big names off the Internet, we were bombarded with pitches from vendors begging to offer their expert opinions on the matter while extolling the virtues of their solutions that naturally would have safeguarded organizations.
Now, a couple of weeks later, Carnegie Mellon's CyLab Security and Privacy Institute too is touting research that it says shows that the tools really needed to stymie such attacks are on the way. Somehow, this seems more believable than some of the all-to-eager vendor claims, though it doesn't appear the tools will quite be ready to fly for imminent DDoS attack candidates, such as 2016 U.S. Presidential Election-related sites and Black Friday 2016 websites.
Senior Systems Scientist Yang Cai of CyLab's Visual Intelligence Studio says the key is providing visualization of the reams of network traffic data (i.e., IP addresses and time stamps) that IT and security analysts typically examine. This makes it easier to spot patterns, they say.
(Other CyLab researchers have also tackled the DDoS issue.)
MORE: The future of Drupal could be cooking in this lab
"Visualization is one way to change abstract data into pictures, sound, and videos so you can see patterns in a very intuitive way," says Cai, who has worked with Sebastian Peryt to build a tool that can be used to inspect network traffic during DDoS attacks and help shut down a malware distribution network. Last month, they showed their tool at the IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cybersecurity in Baltimore. (See a video demonstration of the tool below.)
Even the visualization of so much data on a computer screen can be pretty overwhelming though. So one thing the team is working on is presenting the data in a virtual reality form, too.
Pretty much every large enterprise, at least those that realize the world is kind of in a state of change, is thinking about how to make their organization more agile. Theyre also quickly reading Marc Andreessens famous Wall Street Journal piece from a few years ago, "Why Software Is Eating The World."
Hopefully, theyre then putting these two themes, agility and innovation, through software together and deciding that key to remaining competitive is arming their technology teams with the tools, processes, freedoms and cultures to do good stuff.
+ Also on Network World: Promise and peril in the journey to DevOps +
All of that can nicely be wrapped up by the DevOps approacha seemingly simple approach that posits that the creation of software and the delivery of that software shouldnt be two discrete tasks, but rather a continuous process with software developers having deeper understanding of operating paradigms, while IT operations folks have more of an appreciation of the nuances of software development.
For such a simple theme, DevOps sure creates a lot of debate with people arguing tirelessly about whether the most important thing in DevOps is organizational culture change or its really about the technicalities around IT operations. Ive always sided with the proponents of the former theory, and I have been adamant that without a culture shift within an organization, no end of new tooling will make an ounce of difference to actual outcomes.
CloudMunch introduces its DevOps intelligence platform
So, I was interested to here from young DevOps vendor CloudMunch recently. The company is this week rolling out its Insights offering, a standalone DevOps intelligence platform.
According to Krish Subramanian, an executive with the company, while most of the talk about DevOps either focuses on culture or automation, CloudMunchs take is that culture and automation are key elements for DevOps and helps deliver software faster. But you also need a continuous feedback loop layered on top of the delivery pipeline to deliver better software faster.
According to the company, the fact that much of the focus and effort in enterprise modernization is spent on automation is somewhat misguided. The company posits that organizations are getting suboptimal ROI in their DevOps adoption because siloed data across various tools leads to lack of visibility, metrics and performance.
CloudMunch wants to remediate that perceived issue with its platform, the new parts of which provide a single lens to view the different metrics across the software delivery lifecycle, a closed feedback loop of action/effect, and organizational wide visibility and governance over tools and processes.
Of course, almost every application or infrastructure monitoring company under the sun claims to provide this holistic, consistent and proactive approach toward monitoring. Anyone who is handy with Google search will realize there are tons of monitoring and visualization tools available in the market.
How does CloudMunch differ from other monitoring and visualization tools?
I asked Subramanian what made CloudMunch different from the others. In general, he says CloudMunchs focus on end-to-end connection of data (all the way from code repositories such as GitHub through to the actual production environments) is key. This ability to tie in the feedback coming from insights to take further action is what makes a DevOps intelligence platform useful to enterprises.
I pushed back a little on this and asked for some specific differentiation. Datadog, for example, is a company I have written about extensively and one that also promises this end-to-end monitoring notion. The same goes for monitoring and analytics products from Chef and Silicon Valley darling New Relicsince it extended from just monitoring infrastructure and into applications. So, what is CloudMunchs perspective on these companies and how does it differentiate itself from them?
In the case of New Relic, Subramanian says that product is more of a monitoring tool for the Ops part of DevOps and notes that they support New Relic as a data source, using that data to correlate with data from other tools to offer insights.
Subramanian sees DataDog as the closest competitor to his product but asserts that DataDog is more focused on performance monitoring, alerting, visibility, etc. He points out that performance monitoring is only one aspect of what CloudMunch is trying to do and they go far beyond that with more nuances questions: How is code quality impacting in this sprint? How is the code quality from last sprint impacting production after deployment? Whereas DataDog collects metrics and delivers direct insights based upon it, CloudMunch is more about insights on outcomes or those related to specific roles.
In the case of Chef Analytics, a new product recently announced by the automation vendor, Subramanian contends that it is more on the side of metrics and visualization than actionable insights at this point. He also points out that it is based on pipeline created using Chef Platform. CloudMunch is built to work across multiple platforms and tools, including Chef, Puppet and Ansible. This speaks to a core CloudMunch philosophy, which is to embrace whatever tools development and operations teams already use.
In terms of the key features CloudMunch offers, the product highlights are as follows:
Unified management panel for metrics from various tools, stages and roles
DevOps dashboard with actionable intelligence based on outcomes such as sprint, roles, release/deployment, builds, etc.
Actions that drive automation tasks based on triggers/alerts
Global Dashboard for managers to keep complete track of the entire lifecycle of the software delivered by various teams
Executive Dashboards to enable leadership to get the big picture insights
DevOps Advisor for decision makers to get just-in-time advisory/guidance based on correlated insights
Support for DevOps tools such as Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Jenkins, Github, Subversion, Jira, Sonarqube, NewRelic, cAdvisor, Artifactory, VersionOne, Cruise Control, Heapster, Perforce, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Docker, Kubernetes, Mesosphere and OpenShift.
My POV
Im not 100 percent convinced that CloudMunch is completely unique in the space, but to be honest, thats not the point. What is important is CloudMunchs focus on offering teams choice of platforms, the company's desire to embrace the totality of different development and operations tools in use, and its commitment to offering a single view across the organization. Ive been watching CloudMunch for a couple of years now, and this release looks to be a strong offering from the company.
In addition to releasing 14 security updates on Election Day Patch Tuesday, six of which are rated critical, the Microsoft Security Response Center responded to requests for better access to security update information; Microsofts solution was to release a preview of its new Security Update Guide, a single destination for security vulnerability information.
MSRC added, Instead of publishing bulletins to describe related vulnerabilities, the new portal lets our customers view and search security vulnerability information in a single online database.
After accepting the terms of service, you can sort, filter out products and drill down into more detailed security update information.
Without further ado, lets jump into the nitty-gritty.
Rated critical
MS16-129 is the cumulative patch for Microsofts Edge browser. It closes 17 holes, including remote code execution flaws via four browser memory corruption vulnerabilities and eight scripting engine memory corruption bugs. The patch also fixes four information disclosure flaws and one spoofing vulnerability.
Both the Microsoft browser information disclosure bug and the Microsoft Edge spoofing bug have been publicly disclosed, although Microsoft said the flaws have not been exploited.
MS16-130 is the fix for a remote code execution vulnerability in Windows, as well as two elevation of privilege flawsone in Task Scheduler and the other in Windows Input Method Editor (IME).
MS16-131 patches an RCE vulnerability in Microsoft Video Control, as it fails to properly handle objects in memory.
MS16-132 closes holes in Microsoft Graphics Component that could lead to RCE. Microsoft noted that the vulnerability exists when the Windows font library improperly handles specially crafted embedded fonts. There are memory corruption flaws that could lead to RCE in Windows Animation Manager and Windows Media Foundation. Another RCE vulnerability is in Open Type Font, but this is being exploited even though Microsoft said it wasnt publicly disclosed.
Additionally, Microsoft said an information disclosure flaw exists when the Adobe Type Manager Font Driver (ATMFD) improperly discloses the contents of its memory.
MS16-133 is to patch numerous holes in Office, including 10 memory corruption bugs that could lead to RCE, a denial-of-service flaw and an information disclosure vulnerability.
MS16-142 is the cumulative update for IE. It resolves four browser memory corruption flaws that could allow RCE and three information disclosure bugsone of which was publicly disclosed but marked as not being exploited.
MS16-141 fixes a plethora of RCE holes in Adobe Flash.
Rated important
Although only rated important by Microsoft, MS16-135 patches the zero-day that Google disclosed on Oct. 31; it is being actively exploited and should be a top priority.
Regarding the Win32k EoP vulnerability CVE-2016-7255, Microsoft said it implemented new exploit mitigations in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update version of the win32k kernel component. These Windows 10 Anniversary Update mitigations, which were developed based on proactive internal research, stop all observed in-the-wild instances of this exploit.
MS16-135 also addresses other issues in Windows kernel-mode drivers. In total, there are three Win32k flaws that could allow elevation of privilege and two information disclosure flawsone in Win32k and another in Microsoft browser.
MS16-134 fixes 10 Windows Common Log File System flaws that could allow elevation of privilege. Microsoft noted the CLFS driver improperly handles objects in memory; a local attack scenario included an attacker exploiting the vulnerabilities to take complete control over the affected system.
MS16-136 addresses 10 holes in Microsoft SQL Server. When listing out specifics, Microsoft mentioned three SQL RDBMS Engine EoP holes. The fix corrects how SQL Server handles pointer casting. There is an XSS EoP vulnerability in SQL Server MDS, one SQL Server Agent EoP bug and an information disclosure vulnerability in Microsoft SQL Analysis Services.
MS16-137 is a security update for Windows Authentication Methods, specifically to fix a Windows NTLM EoP Vulnerability, a Virtual Secure Mode information disclosure flaw and a Local Security Authority Subsystem Service denial-of-service hole.
MS16-138 resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive by correcting four VHD Driver EoP flaws that could allow an attacker to access and manipulate files.
MS16-139 fixes a Windows kernel EoP vulnerability. The security update addresses the vulnerability by helping to ensure that the Windows Kernel API properly enforces permissions.
MS16-140 fixes a security feature bypass flaw that could be exploited if a physically-present attacker installs an affected boot policy.
Happy patching!
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The automobile industry is jittery ahead of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting later this month which will arrive at a definition of cars which fall under the luxury category and the incidence of cess that will be applied on it.
Members from the auto industry met Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia to discuss these issues under the GST regime which may be implemented from April 2017. They sought clarity from the Revenue Department to address the transitional issues before the GST is rolled out.
We have talked about the cess rate that will apply on luxury cars and its definition. We have given our views, said Pawan Goenka, Executive Director, Mahindra & Mahindra.
The GST Council had arrived at a four-tier tax structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28%. However, aerated drinks and tobacco which fall under the category of sin goods, as also high-end luxury cars will attract a cess in a manner that the total incidence of tax remains at the current level.
Goenka said that lack of clarity on the definition and on incentives that were given by the Central and state governments, especially by the hilly states, are a real cause of concern for the automobile industry.
It appears to us that the definition of luxury cars will remain the same and the tax incidence will be similar to what it is today. There may be some differential 2-3 per cent up or down, but it will not be a major change, he added.
Kenichi Ayukawa, Maruti Suzuki MD and CEO feels that the GST tax structure may be good for the country but its implementation needs to be smooth. He said that, We are expecting the definition (of luxury cars) to be as it is. The GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprised finance ministers of all states will arrive at a decision in their next meeting this month.
NEW DELHI: The automobile industry is jittery ahead of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting later this month which will arrive at a definition of cars which fall under the luxury category and the incidence of cess that will be applied on it. Members from the auto industry met Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia to discuss these issues under the GST regime which may be implemented from April 2017. They sought clarity from the Revenue Department to address the transitional issues before the GST is rolled out. We have talked about the cess rate that will apply on luxury cars and its definition. We have given our views, said Pawan Goenka, Executive Director, Mahindra & Mahindra. The GST Council had arrived at a four-tier tax structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28%. However, aerated drinks and tobacco which fall under the category of sin goods, as also high-end luxury cars will attract a cess in a manner that the total incidence of tax remains at the current level. Goenka said that lack of clarity on the definition and on incentives that were given by the Central and state governments, especially by the hilly states, are a real cause of concern for the automobile industry. It appears to us that the definition of luxury cars will remain the same and the tax incidence will be similar to what it is today. There may be some differential 2-3 per cent up or down, but it will not be a major change, he added. Kenichi Ayukawa, Maruti Suzuki MD and CEO feels that the GST tax structure may be good for the country but its implementation needs to be smooth. He said that, We are expecting the definition (of luxury cars) to be as it is. The GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprised finance ministers of all states will arrive at a decision in their next meeting this month.
By Reuters
PHILIPPINES: A Bangladesh central bank team arrived in Manila on Monday to work on moving back part of the $81 million stolen from its account in the New York Federal Reserve in February and sent to the Philippines, a Bangladeshi official said.
A Philippine court in September adjudged that Bangladesh Bank was the rightful owner of around $15 million surrendered by casino boss Kim Wong and his Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company, according to a court order seen by Reuters.
Wong, who returned $4.63 million and 488.28 million pesos ($10.05 million) to Philippine authorities from the millions of dollars he took from two Chinese high-rollers, has denied any role in one of the world's biggest cyber heists.
The $15 million recovered from the total heisted is now secure in the vaults of the Philippine central bank, said John Gomes, Bangladesh's ambassador to the Philippines, who attended a count of the money last week.
"The writ of execution that the money be handed back to Bangladesh has already been done by the court," Gomes said. "The good thing is now that the process on this $15 million is more or less completed, we will go for the rest."
A source close to Bangladesh Bank confirmed the visit by the Dhaka officials to retrieve the money.
Bangladesh Bank spokesman Subhankar Saha did not respond to calls seeking comment.
In the Philippine capital, the central bank, Bangko Sentral, directed Reuters to the Anti-Money Laundering Council, which, in turn, deflected the query to the department of justice.
Ricardo V. Paras, the Philippine justice department official who represented the Bangladesh government in court, did not return telephone calls to seek comment.
PHILIPPINES: A Bangladesh central bank team arrived in Manila on Monday to work on moving back part of the $81 million stolen from its account in the New York Federal Reserve in February and sent to the Philippines, a Bangladeshi official said. A Philippine court in September adjudged that Bangladesh Bank was the rightful owner of around $15 million surrendered by casino boss Kim Wong and his Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company, according to a court order seen by Reuters. Wong, who returned $4.63 million and 488.28 million pesos ($10.05 million) to Philippine authorities from the millions of dollars he took from two Chinese high-rollers, has denied any role in one of the world's biggest cyber heists. The $15 million recovered from the total heisted is now secure in the vaults of the Philippine central bank, said John Gomes, Bangladesh's ambassador to the Philippines, who attended a count of the money last week. "The writ of execution that the money be handed back to Bangladesh has already been done by the court," Gomes said. "The good thing is now that the process on this $15 million is more or less completed, we will go for the rest." A source close to Bangladesh Bank confirmed the visit by the Dhaka officials to retrieve the money. Bangladesh Bank spokesman Subhankar Saha did not respond to calls seeking comment. In the Philippine capital, the central bank, Bangko Sentral, directed Reuters to the Anti-Money Laundering Council, which, in turn, deflected the query to the department of justice. Ricardo V. Paras, the Philippine justice department official who represented the Bangladesh government in court, did not return telephone calls to seek comment.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Maggie episode was the worst crisis faced by Nestle India in its 104 year history, but it has bounced back to capture the 60 per cent market share in less than 14 months and is confident to regain the top brand positions says Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director of Nestle India.
Nestle was forced to recall Maggie following allegations that the popular instant noodle contained lead, seven-times the permissible levels.
It was the worst crisis we faced in our 104 years old history in India. The impact was not just on the books, but also the ecosystemfarmers, suppliers distributors, vendorsit should not have happened but did, Suresh Narayanan told Express in an interview on Tuesday.
Excerpts:
How did you deal with the Maggie episode?
Nestle has a 150 year history. The benefit of age, wisdom and maturity helped us to research and become a stronger company. We did not wilt under pressure.
What was the impact on human resource?
Nestle did not terminate the service of even a single permanent employee during the period. Five of our factories were shut for five months. The employees were re-deployed and re-trained. We did not have a single disruption in our business relations during that phase. Not a single supplier or distributor left us.
What were the learnings?
Quite a few, I must say. Our degree and ability to sense the environment and to look at crisis as an opportunity was enhanced. We used it to re-energize and empower, the organisation. We realised the need to expand our product base, as a result in last three months; we have launched 25-30 new productsnew in the category and new offerings. It is the single largest window in the offering in the Nestles history.
We leveraged the strength of local research and development (R&D) facility at Manesar (near Delhi) with 100 odd people working in the project. We worked towards increasing the levels of customer interfacein 2012, we had 2500 calls, today we engage customers 24X7. In 30 minute, we come back with a response in any form and offer a clear message to the consumers. We undertake structural engagement and being a fast, focused and flexible company, we have enhanced our vigour and engagement with the society.
How do you plan to take on the Swadeshi challenge from companies like Patanjali?
I wish to humbly submit that we are as Swadeshi as Patanjali, having been here for 104 years. About 99.7 per cent of the employees in the company are Indians. Our consumers are Indians, the farmers are Indians. Suppliers, distributors, channel partners, advertising and marketing partners are all Indians. We have one lakh share holders and they are Indians.
For me at Nestle, it is not about Swadeshi challenge, but the ability of a company to leverage its R&D capabilities, science and technology and nutrition, to address the issues of the country and the consumers.
How local are your products vis-vis a Swadeshi company?
100 per cent of almost all that is sold in this country procured and sourced in India. When you drink a glass of Everyday milk whitener, the milk is collected from the farms in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. If they are not Indian farmers, who then are the Indian farmers?
When I make Maggie noodles, as a market leader, all the wheat, spices and all the packaging material and services all are provided by Indians.
You are working in nutritional product category. Do you plan to bring more native foods into your products?
Nestle strives to ensure that every claim that we make is credible and should stand at the altar of nutrition, both scientifically and logically. Definitely, Nestle has expertise in grain and grain technology and we will leverage this expertise. After atta (wheat), we are looking at Oat Noodles. We will continue to look at food quality, safety and nutrition in our new launches.
What was the inspiration for your latest offering, MaggieHot heads?
Inspiration for this came from the fact that, we urban Indians have become experimental with cuisines. When I used to visit Chennai many years ago, the options were minimal- mostly Idly and Dosa. There werent many options. Chinese was out of question. Today in Chennai, you get Mexican, Korean and many others. So we went for hot-spicy Maggie, which we knew will have traction in many parts of India. The response for Hot Heads has been really encouraging. We have now launched it in cup form, since 70 per cent of the food consumption is out of home, since the youth is working and have less time to cook.
Has things cooled down between Nestle and FSSAI?
For record, Nestle was not arrogant; there was no feeling to hit back or vengeance. We have always maintained the primacy and respect for FSSAI as the Food regulator of this country. The questions we had was on issue relating to testing, methodology, equipment and the veracity of those testing. We appreciate the new leadership in FSSAI, both chairman and CEO for bringing in clarity on food legislation, introduction of list for additives, upgrading 45 laboratories to NABL standards investing Rs.482 crores.
Does this give you confidence?
Yes, any player domestic or international will have full confidence about the regulatory framework, which is on par with international standards.
Have you changed focus on Chocolates?
Every company has a different history as far as its products are concerned and the focus they put in varies. In the recent past our history shows that we have changed our outlook towards chocolateswe are pioneers in commercial chocolate. We have introduced a few new varieties too.
How does the sales for 2016 look like?
The sales targets achieved last year is not a benchmark for comparison. 2015 was maligned by the issues that we had because of Maggie. We have come back strong in the third quarter, and the sales have been improved in the third quarter. We hope to close the year strongly, with a double digit growth.
What is the status of Nestles case with NCDRC?
The matter is sub-judice.
NEW DELHI: Maggie episode was the worst crisis faced by Nestle India in its 104 year history, but it has bounced back to capture the 60 per cent market share in less than 14 months and is confident to regain the top brand positions says Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director of Nestle India. Nestle was forced to recall Maggie following allegations that the popular instant noodle contained lead, seven-times the permissible levels. It was the worst crisis we faced in our 104 years old history in India. The impact was not just on the books, but also the ecosystemfarmers, suppliers distributors, vendorsit should not have happened but did, Suresh Narayanan told Express in an interview on Tuesday. Excerpts: How did you deal with the Maggie episode? Nestle has a 150 year history. The benefit of age, wisdom and maturity helped us to research and become a stronger company. We did not wilt under pressure. What was the impact on human resource? Nestle did not terminate the service of even a single permanent employee during the period. Five of our factories were shut for five months. The employees were re-deployed and re-trained. We did not have a single disruption in our business relations during that phase. Not a single supplier or distributor left us. What were the learnings? Quite a few, I must say. Our degree and ability to sense the environment and to look at crisis as an opportunity was enhanced. We used it to re-energize and empower, the organisation. We realised the need to expand our product base, as a result in last three months; we have launched 25-30 new productsnew in the category and new offerings. It is the single largest window in the offering in the Nestles history. We leveraged the strength of local research and development (R&D) facility at Manesar (near Delhi) with 100 odd people working in the project. We worked towards increasing the levels of customer interfacein 2012, we had 2500 calls, today we engage customers 24X7. In 30 minute, we come back with a response in any form and offer a clear message to the consumers. We undertake structural engagement and being a fast, focused and flexible company, we have enhanced our vigour and engagement with the society. How do you plan to take on the Swadeshi challenge from companies like Patanjali? I wish to humbly submit that we are as Swadeshi as Patanjali, having been here for 104 years. About 99.7 per cent of the employees in the company are Indians. Our consumers are Indians, the farmers are Indians. Suppliers, distributors, channel partners, advertising and marketing partners are all Indians. We have one lakh share holders and they are Indians. For me at Nestle, it is not about Swadeshi challenge, but the ability of a company to leverage its R&D capabilities, science and technology and nutrition, to address the issues of the country and the consumers. How local are your products vis-vis a Swadeshi company? 100 per cent of almost all that is sold in this country procured and sourced in India. When you drink a glass of Everyday milk whitener, the milk is collected from the farms in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. If they are not Indian farmers, who then are the Indian farmers? When I make Maggie noodles, as a market leader, all the wheat, spices and all the packaging material and services all are provided by Indians. You are working in nutritional product category. Do you plan to bring more native foods into your products? Nestle strives to ensure that every claim that we make is credible and should stand at the altar of nutrition, both scientifically and logically. Definitely, Nestle has expertise in grain and grain technology and we will leverage this expertise. After atta (wheat), we are looking at Oat Noodles. We will continue to look at food quality, safety and nutrition in our new launches. What was the inspiration for your latest offering, MaggieHot heads? Inspiration for this came from the fact that, we urban Indians have become experimental with cuisines. When I used to visit Chennai many years ago, the options were minimal- mostly Idly and Dosa. There werent many options. Chinese was out of question. Today in Chennai, you get Mexican, Korean and many others. So we went for hot-spicy Maggie, which we knew will have traction in many parts of India. The response for Hot Heads has been really encouraging. We have now launched it in cup form, since 70 per cent of the food consumption is out of home, since the youth is working and have less time to cook. Has things cooled down between Nestle and FSSAI? For record, Nestle was not arrogant; there was no feeling to hit back or vengeance. We have always maintained the primacy and respect for FSSAI as the Food regulator of this country. The questions we had was on issue relating to testing, methodology, equipment and the veracity of those testing. We appreciate the new leadership in FSSAI, both chairman and CEO for bringing in clarity on food legislation, introduction of list for additives, upgrading 45 laboratories to NABL standards investing Rs.482 crores. Does this give you confidence? Yes, any player domestic or international will have full confidence about the regulatory framework, which is on par with international standards. Have you changed focus on Chocolates? Every company has a different history as far as its products are concerned and the focus they put in varies. In the recent past our history shows that we have changed our outlook towards chocolateswe are pioneers in commercial chocolate. We have introduced a few new varieties too. How does the sales for 2016 look like? The sales targets achieved last year is not a benchmark for comparison. 2015 was maligned by the issues that we had because of Maggie. We have come back strong in the third quarter, and the sales have been improved in the third quarter. We hope to close the year strongly, with a double digit growth. What is the status of Nestles case with NCDRC? The matter is sub-judice.
By IANS
NEW DELHI: Leading mobile communication app Truecaller on Tuesday appointed Tejinder Gill as head of its operations in India and as Vice-President (Sales).
"I am confident that with Tejinder's deep industry insights, Truecaller will achieve newer heights of success and recognition in the ever-expanding technology industry," said Nami Zarringhalam, co-founder and Chief Trategy Officer at Truecaller.
Gill, who replaces Kari Krishnamurthy, joined Truecaller after his stint in the core leadership team of LinkedIn in India. He has also been associated with Yahoo India.
"I look forward to strengthen Truecaller's brand presence in the country and deliver more value to our users and partners by implementing innovative strategies," said Gill.
Krishnamurthy will move to the company's Stockholm headquarters to lead the global brand initiative.
NEW DELHI: Leading mobile communication app Truecaller on Tuesday appointed Tejinder Gill as head of its operations in India and as Vice-President (Sales). "I am confident that with Tejinder's deep industry insights, Truecaller will achieve newer heights of success and recognition in the ever-expanding technology industry," said Nami Zarringhalam, co-founder and Chief Trategy Officer at Truecaller. Gill, who replaces Kari Krishnamurthy, joined Truecaller after his stint in the core leadership team of LinkedIn in India. He has also been associated with Yahoo India. "I look forward to strengthen Truecaller's brand presence in the country and deliver more value to our users and partners by implementing innovative strategies," said Gill. Krishnamurthy will move to the company's Stockholm headquarters to lead the global brand initiative.
By Express News Service
Delhi starts process to deregister 15-yr-old diesel vehicles in the city in a bid to curb air pollution, imposes ban on fire crackers; Gurugram enforces Section 144, Gautam Buddha Nagar announces emergency steps; Pb, Haryana blame Delhi for failing to act; air quality slightly improves as wind speed picks up
NEW DELHI: With New Delhi under a thick cloud of haze and smog for several days now, the government machinery, albeit belatedly, got cracking with a slew of measures and considered other steps to cut the deadly air pollution afflicting the national capital.
The Delhi government on Monday started a process of deregistering 15-year-old diesel vehicles numbering around two lakh in the city and imposed a ban on use of fire crackers except for religious functions, following directions from Lt Governor Najeeb Jung to bring down air pollution. Jung chaired a high-level meeting attended by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, environment minister Imran Hussain and representatives from other agencies. The State government demanded that the Centre conduct a fresh study to find out sources of emission and their respective share in polluting the national capitals air.
Meanwhile, the Gurugram district administration imposed Section 144 and banned the burning of waste, garbage and other materials openly. The order applies with immediate effect.
Gautam Buddha Nagar District Magistrate (DM) N P Singh on Monday announced emergency steps in view of the unprecedented air pollution levels in the National Capital Region, officials said.
Meanwhile, The Energy and Resources Institute released a 10-point emergency response plan, including reduction of crop burning and ban on movement of all 10-year-old vehicles in Delhi-NCR among others.
The Indian Medical Association president called on Delhiites to stay indoors claiming that particulate matter 10 (pm) and 2.5 has crossed 600 which is hazardous for humans.
However, in a virtual breath of fresh air, the air quality marginally improved as wind speed picked up dispersing pollutants and hazardous haze that shrouded the city for nearly a week.
Your smog is not our doing
Ministers of Punjab and Haryana summoned up much righteous indignation on Monday to hit back at the Delhi government for trying to blame the two states for the pollution crisis gripping the national capital. At a meeting convened by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in Delhi, Tota Singh of Punjab and Vipul Goel of Haryana said it was a bit rich for the Delhi CM to blame his citys air quality on the burning of crop residues in the neighbouring states, which have at any rate done much to curb the practice.
At the same time, Haryana CM M L Khattar announced a slew of measures to dissuade farmers in his State from setting fire to stubbles. The State announced plans to set up strawbalers in each block in the next financial year to deal with the problem of burning of agricultural residue in the fields. He said pollution levels have spiked due to several reasons like smoke, burning of farm residue, construction activities, Diwali fire crackers and lack of atmospheric circulation and so on. All the same, the two ministers said burning of crop stubble could not be the sole cause of the capitals smog. In fact, Goel said Delhis own dust and poison-spewing vehicles were greater culprits than crops in the two states.
(With inputs from Harpreet Bajwa)
Delhi starts process to deregister 15-yr-old diesel vehicles in the city in a bid to curb air pollution, imposes ban on fire crackers; Gurugram enforces Section 144, Gautam Buddha Nagar announces emergency steps; Pb, Haryana blame Delhi for failing to act; air quality slightly improves as wind speed picks up NEW DELHI: With New Delhi under a thick cloud of haze and smog for several days now, the government machinery, albeit belatedly, got cracking with a slew of measures and considered other steps to cut the deadly air pollution afflicting the national capital. The Delhi government on Monday started a process of deregistering 15-year-old diesel vehicles numbering around two lakh in the city and imposed a ban on use of fire crackers except for religious functions, following directions from Lt Governor Najeeb Jung to bring down air pollution. Jung chaired a high-level meeting attended by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, environment minister Imran Hussain and representatives from other agencies. The State government demanded that the Centre conduct a fresh study to find out sources of emission and their respective share in polluting the national capitals air. Meanwhile, the Gurugram district administration imposed Section 144 and banned the burning of waste, garbage and other materials openly. The order applies with immediate effect. Gautam Buddha Nagar District Magistrate (DM) N P Singh on Monday announced emergency steps in view of the unprecedented air pollution levels in the National Capital Region, officials said. Meanwhile, The Energy and Resources Institute released a 10-point emergency response plan, including reduction of crop burning and ban on movement of all 10-year-old vehicles in Delhi-NCR among others. The Indian Medical Association president called on Delhiites to stay indoors claiming that particulate matter 10 (pm) and 2.5 has crossed 600 which is hazardous for humans. However, in a virtual breath of fresh air, the air quality marginally improved as wind speed picked up dispersing pollutants and hazardous haze that shrouded the city for nearly a week. Your smog is not our doing Ministers of Punjab and Haryana summoned up much righteous indignation on Monday to hit back at the Delhi government for trying to blame the two states for the pollution crisis gripping the national capital. At a meeting convened by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in Delhi, Tota Singh of Punjab and Vipul Goel of Haryana said it was a bit rich for the Delhi CM to blame his citys air quality on the burning of crop residues in the neighbouring states, which have at any rate done much to curb the practice. At the same time, Haryana CM M L Khattar announced a slew of measures to dissuade farmers in his State from setting fire to stubbles. The State announced plans to set up strawbalers in each block in the next financial year to deal with the problem of burning of agricultural residue in the fields. He said pollution levels have spiked due to several reasons like smoke, burning of farm residue, construction activities, Diwali fire crackers and lack of atmospheric circulation and so on. All the same, the two ministers said burning of crop stubble could not be the sole cause of the capitals smog. In fact, Goel said Delhis own dust and poison-spewing vehicles were greater culprits than crops in the two states.(With inputs from Harpreet Bajwa)
By Express News Service
KOCHI: The residents of Fort Kochi and Vypeen can soon heave a sigh of relief soon as their long standing demand for RO-RO(Roll-on/roll-off) jhankar service on the Fort Kochi-Vypeen Route is all set to become a reality. The Cochin Shipyard Ltd(CSL), entrusted with the task of building the jhankar, will organise the floating ceremony of first jhankar at the shipyard on Wednesday. Mayor Soumini Jain will be the chief guest at the function.
At present only the first jhankar will be floated and the floating of the second one will take place within a few days. With the commissioning of the project the travel woes of the public in West Kochi will be solved to a great extent. This is not only going to benefit Fort Kochi and Vypeen residents but it will give a fillip for the Water Metro project, the Mayor told Express.
The double-ended ferry, with propellers and ramps at both ends of the vessel, is adorned with white, light green and dark blue colours. The words, Kochi Municipal Corporation and Cochin Shipyard Ltd, along with the connecting route will be emblazoned on the sides of the ferry.
As per the design, the vessel can carry four lorries, 12 cars (Maruti ) and 50 passengers on a single trip. With its launch, West Kochites travel woes will come down greatly. As the vessel is designed with Azimuth Propulsion system on both ends, the vessel can be operated without the need to turn around at the jetty, the Mayor said.
The City Corporation has spent nearly `3.8 cr for one vessel and altogether `7.6 cr has been spent on the two jhankars. The civic body had launched the Ro-Ro project under the Mission Kochi initiative. The fund required for building the vessels has been provided by the Kerala Urban and Rural Development Finance Corporation (KURFDC).
However, the Corporation has not revealed the exact date of launching the service as the construction of jetty costing `7.5 crore is yet to be completed. We are happy with the progress of the jetty construction at both Vypeen and Fort Kochi. We expect to complete the construction with in few months, Soumini Jain added.
pinning hopes on the project
The vessel can carry four lorries, 12 cars (Maruti ) and 50 nos of passengers in a trip.
The Fort Kochi boat tragedy expedited the building of the jankar.
This is the first time a RO-RO ferry is being built at Cochin Shipyard.
The total construction cost of the two jhankars is T7.6 crore
The civic body had launched the Ro-Ro project under the Mission Kochi 15-8-15 initiative.
KOCHI: The residents of Fort Kochi and Vypeen can soon heave a sigh of relief soon as their long standing demand for RO-RO(Roll-on/roll-off) jhankar service on the Fort Kochi-Vypeen Route is all set to become a reality. The Cochin Shipyard Ltd(CSL), entrusted with the task of building the jhankar, will organise the floating ceremony of first jhankar at the shipyard on Wednesday. Mayor Soumini Jain will be the chief guest at the function. At present only the first jhankar will be floated and the floating of the second one will take place within a few days. With the commissioning of the project the travel woes of the public in West Kochi will be solved to a great extent. This is not only going to benefit Fort Kochi and Vypeen residents but it will give a fillip for the Water Metro project, the Mayor told Express. The double-ended ferry, with propellers and ramps at both ends of the vessel, is adorned with white, light green and dark blue colours. The words, Kochi Municipal Corporation and Cochin Shipyard Ltd, along with the connecting route will be emblazoned on the sides of the ferry. As per the design, the vessel can carry four lorries, 12 cars (Maruti ) and 50 passengers on a single trip. With its launch, West Kochites travel woes will come down greatly. As the vessel is designed with Azimuth Propulsion system on both ends, the vessel can be operated without the need to turn around at the jetty, the Mayor said. The City Corporation has spent nearly `3.8 cr for one vessel and altogether `7.6 cr has been spent on the two jhankars. The civic body had launched the Ro-Ro project under the Mission Kochi initiative. The fund required for building the vessels has been provided by the Kerala Urban and Rural Development Finance Corporation (KURFDC). However, the Corporation has not revealed the exact date of launching the service as the construction of jetty costing `7.5 crore is yet to be completed. We are happy with the progress of the jetty construction at both Vypeen and Fort Kochi. We expect to complete the construction with in few months, Soumini Jain added. pinning hopes on the project The vessel can carry four lorries, 12 cars (Maruti ) and 50 nos of passengers in a trip. The Fort Kochi boat tragedy expedited the building of the jankar. This is the first time a RO-RO ferry is being built at Cochin Shipyard. The total construction cost of the two jhankars is T7.6 crore The civic body had launched the Ro-Ro project under the Mission Kochi 15-8-15 initiative.
By Express News Service
CHENNAI: While the first look poster of the science-fiction thriller 2.0, a sequel to Enthiran (2010), will be released on November 20, the shooting is on in full swing and we hear more than two thirds of the portions, is over.
Rajinikanth
Rumour mills suggest that sometime ago, Shankar had convinced the authorities to shoot in a military camp in Chennai, as the director mostly opts for never-before -seen locations in his films. Rajinis co-star Adil Hussain, whos in the city currently, wrote on Twitter, In Chennai since last 3 Days. Finally shot scenes with Rajinikanth. Delightful experience. He is
affectionate. Looking forward shoot more (sic).
Bankrolled by Lyca Productions, 2.0 will have Superstar in triple roles, besides Amy Jackson, Akshay Kumar and Sudhanshu Pandey, in important roles. Having made on a lavish budget of `350 crore, the film will simultaneously be released in Telugu and Hindi.
CHENNAI: While the first look poster of the science-fiction thriller 2.0, a sequel to Enthiran (2010), will be released on November 20, the shooting is on in full swing and we hear more than two thirds of the portions, is over. RajinikanthRumour mills suggest that sometime ago, Shankar had convinced the authorities to shoot in a military camp in Chennai, as the director mostly opts for never-before -seen locations in his films. Rajinis co-star Adil Hussain, whos in the city currently, wrote on Twitter, In Chennai since last 3 Days. Finally shot scenes with Rajinikanth. Delightful experience. He is affectionate. Looking forward shoot more (sic). Bankrolled by Lyca Productions, 2.0 will have Superstar in triple roles, besides Amy Jackson, Akshay Kumar and Sudhanshu Pandey, in important roles. Having made on a lavish budget of `350 crore, the film will simultaneously be released in Telugu and Hindi.
By ANI
NEW DELHI: Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar is in Palestine to co-chair the first Joint Commission Meeting (JCM) between India and Palestine on November 8-9.
The Palestinian side will be co-chaired by its Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki, said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs here.
India and Palestine enjoy historic bilateral ties. In order to give a further impetus to this bilateral relationship, it was agreed to establish this JCM during External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Palestine in January.
The proposed JCM would cover a range of issues, including cooperation in economy, energy, tourism, agriculture, water and environment, education, health, IT, sports, culture, media etc.
Akbar will also be visiting Jordanian capital Amman on November 10 for bilateral talks with his counterpart and other dignitaries.
NEW DELHI: Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar is in Palestine to co-chair the first Joint Commission Meeting (JCM) between India and Palestine on November 8-9. The Palestinian side will be co-chaired by its Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki, said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs here. India and Palestine enjoy historic bilateral ties. In order to give a further impetus to this bilateral relationship, it was agreed to establish this JCM during External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Palestine in January. The proposed JCM would cover a range of issues, including cooperation in economy, energy, tourism, agriculture, water and environment, education, health, IT, sports, culture, media etc. Akbar will also be visiting Jordanian capital Amman on November 10 for bilateral talks with his counterpart and other dignitaries.
By PTI
RAIPUR: A Delhi University professor and a JNU professor have been booked along with Maoists and others on charges of murder of a tribal villager in insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.
"An FIR was lodged against DU Professor Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU Professor), Vineet Tiwari (from Delhi's Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate (Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) and others along with Maoists for the murder of Shamnath Baghel based on the complaint of his wife on Saturday," Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) S R P Kalluri told PTI last night.
They were booked under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC at Tongpal Police Station, the IG said adding, "strongest possible action will be taken against those guilty after the investigation".
Though the case was registered on Saturday, the matter came to light last night.
Armed Naxals had allegedly killed Baghel with sharp weapons on Friday night at his residence in Nama village under Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area, around 450 kms away from here.
Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading the protest against Naxal activities in their village since April this year.
"As per the complaint lodged by the victim's wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May this year. Even armed ultras were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday," the IG said.
The complaint also mentioned that during the attack on him, Maoists kept telling Baghel that he was being punished because he did not listen to Sundar and others, and continued opposing them.
Baghel's wife has sought action against Sundar and others accusing them of murdering her husband, Kalluri said.
Baghel and other villagers of the region had earlier given a complaint to Tongpal police in May this year against Sundar, Prasad, Tiwari, Parate and an unidentified woman activist from Sukma for allegedly inciting innocent tribals against the government and seeking their support for Maoists.
Villagers of Nama and the neighbouring Kumakoleng village (both under Kumakoleng village panchayat) had started a self-motivated protest against Maoist activities in their villages after forming its own security group named "Tangiya (axe) group" in April this year.
"Following the development, according to villagers, Sundar and others went in the village to allegedly threaten them not to oppose the Maoists," the IG said.
Sundar had gone to the village with the alias Richa Keshav, he said.
A letter was then written to the Vice Chancellors of both DU and JNU informing that Bastar police was conducting an inquiry against both the professors following complaint received against them, he added.
RAIPUR: A Delhi University professor and a JNU professor have been booked along with Maoists and others on charges of murder of a tribal villager in insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh. "An FIR was lodged against DU Professor Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU Professor), Vineet Tiwari (from Delhi's Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate (Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) and others along with Maoists for the murder of Shamnath Baghel based on the complaint of his wife on Saturday," Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) S R P Kalluri told PTI last night. They were booked under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC at Tongpal Police Station, the IG said adding, "strongest possible action will be taken against those guilty after the investigation". Though the case was registered on Saturday, the matter came to light last night. Armed Naxals had allegedly killed Baghel with sharp weapons on Friday night at his residence in Nama village under Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area, around 450 kms away from here. Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading the protest against Naxal activities in their village since April this year. "As per the complaint lodged by the victim's wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May this year. Even armed ultras were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday," the IG said. The complaint also mentioned that during the attack on him, Maoists kept telling Baghel that he was being punished because he did not listen to Sundar and others, and continued opposing them. Baghel's wife has sought action against Sundar and others accusing them of murdering her husband, Kalluri said. Baghel and other villagers of the region had earlier given a complaint to Tongpal police in May this year against Sundar, Prasad, Tiwari, Parate and an unidentified woman activist from Sukma for allegedly inciting innocent tribals against the government and seeking their support for Maoists. Villagers of Nama and the neighbouring Kumakoleng village (both under Kumakoleng village panchayat) had started a self-motivated protest against Maoist activities in their villages after forming its own security group named "Tangiya (axe) group" in April this year. "Following the development, according to villagers, Sundar and others went in the village to allegedly threaten them not to oppose the Maoists," the IG said. Sundar had gone to the village with the alias Richa Keshav, he said. A letter was then written to the Vice Chancellors of both DU and JNU informing that Bastar police was conducting an inquiry against both the professors following complaint received against them, he added.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Pakistan government on Tuesday summoned the Indian Deputy High Commissioner to register a protest on ceasefire violations at the Line of Control and eight of its embassy staffers returned to India after their identities were released by Islamabad authorities.
Director General (South Asia & SAARC) Dr Mohammad Faisal summoned Deputy Indian High Commissioner JP Singh and condemned the unprovoked ceasefire violations by the Indian forces, a charge refuted by the Indian official. Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the unprovoked firing killed three civilians. Singh lodged a protest on behalf of India against Pakistan for violating ceasefire.
"The Director-General urged the Indian side to respect the 2003 Ceasefire Understanding; investigate the continued incidents of ceasefire violations; instruct the Indian forces to respect the ceasefire, in letter and spirit, stop targeting the villages and civilians and maintain peace on the LoC," Pakistans Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
India and Pakistan relations have settled in a predictable cycle of tit-for-tat actions. Guns are booming on the Indo-Pak border and the governments are summoning each others High Commission officials; while the number of diplomatic staff has been curtailed. India has asked its eight officials to return home after Pakistan revealed their identities accusing them of indulging in espionage and terror activities.
Three of the eight Indian officials are arriving via Dubai while the rest are going to come via Wagah border.
Pakistan has also recalled six officials after it alleged that their security was compromised after their names and photos were leaked to the media.
NEW DELHI: Pakistan government on Tuesday summoned the Indian Deputy High Commissioner to register a protest on ceasefire violations at the Line of Control and eight of its embassy staffers returned to India after their identities were released by Islamabad authorities. Director General (South Asia & SAARC) Dr Mohammad Faisal summoned Deputy Indian High Commissioner JP Singh and condemned the unprovoked ceasefire violations by the Indian forces, a charge refuted by the Indian official. Pakistan Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the unprovoked firing killed three civilians. Singh lodged a protest on behalf of India against Pakistan for violating ceasefire. "The Director-General urged the Indian side to respect the 2003 Ceasefire Understanding; investigate the continued incidents of ceasefire violations; instruct the Indian forces to respect the ceasefire, in letter and spirit, stop targeting the villages and civilians and maintain peace on the LoC," Pakistans Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. India and Pakistan relations have settled in a predictable cycle of tit-for-tat actions. Guns are booming on the Indo-Pak border and the governments are summoning each others High Commission officials; while the number of diplomatic staff has been curtailed. India has asked its eight officials to return home after Pakistan revealed their identities accusing them of indulging in espionage and terror activities. Three of the eight Indian officials are arriving via Dubai while the rest are going to come via Wagah border. Pakistan has also recalled six officials after it alleged that their security was compromised after their names and photos were leaked to the media.
Rakesh K Singh By
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Amid the recurring border issues on the eastern front, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will chair a high-level meeting on Thursday with the Home Ministers, chief secretaries and Directors General of Police of five bordering States along the Indo-China border.
Singh will hold the meet with top state functionaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir. The Director General of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) Krishna Chaudhary will also attend the meet convened by the Border Management Division of the Union Home Ministry.
The meeting has been scheduled just two days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Meng Jianzhu, a top aide of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Apart from ways to enhance anti-terror cooperation, Singh is learnt to have urged Beijing to stop the practice of issuing stapled visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh.
Singh also sought support from the visiting Chinese dignitary to place JeM Masood Azhar on the UN sanctions list against individuals and groups linked to terror groups. The issue of illegal supply of arms to Northeast insurgent groups also figured in the meeting.
Meng is the Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday. Doval had briefed Singh ahead of his meeting with Meng.
Sources said the minister will seek to know from the Home Ministers, chief secretaries, and DGPs of the five States the issues concerning security and border management in their respective jurisdictions. The minister will also seek the status of infrastructure development in the bordering States.
The daylong meeting will be held at Gangtok in Sikkim to review Indo-China border issues, including the infrastructure of the States on Indo-China border. The Union Home Ministry has also invited the Chief Ministers of these five States to attend the meeting, an official said.
The Home Ministers meeting with State functionaries comes amid recurring issues relating to face-offs between the troops of India and China. The latest one was reported from Demchok in Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) where the Chinese troops had stopped the work of a canal construction under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. A face-off situation was witnessed after the troops of the Indian army and ITBP reached the spot to check the aggressiveness of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops who were over 50 in number.
NEW DELHI: Amid the recurring border issues on the eastern front, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will chair a high-level meeting on Thursday with the Home Ministers, chief secretaries and Directors General of Police of five bordering States along the Indo-China border. Singh will hold the meet with top state functionaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir. The Director General of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) Krishna Chaudhary will also attend the meet convened by the Border Management Division of the Union Home Ministry. The meeting has been scheduled just two days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Meng Jianzhu, a top aide of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Apart from ways to enhance anti-terror cooperation, Singh is learnt to have urged Beijing to stop the practice of issuing stapled visas to residents of Arunachal Pradesh. Singh also sought support from the visiting Chinese dignitary to place JeM Masood Azhar on the UN sanctions list against individuals and groups linked to terror groups. The issue of illegal supply of arms to Northeast insurgent groups also figured in the meeting. Meng is the Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Wednesday. Doval had briefed Singh ahead of his meeting with Meng. Sources said the minister will seek to know from the Home Ministers, chief secretaries, and DGPs of the five States the issues concerning security and border management in their respective jurisdictions. The minister will also seek the status of infrastructure development in the bordering States. The daylong meeting will be held at Gangtok in Sikkim to review Indo-China border issues, including the infrastructure of the States on Indo-China border. The Union Home Ministry has also invited the Chief Ministers of these five States to attend the meeting, an official said. The Home Ministers meeting with State functionaries comes amid recurring issues relating to face-offs between the troops of India and China. The latest one was reported from Demchok in Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) where the Chinese troops had stopped the work of a canal construction under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. A face-off situation was witnessed after the troops of the Indian army and ITBP reached the spot to check the aggressiveness of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops who were over 50 in number.
By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Presiding over the Congress Working Committee for the first time, Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused the government of being blinded by power and seeking to silence anyone who disagreed with its views.
The one-day ban on NDTV India which has been compared to the curtailing of press freedom during the dark days of Emergency by almost all journalist bodies across the country and the Commonwealth provided the backdrop to Rahuls speech. He said that Indian democracy was passing through its darkest hour. By evening, the ban was put on hold by the government.
Ahmed Patel, A K Antony, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Gulam Nabi Azad at the Congress Working Committee meeting in New Delhi on Monday | SHEKAR yadav
With Sonia not well, Rahul chaired the CWC meeting and, in his typical straight-batting style, kept attacking the government. He said that the Modi dispensation was using national security as an excuse to intimidate civil society into silence. Asking questions is what discomforts this government the most, for they have no answers. We must in every forum, in particular the upcoming session of Parliament, expose the governments failures, Rahul told the CWC members, seniors of his party. And this sounded like a curtain raiser for Opposition strategy for the coming session, beginning November 16.
Referring to the OROP issue, for which he had taken to the streets, Rahul said, In recent months, our jawans have suffered the highest casualties in decades. But the Indian ex-soldier was being denied their promised benefits, like OROP, and had their disability pension slashed.
With the CWC giving its go-ahead for a political alliance with like-minded parties, Rahul said that the party had to be gear up as he expected the BJP to polarise to exploit caste and religious issues. The political resolution adopted by the working committee reflected much of what Rahul said. Rahul also claimed that the Congress has successfully exposed the Modi governments anti-poor agenda and the atrocities against Dalits and Advasi that were going on unabated. He also reran his pet themes of the Modi government favouring a few corporates and the alleged dilution of the MGNREGA and laws by the BJP-run state governments.
Union minister and BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu slammed Rahuls comments. Every word said by (Rahul) him, suits them and reminds the nation of what they have done. He may not be knowing, Naidu said, reminding people of Emergency clamped by the Congress in 1975. The Congress talking of democracy and fundamental rights is like the devil quoting scriptures.
NEW DELHI: Presiding over the Congress Working Committee for the first time, Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused the government of being blinded by power and seeking to silence anyone who disagreed with its views. The one-day ban on NDTV India which has been compared to the curtailing of press freedom during the dark days of Emergency by almost all journalist bodies across the country and the Commonwealth provided the backdrop to Rahuls speech. He said that Indian democracy was passing through its darkest hour. By evening, the ban was put on hold by the government. Ahmed Patel, A K Antony, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Gulam Nabi Azad at the Congress Working Committee meeting in New Delhi on Monday | SHEKAR yadavWith Sonia not well, Rahul chaired the CWC meeting and, in his typical straight-batting style, kept attacking the government. He said that the Modi dispensation was using national security as an excuse to intimidate civil society into silence. Asking questions is what discomforts this government the most, for they have no answers. We must in every forum, in particular the upcoming session of Parliament, expose the governments failures, Rahul told the CWC members, seniors of his party. And this sounded like a curtain raiser for Opposition strategy for the coming session, beginning November 16. Referring to the OROP issue, for which he had taken to the streets, Rahul said, In recent months, our jawans have suffered the highest casualties in decades. But the Indian ex-soldier was being denied their promised benefits, like OROP, and had their disability pension slashed. With the CWC giving its go-ahead for a political alliance with like-minded parties, Rahul said that the party had to be gear up as he expected the BJP to polarise to exploit caste and religious issues. The political resolution adopted by the working committee reflected much of what Rahul said. Rahul also claimed that the Congress has successfully exposed the Modi governments anti-poor agenda and the atrocities against Dalits and Advasi that were going on unabated. He also reran his pet themes of the Modi government favouring a few corporates and the alleged dilution of the MGNREGA and laws by the BJP-run state governments. Union minister and BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu slammed Rahuls comments. Every word said by (Rahul) him, suits them and reminds the nation of what they have done. He may not be knowing, Naidu said, reminding people of Emergency clamped by the Congress in 1975. The Congress talking of democracy and fundamental rights is like the devil quoting scriptures.
Santwana Bhattacharya By
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The de facto is yet to become de jure. But, on Monday, the Congress Working Committee after four hours of deliberation took a step towards nudging vice chief of the party, Rahul Gandhi, towards the party presidents post. In what appeared to be a neatly choreographed move, Manmohan Singh and A.K. Antony proposedit is high timethat a change-of-guard is brought about, sooner than later. Congress President Sonia Gandhis absence from the CWC meeting, on health ground, provided the perfect backdrop.
The reluctant prince, for once, showed no reluctance. He was later quoted by a senior party leader as having told the CWC members that he was ready to rise up to the challenge, will take on any responsibility that the party gives him. With bit of activism over the OROP suicide and a 3,800 km Kisen Yatra in poll-bound UP under his belt, he obvious had come a long way from the being the shy MP of Amethi. The same Antony had to persuade Rahul for days before he agreed to accept the Vice President post. Today, Antony indicated that the elevation could take place sooner than later, hopefully before the crucial Assembly polls in 5 states. The Congress media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala hinted that Rahul may be ushered in before the year turns, December 31. Whether it would be achieved on November 19, when the party celebrates Indira Gandhis centenary, was not clear though.
NEW DELHI: The de facto is yet to become de jure. But, on Monday, the Congress Working Committee after four hours of deliberation took a step towards nudging vice chief of the party, Rahul Gandhi, towards the party presidents post. In what appeared to be a neatly choreographed move, Manmohan Singh and A.K. Antony proposedit is high timethat a change-of-guard is brought about, sooner than later. Congress President Sonia Gandhis absence from the CWC meeting, on health ground, provided the perfect backdrop. The reluctant prince, for once, showed no reluctance. He was later quoted by a senior party leader as having told the CWC members that he was ready to rise up to the challenge, will take on any responsibility that the party gives him. With bit of activism over the OROP suicide and a 3,800 km Kisen Yatra in poll-bound UP under his belt, he obvious had come a long way from the being the shy MP of Amethi. The same Antony had to persuade Rahul for days before he agreed to accept the Vice President post. Today, Antony indicated that the elevation could take place sooner than later, hopefully before the crucial Assembly polls in 5 states. The Congress media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala hinted that Rahul may be ushered in before the year turns, December 31. Whether it would be achieved on November 19, when the party celebrates Indira Gandhis centenary, was not clear though.
By ANI
NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman G V L Narsimha Rao on Tuesday lashed out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for shedding crocodile tears for Indias armed forces, and cautioned him about the fact that the whole country is aware that he cannot be trusted.
Rao told ANI, After having deprived soldiers of One Rank, One Pension (OROP) for over four decades, for ten years the Congress party was in power between 2004-2014, it was Rahul Gandhi who remote controlled the Manmohan Singh government. They made an election promise in 2004 in their manifesto, but they did not spent one penny on implementing OROP when they were in office, and today, for the Congress Party to shed crocodile tears for soldiers, this is not going to impress anyone.
The entire country has contempt for the Congress party and the whole country realizes that Rahul Gandhi is not a leader that can be trusted, he is not a leader who understands politics, who can comment maturely. Rahul Gandhis desperate attempt to be taken seriously is falling on deaf ears; with every statement, he is proving to be a completely unsuitable leader for the Congress party, he added.
Raos comments came a day after Rahul Gandhi chaired a crucial meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CEC) in the absence of party president Sonia Gandhi, and chose the occasion to describe Prime Minister Modi as an individual who was power-obsessed. He also called on the gathering to expose the Centre's failures during the winter session of parliament beginning next week.
Rahul asserted that democracy under the present dispensation is going through one of its darkest hours and accused the government of silencing those disagreeing with it.
"Hiding behind the cloak of national security, civil society is being intimidated for asking questions. Television channels are being punished and being asked to shut down. The opposition is being arrested for holding the government to account. All attempts by this government to suppress our fundamental freedoms by abusing state power will only strengthen our resolve to defeat such dangerous designs," he said.
Listing out a range of failures of the NDA Government, he emphasized that the Centre is hiding behind numbers that have been widely doubted and questioned.
"Selectively chosen corporates are favoured, not the aam aadmi. Youth, even those who have a good education, face the spectre of unemployment. Famers' suicides and agrarian unrest have increased to astonishing levels," he claimed.
He said the Centre has swung from one extreme to another in dealing with Islamabad and issues concerning Jammu and Kashmir.
Pointing out that Indian soldiers have suffered the highest causalities in decades under the NDA dispensation, the Congress vice president maintained that the nations armed forces are being cruelly rewarded by a callous government.
"With state elections due in the coming months, we can safely expect the Modi government to launch a campaign of disinformation and polarization. They will exploit caste and religious fault lines. We must anticipate and neutralise such devious strategies," he added.
The "comprehensive failure" of the Modi government must be highlighted, he said.
NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman G V L Narsimha Rao on Tuesday lashed out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for shedding crocodile tears for Indias armed forces, and cautioned him about the fact that the whole country is aware that he cannot be trusted. Rao told ANI, After having deprived soldiers of One Rank, One Pension (OROP) for over four decades, for ten years the Congress party was in power between 2004-2014, it was Rahul Gandhi who remote controlled the Manmohan Singh government. They made an election promise in 2004 in their manifesto, but they did not spent one penny on implementing OROP when they were in office, and today, for the Congress Party to shed crocodile tears for soldiers, this is not going to impress anyone. The entire country has contempt for the Congress party and the whole country realizes that Rahul Gandhi is not a leader that can be trusted, he is not a leader who understands politics, who can comment maturely. Rahul Gandhis desperate attempt to be taken seriously is falling on deaf ears; with every statement, he is proving to be a completely unsuitable leader for the Congress party, he added. Raos comments came a day after Rahul Gandhi chaired a crucial meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CEC) in the absence of party president Sonia Gandhi, and chose the occasion to describe Prime Minister Modi as an individual who was power-obsessed. He also called on the gathering to expose the Centre's failures during the winter session of parliament beginning next week. Rahul asserted that democracy under the present dispensation is going through one of its darkest hours and accused the government of silencing those disagreeing with it. "Hiding behind the cloak of national security, civil society is being intimidated for asking questions. Television channels are being punished and being asked to shut down. The opposition is being arrested for holding the government to account. All attempts by this government to suppress our fundamental freedoms by abusing state power will only strengthen our resolve to defeat such dangerous designs," he said. Listing out a range of failures of the NDA Government, he emphasized that the Centre is hiding behind numbers that have been widely doubted and questioned. "Selectively chosen corporates are favoured, not the aam aadmi. Youth, even those who have a good education, face the spectre of unemployment. Famers' suicides and agrarian unrest have increased to astonishing levels," he claimed. He said the Centre has swung from one extreme to another in dealing with Islamabad and issues concerning Jammu and Kashmir. Pointing out that Indian soldiers have suffered the highest causalities in decades under the NDA dispensation, the Congress vice president maintained that the nations armed forces are being cruelly rewarded by a callous government. "With state elections due in the coming months, we can safely expect the Modi government to launch a campaign of disinformation and polarization. They will exploit caste and religious fault lines. We must anticipate and neutralise such devious strategies," he added. The "comprehensive failure" of the Modi government must be highlighted, he said.
By PTI
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today decided to hear next month the petitions filed by NDTV challenging the government's direction to its Hindi news channel NDTV India to go off air for a day, a decision which has now been put on hold.
The apex court decided to post the matter on December 5 after NDTV's counsel and senior advocate Fali S Nariman and Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said there was no real urgency as the decision to ban the transmission on November 9 has been put on hold by the government.
A bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and N V Ramana was told by the Attorney General that NDTV will be given a hearing by the inter-ministerial committee before whom it hasmade arepresentation for a review of the decisiondirecting NDTVIndia to go off the air for allegedly violating the telecast
norms during the Pathakot terror incident.
NDTV has challenged the constitutional validity of the provision of the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act which was attracted against it.
The government had yesterday decide to put on hold its decision after the top brass of the NDTV had met Information and Broadcasting (I&B) minister M Venkaiah Naidu.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court today decided to hear next month the petitions filed by NDTV challenging the government's direction to its Hindi news channel NDTV India to go off air for a day, a decision which has now been put on hold. The apex court decided to post the matter on December 5 after NDTV's counsel and senior advocate Fali S Nariman and Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said there was no real urgency as the decision to ban the transmission on November 9 has been put on hold by the government. A bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and N V Ramana was told by the Attorney General that NDTV will be given a hearing by the inter-ministerial committee before whom it hasmade arepresentation for a review of the decisiondirecting NDTVIndia to go off the air for allegedly violating the telecast norms during the Pathakot terror incident. NDTV has challenged the constitutional validity of the provision of the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act which was attracted against it. The government had yesterday decide to put on hold its decision after the top brass of the NDTV had met Information and Broadcasting (I&B) minister M Venkaiah Naidu.
By Express News Service
KOLKATA: Reacting to Centre's move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes from Nov 8 midnight, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has termed the decision as financial chaos unleashed over common people in the name of fighting corruption.
Taking to the social media to vent her ire, the Trinamool Congress chief alleged that the Prime Minister could not bring back black money from abroad so created this 'drama' to divert attention.
"Heartless and ill-conceived blow on the common people and the middle class in the fake name of anti-corruption," she wrote, while adding, "While I'm strongly against black money, corruption, deeply concerned about common people, small traders. How they will buy essentials tomo(rrow)?"
Pointing out the problems marginal farmers and labourers will encounter, the Cm said that people who earn their weekly wage in Rs 500 denomination would face problems by this move, alleging that Rs 100 notes were also unavailable with the banks which would further aggravate their problems.
However, twitterati gave mixed reactions. While some criticized Mamata Banerjee reminding her of Saradha chitfund scam and Trinamool's alleged involvement in it, there were others who supported her viewpoint.
SBI CGM (Eastern Zone), Parthapratim Sengupta has asked people not to panic and not take help of middlemen. "People have time to deposit their money. We would try to pour in Rs 100 denomination notes in ATMs as much as we can," he said.
Meanwhile, Kolkatans rushed to the ATMs to deposit whatever amount they have in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency denominations in the deposit machines and withdraw minimum Rs 400 amounts from the ATMs.
"Our salary came recently and had some amount in cash so rushed to the ATM to deposit it," said Jharna Das queued up at an ATM in Gariahat in Kolkata.
"Those having SBI account can deposit their amount. What would those without an SBI account do?," questioned a hassled Rajesh Talukdar in Jadavpur.
Meanwhile, besides long queues at ATMs, liquor shops and bars also witnessed heavy rush, with tippers crowding to gulp down a few Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in the form of liquor before 12 am. "I had Rs 2,000 cash at home in Rs 500 currency denominations. So, I decided to buy some scotch," said Vinay Singh of Tollygunje.
KOLKATA: Reacting to Centre's move to withdraw Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes from Nov 8 midnight, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has termed the decision as financial chaos unleashed over common people in the name of fighting corruption. Taking to the social media to vent her ire, the Trinamool Congress chief alleged that the Prime Minister could not bring back black money from abroad so created this 'drama' to divert attention. "Heartless and ill-conceived blow on the common people and the middle class in the fake name of anti-corruption," she wrote, while adding, "While I'm strongly against black money, corruption, deeply concerned about common people, small traders. How they will buy essentials tomo(rrow)?" Pointing out the problems marginal farmers and labourers will encounter, the Cm said that people who earn their weekly wage in Rs 500 denomination would face problems by this move, alleging that Rs 100 notes were also unavailable with the banks which would further aggravate their problems. However, twitterati gave mixed reactions. While some criticized Mamata Banerjee reminding her of Saradha chitfund scam and Trinamool's alleged involvement in it, there were others who supported her viewpoint. SBI CGM (Eastern Zone), Parthapratim Sengupta has asked people not to panic and not take help of middlemen. "People have time to deposit their money. We would try to pour in Rs 100 denomination notes in ATMs as much as we can," he said. Meanwhile, Kolkatans rushed to the ATMs to deposit whatever amount they have in Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency denominations in the deposit machines and withdraw minimum Rs 400 amounts from the ATMs. "Our salary came recently and had some amount in cash so rushed to the ATM to deposit it," said Jharna Das queued up at an ATM in Gariahat in Kolkata. "Those having SBI account can deposit their amount. What would those without an SBI account do?," questioned a hassled Rajesh Talukdar in Jadavpur. Meanwhile, besides long queues at ATMs, liquor shops and bars also witnessed heavy rush, with tippers crowding to gulp down a few Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in the form of liquor before 12 am. "I had Rs 2,000 cash at home in Rs 500 currency denominations. So, I decided to buy some scotch," said Vinay Singh of Tollygunje.
By Express News Service
CHENNAI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday evening said currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations would cease to be legal tender from midnight. In his rare late-evening address to the nation, the prime minister asked common people to contribute to his governments efforts to curb corruption, unaccounted or black money, and terrorism that relies on such money, as also decimate those from across the border who were pushing counterfeit Indian currency into India.
The old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination currency notes would be nothing more than scraps of paper, the PM said. Here is a look at how it will affect various sectors in the economy in the near future.
Jewellery industry
The jewellery industry welcomed the governments decision saying gold demand will rise as people will have more faith in the precious metal than the currency notes. It will create havoc for a little while and the economy will also destablise. But overall, it is going to be good for the country. In fact, the jewellery industry will thrive as people will have more trust on jewellery than currency notes, Gitanjali Gems Chairman and Managing Director Mehul Choksi said.
Real Estate
Unorganised builders and secondary (resale) property market would be adversely impacted following the governments decision, according to real estate developers and consultants. Housing prices could witness downward pressure, helping revive demand in the sluggish housing segment, they added. We are moving toward the cashless economy which is a sign of maturing economy. Its a step in the right direction, DLF CEO Rajeev Talwar said.
The blackmoney was mostly in land purchase. But in last 6-7 years, there has been no major land buying in this sector. Big builders and organised players are already using bank channel and they would gain from this decision. Unorganised players and the secondary market would be impacted, he said.
Rural economy
India has a little over 10 lakh bank branches. There are 6.8 lakh villages, most of them without a bank. Demonetisation will be a huge shock for bankless villages, which conduct only currency transactions. Since the 500 rupee note is no more legal tender, and rich landlords and rural politicians have to rush to banks in the city, village economies will be hit in the immediate term.
Markets
Stock markets will remain open Wednesday and all risk management systems and surveillance measures have been beefed up to tackle any extreme volatility in the wake of demonetisation of certain currency notes and the US presidential election results. Banks will remain closed tomorrow for the public to allow them time to cope with the governments decision to discontinue existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes with effect from midnight tonight. However, the stock markets will remain open, and clearing and settlement systems will operate normally, exchange official said. Marketmen said that the stocks from the real estate and jewellery sectors may be affected.
Mumbai
People welcome move on black money
The common man in Mumbai is happy with Prime Minister Narendra Modis decision to abolish D1,000 and D500 currency notes from circulation. Oh Teri, Lai Zyak (Marathi equivalent of Thats gr8), Waw! were some of the exclamations that were heard on a local train from Mumbais Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Some welcomed the prospect of putting an end to the black money menace, others showered praise on Modi for being able to keep such an important decision absolutely secret till the announcement. Yet others who argued the decision would be harsh on traders, while some were worried of having to get these notes exchanged.
Kolkata
Tipplers rush to bars to down a few pegs
Following the PMs announcement, Kolkatans rushed to ATMs to deposit whatever amount they had in the D500 and D1,000 denominations and withdraw minimum D400. My salary came recently and I had some amount in cash. So I rushed to the ATM to deposit it, said Jharna Das at an ATM in Gariahat in Kolkata. Those having SBI account can deposit their amount. What would people who do not have SBI account do? questioned Rajesh Talukdar at an ATM in Jadavpur. Besides long queues at ATMs, liquor shops and bars also witnessed rush, with tipplers crowding to gulp down a few pegs before the clock struck 12.
Lucknow
Rural folks may not comprehend move
It was chaos in the Uttar Pradesh capital and many other parts of the State as thousands queued up outside petrol pumps, shops, malls and ATMs, to deposit higher denominations and withdraw lower ones. The police were on alert and law enforcement agencies stepped up vigil to prevent any untoward incidents. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav tweeted that the Central government must set up special banking counters in villages and district centres to assist villagers, public and farmers. There is a fear that people in rural areas many not understand the measure and ways to change the notes that they have.
Chandigarh
Impact on Punjab polls will be huge: Experts
Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement abolishing D500 and D1,000 notes is likely to repress the cash-for-votes push ahead of the coming Assembly elections in Punjab. Sources said the way political parties used to lure voters with cash, liquor, drugs and valuables will take a beating since now one will not be able to buy or exchange goods with D500 and D1,000 notes. Kuldeep Singh, a political analyst, says, This will impact the coming Punjab elections as suddenly the black money which politicians had kept for circulating during the elections to buy votes, has become redundant. Thus money power will reduce to a great extent.
How to cope
Deposit any number of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes till December 30 and exchange them for lower notes at banks and post offices till November 24 with a per-day limit of D4,000 by showing valid identity documents Get up to Rs 4,000 in cash in exchange and anything over and above that will be credited to your bank account Strict cash withdrawal limits Rs 2,000 from ATM and Rs 10,000 from bank account in a day and Rs 20,000 in a week Pay for other requirements by cheque or through Internet banking, mobile wallets, IMPS, credit/debit cards etc You can withdraw cash against withdrawal slip or cheque subject to ceiling of Rs 10,000 in a day within an overall limit of Rs 20,000 in a week (including withdrawals from ATMs) till November 24 You can deposit invalid notes in Cash Deposits machines / Cash Recyclers
CHENNAI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday evening said currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations would cease to be legal tender from midnight. In his rare late-evening address to the nation, the prime minister asked common people to contribute to his governments efforts to curb corruption, unaccounted or black money, and terrorism that relies on such money, as also decimate those from across the border who were pushing counterfeit Indian currency into India. The old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination currency notes would be nothing more than scraps of paper, the PM said. Here is a look at how it will affect various sectors in the economy in the near future. Jewellery industry The jewellery industry welcomed the governments decision saying gold demand will rise as people will have more faith in the precious metal than the currency notes. It will create havoc for a little while and the economy will also destablise. But overall, it is going to be good for the country. In fact, the jewellery industry will thrive as people will have more trust on jewellery than currency notes, Gitanjali Gems Chairman and Managing Director Mehul Choksi said. Real Estate Unorganised builders and secondary (resale) property market would be adversely impacted following the governments decision, according to real estate developers and consultants. Housing prices could witness downward pressure, helping revive demand in the sluggish housing segment, they added. We are moving toward the cashless economy which is a sign of maturing economy. Its a step in the right direction, DLF CEO Rajeev Talwar said. The blackmoney was mostly in land purchase. But in last 6-7 years, there has been no major land buying in this sector. Big builders and organised players are already using bank channel and they would gain from this decision. Unorganised players and the secondary market would be impacted, he said. Rural economy India has a little over 10 lakh bank branches. There are 6.8 lakh villages, most of them without a bank. Demonetisation will be a huge shock for bankless villages, which conduct only currency transactions. Since the 500 rupee note is no more legal tender, and rich landlords and rural politicians have to rush to banks in the city, village economies will be hit in the immediate term. Markets Stock markets will remain open Wednesday and all risk management systems and surveillance measures have been beefed up to tackle any extreme volatility in the wake of demonetisation of certain currency notes and the US presidential election results. Banks will remain closed tomorrow for the public to allow them time to cope with the governments decision to discontinue existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes with effect from midnight tonight. However, the stock markets will remain open, and clearing and settlement systems will operate normally, exchange official said. Marketmen said that the stocks from the real estate and jewellery sectors may be affected. Mumbai People welcome move on black money The common man in Mumbai is happy with Prime Minister Narendra Modis decision to abolish D1,000 and D500 currency notes from circulation. Oh Teri, Lai Zyak (Marathi equivalent of Thats gr8), Waw! were some of the exclamations that were heard on a local train from Mumbais Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Some welcomed the prospect of putting an end to the black money menace, others showered praise on Modi for being able to keep such an important decision absolutely secret till the announcement. Yet others who argued the decision would be harsh on traders, while some were worried of having to get these notes exchanged. Kolkata Tipplers rush to bars to down a few pegs Following the PMs announcement, Kolkatans rushed to ATMs to deposit whatever amount they had in the D500 and D1,000 denominations and withdraw minimum D400. My salary came recently and I had some amount in cash. So I rushed to the ATM to deposit it, said Jharna Das at an ATM in Gariahat in Kolkata. Those having SBI account can deposit their amount. What would people who do not have SBI account do? questioned Rajesh Talukdar at an ATM in Jadavpur. Besides long queues at ATMs, liquor shops and bars also witnessed rush, with tipplers crowding to gulp down a few pegs before the clock struck 12. Lucknow Rural folks may not comprehend move It was chaos in the Uttar Pradesh capital and many other parts of the State as thousands queued up outside petrol pumps, shops, malls and ATMs, to deposit higher denominations and withdraw lower ones. The police were on alert and law enforcement agencies stepped up vigil to prevent any untoward incidents. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav tweeted that the Central government must set up special banking counters in villages and district centres to assist villagers, public and farmers. There is a fear that people in rural areas many not understand the measure and ways to change the notes that they have. Chandigarh Impact on Punjab polls will be huge: Experts Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement abolishing D500 and D1,000 notes is likely to repress the cash-for-votes push ahead of the coming Assembly elections in Punjab. Sources said the way political parties used to lure voters with cash, liquor, drugs and valuables will take a beating since now one will not be able to buy or exchange goods with D500 and D1,000 notes. Kuldeep Singh, a political analyst, says, This will impact the coming Punjab elections as suddenly the black money which politicians had kept for circulating during the elections to buy votes, has become redundant. Thus money power will reduce to a great extent. How to cope Deposit any number of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes till December 30 and exchange them for lower notes at banks and post offices till November 24 with a per-day limit of D4,000 by showing valid identity documents Get up to Rs 4,000 in cash in exchange and anything over and above that will be credited to your bank account Strict cash withdrawal limits Rs 2,000 from ATM and Rs 10,000 from bank account in a day and Rs 20,000 in a week Pay for other requirements by cheque or through Internet banking, mobile wallets, IMPS, credit/debit cards etc You can withdraw cash against withdrawal slip or cheque subject to ceiling of Rs 10,000 in a day within an overall limit of Rs 20,000 in a week (including withdrawals from ATMs) till November 24 You can deposit invalid notes in Cash Deposits machines / Cash Recyclers
A Surya Prakash By
The campaign launched by the radical Muslim clergy and phony liberals against the Law Commission of Indias well-intentioned and long overdue exercise to undertake a revision and reform of family laws in line with the constitutional mandate in Article 44 to bring in a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), is yet another example of the maladjustment of some sections of the citizenry to the core values in our Constitution. The Law Commission has put out a questionnaire and asked citizens, irrespective of denomination, to respond to the issues raised in it. It has said that the objective behind the endeavour is to address discrimination against vulnerable groups and harmonise the various cultural practices and to start a healthy conversation about the viability of a common civil code. The aim of the exercise is to examine family laws of all religions and to tackle social injustice.
How can any citizen of democratic India take exception to this? The Muslim clergy, which seeks to block constitutional rights of Muslim women in the name of religious freedom, has taken exception to the Law Commissions efforts and also tried to portray the commissions effort as an attempt to target Muslims. Anyone who examines the work of the commission since its inception will realise that this is utter rubbish. While the commission has rarely, if ever, discussed Muslim Personal Law, it has examined and opined on Hindu and Christian laws. In fact, there is a pattern to this. In the view of the Muslim clergy and their pseudo-secular cohorts, every institution in the country has a right to interfere with religious practices of the Hindus, Christians and others, but the Muslims are a class apart.
Similarly, when it comes to re-location of places of worship and some such measure to be undertaken by the state for the public good, the state can do so with respect of every place of worship except those belonging to the Muslims. The attitude of the clergy to such issues has not only disturbed communal harmony but also deprived Muslim women of their constitutional rights. It is therefore heartening to see Muslim women like Sharaya Bano and several Muslim womens groups demanding their rights. The question therefore is not why the Law Commission has launched this initiative now, but why this commission, which has such an important remit, allowed Muslim women to suffer such deprivation in terms of their fundamental rights for 66 years after our Constitution came into being. For those who spread the canard that the commission is targeting Muslims, here is a glimpse of the commissions interventions in respect of Hindu customs and laws since its inception. The 59th report dwelt on the amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and the Special Marriage Act, 1954. The 71st report re-visited this issue and the commission took the view that irretrievable breakdown of marriage constituted a ground for divorce. The 73rd report discussed criminal liability of husband for non-payment of maintenance.
The 74th and 83rd reports reviewed the Hindu Widows Remarriage Act and the Guardians and Wards Act and the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act. The 1980s saw a huge jump in reporting of dowry deaths leading to a nation-wide campaign for stricter laws to deal with a husbands, in-laws and other relatives who harass a woman for dowry and indulge in barbaric acts like bride burning when her parents failed to meet their demands. The commission turned its focus on this issue in its 91st report. It recommended amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955; the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The commission returned to the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act in its 98th report. The commission examined property rights of women and proposed reforms in Hindu Law for this purpose in its 174th report, returned to irretrievable breakdown of marriage as another ground of divorce in its 217th report. The right of a Hindu wife to maintenance was examined in the 252nd report.
The commission has dealt with many customary and personal laws pertaining to Christians also. The 15th and 90th reports examined marriage laws and the grounds of divorce amongst Christians, whereas the 224th discussed changes to enable non-domiciled estranged Christian wives to seek divorce. In light of this evidence, how can anyone say that the commission is targeting Muslims? The opposition to the commissions questionnaire is thus beyond comprehension. In its questionnaire, the commission asks respondents whether they are aware of Article 44 of the Constitution and whether a UCC includes subjects such as marriage, divorce, adoption, guardianship and child custody, maintenance, succession and inheritance. It has many questions pertaining specifically to Hindus and Christians. Question number 6 asks whether polygamy, polyandry and customary practices such as Maitri-karar (friendship deed) should be banned or regulated while question number 7 asks whether the practice of triple talaq be abolished in toto, retained or retained with amendments. The Muslim clergy has reacted adversely to the questionnaire itself, but in particular to these two questions. While triple talaq is entirely an Islamic affair, polygamy stands on a different footing. Polygamy is not exclusive to Muslims, yet whenever polygamy is questioned, the Muslim clergy presumes that it is a campaign against adherents of Islam. In the light of all this facts, should we allow a few Mullahs to derail or disrupt our march towards equality and fraternity? The Nehruvians and their Marxists cohorts have allowed the Mullahs to trample on our constitutional rights since independence and given them the veto power on everything. This must end.
A Surya Prakash is the Chairman of Prasar Bharati
Email: suryamedia@gmail.com
The campaign launched by the radical Muslim clergy and phony liberals against the Law Commission of Indias well-intentioned and long overdue exercise to undertake a revision and reform of family laws in line with the constitutional mandate in Article 44 to bring in a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), is yet another example of the maladjustment of some sections of the citizenry to the core values in our Constitution. The Law Commission has put out a questionnaire and asked citizens, irrespective of denomination, to respond to the issues raised in it. It has said that the objective behind the endeavour is to address discrimination against vulnerable groups and harmonise the various cultural practices and to start a healthy conversation about the viability of a common civil code. The aim of the exercise is to examine family laws of all religions and to tackle social injustice. How can any citizen of democratic India take exception to this? The Muslim clergy, which seeks to block constitutional rights of Muslim women in the name of religious freedom, has taken exception to the Law Commissions efforts and also tried to portray the commissions effort as an attempt to target Muslims. Anyone who examines the work of the commission since its inception will realise that this is utter rubbish. While the commission has rarely, if ever, discussed Muslim Personal Law, it has examined and opined on Hindu and Christian laws. In fact, there is a pattern to this. In the view of the Muslim clergy and their pseudo-secular cohorts, every institution in the country has a right to interfere with religious practices of the Hindus, Christians and others, but the Muslims are a class apart. Similarly, when it comes to re-location of places of worship and some such measure to be undertaken by the state for the public good, the state can do so with respect of every place of worship except those belonging to the Muslims. The attitude of the clergy to such issues has not only disturbed communal harmony but also deprived Muslim women of their constitutional rights. It is therefore heartening to see Muslim women like Sharaya Bano and several Muslim womens groups demanding their rights. The question therefore is not why the Law Commission has launched this initiative now, but why this commission, which has such an important remit, allowed Muslim women to suffer such deprivation in terms of their fundamental rights for 66 years after our Constitution came into being. For those who spread the canard that the commission is targeting Muslims, here is a glimpse of the commissions interventions in respect of Hindu customs and laws since its inception. The 59th report dwelt on the amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and the Special Marriage Act, 1954. The 71st report re-visited this issue and the commission took the view that irretrievable breakdown of marriage constituted a ground for divorce. The 73rd report discussed criminal liability of husband for non-payment of maintenance. The 74th and 83rd reports reviewed the Hindu Widows Remarriage Act and the Guardians and Wards Act and the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act. The 1980s saw a huge jump in reporting of dowry deaths leading to a nation-wide campaign for stricter laws to deal with a husbands, in-laws and other relatives who harass a woman for dowry and indulge in barbaric acts like bride burning when her parents failed to meet their demands. The commission turned its focus on this issue in its 91st report. It recommended amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955; the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The commission returned to the provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act in its 98th report. The commission examined property rights of women and proposed reforms in Hindu Law for this purpose in its 174th report, returned to irretrievable breakdown of marriage as another ground of divorce in its 217th report. The right of a Hindu wife to maintenance was examined in the 252nd report. The commission has dealt with many customary and personal laws pertaining to Christians also. The 15th and 90th reports examined marriage laws and the grounds of divorce amongst Christians, whereas the 224th discussed changes to enable non-domiciled estranged Christian wives to seek divorce. In light of this evidence, how can anyone say that the commission is targeting Muslims? The opposition to the commissions questionnaire is thus beyond comprehension. In its questionnaire, the commission asks respondents whether they are aware of Article 44 of the Constitution and whether a UCC includes subjects such as marriage, divorce, adoption, guardianship and child custody, maintenance, succession and inheritance. It has many questions pertaining specifically to Hindus and Christians. Question number 6 asks whether polygamy, polyandry and customary practices such as Maitri-karar (friendship deed) should be banned or regulated while question number 7 asks whether the practice of triple talaq be abolished in toto, retained or retained with amendments. The Muslim clergy has reacted adversely to the questionnaire itself, but in particular to these two questions. While triple talaq is entirely an Islamic affair, polygamy stands on a different footing. Polygamy is not exclusive to Muslims, yet whenever polygamy is questioned, the Muslim clergy presumes that it is a campaign against adherents of Islam. In the light of all this facts, should we allow a few Mullahs to derail or disrupt our march towards equality and fraternity? The Nehruvians and their Marxists cohorts have allowed the Mullahs to trample on our constitutional rights since independence and given them the veto power on everything. This must end. A Surya Prakash is the Chairman of Prasar Bharati Email: suryamedia@gmail.com
K M Divakaran By
The only tea shop in my village is fifty years old. There are no other shops, grocery or other, in my little known village. The shop was established by Krishnettan, a World War II veteran. After returning from the war in Burma, he did odd jobs like breaking rocks in a quarry, cutting trees and making thatched roofs with coconut palm leaves. Initially, customers came to his shop to listen to war stories. His exaggerated way of telling stories lost its charm after some days as the listeners found too many loopholes in his stories. Unfortunately, Krishnettan died ten years ago. Now, his son runs the tea shop. He was my class mate in the Vanivilasam Lower Primary school.
After completing fifth grade he did not go to school. He used to work as a newspaper boy or a manual labourer. Sometimes, he weaved plastic wire baskets. After his father died, he took over the tea shop. Everyday, the shop opens at 5.30 am. Water for the tea is boiled in a copper pot. Very few snacks are served for the customers: the quintessential puttu, avil and bananas. The first customer to visit the shop every day is the newspaper boy. After drinking tea, he goes to the town nearby to collect newspapers. He then distributes the papers in my village and other villages. The second customer is the fishmonger who goes to the to buy fish in bulk. By 8 am, the third regular customer, my elder brother, who is a retired person goes to the shop for his glass of tea.
After that, not more than three customers come to drink tea. The last customers in the morning session are two male teachers from the nearby school. The morning session ends at 11 am. The shop owner goes home, takes a nap, and returns at in the evening by 4 pm. After the sun sets, there are more customers or rather visitors to the shop. One unemployed B.Tech graduate, a couple of Gulf returnees and two government employees sit on the wooden bench and discuss local politics. Occasionally, a village gossip also becomes the subject of discussion.
All these visitors do not drink tea and order snacks daily. The shop down its shutters at 8 pm. Whenever I visit my ancestral home once in a while, I go to the tea shop run by my class mate. I have a glass of tea. Then, I get all the news of the village from the shop owner. Who all got married, who died and who returned from the Gulf for good; he knows everything.
Email: divakarankm@gmail.com
The only tea shop in my village is fifty years old. There are no other shops, grocery or other, in my little known village. The shop was established by Krishnettan, a World War II veteran. After returning from the war in Burma, he did odd jobs like breaking rocks in a quarry, cutting trees and making thatched roofs with coconut palm leaves. Initially, customers came to his shop to listen to war stories. His exaggerated way of telling stories lost its charm after some days as the listeners found too many loopholes in his stories. Unfortunately, Krishnettan died ten years ago. Now, his son runs the tea shop. He was my class mate in the Vanivilasam Lower Primary school. After completing fifth grade he did not go to school. He used to work as a newspaper boy or a manual labourer. Sometimes, he weaved plastic wire baskets. After his father died, he took over the tea shop. Everyday, the shop opens at 5.30 am. Water for the tea is boiled in a copper pot. Very few snacks are served for the customers: the quintessential puttu, avil and bananas. The first customer to visit the shop every day is the newspaper boy. After drinking tea, he goes to the town nearby to collect newspapers. He then distributes the papers in my village and other villages. The second customer is the fishmonger who goes to the to buy fish in bulk. By 8 am, the third regular customer, my elder brother, who is a retired person goes to the shop for his glass of tea. After that, not more than three customers come to drink tea. The last customers in the morning session are two male teachers from the nearby school. The morning session ends at 11 am. The shop owner goes home, takes a nap, and returns at in the evening by 4 pm. After the sun sets, there are more customers or rather visitors to the shop. One unemployed B.Tech graduate, a couple of Gulf returnees and two government employees sit on the wooden bench and discuss local politics. Occasionally, a village gossip also becomes the subject of discussion. All these visitors do not drink tea and order snacks daily. The shop down its shutters at 8 pm. Whenever I visit my ancestral home once in a while, I go to the tea shop run by my class mate. I have a glass of tea. Then, I get all the news of the village from the shop owner. Who all got married, who died and who returned from the Gulf for good; he knows everything. Email: divakarankm@gmail.com
Abhijit Singh By
In another 24 hours, the US Presidential race will be over. This has been an acrimonious election, with a deep and often caustic hostility between the two candidates. In the welter of claims and counter-claims, public opinion has been bitterly divided both within and outside the US over who will make the better president. One place, however, where the event has been treated with relative nonchalance is India. New Delhi is aware that there is bipartisan consensus among Democrats and Republicans on the need for a deeper and more meaningful partnership with India. Regardless of who emerges victorious, Indian analysts feel confident that the new US President will look at India as a close strategic partner. In material terms, this translates into a continuing sale of US military hardware and defence equipment, close coordination in multilateral fora on matters of global governance, co-production and co-development of military technologies, and more maritime collaboration in the Asian littorals (particularly the Western and Eastern Indian Ocean, where there is a significant convergence of security interests). India will also look to US support for entry into Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and other multilateral export control regimes. Washingtons steadfast support in New Delhis quest for NSG membership, as also a civil nuclear deal with Japan, makes many Indian observers hopeful that the new leader will be equally committed to advancing Indian interests.
In recent years, the US has emerged as Indias largest military supplier, with defense trade figures having surpassed US$ 14 billion in 2015. But New Delhi needs close cooperation from the US to ensure the success of the Modi governments Make in India initiative. The focus of Indian interest would be on the new Presidents policies vis-a-vis China. The last thing Indian policymakers want is a revival of the G-2. That flawed notion of a special greatpower partnership between China and the US proposed by the first Obama administration and rejected quickly after served to alienate many in New Delhi, also raising doubts about US commitment to a stable and peaceful Asia. Now, with growing Chinese assertiveness along the Sino-Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh, there is an even greater imperative for the new US Administration to eschew any suggestions for any special arrangement with Beijing which involves turning a blind eye to Chinese aggression in its neighborhood.
Indian analysts will be keen to see how the new president moves to counteract the China-Pakistan axis in South Asia. From submarines and corvettes to fighter aircraft and missile technology, Beijing has become Islamabads principal defence supplier, skewing, to a degree, the strategic equilibrium on the subcontinent. Despite Washingtons dependence on Islamabad for political negotiations in Afghanistan, New Delhi will be hoping that the White Houses new occupant will adopt policies that will address Indias strategic concerns, restoring South Asias geopolitical balance in Indias favour. Afghanistan might serve as the first indicator of a continuing US commitment to Indian interests. If Washington makes common cause with China and Pakistan, resulting in a future reduction in US military presence, Indias interests might be adversely impacted.
A leader that appreciates Indian stakes in broader South-Asia is likely to best advance the bilateral relationship. In the main, however, New Delhi needs the incoming US administration to address the threat of Pakistan based terror. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on an Indian army camp in Uri, India has placed terrorism at the top of its political agenda. While Washington has been quick to rap Pakistan for its use of militant-proxies, it has hesitated in going beyond rhetorical admonitions. New Delhis expectation is that the new US President will push Islamabad into abandoning its export of terror and work towards sustaining a high level of security and intelligence coordination that could preempt potential terror attempts on Indian soil. The Indian foreign policy establishment is also hopeful that the new leader will move to improve the United States relationship with Russia.
For all of the benefits of close bilateral ties with Washington, New Delhi knows that the quality of its engagements with Russia and the US has suffered on account of their mutual mistrust. Indian analysts ascribe a recent antiterror exercise between Russian and Pakistani Special Forces to Moscows perception of strategic intimacy between India and the US. Similarly, Washington isnt too pleased with Indias continuing defence engagement with Russia particularly New Delhis dependence on Moscow for strategic military platforms. Indian observers hope that the new US President will appreciate New Delhis dependence on Russian platforms and systems has been the result of Washingtons reluctance to provide highgrade strategic platforms and weapons systems to India. On the economic side, the problems with Washington on economic and immigration are likely to continue. Indian citizens are the top recipients of temporary high-skilled worker visas, accounting for more than two-thirds of all H-1B petitions, but on a back of tepid economic growth in the United States, New Delhi is apprehensive that the new administration might adopt a tougher immigration laws, reducing the prospects for employment among aspiring Indian professionals. There is also hope that the new administration will plump for a better trade relationship with India than presently exists.
This does not mean Indiansat- large are not taking sides. Between the two candidates, Clinton seems more popular with the Indian-American community. She seems to enjoy the advantage of a better understanding of Indian strategic and political culture, and better foreign policy experience, having navigated through some tricky geopolitical terrain during her tenure as US Secretary of State. Many Indians dont feel too comfortable with Trumps antecedents and antics, even though the Republican candidate has in recent days reached out to the Indian-American community. Even as the American commentariat is on razors edge waiting for tomorrows results, Indian analysts have been relatively tranquil. They know that irrespective of which candidate wins the election, the trajectory of the US-India partnership will remain unchanged.
Abhijit Singh is a Senior Fellow and Head Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation
Email: abhijitsingh@orfonline.orgcom
In another 24 hours, the US Presidential race will be over. This has been an acrimonious election, with a deep and often caustic hostility between the two candidates. In the welter of claims and counter-claims, public opinion has been bitterly divided both within and outside the US over who will make the better president. One place, however, where the event has been treated with relative nonchalance is India. New Delhi is aware that there is bipartisan consensus among Democrats and Republicans on the need for a deeper and more meaningful partnership with India. Regardless of who emerges victorious, Indian analysts feel confident that the new US President will look at India as a close strategic partner. In material terms, this translates into a continuing sale of US military hardware and defence equipment, close coordination in multilateral fora on matters of global governance, co-production and co-development of military technologies, and more maritime collaboration in the Asian littorals (particularly the Western and Eastern Indian Ocean, where there is a significant convergence of security interests). India will also look to US support for entry into Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and other multilateral export control regimes. Washingtons steadfast support in New Delhis quest for NSG membership, as also a civil nuclear deal with Japan, makes many Indian observers hopeful that the new leader will be equally committed to advancing Indian interests. In recent years, the US has emerged as Indias largest military supplier, with defense trade figures having surpassed US$ 14 billion in 2015. But New Delhi needs close cooperation from the US to ensure the success of the Modi governments Make in India initiative. The focus of Indian interest would be on the new Presidents policies vis-a-vis China. The last thing Indian policymakers want is a revival of the G-2. That flawed notion of a special greatpower partnership between China and the US proposed by the first Obama administration and rejected quickly after served to alienate many in New Delhi, also raising doubts about US commitment to a stable and peaceful Asia. Now, with growing Chinese assertiveness along the Sino-Indian border in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh, there is an even greater imperative for the new US Administration to eschew any suggestions for any special arrangement with Beijing which involves turning a blind eye to Chinese aggression in its neighborhood. Indian analysts will be keen to see how the new president moves to counteract the China-Pakistan axis in South Asia. From submarines and corvettes to fighter aircraft and missile technology, Beijing has become Islamabads principal defence supplier, skewing, to a degree, the strategic equilibrium on the subcontinent. Despite Washingtons dependence on Islamabad for political negotiations in Afghanistan, New Delhi will be hoping that the White Houses new occupant will adopt policies that will address Indias strategic concerns, restoring South Asias geopolitical balance in Indias favour. Afghanistan might serve as the first indicator of a continuing US commitment to Indian interests. If Washington makes common cause with China and Pakistan, resulting in a future reduction in US military presence, Indias interests might be adversely impacted. A leader that appreciates Indian stakes in broader South-Asia is likely to best advance the bilateral relationship. In the main, however, New Delhi needs the incoming US administration to address the threat of Pakistan based terror. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on an Indian army camp in Uri, India has placed terrorism at the top of its political agenda. While Washington has been quick to rap Pakistan for its use of militant-proxies, it has hesitated in going beyond rhetorical admonitions. New Delhis expectation is that the new US President will push Islamabad into abandoning its export of terror and work towards sustaining a high level of security and intelligence coordination that could preempt potential terror attempts on Indian soil. The Indian foreign policy establishment is also hopeful that the new leader will move to improve the United States relationship with Russia. For all of the benefits of close bilateral ties with Washington, New Delhi knows that the quality of its engagements with Russia and the US has suffered on account of their mutual mistrust. Indian analysts ascribe a recent antiterror exercise between Russian and Pakistani Special Forces to Moscows perception of strategic intimacy between India and the US. Similarly, Washington isnt too pleased with Indias continuing defence engagement with Russia particularly New Delhis dependence on Moscow for strategic military platforms. Indian observers hope that the new US President will appreciate New Delhis dependence on Russian platforms and systems has been the result of Washingtons reluctance to provide highgrade strategic platforms and weapons systems to India. On the economic side, the problems with Washington on economic and immigration are likely to continue. Indian citizens are the top recipients of temporary high-skilled worker visas, accounting for more than two-thirds of all H-1B petitions, but on a back of tepid economic growth in the United States, New Delhi is apprehensive that the new administration might adopt a tougher immigration laws, reducing the prospects for employment among aspiring Indian professionals. There is also hope that the new administration will plump for a better trade relationship with India than presently exists. This does not mean Indiansat- large are not taking sides. Between the two candidates, Clinton seems more popular with the Indian-American community. She seems to enjoy the advantage of a better understanding of Indian strategic and political culture, and better foreign policy experience, having navigated through some tricky geopolitical terrain during her tenure as US Secretary of State. Many Indians dont feel too comfortable with Trumps antecedents and antics, even though the Republican candidate has in recent days reached out to the Indian-American community. Even as the American commentariat is on razors edge waiting for tomorrows results, Indian analysts have been relatively tranquil. They know that irrespective of which candidate wins the election, the trajectory of the US-India partnership will remain unchanged. Abhijit Singh is a Senior Fellow and Head Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation Email: abhijitsingh@orfonline.orgcom
By Express News Service
VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh would have one of the two proposed Coast Employment Zones (CEZ) in the country to be developed on the lines of Chinese Coastal Economic Zones - Shenzhen Shantou and Xiamen and the proposal would be tabled during the budget session of the Parliament in next February, NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya said here on Tuesday.
Panagariya, after holding a discussion with chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu in this regard, told the media that the possibility of setting up the CEZ either in the north coast near Vizag or Gangavaram ports or in south near Krishnapatnam port in Nellore district was being considered.
We have plans to set up one CEZ in the west coast and another in the east coast. We visited Gujarat a week ago and have discussed various possibilities with the Andhra Pradesh government. Though the projects were first conceived as the Coastal Economic Zones, they are now being considered as Coastal Employment Zones as the objective here is to provide more employment opportunities, he told the media, after meeting the chief minister.
Unlike Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which are confined to 200 to 2000 acres and are mostly export centric, the CEZs will be set up in much larger areas anywhere between 400 to 500 sq km. It will have different clusters of industries, creating more job opportunities, particularly at the lower-end for semi-skilled and unskilled workforce, he explained.
Since exports are essential for growth of manufacturing sector, ports will play a key role. Hence they are being developed and in time, with infrastructure in place in the hinterland, the growth will expand inwards, Panagariya said, adding that they are looking for the places having deep water ports of more than 19-meter draft, which can handle large to very large ships.
The CEZs would have industries like footwear , textile, food processing, electronics, hardware among others, with a focus on creating a better ecosystem for growth of manufacturing sectors.
Referring to the trend of the multi-national firms looking for alternative locations for the want of workforce, he cited the example of China, saying that in that country, the labour cost is three to four times more than that of India. Now, many firms, coming out of China, are looking at nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia and there is need for having those companies come to India as it offers a large workforce, he observed.
As it needs economic incentives to attract companies to the proposed CEZs, the Centre will discuss issued pertaining to the financial assistance during the budget session in February, he said.
Citing that employment based incentives to companies will play a major role, Panagariya said: For example, if a company provides 10,000 jobs in three years, they could be given five year corporate tax holiday and if it provides 20,000, the tax exemption could be relaxed up to 10 years. However, a final decision could only be taken after discussions with the Central revenue department and others, he said.
With regard to labour reforms, Panagariya said he is yet to study the reforms proposed or made in AP. The proposed development model of CEZs is a win-win approach for both labour and industries, he clarified.
Asked about development of CEZ in tandem with the Sagarmala Project, he said they are initially looking at developing only two CEZs as model and future expansion can be done. On the occasion, Naidu said that the state had several advantages apart from having the longest coastline on the east coast of the Country. State has been adjudged as the top state in ease of doing business and also stood first in energy efficiency,he said.
VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh would have one of the two proposed Coast Employment Zones (CEZ) in the country to be developed on the lines of Chinese Coastal Economic Zones - Shenzhen Shantou and Xiamen and the proposal would be tabled during the budget session of the Parliament in next February, NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya said here on Tuesday. Panagariya, after holding a discussion with chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu in this regard, told the media that the possibility of setting up the CEZ either in the north coast near Vizag or Gangavaram ports or in south near Krishnapatnam port in Nellore district was being considered. We have plans to set up one CEZ in the west coast and another in the east coast. We visited Gujarat a week ago and have discussed various possibilities with the Andhra Pradesh government. Though the projects were first conceived as the Coastal Economic Zones, they are now being considered as Coastal Employment Zones as the objective here is to provide more employment opportunities, he told the media, after meeting the chief minister. Unlike Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which are confined to 200 to 2000 acres and are mostly export centric, the CEZs will be set up in much larger areas anywhere between 400 to 500 sq km. It will have different clusters of industries, creating more job opportunities, particularly at the lower-end for semi-skilled and unskilled workforce, he explained. Since exports are essential for growth of manufacturing sector, ports will play a key role. Hence they are being developed and in time, with infrastructure in place in the hinterland, the growth will expand inwards, Panagariya said, adding that they are looking for the places having deep water ports of more than 19-meter draft, which can handle large to very large ships. The CEZs would have industries like footwear , textile, food processing, electronics, hardware among others, with a focus on creating a better ecosystem for growth of manufacturing sectors. Referring to the trend of the multi-national firms looking for alternative locations for the want of workforce, he cited the example of China, saying that in that country, the labour cost is three to four times more than that of India. Now, many firms, coming out of China, are looking at nations like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia and there is need for having those companies come to India as it offers a large workforce, he observed. As it needs economic incentives to attract companies to the proposed CEZs, the Centre will discuss issued pertaining to the financial assistance during the budget session in February, he said. Citing that employment based incentives to companies will play a major role, Panagariya said: For example, if a company provides 10,000 jobs in three years, they could be given five year corporate tax holiday and if it provides 20,000, the tax exemption could be relaxed up to 10 years. However, a final decision could only be taken after discussions with the Central revenue department and others, he said. With regard to labour reforms, Panagariya said he is yet to study the reforms proposed or made in AP. The proposed development model of CEZs is a win-win approach for both labour and industries, he clarified. Asked about development of CEZ in tandem with the Sagarmala Project, he said they are initially looking at developing only two CEZs as model and future expansion can be done. On the occasion, Naidu said that the state had several advantages apart from having the longest coastline on the east coast of the Country. State has been adjudged as the top state in ease of doing business and also stood first in energy efficiency,he said.
By Express News Service
BENGALURU: With just two days to go for Tipu Jayanti, those for and against it are at loggerheads.
Opposing the celebrations, the BJP will stage a three-day protest starting Tuesday.
BJP State chief B S Yedurappa will lead the demonstration in Bengaluru at the Gandhi Statue, near Ananda Rao Circle in Gandhinagar.
Writer and activist Gauri Lankesh said, The BJP is opposing the Tipu Day celebrations only because he was a Muslim. All other allegations of him being anti-Hindu, anti-Kannada are excuses. They have been alleging that Tipu was a murderer and hence Tipu Jayanti should not be celebrated.
But in that case any king of that era would kill anyone, who would come in their way, and Tipu was no different. King Ashoka too killed so many people in the Kalinga war, but we still carry his lion emblem on our coins. Further, he protected many temples, although many falsely propagated that he destroyed them.
However, Vadiraj, convener, Forum For Social Harmony, said, Our opposition has been there since the time of announcement of the establishment of Minority University. Our reasons are well known.
We are opposing him not because he was a Muslim but because he was anti-Hindu, anti-Kannada and anti-Kodava. He is known for forced conversions and killing many innocent people. Why should we celebrate for such a personality?
Those Who Support
Tipu was not anti-Hindu. Even after his death, his soldiers revolted 30 times against the British and most of them were Hindus. Can 300 years ago Tipu have had only Muslim soldiers?
India is a secular country, and any hero can be celebrated for his/her achievements.
He was not anti-Kannada as he wrote all his letters in the Kannada language instead of Persian. Besides, when the Marathas ruled North Karnataka, they tired to impose their language and traditions and so did the Gangas and Tipu.
Tipu did not destroy temples but in fact protected them. He had given donations to many temples. He gave money to Sringeri Math to pray for his kingdom.
He was one of the best 18th century monarchs in India. He was loved by the people of Mysuru and fought the British. If Rani Channamma is celebrated for fighting the British, then why not Tipu?
There is no proof that Tipu forced people to convert. The stories of he being a tyrant and forced conversions were floated by the British as they hated him since he troubled them a lot.
Those Who Oppose
Tipu was anti-Hindu. He was communal by nature, Tipu had hanged about 700 men, women and children of the Mandyam Iyengar community in Melukote for no fault of theirs.
He destroyed many temples. During 1760 - 1780, Tipu destroyed more than 600 temples across Kodagu. The Mysuru Gazetteer mentions destruction of nearly 8,000 temples across South India during his reign.
He killed many innocent people. He butchered thousands of Coorgis, mainly women and children. He was an oppressive ruler.
Other than Tipu, there are better personalities who could be celebrated. Why celebrate somebody who is known for his tyrannic rule?
Tipu forced conversions. There are several stories of forced conversions of Hindus.
BENGALURU: With just two days to go for Tipu Jayanti, those for and against it are at loggerheads. Opposing the celebrations, the BJP will stage a three-day protest starting Tuesday. BJP State chief B S Yedurappa will lead the demonstration in Bengaluru at the Gandhi Statue, near Ananda Rao Circle in Gandhinagar. Writer and activist Gauri Lankesh said, The BJP is opposing the Tipu Day celebrations only because he was a Muslim. All other allegations of him being anti-Hindu, anti-Kannada are excuses. They have been alleging that Tipu was a murderer and hence Tipu Jayanti should not be celebrated. But in that case any king of that era would kill anyone, who would come in their way, and Tipu was no different. King Ashoka too killed so many people in the Kalinga war, but we still carry his lion emblem on our coins. Further, he protected many temples, although many falsely propagated that he destroyed them. However, Vadiraj, convener, Forum For Social Harmony, said, Our opposition has been there since the time of announcement of the establishment of Minority University. Our reasons are well known. We are opposing him not because he was a Muslim but because he was anti-Hindu, anti-Kannada and anti-Kodava. He is known for forced conversions and killing many innocent people. Why should we celebrate for such a personality? Those Who Support Tipu was not anti-Hindu. Even after his death, his soldiers revolted 30 times against the British and most of them were Hindus. Can 300 years ago Tipu have had only Muslim soldiers? India is a secular country, and any hero can be celebrated for his/her achievements. He was not anti-Kannada as he wrote all his letters in the Kannada language instead of Persian. Besides, when the Marathas ruled North Karnataka, they tired to impose their language and traditions and so did the Gangas and Tipu. Tipu did not destroy temples but in fact protected them. He had given donations to many temples. He gave money to Sringeri Math to pray for his kingdom. He was one of the best 18th century monarchs in India. He was loved by the people of Mysuru and fought the British. If Rani Channamma is celebrated for fighting the British, then why not Tipu? There is no proof that Tipu forced people to convert. The stories of he being a tyrant and forced conversions were floated by the British as they hated him since he troubled them a lot. Those Who Oppose Tipu was anti-Hindu. He was communal by nature, Tipu had hanged about 700 men, women and children of the Mandyam Iyengar community in Melukote for no fault of theirs. He destroyed many temples. During 1760 - 1780, Tipu destroyed more than 600 temples across Kodagu. The Mysuru Gazetteer mentions destruction of nearly 8,000 temples across South India during his reign. He killed many innocent people. He butchered thousands of Coorgis, mainly women and children. He was an oppressive ruler. Other than Tipu, there are better personalities who could be celebrated. Why celebrate somebody who is known for his tyrannic rule? Tipu forced conversions. There are several stories of forced conversions of Hindus.
Toby Antony By
Express News Service
KOCHI: Kerala has been among the Indian states most prone to counterfeit currency, with recent years witnessing a sharp increase in such cases. In the first six months of the year alone, The State Police seized fake currency worth Rs 8 lakh from different parts of the State.
The inflow of counterfeit currency increased twofold in recent years. Counterfeit notes worth Rs 34.55 lakh were seized in 2015, much higher than Rs 7.51 lakh recovered in 2014. In the first six months of 2016, 24 Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) cases were reported in the State, involving Rs 8 lakh. Currently, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is investigating eight fake currency cases reported in Kerala.
The agency has unearthed the links of the ISI and D-Company in some of the cases. In some of the cases registered in Kerala, the involvement of Dawoods brother Anees Ibrahim and his close aide Aftab Batki was established. In another case, Tahir Merchant alias Tahir Taklya, an accused in the 1993 Bombay blast case, was arrested. A Special Branch former official of SP rank, on condition of anonymity, told Express that counterfeit currency reached Kerala mainly through airports from Dubai and the porous Bangladesh border.
It was found that most of the high-quality fake currency notes seized in different parts of the State were printed in Pakistan. The rackets, including those led by underworld gangsters of Indian origin, pump fake currency into India with assistance of the ISI. The paper and ink used for printing the fake notes are exactly the same as those used in original currencies. When the authorities intensified checking at airports, FICN rackets started pushing the contraband from Pakistan and Dubai through the Bangladesh border. The notes are circulated mainly with assistance of migrant workers, said the officer.
KOCHI: Kerala has been among the Indian states most prone to counterfeit currency, with recent years witnessing a sharp increase in such cases. In the first six months of the year alone, The State Police seized fake currency worth Rs 8 lakh from different parts of the State. The inflow of counterfeit currency increased twofold in recent years. Counterfeit notes worth Rs 34.55 lakh were seized in 2015, much higher than Rs 7.51 lakh recovered in 2014. In the first six months of 2016, 24 Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) cases were reported in the State, involving Rs 8 lakh. Currently, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is investigating eight fake currency cases reported in Kerala. The agency has unearthed the links of the ISI and D-Company in some of the cases. In some of the cases registered in Kerala, the involvement of Dawoods brother Anees Ibrahim and his close aide Aftab Batki was established. In another case, Tahir Merchant alias Tahir Taklya, an accused in the 1993 Bombay blast case, was arrested. A Special Branch former official of SP rank, on condition of anonymity, told Express that counterfeit currency reached Kerala mainly through airports from Dubai and the porous Bangladesh border. It was found that most of the high-quality fake currency notes seized in different parts of the State were printed in Pakistan. The rackets, including those led by underworld gangsters of Indian origin, pump fake currency into India with assistance of the ISI. The paper and ink used for printing the fake notes are exactly the same as those used in original currencies. When the authorities intensified checking at airports, FICN rackets started pushing the contraband from Pakistan and Dubai through the Bangladesh border. The notes are circulated mainly with assistance of migrant workers, said the officer.
By Express News Service
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Centre has warned the Kerala Government of a possible terrorist attack on Sabarimala shrine during the pilgrim season which begins from November 15. In a letter to Chief Secretary S M Vijayanand, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs warned that, according to intelligence inputs, the terrorists were contemplating the use of explosives that were likely to be undetected by metal detectors.
The Centre asked the State Government to carry out a comprehensive security audit of the hill shrine in view of the intelligence inputs. The Centre reminded the state that a similar security audit was carried out in 2013 in the wake of a terror alert.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Centre has warned the Kerala Government of a possible terrorist attack on Sabarimala shrine during the pilgrim season which begins from November 15. In a letter to Chief Secretary S M Vijayanand, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs warned that, according to intelligence inputs, the terrorists were contemplating the use of explosives that were likely to be undetected by metal detectors. The Centre asked the State Government to carry out a comprehensive security audit of the hill shrine in view of the intelligence inputs. The Centre reminded the state that a similar security audit was carried out in 2013 in the wake of a terror alert.
Sruthi R Mallya By
Express News Service
COIMBATORE: At the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Coimbatore Medical College Hospital you will find 23-day-old twins, a baby girl and a boy, sleeping away peacefully, not knowing the fate that has befallen them.
The babies were born on 16th October to Kanniammal and Anandkumar from Pudhu Colony in Annur, Tirupur. Head of obstetrics and gynaecology, R Manonmani, recollects how Kanniammal had come to the hospital with labour pain and gave birth to the twins with Very Low Birth Weight, due to which they were kept at the NICU.
Kanniammal was also undergoing treatment for severe anaemia and was provided with blood. She was responding to the treatment, but 10 days later, suddenly she developed a condition of pulmonary embolism (one or more arteries in the lungs getting blocked by a blood clot). And by the night, she passed away due to cardiac arrest, says Manonmani, stressing that Kanniammal had not gone to any check-ups, which ould have resulted in early diagnosis and averted the complications.
The nurses in the NICU ward recollects, how the family members used to visit the newborns daily until the mothers death. And after the death they took the body and left the babies behind.
The babies have three older siblings, who are being raised by their grandmother. And their father hardly takes care of them. Hence, citing that she was unable to raise them, the grandmother left the babies behind. Left to the mercy of the hospital authorities, the babies are now being cared for so that their weight would normalise.
They initially had breathing trouble, and over the time as their weight improved, the health improved. They are being fed with the help of formula feeds and milk from the milk bank.
They were born with the girl weighing 1.27 kg and the boy weighing 1.32 kg. Now they weigh 1.29 kg and 1.39 kg respectively, says M Geetanjali, Professor of Pediatrics, one of the doctors who is looking after the babies. Since they have been abandoned, they would be handed over to the Child welfare authorities, who would leave them at the government orphanage called Saranalayam in Kinathukadavu.
They could be kept at the NICU only for 60 days.
COIMBATORE: At the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Coimbatore Medical College Hospital you will find 23-day-old twins, a baby girl and a boy, sleeping away peacefully, not knowing the fate that has befallen them. The babies were born on 16th October to Kanniammal and Anandkumar from Pudhu Colony in Annur, Tirupur. Head of obstetrics and gynaecology, R Manonmani, recollects how Kanniammal had come to the hospital with labour pain and gave birth to the twins with Very Low Birth Weight, due to which they were kept at the NICU. Kanniammal was also undergoing treatment for severe anaemia and was provided with blood. She was responding to the treatment, but 10 days later, suddenly she developed a condition of pulmonary embolism (one or more arteries in the lungs getting blocked by a blood clot). And by the night, she passed away due to cardiac arrest, says Manonmani, stressing that Kanniammal had not gone to any check-ups, which ould have resulted in early diagnosis and averted the complications. The nurses in the NICU ward recollects, how the family members used to visit the newborns daily until the mothers death. And after the death they took the body and left the babies behind. The babies have three older siblings, who are being raised by their grandmother. And their father hardly takes care of them. Hence, citing that she was unable to raise them, the grandmother left the babies behind. Left to the mercy of the hospital authorities, the babies are now being cared for so that their weight would normalise. They initially had breathing trouble, and over the time as their weight improved, the health improved. They are being fed with the help of formula feeds and milk from the milk bank. They were born with the girl weighing 1.27 kg and the boy weighing 1.32 kg. Now they weigh 1.29 kg and 1.39 kg respectively, says M Geetanjali, Professor of Pediatrics, one of the doctors who is looking after the babies. Since they have been abandoned, they would be handed over to the Child welfare authorities, who would leave them at the government orphanage called Saranalayam in Kinathukadavu. They could be kept at the NICU only for 60 days.
By Express News Service
TIRUVANNAMALAI: Tandarai village is not yet free from the grip of the mysterious disease as another man, who came all the way from Bengaluru developed stomach pain and started vomiting on Sunday.
He has been admitted to Rajiv Gandhi Government General hospital in Chennai and is said to be out of danger.
Vincent, a native of Bangaluru, came to Tandari village to attend the funeral of his relative Christha (65), who died in a private hospital on October 31.
On Sunday evening, he suddenly started vomiting and complained about stomach ache. Immediately he was rushed to Tiruvannamalai Medical College hospital.
The doctors at the hospital referred him to Rajiv Gandhi Government General hospital in Chennai for further treatment after his pulse rate came down drastically.
As many as eight people Christopher (13), Vinodh Kumar (23), Nelson (6), Krithika Merlin (8), Munusamy (70), Amudha (27), Joseph (80) and Christha (65) had died in the village one after the other since October 5.
All of them had complained about stomache ache and had vomited. Except Munusamy and Amudha, all the six were relatives and live in the same area.
V Govindhan, Deputy Director of Health Services, Tiruvannamalai told Express, the test results of food and water samples were out and they did not find anything unusual.
We are awaiting for the forensic reports and autopsy report of Christha. Then only, the exact cause of deaths could be ascertained, he added. Besides, two children also were admitted in the hospital after they complained of stomach pain. They also reportedly started vomiting. Very few students are turning up at the Tandarai village panchayat school after the deaths.
TIRUVANNAMALAI: Tandarai village is not yet free from the grip of the mysterious disease as another man, who came all the way from Bengaluru developed stomach pain and started vomiting on Sunday. He has been admitted to Rajiv Gandhi Government General hospital in Chennai and is said to be out of danger. Vincent, a native of Bangaluru, came to Tandari village to attend the funeral of his relative Christha (65), who died in a private hospital on October 31. On Sunday evening, he suddenly started vomiting and complained about stomach ache. Immediately he was rushed to Tiruvannamalai Medical College hospital. The doctors at the hospital referred him to Rajiv Gandhi Government General hospital in Chennai for further treatment after his pulse rate came down drastically. As many as eight people Christopher (13), Vinodh Kumar (23), Nelson (6), Krithika Merlin (8), Munusamy (70), Amudha (27), Joseph (80) and Christha (65) had died in the village one after the other since October 5. All of them had complained about stomache ache and had vomited. Except Munusamy and Amudha, all the six were relatives and live in the same area. V Govindhan, Deputy Director of Health Services, Tiruvannamalai told Express, the test results of food and water samples were out and they did not find anything unusual. We are awaiting for the forensic reports and autopsy report of Christha. Then only, the exact cause of deaths could be ascertained, he added. Besides, two children also were admitted in the hospital after they complained of stomach pain. They also reportedly started vomiting. Very few students are turning up at the Tandarai village panchayat school after the deaths.
Prabhakar T By
Express News Service
COIMBATORE: Three groups of Maoists, each comprising seven cadre, are believed to have taken arms training at Wayanad, a forest tri-junction bordering Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and close to the Nilgiris, in the month of October.
This forced the Tamil Nadu police to review the security arrangement in the Western Ghats, and increase combing operations.
In fact, the main agenda of the Western Region Review Meet chaired by Tamil Nadu Director General of Police, TK Rajendran, discussed the arms training issue and measures to be taken to prevent Maoist movement in the region.
In the meeting, we discussed about the Maoist movement in the Western region and the police personnel are on a high alert. As of now, there is no movement of suspected Maoists in Tamil Nadu. They were found only in Kerala and we have taken precautionary actions with the help of the Special Task Force and local police personnel, DGP TK Rajendran, told Express.
The hub of Maoist activities revolves around a tri-junction linking the three States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka with Wayanad (Kerala), Gudalur (Tamil Nadu) and Gundur (Karnataka).
In the month of October, three groups of Maoists, each containing seven members, were sighted at the reserve forests in Wayanad, which is a tri-junction connecting Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. The Maoists were also believed to have taken arm training, where leaders from Northern India have participated," said an intelligence wing officer, requesting anonymity.
In this regard, Kerala intelligence wing had also shared the information with the Tamil Nadu intelligence wing, the officer added. In fact, to cross-verify the fact, Tamil Nadu Intelligence Wing personnel also visited the villages in the borders and had confirmed that Maoists had taken arms training in the reserve forests near Wayanad in Kerala, which is too close to Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu police were shocked to know that the Maoists had taken training in the forest areas that are too close to Tamil Nadu. At the Western Region Review meeting held at Coimbatore on Saturday, DGP Rajendran advised The Nilgiris police to strengthen security and step up combing operations.
When asked about the precautionary actions taken in the Nilgiris, Superintendent of Police, Murali Rambha, said, We have set up 16 check posts on the Tamil Nadu- Kerala border, in which four personnel will be deployed round-the-clock. Two special teams have been deployed for combing the forest areas with the help of forest department personnel. We have not found movement of any suspected persons in the Nilgiris forest areas.
We have also adopted some of the tribal villages in the border, and I am personally visiting the villages daily to check for Maoist movement, he added.
COIMBATORE: Three groups of Maoists, each comprising seven cadre, are believed to have taken arms training at Wayanad, a forest tri-junction bordering Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and close to the Nilgiris, in the month of October. This forced the Tamil Nadu police to review the security arrangement in the Western Ghats, and increase combing operations. In fact, the main agenda of the Western Region Review Meet chaired by Tamil Nadu Director General of Police, TK Rajendran, discussed the arms training issue and measures to be taken to prevent Maoist movement in the region. In the meeting, we discussed about the Maoist movement in the Western region and the police personnel are on a high alert. As of now, there is no movement of suspected Maoists in Tamil Nadu. They were found only in Kerala and we have taken precautionary actions with the help of the Special Task Force and local police personnel, DGP TK Rajendran, told Express. The hub of Maoist activities revolves around a tri-junction linking the three States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka with Wayanad (Kerala), Gudalur (Tamil Nadu) and Gundur (Karnataka). In the month of October, three groups of Maoists, each containing seven members, were sighted at the reserve forests in Wayanad, which is a tri-junction connecting Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. The Maoists were also believed to have taken arm training, where leaders from Northern India have participated," said an intelligence wing officer, requesting anonymity. In this regard, Kerala intelligence wing had also shared the information with the Tamil Nadu intelligence wing, the officer added. In fact, to cross-verify the fact, Tamil Nadu Intelligence Wing personnel also visited the villages in the borders and had confirmed that Maoists had taken arms training in the reserve forests near Wayanad in Kerala, which is too close to Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu police were shocked to know that the Maoists had taken training in the forest areas that are too close to Tamil Nadu. At the Western Region Review meeting held at Coimbatore on Saturday, DGP Rajendran advised The Nilgiris police to strengthen security and step up combing operations. When asked about the precautionary actions taken in the Nilgiris, Superintendent of Police, Murali Rambha, said, We have set up 16 check posts on the Tamil Nadu- Kerala border, in which four personnel will be deployed round-the-clock. Two special teams have been deployed for combing the forest areas with the help of forest department personnel. We have not found movement of any suspected persons in the Nilgiris forest areas. We have also adopted some of the tribal villages in the border, and I am personally visiting the villages daily to check for Maoist movement, he added.
By Associated Press
PHNOM PENH: A Cambodian court on Tuesday found the country's exiled opposition leader guilty of defamation for alleging that a senior government official sought to inflate Prime Minister Hun Sen's online popularity by buying "likes" for his Facebook page.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Sam Rainsy, president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, guilty and ordered him to pay a fine of 10 million riel ($2,500) in addition to 15 million riel ($3,750) in compensation to Sam Soeun, a senior official assigned to oversee Hun Sen's Facebook page.
Hun Sen has a very active online presence, and his opponents likewise use the internet to mobilize supporters. The rivalry between Hun Sen and Sam Rainsy evolved into a "Facebook war," with each seeking to claim a greater number of "likes."
At the height of their battling in March, the Phnom Penh Post published its finding that most of Hun Sen's "likes" originated from abroad, raising suspicions about their legitimacy. Currently, Hun Sen's page has 6.1 million "likes," and Sam Rainsy's has 3.3 million.
Cambodia's courts are widely seen as being under the influence of Hun Sen's government and his ruling Cambodian People's Party.
The conviction is the latest in a series of cases against opposition leaders in what is generally seen as an attempt to disrupt their organizing efforts ahead of local elections next June. The next general election is not until the middle of 2018, but holding power at the local level is an advantage when national polls are held.
Sam Rainsy is the most prominent target of these prosecutions, and has been in exile since last November to avoid a jail term on a conviction that he had thought was covered by a royal pardon. There are several other cases pending against him, at least two involving online postings. The government this month banned his re-entry from abroad, making it more difficult for him to fight the charges even if he chooses to return.
Deputy party leader Kem Sokha has also been tied up in legal knots after a well-orchestrated scandal involving his alleged mistress, and was sentenced to a five-month jail term for refusing to appear in court to testify in a related case. He has been holed up at party headquarters in the Cambodian capital for several months.
On Monday, a court sentenced an opposition senator to seven years in prison over comments he posted on Facebook criticizing a 36-year-old border agreement with neighboring Vietnam. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Hong Sok Hour guilty of falsifying public documents, using fake documents and inciting chaos.
Sam Soeun filed his lawsuit about Facebook "likes" in March after Sam Rainsy accused him of being involved in a plan to boost Hun Sen's popularity by buying "likes" originating in places such as India and the Philippines, as well as ordering civil servants and soldiers in Cambodia to set up dummy Facebook accounts.
Judge Im Vannak said Tuesday that Sam Rainsy acted with ill intentions.
Sam Rainsy, in a statement posted on Facebook after the court's ruling, repeated his original allegation.
"Prime Minister Hun Sen has been manipulating Facebook figures in order to boast about his (apparently impressive but fake) popularity, which he uses as a political justification to legitimize the ongoing violent crackdown on his more and more numerous critics," he said.
PHNOM PENH: A Cambodian court on Tuesday found the country's exiled opposition leader guilty of defamation for alleging that a senior government official sought to inflate Prime Minister Hun Sen's online popularity by buying "likes" for his Facebook page. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Sam Rainsy, president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, guilty and ordered him to pay a fine of 10 million riel ($2,500) in addition to 15 million riel ($3,750) in compensation to Sam Soeun, a senior official assigned to oversee Hun Sen's Facebook page. Hun Sen has a very active online presence, and his opponents likewise use the internet to mobilize supporters. The rivalry between Hun Sen and Sam Rainsy evolved into a "Facebook war," with each seeking to claim a greater number of "likes." At the height of their battling in March, the Phnom Penh Post published its finding that most of Hun Sen's "likes" originated from abroad, raising suspicions about their legitimacy. Currently, Hun Sen's page has 6.1 million "likes," and Sam Rainsy's has 3.3 million. Cambodia's courts are widely seen as being under the influence of Hun Sen's government and his ruling Cambodian People's Party. The conviction is the latest in a series of cases against opposition leaders in what is generally seen as an attempt to disrupt their organizing efforts ahead of local elections next June. The next general election is not until the middle of 2018, but holding power at the local level is an advantage when national polls are held. Sam Rainsy is the most prominent target of these prosecutions, and has been in exile since last November to avoid a jail term on a conviction that he had thought was covered by a royal pardon. There are several other cases pending against him, at least two involving online postings. The government this month banned his re-entry from abroad, making it more difficult for him to fight the charges even if he chooses to return. Deputy party leader Kem Sokha has also been tied up in legal knots after a well-orchestrated scandal involving his alleged mistress, and was sentenced to a five-month jail term for refusing to appear in court to testify in a related case. He has been holed up at party headquarters in the Cambodian capital for several months. On Monday, a court sentenced an opposition senator to seven years in prison over comments he posted on Facebook criticizing a 36-year-old border agreement with neighboring Vietnam. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Hong Sok Hour guilty of falsifying public documents, using fake documents and inciting chaos. Sam Soeun filed his lawsuit about Facebook "likes" in March after Sam Rainsy accused him of being involved in a plan to boost Hun Sen's popularity by buying "likes" originating in places such as India and the Philippines, as well as ordering civil servants and soldiers in Cambodia to set up dummy Facebook accounts. Judge Im Vannak said Tuesday that Sam Rainsy acted with ill intentions. Sam Rainsy, in a statement posted on Facebook after the court's ruling, repeated his original allegation. "Prime Minister Hun Sen has been manipulating Facebook figures in order to boast about his (apparently impressive but fake) popularity, which he uses as a political justification to legitimize the ongoing violent crackdown on his more and more numerous critics," he said.
By AFP
PARIS: Despite progress, the European Union is still behind the curve in its programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in industry and transport, a study said Tuesday.
In an assessment coinciding with the UN climate talks in Morocco, the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) gave the EU high marks in some areas.
Carbon emissions from electricity production fell by 20.9 percent between 2000 and 2014, and household energy consumption fell by 21.2 percent, relative to living area, from 2000 to 2013.
"Despite this progress, the EU is currently 'off-track' to achieve its objectives by 2030 and 2050," IDDRI warned.
The EU as a bloc has pledged to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. This is a stepping stone to a planned reduction of 80-95 percent by 2050, again compared with the 1990 benchmark.
The IDDRI report said headway in curbing EU emissions could be attributed to "cyclical effects" -- the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the slow recovery from it -- rather than a long-term carbon strategy.
Europe has made significant progress, but new sectoral policies are needed to ensure it can reach its long-term targets, especially in transport and industry," IDDRI Director Teresa Ribera said.
In addition to setting ambitious emissions target for road transport for 2025, the EU should aim at ensuring that fleet procurement -- one of the biggest sectors of the car market -- be 100-percent electric by that date.
The report called for a tougher goals in energy savings for 2030 and for measures to ensure that the EU's carbon market -- the emissions trading system -- does not suffer a repeat of the price collapse of recent years.
It pointed the finger in particular at coal, which plays a large part in energy production in Europe.
"By 2030, unabated (use of) coal needs to drop by more than 50 percent to make way for low-carbon electricity sources," it said.
The study was coordinated with seven other European research institutes, which trawled over national data, analysing the major sectors for carbon emissions.
PARIS: Despite progress, the European Union is still behind the curve in its programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in industry and transport, a study said Tuesday. In an assessment coinciding with the UN climate talks in Morocco, the Paris-based Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) gave the EU high marks in some areas. Carbon emissions from electricity production fell by 20.9 percent between 2000 and 2014, and household energy consumption fell by 21.2 percent, relative to living area, from 2000 to 2013. "Despite this progress, the EU is currently 'off-track' to achieve its objectives by 2030 and 2050," IDDRI warned. The EU as a bloc has pledged to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. This is a stepping stone to a planned reduction of 80-95 percent by 2050, again compared with the 1990 benchmark. The IDDRI report said headway in curbing EU emissions could be attributed to "cyclical effects" -- the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the slow recovery from it -- rather than a long-term carbon strategy. Europe has made significant progress, but new sectoral policies are needed to ensure it can reach its long-term targets, especially in transport and industry," IDDRI Director Teresa Ribera said. In addition to setting ambitious emissions target for road transport for 2025, the EU should aim at ensuring that fleet procurement -- one of the biggest sectors of the car market -- be 100-percent electric by that date. The report called for a tougher goals in energy savings for 2030 and for measures to ensure that the EU's carbon market -- the emissions trading system -- does not suffer a repeat of the price collapse of recent years. It pointed the finger in particular at coal, which plays a large part in energy production in Europe. "By 2030, unabated (use of) coal needs to drop by more than 50 percent to make way for low-carbon electricity sources," it said. The study was coordinated with seven other European research institutes, which trawled over national data, analysing the major sectors for carbon emissions.
By AFP
NIAMEY: Five soldiers were killed and four are missing following an attack in southwest Niger on Tuesday, a security source told AFP.
"This terrorist attack against the area of Banibangou killed five soldiers, injured three and four others were reported missing," said the source, who requested anonymity.
Niger faces constant attacks in the south by Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram.
A US aid worker was abducted by armed men from a town in the centre of the impoverished country in October.
NIAMEY: Five soldiers were killed and four are missing following an attack in southwest Niger on Tuesday, a security source told AFP. "This terrorist attack against the area of Banibangou killed five soldiers, injured three and four others were reported missing," said the source, who requested anonymity. Niger faces constant attacks in the south by Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram. A US aid worker was abducted by armed men from a town in the centre of the impoverished country in October.
By AFP
BUDAPEST: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will seek Tuesday to bar the resettlement of refugees via a constitutional amendment, but the bid could be thwarted by an unlikely opponent -- the radical right Jobbik party.
For the populist strongman's continuing revolt against Brussels to succeed his ruling right-wing Fidesz party needs to pick up two extra votes in parliament to reach a two-thirds majority for the measure to pass.
The anti-immigration Jobbik party is a natural ally on the issue, but it is currently vying with the Socialists as the second most popular party in the country, and laid a surprise ambush for Orban earlier this month.
Spotting a rare opportunity for leverage, Jobbik's leader Gabor Vona announced after a recent one-on-one meeting with Orban they would vote for the bill only if the government scrapped a controversial cash-for-residency bond scheme for wealthy foreigners, particularly from Russia, China and the Middle East.
Jobbik have long called the residency bonds, generally sold via shady offshore companies, a "dirty business" and a national security risk that could be exploited even by Islamic State jihadists.
"Neither poor nor rich migrants should be allowed to settle in Hungary," Vona said.
Unused to not getting his own way since winning a supermajority in 2010 and reelection in 2014, Orban was caught offguard by the ultimatum and initially said he would "consider" Vona's gambit.
But the leader later told parliament that the government "would not give in to blackmail" and urged Jobbik not to connect the bond scheme with the change to the constitution which he called "an affair of national importance".
Observers say Tuesday's knife-edge vote could set the scene for a growing power struggle between Fidesz and Jobbik ahead of the next scheduled general election in 2018.
"If Jobbik do not back the amendment, it would unquestionably wound Viktor Orban. It would be the first time since 2010 that the parliament votes against the PM, or that Orban has failed to get through something important to him," leading news website Index.hu wrote on Monday.
- 'Sweeping victory' -
The parliamentary ballot follows an expensive and divisive referendum on October 2, in which 3.3 million voters backed Orban's rejection of the European Union's troubled refugee quota plan.
The ballot, however, was deemed invalid due to low turnout in the nation of nearly 10 million people.
Undeterred, Orban still hailed the outcome as "a sweeping victory" over "Brussels bureaucrats" and vowed to change the constitution to "reflect the will of the people".
Submitting a draft amendment personally to parliament the week after the referendum, Orban proposed a ban on migrant settlement without the approval of the national assembly and authorities.
"Foreign populations cannot be settled in Hungary," the amendment reads. Individual foreigners (not including EU nationals) can only live in Hungary with the approval of Hungarians, it continues.
- Domestic pandering -
But the government's argument that the amendment is key to Hungary's future does not convince political analysts.
"The amendment wouldn't really have any legal impact, nor would it clash with EU law, foreigners already only enter Hungary on an individual basis," said Bulcsu Hunyadi of the Political Capital analyst firm.
"It's rather aimed at domestic politics, to make it look like the government is challenging Brussels," said Kornelia Magyar, director of the Budapest-based Progressive Institute.
With Jobbik holding firm that it will not support the bill, and other opposition parties either boycotting the vote or abstaining, the vote may fail unless some rebel lawmakers cross the floor.
But even if it fails, it can still be a win for Fidesz, whose poll ratings have soared over its tough handling of the migration crisis, said Magyar.
"Orban can then continue his anti-migration rhetoric at home until the next election in 2018, and scapegoat Jobbik as not defending the nation," she added.
BUDAPEST: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will seek Tuesday to bar the resettlement of refugees via a constitutional amendment, but the bid could be thwarted by an unlikely opponent -- the radical right Jobbik party. For the populist strongman's continuing revolt against Brussels to succeed his ruling right-wing Fidesz party needs to pick up two extra votes in parliament to reach a two-thirds majority for the measure to pass. The anti-immigration Jobbik party is a natural ally on the issue, but it is currently vying with the Socialists as the second most popular party in the country, and laid a surprise ambush for Orban earlier this month. Spotting a rare opportunity for leverage, Jobbik's leader Gabor Vona announced after a recent one-on-one meeting with Orban they would vote for the bill only if the government scrapped a controversial cash-for-residency bond scheme for wealthy foreigners, particularly from Russia, China and the Middle East. Jobbik have long called the residency bonds, generally sold via shady offshore companies, a "dirty business" and a national security risk that could be exploited even by Islamic State jihadists. "Neither poor nor rich migrants should be allowed to settle in Hungary," Vona said. Unused to not getting his own way since winning a supermajority in 2010 and reelection in 2014, Orban was caught offguard by the ultimatum and initially said he would "consider" Vona's gambit. But the leader later told parliament that the government "would not give in to blackmail" and urged Jobbik not to connect the bond scheme with the change to the constitution which he called "an affair of national importance". Observers say Tuesday's knife-edge vote could set the scene for a growing power struggle between Fidesz and Jobbik ahead of the next scheduled general election in 2018. "If Jobbik do not back the amendment, it would unquestionably wound Viktor Orban. It would be the first time since 2010 that the parliament votes against the PM, or that Orban has failed to get through something important to him," leading news website Index.hu wrote on Monday. - 'Sweeping victory' - The parliamentary ballot follows an expensive and divisive referendum on October 2, in which 3.3 million voters backed Orban's rejection of the European Union's troubled refugee quota plan. The ballot, however, was deemed invalid due to low turnout in the nation of nearly 10 million people. Undeterred, Orban still hailed the outcome as "a sweeping victory" over "Brussels bureaucrats" and vowed to change the constitution to "reflect the will of the people". Submitting a draft amendment personally to parliament the week after the referendum, Orban proposed a ban on migrant settlement without the approval of the national assembly and authorities. "Foreign populations cannot be settled in Hungary," the amendment reads. Individual foreigners (not including EU nationals) can only live in Hungary with the approval of Hungarians, it continues. - Domestic pandering - But the government's argument that the amendment is key to Hungary's future does not convince political analysts. "The amendment wouldn't really have any legal impact, nor would it clash with EU law, foreigners already only enter Hungary on an individual basis," said Bulcsu Hunyadi of the Political Capital analyst firm. "It's rather aimed at domestic politics, to make it look like the government is challenging Brussels," said Kornelia Magyar, director of the Budapest-based Progressive Institute. With Jobbik holding firm that it will not support the bill, and other opposition parties either boycotting the vote or abstaining, the vote may fail unless some rebel lawmakers cross the floor. But even if it fails, it can still be a win for Fidesz, whose poll ratings have soared over its tough handling of the migration crisis, said Magyar. "Orban can then continue his anti-migration rhetoric at home until the next election in 2018, and scapegoat Jobbik as not defending the nation," she added.
By IANS
STOCKHOLM: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned on November 14 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London over an allegation of rape, Sweden's public prosecutor's office has confirmed.
Assange, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, welcomed the news through his lawyer, saying he was looking forward to the "chance to clear his name", the Guardian reported.
The Swedish authorities said one of the prosecutors on the case, Ingrid Isgren, as well as a Swedish police inspector, would also attend the questioning next week and report the findings to Sweden.
"A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it," the prosecutor's office said.
The whistleblower sought refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London in June 2012, fleeing allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden dating back to 2010. Assange, 45, denies the claims.
The Australian national claims he refused to travel to Sweden for questioning because he feared extradition to the US over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010," his lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name. We hope the investigation will be closed then."
WikiLeaks has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks with the damaging leak of tens of thousands of e-mails from the US Democratic party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
STOCKHOLM: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned on November 14 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London over an allegation of rape, Sweden's public prosecutor's office has confirmed. Assange, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, welcomed the news through his lawyer, saying he was looking forward to the "chance to clear his name", the Guardian reported. The Swedish authorities said one of the prosecutors on the case, Ingrid Isgren, as well as a Swedish police inspector, would also attend the questioning next week and report the findings to Sweden. "A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it," the prosecutor's office said. The whistleblower sought refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London in June 2012, fleeing allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden dating back to 2010. Assange, 45, denies the claims. The Australian national claims he refused to travel to Sweden for questioning because he feared extradition to the US over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010," his lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name. We hope the investigation will be closed then." WikiLeaks has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks with the damaging leak of tens of thousands of e-mails from the US Democratic party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
By ANI
ISLAMABAD: National Geographics famed 'Afghan Girl', Sharbat Gula, has refused to stay in Pakistan in response to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government's offer to stop her deportation from the country.
Earlier, a special anti-corruption and immigration court in Peshawar had ordered to deport her and sentenced her to 15 days of imprisonment along with a fine of Rs. 1,10,000 for alleged forging a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC).
The deportation was, however, stopped on humanitarian grounds and as a goodwill gesture towards Afghanistan.
She became famous as the 'Afghan Girl' when National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry captured her photograph at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp situated on the edge of Peshawar in 1984 and identified her as Sharbat Gula.
She gained worldwide recognition when her image was featured on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine at a time when she was around 12 years old.
Gula will leave for Afghanistan on Wednesday through the Torkham border.
ISLAMABAD: National Geographics famed 'Afghan Girl', Sharbat Gula, has refused to stay in Pakistan in response to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government's offer to stop her deportation from the country. Earlier, a special anti-corruption and immigration court in Peshawar had ordered to deport her and sentenced her to 15 days of imprisonment along with a fine of Rs. 1,10,000 for alleged forging a Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC). The deportation was, however, stopped on humanitarian grounds and as a goodwill gesture towards Afghanistan. She became famous as the 'Afghan Girl' when National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry captured her photograph at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp situated on the edge of Peshawar in 1984 and identified her as Sharbat Gula. She gained worldwide recognition when her image was featured on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine at a time when she was around 12 years old. Gula will leave for Afghanistan on Wednesday through the Torkham border.
By AFP
MANAGUA, NICARGUA: Nicaragua's leftist President Daniel Ortega has won a third straight term, with his colorful wife Rosario Murillo as vice president, results showed Monday, but the opposition and the United States condemned the election.
With 99.8 percent of ballots counted, the 70-year-old former Marxist rebel had 72.5 percent of the vote, the country's Supreme Electoral Council said.
His nearest competitor, Maximino Rodriguez of the right-leaning Liberal Constitutionalist Party, had just 15 percent.
Ortega, who has ruled Nicaragua for 20 of the past 37 years, has been accused of using the courts to limit the power of the opposition.
His opponents branded the election a "farce" -- a criticism echoed by the United States, which said the "flawed" process had made free and fair polls impossible.
As Ortega's opponents had urged Nicaraguans to boycott Sunday's vote, all eyes were on turnout.
Electoral officials said 68.2 percent of voters cast ballots. The opposition gave a wildly different estimate: under 30 percent.
"We don't recognize the results of this farce," Violeta Granera, head of one of the opposition parties, the Broad Front of Democracy, told reporters before the tally.
Government and electoral officials described the vote as a great exercise in democracy, conducted in "calm" -- despite the torching of one rural polling station.
"It's a vote for peace, for the security of the Nicaraguan people," Ortega said after casting his ballot.
By his side, Murillo -- a poet and longtime government spokeswoman -- said the polling was "exemplary."
Ortega has strong support from Nicaragua's poor.
They account for more than a third of the population and have benefited from his social programs.
Ortega's supporters poured into the streets to celebrate, honking their car horns and waving white and blue Nicaraguan flags.
"We expect him to keep fulfilling his promises, to keep giving us food and housing," one supporter, Maria Auxiliadora Monte, told AFP.
"He is the best president we have had."
Nicaragua's powerful business interests have also been well-served by economic stability and security under Ortega and his party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN).
But with billions of dollars in credit from troubled ally Venezuela drying up, and massive infrastructure projects -- such as a proposed transoceanic canal to rival Panama's -- failing to materialize, Nicaragua's prospects are clouding over.
It will be Ortega's fourth term.
MANAGUA, NICARGUA: Nicaragua's leftist President Daniel Ortega has won a third straight term, with his colorful wife Rosario Murillo as vice president, results showed Monday, but the opposition and the United States condemned the election. With 99.8 percent of ballots counted, the 70-year-old former Marxist rebel had 72.5 percent of the vote, the country's Supreme Electoral Council said. His nearest competitor, Maximino Rodriguez of the right-leaning Liberal Constitutionalist Party, had just 15 percent. Ortega, who has ruled Nicaragua for 20 of the past 37 years, has been accused of using the courts to limit the power of the opposition. His opponents branded the election a "farce" -- a criticism echoed by the United States, which said the "flawed" process had made free and fair polls impossible. As Ortega's opponents had urged Nicaraguans to boycott Sunday's vote, all eyes were on turnout. Electoral officials said 68.2 percent of voters cast ballots. The opposition gave a wildly different estimate: under 30 percent. "We don't recognize the results of this farce," Violeta Granera, head of one of the opposition parties, the Broad Front of Democracy, told reporters before the tally. Government and electoral officials described the vote as a great exercise in democracy, conducted in "calm" -- despite the torching of one rural polling station. "It's a vote for peace, for the security of the Nicaraguan people," Ortega said after casting his ballot. By his side, Murillo -- a poet and longtime government spokeswoman -- said the polling was "exemplary." Ortega has strong support from Nicaragua's poor. They account for more than a third of the population and have benefited from his social programs. Ortega's supporters poured into the streets to celebrate, honking their car horns and waving white and blue Nicaraguan flags. "We expect him to keep fulfilling his promises, to keep giving us food and housing," one supporter, Maria Auxiliadora Monte, told AFP. "He is the best president we have had." Nicaragua's powerful business interests have also been well-served by economic stability and security under Ortega and his party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). But with billions of dollars in credit from troubled ally Venezuela drying up, and massive infrastructure projects -- such as a proposed transoceanic canal to rival Panama's -- failing to materialize, Nicaragua's prospects are clouding over. It will be Ortega's fourth term.
By Associated Press
LONDON: Scotland's government says it will ask Britain's Supreme Court to block Prime Minister Theresa May from triggering European Union exit talks without consulting the Scottish Parliament first.
May has said she plans to start divorce talks by invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty before March 31. But last week the High Court ruled that lawmakers in Britain's Parliament must first have a say.
The government is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. Hearings are due next month.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Tuesday that Scotland would seek to intervene in the case, because "the consent of the Scottish Parliament should be sought before Article 50 is triggered."
Britons voted to June 23 to leave the EU but voters in Scotland strongly backed staying in.
LONDON: Scotland's government says it will ask Britain's Supreme Court to block Prime Minister Theresa May from triggering European Union exit talks without consulting the Scottish Parliament first. May has said she plans to start divorce talks by invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty before March 31. But last week the High Court ruled that lawmakers in Britain's Parliament must first have a say. The government is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling. Hearings are due next month. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Tuesday that Scotland would seek to intervene in the case, because "the consent of the Scottish Parliament should be sought before Article 50 is triggered." Britons voted to June 23 to leave the EU but voters in Scotland strongly backed staying in.
By Associated Press
SEOUL: South Korea's president said that she will allow the parliament to choose her prime minister as she tries to defuse an escalating influence-peddling scandal.
The announcement on Tuesday by Park Geun-hye is a major concession that could severely curtail her ability to govern in the year she has left in her term.
The prime minister Park nominated last week as a way to settle growing anger will apparently be replaced. Opposition and ruling party lawmakers must, however, first agree on someone else.
Earlier on Tuesday, prosecutors raided the Seoul office of Samsung Electronics in connection with the scandal. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said the raid was part of an investigation into the scandal centering on how much Park's longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil meddled in state affairs though she was not a government employee.
SEOUL: South Korea's president said that she will allow the parliament to choose her prime minister as she tries to defuse an escalating influence-peddling scandal. The announcement on Tuesday by Park Geun-hye is a major concession that could severely curtail her ability to govern in the year she has left in her term. The prime minister Park nominated last week as a way to settle growing anger will apparently be replaced. Opposition and ruling party lawmakers must, however, first agree on someone else. Earlier on Tuesday, prosecutors raided the Seoul office of Samsung Electronics in connection with the scandal. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said the raid was part of an investigation into the scandal centering on how much Park's longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil meddled in state affairs though she was not a government employee.
By AFP
GENEVA: UN rights experts on Monday voiced alarm at the impact Britain's far-reaching welfare reforms have had on people with disabilities, warning their rights were being systematically violated.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said it had "reliable evidence" that a years-long shake-up of the British welfare system has led to "grave or systematic violations of the rights" of disabled people.
London flatly rejected the UN report, insisting in a written response that it was "proud of its record in supporting disabled people to lead more independent lives and participate more fully in society."
Britain has for the past six years been pursuing controversial welfare reforms aimed at cutting the deficit, including deep austerity cuts to disability benefits.
In its statement, the government highlighted "strong evidence" that people benefit physically and mentally from working, and celebrated that there are now some 500,000 more people with disabilities in employment than in 2013.
The UN report, which was dated October 6 but only made public on Monday, meanwhile said reassessments and cuts to a wide range of benefits aimed at making life easier for the disabled had had a negative impact on a large number of people.
It highlighted a "denial of reasonable accommodation" in assessing the extent of people's disabilities as one of several measures having "a discriminatory effect".
Some 13,900 people have lost their right to access to adapted cars, it added in one example.
The report also warned that the rhetoric surrounding the reforms had contributed to negative stereotypes of people who depend on disability benefits, including portrayals of them as lazy and cheats defrauding the system.
The UN committee, made up of 18 independent experts, began receiving information in 2012 from groups warning that disabled people's rights were being violated.
It launched its investigation in April 2014 and committee members conducted a confidential two-week visit to Britain in October 2015, interviewing some 200 people in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.
The experts urged London to take a number of steps, including to carry out a thorough assessment of the impact of each measure introduced to ensure they do not have a disproportionately adverse effect on people's rights.
They also called on the government to "take appropriate measures to combat any negative and discriminatory stereotypes or prejudice against persons with disabilities in public and the media, including that dependency on benefits is in itself a disincentive of employment."
GENEVA: UN rights experts on Monday voiced alarm at the impact Britain's far-reaching welfare reforms have had on people with disabilities, warning their rights were being systematically violated. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said it had "reliable evidence" that a years-long shake-up of the British welfare system has led to "grave or systematic violations of the rights" of disabled people. London flatly rejected the UN report, insisting in a written response that it was "proud of its record in supporting disabled people to lead more independent lives and participate more fully in society." Britain has for the past six years been pursuing controversial welfare reforms aimed at cutting the deficit, including deep austerity cuts to disability benefits. In its statement, the government highlighted "strong evidence" that people benefit physically and mentally from working, and celebrated that there are now some 500,000 more people with disabilities in employment than in 2013. The UN report, which was dated October 6 but only made public on Monday, meanwhile said reassessments and cuts to a wide range of benefits aimed at making life easier for the disabled had had a negative impact on a large number of people. It highlighted a "denial of reasonable accommodation" in assessing the extent of people's disabilities as one of several measures having "a discriminatory effect". Some 13,900 people have lost their right to access to adapted cars, it added in one example. The report also warned that the rhetoric surrounding the reforms had contributed to negative stereotypes of people who depend on disability benefits, including portrayals of them as lazy and cheats defrauding the system. The UN committee, made up of 18 independent experts, began receiving information in 2012 from groups warning that disabled people's rights were being violated. It launched its investigation in April 2014 and committee members conducted a confidential two-week visit to Britain in October 2015, interviewing some 200 people in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. The experts urged London to take a number of steps, including to carry out a thorough assessment of the impact of each measure introduced to ensure they do not have a disproportionately adverse effect on people's rights. They also called on the government to "take appropriate measures to combat any negative and discriminatory stereotypes or prejudice against persons with disabilities in public and the media, including that dependency on benefits is in itself a disincentive of employment."
By Associated Press
SARAJEVO: Several newly elected mayors have boycotted the certification of a convicted war criminal as new mayor of the western Bosnian town of Velika Kladusa. Fikret Abdic was released in 2012 after serving his 15-year sentence in Croatia.
The 76-year-old Abdic was called up first during a ceremony in Sarajevo on Tuesday at which the mayors chosen during Oct. 2 local elections were certified. Mayors of towns around Velika Kladisa walked in to receive their certificates only after Abdic received his.
During the 1992-95 Bosnian war Abdic formed the province of Western Bosnia which fought against fellow Muslim Bosniaks loyal to Sarajevo.
SARAJEVO: Several newly elected mayors have boycotted the certification of a convicted war criminal as new mayor of the western Bosnian town of Velika Kladusa. Fikret Abdic was released in 2012 after serving his 15-year sentence in Croatia. The 76-year-old Abdic was called up first during a ceremony in Sarajevo on Tuesday at which the mayors chosen during Oct. 2 local elections were certified. Mayors of towns around Velika Kladisa walked in to receive their certificates only after Abdic received his. During the 1992-95 Bosnian war Abdic formed the province of Western Bosnia which fought against fellow Muslim Bosniaks loyal to Sarajevo.
By Associated Press
CHAPPAQUA: Seeking to become the nation's first female president, Hillary Clinton cast her ballot Tuesday and settled down to wait for the country to make its choice.
The Democratic nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, voted at an elementary school near their home in suburban New York before greeting supporters waiting for her outside.
"It is the most humbling feeling," she said of voting for herself for president. "I know how much responsibility goes with this."
It was a relatively calm moment Tuesday compared with Clinton's hectic final few days day on the campaign trail. The former secretary of state and New York senator dashed through battleground states, encouraged get-out-the-vote efforts and campaigned with a star-studded cast of celebrity supporters.
It was an election eve punctuated by an emotional rally in Philadelphia with her husband, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, as well as performances by Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen, and capped by Lady Gaga, who serenaded thousands of supporters before the Clintons took the stage for a 1 a.m. rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. It ended with cheering fans greeting her at the airport back in New York when she landed in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
After the divisive rhetoric of the campaign against Republican Donald Trump, Clinton sought to offer a positive closing message on Monday. She told supporters in Pittsburgh they "can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America." In a buoyant mood, she also greeted voters who cried out "we love you," smiling back: "I love you all, too ... absolutely."
Some good news boosted Clinton's spirits in the final moments of the campaign. On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress, informing lawmakers the bureau had found no evidence in its hurried review of newly discovered emails to warrant criminal charges against Clinton.
The late October announcement of a fresh email review rocked the race just as Clinton appeared to be pulling away from Trump in several battleground states. The update from the FBI may have come too late for some: In the nine days between Comey's initial statement until his "all clear" announcement on Sunday, nearly 24 million people cast early ballots. That's about 18 percent of the expected total votes for president.
But campaign aides projected confidence in the final moments. They said they felt good about Nevada, where they said support for Clinton in early voting was strong. They were encouraged by the strong Latino turnout in Florida and felt they took a strong lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania into Election Day, when the bulk of votes are cast in those states.
Leading up to Election Day, Clinton made stops in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and New Hampshire often flanked by star guests. Jay Z and Beyonce performed with pant-suited backup dancers in Cleveland. James Taylor serenaded New Hampshire voters and Katy Perry sang "Roar" in Philadelphia.
She also campaigned with Khizr Khan, the father of a slain U.S. Army officer whose indictment of Trump at the Democratic National Convention was an emotional high point for Clinton's party.
Her last two days on the campaign trail felt almost like a Clinton family reunion, with some of her closest confidants jumping on the campaign plane for her final hours. Even Huma Abedin, her embattled personal aide caught up in the email controversy, jumped on the plane for the midnight rally in Raleigh.
CHAPPAQUA: Seeking to become the nation's first female president, Hillary Clinton cast her ballot Tuesday and settled down to wait for the country to make its choice. The Democratic nominee and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, voted at an elementary school near their home in suburban New York before greeting supporters waiting for her outside. "It is the most humbling feeling," she said of voting for herself for president. "I know how much responsibility goes with this." It was a relatively calm moment Tuesday compared with Clinton's hectic final few days day on the campaign trail. The former secretary of state and New York senator dashed through battleground states, encouraged get-out-the-vote efforts and campaigned with a star-studded cast of celebrity supporters. It was an election eve punctuated by an emotional rally in Philadelphia with her husband, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, as well as performances by Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen, and capped by Lady Gaga, who serenaded thousands of supporters before the Clintons took the stage for a 1 a.m. rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. It ended with cheering fans greeting her at the airport back in New York when she landed in the early hours of Tuesday morning. After the divisive rhetoric of the campaign against Republican Donald Trump, Clinton sought to offer a positive closing message on Monday. She told supporters in Pittsburgh they "can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America." In a buoyant mood, she also greeted voters who cried out "we love you," smiling back: "I love you all, too ... absolutely." Some good news boosted Clinton's spirits in the final moments of the campaign. On Sunday, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress, informing lawmakers the bureau had found no evidence in its hurried review of newly discovered emails to warrant criminal charges against Clinton. The late October announcement of a fresh email review rocked the race just as Clinton appeared to be pulling away from Trump in several battleground states. The update from the FBI may have come too late for some: In the nine days between Comey's initial statement until his "all clear" announcement on Sunday, nearly 24 million people cast early ballots. That's about 18 percent of the expected total votes for president. But campaign aides projected confidence in the final moments. They said they felt good about Nevada, where they said support for Clinton in early voting was strong. They were encouraged by the strong Latino turnout in Florida and felt they took a strong lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania into Election Day, when the bulk of votes are cast in those states. Leading up to Election Day, Clinton made stops in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and New Hampshire often flanked by star guests. Jay Z and Beyonce performed with pant-suited backup dancers in Cleveland. James Taylor serenaded New Hampshire voters and Katy Perry sang "Roar" in Philadelphia. She also campaigned with Khizr Khan, the father of a slain U.S. Army officer whose indictment of Trump at the Democratic National Convention was an emotional high point for Clinton's party. Her last two days on the campaign trail felt almost like a Clinton family reunion, with some of her closest confidants jumping on the campaign plane for her final hours. Even Huma Abedin, her embattled personal aide caught up in the email controversy, jumped on the plane for the midnight rally in Raleigh.
By Associated Press
It's go time.
With hours left in the punishing 2016 presidential race, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump were in a flat-out sprint on Monday, powering through battleground states with rallies, retail stops and special guests along for the ride.
Here's a minute-by-minute look at the candidates in the final stretch (all times EST):
___
10:27 a.m. Clinton's plane is wheels up from White Plains, New York, en route to Pittsburgh. On the tarmac, she tells reporters, "We're just going to work until the last vote is counted."
11:05 a.m. Trump takes the stage at a rally in Sarasota, Florida. He tells the cheering crowd, "In one day we are going to win the great state of Florida, and we are going to take back the White House."
11:27 a.m. Clinton lands in Pittsburgh.
12:25 p.m. Trump's press plane is wheels up from Florida to North Carolina. (Exact departure times for Trump are unknown because he does not let the media on his plane. The press travels on a plane that typically takes off and lands either just before or just after.)
12:28 p.m. Clinton kicks off a rally in Pittsburgh where she says to voters, "Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America."
1:56 p.m. Trump's press plane is wheels down in Raleigh, North Carolina.
2:13 p.m. Clinton's plane is wheels up from Pittsburgh to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
2:55 p.m. Trump starts rally in Raleigh at an arena on the state fairgrounds. "I think it's going to be Brexit plus, plus, plus," he says.
3:03 p.m. Clinton lands in Grand Rapids, gets off the plane nearly 20 minutes later and leaves for Grand Valley State University.
3:42 p.m. Trump finishes up Raleigh rally.
4:11 p.m. Clinton takes stage in Allendale, Michigan, where she told voters she hopes that in the future they will be able to say that "you voted for a better stronger, fairer America."
4:20 p.m. Trump press plane wheels up from Raleigh to Scranton, Pennsylvania.
4:46 p.m. Clinton concludes remarks in Allendale with her rallying cry "Love Trumps hate."
5:20 p.m. Trump press plane lands in Scranton.
6:19 p.m. Trump takes stage at rally in Scranton, telling a roaring crowd, "I think we're going to blow 'em out tomorrow."
7:26 p.m. Trump press plane leaves Scranton for Manchester, New Hampshire.
7:27 p.m. Clinton plane lands in Philadelphia.
8:15 p.m. Trump press plane lands in Manchester.
8:54 p.m. Trump takes stage before a packed crowd. He's got fog machines and strobe lights. "It all began for me in New Hampshire," he says.
9:10 p.m. After musical performances by Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and speeches by President Bill Clinton, first lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama, Clinton comes out on stage in Philadelphia. She is greeted by tens of thousands of people. "I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became," Clinton says.
9:29 p.m. Clinton concludes remarks, waves at voters with her family and the Obamas.
9:36 p.m. Trump wraps up Manchester rally.
10:16 p.m. Trump press plane leaves Manchester for his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
10:32 p.m. Clinton plane takes off from Philadelphia for Raleigh, North Carolina.
11:32 p.m. Clinton plane arrives in Raleigh.
11:44 p.m. Trump press plane arrives in Grand Rapids.
12:30 a.m. Trump takes the stage for his very last rally.
12:51 a.m. Clinton goes onstage in Raleigh after a performance by Lady Gaga.
1:05 a.m. Trump finishes his final rally of the campaign, in Grand Rapids, Michigan
1:09 a.m. Clinton finishes her final rally of the campaign, in Raleigh, North Carolina
It's go time. With hours left in the punishing 2016 presidential race, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump were in a flat-out sprint on Monday, powering through battleground states with rallies, retail stops and special guests along for the ride. Here's a minute-by-minute look at the candidates in the final stretch (all times EST): ___ 10:27 a.m. Clinton's plane is wheels up from White Plains, New York, en route to Pittsburgh. On the tarmac, she tells reporters, "We're just going to work until the last vote is counted." 11:05 a.m. Trump takes the stage at a rally in Sarasota, Florida. He tells the cheering crowd, "In one day we are going to win the great state of Florida, and we are going to take back the White House." 11:27 a.m. Clinton lands in Pittsburgh. 12:25 p.m. Trump's press plane is wheels up from Florida to North Carolina. (Exact departure times for Trump are unknown because he does not let the media on his plane. The press travels on a plane that typically takes off and lands either just before or just after.) 12:28 p.m. Clinton kicks off a rally in Pittsburgh where she says to voters, "Tomorrow you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America." 1:56 p.m. Trump's press plane is wheels down in Raleigh, North Carolina. 2:13 p.m. Clinton's plane is wheels up from Pittsburgh to Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2:55 p.m. Trump starts rally in Raleigh at an arena on the state fairgrounds. "I think it's going to be Brexit plus, plus, plus," he says. 3:03 p.m. Clinton lands in Grand Rapids, gets off the plane nearly 20 minutes later and leaves for Grand Valley State University. 3:42 p.m. Trump finishes up Raleigh rally. 4:11 p.m. Clinton takes stage in Allendale, Michigan, where she told voters she hopes that in the future they will be able to say that "you voted for a better stronger, fairer America." 4:20 p.m. Trump press plane wheels up from Raleigh to Scranton, Pennsylvania. 4:46 p.m. Clinton concludes remarks in Allendale with her rallying cry "Love Trumps hate." 5:20 p.m. Trump press plane lands in Scranton. 6:19 p.m. Trump takes stage at rally in Scranton, telling a roaring crowd, "I think we're going to blow 'em out tomorrow." 7:26 p.m. Trump press plane leaves Scranton for Manchester, New Hampshire. 7:27 p.m. Clinton plane lands in Philadelphia. 8:15 p.m. Trump press plane lands in Manchester. 8:54 p.m. Trump takes stage before a packed crowd. He's got fog machines and strobe lights. "It all began for me in New Hampshire," he says. 9:10 p.m. After musical performances by Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen and speeches by President Bill Clinton, first lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama, Clinton comes out on stage in Philadelphia. She is greeted by tens of thousands of people. "I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became," Clinton says. 9:29 p.m. Clinton concludes remarks, waves at voters with her family and the Obamas. 9:36 p.m. Trump wraps up Manchester rally. 10:16 p.m. Trump press plane leaves Manchester for his final rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 10:32 p.m. Clinton plane takes off from Philadelphia for Raleigh, North Carolina. 11:32 p.m. Clinton plane arrives in Raleigh. 11:44 p.m. Trump press plane arrives in Grand Rapids. 12:30 a.m. Trump takes the stage for his very last rally. 12:51 a.m. Clinton goes onstage in Raleigh after a performance by Lady Gaga. 1:05 a.m. Trump finishes his final rally of the campaign, in Grand Rapids, Michigan 1:09 a.m. Clinton finishes her final rally of the campaign, in Raleigh, North Carolina
By PTI
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the White House race against her Republican rival Donald Trump, a top American pollster has said on the eve of what is being described as the most crucial election in decades.
"Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the election," said FiveThirtyEight website's Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the outcome of 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. This is up from a 65 per cent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton, 69, has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign, he said. Clinton's projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 per cent from 2.9 per cent, Silver said. In the 19 latest polls taken into account by the poll,
Clinton is leading in 17 polls while Trump, 70, leads in just two polls. Clinton's poll margin ranges from six per cent to two per cent, while Trump's ranges from two to five per cent. "Seven of the 19 polls have Clinton leading by 4 points; another four have her ahead by 3 points, then we have a smattering of 1's, 2's and 6's, along with two pollsters, IBD/ TIPP and Los Angeles/USC Dornsife, who still have Trump ahead.
"On average, Clinton leads by 2.9 points in the polls, although the highest-rated pollsters have her a bit higher at 3.8 points, on average. As is usually the case, the range of national polls closely matches the FiveThirtyEight popular- vote forecast," Silver said. On the eve of the elections, Clinton had a lead of 2.9 percentage points over Trump in the website's average of polls.
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the White House race against her Republican rival Donald Trump, a top American pollster has said on the eve of what is being described as the most crucial election in decades. "Hillary Clinton has a 70 per cent chance of winning the election," said FiveThirtyEight website's Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the outcome of 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. This is up from a 65 per cent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton, 69, has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign, he said. Clinton's projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 per cent from 2.9 per cent, Silver said. In the 19 latest polls taken into account by the poll, Clinton is leading in 17 polls while Trump, 70, leads in just two polls. Clinton's poll margin ranges from six per cent to two per cent, while Trump's ranges from two to five per cent. "Seven of the 19 polls have Clinton leading by 4 points; another four have her ahead by 3 points, then we have a smattering of 1's, 2's and 6's, along with two pollsters, IBD/ TIPP and Los Angeles/USC Dornsife, who still have Trump ahead. "On average, Clinton leads by 2.9 points in the polls, although the highest-rated pollsters have her a bit higher at 3.8 points, on average. As is usually the case, the range of national polls closely matches the FiveThirtyEight popular- vote forecast," Silver said. On the eve of the elections, Clinton had a lead of 2.9 percentage points over Trump in the website's average of polls.
By AFP
MIAMI: In a US presidential election that's already been out of this world, the lone American astronaut in outer space has cast his vote, NASA said Monday.
Shane Kimbrough became the latest astronaut to join in a long tradition of voting while floating above the Earth, inside the orbiting International Space Station.
Kimbrough rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS on October 19 to start a four-month mission at the research outpost, along with two Russian cosmonauts.
US astronauts have been able to vote from space since 1997, under Texas law. Most astronauts live in the Houston area, home to NASA's mission control and Johnson Space Center.
The first American to vote from space was David Wolf, who cast his ballot from the Russian space station Mir.
The first US astronaut to vote for a president from space was Leroy Chiao in 2004.
"Current space station resident astronaut Shane Kimbrough is the most recent astronaut to take advantage of the opportunity," NASA said in a statement.
Since astronauts can already get emails in space, an electronic ballot generated by the Galveston County Clerk's office was emailed to Kimbrough's secure account at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Mission control then transferred the email to the space station, so Kimbrough could make his selections some 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth, before sending it back to Texas via secure email.
There was no word from NASA or Kimbrough on which candidate he picked for president.
MIAMI: In a US presidential election that's already been out of this world, the lone American astronaut in outer space has cast his vote, NASA said Monday. Shane Kimbrough became the latest astronaut to join in a long tradition of voting while floating above the Earth, inside the orbiting International Space Station. Kimbrough rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS on October 19 to start a four-month mission at the research outpost, along with two Russian cosmonauts. US astronauts have been able to vote from space since 1997, under Texas law. Most astronauts live in the Houston area, home to NASA's mission control and Johnson Space Center. The first American to vote from space was David Wolf, who cast his ballot from the Russian space station Mir. The first US astronaut to vote for a president from space was Leroy Chiao in 2004. "Current space station resident astronaut Shane Kimbrough is the most recent astronaut to take advantage of the opportunity," NASA said in a statement. Since astronauts can already get emails in space, an electronic ballot generated by the Galveston County Clerk's office was emailed to Kimbrough's secure account at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Mission control then transferred the email to the space station, so Kimbrough could make his selections some 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth, before sending it back to Texas via secure email. There was no word from NASA or Kimbrough on which candidate he picked for president.
By ANI
NEW YORK: As the presidential nominees hopscotched from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Michigan for explicit pleas in last frenzied hours, Democrat Hillary Clinton urged the people to vote for a big hearted America and said the best days of the country lie ahead.
Tomorrow, you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America. Our core values are being tested in this election, she told a crowd in Pittsburgh.
The choice in this election could not be clearer. It is between division or unity, between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon, she said taking on her rival Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump, who was campaigning in five states on Monday, criticised the crooked media, attacked a corrupt Washington establishment and mocked Clinton.
Its a rigged, rigged system. And now its up to the American people to deliver the justice that we deserve at the ballot box tomorrow, said Trump in Raleigh, N.C.
They say well get a tremendous amount of credit, win or lose. I said: No, no, no, no. I dont want any credit if we lose, he said during a rally in Sarasota, Fla.
There are signs that despite the bitter campaign, turnout in states that allow early voting is high, and Americans are seizing the opportunity to express themselves in voting booths, reports the New York Times.
Both Trump and Clinton sent their running mates, families and allies across the country to maximize their reach in crucial swing states.
Trump relied on his three oldest children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee.
Meanwhile, Clinton deployed President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady Michelle Obama.
Trump seemed concerned about the lack of celebrity star power for campaign like Clinton, who was accompanied by musicians like Jay Z and Beyonce and was scheduled to campaign in Philadelphia.
Beyonce and Jay Z. I like them he said, adding, I get bigger crowds than they do.
Is there any place better to be than a Trump rally? he asked his audience in North Carolina. Were having fun. And I dont have a guitar and I dont have a piano.
NEW YORK: As the presidential nominees hopscotched from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Michigan for explicit pleas in last frenzied hours, Democrat Hillary Clinton urged the people to vote for a big hearted America and said the best days of the country lie ahead. Tomorrow, you can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted America. Our core values are being tested in this election, she told a crowd in Pittsburgh. The choice in this election could not be clearer. It is between division or unity, between strong and steady leadership or a loose cannon, she said taking on her rival Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Trump, who was campaigning in five states on Monday, criticised the crooked media, attacked a corrupt Washington establishment and mocked Clinton. Its a rigged, rigged system. And now its up to the American people to deliver the justice that we deserve at the ballot box tomorrow, said Trump in Raleigh, N.C. They say well get a tremendous amount of credit, win or lose. I said: No, no, no, no. I dont want any credit if we lose, he said during a rally in Sarasota, Fla. There are signs that despite the bitter campaign, turnout in states that allow early voting is high, and Americans are seizing the opportunity to express themselves in voting booths, reports the New York Times. Both Trump and Clinton sent their running mates, families and allies across the country to maximize their reach in crucial swing states. Trump relied on his three oldest children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee. Meanwhile, Clinton deployed President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady Michelle Obama. Trump seemed concerned about the lack of celebrity star power for campaign like Clinton, who was accompanied by musicians like Jay Z and Beyonce and was scheduled to campaign in Philadelphia. Beyonce and Jay Z. I like them he said, adding, I get bigger crowds than they do. Is there any place better to be than a Trump rally? he asked his audience in North Carolina. Were having fun. And I dont have a guitar and I dont have a piano.
By IANS
WASHINGTON: First Lady Michelle Obama said on Tuesday that early voting is looking good for Democrat Hillary Clinton because "the Hispanic vote is through the roof".
"The only vote that is down compared to where it was for Barack is the African American vote. And, you know, obviously that's because our folks love us so dearly," CNN quoted her as saying in an interview with Tom Joyner.
"But this election is just as important if -- not more -- because it's about the legacy and it's about the progress and as you both know, we still have work to do," she added.
WASHINGTON: First Lady Michelle Obama said on Tuesday that early voting is looking good for Democrat Hillary Clinton because "the Hispanic vote is through the roof". "The only vote that is down compared to where it was for Barack is the African American vote. And, you know, obviously that's because our folks love us so dearly," CNN quoted her as saying in an interview with Tom Joyner. "But this election is just as important if -- not more -- because it's about the legacy and it's about the progress and as you both know, we still have work to do," she added.
By IANS
NEW YORK: Son of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Eric Trump, posted a photo of his marked ballot on Twitter -- which is illegal to do in New York.
"It is in an incredible honor to vote for my father! He will do such a great job for the U.S.A.!#MakeAmericaGreatAgain," New York Daily News quoted the proud Trump scion as saying in a tweet shortly after 7 a.m., with a picture of a ballot that had been filled out with his father's name.
But a Manhattan federal court judge ruled just last week that a 100-plus-year-old state law barring people from showing their completed ballots applies to people sharing pictures of them on social media.
"I'm glad to see Eric Trump engaged in our valued tradition of civil disobedience by showing his ballot on the internet. However, according to the federal court what he did was illegal and he could face up to one year in jail," said lawyer Leo Glickman, who represented voters challenging the law in a federal suit.
The lawyer added that while researching the law for the suit, he had not found any prosecutions against violators "in decades".
The picture Eric tweeted does not show him in it so he might not have taken the picture himself, but another tweet sent soon after shows him and his wife outside of their East Side polling site. The ballot tweet was also removed after the Daily News inquired about the possible legal violation.
In his November 3 ruling, Judge Kevin Castel said it would be too chaotic to change the law for the 2016 election.
"A last-minute, judicially-imposed change in the protocol at 5,300 polling places would be a recipe for delays and a disorderly election, as well intentioned voters either took the perfectly posed selfie or struggled with their rarely used smartphone camera," Castel said in his 16-page decision.
He said he also wasn't sure the 126-year-old law should be changed.
While selfies can be "a potent form of speech presumptively entitled to First Amendment protection", keeping ballots secret help protect against voter intimidation and bribery, he noted.
NEW YORK: Son of US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Eric Trump, posted a photo of his marked ballot on Twitter -- which is illegal to do in New York. "It is in an incredible honor to vote for my father! He will do such a great job for the U.S.A.!#MakeAmericaGreatAgain," New York Daily News quoted the proud Trump scion as saying in a tweet shortly after 7 a.m., with a picture of a ballot that had been filled out with his father's name. But a Manhattan federal court judge ruled just last week that a 100-plus-year-old state law barring people from showing their completed ballots applies to people sharing pictures of them on social media. "I'm glad to see Eric Trump engaged in our valued tradition of civil disobedience by showing his ballot on the internet. However, according to the federal court what he did was illegal and he could face up to one year in jail," said lawyer Leo Glickman, who represented voters challenging the law in a federal suit. The lawyer added that while researching the law for the suit, he had not found any prosecutions against violators "in decades". The picture Eric tweeted does not show him in it so he might not have taken the picture himself, but another tweet sent soon after shows him and his wife outside of their East Side polling site. The ballot tweet was also removed after the Daily News inquired about the possible legal violation. In his November 3 ruling, Judge Kevin Castel said it would be too chaotic to change the law for the 2016 election. "A last-minute, judicially-imposed change in the protocol at 5,300 polling places would be a recipe for delays and a disorderly election, as well intentioned voters either took the perfectly posed selfie or struggled with their rarely used smartphone camera," Castel said in his 16-page decision. He said he also wasn't sure the 126-year-old law should be changed. While selfies can be "a potent form of speech presumptively entitled to First Amendment protection", keeping ballots secret help protect against voter intimidation and bribery, he noted.
Jinshan court to hear exploding Note 7 phone case
From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-11-07 02:47
SAMSUNG has been sued by a Shanghai resident who claimed a newly bought Galaxy Note 7 phone exploded at his home, burning bedding.
The Jinshan District Peoples Court has accepted the lawsuit, which is described as the first filed in Shanghai against the South Korean company over exploding batteries.
The user surnamed Yao is demanding nearly 24,000 yuan (US$3,550) from the maker Samsungs joint venture in Huizhou City in Guangdong Province, and the seller Shanghai Yuanmai Trade Company, a subsidiary of Chinas leading B2C shopping website JD.com, the court said.
Yao said he saw a notice from Samsung, stating Galaxy Note 7 batteries sold on the Chinese mainland were safe, and as a result he had ordered a Note 7 device from Yuanmai via JD.com on September 7.
He received his phone the next day, but 10 days later, the 5,988 yuan device allegedly vibrated and then exploded when he was using it on the bed.
Yao filed the suit against the South Korean firm and JDs subsidiary to Jinshan Court on October 11, the day Samsung announced a recall of all unsold 190,984 Galaxy Note 7 phones on Chinas mainland.
Yao considered that Samsung had cheated him about the phones safety, and Yuanmai had still sold it despite it being hazardous, the court said.
Yao wanted a full refund and a further 17,964 yuan as compensation, the court added.
No date to hear the case has yet been announced.
Man took 300,000 yuan in scam
From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-11-08 01:47
A 40-year-old local man surnamed Deng has been arrested for defrauding seven women of more than 300,000 yuan (US$44,000) by pretending to be a government official, police said yesterday.
Deng admitted he hooked up with the women, most of whom were from out of town, on dating websites and falsely claimed that he could help them get Shanghai hukou or have their kids enrolled in Shanghai schools in return for bribery fees.
He registered accounts on the dating websites with his real name but false employment data, police said. Victims alerted police in June after they noticed Deng was in touch with several women and making the same offers.
Deng, in detention in Changning District, told Shanghai Daily that he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2014 for the same crime and after sitting out his term, played the same tricks again from the end of last year.
New heavy-lift carrier rocket boosts China's space dream
From:Xinhua | 2016-11-04 09:40
The graphics shows China successfully launched its newly-developed heavy-lift carrier rocket Long March-5 from the coastal Wenchang Space Launch Center in southern Hainan Province at 8:43 p.m. on Nov. 3, 2016. (Xinhua/Meng Lijing)
WENCHANG, Hainan, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday launched its new heavy-lift carrier rocket Long March-5.
The rocket, which looked much "fatter" than other rockets of Long March series, blasted off at 8:43 p.m. Beijing Time from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in south China's Hainan Province. The payload was sent into the preset orbit about 30 minutes later.
The State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) later announced the complete success of the launch.
The launch was delayed for less than two hours from the previously scheduled time. Tian Yulong, chief engineer of the SASTIND, told Xinhua that as it was the first launch of Long March-5 in a new launch site, many parameters needed to be debugged and various systems needed to be matched with each other.
"It was normal preparation work to ensure a successful first launch," Tian said, adding that it caught up with the launch window.
The major targets of the mission are to verify the design and performance of the new rocket and test the rocket's flight program, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the developer of Long March-5.
A congratulatory letter sent late Thursday night by the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission hailed the new rocket as the pinnacle of innovation in carrier rocket science and technology.
Its successful launch has propelled China to the forefront of the world in terms of rocket carrying capacity, and marks a milestone in China's transition from a major player in space to a major power in space, the letter said.
The Long March-5 is a large, two-stage rocket with a payload capacity of 25 tonnes to low-Earth orbit and 14 tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit, the largest of China's carrier rockets. Its carrying capacity is about 2.5 times that of the current main model Long March carrier rockets.
According to the CASC, the rocket uses two kinds of fuel, kerosene/liquid oxygen as well as liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen, rather than highly toxic propellant, making it more environmental friendly and less expensive.
The rocket is about 57 meters long, with a takeoff weight of 870 tonnes and a thrust of 1,060 tonnes. It is equipped with eight liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engines in four strap-on boosters, two liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engines in the first stage and two relatively small liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engines in the second stage.
Li Dong, designer-in-chief, said the rocket was the most complicated of the Long March series with over 100,000 components instead of tens of thousands of components in other Long March rockets. Scientists conducted over 7,000 tests during its 10 years of development.
With a 5-meter diameter core stage, Long March-5 is much thicker than China's previous carrier rockets with 3.35-meter diameter core stages.
Other launch sites in China are located in inland areas. Accordingly, transportation of rockets rely on railways, so that rockets cannot be too wide.
The heavy-lift rocket launched Thursday was taken to coastal Wenchang from the northern port city of Tianjin by ship in early September.
"It is not just a simple enlargement of the diameter, it raised new requirements of materials, manufacturing and equipment," said Lou Luliang, deputy designer-in-chief.
Lou said the new technology in Long March-5 would be used in other Long March series rockets in a bid to upgrade all rockets.
The heavy-lift rocket is a milestone for China to become a real space power in the world, said Li Dong.
Experts said the Long March-5 will also lay the foundation for future rockets with heavier payload capabilities.
The new rocket is of great significance as China's space program relies on the carrying capabilities of launch vehicle systems.
With the heavy-lift carrier rocket, China can build a permanent manned space station and explore the moon and Mars.
In 2017, China will launch the Chang'e-5 probe to the moon, which will bring lunar samples back to Earth aborad the Long March-5. The 20-tonne core module of its first space station will also be delivered by the rocket in 2018.
The rocket will launch the Mars probe around 2021.
It is the second launch from the coastal Wenchang center. On June 25, China's new generation medium-sized Long March-7 made its debut at the site.
On Sept. 15 China sent Tiangong-2 space lab into orbit, making a step closer to the dream of building the country's permanent space station.
On Oct. 17, the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft carried two Chinese astronauts to space. Two days later it docked with Tiangong-2.
The two astronauts will spend a month in the space lab and return to Earth, making it the longest-ever manned space mission of China.
Tian Yulong said at a press conference after the launch on Thursday that China is now developing a mega rocket with the capacity of sending up to 100 tonnes of payload to low-Earth orbit.
The mega rocket will probably make its maiden flight before 2030, Tian added.
The first of five early stage clinical trials to test the safety and ability of an investigational Zika vaccine candidate called the Zika Purified Inactivated Virus (ZPIV) vaccine to generate an immune system response has begun at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) Clinical Trial Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Scientists with WRAIR, part of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), developed the vaccine. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is co-funding the Phase 1 clinical trial with WRAIR, serving as the regulatory sponsor and providing other support.
The experimental ZPIV vaccine is based on the same technology WRAIR used in 2009 to successfully develop a vaccine for another flavivirus called Japanese encephalitis. The ZPIV vaccine contains whole Zika virus particles that have been inactivated, meaning that the virus cannot replicate and cause disease in humans. However, the protein shell of the inactivated virus remains intact so it can be recognized by the immune system and evoke an immune response. NIAID partially supported the preclinical development of the ZPIV vaccine candidate, including safety testing and non-human primate studies that found that the vaccine induced antibodies that neutralized the virus and protected the animals from disease when they were challenged with Zika virus. WRAIR, NIAID and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) part of the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) have established a joint Research Collaboration Agreement to support the development of this vaccine.
"We urgently need a safe and effective vaccine to protect people from Zika virus infection as the virus continues to spread and cause serious public health consequences, particularly for pregnant women and their babies," said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "We are pleased to be part of the collaborative effort to advance this promising candidate vaccine into clinical trials."
Led by WRAIR principal investigator Maj. Leyi Lin, M.D., the new study aims to enroll 75 people ages 18 to 49 years with no prior flavivirus infection. Flaviviruses include Zika virus, yellow fever virus, dengue virus, Japanese encephalitis virus and West Nile virus. Participants will be randomly divided into three groups: the first group (25 participants) will receive two intramuscular injections of the ZPIV test vaccine or a placebo (saline) 28 days apart; the other two groups (25 participants each) will receive a two-dose regimen of a Japanese encephalitis virus vaccine or one dose of a yellow fever vaccine before beginning the two-dose ZPIV vaccine regimen. Investigators chose to administer additional flavivirus vaccines because U.S. service members are often vaccinated against these diseases before deploying to Zika-endemic areas.
Additionally, a subgroup of 30 of the participants who receive the two-dose ZPIV regimen will receive a third dose one year later. All participants in the trial will receive the same ZPIV dose at each injection (5 micrograms). A DoD Research Monitor, an independent physician not associated with the protocol, will monitor the conduct of the trial and report any safety issues to the WRAIR Institutional Review Board. Another independent group, the Safety Monitoring Committee, will also monitor participant safety, review data and report any issues to NIAID. As the regulatory sponsor, NIAID ensures the trial follows the study protocol and informs the FDA of any significant adverse events or risks. NIAID also maintains the Investigational New Drug (IND) application for the candidate vaccine. The WRAIR study is expected to be completed by fall 2018.
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Four additional Phase 1 studies to evaluate the ZPIV investigational vaccine are expected to launch in the coming months. These include
A trial enrolling 90 adults ages 18-49 years at the Center for Vaccine Development at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. This site is an NIAID-funded Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit, and Sarah George, M.D., will serve as principal investigator. All participants will receive either two injections of ZPIV or a placebo 28 days apart. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive either a high, moderate or low dose at both injections to evaluate the optimal dose for use in larger future studies.
A trial enrolling 90 adults ages 21-49 years at the clinical research center CAIMED, part of Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico. The site is supported by NIAID via a subcontract from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. This trial will examine the vaccine's safety and immunogenicity in participants who have already been naturally exposed to dengue virus. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive either a high dose, moderate dose or a placebo. Elizabeth A. Barranco, M.D., will lead the trial.
NIAID's Vaccine Research Center (VRC) will test the ZPIV vaccine candidate as a boost vaccination to its DNA Zika vaccine candidate, which entered Phase 1 clinical trials in August. The next part of the study, which will enroll 60 additional participants ages 18-50 years, will take place at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Global Health in Baltimore, and Emory University in Atlanta. Half of the participants will receive the NIAID Zika virus investigational DNA vaccine followed by a ZPIV vaccine boost four or 12 weeks later. The remaining participants will receive only two doses of ZPIV vaccine four or 12 weeks apart. Julie Ledgerwood, D.O., chief of the VRC's clinical trials program, will serve as principal investigator.
A WRAIR-funded trial enrolling 48 adults ages 18-50 years will be conducted at the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, part of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. One group of participants will receive a single dose of the ZPIV vaccine and all other participants will receive two doses of the ZPIV vaccine at varying intervals. Kathryn Stephenson, M.D., M.P.H., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will lead the trial.
Source: NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
For most invading bacteria, the bladder is not a friendly place.
But for those that have figured out how to scavenge iron from their hosts, it's a fine place to grow and reproduce. And for millions of women a year, that means painful, burning, potentially dangerous urinary tract infections.
Now, in an ironic twist, scientists have turned that iron-scavenging power against the most common UTI-causing bacteria.
For the first time, they've prevented UTIs in mice by vaccinating them with the same molecules that the bacteria usually use to grab iron and fuel their growth. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team from the University of Michigan Medical School.
They caution that a human UTI vaccine based on the approach is still years away. But the success of vaccination with the small iron-grabbing molecules, called siderophores, paves the way for further research.
The same team previously reported success in preventing UTIs using a vaccine made of proteins from the bacteria, called uropathogenic Escherichia coli or UPEC. Neither the protein approach nor the siderophore approach provided complete protection, but the two approaches together might.
UPEC causes more than three-quarters of UTIs in otherwise healthy women, and the bacteria produce "stealth" siderophores that evade the host immune system and are unique to them. That makes these molecules good candidates for a vaccine without unintended consequences.
In fact, in the same issue of PNAS, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Irvine report success in preventing gut infections by vaccinating mice against Salmonella using siderophores made by those bacteria.
A pressing problem
With E. coli gaining resistance to the antibiotics that many women take to treat UTIs, or prevent recurring ones, the search for a vaccine takes on new urgency, says Harry Mobley, Ph.D., senior author of the new paper and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at U-M.
Recent findings that cranberry juice does not prevent UTIs adds to that urgency.
UTI care in the United States costs more than $3.5 billion a year, and affect half of all women sometime in their lives. Half of those who get one will get another in the next year, and about 4 million women suffer continuous UTIs. Women suffering recurrent UTIs are the most likely candidates for a vaccine, says first author and research fellow Laura Mike, Ph.D.
Mike, Mobley and their colleagues assessed the effect of siderophore vaccination in several ways. They started by applying two different UPEC stealth siderophores inside the noses of mice, several times over the course of two weeks.
A week later, they applied UPEC bacteria directly into the mouse bladders, waited two days, and then looked at their urine, bladder and kidneys, which get involved when a UTI rages out of control.
When each of the two siderophores was administered individually, modest protection against UTI resulted. But treating the mice with both siderophores and the carrier protein at the same time produced a much greater effect.
"We saw efficacy more in the kidney than in the bladder, suggesting that this approach may be most useful in preventing advanced UTIs," says Mike. "Our next challenge is creating a combination vaccine that also employs proteins that UPEC bacteria use to bind their iron-laden siderophores, and test other adjuvants to increase the response."
The team is planning to expand their study to see if they can protect against the bloodstream infection, or bacteremia, that can cause some UTI sufferers to develop sepsis and die.
Mobley notes that the researchers did not find direct evidence of antibodies made by the mice responding to the siderophore vaccine. But the findings, including detailed examination of the bladder and kidney tissue, are consistent with an adaptive immune response stemming from the vaccination, he says.
Other teams have tried to use siderophores against UTIs, but did not go as far as the U-M team. Using a small molecule such as a siderophore against bacterial infections is itself a novel approach, Mobley notes.
And, says Mike, since other dangerous bacteria make their own unique siderophores, the approach could be attempted beyond UPEC and Salmonella. Recently, U-M researchers showed the role of siderophores in the ability of a "superbug" bacteria called Klebsiella pneumonia to cause pneumonia and much worse.
"Using proteins that are found on the surface of bacterial cells as the basis for vaccination may lack efficacy because of the variability of the exact protein structure," says Mobley. "But siderophores are the same across most gram negative enteric bacteria that cause some of the worst infections. This is a step along the journey, but it's an encouraging one."
AN INTERNATIONAL team of scientists have provided new insight into the Frank-Starling mechanism; a fundamental aspect of human heart function.
The Frank-Starling mechanism described more than a century ago by Otto Frank and Ernest Starling - allows the volume of blood entering the heart to precisely match that ejected, because if a larger volume should enter the walls of the heart chambers stretch accordingly.
The stretch causes the heart muscle to contract more forcefully during contraction, increasing the volume of blood ejected; an equilibrium essential for normal heart function.
Biological scientists based in London, Manchester, Salford and Germany have published new data in the scientific journal Nature Communications to explain the precision of this process at a molecular level.
They found that during stretch a group of oxidants called reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced in the heart muscle, and these activate a muscle contraction protein called activate protein kinase G (PKG). In turn PKG kickstarts molecular movement to change the force of muscle contraction.
The team discovered that one such process was the molecular modification of a cellular protein called SERCA.
Dr David Greensmith, of the biomedical Research centre at the University of Salford, said: "Heart muscle is formed by billions of cells which simultaneously shorten to produce contraction. This shortening is triggered by a rise of calcium which is dependent on SERCA.
"Anything which alters SERCA activity alters the magnitude of calcium rise and so force of contraction."
The molecular modification of SERCA observed in laboratory tests was, they found, the likely cause of altered SERCA activity and thereby provided the process by which the Frank-Starling mechanism is fine-tuned.
The risk of developing psychosis is more than tripled for those who abuse cannabis, according to results from a new twin study.
Researchers from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), together with colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University, examined the relationship between cannabis and psychosis using psychiatric interviews of Norwegian twins. The interviews reveal whether the twins had symptoms of psychosis and cannabis abuse.
"Previous research has shown that patients with psychotic disorders use cannabis more often than the general population. However research has been divided over whether cannabis use was the cause of the psychotic disorders," says Ragnar Nesvag, senior researcher at NIPH and the main author of the study.
Genetic factors influence both cannabis abuse and psychosis and the same genes may lead to an increased risk for both problems.
"The relative importance of genes in the causes of a disease is known as heritability, and we know from previous studies at the NIPH that cannabis abuse is very heritable, explains Eivind Ystrom, senior researcher at NIPH. "In order to determine whether cannabis abuse can lead to psychosis, it is important to account for genetic risk," he adds.
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The researchers therefore tested both the hypotheses that cannabis use causes psychotic symptoms and that psychotic symptoms lead to cannabis abuse.
Abuse increased the risk by 3.5
The hypothesis best suited to the data was that cannabis abuse caused symptoms of psychosis. Within a twin pair, the twin with symptoms of cannabis abuse had a 3.5 times higher risk of developing symptoms of psychosis compared with the twin who did not have symptoms of cannabis abuse.
"Our analyses showed a significant association between cannabis abuse and symptoms of psychosis in the general population. We also tested the hypothesis that symptoms of psychosis caused cannabis abuse, but the hypothesis was less suited to the data. Therefore, it appears that cannabis abuse can be a cause of psychosis," says Ystrom.
Confirmed high heritability
Previous studies have shown that cannabis abuse is very heritable, which was also confirmed in this study. As much as 88 per cent of the causes of why some people abused cannabis, yet others did not, could be attributed to some people having risk genes.
Despite this, the researchers found that a common genetic risk could not explain the entire association with symptoms of psychosis. Even after genetic risk and risk of childhood environment were taken into account, people with cannabis abuse still had a multiplied risk of developing symptoms of psychosis.
Nesvag says that psychosis is associated with huge costs to society. These findings should be considered when evaluating the cost of policies for increased cannabis availability, such as decriminalisation or legalisation.
A new study challenges the tenet of herpes viruses being strictly host-specific. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Germany have discovered that gammaherpesviruses switch their hosts more frequently than previously thought. In fact, bats and primates appear to be responsible for the transfer of these viruses to other mammals in many cases. The findings were published in the scientific journal "mBio".
For herpes, it has generally been thought that every animal has its own specific viruses and that virus and host species have co-evolved. Now, an international team of scientists led by the Leibniz-IZW discovered that herpesviruses may not conform to this commonly held view. Surprisingly, while studying a group of herpesviruses called gammaherpesviruses, the researchers demonstrated that the herpes viruses found in common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) and hairy-legged vampire bats (Diphylla ecaudata) were similar to those previously found in cattle. While it is known that vampire bats exclusively feed on animal blood, preferring domestic swine and cattle, since they represent an easily accessible food source, the result was somewhat unusual. Were bats being infected by viruses from their food source?
To answer this question, researchers from the Leibniz-IZW worked together with the Centro Nacional de Investigacion Disciplinaria en Microbiologia Animal - INIFAP; the Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia of the Universidad Veracruzana; the Instituto de Biotecnologia of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in the USA, and the Freie Universitat Berlin in Germany. Following up on the results from vampire bats, the researchers compiled the largest dataset of gammaherpesvirus sequences to date from their own sequencing data and publicly available data, including viruses from many bat species, and performed extensive analyses to determine the relationships of the viruses to one another and to their hosts. This shows that herpesviruses have frequently switched between species in the past, rather than being host specific. Most switches derived from bats, with primates being the second most common source of switches.
"We speculate that bat-specific traits such as their ability to fly and a wide geographical range might have been important in promoting a virus spillover from bats to other animal groups," says Dr Marina Escalera-Zamudio, scientist at the Leibniz-IZW. After switching, herpesviruses may have adapted to their new hosts, creating the impression of host specificity. So the vampire bats were not likely infected by their food but more likely infected by other mammals in the past. Also surprisingly, vampire bats were not more prone among bats to transfer viruses, as many viruses from non-blood feeding bats also appear to have jumped.
Since many viruses that cause disease in humans belong to the herpes virus family, it is important to understand their evolutionary development. "Herpes viruses establish latent life-long infections. Although they generally cause disease only in immunosuppressed individuals, they can survive largely below the radar even after infection," Escalera-Zamudio adds. Therefore, there may be even more species switches to uncover. However, only further sampling across a larger diversity of hosts will help determine the full scale of such switches. Future efforts should concentrate on clarifying the role of bats and primates for spreading these viruses.
Expert scientific lectures, live training and customer sessions demonstrate PENTAX Medicals commitment to delivering improved and up-to-date technology to support everyday endoscopy practice
PENTAX Medical highlighted Quality in Focus: New Technologies Pushing Boundaries at UEGW 2016, displaying its very latest endoscopic technology designed to support the clinical pathway through enhanced diagnosis and treatment. Outside of the booth, PENTAX Medical provided a number of expert lectures, live training and customer sessions. These included a Blackbox Innovations room, i-scan certification sessions, introductions to the recently launched my PENTAX Medical portal and the annual Expert Dinner held at the Hofburg Vienna.
PENTAX Medical highlighted Quality in Focus: New Technologies Pushing Boundaries at UEGW 2016
Key products on display included the new, innovative OPTIVISTA EPK-i7010 High-Definition video processor, a world first for endoscopy, featuring both digital (i-scan Surface and Tone Enhancements) and optical enhancements (i-scan OE) on the same platform. PENTAX Medicals SCOPEPILOT also drew attention from visitors to the booth. This true 3D colon navigation system fully supports quality standards in colonoscopy training and offers improved patient comfort in everyday practice.
The focus point of the PENTAX Medical booth was an oversized OPTIVISTA processor and screen showing some of the outstanding clinical images captured with PENTAX Medicals i-scan and i-scan OE technology, to demonstrate its wide range of applications across endoscopic detection, characterization, diagnosis and therapy. Visitors to the booth could also experience first-hand, the benefits of both OPTIVISTA and SCOPEPILOT via a simulator that demonstrated these technologies capabilities in pushing the boundaries in support of quality metrics such as ADR, cecum intubation rates and patient comfort.
The very latest innovations in endoscopy from PENTAX Medical were also demonstrated and discussed in the Blackbox Innovations room. Groups of specially selected clinicians were invited to share the most up-to-date developments, prototypes and ideas from the product and R&D teams from PENTAX Medical. The Blackbox Innovations program builds on the great partnerships between PENTAX Medical and its customers, ensuring a global approach to endoscopic R&D and bringing together all of the elements required to identify, understand and deliver against the clinical unmet needs in the market.
UEGW also saw the launch of the my PENTAX Medical exclusive customer portal. This one-stop knowledge base gives convenient 24/7 access to equipment repair requests and tracking, manual downloads, online training and event registration and a host of other features to ease workload and ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Induction sessions were held throughout the congress to familiarize users with the benefits of this new portal.
PENTAX Medicals annual Expert Dinner proved, as always, to be very popular, with over 200 doctors from around the world attending the charity event held at the prestigious Hofburg Vienna. Guests were treated to three stimulating lectures in a session chaired by Prof. Dr. Ralf Kiesslich (Wiesbaden, Germany). The presentations focussed on advanced imaging technologies in the upper GI tract (Dr. Michael Hafner (Vienna, Austria)), diagnostic and therapeutic challenges in the colo-rectum (Prof. Dr. Helmut Neumann (Mainz, Germany)), and improving quality in endoscopy through innovation (Prof. Matt Rutter (Stockton-on-Tees, UK)). Following the lectures, guests enjoyed a traditional Viennese waltz and took the opportunity to network with colleagues. The event raised 9,460 for the Felix Burda Foundation, which works to raise public awareness for the prevention and early detection of colorectal cancer.
Prof Matt Rutter, Consultant Physician Gastroenterology (Stockton-on-Tees, UK) commented:
Leica Microsystems CMS GmbH has entered into an exclusive, worldwide licensing agreement with Columbia University in New York to commercialize SCAPE microscopy for Life Science applications.
SCAPE (swept confocally aligned planar excitation) microscopy forms 3D images of living samples by scanning them with a sheet of laser light.
Zebrafish heart: Beating heart of zebrafish larva (56 hours after fertilization). Myocytes are expressing GCaMP (calcium indicator) and dsRed (cell marker). Imaged in-vivo using SCAPE at 25 volumes per second. 335 x 288 x 156 micron field of view. Credit: Hillman/Li/Targoff, Columbia University.
SCAPEs unique capabilities allow scientists to perform fundamentally new kinds of experiments, from imaging individual neurons firing throughout the brain of adult fruit flies, to tracking calcium waves through cells in the beating heart of a zebrafish.
SCAPE also stands to create new inroads for understanding diseases such as cancer, and for the development of new drugs and therapies.
Fruit fly brain: Whole brain of adult Drosophila acquired in-vivo at 10 volumes per second using SCAPE. Neuronal subset expressing GFP (green), mushroom body neurons expressing dsRed. 450 x 264 x 227 micron field of view. Credit: Hillman/Li/Schaffer, Columbia University.
SCAPE microscopy was developed in the laboratory of Elizabeth Hillman, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering and radiology at Columbia University and a principal investigator at Columbias Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
SCAPEs ingenuity lies in being able to both scan and image a moving light sheet through a single, stationary objective lens. SCAPE delivers 3D-imaging speeds that are 10 to 100 times faster than conventional point-scanning microscopes, while maintaining the benefits of light-sheet imaging including low photodamage.
Compared to conventional light-sheet microscopes that require multiple objective lenses and complex sample positioning, SCAPEs patented single-objective approach greatly diversifies the range of intact and freely moving samples that can be imaged in 3D at near video-rates. SCAPE technology was recognized late last year with a prestigious grant award from the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative.
SCAPEs ability to perform real-time 3D imaging at cellular resolution in living, freely moving organisms is a new frontier for neuroscience research, said Dr. Hillman. Beyond neuroscience, SCAPE is enabling fundamentally new scientific experiments by transforming our ability to capture 3D structure and function, movement, behavior and cellular activity in real-time across a wide range of organisms and biological samples.
In addition to their own intellectual property, Leica Microsystems has also exclusively licensed OPM (Oblique Plane Microscopy) technology from Imperial Innovations. The technology was invented by Christopher Dunsby, PhD, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics at Imperial College London.
Leica Microsystems is committed to investing in the most promising technologies in order to drive our innovation, and these are excellent examples of that strategy said Markus Lusser, President of Leica Microsystems.
We recognize that the accelerating use of GCaMPs, fluorescent reporters and optogenetics presents an urgent need for high-speed volumetric imaging of living samples and that this is a current major gap in the microscopy market. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to develop next-generation imaging systems that will drive discoveries in neuroscience, biology and medicine by capturing life in action said Prof. Julian F Burke, Chief Scientific Officer of Leica Microsystems.
New Delhi: The Director of Intelligence Bureau (IB) and his team met with top officials of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) late on Tuesday night to discuss any possible law and order fallout of the decision to demonetize 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, sources told News18.
The officials apprised the PMO of likely security scenarios and a nationwide alert could be issued soon, sources said.
Even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi finished his nationally televised speech this evening, there were long queues at ATMs across the country. Network18 reporters fanning the country spotted serpentine queues with a few even availing cash deposit facilities at the ATMs to get rid of their 500 and 1,000 rupee notes by depositing them in the machines and crediting their accounts before the midnight deadline.
At an ATM in Mayur Vihar, Delhi, dozens of panic striken people were trying to deposit their high denomination notes minutes after Modi finished his televised address. "I deposited all the money I had. I don't know how to get Rs.100 notes now. I am stunned. How will we pay for emergencies from tomorrow? said Sneha Kapoor, a home maker, one of the many who had ran to the nearby ATM.
By 8:30 pm there were at least 100 people standing before the two cash deposit machines of an ICICI bank ATM in Mayur Vihar Phase 1 impatiently waiting to get rid of the once prized, now soon to be worthless pieces of paper. Unable to control the swelling crowd security guards were seen downing the shutters of ATMs with cash deposit facilities.
Those who came to withdraw Rs. 100 notes were left disappointed as the ATMs were still dispensing Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 notes. "What can we do? We have suddenly become poor even if we have money. Hope the government ends this chaos by taking effective steps" a young man said.
Met this BSF jawan who guards the Line of Control (LoC) in northern Kashmir. Said he wanted to recite a poem. pic.twitter.com/m7v56zmJjM Jugal R Purohit (@jrpur) November 7, 2016
The September 18 terror attacks in Uri which martyred 19 Indian army soldiers angered people across the globe. Everyone on social media shared posts and videos expressing their anger on the death of our soldiers. And even though India hit back hard with the surgical strikes on terror launch pads in Pakistan, the nation has since been simmering with disappointment, hatred and outrage over the death of its innocent soldiers.It was in times such as these that some soldiers too took to social media platforms to vent their outrage. One such video which went massively viral was of a soldier reciting a poem on India-Pakistan.Months later, another video of a BSF jawan reciting a poem about the valour of our brave soldiers is taking the social media by storm.In the video shared by journalist Jugal R Purohit on Twitter on November 7, the jawan, constable Raghvan Singh from Uttar Pradesh's Mainpuri district, tells people in just four simple yet powerful lines that every soldier is ready to make any sacrifice for his country.He mentions that it gives him immense pride to know that the citizens of the country can sleep peacefully because they know that some BSF jawan is guarding the borders and will protect them from any harm.Singh's short but extremely powerful and touching poem will fill you with pride. After listening to the poem you will be filled with a feeling of realisation. Realisation of their selflessness, bravery and fearlessness to face death. And we bet after you have heard the jawan speak his mind you will want to stand up and salute him.
New Delhi: "Female child is entitled to enjoy equal rights that a male child is allowed to have," the Supreme Court observed on Tuesday, passing a slew of directions, including maintinence of an all-India database of new borns to curb female foeticide.
The apex court said the menace of female foeticide corrodes human values and decreases the sex ratio, which is a sign of "colossal calamity" that cannot be allowed to happen.
The bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said the constitutional identity of a girl child "cannot be mortgaged to any kind of social or other concept that has developed or is thought of".
Holding that there is no room for any kind of compromise, the bench also, comprising Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, said the Constitution only permits affirmative steps and "the question of any kind of condescension or patronisation does not arise".
The bench passed 16 directions to ensure immediate and effective implementation of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act and the Rules framed thereunder.
"All the States and the Union Territories in India shall maintain a centralised database of civil registration records from all registration units so that information can be made available from the website regarding the number of boys and girls being born.
"The information that shall be displayed on the website shall contain birth information for each District, Municipality, Corporation or Gram Panchayat so that a visual comparison of boys and girls born can be immediately seen," the bench said in its 43-page verdict.
The apex court also directed that the states and UTs which do not have any incentive schemes for the girl child shall frame the same.
"If there has been violation of any of the provisions of the Act or the Rules, proper action has to be taken by the authorities under the Act so that the legally inapposite acts are immediately curbed," the bench said, adding that the courts dealing with such complaints "shall be fast tracked and the concerned High Courts shall issue appropriate directions".
It said that courts dealing with such complaints shall hear these matters "in promptitude and submit the quarterly report to the High Courts through the concerned Sessions and District Judge".
The apex court requested the Chief Justices of all the
High Courts to constitute a Committee of three judges to periodically oversee the progress of these cases.
"The judicial officers who are to deal with these cases under the Act shall be periodically imparted training in the Judicial Academies or Training Institutes, as the case may be, so that they can be sensitive and develop the requisite sensitivity as projected in the objects and reasons of the Act and its various provisions and in view of the need of the society," the bench said.
It directed the authorities concerned to carry out awareness campaigns on this issue and asked the State Legal Services Authorities to give emphasis on these campaigns.
"The Union of India and the States shall see to it that appropriate directions are issued to the authorities of All India Radio and Doordarshan functioning in various States to give wide publicity pertaining to the saving of the girl child and the grave dangers the society shall face because of female foeticide," the bench said.
Dealing with the issue of female foeticide, the apex court observed that "when a female foetus is destroyed through artificial means which is legally impermissible, the dignity of life of a woman to be born is extinguished. It corrodes the human values. The legislature has brought a complete code and it subserves the constitutional purpose."
"Female foeticide is conceived by the society that definitely includes the parents because of unethical perception of life and nonchalant attitude towards law. The society that treats man and woman with equal dignity shows the reflections of a progressive and civilized society.
"To think that a woman should think what a man or a society wants her to think tantamounts to slaughtering her choice and definitely a humiliating act," it said.
The court said that decline in sex ratio is a sign of colossal calamity and it cannot be allowed to happen and concrete steps need to be taken to increase it.
"The present generation is expected to be responsible to the posterity and not to take such steps to sterilize the birth rate in violation of law. The societal perception has to be metamorphosed having respect to legal postulates," it said, adding that the "dropping of sex ratio still remains a social affliction and a disease".
Earlier, the apex court had passed a number of directions on the issue including the need to form a statutory board for strict implementation of law prohibiting sex determination as well as setting up of a State Board.
The court passed the verdict while disposing of a PIL by NGO Voluntary Health Association of Punjab urging it to intervene in the matter in view of decreasing number of girls-boys ratio in the country.
A few politicians privately complain the government move was timed to choke funds ahead of the crucial state assembly polls to Uttar Pradesh and Punjab Assembly elections. The BJP has rubbished such claims as absurd.
According to political leaders, the entire money spent on elections will always be in cash and it comes from real estate, infrastructure, smuggling and other illegal businesses. Most politicians and their funders keep the money readily available in cash and take it out during the elections.
Two-and-a-half years after he won an election dubbed as the most expensive election in Indian history, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dealt a huge blow to Indias much-talked election economy by scrapping all Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.We talk about use of black money in elections. We have to set the country free from corruption and black money, Modi said in his televised address to the nation while announcing the surprise move.Even though no political party is ready to admit it openly and for the record all are united in the fight against black money, it is no secret that most of them are stunned.The funding of political parties and their election campaigns remain opaque almost seven decades after Independence. Various studies and surveys done on the issue show that candidates with no money or less money have almost zero chance of winning an Indian election.Minutes after PMs announcement, speaking to CNN News18 noted political analyst and politician Prof. Yogendra Yadav said that it was a good decision to curb the influence of money in our electoral politics. But he attacked the BJP for calling it a surgical strike on election economy.According to a study done by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) over Rs 30,000 crore was spent on the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. On an average, a whopping Rs 55 crore was spent in each Lok Sabha seat in the country. But official spending by the ECI and the Government of India would only be around Rs. 7,000 Rs. 8,000 crores. The former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee had once lamented that, Indian politicians start their legislative careers with a lie the false spending returns they submit. How can we expect them to be honest?In the recently held Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, an estimated Rs 5,000 crore was spent by the candidates. Over Rs.200 crore was seized by the election commission at various places making it the largest haul of election money.H Vishwanath, a senior Congress leader and former minister from Karnataka, said that tens of thousands of crores of such money had become now become worthless. Speaking to News18 he said we all know how mining mafia ruined Karnataka politics. The entire money was in cash. I am sure, thousands of crore in cash has been kept at various places for the next election. All these have now become worthless. Hope the good people win next time.UP and Punjab together expected to witness a flow of at least Rs.5000 crore in the next assembly election. With PM Modi ruining their party, all major political parties will have to really fight hard to raise money for a decent show.A top corporate leader who once fought an election told some of his media friends recently that even though he had hundreds of crores in bank, he could not match the spending power of other candidates who were spending crores like water. All my money is legal. But, you cant spend your legal money. My opponents had no such issues. They were distributing the money like water, he said.
Patna: The Nitish Kumar Cabinet on Tuesday decided to enhance the ex-gratia amount to Rs 11 lakh from Rs 5 lakh for kin of army personnel hailing from Bihar, who are martyred in war or war-like situation.
"The state government took a policy decision to pay Rs 11 lakh as ex-gratia to the kins of soldiers and officers, hailing from Bihar, martyred in war or war-like situation," Cabinent Secretariat Department Principal Secretary Brajesh Mehrotra told reporters here in a post Cabinet briefing.
The state government would also bear the expenditure incurred on cremation/last rites of such soldiers, Mehrotra said.
The Bihar government had on September 19 announced Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia each to three soldiers hailing from Bihar, who were martyred in Uri sector of Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan-sponsored terror attack.
The three soldiers killed in September 18 terror attack were from Bihar regiment that included - S K Vidyarthi (Gaya), Rakesh Singh (Kaimur) and Ashok Kumar Singh from Ara (Bhojpur).
Later, the state Cabinet on September 20 enhanced the ex-gratia amount to Rs 11 lakh for the three soldiers killed in Uri terror attack.
Besides, the government had also paid ex-gratia amount of Rs 11 lakh to the families of BSF soldier Jitendra Kumar Singh (East Champaran) and army havildar Rajiv Kumar Rai (Vaishali district) who lost lives in border firing in the aftermath of surgical strikes.
In another decision, the state Cabinet gave its nod for transfer of 10 hectares of land to Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for construction of building for National Integrated Agriculture Research Centre at Piprakothi in East Champaran, Mehrotra said.
Notably, Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh had inaugurated the Centre last year whose main objective would be to conduct research on the development of location specific integrated farming system.
Altogether, 13 decisions were taken on Tuesday at Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
In a conversation with CNN-News18s Rupashree Nanda, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung held the Arvind Kejriwal-led government responsible for the worsening pollution in the city but said this is not the time to ask questions whether it is the Delhi government or whether it is the Lieutenant Governor.
Post the Delhi High Court judgment, who do you think is responsible for the administration of Delhi? Is it the Lieutenant Governor or the Chief Minister?
The Delhi government runs these things. This is a transferred subject. So, obviously it is the Delhi government. But this is not the time to ask questions whether it is the Delhi government or whether it is the Lieutenant Governor. We are all in this together. We are all making concerted efforts.
Your office took a lot of decisions yesterday. The chief minister, the deputy chief minister, many others attended the meeting. It was a comprehensive meeting, a lot of decisions were taken. Do you think this meeting could have been done earlier? Could you have pre-empted what we saw in Delhi over the past week?
No. I don't think I could have pre-empted. The state government has been active and they have been active actually for three weeks before Diwali. Unfortunately, our efforts did not work well enough. Diwali crackers literally exploded onto Delhi. Nature did not help because a lot of winds were coming from Punjab and Haryana. Consequently, the pollution just settled in. What the Delhi government was trying did not quite work out which required that certain drastic measures be taken, which were taken.
You announced the de-registration of diesel vehicle, closure of polluting industries? Any timeline for this?
The 15-year old (diesel vehicle ban ) is for good. Any polluting industry in non-industrial areas will be shut.
What about livelihood issues (on account of polluting industries shutting down)?
We will have to think about that.
About missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed - Delhi Police did not question the accused for 22 days. You saw Najeeb's mother, how distraught she is, how she was handled by the Delhi Police. What message do you have for Delhi Police and what message would you have for Najeeb's mother?
Delhi Police have been trying very hard to find the boy. We have sent out 200 teams all over. The reward has been enhanced. Everywhere possible, that was advisable after contacting his friends, his teachers, his professors, his old school mates, we have been trying. Unfortunately, we could not find him. About interrogating people or speaking to people I think that is best left to the police. They will decide the time when to speak to whom. So I would not comment on that. I completely understand the sorrow that his mother has. I spent a long time with her today. She will be in touch with me. We will try our best to find the boy.
The manner in which Delhi Police handled his mother, dragging and detained her...
That is not correct. That is not correct. I don't think you should be asking this at all. Law and order is handled on the spot. I am not privy to exactly what happened. I would not want to comment on this.
You are saying that you are doing your best to find the boy. There is hope for the missing boy?
Of course, there is hope. How can you even ask that question? Of course there is hope, of course we are trying our best.
New Delhi: According to an input received by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has directed Pakistan-based Sikh terrorists to activate their sleeper cells in India to carry out terrorist strikes in Punjab to take advantage of prevailing resentment over detention and arrest of radical entities involved in organising Sarbat Khalsa.
Sarbat Khalsa is a parallel congregation of Sikhs which is scheduled to be held on November 10 in Bathinda. Days ahead of the Sarbat Khalsa at Talwandi Sabo in Bathinda district, Punjab police on Sunday launched a massive crackdown on those associated with mobilising support for the event and detained around 180 people, The Indian Express reported on November 6, 2016.
The Parkash Singh Badal-led SAD-BJP government in Punjab has refused permission for organising event in the state.
Earlier, Punjab Police had been put on high alert after intelligence agencies warned about twelve Babbar Khalsa terrorists who managed to enter Punjab to carry out subversive activities in the northern parts of India.
The revelation came following the interrogation of suspected terrorist Kamaldeep Singh who was arrested on October 23 from Punjab.
During his interrogation, Kamaldeep had allegedly claimed that 12 Khalsa terrorists, who were trained in Pakistan, managed to enter India to disrupt the poll related activities in the state.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called for meeting of all 3 service chiefs - Army, Air force and Navy - to discuss about border situation.
New Delhi: Prime minister Narendra Modi on Monday took up the issue of Indian fugitives Christian Michelle and Vijay Mallya with UK's Prime minister Theresa May. Sources confirmed to CNN news18 that India handed over a list of 57 fugitives to UK, which includes Michelle and Mallya.
Sources said, The list included wanted fugitives and pending requests under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with United Kingdom.
India had sent an extradition request for Christian Michelle in the Augusta Westland case but UK refused to extradite him. Media reports said that UK had sought details about exact address of Michele in UK. CBI , the agency investigating the Augusta Westland case believes Michelle is in UK while the enforcement directorate, looking at the money laundering aspect of augusta Westland, claims Michelle is in UAE.
Enforcement Directorate has been wanting custody of Vijay Mallya who is living in the United Kingdom.
Two other alleged fugitives - Sameer Bhai Patel and Rakesh Kapoor - are also on the list handed over to the UK. Patel is wanted in connection with 2002 Gujarat Riots cases. Sources said his extradition order has been cleared by UK. Kapoor is wanted in a child abduction case in India.
Sources told CNN news18 that India and UK agreed in principle to have a mutual home affairs bilateral meet on the lines of Indo-US homeland security meet. The arrangement with UK will be at the home secretary level and will work towards swift action on mutual legal assistance.
In Pics: New Rs 500 note that will be issued pic.twitter.com/N51HDChDs3
ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
In Pics: New Rs 2000 Note that will be issued pic.twitter.com/4NXhNOpxxA
ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
In the first few days, there will be a withdrawal limit of Rs 2,000 per day per ATM card. This will be raised to Rs 4,000 later.
Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes can also be exchanged for lower denomination currency at bank counters and select post offices till November 24 with a cap of Rs 4000 per day. From November 25, the cap will be raised.
In a dramatic move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the government is scrapping with immediate effect the existing currency denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 to combat black money, corruption and terror-financing.These notes will just be paper from tomorrow, Prime Minister Modi said in a televised address to the nation.Notes and coins of all other denominations continue to be legal tender. There will be no change in any other form of currency exchange, be it cheque, DD, payment via credit or debit cards etc.Currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 can be exchanged in banks and head post offices till December 30, 2016, by producing a valid identity like PAN card, Aadhaar or a Voter ID card. Failing this these notes can be exchanged at a local Reserve Bank of India office till March 31, 2017.ATMs will not function till November 9 and in some places till November 10. However, some exceptions have been made on humanitarian grounds. Government hospitals will continue to accept 500 and 1,000 rupee notes. Medicines can be purchased with these notes for the next 72 hours.Prime Minister Modi said that the RBI will issue notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000, but will limit notes with higher value.Similarly, keeping in mind the supply of new notes, in the first few days, there will be a limit of Rs 10,000 per day and Rs 20,000 per week. This limit will be increased in the coming days.Banks will open additional counters and work for additional hours to deal with the rush of people wanting to deposit or change notes.There may be some who, for some reason, are not able to deposit their old Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 note by December 30, 2016, he said, adding they can go to specified offices of the RBI up to March 31, 2017 and deposit the notes after submitting a declaration form.Officials said there were 6.7 billion pieces of Rs 1,000 notes in circulation and 16.5 billion pieces of Rs 500.In his address, first in Hindi and later in English, Modi, whose government had implemented two schemes for unearthing of black money both domestic and abroad, said Rs 1.25 lakh crore belonging to the "corrupt" people has already been brought out in the open."There comes a time in the history of a country's development when a need is felt for a strong and decisive step," he said, asking political parties, all governments, social organisations and media to participate in the war against black money "with enthusiasm to make it a success".He conceded that there could some inconvenience to people in implementing the measures and asked them to bear with it.(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee has called for cooperation between India and the United Kingdom on counter-terrorism operations, a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said on Tuesday.
"Terrorism is the biggest menace to world peace and tranquility. It is a scourge that knows no territorial or ideological boundaries. India and the UK need to cooperate more on counter-terrorism," the statement quoted the President as saying.
Mukherjee's remarks came during a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is on her maiden, three-day official visit to the country, at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday.
Mukherjee said that India sees the UK as a key partner in its growth and economy, and would encourage more UK companies to partner with its national programmes like Make in India, Skill India and Digital India, among others.
"Bilateral trade between India and the UK in goods stood at US $14 billion in 2015-16. There is immense scope to further enhance our trade exchanges both in goods and services," the statement said.
The British Prime Minister said that her visit to India reflects the strength of the relationship.
"The UK is looking to forge a key bilateral partnership with India, which would be to the advantage of both sides," the statement quoted May as saying.
This is the first bilateral visit of May outside of Europe since she assumed the Prime Minister's office in July this year.
She took over the prime ministership after David Cameron resigned following the historic referendum in June in which Britain voted to exit from the European Union. Cameron rooted for Britain to stay in the EU.
May's visit comes a little less than a year after Modi's visit to Britain in November last year.
Kolhapur (Maha): Wreath laying ceremony of Naik Tupare Rajendra Narayan, who lost his life in cross border firing by Pak in Poonch (J&K) pic.twitter.com/28UMbsRdxq
ANI (@ANI_news) 8 November 2016
The mortal remains of martyred soldier from Maharashtra, Rajendra Narayan Tupare, who fell to bullets in Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir were consigned to the flames with full military honours at his native Karve village here on Tuesday morning.Tupare was killed during heavy firing by the Pakistani Army on Indian Army posts along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri sector on Sunday.Thousands of people from Karve and surrounding villages attended the funeral and paid their last respects to Tupare before the cremation, amidst cries of 'Rajendra Tupare Amar Rahe' 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'.Guardian minister Chandrakant Patil and other dignitaries also offered floral tributes to the departed soldier and wreaths were laid by several army officers and on behalf of various army units.Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in a tweet saluted the brave soldier and said the government is with his family in this tough time. The Maharashtra has announced compensation of Rs 1.50 million to the martyr's family.Hailing from Karve village in Chandgad sub-district, Tupare of the 12th Maratha Light Infantry Battalion, is survived by his wife Sharmila and other relatives.His mortal remains were flown shortly from Jammu to Sambra, near Belgaum by a service aircraft on Monday evening.The body was brought by road from Sambra for the last rites to his native village which has plunged into grief since the past couple of days.On October 30, BSF trooper Nitin S. Koli from Dudhgaon in Sangli was martyred while battling terrorists in Kupwara.On September 18, four soldiers from Maharashtra were among 17 killed in the attacks on an army camp in Uri - Sandeep S. Thok from Nashik, Chandrakant S. Galande, Vikas J. Kudmethe from Yavatmal and Punjab Janrao Uike from Amravati.
New Delhi: A group of five petitioners have filed a civil suit against President Pranab Mukherjee accusing him of contempt of court for raking up the sub-judice matter of the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute in his book The Turbulent Years in 1980-996.
The lawyers led by Supreme Court advocate-on-record Vishnu Shankar Jain on Tuesday approached the Patiala House Court requesting immediate halt of the release of the book in its present form, and deletion of a few portions.
The petitioners allege that President Mukherjees book mentioned that the locks of the Ram Janmabhoomi complex were opened on the orders of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, which they argued was far from the truth. How can Rajiv Gandhi order the locks to be opened? It was on the petition of the present petitioner in this case, Umesh Chandra Pandey that District Judge KM Pandey ordered the locks to be opened on 1st February, 1986, Advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain told News18.
However, legal experts said the Constitution doesnt provide for suing the President.
The immunity granted to a President under Article 361 of the Constitution is all pervasive, which includes litigation. Such a suit holding the President liable for any act cannot succeed, Justice (Retd) Bharat Bhushan Parsoon told News18.
The former judge of Punjab & Haryana High Court said he couldnt recall any such suit filed against any sitting President.
Former Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice (Retd) Mukul Mudgal echoed his former brother judges opinion when he said that no such suit would stand a chance in a court of law.
The Presidents spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
But the petitioners are hopeful and Advocate Jain argued that President Mukherjee was liable for contempt of court for voicing his personal opinion about favouring Babri Masjid more than Ram Janmabhoomi when the matter is still sub-judice.
He has even said that with the demolition of Babri Masjid, Indians should hang their heads in shame. How can he say such a thing? He cannot say anything against the Hindu organisations. Did he hang his head in shame when hundreds of temples were destroyed in India? said Advocate Hari Shankar Jain.
Jain said he was hopeful of the clause (4) of Article 361, which enabled filing of a civil suit, if such an act by the president was purported to be done by him in his personal capacity.
Venu Rajamony, the Press Secretary to the president, declined to comment on this civil suit.
In Pics: New Rs 500 note that will be issued pic.twitter.com/N51HDChDs3 ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
In Pics: New Rs 2000 Note that will be issued pic.twitter.com/4NXhNOpxxA ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Expressing concern over the circulation of fake currency notes, Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel on Tuesday said the apex bank will launch new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 currency notes from November 10."RBI will launch new currency notes from November 10," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said while unveiling the new notes.Both Patel and Das were briefing media after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a sudden address to the nation on Tuesday, announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes are being withdrawn from midnight. He said that such notes will become "mere paper"."Banks will keep record of people who will come to exchange cash," Das added.
As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump wait for the verdict in the US presidential election 2016, CNN projections now show a strong fightback by the Democratic candidate.
The projections at 9:30 am IST show Democratic Clinton with 190 against Trumps 186 electoral college votes. The Republican having a slight edge in the key battleground state of Florida.
Both candidates scored early victories in states where they were expected to win. Trump captured conservative states in the South and Midwest, while Clinton swept several states on the East Coast and Illinois in the Midwest.
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His mother is baffled. So are the investigators who are trying to trace Najeeb Ahmed, the 28-year-old JNU student who has been missing since October 15. How can a boy who would not take any decision without consulting his mother be away from her for so long?Najeeb Ahmed, the first year MSc Biotechnology student, left the JNU hostel on the morning of October 15 and since then he has remained untraceable.Without any concrete lead on his whereabouts, the SIT has created a psychometric profile of Najeeb which showed his deep attachment to his mother. The dependence is such that when he went to withdraw money from an ATM for the first time after joining JNU, he had to call up his mother to find out his pin number.After an altercation with some ABVP cadre on October 14 around 10:30pm, an agitated Najeeb called up his mother and told her about the incident. In fact, his mother had reached Anand Vihar when he left the campus the next morning. He allegedly left in an auto, without his phone, wallet or clothes.The investigators found out he was receiving psychiatric help at Vimhans, a premier mental health institute. He was essentially being treated for depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.When the members of the SIT asked the concerned doctor as to what could be the possible reaction of someone of his mental make up to a situation like that, the doctors said it would be to leave everything and run.The timing is also key here. Investigators say he left the hostel room when his mother was less than an hour away from him. It is possible his mother was coming to take him home. The police expect he will try and contact his mother sooner or later.After finishing school, Najeeb went to Kanpur to prepare for medical entrance tests, but joined the Aligarh Muslim University instead. Two years into the MSc course, he decided to leave it and prepare for medical entrance tests again. This time he chose a prep school in Kota.In spite of his strong academic credentials, he failed to clear the tests.Finally, he finished his BSc Biotechnology from a private college in Baraily. He then moved to Delhi: first to Jamia and then to JNU.Najeeb was seen to be a recluse. But the recluse in him probably found a release in the anonymity of the internet. He would spend considerable time browsing the internet and made two Facebook profiles, one of which boasted of 500 friends. Most of them seemed only internet friends. The display picture of the profile was not his photograph.Najeeb's mother doesn't think he was under medication for psychiatric reasons. She says the Delhi Police are spreading false stories. But she too, like the investigators, believes Najeeb is alive.Senior officers of the SIT say they are keeping a constant watch on deaths being reported from areas that are even remotely linked to Najeeb. Areas like Baraily, Badaun, Aligarh, Kota, Kanpur, Ajmer and the adjoining areas of Delhi are being closely monitored by over 150 personnel of the SIT.The missing persons case has taken political overtones with opposition parties accusing the Delhi Police, which reports to the BJP-ruled Centre, of doing little to find the JNU student. The pressure led to the formation of the SIT and the launch of one of the biggest search operations in Delhi.For now, investigators are banking on the strong bond with the boy and his mother, hoping he would contact his mother sooner or later.
Indias Central Bank and Finance Ministry officials the nations top managers of the economy provided more details about the move to scrap currency notes of denominations Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, in a move they labeled as bold and decisive.Urjit Patel, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, said that the government had observed that currency notes of high denomination were being misused and fake currency notes were being used for terror financing.The Governor said that though the security features of the notes had not been breached, it was difficult for the general public to differentiate between real and fake currency. It was for this reason that the decision was taken by the government and the RBI to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes as legal tender.Shaktikanta Das, Economic Affairs Secretary in the Finance Ministry, called the move Bold, Decisive and Powerful. He said that the government had taken a series of steps in the past few years to fight the menace of black money and this move was just the latest.Giving statistics to support the move, Das said that while the increase in the circulation of notes of all denominations had grown by 40% between 2011-16, those of 500 rupees had increased by 76% while those of 1,000 rupees had grown by 109%. The economy had expanded only 30% in this period.This shows the disproportionate increase of high denomination notes, Das said. He added that the RBI was launching a series of new currency notes from November 10 and it will be called the Mahatma Gandhi series.Meanwhile, telephone helplines have been set up at the Reserve Bank of India in Mumbai and the Finance Ministry in New Delhi, which will be operational from 8 am tomorrow. The Mumbai number is 022-22602201 while the New Delhi number is 011-23093230. State governments have been informed of the move and what to do during the transition period.Shaktikanta Das also cautioned people not to be used by those who want to exchange their unaccounted money. He said that banks would keep a record of everybody who exchanges currency notes.Also read: Here's What You Have to do With Old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 Currency Notes
Paulina struggles to open her eyes, sees strange people in her space and raises her tiny claws in warning.
Despite the threat, it's hard not to want to cuddle the pint-sized furball and her mate Freddy, the only pygmy anteaters in the world to be kept in a zoo.
Since being rescued from animal traffickers a decade ago, when they were a year old, the pair have lived in the Huachipa Zoo in Lima, Peru.
Native to Central and South America, pygmy anteaters measure about 20 centimeters (eight inches) long -- the smallest anteaters in the world.
Also called silky anteaters, or Cyclopes didactylus, they are known as creatures of the night, wrapping their little golden-brown bodies around tropical tree branches to feed on ants.
They are much smaller than their cousins, such as the Tamandua anteaters, which can measure up to a meter long, or the giant anteater, which reaches two meters long.
They spend their entire lives in the treetops, never touching the ground.
But the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is leaving them without a home.
Because of their fragility, Paulina and Freddy are not on public display.
They are kept in a special enclosure designed to mimic their arboreal habitat.
The pair are believed to be the longest-lived pygmy anteaters in captivity.
Sometimes captured to be kept as pets, the animals typically stay alive only a short time outside their native habitat.
"There's not much information about them because they're not very visible. They are being affected by deforestation, and because of that we are losing them," said the biologist who cares for
the Lima pair, Gina Ccarhuas.
Encroaching threat
It is difficult to estimate how many pygmy anteaters there are in the Amazon because they are so solitary and shy.
"They are vulnerable," said Ccarhuas.
"A conservation program is being launched, and a zoological training course on managing the species."
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) does not classify the species as threatened, but warned in a 2014 report that parts of its habitat were disappearing in Brazil.
"There is no doubt that rapid and ongoing deforestation of the Atlantic Forest is negatively affecting the northeastern population of Cyclopes didactylus," it said.
"The species cannot survive in the sugar cane plantations that are replacing the native vegetation in this area and the remaining patches of suitable habitat are increasingly fragmented."
Feeding Paulina and Freddy is a challenge for the zoo, which has had to substitute the ants they eat in the wild with a special protein-rich, probiotic milk formula.
They usually wake up around 6 pm and are active until about 4 am, Ccarhuas said.
They live in an enclosure designed to simulate the canopy of a tropical rainforest.
When daytime comes, they curl up to sleep in a small wicker basket -- VIP treatment for two star guests.
Fortunate that I got opportunity to come and meet you. I have always said I'm 'reel hero',you are 'real hero': Akshay Kumar at BSF base camp pic.twitter.com/CoPLNdZLXJ ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Peace is imp as many lives are lost; I think peace is only way out: Akshay Kumar when asked if peace needs to be restored btw India-Pak pic.twitter.com/mIrEdCsHAB ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
There are so many ppl in our country who want to help our armed forces, why not make an app for it?- Akshay Kumar at BSF base camp in Jammu pic.twitter.com/gykWuPgcYZ ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
#WATCH: Akshay Kumar pays tribute to soldiers (who lost their lives in ceasefire violations/encounter) at BSF base camp in Jammu pic.twitter.com/IxGoxCFHrD ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Akshay Kumar, who has always supported the defense forces, paid tribute to soldiers who have lost their lives in ceasefire violations and encounter. The actor visited a BSF camp in Jammu and Kashmir and spoke highly about the work being done by the armed forces."Fortunate that I got the opportunity to come and meet you. I have always said Im a reel hero, you are the real hero", Akshay said. The actor's father was in the army and he himself is an ardent lover of military -life and work.About the tension between the two neighboring countries, India and Pakistan, the actor feels only peace can resolve the issue. "Peace is important as many lives are lost while we are at war. I think peace is the only way out", he said.Akshay has donated Rs 9 Lakhs to the family to martyred BSF jawan who was targeted by Pakistani snipers in Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier the actor has donated Rs 80 Lakhs to the martyred soldiers' families when others in the industry were busy deciding the fate of Pakistani artistes in Bollywood.About his donations, the actors said, "Soldiers are decorated with lots of medals but I looked at their faces. The respect was required for them but they need money too. You have to be practical. I thought how about giving them money and that is when I decided to give 5 lakhs to each family."Akshay Kumar has always expressed his desire to work in the armed forces and tries to fulfill it through his roles like that in Rustom. On the work front, the actor is busy shooting for an offbeat love story with newcomer Bhumi Pednekar.
Twenty-four hours after the stunt mishap that went horribly wrong during a film-shoot at a reservoir near Bengaluru, the families of these two actors are getting frantic with the lack of response and responsibility from the film producers.Rescue officials and divers of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have been searching for the bodies of the actors since last night in the still waters of the Thippagondanahalli (TG Halli) reservoir, near Magadi about 50 kilometres from IT capital Bengaluru. The actors Raghava Uday and Anil Kumar V jumped off a helicopter along with lead actor 'Duniya' Vijay to shoot the climax scene of Kannada film Maastigudi.The stunt was to be a one-of-its-kind stunt in Kannada cinema but ended up as The End, literally. While Vijay was rescued from the water by a coracle on stand-by, both Uday and Anil are seen in the footage flailing their arms in the water, shouting for help, before finally disappearing into the water. The engine of diesel boat nearby is unable to switch on, though people on it are trying to reach the duo.The actors stunned families are wondering who will take responsibility for the obvious negligence and recklessness with which the shooting was taken up.Udays sister Sudharani blames the hero, director, producer and the stunt director of the movie for snuffing out his life.Uday hasnt done this to himself. He has been killed by this film crew. All of them knew he didnt know swimming. Duniya Vijay, stunt director Ravi Verma all of them knew it. Even if they had thrown down a rope from the helicopter (for him to hold on to, while waiting for the boat) when they realised there was a crisis, perhaps my brother would have lived today, she told CNN News18s Kannada affiliate ETV Kannada.Well-built Uday was in his 30s and was a gentle human being, say his relatives and friends. He was apprehensive about plunging into the water and is seen in an interview just before the shooting, saying the stunt director promised him that everything is taken care of. The stunt director in this case Ravi Verma is said to have worked in over 300 films.Both Uday and Anil had shared breakfast at Udays house just before they headed out for the shoot earlier Monday morning telling families they would be back in a couple of hours as it was the last sequence they were wrapping up the movie. Both were excited to be part of this daredevil scene, involving a jump from a height of 100 feet.Anils family has not spoken to the media, his wife and two children too shocked by the tragedy. He has been a close aide of Duniya Vijay, having acted with him earlier.Anils decade-old friend Raju is angry with the film crew. How can they be so negligent about any stunt. The crew must be taken to task. The ignorance of the director has taken away two promising lives, he says angrily.Many in the film industry are also wondering how only the hero was given a life-vest, while the other two jumped with no safety gear the shot required them to be wearing jeans and bare-chested, showing off their six-packs.Also see: Long Ill-treated Stuntmen Say No More Adjusting Award-winning multi-lingual actor Ramya (Divya Spandana) felt the actors should have perhaps put their foot down when they realised there was huge risk involved.This film industry is such that they invest on lavish sets, but forget to take care of minute but important things like safety measures. Kannada industry has always pushed the envelope to prove that we are not far behind (others) because we are constantly compared to other film industries. But the actors here should have put their foot down and refused to do the stunt without adequate safety measures. It is not worth taking such steps for a film. My heart goes out to their families.Questions remain not just about safety measures but about violation of approval norms. Officials of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, which maintains this reservoir with water about 70 feet deep, lodged a police complaint as their rules had been thrown to the winds by the film crew.We gave conditional approval after our team inspected the shooting area with the producers that morning. We told them no entry into prohibited zones, specially the main reservoir area where we know there is accumulated silt. Permission was given to shoot in the backwaters only. They did not heed our rules, says Sarala Kumari, Board public relations officer.In fact, silt and fishing nets stuck in the water impeded recovery efforts, with even professional drivers unable to go below 40 feet.Filmstars like Shivarajkumar and Jaggesh visited the mishap site on Tuesday, which also attracted a large number of fans, on-lookers and locals. Police are finding it doubly difficult to keep the thousands of people at bay, away from the deep waters.Also read: Kannada Actor, Stuntman Drown as 'Masti Gudi' Film Stunt Goes Wrong
Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Jayant Chaudhary has slammed Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh for his speech in Kairana in Uttar Pradesh on Monday and said efforts at polarization will not yield any political dividends for the BJP in the state assembly polls as people have moved on.
The BJP intends to keep playing the communal card. There may be attempts to defend the ministers speech saying he was talking about criminal elements. But, in fact, they are trying to paint the entire community as being associated with criminal activities, the RLD leader told News18.
In his speech while rolling out the BJPs Parivartan Rath in Western UP, the home minister had stressed said that if voted to power in UP his party will take on the forces that terrorise people. Jo gundagardi ke aadhaar par logon ke dilon mein dehshat paida karne ka kaam karta hai, behno aur bhaiyon, Bharatiya Janata Party ki sarkar ke aane ke baad, hum dekhenge ki usne kitna ma ka doodh piya hai, the minister had said.
Chaudhary grandson of former prime minister Charan Singh and son of former Union minister Ajit Singh accused the BJP of creating fear among the Hindu community. Their target is to create an atmosphere of fear, because when people are afraid they do not take rational decisions, he said.
Voters are much smarter and perceptive. The turnout at Rajnath Singhs and Amit Shahs rallies were not as good as expected. Perhaps that is also the signal that people do not want to hear the same thing again and again but this is the only weapon in their armory, he said.
Chaudharys RLD is being rumoured to be in talks with the ruling Samajwadi Party and the Congress to thrash out a grand alliance of parties that want to keep BJP at bay in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections slated for early next year.
He said it was too early to talk about any such Mahagatbandhan but hinted there indeed was a positive frame of mind among the stakeholders.
RLD, thanks the iconic status enjoyed by his late grandfather in the region, has long been a power to reckon with in Western Uttar Pradesh until BJP swept the Lok Sabha polls in the 2014 General elections.
Chaudhary argued the scene has changed now as the atmosphere of polarization has subsided.
There are changes in Uttar Pradesh politics, and BJP might not be happy to note. The communal tension has subsided. Bogeys like Hindu exodus and Love Jihad dont have that impact now as it did a few years ago. People have realized that nothing good comes out of it they have lost jobs, propertysocial equations get disturbed, ultimately people have to learn to live together, he said.
Parts of Western UP including the districts of Muzaffarnagar and Shamli witnessed massive communal conflagrations between the dominant Jat community the core votebase of RLD and Muslims in late 2013 and early 2014.
Hukum Singh, the BJP MP from Kairana, had stoked the fire recently when he alleged that Hindus were leaving the town en masse.
Chaudhary said crime was a big issue in BJP and it was not something unique to Kairana. The region, he said, needs time for rebuilding trust.
We are very consciously dissociating with BJPs ethos, our political positioning is clear, said Chaudhary, whose party had allied with BJP in the past.
BJP and their intellectuals talked about Hindutva as something not associated to religion but called it a way of life. This has now moved on to Hindu hith, it is about keeping the community secure by taking up issues like womens security etc, he said.
What is interesting is this bahu beti ka samman argument was part of Hukum Singhs Lok Sabha campaign. It still is. So what did he do since then? he said, adding, The fact is people have seen through this, they know that it is part of their campaign.
Chaudhary also slammed the National Human Rights Commission.
The NHRC report is quite funny. Instead of seeing human rights, they have come out with how Muslim migration affected the demographic. After riots, Muslims moved out and lived in camps, are they to be blamed? The commission was talking like National Hindu Rights Commission. They could have come with a balanced report. The National Commission for Minorities presented a different report. My report proves there was no massive exodus. People move out for job opportunities, he said.
Jammu: Accusing Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of failing to control the situation in Kashmir, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah on Tuesday demanded that she should resign from her post.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister also asserted that borders between India and Pakistan cannot be redrawn.
Noting that dialogue is the only solution, he said India should take initiative in this regard as it is a strong country.
"We have to leave animosity and the only solution is that the part of Kashmir which is with India will remain with India and that with Pakistan will remain with them," he said addressing party's women workers.
"I am very sorry that this lady (chief minister) is not effectively running the state and it is better that she steps down," Farooq later told reporters on the sidelines of a party function on Tuesday.
Farooq's son Omar Abdullah also hit out at Mehbooba alleging that she had ceded all powers to hardline Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
"Since @MehboobaMufti has ceded all power to S A S Geelani, may be its time to ask him to order the resumption of mobile internet services," Omar wrote on twitter.
The former chief minister was referring to the meeting at Geelani's Hyderpora residence where separatist leaders and other "stakeholders" are meeting to chalk out future course of action on the ongoing agitation in Kashmir.
"Business barons who wouldn't touch any official government meeting with a barge pole have flown in from Jammu & Delhi to be in Hyderpora," Omar claimed.
Farooq raised the issue of burning of schools. "She says, I will give the names. Where are those names, we would like to know who are the ones who are burning these schools.
"Who is going to construct them again? Prime Minister has given a thousands of crores, they will also be burnt down," he said.
Farooq alleged that the chief minister has taken no measure to improve the situation in the Valley which was "extemely bad" and voiced hope that "New Delhi will wake up".
"She has completely failed, the situation in the Valley is extremely bad and I hope in Delhi they will wake up and start thinking of how do we get the Valley back to normal and it is very important because schools are being burnt, there is a definite scheme under which it is being done," he said.
On a question regarding the ongoing shelling and firing on the International Border (IB) and Line of Control (LoC), the NC leader said that the only solution to the dispute was for India and Pakistan to hold dialogue.
"In my opinion the ongoing spell of killings will not lead to any solution. Borderlines will remain as they are.
"The situation is that innocents are being killed here and on the other side of the border as well. The only solution... is that the Prime Minister should immediately hold talks with Pakistan," Farooq said.
He said India should hold talks as being a powerful country, it was India's responsibility to initiate peace process.
Farooq also said the elected government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the army in Pakistan were at loggerheads which was a major cause of the current problem.
"Nawaz Sharif is one ruler and the second is the army.
They have a conflict between them. It is because of this that the problem arises but we have to find a way out because there is no way out except peace," he said.
He said that a war between the two nations would lead to destruction and whatever the two countries have achieved in the past 70 years would be destroyed in seconds.
"War is not the solution. The solution is that we have to find a way for dialogue," he said.
While expressing his anguish over the closure of schools for the past four months, he said the children from the Valley will suffer and won't be able to compete with other children in the country.
Farooq said that the state has suffered losses to the tune of over Rs 10,000 crore in the past four months.
He also accused the ruling coalition of dividing people of the state on religious lines.
Kashmir has been hit by unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8.
New Delhi: Amidst the cacophony of a high-pitched war within the incumbent Samajwadi Party, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has quietly launched its election campaign for Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, via the air-waves as well as on the ground.
While the Parivartan Raths have been set rolling by party president Amit Shah earlier this week, FM radio stations in the state are abuzz with what would be the partys main pitch for the biggest challenge before the next general elections.
Now sample this:
Nisha, Uma aajkal College nahin jaati? asks one Vidya.
Haan jab se college ke bahar kuch ladkon ne cheda hai tab se kehti hai nahin jaungi replies the mother.
A male voice then completes the message.
Pradesh ki bahu betiyon ki izzat ki suraksha ka kaun zimmedar hai? Abki Baar Bhajpaa Sarkar.
Now cut straight to Home Minister Rajnath Singh at Kairana on Tuesday. It is at the centre of the communal cauldron that is Western UP: The same place where local BJP MP Hakum Singh alleged mass migration of Hindus. It is also just a few miles away from where the Muzaffarnagar communal riots started building up to massive polarization in the entire state prior to the 2014 general elections.
So as the Partivartan Yatra rolled into Kairana, with Hakum Singh by his side, Home Minister Rajnath Singh makes a speech. And what does he say?
Jo gundagardi ke aadhar par logon ke dilon mein dehshat paida karne ka kaam karta hai, behno aur bhaiyon, Bhartiya Janata Party ki Sarkar ke aane ke baad, hum dekhenge ki usne kitne ma ka doodh piya hai.
Mark the similarity with the tagline in the radio campaign.
Now Rajnath Singh though always considered a favorite of the RSS for all these years has never been a rabble rouser. Not even at the peak of the Ram Temple Movement. That job was reserved for Kalyan Singh. All this while Rajanth played the perfect foil as the state president, as the organization man. That profile post Kalyans ouster was reserved for the likes of Sakshi Maharaj and others.
But Rajnath Singh who always kept himself ahead of the competitive curve chose to alter his rhetoric to fit into the larger role ahead.
The party is yet to declare its CM candidate for UP, but Rajnath arguably, the tallest BJP leader from the state has been a permanent fixture in all major party functions. He has shared dais with Amit Shah through out the parivartan yatra. Hes played on the administrative credentials of the BJP CMs from the state from Kalyan Singh to Ram Prakash Gupta to himself. Hes drawn a sharp comparison between the law and order during the BJP rule and the current situation.
But UP is a large state with a diverse demography. So wherever Rajnath has gone, hes tweaked his message to fit into the local discourse.
So in Kairana he played on the communal faultiness, pitch-forking it on the general law and order. In Jhansi earlier this week he spoke about criminals and their links to mining mafia.
The first thing we will do if elected to govern UP will be to hang these people upside down, he thundered at the end of his hour-long speech.
Crime and punishment, it seems will be a refrain over which BJP will now try to build its campaign in the days ahead in UP.
Berlin: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday he never intended to influence the U.S. presidential election by publishing copies of emails linked to Hillary Clinton and suggested he would do the same to Donald Trump, if he could.
The secret-spilling website in recent months has published troves of electronic messages sent to or by people in Clinton's campaign, disclosing embarrassing, if not damaging, inside conversations.
"This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election," Assange said in a statement, denying that the publications were designed to bolster support for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or to take revenge on the Democratic Party for the jailing of Chelsea Manning.
Manning, a U.S. former intelligence analyst in Iraq, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013 for passing secret U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.
Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for four years evading legal proceedings in Sweden, indicated WikiLeaks would not hesitate to publish material on Clinton's Republican rival, if it received the right material and judged it newsworthy.
"To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump's campaign, or Jill Stein's campaign, or Gary Johnson's campaign or any of the other candidates that fulfills our stated editorial criteria," he said.
The U.S. government has said Russia was responsible for hacking at least some of the emails released by WikiLeaks including those from the private account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Assange downplayed what he called the "speculative and vague statements from the intelligence community to suggest a nefarious allegiance with Russia," saying there was no evidence to tie the emails WikiLeaks published to Moscow.
Swedish prosecutors say they will interview Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Monday. The 45-year-old is facing sex crime allegations stemming from a visit to the Scandinavian country in 2010.
He has denied the allegations and refused to meet prosecutors in Sweden, saying he fears extradition to the United States to face espionage charges, if he leaves the embassy.
Miami: US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump were in a "technical tie" in critical battleground states, showed a poll released on Monday.
The Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll shows a technical tie between Clinton and Trump in Florida and North Carolina, EFE news quoted Peter A. Brown, the Assistant Director of the poll, as saying.
Clinton held a 1-point lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump in Florida and a 2-point lead in North Carolina, well within the poll's margin of error.
The error margin in the two state surveys is 3.3 per cent, and thus the states remain "too close to call".
The landline and cellphone surveys in the two states were conducted on November 3-6 among 884 possible voters in Florida and 870 in North Carolina.
According to Brown, it is not realistic to think about a scenario in which Trump wins the White House without winning either of these two states, and Clinton can win even without them that is "not a road she wants to travel".
Brown said he does not believe that a situation will arise where the winner in either state will be decided by as few as 548 votes, as was the case in George W. Bush's 2000 win over Al Gore in Florida.
"However, both states could keep the country up counting ballots well into Wednesday morning and perhaps beyond," he added.
In Florida, almost half of the registered voters have already voted by absentee ballot or in early voting, and most of those who have cast ballots so far have been Democrats, according to the latest official figures.
The state's election authorities reported on Monday that some 6.42 million voters, out of Florida's 12.9 million eligible voters, have already cast their ballots.
Of those who have voted, 2.56 million are Democrats and 2.47 million are Republicans, along with 1.23 million who are listed as independents, EFE news reported.
More than 8.5 million people voted in Florida in 2012, when President Barack Obama won re-election.
Quinnipiac University said that 47 per cent of the early or absentee voters have cast their ballots for Clinton and 43 per cent for Trump in the Sunshine State, and 45 per cent of independents have voted for the former First Lady and 43 per cent for the business magnate.
Trump has received 86 per cent of the votes of registered Republicans and Clinton has received 85 per cent of the votes of registered Democrats.
While Trump is ahead of Clinton among white voters, 57 per cent to 34 per cent, and among men, 48 per cent to 40 per cent, former Secretary of State is leading among non-white voters by 68 per cent to 23 per cent and among women, 50 per cent to 42 per cent.
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump gets smiles from his sons Eric Trump (L) and Donald Trump Jr. (R) as they leave him to take the stage to rally with supporters at an arena in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S. November 7, 2016. (REUTERS)
UPDATE, 5:30 P.M.: In Bedford County, voter turnout was almost at 53 percent with about 30,000 out of 56,000 voters showing up to the polls.
Registrar Barbara Gunter said the precincts have been so busy they haven't been sending in results as quickly.
At Knights of Columbus, out of 3,221 voters, 2002 showed up to vote as of 5:30 p.m.
"It's been a reasonably good day," Gunter said. "I'm pleased. It's been relatively normal. We were prepared for all kinds of unexpected events but they haven't occurred."
Bethesda is having some issues with its machine as an "I voted" sticker accidentally went through it.
At Thaxton Baptist Church one poll book went down but was replaced by a backup.
-- Rachael Smith
UPDATE, 5:15 P.M.: At Community Funeral Home on Fifth Street, Shirley Berry sat next to the phone, a yellow legal pad in front of her as she fielded calls from voters who needed rides to the polls on Tuesday.
Working for the Lynchburg Voters League, Berry said she took about 40 calls between 8 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Though she didnt arrive at the funeral home until 8, voters started calling around 6:30 a.m., she said, some looking for rides then and others to reserve their spot once drivers started going out.
Sitting next to her, former Lynchburg Mayor Carl Hutcherson said he'd driven all over town, including one call that took him almost to the Bedford County limits.
He started his day around 6 a.m., when he drove a friend from church to the polls. He was one of eight volunteer drivers are on hand to pick up voters, and Berry, the Lynchburg Voters League treasurer, said they were covering more ground than usual.
"We've gotten some addresses we usually don't," she said.
Shirley Franklin, 78, called in for a ride mid-afternoon and was waiting in the doorway of her Fort Avenue apartment complex, cane in hand and a smile on her face, as the Rev James Coleman and Elvin Moreno arrived to pick her up.
They drove her to the Lynchburg Public Library precinct, where Coleman escorted her to the door.
Franklin, a Trump supporter, said she thought the service provided by the Lynchburg Voters League was wonderful.
I can get on the bus [to get to the polls] but Id have to walk a good ways, she said. They helped me in the car, and we just laughed all the way to the library.
Her ride was their seventh pick-up of the day, said Coleman, vice president of the Voters League.
[During] the presidential election, the volume of calls is much higher.
Coleman talked about how rewarding it was to help get people out to the polls and said each trip is different.
Some of them are hilarious, like Miss Franklin, he said. Some are less talkative. But all of them are excited about the service. I havent found one yet who is not excited about their right to vote.
Earlier in the day, he and Moreno picked up a 61-year-old man who had recently had his voting rights restored, Coleman said.
He had a powerful moment of voting for the first time, and we had the powerful moment of helping him.
The Lynchburg Voters League will be offering rides until polls close at 7 p.m.
At Lynchburg First Church of the Nazarene on Wards Ferry Road, 921 votes out of 1,931 total registered voters were cast as of 2:34 p.m.
According to precinct chief Carol Bush, turnout in the precinct has been heavy.
Im with her, said voter Sarah Doswell, speaking of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
I just believe what she stands for, Doswell said. The way she comes across, shes well spoken and we need someone whos going to speak for us.
Nearly 44 percent of 1,911 total registered voters cast their votes at the Lynchburg Public Library on Memorial Avenue as of 3:17 p.m.
When I opened the door this morning, I wanted to run, precinct chief Estelle McCain said, laughing.
McCain said voters began lining up around 5:30 a.m. and the line of people went around the side of the building.
We had about 100 of them, McCain said. That early, Ive never seen this. This is unreal.
-- Casey Gillis, Sherese Gore
UPDATE, 4:15 P.M.: Southeastern Bedford Countys precincts had all been busy early in the morning, but crowds had thinned come the midday hours.
Moneta Elementary School was still lively in the early afternoon, however, as volunteers for both parties handed out sample ballots feet from one another. They laughed and joked during slower moments.
You get some people yell or whatever, Republican volunteer Brian OConnor said, but its all been very friendly. Were all neighbors here.
Aside from political views, those neighbors had plenty in common each party had an immigrant volunteer in tiny Moneta.
Maria Taylor had defected from Cuba with her family when she was 10. Now in her 60s, Taylor showed up at her hometown precinct to inform voters of the Republican platform. Not a huge fan of Donald Trump she said she aligned more closely with Ron Paul Taylor still saw her involvement as essential.
Im concerned where the country is headed, she said. A lot of people dont realize because of the lies of Hilliary [Clinton] and [Barack] Obama that its not the Democratic Party anymore. Its become infiltrated. I guess I want to help reveal the lies.
Taylor, having lived through Fidel Castros takeover in Cuba, said she had a brother and sister in other states who were volunteering for the GOP as well. Taylor said she saw similarities between the Democrats rhetoric and Castros, and she appreciated Trumps hesitancy around what she called globalization, coalitions of the U.S. and other nations.
Just across the sidewalk, Case Pieterson handed out blue Democratic sample ballots. Pieterson, of Thaxton, is originally from The Nethlerlands and moved to the U.S. in 1972 when his work transferred him here. He never left, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. before retiring to Bedford County.
I know were a minority here, he said, pointing to the Clinton-Kaine sticker on his vest, but the outreach was still worth his time, even in heavily red Bedford County.
Don Walker, of Moneta, stood with him and was also clad visibly to support the Democratic ticket. He pointed to the bumper stickers on the back of his vehicle.
I want everyone to know that the Democrats are here, he said proudly.
Walker has volunteered for the party in every Presidential election, save one, since 1952. In that year, he was 16 years old in his hometown of Mullen, West Virginia. The newly licensed Walker borrowed a friends car to shuttle people to the polls.
I would go up to the area where all the black people lived and take them to where the polling places were, he recalled.
Walkers father was a railroader, a union guy, in those days before coal country turned red.
Taking after its clay soil, Bedford County also visibly leaned that way Tuesday afternoon. OConnor, the Republican volunteer, pointed proudly toward his basket of depolorables, stuffed animals on a table surrounded by Trump-Pence campaign memorabilia. OConnor was excited by the turnout, saying hed spoken with several people in their 40s and 50s who were first-time voters and came out to punch the Trump ticket.
As with the rest of Bedford County, turnouts in Moneta had been well above-average 1,440 of 2,726 registered voters had checked in at 3 p.m. At Staunton River High School an hour prior, the precinct had seen 564 of its 1,317 registered voters. At midday, Chamblissburg Baptist Church had 842 of 1,902 and Goodview Elementary, which had the highest turnout of any Bedford County precinct in the 2012 election, had seen 1,133 of 2,623. Lines hadnt been longer than 25 minutes all day, but Goodview and Staunton River reported crowds of more than 100 when polls opened at 6 a.m.
--Mark D. Robertson
UPDATE, 3:35 P.M.:Even less-concentrated districts are seeing higher turnout than normal, according to election officials.
The Bethesda United Methodist Church precinct in Huddleston had about 57 percent of its total registered voters with just four hours to go before the 7 p.m. deadline.
As of just after 3 p.m. 583 of 1,023 registered voters had cast their ballots. They had at least 40 people in the first 40 minutes and more than 10 people in line at 6 a.m.
"Usually there's three to four door busters at 6 ," said election worker Ann Zudekoff, who worked the 2012 election.
As of about 3 p.m. a new voting machine was on its way to the precinct after a malfunction, although it did not hold up voters from casting their ballots, election officials said.
Nearby at the Bedford Regional Water Authority building, the precinct had hit almost 50 percent by 2 p.m. with 847 of 1,740 registered voters.
Precinct Chief Floyd Crawford said "it's been smooth" then superstitiously knocked on the wooden table. He said seeing a line of people prior to 6 a.m. was unusual for the district.
"That's not normal. Usually we don't have that many people waiting to vote," said Crawford who has worked the precinct for 10 years.
UPDATE, 2:50 P.M.: In Bedford County, all precincts have been busy with lines of voters. Registrar Barbara Gunter said some precincts have hit 50 percent turnout of registered voters, but fewer than half of precincts have called in with their numbers.
"Numbers and pace are good, just very busy," she said. "We are expecting big numbers."
Two precincts have encountered issues with polling machines one will have to manually count ballots.
Those include the Montvale Elementary School and Chamblissburg Baptist Church.
Gunter said the ballots were printed with shadowing, so they will have to be hand-counted.
UPDATE, 2 P.M.: As of midday, 20,186 Lynchburg voters had cast ballots out of a pool of 57,050 registered voters, a turnout rate of 35.9 percent.
Aside from issues such as a few paper jams, "There's really been no problems," said Lynchburg General Registrar Karen Patterson.
"Everything's going very well," she said.
In Appomattox County, 40 to 45 percent of registered voters had cast ballots as of 1:42 p.m.
--Sherese A. Gore & Ashlie Walter
UPDATE, 1 P.M.: Before noon, Liberty University's Vines Center had hosted more than 2,100 voters, putting the polling location far ahead of its 2012 presidential election pace.
When Zac Dunn, a senior and member of the Liberty Trump Coalition arrived to set up at 5:30 a.m., students were already lined up, he said.
"They were all just sitting down, bundled up. It was freezing, too. That was cool," said Dunn, who is confident there will be a strong Trump showing at the precinct. "We've had a nice steady pace of students going in."
Nearby students, who were given the day off for Election Day, waited in line for free Domino's Pizza. Free Election Day snacks are common near LU's precinct.
On Election Day 2012, 3,273 people voted at the precinct, which had the highest number of active registrations in the Hill City this year with 5,031 active registrations.
Voting officials prepared for a heavy turnout this year by moving the polling booths, check-in tables and lines to the Vines Center floor, rather than the concourse above.
Precinct Chief Vicky Bradley said the polling place is running smoothly, except for early in the morning where she forgot to finish prepping a voting machine. She had planned to set up earlier than the designated 4:45 a.m. arrival time, but her planned timeline was knocked back by bomb-sniffing dogs brought in by LU. Election workers got in right on time, though, she said.
For that one voting machine ballots were fed into a lock box on the back while election officials figured out the problem. The ballots, which were placed into what is called the "back door" will be counted later. That total will be reconciled with the number of voters checked in at the precinct.
Democrat and Republican poll watchers said the precinct was running smoothly, too.
"This is 98 percent better," said Bradley, who first started working the precinct in 2012. "... Look at all the space that we have. Look at all the seating that we have. People don't have to stand, they can sit."
In Nelson County, 47 percent of voters had cast their ballots by noon. A total of 5,260 votes had been cast across the county. At the Rockfish Valley Fire Department, the only polling place in the county's North District and the largest precinct in the county, just more than 1,000 ballots had been cast for a turnout of 50 percent.
"Nelson County votes," Registrar Jackie Britt said.
According to Britt, there were some glitches early in the morning, but no major problems to report. There were a few equipment issues, including a couple of jammed ballot machines, but all precincts opened on time and there were no pauses in voting.
--Alex Rohr and Emily Brown
UPDATE, 12:25 P.M.: At the Knights of Columbus in Forest, the wait to vote was about 20 minutes long just before noon, with a line snaking through the inside of the building and out onto the front porch. As of 11:40 a.m., 1,368 people had voted.
"We have been slammed. That's the only word for it," said precinct chief Barbara Couch.
She said turnout so far is similar to what it was in 2012. As Cynthia Calsetta-Wood checked in to vote there, one of the volunteers high-fived her 9-year-old granddaughter, Carly, after asking if she'd vote once she's old enough.
For Calsetta-Wood, that's what it's all about. She said she volunteered to babysit Carly and her two grandsons this week so she could bring them to the polls on Election Day.
"They're really at the age now that they'll remember this and [it will] influence them when they're old enough to vote," Calsetta-Wood said. "I showed her the ballot so she could see what's involved. ... Education is always a good thing. The more people who know about the system, the better."
At Fairview Christian Church, 335 votes were cast as of 11:09 a.m.
According to precinct chief Reisa Seward, there have been no issues at the polls and the turnout has been steady.
Voter Ernest Haskins brought along his eight-year-old granddaughter.
"I didn't want Donald Trump in there for real. That man ain't never had no kind of office. I mean, the way he talks--the way he's downgrading women. He don't need to be in there because he's going to start a war when he gets in there," Haskins said.
UPDATE, 10:55 A.M.: Emily Windsor arrived at her Lynchburg polling place to find three choices on the ballot she didn't know would be there.
The 21-year-old works at Magnolia Foods and co-owns an art business with her mother. She said she left the bubble for 6th District congressman and the two congressional amendment questions blank because she didn't feel qualified to help make those decisions for everyone else.
Windsor, who split breakfast with her sister, Jessica, at Market at Main just after voting Tuesday morning, said they concentrated on researching for the presidential election by "going down rabbit holes online" when checking a range of websites and articles.
"You want to make the best choice. You want to make a choice that's going to be good for everyone, not just you, and that's very difficult knowing that you're in a situation that someone else might not be in and might not see the world from your view as well," said Emily Windsor, who supported Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.
She ultimately decided to vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton after Sanders made the case to his supporters that the time was not right for a protest vote.
She referred to the "Access Hollywood" video in which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump brags about using celebrity to grope women as one reason she could never vote for him.
The Lynchburg ballot offers a choice for 6th District congressman between House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Harrisonburg City Councilman Kai Degner, a Democrat, as well as two state constitutional questions.
"I felt almost like irresponsible. ... There's all these other things that I hadn't been focusing on. There's all these things I hadn't considered," Emily Windsor said. "... I didn't want to vote for someone or vote for that issue yes or no and make some terrible decision that ends up screwing someone over."
Jessica Windsor cast a ballot for Clinton, citing similar reasoning as her sister. She considered Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson but said he talked too broadly with few specifics. She added the same criticism of Trump.
She also picked Degner after reading about his debate with Goodlatte held in Lynchburg. She cited Goodlatte's vote for the invasion of Iraq and defense of it as reasons to vote against him.
"It's that same sort of ... sentiment of, you know, go hard, but we're never going to go home," Windsor, 23, said.
Emily Windsor was pleased to learn she'd have a chance to vote in 2017 for statewide candidates. The sisters came away from the election thinking about better working the layers of the Republic.
"It all adds up. These guys on the top level are built on the millions of localities that we have, all the people who are serving in our government. If these are our two options, then we need to change something from the bottom up to the top," Jessica Windsor said. "My interest has been piqued in politics because of this election, because of this show."
UPDATE, 10:45 A.M.: Just over 904 votes had been cast at St Paul's Episcopal Church on Clay Street as of about 10:45 a.m.
Virginia Episcopal School 10th-grade students are gathered outside the church in downtown Lynchburg taking exit-polling results as part of their government class.
"We've done this several times in the past," said VES teacher Martha Terrell Burruss. "We're working with the statistics classes to get a feel for age, gender, political party and what issue is most important to them. It's a good way for the students to get involved even though they can't vote yet."
UPDATE, 10:30 A.M.: At Rustburg Elementary School in Campbell County, more than 900 residents had voted as of 10 a.m., according to precinct chief Christine Pickett.
"Things have been steady all morning long," Pickett said Tuesday.
Her team arrived at the school at 4:45 a.m., and a line started to form outside the gym, where voting would was to take place, by 5:15 a.m.
Despite surprise by some that the county had moved away from touchscreens, Pickett said there have been no surprises or challenges today and everything is moving smoothly. She recommended voters make sure they have identification at the ready and be prepared to stand in line and wait if necessary.
At the Boonsboro Ruritan Club, more than 900 had voted by just before 10 a.m.
At Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Forest, lines this morning were longer than usual, chief elections officer Debra Allen said.
This one is much larger; weve never had lines this long, she said.
Laura Parker said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump "definitely isn't my first choice" but said she was concerned about Hillary Clintons past.
I cant vote for abortion; the pro-life ticket is the most important thing to me, she said.
She said she has seen the differences between candidates vastly growing in her lifetime.
I would have voted for [former U.S. Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice; I would have worked for her campaign. I would have liked to vote for a different woman."
Standing in line to vote, Beth Hall still wasnt sure who she would vote for a first for her.
Im 55 years old, and Ive always been gung-ho about whoever Im voting for, she said. Its a toss-up. But Ill abide by whatever is decided by the American people. I think a lot of people in the country feel that way this morning.
Traffic was heavy at New London, Bedford Countys largest precinct. Earl Castle, chief elections officer, said the precinct sees about 3,500 voters at the location. The lines snaked throughout the halls and outside this morning.
Mack Burgess has voted in every election since he was 18. He brought his two grandchildren along with him: Leighanna, 6, and Nathaniel Ogden, 4.
He has brought Leighanna and Nathaniel to the New London Academy precinct since they were 10 months and 2 years old, respectively.
Burgess said he doesnt want to see the country run down the drain and is concerned about abortion and immigration policies.
When asked what concerned Calli Anderson during this election, she responded: "Whats not your concern?
I feel like I didnt hear all of the opinions on what [the candidates] were going to do, she said.
Her friend Tiffany Snell was snuggling her four-month-old Charlie close to her, trying to keep him warm as the two waited outside New London Academy.
Hes very excited to vote, she said.
At Tree of Life Ministries on Greenview Drive, there were no lines at 9 a.m., just a steady stream of people in and out.
Precinct chief Ed Foster said about 50 people were waiting in line when voting opened this morning. As of 9:30 a.m., 604 people had checked in to vote, about 25 percent of registered voters there.
As she left the building after voting, Lynchburg resident Linda Anderson said she felt hopeful. She also talked about why it was so important to vote.
"It's just something on the inside. It's my civic duty. It's my responsibility," Anderson said, referencing those who "fought, bled and died for the right."
Dixie Peck, wearing a heart-shaped American flag pin, said she felt compelled to come out and vote.
"It's been a very long time since I've voted for a president," said Peck, a Donald Trump supporter. "I have not been happy with presidential candidates. [There was] never any great choice. This time, [it's] very different. There is too much corruption going on in the White House. ... So I just had to do this not just for myself but for the safety of my country."
--Amy Trent, Rachael Smith, Casey Gillis and Mark Bailey
UPDATE, 9:30 A.M.: At First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, election officials said more than 600 votes have been cast already.
"I am looking forward to things to continue to go smoothly throughout the day," precinct chief Natalie Robinson said.
Elizabeth Becker said she supports Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, citing her temperament and experience.
"Clinton is so extremely well qualified, intelligent, and mature," she said. "It's historic to be able to vote for a woman. It makes me feel proud."
On the other hand, Wayne Dahlgren is looking for a different kind of governance.
"I wanted someone to come who is going to make change," he said. "We know Hillary would have been doing the same things, so I would have voted for anyone from the Republicans who is going to change the situation for the veterans, security, income and lots of other things."
UPDATE, 8:45 A.M.: At the Moose Lodge on Lakeside Drive, traffic occasionally backed up on the road shortly after 7 a.m. as cars crawled in and out. Drivers jockeyed for parking spots or, after voting, places back in the stream of morning commuters.
Inside, the line wrapped around the lodge's spacious interior, but it was orderly and moved steadily. Voters chatted quietly, tapped out Facebook status updates on their phones or simply made eye contact with fellow voters and smiled.
One election official estimated around 7:30 a.m. that 500 people already had voted.
Lynchburg resident Laura Winship came out to vote at Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
"I'm just glad it's going smoothly, and I pray it continues to go that way," she said. "Both today and tomorrow. We'll see how the losing side reacts."
Over at Linkhorne Middle School, Lynchburg City Councilman Turner Perrow cast his vote in support of Donald Trump.
"For me it's about the Supreme Court," he said. "We have a number of vacancies coming up and it's important that we have the right people on there. Donald Trump and I agree on enough that I think he will pick people I support," Perrow said.
Earlier this morning, the battery back-up power for the ballot counter at Linkhorne Middle School went down. After approximately half an hour of down time, election officials restarted the machine and all ballots were counted. The problem happened at several other city precincts, according to chief election official Aimee Mayer.
--Margaret Carmel and Matt Busse
UPDATE, 7:05 A.M.: A steady flow of Lynchburg voters is moving in and out of the doors of Bedford Hills Elementary School in Boonsboro before the workday starts.
Lining the driveway leading up to the school are numerous campaign signs for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Paula Davis, of Lynchburg, is volunteering outside the precinct, handing out sample ballots and greeting voters.
"This election is so important," she said. "[Democratic presidential candidate] Hillary [Clinton] is guilty of so many things. She will be taking so much money from Saudi rulers who are hostile to us. Donald Trump loves America and wants to change things after [President Barack] Obama was such a disgrace."
Foreign policy is front and center for David Allison Jr, a police officer at Liberty University who thinks Trump's foreign policy would be stronger than Clinton's.
"I remember the foreign policy during the [President Bill] Clinton years and that was terrible," he said. "It's not like I voted for Trump during the primary or anything, and I disagree with him on a litany of issues, but Clinton's foreign policy would be awful for America."
On the other hand, longtime couple Michael Meek and John Cros enthusiastically asked for stickers from the Democratic volunteer to wear after voting.
"We have been together for 15 years," said Meek. "The fact that Trump wants to repeal gay marriage and jail Hillary means we can't support him."
--Margaret Carmel
EARLIER: Voters across the Lynchburg region headed to the polls early this morning, with some polling places seeing lines hundreds of people long and some voters arriving an hour early.
Voters today will decide on the nation's next president and vice president, the 5th and 6th District congressional representatives, two proposed amendments to Virginia's constitution, plus local races in some areas.
The weather forecast appears ideal for voting, with sunny skies and a high temperature of 70 degrees expected today. Polling places are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. today; any eligible voters in line at 7 p.m. will be allowed to vote.
At Heritage United Methodist Church, Jo Anne Bryant arrived at the polling place at 5:30 a.m. and was eighth in line.
"I've always been within the first three (in line)," Bryant said. "I'm enthused to see so many people here."
Bryant has been voting at this precinct for about 12 years and said usually there only are a "few stragglers" behind her. Looking down the line of voters that stretched into the parking lot, she said, "I am impressed."
At Sheffield Elementary School in Lynchburg, about 50 people packed into the cafeteria, reading a pamphlet about the constitutional amendments while they waited quietly.
The line moved quickly, though it continued to grow. Some voters carried their small, sleepy children. A voting official commented on how busy it was this early in the day.
--Caroline Glickman and Carrie J. Sidener
For a few months this summer, gunshots drew Roanoke police officers to the area around Chapman Avenue multiple times.
Twice, an ambulance took the same 21-year-old man to the hospital to treat gunshot wounds. In one of those shootings, paramedics also loaded a woman who had been shot into an ambulance.
Other times, officers rushed to the street in the West End neighborhood for reports of gunfire with no injuries but found casings littering the ground.
In each incident, investigators scooped up any shell casings they could find so they could be entered into a massive database operated since 1999 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The database, called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, contains nearly 3 million images of ballistic evidence collected from crime scenes or test-fired from guns used in crimes.
The computer software, by combing through the network and identifying probable matches to casings, could help identify any links between the Chapman Avenue shootings.
Police departments like Roanokes have embraced the technology, submitting any firearms evidence investigators find. However, they have to wait months to get results from the forensic lab, which could be valuable in solving cases that can go cold within days.
Ballistics evidence from the Western District of Virginia joins a queue of other submissions at the state Department of Forensic Science in Richmond, which hosts a NIBIN terminal.
But this winter, the state lab in Roanoke County will once again operate a NIBIN machine . The Western Laboratory has been without a machine since 2011, when the ATF cut the program budget and started removing machines.
Cases dont go cold so fast if youre able to get results back fast, said Sgt. David Morris, supervisor of the major crimes unit in Roanoke. Youre able to utilize those leads in an investigation while its still fresh.
The department is crossing its fingers that the Richmond lab will send back results toward the end of the year for evidence in cases that happened months ago. Morris sends evidence for submission into the federal database once a week.
Among those submissions is evidence from last months FreightCar America shooting. Police have said Getachew Fekede, 53, a former employee at the rail car manufacturer, shot three workers one fatally and grazed a fourth before killing himself. Through NIBIN, police can confirm that the casings found at the scene match the handgun found there.
You dont want to leave any stone unturned, Morris said. In these cases, the investigation goes from investigating for a prosecution to investigating for closure so you can provide some closure to family members.
There are only about 160 NIBIN terminals in the country. Virginia has three others, at the forensic labs in Richmond and Norfolk and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Quantico. Some states dont have any terminals.
Each time a weapon is fired, signature dents, pings and grooves are left on the ejected shell casings. Firearms examiners say the markings are unique to the gun that produced them. Finding a potential match in NIBIN takes a few hours, then a technician examines each image to look for exact matches. Its not a scientifically proven method, but experts believe the technology is reliable, and the ATF has cited numerous success stories.
Its a lot like fingerprints, said Wendy Gibson, forensic scientist supervisor in the firearms department at the Virginia Department of Forensic Sciences Western Laboratory in Roanoke County.
Even if the system flags a probable match, it only puts the gun at the scene of a crime. It doesnt place whoever pulled the trigger. Thats where traditional detective work comes in.
It would let us know if we have a crime series going on, Morris said. Because if you keep seeing the same shell casings and bullets at certain crimes, you either know its the same group or same individual targeting specific people or areas.
Morris said shooters may quickly sell a gun used in a crime so its out of their hands. Sometimes a group of people will share a few different guns. Morris said some savvier criminals have even begun to pick up shell casings if they have the time to do so or use revolvers, which dont eject shell casings.
The ATF is working with local law enforcement agencies to encourage them to use the network. The agency says the system can give local law enforcement an advantage in preventing street violence by identifying the small number of people behind a disproportionate number of shootings.
But police have to pursue all gun offenses similarly in order to build a comprehensive collection to find matches, said James Ferguson, chief of the Firearms Operation Division at ATF. If police only submit casings from homicides or injuries, they miss out on tracking other shootings or those carrying firearms and are prohibited from doing so.
The more you put into it, the more you get out of it, Ferguson said.
Timeliness is also important, Ferguson said. Gun crime trails can go cold in a matter of days, so quickly pushing out leads to investigators may make a difference in an investigation.
Morris said Roanoke police submits evidence for any casings we can get our hands on. With the issue of timeliness, Morris and Gibson both hope to see results returning to police faster once the machine is added to the Western Laboratory this winter.
The ATF doesnt track how many hits in the system result in arrests or convictions. Its too early for Roanoke police to say what kind of effect the technology is having on crime in the city.
Morris hopes those results coming back in the next few months for shooting cases earlier in the year may give detectives new leads on investigations that have gone inactive.
Its a great investigative tool, and I hope to see success with it, especially when its tracking guns and tying crime scenes together, Morris said.
Two Nelson County orchards are among 20 companies across the commonwealth that will receive value-added grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Silver Creek Orchards in Tyro and Seamans Orchard in Roseland each will receive $250,000. The grants will be used to assist with advertising and operational costs to transition into local sales at Silver Creek and to increase the marketing and sales of locally produced apples at Seamans, according to a news release from The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Grants ranged from $49,999 to $250,000.
We have a strong history working with local producers and small rural businesses through the VAPG program, and we continue to give the program careful attention each year because those who benefit are innovative leaders working to expand their businesses, Acting USDA Rural Development Virginia State Director Janice Stroud-Bickes said in a news release. Were proud to help rural farmers, producers, business owners, families and communities maximize the return on their hard work and creativity.
According to the release, the grants were awarded to help develop new product lines or promote additional uses for established products, and the value-added grants program helps companies increase their income and keep that income in their communities.
Local and regional food systems are a key component of rural economic development. Through the Value-Added Producer Grant program, USDA Rural Development invests both in the quality of food and quality of life in rural areas like Nelson County, Economic Development Director Maureen Kelley said in an email. Local businesses like Seamans' and Silver Creek Orchards are creating jobs and growing our local economy with their innovative ideas and entrepreneurial spirit.
According to the release, USDA has awarded more than 1,400 Value-Added Producer Grants, totaling more than $183 million, since 2009.
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Three terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba were also arrested during the operation.
Credit Union Month closes in Tobago
With assets of $13 billion and 600,000 members, credit unions in Trinidad and Tobago continue to withstand the economic and other challenges with admiration. There continues to be pleasing growth in assets, members, shares and loans which demonstrates the full confidence of our membership.
Our credit unions remain a major provider of financial services for their members and we continue to emphasize that credit unions possess unique tools than can assist in poverty alleviation. They take a different approach to microfinance than other financial institutions and support small businesses by providing low cost loans and other financial services.
Our communities build their own credit unions and with the help of the World Council of Credit Unions and other regional bodies ensure that members gain access to financial building blocks for families and strengthen local economies.
Credit unions provide one of the most sustainable solutions in alleviating poverty by the provision of financial services to very low income earners. These also include financial counselling and an environment in which people of all walks of life enter and feel a sense of belonging.
We are regulated under the Co-operative Societies Act and monitored by the Commissioner for Co-operative Development who is charged with the responsibilities of ensuring that co-operatives subscribe to the best standards.
The celebrations over the month included the opening ceremony on October 16, 2016 at Point Fortin which attracted 1,300 persons; the League National Award Ceremony on October 20; the Newsday Newspaper Supplement on October 20 and the Closing Ceremony from October 27-30 2016.
Speaking on the successes of the months celebrations, Leagues Chief Operating Officer, Dianne Joseph indicated that the League was happy that credit unions in Trinidad and Tobago continue to uphold quality standards and that their performance continues to be very pleasing.
She also advised that the League places heavy emphasis on the importance of bringing families and friends together and that there is a continuous level of monitoring on its impact on bonding and relationship building. She is of the view that it is absolutely necessary for the Movement to promote social activities and encourage the participation of the community at large.
Joseph extended special commendations to the South West Regional Chapter for a grand opening ceremony and to the Tobago Regional Chapter for executing a successful closing ceremony in Tobago.
Dillon tells top cop: Get murder rate down
Dillon held a two-hour meeting with Williams and the commanders of the two divisions, Snr Supt McDonald Jacob (Northern) and acting Snr Supt Kenny McIntyre (Central) to give them a clear mandate to re-strategise and bring down the murder toll.
For the same period last year, 367 murders were committed. Dillon told Newsday that following the triple murders in DAbadie last Saturday, he was alarmed by what was taking place in Northern and Central Divisions, hence his reason for summoning the officers to a meeting yesterday. Dillon said the crime spree is not acceptable and every life lost is a concern to him and the Government.
He assured, every additional resource will be deployed to ensure lives are saved and persons intent on ending the lives of fellow citizens will be flushed out and brought to justice. He said society could no longer deal with the spate of murders and a clear message has to be sent to the criminal element that, enough is enough and all lives are important.
During the meeting, Dillon asked the top cop and his senior officers to put new measures in place to deal effectively with the spate of murders and also demanded results, telling the officers the public is equally concerned about their safety because of the killings. One of the main strategies, Newsday was told will be community policing meetings which officers will hold in various communities to foster partnerships and get persons to work with the police in the fight against crime. In the Northern Division, the first community meeting takes place Thursday while in Central Division a community meeting was scheduled for last evening in Enterprise, Chaguanas.
Newsday understands the message of the police will be for residents to reclaim their communities from criminals to make Trinidad and Tobago a safer place for all.
Williams along with Jacob and McIntyre vowed to deliver the necessary results and promised the public will see sweeping changes in the coming days which will benefit their communities in the two divisions.
Felicity couple shot dead
The shooting deaths of Narine Sharo Kalpoo and his wife Lutchmin Bibla Jaggernath were the seventh and eighth murders committed within a three day period, between Friday and Sunday.
Kalpoo, 59, and Jaggernath, 51, of Kalpoo Avenue, Felicity were found at the scene the police. Kalpoo had two adult children from a previous relationship while Jaggernath had three also from a previous relationship. Police reports stated that shortly after 11 pm on Sunday, officers of the Central Division responded to reports of a shooting and discovered the bullet-riddled body of Kalpoo slumped in the drivers seat of a Nissan Almera. Through the drivers glass window, there were several gunshot holes.
A few feet away from the entrance gate of the couples home, Jaggernaths body was found on the ground. She was shot in the head. Jaggernath, a seamstress and grandmother of two, was rushed to the Chaguanas Health Facility where she died less than an hour later. The couple together with Jaggernaths daughter Tracy Jaggernath and her (Tracy) boyfriend had earlier gone to a cinema in Chaguanas where they watched a movie.
The couple dropped off Tracy and her boyfriend at a house at Pierre Road, Felicity, before they proceeded to Kalpoo Avenue where the incident occurred.
Yesterday, a relative of Kalpoo, speaking on the basis of anonymity, recalled that there were two Hindu weddings in the community on Sunday. As such, to celebrate the occasions there were lots of music including the loud sounds of tassa drums.
He believes that the killers used the cover of the tassa drumming to shoot and kill the couple.
Although police are yet to establish a motive for the killings, the relative insisted that it was a hit.
There were two weddings last night (Sunday) so I came home drunk. There were lots of noises and so I feel the killers shot and killed them at that time.
That had to be a hit because they (killers) did not take anything. In this area you might find a duck thief, a fowl thief, an eddoes thief, but not a murderer, the relative said. Kalpoo Trace residents noted that because of the weddings they were unable to hear the gunshots. Kalpoos two adult children and their (the children) mother all live in Canada.
This is very shocking to all of us. We do not know what happened but Sharo was a loving person. He didnt drink (alcohol) or smoked, said a relative of Kalpoo who also did not want to be identified. The couple lived together for about five years, Jaggernath having left her marital home at Pierre Road in Felicity.
Jaggernaths estranged husband Indar Tallboy Jaggernath, a fisherman, recalled that he went to fish at sea at about 2 pm on Sunday together with other residents.
They returned at about 7.35 am yesterday when a relative broke the news to him.
Woman killed in Point Fortin
Her mother, Lystra Mayers, told reporters yesterday that the news of her daughters death came as a total shock, since her daughter never once mentioned that she was ever in an altercation or had been threatened.
I just got a phone call that she was attacked and that I should come to the Point Fortin Hospital, said Lystra Haynes, mother of the deceased. By the time I got to the hospital, she had already dead. According to reports, Mayers was last seen alive on Saturday night, after she had been liming with neighbours at Parry Lands, Guapo, in Point Fortin. At about 6 am on Sunday, neighbours were awakened by a shrill scream coming from Mayers house.
Concerned neighbours checked her house and found Mayers lying motionless on the floor in one of the rooms. She bore a wound to her head. She was rushed to the Point Fortin District Hospital, where she later succumbed to her wounds. The murder toll for the year now stands at 395, as compared to around the same time last year, which stood at 367.
Mayers murder was the last in a bloody weekend which saw about eight murders between Friday morning and Sunday night.
THE WEEKEND MURDERS
FRIDAY NOV 4: Felicia Dyer Francis, shot dead outside a Church on Piccadilly Street, Port-of-Spain
SATURDAY NOV 5: Frank Joseph, shot dead in DAbadie Kevin Plaza, shot dead in DAbadie Ricardo Singh, shot dead in Dabadie Zachory Roberts, murdered in Mt Lambert
SUNDAY NOV 6: Amanda Julia Mayers, beaten to death in Point Fortin.
Narine Kalpoo, shot dead in Felicity Lutchmin Jaggernath, shot dead in Felicity
Express lays off 33 workers
Under that piece of legislation certain particulars that they must provide include the names of the workers, length of service, and the actual process used in selecting workers. All that we have received from the company is a generic item of correspondence which we received last week Thursday indicating no names; just classifications, departments and numbers. We understand that they have effected the notices of retrenchment to the 33 workers so that our position really at this point in time is that we are awaiting the information from the company. This is why we have indicated that they are in breach of the procedure that they were supposed to follow under the RSB, Als told reporters.
He said the union would take the necessary action at the appropriate time, but it is still awaiting relevant information from the company.
He said when the union receives that information it would then be in a position to engage in things under the law and other action it deems appropriate, dependent on the nature of the discussions that would take place. Als said 25 employees from the Express newspaper and eight from TV6 were sent home, including staff from editorial, advertising, pressroom, news and programming. He said that on December 4, 2015, the union received notice of the intention to send home about 60 workers.
He added, We would have engaged discussions on that, and they would have had to take back a number of workers at that point in time. At the Express there has been a programme of attrition.
Over the last three years or so over 100 workers have gone from the Express in particular. What fuelled the return of some workers is that they were simply unable to engage the process of thinking in newspaper with the skeletal staff that they had so they were compelled to take back persons
Uncertainty if Trump wins
Having heard a lot of his speeches and proposals on immigration, how he will deal with terrorism, and on economic proposals about bringing back jobs to America, Ragoonath told Newsday, it will depend on how far the Republican candidate goes in implementing his policies.
For instance, on the immigration policy, he said, Does that mean that all undocumented Caribbean people will be sent back to the region? If that is a case, he said, it is not only undocumented Mexicans who will be affected, if he starts adopting the policy of sending back undocumented nationals because many undocumented Caribbean nationals live in the US.
On the issue of Obamacare, he said, to an extent Caribbean citizens in the US will suffer. I dont know for sure how many will be affected, but I do know that a number of Caribbean nationals will be impacted upon. In terms of dealing with terrorism, Ragoonath said, if Trump decides that he is going to hold to put a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean nationals will be directly affected. Many Muslims from the region travel to the US on officials and unofficial. Does that mean they will all be left in the cold until Trump decides they can come or not? he queried rhetorically.
TT was not necessarily safe from the influence of ISIS, he said, and the country may be looked at in a different light particularly as it relates to Muslims.
We have to ask what does a Trump presidency mean for Trini Muslims, he said.
The region does not know at this time what Trump will be presenting.
We could only speculate at this time what he will want should he win the presidency.
We really have to wait during the post election period until inauguration. Then we will know what his initial plans are, Ragoonath said. Noting that Trump has said that he wants to turn back the clock on various things that President Barrack Obama has put in place, Ragoonath said, We dont know exactly what he is going to turn back the clock on and how quickly. That will be our challenge. Where Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is concerned, he said, She has made it clear that it will basically be a continuation of Obamas policies. We dont expect any major upheavals in terms of her presidency.
No One Has
Done This Before
in Billboard's History
(Newser) Over the past several months, a tiny fraction of consumers of a meal replacement powder and energy bar put out by the company Soylent have complained of pretty adverse digestive reactions, including vomiting and uncontrollable diarrhea. Since 2013 the Silicon Valley startup has been producing its nutrient-dense, just-add-water powder"a jock protein shake but for nerds," reports Bloombergand suddenly, something didn't seem right. Soylent voluntarily stopped making Powder 1.6 and recalled the bars, and wrote last week on its blog that it was investigating which of its ingredients wasn't sitting well with the less than 0.1% of its consumers complaining. Now, the company is blaming algae.
Soylent notes that complaints were not reported with its so-called 1.5 formulation; a key ingredient added to the 1.6 formulation and the bars is algal flour, and Soylent suspects that's the culprit. TerraVia, the company that makes the flour, begs to differ, arguing that it is very safe and has caused few issues though it's been an ingredient in 20 million servings of various products. It points a finger at other Soylent ingredients, like soy protein isolate and glycerin. That said, Colorado energy bar maker Honey Stinger has also recalled a product that contains TerraVia's algal flour due to similar complaints. TerraVia says the companies didn't use an identical ingredient. "Our best guess has been confirmed," reports Gizmodo, which suggested that algae is the problem earlier. (The company's CEO got in hot water over his "experimental living facility.")
(Newser) Maine Gov. Paul LePage should be encouraging first-time voters in his state, not trying to scare them off, says the ACLU, which wants the Republican to be investigated for alleged voter intimidation. When LePage was asked Monday about fliers that appeared on a college campus over the weekend falsely claiming that out-of-state students registering to vote would have to immediately pay hundreds of dollars for things like vehicle registration, he echoed the fliers' claims by warning about voter fraud and stressing that new residents must "follow all laws that regulate voting, motor vehicles, and taxes," the Washington Post reports. Maine has same-day voter registration, and an estimated 16,500 students from out of state.
Maine Attorney General Janet Mills said it was "shameful" to suggest that there would be financial consequences for registering to vote, which does not automatically trigger the likes of vehicle excise taxes, the Portland Press Herald reports. "The governor's statement seems designed to make college students afraid to vote," says Zachary Heiden, legal director at the ACLU of Maine. "College students who live in Maine have the right to vote in Maine, and they are not subject to different laws than anyone else." The executive director of the Maine GOP joined Democrats in condemning the fliers, saying the party has "worked incredibly hard to grow our support on campuses" and is also hurt by attempts to discourage voting. (Read more Election 2016 stories.)
(Newser) A University of Virginia administrator who says she was falsely portrayed as the villain in Rolling Stone's now-discredited gang rape story has been awarded $3 million by a federal jury. The jury decided to award former associate dean Nicole Eramo $2 million from journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely and $1 million from Rolling Stone, which has said it will cover the damages against Erdely, the Washington Post reports. On Friday, the jury decided that the magazine, its publisher, and Erdely had defamed Eramo, who received angry calls and emails calling her the "dean of rape" after the story was published in 2014.
Eramo, whose lawsuit sought $7.5 million, testified Monday that the story, which accused her of trying to discourage "Jackie" from reporting her alleged gang rape to the police, left her feeling so low that she contemplated suicide at one point, the AP reports. Eramowho underwent a double mastectomy for breast cancer weeks after the story was publishedsays she was reassigned from her duties counseling sexual assault victims and lost her associate dean title. "I mourn the loss of Dean Eramo on a daily basis," she said. "It wasn't just a job." After the decision Monday, she said she was "happy to put this behind me and move on to the next chapter of my life." (Read more University of Virginia stories.)
(Newser) Police in South Carolina say they've found a third body on the property of suspected serial killer Todd Kohlheppand they think this one could be the last, at least on that property. Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger says that like another body found on Sunday, it hasn't been determined whether this is the body of a man or a woman, CNN reports. "As we stand here tonight, we feel like there aren't any more bodies on this property," a sheriff's department spokesman said at the Woodruff property Monday, per the Greenville News. Investigators say they plan to search other properties, some of them out of state.
Kohlhepp was arrested last week after a missing woman was found chained up in a container on his property. The body of her boyfriend was found in a shallow grave the next day. Police say that after the arrest, Kohlhepp confessed to a quadruple murder in a motorcycle shop in 2003, the AP reports. WSPA notes that Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright says that before the confession, he granted Kohlhepp's requests to send college money to a girl he is helping raise, send a picture to his mother, and speak to his mother in person. "We had prayer, the mom and I and the stepdad. And I drove them here and then he did as he agreed. He kept his word," Wright says. (Read more Todd Kohlhepp stories.)
(Newser) A German couple who's spent four decades sailing the world has apparently been abducted by pirates for a second time, with what appears to be a fatal result. Jurgen Kantner and Sabine Merzwho were held by Somali pirates for 52 days in 2008, until a six-figure ransom was reportedly paidwere seized by Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines on Saturday, the New York Times reports. Merz fired at the militants, and "our men shot back and killed her," an Abu Sayyaf spokesman told the Philippine Daily Inquirer over the phone. A man who identified himself as Kantner then came on the line claiming, "pirates took our boat and they took us." Abu Sayyaf militants also killed two Canadians earlier this year.
The German Foreign Ministry says it's investigating the reports but hasn't confirmed the abduction or Merz's death. However, the Philippine military released a photo of the attacked boat, recovered on Sunday, which shows it to be the same 30-foot yacht, dubbed the Rockall, that was seized by pirates in 2008. A military rep says a woman's naked body was also found on board bearing "gunshot wounds" and signs of a sexual assault. "A shotgun was also recovered beside the woman's body," the rep says. A year after their first abduction, Kantner told the AFP that he would keep sailing, but "I pray to God that pirates won't get me again. Of course, buying a gun is an option." (An American man was held for 18 days by Dolly Parton-loving pirates.)
(Newser) A "hideous" photo of a St. Louis police officer is drawing comparisons to photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, reports BuzzFeed. Leaked to KMOV, it shows a smiling officer giving a thumbs-up as he holds the limp arm of 28-year-old Omar Rahman, a black man who died of an accidental drug overdose on Aug. 8, the same date the photo was taken. Rahman's mother, Kimberly Stanton, tells the Washington Post she wants all officers involved punished "because my child, he couldn't do anything. He was helpless. He was gone." Her attorney, who's seeking memory cards and police records regarding camera use, says he'll file a lawsuit within two weeks. The photo is "a blatant example of disregard for human life" and was racially motivated, he says. "I'm disgusted by it."
According to Chief Timothy Swope of the North St. Louis County Police Cooperative, the unidentified officer, who is white, was arranging Rahman's body to check for signs of trauma and "to do [a] proper crime scene investigation." While he "may have used very poor judgment" in giving a thumbs-up to the camera, "there's no malice there," Swope says. He also denies that the photo has anything to do with race, noting 60% of the police force and nine of 12 supervisors are black; an internal investigation is ongoing. In a letter sent to KMOV last week, a lawyer for the NCPC threatened to "pursue other enforcement remedies" if the station didn't return all copies of the "stolen" photo. KMOV, which says it received the photo from a law enforcement official, has refused. (Read more police stories.)
(Newser) Donald Trump still isn't saying if he'll accept the results of the election, but a lawsuit filed by his campaign's lawyersand promptly tossed by a judgeTuesday in Nevada may give an indication. CNN reports the Trump campaign is suing Clark County's registrar of voters; the campaign claims the registrar kept polling locations in minority-heavy areas open "two hours beyond the designated closing time." While some polling locations did stay open after they were supposed to close last Friday, Nevada law requires them to stay open to allow anyone already in line to vote, according to Vox. Lines at some locations were two hours long. "We want people to vote," a Clark County spokesperson says.
Judge Gloria Sturman was "exasperated" with Trump's lawyers during a hearing on the lawsuit, Vanity Fair reports. What are you saying?" she asked. "Why are we here?" Sturman refused to make the names of poll workers public, as requested by Trump's lawyers, saying she was concerned they would be harassed just for "doing their civic duty helping their fellow citizens vote." The lawsuit was thrown out. (Read more Election 2016 stories.)
One of the most popular anime series Hunter X Hunter is rumored to have a follow-up chapter. After the end of chapter 360, fans have been waiting for the release of Hunter X Hunter Chapter 361. It has been awhile since the creator released the follow up due to production issues that saddened the fans of the animated series.
However, it was speculated that Yoshiro Togashi might pass the work to his wife, Naoko Takeuchi. Since then, fans are left hanging after the end of chapter 360 ended. Hunter X Hunter Chapter 360 concluded to a new plot called the "Dark Continent", and many fans are left wondering what Kurapika and the rest of the main characters have discovered.
Although the change of management deeply affected the flow of the hit anime series, it was reported that the script of Hunter X Hunter chapter 361 is under production. Takeuchi has been spotted attending multiple manga events such as Osamu Akimoto's Kochira Katsushika-ku Kamearikouen-Mae Hashutsujo 40-th anniversary celebration, which makes fans excited to the next Hunter X Hunter chapter 361. It was reported as well that Togashi experienced some health problems due to severe back problems, the reason the change of creator or hiatus.
Takeuchi is a talented and has a flexible wit to this kind of work. This is a good indication that Hunter X Hunter chapter 361 will be one great episode. Although Hunter X Hunter Chapter 361 released date is not yet announced, it is expected to arrive 2017.
Hunter X Hunter is a Japanese manga series written by Yoshiro Togashi. The story focuses on a young boy named Gon Freecss, who was told that his father was dead was alive and well known Hunter. He then proceeds to an unimaginable experience and journey in search of his father, and also becoming a strong Hunter.
Check out Fans Sentiments about the hiatus
The selection of pickup trucks has been picking up in the new millennia. But next year, the choices will be more exciting with new state-of-the-art pick-up trucks.
Business Insider rounded up some of the modernistic automobiles that are coming in 2017. Here are the pickup trucks that made it to their list.
Ford F-Series Super Duty Pickup
FoxNews reported that this pickup truck has been named the Truck of Texas of this year. The all-new truck featuring all-aluminium body is the best in class in terms of payload and tow ratings. It has a 360-degree camera, trailer backup assist, adaptive cruise control, as well as 440hp per 925 lb.-ft. and 6.7 liters of turbocharged 6-cylinder diesel.
GM Canyon Denali
With a maximum trailer tow rating of 7,000 pounds, this pickup truck has 7-inch diagonal touchscreen radio that features heated steering wheel and 4G WiFi connectivity for a maximum of seven devices. It has semi-autonomous features as well, like forward collision and lane departure alert system.
Toyota Tacoma
Toyota Tacoma, on the tech viewpoint, has JBL speakers, navigation, and other downloadable apps. While the pick-up truck doesn't employ a sophisticated infotainment system, CNet reports, the 7-inch touchscreen is easy to use and organized. However, it has keyless entry, rear park assist and cross traffic warning systems, wireless charging, and blind spot monitors.
Mercedes-Benz X-Class (Stylish Explorer)
While the Mercedes-Benz X-Class pick-up truck will not be for sale in the United States, the Stylish Explorer version of the pick-up truck will. It comes with a loop LED stripe on the tailed front with 22-inch wheels. The X-Class concept, on the other hand, comes with big off-road tires with its own fire extinguisher, Business Insider reports. The report also states that the Mercedes has driver assistance systems that have radar and ultrasound sensors as well as cameras.
Dodge Ram 1500
The classic Dodge Ram pick-up truck has been updated with its 10,030-pound tow rating. It has a slightly bigger 8.4-inch infotainment touchscreen that allows drivers to view back-up and cargo cameras. It has the standard rear park assist system and an optional rear backup camera.
There was a rumor circulating that Jamie Dornan will be replace by someone who's more hot star Ian Somerhalder. The movie "Fifty Shades of Grey" had an overwhelming success and hit all over the world, and the next on trilogy is "Fifty Shades Darker" which will be a success too for sure.
Will Christian Grey be replaced? The star Jamie Dornan answer it on his interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" that the rumor would be an expensive mistake, given he's been the Christian Grey on two movies. Jamie's appearance on the show didn't clarify if he's still the Christian Grey on Fifty Shades Freed . Also Jamie appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" to promote his new movie "The Fall".
On the interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" the star Jamie answers the rumor of replacing him as Christian Grey was a simple "No. I don't know," and continuing with "That would be hard for them to do, considering we shot both of the movies," the actor laughs off the rumor. When he asked if ever he was replaced by Ian Somerhalder, the answer is "That's an expensive mistake, I'll put it that way. But good luck to him-he'll be great!".
According to Jamie, he's uncomfortable to with the sadistic role of Christian Grey and believes the hottie "Vampire Diaries" would make a great fit for the role, recommending him means he really doesn't happy with the characters preferences, well imagine a sadistic vampire Christian Grey? Wow.
Is it still possible to have Jamie Dornan be replaced as Christian Grey? The answer is No, having the stars Jamie and Dakota has a contract, signed by them to have finished the roles of the three movie installments from the books "Fifty Shades of Grey".
"Fifty shades Darker" will be on cinema after next year's Valentine Day, February 17 and the possible airing of the last trilogy "Fifty Shades of Freed" is on year 2018..
A few weeks before Survivor Series 2016, WWE made a huge announcement this week about The Undertaker's return to the business after nearly seven months of being away from the ring. The Deadman is scheduled to appear on SmackDown Live episode 900th on November 15th.
SmackDown Live is set to celebrate its milestone 900th episode at the Mohegan Sun Arena. Monday Night Raw already celebrated its 1000th episode back in 2012, and if SmackDown's celebration is as big as Raw's, then fans are in for quite a night.
This is also the Deadman's first time in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, in a decade. The Undertaker is not only a cornerstone for the whole WWE, but he's also one of the biggest names in SmackDown's main roster since the beginning.
This had the internet buzzing that there could be more than one appearance from the Deadman himself. The episode is set just mere days before Team Raw and Team SmackDown Live clash at Survivor Series, many believe there will be more to it than just an "appearance".
Although some may argue that Mark Calaway's too old and out of shape to wrestle a series of matches, die-hard wrestling fans are still looking forward to what he can bring to the table. After all, this is a living legend, a man who turned a sketchy gimmick into one of the most popular gimmicks in WWE history.
According to WrestlingNewsWorld.com, The Undertaker is rumored to save his brother Kane from a current storyline that will put him against the likes of Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper.
"There is speculation that WWE may setup a match between The Undertaker and Randy Orton on this episode of SmackDown. This could be the reason WWE had Orton align himself with The Wyatt Family against Kane recently, as a possible return opponent for Taker at a later date.
The company feels that a 50-year old Undertaker would work best with a veteran like Orton inside the ring, with a less risk of possibly getting hurt in a match."
The 900th episode of SmackDown LIVE airs Nov. 15 at 8/7 C on USA Network.
BREAKING NEWS! The Undertaker returns to Wilkes-Barre on 11.15 for the 900th episode of @WWESmackDownLiv at @MoheganSunArena #WWEWILKESBARRE pic.twitter.com/okWlFNw1AH Mohegan Sun Arena PA (@MoheganSunArena) November 2, 2016
It was also rumored that WWE is trying to pull Conor McGregor or Ronda Rousey for the 33rd annual Wrestlemania next year. There has been plenty of talk trying to work a deal for a UFC star. At Wrestlemania 32, WWE hinted a Ronda Rousey vs. Stephanie McMahon fight, so she would obviously be the first choice. However, UFC star Conor McGregor has gotten a lot of heat with a lot of WWE Talent saying that WWE Superstars are not as tough as MMA stars. It was rumored that some WWE Superstars wants to face him and school him in the squared circle.
Could Hulk Hogan possibly return to the WWE after that scandal against Gawker Media? The Hulkster reached a $31 million settlement for his lawsuit against Gawker Media regarding a leaked sex tape. Rumors started that this could pave the way for his return to WWE.
Last summer, Hogan was fired by WWE after a leaked audio of the superstar making racist remarks surfaced. WWE made a choice to distance itself from the Hulkster while he's at an all-time-low with the public. After all, this could get WWE a lot of heat.
But that was over a year ago, and much of that criticism has died down. In fact, fans are already complaining about WWE's separation with Hogan. There are also fans who believe that WWE should never bring him back.
Fairbanks, AK (99707)
Today
Flurries and a few snow showers throughout the day. High 13F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 30%..
Tonight
Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low around 0F. Winds light and variable.
New Delhi:
The race to become Barack Obama successor is in its full swing, and both the presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are up in arms to become the 45th President of the United States.
In the buildup to the election, the two candidates have locked horns in three television debates with controversies are piling up against both the White House hopefuls .
While former secretary of state and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is said to be leading the exit polls tally, accusation of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigations into emails allegedly linked to her use of a private server have dented her images.
On the other hand, Republican candidate Donald Trump has found himself entangled in the allegations of sexual misconduct.
As the world goes tizzy, here is all about the US presidential polls.
Know the parties and their agenda
Republicans
Also known as America's right-wing party or GOP - or Grand Old Party, Republicans' agenda focusses on laws like anti-gun control, anti-immigration, anti-abortion and anti-universal healthcare. Republicans press for individual liberty and small government.
The Democrats
Democractic are USs left-leaning party. The party focusses on using taxation to pay for bigger government projects and welfare schemes. Pro-gun control, pro-choice and pro-universal healthcare, are the main areas on Democratic focus.
Election process through Electoral College
The 50 states of the US have a defined number of electors in the electoral college. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors that include 435 representatives, 3 electors (given to the state of Columbia) and 100 senators. To win a majority, a candidate needs to collect at least 270 electors, which essentially means half the total number plus one.
Important timings for India
The voting is expected to open between 6am to 7am and close at around 7pm to 8pm (US time) on , November 8 in most of the areas. It may continue till 9pm in Iowa and North Dakota.
The polling will start at 8pm (New York Time) on November, 8 or 5:30am (India time) on on .
In San Francisco it will start at 8pm time on November 8, Tuesday or 8:30am IST on .
When will the next US president be announced?
The winner will be announced on , after the counting of the Electoral College. The new president will assume the role of US commander-in-chief will move to White House on .
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New Delhi:
India has asked UK counterparts to expedite of industrialist Vijay Mallya from the UK to face probe in the money laundering case against him after the two countries on Monday has agreed not to allow fugitives and criminals escape law and resolved to facilitate outstanding extradition.
In talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his British counterpart Theresa May, sources say, the issue of extradition requests figured and officials dealing with the issue from both sides were directed to meet at the earliest.
Sources said India expects forward movement in Mallya's extradition from the UK following the talks. They said the specific issue of Mallya's extradition had also figured in the talks between the two sides in the run up to the meeting between Modi and May.
Former IPL boss Lalit Modi is also evading law in India and recent talks may help Indian authorities to push for his early extradition as well. Both Mallya and Modi, who have made the UK their home, are wanted by the ED in money laundering cases.
Asked whether Mallya issue figured in the talks, Joint Secretary (Europe) in the External Affairs Ministry Randhir Jaiswal referred to the Indo-UK joint statement issued after the discussions which said the two Prime Ministers affirmed their strong commitment to enhancing cooperation under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.
"The two leaders agreed that fugitives and criminals should not be allowed to escape the law. They expressed their strong commitment to facilitate outstanding extradition requests from both sides.
"In this context, they directed that the officials dealing with extradition matters from both sides should meet at the earliest to develop better understanding of each countries legal processes and requirements; share best practices, and identify the causes of delays and expedite pending requests," the statement said.
It also said the two leaders agreed that regular interactions between the relevant India-UK authorities would be useful in resolving all outstanding cases expeditiously. The Enforcement Directorate has already sought issuance of an Interpol red corner notice against Mallya in connection with its money laundering probe against him.
India has asked Britain to hand over 57 wanted people, including Chirstian Michel, the alleged middleman in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal. 17 extradition requests from Britain are pending with Indian authorities.
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Lucknow:
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has ordered the management of a private medical college in the city to pay Rs 25 lakh damage per student for "wrongly admitting" 150 of them in the MBBS 2015-16 course.
The court directed the management of the college to deposit the entire amount in respect of all the 150 students with the director general of medical education, Uttar Pradesh within two months.
The director general, in turn, shall distribute the money among the students after due verification.
The court though refused to grant relief as sought by the petitioner students and dismissed all the writ petitions filed by them in the matter.
The petitioners had sought a direction to allow them to appear in the first year MBBS examination for 2015-16. The judgment was delivered by justice Devendra Kumar Arora on six writ petitions moved by some students.
State counsel Sanjay Bhasin said the college had no affiliation or recognition of Medical Council of India (MCI) and 150 students were wrongly admitted without proper counselling, in a process which was "neither transparent nor fair".
"This court is constrained to observe that there has been a wilful disobedience by the respondent medical college of the orders passed by the apex court, which is nothing but an interference with the administration of justice. Disobedience of an order of a court, which is wilful, shakes the very foundation of the judicial system and can erode the faith and confidence reposed by the people in the judiciary, and undermines the rule of law," the court said.
The court further observed that the medical college had shown "scant respect" to the order passed by the highest court of the country and proceeded, under haste, to impart medical education to the petitioners in the first year MBBS course, possibly to make an "unlawful gain, adopting unhealthy practices".
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New York:
To avoid possible voter intimidation, the US Supreme Court has rejected an 11th-hour move by the Democratic Party in Ohio seeking to prevent Donald Trump supporters from carrying out certain actions.
The legal battle, followed across the country because of its potential implications, had stemmed from Trump's assertions on the campaign trail -- without providing evidence -- that the election was likely to be rigged and that his supporters should watch polling sites on Tuesday.
Fearing this call would lead to Trump supporters intimidating voters, particularly minorities who are more likely to support Democrat Hillary Clinton, the Ohio Democratic Party filed a lawsuit and initially won their case in federal court on Friday.
US District Judge James Gwin had issued a ruling barring activities including following, questioning or photographing voters or their vehicles.
The Trump campaign appealed and won, with the Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Sunday suspending Gwin's order, saying the Ohio Democratic Party had not sufficiently substantiated their arguments.
On Monday, the shorthanded Supreme Court -- with eight justices instead of the usual nine as Republicans have blocked President Barack Obama's nominee to replace the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia -- sided with the appeals court. In keeping with protocol, the high court is reluctant to intervene just before a national election.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a statement that she voted to deny the Democratic party's case because Ohio already has laws in place to stymie voter intimidation.
Trying to block or harass voters at the polls harkens back to the intimidation of black voters in modern US history, especially in the formerly segregated South.
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New Delhi:
India and the UK on Monday signed two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) on increasing cooperation in intellectual property rights (IPRs) and ease of doing business.
Both the MoUs were exchanged in the presence of Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and her British counterpart Theresa May in New Delhi.
The MoU on IPR was inked between the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom (UKIPO).
It is intended to promote innovation, creativity and economic growth in both countries, an official statement said.
It establishes a broad and flexible framework through which both countries can exchange best practices and work together on training programmes and technical exchanges to raise awareness on IPRs and better protect intellectual property rights.
Also read | India asks UK to extradite 60 wanted people including Vijaya Mallya and Christian Michel
The priority initiatives under the MoU include exchange of best practices, experiences and knowledge on IP awareness among the public, businesses and educational institutions of both countries, collaboration in training programmes, exchange of experts, technical exchanges and outreach activities.
It also covers exchange and dissemination of best practices, experiences and knowledge on IP with the industry, universities, R&D organisations and SMEs through participation in programmes and events, exchange of information and best practices on processes for disposal of applications for patents, trademarks, industrial designs and Geographical Indications, as also the protection, enforcement and use of IP rights.
Also read | UK offers first-ever easier visa regime for Indian businessmen
Under this, both the countries will also enhance cooperation in the development of automation and implementation of modernisation projects, cooperation to understand how traditional knowledge is protected and the exchange of best practices, including traditional knowledge related databases and raising of awareness of existing IP systems.
The MoU on ease of doing business will harness UK expertise to support Indias efforts to climb the World Bank Ease of Doing Business ratings.
In the World Banks latest Doing Business report, Indias place remained unchanged from last years original ranking of 130 among the 190 economies that were assessed on various parameters. But the last years ranking has been revised to 131 from which the country has improved its place by one spot.
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Raipur:
A Delhi University professor and a JNU professor have been booked along with eight others on charges of murder of a tribal villager in insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, police said on Monday.
An FIR was lodged against DU professor Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU professor), Vineet Tiwari (from Delhis Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate (Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) and others along with Maoists for the murder of Baghel based on the complaint of his wife on Saturday, Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) SRP Kalluri told PTI.
They were booked under section 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC at Tongpal police station, the IG said adding, strongest possible action will be taken against those guilty after the investigation.
Though the case was registered on Saturday, the matter came to light late Monday evening.
Armed Naxals had allegedly killed the villager, Shamnath Baghel, with sharp weapons on late night on Friday (November 4) at his residence in Nama village under Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area, around 450 kms away from Raipur.
Baghel and some of his associates were spearheading the protest against Naxal activities in their village since April this year.
As per the complaint lodged by the victims wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May this year. Even armed ultras were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday, the IG said.
His wife has sought action against Sundar and others accusing them of murdering her husband, Kalluri added.
Notably, Baghel and other villagers of the region had earlier given a complaint with Tongpal police in May this year against Sundar, Prasad, Tiwari, Parate and an unidentified woman activist from Sukma for allegedly inciting innocent tribals against the government and seeking their support for Maoists.
Villagers of Nama and the neighbouring Kumakoleng village (both under Kumakoleng village panchayat) had started a self-motivated protest against Maoist activities in their villages after forming its own security group named Tangiya (axe) group in April this year.
Following the development, according to villagers, Sundar and others went in the village to allegedly threaten them not to oppose the Maoists, the IG said.
Sundar had gone to the village with fake name Richa Keshav, he added.
A letter was then written to the Vice Chancellors of both DU and JNU informing that Bastar police was conducting an inquiry against both the professors following complaint received against them, he added.
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New Delhi:
Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar visited a BSF base camp in Jammu on Tuesday to express his gratitude to the troops guarding the International Border and the LoC.A
Terming BSF troops as the "real heroes" of the nation, the Bollywood actor paid tribute to all the jawans, who lost their lives in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
Akshay also paid tributes to the paramilitary soldiers who attained martyrdom in the recent spate of ceasefire violations and encounters by Pakistani forces.
#WATCH: Akshay Kumar pays tribute to soldiers (who lost their lives in ceasefire violations/encounter) at BSF base camp in Jammu pic.twitter.com/IxGoxCFHrD a ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
J&K: Akshay Kumar at BSF Base camp in Jammu, pays tribute to soldiers who lost their lives in ceasefire violations and encounter pic.twitter.com/NCmR1RzuER a ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
The Bollywood action star follows matter of national security and defense very closely and has always come out openly in lauding the efforts of the defence forces in guarding the frontiers of the country.
The actor who set Bollywood ablaze and created a mark of his own with his trademark death-defying stunts in action movies has been seen portraying characters in Bollywood movies whose subject revolve around defence and national security. Prominent among them have been Holiday, Baby, Gabbar and Airlift which were critically acclaimed and commercially successful.
J & K you beauty!Just returning from meeting the heroes who are fighting a battle everyday to protect us. @BSF_India thank you for having me pic.twitter.com/TqonAtaF8L a Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) November 8, 2016
Earlier, the actor, whose father was also an army man, had donated Rs 9 lakh to the family of a martyred BSF jawan Gurnaam Singh.
This donation came days after his earlier donation of Rs 80 lakh to the army.A
Terming BSF troops as the "real heroes" of the nation, Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar today paid tribute to all the jawans, who lost their lives in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
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United Nations:
India has strongly criticised the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for taking months to consider sanctioning leaders of groups it has itself designated as terror entities, in an obvious reference to the "technical hold" on India's bid to get Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar banned by the UN.
Asserting that the council is stuck in its own "time warp and politics", India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin slammed on Monday the council's inability to sanction the leaders of terrorist organisations.
"While our collective conscience is ravaged everyday by terrorists in some region or another, the Security Council gives itself 9 months to consider whether to sanction leaders of organisations it has itself designated as terrorist entities," Akbaruddin said at a session on equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council here.
Earlier this year, China had extended the "technical hold" on India's move to get Azhar designated as a terrorist by the UN. The six-month validity of the technical hold lapsed in late September and China sought another three-month extension on India's bid.
He lamented that the snail-paced and "never-ending carousel of discussions" on UNSC reforms, saying "it is time to break the impasse" to urgently reform the body that is "unresponsive" to the current global situation.
The inability to respond to humanitarian situations, terrorist threats and peacekeeping vulnerabilities during this year itself are part of the price that is being paid for the international community's lack of progress on the critical matter, he noted.
"On issues pivotal to international security such as Syria, there is inaction, and on other situations like dealing with the peacekeeping crisis in South Sudan we see fragmented action which is not implemented even months after being agreed upon," Akbaruddin said.
"The Security Council, stuck in its own time warp and politics, can only be described as working randomly on the basis of a mix of ad-hocism, scrambling and political paralysis. Need one say more about the urgency of the need for reform of this relic which has long been unresponsive to the needs of our time," he said.
Akbaruddin said the never-ending carousel of discussions on UNSC reforms leaves many in the international community perplexed as the crucial reform of the Security Council has been delayed despite both its importance and its urgency.
He pointed out that the Council's global governance structure does not cease to surprise the international community with its persistent inability to even effectively engage with the tasks at hand.
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New Delhi:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet the chiefs of Indian Army, Navy and Air Force at 2 pm on Tuesday to review the current national security.
According to reports, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is expected to be present in the review.
The meeting is considered crucial in the context of continuing ceasefire violations along the Line of Control.
According to sources, a record number of infiltration attempts along the international border have been witnessed this time.
The BSF has foiled at least 15 infiltration bids since the surgical strikes of September 29.
Also read | J-K: Pakistan violates ceasefire again, targets Indian posts along LoC
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Islamabad :
Lodging a strong protest over alleged "unprovoked" firing by Indian forces along the LoC, Pakistan has summoned the Indian Deputy High Commissioner. This is the fifth time in just over two weeks, when Pakistan summoned the Indian Deputy High Commissioner.
"Director General (South Asia & SAARC) Dr Mohammad Faisal, summoned the Indian Deputy High Commissioner, Mr J P Singh, on Tuesday and strongly condemned the unprovoked ceasefire violations" by the Indian Forces on Monday on the LoC in Nikial and Jandrot sectors, Pakistan Foreign Office said.
The firing resulted in the death of 3 civilians, including a woman and injuries to four others, including a 5-year-old boy, the Foreign Office said in a statement. "The Director General urged the Indian side to respect the 2003 Ceasefire Understanding; investigate the continued incidents of ceasefire violations; instruct the Indian forces to respect the ceasefire, in letter and spirit, stop targeting the villages and civilians and maintain peace on the LoC," the statement said.
Deputy High Commissioner Singh has also been summoned to the Foreign Office over ceasefire violations on October 25, 26, 28 and November 1. On October 27, Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale to the foreign ministry and conveyed the decision of the Government of Pakistan to declare an Indian High Commission official "persona non-grata".
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New Delhi:
Thirty-two Indian peacekeepers were injured and 1 local child was killed in an explosion in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, according to UN Mission. According to reports, the Indian peacekeepers were out on a morning run in the western Goma neighbourhood of Keyshero.
Army officials in New Delhi said two of the 32 injured soldiers require surgery but are not critical. They said that none of the soldiers were seriously injured in the blast that happened at 0615 IST when the Indian troops were doing physical training. Sources said a girl, about eight-years-old, was killed in the blast. The peacekeepers were taken to a UN military hospital.
India has an impeccable record when it comes to making contributions for peacekeeping missions under the UN Flag in disturbed areas or regions in the world which are affected by internal conflict, civil war or armed rebellion by local militia or guerrilla outfits.
Read: India criticises UN Security Council for 'unimplementable' peacekeeping mandates
India has been the largest troop contributor to UN missions since its inception. So far India has taken part in 43 peacekeeping missions with a total contribution exceeding 180,000 troops and a significant number of police personnel having been deployed.
As per the latest records, India has a total contribution of 7499 comprising of 899 policemen, 6507 troops and 65 military experts as on 31st August 2016.
Recently Indian Peacekeepers were lauded by the UN for their efforts in preventing a carnage in the South Sudan conflict which resulted in the death of two of its soldiers..
The Indian Army has a brigade of about 3,500 soldiers posted in Congo on UN peacekeeping duty. The injured soldiers belong to Indian Battalion 1.
The UN missions troops and police personnel are drawn from over 50 countries and was deployed in 1999.
United Nations Organisation Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or MONUSCO is a peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which was established by the United Nations Security Council to monitor the peace process in the country.
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New Delhi:
In a move to pierce heavy blanket of smog that has wrapped Delhi-NCR for last 8 days, Delhi government recently took a slew of measures to put crippling pollution crisis to an end. However, environmentalists believe that these emergency measures are not effective for a long run, and they are just temporary ways of damage control.
Air pollution is posing threat to more than 40 million people in Delhi-NCR.
News Nation spoke to environmentalist, Vimlendu Jha, founder of organisation Swechha, on government measures and current smog condition.
Excerpts of the interview
Q: What is your take on current smog condition in Delhi-NCR?
A: We have inherited the problem. The current smog crisis is not new to Delhi. The capital is struggling to breathe fresh since long, but centre and state government have been inefficient to chalk out concrete plans to tackle pollution from construction sites, and waste burning, leading to this SOS problem. The centre and state government need to adopt a two-pronged approach and e strong political will to implement a time-bound programme to stop construction waste and waste-burning.
Q: Government is saying that fire crackers burning and stubble burning in Haryana and Punjab are the main reasons for smog?
A: Fire burning and stubble burning are contributing just 10-20 per cent of the current smog condition, construction and waster-burning are the main culprits of air pollution. The current condition is the result of the 30 thousand hectares of deforestation and 80 thousand hectares of concrete in last 10 year.
Q: Your take on these major measures:
- Delhi roads will be sprinkled with water jets from :
Temporary move. This will help but you cannot sprinkle water all over Delhi. The move will help to control smog in a particular location and that too temporary.
- Electric Generators banned in Delhi for 10 days
Government needs to have permanent effective guidelines to control pollution from industries. These are non-sustainable measures, governments need to mull ways on finding sustainable and permanent regulatory measures to tackle the problem.
- Scope of artificial rain
This is not practical approach. How can you suddenly talk about artificial rain, Delhi-NCR is vast and huge. It raises concerns regarding secondary air and water pollution, as chemicals used to cause precipitation. Also, Delhi's dry weather is not suitable for cloud-seeding. For artificial rain some clouds are needed to carry out the process. Humidity in the air is too less for it to succeed in Delhi. Cloud seeding also need huge amount of water. We have people dying for drinking water in the country. Also, the costing involve should be talked about.
More about Cloud seeding or artificial rain
What is cloud seeding?
Cloud seeding or artificial rain is a way to induce moisture in the clouds by using silver iodide or dry ice. The chemical is spread onto the clouds by using an aircraft or an artillery gun which leads to a rain shower.
Countries that had used cloud seeding technique
China- In July this year, China allocated 199 million yuan ($29.76 million) to spend on its cloud seeding program to prevent drought.
A team of scientists from Beijing, in July this year, shared cloud seeding technology to India to fight droughts in Maharashtra's Marathwada region.
United States- US occasionally the technology to induce snow falls in ski resorts.
UAE: Cloud seeding is frequently used by UAE to recharge its ground water.
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New Delhi:
Indian army has an impeccable record when it comes to making contributions for peace keeping missions under the UN Flag. Indian army has been second to none in contributing troops to disturbed area or regions in the world which are affected by internal conflict, civil war or armed rebellion by local militia or guerrilla outfits.
India has been the largest troop contributor to UN missions since its inception. So far India has taken part in 43 Peacekeeping missions with a total contribution exceeding 180,000 troops and a significant number of police personnel having been deployed.
As per the latest peace keeping records instated in the United States, India has a total contribution of 7471 comprising of 899 policemen, 6507 troops and 65 military experts as part of UN missions as of 31st August 2016.
Recently Indian Peacekeepers were lauded by the UN for their efforts in preventing a carnage in the South Sudan conflict which resulted in the death of two of its soldiers.
Here is the roll of honour of the Indian peacekeeping missions in the past and present -
(a) Korea (195054): Paramedical Unit composed of 17 officers, 9 JCOs and 300 other ranks was deployed to facilitate withdrawal of sick and wounded in Korea.
(b) Indo-China (195470): India provided an Infantry Battalion and supporting staff for control of Indo-China, comprising three states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Tasks included monitoring, ceasefire and repatriation of prisoners of war, among others.
(c) Middle East (195667): India was part of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), where for the first time armed troop contingents were deployed. India's contribution was an infantry battalion and other support elements.
(d) Congo (196064) (ONUC): Two infantry Brigades composed of 467 officers, 401 JCOs and 11354 other ranks participated and conducted operations. A flight of six Canberra bomber aircraft of the IAF also participated in the operations.
(e) Cambodia (1992-1993): United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia was set up to supervise ceasefire, disarm combatants, repatriate refugees and monitor conduct of free and fair elections.
(f) Mozambique (199294) (ONUMOZ): Two Engineer companies, HQ company, logistics company, staff officers and military observers were provided.
(g) Somalia (199394) (UNITAF & UNOSOM II): The Indian Navy and Indian Army took active part in UN Operations. Indian Army deployed a Brigade Group composed of 5000 personnel from all ranks and the navy deployed four battleships.
(h) Rwanda (199496) (UNAMIR): An Infantry Battalion group, a signal company, and engineer company, staff officers and Military Observers were provided. Total of 956 from all ranks took part.
(i) Angola (1989-1999) (UNAVEM): Besides providing a Deputy Force Commander, an Infantry Battalion group and an engineer company comprising a total of 1014 from all ranks.
(j) Sierra Leone (1999-2001) (UNAMSIL): Two Infantry Battalion groups, two engineer companies, Quick reaction company, Attack helicopter unit, medical unit and Logistic support in addition to sector HQ and Force Headquarters staff were provided.
(k) Ethiopia-Eritrea (200608) (UNMEE): Indian contribution comprised one infantry battalion group, one construction engineer company and one force reserve company, apart from staffing at various HQs and military observers.
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Srinagar:
State officials have been criticised by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court regarding continuous incidents of schools being targeted in the valley.
The court was however informed that authorities were receiving cooperation from locals for keeping vigil at these buildings.
The Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, told the court that six out of 11 attempts to target schools have been frustrated recently as there is overwhelming response from people towards safeguarding the schools.
"Where were your officials when attempt was made to burn two more schools (on Sunday). "Compliance on papers is not enough," a division bench comprising justices S Ramalingam and Ali Mohammad Magrey said yesterday while hearing a PIL on schools being burnt by unidentified attackers in the Valley.
The bench said it was concerned about saving the schools.The High Court had taken suo motu cognizance of the incidents of burning of schools in Kashmir last month and directed the officials -- Divisional Commissioner Kashmir, Inspector General of Police Kashmir and Director School Education -- to take steps to prevent any harm to more schools.
The court had also sought a status report from them and directed them to be present in the court on Monday.
The court, while rapping the Government for its failure to stop burning of schools, asked it to take effective measures for safeguarding the educational institutions.
The IGP informed the court that besides schools, more than 100 government buildings have been damaged during the unrest.
The Divisional Commissioner informed the court about the steps taken for safeguarding the schools, saying control rooms have been established which are in touch with the concerned police stations.
The court directed these officials to make coordinated efforts to save the educational institutions from any kind of damage and to involve locals in the process in order to keep vigil on these buildings.
The Divisional Commissioner said Village Level Committees, Sarpanches, Panches and Lumberdars were involved in the process of guarding the schools.
The bench suggested that fire dousing equipments be made mandatory in public buildings.The court also suggested that services of contingent paid employees (temporary contract employees) of schools with enhanced wages -- can be utilised for keeping vigil on the school buildings.
The Director School Education submitted that he has raised the issue of enhancement of wages for contingent paid employees with the Education Minister recently so that they can keep strong vigil on the school buildings.
He has also submitted that control rooms at chief education officer and zonal education officer level have been established to safeguard the institutions.
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New Delhi:
In a surprise move and a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes will be demonetise with effect from Tuesday midnight making these notes invalid.
In his first televised address to the nation, Modi said people holding notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 can deposit the same in their bank and post office accounts from November 10 till December 30.
Highlights of PM Modi's address to the nation -
# Rs 500 & Rs 1000 currency notes will not be legal tender from midnight tonight.
# You have a time period of 50 days to submit your currency notes of 500 and 1000 in the nearest post offices & you needn't rush for this.
# Old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes can be deposited in any bank or Post Office from November 10 to December 31.
# On November 9 and in some places November 10, ATMs will not work.
# Respite for people for the initial 72 hours, Govt hospitals will accept old Rs 500 and 1000 notes till 11 November midnight.
# You have 50 days (From 10 Nov to 30 Dec) to deposit notes of Rs 500 & Rs 1000 in any Bank or Post office.
# For 72 hrs, until Nov 11 midnight special arrangements made. All govt hospitals will accept old 500 & 1000 notes.
# Currency notes of #Rs1000 and #Rs500 will be just paper with no value.
# Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes to be accepted at hospitals till November 11. For some time rail, bus and airline counters will accept them too.
# Currency notes of 100, 50, 20 & all other coins are vaild, there is no stoppage on their circulation.
# These notes should be exchanged in banks and post offices within December 30, 2016.
# Some ATMs won't work on November 9 & 10.
# For 72 hours (till November 11, midnight), Rs 500 & 1,000 currency notes would be acceptable in the hospitals.
# CNG gas stations, petrol pumps and retail outlets can also accept notes till Nov 11 midnight, but they will have to maintain records.
# There will be no change in any other form of currency exchange be it cheque, DD, payment via credit or debit cards etc.
# Every country's history has seen a phase where a strong measure was called for.
# Our enemies from across the border run their business with counterfeit notes and it has been going on for years.
# On one hand terrorism & fake currency are destroying us, on the other, corruption & black money are standing as hurdles for nation.
# Process of cash circulation is directly related to corruption impacting lower classes of our society.
# Corruption, fake currency and terrorism are festering wounds and holding back the economy.
# Black money, corruption make the nation hollow from inside.
# In the last two-and-half years, at least Rs 1.25 lakh crore worth black money has been recovered.
# In all our policies, we are dedicated for the upliftment of entire society.
# Our govt is committed towards the empowerment of poor and all our schemes are designed in accordance to that.
# Corruption and black money is something we have fought for immediately after assuming office.
# There is a time when you realise that you have bring some changes in society, and this is our time to feel the same.
# In all our policies, we are dedicated for the upliftment of entire society.
# Bhrashtachar ki beemari ko kuch varg vishesh ke logon ne apne swarth ke kaaran faila rakha hai.
# With the help of the citizens of India, India has emerged as a bright spot in world economy.
# I will share some important issues and decisions.
# This Govt is dedicated to the poor, and will continue to do so: PM
# With the support of 1.25 billion people, India has emerged as a shining star in the global economy.
# India has registered itself as a bright spot, and this claim is not made by us, but by IMF and World Bank.
#This Govt is dedicated to the poor, and will continue to do so
#India has registered itself as a bright spot, and its not that this is a claim made by us, but by IMF and World Bank
Earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reviewed the security situation with Chiefs of Army, Navy and Vice Chief of Air Force in New Delhi amid continuing Pakistani shelling along the border in Jammu and Kashmir.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval was also present at the meeting, officials said.
During the meeting, the Prime Minister is understood to have taken stock of the situation along the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border where Pakistan has been regularly shelling military posts as well as civilian areas.
Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag is believed to have briefed Modi on the situation and how the forces are handling the Pakistani provocation.
Significantly, the meeting came on a day when one more jawan was killed in Pakistani shelling in Jammu and Kashmir.
(With inputs from PTI)
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New Delhi:
Lok Sabha MP Arun Kumar, who was suspended from RLSP, led by Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha, on Tuesday claimed a majority of the party's office-bearers were with him and made a slew of appointments in the organisation while asserting that his faction represented the "real Rashtriya Lok Samta Party".
Making the announcement at a press conference in New Delhi, Kumar said he would stake his claim to the party's symbol -- ceiling fan -- as his faction represented the "real" Rashtriya Lok Samta Party.
He claimed to have support of Lalan Paswan, one of the party's two MLAs in the Bihar Assembly, and appointed him as its state unit president.
RLSP, a Bihar-based party, has three MPs in the Lower House and is a part of the ruling NDA.
Kumar said he would continue to be part of BJP-led NDA.
"We are the original RLSP, not the one which Kushwaha claims (to lead). Today we have also made several appointments of the party's office-bearers," Kumar said.
The RLSP, a majority of whose leaders had moved away from JD(U), contested the 2014 General Elections and 2015 Assembly polls in Bihar with the BJP.
Earlier, in August this year, Kushwaha had suspended Arun Kumar and Lalan Paswan from the party.
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New Delhi:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the nation by surprise on Tuesday as he announced demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from midnight.
This major announcement will make these notes invalid and itas being considered a huge assault on black money, fake currency and corruption.
PM Modi gave his first televised address to the nation and claimed that people holding notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 can deposit the same in their bank and post office accounts from November 10 till December 30.
Check out twitter reactions regarding PM Modias surgical strike on black money:
Really great move this to ban Rs.500 and Rs.1000 notes post midnight.
The timing and the secrecy, worth lauding.#NoToCorruption a Mohammad Kaif (@MohammadKaif) November 8, 2016
In America they will count Votes.
In India count Notes.
Tonight just notice d houses that dont have lights off,Note Counting On.#BlackMoney a Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) November 8, 2016
Brilliant decision by @narendramodi to stop black money. Kudos to the government. a Amit Bhargava (@bhargavamit21) November 8, 2016
Black Money Circulates Mostly In Rs 500 And Rs 1000 Notes. Now If They Go To Bank To Exchange To Rs 100 Notes, They'd Be Exposed. a Real Indian (@Tarun_Pachauri) November 8, 2016
We salute @narendramodi for taking such a big step. This ni8 vl prove a nightmare for black money hoarders.
Black Money
Rs 500 and Rs 1000 a YYI LOV INDIA YY (@_ajaytiwari79) November 8, 2016
Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes won't be legal tender from tonight: PM Narendra Modi... Master stroke.. RIP black money a Saleem Akhtar Aazmi (@SaleemAkhtarSam) November 8, 2016
No more Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes.
Just Sensational. All politicians who have stacked black money in gunny bags can set it to fire now :) a Pranava (@pranavatandra) November 8, 2016
Check mate by Namo for black money hoaders.. bravados PM #ModiSarkar #BlackMoneyMatters @narendramodi salute to you sir. a Mohit Sharma (@Mojitozz) November 8, 2016
Surgical Strike On Black Money Holders!#PrimeMinisterModi Says Rs 500 and Rs 1000 Notes Will Be Banned From Midnight.
Bold And Brilliant! a aaaa aYs (@Vimal78350433) November 8, 2016
Yes, it's inconvenient. But the move to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes will wipe out black money worth billions. Bold move, but a great one. a Saan Isaac (@Saan_04Chels) November 8, 2016
This is India's 9/11.
Two #BlackMoney towers of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 have fallen. a Rishi Bagree (@rishibagree) November 8, 2016
You need "56 inch ka seena" to take the step like Modi took on Rs 500 and Rs 1000. a EngiNerd. (@mainbhiengineer) November 8, 2016
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New Delhi:
Minutes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes from Tuesday midnight, people rushed to their nearest ATMs to withdraw Rs 100 notes to meet their daily expenses.
With most ATMs programmed to dish out higher denomination notes of Rs 500 and above, people were resorting to withdrawal of smaller amounts of up to Rs 400 to avoid getting a Rs 500 banknote.
People were even seen trying to deposit banned notes in ATM vending machines.
aAs soon as I learnt about the decision, I rushed to the ATM to withdraw some money as I was having only Rs 500 notes. A But there was a big queue and I managed to withdraw Rs 2,000 in five instalments,a a TCS employee said.
A businessman from New Rajendra Nagar Sanjeev Saxena said: aIts a very good decision. There will be some initial problem.a
Delhi University student Vashisht Saxena termed it a good step to curb corruption. aWe are ready to face some difficulty,a he said.
Another businessman from Chandni Chowk said the sudden move has created a ruckus in the market. aThere are big queues at ATMs and people are fighting for their turn to withdraw the money,a he said.
Taking the nation by surprise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tonight announced demonetisation of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes with effect from midnight, making these notes invalid in a major assault on black money, fake currency and corruption.
Long queues at Petrol pumps in Moradabad after Govt scrapped currency notes of Rs 1000 & Rs 500 pic.twitter.com/ZFLOFBNS2O a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 8, 2016
Bhopal: Long queue outside ATMs after Govt scrapped currency notes of Rs 1000 & Rs 500 pic.twitter.com/5kAQuPYvyz a ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Ahmedabad: People queue up outside ATMs after Govt scrapped currency notes of Rs 1000 & Rs 500 pic.twitter.com/dd9ksVJaAd a ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Delhi: People queue up outside ATMs after Govt scrapped the currency notes of Rs 1000 & Rs 500 pic.twitter.com/F0jDxz7GtF a ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
Lucknow: People queue up outside ATMs after Govt scrapped the currency notes of Rs 1000 & Rs 500 pic.twitter.com/R1CS6tyqRi a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 8, 2016
UP: People lined up outside ATM in Lucknow after PM Narendra Modi scrapped the currency notes of Rs 1000 & Rs 500 pic.twitter.com/S15xbspj9Q a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 8, 2016
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BETHEL - The town has several events planned to honor those who have served the country on Veterans Day.
Bethel High School will host a ceremony Friday morning for veterans and Blue Star families. About 20 to 30 veterans and parents whose children have served in the military are expected to attend, Principal Chris Troetti said.
Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media
Three informational meetings will be held this week to update the public on the proposed power plant in New Milford.
Representatives from Panda Power Funds, the Texas company proposing the project, will be on hand to answer the publics submitted questions. The proposal calls for a 550-megawatt power plant powered by natural gas at the former Century Brass mill site.
Could one vote in the historically blue, relatively small state of Connecticut truly matter on Nov. 8?
In what has become a bitterly divisive campaign for president, one that has reached for the lowest common denominator, it is no wonder that some might become discouraged and want tune out the election all together. Hide under the covers.
But that would be a grave mistake. Too much is at stake the future direction of the United States of America (and that is not hyperbole) for anyone to forgo a right to vote.
This right is not to be taken for granted. People are alive today who were born before women had the legal right to vote. Think about it in a lifetime, the country has moved from men-only voting to today seeing a woman on the ballot of a major party for president for the first time. History is in the making, and you should be a part of it no matter who you vote for.
The right to vote is one of the freedoms so many have fought for on foreign soils over the years, and sacrificed their lives. To throw away your vote would be an insult to their valor.
The right to vote is a fundamental part of democracy and distinguishes the U.S. from dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. A peaceful transfer of power every four or eight years is our hallmark be a part of it.
Your vote helps decide who will represent you in Congress, this year the Senate and House of Representatives. Your vote helps decide who will represent you in Hartford as a state Senator or state Representative in the General Assembly.
Issues that will come before the assembly in the session that convenes on Jan.4 will affect most facets of every day life, from education to taxes or spending cuts. Your vote gives you a say on which political party will be in power.
Get out today and vote. If somehow you are not registered yet, go to a central place in your municipality where same-day registration is permitted (information will be on your towns website). If you need a ride, call either political partys headquarters in your town. No time? No excuse polls are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
You dont want to wake up Wednesday morning and find whatever side youre on that you didnt vote and are unhappy with the results.
Every single vote matters.
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Pakistan warns India against breach of water treaty
Pakistan,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Politics,Diplomacy, Tue, 08 Nov 2016 IANS
Islamabad, Nov 8 (IANS) Pakistan has warned India with reprisals if New Delhi breaches the World Bank-sponsored Indus Waters Treaty, the media reported on Tuesday.
"India will be responded (to) if it shows aggression by unilaterally breaking the treaty," the Express News quoted Water and Power Secretary Younis Dagha as saying on Monday.
Dagha was addressing the Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power.
The Committee met to reconsider a report regarding an adjournment motion moved in the upper house of Parliament by Senator Sherry Rehman.
Rehman moved the motion in the backdrop of reported Indian threats to unilaterally revoke the treat.
The Pakistan People's Party senator had sought details about the possible repercussions of the move and Pakistan's preparedness to combat such "a war-like situation".
"If India shows aggression, then there are some other options," he added. "India cannot stop more water from Neelum river. It can stop water only temporarily for using it."
Dagha said the government had started work on a National Water Policy 2016 and consultations would be completed in the next one to two months.
--IANS
ahm/mr
Sri Lanka gets more tourists from India, China
Sri Lanka,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Business/Economy, Tue, 08 Nov 2016 IANS
Colombo, Nov 8 (IANS) Tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka rose by 13.7 per cent in October year-on-year, the increase coming mostly from India and China, official statistics showed on Tuesday.
Indian tourist arrivals were 36,471 in October, a 19.3 per cent increase, Xinhua news agency reported.
More than 20,000 Chinese tourists arrived last month, up 19.8 per cent from the same period last year.
Overall, Sri Lanka received 150,419 visitors last month and tourist arrivals in the first 10 months of this year have risen 14.6 per cent to over 1.65 million.
The number of tourists from traditional markets such as Germany also rose 26.5 per cent to 12,246 while the numbers from Britain were up 10 per cent to 10,964.
An estimated 1.8 million tourists arrived in Sri Lanka last year.
The government expects to attract at least 3 million tourists by the end of this year and it has set a target of 4 million by 2020.
--IANS
ksk/mr
Julian Assange to face questioning next week over rape allegation
Sweden,Media,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Tue, 08 Nov 2016 IANS
null
Stockholm, Nov 8 (IANS) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be questioned on November 14 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London over an allegation of rape, Swedens public prosecutors office has confirmed.
Assange, who has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, welcomed the news through his lawyer, saying he was looking forward to the "chance to clear his name", the Guardian reported.
The Swedish authorities said one of the prosecutors on the case, Ingrid Isgren, as well as a Swedish police inspector, would also attend the questioning next week and report the findings to Sweden.
"A DNA sample will also be taken, provided that Julian Assange agrees to it," the prosecutor's office said.
The whistleblower sought refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London in June 2012, fleeing allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden dating back to 2010. Assange, 45, denies the claims.
The Australian national claims he refused to travel to Sweden for questioning because he feared extradition to the US over WikiLeaks' release of 500,000 secret military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We have requested this interview repeatedly since 2010," his lawyer, Per Samuelsson, said. "Julian Assange has always wanted to tell his version to the Swedish police. He wants a chance to clear his name. We hope the investigation will be closed then."
WikiLeaks has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks with the damaging leak of tens of thousands of e-mails from the US Democratic party and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
--IANS
lok/
null
Plane makes emergency landing at Lahore
Pakistan,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Business/Economy, Tue, 08 Nov 2016 IANS
Islamabad, Nov 8 (IANS) A foreign airliner made an emergency landing at Lahore's Allama Iqbal airport on Tuesday, the media reported.
The airline was en route to Beijing from Ethiopia when it landed in Lahore due to shortage of fuel, Geo News reported. The plane had 335 passengers.
Earlier on Tuesday, a Jet Airways plane from India made an emergency landing at Karachi after a passenger took seriously ill. Pakistani doctors declared him dead.
--IANS
ahm/mr
DIFF 2016: Mixture of indie films, culture, cuisine regale Dharamsala
Himachal Pradesh,Cinema/Showbiz, Tue, 08 Nov 2016 IANS
Dharamsala, Nov 8 (IANS) Reflecting various hard-hitting and blunt subjects from across the world, a holistic mix of Indian and international features and documentaries -- not necessarily representing Bollywood's glitz and glamour -- from India and countries like the US, Britain, Switzerland and Iran, regaled movie aficionados at the fifth edition of the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF 2016) here.
Showcasing a mixture of various cultures and traditions, DIFF 2016, apart from being a four-day independent film festival, also gave those attending a taste of a variety of Indian dishes.
Held at the scenic locales of McLeod Ganj, DIFF 2016 started with filmmaker Raam Reddy's Kannada drama film "Thithi" on November 3 and went on to feature a bouquet of independent films, documentaries and shorts. These facilitated exchange of thoughts on social and cultural issues between independent filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers, foreign attendees and film enthusiasts.
Be it internationally acclaimed Indian films and documentaries like "Highway", "The Violin Player", "Kammatipaadam", or "That Day After Every Day" or gripping movies of foreign filmmakers like Singapore-based director Boo Junfeng's "Apprentice" and Iranian director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami's "Sonita" -- the festival gave a clear view of the universal approach that these filmmakers take to make their films appeal globally.
The fest was pioneered by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam to provide a platform for people to come forward and watch independent films.
"We started with the idea of bringing quality cinema to the mountains. The response that we received this year was fantastic and even better from the previous editions. Apart from the local audience, the tourists also had a great time. Most of the films witnessed packed screenings," Sarin told IANS.
Some other movies which struck the right chords with the audience included "A Korean in Paris" (South Korea), "Didi Contractor: Marrying the Earth to the Building" (Switzerland), "Brothers" (Poland), "Victoria" (Germany), "The Last Dalai Lama?" (US) and "What's in the Darkness" (China).
Besides movies, DIFF 2016 also came out as a cultural gathering where audiences from different parts of India and various countries were seen sharing their views. Another interesting aspect was foreign tourists flaunting Indian ethnic attires like sari and salwar suit at the movie gala.
During an interview with IANS, British documentary director Sean McAllister and US-based director Mickey Lemle even expressed their desire to make films on various Indian cuisines.
"I first came to India in 1969. This is my 24th visit to India. It would be great to make film on Indian food. It's my favourite cuisine. When I go out to eat in New York, I have a favourite Indian restaurant there," Lemle said.
DIFF 2016 also included a special children's section where few short and full length films like "At Eye Level" (Germany), "Hum Chitra Banatey Hain" (India), "Amdavad Ma Famous" (India), "Mindenki" (Hungary) were screened.
There were also panel discussions -- 'Cinema India: Voices from the Non-Hindi Mainstream' and 'Invisible People: Questions of Identity and Belonging' -- which were attended by independent Indian filmmakers Umesh Kulkarni, Sanjeev Kumar, Bauddhayan Mukherji, and actors Girish Kulkarni and Chittaranjan Giri.
It also featured foreign filmmakers like Pimpaka Towira, Chow Kwun-Wai, Boo Junfeng, Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami and Tenzin Dasel.
They spoke of how independent cinema is proving its mettle across the globe. Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah and veteran screenwriter and filmmaker Saeed Mirza were also present at the event.
After an electrifying start, the festival chose to give the movie gala a perfect end by screening National Award-winning filmmaker Vetrimaaran's Tamil drama "Visaranai", which is India's official entry for Oscars 2017 in the Foreign Language Film category.
(The writer's trip to Dharamsala was at the invitation of the Dharamshala International Film Festival organisers. Sandeep Sharma can be contacted at sandeep.s@ians.in)
--IANS
sas/rb/dg
Small town votes in US to keep tradition alive
United States,Politics, Tue, 08 Nov 2016 IANS
Washington, Nov 8 (IANS) Keeping alive a tradition begun in 1960, six people in a small town voted just after midnight on Tuesday -- before the US Presidential elections start later in the day.
All the six voters first gathered at a polling station in Dixville Notch town in New Hampshire state to draw lottery to decide who will be the first voter, reports Xinhua news agency.
Clay Smith, 30, the first to vote, was calm after voting: "This is just another night."
The whole voting process lasted about 10 seconds.
The first-in-the-nation voting took place in the town despite major renovation underway at the now-crumbling Balsams Grand Resort Hotel, the traditional balloting place, which was closed in 2011.
Presidential voting elsewhere in the US will mostly begin on Tuesday morning.
A makeshift polling station was set up this year in the hotel builder's lakeside house, which was erected more than 100 years ago, just a few hundred meters away.
Tom Tillotson, whose father Neil Tillotson started the midnight voting tradition in the town in 1960, who moderated the voting on Tuesday.
He told Xinhua that the ballot booths -- just small cubicles -- were not enough for all the six voters and two of them had to mark their ballots at a writing desk nearby.
"We have to carry on the tradition," said Tillotson.
--IANS
ksk/mr
TORONTO, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ -- Global Cloud solutions provider and leading Microsoft partner COMPAREX Canada has launched a new managed services program, Unified Cloud Management for Office 365, to the Canadian market. Offering comprehensive support for Office 365, Unified Cloud Management for Office 365 helps customers maximize their Microsoft Cloud investments.
"Unified Cloud Management (UCM) for Office 365 helps accelerate our clients' digital transformation while reducing their cost of operation," says Jason Mackay, General Manager of COMPAREX Canada. "Our history and experience in deploying Office 365 at scale not only supports our customers' consumption of the Cloud, but also increases the ways in which they apply Cloud to further their own innovations." With services ranging from email migrations, program implementation, security consultations, 24x7 help desk support, and expert Cloud guidance, clients can customize their UCM for Office 365 package to meet their various lines of business needs.
"Unique to our offering is our Cloud expertise," Mackay continues. "In addition to having migrated and managed over four million seats of Office 365, we've also performed one of Microsoft's largest Google-to-Office 365 migrations to date of 325,000 users. Our years of experience make these transitions seamless for our customers, but our services don't end there. Our focus is on utilization and maximization, not simply on getting to the Cloud."
Without sufficient, experienced internal resources, organizations find it difficult to promote full Office 365 adoption and thus can't realize the value of their investment. Many teams don't have the time or manpower to educate end users on the various programs, while supporting their needs, monitoring compliance and developing security strategies. With UCM, customers have access to COMPAREX Canada's proprietary learning portal and reporting dashboard, 24x7 support and guidance, dedicated technical account management, and effective, experienced project managers to guide their process transformation.
"As Microsoft's leading innovative digital transformation partner, we provide the guidance and support to give our clients the best return on value for their digital investments," says Erik Moll, Director of Digital Transformation at COMPAREX Canada. "Boasting a 99% client satisfaction rate, COMPAREX Canada's North America-based English and French-speaking support team is available around the clock via email, phone or ticket portal. Between that near-constant support and our weekly webinars, IT admin training guides, and our proprietary learning portal, we ensure that our clients have a variety of training opportunities so every employee makes the most of Office 365."
About COMPAREX
COMPAREX is a global IT provider specializing in license management, sourcing, technical product consulting and cloud-based professional services. With a track record spanning thirty years, COMPAREX serves the public-sector, SMB and large international corporations. The COMPAREX Group employs more than 2,450 people at over 80 locations in 35 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. In fiscal year 2015/16 the COMPAREX Group generated (preliminary) revenue of 1.909 billion / $ 2.109 billion. Visit www.comparex.ca to find out more.
SOURCE COMPAREX Canada
For further information: Jason Mackay, General Manager, COMPAREX Canada. [email protected], 416.580.4725, http://www.comparex.ca
CHICAGO, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - The Boyd Group Inc. (the "Boyd Group" or "Boyd") today announced that it has acquired a multi-store operation ("MSO") located in the Detroit, Michigan region, adding an additional five collision repair centers to its presence in the market. The centers previously operated as Adrian's Collision Centers.
"We are excited to be expanding our presence in the Detroit region, a large market with a population of over four million," said Tim O'Day, President and COO of the Boyd Group's U.S. operations. "Our new locations in Dearborn, Farmington Hills, Marysville, Northville and Southfield complement our 14 other centers in the Detroit area and provide us with more options to better serve our customers and insurance partners."
"We look forward to becoming part of these communities and delivering the professional and friendly service for which Gerber is known," added Mr. O'Day.
The Boyd Group is continuously looking to add new collision repair locations to its existing network in Canada and the U.S. Interested collision repair center owners are asked to contact Kim Allen at the contact coordinates below for more information.
The Boyd Group Inc. (the "Company"), directly and through subsidiaries, is one of the largest operators of non-franchised collision repair centers in North America in terms of number of locations and sales. The Company operates locations in five Canadian provinces under the trade name Boyd Autobody & Glass (http://www.boydautobody.com), as well as in 20 U.S. states under the trade name Gerber Collision & Glass (http://www.gerbercollision.com). The Company uses newly acquired brand names during a transition period until acquired locations have been rebranded. The Company is also a major retail auto glass operator in the U.S. with locations across 31 U.S. states under the trade names Gerber Collision & Glass, Glass America, Auto Glass Service, Auto Glass Authority and Autoglassonly.com. The Company also operates a third party administrator, Gerber National Claims Services ("GNCS") that offers first notice of loss, glass and related services. GNCS has approximately 5,500 affiliated glass provider locations and 4,600 affiliated emergency roadside services providers throughout the U.S. For more information on The Boyd Group Inc. or Boyd Group Income Fund, please visit our website at (http://www.boydgroup.com).
SOURCE Gerber Collision & Glass
For further information: Stephen Boyd, Vice President, Corporate Development, Tel: (204) 594-1776, [email protected]; Kim Allen, Director of Business Development, Tel: (847) 410-6003,[email protected]
CHICAGO, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - The Boyd Group Inc. (the "Boyd Group" or "Boyd") today announced the November 1, 2016 opening of a new collision repair center on Greenwell Springs Rd. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This center is about nine miles from the other Gerber Collision & Glass center in Baton Rouge and is in close proximity to the interstate highways 110, 12 and 10.
"We are very pleased to add this new location which positions us well to serve the northern neighborhoods of the city," said Tim O'Day, President and COO of the Boyd Group's U.S. operations. "We look forward to expanding our services in Baton Rouge, introducing our high quality brand to new customers and better assisting our insurance partners."
The Boyd Group is continuously looking to add new collision repair locations to its existing network in Canada and the U.S. Interested collision repair center owners are asked to contact Kim Allen at the contact coordinates below for more information.
About The Boyd Group Inc.
The Boyd Group Inc. (the "Company"), directly and through subsidiaries, is one of the largest operators of non-franchised collision repair centers in North America in terms of number of locations and sales. The Company operates locations in five Canadian provinces under the trade name Boyd Autobody & Glass (http://www.boydautobody.com), as well as in 20 U.S. states under the trade name Gerber Collision & Glass (http://www.gerbercollision.com). The Company uses newly acquired brand names during a transition period until acquired locations have been rebranded. The Company is also a major retail auto glass operator in the U.S. with locations across 31 U.S. states under the trade names Gerber Collision & Glass, Glass America, Auto Glass Service, Auto Glass Authority and Autoglassonly.com. The Company also operates a third party administrator, Gerber National Claims Services ("GNCS") that offers first notice of loss, glass and related services. GNCS has approximately 5,500 affiliated glass provider locations and 4,600 affiliated emergency roadside services providers throughout the U.S. For more information on The Boyd Group Inc. or Boyd Group Income Fund, please visit our website at (http://www.boydgroup.com).
SOURCE Gerber Collision & Glass
For further information: Stephen Boyd, Vice President, Corporate Development, Tel: (204) 594-1776, [email protected]; Kim Allen, Director of Business Development, Tel: (847) 410-6003, [email protected]
OTTAWA, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Coast to coast to coast, First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples have made many immeasurable contributions to Canada's armed forces that have help shape Canada.
Indigenous men and women have helped define our military history for over 200 years. As many as 12,000 served Canada in the great conflicts and peace support missions of the 20th century, with at least 500 giving their lives. In this century, Indigenous Veterans have served with honour and distinction overseas and their dedication continues in peacekeeping operations in faraway lands.
Today, on Aboriginal Veterans Day, all Canadians are encouraged to join in honouring and thanking these Indigenous men and woman and to help preserve their legacy for future generations.
Quotes
"Veterans' Week is a time to remember the courage and sacrifice of those who have served Canada from past to present, and express our endless gratitude for their service. As we pause today to mark Aboriginal Veterans Day, we thank the thousands of Indigenous Canadians in uniform who answered the call of duty and made the ultimate sacrifice. Their contributions and efforts have helped our country in its efforts to make this world a safer place."
The Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence
"Reconciliation is about all Canadians making efforts to better understand our history and chart a new path together, and that includes learning about the sacrifices made by First Nations, Metis, and Inuit women and men serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. Today we thank and honour all those who served, those who lost their lives and those whose lives were changed forever."
The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, M.D., P.C., M.P.
Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs
"A special day to honour the Indigenous people of Canada who have provided voluntary military service to Canada since 1812."
Mr. Richard Blackwolf, President of Canadian Aboriginal Veterans and Serving Members Association
"November 8 has been designated as Aboriginal Veterans Day. This is a solemn reminder of the sacrifice made by our indigenous Peoples and their commitment to Canada. We honour the memory of those who have fallen in battles from our First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities who fought alongside other Canadians, in many global conflicts, for the preservation of peace and security. We also honour those who continue to serve this great country. Your sacrifice will never be forgotten."
Mr. Robert Thibeau, Aboriginal Veterans Autochtones
Quick Facts
Today, more than 1,200 First Nations, Inuit and Metis people serve with the Canadian Armed Forces
Several Canadian warships were named as an indication of our country's esteem for the proud heritage of Indigenous Canadians (the HMCS Iroquois , HMCS Micmac and HMCS Huron).
Associated Links
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/those-who-served/aboriginal-veterans
http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/canada/national-aboriginal-veterans-monument
http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1414152378639/1414152548341
SOURCE Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada
For further information: media may contact: Sarah McMaster, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, 613-996-4649 ; Sabrina Williams, Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, 613-697-8316 ; INAC Media Relations, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, 819-953-1160 ; Stay Connected Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. You can subscribe to receive our news releases and speeches via RSS feeds. For more information or to subscribe, visit www.aandc.gc.ca/subscriptions.
TORONTO, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Jama Hagi-Yusuf first generated national headlines and community shock after a financial services firm rejected his application citing Somalia's "culture of resistance to authority." He since retained a lawyer, Saron Gebresellassi, and filed a case at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Over a year after the original incident, the case is set down for mediation. This comes in the wake of the province's newly-established Anti-Racism Directorate mandated to collaborate with the community, business organizations, government and the Ontario Human Rights Commission to eliminate systemic racism. The Justice for Jama Coalition, comprised of advocates, community organizers, youth and activists, invites you to join us for a bilingual press conference and community showing following the court date at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario where mediation is scheduled to occur.
"It is a rare and unusual day when an Employer is accused of racial discrimination in writing. This has left community members shocked, appalled and dismayed. This case represents an opportunity to toughen efforts to wipe out discrimination in our province," says Saron Gebresellassi, Legal Counsel.
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
Jama Hagi-Yusuf, the complainant, and Saron Gebresellassi, Legal Counsel, will be available for comment in French and English should the case be proceeding to a full and final hearing.*
WHAT: Bilingual Press Conference and Community Showing
WHERE: 655 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario (Outside the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario)
WHEN: Tuesday November 8 2016
TIME: 5:30 PM
Legal Counsel: Saron Gebresellassi
Complainant/'Plaintiff': Jama Hagi-Yusuf
Speakers:
Jagmeet Singh, Deputy Leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party
Sandy Hudson, Black Lives Matter
Gilary Massa, I Stand With Gilary Committee
Ismael Nagdee Machado, High School Student and Member of the Justice for Jama Coalition
A Representative from Urban Alliance on Race Relations
MEDIA COVERAGE:
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/6761558-waterloo-grad-demoralized-after-job-rejection-letter-cites-somali-culture/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/job-posting-somalia-background-discrimination-1.3668307
http://news.nationalpost.com/tag/jama-hagi-yusuf
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/07/08/jama-hagi-yusuf-job-rejection-somali_n_10891730.html
*Allegations have not yet been proven in court.
SOURCE Justice for Jama Coalition
For further information: Saron Gebresellassi, Litigation Lawyer, Phone: 416-854-6645
(TSX-V: MGW)
Nov. 8, 2016 $0.82
CALGARY, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Maple Leaf Green World (MGW-V) ("Maple Leaf" or the "Company") announces that it has signed a Letter of Intent ( the "LOI") with BioNeva Innovations of Henderson LLC ("BioNeva") to purchase a cultivation permit for 33,500 sq ft indoor facility (the "Permit") issued by the State of Nevada, and located in the city of Henderson, Nevada, located 16 miles from Las Vegas.
Under the terms of LOI, Maple Leaf has agreed to purchase the Permit from BioNeva for US$500,000, subject to a 50% reduction in the purchase price if the November 8th referendum in Nevada on the legalization of marijuana for recreational use does not pass. BioNeva agrees to transfer the Permit to Maple Leaf within 30 days. In addition, Maple Leaf has agreed to engage a primary member of BioNeva, Bill Monroe, as a consultant to assist the Company with the transfer of the Permit and subsequently, to guide the development of Maple Leaf's operations in Nevada. The Company anticipates that a definitive Purchase Agreement for the Permit together with the associated management consulting contract will be finalized on or about December 7, 2016.
BioNeva was formed by local businessmen, led by Nevada native Dan Larkin. The founders of BioNeva also operate a solar cultivation facility in Carson City, Nevada. Mr. Monroe has been involved in the cannabis industry for the past eight years and over this time, he has developed excellent connections in Nevada for the distribution and sale of cannabis products. He is also a national board member of the National Council of the Cannabis Chamber of Commerce.
"We are thrilled to be able to purchase this cultivation permit so close to Las Vegas at a reasonable price, and we are especially pleased to have the opportunity to engage the services of Bill Monroe to assist us with the development of our operations in Nevada." said Raymond Lai, President & C.E.O. of Maple Leaf.
For further information regarding Maple Leaf Green World Inc., please visit the www.mlgreenworld.com.
About Maple Leaf Green World Inc.
Maple Leaf is a Canadian company that focuses in the agricultural/environmental industry with four main areas of activity:
Canadian MMPR - It pursues opportunities within the medical cannabis industry. If and when a MMPR license is obtained and through an agreement to lease a greenhouse facility with Woodmere Nursery Ltd., it will become a Canadian producer. It is currently seeking Canadian MMPR licensed producer status to grow medical cannabis in Canada for domestic consumption and export to approved countries. California Project It pursues opportunities within the medical cannabis industry in various States that have legalized marijuana. It is currently in a joint venture with a California non-profit collective. Eco-Agriculture - it pursues several projects around the world. In China , it is focused on growing value-added tree seedlings and nursery products that assist with anti- desertification.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange or its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Certain statements in this news release including (i) statements that may contain words such as "anticipate", "could", "expect", "seek", "may" "intend", "will", "believe", "should", "project", "forecast", "plan" and similar expressions, including the negatives thereof, (ii) statements that are based on current expectations and estimates about the markets in which Maple Leaf operates and (iii) statements of belief, intentions and expectations about developments, results and events that will or may occur in the future, constitute "forward-looking statements" and are based on certain assumptions and analysis made by Maple Leaf. There is no assurance that sufficient financing can be raised or that permits will be available to allow the Company to carry out its current projects on a timely basis.
Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future capital expenditures, including the amount, nature and timing thereof; other development trends within the agricultural industry (and in particular, the medical marijuana business), and the status of, and ability to capitalize on, opportunities available to the Company as well as the business strategy; expansion and growth of Maple Leaf's business and operations and other such matters. Such forward-looking statements are subject to important risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and may affect Maple Leaf's operations, including, but not limited to: the impact of general economic conditions; industry conditions; the availability of equity or debt financing; government and regulatory developments including availability of requisite licenses; product supply and demand; competition; and Maple Leaf's ability to attract and retain qualified personnel. Maple Leaf's actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur, or if any of them do occur, what benefits Maple Leaf will derive therefrom.
SOURCE Maple Leaf Green World Inc.
For further information: Maple Leaf Green World Inc., Raymond Lai, Chairman, President & CEO, +1(403) 452-4552, +1(403) 452-6900, [email protected] www.mlgreenworld.com
/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES./
VANCOUVER, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Mitchell Resources Ltd. ("Mitchell" or the "Company") (TSXV: MI) is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement (the "Agreement") with the shareholders of Hannan Metals Ltd. ("Hannan Canada"), a private British Columbia company, to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Hannan Canada (the "Proposed Acquisition") and, consequently, a 100% interest in Hannan Canada's rights, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Hannan Metals Ireland Ltd. ("Hannan Ireland"), to the Clare prospecting licences in County Clare, Ireland (collectively, the "PLs"). Mitchell also wishes to announce a concurrent "part and parcel" financing of common shares (the "Shares") at $0.075 per common share to raise aggregate gross proceeds of up to approximately $786,000 (the "Financing"). Proceeds from the Financing will be used to fund the Proposed Acquisition, complete initial exploration on the PLS, and for corporate and general working capital.
Description of the Prospecting Licences
The Clare zinc-silver-lead-copper property (the "Clare Property") consists of 7 PLs for 25,282 hectares located in County Clare, Ireland, the western extent of which lies 1.5 km from the town of Ennis. PLs 3509, 3640, 3643, 3679, 3787, 3788 and 3789, issued by the Exploration and Mining Division ("EMD") of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment are 100% owned by Hannan Ireland.
The Irish base metal ore field is one of the world's best mineralized zinc provinces and is considered highly prospective for new zinc discoveries. In 2015 Ireland was the world's 10th largest zinc producing nation with 230,000 tonnes produced.
The Clare Property is underlain by an open syncline comprised of Upper Devonian (sandstones) to Lower Carboniferous (sandstones and limestones) rocks. The Lower Carboniferous sequence includes the Waulsortian Limestone, which hosts most of Ireland's important zinc-lead sulphide deposits, such as the Lisheen and Galmoy deposits.
The Clare Property has a rich history of small scale 19th century mining (Figure 1). Modern exploration efforts from the mid-1960's, by Irish Base Metals, Rio-Finex, Central Mining Finance, Billiton and Belmore Resources Ltd followed up some of these earlier historic mines. There are two known Waulsortian-hosted zinc-lead deposits on the property, the flagship Kilbricken prospect (see below) and the smaller Milltown prospect, where Belmore Resources Ltd ("Belmore") intersected 13.3m @ 5.8% Pb and 10.5% Zn from 45.4 metres in drill hole 3788/19 in 1994. The lowest part of the sequence is also prospective for copper-silver mineralization and contains numerous copper showings, most notable at Ballyvergin where Irish Base Metals drilled hole BV11 which intersected 31.5m @ 1.0% Cu from 51.7 metres in the 1960s.
In 2008, Belmore, a private Irish company, drill tested the base of the Waulsortian Limestone beneath near-surface sulphidic and calcite veined shelf carbonates at the historic Kilbricken lead mine. The discovery drillhole at Kilbricken, DH04, intersected 10m @ 13.8% Zn, 5.5% Pb, 0.08% Cu, 62.8g/t Ag from 448.1 metres at the target base of Waulsortian Limestone.
After this initial discovery, Lundin Mining Exploration Limited ("Lundin"), a subsidiary of Lundin Mining Corporation (TSX:LUN), joint ventured Kilbricken and wider tenure package from Belmore. In 2011, Lundin purchased 100% of Belmore. Drilling by Lundin from 2009 to 2012 continued to intersect sulphide mineralization in the hanging wall of a the Main Kilbricken fault. Significant intersections from Lundin's drilling programs are shown in Table 1.
Hole_ID Mineralized Intersection DH46 20.5m @ 7.5% Zn, 9.9% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 74.6g/t Ag from 415.3m DH06 21.3m @ 11% Zn, 4.8% Pb, 0.06% Cu, 94.4g/t Ag from 441.9m DH50 11.8m @ 9.8% Zn, 5.7% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 178.2g/t Ag from 484.6m DH43 9.4m @ 4.1% Zn, 12% Pb, 0.52% Cu, 242.8g/t Ag from 442.1m DH04 10.0m @ 13.8% Zn, 5.5% Pb, 0.08% Cu, 62.8g/t Ag from 448.1m DH52 19.3m @ 7.2% Zn, 1.2% Pb, 0.18% Cu, 64.6g/t Ag from 425.7m DH44 17.2m @ 2.9% Zn, 4.4% Pb, 0.11% Cu, 83.5g/t Ag from 447.9m DH167 4.5m @ 0.8% Zn, 2.6% Pb, 18.91% Cu, 867.6g/t Ag from 616.5m DH161 10.4m @ 8.4% Zn, 3.9% Pb, 0.09% Cu, 26.5g/t Ag from 607m DH206 10.0m @ 0.9% Zn, 8.7% Pb, 0.16% Cu, 90.7g/t Ag from 619m DH111 4.1m @ 21.5% Zn, 5.7% Pb, 0.1% Cu, 95.4g/t Ag from 447.6m
Table 1: Kilbricken better mineralized drill intersections
The main Kilbricken mineralization (Figures 2 and 3) has been drilled within an area of 1,500 metres by 800 metres in plan view and remains open in most directions. Mineralization, defined as 4.0m @ 4.00% Zn Eq or 16m% Zneq where Zn Eq = Zn% +(Pb% x 1.15) + (Ag ppm x 0.037917), ranges in thickness from 2 metres to 31 metres thick and averages 7.5 metres thickness. Two main mineralized zones have been discovered to date:
The initial discovery area, the Zinc Zone, has been drilled within an area of 950 metres by 400 metres, between 360-440 metres vertically below surface. Significant drill results in this zone include DH46: 20.5m @ 7.5% Zn, 9.9% Pb, 0.07% Cu, 74.6g/t Ag from 415.3m and DH06: 21.3m @ 11% Zn, 4.8% Pb, 0.06% Cu, 94.4g/t Ag from 441.9m.
and DH06: The Copper Zone was found later in the Lundin program and is drilled within an area of 400 metres by 200 metres, between 520-670 metres vertically below surface. Significant drill results in the Copper Zone includes DH167: 4.5m @ 0.8% Zn, 2.6% Pb, 18.91% Cu, 867.6g/t Ag from 616.
Lundin completed significant work on the property. A total of 216 drill holes for 116,230 metres were drilled by Lundin in the Kilbricken area. Lundin also undertook regional exploration in the remainder of the Clare Property, largely focussed on other Waulsortian-hosted zinc-lead prospects. Lundin carried out 616 metres of drilling at the Ballyvergin prospect with the objective of discovering additional zones of copper-silver mineralization. Lundin drilled a total of 2,370 metres on the Kilmurry Project, located within the Clare project area 26 kilometres along strike from Kilbricken. In addition, significant surface geochemical and multiple geophysical surveys have been undertaken by Lundin and previous operators on the Clare project area. Of particular note are a 3D seismic survey over the main Kilbricken mineralization in 2011, and 2D seismic survey conducted in 2012 that consisted of 8 traverses (3-3.5 km long) over a total 10 kilometre strike length, spaced between 1-2 kilometre across the regional Kilbricken extensions.
Massive sulphide mineralization at Kilbricken most commonly consists of early massive-textured, fine-grained pyrite, galena and sphalerite cross-cut by coarse-grained sphalerite and galena, resembling sulphides found in the overlying veins. It differs from most other Irish zinc/lead prospects in that it is rich in silver, most commonly associated with galena-rich zones.
The Kilbricken Project is considered by Hannan Ireland to be highly prospective for the discovery and potential development of zinc-lead-silver suphide deposits. The Kilbricken deposit is open along strike and down-dip.
The two-fold aim to explore the Clare Property is:
Explore along the immediate extensions from the drilled high grade mineralization at Kilbricken, and;
Search for new discoveries and extensions of known mineralization in the well-endowed 25,282 hectare regional block.
A detailed 3D compilation of geological and seismic datasets to create a basinal to local scale structural and stratigraphic model is now underway, with concurrent re-interpretation of 2D and 3D seismic data. Hannan Ireland then plans to outline the first resource model on the property. An initial budget of CDN$200,000 is planned, with follow up drilling when further capital has been raised.
Transaction Summary
The Company has entered into the Agreement with the principals of Hannan Canada, Michael Hudson and Mark Saxon, to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Hannan Canada at cost, being nominal consideration, as a means to acquire a 100% interest in Hannan Ireland's rights to the PLs. The Company will assume all obligations of Hannan Ireland.
The PLs were assigned to Hannan Ireland, and were acquired, effective September 21, 2016, pursuant to an Assignment Agreement (the "AA") between the Irish Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Hannan Ireland and Lundin. Under a separate Asset Purchase Agreement (the "APA"), dated June 3, 2016, Hannan Ireland purchased all exploration data associated with the PLs from Lundin for a cash payment of US$150,000. Hannan Ireland must make two additional cash payments to Lundin Mining of US$425,000 each on September 21, 2017 and March 21, 2018. Lundin retained a 2% net smelter return royalty on all sales of mineral products extracted from the area of land subject to the PLs, subject to a 0.5% buy back right of Hannan Ireland for US$5,000,000, which must be exercised within one year from the date of commercial production. Hannan Ireland is required to pay Lundin a one-time bonus payment of US$5,000,000 within the earlier of (i) Hannan Ireland's decision to proceed with mine construction or (ii) within 90 days of the establishment of a commercial financing to finance capital costs for mine construction. Additionally, Hannan Ireland will be required to pay a one-time cash fee of US$2,000,000 less cash payments already made to Lundin, if it transfers its rights to the PLs to an arm's length party (which excludes Mitchell) for US$10,000,000 or greater within 18 months of the execution of the APA.
On the closing of the Proposed Acquisition, it is expected that Michael Hudson will be appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Company and will join existing directors Nick DeMare, Harvey Lim, David Henstridge and Michael Iannacone on the Company's board of directors.
Mr. Michael Hudson, B.Sc. (Hons 1st) is an explorationist and entrepreneur. During the last 25 years he has developed and financed mineral exploration properties. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1990 with a B.Sc. (Hons 1st) in Geology and more recently received the Tolhurst Noall Prize for "Mining Investment Analysis" in Victoria, Australia for the FINSIA Graduate Diploma. Starting his career underground for 3 years in Broken Hill in 1990 with Pasminco Ltd., he has managed and developed exploration to pre-feasibility projects in Pakistan, Australia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Ireland for major and junior mining companies. He was an integral team member for the discovery of the Portia gold deposit in the Olary district of South Australia, the Duddar Pb-Zn mine in Pakistan, the Norra Karr REE deposit in Sweden and the Rompas-Rajapalot gold property in Finland. Since 2004 has headed Mawson Resources Ltd (TSX:MAW) as founding Chairman, CEO and Director. He is also a founder and Chairman of Leading Edge Materials (TSXV:LEM) a critical metals company in Sweden. He is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and Member of both the Society for Economic Geologists and Australian Institute of Geoscientists.
The Company also proposes to change its name to "Hannan Metals Ltd." on the closing of the Proposed Acquisition.
Completion of the Proposed Acquisition is subject to a number of standard conditions precedent, including, without limitation, the completion of satisfactory due diligence on the PLs by the Company, the completion of the Financing and the receipt of all regulatory approvals, including the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). In order to obtain requisite acceptance from the Exchange with respect to the Acquisition, the Company will have to satisfy the Exchange requirements, which include delivery of an independent technical report in respect of the PLs prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").
This press release is not an offer or a solicitation of an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to U.S. Persons absent registration under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements.
Qualified Person
Mr. David Henstridge, a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining Metallurgy the Company's qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the contents of this press release.
On behalf of the Board,
"Nick DeMare"
Nick DeMare, President & CEO
Company Information
1305-1090 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC V6E 3V7
Forward Looking Statements
Certain information set forth in this news release contains "forward-looking statements", and "forward- looking information" under applicable securities laws. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include the Company's expectations about the completion of the Proposed Acquisition and the concurrent Financing, future performance based on current results, expected cash costs and are based on the Company's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. Some of the forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as "will", "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "projects", "plans", and similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which, may cause the Company's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projects of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statement. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: liabilities inherent in mine development and production, geological, the financial markets generally, the results of the due diligence investigations to be conducted by the Company as against the PLs, the satisfaction of the conditions precedent to complete the Proposed Acquisition, the ability of the Company to obtain a technical report with respect to the PLs, to complete the concurrent Financing or obtain Exchange acceptance of the Proposed Acquisition, the ability of the Company to raise additional capital to fund its planned operations. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
Figure 1: (see above)
Figure 2: Kilbricken Plan View
Figure 3: Typical Stylized Cross Section Through the Kilbricken Prospect
SOURCE Mitchell Resources
Image with caption: "Figure 1: Plan view of the Clare Property with historic mines and recent exploration discoveries. The red dotted lines form the +40km trend for extensions of the base of reef host position of the Kilbricken mineralization. (CNW Group/Mitchell Resources)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20161108_C2252_PHOTO_EN_813943.jpg
For further information: Company Contact: Nick DeMare, +1 (604) 685 9316
CALGARY, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Oryx Petroleum Corporation Limited ("Oryx Petroleum" or the "Corporation") will announce its financial and operating results for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 on Wednesday, November 09, 2016 after the close of trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Mr. Vance Querio, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Scott Lewis, Head of Corporate Finance & Planning will host a conference call to discuss the Corporation's financial and operating results on Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 17:00 CET (16:00 GMT, 11:00 EST).
Conference Call details:
Date: Thursday November 10, 2016
Time: 17:00 CET (16:00 GMT, 11:00 EST)
Participant Access:
Canada +1 514 223 0612 United States +1 719 325 2202 United Kingdom +44 (0) 20 3043 2006 France +33 (0) 1 76 77 22 77 Switzerland / Other +41 (0) 44 580 7206
Access code to join conference: 6432498
Playback will be available up to 14 days after the live call on:
United States / Canada: +1 719 457 0820 United Kingdom: +44 (0) 20 7984 7568 France: +33 (0) 1 70 48 00 94 Switzerland / Other: +41 (0) 43 547 8002
Access code: 6432498
Playback will also be available on the Oryx Petroleum Website.
This recording is the property of Oryx Petroleum. Any reproduction or distribution is strictly prohibited without prior written approval from Oryx Petroleum. Please contact our Investor Relations with any questions.
ABOUT ORYX PETROLEUM CORPORATION LIMITED
Oryx Petroleum is an international oil exploration, development and production company focused in Africa and the Middle East. The Corporation's shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "OXC". The Oryx Petroleum group of companies was founded in 2010 by The Addax and Oryx Group P.L.C. Oryx Petroleum has interests in six license areas, two of which have yielded oil discoveries. The Corporation is the operator or technical partner in four of the six license areas. One license area is located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and five license areas are located in West Africa in Nigeria, the AGC administrative area offshore Senegal and Guinea Bissau, and Congo (Brazzaville). Further information about Oryx Petroleum is available at www.oryxpetroleum.com or under Oryx Petroleum's profile at www.sedar.com.
SOURCE Oryx Petroleum Corporation Limited
For further information: Scott Lewis, Head of Corporate Finance & Planning, Tel.: +41 (0) 58 702 93 52, [email protected]
OTTAWA, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced that he will pay official visits to Cuba and Argentina from November 15 to 18, and will travel to Peru from November 19 to 20 to participate in the 2016 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' meeting.
Canada enjoys strong, long-standing relations with Cuba and Argentina. During the official visits, the Prime Minister will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro, Argentinian President Mauricio Macri, and a number of local business and cultural leaders.
The trip will provide Canada with an opportunity to renew and strengthen its relationships with Cuba and Argentina, and collaborate more closely on sustainable economic growth, inclusive governance, security, climate change, and gender equality.
At the APEC Leaders' meeting in Peru, the Prime Minister will join other APEC leaders to focus on strengthening the middle class, creating economic growth, and facilitating freer trade and investment in the region.
Canada is committed to deepening bilateral relations and engagement with important partners both in the hemisphere and in the Asia-Pacific region in order to benefit Canadians, and grow the middle class.
QUOTES
"Cuba and Argentina are two of our closest partners in the hemisphere. I look forward to working with President Castro and President Macri to stimulate more trade and investment with Canada, grow the middle class, and foster closer people-to-people ties for the benefit of all our citizens."
Rt. Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
"The Asia Pacific region is critical to our country's economic future and to growing our middle class. I look forward to promoting Canada as a partner of choice for trade and investment in the region while embracing the theme of quality and inclusive economic growth that Peru has put forward this year. Peru is a valued partner for Canada in both the hemisphere and the Asia-Pacific region, and I look forward to meeting host President Kuczynski.
Rt. Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
QUICK FACTS
Canada and Cuba enjoy a diverse relationship based on 71 years of uninterrupted diplomatic engagement and constructive cooperation in areas including trade and investment, development assistance, security, and tourism. Cuba is an important market in the Caribbean /Central American sub-region with bilateral merchandise trade valued at over one billion dollars annually.
and enjoy a diverse relationship based on 71 years of uninterrupted diplomatic engagement and constructive cooperation in areas including trade and investment, development assistance, security, and tourism. is an important market in the /Central American sub-region with bilateral merchandise trade valued at over annually. Canada and Argentina enjoy excellent commercial relations and share similar perspectives on many global issues, the promotion of democracy and human rights, international peace and security, nuclear non-proliferation and the sustainable stewardship of the environment. Canadian companies are important actors in the extractives and agro-industrial sectors in Argentina .
and enjoy excellent commercial relations and share similar perspectives on many global issues, the promotion of democracy and human rights, international peace and security, nuclear non-proliferation and the sustainable stewardship of the environment. Canadian companies are important actors in the extractives and agro-industrial sectors in . The APEC forum was established in 1989 and has become the most important economic forum in the Asia Pacific region. Its primary purpose is to facilitate economic growth and prosperity in the region, with the vision of creating a seamless regional economy.
region. Its primary purpose is to facilitate economic growth and prosperity in the region, with the vision of creating a seamless regional economy. APEC's 21 members are home to 2.8 billion people who generate more than half of the world's gross domestic product, including more than 84 per cent of Canada's total merchandise trade.
ASSOCIATED LINK
This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca
SOURCE Prime Minister's Office
For further information: PMO Media Relations: 613-957-5555
VANCOUVER, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Bullfrog Power, Canada's leading green energy provider, and TD Bank Group are collaborating on a first-of-a-kind green energy solution, encompassing the full suite of Bullfrog's renewable energy products green electricity, green natural gas and green fuel to address 100 per cent of TD's energy footprint for its Vancouver branches and a portion of its business-related travel in Vancouver. The collaboration between the two organizations supports the City of Vancouver's Greenest City Action Plan, which has the goal of reducing community-based greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent from 2007 levels by 2020.
"As the first North American-based bank to become carbon neutral, we are committed to supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy," says Karen Clarke-Whistler, Chief Environment Officer, TD Bank Group. "Through our collaboration with Bullfrog Power, we are addressing the entire scope of our emissions footprint in Vancouver. The initiative also provides a model for how business can reduce the full impact of their energy use and play a role in building sustainable cities."
"The City of Vancouver's Renewable City Strategy includes the goal of getting 100 per cent of our energy from renewable sources by 2050," says Vancouver City Councillor Andrea Reimer. "This latest announcement with Bullfrog Power puts TD at the forefront of businesses in Vancouver that are supporting the transition to renewable energy."
Bullfrog Power's green energy is enabling TD to address the energy used in its Vancouver branches, as outlined under Scope 1 and 2 of the GHG Protocol, and business-related travel under Scope 3. TD is doing so by choosing Bullfrog Power's green natural gas (Scope 1) and green electricity (Scope 2) for its Vancouver branches, as well as Bullfrog Power's green fuel (Scope 3) for a portion of its business-related travel in Vancouver.
"Choosing all three of Bullfrog Power's green energy products is significant because it demonstrates the importance of addressing all aspects of an organization's energy footprint," says Ron Seftel, CEO, Bullfrog Power. "Our collaboration with TD provides a model for how organizations can reduce their environmental impact and shows the initiative we need to meet our climate goals and match the expectations of Canadians."
According to the 2016 Sustainable Business Attitudes Survey, which was performed by Environics Research from August 8 to 21, 2016, reaching 2,000 adult Canadians and commissioned by Bullfrog Power, the public is taking note of the efforts of businesses to reduce their energy-related environmental impacts:
85 per cent of Canadians said that they are more likely to buy products from a company that is purchasing green energy to reduce its environmental impact.
90 per cent said that for businesses that use vehicles, such as company cars, delivery trucks or long-distance tractor trailers, it is important that they make efforts to reduce their transportation-related emissions.
About the Sustainable Business Attitudes Survey
The Sustainable Businesses Attitudes Survey was conducted via telephone by Environics Research with a representative sample of 2,000 adult Canadians (18 years of age or older), between August 8 and 21, 2016. The sample included a combination of landline (75 per cent) and cell phone (25 per cent) numbers. The margin of error for a sample of 2,000 is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times in 20.
About Bullfrog Power
Bullfrog Power, Canada's leading green energy provider, offers renewable energy solutions that enable individuals and businesses to reduce their environmental impact, support the development of green energy projects in Canada and help create a cleaner, healthier world. As a Certified B Corporation, Bullfrog Power meets higher standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Thousands of individuals and businesses in Canada are doing their part to address climate change and air pollution by choosing green energy with Bullfrog Power. Sign up easily, quickly and affordably at bullfrogpower.com.
Join the bullfrogpowered community online on Facebook (facebook.com/BullfrogPower), Instagram (@bullfrogpower) and Twitter (@bullfrogpower).
SOURCE Bullfrog Power
Image with caption: "Silvia Livingston, VP Branch Banking Market Leader, TD Bank Group, and Anthony Santilli, VP Sales and Marketing, Bullfrog Power launch a new collaboration between the organizations at the 700 West Georgia Street TD branch in Vancouver, BC. (Photographer: Milos Tosic) (CNW Group/Bullfrog Power)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20161108_C5011_PHOTO_EN_814110.jpg
Image with caption: "INFOGRAPHIC: How Bullfrog Power's green energy solution helps TD to address the energy footprint for its Vancouver branches and a portion of its business-related travel. (CNW Group/Bullfrog Power)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20161108_C5011_PHOTO_EN_814111.jpg
For further information: Contact Bullfrog Power: Jon McKay, Corporate Communications Manager, 416.360.3464 ext 239, [email protected]
Queensway Avenue location will serve approximately 3,500 Veterans
KELOWNA, BC, Nov. 8, 2016 /CNW/ - Veterans, their families and local officials today joined Stephen Fuhr, Member of Parliament for KelownaLake Country, on behalf of the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, for the reopening of the Veterans Affairs Canada office in Kelowna, British Columbia.
The office is located on the 1st floor of 471 Queensway Avenue, Kelowna, BC. The Kelowna office will employ approximately nine staff who will serve approximately 3,500 Veterans in the area. Staff at the office will answer questions about VAC services and benefits; arrange pension medical examinations; and, assist Veterans to complete and submit applications and receipts. Case-managed Veterans will also be able to meet with their case manager.
In August, Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr visited the Kelowna office while it was still under construction. The Kelowna office is the third of nine Veterans Affairs offices to be reopened across the country by May 2017.
Quotes
"I am extremely proud to be reopening doors that were previously closed to Veterans and their families here in Kelowna. They have selflessly answered the call to serve our country, and now we are answering their call by enhancing financial benefits, restoring and expanding access to critical services, expanding service in British Columbia and the territories, and hiring more frontline staff. This was part of our commitment to Canadians, and we stand by this promise."
The Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence
"I am pleased to officially reopen Veterans Affairs Canada doors here in Kelowna so that approximately 3,500 Veterans in this area, as well as their families, will once again receive important in-person services and care from Veterans Affairs Canada."
Stephen Fuhr, Member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake Country.
Quick Facts
Reopening the nine Veterans Affairs offices that closed is a top priority in the Minister of Veterans Affairs' mandate letter.
The offices in Corner Brook, NL , and Brandon, MB , have already been reopened. The rest of the offices will open between now and May 2017 . Offices in Saskatoon, SK , Sydney, NS , and Charlottetown, PE , will open in the fall of 2016. The Thunder Bay, ON , office will open in January 2017 . Offices in Windsor, ON , and, Prince George and Surrey, BC , will open in spring 2017.
, and , have already been reopened. The rest of the offices will open between now and . Offices in , , and , will open in the fall of 2016. The , office will open in . Offices in , and, and , will open in spring 2017. Veterans Affairs Canada is hiring 400 new employees to help ensure that Veterans, Canadian Armed Forces members, RCMP personnel, and their families are provided with the best possible services in their own communities. This includes new staff to ensure case managers have a caseload of an average of 25 Veterans.
Associated Links
SOURCE Veterans Affairs Canada
For further information: Media Relations, Veterans Affairs Canada, 613-992-7468, [email protected]; Sarah McMaster, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, 613-996-4649
Construction of Chinas first floating nuclear power plant has officially begun, China General Nuclear (CGN) announced. The demonstration unit is expected to be completed by 2020.
China Guangdong Nuclear Power Research Institute deputy chief engineer and small reactor lead designer Rui Min said that, unlike the pouring of first safety concrete for a conventional land-based reactor, the signing of the vessel purchase agreement marks the official start of construction of the offshore unit. Of all the equipment necessary to construct the unit including the floating platform the vessel takes the longest to manufacture.
Development of the ACPR50S reactor design was approved by Chinas National Development and Reform Commission in late December 2015 as part of the 13th Five-Year Plan for innovative energy technologies.
The 200 MWt (60 MWe) reactor has been developed for the supply of electricity, heat and desalination and could be used on islands or in coastal areas, or for offshore oil and gas exploration, according to CGN.
CGN has completed both the conceptual and program design. The preliminary design work is expected to be completed soon.
The Chinese company is also working on the ACPR100 small reactor for use on land. That reactor will have an output of some 450 MWt (140 MWe) and would be suitable for providing power to large-scale industrial parks or to remote mountainous areas.
Model of China General Nuclears small modular reactor, the ACPR-100
CGN said the development of small-scale offshore and onshore nuclear power reactors will complement its large-scale plants and provide more diverse energy options.
China National Nuclear Corporation also plans to build a demonstration floating nuclear power plant, based on its ACP100S small reactor, by 2019.
CGN promotes the advantages of a small modular marine reactor
ACPR SMR: Safe, Flexible, Efficient Advanced Small Pressurized Water Reactor
Multi-purpose Small Pressurized Water Reactor independently developed by CGN;
Adopting advanced safety design concepts, satisfying safety requirements for eliminating off-site emergency;
To be used in small-scale grid, comprehensive supply of heat, electricity, water and steam and marine energy.
ACPR50S: Marine Small Modular Reactor
Mature technology: compact reactor design, combined with mature marine engineering technologies
High safety level: combination of active and passive safety systems, to make use of the advantage of sea water in cooling and shielding
Economical and Practical: adopting long-cycle refueling scheme to be more competitive than conventional marine energy; it could be used as a comprehensive energy make-up station for marine exploitation and to satisfy demand for electricity, heat, water and steam in marine environment.
Russia is also building a floating nuclear power plant, featuring two 35 MWe KLT-40S reactors. The Akademik Lomonosov is currently undergoing trials at the Baltic Shipyard, which are expected to be completed by late October 2017. The plant should be ready to be transported to Pevek later that year. Rosenergoatom plans to start installation of the plant in September 2019, followed by trials and operational launch.
Floating plants offer various advantages: construction in a factory or shipyard should bring efficiencies; siting is simplified; environmental impact is extremely low; and decommissioning can take place at a specialised facility. However, the offshore environment brings important considerations, such as access for personnel and equipment and the need to ensure radioactive materials never enter the sea.
Chinas military is developing ships, submarines, aircraft, intelligence systems and foreign bases in a bid to become a global military power, according to a forthcoming congressional China commission report.
Global Firepower list China behind Russia and both behind the USA in military power.
Some studies currently have the UK and France ahead of China in military power.
Nextbigufuture agrees that Chinas global power projection capabilities lag behind Russia, France and the UK. In about ten to fifteen years, China will more clearly develop into the number two world military. This will be after building about 1000+ fifth generation fighters, two to four additional more advanced aircraft carriers with catapult launchers and a lot more advanced submarines.
The late draft of the annual report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission contains a chapter on Beijings power projection development and warns that once fully developed, the weapons and forces could contribute to a regional conflict in places like the South China and East China seas.
The expanded military power projection capabilities could also strengthen Chinas traditional war-fighting capabilities against weaker neighbors.
Expeditionary warfare capabilities include six large amphibious transport docks and a new class of amphibious assault ships, new aircraft carriers, and advanced guided missile warships as escorts for far seas operations by China.
Chinese Type 071 YUZHAO Class Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD)
China to Start Construction on 1st Type 075 LHD Amphibious Assault Ship
According to a source in China, the steel cutting of the first Type 075 Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) for the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy) is expected to take place by the first quarter of 2017.
The Type 075 LHD is expected to have a displacement of 36,000 tons. In comparison, a Mistral-class LHD displaces 21,000 tons full load, the Juan Carlos LHD 26,000 tons and the Wasp-class 40,500 tons.
Type 075 LHD should be able to deploy and accommodate up to 30x helicopters (Z-8, Z-9, Z-18, Ka-28, Ka-31) with 6x helicopter spots on the flight deck and the main elevator located at the stern.
For self protection, the LHD is set to be fitted with 2x H/PJ-11 eleven-barreled 30mm CIWS and 2x HQ-10 short range SAM launchers.
The naval expeditionary forces will also be bolstered by three types of attack submarines, including nuclear-powered, diesel electric and air-independent powered submarines. Its six nuclear-powered Type-093 submarines are being augmented by two even more advanced nuclear submarines that by 2020 will make China the third most powerful state for attack submarines, behind the United States and Russia.
China has nearly completed a domestic Type001A aircraft carrier and has begun construction of a Type 002 aircraft carrier. The type 002 is believed to be larger and will use a catapult launcher.
New aircraft also are being added to the PLA for long-range operations. China is deploying a new Y-20 transport that is similar to the US C-17 and Beijing will co-produce a version of the Russian An-225 transport, the largest cargo aircraft in the world.
To fill out its logistics network, Chinas military is building new fueling ships and will have 10 oilers by 2020
Overseas bases will also contribute to the power projection capability, including a new military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. Civilian ports constructed by China in Sri Lanka and Pakistan also will provide for strategic power projection.
To keep tabs on threats to long-distance forces and provide them with intelligence, China is also developing global intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. They include long-range drone aircraft, space-based sensors, and shore-based radar and intelligence-gathering ships.
Chinas coal power generation capacity will grow as much as 19 percent over the next five years even as the worlds biggest energy consumer expands use of non-fossil fuels.
While coal-fired plant capacity will increase, it will still remain below 1,100 gigawatts, National Energy Administration Chief Engineer Han Shui said Monday in a webcast posted on the agencys website. Non-fossil power will increase 48 percent to about 770 gigawatts over the five-year period through 2020 as total capacity expands by 31 percent to 2,000 gigawatts.
President Xi Jinpings government is seeking to replace coal with cleaner fuels to help cut pollution that has plagued some of Chinas biggest cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. The country has said it plans to raise natural gas consumption to 10 percent of its total energy mix by 2020 from around 6 percent now.
Coal consumption growth over the next five years is projected to be stronger than previously expected, Helen Lau, an analyst at Argonaut Securities Asia Ltd., said by phone. That implies that coal production must not be reduced further, otherwise, the coal market will be in deficit.
China will need to cut about 150 gigawatts of coal-fired power from projects that are either approved for construction or already under construction to maintain the 1,100-gigawatt limit, Huang Xuenong, director of the power generation division of NEA said during the webcast. Without restrictions the countrys coal-fired power capacity could reach about 1,250 gigawatts by 2020, he said.
Hydro-power will account for about 340 gigawatts of the projected 770 gigawatts of non-fossil-fuel generation capacity by 2020. Wind will make up about 210 gigawatts and nuclear power 58 gigawatts, according to the NEA.
Chinas total power consumption may increase to between 6.8 trillion kilowatt hours to 7.2 trillion kilowatt hours by 2020, with an average annual increase of about 3.6 percent to 4.8 percent from 2016 to 2020.
Principal sources of US electricity in 2014 were: coal (39%), natural gas (27%), nuclear (19%), Hydro (6%), and other renewables (7%). Over the decade 20042014, the largest increases in electrical generation came from natural gas (2014 generation was 412 billion kWh greater than 2004), wind (increase of 168 billion kWh) and solar (increased 18 billion kWh). Over the same decade, annual generation from coal decreased 393 billion kWh, and from petroleum decreased 90 billion kWh
In 2014 the total US consumption of electric energy was 4,146.2 Terawatt hours (TWh) (or million MWh or billion kWh). US electrical consumption is about flat because at 1-2% GDP growth the increase can be achieved with more efficiency in home, factory and business equipment and facilities.
Chinas 3.6%-4.8% increase in electricity usage suggests a continued 7 to 7.5% GDP growth plan.
China may be planning to export coal generated electricity to Europe, via ultra high voltage power lines, to arbitrage permanent structural price differences between restrictive European Paris Agreement pledges, and the Chinese commitment to do whatever they want.
China is seeking to build up export markets for its power amid signs the nation has invested too much in new generation plants.
State Grid Corp. of China, which runs the majority of the nations electricity distribution network, is considering how to build links to India, South Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, a move that would require billions of dollars of investment in long-distance, high-voltage power lines.
Interconnections would allow grid managers throughout the region to more flexibility use variable supplies coming from wind and solar farms cropping up from Vietnam to Mongolia. For China, the links would provide customers for power from hundreds of power plants finished in the past few years as demand in its domestic market stagnates.
We can export to India and Southeast Asia where the power supply is inadequate, Zhang Qiping, chief engineer of State Grid, said Tuesday at a conference hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Shanghai.
Signals pointing toward the priority that China places on inter-connectors emerged in March. Then, State Grid joined Tokyo-based wireless carrier SoftBank Group Corp., Korea Electric Power Corp. and Russian grid company Rosseti Pjsc in agreeing to research and plan for interconnected power grids in Northeast Asia as part of a plan dubbed Asia Super Grid.
State Grids Wang has also proposed an ultra-high-voltage global power network to transmit electricity from country to country and continent to continent, with costs estimated at $50 trillion to develop by 2050.
Its doable in technology, said Wang, adding current ultra-high voltage lines can transmit as much as 15 gigawatts of power through 5,000 kilometers.
Officials in China have high hopes of landing ultra high voltage electricity transmission projects in India
Chinas top electricity supplier, State Grid Corp, is set to export its ultra-high-voltage technology to India soon, as it pushes to expand its large-scale network both at home and abroad, a senior official at the utility company said.
We have been having talks in India about testing some ultra-high-voltage projects. Those talks are at an early stage, but there is a great chance that some Chinese technology will be used, said Li Peng, head of the high-voltage division at China Electric Power Research Institute, a unit of the State-owned utility company.
The talks concern ultra-high-voltage or UHV technology, which provides large-scale power delivery over long distances and can reduce energy loss during transmission, he said.
China is a country with rich experience in building large-scale power transmission infrastructure, so it has become the first choice for other countries in need, he told China Daily.
Li made his remarks at a forum in Tianjin, where a 1,000-kilovolt transmission project is expected to be completed by October, marking the latest effort by State Grid to ease power shortages in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
A State Grid employee works on an ultra-high-voltage transmission construction in Huainan, Anhui province. [Photo for China Daily by Song Weixing]
Beijing-based State Grid is building an ultra-high-voltage cross-country transmission network in the worlds biggest energy-consuming market, that will link major hydropower plants and coal-fired plants in the far southwest and northwest with big energy-consuming regions in the east.
The company plans to use its domestic experience to win more exports of its technology and equipment. Last year it inked framework deals with Russia and Kazakhstan for cross-country electricity transmission lines.
State Grid also scored with its bid to build and operate two transmission lines connecting the Belo Monte Amazon dam in northern Brazil to the southeast of the country, the first ultra-high-voltage transmission project it won overseas.
Ex-militant leader, Chief Ateke Tom, has denied coming in contact with one Zakeri Isiaka, who was recently arrested by the police for ar...
Ex-militant leader, Chief Ateke Tom, has denied coming in contact with one Zakeri Isiaka, who was recently arrested by the police for armed robbery.Ateke explained that members of his group were never involved in crime during and after the Niger Delta struggle and wondered why a suspected armed robber would claim that he was once a member of his group.Zakeri Isiaka, a native of Odu-Ochella in Dekina LGA of Kogi State, who was nabbed for armed robbery and kidnapping, had claimed to be Atekes boy during the Niger Delta struggle.But Ateke said through a statement signed by his media aide, Mr. Ifeanyi Ogbonna, that though he met a lot of persons during his days as a Niger Delta agitator, he had not met Isiaka.My attention has been drawn to Saturday Punch Newspaper and other social media publications of 5th November, 2016, that one Zakeri Isiaka, a native of Odu-Ochelle in Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State, who is in police custody for armed robbery, kidnapping, political thuggery and other related offences, said he is my boy and was with me during the Niger Delta struggle.The guys face is not familiar. My boys even during and after the struggle are not into criminality but we were focused on the aims and objectives of the struggle which is the need for the Federal Governments presence in our region.After the amnesty, we laid down our arms and focused on working with the government. During my days in the struggle, I met a lot of persons but for the said Zakeri Isiaka, I have never met him not to talk about knowing him, the leader of the defunct Niger Delta Vigilantce group, said.Ateke warned Isiaka and his likes to stop dropping his name, adding that he (Ateke) remained a man of peace and had nothing to do with crime.The former agitator told Isiaka to face the consequences of his action, maintaining that those who believed in him will not take to crime.You cant claim to know me (Ateke) and yet indulge in the life of criminality. He (Isiaka) should face the consequences of his action. Whoever believes me should shun crime and work for peace, stability and security of our environment, he said.Ateke also expressed the need for the protection of government property.
The Chief of Army of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, wept on Monday as he read the funeral oration at the graveside of the seven military ...
The Chief of Army of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, wept on Monday as he read the funeral oration at the graveside of the seven military men killed by the Boko Haram terrorists.Lt.-Col. Muhammad Abu-Ali, Seargents Muazu Ibrahim, Bassey Okon, Hussani Jafaru, Cpl. Chukwu Simon, Private Salisu Lawal and Seaman Patrick Paul were killed when the terrorists attempted to seize Mallam Fatori on November 4 .The soldiers were inducted into the Operation Lafiya Dole in 2014, designed to fight the Boko Haram insurgents and liberate the North-East from their hold.He said, They were brave, precise, professional and inspiring. They led the battle to recapture the following towns: Monguno, Baga, new Marte, Bama, Gwoza, Banki Junction, Gamboru-Ngala, Yale, Yanteke, Bita, Deruwa, Daira Kangaruwa and Mallam Fatori.In these battles, they rescued children and women, fathers and mothers, the young and the old and restored peace and hope to Nigerian citizens.At last, on Nov. 4, they paid the supreme sacrifice in the battle of Mallam Fatori.He said that the deceased epitomised the very best of our military. They exemplified the values of our nation and the military which are: loyalty, discipline, courage, selfless service, respect, honour and dignity.Buratai said that the deceased fought for the unity of the nation, adding that your labour will never be in vain.He promised that the army would take care of their survivors.Earlier, President Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented by his Chief of Staff at the occasion, Alhaji Abba Kyari, said the deceased had shown unalloyed commitment to the nation.He said, They were fearless, responsive, inspiring, selfless and dedicated to their duties.The selflessness of these gentlemen reinvigorate the memories of other great fallen heroes, who stood firm in the defence of our dear nation.Buhari noted that the deceased had paid the supreme sacrifice in the ongoing fight against insurgency in the North-East, adding that their sacrifices would not go in vain.He also noted that their contributions had resulted in the restoration of normalcy in the region.He said, It is, therefore, our resolve that the labour of these fallen heroes shall never be in vain.Dignitaries that attended the funeral included the service chiefs, Gov. Kashim Shettima of Borno, Ministers of Information and culture, and Interior, and Senators Ali Ndume, Dino Melaye and Phillip Aduda.Also at the burial were the Wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, and Wife of the Senate President, Toyin Saraki, among others.The deceased were interred at about 5.55 p.m. after all necessary military ceremonies. (NAN)
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has urged the Kano State government and the inspector general of Police to bring to book those...
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has urged the Kano State government and the inspector general of Police to bring to book those responsible for the alleged killing of a Christian woman in the city.CAN said it was deeply sad by the news of the release without trial of the five suspects accused of killing a 74-year-old Christian woman in Kano, Mrs. Bridget Agbahime.She was murdered sometime in June.A statement in Abuja by CANs Director Legal and Public Affairs Kwamkur Samuel said: This is a highly provocative and insulting act on our collective sensitivities as a democratic nation, if newspaper reports are correct.The association condemns the continuous act of killing of innocent Nigerians under the pretence of blasphemy and considers the wilful absence of justice for victims of these mindless killings in Nigeria by relevant authorities as a serious constitutional breach and security threat to our unity and collective survival as a nation.The now-familiar tradition of avoidance to arrest or properly investigate and prosecute cases involving the deliberate killing of innocent Nigerians is evidence of a scripted plan to operate another nation within the Nigerian state and to deny justice to those who truly deserve justice.The cardinal responsibility of government to protect life and property of citizens is sacrosanct and must not be sacrificed on the altar of religious convenience. As it stands today, there is no single prosecution record of any criminal who killed under the pretence of blasphemy in Nigeria despite the number of victims and incontrovertible facts showing that those killings were done in daylight and mostly by persons who live within the communities, where these heinous crimes were committed.The association called on the state government and the IGP to execute justice on behalf of the victimThe act of condoning crass criminality in the name of blasphemy deserves greater attention and broader treatment in this era of transforming the mindset of the citizens to work toward progressive change.CAN deeply sympathises with the family of the Kano victim over the rather very sad outcome of the case and assures that the pursuit of justice is a noble task of all well-meaning citizens working together toward a more decent and better society.As the umbrella body of Christians in Nigeria, we will not relent in our effort to ensure that justice is served on the religiously intolerant and to ensure that all Nigerians are treated equally irrespective of their faith, social status and where they come from.
The Federal Government on Tuesday re-arraigned leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, along with other accused on charges...
The Federal Government on Tuesday re-arraigned leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, along with other accused on charges that include terrorism, before the third judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja.The accused were re-arraigned before Justice Binta Nyako on amended 11 counts, comprising terrorism, treasonable felony, managing an unlawful society, publication of defamatory matter, illegal possession of firearms and improper importation of goods.All the counts were in connection with the accused persons alleged broadcasts on Radio Biafra and agitation for the secession from of states in the South-East and South-South zones and other communities in Kogi and Benue states, to constitute the Republic of Biafra.The original charges filed on December 18, 2015 had only six counts, with the exclusion of terrorism which is now the 11th count in the new charges filed on November 11, 2016.Those originally charged along with Kanu were Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi.But in the amended charges filed by the new Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation, Mr. Umar Mohammed, the National Coordinator of IPOB member, Mr. Chidiebere Onwudiwe was added to the defendants, bringing the number of accused persons to fourr.The re-arraignment was necessitated by Kanus recent rejection of the former judge, Justice John Tsoho, on the grounds that the judge, before whom prosecution had yet to open its case, was biased.Earlier in December 2015, Kanu had also rejected Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the same Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, on the same grounds.Justice Nyako on Tuesday became the third judge before whom the accused had appeared in respect to the charges originally filed on December 18, 2015.With the rejection of the previous judge, Justice Tsoho, the prosecution amended the former six counts by adding five fresh counts, including terrorism and brought in Onwudiwe as the second defendant.All the accused persons pleaded not guilty to all the counts.
Fresh facts emerged on Monday that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) may soon bring prominent Nigerians implicated in th...
Fresh facts emerged on Monday that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) may soon bring prominent Nigerians implicated in the $180m Halliburton bribe to justice.According to The Nation, about four former Heads of State, two ex-First ladies and 87 prominent Nigerians were allegedly linked with the scandal.In all, 76 prominent Nigerians are listed in the five notebooks submitted by the Halliburton Group to the EFCC.There were indications that the anti-graft agency may quiz some of those listed.However, some of the ex-Heads of State were claiming that they received gifts and not bribes, sources said.It was learnt that about $2.5million was paid into the ex-minister of Petroleum Resources' account in Switzerland in 1998.A top source in EFCC said: We are looking into all aspects of the Halliburton scandal, including the bribe takers. This latest probe of the scandal is comprehensive.Those implicated in the Halliburton Notebooks are:Four ex-Heads of State;two former Chiefs of General Staff,two ex-First Ladies;ex-CBN Governor;three former Military Governors/ Administrators;a former Deputy Governor of CBN,11 former ministers(including two ex-Ministers of Petroleum Resources);two retired permanent secretaries andthree ex-NNPC GMDs.Others areex-secretaries to the Government of the Federation;a former civilian governor in the South-East;a former Ambassador to Italy,an ex-envoy to Brazil,three ex-NNPC secretaries,a former Chief Security Officer to a former Head of State;former MD, NLNG/Shell;former Chief of Army Staff;a former Field Commandant of ECOMOG in Liberia;ex-MD of NAFCON; and more than 13 former NNPC top shots.(The Nation)
Suspended former Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Abdulmumin Jibrin, has gone on exile.
Suspended former Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Abdulmumin Jibrin, has gone on exile.He has vowed never to return to Nigeria unless his safety can be guaranteed.The embattled lawmaker who left Nigeria for London last week to receive an award and take his anti-corruption campaign to international community, made his decision public in an interview aired on the London based Ben TV, on Monday.Jibrin explained that his decision to flee the country was informed by threats he said he had been receiving from some of his colleagues whom he accused of fraud.According to him, a cabal in the House allegedly led by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, the Deputy Speaker, Yusuf Lasun, the Chief Whip, Alhassan Doguwa, and the Minority Leader, Leo Ogor, are using Herma Hembe to threaten him and members of his family.The lawmaker also said the initial silence of President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter was a blessing in disguise because if the President had spoken much earlier he would have been accused of using him to fight the House leadership.Jibrin said, The situation currently at hand is different from the initial stage of the crisis. The silence of the Presidency is no longer sending the right message to Nigerians and the international community.He also revealed that he recently wrote to President Buhari, seeking an audience to brief him about the monumental fraud in the 2016 budget, the individual and systemic corruption in the House and some vital information on how to check corruption in the House and further fraud in the budget process and reform the House for the good of the country.He said over 2,000 fraudulent projects worth over N284bn were inserted into the 2016 budget, adding that such fraud never happened in the history of the Nigerian legislature.Jibrin, who exonerated himself from any wrongdoing in the appropriation process, said he had been in the House for five years and had never abused his office or corruptly enriched himself.While reiterating his resolve to continue with the anti-corruption campaign, he revealed that he would now take the campaign to the international stage by reaching out to foreign governments, parliaments, media, civil society groups and Nigerians in Diaspora, to press for the arrest and prosecution of Dogara, Lasun, Doguwa, Ogor and other members of the corrupt cabal in the House of Representatives.When contacted, the Special Adviser to the Speaker, Mr. Turaki Hassan, said he would not dignify the suspended lawmaker with a response.
Herman Hembe, a member of the house of representatives from Benue state, has accused Abdulmumin Jibrin of running away from prosecution.
Herman Hembe, a member of the house of representatives from Benue state, has accused Abdulmumin Jibrin of running away from prosecution.Jibrin, who was suspended from the house over some allegations levelled against the leadership of the 8th assembly, is currently in London where he received an award.The suspended lawmaker has vowed not return to Nigeria until his safety was guaranteed.But in a statement on Monday, Hembe said Jibrin fled to London because the anti-graft agencies were closing in on him on his past deeds.My attention has been drawn to a statement issued by the suspended member Abdulmumin Jibrin who has fled to United Kingdom, the statement read.Jibrins allegation that his life is under threat is laughable and foolish. I understand that the anti-graft agencies are closing in on him with their investigation into his past deeds.He might have got the hint of his possible and prosecution and decided to flee while raising false alarm.May I remind him that no matter where he goes justice will surely catch up with him as there is no hiding place for criminals in our todays world.
Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia of the Federal High Court is in fresh trouble for allegedly receiving N5m from a Senior Advocate of Nige...
Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia of the Federal High Court is in fresh trouble for allegedly receiving N5m from a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, it was learnt on Monday.Sources within the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told newsmen that the SAN had been invited to explain what the money was meant for.A detective in the EFCC said, We have evidence that Justice Ofili-Ajumogobia collected N5m from a senior advocate. We have invited him (the SAN) and he is supposed to appear this week.Ofili-Ajumogobia, who acquitted a former Minister of Aviation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, last year is believed to own properties worth almost a billion naira in Lekki, Ikoyi and London.Earlier in the year, the National Judicial Council barred her from getting any promotion for the remainder of her career.No fewer than 10 SANs and five other lawyers are in the soup for allegedly bribing some judges.Impeccable sources within the EFCC told our correspondent that some of the senior advocates paid money into the bank accounts of the judges while some others sent cash to the judges via proxies.A source specifically told journalists that some of the SANs had pending cases before the judges when the money was given to the judges.Some of the senior advocates who had been quizzed by the EFCC include the National Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress, Dr. Muiz Banire; Norrison Quakers, Rickey Tarfa, Chief Felix Fagbohun, Paul Usoro, Joseph Nwobike and Valentine Obi.Four lawyers, who are not senior advocates, were also quizzed. They are Lai Arikewuyo, Titus Orimijupa, Bayo Onitubora and Iniebong Etek.It was learnt that three other SANs Joe Gadzama, who contested the Presidency of the Nigerian Bar Association; Chief Adeniyi Akintola and Godwin Obla had also been invited by the commission as well as another lawyer, Mr. Kola Olateru.It was learnt that the senior advocates, who had been quizzed, had made useful statements while their passports had been seized.A source at the commission said, We quizzed them because they had at one time or the other deposited money into the bank accounts of judges. Many of them claimed the money was not a bribe but the troubling element there is that some of them had cases before the judges.For instance, Justice Terseer Fishim of the Industrial Court was handling the cases of some of the SANs in question and yet he received N550, 000 and N200,000 from two SANs.Apart from Fishim and Ofili-Ajumogobia, other judges interrogated by the EFCC included Uwani Abba-Aji of the Court of Appeal; Mohammed Yunusa of the Federal High Court; Nganjiwa Hyledzira of the Federal High Court; and Musa Kurya of the Federal High Court.A Federal High Court Registrar, Helen Ogunleye, was also arrested and quizzed by the EFCC.The commission alleged that her modus operandi was to refer lawyers to judges willing to cooperate for a fee.We have evidence that she gave one of the judges money at the Federal High Court in Jos. We are still investigating the matter, the source said.However, some of the lawyers, who were quizzed, denied any wrongdoing, insisting that the money they gave to the judges was not a bribe but financial assistance.In a statement, Banire said he never bribed anybody, adding that he only gave money to a friend, who coincidentally happened to be a judge, who needed money for the burial of his motherAll attempts to get other senior advocates Obi, Obla, Fagbohun and Usoro proved abortive as their telephones indicated that they were switched off.Another SAN, Quakers, said he did not give a bribe to any judge, stating that he was at the EFCC to assist the commission with investigations.In a terse text message he sent to our correspondent in response to a question on if the EFCC quizzed him for alleged bribery, he said, No, it (EFCC) did not. I merely assisted them in their investigation. Many thanks.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC,yesterday denied meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari to hike the pump price of pe...
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC,yesterday denied meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari to hike the pump price of petrol from N145 to N150 per litre.It insisted that the price still remains within the N141 to N145 per litre band, adding that it has over 1.6 billion litres of petrol in stock that would last the country for the next 45 days.The Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs, Garba Deen Muhammad, said: NNPC is not empowered statutorily to tinker with the pricing template of petroleum products as erroneously reported in some national dailies.Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has carpeted NNPC over the N4 increase in price of petrol sold at its mega-filling stations.Speaking after receiving an award at an event organised by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) in Abuja, he said it was wrong for the oil firm to do so.NNPC has been selling fuel at N141, but on November. 3, it jerked the price by N4 to match the governments benchmark of N145.Reacting, Kachikwu said: First, I am not aware that the NNPC has increased price. I need to look into that. It is a bit of surprise for me, because there are processes in doing this. If they have done that, it means they are doing it wrongly. Let me find out what the facts are, saying the increase could be as a result of foreign exchange differentiation.He said there are areas within government controlled aspects, such as payments to the Ministry of Transportation and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) that were foreign currency denominated.Having said that, the reality is that what we did at the point where we did some liberalisation was to enable the free market float the price.Obviously, as you look at forex differentiations and all that, it would impact. The worst thing you could do is to go back to an era where we basically were fixing prices.What we ought to be doing was watching the prices, making sure that they are not taking advantage of the common man; making sure that the template is respected.One of the things I think we had hoped to do, which we should still do before we embark on any price increase, is to work on those templates.He, however, promised to discuss with industry operators.Those who are investing must be able to predict the pricing methodologies, the pricing consequences and the actions, so as to be able to justify their investments.At the end of the day, I think PPPRA is the one that has the authority to say it is time the template justified some level of movement, otherwise, you have a crisis of individual decisions on pricing, he said.Nonetheless, the NNPC said the price adjustment in its downstream facilities from N141 to N145 per litre was still within the price band of N135 and N145 per litre approved on 11th May this year by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the statutory body in charge of petroleum products pricing.It assured marketers and motorists of its readiness to continue to play its statutory role of being the supplier of last resort and ensuring energy security for the nation, insisting that there was no time its management met with Buhari to push for a hike in the pump price of petrol to N150 per litre.
Contrary to the claims by the Kogi State Government that Governor Yahaya Bello is healthy, investigations, on Monday, revealed that h...
Contrary to the claims by the Kogi State Government that Governor Yahaya Bello is healthy, investigations, on Monday, revealed that he had been admitted into a hospital in Germany for eye surgery.According to, the governor was in Dubai en route to Germany for the operation, which is expected to correct an eye ailment that had been troubling him for sometime.Bello, who won the December 6, 2015, by-election in the state, was sworn in on Wednesday, January 27, 2016 without a deputy, the first of such development in the country.The nature of the eye problem could not be ascertained on Monday, but a senior official in the state confirmed that Bello travelled with some close aides and officials for the surgery.It was gathered that the state Commissioner for Works, Land and Housing, Abdulmumini Sadiq, who earlier travelled with Bello, returned to Lokoja, the state capital, a few days ago to run some errands for the governor.The source added, The governor is not missing as being speculated. The fact is that he has an eye problem and he decided to travel to Germany for medical treatment.He actually travelled with some close aides, including about two or three commissioners. He is expected back in the state within two weeks, after he might have recovered from the effects of the surgery on his eyes.It was learnt that the governor, however, could not wait for a formal handing over to his deputy, Simon Achuba.The governor, it was further gathered, did not also officially notify the state House of Assembly of his foreign trip, contrary to laid down regulations.Another source, who spoke on Monday, stated that activities in the state had been grounded to a halt following the absence of Bello and some key cabinet members.It was gathered that some of the cabinet members, including commissioners and special advisers, spent more time in Abuja, than in Lokoja, where they have their offices.The commissioners and special advisers were just appointed to do nothing, because no money was allocated to their offices for the implementation of the budget. This is due to the fact that Kogi State is broke, a source stated.The absence of the governor has generated anxiety in the state, leading to rumours that Bello was down with a deadly ailment.Meanwhile, a socio-political organisation in the All Progressives Congress, Lokoja Integrity Group, on Monday, fingered those it described as people desperate for power as the brains behind the rumours that Bello was ill and might have died.The Leader of LIG and chieftain of the APC in Kogi State, Alhaji Suleiman Abdulmalik, said these in a statement in Abuja.He was reacting to reports of anxiety in Kogi State over the weekend, following the non-appearance of Bello in public in the last two weeks.Abdulmalik, who described those behind Bellos death rumour as desperate politicians and power seekers in the state, said, The governor is hale and hearty, enjoying his well-deserved rest outside the country after 10 months of hardworking and rigorous activities without rest since assumption of office.He said the state was in a precarious situation and bleeding before Governor Bello came on board.He added, Governor Yahaya Bello is human and needs to rest so as to refresh in the task ahead. We are all mortals and every soul must taste death and power ultimately belongs to the Almighty God and who gives it to whomever He pleases. People must live with this reality, which derived mainly from the Holy Scriptures.The governors spokesman, Kingsley Fanwo, had, in a statement on Sunday, denied that the governor was nursing any ailment, stressing that Bello was hale and hearty.Fanwo, however, urged the public to discountenance the rumour, describing it as lacking any iota of truth.I want to state clearly here for the avoidance of doubt that the rumour lacks any iota of truth. It is a reflection of the depth the enemies of Kogi State have gone in their desperate angst against fate, he had stated.
The National Legal Adviser of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Dr. Muiz Banire (SAN), who is being probed by the Economic and Fin...
The National Legal Adviser of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Dr. Muiz Banire (SAN), who is being probed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for giving an alleged N500,000 bribe to a judge, has stepped down.In a letter dated November 8, 2016 which he wrote to the APC National Executive Committee through the National Chairman of the party, John Odigie-Oyegun, and copied to President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, Banire said he was stepping down pending the outcome of the EFCC investigation.He said he was doing so in the interest of the image of the party.The EFCC had on November 3, 2016 questioned Banire in relation to a sum of N500,000 he sometime paid into the account of Justice J.T. Agbadu-Fishim of the National Industrial Court.He was reportedly quizzed for about seven hours in the EFCC office before he was released on an administrative bail while his passport was seized.In his letter to the APC NEC sighted by NE on Monday, Banire said he was offering to step down as the partys legal adviser to protest his innocence.He also vowed to do everything within the limit of the law to defend himself.Banire said, For me, this party, our party, and the government which it now leads at the federal level, stands for something beyond individual interest. I see it as the last beacon of hope for our long-suffering people. Whatever is necessary to be done to preserve it and ensure its effectiveness, in order for it to attain and achieve its full potential, must be done. And where that calls for our individual sacrifice we must willingly offer it.It is in view of the above circumstances that I wish to temporarily step aside from my position on our National Working Committee as the National Legal Adviser of our party until the completion and final outcome of the EFCC investigation involving my person.Banire, who explained that Justice Agbadu-Fishim was an old colleague of his while lecturing at the University of Lagos and a fellow researcher at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, said the last contact he had with Agbadu-Fashim was about 14 years before three years ago when he received a text message from Agbadu-Fashim soliciting financial help for the funeral of his mother.Banire said he was not aware that Agbadu-Fishim had become a judge when he sent N500,000 to him.He said he assumed that Agbadu-Fishim was still an employee of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies which he knew him to be.
Against the background of its diverse population and ethnic plurality, President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday declared that multiparty sy...
Against the background of its diverse population and ethnic plurality, President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday declared that multiparty system still remained the best option for Nigerias democracy.Speaking at the commissioning of Edo State University, Iyamho, in Etsako West local government area of Edo State, President Buhari urged Nigerians to appreciate the strength in the countrys diverse ethnic and social groups.We believe in multi-party democracy system. It is the best for us. In a country of over 450 ethnic groups, it is not easy to come together, only God can do it. Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II, and President Muhammadu Buhari and during the Presidents courtesy visit to the Oba of Benin as part of his 2-day official visit to Edo State, on Monday. We are doing our best because we have found ourselves as part of this great country called Nigeria, the President said.President Buhari, who concluded a two-day state visit to Edo, encouraged Nigerians to see the current economic challenges in the country as an opportunity to set the economy firmly on the path of true diversification and sustainable economic growth. He regretted that Nigeria had all the while solely depended on oil, saying the economic recession was the price the country was paying. We are blessed with human and material resources. We made terrible mistakes in allowing ourselves to become a mono economy and we are now paying dearly for our mistakes. Nigeria made money from cocoa, palm oil, palm kernel, groundnut, hides and skin and others.We threw everything away because of petroleum. We have to go back to the land and solid minerals and do a lot of savings so that we can leave a better country for our children, he said. President Buhari expressed appreciation to Nigerians for their understanding and faith with the administrations reform programmes. This is a time for hardwork. This is a time of rebuilding Nigeria. During my campaigns, I emphasized three things, security, economy and fighting corruption. In each of them, we are recording success, the President said. President Buhari congratulated outgoing Governor Adams Oshiomhole on his stewardship during his eight-year tenure, aptly demonstrated in the quality of projects completed in the state.Certainly, Governor Oshiomhole is lucky to have served two-terms in office and he has engraved his name in gold in the history of Edo state, the President said. In his remarks, Gov. Oshiomhole urged Nigerians not to relent in supporting the current administration, saying Nigeria has a future under Buhari; there is no overnight solution to the countrys problems.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Monday closed its case in the trial of a former acting Director-General of the Nigeri...
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Monday closed its case in the trial of a former acting Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Calistus Obi, charged with an alleged N136m fraud.Obi is standing trial before Justice Mojisola Olatoregun of a Federal High Court in Lagos.He is being prosecuted alongside Alu Dismas, who is a former personal assistant to an ex-DG of NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi.The EFCC alleged that the defendants conspired between themselves on August 5, 2015, to convert N136m, belonging to NIMASA, to their own.The offence is said to be contrary to sections 15 and 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012.The defendant had pleaded not guilty.On Monday, the EFCC, through its prosecutor, Mr. Nkereuwem Anana, closed its case after the cross-examination of its eighth witness, Mr. Chukwuma Orji, by the defence counsel.While being cross-examined by the first defence counsel, Mr. Wale Akoni (SAN), Orji, an EFCC investigator, told the court that he traced part of the allegedly stolen funds to the defendants.Referring the witness to counts one to four of the charge, Akoni asked if any part of the N111m mentioned therein, was traced to the account of Obi.Orji answered, I traced the monies to the two accused in the dock.The witness claimed that it was a Bureau De Change operator who handed the money to Dismas, who, in turn, handed the money to Obi.Asked whether the EFCC had any documentary evidence to back the claim, Orji replied, My Lord, Exhibit T8 clearly shows how the said amount of money left NIMASA under the instruction of the accused.He told Justice Olatoregun that Obi had admitted that he gave an oral instruction to that effect in his statement to the EFCC.When asked by Akoni whether he knew any member of NIMASAs Committee on Intelligence, Orji said he knew the chairman of the committee, Captain Bala Agaba, who, he said, had also been facing criminal charges before other courts.When asked by the second defence counsel, Dr. Joseph Nwobike (SAN), whether Obi showed any evidence that he acted on the instruction of Akpobolokemi, Orji said the EFCC had video evidence to that effect.He, however, told the court that Dismas was not a signatory to the account of NIMASAs Committee on Intelligence.
With just 24 hours to Americas presidential election, a cross section of Enugu residents have expressed support for the Democrat Presi...
With just 24 hours to Americas presidential election, a cross section of Enugu residents have expressed support for the Democrat Presidential Candidate, Mrs Hillary Clinton.All the respondents interviewed told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu on Monday that they supported Clinton because she was the best of the four contenders.The South East/South- South Coordinator of the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Mrs Olachi Ronnie-Chuks, predicted that Clinton would win the election because of her antecedents as former Secretary of States.I am supporting Hillary Clinton because of her policy thrust and I know that she will win the election irrespective of her gender and the failed FBI email scandal.Clinton has shown that a woman can contest election based on capabilities and she does not beg for political and economic opportunities, she said.The coordinator urged Nigerian female politicians to borrow a leaf from Clintons character and political will.A civil servant, Mr Mcdonald Odenigbo said he was sure that Clinton would come out victorious because of her experience and intelligence.Odenigbo said that if Clinton won the election, Africans would benefit from her foreign policies.A journalist, Mr Regis Anukwuoji predicted that the democrat would win the election because she defeated Trump thrice during the political debate.Trump is a joker and has nothing to offer America and the world at large. So I pray and hope that Hillary wins the presidential election, he said.The Chairperson of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) in Enugu State, Ifeoma Amuta said that Clinton would make history as the first female US president if she wins the election.Clinton has the pedigree to be the US president following her antecedents as a former Secretary of States, Senator and first lady.She did not achieve the feat because she is a woman but because of her self determination and love for her country, she said.Amuta said that women and Nigerians in general had a lot to learn from Clintons experience.NAN reports that Americans will go to the polls on Nov. 8 to elect a new president to succeed Barak Obama.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday identified training methods for reading and writing as well as the quality of teacher education a...
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday identified training methods for reading and writing as well as the quality of teacher education as the bane of education.Osinbajo said this in his address to the Annual Education Conference with the themeLearning Opportunities for All The Critical Role of Teachers, in Abuja.He recommended investment in technology and new methods of teaching that could accelerate teaching, reading and writing as the best way to address the challenges.There are available methods today that can accelerate teaching, reading and writing.But the reason that they are not available in the public schools is because we are not investing enough; not just in technology but in new methods and ensuring that those children in public schools have access to some of the better methods of reading and writing.It is my respectful view that it is the responsibility of those of us who are educationists to think through the solutions for delivering relevant education with the very little resources available.The vice president, however, said there was hope because the use of appropriate technology could close the education gap between the children of the rich and the poor.I strongly believe that the fastest way to bridge the gap between those who can afford the quality of education and those who cannot is technology.Technology also provides the means to leapfrog the huge knowledge gap created daily between the hemispheric North and South.Fortunately, technology is becoming cheaper and more intuitive.It is, therefore, quite clear that teacher education itself must radically change; teacher training must be technology-driven.I also think that a teacher must be trained in a much wider curriculum.A teacher must be trained in employability skills, project management, financial management and entrepreneurial skills and technology skills even programming for those who are interested.Training this new generation of young people is a new challenge.Today, we are training individuals who must learn to multi-task and compete in the global society.The best jobs will require complex skill; the good news is that this type of training is available and can be made much cheaper and more available.The vice president expressed the hope that the conference would provide the platform for participants to engage in vigorous debate on some of the important issues affecting the future of education in the country.According to him, the future of the country depends on education, adding that a lot of issues needed to be resolved, including the ideological underpinning of Education for All.Education is a tool of empowerment; the lack or inadequacy of it can also disempower; so, education can create or deepen inequality in the society.He said such could create a well-educated few with access to best opportunities and others who are simply not qualified enough to take advantage of the best opportunities.He also noted the huge disparity between the quality of public education at primary and secondary levels and what obtained in private schools in the country, adding that it should be stopped.According to him, there is segregation in Nigerian schools based on the income and the standard of education of parents.He said it was important to engage in technology in public schools to bring the quality to the standard in private schools.The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, in his speech, said that the ministry was interested in ensuring that the teaching profession was not a dumping ground for unqualified people.Adamu said that the low quality of entrance into the profession would be addressed while training institutions would be made to match the demand and supply.He also said efforts were being made to improve the welfare and incentives for teachers as well as ensure adequate professional development for them.He said quality education was a right of the citizens, adding that children in disadvantaged and conflict zones must be captured in the provision of quality and inclusive education for all.In his lead paper on the conference theme, Prof. Kwame Akyeampong of University of Sussex, United Kingdom, said that Nigeria had a wide gap to fill in the global education map.Akyeampong, however, added that the country had increasing learning opportunities while teachers should close the wide gaps for the development of the country.He noted that 38 percent of Nigerian school children were not learning the basics in education, which in turn, affected the quality of professionals and teachers in the society.He underscored the need to produce teachers who could bridge the cultural and religious gaps in the country and advised the administration to improve the learning opportunities for the less privileged.The don further recommended the adoption of a three-part strategy of improving the quality of teaching as well as developing coherent, systematic approach to managing teachers effectively.He also suggested the training of teachers who could help to rebuild education services in emergencies.
Edo State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has accused Governor Adams Oshiomhole, of plotting to defraud the state of N5 billion.
Edo State chapter of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has accused Governor Adams Oshiomhole, of plotting to defraud the state of N5 billion.Oshiomhole will vacate office on Saturday.PDP state chairman, Chief Orbih, told newsmen in Benin, that Oshiomhole has sent the sum as supplementary budget to the state House of Assembly for approval.He said: We have observed with displeasure the despicable financial actions of the governor.They range from the approval of inflated contracts to proposed presentation of a supplementary budget of N5 billion that he wants to spend in less a week before he leaves.
Responding to news that the petrol pump price had increased, petroleum minister Ibe Kachikwu announced over the weekend that he was not aw...
Responding to news that the petrol pump price had increased, petroleum minister Ibe Kachikwu announced over the weekend that he was not aware of such an increase and would review the pricing template.The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had been selling petrol at N145 a liter, but on Thursday, November 3, the price rose to N150 in the Federal Capital Territory and the surrounding areas as private marketers capitalized on rumors regarding plans to hike petrol prices.Sources revealed to SaharaReporters that the federal government would likely not increase the petrol price due to its fear that doing such would trigger mass protests, as it did in 2012. On Monday, the Nigeria Labour Congress advised the government to not increase the petrol price, hinting that such an increase could result in civil unrest.SaharaReporters further gathered that the federal government has been quietly subsidizing crude oil at N28 per liter to keep the fuel price low. The subsidy, however, means that Nigeria has less crude oil to sell, and Nigeria relies on exporting crude oil abroad in order for it to be refined into petroleum products that are then sent back into the local market.Meanwhile, due to the depreciating value of the naira and the economic recession, independent oil companies have had difficulty importing petroleum products, leaving the NNPC as the sole gasoline importer.(SaharaReporters)
Donald Trump has told supporters at his presidential campaigns final rally that the United States is just hours away from a once-in-a-li...
Donald Trump has told supporters at his presidential campaigns final rally that the United States is just hours away from a once-in-a-lifetime change. adding that Today is our independence day.Donald Trump has told supporters at his presidential campaigns final rally that the United States is just hours away from a once-in-a-lifetime change. adding that Today is our independence day.The Republican candidate said this in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a state that has been solidly Democratic for decades.Report says the Republican Candidate sees an opportunity among Michigan white working class voters who have been hurt by the decline of the auto industry.He added that his administration would stop the jobs from leaving America and would also stop the jobs from leaving Michigan.We are finally going to close the history books on the Clintons, their lives, their schemes, their corruptions, he said of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.Meanwhile, with only hours to the heated U.S. presidential elections, some Republicans have exuded confidence that their nominee, Donald Trump, would win the election and not his rival, Democratic Hillary Clinton. Some of Trump supporters who spoke to a correspondent of NAN in the U.S. on Monday said Clintons support base was fast crumbling.According to them, the Republican nominee will win all the battleground states to be elected president of the U.S. on Tuesday.John Fredricks, the Chairman of the Trump Campaign in the State of Virginia said Trump would get more than the required votes to become president. He said we are gaining on Hillary Clinton every single day and we feel very confident that by Tuesday, Trump is going to win; we are very confident about that.As for the Electoral College and the so-called Blue wall, it is crumbling as we speak and the Electoral College is not as they say they have it, it is a complete mess now.We are going to turn the table in the battleground states, including winning Virginia and get elected and Trump is going to win the election on Tuesday night, he said.Fredricks also said that the African-Americans and other minority groups would overwhelmingly vote for the Republican in the election.He accused the media of painting Trump as hating African-Americans and other minority groups in the U.S., adding that the Republican nominee would get a chink of the minority votes. We are going to get more than 50 per cent of the African-American votes.We are going to get a high percentage of the Hispanic.Regardless of the way the media have painted Trump before average working-class American, Black, White, Hispanic, Indians, does not matter.
Hillary Clinton cast her vote early Tuesday near her home in New York state, as America chooses whether to make her its first woman presid...
Hillary Clinton cast her vote early Tuesday near her home in New York state, as America chooses whether to make her its first woman president, or elect the populist Donald Trump.Chanting Madam President, about 150 supporters turned out to cheer on the Democratic nominee who voted with husband Bill Clinton at an elementary school near their home in Chappaqua.Im so happy, Im just incredibly happy, said a smiling Clinton as she emerged from the polling station, shaking hands, mingling and chatting with the crowd.All my friends and my neighbors, it makes me so happy.
Highly celebrated Nigerian military commander and Boko Haram's worst nightmare, Abu Ali seems to have had a premonition about his demi...
Highly celebrated Nigerian military commander and Boko Haram's worst nightmare, Abu Ali seems to have had a premonition about his demise according to one of his colleague at the battlefield.Lt Col Muhammad Abu Ali who was killed by Boko Haram fighters on Friday night left some touching parting words to his juniors at the theatre of war in the north-eastern part of Nigeria.A Nigerian soldier, Ayo Adebayo who served under the late military commander said the young family man apparently predicted his own demise.were the last words of the selfless Nigerian soldier fondly remembered for the recapture of Baga from Boko Haram insurgents.He was killed when suspected Boko Haram terrorists attacked a 119 Battalion Nigerian Army location at Mallam Fatori, Borno State.
The Nigerian Senate has resolved to probe the countrys Ministry of Transport headed by Rotimi Amaechi over the procedure leading to the c...
The Nigerian Senate has resolved to probe the countrys Ministry of Transport headed by Rotimi Amaechi over the procedure leading to the concession of Port Harcourt-Maiduguri and Lagos-Kano rail lines to General Electric, GE, a U.S. conglomerate.In a motion at the Senate on Tuesday, Akpan Bassey (PDP-Cross River) said Mr. Amaechi violated the Public Enterprises (Privatization and Commercialization) Act, 1999 by unilaterally engaging General Electric for the concessioning of the Western and Eastern Rail Lines.Senator Bassey, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Gas, said upon approval of the of the project by the National Privatization Council in April 2015, twilight of former President Goodluck Jonathans tenure, the Bureau of Public Enterprises and the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility had developed a roadmap.
Over 200 million citizens of United States of America will go to the polls to vote in the 45th and next President of the country.
Over 200 million citizens of United States of America will go to the polls to vote in the 45th and next President of the country.It will be another chance for the countrys over 200-year-old democracy to be tested again.The last time that American voters faced such an onerous task was 2008, when the then Senator Barack Obama, a candidate of the Democratic Party, broke the jinx by emerging the first black to be sworn-in as President after a keenly contested election.This time, the race for the White House is clearly between former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who is the standard bearer of the Democrats and the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.While one is on the verge of making history as the first woman to be sworn in as President of the US, the other is a highly successful entrepreneur and vintage money bag.Both of them are strong contenders, no doubt and over the past months, they have been involved in vigorous campaigns targeted at the soul of the average voter across the US.But the election campaigns have been described as the most dramatic, the most absorbing and the grubbiest ever witnessed in the history of the United States.The race for the White House has also been dogged by controversy and scandals, early warning signals to voters that they will need to do additional reality checks on the candidates before leaving their homes to vote on Election Day.At different stages, both candidates have been entangled in controversy. The latest is about Clintons use of a private e-mail server over a general one during her tenure as secretary of state.Although Trump has wormed his way to reckoning through a very aggressive campaign that has also literally left nothing to chance, he has been accused of sexually abusive behaviour and for making certain unacceptable comments.Still, both candidates have not neglected to deal with the most pressing issues affecting the electorate in their campaigns. There have been debates, as always, around key subjects, such as the American economy, taxation, national security, foreign policy, criminal justice, healthcare, childcare plan, education, social security, immigration and refugees, infrastructure, urban renewal and more.Some of these subjects have been frequently raised in the campaigns because of the importance attached to them and their relevance to law and order. For instance, Trumps call for a review of the criteria for selecting immigrants based on their likelihood for success and their merit, skill and proficiency, as well as his insistence on an immigration policy that will put the interest of the American citizen first above that of the immigrant, provoked a wide range of reactions across the states. Just as much as Clintons plan to expand social security and her comments in this regard have raised hope in a possible and significant reversal of the social security policy among the people.Although the events of the past months indicate that none of the candidates has a clear edge over the other, in terms of popularity, the voters will decide in the end who to run the affairs of the nation for the next four years.However, there is an indication that a significant proportion of the American population will not be allowed to participate in the election. Investigation shows that state laws has stripped about six million Americans convicted of various offences of their voting rights.With both candidates tidying up last minute campaigns, who do you want to win the US election today and why?
I didn't 'try to be a cowboy,' says New Orleans man who resisted carjacker on Halloween
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.
Can the Saints actually go above .500? Tune into Tuesday's live Dat Chat podcast
If your home came with unhappy surprises like leaks, cracks, broken mechanical systems, or other defects, the financial responsibility might not be yours alone.
What if something was wrong with your house at the time of purchase and someonethe seller, the property seller's real estate agent, or the inspectorcould have or should have told you about it beforehand, but failed to do so? Such problems can come to light days, weeks, or years after the sale, leaving you angry and wondering whether you really have to shoulder the entire financial burden.
In such cases, you might actually be able to ask the responsible person to pitch in, and take the matter to court if they don't. Ideally, you'll be able to resolve matters without filing a lawsuit suit. To give you a picture of what might be ahead, however, this article will analyze:
who might be held legally responsible, and
whether going forward with a lawsuit makes sense.
Minor Home Defects or Natural Aging Aren't Grounds for a Lawsuit
You probably knew when you bought the house that it wasn't in perfect condition. Some problems, such as a crack in the front walk, might have been obvious. Others, such as aging plumbing, the seller might have told you about in the course of the sale. (In most states, laws require home sellers to disclose all "material" defects to prospective buyers.)
Your home inspector, assuming you hired one, probably also told you about a few problems.
Then after the sale, your home probably continued its normal process of aging and decaying, leaving you to deal with the consequences. None of these sorts of issues provide any grounds upon which to run back to the seller to complain.
Will your insurance company cover the damage? If so, there may be no need to take action on your own. For how to work with your insurance company, see After the Fire or Disaster: Dealing with Your Insurance Company.
Could the Home Seller Be Held Legally Responsible?
Even if you think you've been wronged, you can't sue everyone who was involved in the sale of your home. The home seller is the first one to consider, of course.
As mentioned, nearly every U.S. state has laws requiring sellers to advise buyers of certain defects in the property, typically by filling out a standard disclosure form before the sale is completed. (This responsibility remains even if you bought the house "as is.")
The form usually asks the seller to state whether the property has certain features (like appliances, a roof, a foundation, systems for electricity, water, and heating, and more) and then to rate or describe their condition. Some states' disclosure laws are more comprehensive than others, and if a feature isn't on the list, the seller might not be required to speak up. Also, the seller isn't usually required to scout out problems.
If there's clearly a place on the form where the seller should have stated a problem but denied it, your job is to try to figure out whether the seller in fact knew about it. For example, if the seller patched over or hid problem areas, or if the neighbors have told you about the seller's efforts to deal with a problem, the evidence is on your side.
And even if you're in one of the few states with no mandated seller disclosures, it might be possible, particularly in an egregious situation, to sue the seller for:
negligence
fraud
breach of contract
breach of warranty, or
negligent misrepresentation.
Could the Seller's Real Estate Agent Be Held Legally Responsible?
Some states' laws make sellers' real estate agents liable for failing to disclose problems they observed or were told of by the sellers, though often their duties are fairly limited. Check your state's disclosure laws and try to figure out whether the problem would have been apparent to the broker, but not to you, before the sale.
Could Your Home Inspector Be Held Legally Responsible?
Hopefully, you got a home inspection before buying. In theory, the inspector should have spotted problems that the seller wasn't aware of, or was turning a blind eye to. If the inspector missed problems that an expert (a professional peer) should have noticed, the inspector might be on the hook; that is, legally liable.
Read over your inspection report to see what it said about the area in question. Some buyers are embarrassed to find that the problem is spelled out right in the report, or falls within an area that the inspector rightfully excluded from the report. But in other cases, the inspector failed to meet basic standards of professional competence.
Do You Have a Solid Case?
Once you've figured out the possible responsible parties, you'll want to know whether their actionor inactionmight entitle you to compensation. If your situation meets the criteria below, you might have a good case. We've collapsed a few legal principles into this list, but it will apply to most situations in most U.S. states.
The defect was there before you bought the home. The seller couldn't have hidden problems that didn't exist during the period of ownership. Again, problems that started post-purchase or that are a natural result of the home's aging or your lapses in maintenance are yours to deal with. Of course, determining when a problem started can get complicated. For example, a blockage in your sewer line could be a new problem, or it could be a recurrence of a long-time issue with roots growing into the pipes. You might need a professional's analysis. But if the problem could have started before you bought the house, keep reading.
The seller couldn't have hidden problems that didn't exist during the period of ownership. Again, problems that started post-purchase or that are a natural result of the home's aging or your lapses in maintenance are yours to deal with. Of course, determining when a problem started can get complicated. For example, a blockage in your sewer line could be a new problem, or it could be a recurrence of a long-time issue with roots growing into the pipes. You might need a professional's analysis. But if the problem could have started before you bought the house, keep reading. It's not an obvious defect that you could have seen yourself before buying. If there was a huge crack running across the living room ceiling at the open house and you've only now decided to bring it up, no dice. But if the crack was hidden by a false ceiling, the matter might be worth pursuing. Don't worry if your inspector should have seen the problem. That just means you've got a potential claim against the inspector, too.
If there was a huge crack running across the living room ceiling at the open house and you've only now decided to bring it up, no dice. But if the crack was hidden by a false ceiling, the matter might be worth pursuing. Don't worry if your inspector should have seen the problem. That just means you've got a potential claim against the inspector, too. No one told you about the defect before the sale, or someone actually lied to you about it. The responsible party might have been the seller, the seller's agent, or the inspector, as explained above.
The responsible party might have been the seller, the seller's agent, or the inspector, as explained above. You relied on the lies or nondisclosures. This one's usually easy. If, for example, you took the seller's word that a remodel job was up to code in deciding to buy or in setting your price, you acted in reliance.
This one's usually easy. If, for example, you took the seller's word that a remodel job was up to code in deciding to buy or in setting your price, you acted in reliance. You've incurred monetary damage as a result. Your costs of repairs or related damages (such as destruction of your personal property due to a flooded basement, or a decrease in your property value due to an undisclosed environmental hazard) will become legally speaking, the "damages" that you may collecteven if you haven't paid any out-of-pocket costs yet (for example, you need a new foundation but haven't actually hired a contractor to build it). But don't expect to collect damages that go beyond the house itself, such as for your pain and suffering or lost time.
Your costs of repairs or related damages (such as destruction of your personal property due to a flooded basement, or a decrease in your property value due to an undisclosed environmental hazard) will become legally speaking, the "damages" that you may collecteven if you haven't paid any out-of-pocket costs yet (for example, you need a new foundation but haven't actually hired a contractor to build it). But don't expect to collect damages that go beyond the house itself, such as for your pain and suffering or lost time. You're within any appropriate deadlines ("statutes of limitation"). Every state puts limits on how long you have, from the date you discover a problem or reasonably should have discovered it, to sue someone. The legislators don't want you dragging the seller into court 20 years after the sale, when no one recalls what happened. Most statutes of limitations are somewhere between two and ten years, but this will depend on where you are and what type of claim you have.
Even if you think you meet the above criteria, remember that in an actual lawsuit, it will be your job to convince a judge. Hence the more evidence you can start gathering, the better.
Legal Basis for Filing a Lawsuit
In legalese, you could potentially sue someone based on any of the following principles, or some combination of them:
Again, the law in your state will govern which theory might best fit your case.
Where to Sue Over Home Defects
Your main options for actually filing a lawsuit include:
small claims court, if the damages are under a certain limit, or
state court.
Filing in small claims court allows you to proceed with your case without a lot of the expensive administrative hassles of a "regular" lawsuit. You can represent yourself (in some states, attorneys are actually forbidden), the rules are typically not as rigid, and your case should be resolved relatively quickly.
However, every state places a dollar limit on the amount of damages you can sue forusually somewhere between $1,500 and $15,000. To find your state's exact limit, see 50-State Chart of Small Claims Court Limits. Even if your damages are over the limitfor example, if the repairs cost $8,000 and the limit is $5,000bringing a suit for $5,000 and forgetting about the rest might make economic sense because you will save time and attorney's fees.
If the amount of monetary damages you're asking for exceeds the small claims court limit, your next option is filing suit in state court, most likely with the help of an attorney.
Some attorneys will take this type of case on a contingency basis, meaning you don't pay a fee upfront but pay a large percentage (30-40%) of the damage award. You might still be responsible for paying court costs and other fees, plus expenses such as the attorney's phone calls and postage. Or, the court may award reimbursement of attorney's fees as part of your damages.
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MIAMI (AP) Janet Reno, who was the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney general but also became the epicenter of multiple political storms during the Clinton administration, died early Monday. She was 78.
Reno died from complications of Parkinson's disease, her goddaughter Gabrielle D'Alemberte said, adding that Reno spent her final days at home in Miami surrounded by family and friends.
A former Miami prosecutor who famously told reporters "I don't do spin," Reno served nearly eight years as attorney general under President Bill Clinton, the longest stint in a century.
Her sister, Maggy Reno Hurchalla, told The Associated Press that Clinton called over the weekend said to "tell Janet I love her" and that many others from her career visited or called, including former Florida governor and Sen. Bob Graham. Bill and Hillary Clinton issued a statement praising Reno's tenure and President Barack Obama called her "an American original" in his own statement.
"When Janet Reno arrived in Washington in 1993, the city had never seen anyone like her before and hasn't since," Obama said. "Her legacy lives on in a generation of lawyers she inspired, the ordinary lives she touched, and a nation that is more just."
One of the administration's most recognizable and polarizing figures, Reno faced criticism early on for the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, where sect leader David Koresh and some 80 followers perished.
She was known for deliberating slowly, publicly and in a blunt manner. Reno frequently said "the buck stops with me," borrowing the mantra from President Harry S. Truman.
After Waco, Reno figured into some of the Clinton administration's controversies and scandals, including Whitewater, Filegate, bungling at the FBI laboratory, Monica Lewinsky, alleged Chinese nuclear spying and questionable campaign financing in the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election.
In the spring of 2000, Reno enraged her hometown's Cuban-American community when she authorized the armed seizure of 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez. He was taken from the Little Havana home of his Miami relatives so he could be returned to his father in Cuba.
During her tenure, the Justice Department prosecuted the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case, captured the "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski that same year and investigated the 1993 terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center. The department also filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. and Reno was a strong advocate for protecting abortion clinics from violence.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch praised Reno's integrity, and called her a trailblazer and "one of the most effective, decisive and well-respected leaders" in Justice Department history.
Lynch said Reno applied one test: "to do what the law and the facts required. She accepted the results of that test regardless of which way the political winds were blowing."
Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer, who worked for Reno in Washington from 1995-2000, said, "Even if you agreed or disagreed with her, you knew she was coming from a place of integrity." He added, "Through her work, through her decisions, she exhibited a lot of strength and a lot of courage."
After leaving Washington, Reno returned to Florida and ran unsuccessfully for Florida governor in 2002 but lost in a Democratic primary marred by voting problems.
Born July 21, 1938, Janet Wood Reno was the daughter of two newspaper reporters and the eldest of four siblings. She grew up on the edge of the Everglades in a cypress and brick homestead built by her mother and returned there after leaving Washington. Her late brother Robert Reno was a longtime columnist for Newsday on Long Island.
After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in chemistry, Reno became one of 16 women in Harvard Law School's Class of 1963. Reno, who stood over 6 feet tall, later said she wanted to become a lawyer "because I didn't want people to tell me what to do."
In 1993, Clinton tapped her as the first woman to lead the Justice Department after his first two choices also women were withdrawn because both had hired illegal immigrants as nannies. Reno was 54.
"It's an extraordinary experience, and I hope I do the women of America proud," Reno said after she won confirmation.
A little more than a month of taking office, however, Reno became embroiled in controversy with the raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco.
On Feb. 28, 1993, before Reno was confirmed as attorney general, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents executing a search warrant made a surprise raid on the compound. Gunfire erupted, killing four agents and six members of the religious sect.
That led to a 51-day standoff, ending April 19, 1993, when the complex caught fire and burned to the ground. The government claimed the Davidians committed suicide. Survivors said the blaze was started by tear gas rounds fired into the compound by government tanks, and that agents shot at some who tried to flee. Reno had authorized the use of the tear gas to end the standoff and later called the day the worst of her life.
"It was a dangerous situation," Reno said during a 2005 lecture at Duke University. "The tragedy is that we will never know what was the right thing to do."
In 1995 Reno was diagnosed with Parkinson's after noticing a trembling in her left hand. She said from the beginning that the diagnosis wouldn't impair her job performance. And critics both Republicans and Democrats didn't give her a pass because of it.
Republicans argued she should have sought appointment of an independent counsel to investigate allegations of Clinton-Gore fundraising violations. Democrats grumbled that she failed to act as a team player.
In early 2000, Reno tried to negotiate the return to Cuba of 5-year-old Elian, who had been rescued after his mother and others drowned trying to boat from Cuba to Florida. He had been placed in the care of a Miami uncle, but his father, who lived in Cuba, wanted him returned to the island.
When Reno decided talks had broken down that April, she ordered an early morning raid by federal agents who seized the boy, enraging Miami's Cuban-American community.
Reno later said federal officials tried until the last minute to negotiate a voluntary handover and avoid the raid where Elian was found hiding in a closet and confronted by an agent with a gun.
"We have been to great lengths to resolve this case in the least disruptive manner possible," she said at a news conference following the raid.
As attorney general, Reno often was teased by late night talk show hosts for her unassuming appearance and no-nonsense attitude. Comedian Will Ferrell memorialized her in a recurring "Saturday Night Live" skit called "Janet Reno's Dance Party" and Reno visited the skit the night she left the Justice Department in January 2001.
Reno began her career in Miami in the mid-1960s and had her first encounter with the "glass ceiling," getting passed over for a job at a law firm because she was a woman. She later made partner. In 1972, she lost a race for a Miami-area legislative seat but learned the importance of sticking to her principles from mentor John Orr, a former state lawmaker.
"Don't equivocate, don't pussyfoot, don't talk out of both sides of your mouth and you'll wake up the next morning feeling good about yourself," he told Reno. It became one of her favorite sayings.
After losing that election, Reno was hired by the Dade State Attorney's office. In 1978, when State Attorney Richard Gerstein decided to step down, Reno became his successor.
As prosecutor, Reno built programs to help reform drug dealers and combat domestic violence. Another program strong-armed deadbeat dads into paying child support, inspiring a rap song named after her.
It included the line: "All the money you get, all the checks you make; Janet Reno will make sure and take."
She also weathered a 1980 riot after an all-white jury acquitted five police officers for the beating death of a black insurance salesman. Eighteen people were killed in the rioting and crowds chanted Reno's name, accusing her of being a racist and demanding her resignation. Reno refused.
"To resign was to give into anarchy," she said.
Reno eventually won support in the city's black community, attending countless community meetings, church services and parades.
Her last foray into politics was the race for Florida governor. Reno lost the primary to Tampa lawyer Bill McBride despite her name recognition. Republican Gov. Jeb Bush defeated McBride to win a second term.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who also worked for Reno at Justice in the 1990s, marveled at the twists and turns in her journey.
"Hers was a great and uniquely American life and was well lived," Holder said in a statement. "All who truly knew Janet loved her and all in this nation were made better by her service and by her sacrifice. I will miss her."
After retiring from politics, Reno served on the boards or as an adviser to several organizations. In 2004 she joined the board of the New York-based Innocence Project, which works to free prisoners who can be proven innocent through DNA testing.
She also spent more time with her family. Shy and admittedly awkward, Reno never married but remained extremely close to her tight-knit family.
Asked to describe her legacy after ending her gubernatorial campaign, Reno quoted George Washington: "If I were to write all that down I might be reduced to tears. I would prefer to drift on down the stream of life and let history make the judgment."
The locally made Ford Police Interceptor beat out competitors in the Michigan State Police and Los Angeles County Sheriff tests, which are hugely influential as to which cars police departments around the country buy.
The Police Interceptor Utility and Police Interceptor Sedan, which are made at the Chicago Assembly Plant in Hegewisch, already have about 66 percent of the total market share for police vehicles. Both models produced at Ford's automotive factory on the Calumet River as replacements for the iconic Crown Victoria police vehicle have had double-digit sales growth every month for years.
For October, the Police Interceptor Utility had the largest sales increase of any Ford brand vehicle, with sales increasing 26.1 percent as compared to the year-ago month.
Ford's 2017 Police Interceptor models out-accelerated police vehicles by competitors Dodge and Chevy.
"This isnt just bragging rights, Ford Chief Program Engineer for Police Vehicles Arie Groeneveld said. "Its a question of safety leadership. In terms of both public safety and the safety of our law enforcement officers, the best police chases are the ones that never happen. But like our industry-exclusive 75-mph rear crash test rating and standard full-time intelligent all-wheel drive, these results reinforce the point that Ford is relentless in pursuing safety in our police vehicles."
In the Michigan State Police test, the 2017 Ford Police Interceptor sedan with an EcoBoost engine went from 0-60 mph in 5.7 seconds. It raced from 0-100 mph in 13.62 seconds, beating the nearest competition by nearly a second.
Both the Police Interceptor Sedan and the Police Interceptor Utility clocked the fastest lap and fastest average lap time in their respective categories at the Grattan Raceway near Grant Rapids.
This demonstrates well-rounded performance that tests severe braking, handling and steering under very grueling, extreme conditions, Ford Police Vehicle Engineering Manager Allen Magolan said.
The Police Interceptor had similar results in Los Angeles where the sedan raced from 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds and from 0-100 mph in 13.8 seconds.
MERRILLVILLE MonoSol, the water soluble film maker that's had tremendous success with Tide Pods, is looking to branch out into a new market.
The Merrillville-based company, which is owned by Kuraway in Japan, has developed new water-soluble film for the personal care and cosmetic industries.
NIPSCO wants to undertake $399 million in environmental protection projects at power plants to comply with new federal mandates designed to prevent groundwater and other pollution from coal ash.
The utility last week submitted a request to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission to undertake the work and implement a bill surcharge to pay for 80 percent of the cost.
A lot of the work would be undertaken at NIPSCOs Schahfer Generating Station in Wheatfield, where the utility has transported coal ash from other power plants for more than a decade, according to NIPSCO spokesman Nick Meyer. That plant also uses a wet scrub technology for filtering coal ash that will need extensive modifications in order to comply with new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules.
One of those rules seeks to limit wastewater discharges of toxic metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury that are present in coal ash, a waste product produced at coal-fired power plants. Other work would be done to comply with a rule that deals with coal ash storage on site at the generating stations. Bailly Generating Station in Chesterton is slated to close in 2018 under NIPSCOs current long-range plan, so that plant would be dealt with under a separate closure plan, Meyer said. Michigan City Generating Station would have some work done under NIPSCOs request submitted last week.
The Bailly closure, and the planned 2023 shutdown of two generating units at Schahfer, are in part driven by the new EPA rules on coal ash, Meyer said. Other utilities across the state and nation are also coming up with plans to comply with the new rules. The rules may accelerate the trend toward coal-plant retirements and the use of other fuels, such as natural gas, to generate electricity.
NIPSCOs request for $399 million in environmental protection projects and the bill surcharge to pay for them will be the subject of an Indiana Utility Regulatory Process, including a hearing before the commission.
The environmental bill surcharge, or tracker, NIPSCO wants to use to pay for the projects has been a fairly constant feature of NIPSCO bills for the past decade, ebbing and flowing with the scale of projects undertaken.
NIPSCO has not yet estimated what the surcharge would be for the projects undertaken to comply with the coal ash rules, Meyer said. The surcharge should come onto bills as ones for previous projects are rolling off.
Currently, NIPSCO customers are paying for about $800 million in environmental projects undertaken at power plans via a surcharge that adds about $4.58 to the monthly bill for a typical residential customer using 700 kilowatts of electricity.
The Citizens Action Coalition, the states largest grass-roots consumer group, has already asked to intervene in the case. The coalition points out the projects will impact customer bills as well as the utilitys future choices when it come to alternative energy sources.
Concern about coal ash has been heightened in recent years by high-profile spills at coal-ash storage ponds at power plants, starting with a Dec. 22, 2008 spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority plant in Kingston, Tennessee. That spill flooded more than 300 acres of land and polluted two nearby rivers.
Locally, one has to look no further than The Pines, just west of Michigan City, to see the problems coal ash can cause. NIPSCO is digging up soil around 13 homes and a park in The Pines, west of Michigan City, which was contaminated with toxic metals from coal ash generated by the utility. The coal ash was dumped there years ago by contractors and used mainly as landscaping fill.
When the holidays draw nigh, Welchs Stop & Shop, located at 11333 West 95th Place in St. John, is deluged with orders for turkeys, but thats not allmore and more home cooks are choosing alternatives to the traditional roast bird.
Creative Cuts
Our hams, which we have made and cured for us, are big sellers for Thanksgiving and Christmas, says Ed Welch, a partner in this third generation family business founded in 1953. A lot of people serve sauerkraut and our Polish sausage, which we make fresh daily for holiday meals.
Welchs sells both regular and smoked Polish sausage thats made in-house in one of the two smokers on the premises (one is large enough to hold logs and the other uses wood chips). Both impart a smoky flavor that accents the taste of meats they sell.
For beef lovers, Welch says they offer prime rib, roasts and steaks cut to order. And though theyre not made on-site, Welch says they can order turduckens, the Louisiana dish said to have been invented by the master of Cajun cuisine, Paul Prudhomme. Rich in flavor and spice, this unusual dish is exactly what it sounds like: a boneless chicken stuffed inside a boneless duck inside a boneless turkey, usually with a cornbread or other traditional Southern-style stuffing inside.
From Traditional to Vegan
We actually have a vegan turkey option on the menu during the holidays, says Teresa Connell, a cook at Tiger Lily Cafe, located at 1505 South Calumet Road in Chesterton. The restaurant offers traditional, vegetarian and vegan dining options. We do it like the traditional turkey dinner but our rolls are made by our vegan baker and instead of chicken broth for making the gravy and stuffing, we use vegetable broth.
Also on the menu around holiday time is Tiger Lilys pork rouladea pork roast which is pounded very thin and spread with a layer of chopped apples and onions accented with sage. The filled meat is rolled up, and slowly braised before being sliced and served.
In the bakery at Tiger Lily Cafe, vegan baker Sue Novak also prepares vegan pumpkin pies.
Theyre very similar in texture and flavor to non-vegan pumpkin pies, she says. But we use organic pumpkin puree and substitute coconut milk for cows milk. Regular pumpkin pie filling is thickened with eggs, but since we dont use eggs in vegan cooking, we substitute cornstarch to make it thick.
Complex Flavors
Tammy Pham, executive chef and owner of two sister restaurantsSiam Marina in Tinley Park, Illinois, and Asparagus, located on Broadway in Merrillvillesuggests making her duck confit: braised duck served with sauteed bok choy, topped with mango-blood orange sauce.
In this recipe, the confit, traditionally a French dish, also incorporates the flavors of both Phams native Vietnam as well as Thai cookery, with the addition of soy and oyster sauce, bok choy (a type of Chinese cabbage commonly available in supermarkets), Chinese five spice powder, and mango puree. In all, it reflects the Asian and European culinary legacies found on menu items at both her restaurants.
In two red states that were never supposed to be this competitive, North Carolina and Missouri, Democrats sought to upset entrenched GOP incumbents. As voting got underway, both states looked like they could go either way.
In Democratic-leaning states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates made final appeals trying to tie their GOP opponents to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
"Donald Trump says climate change is a hoax by the Chinese, and Pat Toomey's standing with him," Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty declared at a final rally in Pittsburgh on Monday with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. "We're standing with her, and climate change is on the ballot!"
Toomey, the first-term Pennsylvania GOP incumbent who has refused to say whether he was voting for Trump, implored supporters in Harrisburg to keep up their enthusiasm. National polls showed Clinton narrowly leading Trump, and Republicans faced the prospect of losing the 54-46 Senate majority they won only two years ago.
"The race between me and Katie McGinty is a tied race right now and when you have a tied race, especially in a big state like ours, the winner, in the end, is the side that wants it the most," Toomey told a small crowd of loyalists in a hotel ballroom. When the polls close, Toomey added, "we will have determined the next senator and, probably, which party controls the United States Senate."
Indeed with Senate races down to the wire in a half-dozen states, any one of them could end up determining Senate control after a tough and costly campaign. Democrats needed to pick up four seats to take the majority if Clinton wins the White House and can send her vice president to cast tie-breaking votes in a 50-50 Senate, or five seats if Trump wins.
Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on both sides by the party committees, the gun lobby, environmental groups and other special interests, as well as super PACs aligned with the Senate leaders, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Republicans faced hurdles from the outset, starting with an unfavorable map that had the GOP defending 24 seats, including several in Democratic territory, compared to 10 for the Democrats. Running with Trump on the ballot complicated lives for a number of GOP candidates, including Toomey and Joe Heck in Nevada, who refused to say up until the end whether he would vote for the Republican presidential nominee.
Heck's rival, Catherine Cortez Masto, said Trump's "message of hate" was helping turn out Latinos in Nevada to vote for her and Clinton.
"Did Donald Trump excite my base here in Nevada? Absolutely," said Cortez Masto, who if elected would be the Senate's first Latina. "He wants to build a wall with Mexico. He calls Mexicans rapists and criminals. He's coming to the state of Nevada where 28 percent are Hispanic. The majority are from Mexico. That's my family."
In New Hampshire, GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte was among those who pulled her support for Trump after audio emerged of him boasting he got away with groping women. But that angered Republican voters, and it didn't stop Ayotte's Democratic opponent, Gov. Maggie Hassan, from trying to tie her to Trump throughout the campaign.
In Florida, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio seemed to have a lead over Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, who was abandoned by his own party after Democratic bosses decided to pull ad money from expensive Florida and invest it in Missouri, North Carolina and Indiana, instead.
It was a different story in Indiana, where another star recruit, Evan Bayh, former Democratic governor and senator, was struggling in his comeback bid against Republican Rep. Todd Young. That race was another toss-up.
Wisconsin and Illinois were favored to flip for the Democrats, though in Wisconsin polls tightened in recent weeks in favor of GOP Sen. Ron Johnson. But Ohio and Arizona, forecast to be competitive early on, turned into walks for the GOP incumbents, Rob Portman and John McCain.
Reid's retirement in Nevada created an open seat, and the only contested race where Democrats were on defense.
CROWN POINT State police and local election officials said early Monday they were investigating who is sending misleading texts to voters across Northwest Indiana.
Pat Gabrione, the ranking Republican member of the Lake County elections board staff, said Monday he has heard of voters receiving messages through social media directing voters on Election Day to polling place outside their home communities.
"We've heard of texts that were sending Gary voters to Lowell, and to people in Rensselaer (Jasper County) to Gary," Gabrione said.
Indiana State Police 1st Sgt. Al Williamson said Monday: "We have a complaint from one individual who got the text. It has happened in LaPorte County as well. The number doesn't come back to anyone. It's just a blank text on social media; says bring your photo ID to vote, and I'll call you back to see how it turned out."
Williamson said he also is trying to track a second text that allegedly directed a voter to a polling place outside their precinct.
Drew Anderson, communications director for the Indiana Democratic Party, said Monday afternoon his party did send erroneous texts with wrong polling place locations, but not to Northwest Indiana.
The Indiana Democratic Party experienced a data-match error in our get-out-the-vote text message program to Democratic voters," Anderson said.
"We believe the error impacted less than 2,000 voters, informing them of an incorrect polling location. We are correcting the error now with a new message directing the voters impacted to www.indianavoters.com so that they are able to confirm their polling location," according to a party statement.
Gabrione said he is concerned someone may be attempting to discourage people from voting.
"If someone can call all the Crown Point people who haven't voted early and they direct them to the other side of town, by the time they get back to where they are supposed to be, it will be too late," Gabrione said.
Gabrione and Michelle Fajman, the county elections director, said there have been no last-minute polling place changes and their office only communicates with voters through postcards, not text messages.
Gabrione and Williamson said anyone who has received a suspicious text should call state place at (219) 696-6242.
Some voters were greeted early Tuesday by packed parking lots and lines snaking out the doors in Northwest Indiana though many said it could have been worse if not for the popularity of early voting.
Overall, turnout was steady throughout the day.
Complete voter turnout figures for Lake County were not available late Tuesday night, but election officials earlier in the day estimated that between 200,000 and 225,000 cast ballots, either on Election Day or through early voting. Thats on par with the 2012 general election, where nearly 206,000 voted in Lake County.
With 103 of 123 precincts reporting, 65,003 or about 51 percent registered voters cast ballots in Porter County. With all 92 precincts reporting in LaPorte, about 55 percent or 46,369 cast ballots in Tuesdays election.
Voters who spoke with The Times reported only minor issues and most were quickly resolved, according to election officials.
One of more egregious moments came out of Merrillville, where a woman showed up at the polls to vote, surprised to hear she had been removed from the rolls because she died.
In the end, Pamela Edwards, of Merrillville, said she cast a ballot after signing an affidavit that she was, in fact, alive. Edwards said she was surprised because she has voted in the same place for 30 years and cast a ballot in this years primary election.
Im still employed. Im still paying Social Security tax. Ive very much alive and well, Edwards said, joking that the county wont accept any excuses when her property taxes are due later this year.
She said she suspected the county was trying to clean up its rolls, but something went wrong. The poll workers were following the rules, as they should, she said.
A good crowd
Earlier Tuesday, cars jammed the parking lots outside the polls at the Lake County fairgrounds, but things appeared to be moving relatively quickly inside.
Bonnie Parrish, an inspector for Center Township Precinct 3, said turnout appeared to be brisk.
Its kind of looking like four years ago already, Parrish said. This is kind of a good crowd.
At the Valparaiso Boys and Girls Club, voters found themselves sitting elbow to elbow casting ballots before going to work early Tuesday morning with just one voting booth available.
Instead of waiting for the voting booth to open up, Andrea Flynn, of Valparaiso, said she, like others, sat down to fill out a ballot.
No new machines had been delivered when she left about 6:20 a.m., she said.
Sundae Schoon, Republican director of Porter County Voter Registration and Elections, confirmed crews initially failed to deliver the total number of requested voter booths to the polling site at the Boys & Girls Club, but she said the issue was quickly remedied.
Booths are double-sided, so two people can simultaneously work on ballots.
Other minor issues were reported some candidate signs were found to be too close to polling places but Schoon said it was otherwise quiet.
Tom Malinowski, inspector of Precinct 19, said the Schererville Town Hall was packed with early voters in the days leading up to the election, which may explain why fewer voters were at the polls on election day.
I think it had a big impact, Malinowski said.
HARVEY Illinois State Police late Monday night were searching for a man in connection with an altercation at the Halsted Street toll plaza on Interstate 80/294 that resulted in a state trooper being injured.
Police said the preliminary investigation indicates a trooper saw and then confronted a suspicious person at the toll plaza at Halsted Street and westbound I-80/northbound I-294. At that time, the suspect allegedly pointed a gun at the trooper. Police said a struggle ensued and the suspect's gun discharged several times.
The suspect then fled the area on foot. Police said the trooper was injured in the struggle, but was not struck by gunfire. He is currently at a local hospital undergoing treatment and his injuries do not appear life-threatening, police said.
Police say the suspect is still at large and is described as a black male wearing a construction type vest and black jeans. A firearm was recovered from the scene, but officials said it is unknown if the suspect is still armed.
Law enforcement personnel from other agencies were reportedly assisting state police in the search for the suspect. Police said they will release more information as it becomes available. The mainline of the roadway remains open, according to police.
HIGHLAND A 21-year-old woman on her way to the polls to vote Tuesday was seriously injured when she lost control of her vehicle on Interstate 80/94, state police said.
Jessica Kiel, of Highland, was westbound on I-80/94 at about 12:50 p.m. Tuesday when she lost control of her vehicle for unknown reasons, according to an Indiana State Police news release.
Kiel's Chevrolet Aveo slid across all four lanes of traffic to the south and hit a 2006 pickup truck in the left lane, driven by Vincent Cornelius, 48, of Gary, according to police.
Kiel's Aveo then spun back north into the left middle lane, where the driver's side was broadsided by a semitrailer, owned by Catoosa, Oklahoma-based Oakley Trucking, loaded with 80,000 pounds of coke, a purified type of coal. The semi driver, 43-year-old Chad Bennett, of Monroe, Georgia, was not injured, according to police.
The driver of the pickup struck a concrete median barrier wall, but he was not injured.
Kiel was taken to North Lake Methodist Hospital in Gary with serious head and internal injuries before being airlifted to a Chicago area trauma center, according to police.
Family has been notified. This crash is still under investigation and no tickets have been issued at this time.
LOWELLTown officials locked in their share of funding for $2 million in street paving projects and awarded a major water utility improvement project recently.
The council gave final approval to a $1.3 general obligation bond ordinance which will fund the town's matching portion to a $1 million Indiana Department of Transportation grant. The street repaving project will cover six specific areas plus miscellaneous.
At the same time, the council awarded a contract for the Nichols Street Water project to Austgen Equipment for $528,402.
Craig Hendricks of SEH said the Crown Point company's bid was the lowest of nine received. Bids ranged from $1,020,000 to Austgen's. The closest to the winning bid was about $620,000. SEH had estimated $750,000, including 10 percent contingency funds.
Hendricks said the timing was perfect for the town. "There's not a lot of underground work right now. Lots of companies are looking for an underground job to see them through the winter. ... You got a terrific price," he said.
The project, expected to be completed in May, will be done over the winter. That allows the work to be less of a disruption to property owners along the route, Hendricks said.
Acting on a favorable recommendation from the Lowell Board of Zoning Appeals, the council unanimously approved a variance allowing Lowell Animal Hospital to operate at 17645 Morse St. The building was previously The Construction Zone, a children's day care facility.
Council President Chris Salatas, R-4th, said no animals will be kenneled outdoors.
After much discussion over the past months, the council approved purchasing nine garage doors for the Lowell Fire Station. The doors will include eye-level windows to provide natural light to save on utility costs. They will be painted by Lowell volunteer firefighters. Door openers are included in the estimated $41,000 price range to be covered through town cumulative funds.
Finally, after learning American Legion Post 101 is seeking a grant to help cover estimated $40,000 in roof repairs to its downtown building, the council voted to write a letter in support of the post. The letter will accompany the grant application.
MERRILLVILLE Its decision 2016 for kids, too.
Fifth- and sixth-graders at \ Merrillville Intermediate School have been learning about the political process and discussing the issues since October, and are ready to vote for their candidate in a mock election today.
The mock election is part of a partnership between the school and Purdue University Northwest. PNW elementary education majors taught several civics lessons to students culminating in todays schoolwide mock election, mirroring the general election.
Under Indiana law, state standards require schools to give instruction on the election process two weeks preceding a general election for all students in sixth through 12th grade.
LaVada Taylor Brandon, associate professor of education at PNW in Hammond, and Kelly Vaughan, assistant professor of literacy at PNW, are overseeing elementary education majors who are working with students at Merrillville Intermediate School and Iddings Elementary School in Merrillville.
Our students do field experiences for the program, Brandon said.
We talked to the principal here (MIS), and they were interested in the youngsters learning about the political process. All of the lessons are standards-based. They hear about it on television and they hear their parents talk about it. We want them to walk away informed about the major issues.
Vaughan said one of the assignments for elementary education majors is to teach four lessons that combine social studies and literacy to intermediate-aged students.
PNW education majors Vanessa Lopez and Bailey Kozbiel taught Debbie Czazastys fifth-grade language arts/social studies class at MIS.
Dont buy into the hype, Lopez told students.
Ignore the commercials and look at the facts. Todays lesson is on economics. Lets talk about the candidates positions on the economy, and how to find the main idea in what theyve said. Look at the facts versus the rhetoric.
Lopez said the students had great questions about the candidates backgrounds and the issues each candidate supports.
Weve talked about the history behind the political parties, and weve talked about four main issues health care, education, the economy and climate control, she said.
Use positive words to talk about the candidates and stick to the facts. I know we all have personal opinions, but for this assignment I want you to stick to the facts.
During a lesson a week before the election, Lopez asked students to write a short persuasive essay about the candidate of their choice.
Fifth-grader Gabriel Lyles, 10, said he supports Donald Trump.
Im learning about how a president gets elected and their issues, he said.
Im voting for Trump because I like his position on health care and economy. He wants to raise the minimum wage to $10 and make health care more affordable. I look at the commercials on TV and they say negative stuff about each other. I think they ought to just talk about how they can do better rather than talking about other people.
Fifth-grader Kayta Quinones said shes for Hillary Clinton. I support Hillary because she cares about kids education. She wants to give more money for schools so we have better resources, Quinones said.
The students teacher Czazasty said PNW students were able to help children search out facts.
l dont want the students to listen to the rumors and gossip, and the circus thats going on around them, she said. I wanted them to know the facts. Look at the positions taken by both candidates and make an educated choice.
Residents in East Chicagos Calumet neighborhood have asked a federal judge to give them a say regarding an agreement reached in 2014 for an environmental cleanup of the Superfund site encompassing their homes.
The Department of Justice and the Indiana attorney generals office in fall 2014 announced they had reached a $26 million settlement with Atlantic Richfield and DuPont the successors to companies responsible for the pollution for a cleanup in zones 1 and 3 of the Superfund site.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chose a cleanup plan for zones 1, 2 and 3 in its record of decision in 2012, but zone 2 the middle part of the neighborhood was left out of the consent decree.
The neighborhood and the former USS Lead facility at 5300 Kennedy Ave. were first proposed for the EPAs Superfund list in 1992 and finally added in April 2009, but residents said they didnt realize the severity of the lead and arsenic contamination in their soil until last summer.
Thats when the city and the East Chicago Housing Authority ordered residents at the West Calumet Housing Complex, which is part of zone 1, to relocate and announced plans to demolish the complex. The EPA subsequently shelved its cleanup plan for zone 1 and recently agreed to conduct a new feasibility study in that area.
Formal role in the process
The residents have waited for an incredibly long time for this contamination to be addressed. They deserve a formal role in the process so that they can advocate for their health and property interests, so there is a court, a body, that is supervising the actions that are taken to remediate this site, said Debbie Chizewer, one of the attorneys at Northwestern University Pritzker Law Schools Environmental Law Clinic working on behalf of residents.
In addition to Northwesterns Environmental Law Clinic, attorneys at Goldberg Kohn and the University of Chicago Law Schools Abrams Environmental Law Clinic are representing Calumet residents pro bono.
In the motion, attorneys accused the EPA of minimizing and ignoring public health concerns at the site and cleaning up only a limited number of properties. They argue the EPA did this, despite knowing for years about severe and widespread contamination, using flawed analysis methods to develop cleanup plans and improperly changing cleanup plans.
News about the contamination has left several residents seeking to intervene unable to sell their homes, the motion said.
In the wake of years of inaction followed by this latest abrupt and emergency demolition plan, residents fear for their health and safety, and they are left to wonder whether the high incidents of respiratory issues, kidney disorders, cancer, asthma and learning disabilities that occur frequently in their community were caused by lead and arsenic poisoning or other contaminants endemic to the site, the motion said. That uncertainty alone inflicts a special form of trauma.
The Department of Justice, which represents the EPA, is aware of the motion and will file a response, spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said. An EPA spokesman referred questions about the motion to the DOJ.
The Indiana attorney generals office and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management also are reviewing the motion, attorney generals office spokesman Corey Elliot said. Unless an extension is requested, the parties have until Nov. 15 to file their response, he said. The attorney generals office represents IDEM.
Concerns informally addressed
The EPA has said it will conduct a number of pilot programs to address some of the concerns outlined in the residents motion, including testing basements for contamination carried in by water seepage and flooding, and testing indoor dust and drinking water at properties undergoing excavation work.
But residents said theres more the EPA should do, and they want a court to hold the agency accountable if it doesnt keep its promises.
The agency hasnt yet committed to testing for interior and exterior lead-based paint, which it has done at other Superfund sites, attorneys said.
LAPORTE The owner of a Michigan City day care facility where a 5-year old boy accidentally hanged himself in 2014 could be looking at far less prison time under terms of a plea agreement.
Tricia Calvin pleaded guilty Friday to neglect of a dependent as a Class D felony.
A hearing on sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 13 in LaPorte Circuit Court.
Calvin could receive anywhere from six months to three years.
The charge in the plea was downgraded from Class A felony neglect of a dependent, which carries a sentence of 20 to 50 years.
John Lake, LaPorte County deputy prosecutor, said the decision was influenced by an Appellate Court ruling in July involving a different case under the same Indiana statute.
The ruling created a higher standard for proving in any neglect case that a child's death or serious injury was caused by neglect, he said.
Lake said such a higher standard left room for doubt if Calvin could be proven directly responsible for the boy dying.
"Because of that change, it kind of changed the review on how we would have filed the charges against her," Lake said.
Amareon Williams and three older children were outside in the playground at Tricia's Playhouse at 1824 E. Michigan Blvd. and unsupervised.
Calvin had not reported for work yet.
Her employees, Erica Merriweather and Stephanie Johnson, were inside the day care center tending to younger children.
According to authorities, the boy was on top of a piece of outdoor playground equipment and somehow a rope left on the apparatus got around his neck and he was hanged going down a slide.
In her defense, Calvin had argued she shouldn't be held responsible for the death because the previous day she informed the boy's mother, Anita Leflore, that she must provide a schedule on when her children were coming and without one her kids would not be accepted.
Calvin said Leflore the next day dropped off her kids anyway and she wasn't there when the boy died.
In June, Merriweather was given a three-year prison sentence for Class C felony reckless homicide.
Johnson received four years of probation for reckless homicide in September 2015.
Some citizens no doubt felt knotted stomachs heading into todays general election.
Many of you may still feel that pang as you consider casting votes at Region polling locations.
In an election filled with more toxicity and divisiveness than many in collective memory, its also understandable some voters might want to avoid the polls all together.
Resist that urge and vote today if you havent already done so.
A plethora of reasons and excuses for not exercising ones fundamental right to vote arise from every election cycle.
Work schedules, child schedules and general apathy often are identified inhibitors.
This time around, add ugly rhetoric and a common feeling of both leading presidential candidates lacking desirable qualities to the list of reasons.
We get it.
But the day is here.
Its time to rip the Band-Aid off the wound that is the 2016 election to buckle down and vote, regardless of ones level of distaste with the political landscape.
If you didnt already join the lines of early voters leading up to todays general election, this is your last chance.
Dont be left behind by history. You owe this to yourself, your family and your country.
Our nation will heal from this seemingly tumultuous process, just as it always has, from the Civil War, World Wars I and II and a number of knock-down-drag-out political fights, races and scandals.
It will do so, in part, because people care enough about our direction and future to bridge ideological divides and move things forward to a productive solution.
Be a part of that solution by voting. The knots in our collective stomachs will subside with time, patience and common purpose.
NEW YORK Residents in some parts of the city are encountering long lines as they cast their votes today.
Polls are open until 9 p.m. across the five boroughs as New Yorkers make their choice for president and choose representatives in several national and state races.
Posts on social media have chronicled long lines and broken scanning machines at some polling places, with some voters lined up along entire city blocks.
It's the first time in more than 60 years that city residents are choosing between two major-party presidential candidates who call New York home.
Clinton, the former New York Senator who lives outside the city in Chappaqua, and Trump, the Manhattan real estate mogul, are the first New Yorkers to vie for the presidency since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated challenger Thomas Dewey in 1944.
Clinton cast her ballot this morning. She and her husband Bill were mobbed by reporters and other voters at an elementary school in the Westchester hamlet.
"It is the most humbling feeling, because I know how much responsibility goes with this. So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country. And I'll do the very best I can if I'm fortunate enough to win today," Clinton told reporters outside her polling site.
Her running mate, Tim Kaine, voted in his home state of Virginia this morning.
Donald Trump and his wife Melania cast their votes in Midtown Manhattan just before 11 a.m. The couple received a mix of cheers and boos from bystanders as they entered their polling place at P.S. 59.
Earlier in the morning, two women were removed from the polling site after they took off their tops and yelled anti-Trump statements.
They were brought to the 17th precinct and ticketed for electioneering.
Trump's running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence and his wife, were in their home state to cast their ballots.
Both presidential candidates in the hotly-contested race will be watching the returns in Manhattan tonight after polls close, Trump at a Midtown location and Clinton at a location on the West Side.
In addition to voting for president, voters are casting ballots for their representative in the U.S. Senate and House, and for candidates in the New York State Senate and Assembly, as well as candidates for New York judicial openings.
New York senior Senator Charles Schumer is facing a challenge from Republican attorney Wendy Long as he seeks his fourth term. A Schumer victory could make him Senate majority leader next year should the Democrats win control of that chamber.
Of the city's 13 Congressional races, only two do not involve incumbents: the Queens race between Democrat Tom Suozzi and Republican Jack Martins to fill Steve Israel's seat in the 3rd District, and the Manhattan race between Democrat Adriano Espaillat and Republican Tony Evans to succeed Charles Rangel in the 13th District.
Many New Yorkers are seeing an increased police presence when they cast their ballots, as the NYPD has stepped up its presence around the city amid intelligence information about possible terror threats in several major U.S. cities including New York.
To combat voter fraud, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has set up a hotline for issues encountered by voters at the polls, reachable at 800-771-7755.
The city's Board of Elections also has a hotline number at 1-866-VOTE-NYC or they can be reached by e-mail at vote@boe.nyc.ny.us
And if you want to post a picture of your completed ballot on social media? Don't. New York is one of at least 18 states that currently ban the practice. Instead, election officials recommend posting a selfie with an "I Voted" sticker available at polling stations.
In the presidential race, New York State will deliver 29 Electoral College votes to the winner of the state's popular vote, making it and Florida the third-richest electoral prize behind California (55) and Texas (38). The presidency will go to the candidate who amasses 270 of the 538 total electoral votes available.
Officials say that DNA evidence submitted into a national database, CODIS, lead the arrest of a suspect in a nearly decade old murder case on Monday.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said 24-year-old Rashon Venable was brought back to NYC after waiving extradition from Pennsylvania.
According to Pennsylvania State Police records, Venable has been incarcerated since 2015 on an indecent assault conviction.
Now, Venable is facing a second-degree murder charge in the death of 14-year-old Sabrina Matthews.
If convicted, Venable faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
The teen was found at her Cambria Heights home, with her throat slashed, 8 years ago on November 9.
Brown said, in a statement, that Venable was identified when a DNA sample he provided in Pennsylvania was recently matched to biological evidence recovered from the Cambria Heights crime scene.
He added that at the time of the murder, Venable was sixteen years old and lived in Queens Village.
His address was about two miles from the crime scene, according to Brown.
At the time of the murder authorities said they found no evidence of forced entry into Matthews home.
CODIS is a national DNA database created and maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation which contains DNA profiles from, among other sources, crime scenes.
The first season of The Crown hit Netflix on Friday. Since then the new series, a luscious dramatization of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, has generated conversations about historical accuracy and about how we mythologize the British royal family. Netflix plans to dramatize six decades of the Queens reign, and the first season opens with Princess Elizabeth juggling her responsibilities and her relationship, like so many modern women.
How Historically Accurate Is It?
How The Crown Uses Real History to Make Drama (TIME)
Kate Samuelson talks to the shows script editor about how much research went into making the show historically accurate. It turns out that many moments in the show that seem too good to be true, like the scene in which Winston Churchill takes a bath while his secretary reads to him, really happened.
Netflix Series The Crown Will Cover These Extraordinary Facts About the Queens Life (GQ)
Did you know that the Queen doesnt have a passport? Or that she fell in love at 13? This list runs down some of the details of her life that could be included throughout the course of the show.
Princess Margarets Affair on The Crown Has a Heartbreaking, Real-Life Backstory (Vanity Fair)
Poor Margaret. Her affair with the palace employee Capt. Peter Townsend was hot gossip in the 1950s. This piece includes excerpts from contemporaneous reporting on the doomed affair.
Really, theres only one thing to watch tonight, and watch it we will until the very end. But if youd rather check out of reality for an hour or for the evening pick and choose from an assortment of election-based comedy specials or stream a few episodes from some of the years best series.
Whats on TV
2016 ELECTION NIGHT COVERAGE 6 p.m. on Fox Business and Fox News; 7 p.m. on ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Telemundo and Univision; 8 p.m. on C-Span, Fox, NY1 and PBS. All-night election reporting, infused with some humor by The View Live Election Special, at 9 on Lifetime; Fusions All Def Digital Roast of America, at 9 on Fusion; Stephen Colberts Live Election Night Democracys Series Finale, at 11 on Showtime; Desus & Mero, at 11 on Viceland; and The Daily Show With Trevor Noah: Democalypse 2016 Live, at 11 on Comedy Central, MTV, Spike, TV Land and VH1.
Whats Streaming
3. Most voting seemed to have proceeded smoothly, but there were long lines in some places.
The Trump campaign sued in Nevada, saying that poll workers illegally extended early voting hours.
One thing was clear: A record number of Americans cast their ballots early, changing how campaigns are waged and how voters see the race.
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Its Election Day!
Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump made their closing arguments in states that both view as must-wins to be victorious today. Now its up to the voters.
Despite the ugliness of the campaign, there are signs that Americans are expressing themselves at the ballot box in large numbers. Turnout in states that allow early voting was high, and many voters told The Times that they were eager for the election to end.
In early August, just as protesters from across the country descended on North Dakota to rally against an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, some of the worlds biggest banks signed off on a $2.5 billion loan to help complete the sprawling project.
Now, those banks which include Citigroup and Wells Fargo of the United States, TD Bank of Canada and Mizuho of Japan have come under fire for their role in bankrolling the pipeline. In an open letter on Monday, 26 environmental groups urged those banks to halt further loan payments to the project, which the Sioux say threatens their sacred lands and water supply.
In campaigning to reduce the worlds carbon emissions, environmentalists have increasingly focused on the financiers behind the fossil fuel industry highlighting their role in financing coal, oil and gas projects. It is an expansion of traditional protest efforts, and it has met with some early success.
Environmental groups have also criticized the Dakota Access pipeline as outdated infrastructure with no place in a world racing to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The 1,172-mile pipeline is expected to carry nearly half a million barrels of crude oil daily out of the Bakken fields of North Dakota, according to the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. A federal jury on Monday ordered Rolling Stone and one of its writers to pay $3 million in damages to a University of Virginia administrator over a discredited article two years ago about a supposed gang rape at the university.
The jury in Charlottesville, Va., had already decided on Friday, after a two-week trial, that Rolling Stone; Wenner Media, its parent company; and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the article, were all liable for defamation in a case that centered on faulty reporting and a failure to apply basic fail-safes in editing.
After deliberating for less than two hours on Monday, the jury of eight women and two men decided that Ms. Erdely was liable for $2 million of the total, and Rolling Stone and Wenner Media for $1 million. In her suit, filed in May 2015, the administrator, Nicole P. Eramo, had asked for $7.5 million in damages.
The jury found that assertions made in the story, as well as public statements made after publication by Ms. Erdely and Rolling Stone, were made with actual malice, the legal standard for libel against public figures. To meet that standard, a publisher must be found to have known that the information it published was false, or to have had reckless disregard for the truth.
We invited students 13 to 19 years old to submit their original illustrations to our second annual Editorial Cartoon Contest, and they responded by using humor, wit and irony to comment on the issues they care about: the 2016 presidential campaign, Syria, dress codes, gentrification, gender equality and more.
For the second year in a row, the most popular topic, by a long shot? Donald J. Trump.
From the almost 1,000 entries we received, our panel of judges selected 6 winners, 12 runners-up and 18 honorable mentions. You can see all the finalists here, via this interactive.
One of our judges, Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo Newss Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, commented:
This years cartoon entries displayed a wider array of styles and approaches to the craft, including some great use of color and several longer format cartoons. There were plenty of entries on this years historic election, as expected. But a few urban-centric issues had a surprising presence in the contest, such as gentrification and poverty.
Another one of our judges, Jen Sorensen, winner of the 2014 Herblock Prize and comics editor for Fusion, shared:
I was impressed by the sense of fairness and empathy on display in so many of these cartoons. Whether the topic was unequal pay for women and minorities, gentrification forcing people out of their communities, or a politicians demeaning words, these students managed to address injustice in a variety of clever, entertaining ways.
Thank you to all the students who participated in this years editorial cartoon contest. We run student contests all year, so visit our 2016-17 contest calendar to learn more.
Mr. Klein has met with the leader of the Senate Democratic Conference, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and other top Democrats several times in recent weeks. But Republican leaders note that Mr. Klein is also close with the current majority leader, John J. Flanagan, a Long Island Republican whom he speaks with regularly.
We have a strong working relationship with Senator Klein and the members of the I.D.C., and have every expectation that our coalition will continue to deliver real results for New Yorkers and their families, Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said.
The X-factor in many calculations is Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who has also worked closely with Republicans during his nearly six years in office. I think Klein will try to make a deal with the Democrats first, Eric Lane, dean of the Hofstra Law School and a former counsel for the Senate Democrats, said, because I think the governor will try to push him in that direction.
Professor Muzzio said that the governor had seemed comfortable working with Republicans during his first term, when recession-inspired fiscal austerity was en vogue. But in Mr. Cuomos second term, Mr. Muzzio said, he has tilted to the left, with issues like a $15 minimum wage and a paid family leave program. (The Independent Democratic Conference takes credit for such accomplishments.)
Those are part of Andrews promises and legacy, Mr. Muzzio said.
Mr. Cuomo, who did only scant campaigning for his party mates in 2014, has been a more active force this campaign cycle, appearing at several fund-raisers over the last month and preaching Democratic unity.
At one of those events, on Oct. 25, Mr. Cuomo said his ideal option would be to elect enough Democrats to make a clear majority, though he stopped short of a prediction of that being just mainline Democrats.
There is always the option of making a coalition with the independent Democrats, the governor said. I worked with them for six years. But between Option A or Option B, it has to be one of those options.
The chief executive of NYC Health & Hospitals, which runs New York Citys public hospitals, is stepping down from his post atop the nations largest municipal health care system, a move that City Hall officials described on Monday as voluntary and expected.
The departure of the executive, Dr. Ramanathan Raju, comes several months after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his plan to overhaul the hospital system, which faces a staggering shortfall of cash for the operations of 11 hospitals across the city, including the flagship Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens.
Appointed by Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, in the first weeks of his administration in 2014, Dr. Raju told City Hall officials in September that he wanted to resign, according to a spokeswoman for the mayor. A person familiar with Dr. Rajus thinking said the recent death of his mother precipitated his departure, which is effective at the end of the month.
He felt in many ways that he had done as much as he could, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. His mother had always lived with him. He wanted to go to India and do all of the rituals.
Updated, 11:52 a.m.
Good morning on this winning Tuesday.
On this Election Day, as the presidential campaigns of two New York residents come to an end, another New Yorker Rose Orbach plans to do her civic duty and vote again.
The resident of Bayside, Queens, is 104. Shes voting in her 16th presidential election.
(Stevenson. Kennedy. Johnson. Humphrey. McGovern. Carter, twice. Mondale. Dukakis. Clinton, twice. Gore. Kerry. Obama, twice. You may spot a trend.)
Born in 1911, Mrs. Orbach emigrated from Poland shortly after World War II. She became an American citizen by 1955, and voted in her first presidential election here the following year.
The idea of having and using her voice, without facing persecution, was novel.
In Poland, it was a whole different system, she said. Especially for Jewish people, who werent treated like everybody; they were always beneath.
SARASOTA, Fla. People started lining up at 4 a.m. to catch one last glimpse of their hero. It was Donald J. Trumps first campaign stop on his Monday push through battleground states, and his supporters here in Florida seemed to understand that the whole country would be watching them. So, what are the Trump voters in Florida thinking, and where does this movement or whatever we should call it go after Tuesday?
As at any Trump rally, the merchandising opportunities outside the Sarasota event were plentiful. A man wearing a Trump flag as a cape walked down the line of attendees, towing a wagon filled with water bottles. Ice cold Trump water here! Tastes like freedom! he said. Another man selling foam fingers called out, Give Hillary the finger vote Trump! A supporter constructed a life-size basket of deplorables made out of interwoven cardboard boxes. A woman stood inside the basket and posed for a photo, giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
The Trump supporters at the rally in Sarasota were in good spirits on Monday, but when asked how they felt about their state, some brows furrowed. Florida voters know the eyes of the nation are on them and their precious 29 Electoral College votes. Mr. Trumps supporters recognize its possible Hillary Clinton could win their state, and the whole ballgame, on Tuesday night. But in their gut, it seemed impossible to believe anyone wouldnt be voting for Mr. Trump. All the data they personally collected seemed to reassure them of a Trump landslide. Every bumper, shirt and sign to be seen was plastered with pro-Trump messages. Still, that was hard to reconcile with the polls they were seeing on CNN and Fox.
Outside the arena, Cathy Borden, a retired Navy recruiter, said everyone she talks to is voting for Mr. Trump. Thats why you cant go by those polls.
It is no longer safe to breathe in New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world. The problem has grown steadily worse, but little has been done beyond stopgap measures like allowing cars with odd- or even-numbered license plates to be used only on alternate days.
The citys high levels of fine particles the most deadly because they penetrate more deeply into the lungs have now soared off the charts, even by New Delhis standards, because of seasonal smoke from the burning of leftover crops by farmers in nearby states and from firecrackers set off to celebrate the Diwali holiday.
Levels of the smallest particles, called PM 2.5, recently hit an astounding 688 micrograms per cubic meter of air in one New Delhi neighborhood, far surpassing the citys average annual concentration of 153. Beijings average is 56 and New Yorks is 14. The World Health Organization sets the healthy average annual limit of these particles at 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
The solutions for seasonal smoke are obvious: Firecrackers should be banned and those bans enforced. Farmers who cannot afford equipment that allows them to replant without burning leftover stubble need more help. The government now offers to pay some farmers half the cost, but the remaining burden is too great for most to bear. Subsidies and incentives need to be expanded.
District 3 (parts of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties):
Tom Suozzi (D), an experienced and gifted politician, longtime reformer with excellent ideas for saving the suburbs and fixing government.
District 19 (Hudson Valley and the Catskills):
Zephyr Teachout (D), the law professor who ran an impressive but unsuccessful campaign to unseat Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a voice for farmers and the environment, poised to be a national leader on her main issue: the corrosive effect of money in politics.
District 24 (Syracuse area):
John Katko (R), an independent thinker who bucks his partys destructive line on issues like immigration and the environment and, most important, on Mr. Trump.
State Senate
District 9 (Nassau County):
Todd Kaminsky (D), a former prosecutor, now Assembly member, the perfect choice to replace the corruption-toppled Dean Skelos, one of the biggest symbols of all thats wrong with Albany.
District 7 (Nassau County):
Elaine Phillips (R), as Republican mayor of the village of Flower Hill, built a strong environmental record.
PHILADELPHIA When Bill Clinton introduced the finest surrogate, supporter any candidate for president ever had, everyone on Philadelphias Independence Mall knew the person he was talking about.
Michelle Obama has been in many ways the star of Hillary Clintons campaign it was her speech at the Democratic convention that people were still talking about days and weeks later.
On Monday night, at the campaigns final rally before Election Day, Mrs. Obamas job was, again, to convince the voters who have come to love and trust her that they should also love and trust Hillary Clinton or, at least, that they should vote for her.
As part of her pitch, she described the kind of leader the country needs: someone who takes this job seriously and is ready to be commander in chief on day one. Someone who sees the dignity and humanity in all of us and who will encourage us to see the better angels in one another. Someone who sees us not as rich or poor but as hard-working folks doing the best we can with what we got. Someone who sees us not as Democrats and Republicans but as neighbors and friends who all love this country, who sees us not just as black or white, immigrant or native-born, but as brothers and sisters who are all infinitely worthy, all an important part of this great American story.
Nicaraguas first couple hailed Sundays election, which gave President Daniel Ortega his third consecutive term, and his wife, Rosario Murillo, her first as vice president, as nearly perfect. From their standpoint, that it was.
The Ortegas have spent the past decade consolidating power, sidelining political opponents and destroying a system of checks and balances with the clear intent of establishing a dynastic dictatorship. On Monday, election officials said the first couple obtained 72 percent of the vote, well ahead of their closest rival, who got just over 14 percent. The landslide victory was a widely anticipated outcome of a contest whose outcome was preordained.
Mr. Ortega, 70, has relied on acolytes in the courts and procedural maneuvers to purge the ranks of genuine rivals. His party did away with term limits in 2014, paving the way for his perpetual re-election. By tapping Ms. Murillo, 65, as his running mate, he formally made her the heir apparent.
Several opposition leaders called on their countrymen to abstain from voting. It appears that many did. Polling station turnout reports gathered by a network of opposition groups suggest that only 20 to 30 percent of voters cast ballots, which would be the lowest turnout in the countrys modern history, Violeta Granera, an opposition leader, said in an interview. She added, The decision not to participate in this electoral farce was a civic act.
The initiatives range from Californias Proposition 64, which would allow for relatively unfettered recreational use for adults, to North Dakotas Measure 5, which provides a limited blessing for usage by patients with very specific ailments: cancer, AIDS, hepatitis C, glaucoma and epilepsy, among others.
Voters in these states all share some of the same hopes and reservations about greater consumer access to cannabis. The reservations are no secret, and fear of increased drug use by minors is chief among them. But there are a lot of hopes, too eliminating an unsavory black market and allowing the police to concentrate on more serious crimes, to name two. Also on the minds of plenty of voters, as well as their legislators, is that Colorado (which legalized cannabis in 2012) is expected to haul in more than $140 million in tax revenue from pot sales this year, double what was originally projected. Cannabis taxation would provide a steady stream of revenue to states strapped for cash.
Perhaps its my 1970s adolescence that has left me with the feeling that my use of cannabis, even for medical reasons, is somehow risque. But things have changed since the days when I bought pot from fake health food stores on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.
Now I buy from a shop in charming Gardiner, Me., inside the former train station. There are comfortable chairs and a case displaying edibles and tinctures and a wide variety of smokable strains, each one described in terms as careful and loving as those of an oenophile describing a Burgundy: Blue Dream is piney and fruity in aroma and flavor, delivering clear cerebral effects with the sedative qualities of an indica. I choose a balm that makes my joints feel better, even if it makes me smell like the balcony of the Fillmore East.
If the initiatives pass and polls in Maine suggest ours will millions of Americans are about to join me.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. The casting of a ballot is the most fundamentally American act that any of us takes. It connects us to the Enlightenment ideals of the countrys founding the once-radical notion that human beings should think for themselves, rather than merely obey kings and priests. Dare to know! Immanuel Kant wrote, offering a motto for the Enlightenment. Have the courage to use your own understanding!
These ideals have a stirring power, even in a year as uninspiring as 2016. And their power makes it all the more outrageous that a significant number of Americans find their right of self-determination under attack.
Thousands of citizens have needed intervention from federal judges in the last several weeks in order to vote. Even more remarkably, a few million adult Americans will be denied the right to vote this year.
When you cast your ballot on Tuesday and make sure that you do or watch others go to the polls, I encourage you to keep in mind your disenfranchised fellow citizens.
The insurance works. It is associated with fewer distress sales of livestock, more milk production and household income from milk, better child nutrition and less stress. Compared with Kenyas standard anti-poverty program, which is based on cash transfers, insurance is much more cost effective to scale up.
Insurance may also help even pastoralists who are not insured. When forage dries up, a whole region is hit at once. So insurance providers inject needed cash from outside reinsurers, and the resulting economic activity can lift everyone.
Commercial insurers sell the livestock insurance. But the government is trying to spread this approach by beginning to shoulder some of the cost of premiums. Kenya expects to cover 80,000 households by 2019 in the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program. But thats a tiny percentage of households that need it, and the program will cover only five cows per household.
Mude said that numerous governments in Africa and parts of Asia have contacted him, eager to try the idea. So its worth looking at how Mude and his collaborators overcame some of the toughest problems and what still needs to be solved.
Insurance is an unfamiliar and untrusted idea to herders.
Herders get risk mitigation. Even though some cannot write, they remember livestock dynamics for the past 10 or 20 years, said Mude. Theyre very clear about their key risk and receptive to an idea or service that could help them minimize risk.
Whats harder is helping them understand that they should buy an invisible product that is likely to produce no financial benefit and they should do it season after season.
Researchers developed picture books, comic books, videos and radio shows to explain the insurance. Christopher Barrett, a prominent agricultural economist at Cornell University (hes been on The Daily Show!) who works closely with Mude, said that the group would come into a village, gather farmers, and explain the idea by leading them through a game of drawing chips from bags to determine who had losses, felling little toy plastic cows.
So far, the news is not good for him.
Floridas early voters are 65.8 percent white, 13.1 percent black and 15.3 percent Hispanic. The Democrats also had an edge in voter registration. Mrs. Clinton leads among voters without a party affiliation, according to Upshot/Siena polling.
This is not the electorate Mr. Trump was hoping for. In particular, Latino turnout is up considerably. The Hispanic share of the electorate will probably be three points higher than it was in 2012, when President Obama won the state by a point.
Of course, theres no way to know how the Election Day vote will go.
If Mr. Trump wins in Florida, it wont be because the turnout among nonwhite voters, especially Hispanic voters, was lower than expected. It will be because he generated huge margins among white voters, including white Democrats who crossed over to vote for him.
North Carolina
Mrs. Clinton has led in nearly every live-interview survey of North Carolina over the last month, but the state is not looking like a sure thing for her. The final Upshot/Siena poll found a tied race.
Mr. Trumps position in North Carolina looks stronger than it did a few weeks ago, at least in part because hes succeeded in consolidating Republican-leaning white voters. Many were undecided or supporting Gary Johnson a month ago, but many have returned to the party.
In Los Angeles County over the weekend, some people waited up to four hours in line to vote early, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Mindy Romero, who runs the California Civic Engagement Project at U.C. Davis, said on Monday that even though we are not a swing state, many people are being propelled by anxiety over the nations direction.
People do think that in this election there is something at stake, she said. And, if nothing else, the fear factor among many voters about the other candidate is driving things.
Some of the contests that we will be following closely as votes roll in:
Attorney General Kamala Harris is the favorite against Representative Loretta Sanchez in the race for United States Senate. Either would be the first woman of color to hold the office from California.
The idea that one wakes up and its Election Day in America is actually a rather quaint idea now, said Russ Schriefer, a Republican consultant who has worked on presidential campaigns for two decades. It is as much as a monthlong process to draw people in. And so your advertising tactics, your messaging tactics and certainly your ground game have changed completely.
The spread of early balloting is forging new habits that are forcing campaigns to rethink how they allocate their resources. And it tends to favor those campaigns that are more technologically sophisticated and can identify, draw out and measure its support over a longer voting period.
In Florida, a battleground state where just a few hundred votes can tip an election and victory can guarantee the White House, new behaviors are rapidly taking hold. Hispanics, who have tended to turn out mostly on Election Day, are voting earlier in much larger numbers this year, after a major Democratic-led effort to mobilize them. This is especially true among young and first-time Hispanic voters, who are just forming their voting habits and are likely to retain the practice of casting ballots early, according to those who study early voting.
That will mean that future campaigns will need to further adapt and dedicate more time and money to chasing votes up to six weeks before Election Day.
Until relatively recently, early voting was confined mostly to Western states. In 1978, California became the first state to allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot regardless of whether they were actually going to be absent on Election Day or not. Oregon held its first statewide vote-by-mail election in 1993. Washington State started allowing all its voters to apply for permanent absentee status around the same time.
Millions of Americans will cast their ballots on Tuesday under intense scrutiny both from vigilantes who fear the election will be rigged and from thousands of voting rights advocates who fear the tally will be distorted by intimidation and, perhaps, the suppression of a minority vote that may be crucial to the outcome.
On one side are groups like the Oath Keepers, one of dozens of right-wing and militia groups responding to Donald J. Trumps warnings about a stolen election. The organization has issued a nationwide call to action to its members, urging them to go incognito to polling stations on Election Day to hunt down instances of fraud.
On the other side are more than 100 civic and legal groups, claiming at least 10,000 volunteers, and perhaps many more. They plan to deploy at polling places nationwide to watch for signs of voter intimidation and other roadblocks to voting. Election officials and observers say they are hoping for an orderly final day of voting, but they are girding for the possibility of fights, intimidation and, perhaps, worse.
Adding to the anxiety is fear of Election Day hacking, perhaps by foreign interests.
I would say this is the most frightening election period I can remember in my adult life, said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California, Irvine.
MIAMI Janet Reno sat in a wheelchair with a blanket over her knees, her fingers curled inward so she could not shake hands. She was skinny very skinny almost unrecognizable as the prosecutor who had shot to fame as President Bill Clintons attorney general, the first woman to hold that position.
Her family had consented to let us meet Ms. Reno this summer for an article about a Parkinsons fund-raising event she has long participated in. They agreed because one of us, Marilyn, also has Parkinsons, and the article was to be as much about her journey coming face to face with what her health is likely to look like a few decades from now as it would be about Ms. Reno.
But after that first meeting, Ms. Renos sister, Margaret Hurchalla, fiercely protective of her health and privacy, did not show up for the second interview. Ms. Renos niece, Hunter Reno, politely explained that her family feared that an article on the former attorney generals disease would overshadow her professional contributions.
The decision reflected her familys wish for her to be remembered for her milestone achievement as the first female attorney general, not for being a poster child for Parkinsons. But it also reflected Ms. Renos own attitude toward her disease that it not define her.
LOS ANGELES A gunman who killed a federal transportation security officer and wounded three other people during a rampage at Los Angeles International Airport in 2013 has been sentenced to life plus 60 years in prison.
The gunman, Paul A. Ciancia, was sentenced on Monday in federal court for the shootings that terrorized passengers and employees at the nations second-busiest airport and disrupted air travel nationwide.
Mr. Ciancia, an unemployed motorcycle mechanic from New Jersey, pleaded guilty to killing a Transportation Security Administration officer, Gerardo I. Hernandez, and to 10 other counts.
Prosecutors said Mr. Ciancia had shown no remorse for the killing and still clung to his beliefs that led to the attack, in which two other T.S.A. officers and a teacher headed to a wedding were wounded.
Jessica Huseman, Senior reporting fellow at ProPublica: We\u2019re at CUNY Newsroom which pro-public has set up for Electionland\u2026 TEXT CARD More than 250 news organizations and 14 journalism schools joined efforts to monitor the first election without full protection of the Voting Rights Act. Jessica Huseman This center is set up to track things that prevent people from voting or prevent people from voting in a timely way. That is typically issues with election administration broken voting machines long lines because there are not enough polling places poll workers giving wrong instructions to voters 1.52 we have people who are who are feeding us information we have graduate students from Columbia and CUNY school of journalism here. And we also have what are called catchers which take the information from students and make sure that its authentic and well-packaged so that that can go to reporters Darius Johnson, Columbia Journalism Schoo It feels like I am a detective and it also feels like Im just like this hard news journalist again Im working in the NEWSROOM call and verifying trying to get things as if Im working on a story. TRUMP BITE ON rigged elections here: there is no evidence to suggest that voter fraud is a widespread problem at all. There was a 2014 study that was posted by the Washington Post that took ballots from 2000 and 2004 and seen more than a billion ballots cast and within those billion ballots only found 31 credible instances of in-person voter fraud which is the type of fraud that Donald Trump has been talking about when he tells us that if the election is rigged \u2026.. NATPOP - TRUMP - \u201cYou have to get everybody to get out there and watch DARIUS There was a woman in Pennsylvania who said that there was voter intimidation going on at one of the polling places where citizens were individualise once they came in by political party. So if you are a Democrat you were voting at the booth with the blue curtain if you were a Republican you are voting at a booth with a red curtain. So that was something that was very interesting to me and I reached out she did tell me what happened but I found it hard to be able to verify. The actual location of where it was taking place Caitlin Healy, Columbia Journalism School I caught about five minutes ago a county clerk in Michigan announced that voters had to have their photo I.D. when in reality they didnt they could vote they could sign an affidavit saying that they didnt have photo ID and then still be allowed to vote Jessica statistically you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than coming across in case of in-person voter fraud. 4.00 So our students have key words programmed into TweetDeck to look for things on Twitter. Were also looking for things on Facebook signal and Instagram Darius Johnson, Columbia Journalism School [00:31:38] Key words strike attention voter intimidation long lines down the block home to hours on what else. Rigged. Ive done Philly Ive done Imay politics. Caitlin Healy, Columbia Journalism School 22.30 is its pretty finely tuned machine right now in this newsroom and it feels like the way campaigns are going to be the early elections are going to be covered in the future. [00:08:13] 10.00 So we have noticed that in previous elections the focus has been more on the horse race Its not been really about whether or not people could cast a ballot who tried to cast a ballot. And so the coverage weve seen has been the next day and thats after anybody could do anything about it. So were hoping that if we can put cameras we can put reporters out in front of long lines out in front of polling places with broken machines out in front of polling places where admit were polling workers are not following the law then we can fix those problems really quickly and do something about it today instead of learning lessons from it for next time.
Donald J. Trumps victory in the presidential race on Tuesday night capped a remarkable election in which several Democratic Senate candidates fell short and Republicans retained their majority in the House of Representatives. Here are some key takeaways from a stunning result that upended conventional expectations and set the stage for a drastic reordering of politics in Washington:
Mr. Trump took the stage at the Hilton just before 3 a.m. and told his supporters that Hillary Clinton called him to concede the election. Striking a gracious note, he wished her well and said, We owe her a major debt of gratitude for her debt to our country.
Reading from teleprompters and flanked by Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana and his son, Barron, Mr. Trump said he wanted to reclaim our countrys destiny and be bold and daring. He also called for unity and said that he hoped Democrats and Republicans would work together.
Shortly after the curtain fell on the 1976 election, Hubert H. Humphrey took his dejected friend Bob Dole, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, out for ice cream to try to improve his mood.
Mr. Humphrey, who had lost a presidential race eight years earlier, told him it would get worse before it got better.
Today, people will be second-guessing you, Mr. Humphrey told Mr. Dole, the running mate of Gerald R. Ford, the incumbent president defeated by Jimmy Carter. Theyre going to be looking for someone to blame.
Then Mr. Humphrey offered a gesture of kindness, Mr. Dole recalled in an interview, telling him, Lets talk about tomorrow and your future and move on.
SEOUL, South Korea President Park Geun-hye of South Korea on Tuesday asked rival political parties to recommend a new prime minister, making a major political concession in her efforts to defuse an influence-peddling scandal that has crippled her government for weeks.
During a meeting with Chung Sye-kyun, the speaker of the National Assembly, Ms. Park made the proposal, essentially retracting the appointment, made six days ago, of her own candidate for prime minister. That candidate, Kim Byung-joon, was rejected by the opposition parties who together control a majority in Parliament.
Instead, they demanded that Ms. Park cede some of her presidential policy-making power, especially in economic and other domestic issues, to a prime minister recommended by Parliament. (In the meantime, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, whom Ms. Park had wanted to replace with Mr. Kim, remains in office.)
The concession was another political blow to Ms. Park, and new evidence of her much-diminished political authority as the scandal continues to unfold. She has tried to regain public trust by reshuffling her cabinet and presidential staff.
BARCELONA, Spain A year ago, Oscar Camps, a Spaniard, was a lifeguard who traveled with a colleague to the Greek island of Lesbos to see what he could do to help as thousands of Syrian refugees washed up from Turkey.
He had tried to volunteer for different European organizations and embassies, but was turned down, and arrived on the island with little more than swim fins.
Mr. Camps said he had no idea how critical the situation in Lesbos had become.
Within two hours of their arrival, he and his friend were taking off their shirts and shoes to jump into the sea to save people from drowning, after watching a boat sink close to the islands rocky northern coast.
Lesbos changed my view on almost everything, Mr. Camps recalled in a recent interview.
I realized that Europes inaction was absolutely deliberate a decision by the European Union to use the Mediterranean and the Aegean as dissuasive tools, to send the message to people that they shouldnt try to come because they would drown.
At least since July, when the Democratic and Republican National Conventions ended and the presidential campaign began in earnest, but more likely since the spring of 2015, when Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump threw down their gauntlets, anyone could be excused for wanting to take a long vacation somewhere.
Maybe somewhere beyond the reach of Twitter and perpetual poll analysis, where words like loser and deplorables couldnt be heard, where email servers were too small to see and sites for border walls looked indistinguishable from anywhere else on the planet.
If youre in need of some postelection stress therapy you might still want to visit such a place, if only virtually, at Benjamin Grants three-year-old Instagram project, Daily Overview.
LONDON Austrias criminal intelligence service announced this week that it had uncovered a group selling forgeries of high-profile art, including fakes that had been attributed to Chagall and Picasso.
The service said in a statement on Monday that intelligence officers had posed as art buyers and arrested six suspects at a Vienna airport hotel in an undercover operation in July. Details on the operation were kept private until this week.
The suspects were said to have been trying to sell the undercover authorities five artworks that they said were Picasso originals for about 10 million euros, or about $11 million, each.
The authorities in the Vienna suburb of Schwechat, site of the citys international airport, received a tip in the middle of the year that a small criminal group was planning to sell fake artworks there and alerted the intelligence service, which then organized the undercover purchase.
Republicans relentless attack on the Affordable Care Act certainly contributed to changing opinion. So did the botched rollout of the federal governments health insurance marketplace, healthcare.gov, and rising premiums.
But that doesnt fully account for the fundamental shift. In Post-Racial or Most-Racial: Race and Politics in the Obama Era, (University of Chicago Press), Michael Tesler, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, argues that the declining support for government health insurance during Barack Obamas presidency was driven by racially conservative defections.
Drawing from the 2012 American National Election Study, Professor Tesler found that only one-fifth of the most racially resentful whites (measured by their responses to questions about the causes of racial inequality and discrimination) supported health insurance provided by the government, compared with half of the least racially resentful.
Much of the opposition is set off directly by President Obamas race, Professor Tesler says. In similar surveys from 1988 to 2008, before Mr. Obama became president, support for government health insurance among racially resentful whites was considerably higher.
Opposition is also fueled by the sense that blacks would gain more; 56 percent of respondents to a poll in 2010 commissioned by Stanford and The Associated Press said the Affordable Care Act would probably cause most black Americans to get better health care than they get today. Only 45 percent said the same thing about whites.
The dynamic doesnt apply just to health care. Professor Tesler finds similar racial patterns in support of raising top marginal tax rates and in favor of the fiscal stimulus package of 2009. Fewer than 20 percent of the most racially resentful whites thought the stimulus was a good idea, compared with more than 60 percent of the most racially liberal.
Mr. Obamas race probably intensified such misgivings, but they have been there all along, shaping politics and policy for a very long time.
The digital social networks, meanwhile, attracted many millions of users to old and new forms of news coverage, as predicted. Their rise to prominence was not overstated. But, as companies, they have either failed to reckon with their new medialike roles as hosts, gatekeepers and de facto editors or rejected them outright. We are a tech company, not a media company, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks founder, emphasized at a conference in August.
In media business terms, it is now clear, the 2016 election could not have arrived at a more precarious moment, as industries defined by their futures struggled to handle what was happening in the present. A new business model had not replaced an old one not yet. There was, for the duration of the campaign, effectively no model at all.
Through this lens, some of the defining narratives about the media and the election start to make a little more sense. Major news organizations, household names trusted for decades, lost a great deal of ownership over audiences. The organizations exist among many contributors in infinite feeds. Their news stories could be more easily brushed aside and ignored as a product of bias or motivated reporting. Once privileged with the leverage to shape narratives, or declare stories important, they now found themselves competing with rivals shaped by new incentives.
It seemed that readers and viewers had been prompted, all at once, to ask news outlets: Who are you to assume we trust you?
The suspicions arrived in links above an article; by a video below it; by the friend or family member whose utterly unfamiliar media bubble bounced into yours. But it extended beyond that, too: by the delivery of your news in an entirely new way, complete with new and obliterating signifiers of authority and truth; by constant confirmation that, yes, the media really is just people saying things; and, finally, by opportunistic insinuations that the level of deception by news organizations knows no bounds.
They hold the promise of vibrancy, the allure of a city thoroughfare repurposed with the tent-lined look of a traveling circus. But the street fairs that can sometimes clog the corridors of Manhattan are also the bane of many, from drivers caught in the resulting snarl to those grown weary of the fairs banal ubiquity.
Over the summer, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, began studying ways to reduce the fairs impact, and inject new interest into the often-similar affairs. In September officials floated new rules that would limit the number of street fairs, spread them into more areas of New York City and require a greater diversity of offerings.
But, perhaps to the surprise of many New Yorkers who associate the gatherings only with tube sock merchants and gyro stands, the reform proposal attracted a swift and vocal backlash. At a public hearing in a Lower Manhattan municipal building, scores stood in line to make three-minute statements and 75 did so, nearly all of them in opposition.
There were major street fair organizers, as well as the Manhattan borough president, members of community boards and business improvement districts, and many, many vendors.
Susan B. Anthonys grave site, in Rochester, is a perennial destination for women celebrating their freedom to vote, but on Election Day, Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx would like to remind New Yorkers to share the love.
At Woodlawn, the grave sites of four other prominent suffragists could use some I Voted stickers, like those dotting Anthonys grave, David Ison, the cemeterys executive director, said on Monday. The cemetery will even provide the stickers.
The idea for turning the sites into selfie-and-sticker destinations came this year after seeing the popularity of Anthonys grave site grow on social media, Mr. Ison said. The need for some positive messaging after a bruising election season was also important.
A Queens woman admitted pushing another woman to her death in front of a subway train in Times Square, prosecutors said in court on Tuesday, but the woman denied that she had confessed.
At her arraignment in Criminal Court in Manhattan, the woman, Melanie Liverpool-Turner, 30, pleaded not guilty to a second-degree murder charge.
The police said Ms. Liverpool-Turner pushed Connie Watton, 49, of Queens, in front of a southbound No. 1 train at the busy Times Square-42nd Street station around 1:20 p.m. on Monday. Prosecutors said in a statement read by Justice Gerald Lebovits of State Supreme Court that two witnesses saw Ms. Liverpool-Turner push Ms. Watton.
This is a strong case with multiple eyewitnesses, and the defendant has admitted to the crime, Matthew Thiman, an assistant district attorney, said in court.
To the Editor:
Re U.S. Jury Acquits All Defendants in Refuge Siege (front page, Oct. 28):
Recent coverage of the Bundy brothers outlaw occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge needs to reflect the depth of danger to Western lands. The verdict communicates this message: If you occupy a government facility with guns, take over its equipment, run off its employees and destroy Native American cultural assets, you may not be held accountable.
It would be hilarious if the consequences for federal employees and comity in the West were not so great. Make no mistake, these outlaws want beautiful federal lands, the endowment of every American, sold to the highest bidder or given to them free of charge.
The occupation of the refuge and the trial of the Bundy gang belie the fact that the refuge is a model of public-private collaborative planning. The best thing all good Americans and Oregonians can do is visit the refuge, leave money in the community, encourage a positive and collaborative path forward, and thank federal employees for their dedication.
ROBERT WISE
Portland, Ore.
The writer was a planning director and policy adviser to Gov. Cecil Andrus of Idaho and Gov. Bruce Babbitt of Arizona, both of whom became secretaries of the interior.
In Ruling the Void: The Hollowing-Out of Western Democracy, the political scientist Peter Mair pointed out that even political parties of the left no longer really aimed to represent people, but to govern them. Rather than champion the interests of their base to the system, they manage the integration of their base into the needs of the system, by means of trade deals, tax cuts, welfare reform and more restrictive labor laws.
We are all Thatcherites now! Peter Mandelson, the guru of New Labour in Britain, once declared ahead of a global gathering of Third Way leaders.
The result? Between 1997 and 2010, New Labour lost nearly five million votes. By 2015, soulless and bankrupt of ideas, the party was routed in the general election, and its leadership went to an obscure far-left member of Parliament.
The angry feel locked out from growth. They are. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that in Denmark, from 1975 to 2007, 90 percent of income growth went to 90 percent of the population. Contrast this with the United States, where, over the same period, more than 80 percent of income growth ended up with 10 percent of the population.
The striving middle class is pushed into the ranks of the poor as well-paying jobs, and the social mobility they bring, disappear, sometimes overseas, sometimes as a result of trade deals the establishment parties insisted were in the popular interest. Communities have been devastated, as the civic ecology on which a politics of the common good depends for most folk has been shattered: stable work on which to build a home and a family, pride in identity and place, and a network of supportive institutions and relationships cultivated across generations.
Sometimes, when I tell London friends that my working-class hometown in the northeast of England was doing better when I was growing up there in the 1960s than it is today, I see their eyes glaze over. Some even roll their eyes and tell me to stop being prolier than thou. Borrowing from Tony Blair, they admonish me that no one can say, Stop the world, I want to get off. And with that, we are back to the world of Dickens: two nations invisible to each other.
Little wonder that 58 percent of voters in northeast England supported Brexit. A left-behind working class lashed out at decades of deindustrialization, blighted communities and high levels of immigration. The elites have long dismissed those voters concerns about the downward pressures on wages and the strain on public services as the backward prejudices of the bigoted, as the former prime minister Gordon Brown was famously caught saying in an unguarded moment, as he campaigned for Labours re-election in 2010.
To the Editor:
Re How to Rig an Election, by Paul Krugman (column, Nov. 7):
Heres how America can unrig its electoral system. Send a bipartisan delegation to Australia to observe voting.
Elections always take place on Saturdays, when most people have the day off. Voting locations are many and varied, and citizens can vote at any of dozens of locations in their local area. Early voting is available via mail, local council offices, airports, train stations and other venues. Ballots are standardized across all elections and managed by a single electoral commission.
Voting is a right and a responsibility. If you dont vote, you get fined. If you dont like any of the candidates, you can vote informally, by filling out your ballot incorrectly, so it wont get counted.
Election days are fun. Most voting locations have barbecues, so theres always something to eat while you wait in line (which usually isnt for more than five or 10 minutes).
The question of what constitutes democracy did not have time to be hashed out in the Russian public sphere before that sphere began disappearing a decade and a half ago. It was no surprise, then, that the exiles in Vilnius did not have a unified vision of the democracy to come.
Some participants suggested granting the right to vote only to people who are educated and pay taxes. Others debated Russias constitutional structure. Should power be taken away from the president and a stronger parliament created instead? Do the countrys problems lie with the Constitution itself, or with the man who has seized the powerful office of president? Who should decide? Russias current Constitution was drafted hastily behind closed doors in 1993, following then-president Boris Yeltsins bloody crackdown on a rebellious Parliament.
How to ensure that any new Constitution would be more representative? Who will run the country, and how, while such decisions are being made? Even if the Constitution remains unchanged, current electoral laws, and the institutions that enforce them, are unsuitable for the job of creating a democratic government. A transition period is inevitable, and inevitably it will be perilous.
The transition will require a wide-ranging public discussion. But what will be the language of a post-Putin Russia? That is, where will the Russian words for a new country be found? Key concepts have been distorted by misuse and discredited by decades of Soviet and then Putin-era propaganda. Democrat has become an insult; freedom of speech is invoked to legitimize hate speech even while people are being jailed for expressing their political views. The corruption of language reflects a general lack of trust in democratic mechanisms and widespread dismissal of democratic values.
Then there is the issue of securing the democratic gains that will undoubtedly be won hard, if they are won at all.
How would a Russian democracy protect itself from another hostile takeover from within? Over the last few years, activists have revived talk of lustration, a post-Communist concept that means weeding out certain people from certain offices. Some former Eastern European countries, for example, banned Soviet-era secret-police agents from holding any civic office. Russia opted against lustration back in the 1990s for fear of sowing social division. If it had made a different choice back then, Mr. Putin, as a former K.G.B. agent, would probably have been disqualified from holding state office.
But what should lustration be like? Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of the Russian parliament who now lives in Ukraine, has argued for what he calls a class-based approach. (Mr. Ponomarev is a Marxist.) In his scheme, people who have risen above a certain rank in the civil service under the current regime would not be allowed to work for a future Russian state. Another approach calls for case-by-case review which leaves open the question of what deeds should disqualify people from working for the state.
To the Editor:
Re Judge Halts Deal on Surveillance by Police Dept. (front page, Nov. 1):
Forty-five years ago, while I was a student at Columbia Law School, the New York Police Department illegally gathered information about my antiwar activities and turned it over to the state bar.
At my character interview after passing the bar exam, I was questioned about my political activities and was confronted with a photostatic copy of a petition I had signed against the Vietnam War that the N.Y.P.D. had surreptitiously photographed on a bulletin board at the law school.
My story was among the allegations in the Handschu lawsuit that led to the historic 1971 guidelines limiting the N.Y.P.D.s improper infiltration and surveillance of constitutionally protected political activities. What was done to me paled in comparison to the sweeping First Amendment violations the N.Y.P.D. had been committing against political activists and persists in committing against Muslims and others.
I applaud Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. for insisting on greater oversight of the N.Y.P.D. when it comes to the protection of freedom of speech, assembly and religion. It is imperative that we remain eternally vigilant to ensure that law enforcement officials recognize that it is their duty and responsibility to protect, not violate, the constitutional rights of those they are sworn to serve.
Mr. Hughes and Mr. Chaconas figured they would populate the second floor of the old bookstore with multiple office tenants after leasing the ground floor to a retail mix. Yet before Mr. Chaconas got far, the business and media analytics firm Prime Research made an aggressive play to secure 16,000 square feet at $24 a square foot with a call from a vice president, Julie Myers-Beach.
I wasnt planning on touching the second floor until I was done with the first floor, but the day the sign went up for leasing the building, Julie from Prime called me up and said, I want it, Mr. Chaconas said. I told her, Im not ready. She said, I dont care.
With Prime and Barracuda side by side, the Borders spaces suddenly became the workplace for more than 300 young computer programmers with disposable incomes, Ms. Pollay said. Combined with the Google employees two blocks away, the area suddenly took on a tech-hub vibe, whereas for decades it had primarily focused on serving the university community.
Since then, other start-ups and branches of tech companies have alighted in Ann Arbors downtown core. More than 60 companies took part in a recent job fair put on by the citys small-business incubator, Spark.
A larger tech company can be a real asset in the sense that it creates a talent pool that is now spawning a continuous labor pool for the entire market, said Sparks chief executive, Paul Krutko. He noted that Barracuda had not set up an internal food service, which encouraged employees to venture into downtown.
That is the clientele Mr. Chaconas aimed to cater to while keeping the offerings local. Just as Borders was deeply rooted in the community, so are two current tenants, Knights Steakhouse and Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea, both locally owned chains. A third, the HopCat brew pub, is part of a small chain that started in Grand Rapids.
Seth Colling, who teaches children with developmental disabilities at an outdoor learning center in Michigan, was walking along a creek looking for fish with his students in 2014 when they saw something odd sticking out from the water.
It looked really strange, Mr. Colling said. I said to my student, Hey what is that?
As Mr. Colling and his students would find out, what they had discovered was a leg bone belonging to the most complete mastodon skeleton found in Michigan in more than 70 years. After a full excavation last month, paleontologists uncovered 75 bones, including ribs, a pelvis, shoulder bones and a skull with five gleaming molars that looked as if they were made of quartz.
The teeth may hold the keys to figuring out how the beast died some 13,000 years ago: Was it butchered by hungry prehistoric hunters, did it succumb to starvation in the harsh environment, or was it the loser in a mating-season death match?
Neanderthals and modern humans diverged from a common ancestor about half a million years ago. Living in colder climes in Eurasia, Neanderthals evolved barrel chests, large skulls and strong hands. In Africa, modern humans acquired shorter faces, a prominent chin and slender limbs. Then, roughly 50,000 years ago, the two species encountered one another and interbred, as modern humans spread out of Africa.
The legacy of this interbreeding has been the subject of much scientific inquiry in the past few years. Today, up to 4 percent of the genes of non-Africans are Neanderthal in origin.. These may have influenced a diverse range of traits, including keratin production, disease risk and the propensity to sneeze after eating dark chocolate. Where did all the other Neanderthal DNA go? Why did a Neanderthal-human hybrid not prevail?
Two recent studies converge on an explanation. They suggest the answer comes down to different population sizes between Neanderthals and modern humans, and this principle of population genetics: In small populations, natural selection is less effective.
Neanderthals have this small population over hundreds of thousands of years, presumably because theyre living in very rough conditions, said Graham Coop, a genetics professor at the University of California, Davis, and an author of one of the studies, published Tuesday in PLOS Genetics.
In Charlotte, N.C., the lines for the first wave of early balloting last month forced some voters to wait more than two hours. In Las Vegas last weekend, voters were still waiting outside a polling place in a Mexican grocery store two hours after it was set to close. In New York City on Election Day, voters who spilled out of polling sites snaked through schoolyards and around entire city blocks.
There are two ways to interpret these scenes.
It does give some indication of the health of our democracy that you have all these people who are excited enough to vote that theyll wait in a long line, said Stephen Pettigrew, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvards department of government who studies polling lines. But its also an indication, at least in some areas, that there is a problem.
One problem is that some groups are much more likely to face long lines than others. Another, according to Mr. Pettigrews research on recent elections, is that the people who do wait are less likely to vote in the future as a result.
Early voters, urban voters and minority voters are all more likely to wait and wait and wait. In predominantly minority communities, the lines are about twice as long as in predominantly white ones, Mr. Pettigrew has found. And minority voters are six times as likely as whites to wait longer than an hour to vote. Those disparities have persisted even within the same town or county, suggesting they dont reflect simply the greater difficulty of putting on elections in populous cities.
It has great significance not just for the L.G.B.T.Q. community and for the Hispanic community but for all of us that live and love Orlando, Mr. Dyer said in a video statement posted on Twitter. I think it is very important that city take control of the site.
He said that the city was not sure what kind of memorial it wanted to create and that for the next 12 to 18 months the site would be left untouched so that people from around the country and world that want to visit the site can do so.
Since the massacre, the 4,500-square-foot building and the sign outside with the Pulse logo has drawn tourists from around the world and has also been visited by local and national politicians, including Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Dyer said that he would solicit suggestions from the community and activists about the best way to proceed with creating a memorial.
The city and the owner of the club have agreed to a purchase price of $2.25 million. The City Council, which must approve the purchase, is expected to vote on the matter on Monday.
Perhaps you didnt gather enough information in the first year and a half of the campaign. Perhaps you thought you had made up your mind and cast your ballot early, only to have a last-minute change of heart.
It happens.
Were sorry to say its probably too late to do anything about it. With the exceptions of absentee voters in three states New York, Pennsylvania and Mississippi people who have already voted cannot still change their minds.
Based on recent Google searches, it seems some Americans are having buyers remorse. Searches for change early voting and change my vote peaked on Nov. 2 and have continued through Election Day.
In Wisconsin, absentee voters could change their minds up to three times, but the deadline to do so passed last week, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Unlike in Pennsylvania, voters cannot void their previous ballots in person at their polling places.
With the number of people who voted before Election Day expected to approach 50 million, a lot remains unknown about who these voters are and whether this surge of early voting will change the outcome of the election.
A significant amount of these voters may have voted for Hillary Clinton or Donald J. Trump anyway.
The issue is called vote cannibalization. A campaign cannibalizes its own vote if it turns out only its reliable supporters as early voters.
But a sophisticated campaign uses the early voting period before an election to target the people who are least likely to vote, knowing that they can afford to wait until closer to Election Day to connect with more likely voters.
The other candidates.
That is the default shorthand for the three presidential candidates who are not Donald J. Trump or Hillary Clinton: Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein of the Green Party and Evan McMullin, the independent.
All three made final pleas to voters on Tuesday, and all three sounded a similar theme: Dont just vote against someone; vote for someone.
It is unlikely that any of them will win or have a major impact on the final outcome, but this could be the best year for third-party candidates since Ralph Nader ran in 2000 and grabbed 3 percent of the popular vote.
Mr. Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, wrapped up his campaign in his home state, where he joined sign-waving supporters in Santa Fe.
Some pantsuits were white, in tribute to the dresses of the suffragists. Others were mismatched or borrowed. Many were fished out of the back of a closet, along with a memory of a long-lost job or a somber occasion.
These suits were redeployed by thousands of American women on Election Day, when taking a photo of yourself in a pantsuit and posting it to the secret Facebook group Pantsuit Nation became the digital equivalent of slapping an I Voted sticker on a lapel.
Theyre coming in at about 1,000 every few minutes, Libby Chamberlain, the founder of the group, said of the social media posts. We have over 20,000 posts that are waiting to be approved. We have dozens of moderators and they cant keep up.
Its intense, she added.
Ms. Chamberlain, 33, created Pantsuit Nation to support Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, less than three weeks ago. Since then, more than 2.5 million people have joined the group which is invitation only and have reported donating more than $216,000 through the Pantsuit Nation fund-raising drive. But even that growth didnt prepare the groups organizers for the explosive activity on Tuesday.
What is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is a group of people that elects the president and the vice president of the United States. (The word college in this case simply refers to an organized body of people engaged in a common task.)
As voters head to the polls on Tuesday, they will not vote for the presidential candidates directly, in a popular vote. Instead, they will vote to elect specific people, known as electors to the college. Each state gets a certain number of electoral votes based on its population.
The electors are appointed by the political parties in each state, so if you vote for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, and Mr. Trump ends up winning the popular vote in your state, then electors that the Republican Party has chosen will cast votes for him in their state capitals in December.
The electors are asked to cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. This year, thats Dec. 19.
Julian Assange operates from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where his internet connection was recently cut off. But that has not stopped him from being one of the most significant and unusual players in the 2016 election campaign in the United States.
His WikiLeaks platform has released tens of thousands of hacked emails from inside Hillary Clintons campaign and the Democratic National Committee, making Mr. Assange a reviled figure among supporters of the Democratic nominee and a hero to backers of Donald J. Trump.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Assange weighed in one last time as Americans headed to the polls, releasing a statement that offered an explanation for making the leaks public, an assertion of impartiality and a defense of the WikiLeaks mission.
The real victor is the U.S. public, which is better informed as a result of our work, Mr. Assange wrote, adding that his organization publishes information as quickly as possible and as fast as the public can absorb it.
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Tuesday weighed whether cities can sue banks under the Fair Housing Act for predatory lending, even if foreclosures that stem from such loans affect a city only indirectly.
The case before the justices was brought by Miami after the 2008 financial crisis. The city said that discriminatory mortgage lending practices by Bank of America and Wells Fargo had led to a disproportionate number of defaults by minority home buyers and, in turn, to financial harm to the city.
We are aggrieved in every sense of the word by the discrimination that was propounded here, said Robert S. Peck, a lawyer for the city.
The justices appeared divided over whether Miamis asserted injuries were enough to allow it to sue under the housing law.
Voters nationwide endured long waits in line, malfunctioning voting machines, ill-informed poll workers and a litany of lesser annoyances on Tuesday with scattered reports that some voters gave up trying to cast ballots.
There were claims of illegal electioneering and intimidation by partisans on both sides, but the fears of widespread chaos at polling places, and even violence, failed to materialize as polls began to close on the East Coast.
Nor did there appear to be any organized effort to disrupt the vote, either by supporters of the candidates or by hackers seeking to break into voting or registration databases.
Its pretty much what wed expect to see, David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said at midday in New York. There are scattered indications of machine breakdowns that are being addressed.
Just a few steps into the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, N.Y., up the curve of a cobblestone walkway on a low hill, is the grave of Susan B. Anthony, a leader of the movement for womens suffrage who lived about three miles away.
On Tuesday, her gravestone was nearly invisible beneath a coating of I Voted stickers and behind a line of hundreds of people who came here to pay their respects. They left notes of thanks to a woman who was arrested when she dared to vote and who did not live to see women granted that right.
The cemetery opened early, at 7:30 a.m., to mark the day, and was to stay open late.
At 11 a.m., Lovely Warren, the mayor of Rochester and the first woman elected to that position, arrived at the grave. I was elected 141 years to the day that Susan B. Anthony cast that illegal vote, Ms. Warren said, seated on a stone step in the graveyard under a bowed spruce.
To me that means, as a woman, there are no shackles and no chains to what we can accomplish, she said. If I could do back flips, I would be doing back flips.
Two more bodies were found Monday on the remote property in South Carolina where a missing woman was rescued from a storage container in which she had been chained and held captive, the authorities said.
Image Todd C. Kohlhepp Credit... Spartanburg County Sheriff'S Office
Investigators have been using cadaver dogs to search for more possible victims on the 100-acre site in Woodruff, S.C., 20 miles east of Greenville, since last week, when the woman was found. She and her boyfriend, Charles D. Carver, 32, had been missing since August. His body was found buried there on Friday.
The two bodies found Monday were removed from shallow graves on the property, according to the television station WYFF. The county coroner, Rusty Clevenger, was quoted as saying that he would start working on Tuesday to identify the bodies.
HONG KONG There were no banners. No raised fists. As night fell on Tuesday, more than a thousand protesters dressed in black held a silent march through the central business area of Hong Kong. They took care not to jaywalk. Then they quietly dispersed into the night.
Collectively, the participants in the march had more power than most demonstrators. They were Hong Kong lawyers, angered by Chinas move on Monday to effectively rewrite a clause in Hong Kongs charter in order to prevent two young pro-independence politicians from taking office as legislators.
As a group, Hong Kongs lawyers say Beijings decision to step into a legal case in this city has dealt a blow to its judiciary, famed for its fairness and independence and central to Hong Kongs success as a global financial hub.
The local bar association called the decision, announced by Chinas Parliament, unnecessary and inappropriate and damaging to the concept of one country, two systems that has allowed this former British colony to maintain considerable autonomy from the mainland since the 1997 handover of sovereignty.
MANILA The Philippines highest court ruled on Tuesday that the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos may be granted a heros burial, resolving a divisive issue in a country where passions over his brutal 20-year rule still run high.
A spokesman for the Supreme Court, Theodore Te, said the justices voted 9 to 5 to turn down a petition submitted by rights groups opposed to the reburial of Mr. Marcos, who died in 1989.
The decision clears the way to carry out an order by President Rodrigo Duterte to bury Mr. Marcos in the national Cemetery of Heroes in Taguig City, a part of greater Manila.
In a narrow ruling that did not touch on the crimes or merits of the Marcos government, the court decided that there is no law that prohibits the burial, Mr. Te said.
HONG KONG A Hong Kong judge on Tuesday sentenced a British banker to life in prison for murdering two Indonesian women at his luxury apartment in 2014, bringing to a close a gruesome case that cast a spotlight on social inequality and the excesses of the financial sector in one of Asias richest cities.
A nine-member jury found the banker, Rurik George Caton Jutting, guilty of double murder after deliberating for less than a day in High Court. The decision was unanimous.
I accept this as a just and appropriate judgment, Mr. Jutting, 31, said in a statement that his lawyer read after the verdict was announced, according to a report in The South China Morning Post. The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me in words or by action.
Murder convictions carry a mandatory life sentence in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city that has its own legal system.
Yarchen is very impressive, an island covered with cells, said Katia Buffetrille, an anthropologist and Tibet scholar at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris who visited Yarchen Gar in July. I was struck by the size, not having been there before.
The nuns with whom I spoke, among them a nun from Ganze who had already been there seven years, were very happy to be there, she added. The cells you see on the hill are an indication of the deep faith these nuns have: They meditate in these tiny plastic cells where it must be very hot in summer and incredibly cold in winter.
Some Westerners might call the settlement a slum. The homes are patchworks of boards and thin metal sheets, with the occasional piece of plastic tarp covering a part of the roof or walls. Narrow lanes wind among them. Depending on the wind, the air can be thick with the smell of undrained sewage.
The buildings have no running water. Residents line up with plastic jugs at public faucets at the edge of the settlement. They bring clothes to wash at those faucets, too.
BUDAPEST Lawmakers in Hungary on Tuesday rejected a proposed national ban on refugees relocated from the rest of the European Union, dealing a rare defeat to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Mr. Orban submitted a plan to ban the refugees, in the form of a constitutional amendment, last month, after a similar proposal failed to pass by referendum because of insufficient voter turnout.
He has vowed to block a European Union program that would resettle migrants from the Middle East and Africa who have gone to countries like Greece and Italy. Under that program, Hungary, a nation of 10 million, would have to accept 1,294 of a total of about 160,000 migrants.
MOSCOW Given the blanket coverage on Russias main state-run new channels on Tuesday, it often seemed that the United States presidential election was actually happening here.
Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump casting their ballots warranted attention, while correspondents stationed at the polls where both contenders voted weighed in repeatedly, though news was pretty thin. Rossiya 24, the main cable news channel, promised live coverage starting at 1 a.m. Moscow time on Wednesday morning, still late afternoon on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
The blanket coverage had led to more than a little grumbling that the Kremlin-managed news media was devoting more time and energy to the American elections than it paid to a national parliamentary vote in Russia less than two months ago.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this has not happened for any elections in Russia, Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition politician who lost his seat in part because nongovernment candidates got virtually zero television coverage, wrote on Facebook.
The public are being advised not to approach the men who absconded from HMP Pentonville on Monday, 7 November, and remain at large, a police statement said. It was not known what the inmates had been wearing when they escaped, though the police said that Mr. Whitlock, described as lithe and slender, had the word Tracy tattooed on his torso and that Mr. Baker had reddish hair.
Image Matthew Baker, in an undated photograph from the Metropolitan Police. Mr. Baker, convicted of attempted murder, was one of two inmates who escaped from Pentonville prison in North London. Credit... London Metropolitan Police, via Reuters
According to the police and news reports, the brazen plot began playing out late Sunday. The two inmates, possibly using diamond-tipped cutting tools, sliced through the windows of their fifth-floor cells in the G wing of the prison.
One theory being considered is that, after escaping from their cells, the men climbed onto the roof of the prison chapel before jumping onto the prisons imposing perimeter wall. They may have then used bedsheets to make a rope to reach the ground below.
There was speculation that drones may have been used to drop cutting equipment to the men. A recent report from a prison watchdog group warned that inmates were using drones to smuggle drugs into the prison and were taking advantage of broken and dilapidated windows that made the prison accessible from outside. The prison, which opened its doors in 1842, houses an estimated 1,200 male prisoners, including, at one time, Oscar Wilde.
The men were not discovered missing until 11:44 a.m. on Monday. News reports said that their absence may have gone unnoticed because they were not required to do prison work and that the guards may have been fooled by the bumps underneath the bedsheets when they looked through the cell-door flaps to check on them.
LONDON The peaks are slimmer and the valleys are wider, but the price hasnt changed.
The maker of Toblerone, the Swiss chocolate bar, has reconfigured the unique appearance of two of its milk-chocolate versions, with narrower triangles and a larger gap between peaks.
The price for the new bars is the same as the old ones, but the changes to the smaller one which is sold mainly in Britain at the discount retailer Poundland were so pronounced that Toblerones Facebook page was filled with outrage from aggrieved consumers, even though only a relatively small number were likely to be affected.
Toblerone is all about the triangle, Stephen Mason said on Facebook. Why couldnt you just lose a triangle at the end or make the triangles smaller?
The 170-gram and 400-gram milk chocolate bars (about six ounces and 14 ounces) have been cut down to 150 grams and 360 grams to reduce costs, because of rising prices for ingredients, said Mondelez International, which makes the bars. The altered shape is visible only once the box is opened.
TEHRAN For all of Irans attractions breathtaking scenery and numerous World Heritage sites, among other things there are plenty of downsides to vacationing in the Islamic republic. Alcohol is forbidden. There is very little night life, at least in public. All women, including visiting foreigners, are obliged to wear a head scarf.
Then there are Irans politics: its strident anti-Western stance; seemingly random arrests of people with dual citizenship; hundreds of executions every year; and a rather loose definition of human rights.
None of that has changed, but suddenly Iran is a booming destination for Europeans seeking an adventurous vacation, particularly people from Spain, France and Scandinavia. Even tourism from the United States is picking up, industry insiders say.
I only knew Iran through the image the government presents in the media, said Magali Magnim, a 33-year-old video technician from Lyon, France. She and two friends were in Isfahan, one of Irans most historic cities, as part of a three-week tour. But everything is so different from what I expected.
I took this video while on what often felt like a surreal bus ride through war-torn Syria. The video begins on the edge of the city of Aleppo, its western, government-held half. The area we drove through is all government held but has been intensely fought over, again and again, and has changed hands several times. The route we took connects the city to a key supply route whoever controls the road determines if the eastern, rebel-held part of the city is besieged or not.
The destroyed buildings are in an area that was long held by rebels. The worst of the damage looks like the result of airstrikes. Only the government and, for the past year, its ally Russia have warplanes in the fight here. But some of the destruction could also be from artillery, which both sides have.
You go from this moonscape of war-destroyed buildings to a street of buses, open shops and apartments with laundry hanging from the balconies. These are areas that the government never lost, so they were never hit with the heaviest firepower. But rebel groups fire mortars; an individual strike doesnt cause a building to fall, but that doesnt mean it didnt kill someone.
Horowitz combines the expertise of a scientist with an easy, lively writing style. She describes her own cognitive testing of dogs, such as verification of the claim that they know the time their owners will come home. The author doesnt think there is any magic to this ability, and proposes that it has to do with the amount of time their owners smell lingers. When fresh owner smell was introduced in the house, the tested dogs reset their clocks and failed to wait at the appropriate time by the door.
The author writes mostly about the wonders of the nose, giving as much attention to the human one as that of the dog. Our noses have millions fewer olfactory receptors, and many fewer kinds of receptors, while we are unable to detect pheromones because of the lack of a vomeronasal organ. This is why dogs are called macrosmatic, whereas we are only microsmatic, or feeble scented. But perhaps this is not fair to our species. The author goes out of her way to show that given training, a different attitude and closeness to the source (bending down to the ground or a fence pole), humans can sniff out lots of interesting things. We have no trouble picking out someone who had a garlic-heavy meal the day before, and nonsmokers surely dont need to see someone with a cigarette to know if he or she is a smoker. Despite all this olfactory acuity, however, we remain intensely visual creatures. White wine colored red fools even the connoisseur, who tastes it as red because vision almost always wins the battle of human perception.
Dogs are obedient, eager to please and highly trainable, which is why they do all kinds of jobs for us. In comparison, the cat presents an enigma worthy of the wonder and awe that is the theme of Abigail Tuckers The Lion in the Living Room. What do cats do for us? They sit pretty, purr when petted and seem to use us instead of us using them. How come we like them so much? One possible answer is Konrad Lorenzs so-called Kindchenschema (infant-appeal) according to which we fall for signals of vulnerability in the young of our own and other species. With its relatively large frontal eyes and rounded features, the house cat sends many of these signals. They arouse human care and protectiveness even for a species that massacres songbirds and poses other environmental threats.
Another possible explanation is that we began to love cats for precisely these predatory capacities, tolerating them in order to keep mice and other rodents away from our homes and food storage. This may be the main reason the Near Eastern type of Felis sylvestris (cat of the woods) was turned into Felis domesticus about 12,000 years ago. Although the cats body changed remarkably little, its character became quite a bit more tolerable than the way Frances Pitt, a wildlife photographer, once described a wildcat she owned, which spat and scratched in fiercest resentment. Her pale green eyes glared savage hatred at human beings, and all attempts to establish friendly relations with her failed.
THE EARTH IS WEEPING
The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West
By Peter Cozzens
Illustrated. 544 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $35.
Seldom does a nonfiction book pack the cultural wallop that Dee Browns Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee did in 1970. Just months before its publication a group of Native American activists calling themselves Indians of All Tribes had occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, demanding that the former prison outpost be deeded back to them by the United States government. So when Brown a white novelist and historian from Arkansas with a degree in library science published his searing account of westward expansion, accusing the Army of annihilating Indians between 1860 and 1890, his timing was explosive. While Browns book contained factual errors, it dramatically succeeded in changing the attitudes of the Vietnam War generation about how the West was really won.
Now, 46 years later, the military historian Peter Cozzens counters Brown with The Earth Is Weeping a largely chronological march with an Army viewpoint of the same era, a work reminiscent in scope and approach to James McPhersons Battle Cry of Freedom (about the Civil War). Cozzens is determined to debunk the main thrust of Browns one-sided book that the governments response to the so-called Indian problem was genocide. He documents a string of gratuitous massacres of Native Americans, much to be deeply regretted, but insists that official Washington never contemplated genocide. It is at once ironic and unique, Cozzens declares, contra Brown, that so crucial a period of our history remains largely defined by a work that made no attempt at historical balance.
Balance is what Cozzens is seeking in this detailed recounting of random carnage, bodies burned, treaties broken and treachery let loose across the land. Although the book is not a seamless narrative, and its writing is sometimes stodgy, Cozzens admirably succeeds in framing the Indian Wars with acute historical accuracy. Whether discussing the chaotic Battle of Washita in present-day Oklahoma or Custers skirmishes with Sitting Bulls Lakota coalition or the surrender of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Cozzens demonstrates vast knowledge of American military history.
1852
[Published on Page 4] Sufficient returns of the Elections held yesterday are received, to show that FRANKLIN PIERCE and WM. R. KING are to be the next President and Vice President of the United States. True, our returns are far from complete, at the present writing, even from our own State; but the decided Democratic majorities already marked up sufficiently indicate the complexion of the State.
In this City, the Democratic Electoral Ticket has from ten to eleven thousand majority. Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Rhode Island are known to have given a Democratic triumph. Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio look in the same direction, although in both the latter States the Whigs seem to have made large gains.
The little-known Mr. Pierces landslide over Gen. Winfield Scott would signal the death knell for the Whig party, which was increasingly divided over the issue of slavery.
COTO DE CAZA Demolition of two rustic barns at the Coto Equestrian Center to make way for a luxury housing project is still on hold as county and equestrian center officials continue meeting with the developer to discuss alternatives after an outcry from residents.
Oak Grove LLC, a development firm in Newport Beach, posted notices that it intended to tear down the centers lower barn and a 3,000-square-foot barn that houses feed storage and a workshop on Nov. 3 as part of a process for county approval of the 13-home development on the site.
That move prompted Lisa Bartlett, chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, to request a meeting with Robert O Hill, president of Oak Grove, to discuss her concerns about demolishing the barn prematurely. It could be unnecessary and risky from a business perspective, Victor Cao, Bartletts senior policy adviser, said in an email.
At an Oct. 31 meeting, Oak Grove agreed to hold off on demolition of the lower barn for a week while the Orange County Planning Department and county counsel review the draft of a Nov. 2 agreement in which Oak Grove guarantees to make $1.6 million in renovations at the Coto Equestrian Center.
Those improvements include a new barn with 34 box stalls, four tack rooms a lounge and an additional trail leading in and out of the center.
A number of residents, who have been vocal in opposing Oak Groves housing plan, sent letters to Bartlett asking her to step in. They say the lower barn, one of the last remaining pole-barn structures in California, is a big part of Coto de Cazas rustic charm.
This is an icon of the community, said Mike Ameel, a 41-year resident. Its a huge amenity and to lose it would be devastating. Were a country community and thats why people come here.
Ultimately, Oak Grove plans to build 13 luxury homes at the site of the lower barn, feed barn and the adjacent Merryhill School site, which hasnt served students since 2008.
County staff, Oak Grove and Silver Bronze Corp., which owns and operates the center, are still in discussions about terms and conditions for a development agreement, putting promises by all parties on record, Cao said. Those terms are subject to approval by the Board of Supervisors.
Due to a number of uncertainties the community has expressed, the county is seeking to impose a number of conditions and requirements, Cao said in an email. A development agreement would essentiallycreate accountability measures to ensure each party fulfills their obligations.
O Hill, the majority shareholder of the Silver-Bronze Corp. that owns and operates the equestrian center, said his Board of Directors approved Bartletts request of a guarantee for the $1.6 million in improvements. In return, he said he wants the county to expedite approval of the Coto Equestrian Center Site Plan, which is required by the county before construction can start on the project.
The demolition may be on hold, but preparations for it are continuing. Center staff have taken out materials for pipe and box stalls and plan to preserve them to use for box stalls in the new plaza barn O Hill has agreed to build.
Theyre deciding the barn is going to come down and want to preserve the equipment because the pipe stalls are reusable, said Ken Agid, a founding member of the Silver Bronze Corp., who has spoken out against the housing plan.
As part of the development plans with the county, Silver Bronze Corp. also agreed to preserve the remaining 24.1 acres of the equestrian center for equestrian use only. The county and the California State Horsemans Association would provide oversight should they accept.
It limits any function, with buildings, said Jim Hendrickson, president of the horsemans association, a non-profit that fosters interest in horses and horsemanship throughout the state.
Anything thats put there temporarily has to conform to the equestrian center, so someone cant come in and decide they want to put a building there and claim it themselves it doesnt work that way
Bartletts office will have a meeting with Coto de Cazas master association Friday.
Cao said the lower barn may still be demolished, regardless if there is a project.
The fact remains that the equestrian center is not a publicly-owned facility, Cao said. Property owners have the right to obtain ministerial permits including demolition.
Agid said its his impression that if the county balks at anything, O Hill will exercise his legal right to tear down the lower barn.
From what Ive heard, theres no definitive date for how long hell postpone the demolition, Agid said. I believe hes got a contractor, committed and ready to move on a moments notice on the lower barn.
Contact the writer: npercy@scng.com
Marthe Cohn was in her late teens when Hitler was rising to power in Europe.
Living in Alsace-Lorraine in eastern France, just across the border from Germany, Cohns family began taking in Jews who were fleeing the Nazis as well as Jewish children being sent away by terrified parents. Cohns own sister was arrested and sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz.
Cohn, who joined the French Army as a spy and provided valuable information that helped defeat the Nazis, will speak at the Chabad Center in Laguna Hills Wednesday night.
Rabbi Tzali Stillerman of Chabad Laguna Hills said Cohns is a phenomenal story.
Its a great opportunity for us all to be inspired by her story and heroism, he said. I have personally been inspired by her resilience, faith and her willingness to fight the good fight.
What people can expect to learn from Cohn is that she was a light even during the darkest of times, Stillerman said.
Cohn used her accent and blond hair to pose as a young German nurse trying to find her fiance. But what she was actually doing was traveling about the countryside, learning troop movements and alerting Allied commanders.
When she was 80, Cohn was awarded the Medaille militaire, Frances highest military honor awarded for outstanding service.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7909 or dbharath@ocregister.com
Orange County public health officials on Tuesday lifted a ban on water use for dental procedures at Childrens Dental Group of Anaheim after the clinic replaced the contaminated water system that sickened more than 50 young patients.
The county Health Care Agency ordered the clinic to stop using water on Sept. 15 after samples tested positive for mycobacterium. Since then, at least 57 children have been hospitalized for lab-confirmed or probable mycobacterial infections, which are very difficult to treat.
The on-site water system has been completely removed, replaced with new equipment, and the water from the new system has been tested to ensure it meets the standards established by the American Dental Association, Dr. Eric Handler, county health officer, said in a statement.
The children, ages 2 to 9, received pulpotomies, also known as baby tooth root canals, between March 1 and Aug. 11. In addition to surgery to remove the infection, many children have needed long-term intravenous antibiotics.
On Friday, Claremont attorney Catherine Lombardo filed a lawsuit against Childrens Dental Group alleging that a 6-year-old boy with autism received two unnecessary pulpotomies at the Anaheim clinic in May.
According to the suit, Leonel Sanchez has undergone follow-up appointments at Childrens Dental Groups Carson clinic to determine if he has mycobacterial infection. But the suit says his parents were never told if he does and they believe the clinics dentists are concealing the fact that Leo is indeed infected with the mycobacteria, which is causing them extreme anxiety.
Lombardo said in an interview Tuesday that the boys parents have not yet taken him to Childrens Hospital of Orange County for evaluation but that he has all of the symptoms of infection.
Sam Gruenbaum, CEO of Childrens Dental Group, said in an email that the clinic hopes to begin seeing patients again Nov. 21. He said the new water system has been designed to protect the health and safety of patients.
As for the lawsuit, Gruenbaum said he had not been served, but we deeply regret that any patient had complications following treatment here.
The county said safeguards in place to prevent future contamination at the dental office include use of a treatment designed to prevent bacteria from adhering to equipment and installation of purification cartridges at every dental chair connected to the on-site water system.
Mycobacteria is a naturally occurring germ found in water that can cause illness in high levels, or if a strain is particularly virulent. Last month, the county awarded $150,000 to CHOC to help the hospital manage the complex treatment of patients, some of whom must take an antibiotic used to treat leprosy which must be special-ordered from the Food and Drug Administration.
Jessica Gomez, whose 4-year-old daughter contracted an infection after two March pulpotomies, said she was upset that the clinic will be able to treat patients again.
I would never go there again and I would never refer anyone there, Gomez said. I feel like a lot of the parents whose children were affected are probably shocked to hear theyre still going to be up and running when our children didnt get a second chance; some of them lost their teeth and their jaw bones.
Gomez, 25, of Corona, said her daughter Janell was hospitalized at CHOC last month. Surgeons scraped infection from her jaw bone and extracted five baby teeth, including her four molars. Janell is recovering but is struggling with eating meat and vegetables, Gomez said.
Gomez said its important for parents to take their children to be checked if they received the baby tooth root canals at the Anaheim clinic, even if they dont have swelling, redness or pain, which can develop weeks or months after the procedure.
Thats my concern is just that people should be aware, she said.
Contact the writer: cperkes@scng.com 714-796-3686
HERO Program proves to be a perfect solution for Norwalk couple. Installation of a new HVAC system and a good deed illustrates contractors customer service.
ITS ONE THING to install a new heating and air conditioning system.
Its another thing entirely, during installation, to happily volunteer to get rid of something living in the attic. For the field technicians at Brea-based Service Champions Heating and Air Conditioning, however, performing good deeds for free for clients is part of the companys ethos.
Debra Solorzano-Madrid and Cesar Gallegos had shelled out a sizable amount of cash for a pest-control company to come out to their 1960-built tract home in Norwalk prior to having a new HVAC system installed in June. For years, their air conditioner had failed to keep their single-story, three-bedroom home properly cooled. And it died just ahead of a birthday party the couple was planning for their 17-year-old daughter. Choosy about selecting a HVAC contractor for the job, Debra and Cesar found Service Champions online and were impressed by the 16-year-old contracting companys stellar reviews.
And when Service Champions told the couple about the HERO Program, they were impressed to learn that, because of HEROs consumer safeguards, their contractor had agreed to be paid only after Debra and Cesar signed off that they were fully satisfied with the project. Additionally, through HERO they would not pay upfront for the job. Instead, Debra and Cesar could pay for the project over time through voluntary assessments to their property tax bill thanks to the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing provided by the HERO Program the nations largest PACE provider.
When the HVAC crew from Service Champions found a pigeon in their attic, Debra and Cesar thought work would have to be halted until the pest control people could be summoned back to take care of the problem. Well get it, a Service Champion technician told them. The tech then used a bed sheet to wrap up the pigeon and its nest and relocate the bird and its home outside. Marvels Debra: What kind of a (HVAC contractor) does that? Their customer service was just above and beyond. Leland A. Smith, founder of Service Champions, said the contractors exacting hiring standards and emphasis on excellent customer service are two of the engines behind the impressive growth of his company.
The HERO Program is also fueling Service Champions growth, said Jim Dotson, a comfort advisor who has been with the contractor for 16 years. Because of HERO, weve been able to offer home efficiency upgrades to clients who might not normally be able to afford it another way, Dotson said. Its helped us reach out to a lot of clients. I think HERO is a game changer. The HERO Program is made possible through a public-private partnership with municipalities. It has been adopted by 438 communities and is available to 89% of California households. Since its inception in 2011, HERO has financed more than $1.94 billion in home energy and efficiency improvements in more than 81,000 homes.
HERO financing payments may have tax benefits, and many homeowners see immediate savings on utility bills. In fact, Debra and Cesar are hoping to see lower bills in their Norwalk home.
The HERO Program representative walked us through every step, Cesar said. We felt so informed. They wanted us to feel comfortable about making a decision, and we were absolutely comfortable in making it. The couple also is comfortable knowing their attic now is free of critters.
SANTA ANA A Newport Beach man pleaded guilty Monday to smuggling more than $12 million worth of synthetic drugs into the United States.
Federal prosecutors describe Sean Libbert, 41, as the lead defendant in a criminal case targeting a nationwide drug ring that sold synthetic drugs, more commonly known as spice, or bath salts.
Libbert was arrested following a three-year investigation, in the midst of a national crackdown on synthetic, or designer, drugs. Authorities said Libbert and his co-defendants are the first people to be prosecuted in Southern California for synthetic drugs.
The investigation in this case revealed that this defendant controlled an organization that was one of the largest importers and distributors of dangerous synthetic drugs in this nation, United States Attorney Eileen Decker said of Libbert in a statement released Tuesday.
According to U.S. Attorneys Office officials, Libbert and his associates, over a 16-month period, smuggled more than 600 pounds of chemicals used to manufacture synthetic marijuana. Among the other defendants in the case is a Chinese national who admitted to selling Libbert and the other defendants the synthetic drugs.
Prosecutors allege that Libbert sold the drugs through various websites. They also believe he set up a series of companies and opened multiple bank accounts to facilitate the alleged drug sales.
As part of his plea deal, Libbert admitted to manufacturing and selling his own synthetic marijuana, branded Da Kine Blend.
Under the terms of the plea deal, Libbert agreed to serve at least six years in federal prison. In return, prosecutors agreed not to recommend a sentence of more than 20 years.
United States District Judge Cormac J. Carney will make the final decision regarding Libberts prison sentence. He is scheduled to return to the United States District Court in Santa Ana on March 20.
Five other defendants tied to the synthetic drug ring have already pleaded guilty, and are awaiting sentencing.
While looking into the drug ring, federal investigators seized more than $1.1 million in assets, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office. That included $700,000 taken from Libberts former San Juan Capistrano home.
Contact the writer: semery@scng.com
NEAR BASHIQA, Iraq Iraqi Kurdish fighters exchanged heavy fire with militants on Monday as they entered a town held by the Islamic State group east of Mosul, while troops advancing south of the city discovered a mass grave containing some 100 decapitated bodies.
The offensive to reclaim the town of Bashiqa is part of the broader push to drive IS out of Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, relieving those living under its occupation from the type of brutality, such as mass killings, that the group has committed.
IS militants have carried out a series of massacres since seizing large swaths of southern and central Iraq in the summer of 2014, often documenting them with photos and videos circulated online. On Monday, Iraqi soldiers advancing into the town of Hamam al-Alil, south of Mosul, discovered a pit containing dozens of decapitated skeletal remains, the militarys Joint Military Command said.
The offensive to retake Bashiqa began at dawn with a Kurdish barrage of heavy artillery, Katyusha rockets and mortar rounds slamming into IS positions, providing cover for the advance of armored columns.
Smoke rose from the town throughout the day, with large explosions sending dark clouds into the sky.
We have the coordinates of their bases and tunnels, and we are targeting them from here in order to weaken them so that our forces can reach their targets more easily, said Iraqi Kurdish commander Brig. Gen. Iskander Khalil Gardi.
Bashiqa, which is believed to be largely deserted except for dozens of IS fighters, is located about eight miles northeast of Mosuls outskirts and about 13 miles from the city center. Iraqi government and Kurdish forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition and joined by government-sanctioned militias, are fighting to drive IS out of those surrounding areas and open additional fronts to attack Mosul itself.
Bashiqa has been surrounded by Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, for weeks but Mondays push appeared to be the most serious yet to drive IS from the town.
Kurdish forces launched mortar rounds and fired heavy artillery into the town Sunday in advance of the offensive. More artillery and air strikes hit the town early Monday as the Kurdish forces advance got underway.
On Mosuls southern front, meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers advancing into Hamam al-Alil, some 12 miles from the city center, discovered a mass grave late Monday containing some 100 decapitated bodies near the towns agricultural college. Most were reduced to skeletons, said Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command.
He said a forensics team from Baghdad would investigate the site on Tuesday.
Earlier Monday, army spokesman Brig. Firas Bashar said Iraqi forces had retaken the town and images broadcast by the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen network showed soldiers hoisting the Iraqi flag on a rooftop in the town. Other reports, however, said fighting still continued and that IS fighters remained in several areas.
Iraqi special forces entered Mosul last week and have made some progress in gaining a foothold on the citys eastern edges. But progress inside the city has been slowed as troops push into more densely populated areas.
The troops are suffering casualties as the militants target them with suicide car bombs and booby traps in close-quarters fighting along the citys narrow streets. IS still holds territory to the north, south and west of Mosul, its last major urban stronghold in Iraq.
In neighboring Syria, meanwhile, Kurdish-led Syrian fighters pushed ahead Monday with an offensive aimed at isolating and encircling the Islamic State groups de facto capital of Raqqa, making small advances in villages to the north of the city. U.S.-led coalition warplanes provided air cover for the long-awaited campaign to liberate the city, which began Sunday.
Both battles are likely to be long and costly as the extremists are expected to fight until the end to try to hold onto their biggest urban strongholds in both countries.
Civilians were fleeing Mosul in growing numbers as Iraqi forces struggle to solidify gains in neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, said special forces Lt. Col. Hussein Aziz.
Daesh is trying to draw a line, Aziz said of the heavy fighting in Mosuls easternmost neighborhoods, referring to the militant group by its Arabic acronym. They have a lot of fighters there and they forced families to stay.
Aziz was manning a checkpoint on the edge of Gogjali, Mosuls easternmost neighborhood, where civilians fleeing Mosul are screened to catch any IS fighters who may be hiding among them. Since Iraqi forces first pushed into the eastern edge of the city last Tuesday, Azizs team has arrested dozens of people.
At the checkpoint, men were waiting for their names to be screened by a pair of informants from the area and multiple Iraqi government databases. Women and children waited further back in the shade of an abandoned building.
Gayda, a 42-year-old Mosul resident, said she fled the Samah neighborhood in the citys east just hours earlier, after a car bomb exploded next to her home. She gave only her first name, fearing for her safety and that of family members still under IS rule in other parts of Mosul.
When they reached the checkpoint, the womans husband and son were separated from her and her daughter, and held for questioning a few yards (meters) away.
How can he be from Daesh, hes so young, she said of her 18-year-old son. We are good people, we dont have any enemies.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said it has set up 82 rapid response teams to manage risks of epidemics, chemical exposure and other health worries among people fleeing Mosul.
The U.N. agency said water and sanitation in camps for the displaced could face disruptions as the number of people fleeing the city grows, raising the risk of food- and water-borne diseases such as cholera. It also said that additional concerns include children who reportedly havent been immunized since the radical Islamic State group seized control of Mosul in June 2014.
Associated Press writers Susannah George in Bazwaya, Iraq, Adam Schreck in Irbil, Iraq, and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA (AP) A Cambodian court on Monday sentenced an opposition senator to seven years in prison over comments he posted on Facebook criticizing a 36-year-old border agreement with neighboring Vietnam.
Judge Ros Piseth of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court found senator Hong Sok Hour, a member of the countrys main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, guilty of falsifying public documents, using fake documents and inciting chaos.
Hong Sok Hour and his defense lawyer did not appear before the court, but Son Chhay, an opposition lawmaker who attended the hearing, told reporters that the conviction reflected the courts lack of independence.
For me, I am already aware that this case is political motivated, Son Chhay said.
Hong Sok Hour was arrested in August 2015 after Prime Minister Hun Sen accused him of treason for the online posting, which included the purported text of a 1979 treaty with Vietnam that declared that their mutual border would be dissolved. Hun Sen who was foreign minister at the time in a government installed by a Vietnamese occupation force that invaded Cambodia to oust the murderous Khmer Rouge regime insisted the treaty was forged.
Hong Sok Hour is the latest opposition figure to run afoul of the law in what activists say is the willful use of the courts to suppress government critics.
The case is one of several hanging over opposition leaders in what is generally seen as an attempt to disrupt their organizing efforts ahead of local elections next June. The next general election is not until the middle of 2018, but holding power at the local level is an advantage when national polls are held.
On Friday, an appeals court upheld a five-month prison term for opposition leader Kem Sokhas refusal to twice answer a court summons, in a case involving his alleged mistress, but which his supporters say is politically motivated.
A month ago, another opposition lawmaker, Um Sam Ann, who has been a strong critic of the governments handling of demarcating the border with Vietnam, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for his online postings.
SEOUL, South Korea Scrambling to defuse a massive scandal, South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday conceded to lawmakers the power to name her new prime minister, a move that could seriously hurt, or even destroy, her ability to govern.
Park, who has faced tens of thousands of protesters and an investigation into whether a mysterious confidante manipulated government decisions, made the overture during a meeting with National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun.
Just being forced to work with a deputy named by lawmakers previously a decision left up to the president would weaken her ability to make basic decisions and influence power in the assembly.
But lawmakers, who must still settle on a prime minister nominee, are demanding even more. Some opposition members want the president to divorce herself from all domestic affairs and focus only on foreign matters, while others want her to stay out of government completely.
These scenarios would destroy Parks authority as president during her last 15 months in office, forcing her to voluntarily yield large parts, or maybe even all, of her presidential powers to a prime minister named by an opposition-controlled legislature.
Even so, it is still unclear what the splintered assembly will decide on, or when or what Park will agree to. Parks ruling party is divided between those who support Park and those who dont, and the opposition, while having more members than the ruling party, is also split into factions.
The prime minister is largely a ceremonial job, though by law he or she directs executive ministries under the order of the president and has other important rights. There have always been calls to give the office more power to balance the large role the president has.
Last week Park nominated a new prime minister, but he is likely to withdraw from consideration after Park allowed the legislature to pick a new nominee. The current nominee, Kim Byong-joon, told reporters that he would be in charge of social and economic issues and fully exercise the rights as a prime minister if his nomination received parliamentary approval. Parks office said Tuesday those conditions endorsed by Park would still stand for a new nominee.
The political tug-of-war over the prime minister comes amid a scandal involving Parks longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, who has no official government role. Investigators are looking into whether Choi made major government decisions and used her relationship with Park to force companies to donate money to two foundations controlled by Choi.
Earlier Tuesday, South Korean prosecutors raided the Seoul office of Samsung Electronics, the nations largest and most valuable company, in connection with the scandal.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office provided no other details. The Yonhap news agency said investigators suspect Samsung gave Chois daughter illicit financial help.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Seoul over the weekend, demanding Parks removal from office. Her approval ratings were, at one point, the worst of any president since South Korea gained democracy in the late 1980s.
Nam Jeong-su, spokesman of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the more militant of South Koreas two large umbrella union groups, said he expects 150,000 anti-Park unionists, plus supporters, to gather Saturday and march to the presidential Blue House.
Parks government, meanwhile, said Tuesday she would skip an Asia-Pacific leaders meeting in Peru later this month. The announcement sparked media speculation that the scandal may have forced Park to cancel her plans to attend the summit, though officials said the decision was made before the scandal exploded and is aimed at focusing on how to deal with North Koreas nuclear program.
Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON More than a dozen states have enacted tougher requirements for registering and voting since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act three years ago.
That has led to confusion and claims that certain groups, mostly minorities who tend to vote with Democrats, are being disenfranchised.
Adding to the uncertainty is a call by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his supporters to monitor the polls on Tuesday for voter fraud and concerns by the federal government that hackers could try to disrupt the voting or vote-counting process.
A breakdown of some of the top voting concerns in key states:
Alabama
This is the first presidential election in Alabama in which voters will be asked for photo identification. A lawsuit challenging the voter ID law is pending, with trial set for next year. The plaintiffs have argued the law disenfranchises voters who are unable to obtain a state-issued ID. Last year, 31 state drivers license offices many in poor, minority communities were closed because of budget concerns. Most were open one day a week and now they are open one to two days a month, with critics complaining the reduced hours remain a barrier.
Arizona
Long lines led to frustration during Arizonas March primary, when some voters in the Phoenix area waited hours to cast ballots after county election officials opened 60 polling stations fewer than half what is typical. On Tuesday, Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, plans on having more than 700 sites. Meanwhile, state Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging some Republicans are planning to intimidate voters at the polls. Arizona also was one of two states in which hackers over the summer attempted to breach voter registration systems.
Florida
During the 2012 presidential election, Florida had the longest average wait time among all states 45 minutes, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Some of the most populous counties have since expanded early voting hours in the hopes of reducing long lines on Election Day.
Meanwhile, legal battles continue over voter registration. After Hurricane Matthew raked Floridas eastern coastline, Democrats sued to extend the deadline for voters to register. After a court order, about 107,000 people registered during the extension, but there was a concern that not all those applications would be processed before early voting began. A federal judge declined a request by Democrats to force election officials to allow those affected to vote even if their registration had yet to be verified, saying those affected could cast a provisional ballot that may be counted once their eligibility is confirmed.
Georgia
The states process for handling voter registrations and maintaining its voter lists has been the subject of lawsuits this year. One pending lawsuit was filed against Secretary of State Brian Kemp over a policy allowing for people to be removed from state voter rolls for failing to vote in recent elections. Lawyers in the Georgia case said roughly 372,000 voters were purged between 2012 and 2014.
Civil rights groups also sued Kemps office over a policy they said had prevented tens of thousands of residents from registering to vote and violated the federal Voting Rights Act. The policy rejected applicants whose identifying information did not exactly match state or federal databases. Kemps office informed the court in September that it had changed the policy. Meanwhile, long lines have been reported in some places since early voting began Oct. 17, including a four-hour wait in one metro Atlanta county on the first day.
Indiana
Indiana State Police have said they are investigating some voter registration applications submitted by Patriot Majority USA, a Washington, D.C.-based voter mobilization group with ties to the Democratic Party. The probe is examining whether some applications contained forged signatures or other possible elements of fraud. Attorneys for Patriot Majority have asked the Justice Departments Civil Rights division to look into whether the investigation is an attempt to suppress the votes of black residents. The group has run voter registration drives in 11 states in previous years.
Separately, Secretary of State Connie Lawson, a Republican, warned recently of widespread voter registration fraud after her office found a heavier than usual number of changes to voter registration records. She later tempered those remarks to say that many of the thousands of changes simply could be residents rushing to correct their names or birth dates online ahead of the election.
Kansas
A Kansas court fight focused on whether a group of as many as 50,000 residents could vote even though they did not submit citizenship documents, as required under state law, when registering at motor vehicle offices or with a federal form. Federal courts had previously ordered the state to count their votes in federal elections. The secretary of states office had sought to toss out their votes in state and local races, something a state judge has since blocked.
New York
The states 2016 primary was marred by widespread reports of people in Brooklyn saying they were unable to vote. This happened after about 126,000 Brooklyn voters were removed from voter registration lists or deemed inactive between November 2015 and April of this year. Just days before the presidential election, a lawsuit was filed claiming the New York City Board of Elections had improperly removed voters from the rolls.
North Carolina
In 2013, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina passed a package of measures that required voters to show photo ID, reduced early voting and eliminated same-day registration during the early voting period. In July, a federal appeals court struck down several parts of the law, saying they target African Americans with almost surgical precision. Republican officials have said discrimination was not their intent. A divided U.S. Supreme Court declined in August to take up the case.
After the ruling, Democrats raised alarm when the executive director of the state Republican Party emailed GOP activists suggesting each county election boards Republicans work to limit early voting hours, curtail Sunday voting and avoid placing voting sites on college campuses. This set up a battle over early voting plans in a third of the states counties.
The dispute ultimately was resolved by the state Board of Elections, which restored Sunday voting in a few counties where local officials had sought to eliminate it and expanded hours in counties where the proposals seemed too limiting. But civil rights groups remained concerned that reductions in some places along with confusion over the photo ID law could affect turnout among black voters.
A week before Tuesdays election, the state chapter of the NAACP filed a lawsuit alleging thousands of people, many of them black, had been removed improperly from voter rolls after being challenged by private citizens. A judge ordered those registrations restored, citing a federal law that prohibits such removals too close to an election.
Separately, a federal judge declined a request by state Democrats for an order aimed at preventing Republicans from intimidating voters at the polls, saying there was insufficient evidence of any such plans.
Ohio
A federal judge ruled in October that voters who were wrongfully removed from Ohios registration lists can cast ballots in Tuesdays election. The number of voters covered by the ruling is not known, although some have estimated it to be in the tens of thousands. That decision follows an earlier ruling that found Ohios process for maintaining its voter rolls wrongfully removed eligible people based on their failure to vote in recent elections.
In a separate case, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request by the state Democratic Party to intervene in a lawsuit alleging plans by Republicans to intimidate voters at the polls. A federal judge had initially granted a restraining order against Republicans that was then blocked by a federal appeals court. In the Supreme Courts decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted Ohio law already forbids voter intimidation.
Previously, Democrats attempts to restore golden week, when people could register and cast ballots at the same time, failed after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. Democrats had claimed the reduction, along with other voting changes, disproportionately burdened black voters and those who lean Democratic. But the states attorneys argued the reduction alleviates administrative burdens for local election officials while reducing costs and the potential for fraud.
Pennsylvania
Trump has warned for weeks of a rigged election, asking supporters to head to the polls to watch for voter fraud, and mentions Philadelphia as a place that could have problems on Election Day.
Days before Tuesdays election, state Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging some Republicans were planning to intimidate voters at the polls. Meanwhile, a judge rejected a lawsuit by Republicans challenging a state law that requires poll watchers to be registered in the county where they want to monitor the vote.
Texas
A federal appeals court ruled this summer that the states 2011 voter ID law discriminated against minorities and the poor, ordering officials to relax the ID requirements for the November election. Experts had said the law was among the toughest in the nation, requiring voters to show one of seven acceptable forms of photo identification that included a concealed handgun license but not a college student ID.
It was estimated that more than 600,000 registered voters in Texas lacked an acceptable ID under the law. And there were early signs that confusion surrounding the law has persisted, with reports during early voting of at least seven counties with outdated posters and poll workers saying photo IDs were required to vote.
A federal judge in September had said Texas officials must change the voter outreach efforts after the Justice Department accused the state of still giving the impression that some voters cannot cast a ballot.
Wisconsin
This is the first presidential election in Wisconsin in which voters will be asked for photo identification. The voter ID law was initially blocked by the courts, and then went into effect for the presidential primary in April. In July, a federal judge left the voter ID requirement in place but struck down more than a dozen other election changes, including limits on early voting hours and locations.
As many as 300,000 Wisconsin voters may not have the required photo ID. In recent weeks, recordings by voter advocacy groups have shown state DMV workers giving people inaccurate information about what they can do to obtain alternative voting credentials if they lack a photo ID. A federal judge in October ordered the state to clarify the process and produce a simple, one-page handout that can be distributed in person and online.
Other states
Civil rights groups are also monitoring a group of other states with new voting restrictions or requirements in place for the first time. Those states are Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Follow Christina Almeida Cassidy at http://twitter.com/APChristina .
Associated Press writers Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Bob Christie in Phoenix; Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Florida; Brian Slodysko in Indianapolis; Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kansas; Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Ann Sanner in Columbus, Ohio; Will Weissert in Austin, Texas; and Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
Its been a long campaign. Here are a few key moments.
April 12, 2015
Hillary Clinton former first lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State releases a two-minute video announcing that shes running for president.
April 30, 2015
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders announces his candidacy via Twitter: America needs a political revolution. Join our campaign.
June 16, 2015
Businessman-turned-reality-TV-star Donald J. Trump officially launches his bid for the White House, with a speech focused on immigration: When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, Im sure, are good people.
July 14, 2015
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows Trump leading the GOP field. By July 20 his lead is double digits.
Aug. 6, 2105
In first GOP debate, Trump haggles with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over sexist comments.
Aug. 7, 2015
Trump complains to CNN about Kelly, saying shes a lightweight who was in a bad mood while hosting a GOP debate, with blood coming out of her eyes, you know, blood coming out of her wherever.
Aug. 16, 2015
Trump says he wants to build an impenetrable physical wall to curb illegal immigration from Mexico.
Oct. 13, 2015
Sanders steals spotlight in first Democratic debate, the American people are sick and tired of hearing about Hillarys damn emails.
Nov. 7, 2015
Trump hosts Saturday Night Live. Ratings are strong.
Nov. 24, 2015
Trump mocks reporter Serge Kovaleski, who is disabled. Images from the speech later become a staple in Clintons campaign commercials.
Dec. 1, 2015
CNN shows Trump polling at 36 percent, more than double his closest rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Dec. 7, 2015
Trump calls for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
Feb. 1, 2016
Trump tells a crowd in Iowa If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. Would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.
March 3, 2106
Mitt Romney launches the Never Trump movement.
March 8, 2016
Sanders wins the Michigan primary, highlighting the competitiveness of the Democratic race.
June 13, 2016
Trump campaign revokes press credentials from the Washington Post. The paper continues to write about Trump.
July 5, 2016
FBI Director James Comey says questions about Clintons email storage while Secretary of State dont warrant a criminal prosecution; says instead that Clinton was extremely careless.
July 21, 2016
I am your voice, Trump says as he accepts the GOP nomination for president. Polls show Trump and Clinton nearly deadlocked.
July 28, 2016
Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination, making her the first woman to top a major party ticket for president. Clinton soon opens a lead in the polls.
Aug. 9, 2016
Trump tells a campaign crowd that Second Amendment people might be able to do something to prevent Clinton limiting the Second Amendment. Trump denies hes making a veiled threat.
Aug. 10., 2016
Hacked emails show some of the State Dept.s connections to the Clinton Foundation. Clintons poll numbers fall.
Aug. 17, 2016
Trump swaps out management of his campaign for second time in two months, giving key roles to Kellyanne Conway, a longtime conservative pollster, and Stephen Bannon, co-founder of Breitbart News.
Sept. 26, 2016
Clinton and Trump swap insults in first presidential debate. Pundits and polls later suggest Clinton wins.
Sept. 30, 2016
Trump goes on an early-morning Twitter rant against former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
Oct. 1, 2016
New York Times reports a 1995 tax record indicates Trump might have avoided paying federal income taxes for many years.
Oct. 7, 2016
Video from 2005 surfaces in which Trump says he can and does grab women by the genitals and kiss them without permission because he is a star. Many Republicans denounce Trump and his poll numbers fall.
Oct. 9, 2016
Before the second debate, Trump hosts three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct in pre-debate news conference.
Oct. 19, 2016
Trump declines to say if he will accept the election results if he does not win.
Oct. 28, 2016
Comey says hes found new Clinton emails that might warrant investigation; race tightens.
Nov. 6, 2017
Comey says the new emails dont change his earlier opinion that no criminal investigation is needed.
LONDON It is home to the longest-serving peacekeeping mission in U.N. history. It has been called a diplomatic graveyard, having frustrated generations of negotiators. It has been compared in complexity and duration, not bloodshed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Cyprus has effectively been partitioned since 1974, its Greek and Turkish communities and its capital, Nicosia separated by a buffer zone known as the Green Line. But unlike most conflict zones, Cyprus is more or less at peace, and a popular tourist destination. Hundreds of thousands of people have crossed the line since travel restrictions were eased in 2003. The following year, the country joined the European Union.
So why has the conflict defied so many efforts at resolution?
The answer has as much to do with domestic politics on both sides of the island as with pressures from Turkey and Greece as well as Britain, the colonial-era ruler of Cyprus, James Ker-Lindsay, a scholar at the London School of Economics and the author of several books on the Cyprus conflict, said in a phone interview.
On Monday, the Greek Cypriot leader, Nicos Anastasiades, and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mustafa Akinci, began five days of talks brokered by the United Nations at Mont Pelerin, a Swiss resort. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged them to do their utmost in order to reach a settlement within 2016, and said the prospect of a solution in Cyprus is within their reach.
Such hopes have been dashed before. In 2004, the Greek Cypriot community rejected a peace plan brokered by Bans predecessor, Kofi Annan. Society just wasnt ready for a deal, Ker-Lindsay said. What were seeing now, though, is that the two leaders are much more aligned. The question is whether they can bring their communities along with them.
Some answers to basic questions about the conflict:
Q. Who lives in Cyprus?
A. Cyprus has 1.1 million inhabitants, about the same as Rhode Island, but in an area around 3.5 times the size. About 78 percent are Greek Cypriots (most of them Orthodox Christians) and about 18 percent are Turkish Cypriots (most of them Sunni Muslims). The country has three officially recognized Christian minorities Maronites, Latins (Roman Catholics) and Armenians and a small Roma, or Gypsy, community.
The internationally recognized government of the Republic of Cyprus controls only the southern two-thirds of it. The remaining third is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey.
Q. How did the conflict start?
A. Cyprus came under British control in the late 19th century, during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Many Greek Cypriots supported the political union of all Greeks living under Turkish rule within a sovereign Greek nation, while many Turkish Cypriots favored a partition of the island between Greece and Turkey.
In the late 1950s, a guerrilla group, the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters, rebelled against British rule. As Cyprus slid toward war, the United States and Britain feared that the conflict could open the door to Soviet dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. Archbishop Makarios, the longtime Greek Cypriot leader, agreed to independence as an alternative to union with Greece. The new countrys constitution, ratified on Aug. 16, 1960, provided for a Greek Cypriot president, a Turkish Cypriot vice president, and a Civil Service 70 percent Greek Cypriot and 30 percent Turkish Cypriot.
Britain, Greece and Turkey pledged to maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Cyprus, and Britain kept two sizable military bases there. But after Makarios, as president, proposed amendments to the constitution, fighting between the two communities broke out. Turkish Cypriots say their side was expelled from the government; Greek Cypriots say Turkish Cypriots left the government to form a parallel administration.
The pivotal year was 1974. That summer, the leader of Greeces military junta, which controlled a guerrilla group in Cyprus, Makarios, who went into exile. Turkish officials believed that a Cypriot union with Greece was imminent. In June, Turkey invaded to protect Turkish Cypriots. The junta in Greece collapsed, but during peace talks Turkey sent in a second wave of troops in August, overrunning the north. Turkish settlers also descended on the north, while about 160,000 Greek Cypriots were displaced.
Q. How might it end?
A. Over the years, support for political union with Greece has dissipated. Since the late 1970s, leaders on both sides have agreed in principle on a bizonal, bicommunal federation as the basis for reunification, but have different understandings of that term. The disagreements affect key issues, including the return of displaced Cypriots and the handling of their property, repatriation of Turkish settlers, demilitarization of the island and the future role of Greece, Turkey and Britain.
For most Greek Cypriots, a new federation means two tightly linked federal units, neither defined mainly in ethnic terms; for many Turkish Cypriots, maintaining control over a strongly autonomous region is key.
Land is also a key issue. Turkish Cypriots control 36 percent of the islands area, and by most estimates, that proportion will decline to between 26 and 29 percent under any lasting peace deal. But the percentage is in dispute, as is where to draw the boundaries.
Q. What happened in the last major round of talks?
A. Annan, the previous secretary-general, proposed a power-sharing plan, along with a compromise on former Greek Cypriot property. The plan also allowed a limited right of return for displaced members of both communities, and gradual reductions of Greek and Turkish troops.
Momentum for the deal was considerable. In 2003, the Turkish Cypriot authorities relaxed travel restrictions, and within two weeks, 200,000 people had crossed the Green Line. Turkeys new prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, supported the talks. One major incentive was the Republic of Cyprus candidacy for membership in the European Union.
But in April 2004, a week before the country formally joined the European Union, Greek Cypriots rejected the deal in a referendum, while Turkish Cypriots voters approved it.
Q. What has changed?
A. The two leaders are fairly new Anastasiades, a lawyer, took office in 2013, and Akinci, an architect, last year and seem open to compromise. Unlike past Turkish leaders, Erdogan is not seen as being personally invested in Cyprus; the Greek government, for its part, is dealing with a lingering economic crisis.
The legal landscape has shifted. The European Court of Human Rights opened the way for lawsuits from Greek Cypriots who lost property; by one reading, even ordinary tourists to the north could potentially face fines for staying at hotels or eating in restaurants built on Greek Cypriot land. That could have a potentially disastrous economic impact in the north. Putting pressure on the Turkish Cypriots, they may soon be outnumbered by the settlers who arrived after the 1974 invasions, and their descendants.
The pressure on the Greek Cypriots to negotiate is less clear. While some now believe a de facto partition is permanent, the mainstream view is that reunification is the best outcome, although substantial disagreements remain over what it should look like.
On average, one in three women in the world will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime.
That United Nations statistic served as the anchor of Elahe Amanis keynote address at Cal State Fullertons 17th annual Violence Prevention Conference on Oct. 28.
Amani is the CSUF director of technology and a long-time advocate for womens rights.
She addressed about 200 conference attendees on societys views of gender violence in the United States and throughout the world and what is being done to combat the problem; and presented strategies for how communities can work together to prevent acts of violence against women.
The (gender violence) epidemic is so commonplace in fact that it has often gone unnoticed and without receiving the level of concern it deserves, Amani said.
The conference highlighted the multitude of ways in which women worldwide experience violence, most often at the hands of men. Violence against women includes verbal, emotional and physical abuse, online bullying, sexual harassment and abuse, rape and death.
Violence against women and domestic violence is rooted in power and control, Amani said.
Gender inequality is the cause and consequence of gender violence and violence against women, she said.
Describing violence against women as a complex problem impacted by multiple variables, Amani advocated for a change in how todays world responds to the issue.
Instead of efforts being concentrated on intervention which occurs after the act has been committed, Amani suggested launching a public health and education campaign focused on prevention.
(Efforts) have been focused on providing services to the individual already impacted in order to prevent further hurt or harm, Amani said. While the crisis intervention is a necessary response to gender violence and is essential, it alone can not address the complex dynamic of gender violence and the root cause of violence.
She cited comprehensive, community-wide programs that use a multitude of strategies, such as the United States overall successful public campaigning to lower the number of new smokers.
The key goal of such a program was the denormalization of tobacco in the entire community, Amani said.
It went from a focus on protecting the smoker to a focus on protecting nonsmokers; it has resulted in a surprisingly rapid change in the cultural norms about smoking, she said.
Strategies used in the nations anti-smoking campaign including public service announcements, billboards, traveling educational exhibitions, education at schools and communication through media outlets could be transferable to a public health campaign with a focus on the prevention of gender violence, she said.
As a starting point, the initiative could encourage people to not laugh at sexist jokes, to not re-victimize the victims of gender violence and to provide resources for men who are or may be at the risk of becoming abusive to seek help, Amani said.
Public health campaigns encourage healthy behavior among a particular segment of the population and can serve as one of the types of models for gender violence strategies, she said.
Amani called on the community to take action.
There is a growing consensus that violence prevention is no longer the exclusive domain for specialists and for professionals; it requires the efforts of the entire community, she said.
(Gender violence) is never acceptable, never excusable and should never be tolerated, Amani said.
The theme of this years CSUF Violence Prevention Conference conference organized by the WoMens and Adult Reentry Center was Empowerment as Prevention. The conference included a number of sessions, many of which focused on gender violence.
Contact the writer: amarcos@scng.com
WILL UEBERROTH
CORONA DEL MAR
WATER POLO
GPA: 4.07
Ueberroth, a senior, has 24 goals, 25 assists and 28 steals. He is enrolled in AP statistics, AP psychology 1A, physics 1A, composition-literature 4A and American democracy 1A. Ueberroth has earned Principal Honor Roll honors twice and is a two-time USA Water Polo Academic All-American. He earned the Spanish Seal of Biliteracy as a junior. Ueberroth is a member of the California Scholarship Federation. He participated in a Free Wheelchair Mission trip to Peru as a junior and he is a junior board member of the Bellwether Charitable Foundation.
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@scng.com
An elderly couple in Haikou, Chinas Hainan Province, have been sharing their home with a 60 kilogram, 3.7-meter-long python for seven years, raising it as their child and even taking it for walks around their neighborhood.
68-year-old Shi Jimin, a retired meat processing worker, adopted the python in 2009, to save it from certain death. A fish and snake vendor had come by his workplace, and managed to sell his entire supply, except for a small 30-cm long snake that no one had wanted. The man had said that if no one was interested, he was just going to get rid of it, which is when stepped in and asked the vendor how much he wanted for the reptile. Shi says that he eventually got it for free, as the man was just going to kill it or throw it away somewhere anyway. So he took the young snake home to his wife, not knowing that it would grow up into a cattle-eating behemoth.
But even after realizing that they had adopted a python, the elderly couple had no problem sharing their home with their pet, which they consider more as a child. In the last seven years it has grown to an impressive 3.7 meters and weighs around 120 pounds. But experts say its still young and bound to get even bigger. Still Shi and his wife are not concerned for their safety, and allow the snake to freely slither around their home during the day. It often sits on their laps as they watch TV together, or just finds a comfortable spot and sits there like a good boy. In they evening, the couple give the snake a warm bath, and before going to bed, they take the python to his very own bedroom.
Apart from barring the windows to make sure their son, which they named Shi Nanwang, doesnt run off somewhere, Shi and his wife say theyve taken no precautions to protect themselves from the snake, and swear that it has never once bitten them. They did have a steel cage made for Nanwang, but only to serve as a private enclosure during his six months hibernation period. When he enters his long slumber at the beginning of winter, Shi fills the cage with blankets and places the snake inside so they dont disturb him by mistake.
When asked if taking care of such a large snake is expensive, Shi Jiming said that he spends half his monthly pension on it. Nanwang currently eats about 8 live medium-sized chickens, or 5 large ones, every 20 to 30 days.
The Chinese couple often take their snake son on outdoor walks around their neighborhood, and say that even though their neighbors were originally terrified of Nanwang, they soon realized it is very docile and friendly. Many of the kids stop to pet it or have their pictures taken with it. The python is very tame and listens to Shi Jimin, one of Shis neighbors told China News Service. Everyone has watched it grow just like watching a child grow up.
The elderly couple have two daughters, but they moved out of the house a long time ago and have their own families now, so they wont be able to take care of Shi Nanwang if something happens to them. Shi Jimin told reporters that he plans to give the snake to a zoo when he becomes too old to take care of it, at which point the python allegedly stopped moving and stayed in his lap quietly. Dont worry, that would be some ten years away, Shi said.
Source: Lifeinvan
In a time when ivory poaching has gotten so bad that it threatens to wipe out several animal species, a young Dutch designer is creating egalitarian jewelry made of our very own ivory teeth.
Lucie Majerus first got the idea for her human ivory collection after having her wisdom teeth removed. She kept them and soon realized they would make great material for a statement jewelry collection. Why wouldnt we value our own material instead of the precious material from other species? she rhetorically asks. In opposition to materialistic values, Human Ivory acts metaphorically for having our own value in ourselves. A suggestion to cherish our own Material instead of other species teeth and reconsider conventional preciousness. What if we mine our own ivory and turn it into pearls?
Photo: Matan Bellmakers
Her own teeth became a ring, but in order to create a whole collection, she needed more material, and since having more of her teeth removed wasnt a very pleasant option, she asked her dentist to save his patients unwanted teeth. Most people choose not to keep their pulled teeth, so they are usually donated to dentistry schools. Majerus also received the lost teeth of two of her teachers at Design Academy Eindhoven, so she had a decent supply of human ivory to experiment with.
To turn human teeth into appealing pieces of jewelry, Lucie Majerus first bleaches them, and then uses a stone polishing machine to shape the teeth into various shapes molars are thick enough to be shaped into pearls, while incisors and canines are turned into tear-like pieces. By removing their original form, takes away some of the disgusting factor associated with removed human teeth.
Majerus showcased her human ivory jewelry collection at this years Dutch Design Week, and claims that peoples reaction was mostly positive. Surprisingly, most people arent creeped out by the sight of the jewelry, but really like the idea, Majerus told FastCo Design. Some regret that they didnt keep their tooth at the dentist and some, who will have teeth taken out soon, are now looking forward to it.
Following the success of her initial project, the Luxembourg-born designer has now started taking commissions to turn lost human teeth into various types of accessories, like rings, tie pins, cufflinks and more.
Lucie Majerus is not the first to create jewelry using human teeth. In 2009, we featured the work of silversmith Polly van der Glas, who created a collection of teeth encrusted silver jewelry, although her works were more straightforward than Majerus human ivory project.
The Munich suburb of Neuperlach Sud has nearly completed a giant stone wall meant to separate the local population from around 160 unaccompanied child refugees set to move into a nearby shelter. The 4-meter-high barrier will be taller than the Berlin Wall (3.6 meters).
After the local government decided to build a large refugee shelter approximately 100 meters from a residential estate, the people of Neuperlach Sud went to court to have a stone wall separating their community from the migrants. One of their arguments was the fear that the prices of their homes would plummet if there was nothing to separate them from a group of refugees that could be there for many years. They also expressed concern about the noise that might be coming from their new neighbors. The judge of the Administrative Court in Munich approved their request, and now the large stone wall is almost complete.
Donald Trump wants to build a wall for Mexico, and we in Munich Neuperlach build one to keep us safe from refugees! one Neuperlach Sud couple told a local newspaper.
Photo: video screengrab
The nearly completed wall now stands taller than the Berlin Wall of the Cold War, and while locals are fully aware of this, most of them say that they dont care how it looks, as long as it keeps the refugees away. Besides, engineers claim that it had to be this high to act an effective sound barrier, as well.
Not everyone is pleased with the new infrastructure, though. Deputy District Chairman Guido Bucholtz, said that he was frightened when he first saw this monster of a wall and argued that it could have been smaller. He also told the Merkur newspaper that he considered it absolute madness.
Photo: video screengrab
We dont live directly across but in my opinion the wall is awful. There were other possibilities. It could have been built from overgrown wooden walls and so on, but not a big stone wall, said Edgar Schultz, a resident of Neuperlach Sud.
However, the strong support for the wall is not very surprising in Bavaria, where a poll has shown that four out of five people have a negative attitude towards Muslims, and where local politicians have repeatedly expressed their discontent with Chancellor Angela Merkels open-door policy.
The large stone wall has been described as a compromise between between the local authorities and the residents, many of whom opposed the idea of accepting refugees.
So while Trumps idea of building a large border wall to keep Mexicans out may not actually be feasible in real life, it seems to have inspired communities to use the same principle on a smaller scale.
Bo Park
"Move fast and break things. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Fail fast, fail often. These are words that tech startups live by. Theyre also words that scare the daylights out of bankers and lawyers.
Stories about the tensions between Silicon Valley and Wall Street are well-trodden territory. Big banks worry theyre losing talent to trendy unicorns. Journalists claim the center of power is shifting west. Experienced businessmen complain that tech wunderkinds in hoodies cant stop burning cash.
But for all the scuffles, the technology industry centered in Silicon Valley and the financial sector based in New York need each other. After a few rounds of successful financing and rapid growth, tech companies generally start thinking about their futures in the public markets, and Wall Street starts sizing them up as potential longer-term investments.
Tech companies at this stage have a choice. They can keep telling the same stories about their businesses that have worked in the past, or they can adapt to their new audience. For some, being able to get through to investors and other financial audiences can seem like an impossible code to crack. In many cases though, building those relationships and dialogue early can set a tech darling up to evolve into a successful publicly-traded company with a strong position from which to grow and succeed in the long term.
From growth hacking to TAM
Successful tech companies generally have a compelling growth story, product-market fit, and differentiation. They are the Amazon of X, the eBay of Y, or the Apple of Z. Theyve successfully convinced VCs to give them money at high valuations and built a large and loyal customer base.
But Wall Street speaks a different language. To build credibility with the investors that you most want to attract those who will want to follow the company for the long term you must find the storylines that not only paint compelling picture of your growth opportunity, but also explain the ways youve mitigated risk and positioned your company for success operationally. Investors and analysts who look at companies from this perspective tend to have set methodologies for evaluating businesses and may be more risk-averse than VCs playing a numbers game where losses are expected as many as three-quarters of VC-backed startups fail in the hunt for the next home run.
Identifying the right financial storylines for a tech company should start with a clear-headed analysis of the business and surrounding landscape. Look at the last round of funding and how the business and competitive landscape have evolved since then. Have competitors gone public? Been acquired? Have large players like Salesforce or Google entered the market? What are the realistic growth projections for the coming years? Using the answers to these questions to inform your own perception of a reasonable valuation is the first step in preparing to speak to Wall Street audiences.
The next step is to understand and help shape the industry context in which Wall Street views the company. While entrepreneurs like to say, We dont have any competitors and Were creating a new category, investors and other financial audiences need to understand how you fit into the market. That assessment determines not only who the companys comps are, but also which bankers would handle an IPO. To ensure there isnt a disconnect between external perception and your internal understanding of the business, start showing how you fit into your industry early. Influencing that first impression can have a big impact on how your business is perceived for many years to come.
Finally, start communicating like a publicly-traded company, even before an IPO. Identify the storylines that demonstrate the value of your business today, not just its potential for the future. Public companies ultimately have to be able to explain their financials and tell the story in between the numbers. That means discussing your growth drivers, your challenges, and the external factors shaping your results, and guiding the audience to understand why the company is in a strong position.
From TechCrunch to WSJ
But communicating isnt just about having the messages down in writing. You have to know where to seed your messages for them to reach your target audience. The media environment hasnt only become more fractured when it comes to politics. Today, it is easy to read only the publications that appeal to you which is why you can forgive tech CEOs for assuming financial audiences are just as likely to have seen that big feature in The Verge as if it were in Fortune.
To communicate with Wall Street, expand your target media universe to include publications read by investors on a daily basis. Even if you dont have major financial news now, ensure that your companys spokespeople are meeting with business and financial journalists to start building relationships and foundational understanding of your company before you need coverage.
From SFO to LGA
The mantra in Silicon Valley may be fewer meetings, but when it comes to Wall Street communications, face time is still key. A phone call or Google Hangout cant replace a meeting or cup of coffee at an investor conference.
Schedule media tours around your executives trips to New York and prioritize business journalists who dont know as much about your business and space. Secure speaking opportunities at business-focused, cross-industry events, and take time to sit down with industry analysts that journalists trust and cite in their coverage. Even if it doesnt result in a story in the near-term, a background meeting can pay dividends far into the future if you become a trusted source on your space for a top-tier journalist.
Anyone whos spent more than a few hours in San Francisco and New York knows that the two urban hubs have drastically different cultures. But theirs is a common thread that runs through both: people want to be part of a good business and a good story. Every tech company that has made the transition from startup to unicorn to publicly-traded company knows that each phase has its own challenges and its own storylines. Learning how to communicate clearly and compellingly to the relevant audiences for each is a challenge, but the solution isnt a secret code. If you have a strong business, story and strategy, Wall Street is ready to listen.
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Bo Park is Managing Director and Head of Tech PR at ICR.
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This fall, our daughter entered third grade after skipping second grade completely. Her birthday is in December, which placed her on the older side of first-graders here in Minnesota, where the cutoff date for entering kindergarten is Sept. 1. Based on academic testing and her desires, we felt she needed a challenge.
"I want to do harder math," she told us, and she didn't want it delivered online. She asked to participate in small math groups with friends. But that alone wasn't why my husband, Matt, and I chose to accelerate her. We also wanted to give her the gift of believing in herself.
Conventional wisdom says redshirting, or delaying kindergarten entrance, creates an advantage - for those parents who can afford it - by giving children more time to develop. Older is better, right? One study estimated between 4 and 5.5 percent of children delay kindergarten, mostly white boys. While redshirting may help in sports, I think it can hurt some children - particularly those who are gifted - socially and emotionally.
A recent Johns Hopkins University study reported that between 15 and 45 percent of students perform above grade level. Yet according to a study published in the Journal of Advanced Academics, only about 1 percent of students skip a grade. It's important for that statistic to start to change. Why waste tax dollars teaching children what they already know?
Halfway through my kindergarten year, I was grade-skipped. I walked into my first-grade classroom with a newfound confidence: I was smart, powerful, age-defying! I could do mentally stimulating higher-level work if I just applied myself. Admittedly, being the youngest wasn't always easy - sometimes I had to struggle to keep up, particularly in high school, given my shoddy organizational skills. But that brought on a mental toughness, an assurance that I could do it - despite my age - if I just worked hard enough.
My attitude got me through an Ivy League school. And that's a lesson I want my daughter to carry with her: Age does not define who she is or what she is capable of. Our goal has never been to give her every advantage. Rather, we want to give her every opportunity to work hard, living by that adage, "If you're the biggest fish in your pond, find another pond." But in education, it's not easy to change ponds. As Ken Robinson, a noted British author and educator, says in a TED talk, "Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture."
While children who are older than their classmates may have an early advantage - development ranges dramatically between 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds - it diminishes over time, and some recent studies, such as one done by a group of economists who tracked Norwegian children born between 1962 and 1988 until age 18, suggest redshirting may have a long-term detrimental effect on IQ. Use it early on or lose it, the theory goes. A 2013 study out of Vanderbilt University found that mathematically talented students who skipped a grade were more likely to write patents, publish and earn doctorate degrees by age 50 than their intellectual peers who didn't skip a grade.
Some people are reluctant to skip children ahead for social reasons. Christopher Dougherty, a 39-year-old attorney who lives in Edina, Minn., started kindergarten at age 4 and then skipped second grade. He graduated from high school at age 16. He says his age put him at a social disadvantage, first as a 6-year-old trying to penetrate third-grade cliques, and then due to the awkwardness middle school brought on. "I was in a child's body and they were all several inches taller than me," he says. Now, as a parent, his guiding principle with his son has been to not rush through elementary school.
Other parents, such as Lauren Shive, a 40-year-old former educator living in a Philadelphia suburb, believes it's time we untie age from education. Doing so, she says, will free younger children who aren't ready yet for early escalating academics, while accelerating those who want more. From a young age, her 12-year-old son was seeking the stimulation of learning. While many parents in her district consider redshirting a gift, she let her son start kindergarten early and then skip fifth grade. "You can give them the 'gift' of an extra year of preschool, but that may also come with the 'gift' of 13 years of boredom in school," she says.
Research shows that many gifted students actually do better with older peers. A meta-analysis on grade-skipping by Karen Rogers, a professor of gifted education, reported grade-skipping had positive effects on social skills and maturity. So far, that seems to be case with our daughter. Within a week, she had a new best friend, and they seem unaware of their 15-month age gap.
"Why can't our kids develop academically and socially/emotionally at the same time?" asks Shive, pointing to her father-in-law's rural experience in a mixed-age one-room school house where assigned work was tied to ability.
Susan Assouline, director of the Belin-Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development at the University of Iowa, helped develop a tool called the Iowa Acceleration Scale to aid schools in deciding which kids would benefit from skipping a grade. She says parents should know there are risks to holding back carefully selected gifted students, too, as bored kids can lose their self-motivation.
"If you're not engaged in active learning, then you can't fully develop who you are," she says. As a result, those children may become underachievers, and that comes at a cost to them as well as society.
It's hard to know what is right for your child over the long haul, given the rapid rate at which kids change. I'm just trying to do my best to meet my daughter's needs today.
MIAMI The housing collapse of 2008 nearly broke the city of Miami. Now its leaders have embarked on a novel and aggressive legal strategy to recoup losses from the big banks they say created the crisis with discriminatory and predatory lending practices.
It is a high-stakes effort that is being encouraged by many cities, and the banks today will ask the Supreme Court to stop it before it takes root.
Miami sued Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which bars discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing. The law states its purpose as providing for fair housing throughout the United States.
The city says it can prove that the lending institutions discriminated against Hispanic and African-American residents by directing them into high-interest risky loans. The resulting defaults destabilized Miamis poorest neighborhoods, and the subsequent loss of tax revenue sent the city to the brink of bankruptcy, they say.
It took us three years to really start recovering, said Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez. We decided unanimously as a commission that we wanted to hold the banks responsible for their lending practices, which we learned were discriminatory in nature.
Banks have been sued by individuals and taken to task by the federal government for lending practices, but these new cases are the first in which cities are the plaintiffs and are demanding that banks be held accountable for harming their communities.
The banks counter that there is a reason such Fair Housing Act suits are novel: Congress never intended for the act to be used for such purposes.
Municipal suits like this one were unheard of until recently, when enterprising contingency-fee counsel began pushing them, Bank of America told the court in its brief.
The banks warn of a trickle-down approach that would let anyone affected by a neighborhood in decline from the next-door neighbor to the corner dry cleaner to sue under the act.
There is little debate about the theory that foreclosure leads to vacancy, then blight and lower property values for the neighborhood and city. But the banks say economic and social conditions can have as much to do with that as the original loan.
The city says that if given the chance it can prove that discriminatory lending practices caused its problems, not the general economic downturn.
Using regression analysis, it alleges in court documents that African-American and Hispanic borrowers were far more likely to receive unfavorable loans than similarly situated whites. And when the borrowers got into trouble they were less likely to be offered affordable refinancing packages.
Clearly, higher rates were causing a much higher rate of default, Suarez said. We think the banks were doing it knowingly, and as a part of the pattern and practice of their business model.
No one challenges the dire circumstances in which Miami found itself after the crash. It was the epicenter of the foreclosure problem. Suarez said that when he took office in 2009 the city had just $13 million in reserves, and if it had done nothing to curtail spending its deficit would have reached $115 million.
Like most cities, its revenue is derived from property values, and real estate normally is relatively stable.
This was a precipitous drop, Suarez said, and the city invoked an emergency law to slash the salaries of municipal workers and impose a hiring freeze.
I had firefighters who from one day to the next, theyd get a 20- to 40-percent decrease in pay, Miami Fire Chief Maurice Kemp said. The effect was quite dramatic, as you might expect, on morale.
Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes said his force at one point was down about 160 officers, more than 10 percent of the workforce. And the demands on both fire and police were increasing, the chiefs said.
Abandoned property breeds crime and also disorder, Llanes said. You can imagine living on a block where there is an abandoned house and you go to work every day and you come home to this place that is unsecured and taken over by drug dealers or vagrants or folks using it as a dope house.
The Miami Fire-Rescue Department had increased calls because of the neighborhood blight, the chiefs said. The city incurred additional costs boarding up vacant properties or demolishing them. At trial, the city says, it could document millions of dollars in lost revenue and increased costs.
Localities as diverse as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Montgomery County, Maryland, are supporting Miamis suit.
But just because there is a problem does not mean that Congress provided a solution in the Fair Housing Act, say the banks and the interest groups that support them.
The purpose of the law is to protect minorities from housing discrimination, and to secure for all Americans the benefits of living in an integrated society, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a friend-of-the-court brief.
No one would suggest that when Congress acted to secure fair housing in 1968 it also was concerned with protecting the tax bases and budgets of cities and towns, it said.
To go forward with the suit, Miami has to convince the Supreme Court of two things: that the acts language permitting an aggrieved person to sue includes municipalities and that the alleged discriminatory practices by banks were the proximate cause of its decrease in property-tax revenue and increase in services because of property foreclosures.
Less than two years after it moved much of its operation to Nashville, Tennessee, Rural Media Group may decamp to another capital of country culture: Fort Worth, Texas.
The move for the company, which has an office in Omaha, would be part of a $175 million redevelopment of Fort Worths Historic Stockyards district, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Developers of the project look to recruit Rural Media Groups Omaha office and its Nashville television studios, the newspaper said.
The Fort Worth City Council today is expected to hear details of proposed economic incentives related to recruiting Rural Media Group.
A spokeswoman for the Stockyards Heritage group, which is developing the project, confirmed to The World-Herald that the company is working with Rural Media Group.
The company, founded by Elkhorn native Patrick Gottsch, operates the RFD-TV cable network, which launched in 2000 with programming related to rural lifestyles, including country music and agribusiness. Gottsch didnt return a World-Herald request for comment.
His plans for the company have sometimes included bigger roles for Omaha, and sometimes not.
In 2012 Rural Media Group hired its first CEO, Randy Bernard, the former chief executive of the IndyCar racing and Professional Bull Riders organizations, and created its first board of directors.
In 2013 the company was expanding in offices at One Valmont Plaza, and Gottsch told The World-Herald that he envisioned building a new corporate headquarters in far west Omaha, relocating the networks Nashville studios here and hiring as many as 150 more people.
In 2014, however, the company expanded in Nashville and said only about 20 employees out of 100 total would remain in Omaha. Bernard left the company.
Gottsch said at the time the headquarters would remain in Omaha; however, today the companys marketing materials list Nashville as headquarters.
Gottsch told The World-Herald in 2014 that the moves did not mean that Rural Media Group intended to make Nashville its permanent home. He said the company had been courted by cities including Fort Worth; Pueblo, Colorado; and Branson, Missouri.
The Star-Telegram reported that Fort Worth is competing for the project with Nashville and Durango, Colorado.
Thats not the case, Durangos top economic development official told The World-Herald.
This is the first Ive ever heard of it, said Roger Zalneraitis, executive director of the La Plata County Economic Development Alliance in Durango.
He said Durango is a good place to locate a business, but with just 18,000 residents, it doesnt usually compete for companies looking to locate in cities the size of Fort Worth or Nashville.
Fort Worth City Councilman Sal Espino told the Star-Telegram that having RFD-TV in Fort Worth would help put the citys name in lights.
The appeal of it to the city of Fort Worth is kind of like CNN from its world headquarters in Atlanta or ESPN from Bristol, Connecticut. Every day, someone would say Live from the Fort Worth Historic Stockyards, RFD-TV, Espino said, the newspaper reported.
A grand jury will convene in Cass County in March to investigate the death of a Louisville man shot by a sheriffs deputy.
Cass County District Court Judge Paul Korslund ordered the grand jury to meet March 22 to review the circumstances in the death of Austin Baier, 23. According to Korslunds order, which was filed Monday, the grand jury couldnt meet within 30 days after Baiers death because of the courts extremely busy schedule.
Baier was shot and killed Sept. 21 by Cass County Deputy Tyler Reiff, 25.
The purpose of a grand jury is to investigate the death to determine if formal charges should be filed.
The cause of death in this 23-year-old male is a gunshot wound which penetrated the pulmonary artery root and led to fatal hemorrhage, said Dr. David Jaskierny, who certified the cause of death.
The incident began about 7:15 p.m. Sept. 21 when Reiff stopped a 1992 Buick Century that Baier was driving near First and Cherry Streets in Louisville. The car matched the description of a vehicle that a caller had reported was being driven recklessly in the area, the Nebraska State Patrol said.
After initially stopping, Baier drove off a short distance, the patrol said. After stopping a second time, officials said, Baier got out of the car and confronted Reiff.
After Baier was shot, Reiff and medical personnel tried to save him, but Baier was pronounced dead at the scene. Reiff was not injured.
A hunting knife was found on the dashboard of Baiers vehicle, Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox said, but it doesnt appear that Baier had brandished the knife at the deputy.
Reiff, who has been a deputy for four years, was placed on administrative leave. An official with the Cass County Sheriffs Office declined Tuesday to say whether Reiff has returned to regular duty.
A man who killed his half-brother last December in an alcohol-fueled fight is headed to prison.
Courtney K. Moore, 29, of Norfolk was sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday in the death of Johnny K. Moore, 38.
Family and friends of both men were brought to tears during the afternoon hearing.
Johnny Moores estranged wife, Leigha Moore, told the court that she knows the Moore brothers loved each other.
I know in my heart that my brother-in-law did not mean to cause this tragedy, she said, her voice quivering. I have forgiven him.
Johnny Moore was stabbed in the neck by his brother about 3:30 a.m. Dec. 27, 2015, at a house near 26th and Decatur Streets. Defense attorney James Martin Davis said both men had been drinking when they began to fight over some leftover chicken.
The brothers fought on the main floor of the house until they were broken up by family members, including their mother. Johnny Moore then went upstairs, and Courtney Moore went into the kitchen and grabbed a large knife.
Family members failed to keep Courtney Moore from going upstairs. The fight reignited in a hallway, and Johnny Moore was mortally wounded.
This is not a Cain and Abel situation at all, Davis said. Theres no question they loved each other, but alcohol was involved.
Relatives said Johnny Moore lived in the house where the fight took place. They said Courtney Moore was in Omaha over the Christmas holiday to visit their mother, who lives in Oak Ridge, Louisiana, but also was in town.
Courtney Moore spoke softly Tuesday as he talked about his sorrow. He paused several times to collect himself.
I know what I did was wrong, and if I could take back what I did, I would, he said. I love my brother. We grew up together.
Under state sentencing guidelines, which cut most sentences in half, Moore must serve at least 12 years in prison. With credit for 317 days he already has served in jail, he could be out in 11 years and eight months.
Moore, who pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on that charge and five years in prison for use of a deadly weapon. Douglas County District Judge J Russell Derr ordered the sentences to run one after the other.
A 19-year-old woman charged with first-degree arson is struggling with mental health issues, her attorney told a Douglas County judge Tuesday.
Sarah J. Piccolo was charged with a felony in connection with a fire Saturday in a restroom at Metropolitan Community Colleges Elkhorn Campus near 204th Street and West Dodge Road.
Judge Lawrence Barrett set Piccolos bail at $75,000. She will have to post $7,500, or 10 percent of the bail amount, to be released.
Piccolo waived her preliminary hearing, said Robert Williams, her attorney. If convicted of the felony charge, Piccolo faces up to 50 years in prison.
She is obviously dealing with mental health issues, Williams said. The most important thing now is to make sure that she is safe and that society is also safe.
Firefighters were called to Metros Elkhorn campus about 7 a.m. Saturday, according to an Omaha Police Department report. Investigators determined that the fire had been intentionally set.
Piccolo was identified as a suspect by school personnel with the help of video surveillance, the report said.
Piccolo is on probation for an unprovoked attack in a girls restroom at a Lincoln high school in 2013. She attacked a fellow student with a hammer and knife in a bathroom at Lincoln Pius X in October 2013.
Piccolo lived and received treatment at the Uta Halee Academy in Omaha under a separate juvenile court case. She was released April 10 from the facility upon turning 19.
Per the terms of her probation order, Williams said, Piccolo is living with an aunt and uncle in the Omaha area.
CRESCENT, Iowa The shelves at the Crescent Food Pantry are packed.
A donation of 12,930 items of food, weighing in at around four tons, from WoodmenLife means a number of families in the metro area will have a consistent source of food through the winter.
A huge blessing, pantry owner Tammy Meyer said Friday afternoon as Woodmen officials presented the pantry with a check for $2,250. This will keep us going through the holidays and even longer.
A tremendous blessing, Meyer adding, repeating a word shed say a few more times while talking about the donation.
Meyer works as an underwriter for Woodmen. She opened the pantry in December of 2014 and works her full-time job from an office set up in the back. The first few months Meyer had one man stop by for goods, and today about 60 to 70 families frequent the pantry each month.
It just keeps growing, Meyer said with a smile on her face.
The pantry serves the metro area, with residents in Crescent, Carter Lake, Council Bluffs, Missouri Valley, Pisgah and Oakland among those who have stopped in.
The people are humble; theyre thankful, Meyer said.
Clients of the pantry can stop by once per month to stock up on about a weeks worth of food. After a brief screening process, visitors are able to pick out food.
They pick out the stuff they like, Meyer said. We want them to get food theyll eat.
Meyer said the food bank is there to help support men and women who are unemployed, underemployed or ill, a supplement to income and food stamps. She credited her volunteers for making sure the operation runs smoothly.
The Woodmen donation came in late September after the company hosted a Every Can Counts food drive. Employees on each floor of the WoodmenLife Tower in Omaha collected food in a competition to see who could gather the most. The 23rd floor, which has 37 people, won with an average of 79 items per associate adding up to 8,000 pounds according to the company.
Its our members and associates that identify needs in the community, said Bruce Moritz, director of fraternal outreach for Woodmen . A great community leader like Tammy, she built this from the ground up.
Woodmen Executive Vice President, Fraternal Pat Dees said the company is proud of Meyer, and the way she is making a positive impact in her community.
The Crescent Food Pantry is open from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday and 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday.
Voting is underway in Nebraska and Iowa. Polls will be open until 8 p.m. in Nebraska, and until 9 p.m. in Iowa. If youre in line by closing time, youll be allowed to vote.
TO FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE
Visit www.votercheck.necvr.ne.gov to check whether youre registered to vote and find your polling place. If you think you should be able to vote at a polling place but theres a problem with the registration, ask to fill out a provisional ballot.
The polls are expected to be busy. Douglas County is projecting a turnout of 70 percent; Sarpy County, 73 percent.
HELP GETTING TO THE POLLS
Metro transit will offer free bus rides on Election Day from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. But the buses will be following their regular routes not specifically stopping at polling places. So people who want a ride are advised to research their polling location in advance to catch the right route. For help planning ahead, call 402-341-0800.
Also, Warren Buffetts Drive2Vote effort will operate around Douglas and Sarpy Counties. You can request a ride online at drive2vote.org.
WHEN WILL WE KNOW WHO WINS?
Nationally, polls in a handful of states close as early as 6 p.m. Central time.
At 6:30, polls in the battleground states of Ohio and North Carolina close. At 7, polls close in Florida and Pennsylvania.
Shortly after 8 p.m., the first state and local results out of Nebraska will start rolling out. Stay with Omaha.com for the latest.
EARLY VOTING
Early voting has been popular this year. On Monday, it took about an hour to get through the line at the Douglas County Election Commission. As of Monday, Nebraska counties had received 217,249 early ballots, either by mail or from people voting in person. That surpasses the 2012 total of 207,575.
In-person early voting has finished. If you still have an early ballot in hand by Election Day, you are encouraged to vote via that ballot.
But you must return it to your election office or an approved drop box before the polls close at 8 p.m. Dont put it in the mail because postmarks dont count.
In Douglas County, you can use one of these drop boxes before 8 p.m.:
City/County Building, 1819 Farnam St.
South Omaha Library, 2808 Q St.
Charles B. Washington Library, 2868 Ames Ave.
Ralston Police Department, 7400 Main St., Ralston
Abrahams Library, 5111 N. 90th St.
Douglas County Election Commission, 225 N. 115th St.
Drive-up location, 115th and Davenport Streets, on median
Douglas County Engineers Office, 15505 West Maple Road
Millard Public Schools Foundation, 5225 S. 159th Ave.
Bess Johnson Elkhorn Library, 2100 Reading Plaza
If you want to vote in person today, you must go to your polling place. If you still have an early ballot, its possible to vote at your polling place. But the Secretary of States Office says you must fill out paperwork that the ballot was lost, spoiled or not received. Then, you can vote on a provisional ballot.
REJECTED BALLOTS
Douglas County has rejected some 1,500 early ballots this year, typically because the voter didnt sign the ballot or incorrectly filled out an accompanying voters oath, Election Commissioner Brian Kruse said. (Thats about 2 percent of all early votes in the county.)
You can check your ballot status at the Nebraska Secretary of States website: www.votercheck.necvr.ne.gov. Click on the Absentee Ballot link and fill in your information.
Problems in Douglas County can be addressed until 8 p.m. on Election Day at the election office.
CONTACT YOUR ELECTION COMMISSION
Douglas County Election Commission, votedouglascounty.com; 402-444-8683; 225 N. 115th St. in Omaha. The office will be open until 8 p.m. on Election Day. Phone lines will be open 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Sarpy County Election Commission, sarpy.com/election; 402-593-2167; 501 Olson Drive, Suite 4, in Papillion. The office will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and phone lines open at 7 a.m.
Chris Nohrenberg stood at the end of a slow-moving line outside the doors to the polling place at First Christian Church near the University of Nebraska at Omaha and marveled at the civility of Election Day.
This has been a strange election, said the 42-year-old general repairman, who rode his bicycle to the church at 6630 Dodge St. Im not wildly crazy about either presidential candidate and Im concerned about the direction of the country, but well get through this. Were all Americans.
Many Nebraskans waited in long lines to cast their ballots Tuesday. No major problems were immediately reported.
Douglas County Election Commissioner Brian Kruse predicted a 70 percent voter turnout in the county. The 2008 presidential election drew 72.6 percent of county voters.
Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale had anticipated that a record number of voters would cast ballots in the general election.
A record 1.2 million people registered to vote in Nebraska. Gale said predicting voter turnout would be difficult in part because of the increase in the number of registered voters.
State turnout was 70 percent for the 2008 election, when nearly 812,000 voters cast ballots. If the 2016 election produces the same turnout percentage, that would mean 848,000 Nebraskans will have voted.
Meanwhile, volunteer election observers reported that voting ran smoothly across the state, with election officials quick to respond when minor problems were reported. Poll observers trained by Nebraskans for Civic Reform did, however, note instances of voters being asked to show identification when not required and a high number of voters requesting provisional ballots.
Seventy-six people were in line when precinct inspector Ed Laugel opened the polling site at Luther Memorial Lutheran Church at 61st Street and Western Avenue at 8 a.m.
Michael Krell, 33, snaked his way into the fellowship hall to find his place in the long line of voters. The line swelled to about 150 within minutes after voting started.
Is this the beginning or is this the end? Krell said, seeking a place to stand.
Krell could have been asking about the outcome of the contentious presidential campaign.
Hopefully, once its over, we can get back on track and live with less drama, he said.
By most accounts, voters were patient and in good humor.
A small line had formed before the polls opened at Morning Star Baptist Church, 2019 Burdette St., when Steve Smetter, 60, walked in and broke the silence.
So, he said sarcastically, everybody voting for Trump?
Many in line laughed. After submitting his ballot, Smetter clarified his position on Republican candidate Donald Trump.
He wants to divide the country, and it cant work that way, he said. And he scares the hell out of me.
More than three dozen voters were lined up outside Brownell Talbot School, 400 N. Happy Hollow Blvd., before the polls opened.
Margaux Towne, 56, said she wasnt surprised by the line.
The country is obviously taking this election seriously, she said.
Towne was dressed in white as a sign of support for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Other women around the country did the same.
With her 4-year-old son at her side and her 2-year-old son in a stroller, Sherita Samuels walked out of the University Inn near 30th and Dodge Streets, where she voted for Trump.
Samuels, who is black, said she voted for President Barack Obama in 2012. She said she had no doubt Clinton could run the country, but her values dont line up.
Such as?
Im a Christian, so Im against abortion, Samuels said. Im not so much Women Can Conquer the World. I dont really try to push that agenda.
She said Trump would put people around him who know how to run things.
Asked if she thought Democrats took the black vote for granted, which Trump has alleged, she said yes.
Jackie Blake, 34, a student and stay-at-home mom of three sons, said she considers herself a conservative and a Republican, but she voted for Clinton at the Omaha Public Librarys Millard branch.
This election had me scared. For my childrens future, I want to make sure we have someone of sound mind, she said.
Kevin Adams, 49, a truck driver, said he voted for Trump. He was disappointed that the T-shirt he ordered identifying himself as one of the deplorables had not arrived in time for him to wear it to vote.
He said he did not trust Clinton because she deleted her emails.
At Springville Elementary, near 60th Street and Country Club Road, about 15 people were voting and a handful were waiting when The Star-Spangled Banner was piped over the speakers to start the school day.
Voters stopped what they were doing and joined in another American tradition placing their hands over their hearts and quietly singing along with the national anthem.
World-Herald staff writers Joe Duggan, Julie Anderson, Christopher Burbach, Kim Carpenter, Todd Cooper, Cate Folsom, Erin Grace, Steve Jordon, Michael Kelly, Howard K. Marcus, Michael OConnor, Mike Patterson, Chris Peters, Barbara Soderlin, Blake Ursch, Sue Violi, Jay Withrow and Lynn Yen contributed to this report.
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Note to print subscribers
We are extending our deadlines on Tuesday night in order to have the most complete election coverage in Wednesday's World-Herald. This may cause delivery delays on Wednesday morning for some readers, especially those outside the metro area, and we thank you for your patience. The World-Herald ePaper will be available online to subscribers at its normal time.
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As voters flooded polling places across the country on Election Day, some reported problems such as long lines, confusion and voter intimidation in states ranging from Texas to Pennsylvania.
While voting appeared to proceed without headaches in many locations, election observers said they expect a significant increase in the number of issues reported nationwide.
In the first high-profile legal action of the day, Donald Trump's campaign headed to court for a hearing in Nevada after filing a lawsuit arguing that polls were improperly kept open late during early voting in Clark County.
According to the lawsuit filed by the Republican nominee, this was done "to help Hillary Clinton," Trump's Democratic opponent. Trump's campaign says the voting machines and ballots involved "must be set aside, sequestered and impounded" to preserve the status quo "in the event of post-election challenges." In a statement, Clark County officials note that the lawsuit asks them to preserve early voting records, something that "is required by state law, and so it is something we are already doing."
At a hearing Tuesday morning, a skeptical judge questioned the Trump campaign's attorney and denied the request to preserve evidence in the case.
This lawsuit follows a raft of recent legal wrangling in the days leading up to the election. As the bitter presidential campaign rumbled toward its conclusion, officials across the country have been bracing for the possibility of confusion and chaos on Election Day, owing to a flurry of new voting restrictions and Trump's calls for his supporters to closely monitor polling places.
Voters in Florida, a key battleground, have reported multiple accounts of voters saying they have encountered aggressive, intimidating behavior, according to a nonpartisan group monitoring election issues nationwide.
"In Florida we continue to receive a substantial amount of complaints about voter intimidation," said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is running an independent effort to field voter complaints and questions.
Clarke said her group received reports from Miami-Dade County of "yelling, people using megaphones aggressively." In Jacksonville, in the northeast corner of the state, Clarke said, "an unauthorized individual was found inside [a] polling place."
This person was at St. Paul's Methodist Church, a polling precinct in what Clarke described as a part of Jacksonville with predominantly black residents.
"He was asked to leave and refused," she said. "Through our intervention and calls, that individual has been removed. Unauthorized individuals have no place in the polls."
During early voting, Clarke's group also received reports from Hollywood, Fla., about "aggressive individuals hovering around individuals as they approach the polling site," she said during a briefing with reporters. "Some have turned away because they did not feel able to freely cast [a] ballot."
Clarke said her group has received reports from about 80,000 voters since the beginning of early voting and expects that figure to reach 175,000 reports by the time the polls close. In 2012, the group received 90,000 calls total on Election Day.
During a telephone interview Tuesday on Fox News, Trump did not say whether he was expecting to argue with the outcome of the election, but he said he believed there were reports of voter fraud happening across the country.
"It's happening at various places today, it's been reported," he said. "The machines, you put down a Republican and it registers as a Democrat, and they've had a lot of complaints about that today."
It was not immediately clear what accounts Trump was referring to when he mentioned "a lot of complaints" about the issue. A report out of Clinton Township, an area near Pittsburgh, quoted some voters saying their tickets were switching from Trump to Clinton. According to that report, officials there said the machines were fixed and the problem resolved.
There have been other issues with machines, including some cases of them showing incorrect votes, though it was unclear how widespread this was.
Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said that they are seeing more problems with voting machines than they have seen in past election years.
"There are more machine breakdowns and more malfunctions all over the place," Weiser said. "It's really widespread."
These breakdowns are not a surprise, Weiser said, because 42 states are using machines that are 10 or more years old. There have been issues with machines in South Carolina, New York, Missouri, Georgia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Chicago and Indiana.
"These machines are just degrading," Weiser said.
One specific problem has been "vote slipping," which is what Trump seemed to be referencing and occurs when a voter presses a button on a touch screen for one person but the machine shows them voting for another candidate.
"We've seen more malfunctions and more vote slipping all over the place," Weiser said. But it was not clear how many machines were seeing vote slipping.
Issues with machines caused lines earlier Tuesday at precincts in Virginia, Clarke's group said. Her group also heard similar complaints from Philadelphia, one of the cities specifically cited by Trump during speeches in which he claimed that voter fraud is "all too common" and asked his supporters to closely monitor other voters.
The office of Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams said it has assembled a task force including more than 70 prosecutors and dozens of detectives to tackle complaints of voter fraud, intimidation and electioneering.
"We, as expected, had kind of a busy call volume in the morning," Cameron L. Kline, a spokesman for Williams, said Tuesday morning in a telephone interview. Kline said the task force was not seeing an unusual volume of calls or complaints. "So far the trend is historically rolling the right way."
The Philadelphia Republican Party posted on Twitter that poll workers in the northern part of the city were handing out literature supporting Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, while inside a polling station.
Problems with machines also cropped up in North Carolina, another major battleground state and home to one of the country's most high-profile laws imposing new voting restrictions.
There were also other complaints reported across the country. In complaints submitted to The Washington Post, voters described confusion over identification requirements in Pennsylvania, Texas and D.C., among other issues.
Clarke said the lawyers' committee was contacted about sites that did not open on time in Brooklyn and Boston, along with long lines and broken machines elsewhere.
She said that there were also complaints Tuesday about electronic machines down in Durham County, N.C., which has more than a quarter-million residents outside Raleigh. In Georgia, Clarke said, people complained of "11th-hour polling place changes with no notice issued to voters," creating uncertainty over where to go.
Leading up to Election Day, there have been some heated confrontations between supporters of Clinton and Trump. The specter of possible violence has loomed over Election Day after a particularly vitriolic campaign, one in which issues of race, class, gender and ethnicity have taken center stage in caustic ways.
In a poll last month, half of likely voters said they were worried about violence on Election Day. Meanwhile, U.S. officials recently said they were investigating a possible threat from al-Qaeda to carry out pre-election terrorist attacks, although authorities described the threat as vague and said they were unclear whether it was credible.
Law enforcement officials from Nevada to Georgia have pledged an increase in officers at some locations, with agencies vowing vigilance and saying they are prepared for possible issues.
The Las Vegas police said units would visit polling locations, though the department noted that early voting in Clark County came and went without any issues of violence at the polls. In Chicago, another city named by Trump when he exhorted his supporters to monitor polling locations, police say it is normal procedure for them to have extra officers visiting these sites to ensure safety.
Police in New York are preparing for "a very unique set of challenges," because both Clinton and Trump plan to hold election-night events in Manhattan, said James O'Neill, the police commissioner.
But O'Neill said police are prepared to secure more than 1,000 polling locations across the city, as well as the Clinton and Trump events just two miles apart later on Tuesday night.
"Planning for security events like this is a big part of what we do," O'Neill said during a briefing Monday. "This is nothing new to us."
Omahans Pedro and Amelia Cruz received a high-profile escort to their polling place Tuesday as they cast their first ballots ever in a presidential election.
They rode on a trolley with Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett, who rented the vehicle as part of the Drive 2 Vote initiative offering area voters rides on Election Day.
Many would-be voters could have car trouble or be unable to drive themselves, and knowing that they have a ride might make the difference of getting them to the polls, Buffett said.
We just want everybody to at least have the chance to vote, he said.
More than 100 drivers cleared background checks and were trained as part of the effort, which also included registering voters, reminding them of where to vote and educating them about early voting.
And a few voters had the chance to ride the trolley, which collected Buffett and a small group of family and friends at his home about 8 a.m. The first stop was just down the street at Buffetts own polling place, Lifegate Church, where he chatted with fellow voters standing in the relatively short lines before casting his ballot.
Afterward he spoke with reporters about his goal to see the 2nd District score the biggest increase in turnout of any district in the country.
I think it would be a terrific bragging point really for the 2nd District, to say we had the biggest gain, he said. If so, its a civics lesson for the rest of the country.
The trolley then headed to South Omaha, where Buffett fired up Drive 2 Vote volunteers and the trolley picked up a few voters, including the Cruzes..
As Pedro Cruz posed for a photo with Buffett, he apologized that his English isnt better.
Thats OK, Buffett replied. My hearings bad, so we make a perfect couple.
Pedro said that he has been a citizen for 20 years but that this is the first election he has voted in, compelled by his admiration of Hillary Clinton and objection to Donald Trump.
He referred to rhetoric about Mexican immigrants stealing and bringing drugs into the country.
I live here for 50 years, he told reporters. I live in Texas, Arizona, California and here and never steal nothing from nobody. Never bring drugs.
While he supports Clinton for president, Buffett said he wouldnt be making any partisan comments and stressed that the free rides were available to anyone, regardless of their political leanings.
Everybody that wants to get to the polls today is going to have a way to get to the polls, Buffett said. It makes no difference what their party affiliation is or anything of the sort. Weve got drivers for everybody.
After dropping voters off at their polling places in South Omaha, Buffett headed to Evans Tower in north Omaha, where he posed for more photos with voters as they emerged from the polling place on the ground floor.
At one point, Buffett noted that he has been voting since 1952 and described this election as the most exciting yet.
A reporter pointed out that others might use different words to describe what has been a bitterly contested election.
The heat of battle produces interesting rhetoric, Ill put it that way, Buffett responded. But thats America. Overall, its worked pretty well.
Wehrbein, Jeanene A. Mar 29, 1940 - Nov 6, 2016 Age 76 of Plattsmouth, NE. Jeanene was deeply involved in her community including managing editor of and columnist for the Plattsmouth Journal from 1991-2003, Plattsmouth Chamber of Commerce executive director from 2003-2008, member and past president of Plattsmouth Rotary, Lewis and Clark Foundation board member, Nebraska Beef Council member, Nebraska Humanities Council member, charter member of the Nebraska Community Foundation, Plattsmouth Community Foundation founding member, Plattsmouth Main Street Association founding member, Order of Eastern Star Chapter 189, PEO Chapter F. Survived by her husband of 55 years, Roger Wehrbein of Plattsmouth; sons, Doug and Kari Wehrbein of Plattsmouth, David Wehrbein of Plattsmouth; grandchildren, Kalby Wehrbein of Pasco, WA, Abby Wehrbein of Fremont, NE; brother and sister-in-law Valdean and Sheryl Markussen of Hurst, TX; and sister-in-law, Lillian Markussen of Lexington, KY. She is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents; son Phillip John; brothers, Kenneth and Kenwood Markussen; and a sister Alberta Markussen. A CELEBRATION OF LIFE SERVICE will be held Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 11am at First Presbyterian Church in Plattsmouth with Rev. Portia Iverson officiating. VISITATION will be 1-8pm Wednesday, November 9, 2016, with family greeting friends from 5-8pm at First Presbyterian Church with an Eastern Star Service at 8pm. A private family burial will take place in Oak Hill Cemetery. Memorials may be directed to the Plattsmouth Community Foundation, First Presbyterian Church, Cass County Historical Society, or ALS. Online condolences to: www.bpharveyfuneralhome.com Brian P. Harvey Funeral Home Plattsmouth, NE 402-296-4445
Nebraska beef producers who have been in the business for a while well remember the extraordinary plunge in U.S. and Nebraska beef exports that began in 2004. The cause: international concern over mad cow disease.
Nebraska producers saw their overseas sales fall from $502 million in 2003 to $105 million in 2004. For the U.S. beef sector as a whole, overseas sales fell from $3.2 billion in 2003 to $631 million a year later.
But now, for the comeback.
Recent word that the first Nebraska shipments of beef in 13 years will soon be heading to Israel illustrates the welcome turnaround. State officials marked the occasion by personally congratulating Hastings-based WR Reserve, which will start with 200 head of Angus cattle a week.
Nebraska beef exports have risen steadily in recent years as state and national officials and U.S. producers have demonstrated the safety of American beef. The World Trade Organization officially verified the safety of U.S. beef in 2007.
Trade promotion efforts, in which Nebraska has devoted great focus in recent years, also have helped. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, has been energetic in working to end restrictions on our countrys overseas beef sales.
Nebraskas beef exports have climbed from $380 million in 2007 to $762 million in 2011 to more than $1 billion in 2015 (though slightly down from 2014).
A standout is the strengthening of Nebraska beef exports to Europe, again thanks in large part to marketing by the industry and state government. Nebraska accounted for 42.5 percent of U.S. beef exports to Europe last year, up from only 5 percent in 2005.
For the first half of this year, Nebraskas share in Europe was some 50 percent. Nebraska quality is clearly winning over consumers there.
A major improvement for U.S. beef exporters is that overseas sales are no longer limited to cattle that are 20 months old or younger. That requirement, in place for years after the rise of mad cow concerns, placed considerable documentation requirements on producers, processors and packers.
China has been something of a question mark for U.S. beef exports. The Beijing government officially said in September it will end the ban on U.S. beef imports imposed in 2003. Chinese authorities have yet to announce import guidelines, however. Theres been uncertainty, for example, over whether the country will allow imports of hormone-treated U.S. beef.
"What we dont know yet is how much of our supply will be eligible," says Joe Schuele, spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation.
But it looks as if Nebraska producers are about to receive positive news. Gov. Pete Ricketts and a delegation of Nebraskans left Monday for a trade promotion visit to China. The schedule includes the signing next Tuesday of a commitment to purchase Nebraska beef encouraging proof of Nebraskas effective overseas marketing.
A lingering obstacle is the high value of the U.S. dollar, which makes American exports more expensive for overseas buyers. Still, the overall news on the export market for our countrys beef is positive. Roadblocks stemming from the mad cow scare are gone.
Now the task is to build on the strong promotion efforts overseas by the industry and by state and federal officials. Lets keep the progress going.
I love Twitter. I use it every day. Ive made a number of friends using the service and often have interesting exchanges with an even larger number of colleagues and smart people.
It has been essential to my career; its hard to imagine doing my job without Twitter or some similar tool for connecting with the public.
But Twitter Inc. has big problems. Its user growth has slowed to a trickle, with total user numbers still only at about a fifth of Facebooks. And no one knows how many of those users are robots.
Twitter brings in lots of revenue but loses money. It looked around for a buyer but no one was interested. User harassment is rife, causing a number of high-profile celebrities to quit the service.
Why is Twitter doing so badly, and how can it be fixed?
Part of the answer probably lies in the companys culture. "Hatching Twitter," a 2013 history of the company written by Nick Bilton, reveals that Twitters history has been one of power struggles, boardroom coups and strategic confusion.
But after using the service for more than five years now, Im convinced that the biggest problem is inherent to the technology itself. Short messages what makes Twitter Twitter are inherently conducive to insults, ill will and degraded discourse.
Meanwhile, anonymity and the ability to message anyone on the site, although essential to Twitters nature, enable harassment.
Two of its creators Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams had different ideas of what Twitter ought to be. Dorsey conceived of it as a way of posting personal status updates, while Williams thought of it as a way of reporting news. Noah Glass, a forgotten cofounder, thought of it as a conversation club.
In reality, its all three of those. Celebrities mainly use the site in the way Dorsey intended, while journalists and academics use it more the way Williams envisioned. And Twitter has certainly helped me connect with friends, meaning that Glass was probably on to something, too.
But theres a fourth important use of Twitter that none of the founders seems to have envisioned: Twitter is an ideal platform for being a jerk.
Unlike Facebook, Twitter is an anonymous service.
This means that if youre even a moderately high-profile person an actress, a journalist, a politician youll constantly be subjected to a barrage of harassment by everyone who doesnt like who you are or what you have to say. This includes not just people in your own circle, or even in your own country its people anywhere in the world.
Anti-Semitic trolls sitting in their basements in Hungary can threaten to send Jewish-American journalists to the ovens. Misogynistic teenagers in Australia can make rape threats against female journalists in Canada.
Theres even a popular comedy video series of celebrities and politicians reading mean tweets written about them.
Twitter acts as a force multiplier for evildoers.
A recent study by the Anti-
Defamation League found that most Anti-Semitic harassment comes from just 1,600 accounts many of them probably from outside the U.S. But those 1,600 have managed to make life very difficult for many of Twitters Jewish users.
Racism against black people is even more widespread. A flood of sexist and racist tweets recently drove "Ghostbusters" actress Leslie Jones off Twitter. Harassment of women is probably the most common of all.
After much initial reluctance, Twitter is suspending more and more of the harassers accounts. But because it takes only minutes to generate a new pseudonym, they dont stay gone for long.
Yes, the dedicated harassers are just a few bad apples. But in any community or social network, there is some minimum number of bad apples required to spoil the whole apple cart.
And because of anonymity and unrestricted messaging, Twitters minimum number is exceptionally low.
But beyond active harassment and malfeasance, Twitter is simply conducive to hurt feelings. Its a lot easier to deliver an insult in 140 characters than to give a nuanced explanation of why you disagree with someone.
The length restriction makes it easy to misinterpret things that other people say, and misinterpretation often leads to intolerance, aggression and closed-mindedness. Even reading my own tweets, its easy to see how many of them could be misread as dismissive, arrogant and cruel.
I dont know how to solve these problems. Many seem inherent to the technology, meaning that making Twitter a nicer place to be might require a deep rethink of the way the service works.
But with user numbers plateauing and negative publicity increasing, this should be a top priority.
For the sake of a service I still love to use, I hope that Dorsey is able to come up with something.
An erosion of the U.S. strategic position in Asia during President Barack Obamas final months in office is threatening to turn into a rout.
First the Philippines new president paid a visit to Beijing and announced a "separation" from Washington; last week the prime minister of Malaysia, another U.S. ally, was in the Chinese capital promising to take relations with the regime of Xi Jinping to "new heights."
Though some of the rhetoric was bluster, there is substance behind it: China is showering the two countries with tens of billions of dollars in loans and investments, and its achieving inroads in strategic areas. The Philippines agreed to bilateral talks on Chinas claim to territories in the South China Sea, while Malaysia committed to its first major arms purchase from Beijing, a fleet of patrol boats.
Having made the reinforcement of U.S. influence in Asia a top priority of his presidency, Obama now risks a legacy of weakened alliances and greatly expanded Chinese influence. There are three big reasons for this and arguably only one of them results from a weakness of administration policy.
The failure to push back harder against Chinas aggressive moves in Asian waters can only encourage countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia to strike their own deals with the Xi regime, rather than look to Washington for defense.
But Obamas policy is also suffering from failing support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade deal that was the centerpiece of his Asia policy.
Though the White House is still hoping for ratification by a lame-duck Congress after the election, the vocal opposition from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may have convinced leaders such as Malaysias Najib Razak that the pact is effectively dead.
Finally, the troubles with the Philippines and Malaysia have something to do with a factor that no president should try to alter: a values gap with their leaders.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte seems to have had anti-American inclinations throughout his career, but what prompted his sudden embrace of China appears to be American revulsion at his lawless "drug war," which has led to the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of alleged dealers and users.
Najib, for his part, was offended by the opening of a Justice Department investigation into the disappearance of $1 billion from the state sovereign wealth fund; much of the embezzled money may have been banked or invested in the United States.
Needless to say, the Xi regime is happy to ignore or even abet such abuses. It helped shore up the looted Malaysian investment fund by buying some of its assets. The strategy is to gain influence by supporting leaders who steal billions or violate human rights, knowing that they are likely to have problems in Washington. It might not work there has been a backlash against Dutertes China trip in the Philippines, and Najib faces strong domestic opposition.
But the recent rush to Beijing shows that whether the next U.S. president likes it or not, the contest for influence in Asia wont just be about trade or military might. The U.S. must also defend democratic principles.
'Masti Gudi' tragedy: FIR against crew members
Bengaluru
oi-Anusha
Ramanagara police on Tuesday filed an FIR against crew members of 'Masti Gudi' movie after 2 of its actors lost their lives attempting an action sequence on Monday afternoon. The FIR was filed after T G Halli reservoir dam's director filed a formal complaint with the local police.
[Also Read: Had Kannada film crew not flouted norms, actors wouldn't have died]
FIR, mainly, under sections 304(A) and 308 has been filed against the film's stunt director Ravivarma and director Nagashekhar. The FIR also includes names of the film's producer and assistant director who was managing the unit on that fateful day.
Uday and Anil, 2 actors drowned even as the film's crew watched them helplessly after an action sequence shot went awry. The film's lead and popular Kannada actor Duniya Vijay who jumped into the water with the deceased actors, had a narrow escape.
The crew is accused of flouting norms, not taking safety and precautionary measures and utter negligence causing the death of 2 actors. Prominent names from the industry took to social media sites to express grief and anger about the incident.
[Also read: Masti Gudi actors said they were not good swimmers minutes before mishap]
Teams of NDRF continued to search for the bodies of both actors on Tuesday. Scuba diving teams with the help of underwater cameras are being used to look for the bodies. Big names from the Kannada film industry arrived at T G Halli reservoir on Tuesday to help in search operations.
OneIndia News
Tipu Jayanthi: BJP to observe Nov 10 as black day
Bengaluru
oi-Anusha
Making their opposition to Tipu Jayanthi celebrations loud and clear and condemning the recent killings of RSS, BJP and Sangh parivar workers, Karnataka BJP held protests led by State President B S Yeddyurappa. Prominent leaders addressed a rally at Maurya circle of Bengaluru on Tuesday. BJP has decided to observe November 10 as Black Day
Addressing a gathering of BJP workers, State President B S Yeddyurappa condemned the recent killings of BJP and RSS workers accusing the congress government of allowing such incidents. "It is a disturbing trend. I am meeting Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday and will appraise him about the State's situation and opposition to Tipu Jayanthi. State BJP will discuss about giving a statewide bandh call on November 10. We will display black flags and observe it as black day", he said.
Also Read: Tipu Jayanthi- Karnataka asks for additional central forces
Hundreds of party workers gathered shouting slogans against the government for celebrating Tipu Jayanthi on November 10. Leaders of the BJP accused the Congress government's move of celebrating Tipu as mere appeasement politics. BJP leader and Former Minister R Ashoka said, "Tipu has become a nemesis for those who celebrated him. Siddaramaiah will face the same fate. Celebrating Tipu is nothing but appeasement politics".
OneIndia News
Bihar: Fire breaks out amid Chhath Puja celebrations in Aurangabad; many critical
Chhath Puja 2022 and the story of Devasena
Happy Chhath Puja 2022: Wishes, quotes, Facebook status, WhatsApp messages to share with your loved ones
'Everyone's life should be illuminated': PM Modi extends Chhath Puja greetings
Photos: Chhath puja celebrated with great fervour
Feature
oi-Jagriti
Patna, Nov 8: Chhath is a very big festival in eastern India and it is celebrated with great fervour and it goes on for four days. The festival is performed in order to thank lord Sun, who is considered the god of energy. Sun is worshiped to promote well-being, prosperity and progress.
Chhath Puja also called 'Dala Puja'.It is popular in the North and Eastern Indian states of Bihar and UP.
During the festival, devotees observe fast and make offerings to the Sun God near a pond or sea.
Here are some important photos of the festival widely celebrated in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Women worship the Sun God on Chhath Women worship the Sun God on the occasion of Chhath Puja in Meerut Hindu devotees offer prayers to the rising Sun in Allahabad Hindu devotees offer prayers to the rising Sun during Chhath Puja celebrations in Allahabad on Monday. Woman devotees put vermillion on eachothers' forehead Woman devotees put vermillion on eachothers' forehead on the occasion of Chhath Puja in Mirzapur. Devotees celebrate Chhath in Moradabad Devotees offering prayers on the occasion of Chhath Puja festival in Moradabad. Chhath devotees at Bhyander Chowpati Devotees pay obeisance to the sun god on the occasion of Chhath Puja at Bhyander Chowpati in Mumbai. Chhath celebrated at residence of Bihar CM Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar perform rituals at his residence on the occasion of the Chhath Puja festival in Patna. Chhath devotees in river Yamuna Devotees offering prayers to Surya Dev in river Yamuna on the occasion of Chhath Puja festival in Allahabad.
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Story first published: Tuesday, November 8, 2016, 11:13 [IST]
How India-US relations have progressed under the last 5 American presidents
Feature
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia Staff Writer
Yet another new American president will take charge on January 20. He or she will be the 45th incumbent but certainly will have an entirely new challenging set-up to cope with.
From India's perspective, this will be an occasion to keep a watch on for both these countries are not just democracies but the reality of the current international system also demands that they work closely with each other.
A lot of people are feeling apprehensive that a Trump Presidency could be detrimental from India's point of view. Given the brash billionaire's talks of "bringing back the jobs" and "shutting the borders", one might predict a doom's day for India's economy, especially in the field of software services.
Live updates on US Presidential elections 2016
Of course, a Hillary Presidency will make India feel safer but there is no real reason to think that Trump will be harmful.
There was a time when Republican presidents were considered anti to India's interests. The Democrats have been less hawkish in foreign policy and were seen as more favourable. But in the post-9/11 world, that rule doesn't apply any more.
If we look back into the recent past, nobody perhaps has been more pro-India than George W Bush, despite the fact that he is a Republican. So, what really made this turnaround in America's policy towards India under the last few presidencies?
Under Reagan...
The first reason was certainly the Cold War. If we look into the last five American presidencies and how they have treated India, the progress clearly tallies itself with the developments that have happened in the international politics of the time.
To start from Ronald Reagan (1981-88), his presidency roughly coincided with the rules of both Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and the prevailing Cold War had seen the early years of the Reagan era not having a great relation with India.
It was a time when the erstwhile Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan and the Americans were pumping in more and more funds and resources into Zia-ul-Haq's Pakistan to grow a machinery to carry on the fight against the Soviets.
It is not that New Delhi did not have its good moments with Washington during the Reagan days, but all in all the US-Pakistan bond as a geopolitical necessity of the Cold War era did not really allow the two democracies to come close.
Under senior George Bush...
Reagan was succeeded by George H W Bush, a one-time president (1989-93). His presidency did not see any big deal coming through with India for it was too tied up with making peace with the Soviets and fighting Iraq in the Gulf after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. There were also problems elsewhere in Panama and Somalia that the senior Bush was busy handling.
Also read: Indian-American women making mark in 2016 general elections
India, on the other hand, was in doldrums both politically and economically in those days and had very little scope to see beyond the immediate challenges. Even the issue of an American fighter jet refueling in India had snowballed into a big outcry and put the then fragile government of Chandra Sekhar under pressure.
The charges were that the prime minister was bowing before American imperialism while India has followed non-alignment as its principle policy in foreign affairs. Sounds quite vintage in todays' times, isn't it?
Under Bill Clinton...
Senior Bush was succeeded by Bill Clinton (1993-2000), a Democrat who took office since Jimmy Carter. This was a new beginning of sort in the bilateral relation between the two countries, thanks to PV Narasimha Rao's pragmatic foreign policy approach in the post-Cold War era.
India had made some economic and security-related concessions to the US and these helped New Delhi to get closer to Washington compared to what it was during the previous eras.
But having said that, issues like exception under the Pressler Amendment and all had reiterated the fact that the US was not ready to give up its interests on Pakistan no matter what because Islamabad was too valuable a strategic ally to ignore when it came to serving Washington's interests in Asia. However, Clinton's second term was far more favourable from India's point of view.
It was during this time that the removal of Robin Raphel, the pro-Pakistan US diplomat, had done India's relations with the US a world of good. Also, the Clinton Administration had started taking of Pakistan sponsoring cross-border terrorism into India. The signing of the extradition treaty and declaring Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Ansar as a terrorist organisation by the US impressed India.
However, the Clinton Presidency had imposed sanctions on India after the nationalistic NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee had carried out the nuclear tests in 1998 but those did not last long, thanks to Vajpayee's dynamic leadership and the undeniable reality about India's economic significance.
Under Bush junior...
But the most noticeable turn in India-US relation in history happened during the Presidency of George W Bush (2001-2008). A decade since the end of the Cold War, the US was now leading a word with too many diverse power centres but the clash of the uni-multipolar world culminated into the devastating airstrikes in the US on September 11, 2001.
This one incident had marked a paradigm shift in the USA's policy towards the world and specifically to India and Pakistan. Given Pakistan's proximity with the Taliban and other evil forces based in Afghanistan - a country which the US retaliated against following the 9/11 attacks to nail Osama bin Laden, Islamabad no more remained the blue-eyed boy of Washington.
The rulers of Pakistan were asked to act and as the US was handling things militarily and politically with Islamabad, it flagged off a new era with New Delhi - in terms of nuclear cooperation, energy security, anti-terror cooperation and climate change.
Also read: Clinton has 70 per cent chance of winning elections: pollster
India's growing economic clout and the common concern of terrorism had really brought the two countries together during the Bush era.
Under Obama...
And then it was Barack Obama (2009-2016). His presidency essentially saw a continuation of the Bush days for India-US relations are no more determined by the party representative who has entered the White House. Obama's times also saw India and US entering several agreements and pacts.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made special efforts to build bridges with the Americans despite the fact that he was denied visa by Washington in the wake of the Gujarat riots. He never allowed that fact to come between the two countries and made four quick trips to the US in two years after coming to power in 2014.
The Obama Presidency also ensured that it remained close to India to keep a check on China, which was projected as America's new competitor as a tactic to divert the attention from West Asia where Obama's predecessor had made a complete mess.
India and the US are, unlike in the past, are natural allies because of the changing realities of international relations. And it is very much likely that things will remain the same under the next president as well.
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Story first published: Wednesday, November 9, 2016, 0:07 [IST]
BJP worker murdered in Bidar, cops cite personal rivalry
General
oi-Anusha
Sunil Dongre, a BJP worker from Aurad of Bidar district was found dead in the wee hours of Monday in Sonal village. Dongre was a close associate of local BJP MLA Prabhu Chowhan.
35-year-old Sunil Dongre's body was found with mutiple stab wounds near Sonal village's government primary school in Aurad. MLA Prabhu Chowhan visited the family on Monday. Police found Dongre's body in the wee hours of Monday and shifted it to district government hospital for post-mortem.
The police have registred a case of murder and allege that motive behind his murder could have been personal rivalry. "Murder took place on Sunday night. 3 teams have been formed to nab the culprits. We have vital clues about the suspects. Murder is due to personal rivalry and has no political angle to it', said SP Bidar Prakash Nikam.
[Also Read: Karnataka BJP calls for statewide protest on November 8]
Local MLA Prabhu Chowhan, however, alleges that Dongre was targeted for being a BJP worker and his death is the latest addition to the list of RSS, BJP workers who have been murdered in the state.
The Karnataka BJP had already called for a statewide protest on Tuesday condemning the killings of BJP, RSS and Sangh parivar worker over the last 2 years and also to protest against the government's decision to celebrate Tipu Jayanthi on November 10.
How the flame of Azadi was kept ablaze by the tribal community: PM Modi explains
Chaos after Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes go out of circulation
News
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
New Delhi, Nov 8 The sudden announcement made by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi to pull out of circulation the Rs 500 and 1,000 notes did lead to a lot of chaos.
Minutes after the announcement was made, there were long queues outside ATMs with people trying to withdraw money.
The PM also said that ATMS would not be working on Wednesday in the wake of this announcement.
Outside the shops too there were people trying to do away with their Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Many shop keepers obliged and took the notes and handed over the people with change.
There were a large number of people who were at the petrol bunks too trying to do away with their notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. Modi announced for the next 72 hours hospitals, railway reservation counter, petrol bunks and airports would accept the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
Several persons outside the ATMs and shops were upset about this sudden announcement. They felt that more time ought to have been given. There were also discussions about how this issue needs to be publicised extensively to ensure that the people are fully aware.
The chaos is expected to continue tomorrow as well. Banks are expected to have long queues tomorrow. The banks would not function as normal and would attend to customers who would be submitting their Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. Customers would have time till December 30th to do so.
If someone is unable to meet the deadline, he could do approach the RBI and submit the notes with a declaration.
OneIndia News
Ramachandra Guha calls FIR against Nandini Sundar in murder case 'vicious and vindictive'
India
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia Staff Writer
New Delhi, Nov 8: Noted historian and columnist Ramachandra Guha on Tuesday slammed the government for filing an FIR against Delhi University (DU) professor Nandini Sundar in a murder case.
Sundar has been booked along with a professor of JNU and others on charges of murder of a tribal villager in the insurgency-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, police said on Tuesday.
This is what Guha tweeted:
This vicious and vindictive FIR proves beyond doubt that Chattisgarh is a police state: https://t.co/RjEj1e4Q6r Ramachandra Guha (@Ram_Guha) November 8, 2016
Professor Nandini Sundar is one of the bravest, and most decent, Indians I have known. The CG Govt's action shows their utter depravity Ramachandra Guha (@Ram_Guha) November 8, 2016
Armed Naxals had allegedly killed the villager, Shamnath Baghel, with sharp weapons on late night on November 4 at his residence in Nama village under Kumakoleng gram panchayat in Tongpal area, around 450 km from Raipur.
"An FIR was lodged against DU Professor Nandini Sundar, Archana Prasad (JNU Professor), Vineet Tiwari (of Delhi's Joshi Adhikar Sansthan), Sanjay Parate (Chhattisgarh CPI (Marxist) State Secretary) and others along with Maoists for the murder of Baghel based on the complaint of his wife on Saturday," Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) SRP Kalluri told reporters.
They were booked under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 and 149 of IPC.
"As per the complaint lodged by the victim's wife, her husband had been getting threats from Maoists since he and other villagers had complained against Sundar in May this year. Even armed Maoists were referring to that complaint and anti-Maoist demonstrations while attacking Baghel on Friday," the IG said.
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Story first published: Tuesday, November 8, 2016, 13:30 [IST]
Donald Trump in favour of handing power to select few in administration
India needs to look for new export markets: Nirmala Sitharaman
India
oi-IANS
By Ians English
New Delhi, Nov 8 Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that to boost exports, India needs to look for newer markets like Africa or Latin America for which ECGC, the government company which ensures sustained flow of exports, will have to support the exporters.
"We have to look for newer markets which may be in Africa or in Latin America and it is for ECGC to stand by the exporters to assure them that they are not going to face any risk," Sitharaman said here at the diamond jubilee celebrations of the government-owned company which provides export credit insurance support to the Indian exporters.
"ECGC's (formerly known as Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India) role is very vital in handholding exporters in these trying times because exports have seen a continuous decline over several months," she added.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) contribute a major chunk of exporters who receive the support from ECGC. Engineering goods, chemicals, drugs and pharmaceuticals, textiles, garments, gem, jewellery, diamonds, leather products, carpets, sea foods and electronic goods account for a substantial share of India's exports.
The developed countries account for a lion's share of India's export market. ECGC's role is crucial in sustaining the flow of export to the traditional markets like the US, Britain and EU.
"More than five decades of experience of ECGC in insuring and maintaining credit lines on lakhs of buyers in developed markets will be very vital in sustaining the flow of India's exports," she said.
It is of interest to note that around 90 per cent of world merchandise trade and services involve credit, guarantee or insurance.
She said that more than 90 per cent of India's merchandise exports are made on short term credit i.e. less than 360 days.
She said estimates by ADB (Asian Development Bank) Institute indicate that exports from India suffered due to unmet trade finance needs to the order of $300 billion approximately.
IMF estimates suggest that globally bank intermediated trade finance support around 40 per cent of merchandise trade.
"India's exports increased in the years subsequent to the global financial crisis due to the stabilising role played by ECGC in taking out the lending risks to exporters both at pre-shipment and post-shipment stage," she added.
IANS
Karnataka urges British PM to review new visa rules
India
oi-PTI
Bengaluru, Nov 8: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today requested visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May to review the new visa rules announced by the UK government, saying movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority.
"Under the new visa rules announced by the UK Home Office, anyone applying after November 24 under the Tier-2 intra-company transfer (ICT) category would be required to meet a higher salary threshold of 30,000 pounds from the earlier 20,800 pounds. I request you to review the new policy so that the earlier threshold is continued," he said.
During an interaction with May on her arrival at a private hotel at the Kempegowda International Airport Limited here, he said the movement of skilled tech workers from India should be seen as a trade priority rather than an immigration.
"Madam Prime Minister, our fast growing and high value tech sectors rely upon an effective immigration policy that attracts high-skilled workers and minimises barriers to the flow of talented people," he said in his remarks, made available to the media by the Chief Minister's Office.
He said the temporary placement of highly-skilled individuals into the UK provided a significant economic boost while having a negligible impact on net migration.
Siddaramaiah also said the state government was looking forward to the early setting up of the UK Health City Project coming up on 400 acres of land earmarked for this initiative at Dharwad.
"We are also keen to collaborate with the UK in the fields of maternal and child nutrition and higher education in the public health and health care," he said.
He welcomed the UK Government and British industry to actively participate in this year's much-acclaimed Aero India show in February 2017 here, to chalk out a clear cut plan to build up on our mutual strengths of aerospace and defence.
Siddaramaiah said the government seeks investments from the UK-based firms in renewable energy and for creating smart cities.
The government also would be happy to work together to identify opportunities for the UK to work with Karnataka for creating next-generation logistics, infrastructure and connectivity across fast growing regions of southern and western India, Siddaramaiah said.
He also said 15 per cent of the UK-based companies in India were in Karnataka employing 23,000 people.
PTI
Masti Gudi actors said they were not good swimmers minutes before mishap
India
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia Staff Writer
Bengaluru, Nov 8: Just minutes before two Kannada actors drowned in a lake, located in the outskirts of Bengaluru, during the shoot of a film on Monday, both of them told TV channels that they were not good swimmers.
[Also Read: Anti-climax during film shoot, actors drown during shoot]
One of them also said he was "scared" to perform the stunt.
The horrific incident which was caught on camera showed stunt actors Anil and Uday jumping off a helicopter into the Tippagondanahalli lake from a height of about 50 feet.
The stunt sequence was a part of the climax of the Kannada movie--Masti Gudi.
Popular Kannada actor Duniya Vijay was also part of the film sequence and he too jumped after them.
However, he was fortunate enough to be rescued by a fisherman, as he struggled to swim towards the shore.
According to eyewitnesses, both Anil and Uday were seen splashing in the water trying to swim, before they went missing.
"I know a little bit of swimming, but first time I'm jumping from a height. So that makes me a bit nervous. I have only swam in wells, where you can reach the edge with two or three strokes of your hand. But never swam 20 ft or 30 ft length," Anil told the TV reporter.
"Same with me. I am not a good swimmer either. I have just come here to do the stunt. Stunt masters, Vijay and Anil are with me. We three will jump off the chopper together. Rest is up to God," Uday said.
While speaking to another TV channel, Uday had said he was "scared" of the stunt.
"I'm very scared first of all. I have not done (such stunt) so far, nor have I seen anyone performing such stunt so far, so I'm scared. Whatever safety is done there is always a fear within oneself, despite that the situation is that I have to perform it...."
Police officials investigating the incident said lack of precautionary measures and faulty rescue boats were the main reasons for the mishap.
"The rescue operations are still going on. We will be booking case against those responsible and also inquire into all aspects--whether all adequate measures and permissions were taken or not," Ramanagara Superintendent of Police Dr Chandragupta told on Monday.
OneIndia News
This is what the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes look like
News
oi-Vicky
By Vicky
New Delhi, Nov 8 Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced today that the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will be pulled out of circulation from midnight.
He also announced that the new notes of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 would be printed soon and the Reserve Bank of India had approved of the same.
The RBI governor Urjit Patel said that they were very concerned about the growing menace of fake currency which has been increasing in numbers. We have increased our production and are trying to provide new currency notes as soon as possible, Patel also announced.
Patel also said that there has been no breach of any security features, but for the public the looks of a fake currency note is similar to the genuine.
During the meet, Shaktikanta Das, the economic affairs secretary said that the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes will be known as the Mahatma Gandhi new series of bank notes.
The new notes would would be released from November 10 onwards. He further added that those accepting Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes after tonight would be doing at their own risk.
OneIndia News
TV channel blackouts of the past
India
oi-Vicky
Information and Broadcasting Minister, Venkaiah Naidu repeatedly said yesterday that under the UPA several television channels were ordered off the air. He said at least 21 times channels had been ordered off the air for various reasons. He was speaking in defence of the NDA's decision to take NDTV off the air for a day on November 9. However by evening the decision had been put on hold.
[Also Read: NDTV ban or no ban- The inside story behind the flip-flop]
While there was a lot of outrage over this decision by the government to ban the channel for a day, it must be recalled that this is not the first occurrence. It was however for the first time that a channel was asked to be taken off air over the issue of national security.
Bans in the past:
As per data and statistics available, television channels were blacked out 28 times in the past ten years. They were for reasons such as adult content. Between the years 2005 and 2013, the UPA government ordered 20 channels to go off air for airing adult content.
FTV was taken off air thrice bwtween 2007 and 2010. In 2015, AL Jazeera was taken off air for five days for showing a wrong map of India. Similarly the government had in the past ordered channels such as AXN and Cine World to go off air. At that time, the government had said that these channels were violating the provisions under the Programme Code of Cable act. It was said that programmes that denigrate women through the depiction in any manner of the figure of a woman, her form or body or any part thereof in such a way as to have the effect of being indecent, or derogatory to women, or is likely to deprave, corrupt or injure the public morality or morals.
OneIndia News
Deprivation point to be brought back for PhD students in JNU
Two DU, JNU professors booked for Chhattisgarh tribal's killing
India
oi-IANS
By Ians English
New Delhi, Nov 8 A case of murder was registered against two professors of Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University and others folowing a tribal's killing on November 4 in Chhattisgarh, the police said on Tuesday.
"A case was registered against DU Professor Nandini Sundar, JNU Professor Archana Prasad and others by the police on November 5 at Tongpal police station for the murder of Somnath Baghel," Sukma Superintendent of Police I.K. Elesela told IANS.
According to police, armed Maoists killed Baghel in his home in Nama village in Tongpal area of Chhattisgarh. The police said six months ago, the accused had issued death threats to the villagers on behalf of the Maoists.
Others booked in the case include Maoist leaders Vinod and Shyamla and Communist Party of India leader Sanjay Parate. The killed tribal, Somnath, was a member of the Block Congress Committee in his area.
The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections dealing with murder, attempt to murder, trespassing and rioting, and the Arms Act.
The police said Baghel's wife, in her complaint, said he was getting threats from Maoists after he and other villagers complained against Sundar in May.
In Delhi, historian Ramachandra Guha and Swaraj Abhiyan leader Prashant Bhushan expressed outrage over the registration of the FIR against the Delhi University don and flayed the Chhattisgarh government on the issue.
"This vicious and vindictive FIR (first information report) proves beyond doubt that Chhattisgarh is a police state," Guha said on Twitter.
"Professor Nandini Sundar is one of the bravest, and most decent, Indians I have known. The Chhattisgarh government's action shows their utter depravity," he added.
Bhushan too expressed his outrage: "Outrageous! Raman's killer cop (Bastar Inspector General of Police) S.R.P. Kalluri books DU Prof. Nandini Sundar, who had moved the Supreme Court to ban Salwa Judum, for murder!"
"Prof. Nandini Sundar, booked by the Chhattisgarh's killer cops, had written a book on police atrocities on Adivasis of Bastar."
Professor Nandini Sundar has approached the Supreme Court several times against the state government on the issue of a ban on anti-Maoist force Salwa Judam.
On Monday, an organisation had held protest and burnt an effigy to demand action against the DU don and others. A few days ago, Bastar policemen too had burnt Sundar's effigy.
IANS
Trump dons 'presidential hat' with 45 stitched on it
Putin himself involved in US election hack: Report
Trump is convinced Russia didnt interfere in 2016 polls; blames US for sour ties with Moscow
US midterm polls: American media houses remember 2016, to go slow this time
Hillary Clinton writes to 8-yr-old girl who lost to a boy in class president election
Many shades of Hillary Clinton: Ex-Republican, wannabe astronaut to aspiring first female US Prez
International
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia Staff Writer
New York, Nov 8: So, who is Hillary Clinton?
All we can easily say is that the Democratic Presidential nominee is one of the most multi-faceted political personalities of our times.
The 69-year-old politician wears many hats with ease.
On Twitter, Clinton describes herself as a wife, mom, grandma, women+kids advocate, FLOTUS, Senator, SecState, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado and 2016 presidential candidate.
In fact, as a 14-year-old girl, Clinton wrote a letter to the NASA asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut.
The agency's response was "thank you but we don't take girls".
Thankfully, the space organisation has since changed its policies and become more gender neutral, sending dozens of women into space.
Now, the question is--will American elect Clinton as its first female President?
She started her political journey as a conservative activist for the Republican Party.
Later, Clinton switched her political affiliation and became a Democratic leader.
She did her law at Yale University, where she met her husband and former US President Bill Clinton.
Hillary became the first lady of the US after her husband became the President in 1992. She held the title twice when Bill was re-elected as the President in 1996.
In a few hours from now, if Clinton is elected as the 45th President of the US, history will be created as the nation will get its first female President.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Tuesday, November 8, 2016, 12:49 [IST]
Inlanders journey to the coast for voyages Updated: 2016-11-08 08:38 By ZHOU WENTING in Shanghai(China Daily)
A couple takes a selfie with the sunset onboard Royal Caribbeans latest cruise ship the Ovation of the Seas ahead of its inaugural voyage at the International Cruise Terminal in Tianjin, June 24, 2016. [Photo/IC]
The number of travelers from inland cities on the Chinese mainlandwho fly to a cruise liner homeport on the east coast and embark on a cruisehas been on a sharp rise over the past few years, according to a top executive with an international cruise liner group.
Liu Zinan, senior vice-president of Royal Caribbean International, made the remarks during a media briefing in Shanghai last week, while introducing plans to upgrade the company's products.
Royal Caribbean, the world's second-biggest cruise operator, said that the hefty increase in the Chinese business is expected to continue in the coming years.
Liu said that people who grew up inland have a strong respect and desire to experience life on the ocean.
"That's why a growing number of people are willing to make such fly-cruise tours when the cruise market is becoming mature in inland provinces," Liu said.
Wang Jing, head of sales and marketing in western China for Royal Caribbean, said that the market in this region started from scratch five years ago.
"The number of such travelers has increased at an annual average of more than 40 percent in the past five years," said Wang, who is based in Chengdu, Sichuan province.
Jiang Hong, chairman of Best Cruise International, a cruise agency based in Kunming, Yunnan province, said 84 people were the first batch of tourists from Yunnan to embark on a voyage on Royal Caribbean's cruise liner Quantum of the Seas in June last year.
"But since spring this year, we have at least 500 tourists from Yunnan on each of the four or five voyages run by this company's cruise liners each month," Jiang said.
"Overall, the number of people making fly-cruise tours this year has at least doubled that of last year," he said.
Wang said such tourists currently make up roughly 5 percent of their total customers, but would rise to 10 percentthe same kind of levels as in the US market, where cruise tourism is quite matureif transportation costs between their home city and port cities were lowered.
"The largest obstacle for these tourists is that they have to buy round-trip air or train tickets from their home to the port city, which is between 2,000 yuan ($296) and 3,000 yuan, almost the same as a cruise liner ticket," she said.
PFI ban 'dangerous' as every Muslim who speaks his mind can now be arrested: AIMIM chief Owaisi
Muslim man can't remarry if he's unable to take care of family: Allahabad HC
Why a terror angle should not be ruled out in the Coimbatore cylinder blast case
What if Owaisi had? Muslim users on Twitter blast Kejriwal for asking for Hindu God images on currency notes
Muslim home with Hillary Clinton window sign vandalised in US
International
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Philadelphia, Nov 9: Vandals broke the window of a Muslim family's home in a Philadelphia suburb overnight on Monday.
Wasif Qureshi, a cardiologist and the local head of civic engagement group Emerge USA, said his 15-year-old daughter had recently put a Hillary Clinton sign in the window of her bedroom. At around 2 a.m., a rock shattered glass across his daughter's bed and floor and left her "shaking and crying", The Washington Post quoted Qureshi as saying.
The family called the police, who arrived immediately, he said, but the vandals had already fled.
"We came from Pakistan about 16 years ago to get away from all this stuff, and now for my kids to deal with this - it's just unbelievable," Qureshi said.
The father of three said that he and his wife are unable to vote in this election because they are still awaiting US citizenship. Their children were born in the United States.
The 15-year-old, their eldest, has been volunteering with the Clinton campaign in Westchester, Qureshi said. "Just day before yesterday, she put a sign for Hillary and Kaine in the window."
IANS
Trump is convinced Russia didnt interfere in 2016 polls; blames US for sour ties with Moscow
US midterm polls: American media houses remember 2016, to go slow this time
Hillary Clinton writes to 8-yr-old girl who lost to a boy in class president election
Race for the White House: NASA astronaut casts lone vote from space
International
oi-PTI
Miami, Nov 8: In a US presidential election that's already been out of this world, the lone American astronaut in outer space has cast his vote, NASA has said.
Shane Kimbrough became the latest astronaut to join in a long tradition of voting while floating above the Earth, inside the orbiting International Space Station, it said yesterday.
Kimbrough rode a Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS on October 19 to start a four-month mission at the research outpost, along with two Russian cosmonauts.
US astronauts have been able to vote from space since 1997, under Texas law. Most astronauts live in the Houston area, home to NASA's mission control and Johnson Space Center.
The first American to vote from space was David Wolf, who cast his ballot from the Russian space station Mir.
"Current space station resident astronaut Shane Kimbrough is the most recent astronaut to take advantage of the opportunity," NASA said in a statement.
The agency did not give details on how the vote was transmitted. There was no word from NASA or Kimbrough on which candidate he picked for president.
PTI
Record 46.2 mil votes in early voting in US presidential polls
International
oi-PTI
Washington, Nov 8: A record 46.2 million of the estimated 200 million voters have exercised their franchise in the 2016 US presidential elections before the official voting day, surpassing the 2012 record when 32.3 million people had voted in advance.
Experts said the massive turn out in 2016 general elections in early voting reflects the change in the voting patterns of Americans. "Some voters are clearly changing as they opted to vote early instead of the election day," said Michael McDonald, an early-voting expert who runs the elections project.
He, however, said that high level of early voting may also be a sign of increased overall turnout. McDonald said that there are signs that Clinton would benefit from early voting.
"You can look at the demographics of these folks. I can tell you for sure it is not a surge of older white men making up the unaffiliated," he said. "In comparison to 2012, there are more white women than white men among unaffiliateds, and African-Americans, there are some, and other persons of colour.
"Don't think of these as monolithically white males, that's wrong, don't think of them as independents, because independents tend to break more Republican than unaffiliateds," he added.
PTI
US Presidential Elections: Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton protected by 'totally rigged system'
International
oi-IANS
By Ians English
Miami, Nov 8: US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the home stretch of his campaign on Monday was swift to accuse his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of being protected by a "rigged system", a reference to the FBI's decision to close the investigation into her e-mails.
"Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system...At least we know it and people in this country because of us have never known it so obviously as they do now," EFE news quoted Trump as saying during a rally in the city of Sarasota, Florida, one of the states most sought-after by both the candidates.
The New York business magnate focused his speech on attacking the Democratic candidate in order, he said, to end government by corruption.
This Sunday the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey, told Congress there was no reason to bring charges against Clinton for the use of a private server for State Department e-mails, as he said last July and again now after reviewing new information.
He appealed to Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Dominicans and Haitians, calling them a wonderful community and promising to be their champion.
If elected President, Trump said he will back the Cuban population against the tremendous oppression of the Castros and will defend freedom in Venezuela.
He made it clear that the basis of his programme is "America first", which requires a radical change, he said, to create a strong, smart leadership because "this country is going bad. Everything is wrong. Our country doesn't win anymore. We're tired of being led by stupid people. They're stupid people. Stupid".
He went on to scare his followers by threatening that if he loses the election, they'll never be able to "drain the swamp" in Washington, not in four years, not in eight years, so they had better get out and vote.
The results of three polls published on Monday were close but did not agree on the winner in this state, which Trump must take in order to reach the White House.
Two of them, taken by Quinnipiac and Opinion Savvy, give a slight lead to Clinton of 1 and 2 per cent respectively.
On the other hand, another poll taken by the Trafalgar Group gives Trump a 4-point lead over his rival in Florida.
Meanwhile the Website RealClear Politics, which takes an average of the latest surveys, gives Clinton a minimal 0.2 per cent lead.
In his address, Trump slammed all the ways in which, in his opinion, the Barack Obama presidency has been a failure, starting with the healthcare reform known as Obamacare.
IANS
Trump dons 'presidential hat' with 45 stitched on it
Putin himself involved in US election hack: Report
Trump is convinced Russia didnt interfere in 2016 polls; blames US for sour ties with Moscow
US midterm polls: American media houses remember 2016, to go slow this time
Hillary Clinton writes to 8-yr-old girl who lost to a boy in class president election
US votes - Catch it live here: Donald Trump elected as New US President
International
oi-Oneindia
By Oneindia Staff Writer
Washington, Nov 9: A polarised US went to polls on Tuesday after a bruising, nasty campaign that leaves Democrat Hillary Clinton with a slim lead over her Republican rival Donald Trump after she received a reprieve from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over investigations into her email server use.
The nation held its breathas individual polls have a spread ranging a from a 4 percent lead for Clinton in major ones like those by CBS, Fox and Washington Post to a 5 percent lead for Trump in the Los Angeles Times poll.
On the last day of the campaign of personal invective, the two candidates and their supporters criss-crossed the country on Monday, taking aim at the "Battleground States," those where neither party had a solid lead, the control of the Congress -- now in the hands of the Republicans - is also at stake and the outcome could impact the next presidency.
Here are the live updates.
1.29 pm: Trump says 'ours was not a campaign', but rather a movement.
1.28 pm: Donald Trump calls for unity
1.26 pm: Donald Trump: "America will no longer settle for anything less than the best"
1.25 pm: "I will be a president for all Americans" - Donald Trump
1.23 pm: Donald Trump: "The forgotten men and women of this country will be forgotten no longer"
1.22 pm: Trump: "Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American dream"
1.20 pm: "Sorry to keep you waiting -- complicated business," Trump said.
"I just received a call from Secretary Clinton," Trump opened. "She congratulated us -- this is about us -- on our victory, and I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. She fought very hard."
1.15 pm: Mike Pence Vice President elect: 'The American People Have Elected Their New Champion'
1.05 pm: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 218 against Donald Trump's 276.
1.01 pm: Donald Trump has won Wisconsin. Wisconsin has 10 electoral votes
12.50 pm: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 218 against Donald Trump's 266.
12.38 pm: Clinton Won't Speak to Supporters Tonight
12.31 pm: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 218 against Donald Trump's 265.
12.13 pm: With Pennsylvania Win, Trump Is Just Shy of 270
12.10 pm: Donald Trump has won Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes
11.52 am: With Pennsylvania Win, Republicans Maintain Hold on Senate
11.45 am: Hillary Clinton has opened up a lead in New Hampshire, where she's now ahead by about 700 votes with 85% of precincts reporting. She's trailing in most other states, behind by 2 points in Michigan, just under a point in Pennsylvania, and 3 points in Wisconsin.
11.28 am: Chinese Watchers Cheer Trump at Viewing Party in Beijing
11.12 am: Eastern, polls will close in Alaska, where polling has shown Mr. Trump with a slight lead. The state has three electoral votes.
10.59 am: Ken Salazar, Clinton Transition Chief, 'Not Giving Up Hope'
10.59 am: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 215 against Donald Trump's 244.
10.52 am: Hillary Clinton has won Nevada. Nevada has 6 electoral votes
10.39 am: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 209 against Donald Trump's 244.
10.34 am: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 209 against Donald Trump's 238.
10.25 am: Donald Trump has won Utah. Utah has 6 electoral votes
10.22 am: Trump Is Winning Popular Vote by 1.5 Million
10.09 am: Clinton Holds Strong Lead in Must-Win Nevada
10.08 am: Presidential election results Hillary Clinton 209 against Donald Trump's 232.
10.05 am: Fox News Projects Trump Wins Wisconsin
10.04 am: Donald Trump has won Georgia which has 16 votes.
10.02 am: Hillary Clinton has won Washington. Washington has 12 electoral votes
9.55 am: The Mood at Clinton Party - It's completely silent here. Only the sound of ABC news. Everyone looks stunned. -Carol E. Lee (Source Wall Street Journal)
9.34 am: Hillary Clinton has won California, the state has 55 electoral votes.
9.30 am: Donald Trump has won Idaho, the state has 4 electoral votes.
9.24 am: Donald Trump has completely turned the tables on Hillary Clinton, and the race is extremely close.
9.23 am: Donald Trump has won Florida.
9.15 am: Hillary Clinton has won Colorado.
9.13 am: Hillary Clinton has won Virginia.
9.09 am: Donald Trump has won Ohio.
9.05 am: There was a huge burst of applause when overhead televisions showed NBC calling Virginia for Clinton - Peter Nicholas (Source Wall Street Journal)
9.03 am: Fox News Calls Colorado for Clinton
9.02 am: Donald Trump has won Missouri.
9.00 am: Dow futures plunge as Trump's chances brighten
9.00 am: Trump in his apartment, drinking Diet Coke
9.00 am: Hillary Clinton wins New Mexico.
8.58 am: Hillary Clinton will win New Mexico predicts CNN
8.41 am: NBC has called New Mexico for Hillary Clinton.
8.35 am: Donald Trump will win Montana, CNN projects.
8.25 am: Global markets are sinking as early election results showing a tight race in battleground states, say reports.
8.20 am: Republicans will retain their majority in the House of Representatives, as per CNN projects.
8.10 am: Donald Trump will win Louisiana and Hillary Clinton will win Connecticut, according to CNN projects.
8 am: Donald Trump and I are ready to win, says Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager.
7.50 am: Donald Trump will win Texas and Arkansas, according to CNN projects.
7.40 am: Donald Trump leads in Georgia, Florida and Ohio. Trump leads in Virginia too with 49.5% votes.
7.30 am: GOP's Todd Young wins US Senate seat in Indiana.
7.20 am: Republicans have retained control of the US House of Representatives, say US network projections.
7.10 am: Hillary Clinton wins District of Columbia and New Jersey.
6.56 am: Florida's Marco Rubio re-elected to US Senate.
6.47 am: Donald Trump wins Oklahoma, Tennessee and Mississippi. Florida, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are too early to call: US networks prediction.
6.36 am: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 68-48 in the race to 270 electoral votes, predict US networks.
6.34 am: Hillary Clinton wins Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and District of Columbia, predict US networks.
6.28 am: Hillary Clinton overtakes Donald Trump in partial results from both Florida and North Carolina; races too early to call.
6.18 am: Who did George Bush vote for? Click here to find out
6.13 am: Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton 24-3 in the race to 270 electoral votes.
6.04 am: Donald Trump wins West Virginia, too early to call in crucial state of Ohio and too early in North Carolina, predict US networks.
5.57 am: DonaldTrump leads HillaryClinton 19-3 in the race to 270 electoral votes: CNN Projects.
5.50 am: New York: Security moves media further away from Trump HQ at Hilton as exit polls come in US Presidential elections 2016.
New York: Security moves media further away from #Trump HQ at Hilton as exit polls come in #USElection2016 pic.twitter.com/BTx2iUPYq1 ANI (@ANI_news) November 9, 2016
5.41 am: 1 dead, 3 injured after reported shooting near polling site in Azusa,California.
5.40 am: South Carolina and Georgia are too close to call: CNN.
5.32 am: Donald Trump wins Kentucky and Indiana; Hillary Clinton wins Vermont (CNN projections).
5.25 am: Polls close in first six states in US election.
4.53 am: At least 4 people taken to hospital after shooting in Azusa, California; shooter at large; polling stations on lockdown .
4.52 am: Donald Trump with 69.3 per cent votes and Hillary Clinton with 27.5 per cent votes in Indiana.
4.43 am: Donald Trump with 79.1 per cent votes and Hillary Clinton with 18 per cent votes in Kentucky.
4.35 am: Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura voted "None of the Above" for president and Republican down-ballot, says spokesman.
4.33 am: First polls close in parts of Indiana and Kentucky; partial results expected soon.
4.15 am: Changing US demographic could determine next US President says Washington Post. Read here.
3.53 am: CNN's exit poll says 22% voters voted for experience, 22% voted with judgment in mind.
3.45 am: According to CNN exit polls, 38 per cent want the President to bring a change. 62% decided to vote before Sept.
3.20 am: Hillary Clinton leaves home in Chappaqua, New York, bound for New York City.
2.55 am: I will be watching the election results from Trump Tower in Manhattan with my family and friends. Very exciting!: Donald Trump.
I will be watching the election results from Trump Tower in Manhattan with my family and friends. Very exciting! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2016
2.00 am: Voting for US Presidential elections underway in New York
New York: Voting for US Presidential elections underway#USElections2016 pic.twitter.com/uoHXC0nnNC ANI (@ANI_news) November 8, 2016
1.52 am: Judge rules against Donald Trump campaign in Neveda voting dispute.
1.33 am: Youngstown,Ohio: Voting for US Presidential elections underway
1.32 am: Voting hours have been extended at a Grand Prairie, Texas, polling site after an election judge was found dead at his home early Tuesday.
1.12 am: Hillary Clinton far ahead of Donald Trump on betting exchanges and online markets.
1.07 am: Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit in Nevada, alleging elections officials in Clark County extended the voting hours at several Las Vegas locations.
00.45 am: Inspite of being banned, a large number of ballot selfies were reported from New York on Election Day.
00.24 am: Governor Mike Pence casts his vote on Election Day in Indianapolis.
[End of Day 1 updates]
11.38 pm: Web Publisher of Hacked Emails Goes Offline
11.28 pm: Republicans Say They're Feeling Good About Turn-Out Effort
11.30 pm: US election 2016: No sign of vigilante poll watchers in North Philadelphia
11.20 pm: No Election-Related Cyberattacks So Far, Official Says
11.00 pm: Last Minute Deciders in Suburban Milwaukee Choose Trump
10.30 pm: Trump Tower Is a Fortress
10.14 pm: Donald Trump Casts His Ballot in New York City.
9.40 am: "I've decided to vote for Trump," Donald Trump said in an early-morning interview on Fox News
Today, progress is on the ballot. Go vote - then make sure your friends, your family, and everyone you know votes too. President Obama (@POTUS) November 8, 2016
8.25 pm: Stevie Wonder: asking Trump to be president is like asking me to drive.
8.21 pm: "If we don't win, this will be the single greatest waste of time, energy and money in my life," Donald Trump said.
8.20 pm: First-Time Las Vegas Voter Casts Ballot for Clinton and Democratic Senate Hopeful Cortez Masto (Source: Wall Street Journal)
8.14 pm: In Pennsylvania, Voters Also Weigh Senate Race That Could Decide Control of Chamber (source: Wall Street Journal)
Everything weve worked toward comes down to today. RT this if you're voting for Hillary: https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s pic.twitter.com/AhvOOB6L6C Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
7.50 pm: Election 2016 was a great opportunity for Republicans. Instead, the GOP lies broken: Jamie Weinstein
7.47 pm: Panel upholds "soft-money" ban but sends GOP campaign finance challenge to Supreme Court
7.35 pm: Virginia Woman Prefers Pence but Voted Clinton Over Trump (Source Wall Street Journal)
7.05 pm: Solid Trump Support in Aventura, Fla.; 'Even Though He Looks Like a Buffoon, He's Not a Buffoon'
7.01 pm: Bill Clinton Votes for His Wife for President
6.59 pm: Biden Casts a Ballot, Jokes With Voters and Volunteers
6.51 pm: Hope to do the best I can. Feel humbled so many are counting on me says Hillary.
6.50 pm: Your Election Day Cliff Notes: 8 key races to watch here.
Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart is expecting half a million voters today. Says: "Don't wait until the last two hours, there could be lines" pic.twitter.com/1uqNuB7LQt Erin Ailworth (@ailworth) November 8, 2016
6.17 pm: Voting Begins in New Hampshire -- With Some Long Lines (Source: Wall Street Journal)
6.08 pm: Who is leading the polls the day before voting? Not a clear 'Clinton' or 'Trump'
6.07 pm: Polls have officially opened, and closed, in one small New Hampshire town. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton topped Donald Trump 4-2 in Dixville Notch, where midnight voting has been a tradition since 1960. (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Donald Trump is unfit for the office of president. Fortunately, there's an exceptionally qualified candidate @HillaryClinton pic.twitter.com/phadbXaSqW John Legend (@johnlegend) November 8, 2016
5.39 pm: When will we know who won? New York Times has this interesting graphic- Read it here.
5.36 pm: East Coast polls open as Americans cast their verdicts on Clinton & Trump after an acrimonious campaign.
5.32 pm: Donald Trump has made it clear: in his America, Muslim citizens don't exist: Moustafa Bayoumi
When will election results start rolling in? Which states report first? A complete guide to election night https://t.co/Phd2myYDVY Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 8, 2016
Its Election Day and polls are officially open. When will you vote today? Confirm where to go here: https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s pic.twitter.com/3yZvIbqzdj Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
4.50 pm: Polls open in pivotal US presidential elections reports AP
TODAY WE MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2016
3:55 pm: Triumph hopes for a miracle. Read the report at politico.com
3:40 pm: US President Barack Obama on Monday said at one of his last campaign rallies in the key state of Michigan that the people who supported him in the 2008 and 2012 elections need to "trust him" again and go vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
3:20 pm: Defence and counter-terrorism would be the two key pillars of Indo-US strategic ties under Donald Trump, his top military advisor has said while asserting that India will be "absolutely critical" to the Republican candidate's foreign policy as president.
2:30 pm: Inside Donald Trump's last stand- Read what the New York Times has to say
2:00 pm: Making a strong pitch for his wife and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary, former US President Bill Clinton has said that Americans would determine if they want a change to move forward or to go backward in this general election.
1:32 pm: A record 46.2 million of the estimated 200 million voters have exercised their franchise in the 2016 US presidential elections before the official voting day, surpassing the 2012 record when 32.3 million people had voted in advance.
Your quick guide to the US Presidential Elections 2016
1:28 pm: Highlighting the sharp contrast between her vision for the US and that of Donald Trump, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has said the country's "core values" were at stake in the polls as she urged people to vote for an "inclusive" and "big-hearted" America.
1:20 pm: Hillary Clinton more qualified to become president than Bill Clinton: Barack Obama.
1:08 pm: Meanwhile the Post reports that state officials in US prepare for an unusually chaotic election day. Read the story here State officials prepare for an unusually chaotic Election Day
12:56 pm: Hillary Clinton says voters have "a choice between division or unity".
12:40 pm:
Today we are going to win the great state of MICHIGAN and we are going to WIN back the White House! Thank you MI! https://t.co/Ht7I8jiB1c pic.twitter.com/4tRB8VlJXT Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2016
12:14 pm: "If you believe we should never write discrimination into our laws...you've got to vote!" -Hillary.
"If you believe we should never write discrimination into our laws...youve got to vote! Hillary https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
12:00 pm: "If you believe in science and that we have to act on climate change, then you have to vote!" -Hillary.
"If you believe in science and that we have to act on climate change, then you have to vote!" Hillary https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
11:44 am: "If you believe we should never write discrimination into our laws...you've got to vote!" -Hillary.
"If you believe we should never write discrimination into our laws...youve got to vote! Hillary https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
11:37 am: "It's not just my name or Donald Trump's name on the ballot-it's the kind of country we want." -Hillary.
"Its not just my name or Donald Trumps name on the ballotits the kind of country we want. Hillary https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
11:33 am:
You can vote for a hopeful, inclusive, big-hearted vision for America. Hillary https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s pic.twitter.com/JJcIfaLSSf Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
11:31 am:
I believe that she will win!
I believe that she will win! https://t.co/DhNoz11ARV Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
11:19 am:
"I am so excited that I finally get to vote for my mom in a few hours. @ChelseaClinton https://t.co/jfd3CXLD1s Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
11:17 am: Tiny New Hampshire towns release first voting results in 2016 election.
11:16 am: Today, we're going to win the great state of Michigan and we are going to win back the White House: Trump.
11:14 am:
The analyst has only missed 1 election since 1912. https://t.co/pzehVJ8JOE New York Post (@nypost) November 8, 2016
10:40 am: Hillary Clinton wins the midnight vote in Dixville Notch, N.H., beating Donald Trump 4 votes to 2.
10:30 am: Voters in small New Hampshire town cast votes at midnight, kicking off U.S. presidential elections.
Final rally of the Hillary Clinton campaign in Raleigh, N.C., and it's officially Tuesday, Nov. 8. pic.twitter.com/EhOKHvnHtA Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) November 8, 2016
27 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year.
Millions have already voted.
Ready to join them? https://t.co/jfd3CXu1CS pic.twitter.com/IxkmR36MhL Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 8, 2016
Today's front page: With the race still too close to call, Election Day is finally here https://t.co/3FbdBXDeTl pic.twitter.com/6NRep0Qu1R New York Post (@nypost) November 8, 2016
10:05 am: 'Dream big,' Trump urges supporters on the eve of US election.
Unbelievable evening in New Hampshire - THANK YOU! Flying to Grand Rapids, Michigan now.
Watch NH rally here: https://t.co/5ajbpTtQuK pic.twitter.com/cdRfnxIZqj Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2016
Starting tomorrow it's going to be #AmericaFirst! Thank you for a great morning Sarasota, Florida!
Watch here: https://t.co/VQARCgmZt2 pic.twitter.com/p6f2TRwbLB Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2016
10:00 am: Hillary Clinton: 'We build bridges not walls'.
9:49 am: Preparations are underway on US Election eve as tight presidential contest between Clinton and Trump winds down.
9:44 am: US progress will go down the drain if Hillary Clinton doesn't win, says President Obama.
9:30 am: Mike Pence says Donald Trump embodies the 'spirit of America'.
9:10: When you see real Americans coming up to you this way, it's awesome. I am betting that tomorrow, you will reject fear, and choose hope: Donald Trump Jr.
8:55 am: Outgoing US President Barack Obama urges voters to reject fear and choose hope.
Column: A backgrounder for the US Presidential elections
8:40 am: If his closest advisers don't trust him to tweet, why would we trust him with nuclear codes?: Barack Obama on Trump.
8:25 am: We don't want to shrink the vision of this country, we want to keep expanding it: Hillary Clinton.
8:20 am: I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became: Hillary Clinton addressing a rally in Philadelphia.
Million-dollar question: Who are you betting on--Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?
8:15 am: We love this country, not that we are blind to its faults but I still believe that America's best days are yet to come: Hillary Clinton.
8:10 am: This elections there is choice b/w division & unity,b/w economy that works for everyone or that works only for those on top: Hillary Clinton.
7:55 am: America am betting with you again; betting for your tomorrow, don't cast vote for someone who has no respect for constitution: Barack Obama.
Read more: US presidential elections 2016
7:40 am: Can't trust Donald Trump with nuclear codes: US President Barack Obama in Philadelphia.
Outstanding 3 for 3 debate sweep for @HillaryClinton! Nobody has ever been more prepared to be @POTUS. President Obama (@POTUS) October 20, 2016
Voted early today. Make sure you vote too: https://t.co/SUUmUADsHj pic.twitter.com/NMesNhwsaG President Obama (@POTUS) October 7, 2016
7:30 am: Hillary Clinton is strong and tough like American people, and she knows that Govt service is not for her but for you: Barack Obama.
7:20 am: You just don't have to vote against someone, you have someone outstanding to vote for in Hillary Clinton: Barack Obama.
OneIndia News
Kochi police book 12-year-old boy for impregnating minor
Kochi
oi-Anusha
Kochi police booked a 12-year-old boy for impregnating a girl 2 months short of turning 18 years recently. A case was also registered against the hospital where the girl delivered after hospital authorities failed to inform the police immediately.
The 12-year-old has been booked under sec 75 of Juvenile Justice Act for impregnating the girl 2 months before she turned 18 years old. The police allege that the hospital breached POCSO act by failing to inform them of the case immediately. The hospital however claims that the girl was 18 years old when she approached them and delivered her baby and hence not a minor.
The hospital authorities added that the childline was informed as soon as they learnt that a 12-year-old had fathered the child. "The young mother's relatives told us that a 12-year-old had fathered the child and we alerted the childline accordingly. All documents and records related to the young mother was also handed over", said a source from the hospital.
The childline alerted the local Kalamassery police after receiving information from the hospital leading to a case being registered against the minor boy. The young mother's grandparents, in a sitting with Child Welfare Commission, declared that they were not ready to bring up the new born. The baby girl is now under the case of CWC.
OneIndia News
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Story first published: Tuesday, November 8, 2016, 12:55 [IST]
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Chinese tourists wield influence over world economy Updated: 2016-11-08 11:19 (People's Daily Online)
Chinese tourists visit Tokyo's Ginza district for shopping in August. Japan is the second-most popular overseas destination. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Statistics released by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) show that the number of Chinese tourists reached 4.12 billion in 2015, and the number of outbound tourists was 120 million.
Chinese tourists make a major contribution to the world economy
Chinese tourists spent a whopping 684.1 billion yuan ($100.9 billion) overseas in 2015, or 11,625 yuan per capita. Of that, more than 7,000 yuan was spent in developed countries including Japan, South Korea and the US.
Chinese tourists are focusing more than ever on the quality of travelling experiences. Generally speaking, higher service quality requires a higher consumption level. According to Wei Xiang, an associate professor with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), it costs up to 200 euros ($221) to stay one night in some villages in northern Europe, which is even more expensive than multi-star hotels. However, for Chinese tourists who prioritize personalized travel, price is by no means a problem.
Analysts said more and more Chinese tourists are now willing to invest overseas when travelling abroad. "Some tourists will consider buying real estate instead of staying in hotels when they find a favorable environment overseas," Wu Ya, CEO of China Business Network explained.
Security a priority for Chinese tourists
Li, an experienced travel guide, remarked that Chinese tourists consider security to be of utmost importance when choosing a travel destination.
Liu Tao, general manager of an international travel agency in Beijing, concluded that perceived dangers affecting travel destinationsincluding "floods, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural force majeure factors," according to Liucause tourists to choose alternative destinations.
Chinese tourists benefit destination countries
A report released last year by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) showed that Australia's economic development benefited a great deal from the country's tourism industry, and that China was Australia's largest source of tourists. Data also indicated that Chinese tourists spent up to AU$5,416 per capita in Australia.
The report pointed out that the expansion of the aviation industry and more relaxed visa policies have enhanced Chinese tourists' enthusiasm for traveling abroad.
The power of Chinese tourists cannot be ignored
Statistics from the US Travel and Tourism Administration show that the number of Chinese tourists in the US reached 3 million in 2015, a year-on-year increase of 16 percent. Tourists in the US spent $6,000 to $7,000 per capita, much more than in other countries.
Gao Tianming, a researcher at CASS, offered a contrasting example: "The number of Chinese mainland tourists to Taiwan decreased sharply since May due to securities problems. Many people working in the tourism industry took to the streets to protest the inaction of local authorities."
Chinese buyers eye London property Updated: 2016-11-08 13:48 (chinadaily.com.cn)
Estate agents' boards advertising homes for sale stand near a block of flats in London, Oct 31, 2016. [Photo/VCG]
Chinese investors have increased their focus on London's property market partly due to pound depreciation and new restrictions on property purchases in China, the Financial Times reports.
Chinese investment in London's most exclusive areas shows an increasing trend since the Brexit vote at the end of June. Investment in the commercial property market has also been increasing this year, despite other investors withdrawing capital.
The number of inquiries from Chinese buyers about British properties reached a record level in September, according to data from Juwai.com, an online property portal.
During the third quarter this year, the proportion of Chinese purchases of up-market London homes rose to 2.6 percent from 1.8 percent in the second quarter, according to real estate agent Hamptons International.
Charles McDowell, a high-end London real estate agent, said he sold a home in Mayfair to a Chinese buyer for 160 million pounds ($198 million) after the Brexit vote. "The weak pound has made a difference to them... In fact, it has saved the London real estate market," he told the newspaper.
The increase in the commercial property market was even more obvious: in the six months leading up to the Brexit vote, Chinese buyers poured $1.7 billion into London commercial property, a 75 percent rise from a year earlier, according to Knight Frank, a property consultancy.
Despite the economic uncertainty created by Brexit, Chinese buyers see the British currency and property markets as stable in the long term, the newspaper said.
Sixty percent of Chinese people with assets of more than $1.5 million planned to buy property overseas in the next three years, according to a survey conducted by Hurun Institute. Half of them said Renminbi depreciation was the key concern.
Agencies contributed to this story.
China's October exports down 3.2%, imports up 3.2% Updated: 2016-11-08 13:46 (Xinhua)
A container ship docks at the Port of Ningbo, East China's Zhenjiang province. [Photo/Xinhua]
BEIJING - China's exports in yuan-denominated terms narrowed previous drops to fall 3.2 percent year on year in October, while imports picked up steam by increasing 3.2 percent, customs data showed on Tuesday.
Foreign trade volume reached 325.2 billion yuan ($47.97 billion) in October.
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Chinese and South Korean artists show their works in Beijing Updated: 2016-11-08 08:07 By Lin Qi(China Daily)
The China-Korea Art Exchange Exhibition shows paintings and calligraphic works by artists from the two countries.[Photo provided to China Daily]
There's been a rise in exchanges between Chinese and South Korean cultural circles in the past few years.
This includes official events such as an exhibition of contemporary sculptures that is now being held at the Shandong Art Museum in East China's Jinan city and another exhibition of classical Chinese, Korean and Japanese paintings from the 15th century to the 19th century at Beijing's National Museum of China.
Exchanges at the grassroots level also bring artists of the two countries togetherand an exhibition in Beijing's Songzhuang art district is doing just that. The China-Korea Art Exchange Exhibition is showing paintings and calligraphic pieces that reveal similarities and differences in art of the two countries.
Some 60 artists from both countries have interpreted East Asian cultural features in their modern works on show here. The Korean Fine Arts Association's Pyeongtaek branch initiated the exhibition by bringing dozens of artists who are active in producing oil works, ink paintings and watercolor works.
Beijing's Fine Arts Equivalence Gallery, where the exhibition is being held, has presented Chinese artists with different orientations of contemporary art, the current show curator Bai Yefu says.
Many featured Chinese artists are still in their 20s and 30s, and their works demonstrate an experimental spirit, he says.
Poon Kan-chi, 29, a Beijing-based artist originally from Hong Kong, shows one painting from her Dragonfly 03 series in the current China-Korea exhibition. In the work she created earlier this year, she portrays a vividly colorful scene in which a dragonfly is surrounded by clusters of flowers, through which she addresses the intimacy of "private space in a rapidly changing world", she says.
Poon also works with digital photography, sculpture and video through which she expresses people's pursuit of personal identity.
"Young artists boast great vitality in trying various mediums and ways of expression," says Bai. "The distinctiveness of their approaches shows a broader vision because of their exposure to global art since an early age. They also gain strength from cultural traditions and such exposure will only take them to higher levels."
Korean artists include Yeon Soon-ok, who is presenting a traditional ink painting of bamboo, a shared cultural symbol of "righteousness" in East Asia; and Hwang Jea-sung whose oil on canvas has animation characters in a dream sequence, exploring the distinction between fantasy and reality.
Bai says works like Yeon's painting speak to long-standing cultural links in this part of the world: Chinese literati painting reached a peak during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, and influenced many Korean artists who further developed a style of their own.
The Korean works will travel to other cities, introducing the diversity of contemporary Korean art to more Chinese who know a lot about the country's TV dramas, pop culture and cosmetics.
If you go
9 am-6 pm, through Nov 20. Block C 106, Shangpu Art Zone, Songzhuang, Tongzhou district, Beijing. 010-8951-5019.
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Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Thijs Hovers, co-portfolio manager and co-owner of Lucerne Capital said that active investors need to get away from indices when they are trying to find out where the growth is in Europe. Speaking at the latest Opalesque 2016 New York Roundtable, Hovers explained that a large part of European equity indices are banks, which are suffering from low net interest margins, profitability and earnings. Another heavily weighted sector within the indexes is integrated energy/oil services, whose earnings have collapsed as well. Utility companies are under pressure as well from nuclear write down liabilities and legislative pressures from the governments that basically want more money from them. "So you are left actually with sort of half of the index which is just not growing their earnings, and the other half is being basically deflated away by that," Hovers added. He said, "If you look at Europe top down, taking say the STOXX 600 to STOXX 50, you dont see a phenomenon. But then, if you go again a little lower in the market range, for example, look at the MDAX in Germany or the Dutch mid-cap index, et cetera, there the earnings and free cash yields are actually growing at a quite high rate especially if you take the sectors out that are under pressure. I think thats a big problem for the European indices in ge...................... To view our full article Click here
Opalesque Industry Update - Franklin Templeton Investments Corp. has introduced Franklin K2 Alternative Strategies Fund to accredited retail investors in Canada. Previously available only to institutional investors in Canada, this multi-manager, liquid alternative strategy provides access to top-tier hedge fund managers with strong track records of delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns over multiple market cycles. With its diversified portfolio of hedge strategies, the fund seeks to provide attractive risk-adjusted returns with reduced portfolio volatility and lower correlations to traditional asset classes. "We are pleased to open this fund to Canadians who are looking for an investment that can potentially reduce volatility in unpredictable markets, while providing the potential for attractive risk-adjusted returns," said Duane Green, managing director, Canada, Franklin Templeton Investments Corp. "Franklin K2 Alternative Strategies Fund provides a unique approach among hedge fund structures available in Canada, including offering a lower flat fee relative to the norm for hedge fund pricing, as well as daily liquidity and sub-advisor transparency." The fund invests substantially all of its assets in the underlying FTIF Franklin K2 Alternative Strategies Fund1, which is managed by portfolio managers David Saunders, founding managing director, Brooks Ritchey, senior managing director and head of portfolio construction, and Rob Christian, senior managing director and head of research, at K2 Advisors. The portfolio management team dynamically allocates FTIF Franklin K2 Alternative Strategies Fund's assets across multiple unaffiliated managers who pursue hedged strategies, including event driven, global macro, long short equity and relative value.2 Each of these sub-advisors in turn invests across a range of securities, which may include but are not limited to, equity and equity-related securities, debt securities, financial derivative instruments and exchange-traded notes. "A key benefit of including alternatives in an individual investor's portfolio is that returns are less correlated with traditional long stock or long bond portfolios," said Ritchey. "Rather, returns are driven by manager stock selection expertise and enhanced investment flexibility. By having the ability to have both long and short exposure, the manager has a greater opportunity to generate returns in both rising and falling markets." FTIF Franklin K2 Alternative Strategies Fund's current set of sub-advisors includes: Impala Asset Management, LLC
Chilton Investment Company, LLC
Jennison Associates, LLC
Wellington Management Company, LLP
Portland Hill Capital LLP
P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, L.P.
Halcyon Capital Management L.P.
Basso Capital Management, L.P.
Chatham Asset Management, LLC
Lazard Asset Management, LLC
Loomis, Sayles & Company, L.P.
Graham Capital Management, L.P.
EMSO Partners Limited Graham Capital Management, L.P. K2 Advisors, part of the solutions team at Franklin Templeton Investments, provides integrated hedge fund and alternative product solutions covering multiple strategies to institutional and high net worth investors as well as liquid alternative fund offerings for retail investors worldwide, with over $10 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2016. Products and services offered include single investor custom-tailored investment programs, commingled funds of hedge funds, and strategic advisory relationships. The Stamford, CT-based firm has a global presence with 116 employees and offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney.
Buried in Sunday's news was the announcement that the U.S. military has begun a "major military" offensive in Raqqa, Syria, the self-declared capital of ISIS.
Approximately 30,000 fighters will participate in the U.S.-led operation. The group expected to carry out the bulk of the fighting is the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or the YPG. The YPG is the military extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group that is on the U.S. terrorism list.
(It is not known if U.S. officials were asked about the duplicity of declaring the PKK a terrorist group while at the same time working with them in the region.)
The U.S. will first attempt to seal off Raqqa before venturing into the city itself -- actions that government officials say will not be completed prior to Barack Obama leaving office.
"We always advertised that the isolation phase (of Raqqa) is going to take months," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford was quoted as saying on Sunday.
The announcement paves the way for Hillary Clinton to declare a no-fly zone in northeastern Syria upon entering the Oval Office.
A no-fly zone would "require us to go to war against Syria and Russia," Danford told the Senate in September.
In discussing no-fly zones on Friday, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said, "for us to declare a no-fly zone means get ready for war with Russia." In a separate interview, Stein said, "this is a mushroom cloud waiting to happen."
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Taipei Palace Museum to sue Beijing museum for copyright infringement Updated: 2016-11-08 11:25 By Bi Nan(chinadaily.com.cn)
One of China's best-known ancient paintings, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, is shown in its entirety for the first time in more than 360 years in the Taipei Palace Museum, June 1, 2011. [Photo by Zheng Lvzhong/Asianewsphoto]
The Taipei Palace Museum will file a lawsuit against the Palace Museum in Beijing for violating its copyright by including three of its collections in a painting album without authorization.
According to the Beijing Youth Daily, the Taipei Palace Museum has been preparing documents since November 3, but is yet to file them in a Beijing court.
Law experts say that if the Taipei Palace Museum files a lawsuit in Beijing, due to the different intellectual property regulations, the Taipei side has to not only prove that it owns the copyright of the litigated paintings, but also that the Beijing side has conducted the infringement act according to China's Copyright Law.
Three paintings including Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains are referred to as copyright offense
According to Taipei Palace Museum staff, a painting album published by the Palace Museum in Beijing contains images of three paintings: Travelers among Mountains and Streams, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, and Early Spring, which are now among the Taipei museum's collections.
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is one of the few surviving works by the painter Huang Gongwang, and was burnt into two pieces in 1650, with one of them stored today at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou while the other kept at the Taipei Palace Musuem. The two halves were reunited for the first time in 2011 at the Taipei Palace Museum during an exhibition.
Though the Palace Museum in Beijing marks below each image that they are from the Taipei Palace Museum, the Beijing side shall submit official application for an authorization before usage, according to Taipei museum's copyright usage regulations.
The Taipei side claimed that after finding the three paintings, they had tried to contact the Beijing side in November and December last year to ask for a supplementary application, but no reply was received.
Therefore, the Taipei Palace Museum decided to file a lawsuit against the Palace Museum in Beijing for copyright offenses. So far, the Beijing side hasn't made an official response.
Advanced Carbon Materials Market Will Witness Growth Based On Rising Demand For Composites In Automotive Sector Till 2024: Grand View Research, Inc.
The global advanced carbon materials market() is expected to reach USD 5.29 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing demand for fiberglass products in construction, automotive and energy applications, as a lightweight material, is likely to have a positive impact. Furthermore, technological advancement for the development of carbon nanomaterials is expected to increase the industry penetration over the next eight years.The demand for graphene was 481.2 tons in 2015 and is projected to witness growth in light of its increasing usage as a protective coating for manufacturing flexible electronic devices and smartphones. In addition, companies are focusing on innovation to develop products catering to niche applications. In June 2015, Sweden-based Graphensic developed a new graphene-derived resistance standard measurement kit which is capable of observing Quantum Hall effect at high temperature and low magnetic temperature.Further key findings from the report suggest: Energy is expected to foresee revenue growth at a CAGR of 6.8% from 2016 to 2024. Growing demand for photovoltaic (PV) cells in light of providing high efficiency as compared to conventional solar devices is expected to promote the usage of advanced materials, particularly carbon nanotubes as filling agents. Aerospace & defense generated revenue worth USD 1.06 billion in 2015. Increasing utilization of CFRP for manufacturing fuselage components and wing boxes for optimizing aerodynamic efficiency is likely to have a positive impact on market growth over the next eight years. Fibers are likely to witness volume growth at a CAGR of 6.5% from 2016 to 2024. Significant demand for carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) in automotive, construction and electronics applications in light of providing excellent high initial strength-to-weight ratio is expected to remain a favorable factor. Asia Pacific generated a revenue of USD 878.2 million in 2015 and is anticipated to witness substantial gains over the forecast period on account of the expansion of the manufacturing sector. In May 2016, Foxconn announced the establishment of Apple iPhone manufacturing facility at USD 10 billion in Maharashtra by 2020. This initiative is expected to open new markets for these advanced materials over the forecast period. Key manufacturers include Toray Industries, Hexcel, Mitsubishi Rayon, Showa Denko, Thomas Swan, Graphenea SA, and Graphene Laboratories. Companies are focusing on new product development and formation of strategic alliances with technological companies. For instance, in July 2016, Showa Denko developed a new grade of carbon nanotube under the brand name, VGCFTM-X, with optimized design for resin composite applications.Grand View Research has segmented the global advanced carbon materials market by product, application, and region:Product Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Carbon fibers Graphene Carbon nanotubes Structural graphite Carbon foamsApplication Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Aerospace & Defense Energy Electronics Sports Automotive Construction OthersRegional Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) North Americao U.S. Europeo Germanyo UK Asia Pacifico Chinao Japan Latin Americao Brazil Middle East & Africa (MEA)About Grand View ResearchGrand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Press ContactSherry James - Corporate Relations Specialist28 2nd Street, Suite 3036San Francisco, CA 94105United StatesPhone: 1-415-349-0058Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com
Molecular Cytogenetics Market To Witness Growth Based On Increasing Incidence Of Congenital & Genetic Disorders And The Subsequent Rise In The Early Disease Diagnostics Till 2022: Grand View Research, Inc.
http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/molecular-cytogenetics-market
http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/molecular-cytogenetics-market
http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry/biotechnology
Global molecular cytogenetics market() is expected to reach nearly USD 3.6 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc.Increasing instances of both, chromosomal anomalies implicated in genetic disorders and cancer, coupled with technological advancements in the molecular cytogenetic techniques is expected to positively reinforce the market growth.Technological advancements in molecular diagnostic techniques, such as the Fluorescence In-situ Hybridization (FISH) and the Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH) are enabling rapid analysis of patient data to identify the potential risk factors. Increasing applications of FISH and CGH in molecular diagnostics are expected to propel the market growth in the next seven years.The advent of the genome wide screening technique, the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology enables the detection of a number of chromosomal variations in parallel by comparing genomic sequences of patient and control samples.The NGS technique empowers the clinicians in taking therapeutic decisions based on in-depth information regarding an individuals genetic profile; and hence, the introduction of such technologies is expected to positively reinforce the market growth during the forecast period. Initiatives such as the precision medicine initiative announced by the U.S. president are expected to further drive the demand for the molecular cytogenetic tests.In 2014, the CGH in the technology segment held the maximum market share of 52% owing to enhanced technical specifications such as high speed, accuracy, and high resolution images as compared to the FISH technology. Furthermore, the CGH technology is also expected be the fastest growing segment with a lucrative CAGR of nearly 26% over the forecast period.In 2014, the application of molecular cytogenetics in cancer held the largest market share of over 42%. The high demand for preventive screening and diagnosis, which significantly aids the early detection of risk factors that lead to oncogenesis, are amongst the key factors responsible for the cancer segments high share. Cancer was followed by the personal medicine segment with a market share of over 23%. In conclusion, the cancer segment is expected to be the fastest growing market with a high CAGR of 24.1% over the forecast period.Browse full research report on Global Molecular Cytogenetics Market:Further key findings from the study suggest: In 2014, North America held the largest market share of 47.6%. The large share is attributed to the presence of high-tech R&D facilities, well established manufacturing infrastructure, and active collaborations between private stakeholders, such as technology companies, research centers, universities, patients, as well as government agencies such as the U.S. FDA and CDC that ensure that the new technologies are validated. Asia Pacific is expected to witness lucrative CAGR of nearly 26% in the next seven years owing to the high unmet medical needs such as the increasing prevalence of cancer, genetic, and other hereditary diseases. Key factors contributing to the swift growth ar the rapid development in fast growing Asian economies such as India, China, and others, the increasing healthcare expenditure to improve R&D activities, rapid proliferation of advanced diagnostic technologies, and the increasing awareness about the genetic and molecular screening tests; these crucial factors are expected to synergistically propel the market growth over the forecast period. The global molecular cytogenetics market is dominated by players such as Abbott Laboratories Inc., Illumina, Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc., Applied Spectral Imaging, Inc., PerkinElmer, Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., and others.Browse more reports of this category by Grand View Research:Grand View Research has segmented the global molecular cytogenetics market on the basis of technology outlook, application outlook, and regional outlook.Global Molecular Cytogenetics Market, Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) FISH CGHGlobal Molecular Cytogenetics Market, Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) Genetic Disorders Cancer Personalized Medicine OthersGlobal Molecular Cytogenetics Market, Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) North America Europe Asia Pacific RoWAbout Grand View ResearchGrand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Press ContactSherry James - Corporate Relations Specialist28 2nd Street, Suite 3036San Francisco, CA 94105United StatesPhone: 1-415-349-0058Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com
Christensen Law Announces Return of Safe Ride Home for Thanksgiving Eve
https://www.davidchristensenlaw.com/
Christensen Law is proud to announce the return of its "Safe Ride Home" program for people who have had too much to drink on Thanksgiving Eve.According to Michigan State Police, Thanksgiving Eve is one of the biggest bar nights of the entire year. Christensen Law wants to help make sure that family and friends wont have the tragedy of empty seats at the Thanksgiving table because their loved ones stopped for drinks on their way home the night before.Last years debut of the Safe Ride Home program for Thanksgiving Eve 2015 was a great success, with 125 people taking advantage of the program. Since then, Safe Ride Home has since turned into a community service offered by Christensen Law on various holidays.How Safe Ride Home WorksIf youve had too much to drink on Thanksgiving Eve, just call a cab or Uber to take you from the bar to your home. Pay for the ride that night and get a receipt. The next day, simply email a copy of your receipt along with a copy of your drivers license to saferidehome@davidchristensenlaw.com to receive a reimbursement of up to $35.Restrictions:-Offer is good on Nov. 23 - 24, 2016, from 7:00 p.m. - 4 a.m.-You must be at least 21 years old.-Maximum reimbursement up to $35, good for a one-way ride to your home.-Receipts must be received by Christensen Law by midnight on November 28, 2016 to be eligible for reimbursement.-Ride must be within Wayne, Macomb, Oakland and Washtenaw counties.-Provider of ride must be a licensed taxi company or Uber.-Email a copy of the official taxi company or Uber receipt along with a copy of your valid drivers license to saferidehome@davidchristensenlaw.com OR send those materials via U.S. Mail to Christensen Law Safe Ride Home, 25925 Telegraph Rd., Suite 200, Southfield, MI 48033.Call Christensen Law at 248-213-4900 for more details.Christensen Law is a personal injury law firm that specializes in helping victims of automobile and truck accidents. For more info visit:Founder David Christensen earned his law degree, with honors, as well as a Masters Degree from the University of Michigan. Currently, he is Chairman of the Michigan Association for Justices no-fault committee, past chairman of the negligence section of the Michigan State Bar, and is a member of the Council of Chief Justices Civil Justice Initiative. He testifies before the Michigan legislature, and his expertise has led to appointments to key positions that affect the development of Michigans no-fault law. In 2012, Christensen was chosen as a Leader in the Law by Michigan Lawyers Weekly.David Christensen Law25925 Telegraph Rd.Suite 200Southfield, MI 48033248-213-49003049 Miller Rd.Ann Arbor, MI 48103734-890-5200
Bavarian Inn Doll & Toy Shop Joins Local Merchants to Celebrate Neighborhood Toy Store Day on Nov. 12
www.astratoy.org
www.bavarianinn.com
http://www.logos-communications.com/bavarianinn/
Shoppers looking to get a head start on the holidays will discover a collection of unique gifts for the younger set as the Bavarian Inn Restaurants Doll & Toy Shop joins with two other local merchants in observance of "Neighborhood Toy Store Day," a national event, on Saturday, Nov. 12.From 11 a.m. 4 p.m., the Doll & Toy Shop will offer register to win prizes, games and new product demonstrations, balloons, special Toy Store Day pricing, visits with Elsa and Anna (from 2 4 p.m.), and more. In addition, shoppers purchasing more than $25 in merchandise at the Doll & Toy Shop will be entered into a grand prize drawing.Meanwhile at the nearby Frankenmuth River Place Shops, Mother Earth's Toy Jungle, a store carrying gifts, toys, educational items, and home to Roxie Rex -- a life-size baby T-Rex -- will have giveaways all day, wheel of prizes, new toy demonstrations, face painting, treats and more.The Frankenmuth Toy Company and Kite Kraft, 618 S. Main Street, will be debuting its collection of "Best Toys of 2016" from 2-4 p.m. In addition, the shop will be staging game demonstrations with prizes, Crazy Aaron Putty station, and make a postcard for the military to enter big prize drawings.Neighborhood Toy Store Day is sponsored by the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, which represents smaller, independent toy dealers, and supports those merchants committed to providing children with healthy, quality products that have high play value. To learn more, visitAbout Bavarian InnCelebrating 125 years of service in 2013, the Bavarian Inn Restaurant has become a Michigan landmark. Generations of diners, lodgers and tourists from around the globe have discovered true Bavarian hospitality thanks to Dorothy and her late husband William "Tiny" Zehnder. Guests experience the old-world European charm of the Bavarian Inn whether its the famous chicken dinners, fresh baked goods or Michigans greatest selection of German beer. Bavarian Inn also prides itself on being one of the top consumers of Pure Michigan agricultural products. Nestled within a backdrop of authentic German architecture, a variety of shops and other fun activities, a trip to Frankenmuth would not be complete without a visit to the Bavarian Inn. Learn more atBavarian Inn online press room:713 S. Main StreetFrankenmuth, MI
Industrial Control And Factory Automation Market Size, Share, Analysis, Report and Forecast to 2022
According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Industrial Control and Factory Automation market is accounted for $138.56 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $242.10 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 8.3%. Rapid advancement of Information Technology and the diversion of the manufacturing sector towards the adoption of automated technologies have revolutionized the manufacturing sector. Adoption of IoT (Internet of Things) and advancement in M2M (Mobile to Mobile) communication technology in the industrial sector, the need of optimal use of resources, waste reduction and increase in process efficiency are of prime concern in manufacturing industries, these all are fueling up the market. High investment requirement and advanced infrastructure requirements are some of the major restraining factors.Robotic arms segment is estimated to be the dominant segment in market owing to its advantages in handling, better precision, reduction in labor costs and reduction in the risks of exposure to production hazards. Process industry segment is estimated to be the stagnant segment in order to its varied applications and vast structure. North America accounted for the largest share of market, while Asia Pacific is estimated to be the fastest growing, attributed to growing industrial sector in emerging countries such as China and India. Factory automation is increasing in China, due to the large number of automotive manufacturing plants.Some of the key players of the Industrial Control and Factory Automation market include ABB Ltd., Ametek Inc, Aspen Technology Inc, Emerson Electric Corporation, General Electric, Honeywell International, Inc., Johnson Controls, Inc., Mitsubishi Electric, National Instrument Corporation, Omron, Rockwell Automation, Inc., Schnieder Electric, Siemens AG, Yokogawa Electric Corporation and Texas Instruments Inc..End-Users Covered: Discrete Industryo Aerospace & Defenseo Automotive & Transportationo Electrical and Electronicso Machine Manufacturingo Other Discrete Industries Process Industryo Chemicalso Food & Beverageso Mining & Metalso Oil & Gaso Paper & Pulpo Petrochemicals & Fertilizerso Pharmaceuticalso Powero Printing and Packagingo Textileo Water & Wastewater Managemento Other Process IndustriesTechnologies Covered: Distributed Control System (DCS) Human-Machine Interface Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)System Types Covered: Electric Drives Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Field Devices Industrial Control Systems Machine Vision Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) Motion & Drives Relays & Switches Sensors Other System TypesComponents Covered: Control Valveso Ball Valveo Butterfly Valveo Diaphragm Valveo Gate Valveo Globe Valveo Plug Valveo Other Control Valves Industrial Networkso Wireless Networkv Short-Range Wi-Fi Bluetooth Other Short range networksv Cellular Technologieso Wired Network (Industrial Ethernet) Industrial Robotso Cartesian Robotso Cylindrical Robotso Jointed-Arm Robotso Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Armso Other Industrial Robots Field Instrumentso Transmitters Machine Visiono Camerav Digital Camerav Smart Camerao Frame Grabbero Opticso Led Lightingo Processors and Software Enclosures Control Deviceso Driveso Relays and Switcheso Servo Motors CablesRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancements.We offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC 17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg, MD, 20877, USA
Building Thermal Insulation Market Size, Share, Analysis, Report and Forecast to 2022
According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Building Thermal Insulation market is accounted for $24.65 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach $34.41 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 4.9%. Nurtured environmental benefits attached with these materials have resulted in gradual increase of residential as well as industrial buildings, but inhibiting carbon footprints is making it a government supported incentive. Focused Green House Gases emission reduction and cost efficiency are factors hailing the market, whereas lack of awareness and slow growth are the factors inhibiting the scenario.Wool insulation accounted for largest market share but plastic foam segment witnessed highest growth owing to higher thermal resistance, versatility, strength and higher life span. Increasing residential spaces had registered a flawless growth in roof insulation application and vice versa. North America is holding the largest market share followed by Europe, attributing to stringent energy efficiency regulations for buildings that drive the penetration of insulation in the overall building stock and increase the amount of insulation needed per building.Some of the key players of the Building Thermal Insulation market include Atlas Roofing Corporation, BASF SE, Beijing New Building Material (Group) Co. Ltd., Certain Teed, Dow Building solutions, GAF, Huntsman Corporation, Johns Manville Inc., Kingspan Group PLC, Knauf Insulation, Owens Corning Corporation, Paroc, Rockwool International A/S and Saint-Gobain.End-Users Covered: Residential insulationo Individual homes Non-Residential insulationo Officeso Factorieso Institutionso Hospitalso Shopping Mallso Other public buildingsTypes Covered: Plastic Foamso EPSo Pur Foamso XPSo Other Plastic Foamsv Phenolic Foamsv Polyisocyanurate Insulation Wool Insulationo Glass Woolo Stone WoolApplications Covered: Wall Insulationo Cavity Wallso External Wallso Internal Walls Floor Insulation Roof Insulationo Flat Roofo Pitch RoofRegions Covered: North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo Germanyo Franceo Italyo UKo Spaino Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao Indiao Australiao New Zealando Rest of Asia Pacific Rest of the Worldo Middle Easto Brazilo Argentinao South Africao EgyptWhat our report offers:- Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 7 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancements.We offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC 17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg, MD, 20877, USA
Neurodiagnostics Market Will Witness Growth Based On Increasing Prevalence Of Neurodegenerative Diseases Such As Alzheimers Disease Till 2024
http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/neurodiagnostics-market
The global neurodiagnostics market() was valued at 13.6 billion in 2015 and is expected to reach a value of USD 18.3 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Key factors driving the market growth include increasing prevalence of neurological diseases due to demographic changes and growing awareness of their management. In addition, consistent technological modifications coupled with increased preference for novel diagnostic technologies will further fuel the market. The economic burden of neurological diseases is extremely high on society and governments with around 1 billion people suffering globally.Among all the neuroimaging techniques, computed tomography has the largest market share followed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Computed Tomography (CT) uses ionized radiations for the purpose of creating images, whereas MRI uses radio waves in a magnetic field. Neuroimaging techniques are used to detect brain injuries, developmental malformations in the brain area, vascular irregularities that may lead to stroke, epilepsy, etc.Biomarkers are an important part of in vitro diagnostics for neurological disorders as their development is targeted at the early disease diagnosis with information about nervous system. Although biomarkers are not commercially available in the market, their use is confined to clinical research settings. For instance, ELISA tests for Tau protein are available in clinical studies of Alzheimers disease. In addition, neuroinformatics is a field that studies neuroscience and information technology. This integration allows the storage of neurological data in the form databases. The neuroinformatics market is expected to grow at second highest growth rate during the forecast period.Further Key Findings From the Study Suggest: Increased life expectancy has resulted in increased geriatric population across the globe. The prevalence of aging-related neurological diseases such as Alzheimers disease and Parkinsons disease is on the rise. The diagnosis of these diseases includes neuroimaging, in vitro diagnosis, and neuroinformatics. CT and MRI are the most commonly used imaging techniques across the globe, which are mainly used to detect brain abnormalities. Neurological biomarkers are extremely promising as they provide a direction to the diagnostic studies. Although currently no commercial biomarker is available in the market, an extensive clinical research is happening to find out the perfect combinations of the biomarkers. North America held the major market share of around 36% in the year 2015 and will retain its top position during the forecast period. On the other hand, Asia Pacific will exhibit highest CAGR of 4% over the forecast period.Grand View Research has segmented the Neurodiagnostics market by Technology, and region:Technology Outlook (Market revenue in USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Neuroimaging Technologieso Computed Tomography (CT)o Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)o Nuclear Medicine Imaging (PET, SPECT)o Near Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging (NIRS)o Electroencephalography (EEG)o Magnetoencephalography (MEG)o Voxel-based Morphometry (VBM) In Vitro Diagnostics NeuroinformaticsRegional Outlook (Market Revenue in USD Million, 2013 - 2024) North Americao U.S.o Canada Europeo UKo Germany Asia Pacifico Japano Chinao India Latin Americao Brazilo Mexico Middle East and Africao South AfricaAbout Grand View ResearchGrand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Press ContactSherry James - Corporate Relations Specialist28 2nd Street, Suite 3036San Francisco, CA 94105United StatesPhone: 1-415-349-0058Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com
Cryptococcosis Market - Latest Innovations, Drivers, Dynamics And Strategic Analysis, Challenges & Industry Analysis By 2024
http://bit.ly/2eFfRT8
http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/
Cryptococcosis, also known as cryptococcal disease is a potentially fatal fungal disease. It is caused by inhalation of an encapsulated yeast called Cryptococcus neoformans. Cryptococcosis is believed to be acquired by inhalation of the infectious propagule from the environment. Although the exact nature of the infectious propagule is unknown, the leading hypothesis is the basidiospore created through sexual or asexual reproduction.Cryptococcosis market: Types of infectionThere are three identified Cryptococcus strains that causes disease worldwide namely Cryptococcus neoformans, Cryptococcus grubii and Cryptococcus gattii. Exposure via respiratory or the gastrointestinal tract are considered as the most common and opportunistic pathway for the organism entry in the host. Cryptococcus neoformans can be found worldwide in soil, birds, animals and humans. Whereas, alternative route of administration can be through transplant of infected tissue, surgical instrument or laboratory instruments. Cryptococcosis neoformans can affect a persons lungs causing pneumonia, or central nervous system causing meningitis.For Any Queries Get Solutions With A PDF Sample :People with impaired immunity, such as cancer or AIDS patients that acquire the cryptococcosis illness are predominantly infected with the C. neoformans and C. grubii, while C. gattii can cause illness in not only immunocompromised individuals but also among healthy individuals. In between 1999 and 2010, 281 cases of C. gattii have been reported to the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control among animals and human residing in Vancouver Island and surrounding areas within Canada and the northwest United States.Cryptococcosis market: TreatmentWith the availability highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), the management of cryptococcosis has become a combination of established antifungal treatments together with treatment of any other associated disease. Although the prevalent use of HAART has lowered the incidences of cryptococcosis in medically developed countries yet the incidences and mortality due to infection is still high in regions having limited access to healthcare, HAART and uncontrolled HIV disease. AIDS associated Cryptococcosis accounts for 50 percent of all Cryptococcal infections reported annually and usually occurs in HIV patients when their CD4 lymphocyte count is below 200/mm3.Cryptococcosis market: SegmentationMarket for Cryptococcosis can be segmented on the basis of anatomical location that is central nervous system, Cryptococcosis of bone and so on and risk groups which included HIV infected and organ transplant individual.In 2000, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) first published Practice Guidelines for the Management of Cryptococcal Disease based on clinical data evidences and expert opinion to manage and curb down the highly recognizable invasive fungal pathogen. However, over the past decade a series of new clinical issues and host risk groups have arisen which demands for revision of guideline to proper and efficient management of cryptococcosis.The major symptoms of cryptococcosis include fever, malaise, excessive coughing mental status changes and vision defects. Till date there are no novel drug or vaccines available specifically to treat cryptococcosis.Cryptococcosis market: Regions and key playersHuman disease is endemic in Australia, parts of Africa, the Mediterranean region, Papua New Guinea, India, Southern California, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay and south-east Asia. Some of the organization/ research centers working on the development of vaccine/drug include Pfizer Inc., Janssen Pharmaceutical, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, MedStar Health Research Institute among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
CloudQasts programmes and platform for England and Wales Magistrates
Damian Gaskin (left) and Lindsey Mack, of CloudQast.
http://www.cloudqast.com/_docs/ma2016.pdf
Magistrates in England and Wales can now access video-based online learning programmes, including guides on managing yourself, teamworking and making judicial decisions. Most of these programmes, commissioned by The Magistrates Association (MA), are the work of the leadership communications specialist, CloudQast, which has also provided the platform where these programmes reside.While working with the Judicial College which is responsible for arrangements for training the courts judiciary, including magistrates, in England and Wales - the MA, an independent, national charity, supports its 17,000 members in administering the law. It also educates people in the role of magistracy in England and Wales.The MAs Chief Executive, Chris Brace JP, explained, Since magistrates have to retire when they reach the age of 70, this means that around a third of the countrys stock of magistrates will retire over the next few years. This large turnover in the number of magistrates is likely to result in a training requirement and subsequent on-going continuing professional development (CPD) requirement that would be time-consuming, resources-heavy and costly to meet via traditional, instructor-led training alone.Video-based learning materials, delivered online to a range of devices provide a standardised, convenient and easily accessible solution, he added.Moreover, the CloudQast platform along with CloudQasts creative expertise in creating the videos for this platform gives every indication of being highly cost-effective. In addition, these videos help to engage and motivate learners which, given the many other calls on our members lives, increases the chances that theyll be used.That state of affairs can only benefit our members and the judicial system they serve.Some two years ago, the MA began exploring the idea of standardising its training and making it available online. Not only did this promise to reduce on-going training costs but it also made possible the option of magistrates throughout England and Wales carrying out their CPD activities online - when its convenient for them to do so, bearing in mind that most magistrates have to juggle the demands of a full-time job, a family, along with other hobbies and interests, in addition to the duties and responsibilities of being a magistrate.The Associations researches led it to CloudQast, which specialises in addressing organisations needs for fast, authentic, precise and inspiring communication especially in the fields of leadership as well as compliance, along with learning and development.CloudQasts platform now includes a number of videos of the Associations seminars, as well as some CloudQast-written materials featuring CloudQast directors, Lindsey Mack and Damian Gaskin.Giving evidence to the Justice Committee in the Palace of Westminster, in June 2016, the Magistrates Associations Chair, Malcolm Richardson JP, and the Deputy Chair, Sheena Jowett JP, explained that its important to give magistrates the option to learn online.They explained that, while the Judicial College provides all the learning materials for subjects that are mandated and essential for magistrates to learn, most magistrates are interested in taking their understanding beyond this core of knowledge. Thats where the MAs CloudQast-provided platform comes into its own offering programmes focusing on awareness and familiarisation training to help magistrates do their job more effectively.To read more about how CloudQast is helping the Magistrates Association, visitAbout The Magistrates AssociationThe Magistrates Association is a national charity governed by its members which aims to provide a voice for magistrates, support for its members in administering the law and to educate people in the role of magistracy in England and Wales. Its the independent voice of the 17,000 active magistrates in England and Wales. These magistrates deal with over 90% of criminal cases and comprise 85% of all judicial office holders.The Magistrates Association founded in 1920 operates under a Royal Charter, which was granted in 1962 and updated in 2013. Its established and incorporated to promote the sound administration of the law, including, but not restricted to, educating and instructing magistrates and others in the law, the administration of justice, the treatment of offenders and the prevention of crime. It also aims to educate the public about the role of magistrates. The Association has 58 branches throughout England and Wales. It doesnt operate in Scotland and Northern Ireland which operate different legal frameworks from that in England and Wales.About CloudQastEstablished in 2010, CloudQast addresses organisations needs for fast, authentic, precise and inspiring communication especially in the fields of leadership as well as compliance, along with learning and development. Working with companies around the world, primarily but not exclusively via Cloud-based, interactive video, CloudQast provides creative, intelligent and flexible solutions for leaders to share their voice, mind and vision and, so, engage and inspire their people.CloudQastThe Silver Birches, 6a Back Lane, Wymondham, Norfolk, United KingdomContact: Lindsey MackPR contact: Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0)1727 860405; email bob.little@boblittlepr.com
Latin America Current and Projected Mining Equipments Market size in terms of volume and value 2014-2020
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The mining industry is expected to witness growth with a single digit CAGR over the next six years on account of the further expanding demand for metal and mineral commodities. Latin America accounted for about 8% of the global mining equipment demand in 2013 and its contribution towards global mining equipment sales was registered at 15% for the same year. The region serves as the prime destination for mining exploration and investment at a global level.Request for sample report:The key reason which has accelerated the growth of the Latin American mining equipment market is the enhanced demand for the consumption of natural resources. Presently, the region produces about 45% of the global copper, 21% of the global zinc, 50% of the global silver and 26% of the global molybdenumproduction. In addition, foreign investment, especially from China, US, Canada and Australia, plays a significant role in the growth of the Latin American mining equipment market. Further, other operations such as the Panama Stock Operation (PSO), CSR activities, and introduction of next generation mining equipment such as Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) also serve as driving factors for the growth of the mining equipment market in Latin America. Among these, CSR activities primarily focus on rehabilitation and support programmes, promotion of healthy lifestyle and awareness programmes for the adoption of green technology. However, in the past few years, the mining industry and hence the mining equipment industry has been facing an economic crisis on account of the requirement for budget allocation in the maintenance of the mining industry and equipment, etc. Illegal mining operations at some locations and the risk associated with the mining industry serve as further constraints for the Latin American mining equipment industry.Surging demand and abundant availability of natural resources(including the worlds top three metal and mineral reserves of copper, zinc and silver rapid technological advancement, modernization of mining plants, stable legislations with a motivating legal environment, and the efficient budget allocation with aftermarket revenue generation will serve as opportunities for the development of the Latin America mining equipment market.Market segmentation of Latin American mining equipment can be done on the basis of equipment, application and countries. On the basis of equipment, the Latin American mining equipment market includes mineral processing equipment, surface mining equipment, underground mining equipment, mining drills and breakers, crushing and screening equipment, etc. On the basis of applications, the Latin American mining equipment market segmentation includes metal ore mining, coal mining and mineral mining. Chile, being the largest producer of copper, serves as a lucrative market for copper-based mining equipment. Colombia is an active exporter,and is the first Latin American coal-producing country alongwith the production of metals such as gold, silver and platinum and hence is the opportunistic market for the associated mining equipment market. On the basis of countries, the Latin American mining equipment market includes Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Panama, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Venezuela. Chile is known for the adoption and introduction of advanced technologies such as autonomous haulage system. Peru is the reserve of key minerals and has been witnessing a surging demand for copper and hence the expansion of the associated mining equipment market. Brazil has an integrated approach for the production and sale of mining equipment. Panama has an active stock operation (PSO) for the support of the mining industry. In line with the positive future of the Latin American mining equipment industry, Peru and Chile are expected to receive double digit foreign investment in $ Bn in the next six years.Request for TOC:Some of the prominent players of the global mining equipment market include Sandvik AB, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Komatsu Limited, Atlas Copco Ab Joy Global Inc. Breaker Technology, Astec Industries, Bucyrus International, Caterpillar Incorporated, China Coal Energy Company Limited, Tecpalsa, Tecmap, Tiesa and Igaretta. Among these, Komatsu Limited in the whole of Latin America, Tecpalsa in Colombia, Tecmap and Tiesa in Panama and Igaretta in Argentina are active players in the Latin American mining equipment market.About us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact us:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
UK 'will stick to planned EU departure plan' Updated: 2016-11-08 00:58 By Harvey Morris in London(chinadaily.com.cn)
David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union arrives at Downing Street in London, Britain October 24, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]
The UK government said on Monday it would stick to a March deadline to trigger Britain's departure from the European Union despite the setback of a High Court ruling that said Parliament must have a say on the issue.
David Davis, minister for exiting the EU, confirmed the government would appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court in early December but told the House of Commons there would be no second referendum and "no going back".
The government is contesting the High Court's view that it cannot trigger Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty by using the so-called royal prerogative.
The ruling reignited new controversy over the Brexit vote in the June referendum after pro-leave newspapers attacked the three judges for their decision as well as the private individuals who brought the case. The Daily Mail dubbed the judges "Enemies of the People" along with front-page pictures of them.
Davis said on Monday that the government valued both "the independence of the judiciary" and the "freedom of the press".
He said he was prepared to work constructively with other parties over the Brexit issue.
Davis said he expected the Supreme Court to swiftly deliver its decision on the appeal, although he was challenged by Keir Starmer, his Labour party opposite number, to say what his plans were if the appeal went against the government.
The government would be as open as possible about negotiations, Davis said. However, he said the involvement of Parliament meant handing over negotiations with the EU to its 650 MPs plus the House of Lords. That would weaken Britain's hand.
"Nobody begins by revealing his entire strategy," Davis said, reiterating the government's insistence that it will not give a running commentary on talks with EU in order not to reveal its negotiating hand.
He said there were plenty of MPs attempting to "thwart and reverse" the result of the June referendum, which resulted in a 52-48 percent vote to leave the EU.
Starmer agreed that "no one expects Government to reveal the details of its negotiating hand, but there are big headline issues." He said decisions on Brexit could not be taken in a vacuum.
Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing UKIP party, that campaigned for Brexit, said he was planning to lead a 100,000-strong march to the Supreme Court to coincide with the start of the government's appeal against what he sees as an attempt to delay or reverse Brexit.
To contact the reporter: harvey.morris@gmail.com
Baby Personal Care Market Analysis, Segments, Growth and Value Chain 2014-2020
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The overall baby personal care products market is segmented into hair care, skin care, toiletries, fragrances and convenience products among others. The toiletries and skin care segments are major contributors of revenue to the global baby personal care products market. This trend is expected to continue during forecast period 20142020. Currently, the baby hair care segment is the lowest contributor in terms of revenue in the global market. This segment however, is expected to grow favourably in the near future. Sun care is a sub-segment of the baby skin care segment and contributes a substantially low revenue to the global baby personal care products market. Furthermore, increasing use of baby shower gel is expected to drive growth of this market during the forecast period.Request for sample report:The baby care personal products market is largely driven by increasing births in developing countries and also due to increasing awareness of consumers about child hygiene. This is further supported by increasing disposable income and changing lifestyle of consumers in developing countries. Furthermore, couples married and parenting while in their mid-thirties to mid-forties are considered to be more financially stable, thus resulting in higher spending capacity for baby care products. Additionally, increase in number of working mothers globally is also driving the market. This growth is attributed to increased purchasing power and hence, substantially higher spending on baby care products. Among all segments of the baby personal care products market, the baby skin care products and toiletries segments collectively contributed the highest share in terms of revenue in 2011. Furthermore, these two segments are expected to witness double-digit growth in terms of revenue by 2017. Baby personal care products comprising organic ingredients is also expected to contribute to growth of the baby personal care products market during the forecast period. However, growth of this product type is expected to be relatively slower compared to that of other types. This is attributed to the fact that organic baby care products fall under the premium class range, and cost comparatively more than regular products.Baby diapers is a sub-segment of the toiletries segment and is a key category driving growth in the overall baby care personal products market. Rising birth rate, improving economic conditions and rapid urbanization in developing countries is fuelling growth of the overall baby diapers market. The various stringent regulations to ensure the use of environment-friendly materials however, are posing challenges for baby diaper manufacturing companies. Other challenges include ensuring that these products are available to consumers at affordable prices, and they are non-toxic in nature and skin-friendly. These are some of the anticipated restraining factors for this sub-segment.Request for TOC:Some restraining factors of the overall baby personal care market include substantially high product development and innovation costs, which results into high pricing of final products. Also, strict regulations regarding the use of chemicals is another restraint for the overall baby personal care products market. Additionally, these products need to undergo clinical trials, which incurs high costs, to ensure that they are deemed fit for human consumption.Some key players in the baby personal care market Alliance Boots, Asda Group Ltd., Avon, Beiersdorf, Bonpoint, Burts Bees, Inc., Johnson & Johnson Ltd., Kimberly-Clark (U.K.), LOreal, Marks & Spencer, Nivea, Oral B Laboratories Ltd., Procter & Gamble, Unilever and others.About us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact us:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Point of Use Water Purifier (POU) Market in MENA to Witness a CAGR of 7.6% by 2020
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Future Market Insights (FMI) announced the release of a latest report titled, POU Water Purifiers Market: MENA Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2014 - 2020. FMI estimates that the Point of Use (POU) water purifier market in Middle East and North Africa is expected to reach US$ 471 Mn at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2014 to 2020.Residential water purification system includes point of use water purifiers (POU), point of entry (POE) water purifiers, portable water purifiers. Moreover, the demand for POU water purifiers is high among consumers in MENA region as compared to POE and portable water purifiers.In the POU water purifiers market, products with high purification capabilities such as combination of reverse osmosis (RO) and Ultraviolet (UV) technologies are more preferred. It has also been observed that a majority of the demand is coming from urban centres in GCC when compared to the entire MENA region.Market SegmentsThe POU water purifiers market is segmented on the basis of technology which includes RO, UV and media-based. RO technology based water purifiers segment is estimated to account for slightly over 40% of the total POU water purifiers market in MENA region in 2014. Media-based water purification, which is a conventional water purification technology has also witnessed technological advancements, and is estimated to display a CAGR of 9.3% during the forecast period, in terms of volume. The third technology, UV based water purifiers, is estimated to exhibit a sluggish growth rate during the forecast period due to its limitation in removing only organic contaminants from water. Additionally, UV-based water purifiers are also priced higher in comparison to media-based water purifiers and hence the product preference for UV based water purifiers is comparatively low.Request Free Report Sample@Region-wise, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, Israel, Egypt and Algeria are the promising markets for POU water purifiers. In addition, a cumulative scenario has been highlighted for rest of MENA (includes smaller countries like Kuwait, Jordan etc.). Among the aforementioned regions, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is estimated to be the prominent market for POU water purifiers, followed by Turkey, due to its growing population and rapid urbanization, and increasing awareness for safe drinking water forecast period.In addition, penetration of bottled water is a challenge for the POU water purifiers market in Anatolia. As a result, Anatolia is estimated to demonstrate a sluggish growth rate in the near future. Furthermore, POU water purifiers market in UAE is anticipated to reach 149.2 thousand units by 2020, exhibiting a CAGR of 10% between 2014 and 2020.Drivers and RestraintsDeteriorating water quality, rising cost of bottled water, increasing population coupled with increasing per capita income are some of the prominent factors which will catalyse the point of use water purifiers in the region. Though the MENA market is attractive in terms of absolute dollar opportunity, low awareness about safe drinking water and product unavailability are major challenges for the MENA POU water purifier market.Send An Enquiry@Competitive LandscapeKey players operating in the MENA water purifier market are LG, Eureka Forbes, Strauss Water, Panasonic, WaterLife and Coolplex. The report sheds light on their key growth strategies and recent developments. In addition, the report also discusses the value chain followed by multinational companies in MENA for POU water purifiers.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Laboratory Chemical Reagents Market 2015 - Beckman Coulter Inc., Life Technologies Corporation, Promega Corporation, SAFC Biosciences, Inc., EMD Chemicals Inc., Wako Pure Chemical Industries Ltd. and Other
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Laboratory chemical reagent is a compound that is utilized in a chemical reaction to identify, examine, determine or produce other chemical substance. The chemical reagents play an essential role in the accuracy of a chemical experiment. Whereas preparing the chemistry reagents in a laboratory, correct proportion of chemicals and solvents as well as procedure is very crucial.Request for sample report @The worldwide market for laboratory chemical reagent is expected to grow at significant rate due to extensive chemical reagents applications and research activity. Constant improvements and evolution in technologies such as bio-therapeutics, cell culture and recombinant DNA technology that facilitated the production of numerous essential therapeutic agents also fuel the demand for laboratory chemical reagents. Furthermore, increasing demand from biotechnology industry may boost the market growth in upcoming years. Protein synthesis and DNA sequencing reagents market has increased dramatically in recent years.The report covers forecast and analysis for the laboratory chemical reagents market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2015 along with a forecast from 2016 to 2021 based on revenue (USD Million). The study includes drivers and restraints for the market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes study of opportunities available in the laboratory chemical reagents market on a global level.Know more before buying this report @Global laboratory chemical reagents market has been segmented on the basis of product, end user and region. On the basis of product, laboratory chemical reagent market is classified into molecular biology, cytokine and chemokine testing, carbohydrate analysis, immunochemistry, cell/tissue culture, environmental testing and biochemistry. Molecular biology accounted for largest share of the market in 2015. Whereas, cytokine and chemokine testing is expected to emerge as the fastest growing segment in near future.End user segment includes biotechnology, academic segment, non-academic segment and corporate segment. Currently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technologies are being used extensively in several applications such as forensic labs, gene expression and DNA sequencing. The reagents used in real time PCR testing offer quick and quality results compared to conventional PCR testing method which is consequently expected to increase the sales of PCR reagents. PCR market is rising on account of increasing acceptance and awareness for real time PCR.Geographically, laboratory chemical reagent market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. North America dominated the laboratory chemical reagent market in 2015 owing to technological advancements and innovations in molecular biology. Asia Pacific region is estimated to emerge as the fastest growing region due to development of new academic centers across the region mainly in the biological and chemical science area. Additionally, entry of new pharmaceutical companies and increasing clinical research outsourcing activities in the Asia Pacific region can increase investment in research and development consequently enabling more laboratory test analysis.Browse full report @Beckman Coulter Inc., Life Technologies Corporation, Promega Corporation, SAFC Biosciences, Inc., EMD Chemicals Inc., Wako Pure Chemical Industries Ltd., GE Healthcare, Takara Bio Inc., Meridian Life Science Inc., Sigma-Aldrich Corp., Shimadzu Biotech and PerkinElmer Inc. are some of the major players operating in laboratory chemical reagents market.This report segments the Bionematicides market as follows:Laboratory Chemical Reagent Market: Product Segment AnalysisMolecular biologyCytokine and chemokine testingCarbohydrate analysisImmunochemistryCell/tissue cultureEnvironmental testingBiochemistryLaboratory Chemical Reagent Market: End User Segment AnalysisBiotechnologyAcademic segmentNon-academic segmentCorporate segmentBionematicides Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaAbout UsZion 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:
Corn Starch Market 2015- 2021 : Tereos Syral S.A.S, Roquette Freres S.A., Tate & Lyle PLC, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Company and Other
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Corn starch is sometimes referred as corn flour or maize starch. The starch is obtained from the endosperm of the kernel. It is used for many culinary, household, and industrial purposes. In the kitchen, corn starch is regularly used as a thickening agent for sauces, gravies, glazes, casseroles, pies, soups, and other desserts. It is also used in making corn syrup and bioplastics. Corn starch is gluten free product and made from corn and only includes carbohydrates.Access sample report visit atRising replacement trend of petroleum with ethanol is projected to be the major driving factor for this market over the forecast period. The global corn starch market is anticipated to experience significant growth over the forecast due to increasing usage in processed food, paper & board, food & beverages, and detergent industries. Corn starch is also beneficial for humans in treating glycogen storage disease (GSD). Increasing usage & application of corn starch in end-user industries is also one of the key drivers of the global corn starch market. Rising prices of raw materials and the growing number of substitutes such as tapioca are expected to curtail corn starch market growth.The report includes the detailed competitive landscape of the global corn starch market and an analysis of Porters five forces model for the corn starch market has also been included. It includes company market share analysis, the product portfolio of the major industry participants. The report provides detailed segmentation of the corn starch market based on product, application, and region segment.The corn starch market is segmented on the basis of product into native starch, modified starch and sweeteners. Sweetener is one of the leading segments in the corn starch market. Key application markets for corn starch includes pharmaceuticals & chemicals, food & beverages, animal feed, textile, paper making and others. Food and beverages were the major application segment of this market in 2015.Do inquiry before buying report visit atMajor regional segments analyzed in this study include North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S. Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India, and Brazil. North America dominated the corn starch market in 2015.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Tereos Syral S.A.S, Roquette Freres S.A., Tate & Lyle PLC, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Associated British Foods plc, Global Bio-chem Technology Group, Ingredion Incorporated, Vijayawada Chemicals, and AGRANA Beteiligungs AG.This report segments the global corn starch market as follows:Corn Starch Market: Product Segment AnalysisModified StarchNative StarchSweetenerBrowse full report visit atCorn Starch Market: Application Segment AnalysisPharmaceuticals & ChemicalsFood & BeveragesAnimal FeedTextilePaper MakingOthersCorn Starch Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyFranceUKAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East And AfricaAbout UsZion 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:
ASEAN Research Report and Overview on Confectionery Market, 2015-2025
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ASEAN Confectionery Market OverviewItems in confectionery market consists of candies, chocolates, toffees, lollies, bakery items;basically food items that are rich in sugar and sweet content. Mostly confectionery market items consists of food products like butter, cocoa, honey, milk, flour, fruits, honey, nuts, sugar syrup and more. They are consumed globally, mostly by all regions and countries and are expected to grow in developing countries. Confectionery market is growing in mostly all the South East Asian countries and saw a tremendous growth in the last couple of years.ASEAN Confectionery Market SegmentationThe confectionery market is segmented into three segments Chocolates, Sugar confectionery and Gum. Chocolates constitutes the significant part of confectionery market. Cocoa and sugar are the raw materials for chocolate and latex is the raw material used for gum.Worlds largest cocoa processor Barry Callebauts production has also moved to Asia pacific and Latin America because of its low production costs and great future opportunities.Its factories are in Malaysia and Thailand. Nestle has acquired a majority stake in Chinese confectioner Hsu Fu Chi.Europe constitutes the biggest share of confectionery market, followed by Asia Pacific confectionery market. ASEAN region has become an attractive place to do business. Some big MNCs have shifted their base(plants) for the production of chocolate to Indonesia to improve efficiency and reduce costs in supply. Indonesia has the most consumption of confectionery items as compared to other South East Asian countries. Flavors GmbH (WILD), another company is opening its branch center in Singapore to serve the hub for the ASEAN region. Main markets in South East Asian countries include Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia for confectionery market.Request for sample report:ASEAN Confectionery Market DynamicsRising disposable income, higher population, high GDP growth and consumer spending are the major key drivers of ASEAN confectionery market. The biggest constraint to ASEAN confectionery market could be rise in raw material cost and uncertain consumer behaviour. Also health issues, increasing government regulations, could also be the biggest challenge for confectionery market. Chocolate segment expected to grow the most under ASEAN confectionery market. On special occasions and celebrations, sale of confectionery items increase because people gift each other and its consumption and demand increase. Vietnam is gradually cutting down the import tax imposed on products of ASEAN, countries in accordance with the ASEAN Free Trade Area, AFTA, regulations. As a result, the Vietnamese confectionery market is vibrant compared to other nations.ASEAN Confectionery Market Distribution ChannelMostly confectionery items are sold in retail stores, hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores. Multinational flavor companies and smaller local manufacturers are active in South EastAsia confectionery market. The latter offers good distribution expertise and local connections. Innovation by producers playing a great role in experimenting with flavors, taste, size which is driving a growth of this market. Enterprises operating under Vietnamese confectionery market use modern technology of foreign countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan and Austria to make their products, and apply non-chemical preservation techniquesRequest for TOC:ASEAN Confectionery Market Key PlayersKey players in this confectionery market are Ferraro, Hersheys,Lindt, Wrigleys, Perfetti Van Melle and ChupaChupa. Product innovation and consistent in quality are the reasons for their success. Dunkin Donuts has signed a franchisee agreement to develop a brand in Vietnam with Vietnam Food and Beverage Co. domestic confectionery companies have simultaneously launched many new products in confectionery market. Pioneers of the campaign included famous companies such as Kinh Do, Bibica, Kotobuki, and smaller producers like Nguyen Tran and ThanhPhat, etc. ierce competition was found between Malaysian Khongguan biscuits and Vietnamese productsThis research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically-supported and industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. It provides analysis and information by categories such as market segments, regions, product types and distribution channels.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 us:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018, Valley Cottage, NY 10989, United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Bakery Premixes Market - Market Segmentation, Regional Outlook 2016-2024
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Overview:Bakery premixes are substances that includes combination of ingredients making-up part (usually 40-60%) of the end products to which only flour is added for production of variety of bakery products. Bakery premix contains unique formulations in baking ingredients that offers variety of taste, texture and color to the bakery products such as cake, pastry, white bread rolls, baking flour, muffins, bakery improvers, donut and bread rolls. Many bakery manufacturers are using bakery premixes in various customized bakery products on a large scale globally. Bakery premix provides various benefits to manufacturers including greater product consistency and reducing the chances of incorrect weighing of raw materials used in process of bakery products coupled with decreased labor and inventory costs. Baking premixes also includes leavenings and customized combos of flours and flour types in various products. Manufacturers of bakery products are using standardized enriched blends of various premixes in bakery products in order to fulfill the customer demand for customized bakery products. Thus, the baking premixes helps in increasing the shelf life of products on a large scale.View exclusive Global strategic Business report :Global Bakery Premix: Market SegmentationThe global bakery premix market is segmented on the basis of type, application and region. The bakery premix market is segmented on the basis of type mainly into complete mix, dough-base mix and dough concentrates. The complete mix includes dry powder blend which requires end user to add water resulting into thick batter and is primarily used by commercial baking industries for more cost-effective processes. The dough-base premixes are partial mixes that requires end user to add water, shortening and eggs and can be modified with inclusion of other ingredients for producing various bakery products. The dough concentrate is a mixture of shortening, dough conditioners, dehydrated eggs and flavors mixed in baking flour.The bakery premix market is segmented on the basis of application type in which bakery premixes are used in applications such as bread and non-bread products. Bread products includes specialty bread, toast bread, white bread rolls, whole-meal bread rolls and non-bread products includes cakes, pancakes, pastry, muffins and donuts. Hence, the global bakery premix market is expected to significantly increase the revenue contribution over the forecast period.Global Bakery Premix Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the global bakery premix industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Globally, among all regions, North America has developed as the most dominant market in bakery premixes followed by Europe. Increasing consumer awareness regarding the benefits of customized premixes in bakery products coupled with inclusion of essential ingredients such as vitamins and minerals, has strengthened the growth of global bakery premix market and hence is projected to significantly expand the revenue contribution of the market over the forecast period.Global Bakery Premix Market: Growth DriversThe global bakery premix market driving factors are increasing demand for customized bread-based bakery products with various formulations in baking ingredients due to changing consumer preference, is a major factor that is fuelling the growth of global bakery premix market. Along with changing consumer lifestyle, the demand for natural ingredient bakery products is increasing and hence is driving the global bakery premix market over the forecast period.Browse Full Report With ToC:Global Bakery Premix Market: PlayersSome of the key players identified across the value chain of the global bakery premix market includeEnhance Proteins Ltd., Echema Technologies LLC, Lesaffre, Puratos, Malindra Group, WATSON-INC, Karl Fazer Ab., Allied Mills, Swiss Bake Ingredients Pvt Ltd, Archer Daniels Midland Company and Bakels Worldwide. The companies are expected to expand their business by enhancing their product portfolio in global bakery premix market. The companies are projected to frame certain strategies in future in order to gain the competitive advantage in global bakery premix market till 2024.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. 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Carrageenan Gum Market 2015 - 2021 : Cargill Incorporated, Rhodia, Soriano SA, Shemberg Marketing Corporation, Ingredients Solutions Inc
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Carrageenan is a food additive extracted from class Rhodophyceae. It is a family of sulphated polysaccharides and posses the hydrocolloid properties. Carrageenan is used as a food stabilizer, gelling and thickening agent. Carrageenan is high molecular weight polysaccharides with repeating galactose units. Lambda, iota and kappa are the commercial classes of carrageenan in which kappa forms strong rigid gels, iota gives soft gels whereas lambda does not form gel and is used as a thickener.There has been rapid growth in food and beverage industry around the globe. The sharp rise in demand for gelling agents, food additives fuels the growth of carrageenan gum market. Moreover, rising demand for processed food along with an increase in spending capacity per captia is expected to propel the market growth. Furthermore, escalating food chain worldwide fosters the growth of carrageenan gum market. However, the presence of substitutes in the market such as cellulose and xanthan is the only restrain for the carrageenan gum market. Nevertheless, superior gelling and additive properties of carrageenan gum is likely to offer ample opportunities for the market in the forecast period.Access sample report visit atThe report provides a comprehensive view on analysis of Porters Five Forces model for the carrageenan gum market. The study includes a market attractiveness analysis, wherein type, application, and end-user segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness. The report also analyzes several driving and restraining factors and their impact on the market during the forecast period.Carrageenan gum can be characterized depending on the chemical composition such as lambda, iota and kappa. Iota and kappa are widely used as gelling agents in food and are obtained after reaction with calcium and potassium salts. Meat & poultry, dairy, water gels, toothpaste and others are some of the major applications for the carrageenan gum market. The dairy industry is the prominent segment owing to various applications of carrageenan gum in this industry. Ice- cream, chocolate milk, mixes are some of the products formed due to the use of carrageenan gum. Meat processing industry utilizes the carrageenan gum in precooked meat and chicken pieces.On basis of end user, the carrageenan gum market can be segmented as food and beverage industry, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and others. Food and beverage industry have several and diverse application of carrageenan gum. The carrageenan gum is used in dips, sauces, caramel, instant mixes and in the manufacturing of various dairy products. As carrageenan gum posses the gelling property which is used as gelling agent in the pharmaceutical industry. Cosmetics has the huge stake in developing market for carrageenan gum in the forecast period.Do inquiry before buying report visit atAsia Pacific followed by Europe is the foremost markets for the carrageenan gum market. Some of the factors such as growing attraction towards processed and junk food along with rising disposable income have significantly contributed to the rising demand of carrageenan gum in this region. Moreover, growing population and the emergence of food and beverage industry particularly in India and China surge the growth of carrageenan gum market. In Europe, there is the sufficing increase in diary industry which aids the carrageenan gum market growth.North America held the largest market for the pet food application in 2015. Latin America is likely to experience potent growth in coming years due to increasing demand for carrageenan gum in Brazil. The Middle East and Africa exhibits highest growth rate due to escalating meat and processed food industry.Cargill Incorporated, Rhodia, Soriano SA, Shemberg Marketing Corporation, Ingredients Solutions Inc, AEP Colloids, Marcel Trading Corporation, CEAMSA, FMC BioPolymer, CP Kelco ApS, Danisco A/S, Shemberg Biotech Corporation and Gelymar SA are some of the leading profiles in the carrageenan gum market.Read Report TOC:The report segments of the carrageenan gum market into:Carrageenan Gum Market: Chemical Composition Segment AnalysisLambdaIotaKappaCarrageenan Gum Market: Application Segment AnalysisMeat & poultryDairyWater gelsToothpasteOthersBrowse full report visit atCarrageenan Gum Market: End User Segment AnalysisFood and beveragePharmaceuticalsCosmeticsOthersCarrageenan Gum Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaAbout UsZion 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. 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Global Sleeve Labels Market Poised to Rake US$ 16.5 Bn by 2024
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Sleeve labels are one of the emerging packaging solutions, widely used for labeling purpose. Sleeve labels are broadly categorized into two types: Stretch sleeves and Shrink sleeves. Stretch sleeves are those which adheres to a surface by stretching over it due to its high elasticity whereas shrink sleeves shrinks on a surface tightly on the application of heat. The sleeve labels are estimated to be the fastest growing labeling segment throughout the forecast period, driven by factors such as brand identity, visual on-shelf appeal and cost efficiency.For More Information Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report @The Persistence Market Research report: Sleeve Labels Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016-2024, Sleeve Labels Market is representing annual gains of 5.2% from 10.6 Bn US$ in 2016. The growing demand for beverage and packaged food will drive advances in the industry.The sleeve label market report is categorically split into six sections, based on the product type, end-users, material type, printing technology, printing ink type and regions. Among product type shrink labels are prominent than stretch labels due to its wide applications in consumer goods. Based on end-use, food & beverage segment stand out among all segments owing to the rising demand for packaged foods. PET-G is expected to be the most preferred material for sleeve labeling over the forecast period. Flexography technology is expected to be the most preferred printing technology among sleeve label manufacturers. Among all the variants of printing ink, solvent based ink is widely used for labeling as it is compatible with most of the printing technology such as flexography, gravure and digital printing.Browse Report @Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the sleeve labels market gaining 553 BPS by the end of the forecast period, and is estimated to register the highest CAGR of 6.2%. This trend is attributed to the mounting demand for beverage and packaged food China, India and ASEAN countries. Furthermore, growth in manufacturing sector and increased consumer spending power are the key drivers of sleeve labels in this region. North America though a developed market with multiple market players, is expected to gain momentum in the later phase of the forecast period with future investments in the manufacturing sectors. Mature market of Europe is anticipated to witness uneven growth throughout the forecast period. Moreover, Latin America and MEA sleeve labels markets are expected to register sluggish growth, all over the forecast period.Request Report Sample @Globally the major players in Sleeve Labels are CCL Industries, Fuji Seal International, Inc., DOW Chemicals, Berry Plastics Group, Inc., Macfarlane Group PLC, Huhtamaki Oyj and Klockner Pentaplast.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Passive Infrared Motion Sensor Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024
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Passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors are electronic sensor devices that detect motion and the presence of an identity or object that is a infrared emitting source. Any object that exceeds the temperature of absolute zero emits heat at a wavelength of infrared lights. The sensors are enabled for identification of the variations in IR radiations when an object is colliding with the primary subject of infrared radiation detection. Benefits of using passive infrared motion sensors are that these sensors use limited power and are scarcely activated by airflow. The global market for passive infrared motion sensor is segmented on the basis of device into motion controller, smoke detector, heat detectors and other devices. According to range covered, the global passive infrared motion sensor market is subdivided into long wave passive infrared sensor, short wave passive infrared sensor and mid wave passive infrared sensor. Passive infrared motion sensor market, on the basis of application, can be segmented into defense and aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, security and healthcare and industrial sectors. The consumer electronics sector is further sub-divided cameras, smart mobile devices, smart phones and other electronics. The security segment holds the largest market share in the application segments and is forecasted to have a steady growth rate throughout the forecast market.PDF Sample For Full Details with Technological breakthroughs is @Major driver driving the global market for passive infrared motion sensor market is increased application area of passive infrared sensor. In addition, rising demand for motion enabled industrial machineries, smart phones, military and aerospace devices and medical equipment, growth of home and industrial automation, rising use of wireless communication are acting as major drivers driving the global passive infrared motion sensor market. Increasing demand for motion sensing applications in the gaming sector and low power consumption also acts as a major driver to the global passive infrared motion sensor market. Increased growth in public construction projects which includes the installation of escalators, automatic doors, and taps in these projects. With increasing use of passive infrared motion sensors in these devices, the market is showing substantial growth over the forecast period and is thus acting as a major driver of the market. High cost of passive infrared motion sensors and lack of availability of cheaper alternatives is a major restraint hindering the growth of the PIR motion sensor market. In addition, passive infrared motion sensors cannot detect objects moving at a very low speed which is also a major hindrance in the growth of the overall market. Passive infrared motion sensors cannot determine the distance between two objects which limits its use in the various application sectors which is hindering the market growth substantially. Growing use of passive infrared motion sensors in consumer electronics is a major opportunity in the global market for passive infrared motion sensors.The global passive infrared motion sensor market geographically is segment into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. North America is the largest market for passive infrared motion sensors. Europe follows suit and both these regions are comparatively matured markets. Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa are the most lucrative markets and Asia Pacific is forecasted to witness the highest growth rate. This is facilitated by increasing presence of the application areas in these regions and thus more and more key players are investing in these regions.Major players of the global passive infrared motion sensor include Axis Communications AB (Lund, Sweden), General Dynamics Corporation (Virginia, U.S), Bosch Security Systems Ltd. (Stuttgart, Germany), Current Corporation (Port Moody, Canada), Atmel Corporation (California, U.S), Elmos Semiconductor AG (Dortmund, Germany), Cypress Semiconductor (California, U.S), Honeywell International Inc. (New Jersey, U.S),Epson Toyocom Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) and STMicroelectronics N.V. (Geneva, Switzerland) among others.Market Insight can be Viewed @Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Organic Electronics Market Innovation of NextGen Electronics industry: Technology and Industry Analysis 2018
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A new market research report, titled Organic Electronics Market - Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth and Forecast 2012 - 2018, has been recently published by Transparency Market Research and made available on the company website. The detailed analysis provided in the research study covers the markets overview, including market drivers and barriers, opportunities and challenges, product segmentation, and competitive landscape of the global organic electronics market. According to the research study, the global organic electronic market is projected to register a stunning 32.60% CAGR between 2012 and 2018.View exclusive Global Strategic Business Report:Organic electronics are a category of material science dealing with the synthesis, design, application, and characterization of organic small polymers or molecules. In recent years, the organic electronics market has been gaining traction and organic electronics now have gained multiple applications. Organic electronics have been commercialized successfully, especially in the displays segment such as in photovoltaics, smartphones display, and transistor technologies.The research report has segmented the global organic electronics market on the basis of application into organic sensors, displays, organic radiofrequency identification tags, printed batteries, organic lighting, organic photovoltaics, and logic and memory. Presently, the displays segment dominates the overall market and is expected to remain in the leading position in the forecast period. The displays segment is further sub-segmented into electrophoretic, OLED display, and other displays.By the end of 2018, the OLED display segment is estimated to reach a value of US$10.4 bn and dominate the global organic electronics market in the coming years. In recent years, the OLED display segment has witnessed high demand owing to its low energy consumption, high-speed performance, and sharp display features.In addition, the OLED display segment is estimated to witness significant growth due to the growing support for green products across the globe and an increasing number of OLED applications in mobile signage and phones, which will further augment the growth of the overall OLED display market. On the other hand, the high cost of production and a low penetration rate of technology are some of the factors that are expected to hamper the growth of the overall OLED display market throughout the forecast period.Get More Information:Furthermore, the electrophoretic segment is projected to reach a value of US$3.9 bn by the end of 2018, exhibiting a whopping 58.40% CAGR between 2012 and 2018. The organic radiofrequency identification tags and logic and memory segments are estimated to emerge as the most promising segments for organic electronics manufacturers globally.The global market for organic electronics has been divided on the basis of geography into the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. By the end of 2018, the Asia Pacific market for organic electronics is estimated to dominate the overall market, holding a share of 50% in the global organic electronics market. Asia Pacific is expected to be followed by Europe, exhibiting a progressive growth rate in the next few years.The research study further covers the competitive landscape of the global organic electronics market, emphasizing on the company profile, inception details, contact information, products offered, financial overview, business policies, and recent developments such as mergers and acquisitions.Some of the prominent players studied in the research report are PolyIC GmbH & Co. KG, Merck & Co., Evonik Industries, Heliatek GmbH, AGC Seimi Chemical Co. Ltd., H.C. Starck, Novaled GmbH, Fujifilm Dimatix, Inc., Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., BASF, and Bayer MaterialScience AG.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Google+:
High-speed rail deal among 21 signed by China and Russia Updated: 2016-11-08 04:05 By Hu Yongqi in St. Petersburg, Russia(China Daily)
Twenty-one agreements were signed between China and Russia on Monday to further promote cooperation in various fields, including on high-speed railways, during Premier Li Keqiang's visit to St. Petersburg.
Li and his Russian counterpart, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, witnessed the signing of the agreements which also included civil nuclear power technologies, energy projects and linking China's Belt and Road Initiative with the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union after the 21st China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting in St. Petersburg.
Premier Li arrived in St. Petersburg on Sunday, the fourth stop of an eight-day Eurasian trip that has also taken him to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Latvia. He was accompanied by Medvedev to visit the State Hermitage Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The coastal city, Russia's second-largest, is also Medvedev's hometown, and the two went there under a special "hometown diplomacy" agreement. Medvedev previously visited Li's hometown of Hefei, Anhui province, at Li's invitation.
"Both sides have reached important consensus on trade, investment, education and people-to-people exchanges," said Premier Li. "There is still more new potential to tap for bilateral cooperation ... which is beneficial to both peoples and regional development."
Medvedev said both countries are carrying out large projects in infrastructure, nuclear power generators and high-speed railway, each costing billions of US dollars.
Both countries will cooperate more in small and medium-sized enterprises, he added.
A joint statement issued after the meeting summed up the achievements of bilateral cooperation and will guide the next cooperative steps in trade, investment, energy and people-to-people exchanges. Additionally, China and Russia will safeguard regional and global peace and stability as well as establish a fair and rational world order, the statement said.
Li Xing, a professor of international relations at Beijing Normal University, said regular meetings allow the two leaders to communicate effectively on major issues and facilitate economic cooperation in a timely manner. He added that China-Russia cooperation is characterized by high synergy and major projects that reflect complementary and win-win collaborations.
huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn
Zhang Zhihao contributed to this story.
Roll to Roll Printing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024
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Roll to Roll is a manufacturing technique which involves continuously processing the flexible substrate by transferring it between the two moving rolls made up of the material like flexible plastic and metal foil etc. The process of Roll to Roll manufacturing is called as Roll to Roll processing. Roll to Roll processing is also known as reel to reel processing, web processing, or R2R. The Roll to Roll processing includes three steps coating, laminating and printing. The final step is called roll to roll printing. Roll to Roll printing to manufacture electronic devices provides flexibility. Roll to roll printing also provides benefits like low production cost, high line speed, and process continuity. Roll to roll printing in comparison to conventional systems provides flexibility, cost effectiveness, efficient and light solutions. Deposition, Gravure, Flexographic Printing, Flatbed and Rotary Screen Printing, Imprint or Soft Lithography, Laser Ablation, Offset Printing, Inkjet Printing are some of the processes where the roll to roll printing is used. Although initial cost of capital is high but it can be recovered by the low cost production. However in conventional printing systems overall cycle time is increased due to off-line drying and sheet handling. Applications of roll to roll printing include: flexible photovoltaics, thin film batteries, flexible electronics, multilayer capacitors, thin and thick film substrates, thick film sensor materials, barrier coatings, fuel cells, organic light emitting diodes, CIGS PV, and PEM (Proton Exchange Membranes).PDF Sample For Full Details with Technological breakthroughs is @Major market drivers for the market include increasing demand for flexible devices like RFID antennas & tags (smart labels), printed circuits, OLED lighting, and printed sensors. Highly economical production process for roll to roll printing is another driver for the roll to roll printing market. High-defect density resisting capabilities and rising consumer sectors are also the major driver for the roll to roll printing market. Increasing demand for devices like optoelectronics, photovoltaic, medical and electronics is another major reason for the growth in roll to roll printing market. Increase in durable, small sized, portable and wearable products will drive the market. Improvement in technical features provides opportunities for growth in the market. Increasing use of healthcare multimodal sensors is also driving the roll to roll printing market. Opportunities for the market are product innovations and R&D (Research & Development). Challenge for the market is conquering the digital world. Other restraints are the mass production and failure risksMarket can be segmented based on the application (flexible electronics, photovoltaics, and membrane, fuel cells, and battery technology), end users (commercial, medical, industrial, defense, aerospace, automotive, and consumer electronics), and geography (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America).North is the largest market for roll to roll printing. In North America, U.S. is the leading market for roll to roll printing market. The reason for U.S. being the leading roll to roll market is the improved infrastructure and technological advancements. Europe will also grow considerably because of the presence of the key players. Asia Pacific will witness significant growth in roll to roll printing market due to the improved industrialization in countries like Korea, China, Taiwan, and Malaysia and foreign funds inflow. South and Central America and Africa & Middle East are also emerging nations for the roll to roll printing market.The key players in the market include Sumitomo Electric Industries, Samsung Electronics, Kent Displays, 3M Company, Thinfilm, Linxens, E Ink Holdings, Multek Corporation, Nippon Mektron Ltd., Fujikura Ltd., GSI Technologies LLC, LG Display Co, 3M Company, Ascent Solar Technologies, Emfit, E Ink Corporations, and Avery Dennison. Mergers & Acquisitions, Product innovations, R&D (Research and Development), and new product development are some of the strategies followed by these key players.Market Insight can be Viewed @Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Aerospace Components Aviation Security Market to grow at a CAGR of 7.17% over Forecast 2015-2019
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Albany, NY, Nov 08: The aviation industry faces threats from multiple dimensions considering the various stakeholders in the industry. The threat is targeted to airports, service providers, and air traffic control systems. The global aviation system is targeted by attackers focusing on cyber terrorism, information theft, and other similar objectives on a larger scale. The growing air travel industry, stringent regulatory requirements, and continuous increase in the sophistication of threats necessitate airports to become highly vigilant and integrate smarter security solutions to keep up with current and future demand. These factors drive investments toward the development of identification and screening technologies, such as the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, biometrics systems and prototype screening devices, to strengthen the security at airports.The global aviation security market to grow at a CAGR of 7.17% over the period 2014-2019. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the market shares, market segmentation by system, and growth prospects by region (Americas, APAC, and EMEA). It also presents the market landscape and a corresponding analysis of the five major vendors in the market. In addition, the report discusses the primary drivers influencing the growth of the market. It also outlines the challenges faced by vendors and the market at large, as well as the key trends emerging in the market.Get a Sample Research PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Aviation Security Market 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the Americas, APAC, and EMEA; it also covers the landscape of the global aviation security market and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key regions- Americas- APAC- EMEAKey vendors- American Science and Engineering- Analogic- G4S- L-3 Communications- Morpho Detection (Safran)Other prominent vendors- ACO Electronics- CEM Systems- GE Security- Rockwell Collins- Westminster Aviation Security ServicesKey market driver- Increase in air traffic- For a full, detailed list, view our reportEnquiry at:Key questions answered in this report:-- What will the market size be in 2019 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Honey Market: Among all regions, North America is expected to contribute maximum revenue in the global market, 2016 - 2022
Honey Market, Honey, Natural Honey Market
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Major factor that are expected to drive the honey market is that it is used for direct consumption and as ingredients in a various range of food products. Various promotion and marketing activities are used as medium to reach food service sectors and consumers.in order to further enhance their awareness related to the uses and market opportunities. . However, major factors that are expected to hamper the growth of the global honey market across the globe are crystallization of the honey and increasing adulteration of the honey with sugar syrup.Request for TOC @Global Honey market is segmented by: type, and by regionHoney by Type: Date Honey Acacia Honey Buckwheat Honey Linden Honey Flower Honey OthersHoney By Region: Asia Pacific Europe North America Latin America The Middle East & AfricaThe global honey market is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period due to rising awareness among consumers related to the health benefits associated with the consumption of the honey. Globally, among all regions, North America is expected to contribute maximum revenue in the global honey market followed by Middle East. In North America, U.S. is expected to account maximum market share in terms of revenue owing to the high consumer awareness related to the health benefits associated with the consumption of honey. However Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit maximum market growth owing to the rising population coupled with growing health awareness among consumers.Request for Sample Report @Major companies that operates in the global honey market are operating in honey market are Hi Tech Natural Products (India) Limited, LITTLE BEE IMPEX, Phondaghat Pharmacy, Honey Sugar Product and Lamex Foods UK Limited. Companies that manufacture honey are primarily launching wide range of honey products that are available in various packaging types that caters to the evolving needs of the customers. Various companies that operates in the global honey market are investing huge amount in advertising and branding in order to increase the market share to the overall honey market.The report covers exhaustive analysis on: Honey Market Segments Honey Market Dynamics Historical Actual Market Size, 2013 - 2015 Honey Market Size & Forecast 2016 to 2022 Supply & Demand Value Chain Honey Market Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Competition & Companies involved Technology Value Chain Honey Market Drivers and RestraintsRegional analysis for Honey Market includes: North America Latin America Europe Asia Pacific The Middle East and AfricaReport Highlights: Shifting Industry dynamics In-depth market segmentation Historical, current and projected industry size Recent industry trends Key Competition landscape Strategies of key players and product offerings Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective towards market performanceAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Water Purifier Market 2016 Brita, Aquasana, Pentair, Panasonic and PUR
Water Purifier
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Global Water Purifier Market 2016 Industry Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Water Purifier Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Water Purifier market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Water Purifier market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Water Purifier market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Water Purifier market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Water Purifier market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Sample Copy of Report @The study on the Global Water Purifier market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Water Purifier market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Water Purifier Industry Overview1.1 Water Purifier Definition1.1.1 Water Purifier Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Water Purifier Classification1.3 Water Purifier Application Field1.4 Water Purifier Industry Chain Structure1.5 Water Purifier Industry Regional Overview1.6 Water Purifier Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Water Purifier Industry Related Companies Contact InformationInquiry For Buying @MarketResearchStore.com is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact US:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Cage Free Eggs Market: Naturally laid eggs are protein rich and healthy option which is expected to drive the market growth by 2016 - 2026
Cage Free Eggs Market, Cage Free Eggs, Cage Eggs Market, Cage Eggs Market, Eggs Market
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http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/11086
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Cage Free Eggs Market SegmentationCage free eggs market has been segmented on the basis of size which includes medium size and jumbo size. Among both of these segment medium size is expected to contribute major share in terms of value as it is more economical. However, jumbo size is expected to show a favorable growth over the forecast period.Request for TOC @Consumption of cage free eggs are considered to be safer option as that of caged hens. This is because caged hens have a high chances of being infected by salmonella. Consumption of these types of eggs has become a most common cause of hospitalization and deaths in the North America. This has also led the people to opt for cage free eggs driving the market growth in North America region. In the U.S. consumers are concerned for what they are eating and from where it has been come from. This is expected to be a driving factor for the market growth in the country. In Canada there is a high demand coming from restaurants and even household consumers which is further expected to fuel the market growth in the country.Cage free eggs market is also segmented on the basis of type which includes cage free white and cage free brown. Cage free white egg is expected to contribute major share in terms of revenue during the forecast period. However, cage free white is expected to show a robust growth over the forecast period. In food industry consumers are getting more inclined towards brown, as such brown bread, brown sugar and others. Thus this trend may support the demand of cage free brown egg over the forecast period.Request for Sample Report @Many companies in the region has decided to use cage free eggs in manufacturing their products which is expected to support the demand of cage free eggs in the country. For instance major food and retail chains such as McDonald's, Costco Wholesale Corporation and others has been declaring a shift to buying only cage free eggs. In addition McDonalds has decided switch completely to cage free eggs in the U.S. and Canada over the next decade. Moreover, recently other companies such as DENNYS CORP a major franchised full-service restaurant chains , in January 2016 announced that they will source and serve hundred percent cage-free eggs in all of its U.S. restaurants by 2026. In January 2016 Quiznos another quick service restaurant announced that they are planning to complete the transition to 100 percent cage-free eggs by 2025 in all of their restaurants present in North America.Cage Free Eggs Market DriversThe growing sensitivity among customers to animal welfare issues in the region is expected to drive the market growth over the forecast period. Rising demand from various quick service restaurants, confectionery manufacturers and retail chains is further expected to support the demand of cage free eggs in the near future. Moreover increased government intervention such as in California, a law has been passed according to which egg-laying hens should be given enough space to stretch, turn around and flap their wings, is further expected to support market demand during the forecast period.Cage Free Eggs Market Key PlayersSome of the key players operating in cage free egg market includes Eggland's Best, LLC, Rabbit River Farms, Herbruck's Poultry Ranch, Inc., Rembrandt Enterprises, NESTFRESH EGGS, INC. Hillandale Farms among others.The report covers exhaustive analysis on: Cage Free Eggs Market Segments Cage Free Eggs Market Dynamics Cage Free Eggs Historical Actual Market Size, 2013 - 2014 Cage Free Eggs Market Size & Forecast 2015 to 2026 Supply & Demand Value Chain Cage Free Eggs Market Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Cage Free Eggs Market Competition & Companies involved Cage Free Eggs Market Drivers and RestraintsRegional analysis for Cage Free Eggs Market includes North America U.S. CanadaThe report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.Report Highlights: Detailed overview of parent market Cage Free Eggs changing market dynamics of the industry In-depth market segmentation Recent industry trends and developments Cage Free Eggs Market Competitive landscape Cage Free Eggs Strategies of key players and product offerings Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective towards market performance Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintsAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Military Helicopter Seats Market - Global Industry Analysis, Growth, Trends, Forecast 2024
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The demand for military helicopter seats is increasing due to rising demand of military helicopters and it is likely to witness high growth due to several reasons such as increasing threats from terrorism and extremism among others.Based on product types, the military helicopter seats market is segmented into ejection seats, crashworthy seats and others. In 2015, the ejection seat segment anticipated to be the major market and anticipated to be the same during the forecast period of 2016 2024. The major factor boosting the demand of the market is increasing use of military helicopter in developing regions such as Asia Pacific, South America and Middle East and Africa. Some of the other factors boosting the demand are the raise in the fleet of helicopters.Get PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:Based on the various maintenance types, the military helicopter seats market is segmented into airframe maintenance, field maintenance, engine maintenance, component maintenance and others. In 2015, the component maintenance segment expected to be the most important market and anticipated to be the same during the forecast period. Component segment includes maintenance of foams & fittings, seat actuators and among others. These are very important components of military helicopters seat and should be maintained according to the standards set by European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In 2015, the field maintenance and repair market is highly influenced by the growing orders of military helicopters from developing regions. For instance, in 2015, Korean Aerospace Industries to build up next generation light civil helicopter and light-armed helicopter and South Korea awarded a contract to airbus helicopters.Based on the various component types, the military helicopter seats market is segmented into foams & fittings, seat actuators and others. Among different types of components, seat actuator is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period of 2016 2024, due to rise in the designed seats from the actuators. The others segment accounted for highest share in 2015 and expected to be the same during the forecast period of 2016 2020 which includes metals, thermoplastics, plastics and fibres among others.Based on the regions, the military helicopter seats market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America and Middle East and Africa. North America holds the major market share followed by Europe. In addition, Europe is the second largest market for military helicopter seats market followed by Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and South America. The U.S. is the key contributors to the military helicopter seats market in North America. Military helicopter seats is high in North America is due to concentrated funding for military helicopter procurement will positively affect growth in the maintenance market. Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period of 2016 2024. The demand for military helicopter seats is increasing in developing countries such as India, China and Japan among others due to border problems among countries such as China and India and India and Pakistan among others. One of the major factors fueling the market for military helicopter seats market is Brazilian Army is investing enormous amounts for advancing its military.Some of the important players in the military helicopter seats market include are ORO Manufacturing Company (Carolina), B/E Aerospace, Inc. (U.S.), Recaro Aircraft Seating GmbH & Co. KG (Germany) and Zodiac Aerospace (France),). These top players are aiming to penetrate increasing economies and are adopting various methods to drive their market share. Some of the others players are Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. (United States), Thompson Aero Seating Ltd. (U.K.) and Aircraft Seating (U.K.), Acro Aircraft Seating Ltd.( United Kingdom), HAECO Americas (United States), Stelia Aerospace (France), Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (Israel) and Martin Baker (United Kingdom) among others.About TMRTMR is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Ambient Food Packaging Market Analysis, Growth, Forecast Upto 2026
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Ambient food packaging refers to packing a food product in pasteurised and sterilized packs to increase its shelf life. Ambient food packing has become a trend in the food packaging industry and ambient food products are preferred by majority of the consumers over others. Increasing demand for having more empty space in chill cabinets calls for the adoption of the food packaging methods that can offer a better shelf life to the product even without a refrigerator. Demand for sustainable packaging material has become a new trend in the ambient food packaging industry.Get Sample Report Copy at :Ambient food packaging bestows extended shelf life to the food product as compared to the usual packaging methods and, thus, enables storing the product at room temperature. Additionally, it also makes use of high barrier sheets, which assure that certain important aspects related to food storage, such as safety of food stored inside, consumer convenience, and attractive design, are taken care of. All these supporting factors have led to the increased demand for ambient food packaging among food manufacturers globally.The ambient food packaging market can be classified on the basis of types of containers used, on the basis of food, and by packaging material. On the basis of containers used, the ambient food packaging is segmented into tray, pots, lids, cups, and bowls. On the basis of food, the ambient food packaging market is segmented into ready meals, baby foods, soups and sauces, seafood, fruits and vegetables, coffee, and pet food.On the supply side, major players in the market have started offering services, such as blow moulding, injection moulding, and thermoforming, which has been leading to the additional demand for the packaging type.However, high level of processing required in case of ambient food packaging ultimately adds to the overall cost of packaging product, which poses as a potential threat for growth of the global ambient food packaging market.Main market for ambient food packaging lies in Asia Pacific, as demand for packaged food is increasing along with the growing population and rising disposable income levels of consumers in the region. The Asia Pacific market is anticipated to be followed by North America and Western Europe, as these markets account for the largest share of canned foods consumption across the globe. The Western Europe market is expected to be followed by South America, Eastern Europe, and Middle East & Africa markets. However, the global ambient food packaging market is still expected to be dominated by the emerging economies.Major players in ambient packaging market include FFP Packaging Solutions Ltd. (U.K), RPC Group (U.K), Amcor Limited (Australia), SIG Combiblog Obeikan (Switzerland), Tetra Pak (India) , Rexam (U.K), Bemis (U.S.), Mondi (South Africa), Ampac (U.S), Dupont (U.S.), Excelsior Technologies (India), KM Packaging (UK), and Marsden (US). These companies are continuously focused on inventing new packaging materials that can help prevent contamination of food products and extend their shelf life.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections done using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technologies, and applications.About TMRTMR is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Corporate CapitalVentures Leading RBI Consultant in New Delhi For NBFC Compliance
http://ccvindia.com/nbfc-registration
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Today, CCV announced compliance support for NBFCs, it is part of the RBI consultant services of the company. Non-banking Financial Companies are formed pursuant to the companies Act and are registered with the Reserve Bank of India under the RBI Act, 1934. These financial institutions carry the business similar to that of commercial banks with some restrictions and are categorized in various types as per registration with the Reserve Bank. Corporate CapitalVentures provides assistance in registration of these financial institutions and also maintenance of compliance with the RBI. The company has designed its services suiting to the exact requirements of different categories of non-banking financial institutions. In the announcement, special emphasis was laid on timely execution to provide value for money services.A company incorporated under section 3 of the Companies Act and having minimum net owned funds of Rs 2 Crore can function as a non-banking financial institution. The Section 45-IA of the RBI ACT, 1934 makes its necessary to obtain a certificate from the reserve bank before commencing any business related to that of the non-banking financial institution. NBFCs are directed to submit annual returns within 30 days from closure of the financial year. The return format in new forms NBS-8 and NBS-9 is to capture important financial parameters.The role of consultants in regard to NBFCs() is to first help register in the right category by filing necessary forms with the Reserve Bank. After the registration certificate is obtained and business is commenced, these financial institutions also need to submit annual returns and maintain compliance with the respective regulations. The consultants help in timely filings of returns and any other regulatory compliance as laid down by the RBI().Corporate CapitalVentures is a leading consultancy located in New Delhi providing services encompassing wide gamut of corporate laws. The services of CCV include assistance in company registration, compliance management, capital market activities, and corporate restructuring.CCVIndia Corporate Capital Ventures Pvt. Ltd.160,(Basement),Vinoba Puri,Lajpat Nagar-II,New Delhi-110024Email id:- ccvindiaa@gmail.com
China Bovine Insulin Market Expected to Grow Rapidly during Forecast period (2016-2021)
Market Research hub
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http://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/china-bovine-insulin-market-research-report-2016-report.html
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Albany, New York, November 8, 2016: A research report has been added by Market Research Hub (MRH) to its wide-ranging collection of research studies. The 115-page research report, titled as China Bovine Insulin Market Research Report 2016 provides a detailed analysis, emphasizing on the market dynamics that are projected to determine the growth of the market in the coming few years.Enquire For Any Query:Bovine Insulin is also known as beef insulin, is a two-chain polypeptide hormone produced in the pancreatic cells and it is the most considered hormone. Insulin regulates glucose acceptance into muscle and fat cells by recruiting membrane glucose transporter Glut-4 to cell surface. The detailed analysis of this report is about the Bovine insulin market in China with its complete overview and scope.The research report of China Bovine Insulin market is further segmented on the basis of type with its production, price, revenue, and growth rate and market share and also by applications which focuses on market share, consumption and growth rate of Bovine Insulin. It also describes about the market drivers and opportunities which is further beneficial for the manufacturers.In the next section of the report, deep insights have been provided about the Bovine Insulin manufacturing cost analysis, Industrial chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers. The Market strategy analysis are also carried out in details. This research study also includes SWOT analysis of the players of the China bovine insulin market to understand the strength, weakness, opportunities and threats observed by them. The report provides key measurements on the state of the industry and it is also a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and entities interested in the market.Read Full info with TOC in a PDF Format:The report focuses on top manufacturers with information such as- company profiles, product type, specifications, manufacturing base, sales area, contact information and competitors of the companies. These are the major players of bovine insulin covering- RayBiotech,Inc., BioVendor, Cusabio, Henan Boom Gelatin Co. Ltd., Haihang Industry Co. Ltd., Sigma-Aldrich, Fatimatoultd, Flarebio Biotech LLC, Neostar United Industrial Co. Ltd., Shaanxi Sciphar Hi-tech Industry Co. Ltd.Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:
Epinephrine Market Grows with several technological advances towards development of innovative epinephrine injectors
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Epinephrine or adrenaline is a hormone secreted by adrenal glands in the blood stream. It is one of the two common hormones (the other being glucagon) that is responsible for glycogen breakdown. Secretion of epinephrine is characterized by the presence of extreme emotions such as anxiety or anger thereby resulting in elevated levels of blood pressure along with increased muscle strength and high sugar metabolism. Under strenuous conditions signals are transmitted to brain and brain in turn sends nerve impulses to the adrenal glands in the kidneys and result in the release or secretion of epinephrine. The presence of this hormone is essential for the body to maintain cardiovascular homeostasis as epinephrine can divert blood to tissues under stress. Epinephrine is used as a vasoconstrictor in shock, as a stimulant during cardiac arrest and as an antispasmodic and bronchodilator in bronchial asthma.During cardiac arrest, there is a need for maximum amount of blood flow in the coronary artery and this is facilitated when epinephrine is injected into an intravenous solution. Epinephrine has effects on various parts of the body such as liver, skin, heart and lungs. For instance, in lungs epinephrine causes the relaxation of smooth muscles of lungs. Patients suffering from asthma have constricted lung passages that are prone to inflammation and swelling. This swelling result in coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and due to inhalation of epinephrine in small doses causes the widening of the bronchial tubes thereby allowing the air to pass through and provides short term relief.Download exclusive Sample of this Report:Epinephrine injections are commonly used against life threatening allergic reactions caused by medications, insect bites and stings. Epinephrine injections are available as prefilled automatic injection device with the hormone in the liquid form. Epinephrine is a class of medications called as alpha and beta adrenergic agonists and these medications work by tightening the blood vessels and by relaxing the muscles in the airways. The direction for preparing and use of the injectors is dependent on different brands available in the market. This injection is usually administered on the thighs and effects of this medication are fast and quick but not long lasting. Epinephrine has both mild and serious side effects such as high blood pressure, severe headache, blurred vision, chest pain, uneven heartbeats, dizziness, nausea and vomiting.The market for epinephrine auto-injector market exhibits tremendous growth potential owing to several technological advances towards development of innovative epinephrine injectors. Epinephrine auto injectors market can be analyzed on the basis of the product penetration and availability across the four major geographical regions namely North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and RoW. Adrenaclick, EpiPen Auto-Injector, Adrenalin Chloride Solution and EpiPen Jr. Auto-Injector, epinephrine lidocaine hydrochloride are some of the brands of epinephrine autoinjectors.Request For Custom Research:Some of the major factors favoring the growth of this market are increasing number of patient population susceptible to several allergic reactions along with increased focus of the market players towards development of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) free epinephrine auto-injectors. This is majorly due to the ban on the use of CFC as a propellant inhaler by the U.S. Government.In addition, continuous product modifications, increased need and demand of automatic injection devices further propel the growth and development of epinephrine auto injectors market. On the contrary, the side effects caused by epinephrine medications pose a challenge to the growth of the market. Owing to the potential side effects (dizziness, shortness of breath and severe headache) of epinephrine therapy, doctors recommend or prescribe other alternative pharmacotherapy and immunotherapy against allergic reactions. The key market players operating in this market are Abbott Laboratories, Lincoln Medical, Ltd., Mylan, Inc., Sanofi SA, Amedra Pharmaceuticals LLC and ALK Abello A/S.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S.-based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Reflective Sheeting Industry Analysis and Key Developments 2016
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http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-reflective-sheeting-market-report-2016.htm
http://www.qyresearchreports.com/category/chemicals-market-reports-57.htm
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Global Reflective Sheeting Industry 2016 Market Overview, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Technology, Applications, Growth, Market Status, Demands, Insights, Development, Research and Forecast 2016-2020.The research study offers valuable information related to the global Reflective Sheeting market, focusing on the key growth prospects, limitations, and latest trends in the market. The study has offered an in-depth analysis of the global Reflective Sheeting market and has presented statistics from 2016 to 2021 on the basis of revenue and volume. The study has highlighted the segmentation of the global Reflective Sheeting market, providing information related to the leading segments of the market. The key factors influencing the growth of the overall market have also been discussed in the scope of the research report.Furthermore, the study has made use of analytical tools to determine the key factors that are likely to impact the overall market in a negative as well as positive way in the next few years. The historical data and projections concerning the global Reflective Sheeting market with the help of tables, charts, and infographics have also been highlighted to offer a clear understanding of the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Some of the key questions regarding the global Reflective Sheeting market have been addressed in the research report. Some of them are mentioned below:What are the key developments in the global Reflective Sheeting market in the last few years?Which region is estimated to account for a massive share in the forecast period?Which are the leading product and application segments in the global Reflective Sheeting market?What is the expected growth rate of the global Reflective Sheeting market?Furthermore, the research study offers a detailed vendor analysis of the global Reflective Sheeting market, presenting insights into the key policies and strategies that have been adopted by the leading market players. A list of the prominent players operating in the market has been included in the research study.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of ContentsChapter One Reflective Sheeting Industry Overview1.1 Reflective Sheeting Definition1.1.1 Reflective Sheeting Product Pictures & Product Specifications1.2 Reflective Sheeting Classification & ApplicationChapter Two Reflective Sheeting Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.1 Reflective Sheeting Raw Material & Equipments Supplier and Price Analysis2.2 Reflective Sheeting Labor & Other Cost Analysis2.3 Reflective Sheeting Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.4 Reflective Sheeting Manufacturing Process AnalysisChapter Three Reflective Sheeting Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis3.1 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Reflective Sheeting Capacity and Commercial Production Date3.2 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Reflective Sheeting Manufacturing Plants Distribution3.3 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Reflective Sheeting R&D Status and Technology Sources3.4 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Reflective Sheeting Raw Materials Sources AnalysisChapter Four Reflective Sheeting Production by Regions, Technology and Applications4.1 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Production by Regions(such as US, EU, China and Japan etc)4.2 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Production by Product Type & Application4.3 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Price by key Manufacturers4.4 2010-2016 US & China Reflective Sheeting Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value Analysis4.5 2010-2016 Europe and Japan Reflective Sheeting Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value Analysis4.6 2010-2016 US and China Reflective Sheeting Supply Import Export Consumption4.7 2010-2016 Europe and Japan Reflective Sheeting Supply Import Export ConsumptionChapter Five Reflective Sheeting Sales and Sales Revenue by Regions5.1 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Sales by Regions (such as US, EU, China & Japan etc)5.2 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Sales Revenue by Regions (such as US EU China Japan etc)5.3 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Sales Price by Regions (such as US EU China Japan etc)5.4 2010-2016 Reflective Sheeting Demand by ApplicationsRead More @About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
2nd World Congress on Polymer Science and Engineering
"Showcasing Polymer Science and Engineering breakthroughs universally"
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Congregation to endow, enrich and foster the knowledge hunters in the Polymer World.Conference series LLC takes immense delight in announcing the 2nd World Congress on Polymer Science and Engineering during May 8-9, 2017, in Barcelona, Spain with the theme of Showcasing Polymer Science and Engineering breakthroughs universally.Every day, an individual comes into contact with hundreds, if not thousands, of plastics (most plastics are the polymer) and polymers. The use of polymers in day to day life is indispensable. Hence, we can take chances and boldly claim that we live in a plastic world a.k.a a Polymer World. Since the discovery of fire, and invention of the first wheel, mankind had never looked back or ever wished to go back to their prehistoric life-style, and this attitude paves the road to innovation and success. And The 2nd World Congress on Polymer Science and Engineering is just a milestone which broadcasts and amasses the breakthroughs in the polymer world under one roof.Polymer Congress 2017 is specially custom tailored for the esteemed International professionals to enable the universal dissemination and application of research findings related to the field of Polymer Science and Engineering. It is a coveted platform to meet game changers of Material Science Organization, Chemical Engineering Institutions, Biotech organizations, Academic Institutions, Industries, & Environment Related Institutes etc., and making the congress an appropriate platform to share and gain precious knowledge in the domain of polymer science and engineering. This congress is a dais which is formulated to congregate visionaries with their research talks and presentations, enabling the inception of thought inculcating strategies of production and development of advanced polymeric material and furthermore devising of methods for scaling up of production, making the congress a perfect platform to share proficiency and excellence.Important highlights of the polymer science and engineering conference includes Polymers at a Glance, Polymer Chemistry, Functional Polymers, Green Polymers: Biopolymers & Bio-plastics, Smart Polymers, Polymer Nano-Technology, Forensic Polymer Engineering, Polymer Additives and Re-Enforcements, Engineering Polymers, Production and Commercialization, Polymer Physics, Polymer Pollution and Waste Management and Applications of Polymers.Barcelona, the second largest megacity in Spain, has leapt from 22nd to 7th spot in the list of 468 European cities with the best economic opportunities; it is ranked the 19th & 10th most competitive city in the world and Europe respectively. Barcelona is just not a city, its brand on its own league by being the 6th among the most recognized city worldwide and placing 10th in the global rankings in terms of receiving new business investments. It also proves its mettle in the field of scientific research by reserving the 11th & 5th spot in terms of scientific production globally and home continent basis respectively. To sum it up, Barcelona is an undisputed region with the opportunities it has to offer to the era of globalization.For more visit-: ConferenceSeries.com hosts 3000+ Global Events that includes over 1000+ International Conferences, 1000+ Symposiums and 1000+Workshops and preconference workshops on diverse Medical, Pharmaceutical, Clinical, Engineering, Science, Technology, Business and Management fields. Over 25 Million visitors flock to our websites to observe the attest developments in these fields.2360 Corporate Circle Suite 400 Henderson NV 89074-7722, USA
IQ4I Research & Consultancy published a new report on Hernia Repair Devices Global Market Forecast To 2022
Hernia Repair Devices Global Market estimated to be worth $3.3 billion by 2022
Hernia is the protrusion of an internal organs or tissues through structure or muscle, the most common type occurs in the abdominal region. There are various types of hernias classified based on their anatomical locations into inguinal, incisional, umbilical and other types of hernias. The most common symptoms are pain, swelling, or a bulge and they can develop into an emergency if the hernia is strangulated. Surgery is most commonly recommended treatment for almost all types of hernia. Hernia repair devices are the medical devices that are used for the treatment of hernia and can be treated either by open surgery or laparoscopic surgery. Lately, robotic surgical techniques are also used to treat hernia, but they are expensive and are not adopted widely. According to IQ4I analysis, the Hernia repair devices global market is expected to reach $3,351.1 million by 2022.Increasing demand for minimally invasive procedures, growing number of patients suffering from obesity, the rise in aging population and rising adoption of tension free repair procedures are driving the growth of hernia repair devices global market. However, Inconsistent reimbursements and high cost of hernia repair procedure, high implementation cost and stringent regulations posed on robotic surgery, operation failure in obese and Geriatric patients pose a threat of recurrence of hernia and also the risks and complications associated with hernia repair surgery and mesh are restraining the growth of hernia repair devices global market.Technological advancements in hernia repair devices such as self-fixating (gripping) Mesh. The fixation of mesh at complex sites is considered as the major concern in this market as the inappropriate fixation of mesh increases the chances of hernia recurrence and Hence, to overcome this problem, the manufacturers are focusing on high-flexibility and self-fixation of the hernia mesh where the mesh can be fixed at the hernia site without using any staples or glue. Furthermore, medicine-eluting hernia meshes are a new advancement in this market which is in the development stage, these meshes elute medicines such as sirolimus at the hernia site to reduce the infection rate through its antimicrobial activity.Minimally-Invasive procedures such as laparoscopic surgery is gaining popularity globally as it offers better clinical outcomes than open surgical procedures. The recurrence rate of hernia repair decreases by 1-5% with the laparoscopic surgery from 5 to 30% with open hernia repair. In addition, with the adoption of robotic-assisted surgical techniques, hernia repairs is becoming popular as it reduces the rate of hernia recurrence, lowers pain and shortens hospital stays compared to the other procedures.As the market is competitive, protection of intellectual property rights plays a very important role as a long-term strategy for survival of the company and to maintain a competitive advantage. According to IQ4I Analysis, J&J (Ethicon Inc.) filed the largest number of PCT applications followed by Medtronic and C.R.Bard at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).The Hernia repair devices global market is segmented based on their Hernia types, products, repair methods and geography. Among hernia types, inguinal hernia held the largest market share and is projected to keep the leading position. Among hernia repair Products, the hernia repair meshes held the largest market share, especially synthetic meshes. However, improved performance and increasing popularity of biological mesh will have a major impact on synthetic meshes market in the years to come. Among synthetic mesh types, the non-absorbable meshes held the largest market share. In hernia repair market by repair types, open-tension free repair held the largest market share. Increasing adoption and many of the advantages offered by laparoscopic tension free repair procedure will drive the adoption and are expected to grow at a faster rate.Geographically, North American regions held the largest market share, among European regions, Germany accounted for the largest share,In Asia- Pacific region, China held the largest market share. In RoW regions, Brazil has the largest market share and is expected to grow at the strong rate.Some of the major companies operating in the hernia repair devices market are C. R. Bard, Inc., (U.S.), Medtronic, Inc, (Ireland), Atrium medical (Getinge) (Sweden), Aspide medical (France), Cook medical (U.S.), J&J (Ethicon) (U.S.), and are considered to be the leaders in this space with their marketed products and strong pipelines. Followed by B. Braun Melsungen AG (Germany), Acelity L.P. Inc. (U.S.), W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. (U.S.), Insightra Medical Inc. (U.S.). Some of the other players are A.M.I. GmbH (Austria), Angiologica BM Srl (Italy), Cousin Biotech (France), DSM Biomedical B.V., (Netherlands), Integra Lifesciences (U.S.), Assut Europe S.p.A. (Italy), etc.IQ4I (Intelligence Quotient for Innovation) Research and Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. is a global strategy, consulting and a leading market research company. Our clients include leading businesses, investment banks, researchers and government agencies.We are a team of highly qualified consultants and market researchers, committed to help clients make strategic decisions by providing relevant and firmly reliable market intelligence support. We enable our clients to identify the market opportunities with best-in-class market intelligence reports.IQ4I Research & Consultancy Pvt Ltd,No.11, Industrial Suburb, West of Chord Road,Rajajinagar, Bangalore-560010
Brazil Healthcare IT Market Status, Opportunities, Market Forecasts Outlook to 2022
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MarketResearchReports.Biz presents this most up-to-date research on" Brazil Healthcare IT Market Outlook to 2022 - Clinical IT Systems, Medical Imaging Information Systems, Remote Patient Monitoring, Neonatal Monitors, Fetal Monitors, Blood Pressure Monitors, Micro-Electromechanical Sensors, Multiparameter Patient Monitori "GlobalDatas new report, "Brazil Healthcare IT Market Outlook to 2022", provides key market data on the Brazil Healthcare IT market. The report provides value, in millions of US dollars and volume (in units) within market categories - Blood Pressure Monitors, Clinical IT Systems, Fetal Monitors, Medical Imaging Information Systems, Micro-Electromechanical Sensors, Multiparameter Patient Monitoring, Neonatal Monitors, Patient Monitoring Accessories and Remote Patient Monitoring.The report also provides company shares and distribution shares data for the market category, and global corporate-level profiles of the key market participants. Based on the availability of data for the particular category and country, information related to pipeline products, news and deals is available in the report.View Report At :The data in the report is derived from dynamic market forecast models. GlobalData uses epidemiology and capital equipment-based models to estimate and forecast the market size. The objective is to provide information that represents the most up-to-date data of the industry possible.The epidemiology-based forecasting model makes use of epidemiology data gathered from research publications and primary interviews with physicians to establish the target patient population and treatment flow patterns for individual diseases and therapies. Using prevalence and incidence data and diagnosed and treated population, the epidemiology-based forecasting model arrives at the final numbers.Capital equipment-based forecasting models are done based on the installed base, replacements and new sales of a specific device/equipment in healthcare facilities such as hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centers. Data for average number of units per facility is used to arrive at the installed base of the capital equipment. Sales for a particular year are arrived at by calculating the replacement units and new units (additional and first-time purchases).Extensive interviews are conducted with key opinion leaders (KOLs), physicians and industry experts to validate the market size, company share and distribution share data and analysis.Download Sample copy of this Report at :Scope- Market size for Healthcare IT market categories - Blood Pressure Monitors, Clinical IT Systems, Fetal Monitors, Medical Imaging Information Systems, Micro-Electromechanical Sensors, Multiparameter Patient Monitoring, Neonatal Monitors, Patient Monitoring Accessories and Remote Patient Monitoring.- Annualized market revenues (USD million), volume (units) and average selling price ($) data for each of the market categories. Data is provided from 2008 to 2015 and forecast to 2022.- 2015 company shares and distribution shares data for Healthcare IT market.- Global corporate-level profiles of key companies operating within the Brazil Healthcare IT market.- Key players covered include GE Healthcare Limited, Philips Healthcare, MV Informatica Nordeste Ltda., Agfa-Gevaert N.V., Salux and Others.Reasons to buy- Develop business strategies by identifying the key market segments poised for strong growth in the future.- Develop market-entry and market expansion strategies.- Design competition strategies by identifying who-stands-where in the market.- Develop investment strategies by identifying the key market segments expected to register strong growth in the near future.- What are the key distribution channels and whats the most preferred mode of product distribution - Identify, understand and capitalize.Follow us on LinkedIn:Table of Contents1 Table of Contents 21.1 List of Tables 61.2 List of Figures 92 Introduction 122.1 What Is This Report About? 122.2 Healthcare IT Market Segmentation 122.3 Definitions of Markets Covered in the Report 143 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil 223.1 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2008-2022 223.2 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Revenue Mix ($m), 2015 243.3 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Category Contribution by Revenue ($m), 2015 253.4 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Category Comparison by Revenue ($m), 2008-2022 273.5 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 293.6 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 313.7 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2008-2022 333.8 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 353.9 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 373.10 Healthcare IT Market, Brazil, Company Share by Revenue ($m), 2015 394 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil 414.1 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Revenue Mix ($m), 2015 414.2 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Segment Contribution (%), 2015 424.3 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 434.4 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 454.4.1 Automatic Sphygmomanometers Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), by Segment, 2008-2015 474.4.2 Blood Pressure Transducers Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), by Segment, 2008-2015 494.4.3 Automatic Sphygmomanometers Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), by Segment, 2015-2022 514.4.4 Blood Pressure Transducers Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), by Segment, 2015-2022 534.5 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 554.6 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 574.6.1 Automatic Sphygmomanometers Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), by Segment, 2008-2015 594.6.2 Blood Pressure Transducers Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), by Segment, 2008-2015 614.6.3 Automatic Sphygmomanometers Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), by Segment, 2015-2022 634.6.4 Blood Pressure Transducers Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), by Segment, 2015-2022 654.7 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 674.8 Blood Pressure Monitors Market, Brazil, Company Share by Revenue ($m), 2015 685 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil 705.1 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil, Revenue Mix ($m), 2015 705.2 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil, Segment Contribution (%), 2015 715.3 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 735.4 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 755.5 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 775.6 Clinical IT Systems Market, Brazil, Company Share by Revenue ($m), 2015 786 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil 806.1 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Revenue Mix ($m), 2015 806.2 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Segment Contribution (%), 2015 816.3 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2008-2015 826.4 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Revenue ($m), 2015-2022 846.5 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2008-2015 866.6 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Volume (Units), 2015-2022 886.7 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Distribution Share by Revenue ($m), 2014-2015 906.8 Fetal Monitors Market, Brazil, Company Share by Revenue ($m), 2015 9MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Market Report Focus On Central Vascular Access Devices - 5EU Analysis and Market Forecasts
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"The Report Central Vascular Access Devices - 5EU Analysis and Market Forecasts provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Central vascular devices, particularly catheters, have been a mainstay of modern medicine for the last 40 years. These devices are intended for patients with both acute and chronic diseases such as systemic infections, which require catheters that are able to be situated comfortably and confidently within a patients venous system for extended periods of time. The report analyses the market at a category (PICC, Non-tunneled, tunneled, port, hemodialysis catheters and Huber needles) and subcategory level (E.G. antimicrobial vs non-antimicrobial and acute vs chronic hemodialysis catheters) highlighting trends and issues affecting utilization, volume and value of central access devices within the 5EU region. Key topics discussed include the increasing utilization of PICCs thanks to the development of nurse led implantations and the reasons for the slow adoption of antimicrobial technologies within major markets.Download Sample copy of this Report at :HighlightsKey Questions Answered- What is the current and future outlook of central vascular access devices in developed and emerging 5EU markets?- What trends are affecting the 5EU central vascular access devices market?- What are the market sizes of each central vascular access device segments in the 5EU?- What are unmet needs in the central vascular access devices market? What are the clinical and non-clinical barriers in this space?Reasons to buy- What Do Physicians Think quotes provide a unique insight into how healthcare professionals are reacting to events within the industry, and what their responses could mean for industry strategists. This information is essential for all strategic decision makers in every organization allowing them to act on high quality information.Follow us on LinkedIn:Table of Contents1.1 List of Tables1.2 List of Figures2 Introduction2.1 Catalyst3 Industry Overview3.1 Central Venous Catheters3.1.1 Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter3.1.2 Non-tunneled Catheters3.1.3 Tunneled Catheters3.1.4 Implantable Ports3.1.5 Hemodialysis Catheters3.2 Technological Assessment3.3 Mergers, Acquisitions, and Key Partnerships4 Market Access4.1 Reimbursement4.1.1 North America and Brazil4.1.2 5EU4.1.3 Asia-Pacific4.2 Regulatory Issues/Recalls5 Unmet Needs5.1 Catheter Related Complications5.1.1 Catheter Related Infections5.1.2 Catheter Related Thrombosis5.1.3 Other Complications: Arrhythmia, Phlebitis, and Venous Air Embolism5.2 Expansion of Non-physician Led Central Vascular Catheter Placement5.3 Lack of Devices For Pediatric Populations6 Competitive Assessment6.1 Company Share Analysis6.1.1 Global Central Vascular Catheter Devices Market Share6.1.2 Global Acute Central Vascular Catheter Devices (Non-tunneled) Market Share6.1.3 Global Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter Market Share6.1.4 Global Hemodialysis Catheter Market Share6.2 Peripherally Inserted Central Catheters (Antimicrobial and Non-antimicrobial)6.2.1 Overview6.3 Non-tunneled Catheters (Antimicrobial and Non-antimicrobial)6.3.1 Overview6.4 Tunneled CathetersMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.State Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Renewable Organic Acids Industry 2016 Application Analysis, Market Consumption Analysis & Major Properties Study
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A novel research report on the global Renewable Organic Acids market has recently been added to the vast repository of QY Research. The research study, titled Renewable Organic Acids Market Research 2016, analyzes the current and historical performance of the Renewable Organic Acids market across the globe and makes future projections on the basis of this analysis. It evaluates the global market for Renewable Organic Acids from the perspective of the current industry chain, the import and export statistics, and the market dynamics pertaining to the demand and supply of Renewable Organic Acids.The research report covers each and every aspect of the market for Renewable Organic Acids across the world, starting from the definition of the market and progressing to various segments of the global Renewable Organic Acids market. The report classifies the market segments on the basis of several market verticals such as product types, application, and end users of Renewable Organic Acids. The regional segmentation is also discussed at length in this market report.The market for Renewable Organic Acids across the globes studied through an assessment of the company profiles of major market participants, production chain, production capacity of the producer, and the revenue garnered in the Renewable Organic Acids market worldwide.Browse Complete Report with TOC @This report studies Renewable Organic Acids in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringBASF SE (Germany)Verenium Corporation (USA)BioAmber, Inc. (USA)Beta Renewables SpA (Italy)Braskem (Brazil)Cargill Incorporated (USA)The global Renewable Organic Acids market is also examined on the basisof pricing of the products, the production volume, the dynamics of demand and supply, and the revenue generated by the specific product.Various analytical tools such as investment returns, market feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis have been employed in the report to present a comprehensive market study on of the global Renewable Organic Acids market.The research report also emphasizes the current competitive landscape of the Renewable Organic Acids marketin the global arena by profiling the key participants of the Renewable Organic Acids market in order to find out the leading companies and assists the market participants, consultants, and the stakeholders in working out crucial strategies and make rewarding decisions.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsChapter One Renewable Organic Acids Industry Overview1.1 Renewable Organic Acids Definition1.2 Renewable Organic Acids Classification and Application1.3 Renewable Organic Acids Industry Chain Structure1.4 Renewable Organic Acids Industry OverviewChapter Two Renewable Organic Acids International and Global Market Analysis2.1 Renewable Organic Acids Industry International Market Analysis2.1.1 Renewable Organic Acids International Market Development History2.1.2 Renewable Organic Acids Product and Technology Developments2.1.3 Renewable Organic Acids Competitive Landscape Analysis2.1.4 Renewable Organic Acids International Key Countries Development Status2.1.5 Renewable Organic Acids International Market Development Trend2.1.6 Global And Global Renewable Organic Acids New Project and Project PlanChapter Three Renewable Organic Acids Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis3.1 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Renewable Organic Acids Capacity and Manufacturing Plants Distribution3.2 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Renewable Organic Acids R&D Status and Technology Source3.3 2016 Global Key Manufacturers Renewable Organic Acids Raw Materials Sources AnalysisRead More @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations.QYResearchReports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Sales Vision CRM and BookVision CLM MediaSoft Pharma Solutions
Today customers are core of the every B2B or B2C business. CRM systems collect information from customers , marketers generate and track behaviors, and sales people interact with them to better understand their needs and close deals. All departments of the company revolve around customers. A good CRM takes its cue from consumer facing apps by offering intuitive organization and seamless usability. Leads should be created in just few clicks. And at the end your reps should want to use it because it makes their lives better. CRM has made huge strides in the past few years. Starting out as a simply contact management tool, then progressing to a sales automation tool, its now evolved into a full blown customer multichannel CRM tool.Today marketers have the technology they need to close the loop, between marketing and revenue, but few are really taking advantage of it. The market for cloud mobile solutions that are CLM and customer relationship management ready is maturing, with a growing demand for tools that eliminate data across an enterprise. So if you have recognized your business in all of this features and if you work in pharmaceutical industry we have the best solution for you - MediaSoft Pharma CRM and CLM solutions.MediaSoft is the fastest growing cloud Multichannel CRM vendor globally. MediaSoft was founded in 1996 to prove that Pharma CRM could be awesome. The Pharmacentric philosophy means that we are dedicated to the pharma and all wrench processes from pharma are integrated into our Sales Vision CRM and BookVision CLM.Leaders in the healthcare industry are operating in an increasingly complex world. The number of platforms and technologies that they deal to gain insight into new products, reports, data integrity and even solution adoption is sorely lacking.This is why our CRM has one of the largest opportunities to make an impact in pharma field marketing. Our Pharmacentric Solutions are designed to set up the new Multichannel CRM approach. Engage with doctors using CRM, CLM, e-Detailling, event management, social media and more. Regardless whether you use iPad, Android or Windows, you can store all your data offline on your device and sync them afterwards with the cloud. Sales Vision CRM allows power users to change, manage and adjust every segment of the solution.BookVision CLM helps pharma field sales teams discover the insights they crave more effiecently then ever before. It can accomplish this by simplifying tasks for the field force, marketing and sales departments. Field sales team can present clients with 3D modelling, comprehensive videos, charts and flashy animations and track customer behavior for better informed decisions on future marketing and sales initiatives. Progress can be viewed by the field force and managers, and they can implement new tactics in real time and offline.MediaSoft solves many problems for field sales team with its CLM and CRM cloud based mobile solutions. Contact us today and learn more about our amazing pharma CRM solution at media-soft.infoMedia-Soft is the fastest growing cloud Multichannel and Pharmacentric CRM/CLM vendor globally.Brace Graner 14,40000 CakovecCroatia
Global Carpet Market Trends and Insights
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IndexBox has just published a new report World: Carpets And Other Textile Floor Coverings - Market Report. Analysis and Forecast to 2020 ().This report has been designed to provide a detailed analysis of the global carpet market. It covers the most recent data sets of quantitative medium-term projections, as well as developments in production, trade, consumption and prices.The global trade in carpets and other textile floor coverings amounted to 1,517 million USD in 2015, showing strong volatility over the period under review. A 20% drop in 2009 was followed by a spike in 2010, with exports exceeding their pre-recession value. Exports declined again in 2012, briefly increased in 2013, then continued falling through the end of the period under review. Overall, there was an annual decrease of -0.7% from 2007 to 2015.According to IndexBox estimates, India was the global leader in exports of carpets throughout most of the period under review, with the exception of 2011 and 2012, when it gave way to Egypt. In 2015, India's exports of carpets totaled 449 million USD, which accounted for a 30% share of global exports. Egypt, China, Pakistan, and Iran were the other key global suppliers of carpets and other textile floor coverings in 2015, with a 41% combined share of global exports.Egypt grew its share of global exports from 0% to 20% from 2007 to 2015, becoming one of the world's largest exporters. Besides Egypt, India was the only other major exporter with a positive rate of growth (+4.1%), with the balance of the exporters exhibiting negative growth rates over the same period.On the other hand, USA (37%, based on value terms), Germany (10%), UAE (9%), the UK (4%), and Japan (4%) were the leading destinations of imports of carpets and other textile floor coverings in 2015. Imports to the UAE expanded rapidly at a rate of +20.6% per year from 2007 to 2015. By contrast, Germany significantly contracted its imports of carpets and other textile floor coverings over the same period. The UAE grew its share of global imports by +8 percentage points, while the share of Germany contracted by -6 percentage points.TABLE OF CONTENTS1. INTRODUCTION1.1 REPORT DESCRIPTION1.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2.1 KEY FINDINGS2.2 MARKET TRENDS3. MARKET OVERVIEW3.1 MARKET VOLUME AND VALUE3.2 CONSUMPTION BY COUNTRY3.3 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES BY COUNTRY3.4 MARKET FORECAST TO 20204. PRODUCTION4.1 PRODUCTION IN 2007-20154.2 PRODUCTION BY COUNTRY5. IMPORTS5.1 IMPORTS IN 2007-20155.2 IMPORTS BY COUNTRY5.3 IMPORT PRICES BY COUNTRY6. EXPORTS6.1 EXPORTS IN 2007-20156.2 EXPORTS BY COUNTRY6.3 EXPORT PRICES BY COUNTRY7. PROFILES OF MAJOR PRODUCERS3 easy ways to order:1. Follow the link below to review a free sample or to buy the report:2. Call us +44 20 3239 3063 to discuss your information needs and for special discounts on multi-report orders3. Email your order to info@indexbox.co.ukPrice: 1490 EUR for Single LicenseSource:IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. We conduct market research and publish reports. You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, LondonWebsite:
Angel Deemed Responsible For Miraculous Survival Of Pastor Involved In Horrific Accident Is Proof Says Donna Louis, Author Of Book About Miracles, 'Miracles Of Direction'
Christian book author Donna Louis
http://www.miraclebook.net
A very large percentage of the population believes in not only in miracles, but also in angels. Why do so many of us believe? Because both miracles and angels impact our lives every day. Because they exist. And they give us hope.Pastor John T. Boston experienced a miracle during an encounter with an angel who intervened on his behalf. Boston was run off the road by a driver who crossed the center lane. He crashed into a pole, then a fence and a transformer came to rest on his car. Thousands of volts of electricity were running through the car. He was unable to unbuckle his seat belt. The car was engulfed in flames and became so hot the windshield began to melt. Then a man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Boston described him as 'scruffy'. The man opened the door of the car with his bare hands. Boston stated that the man took him out of the car and walked him a short distance away, just before the car exploded. The man then told Boston he had to leave before the police arrived, and disappeared.When rescue teams arrived they were amazed, as in their opinion there should have been no chance for Boston to survive the accident, as he certainly should have been killed outright by the electricity. They believed it was impossible for anyone to touch a car with a live transformer pumping electricity through it. While some people believe the circuit breaker might have tripped, circuit breakers are designed to reset themselves. To further add to the mystery, the power company said the area never lost electricity.Boston is certain he met an angel that day.Many of us are fascinated with miracles, as they demonstrate there is a Power that lies beyond what our eyes and ears show us. That Power resides not in another realm, but right here on Earth. And it is that Power that is responsible for both miracles and angels. Not surprisingly, that Power has our best interests at heart.Donna Louis' new book, 'Miracles of Direction, Miracles of Conquest, Miracles of Provision and Miracles of Purpose' gives us something very few books can provide - hope. Louis explores biblical miracles that took place while Jesus was here on earth. She then references with miracles that take place on a daily basis in the modern world. She separates these miracles into four categories and presents insightful example of each type, taken directly from the Bible.For centuries, most cultures and religions have been fascinated with the concept of angels. They are described by a multitude of religious faiths and cited in many spiritual doctrines. All angels are known as beings of light because of their awe-inspiring purity and power. Angels are referenced within all faiths, each having their own divine purpose. It has been said that the angels purpose is to be there when we face critical junctures in our lives. That is the essence of a loving GOD to send angels to help us.Louis knows her subject well, as she has personally experienced three miracles. As the result of those life-altering experiences, she began an in-depth study of some of Christianity's most well-documented miracles. In her book, she attempts to expand upon and explain both the purpose and the direction of those miracles."Miracles are acts of God that proclaim his sovereign power over creation as well as his commitment to the good of his people," Louis stated. "Miracles don't happen when there is smooth sailing in your life. Miracles happen when all hell is breaking loose because that is when they are needed. When they happen they provide comfort, strength, and enhance a persons belief in God. It is like petting or stroking a dog, it lowers your blood pressure and emanates calm."Louis was chosen as a winner in the 2015 '50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading' awards contest. 'Miracles' has also received rave reviews from readers. One review called it "amazing, uplifting and inspirational". Another stated, "I was profoundly impressed by the writing."Donna Louis is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below or by email at donnalouisgodsmessenger@aol.com. 'Miracles of Direction, Miracles of Conquest, Miracles of Provision and Miracles of Purpose' is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Xulon Press. More information is available at her website.Donna Louis is happily married to her husband of 30 years Patrick Louis and currently resides in Florida. She lives to accomplish the task that God created her for and on a daily basis to follow Proverbs 3:5-6. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."PO Box 1613Shallotte, NC 28459
Connect and exchange ideas: Biobanking 2017 San Francisco, USA
Exploring Emerging Markets in BiobankingInternational Conference & Exhibition on Tissue Preservation and Biobanking Conference SeriesConference Series has been instrumental in conducting international biobanking meetings for past two years, and very excited to expand Europe, America and Asia Pacific continents. Previous meetings were held in major cities like Barcelona, Philadelphia with success the meetings again scheduled in USA. 3rd International Conference & Exhibition on Tissue Preservation and Biobanking to be held during August 23-24, 2017 at San Francisco, USA, Asia.The global biobanking market is expected to reach USD 3,731.03 Million by 2020 from USD 2,150.48 Million in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 11.65% between 2015 and 2020. Biopreservation is used to ensure the stability, quality and purity of biospecimens. The global biopreservation market is poised for rapid growth between 2015 and 2020. The drivers include increasing healthcare expenditure, growing demand for preserving new-borns stem cells, increasing R&D spending on research, and increasing adoption of regenerative medicine. On the basis of biospecimens, the report is segmented into human tissue samples, stem cells, organs and other biospecimens. On the basis of applications; the report is segmented into therapeutic, research, clinical trials and other applications. The therapeutic applications had the largest share of the biopreservation media & equipment market in 2015. The research applications are expected to one of the fastest growing applications between 2015 and 2020.The scope of US biobanks are more than the UK biobanks.Biobanking-2017 conference welcomes all the stem cell technologists, researchers, industrialists, young scientists as well as student and corporate delegates to participate and to have a great experience. The theme of the conference of Biobanking is based on New Scientifical Innovations in Development of Tissue science and Biobanking Technologies. During Biobanking conferences, the International symposiums, B2B meetings, international workshops will also be organized to discuss the specific topics in the field of Stem cell technology. The conference also welcomes International exhibitors form corporate sectors to showcase the recent advancements in tools and techniques.About us: ConferenceSeries.com hosts 3000+ Global Events that includes over 1000+ International Conferences, 1000+ Symposiums and 1000+Workshops and preconference workshops on diverse Medical, Pharmaceutical, Clinical, Engineering, Science, Technology, Business and Management fields.Over 25 Million visitors flock to our websites to observe the attest developments in these fields.ConferenceSeries.com hosts 3000+ Global Events that includes over 1000+ International Conferences, 1000+ Symposiums and 1000+Workshops and preconference workshops on diverse Medical, Pharmaceutical, Clinical, Engineering, Science, Technology, Business and Management fields.Over 25 Million visitors flock to our websites to observe the attest developments in these fields.5716 Corsa Ave, Suite110 Westlake,
More than 60 instructions for testing properly
Nuremberg, 4 November 2016 Is there a silver bullet to manage software quality assurance and testing correctly and check whats crucial? About 300 experts used this years Software-QS-Tag to intensely discuss the main topic Testing properly Testing what matters. Altogether more than 60 lectures, workshops and tutorials examined successful practical examples and promising trends.The pressure to which QA specialists are subjected is bigger than ever: Within a very short space of time, they have to check and release complex high-performance software products. So wouldnt it be very helpful to have a patent remedy for testing?Already Matt Heussers opening keynote Context: What makes some practices work in some environments and not in others? illustrated: The choice of the testing procedure always depends on the specific situation. It is exactly this factor which makes the testing and QA profession so fascinating, emphasized Tilo Linz, chairman of the Software-QS-Tag programme committee. No project is like the other. Thats the challenge in our field.The two-day program of Germanys leading conference for software quality assurance and testing was multifaceted. Attendees could customize their programme in six slots from the five parallel tracks Requirements & Architecture, Testautomation, Testdesign, Testmanagement and Special Topics. Junior specialists up to senior managers had the choice between deepening their knowledge in their professional field and learning something new from the neighbouring disciplines.The Software-QS-Tag continues onlineThe social media channels are the right choice for anyone, who wants to continue the technical exchange about the conferences main topic Testing properly Testing what matters. On Twitter, speakers, participants and exhibitors have already discussed during the conference using #qstag. The discourse is still in full swing.Another central pivotal point is the group Software-QS-Tag on XING. The community is an exclusive platform for the participants and speakers of this years conference and of those of the years before. Any questions or comments on a particular lecture, workshop or tutorial? The speakers are glad to answer them.By the way, the interactive topic collection for the key issue of the Software-QS-Tag 2017 has already begun in the group. Members can post their ideas in the panel Call for Papers till 4th December 2016. After that, the community votes on the propositions and they are technically assessed by the programme committee. The official conference theme will be proclaimed at the beginning of 2017.The Software-QS-Tag celebrates its 25th anniversary next year. The conference takes place the conference in the Sheraton Carlton Hotel in Frankfurt am Main on 19th and 20th October 2017.If you are interested in taking part next year or in case you just want to keep yourself up to date about the Software-QS-Tag and its operator imbus, you can subscribe to the newsletter by sending an email to info@imbus.de.imbus is a leading solution partner for professional software testing and intelligent software quality assurance.Our portfolio includes consulting for process improvement, software testing services, test outsourcing, test tools, and training.With our comprehensive know-how, the latest tools, and our proven methodology, we increase the reliability and performance of software products, software-intensive systems, and complete IT structures, and as a manufacturer-independent partner, we assure their correct functionality.Since 1992, the experienced and highly-qualified imbus team has been synonymous with across-the-board software quality assurance from a single source that covers the entire lifecycle.The expertise acquired from around 5,000 successful projects over a period of 20 years provides a solid foundation for the daily work of our experts, all of whom are ISTQB Certified Testers. Here you can find the corresponding reference projects.imbus is currently represented by more than 250 employees at locations in Moehrendorf near Erlangen, Munich, Cologne, Hofheim near Frankfurt, Lehre near Braunschweig, Norderstedt near Hamburg, Toronto (Canada), Shanghai (China), Peja (Kosovo) and Sousse (Tunisia).imbus AGPress OfficeFiona ProellKlainseebacher Str. 991096 MoehrendorfPhone +49 9131 7518-0Fax +49 9131 7518-50Mail presse@imbus.de
Anti-Counterfeit Pharmaceutical and Cosmetics Packaging Market is Expected to Reach $80.2 Billion, Globally, by 2020
https://goo.gl/JraHHj
https://goo.gl/1xLlme
A recent report by Allied Market Research titled "Anti-Counterfeit Pharmaceutical and Cosmetics Packaging Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2014 - 2020" forecasts the anti-counterfeit pharmaceutical and cosmetics packaging market to grow at a CAGR of 15.7% during 2015-2020. The hologram authentication technology segment accounted for about 52% share in 2014 and would continue to lead the market through 2020, mainly due to varied products and economical pricing. E-pedigree authentication technology would be the fastest growing segment among RFID anti-counterfeit technology market, estimated to grow at a CAGR of 21.5% during 2015-2020.Read more details @Authentication packaging technology garnered a promising market share as compared to track and trace technologies in 2014. However, the growing adoption of track and trace technologies, such as RFID, Barcode and ePedigree, in product tracking and inventory management would surpass the authentication technology segment by 2020. The emerging product tracking technique, "ePedigree track and trace," would consolidate its position in the track and trace technology market over the forecast period. This is due to the mandatory drug safety and authentication regulatory impositions. Factors, such as higher cost of track and trace technology, limited awareness about product security, and complex operational procedures, would hinder the market growth. However, active initiatives from anti-counterfeit trade associations, and pharmaceutical companies would endorse the adoption of anti-counterfeit technologies.Key finding ofAnti-Counterfeit Pharmaceutical and Cosmetics Packaging Market:The ePedigree authentication application held market share of about 12.2% in RFID technologies segment in 2014, and is expected to see rapid growth over the forecast periodNorth America will continue to lead the global market throughout the forecast periodAsia-Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing region during 2015-2020North America and Europe collectively accounted for most of the market revenue in 2014, thus, are considered as potential regions in the global pharmaceutical and cosmetics anti-counterfeit packaging market. The Higher adoption rate of traceable technologies by manufacturers and active measures taken by the government, pharmaceutical companies and anti-counterfeit trade associations largely contribute to the growth of the market in these regions. Asia-Pacific would be the fastest growing region largely supplemented by the presence of a large number of pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers.Product launch, acquisitions, and collaborations are the key strategies adopted by manufacturers to sustain in the market. Key players profiled in this report are Alien Technology Corp., Alpvision, Zebra Technologies, Inksure Technologies, Avery Dennison, Flint Group, Impinj, Inc., Honeywell (Datamax-O'Neil), Authentix, Inc. and Sicapa.Request Sample Report @Market Research Company offers Syndicate & Custom Market Research Reports with Consulting ServicesPune ( India )Office No.102D & E,2nd Floor,A-3 Building E space IT park ,Pune Nagar Road,Pune 411014.Tel: +91 20 66346060help@alliedmarketresearch.com
Post-Acute Providers Now Receiving Notifications on Patients through Use of PatientPing, Improving Care Coordination Efforts Across Multiple States
www.patientping.com
Boston, Mass. (November 7, 2016) PatientPing, a groundbreaking health technology company that allows health care providers to be notified in real time when their patients receive care elsewhere, announced today that with hospital admission, discharge, and transfer data now flowing across multiple states, post-acute facilities in those areas have the option to receive Pings on their patients to assist with timely intervention and follow up. Facilities that have opted into receiving Pings are seeing immediate and positive results in their patient care.As a result of the ability to receive a notification when a patient event occurs, post-acute facilities and hospitals are benefitting by being able to strengthen their relationship and enhance communication and care coordination with each other. In the past month alone, Massachusetts post-acute care facilities like skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) and Home Health Agencies have received over 2,000 Pings, or real-time notifications, that helped improve care for over 1,500 patients by reducing readmissions, improving patient engagement, and facilitating more favorable outcomes.PatientPing has provided us with real-time data and tremendous insights regarding our patients after their stay. More importantly, it has allowed us as a company to proactively manage our patients even after leaving our care centers, which results in overall better care and improved outcomes, said Tamilyn Levin, Chief Operating Officer at Wingate Healthcare, a provider of skilled nursing, rehab, assisted living, independent living and brain injury recovery services with locations across Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island.This PatientPing product is released on the heels of policies undertaken by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to reduce hospital readmissions, and will have a direct impact on alleviating this national problem. This is particularly important in Massachusetts, which, according to a recent CMS study, ranks sixth in the country for readmission rates. These readmissions are expensive and can be a sign of gaps in care. In fact, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 20 percent of patients who are discharged from the hospital are readmitted within 30 days, costing Medicare an estimated $26 billion annually.Its incredibly gratifying seeing our service bridge community providers with the hospitals they surround, said Jay Desai, founder & CEO, PatientPing. We see that when the full continuum of providers work together collaboratively emergency room, hospital, rehab provider, home health agency patients recover safely and return home safely after surgery or illness much more rapidly. PatientPing is so proud to help patients avoid returning to the hospital after a procedure by ensuring they are supported by a community of providers.This post-acute offering is in addition to the services provided to PatientPings growing community of Accountable Care Organizations and Physician Organizations, which have already been exchanging notifications and care instructions for patients.Prior to PatientPings implementation, post-acute providers delivering care to patients following a hospital visit were left in the dark if a patient happened to be readmitted to the hospital, making it difficult to offer intervention and move patients into a lower-cost, more comfortable care setting. PatientPings offering allows post-acute providers to do just that, helping to lower costs and improve overall care quality.PatientPings nationwide community includes more than 15,000 providers and has a presence in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hampshire. PatientPing is backed by Google Ventures, F-Prime Capital (the VC funds of FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity), and First Round Capital. PatientPing is rapidly accelerating its nationwide expansion so that any two or more providers that share patients anywhere in the country can simply coordinate with one another.About PatientPingPatientPing is a Boston-based health technology company that is building a national community of engaged providers who are sharing information, coordinating care, and working together to get patients healthier faster. By joining the PatientPing community, providers are notified in real-time when their patients receive care elsewhere and are able to share care instructions with other providers. PatientPings national care coordination community includes physicians, nurses, case managers, and care coordinators across hospitals, emergency departments, accountable care organizations (ACOs), physician practices, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation centers, payers and other providers. By connecting care teams through real-time information sharing, PatientPing enables providers to deliver higher quality and more cost-effective care, improving patient outcomes and experience. For more information, please visitDPA Communications256 Hanover Street, Boston, MALisa Belllisa@dpacommunications.com617-304-3836
In Spain, it's possible to eat three meals a day standing up -- garlic-rubbed, tomato-topped toast in the morning, a crusty sandwich at lunch, then tapas, or their toothpick-speared cousin, pintxos, late into the night. So while you don't have to stand at Bar Casa Vale, Clyde Common co-owner Nate Tilden's new Spanish restaurant and bar, it's nice that you can. The long standing rail near the bar is one of many nods to the Barcelona and San Sebastian pintxo bars that inspired this project. The menu, executed by Louis Martinez (Clyde Common, Imperial), is generous and straightforward, with meat and seafood seared to a smoky char in a custom hearth, while the bar, backed by lush turquoise-colored tile, specializes in sherry.
The dish: How about two? Bar Casa Vale's early showstoppers include a chorizo-spiced octopus tentacle with hearth-roast potatoes and a whole pig snout crisped like Cantonese pork belly and laid on a chunky chickpea hummus. Before you reach those larger plates, you'll want something smaller, like a jumble of good Spanish ham, some anchovies skewered or stuffed into olives and a lovely yellow-orange-red rainbow of a pickle plate. Two vegetarian dishes, a big pile of wildly scorched cauliflower with pine nuts and some gently undercooked Brussels sprouts on smooth romesco, could signal the kitchen hasn't quite mastered a finicky hearth. But the tender lamb neck, with its black lentils and raisins, somehow combined a very Spanish dish with a taste of crunchy Eugene.
Scouting Report
First impressions of new (and new-to-us) restaurants in Portland and beyond.
The takeaway: Bar Casa Vale might not serve the best Spanish food in Portland -- right now, that's probably at Ataula -- but it could quickly become the most fun.
Sample menu: Spanish ham ($8-$20), anchovy-stuffed manzanilla olives ($3), "Chorizo style" octopus ($12), crispy pig snout ($12), crema Catalana ($4).
Drinks: Craft beer, Basque cider, Spanish wine and sherry, plus a cocktail menu including "sherry-based and pan-Latin classics." Word to the wise -- the cocktails are dressed to impress, but take their time in arriving.
Go: In a month or two, after the crowds have found this semi-hidden spot and the kitchen has mastered its hearth. For Bar Casa Vale, standing-room only will be a great look.
Details: No reservations, disabled access, dinner nightly, 215 S.E. 9th Ave., 503-477-9081, barcasavale.com
-- Michael Russell
Oregon Capitol
The Oregon Capitol building in Salem.
(The Oregonian/File)
Correction appended
A bipartisan group of 18 Oregon lawmakers signed a letter to Gov. Kate Brown Monday calling for the state to take on more debt in the upcoming biennium to approve high-profile construction projects at public universities.
The request comes as Brown and the legislature expect to tackle a more than $1 billion revenue shortfall tied to public pension obligations and expanded healthcare costs while navigating the fallout from a divisive proposed tax on businesses, whether Measure 97 passes or fails on Election Day.
"We understand the many demands on our state's limited debt capacity," the lawmakers, which included five senators and 13 representatives wrote. But the upcoming session includes two opportunities that the elected officials say "merit investment above historic levels."
Those opportunities: The University of Oregon's proposed Phil and Penny Knight Center For Accelerating Scientific Impact, a professor-driven initiative that school officials say requires $100 million in state bonds to achieve its full potential -- and Oregon State University's desired expansion at its campus in Bend. OSU is requesting more than $69 million from the state for new buildings and other projects in Central Oregon.
The lawmakers, which collectively represent 20 percent of the Legislature, also said the two signature projects should not come at the expense of other proposals at the seven public universities across the state.
Last Friday, the state higher education commission approved a newly prioritized list of projects totaling more than $444 million, up from $252 million in debt approved in the current two-year funding cycle. There was some angst among commissioners that there's not enough money to go around.
Lawmakers beg to differ.
"We believe increased investment in the upcoming budget will benefit Oregon students and the economy," the group wrote. "Capitalizing on these unique opportunities should not come at the expense of others-- instead universities should get a larger slice of the capital pie than has traditionally been served."
Correction: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect figure for capital construction costs anticipated in 2017-19, and also didn't accurately characterize the full nature of the projected more than $1 billion revenue shortfall.
-- Andrew Theen
atheen@oregonian.com
503-294-4026
@andrewtheen
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Parent Kim Sordyl shown at a Portland Public School meeting about lead in the drinking water on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Sordyl, known for requesting public records, is herself the target of a massive request.
(Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)
The lawyer seeking years of text messages and emails between Portland Public Schools and one of its most vocal critics has ties to a district official who has been in the crosshairs of that criticism.
In July, attorney Jason Wright submitted a massive records request to Portland Public Schools seeking documents related to parent Kim Sordyl, who is known for aggressive advocacy and frequent clashes with district officials.
The arduous and likely expensive request has become an intriguing mystery for district insiders who see it as ironic that Sordyl, who has taken the district to task for sluggish responses to records requests, is now the target of an enormous inquiry.
The motive remains unknown, but The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned new information that might explain Wright's involvement.
Records show Wright is married to Anne Sutherland, the ex-wife of Sascha Perrins, a high-level administrator with Portland Public Schools. Sordyl has accused Perrins of covering up child abuse, an allegation the district has vehemently denied and asked Sordyl to retract.
Wright initially told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the request wasn't made by his firm, Folawn Alterman & Richardson, and that he was acting as a "concerned citizen." But he would not answer questions seeking to clarify why his request had been made on his firm's letterhead or why he paid $1,000 for work on the request using the firm's checkbook.
Wright responded to an email for this article with, "No comment."
The district has taken particular issue with Sordyl's criticism of Perrins, which included a November 2015 email she sent to several parents alleging he, "engaged in a cover-up of child abuse at a PPS school. The abuse led to lasting medical problems for students. He is not trusted by the community to be honest, competent, or keep students safe. PPS shuffled Sascha and the abuser off to different positions after the public embarrassment of his actions. He will have only a negative impact on this issue of race and gender discrimination against students."
Sordyl, also an attorney, told The Oregonian/OregonLive the teacher had engaged in severe bullying.
The district's top lawyer asked Sordyl to take back the allegation; when she didn't, the district sent her a letter threatening to take action if she continued "to engage in personal attacks and defamatory statements." The letter detailed the conflict involving Perrins and said that Sordyl's remarks about him and the accused teacher were "false and defamatory."
Though The Oregonian/OregonLive wrote about the letter in March, the matter has remained dormant except for the occasional allusion during board meetings when district officials lament a hostile tone on social media and remind one another that Facebook is a just slice of public opinion.
Perrins did not respond to an email or phone call for this article. Sutherland could not be reached for comment.
Wright's request stands to cost thousands of dollars. He requested all of Sordyl's emails and text messages with school board members, all emails and text messages between board members and district staff concerning Sordyl, and all emails between Sordyl and a district email address going back to 2012.
The district plans to pay an outside contractor $975 per phone to obtain texts, according to an email sent to board members. Additionally, attorney review time can cost $100 an hour, according to past cost estimates given to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
The district hasn't done a full cost estimate on the request, spokeswoman Courtney Westling said.
Wright is arguing that fees should be waived because the request serves the public interest.
"The citizens and taxpayers of Oregon need to be able to understand how elected board members are acting and/or interacting with the public," Wright wrote in an email seeking the cost waiver, "and how those interactions may be affecting the school district that their children are a part of."
-- Bethany Barnes
Forest Grove police car 2.jpg
The following is a list of calls, provided by the Forest Grove Police Department, that officers responded to during the past week.
Oct. 30
* Numerous political campaign signs were dumped in front of City Hall. The signs were collected and are being held in case their origin can be determined.
* Officers assisted sheriff's deputies in breaking up a fist fight between a father and adult son in a parked car. The fight stemmed from a disagreement over their prolific methamphetamine use.
* In an unrelated call, police checked on two people reportedly smoking methamphetamine in a vehicle. They were actually smoking marijuana and received citations.
Oct. 31
* A caller reported a man with a suitcase flipped him off and then ran in front of his car. The man then tried flagging down another car that drove around him. Police contacted the man, who said he was headed to Portland, then to Germany.
* A resident called police after a man showed up at the front door requesting plastic bags to wear on his feet. Police did not locate the man. Later, on a different shift on the opposite end of town, officers responded to a report of a man accusing another man of stealing his wallet. The man was not missing his wallet after all, but he was wearing two plastic bags for shoes.
Nov. 1
* A man reported his neighbor had just hit a tree with a pipe. Police contacted the neighbor who explained he was practicing his martial arts moves.
* Police responded to a residence where the caller told the 911 dispatcher that his son was drinking too much. Upon arrival, police and medical crews found a man with a broken leg. The man was transported to the hospital by ambulance.
* Police were called to check on a man yelling in his front yard. Officers contacted an intoxicated man sitting in a lawn chair in front of his residence. The man went on to express dissatisfaction with his neighbors. He was advised to go to bed.
Nov. 2
* A woman reported finding her vehicle in a different place from where she had parked it. Upon further reflection, she thought it was possible she forgot that she parked it at the location.
* A local convenience store employee contacted police after a man threatened the store clerk not to sell beer to his brother.
* A man called with concerns about his neighbor possibly driving while intoxicated and abusing his cat.
Nov. 3
* Police checked on a report of two people walking down the road with their faces covered with handkerchiefs. Officers located several trash cans knocked over and some smashed pumpkins. Officers picked up the trash cans.
* Police reviewed a report from children's services that grandma was using the "F" word around the grandchildren. No crime was determined.
* A caller reported a man with a plastic bag over his head riding a motorized cart. An officer determined it not a person or a cart, but was a wagon covered in plastic.
Nov. 4
* While driving back to Forest Grove from the jail, a Forest Grove officer spotted a stolen car driving in Cornelius and attempted to stop it. The driver allegedly switched places with the passenger and the vehicle took off at a high rate of speed before crashing. Two occupants were taken into custody. They allegedly had also just committed a theft at Walmart.
* Police responded to an assisted living center after a resident assaulted a staff member. The behavior was out of the ordinary for the resident, who had no memory of it occurring. The resident was transported by ambulance to the hospital for evaluation.
* A woman was scammed when she sent $4,000 to a subject in Kansas as a processing fee to receive "lottery winnings" she was notified about via email.
Nov. 5
* An officer on patrol noticed a man duck into the bushes after driving past him. The officer went back and found the man and arrested him after learning he had warrants for his arrest.
* A resident reported that he gave a caller his credit card number over the phone after the caller informed him his computer was broken and offered to fix over the internet. The resident was advised to immediately cancel his credit card.
* A local merchant reported a man had just passed a fake $20 bill. Officers found the man, who had a BB gun in his waistband, a concealed spring action knife and a less than convincing story about the counterfeit bill. The man was arrested and taken to jail.
20161031 Milwaukie suspect tattoo sketch
Milwaukie police have released Nov. 8, 2016 a sketch of the suspect, who is described to be in his mid-30s with numerous tattoos on his neck and arms. The man is suspected of a carjacking and kidnapping that occurred in the city on Oct. 31, 2016. Police also released a sketch of a unique clown tattoo on the suspect's right forearm.
(Milwaukie police)
Investigators want the public's help in finding a man and woman in connection with the carjacking and kidnapping of a female driver last month, the Milwaukie Police Department said Tuesday morning.
The incident began about 11 a.m. Oct. 31 near Southeast 42nd Avenue and Monroe Street, where a man flagged down a woman in her blue 1988 Toyota Camry, police spokesman Greg Elkins said in a news release.
Once in the car, the man flashed a handgun and demanded they leave the area, then they drove around the region for more than an hour, Elkins said. They made several stops and picked up another woman, he said.
The man had taken away the driver's cell phone and other personal belongings, he said.
About 12:45 p.m., the woman jumped out of the car near 4450 S.E. Johnson Creek Blvd., and the two suspects drove away. Police have released a sketch of the man, who is described to be in his mid-30s with numerous tattoos on his neck and arms. Police also released a sketch of a unique clown tattoo on his right forearm.
Investigators also believe the man is connected to a hit-and-run crash near Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard and Ochoco Street before the carjacking.
The police describe the female suspect as 5-foot-5 with dark hair and about 120 pounds, Elkins said.
Investigators have not found the stolen Camry with an Oregon license plate of YSR 940. People who see this car should call police immediately.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Milwaukie Police Department at 503-786-7500.
-- Tony Hernandez
thernandez@oregonian.com
503-294-5928
@tonyhreports
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Michael Schill speaks at an April 2015 news conference after being introduced as the 18th president of the University of Oregon. In an email Monday, Schill said he's "more than a little sad" about a UO law professor's blackface Halloween costume.
(Brian Davies/The Register-Guard)
'NO FREEDOM FROM BEING OFFENDED': Regarding "UO law professor investigated for wearing blackface at Halloween party," (OregonLive, Nov. 4): The witch hunt of University of Oregon law professor Nancy Shurtz is deeply troubling to those of us who respect the Constitution. Those law professors who signed the letter demanding the resignation of Professor Shurtz wrote, "It doesn't matter if (your expression) was protected by the First Amendment." I don't think professors who dismiss our Constitutional protections belong in the law school. Perhaps it is they who should resign.
Freedom of expression is a core American constitutional principle. There is no freedom from being offended. Shame on the University of Oregon School of Law professors, who -- of all people -- need to be reminded of this. The legal primacy of the Constitution is sacrosanct.
John S. Dearing, Corvallis
*
'SHAMEFUL RUSH TO JUDGMENT': This article tells an appalling story about the University of Oregon and its law school. A distinguished professor invited numerous faculty members and students to a Halloween party at her home. Additional details reveal that the professor wanted to promote a discussion of the relationship of race and medicine based on the prominent memoir "Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine," written by Dr. Damon Tweedy, a black doctor. To do this, she wore a white coat, painted her face black and carried a copy of the book. (In context, I would imagine she also wanted to promote a discussion of race and law.) Her intellectual intentions were apparently ignored by many, and her blackface appearance has aroused an incredible backlash and uproar among the university faculty, students and administration. Michael Moffitt, the law school dean, has placed the professor on paid administrative leave, and numerous faculty and students have demanded that she resign or be fired. University President Michael Schill has jumped in to join the official condemnation.
I wasn't there, I don't know any of the people who were there, and I'm obviously not qualified to evaluate the event. That said, the article certainly suggests that the need to be politically correct at the university has caused its president and its law school to stumble badly in a shameful rush to judgment.
I hope the suspended professor is forgiving, rather than litigious.
Milo E. Ormseth, Southwest Portland
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he thinks the election is rigged against him.
(Associated Press)
RESURRECTING JIM CROW: Tyrants always need a pretext to their tyranny. Mr. Trump and the GOP are trying to prevent minorities in this country from exercising their constitutional right to vote in this year's election. I would have more respect for those in the opposition if they just came out and said, "We don't want blacks voting," instead of insulting my intelligence by claiming massive voter fraud in this country. This election has shown what great lengths a major political party in this country will go to preserve their way of life -- one that is tyrannical in nature and where blacks will and must live under resurrected Jim Crow laws.
Lindsay Earl Paulk, Southwest Portland
1pipeline.JPG
Dakota Access Pipeline protesters sit in a prayer circle at the Front Line Camp as a line of law enforcement officers make their way across the camp to remove the protesters and relocate to the overflow camp a few miles to the south on Highway 1806 in Morton County, N.D., Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016.
(Mike McCleary/The Bismarck Tribune via AP)
By The Washington Post Editorial Board
How did the out-of-state activists protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline arrive at the North Dakota site? How were the sleeping bags they will use when the high plains winter arrives manufactured and shipped to the stores at which they were purchased? What are the plastics made of in the phones they have been using at Standing Rock, North Dakota?
Many things make the global economy possible, but a major one, unfortunately, continues to be oil. The world is addicted to crude because it is energy dense and easy to transport. Practically nothing modern Americans do - including protesting an oil pipeline - would be possible without it. This inescapable fact means that demand is huge. And if there is a market, suppliers will attempt to meet that demand, in all sorts of ways. In and around North Dakota, that has meant sucking it from underground shale formations and transporting it out of the area by truck and train. Pipeline transport would make it safer.
A significant number of those protesting Dakota Access are doing so because they feel the project has infringed on the rights of local tribes. Federal courts and the Obama administration are in the process of sorting that out, though the fact that the pipeline would not be built on reservation land and follows the route of an existing gas line undercuts their case.
Even so, environmental activists have latched onto the cause, styling it "the new Keystone." We do not fault anyone for objecting to global oil dependence. The world must burn continually less to combat climate change. But that transition should be orderly and predictable. If anti-pipeline activism has much impact on the global oil equation, it is to promote short-term volatility in the oil market, making it marginally more prone to temporary price shocks that hurt lower-income people the most.
In the long term, piecemeal activism accomplishes little, because it does not shift underlying demand for fuel. As long as people demand oil, the incentive for someone, somewhere to meet that demand will compel entrepreneurial people to supply it. Doing so is not particularly hard: A massive global oil supply network already exists. Even in places environmentalists try to cordon off, they can be only partially successful: As environmentalists took down the Keystone XL pipeline, oil train and truck transport boomed, posing much more danger to the surrounding environment than that pipeline would have.
The activists are right about the danger of climate change. They could make a real impact if they channeled their energy into protecting and enhancing President Barack Obama's fuel efficiency standards, which will cut U.S. gasoline demand over time by forcing cars and trucks to use less oil, and enacting a carbon tax that would make alternatives to coal and oil steadily more competitive.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post
A second Oregon standoff defendant wants to withdraw his guilty plea.
Eric Lee Flores cites "newly discovered evidence'' presented at the recent trial of Ammon Bundy and six co-defendants as grounds for the withdrawal.
Flores' lawyer Ernest Warren Jr. cited the testimony and statements of FBI informants during the trial "who were encouraging others to violate the law and escalate confrontations with federal officers unnecessarily.''
Document: Eric Lee Flores' motion to withdraw guilty plea
During trial, prosecutors informed the jury that there were 15 FBI informants involved in the investigation of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Of those, nine were at the refuge during the 41-day takeover. Three of the nine were identified at trial - Mark McConnell, Terri Linnell and Fabio Minoggio. The six others at the refuge weren't identified during trial.
Prosecutors said their case didn't rely on the informants' information, yet defense attorneys raised doubts in jurors' minds about who the informants were and the roles they played.
Minoggio was called as the defense team's last witness. He admitted that he went by the alias "John Killman,'' arrived at the refuge on Jan. 23 and helped with tactical training and was asked to oversee the shooting range.
In response to co-defendant Ryan Payne's motion to withdraw his guilty plea, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel pointed out that the government provided defense lawyers redacted reports on the FBI's confidential sources as part of discovery in June and July. The reports are redacted to avoid identifying the informants.
Gabriel also argued that the recent acquittals of Ammon Bundy, his older brother Ryan Bundy and five co-defendants shouldn't be a factor in whether Flores or others should be allowed to rescind their guilty pleas.
On June 9, Flores, 22, admitted he traveled to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge with guns and did guard duty there in January as he pleaded guilty to conspiring to impede federal officers through intimidation, threats or force.
Flores, who lives on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington and was arrested there on Feb. 11, told the court that he conspired with co-defendant Darryl Thorn to travel to the refuge in January.
Federal prosecutors had said they would recommend that Flores, among the youngest indicted in the case and facing his first felony conviction, serve six months on home detention when sentenced. He was scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 8.
"I thought I was doing the right thing,'' Flores told U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown in June. "I thought it was public land.''
Of 26 people indicted in the alleged conspiracy stemming from the refuge occupation, 11 pleaded guilty. Seven were acquitted at trial, seven are scheduled to go to trial in February and prosecutors dropped all charges against another.
Unlike Flores, defendant Ryan Payne filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea before the Bundys' verdicts were issued.
U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown would have to find there's a "fair and just reason'' for any plea to be withdrawn.
-- Maxine Bernstein
mbernstein@oregonian.com
503-221-8212
@maxoregonian
The United Kingdom Royal Air Force operated its largest deployment of equipment and personnel to the Korean Peninsula since the 1950s during Invincible Shield, a combined interoperability exchange.
The RAF sent multiple Eurofighter Typhoon FRG4s to Osan Air Base, which were flown alongside U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, and ROK air force F-15K Slam Eagles in multiple sorties throughout the exchange, which marked the largest RAF gathering in Korea since the end of the Korean War.
I expect Invincible Shield, our first ROK U.S. United Kingdom combined-air exercise, to not only enhance the combined air operations capability to protect peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, but also greatly contribute to the improvement of military operation with the Royal Air Force, said Lt. Gen. Won, In-Choul, ROK Air Force Operations Command commander.
The exchange provided an opportunity for the three nations to share information and skills acquired throughout decades of historic combined aerial experience in different theaters across the globe.
Working shoulder-to-shoulder, we are showing a unified front to those who would wish to do us harm, said Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Bergeson, 7th Air Force commander.
The RAF personnel were appreciative of the opportunity to not only train alongside the U.S. and ROK air forces, but also continue to strengthen their decades-old relationship with the ROK.
I know from speaking with those that have been participating in the exercise the success it has been so far, enhancing the interoperability between our air forces and strengthening our mutual interest in security and defense, said Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier, RAF chief of air staff. The RAF participants have also told me what a privilege they have felt it to be to exercise so closely with our Korean partners and friends, alongside U.S. forces, on Invincible Shield.
The deployment of RAF assets and continuation of training missions alongside ROK and U.S. crews will continue through Nov. 10.
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With two controversial candidates running for president, Midland County residents were lined up and ready to vote this morning when polls opened at 7 a.m.
People were waiting outside Calvary Baptist to vote. The parking lot was full and by 7:30 a.m., cars were parked on West Wackerly Street.
Were busy everywhere, said Ann Manary, Midland County Clerk.
Around 9 a.m., Manary was heading to Jerome Township. She said in Homer Township, more people had voted by 8:30 a.m. than had in the entire primary election.
If you want to avoid busier times, Manary says to shoot for the hours outside of 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., around lunch time, and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., after people leave work to vote. There could be a lull around 4 p.m. too, she said. Polls close at 8 p.m.
A last minute tip for voters: Basically, be patient, Manary said, adding election staff needs to ensure accuracy.
Were working as fast as we can.
Also, dont put signs on property where they dont belong.
Thats been a big thing today, she said, noting signs that had been placed on school property.
The Daily News will be updating election results as they come in tonight online at OurMidland.com
Locally, the 99th House Race between Republican Roger Hauck and Democrat Bryan Mielke could be hotly contested. The district encompasses northern, western and southern townships in Midland County along with all of Isabella County. Both parties have thrown over $1 million combined into the key race as Democrats seek to retake control of the Michigan State House.
Also voters in District 1 and District 4 have contested races for Midland County Commissioner. In District 1, Republican Jeanette Snyder faces Democrat Connie Methner while Republican Gaye Terwillegar squares off against Democrat Eric Anders in District 4.
Midland County residents will vote on two millage renewals: Up to 1 mill for roads and up to 0.25 mill for public transportation (County Connection). There are many other races to be decided; the ballot is long, so be prepared to spend some time in the voting booth.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department.
Sunday, Nov. 6
12:52 a.m. Police cited a minor for alcohol possession at McDonald and Larkin streets.
1:53 a.m. A motorist was arrested at McDonald and East Main streets for drunken driving.
10:30 a.m. A mailbox in the 600 block of Wildes Street was damage.
7:50 p.m. Deputies were called to a domestic assault at an Edenville Township home. A report is being sent to the prosecutor for review.
10:51 p.m. Police made arrests for driving on a suspended license and marijuana possession in the 200 block of South Saginaw Road.
Saturday, Nov. 5
12:54 a.m. Police were called to a report of a loud party in the 2800 block of Ronan Street.
4:14 a.m. A deputy saw smoke while on a routine patrol in a residential area in Sanford. The source of the smoke was found to be a smoldering fire pit.
10:06 a.m. Property was stolen from the 2200 block of East Wheeler Street.
10:23 a.m. A 1998 GMC Sierra pickup truck was reported stolen from a Geneva Township address overnight. The truck is valued at $1,000. There are no suspects.
12:50 p.m. A motorist was arrested at South Saginaw Road and Eastlawn Drive for driving on a suspended license.
7:23 p.m. A deputy was called to a Village of Sanford business for a report of a hole in the road causing a traffic hazard. The hole was found to be a spot where the concrete chipped away and did not disrupt the normal traffic flow.
7:57 p.m. A deputy was sent to an assault involving brothers, ages 13 and 19, at a Lee Township home. A report is being sent to the prosecutor for review.
9:47 p.m. A bag of prescription medications was stolen out of a vehicle while it was parked overnight at an Ingersoll Township home.
9:55 p.m. A motorist was arrested for drunken driving, driving on a suspended license and on a warrant at East Patrick Road and Washington Street.
10:57 p.m. Police made arrests for felony drug possession and possession with the intent to deliver after a traffic stop at Waldo Avenue and East Patrick Road. A police canine was at the scene.
11:55 p.m. Officers were called to a loud party in the 4500 block of Hancock Drive.
Friday, Nov. 4
1:55 a.m. Property was stolen from the 4000 block of Wellness Drive.
3:04 a.m. A motorist was arrested in the 1900 block of Airport Road for drunken driving.
4:47 a.m. Property in the 1500 block of Illinois Street was damaged.
12:25 p.m. Police investigated a complaint of trespassing in the 2200 block of West Wackerly Street.
1:30 p.m. Two televisions, valued at a total of $1,080, were stolen from a Mills Township home.
3:24 p.m. A motorist was arrested at Sturgeon Avenue and Letts Road for driving on a suspended license.
3:26 p.m. A 33-year-old man went to the Law Enforcement Center to report someone used his name to file for unemployment.
4:44 p.m. Deputies were sent to an Edenville Township home to conduct a well being check, and arrested a 39-year-old man on two warrants at the scene.
9:04 p.m. A window was broken from a vehicle while it was parked at a Jerome Township home.
9:57 p.m. Deputies were called to Midland Township for a report of a disorderly woman in a roadway. The woman was found intoxicated at her home, and was told to stay there until she was sober.
10:57 p.m. A motorist was arrested in the 1700 block of South Saginaw Road for driving on a suspended license.
Thursday, Nov. 3
10:06 a.m. Officers investigated a hit and run crash in the 600 block of South Saginaw Road.
10:34 a.m. Property was stolen from the 4800 block of East Patrick Road.
7: p.m. Police investigated a case of fraud in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard.
Chainsaw Man Season 1: The anime community is now buzzing about Chainsaw Man. Although the manga has been out for
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Permitless carry laws in states including Kentucky, Idaho and Texas are creating a dilemma for police officers working the streets: They now have to decide, sometimes in seconds, if someone with the right to carry a gun is a danger. Advocates of the laws say they make people safer, because the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun. Opponents say that allowing anyone to carry a gun anywhere makes it more dangerous for ordinary people, and for police officers. The debate has unfolded as gun violence is on the rise nationwide.
EUREKA A Bloomington woman pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder charges in the Oct. 16 stabbing death of her husband during an incident at a rural Woodford County campsite.
Sarah Mellor, 30, smiled as she talked with defense lawyers Stephanie Wong and Steve Skelton before her arraignment in Woodford County Circuit Court.
Mark Mellor, 31, died at Advocate BroMenn Medical Center where relatives took him following the stabbing, allegedly committed by his wife at the private campground.
Mellor, who is a Spanish/language teacher at Bloomington High School, was shackled as she sat between the two defense lawyers for the 10-minute hearing. As she was led back to the Woodford County jail by deputies, Mellor looked toward supporters who filled a row of seats behind her.
Several days after the stabbing, the families of Sarah and Mark Mellor placed an ad in The Pantagraph expressing "their mutual concern and support for Sarah following the tragic death of Mark Mellor."
The relatives also asked that the public and media "refrain from speculation about the circumstances of Mark's death."
An obituary for Mark Mellor described him as an outdoorsman who loved hunting, fishing, plants and wildlife. "He loved to travel to the untamed places of the world and then to return home to spend his time with family on the banks of the Mackinaw River," read the obituary.
Previously, State's Attorney Greg Minger said Mark Mellor was stabbed in the chest during an argument.
Wong has filed a motion to reduce Sarah Mellor's $1 million bond. That request will be considered at a Nov. 29 hearing.
In another matter, Judge Michael Stroh granted a petition from the media for extended media coverage of the case. The judge rejected an objection by Wong to television cameras that she said could generate adverse pre-trial publicity.
She also said TV cameras may be obtrusive in what she considers a small courtroom. Stroh disagreed and gave approval for television, audio and still photography of the court proceedings.
Minger did not object to extended news coverage now allowed under Illinois Supreme Court rules.
Stroh set a Jan. 17 jury trial date for Sarah Mellor, but the trial probably will be postponed as lawyers exchange records and work through pre-trial matters.
BLOOMINGTON Spending four days at the encampment at the center of a fight against the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline was a powerful experience for the Rev. Carol Lakota Eastin, a Methodist minister formerly from Peoria.
The people call themselves water protectors rather than protesters," Eastin told about 35 people, mostly students, who gathered Monday night at Illinois Wesleyan University for her presentation, Protecting Our Sacred Waters: A Message from Standing Rock and Lakota Medicine Wheel Teachings.
The $3.8 billion, 1,200-mile pipeline is being built to carry oil from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil facility in Patoka, Ill., about 40 miles from Eastin's southern Illinois home in Mount Vernon.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux say the pipeline, which would pass under the Missouri River and the tribe's water source, Lake Oahe, endangers sacred sites as well as their water.
Water is life, said Eastin, superintendent of 88 Methodist churches in Illinois. Without water, you cannot live.
Eastin was there with a group of 15 Native American youths from different tribes who were part of an annual leadership program organized by the Methodist church. This year's program already had planned to be in North Dakota at the Spirit Lake Reservation, but a trip to Standing Rock was added.
While there, they went to the Missouri River to see the water and to pray there, said Eastin. They tied blue ribbons on their wrists as a pledge to protect the water.
Other people from the encampment joined them, she said, some of whom were Christian and some who were traditionalists.
It was a really powerful experience, she said.
The original pipeline route would have taken the oil under the Missouri River north of Bismarck. Instead, it was moved farther south into Indian territory, Eastin said.
Water should be understood as a human right, not a commodity. Think of what's happening in Flint, Mich., she said, in reference to problems with lead-tainted water in Flint.
The encampment is on tribal land, but demonstrations closer to the construction site on private land controlled by the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, have lead to confrontations and arrests.
A temporary halt was ordered in September to construction on Army Corps of Engineers land around and under the lake as the permit is reviewed. Eastin said many at the encampment are committed to stay through the winter.
Just as the youth group that had accompanied Eastin to Standing Rock tied blue ribbons on each other's wrists, those attending the presentation at IWU tied blue ribbons and made medicine bundles as they learned about Lakota traditions after Eastin's talk.
The ribbons you tie on one another as a commitment, Eastin said, noting, You can't tie it on your own wrist; it takes a helper to be a protector.
Tables were set up on the north, east, south and west sides of the atrium at the Center for Natural Sciences to represent the medicine wheel that is a common symbol of many tribes.
Each direction has multiple meanings, explained Eastin's sister, Elida Lakota Knoll.
The four directions represent air, water, earth and fire in the Lakota tradition, Knoll said. The tables had items representing those elements, such as sage, shells, rocks and tobacco, which students gathered then placed into medicine bags or bundles they created on the center tables.
The program was sponsored by the department of sociology and anthropology.
BLOOMINGTON The decision to pick the next leader of the country is an easy one, according to Josh Woodrey, an eighth-grader at Prairie Central Junior High School in Forrest.
You have to get past all the mudslinging; set that aside and pick a candidate, said Josh, 14. You have to understand what they stand for before you spend your vote foolishly.
More than 300 students and staff at PCJH cast their votes Monday in a mock election organized through Angie Kratochvils social studies and current events class.
Meanwhile, at Washington Elementary School in Bloomington, fourth-grade teacher Kelly Mathy has also been enlightening her students though their time for voting is years away.
Ive been teaching them more about the election process than the candidates, like the different political parties and how the three branches of government intertwine, said Mathy.
At Parkside, Kratochvil said: "The candidates are controversial and the students are very opinionated. It has been really fun to see them talk about their opinions and back them up with facts.
Students researched candidates, and created informational posters and slideshows to share with the rest of the school.
The challenge is finding the balance in class between letting kids talk about who they support and making sure they dont get into an argument with their peers. So far, it has worked well, said Kratochvil.
After casting a ballot in the cafeteria and slapping on an I voted sticker, some eighth-graders crowded around a lunch table to discuss what will happen on Tuesday.
The whole thing just feels like a joke, said Ellie Zapp, 14.
It feels like were voting for whos less bad than whos the best, said Ashlyn Kratochvil, 14. Both candidates have done bad things, but might have good views.
The students said they stay informed by talking to their parents and friends, listening to news in school and browsing social media.
Ive really learned how to vote responsibly by looking at all the factual information, said Trenton Nicholas, 13. For the next election, most of us will be able to vote. We talked a lot about how if you dont vote, you dont have the right to complain.
The election results will be revealed Tuesday.
Kratochvil said she hopes the political passion of the teenager will continue until they are old enough to vote.
Ive learned that kids do want to get involved, she said. They do want to have a voice. They are unhappy with the way things are going and they want to see a good America for their future.
Washington's Mathy, a teacher for 17 years, said previous presidential elections were easier to discuss in class.
It has been significantly more challenging to keep things positive during this election, she said. "I havent told the students to watch debates or look into current events this year because there is so much negativity associated with the campaign. If they watched a debate, they would learn to be mean and interrupt and be disrespectful which go against the core values in my classroom.
Mathy invited several local politicians to visit her classroom and chat with students about democracy and politics, including Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, last week. Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner, McLean County board member Josh Barnett, Bloomington Alderman Scott Black and Normal Town council member Kathleen Lorenz will visit on Tuesday.
Sen. Jason Barrickman, R-Bloomington, captured the attention of the fourth-graders on Monday. He explained his role in Springfield and quizzed students on the name of the governor and purpose of taxes, laws and budgets.
He likened the roll of representative to one student in the class choosing lunch for the whole group.
Some people might want pizza and some might want hot dogs. Or you could just decide on chicken without asking the group. So how do you decide whats best? he asked.
I would meet with people and ask them what they want and why. I would compromise if not everyone got what they wanted, said Liam Taylor, 10.
The students also shared their opinions on the presidential candidates, bringing up Hillary Clintons emails and Donald Trumps manners.
Trump is good because he has a strong voice, but bad because hes mean, said Miette Smith, 10.
When Barrickman asked how the class thought about having a female president, Liam said, I think we should give a new gender a chance.
After class, Barrickman said hearing from the children was rejuvenating.
Im always surprised by how well-informed they are, he said. I look to the next generations for opportunity and hope. With so much negativity in the voting world, its very fulfilling to get such an unfiltered view.
Republican election night party set
NORMAL The McLean County Republican Party will host an election night party from 7:30 to 11 p.m. Tuesday at Rosati's Pizza, 1720 Bradford Lane, Normal.
The Party will have its next general breakfast meeting at 7 a.m. Nov. 21 at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Bloomington. Breakfast is $11 at the door. The meeting will include the showing of a video from the Illinois Policy Institute, "Madigan: Power. Privilege. Politics.
Constellation will seek extensions for its operating license for the Clinton Power Station until 2047 and two reactors at the Dresden Generating Station in Morris until 2049 and 2051.
Tackling mental health and providing affordable housing options were among the priorities identified by candidates vying for McLean County Board seats in the three districts that encompass a majority of the town of Normal.
FLANAGAN For the first time since the Village of Flanagan was incorporated in 1882, residents wont have to travel out of town to go to a public library.
The new Flanagan Public Library will host an open house and ribbon cutting ceremony at 2 p.m. Saturday at 124 S. Main St., the former Flanagan State Bank.
We have worked very hard to build this from scratch during the last two years and were so glad to finally be able to open, said Kim Wargo, president of the librarys Board of Trustees.
Voters in Flanagan approved an extra property tax of 25 cents per $100 equalized assessed evaluation to establish a levy of $100,000 in November 2014 to help fund the library. In addition, Kent Schwerin donated the former Flanagan State Bank property to the newly-established library district to help build the library.
The bank moved to a new location at 301 W. Falcon Highway in Flanagan.
I went to Kent and asked him what he was going to do with the building, Wargo said. He asked what I think it should be. I told him it should be a library and so, he donated it. What a great thing to.
Schwerin said he and his family felt it was the right thing to do with the building, located downtown.
When I was a kid, I read the encyclopedias a lot and so I enjoyed reading and doing research, he said. We want to help build Flanagan up and just felt that with it being such a good location, this would go a long way with that. It will be easy for students to get there and we are just happy to be a part of it.
After the referendum passed, the library district formed a board of directors and then went to work on turning the former bank into a library. It took two years and about $138,000 said Wargo.
There hasnt been a library built from scratch in the last 10 years in Illinois, so it was very difficult to get a lot of questions answered, she said. There are a lot of things to consider. You have to get books, shelving and furniture. And, you have to be modern and up to date with computers. It isnt easy doing something like this and it is difficult to find answers. You have to gather bits and pieces from different sources and put it all together.
And there isnt much information on how to turn a 3,500-square-foot bank into a library. The bank vault door, for instance, had to be removed. Walls had to be torn down and new lights and flooring installed.
It took a lot of work from architects, contractors and a lot of volunteers, Wargo said.
Services will include traditional books, e-books, audio books, DVDs, a Wi-Fi hot spot, and a business meeting location. The library will employ a director and a clerk to start, Wargo said.
We will have some volunteers helping out, too, she added. The residents of our community are very excited about this. Its been a long time in coming. But, I know it will be fantastic. I have actually had people tell me they made a decision to move to Flanagan, based on the fact that a new library was coming.
Developing Markets Worldwide Drive Demand for Pressure Sensitive Tapes Nov. 8, 2016 - Advances in the global market for pressure sensitive tapes will generally be the strongest in the developing markets worldwide. The Asia/Pacific region, which is already the largest regional market, will continue to register above average gains. China will remain the largest market by a wide margin and will continue to post above average increases. The Africa/Mideast region will register the most rapid growth through the forecast period (2020 & 2025), but will still account for less than five percent of global demand by 2020. These and other trends are presented in World Pressure Sensitive Tapes, a new study from The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm. International trade plays a big role International trade of tapes is considerable. Historically, pressure sensitive tape production has been concentrated in a handful of countries, particularly the US, Italy, Taiwan, and China. China has grown to become the largest tape producer and exporter by a wide margin. The US remains a large manufacturer and exporter of specialty tapes, although it imports a significant amount of commodity tapes, mainly from China and Taiwan. Italy supplies much of the European market, although Italian producers face greater competition from Chinese suppliers, even in their domestic market. Taiwan still manufactures tape at a level far in excess of its domestic requirements, although some leading Taiwanese producers have shifted output capacity to China, both to save on manufacturing costs and to be nearer to customers. North America, Western Europe & Japan markets face maturity The more mature markets of North America, Western Europe, and Japan will continue to account for a substantial share of worldwide demand for pressure sensitive tape more than one-third of the total in 2020. In the US, modest gains in manufacturing output will support sales of carton sealing tapes. In Western Europe, rebounding construction activity following a long period of decline will heighten the usage of masking and other tapes. Japan's economic growth will remain slow, but the country will remain a significant producer and consumer of specialty tapes, such as those used in motor vehicle and electronics assembly. World Pressure Sensitive Tapes is available from The Freedonia Group. For further details, please visit: www.freedonia.com. SOURCE: The Freedonia Group, Inc.
Fans of "Fifty Shades Darker", the next installment to the uber popular, sexy movie, "Fifty Shades Of Grey" would be happy to learn that Jamie Dornan will continue on as Mr. Christian Grey for the rest of the films.
During the run of the first movie, "Fifty Shades of Grey" there were already rumors about actor Jamie Dornan, who plays Christian Grey in the movie, getting replaced. Rumors have also added a conflict with co-star Dakota Johnson, who plays the titular heroine Anastasia Steele, and with "Fifty Shades of Grey" author E.L James. But the rumors were debunked then when Jamie Dornan reps spoke to People saying, "He is looking forward to making the next film".
Now, rumors of the former frontrunner to the role of Christian Grey, "Vampire Diaries" Ian Somerhalder, are still persisting. Before Jamie Dornan was cast as Christian Grey, "Vampire Diaries" actor, Ian Somerhalder has expressed his desire to get the role of Christian Grey. Fans, most likely of the actor from "Vampire Diaries", has greatly expressed their support and enthusiasm for Ian Somerhalder's campaign for the role of Christian Grey in the "Fifty Shades Of Grey" trilogy.
Unfortunately for Ian Somerhalder, the movie cast Charlie Hunnam to play Christian Grey in the "Fifty Shades Of Grey" movies. Despite reports that Ian Somerhalder was lurid of the casting news, the "Vampire Diaries" actor had another shot for the role as Charlie Hunnam dropped out of the film calling it "the worst professional experience of his life". Ian Somerhalder lucked out as Jamie Dornan took over the role of Christian Grey after Charlie Hunnam's exit.
Now, Jamie Dornan has spoken out to stop all the rumors of Ian Somerhalder replacing him in the upcoming "Fifty Shades Of Grey" movies. In his interview with Jimmy Kimmel last November 3, the "Fifty Shades" actor said that he already finished filming the next two installments, "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed".
The "Fifty Shades" actor also quipped that it would be a costly mistake if the film studios would be replacing him as Christian Grey now that the last two movies of the "Fifty Shades Of Grey" trilogy have finished filming.
"Fifty Shades Darker", the next installment of "Fifty Shades Of Grey" will be released this coming 2017. "Fifty Shades Freed" will finish off the trilogy coming in 2018. Both the main actors, Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson are staying on as their characters Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele.
Anesthesia is said to have little to no effect observed when a child under four years of age undergoes surgery. Accordingly, having been exposed to anesthesia during the surgery will not affect intelligence or academic standing of a child in the future.
Reuters reported that although children who were exposed to surgical anesthesia before the age of four will have slightly lower grades than other kids, the difference is very small so parents should not worry about the effects. A new research from JAMA Pediatrics claimed that the low overall difference in academic performance after childhood exposure to surgical anesthesia is not, in any way, discouraging.
More than two million children from Sweden, who were born from 1973 to 1993, were studied by the researchers. 33,000 of the two million children reportedly had one surgery with anesthesia before the age of four and 159,000 were exposed to the same before reaching the age of 16.
As per the findings, children who had anesthesia had 0.41 percent lower school grades when they reached the age of 16 and 0.97 lower intelligence quotient scores at the age of 18. As for children who were exposed to anesthesia around two to three times before the age of four years old had one to two percent lower grades than the other children.
Lead author Dr. Pia Glatz, who is from Kalmar County Hospital in Sweden, assured that surgical anesthesia had less impact as compared to the mother's level of education, gender and birth month, which are all contributing factors to a child's intelligence. The authors of the study added that parents should push through with the needed surgery as their findings are not as discouraging as many believe it is.
Based on recent animal studies, anesthesia exposure may change brain development, CBC News reported. However, the doses and durations used in pediatric practice do not cause structural changes.
Dr. Tom G. Hansen, the co-author of an editorial that accompanied the study and is from Odense University Hospital in Denmark, said that it is all the more dangerous if the surgeries of children that young are postponed. The study's goal was to reassure that parents should push through with what is needed as it has little to no effect in terms of academic excellence.
An Idaho mother claimed that she tried to do what she thought is best for her child by giving her daughter homemade marijuana butter to relieve her from her seizures. However, due to what she did, she lost her custody over her two children.
The seizures of Kelsey Osborne's three-year-old daughter, Madyson, began in early October. Osborne claimed that Madyson has been having hallucinations after using a prescription anti-psychotic medication to treat a history of seizures, Medical Daily reported.
Due to the side effects of the anti-psychotic drug, Osborne decided to use marijuana butter, which was placed in Madyson's smoothie in an attempt to relieve her daughter's seizures. Unfortunately, Osborne is now facing criminal charges over the move.
Osborne said losing custody over her children is something she is going to fight for even if it takes her years to have them back home. Osborne added that after she gave her daughter the smoothie with marijuana butter, she took a nap right after. The mother said that her daughter was begging her to help her and the only thing she could think that would help Madyson is cannabis.
Osborne was charged with a one misdemeanor count of injury to a child. She, together with other mothers, has been protesting against Child Protective Services to regain custody over Madyson and her other child, a two-year-old son named Ryker. The group of mothers called Idaho Moms for Marijuana also recently rallied outside the Department of Health and Welfare located in Boise in favor of medical marijuana reform, Fox News reported.
Idaho is one of the states that make medical or recreational marijuana illegal. However, a program in Boise by the Food and Drug Administration, which uses cannabidiol oil (CBD), is ongoing for experimental treatment. It treats 34 children with severe epilepsy but CBD is not available for purchase.
Tom Shanakan, a spokesman for the Department of Welfare, said that the marijuana butter used by Osborne for the smoothie of her child with seizure has THC. He added, "The [CBD] they use for epilepsy doesn't have THC, it doesn't appear to have any kind of brain development issues. Recreational marijuana does cause that so it's not safe for these children."
A hospital that has reportedly refused to conduct tubal ligation to a woman from Michigan is now facing complaints before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights. Jessica Mann, who was pregnant with her third child, was advised by her doctors to have her tubes tied during a planned cesarian delivery since her brain tumor could become life-threatening if she gets pregnant again.
The complaint against Ascension Health and Genesys Health System was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on grounds of sexual discrimination. By refusing to provide the tubal ligation procedure to Mann, complainants said they denied necessary healthcare access specifically needed only by women and is considered sexual discrimination.
Yahoo reported that the Genesys Health System located at Grand Blanc in Michigan is near Mann's home, which is why she decided to give birth there. With the proliferation of Catholic Hospitals lately, it has become difficult to determine if a hospital is already bound by the religious system's rules.
Tubal ligation is also considered intrinsically evil by religious people as it is a birth control method and has been prohibited by the said hospital that denied Mann. Genesys belongs to the Ascension Health, the country's largest healthcare system, which follows a set of rules mandated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops known as the Ethical and Religious Directives.
Tubal ligation is frequently performed at the time of a C-section delivery for women who request the procedure. It is deemed the safest and most effective to have both surgeries performed at once and for a woman to not be subjected to two separate surgeries and the accompanying anesthesia.
Tubal ligation according to WebMD is a procedure that blocks the fallopian tubes of a woman through surgery. Such procedure prevents the passage of the eggs and ultimately its fertilization by a sperm. Tubal ligation is considered a method that prevents a woman from getting pregnant permanently.
Washington Post said Mann's case is just one of the many cases where hospitals turn away reproductive-related medical conditions that are specific to women. This has caught the attention of women's rights groups considering the lack of healthcare options available in rural areas especially, when it comes to low-income women.
Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are set to battle it out and one of the issues that they have tackled is education. Both candidates agree that there is a growing problem with education, especially how students from the United States are behind their counterparts from other countries and how states could not really afford to maintain schools as some buildings are just left crumbling.
Even though Clinton and Trump may be similar in viewing education as a problem. However, the place where they draw the line is how to solve such dilemma.
Trump's answer to the problem is by ridding the education system of Common Core and encouraging colleges to curb school costs. Clinton's solution, on the other hand, is to use bonds to rebuild schools, make college free for poor yet deserving students and more pay for teachers.
The Business Insider reports that Donald Trump has been consistent and repetitive when it comes to the abolishment of Common Core as he joins the popular belief that Common Core is not a proper metric in gauging the capability of the student especially if he or she wants to go to College. Hillary Clinton, however, has continuously emphasized her free college tuition plan for students to remain debt-free even after graduating from college, which does not seem to be the trend for several states.
The State reports that while both candidates present these plans, the word "education" has only been mentioned less than half of the time the words "Russia" and "jobs" have been for the past three Presidential debates. It may seem though that education was not much of a focus on the debates as it may have been focused on several "hot" issues such as Clinton's emails or the legality of Barack Obama's citizenship in the United States.
With all that is said and done, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton present these clear-cut solutions in solving education in the United States. One of them surely will win the Presidency and it is up to the American public, which policy may come into fruition.
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Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi
Iran to boost foothold in U.S. carpet market
11/08/16
Source: Press TV
Iran says it has drawn serious plans to boost exports of hand-woven carpets to the United States, adding that it is already sending about a third of its total global sales to US market.
There are at least 1 million carpet weavers in Iran.
Most weavers reside in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi.
(photo by Mehr News Agency)
Gholam-Reza Soleymani, the deputy industries minister for small businesses and industrial townships, said Iran exported about $150 million worth of hand-woven carpets from March to October.
Soleymani added that around $50 million of the exports had been made to the US.
The official said Iran would soon launch a plan in which three key export zones - the US, Lebanon and China - have been identified, stressing that this would facilitate a better coordination in export activities for each zone.
He also said that Iran plans to hold nine specialized carpet exhibitions across the world to promote its hand-woven carpets, IRNA reported.
Earlier this week, Hamid Karegar, the head of Iran's National Carpet Center, said Iran would start direct shipments of its hand-woven carpets to the United States from early 2017. The shipments that used to be carried out from Germany would be made from Iran's southern ports, Karegar added.
The official added that Iran's exports of carpets had increased 18 percent in value and 11 percent in weight from March to September compared to the same period last year.
Karegar emphasized that Iran had sent a cargo of carpets to the US worth $37 million after the removal of the sanctions against Iran in January.
He added that Iran used to export as much as $80 million of carpets to the US, but the sanctions, had brought them to zero in 2010.
U.S. Charges Wealthy Trader's Brother With Violating Iran Sanctions
11/08/16
Source: RFE/RL
U.S. authorities on November 7 indicted the brother of a wealthy gold trader who faces trial in January for violating sanctions by helping Iran transact business. Mohammad Zarrab, who like his brother Reza is a dual citizen of Turkey and Iran, was charged with conspiracy in the prohibited transactions.
Iranian-born gold trader Reza Zarrab
The indictment added new charges against Reza Zarrab, saying his illicit business benefited Iran's Mahan Air, which is targeted with U.S. sanctions for providing services to Iran's Quds Force and Hizballah.
Reza Zarrab was arrested in Florida in March. Mohammad Zarrab, 38, owns Flash Doviz Exchange and other money-service companies in Turkey, and remains at large, prosecutors said.
The case has drawn much attention in Turkey, where prosecutors in 2013 charged Reza Zarrab with paying cabinet officials bribes to facilitate transactions benefiting Iran.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was then prime minister, portrayed the case as a coup attempt orchestrated by his political enemies.
Several prosecutors were removed from the case, police were reassigned, and the investigation was dropped.
In September, Erdogan, whom prosecutors say had close ties to Reza Zarrab, said he believes U.S. authorities have "ulterior motives" in pursuing their case against Zarrab.
With reporting by Reuters
Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
Kofax Power PDF review TechRadar Pro
Kofax has a handful of multi-platform apps to help you alter and annotate PDFs. Standard is likely the one best suited for most needs, and is the software well be exploring in this review.
Personally, I dont like browsers that throw up a warning dialog box when you try to close them with multiple tabs open. But I recently discovered that a lot of people do like this functionality, especially when they have dozens of browser tabs loaded. Unfortunately for those users, Chrome doesnt offer a warning box (even as an advanced option) on Windows.
If you want to see a warning before closing Chrome heres a quick solution. Admittedly, its a bit of a hack, but it works.
Open the website Prevent Close by Germany-based developer Michael Armbruster. This website uses JavaScript to throw up a dialog box that asks you if youre sure you want to leave that specific website.
The idea is to always leave that website tab open in Chrome. Then when you click the big red X to close the browser, this site throws up a dialog box asking if youre sure you want to leave that page. If you click Stay the browser window will not close, if you click Leave Chrome shuts down.
Its a neat little trick that uses a method less-than-reputable websites have been using for years. This time around, however, this little piece of JS magic is being used for good.
Use the Pin tab option to keep Prevent Close available in Chrome.
To make this as painless as possible, I recommend pinning this website to your browser then moving the tab out of the way. To do that open Prevent Close, and then right-click the tab with your mouse. From the context menu select Pin tab.
The tab will now shrink down to a different size from the rest of the tabs. Next, just grab it with your mouse and drag the tab to the far left of your browsers tab lineup. In that spot it should be out of your way, but it will appear every time you start up your browser and prevent accidentally closing Chrome when its loaded with dozens of tabs.
Pro Tip: Chromes pinned tabs feature is a little tricky. Pinned tabs only appear in a single Chrome window, not every new window you open. To keep pinned tabs permanent, you need to close every other open Chrome browser window before closing the one with the pinned tab. In other words close it last or youll lose it. Something to keep in mind the next time you have YouTube or Netflix open in one Chrome window while working in another.
If youre wondering why Chrome doesnt offer a warning dialog on Windows, the best explanation I found was on a Google Chrome Help forum post. The lack of this feature is a philosophical choice. Google is focused on making Chrome as fast and simple as possible, which means stripping away extraneous features. A close dialog box is apparently one such feature. Chrome does have an option to enable a warn before quitting dialog on Mac, owing to the way keyboard shortcuts for closing windows and tabs work on that platform. Windows users, however, will have to make due with this hack.
When the French government quietly announced, in the middle of a holiday weekend, the merging of two files to create a megadatabase holding the biometrics of almost 60 million French citizens, it was clearly hoping to avoid an outcry.
It failed.
Among those lining up to criticize the governments move are its own minister of state for the Digital Sector and Innovation, and the National Digital Council, a body created by the government to provide independent recommendations on all matters relating to the effect of digital technologies on society and the economy.
Minister of State Axelle Lemaire told French journalists the megadatabase used 10-year-old technology and had real security problems.
For the Council, the creation of TES (from the French abbreviation for Secure Electronic Identity Documents) will result in abuses as inevitable as they are unacceptable.
TES is a dramatic expansion of an existing database used for the creation of biometric passports. The government plans to merge it with the (non-biometric) database of holders of the French national identity card
This cycle of clandestine database development followed by public outcry is nothing new: France has been here before. Several times.
In 1973 the French government began working in secret on SAFARI, a project to identify every citizen with a unique number that it could then use to link all the information it held about them in different databases. After newspaper Le Monde revealed SAFARIs existence on March 21, 1974, the resulting furor led to the creation of the 1978 law on computing and freedom that limits the storage and processing of personal identifying information to this day. (In an early display of targeted marketing, Le Mondes report on state surveillance appeared alongside ads for a camera zoom lens and a photocopier.)
French reaction to SAFARI was so visceral because of the use that had been made of an earlier national identity database, created by the Vichy regime during the Nazi occupation of France, to single out Jews and foreigners.
There was a fear that if France once again fell under such a regime, the existence of a ready-made national identity database could facilitate crimes against humanity, according to a history of the project written by the National Center for Scientific Research.
In 2008 the government tried again with a project called EDVIGE.
That too ran into trouble over a plan to record details of peoples sexuality, race and health in a database of criminals, potential criminals, and also past, present and potential elected officials categories with the potential to include almost everyone.
The government was forced first to modify, then withdraw its plan for EDVIGE.
But now the idea has come around again just as Paris is about to host a summit of the Open Government Partnership.
Most worrying for the National Digital Council is the governments selection of a centralized architecture to store everyones biometric details.
One of its concerns is that this will present a rich target for cybercriminals and hostile state actors.
The U.S. has already seen the danger such systems present. In 2015 the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said hackers had accessed the details of 4.2 million government employees in its databases, and those of 21.5 million people who, as current, former or prospective government employees, had been subject to background investigations.
But the Council is also concerned about freedom.
History has shown that the creation of such databases leads to function creep, whether the databases are operated legally or illegally, as until recently were those of the security services. To think that our country will be an exception is to ignore the lessons of history, it said. The rise of populism, in Europe and in the U.S., makes such bets on the future unreasonable.
It called on the government to suspend the creation of the database until all the security implications have been studied.
Lenovo created a stir when it said the Yoga 900 and 900S hybrids would work only with Windows, not Linux. The company has now changed its stance, bringing Linux support to those PCs.
The PC maker earlier this month issued a BIOS update so Linux can be loaded on Yoga 900, 900S and IdeaPad 710 models.
The BIOS update adds an AHCI (Advance Host Controller Interface) SATA controller mode so users can load Linux on the laptops.
This is a Linux-only BIOS, meaning it should be used only by those who want to load the OS. If you want to continue with Windows, do not load the firmware. This BIOS is not intended to be used on machines running Windows operating systems, Lenovo said.
The PC maker is not providing support for the BIOS, and users have to assume any risks of system problems.
Lenovo didnt immediately say if loading Linux would invalidate the warranty of the laptops. But in some cases loading another OS on laptop can break a limited warranty.
The BIOS was created at the request of users, Lenovo said. Most people use Windows, so many wont load the BIOS. Locking out Linux from Windows 10 PCs, however, sparked a heated discussion on Reddit.
Lenovo earlier argued that the Yoga 900 and 900S, which can fold into a tablet, were tested for Windows 10particularly the touch functionality and even the hinges. For example, when the laptop is folded into a tablet, a sensor driver identifies the change and loads the tablet interface of Windows 10.
Lenovo also said that the Yogas unique design led Lenovo to use a storage controller mode not supported by Linux.
Beyond the controller setup limitation, other advanced capabilities of the Yoga design would likely not work with current Linux offerings, Lenovo said at the time.
Lenovo has a list of laptops it has certified for Linux, but the Yoga 900 and 900S still havent been added to that list.
Locking specific hardware to Windows has emerged as an issue in recent years. For example, Intels Kaby Lake chips support only Windows 10, so will AMDs upcoming Zen chips.
Microsoft also stoked user anger when it tried to limit the support period for PCs with Intel Skylake chips running Windows 7 and 8this was viewed as an attempt to force people to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft ultimately changed its plan, extending support.
If you decide to load the BIOS update and Linux on the Yoga 900 or 900S laptops, theres a good chance you wont get help in troubleshooting from Lenovos tech support personnel, who feel comfortable with Windows. Linux is much different from Windows, and requires some technical expertise to load and operate.
Another option is to buy Linux-based laptops with the latest Kaby Lake chips, like System76s Lemur laptop, which starts at $699, or Dells XPS 13 Developer Edition, which starts at $949.
The new leaders of Ontario International Airport are engaging with airlines to try to better live up to the international part of the airports name.
With a large Asian population in cities surrounding Ontario, and a lot of cargo that could be shipped between the countries on passenger jets, flights to Asia could be very attractive.
Currently, only two airlines, Volaris and Aeromexico, offer international passenger flights, from ONT to Mexico. Airport officials have been working with foreign and domestic airline companies to expand international service.
Related: Ontario officers to augment police services at Ontario International Airport
Weve made initial talks to several Asian carriers as well as at least one from Europe and one Middle Eastern carrier, said Curt Hagman, a commissioner of the Ontario International Airport Authority.
One of those the only he would identify by name is Hainan Airlines, Chinas fourth-largest airline and its largest thats privately owned.
They have come out several times to discuss both routes as well as potential investment in the airport, but nothings been signed, Hagman said.
A high-ranking executive for Korean Air was present at ONT last week for the ceremony to hand off ownership from the city of Los Angeles to the authority a visit that local officials hope could translate into potential business.
Related: Why Ontarios control of airport will also benefit LAX
The executive, John Jackson, is vice president of marketing for Korean Air in North and South America. Asked via email whether the company was interested in opening service at ONT, he responded: We were there at the invitation of Ontario Airport and have no plans to begin service.
Hagman said the visit by Korean Air was introductory.
They were interested in our airport, but there were no details and no talk about fleet service at this point, he said. Obviously there are no plans at this point, but that doesnt mean theyre not interested. Lets take it step by step.
VISION FOR AIRPORT
Ontario International Airport Authority officials say full control will allow them to finally move forward on plans to redevelop land at the airport to generate money toward expanding and improving the regional airport, with new money offsetting landing fee costs to entice airlines to return and expand flights.
The authoritys vision for the next few years, according to Hagman, includes a new international terminal, an upgrade of terminals 2 and 4, a parking structure, hotels, restaurants and shops.
Related: Ontario International Airport returns to local control
There are things we need to do in this airport first to gear up for them, Hagman said. Were hoping by the first of the year, well have (temporary) infrastructure at least set up to start taking more flights. We want to make things better for the passenger experience.
Hagman said the authority is also in talks with Chinese companies and airlines to set up shop at the airport, with firms to help with development.
Were in ongoing negotiations and talks. Theres been initial handshaking and meetings, he said.
CHINESE COMMUNITY
Hagman held a news conference at the airport Friday for Chinese media in the region to coincide with the recent handover, but there were no new major announcements.
Everybody here was from Chinese media around the Southern California area to see how the airport was working with Chinese airline companies to have more connections, said Leo Wong, deputy assignment editor for Sing Tau Newspapers, based in Industry.
Wong said a significant portion of the regions Chinese community lives in the area surrounding Ontario International Airport, and any opening of international travel to China would be a welcome convenience for them.
Theres a lot of people in the Chinese community in Chino, Chino Hills and Ontario, Wong said. If they drive to LAX, it would take them two or more hours because of traffic.
Hagmans lawyer, Albert Chang, who is Chinese-American and a Chino Hills resident, was present at the news conference and is looking forward to the opening of flights from ONT to China for the Chinese community in the region.
It would be so much more convenient than driving to LAX, Chang said. The traffic is so much better here. Were closer to home.
CARGO BUSINESS
The opening up of airline passenger service to destinations in Asia could mean big business for cargo logistics in the Inland region as well, said John Husing, chief economist for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership and a longtime advocate for local control of ONT.
Husing said passenger service could serve large Asian populations not only in Chino Hills, Eastvale and Rancho Cucamonga in the west end of the Inland region, but also in cities along the 60 such as Walnut, Diamond Bar and Monterey Park.
There are a lot of airlines that serve Asia for countries besides China, Husing said. A lot of cargo travels in the bellies of passenger jets, not just cargo jets. It opens up the possibility of goods going in the bellies of passenger jets in both directions, and thats efficient for our (logistics) economy, in the interaction with China, because it doesnt have to go into L.A. and be trucked out here.
Hundreds of immigrants are taking their U.S. citizenship oaths in Anaheim on Election Day, two weeks after Californias voter registration deadline, but they still have a right to register and cast their votes Tuesday, Nov. 8.
Theyre eligible to vote thanks to a 2012 state law allowing residents who become U.S. citizens after the deadline, to register.
However, the new citizens cant vote at their local precincts. Instead, new citizens must go to their county Registrars offices anytime before the polls close on Election Day and present proof that they are new citizens.
Related: Do you support Trump or Clinton? 3 voters explain their choice
With two citizenship ceremonies scheduled in Anaheim on Election Day, immigrant rights organizers are reminding new citizens they can still vote.
For these folks, the news will be welcomed, so that theyre not left out of this historic election, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
I dont think many voters know this is something that is available to them in California, he added.
Earlier versions of this policy had been vetoed by two previous governors for concerns over fraud, and logistical concerns of processing both registration and voting at polling places on election day.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed it in 2011.
Related: Where do I go to vote?
Proponents of the law said the system will not be abused because new citizens mush show proof of citizenship and established residency in California. The law also requires county elections officials to keep a list, which will be open for public inspection, of those who registered as new citizens.
This law brings added significance this election season as anti-immigrant rhetoric from the campaign trail has pushed Latino immigrants to become U.S. citizens, many who say theyre doing so to vote against GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Trump has said some Mexican immigrants were rapists and others came to the U.S. bringing drugs. He also said he will build a wall along the Mexican border, vowing to make Mexico pay for it.
Related: Your guide to the Inland areas most compelling Election Day contests
Research shows that at least for Latinos, those who become citizens during a politically charged environment on immigrant issues, vote at rates substantially higher than native-born or longer term naturalized Latino citizens, according to the University of Southern Californias Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.
Thats the case for Marta Sixkho de Alvarado, 80, and her husband Fabio Alvarado, 91, who emigrated from El Salvador and live in Downey.
Theyve been legal permanent residents since the late 80s, but Trumps comments against immigrants pushed them to become citizens this year.
The couple wants to add one more vote to make this nation a great place for all. they said in a statement.
Related: Everything you need to know about whats on the ballot in Riverside County
And this state law will allow them to do so.
Sixkho became a citizen in September and registered to vote by the Oct. 24 deadline. Her husband, however, couldnt meet the deadline because his citizenship oath appointment didnt come through until after the deadline, said Cabrera.
They were very disappointed at first. They thought he was not going to be able to vote, Cabrera said. When they heard (he) actually could vote, they were very excited.
The couple will be joining a surge of voters statewide.
Related: Breakdown of Californias 17 propositions
In California, where 39 percent of residents are Latino, 501,206 people registered to vote online during the final two days of registration for the Nov. 8 election.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla said more California residents registered online Oct. 24, the last day to register, than any other single day in the history of our voter registration website.
Although Latinos have historically been underrepresented in the polls, it may be turning around this year.
Related: How Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton changed the social media game
In Californias June primary, 20 percent of ballots were cast by Latinos more than any other primary in the past decade, according to a report by the California Civic Engagement Project at UC Davis.
It appears that the divisive political environment of the primary and efforts toward greater voter registration and engagement for Latinos had a significant impact on increasing this groups political representation in the state, the report said.
Contact the writer: 951-368-9462, amolina@scng.com, or on Twitter @alemolina
There are many words that can be used to accurately describe Americas 2016 presidential election but the word unprecedented certainly comes to mind. The candidates. The antics. The drama. The coverage by media outlets. The negativity. The lack of substance. The vitriol. The scandals. The FBI leaks. The hateful rhetoric.
American presidential elections arent Little League games, but 2016 has certainly highlighted the worst of our politics.
Its no wonder that a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of voters are frustrated by the presidential election, and 55 percent said they were disgusted. More telling, however, is that only 11 percent of all voters said they would be excited if Donald Trump were to win, and only 12 percent would be excited if Hillary Clinton were to emerge victorious.
In other words, nearly 90 percent of Americans either way will be unenthusiastic about our next president.
In recent days, weeks and months, various newspapers have offered their endorsements in the presidential contest. And some readers have asked if our paper will endorse in the presidential election. The answer is no.
With media constantly focused on the presidential election and an oversaturation of information available to voters, newspaper editorial endorsements for presidential candidates are not likely to sway many, if any, voters.
In local races and state races where we thoroughly interview and vet candidates, endorsements have real value. But in the presidential race that same value is not apparent.
Even still, much like the frustration and division of the country as a whole, our Editorial Board could reach no consensus over who it would like to endorse for the presidency. Even after numerous discussions and debates, we were still an Editorial Board very much divided on the presidential candidates, including Libertarian Party nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.
And its no wonder: Clinton is under investigation by the FBI; she conspired with the Democratic National Committee to suppress her chief rival in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders; her campaign chairman, John Podesta, attempted to get California to move its primary date to help clinch the Democratic nomination for her; foreign governments donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, while at the same time garnering access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and a Department of Justice official tipped off the Clinton campaign about a DOJ investigation about her.
As for Trump, he has illustrated a track record for making horrendous comments about women not to mention Mexican immigrants, Muslims and pretty much everybody else and faces a plethora of sexual assault allegations; he lashes out at reporters and illustrates a disdain for the free press; his companies have filed for bankruptcy at least six times, according to Politifact, and he faces a long list of complaints against his business practices; he consistently engages in derogatory language and name-calling; he engages in childish feuds with celebrities on Twitter; and he has an overall temperament and demeanor that are unbecoming of any head of state.
Its no surprise that many voters would believe that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump are worthy of the Oval Office. Indeed, some members of the Editorial Board made the case for Libertarian Party nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, and still others argued for a none of the above approach.
Ultimately, either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be elected president. But neither they, or their third-party challengers, inspire enough confidence for our Editorial Board to offer an endorsement.
Jennifer Krupa said shes likely to have some nerves when she performs with the U.S. Navy Band Commodores on Wednesday, Nov. 9, at Hemet High School.
Not only will the 1990 Hemet grad be playing in front of her family and friends, but at least one former music instructor will be there.
When Krupa, who plays trombone in the Navys premier jazz ensemble, last performed in Hemet five years ago, all her music teachers were sitting in the front row.
That was one of my most difficult concerts, Krupa said. It was a mixture of being extremely proud and being extremely nervous wanting to make them proud. They were my father figures for music; they got me where I am now.
Among those in the crowd Wednesday will be Jeff Tower, her high school band director, who said seeing a former student perform is phenomenal.
Its probably the best feeling you can get out of teaching, he said.
This will be Krupas third performance with the band in Hemet, but her first at the Ron Murray Theater on campus.
Growing up and being at Hemet High School, it was my second home, Krupa said last week from Cedar City, Utah, where the band was playing amid an 18-city, seven-state tour. Being in the band room and with friends strengthened me. It gave me the courage to move forward.
When Krupa, 44, attended Hemet schools, instrumental music was a high priority. Teachers such as Larry Mattox, Bob Waner and Mel Smith prepared students for the high school band, led by Tower, which was known as one of the top units in the country.
It was truly directing a program from elementary school up, Krupa said. They were more than just feeder programs to the high school, there was full community support.
Tower, who retired in 2007, said Krupa is one of the top musicians to come out of the Hemet program.
She was just a great kid and an excellent musician, he said.
A chief petty officer, Krupa joined the Navy band as a civilian in 2004, becoming the first female wind instrument player in its history. She lives in Maryland with the husband and three sons, ages 3, 6 and 8.
Krupa said when she was a child, her mother, Hemet City Councilwoman Linda Krupa, would accompany her and her two older sisters on the piano.
Shes been kind of persistent, very tenacious about her music, Linda Krupa said.
Jennifer Krupa said theres something special about playing music and serving her country.
I get to make music for a living and I get to support my country, she said.
Concerts conclude with the song of each branch of the military and recognition of those who served.
The band was to perform in Murrieta on Monday evening and Oceanside on Tuesday and is headed to Oxnard on Friday.
Krupa said all the musicians get a boost when any member plays in his or her hometown.
Everyone in the band has the same pride for that band member as the community does, Krupa said.
You find yourself trying to put something extra into it because this is where they came from, added Courtney Williams, concert moderator for the band.
Contact the writer: 951-368-9086 or cshultz@scng.com
State Street Winery in downtown Redlands was evacuated and one person was injured due to a natural gas leak Monday afternoon, Nov. 7 according to city spokesman Carl Baker.
Only employees were there at the time they evacuated the building and no one has been allowed back in, Baker said.
The leak blew a hole in a wall inside the business, taking out a rack of wine bottles and injuring an employee, Baker said.
The owners took the employee to urgent care, he said.
Eighth Street was closed between State Street and Citrus Avenue while officials from Southern California Gas worked to locate and fix the leak. State Street also was closed between Seventh and Eighth streets as of 5 p.m. Monday.
No gas has been detected at neighboring businesses, but gas levels continued to be elevated at the business, according to Baker.
Just before 8 p.m., Baker reported that the leak had been located and clamped.
The winery plans to reopen Tuesday afternoon, according to the business official Facebook page.
ONTARIO Travelers at Ontario International Airport can expect to see a greater presence in Ontario Police Department personnel in the next 21 months as public safety staffing transitions from Los Angeles World Airports to the local authority.
The Ontario International Airport Authority unanimously agreed Monday to have the Ontario Police Department eventually provide law enforcement for the airport.
Although the contract was approved Monday morning, Ontario police officers have been policing the airport since the takeover Nov. 1, Ontario police Capt. Dean Brown said. Brown will be overseeing the airport bureau.
We are augmenting what they currently have. We are not quite supplanting anything, he said. My personnel are working alongside of them during this transition process. As Ontario PD increases their presence there, then LAWA can start reducing their numbers.
For security reasons, Brown declined to state the precise number of officers who will be stationed at the airport. Local officers have been on-site since July for training.
Theres a lot of federal and regulatory issues that we have to be familiar with, he said.
Officers had to take an aviation security course to learn such things as driving in and around the airfield, he said.
Theres a lot of things my officers were required to do before we started performing a law enforcement role, Brown said. We are still allowing LAWA to take the primary responsibility under the augmentation agreement, as I build up staffing to an adequate level.
Ontario City Manager Al Boling said the city has budgeted $3.5 million for the services, although that figure can change by the end of the fiscal year.
We came up with an estimation back in June, but the actual costs will depend on the number of officers provided and billing rates, he said.
The police department has 356 full-time positions, 266 of which are sworn officers. The budget for 2016-17 is $82.4 million, Boling said.
City leaders are expected to approve a more comprehensive services agreement, which will include fire services, in December. That agreement will ultimately go to OIAA commissioners for approval.
At Mondays meeting, Commissioner Lucy Dunn was initially uncomfortable with voting on the contract because the terms of the agreement were not included in the agenda packet.
Our CEO is asking to approve an agreement that the public hasnt seen and I havent seen, Dunn said.
After getting a copy of the contract, which was approved by the Ontario City Council, Dunn reviewed it and agreed to sign off on the document.
Dunns concerns were echoed by Commissioner Curt Hagman.
Youre inheriting a complete business overnight, but Im wondering the same thing, Hagman told CEO Kelly J. Fredericks. We have been in contract with outside consultants and outside attorneys all these things the city of Ontario has been in contract with now were taking over those bills from the city of Ontario. This board needs to review those and approve those as well.
Avocado lovers, rejoice, the shortage of rich green fruit is no more.
At the peak of the avocado crisis in October, shipments from Mexico plummeted to 8.4 million pounds during one week roughly five times less volume needed to meet demand in the U.S.
The crisis triggered widespread panic from produce suppliers to Mexican restaurants.
But with 1,000 harvesting crews back at work after weeks of striking, supplies to the U.S. are bouncing back, reaching 49.3 million pounds last week, according to data by the Mission Viejo-based Hass Avocado Board.
There was a recent disruption in supply in the U.S. market, but it has been resolved and there is no longer a shortage, Emiliano Escobedo, executive director of the board, said Tuesday in a statement.
No one could be more relieved than the operators at Subway and Sharkys Woodfired Mexican Grill.
Previously: Avocado shortage triggers price increase
The shortage forced Subway restaurants in California and Nevada to stop serving avocado on sandwiches.
A Subway spokesman said relief is coming soon: We expect that our restaurant owners will be serving fresh avocado beginning later this week.
At Sharkys, the shortage nearly forced the Westlake Village-based chain to remove fresh guacamole and avocado slices from its menu one day last month. The chains restaurants were getting avocados, but the quality of the supplies coming in were sub-standard, said David Goldstein, chief operating officer.
Previously: Avocado farms retreating from water woes, global competition
With the 25-year-old chains reputation on the line, the company scrambled and found another supplier. The 11th hour shipment allowed the chain to keep the popular accoutrement on the menu at its 24 Southern California restaurants, including four in Orange County.
We dodged a bullet, Goldstein said.
Still, Sharkys like other restaurants couldnt duck the hefty price tag.
In mid-October, the chain was paying 200 percent above normal prices to keep guacamole flowing at its restaurants. The company absorbed the cost, instead of passing it off to customers.
With supplies making a comeback in the last week, Goldstein said the price had dropped dramatically; however, the mark up is still about 20 percent above normal.
Recipe: Yummy seven-layer dip
Its becoming more stable, he said.
In early October, Santa Ana-based Ingardia Bros. Produce was charging $76 a case for Hass avocados from Mexico, the highest the company has seen in three decades. This week, the price is down to about $60 a case still roughly $20 to $30 above average.
The prices are slowly coming down, but not that fast, Ingardia produce buyer Cruz Sandoval said Monday.
Previously: Want to lose weight? Eating avocados may help
Goldstein said its been a tough avocado season.
When you combine the effects of the drought shrinking crop in California, and balance that with the strike in Mexico, those two things together, obviously had a dramatic effect, he said.
Hes ready for 2017, when supplies shift back to Hass avocados grown in California. Still, the ongoing drought might impact the quality of locally grown Hass, which are preferred by restaurants because of their creamy rich flavor.
The real question for us, will the fruit have the flavor and oil content we look for? Goldstein asked.
A chill in the air means its almost time for ski season and Southern California mountain resorts are getting ready for what is their busiest time of year.
Last week, employees at Mountain High resorts completed testing of the giant blowers that create man-made snow.
For the past 19 years Mountain High has been the first resort to open in Southern California, said John McColly, the resorts chief marketing officer. He doesnt think this year will be any different.
The resorts throughout the mountains have been taking steps to prepare for what many hope will be a cold, wet season.
At Big Bear Lake the average low temperature dips below freezing in November, and this would be an indicator that man-made snow making is becoming more viable, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Brett Albright.
Humidity also influences the ability to make snow, with lower humidity values allowing snow to be made at temperatures closer to 32 degrees, Albright said.
So what is artificial snow?
We use the same exact properties that mother nature uses, McColly said. Water and air.
Cold water is forced from a natural pooling source near the top of the mountain down through underground piping and into the blowers, McColly explained.
The water in the pond is continuously moving so it doesnt freeze from the cold weather, he said. Then it travels through the miles of pipes into the guns creating man-made snow.
But theres not much cold weather on the horizon, according to Albright, the forecast calls for clear skies and warmer temperatures.
The weather patterns are pretty quiet for the time being, he said. Any significant snowfall (or precipitation for that matter) appears unlikely through at least midmonth.
Snow Valley Mountain Resort in Running Springs, one of four resorts in the San Bernardino Mountains, has also tested its snow-making equipment and is ready when the weather cooperates.
At Snow Valley, no date has been set to begin making snow, spokesman John Bice said in an email. The resort has spent more than $1 million on equipment for making snow, much of which is now fully automated and computer controlled.
As resort operators and mountain residents watch the weather and prepare for the snow season, Maggie Warren, 49, of Wrightwood, said only one thing really matters, After all the years of drought, we need the snow, and it will be without a doubt a welcomed sight.
Contact the writer: dsaunders@scng.com or @crimeshutterbug
After a year or more of yelling, disagreeing, pointing fingers, some civic pride and some disgust directed at the candidate you dont like, Tuesday (barring a contested outcome) is the final day of the 2016 presidential election.
Either the first woman or the first reality television star/billionaire is going to be the next President of the United States. And many voters who have watched the race and today are inspired or angry or both, are also happy its coming to an end.
Related: Live blog Thoughts, helpful links on Election Day
Some people in the Never Trump or Never Hillary camps are going to be upset with the results of this election.
For roughly half the country, never starts Wednesday.
Related: Election Day freebies where to get free, discounted items for voting
The Southern California News Group talked to three voters a Trump supporter from Riverside County, a Clinton supporter from Los Angeles County and a first-time voter from Orange County about what this campaign has said to them. We will talk with them again after the election, asking what they heard in the vote itself and what, if anything, they plan to do next.
Photos: Voters take to the polls on Election Day
He felt like Trump had a grassroots movement, and he was swept up. He had once supported Marco Rubio.
TRUMP IS THE NEW NORMAL
Mario Herrera remembers the precise moment he became a Donald Trump supporter.
It was April 28, just before 7 p.m. in Costa Mesa. Trump was making an appearance at the OC Fair & Event Center in the run-up to the Republican presidential primary.
Herrera, 27, the head of the Riverside County Young Republicans, saw something in the Trump crowd that opened his eyes: Normal people from every walk of life, people not affiliated with politics.
Long lines of folks waiting to vote at Orange Terrace Community Center pic.twitter.com/2RANERY6bY PE Photo (@PE_Photo) November 8, 2016
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Related: Do secret Donald Trump voters exist, undetected by polls?
Herrera, who works as a political consultant and lives in Murrieta, served six years in the Marine Corps. National security is his No. 1 issue, and he believes Trump exhibits strength. He believes Trumps assertion that Mexico sends criminals into the United States and that we need a border wall. His parents came from Mexico, but they did it the right way, he said.
Related: Where do I go to vote?
While he was in Iraq, Herrera decided to become a Republican after reading a book by conservative media mogul Glenn Beck. (Beck is now a Clinton supporter.)
Herrera was injured in Iraq, and he was angry with the Veterans Administration. The VA, he said, treated him suspiciously, like I was trying to commit fraud, when he tried to get treatment.
He hopes Trump lays waste to the VA.
Herrera is not dismayed by Trumps comments about women, Latinos, the disabled and others.
Related: Your guide to the Inland areas most compelling Election Day contests
its not a popularity contest, Herrera said. He has that New York mentality. Were going to get things done, and if you dont like it too bad. Ive said more offensive things than him in my snores.
On election day, hell be monitoring the polls to see if he can detect rigging by the Democrats, he said.
CLINTON CANT LOSE, CAN SHE?
Donald Trump has already cost Mark Sarvas a $200 bottle of wine Amarone della valpolicella classico.
In 2015, Sarvas, a longtime Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, bet a friend that Trumps campaign would fall apart.
I grotesquely underestimated the appeal of Donald Trump, said Sarvas, a 52-year-old novelist and teacher from Santa Monica.
Related: Everything you need to know about whats on the ballot in Riverside County
Sarvas is rooting hard for Clinton. He admires her years of service, her experience and her platform positions. The only choice is Hillary, he said.
He hopes that she is less hawkish when it comes to dealing with the Middle East; hopes the left wing of the Democratic Party convinces her to moderate those stances.
He does, however, recognize her weaknesses when it comes to transparency.
Im not a Kool-Aid drinker, Sarvas said. Ive been very critical of Clinton over the email issue. It became the Republicans only talking point. But I still wholeheartedly support her.
Raised by Hungarian immigrants in New York, Sarvas remembers his father being a fan of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. It wasnt until 1988 that Sarvas became politically aware. In that election, he voted for the losing candidate Michael Dukakis.
He hopes that doesnt happen this time.
Related: Breakdown of Californias 17 propositions
The proposal that Trump wins is so unthinkable, Sarvas said. It seems unfathomable that he could win.
On election day, Sarvas will be teaching a novel writing class at UCLA. Hell turn on CNN so he and his students can watch.
I have no doubt Hillary will be elected, he said.
THEY MESSED WITH BERNIE
Sabrina Rios thought she had found the leader for the right kind of revolution.
Bernie Sanders wasnt co-opted by the banks, or big business, or war mongers. Rios, a 22-year-old student at Saddleback College and a first-time voter, was inspired by Sanders. She loved his back story. When Sanders was in college, he was fighting against segregation in schools.
And then he lost in the Democratic nomination, a primary process that Rios believes was rigged against him. When Clinton accepted the nomination during the Democratic National Convention, Rios cried.
Related: How Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton changed the social media game
I watched the primary results at work, said Rios, an administrative assistant. It broke my heart. If he would have lost fairly, I would have accepted it.
So, she did what Clintons campaign feared she would do. She is taking the Bernie or bust philosophy literally. Rios is voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Its a good year to vote for a third party, she said.
Stein stands with pipeline protesters in North Dakota. Stein is for Medicaid for all. Stein is for clean energy. And, yes, Rios knows Stein has no chance to win.
She knows about the Ralph Nader vote in 2000 that helped George W. Bush beat Al Gore.
She doesnt care.
We need more voices than this two-party system, Rios said. Why are two parties controlling this game?
She was so angry after reading what Democrats did and said about Sanders in the material published by WikiLeaks that she officially left the Democratic Party. She now has no party affiliation.
Would she jump to the Republicans?
I didnt even consider them, Rios said. I dont support Trump at all. Hes narcissistic. And Hillary is very manipulative.
On election day, she plans to vote during her lunch break.
A lot of my friends flipped to Hillary, she said. But nobody is actually happy voting for her. Id much rather vote my conscience.
Contact the writer: ksharon@scng.com
If the idea of waiting in a long voting line on Tuesday, Nov. 8 sounds bad, consider the other ways you could have cast a ballot before Election Day.
There was (and is) mail-in voting. And Riverside and San Bernardino counties offered early voting at their registrars offices and other locations. And people who vote by mail could drop off their ballots at most city clerks offices in Riverside County from Oct. 11 to Nov. 7.
Many voters used those methods, possibly in an effort to dodge the chaos that might hit polling stations Tuesday, Nov. 8.
Giving voters options can relieve some of the pressure from the operations on Election Day, which tends to draw a higher volume of voters during a presidential general election.
Some California counties offered staffed voting hubs where registered voters could cast votes or drop off mail-in ballots.
Offering such hubs is tied to a statewide overhaul of how elections are conducted.
In September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law SB 450, which allows 14 California counties Calaveras, Inyo, Madera, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Shasta, Sierra, Sutter and Tuolumne to replace traditional neighborhood polling sites with vote centers.
Those who waited until Tuesday to vote have several options, too.
Voters can cast ballots at their designated polling location 7 a.m.-8 p.m.
Its also possible to vote at a polling place other than the one youve been assigned. Simply request a provisional ballot at any polling place in your county of residence.
For those who moved and didnt reregister to vote, take note: If youve registered in your home county at an address different than your current one, you can vote at any polling place by requesting a provisional ballot.
Also, you can still mail in a valid vote-by-mail ballot; as long as its postmarked on or before Election Day and its received by your county elections office no later than three days after Election Day.
Voters who are unsure if their ballots will arrive on time can bring them to any polling station in their home county 7 a.m.-8 p.m. today.
San Diego native Phil Wickham released his self-titled label debut a decade ago and then followed it up with Cannons, partially based on a book in C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia series.
Citing inspirations including U2, Coldplay, Travis and Jeff Buckley, Wickham is best known for the songs Safe (with MercyMes Bart Millard) and gold-certified single This Is Amazing Grace.
Both reached the top 5, while the latter was among 2014s most played songs at Contemporary Christian radio and garnered the artist two Dove Award nominations for Song and Songwriter of the Year.
Wickham will perform at the Packinghouse Christian Fellowship on Friday, Nov. 11.
His most recent studio, album Children of God, arrived last spring. Many lyrics sprang from a difficult period when Wickham lost his voice, underwent surgery and had to remain silent.
Recently, the musician put out Acoustic Sessions and was seen in a one-night-only cinema event, Worship Night in America, alongside Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman and others.
7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11, Packinghouse Christian Fellowship, 27165 San Bernardino Ave., Redlands. $15-$50. 909-793-8744; packinghouseredlands.org; transparentproductions.com.
Contact the writer: features@pressenterprise.com
Since 92, Ghana and the US have voted in the same direction and somehow towards a similar ideology at every general elections
Even though one can rightly argue that in Ghana political ideologies rarely reflect in approach to governance, our major political parties think in line with their US counterparts- on paper at least
The NPP believe that if the big becomes bigger, it will have a trickledown effect on those at the bottom. The NDC believe that the way to develop is to develop those at the base to catch up with those at the top. The Democrats are closer to the NDC whereas the Republican are closer in approach to the NPP in ideology
This similarities has gone perfectly with the voting trend since 92. Whenever Americans have voted the way of the Republicans, Ghana has voted the way of the NPP and whenever Americans have voted the Democrats, Ghanaians have voted the NDC
Interestingly, all 3 US Presidents since 92 have visited their Ghanaian counterparts.
Over that period, all individual presidents were given the chance to complete their second term.
The case is different in Ghana now, whereas President Obama, who was elected with President Mills has ended his two terms, the death of Atta Mills ensured there was a change of candidate for the ruling party in their second term bid. The NPP says NDC have had their two terms: NDC say Mahama as a president has only served for 1 term and deserves a second chance like his predecessors. Time and will tell.
Back to Ghana US
This is how the voting pattern has been since 1992
1992: US voted Bill Clinton a Democrats Ghana Voted Jerry Rawlings of NDC
1996: Clinton was retained in 96 the same as Rawlings was
2000: The US voted for a Republican President and Ghana went the way of NPP in the person of John Agekum Kuffour
2004: Kuffour retained his seat in 2004 a month after George Bush had done same.
Significantly, both the losing Democrats and the NDC candidates disputed the credibility of the result with the late Prof Mills accepting it but proceeding to court. It was more dramatic in the US because whereas Mills' doubts were given very little attention, John Kerry's boycott of the elections became a global issue and still very much talked about.
Fast forward, 2008, Bush had ended his tenure and a new person was to be elected to lead the nation.
Would it be a Democratic or a Republican? Your guess is as good as mine: the answer is called Obama. The US the very first time elected a black man on the ticket of the Democrats.
Significantly, Ghana went the way of the US by same changing political party and continued with the trend of Democrats Party to NDC, Republican Party to NPP
The beneficiary this time was President Mills who was the first African president to be visited by Obama i
Obama retained his seat for the Democrats in 2012 and NDC did same albeit with a new candidate due to the demise of President Mills 5 months to the elections
President Mahama was the beneficiary of the US and Ghana voting pattern. He won the elections and had to sweat to prove he did that cleanly and deservingly. The NPP and at least 40% of Ghanaians, mainly their supporters still dispute the authenticity of the result despite the Supreme Court yessing it in a split decision after almost 7 months of daily litigation covered live on National Television.
2016 is here with us, Ghana and the US go to the polls. Today, the US will elect a president. Will it be a Democrats or a Republican? It looks like America is going the way of the Democrats and end the 8 years cycle of change in ruling party
It appears largely so because the Republican have chosen a candidate who doesn't understand diplomacy and does politics from his heart instead of his head.
But people should not be deceived, Trump is speaking the minds of the indigenous Americans, I mean the real Americans. Not the Muslim American, not the Latinos or African Americans. Those people hold on to views deemed discriminative and therefore are usually reserved and keep their thoughts to themselves.
He is speaking for the UK kind of Americans who voted for BREXIT. Unfortunately, he is on the wrong side of history and civilization and that is the reason Hillary Clinton looks to have advantage even though she is equally unliked by majority of Americans. Trump is speaking the minds of people who cannot come out to defend him due to modernizing.
But I can say this on authority: if Trump will lose, it will have nothing to do with his policies or hate for certain category of people: his widely known immoral behaviour is what might go against him this years. Republicans dont like such characters. They are the conservatives, the Christians. Those against abortions, those against same sex marriage. They are the custodian of high grade morality.
However, people can disagree with a person on issues but their real persona is demonstrated in the ballot box. The d day will tell if Americans really are against Trump as the polls suggests.
In 2012 for instance, throughout the campaign, my choice candidate was Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom. He was the candidate of my heart. When I got the ballot paper, I voted for the candidate of my head. I won't tell you who though
People can hate Trump and change their minds at the last minute because he is also pushing the agenda of majority of Americans who see their youth scramble for limited job opportunities with by force citizens. They say America must work again, America must be for Americans. This is why Trump remains a threat despite his unlikable nature. He is leading an AMEXIT campaign. (see BREXIT for details)
Hilary Clinton is only popular because of Trump. She may be one of the most unliked candidates to win presidential elections in America. People everywhere hate political dynasty. America still discriminates against women. This can go against Hilary Clinton. Her only advantage now is that she brings a cool head to the White House. Trumps brings war: Hilary brings war with wisdom
The question then is, what bearing will the US elections today have on the Ghana elections?
What I know is that the NDC want Donald Trump and the Republican Party to lose. If it does happen, they will use it as a campaign message from tomorrow. The vice president proved that with his description of the NPP campaign as Trumpian on two different occasions. President Mahama referred to Hilary Clintons promise to commit 200 Billions Dollars into infrastructural development in defence of his governments approach
The NPP on the other hand to the best of my knowledge have stayed clear off the US elections. Probably due to lack of confidence in a Trump victory. But everyone knows how they spoke about the Nigerian elections as a testament to our need for change.
They will definitely use the vice Presidents subtle dig at Donald Trump in the final days of their campaign should the republican candidate wins. If it goes the other way round, they will have a good defence because they have not taken sides.
In view of this, I want to think that the NDC will be more disappointed with a Trump win than NPP will feel should Hilary win as largely expected
What I know is that our priorities are different even though both countries have some similar problems they find needful addressing.
The priority of Ghanaians is job: America places security above everything else even though employment is very high on their agenda as always
The NDC candidate, John Dramani Mahama has promised to create 3 million jobs in his second term after dedicating 80% of his attention to infrastructural development in his first term
Nana Akuffo Addo of the NPP has promised to set up over 216 factories. One in each district and provide water for farmers in the 3 Northern Regions
Similarly, both countries want a paradigm shift from the way things have been done of the years. Those who will vote for President Mahama will do so in the view that after his first term was biasly dedicated to infrastructure, his second term will be focussed on job creation. The point is, even if President Mahama wins, Ghanaians require him to change. In the same way, Americans want whoever wins to do things different
The most important aspect of the American elections is that it has the potency of shocking the world like BREXIT did because the Americans proper want America back in the hands of Americans and not legalised immigrants. Trump represents that candidate; Hilary isnt
It is a typical battle between American egoist and realists. Time will tell
In Ghana, those going with the NPP believe that they are best people to wrestle the nation form the ailing economic and create jobs for the people. Those going with the NDC believe that President Mahama deserves a second term.
What I can say for a fact is that one of our two political parties will start telling Ghanaians that we need to go the American way from tomorrow.
Source: Isaac Kyei Andoh - [email protected]
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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President of the Ghana Society of Radiographers, Prince Rockson has called on various health regulatory bodies to clamp down on "unlicensed and unqualified" radiography practitioners in the country.
The President of the Ghana Society of Radiographers expressed worry over the number of practitioners who are giving radiographic treatments to patients across the nation.
According to him, the "quack" practitioners are tarnishing the image of Radiography society and issuing doses to patients which may endanger their lives.
He explained that the activities by such people have adverse effects and possibly jeopardize the entire profession.
The Ghana Society of Radiographers is calling on the Allied Health Profession Council. Theyre the regulatory body who check on the licensing of practitioners in the country to do the due diligence in checking all radiographers who are in the various facilities. Secondly, the Nuclear Regulatory Authority and Health Facility Regulatory Agency; they check the various facilities whether they are also licensed because if you have an unqualified person in a facility, its against the law.
The Health Profession Regulatory Body Act frowns at it for somebody who is not licensed to work in a radiological facility. These facilities could either be ultrasound unit, X-ray unit and radiotherapy unit. So, (those people) as our theme re-emphasizes on the quality of care that we are supposed to be providing to patients; the very unqualified people are radiation doses that are not of good quality," he said.
Speaking in an interview with Peacefmonline.com, Mr. Rockson noted that his facility has identified some practitioners who are in operation without any accreditation from the Regulatory agencies.
He therefore stated that his outfit has alerted the regulatory agencies which will exercise authority over the unaccredited institutions and personnel.
They will face prosecution as the law takes in effective course on such practitioners, he highlighted.
He appealed to the Allied Health Profession Council and the heath profession regulators to take the quacks "out of the system so that the qualified people will be in the system and do the right thingThe Ghana Society of Radiographers is going to liaise with the Allied Health Council and well make sure, my term of office, will rid all quacks in the system.
Mr. Rockson made this admonition during the celebration of the World Radiography Day on Tuesday, November 8 at the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) House at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
The World Radiography Day is marked globally on 8th November to commemorate the discovery of X-rays by renowned German Physicist, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen.
Radiographers are medical personnel who use X-radiation, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Ultrasound to view structures of the body for diagnosis purposes, and other group that uses higher doses of the X-radiation for the treatment of cancer.
Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi /Peacefmonline.com/Ghana
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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Following an attempted jail break by the notorious criminal, Johnson Kombian, and two others, the Nsawam Medium Security Prison has been locked down.
Eastern Region Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, DSP Courage Atsem, told Joy News officers on duty at the prison foiled the jail break attempt.
There was an attempted escape [on Sunday], which was foiled by the officers on duty. Everybody is in intact. The Police have begun a full-scale investigation into the incident to get the full details of what occurred, he confirmed.
Johnson Kombian murdered two policemen at Nakpanduri in the Northern Region was sentenced to death by hanging by the Accra Fast Track High Court.
The seven-member jury unanimously found Kombian, a convicted jail-breaker and notorious armed robber, guilty of conspiracy to commit crime and murder of the two police officers Constables Prince Agyare and Owusu Frimpong.
He was also sentenced to 30 years for conspiracy to commit murder and to death by hanging for murder.
Source: myjoyonline.com
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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The Nsawam Medium Security Prison has been locked-down following an alleged attempt by the notorious criminal, Johnson Kombian, and two others to break jail late Sunday, deep throat sources told 3News.
Kombian, who is currently on a death sentence for killing two police officers on October 17, 2010, was said to have moved from his condemned cell to the main prison yard together with his two cell mates around midnight.
But for the vigilance of a prison warden who was making his night rounds, Kombian and the two others, whose identity have not been revealed, would have escaped from the prison where he has been since his sentencing in August 2015. Authorities at the Prison are said to have been shaken by the jail-break attempt by the notorious jailbird who once escaped from prison.
No one knows how they came out of their condemned cell to the main prison yard around mid-night Sunday. The key to their cell was not broken too. This is the first time, one of the sources told 3News Monday.
According to 3News sources, authorities have currently locked down the prison since the incident and no prisoner has been allowed out yet as they investigate to establish the circumstance leading to the attempted escape.
Authorities at the Nsawam Prison have meanwhile confirmed the incident but declined to give further details. We have launched full scale investigations into the matter, Public Relations Officer at the Prison, DSP Courage Atsem told 3News but declined to give names, noting the details will later be made public.
Whos Kombian?
Johnson Kombian, alias Garkum, is a farmer and businessman who the Police have described as notorious armed robber and jail-breaker. He allegedly conspired with one, Kofi Naaman, known as Accra Boy, to rob Djato Mathias, and then attempted to kill him.
He was arrested, tried and sentenced to seven years in prison by the Tamale Circuit Court, but he escaped while serving his jail term.
He later fled to his hometown, Nakpanduri in the Bunkprugu Yunyoo District of the Northern Region, where he sought refuge.
According to prosecutors, Kombian and his accomplices on October 17, 2010, received information that the Police was closing in on them following which they laid ambush and attacked three police officers two of whom died. Prosecutors say Kombian and his accomplices fired gunshots at the police officers who were on a motorbike causing them to fall into a 10-metre long valley.
They continued firing into the valley where the officers landed but they also returned fire. Two of the officers were killed in the process while the other sustained serious gunshot wounds. They fled the scene and later Kombian crossed to neighbouring Togo.
However, on November 19, 2010, was arrested through the efforts of INTERPOL when he crossed the border at Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo District to visit his girlfriend.
He was on August 19, 2015 sentenced to death by hanging on two counts of murder after a seven-member jury returned a verdict of guilty. He is also serving a 30-year jail term on the charge of conspiracy.
Source: 3news.com
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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The President of the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE), Ing. Dr. Kwame Boakye, has said that this years Engineering Excellence Awards is slated for Saturday, November 12, 2016 at the Engineers Centre, Roman Ridge, Accra.
It is expected to attract all the stakeholders in the engineering community. Among them are Council members, Past Presidents and members of the Institution; members of the Ghana Engineering Council and other officials from all the four branches of Government; members of allied professional bodies other engineering practitioners, engineering students from the universities, select high school students, the press and the general public.
The prestigious Annual Engineering Excellence Awards, organized by the GhIE is to recognize and honour outstanding contributions of individuals and organizations to engineering and engineering practice
According to Ing. Dr. Boakye, This third edition of the Award has seen expansion in the number and areas of awards and also classification of the award categories into four main thematic areas: Engineering Practice; Advancing Engineering Knowledge; Promoting the Future of Engineering and Application and Advocacy of Engineering.
The Chairman of the 2016 Awards Committee, Ing. Simon Kwasi Adobasom has also indicated that entry to this years awards is free of charge to all Engineers and the general public but strictly by invitation.
Source: Peacefmonline.com
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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President John Dramani Mahama has written a letter to Ghanaians ahead of the December general polls expressing gratitude.
According to him, being President has come "with its own challenges but I must say on the balance, our collective gains have been overwhelming. These gains could certainly not have been possible without the blessings of our God Almighty, your patriotism, sense of duty and dedication to the development and economic progress of Ghana".
Speaking on the upcoming elections, he said the "state of the race is very favourable and continues to be better with each passing day and called on Ghanaians "to vote massively for me, John Dramani Mahama. I know that just as we journeyed together in 2012, our collective journey in 2016 will even be brighter and better. I assure you of utmost security and peace of mind before, during and after the elections. Lets continue to work hard to cross the finish line first, and continue our work towards transforming our dear nation Ghana".
Read full details of the letter below
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We are winning the race!
Only God knows the full extent of my gratitude to the good people of Ghana. For giving me, John Dramani Mahama, the rare opportunity to serve you as President, I remain humbled and eternally grateful.
Every passing day has come with its own challenges but I must say on the balance, our collective gains have been overwhelming. These gains could certainly not have been possible without the blessings of our God Almighty, your patriotism, sense of duty and dedication to the development and economic progress of Ghana.
It is these attributes that have propelled me when the going got tough. I stayed focused, listened to your suggestions, took responsibility as your leader and pursued the Agenda for Transformation notwithstanding the adverse global and domestic environment, which greeted the beginning of my administration in 2013.
The fall in commodity prices; almost a year-long election petition, which ended up with the Supreme Court of Ghana upholding the true will of the people; the market fires and the inferno at the Central Medical Stores in Tema among others, are just a few of the obstacles we overcame. For example, as a result of the fire that gutted the Central Medical Stores, we
lost the strategic stock of medications including food supplements for children and pregnant women.
Ghana is up and Rising.
In our difficult moments, my government has shown sensitivity to the plight of the Ghanaian. Till this date, my appointees and I have taken pay cuts to support efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality. A directive to provide government vehicles with specialised number plates (green) is being implemented. Apart from this, ministers and political appointees were migrated onto the prepaid metering system for electricity supply and billing.
As a social democratic party in government we have taken steps to rationalise the anomalies in the Electricity Companys billing system to the relief of consumers. Recently, students loans have been reviewed upwards with an enhanced package for fresh students and the producer price of cocoa has been increased to an all-time high.
And let me add that over GH1billion was paid to cover claims from service providers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Outpatient utilisation alone in 2015 increased to over twenty-nine million; from a low of nine million in 2008.
The United Nations Human Development Index puts our nation within the Medium Human Development category, ahead of our neighbours like Cote DIvoire and Nigeria, and this is better than what we have ever achieved in the past.
Transparency International, the worlds most credible institution on anticorruption matters has lauded the strategies we have adopted to fight corruption. Ghana is currently ranked as the 7th least corrupt country in Africa, and it is an established fact that the NDCs worst record in the Transparency Internationals anti-corruption league table, over the years, is better than the NPPs best record while in office.
In the coming years, I pledge to implement more robust interventions including the National Anti-corruption Action Plan (NACAP) to make corruption unattractive and a higher risk activity. Relative macro-economic stability has been achieved. The budget deficit has dropped favourably and will narrow further going forward. The debt profile is also improving.
The Ghana Cedi is one of the best performing currencies on the continent this year, and the rating agency Moodys, and our development partners, are posting favourable reviews about our performance in economic management and medium term prospects.
More jobs have also been created to improve purchasing power. In the health and education sectors alone, 23,411 nurses and 78,000 teachers respectively have been employed into the public sector. We have developed infrastructure- schools, hospitals, public houses, roads, expanded airports and these alone have created over 400,000 jobs.
This is a radical and positive change from what existed before and demonstrates that we are growing the economy to create more jobs.
It is my conviction that more and better jobs are in the offing in my second and final term as our massive infrastructure projects mature and I begin the implementation of my Economic Transformation and Livelihood Empowerment Programme (ETLEP).
Under ETLEP, I will continue to work with you and the private sector to create more jobs by further developing our hydrocarbon resources (Inland Voltaian and offshore Accra- Keta basins), aluminium deposits, petrochemical industry and the salt industry.
Together we will roll out a green revolution, enhance our Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) sector (The Accra Digital Centre and development of the Ghana- Mauritius ICT Park Project), expansion of the Tema harbour and the construction of the Atuabo Free Port among several others to create more jobs.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Ghanas economy is robust and this gives me the confidence and joy that when our economy begins to grow above 8% from next year as predicted, the growth will be much more beneficial to Ghanaians than Ghanas economy has ever done for us. I believe these prospects are known to you.
I am expecting a resounding victory in the upcoming elections as predicted by various polls we have conducted since June 2016- a win for me, as President and a working majority in Parliament for the National Democratic Congress.
This victory will be a victory for Ghanaians and for those yet to be born. It will certainly not be my personal victory for a second and final term. It will also be victory for the teeming volunteers, students, the youth, workers, drivers, traders, businessmen and women, traditional and religious leaders who have contributed in diverse ways to bring us up to the
strong position we find ourselves in today.
I will continue to be President for all Ghanaians and open the opportunities our country offers to all, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, partisan or religious affiliation.
In the midst of campaign sloganeering and thunderous applause by large crowds, drumming and dancing, my short but very private moments with boys and girls accompanying their parents and guardians and the elderly who walk to me at the rally grounds and during whistle stops, are always profound and indelible moments. I cherish them.
In my autobiography after 2021, God willing, some of the thoughts we share would certainly feature.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The state of the race is very favourable and continues to be better with each passing day. We are winning the race!
I have been overwhelmed by the warmth of the Chiefs and people right here in the Ashanti Region where I am campaigning now and across the country wherever I have been.
You sometimes stay up at durbar grounds deep into the night to receive us; not to mention the several surprises but pleasant ambushes by supporters in the villages, small towns, big towns and cities. You offer us water and food as we stop by your homes. I will forever admire the selfies we take some of which I later find circulating on social media.
Throughout these moments, I have preached my message of peace, transformation and more jobs.
I have also on several occasions reiterated my belief in the fact that this election has nothing to do with insults and that the need for sensitivity and decorum should continue to be our guiding principle. I wish to reiterate that the health of candidates, issues relating to their families and I must add their children, especially, are off limits and I call such violations political malpractice.
I am satisfied that my volunteers, cadres, executives and supporters have largely adhered to this call. I remain eternally grateful to you all, and I call for more circumspection even in the face of extreme provocation as we race towards our goal on December 7, just one month from today.
Let me be quick to add that this election is also about leadership. Ghanaians, I am confident, will once again vote for a leader who not only reflects the aspirations of modern Ghana but also better represents who we truly are.
We love our peace; we appreciate unity; we are humble and development oriented. We celebrate our diversity; and we are hard working. And let me add, our nation is founded on the fear of God, Patriotism, Unity and Love for one another.
With exactly one month to go for the December 7 general elections, I ask God, once again, to bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong.
I also ask you to vote massively for me, John Dramani Mahama. I know that just as we journeyed together in 2012, our collective journey in 2016 will even be brighter and better.
I assure you of utmost security and peace of mind before, during and after the elections.
Lets continue to work hard to cross the finish line first, and continue our work towards transforming our dear nation Ghana.
Stay blessed.
Signed
John Dramani Mahama
President of the Republic of Ghana
November 07, 2016.
Source: Peacefmonline.com
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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The founder and leader of the Ghana Freedom Party (GFP), Akua Donkor has made a sharp u-turn on her decision not to contest the 2016 general elections.
Akua Donkor following her disqualification by the Electoral Commission (EC), announced she would not be contesting the elections again and threw her support behind the sitting President.
I am not contesting again; I am now going to throw my support behind my son, John Mahama. When he is done in 2020, then his mother will come back and contest, Akua Donkor announced after her disqualification.
She thus proceeded to campaign for President John Mahama and the NDC.
But following an order by the Supreme Court for the EC to allow the disqualified presidential hopefuls to correct the mistakes on her nomination forms on Monday November 7, Madam Akua Donkor says she has decided to suspend her campaign for President John Mahama.
She said on Adom FMs Midday News that, she is returning to Accra from Cape Coast where she has been on a campaign tour for the President to correct the mistakes on her nomination forms.
I have heard the order, and that is a good one because we are very tired, if the Supreme Court has asked that we be allowed to correct them, then I am coming to fix mine as well.
I am in Cape Coast, and I am driving to Accra like 'kakai' to fix the problems on my nomination forms too, she said.
Asked if she was still convinced she could sail through, Akua Donkor responded in the affirmative insisting that, God will be her guide.
Akua Donkor said she is coming with her running mate to do the necessary corrections.
Source: adomonline
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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The Ministry for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts on Wednesday, October 26 held a press conference at the Accra Tourism Centre to announce the passage of the Film Bill by Parliament.
Although this came as welcome news for many in the film industry in Ghana, some have accused the Minister, Mrs Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare of jumping the gun, since the bill is yet to be signed by the President to become a law.
But speaking to Showbiz on Tuesday, Mrs Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare said the fact that the bill had passed through Parliament was enough reason to jubilate.
It is a new dawn in the film industry because for the first time after 1961, Parliament has passed the film bill. We have never come this close and so we should be excited. The moment the bill went past Parliament, it meant the difficult part has been done. I know that very soon the President will append his signature and make it a law, she said.
Showbiz spoke to some actors and industry persons to find out their views on the bill and whether they believe it has any positives for the movie industry in the country.
Speaking to Michael Ola, former PRO of the Film Producers Association of Ghana (FIPAG), said the film bill when passed into law will improve the quality of films produced in the country. He outlined that the film fund, which is a provision in the film bill will ensure that there is adequate funds for film makers to finance their movies.
Ola, one of the consultants who advised the Parliamentary Select Committee on the film bill said there were various control mechanisms which will also ensure that films produced in the country are adequately reviewed to ensure that sanity prevails in film production in the country.
I believe the president would pass the bill into law by the end of October. He has an interest in this bill since he was one of the people who worked on the first draft of the bill when he was with the Communication Ministry. The Attorney Generals Department is also working on the Legislative Instrument which will also outline punitive measures and other legal requirements for the bill, he said.
Speaking to the Chairman of the Ghana Culture Forum, Akunu Dake, he also expressed the view that the bill would be passed without much issues. The Film Law has been a long time coming, all the way back to 1961 and on previous occasions; it did not even pass Cabinet. This time, it has gone all the way through Cabinet, the select committee, the hall of Parliament and it is finally with the President, he said.
The bill is a positive venture for filmmakers both in terms of production and administration of film in the country. There are various regulations and standards that are aimed at improving film making in the country. Even more importantly, there are provisions which are aimed at protecting the national interest as far as film is concerned. Industry players now have the opportunity to take control of the industry, he added.
Bill Asamoah, President of the Ashanti Regional Film Producers Association of Ghana (FIPAG) said the Film Bill is a step in the right direction. We as film producers welcome it wholeheartedly since it will help streamline the industry in Ghana. We are grateful to Parliament, the President among others for making this a reality and I only hope it is implemented, he said.
Bill Asamoah cited the film fund as one of the provisions in the bill which would be instrumental in boosting the growth of the industry.
As it stands now, film makers in the country are unable to produce capital intensive movies due to the lack of funds but with the support of the fund, we hope things will change, he said
On his part, veteran film producer, Socrates Safo was optimistic that the bill would significantly improve the industry but he expressed caution that he was keeping his fingers crossed until the President finally signed the bill into law. This is not the first time the bill has reached this stage. It went this far during Kufours era but it was put on hold due to a petition from broadcasters to amend a clause. I pray it goes all the way and becomes a law.
However, it is my prayer again it doesnt remain just a law but backed with the necesaary support in terms of funding among others. Otherwise, it comes to nothing and we are back to square one.he added.
Source: Graphic Showbiz
Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
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As wild as Donald Trumps entire election campaign has been to this point, escalating yesterday to big baby having his Twitter privileges revoked, the thought of him in control of the most powerful country in the universe means its time for some #realtalk.
Even from the early days of this walking talking whack-job gracing our screens, grabbing well, anything and everything he can get his grubby little mitts on, there have been some pretty stark comparisons. Hes already aligned himself with his BFFL Vladimir Putin, but as one very (very) bloody concerned German resident points out, if he were to go back in time perhaps his squad would be a hell of a lot scarier.
@washingtonpost A message from Germany. And a follow-up. Now lets see what happens. pic.twitter.com/17ISqyFWGy Johan Franklin (@CrappyCrapson) November 6, 2016
Highlighting the whole please learn from our mistakes or watch the world burn angle, Johan Franklin published a little open from the people of Germany who have clearly recognised some scary similarities.
Its subtle, and frankly, fucking scary. Perhaps check through those history facts you learned in school and have a think about who else hated minorities, threatens to imprison his opponents, doesnt give a fuck about democracy and claims he alone can fix everything. Ill give you a minute.
Adolf Hitler ring any bells? Or nah?
But I mean, what could go wrong right? Nothing? Guys? WRONG. SO SO WRONG.
Source: The Huffington Post.
Photo: Twitter/ Getty / Bill Conch
Big ups to IKEA for using the significant foot traffic of one of its biggest stores to help drive home the reality of life in war-torn Syria.
The Swedish retailer recently built a 25 square-metre replica of a real Syrian familys home almost totally bare save for some rugs and meager furnishings inside IKEA Slependen, its Norway flagship.
The aim? To give customers a taste of what lifes like for Rana, a mum of four young kids who lives in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in war-torn Damascus.
Their suburb of Jaramana is considered safer than many other neighboring areas but families like Ranas often live in bombed-out or crumbling buildings with little access to food, medicine, clean water and warm clothes during cold winter months.
When we had to flee to this area to find safety, we did not have enough money to rent a better place. We have no money to buy mattresses and blankets, or clothes for the children, Rana told the Red Cross, with whom IKEA collaborated to replicate the apartment in a joint fundraising venture.
The plastic price tags you usually find dangling off $2 planters were used to tell the familys story, as well as serving as donation slips for Red Cross.
POL, the creative agency who helped execute the activation, were determined the give shoppers the most authentic experience possible and that meant building the house from pure concrete on-site.
It would have been easier to just put up wallpaper, but it wouldnt have felt the same, art director Snorre Martinsen told AdWeek. People who had fled war themselves have told us, This is how it feels. I remember this.'
The installation was open to the public for two weeks in October, and raised more than 22 million euros (or AU$31.5 million) for Red Cross efforts in Syria an amazing result.
Check out the campaign video, and kids reactions as they walk through the apartment with their parents.
If you want to do your bit, you can donate to Red Cross Australias Syrian appeal HERE.
Source: AdWeek.
Photo: Supplied.
Save your Samuel L. Jackson jokes, please. Theres a time and a place for that, and this yeah, alright. This is the time and the place.
An actual goddamn snake was found on a plane in Mexico on Sunday night, on a flight to Mexico City from Torreon. According to passengers, it was spotted behind the baggage compartment, before dropping down into the actual cabin. One passenger got video:
La vibora voladoraja ja ja. Una experiencia unica en el Vuelo Torreon-Mexico, vuelo 231 de Aeromexico. Eso siPrioridad en aterrizaje. pic.twitter.com/qwDk6Wtszw Indalecio Medina (@Inda_medina) November 6, 2016
A second video of the reptile shows its tail dangling down from the compartment. It looks quite large, tbh. I 100% would not be into it.
According to flight carrier Aeromexico, the plane received priority landing in Mexico City where workers secured the reptile. I think we all know what securing the reptile means.
Moral of the story? I literally do not know. I dont think there is a moral other than the fact that nature is chaos.
Source: Huffington Post.
Photo: YouTube.
Its my favourite time of the year again: the time when Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm gets so angry he has to retreat into his vault full of porn and fireworks to kiss all of his guns until he calms down.
That Bond-villain-looking motherfucker is Australias staunchest defender of free speech (except maybe for the editorial staff of The Australian, now that Bill Leak is people investigated under 18C), and in true libertarian fashion largely pursues this crusade by defending the gross bullshit they spray on the side of Wicked Campers vans.
The mechanical deathtraps are wildly popular driven all over the country by sweaty groups of shirtless, muscular Belgians until they either explode or reach 1,000,000 kilometres on the odometer, at which point the odometer is reset to 0 and the process is repeated.
Their whole marketing ~thing~ is based on having the dumbest shit possible spray-painted on the side; while they used to get by with the sort of vague hippy nonsense that would delight the kind of people who live in Byron or Nimbin, at some point they made an inexplicable shift into rampant misogyny apparently theres some overlap between backpackers and total bros.
If youre unfamiliar, here are some examples:
A photo posted by wickedcampers (@wickedcampers) on Jan 31, 2013 at 7:46pm PST
What an incredible combination, sexist and deeply unfunny, amazing.
Well that sort of bullshit is not long for this world, at least in Queensland, with roads minister Mark Bailey today introducing legislation into parliament that allows the government to de-register vehicles that refuse to remove offensive slogans.
This might seem like it has a fair bit of potential for abuse, but the definition of what constitutes offensive material will be determined by the Advertising Standards Board, so cops cant just randomly de-register your car because you spray-painted cops are pigs on the side.
As I urge everyone to do whenever I get the chance, please watch this video being absolutely brutalised by The Chaser over his wildly inconsistent attitudes towards free speech and those damn campers:
Flawless.
Source: Huffington Post.
Photos: Wicked Campers.
On October 27, we took note of American Beer Day with a quick rundown of the few major beer brands that are actually owned by American companies.
Of course, one of the most prominent names in American-owned beer is D.G. Yuengling and Sons. The company is neck and neck with Boston Brewing Company (maker of Sam Adams beer) for the title of the biggest craft beer companies in the United States.
And since Yuengling's brewery is located in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, we thought it would make a great opportunity for a tour of their factory.
Of course, right around that same time, Yuengling was in the news due to politics: owner Richard Yuengling Jr. stated his support for Republican candidate Donald Trump when Trump's son Eric was campaigning for his father and toured the factory. This led to an outcry on social media against Yuengling from those who don't support Trump.
While D.G. Yuengling and Sons did not respond to our request for an official statement from the company on our visit, we did still take the tour of the Pottsville brewery.
In the video above, you can see some of the behind-the-scenes tour, including a glimpse inside the tunnels dug into a mountainside where the beer was kept cool prior to the invention of refrigeration. Details on the Pottsville brewery and tour info can be found on the company's official website.
And regardless of your political stance, this election may be cause for many out there to need a drink or two. We've also compiled a list of beers that might come in handy.
Metro Diner
A Metro Diner will open Nov. 15 at the West Manchester Town Center at 360 Town Center Drive in York County.
(Sue Gleiter, PennLive)
A Metro Diner is bringing its diner classics with a southern flair to York County.
The comfort food chain of restaurants that originated in Jacksonville, Florida and has been rapidly expanding, will open its newest outpost on Nov. 15 at the West Manchester Town Center at 360 Town Center Drive.
Metro Diner was featured on an episode of the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-In's and Dives" hosted by Guy Fieri.
The restaurant's menu is crowded with made-from-scratch favorites such as fried chicken and waffles, chicken pot pie, shrimp and grits and a meatloaf plate. There's also a Pittsburgh influence with french fry-topped salads and a sandwich.
Metro Diner makes all of its soups, sauces and compotes from scratch.
"Guests feel at home when they come to Metro Diner because we welcome them as if they are coming to our own house," said Metro Diner founder and chef Mark Davoli in a press statement. "York is a tight knit community and we look forward to instilling that same sense of familiarity when our diner opens its doors to the thriving west side."
Metro Diner dates back to 1992 when Davoli opened the first one in Jacksonville. The chain is expanding from its home base in Florida and opening locations in Virginia, Georgia and North and South Carolina.
In September, Metro Diner opened its first Pennsylvania restaurant in Bensalem, Bucks County.
A special pre-opening charity event will be held Nov. 12-13 at the Metro Diner in York, with proceeds benefitting Leg Up Farm and Olivia's House which will benefit children with special needs and help families cope with grief and loss.
For a $10 donation, diners will receive a sneak peek of the restaurant and be able to try some signature foods. Reservations can be made for the fundraiser both days from 9 a.m.- 1:30 p.m. or 4 -7:30 pm. by calling a charity reservation line at 717-814-9620.
Metro Diner is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hours will be 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
A cavalcade of political stars and rock stars will join Hillary Clinton at a rally in front of Philadelphia's Independence Hall Monday night to help make her final pitch to voters in advance of Election Day.
The Democratic presidential nominee's boosters have fanned out across the country in recent weeks as the email probe returned to the fore, polls showed a tightening race with Donald Trump and millions of citizens cast early ballots in battleground states like Florida and North Carolina.
On Monday, many of those luminaries will descend upon Independence Hall at 7 p.m. for one last push. Attendees include President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama; former President Bill Clinton and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton; their daughter Chelsea; and rock stars Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.
Although Pennsylvania typically leans Democratic in presidential years, getting Philadelphia's more liberal voters out in large numbers is vital. The rest of the state is dominated by white working class voters who have generally favored Trump this election cycle.
Follow PennLive staffers Julia Hatmaker, Wallace McKelvey and Mark Pynes as they cover the Philadelphia rally via Twitter:
2016 Election Nevada
Jacqueline Lima, 20, walks with her 4-year-old sister, Karla, holding an American flag, and gets serenaded by a mariachi group after Lima voted for the first time, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in Las Vegas. Immigrant advocates in Las Vegas worked to get more U.S.-born Latinos to the polls on Election Day as early voter numbers suggest a surge in Hispanic voters. Lima voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.
(Russell Contreras, The Associated Press)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sued the registrar of voters in one Nevada county, saying people were illegally allowed to vote last week after early voting polls closed.
The suit claimed that state law was violated and asked that votes from the affected Las Vegas polling locations not be counted with other votes. It called for records from four early voting spots that allegedly stayed open too late last Friday to be impounded and preserved.
At a hearing Tuesday, however, a judge denied the request. According to Reuters:
Judge Gloria Sturman at the Clark County Court said that the order would potentially make public the identities of poll workers, which could put them at risk of harassment.
The Trump campaign wants to make names of Nevada poll workers public. Judge's response: pic.twitter.com/tes99IMbbH Deadspin (@Deadspin) November 8, 2016
Nevada, like Pennsylvania and other states, allows people to vote if they are in line when the polls closed.
Long lines kept polls open past the 7 p.m. posted closing time at locations that included a Mexican market and several shopping centers. Officials say at one site, the last voter cast a ballot after 10 p.m.
Breaking: Nevada state judge denies #Trump campaign request to isolate ballots from 4 early voting sites, can appeal to State Supreme Ct Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) November 8, 2016
Asked Tuesday afternoon on Fox News if he would accept the election results, Trump continued to demur. The Republican presidential nominee said: "We're going to see how things play out."
He said. "I want to see everything honest."
Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign is dismissing the Nevada case in a Twitter message, calling it "a frivolous lawsuit."
Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
Key moments from Hillary Clinton's final rally in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton wants your vote.
The Democratic Presidential Candidate spent part of the eve of Election Day in Philadelphia at a campaign rally with Former President Bill Clinton, President Obama, the First Lady, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
Tens of thousands attended the rally, and many were turned away. At one point the line to get into the rally extended for 1.8 miles.
If you couldn't make it in, here are 8 key moments from the rally.
Don't Edit
Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
Clinton apologizes for tone of the election season... and then this happens
This election has been one full of anger -- and Clinton is well aware of it. She's also sorry about that. So she apologized.
But, one person wanted to set the record straight. "Not your fault!" a woman cried out. Another agreed with her and many others began to laugh.
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
'Speaking here tonight is perhaps the last and most important thing I can do for my country as first lady'
First Lady Michelle Obama took a moment to thank America for allowing her and President Obama to work to improve the U.S. She said that the country has provided inspiration, and motivated them to always do better.
"We know that our words and actions are a reflection to the world of who we are as a nation and more importantly, our actions are a reflection of what behavior we hope our children will emulate," she said.
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
'I still believe in hope'
President Obama told the crowd that he is still as optimistic as he was when he first ran for office in 2008.
"I'm still as optimistic as ever about our future and that's because of you, the American people," he said. "In my visit the schools and factories, war theaters, national parks and the letters you've written me and the tears you've shed over a lost love one I have seen again and again your goodness and your strength and your heart."
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
Jon Bon Jovi reads a letter
It may not seem like the most exciting moment of a rally, but Jon Bon Jovi's reading of Republican Dan Box's reasons for supporting Hillary Clinton was a powerful one and elicited a lot of cheers from the crowd.
Hear the letter in the video.
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
Obama rips into Donald Trump...
President Obama took apart Donald Trump's candidacy for president at the rally. He attacked Trump's ability to handle the country's economy and international affairs. He also made fun of Trump's use of Twitter.
It was the most pointed attack on Trump at the rally by one of the main speakers. Earlier Congressman Bob Brady had called Trump a "spoiled brat" and Congressman Brendan Boyle said that if Trump was elected "we might as well give the Statue of Liberty back to France."
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
... and Senator Pat Toomey too
Donald Trump wasn't the only one President Obama criticized. Senator Pat Toomey also came under fire, as Obama made the case for electing Katie McGinty to Toomey's position.
"We do not need a Trump-Toomey economy," Obama told the crowd, before extolling McGinty's background.
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
'The choice tomorrow couldn't be any clearer'
Bruce Springsteen painted a picture of an America where diversity was celebrated and problems were solved in a thoughtful way. "That vision of America is essential to sustain no matter how difficult its realization," he said, adding that Hillary Clinton was the candidate who could do it. Watch his remarks in the video.
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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
'I will be a president for all Americans'
Whether you vote for Clinton or not, she will serve you just as much as her supporters if elected, she said.
Why? "I believe we all have a role to play in building a better, fairer, stronger America," Clinton told the crowd. She went on to talk about the importance of working together.
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Photo by Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com
Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com
Want more election coverage?
Election Day is upon us, and the PennLive crew is reporting from across the state.
Click here to read more about the Philadelphia rally, including interviews with Hillary Clinton supporters.
Click here to read about Donald Trump's rally in Scranton on the same day.
And before you hit the polls, here are 12 things you need to know.
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Election Susan B Anth_Lave.jpg
A steady stream of people have been coming to Susan B. Anthony's grave in anticipation of the election. Her grave is located in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY on November 7, 2016
Hundreds of people are flocking to Susan B. Anthony's grave in Rochester, N.Y. to leave roses, flags, "I voted" stickers and more to mark the first time people could vote for a female president on a major party ticket.
Our sister site, NYup.com, has a live post keeping track people visiting Anthony's grave.
Anthony crusaded her entire life to give women the right to vote. She died more than a decade before the 19th Amendment was ratified. That didn't stop her from trying.
On Nov. 5, 1872, Anthony cast a ballot for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election, after she was able to convince the Rochester election inspectors to allow her to vote.
In a letter to another suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony wrote of her success later in the day. "Well I have been & gone & done it!!--positively voted the Republican ticket--strait this a.m. at 7 O'clock," she said. "If only now--all the women suffrage women would work to this end of enforcing the existing constitution--supremacy of national law over state law--what strides we might make this winter."
Here's some of the best tweets being sent from Anthony's gravesite.
The 250 person line in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester New York to pay their respects at Susan B Anthony's grave pic.twitter.com/Zv1WyTQyNl Sarah Maslin Nir (@SarahMaslinNir) November 8, 2016
The scene at Susan B. Anthony's grave. And it's a scene. pic.twitter.com/mgQNwmsB9f Sarah Maslin Nir (@SarahMaslinNir) November 8, 2016
A personal moment on an epic journey through sites of women's suffrage for @nytpolitics:I put my"I Voted" sticker on Susan B Anthony's grave pic.twitter.com/6FQgrHjiT0 Sarah Maslin Nir (@SarahMaslinNir) November 7, 2016
This is not a line to vote; it's a line to see Susan B. Anthony's gravesite. #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/xUd44WpJgj Patrick Thornton (@pwthornton) November 8, 2016
One of two gunshot victims found near the Shippensburg University campus late Monday is facing aggravated and other charges for the gunfire.
State Trooper Robert T. Hicks said Tuesday that Sherron E. Baltimore, 21, of Harrisburg, also is accused of conspiracy, burglary, robber and simple assault for the 11:30 p.m. incident in the 1200 block of Bard Drive in Shippensburg Township.
Baltimore was taken to York Hospital and later committed to Cumberland County Prison in lieu of $300,000 bail, Hicks said.
He identified the other wounded man as Malik Kenney, 20, of Philadelphia, who was flown to Penn State Hershey Medical Center.
Police said the shootings occurred during a drug-related home invasion.
A Shippensburg University spokeswoman said the university informed students of the shooting via text and email, as is its standard practice.
The 2016 Pennsylvania general election
Holly Satterthwaite, left, gets campaign literature from Yireka Roy, cener, and Alexandra Arocho, right, as she heads into the Mount Pleasant Fire Company polling location in Harrisburg. Voters arrive at the polls to cast their ballot in the Pennsylvania general election, Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com
(Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.)
HARRISBURG - In Pennsylvania's reliably blue capital city, voting proceeded smoothly on Tuesday with legions of Clinton supporters taking to the polls.
Standing outside the Neighborhood Center of the United Methodist Church polling station in midtown in the morning, clad in a Captain America costume, Chris Smith was in high spirits.
Smith, whose shield bore the name of state Sen. Ron Teplitz, D-Harrisburg, is a staunch Democratic party supporter. He had just voted for Hillary Clinton for president.
That said, Clinton was not his first preference.
"I was reluctantly for Clinton," he said. "I'm actually a Bernie supporter but I really couldn't follow any of Trump's ideas."
That sentiment was echoed in other polling stations in Harrisburg, where fear of a potential Trump presidency appeared to weigh heavily on the minds of voters exiting the polls.
Milton Baxter, 58, voting at the Haddee mosque polling station in uptown, said a Trump victory was too difficult to stomach.
"I have enough money to leave the country," Baxter said.
Baxter said Trump's rise was a reminder of the racism that still permeated the country.
"When was America ever great for the African American?" Baxter said, referring to Trump's ubiqutuous 'make America great again' slogan.
Bettye Kaplan, 89, who had just voted for Clinton herself, shared a similar distaste for Trump.
"He's a businessman and he should remain a businessman," she said. "His views are just out of sight."
In Kaplan's view, Clinton was clearly the better candidate.
"I admire her," she said. "She's a brilliant woman and she has wonderful ideas for the United States of America."
In Harrisburg's neighboring townships, sentiment among Democratic voters was equally passionate.
At the Colonial Park Fire Company polling station in Lower Paxton, Theodore Johnson, 72, said Trump's rhetoric seemed without substance compared to Clinton's campaign.
"She has always pointed to a plan and the other individual talks and says, 'This is what I'm going to do,' but doesn't have any plans," he said.
Meanwhile, Geoanne Brandt, 64, who voted at the Melrose School polling station in Swatara Township in the early afternoon, was particularly fearful of a Trump presidency.
"Because I think Trump is a megalomaniac," she said. "He's not familiar with the mores of other countries, he would very easily offend other leaders."
If Trump is elected, Brandt said, she's joked about fleeing the country.
In reality, she said, she hopes that the other branches of government will keep him in check.
"I will hope the the government system that we have in place, with the Senate and the House of Representatives would be able to control some of his ideas and thoughts and wishes."
Women's Resource Center adapts to meet rising domestic abuse concerns
With many victims unable to reach out during the pandemic, the Women's Resource Center had to find new ways to connect.
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for Sale - Petpeoplesplace.com
Pemex plans to increase refining output by year-end
Mexico's Pemex plans crude processing ramp-up by year-end
MEXICO CITY
Petroleumworld.com 11 08 2016
Mexico's state oil company Pemex plans to ramp up crude processing to 920,000 to 960,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the year, after refining hit the lowest levels in at least five years in September following a series of plant stoppages.
Carlos Murrieta, director general of Pemex's industrial transformation subsidiary, said on Monday that the company would spend around $120 million by year-end on maintenance at 24 units halted at its six domestic refineries.
"We are making a big effort to designate resources that we are moving from different parts toward maintenance ... and our expectation is to reach levels above 1.1 million bpd by March/April," the official said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
Pemex's six refineries have a combined processing capacity of 1.64 million bpd, but Murrieta said the optimal processing level would be between 1.20 million and 1.25 million bpd, or around 75 percent of total capacity.
He also said that in 2017 the company would ramp up spending on the maintenance of refineries, many of which have faced unscheduled stoppages.
Still, the company's crude oil exports rose to 1.42 million bpd in September, as the company increased oil shipments to Europe and the Middle East.
The company, which has struggled with falling production and a hefty debt load, has been hit by lower oil revenues. Pemex's production fell to about 2.1 million bpd at the end of September, or down nearly 8 percent versus levels at the end of 2015.
However, the company expects to stabilize its finances by 2019-2020.
Murrieta said the company hopes to seal tie-ups at refineries in Tula, Salina Cruz, and Salamanca, although it would aim to keep stakes of least 50 percent.
"What we see is a refinery where they (the partners) participate," he said. "We offer our existing infrastructure, our partner puts up capital, we reconfigure it and become joint owners," he said.
"I would expect that by the middle of next year, there will be solid news," he said, when asked when Pemex expected to seal the first such alliance.
The European Commission (EC) has updated the EUs control measures to combat the spread of African swine fever (ASF) across Europe.
The move builds on the recent inter-ministerial meeting which took place in Warsaw last month.
The new measures also take account of the positive evolution of the situation in the domestic pig sector in Latvia and Lithuania, said the EC, a fact which has resulted in the lifting of some of the existing restrictions on pig farming, in those countries.
At the same time, however, new ASF cases were registered in wild boar in Latvia and Poland, leading to an adjustment of the restricted areas in these two countries.
The Commission had further insisted on the importance of higher biosecurity on pig farms across Europe and the need for the targeted depopulation measures for wild boars.
See current EC measures for ASF
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Mr. Ciruli is the Director of the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Denvers Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is an adjunct professor teaching public opinion and foreign policy. The Crossley Center conducts research and presents live and virtual programs on foreign policy, politics, public policy and public opinion.
Mr. Ciruli holds a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a bachelors degree cum laude in political science from UCLA. He is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and is the past-president of the Pacific Chapter of AAPOR (PAPOR). Mr. Ciruli is a board member of the Social Science Foundation of the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies and past-president of the Georgetown Law Alumni Board and the Denver Athletic Club.
Karla Ramirez-Segoviano (Photo: Facebook)
Authorities in Northern California confirmed Friday that a body found in a creek at an East Oakland park was that of a missing Alameda County (CA) Sheriff's Department volunteer and that two homicide suspects were in custody, reports KPIX.
21-year-old Karla Ramirez-Segoviano was last seen dropping off a friend in San Leandro at 10 p.m. Wednesday. Ramirez-Segoviano was a volunteer mentor in the department's Explorer program. She had been a police explorer for four years and was planning to become a police officer.
Friday afternoon, authorities confirmed that homicide investigators, patrol officers, and crime reduction teams followed up leads which ultimately led to the two individuals a male and a female, both Oakland residents being taken into custody in connection with Ramirez-Segoviano's homicide.
Police sources told KPIX the suspects lured the victim to Arroyo Viejo Park, where they beat her, stabbed her multiple times, and set her body on fire. The source also said that the woman thought Ramirez-Segoviano was having an affair with her boyfriend.
During a press conference, officials stated that Ramirez-Segoviano's work with the Alameda County Sheriff's office was not a catalyst in the homicide.
A man was shot and killed by an off-duty Chicago police officer Saturday afternoon in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood. The man was riding as part of a funeral procession, his family says, when what officials are calling a "road rage incident" escalated and he was shot and killed, reports WGN-TV.
During a short press conference, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson described the chaotic scene near 111th and Troy that led to the fatal shooting around 3 p.m. Saturday.
Johnson said it began as a "road rage incident" between multiple people and a "fire department member." Then, Johnson said, an off-duty police officer who was in a barbershop across the street saw the fight and headed over, "announcing his office" as he got involved. That's when "the subject," identified by his family as 25-year-old Joshua Beal, "displayed a weapon," according to Johnson.
"A CPD police sergeant that was on his way to work observed the subject and at that time shots were fired and the subject was fatally struck," Johnson said.
Johnson said the case is being investigated by IPRA so they can't discuss any further details.
In a release issued later, CPD confirmed the details of Johnson's statement, and said the initial altercation began when the vehicle stopped directly in front of a fire house and an off-duty firefighter "notified the driver that they were illegally blocking the fire lane."
Police say an east Georgia police officer fatally shot a man in a car chase that ended in western Alabama, reports the Associated Press.
Columbus Police Chief Ricky Boren tells multiple news outlets that the chase started around 4 a.m. Sunday in Columbus, Georgia, and ended in Phenix City, Alabama, where the shooting occurred.
Russell County District Attorney Kenneth Davis tells the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer that the officer believed the vehicle was stolen and was being used as a weapon.
Davis says the officer fatally shot the driver of the vehicle, which also carried another man and woman. The two suspects were injured and taken to Midtown Medical Center in Columbus.
Idaho State Police Trooper Brandalyn Crapo was injured in a Sunday crash while escorting the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree. (Photo: Idaho State Police)
An Idaho State Police trooper was injured in a crash while escorting the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree from Valley County to Boise Sunday afternoon.
The crash happened at about 12:20 p.m. on Idaho 55, just south of Banks.
According to ISP, Trooper Brandalyn Crapo was leading the official escort when a Dodge pickup truck crossed the center line and collided with Crapo's patrol car.
Crapo was flown to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise where she was treated for minor injuries, KTVB reports.
Photo: Faro
Tape measures and photographs used to be the standard equipment for documenting any type of scene by law enforcement. But uneven ground and poor lighting posed challenges and affected the quality of results. it was also sometimes difficult to know what areas to focus on, and important evidence was often missed. 3D laser scanners don't have the same limitations.
Unlike manual techniques, a 3D laser scanner captures millions of data points to create a point cloud map. Multiple 360-degree scans can be combined to create a complete 3D view of a scene that can be revisited later in great detail. This allows detectives, prosecutors, and juries to see the scene of the crime exactly as it appeared when first captured. It also allows investigators to take precise measurements and examine pieces of evidence they didn't realize were important until after the fact.
"When I first started we used tape measures to establish a base line. Then we used a total station, but it has limitations inside," says Lt. Mike Young of the Kearney (NE) Police Department. Among his other duties, he is an accident and crime scene reconstructionist for his department and a senior member of the Kearney/Buffalo County Fatality Accident Investigation Team. "With the 3D laser scanner, it works amazingly well both inside and outside, and it doesn't matter if it's light or dark," he says.
Scanning Technology
Young and his department use the Faro Focus3D X 330 scanner and Faro Scene software to process the scans. Then they use Faro Reality software to create animation in 3D. Faro Reality can also be used for 2D and point cloud environment animation. All of these can be combined to create diagrams and presentations for court.
"You're working with a vast amount of data, 9,000 points per second," says Young. "And it can all be in color. You choose which. You can scan in complete darkness, but if you have daylight or lights on in a residence, it will scan in full, vivid colors just like you're standing there."
When assisting a fire marshal investigating a fatal house fire, Young's scan of the scene was more useful than the photos that were taken. "A fire scene soaks up so much of the light with photography. But the scanner got amazing 3D of the entire residence," Young says. It even showed the charring on the ceiling, which helped them pinpoint an area of focus for the origin of the fire.
CSI Karen Livengood of the Orlando (FL) Police Department Crime Scene Unit uses a Leica ScanStation 3D laser scanner for homicides, traffic homicides, shootings, and police use-of-force incidents. The unit also uses the technology to aid local crime scene units in investigating any homicides that occur in 12 neighboring cities that are part of the local Joint Homicide Investigative Team, or J.H.I.T.
The Leica ScanStation series includes three scanner models, the P40, P30, and P16, that all work with the company's 3D point cloud software suite, which includes of Leica Cyclone stand-alone software, Leica CloudWorx plug-in tools for CAD systems, and the free Leica TruView that allows easy sharing with those who don't have sophisticated viewing software.
"Our scan data has been introduced and accepted as scientific evidence on two of our court cases," Livengood says. "But it has been brought up several times in depositions. The state attorneys have requested copies on several cases, including officer-involved shootings and a number of homicides, that are coming up for court."
Devil's in the Details
As already mentioned, a 3D scanner captures millions of points so that details of the scene captured in time can be viewed later. "The scanner captures everything on the scene. That ability, to me, is what makes the scanner worth it," says Livengood, who often gets requests from detectives for additional measurements.
"The closer you are, the more detailed you get," says Young. So if you know there is a specific detail you want to get, such as an entry wound on a body, you can get close to it when you do a scan for a better view later. Livengood was documenting a homicide scene where the victim had been stabbed multiple times in a living room and it was important to capture scans of all of the blood that was on the ground and everywhere else. "We had one ScanStation scanning at ground level, and another was simultaneously scanning on a tripod. Then we merged the scans together," she says.
Presenting in Court
But if there is a detail you didn't know to look for originally, if a 3D scanner was used at the scene that detail will still have been captured and you will be able to view it. This can be especially useful in court.
"It takes the judge or jury and puts them at the scene when it was committed," says Young. Although the case didn't end up going to court, Young and his team were able to recreate the views of different witnesses in a bank robbery to help test whether their statements were accurate, based on where they were located when the incident occurred.
"At a bank, you have a lot of offices, and all witnesses have a different perspective based on where they were when the robbers came in," says Young. "In court, they can say I was here when they did this, and this is what I saw. A year down the road when the case goes to court, things may change, memory may change, but [in our 3D views] everything is exactly as it was at the time we scanned it."
In addition to her agency's scan data being accepted as evidence in court, the resulting imagery from Orlando PD's Leica ScanStation has been extremely useful in cases, Livengood says. "Presentation in court has just been phenomenal, especially when it comes to bullet trajectories or skid marks for traffic homicides," she says. "The data gets shown to defense attorneys, and they show it to clients. Sometimes, it changes the outcome of the case. If you can see it, to me, that right there pays for itself."
Fast and Efficient
Beyond all of the benefits of 3D laser scanning technology for investigations, the equipment allows officers to fully document a scene with fewer people and in less time than before, no matter the conditions.
What used to take at least four people hours to complete can now be done in a fraction of the time by one person, Young says, although he prefers to use two officers. The setup is simpler and faster, and because of this many more areas can be covered, even if there are special requests for detailed scans. "It takes less than 10 minutes from the time I arrive on scene to the time I'm actually collecting data," says Young. Scans are taken before anyone else touches the scene to best preserve the evidence. This took some getting used to and changes to protocol, but it's worth it, he says. And he's done so quickly, compared to before, that the other officers can then do what they need to do without much delay.
Both Young and Livengood deeply appreciate their 3D laser scanners and agree that it's worth changing some policies and spending time and money on the equipment and initial training for a more accurate and efficient way of documenting crime scenes.
Screen shot from Vigilant Solutions FaceSearch showing an image-editing tool that can be used to improve the odds of a match.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, automated facial recognition became a hot technology. The very idea that software using a database of facial photos could help prevent the next terror attack was reassuring. It was also likely untrue. The technology was not nearly sophisticated enough to pick out a terror suspect in a crowd scene unless that suspect was facing the camera and ideally lit in both photos. But the technology and the techniques for using it have improved greatly over the last 15 years and now facial recognition software is becoming a common tool in law enforcement.
Applications for facial recognition are still being determined, but some of the most common include criminal investigations, identification of people with false IDs, and access control.
Back in the early 2000s, only a few companies were making facial recognition tools for law enforcement and you needed the resources of federal agencies or large and well-heeled municipal police departments to acquire the technology and the expertise to effectively use it. Now numerous companies, including 3M, Cognitec, and Vigilant Solutions, produce affordable facial recognition tools specifically for law enforcement operations.
The Tools
3M makes a variety of facial recognition products, including a live matching system and the 3M Cogent suite of biometric solutions. Running on PCs and on mobile devices, 3M's Live Face identification system was designed to scan crowds and alert authorities to the presence of bad actors. The system works with a wide variety of compatible cameras and can capture multiple images of a person for more accurate matching. 3M Cogent's Mugshot System allows law enforcement personnel to access a mugshot database from a desk or out in the field and find mugshot matches using descriptions or digital images of the suspect.
Cognitec's facial recognition tool is called FaceVACS, and the latest version was released in 2015. One of the key features of the newest FaceVACS is the ability to use it on mobile devices. The company says a smaller memory footprint of its new facial characteristics matching algorithm has made it possible to run the tool on Android and iOS devices. Mobile Examiner allows officers to take suspect photos at the scene, search central databases, and quickly receive candidate lists to help determine his or her identity. Cognitec has also added video scanning capability to its menu of facial recognition tools. FaceVACS-VideoScan lets users perform facial match searches on persons appearing in both real-time video streams and stored media files.
Vigilant Solutions calls its facial recognition tool FaceSearch. FaceSearch runs on a variety of platforms, including PCs and smartphones, and features an easy-to-use interface. The tool allows the investigator to easily edit poor quality images within the interface so there is no need to use third-party software. The company says the editing is straightforward, allowing any investigator or analyst to make necessary adjustments without being an image editing master. Reports are downloadable and memorialize the effort conducted by the investigator.
Success Stories
Many of the greatest successes of facial recognition technology will probably never be revealed to the public since the technology is widely used by the Department of Homeland Security in terrorism prevention. But every day, facial recognition systems are helping law enforcement agencies identify the bad guys and close cases.
In 2014, the FBI was able to arrest a child abuse and kidnapping suspect on the lam in Asia with the aid of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, which had scanned FBI Most Wanted posters into its facial recognition system. A scan of the suspect's poster matched a passport photo of an individual traveling in Nepal under another name.
The Sacramento County (CA) Sheriff's Office announced this year that it was expanding its facial recognition program to 500 licenses. The agency has used Vigilant Solutions' FaceSearch to great success. "Over the past year we have made as many as 35 criminal identifications resulting from its use," says Sgt. Kyle Hoertsch. "Two notable cases are the identification of a cold case homicide suspect on the first day of use, and the identification of another individual on a routine traffic stop. The gentleman was covered in prison tattoos, did not have a valid ID, and the name he provided to us included the name of a famous actor as the middle and last names. Upon taking his photo using the mobile app, we were returned a list of possible matches within about two seconds. Upon review of the possible matches, the officer on patrol was able to visually confirm that the gentleman was indeed the same person seen in a 2006 booking photo out of Ohio."
The NYPD operates its facial recognition system from the department's Real Time Crime Center. The unit has to date conducted 8,500 facial recognition investigations, yielding 3,000 possible matches, and leading to almost 2,000 arrests.
Skill and Experience
Roger Rodriguez spearheaded the NYPD's facial recognition investigation unit and he is now manager of image analytics for Vigilant Solutions. In addition to his work with Vigilant, he is also an evangelist for the technology and what it can do, writing blogs and white papers on the Vigilant Solutions Website (www.vigilantsolutions.com) and answering reader questions about facial recognition at PoliceMag.com.
Rodriguez says he is frustrated by the perception of facial recognition as magic that is held by some in the public and even by some law enforcement officers. He bristles at the idea that facial matching leads instantly to arrests and says facial recognition technology should be used in an investigation in a similar fashion as investigators use the work of a sketch artist.
"You have to establish probable cause for an arrest by other means than a facial match," explains Rodriguez. He says that in his work with the NYPD, a facial match was just one element of an investigation. Investigators also needed to document other facts about the individual before establishing probable cause for an arrest. "Facial recognition is a lead generation tool," Rodriguez says.
Accuracy of matches is an issue that can also be affected by the experience and skill of the investigator using a facial recognition system. People who believe facial recognition systems are magic think that the technology can be used to match one image of a face to one individual in a database of millions with just one push of a button. In reality, achieving solid results with facial recognition requires the user to apply some investigative talent and even image pre-processing skills. "You have to be crafty and persistent," Rodriguez says.
One of the easiest ways to achieve better results, according to Rodriguez, is to apply common sense filters to the population the facial recognition system searches. For example, if the image is of a male 18 to 30 years of age, an investigator can tell the system to search for men, eliminating a sizable element of the database that is female, and then apply an age filter to whittle down the possible matches even more.
Users also have to realize that very few images of suspects are perfectly lit or feature the kind of forward-facing view that is ideal for facial recognition algorithms. Vigilant's FaceSearch includes an easy-to-use image pre-processing tool so that users can lighten images and even adjust the positioning of the subject's face to improve their chances of a match. Such processing does not alter the original image, which investigators will need in court.
In the early days of his facial recognition work at the NYPD, Rodriguez taught himself how to use Photoshop for image pre-processing. Photoshop is a complicated tool and that's why he encouraged Vigilant to include an easy-to-use image pre-processing tool in the latest version of FaceSearch.
Rodriguez believes that the growing success rate of facial recognition investigations and the development of easy-to-use solutions will spur more agencies to acquire the technology. "In the next three years or so the use of facial recognition is going to double," he says.
When detectives run out of investigative leads, they often turn to DNA. When you're talking about cold cases that have been unsolved for decades, this is often the only avenue left. But regardless of the timeframe, what if you've checked the DNA evidence from a crime against all databases and all known subjects and come up with nothing? What if you have unidentified remains and no clue as to who the person is? Or blood from a suspect, but no idea of who to look for?
That's typically where Parabon Nanolabs enters the picture, says Dr. Ellen Greytak, director of bioinformatics at Parabon. She helped lead the development of a technique called Snapshot DNA Phenotyping that can analyze an unidentified person's DNA to create a picture of what he or she looks like. And it can give investigators a new lead where there was none.
A detective will contact Parabon with information about a case involving DNA from an unidentified person, and Greytak and her team will evaluate whether there is enough DNA left to do a new analysis. If there is, Parabon coordinates with DNA Labs International or one of the other specially equipped labs they work with to receive the sample, extract DNA or clean up old DNA extracts from cold cases, and conduct a SNP panel. The lab then sends the results to Parabon, and Greytak and her team analyze the data to predict that person's physical appearance.
"We can't just use the STR analysis they've already developed," Greytak says. "We do a SNP analysis, so rather than the usual STR, we're looking for single-nucleotide polymorphisms, SNiPs or SNPs." The test generates a readout of close to a million SNP genotypes. But Parabon uses predictive models that read the raw data and compare them to known people with similar genomes to determine their likely appearance. It goes something like this: "OK, this person is a DG at this SNP, and in the thousands of people I've ever looked at, people who have DG at this SNP tend to have lighter eyes, for example," Greytak says. It can also provide a person's detailed ancestry.
But she and her team are careful to explain to investigators that the information derived from the analysis can only point them in the right direction, mainly by narrowing the focus of possible matches. The composite image provided on the last page of every analysis report is merely representative of a possible person that meets the criteria found in the DNA. The rest of the report details what traits to look for and the level of confidence for each finding.
For example, analysis of a DNA sample might show that the unidentified person most likely has blue eyes, but with only 80% confidence, whereas they have 99% confidence that the person does not have brown eyes. "So we might say the blue is more likely than green, so you would look at the blue-eyed people first. But still keep those green-eyed people on your list, because that's still possible," Greytak says.
Even when Parabon can predict aspects of a person's appearance with a high level of confidence, there are plenty of factors they have no way of predicting, such as age, weight, hairstyle, and whether a person has tattoos. "What we're going to produce at the end is not going to be a driver's license photograph of that person," Greytak says. "There's a lot of information that goes into appearance that's not written in the DNA sequence."
This process has helped generate new leads in numerous cases. For example, a profile and composite were created of one of two unidentified suspects in the 2013 double homicide of a Canadian retired couple living in Florida. In another case, a headless body was found in Galveston, TX. For decades, investigators had been looking for a Caucasian female, but Parabon was able to determine through DNA analysis that the unidentified woman was East Asian, and specifically Chinese. While such revelations are promising, they dont guarantee a solved case.
"We've never had a case where the detective said, 'This wasn't worthwhile.' Because these are for cases where they have exhausted all the leads that they had, and are looking for something new to jumpstart it," says Greytak. "And suddenly it's like, 'Oh, well, I didn't need to be looking at this 95% of the population. Now I can focus on the remaining 5% of the population.'"
This technology is not limited to cold cases. Now more investigators are coming to Parabon with newer cases instead of waiting until years have passed. This can help law enforcement agencies find new possible leads before a trail has a chance to get cold. "I think that's a fantastic use of the technology. To right away say, OK, we're definitely looking for a white guy with light eyes or something like that where we can focus and not have to spend time looking at people who really don't match that DNA," Greytak enthuses.
She likens traditional DNA forensics to a fingerprint, which can only provide useful information if you can compare it to something and get a match. "We look at the DNA like a blueprint, containing all the information that built that person. So it's just a matter of figuring out what the DNA is saying about that person, and learning brand new information that you couldn't have gotten otherwise," Greytak says. "It's sort of like a genetic witness."
MSAB products including XRY Office let officers easily extract data from digital devices. (Photo: MSAB)
In the last five years the number of digital devices available to the public has increased exponentially in both quantity and capability. Computers are now available in everything from desktop systems to phones to coffee pots. And because anything available to consumers is available to criminals, a great deal of contemporary crime evidence is digital evidence. Collecting, reading, and analyzing that evidence has become a major law enforcement headache.
The Swedish high-tech company MSAB believes it has the treatment for that headache. MSAB has long been involved in cellular communications systems and mobile device forensics. The company now has created what it calls an ecosystem of digital forensic tools built around its XRY software. MSAB's ecosystem includes a kiosk for capturing and disseminating data; a desktop or field forensic software tool; and an analysis tool that helps investigators piece together who was using the digital device, when it was used, and for what purpose.
Rey Navarro, MSAB's director, says the purpose of the MSAB Kiosk is to allow detectives and other authorized law enforcement personnel to download data from devices consensually turned over by their owners to the investigators. "No witness turning over a phone video to the police wants to hear we'll get that back to you in a week," Navarro explains. "The kiosk lets authorized personnel dump that data into the system and return the phone to the witness very quickly."
The MSAB Kiosk is a hardware solution that an agency can set up in a central secure location for downloading digital evidence. Little to no training is required to use the system, as it has an intuitive touch screen interface that walks the user through the process. Navarro says the Kiosk is managed by a central administrator who can ensure that only the right people such as investigators and prosecutors have access to the data. And because authorized parties can access the data from the central storage, users don't have to share CDs or memory sticks, saving time and money.
While the MSAB Kiosk is designed to be used by any law enforcement officer granted access, the next element in the MSAB ecosystem was designed specifically for cyber forensic specialists. Available for desktops, laptops, and tablets running the Windows operating system, XRY is a software tool that allows specialists to extract data from mobile devices under warrant but without assistance from the owners. Navarro says the latest version of XRY Office allows users to connect up to three devices at a time. XRY can extract a wide variety of document, database, image, and video file types. It can also extract data from apps and parse call logs, address books, emails, messages, and GPS data.
Navarro says that even though there are millions of apps available for mobile devices, XRY can extract data from the ones most commonly used in criminal activities. MSAB is also constantly adding app data extraction capabilities to the software through regular updates.
The final element in the MSAB forensic ecosystem is XAMN, a tool that helps analysts find the evidentiary value of the data extracted from digital devices. "XAMN allows you to put all the pieces together when it comes to mobile device dumps," Navarro says. "You can use it to reveal contacts between the suspect and the victim or the suspect and associates based on messages, GPS information, and other data."
XRY Office and the other MSAB software products are available on an annual subscription basis per license. Users can learn to use the software and how to testify about the examination in a five-day certification program. For particularly tough data extraction problems, MSAB specialists are available to consult on site.
www.MSAB.com
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Update 10:30 PM: The crowd count is even higher than originally estimated, coming in at 33,000 via the Philadelphia Fire Department. Several thousand additional people watched from outside.
In one of Hillary Clintons final rallies of this campaign season, over 20,000 supporters turned out in Philadelphia to cheer on her march toward history.
Clinton didnt just stress the importance of turning out to vote in one the most critical elections of our time, but she also said tomorrow is just the beginning of the work ahead.
Every issue you care about is at stake, and that is just the beginning because we have to bridge the divides in our country, the Democratic nominee said.
Clinton, acknowledging just how divisive politics has become, added, I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became, before someone from the crowd shouted, Not your fault!
The Democratic nominee said she will be a president for all Americans, not just voters who end up supporting her on Tuesday.
Video:
Hillary Clinton speaks in Philadelphia, PA: I will be a president for all Americans https://t.co/GctxlbVKaV https://t.co/SnhZqGYovT CNN (@CNN) November 8, 2016
Not only was the huge event a great way for Clinton to make her unifying closing argument to voters, but it stood in stark contrast to Donald Trumps rallies, which have consistently been defined by anger and hatred toward Clinton:
This crowd is diverse. Young, old, different colors. And no signs or expressions of anger, hate, or resentment. pic.twitter.com/Ts2JMX4bqi David Corn (@DavidCornDC) November 8, 2016
While Trumps message is specifically directed toward a shrinking and increasingly angry faction of America, Clintons message is forward-looking and inclusive. This was on full display in Philadelphia on the closing night of this long election season.
In the 11th hour of this campaign, its clear that Hillary Clinton has the momentum and stands just 24 hours away from making history as the first woman elected to the highest office in the world.
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Its a well-known fact that Hillary Clinton is not the most exciting or likable presidential candidate to seek the office.
Its true that as a woman, her ascent to the top of American government all while facing attacks and standards often not faced by her male counterparts has been inspiring, but she has always lacked the charisma of a Barack Obama and the understands my pain of a Bill Clinton.
She is a politician with decades of baggage and her reserved style has opened her up to plenty of attacks over the years: Shes a criminal (not true), shes a murderer (not true), shes a serial liar (not true).
All of this is why, on average, she is seen unfavorably by just over half of the American public. Not as bad as Trump, but clearly not the best number.
But let me repeat what Ive told about a million anti-Hillary loyalists throughout this campaign: National presidential elections are not favorability contests.
When voters head to their polling places on Tuesday, they will not be voting on whether they like Hillary Clinton. Instead, they will be choosing between two candidates, regardless of how unhappy they are about those options.
What we shouldnt do is confuse this unhappiness with difficulty. The choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is not an unsolvable math equation its actually pretty simple.
Hillary Clinton should be the next President of the United States and the reasons why all boil down to policy and temperament, not personality and conspiracy theories.
On wages, Trump thinks theyre too high and Clinton wants to raise them. On higher education, Trump hasnt released an official plan and Clinton is proposing debt-free tuition at public universities. On campaign finance, Trump wants to protect the Supreme Court decision that has allowed dark money to pour into our political system; Clinton wants to overturn it. On climate change, Trump thinks its a Chinese-created hoax, while Clinton has a comprehensive plan to address it. Trump wants to build a wall and enlist a deportation force; Clinton wants to secure the border in a sensible way without shipping 11 million undocumented immigrants out of the country.
When it comes to matters of foreign policy, the contrast between the two candidates is even more apparent.
Trump wants to implement torture (war crime), target and kill the innocent relatives of terrorists (war crime) and impose a religious test on those hoping to enter the United States (unconstitutional). As if these arent terrifying enough, he talks casually about using nukes and has said that more countries should have access to these weapons.
Hillary Clinton, while occasionally being too eager to support interventionist military policies, has repeatedly shown that she knows what the hell shes talking about when it comes to foreign affairs. Shes also been at the forefront of important international policy decisions over the years: taking out Osama bin Laden, negotiating an arms reduction treaty with Russia, scoring a Gaza seize-fire, and laying the groundwork for a deal to cap Irans nuclear program.
In the debates, Clinton was prepared and showed she at least understands the complicated world she seeks to lead. Trump, on the other hand, displayed that his knowledge is no deeper than a 140-character tweet.
But aside from the policy disagreements, perhaps the biggest difference between Clinton and Trump is their temperaments.
While the Democratic nominee has withstood decades of attacks from people who passionately despise her (without once taking to Twitter to throw a tantrum), Trump makes it his mission to childishly bully anyone who doesnt worship the ground he walks on.
He even repeatedly denigrates those who have done nothing at all to him: Mexican immigrants, Muslim Americans, women he deems unattractive, Gold Star families, former pageant contestants, federal judges, POWs, people with disabilities rinse and repeat.
At the end of the day, it doesnt and shouldnt matter if Hillary Clinton isnt the most warm-and-fuzzy politician to seek the presidency. What she wears, how she speaks and the fact that her detractors have memorized a giant list of supposedly disqualifying non-scandals arent relevant to me, especially in this kind of election year.
If we pull back from the reality show version of politics that has fueled Donald Trumps candidacy and instead look at which candidate is most qualified and offers the most realistic and sensible domestic and foreign policy proposals, the choice couldnt be clearer.
In a conventional general election environment, perhaps Hillary Clintons likability numbers would make her a weaker nominee. But this is no typical campaign, and there is just a tad bit more at stake.
Four years ago, I cast my ballot to re-elect the first African-African president. On Nov. 8, I will vote for the first female commander-in-chief.
Itll be the easiest choice Ive ever made.
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The numbers are in and the crowd count at Hillary Clintons Philadelphia rally was even higher than originally estimated, reaching 33,000. Several thousand additional people also watched from outside.
This puts Clinton ahead of Trump for biggest rally. Liz Kreutz of ABC pointed out that Donald Trumps biggest rally was in Mobile, Alabama where he had 28,000.
Clinton now surpasses Trump for largest campaign rally. Trump's biggest was 28k in Mobile, AL. HRC had 33k tonight. (h/t @SeniABC) Liz Kreutz (@ABCLiz) November 8, 2016
The enthusiasm and size of the crowd tonight in Philadelphia didnt go over well with Donald Trump or his supporters or surrogates, who insisted it was a concert and not a rally, because of the star power that came out for Clinton.
While its true that rallies arent votes and what really matters is ground game, its also true that Democrats are fired up and ready to go for Hillary Clinton. And thats a story that the media hasnt told this cycle.
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It was a classic moment at Hillary Clintons gigantic Philadelphia rally. As the Democratic nominee expressed regret over the anger in the campaign, a woman in the crowd shouted back, Not your fault.
Video:
Whoever said "not your fault", please step forward so we can give you an award! pic.twitter.com/Lm9VGVARDB T. R. Ramachandran (@yottapoint) November 8, 2016
I regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became, Clinton said. Not your fault! a woman shouted. Clinton smiled.
The American people arent stupid. They have been watching. They know that one campaign is being led by a rage monster who lets out anger the way the rest of us take in oxygen. Hillary Clinton has had to deal with the Trump rage carnival all through the general election. If she was running against nearly any other candidate, the odds are that this campaign would not have been so angry.
It is difficult to run a sunny and uplifting campaign when your opponent is calling Mexicans rapists, insulting women, mocking the disabled, and accused of dozens sexual assaults. The American people dont want an angry president. They want an intelligent and competent president who will get things done for them.
Donald Trump can scream about rigged elections until the day he leaves this earth, but negativity never wins, which is why the angrier Trump got, the more it helped Hillary Clinton.
The anger wasnt Clintons fault, and voters will express their disapproval of Trumps tone on Election Day.
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The final day of the presidential campaign is here, and the Politicus Presidential Projection map contains more clarity as election day awaits.
The baseline map:
Democrats are still set to begin election night favored to win 258 electoral votes. Trump has still failed to make a dent in Hillary Clintons blue wall of electoral votes. The Republican nominee continues to hold scattershot rallies in swing states with no rhyme or reason, while the Clinton campaign is closing with a sharp focus on keeping the door closed to a Trump upset in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Colorado. The Clinton campaign is also holding events in North Carolina and Florida. All total, the Clinton campaign is holding 16 events today involving candidates and/or surrogates. On the other hand, Trump and Pence are holding nine events in North Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The Clinton campaign can cover more ground, and on the final day of the campaign, this could pay dividends in swing states.
Democrats hold the inside track to the White House, and many more roads to get there.
Here is the best case scenario for Trump:
In the election eve best case scenario for Trump, the map gives him every swing state, but Nevada and he still would lose the election. 273-265. This scenario moves North Carolina into the Trump column and ignores the data that shows Hillary Clinton with the inside track on winning Florida.
The map above is the best outcome for Trump without election day blue state upsets. Hillary Clinton isnt going to lose every swing state, but Nevada.
The reason why Republicans are praying for an upset in Pennsylvania or Michigan is that is the only way that Trump wins on election day. The possibly of everything happening that Trump needs to win is remote at best. If Hillary Clinton wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada, the rest of the map doesnt matter, because Donald Trump will still lose the election.
Here is the best case scenario for Hillary Clinton:
This is the scenario where everything breaks Hillary Clintons way on election night. Early voting powers Hillary Clinton to wins in North Carolina, Nevada, and Florida. Latino early voting in Florida is up 89% over 2012. The Clinton campaign had made getting Latino voters who either hadnt voted before or sat out 2012 out to the polls in 2016. Ohio is definitely in play for Clinton. As with Nevada, if Hillary Clinton wins Ohio, she doesnt need to win a single additional swing state to win the White House. An Ohio win along with victories in North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire, and Nevada pushes her electoral college total to 339. Clinton would defeat Trump 339-199, which would better Obamas 2012 electoral vote total, but less than his 2008 total. An electoral vote total in the 350s would mean that everything has gone right for Democrats. An electoral vote total between 330 and 355 looks like Hillary Clintons best case scenario.
The most likely scenario for election day:
The strong Latino early vote in Florida suggests that of all the remaining swing states in question that are on the map, Trumps odds are the best in North Carolina. However, the race is so close there that I dont feel comfortable moving it into his column because of potential election day variables. Ohio and Iowa are Trumps best shots to flip states that President Obama won, but Trumps odds have decreased in Ohio over the past week. It wouldnt be surprising if Clinton won Ohio and Trump won North Carolina. A flip of these two states on the map results in Hillary Clinton winning 324 electoral college votes instead of 322.
Without pulling off some shocking upsets, Trump only has a tiny path to the presidency.
Hillary Clintons likely electoral college vote total sits around 320. Her low-end range remains 290, and her very worst case scenario is 273 electoral college votes. Hillary Clinton has dozens of possible combinations to win the White House, while Trump has none unless he wins in blue states where he is currently losing.
Hillary Clinton is still in great position to be elected the next President Of The United States, as Trump low on options and even lower on time.
Note: These projections take into account polling averages, early voting statistics, and current polls. They are subject to change and will be updated daily through election day.
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With just hours until voters the ones who havent already participated in early voting cast their ballots, a slew of new Election Eve polling shows that Hillary Clinton has the momentum as the campaign reaches its conclusion.
According to at least eight national polls released on Monday, the Democratic nominee leads Donald Trump by anywhere from two to seven percentage points. According to HuffPost Pollster, Clinton now leads the race nationally by an average of 5.2 points a comfortable position to be in with less than a day to go.
On a statewide level arguably more important Clintons advantage when it comes to the Electoral College is even more evident.
According to PoliticusUSAs final electoral projection released today, the Democratic nominee is likely to carry states totaling more than 320 electoral votes. This coincides with Larry Sabatos final Crystal Ball prediction showing Clinton winning 322 electoral votes to Trumps 216. FiveThirtyEights forecast one that has given chances a considerably better chance than other forecasters also has Clintons chances rising just within the past hour to over 70 percent.
All the new polling and data come on the heels of FBI Director James Comeys latest letter clearing Clinton again of any wrongdoing with respect to her email setup.
Its clear that Clintons campaign events since Comeys second letter have struck a more positive, unifying tone likely a suggestion that the former Secretary of State feels good about her chances going into tomorrow. Instead of going hard against Trump, she is preparing for how to move the country forward together.
Contrast that with Trumps closing message, which focuses heavily on attacking Clinton using repeatedly debunked arguments, and its clear who is winning this race right now.
Hillary Clinton hopes to cap off this momentum with a massive rally in Philadelphia on Monday night accompanied by a superstar lineup of Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Chelsea Clinton, and rock stars Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. Its expected to draw tens of thousands of supporters to cheer Clinton across the finish line.
With 24 hours to go and the wind at her back, Hillary Clinton is on the verge of making history.
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A hero judge stood up to the Trump campaigns crazed Nevada conspiracy and dismissed their attempt to undermine democracy with a bogus lawsuit.
The Trump Nevada lawsuit was based on a wild conspiracy theory that people were allowed to walk up and join the line in Clark County after the polls had closed. The Trump campaign wanted the ability to harass the people who were working the polls that night, and they were seeking to violate the principles of the secret ballot by requesting voter information.
The judge repeatedly told Trumps attorney that he was legally asking for something that the Secretary of State was already obligated to do.
This exchange as tweeted by Jon Ralston summed up the tone of the hearing:
"It's all hearsay.your vote is secret," says skeptical judge to Trump lawyer. Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 8, 2016
Judge Sturman pointing out how insane this is because YOU CAN'T OPEN BALLOTS AND SEE HOW PEOPLE VOTED! Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 8, 2016
"It seems to go against the very principle that the vote is secret." Judge Sturman. Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 8, 2016
Judge Sturman denied the Trump campaign everything they were asking for and said that she is reluctant to impose any obligation on their Registrar of Voters because he is a very busy man.
Trumps lawyer would ask for something insane, like the personal information of poll workers, or the power to open ballots to see how people voted.
Trumps ploy to gum up the election is dead, and in the process, the basis for a crazy conspiracy theory that would allow Republicans to argue that the election was stolen was smashed by one hero judge and her respect for democracy.
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Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both ended their campaigns with late night rallies that could not have been more different. Clintons North Carolina rally was a loud party, while Trumps event in Michigan was a dark slog that was exactly like the incoherent nonsense that marked the launch of his campaign.
Donald Trump took the stage in Grand Rapids, Michigan and immediately complained about the musicians who are campaigning with Hillary Clinton to turn out the vote. Trump grumbled about how late it was. He discussed his secret plan to keep jobs in Michigan and promised to be the ribbon cutter in chief who will come back to the state every time a new factory opens.
Trump talked about how had won an award in Michigan once, and he grew less coherent as the speech went on. At one point, Trump claimed that his supporters were only going to sleep for two hours, get up and vote, then go to work, because he, knows his Michigan people. What was striking is how little Trump had changed over the course of the campaign. The Donald Trump campaign started with a speech of incoherent nonsense, and it ended with a rambling late-night jaunt through Michigan.
In contrast, Hillary Clintons crowd in Raleigh, NC was held at North Carolina State University was loud. Clinton was right on message, and the crowd was rocking after getting fired up by Lady Gaga. Clinton said that she wanted joy, passion, and intensity for the nations young people. Hillary Clinton was all smiles and could barely contain her joy during the North Carolina event. The dark cloud that was the Trump campaign in Michigan was replaced by a burst of sunshine on the screen in North Carolina.
There was a noticeable difference in the feel of the two events. Trump went through his regular talking points, but he lacked conviction. Trump was trying to sell in the crowd wanted to buy, but the reality of likely defeat was hanging in the room. On the other hand, the Hillary Clinton event looked, sounded, and felt like a campaign and supporters who believed that they are on the cusp of victory.
Donald Trump has stayed the same, but Hillary Clinton has grown by leaps and bounds. Hillary Clinton has gone from being the most qualified candidate for president in history to speaking with the confidence of a woman who is on the verge of becoming president.
Hillary Clinton closed her campaign in strong fashion, while Donald Trump blustered and faded away.
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Donald Trump, who campaigned on negativity, got a little back this morning as he arrived at his polling place, a New York City school, P.S. 59 around 11 a.m, receiving boos from the waiting crowd. Melanias sour expression tells the tale:
BuzzFeeds Anup Kaphle tweeted the action:
VIDEO: Donald Trump gets booed as he arrives at his polling place. pic.twitter.com/CJcmBIt9Zl Anup Kaphle (@AnupKaphle) November 8, 2016
Donald Trump earned each and every boo he received, having denigrated nearly every group save the Fox News angry white male demographic. No doubt many more Americans will feel like booing as Election Day wears on, subject to long lines as a result of Republican voter suppression efforts.
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Republican efforts to suppress the vote legally or illegally are nothing new. It is almost a knee-jerk reaction conservatism to protect the very lucrative status quo, which makes Trumps claim to be some sort of outside, counter-elite champion of the people all the more laughable.
And now we are seeing those efforts in action as long lines queue up to vote in state after state. CNNs Carol Costello called the lines of people waiting in Raleigh, NC, where it was 36 degrees this morning, incredible and Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker magazine reminded her that there is a reason for these long lines, and it has to do with the Republican decisionto cut the number of places to vote.
CAROL COSTELLO: I want to put up that shot from Raleigh, North Carolina, of the people in line waiting to vote because its incredible. This was taken when the polls just opened. I dont know what this says about voter turnout because this is just a snapshot, right? But still its a beautiful thing to see democracy in action, right? Thats a beautiful thing. I just wanted to put that up to remind people what this day is about.
RYAN LIZZA: Although one thing about these long lines in North Carolina is you cant forget that this was a decision made by the state to cut the number of places. There are not enough places in some of these states, and as beautiful as it is to see people online getting ready to vote, we shouldnt have long lines in this country. We should be making it as easy to vote as possible.
COSTELLO: Youre right about that. There should be a lot of polling places to accommodate voters so they dont have to stand in line.
DAVID SWERDLICK: Yeah. This is something thats going to carry over, again, to subsequent elections, right, Carol? This idea that only in states controlled by Republican legislatures has early voting been reduced, or have the number of polling places like North Carolina been reduced. And as demographics shift and as subsequent presidential elections take place, were really going to see if this winds up being effective for Republicans or if Republicans are going to be forced to expand the number of, the demographics of their voting base.
As David Swerdlick of The Washington Post explained to Costello, there is a direct correlation between these events and Republican legislatures, as it is only in states controlled by the GOP that early voting has been reduced, creating scenes like this, from Raleigh:
Line at 6am at Bedford Clubhouse (Precinct 13-10) in Raleigh. Polls open at 630am. It's 36 degrees. pic.twitter.com/cEF2oPSSkk Victor Blackwell CNN (@VictorBlackwell) November 8, 2016
It is to the Republican Partys advantage if people dont vote, particularly minorities, and it is past time the mainstream media take a good hard look at voting suppression efforts that harm our democratic process.
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More than half of the voter intimidation reports being logged in the entire country by Election Protection are coming in from the must-win state of Pennsylvania.
According to Election Protection half of the nations voter intimidation is happening in Pennsylvania:
Widespread reports of polling places asking for voter ID. More than half of the intimidation events are reported to the hotline from this state
and problems with lack of Spanish language assistance in counties required to provide it under the Voting Rights Act.
Approximately half of the intimidation events that are being reported to 866-OUR-VOTE are coming from Pennsylvania and include some reports of voters engaging in argumentative behavior with each other.
NBC News reported that the requests for voter ID are occurring in the Philadelphia area. Some voters think that poll workers are confused because the proposed voter ID law that former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett tried to put into place that was struck down by a court in 2013.
Pennsylvania state law does require identification for new voters or voters voting in a new location, but a drivers license or photo ID is not required.
The good news is that the Pennsylvania Board Of Elections stepped in to halt the requests for voter ID, Requests for voter ID in Pennsylvania and New York [have been addressed by Boards of Elections after reports. There are no photo ID requirements in these states.
It isnt shocking that Republicans and Trump supporters would target Pennsylvania for their voter intimidation efforts The Democratic strongholds of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are key to Hillary Clinton winning the state. Trump has little hope of winning the presidential election if he cant win in Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton has poll workers in polling places that voters in Pennsylvania can report voter intimidation to. Voters who have been asked for identification or intimidated at the polls call also call Election Protection at 866-OUR-VOTE.
Dont allow anyone to intimidate you out of your vote. Dont allow your vote to be stolen. If you see something wrong at the polls in Pennsylvania or any other state, report it immediately.
Your vote is your voice, and no one has a right to silence you.
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As Americans go to the polls having the option to vote for a woman president on a major party ticket for the first time in history, people in Rochester, New York are also waiting in line at the grave of voting rights activist Susan B. Anthony.
ABC News reported that crowds are putting their I voted and #BecauseOfWomenLikeHER stickers on Anthonys grave, located at Mount Hope Cemetery:
Susan B. Anthony devoted her life to the womens suffrage movement. After Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination of her party in July, the woman Mayor of the city of Rochester put a sign up thanking Anthony:
Stop by #ROC's Mt. Hope Cemetery to sign Mayor Warren's thank you letter to Susan B. Anthony. #womenshistory pic.twitter.com/ZQ6BGfXLPO City of Rochester NY (@CityRochesterNY) July 27, 2016
The Director of the Susan B. Anthony Historic House and Museum, Deborah Roberts, told ABC people have been traveling from out of state or mailing in their stickers to honor Anthony.
You can read more about Anthonys dedicated fight for the rights of women here, where they note, During the Civil War, Anthony and Stanton formed the Womens Loyal National League, the first national womens political organization. Through the WLNL, 5,000 women gathered 400,000 signatures to persuade Congress to pass the 13th Amendment guaranteeing the freedom of African Americans.
Thats important because as Hillary Clinton famously said, womens rights are human rights. This is what today is all about protecting the rights of all Americans, not just the privileged and those who enjoy the status of the majority.
Hillary Clinton has spent her entire adult life, and indeed her college life, fighting for the rights of all people including disabled children, African Americans, women and children. This is a historic day no matter how it ends.
Image: screencap of ABC News, using footage from WROC/CBS
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
As has been the case throughout this overly-long, humiliating, and disgusting election season the media has again failed to report another sign that America is under siege from anti-democratic forces ensconced firmly in the conservative movement. Specifically, there was yet another report that as yet unknown sources used electronic listening devices to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. What is also typical is that the DNC immediately informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Watergate-like breach and yet there was no announcement that Democrats were again targeted to rig the election.
Mother Jones issued an exclusive report late on Friday past announcing that In an episode reminiscent of Watergate, the Democratic Party recently informed the FBI that it had collected evidence suggesting its Washington headquarters had been bugged. This was according to two Democratic National Committee officials who asked not to be named for what seems to be the obvious reason to this author retaliation from the nations top federal law enforcement officials. Remember, it is apparently contrary to a new agency policy to ever report any untoward or illegal action targeting Democrats so close to an election.
The suspected electronic surveillance was discovered after the DNC interim party chairwoman Donna Brazile ordered a second electronic sweep in as many months. The first, in September, came after Russian hackers working to help install Vladimir Putin surrogate Donald Trump in the White House penetrated the DNC email system and those of other Democratic targets.
The DNC hired a private firm to conduct the first electronic sweep and one is curious why the FBI didnt do its due diligence as the nations leading domestic investigative and law enforcement agency; but it was, after all, Democrats who were electronically hacked and not Donald Trump, the Donald Trump for president campaign, or any other Republican candidate, headquarters, or campaign. Had that been the case the proverbial Hell would have broken loose and FBI director James Comey would have alerted Republicans in Congress and held a prime time press conference aired across all manner of media.
Democratic officials rightly felt it was prudent to do the job federal law enforcement couldnt take time for, and that first electronic sweep discovered nothing unusual. However, about a month or so later after convicted criminal and Republican operative James OKeefe released hidden-camera videos targeting Democrats, interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile ordered another electronic security sweep of its headquarters and offices.
Ms. Brazile was concerned that Republican operatives likely infiltrated the DNC headquarter offices where volunteers were reporting to work on phone banks or whatever other election activities those volunteers work on. Democratic officials were aware that conservative criminal OKeefe and his thugs employed people posing as volunteers to gain easy access to Democratic offices where they could do what criminal conservative operatives do.
According to the DNC officials, the second electronic sweep found a radio signal near the chairmans office indicating there might be a listening device outside the office. We were told that this was something that could pick up calls from cell phones. The officials also related that The guys who did the sweep said it was a strong indication even though they did not recover a device and no culprits were identified.
Officials said the DNC sent a report, replete with all the relevant technical details discovered by the private electronic security firm, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but there was no report to Republicans in Congress, no public announcement or no FBI directors press conference. The officials who repeated that Were not supposed to talk about it said they believe its been given by the bureau (FBI) to another agency with three letters to examine.
If the other agencys three letters are not GOP, something not out of the realm of possibility, it is either the DOJ (Department of Justice) responsible for enforcing the law; the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) or NSA (National Security Agency) that are the main intelligence-gathering agencies tasked with gathering and analyzing information on foreign governments and individuals. Homeland Security and the FBI are tasked with handling domestic issues. One might conclude that if the FBI handed the evidence off to the CIA, it is because the bugging can be connected to a foreign government and individuals who are supporting a presidential candidate that is not Hillary Clinton.
It was a worrisome enough of a breach that one Democratic consultant who has, in the past, done work for the DNC said the organization just recently informed him about the bugging of DNC headquarters. The consultant, like the other DNC officials, asked not to be identified for what seems like obvious reasons that do not include because it is too close to an election, or because the investigation is ongoing, or because it is the purview of the Department of Justice.
Of course officials at the DNC took adequate countermeasures and they obviously refused to elaborate on exactly what anti-bugging security protocols they subsequently put in place. Another DNC official did say that, As a general policy, we dont talk about such efforts. You have to take all of this incredibly seriously. We are the oldest political party in this country, and we are under constant attack from Russia and/or maybe others.
A spokesman for the DNC who could comment on the bugging, Adam Hodge, said The DNC is not going to comment on stories about its security. In all security matters, we cooperate fully with the appropriate law enforcement agencies and take all necessary steps to protect the committee and the safety and security of our staff. It is shameful, but as one expected when there is an attack on Democrats so close to an election, Mother Jones reported that The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. Of course, they did not want to comment; it was not a story that would reflect negatively on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or help Republican Donald Trump, the apparent role of the FBI.
Image: DNC: Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa via AP; FBI agent: Steven K. Doi/Zumapress
Charleston, SC (29403)
Today
Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable..
Tonight
Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable.
Emanuel AMEs former secretary is suing the church and the Rev. Norvel Goff for ending her employment after she questioned the handling of donations that poured into the church after a gunman killed nine worshippers. Read moreFormer secretary at Emanuel AME sues for unpaid wages
South Carolina lawmakers with the S.C. Freedom Caucus admitted to editing an audio recording of an employee with a nonprofit education organization, alleging she touted critical race theory curricula in Lexington County School District One, though they deny that their editing changed her words. Read moreRight-wing legislators admit editing audio used in Fox News report attacking SC schools
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Electric vehicles arent a panacea. They dont reduce traffic congestion or the need to spend billions of dollars repairing and expanding our highways, the way mass transit, ride sharing and more walkable and bicycleable communities can. To the contrary, they make it more difficult to pay for the necessary upgrades, because despite some modest steps, politicians here and elsewhere have been unwilling to change our tax laws to ensure that vehicles using little or no gasoline pay their fair share for those improvements. Read moreEditorial: SC electric vehicle expansion helps state in multiple ways
A Rochester man has been charged with sexual assault after the results of a DNA test determined his semen was found on the victim, court documents say.
Darius Dwayne Pitchford, 28, of 315 Fifth St. SE, made his first appearance Monday in Olmsted County District Court, where he's been charged with two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of simple robbery, all felonies.
He's been released on his own recognizance and is due back in court on Nov. 21.
The investigation began Sept. 5, 2015, when Rochester police were sent to a home in southeast Rochester for a report of a sexual assault.
The victim told the officer she'd been downtown earlier and had gone to a business on Fourth Street Southeast. She left with a male whose name she didn't know.
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A man she knew as "D" joined them, and the three walked to Riverside Central Elementary School in the 500 block of Fifth Avenue Southeast. The woman said she laid down near the playground, and was "in and out" because she'd been drinking.
The two men carried her to a playground slide, she said; when she came to, her pants were off and "D" was on top of her, the complaint says. The other man was allegedly also on top of her at one point; one of them took money from her bra, dumped the contents of her purse, then took two phones and ran off.
The woman gave chase, and found them in the parking lot on Eighth Avenue Southeast. She demanded her money and cellphones, but "D" and the other man ran off again.
According to court documents, the woman believed both men sexually assaulted the victim after pulling off her clothes and throwing them; the woman said she swung and punched at them and tried to push them off her.
An officer searching the school area found one of the woman's phones; the number for "D" in her phone was associated with Pitchford, the report says.
In an interview two days later, Pitchford initially said he wasn't in Rochester Sept. 5 and that he isn't known as "D." He acknowledged knowing the other man, whose identity is known to police, then remembered he was in Rochester that day and saw the other man at the Fourth Street business.
Pitchford continued to deny that he knew the victim, however, but he admitted the phone number in her phone was his. He claimed he couldn't have assaulted her, then gave consent for a cheek swab of his DNA, the complaint says.
The final lab report from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was received Sept. 14. The swabs taken from the woman's body tested positive for semen, the document says, matched Pitchford and wouldn't be expected to occur more than once among unrelated individuals in the world population.
Laurie Applen, a fifth-grade teacher at Kingsland Intermediate School in Wykoff, is the Post Bulletin's Teacher of the Month for September.
Applen's nominators cited her creative ways to bring lessons to life and the way she inspires creativity and pushes students to stretch all parts of their brains.
Name: Laurie Applen
Family:David, my husband of 34 years. I have two adult children, Jasmin and Wyatt, who also live in Southeast Minnesota.
Hometown:I grew up and graduated high school from Cass Lake, Minn.
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School/grade:Fifth grade at Kingsland Intermediate School. I attended St. Cloud State University and graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree in elementary education. I began my teaching career with the Minneapolis Public School system, then moved to southeastern Minnesota and have been with Spring Valley/Kingsland Public Schools since 1983.
What is the best or favorite part of your day?
One of the best parts of my day as a fifth-grade teacher is when I scan my classroom and see my students engaged in their learning. I enjoy watching my class when we are reading a classroom novel and all the students are actively following along and/or all volunteering to read next. Then, actively participating in a thought-provoking discussion. During group work, I am most gratified when I roam around and watch all students involved with the groups' tasks. I love to "see," as most teachers can, my students' brains absorbing the knowledge being given to them.
What or who inspired you to become a teacher?
I can't recall any one moment or person that inspired me to become a teacher. I actually changed my major three times in college. I do know, however, that my final professional choice has been the right one. I am able to look back on my career and feel grateful that I am a part of it. I can honestly say I love my job and enjoy going to work every day. OK, almost every day.
What is one thing you want your students to retain from their days with you?
I hope all of the students I have been able to work with leave my class with a positive quest for learning. I want them to understand that knowledge gives them power.
Do you have a teaching philosophy?
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My philosophy of teaching has evolved over the years. I would like my students to understand that learning is an ongoing process. Learning these days requires more than just subject matter in the core classes, but also includes character development, the understanding and acceptance of diverse cultures and being able to work together with all people. I try to make my classroom a positive and safe environment for all kids to learn in the learning style that fits their personality. I feel responsible in treating each of my students in a way that builds their confidence and makes them feel they are important. As educators, we don't always know what action or comment will stay with an individual child and make an impact on them. I want my students to have an overload of positive experiences so school becomes a place they want to come every day.
What is the most memorable thing that's happened in your classroom?
Over my nearly 30 years of teaching, I have had many memorable moments. Some of the most memorable are also the smallest, most inconspicuous moments. Times when a student who struggles with reading wants to read longer because they are in "a really good part" in the book they are reading, or when I see their eyes light up when they finally understand a concept.
At Kingsland, the fifth-graders go on a three-day camping trip to Whitewater State Park every May, and I love to see some of the students that have a hard time sitting still in school, shine when we take our classroom outdoors.
Several years ago, we were having a Halloween party in my classroom, and one of my students began choking on a jawbreaker. I needed to give him the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge the jawbreaker. That was an extremely scary time, but I got a very heartfelt letter from his mom, that I still read once in a while. A few years ago as this student was a senior, we saw each other, hugged and reminisced about that day. I know that experience was memorable for him, too. Needless to say, jawbreakers are banned in my class room now.
ST. PAUL The presidential election is a nervous time for many young immigrants in Minnesota who entered the country illegally.
Nearly 6,000 immigrants in the state are living under two-year reprieves from deportation authorized by President Barack Obama.
The order created by Obama gave some stability to those who came to the U.S. prior to the age of 16 and had clean records.
Many used the opportunity to enroll in college. That opportunity could be in serious trouble by next week, depending on who wins the presidency.
"There's a lot of fear, a lot of worry about, 'Well if this candidate or that one wins, will we actually be rounded up, sent out of the country?'" said Jay Williams, the interim chief diversity officer at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Williams began testing the Star Scholars program last year, a scholarship program for undocumented students funded by private philanthropy that's assisted in making college affordable.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would cancel the reprieves, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, on the first day of his administration.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton said she'd expand the program and fight for comprehensive immigration reform.
Minnesota is one of 20 states that have allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition and one of five states that provide financial aid for them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Data from the Minnesota Office of Higher Education this fall show 763 students applied for in-state tuition and financial assistance, which the state permits.
A state administrative law judge held a probable cause hearing by phone Monday regarding the campaign finance complaint against Rochester City Council President Randy Staver.
According to participants, Administrative Law Judge Jeanne M. Cochran said she expects to rule on the matter by Thursday. Staver is seeking re-election to the council's at-large seat in today's election. The at-large member serves as president.
The complaint was filed Wednesday -- less than a week before the election -- by Abe Sauer, of Rochester, regarding a fundraising event for Staver held at the Mayowood Stone Barn on Sept. 13. Cochran issued a determination Thursday that Sauer's complaint "sets forth a prima facie violation" of the campaign finance statute and scheduled the probable cause hearing.
According to Sauer's complaint, Staver's campaign held the fundraiser at the Stone Barn, owned by Powers Ventures, and the firm also catered the event. In a campaign finance report filed with the city, Staver's campaign lists three in-kind donations from owner Joe Powers' children, Nick Powers, Joey Powers and Melissa Walker, for $933.33 each.
The complaint says that if Powers' children have no ownership in the business, the contributions should be attributed to Joe Powers and therefore constitute a donation over the individual limit of $1,000.
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Staver and Powers have said the campaign contributions were handled appropriately and Staver told the Post Bulletin, "I am quite frankly irritated that Mr. Sauer, a well-known supporter of my opponent, is choosing to bring these kinds of unsubstantiated allegations forward coincidentally only days before the election."
Sauer, who owns a coffee business in Rochester, is a self-described supporter of Sean Allen, the Kutzky Park neighborhood activist and business owner who's challenging Staver. Sauer also filed ethics complaints against Staver and Mayor Ardell Brede a few weeks earlier; in those cases, the Ethical Practices Board found that Staver and Brede failed to disclose their involvement with a local arts board.
The probable cause hearing on the campaign finance complaint lasted about 50 minutes, sources say, and Staver and his attorney, Paul Grinde, of Rochester, provided evidence of how the contributions were handled.
Staver said by email Monday, "I was able to present compelling evidence that clearly shows that Joe Powers did not exceed the $1,000 campaign contribution limit. The judge said that it is normal practice to issue her decision within three days."
Sauer said by Facebook message Monday after the hearing, "I think I have a strong case for probable cause."
If the administrative law judge determines that probable cause exists for a full hearing and it's eventually determined that the Staver campaign violated the statute, it's unclear what would come of it. Grinde said Monday that "there is little or no reported case law on this subject, I assume because (cases) are rarely brought."
WINONA The Winona Family YMCA will try to make its case for a change to the city's comprehensive plan on Monday at the next meeting of the planning commission.
The change asking for the land where the current YMCA building sits to be reclassified as "downtown fringe" is the same change the YMCA asked the city to make in May.
This time, said Winona Family YMCA CEO Derek Madsen, there is a difference.
"Last time, it was a two-part request," he said. "First, there was the comprehensive plan change. Then Kwik Trip was asking for a zoning change. What we're asking for is a comprehensive plan change."
By not having a purchase agreement basically attached to the YMCA's request, Madsen said, he is hopeful the comprehensive plan change will pass this time around.
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"Under the comprehensive plan, our neighborhood is largely residential," he said. The change to downtown fringe would allow any new owner to develop the property for residential or commercial use. "Fundamentally, it offers us a significantly broader spectrum of zoning options."
Planning Commission Chairman Ed Hahn said the circumstances around the need for a zoning change have not really changed for the YMCA since May, when the planning commission voted against the change to the comprehensive plan 4-3.
"They're trying to sell so they can go forward with the rest of their project," he said, referring to the YMCA's plan to build a new $13 million facility adjacent to Winona Health. "They're not going to find a buyer if they remain as a residential zoning block."
Changing the area's designation to downtown fringe would benefit the YMCA right away, Hahn said. But the planning commission and city council are working on changing the city's universal development code, and the land where the YMCA is located is slated to be changed to "downtown mixed use," he said.
That change would allow the YMCA more flexibility than the current designation of "traditional neighborhood" but less than the "downtown fringe" designation the YMCA is seeking at Monday's meeting. Fringe includes more industrial options, Hahn said.
But the incremental benefits of "fringe" over "mixed use" are not why the YMCA is seeking the change now, Madsen said.
"If we wait for (the universal development code changes), we have to wait at least six months and potentially longer for the city to approve that," he said. "Waiting six to nine months on something that is not cut and dried, that does not have a time frame, sets the Y further back."
"They're not part of what the commission and the city are doing behind the scenes," Hahn said. "They are making an appeal based on the zoning code as it currently is. They're doing what they should be doing."
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Madsen said that means making an appeal based on how the neighborhood has changed. The change to the U.S. Highway 43 bridge, the elimination of housing across the street and other changes mean the YMCA's neighborhood is not what it was when the comprehensive plan was put in place.
While the current request does not come with a purchase agreement, the YMCA has been contacted by several interested parties, Madsen said.
"They don't tell us their final plans, but we've heard all kinds of things. Hotels or mixed-use development," he said. "I think if the city supports the comprehensive plan change, we'll get purchase agreements."
While any sale probably would not put the YMCA over the top for its fundraising plans for the new facility the YMCA has more than $8.3 million in pledged funds for the capital campaign a sale of the old building probably would bring in new donations to make up the difference.
"I'm hopeful," Madsen said. "We've had a lot of good discussions in the community. People understand this area of the city as changed. The Y is not a private entity; it's a community entity."
Officer from kicking video no longer with police
ST. PAUL The St. Paul Police Department says an officer caught on video kicking a black man during an incident that led to an apology from the police chief no longer works for the department.
The department on Friday said Brett Palkowitsch had been put on unpaid leave. But on Monday, police spokesman Steve Linders said Palkowitsch no longer was employed by the department.
Linders said state law prohibits him from saying whether Palkowitsch was fired or resigned.
Linders said Palkowitsch remains the subject of an internal affairs investigation. But he wouldn't say if the inquiry resulted from the video recorded incident in June, in which 53-year-old Frank Baker was badly bitten by a police dog and kicked by Palkowitsch. The dog's handler was suspended for 30 days. Associated Press
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Woman arrested in arson, squad car theft
ALEXANDRIA Charges are pending against an Alexandria woman who allegedly caused an apartment fire, unsuccessfully hid from firefighters in the ceiling, then stole a police squad car after being handcuffed and led officers on a high-speed chase.
Police say firefighters responded to the residence Sunday evening and put out a small fire on the living room floor. The 35-year-old woman was arrested after falling through the ceiling tiles while allegedly possessing a methamphetamine pipe and lighter.
Authorities say the woman was able to get one arm free of handcuffs while alone in the back of a squad car and squeeze into the front seat through a sliding window. She allegedly drove off and later led officers on a chase reaching speeds of 121 mph before being apprehended.
No injuries were reported.
Early voting puts 568,000 ballots in boxes ahead of election
MINNEAPOLIS Today is Election Day but more than 568,000 Minnesotans voted early.
The state crushed previous absentee voting records in the first presidential year that allows early voting. Minnesota required voters to provide an excuse to cast an absentee ballot until 2014.
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Data released by the secretary of state's office Monday shows that 568,196 absentee or mail-in ballots had been accepted. That's more than 15 percent of the state's registered voters. Just 183,000 absentee votes had been processed at the same point in 2012.
Both political parties have put a big emphasis on getting residents to vote early, intensifying their get-out-the-vote efforts. Absentee ballots can be accepted through Election Day.
Man shot in leg while deer hunting over weekend
DETROIT LAKES A Lake Park man suffered a leg wound when he was shot while hunting in Becker County.
The sheriff's office says 45-year old David Shaw was in one of two groups hunting on the same public land in Cormorant Township on Saturday. One of the hunters fired at a deer and the bullet struck Shaw in the leg.
He was flown to a hospital in Fargo, N.D., for treatment.
The shooting remains under investigation.
If you haven't done it already, it's time to vote.
It's impossible to imagine anyone has missed the frequent reminders about Election Day. Whether it's sniping in the presidential race or the influx of mailings and yard signs supporting local candidates, the weeks leading to today have been overflowing with reminders.
So, if you haven't filled out a ballot, it's time to do so assuming you are reading this before 8 p.m., the closing time for most polls.
Don't worry if you're a procrastinator who hasn't registered. Same-day registration is available as long as you can put your hands on proper identification and proof of your address, which can be an ID with your current name and address, such as a valid driver's license, or a photo ID and a document showing your name and current address, such as a U.S. Passport and a utility bill dated within 30 days of the election. Other options, as well as where to vote, are listed on the Minnesota Secretary of State website, www.sos.state.mn.us.
Basically, anyone who hasn't cast an absentee ballot in recent weeks or visited the polls today is running out of time and excuses.
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Granted, voting isn't an obligation. You can lead a normal life without weighing in on who our local, state and national leaders will be, but when you go to complain about your taxes, the lack of services or any other government-related concern, you'll be reminded that you decided to pass on your responsibility.
Voting is a responsibility, and it's a privilege too many people decide to skip.
Because of that, it's good to hear reports of increased absentee voting. With numbers up 65 percent from four years ago, it's obvious the lack of a required excuse has motivated people to vote early.
But those of us who waited until today must still do our part.
Two years ago, the state slid from the top spot for voter turnout to No. 6, when just a hair more than half the voters headed to the polls.
We can reclaim the top spot, but it's going to take effort. The unprecedented presidential race is spurring voters throughout the country to weigh in, even though many are simply voting for the candidate they find least offensive.
But, local races are just as important, if not moreso, as we decide who will represent us on local councils and boards, as well as the Minnesota Legislature.
Again, if you haven't already weighed in, please do so.
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If you have, kudos.
Dr. B Speaks!
It always seems impossible until it's done. That is the way Nelson Mandela put it. His quote motivates mission-driven people to accomplish d Read moreTeacher assistants help support teachers and students to learn
Political junkies will recall with a giggle the less than distinguished career of Cynthia McKinney, the six-term congressperson from Georgia who was an embarrassment even to far lefties who are usually immune to embarrassment. (In fact, when she returned to the House in 2005 after having been defeated for re-election in the Democratic primary in 2002, the Democratic House leadership refused to restore her committee seniority. She was defeated again in the Democratic primary in 2006.) Among other things, McKinney was a 9/11 truther, and also speculated that the CIA had a role in the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.
Well now shes Doctor Cynthia McKinney, Ph.D, having completed her Ph.D in leadership and change at Antioch University. Her dissertation is, naturally, on the greatness of Hugo Chavez. Really, Im not making this up. You can look it up! Heres the title and abstract:
El No Murio, El Se Multiplico! Hugo Chavez : The Leadership and the Legacy on Race Abstract Chavez, Chavez, Chavez: Chavez no murio, se multiplico! was the chant outside the National Assembly building after several days of mourning the death of the first President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This study investigates the leadership of Hugo Chavez and his legacy on race as seen through the eyes and experiences of selected interviewees and his legacy on race. The interviewees were selected based on familiarity with the person and policies of the leadership of Hugo Chavez and his legacy on race. Unfortunately, not much has been written about this aspect of Hugo Chavez despite the myriad attempts to explain his popularity with the Venezuelan people up to the time of his death. It is expected that, as a result of this research, a clearer picture of Hugo Chavez will emerge. The resulting profile of Hugo Chavez focuses on him as a person of power as well as of colorof African and Indigenous descentwho was able to free himself from a colonial mindset (and its oftentimes accompanying internalized racism) and thereby gain the attention of oppressed peoples across the planet who sided with him as he used his power to challenge neoliberalism, the U.S. government, and those who wield power on neoliberalisms behalf inside Venezuela. This research serves as important infrastructure for understanding Hugos race-conscious leadership in resistance to internalized racism and European domination. This dissertation is accompanied by an MP4 author introduction, a PDF Dissertation Supplement and 4 participant files : 1 MP3 audio and 3 MP4 videos. This Dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository & Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd .
Unlike many academic publications, you can download this one for free at the link above. And the sound and video files too. Just the thing when your LSD isnt working.
Yesterday, I took issue with Charles Krauthammers claim that Donald Trump, if elected president, would likely undermine our open and free international order. I argued that Trump thinks pretty conventionally about world affairs, and thus as president, though prone to the errors of conventional wisdom, would not be a threat to world order.
I also complained that Krauthammer did not consider whether Hillary Clinton poses a threat to our domestic order. In his pre-election column criticizing both candidates, he focused solely on Clintons character a target rich environment to be sure, but only part of the story.
Regarding Trump on foreign policy, Krauthammer wrote:
Two generations of Americans have grown up feeling that international stability is as natural as the air we breathe. Its not. It depends on continual, calibrated tending. . . . It took seven decades to build [an] open, free international order. It could be brought down in a single presidential term.
True. But our system of ordered liberty and constitutional governance, the product of 200 years of effort, also depends on continual tending. It too could be brought down by our next president.
The left has been trying to bring it down for decades, arguably since at least the days of Woodrow Wilson, who explicitly rejected our founding principles. President Obama was equally explicit in declaring his desire to fundamentally transform[] the United States of America. The transformation he and his fellow leftists have in mind is well summarized in this piece by John Fonte and this one by John Marini.
Fortunately, Obama has been constrained to some extent by a Republican House (and at times a Republican Senate), backed up by a Supreme Court in ideological equipoise. The Supreme Court has been crucial because without it, Obama could simply ignore Congress and routinely get away with it.
Obamas executive amnesty, which he originally thought he couldnt pull off because he is not a dictator, is a great example. When Congress refused to rewrite immigration law, Obama rewrote it via executive order. However, the Supreme Court, by a 4-4 vote, thwarted Obamas usurpation of power.
In a Hillary Clinton administration, the Supreme Court will cease to serve this function. Five (and probably more, eventually) left-wing activists in robes will rubber stamp her executive orders and other power grabs, as four of them tried to do in the executive amnesty case.
What should we expect from a Clinton administration unconstrained by the Supreme Court? Fonte gives us a pretty good idea:
Hillary Clinton will consolidate and expand Obamas fundamental transformation. America will see both an increase in power for the administrative state, which will breech the parchment barriers of the separation of powers and federalism, and the relentless advance of identity politics, which undermines our traditional civic morality centered on the concept of individual American citizenship. . . . Besides appointments to a sharply divided Supreme Court, the next president will appoint scores of lower court judges and U.S. attorneys, the Attorney General, and lawyers in the Justice Department and throughout the federal agencies. There is every reason to expect that the Clinton Legal Behemoth will push the legal envelope with a vengeance on: Obamacare; climate change; green energy; guns; coal; international law; housing [e.g., AFFH]; education; immigration; gender, racial, ethnic, and linguistic disparities; and, of course, expanding the administrative states scope and power to the detriment of the separation of powers and federalism. One could well imagine a legal Blitzkrieg against political critics like Dinesh DSouza, sheriffs who enforce immigration law like Joe Arpaio, climate skeptics, conservative activists, fossil-fuel industry executives, Christians, purveyors of alleged hate speech, and perceived enemies of social justice and ethnic/gender equity.
The last quoted paragraph is speculative, though hardly far-fetched. The first two paragraphs are, I think, beyond dispute.
In concluding that Trumps liabilities outweigh Clintons, it appears from his column that Krauthammer ignored Clintons domestic leftism and focused solely on her character. If so, hes not alone, and thats frightening.
After eight years of Obama, preceded by decades of liberal encroachments on liberty, its possible to view Hillary Clinton as conventional. We have been swimming in increasingly overheated waters long enough to miss the very real possibility that we are about to reach the boiling point.
A Hillary Clinton presidency might well take us there.
What about a Trump presidency? Is the obnoxious tycoon more committed to ordered liberty and the Constitution than Hillary Clinton?
In the abstract, quite possibly not. But Trump isnt out to transform America. Thus, the Constitution is much less of a barrier to his ambitions.
Trump is a fan of neither the administrative state nor identity politics the two main drivers of the assault on our freedom. This doesnt mean he wouldnt buck Congress or try to stifle dissent from time to time. But if he did, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans, backed up by a vigilant Supreme Court, could be expected to thwart him. Under Hillary, there would be no such coalition, no such Court, and very little thwarting.
This evening, Hillary Clinton is in Philadelphia, site of Americas founding, claiming that Donald Trump is a threat to our very Republic. In reality, our form of government will be in greater jeopardy under a President Hillary Clinton than under a President Donald Trump.
Im out of words when it comes to this election. So Ill take the liberty of re-posting something I wrote last month. Along with this post from last night, it captures my view of the person were likely to elect president today and, in the final paragraph, my view of how we should respond to her election:
Stronger together is Hillary Clintons campaign slogan. Like most of what comes out of Hillarys mouth, it is insincere. Clinton has written off approximately 20 percent of the American public as deplorable and irredeemable. Her top aides express contempt for traditional Catholics, evangelicals, and Jews who support Israel.
But lets look beyond the inevitable Clinton insincerity and ask whether, under a Hillary presidency, America would be stronger together.
We must first ask what makes America strong. I believe there are four main elements.
First, America must have a strong military. Second, America must have a shared belief that it is great, and not just because it is good. Third, America must hold its citizens to high standards of personal conduct. Fourth, America must be a meritocracy and must judge merit without regard to extraneous factors such as race, ethnicity, and gender.
Would an America unified behind Hillary Clintons left-liberal leadership and vision satisfy these requirement? I dont think so.
First, Americas military is in steep decline under President Obama. Marco Rubio laid out some of the sorry details here. In all likelihood, this decline would continue under Hillary Clinton.
Second, Hillary Clintons stated position on American greatness is that America is great because it is good. Coming from Hillary, this tired phrase is code for the claim that American greatness depends on policies such as open borders and liberal largess.
The real left-liberal view of American greatness is even more disturbing. It holds that America is anything but great. Political leaders like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have manifested this view by running around the world apologizing for American foreign policy.
Meanwhile, under the guidance of left-liberal intellectuals, the rejection of American greatness has become the organizing principle behind a new way of teaching of American history to top high schools students.
Can America be great if it teaches students that it isnt even good?
Third, Hillary Clinton and her fellow left-liberals want to hold Americans to lower standards of personal conduct than those currently embodied in the criminal law. They want to release criminals, set lower sentences, and decriminalize certain conduct. They also want to impose substantially less discipline on disruptive students.
Their main argument in favor of these measures is that certain segments of the population bear a disproportionate burden as a result of current standards. Thus, they want standards lowered because some groups have difficulty adhering to them. Such laxity wont make America stronger; it will weaken us.
Finally, Hillary Clinton and her fellow left-liberals oppose a meritocracy in which merit is judged without regard to factors like race, ethnicity, and gender. Instead, they favor a spoils system in which a share of rewards e.g., admission to college and accession to jobs is set aside for African-Americans, Latinos, and (where necessary) females. This system produces a lowering of quality and a sense of entitlement antithetical to a strong America.
For these reasons, America wont be stronger together under Hillary Clintons leadership. Rather, it will be stronger if those who oppose the left-liberal policies and viewpoints described above maintain a status apart. That way, we can uphold a vision of what a strong America truly is like and, as Hillarys America begins to unravel, perhaps persuade a critical mass of Americans of the soundness of our vision.
In her closing speeches Hillary Clinton has presented herself of unsurpassed vacuity. Speaking in Raleigh early this morning, she proclaimed: We have to bridge the divides in this country. I want to be president for all of America. I want to be president for everyone.
Clinton also said she wants to lead an America where we build bridges not walls[.] At least that is not vacuous. Message: illegal immigrants welcome here. They will remain a core constituency of the Democratic Party.
As she has for a while, Clinton presented herself as an apostle of love. She seeks an America where we prove conclusively that, yes, love trumps hate.
In Raleigh Clinton shared the stage with Lady Gaga. Gaga got in the spirit. She explained: We cant elect somebody that doesnt care for the people. We can only elect somebody who does. I think Gagas support of Clinton in North Carolina has something to do with bathrooms. Like Clinton herself, Gaga can gag you with the deep stuff.
In Philadelphia Hillary met up with Bill and Chelsea where she needed a little help from her friends to draw a crowd of 33,000 outside of Independence Hall. The talent included President and Mrs. Obama, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. Clinton presented herself as the candidate of unity in an election that is a choice between division and unity. Hillary is the candidate behind whom the Democrat/Media Axis can unite. She has proved that much already.
The Court of Appeal, Lagos, on Tuesday reserved judgement in an appeal by former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank, Erastus Akingbola, challenging revocation of the banks license by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.
Mr. Akingbola is asking the appellate court to set aside the earlier ruling of a Federal High Court, which dismissed his suit, challenging the planned sale of Intercontinental Bank to Access Bank.
He wants the appellate court to restrain CBN from withdrawing InterContinentals inter-bank guaranty, pending the determination of the appeal.
Justice Okechuwku Okeke of the lower court had dismissed a suit by Mr. Akingbola and a former executive director of Intercontinental Bank, Bayo Dada.
The suit was challenging a Memorandum of Understanding for business combination signed by their former bank and Access Bank.
Dissatisfied, Messrs. Akingbola and Dada appealed and insisted that CBN was wrong to have masterminded the signing of the said MoU without recourse to them as shareholders and former directors.
Arguing the appeal on Tuesday, counsel to Mr. Akingbola, Onyebuchi Aniakor, urged the appellate court to allow the appeal and set aside the judgement of the lower court.
The appellants in their amended Notice of Appeal contended that the lower court erred in law when it adjudged the suit as an abuse of court process.
The appellants insisted that Justice Okeke made fundamental error in concluding that the letter in which Mr. Dada was removed as director, was not tendered, adding that the action occasioned substantial prejudice to them.
He urged the court to hold that given the provision of section 36 of the 1999 constitution, the governor of Central Bank of Nigeria or any other body cannot validly direct the appellants to cease to serve as directors of the bank.
The appellants urged the court to order the respondents jointly and severally to render account of their dealings in the affairs of the Bank.
They also urged the court to nullify all steps, decisions taken by the respondents in the affairs of the bank from August 14, 2009 till date.
After listening to parties in the matter, the 3-member panel, led by Justice Mohammed Lawal Garuba, reserved its judgement.
The lower court had held that the suit was an abuse of court process, as there was a similar suit by other interested parties on the same subject matter.
The lower court also held that the suit was status barred, as the suit was challenging an action carried out as far back as August 14, 2009, when Mr. Sanusi removed some bank chiefs.
Meanwhile, the appellate court has reserved judgment till a date that will be communicated to parties.
(NAN)
The African Union announced a new initiative to stabilise Libya on Tuesday, calling on all the countrys stakeholders to join in a frank and direct dialogue.
The meeting will be held as soon as possible, Chadian President and AU chairman, Idriss Deby, said at a summit of seven AU leaders in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
The situation in Libya is very complicated as there is a lack of homogeneity between the two camps, with each one having a multitude of political and military actors.
Africa today is affected by the disastrous consequences of the Libyan crisis, Mr. Deby said.
Libya has suffered from political and security chaos, including a division between Islamist-leaning factions and centrists, since longtime dictator Moamer Gaddafi was overthrown and slain in a 2011 uprising.
About 2.4 million Libyans are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, including 350,000 internally displaced people, according to the AU.
(dpa/NAN)
As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made their final campaign stop at about 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday, polls and pundits across the U.S. are calling the presidential election for Mrs. Clinton albeit with a slim margin of between two and five points.
With more than 376 polls from 43 polling agencies out there, many print and broadcast media organizations, including the BBC, choose to conduct their own or subscribe to poll of polls, that is, an average of select national polls.
BBCs latest poll of polls, published about three hours after the candidates final campaign event, gives Mrs. Clinton 48 per cent chance of winning the election, Mr. Trumps chance stands at 44 per cent. It analyzed more than 150 individual polls.
Real Clear Politics poll of polls shows Mrs. Clinton up by 2.5 points; she has 46.8 per cent chance of winning, compared to Mr. Trumps 44.3 per cent. Even the ultra-conservative Fox News puts Mrs. Clinton chance of winning the election at 48 per cent and Donald Trumps at 44 per cent.
Other national polls published yesterday (Monday) include:
CBS News poll: Hillary Clinton holding a 4-point lead over Republican Donald Trump with 45 per cent to his 41 per cent.
Washington Post/ABC poll: Mrs. Clinton has a 4 per cent lead with 47 per cent to Mr. Trumps 43 per cent.
Bloomberg Politics-Selzer & Co national poll: Mrs. Clinton leads by 3 points with 44 per cent to Mr. Trumps 41 per cent.
The most respected poll of polls, Nate Silvers FiveThirtyEight.com puts Mrs. Clintons chances of winning at about 67 per cent and Mr. Trump at 33 per cent. It predicts that Mrs. Clinton will get 295 electoral college votes and Mr. Trump will get 243.
The U.S. presidential election is decided by the Electoral College system which is made up of 538 electoral votes. The winning candidate must secure at least 270 electoral votes.
Electoral votes are shared between the states according to the number of representatives and senators each state sends to Congress. The biggest states, California, New York, Texas and Pennsylvania have the highest number of delegates, 55, 31, 34 and 21 respectively. They have the most impact on the result of the presidential election. All but Texas traditionally vote Democrat.
Early voting started about two weeks ago in some states. November 8, is the last day to cast votes anywhere in the United States.
Pundits who are calling this years election for Mrs. Clinton base their conclusion on the Democratic candidates gains during early voting in states like Florida and Nevada that usually vote Republican. About 6.4 million people voted early in Florida with sharp increase in the number of Hispanic and African Americans voters, two segments of the population that have been at the receiving end of Donald Trumps tirade on immigration and inner city violence.
Earlier polls in Florida also showed Mrs. Clinton in the lead; unconfirmed reports show that many Florida Republicans voted for her in the early vote.
A U.S. military lab has recruited 75 healthy adults to commence the first of five early stage clinical trials, to test the safety and ability of an investigational Zika purified inactivated vaccine.
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, WRAIR, Clinical Trial Centre in Maryland, disclosed this in Maryland on Tuesday.
It said that given the concerns for immune enhancement with other similar flaviviruses, like yellow fever and Japanese encephalitis, the vaccine would be tested in some volunteers who would first be vaccinated against one of these other flaviviruses.
The WRAIR said the study was expected to be completed by end of 2018.
It said the vaccine in the trial contains whole Zika virus particles that have been inactivated, meaning that the virus cannot replicate and cause disease in humans.
The WRAIR, however, said the protein shell of the inactivated virus remains intact so it can be recognised by the immune system and evoke an immune response.
It noted that an earlier preclinical study found that rhesus monkeys that were vaccinated with the vaccine developed a strong immune response and were protected against two strains of Zika virus.
The WRAIR disclosed that the investigational Zika vaccine would also be included as a part of a U.S. National Institutes of Health trial that began in August.
The NIH study will test it as a boost vaccination to its DNA Zika vaccine, which entered phase one clinical trials in August.
That vaccine uses a small, circular piece of DNA, called plasmid; it is injected into the arm muscle to induce an immune response, it said.
The WRAIR disclosed further that three other phase one trials to evaluate the new Zika vaccine are scheduled to launch later this year.
(Xinhua/NAN)
The Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday announced that its first ever attack on Syria from an aircraft carrier is to take place imminently.
Fighter jets from the Admiral Kuznetsov and heavily armed escort ships are to bomb anti-Syrian government positions in the beleaguered city of Aleppo in the coming hours.
The attacks are to hit the long-range approaches to the city, a Defence Ministry spokesman said.
Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stresses, however, that there would be no airstrikes directly on the embattled eastern parts of the city.
A monitoring group said that an airstrike on rebel-held areas in Syrias north-western province of Idlib killed at least 20 people on Tuesday, among them children.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes hit Khan Sheikhoun and Barabo in south and south-western Idlib.
Among the people who are killed are 11 in Barabo and nine, among them seven children and two pregnant women, were killed in Khan Sheikhoun, the monitoring group said.
Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the observatory, said the strike hit a street where children were playing. Three of the dead children were from one family, he added.
Abdel Rahman was unable to determine whether the planes were Syrian regime jets or Russian.
Russia began its air campaign in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September 2015.
The observatory said elsewhere, regime troops managed to score strategic advances against positions manned by rebels in South-West Aleppo city.
It said that government forces and their allies had seized full control of the so-called 1070 Apartment Project and Minian.
The government troops are trying to regain posts they lost to rebels when the opposition rebels launched their wide-scale attack on regime-held areas on October 28, Abdel Rahman said.
An alliance of opposition fighters, including Islamist militants, started a major offensive on October 28 to break the government siege that has been in place on eastern Aleppo since July.
An estimated 300,000 people are trapped in the eastern part of Aleppo, where residents report declining or damaged supplies of basic goods, including food, water, electricity and medicine.
Russia and its allies in the Syrian army had on Friday, imposed a 10-hour humanitarian ceasefire to allow civilians and rebel fighters to leave eastern Aleppo.
However, none of them agreed to leave through the corridors manned by Syrian troops and their allies.
(dpa/NAN)
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump joined voters across the U.S. on Tuesday in casting ballots for president in an election that brings a long and bitter campaign to a close.
Mrs. Clinton started her day by casting her vote in Chappaqua, New York, where she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have lived since he left office in 2001.
I know the responsibility that goes with this, she said, as she greeted people at the polling station.
So many people are counting on the outcome of this election and what it means for our country, and Ill do the best I can if Im fortunate enough to win today.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has also cast his ballot in New York City at the polling station nearest his home in Trump Tower.
The candidate arrived with his wife Melania, who also cast a ballot.
Everythings very good, he said when asked what he had heard about early returns.
People shouted loser and booed the candidate from behind a barrier set up by police on the street.
Some also shouted, Go, Donald and gave him a thumbs up.
At a polling station in Williamsburg, a neighbourhood in New York Citys Brooklyn borough, Jasmin Stein said she felt somewhat tired of the divisive campaign.
However, she said she was glad that the election cast a spotlight on underlying anxieties among Americans.
A lot of things have been coming to the light that I think the country feels and I kind of would rather have it out in the open than it just be in peoples homes, Ms. Stein, 29 said.
Another voter, Matt Sutton, who works in public relations, said he didnt want to take any chances to let Trump get elected.
Its amazing that I voted for the first woman president.
I didnt know if I would even see that in my lifetime, 29-year-old Mr. Sutton said.
He said he was planning to go to Times Square in the evening to await the results.
Jessica Quinn, 37, who brought her 8-month-old daughter, Emma, to the polls, said she got so anxious about the elections.
She said that she volunteered to work for the Clinton campaign on Monday, making about 30 phone calls.
I needed to do something productive with all of my anxiety about what was happening with the election, Ms. Quinn said.
Both campaigns kept up the pressure until the end.
Mrs. Clintons campaign ticked down the minutes until the start of the polls with calls to vote and to build bridges, not walls, a dig at Trumps promise to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants.
Trump highlighted his final round of campaign stops, saying on Twitter: Today we are going to win the great state of MICHIGAN and we are going to WIN back the White House!
Clinton is favoured to win based on nearly all surveys of likely voters.
However, the race marked by ugly rhetoric and personal attacks has been surprisingly close, especially since many Americans considered Trumps campaign little more than a novelty when it began in 2015.
Since then, he has built a strong campaign around people who feel they have been left behind by the political system.
Voters are also electing members of the lower chamber House of Representatives and one-third of the U.S. Senate.
Voting continues until polling stations close in Hawaii, the state furthest to the west.
Polls will begin closing at 6 p.m. in the Eastern Time zone, and early results are expected shortly after that.
The winner will become the 45th U.S. president on inauguration day, January 20, and will succeed Barack Obama, the nations first African-American president.
(dpa/NAN)
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has said that Zika Virus is spreading in Nigeria as a result of environmental conditions and other related issues.
The centre stated this in a report released to the media on Monday.
The current epidemiology of Zika in Nigeria has not been well-documented or understood due to paucity of recent data, the report stated.
The virus shares a similar vector; the Aedes (Steogmyia) mosquitoes, also responsible for other flavivirus infections recorded in Nigeria such as such as yellow fever.
Consequently, environmental and human behavioural risk factors in areas with reported Zika outbreaks are similar to those found in Nigeria and would thus favour the circulation of Zika.
Possible cross-reaction with other endemic flaviviruses like yellow fever and dengue; genetic host factors protecting against infection or disease; low vector competence and transmission efficiency; lack of diagnostic testing; and the absence of systematic surveillance are potential limitations to detect on-going transmission of Zika in Nigeria, the report added.
In the light of above, NCDC plans to initiate surveillance to understand and monitor the epidemiology of Zika virus in Nigeria for the appropriate interventions.
The report also recommended that travellers should be informed of preventive measures before, during and after travelling to areas with Zika transmission.
Intending travellers should also be provided up-to date information of areas with ongoing Zika virus, it concluded.
The United States government has expressed disappointment at the way Nigerian authorities are handling programmes to eliminate malaria in Nigeria.
The American governments stance was made known at the launch of the Nigeria Malaria Indicator Survey report in Abuja on Monday.
The Country Director of United State Agency for International Development, USAID, Michael Harvey, said the implementation of the National Malaria Elimination Programme, NMEP, in Nigeria was riddled with several shortcomings.
Mr. Harvey said millions of dollars spent so far on the programme have not reflected in performance and delivery, making the project a long one to cover.
He said the Nigeria Malaria Indicator Survey report was aimed at measuring progress on Malaria elimination implementation efforts, with the objective of ensuring that by 2020, no child or adult dies from malaria related ailment.
He said: We are not treating Malaria proper. I am surprised to find out that, when you travel around Nigeria, Chloroquine is readily available and too readily prescribed as a treatment for malaria.
Worst, this is actually a major public policy that we have to get on top of. We are still producing Chloroquine in Nigeria, a drug that has no beneficial use either for malaria or any other use. We must get on top of these shortcomings.
We have a long way to go. So please support your health workers, support your communities, health volunteers, get them the tools they need, lets get on top of it.
We have seen across Africa tremendous decline in Malaria across the continent. We are behind, but Malaria is eliminable and that is one of the most urgent messages. We have a lot of work to do and lets do it he concluded.
The Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, said no other disease has affected Nigeria like Malaria, given that Malaria is responsible for 11 per cent of maternal mortality, responsible for 25 per cent of infant mortality and 35 per cent of under-five mortality.
Mr. Adewole said Malaria is the single most important reason why Nigerians visit health facilities.
60-70 per cent consultation and hospitals visits are due to malaria, and therefore this is one major problem we must face. And when we invest in this war, the savings would be huge.
Nigeria loses about N132 billion to malaria, and these are savings that could be ploughed back into our economy if appropriately used, as malaria remains a major public health challenge, the minister said.
Amaete Ntuk, a former chairman of Ikot Abasi Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, has been set free by his abductors, after two days in their captivity.
Mr. Ntuk, a businessman, was abducted on Saturday, alongside his wife, while they were on their way back from the Akwa Ibom International Airport, Uyo.
They had just returned to the state from Abuja when the incident happened.
Mr. Ntuks wife was also set free.
A source close to Mr. Ntuks family in Ikot Abasi told PREMIUM TIMES, Tuesday morning, that the politician was released in the early hours of Tuesday, and that he was currently being treated in a private hospital in Ikot Abasi for shocks and the wounds he sustained from machete cuts.
Mr. Ntuks abductors had demanded for ransom before his release. It is unclear if the family paid the ransom.
Local residents, who thronged the hospital when the news of Mr. Ntuks release broke out, were not allowed access to the facility, PREMIUM TIMES gathered.
One Nigerian soldier was on Monday night confirmed dead after a Boko Haram attack.
Thirteen of the insurgents were also killed after the attackers were repelled, the army said.
Three other soldiers were injured in the attack on ground troops at Kangarwa Village in northern Borno State. The attack was repelled by a combination of Nigeria Air Force aircraft and Nigerian Army officials.
Mondays attack came at about the time the Nigeria military was burying five soldiers including Abu Ali, a lieutenant colonel who had been commended by the army hierarchy for his role in the war. The five soldiers also died in a Boko Haram ambush.
The Monday incident was confirmed in two separate statements issued by the spokespersons of the Nigeria Army and the Air Force, Sani Usman and Ayodele Famuyiwa respectively.
In the statement by Mr. Famuyiwa, a group captain, he said the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) fighter aircraft yesterday repelled attack by the Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) on own ground troops at Kangarwa in northern Borno State.
Following the report of the attack, 3 x fighter jets and a reconnaissance aircraft were immediately deployed for the operation.
While the fighter aircraft were scrambled to repel the attack, the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft was deployed to give guidance to ground troops on the position equipment and strength of the BHTs.
Mr. Famuyiwa added that the operation which started at about 1700 hours (5pm) continued till late evening at about 1915 hours (7:15pm) before the attack was successfully repelled.
The Air Force spokesperson also provided a Youtube Link https://youtu.be/3KcD8jvMc60 of the face off in Kangarwa.
In his statement, Mr. Usman said the Boko Haram attack was on troops of 119 Task Force Battalion, 8 Division of the Nigerian Army.
He said the troops were able to neutralize 13 of the attacking Boko Haram terrorists.
Unfortunately, Mr. Usman said, one soldier paid the supreme price during the encounter, while 3 soldiers were wounded in action.
He said the troops had to call for air support as the attack dragged on.
The offensive which began at about 4.00pm and lasted for roughly four hours, necessitated the troops calling for air support to which the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) promptly responded by dispatching an Intelligence Surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft and a Ground Attack Fighter Aircraft in support of the ground offensive., he said.
The army spokesperson said the fierce encounter also saw some insurgents fleeing with gunshot wounds while abandoning their weapons and some personal effects.
The troops also neutralized 2 Hilux vehicles belonging to the insurgents and recovered the following: a Hilux vehicle, 1 Browning Machine Gun (BMG), 1 Anti Aircraft Gun (AAG), 2 General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMG), 1 Light Machine Gun (LMG), 2 Rocket Propelled Guns Seven (RPG 7) tubes and bombs, 5 AK-47 Rifles and 550 Rounds of Anti-Aircraft Gun ammunition, he said.
At least two soldiers are feared dead after a bomb explosion along Banki Usmanari Kumshe road in Borno State.
About eight soldiers of the 152 TF Battalion of the Nigerian Army were also injured in the explosion which occurred at about 8:10 a.m., PREMIUM TIMES learnt.
One canter truck was destroyed in the explosion while the Injured persons are currently receiving first aid treatment before they are evacuated by air to the hospital.
Tuesdays explosion occurs a day after one soldier was killed when Boko Haram attackedNigerian troops in Kangarwa Village. The Army said 13 insurgents were also killed in the attack while three other soldiers were injured.
The Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal on Tuesday reserved judgement in the ongoing Ondo governorship crisis till Thursday.
A panel of three judges led by Ibrahim Salauwa disclosed this after taking final arguments by counsel on the matter.
The panel, a newly constituted group set up by the Appeal Court President, Zainab Bulkachuwa, had adjourned hearing on the matter on Monday after sitting for about 10 hours.
A previous panel had resigned based on allegations of bias by a party in the suit.
On Tuesday, the court decided that judgements on the appeals before it would be given on Thursday, after listening to the various counsel.
Eyitayo Jegede, a governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had approached the appeal court to demand that it nullifies previous decisions of a Federal High Court.
Mr. Jegede is of the Ahmed Makarfi faction of the PDP. He wants the appeal court to declare him the authentic candidate of the party for the November 26 governorship poll in the state.
The Federal High Court had on October 14 given an order recognizing businessman, Jimoh Ibrahim, as the rightful candidate of the PDP.
Mr. Ibrahim is of the Ali Sheriff faction of the PDP, the ruling party in Ondo State. The outgoing governor, Olusegun Mimiko, is a staunch supporter of Mr. Jegede and has condemned the electoral commission, INEC, for recognising Mr. Ibrahim as the PDP candidate.
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the forthcoming governorship election in Ondo State will determine how prepared Nigeria is for the 2019 general elections.
Mr. Buhari said same was applicable to the forthcoming national and state assembly rerun elections in Rivers State.
Mr. Buhari, who was speaking on Monday in Edo State during a state dinner to mark his visit to the state, directed security agencies to do their utmost in ensuring violence-free elections in both states.
What happened in (the last elections) Kogi, Bayelsa and Rivers state disturbs me a lot, a statement released by presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, quoted the president as saying.
I think we should go beyond these actions. Why do we kill each other? Putting tyres on people and setting them ablaze.
I have told the law enforcement agencies, if we cant conduct an election in one state then we should forget about 2019, the president said.
Mr. Buhari was said to have acknowledged the role the outgoing governor of Edo, Adams Oshiomhole, in ensuring that the All Progressives Congress (APC) won the recent governorship election in the state.
The president challenged the governor-elect, Godwin Obaseki, to continue in Mr. Oshiomholes footsteps of providing purposeful leadership in terms of quality infrastructure, education and social services.
The publicity your predecessor has given his performance is going to stretch you to the limit, the president told the governor-elect.
Considering what he has done, you have to continue in his footsteps. We wish you the best of luck and will do our best to support you.
On the current economic challenges in the country, the president assured Nigerians that his administration was working hard on diversification of the economy to limit the countrys over-dependence on oil over the years.
This country has incredible mineral resources. All we need is to believe in ourselves so that we can have and leave a better Nigeria for our children and grandchildren, he said.
The Police in Zamfara said several people were killed by gunmen suspected to be cattle rustlers at a mining site in Gidan Ardo Village of Bindin district of Maru Local Government Area.
The Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, in the state, Shehu Muhammad, disclosed this to journalists in Gusau on Tuesday.
Mr. Muhammad, however, said the command had yet to ascertain the actual number of those killed during the mayhem; although residents said over 40 people were killed.
He said investigation into the killing had just begun.
He said the anti-terrorism squad of the command had already been deployed to the area to join the Army in trailing the gunmen, and assured that they would soon be arrested.
Witnesses in the area said the gunmen numbering over 70 rode into the mining site at around 3 p.m. on Monday and shot anyone on sight, killing over 40 persons and injuring several others.
The gunmen were said to have carted away most of the mineral finds and also killed some of those that were in the mining pit.
The Chairman of Maru Local Government, Salisu Dangulbi, confirmed the killings but said that staff of the local council were still assisting security agents in their investigation.
The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that the armed bandits have resumed their activities in full swing after the state had started enjoying peace following the launching of a military offensive tagged: Operation Harbin Kunama by President Muhammadu Buhari in July.
The bandits now kidnap people in various parts of the state, the latest incident being the kidnap of the Vice-Chairman of Anka Local Government Area who has been released, and that of the village head of Doka, who is still their custody.
Similarly, the bandits recently killed six members of the outlawed volunteer security outfit, Yan Sa Kai in a confrontation on the outskirts of Anka town.
On Sunday, the hoodlums also killed 10 traders from Kanoma town who were on their way to the Talata-Mafara market.
(NAN)
State governors, under the aegis of the Nigerian Governors Forum, on Tuesday called for the immediate disbursement of ecological fund to their respective states.
The Chairman of the Forum, Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara, made the call on behalf of his colleagues in Abuja.
Mr. Yari had earlier led a delegation of the governors to a closed-door meet with the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun and Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele.
Mr. Yari said the governors decided to meet the minister to request the disbursement of the ecological fund to states.
The state governors, who accompanied Mr. Yari to the closed door meeting, were Governors of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha; Kaduna, Nasir El-Rufai; Osun, Rauf Aregbesola; Sokoto, Aminu Tambuwal; Delta, Ifeanyi Okowa; and Katsina, Aminu Masari.
The closed door meeting, which was held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Finance, began at about 2:37 p.m. and ended at about 3:30 p.m.
The ecological fund, which originally received one per cent of the federation account, was reviewed upwards to two per cent in 1992.
Mr. Yari said most of the states face environmental challenges and as such could not continue to wait when there is a fund that could be used to address the problem.
We are concerned seriously about the environment. The desertification in the North, oil and gas spills in the South-South and erosion in the South-East.
And we have a lot of funds in the ecological stabilisation funds. Those funds are not being discussed at National Economic Council.
What we discuss at NEC is usually briefing on excess crude account and the federation account. But this fund is not being discussed at that platform.
We will like to have this fund available every month because those funds are federation funds and we are having so many problems. We need the money, he said.
Yari said the state governments would also want access to foreign intervention in relations to the environment.
When asked if the states also requested for fresh bailout from the federal government, Mr. Yari said there were no such requests.
He said the states are only asking for the disbursement of the ecological fund to address the high level of environmental degradation in their respective states.
From its inception, ecological fund had been on a first line charge which provides handy resources for amelioration of ecological problems.
The problems include soil erosion, flood, drought, desertification, oil spillage, pollution and general environmental degradation.
The enabling statutes have over the years placed the fund under the control of the Federal Government to be disbursed and managed in accordance with such directives as may be issued from time to time by the presidency.
Between 2007 and 2015, the ecological fund got an average of N48 billion yearly. A total of N432.5 billion accrued to the fund during the nine years.
(NAN)
A senior lawyer who has worked for the anti-graft commission, EFCC, in the past has been questioned for allegedly giving a judge N5 million.
Godwin Obla, a former EFCC prosecutor, arrived the commissions Lagos office on Tuesday afternoon, a source said.
Mr. Obla is being queried in relation to an allegation of the payment of N5 million to a Federal High Court judge, Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia, through a company in which the embattled judge has an interest.
The High Court judge had earlier told operatives during interrogation that the money was a part payment for a property she sold to the lawyer in Abuja for N40 million sometime in 2015.
But Mr. Oblas statement to investigators on Tuesday contradicted the judges position.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria told investigators that the money was meant for buying of building materials (iron rods) for a building he was putting up in Abuja and not for buying of any property, a source at the commission said.
Mr. Obla explained that in one of his trips to Lagos, he ran into the judge who had been a contemporary in university days and talk led to her acquainting him with where he can get very good building materials in Lagos.
He said the judge gave him the name of someone who plies the trade. She provided the companys name and the account number for the transaction. Obla said he paid the money and goods were supplied. When asked the name of the trader, receipt of transaction and delivery evidence of the goods, the learned silk said he could not remember the name of the trader or his location, neither was there any receipt or delivery note for the transaction, the source said.
However, the account number the N5 million was paid into by the senior lawyer had been confirmed to be a company belonging to the female judge and her children. The registered company, not known to be engaged in building materials or any viable business, is suspected to have been set up for the purpose of warehousing proceeds of gratification.
The same company has been fingered in other illegal transactions including suspicious payments of sorts by some other persons.
Mr. Obla was still at the commissions Lagos office on Tuesday evening and could be detained till Wednesday as he answers more questions from interrogators.
Mr. Oblas interrogation is part of a larger crackdown on corruption in the judiciary by Nigerias anti-graft and security agencies.
Another senior lawyer, Muiz Banire, who was a legal adviser to Nigerias ruling All Progressives Congress stepped down from his position after he admitted to investigators that he also gave money to a judge. He, however, denied any wrongdoing, saying the judge was a long term friend.
Tuesdays interrogation also occurs less than a week after seven judges, including two from the Supreme Court, were suspended pending the conclusion of investigation of corruption cases against them.
The wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, has commiserated with the families of late Lt.-Col. Mohammad Abu-Ali and six others who died in the battle field.
Mrs Buhari offered her condolences to the families during the burial of the soldiers on Monday at the Military Cemetery in Abuja.
The wife of the President, who was among top dignitaries that attended the burial, also interacted with the families of the slain soldiers.
She said the soldiers died as heroes and would remain in her mind and the minds of Nigerians.
Mrs Buhari commended the efforts of Lt.-Col. Abu-Ali and his colleagues for the successful return of some of the Chibok girls and other persons held in captivity by the insurgents.
She prayed for the repose of the slain soldiers souls, saying that late Lt.-Col. Abu-Ali and his colleagues paid the supreme price.
The wife of the President, who was accompanied by the wife of the Senate President, Toyin Saraki, said the soldiers laid their lives for peace and security in the North East.
Also in her entourage were the wives of Borno, Kebbi and Kogi State governors, Nana Shettima, Zainab Bagudu and Rashidat Bello respectively, as well as wives of some ministers.
The families of the slain soldiers were later presented with the National Gorail for fallen heroes by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The presentation was performed by the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, who represented the President at the burial ceremony.
The slain soldiers are Late Lt. Col. Mohammad Abu-Ali, Patrick Paul (SM), Salihu Lawal (PRT), Hussaini Jafaru (SGT), Muazu Ibrahim (SGT), Bassey Okon (SGT) and Chukwu Simon (CPL).
(NAN)
Tuesdays historic U.S. elections will open at 6 a.m. (noon Nigerian time) and end at 7 p.m. (1 a.m. Wednesday Nigerian time), the Department of Elections, State of Virginia, said.
The Commissioner, Edgardo Cortes, told the correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in the U.S. that the elections include the presidential and congressional, while other states also have local elections.
No fewer than 20 states are also expected to elect governorship candidates in Tuesdays polls seen by many as the most unusual and most unpredictable in recent history.
NAN, however, reports that voters in a New Hampshire hamlet, Dixville Notch kicked off voting and residents of the hamlet cast their votes at midnight.
Out of the six votes cast, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump four votes to two, while Libertarian Gary Johnson received one vote, and Mitt Romney received a surprise write-in ballot, according to USA Today.
A New Hampshire law allows communities with fewer than 100 voters to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots.
Cortes said the results of all the elections would be online for anyone to see and use before the end of Tuesday.
We open the results online and anyone can see and use it. There is no press conference or any official to announce the result and declare any candidate the winner.
We update our website once every 10 minutes and you can go online to get it, he said.
The elections commissioner explained that elections results were expected to be posted online as soon as they were transmitted from the election districts.
Cortes, however, said that all results that would be posted online would remain provisional until the electoral board in each of the 50 states meets on Nov. 19, 2016 to certify the results.
According to him, the provisional results are usually not significantly different from the certified results.
In the unlikely event that a candidate alleged rigging, the commissioner said that a candidate does not head to the tribunal but petitions the State Congress.
Cortes, however, said that allegations of rigging had never happened in the history that he remembered.
Case of rigging has never happened and it does not come up in our electoral system because it has been tested and it is a professional-run process and we dont run into those issues.
He said electoral officials, who are members of Republican and Democratic parties appointed by judges at the local level and by the state governor at the state level, cross-checked the figures.
According to him, cross-checking the ballots and the tally with the figures usually take one week to ensure that any mistake is corrected.
Cortes also ruled out fears of hacking of the system, saying that it is not internet-transmitted and could not be hacked into.
NAN reports that about 200 million Americans are expected to vote in a heated election that has two leading presidential candidates, Democratic Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
The U.S. president is elected by Electoral College made up of 538 electors as against popular vote and to be elected president, a candidate must win 50 per cent plus one (51 per cent) electoral vote.
Each of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, has a certain amount of Electoral College votes to award a candidate, based on the number of members of Congress it has.
(NAN)
A policeman (name withheld) with the Bayelsa Police Command has shot dead his colleague (name also withheld) over N20, 000 largesse.
The incident occurred early Tuesday morning following an argument between the officers on the sharing formula.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the duo went on an operation where they were rewarded with N20, 000.
The deceased was reportedly of the opinion that they should give their Divisional Police Officer, DPO, part of the money, while the other objected.
While the argument ensued, the enraged police officer allegedly brought out his gun and shot his colleague.
The deceased, a native of Ondewari community in Southern Ijaw Local Government area of Bayelsa is survived by two wives and children.
His remains have been deposited at the morgue of Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa.
Sympathisers were seen trooping to the deceased residence at Swali to pay condolences to his family.
Some of them, who spoke, described him as a jolly good fellow.
When contacted, the spokesman for the command, Asinim Butswat, said he was yet to be briefed on the incident.
(NAN)
Restoration of peace and total defeat of Boko Haram is the way to honour Nigerias foreign heroes, the Senate said on Tuesday.
The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who chaired the Senate plenary on Tuesday, made the remark following a motion on the demise of Abu Ali, a Nigerian Army commander in the north-east.
Late Mr. Ali, a lieutenant colonel, was one of the troops killed by Boko Haram when the insurgents attacked the 119 Battalion located at Mallam Fatori, Borno North last week.
In the ambush, five soldiers were killed while others sustained injuries; but the insurgents were repelled and 14 of them killed, Army spokesperson, Sani Usman said on Saturday.
Alfa Isaac, the PDP lawmaker who represents late Mr. Alis Kogi East senatorial district, raised the motion on the demise of the fallen heroes.
After speaking on the bravery and commitment of Mr. Ali, the Senate observed a minute silence in honour of the departed soldiers.
The Senate also resolved to convey deep condolence to the families of the deceased soldiers.
The death of Mr. Ali, a prince, has been widely mourned by Nigerians.
He was the commander of the 272 Battalion.
For his exceptional bravery and gallantry, he was recently given accelerated promotion from the rank of Major to Lieutenant Colonel; and was decorated by the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, at Gamboru Ngala on September 15, 2015 during an operational visit.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday declared that multiparty system remains the best option for Nigerias democracy considering the diverse population of the country.
Speaking at the commissioning of the Edo State University, Iyamho, in Etsako West Local Government Area of Edo State, President Buhari urged Nigerians to appreciate the strength in the countrys diverse ethnic and social groups.
We believe in multi-party democracy system it is the best for us. In a country of over 450 ethnic groups, it is not easy to come together, only God can do it.
We are doing our best because we have found ourselves as part of this great country called Nigeria, the president said.
President Buhari, who concluded a two-day state visit to Edo, encouraged Nigerians to view the current economic challenges in the country as an opportunity to set the economy firmly on the path of true diversification and sustainable economic growth.
We are blessed with human and material resources. We made terrible mistakes in allowing ourselves to become a mono economy and we are now paying dearly for our mistakes.
Nigeria made money from cocoa, palm oil, palm kernel, groundnut, hides and skin and others. We threw everything away because of petroleum.
We have to go back to the land and solid minerals and do a lot of savings so that we can leave a better country for our children.
President Buhari expressed appreciation to Nigerians for their understanding and faith with the administrations reform programmes.
This is a time for hard work, this is a time of rebuilding Nigeria.
During my campaigns, I emphasized three things, security, economy and fighting corruption. In each of them, we are recording success, he said.
President Buhari congratulated outgoing Governor Adams Oshiomhole on his stewardship during his eight-year tenure, aptly demonstrated in the quality of projects completed in the state.
Certainly, Governor Oshiomhole is lucky to have served two-terms in office and he has engraved his name in gold in the history of Edo state, the president said.
In his remarks, Gov. Oshiomhole urged Nigerians not to relent in supporting the current administration, saying Nigeria has a future under Buhari; there is no overnight solution to the countrys problems.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has stated that it is conforming with due process and giving equal representation to states, in line with the federal character principle, in its on-going recruitment exercise.
The commission announced recently that it was recruiting 750 cadets. The announcement drew the response of hundreds of thousands of applicants from across the country.
However, after the recruitment exercise at the Nigerian Air force Base, Mando in Kaduna, there were reports of complaints by some participants that they were disqualified because they had no god-fathers and that the exercise was tilted in favour of Northern candidates.
Reacting to the reports on Monday through a statement by its spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, the EFCC said the recruitment exercise was conducted in full compliance with the published criteria.
The criteria published in the commissions website had advised applicants that due to the rigorous nature of the Cadet Training program, all candidates must be physically, medically and mentally fit in conformity with regimental standards.
The information further said candidates for the recruitment, in addition to other statutory requirements, Must not be more than 27 years old, must be single; Height (Minimum Male:1.67m;Female:1.64m); must have Body Mass Index (BMI) of not more than 30 (Not obese);and Chest Measurement (Not less than 34inches for Males).
It further stipulated that the candidates Must have a good hearing, good eye-sight and sound mind (This is for the purpose of weapon handling and other law enforcement gadgets); no recent medical surgery, no respiratory ailments or life threatening illnesses that can cause harm to the cadet and others during training;
No tattoos of any form; must not have any criminal record; no membership of any cult or terrorist group; and must not be a user or dependent on any illicit substance or recreational drugs.
The commission said It received over 200,000 applications for the advertised 750 vacancies. It said the 750 cadets were being meticulously screened.
The exercise, which is still on-going for the Detective Inspectors (DI) and Detective Superintendents (DS) Cadres (the Detective Assistants, DI, Cadre has been concluded), is conducted transparently and every state is given equal representation.
We also reiterate that there was no inappropriate conduct by any official during the exercise as being alleged. The physical fitness and medical tests were conducted by officers from the Nigerian Air Force Hospital who are well trained and adhere to the relevant code of medical practice.
The statement urged the media to beware of being used as instruments of blackmail by applicants who failed the fitness test.
The National Chairman of the Labour Party, Abdulkadir Abdulsalam, on Tuesday called on Nigerians to resist attempts by government to increase Nigerias debt burden.
Addressing journalists in Abuja, Mr. Abdulsalam said the decision by President Muhammadu Buhari to obtain a loan of $29. 9 billion, without a detailed plan of repayment, is a journey to the grave for Nigeria.
The current recession was primarily enhanced by the unfortunate locking up of funds in the name of fighting corruption. Thus, failing in the promise that funds would be released into the economy as soon as the budget was passed, the Buhari-led APC government is ready to take to the nation to a graveyard by borrowing without recourse to the after effect for Nigeria, said Mr. Abdulsalam.
The politician urged Nigerians to bear in mind that part of the problems bedevilling the country was the uncontrollable borrowing of external loans by previous administration under the guise of infrastructural development.
The Labour Party chairman said this government had since its inception failed in its promise to improve Nigerias economy and the decision to look for loans would only have devastating effects on the economy.
He said the supporters of the president should accept the reasons alluded by the National Assembly for refusing to approve the proposal.
Mr. Abdulsalam said a project of any kind required proper planning for success and the failure of government to accompany its proposal with a plan was proof that the proposal was a negative one.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa has raised an alarm over some fake Facebook accounts opened in her name by some fraudsters.
Mrs. Dabiri-Erewa, in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja, said some fraudsters have created phony accounts in her name on Facebook to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.
The statement signed by her Special Assistant on Media, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, warned members of the public to be wary of such accounts stressing that Mrs. Dabiri-Erewa had no FACEBOOK accounts.
She said that the scammers opened 11 different face book accounts using them to send all manners of scam letters to dupe unsuspecting Nigerians.
The presidential aide advised members of the public to disregard any such Facebook page purportedly belonging `Abike Dabiri-Erewa` as she does not operate any Facebook account.
The SSA said she was always available and members of the public could reach her on: ssa@diaspora.gov.ng on issues pertaining to her office.
While noting that she had reported the issue several times to Facebook, she urged online platform to look into such easy methods of cloning peoples identity.
The issue is already being handled by the security agencies to track down those behind creation of these fake accounts, she said.
(NAN)
Governor Ayo Fayose on Tuesday visited the detained former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, in the custody of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, an aide has said.
Jude Ndukwe, Mr. Fani-Kayodes media adviser, said Mr. Fayose arrived at the EFCC facility in Abuja where the ex-minister is being detained. He said the governor spent more than two hours chatting with him.
The governor visited Fani-Kayode in EFCC custody on Tuesday afternoon and spent quite some time encouraging him, Mr. Ndukwe said.
An EFCC officer, simply identified as Madaki, was the one who welcomed the governor when he arrived at the EFCC headquarters at 2:15 p.m., Mr. Ndukwe said.
He later departed the commission at 4:30 p.m.
Mr. Fayoses visit followed similar high profile ones paid to Mr. Fani-Kayode in recent days.
The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and Catholic cleric, Matthew Kukah, visited last week.
The former minister is expected to be arraigned on November 10 at the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court.
Americans in Franklin, New Jersey, will vote for Charles Ejike Onyejiaka, a fellow citizen and a transplant from Imo State, Nigeria, as the U.S. general election unfolds today.
Mr. Onyejiaka, a democrat, is the incumbent in a two-way race for Ward 3 Councilman seat in Franklin. He was one of three men presented to Franklin Town Council as fill-in candidates for the unexpired term of Phil Kramer, former Ward 3 Councilman, who became Mayor of Franklin last January.
Mr. Onyejiaka beat Alex Kharazi and Azim Uddin, also democrats and immigrants, to succeed Kramer. Today, he is contesting against Beverly Briggs-Lawson, a Republican, in the general election.
Mr. Onyejiaka is one of four Americans of Nigerian descent whose names are on ballots in grassroots elections at township and county levels this year. The others are George Chidi, Rasheed BJ Dawodu and April Ademiluyi. All four are product of currents of civic engagement by hundreds of immigrants and first generation Americans who maintain their ties to Nigeria even as they live relatively comfortable lives in the United States.
The rising crescendo of political engagement by Nigerian-Americans is, in some ways, personified by the emergence of Nigerian-American Public Affairs Committee or NAPAC-USA, a self-described political and social welfare think tank where the intellectual and numerical assets of Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans could be harnessed to invigorate our active participation in American political and civic life.
The organization originated from the exertion of an intense, voluntary, electioneering campaign by some Nigerian-Americans on behalf of a Democratic candidate in Californias 36th District during the 2011 special election.
Spurred by the impact of their collective energy, the volunteers decided to create a permanent front which, with an eye on the 2012 general election, was organized as a political action committee named Nigerian-American Political Action Committee or NAPAC.
NAPAC and NAPAC-USA are legally registered entities now, the former as a 501 (c) 3 public welfare foundation and the latter as a 501 (c) 4 non-partisan membership advocacy group. NAPAC Foundation exists for the sole purpose of fostering and carrying out the vision and objectives of NAPAC-USA and its state PACs. Under American law, a PAC or political action committee can raise and spend unlimited amount of money on behalf of a political candidate or to support an issue.
NAPAC Foundation is yet to accumulate the billion dollar war chest some super PACs are famous for, but it did raise $50,000 for the Obama re-election Campaign because of what the group describe as our excitement that someone with African roots had the historic opportunity to seek and was actually elected to the highest office of the land.
Its campaign contribution in this election circle has not been disclosed but there is cause to believe that NAPAC has become the veritable gathering place for Nigerian-American activists across the United States, be they aspirants for political office or community advocates.
Of the four Americans of Nigerian descent running for office this year, only Onyejiaka seems to have no contact with the organization. Chidi and Dawodu attended NAPAC Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, this past September where they mingled with professionals, entrepreneurs and activists from as many as ten states and from cities as far as Los Angeles, New York, Detroit and Baltimore. They had the honor of being the only nominees for electoral positions this year but not the distinction of being the only break-out politicians at the convention.
Also present was Tinuade Pena, a first generation American who spent part of her formative years in Lagos. An engineer and business owner, Ms. Pena is also a U.S. Army sergeant and long-time resident of Floridas Royal Palm Beach. She was a Democratic candidate for District 86 of the Florida House of Representatives this year but lost to a fellow veteran during the primary election in August.
George Chidi is also a veteran and, the son of George Njoku Chidi, a native of Umuoye in Imo State. The younger George is running for a seat on the Board of Commissioners in DeKalb County, Georgia. His story reads almost like that of Barack Obama. His dad arrived Massachusetts in 1970 on a student visa, met his mum who is a Caucasian of Polish descent.
They got married and, unlike Obamas dad, the older George stayed in the United States. George junior was an active duty soldier in the 25th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army for five years and, he has been a journalist and civic leader for twenty years.
Of the four Nigerian-Americans running for office, he seems to have the deepest connection to his constituents and the widest name recognition among Americans and Nigerian-Americans alike. He defeated eight other aspirants to become the Democratic nominee for this general election which he is strongly favored to win. He is very supportive of the Nigerian immigrant community, he is a known face at their social events and an active promoter of worthy causes, including the candidacy of Rasheed Bolaji (or BJ) Dawodu.
Mr. Dawodu, a Democrat, is running against Republican Kristie King for the position of Tax Commissioner in Fayette County, Georgia. A small business owner and seasoned financial management professional, Dawodu relocated to the United States from his native Lagos (Isale Eko) more than 20 years ago. He worked extensively in the public sector before going into private practice, his bid for office of the Tax Commissioner is actively supported by Fayette Chamber of Commerce and his immigrant constituency.
April Ademiluyi is the only female American of Nigerian descent contesting in the general election and she is contesting for a judicial not administrative position. She is a candidate for the Seventh Circuit Court in Prince Georges County, Maryland. April is a first generation American with roots in the Ademiluyi royal family in Ife.
Election into Circuit Courts is non-partisan, candidates participate in as many party primaries as they choose but they have to win at least one primary to get on the ballot. Ms. Ademiluyi won the Libertarian Party primary.
Prince Georges county is reputed to be home to some of the richest Nigerians in the United States, there have been some local fund raising gatherings to support Aprils candidacy. She also got a boost from NAPAC president, Mr. Segun Adeyina who came from Georgia to campaign for her.
Township and county level elections usually do not attract polling agencies so it is not easy to track the progress of these candidates. One thing that can be said for all of them is, if elected, their constituencies will get top-tier professionals and more in each of them.
Charles Onyejiaka has a degree in Electronics Engineering from Thomas Edison State University, he is also something of a veteran public servant with experience dating back to Nigerias Second Republic.
Born in Nkwerre, Mr. Onyejiaka grew up in a family of public servants whose record of civic engagement reached its zenith during Nigerias Second Republic when Sam Mbakwe was governor of Imo State. His uncle served as a commissioner while an aunt worked as special assistant in the governors office. Charles has followed the footsteps of his Nigerian family in his new country.
In 2015, he mobilized voter turn-out in numbers that proved good enough to give Democrats their first mayoral victory in Franklin Township. He is prominent member of the local Catholic community and has served on the Township Planning Board.
George Chidi has a bachelor degree in Journalism, MBA from Georgia Tech and was chief executive officer of a firm that markets competitive intelligence for corporate clients.
Rasheed Dawodu has degrees in accounting, law, public finance and is a certified fraud examiner. He has worked for Fortune 500 firms including General Electric and Georgia Pacific.
April Ademiluyi has a first degree was in Chemical Engineering, law degree from an Ivy League university and has been recognized by Congressional leaders for working with families facing foreclosure.
Eight year after he was first charged for money laundering, the trial of former governor of Oyo State, Rasheed Ladoja, can now properly take off.
Having lost his bid at the Appeal Court to have charges against him quashed, Mr. Ladoja will be re-arraigned for money laundering before a Federal High Court in Lagos.
The court on Monday adjourned the till November 18 for the fresh arraignment of the Accord Party leader.
The Appeal Court, Lagos Division, had dismissed a bid by Mr. Ladoja to have the charges against him and his aide, Waheed Akanni, quashed.
The charges were filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
Saheed Bagir, the judge who read the decision of the appeal court, upheld the powers of the EFCC to prosecute offenders under the money laundering act.
Mr. Bagir held that the provisions of Section 14 of the EFCC Act gave the commission the power to prosecute persons charged with the offence of money laundering.
The court also held that by Section 7(2) of the EFCC Act, the commission was also empowered to charge and prosecute the appellants in the suit.
The anti-graft agency had arraigned Messrs. Ladoja and Akanbi on a 10-count charge of laundering funds taken from government coffers.
The EFCC alleged that Mr. Ladoja used about N42 million to purchase an Armoured Land Cruiser Jeep and remitted about 600,000 to one Bimpe Ladoja in London.
The accused who were arraigned before Ramat Mohammed, a justice of the Federal High Court, Lagos pleaded not guilty and were granted bail.
But Mr. Ladoja filed an appeal to through his counsel, Wole Olanipekun, asking the appellate court to quash the charges against him arguing that they were vague.
Mr Olanipekun, a senior lawyer, had argued that the proof of evidence tendered before the lower court by the prosecution, had no connection with the charge against his client.
He said the charges are baseless as they did not show on first impression any case against Mr Ladoja. He said the EFCC had no power, jurisdiction or authority to prefer the charge against Mr Ladoja and asked the court to rule that the case was baseless.
Responding, counsel to the EFCC, Festus Keyamo, urged the court to uphold the validity of the charge, adding that such objection ought to have been raised before the plea of the accused was taken.
He said the respondents had failed to take necessary steps when they ought to have done so, adding that the objection of the respondent has no basis in law.
The proceedings at the high court were suspended to allow the appellate court rule on the challenge brought before it by the respondents.
The Chief of Army of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, wept on Monday as he read the funeral oration at the graveside of the seven military men killed by Boko Haram terrorists.
They are late Lt. Col. Muhammad Abu-Ali, Seargents Muazu Ibrahim, Bassey Okon, Hussani Jafaru, Corporal Chukwu Simon, Private Salisu Lawal and Seaman Patrick Paul.
They died when the terrorists attempted to seize Mallam Fatori on November 4 in an attack.
The soldiers were inducted into the Operation Lafiya Dole in 2014, designed to fight the Boko Haram insurgents and liberate the North-East from their hold.
They were brave, precise, professional and inspiring. They led the battle to recapture the following towns: Monguno, Baga, new Marte, Bama, Gwoza, Banki Junction, Gamboru-Ngala, Yale, Yanteke, Bita, Deruwa, Daira Kangaruwa and Mallam Fatori.
In these battles, they rescued children and women, fathers and mothers, the young and the old and restored peace and hope to Nigerian citizens.
At last, on Nov. 4, they paid the supreme sacrifice in the battle of Mallam Fatori, Mr. Buratai said.
According to him, the deceased epitomised the very best of our military. They exemplified the values of our nation and the military which are loyalty, discipline, courage, selfless service, respect, honour and dignity.
Mr. Buratai said the deceased fought for the unity of the nation, adding that your labour will never be in vain.
He promised that the army would take care of their survivors.
Earlier, President Muhammadu Buhari, who was represented by his Chief of Staff at the occasion, Abba Kyari, said the deceased had shown unalloyed commitment to the nation.
They were fearless, responsive, inspiring, selfless and dedicated to their duties.
The selflessness of these gentlemen reinvigorate the memories of other great fallen heroes, who stood firm in the defence of our dear nation, the president said.
Mr. Buhari noted that the deceased paid the supreme sacrifice in the ongoing fight against insurgency in the North-East, adding that their sacrifices would not go in vain.
He also noted that their contributions resulted in the restoration of normalcy in the region.
It is, therefore, our resolve that the labour of these fallen heroes shall never be in vain, he said, adding that insurgency and terrorism would be defeated.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that dignitaries who attended the funeral included the service chiefs, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno, the minister of information and culture, and that of interior, and Senators Ali Ndume, Dino Melaye and Phillip Aduda.
Also at the burial were the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari, and wife of the President of the Senate, Toyin Saraki, among others.
The deceased were interred at about 5.55 p.m. after all necessary military ceremonies.
(NAN)
The House of Representatives on Tuesday recommended that a Nigerian soldier who died over the weekend be given a posthumous promotion to be a colonel.
Muhammad Abu-Ali died in a Boko Haram ambush on Friday night as a lieutenant colonel.
The proposal by the House followed a motion of urgent national concern raised by one of its members from Sokoto, Abdulsamad Dasuki.
Mr. Dasuki in his motion also said the Nigerian government should employ his wife into the civil service and take possession of his childrens education forthwith.
The lawmaker also said all salaries and allowances due to Mr. Abu-Ali should be immediately paid out to his family.
Mr. Abu-Ali and six others were killed in an attack by terrorists in Mallam Fatori, Borno State.
During the discussion on the floor of the House, Minority Leader, Leo Ogor, described the soldier as a dogged and patriotic soldier.
He proved that in any capacity you can serve the nation with great enthusiasm and commitment, Mr. Ogor said.
The House observed a one minute silence in honour of Mr. Abu-Ali and other heroes who lost their lives in the November 4 attack.
The House adopted all the recommendations sought by Mr. Dasuki for the family of Mr. Abu-Ali.
The Senate on Tuesday resolved to invite the Minister of Labour and Employment to provide insight into governments roadmap towards tackling unemployment in the country.
This followed a motion by Duro Faseyi (PDP-Ekiti), who called on President Muhammadu Buhari to declare a state of emergency on unemployment with a view to confront the challenge frontally and radically.
The economic recession which has hit the country would integrally multiply the level of unemployment in the country as more companies have started considering downsizing in order to cut cost and optimise profit, he said.
Mr. Faseyi lamented that the unemployment figure in the country had created social tension and crisis in the society, which was evident in cases of kidnapping and insurgency.
He advised that urgent and result-oriented steps should be taken to tackle the unpalatable unemployment situation in the country.
Supporting the motion, Sabi Abdullahi (APC-Niger) said that the time was ripe for the National Assembly to proffer solution to unemployment in the country.
There is no better time than now, especially as we are moving towards next years budget proposal.
The policy intent of government with respect to unemployment is not unambiguous because government has accepted that the unemployment rate is something to worry about, Mr. Abdullahi said.
He said what was worrisome was the issue of translating policy intent into programmes and actions that would address the issue of unemployment.
The Committee on Labour and Employment was on oversight just last week.
It was revealed that the National Directorate for Employment has very innovative programmes that cut across various sectors in various locations across the federation.
In the budget of N1.8 billion, as at November, they were only given N74 million, yet it is expected that from the programmes they have, they are expected to train youths and various interest groups.
This would enable the youth to begin to do something by way of employing themselves or even creating small and micro enterprises where they can employ one or two persons, he said.
The lawmaker urged members of the senate to find a yardstick in determining how much the Ministry of Labour and Employment would receive to tackle unemployment.
After debate on the motion, the lawmakers adopted it with a resolution to invite Labour Minister for some explanation.
The Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided at the plenary, directed the Clerk of the Senate to invite the minister.
(NAN)
The Adamawa Mining Company Limited says it has acquired 12 licenses for solid minerals explorations in the state.
Shanti Shashi, the state Commissioner of Solid Minerals Resources, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Yola on Tuesday.
Ms. Shashi said the state government had also signed a $5 billion agreement with a Swiss company, BTP Swiss Sovereign Asset, for the exploration of solid minerals in the state.
He said the agreement was signed in June 2016 and would last for three years.
Adamawa Mining Company has acquired 12 solid minerals exploration licenses from Federal Government.
The Company has signed five billion dollars agreement with BTP Swiss Sovereign Asset to mine Gold, Diamond, Lead Zinc, Bitumen, Barites, Uranium, and Platinum.
The investor is a world-class renowned mining company that can generate a lot of revenue and employment for the state, Ms. Shashi said.
He said the state government also signed a contract agreement with Dangote Cement for the establishment of cement factory in Guyuk Local Government Area of the state.
According to the commissioner, the development will create more revenue and employment for the state and the country at large.
She said that another foreign investor, Smart Group International, had submitted a letter of intent to the government for the establishment of cement factory in Lamurde Local Government Area.
She added that the groups intention to establish the cement factory was due to huge deposits of gemstones discovered in the area.
A draft Memorandum of Understanding is in place with Orca Energy Company of the United Kingdom for the recovery of alluvial, Gold, Diamond and other gemstones from Rivers Faro and Benue.
As well as the establishment of state of art equipment and mineral testing laboratory and jewellery plant in the state, she said.
Ms. Shashi said that the development was part of efforts to diversify the state revenue generation from oil to non oil revenue.
(NAN)
Contrary to reports, the Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, wrote to the House of Assembly notifying members of his intention to proceed on vacation overseas, PREMIUM TIMES can report.
In an October 25 letter, exclusively obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, Mr. Bello said he will be gone for 14 days effective October 26.
While abroad, all state matters should be forwarded to my deputy, Rt. Hon. Simon Achuba, the governor said.
The letter clarifies reports on social and traditional media claiming that Mr. Bello had gone abroad without notifying the House thereby contravening the states laws.
It, however, fell short at stating where the governor intended to spend his holiday and why, fuelling speculations that he might have travelled on medical grounds.
But the Speaker of the House, Umar Imam, said Mr. Bello did no wrong since it was a private visit.
The governor went on a private leave for two weeks out of the six weeks hes entitled to in a year, the speakers spokesman, Umar Ali, told PREMIUM TIMES Tuesday. The House does not have any issues with it because he satisfied the requirements of the law.
Petra Onyegbule, the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, told PREMIUM TIMES her principal deserved the rest and is due back home this weekend.
Dont forget that since last year before the election and after he was sworn in, hes been busy, Ms. Onyegbule said. But he will be back to the state no later than this weekend.
Ms. Onyegbule also slapped down reports that the governor was gravely ill with eye complications.
Mr. Bello was sworn in on January 27 at age 40, becoming the youngest politician to be elected governor in Nigeria.
The Kwara State Government has begun the repair of the collapsed Moro Bridge on llorin-lgbeti highway.
The narrow bridge, which is on the main road that links the northern district of the state and Oyo north district with the rest of Kwara state, has a history of perennially caving in after repairs, including on some occasions after repairs by the Nigerian Army engineering corps.
The state commissioner for works and transport, Aro Yahaya, in Ilorin on Tuesday said that work had commenced as the steel and other materials purchased for the repair had been received.
Mr. Yahaya also disclosed that the state government had earlier in March intervened on the Ohan-bailey Bridge, also in Moro Local Government Area of the state.
The commissioner said although the two bridges are federal government facilities, the state government decided to carry out intervention work on them in order to ease hardship faced by road users and motorists.
While commending the federal government for its interventions on various roads within the state, Mr. Yahaya said only the reconstruction of the two bridges offer a lasting solution to their constant collapse.
He added that the reconstruction of the bridges will further boost agricultural activities in the area and the state in general, and ease transportation of farm produce to commercial destinations.
Mr. Yahaya urged commuters using the bridges to be patient while the repairs are being carried out.
Yomi Adagazu, Director of Child Development in the Nasarawa State Ministry of Women Affairs, has raised alarm over increasing cases of abandoned babies in Lafia, the state capital, and environs.
Mrs. Adagazu expressed concern over the trend in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Tuesday in Lafia.
She noted that three babies were abandoned at different locations in Lafia and environs within the last one month.
We recall that a day-old baby girl was abandoned along Shendam Road, Lafia on November 1, while another baby boy was dumped at the Bukan-Sidi cemetery the following day.
The mother of the baby girl, a 17-year-old lady eventually turned herself in to the police and claimed maternity of the child.
She cited frustration as reasons for her action and had been reunited with the baby while efforts are on to establish the veracity of her claims, Mrs. Adagazu added.
The director said that the baby boy had been taken to Maimuna Katai Orphanage in the metropolis for proper upkeep.
She described as unfortunate the way girls were abandoning their babies in spite of the fact that these babies were precious gifts from God.
She appealed to members of the public and organisations to assist the orphanages in the state in catering for the children and assured of the ministrys commitment to the proper upbringing of the orphans.
The official implored parents to closely monitor their children and wards, especially the female ones and properly educate them on sexual issues.
Mrs. Adagazu equally cautioned young girls to guard against peer pressure that could result in early sex, which could jeopardise their future.
(NAN)
The Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, in Zamfara has called on the State Government to implement the National Health Act 2014.
Mannir Tsafe, the Secretary of the association in the state, made the demand in Gusau in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday.
Mr. Tsafe commended the efforts of the NMA national secretariat for engaging the Federal Government over similar demands to boost the health sector.
He said that the decision by the association to call on the President Muhammadu Buhari and governors of all the 36 states in the country to immediately start implementation of the Act was timely.
The scribe said the Act had been passed into law by the National Assembly two years ago but had not been implemented despite its importance to healthcare delivery, especially to the people at the grassroots.
It is our major concern in NMA to ensure that government commences implementation of this Act.
Considering its advantages to Nigerian health sector, especially the way it would ensure specific provisions of basic healthcare fund which is the first line charge on the consolidated revenue of the Federal Government.
You know this Act has been passed into law by the National Assembly since 2014, but up till now it has not been implemented by the government, he said.
According to him, the Act will address the various challenges facing the health sector in the country, especially at the grassroots, if it is fully implemented.
He further said that it was one of the major issues discussed at the 2016 Physicians Week.
Mr. Tsafe called on the state government to increase its commitment towards improving healthcare service delivery.
He expressed concern over the state of healthcare centres in the state, particularly in the rural areas.
If we look at the current situation of our primary and secondary healthcare centres in this state, which are all owned by state government, things are decaying.
Most do not have the capacity to operate as healthcare centres; they cannot take care of simple health cases due to inadequate health personnel, poor infrastructure and lack of adequate funding.
So also poor implementation of budget allocation to the health sector and these are all responsibilities of the state government.
Provision of effective healthcare delivery is one of the peoples major needs, therefore, government should accord it more priority, he said.
The scribe said that one of associations responsibilities was to draw governments attention to any issue that affected healthcare services.
Besides, he appealed to all stakeholders in healthcare delivery in the state to redouble their efforts and support government towards promoting the health sector.
Mr. Tsafe commended international donor agencies for supporting healthcare delivery in the state.
(NAN)
The Peoples Democratic Party has alleged that Nigerias ruling All Progressives Congress is trying to manipulate Tuesdays ruling of the Supreme Court on the Bayelsa elections.
The opposition party, therefore, advised the Supreme Court to stand firm against any manipulations.
The Supreme Court will deliver a ruling on an appeal filed by Timipre Sylva who was the candidate of the APC and lost the governorship election to Governor Seriake Dickson of the PDP.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria will on November 8, 2016 deliver Judgment on the Appeals of Chief Timipre Sylva and the All Progressives Congress (APC) against the Judgments of the Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal, both of which upheld the Election of Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa State, the PDP said in a statement by Dayo Adeyeye, a national publicity secretary from of the party.
This Judgement comes at a time when the Judiciary is facing an onslaught from the Ruling Party using the apparatus and instruments of State. This Judgment will be given in the face of allegations, by Justices of the Supreme Court no less, that senior members of APC and Ministers in this administration attempted to bribe judges to subvert the course of justice in similar suits relating to elections in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti and Rivers States.
We are aware that these people and other senior members of APC are again, putting pressure on Justices of the Supreme Court to pervert the course of justice by overturning the Decisions of the Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal to nullify the Mandate freely given to Governor Seriake Dickson by the people of Bayelsa State.
We reiterate our belief that the Judiciary is the last hope of the common man and the bastion upon which our entire democracy rests. We believe that there are men and women of integrity, with proven track records in the dispensation of justice who ensure that justice is not only done but is also seen to be done. We urge the Justices of the Supreme Court to ignore this pressure and give judgment in line with the dictates of our Constitution, electoral laws and good conscience, the party said
Residents of Yenagoa woke up on Tuesday morning to witness increased security around Government House and strategic areas of the capital in anticipation of Supreme Court judgement on Bayelsa governorship poll.
A correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Yenagoa reports that all the roads leading to Onopa, the seat of government were blocked by armed security men.
Motorists and other commuters were forced to seek alternative routes to their destinations.
The Supreme Court will deliver judgment on Monday on the legal tussle between Governor Seriake Dickson of the Peoples Democratic Party, who was declared winner of the poll and Timipre Sylva, the APC candidate who challenged the victory.
Mr. Sylva had approached the election petitions tribunal which upheld Dicksons election.
Not satisfied by the verdict of the tribunal, the APC candidate took his case to the Appeal Court which also affirmed the decision of the tribunal.
NAN however reports that in spite of the heavy presence of security men deployed to strategic locations, the capital remains calm.
Asinim Butswat, police spokesperson, told NAN in a telephone interview that the deployment was to ensure that the prevailing peace in the capital is maintained.
(NAN)
A Lagos State High Court at Igbosere, on Monday ordered the state government to immediately suspend its planned demolition of shanties along creeks and waterways in the State.
The court order was a respite to 300,000 people living in these waterfront communities who were facing the bleak prospect of losing their homes and businesses following an order by the governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode, that communities should be demolished.
Worried by the growing cases of kidnapping and other criminal activities around waterfront communities, the governor on October 9 gave inhabitants of the communities one week to leave, saying the communities would be demolished after the expiration of the deadline.
Most of the issues we have with kidnapping are perpetrated by illegal settlers by the waterfront. All shanties along the waterfront of the state must go because the safety of Lagosians is paramount in this administration, he said.
We will not allow a few set of people who come into Lagos illegally, then stay on our waterfront and use it as an opportunity to kidnap our people, added.
However, the judge, Adeniyi Onigbanjo, granted the prayers of a community-based group, Incorporated Trustees of Community Legal Support Initiative and 35 occupants of various waterfront communities, asking for an interim injunction restraining the state government from carrying out its planned demolition of waterfront communities across the state and preventing the government or its agents from evicting occupants of the community pending the hearing of the suit.
Agemo Abacha, an inhabitant of Ago Egun, one of the waterfront communities, explained in an affidavit sworn in support of the suit, that since the governor made the announcement, life has stopped being normal for people living in the communities.
That since this announcement, my community and dozens of other waterfront communities across the state have been thrown into chaos. We are living in apprehension of demolition and eviction any day.
He said two days after the announcement was made, members of the communities under the aegis of the Nigerian Slum / Informal Settlement Federation wrote to the state governor to retract the order but got no reply.
He said on October 13, members of the community staged a peaceful demonstration at the governors office to save their communities but received no favourable outcome from the government.
Two days later, he said, the government commenced the demolition of Ilubirin a waterfront fishing settlement in the Ikoyi area of the state.
He said the inhabitants of waterfront communities in the state are law-abiding people, who are engaged in legal business. He said if the state government goes ahead with the planned demolition they would be rendered homes, without a means of livelihood and the education of their children would be truncated.
He said members of the communities were ready to work with law-enforcement agencies to help tackle crimes around the communities.
That we understand from what we have heard in the news that Governor Ambode is trying to justify the demolition of communities like ours based on the need to fight crime in Lagos State. But, the residents of our communities are hard-working, law-abiding citizens who have nowhere else to go. We welcome law enforcement activities and we cooperate with the police. Evicting hundreds of thousands of people and destroying our homes and legitimate livelihoods will not prevent crime or make the city safer, he said.
Megan Chapman, co-founder of Justice and Empowerment Initiatives Nigeria, a group that works with communities under the threat of eviction and demolition, told PREMIUM TIMES that the decision of the court to restrain the state government from continuing with the demolition is a step in the right direction.
On behalf of the affected communities, Justice and Empowerment Initiative is very pleased with the judges exercise of discretion and issuance of this interim injuction to protect and estimated 300,000 people who otherwise might lose their homes and their businesses. We think this is a step forward for justice and we pray that the case will continue in this direction, she said.
The Court of Appeal in Abuja will on Tuesday continue hearings into applications relating to the November 26 governorship election in Ondo State.
The court is also expected to make some decisions on the various applications on Tuesday.
The appellate court had during its session on Monday heard arguments from various parties on applications seeking to determine the status of earlier decisions made by an Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, FHC.
Mondays session, which lasted over 10 hours, was meant to ensure that all arguments were heard, but had to be adjourned following delays caused by fresh applications, among other factors.
Applications were brought by Eyitayo Jegede, a governorship aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Ondo.
Mr. Jegede is of the PDP faction led by Ahmed Makarfi and seeks to displace Jimoh Ibrahim, the governorship candidate from the faction led by former Borno Stare governor, Ali Sheriff.
Further applications were also made on Monday from parties in the matter.
The counsel representing Mr. Ibrahim had asked the court to dismiss the applications made by Mr. Jegede for lacking in merit.
The counsel, Beluolisah Nwofor, told the appellate court that the applications were poorly presented, thereby making them dead on arrival.
My lord the relief number one is incompetent for the following reasons: it does not identify the particular suit number; the parties to the suit and the title of the suit for which the ruling was delivered, in which he seeks to appeal, said Mr. Nwofor.
He further said Mr. Jegede did not contest the decision of the lower court during proceedings at the Federal High Court.
Mr. Nwofor, therefore, contended that since the parties involved had not contested the decision at the lower court; what it implies is that the parties have consented to the ruling of the court. Therefore, any attempt to appeal before a higher court should first emanate from a motion seeking leave of court to appeal.
Mr. Nwofor argued that such a motion has not been made.
The lawyer further argued that the October 14 decision of the lower court, which formed the basis of the application at the appellate court, is an interlocutory decision. He said the decision sprang from the June 29 ruling by the FHC, and therefore the motion seeking to appeal against it should have come within 14 days after October 14.
Responding to arguments raised by the respondent counsel, Wole Olanipekun who stood in for Mr. Jegede said the application challenging the October 14 decision was made on October 27, and was therefore within stipulated time.
He added that the decision of the lower court to endorse Mr. Ibrahim was taken after the statutory period when the electoral commission, INEC, would have taken a flag bearer
The door was already shut-after the period for which INEC could substitute a candidate.
All other candidates in the list were nominated by their parties, only this (Jimoh Ibrahim) was nominated by court; that is what we seek to appeal against.
After listening to arguments from both counsel, the panel of three justices, led by Ibrahim Salauwa, decided to continue with other applications on Tuesday.
The Police have arraigned a radio presenter, Adejoke Obisesan, 28, before an Iyaganku Senior Magistrates court for alleged attempt to defraud a University of Ibadan Professor of N90,000.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Ms. Obisesan, a female student and presenter at Osun State Unique FM, Ilesa, was arraigned on a two-count charge of conspiracy and obtaining money under false pretence on Tuesday.
The police prosecutor, Philip Amusan, told the court that Ms. Obisesan allegedly conspired with one other person now at large to defraud the complainant, Joel Adekanye of Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan .
According to the prosecution: Prof. Adekanye complained to the Oyo state Commissioner of police that his wife received a call from a cell phone with MTN number 08162125659 belonging to one Pastor Sunday Komolafe.
Komolafe, the caller, said their son -in-law who married their daughter Ayomide Adekanye was involved in a fatal motor- to -motorcycle accident and that the police needed N90,000 to free their in-law
The caller gave a GTBank account number of Obisesan, the police prosecutor said.
Mr. Komolafe, who was Ms. Obisesans neighbour had told her someone wanted to send him money via GTB. Claiming not to have an account in the bank, Mr. Komolafe sought Ms. Obisesans help.
Obisesan claimed to have innocently given Komolafe her account number with GTB, without an inkling that he wanted to use it to defraud, Mr. Amusan told the court.
The police corporal said Mr. Komolafe had been at large since then.
He said the offence contravened section 516 and 419 of the Criminal Code Cap 38, Vol.II Laws of Oyo state 2000.
Ms. Obisesan, unaware she was wanted by the police, went to withdraw the money sent to her by a relative to buy the HND form at a GTB branch. She was picked up at the bank and then arraigned in court, said her counsel .
Barnabas Diala, her counsel, asked the court for her bail on liberal terms.
The Senior Magistrate, Patricia Adetuyibi, granted the accused bail in the sum of N50,000 with two sureties in like sum .
She said the sureties must be residents of Ibadan.
Ms. Adetuyibi thereafter, adjourned the case till January 9, 2017 for further hearing.
(NAN)
The governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party, Olu Agunloye, on Tuesday launched his campaign to become the next governor of Ondo State, promising to restore integrity to governance in the state.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters at the Democracy Park, Akure, the former federal minister said he would ensure the prompt payment of workers salaries and pensions if elected governor.
He said during his tenure as governor, youth would not only get jobs, but they would be employers of labour.
Wages will be paid, pensions will paid, gratitude will be paid, but until we turn this state to an industrial state, it will still be called a civil service state, he said.
He lamented the poor state infrastructure of the state, noting that there is the need to provide the infrastructure that would support economic development.
Our mission is very simple, to rescue Ondo State, and to rebuild Ondo State, he declared.
He urged the people of the state to vote massively for him, so he could bring the needed prosperity to the people.
He also promised to cater for the welfare of women and support their economic development so they could be taken out of poverty.
GRAM TO BEGIN FROM TOMORROW IN JAIPUR
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New Delhi, The 3 day Global Rajasthan Agritech Meet 2016 (GRAM 16), will begin tomorrow at the Sitapura based Jaipur Exhibition and Convention Center (JECC) in Jaipur. The Governor of Rajasthan, Mr. Kalyan Singh will be the Chief Guest in the inaugural session. The Union Minister of the State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Mr. Parshottam Rupala; Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Ms. Vasundhara Raje and Swami Ramdev Ji Maharaj will also be present on the occasion.
The event is jointly organized by Government of Rajasthan and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
The inaugural session will be followed by the inauguration of an exhibition which is one of the key features of GRAM. To be set up in an area of 20,000 sq. mt., the exhibition will be divided into various categories like Livestock, Post Harvest Technologies, Agri Inputs & Protected Cultivation, Organic Farming, Food & Food Processing Technologies, Farm Machinery, Implements and Allied Services, Financial Institution, Irrigation, Plasticulture and Precision Farming. To promote agri-entrepreneurship a special pavilion on startups will be setup. Furthermore, there will be a special pavilion on organic farming as well to promote herbal and medicinal plants.
With an aim to provide a platform to thousands of farmers to get the maximum exposure about the new and innovative techniques of farming, Jajam Chaupal has also been organized at the event. These Chaupal have been designed in such a manner that farmers will be able to imbibe knowledge and clarify their doubts from experts in a non-formal setting and through the use of local idiom. From 11.30 am concurrent Jajam Chaupals on topics like Organic Farming, Online Commodity Exchange, Development of Sheep and Poultry, Plantation of Palm Trees, Disease and Pest Management in Rose Crops and Advanced Technology of Animal Nutrition for Profitable Dairy Farming, among others will be held.
A dedicated section Smart Farm -- showcasing the finest of agro technologies to visitors will also be a major attraction in the event.
A conference on Sustainable & Innovative Agriculture Practices for doubling farmers income will also be held tomorrow. Themes such as Sustainable Agriculture: Towards an Evergreen Revolution (2.00 pm to 3.50 pm); Innovative Agriculture: Leveraging the technology frontiers (3.50 pm to 5.00 pm) and Rajasthan Israel collaboration for Agriculture Development Way Forward will also be discussed.
It is to be recalled that the primary objective of GRAM is to ensure economic empowerment of the farmers through accelerated yet sustainable growth in agriculture. In addition to farmers, the global event will also showcase global best practices and best of technologies suited to the agro-climatic conditions of Rajasthan. It will also be an important platform for investors, manufacturers, academicians and researchers.
About Global Rajasthan Agritech Meet 2016 (GRAM):
The GRAM is an international event which is being from 9 to 11 November at the Jaipur Exhibition and Convention Center (JECC) at Sitapura in Jaipur. It is jointly organized by the Government of Rajasthan and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The mega event will be attended by around 50,000 farmers. The primary objective of GRAM is to ensure economic empowerment of the farmers through accelerated yet sustainable growth in agriculture. In addition to farmers, the global event will also showcase global best practices and best of technologies suited to the agro-climatic conditions of Rajasthan. It will also be an important platform for investors, manufacturers, academicians and researchers. For further details please visit: http://gramrajasthan.in .
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7:30 p.m.: Republican Donald Trump has won West Virginia and its five electoral votes, reports the Associated Press. The Mountain State was one of the billionaire's biggest supporters in the Republican primary. He is popular for promising to bring back coal jobs.
7:15 p.m.:Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams says he has found no evidence of fraud or intimidation at the city's polls despite Republican candidate Donald Trump's warnings about voter fraud.
7 p.m. The Associated Press has reported that Trump has won Kentucky and Indiana while Democrat Hillary Clinton has won Vermont.
5:53 p.m.: The polls were "very busy" at Assumption Regional Catholic School in Galloway Township, said Natalie Swan, a poll worker.
The line to vote stretched from the voting booth to the door after 5 p.m. as people got off work.
Swan said voters were waiting in line before polls opened at 6 a.m. The line was out the door, she said.
"Until about lunch time, it didn't slow down," she said. "So there's a lot of concerned citizens, a lot of voters."
5:05 p.m. Where are Clinton and Trump tonight? Both candidates will be in Manhattan, accordign to their campaigns.
5:02 p.m.
A Donald Trump cake being wheeled into Trump Tower @abc #ElectionDay pic.twitter.com/HSkHChfUSA Jason Volack (@jasonvolack) November 8, 2016
Vineland resident Jose Ledezma, 25, says its crucial for young people to vote. "This effects us for years to come." pic.twitter.com/YWCHgCQ1aR Thomas R. Barlas (@acpressbarlas) November 8, 2016
Voters coming in and out of the Wildwoods Convention Center, the only polling place in Wildwood, @ThePressofAC pic.twitter.com/04sK1T7pJm Jack Tomczuk (@ACPressTomczuk) November 8, 2016
3:20 p.m.: Shafiq Mohammad once worked for Donald Trump, but he voted for Hillary Clinton.
Mohammad, who manages "Fashion Island" on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, didn't have good memories of the Republican nominee.
Mohammad, a former satellite banker at Trump Taj Mahal, recalled Trump never saying hello when he walked the floor. Mohammad said he received just $25 for a Christmas bonus at the Taj, compared to the $300 holiday gift he'd get working at Golden Nugget.
"He couldn't win employees' hearts. How is he going to win the United States?" Mohammad said.
The Christmas bonus issue aside, Mohammad said he voted for Clinton because of her foreign policy experience.
2 p.m.: Outside of the Middle Township municipal building on Mechanic Street, voters were split between presidential candidates Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.
Elliott Donchey, 83, of Middle Township voted along party lines Tuesday morning, from Donald Trump for president down to Dan Lockwood for Township Committee. His wife, Margery, 84, voted in the local races, including for Lockwood, but abstained from voting in the presidential race. She said she felt disenchanted with both Clinton and Trump.
I just couldnt bring myself to do it, she said.
Republican Melanie Collins, 46, of Middle Township said she did much self-reflection before voting in this presidential election.
I dont love Donald Trump as a candidate, but I voted platform, Collins said. I took a lot of soul-searching: what my values are, what I stand for.
Collins said she had to largely ignore the candidates and focus on issues like the future of the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade.
James E. Smyth, 97, of Middle Township has voted Democrat in every presidential election. On Tuesday, he cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton.
Ive always thought she did a good job no matter what she does, Smyth said. It wasnt a vote against someone.
Look, the men arent doing that great a job. It would be nice to have a woman (president). Male or female, I just wanted the best one, Smyth said.
Michele Meeds, 62, of Middle Township voted for Hillary Clinton Tuesday morning.
I like her. I always have. I think shes gotten a bad rap a lot of times. And the alternative is just unacceptable, Meeds said.
Emily Lattimore, 37, of Middle Township logged a vote for Clinton Tuesday.
Certainly her politics are in line with our family, she said. Coming together, accepting everyone in the country is important to me.
I dont think its insignificant that we get to vote for a woman to become our president for the first time, Lattimore added, noting that she was making history.
Glen Rosenberger Jr., 73, of Upper Township said he voted for Donald Trump Tuesday morning outside the Seaville Fire Department Social Hall on Route 50.
Hillarys background, way too far back she goes as a liar and a thief, Rosenberger said.
He said that he would have liked to see more focus on veterans in this election, and wasnt pleased overall with the campaign season.
If our forefathers could see whats going on today, they would say its time for another Tea Party, Rosenberger said.
Greta Schwartz, 49, of Upper Township voted for Hillary Clinton.
I actually started something called the Revolution for Mental Health Care in America, Schwartz said. She walked from Upper Township to Trenton over Memorial Day weekend carrying a full-size casket to bring awareness to mental health issues.
Schwartz, owner of Red Sky Cafe on Route 9, said she has always identified as unaffiliated, so she did a lot of research leading up to Election Day, especially on mental health platforms.
I feel like Hillary is most apt and most determined to make a difference in the mental health care field, Schwartz said.
Norma Juzwiak, 63, of Ocean City said her children jokingly threatened to tie her up and not let her out to vote as she cast her ballot for Donald Trump Tuesday morning at Our Lady of Good Counsel at 40th Street and Central Avenue.
I dont think the kids see the trouble were in. All of my kids were like, Ma, how could you? she said. Im taking a chance.
Juzwiak said that she has always voted Republican, and hopes to see Obamacare repealed.
I dont particularly think hes a wonderful guy, but I think shes worse, Juzwiak said of the candidates.
Jenna Zarella, 24, and her mother, Barbara Zarella, 66, of Ocean City voted together on Tuesday morning, both in support of Donald Trump.
I feel like Hillary is a liar, Jenna Zarella said. I dont trust her as president.
As a woman, I feel like Hillary Clinton makes me feel like a victim and he makes me feel empowered, she said.
Barbara Zarella said that her Catholic viewpoints helped to form her selection.
Im pro-life. I dont believe in late-term abortions, she said. I dont feel like she represents me as a woman.
Friends Frederick Little, 83, and Philip Toscone, 77, both of Ocean City, were a veritable Odd Couple Tuesday morning as they exited the polls.
I hate Hillary Clinton. She should be in jail, Little said, adding that a Clinton presidency would lead to a worsened economy.
Toscone voted for Clinton.
Were good friends, but politically, were not on the same page, Toscone said. Donald doesnt favor women. Im pro-choice. I feel a woman has the right to decide what she wants to do with her body.
11:45 a.m.: President Barack Obama tweeted Tuesday morning for people to "go vote."
Today, progress is on the ballot. Go vote - then make sure your friends, your family, and everyone you know votes too. President Obama (@POTUS) November 8, 2016
11:25 a.m.: Donald Trump voted in New York City with his wife Melania, daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared as hundreds of people watched Tuesday morning at a public school on Manhattan's East Side.
11 a.m.: Atlantic County is reporting steady voting.
Gov. Chris Christie voted soon after the polls opened, not answering questions from reporters.
10 a.m.: Hillary Clinton cast her own ballot Tuesday with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at an elementary school near their home in suburban New York before greeting supporters.
9:45 a.m.: Outside the large Trump sign at South Pomona Road & Duerer Street in Galloway, Michael Waszen, Sr., of Galloway said he was voting for Trump Tuesday.
"I think Mr. Trump will be the best president we'll have for a long time," he said. "I think he'll do a lot for the economy, for the security of the nation."
Michael Waszen, Sr., co-owner of Trump sign on S. Pomona Rd. & Duerer St., paints over signatures so more pple can sign board today #acpress pic.twitter.com/d8Dzryv42B Nicole Leonard (@ACPressNLeonard) November 8, 2016
9 a.m.: Outside the District 5 and 6 polling place in Cape May Court House, the polls saw a mix between Clinton and Trump supporters.
One woman, Margery Donchey, even opted out of voting for president.
"I just couldn't bring myself to do it," she said, adding that her husband voted this morning.
97-year-old James Smyth voted @HillaryClinton "I've always thought she did a good job no matter what she did" #acpress #southjerseyvotes pic.twitter.com/b14hZy97ZR Claire Lowe (@clairelowe) November 8, 2016
8:45 a.m.: Some voters in Atlantic City hit the polls when they opened at 6 a.m., including Barbara Randolph, 52, who was first in line at Uptown School Complex to cast her vote for Hillary Clinton.
Im excited to come out and to vote and to make that change for women, the lifelong city resident said. I was the first one here in line to vote for the first female for president.
Barbara Randolph, 52, lifelong AC resident, was first to vote at Uptown School this morning. She waited outside to cast a vote for Clinton. pic.twitter.com/YfzOoYS672 Erin Serpico (@ACPressSerpico) November 8, 2016
At Richmond Avenue School in Atlantic City, Terry Kelly, 72, was among the first wave of voters and voted for Donald Trump.
I think it will be very close, he said, adding that he thinks Trump will win. The last eight years haven't been great for the economy.
Another voter at Uptown School Complex early in the morning, James Wilson, said he voted for Hillary Clinton. If you don't vote, it's a vote for the other side, he said.
"Donald Trump only made promises, and he didn't say anything specific," he said.
Mike Evans, 55, said in Atlantic City that he voted for Trump because he's looking for "different change" in the country.
"I just don't trust Hillary," he said.
--
WASHINGTON (AP) A polarized America went to the polls Tuesday to pick its 45th president, choosing to elect either Hillary Clinton as the nation's first female commander in chief or billionaire businessman Donald Trump after a long and rancorous campaign that upended U.S. politics.
The winner will inherit an anxious nation, angry and distrustful of leaders in Washington. She or he will preside over an economy that is improving but still leaves many behind, and a military less extended abroad than eight years ago yet grappling with new terror threats.
Clinton entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump must prevail in most of the battle battleground states to reach 270 Electoral College votes. Control of the Senate also is at stake; Democrats need to net four seats if Clinton wins the White House. Republicans expect to maintain their House majority.
Like millions of Americans, Clinton and Trump were casting their votes Tuesday morning. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, arrived at their local polling station in Chappaqua, New York, shortly after 8 a.m. as a crowd of cheering supporters snapped photos. Trump was voting in Manhattan.
"The people of this country are incredible," Trump said by telephone on Fox News. He said the campaign has changed him because he has seen "so many hopes and dreams that didn't happen, that could have been helped with proper leadership."
In an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said Clinton can clinch victory if she wins any of the "checkmate" battleground states, especially North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio in that category.
Pushing for high voter turnout, Kaine called the election a "history-making race" and said "democracy always works better when people participate."
The candidates blitzed through the roughly dozen battleground states on Monday, accompanied by their families, political allies and celebrities.
In the campaign's final hours, Clinton was buoyed by FBI Director James Comey's weekend announcement that he would not recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. The inquiry had sapped Clinton's surging momentum at a crucial moment in the race and risked damaging Democrats running in down-ballot races.
Clinton never mentioned the FBI review Monday and appeared already to be preparing for the challenges awaiting her after Tuesday. She bemoaned the caustic election season that sparked so much division, saying she'd come to "regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became."
The centerpiece of Clinton's final campaign swing was a massive rally on Philadelphia's Independence Mall, where she was joined by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as well as President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
"We know enough about my opponent, we know who he is," Clinton said as she addressed the 33,000-person crowd, her largest of the campaign. "The real question for us is what kind of country we want to be."
Trump closed his improbable presidential bid in trademark style, flying across the country in his now-familiar private jet and headlining packed rallies filled with enthusiastic supporters. As he surveyed a crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he declared: "It's been a long journey."
"If we don't win, this will be the single greatest waste of time, energy and money in my life," Trump said as he ended a marathon final day of campaigning in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "We have to win."
Having made the new FBI review a centerpiece of his closing case to voters, Trump said Clinton was being protected by a "totally rigged system."
"You have one magnificent chance to beat the corrupt system and deliver justice," Trump implored his supporters. "Do not let this opportunity slip away."
While the candidate previously has suggested he wouldn't accept defeat, one of Trump's sons said Tuesday that "all we've wanted was a fair fight."
Asked if his father would concede, Eric Trump said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," "If he loses and it's legit and fair, and there's not obvious stuff out there then without question, yes."
Almost 45 million people cast ballots in advance voting before Election Day. About half of those votes were cast under the shadow of the FBI director's initial announcement of a new email review.
Clinton is banking on high turnout particularly among Obama's young, diverse coalition of voters to carry her over the finish line. Several states with advance voting have reported record turnout, including Florida and Nevada, whose booming Hispanic populations are expected to pull for Clinton.
In Florida alone, Hispanic participation was up by more than 453,000 votes, nearly doubling the 2012 level.
In Nevada, where more than three-fourths of expected ballots have been cast, Democrats lead 42 percent to 36 percent.
___
Associated Press writers Vivian Salama, Bradley Klapper, Kathleen Hennessey, Hope Yen, Jonathan Lemire, Steve Peoples, Josh Lederman, Jill Colvin and Lisa Lerer contributed to this report.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
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ATLANTIC CITY The introduction of casinos to the resort four decades ago has been both a blessing and a curse for businesses such as One Sto
SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) Straining toward the finish line of the wildly unpredictable White House race, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump blitzed through battleground states Monday in a final bid to energize supporters. Clinton urged voters to embrace a "hopeful, inclusive, bighearted America," while Trump called for support to "beat the corrupt system."
The candidates planned to campaign late into the night, a frenzied end to a bitter election year that has laid bare the nation's deep economic and cultural divides.
Clinton opened the day Monday buoyed by FBI Director James Comey's announcement Sunday that he would not recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. The inquiry had sapped a surging Clinton momentum at a crucial moment in the race, though she still heads into Election Day with multiple paths to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the nation's first female president.
"I think I have some work to do to bring the country together," she acknowledged as she boarded her plane for her last battleground tour. "I really do want to be the president for everybody."
Looking beyond Election Day, Clinton said in a radio interview that she hopes Trump will play a "constructive role" in helping bring the country together if she defeats him.
Trump was aggressive to the end, slamming Clinton as the "face of failure." Having made the new FBI review a centerpiece of his closing case to voters, he argued that the Democrat was being protected by a "totally rigged system."
"You have one magnificent chance to beat the corrupt system and deliver justice," Trump said. "Do not let this opportunity slip away."
The comments were a reminder that Comey's news, delivered in a letter to lawmakers on Sunday, was a doubled-edged sword for Clinton. While it vindicated her claims that the emails would not yield new evidence, it ensured that a controversy that has dogged her campaign from the start would follow her through Election Day.
Across the country, nearly 24 million early ballots were cast under the shadow of Comey's initial announcement of a new email review. That number represents more than half of the roughly 42.5 million people who had cast votes by Monday afternoon, according to Associated Press data.
The inquiry involved material found on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman and estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide. Comey said Sunday the FBI reviewed communications "to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state."
Clinton tried to fly above the controversy Monday and was not expected to address the matter during stops in Michigan and North Carolina. She was also headlining an evening rally in Philadelphia with President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, along with rock stars Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
Nearing the end of his two terms in the White House, Obama was nostalgic as he launched his own busy day of events, noting that he was probably making his last campaign swing for the foreseeable future.
"Whatever credibility I have earned after eight years as president, I am asking you to trust me on this. I am voting for Hillary Clinton," Obama said.
Clinton is banking in part on high turnout particularly among Obama's young, diverse coalition of voters to carry her over the finish line Tuesday. Roughly half the states with advance voting have reported record turnout, including Florida and Nevada, which have booming Hispanic populations, a possible good sign for Clinton.
In Florida alone, Hispanic participation is up by more than 453,000 votes, nearly doubling the 2012 level. Black turnout is up compared to 2012, but that share of the total vote is lower due to bigger jumps among Latinos and whites, according to University of Florida professor Daniel Smith
In Nevada, where more than three-fourths of expected ballots have been cast, Democrats also lead, 42 percent to 36 percent.
Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie downplayed the impact of increased Hispanic participation, telling reporters on a conference call, "We feel that we're going to get a good share of those votes." However, he sidestepped two questions about the level of Hispanic vote Trump needs to win the presidency.
Without victories in Florida and Nevada, Trump's path to 270 electoral votes would be exceedingly narrow. He already must win nearly all of the roughly dozen battleground states.
Trump planned to campaign at a breakneck pace through Election Day. Following the rally in Florida, he headed to North Carolina and then was off to Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. After voting in New York Tuesday morning, After that, Trump was to return to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and New Hampshire.
Midway through his travels Monday, Trump praised his supporters for having created a "movement." But he warned it would all slip away if he loses Tuesday.
"Go vote," he urged. "Or honestly, we've all wasted our time."
___
Associated Press writers Kathleen Hennessey, Hope Yen, Jonathan Lemire and Steve Peoples in Washington and Josh Lederman in Ann Arbor, Michigan, contributed to this report.
_
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC, Lisa Lerer at http://twitter.com/llerer and Jill Colvin at http://twitter.com/colvinj
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Donald Trump got an unexpected vote in New Jersey Tuesday morning.
Congressman Frank LoBiondo (R-2nd District) voted for Trump despite pulling his endorsement of the Republican candidate last month, according to spokesman Jason Galanes.
Galanes said that LoBiondo decided on Monday that he would vote for Trump because of the lingering questions surrounding Hillary Clintons emails and use of a private server.
The issue was raised again when FBI Director James Comey wrote a letter to congress 11 days before the election saying that the case had been reopened because of emails found in the investigation of former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
LoBiondo, Cole vie for N.J. 2nd Congressional District seat Incumbent U.S. Rep. Frank Lobiondo (R) and David Cole (D) will appear on the ballot for New
Comey announced on Sunday that his conclusion to not recommend criminal charges against Clinton had not changed. The case was then closed.
Still, Galanes said that Clinton was 100 percent unacceptable, which led to LoBiondo voting for Trump. Galanes said that the congressman has not changed his views on what Trump has done or said throughout the campaign.
As you head to the polls today, you probably will hope that more of the mild sunshine youll see will appear on the weather ballot for the weeks ahead. Voters will be treated to the warmest day of the forecast, as temperatures soar through the 60s thanks to plentiful sunshine and light offshore breezes.
While the sunshine will remain in office in South Jersey for six of the next seven days, the milder temperatures will be short-lived. The reason may have to do with what could become one of the signature characteristics of the upcoming weather pattern this winter: roller coaster temperatures.
In fact, the next seven days may be a microcosm of what our midwinter pattern will hold in store frequent temperature swings between cold and warm, but swings that are short-lived and never fully locked in.
For example, afternoon highs on our Election Day may be just a few degrees shy of 70. By Saturday, the coldest air of the fall to date will keep highs from reaching 50. But in both cases, the temperature extremes will last only a day or so.
But unlike the coming winter, which I forecast to be rather active in terms of storminess, the next seven days look rather tranquil, minus the up-and-down temperatures. Theres only one chance of rain, and that will arrive Wednesday as some occasional showers break up what has been a relatively dry stretch of weather since late October.
There is the threat of a more sizable storm, with a chance for a steadier and more soaking rain, toward the middle of next week in an otherwise quiet forecast.
Saturday may be noteworthy as it may be our first day this fall with a high temperature stuck in the 40s. During the past 10 years, that normally happened during the first half of November, so theres nothing exceptional about the timing. But given the chilly air and gusty winds, the weekend may begin with a December-like feel.
Patriotism honored by respecting flag
Regarding the Oct. 24 letter, Protesting anthem free speech:
Apparently, the writer is unaware of the flag code and also the reason Francis Scott Key penned The Star Spangled Banner.
During the War of 1812, the British were again trying to gain control of America. The British fleet of over one hundred ships was anchored in the Baltimore Harbor near Fort McHenry. The flagship hold was filled with American prisoners, and British sailors were being held at the fort.
Francis Scott Key was sent to the ship to negotiate the exchange of prisoners. The captain agreed to the exchange, but before it could be carried out the admiral came aboard and said that if the flag could withstand British guns bombarding it through the night, the exchange would be made and the British ships would leave the area.
Bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. By the dawns early light, though tattered and torn, it stood. The admiral was amazed. How could he know that American patriots had held that flag? When one man died, another took his place.
People who wish to dishonor have the option of moving to another country.
Elizabeth Gill-Bailey
Millville
Food aid for poor seniors, not students in college
Regarding the Oct. 23 story, Food-stamp challenge leaves Stockton student hungry:
Living on food stamps limits options what? Why do college students get food vouchers?
When my daughter went to college, I was responsible to pay for a food package. She also worked when in college and in the summer for extra money to buy what she needed even worked at the Casbah in Trump Taj Mahal but she got through college without food assistance. Leave the food stamps for the elderly with low incomes.
Linda Keyser
Margate
Riots chased food stores
Regarding the Oct. 23 story, How some people are bringing healthy food to poor neighborhoods:
The story talks about local food deserts. Has everyone forgotten about the mass riots in the streets where the stores were broken into and everything stolen off the shelves? The stores closed and moved out, never to return.
John Viola Sr.
Newfield
Check out our continued election coverage here:
10:15 p.m.
10:00 p.m.
David Cole acknowledges loss in Congress race to Frank LoBiondo. "I am going to be part of this fight as long as you'll have me." pic.twitter.com/z0Ih1FspRG Martin DeAngelis (@PressBeach) November 9, 2016
9:55 p.m.
John Armstrong won second term as Absecon mayor. #acpress pic.twitter.com/bKVJ46aOMl Martin DeAngelis (@PressBeach) November 9, 2016
9:30 p.m.
With 20% of the state reporting, its 79% to 21% margin against North Jersey Casinos. This is a huge margin, more than polls. #ElectionNight Nicholas Huba (@ACPressHuba) November 9, 2016
9:25 p.m.
With 78 percent of the districts in Ocean County reporting, its a 84% to 16% margin against North Jersey Casinos. #ElectionNight Nicholas Huba (@ACPressHuba) November 9, 2016
9:20 p.m.
Chuck Lear takes Cape May Mayor's race by a landslide Brian Ianieri (@BIanieri) November 9, 2016
9:15p.m.
With 70 percent reporting in Atlantic County: its a 93% to 7% margin against North Jersey Casinos. #ElectionNight Nicholas Huba (@ACPressHuba) November 9, 2016
9:00p.m.
Dem Chair Suleiman announces that John Armstrong wins Absecon mayors race. Also cheers for Clinton win in NJ. #acpress Martin DeAngelis (@PressBeach) November 9, 2016
8:45 p.m.
Linwood votes for elected school board 1,866 to 1,512 unofficial results show. Diane D'Amico (@ACPressDamico) November 9, 2016
8:00 p.m. According to the Associated Press, Hillary Clinton wins New Jersey for the presidential race.
7:30 p.m. Three out of four New Jersey voters had decided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by September, according an exit poll conducted for the Associated Press.
New Jersey has 14 electoral votes up for grabs.
6:40 p.m.
Some voters said they were confused by the wording on a New Jersey ballot question about dedicating all money collected by the states fuel taxes to transportation projects. But no matter how they interpreted it, most people said they supported the basic idea behind it.
They shouldnt be spending it on any other things, said Gabriel Henao, as he left the polls with Brianna Federico of Ventnor, who also voted for the question.
Louis Kessler said he voted no because he doesnt believe it will do any good. And Donna Johnson said she voted for it, just because I hope it will do some good.
I know that in New Jersey, everyone has to get their hands on everything, she said.
6 p.m.:
In Vineland, where the mayor and city council seats are up for election, all three campaigns were busy trying to get out the vote.
On Sixth Street, Robert Romanos team was working the phones and checking voter registration lists.
A block away on Landis Avenue, supporters of Mayor Ruben Bermudez were doing the same thing. They were also organizing rides to the polls.
Bermudez, who is seeking a second term, appeared confident he would regain the mayors office.
Just a few more hours, he said.
Meanwhile, City Council President Anthony Fanucci has dispatched his campaign team to the North Italy Hall, where he expected a victory celebration.
In Millville, where a one-year City Commission term is being contested, some people said they waited up for an hour in line to vote.
Officials at the Cumberland County Board of Elections said long lines were being reported throughout the day at various polling places.
They said they had no reports of any voter irregularity.
5:45 p.m.:
In Ventnor, one regular topic of conversation around polling places was a local ballot question on whether up to three local restaurants should get licenses to sell drinks. For more than a century, liquor stores in the city have sold booze, but restaurants have all been BYOB.
I said yes. Im tired of everyone going to Margate for cocktails with dinner, said Harriet Shore, a Ventnor resident since 1951.
But a bit later, near the Boardwalk, Chris Breece said hes concerned about losing a local amenity he enjoys.
I worry that the culture of the BYOBs would disappear, he said.
4:30 p.m.:
Voters in North Wildwood had the chance Tuesday on whether the city should change its name to Anglesa.
I think its just a better idea to just form all the towns together, said Sarah Fullerton, 22. I feel like a name change like that only creates confusion.
The issue is on the ballot as a nonbinding referendum. Mayor Patrick Rosenello said residents shouldnt expect any immediate change if the measure is approved.
3:05 p.m.:
U.S. Congressman Frank LoBiondo voted for Donald Trump on Tuesday despite pulling his endorsement of the Republican candidate last month, according to spokesman Jason Galanes.
2:50 p.m.:
Final numbers on voter turnout in Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties will not be available until tonight, officials said, but there were crowds and lines early this morning at some South Jersey polls.
"From what I have heard and observed, polls appear to be busier than in recent elections, though we do not have actual numbers at this time," said Linda Gilmore, Atlantic County spokeswoman. "Today's beautiful weather may also have encouraged a stronger turnout."
2:30 p.m.:
In Republican stronghold Cape May County, a surprising number of respondents spoke about voting in Democratic candidates for Board of Freeholders and House of Representatives.
Michele Meeds, 62, of Middle Township voted all Democrat Tuesday morning at the municipal building on Mechanic Street.
It does seem (US Rep. Frank) LoBiondo has done a great job, she said. I dont have anything against him.
Meeds said her vote for Democrat David Cole was to change the direction of Congress.
With a Republican Congress, well have more of the same and Im tired of that, Meeds said.
She also selected the Democratic Cape May County Freeholder candidates Dan Kurkowski and John Amenhauser for the same reason, as there are currently no Democrats on the freeholder board.
Im kind of a lone voice around here, Meeds said of the majority Republican county.
Chris Hemberger, 35, of Upper Township, an Atlantic City firefighter, voted at the Seaville Fire House. He went Democratic in the race for freeholder, but voted Republican for the House.
Hemberger supported Republican incumbent Frank LoBiondo due to his support of firefighters.
I think hes been beneficial to my profession, Hemberger said.
Greta Schwartz, 49, of Upper Township voted Democratic this election, including for the House of Representatives candidate David Cole. She said she wants to see a change in Congress.
Obviously, nobody can get anything done if everyone is fighting, she said.
***
Barbara Randolph, 52, was in front of the Uptown School Complex polling location in Atlantic City this morning and was the first to vote. She said she waited outside to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton since 5 a.m. Tuesday.
I came out for the whole ticket ... to make change, to make a positive, strong change in our community, she said.
Randolph said, as steady voters filed in to cast their vote, that people coming out to vote and care about the election isn't new in her area.
Its always been like that here. The thing about the residents, they do come out to vote," she said.
Francine Stevenson, 68, was out at the Uptown School Complex polling location by 6:15 a.m., saying she cast her vote for Hillary Clinton.
With everything thats been going on in the election, Im just so glad that his day has come. Everyone can relax and just get on with our regular life, she said.
Early Tuesday morning, Michael Waszen, Sr. painted white over a large sign with the word TRUMP on it. It wasn't to deface the sign he co-owns on S. Pomona Road and Duerer Street in Galloway Township, he told a reporter. It was to make more room for people to sign their names to it. "I think Mr. Trump would be the best president we'd have for a long time, since Ronald Reagan," Waszen Sr. said.
***
South Jersey voters will have plenty to voice their opinions on at the polls Tuesday.
In Ventnor, voters could choose to finally let restaurants sell alcohol. Restaurants could still be BYOB as well.
Linwood may decide to change from an appointed to an elected school board.
Vineland, Absecon, Upper and Cape May all have local elections.
Meanwhile Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties have freeholder seats up for election. Atlantic County voters will also choose a county clerk.
And last, but not least, voters will be choosing a new president.
***
Tweets from early Election Day in South Jersey:
"I'm excited to make that change," Randolph said this morning. She said "the thing about" Atlantic City residents is they care about issues pic.twitter.com/jEYMiqbUrp Erin Serpico (@ACPressSerpico) November 8, 2016
"People actually lived and died for this," says Tom Hill, 66, on why he voted pic.twitter.com/rsFBjdQhV7 Erin Serpico (@ACPressSerpico) November 8, 2016
97-year-old James Smyth voted @HillaryClinton "I've always thought she did a good job no matter what she did" #acpress #southjerseyvotes pic.twitter.com/b14hZy97ZR Claire Lowe (@clairelowe) November 8, 2016
Red Sky Cafe owner Greta Schwartz voted No on North Jersey casinos #acpress #southjerseyvotes #Election2016 pic.twitter.com/D2ifTk8g5t Claire Lowe (@clairelowe) November 8, 2016
Connie Goldman, of Smithville, made a special hat today for her vote for #TrumpPence16 pic.twitter.com/ztWOfwn3dZ Nicole Leonard (@ACPressNLeonard) November 8, 2016
Michael Waszen, Sr., co-owner of Trump sign on S. Pomona Rd. & Duerer St., paints over signatures so more pple can sign board today #acpress pic.twitter.com/d8Dzryv42B Nicole Leonard (@ACPressNLeonard) November 8, 2016
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.
Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.
Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.
to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.
Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.
View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.
Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.
Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.
NORTH CHICAGO, Illinois, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
AbbVie Inc. ("AbbVie") (NYSE / CHX / Euronext Paris / SIX: ABBV) today informs its stockholders that it has filed a Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").
AbbVie makes available free of charge on its website its Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, reports filed pursuant to Section 16 of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and amendments to those reports filed with or furnished to the SEC as soon as reasonably practicable after AbbVie electronically files these documents with, or furnishes them to, the SEC. These documents are posted on AbbVie's website at www.abbvieinvestor.com.
The SEC maintains a website that contains reports, proxy statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC. These materials may be obtained electronically by accessing the SEC's home page at http://www.sec.gov.
Copies of the above referenced information will also be made available, free of charge, upon written request to AbbVie Inc., Investors Relations, 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, Illinois 60064, U.S.A.
CONTACT: AbbVie Inc., 1-847-938-8745
This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.
SOURCE AbbVie, Inc.
- Leadership position based on market share figures published by consulting firm Frost & Sullivan
- Atento is the clear leader in Latin America with 18.3% market share, a 9-point advantage over its closest competitor
- Atento increases leadership position in key markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru
NEW YORK, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Atento S.A. (NYSE: ATTO) the leading provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing services (CRM/BPO) in Latin America, and one of the three top providers worldwide, announced that Frost & Sullivan, the global consulting company specializing in growth strategies, published its annual report, "Analysis of the Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market" where it identified Atento, once again, as the clear leader in contact center outsourcing services in Latin America.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150506/214260LOGO
In addition to leading the market at the regional level, Atento expanded market share and strengthen its leadership position in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru. In Brazil, the largest market in Latin America, which accounts for nearly half of the regional contact center outsourcing services revenues, Atento increased its market share to reach 25.6% of the total market. Widening the gap with other market players and strengthening its leadership position in the regions most important market.
Alejandro Reynal, Atentos Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Atentos sustained leadership position in the Latin American contact center outsourcing services market is a direct result of our Companys long-lasting client relationships, deep vertical expertise, differentiated customer experience solutions and highly motivated employees. Every day we contribute to this leadership position by developing innovative and high-added value solutions for our clients that generate customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. I would like to thank all of our clients and employees for their ongoing support which has helped us maintain the top position in this regional market and its key geographies over the years."
Atento is the leader by market share in Latin America, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Chile according to Frost & Sullivan1
Latin America Latin
America- Domestic2 Latin
America-Shore3 Brazil Mexico Argentina Peru Chile 18.3%
(#1) 24%
(#1) 19.4%
(#1) 25.6%
(#1) 16.9%
[29%]2
(#1) 19.7%
(#1) 34.7%
(#1) 25.2%
(#1) 1Market share figures as stated in the "Analysis of the Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market" annual study by Frost & Sullivan. The base year is 2015 and the forecast period is from 2016 to 2021 2The Latin America-Domestic business revenues accounted for $7.24 billion or 72.1% of the total market in 2015. Atentos Latin America-Domestic business market share figures are not part of Frost & Sullivan analysis and they have been calculated according to our company estimations. According to these estimations, Atentos share of the domestic business market in Latin America was ~ 24% in 2015, while in Mexico Atentos share in the domestic market reached ~ 29% in the same year 3 Latin America-Shore business market share refers to revenue generated by serving Latin American consumers from delivery centers located in a different Latin American country, e.g., service provider "X" serving Argentinean consumers from its delivery site in Peru
The "Analysis of the Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market" annual study by Frost & Sullivan examines the trends in the Latin American contact center outsourcing services market and forecasts the market size. The study provides extensive coverage of services delivered in each local market and those provided from Latin American countries to others overseas. The study shows data for outsourcing services alone, excluding operations performed in-house and in shared services centers. Contact center outsourcing is considered by the report as a subset of the broader business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Key takeaways of the Frost & Sullivan report include:
The contact center outsourcing services market in Latin America attained $10.05 billion in revenue in 2015 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.8% through 2021
attained in revenue in 2015 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.8% through 2021 Brazil and Mexico represent 41.1% and 14.3% respectively of the total Latin American market in terms of revenue. Atento is a clear market leader in both countries with 25.6% and 16.9% of share respectively
and represent 41.1% and 14.3% respectively of the total Latin American market in terms of revenue. Atento is a clear market leader in both countries with 25.6% and 16.9% of share respectively By vertical markets, the Telecom & Media and the Banking & Financial Services (BFS) verticals represent over 70% of the markets demand in Latin America in 2015
in 2015 Traditional customer service accounts for over half of the markets revenue (54.1%) while back office, tech support, and other BPO services such as logistics, finance and accounting, and consulting are expected to grow the fastest among all services
Voice channel still represents 87.6% of the revenue in the region by 2015 and it will remain the largest channel for the foreseeable future. Alternative channels, such as chat & web collaboration, social media, email, SMS (Short Message Services), and face-to-face, are expected to account for 15.5% of the market in 2021
The offshoring business in Latin America grew at a YOY rate of 10.5% in 2015, reaching $2.80 billion revenue, driven by the US market (nearshore revenue generated by serving US consumers from delivery centers located in Latin America ) and the Latin American shore services
grew at a YOY rate of 10.5% in 2015, reaching revenue, driven by the US market (nearshore revenue generated by serving US consumers from delivery centers located in ) and the Latin American shore services From a competitive standpoint, Latin America is the most concentrated market worldwide, with 3 major market participants accounting for 34.6% of the total market revenue. In other regions, such as North America , Europe and Asia-Pacific , this figure does not surpass 20%
is the most concentrated market worldwide, with 3 major market participants accounting for 34.6% of the total market revenue. In other regions, such as , and , this figure does not surpass 20% Major market participants are looking to become digital transformation partners for their clients, providing increasingly complex services, including logistics, finance and accounting, human resources, software development, document management, consulting and other BPO solutions
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "intends," "continue" or similar terminology. These statements reflect only Atento's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance or results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, competition in Atento's highly competitive industries; increases in the cost of voice and data services or significant interruptions in these services; Atento's ability to keep pace with its clients' needs for rapid technological change and systems availability; the continued deployment and adoption of emerging technologies; the loss, financial difficulties or bankruptcy of any key clients; the effects of global economic trends on the businesses of Atento's clients; the non-exclusive nature of Atento's client contracts and the absence of revenue commitments; security and privacy breaches of the systems Atento uses to protect personal data; the cost of pending and future litigation; the cost of defending Atento against intellectual property infringement claims; extensive regulation affecting many of Atento's businesses; Atento's ability to protect its proprietary information or technology; service interruptions to Atento's data and operation centers; Atento's ability to retain key personnel and attract a sufficient number of qualified employees; increases in labor costs and turnover rates; the political, economic and other conditions in the countries where Atento operates; changes in foreign exchange rates; Atento's ability to complete future acquisitions and integrate or achieve the objectives of its recent and future acquisitions; future impairments of our substantial goodwill, intangible assets, or other long-lived assets; and Atento's ability to recover consumer receivables on behalf of its clients. In addition, Atento is subject to risks related to its level of indebtedness. Such risks include Atento's ability to generate sufficient cash to service its indebtedness and fund its other liquidity needs; Atento's ability to comply with covenants contained in its debt instruments; the ability to obtain additional financing; the incurrence of significant additional indebtedness by Atento and its subsidiaries; and the ability of Atento's lenders to fulfill their lending commitments. Atento is also subject to other risk factors described in documents filed by the company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which the statements were made. Atento undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the global growth consulting company, has been helping customers develop innovative strategies for more than 50 years. Frost & Sullivan caters to a high number of customers, including some that are ranked within the Top 1000 global companies, start-ups and investors. The company comprehensively covers all industries from a unique and global perspective and combines permanent market and technological analysis with econometric and demographic data. Is your organization prepared for the next wave of profound convergence within the industry, cutting-edge technologies, the increase in competitive intensity, new megatrends, the best innovative practices, the changing dynamics of customers and emerging economies? For further information, visit www.frost.com
About Atento
Atento is the largest provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing (CRM BPO) services in Latin America, and among the top three providers globally, based on revenues. Atento is also a leading provider of nearshoring CRM/BPO services to companies that carry out their activities in the United States. Since 1999, the company has developed its business model in 14 countries where it employs more than 150,000 people. Atento has over 400 clients to whom it offers a wide range of CRM/BPO services through multiple channels. Atento's clients are mostly leading multinational corporations in sectors such as telecommunications, banking and financial services, health, retail and public administrations, among others. Atentos shares trade under the symbol ATTO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In 2016, Atento was named one of the Worlds 25 Best Multinational Workplaces by Great Place to Work for a fourth consecutive year. For more information visit www.atento.com
Related Links
http://www.atento.com
SOURCE Atento S.A.
HONG KONG, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Leading offshore law firm Carey Olsen has opened in Hong Kong as part of the continued expansion of its network in Asia.
The Hong Kong practice has a dispute resolution and insolvency focus, with partner Michael Makridakis having recently relocated to Hong Kong from the firm's Cayman Islands office, where he established and led its dispute resolution and insolvency team.
The opening of the Hong Kong office in November 2016 follows the successful launch of the firm's Singapore office by lead Asia partner, Linda Lee, in October last year. Carey Olsen recently expanded its corporate legal practice in Singapore with the relocation of partner Anthony McKenzie from the firm's Cayman office.
The Hong Kong office will advise on the full spectrum of contentious, semi-contentious and offshore advisory work. This will include domestic and international restructuring and insolvency, corporate and commercial disputes, banking and financial services litigation, trusts litigation as well as fraud, asset tracing and regulatory disputes.
Michael Makridakis, who will continue to work alongside Carey Olsen's dispute resolution and insolvency practices in the British Virgin Islands and Cayman as well as Guernsey and Jersey, said: "The growth in demand for offshore legal services in Asia has created a parallel demand for offshore litigation services and we have an increasing number of clients requiring advice in relation to disputes and insolvency matters in the region.
"Our Hong Kong office provides clients and referrers with access to offshore dispute resolution and insolvency specialists who are in the same time zone and who have a thorough understanding of the Asian market."
Linda Lee, Carey Olsen's head of Asia, said: "The provision of offshore dispute resolution and insolvency services in Hong Kong complements our corporate, finance and investment funds offering in Singapore and begins the next chapter of Carey Olsen's Asia story."
Carey Olsen managing partner, Alex Ohlsson, said: "Our disputes and insolvency teams in BVI and Cayman have a long-standing record of advising Asian-based clients, making an office on the ground in Hong Kong a logical step.
"Hong Kong is a thriving business centre and we look forward to extending our footprint in Asia and to building on Carey Olsen's success in the region."
With 49 partners and 200 lawyers, Carey Olsen is one of the largest offshore law firms. It provides advice on British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Jersey law from a network of eight international offices covering all time zones and key financial markets.
The firm's notable recent dispute resolution and insolvency work in the region includes:
Acting for Clearwater Capital Partners, a holder of US dollar bonds issued by China Shanshui Cement Limited, a Hong Kong listed cement making company with a number of factories in the PRC.
listed cement making company with a number of factories in the PRC. Acting for KPMG, the Court appointed inspectors and now provisional liquidators of Greens Holdings Limited, a Hong Kong listed company that makes heat transfer products for power stations with a number of factories in the PRC.
listed company that makes heat transfer products for power stations with a number of factories in the PRC. Acting for certain beneficiaries of the PAN FAMILY TRUST in "Beddoe" proceedings commenced by the Cayman Islands Trustee relating to the question of whether the Trustee should participate in matrimonial proceedings in Hong Kong .
. Acting for PWC as the joint official liquidators of Ardon Maroon Asia Dragon Feeder Fund.
Acting for KPMG, the official liquidators of Vision Capital Ltd and Tharawat Capital, to advise as they wind up the affairs of these companies which were established to carry on the business of a gold sukuk investment project in the UAE.
SOURCE Carey Olsen
ASHFORD, England, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
CXK, the Kent based charity supporting disadvantaged young people, has appointed Pauline Smith as its new Chief Executive. She will take over from Interim Chief Executive, Matthew Roberts, at the beginning of February 2017.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161108/437153 )
Pauline is currently Director of Services for Norwood, one of the largest Jewish charities providing a wide range of information, support and innovative services for vulnerable children, young people, adults and families. She has a strong background in this sector having previously worked for Kent County Council in a number of leading education, skills, training, development and employment roles for over 20 years. Over the same period, she has devoted one month of her personal time each year to visit India to support two orphanages, a women's refuge, two learning disability charities and an HIV centre.
Commenting on her appointment CXK Chairman, David Philpott, said: "We had a strong response to this job opportunity and Pauline is our preferred applicant following an extensive and rigorous interview process. She demonstrated her deep-rooted passion, energy and commitment to work with us on our mission to empower individuals and communities to break the cycles of disadvantage and live the lives they choose.
"It is a challenging time for all in our sector with funding streams under severe pressure and we are confident that Pauline will give CXK, our supporters and beneficiaries the leadership it requires to build on our solid foundations of innovation, delivery and success."
Pauline Smith said: "I am very excited and delighted that the trustees have chosen me to lead CXK through the next stage of its development. Making a difference in this world is what motivates, inspires and drives me. I intend to champion the charity and its staff who provide vital high quality services and support to so many people, especially young people who need help to make the most of their life and career opportunities. It is a big challenge but one I relish. I am really looking forward to getting my feet under the table and getting on with the job in hand."
Notes to Editors
CXK is a charitable organisation delivering a range of services across the South East to support young people. In particular we provide them with advice, guidance, skills and the confidence that will help them to progress into education, employment and training.
http://www.cxk.org
For further information on CXK, please contact David Ing at CFA on:
Telephone: +44(0)1622-754295
Email: David.Ing@cfa-group.com
SOURCE CXK
HATFIELD, England, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
FOR UK MEDIA ONLY: NOT FOR AUSTRIAN/SWISS JOURNALISTS
Eisai today announces the initiation of a multicentre, randomised phase II clinical study of lemborexant (development code: E2006) in people with Irregular Sleep-Wake Rhythm Disorder (ISWRD) and mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Lemborexant is an oral dual orexin receptor antagonist discovered by Eisai and developed by Eisai and Purdue Pharma L.P.
ISWRD is a type of circadian rhythm sleep disorder characterised by an irregular sleep-wake pattern.[1] Daytime is often composed of multiple naps, whereas nighttime sleep is severely fragmented and shortened.[1]
Study 202 is a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study of the efficacy and safety of lemborexant in 125 participants aged 65 to 90 with ISWRD and mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. The primary objective will be to evaluate the sleep efficiency and wake efficiency during the last four weeks of treatment with lemborexant compared to placebo, measured by actigraphy. An actigraph is a non-invasive device worn on the wrist to assess the circadian rhythm of sleep-wake patterns over several weeks.
A phase III clinical study of lemborexant is also underway in insomnia. Study 304 (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02783729) is a phase III clinical study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of lemborexant in approximately 950 participants, 55 years or older with insomnia disorder.[2] The primary endpoint of the study is change from baseline in mean wake after sleep onset in the second half of the night (WASO2H) compared with zolpidem tartrate.[3] In addition to study 304, three other phase III studies are planned.
Lemborexant is a dual orexin receptor antagonist, which competitively binds to two subtypes of orexin receptors (orexin receptor 1 and 2).[3] The orexin system is a major regulator of the sleep-wake cycle and orexin receptor antagonists have the potential to counteract inappropriately timed nighttime wakefulness and to promote a regular sleep-wake cycle.[4]
"We are aiming to develop lemborexant as a first-in-class medicine for ISWRD to improve sleep and wake patterns for patients with dementia, and as a best-in-class medicine for insomnia disorder. We are striving to deliver lemborexant and contribute to increasing the benefit to patients around the world as soon as possible," comments Dr. Lynn Kramer, Chief Clinical Officer and Chief Medical Officer of Eisai's Neurology Business Group.
The continued development of its neurology portfolio underscores Eisai's human health care (hhc) mission, the company's commitment to innovative solutions in disease prevention, cure and care for the health and wellbeing of people worldwide. Eisai is committed to the therapeutic area of neurology and the unmet medical needs of people with sleep disorders and their families.
About Study 202
Study 202 is a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group phase II clinical study of the efficacy and safety of lemborexant in subjects with ISWRD and mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease dementia. Patients with ISWRD associated with Alzheimer's disease will be administered lemborexant or placebo for 4 weeks to determine whether at least one dose of lemborexant is superior to placebo on the change from baseline of actigraphy mean sleep efficiency and actigraphy wake efficiency during the last week of 4 weeks of treatment.
About Study 304[3] (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02783729)
Study 304 is a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, active comparator, parallel-group phase III clinical study of the efficacy and safety of lemborexant in approximately 950 participants 55 years and older (at least 60% aged 65 years or older) with insomnia disorder.
About Lemborexant
Lemborexant, a dual orexin receptor antagonist, is an in-house discovered and developed small molecule compound by Eisai, which inhibits orexin by binding competitively to two subtypes of orexin neuron receptors (orexin receptor 1 and 2).[4]
About Purdue Pharma L.P.
Purdue Pharma L.P. and associated U.S. companies are privately-held pharmaceutical companies known for pioneering research in chronic pain. Purdue Pharma is engaged in the research, development, production and distribution of prescription and over-the-counter medicines, as well as hospital products. Purdue Pharma is committed to advancing the care of patients with quality products that make a positive impact on healthcare - and on lives. Purdue Pharma's headquarters are located in Stamford, Conn. For more information about Purdue Pharma, please visit http://www.purduepharma.com
About Eisai Co., Ltd.
Eisai Co., Ltd. is a leading global research and development-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Japan. We define our corporate mission as "giving first thought to patients and their families and to increasing the benefits health care provides," which we call our human health care (hhc) philosophy. With over 10,000 employees working across our global network of R&D facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, we strive to realise our hhc philosophy by delivering innovative products in multiple therapeutic areas with high unmet medical needs, including Oncology and Neurology.
As a global pharmaceutical company, our mission extends to patients around the world through our investment and participation in partnership-based initiatives to improve access to medicines in developing and emerging countries.
For more information about Eisai Co., Ltd., please visit http://www.eisai.com
References
1. Zee P, Vitiello M et al. Circadian Rhythm Sleep Disorder: Irregular Sleep Wake Rhythm Type. Sleep Medicine Clinics 2009 1;4:213-218
2. Clinicaltrials.gov. Study of the Efficacy and Safety of Lemborexant in Subjects 55 Years and Older With Insomnia Disorder. Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02783729?term=lemborexant&rank=1 Accessed October 2016
3. Beuckmann C et al. Preclinical Pharmacological Characterisation of E2006, a Novel Dual Orexin Receptor Antagonist for Insomnia Treatment, Poster presented at Japanese Sleep Meeting 2014
4. Scammell T et al. Orexin Receptors: Pharmacology and Therapeutic Opportunities. Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology 2011;51:243-266
November 2016
Corporate-EU0013
SOURCE Eisai
DUBLIN, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global and China Automotive Seating Industry Report, 2016" report to their offering.
Automotive seating saw an ASP of USD723 in 2010 with a market size of USD54 billion. The figures for 2015 were USD790 and USD70.1 billion. It is expected the market size will be valued at USD72.9 billion in 2016, and USD84.3 billion in 2020 when ASP arrives at USD865.
Automotive seating industry, seemingly without technological barriers, is actually a capital-intensive business that does with high-tech expertise. First, automotive seating plants are usually adjacent to car factories, for the products are too large to be transported easily. Therefore, as carmakers add a new production base, automotive seating manufacturers need to follow up. In this case, substantial funds become a must. Second, safety, comfort, and light weight- three requirements on automotive seating- need rich technological accumulation and present high technological threshold. Moreover, a huge number of employees in automotive seating industry pose great challenges to managerial competencies.
Global automotive seating market has grown steadily on account of the two aspects. First, higher barriers in automotive seating industry lead to high market concentration and little competition. Automotive seating manufacturers have a greater say which enables them to raise prices constantly. Second, consumption is upgraded, a phenomenon starkly seen in China where consumers have higher requirements on automotive seating.
The report covers the following:
Composition and function of automotive seating
Size and Trends of global and Chinese automotive seating market
Competitive landscape and trends of global and China's automotive seating industry
automotive seating industry Automotive seating supply chain of major global and Chinese carmakers
Global and Chinese automotive seating manufacturers
Key Topics Covered:
1 Brief Introduction to Automotive Seating
2 Global Automotive Seating Market and Industry
3 China Automotive Seating Market and Industry
4 Automotive Seating Manufacturers
Adient
Brose
DAS
DYMOS
Daewon
Faurecia
GSK
Lear
Magna
NHK Spring
Sitech
TACHI-S
TS
Toyota Boshkou
Wuhan New Yunhe Automotive Seating
For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/kw5t7c/global_and_china
Media Contact:
Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com
For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630
For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907
Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716
Related Links
http://www.researchandmarkets.com
SOURCE Research and Markets
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Infortrend Technology, Inc. (TWSE: 2495) today unveils the premium flagship series "EonStor GS 4000" designed with 32 front-end ports, surpassing all its previous generation storage systems to benefit users with unprecedented advantages in flexibility.
The EonStor GS 4000 aims to provide tremendous flexibility while reducing costs and complexity for building up an IT environment by increasing the number of host ports and supporting multi-protocol data access just in one system. The 32 front-end channel ports enable connectivity for hybrid FC-SAN, IP-SAN, DAS and NAS environment with converged host boards supporting multiple and interchangeable protocols including 8Gb/s or 16Gb/s Fibre Channel, 10GbE iSCSI (SFP+) and FCoE. There is additional support for 1GbE iSCSI, 10GbE iSCSI (RJ45) and 12Gb/s SAS host ports.
As a cloud-integrated unified storage, the EonStor GS 4000 integrates file, block and object services in one system with complete native cloud gateway features. In order to bring users a great experience to boost their cloud applications, Infortrend is offering free cloud license with purchase of any EonStor GS 4000 system till the end of 2016. Click here for more information about the promotion offer.
"By consolidating extreme flexibility and high performance in a single unified storage system, Infortrend's EonStor GS 4000 dramatically simplifies the deployment and management of storage systems while providing future-proof features that meet customers' evolving demands," said Thomas Kao, Senior Director of Product Planning at Infortrend.
For more details about the EonStor GS 4000 series, please click here.
About Infortrend
Infortrend (TWSE: 2495) has been developing and manufacturing storage solutions since 1993. With a strong emphasis on in-house design, testing, and manufacturing, Infortrend storage delivers performance and scalability with the latest standards, user friendly data services, personal after-sales support, and unrivaled value. For more Information, please visit www.infortrend.com
Infortrend and EonStor are trademarks or registered trademarks of Infortrend Technology, Inc., other trademarks property of their respective owners.
Media Contact:
Infortrend Europe Ltd.
Agnieszka Wesolowska
Tel:+44-1256-305-220
E-mail: marketing.eu@infortrend.com
Related Links
http://www.infortrend.com
SOURCE Infortrend Technology, Inc.
DUBLIN, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Facial Wipes Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.
The global facial wipes market to grow at a CAGR of 9% during the period 2016-2020.
Global Facial Wipes Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global facial wipes market. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the retail sales of different types of facial wipes to individual consumers.
One trend gaining popularity in the market is Increased focus on eco-friendly wipes. Currently, rising consumer expectations and pollution figures have necessitated manufacturers of facial wipes to consider the post-consumer life of their products. Therefore, global brands are phasing out microbeads, and many cleansing wipe products are being formulated without plastic bits such as synthetic polymers (polyester) or with sustainable alternatives. In addition, consumers have become aware of the environmental issues and prefer products that are eco-friendly.
According to the report, Smaller packs and multipurpose facial wipes will be driving growth in the market. Convenience and portability are the two major factors considered by consumers when they buy facial wipes. To specifically target the varying needs of consumers, manufacturers of skincare products are introducing smaller or travel-sized packs of facial wipes. These smaller packs are portable and are available at low costs. Such advantages offered by smaller packs create a value proposition for consumers who lead a hectic lifestyle and who travel frequently. Developed markets such as the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, and Australia have a relatively high penetration of smaller packs of facial wipes.
Further, the report states that managing inventory is always a crucial strategy concern for the global beauty products industry. The stocking game rules and perspectives evolve along with changing shopping patterns of consumers. Consumers' preferences change faster, which require faster inventory turnover requirements. Skincare products suppliers or manufacturers then must adjust to smaller orders placed by wholesalers and retailers, and improve inventory turnaround times. This predominantly puts pressure on the manufacturers' raw material, quality control, transportation, and labor costs.
Key vendors
Beiersdorf
Estee Lauder
Johnson & Johnson
Kimberly-Clark
P&G
Unilever
Other prominent vendors
Amway
Avon Products
Chanel
Kao
L'Oreal
LVMH
Mary Kay
O Boticario
Revlon
Shiseido
Key Topics Covered:
Part 01: Executive summary
Part 02: Scope of the report
Part 03: Market research methodology
Part 04: Introduction
Part 05: Market landscape
Part 06: Market segmentation by product category
Part 07: Retail format segmentation
Part 08: Geographical segmentation
Part 09: Key leading countries
Part 10: Market drivers
Part 11: Impact of drivers
Part 12: Market challenges
Part 13: Impact of drivers and challenges
Part 14: Market trends
Part 15: Vendor landscape
Part 16: Appendix
For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/srrwbm/global_facial
Media Contact:
Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com
For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630
For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907
Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716
Related Links
http://www.researchandmarkets.com
SOURCE Research and Markets
SAP on AWS Managed Service Delivers Increased Agility and Cost Optimisation for Enterprise SAP Environments
LONDON, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Attenda Limited, an Ensono company, today launched its SAP on AWS managed service at AWS Enterprise Summit, ExCel, London, expanding its existing suite of AWS managed services for the enterprise.
The Attenda SAP on AWS service enables enterprise organisations to leverage cost and capacity optimisation, and ease of deployment benefits derived through blending SAP with AWS. Whether in production or non-production environments or enhancing existing disaster recovery capabilities, clients can experience a myriad of benefits with the Attenda SAP on AWS service.
"We extended our AWS managed service capabilities to address the increasing pressure on our clients to deliver agile, scalable SAP services," said Oliver Presland, Director of Service Strategy, Attenda. "We believe that the market will be receptive to the availability of enterprise grade SAP on AWS managed services and consultancy delivered by an experienced AWS MSP with years of experience operating business critical SAP systems."
Attenda was accredited as an AWS Managed Services Partner (AWS MSP) in May 2016, having built up an AWS Competency Centre since first launching its AWS managed service in 2012. The integration of Attenda's AWS and SAP Competency Centres provides clients with the skills, expertise, and services required to take full advantage of AWS for SAP, throughout the application lifecycle.
Attenda's AWS Managed Services include a suite of service offerings Elastic Web Applications, Enterprise Applications, Business Intelligence, AWS Enablement Services, and SAP on AWS. These services are an integral part of Attenda's Hybrid IT delivery and integration capability, built upon its Attenda M.O. Hybrid IT Service Management platform, running, managing and governing business critical applications across multiple locations, including AWS data centres.
Attenda is participating in the AWS Enterprise Summit 2016, on Stand S10, ExCel, London, 8th November 2016.
About Attenda Limited, an Ensono company
Attenda, an Ensono company, is a pure-play UK Critical Applications and Hybrid IT managed services provider, specialising in running business critical applications. Attenda's Business Critical IT approach combines business outcome focus with a structured engagement methodology, and a comprehensive services and infrastructure portfolio.
Through an understanding of Clients' needs, Attenda provides independent advice to facilitate the right choices, modernising IT estates through the delivery of platform and location independent managed services that align to business outcomes. Attenda's continual governance of these IT services enables Clients to focus on their business strategy, driving innovation and enhancing stakeholder value.
Attenda has built up a commanding market reputation, with the industry's leading accreditations and an unrivalled portfolio of UK enterprise Clients including BSi, CVC, Nisa, Princes, reed.co.uk, Regus and Travelodge. Attenda carries a rich array of industry accreditations including ISO9001, ISO27001, ISO20000 and ISO22301, and partner accreditations including Microsoft, AWS, VMware and SAP.
Attenda has been recognised by Gartner in its Magic Quadrants for the last three years, and the company is ranked 19th in The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For 2016. Visit us at www.attenda.com.
About Ensono
Ensono is a hybrid IT services provider that collaborates with clients to deliver progressive solutions to help them operate their IT infrastructure for today and optimize it for tomorrow. Supporting mission-critical applications and workloads for the world's most successful companies, Ensono spans across all platforms from mainframe to cloud, and everything in between. Headquartered in greater Chicago with offices in North America and Europe, the company is ranked by Information Week 500 for technology innovation and by the Uptime Institute for 100% availability. Visit us at www.ensono.com.
Media Contact:
Attenda, an Ensono Company
Gill Constable
+44 (0)1784 211100
info@attenda.com
Related Links
http://www.ensono.com
SOURCE Ensono
SAN FRANCISCO, November 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --
The global scaffold technology market is anticipated to reach USD 1.5 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc.Evolution of scaffold technology, which facilitates the transplantation process, has created opportunities to address tissue engineering-associated challenges such as vascularization. Also, scaffolds are used in the treatment of damaged and diseased organs or tissues to provide support to implants that are surgically inserted into the patient's body. This is expected to further support the emergence of this vertical.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150105/723757 )
Rise in the aging population and the number of organ defunctionalization cases coupled with the demand for effective treatments are some of the factors promoting the adoption of scaffold technology.
Browse full research report with TOC on "Scaffold Technology Market Size & Forecast, By Product (Hydrogels, Micro-patterned Surface Microplates, Polymeric & Nanofiber Scaffold), By Application, by End-use And Trend Analysis from 2013 To 2024" at: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/scaffold-technology-market
Further Key Findings from the Study Suggest:
In 2015, hydrogels-based scaffolds dominated the market with a share of over 41% with respect to revenue generation owing to their higher availability as well as continual progress in their development. Moreover, their promising use as cartilage tissue engineering scaffolds, which enable simultaneous cell growth and drug delivery, is fueling their adoption.
Even though nanofiber-based scaffolds are estimated to exhibit the lowest market penetration in the current scenario, this segment is expected to witness the fastest growth rate in the coming years due to their ability to mimic the nanoscale properties and structural characteristics of native extracellular matrix; this factor is expected to increase their incorporation in regenerative medicine and other clinical applications.
Biotechnology and pharmaceutical organizations held the largest share in 2015 and are expected to witness considerable growth over the forecast period due to the demand for robust tools in metabolic and toxicology profiling of drug moieties during the process of drug development. Also, several biotechnological companies have begun investing in the development of novel products targeting this vertical, which is expected to boost revenue generation through these entities.
In 2014, North America emerged as one of the largest markets. This is attributable to the developed healthcare infrastructure and presence of large number of key participants operating in this region. Asia pacific is expected to be one of the fastest growing regional segments owing to the rapidly improving infrastructure and favorable government initiatives pertaining to research and development in the pharmaceutical industry.
emerged as one of the largest markets. This is attributable to the developed healthcare infrastructure and presence of large number of key participants operating in this region. pacific is expected to be one of the fastest growing regional segments owing to the rapidly improving infrastructure and favorable government initiatives pertaining to research and development in the pharmaceutical industry. Some of the key players operating the market space include Merck KGaA (Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC);Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.; 3D Biotek LLC; Molecular Matrix, Inc; ReproCELL Europe Ltd (Reinnervate); Xanofi; Pelo Biotech GmbH; Corning, Inc; Becton, Dickinson and Company; 3D Biomatrix; Avacta Life Sciences Limited; Nanofiber Solutions; NuVasive, Inc; Vericel Corporation; Molecular Partners; Acelity (LifeCell Corporation); and Medtronic (Covidien plc).
These players are undertaking different market strategies to maintain their dominance in the market. These strategic endeavors include new product development, acquisitions and mergers, partnerships, and global expansion efforts.
Scaffold technology is considered as the leading candidate employed to perform 3D-culture assays including high throughput screening, cell to matrix interactions, cell to cell interactions, cell migration assays, and transfections, which collectively accounted for the largest segment share in 2015 and is anticipated to witness lucrative growth in the coming years. The significant share is attributed to the increasing use of scaffold technology to study cellular behavior and understand the underlying mechanism of diseases.
Browse related reports by Grand View Research:
Immunomodulators Market- http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/immunomodulators-market
Mononucleosis Diagnostic Market- http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/mononucleosis-diagnostic-market
Glycobiology Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/glycobiology-market
DNA Diagnostics Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/dna-diagnostics-market
Grand View Research has segmented the scaffold technology market on the basis of types, application, end use, and region:
Global Outlook, by Type (Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Hydrogels Polymeric Scaffolds Micro-patterned Surface Microplates Nanofiber-based Scaffolds
Global Outlook, by Application (Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Cancer Tissue Engineering & Clinical Application Drug development Stem cell research Others
Global Outlook, by End Use (Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Organizations Research Laboratories and Institutes Hospitals and Diagnostic Centers Others
Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany UK Asia Pacific China Japan Latin America Brazil MEA South Africa
Access research insight: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/research-insights/scaffold-technology-market-insights-trends-forecast-analysis-report
About Grand View Research
Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.
Read Our Blogs - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/blogs/healthcare
Contact:
Sherry James
Corporate Sales Specialist, USA
Grand View Research, Inc
Phone: 1-415-349-0058
Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519
Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com
Web: http://www.grandviewresearch.com
SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
Organised by UBM Asia, this is the only trade exhibition, hosted by the Vietnam Water Supply and Sewerage Association (VWSA), with strong support from the Administration of Technical Infrastructure, the Ministry of Construction (MOC), International Water Association (IWA), Southeast Asian Water Utilities Network, Singapore Water Association, IESE, Taiwan Drinking Water Equipment Association, Taiwan Environmental Manufacturers Association and other organisations.
The exhibition expects to welcome over 11,000 industry players who are key decision-makers, leaders, managers, consultants, engineers, professionals and trade-visitors working in water supply, wastewater treatment, purification and sewerage from across the region and the world. All participants will have a chance to exchange and get the latest updates on market trends, innovations, solutions and technologies showcased at 13 international pavilions, including EU, France, Germany, Australia, Finland, Belgium, Japan, China, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand and Taiwan, amongst others.
At this 2016 exhibition, participants can learn the latest industry technologies and solutions from 40 topics presented at three-day technical free to attend seminars, workshops, and the first water international conference with the theme "Sustainable Water Supply & Sewerage Development Solutions in the context of Climate Change: Water Resource Degradation, Drought, Saline Intrusion".
Come and join VIETWATER 2016 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm on 9-10 November 2016 and from 9:00 am 4:00 pm on 11 November 2016 at SECC, 799 Nguyen Van Linh, Tan Phu Ward, District 7, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Admission to the exhibition and seminars is free to all trade visitors.
Discover Show Highlights for the three day exhibitions:
Day 1: 09th November 2016
- The Opening Ceremony keynote addressed by Ms. Phan Thi My Linh, Vice Minister, Ministry of Construction, Vietnam and VVIP guests, together with distinguished exhibitors, visitors, delegations and media representatives.
- VVIP meeting with the participation of government representatives and leaders from different water associations.
- 10 insightful topics presented at Vietwater Technical Seminar, Seminar Room 1
- The co-located exhibition -- RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Expo & Forum
Day 2: 10th November 2016
- Vietwater 2016 International Conference with the theme "Sustainable Water Supply & Sewerage Development Solutions in the context of Climate Change: Water Resource Degradation, Drought, and Saline Intrusion"
- Vietwater Technical Seminars at Seminar Room 1
- Vietnam-Australia Workshop on Water Quality Management and Technological Innovation at Meeting Room 2
- GEC Workshop at Meeting Room 4
- The co-located exhibition RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Expo & Forum
- Exhibitors Networking Party at Main Lobby
Day 3: 11st November 2016
- Vietwater Technical Seminar at Seminar Room 2
- Small round table on Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) at Meeting Room 4
- The co-located exhibition RE & EE Vietnam 2016 Expo & Forum
Notes to Editors:
About UBM Asia (www.ubmasia.com)
Owned by UBM plc listed on the London Stock Exchange, UBM Asia is the largest trade show organiser in Asia and the largest commercial organiser in China, India and Malaysia. Established with its headquarters in Hong Kong and subsidiary companies across Asia and in the US, UBM Asia has strong global network of 30 offices and 1,400 staff in 25 major cities. We operate in 21 market sectors with 235 exhibitions and conferences, 28 targeted trade publications, 18 vertical portals for over 1,000,000 quality exhibitors, visitors, conference delegates, advertisers and subscribers from all over the world.
The Representative Office of UBM ASIA in Ho Chi Minh City
6th Floor, KN Building, 74 Nguyen Khoai, Ward 2
District 4, Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnam
T: +84 8 5401 2718
F: +84 8 5401 2717
SOURCE UBM Asia (Malaysia)
Clinton's '3rd term' of Obama would cause a US recession, says billionaire Wilbur Ross
Hillary Clinton 's policies including her proposal to raise taxes on the wealthiest of Americans and large corporations would hurt the economy, said billionaire Wilbur Ross , a senior policy advisor to the Donald Trump campaign.
The chairman and CEO of distressed asset specialist WL Ross & Co. told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Election Day Tuesday: "I think the equivalent of third term Barack Obama means that we will go into a recession within the next two years."
"We're already pretty long in the tooth, even though this recovery is the weakest we've had in decades and decades," he said.
The stock market, which has been favoring a Clinton win, would warm to a Trump presidency, said Ross. "As soon as Trump announces his Cabinet choices, the market will feel better."
He said Trump has a record of making good personal choices, citing as examples the Republican nominee's proposed list of Supreme Court picks and bringing Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on board as his vice presidential choice.
More From CNBC
It is organised by UBM Asia and supported by the Vietnam Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency Association (VECEA), Vietnam Automation (VAA), Energy Conservation Center HCM (ECC - HCM), EU-Vietnam Business Network (EVBN) and Ho Chi Minh Power Corporation (EVN-HCM).
This is a unit trade exhibition in Vietnam's power, renewable energy and energy efficiency industry. It will feature different ranges of products, technologies, equipment, and solutions showcased at private booths or international pavilions of local and international enterprises such as CJR Renewables, Conergy Asia, DNV GL Energy, Donasonic, Ecosphere Renewables, EVBN, Green Power Monitor, Ingeteam, Mitsubishi and many others.
Come and explore your solutions at RE & EE Vietnam 2016.
During the exhibition, a series of insightful activities will provide full information on Vietnam's energy market, it's trends and development as well as introduce new technologies in this industry. Participants can learn from the Ministry of Industry & Trade, ECC- HCM, BIOTEC, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, and C.F.Nielsen, amongst others at RE & EE Vietnam's Technical Seminars, Workshops and Conference with the theme "Vietnam Energy Forum: Toward Sustainable Energy Development in Vietnam." Find out the full agenda and book your seat at RE & EE Vietnam's website: http://www.renergyvietnam.com/en-us/highlights/conference.
View the show highlights and join RE & EE Vietnam 2016:
Day 1: 9th November, 2016
The Opening Ceremony keynote addressed by H.E. Mrs. Phan Thi My Linh and VVIPs guests, together with distinguished exhibitors, visitors, delegations and media representatives.
and VVIPs guests, together with distinguished exhibitors, visitors, delegations and media representatives. VVIP meeting with the participation of government representatives and leaders from energy associations.
with the participation of government representatives and leaders from energy associations. RE & EE Vietnam Technical Seminar at Seminar Room 2
Vietnam Energy Forum with the theme "Towards Sustainable Energy Development in Vietnam " at Seminar Room 2
" at Seminar Room 2 The co-located exhibition - Vietwater Expo & Forum 2016
Day 2: 10th November, 2016
RE & EE Vietnam Technical Seminar at Seminar Room 2
The EU-Vietnam Business Network at Seminar Room 2
The co-located exhibition - Vietwater Expo and Forum 2016
Exhibitors Networking Party at Main Lobby.
Day 3: 11st November, 2016
RE & EE Vietnam Technical Seminar at Seminar Room 2
The co-located exhibition - Vietwater Expo and Forum 2016
Best Show Awards.
Notes to Editors:
About UBM Asia (www.ubmasia.com)
Owned by UBM plc listed on the London Stock Exchange, UBM Asia is the largest trade show organiser in Asia and the largest commercial organiser in China, India and Malaysia. Established with its headquarters in Hong Kong and subsidiary companies across Asia and in the US, UBM Asia has strong global network of 30 offices and 1,400 staff in 25 major cities. We operate in 21 market sectors with 235 exhibitions and conferences, 28 targeted trade publications, 18 vertical portals for over 1,000,000 quality exhibitors, visitors, conference delegates, advertisers and subscribers from all over the world.
SOURCE UBM Asia (Malaysia)
The PPAHS has had the pleasure of featuring Mr. Oglesby in the past; in 2014, SJ/C celebrated 10 years free from opioid-related adverse outcomes under his leadership. A key driver in this was the successful implementation of capnography monitoring modules to the hospital's existing IV safety platform. As a result, the Georgia-based hospital has been held as a model nationwide for patient safety with a patient safety record which now exceeds 12 years of event-free use of opioids.
Since 2014, Mr. Oglesby and his team have continued to refine best practices to ensure the safety of the hospital's patients; 25,000 patients discharged from 675 beds annually. During the interview, Mr Oglesby highlighted 5 key learnings from the SJ/C's now 12 years of success:
Be proactive and implement continuous monitoring Respiratory therapists are an integral part of the implementation process Treat the patient, not the monitor Educate both patients and staff The 'Eyeball Test' is not enough
To watch the full interview, with corresponding visuals, on YouTube, please visit: https://youtu.be/P8on_Hey-7k
To download a PDF version of the transcript, please visit: http://www.ppahs.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/PPAHSInterviewWithHaroldOglesbyTranscript.pdf
About Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety
Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety is a non-profit 501(c)(3) whose mission is to promote safer clinical practices and standards for patients through collaboration among healthcare experts, professionals, scientific researchers, and others, in order to improve healthcare delivery. For more information, please go to www.ppahs.org.
Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8on_Hey-7k&feature=youtu.be
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131024/CG03341LOGO
SOURCE Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS)
Related Links
http://www.ppahs.org
DALLAS, Nov. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ACE Cash Express, Inc. announced that on November 9, 2016, it will provide financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2016 to Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, the trustee under the Indenture dated as of February 10, 2011 governing the Company's 11% Senior Secured Notes due 2019. The Company also announced it will host a conference call for Noteholders on Thursday, November 10, 2016, at 10:00 a.m. CT to discuss the financial results.
Noteholders should contact David Sternblitz, Vice President, Treasurer of ACE Cash Express, Inc. to obtain access to the Company's financial statements and information concerning the conference call.
About ACE
ACE Cash Express, Inc. is a leading financial services provider serving consumers online and through a network of over 1,000 retail store locations. ACE provides a range of retail financial products and services including short-term consumer loans, check cashing, prepaid debit cards, money transfers, bill payments and money orders. ACE Cash Express, Inc. is the largest owner and operator of check cashing stores in the United States.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120208/DA49391LOGO
SOURCE ACE Cash Express, Inc.
Related Links
http://www.acecashexpress.com
Q3 Revenue Increases 62% to $8.9M and Adjusted EBITDA Improves to $559K
TORONTO and NEW YORK, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - AcuityAds Holdings Inc. (TSXV:AT) ("AcuityAds" or "Company"), a technology leader that provides targeted digital media solutions enabling advertisers to connect intelligently with audiences across video, mobile, social and online display campaigns, today announced financial results for the three-month period ended September 30, 2016.
"I am pleased to report that Acuity delivered another strong quarter as evidenced by our 62% revenue growth and improving Adjusted EBITDA. Our Adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12 month period was $935K," stated Tal Hayek, CEO of AcuityAds. "Contributing to our strong performance were our US and Self-Serve segments as well as our recent acquisition of 140 Proof, Inc., which we closed on September 1, 2016. The amazing team at 140 Proof, Inc. delivered $1.6M of revenue in the month of September."
Third Quarter Financial Highlights
Total revenue for Q3 2016 increased 62% to $8,871,289 , compared to $5,476,982 in Q3 2015. Total revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $21,080 ,474 compared to $13,101 ,707 for the same period in 2015, representing growth of 61% year over year. Total revenue includes one month of revenue associated with 140 Proof, Inc.
, compared to in Q3 2015. Total revenue for the nine months ended was ,474 compared to ,707 for the same period in 2015, representing growth of 61% year over year. Total revenue includes one month of revenue associated with 140 Proof, Inc. AcuityAds grew its Self-Serve partner base by adding 22 new platform partners in Q3 2016. Total Partners of the Company's SaaS-based Self-Service programmatic platform now stands at 125 compared to 60 at the end of Q3 2015.
SaaS-based Self-Service revenue for Q3 2016 increased 88% to $3,536,431 , compared to $1,880,884 in Q3 2015 and represented 40% of overall revenue compared to 34% in the same period last year. SaaS-based Self-Service revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $9,392 ,117 compared to $3,541,716 for the same period in 2015, representing growth of 165%.
, compared to in Q3 2015 and represented 40% of overall revenue compared to 34% in the same period last year. SaaS-based Self-Service revenue for the nine months ended was ,117 compared to for the same period in 2015, representing growth of 165%. US revenue for Q3 2016 increased by 131% to $3,857,976 compared to $1,669,428 in Q3 2015. For the nine months ended September 30, 2016 , US revenue totalled $7,536 ,969 compared to $4,098 ,701 for the same period in 2015, representing growth of 84%.
compared to in Q3 2015. For the nine months ended , US revenue totalled ,969 compared to ,701 for the same period in 2015, representing growth of 84%. Revenue less media costs (gross margin) remained strong at 50% for Q3 2016 compared to 47% for the three months ended September 30, 2015 .
. A key milestone in the quarter was revenue of $226,128 from the Company's European data center which went live at the end of Q2 2016.
from the Company's European data center which went live at the end of Q2 2016. Operating expenses for the quarter were $4,628,522 compared to $2,974,752 in Q3 2015. Total operating expenses for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 were $11,707,285 compared to $9,010,599 for the same period in 2015. Operating expenses include one month of costs associated with 140 Proof, Inc. which totalled $532,587 .
compared to in Q3 2015. Total operating expenses for the nine months ended were compared to for the same period in 2015. Operating expenses include one month of costs associated with 140 Proof, Inc. which totalled . The Company posted Adjusted EBITDA of $559 ,164 in Q3 2016 compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $254,609 in Q3 2015. Adjusted EBITDA for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $673 ,534 compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $1,704 ,176 for the same period in 2015.
,164 in Q3 2016 compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of in Q3 2015. Adjusted EBITDA for the nine months ended was ,534 compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of ,176 for the same period in 2015. Net loss for Q3 2016 was $479 ,172 compared to a net loss of $586,377 in Q3 2015. Net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 was $1,435 ,014 compared to $3,127 ,909 for the same period in 2015. Included in the Q3 2016 net loss was a charge of $374,004 relating to acquisition costs associated with the purchase of 140 Proof, Inc.
,172 compared to a net loss of in Q3 2015. Net loss for the nine months ended was ,014 compared to ,909 for the same period in 2015. Included in the Q3 2016 net loss was a charge of relating to acquisition costs associated with the purchase of 140 Proof, Inc. As at September 30, 2016 , the Company's cash and restricted cash balance was $2,478,067 compared to $3,049 ,172 at the end of Q2 2016. In the quarter, the Company paid cash consideration and acquisition costs of $1,709,052 relating to the acquisition of 140 Proof, Inc. and also increased its term loan by $1,000,000 .
About AcuityAds:
AcuityAds is a technology company that enables marketers to connect intelligently with their most meaningful audiences through digital media. A Self-Serve programmatic marketing platform, powered by proprietary machine learning technology, is at the core of its business, accompanied by a patented solution for mobile targeting that leverages social data. AcuityAds empowers marketers by offering transparency on costs and brand safety, and real-time reporting and analytics, bringing accountability to programmatic advertising to deliver business results.
AcuityAds is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with sales offices in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal. For more information, visit AcuityAds.com.
Disclaimer in regards to Forward-looking Statements
Certain statements included herein constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, AcuityAds does not intend, and undertakes no obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect, in particular, new information or future events. 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 AcuityAds Inc.
Related Links
www.acuityads.com
PITTSBURGH, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, a manufacturer of Pure Balance Walmart's private brand of super premium pet food - announced today that it will donate more than 260,000 meals of Pure Balance dog food to Saving Animals from Euthanasia (S.A.F.E.) Pet Rescue of St. Augustine, Florida, which was impacted by Hurricane Matthew.
S.A.F.E. Pet Rescue is comprised of three adoption centers, two in St. Augustine, and one in Hollister, Florida, located roughly 60 miles southwest St. Augustine. As Hurricane Matthew approached the Florida coast, S.A.F.E. was forced to evacuate more than 150 dogs and cats to their Hollister location, which was already housing approximately 75 animals.
Despite a lack of electricity and air conditioning and a tense and crowded environment, the organization was able to keep all of their animals safe and dry during the storm, however, the financial impact will be felt for some time.
"During times of emergency, keeping our animals safe is always our top priority, however this commitment doesn't come without cost," said Robin Kantner Nordan, Founder, S.A.F.E. Pet Rescue. "The cost of transport, emergency and veterinary fees and 24-hour staffing during the storm were significant. This generous donation from Ainsworth Pet Nutrition will ease the financial burden of feeding the 195 dogs in our care for quite some time. We are very grateful."
"At Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, our commitment to helping animals in need goes beyond doing what's right, it is engrained in who we are as an organization," said Steve Joyce, Vice President of Marketing for Ainsworth Pet Nutrition. "When we heard about S.A.F.E. Pet Rescue and what they had been through during Hurricane Matthew, we knew we needed to do something to help. We are so happy that this donation will be beneficial to the shelter and the animals in their care."
Pure Balance super-premium food for dogs and cats is available exclusively at Walmart. Each recipe is designed without any corn, wheat or soy and is prepared with carefully selected ingredients like real chicken, carrots, peas, and flaxseed. Made with natural ingredients with added vitamins and minerals, Pure Balance makes premium pet nutrition available to Walmart shoppers without a special trip to the pet store.
The donation will be delivered to the S.A.F.E. Pet Rescue within the next week.
ABOUT AINSWORTH PET NUTRITION
Founded in 1933, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition is a fifth generation, primarily family-owned and operated company headquartered in Western Pennsylvania and focused entirely on pets. With a goal of changing the way consumers shop for Super Premium pet food, Ainsworth's mantra is "Pet Store Quality. Supermarket Easy." They achieve this promise by providing consumers with the high-quality pet food where they currently shop for the rest of their families. The company makes multiple brands and types of dog and cat food, including the Rachael Ray Nutrish line, as well as Super Premium retailer specific brands. Ainsworth Pet Nutrition is committed to food safety and prepares all of its dry pet food in the United States using high-quality, natural ingredients with added vitamins and minerals. To learn more, visit www.ainsworthpets.com.
Contact: Samantha Bridger 724-272-1757
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161108/437164LOGO
SOURCE Ainsworth Pet Nutrition
Related Links
http://www.ainsworthpets.com
DALLAS, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Airport Lounge Development Inc. (ALD), the largest and most experienced independent shared-use lounge developer in the US, today announced the international expansion of its portfolio with its newest lounge at London Heathrow Terminal 3, 'Club Aspire'. 'Club Aspire' is the second lounge to be launched in a joint venture partnership between ALD, a subsidiary of Collinson Group, and Swissport, two of the most experienced global companies operating airport lounges today. 'Club Aspire' builds on the success of 'Aspire, the Lounge and Spa at LHR T5', opened by the joint venture partnership at Heathrow Terminal 5 in 2015.
'Club Aspire' will be available to premium airline passengers of participating airlines as part of their premium tickets, and Priority Pass, LoungeKey and Lounge Club Members. Travelers without membership can pre-book and enjoy three hours for an introductory price of 24.99 (approximately $32.00) using partner websites, including www.executivelounges.com and www.loungepass.com. Walk-in access is also available for an introductory price of 29.99 (approximately $39.00).
"As one of the world's leading airports and home to 80 airlines, London Heathrow Airport is an ideal addition to our international lounge network," said Nancy Knipp, Senior Vice President, ALD. "We're delighted to partner with Swissport to offer travelers an inclusive and innovative lounge experience at London Heathrow's Terminal 3, just one year after opening our lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5. This is an exciting time for ALD, as we've grown from 3 airport lounges to 13 in just under three years. We're looking forward to announcing exciting new US domestic locations in the coming months."
"Swissport's lounge offerings have grown steadily in popularity with the Aspire brand since it launched in 2012, and now covers many global destinations," said Shaun Weston, Travel Services Director, Swissport. "The opening of 'Club Aspire' gives us a presence in one of the world's most popular airport terminals and is another step forward for Swissport and the Aspire brand. We're pleased to have been able to combine our operational expertise with that of ALD's to create another world class lounge facility."
'Club Aspire' is located in Terminal 3 near Gate 9 and is open daily from 05:00 - 22:00. The brand-new lounge accommodates more than 120 passengers and incorporates the very best of contemporary design. The lounge offers a range of dedicated zones that will ensure travelers can work, rest or pamper themselves before their journey including luxury spa treatments from Bliss. Its best-of-British food menu will include complimentary, freshly-prepared breakfast rolls, a salad bar, deli counter, and children's options. A premium menu with full meals will also be available for a small charge. Drink options will include complimentary premium brand alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, along with specialty teas and coffees.
"Following the success of 'Aspire, the Lounge and Spa at LHR T5', we are delighted to be bringing the same experience to Terminal 3 with 'Club Aspire'," said Stephen Wilkinson, Property Director, London Heathrow. "We are always looking for new ways for our customers to receive the very best experience when they fly and we hope they enjoy the newest independent lounge we have to offer."
The addition of 'Club Aspire' increases ALD's airport lounge portfolio to thirteen, and demonstrates its continued commitment to expand domestically and internationally as more and more airports review their options for independent shared-use lounges. ALD continues to be the leader in shared-use airport lounge operations in the US and has aggressive plans for growth in the coming months.
ALD's 12 other airport lounges include:
The Club at CVG, located in Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport;
located in / International Airport; The Club at DFW , located in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport;
, located in International Airport; The Club at LAS (Terminals 1) and The Club at LAS (Terminal 3) in Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport;
(Terminals 1) and (Terminal 3) in McCarran International Airport; The Club at SJC , located in Mineta San Jose International Airport;
, located in Mineta San Jose International Airport; The Club at ATL , located in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport;
, located in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport; The Club at PHX , located in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport;
, located in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport; The Club at SEA (concourse A ) and The Club at SEA (south satellite), both located at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport;
(south satellite), both located at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport; The Club at MCO, located in Orlando International Airport;
located in International Airport; The Lounge, (concourse C) located at Boston Logan International Airport
(concourse C) located at Boston Logan International Airport Aspire, the Lounge and Spa at LHR T5, located in London Heathrow Airport.
For more information visit: http://www.theclubairportlounges.com.
About Airport Lounge Development Inc.
Airport Lounge Development (ALD) specializes in the design, construction, operation, management and marketing of independent shared-use airport lounges. ALD brings expertise and insight from the travel industry to offer deeper, forward thinking solutions for the benefit of airport and airline clients in the form of shared airport lounge concepts.
Operating since 2006, ALD (www.airportloungedev.com) is the U.S. leader in independent shared-use lounges offering an affordable hospitality experience for travelers on any airline and travelling any class of service. Using its successful business model, ALD is now also targeting growth outside of the US with 'Club Aspire' becoming its second UK lounge.
About Collinson Group
Airport Lounge Development is a Collinson Group company. Collinson Group has deep insight into the needs of frequent travelers, having served millions of customers worldwide for over 23 years through its Priority Pass product. The Group is a global leader in influencing customer behavior to drive revenue and value for its clients. It offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading experience in delivering products and services across four core capabilities: Loyalty, Lifestyle Benefits, Insurance, and Assistance. Collinson Group has 25 years' experience, with 26 global locations, servicing over 800 clients in 170 countries, employing 2,000 staff, and managing over 20 million end customers.
About Aspire by Swissport
Aspire by Swissport operates 14 airport lounges in Europe and Africa, 9 of them being located in the UK at key locations such as Manchester Terminal 1, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Newcastle, the first of which opened within London Gatwick's North Terminal in February 2012. During 2015 Aspire Lounges opened new facilities in London Heathrow Terminal 5, Bristol and London Luton airports.
Aspire Lounges are part of Swissport International, the world's largest provider of ground and cargo handling services in the aviation industry. Swissport International Ltd. provides ground services for around 230 million passengers and handles 4.1 million tonnes of cargo a year on behalf of some 835 client-companies in the aviation sector. With a workforce of around 61,000 personnel, Swissport is active at more than 280 stations in 48 countries across five continents, and generates consolidated operating revenue of CHF 3.0 billion. www.swissport.com
About Bliss
Bliss is a world renowned expert in spas, skincare and well-being. Famous for delivering the best facials, massages, body treatments, hair removal and nail services, these highly-effective treatments are turned into best-in-class products to make guests look and feel beautiful, healthy, and happy. It all started when Bliss opened its first New York City location in 1996 and revolutionized the industry by taking a completely different approach to spas, skincare and well-being. Bliss operates 21 spas around the world and its spa-powered products are now sold in over 35 countries. From the powerful results from every spa service and product, to the upbeat environment, pretension-free attitude, everything Bliss does is aimed at empowering guests to achieve a higher state of happy.
About Heathrow
Heathrow is the UK's hub airport, home to more than 80 airlines connecting to more than 180 destinations. Every year Heathrow welcomes over 70 million passengers with a commitment to 'making every journey better'. Following an investment of more than 11 billion over the past 10 years, passengers have voted Heathrow the 'Best Airport in Western Europe', 'Best Airport Terminal' for Terminal 5 and 'Best Airport for Shopping' 7 years in a row.
Airport Lounge Development:
Charli Sharp
MWW
213-405-3780
[email protected]
SOURCE Airport Lounge Development Inc.
Related Links
http://www.airportloungedev.com
"Source Security & Investigations is widely recognized as Canada's leading security firm and it has grown through a unique model featuring outstanding systems and processes and a strong culture," said Steve Jones, Allied Universal CEO. "Adding Source Security to our portfolio of companies greatly expands our Canadian presence, an area we look to continue future growth."
Founded in 2002, Source Security is Canada's leading security group with a range of innovative and cost-effective services and offices that span the country. The company provides uniformed security professionals and technological security solutions.
The company also offers VIP security, industrial and event security and private investigations in offices across eight provinces and 21 cities in Canada. The company services clients across multiple sectors including higher education, industrial, retail, hospitals, government transit hubs and auto ports.
"We are very excited about this merger because we will be able to provide more opportunity for our people as well as provide additional service offerings for our clients due to Allied Universal's security technology offerings and largest security force in North America," says Ron Lovett, President and Chief Support Officer, Source Security & Investigations Inc.
Learn more about Allied Universal's service offerings at www.AUS.com.
About Allied Universal
Allied Universal, a leading facility services company and the largest security force in North America with over 150,000 employees, provides unparalleled security services and solutions. With headquarters in Santa Ana, Calif., and Conshohocken, Pa., Allied Universal combines people and technology to deliver evolving, tailored solutions that allow our clients to focus on their core business. An unrelenting focus on clients' success creates partnerships rooted in quality and value, and is supported by experience gained from being in business for over 50 years. Through our people and leading services, systems and solutionsAllied Universal is there for you. For more information, please visit www.AUS.com.
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SOURCE Allied Universal
Related Links
http://www.aus.com
Mr. Shah is a recognized leader in the global air cargo industry, with over 14 years of experience working for United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, most recently as Senior Vice President and Chief Cargo Officer of Delta. While at Delta, Neel led the integration of the two cargo divisions when Delta acquired Northwest Airlines and grew global cargo revenues to over $1 billion. During his tenure, Neel helped shape the air cargo industry through his participation on many boards including IATA, TIACA, CNS and A4A. Since leaving Delta in 2012, Neel has remained active in the industry through his consulting firm, JS Aviation Consulting, Inc., and his work with the Boston Consulting Group as a Senior Advisor.
"I am very excited and honored to be joining the Board of Amerijet, which is a very well respected air cargo carrier. Under the leadership of the Company's CEO, Vic Karjian, and the rest of the management team, Amerijet has immense potential to grow in both its current and new markets," said Shah.
Amerijet International is an all-cargo air carrier, operating Boeing 767 and Boeing 727 aircraft from its primary hub at Miami International Airport to destinations throughout the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico and South America. With more than 40 years of experience, 25 offices in the U.S. and over 130 offices worldwide, Amerijet International and its logistics partner, ITN Worldwide, provide seamless transportation and logistics solutions for freight of any size or type to destinations throughout the world.
MEDIA CONTACT: Christine Richard, Amerijet International at 954-320-5354
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SOURCE Amerijet LLC
FREMONT, Calif., Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NYSE MKT: AST), a biotechnology company pioneering the field of regenerative medicine, today announced that the first patient with complete (AIS-A) cervical spinal cord injury was successfully administered the highest dose of 20 million cells of AST-OPC1 (oligodendrocyte progenitor cells) in the SCiStar clinical trial at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC) in San Jose, CA. In addition, enrollment continues in the AIS-B 10 million cell cohort with a second patient now dosed.
Dose escalation to 20 million cells followed the Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) review of safety data from the prior 2 million cell and 10 million cell dose cohorts, and was based on AST-OPC1's continued favorable safety profile observed in the ongoing clinical study. The company recently presented positive early efficacy data from the 10 million cell cohort. These data reached the 6 month efficacy target within 3 months and suggested the emergence of a possible early dose response for AST-OPC1.
"We have been very encouraged by the early clinical efficacy and safety data for AST-OPC1, and we now look forward to evaluating the 20 million cell dose in complete cervical spinal cord injury patients," said Dr. Edward Wirth, Chief Medical Officer of Asterias. "Based on extensive pre-clinical research, this is in the dosing range where we would expect to see optimal clinical improvement in these patients."
Stephen McKenna, MD, Chief of the Rehabilitation Trauma Center at SCVMC, said, "The early efficacy results presented in September from the 10 million cell AIS-A cohort were quite encouraging, and we're looking forward to seeing if those meaningful functional improvements are maintained through six months and beyond. We are also looking forward to seeing the results in patients from the higher 20 million cell AST-OPC1 dose, as well as results in the first AIS-B patients."
The trial results to date continue to support a positive safety profile for AST-OPC1. There have been no serious or unexpected adverse events related to AST-OPC1, the administration procedure or the accompanying short course of low-dose immunosuppression in any of the patients treated with AST-OPC1, including five patients in an earlier Phase 1 trial with neurologically complete thoracic SCI.
In September, Asterias reported positive early efficacy data for AST-OPC1 from five AIS-A patients that had been dosed with 10 million AST-OPC1 cells in the SCiStar study. While early in the study, by Day 90 of follow-up, all patients have shown at least one motor level of improvement and the efficacy target of 2 of 5 patients in the cohort achieving two motor levels of improvement on at least one side of their body was achieved. Patient improvements are being measured by the ISNCSCI neurological classification scale widely used to quantify functional status of patients with spinal cord injuries. As suggested by existing research in patients with complete cervical spinal cord injuries, a two motor level improvement is correlated with a significant increase in functional ability, as well as the ability for patients to care for themselves, since so many activities of daily living are dependent on arm and hand function [Steeves, et al, 2012].
About the SCiStar Trial
The SCiStar trial is an open-label, single-arm trial testing three sequential escalating doses of AST-OPC1 administered at up to 20 million AST-OPC1 cells in as many as 35 patients with sub-acute, C-5 to C-7, motor complete (AIS-A or AIS-B) cervical SCI. These individuals have essentially lost all movement below their injury site and experience severe paralysis of the upper and lower limbs. AIS-A patients have lost all motor and sensory function below their injury site, while AIS-B patients have lost all motor function but may retain some minimal sensory function below their injury site. AST-OPC1 is being administered 14 to 30 days post-injury. Patients will be followed by neurological exams and imaging procedures to assess the safety and activity of the product.
The study is being conducted at six centers in the U.S. and the company plans to increase this to up to 12 sites to accommodate the expanded patient enrollment. Clinical sites that have enrolled and dosed patients in the study include the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Shepherd Medical Center in Atlanta, University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.
Asterias has received a Strategic Partnerships Award grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which provides $14.3 million of non-dilutive funding for the Phase 1/2a clinical trial and other product development activities for AST-OPC1.
Additional information on the Phase 1/2a trial, including trial sites, can be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov, using Identifier NCT02302157, and at the SCiStar Study Website (www.SCiStar-study.com).
About AST-OPC1
AST-OPC1, an oligodendrocyte progenitor population derived from human embryonic stem cells, has been shown in animals and in vitro to have three potentially reparative functions that address the complex pathologies observed at the injury site of a spinal cord injury. These activities of AST-OPC1 include production of neurotrophic factors, stimulation of vascularization, and induction of remyelination of denuded axons, all of which are critical for survival, regrowth and conduction of nerve impulses through axons at the injury site. In preclinical animal testing, AST-OPC1 administration led to remyelination of axons, improved hindlimb and forelimb locomotor function, dramatic reductions in injury-related cavitation and significant preservation of myelinated axons traversing the injury site.
In a previous Phase 1 clinical trial, five patients with neurologically complete, thoracic spinal cord injury were administered two million AST-OPC1 cells at the spinal cord injury site 7-14 days post-injury. They also received low levels of immunosuppression for the next 60 days. Delivery of AST-OPC1 was successful in all five subjects with no serious adverse events associated with the administration of the cells, with AST-OPC1 itself, or the immunosuppressive regimen. No evidence of rejection of AST-OPC1 was observed in detailed immune response monitoring of all patients. In four of the five patients, serial MRI scans indicated that reduced spinal cord cavitation may have occurred. Based on the results of this study, Asterias received clearance from FDA to progress testing of AST-OPC1 to patients with complete cervical spine injuries, which represents the first targeted population for registration trials.
About Asterias Biotherapeutics
Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company pioneering the field of regenerative medicine. The company's proprietary cell therapy programs are based on its immunotherapy and pluripotent stem cell platform technologies. Asterias is presently focused on advancing three clinical-stage programs which have the potential to address areas of very high unmet medical need in the fields of neurology and oncology. AST-OPC1 (oligodendrocyte progenitor cells) is currently in a Phase 1/2a dose escalation clinical trial in spinal cord injury.
AST-VAC1 (antigen-presenting autologous dendritic cells) is undergoing continuing development by Asterias after demonstrating promise in a Phase 2 study in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and completing a successful end-of-Phase 2 meeting with the FDA. The company is currently focused on streamlining and modernizing the manufacturing process for AST-VAC1 in advance of a planned initiation of a confirmatory phase 2b study in 2018. AST-VAC2 (antigen-presenting allogeneic dendritic cells) represents a second generation, allogeneic immunotherapy. The company's research partner, Cancer Research UK, plans to begin a Phase 1/2a clinical trial of AST-VAC2 in non-small cell lung cancer in 2017. Additional information about Asterias can be found at www.asteriasbiotherapeutics.com.
Forward Looking Statements
Statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating and/or clinical research results, future growth in research, technology, clinical development, and potential opportunities for Asterias, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact (including, but not limited to statements that contain words such as "will," "believes," "plans," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates") should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks inherent in the development and/or commercialization of potential products, uncertainty in the results of clinical trials or regulatory approvals, need and ability to obtain future capital, and maintenance of intellectual property rights. Actual results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements and as such should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect the businesses of Asterias, particularly those mentioned in the cautionary statements found in Asterias' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Asterias disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
SOURCE Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc.
Related Links
http://www.asteriasbiotherapeutics.com
LINDON, Utah, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, BambooHR, the industry's leading vendor for accelerating the evolution of HR in small and medium-sized businesses, will host Elevate 2016, the largest virtual HR conference in the world. Focused on helping HR and business leaders elevate their work, the free online event will occur on November 10, 2016 from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. PST.
More than 20,000 HR and business leaders have already registered to watch presentations from over 50 industry experts and visionaries. Notable speakers include:
Josh Bersin , principal and founder, Bersin by Deloitte
, principal and founder, Bersin by Deloitte Stephen M.R. Covey , bestselling author and co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide
bestselling author and co-founder and CEO of CoveyLink Worldwide Keith Ferrazzi , bestselling author and founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight & Yoi
, bestselling author and founder and CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight & Yoi Marshall Goldsmith , bestselling author and No. 1 leadership coach
, bestselling author and No. 1 leadership coach Joseph Grenny , co-chairman and co-founder of VitalSmarts
, co-chairman and co-founder of VitalSmarts Patty McCord , former chief talent officer at Netflix
, former chief talent officer at Netflix Kid President and Brad Montague , performer and writer and director duo
, performer and writer and director duo Liz Wiseman , bestselling author and president of the Wiseman Group
Registrants can customize their virtual summit experience around eight session tracks, including leadership, employee engagement, performance and culture. Registrants can also win prizes for attending sessions, sharing insights from the conference on social media and interacting with virtual sponsor booths.
The most engaged registrant will win a $1,000 vacation experience of their choice. Other engaged registrants on the leaderboard within the conference environment can win a variety of prizes, such as a $500 or $250 vacation experience, snack boxes, S'well bottles, yoga balls and more.
"We were thrilled by the overwhelming response of Elevate's inaugural summit last year," said Ben Peterson, CEO and co-founder on BambooHR. "This year, we wanted to help even more people do great work and we love that some of the best speakers in the industry have joined the cause."
To register for Elevate 2016, visit bamboohr.com/elevate. Follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #elevate2016.
About BambooHR
BambooHR is the leading provider of tools that power the strategic evolution of HR in small and medium businesses. BambooHR's cloud-based system is an intuitive, affordable way for growing companies to track and manage essential employee information in a personalized Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Now HR managers have more time for meaningful work, executives get accurate, timely reports and employees can self-service their time off using a convenient mobile app. BambooHR's clients include innovators like SoundCloud, Foursquare, Freshbooks, Magnolia Homes and Stance, among thousands of others in more than 100 countries worldwide. To find out more, visit bamboohr.com or follow us on Twitter at @BambooHR.
Press Contact
Mikey Collard
BambooHR Public Relations
801-461-9752
[email protected]
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SOURCE BambooHR
Related Links
http://www.bamboohr.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Demotech, Inc. is pleased to announce that it was the recipient of the DealMakers Global Awards 2016 for BEST Property & Casualty Insurance Firm of the Year. The DealMakers Global Awards recognize a select number of leading professional firms across the globe for their individual areas of specialization within their geographical location.
Since 1985, Demotech has assigned accurate, reliable and proven Financial Stability Ratings (FSRs) for Property & Casualty insurers. According to Joseph Petrelli, President, "Receiving this award is an honor. On behalf of the over 400 Property & Casualty companies we review and rate annually, we thank the judges at DealMakers Monthly and all who voted for us."
The DealMakers Global Awards 2016 are presented across all geographical locations that the Monthly Magazine penetrates. They recognize and salute the organizations that have performed to exceptional levels during the most difficult period that the global economy has experienced for decades. The poll represents who the readership believes are the leading professional firms, within areas of specialization across various geographical regions.
About DealMakers Monthly
DealMakers Monthly reports on up to date global business news of M&A deals, Management Buyouts, Debt Refinancing, venture financing, and privatizations. They have an audience of private and public companies, many of them are listed on stock exchanges across the world as well as the top law firms, private equity companies, investment officers, financiers and entrepreneurs. With a readership of over 80,000, DealMakers Monthly combines global deal news, expert summaries, private company features, specialist reviews and global deal reporting.
About Demotech, Inc.
Demotech, Inc. is a financial analysis firm specializing in evaluating the financial stability of regional and specialty insurers. Since 1985, Demotech has served the insurance industry by assigning accurate, reliable and proven Financial Stability Ratings (FSRs) for Property & Casualty insurers and Title underwriters. FSRs are a leading indicator of financial stability, providing an objective baseline of the future solvency of an insurer. Demotech's philosophy is to review and evaluate insurers based on their area of focus and execution of their business model rather than solely on financial size. Visit www.demotech.com for more information.
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SOURCE Demotech, Inc.
Related Links
http://www.demotech.com
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Moreover, Blowout&Go's will exclusively use Balmain Paris Hair Couture products during hair styling appointments, and Blowout&Go's training and education center B&G Academy will host Balmain's global educators to deliver a comprehensive education program to Blowout&Go's team of hair stylists.
The two brands have worked together previously, with Blowout&Go offering home service application of Balmain Paris Hair Couture's extensions range in the UAE.
Paria Ghorashi, CEO and Co-Founder of Blowout&Go expressed her enthusiasm about this new endeavour:
"Having spent over 2 decades in the fashion industry I have always been a big fan of the Balmain Paris fashion house, and I am very excited to see with Balmain the merger of both hair and fashion bringing the latests trends straight from the catwalk"
Richard Guilker, Art Director of Balmain Paris Hair Couture added:
"We are thrilled about the the partnership with the innovative and dynamic team of Blowout&Go. It will bring the latest hair fashion trends and catwalk looks from Paris and Milan to consumers in the UAE. They will also have the opportunity of purchasing and experiencing the full range of Balmain Hair Couture and receive them the very next day across Dubai and the UAE."
The full range of Balmain Paris Hair Couture's Luxury Hair Care & Styling products can be purchased from B&G Shop and delivered anywhere in Dubai and the UAE the next day.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Blowout&Go
Website: https://www.blowoutandgo.ae
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blowoutandgo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blowoutandgo/
Blowout&Go is the leading provider of high quality mobile blow-dry, hair styling and makeup services across Dubai and the UAE. Their handpicked and professional team of qualified hair stylists and makeup artist travel directly to your door, whether it be a home, hotel or office, providing the same high quality experience which you would expect in a salon but with the convenience of never having to leave your door.
About Balmain Hair Couture
Website: https://www.balmainhair.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/balmainhairgcc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balmainhairgcc
Balmain Hair Couture is part of the Balmain Paris fashion house, founded in 1945 by Pierre Balmain, was well known for its feminine, elegant style. Nowadays Balmain Paris is renowned for its edgy and sexy looks. In 2011 Olivier Rousteing stepped on board where his collection contains the balmain-signature look with a highly appreciated twist. As part of this heritage as a famous Parisian fashion house, many international designers work with the Balmain Hair Couture collection for their shows and photoshoots. In collaboration with backstage stylists, Balmain Paris Hair Couture developed a line of bare essentials for the session stylist.
SOURCE Blowout&Go
MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, is proud to announce that it will now offer uniFLOW Secure Print Applets to support select1 OKI and Samsung multifunction systems2 (MFPs). The uniFLOW Secure Print Applet offers an embedded Secure Printing experience with a consistent uniFLOW look and feel to customers in certain mixed fleet environments, providing a single-user interface as users move from networked device to device.
Utilizing the built-in screen and keypad on the customer's existing device, the uniFLOW Secure Print Applet can help provide access controls to the device, and to print jobs, by requiring users to authenticate at the device using their PIN code, username/password, or simply swiping their access card. Providing an additional layer of flexibility, the embedded applet also enables print jobs to follow the user from networked device to device, allowing customers to release print jobs from compatible devices with the embedded applet installed.
"A comprehensive print management plan not only provides for security features and ease of use, but also flexibility, both in daily operation and in the long term," said Randy Dazo, group director, InfoTrends. "By extending its offering of the uniFLOW Secure Print Applet to Non-Canon devices, Canon is demonstrating its confidence in uniFLOW and its abilities to provide a solution that can adapt to customers' office technology, as they continually transform and grow."
"Canon is pleased to further expand our support for heterogeneous customer environments," said Toyotsugu Kuwamura, executive vice president and general manager, Business Imaging Solutions Group, Canon U.S.A., Inc. "By extending uniFLOW Secure Print capabilities to fleets employing certain OKI and Samsung devices, we are pleased to help customers take advantage of uniFLOW's power to help become proactive in the day-to-day management of print activity across their enterprises."
Availability
The uniFLOW Secure Print Applet is now available for select OKI and Samsung devices through Canon Authorized Dealers and Canon Solutions America. Prices are set by dealers and may vary. For more information, visit www.usa.canon.com.
About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions to the United States and to Latin America and the Caribbean (excluding Mexico) markets. With approximately $31 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE: CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents granted in 2015 and is one of Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies in 2016. Canon U.S.A. is committed to the highest level of customer satisfaction and loyalty, providing 100 percent U.S.-based consumer service and support for all of the products it distributes. Canon U.S.A. is dedicated to its Kyosei philosophy of social and environmental responsibility. In 2014, the Canon Americas Headquarters secured LEED Gold certification, a recognition for the design, construction, operations and maintenance of high-performance green buildings. To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company's RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/rss and follow us on Twitter @CanonUSA. For media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
1 Contact your Canon Authorized Dealer for compatible OKI and Samsung models.
2 Professional Services is needed to install the uniFLOW Secure Print Applet.
Based on weekly patent counts issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Availability, prices and specifications are subject to change without notice.
SAMSUNG is a trademark of SAMSUNG in the United States or other countries.
OKI is a registered trademark of Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
All referenced product names, and other marks, are trademarks of their respective owners.
Canon offers security features that can help your business. Many variables can impact the security of your devices and data. Canon does not warrant that the use of its features will prevent malicious attacks, or prevent misuse of devices or data or other security issues. Nothing herein should be construed as legal counsel or regulatory advice concerning customers' compliance with laws related to privacy and security. Customers must have their own qualified counsel determine the feasibility of a particular solution as it relates to regulatory and statutory compliance. Some security settings may affect device functionality or performance. You may want to test these settings before deploying them in your environment to ensure you understand their effects.
Canon U.S.A. website:
http://www.usa.canon.com
For sales information/customer support:
1-800-OK-CANON
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SOURCE Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Related Links
http://www.usa.canon.com
MELVILLE, N.Y., Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In today's healthcare environment, it is essential to invest in solutions that help streamline workflows while having features that can assist healthcare professionals with their compliance efforts. Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, will showcase its teleretinal imaging solution and eye care devices during this year's American Academy of Optometry annual meeting at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California from November 9-12, 2016.
On display in the Canon booth will be the Canon teleretinal solution, featuring the Canon CR-2 PLUS AF Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal camera and imageSPECTRUM Image Management System software1, an intuitive software solution offering image management and portability to help improve workflow, which is sold separately. With the CR-2 PLUS AF camera and imageSPECTRUM Image Management software, healthcare professionals using either the Windows 7 with SQL 2012 or Windows 10 with SQL 2016 operating systems can perform retinal screenings then quickly transmit the images to doctors' offices thousands of miles away, both domestic and abroad2, to assist in making a diagnosis.
Visitors to the booth will have the opportunity to experience firsthand the camera component of the Canon teleretinal imaging solution, the Canon CR-2 PLUS AF Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal camera. The CR-2 PLUS AF camera captures ultra-high resolution images quickly, efficiently, and automatically. Designed around advanced Canon EOS optics and CMOS image-capture technology, the CR-2 PLUS AF features a customized 20.2 megapixel digital camera. With the press of a button, users can switch between auto and manual focusing for ultimate control and ease-of-use. The Auto Capture function determines the appropriate moment to capture an image by analyzing when exposure and alignment are ideal. The camera includes a non-invasive Fundus Autofluorescence imaging mode that provides the reviewer with the ability to quickly assess the condition of the RPE layer.
In addition to high-resolution color retinal photography, the Canon teleretinal solution also includes imageSPECTRUM Image Management software (sold separately), which has digital RGB filters for the more critical viewing of suspect pathologies. With imageSPECTRUM Image Management software, healthcare professionals can use the opacity suppression selectable filter tool to subdue the effect of ocular opacities in an image to help correct blur and enhance the clarity of blood vessels, helping eye care professionals to take clear images of patients' eyes.
In addition to the CR-2 PLUS AF Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal camera and imageSPECTRUM Image Management System software, visitors to the booth will have the opportunity to interact with eye care solutions including:
CR-2 AF Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal Camera: The CR-2 AF incorporates Canon EOS technology and provides superb retinal images under just about any condition. With integrated AutoExposure, AutoFocus, AutoFundus, AutoCapture and Image Error Detection, Low-Flash and Quick Preview modes, this retinal camera is a breeze to operate. Enhanced from the previous CR-2 Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal Camera, the CR-2 AF features Canon contrast enhancement technology never before offered in a Canon retinal camera to emphasize the differences in "redness" and "brightness" of blood vessel structures relative to their surroundings.
The CR-2 AF incorporates Canon EOS technology and provides superb retinal images under just about any condition. With integrated AutoExposure, AutoFocus, AutoFundus, AutoCapture and Image Error Detection, Low-Flash and Quick Preview modes, this retinal camera is a breeze to operate. Enhanced from the previous CR-2 Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal Camera, the CR-2 AF features Canon contrast enhancement technology never before offered in a Canon retinal camera to emphasize the differences in "redness" and "brightness" of blood vessel structures relative to their surroundings. RK-F2 Full Auto Ref-Keratometer : Including a Full Auto Mode which allows professionals to automatically align, focus, and acquire a reading for one eye and continue to the opposite eye to perform the same function all with one touch of a button. This feature contributes to a comfortable, efficient screening process for the patient.
: Including a Full Auto Mode which allows professionals to automatically align, focus, and acquire a reading for one eye and continue to the opposite eye to perform the same function all with one touch of a button. This feature contributes to a comfortable, efficient screening process for the patient. TX-20 Full Auto Tonometer: Designed to be compact and lightweight, the non-contact tonometer is easy to transport and install. With soft air puffs, the TX-20 tonometer easily measures Intraocular Pressure (IOP), enhancing patient comfort and allowing doctors to perform simple eye exams efficiently. The TX-20 Tonometer, as the RK-F2 Keratometer, also offers one-touch Full Auto Mode to automatically align, focus and capture readings.
For more information about Canon eye care devices and solutions, please visit http://www.usa.canon.com/eye-care.
About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc., is a leading provider of consumer, business-to-business, and industrial digital imaging solutions to the United States and to Latin America and the Caribbean (excluding Mexico) markets. With approximately $31 billion in global revenue, its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ), ranks third overall in U.S. patents granted in 2015 and is one of Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies in 2016. Canon U.S.A. is committed to the highest level of customer satisfaction and loyalty, providing 100 percent U.S.-based consumer service and support for all of the products it distributes. Canon U.S.A. is dedicated to its Kyosei philosophy of social and environmental responsibility. In 2014, the Canon Americas Headquarters secured LEED Gold certification, a recognition for the design, construction, operations and maintenance of high-performance green buildings. To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company's RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/rss and follow us on Twitter @CanonUSA. For media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
Based on weekly patent counts issued by United States Patent and Trademark Office.
1 Requires Windows 7 with SQL 2012 or Windows 10 with SQL 2016 operating system. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
2 Requires internet access and imageSPECTRUM Image Management software to both send and receive data.
Canon U.S.A. Web site:
http://www.usa.canon.com
For sales information/customer support:
1-800-970-7227
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SOURCE Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Related Links
http://www.usa.canon.com
ABBOTSFORD, BC, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Cascade Aerospace Inc. recently delivered the final CC-130J to the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) after the entire fleet received the Block 7.0 upgrade. This marks a first for the entire aerospace industry and a first for Cascade as the only non-government organization to complete a production Block upgrade in the global C-130J fleet.
Located in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Cascade Aerospace, North America's only C-130J Heavy Maintenance Centre, is also fully certified and ready to service and maintain aircraft for departments and agencies of the Government of the United States, including the entire C-130 Hercules fleet.
"Capitalizing on our current contracts to maintain and support Canada's CC-130 Hercules fleets as well as the work we have done internationally; we are able to provide the best taxpayer value to modernize the CC-130J's ensuring these aircraft operate to their fullest ability." said Ben Boehm, Executive Vice President and COO at Cascade Aerospace. "At Cascade Aerospace, with our ISO and Aerospace Standard series quality certifications, we are equally ready to immediately assist U.S. military and civilian agencies as well."
Cascade Aerospace was able to limit down-time to an average of 35 days per aircraft for the upgrade; which adds 29 enhancements to Canada's CC-130J Hercules. The changes include improvements to navigation, communications, and maintenance capabilities, and allows Canada's Hercules to remain at the forefront in tactical airlift operations.
Mr. Boehm said: "Government departments and agencies can count on Cascade Aerospace to save time, maximize value and enhance capacity for their fleets, including fixed wing search and rescue (SAR) and tactical heavy lift aircraft."
Successfully managing and implementing complex aerospace programs involving Engineering, Project Management, Aircraft Compliance and Certification, and Flight Testing, uniquely positions Cascade Aerospace as a growing global aerospace leader, and demonstrates how Canadian industry working in partnership with the military and manufacturers can create growth opportunities for the industry overall.
Related Links:
Visit Cascade Aerospace online: www.cascadeaerospace.com and Twitter @CascadeAero
Visit Lockheed Martin online: http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/c130.html
Visit the RCAF online: http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/aircraft-current/cc-130j.page
http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/news/article.page?doc=rcaf-uses-cc-130j-hercules-in-humanitarian-assistance-role-for-first-time-on-rimpac/iqxjjfj4
SOURCE Cascade Aerospace Inc.
Related Links
http://www.cascadeaerospace.com
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CGCN Group, an integrated advocacy and public-affairs firm, on Tuesday announced the addition of Ken Spain to its strategic communications division to help companies and industry groups navigate complex public-policy challenges and image concerns.
"Ken brings a rare mix of high-level corporate and political experience to our growing communications practice," said Steve Clark, founder of CGCN Group. "He has successfully managed crises and repositioned some of the most prominent industries, companies and executives in the eyes of the public."
The expansion comes two months after CGCN Group launched its strategic communications practice to provide clients with more direct outreach to the media and the ability to create content and build coalitions inside and outside Washington. This integrated approach is increasingly critical for companies and industry groups to achieve their public-policy objectives.
Spain joins CGCN from Koch Industries, where he served as managing director for corporate communications and external affairs. He played a central role in the company's recent branding effort, shaping news coverage and highlighting corporate and philanthropic initiatives that illustrate the company's commitment to strong values.
He previously served as vice president of public affairs and communications at the Private Equity Growth Capital Council (now the American Investment Council). In that role, he helped leading private-equity firms educate Americans about the critical role they play in the country's economy. He also managed the communications effort for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives when they regained the majority in 2010. The New York Times called it "one of the most remarkable congressional campaigns in more than half a century."
Before entering the private sector, Spain worked on a number of political campaigns and for multiple members of Congress, including House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway (R., Texas). That experience gave him a firm grasp of what messages resonate with lawmakers and voters back home, making him an ideal complement to CGCN's highly regarded lobbying team.
"We found a perfect fit," Clark said. "Ken has an incredible record of success in politics, corporate communications and trade associations. He works hard, cares about his clients and earns the respect of everyone he works with."
Spain joins former Wall Street Journal reporter Patrick O'Connor, who launched the firm's strategic communications practice back in September. CGCN's new public-affairs team offers clients a unique understanding of how the media operates and how voters and politicians react.
ABOUT CGCN
CGCN Group is an integrated advocacy and strategic communications firm that specializes in helping corporations, non-profits and industry groups navigate complex legislative and regulatory issues. The firm provides outreach to key policymakers, gathers strategic intelligence and offers a full suite of tools for media and grassroots communication. CGCN represents more than 50 clients from a wide range of industries, including non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and prominent trade associations.
Contact: Patrick O'Connor, [email protected], (202) 486-5958
SOURCE CGCN Group
Related Links
http://www.cgcn.com
The latest global event held in the city was the 22nd World Route Development Forum ("World Routes"), one of the biggest annual events for the global civil aviation sector. The four-day event, which concluded on Sept 27, drew 3,500 representatives from airlines, airports, government departments and international organizations, and was the largest in its history in terms of scale. It offered a platform for route development professionals to meet, plan and discuss new and existing global air services. The agenda included keynote speeches, a strategic summit, a world tourism summit, face-to-face meetings, exhibitions and folk performances.
The exhibition area totaled more than 40,000 square meters. The exhibition hall specified for Chengdu covered 1,400 sq m, which fully displayed the city's flight networks, aviation economic development, as well as tourism and culture.
The event bore fruitful results. The Chengdu city government, together with Sichuan Province Airport Group, signed agreements with six airlines to open nine non-stop air routes departing from Chengdu during World Routes. These airlines are Air China, Hainan Airlines, Beijing Capital Airlines, Tibet Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines and Sichuan Airlines. According to the agreements, they will open the direct routes within one year, strengthening Chengdu's connection to Europe, Oceania, North America, Africa and the Middle East.
Chengdu is the second city on the Chinese mainland to host World Routes, following Beijing in 2009. Launched in 1995, World Routes is considered the "Olympics" or "World Expo" for the worlds' civil aviation industry. The event has been held in cities including Abu Dhabi, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Dubai, Vancouver and Beijing, all famous international destinations.
Chengdu has rich experience in hosting events such as World Routes. In the past five years, Chengdu has introduced, on average, more than 10 new international conventions each year, including the 2013 Fortune Global Forum, the 12th World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention, the ninth World Biomaterials Congress, the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting, the 12th Michelin Challenge Bibendum, and the 2016 Chengdu Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fair. Chengdu is upgrading its service and infrastructure to meet the growing demand for international events, according to the Chengdu Bureau of Exposition.
Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has become a top destination for international conventions and exhibitions to be held in western China.
Website: www.cbecd.com
Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161103/435760
SOURCE China Council For the Promotion of International Trade Chengdu Sub-council
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http://www.cbecd.com
CHENGDU, China, Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The 4th China-Australia Media Forum took place in the megacity of Chengdu, Western China, on November 2nd. The forum was an initiative introduced in 2006 and the last forum was held in Sydney, Australia.
It marked the second time that Chengdu hosted a high-level international mass media event over the last two months. Earlier in September, main news agencies from eight Asia-Pacific countries, including but not limited to China, Australia, Japan and South Korea, met in the city as an autumn usual. "It's both ancient and modern. There's much more than good food and giant pandas. Its development potential is eye-catching, too." AAP CEO Bruce Davidson aired his views on Chengdu.
As Chengdu and Australia strengthen mutual economic and trade relations these years, Australia has risen as an important trade partner of and investor in Chengdu. Similarly, Chengdu is now also Australia's most important partner in Western China.
Australia set up a Consulate General in Chengdu in 2013 to encompass Western China - the first time it established a consulate in China since 1992.
The same year, Chengdu opened nonstop air routes to Melbourne. With the ongoing economic, cultural and social exchanges, beef, wine and even fresh produce (e.g. lobster) from Australia have appeared on the table of Chengdu families.
Chengdu became a sister city of the Australian city of Perth as early as 2010. Since then, the two cities have been successful in cooperating on education, tourism, etc. Thus far, 120 Australian investors, including ANZ, BlueScope and Goodman, have made investments in Chengdu.
What is it that makes the city renowned for giant pandas and spicy delicacies attractive to the Australian government and Australian investors?
In 2013, the Chinese government initiated the huge "One Belt, One Road" strategy in an attempt to re-create the historical economic prosperity along the ancient Silk Road leading from Central Asia to Europe by way of Russia. Located at the crossing of "One Belt, One Road" and the Yangtze Economic Area, Chengdu is now in a position to rank among the most developed Chinese cities.
Earlier this year, Chengdu was positioned by the Central government as a national-level economic center, a new opportunity to launch it onto a fast track of development. With 89 international/regional air routes in operation, a second airport quickly under construction and a currently operational express rail shuttling between Chengdu and EU countries, the city is showing a huge ambition to become the largest general aviation complex in Western China and a national/international-level logistics center.
The commendable entrepreneurial environment and livability of Chengdu struck the Australian media magnates who attended the forum as an impressive surprise, who visited the S&T City in Tianfu New Area, the Giant Panda Breeding Ground and Kuanzhaixiangzi during breaks in their spare time.
It was the third time that Wilton International Media Group CEO Harold Weldon came to Chengdu. He was amazed at the changes, "The changes are not simply in area. The city is actively merging into the world. Geographical advantage brings it unlimited opportunities. There's something like an inherent leisure here, so foreigners embrace the city very quickly and take their time living and working here."
State Council Information Office Deputy Head Guo Weimin said in an address at the forum, "In Chinese, Chengdu means 'City of Success'. I believe the forum to be a fruitful success if China and Australia stick together as well as the starting point for in-depth cooperation between media groups on both sides."
SOURCE Gochengdu
SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Nov. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a show of unprecedented collaboration, more than 40 Chicagoland radio stations will simultaneously air a 30-minute broadcast conversation with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a "Chicago Radio Town Hall Meeting." These member stations of the Illinois Broadcasters Association will interrupt regular programming at 6pm on Monday, November 14, 2016, to highlight the strength of Chicago, and host a conversation about pressing issues facing the city.
Award winning and IBA Hall of Fame broadcast journalist Bill Kurtis will moderate the Chicago Radio Town Hall Meeting, scheduled to air on a diverse group of stations involving all formats including music, spoken word and Chicago's Spanish language stations. Programmers from a number of the participating stations are collaborating to produce the program while General Managers have cleared the time to air the program commercial free.
"This project showcases the high value that radio broadcasters have in a media marketplace," says Doug Levy, Illinois Broadcasters Association (IBA) Chairman of the Board and Chair of the IBA's Radio Broadcasters of Chicagoland Committee responsible for the program. "My colleagues and I all share a deep sense of responsibility to our audiences. This unprecedented broadcast connects an enormous number of people with their elected leader tasked with making lives better for everyone in Chicago."
"I recently asked the leaders of Chicago-area radio stations to utilize their powerful platforms and tremendous reach to motivate Chicagoans to take a more active role in making our city stronger," said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. "They answered the call with this unique broadcast opportunity. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with the people of Chicago about how, when we work together, we make our city better for everyone who calls it home."
"The fact the most popular radio stations in Chicago are willing to set aside regular programming and commercial inventory to air this 30-minute conversation with the Mayor is a prime example of local broadcasters doing what they do best; serving the needs of their listeners within their communities of license," said Dennis Lyle, president & CEO of the IBA.
In advance of the broadcast, participating radio stations will give listeners a chance to submit questions of the Mayor by visiting the RBC's designated website www.ChicagoRadioStations.com or through social media with the hashtag #ChicagoRadio. Kurtis will use some of those questions during the broadcast.
"Radio stations have a unique ability to create a meaningful conversation because of the intimate relationship the medium has with its audience," continued IBA/RBC Chairman Levy. "Chicago is a world class city with some of the best radio stations in the country. I am proud that we are leading the dialogue about how to solve some of our biggest problems and take full advantage of some of our greatest strengths."
SOURCE Illinois Broadcasters Association
Related Links
http://www.ChicagoRadioStations.com